The Express Tribune hi five - January 20

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Unicorns

Chief Wizard: Zarrar Khuhro Master Storyteller: Ameer Hamza Knowledge Navigator: Dilaira Mondegarian Creativity Analysts: Maha Haider, Jamal Khurshid, Samra Aamir, Amna Iqbal, Essa Malik, M.Suhaib, Kiran Shahid, Faizan Dawood, Anushay Furqan, Umar Waqas

THE EXPRESS EXPRES S S TR TRIBUNE, R IB UNE, JANUARY 20, 2013

Hi light

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Unicorns

Did you know Julius Caesar claimed to have seen a unicorn? Legend has it that a unicorn even saved India from Genghis Khan’s armies. The tale says tthat hat as Genghis Khan prepared to invade India he was met by a unicorn that knelt in front of of him. He took this as as a sign from the heavens telling him not to attack a ttack and tturned urned away. a way.

But where do they come from?

There are different theories as to how the legend of the unicorn was born. Surprisingly, few of them have anything to do with horses at all and they might even have existed really close by!

When archaeologists discovered Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, the first objects they found were small stones with animals drawn on them, including a unicorn-like figure! Experts say that it is possible that the unicorns on the stones were aurochs—a type of large wild cow. They say that since you can only see one side of the animal in the drawings, it seems that it has only one horn but in reality aurochs had two horns.

Even the Greeks believed that the unicorns lived in this area. In the 4th century BC, a Greek doctor named Ctesias travelled through Persia, where he heard many tales from Indian travellers about creatures back home. He wrote about them later, describing them as “wild asses as large as horses” that had white bodies, red heads and dark blue eyes, and “a horn on the forehead, which is about a foot and a half in length.” Of course, Ctesias never actually saw this creature himself, but was relying on other people’s accounts.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant who lived in the 6th century, made a voyage to India and wrote about seeing a unicorn. He said that it was impossible to capture the unicorn and that its horn was so strong that it would jump off cliffs and turn so quickly that it receives all the shock on the horn.

The white horse we think of as a unicorn today is not necessarily the same animal that emerged from Chinese folklore where stories of its existence began 5000 years ago. To the Chinese the unicorn was called ki-lin or qilin and it was an omen that all was well with the world. They described it as a hybrid animal with the body of a deer, the head of a lion, green scales and a long curved horn.

Marco Polo also claimed to have seen one. He said that they were smaller than elephants, with the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant’s. He also said that they had a single large black horn and spent their time swimming in mud.

Does this animal sound familiar to you? It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros. Talk about crazy!

Did you know that a group of unicorns is called a blessing?

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THE EX EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 20, 2013

Unicorn Horn The horn of the unicorn is called an alicorn and it was believed to have magical powers.

The alicorn was thought to cure many diseases and have the ability to detect poisons, and many physicians would make cures and sell them.

Cups were made from alicorn for kings and given as a gift. The horns were so popular that they were eleven times more expensive than gold!

You must be wondering, where did these horns come from? Did unicorns really exist! Well, Danish doctor, Ole Worm, discovered in 1638 that all the alicorns being sold were actually the tusks of narwhals.

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Hi Light

Real-life Unicorns

What are narwhals?

Narwhals are the unicorns of the sea. They are one-toothed, medium-sized whales that live in Arctic Greenland and Canadian waters. The males have one long straight spiral tusk! In the past, the tusks were sold as horns from the legendary unicorn.

The truth of the tusk was discovered as more and more explorers began to discover the world. Narwhals are actually quite cool, they are deepest divers in the animal kingdom, diving at least 2,500 feet 15 times a day and often diving as deep as 5,400 feet. The total journey takes them approximately 25 minutes! Don’t worry; their main predators are orca whales and polar bears.

Experts say that people might have confused goats, sheep and cows for unicorns. In fact some art actually shows unicorns as small creatures, with cloven hooves and beards, sometimes resembling goats more than horses with horns.

The Arabian Oryx was once thought to be the legendary unicorn since it has long, thin antlers that, when seen from the side, can be mistaken for a single horn. In Southern Africa, the Giant Eland was also confused to be a unicorn, perhaps because this very large antelope will defend itself against lions and is able to kill these fearsome predators.

A new possibility for the inspiration of the unicorn came in 2008 with the discovery of a deer in Italy with a single horn. Single-horned deer are not uncommon; however, this deer had a horn in the middle of its head, which is very rare. Generally, the horn is on one side (of the head) rather than being at the centre.

Now while this next creature would not be confused for a unicorn, it’s still pretty cool. The Unicorn Beetle, also known as the Hercules Beetle, is a insect that can grow to over two inches long – not bad for a bug! Size isn’t everything, of course, but don’t tell that to the Unicorn Beetle: it has a scary-looking horn on its head.

Did you know that schoolboys in Japan catch these insects and groom them... for insect sumo matches?

That’s all we know about unicorns, do tell us if you ever see one! Let’s end with a unicorn joke: What do you call a daddy unicorn? Pop Corn!

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 20, 2013

4 Supplies needed: • Toilet Paper Roll • Paint • Glitter • Yarn or Ribbon • Craft Glue • Paint Brush • Scissors

Snowflakes Instructions: Cut the toilet paper roll into 1-inch wide pieces. You can use one or more toilet paper rolls, depending on how big you want your snowflake to be.

Paint your toilet paper roll pieces. Use whatever colours you like. You can also sprinkle them with glitter.

Once the paint is dry, glue the tube pieces into the shape of a snowflake. Experiment with different configurations! Let the glue dry and then use a piece of ribbon or yarn to hang up your snowflake.

Remember kids, always get permission from your parents before you start.

It’s always a good idea to have a helper nearby.

Recipe

Marie Biscuit Fun — Method: Take the dry coconut and pour into a bowl.

Add a few tablespoons of Comelle milk (please ask an adult to help you open the can) and mould the coconut and sticky Comelle into round bite size balls with your hands. Don’t add too much Comelle otherwise they will be too sweet. Crush the marie biscuits in a chopper and ensure they are fine crumbs. Roll the sticky coconut balls into the crumbs and leave in the fridge for two hours to cool. Eat them with a cold glass of milk!

Easy as one, two, three!

by Laila Dharamsey

Ingredient Desiccated coconut One Packet Comelle condensed milk One Tin Marie biscuit crumbs 10-12 crushed

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 20, 2013

World wide weird Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny from across the globe!

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On all paws

Speed 4

When Jacob and Bonnie Richter lost their beloved cat Holly in November, they were devastated. But they would soon be surprised just how determined Holly was to get back home – making a nearly 300km journey to reunite with her owners.

Jacob and Bonnie Richter’s four-year-old pet Holly ran off when she was scared by fireworks at the Daytona International Speedway.

The distraught couple searched for Holly for days, putting up flyers and alerting rescue agencies, before despondently heading home to West Palm Beach.

Two weeks later, a rescue group spotted the distinctive cat outside of a Daytona Beach restaurant but it had disappeared by the time the Richters could drive there. And that was the last they heard of Holly - until she showed up, skin and bones, paws rubbed raw and too exhausted to meow, in Barb Mazzola’s Palm Beach Gardens yard. In a week, Holly was well enough to be coaxed into a cat carrier and taken to the vet, where she was scanned for a microchip. The chip came back to match the Richters, who couldn’t believe the news. Holly had travelled about 190 miles in 62 days.

“It was quite a journey for this little girl,” said Jacob Richter. “We just can’t believe she came home.”

A Swedish cleaning woman found herself a bit over her skill level when she decided to make off with the hulking mass of steel she was polishing – a Stockholm commuter train.

She drove it off the end of the tracks and smashed into a house in Sweden, injuring only herself in an incident police are investigating.

It was not clear how the woman, around 20, got access to the key needed to start the train. She was taken to hospital with serious injuries, but the train was carrying no other passengers as it was in the early hours and no one in the house was hurt.

“The cleaner drove the train at high speed, considerably higher than normal on that stretch, to where the rails end and crashed into a house,” said Jesper Pettersson, spokesman at Stockholm Public Transport (SL). SOURCE: REUTERS

SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

Fantastic flying frog With big webbed feet, this frog parachutes from high trees in the forest. An Australian researcher discovered a new species of flying frog near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and named it after her mother.

Helen’s Flying Frog was first discovered by Jodi Rowley, an amphibian expert from Sydney’s Australian Museum, in 2009 during a field trip to the forests fringing the city previously known as Saigon.

Rowley initially thought the tree-dwelling flying frog, so named for the huge webbed feet that allow it to glide or parachute across the forest canopy, was a familiar species when she saw it sitting on a log beside a path.

It was not until a later trip, when she saw a specimen of the original type of frog in another part of Vietnam, that she realised her creature was something quite different.

Molecular analysis confirmed Rowley’s suspicions and she had the honour of naming the new species rhacophorus helenae or Helen’s Flying Frog after her mother, who had recently been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Researchers are now working to establish whether Helen’s frog is endangered. Specimens have only been seen in the lowland forests of southern Binh Thuan and Dong Nai provinces and Rowley said there were real fears for its survival. SOURCE: AFP

Toddlers tie the knot These tots never have to worry about finding their soulmates!

A Chinese kindergarten ‘married’ off more than 100 toddlers as part of a lesson on family life.

The brides and grooms - aged between three and six - were dressed in suits and wedding dresses to swap rings and make vows in front of a registrar in Zhengzhou, Henan province.

Kindergarten head Li Wang explained: “They all chose their own partners and then they had to woo them, maybe with some chocolates or a toy. This teaches them about relationships and how to maintain them and what we should all be working towards. They’re taught to be kind and thoughtful.”

The parents had to agree to the ceremony and were given assurances that the ceremony that mimicked the real thing - if somewhat shorter in time and in the stature of those taking part - was not binding. SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

BOOK REVIEW The Year of the Quail

By Basma Siddiqui The Year of the Quail by Ines Labunski Roberts is about how Ines comes across a pair of quails who suddenly fly away leaving behind 13 unhatched eggs. It’s a story where the newborn quails become part of the author’s life and watching them grow becomes part of her routine. The book is easy to read and filled with black and white photographs. Each photo shows the life stages of the quails and has some text to explain what was happening at the time the photo was taken. An Urdu version of the book is also available for parents who wish to read to their children in Urdu.

The Year of the Quail is one of those books that parents would want to read out to their kids before tucking them in.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 20, 2013

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Did you know?

s n i g i r O d r o W RSVP RSVP comes from the French word Répondez S’il Vous Plait which translates roughly as “please reply” or “reply if it pleases you”. Now you might have seen RSVP on wedding cards, when someone sends you a card with RSVP written on it, you are supposed to reply back and tell them if you can make it to the wedding but people really don’t do that anymore. RSVP dates all the way back to around the 11th century when French became the top language among the elite of the English court. This continued in England for several hundred years. It was also the fashion in the United States, among high society, to use French because it is a very refined and beautiful language. From this, many such similarly themed French phrases and words made their way into English, another example being the word “etiquette” itself‘. Ironically, the French themselves don’t typically use RSVP anymore, more typically using Priére de Répondre these days.

How to say 'I don’t know' in different languages!

Afrikaans Arabic Basque Cherokee Croatian Czech Danish Dutch Esperanto Filipino French Indonesian Italian Japanese Malay Papiamento Slovenian Swedish Turkish

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

Ek weet nie Ma’arafsh Ez dakit Gesdigata Ne znam Nevím Jeg ved ikke Ik weet het niet Mi ne scias Hindi ko alam Je pas Saya tidak tahu Non lo so Wakaranai Saya tidak tahu Ami no sa Ne vem Jag vet inte Bilmiyorum

Cool facts Denim clothing was originally developed in France in the city of Nimes.

It is estimated that 94% of French children know English as their second language.

The tradition of wearing a white dress for wedding days originated in France back in 1499.

April Fool’s Day originated in France after the nation started following the Gregorian Calendar but failed to communicate the change properly.

Paris was originally named Lutetia.

The Statue of Liberty in New York City, was a gift from the people of France to the US. Mont-Blanc in the French Alps is the highest peak in Europe. It is nearly 4,810 metres high.

France produces over 400 varieties of cheese!

It is illegal to kiss on railways in France.

The entire country of France is divided into 22 different regions.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 20, 2013

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Fun & games

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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, JANUARY 20, 2013

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