Most penguins lay two eggs per year but emperor penguins lay only one. After the penguins mate, the mother lays her egg or eggs and soon goes in the ocean to eat. The father and mother take turns keeping the eggs warm, and the chicks warm after hatching. The parent on baby duty has nothing to eat. Parent penguins call to find each other amongst the thousands of birds when they return from the feeding grounds. The time one parent is alone with the eggs or chicks and going hungry may be weeks or months depending on what kind of penguin they are. If one parent does not return, the other must abandon the egg to go and eat. Global warming is a threat to penguins along with other arctic animals.
Penguins eat krill, fish, squid, and other small animals from the ocean, which they catch. They are at home in the ocean. They come up on the land or ice to lay their eggs and raise the chicks. They don't eat there because they live in places where the land has no food for them. In most species the birds all nest together in a huge group, called a rookery. They usually make nests on the ground with rocks or mud.
Penguins cannot taste fish. This was discovered when a research team noticed they were missing some key genes for taste. A closer look at the DNA of penguins showed that all species lack functioning genes for the receptors of sweet, umami, and bitter tastes. It doesn't matter to them, because they swallow the fish whole.
There are 15-20 living species (types) of penguins. The white-flippered penguin is today generally considered a subspecies of the little penguin. It is still unclear if the royal penguin is a subspecies of the macaroni penguin. Scientists are also uncertain whether rockhopper penguins are one, two, or three species.
March 6
1953
1953 (MCMLIII) was .
1820
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is where a person eats the flesh of another person. It is also called anthropophagy. Anthropologists are not sure how widespread it was, but it did happen in some societies. It also occurs in non-human animals.
The word 'cannibalism' comes from the Island Carib people of the Lesser Antilles. They got a long-standing reputation as cannibals when their legends were recorded in the 17th century. Some controversy exists over the accuracy of these legends.
Cannibalism was widespread in the past among humans in many parts of the world, continuing into the 19th century in some isolated South Pacific cultures, and to the present day in parts of tropical Africa. Cannibalism was certainly practiced in New Guinea and in parts of the Solomon Islands, and flesh markets existed in some parts of Melanesia. Fiji was once known as the 'Cannibal Isles'. Cannibalism has been well documented around the world, from Fiji to the Amazon Basin to the Congo to Māori New Zealand.
May 29
Halloween
Halloween is a celebration on the night of October 31st. It is most practised in the United States and Canada. Children wear costumes and go to people's homes saying "Trick or treat!" to ask for candy (sweets in the UK) and people give it to them. The suggestion is: "Give me a treat or I will play a trick on you." People mainly dress up as ghosts, witches, or other scary things for Halloween. It is often referred to as ‘the scariest time of the year’.
For Christians it is the eve of All Saints' Day, which begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide. This covers the three days – October 31 (All-Hallows Eve or Hallowe'en), November 1 (All Saints) and November 2 (All Souls). All Hallows' is a Christianized holiday and originated in Ireland, it also has pagan roots.
Halloween originated from Ireland. The pagan holiday "Samhain", which the "All Saints" holy day replaced, was also known as the "Day of the Dead". Many wiccans and modern pagans celebrate the "Day of the Dead". This is a "happy" holiday (even though it celebrates death). It is the day that some believed the souls of dead people come back to Earth. Pope Gregory III originally designated Halloween on November 1 as a time to honor all saints. Soon, All Saints Day incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain.
Many Lutheran churches celebrate a holiday on November 2 called the Reformation. This holiday celebrates the day that Martin Luther put The Ninety-Five Theses on a church door.
During Halloween some people wear a costume. People have worn costumes at Halloween for centuries. Wearing a costume may come from Celtic festivals of Samhain and Calan Gaeaf. It could also be from the Christian Allhallowtide.
Early costumes were usually scary. They were often supernatural beings or from folklore. In the 1930s costumes of characters from literature, radio, or movies became popular. Scary costumes are still popular.
Frida Kahlo
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954), usually known as Frida Kahlo, was a Mexican painter. She was known for her surreal and very personal works. She was married to Diego Rivera, also a well-known painter.
She was born in Coyoacán, Mexico. She had polio that left her disabled when she was 6 years old and some people think that she may have had spina bifida (a birth defect affecting the development of part of the spine) as well. She studied medicine and was going to become a doctor. Because of a traffic accident at age 18 which badly injured her, she had periods of severe pain for the rest of her life. After this accident, Kahlo no longer continued her medical studies but took up painting. She used ideas about things that had happened to her. Her paintings are often shocking in the way they show pain and the harsh lives of women, especially her feelings about not being able to have children. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are of herself. She was also influenced by native Mexican culture, shown in bright colors, with a mixture of realism and symbolism. Her paintings attracted the attention of the artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married. She was openly bisexual and was a communist. She died of a pulmonary embolism caused by bronchopneumonia in Coyoacán.
Kahlo's work is sometimes called "surrealist", and although she organized art shows several times with European surrealists, she herself did not like that label. Her attention to female themes, and the honesty in her painting them, made her something of a feminist cult figure in the last decades of the 20th century. Some of her work is seen at the Frida Kahlo Museum, found in her birthplace and home in suburban Mexico City.
1932
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is a book written by Hunter S. Thompson. The book is based on an article Thompson wrote for "Rolling Stone" magazine. It was later made into a movie directed by Terry Gilliam and starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro.
What originally was a two-hundred-fifty-word photo-caption-job for "Sports Illustrated" grew to a novel-length feature story for "Rolling Stone". Thompson said publisher Jann Wenner had "liked the first 20 or so jangled pages enough to take it seriously on its own terms and tentatively scheduled it for publication — which gave me the push I needed to keep working on it". He had first submitted a 2,500 word manuscript to "Sports Illustrated" that was "aggressively rejected".
Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo were based on Thompson and Acosta's life and experiences. Thompson wrote that he concluded their March trip by spending some thirty-six hours alone in a hotel room "feverishly writing in my notebook" about his experiences. The genesis of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" is in that notebook.
The novel does not have a clear plot. Frequently, it is difficult for a reader to know what is imaginary to the fictional characters and what is really happening as fact.