Red Adair, the Munroe Effect, & the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter On 20 February 1962, John Glenn became the third American to visit space, as Friendship 7 left Earth. When the craft successfully orbited our planet, Glenn was the first American to circle Earth above the atmosphere. He orbited three times during the nearly five-hour mission, giving Glenn […]
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Jerrie, Queen of the Clouds All right, I will. — Jerrie Mock We’ve noted many times the power of role models during our examinations of exemplary humans, most recently during the biography of Mae Jemison. Trailblazers open the minds of young people and expand their palette for what is possible. In the World War interregnum, Amelia Earhart was
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Children of the Jungle Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle. — Radio Transmission An example of total survival which will remain in history. — Colombian President Gustavo Petro On 1 May 2023, a Cessna 206 departed Araracuara Airport in southern Colombia with seven humans aboard. In addition to the pilot, Hernando Murcia Morales, and a local Indigenous leader, Herman Mendoza Hernández,
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Team NKR Social media are tricky gumbos, simultaneously connecting and isolating, able to amplify fantastic messages, misinformation, and drivel. As lovers of the outdoors, one unabashedly positive aspect of the internet is the ability to follow along with incredible adventurers, as they visit gorgeous or remote vistas. For those of us who will likely never
Ile Moyenne, a Voluntary Robinson Crusoe, and the World’s Smallest National Park Please Respect the Tortoises. They are probably older than you. — Sign on Moyenne Island About 800 nautical miles east of Africa, 115 islands dot the Indian Ocean, forming an archipelago named Seychelles. Named after a minister of Louis XV, the islands had never
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Gelje Sherpa, Superhuman Around 800 people attempt to summit the world’s highest mountain each year. Since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first humans to reach the apex of the world in 1953, 6,338 people have successfully climbed to the top of Mt. Everest. The vast majority of these people owe their triumph to Sherpas.
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Yosemitebear One of the great phenomena we have the blessing to experience as entities in a physical reality is one we tend to treat with familiarity because it is fairly common. Like the glory of a sunrise or sunset, upon which one could gaze two times every living day, rainbows are a marvel of physics
The Birth of the Space Age I climbed a tall cherry tree at the back of the barn…and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if
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Man of the Hole South America’s Amazon Rainforest is, in many ways, the heart of our planet. The eponymous river drains more water than the next seven-largest waterways, approximately 20% of Earth’s total. The rainforest is the largest and most diverse in the world. Of all the plant and animal species extant, one in 10 lives
Alex Trebek Today marked the final new episode of Jeopardy! hosted by Alex Trebek. I’ve spent nearly four decades of time on this planet watching Jeopardy! five nights per week. Though I know the game predated Trebek’s involvement and I actually know a person who appeared on the show when it was hosted by Art Fleming, to me, Jeopardy! is synonymous with