Why did people fear Comets?

A comet appears to be very large bright star with a massive, luminous tail straming out behind it. Such a spectacle is an aw-inspiring sight. Small wonder that our ancestors regarded a comet with fear, believing it to be an evil omen and indication of the wrath of God.

A comet appeared in 1066 just before the Battle of Hasting - the English may well have blamed their defeat by William the Conqueror on the evil influence of the comet. The idea that a comet is a bad omen has taken a long time to die out. A wave of terror convulsed the world at the passage of Halley's comet in APril 1920. Dozen of people committed suicide.

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Jazz Chant

Jazz chant is a poem that use jazz rhythms to illustrate the natural stress and intonation patterns of conversational American English. Jazz Chants provide an innovative and exciting way to improve your student's speaking and listening comprehension skills while reinforcing the language structures of everyday situation.

Here is a sample of a Jazz chant performed by the selected students of the Lupon Vocational High School during the Division Level English Festival held at Manay National High School, Manay, Davao Oriental last January 15, 2009.

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Excel Activity in the Classroom

Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that can be used for storing, organizing and manipulating data. Among all the Office applications, most students find excel very boring. I tried to search for excel activities online so that students will realize that there is more to what excel can do other than formulas and manipulating data. I found this file, thanks2, wherein students use the photo bucket to fill in the cells with colors. The picture below is the sample I showed to the students. Then I let them make their own design.

In Sheet 2 , I let the students draw a figure in a Excel worksheet using any clipart as their guide. Here are some sample designs made by the fourth year students. This design can be used as a pattern for cross stich.

Noel Cañete

Eden Vitor

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Bread Festival

Many traditional festivals are held in India, actually forming a yearly cycle. This festival cycle begins with the bread Festival which takes place in the month of March or April. This festival marks the end of the cold season. People now stop keeping cooked food overnight. On the evening before the celebration of this festival, the women cool wheat porridge sweetened with brown sugar. The food is set aside uneaten. Early the next morning, the women dress in their clothes. They carry the porridge with some rice, peas, and water to the shrine of Girgaon-Wali Mata. They bring their youngest children. They chant as they march together, "O Mata, you gave us children, now protect them from disease."

They pray to the goddess Girgaon-Wali Mata. Then they move on to the shrine of Kainthiwali Mata, this is the goddess of typhoid. The same ritual is repeated. Brown sugar and candies are distributed to the children. A man might bring a cock and hold it over the heads of the children, making it flutter its wings. This is supposed to ensure the long life of the children.

Sometimes the goddess is given sweets rather than prridge. This is especially true if he pilgrimage is done to fulfill a promise to the goddess; for the cure of a sick child or a successful birth or even a satisfactory marriage.

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The Protestant Reformation

In 1517 Martin Luther launched his famous attack on the sale of indulgences by the Church. He won instant support from a Germany that resented taxes imposed by an Italian Pope and was not protected by a central monarchy. When he went on to defy the Emperor of Worms in 1521, he began to win the support of princes who feared the power of Charles V. The protection of the Elector Saxony saved him after Worms. It was the princess of the League of Schmalkalde who, with French help, eventually forced Charles V to come to terms.

Luther in his turn up held the power of the princess, and strongly condemned te Peasant's Revolt of 1525. But the movement he started was always for him religious rather than political - the duty of the princess was to establish true religion; the source of try religion was the Scriptures; if rightly understood, these made plain that man could gain salvation only by throwing himself upon the mercy of a just and loving God; he could not earn salvation by his own efforts, and needed no priest to stand between him and God; all true believers were priests, and the Church existed wherever the Word of God was truly preached by His ministers. Luther was thus attacking the whole basis of the Catholic Church, which held that man must perform good works to merit salvation, and that a priesthood was necessary boeth to interpret the Scriptures and bring men to God through the sacraments of the Church. Luther's ideas were the foundation of all the Reformed churches.

Luther made no clear and complete statement of his faith, and the Lutheran movement was weakened both by the divisions among his followers and by a feeling that Lutheranism was a faith for rulers rather than commoners.

(The Groiler Society Lmtd.)

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When Skin Cancer Begins

The danger of skin cancer begins with your first exposure to the sun. Because the minute you get into the sun, the radiation that can cause skin cancer starts doing its damage.

And the harmful effects don't fade away at the end of the summer like your tan. They accumulate year after year.

Until one year you could develop skin cancer. Which can be disfiguring. And even fatal.

Fortunately, skin cancer can almost always be cured. Provided it is detected and treated in time.

Better yet, most skin cancer can be prevented. Doctors advise reducing the amount of time you spend in the sun, using an effective sun screen and wearing protective clothing.

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How Do Crickets Sing?

The sound you hear is the male crickets singing to the female crickets. Lady crickets do not sing. The male cricket makes its music by rubbing its wings, one over the other. One wing has a row of ridges. The other wing has a hard little scraper. When one wing rubs over the other, we hear a cricket chirp or sing.

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Overweight

If one parent is very overweight, the chance that an offsrping will be very overweightis 40 percent. If both parents are, it's 80 percent.

Overfeeding in infancy can increase the number of fat cells in the body to as many as 100 billion (as child of normal weight has 25 to 30 billion fat cells)

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The Shipwrecked Woman and the Giant Turtle

Candelaria Villanueva was traveling on the Aloha when it caught fire and sank six hundred miles south of Manila. A life jacket strapped around her body, the woman floated in the sea for more than twelve hours before a giant sea turtle appeared beneath her. Some thirty-six hours later, the crew of a Philippine navy vessel rescued her, thinking the woman was clinging to an oil drum. They didn't realize that the turtle was holding her afloat until they pulled the woman on board. Villanueva later reported that there was also another, smaller turtle that had crawled up on her back and seemed to bite her every time she about about to fall asleep. She thought that, perhaps, it wanted to prevent her from submerging her head in the water and drowning.

(From World Of The Incredible But True)

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Wild Life in the Backyard

To help keep from expanding the list of endangered and extinct species, many nature conservation organizations have focused on creating urban habitats that are inviting to wildlife. "Wildlife shouldn't be treated as if it shouldn't exist in a city," says Peter berg, director of San Francisco's Planet Drum, an ecological education group. "Wildlife is the biological monitor of the health of our cities." Some animals have already successfully made the move into cities across the United States: The endangered peregrine falcon has established itself on high rises and feasts on pigeons; many fish, frogs, and salamanders are quietly flourishing in city ponds; and even deer, raccoons, and coyotes have made a home in local parks. Fostering wildlife is as easy as planting certain flowers in backyards or creating a niche with water and sufficient shelter on front porches. The National Wildlife Institute for Urban Wildlife are also working on the creation booklets with tips for individuals, schools, or other organizations.

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Volcano Trivia

The Philippines is home to some 200 volcanoes, 22 of which are active and have erupted during the last 600 years, the Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvocs) said.

Mayon, known to have the world's most perfect cone had at least 44 violent eruptions from 1616 to 1993. Its most destructive eruption was on February 1, 1814, when 1,200 persons were killes and six towns were totally destroyed.

Bulusan had 17 eruptions from 1852 to 1988. It erupted 52 times in 1980 but the damage was small.

Mayon and Bulusan have been acting yp and Philvocs has warned residents living withing the area to evacuate in the wake of an imminent eruption.

Taal had erupted 33 times from 1571 to 1994. In 1911 Taal spewed ash which reaches as fas as Manila.

Mt. Banahaw, the tallest volcano in Southern Tagalog erupted in 1730 and 1743. During these eruptions, boulders as big as houses reached as fas as the cities of Lucena and San Pablo.

Other active volcanoes are Didicas and Smith in Babuyan Islands; Canlaon in Negros Oriental; Ragang in Cotabato; Hibok-hibok in Mambajao, Camiguin Island, Pinatubo in Zambales and Banahaw in Quezon.

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How to Prepare Written Work

The written work you do everyday in school or at home must have a clean, near appearance. Put yourself in the teacher's place and ask a few questions about the work you turned in. Is it written carefully? Are the problems spaced so that they do not crowd one another? No written work should be turned in unless it is the neatest you can do. The arrangement, the writing, spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing should represent your best effort.

Your daily work is the mirror in which the teacher sees you, whether you write a few sentences or a whole theme! Keep this mirror bright by following these few rules:

1. Know what you are supposed to do. Write down exactly what your teacher tells you.

2. Plan before you write. An outline will help you when you have to write the paragraph or a them. You must built your thoughts with care and order.

3. Your teacher like to see neatness and is favorably disposed when the work is written neatly. You show respect for the teacher when you turn in only the most carefully written work.

4. Good writing will improve your grades. Pupils who run letters together, fail to dot the i's, cross t's and write unevenly down the margin, erase carelessly, are headed for failure. If you don't help yourself, no one else will.

5. Finally, when your written work is returned to you, go over it carefully. Check the mistakes so that you will not repeat them. After your teacher has taken time to correct your work, take advantage to his help.

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The Mysterious Soviet Mummies

Soviet speleologists exploring caves in central Russia discovered a virtual city of dead, composed of dozens of ancient, mummified men, horses, and wild animals. Soviet scientists speculate that the men had been fleeing the armies of Alexander the Great, who reached modern-day Afghanistan in the fourth century B.C. On the other hand, they could have been driven into tha caves b y tribal feud and ended up meeting a mysterious collective death. Others, like Emory University anthropologist Brad Shore believe that the men may have been the victims of a natural disaster; a mudslide or landslide could have trapped the victims, burying them alive and then preserving their bodies.

The mummies, however, also disclosed evidence of mite infestation that had left the men with painful body sores, which didn't surprise the mountain people who live in the area today. They have always believed that the black plaque originated with mites from the nearby caves.

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What Hit the Earth in 1908?

On the morning of June 30, 1908 a brilliant fireball, blazed through the skies over Siberia, exploding above the Stony Tunguska River with the force of a 12-megaton bomb. The blast knocked down trees for up to 30 kms. around, set the forest ablaze and caused shockwaves like an earthquake.

Astronomers think that the Tunguska object was a fragment from the head of a comet. It was about 330 feet across and weighed a million tons, cites Hamlyn's Giant Book of Facts.

Another such object could hit the Earth at any time. If it descended over a city, it would cause massive devastation.

Severka times a year lumps of rock and metal plunge to Earth. Scientist call these meteorites, and they are debris left over from the formation of planets. Meteorites have been known to crash through the roofs of houses, and one in 1954 badly bruised a woman in Alabama, USA.

A meteorite gauged out a crater one kilometer wide in the Arizona desert. The largest known meteorites lies where it fell in prehistoric times, at the Grootfontein in Namibia, Africa. It is made of iron and nickel and estimated to weigh 60 tons.

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Hard Rocks Stimulates Termites' Appetite

Hard rock music may bring misfortime to those living in wooden houses or rooms. Experiments in the U.S. show that when music is played to colonies of termite, the insects enter a kind of frenzy and chew through wood at twice their normal rate.

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What is the Strangest Animal?

The strangest animal leaves in Australia. It is called duckbilled platypus. It has fur and feeds its babied milk, so it is a mammal. But it lays eggs like a bird and has webbed feet and a bill like a duck's. Its tail is like a beaver's tail. It is timid and shy, but if you watch a river or lake in eastern Australia, you may see one.

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Ice Provides Information About Ancient Weather

Scientists say they can tell what air and sea conditions were like hundreds of thousands of years ago. They say pieces of ice taken from Greenland provide such information.

Scientists took the ice from more than one-to-one half mile deep in ice floes. That is the deepest scientists ever have drilled for ice. The ice has been cut into pieces about three feet long. Each one shaped like solid round pieces of pipe, five inches wide.

The scientists examine the ice that was formed each year. They measure the oxygen and carbon dioxide in the ice. These measurements tell about the year's temperature. From these measeurements, the scientific teams say that the past 10,000 years is the only period during which the weather has not changed very much. The ice appears to show that at some periods, Earth's weather changed from very hot to very cold in only ten years.

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Celebrating New Year's Day

The people of ancient Egypt began their new year in summer. The people of ancient Babylonian and Persian began their new year on March 21, the first day of spring. and, some native American Indians began their new year when the nuts of oak tree became ripe.

Now, almost everyone celebrates New Year's Day on January 1. The ancient Babylonians celebrated by forcing their king to give up his crown and royal clothing. They made him get down on his knees and admit all the mistakes he had made during the past year.

This idea of admitting wrongs and finishing the business of the old year is found in many societies at New Year's. So is the idea of making resolutions. A resolution is a promise to change your ways.

Noise-making is another ancient custom at the New Year. The noise is considered necessary to chase away the evil spirits of the old year. People around the world do different things to make a lot of noise. They may hit sticks together. Or beat on drums. Or blow horns. Or explode fireworks.

Americans celebrate New Year in many ways. They visit family and friends. Attend Church sevices. Share a holiday meal. Or watch New Year's parades on television.

For those who have been busy at work or school, New Year's Day may be a day of rest. They spend the time thinking about, and preparing for, the demands of the new year.

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The man with the tiniest Writing

Since 1989, when he challenged a Japanese record for inscribing the most characters on a grain of rice (184) Surendra Apharya, 38, has clinched seven Guinness slots for writing on rice grains (1,749), postage stamps and human hair. His dedication has inspired his wife. She is trying to beat the record for splitting a hair. So far, she’s up to 24 times.

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