Author: Lisa Mungovan

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.

Today is Disc Golf Day. If you don’t have a disc golf course nearby, grab a frisbee and make your own targets to hit. Landing it in a birdbath, can be a hole-in-one. It’s also Mustard Day. Which do you like better; smooth yellow mustard, or coarse brown mustard full of crunchy mustard seeds?

Fred Reissman once collected 228 four-leaf clovers in under 2 hours, setting a world record, while Gabriella Gerhardt’s collection of 118,791 four-leaf clovers is the world’s largest. 10-year-old Katie Borka found 166 four-leaf clovers in 1 hour, in her own back yard! Try your luck at finding a four-leaf clover, for Four-Leaf Clover Day!

Get your crayons or colored pencils out, because it’s Coloring Book Day! If you don’t have one, ask everyone to draw pictures for you with black markers, then color them in. It’s also Ice Cream Sandwich Day. Do you want your ice cream on wheat or white bread? Just kidding! Use cookies!