Art & History

Great Women You Should Know… Hedy Lamar

You probably do not know who the actor Hedy Lamarr was as her last film credit was in 1958. If you ask your parents they may have a vague recollection or at least know her name.
What they probably don’t realize is that she wasn’t only an actor. She was a philosopher and, most importantly this month as we remember the World Wars and the sacrifices made during those wars, she was an inventor. She and avant-garde composer George Antheil worked together to create the first broad-spectrum frequency hopping wireless communications.
“What on earth is that?”, you’re probably thinking!

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Science, Nature and Tech

CURIOUS CREATURES 3 – The Naked Mole Rat

 

The strangest creatures are, to me,

The ones I love the best.

The slimy, ugly and the odd

Are cooler than the rest…

 

When I began this Curious Creatures series for Jump! Mag, I made a list of animals and insects I wanted to cover. I began with the ones I had some sort of connection with and most were animals close to home that I’d seen or heard, which intrigued and inspired me.
But rather impatiently, I’m now going to go a bit further afield and invite you to join me in the strange and extra-extraordinary world of  “Curiouser and Curiouser”*Creature number 3… 

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Art & History

Who Was Maya Angelou?

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson, in St Louis, Missouri, in 1928. Her brother could not pronounce her name properly and called her Maya, the name that she came to be known by.
She had a difficult childhood – after suffering abuse when she was eight years old, she stopped talking for five years.  She later wrote her autobiography, describing overcoming her childhood trauma, and growing up in the segregated south of USA – when people of colour and white people were not allowed to mix. She was committed to the civil rights movement, which aimed to break the segregation and allow people to live freely.

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Language & Literature

Talking in Text

Text speak is very confusing for a lot of people, but it is one area in which children and teenagers are far more advanced than adults.  Mobile phones and the internet are recent inventions.
Imagine what it was like for your parents as children.  If your parents are 30 years old, the internet did not exist for them!  Mobile phones were only invented in 1973 but did not become common for 15 or 20 years.  The first ones cost thousands of pounds and were the size of house bricks!

 

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