Page Type: Elementary

A teenager from Nepal is the youngest person ever to climb to the top of the 14 highest mountains in the world. Nima Rinji Sherpa, 18, checked number 14 off the list on October 9, when he reached the summit of Shisha Pangma, a 26,335-foot (8,027-meter) mountain in Tibet.

Nima began his quest in September 2022, when he reached the top of Manāslu, a 26,781-foot (8,163-meter) mountain in Nepal at age 16. He has spent the past two years climbing the rest of the 14 peaks, including Mount Everest, which at 29,032 feet (8,849 meters) is the tallest mountain in the world.

The 14 peaks are known as “eight-thousanders” because they are all more than 8,000 meters (26,245 feet) high, making them dangerous to climb. The human body struggles at altitudes above 8,000 meters because the air contains less oxygen. The low temperatures and high winds make it even harder for climbers to gather the strength they need. 

Unlike many other climbers, Nima did not always carry a tank of oxygen with him, a decision that he said is not what experts recommend. He and his climbing partner also faced avalanches, slippery ice, and stomach cramps, which can occur when a climber doesn’t drink enough water.

“Regardless of the beauty of the mountains [and] the success of the summit, it’s always going to be a dangerous sport,” Nima later told CNN.

Thousands of years ago, kings called pharaohs ruled over ancient Egypt. They built giant palaces, temples, and pyramids. They had statues made to look like them. When a pharaoh died, their body was placed in a sarcophagus (coffin) painted to look like them and buried with jewelry and other priceless gold objects. Egypt has a larger-than-life history, and it’s now being told at the enormous new Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo, Egypt.

A new playground in Clearfield, Utah, has a special distinction: It was designed by a kid. When the playground opened in September 2024, 12-year-old Rosili Olson had a lot to be proud of. 

Rosili came up with the design last year, after seeing the plans for a new playground near her home. The plans showed rope climbers and other features, which are super fun for older kids but too challenging for younger ones. Rosili, then 11, worried that her younger sisters wouldn’t be able to enjoy the new playground until they were bigger. 

“I love [my sisters], and we’re all four years apart and they’re both unique and different, and I wanted them to have fun in a park,” Rosili told Fox13 in Utah.

Rosili decided to sketch a design for a playground she felt kids of all ages could enjoy. She dreamed up features like a rock climbing wall and a twisty slide before putting them on paper. Her mom then took her to city hall, where they met with Eric Howes, Clearfield’s head of parks and recreation.

Last year, Jayme Littlewolf decided to take up a new hobby. He got his sister’s toy piano, found some how-to videos on YouTube, and taught himself to play the instrument. Since then, the 7th grader has given many shows, and his talent has inspired his community to give him a generous gift.

[[Learning the Piano]]

Jayme’s love for the piano started at a young age. He enjoyed listening to music, and one day thought he’d like to try playing music himself. Once he had the basics down, his parents gave him a digital keyboard with 61 keys. It wasn’t a full-size keyboard (which has 88 keys), but it was large enough for Jayme to learn a lot of the songs he’d been wanting to try. 

Jayme and his family live in Minnesota, on the White Earth Reservation, which is home to the Anishinaabe people. Anishinaabe people may also call themselves Chippewa or Ojibwe. It was on a family trip that Jayme’s talent revealed itself to the community.

In November 2023, Jayme’s family, along with other members of the community, went to Minneapolis to see their football team in a tournament. Jayme likes to find pianos to play whenever he travels—and he found one in the hotel where the family was staying. 

“Every town or city we go through, he usually has one of our phones, so he uses Google and finds out where all the piano stores are—‘Can we go? Can we go? Just to look at them?’” Jayme’s father, Justin, told the Grand Forks Herald.

[[A Generous Gift]]

When Jayme sat down to play, a man named Brad Riggle was particularly impressed. Riggle, who lives on the reservation and also plays the piano, posted a video of Jayme online and asked the White Earth community if they would donate money to buy Jayme a piano. Not long after that, there was a baby grand piano in the Littlewolf living room.

Jayme practices all the time.

“He’s playing before he goes to bed, he plays when he gets home from school,” Jayme’s mom, Amy, told KARE11 News. 

He plays for audiences, too. In September, Jayme performed at Norsk Høstfest, an annual festival in North Dakota. The fact the audiences love his music has Jayme excited for the future.

“Makes me want to keep doing it and going on and on with it,” he told the Grand Forks Herald after one performance.

The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., received a special delivery earlier this month. Two pandas named Bao Li and Qing Bao arrived at the zoo after a long flight from China.

It’s been nearly a year since the National Zoo has had any pandas. China and the U.S. have an agreement in which China lends pandas to the U.S. in exchange for a yearly fee that China uses to conserve wild pandas. (The species was once endangered.) U.S. zoos get to keep pandas for a certain amount of time. The National Zoo kept its last pair of pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, for 23 years. When the zoo returned them, plus their cub, in November 2023, it was hard to say goodbye.

China has agreed to let Bao Li and Qing Bao, both 3 years old, live at the National Zoo for 10 years. Bao Li has connections to the National Zoo. His mother was born there in 2013 and returned to China in 2017. Mei Xiang and Tian Tian are his grandparents.

He’s big, he’s feathery, and he’s become a major animal celebrity in Australia. We’re not talking about a kangaroo or a koala—they don’t have feathers. No, Australia’s newest star is Pesto, a king penguin chick that got people talking when he grew larger than his parents.

Pesto was born at the Sea Life aquarium in Melbourne, a city on the country’s southern coast. His father, Blake, is one of the aquarium’s largest king penguins. But even Blake looks small compared to Pesto. The chick, now 10 months old, stands more than 35 inches (90 centimeters) tall and weighs more than 51 pounds (23 kilograms). For comparison, fully grown male king penguins tend to reach about 37 inches (95 centimeters) and weigh 37 pounds (17 kilograms). Pesto will continue to grow for a couple more months. 

A penguin that big can eat a lot. Pesto consumes more than 30 fish a day, which is more than twice what the average adult penguin eats.

Pesto has become a social media star on Instagram and TikTok—and not just because of his unusual size. He was the only king penguin to be born at the aquarium in 2024 and the first since 2022. He’s also adorable. 

When 6-year-old Luca Arpin of Rhode Island saw a tiny kitten at his local animal shelter, he wanted to take her home. But it costs money to adopt a pet. So Luca decided to start a business picking up dog poop in people’s yards. He calls himself “Poopa Scoopa Luca.”

While some people would find this job unpleasant, Luca doesn’t mind it. In fact, he loves caring for animals, whatever it takes. Luca’s mom works at the animal shelter, and he’s been volunteering there for a while. He and his mom have also fostered many dogs and cats before finding homes for them.

“[Luca] is the first person to walk into the [shelter] building,” his mom, Robbyn Bouchard, told NBC 10. “He’ll start folding laundry. He’ll sweep and mop the floors. He’ll tell everybody, ‘I love my job. I love coming to work every day.’”

But as a volunteer, Luca does not get paid. If he wanted to adopt his favorite shelter kitten, he needed to find a way to make money.

“We had a conversation about some of the things he could possibly do to raise money,” Bouchard explained. “And I asked him, ‘What are you good at?’”

Since Luca is good at cleaning, he decided to start scooping poop at neighbors’ homes. Luca charges $15 for one dog and $20 for more than one. His mom goes with him, and they take precautions to make sure his hands stay clean.

Luca has been able to pay to adopt the kitten, which he named Pebble. He hasn’t shut down his business, however. He hopes to earn more money, which he’ll use to help additional animals!

What’s the best thing about autumn? For some people, it’s the way the leaves turn different shades of red, orange, and yellow. But watching the leaves change color just isn’t the same for people who are color-blind. That’s why all of Virginia’s state parks now have special viewfinders for people with red-green color blindness. 

What Is Red-Green Color Blindness?

Most people with color blindness can see colors, but they see them in a different way than others do. People with red-green color blindness do not see some shades of red, green, or both. The colors or shades they can’t see sometimes look like other colors.

A Park Ranger with Color Blindness

Ethan Howes has color blindness. Howes, chief ranger at Natural Tunnel State Park in Virginia, has never been able to see all the bright colors in the park. So when he heard that a company called SeeCoast made viewfinders with special lenses for people with color blindness, he decided to put one in Natural Tunnel.

Many parks have viewfinders. They magnify scenery, meaning they give people a more up-close view of nature. But the special viewfinder lenses, made by a company called EnChroma, also allow people with color blindness to see more colors. 

Howe remembers when a father and son who are both color-blind used the viewfinder at his park.

“They were just so giddy and excited about it,” Howes told Virginia Public Radio.

This photo shows what Lake Anna State Park looks like to a person who is color-blind when they look through the viewfinder (left) and when they don’t (right).

What does music sound like when it’s written by a kid? If that kid is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, it sounds pretty good! A piece of music Mozart probably wrote in his early teens was recently rediscovered—and it has already been performed.

Mozart is known as a prodigy—someone who shows extraordinary talent at a young age. Born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756, Mozart learned about music from his father, a violin player. The young Mozart wrote his first piece of music when he was 5 years old. He went on to write more than 600 pieces of music during his lifetime and is considered one of the greatest composers in history. Much of Mozart’s early work has been lost, but the recently discovered music was saved. It was found in a library in Germany.

The 12-minute piece of music, called Serenade in C, is labeled “Wolfgang Mozart.” Since it’s not in Mozart’s handwriting, experts believe it’s a copy of the original. Serenade in C was written sometime in the mid to late 1760s. Experts say the music has the same style as other music Mozart composed when he was between 10 and 13 years old. Mozart’s writing style changed as he got older.

Serenade in C has already been performed at least three times, and the crowds were large and enthusiastic. More than 200 years after his death, Mozart is still extremely popular.

The video features part of Serenade in C.

What’s the funniest animal of all? An annual contest called Comedy Wildlife Awards aims to answer that question. The contest invites photographers from all over the world to enter their silliest images of all kinds of animals, from ants to zebras. This year’s finalists have been announced—and the public gets to select one of the winners. 

Here’s one of the entries in the video category.

This is one of the entries in the portfolio category.