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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.

 
The Secret Language of Cairo’s Goldsmiths
Gabriel Rosenbaum was walking through the streets of Cairo one day when he heard a familiar word, zahub, coming from a nearby shop. The word sounded awfully close to the Hebrew word for gold, zahav, and as an Israeli, he was intrigued: The Arabic word for gold (dhahab) is similar, but zahub’s presence here seemed unusual. Rosenbaum, a professor of Arabic language and literature at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, decided to turn into the shop. Rosenbaum found himself...

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Son Bhandar Caves in Rajgir, India
Located in the ancient city of Rajgir, the Son Bhandar Caves are two artificial caves about which little is known. They are noted for their polished surfaces, a common trait in ancient Mauryan artifacts, but rather unusual in cave temples. One of the caves is believed to be from the time of the Mauryan Empire, which ruled South Asia from the late fourth to early second centuries B.C. The second cave, adjacent to it, has been largely destroyed, but...

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Basshenge in Baudette, Minnesota
As stones create Stonehenge, basses create Basshenge. In 2001, Chicago Symphony double bassist Joseph Guastafeste collaborated with artists to create this monument to the double bass off of Highway 11 in Minnesota. The spiral of sculptures forms a bass clef when viewed from above. The metal bass sculptures are made from thin steel plating. There are 21 basses in total, and the ones in the center are taller than the ones that make up the outer ring. Pairs of...

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Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden in Federal Way,...
The Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden (RSBG)  is unusual for many reasons, including its unassuming address. Federal Way is a suburb nestled between Seattle and Tacoma, best known for its strip malls and horrific traffic. It’s not somewhere you’d expect to find a botanical garden—let alone a sprawling, 22-acre oasis teeming with rare plants.  In the 1970s, the Rhododendron Species Foundation was allotted a plot of land on the 400-acre wooded campus where a large logging company maintained its headquarters. What...

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The Chestnuts in Guildford, England
In the garden behind a Victorian brick house, a sculpture of an inquisitive Alice, caught between two realms, extends two stony hands through the glass in front of her. The place she eternally guards—or at least the one we can see—is known as The Chestnuts. Here, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, known by his pen name of Lewis Carroll, spent his final days.  The late author was no stranger to multiple realities, himself....

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Kitsilano Pool in Vancouver, British Columbia
Of the five outdoor swimming pools in Vancouver, many would say that Kitsilano Pool is the cream of the crop. Situated directly on the water in the city’s trendy Kitsilano neighborhood, the pool—known as Kits Pool to locals—is a popular summer gathering place. At 137 meters (450 feet), it is the longest salt water swimming pool in North America; almost three times the length of an Olympic pool. Its waters are replenished by the changing of the tide. Kits Pool...

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Grave of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös in...
Each year, the Hungarian government sends a delegation to the Old Darjeeling Cemetery to honor Alexander Csoma (or more properly in Hungarian, Sándor Csoma de Kőrös) whose pioneering linguistic studies helped open Central Asia to the West. Csoma died of malaria in Darjeeling in 1844, but the effects of his scholarly contributions continue to be felt nearly 2 centuries later. Born in Transylvania (which was then under the Hungarian crown) in around 1784, Csoma was initially interested in finding...

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Royal Mint Jáchymov Museum in Jáchymov, Czechia
The word “dollar” derives from the former German currency thaler, which in turn comes from Joachimsthaler, a large silver coin from the 16th century. It was originally minted in the Bohemian town of Joachimsthal, known today as Jáchymov. Located in an ore-rich area in the mountains, the town of Jáchymov was founded in 1516, the same year its silver mines opened. The silver coins were first minted two years later. The property purchased to establish the mint stood adjacent to...

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Was a Classic Chinese Hat an Early...
Last month, as children in China started returning to school after COVID-19 closures, an ancient hat from the Song Dynasty came back into fashion. At a primary school in Hangzhou, pupils donned handmade headgear that they fashioned out of paper, balloons, and other crafts, with protruding arms that spanned one meter. These eccentric hats were intended to help them adjust to social distancing measures, the South China Morning Post reported, and they were modeled after hats once worn by...

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Under Pandemic Prohibition, South Africans Resort to...
On March 15, the day before South Africans were plunged into a lockdown which prohibited sales of alcohol, cigarettes, and takeout food, lines outside liquor stores spilled into the streets. One bottle store owner told me he did a month’s trade in a day. Three weeks later, when President Cyril Ramaphosa made it clear the booze ban wouldn’t be lifted anytime soon, South Africans started to get desperate. Bottle store break-ins and drone-assisted drink deliveries made the news across...

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San Gervasio in Cozumel, Mexico
From Polé to Xaman-Há, Maya settlements on the Caribbean coast of modern-day Mexico were often dedicated to assisting pilgrims on their way to the temples of fertility goddess Ixchel, often established on nearby islands. One island was so full of female idols that the Spanish named it Isla Mujeres, or Island of Women, while in Cozumel, several temples dedicated to the goddess were well-known pilgrimage sites. The Cozumel site now known as San Gervasio was not part of a...

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Mount St. Helens Is Going Green Again
The most explosive volcanic eruptions are striking not just for their vivid pyrotechnic displays, or for the huge clouds of ash they spew into the air. Often, the aftermath is just as jarring—the miles upon miles of ash that blanket the earth, extinguishing the life that grew there and suppressing any that was to come. But nothing is forever. Take Mount St. Helens, whose gargantuan eruption 40 years ago—the deadliest in U.S. history—completely destroyed the top of the mountain....

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Fort Péninsule in Gaspé, Québec
You don’t exactly think of quaint Canadian fishing towns as a theater of war. But Fort Péninsule (Peninsula Fort),  strategically at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, played a critical role in the defense of Allied shipping convoys and winning the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II.  As early as 1941, German U-Boats had been spotted off the coast of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. It was just a matter of time before they found their way...

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The Museum of Youth Culture Wants Your...
Bars, parks, and schools are closed until further notice, but one British museum is making sure that we remember what it means to be young. With millions stuck at home, within close reach of old photo albums, the United Kingdom’s Museum of Youth Culture (MOYC) has issued a call for submissions: The museum wants your childhood, adolescent, and teenage photos—in all their adorable, rebellious, or just plain awkward glory. The submissions will join the museum’s growing archive of looks,...

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Bee Museum of Rhodes in Rhodes, Greece
Bees have long been an important part of the Earth’s ecosystem. Many ancient cultures recognized the contributions of these humble insects, and cultivated them. The Bee Museum of Rhodes in Greece honors the long and storied relationship between humans and bees around the world. There’s a handful of apiculture museums across the world, but the Bee Museum in Rhodes is a unique one. Decorated with honeycomb-shaped ceilings, the museum is bathed in honey-colored lighting, sure to make Winnie-the-Pooh hungry....

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