The lights on tall communication towers warn pilots to avoid the towers when flying at night. Unfortunately, the steady red lights often used on towers have the opposite effect on birds: the bright beams attract and confuse them. Instead of avoiding the lights, the birds fly directly toward them, crashing into the towers or becoming entangled in power lines. Millions of birds have died this way. However, there is a solution. Unlike steady lights, flashing or blinking lights don't attract birds. In response to demands from conservation groups, the Federal Aviation Administration in 2016 began requiring communication towers in the U.S. to use blinking lights instead of steady ones.

Carrots contain high amounts of vitamin A and are good for general eye health. However, carrots will not improve night vision. That myth goes back to British propaganda during World War II. In 1940, the German Luftwaffe, or air force, began bombing Britain at night. In response, the British government ordered people to turn off their lights; the government wanted to make it difficult for German pilots to hit their targets. A new technology, radar, allowed the British air force to track and shoot down the German planes without light. To keep the technology secret, the government told the media that their pilots could see the German planes because they consumed so many carrots. Consequently, people began to believe that eating carrots would help them see better in the dark.

In 2016, Vallecito Elementary School in San Rafael, California, became the first U.S. school to replace all of its ordinary desks with raised desks that students stand at. Speaking to a reporter from TIME for Kids magazine, one student at the school gave the standing desks high praise. "You feel happier, you're less tired, and you're more active," she said. According to several studies, children working at standing desks burn more calories and are more focused on tasks. However, some teachers and parents are opposed to the change. They are concerned that standing for long periods of time could cause fatigue, strain on the legs and feet, or posture problems. In addition, standing desks are more expensive than seated desks. Only time will tell whether standing desks will prove to be the next big trend or a failed experiment.

The Crimean War was fought in the 1850s between Russia on one side and Britain, France, and Turkey on the other. Although it was a major conflict, it is perhaps best remembered as the first war in which journalists were present on the battlefield. News dispatches from William Howard Russell, a reporter for the Times of London, exposed military blunders and revealed the filthy conditions that existed in military hospitals and camps. Photographers such as James Robertson and Roger Fenton made hundreds of photographs of soldiers on the battlefield. These news reports and photographs provided an uncensored look at life on the frontlines. The Crimean War marked the first time in history that people back home were exposed to the horrors of war.

In the northeastern United States, autumn is particularly colorful. Leaves change from green to red and orange, and many Americans take scenic fall foliage trips. In Japan, a similar phenomenon takes place in the spring. Cherry trees erupt in a shower of pink, and the entire country celebrates the arrival of sakura, or cherry blossoms. Though autumn leaves are admired in the United States, they are seen as just a pretty seasonal display. In Japan, on the other hand, cherry blossoms have much greater significance; the flowers are deeply rooted in Japan's culture and philosophy. Since as far back as the eighth century, sakura have symbolized change and beauty, new beginnings, and the circle of life. The blossoms have been celebrated in Japanese paintings, poems, and tea ceremonies for centuries.

On November 17, 1968, football fans across the United States sat glued to their televisions. A close game between two top teams—the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders—was being broadcast. When the Jets pulled ahead with only fifty seconds remaining, viewers went wild. But then, just as the Raiders were bringing the ball across midfield, the game disappeared from the screen! In its place, a previously scheduled children's movie, Heidi, started playing. Callers flooded the TV network's phone lines, but it was too late. The Raiders scored two touchdowns in the very final moments—touchdowns that were unseen by all but West Coast viewers. As a result of the interrupted event, dubbed "the Heidi game," television networks began delaying their regularly scheduled programs until football games had ended.

Maya Lin was an architecture student at Yale University when she completed a special class assignment—a monument to veterans of the Vietnam War. The assignment was inspired by the October 1980 announcement of a national design competition for such a memorial to be built in Washington, D.C. Lin's professor gave her design only a B but encouraged her to enter it into the competition. More than 1,400 entries were submitted and judged anonymously. Most of the other entrants were trained architects, whereas Lin hadn't yet completed her degree in architecture. Yet Lin's design took first place, earning her $20,000 in prize money. She later wrote, "From the very beginning I often wondered, if it had not been an anonymous entry . . . but rather an entry by Maya Lin, would I have been selected?"

The modern baseball has come a long way from early baseballs. In the 1840s and 1850s, pitchers often made their own balls by hand. One of the most popular balls of the time was known as the "lemon peel" ball. The lemon peel ball was composed of a single piece of leather wrapped around a core with four lines of stitching. Today's Major League baseball must measure between 9 and 9.25 inches and weigh between 5 and 5.25 ounces. However, there were no standards for lemon peel balls, which were generally smaller and lighter than today's balls. While today's official ball must be white and stitched with waxed red thread, the lemon peel ball was often a dark brown leather and had a variety of stitching colors.

Birds have a reputation as excellent parents. They expend a great deal of effort in building nests in which to lay their eggs. They patiently incubate the eggs, keeping them warm and safe until they hatch. Birds also bring food to their newly hatched offspring until the baby birds are independent. However, some unusual birds, known as brood parasites, don't provide any parental care for their young. Perhaps the most famous brood parasite is the cuckoo. Instead of building a nest, the cuckoo lays her eggs in the nest of another species with similar-looking eggs. The female cuckoo simply removes an egg laid by the host female, lays her own egg, and then leaves, expecting the host bird to care for the imposter.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland in approximately 1818. After several unsuccessful attempts, Douglass escaped from slavery and eventually settled in Massachusetts. In 1845, he wrote his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which had a profound influence on the movement to abolish slavery. Harriet Jacobs was born in North Carolina in 1813. Like Douglass, Jacobs was born into slavery. She eventually escaped and settled in New York. Also like Douglass, she wrote an autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which revealed the horrors of life under slavery. Both Douglass and Jacobs went on to become vocal supporters of the antislavery movement.

During World War II, American and British forces dropped millions of tons of bombs on German cities. Nearly ten percent of the bombs never exploded. The war ended in 1945, but more than two thousand tons of unexploded bombs are still found in Germany each year. Before any construction project is undertaken, the site must be checked for unexploded bombs. Buried bombs are often discovered. For this reason, Germany has a special force of firefighters and police officers, called the KMBD, to defuse and remove these bombs. Even though the war has been over for seven decades, the KMBD is one of the busiest bomb squads on the planet.

Small-scale fishing performed with nets is one of the most common fishing methods used around the world. One of the unfortunate side effects of this method is that sea turtles, which are considered threatened, get caught in the nets along with the fish. Conservation biologists at the University of Exeter in England recently devised a way to prevent these sea turtle deaths, which they tested at a fishery in northern Peru. They found that attaching green LED lights to the nets warned the turtles away, possibly because the lights made the nets more visible. The number of sea turtle deaths was reduced, but the number of fish caught seemed to remain the same.

In 2007, a boy in Nova Scotia, Canada, wore a pink polo shirt on his first day of high school. According to students, bullies threatened the boy because of his shirt color. Two seniors, David Shepherd and Travis Price, were disturbed by the bullying and came up with an innovative response. They emailed classmates, explaining the situation and suggesting that everyone wear pink the next day. They also bought fifty pink shirts to distribute at school. When the boy who had been threatened arrived for his second day of high school, he was met by hundreds of his fellow students wearing pink. The action served as a clear anti-bullying message. The news of the event quickly spread to other schools, many of which instituted their own "Pink Shirt Days."

In the Gold Rush of 1849, some one hundred thousand immigrants were lured to California by the promise of gold. Towns and businesses popped up to accommodate the growing population, but a problem remained: how to communicate across the vast reaches of the United States. Three businessmen thought they had an answer: faster mail delivery via the Pony Express, a relay system of horses and riders. The Pony Express made its first delivery on April 14, 1860. Mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, reached San Francisco in just eleven days, rather than a month or more, which was standard for mail delivery at the time. The Pony Express was a short-lived solution, however. After just eighteen months, it was replaced by a national telegraph wire.

When buildings collapse, it is extremely difficult to safely locate and rescue people trapped inside. Victims may be wedged into small spaces, and unstable rubble could collapse on rescue workers. An alternative to human rescue workers may be robotic cockroaches. Real cockroaches are protected by strong yet flexible exoskeletons. They can also flatten their bodies through tiny cracks. A robotics researcher from Harvard University and a biomechanics expert from the University of California, Berkeley, were inspired to create mini robots that have the same features. The roach robots can squeeze through small spaces and skitter over unstable environments. Fitted with cameras and microphones, they could be used in disasters to locate victims.