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14 Things We Learned This Week

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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!)

South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope array spotted more than 1,300 galaxies in this patch of sky. Prior to MeerKAT, there were 70 known galaxies in the region. The panels to the right show two distant galaxies with massive black holes at their centers. At lower left is a galaxy approximately 200 million light years away, where hydrogen gas is being used up to form stars in large numbers.
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.

The six colors of the LGBT rainbow flag symbolize life (red), healing (orange), sunlight (yellow), nature (green), serenity (blue), and spirituality (purple). The white stars on the U.S. flag symbolize the 50 states, and their position on a blue background symbolizes, in the words of Ben Franklin and John Adams, “a new constellation.”
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.)

The “Preston Twins” here are possibly the oldest English elms in the U.K. The trees, in Brighton, England, are about 400 years old.
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.

We love this photo of a woman and her boyfriend repairing her dump truck in Williston, North Dakota.
Photograph by Eugene Richards, National Geographic

 

 

… 10 great tips for new teachers.

 

 

… we just missed the World Santa Claus Congress. Ho ho ho. (Teachers! Learn more about Santa, NORAD, and Krampus here.)