A column of hissing steam emerges from a gaping 600-foot (180-meter) chasm in Iceland’s Vatnajökull Glacier. Scalding magma transforms water, pooled at the bottom of this abyss, into billowing steam. In 1996, two weeks after an enormous volcanic eruption beneath the ice cap, billions of gallons of meltwater gushed from a glacial lake, causing Iceland’s worst deluge in 60 years.
Nov 22, 2008
Church of San Pedro Claver, Cartagena, Colombia, 1989
Photograph by O. Louis Mazzatenta
Founded in 1603, this Spanish colonial church holds the remains of Father Claver, who ministered to enslaved Africans when Cartagena, Colombia, had the largest slave market in the Caribbean. He cared for the sick and dying and baptized tens of thousands.
Nov 23, 2008
Resting Bushman, Tsumkwe, Namibia, 2001
Photograph by Chris Johns
Bushmen, like this hunter resting in Tsumkwe, Namibia, have had a key advantage over other early societies: their ability to survive without surface water. They know where to find liquid-bearing melons and tubers. They also bury ostrich eggs filled with water during the wet season and recover them later, during the dry. This arcane knowledge allows the Bushmen to live where others could not.
Nov 24, 2008
Boot Track Cafe, Mentone, Texas, 2000
Photograph by Jodi Cobb
The town of Mentone, Texas—population 15, more or less—supports a leisurely business at the Boot Track Cafe. The ramshackle restaurant with the lipstick-red posts sets out bottles of hot sauce as centerpieces and serves about 25 cheeseburgers per day.
Wildflowers peek out amid a vast jumble of moss-covered rocks near Iceland’s Vatnajökull Glacier. This view is deceptively peaceful, as Iceland is perched above the volatile Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates pull apart, creating an extensive and active volcano zone.
Nov 26, 2008
Sunset, Plaplaya, Honduras, 2001
Photograph by Susie Post Rust
The sun plays a quick nighttime melody over the shores of Plaplaya, Honduras, before it softly vanishes behind the trees. The peoples of these shores are the Garifuna, a hybrid through the marriage of African and Carib Indian.
Nov 27, 2008
Ruins, Pompeii, Italy, 1984
Photograph by O. Louis Mazzatenta
The overgrown ruins of Pompeii stretch into the horizon, providing a glimpse into the flourishing urban life of its citizens before the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The volcano has erupted 80 times since unleashing colossal destruction in A.D. 79 but has remained mercifully quiet since 1944.
Nov 28, 2008
Rocket Launch, Cape Canaveral, Florida, 1972
Photograph by Otis Imboden
A time-lapse photo captures the brilliant arc of light streaking through the night sky after a rocket blast-off in Cape Canaveral, Florida. This rocket was likely used to launch a weather satellite, which will orbit the Earth and gather data on atmospheric conditions, such as cloud cover, precipitation, and air pressure, used to predict the weather.
Nov 29, 2008
Dancing Bushmen, Namibia, 2001
Photograph by Chris Johns
Southern Africa's San Bushmen, like these youth dancing at Namibia's Nyae Nyae Conservancy, are among the most intensively studied aboriginal people on Earth. Interest in this culture is stoked by the idea that the Bushmen are one of our last connections with a hunter-gatherer existence, a way of life that was a human universal until some 10,000 years ago.
Nov 30, 2008
Canoe With Fish, Nueva Armenia, Honduras, 2001
Photograph by Susie Post Rust
Wooden dories rest on the shore of a lagoon in Nueva Armenia on the Honduran coast. The sea still serves as a byway, grocery, laundry, workplace, and playground for the local inhabitants, just as it has for centuries.