U.S. Relay Teams Failed to Pass the Baton

It's the sound no relay runner wants to hear: Ping. Ping. Ping. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the United States men's and women's 4x100-meter ...

Parents' Gift to Their Son: Two Message Stones

Os Guinness writes in “Impossible People”:

I grew up in a China that had been ravaged by two centuries of European and American adventuring, ...

Syrians Risk Lives for Secret Library

When a place has been besieged for years and hunger stalks the streets, you might think that people would have little interest in books. But enthusiasts ...

Inuit Hunters Losing Ability to Read Surroundings

The small island of Igloolik, in northern Canada is a bewildering place in the winter. The average temperature hovers at about 20 degrees below zero, ...

How C.S. Lewis Critiqued and Improved Tolkien's Work

In June of 1938, J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings author) wrote a letter to his editor Stanley Unwin explaining why he was behind ...

Is This Library in Vermont? Or Canada? (Or Both?)

Going back and forth between the United States and Canada requires a passport and customs check, right? Usually, but one exception manifests itself in ...

African Bird Helps Hunters Find Honey

Scientists published a study on a species of small African birds that has developed a "rare partnership" with humans. The birds, known as "honeyguides," ...

Ship Misguided by Faulty Maps

In the Kingdom of Ice is journalist Hampton Sides' compelling account of the failed nineteenth-century polar expedition of the USS Jeannette, captained ...

Americans Face a 'Choice Explosion'

A few years ago, a researcher asked 100 American and Japanese college students to take a piece of paper. On one side, they wrote down the decisions in ...

Faulty Compass Led to Ships' Misorientation

In 1914, not long after the sinking of the Titanic, Congress convened a hearing to discern what happened in another nautical tragedy. In January of that ...