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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.

 
For a Brief, Shining Moment, These Bioluminescent...
Every year around April and early May, the waters of Toyama Bay, a fishing port in central Japan, glow an otherworldly blue. Though the dazzling phosphorescent display resembles the celestial constellations of the night sky, its source comes from the depths of the oceans. Watasenia scintillans, also known as firefly squid, or hotaru ika in Japanese, emit a mesmerizing light courtesy of a network of thousands of photophores situated all over their 3-inch bodies. While most sea creatures, like...

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Cromwell's Bridge in Lancashire, England
This bridge was built during the Tudor period but found fame in August 1648 in the English Civil War. During the war, Oliver Cromwell marched his army of more than 8,000 soldiers along with artillery over the bridge on his way to the battle of Preston. Despite being outnumbered, he defeated the combined army of English Royalists and  Scots “Engagers” who marched south in support of King Charles I. The bridge was a packhorse bridge and has been out...

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Millennium Manor Castle in Alcoa, Tennessee
William Andrew Nicholson spent nearly a decade constructing this mysterious castle. In 1937, at the age of 61, he began building the Tennessee home by hand with some assistance from his wife Emma Fair. The Nicholsons believed that Armageddon (apocalypse from the Book of Revelations) was coming, and built their home to withstand whatever forces might come. Constriction was completed in 1946, and the building was dubbed the Millennium Manor Castle. Nicholson used his flatbed truck to pick up a gray...

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Fórnea de Porto de Mós in Alcaria,...
The Fórnea of Porto de Mós is a natural depression (almost like a sinkhole)  in the shape of an amphitheater that is located in the Aire and Candeeiros Mountain Range Natural Park (Parque Natural das Serras de Aire e Candeeiros). It measures one kilometer in diameter and stands 250 meters high. Locals call it Fórnea because its shape is similar in shape to an oven (forno in Portuguese). This geological phenomenon was caused by the erosion from rain and spring waters in the mountain range’s limestone-rich soil. There are several springs in the valley, which are...

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The Mysterious Coral Cousin Swarming the Palmyra...
The Palmyra Atoll is about 1,060 miles south of the Hawaiian archipelago in the equatorial Pacific. Far from any permanent human disturbance, it is a haven for an astonishingly diverse spectrum of species, but for the past couple decades, the reefs have been overrun by creatures we know very little about: corallimorphs. Corallimorphs are cnidarians, like hard corals, sea anemones, and jellyfish. They’re closely related to corals, except without the hard parts, and in Palmyra they’ve been outcompeting and...

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Revenue Management Trends: Discover the Latest Developments
A significant part of getting the most out of a hotel revenue management strategy involves keeping up with the very latest revenue management trends and then implementing associated strategies, while investing in relevant technology. In this article, you can learn all about the latest developments in this area, so that you can stay ahead of The post Revenue Management Trends: Discover the Latest Developments appeared first on Revfine.com.

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Podcast: Traveling While Aging
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, our host Dylan Thuras confronts the good and the bad ways travel changes as you move through different life stages. 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...

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Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, Georgia
This museum is the perfect place to spend an afternoon marveling at Greek and Roman statues. This unassuming museum tucked away on the Emory University campus contains an impressive collection of art. Inside is an extensive collection of ancient Latin American art, as well as artifacts found locally in Georgia. Other standouts in the collection include a soldier’s armor from ancient Greece and a section from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

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James C. Dent House in Washington, D.C.
James Clinton Dent was born into slavery in 1855 in Charles County, Maryland. It is believed that he gained his freedom after the United States’ abolition of slavery in 1864.  In the 1870s, Dent moved to Washington, D.C., where he took up residence in a part of the city known as “the island” that was separated from the rest of D.C. by the Washington and James Creek canals. Dent married his wife Mary and worked as a laborer for...

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Real Santuario Insular de Nuestra Señora de...
Like most places in Spain, the Canary Islands are filled with Christian churches both big and small that dot the landscape. These churches focus on Marian devotion and around terracotta statues of Maria. The oldest of these statues can be found on La Palma and dates back to the late 14th or early 15th-century, predating the end of the conquest of the Canaries. In fact, the effigy has been worshiped by the native Benahoritas in a cave not far from...

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Maratha War Memorial in Pune, India
Just a few blocks away from the iconic George Restaurant in Pune Cantonment, lies a stone monument within a triangular garden. It is a quiet and peaceful spot to explore, particularly on a Sunday afternoon. The memorial is in the center of the garden. An inscription on the top reads: “In memory of those men of Maharashtra who laid down their lives in the war of 1914-18.” Nearly 1.8 million Indian soldiers fought for the British Indian Army in...

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'Hönstavlan' ('Picturesque Chickens') in Strängnäs Ö, Sweden
Being rich in the 18th century often included commissioning art for your large mansion. These could be portraits, still life, landscapes, artistic representations of historical events, or chickens with heads of your court ladies. The painting was commissioned by Count Karl Tessin, who collected and commissioned art. The painting depicts six hens (single ladies) with a rooster in the background, which was meant to be Tessin himself. This painting was a private one, intended to be seen only by a...

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Battle of Marston Moor Monument in York,...
On quiet farmland just outside York, one of the most significant battles of the English Civil War was fought on July 2, 1644. Indeed, it is thought that it is the largest battle ever fought on British soil.  Throughout that summer, Parliamentarian forces under the command of Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Manchester were joined by Scottish Covenanters who had been besieging the Royalist stronghold of York. On the Royalist side, Prince Rupert of the Rhine had gathered...

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Muzej Žeravica in Novo Miloševo, Serbia
The Museum Žeravica founder Milivoj Žeravica started collecting old tractors in the 70s. It started while he was trying to get a Fordson 10-20 HP tractor that his father Milorad Žeravica had owned working again. Soon after, he began gathering other old tractors. That collection became a museum exhibition in 1991 when Museum Žeravica was opened by his son Čedomir Žeravica.  Initially, the small collection of tractors was housed in an old shed. Today the tractors—along with old vehicles, electronic devices, toys, musical...

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How to Build an Island
This story is excerpted and adapted from Alastair Bonnett’s Elsewhere: A Journey into our Age of Islands, published in November 2020 by the University of Chicago Press. Outside the United States and Canada, Elsewhere is published as The Age of Islands: In Search of New and Disappearing Islands (Atlantic Books). So, you want to build an island. You’ll have some questions, such as where, how, and of course, what shape? Strange-looking islands are sprouting in shallow seas all over...

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