Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
He was the king in Shakespeare’s play who uttered the famous words, “My kingdom for a horse!”
His name was Richard III, and he ruled as King of England from 1483 to 1485. He died in battle at age 32 at a place called Bosworth Field near Leicester (pronounced like “Lester”), England.
His body was buried by King Henry VII in a monastery (a place where monks live). Later, the monastery was destroyed and no one ever knew what became of Richard III’s bones.
Hundreds of people can walk by your front door every day.
The only time you may notice someone, however, is when they knock. Last week, the universe knocked on Earth’s door.
Thousands of asteroids and meteoroids streak pass planet Earth every year. Some of them enter Earth’s atmosphere where most of them simply burn up—those are called meteors. Any that land on Earth are called meteorites.
When a meteorite landed in the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia last Friday, the world took notice. That’s because it was a particularly large meteorite; one chunk was about the size of a van.
Before he left for the International Space Station, Hadfield wrote a song with singer Ed Robertson.
It’s called I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing?). ISS can also stand for “International Space Station,” which is fitting since the song is about what it’s like to leave the Earth and go into space.
Hadfield has done some incredible things during his time on the ISS. He has made his experience in space accessible to the people on Earth.
He has tweeted messages, conducted live media conferences, sent photos and kept people up-to-date on what the astronauts on the Space Station are doing.
What Hadfield is doing is unique. No astronaut has ever brought space so close to Earth before.
Keller Laros is a professional scuba instructor who lives in Hawaii.
The shores of Kailua-Kona, on The Big Island of Hawaii, host some of the world’s most diverse and interesting aquatic life.
Laros estimates he has made more than 10,000 dives in his career.
On Jan. 11, he led a group of videographers and divers on a “Manta Ray Night Dive.”
However, the tour would be unlike any other trip he had ever been on before.
When Chris Hadfield was nine years old, he watched Apollo 11 land on the moon and decided he wanted to become an astronaut.
That was in 1969, and about half a billion people around the world watched the same grainy images of the moon landing on TV.
It seems incredible, but with today’s technology and social media websites, people can see and hear what the astronauts are doing on the International Space Station every day.
We can watch videos of them, check out the view of Earth from the space station, and even have casual “conversations” with the astronauts.
Scientists around the world have criticized a group of Canadians for dumping more than 100 tonnes of iron dust into the Pacific Ocean last summer.
The group, called the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation, is supported by the village of Old Massett, British Columbia.
About 700 people live in the village, which is located on the Haida Gwaii islands.
They used to make their living by fishing for salmon, but now there are not enough salmon and 70 per cent of the villagers don’t have jobs.
Last July, the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation paid $2.5 million to an American businessman named Russ George to dump a mixture of iron sulphate and iron oxide dust into the ocean about 370 kilometres west of the islands.
They hoped the iron would cause more plankton to grow in that part of the Pacific.
They believed that more plankton would help increase the number of salmon in the area.
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield will soon become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station.
Hadfield and two other astronauts – Tom Mashburn from the United States and Roman Romanenko from Russia – docked at the ISS on Dec. 21, 2012.
Their Soyuz spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Dec. 19.
It took them two days to reach the space station.
The space station is a satellite which orbits the Earth. The size of the crew varies from three to six astronauts at a time.
The crews stay on the space station for up to six months and then are replaced by other astronauts.
Hadfield and his crew will stay for five months.
This mission is Hadfield’s third trip into space and his second visit to the space station.
When he takes over command of the ISS in March, he will become the first Canadian ever to command a spacecraft.
Hadfield can already claim several “firsts” in space.
In 1995, Hadfield was the first Canadian to serve as “mission specialist” on a space shuttle.
He was also the first Canadian to operate the Canadarm while in orbit, and the first Canadian to board the Russian space station, Mir.
When the giant tortoise known as Lonesome George died last summer, people thought he was the last of his kind.
Lonesome George lived on Pinta Island, one of a group of islands called the Galapagos, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America.
He belonged to a species called Chelonoidis abingdoni, which was native to that island and not found anywhere else in the world.
When he died, scientists believed the species became extinct.
Now a group of researchers has found giant tortoises, who may be related to Lonesome George, living on another Galapagos island.
These scientists studied the DNA of a group of giant tortoises living on Isabella Island, about 60 kilometres away from Lonesome George’s home.
They found 17 tortoises that had some DNA from the same Pinta Island species as Lonesome George.
These tortoises also had DNA from a different species, which means they had ancestors from both species.
If a baby Fairy-Wren wants food, he has to give the password first.
He’ll know it off by heart—because he learned it before he was hatched, while he was still inside his egg.
The Superb Fairy-Wren (its scientific name is Malurus cyaneus) is an Australia bird.
It teaches its babies a single note, even before the baby is hatched.
The mother wren sings the note over and over to her unhatched eggs.
The mother teaches the note to the father wren so he can sing it to the eggs, too.
Scientists have not found any signs of life on Mars yet, but they say a robotic vehicle called “Curiosity” is helping them learn a lot about the planet’s history and climate.
Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 after travelling through space for more than eight months.
It was sent to Mars by scientists from NASA in the United States.
Curiosity is a motorized vehicle called a “rover” which is controlled by scientists back on Earth.
It is about the size of a car and has six wheels that allow it to travel across the planet’s surface and climb over sand and rocks.
It also has a robotic arm, cameras, and instruments such as a scoop, drill and microscope that allow it to examine things it finds on the surface.
Then it transmits the information back to Earth.
The main purpose of Curiosity’s mission is to find out if anything could live on Mars, either now or in the past.
On Nov. 2, NASA scientists held a press conference to discuss what Curiosity had found in its first two months on Mars.
