Karen Hill

Whales weighing as much as 100 tons live in the waters near Antarctica, and some seals spend part of the year on that continent. Penguins and some other birds also spend part of the year in Antarctica or the waters nearby. But the only creature that lives on the continent of Antarctica year-round is an … Read more

The Arctic tern might just as well be called the “Antarctic” tern. As this sea bird, related to the gull, spends about three months of each year in the Antarctic region and about three months in the Arctic. It spends the rest of the year traveling from one end of the globe to the other. … Read more

Most birds are built for life in the air, but penguins are far better equipped for life in the water. These flightless birds use their wings as paddles when they’re swimming, enabling them to “fly” through the water. And they can “fly” indeed, some penguins travel more than 22 miles an hour when swimming underwater, … Read more

Islands have been known to appear and disappear due to volcanic eruptions. The Aurora Islands, which were supposed to lie in the South Atlantic within about 1,000 miles of the continent of Antarctica, appeared and disappeared a number of times over the course of several decades. But their disappearing act wasn’t due to volcanoes, the … Read more

When you think of a volcano, you think of bubbling lava, steam, smoke, and heat. But there’s a large volcano in the last place you would expect to find heat, Antarctica, the coldest continent! Mount Erebus is the earth’s most southerly volcano. It’s located less than 900 miles from the South Pole. It’s not really … Read more

An ocean current is a stream of water moving through a larger body of water. Just as a river is a stream of water moving through land, an ocean current is a “river” of water moving through the ocean. One of the major ocean currents is the Gulf Stream, which flows out of the Gulf … Read more

There are a number of places on earth where the land is below sea level. In Death Valley, California, and around the Dead Sea in Israel, for instance. But none of these depressions, or low-lying places, can compare to a huge depression in Antarctica that is covered with thick ice. Scientists have found that at … Read more

The continent of Antarctica, which surrounds the South Pole, has an area of more than 5 million square miles. Only a few hundred miles of the continent are free from a permanent cover of ice. The ice cap that covers Antarctica is more than 6,000 feet thick in many places. At some points, it’s over … Read more

That depends upon what part of the ocean you’re talking about. Even the Pacific, the largest ocean, is just a few hundred feet deep at some points. On the average, the Pacific is about 14,000 feet deep. But at one point its more than twice as deep as that! The Marianas Trench is an underground … Read more

If You’ve ever enjoyed the book or the film Mutiny on the Bounty, then You know the story of the British ship Bounty and its cruel Captain Bligh. The story is true. The tiny Pacific island of Pitcairn is proof. In 1787, William Bligh was sent to the Pacific to bring, back a tropical fruit … Read more

Bikini is an atoll in the Pacific, a ring of about 20 islands that includes Bikini Island. Bikini first came to public attention in 1946, for two entirely different reasons. In July, 1946, the United States conducted tests of the recently invented atomic bomb at the Bikini atoll. A number of old ships were anchored … Read more

The nation of Tonga consists of 150 islands spread over 100,000 square miles of ocean in the South Pacific. The total area of these islands is just 270 square miles, and Tonga’s 93,000 people live on only 45 of the islands. The English explorer James Cook discovered these islands in the eighteenth century and called … Read more

Tuvalu means “cluster of eight islands” in the language of the natives who live there. This tiny nation actually consists of nine islands in the South Pacific, but only eight of them are inhabited. The islands form a chain about 360 miles long. The total area of the nine islands is less than ten square … Read more

Saipan is a 15-mile-long island in the Pacific Ocean, about 1,200 miles south of Japan. If you like weather with temperatures that hardly vary from one day to the next, then Saipan is the place to go. During a nine-year period at one place on Saipan, the temperature never rose higher than 88 degrees, and … Read more

Nauru is an island in the Pacific, almost on the Equator. Its total area is about eight square miles, making Nauru the smallest completely independent republic in the world. Nauru also called itself the “richest republic on earth.” The tiny nation’s wealth came from the guano, or seabird manure, that covers the island. Guano is … Read more

An atoll is a horseshoe-shaped or ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a lagoon. Atolls are formed by the skeletons of sea creatures called corals. These corals live in colonies, and their skeletons collect over the course of years to form a reef. Then sand collects on the reef, and vegetation eventually follows. The largest atoll in … Read more

Bougainville is the largest island in the Solomons, a group of South Pacific islands North East of Australia. Some of the island natives use an alphabet of only 11 letters, the shortest alphabet on earth. This alphabet includes the same five vowels as our alphabet: a, e, i, o, and u. But there are only … Read more

The people who live on the remote island of Ponape in the Pacific are simple farmers and fishermen. There are no cities of any size on the island. However, the ruins of an ancient city suggest that Ponape may once have had a much larger population than it does today. This city, called Nan-Matal, is … Read more

July 4 is a special day in the United States. But to the people of the new nation of Kiribati, July 12 will always be Independence Day. For on that date in 1979, Kiribati joined the community of nations. Kiribati consists Of about 35 small islands spread over some 2 million square miles of territory … Read more

New Caledonia is a French colony that consists of about 25 islands in the South Pacific, some 750 miles off the coast of Australia. Most of the islands are very small. The single large island, called New Caledonia, has an area of 6,530 square miles, about the same size as all the Hawaiian Islands put … Read more

If someone were to ask you the name of a certain hill on North Island, New Zealand, you could probably take the person to the top of the hill in less time than it would take to answer the question. As this hill has a native name that consists of 85 letters, making it the … Read more

Waitomo Cave, an underground cavern on New Zealand’s North Island, never sees daylight. But there’s plenty of “natural light” in this cave, produced by thousands of tiny glowing worms! Visitors to Waitomo Cave descend into a cavern 100 feet long and 50 feet wide. They then ride a boat along an underground river. All around … Read more

If New Zealand is “New,’ then where is “Old” Zealand? These large Pacific islands were sighted by a Dutch explorer in 1642. They were named after Zeeland, a region of the Netherlands along the North Sea. British explorer James Cook was the first to land in New Zealand in 1769 and the discovery of gold … Read more

Like its neighbor Australia, New Zealand is a land with animals all its own, or, at least, birds of its own. Originally there were no mammals at all in New Zealand aside from two kinds of bats. There are no land snakes, either. But there are plenty of birds, more than 250 kinds that can … Read more

For years, people have reported seeing a strange, cat-like creature in the sheep-grazing areas of eastern Australia. The creature is described as either black or striped like a tiger, standing about three feet high. A man who chased one of these “tigers” in a truck claimed that it ran at a speed of more than … Read more

You might expect to find the world’s largest cattle ranch in Texas. But you would do better to look halfway around the world in Australia. A cattle ranch at Alexandria Station, in Australia’s Northern Territory, once covered some 7.2 million acres, or about 11,250 square miles, an area about the size of New Hampshire and … Read more

Livestock raising is the main industry of New Zealand, and sheep are by far the most important animals raised in this Pacific Ocean nation. There are more sheep in New Zealand, in relation to the human population, than in any other nation on earth. With only 3 million people, New Zealand is home to some … Read more

In Australia, it’s easier to find a sheep than another person. Australia had a sheep population of some 148 million in the 1980s. The human population was about 14.4 million, So there are about ten times as many sheep in Australia as there are people! Its not surprising, then, that Australia leads the world in … Read more

Australia is the most arid continent on earth. About two-thirds of Australia receives less than 20 inches of rain a year, and only 10 percent of the continent receives more than 40 inches. In parts of Australia, rainfall may total less than 5 inches a year! The “Australian Desert” is a name sometimes given to … Read more

Australia is a nation of big cities, at least in terms of area. Sydney, the most populous city in Australia, is also one of the largest cities on earth, covering about 670 square miles. By comparison, New York City has an area of 320 square miles, and Pittsburgh an area of just 56 square miles! … Read more

Australia is not just the land of strange animals. There are also birds in Australia that can be found nowhere else on earth. One of these is the emu, a big bird that cannot fly. The emu looks much like the ostrich, and after the ostrich it’s the largest bird on earth, sometimes standing five … Read more

Ayers Rock, an immense rounded rock with a flat top, rises from a plain near the center of Australia. The rock is almost 2 miles long. It has a circumference of 5.5 miles and is 1,100 feet high. Ayers Rock contains gem-like minerals that reflect the sun, making the huge rock one of the most … Read more

Long ago, animals could travel to and from Australia by way of a land bridge that connected the continent with other landmasses. Later this bridge was submerged by the ocean, and Australia’s animals were “stranded” on the continent. Animals in Australia then developed independently from the animals in the rest of the world. That’s why … Read more

You probably can name some of the world’s longest bridges. But do you know where to find the world’s widest bridge? It’s the Sydney Harbor Bridge, in the Australian city of Sydney. This steel-arch bridge, built in 1932, has a total length of 3,770 feet and a span of 1,670 feet, making it one of … Read more

A coral is a small sea creature, related to jellyfish and sea anemones, that secretes a hard, stony substance to form its skeleton. The skeletons left behind by colonies of these creatures can eventually form islands or long ridges called coral reefs. One reef, or series of reefs, is so large that its more like … Read more

Australia is the world’s sixth largest nation. Even so, fewer than 15 million people live in this vast country. The average population density of Australia is just 4.8 persons per square mile, one of the lowest on earth. Most Australians live in settlements that are far more crowded than the nation’s population density suggests. About … Read more

Lake Eyre is Australia’s largest lake. It is 110 miles long and up to 40 miles wide, with a total area of about 3,700 square miles. But Lake Eyre is sometimes much smaller than that, and it sometimes isn’t a lake at all! Lake Eyre is filled with water for part of the year, and … Read more

When European explorers first set foot on Australia, there wasn’t a single rabbit on that continent. Yet within two centuries, rabbits abounded in Australia to such an extent that Australia was the world’s number-one producer of rabbit pelts, and was desperately trying to stamp out the creatures. Rabbits were introduced in Australia around 1860. These … Read more

In January, 1936, a prison in the Australian city of Geelong experienced a jailbreak of a most unusual kind. There have been many instances of convicts breaking out of jail. But on this occasion, someone broke in! During the night, the culprit sawed through a lock and then lowered himself down a rope 30 feet … Read more

The citizens of West Germany are the world’s greatest beer drinkers. But people in some parts of Australia drink more beer than any other people on earth, more than 60 gallons a year! So it makes sense that the world’s longest bar can be found in the Australian city of Mildura. The bar is 298 … Read more

A waterspout is a tornado that occurs at sea. Sometimes a waterspout results from a tornado that begins on land and then moves over the sea. Sometimes a waterspout develops at sea. As in a tornado, the winds in a waterspout swirl in a funnel-shaped column. When the lower tip of this column reaches the … Read more

Australia’s name comes from the Latin word australis, “southern.” It was given this name because Australia is the only continent, besides Antarctica, that lies wholly in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia is also the world’s smallest continent. It has an area of almost 3 million square miles, only three-quarters the size of Europe. The continent of … Read more

When Columbus set sail in 1492, he was searching for a shorter route to the Indies, a group of islands now known as Indonesia. That’s why the Caribbean islands he discovered became known as the West Indies. Indonesia, Columbus’s original goal, is the largest archipelago, or chain of islands, in the world. This island chain … Read more

Before the 19th century, the island that is now called Singapore was a swampy area inhabited by only a few fishermen. Then in 1819, an English businessman named Sir Stamford Raffles decided to build a port on the island of Singapore. Stamford worked for the East India Company and planned the port to handle the … Read more

The nation of Singapore consists of one large island and a few smaller islets at the end of the Malay Peninsula. The large island is connected to the mainland of Malaysia by a causeway almost a mile long. The name of the nation, its largest city, and the island it lies on, Singapore, comes from … Read more

Japan and India make more films each Year than any other nations on earth, more than 500 each. France and Italy each make more than 200 films in an average year. But surprisingly enough, the fifth ranking nation in film-making is the Philippines! The Philippines might be called the “Hollywood of the Pacific”, as while … Read more

Laos is a landlocked nation in Southeast Asia. It is about twice the size of Pennsylvania. The country is largely covered by mountains and jungles, and most of the people live in the western part of Laos, near the Mekong River. Although various tribes live in the mountains of Laos, more than half of the … Read more

Khone Falls, on the Mekong River in Laos, are no more than 70 feet high. So these falls can’t compare in height with most of the world’s well-known waterfalls. But Khone Falls are wider than any other waterfall on earth, 6.7 miles wide! The amount of water that flows over Khone Falls varies at different … Read more

Beginning in the ninth century, the Khmer people ruled a vast empire in Southeast Asia. The Hindu kings of the Khmers built their capital at Angkor, in the northern part of what is now the nation of Cambodia. Covering about 40 square miles, Angkor was a great city of palaces and temples. It had a … Read more

The city we call Bangkok, the capital and largest city of Thailand, is known as Krung Thep by the people who live there. Its official name is “Krung Thep Maha Nakhon”. But this, too, is a shortening of an older name, which consists of those two words and 10 others. Some believe that “Bangkok” derived … Read more

Burma is almost exactly the same size as Texas. But while Texas has a population of less than 15 million, Burma is home to more than 33 million, making it the twenty-fifty most populated country on earth. Burma is in Southeast Asia. It shares borders with China, Laos, Thailand, India, and Bangladesh. The northern part … Read more

Each year, about 35,000 people around the world die from the bite of poisonous snakes. More than half of them are in India, but the nation that suffers most from poisonous snakes is Burma. Out of a population of 3.3 million, about 5,000 people in Burma die from snakebite each year. That’s an average of … Read more

In the United States and many other countries, a person would never wear white clothes to a funeral. Black is our color of mourning. But in Japan, black clothes would be out of place at a funeral, the Japanese color of mourning is white! Many Americans and Europeans think that black cats are unlucky. But … Read more

The city of Kamakura, southwest of Tokyo, was once the capital of the shoguns, the military rulers of medieval Japan. It was also a religious center for some Buddhist sects and was the site of many ancient temples. The Kencho-ji in Kamakura is the oldest Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan. It was built in 1253. … Read more

Japan has suffered many earthquakes during its history. One quake that occurred in this century is known as the “Great Quake” because of the great damage it did to the Tokyo region, the most populous in Japan. On September 1, 1923, a powerful earthquake and the fires that followed it destroyed most of Tokyo and … Read more

Mount Aso is a 5,223-foot peak on the island of Kyushu, Japan. The mountain was once a volcano, but it’s now a caldera, a crater formed when the cone of a volcanic mountain collapses. The caldera of Mount Aso is the largest volcanic Crater on earth, measuring more than 17 miles across. Its total circumference … Read more

The United States has more than 170,000 miles of railroad track. Japan has about 30,000 miles of track. But the people of Japan use their railroads far more than Americans do, far more, in fact, than any other people on earth. The average American travels about 45 miles a year by railroad. The average Japanese … Read more

In 1978, a Japanese man was spending a vacation near Lake Ikeda in Japan. One afternoon, as he stood near the shore with a camera, he saw something rise out of the lake. It was a snake-like creature with dark skin and humps on its back. Its body appeared to be at least 45 feet … Read more

The Ryukyu Islands are a string of islands that stretch from Japan almost to Taiwan. Poisonous snakes abound on these islands. There is another fearsome creature in the Ryukyus, a giant crab. The giant spider crab lives in the waters off the coast of the Ryukyus. This crab is the largest crustacean on earth. It … Read more

Nintoku was a Japanese emperor who ruled in the 4th or early 5th century. According to one legend, Nintoku wanted his brother to become emperor instead, so he refused to take his throne for three years. His brother also refused to become emperor, and he eventually committed suicide to assure that Nintoku would rule. Another … Read more

In Japanese, Fujiyama means “never-dying mountain.” Mount Fuji is the Highest Mountain In Japan. The peak of Mount Fuji, about 50 miles from Tokyo, is also sometimes known as the “most beautiful mountain on earth”. This volcanic peak rises 12,390 feet in the shape of a nearly perfect cone. It towers over a fertile plain, … Read more

The piano was invented in Italy in the eighteenth century. For many years afterward, almost all pianos were produced in Europe, especially in France, Germany, and England. America began manufacturing pianos even before the Revolutionary War. By 1909, the United States was producing about 360,000 pianos a year. But what nation is today the leader … Read more

In America, it’s a custom to bring flowers to a sick person. But in Japan, a person would never bring cut flowers when visiting a sick friend. In the Japanese view, cut flowers are already dead, since they have been cut off from their roots and will soon wither. It would be bad luck, then, … Read more

Kyoto was the capital city of Japan during the Middle Ages. It was the home of the shogun, or Japanese military ruler. Nijo Castle was built in Kyoto in 1603. It has more than strong walls and a moat to protect the shogun, it has a squeaking floor, too! The floors of the outer rooms … Read more

The English playwrights Gilbert and Sullivan wrote a musical about the emperor of Japan called the Mikado. Most people think that the Mikado was the name of the Japanese emperor. The Mikado was actually the name of a door! In medieval times, the Japanese were not allowed to say the name of their emperor. Saying … Read more

Karate, the art of self-defense employing chopping blows with the side of the hand, is a Japanese invention right? Actually, karate was not invented by the Japanese. It was invented by the people of Okinawa, as a means of defense against the Japanese! Okinawa, an island about 350 miles from the coast of Japan, has … Read more

In America and Europe, many people consider 13 an unlucky number. The reason for the superstition is open to question. In Japan, the numbers 19, 33, and 42 are considered unlucky. The reasons for these superstitions aren’t so unclear. The Japanese word for the number 19 sounds much like the word for “bad luck”. The … Read more

Homogeneous comes from the Creek words homo, which means “same” or “equal”, and genus, which means “race”. In regard to population, the word homogeneous means of the same race or of common descent. Of all the countries on earth, the nation with the most homogeneous population is Korea. Both North Korea and South Korea have … Read more

The largest armies on earth are those of the former Soviet Union, China, and the United States. Do you know what nation has the fourth largest army? It’s India, with about 1.3 million people in its armed forces. Since 1948, Korea has been divided into two countries, North Korea and South Korea. Both nations have … Read more

Taiwan is an island of about 13,800 square miles, lying about 90 miles off the coast of China. For many years, the island was called Formosa by Europeans, a name that means “beautiful” in Portuguese. Its name in Chinese has long been Taiwan, which means “terraced bay.” Taiwan gets its name from a kind of … Read more

The Altai and the Tien Shan are mountain ranges in the area where Mongolia, China, and the Soviet Union meet. Few people live in this region today, and there are parts of the mountains that have never been seen by more than a handful of explorers. However, if some reports are true, this region may … Read more

Of all the capital cities on earth, which would you guess to be the coldest? Helsinki, Finland, might be a good guess. The average low temperature there in February is just 15 degrees. Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, would be a better guess, for the low temperature there in January averages just 9 … Read more

Mongolia is the 18th largest nation on earth, with an area almost four times the size of California. But the population of this vast nation was just 1.6 million in the 1980s, less than a quarter of the population of California’s largest metropolitan area! There are only 2.6 persons on the average square mile of … Read more

Chin Shih Hwang-ti was a Chinese emperor who reigned in the third century B.C. Under his rule, much of China was united for the first time. But Chin is probably best known today for a construction project begun during his reign: the Great Wall of China. Parts of this wall were probably already standing when … Read more

Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, was long known as the “Forbidden City”. Not only is it sealed off from the world by the towering Himalaya Mountains, but it was closed by law to foreigners until 1890. This was because Lhasa was the sacred city of Tibetan Buddhists, and it was the home of their leader, … Read more

The river we call the Yangtze is known by many other names in China. Part of the river is called the Kinsha Kiang, or the “river of golden sand”. Another part is known as the Chang Kiang, or “Long River,” which is the official name of the Yangtze. The name Yangtze is used by the … Read more

Around the middle of the 19th century, much of China was ruled by the Manchus, Mongolian people from northern China. A famine during the 1840s helped turn the peasants of China against the Manchus, and a revolt broke out that came to be called the Tai-Ping, or “Great Peace,” Rebellion. The rebellion was led by … Read more

Hwang Ho means “Yellow River” in Chinese, and we usually call the river by that name. The river deserves its name, too. Part of the Hwang Flo flows through a region of loess, or yellow earth, and this loess is carried downstream by the river in the form of silt and sand. So much of … Read more

When you think of agriculture in China, you probably think of rice. China is indeed the world’s number-one producer of rice, accounting for about 37 percent of the world crop. But rice is the principal crop only in the southern part of China. In the cooler north, wheat is the main crop, just as it … Read more

Chin Shih Huang-ti was one of the most important rulers in the history of China. He did much to unify that nation, and he ordered the construction of the Great Wall. But Chin is as much remembered for what he destroyed as for what he built. Many Chinese scholars opposed Chin, so the emperor ordered … Read more

Dominoes are rectangular blocks with clots on their faces. They are used to play a number of games. Dominoes first appeared in Europe in the 18th century, in Italy and France, and they were brought to England by French prisoners. But dominoes have been used in China for almost as long as playing cards. Chinese … Read more

During the later part of the 19th century, a number of foreign nations controlled parts of China. Because of this, there was widespread unrest among the people of China. In 1900, a group of Chinese set out to rid China of all foreigners. They attacked foreign churches, schools, and settlements. This group was known as … Read more

The farthest country from any sea or ocean is Kyrgyzstan. If you like the open seas, then the last place on earth you would like to visit would be Xinjiang, a province of China that used to be called Sinkiang. One place in the desert region of northern Xinjiang is second farthest from the sea … Read more

What do muslin, cashmere, denim, damask, calico, suede, and satin have in common aside from the fact that all are kinds of fabric? They were all named after places! The cotton cloth called muslin was named after the city of Mosul, Iraq, where it was made. Cashmere is named after the region of India called … Read more

When we say that the year is 1985, we mean that the year is the 1,985th since the supposed date of Christ’s birth. But the Chinese date their calendar from legendary events in the twenty-seventh century B.C. To the Chinese, our year 1981 was the year 4679! The Chinese have not only numbers for their … Read more

Do you know how large a number 1 billion is It’s equal to 1,000 million! If you were to count one number every second, without stopping to sleep or do anything else, it would take you 32 years to count to 1 billion. Now you have an idea of how many people live in China. … Read more

The Maldives is a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean, about 350 miles southwest of India. The Maldives include about 2,000 islands spread over a distance of 500 miles. Even with all those islands, the total area of the Maldives is just 115 square miles, about the size of Portland, Oregon! If you like … Read more

Sri Lanka is a pear-shaped island in the Indian Ocean, off the southern coast of India. Though only about the size of West Virginia, Sri Lanka is really two lands in one, it boasts two peoples, two languages, two religions, two kinds of climate, and two kinds of terrain. The northern half of Sri Lanka … Read more

The city of Anuradhapura was founded in the fifth century B.C. and remained the capital of Ceylonese kings for 12 centuries. After the people of Ceylon had been converted to Buddhism, Anuradhapura became a holy city and the destination of many Buddhist pilgrims. The Ceylonese built in Anuradhapura a number of massive stupas, monumental mounds … Read more

Today, there is no land link between the mainland of India and the island of Sri Lanka, which lies off the southern tip of India. But scientists believe that India and Sri Lanka were connected in recent times. Adam’s Bridge is a chain of sandbanks stretching more than 30 miles between India and an island … Read more