There was a line of climbers making it to the summit of Mount Everest, the highest mountain on the planet. On May 20th, 275 mountain climbers reached the top of the mountain, 29,029 feet above sea level. That was a one day record for climbing from the Nepal side! On May 29th, 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first to summit the "top of the world".The pair stayed for 15 minutes at the summit, gave each other a big hug. Hillary left a cross and Norgay left some chocolates for the gods of the mountain. Hillary took a photograph of Norgay but did not wish to have a photograph taken. For years, the two kept a secret as to which was the first to summit but the secret was unveiled in Norgay's book. It was Hillary.

Photograph from DogoNews

Leonardo da Vinci's famous Renaissance painting will soon be getting her own wing at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The wing will be pretty large, too, more than 33,000 sq. feet of space. The reason for the move of the Mona Lisa is that she is such a popular painting to view by visitors coming to the museum each year. It gets very crowded to get a glimpse of her. People wait hours in line to see the Mona Lisa with an estimated 20,000 people coming each day! Did you know that da Vinci’s Mona Lisa doesn’t have any eyebrows? That was because a custom during the time was for wealthy women to shave their eyebrows. The Mona Lisa has had some problems over the years. A rock was thrown at in 1956 and someone hit it with a teacup in 2009. In 2022, someone caked the painting and two years later someone tried to splash the Mona Lisa with soup! The Mona Lisa was actually stolen from the Louvre in 1911 but was recovered two years later. Painted in 1503-1506, da Vinci's Mona Lisa is estimated to be worth over 1 billion dollars!

Photograph from Pixabay

Found covered in concrete, in a town in Utah, a young great horned owl was given a feather transplant! The owl did not molted, lose its feathers as usually happened naturally. Wildlife people used the feathers from a similar sized great horned owl that had died and glued them to the other owl's right wing after organizing the feathers and clipping where necessary so they would fit just right. After making sure the owl could achieve "silent flight" with its new feathers, it was released into the wild. Eventually, the replacement feathers will molt and the owl will replace them on his own.

Photograph from Best Friends Animal Society(Molly Wald)

A new dinosaur was discovered in the country of Thailand. It is a whopper in size. Thought to tip the scales at 27 tons (think NINE large elephants), the long necked herbivore measured about 88 feet in length. Named after a mythological serpent type creature, the Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis is believed to be the largest dinosaur to roam Southeast Asia. A leg bone was the size of an adult human male( 6 ft) and additional remains including pelvis, rib, spine helped to estimate its amazing size when it roamed the Earth. Paleontologists say this "last titan",as it is also being called, was largest than the TRex.

Illustration from Yahoo News

Been to the dentist recently? Seems that dentistry has been around a LONG time. Archaeologist found teeth dating back 60,000 years that have evidence of dental surgery!

In Siberia (a region in Russia),a tooth belonging to a Neanderthal, was found in a cave.The molar had a deep hole that showed a small tool had been used "drill" to remove decay. It was also believed that something like wax might have been used to "fill" the hole. Archaeologists also found that a kind of toothpick was used to pick food from teeth. This discovery dates dentistry further back that previously thought. Until recently, it was thought the first dental work dated back about 14,000 years.

Photograph from Live Science

Ziggurats were ancient structures built for the belief that their gods would have a home in flat Mesopotamia (present day Iraq). Since there weren't tree or many stones, the Mesopotamians used clay bricks to build the structures. Erosion has caused the ziggurates crumble. Now, the Iraqi government is hoping to rebuild the famous ziggurat of UR. Dating back to 3800 BCE, the ziggurat once stood about 98 feet tall and was 210 ft in length. It was built for Namma, the moon god. The ziggurat has already been rebuilt on two previous times in history.To replicate the ziggurat as best as possible, the same materials and method of brick construction will be used.

Photograph from Goodness Network