Author: Ms. R.

When a hurricane struck the Florida coast in September 1928, it caused a dike on Lake Okeechobee to fail which resulted in an extensive loss of human life. Of the victims in Palm Beach County, most of the white victims were buried in a mass grave in the prestigious Woodlawn Cemetery. However, segregation laws at the time prevented the burial of Black residents in that cemetery. More than 600 Black and other people of color were interred in a……

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Nestled in the small circus town of Baraboo, Wisconsin is Devil’s Lake State Park. The park is named for the large lake that sits at its center. Devil’s Lake is located in the middle of a deep chasm, with no visible inlet or outlet. Rather than any religious origins, its name actually comes from a misinterpretation of a term from the Ho-Chunk Nation, the region’s Indigenous inhabitants. The Ho-Chunk term Tawacunchukdah, sometimes spelled Da-wa-kah-char-gra, is more accurately translated as “Sacred……

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Halfway between the medieval town of Serrone (738 meters above sea level) and the peak of Mount Scalambra, along a steep hike through the holm oak woods, there is a small stone hermitage. The Hermitage of Saint Michael stands directly against a rocky cliff and with an extraordinary view over the valley below (1105 meters above sea level). The hermitage was restored in 1758 and local documentation has shown that it was run by the order of the Benedictines……

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The country of Suriname was once the only Dutch colony in South America and the main fortification here was Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam, located near the city of Paramaribo at the mouth of the Suriname River. In 1911, the newly-built Suriname-Rivier ship sailed from Haarlem, in the Netherlands to reach Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam after a 40-day-long journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Once at its destination the ship, not equipped with engines, was used as a lightvessel to mark the position of the……

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Many famous buildings in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. owe their longevity and fortitude to red bricks that were made in this kiln or eight others like it situated within the nearby Occoquan Workhouse. The last of these giant kills standing along the banks of the Occoquan River and taking point of pride in Occoquan Regional Park, next to the nicely designed visitor center. The nearly 100-year-old kiln produced millions upon millions of bricks between 1910 and 1967, including……

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This story originally appeared in Wired and is reproduced here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. Humanity’s got a full-tilt zombie outbreak on its hands. As the world warms and certain regions—particularly the Arctic—dry, so does the super fuel known as peat. It’s basically concentrated carbon from dead plants, and it burns not at all like your typical Californian or Australian wildfire. Instead of sending towering flames upward, a peat fire burns in the opposite direction, smoldering deep……

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