If you see "A.B. Rowlands" twice on a Royal Navy roll call sheet, it's not a typo! For the first time in the Royal Navy's nearly 500-year history, a mother and son are in training together.
Michelle started as a part-time reservist before serving full-time and eventually transferring to the regular Royal Navy. She began part-time so she could pursue her dream of joining the Navy while keeping her regular job and raising her young children. At the time, she didn't think a full-time military career was possible. She sure showed…well, herself! Now, she’s working to qualify as a technician to maintain Navy aircrew survival equipment while her son, Thomas, is training to become an engineer in the submarine service when he turns 18.
Normally, recruits spend their training months far from home, making time with family hard to come by. But Michelle and Tom still squeeze in games of badminton, and Michelle shows no mercy when it comes to the state of Tom's uniforms. After all, some parts of being a mum don't stop just because you're both in the Navy!
Why did the chicken cross the road? They probably just wanted an excuse to hang out with crossing-guard, Brenda!
A town recently bid farewell to a local legend of a crossing guard, Brenda, who retired after 40 years. In the UK she was known as a "lollipop lady," but that's because of the shape of the stop sign crossing guards carry—not because she handed out candy. Still, by all accounts, Brenda was plenty sweet!
Although Brenda made the same journey nearly every day for four decades, her final day held one big surprise. Community members gathered to applaud her years of service and presented her with a certificate in recognition of everything she'd done.
Over the years, Brenda has broken up fights and even stepped between children and moving cars, so she's not easily shaken. But she was overwhelmed by the love and support shown at her retirement. Among those celebrating were current students, adults she had safely guided across the street as children, and, of course, her own family.
“Flush with cash” might need to turn into “flush that cash” if fake money keeps popping up! Counterfeit cash used to be a problem for mostly shops and retailers, but there’s been a recent rise in fake cash popping up in the home! That doesn’t mean that more of your neighborhood pals have decided to print their own money, or that fake bills are appearing out of thin air, but enough of it is in circulation that everyday people are going to make a purchase or deposit money with counterfeit cash, very possibly by accident.
In 2024, there were 99,000 fake notes in circulation. Last year, that doubled to 200,000, partly because of a rise in organized crime. While the fake bills make their way between hands and households and businesses, people become increasingly reliant on electronic methods of payment (like cards and Venmo), so they fall a bit out of practice of knowing what physical, paper money looks and feels like.
Unfortunately, it’s not always the people making counterfeit bills that are punished. Shops and retailers are hurting, and customers go into banks and post offices to deposit money that can’t be accepted because it ends up being fake.
The Major Oak has finally fallen. Figuratively. The famous tree still technically stands, but has been pronounced dead after a long life of as many as 1,200 years. The massive oak tree was well-known for being central to Robin Hood folklore, but it also stood out with its formidable trunk circumference of 11 meters, or 33 feet. That’s big enough for a large African elephant to hula hoop with.
The huge tree still stands tall, looking majestic with its craggly branches and massive reach, but it’s been in decline for years. This year is the first that it hasn’t put any leaves out, so experts deemed it deceased.
While it was certainly old, its demise was likely quickened by climate change, heat waves, and damage to the surrounding soil from people coming to admire the tree. Admirers may have meant well, but decades of foot traffic compacted the soil around the tree's roots, making it harder for the tree to absorb the water, nutrients, and minerals it needed.
It may not produce lush, green leaves anymore, but fans can still pay homage to The Major Oak. It will remain in its spot to decompose (which could take more than 100 years), and the legacy of the tree lives on in the form of saplings that have been grown from acorns and cuttings.
Skateboarding made its Olympic debut as an optional sport in 2020, and it'll become a permanent fixture in 2028. But long before the Olympics caught on, skaters had already found their spot.
Back in the 1970s, London's South Bank was known for something other than tourists and river views: skateboarders, drawn to the smooth concrete and sloped walls of the Undercroft Skate Space. Decades later, an exhibit is celebrating that space — a hollowed-out concrete bowl with a cult following — through art, memorabilia, and film.
The Undercroft is where a generation of skaters learned the sport (safety gear very much included). But for years, this free public space faced a real threat: developers tried repeatedly to shut it down or move skaters elsewhere.
The skaters didn't budge. Their persistence paid off — the space was saved, renovated, and eventually celebrated as a landmark. Today, skaters and BMX riders of every age still roll through the Undercroft, part of a community it helped build.
Every student, everywhere, knows the feeling: walking out of a big exam with no idea if you did well or completely bombed it. This year, that feeling hit an entire country at once.
In the UK, this year's math exams were unusually tough — tough enough that students flooded social media with one shared message: "that test kicked my butt." And it wasn't about skipping study time or being dramatic. Many said the exam's structure meant you could know the material and still not be able to show it.
Here's why: the questions were worded differently than in past years. If a student got stuck on the first part of a question, they couldn't move on to the rest — like having the perfect ice cream sundae recipe, but the ice cream and toppings are locked in a vault guarded by a saber-toothed parabola.
Not everyone agreed the test was actually harder. Some math experts said the calculations themselves were standard, and students should have been able to solve them. So who's right?
It's not really a students vs. experts argument. When exam boards set the grades for a test like this, they review a wide range of evidence to make sure students end up with fair results — not just the raw difficulty of the questions. The organization that oversees UK exams also said it will keep a close eye on this one going forward.
In late May, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded during a routine engine test. No one was hurt. But the explosion badly damaged the launch pad, and that's a serious problem.
New Glenn had flown once before, in a test flight in January 2025. Now the next flight is delayed by months. That delay affects more than just Blue Origin — it pushes back NASA's entire Moon program.
Here's the plan that's now on hold: a robotic lander was set to touch down near the Moon's south pole later this year, scouting the best site for a future Moon base. A crewed mission would follow in 2027. Then two more astronaut landings. Then, in 2028, construction would begin on the base itself.
Each step in that timeline now needs to move back.
Not all the news is bad. While Blue Origin investigates what went wrong, rival company SpaceX successfully launched its own rocket, a Falcon 9. One setback hasn't slowed the space industry down.
Why did the various wildlife species cross the road? To test the new heathland bridge!
It may look like a bridge that’s just unfinished, but the dirt and grass butting up against the pavement is very intentional.
This heathland bridge separating two commons is the first of its kind to include a network of natural routes that encourage species to reunite for the first time in over 40 years. Man, we would not remember ANYONE’S names! The bridge is home to mosses and vegetative grounds, as well as sand that could be a habitat to species like sand lizards, adders, foxes, deer, and bugs. Lots of bugs.
The bridge connects the heathland on either side, which the Wildlife Trusts are working to restore, so the aim of the bridge is to let wildlife move from side to side, building up the population and their resilience. But, it wasn’t as simple as leaving the bridge half-paved. Crews had to create the heathland by distributing acidic sand before adding areas of ground taken directly from larger heathland sites.
It might feel odd to say you’re happy to see a shark, but that was the case for three divers for an environmental charity. The team was clearing lost fishing nets from a wreck (What? That’s not on your chores list?) when they spotted a great white shark swimming right past them. The group was far offshore between Sicily and the Tunisian coast, so there was no reason to alarm beachgoers splashing around at the beach, but the sighting was still a big deal.
Due to factors like heavy fishing and nets that accidentally catch sharks, great white sharks in the Mediterranean are critically endangered, and sightings like this one may be the push that governments need to create marine protected areas.
When you join your school band, you probably expect to perform in your school auditorium for friends and family. No shade to Gramps, but imagine the excitement when a group of kids learned that they were going to be performing at the massive Anfield Stadium, home of Liverpool Football Club. Multiply that by 10,000,000, and that’s a fraction of what they may have felt when they learned they would be performing a Foo Fighters song there FOR the Foo Fighters!
The Bell Tower Beats is a band from Anfield Road Primary School, who had the pleasure (and pressure) of playing "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters for the actual members of the Foo Fighters. The performance was organized by a year three teacher, and has gone viral on news and media sources. Not only was the performance fun, but it helped bring attention to the opportunity to join the school band.
Okay, ChatGPT can't cure COVID, but using AI to develop vaccines has shown promising results.
Even though COVID vaccines ultimately saved lives, many were lost in the early days of the disease because scientists couldn’t develop the vaccine faster than the virus spread, and they had to update it when the virus mutated. Now, a team at the University of Cambridge has a way to get ahead of things.
They took the genetic blueprint of multiple coronaviruses related to the one that caused COVID-19 (think: the guest list to the worst family reunion ever) and are using artificial intelligence to work on a vaccine that would protect against a range of the viruses. It’s the first time a vaccine’s key component has been designed by AI and tested on people, but the trial’s work could open up a world of possibilities. Success would signify that we can use an AI antigen that’s safe and, importantly, can represent a whole group of viruses. That would mean we could move away from chasing a particular infection when it happens and towards preventing a whole family of viruses.
It’s too soon to know for sure, but scientists are hopeful that this technology can be implemented to replace the flu vaccine, prepare for bird flu, or protect against hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola.
If you were looking up at the sky during any of the World Cup games in Mexico, you may have seen a few Black Hawk helicopters. You also probably missed some good soccer. Pay attention!
But the helicopters weren’t meant to be a distraction — they were patrolling as part of the efforts to help keep the people of Monterrey, Mexico, and 300,000 visiting fans safe. The area saw a lot of crime earlier this year, so the helicopters were brought in (in addition to the more than 1,500 street cameras that peppered the stadium’s area) to protect mainly against crimes like phone theft and robbery.
Working with these cameras and helicopters were robot dogs, which patrolled the stadium using facial recognition and could detect early signs of crowd trouble and alert their masters. Some people were skeptical of the robot dogs, but at least there was no danger of them going potty on the pitch.
If you see "A.B. Rowlands" twice on a Royal Navy roll call sheet, it's not a typo! For the first time in the Royal Navy's nearly 500-year history, a mother and son are in training together.
Michelle started as a part-time reservist before serving full-time and eventually transferring to the regular Royal Navy. She began part-time so she could pursue her dream of joining the Navy while keeping her regular job and raising her young children. At the time, she didn't think a full-time military career was possible. She sure showed…well, herself! Now, she’s working to qualify as a technician to maintain Navy aircrew survival equipment while her son, Thomas, is training to become an engineer in the submarine service when he turns 18.
Normally, recruits spend their training months far from home, making time with family hard to come by. But Michelle and Tom still squeeze in games of badminton, and Michelle shows no mercy when it comes to the state of Tom's uniforms. After all, some parts of being a mum don't stop just because you're both in the Navy!
Why did the chicken cross the road? They probably just wanted an excuse to hang out with crossing-guard, Brenda!
A town recently bid farewell to a local legend of a crossing guard, Brenda, who retired after 40 years. In the UK she was known as a "lollipop lady," but that's because of the shape of the stop sign crossing guards carry—not because she handed out candy. Still, by all accounts, Brenda was plenty sweet!
Although Brenda made the same journey nearly every day for four decades, her final day held one big surprise. Community members gathered to applaud her years of service and presented her with a certificate in recognition of everything she'd done.
Over the years, Brenda has broken up fights and even stepped between children and moving cars, so she's not easily shaken. But she was overwhelmed by the love and support shown at her retirement. Among those celebrating were current students, adults she had safely guided across the street as children, and, of course, her own family.
“Flush with cash” might need to turn into “flush that cash” if fake money keeps popping up! Counterfeit cash used to be a problem for mostly shops and retailers, but there’s been a recent rise in fake cash popping up in the home! That doesn’t mean that more of your neighborhood pals have decided to print their own money, or that fake bills are appearing out of thin air, but enough of it is in circulation that everyday people are going to make a purchase or deposit money with counterfeit cash, very possibly by accident.
In 2024, there were 99,000 fake notes in circulation. Last year, that doubled to 200,000, partly because of a rise in organized crime. While the fake bills make their way between hands and households and businesses, people become increasingly reliant on electronic methods of payment (like cards and Venmo), so they fall a bit out of practice of knowing what physical, paper money looks and feels like.
Unfortunately, it’s not always the people making counterfeit bills that are punished. Shops and retailers are hurting, and customers go into banks and post offices to deposit money that can’t be accepted because it ends up being fake.
The Major Oak has finally fallen. Figuratively. The famous tree still technically stands, but has been pronounced dead after a long life of as many as 1,200 years. The massive oak tree was well-known for being central to Robin Hood folklore, but it also stood out with its formidable trunk circumference of 11 meters, or 33 feet. That’s big enough for a large African elephant to hula hoop with.
The huge tree still stands tall, looking majestic with its craggly branches and massive reach, but it’s been in decline for years. This year is the first that it hasn’t put any leaves out, so experts deemed it deceased.
While it was certainly old, its demise was likely quickened by climate change, heat waves, and damage to the surrounding soil from people coming to admire the tree. Admirers may have meant well, but decades of foot traffic compacted the soil around the tree's roots, making it harder for the tree to absorb the water, nutrients, and minerals it needed.
It may not produce lush, green leaves anymore, but fans can still pay homage to The Major Oak. It will remain in its spot to decompose (which could take more than 100 years), and the legacy of the tree lives on in the form of saplings that have been grown from acorns and cuttings.
Skateboarding made its Olympic debut as an optional sport in 2020, and it'll become a permanent fixture in 2028. But long before the Olympics caught on, skaters had already found their spot.
Back in the 1970s, London's South Bank was known for something other than tourists and river views: skateboarders, drawn to the smooth concrete and sloped walls of the Undercroft Skate Space. Decades later, an exhibit is celebrating that space — a hollowed-out concrete bowl with a cult following — through art, memorabilia, and film.
The Undercroft is where a generation of skaters learned the sport (safety gear very much included). But for years, this free public space faced a real threat: developers tried repeatedly to shut it down or move skaters elsewhere.
The skaters didn't budge. Their persistence paid off — the space was saved, renovated, and eventually celebrated as a landmark. Today, skaters and BMX riders of every age still roll through the Undercroft, part of a community it helped build.
Every student, everywhere, knows the feeling: walking out of a big exam with no idea if you did well or completely bombed it. This year, that feeling hit an entire country at once.
In the UK, this year's math exams were unusually tough — tough enough that students flooded social media with one shared message: "that test kicked my butt." And it wasn't about skipping study time or being dramatic. Many said the exam's structure meant you could know the material and still not be able to show it.
Here's why: the questions were worded differently than in past years. If a student got stuck on the first part of a question, they couldn't move on to the rest — like having the perfect ice cream sundae recipe, but the ice cream and toppings are locked in a vault guarded by a saber-toothed parabola.
Not everyone agreed the test was actually harder. Some math experts said the calculations themselves were standard, and students should have been able to solve them. So who's right?
It's not really a students vs. experts argument. When exam boards set the grades for a test like this, they review a wide range of evidence to make sure students end up with fair results — not just the raw difficulty of the questions. The organization that oversees UK exams also said it will keep a close eye on this one going forward.
In late May, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded during a routine engine test. No one was hurt. But the explosion badly damaged the launch pad, and that's a serious problem.
New Glenn had flown once before, in a test flight in January 2025. Now the next flight is delayed by months. That delay affects more than just Blue Origin — it pushes back NASA's entire Moon program.
Here's the plan that's now on hold: a robotic lander was set to touch down near the Moon's south pole later this year, scouting the best site for a future Moon base. A crewed mission would follow in 2027. Then two more astronaut landings. Then, in 2028, construction would begin on the base itself.
Each step in that timeline now needs to move back.
Not all the news is bad. While Blue Origin investigates what went wrong, rival company SpaceX successfully launched its own rocket, a Falcon 9. One setback hasn't slowed the space industry down.
Why did the various wildlife species cross the road? To test the new heathland bridge!
It may look like a bridge that’s just unfinished, but the dirt and grass butting up against the pavement is very intentional.
This heathland bridge separating two commons is the first of its kind to include a network of natural routes that encourage species to reunite for the first time in over 40 years. Man, we would not remember ANYONE’S names! The bridge is home to mosses and vegetative grounds, as well as sand that could be a habitat to species like sand lizards, adders, foxes, deer, and bugs. Lots of bugs.
The bridge connects the heathland on either side, which the Wildlife Trusts are working to restore, so the aim of the bridge is to let wildlife move from side to side, building up the population and their resilience. But, it wasn’t as simple as leaving the bridge half-paved. Crews had to create the heathland by distributing acidic sand before adding areas of ground taken directly from larger heathland sites.
It might feel odd to say you’re happy to see a shark, but that was the case for three divers for an environmental charity. The team was clearing lost fishing nets from a wreck (What? That’s not on your chores list?) when they spotted a great white shark swimming right past them. The group was far offshore between Sicily and the Tunisian coast, so there was no reason to alarm beachgoers splashing around at the beach, but the sighting was still a big deal.
Due to factors like heavy fishing and nets that accidentally catch sharks, great white sharks in the Mediterranean are critically endangered, and sightings like this one may be the push that governments need to create marine protected areas.
When you join your school band, you probably expect to perform in your school auditorium for friends and family. No shade to Gramps, but imagine the excitement when a group of kids learned that they were going to be performing at the massive Anfield Stadium, home of Liverpool Football Club. Multiply that by 10,000,000, and that’s a fraction of what they may have felt when they learned they would be performing a Foo Fighters song there FOR the Foo Fighters!
The Bell Tower Beats is a band from Anfield Road Primary School, who had the pleasure (and pressure) of playing "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters for the actual members of the Foo Fighters. The performance was organized by a year three teacher, and has gone viral on news and media sources. Not only was the performance fun, but it helped bring attention to the opportunity to join the school band.
Okay, ChatGPT can't cure COVID, but using AI to develop vaccines has shown promising results.
Even though COVID vaccines ultimately saved lives, many were lost in the early days of the disease because scientists couldn’t develop the vaccine faster than the virus spread, and they had to update it when the virus mutated. Now, a team at the University of Cambridge has a way to get ahead of things.
They took the genetic blueprint of multiple coronaviruses related to the one that caused COVID-19 (think: the guest list to the worst family reunion ever) and are using artificial intelligence to work on a vaccine that would protect against a range of the viruses. It’s the first time a vaccine’s key component has been designed by AI and tested on people, but the trial’s work could open up a world of possibilities. Success would signify that we can use an AI antigen that’s safe and, importantly, can represent a whole group of viruses. That would mean we could move away from chasing a particular infection when it happens and towards preventing a whole family of viruses.
It’s too soon to know for sure, but scientists are hopeful that this technology can be implemented to replace the flu vaccine, prepare for bird flu, or protect against hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola.
If you were looking up at the sky during any of the World Cup games in Mexico, you may have seen a few Black Hawk helicopters. You also probably missed some good soccer. Pay attention!
But the helicopters weren’t meant to be a distraction — they were patrolling as part of the efforts to help keep the people of Monterrey, Mexico, and 300,000 visiting fans safe. The area saw a lot of crime earlier this year, so the helicopters were brought in (in addition to the more than 1,500 street cameras that peppered the stadium’s area) to protect mainly against crimes like phone theft and robbery.
Working with these cameras and helicopters were robot dogs, which patrolled the stadium using facial recognition and could detect early signs of crowd trouble and alert their masters. Some people were skeptical of the robot dogs, but at least there was no danger of them going potty on the pitch.