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Hazel Ying Lee was 19 when she decided she wanted to be a pilot. But the year was 1931, and Lee had two strikes against her. She was a woman, and she was Asian American. Although other women had overcome discrimination to take to the skies, there were no Asian American female pilots—not yet. Lee would become the first.

Lee had read about a new flight school in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. Named the Chinese Flying Club of Portland, its purpose was to train Chinese American pilots so they could join the Chinese military and defend China from Japan, which had recently invaded. Lee, who was Chinese American, signed up for lessons. She wasn’t just fascinated with flight. She also wanted to defend her parents’ country of birth. Lee earned her pilot’s license in October 1932 and traveled to China soon after. But when she learned that the Chinese air force didn’t accept women pilots, she began flying commercial planes instead.

By 1938, the year Lee returned to the United States, Japan controlled a large portion of China. Lee found a job with an organization that sent military supplies to China. Meanwhile, the United States sympathized with China, and its relationship with Japan was growing worse. In 1939, World War II began, pitting Britain, France, Russia, and China against Germany, Italy, and Japan. When the United States entered the war in 1941, Lee saw another opportunity to help the allied cause—and this time, she would have a chance to fly military planes.

In 1942, Lee went to Texas to begin training for the Women’s Flying Training Detachment, which would eventually become the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). WASP trained women (who would become known as “WASPs”) to fly military aircraft. Lee was one of only two Asian American women and five women of color accepted into the WASP program. She devoted some of her time to educating the other trainees about Chinese culture. She often wrote the other pilots’ names on their planes in Chinese characters.

Why is English pronounced so differently in the United States and the United Kingdom, or in New York City and Dallas, Texas? It’s hard to trace how and why a particular accent develops. But researchers say they were able to hear the beginning of a brand-new accent in a series of recordings. You could call this accent “Antarctic.”

Although Antarctica has no permanent residents, a small number of people, mostly scientists, stay on the continent’s research bases for months at a time. This temporary population has many of the ingredients necessary to develop an accent. They are geographically isolated for much of the year because travel to and from Antarctica is so difficult during the winter. And since phone calls to the outside world are expensive, they mostly talk to one another. Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich in Germany wanted to find out whether these conditions would change how people talk.

The researchers asked a group of 26 people to record themselves talking every few weeks during a six-month stay at Antarctica’s Rothera Research Station. The group included scientists, a chef, an engineer, and a plumber. All of them were told to say the same 29 English words each time they recorded. When the researchers analyzed the recordings, they found very subtle changes in the way these words were being pronounced over time. They also found that the 26 Antarctic residents were beginning to pronounce these words more similarly to one another, suggesting that a new accent was forming.

Researchers say that a couple of factors probably influenced the new accent. In addition to being isolated, the group members came from different parts of the world, and each person added their own flavor to the way English was being spoken. People who move to a new city do this as well. They begin to speak more like the city’s population, but they also influence the accents heard in the city with their own native accent. That’s why local accents change over time.

The Antarctica participants didn’t notice that their accents were changing—and according to researchers, that’s how accent formation works. It happens very slowly. According to Jonathan Harrington, a professor of phonetics and speech processing at Ludwig-Maximillians-University of Munich, a new accent isn’t usually detectable until the next generation begins to speak.

“For accents to develop to the point where they are noticeable, it really takes a generational change,” Harrington told the BBC. “Children are very good imitators, so that process of memorizing each other’s speech is magnified in children. If the [people in Antarctica] were to have children, like the settlers on the Mayflower when they went to America, the accent would become more stable.”

Since Antarctica doesn’t have a permanent human population, its accent will never fully develop. Still, researchers were fascinated to hear its birth.

Did you know that Filipino people first arrived in what’s now the United States sometime in the 18th or early 19th century? These early settlers had left the Philippines to serve as sailors and servants aboard Spanish trading ships. At some point, they escaped to North America, where they established the fishing village of Saint Malo along the shores of Lake Borgne in what is now Louisiana. The town would survive into the 20th century.

If you haven’t heard this story, you’re not alone. According to The Asian American Foundation (TAAF), three in 10 Americans can’t name one historical event involving Asian Americans. A new series of graphic novels is meant to help address this problem.

In the first volume of Fighting to Belong, which was released in February, a group of middle school students travel through time and witness important events in the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, including the founding of Saint Malo. Volumes 2 and 3 will be available in September 2024 and January 2025. All three volumes will be as colorful and compelling as any comic book because they’re written by comic book authors.

The series was written by Amy Chu and Alexander Chang. Chu is no stranger to the genre—she’s written comic books and TV shows for DC, Marvel, and Netflix and dreamed up storylines for Wonder Woman, Ant-Man, and Iron Man. Louie Chin provided the illustrations for the series.

“With these books, I hope kids and their parents learn that superheroes are real people in history who fought for the rights we have today,” said Chu.

TAAF said the graphic novels aim to do more than just teach about events. Since their history is not widely known in the United States, Asian Americans often get left out of the American story, as if their voices and cultures have been silenced. This can lead to prejudice and discrimination.

“We believe education is the long-term solution to fight hate, and our hope is that when students see themselves in history books and their peers learn about these stories in class, we can create a sense of belonging and shared humanity,” said Norman Chen, the chief executive officer of TAAF.

If you’re going to try to break the world rope climbing record, why not do it in the middle of a busy city? Anouk Garnier of France climbed a rope 361 feet (110 meters) to the second level of Paris’s Eiffel Tower in a quest to make the record books—and to raise money for cancer research. 

“My dream has come true. It’s magical,” Garnier told reporters after the climb. “If there was one thing I never doubted, it was that I was going to do it.”

Garnier, a two-time world obstacle course champion, started rope climbing in 2022 because she wanted to try something new. When she learned that Ida Mathilde Steensgaard of Denmark set the women’s rope climbing record by climbing 85 feet (26 meters) at the Copenhagen Opera House, she thought she might be able to reach even greater heights.

“I said to myself, 26 meters isn’t that far. What monument could I climb?” Garnier told Agence France-Presse. She set her sights on the Eiffel Tower, training for a year before the big event.

Washington, D.C., is famous for the cherry trees whose pink and red blossoms draw more than one million visitors each year. The trees are more than just beautiful. They’re a symbol of the friendship between the United States and Japan. Recently, Japan’s prime minister reinforced that alliance by offering a generous gift.

On April 10, during an official visit to the U.S., Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida announced that Japan would give its ally 250 cherry trees. The Japanese government decided on the gift after learning that hundreds of Washington’s cherry trees will be removed this summer in order to rebuild a crumbling seawall around the Tidal Basin, a reservoir along which many of the trees are planted. When the city’s Potomac River floods, the water in the reservoir floods as well, damaging nearby trees.

Caitlin Clark may not have a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) title, but she’s already a basketball legend. Clark earned superstar status as a guard for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. Now, she’s headed for the WNBA.

Clark scored 30 points in the championship game of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. It wasn’t enough to win against the undefeated University of South Carolina, which beat Iowa 87–75. But fans recognized a once-in-a-lifetime talent. Almost 19 million viewers watched the game on TV or online, making the event the most popular in the history of women’s college basketball. In the stadium, the crowd gave Clark a round of applause when she was subbed out after it became clear that South Carolina would win.

The Colorado River is amazing. Flowing from the state of Colorado down to Mexico, the river provides water and electric power to people throughout the arid Southwest. This wouldn’t be possible without a feat of human engineering called the Hoover Dam. Built in the 1930s by the U.S. government, the dam harnessed the power of the unpredictable river, turning it into a valuable resource. But the Hoover Dam has also had negative environmental consequences. 

In a new book called The Wild River and the Great Dam, author Simon Boughton explores the construction of the dam and its impact on the natural world. The book is filled with historical photos and quotes from people who were involved in the Hoover Dam project. To mark Earth Day (April 22), In the News spoke to Boughton about how the dam has affected our planet. Here is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.

In the News: Why did you choose the Hoover Dam as your topic?

Simon Boughton: I had a childhood fascination with big things and big machines and building things. This book began with that childhood fascination with construction. I was interested in the audacious engineering story, just building this huge thing in the desert with new machinery. And it does turn out to be an engineering story about solving problems and building big things. The other thing that really spoke to me about it is that it turned out to be a really interesting human story as well as a piece of social history. I found it really fascinating.

ITN: In the book, you point out that the Southwest is largely desert. Why did people want to change that by building a dam that would supply water?

SB: It’s not an easy thing to settle in a desert. So, it was just a matter of practical necessity to support this flood of people that came from the East to the West during the late 19th century and early 20th century. In order for more people to live there, there has to be water.

ITK: This land had to be turned into something that was usable.

SB: Yeah, I mean, I’m very conscious when thinking about the story that I don’t think it was inevitable that this had to happen. It’s a story about something that, to some people, seemed like a good idea but turned out to have other consequences. I’m wary of sounding like it was something we had to do. It’s something we chose to do. 

ITK: It felt like from the government’s perspective that they believed that they had to do it. But that’s just one perspective. In your book, you quoted U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur. In 1930, he said the Hoover Dam would be “one of man’s greatest victories over nature.”

SB: Yeah, that’s particularly the language [of that era] of sort of bringing nature into subjugation. There’s also a quote about the river running wild through the West and resembling an untamed horse, and finally [after the dam was built], the horse being tamed and harnessed.

There are [also] these different ways that the word conservation came to be understood over the course of the 20th century. [At one time], if water reached the sea without being used, it was considered wasted, so that their version of conservation was that you had to put water to use. Today, we talk about conservation as something else—not using too much of a resource or being careful how we use it. 

ITK: Can you talk a little bit about the positive and negative impacts of the dam?

SB: The dam was a success in the short term. The amount of water that was stored by the dam and the amount of power that was generated by the dam was far in excess of what people thought they needed at the time. The impact of the building of the dam on the farming communities down river was almost immediate. Immediately, the supply of water became predictable and reliable and manageable. But because it was a success, it created a kind of hunger for more. I think what happened was that the government got caught up in this cycle of trying to squeeze more out of the river over the second part of the 20th century. The story became one of trying to get ahead of economic and population growth.

In the 15th century, a powerful duke abandoned his castle, leaving it to slowly decay. Archaeologists recently found the remains of this castle—along with artifacts its residents left behind.

The castle, known as the Château de l’Hermine, was built in the village of Vannes by John IV, Duke of Brittany, in 1381. Brittany is now part of France, but between the 10th and 16th centuries it was a feudal state, sort of like its own small country. Brittany was ruled by a series of dukes, and Vannes was its capital. The castle was used for about 100 years until it was abandoned by John’s grandson Francis II, also a duke. Another building was constructed on top of the castle ruins in the 1700s.

Parents often worry that kids and teens focus too much on their phones. But in a recent survey, many teens said they value time away from their devices.

Conducted in late 2023, the Pew Research Center survey gathered data from 1,453 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17, along with one parent or guardian per teen. Pew’s website says the survey aimed to get a sense of a generation in which teens are constantly online by seeking an answer to the question, “How are young people navigating this ‘always on’ environment?” Pew also wanted answers from parents, who are often concerned that spending too much time online might be harmful to kids.

Teen survey participants said they value their phones for many reasons. Sixty-nine percent of teens said their phones make it easier for them to pursue hobbies and interests, while 30 percent said the devices help them improve their social skills.

But the participants value time away from devices as well. Seventy-two percent of them said they often or sometimes feel peaceful without their phones, 44 percent said they sometimes feel anxious without them. Only 38 percent of the teens believe they spend too much time on their phones, while a little more than half said they think they strike a good balance between time spent on and away from their phones.

Meanwhile, some parents are keeping a close eye on their teens’ phone use, though this is mostly true for parents of younger teens. Almost 64 percent of parents of teens aged 13 to 14 look through their teens’ phones, while 41 percent of parents of teens aged 15 to 17 do so. Just under half the parents in the survey said they limit the amount of time their teens can be on their phones. 

Interestingly, parents and teens have different views of adult phone use. Thirty-one percent of parents said they often or sometimes get distracted by their phones while talking to their teens. But when teens were asked if their parents get distracted by their phones, 46 percent said yes.

Imagine being able to travel as fast as an airplane without ever taking flight. That’s the idea behind the hyperloop, a super speedy form of transportation technology that people have been hyping for years. Could the opening of a new test track mean the hyperloop is in our future?

Like a train, a hyperloop carries passengers in a pod, or car, along a track. But there are some key differences. Unlike train cars, hyperloop pods aren’t connected to one another, so a single pod can go in its own direction. Hyperloops are designed to travel much faster than a traditional train by moving with as little friction from the ground or the air as possible. This is achieved in a couple of ways. With help from electromagnets, the pods hover over the tracks. Also, technology sucks almost all the air out of the tubes. Some experts claim that hyperloop pods will be able to travel over 600 miles per hour (970 kilometers per hour).

Located at the Hyperloop Center in the Netherlands, the new test track is Europe’s longest so far, consisting of a 420-meter (1,400-foot) tube. There’s also a fork in the tube—a section where it splits into two directions. Experts say this is important if they hope to build tubes going to many places.

“[The fork] really creates a network effect where you sort of have a highway of tubes, and vehicles can take an on and offramp or they can take a lane switch to go to a different part of Europe or to a different destination,” Marinus van der Meijs, the technology and engineering director at Hardt Hyperloop, which built the test pod, told the Associated Press.

This isn’t the first time hyperloop hopes have been raised. In 2013, Elon Musk touted plans to open a hyperloop in California, but nothing has materialized so far. And in 2023, after spending several years developing technology, a U.S. company called Hyperloop One shut down. The new test track has revived the dream.

“I expect by 2030 you will have the first hyperloop route, maybe 5 kilometers (3 miles) in which people will actually be transporting passengers,” the Hyperloop Center’s director, Sascha Lamme, told the Associated Press.

Doubters say there’s not much chance the hyperloop will be successful. It would require governments to agree to build a network of tubes within countries and across borders. And that would cost a lot of money.

But Lamme is more optimistic.

“If you look at how highways were developed over time, it goes exponentially when the technology is ready,” he told the Guardian.