Page Type: Elementary

On May 24, a crowd gathered on the French island of Mont-Saint-Michel to witness a strange sight. High above them, a man was walking on a very long tightrope! The man, Nathan Paulin, walked—and sometimes wobbled—his way across the 0.8-inch (2-centimeter) wide slackline for 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers). It was the longest tightrope walk ever!

The record-breaking walk took place on a slackline that was tied to a crane at one end and a very old building called the Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey at the other. The line was more than 300 feet (100 meters) off the ground, and it swayed back and forth in the wind as Paulin made his way across. Paulin, who was attached to a harness for safety reasons, took his time, carefully placing his foot with each step. The walk took two hours to complete! 

Just before he reached the end, Paulin lost his balance and slipped off the line. (He caught the line with his hands.) By the time he slipped, Paulin had already broken the record. 

Paulin, 28, is a pro at this sort of thing. According to his website, he’s been making his way across tightropes since he was a teenager, and he has done many attention-grabbing walks high above famous places. In 2017, Paulin and two others walked across a 1.0-mile (1.7-kilometer) tightrope above a valley in a French mountain range. And in 2021, he walked 1,969 feet (600 meters) on a line that stretched above the city of Paris from the Eiffel Tower to the Chaillot theater.

Paulin hopes to set more records in the future.

“My next dream—I hope to be able to do it—would be to walk between the Eiffel Tower and Montparnasse Tower,” he told Euro News. That’s a distance of 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers).

Cars are cool when they drive, but what if they could also walk? Hyundai, a company that has been making cars for many years, plans to build two types of vehicles that are half car, half walking robot! 

Hyundai calls these cars Ultimate Mobility Vehicles, or UMVs. When they’re on smooth roads, UMVs ride on their wheels, like any other car. But when they reach someplace most cars can’t go—like steps or a pile of rocks—they grow legs! Picture a four-legged robot with a wheel at the end of each leg. The legs can bend and stretch, while the wheels can turn all the way around, allowing the vehicle to go forward, backward, side to side, and even up. 

Hyundai introduced the first of these vehicles, called the Elevate, in 2019. According to the company, the Elevate can climb a 5-foot (1.5-meter) wall or step across a 5-foot gap. Hyundai says the Elevate could be used to rescue people after natural disasters, like earthquakes. It could also help people with disabilities. For example, if someone can’t get down their front steps, the Elevate could go right to the top of the staircase to meet the person where they are! 

The other vehicle, called the Tiger X-1, was introduced in 2021. It’s similar to the Elevate, but it doesn’t carry people. Hyundai says the Tiger could take supplies to people who are waiting to be rescued after earthquakes. It could also be used on construction sites, or even to explore other planets!

So far, both the Elevate and the Tiger are concept cars. That means they’re still being developed. But in 2022, Hyundai opened a facility in Montana where it will build and test versions of these UMVs. The company hopes to someday put them on the road—and beyond.

If you don’t know how to spell a word, you could look it up in a dictionary. Or maybe you could ask Harini Logan! The 14-year-old from San Antonio, Texas, correctly spelled a series of seriously hard words in the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee to capture the top prize.

“This is such a dream,” Harini said after the bee, according to CNN. “This is my fourth bee, and I’m just so overwhelmed.”

In spelling bees, contestants are given words to try to spell. If they spell the word correctly, they stay in the bee. If not, they are out of the contest. As the bee continues, there are fewer and fewer spellers. The last speller left wins! 

This year’s Scripps Spelling Bee was a tough contest. The last two contestants, Harini and Vikram Raju, 12, were tied during the final round, so the judges decided to have a tiebreaker round called a “spell-off.” In a spell-off, each contestant tries to spell as many words as possible in 90 seconds. Vikram spelled 15 words correctly, while Harini spelled 22 words correctly, making her the winner. Harini’s words included “kniphofia” (a kind of plant) and “moorhen” (a kind of bird).

What’s the best part of summer? If you’re into thrills, it may just be a roller coaster ride. Did you know that roller coasters have been around for more than 200 years? It’s true! 

The world’s first roller coaster may have been the Aerial Walk in Paris, France. This thrill ride opened in 1817. Riders climbed a staircase that led to the top of a tower. Then they got into a three-wheeled car and rode down a sloped track at about 40 miles per hour (64.4 kilometers per hour). Then the car was towed back up the track for the next riders. 

Not long after the Aerial Walk opened, Coney Island in New York became a resort—a place where people went to relax and have fun. Beginning in the 1820s, hotels, theaters, and restaurants started popping up at Coney Island. Then, in 1884, an inventor named LaMarcus Thompson came up with a new way for Coney Island visitors to have fun: He built a roller coaster or, as he called it, the “Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway.” This was the first roller coaster in the United States.

Like the Aerial Walk, the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway was different from many of today’s roller coasters. Passengers paid five cents (about $1.48 in today’s money) to ride from one end of a 600-foot-long (182.9 meters) track to the other. The ride traveled at only 6 miles per hour (9.7 kilometers per hour). There were no loops, so riders didn’t get to go upside down. Still, the coaster proved to be very popular. By 1900, there were hundreds of roller coasters all over the United States.

Scientists say a cypress tree in Chile might be the oldest tree in the world. They calculate that the tree is more than 5,000 years old!

Known as Great Grandfather, the Patagonian cypress tree (also called an alerce) is located in Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park. Dr. Jonathan Barichivich, a scientist from Chile who lives in France, first tried to estimate the tree’s age by taking a small sample of wood from its trunk. This method usually allows experts to tell how old a tree is by showing how many rings the tree has. But the sample Barichivich got did not capture all of the tree’s rings because its trunk is just too wide! So Barichivich used a computer to compare the tree to some other very old trees whose ages are known. He estimates that Great Grandfather is up to 5,484 years old. Barichivich adds that, according to his research, there is only a 20 percent chance that the tree is less than 5,000 years old. 

Until now, experts believed that Methuselah, a bristlecone pine tree in California, was the oldest tree on the planet. Methuselah’s age has been calculated at 4,853 years old. If Barichivich is correct, it would mean that Great Grandfather could be more than 500 years older than Methuselah!

But while the tree has survived for thousands of years, scientists say it faces threats now. Climate change is making the area where the tree is located drier, causing harm to the tree. Plus, Great Grandfather attracts visitors who step on its roots and strip away pieces of its bark. The locations of many other ancient trees, including Methuselah, have been hidden from the public so that no one will damage them.

“Is that a horse?” 

That’s the question some people ask when they see a dog named Zeus out walking with his family. It’s not really surprising that Zeus is big. After all, he’s a Great Dane, the world’s tallest breed of dog. But Zeus is even taller than the average Great Dane. In fact, he was just named the world’s tallest living dog by Guinness World Records! 

Zeus stands at 3 feet 5.18 inches tall (104.6 centimeters). His height is closer to that of a donkey than a horse. But since most dogs are much smaller than a donkey, Zeus attracts a lot of attention in his Bedford, Texas, neighborhood. Some people gasp, and others ask if they can take pictures of him. Zeus loves all of it. Like many dogs, he enjoys people and laps up attention.

“We counted 68 times once that we heard people say, ‘Whoa, that’s a horse,’” Brittany Davis, Zeus’s human mom, told the Today show. “It’s kind of a game now.” 

When Zeus is not getting the celebrity treatment, the “gentle giant” is at home with Davis and her family. He loves to play with the family’s three miniature Australian shepherds, all of which are much, much smaller than he is. Davis says the three smaller dogs have tons of energy, while Zeus is very laid back. 

Occasionally, he does get into a tiny bit of trouble. Sometimes he takes food right off the kitchen counter or uses his tongue to “clean” his human baby brother’s dinner plate. He just can’t help himself—the food and crumbs and spills are so easy for him to reach! In addition to the stolen snacks, Zeus eats 12 cups of dog food a day.

Zeus’s other hobby is lounging. He’s the king of the couch, but he also takes every chance he can to try to sit on a person’s lap. It may be a little bit awkward, but the family loves every minute of it.

Robots are amazing. They can deliver stuff, move heavy equipment, and even do some repairs. All of this saves humans a lot of time and energy. Now, thanks to scientists in Japan, at least one robot can peel a banana!

Why teach a robot to peel a banana? As great as robots are at certain tasks, they’re not known for being good at delicate tasks. Humans have fine motor skills, which enable us to use small muscles in our wrists, hands, and fingers to do things like hold a pen or peel a banana. Robots don’t have human hands, of course. But could they learn these skills? Scientists decided to find out. They wanted to see if they could teach a robot to do a delicate task—like peeling a banana without squishing it and making a big mess.

Scientists used a robot that has two arms. They trained the robot by showing it how to peel a banana hundreds of times. Each time, the robot collected more data (information) about what to do. This allowed it to learn the action and copy it. It took the robot 13 hours of training before it could peel a banana. Even then, it did the task successfully only a little more than half the time. It took the robot about 3 minutes to peel one banana. 

While the robot couldn’t peel a banana as well as a human can, scientists did show that robots can learn at least one delicate task. This suggests that robots may be able to learn other delicate tasks, too. If they can, companies that use robots will be able to put them to work in many more ways.