Ensuring it's a sunny Saturday with a smorgasbord of tasty positive news stories.
Make Like a Flamingo
Any time, anywhere, this is a fun way to boost your health for the long term. Practise standing on one leg when you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, brushing your teeth, or just for the hell of it because you haven’t moved for three hours. Balancing engages muscles involved in stability from your core to your toes. More importantly, getting good at it helps you avoid falling over. Balance ability starts dropping off at 60, so make sure you can stand on each leg for at least 30 seconds at that age, then try to maintain it. (Aim for at least 43 seconds if you’re under 40, says Britain's NHS.) Want to take it up a notch? Bend your upper body to one side while balancing. If you can’t do this already, you’ll be delighted when you can.
Sub Bnb
From lighthouses to baseball stadiums, globetrotters have no shortage of unique accommodations to choose from while traveling. But history buffs may find one experience particularly intriguing: staying on a fully restored World War II-era submarine - including the very same bunk beds American sailors slept in during war patrols. Intrepid travelers can do just that at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, which has made its submarine, the USS Cobia, available for overnight stays. Called the “Sub Bnb,” the unusual floating lodging is available for booking on Airbnb, and can accommodate 16 guests at a time.
Healing Bones
Researchers at the University of Oregon have developed tiny implantable sensors that help guide rehabilitation for broken bones. The devices provide real-time data, allowing protocols to be adjusted for optimal recovery. The team hopes the technology will soon help human patients.
2025 Meteor Events
Look not only ahead but above to enjoy some truly epic events taking place in the night sky from early January onward. These include the Quadrantids meteor shower (Jan. 3-4), two total lunar eclipses (March 14 and Sept. 7), the Eta Aquarids meteor shower (May 6-7), the Perseids meteor shower (Aug. 12-13), and the Geminids meteor shower (Dec. 13-14), dubbed by SeaSky.org as “the king of the meteor showers.” Per the website, the Perseids are “considered by many to be the best shower in the heavens, producing up to 120 multicolored meteors per hour at its peak.” Don't worry OGN will remind you nearer the time (as we did about the Quadrantids in Thursday's good news nuggets).
Compliments
Zoe Williams, a journalist at Britain's Guardian newspaper, recommends boosting your mood by paying one person who isn’t expecting it a compliment. This, she says, "will lift your mood as well as theirs. It could be to someone close to you, or a guy you’ve just met, but it has to be considered. It can’t just be 'You look nice' (unless they habitually look like crap, and for some reason today they don’t). Try to make it a close observation: for instance, I told a lady on the delicatessen counter in the Ramsgate Waitrose that her eyeball estimation of the weight of things was the best I’d ever seen. That was in 2004. She still says hello to me."
First State to Ban PFAS
As of now, Minnesota is the first US state to ban products made with harmful PFAs - that’s per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as “forever chemicals” due to the fact that they don’t naturally degrade. Nonstick cookware and waterproof clothing are well-known examples of items that typically contain PFAs. The new law means Minnesotans won’t be able to sell or distribute for sale consumer products with intentionally added PFAS within 11 specific categories, including cookware, dental floss, and cleaning products.
"Ask yourself about the kind of life you want: What would you do day to day, and with whom, and where? Consider the life you have. Do one thing today, however small, to close the gap between the two." Dame Maggie Smith
On This Day
4 January 2007: U.S. politician Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker of the House of Representatives, becoming the first woman to hold the office.
Today's Articles
Women Honorees: The U.S. Mint is making new quarters featuring five historical female figures this year. Who are they?
166 Million Years Later: UK's biggest ever dinosaur footprint site has been unearthed in Oxfordshire.
Interesting Origins: From French kiss to Mexican wave and Indian summer - but do you know how such geographic idioms originated?
Mood Boosting Video
How They Do It: Behind the scenes of Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.