Sometimes when the rain falls hard and fast on you, it might hurt a little. But what happens when it hits a mosquito? A 2012 study says when a raindrop falls on a mosquito, it’s like when a bus hits a person. Besides, the little insect is hit by a raindrop about once every 20 seconds. So why don’t we see many dead mosquitoes after it rains?

A mosquito is as big as a raindrop, but it is much lighter—0.002 g only. This saves its life in raindrop attacks. Because the mosquito is so light, when it is hit by a raindrop, it won’t experience a force that is strong enough to kill it.

The study also found that when a mosquito is hit by a raindrop, the insect is pushed by the raindrop and falls together with it. But the mosquito doesn’t get wet easily because it is covered with hairs which keep off water. After dropping about 6 cm, it will roll off the raindrop and fly away.

However, this trick isn’t always successful. If the mosquito flies too low when it is hit by the raindrop, it won’t have time to fly off. Then it will hit the ground and meet its death.

       Marie Colvin was a world-famous war reporter. She was born in New York, USA, in 1956 and died in Homs, Syria, in 2012. 

       When she was a student at Yale University, Colvin decided that she wanted to be a reporter in the future. She joined the Sunday Times, a UK newspaper, in 1985 and soon became its Middle East reporter. Besides the Middle East, she also reported from other parts of the world: Chechnya, Kosovo and Sri Lanka, for example. When she was reporting on the war in Sri Lanka, she lost her left eye. But that never stopped her. She still went to dangerous places that few reporters wanted to visit and stayed when others left.

      Colvin showed great empathy in her stories. For her, war reporting was not just some quick interviews and a few photos. She wrote about real people and their real lives. Her writing made you feel so strongly about these people’s stories, just like they were your own. She hoped that through her work the world would understand what really happened in war, and would take action to stop the fighting.  

      On February 22, 2012, the day after she gave her report on the war in Homs, Colvin was killed when the house she was staying in was attacked. She always knew what price a war reporter might have to pay. She already lost an eye before. This time, she gave her life to the work she could not give up—telling the true stories to the world.