The Island of Mauritius God first made Mauritius and from it, he created Paradise. Mark Twain 1896 Where is it? Over ten million years ago, the waters of the Indian Ocean boiled. Massive volcanoes erupted miles underneath the surface. Huge amounts of...
We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.(Shakespeare) Does this sentence make you think? What does it make you think about? Shakespeare was a dreamer, and some say he was a philosopher too. In this sentence...
Piracy - the act of robbery from ships at sea - has existed for thousands of years. It was written about by the ancient Greeks and has been written about ever since. As long as some people have moved valuable cargo in ships, other people have wanted...
When most people think of strikes, they think of factory workers asking for better pay and conditions, or perhaps refusing to work to support a colleague who has been unfairly sacked. It is not often that people associate strikes with school students...
We all know that chainsaws are very dangerous. In Britain, 1207 people had to visit hospitals after accidents with chainsaws in 1999. However, in the same year, 16,662 people, more than twelve times as many, were injured by their sofa! In June 2001,...
Hallowe'en Hallowe'en is a popular festival in many countries all over the world, and every year it seems to get bigger. It's getting dark earlier and it's starting to get cold. Christmas is still a long way away. We need something to cheer us up and...
Being old is when you know all the answers, but nobody asks you the questions. (Anonymous) Six months before she died, my grandmother moved into an old people's home and I visited her there when I was in Britain. She was sitting in the living room wi...
Being old is when you know all the answers, but nobody asks you the questions. (Anonymous) Six months before she died, my grandmother moved into an old people's home and I visited her there when I was in Britain. She was sitting in the living room wi...
As I write this, I have half an eye on an old James Bond film that is showing on my computer. But this is a story about how I stopped watching TV and began reading again for pleasure, after ten years in which I hardly turned a page. I suppose I was a...
My grandmother had a beautiful elephant carved out of sandalwood on her dressing table which I secretly used to covet. I wanted it more than anything in the world. It was about the size of a football and had a cheeky smile. It was inlaid with tiny ci...
When Scotsman Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it was a revolution in communication. For the first time, people could talk to each other over great distances almost as clearly as if they were in the same room. Nowadays, though, w...
In the square outside the British Library in London is a sculpture of Sir Isaac Newton - The first man who asked why apples seem always to fall towards the centre of the earth. Maybe they chose it for the spot because it shows a great scientist at wo...
Food Do we live to eat or eat to live? That is the question. I remember as a child growing up in Britain having fish and chips or baked beans on toast at least twice a week on my lap while watching my favourite cartoon. Of course I enjoyed my food bu...
GamblingHuman beings have spent large amounts of money trying to beat the laws of probability for centuries. More than thirty countries currently have legalized gambling in the form of national lotteries or private casinos. In the last ten years this...
CalendarsAre you looking forward to summer? In Saint Petersburg, where this article was written, a day can be less than less six hours long in the middle of winter and nearly 19 hours in summer. At this time of year, you can easily see in peoples fac...
