Six internationally recognized artists contributed original works for this year’s NatureBridge gala fund-raising auction in San Francisco. A nonprofit educational organization, NatureBridge provides hands-on environmental science experiences to some 30,000 students and teachers annually. Their “classrooms” are six of the most magnificent national parks on earth.
Print fans, philatelists, and astronomy lovers are in for a treat this summer, thanks to the U.S. Postal Service. To commemorate the first total eclipse of the sun to be visible across a swath of the mainland U.S. since 1918, the USPS is releasing a first-of-its-kind stamp that changes appearance when you touch it. Printed using thermographic ink, the photo of the sun responds to the heat of a finger, turning the solar disk into a black moon with only the corona of the sun glowing around it. Pretty cool, huh!
To make this stamp even more fun, the USPS is hosting the first-day-of-issue ceremony at precisely 1:30 p.m. on June 20 at the University of Wyoming Rotunda Gallery in Laramie. As if heralding the summer solstice, the sun is then slated to shine directly down through the solar tube in the Rotunda ceiling casting a single beam of sunlight onto the silver dollar embedded into the Rotunda floor, setting it aglow.
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Macondo Chocolate is a single origin chocolate line handmade by Kernow Chocolate Company in the UK. According to Kernow’s website, the flavor of cacao beans, like that of coffee beans and wine grapes, is affected by where the beans are grown, the regional temperature, annual rainfall, and nutrients in the soil. It’s said that chocolate connoisseurs are familiar with the appellations of cacao beans and have their preferences. Hence, Macondo Chocolate set out to appeal to their discerning taste by sourcing its cacao beans from different corners of the world, and processing each batch separately to maintain the distinct and pure flavor of their country of origin.
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In the early 1980’s, psychologist William Cain conducted a study with students at Yale University to see if they could identify 80 common products just by their scent. Here are the top 20 recognizable odors. See if you can arrange them according to immediately recognizable to least. (See answers at end of article.)
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The year was 1990. “The Simpsons” is aired on Fox for the first time. GM launches the Saturn car. The most complete skeleton of T-Rex is found in South Dakota. Crayola retires eight colors and replaces them with eight others, including the cheerful Dandelion.