In 2005, Guinness chose 9 November as "International Guinness World Records Day". This is to encourage breaking of world records. In 2006 about 100,000 people participated in over 10 countries.
In February 2008, NBC aired "The Top 100 Guinness World Records of All Time". Guinness World Records made the complete list available on their website.
On August 18 2019,Maliha Mohammed from Mombasa in Kenya broke the record for cooking the longest time, a record 3 days non stop.
Mime
Mime is a type of acting that does not use words or speech. Mime is all about physical movement and exaggerating your expressions. Mimes (people who practice mime) must use their actions to send a or tell a story. They are not allowed to speak directly to the audience.
Probably the most well-known mime was Marcel Marceau. Mime originates from Rome and Greece. Some people also believe that cavemen used mime to communicate as they could not talk.
Kangaroo
A kangaroo is an Australian marsupial. It belongs to the genus "Macropus". The common name 'kangaroo' is used for the four large species, and there are another 50 species of smaller macropods. The kangaroos are common in Australia and can also be found in New Guinea.
There are four living species of kangaroos:
There are also about 50 other smaller macropods in the macropodidae family.
Kangaroos hop to move around quickly, and walk on two or four legs while moving slowly. They cannot walk in any direction and cannot hop backwards. They can hop or jump as far as about three times their own height. They can also swim if necessary. The kangaroo is a herbivore, eating mainly grass, but some species also eat shrubs. A female Kangaroo has three vaginas.
Kangaroos are marsupials: they carry their young in a special pouch on their bodies. Baby kangaroos are called joeys. Kangaroos live in large groups, called mobs. Each group is made up of breeding females, their young and several adult males. One of the males is the dominant male, he is the only one that breeds with the females in the mob.
Because they are mostly found in Australia, Australians see it as a national symbol. The kangaroo is featured holding the Australian coat of arms. The Australian airline, Qantas, uses the kangaroo as its emblem. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) also a has a kangaroo emblem.
Kangaroos can be dangerous because of their powerful legs. They can lean back on their tails to deliver powerful kicks. In 2009, a man went to save his dog which had chased a kangaroo into a farm dam. The kangaroo was able to hold the dog underwater nearly drowning it. The kangaroo gave the man several big kicks before he was able to grab his dog and escape from the dam. He needed hospital treatment for his injuries.
The word "kangaroo" is an Australian Aboriginal word from the Guugu Yimidhirr people of north Queensland. The word was recorded by Captain James Cook in August 1770. It was the name for the grey kangaroo, Macropus robustus. Cook's ship, the "HMS Endeavour", had been damaged on coral on the Great Barrier Reef. It took seven weeks for the ship to be repaired on the banks of a river, now the Endeavour River, at the site of the town of Cooktown. This gave Cook, Joseph Banks and other crew members time to explore the area and the plants and animals. The skin and skull of a kangaroo was taken back to England to be put on show. In James Boswell's book "Life of Johnson" he describes Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1793 hopping around the room to explain to people how a kangaroo moved. When Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788, they were surprised that the Aborigines did not know the word "kangaroo." It took them a while to realize that Aborigines at Sydney spoke a different language to those from Cooktown.
There was a now-extinct family of giant kangaroos, the Sthenurinae. They were adapted for browsing in woodland areas, rather than open grassland. The largest ("Procoptodon goliah") had an estimated body mass of 240 kg., which is almost three times the weight of the largest living kangaroos. Probably they moved at slower speeds, since hopping was not possible. They would have moved by striding (walking). The family went extinct about 30,000 years ago.
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross; c. 1820 or 1821 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American anti-slavery worker, and humanitarian. She was also a Union spy and the first black woman to ever lead an American mission during the American Civil War. She was born into slavery but she escaped. During her life, she made nineteen trips. She helped more than 300 slaves escape. She used the Underground Railroad.
When Tubman was a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, she was whipped and beaten by many different masters. When she was very young, an angry overseer threw a heavy metal weight at another slave. The weight accidentally hit Tubman's head. That caused seizures, headaches, powerful visionary and dream experiences. She had those problems all her life. Tubman believed the visions and vivid dreams came from God.
In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia. Slaves were free there. She later returned to Maryland to rescue her family. She eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Slave owners offered large rewards for the return of their slaves. Tubman was never caught because nobody knew she was freeing the slaves.
When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army. She worked first as a cook and nurse. Later she was an armed scout and spy. She was the first woman to lead an armed group in the war. She guided the Combehee River Raid, which freed more than 700 slaves in South Carolina. After the war, she moved to her family home in Auburn, New York. There she cared for her aging parents. She became active in the women's suffrage movement in New York until she became ill. Near the end of her life, she lived in a home for elderly African Americans. Years earlier, she had helped create that home. Harriet was a leader and still is.
Tubman's mother Rit (whose father might have been a white man) was a cook. Her father Ben was a woodsman. He did the timber work on a plantation. They married around 1808. According to court records, they had nine children together. Linah was born in 1808, Mariah Ritty in 1811, Soph in 1813, Robert in 1816, Minty (Harriet) in 1821, Ben in 1823, Rachel in 1825, Henry in 1830, and Moses in 1832.
Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had very little time for her family. Tubman took care of a younger brother and a baby. This was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodas hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to watch the baby. Tubman was whipped. She later talked about a day when she was whipped five times before breakfast. She had the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.
As a child, Tubman also worked at the home of a planter named James Cook. She had to check muskrat traps in nearby marshes. She did that work even after she got measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodas. Her mother nursed her back to health. Brodas then hired her out again. Tubman spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness. She compared herself to "the boy on the Swanee River" (referring to Stephen Foster's song "Old Folks at Home"). When she was older and stronger, she did field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.