What did you learn this week? Let us know in the comments or at education@ngs.org.
This week, we learned …
… James Bond’s fake Day of the Dead parade was so cool Mexico wants to do it for real. (Teachers! Learn more about Dia de los Muertos here!)
… South Africa’s amazing MeerKAT telescope array spotted more than 1,300 unknown galaxies. (Teachers! Learn more about radio telescopes here!)

Photograph courtesy Square Kilometre Array
… an Australian school has banned clapping.
… where U.S. roads bend to the curvature of the Earth.
… how to spot a dodgy statistic. (Teachers! Learn more about statistics here.)
… why hummus unites and divides the Middle East.
… why good storytellers are happier people.
… LGBT history is coming to California classrooms.

Photograph by dbking, courtesy Wikimedia. CC-BY-2.0
… the bicycle problem that nearly broke mathematics.
… all elm trees in England are clones of a 2,000-year-old import from the Roman Empire. (Teachers! Learn more about plant clones here.)

Photograph by Ulmus man, courtesy Wikimedia. CC-BY-SA-3.0
… the biggest city in Africa shut churches and mosques to reduce noise.
… how blue-collar vocational education is leaving girls behind.

Photograph by Eugene Richards, National Geographic
… 10 great tips for new teachers.
Too much noise makes us so much irritating and violent.. It’s neither good for environment nor for our health.. Its so weird that mosques and churches are banned to reduce noise pollution in Lagos.. In fact people should not use loud speakers in such holy places.. They are for peace but by the use of instruminstruments they are making it a religious issue..
Hummus war is better than any other war… At least no one gets hurt, homeless..
Clapping is banned!!! Seriously ?? I just don’t understand this.. There are a lot of factors which are much and miss stornger than clapping to those children who are sensitive to noise.. Maybe it would be little helpful for them.. But clapping is a way to encourage someone…
you are right Rubeena , its a strange thing to hear that clapping is banned