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February 16th is the Chinese New Year, which begins the Year of the Dog. The 12 year cycles are based on the Chinese zodiac. Legends say the Jade Emperor held a race to pick the zodiac animals. The rat won, followed by the ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig!
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Scientists have been studying a lake in the sea in the Gulf of Mexico. The brine pool at the bottom of the sea is five times saltier than the surrounding waters. The toxic habitat contains deadly concentrations of hydrogen sulfide and methane, giving it the nickname, “Hot Tub of Despair.”
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NASA’s New Horizons probe is hurtling through space at 700,000 miles a day into the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto and many icy objects orbit the sun. The probe sent the most distant photographs ever of the Wishing Well, a group of stars 1,300 light years away. The probe is 3.79 billion miles from Earth. Far out!
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Today is National Umbrella Day and National Cream Cheese Brownie Day. I wish it would rain delicious cream cheese brownies so I could use my bumbershoot, another name for umbrellas in the 19th century. James Smith and Sons is a London umbrella shop open since 1830. Umbrellas were invented more than 4000 years ago!
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The Hyundai Pavilion at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in South Korea is the blackest building ever. It is coated with Vantablack, a pigment that absorbs 99.96% of all visible light. Architect Asif Khan designed it to feel like you’re looking into deep space. Inside, it’s glossy white with an interactive water installation.
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Humans can perceive three dimensions because each eye sees a slightly different view and our brains combine them. Praying mantises are the only invertebrates that can see in 3D, also called stereopsis. Researchers gave them teeny tiny 3D glasses and showed them 3D movies to study their depth perception!
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The Museum of London has a FAT-scinating new item on display. You can see pieces of London’s famous fatberg, a rock-hard mass of toilet waste as big as two football fields that had blocked the sewers. The specimens have been dried out so they’re not as smelly, but they’re still hatching flies. Yuck!
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When you walk through the halls of New Trier High School in Winnetka Illinois, you might feel like you’re seeing double. The sophomore class of 1000 students contains 44 sets of twins and one set of triplets! Luke and Ryan Novosel applied to Guinness and the 91 students now officially hold the world record.
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Today is National Pizza Day, National Bagel Day, and National No One Eats Alone Day. It’s also National Toothache Day, but who would want to celebrate a toothache? Students started the No One Eats Alone movement so kids didn’t feel left out in the lunchroom. Eat pizza on a bagel with a new friend!
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A standard cat has 18 toes: 5 on the front paws and 4 on the back. But Paws from Minnesota is an overachieving cat. She has 28 toes! The polydactyl cat is tied for the world record with a Canadian cat named Jake. Between the two of them, they could count to 56!
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