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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.

Playoff loss drives Antetokounmpo as he aims...

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Giannis Antetokounmpo is motivated by winning. In his mind, he didn’t do enough of that last season. The Milwaukee Bucks forward spent the NBA offseason working on his game and body – while also representing his country – as he makes a run at another championship. It is what drives the 27-year-old two-time MVP. Sure, he is flattered to be thought of as the world’s greatest basketball player, but Antetokounmpo says that title belongs to the…

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National Coracle Centre in Cenarth, Wales

They might not be as iconic as leeks or dragons on the ‘Welshness’ scale (in fact, many people probably won’t know what they are), but coracles are entwined into the culture of Wales, and this little museum in Carmarthenshire acts as a perfect introduction to the history of these odd-looking, river-going crafts. Records of coracles being used in the United Kingdom date back to Roman times. The small, wooden boats, which appear like large baskets bobbing on the water’s……

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Q&A: Melissa Nobles on guest-editing Nature to...

The venerable British journal Nature is publishing four special issues in 2022 that delve into matters of racism and science, including the way racist thinking has imbued the content of biological thinking, the downplaying of knowledge accumulated by non-Western societies, and the exclusion of people of color from the scientific establishment. MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles is one of four guest editors of these issues, along with Elizabeth Wathuti, an environmental and climate activist from Kenya and founder of the……

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Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum in...

Walking around an artist’s studio can feel, at times, like taking a peek inside their brain. And if there’s anywhere to get a glimpse inside the incredible mind of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer, it’s at her home and garden at 1313 Pierce Street in Lynchburg, Virginia, now open to the public as a museum.  Head behind the handsome brown home with green shutters and you’ll find Anne’s garden. It’s an oasis of lush green with bright pops of……

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Mammoth Spring in Mammoth Spring, Arkansas

Arkansas and Missouri could be at odds with the true ownership of Mammoth Spring, the largest spring in Arkansas, and the seventh-largest in the world. The mouth of the spring is in Arkansas (only 500 feet from the MO/AR border), but the recharge area belongs to Missouri. For now, the states are in agreement, the second-largest spring in the Ozarks belongs to Arkansas. Almost ten million gallons of water pump out of Mammoth Spring every hour. A hydroelectric dam……

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Beware Montana’s Shunka Warak’in, the 'Rocky Mountain...

Cryptids of all kinds have long moved in the shadows across what’s now the United States, their legends preserved in Native American traditions that stretch from the Southwest to the Great Lakes and beyond. Acclaimed writer J.W. Ocker introduces us to some of these ancient terrors. Excerpted with permission from The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters, by J. W. Ocker. Published by Quirk Books. All rights reserved. Something has been preying on domesticated……

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5 Haunted House Stories That Will Make...

Haunted houses are so popular that selling a home that is reported to have paranormal activity isn’t all that hard. As author Dan Nosowitz writes, “sometimes a haunting can be a turn-off, but it all depends on the market and, well, the ghosts.” In other words, not all haunted spaces are the same. Take a tour through through the troubling histories and fraught futures of some of the world’s scariest places in these Atlas Obscura stories Planning on Selling……

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Seven's Pinballorama in Cornwall, Prince Edward Island

Located just west of Charlottetown, Seven’s Pinballorama offers the most playable pinball machines under one roof in Canada. Opened in the spring of 2022, the arcade features around 40 machines and counting, ranging from the 1950s to the present day. Players can try their hand at electro-mechanical machines from the 60s and 70s, solid-state games from the late 70s (hello, digital display readouts, ramps, and flashing lights on the playfield), and increasingly complex dot-matrix display machines of the 1990s…….

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Podcast: Brown Dog Statue

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit a memorial that marks the life of a pup who sparked riots over animal rights issues in London, England. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their stories…….

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Method for decoding asteroid interiors could help...

NASA hit a bullseye in late September with DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which flew a spacecraft straight at the heart of a nearby asteroid. The one-way kamikaze mission smashed into the stadium-sized space rock and successfully reset the asteroid’s orbit. DART was the first test of a planetary defense strategy, demonstrating that scientists could potentially deflect an asteroid headed for Earth. Now MIT researchers have a tool that may improve the aim of future asteroid-targeting missions. The……

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Actor Anna May Wong will be first...

Watch Video: Meet the history-making women being honored on quarters in 2022 Anna May Wong, considered to be the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, is set to become the first Asian American to be featured on U.S. currency. Wong will appear on a new quarter as part of the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters Program, which was first announced in January 2022 and features women who have made contributions in a variety of fields including suffrage, civil…

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Kevin Spacey finishes testimony at NY civil...

NEW YORK (AP) — Kevin Spacey remained composed Tuesday during cross examination at a civil trial, repeatedly rejecting suggestions that he wasn’t telling the truth when he denied an actor’s claims that he made a sexual advance on him when he was 14 in the 1980s. His testimony for several hours on cross examination by a lawyer for actor Anthony Rapp, 50, went smoothly enough that Spacey’s lawyer did not ask any questions after the examination was completed by…

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Dougie Hamilton breaks tie in 3rd, Devils...

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Defenseman Dougie Hamilton broke a tie 33 seconds into the third period, Mackenzie Blackwood made 18 saves and the New Jersey Devils beat the Anaheim Ducks 4-2 on Tuesday night. Jesper Bratt set up Hamilton with a cross-crease pass to Hamilton parked to the right of goaltender Anthony Stolarz. Blackwood denied Ducks scoring leader Troy Terry from in front on the power play midway through the third as New Jersey held on for its first…

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Otford Solar System in Otford, England

The Otford Solar System is a scale model built in 1999 to celebrate the new millennium. The scale is 1:4,595,700,000, so one millimeter is equivalent to 4,595.7 kilometers. All the planets of our Solar System are located in their relative positions at midnight on January 1, 2000. Each planet is shown as a scaled engraving on a sun-sized stainless steel disc on the top of a three-foot-tall white concrete column. The sun and planets out to Jupiter are all……

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Falls Creek Falls in Rebel Creek, Nevada

The Santa Rosa Range, in the far northern part of the state next to southeastern Oregon, is another of those little-known Nevada ranges with peaks near 10,000 feet. Like nearly all of Nevada’s ranges, it trends north-south, with most of the southern part of the range included in the Santa Rosa-Paradise Peak Wilderness. Although the range does host perennial streams, the Santa Rosas are relatively dry, so a waterfall is an unexpected sight. Falls Creek drains to the west…….

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