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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.

Prince of Buda and Princess of Pest...

The Prince of Buda and Princess of Pest is a small sculpture positioned on Gellért Hill overlooking the city below. For many years, the towns of Buda, Óbuda, and Pest were separate and independent. In 1873, they were joined together and given the new name Budapest. The bronze and stone sculpture is meant to symbolize the unification of the city. The statue tells a beautiful but tragic tale of Prince Buda and Princess Pest, two lovers divided by the……

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Prubechu in San Francisco, California

When Shawn Camacho and Shawn Naputi first opened Prubechu in 2014, it was the only Guamanian restaurant in San Francisco. Most of their customers had never heard of Chamorro food before. Now, the popular restaurant is a community stronghold, putting food from the Mariana Islands on the map.  Before opening Prubechu, Camacho and Naputi had, for years, cooked their native cuisine for friends. Chamorro refers to an Indigenous people from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam…….

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The Japanese-Style House of Prospect Park South in...

At the turn of the 20th century, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park South neighborhood served as a real estate showcase for developer Dean Elvord, who wanted to create a “high class” suburban community. About 205 houses in Prospect Park South, the so-called “Garden Suburb,” were built in styles ranging from Queen Anne and Colonial Revival to Italian Villas and Spanish Mission. There is even a Swiss chalet. However, even today, the Japanese House is certainly one of the unique buildings in the……

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How Indigenous-Led Conservation Brought a Caribou Herd...

Caribou, it turns out, can be fussy. “They’re picky about what they eat,” says Carmen Richter, a biologist and citizen of the Saulteau First Nations in British Columbia. “They definitely let us know what’s acceptable.” For nine years, Richter has been a part of an intensive caribou recovery effort, a collaboration spearheaded by the Saulteau and West Moberly First Nations, neighboring communities that live across a lake from one another, a few miles north of Chetwynd, British Columbia. Richter……

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Pie Town in Pie Town, New Mexico

In the early 1920s, Clyde Norman started a bakery making dried-apple pies, selling to ranchers who traveled through on The Driveway, a famous cattle path that ran from Western Arizona through New Mexico to the Magdalena trail head, some 120 miles. His bakery was the only building at the time, but soon “Norman’s Place” was the site of a town, one built by homesteaders moving west for free land, and that the residents decided to name Pie Town. Just……

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MIT scientists develop low-cost, high-precision fabrication method...

Technologies that depend on lightweight, high-precision optical systems, like space telescopes, X-ray mirrors, and display panels, have developed significantly over the past several decades, but more advanced progress has been limited by seemingly simple challenges. For example, the surfaces of mirrors and plates with microstructures that are necessary in these optical systems can be distorted by stressed surface coating materials, degrading optics quality. This is especially true for ultra-lightweight optical systems, such as space optics, where traditional optical fabrication……

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Liverpool Castle in Rivington, England

Lever Park lies in the Lancashire village of Rivington between the Lower Rivington Reservoir and a hill named Rivington Pike.  The park was donated to the city of Bolton in 1902 by William Lever, who was also known as Lord Leverhulme and who founded the Lever Brothers company (which later became part of Unilever).  The area contains a number of structures that Lord Leverhulme commissioned in the early 20th century, but the most unusual of these structures is Liverpool……

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'Renée' in Leuven, Belgium

Leuven is a student city, dotted with university buildings throughout. This closeness to student life has inspired much of the art in the city, including the famous statue of Fonske, who pours knowledge or beer into his head. Not far from Fonske stands another statue of a student, this one a young woman.  The statue depicts a fictional girl named Renée, who is made to represent the other side of student life. While Fonske is a silly, loud, and playful……

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US Pentagon chief speaks for 1st time...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday spoke with his Chinese counterpart for the first time since becoming Pentagon chief more than a year ago, breaking a communications impasse that American officials saw as increasingly dangerous amid concern that Beijing might provide military support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Austin, who calls China the U.S. military’s leading long-term challenge but has been forced to focus heavily on Russia this year, requested the telephone conversation with Gen. Wei…

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Review: ‘The Northman’ an ambitious, but lean...

The first sign that not everyone in Robert Eggers’ 10th-century Viking revenge tale “The Northman” has their priorities entirely straight comes early in the film, when the Viking king Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke) returns home to the North Atlantic kingdom of Hrafnsey after a year of fighting overseas. After trudging up on horseback to the snowy cliffside village, Aurvandil’s queen, Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), greets him warmly and, after a hug for their son, Amleth (Oscar Novak), urges him to bed…

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The Whale Monument in Tokyo, Japan

The district of Ningyōchō, a name that literally translates to “Doll Town,” is named after its past as feudal Tokyo’s center of puppetry and theater arts. Starting in the first half of the 17th century, the area attracted a number of kabuki and bunraku troupes, as well as merchants and craftsmen dealing in dolls and puppets with the said entertainers. Today, as you explore the quaint district you might come across a lifelike sculpture of a whale emerging from……

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Podcast: The Louis Armstrong House Museum

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit famed jazz musician Louis Armstrong’s house in Corona, Queens, which is now a museum preserving his legacy. 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. Join us……

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A Mystery Worm Is Threatening the Future...

This article was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. A dozen twists of a knife were all it took to tarnish the unblemished reputation of Washington’s oysters. It was 2017, and Teri King, an aquaculture specialist for Washington Sea Grant, a marine research institute, had been invited to shuck shellfish at a seafood event in Shelton, Washington. She was there to teach people about the local oyster industry, which……

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Professor Emeritus Markus Zahn, who specialized in...

Markus Zahn, professor emeritus within the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), died on March 13. He was 75 years old. Zahn was born in Bergen Belsen, Germany, in 1946, to Maria (Fischer) Zahn and Irving Zahn, each the sole survivor of their respective families during the Holocaust. The small family emigrated to the United States in 1949, settling in New York City, where Markus attended the Bronx High School of Science and Lakewood High School……

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Barrel Arch Bridge in Lorton, Virginia

This bridge was built in 1946 by imprisoned laborers from the nearby Lorton Workhouse using bricks made in their brickyard. It is the only structure of its kind in the state of Virginia. Known as voussoir arch bridges (so named for the wedge-shaped or tapered stones used to construct arches) or barrel arch bridges (due to the resemblance to the inside of a wooden barrel), this complex building style is among the strongest and most durable forms. (One of the oldest……

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