Page Type: Middle

We owe a lot to inventors. Their innovations have kept our food cold, lit our homes, and kept us safe in moving traffic. But what about the things that make life fun? Here are three inventors who have brought us joy.

The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are underway! When you think about the Winter Olympics, you may picture classic sports like ice hockey and snowboarding. But what about ski ballet? It is one of a handful of sports that were once proudly part of the Olympic experience but won’t be on display at this year’s games. Let’s take a trip down a snowy memory lane to learn about this and other curious winter sports events.

Muhammad Ali has already stamped his name in the record books as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time—and now he’s getting an actual postage stamp. The stamp honors the athlete and activist just in time for Black History Month, a celebration of the achievements of African Americans.

Before he was known as Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942. He began boxing at 12 years old and quickly rose through the ranks to become a gold-medal Olympic champion by 1960. In 1964, when he was 22, Clay won the world heavyweight boxing title by defeating Sonny Liston. At the time, Liston was the reigning heavyweight champion and was favored to win the fight. Shortly after his victory, the newly crowned champ renounced his birth name and took the name Muhammad Ali.

Ali would go on to win a total of three heavyweight championships. His overall boxing record of 56 wins and five losses cemented his legacy as an unlickable (unbeatable) boxer. At some point in his career, Ali joked that having his photo on a postage stamp would be “the only way I’ll ever get licked.” (At the time, people had to lick stamps to get them to stick to envelopes.)

Ali’s status as a champion fighter does not stay within the bounds of the boxing ring—he is also remembered for his fight to end racial inequality. Ali knew his image as a sports hero could help draw attention to the harsh discrimination Black people faced in the United States, so he used his voice to be a champion for change. 

“When you saw me in the boxing ring fighting, it wasn’t just so I could beat my opponent. My fighting had a purpose,” said Ali. “I had to be successful in order to get people to listen to the things I had to say…. I wanted to be a champion who was accessible to everyone. I hoped to inspire others to take control of their lives and to live with pride and self-determination.”

Ali died in 2016 at age 74 after struggling for years with the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. He is remembered for a lifetime of championing social justice and humanitarian causes that promote peace and equality.

Click through the slideshow for photos from Ali’s remarkable life.

Each winter, giant snow monsters appear across the landscape of Japan’s Mount Zao. Though they may look like towering ghosts or abominable snowmen, these “monsters” are just trees encased in snow and ice. People travel from all over the world to see this rare natural wonder—but new research shows that it’s at risk of disappearing. 

The monsters, called juhyo in Japanese, occur when cold and windy weather brings a supercooled, icy rain to the mountain. The icy rain freezes immediately when it meets the fir trees, encasing them in layers of ice and snow. The phenomenon turns the whole mountain into an otherworldly landscape. 

However, a team of Japanese researchers confirmed that the snow monsters are not growing as large as they did nearly 100 years ago.

“In the 1930s, we saw juhyo five to six metres [16–20 feet] across,” said Fumitaka Yanagisawa to the BBC. Yanagisawa is a professor at Japan’s Yamagata University who studies juhyo. “Since 2019, many are half a metre [1.6 feet] or less. Some are barely columns.”

For Quilen Blackwell, business is blooming—literally. Blackwell’s vision to turn empty city lots into colorful flower gardens has helped transform Englewood, a neighborhood in the U.S. city of Chicago, revitalizing the area and creating jobs for young people. It has also earned Blackwell CNN’s 2025 Hero of the Year award.

Despite being part of a major city, Englewood has a history of poverty due to a lack of development in the area. Many houses and businesses are left abandoned, and there are limited job opportunities for young people. While others may have looked at this area as barren, Blackwell saw a fertile opportunity to grow a business. 

“Most people will see the trash, the vacant lots,” Blackwell told CNN in an interview. “But for me, I see potential.”

About 1,200 years ago, earthquakes and rising sea levels caused part of an Egyptian city to sink beneath the Mediterranean Sea, carrying countless treasures with it below the waves. Scuba divers, archaeologists, and Egyptian officials are working together to bring some of these artifacts back to the surface. 

Statues, coins, pottery, and ship parts are among the treasures pulled from the Abu Qir Bay, off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. The artifacts come from Canopus, which was a thriving coastal city thousands of years ago. One statue pulled from the water was of a sphinx—a mythical creature with the head of a man and the body of a lion—that dated back at least 3,000 years to the rule of Egyptian king Ramses II. Other statues depict Roman and Macedonian nobles, showing that several ancient dynasties influenced the city culture before it sank into the depths.

Raccoon faces are instantly recognizable: their mask-like facial markings and habit of rummaging in trash bins has earned them the affectionate nickname “trash bandit.” New research shows that the face of the trash bandit is changing—literally! Biologists say urban raccoons now have shorter faces than their forest-dwelling peers, meaning they could be in early stages of domestication. In other words, they’re becoming tamer.

In the wild, raccoons will eat nearly anything they can from plants or animals. In an urban environment—meaning in a city or town—the easiest place to find food is in garbage cans.

“Wherever humans go, there is trash. Animals love our trash. All they have to do is endure our presence, not be aggressive, and then they can feast on anything we throw away,” said Raffaela Lesch, a biologist at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in the United States.

Some new vehicles are hitting the road in Zimbabwe—electric tricycles! These three-wheeled electric vehicles (EVs) are giving women in rural Zimbabwe some yearned-for independence.

In Zimbabwe’s rural areas, many women are disconnected from public transportation and economic opportunities. Some have to walk a great distance to hand-deliver crops and goods to sell at marketplaces so that they can make money for their families. The other option is to rely on family members to make time to drive them.

Bana Alabed has been using her voice to promote peace since she was 7 years old. Growing up amid a deadly civil war in Syria, a country in the Middle East, she drew attention to the plight of children in conflict by publicly documenting her childhood on social media.

Now 15 years old and a refugee living in Turkey, Alabed continues to advocate for children affected by war. Her tireless work is the reason Alabed is the 2025 International Children’s Peace Prize winner. Presented by the KidsRights Foundation and the Global Child Forum, the award goes to an outstanding young person “who courageously fights for children’s rights.”

Experts estimate that about 1 out of every 6 children around the world lives in an area affected by conflict. Alabed has been working to help reopen schools and reunite families torn apart in war. Her efforts have focused on children in Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan.

“Peace is not a luxury. The world must listen to us. Our childhood has been stolen due to wars and conflicts,” said Alabed when she was nominated. “We want peace, and to those children who are suffering in the wars, you are not alone.”

Here is more about the other two finalists for the 2025 International Children’s Peace Prize:

• Aeshnina “Nina” Azzahra Aqilani (17 years old, Indonesia): No one wants their home to be treated like a trash can, but unfortunately, many Western countries export their plastic waste to other places, like Indonesia. Aqilani has combined environmental and international advocacy to help ban this harmful practice and make the world a cleaner, more just place.

• Divyansh Agrawal (16 years old, United States): Proving no one is too young to give back to their community, Agrawal founded the Junior Philanthropists Foundation. This teen-led organization focuses on the way climate laws affect children’s rights. It has already helped pass 18 environmental bills in the state of California.

When you picture an archaeologist at work, you might think of someone digging through buried, ancient buildings. But what about sifting through vultures’ nests? Archaeologists in Spain have done just that, finding hundreds of years’ worth of archaeological treasures stashed in the cliffside nests of bearded vultures.

Bearded vultures like to reuse nests each year, so generations of vultures will use the same nests and slowly add layers over time. The species is locally extinct in southern Spain, allowing archeologists to look for interesting objects in the area’s preserved—but uninhabited—nests, which are tucked into cliffside caves.

To reach the nests, the scientists had to rappel down a cliff using ropes and harnesses. Treating the 12 nests as they would any other archeological site, the scientists carefully dug through each layer. Their work revealed hundreds of years’ worth of the birds’ history and the history of Spain itself.