Ensuring the week gets off to a bright start with today's global round up of positive news.
Library For Eavan
Though it was founded by a woman - Queen Elizabeth I, no less - Dublin’s Trinity College is entirely made up of buildings named after men. But now, after more than 400 years, one of Trinity’s main libraries will be renamed for Eavan Boland (1944-2020), an Irish feminist poet and the first female namesake of a building on Trinity’s campus. The library was formerly named for an 18th-century philosopher who profited from the international slave trade. A Trinity graduate herself, Boland wrote about women in ordinary domestic life, a subject often undervalued in 20th-century poetry, and advocated throughout her life and work for women’s rights. But unlike other high-profile writers who attended the college, she hadn’t received recognition on a building facade like Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett.
Top Reality Show
The hottest show streaming right now follows the lives of a celebrity couple as they weather storms and raise their young in the public eye. Welcome to the world of Jackie and Shadow, a bald eagle couple in Big Bear Valley, California, whose relationship has been documented in a livestream over several years. Longtime fans were overjoyed last week when two chicks finally emerged from their eggs - a major triumph for Jackie and Shadow, whose eggs haven’t successfully hatched in three years. Regular viewers of Jackie and Shadow’s 24/7 reality show have delighted watching the couple’s dynamic shift now that they’re parents again. The birds gently bicker over who gets to incubate the eggs - Shadow will attempt to nudge Jackie out of the way by placing sticks on her back, while she’ll just hover over him and nudge him until he makes way for his lady.
Kew's Carbon Garden
London’s Kew Gardens is on a mission to help us all tackle climate change. The team is opening a new permanent garden that will offer a tangible (and beautiful) example of how to help give nature a boost. The Carbon Garden, opening in July, draws on research to show why carbon is vital to life on Earth through intentional displays such as a dry garden and fungi-inspired pavilion. It will also include climate-resilient trees, drought-resistant plants, and wildflower meadows, all to highlight how plants and fungi act as “our natural allies in climate repair.” Richard Wilford, who is designing the Carbon Garden, explained that it presents a “unique opportunity to showcase our ongoing research, combining scientific insight with thoughtful design and beautiful planting.” He added: “We hope the Carbon Garden inspires visitors to act and join us in shaping a more sustainable, resilient future for life on our planet.”
Old Prom Date
Thirty-five years after going to prom with Shawn Moyer, Elena Hershey gave him one of her kidneys. Hershey and Moyer fell out of touch after high school, and last year, Hershey learned that Moyer, a doctor in Pennsylvania, needed a kidney. She had always been open to donating an organ and was thrilled to help an old friend. "It's just a remarkable thing for somebody to do," Moyer said.
The Funeral Guide
Every now and again a study will fall into our inboxes, bankrolled by an unlikely source, that sheds some light on an area of film so esoteric that nobody has given it a moment’s thought until now. With that in mind, it's OGN's pleasure to announce that Funeral Guide has commissioned a study to see which names are most likely to be killed off early in horror movies. This was achieved by combing through IMDb’s top 100 horrors, and seeing which characters didn’t make it to the end credits. As such, actors are not advised to star in anything where their character is called David, Holly or Dick, because these names are, quite literally, the most common death sentence.
Not Just a Fortress
Using laser scanning technologies, a researcher has identified a 15th-century city in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The sprawling metropolis, known as Guiengola, was built by the Zapotecs, a pre-Columbian group that inhabited the region as early as the sixth century B.C.E. Researchers have known about the site for some time, but they’d assumed it was a fortress where soldiers were stationed. The city is covered by a thick forest canopy, making it difficult to study. But in late 2022, Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis, an anthropologist at McGill University in Canada, scanned Guiengola from above with lidar, a remote-sensing technology. He recently published his findings in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica. At Guiengola’s peak, “I would say that at least 5,000 people were living permanently on the site,” tells Live Science. The city was likely inhabited for about 150 years - around 1350 to 1500 - and then “abandoned a few decades before European contact in 1521.”
“Gratitude makes sweet miracles of small moments.” Mary Davis
On This Day
10 March 1849: Abraham Lincoln applies for a patent (only US President to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions.
Today's Articles
WWII: Remembering American Red Cross Servicewomen in the UK as, at the moment, their stories are largely unknown.
Dystopia or Utopia? Toyota's new 'living laboratory' is an AI-powered futuristic experiment for residents.
Mood Boosting Video
Home Runs: Watch this skier if you're up for a bit of a vicarious adrenalin rush.