For the past two-and-a-half years, I have been writing about adventure topics for The Adventure Corner travel blog, on everything from the merits of bumpy roads to tracking devices on narwhals. From my own thoughts on adventure to the latest scientific research, we’ve covered a lot of ground together. Looking …
Antibacterial soaps, alcohol wipes, and bleach in our everyday cleaning products have made us focused on eliminating all the germs that we possibly can from our lives. And when it comes to our children, it seems that focus turns into an obsession. It’s here, though, where we soon become at …
Nature surrounds us with an amazing variety of animals, insects, birds, plants, and topographic features. To refer to and distinguish the entities in this bounty, we assign them names — often two: one for common use and one, a two-parter, for scientific identification. Usually, the person credited with discovering or …
When you hear about the great journeys undertaken by some of nature’s smallest creatures, you can’t help but feel inspired to step into adventures of your own that may be outside your comfort zone. And no odyssey is greater than that of the Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea). Weighing only 3.2 …
British explorer and Royal Navy officer Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912. A hundred years later, on January 17, 2012, in honor of this historic adventure, the National Geographic Society exhibited some rare photos of the expedition, taken by Herbert Ponting. A former rancher out …
Cute, adorable animals are often used to garner support for environmental causes in places that are remote. After all, it’s hard to have concern for an area that is at the opposite end of the Earth from where you live and for which you have no plans to ever see. …
There are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than previously thought, stated the National Science Foundation in mid April. That’s certainly good news, as concerns about the effects of global warming on penguin colonies rise. But another new report mentions an increasing number of something else in Antarctica that …
Big dreams of exploration were not uncommon in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But one explorer may have taken such aspirations to the next level: In 1895, at a London conference on polar exploration, a Swedish engineer named Salomon August Andrée declared his intention to reach the North Pole …
Ever since the explorers of old used oral storytelling, flyers, and published journals to spread word of streets lined with gold, fountains of youth, or rich silks and spices, people have been using mass media to motivate others to go on adventures. A hundred years ago, even Ernest Shackleton promised …
When early, intrepid European explorers first began trekking through the New World in the late 1400s, they were awed by the strikingly different cultures they encountered. But they also came to notice something else: remarkable physical similarities between the Asian peoples they had seen during their many travels and these …