Tag Archives: America

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

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Mount Rushmore National Memorial

A sculpture in a mountain!

  • Mount Rushmore is in South Dakota, United States of America, and is controlled by the United States National Park Service.
  • Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved in the side of the granite mountain, Mount Rushmore.
  • The Mount Rushmore sculpture depicts four US president heads – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
  • Mount Rushmore National Memorial was carved in 1927-1941 by Gutzon Borglum, a notable sculptor, and a team of 400 workers.
  • Mount Rushmore’s carved heads are 18 meters (60 feet) high and make up the  largest sculpture ever carved.

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Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Image courtesy of Stock.Xching
  • The Mount Rushmore sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, made plaster models that were one twelfth the size of the finished sculpture so that the workers had a guide to follow.
  • Dynamite was used to carve 90% of the Mount Rushmore heads.
  • Around 3 million people visit Mount Rushmore every year.
  • After approximately two year’s work on the sculpted Thomas Jefferson, bad cracking was found in the granite, so Jefferson was removed and restarted on the other side of Washington.
  • Each day during construction, the Mount Rushmore workers had to climb 700 stairs before they could start work.
Bibliography:
Mount Rushmore 19 February 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore>
Grant, N 1994, People and Places, RD Press, Australia

Amazon River

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Amazon River

One of the longest rivers…

  • The Amazon River is in South America and crosses most of the continent, and runs all the way across the top of Brazil.
  • The Amazon River is generally named the second largest river in the world.
  • There is a debate about the Amazon River being the second longest river in the world. More accurate measuring systems in recent years suggests that the Amazon River is longer than the Nile (supposedly the longest river), which reaches 5,499 to 6,690 km (3,417 – 4,160 miles) in length, whereas the Amazon River is said to be 6,259 to 6,800 km (3,889 – 4,200 miles) in length.
  • The Amazon River discharges more water than the other top seven largest rivers combined, with an average discharge of approximately 209,000 m3/s (7,381,000 cu ft/s).
  • The Amazon River has the largest river basin in the world being 7, 050, 000 square km (2, 720, 000 square miles) and contains many river systems.

Amazon River, Aerial View, Green, Blue, Landscape, Ten Random Facts, Flickr, CIFOR

Amazon River
Image courtesy of CIFOR/Flickr
  • The Amazon River ranges in width, depending on the season, being 1.6 – 10 km (1 – 6.2 miles) wide in the dry season, and in the wet season the river can reach up to 48 km (3o miles) wide.
  • The Amazon River starts its flooding season in November and continues to around June.
  • The Amazon River is the home to many animals, most notably the Amazon River dolphin (boto) and the anaconda snake.
  • The Amazon River is the home of over 5,600 known fish species.
  • The Amazon River has an underground river, called Hamza, flowing underneath it, which is about 6,000 km (3, 730 miles) in length, and generally follows a similar path to the Amazon.
Bibliography:
Amazon River 10 February 2013 , Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River>

Playdough

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Playdough

What do you want to make?

  • Playdough is a popular modelling medium for children.
  • Home-made playdough is commonly made from flour, water, salt and oil and there are numerous recipes available including cooked, uncooked and edible playdough.
  • The first commercial version of playdough was invented by Noah McVicker and his nephew Joseph and was first manufactured in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America.
  • The McVicker’s playdough was called Play-Doh, made by a new company they called Rainbow Crafts in 1956, Play-Doh is now owned by Hasbro.
  • Originally, Play-Doh (although it wasn’t called that at the time) was manufactured to clean coal marks from wallpaper in the 1930s.

Playdough, Roses, Mushroom, Blue, Red, Green, White, Blob, Play-Doh, Ten Random Facts

  • In 1955, the McVicker’s non-toxic wallpaper cleaner was introduced to children in schools and became an almost overnight success.  Prior to this, classrooms were using much stiffer materials that were difficult to model and stained hands.
  • More than 2 billion containers of Play-Doh were sold between 1955 – 2005.
  • Petroleum has been added to manufactured Play-Doh to obtain softness qualities.
  • Play-Doh has been sold in 75 countries around the world and similar playdough products are also sold in numerous countries.
  • Approximately 100 million containers of Play-Doh are sold each year.
Bibliography:
Play-Doh 14 January 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-Doh>

Lantana

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Lantana

Nasty and nice!

  • Lantana is a perennial shrub consisting of approximately 150 species.
  • Lantana belongs to the verbena family, ‘Verbenaceae’ and range in size from 50 cm (1.6 ft) to 2 metres (6.6 ft) tall.
  • The flowers of the Lantana are in small clusters, and can be yellow, orange, red, pink, purple and white or a mixture of these.
  • Lantana blooms most or all of  the year depending on the plant species and the weather.
  • The fruits of Lantana are black with one seed and are prized by birds, which is one of the major causes of the spread of the plant.

Lantana, White, Flowers, Weed, Queensland. Australia, Ten Random Facts, Many

  • Lantana was introduced to Australia before the 1850s, and has become one of its major pests.
  • The leaves from Lantana are poisonous to most animals.
  • In Australia, lantana covers millions of hectares of pasture, natural bushland and  forests.
  • Lantana flowers are attractive to bees and butterflies , and some types of weaver birds use them to decorate their nests.
  • Lantana is native to the tropical regions of North and South America and Africa.
Bibliography:
Lantana n.d, Weeds Australia, <http://www.weeds.org.au/cgi-bin/weedident.cgi?tpl=plant.tpl&ibra=all&card=S03>

Niagara Falls

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Niagara Falls

Pretty but dangerous.

  • The Niagara Falls is a group of three waterfalls: the Horseshoe Falls, the American Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls and sits on the border of the US state of New York, and Ontario, Canada.
  • The Niagara Falls are very wide and at their highest point are 51 meters (167 feet) in height.  They are most significant due to the enormous volume of water that falls over the edge, on average approximately 110,000 m3 (4 million cubic feet) per minute.
  • The Niagara Falls produces large amounts of  hydroelectricity power for the surrounding cities.
  • The Niagara Falls erodes easily, and is estimated in 50,000 years there will be no falls at all.
  • The name ‘Niagara Falls’ is from the American-Indian tribe the Mohawks.

Niagara Falls, America, Ten Random Facts, Free Digital Photos, Ontario, Canada, waterfall,

Niagara Falls
Image courtesy of George Stojkovic/ Free Digital Photos
  • Fifteen people have intentionally gone over the falls; some jumped, some were protected by barrels; some died, some survived with injuries.
  • The first person to go over the Niagara Falls was a 63 year old school teacher from Michigan, Annie Edison Taylor, in October, 24, 1901, in a barrel.
  • A number of people have tight-roped over Niagara Falls, the first was Jean François ‘Blondin’ Gravelet.  Tight-roping and going over the falls is now banned and is illegal.
  • Niagara Falls as been featured in many movies, including ‘Superman II’.
  • In 2009, it was estimated 28 million people visited the Niagara Falls that year.
Bibliography:
Niagara Falls 31 December 2012 , Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls>

Cherry

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Cherry

Red as a rose, sweet as love.

  • Cherries are stone fruit since they have one seed in them, and have an outer flesh.
  • Cherries are the fruit of certain species of ‘Prunus’, and most cherries that humans eat come from varieties of the sour cherry (Prunus cerasus), which is mostly used for cooking purposes, or the wild cherry (Prunus avium).
  • The word ‘cherry’ comes from the common Greek word, translated into Latin, ‘Cerasum’.
  • The cherry tree cultivars are mainly native to the Northern Hemisphere.
  • Several caterpillars rely on cherry tree cultivars for food.

 Cherries, Cherry, Sour, Eatable, Many, Lots, Glass, Ten Random Facts

  • The word ‘cherry’ refers to the fruit, tree, similar ornamental trees and strangely enough, sometimes almonds.
  • The cherry tree’s prime season for harvest is Summer.
  • In 2007, cherry trees produced approximately 2 million tonnes of cherries world wide. 40% of this production belonged to Europe and 13% belonged to the United States of America.
  • Turkey was the top producer in 2009, with 417.7 thousand tonnes, followed by  the United States with 390.7 tonnes.
  • Cherries have been proven to decrease pain, swelling and tenderness in rats.
Bibliography:
Cherry 28 December 2012, Wikipedia,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry>

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