Secret Diary

Early playing cards are believed to have originated in China, where paper was first invented, as a form of paper dominoes.

Playing Cards: Hearts and Gin, p. 50

We spotted this headline a couple of weeks ago and were thrilled by the news that girls swept the math and science awards at this national competition:

Girls Dominate the Siemens Competition: For the first time in the prestigious national math and science contest’s nine-year history, girls were awarded both grand prizes. In a first for the prestigious Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology for U.S. high school students, girls walked away with top honors in both the individual and team categories. The individual grand prize of a $100,000 scholarship went to Isha Jain, a senior at Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pa., for research into bone growth. . . . As winners of the team grand prize, Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, seniors at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School in Plainview, N.Y., will split a $100,000 scholarship awarded for their research on tuberculosis.

Looking for more daring girl inspiration in math and science? Check out our chapters on “Math Tricks” (p. 183) and “A Short History of Women Inventors and Scientists” (p. 112)!

I had the pleasure of talking this week with John Ysdtie and five grade-school girls about The Daring Book For Girls in a segment for NPR’s Weekend Edition. It aired this morning, and in case you didn’t catch it, you can listen to the piece online right here.

In our recent post on talking to Australian media about The Daring Book For Girls, we asked folks to send us their best guesses for the answer to the following question:

Jacks, along with marbles, is one of the oldest games in the world. What name does it go by in Australia?

And now we can reveal the answer! In Australia, the game is called Knucklebones — because originally it was played with the knucklebones of a sheep.

The old weather saying “Clear moon, frost soon” is actually grounded in science?

When the moon sits in a clear, cloudless sky, lore has it that frost is on its way. The weather science behind the saying explains that in a clear atmosphere, with no clouds to keep the heat on earth from radiating into space, a low-temperature night without wind encourages the formation of frost.

Weather Signs, p. 62