Seasons are a very important element in our lives. They have an influence on what we wear, what we eat and what we do in our free time. They also affect themood we are in. In ancient civilizations people observed that the sun was at different places during different times of the year. But they didn’t understand how this led to the […]
A strange oasis of fantastic skyscrapers emerges from the desert floor. The citysprawls over the sand and creeps out to the sea, man-made islands dot the coast line. Tourism, business and construction keep the city busy, even at night. Dubai, once a Bedouin outpost displays capitalism at its peak. The discovery of oil in 1966 turned the city from a quiet fishing and pearl-exporting town to a rich oil sheikdom. But because its oil supplies are […]
Melting About half of the ice disappears in the Arctic during the summer months. It grows back to about the size of the United States during the winter. Studies have showed that the Arctic ice is melting so rapidly that in the entire area could be ice-free during the summer in a few decades. Recently, scientists have found out that the Antarctic ice sheets are melting too, but not that […]
The Rocky Mountains are part of the longest mountain range in the world. They run down the western part of North America, from Alaska to Mexico and continueas the Andes Mountains in South America. The Rocky Mountains are almost 5,000 km long and, in the central part of the USA, almost 500 km wide. The mountains are made up of […]
The island of Ireland is divided into two parts. Northern Ireland, in the northeast, is a part of the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland is an independent country. A conflict between the two main religious groups, the Protestants and the Catholics, has been going on for over four hundred years. In the second half of the 20thcentury violent clashes between the […]
Burj Dubai is the tallest building that has ever been built. The world’s tallestskyscraper, located in the United Arab Emirates, is 828 metres tall.Construction started in 2004 and, even though the interior is unfinished, the building officially opened in January 2009. According to the constructors, a South Korean firm, the skyscraper cost about $1.5 billion. Shortly after the opening ceremonies the tower was renamed Burj Khalifa, after the president of […]
The Great Wall of China is the biggest object ever made by humans. It stretchesacross mountains, deserts and grasslands for over 6,000 kilometres. The ancientChinese built the wall to keep invaders from the west out of their country. Today tourists from all over the world come and see it. The Great Wall began as a series of many smaller walls that were […]
Babies born in the United States in 2005 are expected to live an average of 77.9 years, according to a 2007 study. That’s an increase of more than 30 years since 1900, when Americans were expected to live just 47.3 years. The increase is big, but America is not at the top of the list for life expectancy. Actually, the United States ranks behind 41 other […]
Florida is the southernmost state on the US mainland. It is a peninsula that borders on Georgia and Alabama in the north, the Atlantic Ocean in the east and the Gulf of Mexico in the west. The state has a land area of about 140,000 square kilometres and more than 10,000 square kilometres of water surface. Florida got its name from the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce […]
South Africa lies at the southern end of the African continent, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans come together. For a long time in the past centuries South Africa was governed by whites, although about 80 % of the population are blacks. In the 1990s the election of the first black president , Nelson Mandela opened a newchapter of South African history. Size and […]