• Sprites are red plumes of light that shoot 20 miles above a storm.
• Blue jets are cone-shaped rays of blue light that discharge at 10 miles above the earth, extending far above the tops of clouds to 30 miles high.
• Elves are huge blue-and-white disks that come from the top of a thunderstorm. Some grow to be 250 miles in diameter and extend 60 miles into the air. And they can vanish in the blink of an eye.
BALL LIGHTNING
No one is completely sure what ball lightning is. What we do know is that the phenomenon usually occurs just after a lightning strike. A “ball” can be as small as a pea or as big as a car. It can glow as bright as a 100-watt bulb, but only produces 30 watts of heat.
A million dollars in $1 bills weighs a ton and placed end to end, would stretch about 100 miles.
These balls of light float in the air and move through walls. They can last up to five minutes and vanish either silently or with a big bang. They can change colors right before your eyes. Ball lightning has even bounced around the cabins of high-flying jets, scaring the living daylights out of passengers.
SAINT ELMO’S FIRE
Saint Elmo’s fire looks a lot like a neon light. It’s a type of continuous electric spark called a glow discharge. Unlike ball lightning, which floats freely in the air, Saint Elmo’s fire is always attached to a person or an object. It tends to occur toward the end of a thunderstorm, snowstorm, or dust storm, but it’s not a form of lightning. It’s actually plasma—high-temperature ionized gas.
The glow of Saint Elmo’s fire is often seen on the top of a ship’s mast when electrified clouds are overhead. The mast appears to be on fire but does not burn. Saint Elmo’s fire has also been seen on airplanes, on the points of steeples, and even on the horns of cattle. If it should dance around your head someday, it will cause a funny tingling sensation in your body. But don’t worry, you’ll live—the amount of electricity in Saint Elmo’s fire isn’t quite enough to be dangerous.
The human eye can see the light of a single candle from as far as a mile away.
GHOST DOG
Are ghost stories real? Who knows? But they sure are scary! In this one, we discover that not all ghosts come in human form. Some of them are short and furry and have wet noses.
BOO-WOW
There is a story told about a ghost dog that helped two young girls on the Isle of Wight (off the coast of England). The beach where the two girls lived was very flat. When the tide was out, it was a long hike to the water. But when the tide came in, it rolled in as fast as a racehorse. Many people died there—drowned because they weren’t paying attention to the dangerous tides.
One day in 1935 two teenage girls on their way to Sunday school stopped to watch an ocean liner pass by. They stood on the beach, unaware that the tide was already circling their ankles, when suddenly a little dog appeared. It was completely black except for its paws and one ear, which were white. He barked furiously at them, ran toward land, and turned around, urging them to follow him. As the little dog ran, one of the girls noticed something strange: he didn’t leave any footprints in the sand.
TIME TO RUN
Before they could even discuss it, the girls suddenly realized they were surrounded by water. It was up to their knees and any second they would be pulled out to sea by the undertow. The girls struggled to get to shore as the dog continued to urge them on.
Some stars, called neutrons, can spin up to 1,000 times a second.
As the girls ran behind the dog, they noticed something else: the water should have been up to the dog’s neck or even over his head. But it wasn’t. In fact, the dog seemed to be running on top of the water!
As soon as they reached land, the dog vanished. Now this was very strange. How could the dog just disappear? They were sure they’d seen a ghost. When they told their friends this story, everyone laughed. Saved by a ghost dog? What a joke! But they stopped laughing when the girls told the story to their Sunday school teacher.
SPOOKY TWIST
The teacher listened carefully and then told his own tale. He said that 40 years earlier, there had been a tragedy on the beach. Three little girls and their dog had gone to play in the sand. They, too, did not notice when the tide came in. As the water circled them, they tried to run back to shore. But the water was too deep for the littlest girl, named Mary. So the older sister put Mary on her shoulders and tried to run for land. But she stumbled and Mary plunged into the deep water.
Don’t believe it? Count ’em yourself: The average person sheds about 10 billion skin flakes every day.
The little dog saw Mary fall and swam out to try to save her. He paddled as hard as he could and was finally able to catch hold of her dress. He pulled her toward the shore, but the current was too strong for both of them. Mary and the dog were dragged under and pulled out to sea.
Days later, when their two bodies were found cast upon the shore, the little dog still had Mary’s dress clenched in his teeth and Mary’s arms were wrapped around him.
You could hear a pin drop as the teacher described the little dog to the class. “He was completely black, except for his paws and one ear, which were white.”
***
YOU CALL THAT FOOD?
The ancient Romans were fond of eating a particular kind of rodent, known as a dormouse. So fond, in fact, that the upper classes raised them like chickens. The little creatures (which resemble small squirrels) were kept in specially designed cages and were fed a variety of nuts to make them taste better. Yum!
NO-NOS IN SPACE
So you’re going into space. Congratulations! But before you blast off, there are a few things you should no…er, we mean know.
NO RUNNING WATER. You can’t just turn on the faucet and brush your teeth. Why? Water doesn’t flow in a weightless environment—it just breaks up into tiny droplets and floats around. So you just have to swallow the toothpaste or wipe it away with a towel.
NO BUBBLES. Washing yourself isn’t easy because soap bubbles, like water, would float all over the spacecraft. That means you’re going to have to use a towel soaked with alcohol or soap. And if you plan on washing your hair, you’ll have to use a special dry shampoo.
NO BREAD. Bread means crumbs—and those little tiny crumbs could float into someone’s eye (or worse yet, into the spacecraft’s components). So if you want to make a sandwich, you’ll have to use a tortilla.
NO BURPS OR FARTS. Space food is designed to be easily digestible so astronauts won’t pass gas. Why? Astronauts discovered that if they burped, quite often they vomited. Can you imagine barf floating around a space capsule? And of course, a fart in that small an area would be enough to get you voted off space island.
Song sung most often in the U.S.: “Happy Birthday.”
TRICK OR TREAT
Halloween is Uncle John’s favorite holiday. Why? It’s the one day of the year he looks “normal!” Here’s how this spooky celebration got started.
ANCIENT ORIGIN
The ancient Celts in the British Isles celebrated their new year on November 1. Their New Year’s festival was called Samhain (pronounced sow-wen), which means “summer’s end.” Early Christians adopted the festival in the seventh century A.D., making November 1 a celebration of saints and martyrs—hence the name All Saints’ Day or All Hallows’ Day. (Hallow comes from an Old English word meaning “holy.”) The night before All Saints’ Day was known as All Hallows’ Even (evening)—which was shortened to “Hallowe’en.”
ANCIENT MYSTERY
What’s Halloween’s connection to ghosts and costumes? No one’s sure, but historians offer these three possibilites.
Theory #1: The Ghosts Are Hungry!
On All Hallows’ Eve, evil spirits roamed the Earth in wild celebration, ready to greet the arrival of “their sea-son”—the cold dark winter. And just for fun, they liked to frighten mortals. One way for scared humans to escape the demons was to offer them food and sweets. Another way was to dress up like spirits and roam arou
nd with them…hopefully going unnoticed. “That is what the ancient Celts did,” explains Francis X. Weiser in The Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, “and it is in this very form that the custom has come to us.”
Most snow in a single storm: Mt. Shasta, California, got a record 15.75 feet in 1959.
Theory #2: It’s Visiting Day!
The Druids, a Celtic priest class, believed that spirits freely roamed the Earth on the new year—November 1—when the veil between this world and “the other side” was at its thinnest. People dressed up as ghosts so they could better interact with real ghosts. They’d trick the evil spirits by offering up a feast and then leading them out of town.
Theory #3: Hey! Go Find Your Own Body!
On All Hallows’ Eve, everyone who died the previous year would rise up to select a human body to inhabit until the next All Hallows’ Eve, when they would finally pass into the afterlife. To fool these unwanted ghosts, people disguised themselves as demons and paraded loudly through the streets. The scarier and crazier they acted, the better… because what ghost in his right mind would want to inhabit the body of a crazy demon?
MODERN HALLOWEEN
Although historians debate its origins, they all agree that Halloween came to the United States in the mid to late 1840s. When Irish immigrants fled the potato famine to build a better life in America, they brought the October 31 celebrations with them. By then most of the beliefs in spirits roaming the Earth had gone away, but giving people an excuse to dress up and act silly—that’s timeless!
The first letter Vanna White ever turned on Wheel of Fortune was a “T.”
THE CHAIR TRICK
Uncle John has seen major jocks be humiliated by this trick at parties, but girls love it. Give it a try—we dare you.
YOU’LL NEED:
1. A girl
2. A boy
3. A wall
4. A straight-back chair
WHAT YOU DO:
1. Take your shoes off.
2. Girl goes first. Start with your toes touching the wall and step back two exact toe-to-heel foot-lengths away.
3. Put the chair on the floor between you and the wall.
4. Without moving your feet, bend over and place your forehead against the wall.
5. Grasp the chair and raise it to your chest.
6. Now, try to stand up while holding the chair.
EXPECTED RESULT:
Girls should have no problem doing this; but boys usually can’t do it. Why? Generally, a boy’s feet are longer, which keeps him too far from the wall. His center of gravity is closer to the wall than his toes, so it’s nearly impossible for him to straighten up. Note: If your feet are so small that you can’t fit a chair in two foot-lengths, sorry—it won’t work. (Try again next year.)
Asia is the biggest continent in the world. You could fit almost six Australias in it.
BERG-WATCHING
Icebergs are really big, really cold, really beautiful, really dangerous, and really important.
HOW BIG IS AN ICEBERG?
Picture an ice cube about the size of Connecticut. That’s the size of B15, the iceberg that broke off Antarctica on March 17, 2000. At 183 miles long and 25 miles wide, this massive berg—nicknamed Godzilla—rose 120 feet above the ocean’s surface and bottomed out at a depth of 9,000 feet below, and weighed in at around four trillion tons!
WHERE DO ICEBERGS COME FROM?
Snow is almost constantly falling on the ice sheets of Antarctica (southern hemisphere) and the glaciers of Greenland and Canada (northern hemisphere). All of this snow gets packed down under its own weight and slowly slides toward the sea. When the compacted snow reaches the water’s edge—usually after thousands of years—it forms a huge ice “shelf.” Then cracks develop from the combination of more ice sliding down behind it and ocean waves battering the front of it. When one of these cracks gets large enough, a huge chunk of ice breaks off into the sea. That’s when it becomes an iceberg.
As soon as it hits the ocean, the iceberg starts to melt—bigger bergs have been known to last up to two years in colder waters. In the meantime, ocean currents and wind can carry an iceberg thousands of miles. This can be especially hazardous in the North Atlantic, where icebergs frequently cross shipping lanes. That’s what sank the Titanic in 1912.
Sapphires and rubies are chemically identical in every way…except for their color.
HOW DO ICEBERGS FLOAT?
You’d think that something that weighs trillions of tons would immediately sink to the ocean floor—but ice doesn’t. Most substances shrink when they cool, but when water turns into ice, it expands. For an object to float, it has to weigh less than the amount of water it displaces, so because ice is less dense than water, it floats. But not all of it—between 70% and 90% of it is under water. (Try it yourself: drop an ice cube in a glass of water and see how much of it is below the surface.)
WHY ARE ICEBERGS IMPORTANT?
Scientists use icebergs to measure global warming. As Earth’s temperatures slowly rise, some environmentalists speculate that the glaciers will break apart faster, causing more icebergs to fill the seas, and causing sea levels to rise. If the levels rise high enough, you’ll need a boat to travel through New York City.
Other scientists believe that the massive amounts of fresh water contained in icebergs could be used to quench thirst and irrigate farms around the world. The B15 iceberg, for example, could have supplied the entire United States with water for five years—if only we knew how to extract it. The problem is that towing a million- or billion-ton iceberg is very expensive. Some Middle Eastern nations have considered transporting huge icebergs from Antarctica to the Persian Gulf, but most of the ice would melt before it reached its destination.
Picky, picky: A year is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds long.
ICEBERG FACTS
• The process of glacial ice cracking and falling into the sea is called calving.
• Icebergs come in many shapes and sizes:
Brash ice are tiny icebergs. They can be as small as an ice cube or as big as a baseball.
Bergy bits are icebergs that are larger than baseballs and smaller than beach balls.
Growlers range from 3 feet to 10 feet. Why are they called growlers? Because sailors often hear a growling sound as they bob up and down in the water.
Bergs are the large icebergs, the largest of which are called tabular bergs. Found only in the Antarctic, they’re formed when huge plates of ice break off of the ice shelf; B15 was a tabular berg.
• Most of an iceberg is under the water, so when someone says, “It’s only the tip of the iceberg,” they mean there’s a lot more to the story than what’s being told.
There are no thunderstorms in polar regions. Why? Not enough warm air.
FOODS THAT WENT TO WAR
What do you feed hungry soldiers? It has to be filling, packed with protein, not too heavy to carry in their backpacks, and—hopefully—tasty.
OH MAN, CANNED HAM
What comes in a can and looks like a pink brick of meat swimming in golden jelly? It’s SPAM! Invented by the Hormel Food Corporation in 1937, Spam (short for SPiced hAM) became popular during World War II. Why? It was cheap and portable and didn’t need refrigeration—all of which made it an ideal food to send into battle with U.S. soldiers.
Enlisted men ate so much Spam during the war—more than 100 million pounds of it—that many of them swore they’d never touch the stuff again. But when the soldiers came home, sales of Spam in supermarkets shot up… and remain high today.
For those of you who think Spam is made from eyeballs, noses, and other unsavory pig parts—stop worrying. The canned delicacy is made from pork shoulder, ham, salt, sugar, and sodium nitrate.
AUSTRALIAN SUPER FOOD
Ever heard of Vegemite? It’s as popular in Australia as peanut butter is in the United States. Except for being thick and pasty, it’s nothing like peanut butter.
That sinking
feeling: Crocodiles swallow stones to help them stay submerged under water.
So, what is it? Vegemite is salty, dark brown yeast extract, seasoned with a bit of celery and onions. Sounds gross, but Aussies love it. During World War II, a jar of Vegemite was placed in every Australian soldier’s mess kit. In fact, they ate so much of it that Australia almost ran out of Vegemite and had to ration it.
When the victorious troops returned, Vegemite was hailed as a “war hero.” Even today it’s a source of national pride (and protein). If you’d like to give Vegemite a try, here’s a tip from the Aussies: never eat it right out of the jar. This power spread tastes best on bread with butter and lettuce. Now you’re eatin’ Australian, mate!
PLAIN OR PEANUT?
In 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, a man named Forrest Mars encountered some soldiers who were eating bits of chocolates coated with a hard sugar “shell.” The soldiers explained that the sugar formed a protective seal that kept the chocolate from melting. This gave Mars an idea: He ran home to his kitchen and whipped up his own little sugar-covered chocolates. He packaged them in cardboard tubes and when World War II broke out, he sold them to the U.S. military as a snack that traveled well in any climate. After the war they became available to the public in little brown bags, appearing in “Plain” and “Peanut” varieties. Have you guessed what these candies are yet? M&Ms!
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