Eddy's Good News: Cat pictures in place of fines and magnet fishing

Virgin Radio

20 Mar 2024, 16:52

Every day during his show on Virgin Radio Anthems, Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world, to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Be sure to listen each day between 2pm and 6pm (Monday - Friday) to hear Eddy's Good News stories (amongst the finest music of course), but if you miss any of them you can catch up on the transcripts of Eddy's most recent stories below:

Wednesday 20th March 2024

Let’s take our hats off to a US library that’s accepting cat pictures in place of fines for the whole month of March!

Say hello to the Worcester Library in Massachusetts March Miaowness campaign, a slice of feline genius where people are able to take advantage of an amnesty to bring in their overdue books with the fines waived in place of a cat picture or drawing.

They’ve also allowing dog pictures and even the odd whale. The point of the amnesty is to clear the backlog of overdue books and to acknowledge the fact that people are scared of bringing the books back because the fines have built up. Lots of people let books become overdue during the pandemic then just never came back with them. The March Miaowness campaign has been a roaring - maybe that’s not the right word - meowing - success, with 400 books coming back in the first five days. Kindness and kitties, what’s not to love about this. 

Via: twitter.com

You know about metal detecting, do you know about magnet fishing, its underwater equivalent where people fish for treasure in a river with a magnet in a rope? 

Trevor Penny is a magnet fisherman who was trying his luck in an Oxfordshire river and was pulling out scaffolding pole after scaffolding pole until the end of the day when he hauled up something really interesting. “It’s a sword!” Said his friend and it was an old one. Trevor thought it must be at least 250 years old. 

Trevor couldn’t believe it when experts dated his find as Viking and at least 900 years old. It was very normal for Viking warriors to be buried underwater and for their swords to be with them, so they could get into Valhalla. Interestingly while Vikings were good at many things they were terrible at metallurgy. Their swords had really high slag content and were prone to breaking in battles. Vikings who made money always bought swords made in France or the U.K.  there’s a twist to the tale though. the rivers trust don’t allow magnet fishing but they’ve said they’ll take no action if Trevor gives the sword to a museum, which he was happy to do.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org