About 80% of the Earth’s oxygen comes from plankton.

Prochlorococcus, a species of ocean-dwelling phytoplankton, only measures about 0.6 micrometers. It’s the world’s smallest organism capable of photosynthesis — so small that 20,000 or so can reside in a single water droplet. But its impacts are so huge that an estimated one out of every five breaths you take is thanks to this minuscule microbe. Prochlorococcus, along with many other types of plankton (organisms carried along by the tides and currents), create as much as 80% of the world’s oxygen. They also play a big role in sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, capturing about 40% of all the CO2 produced. That’s equivalent to the amount that would be captured by roughly four Amazon rainforests.

Phytoplankton such as Prochlorococcus produce oxygen through photosynthesis, the same way plants on land do, by soaking up the sun for energy and releasing oxygen into the ocean and atmosphere. Also like plants on land, phytoplankton are full of the compound chlorophyll, which gives some of the microbes their green color. The entire ocean ecosystem rests upon these vital, oxygen-burping organisms, which provide essential nutrients for beings from the smallest krill to the largest blue whale.

Despite essentially being synonymous with his most famous character, Walt Disney didn’t draw Mickey Mouse. The iconic cartoon rodent was actually designed by Disney’s best friend, animator Ub Iwerks, in 1928. Indeed, A Mouse Divided: How Ub Iwerks Became Forgotten, and Walt Disney Became Uncle Waltauthor Jeff Ryan described Mickey as “basically the child of two dads.” The pair worked together for decades, and Iwerks created effects for such Disney classics as Mary Poppins and Sleeping Beauty, in addition to helping develop theme park attractions such as “It’s a Small World.” But he rarely received much credit for his contributions to the company, especially in comparison to its namesake. That began to change when his granddaughter Leslie Iwerks directed the 2000 documentary The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, but even today, Iwerks remains relatively unknown.

For the first 20 years of Mickey Mouse’s existence, Disney voiced the character himself. The world was introduced to Mickey in the 1928 animated short Steamboat Willie, though Disney produced two previous shorts featuring Mickey that same year, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho, La which weren’t picked up by distributors. Steamboat Willie was the first of these to feature sound, though Mickey didn’t utter his first actual words (“Hot dog!”) until the following year’s The Karnival Kid. Disney last lent his vocal talents to The Mickey Mouse Club between 1955 and 1958, though 2013’s Get a Horse! patched together previous recordings to once again feature him as the voice of the famous cartoon mouse.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

The thing that makes us different from our next nearest animal relative is imagination and curiosity. Without these traits we would not have pushed to see what was over the next hill or found a way to cross a lake or ocean. These traits have driven us to find new worlds and explore space, make movies and even set up societies with governments and moral codes based on religion and fear.
Lives are lived chasing an imagined idea, being the super sports hero, the most talented or beautiful actress or the most rich and powerful ruler. If you really think about it, do you know anyone who aspires to be mediocre.
When does the realization set in that the wow thing just isn’t going to happen for you? That must be pretty much on an individual basis and the reaction to that fact is just as telling. At one time the first born was the most likely to have all the assets of the family to help them achieve their goal and the others were just along for the ride. The bigger the family the more they were capable of making and the better the chances may have been the reason for large families, or TV had not been invented yet so they did have anything else to do, take your pick.
The following siblings had to be taught that the efforts to push the eldest forward were best for all and that playing second string was not such a bad place to be in. Look across Europe at all the various families that are related because they tried to keep the wealth and power in one family group. It did not stop them from fighting with one another; they just did it as nations instead of as individuals. Those unions produced diseases that we would have been better off without but that is an issue of the past.
The beginning of our world started as a big bang, an accidental collision of elements, take a guess. Life began and developed and eventually became human and look where we are now. Civilization started with someone telling a great story that developed over time into similar complex systems of social behavior. Knowledge has allowed some to move forward and holding onto tradition has held others back. The most upsetting of these systems is the one that is allowing ignorance to drag it backwards to a place of utter dominance and stupidity.

Today, aluminum is a common material you can buy for cheap at your local supermarket, but in the mid-to-late 19th century, it was as valuable as the most precious of metals. Although the material is easily found in the Earth’s crust, a pure form of aluminum doesn’t occur naturally. Instead, it requires a laborious process to extract it from other elements with which it appears, such as iron or silicon. So when the U.S. governmentneeded an impressive topper for the Washington Monument, they went with a 9-inch pyramidion (a small pyramid at the top of an obelisk) made of aluminum — the largest piece of aluminum ever made at the time. The pyramid was affixed atop the Washington Monument on December 6, 1884; after 36 laborious years of construction, the 555-foot memorial to the nation’s first Presidentwas finally completed. 

Although the 9-inch aluminum pyramid was dazzling in its day, the hunk of metal also served a more practical purpose. Because the Washington Monument towered over nearby buildings, its designers also intended it as an effective lightning rod. The pyramidion was connected by four iron rods that went down the monument and traveled 40 feet underground into a pool of groundwater, which dispelled the electricity. (Gold-plated copper rods with copper points were also added to the structure after lightning cracked it during a storm in 1885.) Unfortunately, the Washington Monument was a little too good at being a lightning rod — repeated lightning strikes have melted down the aluminum cap by 3/8 inch. Today, two lightning rods divert strikes from the pyramidion, which still glistens atop the monument’s peak.