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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.

DuPont Explosives Depot Ruins in...

Constructed by the DuPont Powder Company (now Dow-DuPont), the DuPont Dock and Depot was a storage site for blasting supplies used in the Alaska Juneau mine. It was built seven miles from downtown Juneau due to the threat of an accidental explosion. The DuPont trail follows the water’s edge of the Gastineau Channel with excellent views of the water to the right. On the left are waterfalls that flow through the lush, mossy rain forests.  When visitors arrive at the ruins,……

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Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Powell,...

Heart Mountain was originally named by the Apsáalooke (or the Crow Nation in English) for resembling a buffalo heart. The limestone summit is almost 300 million years older than the rocks at the base, but geologists have found no explanation as to how this occured. The mountain is also one of the few recognizable features on the maps created by Lewis and Clark. In August 1942, the United States government relocated over 13,000 Japanese-Americans from California to an internment……

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Podcast: The Thousand-Year Rose

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit the world’s oldest rose, so tough that it survived being bombed in World War II. 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 daily, Monday……

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Expenses startup Pleo preps $100M Series C...

Late-stage Fintech startup Pleo, which offers expense management tools and ‘smart’ company Mastercards, says it plans to raise a Series C round of funding this summer. It’s also launching a B2B bill payments service this week. Co-founder and CEO Jeppe Rindom told me via a call: “We have money until 2022, but we’ve seen incredible momentum in the past couple of quarters, and we are getting a lot of inbound interest so we will be fundraising a Series C……

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Daily Crunch: Apple announces a new iPad...

Apple announces new devices, Amazon opens a hair salon and Venmo adds cryptocurrency support. This is your Daily Crunch for April 20, 2021. The big story: Apple announces a new iPad Pro and much more Apple revealed a bunch of new products at its press event today. As expected, there’s going to be a new iPad Pro that’s supposed to represent a 50% performance increase over the previous model, with pricing starting at $799 for an 11-inch model. In……

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Sweeten Your Springtime With Japan’s Fruit Sandwiches

Ham and cheese. Peanut butter and jelly. Whipped cream and strawberries. Which one of these sandwiches does not belong? To the Western eye, the answer is obvious. And yet, if you stroll the aisles of any Japanese convenience store, furutsu sando, or fruit sandwiches, are a common sight. Sweet sandwiches exist outside of Japan, of course—think peanut butter and jelly, or even the Fluffernutter. But it’s not only the filling that sets fruit sandwiches apart. Bakeries don’t use whole……

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Innovative design thinking for a fast-changing world

Blade Kotelly is a senior lecturer at MIT on design thinking, user interfaces, and innovation whose enthusiasm for cars is intertwined with his passion for innovative design. Despite Kotelly’s love affair with the internal combustion engine, he realizes the technology is heading for endangered species list. “We are going to see a huge shift to electric cars, not just for the environment but because the total operating cost is lower,” he says. Kotelly’s brain may have convinced him batteries……

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Peter Pan Mini-Golf in Austin, Texas

In the middle of the 20th century, miniature golf courses in the United States commonly used gigantic representations of otherworldly characters to attract customers. Figures from fairy tales standing several stories high drew in crowds of people willing to pay for a chance to putt next to these characters over on astroturfed courses. Over the past 50 years, many of these cartoonish courses have slowly fallen into disrepair or disappeared entirely. But there are a few exceptions, including Peter Pan……

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How Can a Basilica Stay Dry Amid...

As night fell over the northeastern Italian city of Venice on November 12, 2019, sirens wailed, signaling the arrival of a particularly high tide. At more than four feet above sea level, the city’s forecasting institute classed the tide as “exceptional,” but residents were prepared with electric pumps and steel barriers slotted into ground-floor doorways. As the night wore on, though, the tide rose far higher. Fierce winds and rain drove the water into the historic city, creating waves……

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MIT launches new data privacy-focused initiative

Strategic use of data is vital for progress in science, commerce, and even politics, but at the same time, citizens are demanding more responsible, respectful use of personal data. Internet users have never felt more helpless about how their data are being used: Surveys show that the vast majority of U.S. adults feel that they have little to no control over the data that the government and private companies collect about them. In response to these concerns, new privacy……

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'Soorebane' ('Bog Fox') in Risti, Estonia

This transmission line carries electricity to the western part of Estonia. It was commissioned by the electricity company Elering to raise public awareness of everyone’s role when it comes to electricity in modern society. It was also designed to demonstrate that even such a mundane object as an electric pylon can be artistic and enjoyable. The sculpture is 147 feet (45 meters) high and weighs about 33 tons. It’s made of steel tubes that are anchored to the bog……

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Tlos in Fethiye, Turkey

One of the six most important Lycian cities, Tlos was described in the Hittite Chronicle as “the most brilliant metropolis of the Lycian nation.” Although most Lycian cities were located along the coast, Tlos was strategically placed on a hill commanding expansive views of Xanthos Valley to the west and protected by the Akdag mountains to the east. The actual hill on which Tlos is perched is further secured by near-vertical slopes on three sides, making it a natural fortress. ……

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A Desert Oasis Hints at a Long...

The oasis of Jubbah stands out like a smudged green footprint in the sea of dunes that is Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert. It’s fitting that the image was taken by a modern explorer, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station: The site is a testament to changing climate patterns, and to human resilience and exploration. Thousands of years ago, when the region was considerably less arid, the basin was a lake, offering fresh water to wildlife, livestock, and humans……

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Požega Railway Museum in Požega, Serbia

The Narrow-gauge Railway Museum in Požega is located next to the railway station. This open-air exhibition contains more than 40,000 museum pieces. It was founded in 1990 by Stojan Stamatović, who worked at the railway station for his entire career. He was also a collector of abandoned locomotives and wagons from Yugoslavian narrow-gauge railways. The museum resembles an old station and some of the trains are in operating condition even though they were crafted during the 19th-century. Two of the……

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Feds consider how to respond after verdict...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is privately weighing how to handle the upcoming verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, including considering whether President Joe Biden should address the nation and dispatching specially trained community facilitators from the Justice Department, aides and officials told The Associated Press. The jury resumed deliberations Tuesday morning after spending a few hours Monday discussing the case behind closed doors. In closing arguments earlier in the day, a prosecutor…

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