Ocean life
Although the oceans make up by far the largest biome on Earth, only about 20% of Earth’s species live in the oceans, of which about 90% are bottom-living, shallow-water species...
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Famous women
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an English champion of women’s rights. She is best known for writing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she argues for...
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Ancient Middle East
Mesopotamia, the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now Iraq, was one of the first places in the world where people settled down to be farmers: around...
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Ships and boats
In the middle of the twentieth century, steam power began to give way to diesel power. Diesel engines are smaller, cleaner, far more efficient, and need fewer crew to operate them...
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Age of Dinosaurs
The Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, which lasted from 252 to 65.8 million years ago, are together known as the Mesozoic Era, but more commonly called the Age of Dinosaurs...
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Planet Earth
The Earth is a spinning ball of rock and metal. It is one of eight planets that orbit, or circle, our nearest star, the Sun. Its surface is made up of oceans and land masses called...
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Music and dance
Music is the organization of sounds and silences to produce a work that is designed to give pleasure to the listener. Music can be written down in advance or improvised (made up on the...
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Rocks
Rock is the hard material that makes up the Earth’s crust, its hard “shell”. Rock lies beneath all natural soil layers—and everything else: city streets, a...
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Farming
The world relies on farming (also called agriculture) for its food. Farms range in size from large commercial businesses that provide food for sale at home and abroad (cash crops), to...
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Aircraft
All flying machines are types of aircraft. Balloons and airships stay airborne because they are filled with lighter-than-air gas. Aeroplanes (known as airplanes in the US) and...
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British history
The first people to arrive in Britain did so at least 850,000 years ago. At that time, Britain and Ireland were joined together with the continent of Europe (they did not become...
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Oceania
Oceania is the name given to the group of countries located in the South Pacific Ocean. It is made up of Australia—itself an island continent—New Zealand, Papua New Guinea...
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Birds
Birds are warm-blooded, vertebrate animals with four limbs, the front two of which are adapted into wings. They are the only animals that have feathers. Birds have light, hollow bones...
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Oceans
The oceans cover more than 360 million square kilometres (139 million square miles) of the Earth’s surface, approximately 71% of its total area. More than 1350 million cubic...
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Universe
The Universe consists of everything that we know to exist: stars, planets, rocks, people, and so on. It even includes empty space. Nearly all the visible matter in the Universe is...
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Erosion
Over the millions of years of geological time, great mountain ranges have been forced up—then disappeared. Colliding tectonic plates, faulting and other earth movements have...
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Electrical power
Electricity is a type of energy that gives us heat and light and drives machines. To be useful, electricity must be made to flow in a current. In 1831 the British scientist Michael...
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South America
South America reaches from the tropical coast of the Caribbean to the icy Southern Ocean. The world’s longest mountain range, the Andes, stretches down the western side of South...
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Film
In 1895 two French brothers, Louis and Auguste Lumière, showed moving pictures to a paying audience. Their groundbreaking invention, the Cinématographe, could record...
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Europe
Europe and Asia together form one vast land mass called Eurasia. Europe itself lies west of the Ural Mountains, to the north of the Caucasus and on the western bank of the Bosporus...
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Ancient Greece
About 2500 years ago, Greece enjoyed a time of wealth, discovery and invention. It was known as the “Golden Age” of Greece. The country was divided into small states, each...
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Maps
A map is a representation of space that allows us to see the relationship between places, objects or themes. The space shown on a map may be on the Earth’s surface, beneath its...
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Literature
Literature is the art of the written word. Literature has two main forms: fiction (make-believe) and non-fiction (fact). It is written in either prose or poetry. The word literature...
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Pterosaurs
Pterosaurs were flying reptiles. They first took to the air in the Triassic Period, and proceeded to dominate the skies for nearly 100 million years. They had wings formed by flaps of...
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