A 600-year-old Chimú tomb in Peru was just opened for the first time and called the discovery of the decade

Happy Monday. I love a week that starts with an ancient mystery solved. A 600-year-old tomb at Chan Chan in Peru, one of the largest pre-Columbian cities in the Americas, was opened for the first time last week. What archaeologists found inside is today's lead story.

We also have a 54-year-old chimpanzee who went completely blind from cataracts and can now see again, New York City restoring the park to Park Avenue for the first time since the 1920s, and a fox cub in Nottinghamshire who was left for dead after being hit by a car and is now kicking his legs in a hydrotherapy pool.

Good week ahead.

—Stephanie S

Chan Chan is a UNESCO World Heritage site in Trujillo, Peru, and the largest pre-Columbian city in South America. It was built by the Chimú, a sophisticated civilization that reached its peak in the 15th century before being conquered by the Inca in the 1460s. Their burial practices were known largely from looted sites and museum collections. Until now, no intact elite Chimú burial had ever been scientifically documented.

Inside a palatial complex called Utzh An, archaeologists led by Jorge Meneses uncovered a mausoleum at the bottom of a staircase, measuring 4 feet wide and 16 feet deep. Within it lay a single individual whose skull bore traces of red pigment, positioned with the body fully extended, an unusual arrangement for Chimú burials, which were typically flexed or seated. Two secondary chambers branched off either side, one containing 20 people alongside metal weapons, copper and gold artifacts, ornate jewelry, and colorful textiles. Seventeen additional skeletons surrounded the platform above.

"What was known about elite burials in Chimú society came from looted platforms, private collections, and museum holdings," Meneses told El Pais. "There was no scientific data on the individuals and their corresponding artifacts and associations." Gabriel Prieto, an anthropologist at the University of Florida who was not involved in the excavation, called the find the discovery of the decade in the New York Times. Only 7% of Chan Chan has been excavated.

Pierre has lived at Chimp Haven, the world's largest chimpanzee sanctuary in Northwest Louisiana, for decades. When cataracts took his sight entirely, the staff didn't simply schedule surgery. They spent months using positive reinforcement training to teach him to voluntarily present his eyes for care while he was still completely blind, preparing him to accept the eyedrops and monitoring he would need after the procedure.

Dr. Kenneth Pierce, a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist, performed the surgery — the first cataract procedure ever carried out at Chimp Haven. The results were immediate. Within hours Pierre was responding visually to a longtime caregiver. Within days he was reuniting with Jill, one of his closest companions, and he returned to his full social group earlier than anyone had expected.

Among the first faces Pierre saw was Colony Director Michelle Reininger, who has known and cared for him for more than 25 years. "Watching Pierre look at me again," she said, "was something I will never forget."

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Until the 1920s, Park Avenue in Manhattan actually had a park running down its center. Then came the cars. A century later, Mayor Mamdani and the NYC Department of Transportation are unveiling a plan to transform 11 blocks of the avenue, from 46th Street to 57th Street, back into something closer to what it once was: a tree-lined, people-centered corridor in the heart of Midtown.

The redesign expands the avenue's median into genuine public space, adding seating, plantings, and public art. One existing southbound vehicle lane is being converted into a two-way protected bike lane. The project sits directly above the Grand Central Terminal train shed, which is undergoing a major capital rehabilitation by Metro-North, giving the city a rare chance to reimagine the surface above while the infrastructure below is already being rebuilt.

"New Yorkers asked us to make more room for people to walk, bike and enjoy their city, and we listened," said Mayor Mamdani. The design was created by Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and will bring more green space to one of the most-walked stretches in one of the world's most-walked cities.

Chance arrived at Mansfield Wildlife Rescue in Nottinghamshire, England, last June after being struck by a vehicle and left on the road. His back legs had stopped functioning entirely. A veterinarian initially feared he would need to be put down. Rescuers took him in anyway and began a careful rehabilitation program, keeping human contact minimal to protect his chances of eventually returning to the wild.

The unexpected addition to that program was a hydrotherapy pool at the Mansfield Canine Centre, which offered free sessions for Chance after his rescue. The pool is normally used for dogs recovering from injuries and surgery. His designated caretaker Chelsea guides him through the water during each session, and the buoyancy has allowed him to begin using his back legs in ways he cannot yet manage on land. He is regaining sensation and can now kick them while in the water.

"When you see that it looked like there was no chance he was going to survive, to now, it's just an incredible journey," said Cathy Fraser of the Mansfield Canine Centre. Mansfield Wildlife Rescue founder Cheryl Martins noted that a hot summer has pushed more foxes into urban roads, and that the centre has already nursed five hit-by-vehicle foxes back to health this year. "This little act of kindness," Fraser added, "is going to go a long way to potentially Chance being released and living a full, wild life."

🐱 Global: Scientists have identified a new species of wild cat for the first time in over 100 years, a small spotted feline called the Tilcayo discovered in the forests of South America, adding to the short list of wild cat species known to science. GNN Animals.

♻️ USA: A team of entrepreneurs has developed a process to intercept plastic waste and transform it into new consumer products before it breaks down into microplastics in the environment, offering a new model for plastic sequestration that turns pollution into profit. GNN Good Earth.

🦀 USA: The Chesapeake Bay blue crab population has seen an encouraging bounceback in this year's annual survey, with numbers up significantly from recent lows, offering hope for one of America's most iconic and economically vital fisheries. GNN USA.

🎨 Global: A startup called EverDye has developed textile dyes that work through magnetism rather than chemical saturation, dramatically cutting the fashion industry's water use, energy consumption, and chemical pollution in one of its most environmentally damaging processes. GNN Business.

🐶 UK: A British couple has spent the past 15 years fostering 59 dogs from Battersea Dogs Home while working from home, getting them out of kennels and into a home environment while they wait to be adopted. GNN Animals.

On September 21, 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor was sworn in as the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court. The Senate had confirmed her 99-0, with one Montana senator absent who later sent her a copy of A River Runs Through It by way of apology. In her first year on the court, she received more than 60,000 letters from the public — more than any other justice in history.

Her jurisprudence resisted easy categorization. Appointed by President Reagan, she gradually moved toward a centrism that satisfied neither the left nor the right, which is perhaps the most reliable sign that she was doing the job correctly.

Other notable September 21 events:

1937: J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was first published in London, 89 years ago today, written to read to his children, reviewed by C.S. Lewis as something that "has the air of inventing nothing," and eventually leading to The Lord of the Rings.

1915: Cecil Chubbs bought Stonehenge at auction for £6,600, 111 years ago today, because he believed "a Salisbury man ought to own it," and gifted it to Great Britain three years later.

1991: Armenia declared independence from the Soviet Union, 35 years ago today, becoming one of the first republics to break free as the USSR began its final collapse.

Today is the United Nations International Day of Peace, observed annually since 1981 and dedicated to strengthening peace between nations and peoples around the world.

— Nelson Mandela

Every day brings amazing advances and uplifting moments that remind us just how wonderful the world can be. Here are five reasons why today is the best time ever to be alive:

🌊 The Ocean's Hidden Carbon Vaults: Marine scientists are mapping the carbon stored in seagrass meadows, mangroves, and salt marshes with unprecedented precision, creating the foundation for blue carbon credit markets that could fund coastal ecosystem restoration at scale. These ecosystems store carbon far more efficiently than forests but have received a fraction of the conservation attention.

🔬 Healing the Brain Without Surgery: Scientists are using precisely focused beams of ultrasound to modulate specific brain circuits and treat conditions including depression, OCD, and tremors, with millimeter accuracy and no surgery or medication required. The technique works by temporarily activating or quieting targeted regions of the brain from entirely outside the skull.

🌱 Drones That Plant Forests: Drones are now planting millions of mangrove seeds along coastlines where manual replanting would be impossible or prohibitively slow, dramatically accelerating the restoration of ecosystems that store carbon, buffer storms, and shelter the early lives of countless marine species. Mangrove coverage that would take decades to recover naturally is being reestablished in years.

🔭 Holding a Piece of the Early Solar System: Scientists are now analyzing pristine samples returned from asteroids by missions including Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, the first uncontaminated primitive solar system material ever studied in Earth laboratories. These samples contain organic molecules and water-bearing minerals that may help explain how life's building blocks arrived on our planet.

🧬 Cells That Compute: Scientists are engineering living cells to perform computational operations using biological molecules, creating microscopic processors that can sense their environment, run logical operations, and respond with a precisely targeted therapeutic output, all within a single cell. These living computers could one day patrol the body and deliver treatments only when and where they are needed.

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