It wasn’t all bad

The best-preserved shipwreck ever found from the era of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama has been located at a depth of 120 metres in the Baltic Sea, 100 miles southeast of Stockholm. Some 99% of the 16-metre-long ship is intact: its masts are standing, its tender is on board and its guns are in their firing positions. This, along with specific damage to the merchant vessel, has led to speculation that it was sunk in a previously unknown naval battle in the 1500s.

A portrait of Charles Dickens that was lost for more than 130 years is being brought “home” to the Charles Dickens Museum in London, following a fundraising campaign. The watercolour was painted in 1843 by Margaret Gillies, when Dickens was 31 and working on A Christmas Carol. The once-famous portrait, which was shown at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in 1844, was lost by 1886, but two years ago it was found by chance, covered in mould, in a box of trinkets bought for £27 at an auction in South Africa. Now, the museum has raised £180,000, from grants and individual donations, to buy the portrait, and will be displaying it from 24 October.

A 96-year-old runner who lives in a retirement community in the US has added the 5,000m world record to his collection of triumphs for his age group. Roy Englert, a former lawyer from Virginia, completed the race in 42 minutes 30 seconds at an event earlier this month – eight minutes faster than the previous record for 95- to 99-year-olds. He already holds the records for the 800m and 1,500m, and is a member of three record-holding relay teams. “I’m a slow runner,” he said. “It gets easier to win when there’s not as much competition around.”