Page Type: Elementary

A pilot named Mack Rutherford just became the youngest person ever to fly solo (alone) around the world. Rutherford is 17 years old.

Rutherford’s small plane took off from Bulgaria, a country in Europe, on March 23, 2022. As Rutherford circled the globe, he flew over 52 countries and stopped in 30 countries to rest and refuel his plane. On August 24, 2022, he finished his journey in Bulgaria, where it had begun five months earlier.

If you’re going to have a vehicle, why not get one that can drive and fly? That’s just what the Switchblade flying car does—and it could be available soon.

A company called Samson Sky has been working on the Switchblade for 14 years. The vehicle has already been tested on the road. In July 2022, the Switchblade got a boost from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is the government agency that makes rules for aircraft. The FAA approved the Switchblade for flight. Samson Sky is now doing flight tests and says the vehicle could be available to buy within weeks.

When it’s on the road, the Switchblade looks like a very unusual car. It has three wheels, a large windshield, and a sleek, sloping hood. There’s enough room inside for two people. When the driver decides to fly, the vehicle easily changes into a plane. With the push of a button, wings and a tail come out! 

To take flight, the Switchblade requires a runway, which means the driver needs to take it to airport. In the air, it can reach speeds of 160 miles per hour (257.5 kilometers per hour) and climb to 16,000 feet (4,876.8 meters). That’s much lower than a commercial plane, which flies at about 35,000 feet (10,668 meters). 

Several other flying cars are also being developed by other companies. These companies will also need government approval before they can sell their vehicles.

People who want to buy and operate Samson Sky’s Switchblade will need a few things first. For one, they’ll need about $170,000. That’s how much the vehicle is set to cost. They will also need a driver’s license and a license to fly private planes. 

Check out the video, which shows how the Switchblade spreads its wings.

Experts have good news about tigers! There are more of them than they thought. 

A group called the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) keeps track of plant and animal populations. The IUCN says there are between 3,726 and 5,578 tigers in the wild. That’s a lot more than the number of tigers the IUCN counted in 2015. That year, the IUCN estimated that the tiger population was 3,159.

It seems like there are many more tigers than there were in 2015. But experts say they’ve gotten better at counting animal species…so the old count was probably too low. 

Still, it’s good news for tigers, which are endangered (in danger of dying out). In the year 1900, there were about 100,000 tigers in the wild. They lived all across the continent of Asia. But it has become harder for tigers to survive. Much of the rain forests, grasslands, and swamps where tigers live has been taken over by humans—for building and for farming. Humans also hunt tigers. In many cases, it’s because tigers kill livestock (farm animals). Today, tigers are found in the wild only in India and a few other parts of Asia.

Governments and scientists are working hard to save tigers. They are expanding the amount of land that cannot be built on. They are also working to catch people who hunt tigers. Because of this, the tiger population is rising in some countries!

Experts hope that the next time they count the world’s tigers, their numbers will be even higher.

Bellen Woodard is an author, a public speaker, and the head of her own company. And she’s only 11. Woodard has already achieved so much, but she still has big dreams. She wants to help people be proud of who they are.

That’s why Woodard wrote a book called More than Peach. In the book, Woodard writes that when she was 8 years old, a boy in her class asked her to hand him the “skin-colored” crayon. The boy actually wanted the peach-colored crayon. It wasn’t the first time Woodard had heard someone called the peach crayon “skin-colored.” It made her wonder why this happened, when skin can be so many other colors.

“I found it pretty strange that…only one [color] was being called ‘skin-color’ crayon,” she writes in the book.

Soon after, Woodard started a project called More than Peach. She wanted to get more colorful crayons into classrooms—crayons that would let kids draw people with many different skin tones, or colors. Over time, Woodard turned her project into a company and started making crayons. The crayons are called More than Peach, just like the company. Woodard wants to show that it’s important to include everyone. 

Her efforts have attracted a lot of attention. Woodard has made speeches to organizations like the Girl Scouts and has met many leaders, including gymnast Simone Biles and former first lady Michelle Obama. She hopes to inspire other kids. She wants them to know that, if they see something that needs to be changed, they can do something about it.

Woodard’s message isn’t just that crayons need to be available in more colors. It’s also that everyone has value. Because peach isn’t the only skin color.

It’s back-to-school time! Did you know that there are millions of schools in the world?

Every school is special, but some are VERY different from all the rest. Check these out!

Oldest School

Shishi High School in Chengdu, China, opened in 141 BCE, making it the oldest school in the world. The school’s buildings have been rebuilt a few times, but Shishi has operated in the same location for more than 2,100 years!

Keep chasing your dreams. That’s what Carson Pickett’s dad has always told her. So Pickett never stopped doing what she loved—playing soccer. And in June 2022, she became the first person with a limb difference to play on the U.S. women’s national soccer team (USWNT). (When someone has a limb difference, it means that one of their arms or legs is not shaped in the usual way.) 

Pickett usually plays for a team called the North Carolina Courage, but she was chosen to fill in for Emily Fox for the USWNT game that took place on June 28, 2022. Pickett played for all 90 minutes of the game. She helped the U.S. team win a 2-0 victory against Colombia.

Pickett, who was born without a left hand or forearm, started playing soccer when she was 5. She loved the sport, and by the time she got to college, experts were calling her one of the best young players in the United States. Eventually, Pickett became a professional soccer player. She has played for many teams, but playing for the USWNT was an especially big moment in a big-deal career.

“I saw the crowd and everyone chanting ‘USA’ and I just knew that my biggest dream just came true,” she told Good Morning America. “I think it was so cool to see my parents in the stands and just all the little kids screaming your name and things like that. And honestly, it’s the best feeling I’ve ever had in my entire life.” 

But soccer isn’t the only thing that’s important to Pickett. In 2019, a photo of Pickett with a young fan went viral on social media. Like Pickett, the boy, Joseph Tidd, had been born without a left hand and forearm. Pickett wants to encourage people—especially kids—to be proud of what makes them different.

“Different people are my kind of people,” she told CBS News. “The world needs more of that.” 

A diner was eating outside at a restaurant in China when they spotted some footprints—very large footprints. These were no ordinary animal tracks. It turns out they were made millions of years ago…by dinosaurs!

Paleontologists (scientists who study fossils from long ago) used special instruments called 3D scanners to study the fossilized footprints and determine their origin. According to paleontologist Dr. Lida Xing, the prints date back about 100 million years, to a time called the Cretaceous period. They were made by two sauropods. 

A sauropod was a type of dinosaur that had a small head and a long neck and tail. Dr. Xing said the sauropods that made the footprints probably measured about 26 feet (8 meters) in length. They were actually on the small side. Some sauropods could reach almost 100 feet (30 meters). That’s the length of three school buses! Sauropods were so heavy that the ground probably shook when they walked. 

But while they were big enough to take down a lot of other dinosaurs, sauropods were vegetarians. They didn’t eat meat. Because they were so big, sauropods had to look for endless amounts of vegetation to eat. Paleontologists say that could be what the pair of sauropods were doing when they made the footprints that have survived for so long.

Footprints don’t always last for millions of years, even when they’re fossilized. Many footprints and other fossils may have been lost when they were built on or paved over before they could be discovered. But the sauropod footprints were discovered in a location that was once a farm, and the prints were buried in dirt and sand. Covered over like this, the prints were protected from damage. The dirt and sand were removed when the property was turned into a restaurant.

The restaurant owner has fenced off the area where the footprints are in order to protect them. It’s as if there’s a treasure on his property.

“The footprints were very deep and quite obvious,” Dr. Xing told CNN. “But [for a long time] nobody had thought about [the possibility that they were made by dinosaurs].”

Have you ever seen a monarch butterfly? Monarchs, which are found mostly in North America and Central America, are famous for their beautiful orange, black, and white wings. But in the past several years, it’s been harder to find some monarchs—because there aren’t as many as there used to be. Scientists say that migrating monarch butterflies are endangered, which means they’re in danger of dying out.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a group that keeps track of species populations, has added the migrating monarch butterfly to its “red list” for the first time. The red list is a list of species whose populations have fallen to the point where they are “threatened.” When something is threatened, it means that its future is not certain. There are more than 41,000 species on the red list.

According to the IUCN, the number of monarchs in North America has fallen by at least 22 percent in the past 10 years. That’s almost one-quarter of the monarch butterfly population. Scientists believe there are a few reasons for this. The butterflies have lost much of their habitat, including parts of forests where they stay during the winter. They’ve also been harmed by pesticides, which are poisons that farmers use to kill pests that eat crops. And, like many species, monarch butterflies are affected by climate change.

Not all monarch butterflies are in trouble. The problem is affecting only the monarch butterflies that migrate, or fly from one place to another each year. Every autumn, millions of these monarchs fly south, from colder parts of North America to California and Mexico, where they spend the winter. They fly north again as the weather warms up in the spring. 

The migration of the monarch butterfly is thousands of miles—the longest in the insect world. The sight of the butterflies is so beautiful that crowds sometimes gather to see thousands of the orange insects sleeping in the trees.

But scientists say there are reasons to hope monarch butterflies will be around for a long time. Putting a species on the red list can make people aware that it needs help. And there are ways to help, including by protecting forests and using fewer pesticides. 

Ordinary people can help too. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on a plant called milkweed, and caterpillars (young butterflies) feed on the milkweed. People who have backyards can help monarchs by planting milkweed.

“There is still time to act,” Scott Hoffman Black, a scientist who works to help save species, told CNN.

What do you get when you build the most powerful space telescope ever? Some pretty amazing images! The James Webb Space Telescope was launched into space in December 2021. And now, it’s showing us space like we’ve never seen it before.

The Webb telescope orbits around our Sun, so it’s close to Earth. Yet it can capture images of space objects that are millions of miles away. And those images are really clear. What’s the secret? Webb has infrared cameras. These cameras can detect (see) light that the human eye—and many other telescopes—cannot. Webb can receive images through space dust, which is where stars and planets form!

Some of the most beautiful images show nebulae, which are clouds made up of swirling dust and gases. Sometimes this dust and gas has been ejected, or released, by a dying star. 

Webb captured an image of the Southern Ring Nebula. The image shows the dying star in the center of the nebula. The image also includes a brighter star. That star is not dying, but it will one day. When that happens, scientists say, it will probably eject a nebula of its own.

New stars also form from the dust of nebulae. One of Webb’s images shows the Carina Nebula, where many stars are forming. The image shows stars in and around a cloud of dust that looks like mountains.

Webb is just getting started. It could continue to capture images for another 20 years! Scientists hope to get images of exoplanets—planets that are outside our solar system. Some of these planets may have what it takes to support life! Scientists want to peer far into the universe to learn more about how it began. 

What else will they find? They’re not sure, but they can’t wait to find out!

There’s something funny about the kidney garden spider. The markings on its back look like a face with a thick mustache! It’s not just any face, though. It appears to be the face of the man on cans of Pringles brand potato chips. Now, the people at Pringles want the spider species to have a new name: the Pringles Spider. 

Pringles has posted an online petition to try to get the kidney garden spider renamed. A petition is a form that people can sign to show they want something to happen. The Pringles petition says, “We’re [asking] the arachnid community to do what’s right and recognize this very real spider as the Pringles Spider.” (An arachnid is an eight-legged animal with a body in two parts.)

It’s not likely the kidney garden spider cares what it’s called. After all, it would rather eat a bug than a potato chip. The spider, which is found in South, East, and Southeast Asia, catches its meals by building a circle-shaped web called an orb web. It places a curled-up leaf at one end of the web and builds a silky “roof” for the leaf. Then, it creeps under the roof and hides. When prey lands on the web and tries to get untangled, it makes the web vibrate. Feeling the vibrations, the spider rushes out to get its meal. 

And why is it called the kidney garden spider? It often lives in gardens, and its two large markings are shaped like kidneys.

Still, there are plenty of people who think the spider should be named for Pringles instead. Thousands of people signed the Pringles petition in the first week after it was first posted.

The public doesn’t get to make the final decision, though. Scientists give animals their names. So far, “the arachnid community” hasn’t commented.