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  In a small seaside park near the Kanmonkyo Bridge, in the Japanese city of Shimonoseki, stands two bronze statues depicting two Samurai warriors locked in mortal combat. The statues are flanked by replicas of cannons and ships. The monument commemorate a historic battle that took place in this area more than eight centuries ago. The year was 1185. Two powerful fleets, one consisting of the Heike clan, the imperial rulers of Japan, and the other consisting of the Minamoto, who were fighting for control of the throne, faced each other one April morning on tiny bay called Dan-no-ura in Japan’s Inland Sea. In the fierce battle that followed, hundreds of Samurai warriors lost their lives and their bodies slipped between the waves to the bottom of the sea. At the end of the day, the Minamoto came out victorious; the Heike were routed and their 6-year old emperor was drowned by his grandmother to prevent his capture. Minamoto Yoritomo went on to become the first Shogun, or military rule...

  In 1647, construction workers carrying out repairs on the Church of Saint Andrew in the small city of Venzone, in the province of Udine, Italy, accidentally broke open a tomb in the churchyard. Inside was found the perfectly dried body of a man who appeared to be of average height and possibly rotund during his living days. His body had now shrunk to only 33 pounds, or about 15 kg. But curiously, it hadn’t decomposed. Over the next four centuries up to present times, a total of 42 bodies have been dug up from the tombs in the churchyard. All the bodies had undergone spontaneous mummification a short time after they were buried. Their skins have turned yellow-brown and look like tanned leather. The muscles, including the heart, have been reduced to thin membranes, while internal organs such as kidneys and pancreas have disappeared. The brain is one-third of its volume. These mummies weigh anywhere between 22 and 44 pounds, and although greatly altered, the forms and features of th...

  Male moose—the world's largest deer—go to great lengths to allure females. While humans will soon be spring cleaning, moose clean house in the winter by getting rid of their antlers. While humans will soon be spring cleaning, moose clean house in the winter by getting rid of their antlers. We found out quite a lot about the process when Gaia Restrepo asked: “Why do moose shed their antlers every year?” LOSE WEIGHT FAST Cattle, sheep, and goats keep and grow their horns, which are made of bone and keratin. But members of the deer family—including its biggest member, the moose—annually shed their antlers, which are not fused to their skull. Only male moose have antlers, and their growth is regulated by testosterone, Kris Hundertmark, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says via email. (Read how moose get so big eating plants.) Casting off these massive structures frees moose of up to 60 pounds of weight, allowing them to store more energy for the winter, say...

  The seas off China have been hit by the largest ever growth of algae. The vast swath of green growth is washing onto the shores of the Yellow Sea, near the eastern city of Qingdao, where bulldozers shoveled up tons of algae from the sand. The State Oceanic Administration said on its website that the algae, enteromorpha prolifera, started to appear a week ago and had spread across an area of 28,900 square kilometers. Two years ago, a 410-square-km patch of algae floated into the city’s beaches. Shandong suffered severe green algae invasions in 2007, 2008 and 2010 that decimated its aquaculture and cost millions of yuan in damage. The previous largest bloom was in 2008 when it affected around 13,000 square kilometers, and threatened the Olympic sailing events that were held in Qingdao’s waters. The algal phenomenon is usually caused by an abundance of nutrients in the water, especially phosphorus, although the triggers for the enormous blooms that began to appear in the Yellow Sea ...

  The Eisriesenwelt (German for "World of the Ice Giants") is a natural limestone ice cave located in Werfen, Austria, about 40 km south of Salzburg. It is the largest ice cave in the world extending more than 42km. Eisriesenwelt Cave was created by the Salzach river as it flowed through the mountain eroding passageways nearly 100 million years ago. Over the course of thousands of years cracks and crevices in the limestone became more developed as water eroded the rocks away. In winter, when the air inside the mountain is warmer than outside, cold air streams into the mountain and reduces the temperature of the lower areas of the caves to below freezing point. In spring the water from melting snow seeps through the cracks in the rock and when it reaches the colder lower areas of the caves it freezes and turns slowly into the wonderful ice formations visible inside the caves. Although the cave has a length of 42 km, only the first kilometer, the area that tourists are allowed ...