Goodable

Talk about an unexpected houseguest!

Staff at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore got the surprise of the season when Kipepeo, a four-year-old giraffe who wasn’t known to be pregnant, casually gave birth to a healthy baby girl. The calf made her grand entrance in the early hours of March 27, and zookeepers are still doing double takes.

“Kipi,” as she’s affectionately called, had only arrived at the zoo in November. So when keepers noticed a tiny shift in her behavior on March 26, they thought she might be having an off day—not a whole baby.

But sure enough, by the next morning, Baltimore had a brand-new resident: a 128-pound, six-foot-tall bundle of spotted joy.

Erin Cantwell Grimm, the zoo’s Mammal Curator, explained that giraffe pregnancies last around 15 months. The baby—who hasn’t been named yet—is nursing like a champ and adjusting well to zoo life, while first-time mom Kipi is absolutely crushing it in the parenting department.

We’re just hoping she gave the zookeepers a high-five. Or, at the very least, a very tall head nod.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom welcomed its newest addition, a young Masai giraffe named Tucker, to the Kilimanjaro Safaris’ savannah.
Its mother, Mara, gave birth to the calf earlier this year and park visitors got the chance to see Tucker make his debut on Monday.
The new arrival is the first giraffe born at Walt Disney World Resort since 2021. In an announcement celebrating this new family member, the resort promised its ongoing commitment to wildlife and species protection.

Surprise! This Giraffe Just Unexpectedly Delivered an Adorable Baby

GoodGoodGood

Sustainability has become one of the loudest conversations in music. Fans are calling on artists to shrink their environmental footprint, from the way merch is made to the fuel that powers entire arenas. Every part of the industry carries a cost, and REVERB, a nonprofit that has been working on these issues for more than two decades, is focused on reducing it.

Since 2004, REVERB has helped “green” tours and venues, offset carbon emissions and raise over 16 million dollars for environmental causes. Chris Spinato, the organization’s director of communications, has watched the work grow without drifting from its original mission. Their roster now includes major touring names such as Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer and Jack Johnson, and their festival partnerships are expanding, but the approach remains steady. “We help partners identify their sustainability goals and then create custom programs to meet and usually exceed what they’re hoping to achieve,” Spinato told the Goodnewspaper.

A big part of that work happens on the road. For many tours, REVERB sends an on-site sustainability coordinator who travels with the band. “They’re sort of like a guitar tech, but instead of restringing and adjusting guitars, they’re making sure that sustainability efforts are happening,” Spinato said. Those efforts include reducing single use plastics, improving recycling, diverting waste from landfills and lowering carbon emissions. The same model now appears at festivals and large venue events.

Over the last decade, Spinato has seen significant shifts. Simple measures they once had to fight for, such as allowing reusable water bottles, installing refill stations and providing recycling bins, have become standard at many venues. Yet festivals remain a challenge. According to Musicians for Sustainability, concerts in the United States generate more than 116 million pounds of waste each year and emit 400,000 tons of carbon.

Cutting fossil fuel use is another priority. Through REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project, artists and industry partners fund efforts to replace diesel generators with cleaner energy. “This effort has been entirely funded by artists and industry partners and is helping to rapidly decrease or eliminate carbon emissions and accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels,” Spinato said. In 2023, the program helped power Billie Eilish’s Lollapalooza headline set and Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion using solar charged battery systems instead of diesel.

Spinato has no illusions about the scale of the climate crisis, but he finds motivation in the collective effort behind this work. “Despite the challenges that still remain both in music and generally as we all face the worsening climate crisis, we have hope,” he said. “It’s not hope in the sense that we hope things get better. It’s a hope gained through taking action and seeing the millions of people that are working to create a better future for people and the planet.”

He also stresses that REVERB does not operate alone. Its impact depends on a wide network of staff, volunteers, partner organizations, artists and the fans who show up ready to participate. Concerts, he said, are uniquely powerful places to spark that engagement.

“It may be a little cliché, but music really is a universal language. It connects people in a way that really nothing else can,” Spinato said. Concerts bring people together around a shared love of an artist, he explained, and that atmosphere creates a natural opening for conversations about climate action. “What better place to talk to people about taking action for people and the planet!?”

The sustainability push is still evolving, but the momentum is real. As artists and fans continue to demand accountability, groups like REVERB are helping shift the industry toward practices that match the spirit of the music itself, energetic, collaborative and ready to build something better.

How Billie Eilish, Dave Matthews Band And Jack Johnson Lead The Way In Eco-Friendly Concert Tours

YR - Yr Vaughan

For ten years every September, cyclists from northern York Region, southern Simcoe County and beyond have come together for one of the region’s most anticipated traditions, the NewRoads LakeRide. Hosted by NewRoads Automotive Group and driven by the leadership of president Michael Croxon, the ride marked its final year in 2025, closing out the decade with a milestone the organizers had long hoped to reach.

Across ten years of fundraising, participants and supporters helped the event surpass 1 million dollars raised for Southlake Health. While the ride has supported a range of critical programs, its most profound impact has been on Southlake’s mental health services, helping to transform care for some of the community’s most vulnerable patients.

Earlier this January, Southlake Health Foundation president Jennifer Ritter and members of her team visited a NewRoads town hall to share the hospital’s gratitude. A custom cycling jersey was also presented to Croxon in recognition of his philanthropic leadership. “Our partnership with NewRoads Automotive Group, through the thoughtful and generous leadership of Michael Croxon, has been a point-of-pride for Southlake Health,” Ritter said. “Over the last 10 years, we have seen the NewRoads LakeRide grow and inspire cyclists across the region to fundraise and ride to make an impact on the health of our communities.”

She added that nowhere has that impact been felt more deeply than within the Mental Health Program. Funding from the LakeRide has helped create healing spaces tailored to the needs of patients, ensuring they have an environment that supports recovery.

In 2020, that support helped make possible the NewRoads Automotive Group Emergent Mental Health Assessment Unit, a dedicated space with six private assessment rooms for people experiencing a mental health crisis. In 2023, a new 12 bed adult inpatient unit opened, expanding Southlake’s capacity and providing light filled, purpose built spaces designed specifically for mental health care.

“As a psychiatrist caring for patients in Southlake’s mental health program, I know the important role that a peaceful and healing environment plays in enabling a patient to recover,” said Dr. Gaurav Mehta, physician leader of the program. He noted that patients are already benefiting from the improved and expanded spaces made possible through NewRoads’ support. “We’re so appreciative of our partners at NewRoads and participants and donors of the NewRoads LakeRide over the last 10 years for making this a reality for Southlake.”

Though 2025 marked the final year of the LakeRide under NewRoads’ leadership, the legacy of the event lives on through the care it helped strengthen. For information on supporting Southlake’s mental health program or updates on upcoming community fundraising events in 2026, visit southlakefoundation.ca.

Southlake Health Celebrates Final Popular Newmarket Fundraiser For Mental Health

Good News Network

What began as a simple chair volleyball game at a senior living community in Belton, Texas, has grown into a genuine friendship that crosses generations.

The seniors at Woodland Cottages, who proudly call themselves “The Hit Squad,” regularly square off against members of the Lake Belton High School volleyball team. The matches are lighthearted and energetic, filled with laughter, quick volleys and plenty of friendly banter.

“We just laugh and laugh when we practice,” said Hit Squad member Charlotte Wheeler.

The relationship has also moved well beyond the walls of the senior community. Residents recently traveled to one of the girls’ games, cheering from the stands and surprising eight senior athletes with personalized goodie bags during the school’s Senior Night celebration.

Students have embraced the connection just as warmly. They visit often, staying long after the games end to talk, share stories and build friendships. “I’m ready to get some wisdom and skills from those who know more than I do,” high schooler Thia Allsion told the Belton Journal.

The idea has spread quickly at school. After hearing about the games, the undefeated Lady Broncos basketball team asked to schedule their own chair volleyball match with residents.

The impact on the seniors has been clear. A Woodland Cottages spokesperson told GNN that residents are experiencing increased physical activity, stronger social engagement and a renewed sense of purpose. Families and staff say the change is easy to see in the residents’ excitement leading up to each match.

The story continues to grow through packed cheering sections, hugs exchanged after games and smiles that stretch across generations. It started with a simple game, but it has become something much bigger, a reminder of how powerful connection can be when communities find ways to bring people together.

These Texas Seniors and High School Athletes Built an Unlikely Friendship Through Chair Volleyball

Science Daily

For years, scientists have noticed something puzzling. People who live at high elevations, where the air holds far less oxygen, tend to develop diabetes at much lower rates than people at sea level. The pattern was clear. The biology behind it was not.

Researchers at Gladstone Institutes now say they have found the missing explanation. Their work shows that in low oxygen environments, red blood cells start pulling large amounts of sugar out of the bloodstream. They act like glucose sponges, helping keep blood sugar levels lower under conditions similar to the thin air found on the world's tallest peaks.

The findings, published in Cell Metabolism, reveal that red blood cells can change their metabolism when oxygen drops. This shift helps them deliver oxygen more efficiently throughout the body. At the same time, it reduces circulating blood sugar, offering a simple explanation for the lower diabetes risk seen at altitude.

"Red blood cells represent a hidden compartment of glucose metabolism that has not been appreciated until now," said senior author Isha Jain, PhD, a Gladstone Investigator, core investigator at Arc Institute, and professor of biochemistry at UC San Francisco. "This discovery could open up entirely new ways to think about controlling blood sugar."

Jain's lab has spent years studying hypoxia, the term for low oxygen levels in the blood, and how it shapes metabolism. In earlier mouse experiments, the team noticed that animals breathing low-oxygen air had sharply reduced blood glucose levels. After eating, they cleared sugar from their bloodstream almost instantly. That behavior is typically linked to lower diabetes risk. But the usual organs, including muscle, liver and brain, did not explain where all the sugar was going.

"When we gave sugar to the mice in hypoxia, it disappeared from their bloodstream almost instantly," said first author Yolanda Martí-Mateos, PhD. "We looked at muscle, brain, liver, all the usual suspects, but nothing in these organs could explain what was happening."

A different imaging approach uncovered the answer. Red blood cells, long viewed as simple oxygen couriers, were absorbing and using a large share of the glucose. Follow-up experiments confirmed it. Under hypoxia, mice produced more red blood cells, and each of those cells took in far more glucose than those formed in normal oxygen.

To understand how this worked, Jain partnered with Angelo D'Alessandro, PhD, at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and Allan Doctor, MD, at the University of Maryland. Their work showed that when oxygen is limited, red blood cells use glucose to make a molecule that helps release oxygen to tissues. That process becomes especially important when oxygen is scarce.

"What surprised me most was the magnitude of the effect," D'Alessandro said. "Red blood cells are usually thought of as passive oxygen carriers. Yet, we found that they can account for a substantial fraction of whole body glucose consumption, especially under hypoxia."

The team also found that the metabolic benefits of prolonged hypoxia lasted weeks to months after mice returned to normal oxygen.

They then tested HypoxyStat, a new drug from Jain's lab that mimics the effects of low oxygen. HypoxyStat, taken as a pill, causes hemoglobin to hold onto oxygen more tightly, reducing delivery to tissues. In mouse models of diabetes, the drug reversed high blood sugar entirely and outperformed existing treatments.

"This is one of the first use of HypoxyStat beyond mitochondrial disease," Jain said. "It opens the door to thinking about diabetes treatment in a fundamentally different way, by recruiting red blood cells as glucose sinks."

The implications stretch beyond diabetes. D'Alessandro pointed to potential relevance for exercise physiology and trauma care. Traumatic injury often triggers severe oxygen deficits, and shifts in red blood cell metabolism could influence glucose availability and muscle performance. Trauma remains a leading cause of death among younger people, making this line of research especially important.

"This is just the beginning," Jain said. "There's still so much to learn about how the whole body adapts to changes in oxygen, and how we could leverage these mechanisms to treat a range of conditions."

The study, "Red Blood Cells Serve as a Primary Glucose Sink to Improve Glucose Tolerance at Altitude," appeared in Cell Metabolism on February 19, 2026. It was authored by teams from Gladstone Institutes, University of Maryland and University of Colorado Anschutz, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, private donors and the W.M. Keck Foundation.

Scientists Discover How Red Blood Cells Reduce Diabetes Risk at High Altitudes

Artnet

British-born artist James Doran-Webb has built a career out of a material most people walk past without a second thought. Driftwood, worn by weather and time, is the backbone of his wildlife sculptures. Each one carries the texture of its past life and the personality he coaxes out of it. Next year, he will debut his first solo exhibition with Gladwell and Patterson at Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week 2026. The gallery, one of the oldest in the United Kingdom with locations in London and Stamford, will show his sculptures alongside Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings. The mix is meant to pull viewers into a space where his wooden animals blur the line between what is imagined and what feels real.

His path to this work started long before he ever picked up a piece of driftwood. Doran Webb worked as an antiques dealer and cabinet maker, restoring everything from carved hardwood furniture to Queen Anne pieces. Restoration demands careful problem-solving, choosing repairs that stay true to a piece’s history while giving it a longer life. That mindset carries directly into his sculptures.

In 1990, he founded a home décor and art company and began experimenting with building animals from different materials. In the early 2000s he created his first driftwood horse. He kept collecting pieces from beaches and forests. Over time, those piles of wood turned into a growing sculptural menagerie shaped by his attachment to the outdoors and the natural world.

Creating each animal takes patience and an ability to see possibilities in shapes that do not look like much at first glance. He searches for driftwood pieces that match the movement he wants, whether that is a horse mid-stride or a meerkat standing alert. In his view, the material is not dead at all. It is simply waiting for the right form. “One of the things I find most satisfying about my work is being able to take something that is dead and inanimate and transform it into something which is vital, that has movement and has life,” he said.

His work sits inside bigger conversations about sustainability and the ways artists use reclaimed materials. Driftwood shapes the structure of his animals, but it also shapes the meaning. These sculptures raise questions about what can be reused, how humans interact with nature and how discarded things gain new purpose. His subjects range from owls to meerkats to horses. Together they form a kind of ecosystem where each piece invites viewers to look closer and think harder about the relationship between people and the environments they alter.

At Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week, those creatures will share space with paintings from artists who worked more than a century ago. The pairing encourages viewers to explore how artists past and present portray the natural world. Doran Webb’s sculptures add another layer. Built from reclaimed wood, they are reminders of time, weather and resilience, yet they also carry a sense of play. It is a combination that has pushed his work toward international attention and now, toward his first solo exhibition with one of Britain’s oldest galleries.

How This Artist is Bringing Driftwood Creatures to Life

CNBC

Cat Goetze has been watching people drift back toward simpler habits. Less screen time, fewer apps, anything that feels a little calmer. At 29, she has turned that feeling into a fast-growing hardware business built around something many assumed was gone for good, a landline-style phone.

Her company, Physical Phones, brought in more than 789,000 dollars in sales in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The rise looks sudden from the outside. Goetze has been chipping away at the idea for years.

She first thought about a landline product in 2023 after trying to cut her own screen time. She kept thinking about the phone her family shared when she was a kid. "When I grew up, there was this booklet that the school sent out to all of the families in the school district that literally had all of the students' names and their home phone numbers," she said. She remembers prank calling classmates from that printed phone book.

She checked what it would take to install a landline again and balked at the 80 dollar monthly service she was quoted. That pushed her to think differently. With a technical background and an interdisciplinary degree in science, technology and society from Stanford, she wondered how hard it would be to connect a landline phone directly to her smartphone. She started tinkering and built a prototype.

In 2023, she posted a pink handset prototype to TikTok. She had almost no audience and the post produced no sales. "I was like, OK, whatever, that's fine. This was like a fun project," she said. "I wasn't really trying to make money off of it anyway."

By 2025, she had built an online following under the name CatGPT, where she talked about AI and digital wellness. She also saw more people voicing frustration with smartphone dependence. That reminded her of the prototype sitting on the shelf. So she posted it again.

The July 2025 video went viral with more than 8 million views across Instagram and TikTok. Physical Phones passed 120,000 dollars in sales in its first three days. "As a creator, your job is really to kind of hold an antenna out into the zeitgeist and pick up on what people want creatively, spiritually, emotionally," she said. Revisiting the idea at the right moment made all the difference.

Physical Phones connect to a smartphone over Bluetooth and act like a classic landline. When your cellphone rings, the landline rings. To make an outgoing call, you can dial directly on the set. If you do not remember phone numbers, you can pick up the handset and dial star to activate your phone’s voice assistant. It also works for audio calls on FaceTime and WhatsApp.

Pre-orders opened in July 2025 and fully funded the first production run, covering costs for warehousing, shipping, printing and hiring. The company sells three styles, a handset, a wall mount and a rotary version, priced between 90 and 110 dollars.

Goetze says the hardest part was manufacturing. She had never done it before and learned how much attention a hardware product demands. She worked with a manufacturer in Asia, which also meant losing a "whopping portion" of profits to tariffs under the Trump administration’s policy. Finalizing the first model took about two to three months.

Her goal was to deliver phones by December 2025 for Christmas. Shipping by cargo boat would have taken too long. The only way to hit the deadline was to fly the entire shipment from Asia to California by cargo plane. The cost was nearly 74,000 dollars, covering freight, customs and delivery fees. "It was a huge hit to our profit margin," she said. "But I also think that it's those kinds of decisions where you really stand up for your customer and you show them how much you care."

Once the shipment arrived, Goetze pulled together anyone she could find to help. Friends, family, colleagues and neighbors all came to the warehouse to pack and ship the products. The team prepared 4,000 orders for delivery across the United States in December 2025.

Physical Phones has now sold more than 7,500 devices. The company made about 439,000 dollars in profit in 2025, money Goetze reinvests into research and development and into her small team of four. She does not take a salary from the company and instead supports herself through her CatGPT media business, which includes branded content and partnerships.

She recently hired a CEO, Josh Silverman, who joined during the first production round and now runs day-to-day operations. In 2026, she hopes to expand into retail. The team is weighing whether to keep the drop model or move to a more traditional e commerce setup with steady inventory.

Goetze is also launching Cat Labs, a creator-first product studio focused on building new products, apps, websites and services. "As a creator founder," she said, "my zone of genius, if you will, comes from my ability to stick that cultural antenna up into the air and understand what my audience wants, and being able to predict and build what they want next."

For now, a retro-looking phone that pairs with a smartphone seems to be exactly what people are reaching for.

People Are Craving Simpler Tech, and a 29-year-old in Los Angeles Built a Business Around It

Sunny Skyz

An early morning fire in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, had all the makings of a tragedy. Flames tore through a wooden home shortly before 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 19, burning so intensely that they threatened nearby structures, including a mobile home less than 20 feet away.

But before firefighters arrived, a 12-year-old girl inside the house made a choice that likely saved a life.

As the fire spread, one sibling dialed 911. In the recording, a young caller told the dispatcher, “We do have an injured.” When asked who was hurt, the child replied, “She has severe burns on her neck. She’s 72 and she’s crippled.”

According to Tyler McDow, director of Lawrence County Fire and Rescue, the elderly woman — who had limited mobility — made it outside only because the 12-year-old pulled her from the burning home. It happened before emergency crews reached the scene.

“That child made a decision to help somebody out of the house that some adults would have trouble overcoming the fear,” McDow said. “Obviously, she sustained some burns in doing so, so that tells you that the conditions inside the residence were very dangerous at the time, and so, obviously, she had to make the decision that somebody else’s life was more important than hers.”

First responders treated both the woman and the child on site before transporting them to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Officials said the woman suffered significant burns but was in stable condition. The girl sustained minor burns to her arms and legs.

In a press release, Lawrence County Fire and Rescue thanked the child for her bravery. “We are thankful for the actions of the child on scene at the time of the discovery of the fire. Her heroic efforts quite possibly saved a life this morning.”

What began as a terrifying blaze became a story of instinct, courage and a split-second choice that changed everything.

A 12-Year-Old Girl Just Pulled Her Grandmother From A Burning Tennessee Home And Saved Her Life

ABC News

In the heart of Budapest, a city better known for paprika and goulash, one restaurant is inviting diners about two thousand years into the past. At Neverland Pizzeria, founder Josep Zara and his team have created a limited edition pie made entirely from ingredients available in the ancient Roman Empire, long before tomatoes, mozzarella or even the word “pizza” ever existed in Europe.

“Curiosity drove us to ask what pizza might have been like long ago,” Zara said. “We went all the way back to the Roman Empire and wondered whether they even ate pizza at the time.”

Strictly speaking, the Romans did not. Tomatoes would not arrive in Europe until centuries after the empire fell, and mozzarella had not yet appeared. But the Romans did eat flatbreads baked in ovens and topped with herbs, cheeses and sauces. These early dishes, sold in open air snack bars called thermopolia, were the ancestors of modern pizza.

Zara’s inspiration came in 2023, when archaeologists uncovered a fresco in Pompeii that appeared to show a focaccia style flatbread topped with pomegranate seeds, dates, spices and a pesto like spread. “That made me very curious about what kind of flavor this food might have had,” he said. “That’s where we got the idea to create a pizza that people might have eaten in the Roman Empire, using only ingredients that were in wide use at the time.”

To do it, Zara dug into Roman culinary history, consulting a historian in Germany and reading De re coquinaria, an ancient cookbook from around the 5th century. From that research he created a historically documented ingredient list and handed it to Neverland’s head chef, László Bárdossy.

The restrictions turned out to be the real challenge. “We had to discard a couple ideas,” Bárdossy said. “The fact that there wasn’t infrastructure like a water system at the time of the Romans made things difficult for us, since more than 80% of pizza dough is water. We had to come up with something that would have worked before running water.”

Their solution was unconventional but plausible: using fermented spinach juice to help the dough rise. Ancient grains like einkorn and spelt, widely grown in Roman times, formed the base. The resulting dough is denser than a modern crust, but close enough in texture that diners can still recognize it as pizza.

The final creation leans heavily into Roman aristocratic cuisine. It includes epityrum, a type of olive paste; garum, a fermented fish sauce that flavored nearly everything in Roman cooking; confit duck leg; toasted pine nuts; ricotta; and a grape reduction.

“Our creation can be called a modern pizza from the perspective that we tried to make it comprehensible for everyone,” Bárdossy said. “Although we wouldn’t use all its ingredients for everyday dishes. There is a narrow niche that thinks this is delicious and is curious about it, while most people want more conventional pizza, so it’s not for everyday eating. It’s something special.”

For Zara, it fits the restaurant’s philosophy. “We’ve always liked coming up with new and interesting things, but tradition is also very important for us, and we thought that these two things together suit us,” he said.

There is one modern line the pizzeria refuses to cross. “We do a lot of experimentation with our pizzas,” Zara added. “But of course, we definitely do not use pineapple.”

A Budapest Pizzeria is Serving Ancient Roman-Inspired Pizza Using Historical Ingredients

CTV News

At the bottom of 380 steps, the walls look like dull, mottled stone. But they taste salty, and visitors at the Wieliczka Salt Mine are encouraged to try them. The underground maze just southeast of Kraków is part cathedral, part industrial monument and part tourist attraction, drawing up to 9,000 people a day.

Salt production stopped in 1996, but after 700 years of continuous mining and more than 150 miles of excavated tunnels, only about 2 per cent of the complex is open to the public. Even that small fraction is immense: nine levels of chambers cut as deep as 330 metres below ground.

Visitors can choose a two-hour tourist route or a three-hour “miners’ route,” complete with helmets and headlamps. The classic route opens with a plunge down 380 steps and passes through chambers carved entirely by hand. Many now hold sculptures, biblical scenes and ornate chandeliers made of salt crystals. The tour ends at 137 metres underground. The miners’ route runs between 57 and 100 metres.

Tour guide Patrycja Antoniak explains why the walls are grey instead of white. The salt contains impurities like sand, silt and claystone. “Ninety to ninety-five percent of the rock is salt, sodium chloride, and impurities give the salt the gray color,” she says. Despite the color, it is still edible. “It was used to preserve food without being purified.”

The salt itself formed from ancient evaporated seas about 13.5 million years ago. Tectonic shifts in the Carpathian Mountains lifted the layers closer to the surface, making them easier to discover. Miners excavated inch by inch until 1743, when they began using gunpowder. Mechanical drilling arrived more than a century later. To prevent collapse, layers of salt were left to form natural supports; today, engineers reinforce the chambers with fiberglass rods.

Mining at Wieliczka began in the late 13th century, though salt had been essential long before. Prehistoric communities boiled brine to collect crystals used for trade. By the late 1200s, miners were digging wells and shafts, eventually unearthing the first lumps of solid salt. In the 14th century, King Casimir III made the mine a royal asset. Revenue from salt accounted for up to a third of the royal treasury, helping fund Poland’s first university. By the late 1400s, annual production reached 7,000 to 8,000 tons.

Life underground was tough but, compared to other mines, relatively safe. “It wasn’t a bad job because of the good air, soft rock and short working day,” Antoniak says. Still, excavation often took generations, and some jobs were dangerous, especially for “penitents,” workers who burned off methane to prevent explosions.

Horses brought underground in the 1500s to power pulleys never saw daylight again. One of their wooden carts still remains in a chamber. During World War II, the Nazis briefly turned part of the mine into a factory for aircraft components staffed by forced labourers from the Płaszów concentration camp. The operation ended after a few months because salt and humidity corroded the metal.

Although mining has ended, salt is still produced from brine pumped out to prevent structural damage. More than 10,000 tons a year are extracted this way.

Tourism at Wieliczka goes back 300 years. Visitors once attended firework displays and glided across an underground brine lake in boats. Even Nicolaus Copernicus is believed to have toured the mine in 1493, becoming, as Antoniak notes, “the first ‘tourist’ in the mine.”

The site’s most famous chamber is St. Kinga’s Chapel, a vast underground church carved from salt over 67 years by three miners: Józef Markowski, Tomasz Markowski and Antoni Wyrodek. The chapel, completed in 1964, features salt rock altars, chandeliers and reliefs of biblical scenes. Mass is still held there, and weddings take place in its cavernous hall.

Wieliczka continues to evolve. Some chambers now host events, including galas, a bungee jump from a 36 metre high chamber and even a tethered hot air balloon. A spa 137 metres underground offers respiratory treatments, relying on the mine’s stable, mineral-rich, nearly bacteria-free air. “Salt miners don’t suffer from black lung and they live longer than other miners,” Antoniak says.

Keeping the mine safe remains labour-intensive. About 380 miners work to prevent water infiltration, which is the greatest threat. “They have to make sure it’s safe so we can let visitors in,” Antoniak says. “They make sure the wooden constructions are still supporting the ceiling.”

Nearly 750 years after the first shafts were dug, Wieliczka remains a world unto itself, preserved by the same community that carved it from the earth.

Salt Mine Tourism: Inside A Subterranean World Carved By Hand Over 700 Years

BBC News

Keely Hodgkinson had been waiting for the right race and the right moment. When she stepped onto the track in France on Thursday, the 23-year-old and her coaches already believed she was about to rewrite the record books. She delivered exactly what they expected, running 1 minute 54.87 seconds to break the indoor 800m world record that had stood since the day she was born, 3 March 2002.

The run in Liévin was the version of herself her team calls “Keely 2.0” after a year of setbacks that could have shaken her confidence. Instead, they became the fuel behind one of the strongest performances of her career.

Hodgkinson has trained with coaches Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows since 2019. Meadows, a former international 800m runner, said the confidence going into the race was unusually high. “She actually said to me the day before, ‘obviously I know I'm going to get it’,” Meadows said. Their training benchmarks backed it up. “We had no doubt that she would do it.”

Her only concern was the feeling afterwards. Meadows said Hodgkinson worried she might break the world record but be disappointed if the time did not meet her own expectations. Even then, Meadows said the result in France was “the bare minimum of what she was happy with. She definitely would have liked to run faster, and there was definitely half a second, maybe even up to one second in those legs.”

That confidence was matched by strategy. Meadows and Hodgkinson had circled 19 February on the calendar months ago. Liévin has a reputation for fast times and a long list of world records, so they singled out the meet as the season’s best shot.

Behind the scenes, the training had been sharp but restrained. Meadows said the team had learned not to push too hard, especially after the injuries Hodgkinson battled last year. “Keely can be doing certain repetitions, and she's being physically sick from the lactic acid. It's a little bit inhumane at times,” she said.

Hodgkinson had aimed to break the indoor record at her Keely Klassic meet in February 2025. She was ready for it until a hamstring issue forced her to withdraw. The injury resurfaced 12 weeks later, disrupting preparations again. She still lined up at the World Athletics Championships in September and won bronze behind Georgia Hunter Bell and Lilian Odira, but Meadows said Hodgkinson has barely looked at that medal since. “She wants the gold, she wants the records, and that is what was driving her forward,” she said.

Meadows described Hodgkinson as mentally exceptional. “She isn't the most talented athlete I have ever seen. The difference between Keely and a lot of others is mindset; she can get the best out of herself on a daily basis.”

With the indoor record now hers, Hodgkinson will head to Poland next month as a strong favourite at the World Athletics Indoor Championships. But an even bigger target is ahead. The outdoor 800m world record of 1:53.28, set by Jarmila Kratochvilova in 1983, has stood longer than any other in track and field. Hodgkinson wants it.

She has run 1:54.61, the British record she set in London in 2024. Meadows believes London could also be where she challenges the historic mark. “I think she would like to do it in the UK. London always delivers a great crowd, a great occasion. In 2026, I think she can definitely run under 1:54. If she goes in on interrupted training, she really does stand a chance.”

For now, Hodgkinson has a new title: the fastest woman ever indoors over 800m. And for a runner forged by a year of setbacks and rebuilt confidence, that moment was years in the making.

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