Chess is said to be the oldest game in the world, originating in India 5,000 years ago with the Buddhists, who, believing war to be wrong, devised the game of chess as a peaceful substitute. From India the game spread to Persia, Arabia and then to Western Europe. The word ‘chess’ is derived from the Persian word ‘shah’ meaning king, …

At the end of the eighteenth century, Australia was going through a difficult time. Food was scarce and only storeships from England staved off actual famine. Things were so bad that officers in the army were importing rum and using it instead of money. However, John Macarthur, one of these officers, was convinced that money could be made out of …

America is named after Amerigo Vespucci (right), an Italian mariner who sailed under the Portuguese flag. He charted the American coastline from what is now Chesapeake Bay to Honduras a few years after Columbus’s discovery of the New World. On his return, Vespucci wrote of his discoveries and people began to realize that the great land mass was not Asia …

An English scientist Isaac Newton born in 1642 made the next significant discovery. Newton introduced the theories of gravity and mass, and explained how they are responsible for an apple’s falling to the ground, for the motion of the moon around the earth and for the motion of the planets around the sun.

All crocodiles are meat eaters and feed in water. They are particularly successful in catching smaller animals because they can float up very close to their prey without being seen. They catch animals at water holes in this way and, holding them under water, they back off into deeper water until the prey drowns. Crocodiles tear pieces from their victims …

You might think that winter is cold enough, until you compare it with absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature. Absolute zero is -273ºC or -460ºF. Nothing can get colder than this temperature. The reason is that everything has to lose heat energy to get colder. At absolute zero, an object has no heat energy left, so it can’t get any …

If you live in the northern hemisphere, you can always find north at night, because there is a star very near to the north pole of the sky. This star is called Polaris, and during the night all other stars appear to circle around it as the Earth turns. To find Polaris, first locate the familiar saucepan shape of seven …

Huge amounts of polluting gases are being released into the earth’s atmosphere by the large scale burning of fossil fuels or natural fuels found under the earth. These gases are the main culprits behind the phenomenon of global warming and other climatic changes. In order to find cleaner fuels, scientists around the world are trying to find a fuel or …

If other beings existed in space, we could talk to them via radio waves, which travel at the same speed as light. Astronomers have begun t listen for possible incoming radio messages from the stars, although nothing has been heard so far. In 1974 the first deliberate radio message from Earth was beamed towards as star cluster called M13 in …

You may not know it, buy your body is giving off heat rays. So is everything else around you. The strength of these rays, which are also known as infrared rays, depends on how warm or cold things are. Special cameras and instruments can pick up these heat rays and turn them into pictures. In this way, it is possible …