the gist time
TRANSCRIPT
VOLUME
ONE
History of Teddy Bear (pages 8-9)
The Baobab Tree (page 4)
Pied Piper Of Hamelin (page 5)
The Roles Of
Parents Against
Bullying (page 6)
The Clever
Wife (page 10)
●Kiddies News (Page 1-2)
●Inside a cave in France (Page 3)
●Fun Zone (Page 7)
●Glory Kiddies Time (Page 11)
●Around The World (Page 12)
PUBLISHED AND PRODUCED BY:
©Golven Kiddies Network 2014
Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.
| www.facebook.com/golvenkiddiesnetwork
| www.twitter.com/golven_network
| gplus.to/golvennetwork
Biblical Salvation
A bus driver in Ohio had his life saved,
when a Bible in his pocket stopped a
bullet fired at his chest.
The driver, Rickey Wagoner, had
stopped to fix a problem with his bus
when he was attacked by three youths.
One of them shot him twice in the chest; another slashed
his arm with a knife.
Wagoner managed to seize the weapons and stabbed one
of his assailants in the leg with a pen. "He hollered and
that's when they all ran," he told the police.
"There was obviously some kind of intervention involved in this
incident, because he probably should not be here," a police ser-
geant commented.
Blue Moo-vies
A worried cow is dead, three cars are severely damaged
and two men are in
jail in a case that
came to light after a
New York farmer
put up a video in his
barn to try to dis-
covered why his
cows were worried
and not producing
milk.
When he viewed the
video, he called the
police who pieced
together a picture alleging that one of the men covered him-
self in jello and had sex with a cow while the other filmed it.
The cow then appeared traumatised and wandered into the
middle of a road where it was hit by three cars and killed.
The cars were badly damaged.
The two men have been charged with sexual misconduct with a
cow.
The Folding Car
As the world’s population is increasing, there is one
thing that is obviously shrinking. Space on Earth! We
have space savers everywhere. Cabinets, drawers and
shelves that can organize our house efficiently. Now
there is a space saver car that folds on its own and
saves you a lot of space in your garage or a parking
lot.
How many times have you found yourself in a tight
spot for parking? What if a car could shrink and you
could park two or three in the place of one.
Researchers at Korea Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology have just achieved that. They have
built a foldable, compact electric car that can be used
either as a personal car or part of the pub-
lic transportation. It is called Armadillo -T as it curls
up in to a ball like an armadillo.
This micro car shrinks from its original length of 2.8
meters (110 inches) down to almost half, or 1.65 me-
ters (65 inches). It can also be controlled remotely with
a smartphone. It can run at a maximum speed of
60km/hr.
Page 1
The Thinnest Glass
Sometimes strange discoveries are done by chance. Imagine
their surprise when researchers at Cornell and Germany’s
University of Ulm discovered that,they had unknowingly creat-
ed the thinnest glass. Their discovery is recorded in Guinness
Book of World Records.
David A. Muller, professor of applied and engineering physics
and director of the Kavli Institute at Cornell found it. Glass is
made up of silicon and oxygen molecules. Here, the glass is
so thin that, the individual molecules are clearly visible under
a microscope.
So, what led to the formation of this glass? The scientists
were actually making graphene. It is a different form of car-
bon. This used some copper foils in a quartz furnace. While
they were working on it, they noticed some dirt. The dirt was
actually glass made up of silicon and oxygen.
Where did silicon and oxygen come from? Some air leaked
and caused the copper to react with the quartz which pro-
duced silicon and oxygen. This produced the glass layer on
the would-be pure graphene.
Spider Silk or Electrical Conductor?
Spider silk is astonishingly strong and sturdy. No won-
der Spiderman roams around the city using the spider
silk as steel bars. It is finer than a human hair and five
times stronger than the steel wire of the same diameter.
It is extremely stretchable, and some kind of spider silk
can also transmit light.
Looking at these exceptional strengths that the silk pos-
sesses,it is hardly a surprise that researchers at Florida
State University’s National High MagneticField Lab
have used it and changed the Spider silk to conduct
electricity. How did they do that? They coated spider
silk with a very thin layer of carbon nanotubes, which
are also stretchable and flexible but conduct electricity
as well as a copper wire.
They successfully used electrical circuits made by this
coated spider silk and used it in monitoring heart pulse.
It can also be used for monitoring relative humidity
changes.
Such tiny electrical conductors, huh!
Sometimes the best materials are natural, you only
have to look around.
Page 2
One day in 1940, five young boys were hunting for rab-
bits in the hills near the town of Montignac, France.
The dog that they had brought along with them, named
Robot, suddenly disappeared. The boys began search-
ing for the dog on a hill called Lascaux. They heard
Robot’s barks and followed them to a small hole in the
hill; the dog had fallen into this hole and could not get
out.
One of the boys climbed down into the hole to fetch
the dog. He found himself in a cave 25 feet below the
surface. When he struck a match, he couldn’t believe
his eyes. All around him on the walls of the cave were
paintings of horses, bulls, stags, and other animals. What
the boy didn’t know at the time was that these paintings
were the work of primitive people who had lived in the re-
gion, and that no one had seen the paintings for 15,000
years!
The cave paintings of
Lascaux, France are
probably the world’s
most famous cave paint-
ings. Each year people
come from around the
world to see the artwork
done by their ancestors
many thousands of
years ago. These paint-
ings were made long
before the first cities ap-
peared on earth.
But the paintings at Lascaux are not the oldest paintings in
the world, or even in France. For not far from Lascaux, a
block of stone was found bearing pictures of animals that
scientists believe date from around the year 25,000 B.C.!
Page 3
This tree is called ‘The tree of life’
This tree is called ‘Bottle tree’
This tree is called ‘Monkey bread tree’
This tree is called ‘Upside down tree’
This tree is called the Baobab tree. This tree is found in
dry areas of Madagascar, Africa and Australia. In fact, this
tree is the National Tree of Madagascar.
There is an interesting reason behind every name this tree
has. It is called ‘the tree of life’ because it provides shelter,
clothing, food, and water for the animals and humans. Grown
up trees are often hollow, a perfect cosy space for anyone to
live! The bark and stem are used for making clothes.
The leaves and vitamin-C rich fruits are eaten. Clefts of the
large branches are
used to store rain-
water for people to
use later. Did you
know in the Disney
movie “Lion King”,
Rafiki and Simba
often hung around
the tree of life?
Why is this
tree called bottle
tree? The shape of
the tree clearly holds
the clue. Notice the
enormous trunk. Doesn’t it resemble a bottle? And just like a
bottle can hold water, the trunk can hold up to 120,000 litres of
water.
And the name Monkey bread? You must wonder. Seems
like an unusual name for a tree. This tree’s fruits are large
pods known as ‘monkey bread’. They are favorite fruits of
monkeys hanging around!
A baobab tree is leafless most of the year. The barren branches look like roots sticking up in the air. It looks exactly like a tree that is upside down! There are many legends be-hind why it is like that. One legend says that, when God made the world he gave each animal a tree. Hyena got the baobab. Foolish hyena, instead of planting it the right way planted it upside down!!
Many Africans have another story to tell. Baobab tree was
unhappy with its looks from the time it was created by God. It
was whiny and yelled at God all the time for being partial and
making it unattractive. One day God, fed up of his baseless
complaints, came back to Earth. He pulled it from the
ground, turned it over, and replanted it upside down. With his
mouth now buried in the ground, baobab couldn’t complain
anymore.
Baobab trees can live up to thousands of years. People say
when they die, they collapse into a heap of mushy, hairy pulp
that burns by itself, or it turns into dust that gets blown away
by the wind only to create new baobab trees!!
Page 4
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a folk tale, among others
written down by the Brothers Grimm. It tells about a disas-
ter in the town of Hamelin, Germany, that supposedly oc-
curred in the year 1284. In that year a man came to
Hamelin claiming to be a rat-catcher. The people of
Hamelin promised him payment for killing the rats. So the
man took a pipe, attracted the rats by his music and made
them follow him to the Weser river, where they all drowned.
Despite this success the people reneged on their promises
and did not pay the rat-catcher.
He left the town, but returned several weeks later. While
the inhabitants were in the church, he played again a melo-
dy, now attracting the children of Hamelin. 130 boys and
girls followed him out of the town, were lured into a cave
and sealed. Depending on the version, at most two children
survived.
Although there has been a lot of research, no clear expla-
nation can be given these days of what historical event is
behind the reports.
The oldest remaining written source is from ca. 1440.
Reportedly there has been a law for a long time, forbidding
singing and music in one particular street of Hamelin, out of
respect for the victims.
The Pied Piper story is heavily referenced by the Russian
poet Marina Tsvetaeva in her poem The Rat-catcher.
There is a poem by Robert Browning based on the tale,
which was published in 1888.
The first two verses of the poem, THE PIED
PIPER OF HAMELIN, by Robert Browning
I.
Hamelin town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the south-ern side
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, what a pity
II.
Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles.
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sun-day hats,
And even spoiled the wom-en's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
Page 5
Bullying is more than just children fighting. It is a continued abuse that can leave lifelong scars. It ’s not the same harm-
less act that it used to be earlier.
Bullies Unlimited
Bullying cuts across all socio-economic classes and occurs in cities and
suburbs. Children in primary schools are twice as likely to be bullied as
those in secondary schools, because the children in primary schools are
younger and weaker; according to a study of approximately 150,000
children, bullying is more violent in the secondary schools.
Victims of bullying are likely to be anxious, passive, sensitive, physi-
cally weak children who feel they deserve the abuse and are suscepti-
ble to depression and poor self-esteem.
Parents should be alert to signs of possible bullying, since children
may hide problems and be unwilling to talk about being bullied because
they're afraid the bully will punish them. Children may be victims when
they:
Are reluctant to go to school,
Suddenly do poorly in class,
Don't invite classmates home to play,
Are moody and have sudden displays of temper, or
Ask for extra school supplies or lunch money (which is often extorted by a bully).
A parent who steps in to help a child may be accused of being overprotective, so many parents wonder to what degree
they should let children work these problems out themselves. But experts say that, bullied children have difficulty dealing with
the abuse themselves and need adult guidance.
When a child complains about a bully, parents should:
● Take the complaints seriously,
Role-play with the child on solutions to volatile situations,
Keep a journal of the abuse,
Discuss incidents with teachers or school staff,
Work out a plan of action with the school, and
Monitor the plan's effectiveness.
To prevent children from being chronic victims of bullies, parents should foster their kids' self-esteem and find ways to help
the child avoid the victimizing situations.
Page 6
Parents should be alert to signs of possible
bullying, since children may hide problems
and be unwilling to talk about being bullied
because they're afraid the bully will punish
them.
Most people born in this century have probably encountered teddy bears during their lives, for the teddy bear was devel-
oped around the turn of the century. Toy bears developed out of admiration for real
bears. About 110,000 years ago, Neanderthal hunters collected skulls of a large
brown bear (now extinct) in a shrine where the Cult of the Bear worshiped for over
50,000 years. In modern times, the bear is still considered a symbol of strength,
courage, and endurance. Bears share many characteristics with humans, including
the abilities to stand upright and to hug, and they also fiercely protect their cubs.
Bears are sometimes called the "clowns of the woods" because they dance, sit on
their haunches, and roll head over hind paws.
The teddy bear was born in two parts of the
world at about the same time. In 1903 in
Giengen, Germany, Margaret Steiff made toy
animals out of felt in a small factory owned by
her family. Her nephew, Richard Stieff, encour-
aged her to make a bear based on his sketch-
es following a visit to the Stuttgart Zoo.
Margaret was afraid a toy bear would be too
frightening, so she softened the bear's snout
into a friendly, pert nose and gave him a slight-
ly hunched back like a real bear. She cut a pattern out of brown mohair pile fabric and
created a bear whose head, arms, and legs were articulated so they could move inde-
pendently and so the bear could sit or stand. The toy was stuffed with excelsior (wood
shavings used as packing material), and it had shoe-button eyes and an embroidered
nose and other features. At a toy show in Leipzig, Germany, Richard displayed the
bear, which caught the attention of an American toy buyer who ordered 3,000 bears.
Steiff ’s bears in many variations from Margaret's original have been made in the Steiff
factory in Germany ever since, where thousands are now produced every day.
In November 1902,in the United State of America, President Theodore Roosevelt and some of his friends went on a hunting trip to Missis-sippi. After hours of searching, Roosevelt and his group had not come across any wild animals. Finally, the group did track down and surrounded a helpless bear. One of the guides asked the president to shoot the bear so he could win a hunting trophy. The president refused, and news reporters throughout the country spread the story of Roo-sevelt's kind act.
Not long after this took place, a famous cartoonist named Clifford Berryman drew a car-
toon based on Roosevelt 's rescue of the bear. When a store owner, Morris Michtom
in Brooklyn saw the cartoon, he decided to make toy bears to sell in his shop. He asked
President Roosevelt for permission to use the name "Teddy's Bear" for his toys, as a
reminder of the bear Roosevelt had set free. Nowadays, everyone knows these toys as
Teddy Bears, but few people know that they were named after President Theodore
"Teddy" Roosevelt.
Morris Michtom
Page 8
Clifford Berryman
The cartoon showed President Theodore Roosevelt holding a gun, with his back towards the bear. His gestures portray refusal to kill the bear. The sketch has a punch line that read, 'Drawing the Line in Mississippi'. This cartoon was drawn by Clifford Berryman.
●After the invention of the Teddy Bear, this toy craze nearly swept the entire globe. Soon after this, President Theodore Roosevelt made the Teddy Bear his offi-cial mascot for his political campaigns. ●In America, Michtom sold these teddy bears under Ideal Novelty and Toy Co., which mainly supplied the homeland. In Germany, the Steiffs made more subtle and cute versions of the Teddy Bear, which ruled the European markets. ●Many competitors later joined the race to make toy bears, post World War I. The 1920s saw more companies making this toy. Though World War II affected the pro-duction of Teddy Bears everywhere, its production picked up pace again after every-thing got back to normal. ●New and prettier designs of the Teddy Bear were introduced in the global market. The 1970s saw even adults fancying the soft toy with great interest. The new de-signs were appealing indeed. As more and more people began to know about the his-tory of the Teddy Bear, the demand for old bears and designs increased even further. ●The Steiffs then produced the first ever edition of old bears, (replica bears), aimed at attracting more soft toy collectors than kids, in the 1980s. In 1984, the world's first bear museum was opened in England.
Teddy Bear's Journey Since Invention
Page 9
Long ago, there lived a lazy man. He never wanted to work, and was always looking for an easy way to get food. One
day, as he was passing by a temple, he saw a mango tree full of juicy mangoes. He climbed up on the compound wall of
the temple to steal the mangoes.
The temple also had a pond full of fish. As soon as the lazy man noticed the fish, he jumped into the compound. Being
lazy, he didn't even bother to bend. He used his hands to pluck the mangoes and his feet to catch the fish. Stuffing both
in his bag, he ran home. "Here, I have brought some good food today," he said to his wife, taking out the fish and some
mangoes from his bag.
At first, his wife excited to see such delicious food as they
had not eaten mangoes and fish for a long time. But then she
thought," He never goes to work; how did he manage to bring
home the mangoes and the fish?" She took the bag from her
husband and asked," Where did you get these from, dear?"
The husband said with pride," I stole them from the temple
compound." The wife was shocked to hear this! “Earlier my
husband was lazy, now he has become a thief too! How
shameful!" she thought.
So, the clever wife decided to teach her lazy husband a les-
son. She pretended to be happy and said," Good that you
stole from the temple compound; there are plenty of mangoes
and fish there. I will prepare a delicious feast today. Go and
take a bath in the meantime."
With happy thoughts of the feast, the man went to take a bath
while his wife went into the kitchen to cook the fish. As she
prepared the meal, its mouth-watering aroma spread in the
entire house. "Air can't resist the temptation!" thought the lazy
man, finishing his bath, quickly. His mouth began to water. "Come quickly, dear!" called out his wife. "The food is almost
ready."
Just as she heard her husband's footsteps, she quickly untied her hair, picked up the pan of fish in her hand and stood
up.
As soon as her husband entered the kitchen, he saw a horrid-looking figure staring at him. "How dare you steal from my
temple?" yelled the wife. "W...What! Your temple!" asked the man, scared. "Yes, I am the Goddess of the temple," re-
plied the wife, angrily. "I saw you stealing from my mango tree and my pond! Now I have taken possession of your wife's
body. And I am going to kill you!" Hearing this, the man fell to his knees and begged for mercy." Then go and throw this
vessel of fish into the pond and swear by me that you won't be lazy anymore, and that you will work hard, and that you
will never steal again," said the wife. "I promise, O Goddess!" said the man.
He threw the vessel of fish in the pond and vowed never to steal again. From that day on, he was a changed man and
not lazy anymore. Thus, the clever wife had taught her husband a valuable lesson.
Page 10
Riddles
Question I arrive once in every second, once in every
minute and once in every year. What am I? The letter E.
Question What always ends everything? The letter G.
Question If you have me, you want to share me. If you
share me, you haven't got me. What am I? A Secret.
Aunt Edna
A small boy turned to his Aunt Edna and said: "My
goodness, you're ugly!"
His mother overheard the remark and was ap-
palled.
She took him to one side and gave him a real tell-
ing-off before ordering him to go back and say sor-
ry to Aunt Edna.
Suitably chastened, the boy went over and said
quietly: "Aunt Edna, I'm sorry you're ugly."
DID YOU KNOW?
Page 11
Widest mouth - world record set by Francisco Domingo Joaquim ROME, Italy-- Francisco Domingo Joaquim- aka the
Angolan Jaw of Awe - from Sambizanga in Angola, who
can even fit a Coke can sideways in his 17cm-wide mouth,
won the World's Widest Mouth title at the Big Mouth
competition in Rome, setting the new world record for the
Widest mouth.
Joaquim, who is known as Chiquinho and dubbed the An-
golan Jaw of Awe, has hailed his new world record as "a
dream come true".
Contestants crammed their cake holes with a whole host of items including saucers, coffee cups and beer bottles but
nobody's mouth could beat Francisco and his can of coke.
Ever since researchers tracked him down to his hometown in Angola, his videos have become a web sensation.
He was tracked down by Guinness World Records after becoming a YouTube hero. After two years of searching, they
tracked him down to his hometown in Angola.
The 20-year-old, whose mouth is 17cm wide, shot to stardom on the streets of Luanda, the capital of Angola, performing
jaw-dropping tricks.
Timothy Doner Timothy Doner
learnt 23 languages just in
a matter of few weeks.
Even Doner did not know
about his hidden talent
until he started learning
Hebrew, which he easi-
ly picked up within a
week. Now Doner is being
called by experts as
‘hyperpolyglot‘ often re-
ferred to a person who is
proficient in remarkable
number of languages.
There are very few people in the world like that!
23 languages spoken by Doner are Hindi, Arabic, Croatian,
Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Hausa, Hebrew,
Indonesian, isiXhosa (an official language of South Africa),
Italian, Mandarin, Ojibwe (a Native American language),
Persian, Pashto, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Turkish, Wolof,
Yiddish.
Toda Woman
The Todas are a tribe of peo-
ple who live in southern India.
Many of the Todas’ customs
are not shared by any of the
other people who live around
them. The Todas practice sor-
cery, live in beehive-shaped
huts, and observe a marriage
custom that allows a woman
to have more than one hus-
band.
It is possible for a Toda
woman to have more hus-
bands than garments in her wardrobe! Toda women own
what has to be the smallest wardrobe of any women on
earth.
Each Toda woman is allowed to own only two garments in
her whole life, one when she is a child, and one when she
first marries!
Page 12
[email protected] www.facebook.com/kiddies.comment www.twitter.com/kiddies_comment
SAY NO TO CHILD ABUSE! Courtesy:
In collaboration with
Gbugbu,Edu Local Government,Kwara State,Nigeria.