What’s It Like To Be Among The First To Motorbike In Jordan?
Riding along the Desert Highway, northwest of the famed Wadi Rum on a large-bore, high-powered motorcycle was a joy afforded only by Jordanian royalty for nearly four decades.
Chechnya: Republic Of Contrasts. High Fashion, Celebrity Parties & Sharia Law
Russia’s Republic of Chechnya has undergone a revival after two military operations in its recent post-Soviet history. Today, the region is home one of the largest mosques in Europe, hosts international celebrities and even is trying its hand at high fashion.
You Can Hike To A 1950s Plane Wreck In Alaska’s Talkeetna Mountains
The Bomber Glacier is aptly named. It comes from the wreckage of a TB-29 Superfortress that crashed on the glacier at the end of a training mission in 1957, killing six of the 10 crewmembers. The airplane, strewn across the ice, has sat where it touched down for more than 60 years ago.
The City Left Behind By China’s Nuclear Ambitions
Li Yang grew up in what he thought was a boring town. It was called 404, like the error code, and sat a couple hours from the nearest city, in the sun-beaten Gobi Desert of western China. It was once part of a massive nuclear weapons base in the People’s Republic of China.
Is An Island Off Cuba The Last Surviving Piece Of East Germany?
The Unification Treaty signed in August 1990 re-Germanied the Germanies, and that West Germany (now known as “Germany”) inherited East Germany’s territories. But there may have been a tiny oversight. Turns out, there could still be a sliver of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik remaining in the Caribbean, just west of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.
Inside The Daring Mission To Reach The Bottom Of All Earth’s Oceans
Science fiction obsessed Victor Vescovo wanted to be the first person to reach the deepest points of all five oceans – but first he had to build a submarine that was up to it.
Behind The Chinese Internet Wall
What is happening on the other side of the barrier? There we find people who respond to state controls with creativity and spunk. While some spend their days trawling cat videos, others create oases of subversion within the reality that they’ve been dealt.
Deep In The Ocean’s Trenches, The Legacy Of Nuclear Testing Lives
Evidence of Cold War nuclear testing has made its way to the deepest reaches of the Pacific Ocean. The discovery of “bomb carbon” miles below the surface shows how deep human impact goes.
Coming Out Of The Shadows: What It Means To Be French And Chinese
France is home to large Vietnamese and Cambodian communities who arrived in the country in great numbers following the wars in the former French colonies in the 1970s. People of Chinese descent have long faced prejudice and violence in France. But today a new generation is staking out its rightful place in society.
The Shipwrecked Sailors And The Wandering Cod
In the remote archipelago of Lofoten, Arctic cod have been dried on oceanfront racks since the age of the Vikings. This is the unlikely story of how the humble fish became king of Norway.
The Sound Of Icebergs Melting: My Journey Into The Antarctic
We were listening to air escaping up through water. We were so close to the ice that this ancient fizz was surprisingly loud. Though we humans never hear it above the surface, this is the sound the Antarctic makes every summer. And as the planet heats, the sound is getting louder.
Alone On A Mountaintop, Awaiting A Very Hard Rain
Decades ago, Armenian scientists built a high-elevation trap to catch and study cosmic rays. Physics has mostly moved on, but the station persists — a ghost observatory with a skeleton crew.
When Antarctica Was Green
Before the start of the Eocene Epoch about 56 million years ago–Antarctica was still joined to both Australia and South America. And it turns out that a lot of what we recognize about the southern hemisphere can be traced back to that time when Antarctica was green.
Gallery: Teemu Jarvinen’s Sapporo
Finnish street photographer Teemu Jarvinen draws inspiration from the traditions of cyberpunk and film noir, so when he took his camera to Sapporo, Japan earlier this year, he inserted those influences into his images of the city’s snowy streetscapes.
Arctic: New Frontier
Yuri Kozyrev and Kadir van Lohuizen travelled through 15,000km of the Arctic Circle, investigating the startling effects of climate change on the land and its indigenous communities. If temperatures continue to rise, scientists expect that the North Pole will be ice-free in summer by 2040.
The Jungle Prince Of Delhi
For 40 years, journalists chronicled the eccentric royal family of Oudh, deposed aristocrats who lived in a ruined palace in the Indian capital. It was a tragic, astonishing story. But was it true?
The Mysterious Final Voyage Of The Alta, Ireland’s Doomed Ghost Ship
The MV Alta drifted without a soul on board in the Atlantic ocean for 18 months, before crashing into the coast of Ireland. Tracking and current data give us intriguing clues about its final, fateful voyage.
Surprising Images From Inside North Korea
Magnum photographer Carl De Keyzer is one of very few to have been given unprecedented access to Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.
World’s Largest Syrian Refugee Camp Has Developed Its Own Economy
Zataari in Jordan, the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world with 80,000 people, was supposed to provide temporary housing for people. But since residents have not been able to leave, they have started 3,000 businesses, including pastry shops, a pizza place, a supermarket and a gardening shop.
‘Anumeric’ People: What Happens When A Language Has No Words for Numbers?
Cultures without numbers, or with only one or two precise numbers, include the Munduruku and Pirahã in Amazonia. Researchers have also studied some adults in Nicaragua who were never taught number words. What can these anumeric cultures teach us about ourselves?
Documenting Life On India’s Disappearing Islands
Photographer Sushavan Nandy experienced the devastating effects of flooding first hand, as a child living in Jalpaiguri in North Bengal, India. This project shows the disruptive effects of climate change and flooding on individual lives.