2017年10月18日 星期三

SixWay Paragraphs M

1 Feathery Homes
Did you know that there is a kind of bird that can sew? This bird, called the tailorbird, uses its beak as a needle. It sews leaves together in the shape of a cup. Then it lines the cup with straw and lays its eggs there.
Each species builds its own special kind of nest. The most common materials used for nests are grasses, twigs, and feathers. A bird must weave these materials into a nest. Imagine building a house without cement or nails to hold it together!
A weaverbird builds a nest that looks like a basket. The nest is shaped like a pear with a hole in the middle. The hole is the door of the nest.
The ovenbird makes a nest that is very solid. The nest is made of mud. Like a sculptor, the ovenbird molds the mud into the shape of an oven and then lets it dry in the sun. The sun bakes the mud, making it very hard.
Not all birds make their homes in branches. Some birds build their nests on the ground, while others bury their eggs under the ground. And some birds do not build nests at all. For example, a bird called the fairy tern lays its eggs right on a branch. It tiptoes on the branch and balances its eggs very carefully so they won't fall. So, when you look for nests and eggs in the branches of trees and bushes, remember that some nests may be right under your feet!

2 Outsmarting the Enemy
When a garden warbler sings from trees or bushes, no one can see it. The colors of this songbird match the colors of the leaves. When an animal blends in with its surroundings, its enemies can't see it either. This kind of protection is called camouflage.
Birds must protect themselves from their enemies. Sometimes this means having to fight. Sometimes it means fooling the enemy. Sometimes it means being able to escape. Birds must also protect their eggs and their young. Cats, rats, and foxes love eggs for breakfast. They prowl around looking for eggs and young chicks to eat. How can birds defend themselves against such enemies?
Each species has its own way of defending itself. Birds called common terns fight with their beaks and claws. In a swarm, they peck and scratch at anyone who comes too close to their nests. Ostriches protect themselves by escaping. They can't fly, but they can run very fast on their long, muscular legs. These birds can reach speeds of up to forty miles per hour. How fast is that? Well, if the wind blows this hard, it can rip huge branches from trees.
A bird called a killdeer has a lot of courage. It cares very much for its young. It would rather die than see its eggs eaten by a fox. If a fox wanders toward the nest, the killdeer pretends to be hurt. Dragging one wing, it hops away from the nest and draws the hungry fox after it.

3 Rain Forests
Tropical rain forests grow near the equator, in the hottest parts of the world. Rain forests are always wet. The moisture just never dries up.
The trees in a rain forest are very tall and have very few limbs. The leaves are all at the top. They form a high ceiling. Very little sunlight comes through the leaves. Inside a rain forest it is as dark and quiet as a church.
There are very few low-growing plants on the rain forest floor. Walking through a rain forest is like being at a circus's high trapeze show—the most exciting things are happening high above the ground. Monkeys swing on vines, with baby monkeys on their backs. Large snakes crawl from branch to branch. Giant bats make squeaky noises.
The animals that stay near the ground are fascinating, too. The gentle tapir, which looks like a small horse with a long nose, covers itself with mud from head to foot. When the mud dries, it forms a kind of armor. It protects the tapir from biting insects. Another ground animal is the anteater. It has a long, sticky tongue that works like a fly trap. But the tongue is really an ant trap. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner the anteater eats nothing but ants, ants, and more ants.

4 Put a Lid on It
Sports have always been ruled by the weather. Rain, sleet, snow, and cold called the plays. Baseball fans often sat in the rain without cover, waiting for the sun to come out and the game to begin. Football lovers sometimes took days to warm up after sitting through a freezing cold Sunday game. For both sports fans and players, the domed stadium was like something out of a dream. A huge plastic bubble kept out rain and snow. There was heat to keep things comfortable year round.
Domed stadiums have clearly changed the course of sports. Still, they did have their problems at first. Most of these problems were discovered and solved at the Houston Astrodome. This was the world's first stadium with a lid. For the fans, it was great. But there were some problems for the players. Baseball outfielders had the most difficult time. They had to learn to catch in a field with a roof. At first this was almost as difficult as playing in the dark. The panes of the roof were light colored, to let sunlight in. Sunlight was needed to keep the grass on the field alive. But the light roof blended too well with the white baseball. Fly balls seemed to drop out of nowhere. Even skilled fielders were making errors. Finally, the decision was made to paint the panes of the roof dark. The problem was solved. What about the grass? Well, the real grass was dug up and replaced with artificial turf!

5 Two Unhappy Firsts
People enjoy talking about “firsts.” They like to remember their first love or their first car. But not all firsts are happy ones. Some involve accidents or other sad events. Few people enjoy recalling the firsts that are bad.
One of history's bad but important firsts was the first car accident. Autos were still young when it happened. The crash took place in New York City. The year was 1896. The month was May. A man from Massachusetts was visiting the city in his new car. At the time, bicycle riders were still trying to get used to the new sets of wheels on the road.
In the accident, no one is sure who was at fault. In any case, the bike and the car collided. The man on the bike was injured. The driver of the car had to stay in jail and wait for the hospital report on the bicycle rider. Luckily, the rider was not killed.
Three years later, another automobile first took place. The scene was again New York City. A real estate broker named Henry Bliss stepped off a streetcar. He was hit by a passing car. Once again, no one is sure just how it happened or whose fault it was. The driver of the car was put in jail. Poor Mr. Bliss became the first person to die in a car accident.

6 Sea Turtles
Did you know that a turtle can lay twelve eggs in one minute? A large sea turtle lays around 150 eggs at a time. She lays all these eggs in just a few minutes.
Large sea turtles live in the warm seas of the world. Except for when they lay their eggs, they spend their whole lives in water. When it is time to lay their eggs, the females swim to land. They usually return to the place where they themselves were born. How they find their way back there is a mystery.
When they reach shore, the big, heavy turtles crawl slowly up to the high water mark. Using their flippers, they pull themselves along the sand. They must struggle like mountain climbers to attain their goal. When they finally reach dry sand, they rest before beginning the difficult task of laying eggs.
The turtles lay the eggs in deep holes and cover them with warm sand. The sand protects the eggs from harm. Then the females leave them. After a few weeks, if you happened to be walking along the beach, you might see the sand begin to shake in one spot. Then you would see tiny black balls coming out of the sand. The tiny heads of baby turtles!
Baby turtles have a built-in sense of direction. As soon as they are hatched, they head for the water. Once the babies swim out to sea, they don't touch shore again until it is time for them to lay their own eggs.

7. The Whale Clan
If you're looking for a whale, you have a whole family of creatures to choose from. The papa of the whale family is, of course, the whale itself. But there are other members as well. Relatives, you might say.
Few people realize that dolphins are part of the whale clan. In fact, many people do not realize that dolphins aren't fish. Fish breathe through gills and lay eggs. The dolphin does neither. Dolphins, like all the members of the whale clan, are mammals. They breathe air, and they have babies like land mammals and feed them with milk. Dolphins are fascinating to watch. They can leap high out of the water and perform turns in the air. These leaps give the dolphin time to breathe.
Porpoises also belong to the whale family and are very much like dolphins. The main difference between dolphins and porpoises is the size and shape of the snout. The dolphin's nose is long and thin. The snout of the porpoise is short and stubby. Both creatures are smart and friendly to humans.
Not all the members of the whale family are friendly. Perhaps the difference in mood has to do with size. The giant whale is much grumpier than the smaller dolphin or porpoise. An angry whale can be hard to ignore. Perhaps this trait helped to inspire the story of Moby Dick, the Great White Whale who sank a ship and caused the crew to drown.

8 Give Them a Hand
Right is right. Right? Of course. But is left wrong? Well, the ancient Romans thought so. As far as they were concerned, left-handed people were mistakes of nature. Latin, the language of the Romans, had many words that expressed this view. Some words we use today still have this meaning. The Latin word dexter means “right.” The English word dexterous comes from this word. It means “handy.” So, right is handy. But the Latin word for "left" is sinistra. The English word sinister was derived from this word. Sinister means “evil.” Is it fair to call righties handy and lefties evil? Well, fair or not, many languages have words that express similar beliefs. In Old English, the word for left means “weak.” That isn't much of an improvement over “evil.”
Not very long ago, southpaws were often forced to write with their right hands. Doctors have since found that this can be very harmful. You should use the hand you were born to use.
People who use their left hands are just starting to get better treatment. But why all the name calling in the first place? One reason may be that there are not as many left-handed people as there are right-handed people. People who are different are often thought to be wrong. But attitudes do seem to be changing. Fair-minded right-handed people are finally starting to give lefties a hand.

9 Six-Legged Workers
Can you imagine being able to lift fifty people at once and carry them? You'd have to have superhuman strength. Well, you may be surprised to know that tiny ants do have this kind of strength. An ant can lift a load fifty times heavier than itself! Ants must often carry food to their homes from places that are far away. To do this, they must be very strong.
Ants live in tunnels that twist and turn in many directions, like the roots of a gnarled old tree. Thousands of ants can live in one nest. The tunnels are divided into parts. Each part serves a special purpose.
The royal chamber is the place where the queen ant lays her eggs. The queen spends her whole life laying eggs. She never leaves her chamber, except to start a new nest. Worker ants must bring food to her.
The worker ants in an ant colony have many different jobs. Some workers pull the eggs from the royal chamber into a room called the “nursery.” There, they help larvae climb out of their shells. Larvae are the baby ants when they first come out of the eggs. In the nursery, there are workers who look after the larvae until they become full-grown ants. Some workers look for food and store it in the granary, where seeds are kept. Others dump leftovers in the rubbish room. Ants have their own complete, busy world hidden in tunnels under our feet!

10 The Collapsing Road
The young couple was very lucky. The back tires of their car stayed on the road. Otherwise, the car—and its passengers—would have fallen right into a pit twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep!
The man and woman were coming home from a party. They were enjoying the landscape around Swansea, Wales. Suddenly, they found the front of their car leaning into a huge hole. The car barely hung on to the edge of the pit. It swayed back and forth like the arm of a balance.
In their precarious position, the couple knew that each movement they made could be a matter of life and death. Slowly, slowly, they edged toward the backseat. Then each opened a back door. And on the count of three, they jumped out together. The accident was so scary that they ran along way before they calmed down. But later they returned to see what happened. They found that a big chunk of the road had sunk into the ground! At the bottom of the pit lay their car—roof down and wheels up.
Was this mystery of the sunken road ever solved? It turned out that an abandoned mine shaft lay under the road. It had collapsed and taken the pavement with it. Layers of tunnels intersect beneath the city of Swansea. The tunnels were built so many years ago that no one knows where they end or begin. The tunnels are shaky, like those that ants build in the sand. It's even possible that the entire city might collapse.

11 A Whale of a Story
There has been, in history, a man who was swallowed by a whale and lived to tell the tale. The man's name was James Bartley. The records to prove his unusual experience are in the British Admiralty.
This story takes place at a time when whales were hunted for meat and oil. Bartley was making his first trip on the whaling ship Star of the East. Suddenly the lookout sighted a huge sperm whale. The whalers knew it was a huge whale by the size of the spray it blew into the air. They lowered their small boats. James Bartley was in the first longboat. The men rowed until they were close to the whale. A harpoon was thrown and found its mark. It sank into the whale's flesh. The maddened beast crashed into the boat, snapping its tail at the men and the wreckage of their boats. When the survivors were picked up, James Bartley was missing.
Shortly before sunset, the whale was finally captured. The sailors tied the whale's carcass to the side of the ship. Because of the hot weather it was important that they cut up the whale right away. Otherwise, the meat would begin to rot and the oil would begin to spoil. When they got to the stomach, they felt something moving about wildly. They thought it would be a big fish still alive inside. But when they opened the stomach they found James Bartley. After this trip, Bartley settled in Gloucester, England, and never returned to sea.

12 The Hermit
Most people like living with other people. But some people just have to be by themselves. Take Bozo Kucik, for example. For over eighty-four years Bozo lived all alone on a desert island.
In 1888, when Bozo was only sixteen, his father left him on a little island off the coast of Croatia. He kissed Bozo goodbye and said, “I hope all goes well with you, my son.” Then the father got back in his boat and sailed home without his son. How could he do such a thing, you ask? Well, Bozo had asked him to.
Bozo's father was a poor peasant who couldn't afford to feed his seven children. So he called his sons together and asked them to decide their own futures. Bozo chose the life of a hermit.
During the years that Bozo lived alone, World Wars I and II were fought. But Bozo never heard about them. In 1972, a crew of fishermen visited his island. They tried to talk to Bozo. At first the old hermit ran away. Finally, he let the men into his windowless stone hut.
The fishermen talked with Bozo for over two hours. They told him all about the two world wars he had missed. When they asked his age, Bozo guessed he was one hundred years old.
They asked if he wanted to go home. But Bozo said no. So the fisherman wished Bozo well and left him alone again—just as his father had eighty-four years before.

13 Forever Amber
Amber is a substance that lasts and lasts. Scientists are very glad of this. Without amber, we would not have many of the world's important insect remains. Amber is a hard, yellowish-brown resin found in the earth. It is translucent, which means you can see through it. It is known for its ability to preserve things.
Long ago, amber was not as hard as it is today. It was soft and gummy. Insects that weren't careful about where they walked often got trapped in it. The poor bugs that got caught in the sticky amber died. But they were forever preserved. The golden resin worked like a wax mold. It shaped itself around the insects. The resin hardened as the bodies of the dead insects slowly fell into decay.
The last traces of the insects trapped in amber have been gone for thousands of years. But the imprints of their bodies remained fixed in the hardened resin. Although the bugs are gone from the earth, their imprints remain for us to study. Many of these imprints are very fine and detailed. Preserved imprints of creatures and plants that once lived are called fossils. They help scientists learn more about life on earth in the past.

14 Jumbo
Jumbo the elephant is one of the most famous animals that ever lived. He was the biggest elephant and the proudest possession of the British Crown.
In April of 1882, Jumbo was shipped to a zoo in the United States for a visit. He was an instant success. P. T. Barnum had heard of this giant and the great crowds he attracted. Barnum decided that he would like to have Jumbo in his circus. He thought of a way to get him.
Barnum knew that elephants in captivity have periodic fits of violence. He waited for Jumbo to have such a fit. When it happened, he asked the zoo to sell him the elephant. Jumbo was sold to Barnum, who paid on the spot. Jumbo became the star of the circus. Barnum made a fortune on this star.
But one day tragedy struck Jumbo. It was after a show. The elephant was being led back to his cage near the railroad tracks by his trainers. Suddenly a bright light blinded them. A train whistled, and brakes screeched as the engineer tried to stop. Dazzled by the light, Jumbo charged right into it. There was a crash that chilled the hearts of those who were there. The confused animal had run head-on into the train's engine. Jumbo died of a broken neck.

15 Stunt People
They are daredevils. They are in great physical shape. They are not movie stars, but they make a lot of money. These brave folks—stunt people—are the hidden heroes of many movies.
Stunt people were around long before films. Even Shakespeare probably used them in fight scenes. To be good, a fight scene has to look real. Punches must land on enemies' jaws. Sword fights must be fought with sharp swords. Several actors are usually in a fight scene. Their moves must be set up so that no one gets hurts. It is almost like planning a dance performance.
If a movie scene is dangerous, stunt people usually fill in for the stars. You may think you see Tom Cruise running along the top of a train. But it is probably his stunt double. Stunt people must resemble the stars they stand in for. Their height and build should be about the same. But when close-ups are needed, the film focuses on the star.
Some stunt people specialize in certain kinds of scenes. For instance, a stunt woman named Jan Davis does all kinds of jumps. She has leapt from planes and even off the top of a waterfall. Each jump required careful planning and expert timing.
Yakima Canutt was a famous cowboy stunt man. Among other stunts, he could jump from a second story window onto a horse's back. He invented the famous trick of sliding under a moving stagecoach. (Maybe you've seen this stunt in TV westerns.) Canutt also figured out a new way to make a punch look real. He was the only stuntman ever to get an Oscar.

16 A Dragon That Flies
Although it doesn't breathe fire, this dragon can fly. And what a beauty it is. By far the scariest thing about the dragonfly is its name. This double-winged, fast-flying insect is totally harmless. It has large, deep eyes that can detect the smallest movements. Its body may be bright blue and red or a vivid green. Dragonflies in flight look like dancing spots of color in the light of a midsummer's day.
The dragonfly has a long and respectable history. It was one of the first flying insects on the earth. To see this oldster of the insect world in action, head for a pond. Dragonflies live near the water. In fact, they lay their eggs right in the water
A dragonfly goes through several big changes before it becomes a flying insect. From the egg, a tiny creature called a nymph is hatched. It lives in the water, eating other small creatures that live in the pond. As the nymph grows, it becomes too big for its skin. Then it sheds the skin that is too small for it. Soon it grows a new one. This molting happens several times, until the insect is full grown. At this time it crawls up the stem of a water plant, out into the air. It squeezes its way out of its last skin as a full-fledged dragonfly.
After going through all that work to grow up, the dragonfly only lives for about a month. But for this short time it startles the hot summer air with its bright beauty.

17 A Dangerous Weather Maker
Thunderstorms are dangerous because they can give off lightning. Snowstorms can tie up traffic and strand people. But tornadoes cause some of the worst weather of all.
Tornadoes are very strong columns of twisting air. They come out of rain clouds and form funnels. The funnels move along the ground, picking up anything in their path. Tornado winds can be over 300 miles an hour. Property damage can be terrible.
Most of the world's tornadoes are in the United States. The flat middle section of the country—the Great Plains—is where many strike. Spring is the most common time for tornadoes. But they hit in other seasons, too.
Tornadoes can be rated by the damage that their winds do. The worst tornadoes have winds between 261 and 318 miles an hour. They can lift a sturdy wooden house off its foundation. They can even carry cars through the air. Luckily, tornadoes this strong don't happen very often.
The world's worst tornado happened in March 1925. It went through three states—Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. It killed about seven hundred people and injured over two thousand. In one small town, over two hundred people were killed. Many of the dead were school children. If you hear that a tornado is coming, look for a safe place right away.
If you are indoors, go to a basement. If you are outside, lie flat on the ground. Treat these storms with respect.

18 Oldest, Youngest, or in the Middle?
Were you the first or last child in your family? Or were you a middle or only child? Some people think it matters where you were born in your family. But there are different ideas about what birth order means.
Some people say that oldest children are smart and strong-willed. They are very likely to be successful. The reason for this is simple. Parents have a lot of time for their first child. They give him or her a lot of attention. So this child is very likely to do well. An only child will succeed for the same reason.
What happens to the other children in a family? Middle children don't get so much attention. So they don't feel that important. If a family has many children, the middle ones sometimes get lost in the crowd. The youngest child, though, often gets special treatment. He or she is the “baby.” Often this child grows up to be funny and charming.
Do you believe these ideas about birth order? A recent study saw things quite differently. This study found that first children believed in family rules. They didn't take many chances in their lives. They usually followed orders. Rules didn't mean so much to later children in a family. They went out and followed their own ideas. They took chances. And they often did better in life.
Which theory about birth order do you believe? Look at your own family or your friends' families. Decide which idea fits what you see.

19 A Very Old Riddle
The people of old Greece and Egypt believed in mythology. The stories in myths were mostly about strange creatures. Some of these creatures were part human and part animal. One, the Sphinx, had the head of a woman and the body of a lion. The Sphinx lived high on a mountain peak over which a road passed.
People who traveled that road were never heard from again. Whenever travelers reached the peak of the mountain, the Sphinx would block the road and speak this riddle: "What goes on four feet in the morning, on two feet at noon, and on three feet in the evening?” No traveler in a thousand years had guessed the answer. And the Sphinx had eaten them all.
But one day a Greek traveler named Oedipus traveled that way. When Oedipus came to the mountain pass, the Sphinx leaped out. With a catlike grin, it asked its terrible riddle. Oedipus, wise with age, knew the answer immediately, but he teased the Sphinx by frowning and shaking his head. These strange actions made the Sphinx tense and upset. Then suddenly Oedipus shot forth the answer. The Sphinx was so upset that it jumped off the mountain to its death.
The answer Oedipus gave was simple: a person. Can you guess why this was right? In a person's morning, or childhood, he or she crawls on all fours. At noon, as an adult, a person walks on two legs. In the evening, old age, a person uses a third foot—a cane.

20 Protect Your Hearing
Is your roommate's stereo playing too loud: Is the neighbor's leaf blower driving you crazy? The world seems to be getting noisier all the time. And you need to be concerned about it. All those loud sounds may actually damage your ears.
Noise can affect your hearing in two ways. A very loud noise very close to the ear can injure it right away. An example might be the sound from a high-powered rifle. Aloud blast like this can leave scars on your inner ear tissues. You will hear less well as a result. (That is why people at shooting ranges wear coverings to protect their ears.)
Much hearing damage comes more slowly. It occurs over a period of time. You have probably heard of people in rock bands who lose their hearing. The constant loud noise gradually damages their ears. But this can happen to other people as well. Loud noise comes from fireworks, from car horns in traffic, even from vacuum cleaners. Too much of any of these can affect your hearing.
How can people protect their ears? One way is to use earplugs. Is the concert so loud that you can't hear what your friend is saying? Put the plugs in. And sometimes give your ears a rest. Go to that noisy basketball game tonight. But don't run your lawn mower tomorrow morning.
As people grow older, their hearing skills gradually decrease. This is a fairly natural phenomenon. But hearing loss by age thirty is not natural. You can avoid it if you are careful.

21. The Wizard of Wall Street
At the age of eighty, Hetty Green lived like a pauper in an unheated apartment. To save the cost of heating her food, she ate only cold eggs and onions. In order to save more money, Hetty wore newspapers instead of underwear. She had only the bottoms of her dresses cleaned. A very poor person, you say? No, Hetty was one of America's richest women!
Hetty Green was born in 1835 in a rich section of Bellow Falls, Vermont. When her father died, she was left a large fortune. She took all of her money and invested it in the stock market. Her stocks did so well that she became known as “the wizard of Wall Street.”
But though she was very rich, Hetty Green was extremely cheap. For instance, when her son, Edward, broke his leg, she refused to call for a doctor. She felt it would cost too much. So she carried her son to a charity hospital. Still, young Edward's leg got worse. Finally, the leg had to be removed to save the boy's life. But Hetty still didn't want to pay the hospital fee. Instead, in order to save more money, she had her son's operation done on the kitchen table in her rooming house.
When Hetty died in 1916, she was worth over $120 million. Yet this tightfisted woman had lived as though she barely had a cent.

22 Surviving in Very Cold Climates
Imagine going to sleep in October and waking up in May! Animals such as marmots and ground squirrels stay warm by sleeping all winter. All this time, they do not wake up once. This special kind of sleep is called hibernation. During this sleep, the heart slows down, and the animal breathes more slowly. It doesn't move around, so it uses less energy.
Animals like the marmot and the ground squirrel inhabit the coldest parts of the world. They need special talents to survive in these frigid places. Their furry coats keep them snug when the temperature falls below zero. It often gets this cold in the Arctic, a land that is just below the North Pole.
Before the long winter, some animals eat and eat. After a while, they grow very fat. When winter comes, they live on the fat saved up in their bodies. The fat layers help keep them warm.
Arctic animals also have other ways to beat the cold. Rabbits in the Arctic, for example, have very small ears. Small ears keep heat in, while big ears let it out. Small things usually keep heat in. Have you ever slept in a room that is very small and noticed how hot it can get?
It rarely gets warm in the Arctic. But although summer seasons there are very short, the sun shines brightly. Plants seem to spring up before your eyes! Animals such as caribou look forward all year to summer, when they can eat fresh grass again. Every minute of sunshine is important to their lives.

23 Let's Shake on It
What could be simpler than shaking fruit from a tree? Well, the job is a lot tougher than you might think. There is definitely a right way and a wrong way to shake a fruit tree. And a person who is a good apple tree shaker may not be a good cherry tree shaker. Different fruits take different shakes.
     As a rule, a slow, hard shake is best. This makes the fruit fall much faster than a light, quick jiggle. Most fruits have a set number of shakes per minute that will do the best job of getting them out of the tree and onto the ground. To shake down plums, try shaking the tree four hundred times per minute, moving the tree two inches at each shake. Experts say you'll get three times more fruit from the tree than you will if you shake eleven hundred times per minute at one inch per shake. Cherries, because they are smaller, need more jarring. A good rate of shaking seems to be about twelve hundred shakes per minute. Apples, like plums, need about four hundred shakes.
     Of course, some folks may choose to ignore all these expert directions for jiggling fruit. Can you actually imagine shaking a tree so many times? Besides, keeping track of all the numbers can be enough to drive some people up a tree.

24 Slow but Sure
Nowadays the Indianapolis 500, one of the world's most famous car races, takes about three-and-a-half hours to run. If the Indy 500 had been held in 1895, it would have taken almost three days. The horseless carriage had just been invented a short time before. Top speeds back then were much lower than they are today. For most people, just seeing a car move without a horse pulling it was thrilling enough. The driver's main concern was making sure the car didn't break down.
One of the first car races was held in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day in 1895. Folks crowded the streets to gawk at the new machines. The route of the race went through the heart of town. The cars were to go out to a nearby suburb and back. The race covered a distance of about fifty-four miles. That's less than one-tenth the distance at Indy. The drivers cranked up their engines and prayed that they wouldn't conk out. Then they were off. The race proved too much for some of the cars. Perhaps they couldn't withstand the high speeds. The winner of the contest was J. Frank Duryea. He got the checkered flag a bit more than seven hours after he started. He had covered the grueling distance at an average speed of 7.5 miles per hour. That is slower than a modern marathoner can go on foot. Even so, as Duryea finished, the crowd went wild.

25 Scallops and Clams
Scallops and clams are both mollusks—shelled sea creatures with soft bodies. Yet they have more differences than similarities. Scallops and clams both feed by pulling water through their shells and straining out tiny plants and animals as their food. Both shellfish are popular prey for many other sea creatures. But when it comes to searching for safety, they have very different ways.
The scallop lies on the floor of the ocean in shallow to fairly deep water. Its curved shell raises it just above the sand or gravel on the bottom. It looks almost helpless lying there. But don't let it fool you. There is a ring of tiny eyes peering out from the scallop's shell. At the first sign of an enemy, the scallop takes off, swimming by jetting spurts of water out behind it. It's a very fast swimmer.
Any clam that dared to lie in full view on the ocean floor would quickly be eaten. Clams make a tasty meal for starfish, crabs, or carnivorous snails. They move very slowly and cannot swim at all. They find safety by burrowing deep into the mud or sand. Their long necks stretch like periscopes, up to the top of the sand. Just the tip of the neck pokes out to get food for the clam. If anything comes near, the neck can quickly be pulled back within the shell. The clam stays safe below the surface, two or three feet down.

Watch out for practical jokers. They'll do almost anything for a laugh. One such prankster was Moe Drabowsky. He was a baseball relief pitcher. Relief pitchers are standby players who replace the starting pitcher in a game if he is pitching badly. If the starting pitcher is throwing well, relief pitchers have nothing to do. They just sit around in the bullpen and hope the manager calls them to play.
Waiting around in the bullpen gave Moe lots of time to think up jokes. But his best joke was played after he retired from baseball. Moe was sitting at home watching his team play on television. It would have been a boring game for him had he still been on the team. The starting pitcher was doing great. He hadn't given up a single run. The relief pitchers wouldn't be likely to play in this game. The last thing they'd expect would be a call from the manager. The thought gave Moe a mischievous idea. He still remembered the bullpen phone number. Moe dialed it from his living room. A startled relief pitcher answered. Using a voice that sounded like the manager's, Moe growled, “Warm up and get ready to play.” The star pitcher gape at the man in the bullpen who was getting ready to pitch. Everyone stared at the manager in disbelief. The poor manager could only scratch his head. A thousand miles away, Moe Drabowsky sat in his living room watching the event on TV and laughing.


27 The Mysterious Iceman
Put yourself in these tourists’ position. You are walking an icy mountain path in the Alps in Europe. Suddenly you spot a body on the ground, face downward and stuck to the ice. You think someone may have been murdered or in a fatal accident. So you rush back and call the police. The police, however, quickly realize that this body is different from others they've found on the mountain. For one thing, it is mostly undamaged. For another, its skin is dried out, like a mummy's. And with it is a knife with a small stone blade.
The body turned out to be much older than the tourists could have guessed. When specialists had a chance to examine it, they discovered it had been there for about five thousand years!
How could a body stay preserved for all this time? Two things probably helped. First, the place where the man died was somewhat sheltered, so animals couldn't get at it. Then he was quickly covered by falling snow. Wind blowing through the snow probably “freeze-dried” his body, removing all moisture from it.
Objects found with the body told something about the Iceman's life. He wore a well-made fur jacket and pants. He clearly had been hunting, for he carried arrows, and animal bones were nearby. He also had a braided grass mat for sitting or sleeping on. Perhaps he was exhausted when he lay down for the last time.
The body was found in 1991, when some of the ice on the mountain melted. Searching for the cause of the Iceman's death, scientists put the body back into cold conditions—and hoped.

28 They'll Eat Anything
You know that pearls grow inside oysters, but would you ever think to look for diamonds inside an ostrich? Well, a hunter once shot an ostrich and discovered, to his great surprise, that the big bird had swallowed a bunch of diamonds. How could such a strange thing happen?
Like many other birds, the ostrich swallows small stones that stay inside its “gizzard.” The gizzard is a bird's second stomach. It is where the food is ground up. The small stones help to grind up the food so it can be digested. The small stones do the chewing, because birds don't have teeth. In the case of the ostrich with the diamonds, the bird simply had expensive taste in rocks. He used the diamonds to help digest his dinner.
Diamonds and stones aren't all that an ostrich will swallow. If there are no stones around, it will eat just about anything. Sadly for ostriches in zoos, this can be a fatal habit. The tendency to swallow anything it sees has caused the death of many an ostrich. Cruel or careless people often throw things into the bird's living space. They throw keys, coins, and even large objects such as horseshoes. The ostrich swallows them without hesitation. Coins can be the worst. Inside the ostrich they wear down to a razor-sharp edge. They will cut open the bird's gizzard from the inside. When one young zoo ostrich died, 484 coins weighing more than eight pounds were found in its gizzard.

29 No Laughing Matter
Never laugh at a snow-covered mountain! Laughter and yelling during the avalanche season can trigger a deadly pile of snow. Huge snow slides are most common in mountains where there are steep slopes that are well buried in snow and ice. The snow builds up slowly and lands very softly. This can create a very touchy, unstable situation. Tons of snow may be held up by only the friction between snowflakes. The deep snow is like a house of cards. The slightest movement can cause it to tumble. As soon as something slips, a great mass of snow will come crashing down the mountainside.
Slides may be started by sound vibrations. They may also be started by the weight of wet, melting snow. Once an avalanche has been triggered, the cause no longer matters. Moving down a steep slope, it picks up great speed and added snow. Some avalanches travel as fast as 200 miles per hour. The force of an avalanche will mow down anything in its path. Whole houses have been swallowed up by these fast-paced piles of snow.
The wind that is caused by an avalanche is almost as destructive as the snow itself. Winds from an avalanche have been known to travel as fast as those of a tornado. So, when approaching a thickly snow-covered mountain, speak softly!

30 Abe's Favorite Story
If he hadn't turned to politics, Abe Lincoln might have done well as a comic. It has been said that he was always ready join in a laugh at his own expense. There is one particular story that he always told with great glee.
In his early days as a lawyer, Lincoln was on the “circuit.” This meant going from town to town to hear and judge legal cases. During one of these many trips, he was sitting in a train when a strange man came up to him. The stranger looked at the tall, gawky lawyer quite sternly and explained that he had something he believed belonged to Lincoln. Lincoln was a bit confused. He had never seen the man before. He didn't see how a total stranger could have something of his. Lincoln asked him how this could be. The stranger pulled out a gleaming penknife and began to explain. Many years before, he had been given the pocketknife. He had been told to keep it until he was able to find a man uglier than himself.
Lincoln's eyes always sparkled when he reached this part of the story. He was never considered a handsome man. The stranger had decided that Lincoln was ugly enough to deserve the knife. The story always brought smiles to the faces of the audience that heard it. The tale itself was funny. But even more delightful was the fact that a man as great as Lincoln could still laugh at himself.

The first matches were made by a German experimenter. Like others of his time, he was trying to make gold. Instead, he came up with phosphorous. This chemical is so sensitive that it bursts into flame when exposed to the air. The first match was made in 1680. In those days, few people could afford even an ounce of phosphorous. It was so expensive that lighting a match was like burning money. The first matches were toys for the rich. They were not matches as we know them. They were small bottles containing pieces of paper dipped in phosphorous. When exposed to the air, they caught fire.
It was not until 1827, in England, that the type of match we are familiar with was made. It used phosphorous too, but in smaller amounts. It was lighted by friction. Everyone could afford these matches. They replaced flint and steel, which for ages had been the only tools for starting fires. But these matches proved to be a curse as well as a blessing. Phosphorous is a deadly poison. The people who made matches often died from a disease caused by the poison. Babies died from swallowing match heads. Some people used them to commit suicide.
At last, in 1911, William Fairburn devised a nontoxic type of phosphorous. He proved himself an unselfish man by giving the formula to all the matchmakers, rather than keeping it for his own profit.

32 The Great Invasion
In 1944 an event occurred that changed the course of history. It was the invasion of France by the Allied forces. This invasion was the beginning of the end of World War II.
By 1944 most of Western Europe was controlled by German armies. To free the people, the Allies carefully planned their attack. British, Canadian, and American troops would set out from England and sail across the English Channel. They would land on the mainland of Europe and take back the land the Germans had grabbed.
The Germans knew the invasion was coming. They did not know where or when. The Allies tried to fool their enemy, and they succeeded. The Germans thought the invasion would come through northern France or through Belgium. The Allies decided to land further south, along France's Normandy coast. The Germans had fortified this region with guns, land mines, and barbed wire fences. But their main troops weren't there.
Invasion Day was June 6, 1944. Some 175,000 men were carried one hundred miles across the water. With them came tanks, trucks, and fighter planes providing bombing support. The goal in the first few days was to gain control of five beaches. From there troops could move inland.
Some of the worst fighting was at Omaha Beach. Just beyond the beach, Allied soldiers had to climb steep cliffs to make sure German gunnery was not there. At Omaha, over two thousand men died or were injured.
But the invasion was successful. The Allies established a beachhead by the end of the first day. Within a year, the Germans would be defeated.

33 The Ship with Four Legs
There is just one four-legged animal that can walk two hundred miles without stopping once to rest. It would take a person two days and two nights to walk this far, and only one man has ever done it without stopping. What amazing animal has such endurance? The camel! The camel is well known for something else, too. It can cross an entire desert without a single drink of water. Its body is built in a special way to help it store water and food.
A person has just one stomach, but a camel has quite a few. Within each stomach are layers and layers of cells. These cells are like tiny water balloons, storing liquids until the camel needs them. When the camel drinks, the cells grow larger and larger. For a whole week, they can keep the animal's thirst away by sending water to all parts of its body.
Did you ever wonder why the camel has a hump? The hump is a storage place for fat. Because it has this storage area, the camel does not need to eat very often. When the animal needs energy, the layers of fat serve as fuel to keep it going on the long, hot days in the burning sun.
The camel has one other gift that makes it well suited to arid regions. This gift is its amazing nose. A camel can smell a water hole from miles away!
When a camel moves, it sways from side to side like a ship on a wavy ocean. Because of this swaying motion, the camel has been called the "Ship of the Desert."

34 The Octopus Plant
Unless you have visited the southern United States, you probably have never heard of kudzu. Kudzu, as any farmer in the South will sadly tell you, is a super-powered weed. It is a strong climbing vine. Once it gets started, kudzu is almost impossible to stop. It climbs to the tops of the tallest trees. It can cover large buildings. Whole barns and farmhouses have been known to disappear from view. It has even been said to engulf small, slow-moving children, but that is probably an exaggeration. Still, wherever it grows, its thick, twisting vines are extremely hard to remove.
Kudzu was once thought to be a helpful plant. Originally found in Asia, it was brought to America to help fight erosion. It was planted where its tough roots, which grow up to five feet long, could help hold back the soil. But the plant soon spread to places where it wasn't wanted. Farmers now have to fight to keep it from eating up all the nutrients in the soil and killing other plants. In a way, it works as a sign of unemployment in the South; where there is no one to work the fields, kudzu soon takes over.
The northern United States faces no threat from kudzu. Harsh winters kill off its vines. The plant loves the warmth of the South. But the South surely doesn't love it. If someone could invent some use for kudzu and take it off southern farmers' lands, his or her fortune would be assured.

35 Monkey Do
Would you send a monkey to do your shopping for you? Sounds pretty strange, doesn't it? But monkeys can be trained to do some amazing things. Most people are aware that monkeys are one of nature's brainiest beasts. Scientists have been studying the link between monkeys and people for a long time. They have designed experiments that test the monkey's ability to perform simple human tasks.
In one test, a psychologist put two monkeys in cages beside each other. Each cage contained a vending machine. One cage had a machine that gave out water. The other had one that gave out food. Instead of real coins, each monkey was given a bag of black and white tokens. The black tokens worked only in the food machine. The white tokens worked in the machine with the water. In time, both animals were able to figure out which coin worked in which machine.
Then the test was made harder. The coins were taken away. The monkey with the water machine was not allowed to have any water for twenty-four hours. The food monkey was deprived of food. The next day, the coins were returned to the monkeys. This time, though, the monkey with the food machine was given water machine tokens, and the monkey with the water machine was given the tokens that worked the food machine. What did the two hungry monkeys do? These smart creatures simply reached through the bars of their cages and traded tokens.

36 Courage and Skill
John Paul Jones was one of the founders of the United States Navy. During the American Revolution, the colonies were desperate. They needed men to lead their small ships against the British fleet. Jones was more than willing to fight. John Paul Jones had once been a captain of a British merchant ship. In 1773, his crew mutinied. One member of the crew tried to gain control of the ship. Jones shot the man to death. The mutiny took place near the port of Tobago, an island in the Caribbean. Authorities there decided to have a trial. This meant certain death for John Paul Jones, since the whole crew would testify against him. One night during a thunderstorm, he escaped from the jail. He fled to the United States and lived with a family named Jones. His real name was John Paul. He added the name of Jones to his, in honor of the family. He outwitted the British ships that were sent to hunt him down. And he did this with little more than his own courage and the skill of his crew. When the American Revolution ended he went to serve in the Russian navy. There he fought the Turks and achieved one of the few major naval victories in the history of Russia. He died in Paris at the age of forty-five. John Paul Jones is considered both an American and Russian hero, but the English considered him a fugitive.

37 No Chance to Dream
The thought of not sleeping for twenty-four hours or more is not a pleasant one for most people. The amount of sleep that each person needs varies. In general, each of us needs about eight hours of sleep each day to keep our bodies healthy and happy. Some people, however, can get by with just a few hours of sleep at night. It doesn't matter when or how much a person sleeps. But everyone needs some rest to stay alive. Few doctors would have thought that there might be an exception to this. Sleep is, after all, a very basic need. But a man named Al Herpin turned out to be a real exception, for supposedly he never slept! Al Herpin was ninety years old when doctors came to his home in New Jersey. They hoped to negate the claims that he never slept. But they were surprised. Though they watched him every hour of the day, they never saw Herpin sleeping. He did not even own a bed. He never needed one. The closest that Herpin came to resting was to sit in a rocking chair and read a half dozen newspapers. His doctors were baffled by this strange case of permanent insomnia. Herpin offered the only clue to his condition. He remembered some talk about his mother having been injured several days before he had been born. Herpin died at the age of ninety-four, never-it seems-having slept a wink.

38. The World's Oldest Sport
Most of us have heard of thoroughbred horses. But what does "thoroughbred" mean? It means a horse of a pure breed. In other words, a thoroughbred is a type of horse that has not been mixed with any other type of horse through breeding. Thoroughbred horses are the world's fastest racers. Long ago, three Arabian stallions were brought to England by King Charles II. They were the ancestors of all thoroughbreds known today. They were called Byerley Turk, Godolphin Barb, and Darley Arabian.
Horse racing is one of the oldest sports in the world. Rulers of all times have enjoyed breeding their own horses. In the Middle Ages, kings liked to watch their knights on horseback compete in tournaments. Because of this, horse racing is often called "the sport of kings."
There are many different kinds of horse races. Flat races are races that take place on grass or dirt tracks. They are called "flat" because the horse is not made to jump over any obstacles.
In another kind of race, called the steeplechase, a horse must jump at least eighteen fences. Steeplechasing gets its name from races once held in Ireland. In these events, the course was set between the church steeples of one village and the next. The most famous steeplechase in modern times is the Grand National, held in England.

39 Glass on the Beach
If you have gone to the same seashore for several years, you may have noticed that the beach gets smaller every year. The wind and the waves carry the beach out to sea, bit by bit. Most shore towns try to fight the beach changes caused by ocean currents and the tides. Some dig sand out of the backwater bays and dump it on the beachfront. Others build wooden piers and jetties made to keep currents away from the beach. A type of artificial sand that has been developed might be able to slow down beach erosion. Strangely, this new kind of sand is made of ground glass! You might think that walking barefoot on ground glass would be painful. But it's not. The reason is very simple. Sand and glass are made of the same kind of material, called silicate. When glass is ground very finely, you get a sandlike substance that is harder than real sand. The size of the pieces can be controlled. Larger pieces wouldn't be as easily affected by the wind and waves. So a beach covered with artificial sand would last longer than a beach with real sand. A wonderful thing about artificial sand is that it can be made from waste glass. But making artificial sand costs three times as much as using conventional methods of beach protection. So it is not likely that sand made of glass will be used in the
near future.

40 The Monstrous Flower
Have you ever heard of a flower whose seeds are carried and spread by elephants? The rafflesia, a rare blossom, is very unusual. Found in the rain forests of Sumatra, the rafflesia is the world's largest flower, measuring three feet in diameter.
This giant flower is a parasite-it needs another plant to live on. It lacks the structures needed to survive alone. The rafflesia has no stem or leaves. It is all flower. It attaches itself to the roots of other plants and sucks their juices. The flower's favorite home is the root of the cissus vine, which grows above ground.
The rafflesia seems to burst right out of the forest floor. Its blossom weighs fifteen pounds! It has thick, spotted petals that give off a foul smell. The center, or nectary, is about the size of a household bucket. After a rain, it may hold up to twelve pints of water.
After the rafflesia dies, it becomes a pool of thick liquid in which seeds float. Elephants wandering through the forest step into the mushy pool, and the seeds glue themselves to their feet. As the animals stomp though the forest, their sticky feet pick up twigs and leaves. The elephants try to rid themselves of the sticky mess, in the same way people try to get bubblegum off their shoes. The elephants rub their feet against the roots of the cissus vine. In no time, seeds left on the vine grow into more monstrous flowers!

41 Famous Horses of the Past
Did you think only kings and queens lived in marble houses? Well, Caligula, a Roman Emperor, kept his horse, Incitatus, in a marble stable! The horse's stall was made of ivory. The horse wore a golden collar inlaid with jewels. His purple blanket was a sign of royalty. It was rumored that Caligula had even made his horse consul! A consul was a ruler with much power.
Horses have helped to shape history. Long ago, winning or losing a battle often depended on how fast a horse could run. Horses were crucial in war. General Robert E. Lee never parted with his horse, Traveller. During the American Civil War, General Lee led the Confederate Army. Traveller braved many battles with Lee and was never hurt.
The most famous warhorse of all time was made of wood. It actually helped defeat an entire army. About 3,500 years ago, a fierce battle was going on between the Trojans and the ancient Greeks in a place called Asia Minor. The Greeks tried to think of a way to outsmart their enemies. Finally they built a huge wooden horse, taller than two houses, and left it outside the gates of the city of Troy. Since they didn't know where it came from, the Trojans thought the horse had magical powers. Carefully, they pulled it through the gates. That night, a surprising thing happened. The sides of the wooden horse opened and a band of Greek soldiers climbed out. They opened the gates of Troy and let in the Greek army. The Greeks soon captured the city of Troy.

42 A Safe Place to Sleep
Need some sleep? Maybe you should try curling up in a cactus. This prickly plant can provide sound slumber-at least for a desert centipede. It has worked as a bedroom for this creature for years. The centipede is a long bug with one hundred legs. Although pretty scary to look at itself, the bug is afraid of the tarantula, a large dark spider with eight big hairy legs. Each night before the centipede goes to sleep, it builds a special burglar alarm made of cactus. It surrounds itself with these sharp plants. The smart bug knows that the tarantula will never crawl over cactus. That would be like hugging a porcupine. So the centipede sleeps safely in its cactus Corral. It can be sure that no enemy will get in. Shut out by this prickly prison, the hungry tarantula lurks outside the centipede's bedroom for hours. First it circles the wall, then it peers over and circles again. Finally it decides that there is nothing it can do. It leaves the centipede to sleep and goes off to look for a creature that won't protect itself as well. The next day the centipede wakes up from a good night's sleep, figuring the tarantula has surely given up by now. Still, the centipede is cautious. It takes a long and very careful look around. Only when it's sure that the coast is clear does the centipede begin to remove the wall of cactus that protected it in sleep.

43. The Ancient Cockroach
He was there to greet the dinosaurs when they arrived on earth. He is still with us 170 million years and billions of kitchens later. Rather than being honored, this sage is despised. Nobody likes a cockroach. Perhaps our hatred of this hearty insect is due to envy. No creature knows more about survival than the cockroach. A cockroach can live in the middle of the desert or under a kitchen sink. Recently, roaches have been found living in TV sets-the parts that heat up provide warmth, and the wax in the set serves as food. Roaches can survive on almost anything from rose petals to laundry soap. They can even do without any food or water at all for up to a month. Cockroaches like living with people because there's always food around. Even ships at sea are plagued by cockroaches. One sea captain offered a bottle of brandy to any sailor who could catch one thousand roaches on board the ship. The crew turned in 32,000 of the pests. Many fancy poisons are used to kill roaches, but there is no hope of getting rid of them completely. So keep your food wrapped up as tightly as possible. But remember, the roach's existence is one of those creepy facts of life on earth.

44. Without Hook and Line
The people of the Maori tribe of New Zealand take their tickling seriously. Their survival depends on their ability to tickle. Tickling might not sound like a very hard or useful activity. But for the Maori, tickling is an important way to get food. The Maori practice their own brand of tickling on fish. There are many fish in the shallow coastal waters of New Zealand. They are a main staple in the diet of the Maori. To catch the fish, a fisherman must first walk slowly and quietly in the shallow water. But the fish are wary. They often hide near jagged rocks and coral reefs. They swim quickly from one hiding place to another. But sometimes the hiding fish will sleep. This is when they are most vulnerable to the Maori's entrancing tickle. When he spots a sleeping fish, the keen-eyed fisherman is set to make his move. Very slowly and cautiously he bends down and starts to tickle his napping food. The sleeping fish responds to the tickle by wiggling from its hiding spot. With a quick movement, the Maori fisherman reaches for the stunned fish. He holds on as tightly as he can with both hands. Supper has been caught with a tickle. The Maori's fishing techniques may be unusual, but they have been successful for many centuries.

45 Watch Out for Quicksand!
While hiking in the swamplands of Florida, Fred Stahl watched Jack Pickett disappear before his eyes. Pickett had stepped onto what looked like an innocent patch of dry sand and then started to sink. Within fifteen minutes, Pickett had disappeared completely beneath the surface. Pickett was a victim of quicksand. If you think quicksand is something found only in adventure novels or films, you're making a big mistake. And that mistake could cost you your life. Geologist Gerard H. Matthes, who once escaped from quicksand himself, always gave this message to hikers: "Anyone who ever walks off the pavement should learn about quicksand." It can be found almost anywhere. Here are some of Matthes's tips on how to prevent being helplessly sucked under by quicksand. First of all, if you step into quicksand that is firm enough, you may be able to run out. But you have to move fast. If, however, the sand pulls your legs in too quickly for you to escape this way, throw yourself flat on your back. That's right-you can actually float in quicksand. Don't make the common mistake of raising your arms. Resting on the surface, your arms can help you to float. Any movements you make should be slow and deliberate. Quick, jerky movements can cause you to be completely sucked in, just as Jack Pickett was. Try doing a slow breaststroke or slowly rolling yourself to firm ground. Above all, don't panic.

46 The Prince Tames a Horse
A horse named Bucephalus was offered for sale to Philip, King of Macedonia, in about 340 B.C. The king, his son Alexander, and many others went to see it. The horse appeared extremely fierce. No one could mount it. King Philip was displeased and said, "Take this wild creature away." But Alexander said, "What a horse they are losing because they lack the skill and spirit to manage him!" Philip turned and said, "Young man, you find fault with your elders as if you know more than they or could manage the horse better." The prince quietly replied, "I know I can manage the horse better." "If you should not be able to ride him, what will you give up?" "I will pay the price of the horse." The king agreed to the bet. Alexander grasped the horse's bridle and quickly turned him toward the sun so he would not see his shadow, which was what had disturbed him. While the spirited horse pranced, Alexander spoke softly and stroked him. Then he leaped lightly upon the horse's back. Without pulling the reins too hard or using a whip or spurs, he set Bucephalus to running. He pushed him on to a full gallop. Philip and his court looked on in great fear. At the end of the field, Alexander suddenly wheeled the horse and raced back at tremendous speed. Loud shouts broke out from the group. Alexander's father, weeping with joy, kissed him and said, "My son, seek another kingdom that may be worthy of your abilities, for Macedonia is too small for you."


47 No Moisture Here!
They are the world's driest places. Sometimes rain doesn't fall there for years. These dry areas-deserts-cover about one-fifth of the earth's surface. Perhaps you think of a desert as a place filled with sand. This is true of many deserts, but not all. Areas near the North and South poles are also considered deserts by some scientists. They define a desert as any area where the moisture that is lost, mostly by evaporation, is greater than the moisture that falls as rain or snow. Many deserts are near the equator, where the air is dry and warm. Others are in regions blocked off from oceans by mountains. In these areas the moisture from the ocean winds evaporates as the winds pass over the mountains and cool off. But some deserts are found right next to oceans. Deserts usually form along coastlines if there is a cold current in the ocean water. The cold wind blowing across that current and onto the nearby land holds little moisture. Most deserts get less than ten inches of rain a year. Because the land is so dry, the rain doesn't penetrate it; it just washes over the surface. Some deserts almost never get any rain. For instance, it rains in the Atacama Desert on the coast of Chile about once every hundred years! Not many varieties of plants will grow in a desert. Some cactuses survive because they store water inside themselves after a rain. When it does rain, a desert landscape may flourish. Many plants will put forth bright and beautiful flowers.

48 Protected by Armor
Where can you find a cliff built entirely by animals? On the bottom of the ocean! Underwater reefs are huge walls made by tiny animals called corals. Because corals are very small, reefs take hundreds of years to build. How do such small animals accomplish such a great task? The answer is simple. The reefs are composed of coral skeletons! The coral animals are called "polyps." They have very soft bodies. Without some kind of "armor," they would be eaten by fish. To protect themselves, they build limestone shells around their bodies. Coral polyps live in colonies. They connect themselves to each other and to the ocean floor. The corals build their limestone skeletons by taking a mineral called calcium out of the water and depositing it around themselves. The calcium deposits are very hard. As new coral polyps are born and attach themselves to the colony, the formation gets bigger. After a long while, a large reef has grown up. The world's largest coral reef is longer than the state of New York. It is the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

49 Knock Knock
Knock on wood. Woodpeckers do just that. This bird is an amazing creature: it pecks so hard and fast that its head looks like a blur. The woodpecker knocks on dead wood, looking for insects to eat. Its chisel-like beak chips away bark and decayed wood, and the violent tapping disturbs insects hidden in the tree's cavities. When the woodpecker reaches the insects' home, it spears its dinner with a barbed and sticky tongue. The woodpecker pecks at a speed of 1,300 miles per hour. At this speed, the impact of the bird's beak hitting the wood is almost like that of a supersonic jet smashing into a mountain. Each peck takes just a thousandth of a second. The movement is quicker than the human eye can follow, Incredibly, the bird's cherry-sized brain is never injured from all this furious smashing. There is a secret to the woodpecker's ability to withstand the great impact of its pecking. The secret lies in the woodpecker's neck muscles. They are so well coordinated that the head and beak move only in a straight line. This spreads the shock evenly though the bird's body and into the tree trunk. Pecking at even a slight angle would kill the woodpecker. Design experts are using this bird as a model. They hope to come up with a crash helmet that will better protect people's head from injuries.

50 Never Say Die
On October 17, 1829, Sam Patch did what he had said he would do. He perched on a platform built beside Niagara Falls and jumped into the water a hundred feet below. A big crowd had gathered to watch Sam's well-advertised leap. The spectators held their breath as the daredevil hit the swirling water. At last his head burst out of the foam, thirty feet clear of the falls, and the crowd let out a mighty roar. Men waved their hats and yelled out the expression that had become Sam's trademark: "There's no mistake in Sam Patch!" Sam began his career as a leaper in 1827, when he jumped eighty feet into the Passaic River from a bridge that was still under construction. Delighted with the notoriety he received, Sam traveled from town to town, jumping from masts, cliffs, and bridges. Then he made his great conquest of Niagara Falls. Sam was spurred on by the widespread public excitement over his successful leap from the falls. He turned to the higher Genesee Falls for his next feat. On November 13, a scaffold was constructed 125 feet above the base of the falls. A huge crowd gathered on both riverbanks. At 2:00 P.M., Sam climbed the shaky scaffold, made a brief speech, and jumped. Once again there was a hushed silence as his body smacked the water. But this time Sam didn't resurface. Sam's body was pulled from the mouth of the river the following spring. Even so, for years afterward, a legend persisted that the great Sam Patch was still alive.

51 Leaf-Cutters
A clean dirt path several inches wide is a sign that you are near a leaf-cutter ant colony. In one direction the path branches into trails that end at a tree trunk or peter out in the grass. In the other direction it leads to the colony's nest-a wide area marked by holes and large rubbish heaps.
The holes are entrances to the underground nest. The rubbish heaps are piles of old, dry plant matter that was cleared out of the nest when it was no longer useful. Leaf-cutters are farmers, and they use leaves and grass to grow their food-fungi. Fungi are plants that grow on other plants or on decaying matter. Toadstools and molds are types of fungi. At night the ants go out to forage for more material to grow food. Each ant carries a piece of leaf at least twice as large as its own body.
Leaf-cutters come in all sizes, and, oddly enough, it is the largest ones who do the least work. They are soldiers, whose main job is to protect the nest. They have enormous jaws. Because of this, the native Indians of South America, where these ants are found, put them to an odd use. Instead of using stitches to close a wound, the Indians hold large leaf-cutter ants up to the edges of a cut and let them bite it together. Then they pinch off the bodies, leaving the jaws behind to hold the wound firmly closed.

52 A. Hard and Beautiful Mineral
What is the world's hardest natural substance? If you guessed something like iron or marble, you would be wrong. The world's hardest substance is actually the diamond. Diamonds are formed deep in the earth and hardened by the intense heat and pressure found there. That pressure pushes the diamond material up near the surface into outlets called pipes. There the material cools off, and from there diamonds can be mined. To bring out a diamond's brilliance, the stone must be cut and polished. The most valuable diamonds are clear-there are no dull spots in them. They are also colorless. (A few diamonds are pink or some other color, but these are rare and very expensive.) Valuable diamonds are fairly large, at the very least one carat in weight. And they are also well cut. This means they have even-sided faces, or facets, that reflect light clearly and evenly. If diamonds are so hard, what is used to cut them? You guessed it: other diamonds. Many factories also use diamonds to cut other hard substances. Diamonds are used in polishing as well. Polishing material made of diamond particles can be used like sandpaper. It can make steel surfaces so smooth that they reflect like fine mirrors. The world has always valued diamonds. People have fought over them, and curses have been placed on them. They are a symbol of power as well as love.

53 No Runs, No Hits, and Too Many Errors
Some days it just doesn't pay to go to the ballpark. One day in 1966, Los Angeles Dodger outfielder Willie Davis was thinking of places he'd rather have been. At the time, anywhere must have seemed more inviting. The game he would like to have skipped was no ordinary test. It was the World Series. The year 1966 had been a good one for the Dodgers. They had clinched the National League Pennant with ease, and all that was left was the World Series against the Baltimore Orioles. As far as most fans and sportswriters were concerned, the "Fall Classic" would be no contest. The Dodgers had powerful hitting and a pitcher who threw the ball so fast that some people insisted it could cause a sonic boom. But something unexpected happened. The Orioles' pitching sparkled, and their hitters were slugging the ball over the outfield fences. All the Dodger fans could talk about was the "cold Dodger bats"—that is, when they weren't talking about Willie Davis and "that inning." In this particular game Davis set a major league record, one that no ball player would be proud of. In one short inning he made three errors. He let an easy hit skid by him. Several pitches later, he lost a fly ball in the glare of the sun. And if that weren’t bad enough, he picked up the ball he had missed and threw it over the infielder's head. Davis felt bad, but he wasn't alone. The Dodgers lost the best-out-of-seven series without winning a single game.

54. The Code Talkers
Many people enjoy secret codes. The harder the code, the more some people will try to figure it out. In wartime, codes are especially important. They help armies send news about battles and the size of enemy forces. Neither side wants its code broken by the other. One very important code was never broken. It was used during World War II by the Americans. It was a spoken code, never written down. And it was developed and used by Navajo Indians. They were called the "Navajo Code Talkers." The Navajos created the code in their own language. Navajo is hard to learn, and only a few people know it. So it was pretty certain that the enemy would not be able to understand the Code Talkers. In addition, the Talkers used code words. They called a submarine an "iron fish" and a grenade a "potato." If they wanted to spell something, they used code words for letters of the alphabet. For instance, the letter a was "ant" or "apple" or "axe." The Code Talkers worked mostly in the islands in the Pacific. One or two would be assigned to a battalion of soldiers. They would send messages by field telephone to the Code Talker in the next battalion. And he would relay the information to his commander. The Code Talkers played an important part in several battles. They helped troops coordinate their movements and attacks. After the war, the U.S. government honored them for what they had accomplished. Theirs was the most successful wartime code ever used.

55 Feeling the Forecast
To find out what the weather is going to be, most people go straight to the radio, television, or newspaper to get an expert weather forecast. But if you know what to look for, you can use your own senses to make weather predictions. There are many signs that can help you. For example, in fair weather the air pressure is generally high, the air is still and often full of dust, and faraway objects may look hazy. But when a storm is brewing, the pressure drops and you are often able to see things more clearly. Sailors took note of this long ago and came up with a saying: "The farther the sight, the nearer the rain." Your sense of smell can also help you detect weather changes. Just before it rains, odors become stronger. This is because odors are repressed in a fair, high-pressure center. When a bad weather low moves in, air pressure lessens and odors are released. You can also hear an approaching storm. Sounds bounce off heavy storm clouds and return to earth with increased force. An old saying describes it this way: "Sound traveling far and wide, a stormy day will betide." And don't scoff if your grandmother says she can feel a storm coming. It is commonly known that many people feel pains in their bones or in corns and bunions when the humidity rises, the pressure drops, and bad weather is on the way.

56 The African Elephant
The elephant is the largest of all land animals. It can reach a height of eleven feet and weigh nearly six tons. The African elephant can also boast the biggest ears in the world. They can grow as large as three-and-a-half feet across. You might think that a gigantic animal like the elephant wouldn't have much to worry about, but it has its problems too. And its huge ears can help it to deal with many problems ranging from pesky insects to great danger. The ears are very effective fans that can be used to swat flies. The elephants' huge ears also help them hear everything that's happening nearby. A mother elephant might hear the approach of a dangerous lion that would kill her calves. The elephants' great size can sometimes present a heat problem. The larger an object, the harder it is for it to lose heat. Elephants live on the hot plains of Africa, where keeping cool is not an easy task. Elephants' huge ears help them cool their bodies so they can survive in the heat. The large surfaces of the ears have many blood vessels that are very close to the surface of the skin. Blood that is closer to the surface cools more easily. The most impressive use of the ears, though, is seen in an elephant's threat display. When trying to threaten another animal, the elephant bellows and charges with both ears spread wide. This makes the huge beast look almost twice as large as it really is. Few enemies would dare to stand up to anything that colossal.

57 Jaws
Of all the fish in the ocean, sharks are the greediest eaters and killers. They suffer from continual hunger. Almost as soon as they have eaten, they are on the prowl for more food. Sharks have been described as eating machines, and indeed they are perfectly designed for that activity. They are powerful swimmers, with smooth, well-muscled, streamlined bodies.
But the most remarkable part of a shark is its mouth-a wide gash lined with rows of jagged teeth. When a shark attacks, it opens its mouth wide until its teeth can stab straight into the body of its victim. The teeth slice like razors as the shark twists and rolls its body to tear off a chunk of food. New teeth are constantly being formed and moving forward to take the place of those lost during the shark's violent feeding activities. Even very old sharks have razor-sharp teeth.
The largest and most fearsome of the species is the great white shark. Its average length is between fourteen and sixteen feet. A few great whites may reach well over thirty feet in length. The longest ever recorded was a thirty-seven-footer, a truly monstrous fish. The great white lives in the tropical seas and sometimes along the southern coast of the United States.

58 Are You Superstitious?
Many superstitious people are afraid of black cats. They believe that black cats have a strange power. If a black cat crosses their path, they think they will have bad luck. Black cats haven't always had such a bad reputation. Long ago, the Egyptians thought that black cats were holy animals. They even worshipped them. Pasht was an Egyptian goddess who had a woman's body and a cat's head. Because the Egyptians had so much respect for black cats, they often buried the sacred creatures with great ceremony. Mummies of cats have often been found in ancient cemetery ruins. To keep the cats Company after they died, mice were sometimes buried beside them. Feelings about black cats have always been strong. People have thought they were either very good or very bad. The people of Europe in the Middle Ages believed black cats were the evil friends of witches and the devil. Witches were said to have the power to change themselves into black cats. People believed that you could not tell whether a black cat was just a cat or whether it was a witch disguising herself as she plotted some evil scheme. The brain of a black cat was thought to be a main ingredient in a witch's brew. Unlike their ancestors of the Middle Ages, the English today consider black cats to be good luck charms. Fishermen's wives often keep a black cat around so that their husbands will be protected when they are out at sea.

59 The Badger
The badger is a member of the weasel family. It ranges throughout the western United States. It is both a help and a burden to farmers and ranchers. It kills harmful rodents, but it also digs deep holes that cause tractors to break wheels and livestock to break legs.
A clumsy Critter, the slow-footed badger is built low to the ground, with short legs and a flat, squat body. It digs like a steam shovel into the rich earth of the prairie. Its strong, dark feet, each tipped with five two-inch-long nails, can dig any gopher or ground squirrel out of its burrow.
This pigeon-toed, round-shouldered ground hugger is dirty yellowish gray with a dark brown face striped with white. It may grow to more than two feet long and weigh up to twenty-five pounds. The badger has thirty-four sharp teeth and a menacing growl and hiss that make it about as sociable as a grizzly bear. Being a close cousin to the skunk, it doesn't smell very good.
An acute sense of smell enables the badger to locate food underground. It eats snakes and snails, insects, rats and mice, gophers, ground squirrels, and other rodents. Occasionally it will kill ground-nesting birds and eat their nestlings or eggs, but the badger saves many more birds than it destroys. The rodents it usually kills are animals that hunt birds. And the holes it digs in its quest for food provide homes for many animals.

60 Altitude Sickness
Mountain climbing is becoming a popular sport, but it is also a potentially dangerous one. People can fall; they may also become ill from drinking bad water. One of the most common dangers to climbers is altitude sickness, an ailment that can affect even very experienced climbers.
Altitude sickness usually begins when a climber goes above 8,000 or 9,000 feet. The higher one climbs, the less oxygen there is in the air. When people don't get enough oxygen, they often begin to gasp for air. They may also feel dizzy and lightheaded. Besides these common symptoms of altitude sickness, others such as nausea, headache, tiredness, and difficulty sleeping may also occur. At heights of over 18,000 feet, people may be climbing in a constant daze. This state of mind can have a serious effect on their judgment.
A few precautions can help most climbers avoid altitude sickness. The first is not to go too high too fast. If you climb to 10,000 feet, stay at that height for a day or two. Your body needs to get used to a high altitude before you climb to an even higher one. Or if you do climb higher sooner, comeback down to a lower height when you sleep. Also, drink plenty of liquids and avoid tobacco and alcohol. When you reach your top height, do light activities rather than sleep too much. You breathe less when you sleep, so you get less oxygen.
The most important warning is this: if you have severe symptoms and they don't go away, go down! Don't risk injury or death because of overconfidence or lack of knowledge.

61. A Light Blazing Across the Sky
When you look up at the night sky, what do you see? There are other heavenly bodies out there besides the moon and stars. One of the most fascinating of these is a comet. Comets were formed around the same time the Earth was formed. Usually about five to ten miles across, they are made up of ice and other frozen liquids and gases. Now and then these "dirty snowballs" begin to orbit the sun, just as the planets do. Scientists know of over one hundred comets in orbits that sometimes bring them fairly close to Earth. As a Comet gets closer to the sun, some of the gases in it begin to unfreeze. The gases combine with dust particles from the comet to form a cloud thousands of miles across. As the Comet gets even nearer to the sun, a solar wind blows the cloud behind the Comet, thus forming its tail. The tail and the generally fuzzy atmosphere around a Comet are characteristics that can help you to identify this phenomenon in the night sky. In any given year, about a dozen known comets come close to the sun in their orbits. There may also be a dozen or more newly discovered comets. The average person can't see them all, of course. Usually there are only one or two a year bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. Comet Hale-Bopp, discovered in 1995, was an unusually bright comet. Its orbit brought it relatively close to Earth-within 122 million miles of it. But Hale-Bopp came a long way on its earthly visit. It won't be back in this vicinity for another four thousand years or so.

62. The Great Stock Market Crash
The stock market can be a wonderful place to make money. If you buy stock in a company at $12 a share and later sell it for $24, your investment has doubled. It is tempting to believe that stock prices will always increase, but they can also decrease. Prices of shares of all companies can drop simultaneously-and drop a lot. Then there is a market crash-like the one in 1929. During the last week of October in 1929, people began to lose confidence in the market and to sell stock shares in great numbers. On October 29, the worst day, over 16 million shares of stock were traded-by far the highest number ever sold in one day. By November 13, the market temporarily bottomed out. In about three weeks it had lost 40 percent of its value, a drop of about $30 billion. It would be years before that value was regained. What caused the crash? The 1920s had been years of tremendous growth and prosperity. Road Construction skyrocketed as people traded in horses and buggies for cars. Radios and other consumer items rose in demand as more homes were wired for electricity. Feeling prosperous, many people looked to the stock market as a way to make money. Many stocks were bought on margin: put down as little as 10 percent and buy the rest on credit. Since everyone else was doing the same thing, the value of the market continued to rise. It seemed as if you couldn't lose. When stock prices began to plummet, the brokers stopped giving credit and demanded to be paid the money they were owed. In a panic, people began selling everything they had. The long spiral down into the Great Depression had begun.

63. The World's Greatest Athlete?
Many people are good in one athletic event. A few excel in two. But very few can compete in a sport requiring skill in seven different events. Jackie Joyner-Kersee is someone who could. Some have called her the world's greatest athlete. Even as a child, Jackie Joyner wanted to do well in many sports. In high school she competed in volleyball, basketball, and track. Basketball was her favorite sport then. She attended college on a four-year basketball scholarship. She became a basketball All-American. After marrying her coach, Bob Kersee, Jackie began focusing on track. One of her best events was always the long jump. Over the years Joyner-Kersee has won many long jump medals. These include an Olympic gold medal and several world championships. What about the sport with seven different events? It is called the heptathlon. Besides long jump, it includes events like hurdles, high jump, and shot put. JoynerKersee competed in this sport in four different Olympics. She won two gold medals and one silver. Joyner-Kersee has succeeded for two reasons. Her great athletic ability is one thing. But she also possesses great mental toughness. That toughness helped her triumph in spite of her serious asthma and allergies. Joyner-Kersee's last Olympics was in 1996. After that, she played professional basketball for a while. She did one final heptathlon in 1998 and then retired at the age of thirty-six.

64 Vipers
The family of snakes called vipers includes some of the deadliest poisonous snakes in the world. Some of the snakes in this fearsome group are the water moccasin, rattlesnake, and copperhead (all of which are found in the United States), the bushmaster and fer-de-lance of South America, and the puff adder of Africa. Vipers have thick bodies, short tails, and triangular heads. Fangs in their upper jaws inject poison into their victims' bodies like a hypodermic needle. When the snakes bite, they contract the muscles around their poison sacs. These sacs are located behind the eyes. The poison squirts out through the hollow fangs. Almost a half-teaspoon of poison is put into a victim at one time. Fortunately, many of these snakes are small, so their bite is not fatal. There are actually two main types of vipers-the true vipers and the pit vipers. Pit vipers live in Asia and the Americas. The name comes from a smallhollow in the side of the head just below the eye. The small hollow, or pit, has a special nerve that senses heat, helping the pit viper to find its warm-blooded prey. True vipers don't have this special nerve and must rely on their keen sense of smell to find their food. Vipers don't usually strike unless they are disturbed or are looking for food. Still, it is a good idea to stay away from them.

65 The Black Death
Imagine an illness so serious that people might go to bed well and be dead before morning. Think of this illness striking most of your family and friends. How would you respond? This question faced many Europeans in the 1300s as bubonic plague-the Black Death-swept the continent.
The plague rampaged across Europe beginning in late 1347. Its symptoms were terrible. In one form, sufferers developed egg-sized black swellings in their armpits and groins. These swellings were followed by boils and strange blackblotches on their skin, the result of internal bleeding. In another form of the disease swellings didn't develop, but people spit blood instead. In both forms, people contracted a severe fever, and they were dead within hours or days.
The plague was spread either by contact with blood or by respiratory infection. The respiratory infection meant that if a person coughed on you, you could get the disease. And if you got it, you most probably died. By the time the plague burned itself out in 1350, over twenty million Europeans had died from it. The city of Paris lost half of its population; Venice lost about two-thirds. Sufferers died so fast that there often wasn't time to bury them, and bodies piled up in the streets. The plague was responsible for a decades-long shortage of people.
Today an outbreak of plague could be controlled with antibiotics, but no such cure existed 650 years ago. Many escaped the only way they could: by deserting sick friends and families. A few got to isolated areas where the plague had not hit, but most did not-and died anyway.

66 The Man from Stratford
What makes a person famous? This is a mystery that many people have pondered. All kinds of myths surround the lives of well-known people. Most people are familiar with the works of William Shakespeare, one of the greatest English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet how many know Shakespeare the person, the man behind the works? After centuries of research, scholars are still trying to discover Shakespeare's personal history. It is not easily found in his writings. Authors of the time could not protect their works. An acting company, for example, could change a play if they wanted to. Nowadays writers have copyrights that protect their work. Many myths arose about Shakespeare. Some said he had no formal education. Others believe that he began his career by tending the horses of wealthy men. All of these myths are interesting, but are they true? Probably not. Shakespeare's father was a respected man in Stratford, a member of the town council. He sent young William to grammar school. Most people of Elizabethan times did not continue beyond grammar school, so Shakespeare did have at least an average education. Some parts of Shakespeare's life will always remain unknown. The Great London Fire of 1666 burned many important documents that could have been a source of clues. We will always be left with many questions and few facts.

67 Once Poison, Now a Food
Would you eat a bacon, lettuce, and love apple sandwich? You probably have eaten many of them. Love apple was the name used many years ago for the tomato. The tomato was originally an American plant. It was found in South America by early Spanish explorers. The word tomato comes from the native Nahuatl word tomatl. But when it moved north, the plant earned a different name. Remarkably, the settlers in North America thought it was poisonous. They believed that to eat it was surely to die. It was said that jilted suitors would threaten to eat a tomato to cause their cold-hearted lovers remorse. Because of this legend, the settlers called the tomato a "love apple." While people enjoyed other native plants, such as corn and Sweet potatoes, everyone avoided the tomato. No one knows who first dared to eat a tomato. Perhaps someone was brave enough, or lovesick enough, to try out the truth of the rumors. Of course, whoever ate this fruit was perfectly safe. No one died from eating a love apple. Still, it was many years before the people fully believed that the tomato was a safe, and even good, food. But its use did become common, and the plant was sent across the ocean to become part of many traditional European dishes,

68 Developing the Desktop Computer
Can you remember a time without computers? Large computers have been around for many years. But small ones, the desktop kind, are a fairly new invention. Two people who helped make small computers popular are Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak. The two technology buffs began designing their first computer in Jobs's bedroom. (They actually built it in Jobs's parents' garage.) That computer was the Apple I, and it was mostly a toy. The next year, 1977, they put out the Apple II. It was the first easy-to-use desktop computer and became a huge seller. Apple Computer, Inc., took the computer world by storm. IBM, which made big Computers, did not even enter the desktop computer market until several years later. In 1984. Apple introduced their latest innovation: the Macintosh. Like the Apple II, it was an easy-to-use computer. It was the first computer to show icons such as the "Trash" container on the screen. It was the first popular computer to use a mouse. The icons and the mouse made it easy to do things like move and save files. A person could work without memorizing a lot of confusing keyboard commands. Wozniak and Jobs didn't stay with the company they founded. And as time went on, the company was less successful. But their new ideas changed computer use. They were instrumental in bringing the Computer Age into people's businesses

69 A Dish Fit for Royalty
When people think of caviar, they think of elegant parties given by wealthy people. Actually, not all caviar is terribly costly; you sometimes find domestic-homegrown-caviar on buffet tables in all-you-can-eat restaurants. But the best kinds of caviar are very expensive indeed. Caviar is fish eggs. The top variety comes from three kinds of sturgeons found in the Caspian Sea in Russia: beluga, osetra, and sevruga. These fish take between nine and fifteen years to mature and produce eggs. When they do, they generally yield a few pounds of tiny, dark brown or dark gray eggs apiece. The scarcity of caviar and the long time it takes to harvest are what make caviar expensive. One ounce of beluga can cost around $50 to $60 in a retail store. Why do people eat caviar? Some, naturally, are entranced by anything so expensive. But there are also people who appreciate the taste. Beluga is said to have a Creamy, buttery taste. Osetra has a nutty flavor. True fans will eat top-quality caviar by itself on dry toast points; the fat from the eggs will moisten the bread. If you've never tried caviar, you might want to see what an inexpensive type tastes like. Caviar from North American sturgeon costs less than a third as much as the most expensive Russian types. Some people also call salmon eggs caviar. These slightly larger, bright red eggs are the least expensive of all. If you're in doubt, go to the nearest fish buffet and see if you can sample them there!

70 Asteroids and Meteorites
In addition to comets, two other relatively small bodies can be found floating around the solar system. They are known as asteroids and meteorites. Asteroids are smallish bodies that orbit the sun, mainly in the area between Mars and Jupiter, Though not large enough to be thought of as planets, asteroids can range from the size of a small boulder to several hundred miles in diameter. They are rocky bodies made up of various metals and other substances. Now and then something will jar an asteroid out of its orbit. Then it may approach or-very rarely-hit Earth. Meteorites are also small, rocky bodies that have traveled through space. Some may be broken-off pieces of asteroids; some may be leftover chunks of comets. Meteorites are pieces of rock from space that actually hit our planet. When these intruders make contact, what damage do they do? It all depends on their size and where they hit. Since Earth is mostly made up of water, a small meteorite falling into the Atlantic Ocean probably won't harm anything. But some meteorites strike solid ground. A meteorite weighing about sixty tons once hit near a farm in southern Africa. Another huge one broke up in the air above Siberia in 1908. It destroyed trees in a twenty-mile area. The damage from a huge fallen asteroid can be far worse. In eastern Mexico are the remains of a basin one hundred miles wide where an asteroid touched Earth 65 million years ago. Enough debris shot forth to block out the sun's light for decades. When there was light again, all the dinosaurs had disappeared.

71. El Niño
When you live in an area for a while, you get used to its climate. You know about how cold and wet it will be in March and how warm in August. Sometimes, though, weather conditions occur that create big changes in temperature and rainfall. One of these is called El Niño. In an El Niño situation the surface water in the eastern Pacific Ocean, near the coast of Peru, gets unusually warm. (This warming occurs around Christmas; "El Nino" is Spanish for "Christ Child.") Rainfall seems to follow the warm water, so that areas around Peru get floods. But the weather change doesn't stop there. Regions to the west of the warm water, such as Australia, get very little rain and so experience drought. El Niño also influences the United States. Usually California gets very severe rains. The middle and eastern parts of the country have winters that are much warmer than normal. El Niños have been occurring for hundreds of years, but people didn't understand what was happening. It was only in the 1960s that scientists found definite proof that warming in the Pacific affected weather elsewhere. Computers are continuing to compile information about how an El Niño works. We know, for instance, that the condition occurs every two to seven years. Usually it lasts for several months, though sometimes it can last for years. And its effects can vary: some El Niños are much stronger than others. Often an El Niño year is followed by one with a condition called La Nina. In this situation, the Pacific waters get very cold and the weather patterns of El Nino tend to be reversed.

72. The Witch's Wind
In California it's called the "Santa Ana." Argentineans call it the "zonda." It has more than twenty other local names; one of the most fitting is the "witch's wind." The scientific name of this mysterious wind is foehn, pronounced fern. A foehn is a moving mass of air that, after crossing mountains, becomes a dry, gusty wind that moves with great power. A witch's wind in Texas once flattened 252 oil derricks. One in Austria derailed three streetcars, each weighing over three tons. There is an unresolved mystery in the witch's wind. The foehn can have a strange and hard-to-explain effect on people's physical and mental states. When the wind is blowing, some people experience what in Europe is called "the foehn disease." Those who suffer from it say they are depressed and can't concentrate. In Germany, you can even buy anti-foehn pills. In many places, there have been increases in the numbers of accidents, suicides, and calls for medical help during the wind. The foehn has been blamed for everything from drops in factory production to family quarrels. In California during the 1890s, people who committed crimes of passion during the witch's wind could use the foehn as an excuse. Some people feel symptoms even before the wind arrives. They may have headaches or breathing problems. Their skin becomes taut, and old scars ache. These signs have occurred in people as much as ten hours before scientific weather equipment detected the foehn's approach.

73 A Fighter for Justice
He was denied admission to one law school because he was black. But today that same school has a law library named after him. You may not know much about Thurgood Marshall, but he strengthened education rights for African Americans all over the country. Marshall was born in Baltimore in 1908. Like other African American students of his time, he went to segregated schools. These schools were not illegal. An 1896 law stated that schools for blacks and whites could be "separate but equal." But Marshall knew that most black schools were not equal. He decided to do something about it. Marshall received a law degree from Howard University. Then he began to work at changing the country's schools. Marshall's strategy was to start with colleges and graduate schools, because he thought judges would sympathize with ambitious young African Americans searching for an education. In 1935, he successfully sued the University of Maryland Law School to accept its first black student. Other cases followed, with similar results. By the 1950s, Marshall was ready to turn to grade schools and high schools. In 1954, he accepted the case of Linda Brown, who wanted to attend a white grade school near her home. As a result of Marshall's arguments, the Supreme Court changed the law. It said that "separate" schools could never be "equal." In 1967, Marshall became the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until he retired in 1991, he supported many other civil rights bills.

74. What Makes a Dynasty?
Sports fans love to discuss dynasties-teams that did so well for so long that while they were successful they seemed almost to own their sport. They don't necessarily have to win the World Series or Super Bowl or NBA title every single year. But in those few years they don't win, they must come pretty close. Who were some of the great sports dynasties? Certainly the New York Yankees in the 1920s, when Babe Ruth was playing. (The Yankees also had a dynasty in the '50s and '60s, with stars like Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle.) There were also the Boston Celtics, who dominated professional basketball from the late 1950s all the way through the '60s, and the Chicago Bulls, who owned the sport in the 1990s. The Green Bay Packers pretty much dominated football in the '60s, in the Vince Lombardi years. In hockey, the Montreal Canadiens were the team to beat through much of the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Beyond that, calling any team a dynasty gets a little dicey. For instance, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and San Francisco have each played in, and won, several Super Bowls. But have any of these teams dominated football for an extended period? Do the New York Islanders four consecutive Stanley Cups in the early 1980s make them a hockey dynasty for that period? Questions like these don't have hard and fast answers. What you think depends, to a large extent, on where you live and which teams you support. But that is what makes sports interesting.

75 A Leader of Her Country

By the 1990s, people had become accustomed to seeing women in high government posts. People were not so accustomed to this in the 1960s, however. Yet that is when Golda Meir became prime minister of Israel. Meir was born in the Ukraine. However, she emigrated to the United States with her family as a young child. She grew up in Milwaukee, where her mother ran a grocery store. Meir trained to be a schoolteacher and married when she was about twenty. As a young woman, Meir heard stories of the struggles to establish a Jewish homeland. In 1921, she and her husband moved to Palestine to work with the Jewish groups there. She was instrumental in helping Israel become an independent state in 1948. When the new government was formed, Meir was the only woman to belong to the provisional council of state, the legislative part of the government. She took an active role in establishing policy. In 1969, the Israeli prime minister died suddenly, and Meir was chosen as a compromise candidate for the position. She remained prime minister until 1974. Seventy-one years old when she took office, Meir was a plain-looking, plain-dressing woman. She reminded some people of a kindly grandmother. But it was a mistake to underestimate her strength and will. She led her country through peace and war. After her death in 1978, Meir was called "one of the great women in Jewish and world history."

Harry1AP26~P30

  I   know   they   don't ,"  said  Harry. " It   was   only   a   dream ." But   he   wished   he   hadn't   said   ...