Candy Mama In 2018, a Belgian dentist named Karel Sabbe ran the length of the Appalachian Trail in 41 days, 7 hours, and 39 minutes. His incredible achievement was the fastest-known time to complete the 2,198-mile icon of American footpaths. Sabbe averaged 53 miles per day over intense terrain. That’s more than two marathons every day for […]
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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Hailing Frequencies Open To a child born in 1956, the Apollo missions to the moon transpired during a formative period. Teenagers across the United States watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin prance across our grey satellite, many dreaming of one day leaving their footprints on an alien world. Though the monumental achievements of the space
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The Dark Lady of DNA For many decades following the 1950s, biology classes across the United States and the world drilled two names into the heads of students in relation to unraveling the “secret of life.” Which brilliant scientists unlocked the famous double helix of deoxyribonucleic acids – aka DNA – the coding chains of life on
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The Sami Speedster On 27 July 2023, Kristin Harila and Tenjin Sherpa stood atop K2, the world’s second-highest peak. By itself, this summit represents a world-class achievement; significantly fewer than 1,000 people have ever occupied this location. For Harila and Tenjin, however, success on the Savage Mountain represented something even more stunning. In 2019, Nirmal Purja
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500 Days in Timecave “I said: ‘Already? Surely not.’ I hadn’t finished my book.” –Beatriz Flamini On 21 November 2021, mountaineer and endurance athlete Beatriz Flamini descended into a Spanish cave. Russia had not invaded Ukraine. Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t dead. The James Webb Space Telescope had not yet probed the cosmos. When Flamini emerged from the cave
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Apgar When a baby joins our planet today, doctors or nurses evaluate them at one minute old and again at five minutes old, using a system called the Apgar Score. Five attributes each receive a score of 0-2, making the overall score a range between 0 and 10. If you have a child in modern times,
Wanda Risen “I don’t seek death, but I don’t mind if it happens in the mountains. It would be an easy death for me. Many of my friends are waiting for me in the mountains.” –Wanda Rutkiewicz Many alpine historians consider a slight Polish climber to be the greatest woman mountaineer ever born. Standing just 5 feet,
The Sun Queen It is the things supposed to be impossible that interest me. I like to do things they say cannot be done. — Mária Telkes Aladar Telkes and Maria Laban de Telkes welcomed a daughter to the world on 12 December 1900 in Budapest, at the time part of Austria-Hungary. The Telkes did
Code Girls written by Alan R. In the years leading up to and during World War II, increasing usage of radio and telegraphic transmissions to send secret communications necessitated the need for ciphers to disseminate sensitive information, such as military planning and operations. As the ability of one force to crack the enemy’s codes