When you are about to do something brave, a cheerful wish of "Good luck!" from a friend can be helpful. But if you think you need lots of luck, what else might you do?

    In the UK and US there are some strange traditions for bringing yourself a little more good luck. Some are hundreds of years old and some are much newer.

    Have you heard the saying "When you wish upon a star"? If you are looking up at the sky on a clear night and you see a sudden flash of light, it is probably a shooting star! Seeing one doesn't happen very often. The saying goes that you have been very lucky if you see one, and so if you make a wish, it will come true.

    Maybe you have heard of the lucky  rabbit's foot. Some people believe that rabbits are lucky animals, so they carry a part of the rabbit, its foot, for good luck. There are all kinds of strange, unclear rules about which of the rabbit's feet is the luckiest. It is said that this good luck tradition is the oldest one of all. However, as the funny saying goes, "Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit!"

    People in Britain love trees. If it is autumn and leaves are falling from the trees, some people try to catch the leaves as they fall because they think each leaf they catch will bring them a lucky month in the following year—they will need to catch 12 falling leaves to have a whole of good luck!

    Every country has its own popular sports. The most popular sport in the USA is baseball. Soccer is popular, too. People in the USA also like American football. A football in America is not round. It is oval-shaped. Baseball is more popular than soccer or American football. Almost everyone in the USA loves baseball. It is the favorite sport of the nation.

People in Mexico like baseball too, but soccer is more popular there. Soccer is also very popular in other countries. It's the most popular sport in the world. Soccer fans say soccer is faster and more exciting than baseball.

In 1826, a Frenchman named Nieple needed pictures for his business. But he was not a good artist. So he invented a very simple camera. He put it in a window of his house and took a picture of his garden. That was the first photo.

The next important date in the history of photography was in 1837. That year, Daguerre, another Frenchman, took a picture of his reading room. He used a new kind of camera in a different way. In his picture you could see everything very clearly, even the smallest thing. The kind of photo was called a Daguerreotype. Soon, other people began to use Daguerre's way. Travelers brought back wonderful photos from all over the world. People took pictures of famous buildings, cities and mountains.

In about 1840, photography was developed. Then photographers could take pictures of people and moving things. That was not simple. The photographers had to carry a lot of films and other machines. But this did not stop them, for example, some in the United States worked so hard.

Mathew Brady was a famous American photographer. He took many pictures of great people. The pictures were unusual because they were life like. 

Photography also became one kind of art by the end of the 19th century. Some photos were not just copies of the real world. They showed the author's ideas and feelings, like other kinds of art.

For thousands of years, tea is loved by many people around the world. It has finally received top-level global recognition as a shared cultural treasure of our humans. On November 29, 2022, traditional tea processing techniques and their related social customs in China were added to UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity（联合国教科文组织人类非物质文化遗产名录）. Following "Wangchuan Ceremony（送王船）" in 2020,this project is the 43rd one to be successfully added to the list and there are 44 sub-projects in total belonging to this main project.

Chinese tea culture began as early as over 5,000 years ago. It's said the ruler Shen Nong was the first to discover tea as a drink by accident. But during the Three-Kingdom Period, people paid more attention to its medical value. In the Tang Dynasty, tea-tasting became an important part for poets' life. Bai Juyi wrote 64 poems about tea in his lifetime.

 According to UNESCO, in China traditional tea processing techniques are closely connected to location and natural environment. The area of tea planting in China is about between 18°-37°N and 94°-122°E. Tea-related customs are not only found across the country, but also influenced the rest of the world through the ancient Silk Road. In western countries, tea firstly became popular in Britain in the 17th century, and then the whole of Europe. When it came to the late 18th and 19th centuries, 10% of a British person's income（money made from work） at the time was spent on tea, making it one of the most important expensive goods.

The last Eurasian lynx (猞猁) in the British Isles lived a life of danger as it moved quickly to avoid campfires and vicious dogs, and hid in holes. Because of disappearing woodlands, being short of animals for food, and hunting, lynx started to disappear from these islands about 1, 500 years ago. But experts hope to one day bring the Eurasian lynx back to Scotland. 

Wildlife conservationists (环保主义者) in Switzerland, Germany, France, and other countries have taken Eurasian lynx from elsewhere in their areas and introduced them again to protected forests, allowing their populations to grow. Now they' re hoping to do the same thing in Scotland. Returning the cats would do more than just improve the numbers of this once- endangered animal. A win for the lynx is a win for the forest- and the planet. 

When the Eurasian lynx disappeared, so did the Scottish landscape. Without these cats and other animals hunting them, deer populations increased a lot. Those animals lived on the leaves of trees and bushes for food, and soon large areas of the Scottish forest disappeared since it couldn't grow fast enough to keep up with the deer's wish for food. Birds and rodents (啮齿动物) that depended on shelter (庇护所) in the lower level of forest plants became food for foxes, which lynx also hunt. 

Experts trying to restore the forests have to put up fences to keep deer from eating leaves of young trees. But with lynx hanging out in the woods, experts think these cats would keep the deer from harming the young trees, helping the forests make a comeback. 

And that would have even bigger influences. The Earth is losing woodlands as people cut down trees to make room for farming, and to sell the wood for products like furniture and toilet paper. In 2020 alone, the Earth lost as many trees as would cover an area larger than Michigan. 

So restoring forests in places like Scotland can help provide more space for wildlife and even fight climate change. That's because trees take in carbon dioxide, which takes in the sun's heat and warms our planet.