The secret plan to map every city on Earth

PHOTOS OF ANIMALS AT NIGHT

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Your Weekly Escape

Extraordinary people, discoveries, and places in a time of turmoil

PHOTOGRAPH BY DIANE COOK AND LEN JENSHEL

What we can learn from trees

They inspire us, comfort us, and remind us how life moves on.

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IMAGE BY TOM BJÖRKLUND

Everything we know about this girl comes from a piece of Stone Age 'chewing gum'

For the first time, scientists used saliva to sequence the complete human genome of an ancient hunter-gatherer they call Lola, who lived on an island in the Baltic Sea around 3,700 B.C.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY AUDUN RIKARDSEN

See what happened when this polar bear found a camera

“I saw the polar bear breathing. I saw it licking the lens until the lens became blurry. I saw it prod the lens with its massive, furry white paw.”

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IMAGE FROM THE RED ATLAS: HOW THE SOVIET UNION SECRETLY MAPPED AMERICA, PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

The Soviet military program that secretly mapped the entire world

Military cartographers created hundreds of thousands of maps and filled them with detailed notes on every place on Earth. It was one of the greatest mapping endeavors the world has ever seen—and it only recently came to light.

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There's nothing I can't trace back to my coarse immigrant blood.
Uncles tipple wine on the streets of Mott and Bayard.
Night shifts meet day shifts in passing.
Sweat seasons the body that labors.
And in each noodle shop, bowls dusted with salt.

Jenny Xie

Poet; from “Chinatown Diptych”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY REID WISEMAN, NASA

Where, exactly, is the edge of space?

It depends who you ask. With more countries and commercial companies heading into the stratosphere, the debate about how to define outer space is heating up.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN ZIEGLER, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Photos reveal the hidden world of animals at night

While some animals settle down as the sun begins to set, others are just starting to come alive.

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From Rosie to Roomba

Yes, The Jetsons inspired iRobot’s invention that has made housekeeping easier. The company’s co-founder was fascinated with the cartoon’s Rosie the Robot while growing up. Siri and Alexa, too, have arisen from the same long-imagined dream of a robot butler.