2 October: Eyebrow Day

Today is Eyebrow Day. Here are a few things you might not know about your eyebrows.

1. Why do we have eyebrows? What evolutionary purpose do they serve? They keep sweat, dirt and raindrops out of our eyes. They divert raindrops so that they run down the sides of our faces instead of into our eyes. There's another theory - that eyebrows helped protect our cavemen ancestors when they were asleep, because they made it look, to predators, like they were still awake and watching them.
2. On average, each eyebrow has about a thousand hairs. Your eyebrow hairs don't all point in the same direction. The ones nearest the nose point upwards while the ones from the arch onwards point outwards.
3. Eyebrow hairs don't last as long as the hairs on your head. They fall out after about four months, while the ones on your head last three to seven years. They grow more slowly, however. The hairs on your head grow twice as fast.
4. They don't start to turn grey until years after the hairs on your head do.
5. Brow hairs grow faster in the summer. Stress can make them grow slower, or not at all.
6. The space between your eyebrows is called the glabella.
7. Eyebrows are one of the most expressive parts of the face. You can often tell how someone is feeling based on the position of their eyebrows. Raised eyebrows, for example might mean shock or surprise while furrowed brows mean the person is angry.
8. An MIT study found that if people are shown pictures of celebrities with their eyebrows photoshopped out, they only recognise about 46% of them. Even Richard Nixon was hard to recognise without eyebrows apparently. If the eyes were edited out and the eybrows left in, people recogised the celebs 56% of the time.
9. The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It's not known whether Leonardo da Vinci never gave her any or whether they came off when the painting was cleaned. Perhaps that's why nobody knows who she is...
10. The shape of a person's eyebrows is sometimes said to be an indication of their personality. People with straight eyebrows, for example, are said to be logical and analytical, while curved ones indicate a sociable person. Unibrows are generally thought to be undesirable and an indication of undesirable traits, so in the west, they get plucked. There are some cultures, however, where a unibrow indicates high intelligence.

NEW!

Obsidian's Ark

Teenage years bring no end of problems. Daniel Moran's include getting hold of computer games his parents don't think he should have; a full blown crush on the beautiful Suki from Zorostan; maintaining his status as a prefect and getting his homework done. He must also keep from his parents and sister the fact that he is a superhero with a sword from another world.

Trish wonders how to get science whizz Tom to notice her; how to persuade him that the best way to stand up to the school bully is to fight back. She doesn't want her friends, especially not Tom, to know she is a genetic variant with superpowers. Little does she know that Tom has secrets of his own.

Suki struggles to make friends at school when she cannot understand everyday cultural references, and they all suspect her of being a terrorist. She, too, has a secret, but is it what her classmates assume?

When Daniel stumbles upon a plot by an alliance of supervillains to plunge the world into war, he tries to alert the established superheroes, but none of them believe him. When the Prime Minister's only daughter, Yasmin Miller, is abducted, Daniel knows the villains' plan is underway. It seems humanity's only hope may be Daniel and the ragtag bunch of teenage superheroes he recruits. Can he pull together, not only his own team, but the older heroes as well, in a bid to save the Earth from a devastating war?

Themes: 

Superheroes; Coming of age; Leadership; Kidnap and rescue; Aliens; Friendship and rivalry; Terrorism; Secrets.

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