Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield will soon be simply, “Mr. Hadfield.”
That’s because he has announced that he is resigning.
In this case, “resigning” means stopping his job as an astronaut.
Hadfield has been an astronaut for 35 years.
Recently, he gained wide popularity after sending photos and videos to Earth from the International Space Station.
Many people around the world enjoyed his tweets and Facebook posts from space.
Four-year-old Gavin Pope of Garfield, New Jersey, loves to cook.
But when his family decided to buy him an Easy-Bake Oven, they found that the colour and packaging made it look like a “girls only” toy.
The Easy-Bake Oven and its box are purple.
The packaging and advertising show only girls baking with it.
So McKenna Pope, Gavin’s 13-year-old sister, started an Internet campaign for a gender-neutral oven.
More than 54,000 people signed the petition.
Hasbro executives met with McKenna and told her they planned to introduce a black, silver and blue oven next fall.
Jiroemon Kimura is the oldest living human being.
Kimura, who lives in western Japan, is 116 years old. He’s the last man alive who has lived in three different centuries.
The only other man who was alive before the 20th century (before the year 1901) was James Emmanuel Sisnett, who died last week at age 113.
Not only is Kimura the oldest man living right now, he is also the oldest man who has ever lived whose birth age can be verified. “Verified” means proved to be true. There are other men who have said they are older than 116, but there wasn’t any way to be certain of the truth.
Kimura worked for the post office until he was 65 and then farmed until he was 90.
He isn’t the only one in his family to live a long time: four of his siblings lived to be 90 or older and one of his brothers made it to age 100.
One of the strangest things about Kimura’s age is that his hometown of Kyotango, Japan, is reported to have 95 centenarians, even though the population of the whole city is just 60,000. “Centenarian” means “over the age of 100.”
How would you like to go to Lego school?
That’s just what some kids will get a chance to do, when the new International School of Billund opens in Denmark this August.
The school was built by the owner of Lego, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, who lives in Billund. He is the grandson of the man who founded the company.
And, just like many kids have built Lego towns, billionaire Kristiansen and his family have used their money to build a church, an airport, a library and a theatre in the town of Billund.
The school will be start with kids aged three to seven and expand to include kids up to age 16 by 2015.
A dome-headed dinosaur skull found in southern Alberta is helping scientists rethink some of their ideas about dinosaurs.
The skull was found in 2008 by a team of scientists led by Dr. David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum.
The skull is about 85 million years old.
The top of the skull is made of a dome-shaped mass of solid bone about 10 centimetres thick.
This means the dinosaur belonged to a group of dinosaurs called pachycephalosaurs (“thick-headed lizards”).
The scientists compared the skull to all of the known pachycephalosaur specimens in the world – about 600 of them.
They learned that there are 16 different species within that group, and the skull discovered in Alberta belongs to a species that has never been seen before.
It’s well known that in the 1840s, Ireland suffered from a disaster known as the Irish potato famine.
“Famine” means a “shortage of food.”
More than a quarter of the population of Ireland died or left the country from 1845 to 1852 because of the famine.
For much of the country at the time, potatoes were the main source of food.
The famine had a big effect on Ireland; for one thing, its population is not yet back to pre-famine levels.
The famine happened because the country’s potatoes caught a disease.
At the time, no one knew what the disease was or how to cure it.
To help his home city “bounce back” after a terrible storm, NBA player Kevin Durant has donated $1-million.
The number of people harmed by a recent tornado in the U.S. state of Oklahoma was greatly reduced, thanks to a special early-warning system.
On Monday, a major tornado hit Moore, a suburb of Oklahoma City.
A tornado is a violent storm that usually looks like a whirling funnel.
Residents were warned there was a big storm coming, and possibly a tornado, days before it arrived.
When it actually hit, sirens blared, giving people a 16-minute head start to find shelter.
Only a quarter of Canadian kids walk or bike to school and that’s not enough, according to a new “report card on physical activity for children and youth.”
Active Healthy Kids Canada (AHKC) is a Canadian charity that encourages children and their parents to get more exercise.
Their report found that only 24 per cent of five to 17-year-olds in Canada use “active transportation” to get to school.
“Active transportation” means not using cars, trains or buses.
On the other hand, their parents were twice as likely to walk to school when they were children.
Every year in its report card, AHKC focuses on one aspect of healthy living.
This year’s theme, “driving,” looked at how much exercise kids are getting when they travel to and from different places near their homes.
A four-year-old boy named Robert Tufts is the mayor of the small town of Dorset in Minnesota.
He was given the job last August – when he was only three – and will continue to be mayor until this August.
The boy was awarded the position after his name was pulled out of a hat.
Once a year, people who live in or nearby Dorset can pay $1 to have their name written on piece of paper and put into a hat.
Then a name is randomly drawn out of the hat, and the person whose name it is becomes the mayor.
Last year, Robert Tufts’ name was pulled out.
The Liberals unexpectedly won the provincial election in British Columbia on Tuesday surprising many people, who thought the New Democratic Party (NDP) would win.
The Liberals and the NDP are two of Canada’s biggest political parties.
The Liberals were already in power in B.C.; after this election, they will stay in power.
Being “in power” in this case means they are responsible for making many of the important decisions involving laws and money in the province. It also means that their leader is the Premier of the province.
Many people—including political experts—thought the New Democratic Party would win the election. Not only did the Liberals win, but they won a “majority government.” That means they have more seats in the legislature than all of the other parties combined.
