Readable, teachable news.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
At nine years old, Quvenzhane Wallis is the youngest person to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
The Academy Awards (nicknamed “The Oscars”) are given to the best work in movies each year.
Best Actor and Best Actress are perhaps the most prestigious awards an actor can win.
Wallis was just five when she tried out (or “auditioned”) for the role of Hushpuppy in the film Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Was there really anyone left who still believed he didn’t cheat?
If so, even they would have to admit that Lance Armstrong did cheat at cycling.
That’s because he himself recently came clean about it, to celebrity interviewer Oprah Winfrey.
The renowned cyclist won seven Tour de France victories–more than anyone else.
The Tour de France is the sport’s most gruelling and prestigious race.
For years, Armstrong has been accused of cheating by using performance enhancing drugs that aren’t allowed in competitive racing.
He always denied it. Vehemently.
Barack Obama was “sworn in” as president of the United States on Sunday.
It’s his second term as president. A term is four years; because he won the election in November, he is slated to serve another four years.
Obama was sworn in by taking an “oath of office.” An oath of office is a promise he makes in accepting the job of U.S. president.
In taking the oath, he promised to “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States so help me God.”
Some of Cirque du Soleil’s performers will soon have their feet on the ground.
That’s because the fantastical circus company is laying off 400 employees.
Cirque employs about 5,000 people around the world, doing more than 100 types of jobs including performing.
Most of the lay-offs will be at the organization’s Montreal headquarters, according to an article in the Globe and Mail.
Cirque du Soleil is a famous Canadian performing troupe. According to Wikipedia, they describe themselves as “a dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment.”
They were founded by two former street performers, Guy Laliberte and Gilles Ste-Croix, about 30 years ago.
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.
The National Hockey League season is finally beginning.
After 113 days, the dispute between the owners and the players is over.
Fans have been without hockey since Sept. 15; that’s when the NHL season was supposed to have started.
After months of negotiations, players voted in favour of a new “collective agreement” to end the lockout.
Then to officially end the lockout, representatives for both the owners and players signed a document saying they agree to the proposal.
The 30 hockey teams that make up the NHL started training camps on Jan. 13.
There are seven Canadian teams in the NHL: the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Montreal Canadiens, the Calgary Flames, the Edmonton Oilers, the Winnipeg Jets, the Ottawa Senators and the Vancouver Canucks.
Training camp is a time for teams to put together their roster.
It also gives teams a chance to prepare for the upcoming season in hopes of winning the Stanley Cup.
This camp will be shorter than usual as there is a rush to get the season started. As a result there will be no pre-season games.
Last week, thousands of children in Toronto learned an important lesson about the seriousness of plagiarism, from the head of the largest school board in Canada.
Plagiarism is when you copy someone else’s work and claim the ideas or writing as your own.
When you use someone else’s writing in a school report, for instance, you must let the reader know where the passage came from.
That’s known as “citing the source” or “giving attribution.”
Everyone wants to work somewhere that’s interesting and fun.
The people at Google have taken that concept to an extreme.
Their new Canadian headquarters in Toronto, Ont. have some features that make everyone want to come to work.
Google is the Internet’s most popular search engine (the software program that helps you find websites you’re looking for).
The company also makes many other software products such as Google Maps and Google Chrome.
Google also owns many Internet companies including YouTube and Blogger.
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.
