More than 60 years ago, when he was a child, farmer Peter Andrews saw his first dust storm. He still remembers it. “The noise was horrendous,” he says. “We hid in the house waiting for it to pass. The whole sky was dark. And the damage we saw the next...
Sandwiched between the mountains and the sea in Japan’s far-west corner, Fukuoka is a city trying to reinvent itself. In a land long dominated by mega-conglomerates and the inexorable pull of Tokyo, the country’s fastest growing urban centre wants to become Japan’s answer to Silicon Valley. Despite the country’s reputation...
“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe Some days are light...
The contributions that the medieval Muslims played in the invention of new drugs and therapeutic agents are great in number as well as in value. The following passages will shed some light on the real contribution of the prominent Muslim scientists and philosophers in the relevant field. Abu `Ali al-Husayn...
My father’s family came to the US in the 1930s, a Jewish family fleeing Nazi Germany. My life has gone well, and I suppose I should be grateful for the way things turned out. However, I can’t help but wonder what would the world look like today if the Holocaust...
Oliver McAfee was supposed to be home in time for Christmas 2017. But the 29-year-old landscape gardener, originally from Dromore in Northern Ireland’s County Down, hasn’t been seen since 21 November 2017. McAfee had been cycling along the Israel National Trail, near the desert city of Mitzpe Ramon, before he...
In the haze of an overcast April afternoon, the rust-stained hull of the Andrey Dolgov slapped its way through the ocean swell, oily water gushing from the ship’s waterlogged bilge as it made a desperate attempt to flee. Pursued by a sleek, heavily armed naval patrol boat, the ungainly fishing...
Forensic anthropologist Amy Mundorff has been identifying human remains for years. Now her goal is to make the search for the missing safer and more successful. One morning in July 2005, Amy Mundorff rode into the Bosnian countryside, tagging along with a team from the International Commission on Missing Persons....
It’s a perfect selfie opportunity in the most unlikely of settings. Four-wheelers wind precariously up the sides of lush mountains, their backseats filled with Saudi families and tourists from other parts of the Arabian Peninsula. As the vehicles make their way through the cool mist, the passengers intermittently pull over...
Today, most people like the idea about self-improvement. It’s trendy. But before you can improve yourself, you have to get to know who you are, what you want, and why it’s so crucial to know the answers to those questions. Once you know who you are, what you stand for,...
Cecilia Tortajada recalls making her way down a long staircase and into of one of Japan’s engineering marvels, an enormous water tank that crowns Tokyo’s defences against flooding. When she finally reached the tank’s ground, she stood among the dozens of 500-tonne pillars supporting the ceiling. In the cavernous, shrine-like...
Life today is engulfed in boundless forms of technology. Amidst all the fascinating creations, cassette tape is one of the most notable ones that had brought a revolution in the history of recording. Today, we perceive it as a rectangular device with a black magnetic strip encircled around two hollows,...
Running a distance race – like a 246km ultramarathon – takes extraordinary physical fitness.But however hard they have trained, an athlete’s success hinges on their mental endurance. By Sarah Keating This story is an adaptation of What are the limits of human endurance?, an episode of CrowdScience presented by Marnie Chesterton...
Fearing invasion during the Cold War, Albania’s leader Enver Hoxha forced his country to build tens of thousands of bunkers. Long after the regime’s collapse, many still remain. By Stephen Dowling in Albania It is a spring morning and the sun is already high and hot. I am scrambling across...
“I like coffee because it gives me the illusion that I might be awake,” once said Lewis Black, the American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor. Coffee is a popular beverage worldwide for its irrepressible ability to energize its taker. In around 9th century, it was first discovered...
Money was not invented by a single nation at a single time. Money is not just coins and notes; it is anything humans agree to represent the value of goods and services. During early times, people exchanged goods and services in exchange of other goods and services since there was...
“Uhhh, I hate thrillers! What’s so exciting about them? Is it more boring than non-thriller books? Why can’t you just admit that all books are same and tremendously boring!!?” When you’re a thriller lover like me, you just gotta hear that. People will stare at you with their eyes and...
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” – Buddha There is only one time and place where you can be and have any control over. The present moment. But most of us still spend a lot of our...
Victoria Orphan has loved the ocean for as long as she can remember. She used to snorkel in the Pacific Ocean near her family’s home in San Diego, Calif. She’d grab her mask and snorkel tube to visit the hidden world of plants and animals beneath the ocean’s surface. Orphan...
In 21st century, it’s almost difficult to subsist without internet. It has made human being’s life more dynamic ever than before. An estimated 4.2 billion people around the world have internet access, more than half of the global population. But sometimes people’s activity in internet resulted in the thriving and...
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