When I was watching a sports event yesterday, I met with an amazing sight. It was not a gold medal, or a world record broken, but a show of pure courage and determination.

    The event was swimming. I watched a man dive off the blocks and knew right away that something was wrong. I'm not an expert swimmer, but I can tell a good dive from a poor one, and this was not exactly medal quality. When he resurfaced, it was evident that the man was not out for gold — his arms were waving in an attempt at freestyle.

    I heard the crowd begin to laugh at this poor man who was clearly having a hard time. Finally he made his turn to start back. It was pitiful. He made a few desperate strokes (划水) and you could tell he was worn out. But in those few awkward strokes, the crowd changed. No longer were they laughing, but beginning to cheer. Some even began to stand and yell things like, "Come on, you can do it!" He did. The crowd went wild.

    Just a short year ago, he had never even swum, let alone race. His country had been invited to take part in the event. Even though he recorded the slowest time, this man gave more heart than any of the other competitors—a man that gave his all, knowing that he had no chance but to compete because of the spirit of the games.

    Below is a selection about Guinness（吉尼斯） World Records.

    Top 6 Unusual Guinness World Records

    ♦ Fastest 100 m running on all fours

    The 2008 Guinness World Records Day was, according to CWR, their biggest day of record-breaking ever, I- h more than 290.000 people taking put in record attempts in 15 different countries. Kenichi Ito's record attempt was port of this special day. He is just another example of Japanese with "super powers". His "super power" is to run with great speed on all fours. Kenichi Ito ran 100 m on all fours in 18.58 seconds. The Japanese set this record at Setagaya Kuritsu Sogo Undojyo, Tokyo, in 2008.

    ♦ Most people inside a soap bubble

    The Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, Califomia celebrated this year the 15th anniversary of the Bubble (泡泡) Festival. A bubble's math principles and science were presented and demonstrated at the three-week-long exhibition. The intriguing Bubble Show was also part of the program. Fan Yang and Deni Yang impressed the audience with their awesome skills for bubble making. The Yang family cooperated with the Discovery Science Center to set a new Guinness World Record for mow people inside a scup bubble and they succeeded.

    The family that has been working with soap bubbles for 27 years created a huge soap bubble and got 118 people inside it. The record was set or. April 4, 2011.

    ♦ Longest ears on a dog

       A bloodhound from Illinois has the longest ears ever measured a dog. The right ear is 13.75 inches long and the left one 13.5 inches. The dog named Tigger earned this title in 2004 and is owned by Christina and Bryan Flessner.

Mr. Jeffries is the previous record holder of this title. Each of his ears measured approximately 11. 5 inches long. His grandfather used to hold this amazing world record, but when he died Mr.Jeffries look over.

    ♦ Most living generations

    Did you ever wonder what is the Guinness World Record for most living generation in one family? Seven is the answer.

    The ultimate authority on record-breaking mentions on the website that the youngest great-great- great-great grandparent of this family was Augusta Bung "aged 109 years 97 days, followed by her daughter aged 89, her granddaughter aged 70, her great grand-daughter aged 52, her great-great grand-daughter aged 33 and her great-great-great granddaughter aged 15 on the birth of her great-great-great-great grandson on January 21, 1989".

    ♦ Most T shirts worn at once

Believe it or not, there is a record also for this category. Krunoslav Budiseli set a new world record on May 22, 2010 for wearing 245 T-shirts at the same time. The nun from Croatia was officially recognized as the new record bolder by Guinness World Records after he managed to put on 245 different T-shirts in 1ess than two hours. . The T-shirts weighted 68 KG and Budiseli said he began struggling around T-shirt No. 120. He dethroned the Swedish Guinness record holder who wore 238 T-shirts.

    ♦Heaviest pumpkin

    Guinness World Records confirmed on October 9. 2010 that a gigantic pumpkin （南瓜） grown in Wisconcin was officially the world's heaviest. It weighed 1,810 pounds 8 ounces and was unveiled by Chris Stevens at the Stillwater Harvest Festival in Minnesota. Stevens' pumpkin was 85 pounds Javier than the previous re I, another huge pumpkin grown in Ohio. The proud farmer said his secret is a precise of rain, cow mature, good soil, sea grass and fish emulsion. Some of the world's heaviest pumpkins, including the record bolder, were on public display at the Bronx Botanical Gardens in New Yost for a dozen days.

    Nowadays more and more people like to travel, especially when vacations come. A great number of people rush out of their homes or companies to travelling spots. They either drive or take a bus, a train, a ship and so on. Some even ride bikes.

    However, there is another way of travelling—poorism. People have a tour in the poorest areas of the world. Some people may take one-day poorest tour, and some even pay to stay in very poor neighborhoods to experience the lowest living standards in the world. Poorism tours take place around the world, and not just in the third world countries. You can, for instance, tour New York neighborhoods in the Bronx, in the Bund of Shanghai. Such tours can take people into the heart of poor areas within large and in some rich cities. These tours may awaken people to pay more attention to long-standing poverty, or the effects of war.

    Some suggest that tours in the poor areas can raise social care. And the money from the tour can be donated to help the people there.

    People say that text messages and e-mails lack emotion compared to phone or face-to-face conversations. But one thing seems to improve it – the emoticon(表情符).

    These little symbols – whether it's a wink(眨眼); -), a smiley : -) or a sad face : -) - always add a little something to whatever you are sending out, making it more expressive than cold words on a screen.

    To be sure, emoticons have changed the way that we communicate with each other. But there is more: a new study found that they are even changing how our brains work – we now react to emoticons in the same way as we would to real human faces, reported Live Science.

    It's actually amazing when you start to think about it: what an emoticon consists of is simply three punctuation marks(标点符号) – on their own, they carry no meaning as a pair of eyes, a nose or a mouth, but after they were first put together as symbols for faces in 1982, they began to appear more and more in our written materials.

    Owen Churches, a scientist at Flinders University in Australia, wanted to find out what people see in emoticons that make them so popular. So he showed 20 participants images of real faces, a smiley emoticon and a series of meaningless characters while their brain activities were monitored.

    Previous studies have already shown that our brains process human faces differently than they do other objects – they analyze the position of the mouth relative to the nose and the eyes to “read” for emotions. As a result, certain parts of our brain, such as the occipital-temporal cortex, are activated(激活).

    When Churches compared participants' brain activities, he was surprised to find that the brain areas that were activated when people looked at smiley emoticons were the same as when they were shown pictures of real faces.

    According to Churches, this is a good example of how culture is shaping our brains. “Emoticons are a new form of language that we're producing,” Churches told ABC Science. “Before 1982 there would be no reason that ':-)' would activate face-sensitive areas of the cortex, but now it does because we've learnt that this represents a face.”

    Next time you chat with your friends online, try to use emoticons where they are needed. It'll be almost like you're smiling or winking at them yourself.

    "You know, the soft subjects," says the boy in maths. "The easy ones: the stupid girls at the bottom take them. Like dance. It shouldn't even be a subject." We're choosing subjects for our A-level taster day at school. I see the raised eyebrows (眉毛) when I explain two of my GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) choices are dance and drama(戏剧).

    I was told by advisers that dance and drama wouldn't help me to get a suitable career. My friends told me I'd get bored of dance and switch to science within the first month.

    But taking GCSE dance was the best decision I ever made. Dance gives me something to pour my head and heart into. It gives me a feeling of belonging, creativity, security and freedom.

    The education secretary Nicky Morgan has put emphasis on (强调) science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), saying that students who focus on the arts risk their careers. Stopping young people from expressing themselves at such a young age is not doing them any favours. Perhaps Nicky Morgan has forgotten to open the door of having a drive to study that subject day in, day out. It shouldn't matter what that subject is.

    I don't doubt the influence that STEM subjects can have on the people that love them. But to force children into one field is cruel. As much as I try, I'm not good at and don't love physics, biology or maths. I don't want a career in these areas.

    There has been a decrease in the number of state schools offering arts subjects taught by specialist teachers. I can't even imagine how it feels to be told that you don't teach a "real subject" by an 8-year-old boy.

    To the teachers, the parents, the government I say: Let children make their own decisions. Let them live in the present. Let them have a real, unlimited education.

Teenage summer camps

    We helped on a nature reserve(保护区)for a week. We did different things every day, including cutting the reeds(芦苇),by the lake. Every day, we took turns to cook, in teams of five. When it was our teams turn, we made a simple dinner of pasta and salad for everyone. Judging by the fact that there was none left, we didn't do too badly!

-Adam

    We stayed with families who had kids our own age, and because they were on a mid-term break they came with us on all the trips. So except when we were actually in a language class, we were spending time with our new friends. It was a great way to practice the language we had been working on in the classroom.

-Oliver

    Every morning we had the same breakfast, and then cleaned up the camp. When it was all completely tidy, we could head off for the day. The first time we went into the city, we were put into teams and given lists of things to spot, like statues, squares and other landmarks. With some help from the locals, my team found almost all of the things on our list and came second. We went to different museums and galleries in and around the city every day. It was a great chance to learn about another country and its history.

-Sarah

    We stayed in a youth center in the suburbs, and went into the center of town by bus every day. It was a good way to see a bit of the city, and it didn't take long to get to the theater where we had our classes. I loved the atmosphere in the old building, and we could walk around during our breaks and watch rehearsals(排练). We learned a great deal and I'm looking forward to putting it all into practice at my school drama club next term!

-Malika