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Anna May Wong is the fifth woman to be featured in a series of U.S. quarters honoring women’s achievements. Here’s a little bit about the other women being honored in 2022.

Wondering how prime ministers and members of the British Parliament get their jobs? Here’s a crash course.

In the United Kingdom, Parliament is the lawmaking body. Parliament has two houses: the House of Lords and the House of Commons. 

Members of the House of Lords are called lords or peers. Until recently, most of them inherited their seats from a parent and kept their seats for life. Now, people may be appointed to the House of Lords by other people in power or by a committee.

Members of the House of Commons are elected by the public. Its members are often called MPs. Each MP represents a different constituency, or district, and looks out for the interests of the people in that constituency.  

There are many political parties in the U.K., but most MPs belong to either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party. The party that has the majority in the House of Commons selects the prime minister (PM) to lead the country. The prime minister is always a member of Parliament.

A Parliament can be in power for up to five years until there is a national election to select new members. However, the prime minister can request that the current Parliament be dissolved before that time, which would lead to an early national election. The king has the power to dissolve Parliament at the request of the prime minister.

Calling for an early election is risky. It could add to the number of MPs who belong to the majority party. But that party might end up with fewer members of Parliament.  Even worse, the party might lose its majority, which means the new majority party would select a new prime minister. 

By law, the next general election has to take place by January 23, 2025.

In the 1950s, people predicted that, by the year 2000, we’d have intelligent, humanoid robots helping us with all kinds of things. Less optimistic people worried about robots becoming too smart and taking over the planet. Fears of a robot-dominated world played out on movie screens and on the pages of comic books.

Neither of these predictions has come true…but robots are creeping into our lives. Robot vacuum cleaners and robot lawn mowers are available to buy. And robotic devices are helping humans to build cars, perform surgeries, and much more.

Experts say robots will be an even bigger part of our future, doing tasks that are somewhat repetitive or predictable. In the future, a robot might schedule your doctor appointments and even take your vital signs during a checkup. A robotic truck could transport cargo over long distances. (Self-driving cars already exist.) Robots might be able to do an increasing amount of housework, as well. 

Far from a robot takeover, experts believe that future robots will be beneficial to humans as a whole. As they do more for us, robots will free up our time to be more innovative and creative.

Rapa Nui is the easternmost island in Polynesia. Located 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) from any other inhabited land, it’s extremely remote. Archaeologists aren’t sure where the people who first settled Rapa Nui in about 400 CE came from. They may have traveled from a different island in Polynesia, but one that would have been thousands of miles away from Rapa Nui. 

How did ancient people undertake such a long ocean voyage with no modern navigation equipment? The Indigenous people of the Pacific Ocean islands were skilled navigators. Traveling in large wooden canoes, the Polynesians used their knowledge of the stars to find their way. 

In the 1970s, the Polynesian Voyaging Society built a traditional Polynesian canoe and sailed it for thousands of miles, from Maui to Tahiti, using only the wind, sea, and stars. They proved that a long sea voyage is possible, even with primitive tools.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) makes rules to ensure the safety of food, medicine, and other products that have to do with food preparation and health. But in the 19th century, there was no FDA. Manufacturers were much freer to sell products that weren’t necessarily safe. 

Before the FDA, some products that claimed to help cure illnesses weren’t always effective. Companies could use phrases like “Restores health!” and “Guaranteed cure!” in their advertisements, whether this was true or not. Not only that, but some of these products were actually dangerous, containing ingredients that have since been made illegal due to safety concerns. Consumers wouldn’t have known what was in their medicine because manufacturers weren’t required to put the ingredients on the label. 

Packaged food products were also a bit of a mystery to buyers. Rotten meat, for example, could be covered in spices to cover a foul odor and then canned and shipped to stores.

Over time, reports spread about the unsanitary conditions under which many packaged foods were being produced. In 1906, author Upton Sinclair wrote about these conditions in a novel called The Jungle. 

In response to the resulting outcry, the U.S. Congress passed the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. This law led to the creation of what’s now called the FDA. The FDA is the reason why food ingredients are listed on labels, why certain products or ingredients are outlawed, and why there are limits on the claims companies can make when they advertise their food and health products. 

If you want to see the types of claims companies used to make, check out the slide show!

Scientists have sent spacecraft to study Saturn, but humans haven’t gone to the ringed planet—not yet, anyway. Even if we could journey the roughly 746 million miles (1.2 billion kilometers) to Saturn, we couldn’t land on the planet, which is made up mostly of gases and liquids. (Also, we’d get crushed by the pressure of Saturn’s atmosphere.)

However, scientists say that, theoretically, we could land on Titan, one of Saturn’s 83 moons. While Titan is not exactly a comfortable rest stop (there are no bathrooms, let alone a McDonald’s), we could make it work, if we had the proper equipment. Unlike Saturn, Titan has a solid surface—it’s covered in water ice.

“If you were in the outer solar system and you had to make an emergency landing, go to Titan,” NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay told Space.com.

Humans wouldn’t need a pressurized suit to survive on Titan because Titan’s atmosphere is only about 60 percent denser than Earth’s. Being on Titan would feel like being about 50 feet (15.2 meters) under water. 

Humans would need oxygen masks in order to breathe, though. They’d also need really, really warm clothing. On Titan, the temperature is about -290 degrees Fahrenheit (-179 degrees Celsius).

Aaron Judge’s 62 single-season home run total put him ahead of Roger Maris in the record books. Three players achieved more single-season home runs than Judge. Sammy Sosa hit 66, Mark McGwire hit 70, and Barry Bonds holds the record, with 73. But some people, including Roger Maris’s son, argue that Sosa’s, McGwire’s, and Bonds’s stats aren’t legitimate.

The careers of Sosa, McGwire, and Bonds are mired in controversy over the use of steroids—drugs that can enhance strength. (Sosa has not admitted to using steroids, although it was reported that he tested positive on a drug test.) Steroids are illegal in Major League Baseball, and using them is considered cheating. Yet all three players are celebrated and listed in the record books.

Roger Maris Jr., the son of New York Yankee Roger Maris, says he believes Judge should be recognized as a true single-season home run king because he’s clean (drug-free).

“Not just for me,” Maris told reporters after Judge hit number 61. “I think it means a lot for a lot of people—that he’s clean, he’s a Yankee, he plays the game the right way…. He should be revered for being the actual single-season home run champ. I mean, that’s really who he is if he hits 62. I think that’s what needs to happen. I think [major league] baseball needs to look at the records and I think baseball should do something.” 

Is it possible that asteroids were responsible for the existence of life on Earth?

Scientists say that until about 3.8 billion years ago, collisions with asteroids and comets made Earth too hot to sustain the water and carbon-based molecules needed for the development of life. 

But as destructive as they can be, asteroids and comets actually contain heavy amounts of water and carbon-based molecules—the building blocks of life. Some scientists theorize that less intense collisions with asteroids and comets may have delivered these ingredients to the planet, planting the seeds of life as we know it. This would have happened more than 3.5 billion years ago. (Earth’s earliest known fossils are 3.5 billion years old.)

The Wounded Knee massacre was one of the last of many conflicts that took place between the U.S. military and American Indians as U.S. officials moved to take more and more of the Indians’ land away from them. 

In December 1890, U.S. officials had banned a religious movement called the Ghost Dance. One of the key parts of the Ghost Dance was a belief in a prophecy or vision of the future. In this vision, the world would return to a time before Europeans arrived in North America, and American Indians would be able to reclaim their traditional ways of life. 

On December 28, 1890, in an attempt to enforce the ban on the Ghost Dance, U.S. officials arrested some Lakota people. The next day, soldiers began to take away the group’s weapons. When one of the Lakota people’s guns accidently went off, the U.S. soldiers opened fire. Having given up their guns, many of the Lakota people were defenseless. The soldiers killed between 250 and 300 Lakota men, women, and children.