Author: Ms. R.

This piece was originally published in The Guardian and appears here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. Hundreds of elephants died in Botswana earlier this year from ingesting toxins produced by cyanobacteria, according to government officials who say they will be testing waterholes for algal blooms next rainy season to reduce the risk of another mass die-off. The mysterious death of 350 elephants in the Okavango Delta between May and June baffled conservationists, with leading theories suggesting they……

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Though the Alpine Inn is considered the site of history’s first internet transmission, this tavern is definitely more Wild West than World Wide Web. A former San Jose mayor built the bar in 1852 on a roadside in the Portola Valley, an ideal spot to avoid various city ordinances against drinking and gambling. Though it passed through various names and hands over the years, it was always a favorite with locals, especially the local Stanford students. But when a……

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Designated as a National Natural Landmark in 1983, this relatively young and still active slide is one of the best examples of a rare geologic phenomenon known as “mass wasting” in the world. Centuries ago, a portion of the Lake City caldera broke off of Mesa Seco and started moving down the steep slopes of the Lake Branch of the Gunnison River. Unlike many other slides, this was a slow-moving mass of materials known as mass flow or earth……

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An overlooked Brutalist gem, the Isthmia Prime Hotel was built in the late 1960s by two friends, composer Iannis Xenakis and urban planner Panos Spiliotakos. Xenakis was a Greek artist and composer with a degree in engineering. Escaping the horrors of the Greek Civil War in 1947, he worked under the architect Le Corbusier in Paris. Xenakis helped design the Unite D’Habitation and Couvent De La Tourette projects, two of the most recognized Brutalist architecture sites worldwide.   It was……

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Within Hazelbank Park sits a memorial stone dedicated to a Huguenot Soldier named Gideon Bonnivert. The diaries he wrote recorded the historic landings of King William III’s (“William of Orange”) massive European Army in 1690. His army went on to defeat King James VII of Scotland and Ireland at the Battle of The Boyne near the town of Drogheda on July 1, 1690. Gideon Bonnivert’s diary containing his accounts of the landing can be found at the British Museum in……

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On the small island of Motutapu, a complex of bunkers, tunnels, and observation posts stands abandoned, left over from the 1940s and preparations for an invasion that never came.  In the language of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people, Motutapu means “sacred island of Taikehu” (a reference to a Maori ancestor). Located adjacent to the volcanic Rangitoto Island, it was a home and important site for centuries, and the Department of Conservation and the Motutapu Restoration Trust oversee a network of archaeological sites that date……

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After refusing to marry the son of a local chieftain, a young woman named Ashima was kidnapped by her spurned suitor and carried into the wilderness. Her true love, Ahei, saved the day by defeating the abductor in a three-day singing match, but on the ride back to their village, Ashima drowned in a flood. This, according to Chinese lore, is the origin of the iconic Shilin Stone Forest’s Ashima Stone, a monolithic rock formation that resembles a kerchiefed……

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