Author: Lisa Mungovan

Today is International Tug-of-War Day. It’s an ancient game of strength that used to be an Olympic sport, where 2 teams pull on a rope in opposite directions. The Vikings used to play tug-of-war over a fire pit! Give the winner a box of Thin Mints, because it’s also Chocolate Mint Day. Yum!

Marc Goldstein was playing a round of golf in Florida, when his ball landed near a pond. By the time he got there, an alligator was holding the ball in its mouth! Marc decided the rule, play it as it lies, no longer applied. The alligator happily swam away with its new toy.

The Mars 20 20 mission, which launched last July, will land today at 3:55 Eastern Standard Time. It’s delivering the latest Mars rover, Perseverance, as well as a helicopter drone called Ingenuity. After traveling over 292,000,000 miles, Perseverance and Ingenuity are ready for a rest stop! Watch the touchdown online, at NASA.gov.

Much of North America is experiencing record cold temperatures, but extreme cold can be fun in small doses! Make candy by boiling pure maple syrup and pouring it onto clean snow. Watch a balloon deflate outside and re-inflate indoors. Try blowing bubbles high in the air and watch them freeze on the way down!

Today is Battery Day. Alessandro Volta built the first electrochemical battery in 18 hundred. Count all the things in your house that use batteries. Battery University experts have advice for charging your phone correctly. Remove it from the charger as soon as it’s near 100%, plug in a few times-per-day, and always keep it cool.

Poor little Pluto. It used to be one of the 9 planets in our solar system, until it got down-graded, because it can’t clear it’s neighborhood. It’s now classified as a dwarf planet, along with Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris. But at least Pluto gets its own day to celebrate. Happy Pluto Day!

Under the streets of Paris France, lie many abandoned parking garages. A company called Cycloponics, is putting the space to good use, by turning them into mushroom farms. Organic oyster and button mushrooms, microgreens, and chicory, are some of the crops grown in The Cave. They can harvest up to 400 pounds of mushrooms-per-week!

As the Earth warms up, parts of Siberia that were permanently frozen, called permafrost, are melting. It’s giving Russian scientists the chance to study Paleolithic viruses. Samples taken from a 4500-year-old horse, as well as mammoths and other prehistoric animals, can help them learn about virus evolution.

Today is Cabbage Day. It’s a good day to try cabbage soup, fried cabbage, or coleslaw. Think about growing cabbage in your garden. You can start the seedlings inside, and plant after the last frost. Maybe your cabbage will beat the world record, held by Scott Robb’s 138 pound green cabbage in Alaska.

If you see someone with a dirt smudge on their forehead today, it’s probably not because they’re messy. Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the Christian period of fasting before Easter, called Lent. Some people wear ashes as a sign of repentance. You still have to wash your face!