Every December, the Geminid Meteor Shower fills the evening sky with shooting stars (meteors). The first step to enjoying the shower, which will peak the evening of December 13 and into the morning of the 14th, is to locate the constellation of Gemini in the night sky, as the meteors will appear to radiate from …
I love the Olympics. I love the competition, the ceremonies, the sportsmanship. My earliest personal experience with a festival of games was on a pretty small scale: the annual Field Day in grade school. My favorite event wasn’t the water balloon toss or the three-legged race. It was the ultimate battle between classes, Tug of …
Photographing the Golden Gate Bridge is a challenge on many levels – quite literally! Nearly 9,000 feet in length, and rising almost 800 feet into the air, it doesn’t pose easily for the camera. I can only assume from looking at the images of the Golden Gate Bridge in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, …
Nearly half a million people lived in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The majority of them were fast asleep when the world began to shake apart. At 5:12 a.m. the city was struck by a massive earthquake, one which modern science estimates at anywhere from 7.8 to 8.2 on the Richter scale. …
Who are the two little French boys that were dropped, almost naked, from the deck of the sinking Titanic into the arms of survivors in a lifeboat? From which place in France did they come and to which place in the new world were they bound? There is not one iota of information to be …
One hundred years ago, the city of Tokyo sent Washington, D.C. a gift of friendship that continues to bloom today. Quite literally, in fact! Three thousand flowering cherry trees arrived in D.C. in 1912, and started what has become an annual spring tradition for residents of the D.C. area and thousands of tourists: going to …
“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race!” (Robert Burns, Address To A Haggis) I hope you’ve already begun preparing your Burns Supper, because today is Robert Burns Day, and it takes several hours to make a proper haggis! If the prospect of dinner cooked in a sheep’s stomach does not appeal, …
Can you imagine the D.C. skyline without the familiar obelisk of the Washington Monument? If Peter Force’s 1837 design had been chosen, it could have been a hollowed-out pyramid. Or what if Memorial Bridge welcomed visitors to the city with looming turrets and towers instead of the low profile it presents today? These possibilities and …