Author: Lisa Mungovan

Xīn nián kuài lè! That means “Happy new year” in Chinese. The Chinese Lunar New Year starts today, and it’s the Year of the Rat. The Spring Festival begins 15 days of parties, fireworks, feasts and parades. It’s traditional to wear red and avoid sweeping. You’d  sweep out good luck that the new year brought!

If you have trouble choosing flavors at ice cream shops, you’d better skip dessert at Gibson’s Gourmet Burgers & Ribs, in Cape Town South Africa. They set the world record for the most flavors of milkshakes. The restaurant serves 207 different varieties! Maybe I’ll just have a vanilla one!

18-year-old Fionn Ferreira, from Ireland,  invented a new way to extract microplastics from water. He created his own version of ferrofluid, a liquid developed by NASA. Fionn will be speaking to world leaders, at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, along with other young people fighting for the Earth’s future.

The Best Friends Roadhouse and Mercantile  is a hotel in Utah, that loves dogs. The rooms have dog houses and slide-out dog beds. Don’t worry if you don’t have a pet. You can take a shuttle bus to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and bring an animal back to the hotel for a sleepover.

Star Wars fans visiting Orlando Florida, might need to stay at Twelve Parsecs. It’s a house available to rent from AirbNb, that has 9 Star Wars-themed bedrooms! You can choose Cloud City, Alderaan, Hoth, Tatooine, Mustafar, Dagobah, Endor, or a spaceship. You can even sleep in a pod-racer bed!

Today is Talk Like A Grizzled Prospector Day. Pretend you’ve found a hunk of gold in the 1848 California Gold Rush! Maybe your impression will make people laugh, for Belly Laugh Day! After all that prospectin’ and laughin’, you’ll need a hearty snack. It’s Peanut Butter Day, so dig into some with a celery shovel!

17-year-old Ayakha Melithafa, is from South Africa. She has grown up seeing her mother, a farmer, struggle through droughts and severe water shortages. Now, Ayakha is working to gain support for the African Climate Alliance. She’ll be speaking to world leaders about climate change this week, at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland.

Would you like to build an International Space Station, in your bedroom? Starting in February, you can buy an I-S-S LEGO set! LEGO consulted with NASA, to get all the details right. In the past, they’ve released lunar lander and Saturn 5 rocket building sets. The International Space Station will even include a space shuttle!

Last week, a blazing fireball streaked across the blue sky, over the ocean near Puerto Rico. The meteor may have been a couple of feet in length. Unlike recent hurricanes and earthquakes which have devastated the island, the fireball didn’t damage anything. It just flew by, looking amazing!

Scientists have discovered a way to harvest even more solar energy, from our Sun. They’ve developed a molecule that absorbs energy from the entire visible spectrum of light, creating 50% more energy than current solar cells. The molecule is also a catalyst for creating hydrogen, which can be used as a clean fuel.