Of the 8,300 million tonnes of virgin plastic produced up to the end of 2015, 6,300 million tonnes have been discarded. Most of that plastic waste is still with us, entombed in landfills or polluting the environment. Microplastics have been found in Antarctic sea ice, in the guts of animals...
More than 2,000 years ago, in a temple in the city of Borsippa in ancient Mesopotamia, in what is now modern-day Iraq, a student was doing his homework. His name was Nabu-kusurshu, and he was training to be a temple brewer. His duties involved brewing beer for religious offerings, but...
In the middle of the Iraqi desert, just north of the city of Mosul, is a pile of limestone blocks. Even at first glance, they’re unusual – each half a metre (1.6 feet) across, with a square shape and one side decorated with enigmatic symbols. Collectively they look like the...
“Get out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” – Brian Tracy I’m a big fan of doing the unusual thing. Sometimes in big ways. Often in small and daily ways to mix things up....
Reach Penaflor is a man with a mission. Since 2009, he has been working closely with the River Warriors, a group bent on cleaning up estuaries feeding into the Pasig River, which runs through the Philippines’ largest urban area, Metro Manila, and is notorious for its noxious smells. Scientists describe...
It may be an unlikely spot for a cash machine, but the Khunjerab Pass ATM has been serving the small number of residents and border staff – and adventurous tourists – since 2016. “We’re going to the end of Pakistan,” I announced to my children, wrestling on their umpteenth layer...
The oppressive temperatures of a heatwave can have far-reaching impacts, from risks to human health to destroying crops and increasing the risk of wildfires. In 2019, extreme heat is estimated to have caused the deaths of 356,000 people worldwide, according to one set of estimates, making it one of the...
A few years ago, a strange trend started to sweep through prisons in Europe and North America. They began painting some of their cells pink. It became so common that in 2014, one in every five prisons and police stations in Switzerland had at least one detention cell that was...
If you are struggling to find the motivation to stick to a workout routine, be assured, you’re not alone. No matter who you are – a student, a service holder or a young mother, the truth is motivation is easily lost when life gets tough or you don’t work at...
In 2014, an initiative to discover, celebrate and support exceptional young people from every Commonwealth nation was taken. The goal of the program, established by The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, was to identify and support those youngsters who are leading the way in transforming their own lives as well...
“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” – Leonardo Da Vinci One of the biggest and most common problems with improving your life or the success you want out of...
Do you want to change your life? The key is to rewrite the story you tell yourself. Often, we tell ourselves we’re good at some things and not others. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You say, “I’m not good with money,” and sure enough, financial freedom eludes you. Much of...
In Yemen’s ancient walled city of Sana’a mud skyscrapers soar high into the sky. The towering structures are built entirely out of rammed earth and decorated with striking geometric patterns. The earthen buildings blend into the nearby ochre-coloured mountains. Sana’a’s mud architecture is so unique that the city has been...
In 1879, Spanish aristocrat and amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuloa and his daughter Maria set out to explore a cave near their family home in Cantabria. While De Sautuola scrambled around the floor looking for prehistoric artefacts, Maria wandered off deeper into the cave. Suddenly she stumbled across a...
In 2005, several of the centuries-old ponderosa pine trees on my 15 acres (0.06 sq km) of forest in the northern Rocky Mountains in Montana suddenly died. I soon discovered they were being brought down by mountain pine beetles, pernicious killers the size of the eraser on a pencil that...
Oh, those voices in our heads! You know the ones. They whisper words of judgment and doubt. They ask us, “Who do you think you are?” and “How could you possibly be so clueless?” They are masters at making us feel as if we’re just not good enough. And before...
A little over a century ago, anyone looking out over the water on the eastern edges of Amsterdam on a clear day would have seen Dutch fishermen hauling their nets from the sea. Today the view is very different – more than 200,000 people now live in a spot that...
During the summer of 1883, a caldera in the Sunda Strait, located between the islands of Java and Sumatra, became increasingly turbulent, releasing huge plumes of ash and steam into the sky. Then, on 26 August, an underwater volcano ejected approximately 25 km3 (six cubic miles) of debris, hurtling pumice...
I am dazzled by the rural beauty of France’s Basque Country, where the untamed coast and rolling green hills are dappled with red tile-roofed villages and surrounded by clouds of white sheep. Walking through these towns, I’m always on the lookout for a singular wall, measuring approximately 16m wide and...
On 3 August 1958, the commander of the world’s first nuclear submarine made an extraordinary, if somewhat tongue in cheek, entry in his logbook: “Embarked following personage at North Pole…” wrote USS Nautilus commander William Anderson, “…Santa Claus, affiliation: Christmas.” It was the final sentence of a celebratory record of...
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