The act of sending and receiving holiday cards is a long-standing tradition celebrated around the world — and it was a pastime that Queen Victoria appeared to partake in during her reign. On January 5, Hansons Auctioneers announced that a 140-year-old table letter box belonging to Queen Victoria was discovered in a Surrey cottage. The […]
The RMS Titanic sank more than 110 years ago, but explorers are still uncovering new details about the famed ship. This past August, OceanGate Expeditions released “unprecedented” 8k video footage of the underwater wreck — and the insight it provided has experts giddy. Captured during the organization’s 2022 Titanic Expedition, the recordings offer incredibly detailed visuals
Canine remains found at the colonial settlement of Jamestown have provided new information about the lineage of dogs, both indigenous and of European origin, in the Americas. After extracting DNA from the bones, a team of archeologists from the University of Iowa were able to confirm that the remains belonged to indigenous dogs. The discovery
Have you ever wondered about whose scrawl is in the margins of your library book, or read a note on the inside cover and imagined who it was for? Sharon McKellar’s collection is for you. The librarian compiles items left on shelves and in library books across Oakland, California — from Post-It notes to bus
Librarian Compiles Lost Notes and Items Found in Library Books Continue Reading »
Outside of academia, many people have never heard of Pāṇini, the revered grammarian and scholar whom some experts refer to as “the father of linguistics.” A master of Sanskrit — a classical Indo-European language from South Asia, and the sacred and literary language of Hinduism — Pāṇini is thought to have produced his legendary treatise,
After 2,500 Years, a Ph.D. Student Has Solved an Ancient Grammatical Puzzle Continue Reading »
Have you ever stopped to wonder how the first month of the year came to be called “January,” or where the other months’ names, from “February” through “December,” actually originated? In case the start of another trip around the sun has you curious, here’s a brief overview of how we arrived at our present-day calendar system.
What’s a “January,” Anyway? A Brief Guide to the Origins of Each Month’s Name Continue Reading »
In the middle of Nevada’s vast desert there’s a 200-million-year-old rich fossil bed, where many “school bus-sized” ichthyosaurs are petrified in stone. The remains of these 50-foot-long, ancient marine reptiles (Shonisaurus popularis) have been found over the course of half a century, but the findings have perplexed paleontologists since their discovery — specifically why their
More than a century after his death, Vincent Van Gogh is continuing to delight art enthusiasts with new masterpieces. Experts at the National Galleries of Scotland discovered a never-before-seen self-portrait of the late artist while X-raying another of Van Gogh’s paintings, “Head of a Peasant Woman,” before putting it on display. When “Head of a
Hidden Self-Portrait of Vincent Van Gogh Discovered Behind Painting Continue Reading »
In our fast-paced, ever-changing, and chaotic world, it can often feel difficult to remember something good that has happened in the past week, let alone an entire year. Nice News is here to help you remember some of the most significant positive stories from 2022 — from the endangered species that are bouncing back (looking
What Went Right This Year: 13 Positive Stories From 2022 Continue Reading »
The last few years have yielded plenty of challenges: political and financial unrest, the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, habitat loss, and the effects of warming temperatures due to climate change, to name but a few. But there’s still plenty of good in the world, from small and simple pleasures to larger advancements offering collective hope for
