The Upper Peninsula is a forested region in Michigan bordering 3 of the Great Lakes and extending outward from Wisconsin. It’s connected to Michigan’s Lower Peninsula by the roughly 5-miles-long Mackinac Bridge, which spans the Straits of Mackinac.
Sandwiched between the 2 peninsulas is Mackinac Island, a car-free vacation destination with the iconic 1887 Grand Hotel and the Victorian-era Fort Mackinac.
In 1847, Sir John Franklin and a crew of 128 men disappeared while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage. A National Geographic team sought to find evidence of their fate—but the Arctic doesn’t give up its secrets easily.
BY MARK SYNNOTT
Jacob Keanik scanned his binoculars over the field of ice surrounding our sailboat. He was looking for the polar bear that had been stalking us for the past 24 hours, but all he could see was an undulating carpet of blue-green pack ice that stretched to the horizon. “Winter is coming,” he murmured. Jacob had never seen Game of Thrones and was unaware of the phrase’s reference to the show’s menacing hordes of ice zombies, but to us, the threat posed by this frozen horde was equally dire. Here in remote Pasley Bay, deep in the Canadian Arctic, winter would bring a relentless tide of boat-crushing ice. If we didn’t find a way out soon, it could trap us and destroy our vessel—and perhaps us too.
BY SOREN WALLJASPER,
In 1845, British explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew of 128 men set out in search of the Northwest Passage—a fabled sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific that would hasten trade between Europe and Asia. None of Franklin’s crew survived. The Norwegian ship Gjøa in 1903-06 made the first successful passage. In 2022, a National Geographic team attempted to retrace Franklin’s expedition to find fresh evidence of its undoing.
Why do we explore? It’s just what humans do. But how we define it is changing.
BY NINA STROCHLIC
There is only one museum along the old Oregon Trail that tells the story of America’s westward expansion through the eyes of those being expanded into. In a corner of Oregon bordered by Washington and Idaho, this wood-paneled warren of galleries and interactive exhibits celebrates the heritage of Native people and mourns what was destroyed when the pioneers arrived. Walking down a long ramp, visitors enter the brick facade of a replica “Indian training school,” where Native children were forcibly converted and assimilated. A life-size photo of the students stares back from over a century ago; their matching uniforms make them look like tiny soldiers.
In a two-year expedition, a National Geographic photographer is documenting the mighty river and the greater ecosystem from the Andes to the Atlantic.
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY THOMAS PESCHAK
Two jaguars leap into the river, lunging at pacas. These oversize rodents, with blotched and striped coats, are agile swimmers. Piranhas, attracted by the commotion, hover nearby.
I’m photographing this riveting scene, but I’m not underwater as I usually am when I’m on assignment. Instead of diving to see this aquatic life, I’ve climbed to a rocky ledge far above a rainforest. The jaguars, pacas, and piranhas are not flesh and blood; they are prehistoric artworks painted with hematite, a blood-red iron oxide, in exquisite detail. I am in awe, as if seeing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the first time.
The ground-breaking, award-winning natural history franchise Secrets Of returns with its next installment, Secrets of the Elephants. From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer-at-Large James Cameron, the series travels the world — from the Savannahs of Africa to the urban landscapes of Asia — to discover the strategic thinking, complex emotions and sophisticated language of elephants, shaping a unique and dynamic culture.
Narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Natalie Portman and featuring renowned National Geographic Explorer and elephant expert Dr. Paula Kahumbu, the four-part series not only reveals the extraordinary lives of different families of elephants but also highlights how similar they are to us. Secrets of the Elephants will change everything you thought you knew about elephants forever.
Off the coast of Italy, the Mediterranean’s most active volcano system is extremely volatile—yet our photographer found that marine life clings on all the same.
Early cultures used meteorites to craft weapons and jewelry long before anyone knew how to extract iron from ore.
ASIAN ELEPHANTS ARE LEARNING TO LIVE WITH US. BUT WILL WE LEARN TO LIVE WITH THEM?
This small Balkan country won its independence from Serbia 15 years ago, but still waits for justice for wartime victims and global recognition as a new nation.
Catch all-new episodes of #TraffickedWithMarianavanZeller, Wednesdays at 9/8c on National Geographic.
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1817 or 1818– February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his orator and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
Boomers Daily 