When were the Olympic Games re-started?   A young French baron, Pierre de Coubertin of Paris, was responsible for the rebirth of the Olympic Games in 1896 — after a lapse of 15 centuries. As you probably know, the first Olympic Games were held by the Greeks about 776 BC and continued to be held every four years for over 1,100 years. They ceased about 500 years after the Romans conquered...

 The Football World Cup The World Cup is the supreme football competition. Practically every footballing nation in the world enters for it, and it is played every four years. The last finals were in Spain in 1982, when Italy beat West Germany 3-1. The World Cup series of games was the idea of M. Jules Rimet, president of the French Football Federation who became president of FIFA (the Federation of International...

Where do insectivorous plants grow? You may think that these plants only grow in exotic tropical forests, where many strange plants are found. Although some insectivorous plants like the pitcher plant do grow in tropical forests, they have relatives that also grow in North America. The Venus fly trap lives in North America too, in places where it is boggy. The sundew can be found in Australia and parts of Europe,...

How do insectivorous plants catch insects? The two pictures at the bottom of this page show pitcher plants ; so named because of their shape which is like a pitcher. Insects are attracted to the pitcher by the red colour inside and by a sweet-smelling odour — they probably think it is a flower. Once they walk inside, tiny scales which surround the sides stick to their feet. These scales prevent...

Why do some plants eat animals? All green plants, that is, those that make their own food by photosynthesis, also have a need for certain chemicals. These chemicals are called nutrients, and plants usually obtain them from the soil. The nutrients pass into the roots, and from there they are carried to the various parts of the plant. One of the most important nutrients is nitrogen, which is turned into nitrates...

Importance of  Copernicus During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries men in Europe began to look at ideas that had been accepted since the time of the Greeks and to re-examine them. We call this great upsurge in thinking, the Renaissance. Nicolas Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473. He became a Roman Catholic cleric and was particularly interested in astronomy. After carefully observing the planets and calculating their movements, he discoverec...

Aristarchus Concept : Earth went round the Sun   Although everyone tends to think that Copernicus was the first man to have this startling new idea, it was suggested by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus in the third century before Christ. He seems to have been the first man to realise that the Earth was a planet, and with the other planets, revolved around the Sun. However, no one seems to have...

Why is Ptolemy important? As we have said, the Greeks explored many new ideas about astronomy between 700 BC and AD 200. These ideas were finally written down by Claudius Ptolemais, better known as Ptolemy. Ptolemy lived and worked in Alexandria in the second century after Christ. Like the Greek astronomers that had preceded him, he believed that the Earth lay at the centre of the Universe and that the Moon,...