When Jeanne Calment entered the world in 1875, telephones and automobiles still lay in the future. Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso were not yet born. The Eiffel Tower was 14 years from being built. As a teenager, she met Vincent Van Gogh, near her home in Arles, in the south of France. He was “very ugly, ungracious, impolite, sick—I forgive him, they called him loco (精神失常的)”, she recalled. When she died last week at age 122, she was the world's eldest person. (There are others who claimed to the title, but only Calment had the official documents to prove her age.)

    Each February 21, her birthday, she would share the secrets of long life. Some years it was “a sense of humour”, others it was “keeping busy”. “God must have forgotten me,” she once explained. The truth probably was that her mother reportedly lived to be 86 and her father 94.

    Her life had its sadness: she outlived her husband, her only daughter and her grandson. According to a friend, she was imperturbable. “If you can't do anything about it,” she reportedly said, “don't worry about it.”

    In her last years she was nearly blind and deaf, but her health remained good. She ate a few bars of chocolate each week and continued smoking until a few years ago, when she could no longer light her own cigarettes. She never lost her sense of humour. On her 110^th birthday, she commented, “I've only ever had one wrinkle, and I'm sitting on it. “Her longevity made her famous; her spirit made her eternal (永恒的).

    If we are observant(善于观察的), we can find that most of the flowers in nature are red, orange and yellow. If we have seen a black flower, it is a chance in a million. People have made census (统计) to colors of more than four thousand kinds of flowers and discovered that only eight of them are black. Why are black flowers so rare?

    As we know, sunlight is formed by seven different kinds of colored light. The wave length of each light changes, so the quantity of heat in each light changes, too. Flowers, especially their petals (花瓣) , are very weak and easy to the harm caused by high temperature. Black flowers can take in all the light waves, which cause the flowers to dry up in a high temperature. So the black flowers can hardly continue their lives. While red flowers, orange flowers and yellow ones can protect themselves from sunlight by reflecting（反射） the red light, orange light and yellow light, each of which has a large quantity of heat.

    That is why red, orange and yellow flowers are very common in nature while black flowers are so unusual.

    From July to October every year, about a quarter of the world's blue whales feed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. But the whales currently face a major threat in their favorite feeding area. Ships carrying cargo (货物）sail in the same area at the same time. All too often, the whales' paths and the ships' travel lines overlap (重叠), and a ship will hit a whale.

    According to a new study, these ship strikes have become a serious threat to the overall population of the world's blue whales. Only about 10,000 of the creatures still exist worldwide. Blue whales are the largest known animals ever to live on Earth. Even so, if hit by a container ship, a blue whale will likely die from its injuries.

    In 2007 alone, large ships killed five blue whales in the waters off San Francisco and Los Angeles, California. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that because there are so few whales already, losing three to five from the California whale population every year is a significant loss. “The estimated population of blue whales in this part of the Pacific is 2,500”, says Sean Hastings, a NOAA analyst. “So every whale counts toward this species moving off the endangered-species list.”

    Now, marine scientists must figure out how to protect the whales from the giant container ships. One very simple program is already under way in the Santa Barbara Channel, a waterway that separates mainland California from the nearby Channel Islands.

    The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary has asked large container ships passing through the area to voluntarily slow down. Sailing slower will allow the ships‟ crew (船员）more time to change course before hitting a whale.

    Several of the world's largest shipping lines are set to participate in the new program. For every ship that passes through the Santa Barbara Channel at or below the reduced speed of 12 knots (海里/小时）, the company that owns the ship will be paid $2,500.

    Melissa Poe was 9 years old when she began a campaign for a cleaner environment by writing a letter to the then President Bush.Through her own efforts,her letter was reproduced（复制）on over 250 donated billboards（广告牌）across the country.

    The response to her request for help was so huge that Poe established Kids For A Cleaner Environment(Kids F.A.C.E.) in 1989. There are now 300,000 members of Kids FACE worldwide and is the world's largest youth environmental organization.

    Poe has also asked the National Park Service to carry out a "Children's Forest" project in every national park. In 1992, she was invited as one of only six children in the world to speak at the Earth Summit in Brazil as part of the Voices of the Future Program. In 1993, she was given a Caring Award for her efforts by the Caring Institute.

    Since the organization started, Kids F.A.C.E.members have distributed and planted over 1 million trees! Ongoing tree-planting projects include Kid's Yards—the creation of backyard wildlife habitats and now Kids F.A.C.E.is involved in the exciting Earth Odyssey, which is a great way to start helping.

    "Starting the club turned out to be a way to help people get involved with the environment. Club members started doing things like recycling, picking up litter and planting trees as well as inviting other kids to join their club."

    "We try to tell kids that it's not OK to be lazy," she explains. "You need to start being a responsible, environmentally friendly person now, right away, before you become a resource-sucking adult."

    Ancient Chinese folk paintings and many other art styles have been passed down from generation to generation, and are still practised in different parts of China. Here's a look at four unique Chinese folk art forms.

    Chinese Opera (戏剧) is the traditional form of Chinese drama. According to incomplete statistics, in China's various ethnic regions there are about more than 360 kinds of operas. The most famous ones include Peking Opera, Kunqu Opera, Yueju Opera, Yuju Opera, Sichuan Opera, Fujian Opera, Hebei opera, Huangmei Opera arid so on, in total more than 50, among which Peking Opera is the most popular in China.

    Shadow Play (皮影戏) dates back to Western Han Dynasty in Shaanxi more than 1,000 years ago. The moving figures, usually carved out from leather, are operated by folk artists, accompanied by music and singing. It is the world's first dubbed (配音的) motion picture art form, thus considered the "ancestor" of modern film. Today this art form is still popular in northern China.

    Paper-cutting (剪纸) is one of the most popular traditional decorative arts in China with a long history. Paper-cutting can be seen across China and it has even developed into different local genres (流派). They are usually used to decorate gates and windows during festivals.

    The Kite was invented by Chinese people. According to legend the earliest kite in China was a wooden bird by Mo Di in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Later his student Lu Ban improved the tech and used bamboo as material to make a kite. Today, various kite-flying activities can be found in different regions of China. Shandong Weifang Kite Festival is held every year and attracts lots of kite lovers and travelers.

On an autumn afternoon, a remote sheep farm in southern Greenland is quiet. The silence is abruptly broken when dozens of sheep come thundering across the hills overlooking the farm. Walking after them are Lars Nielsen and his 37-year-old son Kunuk Nielsen.

The Nielsen family has owned and run the farm since 1972. Kunuk says the summers now are longer than when he was a child and that drought has become a problem. The fields are not so green as those in the old days. He has to buy hay (草料) from European countries.

The effects of a warming climate are obvious on the land. While he intends to struggle on, his older brother Pilu has chosen a different path.

Pilu, 40, lives in Qaqortoq in the south of Greenland -- a town of about 3,000 people. Ten years ago, he got his helicopter pilot's license and is now part owner of a small company called Sermeq Helicopters. It caters to construction and telecommunication workers and an increasing number of foreign tourists.

Pilu says he loves his family's sheep farm. But he saw that warming temperatures were making remote areas of Greenland more accessible and wanted to look for other opportunities. His company's most popular tours include a visit to Greenland's glaciers.

The warming temperatures are also affecting traditional ways of life, particularly hunting. The sea ice is changing; it's becoming less so that hunting on ice becomes more difficult. When there's no sea ice, it's difficult to use dog sledges (雪橇), and the whole culture around having dogs and dog sledges and doing traditional hunting on the ice is sort of diminishing.

Besides, many Greenlanders, like Pilu, are leaving the countryside for towns and the capital city Nuuk, where opportunities are greater. A report found that Nuuk's share of Greenland's population grew from 17.2% in 1977 to 29.2% in 2014. If there were enough houses in Nuuk, the share would even be bigger.