Some tasty bite-sized chunks of positive news to perk up the day.
Add Years to Life
In a video produced by CBS Sunday Morning News, activist and actress Jane Fonda joined her friend - and fellow anti-ageism advocate - Ashton Applewhite to get the word out: living with positivity can literally extend your life. “In the next few minutes, Ashton and I are going to add seven and a half years to your life,” Fonda pledged, in a direct address to the viewer. “People with more positive age beliefs lived an average of seven and a half years longer than people who equated aging with disease and decline,” Applewhite said, in reference to a study from Yale. “In other words,” Fonda cut in. “One way to live longer is just to have a good attitude.” Want to watch the 4 minute video? Click here
Mood Booster
Buy a toy for your dog. Or a shipwreck for your goldfish to explore. A US study found that spending $5 on your pet boosts your mood more than spending the same amount on yourself or another person.
Jimmy Carter
Did you know that the former president installed thermal solar panels on the roof of the White House? Following the death of Jimmy Carter, US president from 1977 to 1981, the flurry of obituaries highlighted not only his Nobel Prize-winning diplomacy but also his eco-credentials. In stark contrast to the president-elect Donald Trump, Carter upheld green values and pioneered environmental policies decades before other world leaders grasped the urgency. The former president, who died aged 100, famously installed thermal solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1979.
Solar Great Wall
Sandy and mostly devoid of life, the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia once had a reputation for being a “sea of death.” More recently, its dune fields have become a sea of photovoltaic possibility, transformed by a surge of newly installed solar panels. The construction is part of China’s multiyear plan to build a solar great wall designed to generate enough energy to power Beijing. The project, expected to be finished in 2030, will be 400 km (250 miles) long, 5 km (3 miles) wide, and achieve a maximum generating capacity of 100 gigawatts. So far, Chinese officials say they have installed about 5.4 gigawatts.
Fun Fact
Penguins are skilled divers, transitioning from land to water with smooth movements. But what's the deepest a penguin can actually dive? The deepest-diving penguins are emperor penguins, who also dive deeper than any birds. Typically, they plunge 100 to 200m (330 to 650ft) into the chilly depths of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica as they hunt for krill and fish. The deepest penguin dive on record was more than 550m (1,800ft) - making it the deepest diving bird. In 2013, an emperor carrying an electronic tag stayed underwater for more than half an hour, breaking previous records by five minutes.
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Scandinavian Heritage
People with Scandinavian ancestry were in Britain long before the Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings turned up, researchers have found after studying the genetics of an ancient Roman buried in York. The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons brought an influx of Scandinavians to ancient Britain in the fifth century, with the first major Viking raid - which targeted the monastery at Lindisfarne - occurring in AD793. However, researchers studying a man thought to have been Roman soldier - or perhaps even a gladiator - who lived between the second and fourth century have found that 25 percent of his ancestry came from Scandinavia. “The ancestry that we thought would come in [with] Anglo-Saxons maybe in some parts was already there,” said Dr Leo Speidel, first author of the study and a group leader at Riken, a national scientific research institute in Japan.
“Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away.” Rebecca Solnit
On This Day
3 January 2001: Hillary Clinton was sworn in as a U.S. senator from New York, having become the first first lady in U.S. history to win elective office.
Today's Articles
Cold Case Investigation: Missing woman found 52 years after she vanished, solving one of Britain’s longest-running missing person cases.
Mood Boosting Video
Teamwork: Senior citizen plays piano, and then magic occurs.