The news last week that Wits professor David Block had led a team of international astronomers and had made the biggest discovery about the Andromeda spiral galaxy, the closest galaxy to our own, gave me a bit of a fillip.
Amid news of slowing growth, rising interest rates, chronic unemployment, degrading poverty, rampant crime and dodgy politicians, here we finally had something to be proud of.
Unlike the Americans, who are going through the ignominy of having Pluto, the only planet they discovered, downgraded to dwarf planet status, we have a space first.
Like most of us, I don't really get it. Why should one galaxy smashing through the centre of another a mere 210 million years ago matter? But still, I felt a flush of pride, much as the Japanese must have felt when their scientists took the first photographs of a living giant squid.
This is not the only discovery or invention that South Africans can take credit for. A quick browse through the net gets you to www.southafrica.info, a site that is so overwhelmingly optimistic about the country and its future that it could breathe hope into the most jaded citizen.
The fact that it glosses over the crime statistics and the fact that if you are looking for a bribe, we are one of the best countries to come looking for one, according to Transparency International, can be ignored for now. It just messes with my warm and fuzzy feelings.
Sasol built the world's first - and still the largest - oil-from-coal refinery. The Fischer-Tropsch technology used may have been commercially exploited by the Nazis and perfected during apartheid to overcome the difficulties of being a pariah state, but still, South Africans did it.
South African inventor Henri Johnson came up with the speed gun that was used officially for the first time at The Oval in England during the 1999 cricket World Cup. It is also used to measure the speed of tennis balls and gives us something to watch on the seemingly endless replays during down-time between balls.
And let us not forget the ubiquitous Kreepy Krauly, which made pool ownership a less onerous task; or Pratley Putty, which went to the moon in 1969 when it held bits of Apollo 11's Eagle landing craft together; or dolosse, those funny shaped concrete blocks that break up wave action and protect harbour walls and coastal installations.
South Africans invented the computed axial tomography scan, or CAT scan, and in 1967, Dr Chris Barnard performed the world's first heart transplant.
On the lighter side we have Johannesburg's Ivo Lazic's idea of making cellphone masts look like giant palm trees and two Durbanites' invention of the world's first automatic popcorn vending machine.
But looking through the list, we see there has not been anything spectacular for quite a while. And unless we sort out the education system and put more money into research and development, we are unlikely to see new or world-changing discoveries any time soon.
Nonetheless, we do have a chance to get our names in the record books again. On Thursday, November 9th, it is the second Guinness World Records Day. Last year we got in with the most heads shaved in a day and this year an attempt will be made to create the longest bra chain in aid of breast cancer awareness month.
According to the organisers, the existing record is held by the Cyprus Cancer Patients Support Group, which created a bra chain consisting of 114 782 bras, measuring 111km.
Nino's coffee chain and FigJam Marketing will be trying to collect more than 115 000 bras (and R1.15 million). Now, there's something we can do.