Beyond the blog

8 awesome space facts 1. One of Jupiter's 50 moons, Ganymede, is orbiting the gas giant. The largest moon in the entire solar system, Ganymede is bigger than the planet mercury. 2. Astronauts on the international space station captured the June 12, 2009 eruption of Sarychev Peak, a volcano in the northern part of Russia's Kuril Island chain.     3.  Mission Specialist Bruce McCandless 2 performed an untethered spacewalk, going farther than any astronaut while unattached to a shuttle  4. the star called V838 monocerotis lives in the milky way galaxy 20,000 light-years away. When it lit up in 2002, its "light echo" revealed dust patterns, show here, in its surrounding cloud structures. 5. Looking more like bizarre rock formation than columns of cold gas in space, these iconic towers are referred to as the Pillars of Creation because the gas is creating new stars. Looking more like vertical rock formations in a cave than columns o...

13 sweet fact about chocolate Chocolate is a preparation of roasted and ground cacao seeds that are made in the form of a liquid, paste, or in a block, which may also be used as a flavoring ingredient in other foods. 1. Legend says that Aztec ruler Moctezuma drank 50 cups of chocolate every day. Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin was the ninth tlatoani or ruler of the Aztec Empire, reigning from 1502 to 1520. 2. Manie is home to a 1700 pound chocolate moose named Lenny. A 1,700-pound behemoth, Lenny is a milk-chocolate moose, the star of an edible animal habitat hidden inside of Len Libby Candies, a chocolatier in Scarborough, Maine. Lenny's pals are some dark chocolate black bears: 380-pound Mama Libby and her cubs, Cocoa and Chip, who are 80 pounds each. 3. A 100-year-old chocolate bar sold for $700. The 10-centimeter (four-inch) chocolate bar was part of a 3,500-pound load of cocoa and chocolate taken by British explorer Captain Robert Scott on his 1901-1904 expedition to the f...

         15 cool things about national monuments Monuments are built all over the world to honor history. Many are parts of national parks or sites and are cared for by governments. Others are protected by an organization called the united nations. Checks out some of the world's most amazing monuments. 1. The National Mall, a national park in Washington, D.C, with several national monuments has 41 KM of sidewalks. National Mall is home to iconic monuments including the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. 2. The walls of Irelands Blarney castle are 18 feet thick in some parts. The castle originally dates from before 1200 and was destroyed and rebuilt in 1446 by Cormac Laidir MacCarthy. 3. Construction of Spain's Sagrada Familia a church started in 1882 probably won't be done until at least 2026. The Basílica de la Sagrada Família, also known as the Sagrada Família, is a large unfinished Roman Catholic minor basilica in Barcelona, Catalo...

15 cool things about dinosaurs dinosaurs are a group of reptiles that appeared in the Triassic period between 243 and 233.23 million years. They became the terrestrial vertebrates after the jurassic-Triassic extinction event.    1. Scientist Richard Owens coined the term dinosaur in the 1800s. it means "terrible lizard". 2. Mamenchisaurs could stretch its neck up to 30 feet while a Giraffe's neck only stretches up to 6 feet long. Mamenchisaurus was first discovered in 1952 on the construction site of the Yitang Highway in Sichuan, China. Mamenchisaurus is a sauropod dinosaur genus including several species, known for their remarkably long necks which made up half the total body length. It is known from numerous species which ranged in time from 160 to 145 million years ago, from the Oxfordian age of late Jurassic Period in China. 3. Dinosaurs lived on the earth 160 million years while humans lived on the earth for 200 thousand years. 4. During...