National Geographic | Your Weekly Escape

National Geographic

Your Weekly Escape

Extraordinary people, discoveries, and places

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID LIITTSCHWAGER

Inside the scary, brainless, beautiful world of jellyfish

Despite their name, they aren't actually fish. They're relatively simple animals that lack not just brains, but also blood and bones, and possess only rudimentary sense organs. And most astonishing of all, some of them seem able to reproduce from beyond the grave.

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

PHOTOGRAPH BY EREZ BEN-YOSEF AND CTV PROJECT

Is this the site of King Solomon's mines?

The biblical monarch was renowned for his wisdom and wealth. But his lavish temples, said to be filled with gold and bronze, would have required industrial-scale mining operations that have yet to be unearthed. Now, a fresh clue may have brought archaeologists closer to identifying the famous site.

FOLLOW THE CLUE

PHOTOGRAPH BY BEARA CREATIVEM, ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

A mysterious event nearly wiped out many of the planet's sharks

Fossil records show that roughly 90 percent of the planet's open-ocean sharks inexplicably vanished about 19 million years ago. Nobody knows what triggered the extinction event.

AN EXTINCTION MYSTERY

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOE BROWNING-HANSON

Rare chunks of the Earth's mantle were found exposed in Maryland

The layer of rock is usually found between the planet's crust and core. But even more intriguing, the set of rocks strewn throughout Baltimore likely represent a slice of prehistoric seafloor from a now-vanished ocean.

AKG/ALBUM

240 men started Magellan's voyage around the world. Only 18 finished it.

A series of blows—including starvation, illness, mutiny, executions, and the death of their leader—decimated their fleet. Here is the story of their doomed voyage, and of some of the men who survived.

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

QUOTE

Sharks have a 400-million-year evolutionary history; they've been around a long time; they've seen a lot. And there's something that could knock out 90 percent of them?

Elizabeth Sibert

Paleobiologist and oceanographer

From: Mystery event caused shark populations to crash

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER MARINO, GETTY IMAGES

The revolutionary idea behind America's urban trails

What if going for an epic hike or bike ride didn't involve driving hundreds of miles to the mountains? What if you could amble through a maze of flora and fauna right in the heart of a city? While urban greenways are becoming popular now, their roots stretch back a century.

MORE GREAT READS

Does 'The Da Vinci Code' writer have a secret? (New York Times) ››

The hidden power of the underdog (BBC) ››

Sign up here to receive Your Weekly Escape and/or our daily newsletters—covering History, Environment, Science, Animals, Travel, and Photography news.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

{We'd like to hear from you! Tell us what you think of our emails by sharing your feedback in this short survey.

TAKE THE SURVEY

Clicking on the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and National Geographic Channel links will take you away from our National Geographic Partners site where different terms of use and privacy policy apply.

This email was sent to: [email protected]. Please do not reply to this email as this address is not monitored.

This email contains an advertisement from:
National Geographic | 1145 17th Street, N.W. | Washington, D.C. 20036

Stop all types of future commercial email from National Geographic regarding its products, services, or experiences.

© 2021 National Geographic Partners, LLC, All rights reserved.