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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Why Did This Ancient Marsupial Have Saber...
The naming of many saber-toothed species—the most famous being the genus Smilodon, or the saber-toothed cat—sounds like a bit of a macabre joke. The pearly grins of these prehistoric predators might have been the last sight of any creatures that got close enough to appreciate them. But not all saber-toothed things were aggressively predatory. Some, like the marsupial Thylacosmilus atrox, may have occupied a different niche. As a new study published in the journal PeerJ reports, the pouched, cat-resembling...

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William Penn Landing Site in Chester, Pennsylvania
Near the confluence of Chester Creek and the Delaware River, a small granite monument marks the site of one of the most significant events in the early history of Pennsylvania—the first disembarkment of its founder William Penn.  In a plot of land that throughout history played host to a Swedish tobacco plantation, a Quaker meeting place, railroad waste, the governor’s daughter’s house, and Okehocking tribal land, the site, located in the now-city of Chester, was in the middle of...

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The Witch Stone of Great Leighs in...
St Anne’s Castle, in Great Leighs, Essex, is supposedly the oldest licensed inn in the country. Though, due to a devastating fire, the current building is less than 100 years old, an inn on the site is recorded in The Domesday Book in 1086 (and others hold claim to the same title). As one might expect for a site with so much history, it is home to many mysteries and alleged hauntings. However, it is outside the walls, just...

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Church of the Holy Trinity in Codrongianos,...
Tucked away in the rolling countryside of northern Sardinia, the Church of the Holy Trinity (Basilica della Santissima Trinità di Saccargia) is a prime example of Pisane Romanesque architecture. Though the black-and-white basilica dates back to the early 12th century, the site upon which it was built was home to religious institutions for far longer, and the ruins of an ancient monastery can still be found on the grounds.  At the time the basilica was erected, the Italian island...

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Peppersauce Cave in Oracle, Arizona
Accessible only by hiking in and marked only by a graffitied map, Peppersauce Cave feels very different from better-known cave systems that feature guided tours, parking lots, and paths with handrails.  The cave is located in the Coronado National Forest north of Tucson, Arizona. A 1948 article in The Desert Magazine brought the site, which was reportedly discovered by deer hunters, to the attention of the wider public. You can still see wonders described in the article, including an underground lake, which...

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Saint Patrick’s High Cross in Carndonagh, Ireland
Located on the Inishowen peninsula, Carndonagh is one of the main towns of County Donegal. In Irish, Carn Domhnach means “the cairn of the church,” and the story says that Saint Patrick himself founded a monastery there. But, in reality, very little is known about this the site and its history, and the building is long gone. The sole remnant of it is its high cross, which suggests that the monastery had reached a certain level of prosperity and...

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The South Carolina Forest That Looks Like...
With its sometimes-swampy landscape stippled with soaring cypresses, Congaree National Park in central South Carolina looks like a prehistoric diorama. And occasionally it also resembles a Lisa Frank folder come to life. When conditions are right, standing water appears orangey, blue, and pinky-red—hues usually reserved for garish school supplies or swirls of melted sherbert on a hot day. The sheen comes from oil, but isn’t the product of a spill or other industrial mess-up. Rather, the “oil-slick sheen” comes...

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In Mexico City, the Coronavirus Is Bringing...
In the south of Mexico City, about 100 miles of murky canals wind their way through the Xochimilco neighborhood. Here, the urban sprawl of one of the world’s densest cities yields to a lake region where indigenous farmers have been cultivating a unique system of floating gardens since pre-colonial times. Called chinampas, these floating gardens were built by the Aztecs to feed a growing population. Xochimilco became one of the city’s main sources of food, but rapid urbanization in...

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Charles Feltman’s Tomb in Brooklyn, New York
Nathan’s might be synonymous with hot dogs in Brooklyn, but it was a German immigrant named Charles Feltman who introduced them to Coney Island in the first place.  Feltman came to the United States in 1856 at the age of 15 and was soon selling pies from a pushcart at the beach. Eventually, he started hawking frankfurters inserted into a long bun. This new handheld meal, known as a “red hot,” became popular enough that he was able to open...

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Meet the Caretakers of Sealand, the World’s...
This story was excerpted and adapted from the author’s book, Sealand: The True Story of the World’s Most Stubborn Micronation and its Eccentric Royal Family, which was published in June 2020 by Diversion Books. At 6:00 a.m. on a cold day in March 2019, a lone figure can be seen on the pier in Harwich, on the coast of Essex, England, in the deep blue of the early morning light. The man in his late 50s wears a taxi...

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Memorial 68 in Mexico City, Mexico
The museum known as Memorial 68 is a space that tells the story of the protests in Mexico, from LGBT marches to those led by seamstresses affected by the 1985 earthquake. However, the key point of the exhibition is the student protests of 1968 and the violent attack on these activists that occurred a few steps away from the museum itself.  The year 1968 was marked by protests around the world, from the United States to France to Japan. In Mexico,...

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Site of the Angola Horror in Angola,...
On December 18, 1867, one of the country’s worst train accidents took place here. The train, traveling from Cleveland to Buffalo, was running behind schedule. Crucially, the train was designed to work on different gauge tracks, which led to instability. As a train crossed the bridge over Big Sister Creek, the last car jumped and derailed, causing it to swing and crash into the gorge below. The accident caused the stoves to overturn, throwing hot coals all over the...

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Norwegian Petroleum Museum in Stavanger, Norway
The Norwegian Petrol Museum is dedicated to exploring how “black gold” changed Norway—not just the country’s economy, but its society. There, you can learn about every aspect of the industry.  The museum has a range of exhibits, from models and films, to original objects from the extraction process and interactive exhibits where visitors can experience what life is like on an oil rig. Perhaps the most eye-catching exhibit is the “leg” of an oil rig that was destroyed. The twisted...

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The Devil’s Fingerprints in Blythburgh, England
Stories and sightings of ghostly and demonic black dogs are woven through the folklore and mythology of the British Isles. Perhaps the most ancient and well known of these entities is the Black Shuck.  Tales of the Black Shuck, or simply Shuck, haunt rural East Anglia, the coast and countryside of the counties of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire. Descriptions of the creature’s nature and appearance vary across time and space. What remains consistent, however, are the descriptions of...

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How a Tiny Island’s Trash Heap Is...
Mackinac Island—a little freckle between Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas—is a great place to savor homemade fudge, slurp seafood chowder, or ride bikes along paths that hug the water. It’s not an ideal spot for archaeological artifacts to bed down. “Mackinac is a piece of limestone with a little soil on it,” says Lynn Evans, curator of archaeology at Mackinac State Historic Parks. “Not great for preservation.” But many artifacts have managed to linger. The island is home to...

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