Kids News - Articles for Grades 4-5

Living in an era when airplanes can run on autopilot with no humans at helm, it is hard to imagine that there was once a time not too long ago, when pilots in the USA had to navigate their way across cities using rudimentary aviation maps and . . . ginormous arrows!...

Long before there was English, German, Hindi, Spanish, French and the myriad of other languages that we speak today, there was Proto-Indo European or what linguists affectionately call PIE. Believed to have been spoken sometime between 4,500 and 3,700 B.C. by our ancestors in Europe and Asia, it is the most researched of all ancient languages simply, because it is believed to be the root of many of the modern ones....

The fact that kids seem to have an inordinate amount of energy is indisputable. What if this energy could somehow be harnessed and turned into electricity? That was a question that Ben Markham, a retired Vice President of Engineering at ExxonMobil asked himself a few years ago. The result? Empower Playgrounds Inc., non-profit company that has transformed the lives of thousands of young kids in Ghana with a simple yet brilliant idea!...

If you have been paying any attention to the news for the past few weeks, you may have heard about the possibility of the US government 'shutting down.' At 12:01 am on October 1st, that possibility became a reality. So what led to this momentous event and how will it affect your day-to-day life? Read on . . ....

Completing a 26.2-mile marathon is hard enough. Now imagine running it backwards! Not impressed? How about doing all that and juggling, or as they call it 'joggling'? That believe it or not, is what Joe Salter did on the weekend of September 19th, at the Quad-Cities Marathon in Illinois....

Over his short illustrious career, base jumper Jeb Corliss has completed over 2,000 stunts including leaping off France's Eiffel Tower, zooming through a waterfall in the Swiss Alps and even, flying across the Tianmen Cave, a 100ft-wide water eroded slit, in China's Tianmen Mountain. However, the stunt he pulled recently was so dangerous that it scared the daredevil himself....

If you think conning or swindling others is something that was invented by the amazingly bright human mind, think again - the cuckoo finch has been doing it for centuries and their con is much more convincing than anything humans have been able to pull, because it entails tricking other birds into raising their chicks!...

Here's some good news for Manga comic book lovers that have always wished to see themselves in one. Japan's Shirai Labs has figured out an almost instant way to insert them in - All the aspiring star has to do, is pose!...

Patrick a 23-year-old Western lowland gorilla has been a fixture at the Dallas Zoo since 1995. And while the gregarious male seems to love humans, his attitude toward his fellow gorillas especially females, has left much to be desired, leaving officials with no choice but to ship him off to a new home....