Since China launched its first lunar spacecraft in 2007, the nation has achieved something nobody has managed to do before. Here is a brief history of Chinese lunar missions.

Chang’e 1

It was launched in October 2007 on a 16-month mission to map the moon from the orbit. Having studied the lunar surface and the surrounding environment there, the spacecraft crashed onto the moon on March 2, 2009.

Chang’e 2

Launched on October 1, 2010, Chang’e 2 returned a more detailed map of the moon’s entire surface and took close-up images of the Bay of Rainbows, where mission planners at the time suggested they might put down the country’s first lander. It left the moon’s orbit in April 2012 to fly by another small planet called 4179 Toutatis, which it reached in December 2012.

Chang’e 3

Chang’e 3 is most famous for landing its rover, Yutu, on the moon—the first one since 1976. After heading out to the surface on December 14, 2013, Yutu took many amazing pictures that were sent back to the earth. In 2015, it even discovered a new kind of rock.

Chang’e 4

When Chang’e 4 made a safe touchdown on the far side of the moon on January 2, 2019, it made history since it was the first time that a rover has landed there. The far side is a more challenging environment in general than the near side.

Chang’e 5

The Chang’e 5 spacecraft, which was launched on November 24, 2020, returned to the earth on December 16, 2020, carrying around 2 kilograms of rocks and soils from the northern part of the moon. The lunar sample will help scientists fill in a gap in knowledge about the history of the moon between roughly one billion and three billion years ago.

In November, Focus Features will release a new movie, The Theory of Everything, which describes what happened to the famous physicist Stephen Hawking.

The movie is based on a book by Jane Hawking, Stephen’s first wife. When they met in the early 1960s, Jane was studying literature and got a Ph. D in Spanish poetry, while Stephen was just 21, looking for an interesting physics problem to explore.

Not long after they began dating, he developed balance problems, then speech issues. He was told that he had ALS, a disease that would kill him in two years. Jane’s friends warned her not to stick with a boy with so little time ahead of him. But he and Jane didn’t quit each other. Instead, they willfully pushed on. It wasn’t like they didn’t believe the diagnosis (诊断). They did. They just ignored it.

“We did not want to think about that,” she wrote. “Also, we had this very strong sense at the time that our generation lived anyway under this most awful nuclear cloud — that with a four-minute warning the world itself could likely end. That made us feel that we should make the most of whatever gifts that were given to us.”

They had one child. Then another. He, meanwhile, kept losing ground. He needed help with dressing, then washing, then eating. She tried to keep up.

“I had two babies. I was running the home and looking after Stephen alone. One of the greatest battles was getting Stephen to use a wheelchair,” she continued. “I’d be going out with an adult on one arm, carrying a newly-born baby in the other, with an older baby struggling alongside.”

As Stephen Hawking became more celebrated and dependent, Jane had a third child and he had to allow others to help him. But he fell in love with a nurse and left his wife.

Hmmm, I wonder how they are going to handle this one. It’s a messy story.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful milkmaid. One day, she declared to a 13-year-old boy, “I shall never have an ugly face because I have already had cowpox (牛痘).”

The boy was Edward Jenner, who would one day be famous for developing the world’s first vaccine (疫苗), which would eventually rid the earth of smallpox (天花). And the story of his inspiration for developing the vaccine first appeared in an 1837 biography and was repeated endlessly over the years.

But was the milkmaid really Jenner’s muse?

Perhaps not, because there is another storyline, backed by letters, diaries and research notes that Dr. Arthur Boylston uncovered in the course of his research. Instead, it involves a country doctor named John Fewster.

Like other doctors of the time, Fewster used smallpox virus to protect people from smallpox. In 1768, he treated a group of farmers in Thornbury. But something unusual happened: All of them didn’t respond to the smallpox virus at all. Fewster inquired further and found that all the farmers never had smallpox but did previously have cowpox.

Today, Fewster’s discovery would have led to a larger study and publication of results. But that wasn’t the way medicine worked in the 18th century. “In those days, there were no medical journals,” says Boylston. “Doctors communicated by having little dinner parties and drinking themselves silly.”

One such meeting took place at an inn called The Ship. Fewster presented his discovery at the meeting. Records show that Jenner later also became a member of the medical society and was known for his enthusiasm about the topic in the members’ debates.

So how did the milkmaid myth (神话) get started?

At the time, the first and only mention of the milkmaid story was by Jenner’s friend and first biographer, John Baron, several years after Jenner’s death. According to Boylston’s research, other doctors were then criticizing Jenner, questioning how he had ever made the connection between cowpox and smallpox immunity.

“Jenner himself never explained how he developed the theory,” Boylston says. “To protect his friend, the biographer probably made up the milkmaid story as a way to show how Jenner had come across the idea of a cowpox-smallpox connection.”

Catalonia, a region in northeastern Spain, is known for its architecture, sea-side markets and white champagne. It has its own language and even a regional flag. But the most dramatic display of Catalonian culture comes from the tradition of building castells, or human pyramids. First documented in 1801 as a cultural activity, castell building was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2010.

In Catalonia, most towns have a castell building group with hundreds of members. Anyone is allowed to join, and families often participate together. An official organization keeps a record of the points awarded at each competition and then ranks the groups. Points are given based on the difficulty of the pyramid’s structure and height. For a long time, seven levels was the tallest that had been achieved, but lately pyramids have been built as high as ten.

Basic pyramids contain five main levels. The first level is called the pinya, followed by the folre, the manilles, the tronk, and the pom de dalt. The tronk is the vertical structure in the center of the pyramid that holds the most weight. The strongest men make up the tronk, followed by strong but light women. A small child known as the enxaneta climbs to the pom de dalt. The enxaneta is usually between 7 and 10 years old and must be light and fearless.

“As the enxaneta begins to climb, silence falls over the crowd and the air is charged with both excitement and fear, because no one knows where the pyramid is going to end,” said Giori Worsley, who began studying human pyramid building 11 years ago.

Originally attracted by the structures themselves, Giori Worsley later realized that building higher human pyramids was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the close connection within the Catalonian society that encouraged people to support each other.

“I see it as a poetic reflection of the society,” he said. “All the participants at the base hold to each other so tightly that it’s almost like they have become one, while the stronger men hold the weight of the youngsters and women on their shoulders.”