Tag: Archive

It just got easier to take a bus, in Olympia Washington. Following the lead of other cities, like Corvallis Oregon and Missoula Montana, Olympia decided to stop charging bus fare! Now riders can travel easily around the city, without needing to look for correct change. That also means less cars polluting the roads!

Today is Apple Tree Day, which started as a celebration of a nearly 200 year-old tree. Eat an apple, and also eat a bean for Bean Day! Do you like green beans, black beans, kidney beans, or lima beans? Eat them all in 15 bean soup! It’s also Shortbread Day, so eat shortbread cookies for dessert!

Paul Jones started collecting baseball cards when he was 10 years old. He has Asperger’s syndrome, and baseball helped him learn to read, spell, and count. 24 years later, his hobby has earned him a world record for the largest private baseball card collection. He has collected more than 2,700,000 cards! That’s incredible!

Scientists think there are stars, with eyeball planets orbiting around them! Some planets might be tidally locked to their star, just like the Moon is locked to the Earth. The side that always faces the star would be hot and dry, while the other side would be icy. It would look like an eyeball!

In order to learn new things, sometimes you have to fail. A new study found that the best learning takes place, when you’re right 85% of the time. Does that mean an 85% is better than a 100% on a test? Nice try! Failure can help you learn, but the test proves you learned it.

Pie and hot chocolate are even better, with a tower of whipped cream sprayed on top! For Whipped Cream Day, try making your own. Simply put some heavy whipping cream in a jar, and shake it for a few minutes! Just don’t shake it too long, or it will turn into butter.

Today is Bird Day. There are around 18,000 different bird species! The largest non-flying bird is the ostrich, the kori bustard is the heaviest bird that can fly, and the wandering albatross has the largest wingspan at up to 11 feet! The bee hummingbird is smallest at 2 1/4 inches long. The Australian lyrebird sounds like R2-D2!

Sometimes when you check into a hotel, you’re really excited to use the pool. A hotel guest in Florida couldn’t even wait to get out of the car! They accidentally backed their car into the swimming pool at a Holiday Inn. Luckily, the passengers were able to escape, and no one was hurt.

Our Sun is just 1 of over 100,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way galaxy. So how long would it take, to get to our nearest star neighbor? The Voyager 1 is fast enough to make the trip in only 80,000 years! Until Earthlings develop some faster spacecraft, we’ll have to be content to explore our own Solar System.

This week, the coral reefs around the island nation of Palau, will be breathing a little easier. Palau is the first country in the world to ban sunscreens that contain oxybenzone and octinoxate. Those chemicals damage the ocean’s coral reefs, and the animals that live there. Use sunscreens that don’t poison the ocean.