An Oregon man became the first person to traverse the Antarctic continent alone.

As night approached, Sandra Cadiz wrapped her shivering 10-year-old daughter in a blanket. The displaced mother prayed for a ride up the frigid Colombian mountaintop known as “the icebox.” Read More

Embers falling on their heads, Venesa Rhodes and her husband, Stephen Cobb, rushed their two beloved cats toward their SUV before a wildfire last summer could overtake them all. One cat, named Bella, bolted. She disappeared as the blaze bore down. The couple had no choice but to flee. Read More

Caroll Spinney has spent the last 49 years playing around—as a puppeteer. You’ve probably seen his work. Until last fall, Spinney was the body and voice of Big Bird on Sesame Street. Read More

The 12 boys and soccer coach from Thailand who were trapped for almost three weeks in a partially flooded cave last summer were back in the media spotlight. Read More

It begins at an inner-city stable in one of the grittiest areas of Baltimore, Maryland. A vanishing breed of urban horsemen prepares for a weekly visit to Pennsylvania Dutch country. Read More

Less may be more, but zero is the best of all—at least where adding to landfills is concerned. So a growing number of households are joining the Zero Waste movement. Their goal is producing no trash at all. Some Zero Wasters come close. Read More

Engineers in September deployed an ambitious trash collection device. The project aims to corral vast amounts of plastic litter floating in the world’s largest garbage patch. Read More

Jennifer Ziemons is a competitor. She’s won multiple awards for her talent. She’s even won a gold medal in the Olympics . . . of tiny cooking, that is. Read More

Thunk, thunk, thunk. A lone man whacks at a tree. Birds trill in the forest canopy. No one knows the man’s name or what language he speaks. He has no living friends, family, or neighbors. He lives in the Amazon rainforest—alone. Read More