Author: Lisa Mungovan

28 years ago, a wave swept 62 shipping containers of Lego off a cargo ship. People have been finding pieces ever since, in Europe and the British Isles. Tracey Williams founded the Lego Lost at Sea project, to track the 4,756,940 sea-themed pieces from one container. People share their finds on the Facebook page.

Soon people will be taking down Christmas decorations. Many communities have recycling programs to pick up live Christmas trees. Some trees are turned into mulch, while others are submerged in lakes to make underwater fish habitats. But the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge gives trees to lions and tigers to use as scratching posts!

Stop. Don’t take down your Christmas decorations yet. It’s only the 5th day of Christmas! You could celebrate Twelve Days of Christmas, by giving a gift each day. Any late packages, could still technically arrive on time. It’s also the 4th day of Kwanzaa, an African American celebration of community, history, culture, and family.

Tick. Tock. Tick, tock, ticktock-ticktock! It’s Tick Tock Day, and the new year’s nearly here. You have 2 days to finish anything you needed to do this year! Another name for it is Still Need To Do Day. If you’re all caught up, bravo! You can relax and enjoy the rest of the year!

Every year Western monarch butterflies show up, in California’s Pismo Beach Butterfly Grove. Park rangers track the butterflies’ migration each year, as they arrive by the thousands. The orange-and-black butterflies, quietly flutter on every tree, like a beautiful living curtain. You can visit the spectacular butterfly show, until the migration tapers off in February.

127 years ago, Auguste and Louis Lumière started the motion picture industry. The brothers showed 10 short films, to an audience of 33 paying customers, in Paris France. The moving pictures showed ordinary events, and each movie was less than 1 minute long, but the audience was amazed. Today, Short Film Day, commemorates that movie history moment.

Get your favorite deck of cards out, because today is Card Playing Day! Do you know how to play Crazy 8’s, War, or Rummy? Or try another card game, like Uno. It’s also Chocolate Candy Day, so you could learn to play Poker, and bet with chocolate, then eat all your winnings!

Stop. Don’t take down your Christmas decorations yet. It’s only the 4th day of Christmas! You could celebrate Twelve Days of Christmas, by giving a gift each day. Any late packages, could still technically arrive on time. It’s also the 3rd day of Kwanzaa, focusing on collective work and responsibilit, so stay festive!

A popular holiday gift for kids years ago used to be a chemistry set. But those sets could be dangerous! They contained poisonous cyanide to dissolve gold, blowtorches to make glass test tubes, radioactive uranium to practice measuring radiation, and carcinogenic asbestos to dust for fingerprints. Now some chemistry sets don’t even contain chemicals!

The Farallon Islands, off the coast of California, were once home to 150,000 elephant seals and fur seals. The seals were hunted until there were none left in the area. Hunting bans and wilderness protection laws have helped bring the population back. Thousands of seal pups have been born in recent years.