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Image Credit: Clipart.com

Tomorrow, November 26th is Thanksgiving, one of the most popular holidays on the American calendar. Celebrated on the last Thursday of every November, the day commemorates the 1621 harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony after a harsh winter. While food and family remain at the forefront of the celebrations, several new traditions have been introduced over the years. How did all these fun rituals begin? Read on . . .

How turkeys became a Thanksgiving staple

Photo Credit: freeallimages.com

Since there were plenty of wild turkeys in 1621, it makes sense to assume that the birds were featured in the original feast. However, according to historians, this was not the case. They say that the poultry mentioned in the meal enjoyed by the Pilgrims and North Americans was most likely duck or goose.

Though nobody knows for sure how turkeys became the bird of choice, there are some theories. Some believe it was because they were cheaper than geese and chickens and also easier to raise. Others think it is all to do with Sarah Josepha Hala. The American writer who is considered the driving force behind convincing the U.S. government to declare Thanksgiving an official holiday also urged families to adopt certain foods like turkey. In 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who loved roasted turkey agreed to both her requests and the rest, as they say, is history.

Cranberry sauce

Photo Credit: Catyatescooking.com

Given that sugar was a rare luxury back in 1621, it is unlikely that cranberry sauce as we know it today, was part of the first Thanksgiving meal. The first record of this tasty condiment can be traced to 1663 when visitors to the Plymouth area mentioned a sweet sauce made of cranberries to accompany the meat. However, many believe that it did not officially become a Thanksgiving tradition until 1864 when General Ulysses Grant asked that cranberries be served to soldiers as part of their holiday meal.

Cracking wishbones

Photo Credit: Clyde Robinson/Flickr Creative Commons

For many Americans, snapping the turkey's wishbone in half is a Thanksgiving must. It is believed that the person that gets the larger piece will have his/her secret wish fulfilled. This fun ritual is thought to have been passed on to us by the Etruscans, an ancient Italian civilization. While they are believed to have used chicken or geese wishbones, we, of course, have resorted to turkeys!

Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

Photo Credit: By Jon Harder CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons

No Thanksgiving celebration would be complete without the Macy's Parade. Started by the department store employees in 1924, the first parade featured live animals from New York's Central Park Zoo. While the animals have since been replaced with giant floats, the parade's popularity has never waned. Today, an estimated 3.5 million people gather along Manhattan's 77th Street and Central Park West to watch the procession live while another 50 million view it from the comfort of their homes.

And Finally . . . Football!

Photo Credit: NFL.com

Though Americans don't need an excuse to watch football, doing it with family and friends while noshing on delicious food makes this an extra special Thanksgiving tradition. Surprisingly, it was not the National Football League (NFL), but the American Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) that came up with the idea. The first Thanksgiving game was played between Yale and Princeton in 1876 when it was still evolving from a rugby hybrid to the football we love today. It was such a success that it became the traditional date for the IFA Championship game.

It was only when that tradition subsided that the NFL teams jumped in. The Detroit Lions took the lead in 1934 to try to attract more locals to their games. It was an enormous success. The inaugural game against the undefeated Chicago Bears was sold out two weeks before the event, and many fans had to be turned away from the gates. Ever since then, except for a short break from 1939-1944, the team has played every year! The Dallas Cowboys joined the tradition in 1966, and the two teams now attract millions of viewers every Thanksgiving.

This Thanksgiving, the DOGOnews team is grateful for our awesome audience who inspire us to do better every single day. What are you grateful for? Be sure to let us know by adding your comments below.

Have a Happy and Safe Thanksgiving!

Resources: wikipedia.org, theblaze.com, mentalfloss.com

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The History Behind Some Of Our Favorite Thanksgiving Traditions

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Tomorrow, November 26th is Thanksgiving, one of the most popular holidays on the American calendar. Celebrated on the last Thursday of every November, the day commemorates the 1621 harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony after a harsh winter. While food and family remain at the forefront of the celebrations, several new traditions have been introduced over the years.

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The buyout clause for the new deal was set at 700 million euros, according to a statement from FC Barcelona.

The contract was first announced in August, just days after the record-breaking Messi married his childhood sweetheart, Antonella Roccuzzo.

"I'm happy to continue with the club, which is my home," Messi, 30, told Barça TV on Saturday, according to the club's website. "My dream was to finish my career at Barça, and we are moving down that path."

"The objective is to continue achieving things, fill the club's trophy cases and keep making history at Barça," said Messi, who spent his first 14 years in the sport with Barcelona's first team. We've been lucky enough to have won a great many things and I hope there will be more in the future."

Josep Maria Bartomeu, the president of FC Barcelona, posted his praise for the deal on Saturday.

"We are in luck with the Barça players," he wrote. "We continue to enjoy the best player in the history of football."

Standing about 5-foot-7, Messi has been one of the most creative ball-handlers and scorers in world soccer history, and he is FC Barcelona's all-time leading goal scorer.

His partnership with Barcelona has been hugely successful for both sides. Messi has won the Ballon d'Or award, given annually to the world's best player, a record five times. And he has led FC Barcelona to eight La Liga titles, four Champions Leagues, five Copas del Rey, and a slew of other titles.

Forbes estimated that Messi took in $80 million in earnings last year, making him the third-highest paid athlete in the world.

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lionel messi re-signs with fc barcelona through 2021 - cnn

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Lionel Messi re-signs with FC Barcelona through 2021

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The buyout clause for the new deal was set at 700 million euros, according to a statement from FC Barcelona. The contract was first announced in August, just days after the record-breaking Messi married his childhood sweetheart, Antonella Roccuzzo.

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On August 16th, 26 youngsters from 18 countries gathered at London's Trafalgar Square to compete in the World Freerunning competition, a sport that involves gymnastic moves like handstands and back-flips, all performed in an everyday urban environment.

Freerunning originated 20-years ago in Paris, France where it is known as Le Parkour. Since then, it has evolved into an organized sport, made even more official by these kind of events.

The event was won by last year's runner-up, 21-year-old Tim "Livewire" Shieff, a British resident who took up the sport five years ago. Victor "Showtime" Lopez from the USA and Jason Paul from Germany came in second and third respectively. To learn more about this sport and the athletes, check out

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Video Of The Week - World Freerunning Championships

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On August 16th, 26 youngsters from 18 countries gathered at London's Trafalgar Square to compete in the World Freerunning competition, a sport that involves gymnastic moves like handstands and back-flips, all performed in an everyday urban environment. Freerunning originated 20-years ago in Paris, France where it is known as Le Parkour.

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While everything about the 2012 Summer Olympics was mesmerizing, some moments will forever be etched in our minds - Oscar Pistorius running on his carbon fiber legs, Michael Phelps celebrating his final swim and most of all, US silver medalist McKayla Maroney, scowling in disappointment!

The now famous expression that the 16-year old gymnast says was born out of the disbelief she felt at losing the gold medal to Romania's Sandra Izbasa after an uncharacteristic slip in the vault finals, may not have seemed to be the smartest thing to do, especially whilst on the medal podium.

But looking back, that is probably one of the most positive things that came out of the Olympics for this young athlete - That's because the expression seemed to resonate with so many people that it has turned McKayla into a mini-celebrity! So much so, that US Olympic soccer stars Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux, along with countless others, even dressed up as Maroney for Halloween, complete with scowl!

But the true reach of her scowl was felt on Thursday November 15th, when the US gymnastics team arrived to meet with President Obama at the White House. According to the youngster they had just about completed their private visit with the President when he approached her and told her he wanted to talk to her about the face and then added, " I pretty much do that face at least once a day."

Then, he came up with an even more unusual request - To see if they could pose side-by-side and do it together. Though a little terrified, McKayla did agree and later declared President Obama as the coolest person she had ever met - Which says a lot given that the 'Fierce Five', only the second US gymnastic team to bring home the gold, have met with a lot of cool people since the games.

As for President Obama? He is thrilled because taking this photo with McKayla has established his 'coolness', with the two girls that are the most difficult to impress - His daughters, Malia and Sasha! Who do you think did a better job scowling? Be sure to let us know, by adding your comments below!

Resources: shine.yahoo.com,bostonherald.com

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US Gymnast Out Scowled By President Obama!

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While everything about the 2012 Summer Olympics was mesmerizing, some moments will forever be etched in our minds - Oscar Pistorius running on his carbon fiber legs, Michael Phelps celebrating his final swim and most of all, US silver medalist McKayla Maroney, scowling in disappointment!

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Neymar said he was "extremely happy to join Paris Saint-Germain," the French club said.

The world-record transfer from Spanish giants Barcelona was previewed Thursday night, with PSG tweeting: "He's coming." The club said it plans to show off its new marquee player Friday at 1:30 p.m. local time (7:30 a.m. ET).

The move had taken a step closer Thursday afternoon after Barcelona confirmed it had received a $263 million payment from the Brazilian to buy out his contract.

Later Thursday, Paris Saint-Germain let its fans know the big news. The video starts with the two words, "He's coming," then ends with samba music and an animation of the Eiffel Tower lit in the Brazilian colors of green, yellow and blue.

Brazilian Lucas Moura, who plays for PSG, sent a welcome message on Twitter, writing, "Bem vindo meu amigo" in Portugese and "Bienvenue, mon pote!" in French.

In a short statement, Barcelona also announced it would be passing details of the deal to European soccer's governing body UEFA amid accusations that PSG is in breach of financial regulations set by the governing body.

"On Thursday afternoon Neymar Jr.'s legal representatives visited in person the Club's offices and made the payment of 222 million euros in the player's name with regards to the unilateral termination of the contract that united both parties.

"As such, the club will pass on to UEFA the details of the above operation so that they can determine the disciplinary responsibilities that may arise from this case."

Barcelona confirmed Wednesday that Neymar had informed it of his intention to move away from Camp Nou. The move had appeared to hit a snag earlier Thursday after Spain's La Liga refused to accept the world record $263 million fee that would facilitate his move to the French club.

La Liga -- Spain's top division -- raised concerns that PSG was contravening Financial Fair Play (FFP), regulations put in place by UEFA to prevent overspending by soccer clubs.

Spanish buyout rule

In Spain, a player has to buy himself out of his contract. The funds are then deposited with La Liga to trigger the release clause in the player's contract before being transferred to the selling club.

And in a statement published Thursday, La Liga said: "We can confirm that the lawyers of the player (Neymar) have come to La Liga to deposit the clause and that it has been rejected. It is all the information we will give so far."

In response, the LFP, which is responsible for France's Ligue 1, said it was "in support and at the disposal of Paris Saint-Germain so that the Neymar contract is approved as soon as possible."

It also urged the Spanish league "to stick to FIFA's rules and its responsibilities."

Neither Barcelona or PSG has responded to CNN's request for comment.

According to UEFA rules, clubs can be punished if they incur a losses in excess of €30 million ($35.5 million) over a three-year period.

PSG was fined €60 million ($71 million) and had its Champions League squad limited by UEFA after failing to meet FFP criteria in 2014.

To be the best, move needed, expert says

Since arriving from Brazilian club Santos in 2013, Neymar has scored over 100 goals for Barcelona, winning the European Champions League, two La Liga titles and three Copa del Rey.

The 25-year-old was part of the world football's most potent attacking triumvirate alongside five-time world player of the year Lionel Messi, and Uruguay star Luis Suarez.

He has also scored 52 goals in 77 appearances for Brazil as well as winning Olympic gold at last year's Rio Games.

Marcelo Bechler, the Brazilian journalist who first reported the expected transfer back in July, told CNN that Neymar's decision came out of his desire to one day be crowned the world's best footballer.

"Neymar thinks he can be the best player in the world," Bechler said. "And it cannot happen if he plays with (Lionel) Messi.

"They are friends but Neymar can't play with Messi and be the best player in the world, so that's why he's made the decision to leave Barcelona."

Neymar's departure comes just a week after club officials said the player would "200%" be staying.

His move to Barcelona would be the most expensive in the history of the sport, dwarfing the $120 million Manchester United paid Juventus for Paul Pogba in August 2016.

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neymar signs 5-year deal with paris saint-germain - cnn

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James Masters, Vasco Cotovio  and Tom McGowan, CNN

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Neymar signs 5-year deal with Paris Saint-Germain

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Neymar said he was "extremely happy to join Paris Saint-Germain," the French club said. The world-record transfer from Spanish giants Barcelona was previewed Thursday night, with PSG tweeting: "He's coming." The club said it plans to show off its new marquee player Friday at 1:30 p.m. local time (7:30 a.m.

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Photo Credit: Estilo Gaucho via Vimeo (screen capture)

Thanksgiving is one of the biggest and most anticipated of all American holidays. Observed annually on the last Thursday of November, the secular celebration, which marks the beginning of the holiday season, can be traced to a harvest feast enjoyed by the early European settlers, or Pilgrims, and Native Americans. Though food remains the centerpiece of the celebration, many other fun traditions have been added since. Here is some Thanksgiving trivia to get the conversation going as you sit down for the scrumptious meal on November 23.

The Origin

Sarah Josepha Hale made the holiday a reality (Photo Credit Wikipedia.org CC 2.0 via abh.org

The first Thanksgiving feast was organized by Governor William Bradford in 1621 to celebrate the Pilgrims' inaugural harvest. According to the folklore, he invited Native Americans to the three-day event, which included hunting and fishing, to thank them for their help. Though that was a one-time celebration, harvest festivals became fairly common in the following years, especially in the northern states. The first attempt to unify the various celebrations came in 1789 when George Washington suggested a national day of Thanksgiving. The leader thought it would be a good way for the nation to commemorate the "happy conclusion to the country's war of independence and the successful ratification of the US Constitution." However, the idea received little support from the American people and was abandoned shortly after.

In 1846, Sarah Josepha Hale, most famous for the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb," began petitioning through editorials and letters for a national Thanksgiving celebration. It took the magazine editor 17 years, but in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln finally proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving. In 1941, to avoid confusion, the US Congress set the date to the fourth Thursday of the month.

Why Thursday?

Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org (CC 2.0)

November is the month of choice because it was when the original feast was organized by the Pilgrims. It also happens to be right after the US harvest season. There appears to be no real significance to Thursday, except that it was the day picked by President Lincoln. However, it is perfect because it allows for an extended weekend enabling families to take road trips to celebrate the holiday together.

How Turkey Became The Centerpiece Of The Dinner

Photo Credit: Johnhain via Pixabay CCO

Though there were plenty of wild turkeys in 1621, the bird was not on the original Thanksgiving menu. According to two separate accounts of the first Thanksgiving, the Native Americans and Pilgrims feasted on goose, lobster, cod, and deer. Some believe turkeys were selected because they were cheaper than geese or chickens and easier to raise. Others think the tradition stems from a mention of the bird in a letter describing the first Thanksgiving by Pilgrim Edward Winslow. Some credit also goes to Hale, who urged officials to make the bird a Thanksgiving staple while petitioning for the holiday. US President Abraham Lincoln, who loved roasted turkey agreed, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Cranberry Sauce

Photo Credit: Veganbaking.net (via Flicker CC 2.0)

Since sugar was a rare luxury in 1621, it is unlikely that cranberry sauce made an appearance on the inaugural Thanksgiving meal. The first recorded mention of the sweet sauce was made by visitors to the Plymouth area in 1663. However, the tradition is believed to have started in 1864, when General Ulysses Grant ordered cranberries be served to soldiers as part of their holiday meal.

Cracking Wishbones

Wishbones (Photo Credit David Goehring (CC 2.0 via Flickr)

Competing to crack the turkey's wishbone in half is a popular Thanksgiving tradition. According to the myth, the person with the larger piece gets his/her secret wish fulfilled. This fun ritual is thought to have been passed on to us by the Etruscans, an ancient Italian civilization. While they are believed to have used chicken or geese wishbones, we, of course, have no choice but to use those of the turkey's.

Thanksgiving Football

Thanksgiving postcard circa 1900 showing turkey and football player (Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org CC 2.0)

This Thanksgiving tradition started when the American Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) staged the championship game between Yale and Princeton on the day in 1876. It was such a success that it became a holiday staple. When IFA abandoned the tradition in 1934, the Detroit Lions seized the opportunity to attract more locals to their games. It was enormously popular. The inaugural game against the undefeated Chicago Bears was sold out two weeks before the event, and many fans had to be turned away. Since then, except for a short break from 1939-1944, the Lions have played every Thanksgiving! The Dallas Cowboys joined the tradition in 1966, and the two teams now attract millions of viewers on the holiday.

Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

Santa Claus' arrival at the parade's finale marks the start of the Christmas season (photo Credit: tweber1 (Santa Claus arrives.) [CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, which was started by the department store employees in 1924, initially featured animals from New York's Central Park Zoo. While they have long been replaced by the giant floats, the event remains extremely popular. An estimated 3.5 million people gather along Manhattan's77th Street and Central Park West to watch the procession each year, while 50 million more enjoy it on television.

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you get the longer end of the wishbone!

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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Thanksgiving And More

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Thanksgiving is one of the biggest and most anticipated of all American holidays. Observed annually on the last Thursday of November, the secular celebration, which marks the beginning of the holiday season, can be traced to a harvest feast enjoyed by the early European settlers, or Pilgrims, and Native Americans.

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Great Barrier Reef (Photo Credit: Kyle Tayor CC. by 2.0 via Flickr)

Over the past 30 years, Australia's Great Barrier Reef has experienced a 50 percent loss in coral. Though part of the decline is being attributed to the warmer ocean temperatures caused by climate change, about half of the damage is due to the proliferation of the crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS). The deadly predators can devour as much as 53 square feet (five square meters) of live coral annually.

Native to the region, the starfish - which grow as big as 32 inches across, have over 21 arms, and are covered in venomous thorn-like spikes - are beneficial in small numbers. They help keep faster-growing coral reef in control, allowing slower growing colonies to form. However, the recent population explosion, combined with two consecutive years of coral bleaching, is destroying the reef at an unprecedented rate.

Crown of thorns starfish eating live coral (Photo Credit: http://waittfoundation.org)

The starfish population is currently being controlled with bile salt solutions or ordinary household vinegar. However, this is a tedious process that requires dive teams to inject each specimen individually. Now, Australian marine scientists are hoping to get some help from a natural COTS predator - the Pacific or giant triton, snail. Named after the Greek god Triton - son of Poseidon and god of the sea - it is one of the world's largest sea snails, reaching lengths of up to two feet! The marine gastropods are so good at hunting down the starfish that even their scent is enough to send the sea stars scampering. Unfortunately, the endangered giant tritons, which have been hunted down for their beautiful shells, are hard to find. Also, since they only consume a few starfish a week, it would take an army of snails to make a difference.

To try to increase the snails' numbers by breeding them in captivity, researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences went in search of them. It took them two years to find just eight specimens, but the effort was worth it given that over the past month, they have produced over 100,000 tiny larvae. The researchers hope to learn more about the lifecycle of these elusive marine creatures as they grow and release them once they are old enough to prey on the COTS. Cherie Motti, leader of the triton breeding program, says, "If we can have a natural predator doing the job for us [killing the starfish], it will be the best outcome." Hopefully, the researchers will be successful in their endeavor.

Giant Triton snails feeding on a crown of thorns starfish (Photo Credit: Australian Institute of Marin Science)

Besides creating thousands of jobs and adding over $50 billion to the country's economy, the Great Barrier Reef is also crucial to the local ecosystem. As you may know, the brightly colored calcium carbonate structures are a symbiosis, or partnership, between coral polyps and zooxanthellae. The polyps provide a home for the single-celled organisms in exchange for food and the vivid color we have come to love. In addition to sheltering the zooxanthellae, the strong corals help protect the shoreline from storms and floods. The polyps, which use calcium ions and dissolved carbon dioxide to form the calcium carbonate skeletons, also help reduce the level of the toxic gas in the oceans. Hence, it is imperative to do all we can to save these delicate structures.

Resources: aims.gov.au, earthtouchnews.com,phys.org.

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Australian Scientists Hope The Giant Triton Snail Will Help Save The Great Barrier Reef

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Over the past 30 years, Australia's Great Barrier Reef has experienced a 50 percent loss in coral. Though part of the decline is being attributed to the warmer ocean temperatures caused by climate change, about half of the damage is due to the proliferation of the crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS).

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Image Credit: cam.ac.uk

A team of astronomers, led by Alexander Boetticher of the University of Cambridge have stumbled upon what is being touted as our galaxy's smallest known star. According to experts, EBLM J0555-57Ab, (57-Ab), which is slightly larger than Saturn, is the smallest possible size for a star. Boetticher says, "Had this star formed with only a slightly lower mass, the fusion reaction of hydrogen in its core could not be sustained, and the star would instead have transformed into a brown dwarf."

57-Ab, which lies almost 600 light years away from Earth, was discovered accidentally. The Cambridge team was looking for exoplanets using data from the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP), a planet discovery experiment created by a collaboration of universities. That's when they noticed a tiny celestial object orbiting its parent star. They initially thought they had found an exoplanet. However, after studying its mass, the team realized that the dim orb was part of a binary star system - two stars of different masses orbiting one another.

Image Credit: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/

The minuscule star is believed to be 2,000 to 3,000 times dimmer than our sun, possess a gravitational pull of about 300 times that of Earth, and sport a lower temperature than most similarly sized stars. The last fact is particularly intriguing to the scientists, who published their study in arXiv.org on July 12, 2017. That's because ultra-cool stars like 57-Ab do not emit much heat and are, therefore, the best places to search for habitable planets. Earlier this year, an astrophysicist from Belgium's University of Liège discovered the Trappist-1 system, which comprises seven potentially habitable planets rotating around an ultra cool star.

Artist's rendition of Trappist-1 System (Photo Credit: Trappist One)

While stars like 57-Ab are ubiquitous, finding them is not easy. Study co-author Amaury Triaud says, "It is a little ironic that those small stars are the most common stars in the cosmos, but because they are faint, we don't know as much about them as we wish. This is why, in parallel to our investigations into planets orbiting ultra-cool stars, we are also investigating the stars themselves." Whether this tiny star will finally end our search for aliens, remains to be seen. But for now, 57-Ab can bask in the glory of being the smallest star known to mankind!

Resources: phys.org, cam.ac.uk, arxiv.org

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Astronomers Stumble Upon Our Galaxy's Smallest Known Star

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A team of astronomers, led by Alexander Boetticher of the University of Cambridge have stumbled upon what is being touted as our galaxy's smallest known star. According to experts, EBLM J0555-57Ab, (57-Ab), which is slightly larger than Saturn, is the smallest possible size for a star.

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Black Friday and Thanksgiving online sales in the United States surged to record highs as shoppers bagged deep discounts and bought more on their mobile devices, heralding a promising start to the key holiday season, according to retail analytics firms.

U.S. retailers raked in a record $7.9 billion in online sales on Black Friday and Thanksgiving, up 17.9 percent from a year ago, according to Adobe Analytics, which measures transactions at the largest 100 U.S. web retailers, on Saturday.

Adobe said Cyber Monday is expected to drive $6.6 billion in internet sales, which would make it the largest U.S. online shopping day in history.

In the run-up to the holiday weekend, traditional retailers invested heavily in improving their websites and bulking up delivery options, preempting a decline in visits to brick-and-mortar stores. Several chains tightened store inventories as well, to ward off any post-holiday liquidation that would weigh on profits.

TVs, laptops, toys and gaming consoles - particularly the PlayStation 4 - were among the most heavily discounted and the biggest sellers, according to retail analysts and consultants.

Commerce marketing firm Criteo said 40 percent of Black Friday online purchases were made on mobile phones, up from 29 percent last year.

No brick-and-mortar sales data for Thanksgiving or Black Friday was immediately available, but Reuters reporters and industry analysts noted anecdotal signs of muted activity - fewer cars in mall parking lots, shoppers leaving stores without purchases in hand.

Stores offered heavy discounts, creative gimmicks and free gifts to draw bargain hunters out of their homes, but some shoppers said they were just browsing the merchandise, reserving their cash for internet purchases. There was little evidence of the delirious shopper frenzy customary of Black Fridays from past years.

However, retail research firm ShopperTrak said store traffic fell less than 1 percent on Black Friday, bucking industry predictions of a sharper decline.

"There has been a significant amount of debate surrounding the shifting importance of brick-and-mortar retail," Brian Field, ShopperTrak's senior director of advisory services, said.

"The fact that shopper visits remained intact on Black Friday illustrates that physical retail is still highly relevant and when done right, it is profitable."

The National Retail Federation (NRF), which had predicted strong holiday sales helped by rising consumer confidence, said on Friday that fair weather across much of the nation had also helped draw shoppers into stores.

The NRF, whose overall industry sales data is closely watched each year, is scheduled to release Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales numbers on Tuesday.

U.S. consumer confidence has been strengthening over this past year, due to a labor market that is churning out jobs, rising home prices and stock markets that are hovering at record highs.

Reporting by Richa NaiduEditing by Marguerita Choy

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computer and electronics retailers (trbc)

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food distribution and convenience stores (trbc)

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retailers excl food and drug specialists (trbc)

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U.S. Black Friday, Thanksgiving online sales climb to record high

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Black Friday and Thanksgiving online sales in the United States surged to record highs as shoppers bagged deep discounts and bought more on their mobile devices, heralding a promising start to the key holiday season, according to retail analytics firms.

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Needless to say, that usage didn't sit well with local retailers. They tried, according to Mr. Zimmer, to give the day a more positive name: Big Friday.

That did not take, but eventually retailers - in Philadelphia and beyond - managed to spin a new connotation: The day the books went from red ink to black.

Most consumers probably don't know - and don't care - about any of this. They want deals.

The rebranding of Black Friday has been so successful that others have tried to spread the wealth across multiple days of the week as the holiday shopping season has grown ever more competitive.

In 2005, Cyber Monday was introduced as the day online retailers offered big savings to holiday shoppers. In 2010, American Express came up with "Small Business Saturday" to encourage people to shop (presumably with their Amex cards) at independent local businesses the day after Black Friday.

And as retailers begin their holiday promotions earlier and earlier, there have even been efforts to change the name of the day before Black Friday to Gray, Brown or Black Thursday.

But for most Americans, it will forever be Thanksgiving.

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black friday and cyber monday (shopping)

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Needless to say, that usage didn't sit well with local retailers. They tried, according to Mr. Zimmer, to give the day a more positive name: Big Friday. That did not take, but eventually retailers - in Philadelphia and beyond - managed to spin a new connotation: The day the books went from red ink to black.

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The Detroit Lions aren't synonymous with many good things. The best might be Thanksgiving.

Since 1934, the Lions have hosted an NFL game in the middle of America's turkey-laden holiday. Through the good (any season when Barry Sanders was in town) and the bad (2008's 0-16 season), Detroit has been the backdrop for the holiday entertainment shared by young, eager football fans and old, dozing uncles alike.

The tradition began as a publicity stunt. The 1934 Lions were spending their first season in Motor City after moving from the booming metropolis of Portsmouth, Ohio. Detroit had pitiful home attendance numbers despite its 10-1 record. Fewer than 12,000 fans had attended each game in a city justifiably focused on baseball. The Tigers had won 101 games that year and consumed the hearts and minds of Michigan's sports fans well into the fall.

Owner George A. Richards wasn't happy with his fledgling franchise, but he knew he could boost attendance simply by moving a showdown with the Chicago Bears up a few days.

Thanksgiving Day games were not a bold and new idea in 1934. In fact, they'd been pretty successful. The largest crowd in NFL history at the time (36,000) watched Red Grange and the Bears play the Chicago Cardinals in 1925.

The Bears would make history again. Chicago was undefeated and coming off an NFL championship season in 1933. The hype surrounding the franchise would have boosted attendance at University of Detroit Stadium even without a shift to Thanksgiving. With the move to Thursday, the Bears and Lions sold out the stadium for the first time. More than 25,000 people were in attendance to watch Chicago's come-from-behind victory, more than doubling the count from the previous week.

But playing on the holiday didn't just increase the Lions' exposure to local fans - it also wound up broadcasting the franchise to the entire country. Richards also owned a key NBC radio affiliate, WJR. NBC radio picked up the game, making 1934's Lions-Bears matchup the first NFL contest to be beamed to a national audience. The game was the perfect storm to push professional football past the college game and into the hearts of American sports fans everywhere.

The NFL has called Detroit home on Thanksgiving ever since - with the exception of a six-year interruption during World War II. The Lions have crested and fallen, but they're 5-4 and second in the NFC North this season. They can bolster their spot in the standings with a game against the first-place Vikings, probably the best game of the day and certainly the one with the most playoff implications on the line.

While it's not 10-1 Detroit vs. 11-0 Chicago in 1934, quarterback Matthew Stafford -the NFL's highest paid player-will do what he can to make sure his team lives up to the Lions' standard.

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How the Lions playing football became a Thanksgiving tradition

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The Detroit Lions aren't synonymous with many good things. The best might be Thanksgiving. Since 1934, the Lions have hosted an NFL game in the middle of America's turkey-laden holiday. Through the good (any season when Barry Sanders was in town) and the bad (2008's 0-16 season), Detroit has been the backdrop for the holiday entertainment shared by young, eager football fans and old, dozing uncles alike.

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Every year since 1934, the Detroit Lions have taken the field for a Thanksgiving game, no matter how bad their record has been. It all goes back to when the Lions were still a fairly young franchise. The team started in 1929 in Portsmouth, Ohio, as the Spartans. Portsmouth, while surely a lovely town, wasn't quite big enough to support a pro team in the young NFL. Detroit radio station owner George A. Richards bought the Spartans and moved the team to Detroit in 1934.

Although Richards's new squad was a solid team, they were playing second fiddle in Detroit to the Hank Greenberg-led Tigers, who had gone 101-53 to win the 1934 American League Pennant. In the early weeks of the 1934 season, the biggest crowd the Lions could draw for a game was a relatively paltry 15,000. Desperate for a marketing trick to get Detroit excited about its fledgling football franchise, Richards hit on the idea of playing a game on Thanksgiving. Since Richards's WJR was one of the bigger radio stations in the country, he had considerable clout with his network and convinced NBC to broadcast a Thanksgiving game on 94 stations nationwide.

The move worked brilliantly. The undefeated Chicago Bears rolled into town as defending NFL champions, and since the Lions had only one loss, the winner of the first Thanksgiving game would take the NFL's Western Division. The Lions not only sold out their 26,000-seat stadium, they also had to turn fans away at the gate. Even though the juggernaut Bears won that game, the tradition took hold, and the Lions have been playing on Thanksgiving ever since.

This year, the Lions host the Minnesota Vikings.

HOW 'BOUT THEM COWBOYS?

The Cowboys, too, jumped on the opportunity to play on Thanksgiving as an extra little bump for their popularity. When the chance to take the field on Thanksgiving arose in 1966, it might not have been a huge benefit for the Cowboys. Sure, the Lions had filled their stadium for their Thanksgiving games, but that was no assurance that Texans would warm to holiday football so quickly.

Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm, though, was something of a marketing genius; among his other achievements was the creation of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

Schramm saw the Thanksgiving Day game as a great way to get the team some national publicity even as it struggled under young head coach Tom Landry. Schramm signed the Cowboys up for the game even though the NFL was worried that the fans might just not show up-the league guaranteed the team a certain gate revenue in case nobody bought tickets. But the fans showed up in droves, and the team broke its attendance record as 80,259 crammed into the Cotton Bowl. The Cowboys beat the Cleveland Browns 26-14 that day, and a second Thanksgiving pigskin tradition caught hold. Since 1966, the Cowboys have missed having Thanksgiving games only twice.

Dallas will take on the Los Angeles Chargers on Thursday.

WHAT'S WITH THE NIGHT GAME?

In 2006, because 6-plus hours of holiday football was not sufficient, the NFL added a third game to the Thanksgiving lineup. This game is not assigned to a specific franchise-this year, the Washington Redskins will welcome the New York Giants.
Re-running this 2008 article a few days before the games is our Thanksgiving tradition.

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Why Do the Lions and Cowboys Always Play on Thanksgiving?

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Every year since 1934, the Detroit Lions have taken the field for a Thanksgiving game, no matter how bad their record has been. It all goes back to when the Lions were still a fairly young franchise. The team started in 1929 in Portsmouth, Ohio, as the Spartans.

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The fire, which Mr. Gonzalez said he started to keep warm, threatened no structures and was quickly put out, the sheriff said.

That arrest was reported locally, and rumors began to fly.

The conservative media outlet Breitbart reported on Tuesday that Mr. Gonzalez was arrested "on suspicion of arson in Wine Country fires that have killed at least 40 residents." That same day, Sheriff Giordano felt compelled to publicly deny the connection, saying there was no indication Mr. Gonzalez was involved with the deadly fires.

"We don't even know if it's arson," he said at a news conference. "It could have started a million ways."

Then Mr. Homan issued his statement on Wednesday.

In it, he said that Mr. Gonzalez had been arrested multiple times before, and that the sheriff's office had repeatedly failed to notify federal authorities of his release. Mr. Gonzalez's arrest, he said, was "especially troubling in light of the massive wildfires already devastating the region."

Sheriff Giordano then began receiving questions about Mr. Gonzalez again, he said. To answer them accurately, he and several others researched the arrests.

"I spent several hours doing that when I could have been doing community work and working on the fire issue," he said.

He issued a long statement on Thursday rebutting the agency, saying that it had stirred fear and that he was eager to get back to focusing on recovery from the fire.

On Friday, Mr. Homan said the whole episode could have been avoided had the sheriff's office cooperated with federal authorities in the first place.

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How the California Wildfire Was Falsely Pinned on an Immigrant

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The fire, which Mr. Gonzalez said he started to keep warm, threatened no structures and was quickly put out, the sheriff said. That arrest was reported locally, and rumors began to fly. The conservative media outlet Breitbart reported on Tuesday that Mr. Gonzalez was arrested "on suspicion of arson in Wine Country fires that have killed at least 40 residents."

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Over 250 firefighters and emergency personnel responded around 3:15 p.m. on Friday, the Fire Department said. Neighbors said the fire continued to roar well into the night, forcing dozens to evacuate.

"At the height of this fire, the winds were at their peak and the angle that the wind was hitting this building caused the rapid spread of this fire across the top floor," Chief Leonard said. The building had extensive fire and water damage, he said.

#FDNY members from #Ladder47 rescue dog from Apt 1E at 5-alarm fire, 565 W 144 St Manhattan pic.twitter.com/XbxEjBP2k1
- FDNY (@FDNY) Nov. 18, 2017

On Saturday, tenants returned to their neighborhood to stare at the scorched remnants of what had been their home and contemplate their losses.

"I lost everything material-wise but not my life," Mr. Ortiz said. "We'll rebuild the rest."

When he evacuated the building, he took his most precious possession, his United States passport. As Mr. Ortiz stared at the fifth-floor window of his apartment, he spoke of his collection of Latin-American landscape paintings and dozens of history books, all gone.

"Imagine," Mr. Ortiz said. "We're hard-working families and now we're displaced."

He said he had not yet thought of living arrangements. The building will remain closed as the Buildings Department investigates safety conditions, the Fire Department said.

Mr. Ortiz and 10 other families were relocated by the Red Cross to hotels and shelters on Friday night. Other tenants helped each other find refuge with friends and family. Many were concerned for documents proving their residency.

Aurora Cordero said her second-floor apartment was "probably under water" along with her residency papers. "Look at my eyes," Ms. Cordero, 57, said. "I haven't stopped crying. It's not that we're attached to our belongings but it hurts to lose everything."

As they started to navigate their new reality, tenants banded together. About a dozen families met at a community center on Saturday afternoon for legal advice and to discuss how they would move forward.

Outside, Mr. Ortiz trembled as he checked text messages on his phone. He was still wearing the clothes from the day of the fire - a light fleece pullover and green sweatpants. Another tenant approached and gave him a brown shopping bag with a jacket.

"There are some buildings where neighbors see each other and don't say hi," Mr. Ortiz said as he looked at the jacket. "But we all know each other. We all share."

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'It Hurts to Lose Everything': Huge Fire in Manhattan Displaces Dozens

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Over 250 firefighters and emergency personnel responded around 3:15 p.m. on Friday, the Fire Department said. Neighbors said the fire continued to roar well into the night, forcing dozens to evacuate. "At the height of this fire, the winds were at their peak and the angle that the wind was hitting this building caused the rapid spread of this fire across the top floor," Chief Leonard said.

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Sonja Paulic

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Massive asteroid to zip past Earth on September 1 (Photo Credit NASA)

Earlier this month, millions of Americans were treated to a rare spectacle: a total solar eclipse that was visible from coast-to-coast. While Florence, a massive asteroid that will zip past our planet on September 1, will not overshadow the stunning event, it will make history of its own. According to Paul Chodas at the Center for Near Earth Object (NEO) Studies, the space rock is the largest to pass this close to our planet since the first near-Earth asteroid was discovered over a century ago.

Though many small NEOs enter our atmosphere harmlessly on a regular basis, the average size of comets or asteroids whose orbits have come into proximity with Earth is about 460 feet (140 meters) In comparison, the Spitzer Space Telescope estimates Florence is an impressive 2.7 miles (4,345 meters) across, or about a third of the size of the asteroid believed to have caused dinosaurs to become extinct.

Simulation of Florence's flyby on September 1 (Image Credit: NASA.gov)

Luckily, according to NASA experts, the closest Florence will get is about 4.4 million miles, or approximately 18 times the distance between the Earth and the moon. While that is far enough to rule out a possible collision, it is close enough to view with binoculars and telescopes from late August to early September. More importantly, Florence's proximity will give scientists the rare opportunity to observe the asteroid in detail. Studying this largely unaltered rock debris, from when the solar system was created about 4.6 billion years ago, will give researchers some insights into the formation process of Earth and other planets.

Discovered in March 1981 by American astronomer Schelte "Bobby" Bus at Australia's Siding Spring Observatory, Florence was named after Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. The asteroid hasn't been this close to Earth since 1890, and won't approach us again until 2500.

Image Credit: NASA.gov

Though most NEO's aren't nearly as large as the visiting behemoth, they're not a rare occurrence. In 2016, more than 15,000 asteroids were classified as near-earth objects, and about 1,500 previously unknown ones are discovered each year. Though this might sound concerning, even those that get significantly close to our planet don't necessarily pose a risk. In March of this year, an asteroid the size of a bus caught experts by complete surprise when it soared within 202,000 miles of Earth - nearer than the distance between the Earth and the moon. Fortunately, it had no intention of landing on our planet.

Resources: NASA.gov, gizmodo.com, space.com, wikipedia.org

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Get Ready For A Close Encounter With A Massive Asteroid!

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Earlier this month, millions of Americans were treated to a rare spectacle: a total solar eclipse that was visible from coast-to-coast. While Florence, a massive asteroid that will zip past our planet on September 1, will not overshadow the stunning event, it will make history of its own.

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Jacob Tremblay won plenty of acclaim for his portrayal of Jack, a young boy who has been held captive with his mother since his birth, in the 2016 film "," and now the 11-year-old is receiving praise for his latest role as Auggie in "Wonder," a movie about a young boy who has undergone 27 surgeries to address facial differences and is attending school for the first time as a fifth-grader.

Tremblay is partnering with Crest for their #ChooseSmiles campaign, which encourages people to spread kindness. The actor talked to CBS News about the campaign, what he learned from filming "Wonder," and his holiday plans.
Q: Tell me about your partnership with #ChooseSmiles and why you're working on this campaign.
A: I'm proud to work with Crest and help spread the message to #ChooseSmiles because smiles are the easiest way to express kindness or happiness. Smiles are everywhere and smiles can spread. You can smile to someone and they'll smile to another person and it goes on and on and on.
Q: What got you excited about playing Auggie, a child who has facial differences, in "Wonder"?
A: One of the reasons is usually I don't work with a lot of kids, like in "Room" I didn't really work with kids, and it was so fun to work with other kids. But when I heard about the message, I thought, "I gotta be part of that movie." It's very important to choose kindness and stop bullying.
Q: Have you ever been bullied in real life?
A: I'm lucky. I haven't been bullied to the extent that Auggie was, but I have been picked on because I'm kind of short for my age, so I know how it feels and it doesn't feel good.
Q: How do you maintain your self-confidence in situations like those?
A: The best thing is to go to your parents, because when I told my mom about it, she said she'd never want me to carry anything negative on my shoulders alone. She gave me advice to kill 'em with kindness, and if that doesn't work, just ignore it.
Q: Was it hard for you to see yourself in the prosthetics for Auggie's face?
A: It wasn't hard for me at all. When I looked at myself in the mirror for the first time, I thought it looked really realistic, even without the little bit of CGI they add. I think they help me become Auggie by using my imagination. There's a lot of different pieces. There's a neck piece, a face piece, a helmet connected to an eye mechanism, a wig, contact lenses and dentures.
Q: Was it uncomfortable to wear all of that?
A: Yes, it was uncomfortable -- a little bit. But I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was such an honor to play Auggie.
Q: Did you get any feedback from children with facial differences?
A: I reached out to a group of children from hospital affected by facial differences and I asked them for letters or anything they wanted me to know. I got a lot of letters from these children and I put them in a binder I had on set and I'd read it before I did my serious scenes.
Q: Did reading the letters help?
A: It did help me because there was one letter about the experience of being stared at and I remember reading that letter before I did that scene when Auggie walks into homeroom for the first time.
Q: What was the most challenging part of playing Auggie?
A: Probably the crying scene because it was challenging and it was emotionally draining, but crying scenes are real acting. That's when real acting comes into play, because you really have to focus.
Q: You've had some really talented co-stars in your films. What did you learn from working with Julia Roberts?
A: I definitely learned a lot just by watching her act. I saw how focused and intact she is with her character and I saw how kind she is to everyone on set. That taught me no matter how famous you are, you can always choose kind
Q: What are your plans for the holidays?
A: I'm going to be home for Thanksgiving. I like it because you get to spend time with family. For Christmas, I'm going to be in Mexico with my grandparents.
Q: What's on your Christmas list?
A: I think I have everything already, but I'm still thinking about it.
Q: What else are you working on now?
A: I'm not working on anything right now or later this year but I have two movies coming out soon. One of them is called "The Death and Life of John F. Donovan" with Jessica Chastain, and the other one is "The Predator" -- the alien movie -- which was really exciting. It was really fun to work on "The Predator."

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Jacob Tremblay on getting bullied, learning from "Wonder"

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Jacob Tremblay won plenty of acclaim for his portrayal of Jack, a young boy who has been held captive with his mother since his birth, in the 2016 film "," and now the 11-year-old is receiving praise for his latest role as Auggie in "Wonder," a movie about a young boy who has undergone 27 surgeries to address facial differences and is attending school for the first time as a fifth-grader.

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Photo Credit: Lego

On September 28, 2017, LEGO fans of all ages finally got the chance to visit the massive 82,000 square-feet, 100-feet high, LEGO house aka "Home of The Brick." Located in the iconic toy's hometown of Billund, Denmark, the impressive structure, that has been in the works since 2014, is the brainchild of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Its exterior, resembling 21 gigantic LEGO blocks, is covered in colorful tiles giving the illusion that the entire building is made of the popular bricks. A 2X4 keystone brick placed on top welcomes visitors flying into Billund Airport with light beams from its eight knobs.

Red Zone promotes creativity (Photo Credit: LEGO)

Part public art piece, part amusement park, the LEGO house has something for everyone - from the youngest enthusiasts to AFOLs (Adult Fans of LEGO). Upon entering, visitors encounter four color coded areas, each signifying a different aspect of play and learning. The Red Zone allows kids to put their creative skills to work using the millions of colorful bricks scattered under a cascading LEGO "waterfall." The Green Zone, which tests social skills with storytelling and roleplay, includes activities like writing and directing a LEGO movie. The Blue Zone is dedicated to cognitive play, with fun tasks like guiding robots on Arctic missions to rescue trapped mammoths. The Yellow Zone allows visitors to express their emotions by using the bricks to build fish and releasing them into a large "aquarium" or planting their LEGO flower creations in the extensive LEGO meadow.

LEGO Structures built by fans (Photo Credit: LEGO)

Those tired of playing with the over 25 million bricks, or not in the mood, can admire the large gallery of fan-built LEGO creations, learn about the toy's fascinating 85-year-old history, or buy themselves a set or two at the LEGO store. The Home of the Brick also features numerous public spaces for visitors to relax in, as well as a number of playgrounds to entertain kids. While the outdoor spaces are free, visitors who want to visit the experience zones and galleries have to pay 199 Danish Krone ($31.56) per person.

The Mini Chef restaurant (Photo Credit LEGO)

No park excursion is complete without a good meal. At the Home of the Brick, visitors can choose from one of three restaurants - Brickaccino Café, Le Gourmet, and Mini Chef. While all have unique features, it is Mini Chef that is likely to be the favorite with kids. The family restaurant allows patrons to build their order with color-coded LEGO bricks. They then insert it into a screen on the table and watch as the animated chefs "make" the food. When ready, the meal is placed inside a cool-looking LEGO lunchbox and delivered by a robot waiter via a conveyor belt.

Blue Zone tests cognitive skills (Photo Credit: LEGO)

While having a sleepover at the Brick House is not an option for most, four lucky individuals will soon get a chance to do just that. On November 7, the LEGO Company teamed up with Airbnb to stage a contest that will enable one lucky winner and his/her three guests to stay inside the magical house for a night on November 24. To be eligible, competitors have to answer the question, "If you and your family had an infinite supply of LEGO bricks, what would you build?" on the Airbnb/LEGO House page before November 16. Judges will score participants based on the creativity and originality of the responses. So if you are a LEGO fan, be sure to get your entries in before the deadline.

Resources: lego.com, huffingtonpost.com, theverge.com, businessinsider.com

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LEGO's Massive "Home Of The Brick" Delights Fans In Denmark

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On September 28, 2017, LEGO fans of all ages finally got the chance to visit the massive 82,000 square-feet, 100-feet high, LEGO house aka "Home of The Brick." Located in the iconic toy's hometown of Billund, Denmark, the impressive structure, that has been in the works since 2014, is the brainchild of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels.

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The young star of the new movie "Wonder" has advice for other children: If you are curious about someone's differences, it is better to ask questions than to stare.

When Jacob Tremblay, 11, took on the role of Auggie Pullman, the unlikely hero of the best-selling book of the same name, he asked patients at a Toronto children's hospital to write him letters describing their experiences living with facial differences like those of his character. Their answers, he told TODAY Parents, helped him create Auggie for the big screen.

Steve Cohn/Lionsgate

"I had a binder with those letters in it, and I took it to the set with me every day," said Tremblay.

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One of the experiences the children described for him was how it felt to be stared at, perhaps when walking into a school homeroom for the first time. "They said it feels like you're shrinking away," Tremblay explained, "Like you are torn into a million pieces."

Tremblay, who is now working with Crest toothpaste on their #Choose Smiles and #ChooseKindness campaign, said parents can help by teaching their children how to be kinder if they encounter someone with a condition that makes them look different.

"I would tell parents to just tell their kids that behind the face is the heart," said Tremblay. "Don't be afraid to ask questions if you are curious about differences, because that's OK. They will be happy to tell you about their conditions and about who they are."

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'Behind the face is the heart': Young star of 'Wonder' on teaching empathy

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The young star of the new movie "Wonder" has advice for other children: If you are curious about someone's differences, it is better to ask questions than to stare.

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Great Barrier Reef (Photo Credit: Kyle Tayor CC. by 2.0 via Flickr)

Over the past 30 years, Australia's Great Barrier Reef has experienced a 50 percent loss in coral. Though part of the decline is being attributed to the warmer ocean temperatures caused by climate change, about half of the damage is due to the proliferation of the crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS). The deadly predators can devour as much as 53 square feet (five square meters) of live coral annually.

Native to the region, the starfish - which grow as big as 32 inches across, have over 21 arms, and are covered in poisonous spikes - are beneficial in small numbers. They help keep faster-growing coral reef in control, allowing slower growing colonies to form. However, the recent population explosion, combined with two consecutive years of coral bleaching, is destroying the reef at an unprecedented rate.

Crown of thorns starfish eating live coral (Photo Credit: http://waittfoundation.org)

The starfish population is currently being controlled with bile salt solutions or ordinary household vinegar. However, this is a tedious process that requires dive teams to inject each specimen individually. Now, Australian marine scientists are hoping to get some help from a natural COTS predator - the Pacific or giant triton, snail. Named after the Greek god Triton - son of Poseidon and god of the sea - it is one of the world's largest sea snails, reaching lengths of up to two feet! The marine gastropods are so good at hunting down the starfish that even their scent is enough to send the sea stars scampering. Unfortunately, the endangered giant tritons, which have been hunted down for their beautiful shells, are hard to find. Also, since they only consume a few starfish a week, it would take an army of snails to make a difference.

To try to increase the snails' numbers by breeding them in captivity, researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences went in search of them. It took them two years to find just eight specimens, but the effort was worth it given that over the past month, they have produced over 100,000 tiny larvae. The researchers hope to learn more about the lifecycle of these elusive marine creatures as they grow and release them once they are old enough to prey on the COTS. Cherie Motti, leader of the triton breeding program, says, "If we can have a natural predator doing the job for us [killing the starfish], it will be the best outcome." Hopefully, the researchers will be successful in their endeavor.

Giant Triton snails feeding on a crown of thorns starfish (Photo Credit: Australian Institute of Marin Science)

Besides creating thousands of jobs and adding over $50 billion to the country's economy, the Great Barrier Reef is also crucial to the local ecosystem. As you may know, the brightly colored calcium carbonate structures are a symbiosis, or partnership, between coral polyps and zooxanthellae. The polyps provide a home for the single-celled organisms in exchange for food and the vivid color we have come to love. In addition to sheltering the zooxanthellae, the strong corals help protect the shoreline from storms and floods. The polyps, which use calcium ions and dissolved carbon dioxide to form the calcium carbonate skeletons, also help reduce the level of the toxic gas in the oceans. Hence, it is imperative to do all we can to save these delicate structures.

Resources: aims.gov.au, earthtouchnews.com,phys.org.

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Australian Scientists Hope The Giant Triton Snail Will Help Save The Great Barrier Reef

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Over the past 30 years, Australia's Great Barrier Reef has experienced a 50 percent loss in coral. Though part of the decline is being attributed to the warmer ocean temperatures caused by climate change, about half of the damage is due to the proliferation of the crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS).

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Should elementary schools assign homework? TFK asked two experts to weigh in.

Janine Bempechat is a professor of human development and psychology at Wheelock College, in Massachusetts. She studies kids' motivation for learning. Below, she explains why homework serves an important purpose for students of all ages.

Etta Kralovec is a professor of education at the University of Arizona. She is also a coauthor of the book The End of Homework. Here, she argues that homework is a waste of time and explains her reasoning.

RICHARD NESTEAD-GETTY IMAGES

Yes!
By Janine Bempechat
Particularly for elementary school, homework has become a debated issue. That is because studies show that doing homework does not necessarily improve younger students' grades.

Still, many teachers and parents are in favor of homework in elementary school. They view it as a way for students to review what they are learning in school and develop the learning habits and study skills they will need through middle school and high school. Homework helps you practice how to plan your time, manage distractions, and persevere when learning becomes difficult.

Research shows that homework pays off. Students who invest effort in their homework are better at keeping track of their work and managing their time. When they begin middle school and high school, they are more positive about learning than students who do not invest time in homework. They also do much better in school.

This payoff may not appear during the elementary school years. But that doesn't mean homework should be abandoned. Instead, educators should focus on designing high-quality, enjoyable homework that is challenging in the best sense of the word.

No!
By Etta kralovec
I hated homework when I was in elementary school, and I hated it even more as a parent. As I recall, my kids and I argued more about homework than about anything else.

Now that I'm an educator, I spend a lot of time in schools. When it comes to homework, there is still a lot of controversy. And it's not just students who are unhappy. Many teachers and parents tell me they think homework is a waste of time. I couldn't agree more.

Homework has been around about as long as there have been schools. You may be surprised to know that it was not always popular. In 1905, California banned homework for students under 15. In the 1920s, doctors formed a group called Physicians Against Homework. They said homework harmed students' eyes and kept kids cooped up, denying them exercise and fresh air. More recently, researchers at Stanford University found that it causes considerable stress in students' lives.

My colleagues and I have put together healthy homework guidelines, which we hope will stimulate conversation between teachers, parents, and students, and eventually lead to some common-sense solutions for the age-old controversy of homework in our schools. It's a conversation worth having, don't you think?

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Should elementary schools assign homework? TFK asked two experts to weigh in. Janine Bempechat is a professor of human development and psychology at Wheelock College, in Massachusetts. She studies kids' motivation for learning. Below, she explains why homework serves an...

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Newsela | California works to solve a growing problem: whales caught in fishing gear

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The Pacific Ocean is warming, and whales are moving after their food supply closer to the California coast. As a result, many whales are getting tangled up in fishing ropes and gear.

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Newsela | It may be light years away, but Ross 128 b looks pretty similar to Earth

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CLOSE

Scientists have discovered a remarkable cluster of planets resembling the core of our own solar system, but better: seven Earth-size worlds, each potentially capable of hosting liquid water and therefore life, in orbit around a nearby star.

Preliminary data suggest all seven planets some 40 light-years from our sun are rocky, which would make them more similar to Earth than, say, Jupiter, a huge ball of gas. Rocky planets seem a better bet than gaseous worlds for offering sanctuary to life as we understand it.

Never before have astronomers found a star circled by so many Earth-like planets with relatively pleasant climates. Better yet, the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories peering at these new found worlds should be able to pick out chemical signals of any living organisms. Oxygen, for example, is a product of plants, while methane is made by certain microbes.

"We've made a crucial step toward finding (out) if there is life out there," says Amaury Triaud of Britain's University of Cambridge, co-author of the study on the planets in this week's Nature. "Here, if life managed to thrive and release gases similar to that (which) we have on Earth, we will know."

Three of the planets bask in just the right amount of energy from their host star that oceans could wash their surfaces, assuming the worlds are swaddled in atmospheres. Three more could feature smaller water bodies, and water might puddle on the seventh under ideal conditions. Many researchers refer to the region around a star where planets are neither too cold nor too hot to support liquid water on their surfaces as the habitable zone, often jokingly referred to as the Goldilocks zone.

Five of the seven planets are almost exactly the width of Earth, a state scientists call having "Earth radii." The remaining two are a touch smaller than Earth. Among our celestial companions, Mars and Venus are roughly Earth-size, Mercury is much smaller and the four outer planets are much bigger. That tally means the new planetary system boasts more Earth-size worlds than our own solar system.

"Seven planets with Earth radii - that's unique. And seven of them in the habitable zone - that's unique as well," says Francesco Pepe of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory, who was not involved with the study. Other seven-planet systems have been found, but none with so many planets in the habitable zone, says Abel Méndez of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

The new herd of planets circles a tiny dim bulb of a star called TRAPPIST-1, which shares its name with the Belgian-operated telescope that discovered some of the planets and, not coincidentally, with a beloved Belgian beer.

The star's puniness - it's only 8% the mass of our sun - will make it easier to pin the planets' measurements because smaller stars are more easily influenced by their surrounding planets. Researchers have already confirmed that at least two of the planets don't have flabby hydrogen atmospheres, which would render them uninhabitable.

"Of all the planets we've found, this has risen to the top as the most exciting (for) the potential of studying habitability," says Boston University's Philip Muirhead, who was not involved with the study.

The Hubble Space Telescope should be able to detect methane and water in the planets' atmospheres, says study co-author Michaël Gillon of Belgium's University of Liege. The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018, will be powerful enough to spot the signatures of other chemicals such as ozone and carbon dioxide. Finding a cocktail of these chemicals in the right amounts would be strong evidence something out there is alive.

If someone could stand on one of these planets, he or she would see a salmon-colored sun brighter than the moon but dimmer than our own sun, Triaud says. If that observer looked up, he says, "the spectacle would be beautiful, because every now and then you'd see another planet, maybe twice as big as the moon in the sky, depending on which planet you're on and which planet you're looking at."

The researchers say with luck they'll know in a decade whether there are signs of life near TRAPPIST-1. "People will get more and more news about this system in the coming months and years," Gillon says. "The story is really just beginning."

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2m8sivN

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Newly discovered network of planets could harbor water and life, scientists say

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CLOSE Scientists have discovered a remarkable cluster of planets resembling the core of our own solar system, but better: seven Earth-size worlds, each potentially capable of hosting liquid water and therefore life, in orbit around a nearby star.

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Newsela | Caught On Camera: The blue whale

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Blue whales are the largest animals ever to have lived on Earth, but they are hard to find.

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Great Barrier Reef | Map, Animals, Bleaching, & Facts

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Great Barrier Reef, world’s largest coral reef complex, located in the Pacific Ocean off northeastern Australia. It extends for more than 1,250 miles (2,000 km) in a northwest-southeast direction, and its width ranges from 37 to 155 miles (60 to 250 km). It has an area of some 135,000 square miles (…

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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CHICAGO -- A scientist searching for a young male alligator snapping turtle that was put in a Southern Illinois creek at least a year ago instead grabbed a 22-pound adult female, raising hopes for those trying to protect a creature that hadn't been spotted in the area for three decades.

Illinois Natural History Survey herpetologist Chris Phillips called his finding of the turtle, at least 18 years old, a "move in the right direction" in the effort to save the state-endangered species.

The discovery was chronicled in an article in this month's Southeastern Naturalist co-authored by Ethan Kessler, a graduate student of natural resources and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois.

"It gives us hope that reproduction is happening," Kessler said.

Still, both Kessler and Phillips aren't quite sure what exactly the find says about these secretive creatures that have been around for millions of years. This particular turtle that was living in Union County's Clear Creek, where scientists have been releasing turtles in Union County's Clear Creek because no wild alligator turtles had been found in Illinois since 1984.

"Maybe there is a hidden population we don't know about," Kessler said, adding that it's more likely that this turtle was just the last survivor of what was once a bigger population of turtles or a hearty traveling turtle that somehow made its way up the Mississippi River.

However it got there, before it was found by Phillips it found at least one other turtle. The scientists know that because on the day Phillips reached down and grabbed the female turtle he thought he was reaching down for a smaller male turtle that has been wearing a radio transmitter ever since scientists released it into the same creek at least a year ago.

It was because the water is so murky, Phillips had no way of knowing that he was grabbing the bigger turtle and not the smaller one that was so close that it was ultimately pulled out of the water in the same spot.

That leaves both Kessler and Phillips wondering if Phillips was interrupting the kind of activity that a species needs to increase its numbers.

"He (the smaller turtle) had sidled up to her so maybe they were making plans," said Phillips.

Sadly -- at least for the scientists -- just what plans the turtles were making may never be known thanks to a failure in technology.

"We put a transmitter (on the larger turtle) but the battery died three months later," Phillips said. "She's in there but there is no way we're going to find her."

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"It gives us hope": Rare alligator snapping turtle found in Illinois

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CHICAGO -- A scientist searching for a young male alligator snapping turtle that was put in a Southern Illinois creek at least a year ago instead grabbed a 22-pound adult female, raising hopes for those trying to protect a creature that hadn't been spotted in the area for three decades.

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Newsela | Making take-off easier for kids with autism

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Although "Navigating MSP" started as a program for children with autism, people of all ages and abilities are finding value in a travel-day trial run.

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Newsela | If you live alone, owning a dog can reduce the risk of a heart attack

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Needless to say, that usage didn't sit well with local retailers. They tried, according to Mr. Zimmer, to give the day a more positive name: Big Friday.

That did not take, but eventually retailers - in Philadelphia and beyond - managed to spin a new connotation: The day the books went from red ink to black.

Most consumers probably don't know - and don't care - about any of this. They want deals.

The rebranding of Black Friday has been so successful that others have tried to spread the wealth across multiple days of the week as the holiday shopping season has grown ever more competitive.

In 2005, Cyber Monday was introduced as the day online retailers offered big savings to holiday shoppers. In 2010, American Express came up with "Small Business Saturday" to encourage people to shop (presumably with their Amex cards) at independent local businesses the day after Black Friday.

And as retailers begin their holiday promotions earlier and earlier, there have even been efforts to change the name of the day before Black Friday to Gray, Brown or Black Thursday.

But for most Americans, it will forever be Thanksgiving.

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black friday and cyber monday (shopping)

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Needless to say, that usage didn't sit well with local retailers. They tried, according to Mr. Zimmer, to give the day a more positive name: Big Friday. That did not take, but eventually retailers - in Philadelphia and beyond - managed to spin a new connotation: The day the books went from red ink to black.

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - Black Friday and Thanksgiving online sales in the United States surged to record highs as shoppers bagged deep discounts and bought more on their mobile devices, heralding a promising start to the key holiday season, according to retail analytics firms.

U.S. retailers raked in a record $7.9 billion in online sales on Black Friday and Thanksgiving, up 17.9 percent from a year ago, according to Adobe Analytics, which measures transactions at the largest 100 U.S. web retailers, on Saturday.

Adobe said Cyber Monday is expected to drive $6.6 billion in internet sales, which would make it the largest U.S. online shopping day in history.

In the run-up to the holiday weekend, traditional retailers invested heavily in improving their websites and bulking up delivery options, preempting a decline in visits to brick-and-mortar stores. Several chains tightened store inventories as well, to ward off any post-holiday liquidation that would weigh on profits.

TVs, laptops, toys and gaming consoles - particularly the PlayStation 4 - were among the most heavily discounted and the biggest sellers, according to retail analysts and consultants.

Commerce marketing firm Criteo said 40 percent of Black Friday online purchases were made on mobile phones, up from 29 percent last year.

No brick-and-mortar sales data for Thanksgiving or Black Friday was immediately available, but Reuters reporters and industry analysts noted anecdotal signs of muted activity - fewer cars in mall parking lots, shoppers leaving stores without purchases in hand.

Stores offered heavy discounts, creative gimmicks and free gifts to draw bargain hunters out of their homes, but some shoppers said they were just browsing the merchandise, reserving their cash for internet purchases. There was little evidence of the delirious shopper frenzy customary of Black Fridays from past years.

However, retail research firm ShopperTrak said store traffic fell less than 1 percent on Black Friday, bucking industry predictions of a sharper decline.

"There has been a significant amount of debate surrounding the shifting importance of brick-and-mortar retail," Brian Field, ShopperTrak's senior director of advisory services, said.

"The fact that shopper visits remained intact on Black Friday illustrates that physical retail is still highly relevant and when done right, it is profitable."

The National Retail Federation (NRF), which had predicted strong holiday sales helped by rising consumer confidence, said on Friday that fair weather across much of the nation had also helped draw shoppers into stores.

The NRF, whose overall industry sales data is closely watched each year, is scheduled to release Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales numbers on Tuesday.

U.S. consumer confidence has been strengthening over this past year, due to a labor market that is churning out jobs, rising home prices and stock markets that are hovering at record highs.

Reporting by Richa NaiduEditing by Marguerita Choy

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computer and electronics retailers (trbc)

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food distribution and convenience stores (trbc)

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retailers excl food and drug specialists (trbc)

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U.S. Black Friday, Thanksgiving online sales climb to record high

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Black Friday and Thanksgiving online sales in the United States surged to record highs as shoppers bagged deep discounts and bought more on their mobile devices, heralding a promising start to the key holiday season, according to retail analytics firms.

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The NBA announced Saturday that it agrees with Derrick Rose's assertion that he was injured on a flagrant foul by Bucks center Greg Monroe on Friday night. It changed the officials' call from a common foul to a flagrant 1, which signifies unnecessary contact against a player by an opponent.

Greg Monroe's (MIL) foul against Derrick Rose (CLE) at 10:12/qtr 4 on 10/20/17 has been upgraded to a Flagrant 1 after league review.

- NBA Official (@NBAOfficial) October 21, 2017

Rose, 29, who hasn't played more than 66 games in a season since 2010-11 because of various injuries, sprained his ankle on a fourth-quarter drive to the basket when Monroe appeared to wrap his arm around his neck, sending the Cavs point guard sprawling out of bounds. The officials reviewed the play and upheld their call of a common foul, but Rose said afterward that it should have been called a flagrant foul.

"I think I'm the only person in the league that's not getting a flagrant for that call, bro," Rose said, per ESPN, after scoring 12 points in 23 minutes before departing. "Come on, man. Like, I'm sure I'm the only player, but it is what it is. ... That's a common foul. Wow. Come on."

Cavs guard Dwyane Wade also wasn't buying it.

"I ain't got calls in the last seven years, so I definitely understand what he's talking about," Wade said, again per ESPN. "It's unfortunate, a guy goes down and he can't protect himself. From what we're told, as players, if they go around the neck it's automatic. And, Derrick said it when he got here. He said, 'Listen, y'all, I ain't gonna get calls.' And it continues to happen to him. But he's going to keep attacking the rim. That's his nature and that's who he is and we know that. So, hopefully next time, it's rewarded."

Rose stayed in the game to shoot his free throws - he made both - and then departed to watch the rest of the Cavs' 116-97 win from the bench.

Cavs Coach Tyronn Lue said he's "kind of assuming" that Rose, who was walking around without crutches after the game, will miss Saturday's game against the Magic.
More NBA: Lonzo Ball's second game was much, much better than his first NBA podcast: Twitter mailbag on Gordon Heyward's injury, Lonzo Ball and more Russell Westbrook's Thunder was a one-man band. Now he's conducting an all-star ensemble. Is Kyrie Irving just a sidekick? Is DeMarcus Cousins not a winner? Five players with labels to shed. The Top 100 players for the 2017-18 season Future Top 100 NBA players: 10 potential breakout candidates not on this year's list Top 100 NBA players: Which guys rose and fell the furthest from last year? The Clippers will miss the playoffs and nine other bold predictions for the 2017-18 season

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NBA agrees with Derrick Rose, says foul that caused ankle injury was flagrant

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The NBA announced Saturday that it agrees with Derrick Rose's assertion that he was injured on a flagrant foul by Bucks center Greg Monroe on Friday night. It changed the officials' call from a common foul to a flagrant 1, which signifies unnecessary contact against a player by an opponent.

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CLEVELAND (AP) -- The Cavaliers' problems at point guard aren't getting much better.

Derrick Rose, who was supposed to handle starting duties while Isaiah Thomas recovers from a hip injury, could miss three more weeks with a left ankle injury that has bothered him for a month.

Rose injured the ankle Oct. 20 at Milwaukee and has missed Cleveland's past five games. The team said Friday that Rose's ankle will be immobilized for a week and he will undergo extended treatment "over the next two to three weeks."

In his first season with Cleveland, the 29-year-old Rose, whose promising career has been slowed by injuries in recent years, is averaging 14.3 points in seven games. The former league MVP signed with the Cavs as a free agent this summer after spending last season with the New York Knicks.

Rose has shown flashes of his All-Star form, but hasn't recovered from the ankle injury.

Because he's been limited and with Thomas still likely to be out another month or more before making his Cleveland debut, Cavs coach Tyronn Lue has been forced to juggle his lineups and has used LeBron James at point guard.

He's also been forced to use Jeff Green and Dwyane Wade at the point.

Iman Shumpert started at point guard during Cleveland's recent road trips as the Cavs went 3-1. Shumpert started again Friday night as the Cavs host the Los Angeles Clippers.

"We still miss a true point guard," Lue said. "It's hard having to just try to mix and match and have Jeff play the point and D-Wade and different guys, but they've been doing a good job of handling and we know he's going to be out for at least two weeks now so just keep continuing to plug away."

There remains no clear timetable for Thomas to play. The two-time All-Star, acquired in the blockbuster offseason trade for Kyrie Irving, has increased his workouts in recent weeks.

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Cleveland Cavaliers' Derrick Rose (left ankle) out at least two more weeks | NBA.com

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CLEVELAND (AP) -- The Cavaliers' problems at point guard aren't getting much better. Derrick Rose, who was supposed to handle starting duties while Isaiah Thomas recovers from a hip injury, could miss three more weeks with a left ankle injury that has bothered him for a month. Rose injured the ankle Oct.

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By Michelle Z. Donahue

A bat specimen collected in France at the end of World War I, since housed in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, may hold important clues for solving the origins of a deadly fungus on a modern rampage among North American bat species.

The responsible pathogen, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, was first found on hibernating bats in New York in 2006. Known simply as Pd, it has spread to 33 states and five Canadian provinces and is estimated to have killed more than 6 million bats.

Scientists don't know exactly where Pd came from or how it arrived here, and there is no cure for the disease it causes.

The discovery of the fungus's DNA on the Smithsonian specimen-collected in 1918-is the oldest such sample found to date. It gives scientists a glimmer of hope that they will eventually be able to deduce if bats from Europe and Asia once suffered similar losses to what North American bats are seeing today, and what, if any, immunity may have evolved in affected bat species.

The discovery, announced in the Sept. 2017 issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, may someday help inform strategies to combat the disease, either through vaccines or other preventative measures.

The find came when a team led by Kris Helgen, formerly a curator of mammals at the Natural History Museum, sampled 138 19th- and 20th-century bat specimens from Europe, East Asia and North America in the museum. Helgen is now at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

The main aim of the sampling was simply to see if DNA from the fungus could be detected-it was, just once, on a little bat known as Bechstein's bat ( Myotis bechsteinii).

The find is surprising, although not entirely unexpected. "Pd is known to have been in Asia and Europe for a long time, but was only recently introduced to the United States," says Michael Campana, a scientist with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Centers for Conservation Genomics and lead author of the study. Bats in Europe show resistance to the most lethal effects of the fungus.

"We wanted to learn if we could determine how long it's been in Europe, and in the past, did these animals undergo a bottleneck similar to what North American bat populations are now experiencing," he says.

To determine that will require much more extensive testing of the European bats themselves, their immune responses and close examination of the genes responsible for immunity, Campana says. But this 100-year-old find is a start.

Campana and his team also found that Pd DNA strains from 1918 to the modern day are identical-an expected result, given that the genetic analysis only looked at 100 base pairs out of the 31 million total base pairs in the pathogen's genome. To see how modern strains differ-how they have mutated or evolved, perhaps-from the 1918 specimen, a much more detailed genetic analysis is required, Campana adds.

In susceptible bats, infection by the fungus leads to a disease known as white-nose syndrome, named for the dusty appearance bats' muzzles take on in advanced stages of infection. The disease causes hibernating bats to arouse more frequently from their torpor, which severely depletes the stored reserves they need to survive the remainder of the hibernation season.

Infected bats often die of starvation and exhaustion when they try in vain to find insect food in winter, though the heaviest mortality usually comes in the second and third years after infection.

Those losses add up, and affect other populations: The death of every bat chips away at the $3.7 billion farmers save per year in costs related to pest damage and control. In corn alone, one study found that bats save farmers of that crop $1 billion every year.

Currently, the best strategy for slowing the spread of the disease to new areas in North America is restricting humans from entering caves where bats live, especially during the winter. Because the disease doesn't seem to affect all bats equally, biologists are still working to determine the exact mix of factors that lead to infections.

One way the infected 1918 French bat specimen may ultimately help is through the work of researchers like Jeff Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Northern Arizona University, who is tracing the overall genomic history of Pd. He is working toward assembling a "relatedness" diagram that shows how closely Pd strains from different geographic locations are related. North American strains are more closely related to each other than strains from Europe and Asia, which are far more diversified.

"Tying results from this study in with projects like Jeff Foster's will help us to better understand the long-term dynamics of the spread of Pd," says Jeremy Coleman, national white-nose syndrome coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "Ideally such information will help inform our efforts to manage the spread and impacts of the disease."

It is possible that specimens housed in other museums around the world could yield similar clues. Coleman cautioned that museum samples may only be able to take researchers so far back in time. European and Asian bats may have adapted to live with the fungus thousands of years ago. Contamination with modern DNA is another stumbling block, especially if the specimens have not been carefully handled or stored.

"We've been grappling with this question of where Pd came from for a long time," Coleman says. "Many have hypothesized that there may have been similar mass mortality events as the fungus spread in other parts of the world, but perhaps it all happened before people took notice. As we continue to look for answers it is great to see that museum collections may be able to help connect some of the dots."

Tags: bats, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, white-nose syndrome

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DNA on 100-year-old bat from France may help fight deadly fungus in North America

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By Michelle Z. Donahue A bat specimen collected in France at the end of World War I, since housed in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, may hold important clues for solving the origins of a deadly fungus on a modern rampage among North American bat species.

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Two American sailors and their two dogs were rescued Wednesday after surviving five months at sea in the Pacific after their sailboat's engine failed in May.

The U.S. Navy says Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiaba were discovered 900 miles southeast of Japan on Tuesday by a fishing ship from Taiwan. The USS Ashland, an amphibious landing ship, was in the area on routine patrol and assisted in the rescue effort.

Appel and Fuiaba set sail from Hawaii to Tahiti in the spring with their dogs, one of which is named Zeus. They said the vessel's engine died during bad weather on May 30, but the pair believed they could make it to land using the ship's sails.

After two months at sea, the sailors said they began issuing daily distress signals, but there were no ships close enough to hear the calls. The ship drifted far off its original course after the engine failed.

Appel said they survived thanks to water purifiers and a year's supply of dry food on board, including rice, pasta and oatmeal, according to the Navy.

U.S. Navy / Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jonathan Clay

The USS Ashland rescued the pair and their dogs several hours after locating their vessel on Thursday. They will remain on board until the Ashland makes its next port of call.

Appel thanked the Navy for coming to their rescue.

"I'm grateful for their service to our country. They saved our lives. The pride and smiles we had when we saw [U.S. Navy] on the horizon was pure relief," Appel said, according to the Navy.

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2 sailors and their dogs rescued after months adrift at sea

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Two American sailors and their two dogs were rescued Wednesday after surviving five months at sea in the Pacific after their sailboat's engine failed in May. The U.S. Navy says Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiaba were discovered 900 miles southeast of Japan on Tuesday by a fishing ship from Taiwan.

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national aeronautics and space administration

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Total Solar Eclipse 2017 - On Monday, August 21, 2017, all of North America will be treated to an eclipse of the sun. Anyone within the path of totality can see one of nature's most awe inspiring sights - a total solar eclipse.

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Travelers wandering the streets of European capitals in search of old-world charm might just as likely stumble upon from the New World. The might find a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Cafes serving American breakfast cereal have exploded in popularity in Europe. Young businesspeople are tapping into both nostalgia and novelty. Customers pay between $3 and $9 a bowl. In U.S. supermarkets, you can buy entire boxes of cereal for less.

In the last two years, cafes have opened in many cities. These cities include London, and Paris. They include Madrid and Barcelona. They include Lisbon and Berlin. They include Hamburg and Manchester. The trend also has a place in the Middle East.

There's no single model for the cafes. But they tend to offer at least 100 brands. The also offer dozens of fruit and candy toppings. They offer sweet syrups and several kinds of milk. The milk includes nondairy and flavored varieties.

Many also serve coffee. They serve cereal-flavored milkshakes or soft-serve sundaes. Many provide inventive takes on Rice Krispies treats. These are like tiered cakes. The cakes are made from marshmallowy layers of Fruity Pebbles, Apple Jacks and other sugary cereals. Rare varieties from foreign countries also bring in homesick expats.

A classic bowl with milk is still the standard. But they're often topped with combinations. These combinations go far beyond what most Americans would recognize as a breakfast banana sliced over Corn Flakes.

Pop Cereal Cafe is in Lisbon. It has a very popular mix that includes Froot Loops and Rice Krispies. It also has mini marshmallows and dried strawberries. It is topped with strawberry syrup, a waffle cookie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It is served with a side of milk in a glass bottle.

"Cereal has existed for what, a hundred years?" This was the question posed by one of Pop's three owners, Filipe Vicente. He is 32. "But for a hundred years it was cereal and milk and that was pretty much it. Now this product has so many varieties. The combinations are endless. We think, what about ice cream or pudding? Why not?"

Brightly colored boxes line the shelves at Pop. This is for both practical and decorative purposes. A bunkbed and padded benches let patrons doze off for a quick nap. Pop also has hosted events. These include a pajama party with a live band called Beliche. That is Portuguese for bunkbed.

Vicente was a mechanical engineer until 2016. He said they got the idea from seeing Cereal Killer Cafe in London. It was the first of its kind in Europe. Identical twins from Belfast had opened it in 2014. That was after they saw cereal cafes in the United States. It was also after watching the 2007 independent movie "Flakes." Now Cereal Killer has two more stores in England. It also has branches in Jordan, Dubai and Kuwait.

Cafes that had opened in Chicago, Florida and Texas have since mostly closed. But two flashy entries opened recently in New York. One is a Kellogg's-branded flagship near Times Square. The other is inside a designer sneaker store in Brooklyn.

But nowhere has the trend caught on quite like it has in Europe. In Europe, grocery stores never stocked the hundreds of varieties that fill entire aisles of American supermarkets.

Nicolas Castan is one of three people behind El Flako. It is in Barcelona. He said the lack of experience led to some risky combinations after they opened in the spring of 2017.

"Almost half the people would make their own but they wouldn't finish it because they were making really weird mixes, like Froot Loops with chocolate Krave," said Castan, who previously worked in public relations. "So, we tried to make sure the combinations are balanced with both flavor and texture."

On one recent afternoon, all of El Flako's 20 seats were filled, mostly with Spanish speakers who giggled at the menu's fruity, chocolatey, honey or healthy combinations. Lining the white shelves around them were colorful boxes of Sugar Smacks, Disney Princess and dozens of others cereals. There were also potted plants labeled with first names of famous rock singers like Patti, Jim and Alice. A soundtrack of The Doors, Jimi Hendrix and The Clash pumped out of the speakers.

Castan, 29, said the nod to classic rock points to the origins of the boxed-cereal boom in the 1960s and '70s. "We have a concept of going back to the roots, returning to being a kid, back to the origins."

The combination of novelty and atmosphere were enough to attract Maria Roca. She is a 19-year-old student from the University of Barcelona and came back a second time with a friend, Nuria Amor.

"It's not cheap, but it's not really expensive," said Roca, who had a 5.60 euro combo of Cookie Krisp, Choco Krispies, Kinder chocolates, M&Ms, bananas and chocolate milk. "And it's something original, so I wanted to show her."

Would they be back?

"Yes, for sure," said Amor, who had Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Apple Jacks with honey, apples and wheat milk. "It was really good, and you wouldn't do that at home."

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Cereal cafes in Europe serving Lucky Charms

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Travelers wandering the streets of European capitals in search of old-world charm might just as likely stumble upon from the New World. The might find a bowl of Lucky Charms. Cafes serving American breakfast cereal have exploded in popularity in Europe. Young businesspeople are tapping into both nostalgia and novelty.

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Hurricane Ophelia on rare course to Ireland U.

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Hurricane Ophelia on rare course to Ireland U.

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go to planet earth  on website

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Daily discoveries, groundbreaking research and fascinating science breakthroughs that impact you and the wider world, reported by our expert journalists.

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Properly-trained guide dogs are a valuable asset for the visually impaired

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Newsela | Hero Dogs program enlists pups to help those who served

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Hero Dogs can shut doors, turn lights on and off and do other tasks to help people who served in the military.

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Smoke from the fires captured by NASA's Terra Satellite (Photo Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team/Rob Gutro)

Wildfires are a common occurrence in California from early spring to late autumn, due to the dry, windy, and hot weather conditions. However, the Golden State has never experienced anything as devastating as the fires that are currently burning through parts of Northern California. Though it has been four days since the first flames ignited, firefighters still have no control over the blazes that extend all the way from Napa to Mendocino County.

The widespread destruction of what is popularly known as the wine country, began on Sunday, October 8 when three fires ignited almost simultaneously. The Atlas fire, which has already burned through 26,000 acres in Napa and Solano counties, started at 9:20 pm. Shortly after at 9:45 pm, came news of the Tubbs Fire in Calistoga and then at 10:36 pm the Redwood/Potter fires west of the Mendocino National Forest.

Santa Rosa's Coffey neighborhood before the fires (Photo Credit: Google Earth)

While having three fires start within minutes of each other late in the night is hard enough for firefighters to battle, what made things worse was the unprecedented 50-79 mph gusts of wind. Experts say the destructive winds and the bounty of plants that had bloomed following a heavy rainy season, but have since wilted and dried out, provided the perfect storm of factors.

By late Sunday night, rapidly moving infernos leaped from ridge top to ridge top, claiming houses, hotels, and wineries that lay in its path. Among the worst hit is the city of Santa Rosa, where the Tubbs fire has leveled an entire neighborhood and torched a Hilton hotel and strip-mall. The fast-moving flames forced thousands of residents to flee their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Santa Rosa's Coffey neighborhood after the fires (Photo Credit: California CHP/EPA)

Despite the ongoing efforts of the almost 8,000 firefighters who are battling the fires both from the ground and air, the situation continues to deteriorate. The rapidly spreading flames that have scorched over 170,000 acres and destroyed more than 3,500 structures, show no signs of slowing down. Over 20,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, and thousands more are ready to evacuate at short notice. At least 23 people have perished, and 285 remain missing.

Meanwhile, the weather is refusing to cooperate. The affected areas, as well as numerous other North Bay counties, are under red flag warnings (means conditions are ideal for fast-moving fires) until late tonight (October 12) due to the expected 50 mph winds. "It's a good heads-up to all the firefighters and emergency management that the conditions are going to be pretty bad in terms of the fire behaviors," said Will Pi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "We're expecting the strongest winds to be tonight and tomorrow morning."

With the rain not expected until next Wednesday there is little hope of the fires being extinguished entirely anytime soon. However, the firefighters are doing everything they can to prevent them from spreading further, by clearing out all the brush that provides the fuel.

Photo Credit: SFFlocal798 via Cal Fires Facebook

The cause of the devastating fires is still being determined. One possibility being investigated is that they were ignited by falling power lines or exploding electrical transformers, both of which were reported to Sonoma County emergency dispatchers on Sunday night. If true, this would not be the first time the local utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, would be responsible for a major fire.

In April, the State Public Utilities Commission fined the company $8.3 million for failing to properly maintain a power line which caused the massive Butte fire that killed two people, demolished 549 homes and burned through 70,868 acres in Amador County in 2015. But regardless of what caused the fire, for people that have lost their homes and livelihood, it is a life-altering event that will take many years to recover.

Stay Strong California! The world's thoughts and prayers are with you!

Resources: Cnn.com, latimes.con, sfgate.com, mercurynews.com.

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Ferocious Northern California Fires Show No Signs Of Slowing Down

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Wildfires are a common occurrence in California from early spring to late autumn, due to the dry, windy, and hot weather conditions. However, the Golden State has never experienced anything as devastating as the fires that are currently burning through parts of Northern California.

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Tony Dejak/Associated Press
It took less than six minutes for Gordon Hayward's season to likely end. Six minutes for the Boston Celtics' hopes of unseating the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference to all but vanish. One slight collision, one awkward landing and it was all gone.

Then the Celtics and Cavaliers had to return to basketball.

LeBron James nearly recorded a triple-double and Kevin Love added a double-double as the Cavaliers opened the 2017-18 NBA season with a 102-99 win over the Celtics.

Kyrie Irving, playing in his first game against the Cavaliers after an offseason trade to Boston, missed a game-tying three-pointer as time expired with James' outstretched arm in his face.

The result nevertheless seemed mostly irrelevant in the aftermath of Hayward's injury.

Hayward, making his debut with the Celtics after signing a four-year max contract this summer, toppled to the ground after making contact with Jae Crowder on a lob attempt. He landed awkwardly on his left leg, twisting it at an odd angle. Perhaps only Paul George, who broke his leg in a Team USA scrimmage, and former Louisville forward Kevin Ware have had comparable on-court injuries in recent years.

The game was delayed for an extended period as Celtics trainers and players from both teams attended to Hayward before he was stretchered off the floor. James, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Love and Isaiah Thomas all went into the locker room to offer Hayward their support following the injury.

Stevens told reporters after the game that Hayward was diagnosed with a dislocated ankle and tibia fracture.

The Celtics understandably never recovered in the first half. They shot 34 percent from the floor as a team, including a ghastly 2-of-16 from beyond the arc. Head coach Brad Stevens steadied his team coming out of the locker room, and a strong third quarter briefly gave them a lead and set the stage for a more competitive fourth quarter.

The lead changed four timesin the final 12 minutes, and the teams were tied on three occasions. A James layup with 1:19 remaining gave the Cavs the lead for good, and Love hit a three off a James assist with 46 seconds left.

Irving finished with 22 points and 10 assists. The Quicken Loans Arena crowd booed Irving in pregame introductions and throughout the game when he touched the ball.

Irving requested a trade from the Cavaliers this summer, which led to him being dealt to Boston in exchange for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic and two draft picks. The All-Star guard refused to delve into his reason for requesting the trade when speaking with reporters Tuesday.
"Well, guys, going forward I kind of want to put that to rest. Everyone figuring out or trying to figure out a dive into a narrative they have no idea about and probably never, ever will be divulged because it's not important. "This was literally a decision I wanted to make solely based on my happiness and pushing my career forward. I don't want to pinpoint anything. I will never pinpoint anything because that's not what real grown-ups do. They continue to move on with their life and continue to progress. And that's what I'm going to continue to do."
Crowder had 11 points and five rebounds in his first game against his old team. Thomas will be out until at least January rehabbing a hip injury, while Zizic did not play.

The Cavs' effort depended almost entirely on the brilliance of James, who finished with 29 points, 16 rebounds and nine assists. A preseason MVP favorite seemingly for the first time in years, James seemed fully willing to shoulder the season-long load. He went 12-of-19 from the field, blocked a pair of shots and acted as the two-way fulcrum of the Cavaliers' ecosystem.

Matching him nearly shot for shot was Jaylen Brown, who for at least one night appears to have made a second-year leap. Brown finished with a team-high 25 points and six rebounds, knocking down a pair of threes and adding three steals. He scored 20 points in a game just once his entire rookie season.

The Cavs' other two additions to their starting lineup, Derrick Rose and Dywane Wade, struggled in their debuts. Rose had Cleveland's worst plus-minus at minus-7 and shot 5-of-14 on his way to 14 points. Wade, who came to the Cavaliers after reaching a buyout agreement with the Chicago Bulls, had eight points and three assists.

The Celtics and Cavs both have the Milwaukee Bucks on their schedule next. Boston hosts Milwaukee on Wednesday, and Cleveland travels to play the Bucks on Friday.

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Cavaliers Nab Season-Opening Win vs. Celtics as Gordon Hayward Injures Ankle

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Tony Dejak/Associated Press It took less than six minutes for Gordon Hayward's season to likely end. Six minutes for the Boston Celtics' hopes of unseating the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference to all but vanish. One slight collision, one awkward landing and it was all gone.

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A 10-year-old boy is in hospital after falling about 30 metres (100ft) over the railing at Niagara Falls into a gorge below.

Police told the BBC the boy was sitting on the railing so his mother could take a picture on Sunday.

He apparently lost his balance and plummeted backwards, striking his head.

A helicopter took the boy, whose injuries were initially described as critical, to McMaster Children's Hospital in nearby Hamilton, Ontario.

Niagara survivor dies in second plunge

Police said the boy was now in a stable condition and they were still investigating the incident.

The boy was visiting Niagara Falls on the Canadian side with his family when they stopped to take a picture at the Horseshoe Falls, the largest of three waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls.

About a dozen people have gone over the falls since 1901, usually intentionally, inside a barrel or some other kind of protective device.

In 2017, Kirk Jones died after going over the falls in an inflatable ball after surviving a similar stunt in 2003.

In 2011, a Japanese exchange student died when she slipped and fell into the falls after climbing a pillar to get a better view.

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A 10-year-old boy is in hospital after falling about 30 metres (100ft) over the railing at Niagara Falls into a gorge below. Police told the BBC the boy was sitting on the railing so his mother could take a picture on Sunday. He apparently lost his balance and plummeted backwards, striking his head.

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Smoke from the fires captured by NASA's Terra Satellite (Photo Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team/Rob Gutro)

Wildfires are a common occurrence in California from early spring to late autumn due to the dry, windy, and hot weather conditions. However, the Golden State has never experienced anything as devastating as the fires that are currently burning through parts of Northern California. Though it has been four days since the first flames ignited, firefighters still have no control over the blazes that extend all the way from Napa to Mendocino County.

The widespread destruction of what is popularly known as the wine country, began on Sunday, October 8 when three fires ignited almost simultaneously. The Atlas fire, which has already burned through 26,000 acres in Napa and Solano counties, started at 9:20 pm. Shortly after, at 9:45 pm, came news of the Tubbs Fire in Calistoga and then, at 10:36 pm, of the Redwood/Potter fires west of the Mendocino National Forest.

Santa Rosa's Coffey neighborhood before the fires (Photo Credit: Google Earth)

While having three fires start within minutes of each other late in the night is hard enough for firefighters to battle, what made things worse was the unprecedented 50-79 mph gusts of wind. Experts say the destructive winds and the bounty of plants that had bloomed following a heavy rainy season, but have since wilted and dried out, provided the perfect storm of factors.

By late Sunday night, rapidly moving infernos leaped from ridge top to ridge top, claiming houses, hotels, and wineries that lay in its path. Among the worst hit is the city of Santa Rosa, where the Tubbs fire has leveled an entire neighborhood and torched a Hilton hotel and strip-mall. The fast-moving flames forced thousands of residents to flee their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Santa Rosa's Coffey neighborhood after the fires (Photo Credit: California CHP/EPA)

Despite the ongoing efforts of the almost 8,000 firefighters who are battling the fires both from the ground and air, the situation continues to deteriorate. The rapidly spreading flames that have scorched over 170,000 acres and destroyed more than 3,500 structures, show no signs of slowing down. Over 20,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, and thousands more are ready to evacuate at short notice. At least 23 people have perished, and 285 remain missing.

Meanwhile, the weather is refusing to cooperate. The affected areas, as well as numerous other North Bay counties, are under Red Flag warnings (indicating conditions ideal for fast-moving fires) until late tonight (October 12) due to the expected 50 mph winds. "It's a good heads-up to all the firefighters and emergency management that the conditions are going to be pretty bad in terms of the fire behaviors," said Will Pi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "We're expecting the strongest winds to be tonight and tomorrow morning."

With the rain not expected until next Wednesday, there is little hope of the fires being extinguished entirely anytime soon. However, the firefighters are doing everything they can to prevent them from spreading further, such as clearing the brush that provides the fuel.

Photo Credit: SFFlocal798 via Cal Fires Facebook

The cause of the devastating fires is still being determined. One possibility being investigated is that they were ignited by falling power lines or exploding electrical transformers, both of which were reported to Sonoma County emergency dispatchers on Sunday night. If true, this would not be the first time the local utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, would be responsible for a major fire.

In April, the State Public Utilities Commission fined the company $8.3 million for failing to properly maintain a power line which caused the massive Butte fire that killed two people, demolished 549 homes and burned through 70,868 acres in Amador County in 2015. But regardless of what caused the fire, for people that have lost their homes and livelihood, it is a life-altering event that will take many years to recover.

Stay Strong, California! The world's thoughts and prayers are with you!

Resources: Cnn.com, latimes.con, sfgate.com, mercurynews.com.

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Ferocious Northern California Fires Show No Signs Of Slowing Down

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Wildfires are a common occurrence in California from early spring to late autumn due to the dry, windy, and hot weather conditions. However, the Golden State has never experienced anything as devastating as the fires that are currently burning through parts of Northern California.

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Newsela | Amid the Las Vegas shooting chaos, many unwitting heroes emerged

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Amid the chaos, many people instinctively tended to others during the Las Vegas concert shooting.

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A lacy, cloud-like pattern drifted across a Denver-area radar screen. It turned out to be a wave of butterflies. It was 70 miles wide. That's according to forecasters.

Paul Schlatter works for the National Weather Service. He said he first thought flocks of birds were making the pattern he saw on the radar Tuesday. But the cloud was headed northwest with the wind. Migrating birds would be southbound in October.

He asked birdwatchers on social media what it might be. By Wednesday he had his answer. People reported seeing a loosely spaced net of painted lady butterflies. They were drifting with the wind across the area.

Schlatter said the colors on the radar image are a result of the butterflies' shape and direction. The colors he saw were not their own colors.

Midwestern radar stations sometimes pick up butterflies. But Schlatter believes it's a first for Denver.

An unusually large number of painted ladies are sometimes mistaken for monarch butterflies. They have descended on Colorado's Front Range in recent weeks. They feed on flowers. They sometimes fly together in what seem like clouds.

Sarah Garrett is a lepidopterist at the Butterfly Pavilion. It is in Westminster, Colorado. She said people from as far away as the Dakotas have called to report seeing the butterflies. Their population typically surges with plentiful flowers.

Research on the painted ladies in North America is limited. Scientists believe they migrate to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. This happens in the fall.

In Europe, studies using radio tracking have shown they migrate south from Europe to Africa in the fall. They return in the spring. Studies also show that monarch butterflies often use wind to their advantage. They glide on currents for periods of time, Garrett said.

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Wave of butterflies lights up weather radar

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A lacy, cloud-like pattern drifted across a Denver-area radar screen. It turned out to be a wave of butterflies. It was 70 miles wide. That's according to forecasters. Paul Schlatter works for the National Weather Service. He said he first thought flocks of birds were making the pattern he saw on the radar Tuesday.

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Newsela | Rainbow Tunnel to world's largest collection of fluorescent rocks

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Deep under New Jersey, a mining museum glows with fluorescent minerals.

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Photo Credit: Hirola Conservation Center

Earlier this year in June, a villager in Garissa County, Kenya stumbled upon a rare sight - two white giraffes! Having never seen anything like it before, he immediately ran over to inform the rangers at the nearby Hirola Conservation Center, established to protect the critically endangered hirola antelope. Cameras in hand, the troopers rushed to the area to capture the first-ever video of the extremely rare specimens, who fortunately, appeared to be in no hurry to leave.

Not surprisingly, the recently-released footage of the adult and juvenile giraffe is creating a stir worldwide. According to experts, the lack of color is not a result of albinism, a congenital disorder caused by the reduction or absence of the pigment melanin. Instead, these giraffes have a condition called leucism, which is characterized by a partial loss of a number of different types of pigments, not just melanin. This causes the skin to appear patchy, or entirely white. While the juvenile giraffe in the video still has some faint spots, the rangers expect them to fade away as the animal becomes older.

Photo Credit: Hirola Conservation Center

Before this, there have only been a few other sightings of leucistic giraffes. In January 2015, the first specimen, a calf, was seen at Tanzania's Tarangire National Park. Named Omo after a popular local detergent, it was spotted at the same park again in January 2016. A few months later, in April 2016, another one was spotted and captured on camera in the vicinity of the most recent sightings. Hopefully, the giraffes will continue to delight the locals and the world with more frequent visits.

Resources: Hirola Conservation Center

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Video Of The Week - Rare White Giraffes Sighted In Kenya

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Earlier this year in June, a villager in Garissa County, Kenya stumbled upon a rare sight - two white giraffes! Having never seen anything like it before, he immediately ran over to inform the rangers at the nearby Hirola Conservation Center, established to protect the critically endangered hirola antelope.

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Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

When Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward jumped up for an alley-oop on Tuesday night, the 2017 NBA season was six minutes old. When he landed, it became clear that-barring a miracle-those six minutes are the only ones he's going to play this season.

Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena has one of the league's loudest and most frenetic backing tracks-the speakers are constantly blaring music, thumping bass, and piping in sound effects to celebrate the home team's successes. That all stopped when Hayward fell to the floor. Broadcasters are exceedingly careful not to diagnose injuries from the booth, but TNT's Kevin Harlan couldn't help himself. "Hayward broke his leg. Hayward has broken his leg," he said. "Oh my gosh."

Video of the injury can be seen below. View at your discretion.

Players on both the Celtics and Cavaliers fanned out and away from the fallen Hayward. Boston's Jaylen Brown paced with his hands atop his head and his mouth agape. LeBron James slumped on the scorer's table, and Dwyane Wade fell to one knee. These men had witnessed-and were experiencing-a traumatic event.

TNT showed one close-up of the injury immediately after Hayward tumbled to the floor, and it revealed the gore of the dislocated ankle and fractured tibia scrambled inside his sock. As team doctors administered triage, the broadcast danced between vantage points, carefully avoiding any shots that would further nauseate viewers. Their prudence, however, didn't stem the flow of images and videos on Twitter and YouTube. In 2017, a single camera shot has infinite reach and duration.

It seems unlikely Hayward will have much interest in seeing the video we've all been cringing at.

According to a story by Deadspin's Barry Petchesky, there is a "rough consensus" among networks that they will air no more than two replays of a particularly gruesome injury. This agreement apparently dates back to 1985, and Joe Theismann's famous compound fracture on Monday Night Football. Back then, replay technology was relatively novel, and Monday Night Football was the only sports broadcast that used 12 cameras rather than the standard five or six. Those extra lenses gave ABC a clear view of New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor inadvertently thrusting his knee into the Washington quarterback's leg and snapping his tibia and fibula, in Theismann's words, " like a breadstick."

"Guys, this is ugly," Monday Night Football producer Bob Goodrich warned the announcers as his team prepped the tape to air. According to the New York Times, the program's director Chet Forte was overheard saying the footage was "too gruesome to be replayed." But they showed it anyway. Twice.

Catastrophic injuries shown on live TV, like Theismann's and Hayward's and Odell Beckham Jr.'s, all have a certain Dealey Plaza effect: You remember where you were when you first saw them. Sports fans and athletes themselves can tick off a catalog of gruesome moments-a collective memory bank of busted bones and dislocated joints that come flooding back whenever an unlucky soul adds his or her name to the list. "I've seen Paul George when it happened to Paul. I was watching the game with Shaun Livingston when it happened, when he was with the Clippers," James told reporters after Tuesday's game. "I was watching NCAA basketball when Kevin Ware was at Louisville."

These battered and broken athletes become part of an exclusive fraternity of people who've had the audible snap of their splintered bones broadcast to millions. Often, as was the case with Ware in 2013, they'll get a call from Theismann, offering his support. Both George and Livingston sent tweets to Hayward. While they weren't the only NBA players to do so, messages from others in the league couldn't possibly have had the same resonance.

All the incidents James mentioned are YouTube-able, and each is horrendous in its own way. The George injury happened in 2014 at a televised Team USA scrimmage. The then-Indiana Pacers star went to block a layup and landed awkwardly on the stanchion underneath the basket. His lower leg buckled and the bones inside snapped and visibly tented within his skin. The game was immediately canceled.

Shaun Livingston's own awful injury came in 2007, when he played for the Los Angeles Clippers. Livingston landed awkwardly after going up for a layup, and the impact destroyed much of his left knee. In the immediate aftermath, a doctor at Inglewood, California's Centinela Hospital Medical Center told him he may have to brace for amputation. It's hard to convey how difficult the video is to watch. The in-rim mic that's supposed to amplify swish es instead picked up Livingston's screams, and these linger through the replays as the local broadcasters try to make sense of what they've just seen and heard.

Livingston, who now plays for the Golden State Warriors, said after the team's practice on Wednesday that he's not going to watch the Hayward video: "Seeing something like that, things pop out, it's not normal, right? It's like stuff that happens [during] car accidents."

When Kevin Ware broke his shin during the 2013 NCAA Tournament, some of his teammates on the sideline vomited. His bone punctured his skin and jutted out several inches. CBS showed two replays of the Louisville guard's injury, and at halftime Greg Gumbel assured viewers they would not be airing any more footage of the open fracture. Regrettably, this slasher-flick image is the first picture that comes up when you Google Ware's name.

Based on recent history, it seems unlikely Hayward will have much interest in seeing the video we've all been cringing at for the past 24 hours. Even though Livingston made a miraculous recovery and became a two-time NBA champion, he has no interest in reliving that old trauma. He has never watched footage of his injury, nor does he ever plan to. Ware, meanwhile, has only watched the video of his leg snapping one time-"and once was enough," he wrote in the Players' Tribune.

It took 20 years before Theismann decided he was ready to see the footage of his compound fracture. In 2005, he watched the Monday Night Football broadcast with a reporter. After the second replay, Theismann asked, "How many times do I have to watch this?"

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Gordon Hayward and the Gruesome, Bone-Snapping History of Traumatic Sports Injuries on TV

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When Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward jumped up for an alley-oop on Tuesday night, the 2017 NBA season was six minutes old. When he landed, it became clear that-barring a miracle-those six minutes are the only ones he's going to play this season.

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Travelers wandering the streets of European capitals in search of old-world charm might just as likely stumble upon from the New World. The might find a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Cafes serving American breakfast cereal have exploded in popularity in Europe. Young businesspeople are tapping into both nostalgia and novelty. Customers pay between $3 and $9 a bowl. In U.S. supermarkets, you can buy entire boxes of cereal for less.

In the last two years, cafes have opened in many cities. These cities include London, and Paris. They include Madrid and Barcelona. They include Lisbon and Berlin. They include Hamburg and Manchester. The trend also has a place in the Middle East.

There's no single model for the cafes. But they tend to offer at least 100 brands. The also offer dozens of fruit and candy toppings. They offer sweet syrups and several kinds of milk. The milk includes nondairy and flavored varieties.

Many also serve coffee. They serve cereal-flavored milkshakes or soft-serve sundaes. Many provide inventive takes on Rice Krispies treats. These are like tiered cakes. The cakes are made from marshmallowy layers of Fruity Pebbles, Apple Jacks and other sugary cereals. Rare varieties from foreign countries also bring in homesick expats.

A classic bowl with milk is still the standard. But they're often topped with combinations. These combinations go far beyond what most Americans would recognize as a breakfast banana sliced over Corn Flakes.

Pop Cereal Cafe is in Lisbon. It has a very popular mix that includes Froot Loops and Rice Krispies. It also has mini marshmallows and dried strawberries. It is topped with strawberry syrup, a waffle cookie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It is served with a side of milk in a glass bottle.

"Cereal has existed for what, a hundred years?" This was the question posed by one of Pop's three owners, Filipe Vicente. He is 32. "But for a hundred years it was cereal and milk and that was pretty much it. Now this product has so many varieties. The combinations are endless. We think, what about ice cream or pudding? Why not?"

Brightly colored boxes line the shelves at Pop. This is for both practical and decorative purposes. A bunkbed and padded benches let patrons doze off for a quick nap. Pop also has hosted events. These include a pajama party with a live band called Beliche. That is Portuguese for bunkbed.

Vicente was a mechanical engineer until 2016. He said they got the idea from seeing Cereal Killer Cafe in London. It was the first of its kind in Europe. Identical twins from Belfast had opened it in 2014. That was after they saw cereal cafes in the United States. It was also after watching the 2007 independent movie "Flakes." Now Cereal Killer has two more stores in England. It also has branches in Jordan, Dubai and Kuwait.

Cafes that had opened in Chicago, Florida and Texas have since mostly closed. But two flashy entries opened recently in New York. One is a Kellogg's-branded flagship near Times Square. The other is inside a designer sneaker store in Brooklyn.

But nowhere has the trend caught on quite like it has in Europe. In Europe, grocery stores never stocked the hundreds of varieties that fill entire aisles of American supermarkets.

Nicolas Castan is one of three people behind El Flako. It is in Barcelona. He said the lack of experience led to some risky combinations after they opened in the spring of 2017.

"Almost half the people would make their own but they wouldn't finish it because they were making really weird mixes, like Froot Loops with chocolate Krave," said Castan, who previously worked in public relations. "So, we tried to make sure the combinations are balanced with both flavor and texture."

On one recent afternoon, all of El Flako's 20 seats were filled, mostly with Spanish speakers who giggled at the menu's fruity, chocolatey, honey or healthy combinations. Lining the white shelves around them were colorful boxes of Sugar Smacks, Disney Princess and dozens of others cereals. There were also potted plants labeled with first names of famous rock singers like Patti, Jim and Alice. A soundtrack of The Doors, Jimi Hendrix and The Clash pumped out of the speakers.

Castan, 29, said the nod to classic rock points to the origins of the boxed-cereal boom in the 1960s and '70s. "We have a concept of going back to the roots, returning to being a kid, back to the origins."

The combination of novelty and atmosphere were enough to attract Maria Roca. She is a 19-year-old student from the University of Barcelona and came back a second time with a friend, Nuria Amor.

"It's not cheap, but it's not really expensive," said Roca, who had a 5.60 euro combo of Cookie Krisp, Choco Krispies, Kinder chocolates, M&Ms, bananas and chocolate milk. "And it's something original, so I wanted to show her."

Would they be back?

"Yes, for sure," said Amor, who had Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Apple Jacks with honey, apples and wheat milk. "It was really good, and you wouldn't do that at home."

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Cereal cafes in Europe serving Lucky Charms

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Travelers wandering the streets of European capitals in search of old-world charm might just as likely stumble upon from the New World. The might find a bowl of Lucky Charms. Cafes serving American breakfast cereal have exploded in popularity in Europe. Young businesspeople are tapping into both nostalgia and novelty.

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Video Of The Week — Adorable Arctic Fox Pups Attack Hidden Camera

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Wildlife filmmakers know to expect the unexpected when observing animals in their natural habitat. For a PBS Nature film crew trying to stealthily capture footage of Arctic foxes in the freezing Arctic tundra that meant losing a hidden camera to the curious animals.

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Newsela | Rainbow Tunnel to world's largest collection of fluorescent rocks

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Deep under New Jersey, a mining museum glows with fluorescent minerals.