Life, Nature, Society

Total Solar Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse: The moon appeared to turn red due to the way the reflected light is refracted in the Earth's atmosphere.

Blood Moon is sometimes used to describe 4 total lunar eclipses in a row.

People across North America will witness a rare total solar eclipse on 21 August.
The earth, moon and sun will momentarily align, casting a 70-mile wide shadow that will move across the US, from the west coast to the east coast. The millions of people living within this ‘path of totality’ – and the millions of others expected to travel to a location on the strip – will see a total solar eclipse, where the moon completely blocks out the sun, leaving the solar corona visible.
The last time the entirety of the US witnessed a total solar eclipse was 99 years ago.

Total Solar Eclipse 2017: When, Where and How to See It (Safely)  read more »

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Left: Prince Philip in his regalia in 1958. Right: On May 31 2017 after he announced his retirement.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were married in 1957 and have been together ever since.

2003: The Queen can't hide her smiles as her husband dons a uniform for The Queen's Company Review at Windsor Castle.

The Duke of Edinburgh laughed as he spoke with senior officers.

Born at the family home, Mon Repos in Corfu Greece - allegedly on the kitchen table - on June 10 1921, Prince Philippos of Greece and Denmark came to Britain when he was just one year old.

The Duke has immersed himself in national life but also served in the Armed Forces, left, in his naval uniform circa 1982; and right, on a boat in Malta in 1949

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Roger Federer, at 35, wins Wimbledon for a record eighth time
WIMBLEDON, England - Roger Federer, who won Wimbledon at 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 30, won it again Sunday at 35, further cramming his name into a men’s tennis record book in which it appears almost as rampantly as it would in a biography.

At 35 years, 342 days old, he became the oldest Wimbledon champion in the Open Era, as well as the oldest Grand Slam champion since Ken Rosewall won the Australian Open in 1972, a category in which Federer surpassed the 2017 Australian Open champion Roger Federer. He also extended his Grand Slam title total to 19 to arrange an arrival in New York in late August with a stunning yet realistic chance at 20, which would have seemed farfetched only six months ago.

Back in mid-January, Federer had just come off a six-month hiatus in deference to a left knee that kept yelling for attention on court while he tried to plot strategic points. With that knee rested, Federer up and won the Australian Open from a No. 17 seed, and set off on a year he has called "a fairy tale"”  read more »

Lucky Strike
Storm chaser and Your Shot photographer Vanessa Neufeld captured this scene in Keyes, Oklahoma. "As the evening descended, so did a barrage of lightning in northwest Oklahoma."

Penguin Parade
A group of gentoo penguins cross the beach at sunrise on Saunders Island, the fourth largest island in the Falkland Islands.

Marble Caves
Las Cuevas de Mármol (The Marble Caves) sit in the middle of General Carrera Lake, which lies between Chile and Argentina. The tunnels and caves are only reachable by boat. The swooping arches have been formed by more than 6,000 years of water lapping against the rock, and the waters change color depending on the time of year.

Eagle Training  read more »

June 27, 2017- It was dusk when Elsie Dabrowski made her nightly trip to lock up the chicken coop and decided she would do a little bit of weeding in the garden.

The 80-year-old grandmother was at a rose bush hacking weeds with her sickle when the bobcat pounced on her, sinking its teeth into her face.

"All I could think of is 'Why is he doing this? Why is this stupid cat attacking me?"' Dabrowski said.

She turned her sickle on it as some of her five dogs scrambled over to help.
"He just kept scratching and biting, and then the dogs came and chased him off," she said.

By then, the bobcat had ripped into her in five places, causing wounds that would take 60 stitches to close.

Her adult son heard the commotion from his yard nearby.
"He heard it and he got the gun and came down," she said.
He killed the bobcat with a shotgun blast.

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Photo courtesy CBS Boston

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Deadly Heat Waves Threaten Third of the World
Currently, nearly a third of the world's population is exposed to lethal climate conditions for at least 20 days a year, according to findings published Monday in Nature Climate Change, a monthly peer-reviewed journal. As the planet's temperature rises, more of the world's population will be exposed to conditions that trigger deadly heat waves, the report said.

For a city like New York, which currently sees about two days per year that surpass the heat threshold, that could mean 50 deadly days per year by 2100.

The researchers analyzed more than 1,900 cases of fatalities associated with heat waves in 164 cities across 36 countries between 1980 and 2014 to define a global threshold for life-threatening conditions based on heat and humidity. Researchers found the overall risk for heat-related sickness or death has increased steadily since 1980.

The study notes well-documented heat waves, including a five-day stretch that claimed hundreds of lives in Chicago in 1995, the European heat wave in 2003 that saw tens of thousands of heat-related deaths and lethal temperatures in Moscow in 2010 that killed more than 10,000. Across Russia, the heat wave in 2010 claimed more than 50,000 lives. But the research team found that heatwaves are more common than most people think, and humidity levels combined with heat play a major role in heat-related heath risks.  read more »