Category Kids Queries

Your body’s guts have a lot of give. When you encounter a sudden change in direction and speed, your organs jostle against each other until forces of gravity and momentum reassert themselves and pull everything back into place. Drops on roller coasters (and, to a lesser extent, dips in the road) counteract the forces of gravity and throw your body into a sudden free fall. For an instant, with nothing pushing against it, your stomach rises and you feel that funky sinking feeling that makes roller coasters so much fun and/or terrifying.

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J.K. Rowling is famous for introducing the world to a boy wizard in 1997 through today in England. The “boy who lived” first sparked to life in the imagination of J.K. Rowling when she was riding a train from Manchester to London in 1990. Rowling’s own mother was dying of an illness at the time, which influenced her tale of an orphaned boy and the villainous Voldemort’s quest to conquer death. Low on money and raising her daughter alone, Rowling released her first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (known as the Sorcerer’s Stone in the U.S.) seven years later, followed by six sequels. Her creation spawned blockbuster movies and even a theme park. She’s now one of the England’s wealthiest people and possibly the most famous English author since William Shakespeare.

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Originally appearing as a carpenter named Jumpman in the Donkey Kong arcade game, Mario was renamed after the landlord of Nintendo’s American warehouse. Mario’s profession changed to plumber when he appeared again in Mario Bros.

Regarding Mario’s origins, it’s common knowledge among game fans that legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto created him for 1981’s Donkey Kong arcade game. But few know that Nintendo borrowed Mario’s name and Italian heritage from a real man.

That man’s name is Mario Segale, and he’s not a plumber. He’s a wealthy real estate developer in Tukwila, Washington.  Segale unwittingly stepped into video game history by renting out a warehouse that served as Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters in the early 1980s. At that time, a financially struggling Nintendo of America (NOA) was preparing the U.S. launch of Donkey Kong. Legend has it that NOA President Minoru Arakawa noticed physical similarities between Donkey Kong’s short, dark-haired protagonist and the landlord. So the crew at NOA nicknamed the character Mario, and it stuck.

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Director George Lucas changed the title of the third Star Wars movie from Revenge of the Jedi after realizing that true Jedi wouldn’t seek revenge. The change came just two months before Return of the Jedi was released in cinemas.

It was a big financial problem for Lucas film, who had already released lots of merchandise, trailers and posters with the original title. Since the change fans have speculated that Lucas called it Revenge of the Jedi on purpose, with full intention of changing it later to prevent counterfeiting.

Another rumour claimed it was because the title would be too closely related to Star Trek II: The Vengeance of Khan, which too was changed to Wrath of Khan.

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The company that makes the famous snap-together bricks took its name from the Danish phrase leg godt, which translates to “play well.” Approximately 20 billion LEGO elements (bricks) are made every year in the LEGO factory in Billund – equivalent to approximately 2 million elements an hour or 35,000 a minute. The moulds used in production are accurate to within two-thousandth of a millimeter (0.002 mm), and the accuracy of the moulding process means that only 18 elements in every million produced fail to meet the company’s high quality standard. A professor of mathematics calculated that there are over 915 million ways to combine six LEGO bricks. Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times round the world. There are about 2,350 different elements in the LEGO range – plus 52 different LEGO colours. Each element may be sold in a wide variety of different colours and decorations, bringing the total number of active combinations to more than 7,000.

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NASA intended to name its first shuttle, built in the 1970s as a test craft for atmospheric flights, the Constitution. But after a letter-writing campaign by fans of the sci-fi show Star Trek, President Gerald Ford asked NASA to name the shuttle Enterprise (the starship from the show). Ford never admitted that h was influenced by the Star Trek show or campaign, however. Regardless, Star Trek fans were thrilled – even though this real-life Enterprise never launched into space.

Enterprise was the culmination of decades of research in “lifting bodies.” Between 1963 and 1975, the Air Force and NASA researched methods of flying winged vehicles back from space and landing them like an aircraft. Six different prototypes were manufactured and flown in 223 glide tests, providing a set of information that was used for the shuttle and similar concepts developed by NASA.

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