Emergency services

There is only one main type of police force in the UK. Most police officers in Britain don't carry guns. They patrol the streets to see what is happening. They usually do this on foot, or in a car. Sometimes they use horses or bikes. Police officers often go to schools to give talks to the pupils about crime, drugs and things like that.
The main job of the fire service is to fight fires. They also help in other situations, for example when there are floods and other disasters. They also help in road accidents. They use special tools to cut open cars to get people out.
The coastguard helps people at sea. It also helps people who have problems on the coast because they have falle or got stuck in a dangerous place. There are 24 coastguard stations and they often have to use helicopters to find people and lift them out of the water.
In some parts of the country, like Scotland and the Lake District, there is alsoa mountain rescue service. They help when people have an accident or get lost in the hills and mountains.
Ambulances take people to hospital in an emergency. The paramedics also give first aid in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. There is also an air ambulance service. They use helicopters to reach people in difficult places quickly.

Time Zones

Until the 19th century, towns in the same country often had different times. This was because people told the time by the local position of the sun. It didn't matter because people didn't travel very much and they travelled very slowly. However, all that changed when railways arrived. People could now travel quickly from town to town, so they needed a standard time. In 1884, countries agreed to an international time system with 24 zones.
The time zones start from The Primer Meridian at Greenwich in London. All places east of Greenwich are later; all places west of Greenwich are earlier.
Most countries are in one time zone, but some larg countries have more than one. There are five time zones in the USA. So when it's 9 am in New York, it's only 6 am in Los Angeles. Australia has thee time zones and Russia has eleven!
The system of time zones starts in Greenwich. On the other side of the world is the International Date Line. When you cross this line, you don't just change hours, you change days. So you can travel from today back into yesterday!

The incident

It was a normal saturday. At about 10 o'clock, John was cycling to a lake near the town. He was going fishing. There was a dam at one end of the lake. While he was crossing the dam, he saw a crack in the wall. Water was coming through the crack. It was going to flood the town. When John saw it, he turned round and cycled back to the town as fast as possible. When he reached the town, he shouted, "The dam's breaking!". While he reached the town, people were shopping and some children were playing. Whe people heard him, everyone grabbed their children, pets and things and ran indoors. As he was cycling past the post office, Mrs Roberts shouted,"Quick, come in here." He ran into the post office and Mrs Roberts shut the door. About a minute later the water went past. It picket up cars and it carried them down the street like toys. It was very scary. The water damaged a lot of cars and buildings, but everybody was safe thanks to John. But now he couldn't go fishing, because they haven't got a lake!

Roads

Vehicles in Britain and Ireland travel on the left of the road, so the steering wheel is on the right. It is because when people travelled on horses, everybody travelled on the left, so your right arm was free to use a sword. You normally get on and off a horse on the left side, too, so your left side had to be close to the side of the road. However, in 18th century farmers in France started to use carts with teams of horses. The driver sat on the left-hand horse so that his right hand was free to control the other horses. He needed to travel on the right so that he was in the middle of the road and could make sure that he didn't hit other carts. Slowly most countries changed to the right, but several European countries, including Portugal, Italy, Hungary and Czechoslovakia still travelled on the left until the 1920s and 1930s.

The most important roads in Britain are the motorways. In some countries you have to pay a toll to use the motorways, but in Britain and Ireland most of them are free.

Animal migrations

A lot of animals travel from one place to another. We call this migration.

A lot of birds migrate to find food and better weather, too. They spend the summer in northern Europe, because there are lots of insects there. In the winter there aren't any insects, so the birds fly south to southern Europe and Africa. Some insects migrate, too. In North America, millions of butterflies fly south to spend the winter were it's warmer.

Fishes migrates to breed. Salmon for example swim over 20,000 km in their life. They are born in rivers in Ireland, Scotland and other places in northern Europe. The young fish swim down the river to the sea and into the Atlantic Ocean. They live in teh ocean until they are adults. Then they return to the river where they were born. They lay their eggs in the river because then other fish can't eat them, after they have done it they usually die.

Blue food

Nature's way of making food attractive is to colour it so that it looks delicious, so we expect our food to come in familiar colours.

Food companies sometimes need to add colour to their products to make them more natural-looking. We think that it tastes better, although the taste hasn't changed at all.

The colour blue isn't often found in natural food. THere aren't any blue vegetables and there isn't any blue meat. As a result, we don't have  an automatic desire to eat blue food. A million years ago, when our ancestors searched for food, vlue, plurple and black were 'warning' colours that the food may be poisonous.

However, as blue suppresses the appetite, it is used to help a lot of people who want to lose weight. Diet specialists advise people to eat off blue plates and to use knives, forks and spoons with blue handles.

THE PLAGUE

In 1348-49 a terrible disease broke out in Europe. People called it the Black Death. In two years nearly half of Europe's population died. The disease was bubonic plague. Fleas carried the plague. The fleas lived on black rats. These rats arrived in Europe on ships from Asia.

However, people didn't know what caused the plague and the disease spread quickly. Medieval towns were very different from today's cities. Most of the buildings were made of wood or mud. Streets were dirty and there where rats everywhere. A lot of people died of the plague in Europe during this period.

The plague continued to hit Europe until the end of the 17th century. One of the biggest outreaks was the Great Plague of London. The total number of deaths was about 70.000. Many people run away from London.

Later, the plague also broke out in the village of Eyem in Derbyshire. A tailor there there, bought some cloth from London. Unfortunately, when the parcel arrived, there were fleas in the cloth. The people of Eyam were very brave. They decided to close their village. Nobody entered or left the village. Other people put food and medicine near the village. The plague didn't spread to ogher villages, but at least 260 out of 350 people from Eyam died.