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Every four years, athletes from around the world gather to compete in events such as sprinting, long jump, discus, snowboarding, and figure skating as part of the Olympics. Their prize? Bragging rights for their home country-plus, you know, a shiny gold medal. Winners didn't always get a medal, though. Victors in the earliest Olympics won a crown of olive leaves.

READY, SET, GO!

The first known Olympics were held in the summer of 776 B.C. at Olympia, a site in southern Greece where people went to worship their gods. In fact, the Olympics were created in honor of ancient Greece's most famous god: Zeus, king of the gods. Athletes prayed to Zeus for victory and left gifts to thank him for their successes.

Worshipping Zeus was one of the few things the ancient Greeks agreed on. Divided into different city-states, or settlements, the Greeks were often at war with each other. But even in times of unrest, dueling city-states declared a truce so their athletes could take part in the Olympics. But unlike today's games, only men were allowed to compete-and they did so naked!

Many events, including sprinting and wrestling, are still part of the modern games. Other sports such as chariot racing are history. Here's another one that's long forgotten: Called the pankration, the event was known as the ultimate fighting sport. There were no weight classes, no time limits, and only two rules: no biting and no eye gouging. Ouch! Competitors fought until one gave up or died. Hm ... wonder why this sport disappeared?

TAKING HOME THE GOLD

The Romans eventually banned the Olympics in A.D. 393, after Rome conquered Greece in the second century B.C. But the games were revived in 1896 in Athens, Greece, and have been celebrated every four years since. And in 1924, the Winter Olympics were added to showcase chillier sports such as cross-country skiing, speed skating, and ice hockey.

Today thousands of athletes from hundreds of countries all over the world compete for the gold (or silver or bronze) in the summer and winter events. The modern Olympics aim to bring people from different parts of the world together and encourage friendly competition and peace among neighboring nations. Game on!
Want even more sports? Download this fun pack, filled with sports-themed games, quizzes, and more.

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Every four years, athletes from around the world gather to compete in events such as sprinting, long jump, discus, snowboarding, and figure skating as part of the Olympics. Their prize? Bragging rights for their home country-plus, you know, a shiny gold medal. Winners didn't always get a medal, though.

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NASA encourages you to visit NASA Kids' Club and use its games and activities to inspire the next generation.

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When biologist Luis Zambrano began his career in the late 1990s, he pictured himself working miles from civilization, maybe discovering new species in some hidden corner of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Instead, in 2003, he found himself counting amphibians in the polluted, murky canals of Mexico City's Xochimilco district. The job had its advantages: he was working minutes from his home and studying the axolotl ( Ambystoma mexicanum), a national icon in Mexico and arguably the world's most recognizable salamander. But in that first year, Zambrano couldn't wait for it to be over.

"Let me tell you, I hated the project at the beginning," he says. For one thing, "I couldn't catch anything".

Over time, however, he did catch some axolotls. What he found surprised him-and changed the course of his career. In 1998, the first robust study to count axolotls estimated that there were about 6,000 of them per square kilometre in Xochimilco. Zambrano-who now is a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City-discovered in 2000 that the number had dropped to about 1,000 animals per square kilometre. By 2008, it was down to 100; today, thanks to pollution and invasive predators, there are fewer than 35 animals per square kilometre.

The axolotl is on the brink of annihilation in the canals of Mexico City, its only natural habitat. But although there might be just a few hundred individuals left in the wild, tens of thousands can be found in home aquariums and research laboratories around the world. They are bred so widely in captivity that certain restaurants in Japan even serve them up deep-fried.

"The axolotl is a complete conservation paradox," says Richard Griffiths, an ecologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, who recruited Zambrano to the project. "Because it's probably the most widely distributed amphibian around the world in pet shops and labs, and yet it's almost extinct in the wild."

This creates a problem for biologists. Thanks to its unique physiology and remarkable ability to regenerate severed limbs, the axolotl has become an important lab model for everything from tissue repair to development and cancer. But after centuries of inbreeding, captive populations are vulnerable to disease. And the loss of genetic diversity in wild axolotls-owing to their diminishing population-means that scientists lose out on learning all they can about the animal's biology.

As lab scientists continue to study the captive animal and its large and complex genome, Zambrano and a handful of other researchers are doing their best to preserve the wild version. They are breeding and releasing axolotls into control ponds and canals in and around Xochimilco to see how they fare, and hopefully to retain some of their natural genetic diversity. The task of saving them is difficult, but should be doable given the animal's hardiness-if the Mexican government would only engage with the process.

"I've seen that in other places in the world, these kinds of huge tasks are possible," Zambrano says. "If they can do it, why can't we?"

The creature that never grew up

Axolotls evolved relatively recently compared to other salamander species in the region, and they thrived along the banks of Lake Texcoco in the mountains of central Mexico. They are neotenic, meaning that the adults retain traits seen only in juveniles of similar species. Although other salamanders metamorphose into terrestrial creatures, axolotls hold on to their feathery gills and stay in the water for their entire lives. It's as if they never grow up.

Sometime in the thirteenth century, Lake Texcoco was settled by the Mexica (the people that Europeans dubbed Aztecs). They built a powerful empire controlled by an island city built in the middle of the lake. As the empire grew, so did the land, expanding much faster after the Spanish conquest in 1521. Today, all that remains of the axolotl's habitat are about 170 kilometres of canals criss-crossing Xochimilco, a district in the southern part of Mexico City.

The species might have perished entirely under colonial rule, except that its odd inability to grow up caught the attention of European scientists, who puzzled over it in the late nineteenth century.

Visitors to Mexico brought the creatures back and began breeding them. The animal turned out to be ideal for research: it reproduces readily in the lab, is a hardy survivor and is easy to care for. Axolotls have large cells that simplify investigations into development. Their eggs are almost 30 times larger than a human's. And in an axolotl embryo, the neural plate cells-a precursor to the brain and spinal cord-are almost 600 times larger by volume.

Also, the pigmentation of axolotls varies greatly from one cell to the next, unlike in humans or other animals, in which cell traits tend to be uniform. This can help researchers to track which tissues in an embryo become which organs. Yet it has a large genome-roughly ten times the size of a human's-which can make it challenging to study in some respects.

"It is not a good genetic model organism, but it does regenerate-and that makes it an awesome biological model," says David Gardiner, a developmental biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied axolotl regeneration for decades.

In the early twentieth century, axolotls were central to understanding how organs develop and function in vertebrates. They helped scientists to unpick the causes of spina bifida in humans-a birth defect in which the spine doesn't form properly. And they played a part in the discovery of thyroid hormones: in the 1920s, scientists fed thyroid tissue from livestock to axolotls. If the tissue had been secreting hormone, the axolotls would metamorphose, losing their gills and shedding their larval skin.

In the 1980s, axolotls helped scientists to develop a model explaining how cells take on different forms in embryos. The 'cell state splitter' model proposes that many stem cells turn into specific tissues in the body through waves of pulling and stretching as embryos. Scientists found that they could watch the axolotl's cells squeeze and stretch before they formed tissues. More recently, in 2011, extract from axolotl oocytes has been used to stop breast-cancer cells multiplying by switching on a tumour-suppressor gene.

But perhaps the most fascinating contribution of the axolotl to science has been in regenerative medicine. The animals can grow back missing limbs, tails, organs, parts of the eye and even portions of the brain. Many scientists have presumed this is because, being neotenic, they retain some trait from their embryonic stages, although other salamanders seem to regenerate even as adults.

Biologists have been trying to identify the mechanisms behind their regenerative abilities for decades, says Tatiana Sandoval Guzmán, a regeneration researcher at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany. "How do they do it? What is it that they have that we don't? Or maybe the opposite-what in mammals is stopping that?"

Sandoval Guzmán is interested in bone and muscle regeneration and has taken over a long-standing axolotl laboratory in Dresden. A Mexican national who went to school not far from Xochimilco, she never thought much about the animal and certainly never considered studying it until she came to Germany. Today she is fascinated by the creature, and has shown that many of the mechanisms in axolotl regeneration-such as those involving muscle-tissue stem cells-are not so different from those found in humans.

Most regeneration research focuses on the stub-or blastema-that forms over the wound of a severed limb. Whereas such a wound in humans gets covered with skin tissue, axolotls transform nearby cells into stem cells and recruit others from farther away to gather near the injury. There, the cells begin forming bones, skin and veins in almost the same way as when the animal was developing inside the egg. Each tissue contributes its own stem cells to the effort.

Researchers showed that a protein called transforming growth factor-β is key both in axolotl regeneration and in preventing scar tissue in injured human embryos during the first trimester. Adult mice and humans can regenerate digit tips, although humans lose this ability with age, suggesting that regenerative abilities could be reawakened in mammals.

"There will be a day when we as humans can regenerate," says Gardiner. His studies are not focused on rebuilding limbs, but on curing paralysis, growing healthy organs and even reversing ageing by repairing damaged and worn-out tissues. "And when they write that story, it will go back to these model organisms," he says.

By the time that day comes, however, the wild axolotl may be gone. That worries Gardiner and Sandoval Guzmán because the animals that they study, like many lab animals, are highly inbred. Scientists use an 'inbreeding coefficient' to measure how small a gene pool is. Identical twins have a coefficient of 100%; totally unrelated individuals would score close to zero. A score above 12% indicates a population in which individuals are mostly breeding with their first cousins, and is considered a serious concern by ecologists and geneticists. The famously inbred and unhealthy Spanish Habsburg kings of the seventeenth century often had a coefficient somewhere above 20%. The average axolotl inbreeding coefficient is 35%.

"These animals that we have, they still work just fine, they regenerate just fine. But they are so inbred. It's a bottleneck," Gardiner says. "Populations are very vulnerable to disease when inbred."

Their high level of inbreeding is partly a result of the bizarre historical path captive axolotls have taken. Most laboratory specimens trace their heritage back to a single group of 34 animals that were taken out of Xochimilco by a French-funded expedition in 1863. They sparked an axolotl-breeding craze across Europe by museums and naturalists.

In 1935, some of the animals travelled from a Polish laboratory back to North America, where they eventually became a breeding stock at the University of Buffalo, New York. Here, scientists brought in a series of wild axolotls to mix up the gene pool and at one point even added in tiger salamanders ( Ambystoma tigrinum). The Buffalo population thrived and eventually moved to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, which is now the centre of global axolotl breeding. This means that, in addition to being inbred, almost all of the axolotls in labs and aquariums today are actually part tiger salamander.

"They got bottlenecked in Europe for sure and then they got bottlenecked again," says Randal Voss, head of the programme in Kentucky, which holds some 2,000 adults and 3,000-5,000 larvae.

Voss says that axolotl research today is expanding throughout the world, thanks to modern genetics and stem-cell research. In 2015, he and his group published an initial assembly of the axolotl genome, a Herculean task given its large size, estimated to be about 32 billion bases. But it is incomplete-the size and complexity of the genome proved too much for the computational power Voss's group could throw at it. Scientists in several centres continue to work on completing the picture.

But as they work on that, the creature's vulnerability to disease has already caused mysterious massive die-offs in Voss' facility. Scientists worry that if a new infectious disease were to race around labs worldwide, it might force them to abandon the axolotl, potentially setting research back by years.

What's more, no one can be sure that lab axolotls haven't already diverged so much from their wild counterparts that they have lost key elements of regeneration. "Going back to study the wild population can give you a different mechanism or different genes," says Sandoval Guzmán. "Losing the genetic diversity-of course it's a loss for science."

Double digits

"I can't always know for sure, but the axolotls from Kentucky do have some differences," says Arturo Vergara Iglesias, staring into a tank of axolotls lazily crawling about. "They have a lot of malformations. For example, they often have too many fingers."

Vergara Iglesias is a biologist at the Centre for Biological and Aquaculture Research (CIBAC), an axolotl breeding facility near Xochimilco that is hoping to preserve a few wild lines. On the side, he breeds his own wild axolotls to sell to labs and pet distributors. He is standing over a salamander tank on a traditional Xochimilco farm plot, or chinampa, that is used as an educational facility for tourists. These animals, and the others he sells, were bred from a group of 32 pulled out of the water not far from the plot. In Mexico, the axolotl is a prized pet and a source of national pride. It's the subject of countless Mexican memes and souvenirs, and is even the official emoji for Mexico City.

It's hard to know exactly how many axolotls are left in the wild there. Zambrano guesses that during his last survey, in 2014, there were fewer than 1,000 in total, and perhaps fewer than 500. But he can't be more specific-in the past two years, he's been unable to raise the money to do any follow-up studies. That he can't obtain funding for a simple census does not bode well for conservation efforts.

Zambrano says that to save the wild axolotl, policymakers must address its two primary threats. The first is non-native fish such as the common carp ( Cyprinus carpio) and tilapia ( Oreochromis niloticus). Ironically, these were introduced to Xochimilco in the 1970s and 1980s through programmes run by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, with the aim of getting more protein into local diets. Zambrano says he has mapped the areas where axolotls still remain; he envisions a team of local fishers being paid to sweep them of fish on an ongoing basis. Although this wouldn't remove all the fish, for a few hundred thousand dollars it might give the salamanders a window in which to re-establish themselves. His work has shown that axolotls are most vulnerable to carp when they are at the egg stage, and to tilapia when they are juveniles, but reveals that if they can grow beyond a certain size, they might still thrive.

The second threat is trickier. Every time a powerful storm fills the city's ageing sewer system, treatment facilities release human waste into Xochimilco, carrying with it ammonia, heavy metals and untold other toxic chemicals. Amphibians, which breathe in part through their highly permeable skin, are vulnerable to these regular pollution dumps. It's a testament to the animal's resilience that it exists in the wild at all.

These are complex issues, but they are not unsolvable. So far, however, there have been no efforts to save the wild axolotl beyond a few halfhearted outreach programmes and some photo opportunities. In 2013, CIBAC released a few thousand axolotls for a behavioural study; some of them survived and even seemed to breed the following year. This suggests that lab-bred salamanders might be able to thrive in the wild if they are raised in captivity to a certain size. But biologists caution that this doesn't mean Mexico should start releasing them into canals.

"There's probably not much point in doing releases into the wild until you can neutralize the threats," says Griffiths. "You just might be increasing the fish population by just chucking out more fish food."

When Griffiths first started working in Xochimilco in 2000, his plan was to create a breeding programme aimed at releasing axolotls into the wild. But he and his Mexican partners quickly abandoned the idea once they saw the condition of the ecosystem, which was polluted and teeming with predators. It seemed pointless to send axolotls off to their deaths. Successful reintroductions, such as those of the pool frog ( Pelophylax lessonae) in Britain or the hellbender salamander ( Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) in the United States, require managing the ecosystem as a whole and working with the community.

"If we had a million dollars per year for ten years, we would save Xochimilco. Which is nothing compared with the amount of money that is spent in this city," says Zambrano.

One afternoon in October, Zambrano and a group of volunteers gather by the ponds near the UNAM campus to release ten lab-raised wild axolotls into a protected pond. If the animals survive and breed, they might someday act as a sort of genetic bank for the organism. Zambrano has been sporadically releasing and tracking animals here over two years to understand their behaviour and habitat preferences. His work so far suggests that the salamanders prefer fairly dirty ponds over the most pristine ones-another sign that axolotls might still thrive in Xochimilco if other pressures are removed. Similarly, CIBAC is breeding wild-type animals in an effort to preserve the axolotl's genetic diversity. But if axolotls do not have a suitable home, most researchers say that their extinction in the wild might be inevitable, no matter what they do.

"I would be frustrated if I saw it in that way," says Zambrano. "I see it with another view-that I am doing my best to keep that from happening."
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on November 15, 2017.

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Biology's Beloved Amphibian--the Axolotl--Is Racing toward Extinction

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When biologist Luis Zambrano began his career in the late 1990s, he pictured himself working miles from civilization, maybe discovering new species in some hidden corner of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Instead, in 2003, he found himself counting amphibians in the polluted, murky canals of Mexico City's Xochimilco district.

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Frida Kahlo: A Brief History (School Friendly)

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From boxing contests with no weight classifications or point scoring to chariot racing where danger lurked on every corner, it is easy to see why the Ancient Games enthralled the Greeks for so long. Here, we give you the essential lowdown, highlight our favourite facts.

Full of blood, passion and extraordinary feats of athletic endeavour, the Olympic Games were the sporting, social and cultural highlight of the Ancient Greek calendar for almost 12 centuries.

"It is hard for us to exaggerate how important the Olympics were for the Greeks," Paul Christesen, Professor of Ancient Greek History at Dartmouth College, USA, said.

"The classic example is that when the Persians invaded Greece in the summer of 480 (BC) a lot of the Greek city states agreed that they would put together an allied army but they had a very hard time getting one together because so many people wanted to go to the Olympics. So, they actually had to delay putting the army together to defend the country against the Persians."

The threat of invasion or not, the Games took place every four years from 776BC to at least 393AD. All free Greek males were allowed to take part, from farmhands to royal heirs, although the majority of Olympians were soldiers. Women could not compete or even attend. There was, however, a loophole to this misogynistic rule - chariot owners, not riders, were declared Olympic champions and anyone could own a chariot. Kyniska, daughter of a Spartan king, took advantage of this, claiming victory wreaths in 396BC and 392BC.

At their heart, the Games were a religious festival and a good excuse for Greeks from all over the Mediterranean basin to gather for a riotous barbeque. On the middle day of the festival a vast number of cows were slaughtered in honour of Zeus, King of the Greek Gods - once he had been given a small taste, the rest was for the people.

For the first 250-plus years all the action took place in the sanctuary of Olympia, situated in the north-western Peloponnese. Pock-marked by olive trees, from which the victory wreaths were cut, and featuring an altar to Zeus, it was a hugely sacred spot.

The Games lasted a full five days by the fifth century BC and saw running, jumping and throwing events plus boxing, wrestling, pankration and chariot racing. At least 40,000 spectators would have packed the stadium each day at the height of the Games' popularity, in the second century AD, with many more selling their wares outside.

But first, here are our 10 favourite facts to get you started:

All athletes competed naked

Wrestlers and pankration (a sort of mixed martial art which combined boxing and wrestling) competitors fought covered in oil

Corporal punishment awaited those guilty of a false start on the track

There were only two rules in the pankration - no biting and no gouging

Boxers were urged to avoid attacking the on-display male genitals

There were no points, no time limits and no weight classifications in the boxing

Athletes in the combat sports had to indicate their surrender by raising their index fingers - at times they died before they could do this

Boxers who could not be separated could opt for klimax, a system whereby one fighter was granted a free hit and then vice-versa - a toss of a coin decided who went first

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The first ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to Olympia in 776 BC. Full passion and extraordinary feats of athletic endeavour, the Olympic Games were the sporting, social and cultural highlight of the Ancient Greek calendar for almost 12 centuries.

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Cristiano Ronaldo - Soccer Player | Mini Bio | BIO

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Scientific Name:

Ambystoma mexicanum

Average Life Span In The Wild:

10 to 15 years

Size relative to a teacup:

What is an axolotl?

As legend has it, the axolotl is the Aztec god of fire and lightning, Xolotl, which disguised himself as a salamander to avoid being sacrificed. But these Mexican amphibians are impressive enough on their own, with the ability to regenerate lost limbs and stay "young" throughout their lives.

Unlike other salamanders that undergo metamorphosis, axolotls (pronounced ACK-suh-LAH-tuhl) never outgrow their larval, juvenile stage, a phenomenon called neoteny.

Their youthful traits include feathery gills sprouting from their heads like a mane, webbed feet, a dorsal fin that runs down the length of their body, and a tail. Though they keep their gills, adult axolotls also have functional lungs and can breathe through their skin. And as if being forever-babies didn't make them cute enough, their mouths are upturned in a permanent Mona Lisa smile.

Those sweet little smiles can quickly turn into vacuum cleaners when it's time to eat. Axolotls suck in their prey, which includes crustaceans, mollusks, insect eggs and small fish.

A popular oddity

Axolotls have long fascinated the public, even more so when they were first brought from Mexico to Paris in 1864. Europeans across the continent began breeding the salamanders, the beginning of a robust pet trade in the animals, which breed easily in captivity.

In the wild, they're mostly grayish brown in color. Lighter colored axolotls, especially those with white bodies and pink gills, are usually bred as pets.

Yet in most countries, the species cannot be traded across international borders, in part due to the concern that they'll be poached from the wild. Axolotls are illegal to own in some U.S. states for the same reason.

Yet axolotls are illegal to own in some U.S. states due in part to the risk of them escaping captivity and interbreeding with native salamanders.

Axolotls are also a common research subject for biologists, thanks to their capacity to regenerate lost or damaged limbs, hearts, spinal cords, and even parts of their brains -all without permanent scarring.

Since scarring prevents tissue from regenerating, finding out how and why axolotls don't scar could unlock human's ability to regenerate tissue. An April 2021 study, for instance, deciphered how the axolotl's molecules communicate to promote regeneration.

Despite their ubiquitous captive population, wild axolotls are critically endangered. The amphibians once inhabited the high-altitude lakes around Mexico City, but habitat degradation has limited them to only in a few inland canals in the area. (Learn how Mexican nuns are helping save axolotls.)

Reproduction

Axolotls, which are solitary creatures, reach sexual maturity at a year old, and their spawning season in the wild is in February. Males seek out females, possibly using pheromones, and perform a courtship "hula" dance, shaking his tail and lower body. She responds by nudging him with her snout.

The male then deposits spermatophores, or sperm packets, on the lake floor, which the female picks up with her cloaca, a body cavity, which then fertilizes her eggs.

Females can lay up to a thousand eggs (though the average is about 300) on plant material or rocks, which protects them from predators. After two weeks they hatch and, with no parental care, the larvae are off and swimming on their own.

There's a theory for why axolotls don't change appearance as adults. Because their native lakes never dry up, as is the case for many other water bodies, axolotls didn't have to trade in their aquatic traits-such as a tadpole-like tail-for terrestrial ones, such as legs.

Conservation

A 2019 assessment by the International Union for the Conservation of Species found only between 50 and a thousand axolotls are left in the wild- and their populations are dropping.

Development for tourism and residential housing, in addition to agricultural and industrial pollution, has drastically reduced the species' population.

So has the introduction of tilapia and other invasive fish, which eat baby salamanders and compete with adults for food.

The Mexican government, as well as many nonprofits, are trying to save axolotls, in part by restoring parts of their freshwater habitat and offering ecotourism for people to see the quirky salamanders in the wild.

For instance, scientists and farmers are working together to create chinampas, floating islands made of water plants, logs, and lake mud that help filter the polluted water. (Read how traditional Mexican farmers and scientists are teaming up to save the axolotl in Mexico City.)

Some travel companies offer tours of these gardens, whose proceeds support axolotl conservation efforts in the area.

DID YOU KNOW

The axolotl genome is the second longest in the animal kingdom, with 32 billion base pairs. That's 10 times as long as the human genome.

-Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Newly hatched axolotls, hungry for their first meal, will sometimes snack on their siblings' limbs. They grow back, after all.

- Northeastern University

The word "axolotl" is thought to roughly translate to "water monster" in the ancient Aztec language Nahuatl.

- American Museum of Natural History

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Get to know this endangered salamander, found only in one place on Earth. Discover what sets this species apart from its relatives.

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Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón ( 6 July 1907 - 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. She is also known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.

Early years

Born to a German father and a mother, Kahlo spent most of her childhood and adult life at La Casa Azul, her family home in Coyoacán - now publicly accessible as the Frida Kahlo Museum. Although she was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical school. Due to polio, Kahlo began school later than her peers. Along with her younger sister Cristina, she attended the local kindergarten and primary school in Coyoacán and was homeschooled for the fifth and sixth grades. While Cristina followed their sisters into a convent school, Kahlo was enrolled in a German school due to their father's wishes. She was soon expelled for disobedience.

Kahlo enjoyed art from an early age, receiving drawing instruction from printmaker Fernando Fernández (who was her father's friend) and filling notebooks with sketches.

A severe bus accident at the age of 18 left Kahlo in lifelong pain. Confined to bed for three months following the accident, Kahlo began to paint. She started to consider a career as a medical illustrator, as well, which would combine her interests in science and art.

Her mother provided her with a specially-made easel, which enabled her to paint in bed, and her father lent her some of his oil paints. She had a mirror placed above the easel, so that she could see herself. Painting became a way for Kahlo to explore questions of identity and existence. She explained, "I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best." She later stated that the accident and the isolating recovery period made her desire "to begin again, painting things just as [she] saw them with [her] own eyes and nothing more."

Most of the paintings Kahlo made during this time were portraits of herself, her sisters, and her schoolfriends.

In 1925, Kahlo began to work to help her family. She became a paid engraving apprentice for Fernández. He was impressed by her talent, although she did not consider art as a career at this time.

Kahlo spent the late 1920s and early 1930s travelling in Mexico and the United States withe her husband and fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. During this time, she developed her artistic style, drawing her main inspiration from Mexican folk culture. She painted mostly small self-portraits that mixed elements from pre-Columbian and Catholic beliefs.

Her paintings raised the interest of surrealist artist André Breton, who arranged for Kahlo's first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938; the exhibition was a success and was followed by another in Paris in 1939. While the French exhibition was less successful, the Louvre purchased a painting from Kahlo, The Frame, making her the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection. Throughout the 1940s, Kahlo participated in exhibitions in Mexico and the United States and worked as an art teacher. She taught at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (" La Esmeralda") and was a founding member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana. Kahlo's always-fragile health began to decline in the same decade. She had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, shortly before her death in 1954 at the age of 47.

Later years

Even as Kahlo was gaining recognition in Mexico, her health was declining rapidly, and an attempted surgery to support her spine failed. Her paintings from this period include Broken Column (1944), Without Hope (1945), Tree of Hope, Stand Fast (1946), and The Wounded Deer (1946), reflecting her poor physical state. During her last years, Kahlo was mostly confined to the Casa Azul. She painted mostly still lifes, portraying fruit and flowers with political symbols such as flags or doves.

Photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo understood that Kahlo did not have much longer to live, and thus staged her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Arte Contemporaneo in April 1953. Though Kahlo was initially not due to attend the opening, as her doctors had prescribed bed rest for her, she ordered her four-poster bed to be moved from her home to the gallery. To the surprise of the guests, she arrived in an ambulance and was carried on a stretcher to the bed, where she stayed for the duration of the party. The exhibition was a notable cultural event in Mexico and also received attention in mainstream press around the world. The same year, the Tate Gallery's exhibition on Mexican art in London featured five of her paintings.

In 1954, Kahlo was again hospitalized in April and May. That spring, she resumed painting after a one-year interval. Her last paintings include the political Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (c. 1954) and Frida and Stalin (c. 1954) and the still-life Viva La Vida (1954).

Health issues and death

In 1950, Kahlo spent most of the year in Hospital ABC in Mexico City, where she underwent a new bone graft surgery on her spine. It caused a difficult infection and necessitated several follow-up surgeries. After being discharged, she was mostly confined to La Casa Azul, using a wheelchair and crutches to be ambulatory. During these final years of her life, Kahlo dedicated her time to political causes to the extent that her health allowed. She had rejoined the Mexican Communist Party in 1948 and campaigned for peace, for example, by collecting signatures for the Stockholm Appeal.

Kahlo's right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene in August 1953. She became severely depressed and anxious, and her dependency on painkillers escalated.

In her last days, Kahlo was mostly bedridden with bronchopneumonia, though she made a public appearance on 2 July 1954, participating with Rivera in a demonstration against the CIA invasion of Guatemala. She seemed to anticipate her death, as she spoke about it to visitors and drew skeletons and angels in her diary. The last drawing was a black angel, which biographer Hayden Herrera interprets as the Angel of Death. It was accompanied by the last words she wrote, "I joyfully await the exit - and I hope never to return - Frida" ("Espero Alegre la Salida - y Espero no Volver jamás").

The demonstration worsened her illness, and on the night of 12 July 1954, Kahlo had a high fever and was in extreme pain. At approximately 6 a.m. on 13 July 1954, her nurse found her dead in her bed. Kahlo was 47 years old. The official cause of death was pulmonary embolism, although no autopsy was performed.

On the evening of 13 July, Kahlo's body was taken to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where it lay in state under a Communist flag. The following day, it was carried to the Panteón Civil de Dolores, where friends and family attended an informal funeral ceremony. Hundreds of admirers stood outside. In accordance with her wishes, Kahlo was cremated. Rivera, who stated that her death was "the most tragic day of my life", died three years later, in 1957. Kahlo's ashes are displayed in a pre-Columbian urn at La Casa Azul, which opened as a museum in 1958.

Recognition

Kahlo's work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists. By the early 1990s, she had become a recognized figure in art history. She was also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the feminism movement, and the LGBTQ+ community.

Kahlo's work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions.

Personal life

Kahlo's interests in politics and art led her to join the Mexican Communist Party in 1927, through which she met fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. The couple married in 1929. He was 42 and she was 22.

The couple divorced in 1939, but remarried December 8, 1940, in San Francisco, California. A year after Kahlo's death, on July 29, 1955, Rivera married Emma Hurtado, his agent since 1946.

Kahlo and Rivera had no children together.

Frida Kahlo quotes

"They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

"I paint flowers so they will not die."

"At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can."

"Nothing is worth more than laughter."

"The most important part of the body is the brain. Of my face, I like the eyebrows and eyes."

Interesting facts about Frida Kahlo

Frida was born in Mexico, but her father was German.

Her name, which was originally spelled "Frieda" means "peace" in German.

Frida survived both polio and a bus crash.

She married a man with a name even longer than hers. Her husband's full name was Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez.

She exaggerated her facial hair in her self-portraits.

Because of the bright clothing she wore, she was asked by children, "Where's the circus?"

She was born and died in the same house, called "La Casa Azul" (The Blue House), which is now known as Frida Kahlo Museum.

Commemorations

Kahlo's legacy has been commemorated in several ways:

La Casa Azul, her home in Coyoacán, was opened as a museum in 1958, and has become one of the most popular museums in Mexico City, with approximately 25,000 visitors monthly.

The city dedicated a park, Parque Frida Kahlo, to her in Coyoacán in 1985. The park features a bronze statue of Kahlo.

In the United States, she became the first Hispanic woman to be honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 2001.

She was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago that celebrates LGBT history and people, in 2012.

Kahlo received several commemorations on the centenary of her birth in 2007.

Notable artists such as Marina Abramovic, Alana Archer, Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso, Yasumasa Morimura, Cris Melo, Rupert Garcia, and others have used or appropriated Kahlo's imagery into their own works.

Kahlo's life and art have inspired artists in various fields. Kahlo has also been the subject of several stage performances.

In 2018, Mattel unveiled seventeen new Barbie dolls in celebration of International Women's Day, including one of Kahlo. Critics objected to the doll's slim waist and noticeably missing unibrow.

In 2018, San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to rename Phelan Avenue to Frida Kahlo Way. Frida Kahlo Way is the home of City College of San Francisco and Archbishop Riordan High School.

In 2019, Frida was featured on a mural painted by Rafael Blanco in downtown Reno, Nevada.

In 2019, Frida's "Fantasmones Siniestros" ("Sinister Ghosts") was burned to ashes, publicizing an Ethereum NFT.

In 2022, as part of a collaboration with Centre Pompidou, Swatch released a watch based on The Frame.

Solo exhibitions

4 January 2022 onwards Frida Kahlo: The Life of an Icon at Barangaroo Reserve, Sydney. Audio visual exhibition created by the Frida Kahlo Corporation.

8 February - 12 May 2019 - Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the Brooklyn Museum. This was the largest U.S. exhibition in a decade devoted solely to the painter and the only U.S. show to feature her Tehuana clothing, hand-painted corsets and other never-before-seen items that had been locked away after the artist's death and rediscovered in 2004.

16 June - 18 November 2018 - Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The basis for the later Brooklyn Museum exhibit.

3 February - 30 April 2016 - Frida Kahlo: Paintings and Graphic Art From Mexican Collections at the Faberge Museum, St. Petersburg. Russia's first retrospective of Kahlo's work.

27 October 2007 - 20 January 2008 - Frida Kahlo an exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 20 February - 18 May 2008; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 16 June - 28 September 2008.

1-15 November 1938 - Frida's first solo exhibit and New York debut at the Museum of Modern Art. Georgia O'Keeffe, Isamu Noguchi, and other prominent American artists attended the opening; approximately half of the paintings were sold.

Images for kids

Kahlo (on the right) and her sisters Cristina, Matilde, and Adriana, photographed by their father, 1916

Frida photographed in 1932 by her father, Guillermo

Kahlo and Rivera's houses in San Ángel; they lived there from 1934 until their divorce in 1939, after which it became his studio

1937 photograph by Toni Frissell, from a fashion shoot for Vogue

In Spanish: Frida Kahlo para niños

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The Ancient Greek Olympics (776 BC-393 AD)

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Send Your Name to Jupiter's Moon Europa

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The International Space Station advances scientific knowledge in Earth, space, physical, and biological sciences, for the benefit of all.

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Globular Cluster Omega Centauri Looks Radiant in Infrared

A cluster brimming with millions of stars glistens like an iridescent opal in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Called Omega Centauri, the sparkling orb of stars is like a miniature galaxy. It is the biggest and brightest of the 150 or so similar objects, called globular clusters, that orbit around the outside of our Milky Way galaxy. Stargazers at southern latitudes can spot the stellar gem with the naked eye in the constellation Centaurus. Globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in our universe. Their stars are over 12 billion years old, and, in most cases, formed all at once when the universe was just a toddler. Omega Centauri is unusual in that its stars are of different ages and possess varying levels of metals, or elements heavier than boron. Astronomers say this points to a different origin for Omega Centauri than other globular clusters: they think it might be the core of a dwarf galaxy that was ripped apart and absorbed by our Milky Way long ago. In this new view of Omega Centauri, Spitzer's infrared observations have been combined with visible-light data from the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Visible-light data with a wavelength of .55 microns is colored blue, 3.6-micron infrared light captured by Spitzer's infrared array camera is colored green and 24-micron infrared light taken by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer is colored red. Where green and red overlap, the color yellow appears. Thus, the yellow and red dots are stars revealed by Spitzer. These stars, called red giants, are more evolved, larger and dustier. The stars that appear blue were spotted in both visible and 3.6-micron-, or near-, infrared light. They are less evolved, like our own sun. Some of the red spots in the picture are distant galaxies beyond our own.

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NASA.gov brings you the latest news, images and videos from America's space agency, pioneering the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

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Cristiano Ronaldo has gone from a small island in the middle of the ocean to the top of the soccer world. Kidzworld checks out one of the world's most exciting soccer superstars.

Growing Up

Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo was born on February 5, 1985, on the island of Madeira, which is a few hundred miles south of Portugal. He grew up in a small house in the city of Funchal and began playing soccer for a youth team in Madeira, where his dad was the team's equipment manager. At just 12 years old Cristiano moved 600 miles to Lisbon, which is on the mainland of Portugal, to play for Sporting Lisbon's youth team. The move was a difficult one for Cristiano, since he was away from his family and many of his teammates made fun of his Madeiran accent.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Teenage Soccer Star

While some kids chose to tease Cristiano about his accent, no one was teasing him about his soccer skills. His dazzling footwork and goal-scoring abilities made him a teenage super-star. He played his first game for Sporting Lisbon in the Portuguese Super League when he was 17 and quickly became known as one of the most exciting young soccer players in the world.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Teenage Millionaire

Cristiano's talent caught the eye of Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, who bought him from Sporting Lisbon for a mind-boggling $20 million US! Cristiano had great success playing for both Manchester United and for Portugal. He scored the opening goal for Manchester in their 2004 FA Cup victory and helped Portugal advance to the finals at Euro 2004. In 2009, Manchester United accepted an offer of 80 million pounds (that's over $120 million US!) from Spain's Real Madrid soccer team for Cristiano, who had apparently made it known he wanted to leave England for Spain.

Off the Field

No matter what team he's on, Cristiano's fabulous footwork and good looks have made him one of the most popular players in Europe. He's a millionaire at a very young age (Cristiano is now in his 20s), he drives expensive Ferrari cars and he's been linked to famous American celebs like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Did U Know?

Ronaldo was named after former US President, Ronald Reagan, who was greatly admired by Ronaldo's dad. His full name is Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro.

Cristiano Ronaldo's favorite actress is Angelina Jolie.

When Cristiano Ronaldo was a kid, he once hit a teacher with a chair because she made fun of his Madeiran accent (Kidzworld doesn't recommend you hit your teachers with chairs).

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Cristiano Ronaldo has gone from a small island in the middle of the ocean to the top of the soccer world. Kidzworld checks out one of the world's most exciting soccer superstars. Soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo was born on February 5, 1985, on the island of Madeira, which is a few hundred miles south of Portugal.

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Known across the globe for her symbol-filled self-portraits, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is an icon. Her fierce determination and often-arduous life fueled her work. This TED-Ed from Iseult Gillespie briefly summarizes her 47 years, including the bus collision that changed the path of her life, her turbulent marriage to Diego Rivera, her political and cultural values, and the visual language of her paintings. Plus, from TED-Ed:

Born in Coyoacán in 1907, Kahlo is known for her resplendent imagery and unapologetic individualism. Animals and plants, along with her body, pain and spirituality, became signature themes of her unique visual language. She painted many eerie portraits, still lives and spiritual scenes - but it is her mesmerizing self-portraits which first caught people's attention, and continued to captivate after her death.

Such work is groundbreaking because it turned self-portraiture inward - especially at a time when women often inhabited art only as men saw them. Kahlo insisted her personal experience mattered, and boldly documented the circumstances of her body, beliefs and every day life. These are often conveyed through symbols, which can be as sensuous as they are gruesome: from giant floating flowers and undulating landscapes, to transplanted body parts, skulls and billowing clouds of demons.

Find more of her work at FridaKahlo.org.

Watch these videos next: A New Republic: The portrait work of artist Kehinde Wiley, Tableaux Vivants: Caravaggio paintings performed live, and Relighting "Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque)" by Georges Seurat.

Bonus: Sara Berman's Closet.

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Frida Kahlo: The woman behind the legend | The Kid Should See This

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Known across the globe for her symbol-filled self-portraits, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is an icon. Her fierce determination and often-arduous life fueled her work. This TED-Ed from Iseult Gillespie briefly summarizes her 47 years, including the bus collision that changed the path of her life, her turbulent marriage to Diego Rivera, her political and cultural values, and the visual language of her paintings.

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50 years after first games, Special Olympics aims for 'inclusion revolution'

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All About the Sun for Kids: Astronomy and Space for Children

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American gymnast Aly Raisman made her Olympic debut at the 2012 London Games and emerged as the most-decorated American gymnast at that year's Games, coming away with two gold medals and one bronze. Her gold medal win in floor exercise marked the first time that an American woman was awarded the gold medal in that category. After taking a break from competitive gymnastics, during which time she appeared as a contestant on the television show "Dancing with the Stars" (2013), Raisman returned for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where she won two silver medals and one gold.

Facts

Also Known As

Alexandra Rose Raisman

Birthplace

Needham, Massachusetts, United States

Notable Family Members

daughter of Rick Raisman * daughter of Lynn Raisman * sister of Chloe Raisman * sister of Brett Raisman * sister of Madison Raisman

Education

Needham High School (Needham, Massachusetts) * Babson College

Olympic Medals

silver in floor exercises (Rio 2016; gymnastics) * silver in individual all-round (Rio 2016; gymnastics) * gold in team competition (Rio 2016; gymnastics) * bronze in womien's balance beam (London 2012; gymnastics) * gold in women's floor exercises (London 2012; gymnastics) * gold in women's team competition (London 2012; gymnastics)

Movies/Tv Shows (Acted In)

"Charlie's Angels" (2019)

Published Works

"Fierce: How Competing for Myself Changed Everything" (2017; with Blythe Lawrence)

Did You Know?

Raisman's parents came to popular notice among TV viewers of the Olympic Games for their visibly tense reactions to watching their daughter compete; cameras captured the pair squirming in their seats with rigid expressions on their faces until the moment when Raisman safely completed her routine.

Raisman began practicing gymnastics when she was only two years old, at which age her mother brought her in for "mommy and me" classes; Raisman took to the sport immediately.

Top Questions

At what age did Aly Raisman start practicing gymnastics?

Aly Raisman began practicing gymnastics in 1996, when she was only two years old.

Where did Aly Raisman go to school?

Aly Raisman attended Needham High School in Needham, Massachusetts, and later took classes at nearby Babson College.

When was Aly Raisman on "Dancing with the Stars"?

Aly Raisman competed in 2013 on the 16th season of the television program "Dancing with the Stars." Raisman and her dancing partner for the show, Mark Ballas, placed fourth.

Where did Aly Raisman grow up?

Aly Raisman grew up in Needham, Massachusetts.

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American gymnast Aly Raisman made her Olympic debut at the 2012 London Games and emerged as the most-decorated American gymnast at that year's Games, coming away with two gold medals and one bronze. Her gold medal win in floor exercise marked the first time that an American woman was awarded the gold medal in that category.

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Amazing Peacock Spiders Perform a Fascinating Love Dance | National Geographic

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WHO WAS PABLO PICASSO | ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW

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The sun is the real star of the show-literally! The closest star to Earth, it's the source of all the heat and light that makes flowers bloom, songbirds croon, and sunbathers swoon. Life wouldn't exist without it. It's also the center of our solar system and by far its largest object. More than a million Earths would fit inside the sun! Our star's enormous gravity grips the planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, keeping them from spinning into deep space. Put simply, we wouldn't have a solar system without the sun.

Despite its importance in the grand scheme of things, the sun isn't unique or particularly complex. It's average in size and middle-aged compared to the billions of other stars in our galaxy. And although the sun accounts for 99.8 percent of the total mass of the solar system, it's really just a big ball of gas. A process called nuclear fusion converts hydrogen to helium deep in the sun's core, where temperatures hit a balmy 18 million degrees Fahrenheit (15.7 million degrees Celsius). Fusion creates energy that travels to the sun's surface in a journey that lasts a million years. The core will run out of hydrogen gas eventually, which will put an end to our fun in the sun. But fear not: That day won't come for at least another five billion years.

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The sun is the real star of the show-literally! The closest star to Earth, it's the source of all the heat and light that makes flowers bloom, songbirds croon, and sunbathers swoon. Life wouldn't exist without it. It's also the center of our solar system and by far its largest object.

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Who Is Aly Raisman?

Born in 1994, Aly Raisman started gymnastics at an early age and helped the U.S. gymnastics team win the 2011 World Championships. The following year, she won two gold medals-one in the team competition and the other in the individual floor exercise-and a bronze medal on the beam at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. In 2016, Raisman returned to the Olympics in Rio, winning silver medals in the individual all-around final and floor exercise and a gold in the women's gymnastics team competition. In 2017, Raisman revealed she had experienced sexual abuse at the hands of former team doctor Larry Nassar, and the following year she sued USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Early Life

A member of the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team, Aly Raisman started learning her sport not long after she began walking. In an interview with USA Gymnastics, she said, "I was 2 years old when my mom put me in mommy and me classes. I always had a lot of energy so it was the perfect fit!" The oldest of four children, Raisman is the daughter of two athletic parents. Her mother was a gymnast in high school and her father played hockey.

At the age of 10, Raisman took her training to another level. She started working with Mihai and Sylvie Brestyan at their American Gymnastics Club in Burlington, Massachusetts. Around the age of 14, Raisman had begun to compete on an elite level. She came in 12th over all in junior competition at the 2009 CoverGirl Classic. That same year, Raisman won the junior vault event at the American Classic.

Top Gymnast

By 2010, Raisman proved that she had the right stuff to be a world-class gymnast. She was part of the silver medal-winning team at the World Championships and claimed three bronze medals at the Visa National Championships that year. Raisman went on to win the CoverGirl Classic in 2011, and earned a bronze medal in the floor exercise at the 2011 World Championships. She and her teammates-Jordyn Wieber, Gabby Douglas, Sabrina Vega and McKayla Maroney-also took home the gold medal at the 2011 World Championships, in the team competition.

Raisman worked hard to balance her love of gymnastics with her school work. She went to Needham High School through her junior year, and completed her studies online in 2012. Though dedicated to her sport, she managed to find the time to go to graduation with her friends, and even made it to her senior prom. "The gymnastics definitely takes a priority, but she's very good with still trying to keep in touch with friends and having a little bit of normalcy," her mother, Lynn Raisman, told ESPN. "I think if you don't have that, it's hard. It's just a very grueling sport."

Raisman made the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team in 2012. "Making the team is a dream come true," she told ESPN. "I am so honored and so excited to represent my country. It means the world to me." While the 18-year-old gymnast was selected to be the team's captain, much of the initial media attention focused on Raisman's teammates, Jordyn Wieber and Gabby Douglas.

Once the games started, however, Raisman showed the judges that she was no underdog. She beat out Wieber for a spot to compete in the all-around finals. According to Raisman, the victory was bittersweet. "I was really surprised. I feel awful because she [Wieber] wanted it so bad. But she should still feel proud. She's an Olympian," Raisman said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

In late July 2012, Raisman and her U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics teammates-Gabrielle Douglas, Kyla Ross, McKayla Maroney and Jordyn Wieber, a group that would become known as the "Fierce Five"-took home a team gold medal. Fans worldwide watched as judges announced the team's medal win-the first gold for the American women's gymnastics team since 1996. Raisman went on to win a bronze medal for the beam and a second gold medal, in the individual floor exercise, at the 2012 Olympics. Afterward, Raisman took some time out of the gym to compete on Dancing With the Stars, in 2013. Two years later, she became an all-around bronze medalist and World team champion.

In June 2016, Raisman was seen on Gold Medal Families, a Lifetime reality show that gave fans a glimpse into her family life. The next month, Raisman, along with Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Laurie Hernandez and Madison Kocian, officially made the 2016 U.S. Olympic team. Raisman and Douglas were the first American women gymnasts to return to the Olympics since Dominique Dawes and Amy Chow in 2000.

2016 Olympic Games

At age 22, Raisman, the oldest member of the 2016 Olympic women's gymnastics team, brought poise and experience to Rio.

"We're going in as the best team in the world," Raisman told NBC. "So we should carry ourselves that way, not be scared and shaky because we have that pressure. It should be the opposite."

She went on to help the U.S. team win gold with impressive performances on the vault, balance beam and floor. Raisman shared the victory with Biles, Douglas, Hernandez and Kocian, a group that called themselves the "Final Five." They were the third American women's gymnastic team to win gold, following the team victories in 1996 and 2012.

Raisman explained the meaning behind the team's nickname on Today: "We're the Final Five because this is [coach] Marta [Karolyi's] last Olympics and without her none of this would have been possible. ... We wanted to do it for her just because she's there with us every single day." Additionally, the 2016 Games marked the last Olympics before the five-person gymnastic teams would be reduced to four.

Following the team competition, Raisman won a silver medal in the individual all-around competition. Teammate Simone Biles took home the gold and Russian gymnast Aliya Mustafina won bronze. It was an emotional triumph for Raisman, and the culmination of years of hard work and determination.

"I feel like I'm better now than I was in 2012," Raisman said in an ESPN interview after taking the silver medal. "I'm very proud of that. It's obviously not something people expected or that's easy to do after taking a year off and being the 'Grandma,' as everyone likes to call me. I'm happy I proved everyone wrong."

Raisman took silver again in the individual floor exercise with a score of 15.500, making her the first American gymnast to win medals in that competition in back-to-back Olympics. Teammate Simone Biles won gold and Amy Tinkler of Great Britain took the bronze.

Autobiography and Abuse Revelations

Following her Olympic triumph, Raisman set to work on her autobiography, Fierce. Days before its scheduled release on November 14, 2017, the gold medalist discussed the book's revelation that she had been molested by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar since age 15.

"It wasn't until I started seeing other doctors and athletic trainers that I began to realize that their methods were far different from Larry's," she wrote of the experience. "And there was never a moment when their methods made me uncomfortable. It was different with Larry. I would lie on the table, my hands involuntarily balling themselves into fists as his ungloved hands worked their way under my clothing. 'Treatment sessions' with him always made me feel tense and uncomfortable."

On November 22, Nassar pleaded guilty to multiple charges of criminal sexual assault, spawning a lengthy tweet from Raisman: "It is about time that Larry plead guilty and owned up to his actions. I am beyond disgusted that a decorated Olympic and USA Gymnastics doctor was able to prey upon so many over such a long period of time," she wrote.

Raisman later had more choice words for her abuser and USA Gymnastics at Nassar's sentencing hearing in January 2018:

"You already know you're going away to a place where you won't be able to hurt anybody ever again," she said in her victim impact statement. "But I am here to tell you that I will not rest until every single last trace of your influence on this sport has been destroyed, like the cancer it is.

"My dream is that one day everyone will know what the words #MeToo signify. But they will be educated and able to protect themselves from predators like Larry so that they will never ever, ever have to say the words, 'me, too.'"

Lawsuit Against the USOC and USA Gymnastics

In early March 2018, Raisman filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics over their failure to "implement appropriate safeguards" to protect her and other athletes from Nassar. Describing a system of neglect, she told The Washington Post of the inhumane conditions at the Karolyi Ranch, USA Gymnastics' training center, where the showers lacked soap and the beds were covered with stained, bug-infested blankets.

An athletic trainer who predated Raisman's time with the team corroborated the gymnast's accounts, adding that the coaches and staff would often depart from the facility at night, leaving the athletes alone to be treated by Nassar in their beds.

In July 2018, Raisman took the stage at the ESPY Awards, alongside 140 other victims of Nassar's sexual abuse, to receive the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. "1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016. These were the years we spoke up about Larry Nassar's abuse," she said, in one of the ceremony's most powerful moments. "All those years we were told, 'You are wrong. You misunderstood. He's a doctor. It's OK. Don't worry, we've got it covered. Be careful. There are risks involved.' The intention: to silence us in favor of money, medals and reputation.

"To all the survivors out there, don't let anyone rewrite your story," she added. "Your truth does matter, you matter and you are not alone."

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Gymnast Aly Raisman accepted the ESPYs' Arthur Ashe Courage Award on behalf of the numerous victims of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse. "To all the survivors out there, don't let anyone rewrite your story," she said. "Your truth does matter, you matter and you are not alone."

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This colorful, dancing arachnid is just one of the new peacock spider species that's been found in eastern Australia.
Published April 22, 2015
If you don't think of spiders as cute and cuddly, then you've never met Sparklemuffin. Scientists have identified the adorable arachnid as one of three recently discovered species of peacock spider in eastern Australia.

Less than a quarter-inch (five millimeters) long, male peacock spiders are known for their bright colors and flashy mating dance. These colors-like the vibrant red and blue of Sparklemuffin's stripes-make it easy to tell the difference between species. Many female peacock spiders, though, look alike, even to the males.

So how do peacock spiders like Sparklemuffin-a pet name given to this new species-break it down? When a female is nearby, the male begins his dance by raising the third pair of legs from his front and waving them around. Then he unfolds the flaps over his belly and waves those around. As the female comes toward him, he starts shaking and rolling his body, sending vibrations through the ground that the female can sense.

Fifty-three species of peacock spider, which are found only in Australia, have been named so far. But photographer Jürgen Otto thinks many more are waiting to be discovered. Because not many scientists are studying these spiders, he says photographers and nature lovers will probably be the ones to find new spiders. We can't wait to see what name they come up with next!
Text from "Behold Sparklemuffin and Skeletorus, New Peacock Spiders" by Carrie Arnold for National Geographic News Adapted by Rose Davidson, NGS Staff

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Read about one of three recently discovered peacock spiders in Australia.

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Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 - 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer. He was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century and is known for co-founding the Cubist movement.

Picasso was born at 23:15 on 25 October 1881, in the city of Málaga, Andalusia, in southern Spain. He was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838-1913) and María Picasso y López. Picasso's family was of middle-class background. His father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life, Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz's ancestors were minor aristocrats.

Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models.

The family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him.

In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria. After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts.

Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the jury admitted him, at just 13. As a student, Picasso lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented a small room for him close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his drawings. The two argued frequently.

Picasso's father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid's Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the country's best art school. At age 16, Picasso left home. He stopped attending classes soon after enrollment, because he did not like formal training. Instead, he spent time in the Prado, studying paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; elements such as his elongated limbs, arresting colours, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso's later work.

Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. The most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901-1904), the Rose Period (1904-1906), the African-influenced Period (1907-1909), Analytic Cubism (1909-1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912-1919). Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.

Blue Period: 1901-1904

Picasso's Blue Period (1901-1904) began either in Spain in early 1901 or in Paris in the second half of the year. It called so as he mostly used shades of blue and blue-green for his paintings.

Rose Period: 1904-1906

The Rose Period (1904-1906) is characterised by utilising orange and pink colours and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins.

By 1905, Picasso became a favourite of American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work.

African art and primitivism: 1907-1909

Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907-1909) begins with his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. When he displayed the painting to acquaintances in his studio later that year, the nearly universal reaction was shock and revulsion; Matisse angrily dismissed the work as a hoax. Picasso did not exhibit Les Demoiselles publicly until 1916.

Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.

Analytic cubism: 1909-1912

Analytic cubism (1909-1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time share many similarities.

Synthetic cubism: 1912-1919

Main page: Crystal Cubism

Synthetic cubism (1912-1919) was a further development of the genre of cubism, in which cut paper fragments - often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages - were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art.

Between 1915 and 1917, Picasso began a series of paintings depicting highly geometric and minimalist Cubist objects, consisting of either a pipe, a guitar or a glass, with an occasional element of collage.

c.1911, Le Guitariste. Reproduced in Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Du "Cubisme", 1912

Parade, 1917, curtain designed for the ballet Parade. The work is the largest of Picasso's paintings. Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France, May 2012

Neoclassicism and surrealism: 1919-1929

In February 1917, Picasso made his first trip to Italy. In the period Picasso produced work in a neoclassical style. Picasso's paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of Raphael and Ingres.

In 1925, he took part in the first Surrealist exhibition in Paris. Between 1924 and 1926, Picasso preferred to paint abstract still lifes.

In 1928, he started a new period. He began to make sculptural works.

Before the Second World War

In 1936, Picasso got a job as director of the Prado-Museum in Madrid. During this time, the Spanish Civil War started. German bombs fall on Guernica in Spain on 26 April 1937. Picasso used this impact to paint one of his most famous paintings, Guernica. This painting was completed in about 2 months. It was first shown in the Spanish Pavilion in Paris in 1937.

During the Second World War

In 1938, Picasso's mother died. After the Second World War started on 1 September 1939, Picasso returned to Paris. In 1941, he wrote his first play "Le désir attrapé par la queue" ( English: Desire Caught by the Tail). It was first shown in 1944. Also in 1944, Picasso joined the communist Party. Picasso spent almost the full war time in Paris.

Personal life

Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women:

Paulo (4 February 1921 - 5 June 1975, Paul Joseph Picasso) - with Olga Khokhlova

Maya (5 September 1935 - 20 December 2022, Maria de la Concepcion Picasso) - with Marie-Thérèse Walter

Claude (born 15 May 1947, Claude Pierre Pablo Picasso) - with Françoise Gilot

Paloma (born 19 April 1949, Anne Paloma Picasso) - with Françoise Gilot

Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, from pulmonary edema and heart failure, while he and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. He was buried at his Château of Vauvenargues near Aix-en-Provence.

Interesting facts about Pablo Picasso

Although Picasso was Spanish, he spent most of his adult life in France.

At birth, he was given a very long name, combining those of various saints and relatives. The record of his baptism stated that his full name was 'Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso'.

According to his mother, his first words were "piz, piz", a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil".

Henri Matisse was Picasso's lifelong friend and rival. The two met in 1905.

In 1944, Picasso joined the French Communist Party.

In 1950, received the Stalin Peace Prize from the Soviet government. In 1962, he received the Lenin Peace Prize.

As a communist, Picasso opposed the intervention of the United Nations and the United States in the Korean War.

On 9 January 1949, Picasso created Dove, a black and white lithograph. It was used to illustrate a poster at the 1949 World Peace Council and became an iconographic image of the period, known as "The dove of peace". Picasso's image was used around the world.

Picasso made a few film appearances, always as himself, including a cameo in Jean Cocteau's Testament of Orpheus (1960).

In 1955, he helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

In 1967, Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for the Chicago Picasso, which is one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago. He donated the money to the people of the city.

Picasso also wrote poetry. Between 1935 and 1959 he wrote over 300 poems.

As of 2015, Picasso remained the top-ranked artist (based on sales of his works at auctions) according to the Art Market Trends report.

More of his paintings have been stolen than any other artist's; in 2012, the Art Loss Register had 1,147 of his works listed as stolen.

Picasso is played by Antonio Banderas in the 2018 season of Genius which focuses on his life and art.

The Museu Picasso in Barcelona. It features many of his early works, created while he was living in Spain, including many rarely seen works which reveal his firm grounding in classical techniques.

The Museo Picasso Málaga opened in 2003 in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain.

The Musée Picasso, Paris. Picasso's paintings left after his death form the core of this collection.

In Spanish: Pablo Picasso para niños

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Special Olympics Facts & Worksheets | KidsKonnect

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Special Olympics is the world’s largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Click for more facts or worksheets.

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The Sun is a star, the only one we can see during the daytime. When we look in the night sky, we see endless dots of light, every one of them is a star just like our Sun.

Key Facts & Summary

The Sun is located in the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, essentially, a hot ball of glowing gases.

It is the most important source of energy for life on Earth.

The Sun has a diameter of around 1.39 million kilometers / 864,000 miles. This is 109 times greater than the diameter of our planet.

The Sun's mass consists of 73% hydrogen, 25% helium, and smaller amounts of oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, and other elements.

The Sun is so massive that it accounts for 99.86% of the total mass of the entire Solar System.

The Sun currently fuses around 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second. It is converting 4 million tons of matter into energy every second as a result.

This energy is the source of the Sun's light and heat. It can take between 10,000 and 170,000 years for this energy to escape from the Sun's core.

Every star is classified based upon their physical characteristics. Our Sun is labeled as a G-type main-sequence star or G2V.

The Sun is approximately 4.6 billion years old.

Many cultures from around the world associated the Sun with their most important deity or a very prominent one, and for good reason! Without the Sun, we wouldn't exist.

The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, climate, radiation belts, and aurorae.

Though there are billions of stars in the galaxy, our Sun will always be the most special star.

The Sun spins once every 25 days, but at its poles, it rotates once every 35 days.

The Sun's core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit / 15 million degrees Celsius.

The English word "sun" developed from Old English "sunne." Many cultures throughout the world had solar deities in their religions and mythologies.

The ancient Sumerians associated the Sun with Utu, the god of justice and twin brother of Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, who was identified as the planet, Venus.

In ancient Egypt, the Sun was worshipped as the god Ra while in Greece, the Sun was a male deity named Helios, and for the Japanese, the Sun was a goddess named Amaterasu.

Formation

Our Sun together with the Solar System formed from a giant, rotating cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula, around 4.5 billion years ago.

The solar nebula collapsed due to its overwhelming gravity, it spun faster and flattened to a disk. Most of the material was pulled in the center to form our Sun, which accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the entire Solar System.

Like all-stars, the Sun will eventually run out of energy and it will swell and thus engulf Mercury, Venus, and most likely even Earth. Scientists believe that the Sun is already at around halfway through its lifetime and will last for another 5 billion years before it will shrink down to become a white dwarf star.

Size and Distance

Our Sun is a relatively medium-sized type of star. It has a radius of 432,168 mi / 695,508 km and a diameter of around 1.39 million kilometers / 864,000 miles. This is 109 times greater than the diameter of our planet.

The volume of the Sun is so great that you would need 1.3 million Earth-sized planets to fill it. Not even all the planets combined could fit inside the Sun.

The Sun is 93 million mi / 150 million km away from Earth. The nearest stellar neighbor to the Solar System is the Alpha Centauri triple star system. It is at 4.24 light-years away from us.

Orbit and Rotation

The Sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, millions of asteroids, and up to three trillion comets and icy bodies. But what does the Sun orbit?

Everything in the Solar System is located in the Milky Way galaxy. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way, bringing the planets, asteroids, comets, and other objects along with it.

Our Solar System is moving at an average speed of 450,000 mi / 720,000 km per hour. Even though we are moving fast, it still takes us 230 million years to complete one orbit around the Milky Way.

The Sun rotates as it orbits the Milky Way's center. Since the Sun isn't a solid body, different parts of it rotate at different rates. At the equator, the Sun spins once every 25 days, while at the poles, it rotates once on its axis every 35 days.

Structure and Surface

All stars are basically a ball of gas, and this is also true in regards to our Sun. The Sun is made out of 91% hydrogen and 8.9% helium. By mass, the Sun is about 70% hydrogen and 27% helium.

This mass is held together by gravitational interaction, and this produces immense pressure and temperatures at the core. The core is the hottest part of the Sun, with temperatures being at around 27 million degrees Fahrenheit / 15 million degrees Celsius.

The energy produced at the core powers the Sun and produces heat and light. The surface of the Sun, the part we can see, is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit / 5,500 degrees Celsius. It is hot enough to boil diamonds or graphite.

The surface of the Sun is called the photosphere, and it is a 300 mi / 500 km-thick region, from which most of the Sun's radiation escapes outward. It isn't a solid region like the surfaces of planets, but merely the outer layer of the gassy star.

We see radiation from the photosphere as sunlight when it reaches Earth, about eight minutes after it leaves the Sun.

Fun Facts

If the Sun disappeared, we would only notice its absence after eight-minutes, since it takes eight minutes for sunlight to reach us.

The Sun's visible surface sometimes has dark sunspots. These are areas of intense magnetic activity that can lead to solar explosions.

The Sun is actually white. We see it as yellow because of the Earth's atmosphere. Many photos present the Sun as yellow, this is because we are very familiar with this color, however, from space, the Sun's true color is white.

The energy created by the Sun's core is nuclear fusion.

The Sun is almost a perfect sphere. There is only a 10 km difference in the Sun's polar and equatorial diameters. This makes it the closest thing to a perfect sphere ever observed in nature.

The Sun rotates in the opposite direction to Earth, from west to east.

The atmosphere of the Sun is composed of three layers: the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona.

The Aurora Borealis and Australis are caused by the interaction of solar winds with Earth's atmosphere. Solar winds are generated by the Sun, they are charged particles, and they occur when the Sun's magnetic field extends into space.

Around 1,000 Jupiter-sized planets could fit inside the Sun. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, having more than 11 times the Earth's diameter.

Trivia

The other name of the Sun

Our Sun doesn't have an official scientific name, however, there is one other common name for it: Sol. This name originates from the ancient Roman god of the Sun, Sol. This alternate name is where we get the term "solar system", which means the system of the Sun.

The Sun will consume Earth, and then it will become Earth-sized

When the Sun will exhaust its hydrogen supplies, it will start to burn its helium supplies. During this period, the Sun will expand and engulf Earth. At this stage, our Sun will become a red giant type of star.

After its red giant phase, the Sun will collapse. It will keep its enourmous mass with about the same volume as our planet. When this happens, the Sun will then become a white dwarf type of star.

Did you know?

1. When the Sun will blast its dying light, it will destroy even the asteroid belt.

2. The Sun's surface area is around 11,990 times greater than that of Earth.

3. The distance between the Earth and the Sun is called an Astronomical Unit - AU.

4. The Sun travels at a speed of 136 mi / 220 km per second through space.

5. The Sun is quite small in comparison to other stars. For example, UY Scuti - a red supergiant star, has a radius of around 1,700 times greater than that of our Sun.

Sources:

Image sources:

1. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/system/stellar_items/image_files/1_sun.jpg

2. https://www.nasa.gov/images/content/513681main_AFGL490-43_946-710.jpg

3. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/images/videos/inasnap_solarsystem.jpg

4. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/watereventfeature20150407_main.jpg

5. https://www.nasa.gov/images/content/161856main_hinode2_1385x1249.jpg

6. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/images/462977main_sun_layers_full.jpg

7. https://mythology.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Sol-Indiges-380x240.jpg

8. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/white_dwarf_disk_final.jpg

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The Sun Facts for Kids | Fun & Interesting Information & History

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The Sun is a star, the only one we can see during the daytime. When we look in the night sky, we see endless dots of light, every one of them is a star just like our Sun. The Sun is located in the center of the Solar System.

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KCUR 89.3 - NPR in Kansas City. Local news, entertainment and podcasts.

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Aly Raisman started gymnastics like millions of other children - in a toddler tumbling class. Now 17, the Massachusetts athlete is considered one of the best tumblers in the world. And she's on track to make the 2012 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.

As a gymnast, Raisman sets herself apart with her power moves. When she competed at the 2012 American Cup, an NBC TV commentator said of one tumbling pass: "Most people in the world would have said that this pass is not possible."

In her tumbling routine at that competition, Raisman ran across the floor into a series of aerial somersaults that ended with a "punch layout." For the maneuver, she flipped over, fully extended, like a pancake being flipped. It's almost like she's floating.

If she nails that routine at the Olympic trials at the end of June, Raisman will have a very good chance of taking one of the five spots on the women's U.S. gymnastics team.

"I'm excited. I'm anxious. And I'm just kind of ready for it to happen," Raisman says. "I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for it. So I just kind of want it to come now."

Her mother, Lynn Raisman, says that as the oldest of four children, Aly has shown drive and determination in everything she does.

"Gymnastics has really taken a priority in her life for a really long time, and that comes from her," Lynn says. "Because if it didn't, I think she would have quit a long time ago."

Raisman was only 2 years old in 1996, when the U.S. women's gymnastics team last took Olympic gold. When she set her sights on competing in the Olympics, her mother found an old VCR tape of that golden team and gave it to her.

"In my room, I would replay it day after day after day," Raisman says. "And I was literally obsessed with it. I could memorize all the scores and tell you who was going next, and all that stuff. I was so inspired by it."

Until last year, Raisman went to Needham High School and maintained a rigorous training schedule. Now she's completing her senior year online. On most days, she spends seven hours at the gym. She says the key to tumbling is conditioning, not just lifting weights.

"Actually I have to climb the rope without legs, with 10-pound weights on," she says - adding with a laugh, "so it's very, very hard."

As a result of that work, her upper body seems very powerful - something she confirms.

"I look really strong, definitely compared to normal girls," Raisman says. "I'm proud of it, I guess, because it's a lot of hard work to get that, and it doesn't just come overnight."

Raisman competes in the floor exercise, uneven bars, vault and balance beam.

Training recently at a gym in a Boston suburb, she practices her dismount from the balance beam. Her coach, Mihai Brestyan, stands a good distance away, quietly giving pointers.

"OK, this was a good one," he says. "Stay with this one, that's it."

Brestyan, who's Romanian, says Raisman is an Olympic-caliber athlete because she is self-critical.

"To be successful, you cannot be all the time pleased with yourself - you need to be critical," he says. "Because if today you think, 'Oh, I am good enough,' tomorrow, someone else [is] better than you."

Raisman doesn't want anyone to be better than her. She wants a gold medal. But like any teenager, she's not entirely focused on the gold. She's also thinking about the prom.

"My prom dress is brown," she says. "And it's really different, because most people don't wear brown to prom. It's almost like a cap sleeve, with jewels. And it has a low V-neck, but it's very simple, and elegant and sophisticated. So I'm really excited to wear it."

Raisman says she wants to eventually go to college and study fashion. But right now, she's focused on sticking a spot on the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.

Copyright 2020 WBUR. To see more, visit WBUR.

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Gymnast's Journey: Toddler Tumbler To Golden Girl

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Aly Raisman started gymnastics like millions of other kids - in a toddler tumbling class. Now 17, the Massachusetts athlete is considered one of the best tumblers in the world. And she's on track to make the 2012 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team.

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They're fuzzy, they're flashy, and they've got great moves. 1. They're small, but they're scrappy. Peacock spiders (genus Maratus) cram a whole lot of swagger into a teeny-tiny package. The biggest Maratus species can reach 0.3 inches-about the size of a pencil eraser. Like almost all spiders, peacock spiders are venomous.

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Who Was Pablo Picasso?

Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and stage designer considered one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. Picasso is credited, along with Georges Braque, with the creation of Cubism.

Early Life

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, on October 25, 1881. Picasso's mother was Doña Maria Picasso y Lopez. His father was Don José Ruiz Blasco, a painter and art teacher.

His gargantuan full name, which honors a variety of relatives and saints, is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso.

A serious and prematurely world-weary child, the young Picasso possessed a pair of piercing, watchful black eyes that seemed to mark him destined for greatness.

"When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as the pope,'" he later recalled. "Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso."

Though he was a relatively poor student, Picasso displayed a prodigious talent for drawing at a very young age. According to legend, his first words were "piz, piz," his childish attempt at saying "lápiz," the Spanish word for pencil.

Education

Picasso's father began teaching him to draw and paint when he was a child, and by the time he was 13 years old, his skill level had surpassed his father's. Soon, Picasso lost all desire to do any schoolwork, choosing to spend the school days doodling in his notebook instead.

"For being a bad student, I was banished to the 'calaboose,' a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on," he later remembered. "I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly ... I could have stayed there forever, drawing without stopping."

In 1895, when Picasso was 14 years old, his family moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he quickly applied to the city's prestigious School of Fine Arts. Although the school typically only accepted students several years his senior, Picasso's entrance exam was so extraordinary that he was granted an exception and admitted.

Nevertheless, Picasso chafed at the School of Fine Arts' strict rules and formalities, and began skipping class so that he could roam the streets of Barcelona, sketching the city scenes he observed.

In 1897, a 16-year-old Picasso moved to Madrid to attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando. However, he again became frustrated with his school's singular focus on classical subjects and techniques.

During this time, he wrote to a friend: "They just go on and on about the same old stuff: Velázquez for painting, Michelangelo for sculpture." Once again, Picasso began skipping class to wander the city and paint what he observed: gypsies, beggars and prostitutes, among other things.

In 1899, Picasso moved back to Barcelona and fell in with a crowd of artists and intellectuals who made their headquarters at a café called El Quatre Gats ("The Four Cats").

Inspired by the anarchists and radicals he met there, Picasso made his decisive break from the classical methods in which he had been trained, and began what would become a lifelong process of experimentation and innovation.

Paintings

Picasso remains renowned for endlessly reinventing himself, switching between styles so radically different that his life's work seems to be the product of five or six great artists rather than just one.

Of his penchant for style diversity, Picasso insisted that his varied work was not indicative of radical shifts throughout his career, but, rather, of his dedication to objectively evaluating for each piece the form and technique best suited to achieve his desired effect.

"Whenever I wanted to say something, I said it the way I believed I should," he explained. "Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it."

Blue Period

Art critics and historians typically break Picasso's adult career into distinct periods, the first of which lasted from 1901 to 1904 and is called his "Blue Period," after the color that dominated nearly all of his paintings over these years.

At the turn of the 20th century, Picasso moved to Paris, France - the center of European art - to open his own studio. Lonely and deeply depressed over the death of his close friend, Carlos Casagemas, he painted scenes of poverty, isolation and anguish, almost exclusively in shades of blue and green.

'Blue Nude' and 'The Old Guitarist'

Picasso's most famous paintings from the Blue Period include "Blue Nude," "La Vie" and "The Old Guitarist," all three of which were completed in 1903.

In contemplation of Picasso and his Blue Period, writer and critic Charles Morice once asked, "Is this frighteningly precocious child not fated to bestow the consecration of a masterpiece on the negative sense of living, the illness from which he more than anyone else seems to be suffering?"

Rose Period: 'Gertrude Stein' and 'Two Nudes'

By 1905, Picasso had largely overcome the depression that had previously debilitated him, and the artistic manifestation of Picasso's improved spirits was the introduction of warmer colors-including beiges, pinks and reds-in what is known as his "Rose Period" (1904-06).

Not only was he madly in love with a beautiful model, Fernande Olivier, he was newly prosperous thanks to the generous patronage of art dealer Ambroise Vollard. His most famous paintings from these years include"Family at Saltimbanques" (1905), "Gertrude Stein" (1905-06) and "Two Nudes" (1906).

Cubism

Cubism was an artistic style pioneered by Picasso and his friend and fellow painter Georges Braque.

In Cubist paintings, objects are broken apart and reassembled in an abstracted form, highlighting their composite geometric shapes and depicting them from multiple, simultaneous viewpoints in order to create physics-defying, collage-like effects. At once destructive and creative, Cubism shocked, appalled and fascinated the art world.

'Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon'

In 1907, Picasso produced a painting that today is considered the precursor and inspiration of Cubism: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon."

A chilling depiction of five nude prostitutes, abstracted and distorted with sharp geometric features and stark blotches of blues, greens and grays, the work was unlike anything he or anyone else had ever painted before and would profoundly influence the direction of art in the 20th century.

"It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire," Braque said, explaining that he was shocked when he first viewed Picasso's "Les Demoiselles." Braque quickly became intrigued with Cubism, seeing the new style as a revolutionary movement.

French writer and critic Max Jacob, a good friend of both Picasso and painter Juan Gris, called Cubism "the 'Harbinger Comet' of the new century," stating, "Cubism is ... a picture for its own sake. Literary Cubism does the same thing in literature, using reality merely as a means and not as an end."

Picasso's early Cubist paintings, known as his "Analytic Cubist" works, include "Three Women" (1907), "Bread and Fruit Dish on a Table" (1909) and "Girl with Mandolin"(1910).

His later Cubist works are distinguished as "Synthetic Cubism" for moving even further away from artistic typicalities of the time, creating vast collages out of a great number of tiny, individual fragments. These paintings include "Still Life with Chair Caning" (1912), "Card Player" (1913-14) and "Three Musicians" (1921).

Classical Period: 'Three Women at the Spring'

Picasso's works between 1918 and 1927 are categorized as part of his "Classical Period," a brief return to Realism in a career otherwise dominated by experimentation. The outbreak of World War I ushered in the next great change in Picasso's art.

He grew more somber and, once again, preoccupied with the depiction of reality. His most interesting and important works from this period include"Three Women at the Spring" (1921), "Two Women Running on the Beach/The Race" (1922) and "The Pipes of Pan" (1923).

'Guernica'

From 1927 onward, Picasso became caught up in a new philosophical and cultural movement known as Surrealism, the artistic manifestation of which was a product of his own Cubism.

Picasso's most well-known Surrealist painting, deemed one of the greatest paintings of all time, was completed in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War: "Guernica." After Nazi German bombers supporting Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces carried out a devastating aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, Picasso, outraged by the bombing and the inhumanity of war, painted this work of art.

In black, white and grays, the painting is a Surrealist testament to the horrors of war, and features a minotaur and several human-like figures in various states of anguish and terror. "Guernica" remains one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history.

Later Works: 'Self Portrait Facing Death'

In contrast to the dazzling complexity of Synthetic Cubism, Picasso's later paintings display simple, childlike imagery and crude technique. Touching on the artistic validity of these later works, Picasso once remarked upon passing a group of school kids in his old age, "When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them."

In the aftermath of World War II, Picasso became more overtly political, joining the Communist Party. He was twice honored with the International Lenin Peace Prize, first in 1950 and again in 1961.

By this point in his life, he was also an international celebrity, the world's most famous living artist. While paparazzi chronicled his every move, however, few paid attention to his art during this time. Picasso continued to create art and maintain an ambitious schedule in his later years, superstitiously believing that work would keep him alive.

Picasso created the epitome of his later work, "Self Portrait Facing Death," using pencil and crayon, a year before his death. The autobiographical subject, drawn with crude technique, appears as something between a human and an ape, with a green face and pink hair. Yet the expression in his eyes, capturing a lifetime of wisdom, fear and uncertainty, is the unmistakable work of a master at the height of his powers.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S PABLO PICASSO FACT CARD

Women

A lifelong womanizer, Picasso had countless relationships with girlfriends, mistresses, muses and prostitutes, marrying only twice.

He wed a ballerina named Olga Khokhlova in 1918, and they remained together for nine years, parting ways in 1927. They had a son together, Paulo. In 1961, at the age of 79, he married his second wife, Jacqueline Roque.

While married to Khokhlova, he began a long-term relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter. They had a daughter, Maya, together. Walter committed suicide after Picasso died.

Between marriages, in 1935, Picasso met Dora Maar, a fellow artist, on the set of Jean Renoir's film Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (released in 1936). The two soon embarked upon a partnership that was both romantic and professional.

Their relationship lasted more than a decade, during and after which time Maar struggled with depression; they parted ways in 1946, three years after Picasso began having an affair with a woman named Françoise Gilot, with whom he had two children, son Claude and daughter Paloma. They went separate ways in 1953. (Gilot would later marry scientist Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine.)

Children

Picasso fathered four children: Paulo (Paul), Maya, Claude and Paloma Picasso. His daughter Paloma - featured in several of her father's paintings - would become a famous designer, crafting jewelry and other items for Tiffany & Co.

Death

Picasso died on April 8, 1973, at the age of 91, in Mougins, France. He died of heart failure, reportedly while he and his wife Jacqueline were entertaining friends for dinner.

Legacy

Considered radical in his work, Picasso continues to garner reverence for his technical mastery, visionary creativity and profound empathy. Together, these qualities have distinguished the "disquieting" Spaniard with the "piercing" eyes as a revolutionary artist.

For nearly 80 of his 91 years, Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that he superstitiously believed would keep him alive, contributing significantly to - and paralleling the entire development of - modern art in the 20th century.

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Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and stage designer considered one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century. Picasso is credited, along with Georges Braque, with the creation of Cubism. Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, on October 25, 1881.

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Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics - Athletes, Medals & Results

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Relive the moments that went down in history at the 2020 summer Olympics in Tokyo. Access official videos, results, galleries, sport and athletes.

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The band of the Milky Way galaxy can be seen at night in areas with dark skies. Here it is seen with several Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Arra (ALMA) antenna. (Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi

Our Sun (a star) and all the planets around it are part of a galaxy known as the Milky Way Galaxy. A galaxy is a large group of stars, gas, and dust bound together by gravity. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The Milky Way is a large barred spiral galaxy. All the stars we see in the night sky are in our own Milky Way Galaxy. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way because it appears as a milky band of light in the sky when you see it in a really dark area.

It is very difficult to count the number of stars in the Milky Way from our position inside the galaxy. Our best estimates tell us that the Milky Way is made up of approximately 100 billion stars. These stars form a large disk whose diameter is about 100,000 light years. Our Solar System is about 25,000 light years away from the center of our galaxy â€" we live in the suburbs of our galaxy. Just as the Earth goes around the Sun, the Sun goes around the center of the Milky Way. It takes 250 million years for our Sun and the solar system to go all the way around the center of the Milky Way.

We can only take pictures of the Milky Way from inside the galaxy, which means we don't have an image of the Milky Way as a whole. Why do we think it is a barred spiral galaxy, then? There are several clues.

The first clue to the shape of the Milky Way comes from the bright band of stars that stretches across the sky (and, as mentioned above, is how the Milky Way got its name). This band of stars can be seen with the naked eye in places with dark night skies. That band comes from seeing the disk of stars that forms the Milky Way from inside the disk, and tells us that our galaxy is basically flat.

Several different telescopes, both on the ground and in space, have taken images of the disk of the Milky Way by taking a series of pictures in different directions – a bit like taking a panoramic picture with your camera or phone. The concentration of stars in a band adds to the evidence that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. If we lived in an elliptical galaxy, we would see the stars of our galaxy spread out all around the sky, not in a single band.

An all-sky image shows the flat plane of the Milky Way galaxy. (Credit: E. L. Wright/UCLA, The COBE Project, DIRBE, NASA)

Another clue comes when astronomers map young, bright stars and clouds of ionized hydrogen in the Milky Way's disk. These clouds, called HII regions, are ionized by young, hot stars and are basically free protons and electrons. These are both important marker of spiral arms in other spiral galaxies we see, so mapping them in our own galaxy can give a clue about the spiral nature of the Milky Way. There are bright enough that we can see them through the disk of our galaxy, except where the region at the center of our galaxy gets in the way.

There has been some debate over the years as to whether the Milky Way has two spiral arms or four. The latest data shows that it has four arms, as shown in the artist's illustration below.

Since we can't get outside the Milky Way, we have to rely on markers of spiral arms like young, massive stars and ionized clouds. This artist's conception of the Milky Way's spiral structure is based on the measured distances of young, hot stars (shown in red) and ionized clouds of hydrogen gas (shown in blue). (Credit: Credit: Urquhart JS, et al.; Robert Hurt, the Spitzer Science Center; Robert Benjamin)

Additional clues to the spiral nature of the Milky Way come from a variety of other properties. Astronomers measure the amount of dust in the Milky Way and the dominant colors of the light we see, and they match those we find in other typical spiral galaxies. All of this adds up to give us a picture of the Milky Way, even though we can't get outside to see the whole thing.

There are billions of other galaxies in the Universe. Only three galaxies outside our own Milky Way Galaxy can be seen without a telescope, and appear as fuzzy patches in the sky with the naked eye. The closest galaxies that we can see without a telescope are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. These satellite galaxies of the Milky Way can be seen from the southern hemisphere. Even they are about 160,000 light years from us. The Andromeda Galaxy is a larger galaxy that can be seen from the northern hemisphere (with good eyesight and a very dark sky). It is about 2.5 million light years away from us, but its getting closer, and researchers predict that in about 4 billion years it will collide with the Milky Way. , i.e., it takes light 2.5 million years to reach us from one of our "nearby" galaxies. The other galaxies are even further away from us and can only be seen through telescopes.

Our nearest large neighbor galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy. (Credit: Bill Schoening, Vanessa Harvey/REU program/NOAO/AURA/NSF)

Updated: December 2015
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This site is intended for students age 14 and up, and for anyone interested in learning about our universe.

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Serena Williams, (born September 26, 1981, Saginaw, Michigan, U.S.), American tennis player who revolutionized women's tennis with her powerful style of play and who won more Grand Slam singles titles (23) than any other woman or man during the open era.

Williams grew up in Compton, California. The family included her parents-Oracene Price, a nurse, and Richard Williams, who founded a security service-and Venus Williams, her older sister. Price also had three daughters from a previous marriage. While both parents encouraged Serena and Venus Williams to play tennis, it was Richard Williams who largely taught them the sport, taking the two girls to the public courts in the area. He was known as a strict coach, and the sisters spent long hours practicing. In 1991 the family moved to Florida so that Serena and Venus Williams could attend a tennis academy. Serena Williams turned professional in 1995, one year after her older sister. Possessing powerful serves and ground strokes and superb athleticism, they soon attracted much attention. Many predicted that Venus would be the first Williams sister to win a Grand Slam singles title, but it was Serena who accomplished the feat, winning the 1999 U.S. Open. At that tournament the sisters won the doubles event, and, over the course of their careers, the two teamed up for 14 Grand Slam doubles titles.

At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, Serena and Venus Williams won gold medals in the doubles event. After several years of inconsistent play, Serena Williams asserted herself in 2002 and won the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open, defeating Venus Williams in the finals of each tournament. At the latter tournament, Serena Williams also garnered attention by wearing a catsuit. Long interested in fashion, Williams became noted for bold outfits that highlighted her strength and challenged traditional-and typically conservative-dress codes. Displaying her trademark tenacity, Williams won the Australian Open in 2003 and thus completed a career Grand Slam by having won all four of the slam's component tournaments. Later that year she was also victorious at Wimbledon; both of her Grand Slam wins in 2003 came after she had bested her sister in the finals. In 2005 Williams won the Australian Open again. Beset by injury the following year, she rebounded in 2007 to win her third Australian Open. Serena and Venus Williams won their second doubles tennis gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Later that year Serena Williams won the U.S. Open for a third time. In 2009 she captured her 10th Grand Slam singles title by winning the Australian Open. Later that year she won her third Wimbledon singles title, once again defeating her sister. Williams defended her titles at the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2010. She subsequently battled various health issues that kept her off the court for almost a year.

In 2012 Williams captured her fifth Wimbledon singles title. A month later at the London Olympic Games, she won a gold medal in the singles event, becoming the second woman (behind Steffi Graf) to win a career Golden Slam. She also teamed with her sister to win the doubles event. Later that year Williams claimed her 15th Grand Slam singles title with a victory at the U.S. Open. In 2013 she won her second French Open singles championship and fifth U.S. Open singles title. Williams successfully defended her U.S. Open championship in 2014, which gave her 18 career Grand Slam titles, tying her with Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova for the second highest women's singles total of the open era. The following year she captured her sixth Australian Open. Williams then won the 2015 French Open-her 20th total Grand Slam singles championship. She continued her torrid streak at Wimbledon, winning a straight-set final to capture her sixth career Wimbledon singles title. Williams again won Wimbledon in 2016, giving her 22 career Grand Slam singles titles, which tied her with Graf for the most Slams in the open era for both women and men. Williams broke Graf's record at the 2017 Australian Open, where she defeated her sister in the final.

In April 2017, Williams announced that she was pregnant (she had gotten engaged to Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of the website Reddit, in December 2016) and would miss the remainder of the 2017 season. In September she gave birth to a daughter, and two months later she married Ohanian. Williams returned to tennis in March 2018. She failed to win a tournament that year, though she reached the finals at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. The latter loss proved controversial as Williams was penalized a game after arguing with the chair umpire over a code violation. In 2019 she was again defeated in the finals at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. At the 2020 ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand, Williams won her first singles event in some three years.

Williams reached the semifinals of the 2021 Australian Open but lost to Naomi Osaka. Later that year she was forced to withdraw from both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open because of injuries. After missing the first half of the 2022 season, Williams competed at Wimbledon but was defeated in the first round. She later was interviewed for Vogue magazine and revealed that she would be retiring after the upcoming U.S. Open. Williams stated that she was "evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me."

Williams's activities outside of tennis include ventures relating to fashion, beauty, and accessories. Her autobiography, On the Line (written with Daniel Paisner), was published in 2009.

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Serena Williams | Biography, Titles, & Facts

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Serena Williams is an American tennis player who revolutionized women's tennis with her powerful style of play and who won more Grand Slam singles titles (23) than any other woman or man during the open era. Learn more about Williams's life and career, including her various titles.

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How The Peregrine Fund is helping

Learn more about our Harpy Eagle conservation project

Today, more and more people are moving into forested areas and many natural resources, like trees and minerals, are increasingly in demand. As a result, it is becoming harder for many wildlife species, including Harpy Eagles, to find good areas in which to live. In Central America, the loss of Harpy Eagles was particularly noticed as the species became extinct in countries such as El Salvador and began disappearing quickly from others.

In 1989 The Peregrine Fund began a program to learn how to breed Harpy Eagles in captivity and to return the species to some of its rainforest habitat. With the cooperation of many Latin American countries such as Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela, which donated eagles from their national zoos and similar facilities, The Peregrine Fund had enough Harpy Eagles to begin a captive breeding program. The adult eagles were all sent to The Peregrine Fund’s headquarters in Boise, Idaho.

Boise is much colder and drier than the places where most Harpy Eagles live. To help make the birds feel at home and thus more likely to breed, The Peregrine Fund built special chambers designed to mimic some of the conditions of a natural rain forest. Despite these efforts, however, only 10 Harpy Eagle chicks survived to hatching in about seven years.

Our biologists realized that to achieve the highest production possible, the eagles needed to be in an area more consistent with their natural habitat, which would include an outdoor area with warmer temperatures, higher humidity, and adequate sunlight. The commitment to creating a more productive captive population of Harpy Eagles was realized with the construction of the Neotropical Raptor Center and breeding facility in Panama City, Panama, in 2001. At the new facility, 17 eagles hatched in the first year alone!

Almost 50 Harpy Eagles have been released in Panama and Belize since 1998. The captive breeding phase ended in 2006 and the last captive birds were released in 2008. Through this effort, The Peregrine Fund gained valuable knowledge and experience that will be useful in ensuring the survival of this and other large, tropical forest raptors.

While the release program was in full swing, The Peregrine Fund also carried out an extensive education campaign designed to teach people that Harpy Eagles aren’t dangerous and that they should be protected. Peregrine Fund educators conducted talks at schools and in communities, held teacher training workshops, produced radio messages and commercial jingles, and hosted festivals. All of this helped to change people’s attitudes toward this beautiful eagle. With some help from us, the country of Panama declared the Harpy Eagle as its national bird on April 10, 2002!

A big part of The Peregrine Fund’s education campaign was made possible due to a Harpy Eagle named Luigi. Luigi hatched in Boise and traveled to schools and communities in Panama. He helped teach people that Harpy Eagles are gentle birds and deserve to be protected. Luigi retired in 2013 and moved to Florida.

Today, the Peregrine Fund supports one of the longest studies on Harpy Eagles ever. For more than 10 years, biologists have been observing the wild population in Darien, Panama. Every day, they learn more and more about this eagle’s diet, habitat needs, nesting behavior, and other interesting facts. This information will help The Peregrine Fund and other organizations better determine how to protect Harpy Eagles and increase their numbers.

Where they live

Learn more about our habitat conservation work in Darien, Panama

Historically, Harpy Eagles were found from southern Mexico through Central and South America all the way down to northern Argentina. Sadly, Harpy Eagles are disappearing mainly because people are destroying their habitat and shooting them. In Central America, the largest known breeding population is found in Panama, close to the border with Colombia. Harpy Eagles are likely extinct in El Salvador. Only one nesting pair has been observed in Belize.

The Harpy Eagle is a Neotropical rainforest species. It lives at low elevations where it can find prey and large trees for nests. Its rainforest home is lush and vibrant and contains some of the highest biodiversity in the world. The Harpy Eagle lives among jaguars, macaws, tapir, monkeys, sloths, snakes, frogs, and many other plants and animals – each one playing an important role in its environment. While these eagles prefer large expanses of pristine forest, Peregrine Fund biologists have learned that they can survive in some habitats that have been altered by humans as long as there is enough to eat, they have tall trees to nest in, and people don’t harm them.

What they do

Imagine a large, forest-dwelling bird with legs almost as thick as your wrists. Imagine a bird able to hunt heavy sloths or monkeys with nothing but the strength of its claws, toes and legs. Imagine a bird that might mate for life and that shares all parenting duties. Imagine a bird that cares for its chick for up to the first two years of its life. If you can imagine a bird with all these characteristics, you can imagine a Harpy Eagle.

Harpy Eagles are among the most powerful raptors in the world. From wing tip to wing tip, they are longer than many full-grown humans are tall. Unlike the Andean Condor and many other raptors, Harpy Eagles are not built for true soaring. They have relatively short wings and long tails that act like a rudder on a boat to steer through dense vegetation. Rather than flying long distances at one time, Harpy Eagles travel relatively slowly, moving from tree to tree through the forest.

Harpy Eagles are diurnal (active in the daytime) and spend much of their time perched in high trees when they are not actively hunting or searching for food. When they are hunting, they sometimes drop below the forest canopy to look for prey. Even in the daytime, little sunlight penetrates the thick forest and it is a lot darker there than it would be in the open. So, in addition to their keen eyesight, Harpy Eagles use their hearing to help them pinpoint prey.

They are one of the few diurnal raptors that have a facial disk, a trait they share with owls. The facial disk is composed of feathers that form a circle around the bird’s face. The disk can be lifted or lowered at will. When the feathers of the facial disk are raised, they help direct sounds to the birds’ ears, which are located on the sides of its head. To find out how this works, cup your hands behind your ears and listen. You might notice that whatever you are listening to seems louder. These eagles also have a crest composed of a few long feathers that also can be raised and lowered at will.

Harpy Eagles don’t hunt every day, as they can feed on the same kill for several days in a row. Now, if you think that a dead animal must get fairly stinky after three days in the heat of a Neotropical forest, you are right! Harpy Eagles don’t have containers or cool places to store their food like we do, but their bodies have a higher tolerance for eating meat that is several days old and slightly rotten. Though it may sound gross, this helps Harpy Eagles survive and means that they have to hunt less. Unlike many raptors, they do not need to eat every day. In fact, they can go a week or more without food!

Harpy Eagles, like all top predators, play a very important role in their environment. They are what is known as an umbrella species. Just as several people can stand under a large umbrella and be protected from the rain, so too can many species of wildlife be protected by conserving one species like the Harpy Eagle. To protect the eagles, we must protect the monkeys and sloths and other animals they need for food, the plants and animals that monkeys and sloths feed on, and the trees that Harpy Eagles nest in, which helps protect the other animals that use these trees for food, shelter, and space. Conserving Harpy Eagles and their habitat automatically provides protection for all the other plants and animals that live there too.

Why they need our help

It might seem that a bird as big and as strong as a Harpy Eagle would not need our help, but the truth is that large animals, especially predators, are sometimes the ones that become endangered first. Many large predators have a hard time surviving in today’s world because they usually need more habitat and space in which to survive, they rely on other animals for food, and many people fear them and sometimes kill them. The Harpy Eagle is no exception.

When forests are cut down, many of the animals who once lived there are forced to move. With less and less available forest, there often isn’t enough habitat to support all the wildlife that needs a home. Many end up dying. Others are forced to live on forest edges, which puts them at greater risk of being harmed by people. In 2002, The Peregrine Fund did a survey in Panama to find out why people might kill a Harpy Eagle. The top answers all were related to a misunderstanding about the bird’s behavior. Sometimes people were afraid the eagles would attack them or their families. Others were just curious and wanted to see a bird up close. Through research and education, The Peregrine Fund continues to support Harpy Eagle conservation.

What they eat

A raptor’s feet determine what it eats. One look at a Harpy Eagle’s foot leaves no doubt that these birds are built for hunting good-sized prey. Their powerful legs and feet and long, sharp talons are designed to catch prey that would be off-limits for most other birds. Two-foot-long Howler Monkeys (not including their tails), 8-pound sloths, even baby deer are all on this eagle’s menu.

Harpy Eagles have a varied diet. They are able to fly between trees and branches with amazing agility for their great size and are skilled at catching arboreal animals, or animals that spend all or much of their lives in trees. This can include iguanas, parrots, porcupines, coatimundis, and raccoons. They have even been seen preying on Black Vultures and foxes! Though they prefer to hunt high up in the trees, they will hunt ground dwelling animals, including javelina, armadillos, and agoutis.

Even though Harpy Eagles are adapted to hunting large prey animals, they still have to be very careful. After all, it isn’t only the predators that are equipped with good defenses. Monkeys and sloths, for example, have sharp teeth and claws. With one swipe or bite, they could easily injure any predator. Peregrine Fund biologists once found a Harpy Eagle with a large, deep cut on his left leg. They suspected that he had been hurt by a prey animal defending itself. Luckily, the biologists were able to treat the bird and release it. Younger birds, in particular, are susceptible to injury while they are learning how to become effective hunters.

Nest, eggs, and young

Harpy Eagles reach adulthood when they are about five years old. A young bird’s feathers are almost all white and light grey. At least once a year, all birds go through molt, when their old feathers fall out and are replaced by new ones. For the first five years, a young Harpy Eagle's feathers grow in a little darker after each molt. When it reaches adulthood, the bird continues to molt but its feathers no longer change color.

Adult Harpy Eagles have black back feathers, a dark grey face, and white belly feathers. This coloration could help Harpy Eagles identify other members of their species who are ready to mate. For an adult Harpy Eagle, finding a mate and raising young are very important. Scientists believe that Harpy Eagles may stay with the same companion for life. This means that a male and a female could stay together for 25-30 years!

After a suitable partner is found, it is time to look for a nesting site. Harpy Eagles nest in some of the tallest trees in the forest. They pick the highest point on the trunks of these trees, just where the branches begin to spread out, at around 130 feet or 40 meters high. Once they pick the tree, nest building begins.

Nests are composed of large sticks and branches gathered from nearby trees. When a Harpy Eagle locates an adequate branch, it will clutch it in its mighty talons, all the while flapping its wings vigorously until the branch breaks off the tree. It then carries the branch back to the host tree and arranges it in the ever-growing nest. In all, the pair will lay down more than 300 branches! The result is a nest that can be six feet in diameter and more than one foot deep. Two grown men fit easily into a Harpy Eagle nest.

Some Harpy Eagle pairs reuse the same nest over and over, while others might have several nests they use off and on over the years. When the nest is completed, the female will lay one or two large white eggs. Though the male may assist in incubation, the female does the most sitting on the eggs to keep the chicks developing inside warm and safe. She needs to incubate her eggs for approximately 55 days. Imagine sitting in the same spot for almost two months straight, only taking occasional breaks to stretch your wings or to eat. It is not an easy task, but Harpy Eagle mothers do it with ease.

Even so, most often only one chick out of the two eggs will survive. Though scientists don’t fully understand why, some believe that Harpy Eagles lay the second egg as a “backup” in case something happens to the first. And since raising one Harpy Eagle chick takes so much time and energy, it would be too difficult to try to raise two chicks. Therefore, scientists believe that once the first chick hatches, the female stops incubating the second egg. If an egg isn’t incubated, the chick inside isn’t able to develop and hatch. If, for some reason, the first egg doesn’t hatch, the pair has another chance to raise young from the second egg.

Harpy Eagles are wonderful parents that work hard to protect their chicks. From the time the female first lays her eggs until the nestling is about four months old, she will spend almost all her time at the nest. Meanwhile, the male spends his time and energy looking for food for himself, the female, and his young.

A newly hatched Harpy Eagle nestling is so small that it fits perfectly into the palm of a person’s hand. In only five or six months, though, it will reach adult size! Because the chick grows so quickly, it needs to eat a lot and it needs to eat often. When the chick is very young, the mother will tear off small pieces of meat for the chick and delicately feed it with her bill. Later, as the chick grows, it will be able to tear off and eat the meat on its own. At around five or six months of age, the young eagle will fledge, or fly for the first time. Its first few flights might be shaky and awkward, but after only a few days, it will be flying almost as well as its parents.

The young bird will remain dependent on the adults for the first one to two years of life. When it is hunting well enough on its own, the juvenile will disperse, or leave its parents' territory and look for a home of its own. When a young bird turns four or five years old, it will begin looking for a partner and the cycle of reproduction will begin all over again. A pair of Harpy Eagles generally raises young every two years. They normally won’t lay more eggs while they are still caring for a young bird in their territory.

Idaho Connection

Harpy Eagles are a Neotropical species, which means they won't be found living in the forests or deserts of Idaho. Even so, Idaho is an important state for this species. At The Peregrine Fund's captive breeding facilities, 10 Harpy Eagles were hatched and raised in the late 1990s. These young were later released into their native habitat in Panama.

Harpy Eagle and The World Center for Birds of Prey

The World Center for Birds of Prey is a great place to begin learning about Harpy Eagles. You can see Grayson, a male Harpy Eagle, in his specially-designed chamber. We have a mounted eagle on display, real Harpy Eagle feathers you can touch, and a short video that chronicles the exciting journey of our biologists as they work to hatch young eagles, raise them, and ultimately release them into the dense forests of Panama.

Research Resources

Harpy Eagle in Global Raptor Information Network

Resources

A Harpy Eagle: https://www.whitehawkbirding.com/size-of-harpy-eagle/

Aguiar-Silva, F.H., Sanaiotti, T.M. and Luz, B.B., 2014. Food habits of the Harpy Eagle, a top predator from the Amazonian rainforest canopy. Journal of Raptor Research, 48(1), pp.24-35.

Global Raptor Information Network. 2020. Species account: Harpy Eagle Harpia harpyja. Downloaded from http://www.globalraptors.org

González, J.D.J.V. and Vargas, F.H., 2011. Nesting density of Harpy Eagles in Darien with population size estimates for Panama. Journal of Raptor Research, 45(3), pp.199-210.

Rettig, N.L., 1978. Breeding behavior of the harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja). The Auk, 95(4), pp.629-643.

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Today, more and more people are moving into forested areas and many natural resources, like trees and minerals, are increasingly in demand. As a result, it is becoming harder for many wildlife species, including Harpy Eagles, to find good areas in which to live. In Central America, the loss of Harpy…

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Art with Mati and Dada – Edgar Degas | Kids Animated Short Stories in English

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TOPLINE

The Tokyo Summer Olympics will go forward despite the coronavirus, International Olympic Committee Vice President John Coates told Agence France-Presse Monday, as Olympics officials still scramble to figure out what the postponed summer games will look like amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Olympic Rings and a statue of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic ... [+]
AFP via Getty Images

KEY FACTS

Crucial Quote

"These will be the Games that conquered Covid, the light at the end of the tunnel," Coates told AFP.

Big Number

23.9%. That's the percentage of people in Japan who actually favor holding the Olympics next year as planned, according to a Kyodo News survey conducted in July. A survey from Tokyo Shoko Research also found that out of nearly 13,000 Japanese companies surveyed, only 46.2% wanted the games to go forward in some way, while 27.8% thought they should be canceled and 25.8% wanted them to be further postponed.

Chief Critic

Health experts have been warning that the timeline for holding the Olympics amid the pandemic may make it impossible to safely hold the summer games, with George Washington University global health professor Ronald Waldman telling USA Today he doesn't "see it happening" given the virus is still "very, very likely" to continue spreading around the world in early 2021. "The major concern is not just the holding of the event itself, which I think is logistically almost impossible," Waldman said. "But when you factor in all of the time that's required up front, the lead-up time for both organizers and the athletes, I just can't imagine that could all happen."

Key Background

The Tokyo Olympics, originally scheduled to take place in July, were postponed in March as the Covid-19 pandemic spread rapidly around the world. The Olympics had never previously been postponed during peacetime, and the games have only ever historically been cancelled due to war, in 1916, 1940 and 1944.

Further Reading

Tokyo Olympics: Games will go ahead 'with or without Covid', says IOC VP (BBC)

Tokyo Olympics will go ahead 'with or without Covid' - IOC's Coates (AFP)

Tokyo Olympics: Coronavirus risk raises questions over 2021 Games (BBC)

As COVID-19 pandemic rages on, experts say it's unlikely Tokyo Olympics can be held next summer (USA Today)

The Tokyo Olympics Will Open a Year From Now. Maybe. (New York Times)

Tokyo 2020: Olympics and Paralympics may have 'limited spectators' (BBC)
Full coverage and live updates on the Coronavirus

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Tokyo Olympics Will Take Place Next Year 'With Or Without Covid,' Says IOC VP

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The Tokyo Summer Olympics will go forward despite the coronavirus, International Olympic Committee Vice President John Coates told Agence France-Presse Monday, as Olympics officials still scramble to figure out what the postponed summer games will look like amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

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When we look up, every star we see is in the Milky Way, the spiral galaxy we call home. The Milky Way holds every alien planet humans have ever spotted, and the billions more that likely exist in the galaxy.

On a dark night, the dense plane of the Milky Way winds like a ribbon across the sky. On a really dark night, in areas free from light pollution, that ribbon becomes so intensely spangled with stars that it's possible to see the dark, dusty clouds of dust and gas deep in space that blot out their light. Those clouds are so prominent that Australia's Aboriginal people saw them create the shape of an emu.

Our galactic home is one of trillions of galaxies in the universe. Astronomers have been ardently studying them for almost a century, ever since Edwin Hubble discovered that neighboring Andromeda was not just another nearby dusty nebula, but a galaxy in its own right. And yet, humans are still trying to unravel the secrets of our galactic home and how it fits in the tapestry of the universe.

"I would love to see a movie in time of the assembly of the Milky Way," says Jay Lockman of the Green Bank Observatory, who presented new observations about our galaxy this week at the 231st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Maryland.

Here are some of the fun, weird facts and questions we have about the 13.6-billion-year-old space oddity we inhabit.

The Milky Way Is (Mostly) Flat

Our galaxy is, on average, a hundred thousand light-years across but only a thousand light-years thick. Within this flattened (though somewhat warped) disc, the sun and its planets are embedded in a curving arm of gas and dust, putting the solar system about 26,000 light-years away from the galaxy's turbulent core. A bulge of dust and stars swaddles the galactic center, looking like a dollop of whipped cream plopped on both sides of a pancake.

Earth Is 18 Galactic Years Old

The solar systemis zooming through interstellar space at around 500,000 miles an hour. Even at that rate, it takes about 250 million years to travel once around the Milky Way. The last time our 4.5-billion-year-old planet was in this same spot, continents fit together differently, dinosaurs were just emerging, mammals had yet to evolve, and the most profound mass extinction in the planet's history- an event called the Great Dying -was in progress.

There's a Monster Black Hole in the Galaxy's Middle

Called Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole weighs in at more than four million times the mass of the sun. We've never seen this object directly-it's hidden behind thick clouds of dust and gas. But astronomers have been able to follow the orbits of stars and gas clouds near the galactic center, which allowed them to infer the mass of the cosmic heavyweight hiding behind the curtain. It's thought that supermassive black holes are parked in the cores of most galaxies, and some are feeding on nearby matter so greedily they shoot out jets of powerful radiation visible from millions of light-years away.

You can take a spin through the Milky Way's chaotic center courtesy of a new animation released at the AAS meeting.

The Milky Way Won't Live Forever

In about four billion years, the Milky Way will collide with its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. The two spiral galaxies are currently hurtling toward each other at 250,000 miles an hour. When they do smash into one another, it won't be as cataclysmic as you might imagine-Earth will likely survive, and very few stars will actually be destroyed. Instead, the newly formed mega-galaxy will offer a night skyscape with a spectacular blend of stars and streamers unlike anything we see today.

Our Sun Is One Star Among Several Hundred Billion

There are a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way. Or is it 300 billion? Or 400 billion? That's right-we don't actually know how many stars are in our galaxy. Many of them are dim, low-mass stars that are hard to detect over vast cosmic distances, and there are massive clouds obscuring the bulge of stars nearest to Sagittarius A*. Astronomers have estimated the total number of stars based on the Milky Way's mass and brightness, but more precise numbers are still elusive.

We're Surrounded By a Dark Halo

The Milky Way is embedded in a clump of dark matter that is far larger and more massive than the galaxy itself. In the late 1960s, astronomer Vera Rubin inferred the presence of these invisible halos around galaxies when she observed that stars near the edge of Andromeda were whipping around the galaxy's center at speeds that should send them flying off into space. And yet, they weren't, meaning that some sort of cosmic glue held everything together. That glue, we now know, is dark matter.

We Hang Out With Ancient Stars

The Milky Way is also surrounded by more than 150 ancient groups of stars, some of which are among the oldest in the universe. Called globular clusters, these primordial stellar conglomerates live in the Milky Way's halo and orbit the galactic center. Each is crammed with hundreds of thousands of stars. Also hanging around the Milky Way are dozens of satellite galaxies; most of these are tough to see, but the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds glisten each night in the southern sky.

The Galaxy Is an Island in a Stream of Stars

The Milky Way eats galaxies that come too close. Over the years, scientists studying the galaxy's fringe have detected some two dozen faint streamers of stars that are the remnants of galaxies past. These ghostly stellar rivers formed when the Milky Way's more powerful gravity ripped apart smaller galaxies, leaving behind glittering strands of leftovers. At the AAS meeting, the Dark Energy Survey team announced that it had detected 11 more of these streamers, some of which have been given Aboriginal names.

The Galactic Center Is Blowing Hot Air

The Milky Way is blowing massive bubbles of extremely hot gas and energetic particles. Stretching far above and below the galactic plane, these so-called Fermi bubbles balloon straight out of the galaxy's center, fueled by a wind blowing at two million miles an hour. Unknown until 2010, it's not entirely clear why the bubbles exist, but scientists think they could be linked to the frenzy of star death and formation in the region around Sagittarius A*.

Gas Clouds Are Fleeing the Galaxy

Observed recently with the Green Bank Telescope, more than a hundred hydrogen gas clouds are zooming away from the galaxy's core at 738,000 miles an hour. Scientists studying the deserting swarm say the clouds can act as tracers for the powerful processes that produce the giant Fermi bubbles.

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10 Weird Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About the Milky Way

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When we look up, every star we see is in the Milky Way, the spiral galaxy we call home. The Milky Way holds every alien planet humans have ever spotted, and the billions more that likely exist in the galaxy. On a dark night, the dense plane of the Milky Way winds like a ribbon across the sky.

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Early Life and Family

Serena Jameka Williams was born on September 26, 1981, in Saginaw, Michigan, to Richard and Oracene Williams. The youngest of Richard's five daughters, Serena and her sister Venus would grow up to become great tennis champions.

Serena's father - a former sharecropper from Louisiana determined to see his two youngest girls succeed - used what he'd gleaned from tennis books and videos to instruct Serena and Venus on how to play the game. At the age of three, practicing on a court not far from the family's new Compton, California, home, Serena withstood the rigors of daily two-hour practices from her father.

The fact that the family had relocated to Compton was no accident. With its high rate of gang activity, Richard wanted to expose his daughters to the ugly possibilities of life "if they did not work hard and get an education." In this setting, on courts that were riddled with potholes and sometimes missing nets, Serena and Venus cut their teeth on the game of tennis and the requirements for persevering in a tough climate.

By 1991, Serena was 46-3 on the junior United States Tennis Association tour and ranked first in the 10-and-under division. Sensing his girls needed better instruction to become successful professionals, he moved his family again - this time to Florida. There, Richard let go of some of his coaching responsibilities, but not the management of Serena's and Venus' career. Wary of his daughters burning out too quickly, he scaled back their junior tournament schedule.
READ MORE: Serena and Venus Williams: How Their Father Made Them Tennis Stars
The Williams Sisters

Serena and her older sister Venus were groomed for a tennis career from the age of three years old by their father. With their signature style and play, Venus and Serena changed the look of their sport. Their sheer power and athletic ability overwhelmed opponents, and their sense of style and presence made them standout celebrities on the court. The close-knit sisters lived together for more than a dozen years in a gated Palm Beach Gardens enclave in Florida, but they went their separate ways after Serena bought a mansion in nearby Jupiter in December 2013.

In 1999, Serena beat out her sister Venus in their race to the family's first Grand Slam win when she captured the U.S. Open title. It set the stage for a run of high-powered, high-profile victories for both Williams sisters.

In 2008, Serena and Venus teamed up to capture a second women's doubles Olympic gold medal at the Beijing Games. The next year, Serena and Venus purchased shares of the Miami Dolphins to become the first African American women to own part of an NFL team.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Serena claimed her fourth overall Olympic gold medal by teaming with sister Venus to defeat Czech Republic stars Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka in women's doubles.

Seeking to add to her hardware collection in the summer of 2015, Williams had to overcome big sister Venus to advance past the fourth round at Wimbledon. A few days later, she defeated Garbine Muguruza in the final to claim her second career "Serena Slam" and become the oldest Grand Slam singles champion in the Open era.

At the 2015 U.S. Open, Williams again squared off with Venus in a tough quarterfinal matchup, this time pulling away in the deciding third set. The outcome left her two wins shy of the calendar year Grand Slam, a feat accomplished by just three women in the sport's history. But it was not to be. In a shocking upset, unseeded Roberta Vinci, ranked No. 43 in the world, dashed Williams' quest by pulling out a 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 win in the semifinals.

Just hours after her singles win at Wimbledon in 2016, Serena and Venus won the doubles championship, their sixth Wimbledon win together.

At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, the Williams sisters experienced a shocking upset when they were bounced out of the first round of women's doubles at the Rio Olympics by Czech duo Lucie Safarova and Barbora Strycova. The Williams sisters had originally been seeded as no. 1, had an Olympic record of 15-0, and had won gold three times previously.

Williams scored a historic victory at the 2017 Australian Open, winning her 23rd Grand Slam title after defeating her sister Venus, 6-4 6-4. With her 23rd win, she surpassed Steffi Graf's total and captured the world number one ranking.

Reflecting on her victory, Williams credited her sister as an inspiration. "I would really like to take this moment to congratulate Venus, she is an amazing person," she said. "There is no way I would be at 23 without her. There is no way I would be at one without her. She is my inspiration, she is the only reason. I am standing here today and the only reason that the Williams sisters exist."

'The Serena Slam'

In 1995 Serena turned pro. Two years later, she was already No. 99 in the world rankings - up from No. 304 just 12 months before. A year later, she graduated high school and almost immediately inked a $12 million shoe deal with Puma.

In 2002, Serena won the French Open, the U.S. Open, and Wimbledon, defeating sister Venus in the finals of each tournament. She captured her first Australian Open in 2003, making her one of only six women in the Open era to complete a career Grand Slam. The win also fulfilled her desire to hold all four major titles simultaneously to comprise what she'd dubbed "The Serena Slam."

Burnout & Comeback

In August 2003, Serena underwent knee surgery, and in September her half-sister Yetunde Price was murdered in Los Angeles, California. Three years later, Serena seemed burned out. Plagued by injuries, and just a general lack of motivation to stay fit or compete at the same level she once had, Serena saw her tennis ranking slump to 139.

Serena credited her faith as a Jehovah's Witness, as well as a life-changing journey she made to West Africa, for renewing her pride and competitive fire. In 2008, she won the U.S. Open. By 2009, Williams reclaimed her place atop the world's rankings, winning both the 2009 Australian Open singles (for the fourth time) and Wimbledon 2009 singles (for the third time). She also won the doubles matches at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon that year.

Probation

Williams made headlines in September 2009, when she blasted a lineswoman for a foot-fault called near the end of a semifinal loss to eventual champion Kim Clijsters at the U.S. Open. The profanity-laced outburst included finger pointing and, according to the lineswoman, an alleged threat from Serena against her life.

Williams downplayed what happened, refuting the allegation that she'd threatened the woman. But the incident did not go over well with the tennis-viewing public, nor the U.S. Tennis Association, which fined her $10,000 on the spot. Two months later, she was placed on two-year probation and ordered to pay another $82,500 to the Grand Slam committee for the episode, the largest punishment ever levied against a tennis player.

By early 2010, Senena was back on track, winning the Australian Open singles and doubles matches as well as her fourth Wimbledon singles championship.

Injuries and Retirement Speculation

In 2011, Serena suffered a series of health scares after doctors found a blood clot in one of her lungs, which kept her away from tennis for several months. Following several procedures, including one to remove a hematoma, speculation rose as to whether Williams would retire from the sport.

Serena's health improved by September 2011, however, and she looked like her old dominant self at the U.S. Open before falling to Samantha Stosur in the finals.

Williams stumbled badly at the 2012 French Open, enduring a first-round loss for the first time at a major tournament. But she was back in top form in London in July 2012, defeating 23-year-old Agnieszka Radwanska in an emotional three sets to claim her fifth Wimbledon singles title and first major championship in two years.

At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, Serena beat Maria Sharapova to take her first gold medal in women's singles.

15th and 16th Grand Slam Titles

Serena continued her winning streak to her next Grand Slam event. In September 2012, she beat out rival Victoria Azarenka to take the singles title at the U.S. Open. According to USA Today, Williams wasn't sure that she'd emerge victorious. "I honestly can't believe I won. I was really preparing my runner-up speech, because I thought, 'Man, she's playing so great.'"

By this time, Serena had captured 15 Grand Slam singles titles and 13 Grand Slam doubles titles. "I would like to leave a mark," Serena once said about her standing in the tennis world. "I think obviously I will, due to the fact that I'm doing something different in tennis. But I don't think I could ever reach something like a Martina Navratilova - I don't think I'd ever play that long - but who knows? I think I'll leave a mark regardless."

In June 2013, Serena took her second French Open title - as well as her 16th Grand Slam singles title - in a 6-4, 6-4 victory over defending champion Sharapova. "I'm still a little bit upset about that loss last year," Serena said in an interview with ESPN following the match. "But it's all about, for me, how you recover. I think I've always said a champion isn't about how much they win, but it's about how they recover from their downs, whether it's an injury or whether it's a loss."

2013 Wimbledon Loss and U.S. Open Win

Nearly one month later, Serena competed at Wimbledon, where she suffered a shocking loss (6-2, 1-6, 6-4) in the fourth round to Germany's Sabine Lisicki, the No. 23 seed.

Her career-best 34-match winning streak over, Serena told Sports Illustrated, "I don't think it's a huge shock. [Lisicki] is a great player. Her ranking has no effect on what she should be. She should be ranked higher. She just has a super, super game to play well on grass."

At the 2013 U.S. Open, Serena made a strong showing. She knocked out her younger rival Sloane Stephens in the fourth round before upending Azarenka to clinch the U.S. Open title. It was the second year in a row that the pair had faced off in the finals.

20th Grand Slam

Serena clinched her third straight and sixth overall U.S. Open singles title in 2014 by defeating her good friend Caroline Wozniacki. Her winning ways carried into the new year, as she beat Sharapova to claim the 2015 Australian Open championship. At the French Open in June, Serena managed to overcome illness to win the tournament for the third time and claim her 20th Grand Slam singles title, good for third place all-time.

"When I was a little girl, in California, my father and my mother wanted me to play tennis," she told the crowd in French after her victory. "And now I'm here, with 20 Grand Slam titles."

2016 Losses and Wins

Serena opened 2016 by advancing to the Australian Open final, where she lost in three sets to Angelique Kerber. After notching career WTA title No. 70 with a win at the Italian Open, she advanced to a French Open final rematch with Muguruza, but this time succumbed to the Spanish player in straight sets.

On July 9, 2016, Serena found her way back to victory, defeating Kerber 7-5, 6-3 at Wimbledon and winning her 22nd grand slam title. With her historic win, Serena tied Steffi Graf for the most major championships in the Open era of professional tennis, which started in 1968.

"I have definitely had some sleepless nights with a lot of stuff, coming so close and feeling it and not being able to get there," Serena told reporters. "This tournament I came in with a different mindset. In Melbourne I thought I played well but Angelique played great, and better. So I knew going into this one I needed to be calm and be confident and play the tennis I've been playing for well over a decade."

At the 2016 U.S. Open, Serena suffered another surprising defeat, leaving the competition early after she was defeated by Karolina Pliskova in their semifinal match. With the loss, she also gave up the No. 1 ranking which she'd held for 186 weeks.

23rd Grand Slam, Pregnancy and Birth

Serena went on to clinch the 2017 Australian Open to win her 23rd Grand Slam title. Later that year, she revealed she was two months pregnant during the game. She gave birth to her daughter in September and returned to the courts in late December 2017, hoping to shake off the rust in time to defend her Australian Open title.

However, Williams withdrew from the opening Grand Slam tournament in early 2018, noting she wasn't quite ready yet after the birth of her daughter in September. "I can compete-but I don't want to just compete, I want to do far better than that and to do so, I will need a little more time," she said.

Serena finally returned to competition on February 11, teaming up with Venus for a doubles match in Fed Cup play. Clad in her "Wakanda-inspired catsuit," Williams looked to be rounding into form at the French Open, before pulling out with a pectoral injury prior to her eagerly anticipated fourth-round match against Sharapova. Recovering from the setback, she proceeded to march through the Wimbledon women's draw in July, her run ending with a loss to Kerber in the final.

At the end of the month, just before a match against Johanna Konta at the Mubadala Silicon Valley Classic, Serena learned that the man who murdered her half-sister had been paroled three years short of his full sentence. She subsequently suffered a lopsided defeat, and later told Time how heavily the news weighed on her during the match.

The star athlete was back in the news in late August when French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli said he was instituting a new dress code at the French Open to prevent the reappearance of the notorious catsuit. After insisting she had no problem with the ruling, Williams went on to wear a custom-designed tutu for the start of U.S. Open play, in which she easily dispatched her early competition en route to a third-round matchup with big sister Venus.

2018 U.S. Open and 2019 Runner-up Finishes

Just one year after giving birth, Serena was back in top form at the 2018 U.S. Open. During the final match against Japan's Naomi Osaka, Williams got in a heated dispute with the umpire after he determined that her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, was giving her hand signals from the stands, so the umpire gave her a coaching violation.

Serena denied any cheating and accused him of sexism and attacking her character. "You owe me an apology!" she said. She then got a point penalty for smashing her racket and a penalty for verbal abuse. Osaka won the match, 6-2, 6-4, and Williams was later fined $17,000 for the incident.

At the 2019 Australian Open, the site of her last Grand Slam crown, Serena played her way into a quarterfinal match against Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic. However, she lost despite being up 5-1 in the third set, a stunning collapse for a champion known for her nerves of steel.

A few months later, Serena was outplayed in a third-round French Open loss to 20-year-old American Sofia Kenen. She got back on track and advanced to the Wimbledon final, before suffering a straight-set loss to Romania's Simona Halep. Serena then breezed through her draw at the 2019 U.S. Open but was unable to overcome 19-year-old Canadian Bianca Andreescu in the final.

Although she finished the year without a Grand Slam win, Williams earned a consolation prize by being named the AP Female Athlete of the Decade.

2020 U.S. Open and 2021 Australian Open

Taking a medical time out after a third-set point during the semifinals on September 10, 2020, Williams called over her trainer while clutching her left ankle. She eventually lost to Victoria Azarenka, 1-6, 6-3 and 6-3.

Williams and Osaka faced off again in the semifinal of the 2021 Australian Open, with Osaka winning 6-3, 6-4.

Grand Slams

Over the course of her career, Serena Williams has won a record 23 Grand Slam singles titles, beginning in 1999 with the U.S. Open title. Her most recent victory came with the 2017 Australian Open when she surpassed Steffi Graf 's record for most wins in the Open era.

Husband and Daughter

In December 2016, Williams became engaged to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. On November 16, 2017, Williams and Ohanian were married at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, Louisiana. Serena wore a stunning Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen dress, and the list of celebrity guests in attendance included Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian West and Eva Longoria.

In April 2017, Williams hinted that she was pregnant in a post on Snapchat showing her baby belly with the caption "20 weeks," though the posting was deleted a few minutes later.

Williams was indeed pregnant, and she gave birth to daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. on September 1, 2017. The tennis great posted a photo with her baby on Instagram and shared the journey of her pregnancy in a video posted on her website and on YouTube.

In the cover story for the February 2018 edition of Vogue, Williams revealed the major health complications that came with giving birth to Alexis Olympia. After undergoing an emergency cesarean section, Williams experienced sudden shortness of breath, leading to the discovery of blood clots in her lungs. Additionally, doctors found a large hematoma in her abdomen that had been caused by hemorrhaging at the site of her C-section.

Following multiple surgeries, Williams was able to return home after a week. However, she was then unable to get out of bed for another six weeks, leaving her feeling helpless at times when it came to tending to her newborn. Despite the toll it took on her emotions, she told Vogue she was willing to consider having more children, but understandably was in no rush to do so.

TV, Books & Fashion

Proving to have much more than just tennis clout, Serena expanded her brand into film, television, and fashion. She developed her own Aneres line of clothing, and in 2002 People magazine selected her as one of its 25 Most Intriguing People.

Essence magazine later called her one of the country's 50 Most Inspiring African Americans. She's also made television appearances, and lent her voice to shows such as The Simpsons.

Seeking to provide educational opportunities for underprivileged youth around the world, the tennis star formed the Serena Williams Foundation and built schools in Africa.

In 2010, Williams had released an autobiography, Queen of the Court.

Starting in May 2018, HBO released the first of a five-chapter doc series on Williams called Being Serena. Around that time, the athlete-entrepreneur launched a new eponymous clothing line.

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Serena Jameka Williams was born on September 26, 1981, in Saginaw, Michigan, to Richard and Oracene Williams. The youngest of Richard's five daughters, Serena and her sister Venus would grow up to become great tennis champions.

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Harpy Eagle | San Diego Zoo Animals & Plants

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Harpy eagles range from Mexico to northern Argentina and live in forested areas. Despite their wingspan, which can reach up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) across, harpies fly through their forest home with great agility. For nesting, harpies favor silk-cotton trees (kapok trees) and usually build nests 90 t…

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Biography >> Art History

Occupation: Painter, Sculptor

Born: July 19, 1834 in Paris, France

Died: September 27, 1917 in Paris, France

Famous works: The Dance Class, Dance Class at the Opera, The Bellelli Family, Two Dancers on a Stage, Orchestra Musicians

Style/Period: Impressionism

Biography:

Where did Edgar Degas grow up?

Edgar Degas grew up in Paris,France where his mother was an Opera singer and his father a French banker. Edgar's parents had money and he was able to go to good schools growing up. His mother died when he was thirteen years old. Edgar showed a talent for drawing while young and wanted to become an artist.

Edgar's father loved the arts, but knew that it was a tough way to make a living. He wanted Edgar to become a lawyer. Edgar went to law school, but was soon begging his father to let him study as an artist. Eventually his father agreed to support his art career.

Learning to Paint

Edgar spent a lot of time at the Louvre, a famous art museum in Paris. He copied many of the masterpieces of classical artists like Raphael. He also attended art school at the School of Fine arts. Next, Edgar traveled to Italy to study artists likeMichelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. He stayed with his Aunt who was married to the Baron Bellelli. He later painted a famous picture of their family called The Bellelli Family.

Return to Paris

In 1859, Degas returned to Paris. He wanted to become a famous artist. Initially he painted traditional subjects including portraits and grand historical scenes. He submitted his paintings to the Salon. The Salon was the official art exhibition in France. In order to be considered a major artist, your paintings had to be accepted by the Salon. However, the Salon wasn't impressed with Degas' paintings.

Degas wanted to experiment and try new styles of painting. He wasn't interested in painting the same old thing that the Salon wanted. He began meeting with other artists who thought the same way. They wanted to paint ordinary scenes and explore light and color. This new group would soon be called the Impressionists.

Impressionists

When a number of new artists, including Degas, decided to part ways with the Salon and have their own art show, many people laughed at them. One critic said their paintings looked unfinished, as if they were "impressions" of a scene rather than finished paintings. The name stuck. Besides Degas, other artists that were part of this group includedClaude Monet, Pierre Renoir, and Camille Pissarro.

Degas Style

Degas called himself a "realist". He wanted to paint scenes of real life and try to capture a moment, almost like a camera. His paintings may look spontaneous, but he spent a lot of time planning them out. He would study his subjects and make lots of sketches before starting on a painting.

Like many Impressionists, Degas liked to experiment with light, angles, and focus. Sometimes subjects would have their backs to the viewer or be cut off by the edge of the canvas. He would paint subjects off center and have them doing mundane things, like scratching their backs or even ironing clothes. He differed from many Impressionists in that he did not paint outdoors or study the effects of light on landscapes.

Ballet Dancers

One of Degas' favorite subjects was the ballet dancer. He loved to paint the dancers practicing in rehearsals or backstage before a show. He wanted to capture their energy and grace, but also their hard work and effort. During his career he created more than a thousand pictures of dancers.

Rehearsal of the Scene
(Click image to see larger version)

Legacy

Most people know Degas as the painter of ballerinas. Art historians today consider him one of the founders of the Impressionist movement. Many of his paintings are in major museums throughout the world.

Interesting Facts about Edgar Degas

When he was younger his family spelled their last name "de Gas". He changed it to Degas when he was older.

His eyesight failed later in life making it difficult for him to paint with oils. During this time he painted using pastels.

He very seldom considered a painting complete, always wanting to improve them.

He was never married.

His most famous sculpture is called The Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer. It is the only sculpture that he exhibited during his lifetime.

He once said "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."

More examples of Edgar Degas' Art:

The Dance Class
(Click to see larger version)

Dancers at the bar
(Click to see larger version)

Ballet Rehearsal
(Click to see larger version)

Activities

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Works Cited

Biography >> Art History

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Biography >> Art History Occupation: Painter, Sculptor Born: July 19, 1834 in Paris, France Died: September 27, 1917 in Paris, France Famous works: The Dance Class, Dance Class at the Opera, The Bellelli Family, Two Dancers on a Stage, Orchestra Musicians Style/Period: Impressionism Biography: Where did Edgar Degas grow up?

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Milky Way Galaxy, large spiral system consisting of several hundred billion stars, one of which is the Sun. It takes its name from the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band of stars and gas clouds that stretches across the sky as seen from Earth. Although Earth lies well within the Milky Way Galaxy (sometimes simply called the Galaxy), astronomers do not have as complete an understanding of its nature as they do of some external star systems. A thick layer of interstellar dust obscures much of the Galaxy from scrutiny by optical telescopes, and astronomers can determine its large-scale structure only with the aid of radio and infrared telescopes, which can detect the forms of radiation that penetrate the obscuring matter.

This article discusses the structure, properties, and component parts of the Milky Way Galaxy. For a full-length discussion of the cosmic universe of which the Galaxy is only a small part, see cosmology. For the star system within the Galaxy that is the home of Earth, see solar system.

Milky Way Galaxy iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Major components of the Galaxy

Although most stars in the Galaxy exist either as single stars like the Sun or as double stars, there are many conspicuous groups and clusters of stars that contain tens to thousands of members. These objects can be subdivided into three types: globular clusters, open clusters, and stellar associations. They differ primarily in age and in the number of member stars.

The largest and most massive star clusters are the globular clusters, so called because of their roughly spherical appearance. The Galaxy contains more than 150 globular clusters (the exact number is uncertain because of obscuration by dust in the Milky Way band, which probably prevents some globular clusters from being seen). They are arranged in a nearly spherical halo around the Milky Way, with relatively few toward the galactic plane but a heavy concentration toward the centre. The radial distribution, when plotted as a function of distance from the galactic centre, fits a mathematical expression of a form identical to the one describing the star distribution in elliptical galaxies.

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Globular clusters are extremely luminous objects. Their mean luminosity is the equivalent of approximately 25,000 Suns. The most luminous are 50 times brighter. The masses of globular clusters, measured by determining the dispersion in the velocities of individual stars, range from a few thousand to more than 1,000,000 solar masses. The clusters are very large, with diameters measuring from 10 to as much as 300 light-years. Most globular clusters are highly concentrated at their centres, having stellar distributions that resemble isothermal gas spheres with a cutoff that corresponds to the tidal effects of the Galaxy. A precise model of star distribution within a cluster can be derived from stellar dynamics, which takes into account the kinds of orbits that stars have in the cluster, encounters between these member stars, and the effects of exterior influences. The American astronomer Ivan R. King, for instance, derived dynamical models that fit observed stellar distributions very closely. He finds that a cluster's structure can be described in terms of two numbers: (1) the core radius, which measures the degree of concentration at the centre, and (2) the tidal radius, which measures the cutoff of star densities at the edge of the cluster.

A key distinguishing feature of globular clusters in the Galaxy is their uniformly old age. Determined by comparing the stellar population of globular clusters with stellar evolutionary models, the ages of all those so far measured range from 11 billion to 13 billion years. They are the oldest objects in the Galaxy and so must have been among the first formed. That this was the case is also indicated by the fact that the globular clusters tend to have much smaller amounts of heavy elements than do the stars in the plane of the Galaxy, e.g., the Sun. Composed of stars belonging to the extreme Population II ( see below Stars and stellar populations), as well as the high-latitude halo stars, these nearly spherical assemblages apparently formed before the material of the Galaxy flattened into the present thin disk. As their component stars evolved, they gave up some of their gas to interstellar space. This gas was enriched in the heavy elements (i.e., elements heavier than helium) produced in stars during the later stages of their evolution, so that the interstellar gas in the Galaxy is continually being changed. Hydrogen and helium have always been the major constituents, but heavy elements have gradually grown in importance. The present interstellar gas contains elements heavier than helium at a level of about 2 percent by mass, while the globular clusters contain as little as 0.02 percent of the same elements.

Clusters smaller and less massive than the globular clusters are found in the plane of the Galaxy intermixed with the majority of the system's stars, including the Sun. These objects are the open clusters, so called because they generally have a more open, loose appearance than typical globular clusters.

Open clusters are distributed in the Galaxy very similarly to young stars. They are highly concentrated along the plane of the Galaxy and slowly decrease in number outward from its centre. The large-scale distribution of these clusters cannot be learned directly because their existence in the Milky Way plane means that dust obscures those that are more than a few thousand light-years from the Sun. By analogy with open clusters in external galaxies similar to the Galaxy, it is surmised that they follow the general distribution of integrated light in the Galaxy, except that there are probably fewer of them in the central areas. There is some evidence that the younger open clusters are more densely concentrated in the Galaxy's spiral arms, at least in the neighbourhood of the Sun where these arms can be discerned.

The brightest open clusters are considerably fainter than the brightest globular clusters. The peak absolute luminosity appears to be about 50,000 times the luminosity of the Sun, but the largest percentage of known open clusters has a brightness equivalent to 500 solar luminosities. Masses can be determined from the dispersion in the measured velocities of individual stellar members of clusters. Most open clusters have small masses on the order of 50 solar masses. Their total populations of stars are small, ranging from tens to a few thousand.

Open clusters have diameters of only 2 or 3 to about 20 light-years, with the majority being less than 5 light-years across. In structure they look very different from globular clusters, though they can be understood in terms of similar dynamical models. The most important structural difference is their small total mass and relative looseness, which result from their comparatively large core radii. These two features have disastrous consequences as far as their ultimate fate is concerned, because open clusters are not sufficiently gravitationally bound to be able to withstand the disruptive tidal effects in the Galaxy ( see star cluster: Open clusters). Judging from the sample of open clusters within 3,000 light-years of the Sun, only half of them can withstand such tidal forces for more than 200 million years, and a mere 2 percent have life expectancies as high as 1 billion years.

Measured ages of open clusters agree with the conclusions that have been reached about their life expectancies. They tend to be young objects; only a few are known to exceed 1 billion years in age. Most are younger than 200 million years, and some are 1 or 2 million years old. Ages of open clusters are determined by comparing their stellar membership with theoretical models of stellar evolution. Because all the stars in a cluster have very nearly the same age and chemical composition, the differences between the member stars are entirely the result of their different masses. As time progresses after the formation of a cluster, the massive stars, which evolve the fastest, gradually disappear from the cluster, becoming white dwarf stars or other underluminous stellar remnants. Theoretical models of clusters show how this effect changes the stellar content with time, and direct comparisons with real clusters give reliable ages for them. To make this comparison, astronomers use a diagram (the colour-magnitude diagram) that plots the temperatures of the stars against their luminosities. Colour-magnitude diagrams have been obtained for more than 1,000 open clusters, and ages are thus known for this large sample.

Because open clusters are mostly young objects, they have chemical compositions that correspond to the enriched environment from which they formed. Most of them are like the Sun in their abundance of the heavy elements, and some are even richer. For instance, the Hyades, which compose one of the nearest clusters, have almost twice the abundance of heavy elements as the Sun. It became possible in the 1990s to discover very young open clusters that previously had been entirely hidden in deep, dusty regions. Using infrared array detectors, astronomers found that many molecular clouds contained very young groups of stars that had just formed and, in some cases, were still forming.

Even younger than open clusters, stellar associations are very loose groupings of young stars that share a common place and time of origin but that are not generally tied closely enough together gravitationally to form a stable cluster. Stellar associations are limited strictly to the plane of the Galaxy and appear only in regions of the system where star formation is occurring, notably in the spiral arms. They are very luminous objects. The brightest are even brighter than the brightest globular clusters, but this is not because they contain more stars; instead it is the result of the fact that their constituent stars are very much brighter than the stars constituting globular clusters. The most luminous stars in stellar associations are very young stars of spectral types O and B. They have absolute luminosities as bright as any star in the Galaxy-on the order of one million times the luminosity of the Sun. Such stars have very short lifetimes, only lasting a few million years. With luminous stars of this type there need not be very many to make up a highly luminous and conspicuous grouping. The total masses of stellar associations amount to only a few hundred solar masses, with the population of stars being in the hundreds or, in a few cases, thousands.

The sizes of stellar associations are large; the average diameter of those in the Galaxy is about 250 light-years. They are so large and loosely structured that their self-gravitation is insufficient to hold them together, and in a matter of a few million years the members disperse into surrounding space, becoming separate and unconnected stars in the galactic field.

These objects are organizations of stars that share common measurable motions. Sometimes these do not form a noticeable cluster. This definition allows the term to be applied to a range of objects from the nearest gravitationally bound clusters to groups of widely spread stars with no apparent gravitational identity, which are discovered only by searching the catalogs for stars of common motion. Among the best known of the moving groups is the Hyades in the constellation Taurus. Also known as the Taurus moving cluster or the Taurus stream, this system comprises the relatively dense Hyades cluster along with a few very distant members. It contains a total of about 350 stars, including several white dwarfs. Its centre lies about 150 light-years away. Other notable moving stellar groups include the Ursa Major, Scorpius-Centaurus, and Pleiades groups. Besides these remote organizations, investigators have observed what appear to be groups of high-velocity stars near the Sun. One of these, called the Groombridge 1830 group, consists of a number of subdwarfs and the star RR Lyrae, after which the RR Lyrae variables were named.

Recent advances in the study of moving groups have had an impact on the investigation of the kinematic history of stars and on the absolute calibration of the distance scale of the Galaxy. Moving groups have proved particularly useful with respect to the latter because their commonality of motion enables astronomers to determine accurately (for the nearer examples) the distance of each individual member. Together with nearby parallax stars, moving-group parallaxes provide the basis for the galactic distance scale. Astronomers have found the Hyades moving cluster well suited for their purpose: it is close enough to permit the reliable application of the method, and it has enough members for deducing an accurate age.

One of the basic problems of using moving groups for distance determination is the selection of members. In the case of the Hyades, this has been done very carefully but not without considerable dispute. The members of a moving group (and its actual existence) are established by the degree to which their motions define a common convergent point in the sky. One technique is to determine the coordinates of the poles of the great circles defined by the proper motions and positions of individual stars. The positions of the poles will define a great circle, and one of its poles will be the convergent point for the moving group. Membership of stars can be established by criteria applied to the distances of proper-motion poles of individual stars from the mean great circle. The reliability of the existence of the group itself can be measured by the dispersion of the great circle points about their mean.

As radial velocities will not have been used for the preliminary selection of members, they can be subsequently examined to eliminate further nonmembers. The final list of members should contain only a very few nonmembers-either those that appear to agree with the group motion because of observational errors or those that happen to share the group's motion at the present time but are not related to the group historically.

The distances of individual stars in a moving group may be determined if their radial velocities and proper motions are known ( see below Stellar motions) and if the exact position of the radiant is determined. If the angular distance of a star from the radiant is λ and if the velocity of the cluster as a whole with respect to the Sun is V, then the radial velocity of the star, V r, is V r= T = V sin λ = 4.74 μ/ p = 4.74 μ cot λ/ V r. p where V cos λ. The transverse (or tangential) velocity, T, is given by p is the star's parallax in arc seconds. Thus, the parallax of a star is given by

The key to achieving reliable distances by this method is to locate the convergent point of the group as accurately as possible. The various techniques used (e.g., Charlier's method) are capable of high accuracy, provided that the measurements themselves are free of systematic errors. For the Taurus moving group, for example, it has been estimated that the accuracy for the best-observed stars is on the order of 3 percent in the parallax, discounting any errors due to systematic problems in the proper motions. Accuracies of this order were not possible by other means until the space-based telescope Hipparcos was able to measure highly precise stellar parallaxes for thousands of individual stars.

A conspicuous component of the Galaxy is the collection of large, bright, diffuse gaseous objects generally called nebulae. The brightest of these cloudlike objects are the emission nebulae, large complexes of interstellar gas and stars in which the gas exists in an ionized and excited state (with the electrons of the atoms excited to a higher than normal energy level). This condition is produced by the strong ultraviolet light emitted from the very luminous, hot stars embedded in the gas. Because emission nebulae consist almost entirely of ionized hydrogen, they are usually referred to as H II regions.

H II regions are found in the plane of the Galaxy intermixed with young stars, stellar associations, and the youngest of the open clusters. They are areas where very massive stars have recently formed, and many contain the uncondensed gas, dust, and molecular complexes commonly associated with ongoing star formation. The H II regions are concentrated in the spiral arms of the Galaxy, though some exist between the arms. Many of them are found at intermediate distances from the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, with the largest number occurring at a distance of 10,000 light-years. This latter fact can be ascertained even though the H II regions cannot be seen clearly beyond a few thousand light-years from the Sun. They emit radio radiation of a characteristic type, with a thermal spectrum that indicates that their temperatures are about 10,000 kelvins. This thermal radio radiation enables astronomers to map the distribution of H II regions in distant parts of the Galaxy.

The largest and brightest H II regions in the Galaxy rival the brightest star clusters in total luminosity. Even though most of the visible radiation is concentrated in a few discrete emission lines, the total apparent brightness of the brightest is the equivalent of tens of thousands of solar luminosities. These H II regions are also remarkable in size, having diameters of about 1,000 light-years. More typically, common H II regions such as the Orion Nebula are about 50 light-years across. They contain gas that has a total mass ranging from one or two solar masses up to several thousand. H II regions consist primarily of hydrogen, but they also contain measurable amounts of other gases. Helium is second in abundance, and large amounts of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen occur as well. Preliminary evidence indicates that the ratio of the abundance of the heavier elements among the detected gases to hydrogen decreases outward from the centre of the Galaxy, a tendency that has been observed in other spiral galaxies.

The gaseous clouds known as planetary nebulae are only superficially similar to other types of nebulae. So called because the smaller varieties almost resemble planetary disks when viewed through a telescope, planetary nebulae represent a stage at the end of the stellar life cycle rather than one at the beginning. The distribution of such nebulae in the Galaxy is different from that of H II regions. Planetary nebulae belong to an intermediate population and are found throughout the disk and the inner halo. There are more than 1,000 known planetary nebulae in the Galaxy, but more might be overlooked because of obscuration in the Milky Way region.

Another type of nebulous object found in the Galaxy is the remnant of the gas blown out from an exploding star that forms a supernova. Occasionally these objects look something like planetary nebulae, as in the case of the Crab Nebula, but they differ from the latter in three ways: (1) the total mass of their gas (they involve a larger mass, essentially all the mass of the exploding star), (2) their kinematics (they are expanding with higher velocities), and (3) their lifetimes (they last for a shorter time as visible nebulae). The best-known supernova remnants are those resulting from three historically observed supernovae: that of 1054, which made the Crab Nebula its remnant; that of 1572, called Tycho's Nova; and that of 1604, called Kepler's Nova. These objects and the many others like them in the Galaxy are detected at radio wavelengths. They release radio energy in a nearly flat spectrum because of the emission of radiation by charged particles moving spirally at nearly the speed of light in a magnetic field enmeshed in the gaseous remnant. Radiation generated in this way is called synchrotron radiation and is associated with various types of violent cosmic phenomena besides supernova remnants, as, for example, radio galaxies.

Dust clouds

The dust clouds of the Galaxy are narrowly limited to the plane of the Milky Way, though very low-density dust can be detected even near the galactic poles. Dust clouds beyond 2,000 to 3,000 light-years from the Sun cannot be detected optically, because intervening clouds of dust and the general dust layer obscure more distant views. Based on the distribution of dust clouds in other galaxies, it can be concluded that they are often most conspicuous within the spiral arms, especially along the inner edge of well-defined ones. The best-observed dust clouds near the Sun have masses of several hundred solar masses and sizes ranging from a maximum of about 200 light-years to a fraction of a light-year. The smallest tend to be the densest, possibly partly because of evolution: as a dust complex contracts, it also becomes denser and more opaque. The very smallest dust clouds are the so-called Bok globules, named after the Dutch American astronomer Bart J. Bok; these objects are about one light-year across and have masses of 1-20 solar masses.

More complete information on the dust in the Galaxy comes from infrared observations. While optical instruments can detect the dust when it obscures more distant objects or when it is illuminated by very nearby stars, infrared telescopes are able to register the long-wavelength radiation that the cool dust clouds themselves emit. A complete survey of the sky at infrared wavelengths made during the early 1980s by an unmanned orbiting observatory, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), revealed a large number of dense dust clouds in the Milky Way. Twenty years later the Spitzer Space Telescope, with greater sensitivity, greater wavelength coverage, and better resolution, mapped many dust complexes in the Milky Way. In some it was possible to view massive star clusters still in the process of formation.

Thick clouds of dust in the Milky Way can be studied by still another means. Many such objects contain detectable amounts of molecules that emit radio radiation at wavelengths that allow them to be identified and analyzed. More than 50 different molecules, including carbon monoxide and formaldehyde, and radicals have been detected in dust clouds.

The stars in the Galaxy, especially along the Milky Way, reveal the presence of a general, all-pervasive interstellar medium by the way in which they gradually fade with distance. This occurs primarily because of interstellar dust, which obscures and reddens starlight. On the average, stars near the Sun are dimmed by a factor of two for every 3,000 light-years. Thus, a star that is 6,000 light-years away in the plane of the Galaxy will appear four times fainter than it would otherwise were it not for the interstellar dust.

Another way in which the effects of interstellar dust become apparent is through the polarization of background starlight. Dust is aligned in space to some extent, and this results in selective absorption such that there is a preferred plane of vibration for the light waves. The electric vectors tend to lie preferentially along the galactic plane, though there are areas where the distribution is more complicated. It is likely that the polarization arises because the dust grains are partially aligned by the galactic magnetic field. If the dust grains are paramagnetic so that they act somewhat like a magnet, then the general magnetic field, though very weak, can in time line up the grains with their short axes in the direction of the field. As a consequence, the directions of polarization for stars in different parts of the sky make it possible to plot the direction of the magnetic field in the Milky Way.

The dust is accompanied by gas, which is thinly dispersed among the stars, filling the space between them. This interstellar gas consists mostly of hydrogen in its neutral form. Radio telescopes can detect neutral hydrogen because it emits radiation at a wavelength of 21 cm. Such radio wavelength is long enough to penetrate interstellar dust and so can be detected from all parts of the Galaxy. Most of what astronomers have learned about the large-scale structure and motions of the Galaxy has been derived from the radio waves of interstellar neutral hydrogen. The distance to the gas detected is not easily determined. Statistical arguments must be used in many cases, but the velocities of the gas, when compared with the velocities found for stars and those anticipated on the basis of the dynamics of the Galaxy, provide useful clues as to the location of the different sources of hydrogen radio emission. Near the Sun the average density of interstellar gas is 10 −21 gm/cm ³, which is the equivalent of about one hydrogen atom per cubic centimetre.

Even before they first detected the emission from neutral hydrogen in 1951, astronomers were aware of interstellar gas. Minor components of the gas, such as sodium and calcium, absorb light at specific wavelengths, and they thus cause the appearance of absorption lines in the spectra of the stars that lie beyond the gas. Since the lines originating from stars are usually different, it is possible to distinguish the lines of the interstellar gas and to measure both the density and velocity of the gas. Frequently it is even possible to observe the effects of several concentrations of interstellar gas between Earth and the background stars and thereby determine the kinematics of the gas in different parts of the Galaxy.

Companion galaxies

The Magellanic Clouds were recognized early in the 20th century as companion objects to the Galaxy. When American astronomer Edwin Hubble established the extragalactic nature of what we now call galaxies, it became plain that the Clouds had to be separate systems, both of the irregular class and more than 100,000 light-years distant. (The current best values for their distances are 163,000 and 202,000 light-years for the Large and Small Clouds, respectively.) Additional close companions have been found, all of them small and inconspicuous objects of the dwarf elliptical class. The nearest of these is the Sagittarius dwarf, a galaxy that is falling into the Milky Way Galaxy, having been captured tidally by the Galaxy's much stronger gravity. The core of this galaxy is about 90,000 light-years distant. Other close companions are the well-studied Carina, Draco, Fornax, Leo I, Leo II, Sextans, Sculptor, and Ursa Minor galaxies, as well as several very faint, less well-known objects. Distances for them range from approximately 200,000 to 800,000 light-years. The grouping of these galaxies around the Milky Way Galaxy is mimicked in the case of the Andromeda Galaxy, which is also accompanied by several dwarf companions.

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Milky Way Galaxy | Size, Definition, & Facts

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Milky Way Galaxy (sometimes simply called the Galaxy), large spiral system of about several hundred billion stars, one of which is the Sun. It takes its name from the Milky Way, the irregular luminous band of stars and gas clouds that stretches across the sky as seen from Earth.

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Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

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Serena Williams (Biography): Women in History (Educational Videos for Students)

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An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person who goes into outer space. The Soviet Union and countries that it was friends with used the word cosmonaut. Western countries including the United States said astronaut. Astronauts are also called "taikonauts" in China or "spationaute" in France.

The first person to go into space was a Russian from the Soviet Union. His name was Yuri Gagarin. This happened on April 12, 1961. The first and second people to walk on the Moon were the Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. This happened on July 20, 1969. No astronauts have gone to the moon since 1972. No people have visited any other planets yet.

Astronauts used to go into space using many different ways, but now they only go on the Soyuz and Shenzhou. Several countries have worked together to build an International Space Station where people stay and work in space for long periods of time.

A few countries and companies are trying to make more ways to get people into space. The United States is building a very big rocket called the SLS. Some American companies, like Boeing and SpaceX, are being paid by the United States to make ways for people to go to space.

Space travel milestones

The first human in space was Soviet Yuri Gagarin, who was launched on April 12, 1961, aboard Vostok 1 and orbited around the Earth for 108 minutes. The first woman in space was Soviet Valentina Tereshkova, who launched on June 16, 1963, aboard Vostok 6 and orbited Earth for almost three days.

Alan Shepard became the first American and second person in space on May 5, 1961, on a 15-minute sub-orbital flight. The first American to orbit the Earth was John Glenn, aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. The first American woman in space was Sally Ride, during Space Shuttle Challenger's mission STS-7, on June 18, 1983. In 1992 Mae Jemison became the first African American woman to travel in space aboard STS-47.

Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov was the first person to conduct an extravehicular activity (EVA), (commonly called a "spacewalk"), on March 18, 1965, on the Soviet Union's Voskhod 2 mission. This was followed two and a half months later by astronaut Ed White who made the first American EVA on NASA's Gemini 4 mission.

The first manned mission to orbit the Moon, , included American William Anders who was born in Hong Kong, making him the first Asian-born astronaut in 1968.

The Soviet Union, through its Intercosmos program, allowed people from other " socialist" (i.e. Warsaw Pact and other Soviet-allied) countries to fly on its missions, with the notable exception of France participating in Soyuz TM-7. An example is Czechoslovak Vladimír Remek, the first cosmonaut from a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States, who flew to space in 1978 on a Soyuz-U rocket.

On July 23, 1980, Pham Tuan of Vietnam became the first Asian in space when he flew aboard Soyuz 37. Also in 1980, Cuban Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez became the first person of Hispanic and black African descent to fly in space, and in 1983, Guion Bluford became the first African American to fly into space. In April 1985, Taylor Wang became the first ethnic Chinese person in space. The first person born in Africa to fly in space was Patrick Baudry (France), in 1985. In 1985, Saudi Arabian Prince Sultan Bin Salman Bin AbdulAziz Al-Saud became the first Arab Muslim astronaut in space. In 1988, Abdul Ahad Mohmand became the first Afghan to reach space, spending nine days aboard the Mir space station.

With the larger number of seats available on the Space Shuttle, the U.S. began taking international astronauts. In 1983, Ulf Merbold of West Germany became the first non-US citizen to fly in a US spacecraft. In 1984, Marc Garneau became the first of 8 Canadian astronauts to fly in space (through 2010). In 1985, Rodolfo Neri Vela became the first Mexican-born person in space. In 1991, Helen Sharman became the first Briton to fly in space. In 2002, Mark Shuttleworth became the first citizen of an African country to fly in space, as a paying spaceflight participant. In 2003, Ilan Ramon became the first Israeli to fly in space, although he died during a re-entry accident.

On October 15, 2003, Yang Liwei became China's first astronaut on the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft.

The first NASA astronauts were selected for training in 1959. Early in the space program, military jet test piloting and engineering training were often cited as prerequisites for selection as an astronaut at NASA, although neither John Glenn nor Scott Carpenter (of the Mercury Seven) had any university degree, in engineering or any other discipline at the time of their selection. Selection was initially limited to military pilots. The earliest astronauts for both America and the USSR tended to be jet fighter pilots, and were often test pilots.

Once selected, NASA astronauts go through twenty months of training in a variety of areas, including training for extravehicular activity in a facility such as NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Astronauts-in-training (astronaut candidates) may also experience short periods of weightlessness (microgravity) in an aircraft called the "Vomit Comet," the nickname given to a pair of modified KC-135s (retired in 2000 and 2004, respectively, and replaced in 2005 with a C-9) which perform parabolic flights. Astronauts are also required to accumulate a number of flight hours in high-performance jet aircraft. This is mostly done in T-38 jet aircraft out of Ellington Field, due to its proximity to the Johnson Space Center. Ellington Field is also where the Shuttle Training Aircraft is maintained and developed, although most flights of the aircraft are conducted from Edwards Air Force Base.

NASA candidacy requirements

Be citizens of the United States.

Pass a strict physical examination, and have a near and distant visual acuity correctable to 20/20 (6/6). Blood pressure, while sitting, must be no greater than 140 over 90. There are currently no age restrictions.

Commander and Pilot

A bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics is required.

At least 1,000 hours' flying time as pilot-in-command in jet aircraft. Experience as a test pilot is desirable.

Height must be 5 ft 2 in to 6 ft 2 in (1.58 m to 1.88 m).

Distant visual acuity must be correctable to 20/20 in each eye.

The refractive surgical procedures of the eye, PRK (Photorefractive keratectomy) and LASIK, are now allowed, providing at least 1 year has passed since the date of the procedure with no permanent adverse after effects. For those applicants under final consideration, an operative report on the surgical procedure will be requested.

Mission Specialist

A bachelor's degree in engineering, biological science, physical science or mathematics, as well as at least three years of related professional experience (graduate work or studies) and an advanced degree, such as a master's degree (one to three years) or a doctoral degree (three years or more).

Applicant's height must be between 4 ft 10.5 in and 6 ft 4 in (1.49 m and 1.93 m).

Mission Specialist Educator

Applicants must have a bachelor's degree with teaching experience, including work at the kindergarten through twelfth grade level. An advanced degree, such as a master's degree or a doctoral degree, is not required, but is strongly desired.

Mission Specialist Educators, or "Educator Astronauts", were first selected in 2004, and as of 2007, there are three NASA Educator astronauts: Joseph M. Acaba, Richard R. Arnold, and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger. Barbara Morgan, selected as back-up teacher to Christa McAuliffe in 1985, is considered to be the first Educator astronaut by the media, but she trained as a mission specialist. The Educator Astronaut program is a successor to the Teacher in Space program from the 1980s.

Food and drink

An astronaut on the International Space Station requires about 0.83 kilograms (1.83 pounds) weight of food inclusive of food packaging per meal each day. (The packaging for each meal weighs around 0.12 kilograms - 0.27 pounds) Longer-duration missions require more food.

Shuttle astronauts worked with nutritionists to select menus that appeal to their individual tastes. Five months before flight, menus are selected and analyzed for nutritional content by the shuttle dietician. Foods are tested to see how they will react in a reduced gravity environment. Caloric requirements are determined using a basal energy expenditure (BEE) formula. On Earth, the average American uses about 35 gallons (132 liters) of water every day. On board the ISS astronauts limit water use to only about three gallons (11 liters) per day.

Related pages

Images for kids

The first sixteen NASA astronauts, February 1963. Back row: White, McDivitt, Young, See, Conrad, Borman, Armstrong, Stafford, Lovell. Front row: Cooper, Grissom, Carpenter, Schirra, Glenn, Shepard, Slayton.

The first eleven Soviet cosmonauts, July 1965. Back row, left to right: Leonov, Titov, Bykovsky, Yegorov, Popovich; front row: Komarov, Gagarin, Tereshkova, Nikolayev, Feoktistov, Belyayev.

Vladimír Remek, a Czechoslovak who became the first non-American and non-Soviet cosmonaut in space (1978)

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An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person who goes into outer space. The Soviet Union and countries that it was friends with used the word cosmonaut. Western countries including the United States said astronaut. Astronauts are also called "taikonauts" in China or "spationaute" in France.

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Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

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LeBron James Biography for students (Highlights) | Sports History | NBA Basketball Legend

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The coati is an agile, fruit-loving, meat-eating insectivore-an opportunistic omnivore-that is as at home in the trees as it is snuffling along the forest floor. Weighing as much as a large housecat, these mostly diurnal mammals are native to Central and South America, and parts of the southwestern US.

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Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical and psychological content. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan.

Kusama was raised in Matsumoto, and trained at the Kyoto City University of Arts in a traditional Japanese painting style called nihonga. Kusama was inspired, however, by American Abstract impressionism. She moved to New York City in 1958 and was a part of the New York avant-garde scene throughout the 1960s, especially in the pop-art movement. Embracing the rise of the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s, she came to public attention when she organized a series of happenings in which participants were painted with brightly coloured polka dots. Since the 1970s, Kusama has continued to create art, most notably installations in various museums around the world.

Kusama has been open about her mental health. She says that art has become her way to express her mental problems. She reported in an interview upon the release of her biography Infinity Net that "I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live."

Early life: 1929-1949

Yayoi Kusama was born on 22 March 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano. Born into a family of merchants who owned a plant nursery and seed farm, Kusama began drawing pictures of pumpkins in elementary school and created artwork she saw from hallucinations, works of which would later define her career. Her mother was not supportive of her creative endeavors; Kusama would rush to finish her art because her mother would take it away to discourage her. Her mother was also apparently physically abusive, and Kusama remembers her father as "the type who would play around, who would womanize a lot". Her traumatic childhood can be said to be the origin of her artistic style.

When Kusama was ten years old, she began to experience vivid hallucinations which she has described as "flashes of light, auras, or dense fields of dots". These hallucinations also included flowers that spoke to Kusama, and patterns in fabric that she stared at coming to life, multiplying, and engulfing or expunging her, a process which she has carried into her artistic career and which she calls "self-obliteration". Kusama's art became her escape from her family and her own mind when she began to have hallucinations. She was reportedly fascinated by the smooth white stones covering the bed of the river near her family home, which she cites as another of the seminal influences behind her lasting fixation on dots.

When Kusama was 13, she was sent to work in a military factory where she was tasked with sewing and fabricating parachutes for the Japanese army, then embroiled in World War II. Discussing her time in the factory, she says that she spent her adolescence "in closed darkness" although she could always hear the air-raid alerts going off and see American B-29s flying overhead in broad daylight. Her childhood was greatly influenced by the events of the war, and she claims that it was during this period that she began to value notions of personal and creative freedom.

She went on to study painting at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts in 1948. Frustrated with this distinctly Japanese style, she became interested in the European and American avant-garde, staging several solo exhibitions of her paintings in Matsumoto and Tokyo in the 1950s.

Early success in Japan: 1950-1956

By 1950, she was depicting abstract natural forms in water colour, gouache, and oil paint, primarily on paper. She began covering surfaces-walls, floors, canvases, and later, household objects-with the polka dots that would become a trademark of her work.

The vast fields of polka dots, or "infinity nets", as she called them, were taken directly from her hallucinations. The earliest recorded work in which she incorporated these dots was a drawing in 1939 at age 10, in which the image of a Japanese woman in a kimono, presumed to be the artist's mother, is covered and obliterated by spots. Her first series of large-scale, sometimes more than 30 ft-long canvas paintings, Infinity Nets, were entirely covered in a sequence of nets and dots that alluded to hallucinatory visions.

On her 1954 painting Flower (D.S.P.S) Kusama has said:

One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows, and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realised it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs spraining my ankle.

New York City: 1957-1972

After living in Tokyo and France, Kusama left Japan at the age of 27 for the United States. She has stated that she began to consider Japanese society "too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women". Before leaving Japan to the United States, she destroyed many of her early works. In 1957, she moved to Seattle, where she had an exhibition of paintings at the Zoe Dusanne Gallery. She stayed there for a year before moving on to New York City, following correspondence with Georgia O'Keeffe in which she professed an interest in joining the limelight of the city, and sought O'Keeffe's advice. During her time in the US, she quickly established her reputation as a leader in the avant-garde movement and received praise for her work from the anarchist art critic Herbert Read.

In 1961 she moved her studio into the same building as Donald Judd and sculptor Eva Hesse; Hesse became a close friend. In the early 1960s Kusama began to create so-called soft sculptures. Despite the micromanaged intricacy of the drawings, she turned them out fast and in bulk, establishing a rhythm of productivity which she still maintains. She established other habits too, like having herself routinely photographed with new work and regularly appearing in public wearing her signature bob wigs and colorful, avant-garde fashions.

Since 1963, Kusama has continued her series of Mirror/Infinity rooms. In these complex infinity mirror installations, purpose-built rooms lined with mirrored glass contain scores of neon-colored balls, hanging at various heights above the viewer. Standing inside on a small platform, an observer sees light repeatedly reflected off the mirrored surfaces to create the illusion of a never-ending space.

During the following years, Kusama was enormously productive, and by 1966 she was experimenting with room-size, freestanding installations that incorporated mirrors, lights, and piped-in music. She counted Judd and Joseph Cornell among her friends and supporters. However, she did not profit financially from her work. Around this time, Kusama was hospitalized regularly from overwork, and O'Keeffe persuaded her own dealer Edith Herbert to purchase several works to help Kusama stave off financial hardship. She was not able to make the money she believed she deserved.

In the 1960s, Kusama organized outlandish happenings in conspicuous spots like Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge, often designed to protest the Vietnam War. Between 1967 and 1969 she concentrated on performances held with the maximum publicity, usually involving Kusama painting polka dots on her performers.

In 1968, Kusama presided over the happening Homosexual Wedding at the Church of Self-obliteration at 33 Walker Street in New York and performed alongside Fleetwood Mac and Country Joe and the Fish at the Fillmore East in New York City.

In 1966, Kusama first participated in the Venice Biennale for its 33rd edition. Her Narcissus Garden comprised hundreds of mirrored spheres outdoors in what she called a "kinetic carpet". As soon as the piece was installed on a lawn outside the Italian pavilion, Kusama, dressed in a golden kimono, began selling each individual sphere for 1,200 lire (US$2), until the Biennale organizers put an end to her enterprise. Narcissus Garden was as much about the promotion of the artist through the media as it was an opportunity to offer a critique of the mechanization and commodification of the art market.

During her time in New York, Kusama had a brief relationship with artist Donald Judd. She then began a passionate, but platonic, relationship with the surrealist artist Joseph Cornell. She was 26 years his junior - they would call each other daily, sketch each other, and he would send personalized collages to her. Their lengthy association would last until his death in 1972.

Return to Japan: 1973-1977

In 1973, Kusama returned in ill health to Japan, where she began writing shockingly visceral and surrealistic novels, short stories, and poetry. In 1977, Kusama checked herself into a hospital for the mentally ill, where she eventually took up permanent residence. She has been living at the hospital since, by choice. Her studio, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s, is a short distance from the hospital in Tokyo. Kusama is often quoted as saying: "If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago."

From this base, she has continued to produce artworks in a variety of media, as well as launching a literary career by publishing several novels, a poetry collection, and an autobiography. Her painting style shifted to high-colored acrylics on canvas, on an amped-up scale.

Revival: 1980s-present

Her organically abstract paintings of one or two colors (the Infinity Nets series), which she began upon arriving in New York, garnered comparisons to the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. When she left New York she was practically forgotten as an artist until the late 1980s and 1990s, when a number of retrospectives revived international interest. Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective was the first critical survey of Yayoi Kusama presented at the Center for International Contemporary Arts (CICA) in New York in 1989, and was organized by Alexandra Munroe.

Following the success of the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993, a dazzling mirrored room filled with small pumpkin sculptures in which she resided in color-coordinated magician's attire, Kusama went on to produce a huge, yellow pumpkin sculpture covered with an optical pattern of black spots. The pumpkin came to represent for her a kind of alter-ego or self-portrait. Kusama's later installation I'm Here, but Nothing (2000-2008) is a simply furnished room consisting of table and chairs, place settings and bottles, armchairs and rugs, however its walls are tattooed with hundreds of fluorescent polka dots glowing in the UV light. The result is an endless infinite space where the self and everything in the room is obliterated.

The multi-part floating work Guidepost to the New Space, a series of rounded "humps" in fire-engine red with white polka dots, was displayed in Pandanus Lake. Perhaps one of Kusama's most notorious works, various versions of Narcissus Garden have been presented worldwide venues including Le Consortium, Dijon, 2000; Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2003; as part of the Whitney Biennial in Central Park, New York in 2004; and at the Jardin de Tuileries in Paris, 2010.

In her ninth decade, Kusama has continued to work as an artist. She has harkened back to earlier work by returning to drawing and painting; her work remained innovative and multi-disciplinary, and a 2012 exhibition displayed multiple acrylic-on-canvas works. Also featured was an exploration of infinite space in her Infinity Mirror rooms. These typically involve a cube-shaped room lined in mirrors, with water on the floor and flickering lights; these features suggest a pattern of life and death.

In 2015-2016 the first retrospective exhibition in Scandinavia, curated by Marie Laurberg, travelled to four major museums in the region, opening at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and continuing to Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Museum, Norway, Moderna Museet in Sweden, and Helsinki Art Museum in Finland. This major show contained more than 100 objects and large scale mirror room installations. It presented several early works that had not been shown to the public since they were first created, including a presentation of Kusama's experimental fashion design from the 1960s.

In 2017, a 50-year retrospective of her work opened at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. The exhibit featured six Infinity Mirror rooms, and was scheduled to travel to five museums in the US and Canada.

On 25 February 2017, Kusama's All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins exhibit, one of the six components to her Infinity Mirror rooms at the Hirshhorn Museum, was temporarily closed for three days following damage to one of the exhibit's glowing pumpkin sculptures. The room, which measures 13 square feet (1.2 m ²) and was filled with over 60 pumpkin sculptures, was one of the museum's most popular attractions ever. Allison Peck, a spokeswoman for the Hirshhorn, said in an interview that the museum "has never had a show with that kind of visitor demand", with the room averaging more than 8,000 visitors between its opening and the date of its temporary closing. While there were conflicting media reports about the cost of the damaged sculpture and how exactly it was broken, Allison Peck stated that "there is no intrinsic value to the individual piece. It is a manufactured component to a larger piece." The exhibit was reconfigured to make up for the missing sculpture, and a new one was to be produced for the exhibit by Kusama. The Infinity Mirrors exhibit became a sensation among art critics as well as on social media. Museum visitors shared 34,000 images of the exhibition to their Instagram accounts, and social media posts using the hashtag #InfiniteKusama garnered 330 million impressions, as reported by the Smithsonian the day after the exhibit's closing. The works provided the perfect setting for Instagram-able selfies which inadvertently added to the performative nature of the works.

Also in 2017, the Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Tokyo, featuring her works.

On 9 November 2019, Kusama's Everyday I Pray For Love exhibit was shown at David Zwirner Gallery until 14 December 2019. This exhibition incorporated sculptures and paintings. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue published by David Zwirner books containing texts and poems from the artist. This exhibition also included the debut of her INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM - DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE, 2019.

In January 2020, the Hirshhorn announced it would debut new Kusama acquisitions, including two Infinity Mirror Rooms, at a forthcoming exhibition called One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection. The name of the exhibit is derived from an open letter Kusama wrote to then-President Richard Nixon in 1968, writing: "let's forget ourselves, dearest Richard, and become one with the absolute, all together in the altogether."

In November 2021, a monumental exhibition offering an overview of Kusama's main creative periods over the past 70 years, with some 200 works and four Infinity Rooms (unique mirror installations) debuted in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The retrospective spans almost 3,000 m ² across the Museum's two buildings, in six galleries and includes 2 new works: A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe, 2021 and Light of the Universe Illuminating the Quest for Truth, 2021.

Meaning and origins of her work

Curator Mika Yoshitake has stated that Kusama's works on display are meant to immerse the whole person into her accumulations, obsessions, and repetitions. These infinite, repetitive works were originally meant to eliminate Kusama's intrusive thoughts, but she now shares it with the world. Claire Voon has described one of Kusama's mirror exhibits as being able to "transport you to quiet cosmos, to a lonely labyrinth of pulsing light, or to what could be the enveloping innards of a leviathan with the measles".

Creating these feelings amongst audiences was intentional. These experiences seem to be unique to her work because Kusama wanted others to sympathise with her in her troubled life. Bedatri D. Choudhury has described how Kusama's lack of feeling in control throughout her life made her, either consciously or subconsciously, want to control how others perceive time and space when entering her exhibits. This statement seems to imply that without her trauma, Kusama would not have created these works as well or perhaps not at all. Art had become a coping mechanism for Kusama.

Works and publications

Performance

In Yayoi Kusama's Walking Piece (1966), a performance that was documented in a series of eighteen color slides, Kusama walked along the streets of New York City in a traditional Japanese kimono while holding a parasol. The kimono suggested traditional roles for women in Japanese custom. The parasol, however, was made to look inauthentic, as it was actually a black umbrella, painted white on the exterior and decorated with fake flowers. Kusama walked down unoccupied streets in an unknown quest. She then turned and cried without reason, and eventually walked away and vanished from view.

This performance, through the association of the kimono, involved the stereotypes that Asian-American women continued to face. However, as an avant-garde artist living in New York, her situation altered the context of the dress, creating a cross-cultural amalgamation. Kusama was able to highlight the stereotype in which her white American audience categorized her, by showing the absurdity of culturally categorizing people in the world's largest melting pot.

In 1968, Kusama and Jud Yalkut's collaborative work Kusama's Self-Obliteration won a prize at the Fourth International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium and the Second Maryland Film Festival and the second prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. The 1967 experimental film, which Kusama produced and starred in, depicted Kusama painting polka dots on everything around her including bodies.

In 1991, Kusama starred in the film Tokyo Decadence, written and directed by Ryu Murakami, and in 1993, she collaborated with British musician Peter Gabriel on an installation in Yokohama.

In 1968, Kusama established Kusama Fashion Company Ltd, and began selling avantgarde fashion in the "Kusama Corner" at Bloomingdales. In 2009, Kusama designed a handbag-shaped cell phone entitled Handbag for Space Travel, My Doggie Ring-Ring, a pink dotted phone in accompanying dog-shaped holder, and a red and white dotted phone inside a mirrored, dotted box dubbed Dots Obsession, Full Happiness With Dots, for Japanese mobile communication giant KDDI Corporation's "iida" brand. Each phone was limited to 1,000 pieces.

In 2011, Kusama created artwork for six limited-edition lipglosses from Lancôme. That same year, she worked with Marc Jacobs (who visited her studio in Japan in 2006) on a line of Louis Vuitton products, including leather goods, ready-to-wear, accessories, shoes, watches, and jewelry. The products became available in 2012 at a SoHo pop-up shop, which was decorated with Kusama's trademark tentacle-like protrusions and polka-dots. Eventually, six other pop-up shops were opened around the world. When asked about her collaboration with Marc Jacobs, Kusama replied that "his sincere attitude toward art" is the same as her own.

In 1977, Kusama published a book of poems and paintings entitled 7. Between 1983 and 1990, she finished the novels The Hustler's Grotto of Christopher Street (1983), The Burning of St Mark's Church (1985), Between Heaven and Earth (1988), Aching Chandelier (1989), and Angels in Cape Cod (1990), alongside several issues of the magazine S&M Sniper in collaboration with photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. Her most recent writing endeavor includes her autobiography Infinity Net published in 2003 that depicts her life from growing up in Japan, her departure to the United States, and her return to her home country, where she now resides. Infinity Net also includes some of the artist's poetry and photos of her exhibitions.

Commissions

To date, Kusama has completed several major outdoor sculptural commissions, mostly in the form of brightly hued monstrous plants and flowers, for public and private institutions including Pumpkin (1994) for the Fukuoka Municipal Museum of Art; The Visionary Flowers (2002) for the Matsumoto City Museum of Art; Tsumari in Bloom (2003) for Matsudai Station, Niigata; Tulipes de Shangri-La (2003) for Euralille in Lille, France; Pumpkin (2006) at Bunka-mura on Benesse Island of Naoshima; Hello, Anyang with Love (2007) for Pyeonghwa Park (now referred as World Cup Park), Anyang; and The Hymn of Life: Tulips (2007) for the Beverly Gardens Park in Los Angeles. In 1998, she realized a mural for the hallway of the Gare do Oriente subway station in Lisbon. Alongside these monumental works, she has produced smaller scale outdoor pieces including Key-Chan and Ryu-Chan, a pair of dotted dogs. All the outdoor works are cast in highly durable fiberglass-reinforced plastic, then painted in urethane to glossy perfection.

In 2010, Kusama designed a Town Sneaker styled bus, which she titled Mizutama Ranbu (Wild Polka Dot Dance) and whose route travels through her hometown of Matsumoto. In 2011, she was commissioned to design the front cover of millions of pocket London Underground maps; the result is entitled Polka Dots Festival in London (2011). Coinciding with an exhibition of the artist's work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2012, a 120-foot (37 m) reproduction of Kusama's painting Yellow Trees (1994) covered a condominium building under construction in New York's Meatpacking District. That same year, Kusama conceived her floor installation Thousands of Eyes as a commission for the new Queen Elizabeth II Courts of Law, Brisbane.

Select exhibitions

Rodenbeck, J.F. "Yayoi Kusama: Surface, Stitch, Skin." Zegher, M. Catherine de. Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1996. ISBN: 978-0-262-54081-0

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 30 January - 12 May 1996.

Kusama, Yayoi, and Damien Hirst. Yayoi Kusama Now. New York, N.Y.: Robert Miller Gallery, 1998. ISBN: 978-0-944-68058-2

Robert Miller Gallery, New York, 11 June - 7 August 1998.

Kusama, Yayoi, and Lynn Zelevansky. Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1998. ISBN: 978-0-875-87181-3

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 8 March - 8 June 1998; three other locations through 4 July 1999.

Kusama, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama. Wien: Kunsthalle Wien, 2002. ISBN: 978-3-852-47034-4

Kusama, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama. Paris: Les Presses du Reel, 2002. ISBN: 978-0-714-83920-2

Seven European exhibitions in France, Germany, Denmark, etc.; 2001-2003.

Kusama, Yayoi. Kusamatorikkusu = Kusamatrix. Tōkyō: Kadokawa Shoten, 2004. ISBN: 978-4-048-53741-4

Mori Art Museum, 7 February - 9 May 2004; Mori Geijutsu Bijutsukan, Sapporo, 5 June - 22 August 2004.

Kusama, Yayoi, and Tōru Matsumoto. Kusama Yayoi eien no genzai = Yayoi Kusama: eternity-modernity. Tōkyō: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2005. ISBN: 978-4-568-10353-3

Tōkyō Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 26 October - 19 December 2004; Kyōto Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 6 January - 13 February 2005; Hiroshima-shi Gendai Bijutsukan, 22 February - 17 April 2005; Kumamoto-shi Gendai Bijutsukan, 29 April - 3 July 2005; at Matsumoto-shi Bijutsukan, 30 July - 10 October 2005.

Applin, Jo, and Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama. London: Victoria Miro Gallery, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-955-45644-2

Victoria Miro Gallery, London, 10 October - 17 November 2007.

Kusama, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama. New York: Gagosian Gallery, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-932-59894-0

Gagosian Gallery, New York, 16 April - 27 June 2009; Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, 30 May - 17 July 2009.

Morris, Frances, and Jo Applin. Yayoi Kusama. London: Tate Publishing, 2012. ISBN: 978-1-854-37939-9

Reina Sofia, Madrid, 10 May - 12 September 2011; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 10 October 2011 - 9 January 2012; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 12 July - 30 September 2012; Tate Modern (London), 9 February - 5 June 2012.

Kusama, Yayoi, and Akira Tatehata. Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived in Heaven. New York: David Zwirner, 2014. ISBN: 978-0-989-98093-7

David Zwirner Gallery, New York, 8 November - 21 December 2013.

Laurberg, Marie: Yayoi Kusama - In Infinity, Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015, Heine Onstadt, Oslo, 2016, Moderna Museum, Stockholm, 2016, and Helsinki Art Museum, 2016

David Zwirner Gallery, New York, 9 November - 14 December 2019.

Illustration work

Carroll, Lewis and Yayoi Kusama. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. London: Penguin Classics, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-141-19730-2

Nakajima, Izumi. "Yayoi Kusama between abstraction and pathology." Pollock, Griselda, ed. Psychoanalysis and the Image: Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2006. pp. 127-160. ISBN: 978-1-405-13460-6

Klaus Podoll, "Die Künstlerin Yayoi Kusama als pathographischer Fall." Schulz R, Bonanni G, Bormuth M, eds. Wahrheit ist, was uns verbindet: Karl Jaspers' Kunst zu philosophieren. Göttingen, Wallstein, 2009. p. 119. ISBN: 978-3-835-30423-9

Cutler, Jody B. "Narcissus, Narcosis, Neurosis: The Visions of Yayoi Kusama." Wallace, Isabelle Loring, and Jennie Hirsh. Contemporary Art and Classical Myth. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011. pp. 87-109. ISBN: 978-0-754-66974-6

Autobiography, writing

Kusama, Yayoi. A Book of Poems and Paintings. Tokyo: Japan Edition Art, 1977.

Kusama, Yayoi. Kusama Yayoi: Driving Image = Yayoi Kusama. Tōkyō: PARCO shuppan, 1986. ISBN: 978-4-891-94130-7

Kusama, Yayoi, Ralph F. McCarthy, Hisako Ifshin, and Yayoi Kusama. Violet Obsession: Poems. Berkeley: Wandering Mind Books, 1998. ISBN: 978-0-965-33043-5

Kusama, Yayoi, Ralph F. McCarthy, Yayoi Kusama, and Yayoi Kusama. Hustlers Grotto: Three Novellas. Berkeley, Calif: Wandering Mind Books, 1998. ISBN: 978-0-965-33042-8

Kusama, Yayoi. Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-226-46498-5

Catalogue raisonné, etc.

Kusama, Yayoi. Yayoi Kusama: Print Works. Tokyo: Abe Corp, 1992. ISBN: 978-4-872-42023-4

Hoptman, Laura, Akira Tatehata, and Udo Kultermann. Yayoi Kusama. London: Phaidon Press, 2003. ISBN: 978-0-714-83920-2

Kusama, Yayoi, and Hideki Yasuda. Yayoi Kusama Furniture by Graf: Decorative Mode No. 3. Tōkyō: Seigensha Art Publishing, 2003. ISBN: 978-4-916-09470-4

Kusama, Yayoi. Kusama Yayoi zen hangashū, 1979-2004 = All Prints of Kusama Yayoi, 1979-2004. Tōkyō: Abe Shuppan, 2006. ISBN: 978-4-872-42174-3

Kusama, Yayoi, Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata, Udo Kultermann, Catherine Taft. Yayoi Kusama. London: Phaidon Press, 2017. ISBN: 978-0-714-87345-9

Yoshitake, Mika, Chiu, Melissa, Dumbadze, Alexander Blair, Jones, Alex, Sutton, Gloria, Tezuka, Miwako. Yayoi Kusama : Infinity Mirrors. Washington, DC. ISBN: 978-3-7913-5594-8. OCLC 954134388

Exhibitions

In 1959, Kusama had her first solo exhibition in New York at the Brata Gallery, an artist's co-op. She showed a series of white net paintings which were enthusiastically reviewed by Donald Judd (both Judd and Frank Stella then acquired paintings from the show). Kusama has since exhibited work with Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns, among others. Exhibiting alongside European artists including Lucio Fontana, Pol Bury, Otto Piene, and Gunther Uecker, in 1962 she was the only female artist to take part in the widely acclaimed Nul (Zero) international group exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Exhibition list

1976: Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art

1983: Yayoi Kusama's Self-Obliteration (Performance) at Video Gallery SCAN, Tokyo, Japan

1993: Represented Japan at the Venice Biennale

1998: "Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama,1958-1969", LACMA

1998-99: "Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama,1958-1969" - exhibit traveled to Museum of Modern Art, New York, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo)

2001-2003: Le Consortium - exhibit traveled to Maison de la Culture du Japon, Paris; Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark; Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; and Artsonje Center, Seoul

2004: KUSAMATRIX, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

2004-2005: KUSAMATRIX traveled to Art Park Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo Art Park, Hokkaido); Eternity - Modernity, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (touring Japan)

2007: FINA Festival 2007. Kusama created Guidepost to the New Space, a vibrant outdoor installation for Birrarung Marr beside the Yarra River in Melbourne. In 2009, the Guideposts were re-installed at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, this time displayed as floating "humps" on a lake.

2009: The Mirrored Years traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand

2010: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen purchased the work Infinity Mirror Room - Phalli's Field. As of 13 September of that year the mirror room is permanently exhibited in the entrance area of the museum.

July 2011: Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain

2012: Tate Modern, London. Described as "akin to being suspended in a beautiful cosmos gazing at infinite worlds, or like a tiny dot of fluoresecent plankton in an ocean of glowing microscopic life", the exhibition features a retrospective spanning Kusama's entire career.

30 June 2013 - 16 September 2013: MALBA, the Latinamerican Art Museum of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

22 May 2014 - 27 June 2014: Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil

17 September 2015 - 24 January 2016: In Infinity, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark

12 June - 9 August 2015: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Theory, The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia. This was the artist's first solo exhibition in Russia.

19 February - 15 May 2016: Yayoi Kusama - I uendeligheten, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway

20 September 2015 - September 2016: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrored Room, The Broad, Los Angeles, California

12 June - 18 September 2016: Kusama: At the End of the Universe, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, Texas

1 May 2016 - 30 November 2016: Yayoi Kusama: Narcissus Garden, The Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut.

25 May 2016 - 30 July 2016: Yayoi Kusama: sculptures, paintings & mirror rooms, Victoria Miro Gallery, London, United Kingdom.

7 October 2016 - 22 January 2017: Yayoi Kusama: In Infinity, organised by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in cooperation with Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Moderna Museet/ArkDes and Helsinki Art Museum HAM in Helsinki, Finland.

5 November 2016 - 17 April 2017: "Dot Obsessions - Tasmania", MONA: Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Australia.

23 February 2017 - 14 May 2017: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, a traveling museum show originating at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC

30 June 2017 - 10 September 2017: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, exhibition travels to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington

9 June 2017 - 3 September 2017: Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow, National Gallery Singapore.

October 2017 - January 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, exhibition travels to The Broad, Los Angeles, California

October 2017 - February 2018: Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas

November 2017 - February 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow and Obliteration Room, GOMA, Brisbane, Australia

December 2017 - April 2018: Flower Obsession, Triennial, NGV, Melbourne, Australia

March 2018 - February 2019"Pumpkin Forever'(Forever Museum of ContemporaryArt), Gion-Kyoto, Japan

March-May 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, exhibition travels to Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

May-September 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), Jakarta, Indonesia

July-September 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, exhibition travels to Cleveland Museum of Art, exhibition travels to Cleveland, Ohio

July-November 2018: Yayoi Kusama: Where The Lights In My Heart Go, exhibition travels to deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA

26 July 2018 - Spring 2019: Yayoi Kusama: With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever (2011)

March-September 2019: Yayoi Kusama, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands

9 November 2019 - 14 December 2019: Yayoi Kusama: Everyday I Pray For Love, David Zwirner Gallery, New York, NY

4 January - 18 March 2020: Brilliance of the Souls, Maraya, AlUla

4 April - 19 September 2020: Yayoi Kusama: "One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection," Washington, DC

31 July 2020 - 3 January 2021: STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World, Tokyo, Japan

10 April - 31 October 2021: Kusama: Cosmic Nature, New York Botanical Garden, New York, NY

15 November 2021 - 23 April 2022: "Yayoi Kusama : A Retrospective", Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel

Permanent Infinity Room installations

Infinity Dots Mirrored Room (1996), Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Infinity Mirror Room fireflies on Water (2000), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy, Nancy (France)

You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies (2005), Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona

Gleaming Lights of the Souls (2008), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark

The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), The Broad, Los Angeles, California

The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens (2015), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Phalli's Field (1965/2016), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Love is Calling (2013/2019), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts

Light of Life (2018), North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina

Brilliance of the Souls (2019), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN), Jakarta, Indonesia

Infinity Mirror Room - Let's Survive Forever (2019), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario

Peer review

Applin, Jo. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room - Phallis Field. Afterall, 2012.

Hoptman, Laura J., et al. Yayoi Kusama. Phaidon Press Limited, 2000.

Lenz, Heather, director. Infinity. Magnolia Pictures, 2018.

Collections

Kusama's work is in the collections of museums throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix; Tate Modern, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Recognition

Yayoi Kusama's image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.

In 2017, a fifty-year retrospective of Kusama's work opened at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. That same year, the Yayoi Kusama Museum was inaugurated in Tokyo. Other major retrospectives of her work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art (1998), the Whitney Museum (2012), and the Tate Modern (2012). In 2015, the website Artsy named Kusama one of its top 10 living artists of the year.

Kusama has received many awards, including the Asahi Prize (2001); Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2003); the National Lifetime Achievement Award from the Order of the Rising Sun (2006); and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for Art. In October 2006, Kusama became the first Japanese woman to receive the Praemium Imperiale, one of Japan's highest honors for internationally recognized artists. She also received the Person of Cultural Merit (2009) and Ango awards (2014). In 2014, Kusama was ranked the most popular artist of the year after a record-breaking number of visitors flooded her Latin American tour, Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Obsession. Venues from Buenos Aires to Mexico City received more than 8,500 visitors each day.

The octogenarian also gained media attention for partnering with the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to make her 2017 Infinity Mirror rooms accessible to visitors with disabilities or mobility issues; in a new initiative among art museums, the venue mapped out the six individual rooms and provided disabled individuals visiting the exhibition access to a complete 360-degree virtual reality headset that allowed them to experience every aspect of the rooms, as if they were actually walking through them.

Kusama's work has performed strongly at auction: top prices for her work are for paintings from the late 1950s and early 1960s. As of 2012, her work has the highest turnover of any living woman artist. In November 2008, Christie's New York sold a 1959 white Infinity Net painting formerly owned by Donald Judd, No. 2, for US$5.1 million, then a record for a living female artist. In comparison, the highest price for a sculpture from her New York years is £72,500 (US$147,687), fetched by the 1965 wool, pasta, paint and hanger assemblage Golden Macaroni Jacket at Sotheby's London in October 2007. A 2006 acrylic on fiberglass-reinforced plastic pumpkin earned $264,000, the top price for one of her sculptures, also at Sotheby's in 2007 Her Flame of Life - Dedicated to Tu-Fu (Du-Fu) sold for US$960,000 at Art Basel/Hong Kong in May 2013, the highest price paid at the show. Kusama became the most expensive living female artist at auction when White No. 28 (1960) from her signature Infinity Nets series sold for $7.1 million at a 2014 Christie's auction.

In popular culture

Superchunk, an American indie band, included a song called "Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama)" on its Here's to Shutting Up album.

In 1967, Jud Yalkut made a film of Kusama titled Kusama's Self-Obliteration.

Yoko Ono cites Kusama as an influence.

In 2013, the British indie pop duo The Boy Least Likely To made song tribute to Yayoi Kusama, writing a song specially about her. They wrote on their blog that they admire Kusama's work because she puts her fears into it, something that they themselves often do.

Magnolia Pictures released the biographical documentary Kusama: Infinity on 7 September 2018 and a DVD version on 8 January 2019.

Veuve Clicquot and Kusama created a limited-edition bottle and sculpture in September 2020.

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Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical and psychological content.

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29 July 2019

Our alien friend Paxi went to visit American astronaut Anne McClain on board the International Space Station. Anne explains some of the mental challenges of being an astronaut on the ISS.

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29 July 2019 Our alien friend Paxi went to visit American astronaut Anne McClain on board the International Space Station. Anne explains some of the mental challenges of being an astronaut on the ISS.

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Co-what-i? You may not be familiar with this fur ball, which inhabits parts of South America, Central America, and North America. But you no doubt know about the mammal's famous family. The coati is closely related to the raccoon. And like its cousin, this mammal is the size of a large house cat, has a ringed tail, and hangs out in trees.

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Co-what-i? You may not be familiar with this fur ball, which inhabits parts of South America, Central America, and North America. But you no doubt know about the mammal's famous family. The coati is closely related to the raccoon.

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Who is she?

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is sometimes called 'the princess of polka dots'. Although she makes lots of different types of art - paintings, sculptures, performances and installations - they have one thing in common, DOTS!

What's with all the dots?

Yayoi Kusama tells the story of how when she was a little girl she had a hallucination that freaked her out. She was in a field of flowers when they all started talking to her! The heads of flowers were like dots that went on as far as she could see, and she felt as if she was disappearing or as she calls it 'self-obliterating' - into this field of endless dots. This weird experience influenced most of her later work.

By adding all-over marks and dots to her paintings, drawings, objects and clothes she feels as if she is making them (and herself) melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe. She said:

'Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment'.

She also creates environments of dots so that we can experience this feeling of self-obliteration too. She calls these rooms her 'Infinity Rooms', and creates them by installing hundreds of flashing coloured LED lights into mirrored rooms. The pinpricks of light in the dark room reflect endlessly in the mirrors, making you feel like you are in an apparently endless space. The dots surround and engulf you...it's very hard to tell where you end and where the rest of the room begins!

How did she start?

Yayoi was born in Japan in 1929. She loved drawing and painting and although her parents didn't want her to be an artist, she was determined. When her mum tore up her drawings, she made more. When she could not afford to buy art materials, she used mud and old sacks to make art. This is a drawing she made of her mum when she was 10-years-old.

Eventually Yayoi Kusama persuaded her parents to let her go to art school and study painting.

In the late 1950s she moved to New York as lots of the most exciting art seemed to be happening there. It must have been a bit frightening arriving in a big city with such a different culture from what she knew. But she was determined to conquer New York. She later wrote about her feisty attitude: 'I would stand up to them all with a single polka dot'.

She had the first of many exhibitions there in 1959. She met and inspired important artists including Donald Judd, Andy Warhol and Joseph Cornell, and her art was a part of exciting art developments such as pop art and minimalism. She was also one of the first artists to experiment with performance and action art.

As well as being an art pioneer, Yayoi Kusama put her creativity into other things including music, design, writing and fashion.

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Find out who is Yayoi Kusama. Find out about her dots, her art and infinity mirrors with this Tate Kids art homework guide, includes facts for kids.

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Surprising Facts

Being an astronaut is a tremendous commitment. Astronaut candidates - who tend to be selected in their 30s and 40s - usually leave prestigious careers for a chance at being an astronaut, starting again at the bottom of the rung. Training means long days at work and lots of travel. There's also no guarantee they'll make it into space.

Yet, more than 18,000 Americans competed in this round of NASA's astronaut selection. The new candidates will be announced Wednesday (June 7), and will report for basic training in August. Here's what it takes to be a NASA astronaut and what happens after the selection.

Astronaut requirements

What an astronaut "class" looks like

NASA has selected 22 "classes" of astronauts since the first group of seven astronauts in 1959 who were chosen for the Mercury program. The space program has grown and changed significantly since that time. The first few classes of astronauts were drawn largely from the military, especially test pilots - a group deemed ready to deal with the extreme dangers of space. But as NASA's program evolved, more diverse skill sets were needed.

For example, the fourth class of astronauts (in 1969) was known as "The Scientists," and included Harrison J. Schmitt, who was the only geologist to walk on the moon (during Apollo 17). Other notable classes include the eighth class in 1978 (including female, African-American and Asian-American selections), the 16th class in 1996 (the largest class, with 44 members selected for frequent space shuttle flights to build out the International Space Station) and the 21st class in 2013 (the first class with a 50/50 gender split. [ Building the International Space Station (Photos)]

In this photo: The most recent group of NASA astronauts, shown above, was selected in 2013. It was the first class to be evenly split between male and female candidates.

The vehicles they will use

Where the new astronauts will go

The new astronauts may begin their careers traveling to the International Space Station, or they may find themselves flying farther. It all depends on where United States space policy goes in the coming years, and what programs NASA finds itself involved in. The space station is scheduled to last until 2024, but could be extended until 2028 or even longer.

Other plans are more nebulous, but NASA has several ideas in mind. The agency is testing its Orion spacecraft, which is expected to make an uncrewed flight past the moon in 2019. (The agency considered putting astronauts on board, but decided not to due to the additional technical burden.) Orion would then carry humans to deep-space destinations in the 2020s and beyond.

Where next? NASA hopes to bring astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, if its current plan has support for that long. As a part of that, the agency recently announced a "deep-space gateway" space station near the moon that could help the astronauts train for deep-space missions, or prepare for a voyage to Mars.

In this photo: An artist's conception of the "deep-space gateway" space station that could be used near the moon in the coming years.

What astronauts do (most of the time)

What basic training looks like

Forging partnerships

Passing the selection process

Reporting for duty
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

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What It's Like to Become a NASA Astronaut: 10 Surprising Facts

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Being an astronaut is a tremendous commitment. Astronaut candidates - who tend to be selected in their 30s and 40s - usually leave prestigious careers for a chance at being an astronaut, starting again at the bottom of the rung. Training means long days at work and lots of travel.

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Who Is LeBron James?

LeBron James is an American basketball player with the Los Angeles Lakers. James first garnered national attention as the top high school basketball player in the country. With his unique combination of size, athleticism and court vision, he became a four-time NBA MVP. After leading the Miami Heat to titles in 2012 and 2013, James returned to Cleveland and helped the franchise claim its first championship in 2016.

Early Life and High School Basketball Career

James was born on December 30, 1984, in Akron, Ohio. At an early age, James showed a natural talent for basketball. He was recruited by St. Vincent-St. Mary High School to join their basketball team in 1999. Overall, James scored 2,657 points, 892 rebounds and 523 assists during his four years there.

As a freshman, James averaged 18 points per game. He helped the team to a Division III state title by scoring 25 points in the championship game. Word of his advanced basketball skills spread, and James received several honors for his performance.

As a high school sophomore, James was chosen for the USA Today All-USA First Team. He was the first sophomore ever selected for this award. His team also won the Division III state title for the second year in a row.

The following school year, James was named PARADE magazine's High School Boys Basketball Player of the Year and Gatorade Player of the Year. Following the end of his junior year, James was such a strong player that he contemplated going pro.

Deciding to finish his education, James had a tremendous senior year on the court. He averaged 31.6 points per game, helping his team clinch their third state title. The St. Vincent-St. Mary High School team also earned the top national ranking that year. James would soon emerge as one of the National Basketball Association's leading players.

Draft

With his impressive record, it was no surprise that James was the first player picked in the 2003 NBA Draft straight out of high school. The Cleveland Cavaliers signed the powerful young forward, and he proved to be a valuable addition to the then-struggling franchise. The team had ended the previous season in eighth place in the Eastern Conference.

Cleveland Cavaliers

During the 2003-04 season, James made history when he became the first member of the Cavalier franchise to win the NBA Rookie of the Year Award. He also became the youngest player - at only 20 years old - to receive this honor.

Additionally, James, averaging 20 points per game at this time, became one of only three rookies to accomplish this feat, putting him in the same company as Michael Jordan and Oscar Robertson.

James continued to excel professionally in the NBA the following season, upping his average points per game to 27.2. He made NBA history again in 2005 when he became the youngest player to score more than 50 points in one game.

In 2006, James helped his team defeat the Washington Wizards in the first round of playoff action. From there, the Cavaliers took on the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference semifinals. James scored an average of 26.6 per game in this postseason matchup, but it wasn't enough to secure victory for his team. While his team wasn't at the top of the rankings, James himself continued to receive special recognition for his abilities.

In 2006, James reached a new contract agreement with the Cavaliers. The team proved to be stronger competitors the following season, defeating Detroit to win the Eastern Conference. In the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs, however, the Cavaliers lost their championship bid in four consecutive games.

During the 2007-08 season, James continued to help the Cavaliers improve their standing in the Eastern Conference. The team made it to the semifinals, where they were defeated by the Boston Celtics in seven games. In terms of individual performance, James had a stellar year, outperforming such rival players as Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson by scoring an average of 30 points per game, the highest average in the NBA regular season.

Early in the 2008-09 season, sports journalists and fans began talking about James' future in the sport. He had the option to become a free agent in 2010, and there was much discussion as to where James would end up. Some journalists identified the New York Knicks as a potential suitor for the rising player.

James made several references to his impending free-agent status, but he was sure to downplay the matter. "I am focused on the team that I am on right now and winning a championship ... I don't think about making a change at this point," James told reporters.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S LEBRON JAMES FACT CARD

Miami Heat

Shortly after becoming a free agent, James announced that he would be joining the Miami Heat for the 2010-11 season. His fans in Cleveland were less than pleased, and many considered his departure a betrayal to his hometown.

Soon after James' announcement, Cleveland Cavaliers majority owner Dan Gilbert wrote an open letter declaring James' decision as "selfish," "heartless" and a "cowardly betrayal." Unfazed, James finished second in the league during his first season with the Heat, scoring 26.7 points per game.

The 2011-12 season saw major success for James and the Miami Heat. With his team's victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals, the superstar forward finally earned his first title. In the clinching Game 5, James scored 26 points, and had 11 rebounds and 13 assists. "I made a difficult decision to leave Cleveland, but I understood what my future was about," James told FOX Sports following the game. "I knew we had a bright future [in Miami]."

During the 2012-13 season, James made NBA history yet again: On January 16, 2013, at age 28, he became the youngest player to score 20,000 points, succeeding Bryant of the Lakers - who accomplished this feat when he was 29 - and becoming only the 38th player in NBA history to achieve this distinction. James made a jump shot the final seconds of the game, bringing his scoring total 20,001 and leading the Heat to a 92-75 victory over the Warriors.

Success followed the Heat to the end of the 2012-13 season: Following a hard-fought, six-game series against the Indiana Pacers to win the Eastern Conference, Miami outlasted the San Antonio Spurs in seven games to win its second consecutive NBA championship.

At the culmination of the 2013-14 season, Miami returned to the NBA Finals to face off against the Spurs again, this time losing to San Antonio after five games.

Return to Cleveland Cavaliers

In July of 2014, after opting out of his contract with the Heat and considering other teams, James announced that he would be returning to the Cavaliers.

Hampered by back and knee problems, James missed 13 of 82 regular-season games in 2014-15. However, he was as dominant as ever when healthy, averaging 25.3 points and 7.4 assists per game. James led the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals, becoming the first player in nearly 50 years to reach the championship round in five consecutive seasons. However, injuries to star teammates Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving damaged his hopes of claiming a third title, and the Cavaliers lost to the Golden State Warriors in six games.

Over the course of 2015-16, the Cavs overcame the distraction of a mid-season coaching change and breezed through the playoffs to earn a rematch with the Warriors, marking the sixth straight NBA Finals appearance for "King James." In perhaps the crowning achievement of his career, he led his team back from a 3-1 deficit, scoring 41 points in both Games 5 and 6, before recording a triple-double in Game 7 to give the Cavs their first championship in franchise history.

Voted Finals MVP, James said, "I came back to bring a championship to our city. I knew what I was capable of doing. I knew what I learned in the last couple years that I was gone, and I knew if I had to - when I came back - I knew I had the right ingredients and the right blueprint to help this franchise get back to a place that we've never been. That's what it was all about."

The following year, James again paced himself and took charge when necessary, driving the Cavs through the Eastern Conference to make an incredible seventh consecutive appearance in the NBA Finals. This time, with former MVP Kevin Durant added to the mix, the Warriors proved too formidable for James and his teammates, claiming the championship in five games.

For all his accomplishments, James achieved another first early in the 2017-18 NBA season: After yelling at a referee during a late November win over the Heat, he was ejected for the first time in 1,082 career games.

The superstar likely felt like yelling often during the course of a frustrating campaign, as an offseason trade that sent Irving to Boston for Isaiah Thomas failed to bear fruit and forced the Cavs to make another major deal before the All-Star break.

After averaging a career-best 9.1 assists in the regular season, James had to dig deep just to get the team out of the first round of the playoffs, delivering a brilliant 45-point effort to sink the Pacers in Game 7. The Cavs were again pushed to the limit two rounds later by the scrappy Celtics, but James scored 81 points over the last two games to pull out the series win and make his eighth straight NBA Finals appearance.

Game 1 of the rematch against Golden State went down to the wire, thanks to James's 51-point outburst, but Cleveland guard J.R. Smith inexplicably dribbled out the clock with the game tied in regulation, before the Warriors pulled away for the win in overtime. That represented the Cavs' best chance to get a leg up on their opponents, as the Warriors won the next three games handily to claim their third title in four years.

Afterward, with questions swirling about his future with the team, James revealed that he had played out the series with a broken right hand after punching a whiteboard in the aftermath of the Game 1 loss.

Los Angeles Lakers

On July 1, 2018, James announced that he was moving on to the next chapter of his career by signing a 4-year, $153.3 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, a storied franchise that counted Bryant, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson among its all-time greats.

The good vibes had worn off by midseason, as the Lakers sputtered through a 17-game stretch without their injured star.

With the team still struggling in late February 2019, James accused his teammates of losing focus over trade rumors, saying, "If you're still allowing distractions to affect the way you play, this is the wrong franchise to be a part of and you should just come in and be like, 'Listen, I can't do this.'"

When the Lakers were officially eliminated from playoff contention in March 2019, it snapped James' personal marks of 13 consecutive postseasons and eight straight NBA Finals appearances. Capping a difficult first season in Los Angeles, the Lakers announced that their star would miss the final six games because of his lingering groin injury.

Things got off to a much better start the following season, thanks in large part to the addition of athletic big man Anthony Davis to the roster. Spearheading the Lakers' rise to the top of the standings was James, who became the first player to record a triple-double against all 30 NBA teams in November 2019.

The following month, James added another accolade to his ever-growing list by earning AP Male Athlete of the Decade honors.

Championships and Rings

James participated in eight straight NBA championships from the 2010-11 season to the 2018-19 season. During that time, he captured three championship rings: twice with the Heat (2011-12 and 2012-13) and once with the Cavaliers (2015-16).

All-Star Games and MVPs

James was selected for the NBA All-Star Game for the first time in 2005 and would go on to earn a spot in the annual showcase in each of the next 15 seasons.

In January 2018, the NBA announced that James and Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry had topped the ballots and would serve as captains for that year's All-Star Game.

In 2006, James was named the Most Valuable Player in the NBA All-Star Game, a feat he would repeat in 2008 and 2018. James has also been named NBA MVP four times, in seasons 2008-09, 2009-10, 2011-12 and 2012-13.

Stats and Points

In January 2018, at age 33, James surpassed Bryant as the youngest player to accumulate 30,000 career points and became the seventh player in NBA history to achieve that milestone. The feat put him just more than 8,000 points shy of Abdul-Jabbar's all-time record of 38,387 points.

In 2019, James surpassed Jordan's career tally of 32,292 points to move into fourth place on the all-time list. In January 2020, he eclipsed Bryant's total of 33,643 points to slide into third place, one night before his predecessor's shocking death in a helicopter accident.

After 16 NBA seasons, James' stats included regular season per-game averages of:

27.2 points

38.6 minutes

0.736 free-throw percentage

0.343 3-point field-goal percentage

0.504 field-goal percentage

1.2 offensive rebounds

6.2 defensive rebounds

7.2 assists

0.8 blocks

1.6 steals

3.5 turnovers

Olympic Games

James competed on the U.S. Olympic basketball team during three Summer Olympic Games, in 2004, 2008 and 2012. James made his Olympic debut at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece. He and his teammates won bronze medals after defeating Lithuania. Argentina took home the gold after beating Italy in the finals.

In the summer of 2008, James traveled to Beijing, China, to play with the likes of Bryant, Jason Kidd and Dwyane Wade on the U.S. Olympic basketball team. This time around the U.S. team brought home the gold after defeating Spain in the final round.

James competed at his third Olympic Games in 2012, at the Summer Olympics in London, along with Durant, Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and several other top players. The U.S. basketball team took the gold medal - James' second consecutive Olympic gold.

Contract With Nike

In 2003, James signed several endorsement deals, including a deal with Nike for $90 million that could net him over $1 billion over his lifetime.

Other endorsements include Intel, Verizon, Coca-Cola, Beats by Dre and Kia Motors.

Salary and Earnings

In the 2016-17 season, James collected a $31 million salary, making him the third player to earn that much after Jordan and Bryant. The NBA superstar went on to sign a four-year, $153.3 million contract with the Lakers in July 2018. He's also a co-owner of the production company SpringHill Entertainment and has invested in Blaze Pizza.

In February 2019, Forbes magazine's estimated James' yearly earnings at $88.7 million, making him the NBA's highest-earning player for the fifth year in a row.

Wife and Kids

On January 1, 2012, James proposed to his high school sweetheart, Savannah Brinson. The couple married in a private ceremony with about 200 guests in San Diego on September 14, 2013.

James and Brinson have two sons and one daughter together. In October 2004, James welcomed his first son LeBron Jr. On June 14, 2007, Brinson gave birth to their second son, Bryce Maximus James. Their third child, daughter Zhuri James, was born on October 22, 2014.

LeBron James Family Foundation

Outside of the NBA, James has worked to help others. He established the LeBron James Family Foundation in 2004, along his mother Gloria, to help out children and single-parent families in need.

Among its many programs, the organization builds playgrounds in economically disadvantaged areas and hosts an annual bike-a-thon.

Outspoken Posts on Social Media

One of the world's most recognizable athletes, James hasn't been shy about expressing his views on social media. Among other issues, he displayed his support for Trayvon Martin after the teen's death in 2012, and he has clashed with U.S. President Donald Trump.

James waded into delicate territory in October 2019, after Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey posted a tweet in support of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters that ignited a Chinese media boycott of NBA preseason games in the country. James said he believed Morey was "misinformed" about the situation, although he later tweeted that he mainly took issue with the executive posting comments that could have exposed traveling players to danger.

The basketball superstar has also shown a playful side on social media, such as when he posted a picture of cartoon character Arthur clenching his first during the Cavaliers' slow start to the 2017-18 season.

'Space Jam 2'

James starred in Space Jam 2, the 2021 sequel to the 1996 hit starring Jordan. "The Space Jam collaboration is so much more than just me and the Looney Tunes getting together and doing this movie," James told The Hollywood Reporter.

"It's so much bigger. I'd just love for kids to understand how empowered they can feel and how empowered they can be if they don't just give up on their dreams."

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LeBron James became an immediate star after skipping college to join the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers. He led the Miami Heat to NBA titles in 2012 and 2013 and won another championship with Cleveland in 2016, before joining the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018.

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Yayoi Kusama – Obsessed with Polka Dots | Tate

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He won the best FIFA men's award

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Lebron became the all time scorer in NBA history.

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The person who created football was Walter Camp.

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Bethany began competitive surfing at age 8.

She began surfing one month after being attacked by the shark. They caught the shark and figured out it was a 14 foot Tiger shark.

Fun Fact:Bethany was attacked by a shark on October 31

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Sabrina Ionescu started playing basketball when she was 3 years old. Sabrina would spend hours outside playing basketball.

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Ronaldo Has won 5 UEFA champions leagues and the UEFA European Championship and the UEFA nations league.

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The Milky Way is known as a barred spiral galaxy. The diameter of the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years and it holds hundreds of billions of stars. The Milky Way is shaped like a big pinwheel in our eyes.

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Elon Musk took lots of risks because he was fueled by resilience & a visionary mindset. -Molly

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Sabrina was #1 pick in the WNBA draft in 2020! She is the New York Liberty point guard, and the 14th highest paid player. She has had a true love for basketball since she was 3 years old, spending every hour playing and practicing with her twin brother Eddie.

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The Green Bay Packers won the first super bowl.

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Cristiano Ronaldo one of the best football player of all time. Cristiano Ronaldo has won many trophies.

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Neymar is known for all of his skills, dribbling, shots, and all of his Brazilian moves. He is the national's all time goalscorer.

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Madisen Skinner was influenced to start playing volleyball by her older sister named Avery and she started to actually play volleyball at the age of 14. She is an amazing outside hitter with so many kills.

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He has been named the world's highest-paid athlete in 2016 and 2017, and the world's most famous athlete (by ESPN) in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

He won the FIFA/Ballon d'Or award for the best footballer in the world a record five times!

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Lebron James wrote a children's book to inspire younger kids and help them achieve their dreams.

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Jewish people who were taken captive were put into different districts,and to recognize if you were Jewish you would wear a six pointed star. So depending on your district you would get a badge.

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Football started with collage

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Who's better? MARTHER LUTHER KING JR, OR ROSA PARKS??? (remember black history month)

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I learned that the Milky Way Galaxy has been studied for more than ten years. The picture that they (NASA) has gotten from those past ten years was used to make one full picture of the whole milky way Galaxy.

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He outdoes Michael Jordan in 25 May 2017.

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Follow the inspiring timeline of LeBron James, from his rise as a high school prodigy to becoming an NBA legend, philanthropist, and cultural icon. Discover the milestones that define the King's legacy on and off the court.