The word comes from the Greek, astron, meaning 'star' and nautes, meaning 'sailor'. Astronauts are the men and women who pilot, navigate and fly in spacecraft. Russian 'star-sailors' are called cosmonauts,
kosmos being the Greek for 'universe'. The first space flight was made in 1961 by the Russian, Yuri Gagarin. It lasted just over 89 minutes. The first woman in space was also Russian, Valentina Tereshkova. In 1963, her flight lasted almost 3 days. The first 'space walk' was made by another Russian, Aleksei Leonov, in 1965, though he was still tethered by a line to his spacecraft. It was nineteen years later, in 1984, that the American Bruce McCandless made the first, independent excursion in space. The oldest of all the space travellers so far is the American Karl Henize, who was fifty¬-eight during his flight in 1985.
Astronauts have to undergo extensive training before they are allowed into space. As there is no gravity in space they have to become accustomed to the sensation of weightlessness and to learn how to walk and to eat and drink when their food could be floating along in front of them. Some people who have wanted to become astronauts have been unable to do so because weightlessness has made them ill.
Sherlock Holmes, the best-known, fictional detective of all time, first appeared in print in London in a story called A Study in Scarlet in Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887. Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes's creator, was born in Edinburgh in 1859 and studied medicine at Edinburgh University. One of his tutors, Dr Joseph Bell, is said to have been the inspiration for the great detective. Doyle was a senior physician in the Second South African War and was knighted in 1902. His stories of Sherlock Holmes were so successful that he gave up medicine and devoted himself to writing. Holmes appeared in The Sign of Four, The Valley of Fear and in several volumes of short stories, first published in the Strand magazine. In the stories, Holmes's apparently miraculous ability to solve incredibly complex cases never fails to amaze Dr Watson, Holmes's friend, whom Sir Arthur uses as the narrator of the stories. Such was the popularity of the stories that when Sir Arthur 'killed off' Holmes in a story, the outcry from the reading public was so great that he was forced to bring him back to life in a subsequent story. Holmes's phrase, 'Elementary, my dear Watson', when explaining his methods to the Doctor
An iceberg is an enormous piece of ice floating in the sea. 'Berg' is the German word for mountain. In the coldest parts of the earth, around the North and South Poles,land and sea are both covered by sheets of ice, over 300 metres deep at the centre.
Tongues of ice, called glaciers, stretch out into the open waters of the oceans. The sea water melts the bottom parts of these glaciers, then the top part slides into the water with a mighty roar. The great piece of ice sinks for a short time beneath the surface then it rises again, and floats away as a new iceberg. Some icebergs are miles across to begin with, and travel for thousands of miles and several years before they finally melt. The part of an iceberg which can be seen above the water is only about one-ninth of the total size. The rest is hidden beneath the waves.
One of the world's worst disasters at sea was in 1912 when the liner 'Titanic’ collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage.
When the ancient Greeks studied the heavens they observed points of light which seemed to move back and forth against the background of apparently fixed stars.
These moving lights shone steadily and did not twinkle like the stars.The Greeks called these heavenly bodies planets, meaning 'wanderers'. We know now that the planets are those bodies, like the Earth, which revolve around a star, the Sun. Planets do not give off light of their own, but get their light from the Sun. Including the Earth, there are nine planets in our solar system that is revolving around our Sun. In sequence, moving away from the Sun, they are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
The first four are known as the Inner Planets and are mainly solid. Mercury is the smallest of the planets; Venus can be seen as the Evening Star in the western sky; Mars seems red even to the naked eye. The others are known as the Outer Planets and the first four are composed mainly of gases but Pluto is believed to be solid. Jupiter is the largest of all the planets, about 1,000 times as big as Earth, and has twelve satellites; Saturn is surrounded by three beautiful rings; Uranus has five satellites and Neptune two; Pluto was only discovered in 1930.
Other stars in space probably have planets also but, as planets give off no light, we cannot detect them with our present instruments.
Penguins are birds that cannot fly. There are eighteen different species. They are all splendid swimmers and can propel themselves through the water at a rate of 30 kilometres per hour. They live only in the southern seas of the world, on the islands off Australia, in New Zealand, South Africa and southern South America. Those that live in the snow and ice cannot build nests.
The biggest are the Emperor penguins which stand about 1.2 metres and weigh about 75 kilogrammes. When a female lays an egg, it is the male that keeps it off the ice by resting it on top of his feet. When the chick hatches, the male, which will not have eaten for two months, then goes off to feed while the female stays with the chick to feed and protect it.
Adelie penguins gather in huge colonies, sometimes as many as half a million in one group.
Rockhopper penguins are so called because of the way they hop from rock to rock. They have long crests on their heads. Their chicks are covered with soft down when hatched. They are helpless at first and need to be looked after and fed for several weeks.
As far back as 1499 it was noted that the jackass penguin (right) brayed like an ass. It is also known as the black-footed penguin.Gentoo penguins live on many of the Antarctic islands. They are very friendly and do not fear man.King penguins also live in the Antarctic. They toboggan on their stomachs at great speed on the ice to escape -- their enemies.
Look up at the sky on a clear, moonless night and the twinkling points of light you can see scattered across the heavens are stars. To the naked eye about 3,000 stars are visible from Earth. With the aid of instruments, scientists can see about 1,500 million stars!
Stars are formed when the gigantic clouds of gas and dust in space collapse inwards under the pull of their own gravity.When this happens, the pressure at the core becomes so great that the heat releases energy which keeps a star burning brightly for most of its life, 10,000 million years. Our Sun is a typical star. Throughout the vastness of space, stars are gathered in galaxies numbering millions of stars. The universe contains millions of galaxies! We give names to constellations, recognisable clusters of stars, like Orion, the Plough, and Cassiopeia.
Born in America in 1874, Erich Weiss became one of the most famous magicians who ever lived. He took the stage name, Harry Houdini, in honour of Robert Houdini, a French conjurer and magician who died in
1871. Houdini was renowned most of all for his escapes from bonds of every kind - locks, handcuffs, strait-jackets and sealed chests under water. We refer nowadays to people who escape from impossible situations as 'Houdinis'.
One of Houdini's greatest tricks on stage was called 'The Vanishing Elephant'. An elephant was led into a cabinet with curtains at the front and doors at the back. The curtains were closed and then opened. The cabinet was empty and the elephant had vanished! The audience could see all round and below the cabinet, but they could not see the secret compartment on one side where the elephant was hidden.
Lightning is a sudden, violent flash of electricity between a cloud and the ground, or from cloud to cloud. A lightning flash, or bolt, can be several miles long. It is so hot, with an average temperature of 34,000° Centigrade, that the air around it suddenly expands with a loud blast. This is the thunder we hear.
Lightning occurs in hot, wet storms. Moist air is driven up to a great height. It forms a type of cloud called cumulo-nimbus. When the cloud rises high enough the moisture freezes and ice crystals and snowflakes are formed. These begin to fall, turning to rain on the way down.
This rain meets more moist air rising, and it is the friction between them which produces static electricity. When a cloud is fully charged with this electricity, it discharges it as a lightning flash.
Different from them are the whale sharks which are the largest of all fish. They eat small animals and plants. The porbeagle shark (above) eats mackerel, haddock, cod and dogfish. These fish are all swallowed whole Sharks are flesh-eating fish so one can easily understand why they are the most feared by all human swimmers.
The giant white sharks are very fast and ferocious and attack anything that moves. The blue sharks and tiger sharks are also deadly killers. The porbeagle is about 3 metres in length. It is a great nuisance so far as fishermen are concerned for sometimes porbeagles are caught in nets that are already partly filled with other fish. A porbeagle so caught will promptly break through the net so releasing the rest of the catch. The porbeagle is easily recognised by its pointed snout.
The orang-utan lives in the dense forests of Sumatra and Borneo. It uses its powerful arms and legs to clamber through the trees in search of fruit, seeds and sometimes eggs.
Each night the orang-utan builds a nest of twigs high in a tree in which to sleep.
It stands about 1.5 metres tall and, when erect, its hands reach its ankles.
Chimpanzees live in the forests and open woodlands of central Africa. They live in groups of up to thirty animals and have a complex social life. They are able to use tools and are generally thought to be the most intelligent of the apes.
Chimpanzees grow about 1.6 metres tall, with slender, but muscular, arms and legs. They spend the day searching for fruit, nuts and eggs as they move through their territory. Chimpanzees often make nests of branches and leaves in which to sleep at night.
Dogs have been pets of humans for thousands of years. Nobody is quite certain when or why dogs first became domesticated. Perhaps dogs took food from prehistoric humans in return for warning of the approach of dangerous bears or lions. It is generally thought that domestic dogs are descended from wolves, but the jackal may be an ancestor. Or the dog may be a cross between the two animals.
Domestic dogs generally have long snouts with up to
forty-four teeth in the jaws. The claws do not retract, like those of domestic cats, so the claws become blunt and stout. Unlike most wild dogs, the domestic dog eats quantities of biscuits and other non-meat food. When dogs run wild they will eat plant material as well as hunt .animals.
Over the millennia that dogs have been kept by humans, the original dog has been selectively bred to produce a wide range of different breeds. Each breed has different characteristics, depending on the task for which it was bred. It is thought that the oldest breed may be the bloodhound, bred to have a keen sense of smell to follow deer and other game through dense forests.
A rainbow is caused by sunlight being refracted, or 'bent', and reflected back towards the observer by raindrops. By this refraction, sunlight is
broken up into its component colours - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - the colours of the rainbow from the outside to the inside of the arc. Rainbows always form on the side of the observer opposite the Sun.
Mankind always seems to have regarded rainbows as good news. In the Bible story of Noah's Ark, after the flood, God put a rainbow in the sky as a sign that there would be no more floods. A legend maintains that, if you dig at the spot where the rainbow touches the ground, you will find a pot of gold buried there.
Butterflies are insects which belong to the order Lepidoptera. which also includes moths. They have large wings, which ate often beautifully coloured, and long, slender bodies. There are thousands of different types of butterfly living. all around the world. They vary in size from the Queen Alexandra's birdwing with a wing span of 28 centimetres to the tiny dwarf blue of South Africa that has a wing span of 14 millimetres.
(The Amazing World of Living Things, Ref: 557, England: Peter Haddock Publishing)In military terms, camouflage means disguising people and objects so that they blend into their surroundings and are more difficult to detect. In this, the military are merely copying nature. A zebra's or a tiger's stripes make it hard for other animals to see them amidst the tall grass. Frogs, lizards and snakes are marked in ways that enable them to merge into whatever background is their natural habitat. Some animals change their coats seasonally. Stoats are brown in summer and white to blend into the snow in winter, when they are called ermine.
The cleverest form of camouflage is the one called mimicry, in which one animal is marked like another. The viceroy butterfly resembles the monarch butterfly because birds find the monarch repugnant and so the viceroys can fly about more safely.
Born in 100 BC, a member of an important Roman family, Julius Caesar was one of the greatest men who ever lived. He was outstanding as a statesman, a general, an orator, an historian, a law-maker, a ruler. . . and, as even his enemies said, a conversationalist! From his youth he held public office, and in 60 BC he became one of the three equal heads of government. For ten years he commanded the Roman armies in Gaul, conquering large parts of Britain and Germany. He then returned to Italy and, by crossing the River Rubicon, began a civil war in which he was victorious. He became the master of the Roman Empire and was largely responsible for the shape of today's Europe. He was assassinated in 44 BC but even 2,000 years later, rulers were still using his name: Kaiser, Tsar or Czar, Shah - all were 'Caesars'.
(My Book of Questions and Answers, Ref: 083, England: Peter Haddock Publishing)
The legendary outlaw of the 12th century in England, Robin Hood, may have been a mythical folk hero, but it is also possible that he was a real person, perhaps even an Earl of Huntingdon. In the legend Robin is outlawed for opposing the sheriff of Nottingham's unjust ways. The sheriff is an ally of Prince John during his rule over the country while King Richard the Lionheart is away on the Crusades. Robin takes refuge in Sherwood Forest and gathers a band of 'Merrie Men' about him, including Little John, the archer, Friar Tuck, and Maid Marion, his beloved. He robs the rich to help the poor, is chivalrous, manly and fair, and generally embodies the ideals of the English yeoman. The story appears first in Piers Plowman (1377) and Robin is also the hero of thirty ballads written between 1100 and1500. He also appears in Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1819).
A kangaroo is an animal found only in Australia, although it has a smaller relative, called a wallaby, which lives on the Australian island of Tasmania and also in New Guinea.
Kangaroos eat grass and plants. They have short front legs, but very long, and very strong back legs and a tail. These they use for sitting up on and for jumping. Kangaroos have been known to make forward jumps of over eight metres, and leap across fences more than three metres high. They can also run at speeds of over 45 kilometres per hour.
The largest kangaroos are the Great Grey Kangaroo and the Red Kangaroo. Adults grow to a length of 1.60 metres and weigh over 90 kilos.
Kangaroos are marsupials. This means that the female kangaroo has an external pouch on the front of her body. A baby kangaroo is very tiny when it is born, and it crawls at once into this pouch where it spends its first five months of life.
(My Book of Questions and Answers, Ref: 083, England: Peter Haddock Publishing)
An iceberg is an enormous piece of ice floating in the sea. 'Berg' is the German word for mountain. In the coldest parts of the earth, around the North and South Poles, land and sea are both covered by sheets of ice, over 300 metres deep at the centre.
Tongues of ice, called glaciers, stretch out into the open waters of the oceans. The sea water melts the bottom parts of these glaciers, then the top part slides into the water with a mighty roar.
The great piece of ice sinks for a short time beneath the surface then it rises again, and floats away as a new iceberg. Some icebergs are miles across to begin with, and travel for thousands of miles and several years before they finally melt. The part of an iceberg which can be seen above the water is only about one-ninth of the total size. The rest is hidden beneath the waves. One of the world's worst disasters at sea was in 1912 when the liner 'Titanic’ collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage.
(Text Source: Peter Haddock Ltd., Ref.083)
Dolphins are seamammals. They have to breathe air or they will die. They are members of the Delhinidae family. Dolphins have smooth skin. Only baby dolphins are born with a few bristly hairs on their snouts. The hairs soon fall out. They have a long tail and the fin on the top of their backs keeps the dolphin from rolling over. The female dolphins have a thick layer of fat under their skin to keep them warm when they dive very deep. The dolphin’s front fins are called flippers. They use them to turn left and right. Dolphins grow from 2 to 3 metres long and weigh up to 75 kilograms.
Dolphins hunt together in a group. A group of dolphins is called a pod. They eat fish, shrimps and small squid. They live in salt water oceans. Dolphins can hold their breath for six minutes.
When dolphins hear or see a shir close by they go near it and follow it from many kilometers. Dolphins can leap out of the water and do somersaults. Sometimes they invent their own tricks and stunts after watching other dolphins perform.
Dolphins are very friendly to people and have never harmed anyone. They are very playful animals.
