 The young people of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, sometimes play a deadly sport. They call it train surfing. In train surfing, young people stand on the tops of moving trains.  It is very dangerous. Train surfers, or surfistas, can fall off the trains. They can also hit the train’s electrical wires. Many surfistas die each year doing their deadly sport.

 Surfistas know that their sport is dangerous. However, the surfistas often come from very poor parts of the city, and they don’t see much hope in their lives.  The police and the train companies try to stop the surfistas, but it is very difficult. Brazil is not a rich country and does not have enough police to guard the trains. Instead, Brazil tries to teach its young people about the dangers of train surfing. Sadly, the surfistas probably won’t stop until their lives get better.

 Rodeo is a popular sport in the American Southwest. In rodeo, cowboys ride bulls, large male cows. The bulls are very strong and very angry. Cowboys get points for the number of seconds they can stay on the bull, but they usually fall off after just a few seconds.  At this point, their sport becomes really dangerous. Horses try very hard not to step on a person after they fall off the horse.

 Bulls actually try to step on people, or stab them with their horns. After they fall, cowboys are in great danger. However, the cowboys are not alone. When they fall, clowns save them. Rodeo clowns are very different from normal clowns at the circus.  Rodeo clowns get the attention of the bull. When the bull chases the rodeo clown, the cowboy can get to safety. Of course, being a rodeo clown is very dangerous. Still, most clowns love their jobs.

 Zombies, the walking dead, are very popular in horror movies. However, there were stories of zombies long before there were movies. The first stories of zombies came from the Caribbean in the 1500s and 1600s. The slaves from African made a new religion, voodoo. Their religion had magicians called bokors. The bokors claimed they could bring dead people back to life.

 These zombies would then be the slaves of the bokors. Scientists didn’t believe the bokors could raise the dead. But many bokors had zombie slaves. How was this possible?  Today, scientists think they know more about these “zombies.” The zombies are not dead. They are normal people. The bokors learned to make a special poison which didn’t kill a person, but it made them look like they were dead.

 After a bokor poisoned them, the family of the “dead” person would bury them, thinking they were actually dead. Later, the bokors would dig them out of the ground.  The poison would stop working, and the person would wake up. This was so frightening most of the “zombies” actually thought they were dead and became the bokor’s slaves!

 Spiders are very interesting creatures, but the water spider is especially interesting. The water spider lives underwater, but it breathes air. The water spider builds a special web that holds air inside of it, like a balloon. The water spider has special hairs on it, which hold air.  When the water spider finishes its web, it can live underwater.

 Water spiders are excellent swimmers. Most spiders use their webs to catch their food, but water spiders can’t do this. They already use their webs to hold their air. When small insects swim near the web, the water spider quickly swims out and bites them. Its poison quickly kills the insect. Then, the water spider can take it back to its web to eat it.

 When the Europeans came to North and South America, they found people already living there. However, the Native Americans of North and South America were very different from each other.  The Native Americans of South America, such as the Aztecs and the Incas, lived in large kingdoms which were much like the kingdoms of Europe in some ways.

 They had kings or emperors, large governments, and powerful armies. The tribes of North America, however, were generally much smaller. They did not have kingdoms. Instead, each tribe had a chief, or a group of chiefs. The chiefs did not have as much power as the kings of South American tribes.

 In addition, their homes were very different. The South American tribes built large cities, sometimes as large as the biggest European cities. Furthermore, they built large palaces and temples.  In contrast, the North American tribes lived in smaller communities. They did not build large buildings because they moved more often than South American tribes.

 Greece was an important place in the 4 th and 5 th centuries. Unlike Egypt or ancient Persia, Greece was not a single kingdom. Greece was a group of independent cities. Sometimes these cities worked together.  Sometimes they fought each other. Two of the most important and powerful cities were Athens and Sparta.

 The cities of Sparta and Athens were quite different. Athens was famous for its culture and art. Many great thinkers, such as Socrates and Plato, came from Athens. Sparta, on the other hand, was mostly famous for its army.  The Spartan army controlled the city and was the best army in Greece. All Spartan men had to serve in the army.

 Boys started training for the army at age seven and remained in the army until they were thirty. Sparta had many rules, and people did not have much freedom. Life was quite different in Athens, where men served in the army but for a much shorter time.  In addition, the people of Athens chose their leaders, rather than having a military government.

 At the beginning of the 20 th century, African Americans were not equal members of American society. For example, they could not go to the same schools as white people, and they could not vote.  Many African-American leaders at the time wanted more freedom and a better life for African-Americans. Two of the most important African-American leaders of the time were W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington.

 Dubois and Washington both wanted to help African-Americans, but they had very different plans and ideas. Washington wanted to teach job skills to large numbers of African-Americans. For example, he wanted to train African-Americans for jobs as carpenters and mechanics.

 Dubois, on the other hand, wanted to send the most intelligent African-Americans to college to become doctors and lawyers. Dubois called his plan “the talented tenth.” He believed that African-Americans needed powerful jobs (like doctors and lawyers) to change America. Washington, on the other hand, thought that America would slowly change on its own, and white and African- American would learn to live together naturally.

 At the start of the American Revolution, the British thought the colonists had no chance of winning the war. After all, Britain had a much larger army and was far richer than the colonies.  Although the British didn’t know it at the time, the colonists actually had many advantages.

 The British army was very good at fighting European-style wars in which large armies met on a field of battle and attacked each other in the open. The colonists, however, did not fight this way. They attacked in small groups, and then hid from the British. Furthermore, the colonists had much better guns than the British.

 They could shoot the British before the British got close enough to shoot back. Moreover, the British had to get all of their supplies, guns, food, etc. from Britain.  The colonists, on the other hand, were fighting on their own land and could get more supplies easily. Finally, while British soldiers had better training, they did not know the land. The colonists knew the land well, and this helped them greatly.