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Hello there, my friends.
It's Ruby here and you are listening to an episode of Newstime.
Hi there, Ruby.
Hey, Ruby.
If you've listened to Newstime before, you'll know that each week we end the countdown with a wow of the week.
Well, today's episode is 100% wow.
It's WowFest 2025, a countdown of five amazing stories this year that made you and me go, whoa.
So without any further ado, let's jump in.
Story number five.
In February, we were wowed by something a little bit gross at the bottom of the sea.
This story made me go wow because I never knew a shark could vomit.
Millions of years ago, there was a shark swimming through the ancient oceans of Earth.
It stumbled as much as a shark can stumble on a patch of sea lilies and it thought ha perfect time to chow down.
This shark had a big meal of sea lilies, but they seemed to upset its tummy.
The poor shark vomited up its snack and swam away.
That vomit though.
It sat there for years, millions of years actually, until recently when someone spotted it all dried up, perched at the edge of a cliff in Denmark.
The vomit had turned into a fossil.
It kind of looks like it has little candles poking out of it.
It looks really yucky.
Yeah, it's not very pretty.
After all these years, it just looks like a pile of white bones and bits.
The person who found this vomit was an amateur scientist.
They like to explore for fun, and they knew immediately they'd found something special.
So they shared the location of the fossil with some experts.
Fossilised vomit is called regurgitolite and it's a great thing to study, to learn about what life was like on Earth millions of years ago.
Scientists can learn what animals were eating, where they lived and where the oceans used to be.
The people who live in Denmark, which is the country where this regurgitolite was found, have said this fossil is an object of exceptional natural historic value.
They should maybe preserve it.
Put it in a museum?
That's probably what will happen.
Story number four.
In March, we set sail down a river in an unusual kind of boat.
This story made me go, wow, that's so cool.
Row, row, row your... What is that?
Gently down the stream.
The guy's in an orange.
That's a pumpkin.
Why is there a person in a pumpkin?
Whoa, that's not something you see every day.
But you're right, it's a pumpkin.
A man named Mark Peacock grew a giant pumpkin and turned it into a boat.
Mark rowed that pumpkin boat down the Tumut River near his home in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales.
How on earth do you reckon he grew a pumpkin so big?
Put it in perfect conditions for it to grow big.
Use an air pump.
Use magic.
Maybe loads and loads of fertiliser.
All excellent ideas.
Mark is now giving tips to other would-be giant pumpkin growers.
He says you have to make sure you've got good, healthy soil, no frost or pests nearby.
And then when the pumpkin starts growing, it helps to put a little bit of sand under it to help it expand.
You also have to make sure the plant doesn't get too much sun and you need to prune new stems and leaves and fruit as they sprout.
If you follow those tips, you too might grow a pumpkin as big as Mark's biggest, which, by the way, was 426 kilograms.
That's about as heavy as a grand piano.
Wow.
Mark chopped the top off his pumpkin and turned it into a boat.
What would you do with your supersized pumpkin?
Make a giant pumpkin pie.
Yes, pumpkin juice.
Hmm, nice.
I reckon I'd make some pumpkin scones.
I might go and cook a batch.
Story number three.
In April, we went back in time to an ancient civilisation.
This story made me go wow because it actually distracted me from my bad day.
Oh, I'm so glad.
I hope your day's getting better now.
Sometimes, when I'm daydreaming, I like to cast my mind all the way back thousands of years, to ancient Egypt.
They worship a lot of gods.
They have some mummies.
They're this ancient culture that constructed the pyramids.
Wow, you know a lot about ancient Egypt and we're about to learn a bit more.
Archaeologists, who are the people who dig up remains and artefacts.
They've just discovered a pharaoh's tomb near a place called Valley of the Kings.
The tomb is an underground place where people were buried after they died.
It looks very old, almost like a jail cell.
Might be a bit scary if you went in there.
You might be right.
This is the first tomb that's been discovered in Egypt in more than 100 years.
How do you reckon the archaeologists felt when they found it?
Excited, and they might have felt they'd become famous and rich.
Maybe.
One of the archaeologists named Piers Latterland says he burst into happy tears when he realised what they'd found.
The tomb belonged to a pharaoh named King Thutmose II.
They know it belonged to him because his name was carved into objects they found inside the tomb.
It looks like stone carvings that have come off the walls.
Yeah, there are vases, furniture and carvings on the mortar.
Mortar is a material that builders use to stick bricks and stones together.
Archaeologists say the tomb wasn't in the best shape because it had been flooded and it looks like some objects had been removed.
But they're hoping that their discovery will uncover more secrets and help everyone learn more about ancient Egypt.
In June, we met some very thirsty birds.
This story made me go wow because I liked it.
Cockatoos are very clever creatures.
In fact, previously on Newstime we've talked about how they figured out how to open bins to poke around for food.
But now, some cockatoos in a Western Sydney park have learnt a new skill.
Some sulphur-crested cockatoos have learnt how to use a bubbler.
Bubblers, also called water fountains, in this Sydney park, they're twisty ones.
And the cockatoos have had to think hard about how to twist the handle to take a drink.
Turning on a bubbler.
And make his claws like.
So they use their claws to turn the bubbler on and then use their beaks to drink the water.
Ecologist Lucy Aplin is one of the scientists who figured out exactly what these birds were doing.
The cockatoos hold onto the bubbler with their foot and then they twist.
But because they're not as strong as humans, they have to lean their whole weight on this twisted tap while they angle their beak for a drink.
To be honest, it doesn't look super comfortable.
It's probably not the easiest position to get into, but about 200 birds have been seen contorting themselves like this just for a drink.
Because the bubbler has clean water.
The coolest part is these birds are teaching each other.
More than half of the birds in the local area are now using bubblers to get a drink, whether they're male female, young or old.
Cockatoos have pretty big brains compared to the size of their bodies, which gives them brain power to learn these new tricks.
I'm going to follow the steps that the people do.
I wonder what these quirky birds will learn next.
Story number one.
And finally, my friends, in September, we learned that robots aren't quite as clever as humans.
This story made me go wild because there's robots in the Olympics.
A brand new world sporting event has just finished up over in China.
Competitors gathered together in stadiums to run, kick, box and fall apart.
Okay, that was weird.
Like the guy fell over and his head was dangling from his neck.
Like the robot.
Yes, that's right.
There are no humans in this event.
This was the world's first robot humanoid games.
Humanoids are robots that look and move like humans do.
They probably made it like the robot Olympics.
There's no point in winning it because the robots, like humans, they won't get anything from it.
There were more than 500 humanoid robots from 16 countries, including the US, Germany and Japan, and they competed in sports like athletics football, table tennis and even a dancing competition.
The organisers of the Games wanted to use the event to see just how advanced robotic technology has become.
They say that sport is a good way to test robot decision-making and movement.
But it would seem like these robots have a fair way to go.
There was some falling over, knocking into humans by mistake and a bit of malfunctioning.
They barely know what they're doing.
Still, there have been some incredible advances in technology when it comes to humanoid robots, and the industry just keeps on growing.
It makes you wonder what the future might be like.
Butlers and stuff with robots, it will probably be, like, cheaper.
Attention, robot butler, cook my dinner, please.
Not today, Ruby.
And that is it for WowFest 2025.
What did you think?
Did you manage to say wow?
I'll catch you next week.
See you later.
Bye.
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