“When we bought it, the house was again a one-family, but most of the stained glass was covered with black paint. The exterior was bland; architectural elements were all painted the same color so that you couldn’t really see the varied and interesting exterior details. At some point,” Matthew adds, “all the quarter-sawn oak interior woodwork had been painted. Fortunately for us, a previous owner stripped it and brought it back to its original appearance.”
“This house, which has an elongated foursquare plan, was a custom build,” Elizabeth says. “There’s no other house like this. Also, in the 1880s, a fire destroyed much of Memphis, so older houses are rare here.”
The Quest for the North Pole, Episode 5: Meet Peary and Henson Kat Long
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It’s summer, 1895, in the northernmost reaches of Greenland. The temperature hovers around freezing. American explorer Robert E. Peary and his assistant Matthew Henson are on a backbreaking journey by dogsled across the ice cap, from Independence Bay, a large fjord on Greenland’s northeastern corner, to their base camp at Bowdoin Bay on the west coast. They’re nearly out of food, and they’re desperately searching for a herd of musk ox to stave off their deaths by starvation.
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It’s summer, 1895, in the northernmost reaches of Greenland. The temperature hovers around freezing. American explorer Robert E. Peary and his assistant Matthew Henson are on a backbreaking journey by dogsled across the ice cap, from Independence Bay, a large fjord on Greenland’s northeastern corner, to their base camp at Bowdoin Bay on the west coast. They’re nearly out of food, and they’re desperately searching for a herd of musk ox to stave off their deaths by starvation.
The animals they’re stalking weigh up to 800 pounds and are built like battering rams, with a coat of shaggy hair and sharp, curved horns. Musk ox are powerful and unpredictable, and they’re Peary’s and Henson’s last hope for survival. All day, they look for snags of the oxen’s hair on rough rocks and scan the snow for tracks. Finally, they locate hoofprints and follow them across a valley, anticipating fresh meat.
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It’s August, 1818, and two British naval ships are dodging icebergs in Baffin Bay on their mission to find the Northwest Passage. John Ross, commanding the HMS
Isabella, and William Parry in the HMS
Alexander are farther north along the western Greenland coast than any previous explorers. They assume this land of glaciers and stark mountains is uninhabited.
But they’re wrong.
They spy several figures running on a hill near shore. Ross assumes they’re shipwrecked sailors in need of rescue, and he steers the
Isabella to get closer. But they turn out to be Native people, a community of Inughuit living farther north than Europeans believed was physically possible.
McDonald s/Justin Dodd
If you re celebrating a 50th birthday or anniversary this year, you re in excellent company. From the first e-mail to McDonald s Quarter Pounder, 1971 was a year full of change. Here are 50 people, places, things, and events celebrating their own 50th birthday in 2021.
1. Walt Disney World
Jacqueline Nell/Disneyland Resort, Getty Images
Following the success of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Walt Disney began searching for a location for a second theme park in 1959. After Walt s death in 1966, his brother Roy O. Disney continued the search and also insisted that the name of the theme park be changed from Disney World to Walt Disney World to act as a remembrance of his brother.