To kick off the new year, I wanted to finish my look back at the quirkier news items from the second half of 2019, as reported in The Guardian newspaper online.
July
The England team at the Women’s World Cup reach the semi-finals before going out to the USA, narrowly failing to become the first England team in a World Cup final since 1966. Snowball, the sulphur-crested cockatoo, not only dances but does his own choreography, too. As an incentive for good behaviour, prisoners are offered keys to their own cells. A message in a bottle dropped into the seas off the Australian coast in 1969, is finally discovered. A study reveals that chimps are more sociable after watching movies together. And Neuroscientists manage to decode brain speech signals into written text.
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| Snowball the dancing cockatoo. Pic: the Guardian |
August
Having a healthy social life is shown to help ward off dementia in later life. Scientists produce ‘Atomik’ vodka from grain grown around Chernobyl. Two footbridges, cantilevered out from the cliffs with a 4cm gap in the middle, meet to connect Tintagel Castle with Merlin’s Cave in Cornwall. A cure for the previously deadly Ebola virus is tested successfully in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Growing up in areas with high air pollution is linked to mental health issues, a new study shows. Six portraits of the ‘Petworth beauties’ which had their lower legs removed in the 1820s when the owner of Petworth House, the third Earl of Egremont, required more room to hang other paintings, have been restored to full length by the National Trust.
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| The Tintagel footbridges. Pic: the Guardian |
September
It is thought the Loch Ness Monster could be a giant eel, after researchers from Otago University find the water contains no dinosaur or monster DNA. Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler space telescope determine that there is water on planet K2-18b, in the constellation of Leo. The planet is twice the size of earth and orbits a cool red dwarf less than half the size of the sun, which warms the surface of the planet to approximately 10C (50F). The annual science prizes, the Ig Nobel, given to work that ‘first makes people laugh, then makes them think’, are awarded in a ceremony at Harvard University. A British researcher, part of an international team, wins one for discovering which parts of the body are most pleasurable to scratch. The ankles, apparently, closely followed by the back and then forearm. A Japanese Airline indicates seats with infants up to two years old for other passengers booking seats.
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| the Loch Ness Monster |
Posts
Hmm, Zoë, what would you say is defined as a "healthy social life," and when is too late to start living one?
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant to say was, Hmm, Zoë, before I forget...
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