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A special day for a special cat
A special day for a special cat
With short, limber legs and a long tail, the clouded leopard is perfectly adapted for living in the trees. Flexible ankle joints allow it to descend trunks headfirst, one of only two cat species that can pull this off. A long tail provides stabilizing balance for leaps between trees. Sharp, retractable claws let this jungle climber dangle off branches in all sorts of gravity-defying positions.Desktop Version
A learning garden
A learning garden
Today we’re at Waterperry Gardens in Oxfordshire, England. The gardens have gone through many changes since 1931, when Beatrix Havergal and Avice Sanders first began turning the grounds of a country house into an educational public garden. (Waterperry grew much-needed produce during World War II.) The gardening school at Waterperry closed in 1971, and now the land is owned and operated by the School of Economic Science, which uses some of the buildings for study projects and retreats. Waterperry is a wonderful example of classic English gardening. Visitors can stroll through the aromatic knot garden seen on our homepage today, or explore other parts of the gardens, including orchards, a nursery, and a museum.Desktop Version
Sleep tight, little hedgehog
Sleep tight, little hedgehog
Though they may seem exotic to most people in the Americas, wild hedgehogs are quite common in much of the rest of the world. The tiny creatures are usually nocturnal and use their spiky exteriors to protect themselves. Each hedgehog has about 6,000 quills, but the quills aren"t poisonous and don"t easily detach, like those of the also-quilled (but completely unrelated) porcupine.Desktop Version
Sundance Film Festival opens in Park City
Sundance Film Festival opens in Park City
As beautiful as this vista is, most of today"s visitors to Park City are there to spend the day inside. Sundance Film Festival, the nation"s biggest celebration of independent cinema, opens today and runs through January 29. The careers of Hollywood directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh were launched here, and every year a new crop of greenhorns arrives in this mountain enclave with the dream that they"ll leave with a distribution deal.Desktop Version
For the love of bikes
For the love of bikes
In honor of World Bicycle Day, we share a bird"s-eye view from Utah of two mountain bikers riding on the Shafer Trail switchbacks of White Rim Road in Canyonlands National Park. In 2018, the UN officially recognized "the uniqueness, longevity and versatility of the Bicycle, which has been in use for two centuries, and that it is a simple, affordable, reliable, clean and environmentally fit sustainable means of transportation."Desktop Version
Venture into a prehistoric gallery of art
Venture into a prehistoric gallery of art
In the fall of 1940, a group of boys exploring the outdoors in the Dordogne area of southwest France came upon the entrance to a cave–and unwittingly discovered a treasure trove of prehistoric art. The walls of the cave now known as ‘Lascaux’ are covered with hundreds of images–giant drawings of bulls, horses, and humans–created some 17,000 years ago, in the Upper Paleolithic Period. The cave was opened to the public in 1948, but after several years, scientists observed that the artwork was being damaged by carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, and other contaminants produced by an average of 1,200 visitors who explored the caves each day. To protect the prehistoric masterpieces, the cave has been closed to the public since 1963. Today, the closest you can get is viewing full-scale replicas at the International Centre for Cave Art in nearby Montignac, where our homepage image was photographed.Desktop Version
Gazing upon Portraits of Change
Gazing upon Portraits of Change
For the start of Women"s History Month, we"ve come to Union Station in Washington, DC, to view a mosaic of historical photographs of thousands of American women who fought to win voting rights. The ratification of the 19th Amendment, on August 18, 1920, finally secured the legal right of women to vote, but this mainly benefited white women. Despite heroic contributions to achieve suffrage, Black, Indigenous, and other women of color continued to face barriers to voting in the form of poll taxes, restrictive local laws, and hostile intimidation. This mosaic, called "Our Story: Portraits of Change," attempts to show a more complex history of the fight for American women"s right to vote.Desktop Version
What are we looking at?
What are we looking at?
On National Poinsettia Day we"re taking an up-close look at a poinsettia leaf. Although many people assume the red, white, pink, purple, or marbled colors are flowers, they"re actually bracts, a type of leaf that aids in reproduction, usually by turning color as the plant develops true flowers. On the poinsettia, the bracts, surrounding small yellow clustered buds called cyathia, flag down pollinators just as flower petals do.Desktop Version
Up in the Highlands
Up in the Highlands
There"s a good chance the occupants of that car you can see in this photo, winding along a remote highway in the Highlands of Iceland, won"t encounter any other visitors to this desolate region. Accessible only during the summertime, roads across the Icelandic Highlands pass through mostly uninhabited volcanic desert. Frequent volcanic activity in the area creates a porous topsoil full of chemical compounds that aren"t conducive to plant growth. Besides, much of the rainfall is quickly absorbed so plant life only appears alongside glacial rivers. Despite this seemingly unwelcoming environment, adventurous travelers come to the Highlands every summer to see firsthand an ecosystem so unearthly that NASA conducted training missions here for some of its Apollo astronauts.Desktop Version
What are these creatures?
What are these creatures?
No, this isn"t a still image from a sci-fi space opera. We"re offshore of Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, watching a Glaucus atlanticus, aka "sea swallow" or "blue sea dragon," snack on the poisonous tentacles of a Porpita porpita, aka "blue button." At the tips of the blue button"s tentacles are stinging cells called nematocysts, but the venom doesn"t deter the sea swallow. Instead, once the sea swallow ingests the blue button"s poison, it stores the venom in the tips of its own feather-like fingers called papillae. Would-be predators should think twice before biting the sea swallow. The poison concentrated in its papillae can kill a predator in seconds. If you come across either of these creatures washed ashore, don"t touch! While the stings aren"t deadly to humans, they can cause skin irritation.Desktop Version
International Lighthouse Weekend
International Lighthouse Weekend
This solemn beacon set atop a rocky outcropping is in a country usually associated with sand and sun, making this a side of Spain many do not often see. We"re looking out at the sea on the Costa da Morte, or Coast of Death, a nasty name for an equally nasty (but beautiful!) stretch of Galician coastline in the extreme northwest of Spain. We"re featuring Costa da Morte during International Lighthouse Weekend because mariners are never happier to see a lighthouse than when they"re sailing this coast, known as the Bermuda Triangle of the Eastern Atlantic.Desktop Version
Whoopin it up!
Whoopin it up!
For Endangered Species Day, celebrated annually on the third Friday of May, we"re featuring the whooping crane, one of only two crane species found in North America. Once seen throughout midwestern North America, whooping cranes were driven perilously close to extinction by the early 1940s, with fewer than two dozen birds in the wild. Thanks to conservation efforts, their numbers have now risen to more than 600. While that"s good news, this limited recovery is still fragile, and these incredible creatures remain imperiled, particularly by the loss of their wetland habitat.Desktop Version
A march toward a dream
A march toward a dream
For Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we"re going back to August 28, 1963, to the March on Washington. Among those in the front line of demonstrators are baseball great Jackie Robinson and bus-boycott activist Rosa Parks, both towering figures in the civil rights movement. Later this day, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. would deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of a quarter-million protesters packed onto the National Mall. The speech is considered among the best in American history and a defining moment in the fight for civil rights. King was just 34 years old.Desktop Version
A garden of prickly delights
A garden of prickly delights
To celebrate the final weekend of National Park Week, we"re at Joshua Tree National Park in southeastern California, about a three-hour drive from Los Angeles. This 1,235-square-mile stretch of land where the Mojave and Colorado Deserts converge was declared a national monument in 1936, then was redesignated a national park in 1994. That status protects a wide variety of plant and animal life, including the eponymous Joshua tree, which can be found growing mostly in the hills on the Mojave side of the park.Desktop Version
Crown Fountain by Jume Plensa at Millennium Park in Chicago
Crown Fountain by Jume Plensa at Millennium Park in Chicago
Welcome to Chicago, the undisputed home of the blues. If you’re a fan of blues music, make your way here to Millennium Park this weekend for the 36th annual Chicago Blues Festival. Blues music is considered one of America’s greatest contributions to world culture and the progenitor of jazz, R&B, and rock & roll.Desktop Version
Mountain mists over Bavaria
Mountain mists over Bavaria
In modern German, the word for this month is "November." But an older German name was "Nebel-mond," which translates as "fog month" in English—it"s the time of the year when fog is most likely to roll in. In some parts of the world the topography and local climate make fog a regular feature of the weather, especially during certain times of the year. That’s called "fog season." San Francisco has a fog season. Tampa, Florida, does too. Is there a fog season where you live?Desktop Version
Super sandy Sweet 16
Super sandy Sweet 16
We"re in the Rockies of southern Colorado to celebrate Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve"s 16th year as a full-fledged national park—though it was a national monument from 1932, and both the dunes themselves and the surrounding valley"s history are far more ancient.Desktop Version
Of moose and Maine
Of moose and Maine
As spring unfolds in Maine, the backwoods teem with life small and large. We"d say this water lily-munching moose belongs in the second category. Moose are the bulkiest members of the deer family, trouncing their relatives in size: Bulls can weigh in at well over 1,500 pounds. And while this hulking hoofer"s velvety antlers are still sprouting, they may soon span more than 6 feet.Desktop Version
Looking back at Yellowstone, 30 years after the fires
Looking back at Yellowstone, 30 years after the fires
Nature’s resiliency is on full display here at Yellowstone National Park, where new growth has emerged among the trees charred by the massive 1988 wildfires. More than 1 million acres in the greater Yellowstone area were affected by the blazes that summer, scarring 36 percent of the park. Today marks the 30-year anniversary of Black Saturday, a day when the park saw some of the worst damage, with smoke and ash blackening the skies. But when cool, moist weather brought an end to the devastating fires in late autumn, the ecosystem immediately began to recover. Fire has long been part of the complex ecosystem at Yellowstone and many species have even adapted to rely on fire to open up the canopy, spread seeds, and diversify the habitat.Desktop Version
One for the books
One for the books
Today is the kickoff to the 20th Library of Congress National Book Festival, and for the first time it will be held entirely online. Nearly 120 authors, including Colson Whitehead, John Grisham, Ann Patchett, Walter Mosley, and Tomi Adeyemi, will appear on virtual stages to discuss the written word from September 25-27.Desktop Version
Working for that cliffside view
Working for that cliffside view
Maine"s Acadia National Park serves up spectacular views at most every turn. But the park"s Otter Cliffs on Mount Desert Island offer the adventurous among us a chance to take in the picturesque Atlantic shoreline from the edge of a sheer granite wall. Rising some 60 feet above the crashing waves below, the cliffs are shown here at low tide—when the tide is up, that ledge at the bottom is completely submerged.Desktop Version
Cherry blossoms spring to life
Cherry blossoms spring to life
The National Cherry Blossom Festival is always a highlight of spring in our nation"s capital. It"s timed for the peak bloom date (usually the last week in March or first week of April) when most of the blossoms are open on the cherry trees that surround the Tidal Basin. The trees were originally a gift from Japan, planted in Washington in 1912. While some Cherry Blossom Festival events are virtual this year, the trees will decorate the city as usual—just as they do in this photo framing the Jefferson Memorial. This year"s festival began on March 20 and runs until April 11. It includes in-person tours and activities visitors can do on their own, as well as virtual viewings and an online Celebration Show that debuts on April 9.Desktop Version
A circular celebration
A circular celebration
It"s Pi Day, the day we celebrate the mathematical constant π. This day was chosen because today"s date, March 14, expressed numerically, matches the number"s first digits, 3.14. Pi represents the ratio of a circle"s circumference to its diameter. It can be used to compute the area and circumference of a circle, such as the circles that make up this bridge we"re looking at here in Copenhagen. (Who said math wasn"t useful in the real world?) Many people mark the day with activities based around mathematics—and most also serve pie. We can"t think of a more delicious way to study geometry.Desktop Version
A night on the (ghost) town
A night on the (ghost) town
The spooky scene here might look like a place you"d want to avoid, but it"s not likely to scare you—not too much anyway. It"s the Fort Rock Valley Historical Homestead Museum in central Oregon, a collection of abandoned homestead-era buildings from the area. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people acquired federal lands around here for farms and ranches via the Homestead Acts. But most left within a few years due to the hot, dry summers and extremely cold winters. Today, the buildings are assembled as a ghost town and contain items from that period, including furniture, dishes, and tools. There"s also a nearby cemetery which, according to local lore, is haunted by the ghost of rancher and author Reub Long riding his horse.Desktop Version
Big dreams require a big sleigh
Big dreams require a big sleigh
For Christmas Day, we traveled 217 miles north of the Arctic Circle to Ilulissat, Greenland. It"s the island"s third-largest city, though in almost any other region, it would be considered a small town—only 4,670 people live here. Until a few years ago, Ilulissat served as a key destination for that most important holiday correspondence: Thousands of letters sent from around the world to Santa Claus, North Pole, ended up being rerouted to this giant mailbox. Today the mailbox has moved farther north, to Uummannaq, ever closer to the jolly old elf"s magical domicile. If you"re celebrating Christmas today, we hope you have a merry one.Desktop Version