Ada, the Queen of Numbers

A long, long time ago, in a small English town, there lived a little girl named Ada. There were lots of kids in the town, and even though Ada was very different from them, she also loved to play in her own way.

She didn't like to play with pretty dolls or run around frollicking with other kids. No, what she enjoyed most was walking outside and doing calculations in her head - anything she could think of.

One, two, three, four, five... How many leaves are there on a tree? How many steps would it take to get from her house to school? How many mints could fit inside the glass sweets jar at Aunt Betty's house? She wanted to know the exact numbers for everything, and she even took notes of them and put them into her journal. She simply loved counting more than anything else in the world.

One day, Ada got very sick. She couldn't walk because the illness had taken away all of her energy. She could barely sit up. Every day, she would lie in bed and look out the window at the crows circling the sky. "Oh, how the crows are free, they can fly anywhere they want," she would sigh.

And that's when she came up with an idea.

“What if I could fly as well? My feet won't take me very far, but if I had wings I could fly all around our street. I could fly to school or to Auntie Betty's. I could even fly to London!”

It wasn’t long before she took out her little notebook and started doing her calculations. Thanks to her amazing understanding of mathematics, she could easily work out what size of wings she’d need to carry…