During Speech & Hearing Awareness Month, thousands of professionals involved with the treatment of speech, language and hearing disorders come together to participate in a public awareness campaign that encourages early detection and prevention of communication disorders, and seeks to increase the public’s sensitivity to the challenges faced by individuals experiencing them.
• May’s birthstone is the emerald which is emblematic of love and success.
• The May birth flower is the Lily of the Valley and the Crataegus monogyna. It is native throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere in Asia, Europe, and in the southern Appalachian Mountains in the United States, but has been naturalized throughout the temperate climactic world.
• The “mayflower” Epigaea repens is a North American harbinger of May, and the floral emblem of both Nova Scotia and Massachusetts. Its native range extends from Newfoundland south to Florida, west to Kentucky in the southern range, and to Northwest Territories in the north.
• The zodiac signs for the month of May are Taurus (until May 20) and Gemini (May 21 onwards).
Biggest and smallest islands
Greenland is the largest island in the world. Australia is considered a continent because it has unique plant and animal life. Antarctica also is a continent, larger than Europe and Australia. Although quite big, Greenland shares the habitat features of Northern America. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the smallest island in the world is Bishop Rock. It lies at the most south-westerly part of the United Kingdom. It is one of 1040 islands around Britain and only has a lighthouse on it. In 1861, the British government set out the parameters for classifying an island. It was decided that if it was inhabited, the size was immaterial. However, if it was uninhabited, it had to be “the summer’s pasturage of at least one sheep” which is about two acres. Going by the above parameters, most of the 179 584 islands around Finland and the almost 200 000 around Canada would not match Indonesia as the country with the most islands. In fact, Indonesia consists of 13 667 islands and 6000 of them are inhabited.
Most of these laws remain in the books today, even if rarely enforced.
-In Texas, it’s against the law for anyone to have a pair of pliers in his or her possession.
-In Philadelphia, you can’t put pretzels in bags based on an Act of 1760.
-Alaska law says that you can’t look at a moose from an airplane.
-In Corpus Christie, Texas, it is illegal to raise alligators in your home.
-In Miami, it is forbidden to imitate an animal.
-It is against the law to mispronounce the name of the State of Arkansas in that State.
-In Kentucky, it’s the law that a person must take a bath once a year.
-In Utah, birds have the right of way on any public highway.
-In Ohio, one must have a license to keep a bear.
You Can See More Snakes in Winnipeg than Anywhere Else
Just 130-km north of Winnipeg is the Narcisse Snake Dens conversation area, where each spring, tens of thousands of red-sided garter snakes slither out from their dens for a few weeks from mid-April to early May. Fortunately there are viewing platforms set up so you can watch them from afar.
We Have a Secret Underground Labratory in Sudbury, Ont.
Canada is at the forefront in the international search for new forces and forms of matter thanks to SNOLAB. Designed for the study of neutrino and dark matter physics, it’s the deepest clean laboratory in the world dedicated to this type of work. The lab, which was once the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, was built in a mine to avoid interference from environmental and solar radioactivity.
We Harvest Icebergs in Labrador and Newfoundland
Every spring, massive islands of ice broken off of glaciers in Greenland parade through ‘Iceberg Alley’, past the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland. Entrepreneurs are harvesting chunks of these cool marvels for some pretty unique products, including wine, vodka, beer, and even skincare products