The Story of Balto
In 1925, a life-or-death race to deliver desperately needed medicine from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska turned a sled dog named Balto into a hero.
At the beginning of 1925, the diphtheria, a fatal disease which attacks the children, developed in the village. Telegraphs asking for help were sent to all the hospitals in the neighbourhood. The only serum in Alaska was found at a hospital in Anchorage, nearly 1,000 miles away. A train would be able to transport the medicine to the town of Nenana, but after that, there were no other transportation methods available. Pack ice prevented delivery to Nome by ship, and frequent blizzard conditions prevented transport by air. It was finally decided that the fastest way to transport the serum over the remaining 674 miles between Nenana and Nome was by using a dog sled. Balto, a Siberian husky, was leading the sledge.
On 2 February at 5.30 a.m., the team finally arrived in Nome. The dogs were too tired to even bark, but the serum had successfully been delivered - only seven days after leaving Anchorage, and just 127 and a half hours after leaving Nenana.

The Aborigines
Australia is the home of the Aborigines, the original people of Australia. Life is very hard for many young Aborigines. European Australians have treated the Aborigines very badly and destroyed a lot of their traditional culture. Now it’s impossible for them to live in their traditional way but, at the same time, it is very difficult to understand the European ways.
Aboriginal culture and traditions go back to the Stone Age. When the first Europeans came to Australia in the 18th century, they found a people who lived by hunting, gathering and fishing.

Australia
Three quarters of the Australian population have British origins. The first British immigrants who settled near Sydney Harbour in 1788 were prisoners. Since British prisons in the late 18th century were too full (a result of very strict laws for small crimes such as stealing some bread or a handkerchief), the British government decided to establish a penal colony in Australia, a continent 24,000 kilometres away, from which they could not easily return. Most convicts stayed in Australia after their time in prison was over. They set up farms or worked for the free settlers who also started to arrive in the 1790s. For the next 200 years the United Kingdom continued to be the largest source of immigrants to Australia, which explains the many similarities with Britain – from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the popularity of fish-and-chip shops.

The Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest railroad line in the world (9,288 km). It connects European Russia with Russian Far East provinces, Mongolia and China. The main route, the Trans-Siberian, runs from Moscow to Vladivostok via southern Siberia and was built between 1891 and 1916. It spans 8 time zones and it takes about 7 days to complete the journey. A second primary route is the Trans-Manchurian (built around 1900), which coincides with the Trans-Siberian as far as Tarskaya, about 1,000 km east of Lake Baikal. From Tarskaya the Trans-Manchurian heads southeast into China and makes its way down to Beijing. The third primary route is the Trans-Mongolian (completed in the 1950s), which coincides with the Trans-Siberian as far as Ulan Ude on Lake Baikal’s eastern shore. From Ulan-Ude the Trans-Mongolian heads south to Ulaan-Baatar before making its way southeast to Beijing.

New Zealand
Though the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to sight the country (1642), it was the British who colonised New Zealand. In the years 1769-70, Captain James Cook successfully circumnavigated and mapped the country. His botanists and other experts on board his ship gained lots of information about the country’s flora and fauna, and the native Maori inhabitants.
British settlers treated the largely landless native Maori population very badly, and British culture dominated New Zealand life throughout the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries.
1850-1880: “wool period” with importation of sheep from Australia.
1893: New Zealand becomes the first country in the world to give women the vote.
1947: New Zealand becomes independent.

English and French Canada
English and French are Canada’s two official languages, though the province of New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual area in the country. You will, however, find both languages on maps, tourist brochures and product labels. The French spoken in Canada is not, for the most part, the language of France. In Quebec, where the majority of the population are of French origin, the local dialect is known as Quebecois. Most Quebeckers, however, will understand formal French.
History:
1608: Frenchman Champlain established New France in Quebec
1759: Canada became part of the British Empire
1931: Independence from Britain