Author: Lisa Mungovan

International Clouded Leopard Day is a good time to learn more about these big cats. Clouded leopards are endangered, and native to parts of Asia. The Formosan clouded leopard was thought to be extinct until fairly recently. Their bodies can be 2 to 4 feet long, and they have very long canine teeth. They’re beautiful!

Today is Assistance Dogs Day. That could mean guide dogs, that are trained to lead blind and visually impaired humans, or hearing alert dogs to help the deaf. There are also seizure and medical alert dogs. Never pet or distract an assistance dog. They’re working! Thank you, poochies!

Are you excited? It’s Hooray For Kids Day! Baby goats are so cute, aren’t they? Just kidding. Young humans, this day is for you! People could celebrate how awesome you are, by giving you cookies, or helping you bake your own. After all, it’s also Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. Chip-chip hooray!

There’s another corpse flower blooming, at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Octavia is a corpse flower that blooms once every 7 years, and smells like rotting flesh! The giant flower only lasts 48 hours, and opens at night. See the pictures on MoBot’s Facebook page, and be glad you don’t have smell-o-vision.

Scientists believe the planet Mercury, contains an 11-mile-thick layer of diamonds, surrounding its core.  Think that’s impressive? They’ve also found that some stars collapse on themselves, creating giant diamond crystals. There’s one white dwarf star, that’s turning into a diamond about 2,500 miles in diameter and weighing 10 billion, trillion, trillion carats!

It’s Sandcastle Day, so get to a beach and start building! It’s going to take you a while if you want to beat the record for the world’s biggest sandcastle. That one was in Denmark, and stood more than 69 feet tall! It was built using 6,400 tons of sand. That’s 12, 800,000 pounds!

Do you have a sister? Be especially nice to her, because it’s Sisters’ Day. Today is American Family Day as well, so go ahead and be nice to your whole family. In fact, since it’s also Friendship Day, I think this day will be filled with friends, family, and fantastic fun.

Walnuts, hazelnuts, Brazil nuts, peanuts. Eat them all on Grab Some Nuts Day! Don’t worry about dropping shells on the floor. Next, grab a giant slice of juicy watermelon and eat it, because it’s Watermelon Day! Now that your floors are a sticky mess, you can celebrate Clean Your Floors Day!

Here’s something interesting, for Sunflower Day. A sunflower’s face tilts toward the sun, as it moves across the sky throughout the day. Scientists have used nanotechnology to create solar panels, that copy the sunflower’s ability to follow the sun. Tiny stems on their experimental SunBOTs bend towards light, to absorb maximum energy!

Young paleontologists will be happy to know, it’s Dinosaur Day! Practice your excavation skills, by burying toy dinosaurs in a sandbox. Identify the species, then research when it lived. Dinosaurs from the Jurassic Period, like the brachiosaurus and stegosaurus, lived from 201,000,000 to 145,000,000 years ago. Tyrannosaurus rex lived later, in the Cretaceous Period.