The now-renowned Schengen Agreement was signed in a tiny village in Luxembourg’s south-east, a location that was drenched in symbolism. //

Just as I thought I was running out of country, I arrived at tiny Schengen, tucked in among the vines on the western bank of the Moselle. With fewer than 520 residents, it’s certainly not the big-name, bright-lights destination one might expect for an agreement that would change the way people travelled in Europe. Nevertheless, it was here, on a murky morning on 14 June 1985, that representatives of Belgium, France, Luxembourg, West Germany (as was) and the Netherlands gathered to officially seal the deal on this revolutionary new border-free zone. //

As Luxembourg was soon to take over the EEC presidency, the small nation was entitled to choose where the signing of this treaty would take place. It just so happens that Schengen is the only place where France and Germany both join with a Benelux member, securing it as the destination of choice.

As the meeting place of three countries, the choosing of Schengen was drenched in symbolism. To ensure it was a neutral affair, the signatories were assembled on a pleasure cruiser, the MS Princesse Marie-Astrid, to put pen to paper. The cruiser was moored as close as possible to the tri-point border, which runs down the middle of the Moselle River. //

Today, the Schengen Area comprises 26 member states. Of these, 22 are members of the EU, while four (Iceland, Switzerland, Norway and Liechtenstein) are not. //

...the European Museum. Here, the story of how the Schengen Area came to exist is expertly told through interactive displays inside and a variety of monuments outside.

Don’t miss the cabinet of official border control caps from the member states at the time they joined the area, each a piece of national identity that was surrendered in order to make Schengen work. Poignant sections of the Berlin Wall sit perfectly placed in front of the museum, set there to remind us all that walls – in this case, world-famous reinforced concrete from one of its founding members, no less – don’t have to remain in place forever.

Although the trail itself is in Belgium, they're actually much closer to German cities and services. "If they have an accident, I tell them they should roll to the German side," she said, "because the ambulance will come faster."

This tiny spot of Germany is entirely surrounded by Switzerland, which makes it both an enclave and exclave, geographic oddities to trivia fans, but confounding to everyone else.

In Roman times, the island was known as "Pausoa", the Basque word for passage or step. Then the French translated this as "Paysans", meaning peasant, before transposing it as "Faisans", for pheasant. Over time, the name Île des Faisans stuck.

The humble island finally came into prominence in 1648, following a ceasefire at the end of the Thirty Years' War between France and Spain, when it was chosen as a neutral space to demarcate the new borderlands. In fact, 24 summits took place, with military escorts on standby should talks breakdown. Eleven years later, the Treaty of the Pyrenees peace accord was struck.

To honour the occasion, a royal wedding was mooted, and, in 1660, French King Louis XIV married the daughter of King Philip IV, Maria Theresa of Spain, on the spot of the declaration. Wooden bridges were built to ease passage, royal parties arrived in state barges and carriages, and tapestries and paintings were commissioned. Diego Velázquez, court painter to Philip and whose magnum opus remains Las Meninas (a portrait of Margaret Theresa with her maids of honour) was put in charge of arranging much of the festivities.

So symbolic was Pheasant Island as a metaphor of peace, in fact, that it was decided both countries would have joint custody of the territory. Spain would hold stewardship from 1 February to 31 July each year, while Pheasant Island would become an official part of France for the other six months. In that moment, the world's smallest condominium was born.

By definition, condominiums are places determined by the presence of at least more than one sovereign state. The sense is derived from Latin, with "com" implying "together" and "dominium" meaning "right of ownership". And over the centuries, numerous countries have become embroiled in geographic tug o' wars over condominiums, with governments spending decades happily arguing the finer points of who owns what and why. Most aren't centres of empire, but rather experimental, geopolitical addendums.

At least for now, there are eight in the world, including Lake Constance, the tridominium between Austria, Germany and Switzerland; the Brčko District shared by Bosnia and Herzegovina; and the disputed territory of the Republika Srpska. Then there is the Joint Regime Area, a shared maritime zone between Colombia and Jamaica; and the Abyei Area contested by South Sudan and Sudan.

Another is the Moselle river and its tributaries the Sauer and the Our – a riverine condominium shared between Germany and Luxembourg; while the Gulf of Fonseca is a tripartite condominium portioned up by Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Antarctica is the last but also the largest and most momentous, a theoretical continental condominium, governed by the 29 signatories of the Antarctic Treaty that have consulting status.

On the day of my visit to Pheasant Island, the territory was in the hands of the Spanish. A group of kayakers was exploring its nooks from the water, and, on land, only one passer-by stopped to take photographs. Besides administering the gardening, maintaining the boat landing site, discussing fishing rights and monitoring the water quality, there isn't much for the Spanish to do on a month-to-month basis. Visitors are only allowed onto the island on rare occasions: either on one of the bi-annual handover days, when the island is abuzz with activity during the official ceremony, with flags, delegates, diplomats and plenty of formal pomp; or as part of ad-hoc, occasional heritage tours.

Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, Lamborghini, and Lotus also use w3w. //

What3words divides the planet into 3×3m squares and assigns each one a randomly generated three-word address. //

What3words is a mapping company that looks at navigation differently. It divides the planet into a grid of squares, each measuring 3×3 m. Each one of those squares gets its own identifier made up of three random words—hence the company's name.

So, 1 World Trade Center, Ars Technica's corporate HQ (as opposed to the orbiting one), includes the "squares" cycles.rugs.lucky, feels.thigh.bigger, and gifts.spray.ties.

The fact that this large building with a single street address (285 Fulton St.) can have multiple what3words addresses highlights the utility of this approach, which is magnified in the case of something like a stadium or industrial park. And since what3words' grid is independent of street addresses, it means you can also use it for parks, hiking trails, or literally any other location on the planet.

Guess the WORLDLE in 6 guesses.
Each guess must be a valid country, territory, ...
After each guess, you will have the distance, the direction and the proximity from your guess and the target country.

A new WORLDLE will be available every day!
About distance
The distances displayed correspond to the distances between the selected and the target territory centers.
For instance, the computed distance between United States and Canada is around 2260km even if they have a common border.

NASA researchers have an estimate of the power of a massive volcanic eruption that took place on Saturday near the island nation of Tonga.

"We come up with a number that's around 10 megatons of TNT equivalent," James Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told NPR. //

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai was completely destroyed by Saturday's explosion, says Dan Slayback, a research scientist for NASA's Goddard, as well as Science Systems and Applications Inc. Slayback says the blast was so massive it even appears to have taken chunks out of the older islands nearby.

"They weren't ash — they were solid rock, blown to bits," he says. "It was quite amazing to see that happen." //

He suspects the explosion was triggered by a sudden change in the subterranean plumbing, which caused seawater to flood in.

"When you put a ton of seawater into a cubic kilometer of liquid rock, things are going to get bad fast," he says.

In the middle of the thousands of islands of the Croatian coast, Bavljenac, an islet of derisory size stands out for its large number of walls. These dry stone walls, typical of the Mediterranean, give the island a unique and singular aspect.

A fragmented territory
The Croatian coast is very fragmented along the Adriatic Sea. The country always seems to break up in the water into distinct sets of archipelagos. Indeed Croatia is the largest archipelago in the Adriatic Sea with 79 islands, 525 islets and 642 reefs or rocks (Rocks are defined as islets smaller than 0.1 km², islets are between 0.1 and 1.0 km² and islands proper are bigger than 1.0 km²). Of these 1246 islands, which represent a territory of 3,300 km2 , only 48 islands are inhabited. One of these uninhabited islands is the island of Baljenac (or Bavljenac) located in the center part of the Croatia coast. It is part of the Šibenik archipelago, 10 km from the coast.

Between the walls
Although it is of an insignificant size of 0,14km² it represents a historical interest for the mark that man has left there. The island is completely covered by walls built of stones piled one on top of the other. The ancient wall network is 23.357 km long on an island whose coastal perimeter does not exceed 1431m. These dry stone walls were built only by superimposing simple stones to delimit agricultural plots and protect the olive trees and vines from the wind. Farmers from the neighboring island of Kaprije are said to have started the agricultural colonization of the island in the 19th century, although some of the walls may have been built earlier. These networks of walls is indeed found in some neighboring islands, although the island of Baljenac is the largest concentration of these walls. However, it is estimated that 300 farmers would have built 106km of walls on a surface area of 12 km² in all the neighboring archipelago.
This uninhabited island has a physiognomy totally transformed by man. These agricultural plots give it a physical and totally improvised plot plan, almost random. Seen from the sky the island looks like a maze, a puzzle or a fingerprint, the hundreds of walls giving the island a unique and singular identity.

Conventional hydrogeologic framework models used to compute ocean island sustainable yields and aquifer storage neglect the complexity of the nearshore and offshore submarine environment. However, the onshore aquifer at the island of Hawai‘i exhibits a notable volumetric discrepancy between high-elevation freshwater recharge and coastal discharge. In this study, we present a novel transport mechanism of freshwater moving from onshore to offshore through a multilayer formation of water-saturated layered basalts with interbedded low-permeability layers of ash/soil. Marine electromagnetic imaging reveals ∼35 km of laterally continuous resistive layers that extend to at least 4 km from west of Hawai‘i’s coastline, containing about 3.5 km^3 of freshened water. We propose that this newly found transport mechanism of fresh groundwater may be the governing mechanism in other volcanic islands. In such a scenario, volcanic islands worldwide can use these renewable offshore reservoirs, considered more resilient to climate change-driven droughts, as new water resources.

Located 12km east of Suffolk in the North Sea, the Principality of Sealand is a micronation that claims to be the world’s smallest country.

Microsoft Spotlight

Britain’s biggest city has almost ground to a halt, thanks to the rise of Uber, delivery drivers – and cycle lanes. Can anything be done to end the gridlock and pollution?

Fire swept through the canyons where the rare trees had outlived the dinosaurs. For days, the smoke was so thick that no one knew whether the careful plan to protect them had worked. //

Australian firefighters was bent on saving invaluable plant life: hidden groves of the Wollemi pine, a prehistoric tree species that has outlived the dinosaurs.

Wollemia nobilis peaked in abundance 34 million to 65 million years ago, before a steady decline. Today, only 200 of the trees exist in their natural environment — all within the canyons of Wollemi National Park, just 100 miles west of Sydney.

The trees are so rare that they were thought to be extinct until 1994. //

The fire did sweep through the canyons, and through the groves where these trees have somehow survived for millions of years.

For a few days, the smoke was so thick that it wasn't clear whether the plan had worked. "We all waited with bated breath," Kean said.

At last the smoke abated.

A few trees had been charred by the flames, and two died. But the efforts had paid off. "Finally," Kean said, "we were able to get in there and see that, thank goodness, the trees were saved."

He says they knew they had to do everything they could to save the Wollemi groves.

"These are the only living Wollemi pines found anywhere on the planet in their natural environment. These pines used to cover the whole of Australia. Now they're only found in a very small and secret location in New South Wales."

If Liberia were your home instead of The United States you would...

• die 21.35 years sooner
• be 13.7 times more likely to be unemployed
• be 11.2 times more likely to die in infancy
• make 98.67% less money
• use 99.38% less electricity
• spend 99.26% less money on health care
• consume 98.48% less oil
• be 93.84% less likely to be in prison
• be 50% more likely to have HIV/AIDS
• be 13.16% less likely to be murdered
• have 2.6 times more babies

The Hawaiian island chain, or archipelago, is the most geographically isolated group of islands on Earth. Located more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continental land mass, the chain of volcanic islands is home to a wide range of flora and fauna that exist only in Hawaii.

90 percent of the island’s plants and animals are unique to the island chain,

A tiny Alaskan island faces a threat as deadly as an oil spill—rats. //

Between 40 and 60 percent of all recorded bird and reptile extinctions since 1600 have been attributed to rats, with Norway, black, and Pacific rats the most destructive species. These losses warp ecosystems. Without seabirds and shorebirds to control intertidal invertebrates, for instance, populations can surge and decimate seaweed. Deprived of ocean nutrients found in seabird poop, island grassland can turn to tundra. Rats may have even contributed to the fall of civilization on Easter Island, devouring the environment out from underneath its human inhabitants. //

Pacific Islanders brought Pacific rats to new haunts by canoe as a food source thousands of years ago. Ships on missions of war, colonization, and trade later spread Norway and black rats. Today, rats inhabit more than 80 percent of the world’s islands.

Canyonlands invites you to explore a wilderness of countless canyons and fantastically formed buttes carved by the Colorado River and its tributaries. Rivers divide the park into four districts: Island in the Sky, The Needles, The Maze, and the rivers themselves. These areas share a primitive desert atmosphere, but each offers different opportunities for sightseeing and adventure.

Originally named by John Wesley Powell, the Colorado Plateau comprises a series of tablelands (plateaus or mesas) located within an immense basin surrounded by highlands. Stream valleys that are typically narrow and widely spaced dissect the region, as do larger valleys, including the most spectacular – the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is the largest stream valley dissecting the tablelands of the Colorado Plateau The Grand Canyon is the largest stream valley dissecting the tablelands of the Colorado Plateau

NPS / Kristen M. Caldon

23 September 2019|Nature

The Veryovkina Cave is the deepest known cave on Earth. It took half a century and about 30 expeditions for Russian cave explorers to reach its record depth of 2,212 meters. Speleologists still think there is more to be discovered.

The Salar de Uyuni salt flat is on many people's bucket list, but most do not know that the area surrounding this monochromatic scene is bursting with colour.