Stories

Deep in Phong Nha–Kẻ Bàng National Park in Quảng Bình, Vietnam, lies Hang Sơn Đoòng, the world’s largest known natural cave.

Deep within the Svalbard archipelago, at the foot of the pyramid-shaped mountain that gave it its name, lies Pyramiden, an abandoned Soviet coal mining settlement.

About 12 kilometers north of Šiauliai, Lithuania, lies the Hill of Crosses, a site that has drawn pilgrims for nearly two centuries. Its origins trace back to the 1831 Uprising against the Russian Empire.

In the forests around Verdun, the scars of World War I remain buried beneath the leaves.

In 1960, a British man named David Latimer planted a spiderwort cutting in a large glass bottle.

Medieval castles are remembered for towers, walls, and moats—but they also contained one of the most unusual architectural features of their age: turret toilets.

In May 1996, Dr. Beck Weathers joined an expedition led by Rob Hall of Adventure Consultants to climb Mount Everest.

For nearly a thousand years, a practice shaped the lives, bodies, and futures of millions of Chinese women

In the 1920s, Soviet leaders sought a territory for concentrated Jewish settlement within the USSR. Their choice fell on Birobidzhan, a remote area in the Russian Far East along the Amur River, bordering China.

In July 1961, Arkhipov was executive officer on the K-19, a Hotel-class ballistic missile submarine, when a coolant system leak threatened a nuclear reactor meltdown.