Our mission here at News Bites (a monthly children’s newspaper) is to Engage, Inform, and Inspire by bringing news, STEM, sport and entertainment to young people in a language they understand and in a manner they can easily relate to.
Summer greetings, everyone! As always, you are very welcome to another jam-packed issue of News Bites. As you will see, we have been buzzing around since last we spoke – busy as bees, you could say – and not without good reason. You see, we’ve uncovered the somewhat secret (but downright amazing) lives of bees – all in the hope that you will come to marvel at their might and appreciate their awesomeness! Fly on over to pages 12 and 13 to begin. Of course, we’ve also got a feast of news stories in here for you – from the major headlines making the news around the world, to the wacky, weird and wonderful news that is as incredible as it is entertaining. In this month’s Big Story, we’re addressing…
Mobile devices have changed all of our lives, and mostly in a good way. We can now communicate with our family and friends instantly and from afar. We can share what’s happening in our lives with the people who matter to us, and we can share in their lives too. Being able to connect with distant friends means we don’t have to miss out on important events and it can help us to keep those friendships alive, despite the fact that our loved ones are so far away. But most of us also have connections with people on social media whom we’ve never actually met. Some of them may have become friends, but many of them may be people that we’ve never even had a spoken conversation with – our…
Treasured Violin Lives On For almost 300 years, a prized violin crafted by Italian Giuseppe Guarneri, has been played in concerts around the world. Guarneri was a legendary craftsman, who made about 150 violins. He made this particular one at the height of his career. This month was the first time in about 10 years that one of his instruments came up for auction. Regis Pasquier, an expert musician, had owned this violin for about 20 years. Pasquier has said that the violin is special in the way it projects sounds much further than many others. That fact was important when he played the instrument in places like the Opera Garnier of Paris and in New York’s Carnegie Hall. This violin is so special that the French auction house said…
Traded for a Sandwich, Sold for $280,000 Maud Lewis (1903-1970) was an artist from Nova Scotia in Canada who sold her paintings for two or three dollars each. Like many great artists, Maud lived a life of poverty but in the years since her death her paintings have become valuable. One of her paintings, called Black Truck, was sold recently for 350,000 Canadian dollars ($280,000). Black Truck was sold by Tony and Irene Demas (pictured above) who owned a restaurant in Nova Scotia and had recently retired. One of their regular customers in the 1970s was an artist named John Kinnear. John admired Maud’s artwork, knew she was poor and often gave her painting materials. Maud appreciated the gifts and occasionally sent some of her work to John as a…
Glass Frog Two new species of glass frogs have been discovered. Why are they called ‘glass frogs’? Well, that is literally ‘clear to see’! They have completely transparent bellies showing a red heart, a white liver and digestive system, and a pouch of greenish eggs if they are female. What an astonishing creature! And there are 156 different species of them – all in South and Central America. The two new species were discovered in a river valley in the Andes mountains in Ecuador, South America. One of them lives on the south side of the river. The other lives on the north side, on a mountain slope. They look identical to the naked eye, with lime-green backs peppered by black dots around yellow spots, but their DNA is a…
75 years ago! JUL 2 1947 On this day, a strange aircraft crash-landed on a ranch in New Mexico, USA. The rancher reported it to the Army Air Field at Roswell (so the event is known as ‘The Roswell Incident’). The Army said they found a ‘flying disc’ but then said it was a weather balloon. Later, a retired colonel, who had examined the crash, claimed it was extraterrestrial. In 1994, the Air Force stated it was a device for monitoring nuclear activity. Some people said they saw bodies of aliens around the area – the Air Force said they were crash-test dummies. Many still believe they were aliens! 70 years a go! JUL 3 1952 On this day 41-year-old Henry Opitek became the first patient to survive open-heart surgery,…
