The child’s headstone is inscribed simply “Nannie,” marking the grave of a 7-year-old girl who died on May 18, 1856. She is buried in one of Washington’s oldest Black cemeteries, in a neglected corner of Georgetown. For years she has touched visitors who have left toys, dolls and birthday cards at her grave. This year […]
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Millions of years ago, this desert in Peru was a gathering place for fantastical sea creatures: whales that walked, dolphins with walrus faces, sharks with teeth as large as a human face, red-feathered penguins, aquatic sloths. They reproduced in the gentle waters of a shallow lagoon buffered by hills that still wrap across the landscape […]
Read More Millions of years ago, this desert in Peru was a gathering place for fantastical sea creatures: whales that walked, dolphins with walrus faces, sharks with teeth as large as a human face, red-feathered penguins, aquatic sloths. They reproduced in the gentle waters of a shallow lagoon buffered by hills that still wrap across the landscape […]
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My mother, who died suddenly when I was a teenager, is buried alongside her ancestors in a historic mausoleum in the area of Cairo known as the City of the Dead. It’s the oldest continuously used Muslim cemetery in the world, and its history traces back to the seventh century. My ancestors chose this burial […]
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Twelve hundred tons of sand arrived last month in Hudson River Park, the sliver of green space on the western edge of Manhattan, and it took only a quarter-century to get there. In 1998, when Gov. George E. Pataki signed the law authorizing the creation of the park, he vowed it would have a beach. […]
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A team of archaeologists, historians and engineers had nearly finished a monthslong restoration of the Tinmel Mosque, a 1,000-year-old jewel of Moorish architecture set deep in the mountains of Morocco, when a powerful earthquake barreled through the area a week ago. By the time it was over, the intricate domes and graceful arches, first built […]
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When Marilyn Monroe moved to Brentwood in 1962, the Los Angeles neighborhood provided the perfect seclusion for the world’s most famous woman. The four-bedroom Spanish colonial-style house was tucked off a quiet street, with a kidney-shaped pool and towering palm trees. The house was known as “Cursum Perficio,” which in Latin loosely translates to “I […]
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A riddle haunts the Titan disaster. It’s the presence on the doomed craft of Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77. The Frenchman was one of the world’s great submariners. So why was he, of all people, diving repeatedly to the Titanic on a submersible that many experts saw as a catastrophe waiting to happen? “It’s a source of […]
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A powerful earthquake struck Morocco on Friday night, killing more than 2,000 people and setting off frantic rescue efforts through rubble-strewn city streets and remote rural areas as some residents sifted through mountains of debris with their bare hands. The earthquake, which had a magnitude of at least 6.8 and was centered about 50 miles […]
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A powerful earthquake struck Morocco on Friday night, killing more than 2,000 people and setting off frantic rescue efforts through rubble-strewn city streets and remote rural areas as some residents sifted through mountains of debris with their bare hands. The earthquake, which had a magnitude of at least 6.8 and was centered about 50 miles […]
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Virginia Allen, a poised 92-year-old with an elegant sweep of white hair and a nagging case of sciatica, remembers the first time she set foot on the sprawling green campus of Sea View Hospital three-quarters of a century ago. “I felt in awe of it,” she said of the complex, more than two dozen buildings […]
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