Author: Lisa Mungovan

The Albuquerque International Balloon Festival in New Mexico, broke a world record, by launching 524 balloons at the same time. The event took place in 20 19, but they only realized their accomplishment recently. When the next festival happens in October, maybe they’ll be paying better attention!

A solar-powered robot, is helping to clean up the ocean, by removing trash from beaches. The sand-sifting BeBot can clean 33,000 square feet of shoreline every hour. It even collects tiny pieces of plastic that are hard to clean by hand, but won’t crush any plants or turtle eggs buried in the sand.

A farmer in Sri Lanka, was digging a well with some workmen, when they came to a big rock. They removed the boulder, and found it was actually hundreds of precious gems. It contained a cluster of star sapphires, worth $140,000,000. The 2.5 million-carat treasure, is called the Serendipity Sapphire.

On Pluto Demoted Day, we remember when Pluto was officially downgraded in 2006. Its status was changed to dwarf planet. Now the 8 planets in our Solar System are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, while the 5 known dwarf planets are Pluto, Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris. We still love you Pluto!

Today is Vesuvius Day. Mount Vesuvius is the volcano in Italy, that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD. Create your own volcano and make it erupt, while listening to unusual music for International Strange Music Day! You can make music from anything. Today is also Waffle Day. What’s your favorite flavor, blueberry or chocolate chip?

The Cramlington and District Red Squirrel Group, are nuts about squirrels. One street in their English city was particularly dangerous for squirrels, so the group raised money, to build a rope bridge across the road! Now the squirrels can cross safely to a nature reserve, and gather loads of hazelnuts without dodging automobiles.

The San Francisco garter snake, was added to the endangered list 54 years ago. Someone created a safe haven for them, near the San Francisco International Airport, and the 160-acre area, is now home to 1300 beautiful snakes. The black, turquoise, and orange stripes, would be easy to spot as your plane lands.

2 weeks ago, 13-year-old Lacey Shillinglaw found a big bumblebee with a damaged wing. She moved it onto some flowers, but the bee kept following Lacey. She finally gave up, and let her new friend Betty, ride home on her shoulder. Now Betty follows Lacey everywhere, and even sleeps next to her bed!

Today is Buttered Corn Day, and there’s nothing like biting into an ear of buttery sweet roasted corn. What’s the best way to cook corn? Look it up on the World Wide Web, because it’s also Internaut Day. An internaut is someone who knows all about how to use the internet.

Today is Sponge Cake Day. This light and airy cake is perfect with a cup of tea. Maybe it will make you feel light and airy enough to rise into the sky! It’s also Ride The Wind Day, so go sky diving or hang gliding, or maybe just fly a kite.