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Your Weekly Escape

Extraordinary people, discoveries, and places

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The renegade scientist who taught us to love gorillas

Dian Fossey adopted a brash approach to communication and conservation that ruffled many—and likely contributed to her still-unsolved murder in 1985. And as much as she cared about gorillas, her letters and journals reveal she was less concerned about humans.

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FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Read Dian Fossey's 1970 article in National Geographic magazine +

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIDGEMAN / ACI

Jesse James: The rise of an American outlaw

Before there was the bold and bad and brave Jesse, and long before there was the mythic Jesse of song, dime novels, and films, there was a blue-eyed boy, son of a Baptist minister and a devoted mother, coming of age in a land torn apart over slavery and divided loyalties.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY JOEL SARTORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK

Why bats are the real superheroes of the animal world

Over their 50 million years of evolution, these flying mammals have developed ingenious solutions to life's challenges, from seeing with sound to dexterous wings that create the fastest horizontal flight of any animal on Earth.

PHOTOGRAPH BY FOX PHOTOS, HULTON ARCHIVE, GETTY IMAGES

Britain's secret weapon against the Nazis? Refugees.

European exiles fled to the country they called Last Hope Island and became pilots, spies, and saboteurs.

ILLUSTRATION BY ZHAO CHUANG

How did giant dinosaurs sit on their eggs without crushing them?

A study of dinosaur nests, along with a stunning fossil of a dinosaur that died tending its eggs, shows that heftier dinosaurs did indeed have a special strategy used to keep their young safe.

CRUSH-PROOFING 101

QUOTE

I know the gorillas as individuals, each with his own traits and personality, and ... I have given many of them names: Raﬁki, Uncle Bert, Icarus, and so on.

Dian Fossey, scientist

From: Making friends with mountain gorillas, 1970

PHOTOGRAPH BY AMI VITALE

The extraordinary story of how two former enemies united—to save wildlife

They had been at war for decades—then agreed to save the wildlife their conflict had helped drive out. Starting with a rare giraffe that needed to be moved from a flooding island, they built a modern-day ark.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY ARON KLEIN

These surreal pictures show Bulgaria's masked dancers ward off evil

Around early winter or midwinter, groups of kukeri don elaborate costumes—complete with fantastical masks and belts of massive metal bells—and accompany musicians throughout the village, dancing rhythmically to drive away evil and invite good.

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MORE GREAT READS

The people cloning their pets (BBC) ››

This Japanese man makes a living showing up and doing nothing (Washington Post) ››

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