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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.

 
Seaman's Memorial Tower in Aransas Pass, Texas
The Seaman’s Memorial is an 80-foot tower that stands at the entrance to Conn Brown Harbor, where many sport and commercial fishers launch to comb the bays and estuaries along the South Texas coast. The tower was dedicated on May 9, 1970, and is an ongoing tribute to locals who were lost or died at sea.  A plaque honoring six Coast Guard airmen, who perished when a flare was accidentally fired inside their aircraft, can be found on the...

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Las Bóvedas de Uspallata (The Vaults of...
The name Argentina translates to “Land of Silver.” This name was given to the region based mostly on rumors that massive amounts of silver existed across the landscape. The vast deposits of the precious metal never materialized, but the name stuck. However, in Uspallata exist a rare example of mining activity that did occur in the region. Bóvedas is the Spanish word for vaults. However, the primary function of this site was to act as a smelter. Metallic ore...

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Tolbooth Tavern in Edinburgh, Scotland
Edinburgh is a very photogenic city that offers visitors several prime locales to snap a picture. One such visage is located along the Royal Mile, in an area known to locales as the Canongate. The Tolbooth Tavern is situated in an impressive stone building with an ornate clock tower. But what many tourists may be unaware of is that this building hides a dark and mysterious past. Originally constructed in 1591, the building that contains The Tolbooth Tavern was...

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To Help a Rare Brazilian Parrot, Start...
Maximo Cardoso had never used a crossbow before, but he was intuitively able to assemble the Barnett Raptor FX, a model typically marketed for deer hunting. The field guide also displayed natural marksmanship. So it was agreed: He would be the one to launch the poison. At the base of a sheer rock face amid dry scrub in Bahia, Brazil, decked out in a beekeeping suit, Cardoso took aim at a 45-degree angle, the crossbow loaded with bolts modified...

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Bake a Forgotten 19th-Century Presidential 'Pie'
In 1895, Washington Pie was such a popular recipe that it was also a metaphor. Leading up to Independence Day festivities in Grand Rapids, Michigan, an article in The Michigan Tradesman used the dessert to explain a way to keep the town’s raucous paraders in line, suggesting that they make, “a sort of Washington Pie with that part of the procession—a layer, say, of traveling men and then a filling of Salvation Army jam, and so on, with the...

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The Quiet Disappearance of Australia's Urban Platypuses
This story was originally published in The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It is dusk beside a creek and we are instructed to look for a trail of bubbles, under which could be one of the world’s weirdest mammals. When you’re desperate to see a platypus in the fading light, everything looks like one. Floating logs from bank-side paperbark trees, gyrating leaves caught in a dance with the wind, and what was probably...

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Keddie Wye in Quincy, California
One of the greatest chapters in the history of United States westward expansion is the Transcontinental Railroad. The train allowed passengers and cargo to cross the country in a fraction of the time of wagons and stagecoaches. It also gave rise to the railroad tycoons and robber barons who had a virtual monopoly on transportation. In 1903, the Western Pacific Railroad was created to compete with the Southern Pacific Railroad, which held the original transcontinental route over Donner Pass...

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Great Wallace Shows Circus Train-Wreck Memorial ...
On August 6th, 1903 two train cars carrying members of the Great Wallace Shows Circus collided in the Durand railroad yards. The incident killed 23 people along with several animals. Nine of those killed were never identified and lie buried in Lovejoy Cemetery. The animals, including an elephant named “Maude,” were buried at the scene of the accident. An impressive obelisk memorial stands near the entrance of the cemetery and reads: “In memory of the Unknown Dead. Who lost...

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Silent Green Kulturquartier in Berlin, Germany
In 1911, Berlin got its first crematorium: a dramatic, domed building that stands amidst a graveyard in the multicultural district of Wedding. After it closed in 2002, holding its final cremations, a group of Berliners reinvented the space as a hub for art, events, and learning.  The former crematorium is owned and run by Silent Green, an organization whose investors include filmmaker and director Jörg Heitmann and developer Frank Duske, who has been involved in urban development projects. Their transformation of the historic...

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Old Hill Street Police Station in...
The Old Hill Street Police Station is a former station used by the Singapore Police Force. It now stands as a historic building with an amazing facade.  The building has a total of 927 windows, each with a wooden shutter painted in one of the colors of a rainbow.  The colored windows on the first four stories all contain the same vibrant intensity. As visitors look upward, they’ll notice the upper windows gradually intensify to accentuate the cantilevered balconies. With...

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Modhera Sun Temple in Modhera, India
A mesmerizing sight to behold, the intricacies of this temple are what make it so amazing. The Sun Temple is a Hindu temple constructed after 1026 CE, during the Chaulukya dynasty. The complex was designed in the Māru-Gurjara style. Unlike other tourist destinations around the country, this temple isn’t usually overrun with tourists, which adds to its appeal.  The temple was constructed during every equinox, the first sunrays would fall on a diamond placed on the Sun God’s head. The...

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The Skerne Bridge in Darlington, England
This little bridge near the heart of Darlington has a wondrous and under-appreciated history. The Skerne Bridge is officially the world’s oldest railway bridge in continuous operation. The bridge was constructed as part of the Darlington to Stockton railway in 1825, the world’s first public railway to use steam trains. The line connected collieries in Shildon with Stockton-on-Tees, via Darlington, the home town of the family that funded the world’s first railways. In that same year, George Stephenson’s Locomotion...

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How a Monster-Repelling Cake Became a Lunar...
During Lunar New Year, a prosperous future belongs to those who eat their weight in luck. Diners slurp long noodles to ensure long lives and scarf down bone-in fish to swim to new fortunes. But the sweetest of these auspicious New Year dishes may be nian gao, a sticky cake eaten with the hope that the upcoming year will be more fortunate than the last. Like many symbolic Chinese dishes, nian gao comes with its own set of origin...

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Tapi Tapi Ice Cream in Cape Town,...
Even in South Africa, African food is not the default. And in Cape Town especially, dining can be quite Eurocentric. Centuries of colonialism erased indigenous foods and entrenched the idea that European food is somehow superior. These effects are still found today, but a microbiologist turned ice-cream maker, Tapiwa Guzha, wants that to change. With every handcrafted scoop served at Cape Town’s Tapi Tapi, he tells the story of his own food history, as well as stories from across...

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California’s Elusive Urban Lizards Can’t Hide From...
As a lizard-loving kid growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, Greg Pauly sometimes found himself running an accidental rehabilitation center for wayward reptiles out of his parents’ house. One neighbor wasn’t particularly sold on the squamates that lived around her yard, he recalls, but her cats, Crackers, Peepers, and Stinkers, kept intercepting them and delivering them to her. Pauly remembers that she paid him a dollar to take the unwelcome gifts off her hands, so he adopted...

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