S3 Resource Owner and default Bucket/Object Privileges

Following is what the AWS Doc says:

"By default, all Amazon S3 resources—buckets, objects, and related subresources (for example, lifecycle configuration and website configuration)—are private: only the resource owner, an AWS account that created it, can access the resource."

I login to my AWS account using the root user and create an S3 bucket and an object. While I can browse and see the objects, I get an "access denied" error when I try to click the http link to the file from AWS console. As the AWS Account root user/ resource owner, shouldn't I have been able to get a successful read instead of the "access denied" as the doc suggests?

I turn the bucket into a "Objects can be public" bucket. But I still get the "access denied" error. I turn this object into public. I now see the object when I try to click the http link to the file from AWS console.

So, the question is, what does it specifically mean when the doc says "...only the resource owner, an AWS account that created it, can access the resource." as even the resource owner was being denied access by default and a whole lot of granting had to be done to make even the resource owner, that is the AWS root account to get the access?