Population of the metro area: 66,819

Median home price: $395,300

Average monthly rent: $2,195

Median household income: $112,656

Known for: A growing area outside Austin, Pflugerville has more than 56 miles of recreational trails, including those surrounding the 180-acre Lake Pflugerville. The nearby Typhoon Texas Waterpark is also an annual draw for locals and visitors alike.

Population of the metro area: 79,990

Median home price: $645,600

Average monthly rent: $2,890

Median household income: $157,737

Known for: Named for a local hill covered in wildflowers, the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound is known for its small-town charm just outside the big city. The area boasts a strong public school system and a robust calendar of community events, including a summer concert series.

Population of the metro area: 75,947 (as of 2020)

Median home price: $769,000

Average monthly rent: $2,812

Median household income: $157,891

Known for: Under 30 minutes from the bustle of Baltimore sits quaint Ellicott City. Several buildings from the 19th century remain, and there are museums dedicated to everything from turn-of-the-century firefighting to the country's oldest surviving railroad station.

Population of the metro area: 122,756

Median home price: $355,000

Average monthly rent: $1,750

Median household income: $85,220

Known for: One of Tulsa's suburbs, Broken Arrow has long connections to the Muscogee people, who settled in the area after the US government forced them to move from Alabama along the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. Today, its downtown has boutiques, galleries, restaurants, and an annual festival, Rooster Days, that's been held for over 90 years.

Population of the metro area: 66,474

Median home price: $1.9 million

Average monthly rent: $3,845

Median household income: $227,273

Climate Vulnerability Index: 1st percentile, lowest vulnerability

Known for: This picturesque city, home to both the glittering Lake Sammamish and verdant forests, is just a short drive from Seattle. Locals enjoy recreational activities including boating, fishing, and hiking in its multiple parks.

Population of the metro area: 89,209

Median home price: $462,500

Average monthly rent: $2,200

Median household income: $119,299

Known for: Not far from Detroit, Troy is home to many companies that support the automotive industry. Somerset Collection is the city's mall, where you'll find upscale stores including Christian Louboutin, Rolex, Versace, and more.

Population of the metro area: 78,330

Median home price: $467,000

Average monthly rent: $1,800

Median household income: $119,054

Known for: With a charming downtown, plenty of nature trails, and a popular cider mill, Rochester Hills has activities for all of Michigan's four seasons. Meadow Brook Amphitheater brings in an eclectic mix of summer concerts, from big-name bands to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Population of the metro area: 87,511

Median home price: $403,800

Average monthly rent: $2,195

Median household income: $140,180

Known for: One of the fastest-growing spots in the county, Leander draws people with its good schools and natural beauty. It's a 30-minute drive or a commuter-rail ride from Austin.

Population of the metro area: 75,977

Median home price: $596,000

Average monthly rent: $2,250

Median household income: $138,442

Known for: Apex, North Carolina, a 25-minute drive to Raleigh, is one of the smaller cities on the list, by population, but has a better job market than the national average, according to US News.

Population of the metro area: 118,456

Median home price: $343,800

Average monthly rent: $2,200

Median household income: $119,870

Known for: League City, Texas, is about 26 miles south of Houston and only 30 miles from beaches along the Gulf. It rated highly for value and desirability, according to US News.

Population of the metro area: 182,659

Median home price: $701,500

Average monthly rent: $2,120

Median household income: $129,399

Known for: A suburb of Raleigh, Cary is part of North Carolina's research triangle and attracts people from all over the country — and world — for its robust job market and laid-back lifestyle.

Population of the metro area: 103,986

Median home price: $406,400

Average monthly rent: $2,175

Median household income: $128,141

Known for: Located about 20 miles outside Indianapolis, Fishers has a growing number of tech jobs.

Population of the metro area: 129,620

Median home price: $368,900

Average monthly rent: $2,300

Median household income: $112,470

Known for: One of the fastest-growing cities in Texas, Pearland has had its population increase from approximately 19,000 residents to over 100,000 in the last 20 years. It's a suburb of Houston.

Population of the metro area: 103,606

Median home price: $516,600

Average monthly rent: $2,199

Median household income: $134,602

Known for: Carmel, which has a nice civic square, an art and design district, and a network of walking and biking trails, has recently drawn new residents. In 2023, a TikTok video that showed off the local high school's swanky facilities, from big athletic facilities to a radio studio to a café, went viral.

Population of the metro area: 81,167

Median home price: $637,500

Average monthly rent: $2,750

Median household income: $160,185

Known for: About 40 minutes north of Atlanta, Johns Creek is the 10th largest city in Georgia and the safest. Fun fact: It wasn't incorporated until 2006.

In New York's Chestnut Ridge Park, a flickering fire lends its name to the Eternal Flame Falls. Protected from the waterfall in a rocky alcove, it can burn on its own indefinitely, though it does sometimes go out.

It's an extremely rare phenomenon. There are fewer than 50 eternal flames around the world, geologist Giuseppe Etiope told National Geographic in 2024. Flammable natural gas, created when extremely high temperatures cook organic materials, seeps out from underground, constantly fueling the flame. Humans, forest fires, or lightning might set them alight.

What's unusual about the flame in New York is that its source, over 1,300 feet below the surface in the Rhinestreet Shale formation, is comparatively cool.

"The traditional hypothesis of how natural gas forms is, you have to heat to more than boiling water," researcher Arndt Schimmelmann told State Impact Pennsylvania in 2013. "But our rock here is not that hot and has never been that hot."

One of the researchers' theories was that minerals like iron or nickel could provide the flame's catalyst.

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote, "Eels are derived from the so-called 'earth's guts' that grow spontaneously in mud and in humid ground."

Over 2,000 years later, scientists knew that wasn't true, but they still had no idea how eels reproduced. Danish biologist Johannes Schmidt traced migrating European eels to what he believed was their spawning location in the Sargasso Sea. Some travel over 3,000 miles to reach the region of the North Atlantic bounded by four currents.

That discovery was over 100 years ago, and scientists still have questions about how European eels travel, including how they navigate, their routes, and how quickly they swim.

Learning more about how these eels reproduce is critical because the number arriving in Europe has plummeted by 95% since the 1980s.

In 2022, scientists published a paper describing how they had tagged eels and confirmed that adults do migrate to the Sargasso Sea, possibly to spawn. Despite years of research, no one has found adult eels or eggs at the location, causing some to doubt it's the site of reproduction. Slippery as an eel, indeed.

Fly over Katmai National Monument in southwestern Alaska, and you'll see a lake that looks almost too perfect not to be human-made. It's over 1,600 feet across and more than 360 feet deep.

Melting snow and rain have filled in a crater, which formed sometime during or before the last ice age. In the 1960s and '70s, scientists studying the Savonoski Crater tried to find evidence of a meteoric impact. It does seem possible a meteor caused the deep, round hole.

However, receding glaciers likely took any remnants of the impact with them.

The crater could also be the result of a volcanic maar, which University of Alaska Fairbanks professor T. Neil Davis described as a "volcano that tried but failed" in a 1978 article on the mysterious Savonoski puzzle.

When a magma pipe hits a water table near the earth's surface, it erupts in an explosion of steam, forming a rock pit. The maar continues to spew smoke and ash before subsiding due to a lack of pressure.

In Josephine Tey's 1952 novel "The Singing Sands," a police inspector gets caught up in a murder investigation involving an enigmatic poem: "The beasts that talk, The streams that stand, The stones that walk, The singing sand…"

While the story is fiction, singing sand is very real, found in Indiana, Japan, Egypt, and California. Many, like those in Dunhuang, China, have become tourist attractions.

A low, vibrational hum emanates from sand spilling down dunes in these locations, sometimes loud enough to be heard 6 miles away. Certain conditions, like the size, shape, and silica content of the sand, have to align to produce the singing, according to NOAA.

Just why the frequencies of the tumbling sand sound like music is still a mystery, according to a 2012 study.

For decades, barren patches in the Namib Desert's arid grasslands have baffled scientists. Nicknamed "fairy circles," they stand out against the surrounding Southern Africa's green vegetation.

Some scientists have suggested that colonies of termites consume the plants and burrow in the soil, creating a ring that grows larger and larger. In a 2022 study, a group of researchers said they found no evidence of the insects in the circles they studied. Instead, they used sensors to monitor the plants' moisture uptake.

Their results suggested that ecohydrological feedback caused the bare circles. Essentially, these patches sacrificed having vegetation to divert more water to areas with grasses.

"These grasses end up in a circle because that's the most logical structure to maximize the water available to each individual plant," Stephan Getzin, an ecologist who led the study, told CNN in 2022.

Other researchers have posited that microbes could be a potential culprit for similar circles in Australia.

For years, curious visitors to Judge C. R. Magney State Park flung sticks, ping-pong balls, and colorful dyes into the Brule River to try and trace its flow. As it moves through the park, it spills out into several waterfalls, including the Devil's Kettle.

Part of the water cascades into a hole, and no one knew exactly where it went afterward. Some thought it might stream underground toward Canada or Lake Superior.

In 2017, hydrologists compared the amount of water above and below the falls, and it was almost identical. In other words, the water wasn't leaving at all but fed right back into the river at the base of the waterfall.

Scientists think they have a pretty good idea where the water reemerges, but they don't know for sure, hydrologist Jeff Green told Vice's "Science Solved It" podcast in 2018.

So where did all those ping-pong balls end up? The powerful, swirling currents would have smashed them to pieces, Green said.

When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit near Acapulco in 2021, people in Mexico City, hundreds of miles away, used their phone cameras to capture strange lights in the sky. Blue flashes lit up the sky like lightning.

Not all experts are convinced that earthquake lights exist, though they've been documented for centuries all over the world. Some scientists thought the flickers were from a damaged power grid or rainstorm, NPR reported.

Others are studying the phenomenon in hopes of using the lights, which sometimes occur prior to the earthquake, as a kind of early warning signal.

First, though, they would need to figure out why these flashes occur. A recent paper examined several possible causes of the lights, including escaping methane gas ignited by static electricity.

Off the coast of Western Australia is the vibrantly pink Lake Hillier. It looks surreal, as if someone dumped a massive amount of Pepto-Bismol into its super-salty waters.

Biologists have hypothesized that pigment-producing microbes are responsible for the lake's bright shade. In 2022, researchers published a study after looking at the water's microbiome. They found a number of bacteria, viruses, and algae. Some produced purple sulfur, and others were associated with a red-orange color. Together, they combined to make the pink color.

Researchers noted that other organisms could contribute, and further studies would have to be done.

That same year, there was a huge amount of rainfall, diluting the saltiness that's also a key factor in the color. Today, the lake is only tinged pink, but scientists think the brightness will return as more water evaporates, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported earlier this year.

People have used the Fosse Dionne for centuries, drinking in the turquoise waters without ever knowing where the rushing spring originated. In the 1700s, residents built a laundry around it to take advantage of the flow, which pours out over 82 gallons a second.

Located in Tonnerre, France, the spring feeds into a basin. Depending on the weather and other factors, its hue can change from green to blue to brown, the city's mayor told the BBC in 2019. Local legends said a mythical, snake-like basilisk once made the pit its home.

About a quarter mile of its course is known, but divers have lost their lives exploring the flooded cave along the route.

A professional diver, Pierre-Éric Deseigne, has reached unexplored areas of the cave but couldn't find the Fosse Dionne's origin, the BBC reported in 2019.

In 1978, the USGS issued a report stating that Mount St. Helens had the potential to violently erupt before the end of the millennium.

The last known eruption had been in 1857. Over the past few centuries, its recent dormant periods lasted an average of 123 years. It was only a matter of time.

Thousands of small earthquakes in March and April caused cracks in the summit. On March 27, steam started pouring out, turning the snow an ashy gray.

"That's when it becomes this multi-agency response because now you have to prevent people from getting too close," Liz Westby, a geologist with the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory, told Business Insider in 2024. "It could possibly erupt, but that wasn't a for-sure thing."

Meanwhile, people climbed on their roofs to take pictures of the steaming top. "Everyone really wanted to catch that glimpse of Mount St. Helens," she said.

When the earthquake hit on May 18, its northern side collapsed. That triggered a debris avalanche, forcing down enough rock, dirt, and snow to fill a million Olympic swimming pools. Some of it traveled as far as 14 miles away.

Ash-filled plumes rocketed 650 feet into the sky.

The avalanche sheared off part of the cryptodome, a magma-filled bulge that had swollen part of Mount St. Helens' north side by about 450 feet.

Rapidly expanding gas then caused a devastatingly powerful blast that exploded sideways instead of up and formed what's called a pyroclastic flow. The mixture can reach blistering temperatures of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

"That is such a hot, thick, gas-rich flow that it essentially kills everything in its path," Westby said.

The heat, force, and high-speed debris can all be deadly. It knocked over trees, leaving them stripped and looking like toothpicks.

Moving at 300 miles per hour, the flow traveled faster than the debris avalanche, covering roughly 230 square miles, an area nearly the size of Chicago.

"Then you see this plume rising up," Westby said.

This one, full of ash and rock, rose as high as 80,000 feet. The eruption lasted nine hours.

Mount St. Helen was still snowcapped in May when it erupted. The scorching heat turned ice and snow into gushing water that took rocks and soil with it.

Known as lahars, these 100-mile-per-hour volcanic mudslides ripped up trees, destroyed over 200 houses, and took out bridges.

Westby was at Eastern Washington University, not far from the Idaho border, when the volcano erupted. What looked like an ominous line of dark clouds drifted in the sky above.

"I thought, wow, that's the weirdest thunderstorm I've ever seen," she said. It turned out to be ash.

Wind blew roughly 520 million tons of ash and volcanic glass to eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana. It was dark enough to obscure the sun in some cities.

It settled on everything, leaving trees with a dusting of what looked like snow.

"This ash, it's fine like baby powder," Westby said. Driving through it would stir it back up into the air.

For days afterward, authorities closed highways and canceled flights because of the poor visibility and the ash's potential to damage plane engines, Westby said.

One of the first USGS geologists at the volcano was David Johnston. He had been closely monitoring Mount St. Helens during its many earthquakes.

On May 18, Johnston was only 6 miles from the volcano. As the eruption started, he radioed a final message to a nearby Washington city: "Vancouver, Vancouver. This is it."

After that, Johnston's death would have come within a minute, his fellow geologist Swanson wrote.

"It hit home to us as geologists, as volcanologists, how important it is to have monitoring up at the volcanoes and to install sensors before unrest so that we don't have to have people up there in harm's way," Westby said of Johnston's death.

Leading up to the eruption, experts created safety zones around the volcano. Only essential workers could go to the red zone.

However, the majority of the 57 people who lost their lives were outside the red zone, NPR reported. Many were killed by the lateral blast, Westby said. It ended up being more powerful than anticipated.

"It still gets me a little bit, thinking about that," she said, "but that really influences how we feel about hazards today."

Now, she said, hazard maps are much more accurate and take into account a range of an eruption's possible outcomes.

Over a week after the eruption, researchers from the USDA Forest Service started looking at the ecological impact. Ecologists were shocked by what they saw at Johnston Ridge, about 6 miles from the summit.

They had expected to find nothing. Instead, there were still carpenter ants, frogs, pocket gophers, spiders, and other signs of life.

Thousands of large mammals like elk and bears didn't survive, but other species of plants and animals were buried in snow or sleeping in their dens.

The blast zone where a hot flow of gas toppled trees is now known as the pumice plain, named for the porous rock that volcanoes create.

Initially, nothing survived in this area. It was two years before researchers saw the first plant, a prairie lupine. The purple-flowered perennial is known to be resilient.

It took four years following the eruption for new greenery to shoot up in the "ghost forests" where the volcano left broken and dying trees.

In 1983, scientists realized not much was growing on the lava-scorched regions of Mount St. Helens. They tried an experiment. They flew a few northern pocket gophers to the volcano and put them in enclosures for about 24 hours.

They did what gophers do, digging holes. Burrowing into the soil helped aerate it and dispersed bacteria and fungi that promote plant growth.

"They're often considered pests, but we thought they would take old soil, move it to the surface, and that would be where recovery would occur," University of California, Riverside microbiologist Michael Allen said last year.

Little did they know the lasting, positive impacts the gophers' tunneling would have. After six years, 40,000 plants had sprung up where they'd turned over the soil. The other areas stayed bare.

A new ecosystem has slowly emerged on the volcano. In the absence of larger predators, their prey thrived.

The smaller animals and dormant plants that survived the volcano's destruction are still there, and bears, cougars, elk, and mountain goats have been spotted, too, The Seattle Times reported in 2020.

That doesn't mean Mount St. Helens is back to normal, ecologist Charlie Crisafulli told the Seattle Times. With the pumice plain area starting from scratch, ecologically, what's happening there now is unique.

In addition to ecology, Mount St. Helens offers opportunities for other kinds of scientific research. Two years after the eruption, the USGS established the Cascades Volcano Observatory to better monitor the volcanic range.

The Observatory, which was dedicated to David Johnston, is one of only five in the US. It's become a kind of laboratory for volcanic research and monitoring.

It's also helping to train what could be the next generation of volcanologists. Every summer, Westby and the Mount St. Helens Institute run a camp for middle school girls called GeoGirls.

"We treat them as though they were our field assistants, to give them an idea of what it's like to work on volcanoes," Westby said.

Mount St. Helens continued to have smaller eruptions through 1986 and then had more between 2004 and 2008.

"They are active volcanoes," Westby said of the Cascades, the volcanic arc that runs through several states and Canada. "They've erupted in the past, and we know they'll erupt in the future."

Of all the Cascade volcanoes, Mount St. Helens is the most active and most likely to erupt again, Westby said. But the technology to predict eruptions has vastly improved.

In 1980, Mount St. Helens only had a single seismometer, Westby said. "Now we've got 20," she said. These newer devices are more sophisticated and can detect smaller earthquakes that could signal an impending eruption.

GPS data can also alert scientists if the ground is deforming. And software can help them process the data more quickly. In the 1980s, scientists were making the calculations by hand.

As the sensors help geologists keep an eye on what's happening beneath the ground, Westby says people should feel free to enjoy the volcanoes. "They're safe to be around right now," she said, "but you never know what happens in the future."

This story was originally published on May 18, 2024 and was updated on May 18, 2025.

Oysters in Hiroshima. Kaiseki meals in Kyoto. Egg salad from a convenience store?

During my research, tamago sandos popped up again and again. They're sold in restaurants, vending machines, and convenience stores, or konbini.

Dutch and Portuguese traders introduced bread to Japan in the 16th century, and Western-influenced sandwiches became more popular during the Meiji Era in the late 19th century, per Tasting Table. Japanese chefs soon adapted sandwiches to add their own culinary style, flavors, and techniques.

Lawson started in Ohio in 1939 and opened stores in Japan beginning in 1975. Only two stores remain in the US, both in Hawaii.

Sandwiches from both 7-Eleven and Lawson have their fans, and you can find dupe recipes from Food & Wine, Tasting Table, and more.

Paradise. Utopia. These are the words people use to describe the bounty to be found in 7-Eleven, Lawson, and FamilyMart, the three major convenience store chains in Japan. Estimates put the number of konbini at around 56,000, The Guardian reported in 2024.

They offer a huge variety of items, from underwear to face masks to alcohol. It's the wealth of fresh, prepared foods that sets them apart from their US counterparts.

There were plenty of potato salad options left, though. Tuna and egg and ham and egg options were also available.

My sandwich expired two days after I bought it, at 11 p.m., according to its label.

Fluffy and lightly flavored, milk bread, or shokupan, adds a touch of sweetness. Bon Appétit compared its softness to white bread but with more fat. The sandwiches are crustless, cut into perfect squishy triangles.

Those trying to replicate the sandwich in the US typically use Kewpie mayo. The Japanese brand uses an extra egg yolk, several types of vinegar, and MSG, per Tasting Table. The result is a creamy, rich sauce that's a little different from other types of mayo, though the US version doesn't contain MSG.

There was no shortage of canned coffees and other beverages available in to-go cups. The latter came with straws to pierce through the foil tops.

After buying my items, I tasted the sandwich. The bread was soft and springy, while the filling was rich with a touch of tanginess.

When I got back to the US, I checked out the sandwich options in my local 7-Eleven. There was a small cooler with a few options, including an egg salad. It cost $5.29, more than double what I paid in Tokyo. Since its "best by" date was the same day, I decided to skip trying it.

In Kyoto, I usually spent breakfast at sit-down restaurants that invariably had incredible, creamy egg sandwiches and perfectly brewed coffee. I was able to enjoy a leisurely meal while planning out my agenda for a day of sightseeing.

When you're late for work or rushing to the airport, though, stores like 7-Eleven and Lawson can't be beat for a speedy, inexpensive option.

It's not certain that this means the new pope will live in these apartments. He could choose a humbler abode, as Francis did.

Mural maps cover the corridor leading to the apartments. The area is known as the Third Loggia.

The rooms are spacious, but some areas are not as lavishly decorated as some other parts of the Apostolic Palace.

In 2004, a photographer captured an image of Pope John Paul II praying in this room for victims of the Madrid bombings.

Heads of state from Malta, Slovakia, Lebanon, the US, and many other countries have had audiences with the Holy See.

The library is on the second floor of the palace.

These weekly events gave visitors a chance to see the pope.

In addition to the library and chapel, there's a sitting room, study, bedroom, and medical clinic. They surround the Courtyard of Sixtus V.

In 2005, renovations updated the kitchen and clinic, Catholic News reported at the time.

In 1903, Pope Pius X became the first pontiff to live in the apartments. Many were surprised by Francis' choice to live in Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican guest house, though it was in keeping with his reputation for humility.

Leo seems to share similar views. Recently, he told Vatican News that a "bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom, but rather called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them and to suffer with them."

Prehistoric camels, mammoths, and giant sloths once roamed what's now New Mexico, when it was greener and damper.

As the climate warmed around 11,000 years ago, the water of Lake Otero receded, revealing footprints of humans who lived among these extinct animals. Some even seemed to be following a sloth, offering a rare glimpse into ancient hunters' behavior.

Recent research puts some of these fossilized footprints at between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. If the dates are accurate, the prints would predate other archaeological sites in the US, raising intriguing questions about who these people were and how they arrived in the Southwestern state.

"Where are they coming from?" Feder said. "They're not parachute dropping in New Mexico. They must have come from somewhere else, which means there are even older sites." Archaeologists simply haven't found them yet.

While visitors can soak in the sight of the eponymous white sands, the footprints are currently off-limits.

In the 1970s, archaeologist James M. Adovasio sparked a controversy when he and his colleagues suggested stone tools and other artifacts found in southwestern Pennsylvania belonged to humans who had lived in the area 16,000 years ago.

For decades, scientists had been finding evidence of human habitation that all seemed to be around 12,000 to 13,000 years old, belonging to the Clovis culture. They were long believed to have been the first to cross the Bering land bridge. Humans who arrived in North America before this group are often referred to as pre-Clovis.

At the time, skeptics said that the radiocarbon dating evidence was flawed, AP News reported in 2016. In the years since, more sites that appear older than 13,000 years have been found across the US.

Feder said Adovasio meticulously excavated the site, but there's still no clear consensus about the age of the oldest artifacts. Still, he said, "that site is absolutely a major, important, significant site." It helped archaeologists realize humans started arriving on the continent before the Clovis people.

The dig itself is on display at the Heinz History Center, allowing visitors to see an excavation in person.

One site that's added intriguing evidence to the pre-Clovis theory is located in western Idaho. Humans living there left stone tools and charred bones in a hearth between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating. Other researchers put the dates closer to 11,500 years ago.

These stemmed tools are different from the Clovis fluted projectiles, researchers wrote in a 2019 Science Advances paper.

Some scientists think humans may have been traveling along the West Coast at this time, when huge ice sheets covered Alaska and Canada. "People using boats, using canoes could hop along that coast and end up in North America long before those glacial ice bodies decoupled," Feder said.

Cooper's Ferry is located on traditional Nez Perce land, which the Bureau of Land Management holds in public ownership.

In the early 1980s, former Navy SEAL Buddy Page alerted paleontologists and archaeologists to a sinkhole nicknamed "Booger Hole" in the Aucilla River. There, the researchers found mammoth and mastodon bones and stone tools.

They also discovered a mastodon tusk with what appeared to be cut marks believed to be made by a tool. Other scientists have returned to the site more recently, bringing up more bones and tools. They used radiocarbon dating, which established the site as pre-Clovis.

"The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools," Michael Waters, one of the researchers, said in a statement in 2016. "These people were well-adapted to this environment."

Since the site is both underwater and on private property, it's not open to visitors.

Scientists study coprolites, or fossilized poop, to learn about the diets of long-dead animals. Mineralized waste can also reveal much more. In 2020, archaeologist Dennis Jenkins published a paper on coprolites from an Oregon cave that were over 14,000 years old.

Radiocarbon dating gave the trace fossils' age, and genetic tests suggested they belonged to humans. Further analysis of coprolites added additional evidence that a group had been on the West Coast 1,000 years before the Clovis people arrived.

Located in southcentral Oregon, the caves appear to be a piece of the puzzle indicating how humans spread throughout the continent thousands of years ago.

The federal Bureau of Land Management owns the land where the caves are found, and they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Whenever people arrived in the Americas, they crossed from Siberia into Beringia, an area of land and sea between Russia and Canada and Alaska. Now it's covered in water, but there was once a land bridge connecting them.

The site in Alaska with the oldest evidence of human habitation is Swan Point, in the state's eastern-central region. In addition to tools and hearths dating back 14,000 years, mammoth bones have been found there.

Researchers think this area was a kind of seasonal hunting camp. As mammoths returned during certain times of the years, humans would track them and kill them, providing plentiful food for the hunter-gatherers.

While Alaska may have a wealth of archaeological evidence of early Americans, it's also a difficult place to excavate. "Your digging season is very narrow, and it's expensive," Feder said. Some require a helicopter to reach, for example.

In 1929, 19-year-old James Ridgley Whiteman found mammoth bones along with fluted projectile points near Clovis, New Mexico. The Clovis people who made these tools were named for this site.

Researchers studying the site began to realize the artifacts found at the site belonged to different cultures. Clovis points are typically larger than Folsom flutes, which were first found at another archaeological site in New Mexico.

For decades after Whiteman's discovery, experts thought the Clovis people were the first to cross the Bering land bridge from Asia around 13,000 years ago. Estimates for humans' arrival is now thought to be at least 15,000 years ago.

Eastern New Mexico University's Blackwater Draw Museum grants access to the archaeological site between April and October.

One reason the dates of human occupation in North America is so contentious is that very few ancient remains have been found. Among the oldest is a child from Upward Sun River, or Xaasaa Na', in Central Alaska.

Archaeologists found the bones of the child in 2013. Local indigenous groups refer to her as Xach'itee'aanenh t'eede gay, or Sunrise Girl-Child. Genetic testing revealed the 11,300-year-old infant belonged to a previously unknown Native American population, the Ancient Beringians.

Based on the child's genetic information, researchers learned that she was related to modern Native Americans but not directly. Their common ancestors started becoming genetically isolated 25,000 years ago before dividing into two groups after a few thousand years: the Ancient Berignians and the ancestors of modern Native Americans.

According to this research, it's possible humans reached Alaska roughly 20,000 years ago.

Stretching over 80 feet long and 5 feet tall, the rows of curved mounds of Poverty Point are a marvel when viewed from above. Over 3,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers constructed them out of tons of soil. Scientists aren't sure exactly why people built them, whether they were ceremonial or a display of status.

The artifacts various groups left behind indicate the site was used off and on for hundreds of years and was a meeting point for trading. People brought tools and rocks from as far as 800 miles away. Remains of deer, fish, frogs, alligators, nuts, grapes, and other food have given archaeologists insights into their diets and daily lives.

You can see the World Heritage Site for yourself year-round.

Though remote, the multicolored walls of Horseshoe Canyon have long attracted visitors. Some of its artifacts date back to between 9,000 and 7,000 BCE, but its pictographs are more recent. Some tests date certain sections to around 2,000 to 900 years ago.

The four galleries contain life-sized images of anthropomorphic figures and animals in what's known as the Barrier Canyon style. Much of this art is found in Utah, produced by the Desert Archaic culture.

The pictographs may have spiritual and practical significance but also help capture a time when groups were meeting and mixing, according to the Natural History Museum of Utah.

It's a difficult trek to get to the pictographs (and the NPS warns it can be dangerously hot in summer) but are amazing to view in person, Feder said. "These are creative geniuses," he said of the artists.

Situated in the Navajo Nation, Canyon de Chelly has gorgeous desert views and thousands of years of human history. Centuries ago, Ancestral Pueblo and Hopi groups planted crops, created pictographs, and built cliff dwellings.

Over 900 years ago, Puebloan people constructed the White House, named for the hue of its clay. Its upper floors sit on a sandstone cliff, with a sheer drop outside the windows.

Navajo people, also known as Diné, still live in Canyon de Chelly. Diné journalist Alastair Lee Bitsóí recently wrote about visiting some of the sacred and taboo areas. They include Tsé Yaa Kin, where archaeologists found human remains.

In the 1860s, the US government forced 8,000 Navajo to relocate to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The deadly journey is known as the "Long Walk." Eventually, they were able to return, though their homes and crops were destroyed.

A hike to the White House is the only one open to the public without a Navajo guide or NPS ranger.

In the early 1900s, two women formed the Colorado Cliff Dwelling Association, hoping to preserve the ruins in the state's southwestern region. A few years later, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill designating Mesa Verde as the first national park meant to "preserve the works of man."

Mesa Verde National Park holds hundreds of dwellings, including the sprawling Cliff Palace. It has over 100 rooms and nearly two dozen kivas, or ceremonial spaces.

Using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, archaeologists learned when Ancestral Pueblo people built some of these structures and that they migrated out of the area by the 1300s.

Feder said it's his favorite archaeological site he's visited. "You don't want to leave because you can't believe it's real," he said.

Tourists can view many of these dwellings from the road, but some are also accessible after a bit of a hike. Some require extra tickets and can get crowded, Feder said.

Cahokia has been called one of North America's first cities. Not far from present-day St. Louis, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people lived in dense settlements roughly 1,000 years ago. Important buildings sat atop large mounds, which the Mississippians built by hand, The Guardian reported.

At the time, it was thriving with hunters, farmers, and artisans. "It's an agricultural civilization," Feder said. "It's a place where raw materials from a thousand miles away are coming in." Researchers have also found mass graves, potentially from human sacrifices.

The inhabitants built circles of posts, which one archaeologist later referred to as "woodhenges," as a kind of calendar. At the solstices, the sun would rise or set aligned with different mounds.

After a few hundred years, Cahokia's population declined and disappeared by 1350. Its largest mound remains, and some aspects have been reconstructed.

While Cahokia is typically open to the public, parts are currently closed for renovations.

Perched on a limestone cliff in Camp Verde, Arizona, this site is an apartment, not a castle, and is unrelated to the Aztec ruler Montezuma.

The Sinagua people engineered the five-story, 20-room building around 1100. It curves to follow the natural line of the cliff, which would have been more difficult than simply making a straight building, Feder said.

"These people were architects," he said. "They had a sense of beauty."

The inhabitants were also practical, figuring out irrigation systems and construction techniques, like thick walls and shady spots, to help them survive the hot, dry climate.

Feder said the dwelling is fairly accessible, with a short walk along a trail to view it, though visitors can't go inside the building itself.

Net worth: $1.5 billion

Age: 78

Source of wealth: As the founder and CEO of Great Southern Wood Preserving, Rane helped popularize the lumber business by appearing in commercials as a cowboy known as "the Yella Fella."

Residence: Abbeville

Net worth: $400 million, each

Age: Rubini is 70; Hyde is 68.

Source of wealth: Rubini serves as the CEO and chairman of commercial real-estate developer JL Properties, while Hyde serves as its president. Each of them owns 50% of the business, which also includes properties in Florida and Utah, Forbes reported.

Residence: Anchorage

Net worth: $17.3 billion

Age: 67

Source of wealth: Ernest Garcia II owns the used car retailer DriveTime Automotive, the fourth-largest used car retailer in the US. He is also the largest shareholder of Carvana, an online used car dealer founded by his son, Ernest Garcia III, in 2012.

Residence: Tempe

Net worth: $113 billion

Age: 80

Source of wealth: Rob Walton and his siblings inherited their wealth from their father, Sam Walton, who opened the first Walmart store in 1962 and founded the discount warehouse Sam's Club in 1983. Rob Walton, the eldest of the Walton siblings, is also one of the principal owners of the Denver Broncos.

Residence: Bentonville

Net worth: $189 billion

Age: 40

Source of wealth: As a student at Harvard, Zuckerberg cofounded a social network known as "The Facebook" in 2004. He went on to become CEO of Meta, the parent company for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.

Residence: Palo Alto

Net worth: $16.9 billion

Age: 85

Source of wealth: Anschutz initially amassed his fortune through the discovery of an oil field on the Wyoming-Utah border in 1979 and subsequent investments in railroad companies. He founded Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) in 1994, which owns major sports teams and performance venues such as the Crypto.com Arena. AEG is also the parent company of the Coachella music festival.

Residence: Denver

Net worth: $21.3 billion

Age: 68

Source of wealth: Cohen founded two hedge funds, SAC Capital and Point72. Until SAC Capital was shut down after pleading guilty to insider trading charges in 2013, it was one of the most successful hedge funds in the world (Cohen himself was never charged). Point72 currently manages over $35 billion, Forbes reported. He also holds a 95% ownership stake in the New York Mets.

A fun fact about Cohen: He loosely inspired Damien Lewis' "Billions" character, Bobby Axelrod.

Residence: Greenwich

Net worth: $800 million

Age: 77

Source of wealth: Snyder's parents founded WL Gore & Associates, a manufacturing company that holds over 7,000 patents, in 1958. Gore-Tex, a waterproof fabric used in outdoor apparel and shoes, remains its most profitable invention. Snyder owns around 5.5% of the company, Forbes reported.

Residence: Wilmington

Net worth: $206 billion

Age: 61

Source of wealth: Bezos founded e-commerce titan Amazon in 1994 and still owns around 9% of the company. As of May 2025, he was the third-richest person in the US behind Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. He's also the third-richest person in the world, just ahead of Larry Ellison.

Residence: Miami

Net worth: $10.7 billion

Age: 71 (Bubba), 72 (Dan), and 69 (Trudy)

Source of wealth: The Cathys are heirs to the Chick-fil-A family fortune. Founded by their father, S. Truett Cathy, in the 1960s, the fried-chicken fast-food chain now has over 3,200 restaurant locations worldwide. Dan Cathy's son, Andrew Cathy, took over as CEO in 2021. Dan Cathy's brother, Bubba Cathy, is still the executive vice president.

Residence: Atlanta (Bubba and Don), Hampton (Trudy)

Net worth: $10 billion

Age: 57

Source of wealth: Omidyar founded eBay in 1995 and became a billionaire when the e-commerce company went public during the dot-com bubble in 1998. eBay also acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Residence: Honolulu

Net worth: $3.2 billion

Age: 76

Source of wealth: VanderSloot is the founder and former chief executive of Melaleuca, Inc., which sells nutritional and wellness products online. Forbes reported that the company now has over one million customers each month.

Residence: Idaho Falls

Net worth: $39 billion

Age: 38

Source of wealth: Lukas Walton is the billionaire heir to the Walmart fortune and the grandson of Walmart founder Sam Walton. Lukas Walton inherited his vast wealth after his father, John T. Walton, died in a plane crash in 2005 at the age of 58.

He founded Builders Vision, an impact investing group, in 2021, and also chairs the Walton Family Foundation's environment program committee.

Residence: Chicago

Net worth: $9.9 billion

Age: 62

Source of wealth: Cook has served as CEO of Cook Group, a medical-device manufacturing company founded by his parents, since his father's death in 2011. Forbes reported the company made $2.4 billion in revenue in 2024.

Residence: Bloomington

Net worth: $10.2 billion

Age: 83

Source of wealth: Stine is an agricultural pioneer and the founder and owner of Stine Seed, a corn and soybean seed company based in Adel, Iowa.

According to the company's website, Stine Seed and its affiliates own around 800 patents related to soybean and corn genetic technology. Major licensing deals have helped it become one of the world's largest private seed companies.

Residence: Adel

Net worth: $67.5 billion

Age: 89

Source of wealth: Koch amassed his billions from serving as co-CEO of Koch, Inc., which produces around $125 billion in revenue each year, Forbes reported.

Founded in 1940 by his father, Fred Koch, Koch Industries — later shortened to Koch — is involved in various businesses, from oil pipelines to paper goods, and is the second-largest private company in the US.

Residence: Wichita

Net worth: $8.1 billion

Age: 63

Source of wealth: Gustavson made her billions as the heiress to the Public Storage empire and as a prize-winning horse breeder. Her father, B. Wayne Hughes, cofounded Public Storage, a self-storage company that now owns and operates thousands of locations across the US and Europe, in 1972.

Forbes reported that Gustavson owns about 10% of the company.

Residence: Lexington

Net worth: $17.2 billion

Age: 53

Source of wealth: Graves, the founder and CEO of the chicken-tender restaurant chain Raising Cane's, opened his first restaurant in 1996. The company now has nearly 900 restaurants in the US and made $5.1 billion in annual sales in 2024, Forbes reported.

Residence: Baton Rouge

Net worth: $3.7 billion

Age: 79

Source of wealth: Alfond's father, Harold Alfond, made a fortune as the founder of the Dexter Shoe Company, once one of the largest shoe manufacturers in the US. Forbes reported that he sold the company to Warren Buffett in 1993 for $420 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock.

Harold Alfond died in 2007, leaving his fortune to Susan Alfond and her three siblings.

Residence: Scarborough

Net worth: $5.5 billion

Age: 95

Source of wealth: Lerner's fortune grew after she loaned $250 to her husband, Ted Lerner, to establish a firm that sold homes to real-estate developers, Forbes reported.

Founded in 1952, it grew to become one of the most successful real-estate companies in the DC area. The Lerners also made their money as owners of the Washington Nationals baseball team.

Residence: Chevy Chase

Net worth: $31.5 billion

Age: 63

Source of wealth: Johnson is the chair and CEO of Fidelity Investments — which her grandfather founded — and holds an estimated 28.5% ownership in the company. The Financial Times called her the "quiet queen of American finance" for the way she grew her father's and grandfather's business while staying incredibly private.

Residence: Milton

Net worth: $23.7 billion

Age: 63

Source of wealth: Gilbert is the founder and chairman of Rocket Companies, formerly known as Quicken Loans. From 2013 to 2018, under Gilbert's leadership, the company closed nearly half a trillion in home loans, according to the Gilbert Family Foundation. He also owns the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers.

Residence: Franklin

Net worth: $2.9 billion

Age: 84

Source of wealth: Taylor purchased Carlson Letter Service, a wedding stationery business that he worked for while attending college, in 1975, according to the company's website. It became the Taylor Corporation, a print services and communications company. A former state senator, he's also owned several sports teams.

Residence: Mankato

Net worth: $3 billion

Age: 68 and 64

Source of wealth: The Duff brothers' wealth originates from their family business: tires. Their father, Ernest, founded Southern Tire Mart in the '70s and sold it in 1998. James and Thomas bought it back in 2003 and then cofounded Duff Capital Investors, a holding company, in 2007. Forbes reported it now brings in $5 billion in revenue across over 20 businesses.

Residence: Hattiesburg

Net worth: $11.4 billion

Age: 73

Source of wealth: In 1990, David Steward cofounded IT provider World Wide Technology, which Forbes valued at $20 billion in sales. Citi, Verizon, and the federal government are a few of the company's clients. An avid fan of car racing, Steward has pushed for more diversity in NASCAR, according to his company bio. In 2018, WWT began sponsoring Bubba Wallace, one of the few Black drivers in the racing organization's history.

Residence: St. Louis

Net worth: $7.4 billion

Age: 90

Source of wealth: Washington owns a business group called Washington Companies, which is involved in mining, rail and marine transportation, and construction. He's also invested in his son Kyle's ship business, Seaspan ULC.

Residence: Missoula

Net worth: $165 billion

Age: 94

Source of wealth: Buffett is one of the best-known and most successful investors of all time. He's made his fortune via Berkshire Hathaway, which owns brands such as Geico, Dairy Queen, and Duracell. Despite his immense wealth, he's also known for his modest spending habits. Recently, he announced he'll retire at the end of 2025.

Residence: Omaha

Net worth: $28.6 billion

Age: 79

Source of wealth: Miriam Adelson is on the list after the 2021 death of her husband, casino magnate and major Republican donor Sheldon Adelson. Now, she and her family own over 50% of Las Vegas Sands, a casino company worth over $39 billion. In 2023, she became a majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, a title formerly held by Mark Cuban. She's also been a major donor to Donald Trump.

Residence: Las Vegas

Net worth: $11.5 billion

Age: 72

Source of wealth: Most of Cohen's familial wealth comes from Symbotic, a warehouse automation company that has partnered with Walmart. Cohen is the chairman and CEO. In addition, Cohen also owns the US' largest grocery wholesaler, C&S Wholesale Grocers, which brings in $33 billion annually, Forbes reported. In 2024, his net worth plunged by $9 billion due to his family's stake in Symbotic, when the company's stocks tanked.

Residence: Keene

Net worth: $7.4 billion

Age: 55

Source of wealth: Two Sigma, a $60 billion hedge fund, which Overdeck cofounded, is the source of his wealth. He and David Siegel stepped down as co-CEOs last year, amid a long-term dispute over managing the firm. In high school, he won a silver medal in the International Mathematics Olympiad, and now he serves as chair for the National Museum of Mathematics.

Residence: Millburn

Net worth: $1.7 billion

Age: 63

Source of wealth: Corio's billionaire status — the first in New Mexico — stems from Array Technologies, a solar tracking systems business. He is the founder and former CEO, resigning in 2020 before its IPO.

Residence: Albuquerque

Net worth: $105 billion

Age: 83

Source of wealth: What hasn't Bloomberg done? Besides his 12-year stint as the mayor of New York City and an unsuccessful presidential campaign, Bloomberg cofounded Bloomberg LP in 1981. Bloomberg is a media company and a financial firm with revenues of $13.3 billion, as reported by Forbes.

Residence: New York

Net worth: $9.8 billion

Age: 82

Source of wealth: Goodnight and his colleague John Sall (also a billionaire) cofounded a private school, Cary Academy, and also co-own a hotel and country club. But their biggest business venture together is the software company SAS, founded in 1976. It made over $3 billion in sales in 2024, according to the company's 2024 annual report.

Residence: Cary

Net worth: $1.2 billion

Age: 79

Source of wealth: Tharaldson, the only billionaire in North Dakota, got his start in 1982 when Tharaldson Hospitality purchased a Super 8 Motel. It then became a huge hospitality group and one of America's largest developers of new hotels.

Residence: Fargo

Net worth: $7.8 billion

Age: 87

Source of wealth: Wexner opened The Limited in Ohio in the 1960s. He then founded a retail empire that, at one point, owned brands like Abercrombie & Fitch, The Limited Too, Express, and Victoria's Secret. Now Wexner's company has been renamed Bath & Body Works Inc., and solely owns the chain of the same name.

Residence: New Albany

Net worth: $18.5 billion

Age: 79

Source of wealth: Hamm founded the Shelly Dean Oil Company, now known as Continental Resources, in 1967 when he was only 21. It's now one of the largest oil companies in the US, thanks in part to Hamm's decision to use horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Bakken region of North Dakota in the '90s. The company went public in 2007, but in 2022, Hamm and his five children took the company private again in a deal worth $27 billion.

Residence: Oklahoma City

Net worth: $29 billion

Age: 87

Source of wealth: One word: Nike. Knight cofounded the iconic brand in 1964 alongside Bill Bowerman. Although Knight retired in 2016, he and his family still own 20% of the company, which, in 2024, earned $51 billion in fiscal revenue, per Forbes.

Residence: Hillsboro

Net worth: $59 billion

Age: 66

Source of wealth: After spending time as a pro gambler and trader on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, Yass cofounded Susquehanna International Group in 1987. The successful Wall Street trading firm has a 15% stake in ByteDance, TikTok's parent company. NBC reported in 2024 that Yass also has a personal share (7%) of ByteDance.

Residence: Haverford

Net worth: $3.4 billion

Age: 68

Source of wealth: In 1989, Nelson founded and led the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners. He was CEO until January 2021 and is now its executive chairman. The firm has invested in over 180 companies, including Hulu, Warner Media Group, and Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network (YES).

Residence: Providence

Net worth: $5 billion

Age: 61

Source of wealth: Robert "Bob" Faith founded Greystar, a global real estate firm, in 1993 and continues to serve as chairman and CEO. Throughout his career, Faith grew Greystar from 9,000 units in the US to more than a million units across five continents, worth more than $315 billion, the company reported in a March press release. The company also has an investment management platform with $36 billion in assets under development.

Residence: Charleston

Net worth: $2.1 billion

Age: 89

Source of wealth: The University of Minnesota alum made his fortune as the owner of First Premier Bank. Despite having just 17 branches across South Dakota, the bank is one of the largest issuers of Mastercards, in part because it specializes in offering credit cards to those with low credit scores. Often, the cards have low limits and high interest rates.

Residence: Sioux Falls

Net worth: $26.8 billion

Age: 86

Source of wealth: Frist Jr. cofounded Hospital Corp. of America with his father in 1968. According to its website, the for-profit healthcare company is responsible for 186 hospitals and over 2,400 care sites (like urgent care centers, surgery clinics, and physician clinics) across the US and UK. He and his family own over 20% of the company, and his sons, Thomas Frist III and William Frist, are board members.

Residence: Nashville

Net worth: $388 billion

Age: 53

Source of wealth: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are in a continuous battle for the title of richest person in the US. Musk is CEO of Tesla, CEO and founder of SpaceX, and the founder of neurotechnology startup Neuralink and tunneling company The Boring Company. He also helped found OpenAI, but he left in 2018 and announced his own AI endeavor, xAI, in 2023, which he owns an estimated 54% of, according to Forbes. He also owns an estimated 74% of social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Residence: Austin

Net worth: $4.4 billion

Age: 81

Source of wealth: Miller owns the Larry H. Miller Company, which she founded with her husband, Larry H. Miller, in 1979 after purchasing their first Toyota dealership. The LHM Company's car dealership business became the eighth-largest in the US, and she sold it for $3.2 billion in 2021, Forbes reported. (Larry H. Miller died in 2009.) LHM's portfolio also includes companies in real estate, entertainment, sports, and insurance, among others. In 2020, after more than 30 years of owning the Utah Jazz, Miller sold the team and their home arena for $1.66 billion.

Residence: Salt Lake City

Net worth: $2 billion

Age: 88

Source of wealth: In 1979, Abele cofounded Boston Scientific, a medical device manufacturer, alongside Peter Nicholas. Boston Scientific focuses on developing more accessible medical technologies, and its products include pacemakers, defibrillators, and stents.

Residence: Shelburne

Net worth: $39 billion

Age: 85

Source of wealth: As the granddaughter of Mars Incorporated founder Frank C. Mars, Jacqueline owns an estimated one-third of the legendary candy, food, and pet-care company responsible for treats like Snickers, Juicy Fruit, and Milky Way. (Her brother owns another third and is the richest person in Wyoming, per Forbes.) She served on the board of directors until 2016, having spent nearly 20 years with the company.

Residence: The Plains

Net worth: $118 billion

Age: 69

Source of wealth: Bill Gates hired Ballmer as Microsoft's 30th employee in 1980. Ballmer went on to serve as the CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. After retiring, he bought the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion and donated millions to the University of Oregon.

Residence: Hunts Point

Net worth: $900 million

Age: 61

Source of wealth: During Smith's time as CEO and then executive chairman of the finance and business software company Intuit, the company's revenue almost doubled, Forbes reported. The success came after Intuit revamped its desktop software into a digital cloud-based platform. Now the president of Marshall University, he also chairs Nordstrom's board of directors and sits on the boards of Amazon and JPMorgan Chase.

Residence: Huntington

Net worth: $21.9 billion

Age: 78

Source of wealth: Hendricks earned her billionaire status as the cofounder of ABC Supply, the largest roofing wholesaler in the US, with her late husband Ken Hendricks. Founded in 1982, ABC Supply acquired the building materials distributors Bradco in 2010 and L&W Supply in 2016 with Hendricks at the helm.

Residence: Afton

Net worth: $39 billion

Age: 89

Source of wealth: Mars — whose sister is Jacqueline Mars, Virginia's richest person — is another heir of the Mars family fortune amassed from candy products such as Snickers, Mars Bars, and M&M's, as well as Pedigree pet food and Uncle Ben's rice. He owns a third of the $45 billion business.

Residence: Jackson

He's 69 years old and moved to Peru as a child, the BBC reported.

He's also a citizen of Peru, where he served as Archbishop of Chiclayo. He was 27 when he became ordained in 1982, The New York Times reported.

He studied at Villanova University and the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago. In 1987, he received his doctor of canon law degree from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Pope Leo XIV speaks English, Spanish, and Italian.

In 2023, the then-pope appointed Cardinal Prevost to the role of prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Latin America, which oversees bishop nominations all over the world, the AP reported.

In 2024, Pope Leo said in an interview with Vatican News that a "bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom, but rather called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them and to suffer with them."

The process is known as the conclave. It took two days and four rounds of voting for the cardinals to agree on a new pope, per the AP.

Earlier this week, the National Catholic Reporter wrote that it was unlikely the US cardinal would become pope because of political implications. Yet Cardinal Prevost was considered a contender by others, especially as the week went on, ABC News reported.

Speaking from St. Peter's Basilica balcony, Pope Leo XIV said, "Peace be with all you" in his first words in his new role. He spoke in Italian and then Spanish.

Some believe the new pope will continue his long commitment to helping poor communities and immigrants, following a similar course to his predecessor, Pope Francis, per Slate.

"My experience of Cardinal Prevost was that he's not a showboat," Father Mark R. Francis, who worked with Pope Leo in the past, recently told CBS News. "He's very calm, but extremely intelligent, and extremely compassionate."

In February, he posted a story from The National Catholic Reporter on X with the headline "JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others."

San Franciscans can see the island from another famous tourist spot, Fisherman's Wharf.

Ferries from a private company, Alcatraz City Cruises, are the only way to access the island. Tickets for adults start at $47.95. Sometimes they sell out as much as a month in advance. 

He called it Isla de los Alcatraces, named for the strange birds, likely pelicans, found there. The name was later anglicized to Alcatraz Island, according to the National Park Service.

In 1850, the same year California became a state, President Millard Fillmore signed an order reserving the island for military use. Army engineers built a fortress and placed cannons around the island to protect it from foreign attack.

The government seized a ship belonging to Confederate sympathizers who wanted to capture San Francisco Bay. The US Navy brought the ship and the plot's orchestrators to Alcatraz.

In 1912, the 600-cell holding complex was completed by the military prisoners. A dining hall and hospital were also constructed. In 1933, the facility was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The cell house was built in 1912 on top of the citadel fortress, which was leveled in 1909.

It's where guards would sound the alarm that went out to the whole island if they witnessed anything out of the ordinary, per NPS.

The sign is on the cell house, the island's main building.

The recording includes interviews with former prisoners, correctional officers, and family members to depict the experience of living on the island.

The island's rugged terrain made it difficult to flee. The tiny cells meant only a single person could stay in them, reducing the opportunity for clashes between prisoners.

The prison had enough space for 336 prisoners, but the population typically averaged around 260 to 275, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

This area held the most dangerous inmates, according to NPS. Those who broke the rules could be punished with hard labor or solitary confinement, where they'd only be given bread and water.

It was nicknamed "the gas chamber" because of the 14 tear-gas dispensers mounted on the ceiling, according to NPS.

Sharp bones were removed, and the coffee wasn't hot enough to scald.

Alcatraz's food was considered better than most other prisons'.

For dinner, the incarcerated men would eat soup, salad or vegetables, a starch like rice or pasta, meat, and dessert.

Prisoners showered regularly and wore clean clothes, making Alcatraz "probably the cleanest institution of its kind," according to one prison official from the 1930s.

Every person incarcerated on the island received food, clothing, and medical care, but privileges like visitors, art supplies, and a job had to be earned.

The wardens and their families lived in a 15-room mansion next to the cell blocks. All that's left of the building is its concrete frame following a fire in 1970.

The men made furniture and canvas gloves, earning 7 cents an hour, Alcatraz Ranger John Cantwell said at a presentation to the San Francisco Public Library in 2017.

During their free time, the incarcerated men would play instruments, write letters, or watch movies, per NPS.

Softball and bridge were other popular pastimes.

Five of those prisoners were never found and are presumed to have drowned.

The men climbed through a chiseled cell air vent and escaped the island using a raft made from raincoats.

Nobody knows what happened to them, although the FBI says it is unlikely they survived the journey to shore. Clint Eastwood portrayed Morris in the 1979 movie "Escape from Alcatraz."

It had become too pricey to run, costing three times as much as other prisons to operate. Over its 29 years as a federal penitentiary, it held 1,576 inmates.

The activists requested the deed to the island, hoping to open a university and museum there. Almost two years later, on June 11, 1971, President Nixon sent federal troops to clear the island, ending the occupation.

It opened to the public the following year.

The gardens deteriorated after the prison closed but have since been restored.

Some areas are off-limits to visitors because they're deteriorating.

Trying to reopen the site as a prison would take an enormous amount of work, Hugh Hurwitz, former acting director of the Bureau of Prisons, told the BBC.

"It's not realistic to think you can repair it," he said. "You'd have to tear it up and start over."

Hill's father was a traveling preacher, so she spent much of her childhood moving around the US. 

She was given the nickname "Butterfly" at age 7 when a winged insect landed on her finger and stayed there during a lengthy hike.

When the San Francisco Chronicle asked Hill about her childhood in a 2009 interview, she described feelings of social isolation.

"I didn't fit in. I didn't understand other people," she said. "I didn't know how to relate."

Her tenacity helped as she became involved in activism.

"I have been stubborn and getting into trouble since I was 2, but I learned how to redirect that into good causes," Hill told the Chronicle. 

In 1996, a drunken driver hit Hill's car from behind. As a result of the near-fatal crash, she had difficulty speaking and walking for almost a full year. During her recovery process, Hill took an interest in environmental preservation.

"It took 10 months of physical and cognitive therapy to recover from the wreck, and during that time I realized I wanted to find a more powerful purpose for being here on this planet," Hill told Grist in 2006.

Soon after, she took a road trip with friends, which led her to California and its redwoods, she said.

"When I entered the ancient redwoods for the first time, I dropped to my knees and began to cry," she later wrote for The New York Times.

After connecting with like-minded activists at a protest in Eureka, California, Hill learned of an opportunity to participate in a tree sit. She would join two other activists, staying in a 1,000-year-old tree named "Luna."

The initiative was sponsored by Earth First!, an organization that shared her passion for preserving redwoods.

After a few days of the tree sit, Hill became ill and had to leave. When the two remaining tree-sitters left Luna weeks later, Hill volunteered to ascend the 180-foot tree once again.

Although Earth First! initially offered support, Hill continued her tree-sit even after they pulled their resources. A friend began periodically ascending the tree to supply her with food. 

Pacific Lumber Company responded with "intimidation tactics," such as flying helicopters nearby, cutting down ropes from nearby trees, and stationing security guards at the base of Luna, the Los Angeles Times reported in 1999.

In her book, Hill described surviving a 70-mile-per-hour windstorm that lasted for 16 hours and destroyed the tarps that sheltered her.

Even when it wasn't storming, her platforms were damp. "Hill was never truly dry during her two years in Luna," the San Francisco Chronicle's  Glen Martin wrote in 1999.

The bottoms of her bare feet were always sticky with sap, which actually helped her cling to the branches. What she most missed were hot showers, she told The New York Times in 1998. She had only taken a few sponge baths by then.

A group of five men served as her support system, delivering essentials to the tree twice a week. Their provisions included food, fuel for her stove, mail, and batteries for her cellphone. Occasionally, other protesters would also join her to sit in the tree.

However, most of her contact was with the wildlife around her, she told the Chronicle. That included the flying squirrels who would rescue any crumbs she dropped.

"They knew that when the candle went out, that was the time to make as much of a mess as possible and tapdance on my head," she said.

From Dateline spotlights to stories in The New York Times, Hill's activism made headlines both nationally and internationally. The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Vancouver Sun, and Globe and Mail all covered her stay.

Reporters and photographers who wanted to meet with her had to scale the redwood.

"Physically, it was demanding," reporter Justin Acri told KUAF recently.

The agreement guaranteed that Luna and the trees within a 200-foot radius would be preserved, but already-felled trees would remain the company's property. 

Hill then descended Luna, ending her 738-day tree sit.

In 2007, the Pacific Lumber Company filed for bankruptcy, citing the high costs of environmental regulations, the Los Angeles Times reported.

While living in Luna, Hill founded Circle of Life, an organization that teaches people to live a more environmentally conscious lifestyle.

"It is so right within our grasp to be the more peaceful, healthy, sustainable world and country — it's so close — and yet the gap within that possibility is so far," Hill told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009. "And for a sensitive person like me, that's painful."

Doug Wolens directed the film, which aired on PBS.

That same year, she also published a memoir, "The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods," about her experience living in the redwood. 

In 2012, actor Rachel Weisz told The Hollywood Reporter that she tried for years to get a film made about Hill's protest, calling it "an impossible movie to get made."

She joined high-profile figures such as actor Daryl Hannah, singer Joan Baez, and activist John Quigley in the action. The garden's farmers were under threat of eviction.

This attempt was less successful. In June 2006, the farmers were evicted, and bulldozers moved in that July, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. Some of the farmers relocated to other spaces in the city.

"I am a joyous vegan, and an avid cook and un-cook. I love preparing food that is healthy for people, the planet, and animals, and tastes damn good," Hill told Grist in 2006.

She has also spoken about her mission to get people to stop using single-use items like napkins and takeout containers.

"I have walked on the earth that is connected to the thread at the other end of those horrific choices, and I am not being overdramatic when I say disposables are weapons of mass destruction," she said.

In 2024, Hill and Sanctuary Forest, a land trust that oversees Luna, held a fundraiser coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the end of her tree sit.

Her story continues to have an impact in other ways as well.

Idina Menzel's new Broadway musical, "Redwood," was inspired by Hill and the trees themselves.

"Redwoods thrive because of their root systems. They interconnect and hold each other up," Menzel told Playbill earlier this year.

When FDR took office, the Great Depression was gripping the US. Over 12 million people were out of work, and Roosevelt wanted to put them to work. The idea was to marry conservation projects that paid the workers well.

The CCC could focus on forestry, preventing soil erosion, flood control, and similar projects that would avoid financial loss, he wrote to congress in March 1933: "This is brought home by the news we are receiving today of vast damage caused by floods on the Ohio and other rivers."

He summed up the dual goals by writing, "It will conserve our precious natural resources. It will pay dividends to the present and future generations."

"Unless we maintain an adequate material basis for our civilization, we cannot maintain the institutions in which we take so great and so just a pride; and to waste and destroy our natural resources means to undermine this material basis," Theodore Roosevelt said in 1907. FDR's notions of conservation were similar to his distant cousin's.

FDR grew up on his family's 1,200-acre estate in Hyde Park, New York. There, he saw firsthand how clearing land led to erosion. In 1912, he started planting what would turn out to be over half a million trees on the property over the course of his lifetime.

Gifford Pinchot was the first head of the United States Forest Service, which was formed in 1905. He saw conservation as "the development and use of the earth and all its resources for the enduring good of men," he wrote in his autobiography. Pinchot's ideas influenced Roosevelt's own.

"The idea was not to preserve them or not touch them," Maher said of the US' trees, rivers, and soil. "The idea was to very much use them, but to do it in a responsible way."

That meant planting trees that could be cut down later, but their roots would also slow erosion.

FDR took office in early March. By the end of the month, Congress had passed the Emergency Conservation Work Program Act. Enrollees were already signing up in early April, and Camp Roosevelt, the CCC's first, started up soon after near Luray, Virginia.

In just a few short months, the Corps had over 1,400 camps throughout the country. The 275,000 enrollees, as they were called, more than met Roosevelt's goal to have 250,000 men working by July 1, 1933.

The US Army was responsible for everything from food to transportation to medical care. "The Army is their provider and tailor, doctor and teacher, spiritual advisor and paymaster," one CCC promoter wrote.

Meanwhile, the Department of Labor was in charge of recruitment, and the Forest Service and NPS headed the conservation work and park development.

Robert Fechner became the program's first director.

There were a few requirements for enrollment. One was the age limit, 18 to 25. Only men were hired, and they had to be citizens. Though the enrollees couldn't be married, they had to have family members on relief, receiving financial assistance.

"Quite a number of teenagers got into the CCC lying about their age," Alexander said. "Back then, it was possible for a 15-year-old to pretend to be 18."

These were temporary jobs. They could only work for two six-month stints. Later, the number was increased to three, and the age limits were raised.

Older veterans and local experienced men (LEMs) also joined the CCC in different roles and didn't have to meet the same age or marriage restrictions. The local men typically had experience in forestry work.

The men only kept between $5 and $7 of their paycheck. The rest went to their parents and siblings; teens and young men who did not have families weren't able to join the program.

"The CCC might very well have helped a lot of them, but there was a prejudice against transient youth as being socially inferior to those who came from families," Alexander said.

Earnings they kept for themselves might be spent at local businesses during trips to town or on candy, cigarettes, soap, ice cream, and other items from the camp's canteen.

As the economy improved, the rules changed so the workers could keep the money they earned.

The Army started conditioning camps for the new CCC recruits. The work was going to be demanding, so they had to prepare for it.

The first camps used six-person tents warmed with wood stoves. Later construction included garages, mess halls, barracks, recreation centers, and other buildings.

In addition to filling general positions that helped the camps run smoothly, like drivers and kitchen staff, CCC members might plant trees, build structures, survey wildlife, or perform other tasks depending on where they were stationed. Civilian supervisors in the forestry and parks departments oversaw this type of work.

"They weren't given military training, but there was some degree of militaristic-style discipline," Benjamin Alexander, author of "The New Deal's Forest Army: How the Civilian Conservation Corps Worked," told BI.

Some roles were dangerous. Men drowned or died fighting fires.

The men started early in the morning and worked eight-hour days, five days a week. During their off-duty hours, there were books to read, the radio to listen to, and board games to play. Watching movies was also a popular way to pass the time.

At night, musically inclined enrollees could be heard strumming banjos or guitars or playing accordions and concertinas.

Sometimes Corps members got leave time to visit home or passes to go into the nearest town.

Historian David J. Nelson compared the CCC experience to summer camp rather than Army life.

Playing sports could build unity as well as prevent boredom. Boxing matches were an unofficial way to settle arguments and potentially prepare the men for combat, according to Nelson.

Night classes were another way to occupy the enrolled men. As many as 110,000 CCC members learned to read and write during the program, according to one estimate.

Other men had already started attending college and might be able to continue studying physics or literature, even if it was informally. Nearby libraries and universities sometimes provided books or instructors.

Enrollment varied across camps, and some men showed up because "there was nothing else to do," one participant later said. Many eventually lost interest. For others, though, it was a chance to get training or learn something new. The courses offered covered everything from typing to beekeeping to drama.

In the midst of the Great Depression, many of the men arrived at camp undernourished. The Army supplied as much as 5 pounds of food a day. After a few weeks, most gained weight, an average of 12 pounds.

A typical breakfast might consist of eggs, bacon, coffee, cereal, and bread. Dinner might be burgers, potatoes, and coleslaw.

"I never ate so good in my life," one enrollee later said.

For FDR, there was a danger in having large numbers of men in their teens and 20s without jobs.

"There's always the governmental concern that too many unemployed, disaffected youth could be a recruiting ground for political extremists, both communists and fascists," Alexander said.

Keeping them busy would have "moral and spiritual value," Roosevelt said: "We can take a vast army of these unemployed out into healthful surroundings."

When Congress passed the act creating the CCC, Oscar DePriest, its only Black member, included language that "no discrimination shall be made on account of race, color, or creed" when hiring workers.

Young Black men were able to enroll, but the Army continued its segregation policies in its CCC camps. Many from northern states like Minnesota were sent to the South. An editorial in Minneapolis' "Spokesman" newspaper called these transfers "a vicious move to send our boys into states which subscribe completely to Jim Crow traditions."

In both the North and South, white communities sometimes objected to Black CCC units setting up in their vicinity. "The government actually had difficulty locating the Black camps for that reason, based on nothing other than paranoia," Alexander said.

Director Fechner then suppressed Black men's enrollment, a policy that stayed in place until 1941, according to the NPS.

What became known as the Civilian Conservation Corps—Indian Division, or CCC-ID, started in June 1933. Run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it had slightly different requirements than the original version.

Men who were older than 25 could enroll, and many lived at home instead of in camps. Projects were similar, including dam and fence construction, stringing telephone lines, building roads, and fighting fires. When the program ended, around 80,000 Indigenous people had been involved.

First lady Eleanor Roosevelt spearheaded "She-She-She" camps for about 8,500 unemployed women. These summer programs took place from 1933 to 1937 and were meant to "provide healthful employment and useful instruction amid wholesome surroundings for needy young women."

Their work was very different, according to the New England Historical Society. They put on plays, sewed, and fixed toys.

"The creation of jobs appeared to be the solution for the male population alone," historian Elaine S. Abelson wrote.

Some local shops would put up signs: "No Dogs or CCC Allowed," some enrollees said.

"They also sometimes got into conflicts with the local young men," Alexander said. "There were a few fist fights there."

Eventually, locals realized the camps boosted the economy. CCC members would offer open houses to smooth over relations. These often ended with positive mentions in the paper or visitors swapping recipes with the cooks.

They would either travel into town or hold them at the camps. It gave them a chance to meet young women from the area. "Some lasting marriages grew out of such unions," Alexander said.

As with many other aspects of camp life, these events were segregated. "Then, occasionally they'd have a dance, and we weren't invited," Black CCC member Paul Wood later said in an interview.

Eventually, every state and several territories had camps. They worked on farms in Nebraska, built visitor centers in North Dakota, and installed stairs in Oregon caves.

Drought and "black blizzards" of dust underscored the danger of soil erosion. CCC camps relocated to the Great Plains to work on farms, trying to conserve soil.

They worked with farmers to remap their land to better hold soil and water. Newly planted trees would grow into windbreaks to prevent massive dust clouds in the future.

"They really transformed a lot of the agricultural land," Maher said.

Wealthy scion John Roebling and his wife, Margaret, spent tens of thousands of dollars transforming virgin forest into a park.

In the mid-1930s, CCC workers arrived to build an arboretum. They also constructed trails, built picnic benches and fences, and cleared roads.

Located on Prince of Wales Island, the park, which CCC and locals built in 1939, contains 21 totem poles. The Haida people moved to the island in the 1700s. Another Indigenous group, the Tlingit, appreciated their skill in carving canoes and other objects out of red cedar.

Several local communities contributed the totem poles, which still stand today, though some have been repaired or retouched.

The CCC both bolstered existing forests and planted 13 new ones in the state. The men filled them with white and red pines, aspens, and poplars.

"Whenever you see a stand of red pine about 10-12 inches in diameter, it is almost certain to have been planted by the CCC," forest archeologist Walter Okstad told oral historian Barbara W. Sommer.

Before the CCC fully segregated workers into all-Black camps, some worked at the Grand Canyon.

John B. Scott, a member of Company 818, trained new recruits and worked on trails, per the NPS. This company was responsible for the Colorado River Trail, which was an engineering feat.

CCC enrollees built a lot of structures, from visitor centers to picnic shelters to bridges. Between 1939 and 1940, camp members constructed a stone bridge to replace a wooden one in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

On June 15, 1941, the amphitheater held its first concert, featuring New York City's Metropolitan Opera star soprano Helen Jepson. Hauling dirt, quarrying stone, putting up a stage, creating an orchestra pit, and constructing the tiered seating area made it one of the CCC's biggest projects.

"I think one of the most beautiful projects the CCC did was the Red Rocks Amphitheater," Maher said.

Botanists working for the CCC made valuable records of plant species that were later removed. Others noted animal species. In Minnesota, they studied how birds migrated and how mammals moved through different areas.

Yellowstone was the first national park in the US, established in 1872. New York created its first state park at Niagara Falls in 1885, and other states quickly followed.

Not every state had its own parks, though, and those that did often had trouble funding and supporting them. NPS director Horace Albright wanted to change that. He encouraged local agencies to use CCC and its funding to develop more parks.

The effort to increase the number of state parks was different from the CCC's other conservation work, Maher said. "It was creating outdoor recreational spaces where people could get healthy and go into the outdoors."

Dry conditions in many states meant forests were susceptible to fire. The enrollees built fire towers, cleared brush, and created fire breaks to keep flames from spreading. Many fought fires that broke out.

An out-of-control fire could destroy everything the CCC camps constructed, so it was the enemy. Today, their practices don't align with modern fire ecology.

"Many of these fires had to burn in order to keep the forest healthy," Maher said.

Parks and other spaces weren't left in pristine condition. Instead, they were altered to be beautiful and safe. The CCC turned "what was once a wilderness into a beautiful scenic recreational area," according to a report on Florida's Gold Head Branch State Park.

The men dug up unsightly plants and drained wetlands. Turtles, catfish, snakes, and other animals were killed or removed.

For CCC leadership, "nature was a wild entity that needed to be tamed, beautified, sanitized, and improved upon," historian Nelson wrote.

Ecology was a new science, but some environmentalists objected to the CCC pulling out native plants and replacing them with neat rows of a single species of trees. Some of these new plants would turn out to be invasive.

"They started to argue that conservation needed to include a concern for ecological balance as well," Maher said.

Other wilderness advocates disliked the Corps's work in national and state parks.

"They argued the corps was building too many roads and too many campgrounds and destroying the wild character of some of those parks," Maher added.

CCC enrollees also stocked lakes and ponds with species that fishermen liked to catch.

By the 1930s, Aldo Leopold, one of the founders of The Wilderness Society, had realized that predators were not the enemy but were instead an essential part of ecological balance. His voice and others like him weren't enough to sway Roosevelt and higher-ups in the CCC.

"The ecological critique and the wilderness critique was in the minority still," Maher said.

A 1936 poll from the American Institute of Public Opinion found that 82% of people surveyed had favorable opinions of the program.

Locals appreciated new access to parks that had been difficult to reach by car. Now there were roads, electricity, and facilities. These new amenities also helped bring in tourists.

The program was so widespread that many Americans had camps of young men building structures and planting trees not far from where they lived.

As the projects wrapped up, they were then able to go out and enjoy the CCC's work.

"It also made that experience unique and special because of the way the Corps blended in that development work with local materials, local surroundings," Maher said. "So a visitor center in New Mexico looks different than a visitor center in Maine, and that really matters to the people who are visiting those places."

Even in its early days, "there were some who suspected that the CCC was a plot to militarize the youth," Alexander said. In the 1940s, its mission shifted.

"The Civilian Conservation Corps has a new objective as it marches forward in its eighth year," the program's director James McEntee wrote in 1940. "It is national defense."

Over the following few years, CCC camps dwindled in number. By May 1942, all had closed. The CCC-ID ended the following year.

Many former members enlisted in the Army instead. "A huge number of CCC enrollees ended up serving in World War II," Alexander said.

Decades later, CCC men continued to meet for reunions. "For many of them, it was a real transformative experience," Maher said.

The over 2 million men who were part of the CCC managed to do an incredible amount of work in less than 10 years. They created or expanded 800 parks, planted over 2 billion trees, and strung 65,100 miles of telephone lines.

All over national and state parks, "there are signs and plaques telling hikers that they are on grounds that the CCC made possible," Alexander said.

These projects covered 118 million acres, roughly three times the size of Connecticut.

The Biden administration created the ACC in 2023, with the goal of enrolling 20,000 members in its first year.

"The idea was to avoid the problems of the original CCC and to build on the successes," Maher said.

That meant being more open and inclusive to young enrollees. Its goals were focused on the climate crisis, including fire prevention and energy grid improvements. Local communities would have had more say on which projects were prioritized.

Donald Trump canceled the program when he became president, signing an executive order on his first day in office that ended all "activities, programs, and operations associated with the American Climate Corps." However, Grist's Kate Yoder reported in January that the Climate Corps largely leaned on existing non-profits and agencies for its workers, meaning that many of the jobs will remain, for now.

Sources for this story include "Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement" "The New Deal's Forest Army: How the Civilian Conservation Corps Worked," "Hard Work and a Good Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps in Minnesota," "How the New Deal Built Florida Tourism: The Civilian Conservation Corps and State Parks," the National Archives, the National Park Service, and PBS.

For over 40 years, daredevils have been climbing the icy walls of Keystone Canyon as part of an annual festival. Located near Valdez, east of Anchorage, the canyon also contains more than a dozen waterfalls. Bridal Veil Falls is among them, its rushing water suspended in a frozen tableau during the winter. It's over 600 feet tall and is viewable from Richardson Highway.

The contrast of teal water and dusty orange rocks makes Havasu Falls a memorable sight. The waterfall is one of several on the Havasupai Indian Reservation. Over 60 miles from Grand Canyon Village, it's a 10-mile hike to see the vivid scenery. Temperatures can get scorching, as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit. The popular spot also requires a reservation in advance.

Volcanoes and erosion shaped Northern California's Burney Falls. The craggy rocks are remnants of basalt lava flows, with nooks and crannies that hold flowing water. Snow melt and springs feed the 129-foot cascade, upping its intensity in the spring and summer. They end in a misty reservoir below the falls. Sightseekers pack the park during warmer months, so expect lots of traffic if you visit.

Melting snow turns into the pounding Yosemite Falls in spring. By late summer, it's like someone has turned off the tap. Three cascades make up the Yosemite National Park's falls, which are among the tallest in the world at 2,425 feet. Full moons in April and May produce an effect known as a moonbow, when the Lower Yosemite Falls' splashing water creates a lunar rainbow. Visitors can take a 1-mile path to the bottom or a more taxing 7.2-mile hike to the Upper Falls.

Telluride is known for its skiing, but it's also home to Colorado's tallest free-falling waterfall. Like Alaska's Bridal Veil Falls, it freezes in the winter. Snow enthusiasts come for the spectacular views as well as ice climbing. In summer, hikers, bikers, and four-wheelers arrive for a peek at the 365-foot flow. Atop the falls sits a hydroelectric power plant, built in 1907.

Two streams meet and part in the Kauai's Wailua Falls, depending on the amount of water flowing. The trail to the falls is dangerous, and hiking is prohibited — however, tourists barely have to leave their cars to get a glimpse of the twin falls. In the mornings, rainbows dance in the falls' mist. It's a hugely popular spot for wedding photos, and park officials have had to create guidelines to keep it from getting overrun with couples on their big day.

It's no easy feat to reach Maui's 400-foot Waimoku Falls. After a twisty drive to Haleakalā National Park, hikers take the Pīpīwai Trail through a bamboo forest. Moss coats the trees, and the water thunders over the precipitous cliff. There can be rock falls and flash floods in the park, so visitors should be alert.

Outside Twin Falls, what's known as the "Niagara of the West" spans 900 feet and plummets from 212 feet. It pours into the Snake River, which winds through a basalt canyon. Kayakers and canoeists travel along the river when it's warm. Spring means melting snow adds oomph to the flow, which slows in summer when some of the water is used for irrigation. Viewing decks offer opportunities for breathtaking photos, and there are hiking trails and picnic areas in the park as well.

Like Yosemite, Cumberland Falls produces lunar rainbows when the 125-foot-wide expanse of water catches the light during full moons. Crowds make their way to the Cumberland Falls State Resort Park to see the moonbow, either hiking the challenging trail for a closeup or staking out a spot in the parking lot, which has a view of the falls.

Winters are cold in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but the Tahquamenon Falls don't freeze over every year. They're nicknamed the "Root Beer Falls" because cedar tannins have turned the water soda-pop brown. Water also foams as it drops nearly 50 feet, like the foam on a freshly poured soft drink. There are two sets of falls, located about 4 miles apart.

Arguably the most famous falls in North America, Niagara flows through both Canada and the US. One of its cataracts, Horseshoe Falls, thunders down 180 feet and is located in both Ontario and New York. There are plenty of vantage points for watching the three waterfalls, including bridges and an observation tower. Perhaps the most unique is the Maid of the Mist boat tour, which has been ferrying passengers past the falls since 1847.

Niagara Falls doesn't have a monopoly on New York's pretty waterfalls. Near Lake Placid is the 150-foot Rainbow Falls, located in the Ausable Chasm, a sandstone gorge. True to its name, a spectrum of colors dazzles on the rock wall as the light catches the mist. Visitors need a reservation if they're going to make the 8.5-mile roundtrip hike from May through October. The Route 9 bridge also crosses nearby.

For those who like to peer at waterfalls from behind the curtain of water, Dry Falls is a spectacular option. A trail through the Nantahala National Forest takes hikers around the back of the 75-foot waterfall. Visitors can also see the front view after a short walk from the parking lot, but either way, this is a popular attraction that gets crowded.

A short drive from Portland brings travelers to the state's tallest waterfall. Underground springs supply the two-tiered Multnomah Falls, which crashes down over 600 feet. Though that flow is heaviest in winter and spring, tourist traffic peaks in the summer. Visitors need a permit for admittance at the end of May through early September.

Take an elevator ride into a limestone cave in Lookout Mountain, and follow the trail to Ruby Falls. It's named not for its color but for the wife of Leo Lambert, who found the waterfall in 1928. Raining down 145 feet, the underground waterfall is a popular attraction that's not far from Chattanooga. Today, lights illuminate the cave, and tickets are needed to enter.

The gushing waterfall in the opening credits of the '90s show "Twin Peaks" is Snoqualmie Falls. Less than an hour from Seattle, it cascades 268 feet against a backdrop of granite cliffs. Sightseers can enjoy them from an accessible observation deck or check into the Salish Lodge, which overlooks the falls.

Hydrothermal vents aren't Yellowstone's only stunning water feature. The Upper and Lower Falls carry the Yellowstone River to the park's Grand Canyon. Each tumbles roughly 100 feet into the canyon, which is over 20 miles long and a rich mix of reds and yellows. Roads with viewpoints run along both the Upper and Lower Falls.

Astronauts and cosmonauts from 20 countries have been on board, according to NASA. It's a floating lab where researchers conduct experiments related to space travel. Astronauts typically stay for six months to a year.

Almost everything they do revolves around discovering more about life in space, and they keep meticulous track of how their bodies respond to the weightless environment. Some of what they've learned has led to developments in drugs and medical technology that benefit humans on Earth, too.

It's more like a not-a-lot-of-space station. It's a six-bedroom house packed into an area that's shorter than a football field, according to NASA. Five agencies share the station, which has six sleeping quarters, a gym, and two bathrooms.

Astronaut Frank Rubio described it as a building made of hallways, with no large space like a living room to gather.

"You almost have to block the fact that it is so small," he told "Houston: We Have a Podcast" in 2024.

Space food needs to meet a few requirements. It can't crumble to bits and clog up machinery, it has to be able to stay fresh for months, and it should taste good.

Several newer methods for preserving food for long-distance travel have given astronauts more meal options, and ISS astronauts can make everything from spicy shrimp to chocolate pudding cake.

"A lot of it was really tasty," retired astronaut Leland Melvin told Business Insider in 2023.

Lots of astronauts like spicier options because the lack of gravity makes fluid float into their sinuses, making them stuffed up and affecting how food tastes.

Astronauts and cosmonauts will often bring snacks that remind them of home. For example, one of Rubio's crewmates brought items for a charcuterie board.

Early on in space travel, doctors realized astronauts were losing bone density after spending long periods of time in a weightless environment. Now, ISS residents do a couple of hours of exercise every day to help prevent that.

It's a mix of cardio and load-bearing workouts, Rubio said. They do so many squats that "every day is leg day in space," he added.

In 2013, retired astronaut Chris Hadfield demonstrated how he brushed his teeth in space on the Canadian Space Agency's YouTube channel.

First, he used a resealable water container to wet the toothbrush. Then he slurped the water off the brush and applied regular toothpaste. When he was done, he swallowed the toothpaste and filled his mouth with water to clean the toothbrush.

Showers are actually sponge baths with washcloths, per NASA. Astronauts use shampoo that they don't have to rinse out. Suction takes care of extra water, which then goes to a waste tank.

Hoses, funnels, and suction are all crucial components when it's time to go in space. In 2020, NASA redesigned its toilets for more comfort and durability.

Astronauts get rid of toilet paper in water-tight bags, and the solid waste is shipped off to burn up on reentry through Earth's atmosphere. Urine is another story.

Water is a precious and heavy commodity. Humans generate a lot of it, including through sweat, urine, and the droplets in their breath. Most of it doesn't go to waste on the ISS.

"We have hardware on station that helps take that output and turn it back into clean, drinkable water," NASA aerospace engineer Brendan Lutes told "Houston: We Have a Podcast" in 2024.

The agency reported in 2023 that it is working on recycling 98% of the water the astronauts expel.

Astronauts only get to bring a small amount of clothes with them, and they have to make them last. They might wear the same outfit for a week, according to NASA. Washing clothes would be too water-intensive, so their well-worn garments get burned up like other waste.

That doesn't mean there are no chores on the ISS. Astronauts have to use vacuums — like the one pictured above — to make sure there are no crumbs or debris floating around that could damage instruments.

A typical workday on the space station is around 12 hours with some breaks for lunch and exercise, according to Rubio. During that time, astronauts and cosmonauts are conducting experiments and monitor their own health. They're often involved in ongoing medical experiments.

The ISS also needs a lot of maintenance. In recent years, the modules have started showing cracks and leaking air. A toilet breakdown and temperature fluctuations are a few of the other problems the station has faced.

In a recent report, the Office of Inspector General wrote the leaks are "a top safety risk" that NASA is investigating and monitoring.

Astronaut Rubio spent over a year on the ISS and said that "every day is different, and yet every day is the same." He woke up around 6:30 a.m., ate breakfast, and got ready for work, which started around an hour later.

He would take half an hour for lunch and get in his two-hour workout. The workday would end around 7 p.m., he said. The work he would do each day — experiments, maintenance, spacewalks — would vary.

When astronauts and cosmonauts are stationed at ISS for months at a time, they often miss events like birthdays, anniversaries, and graduations. Email is a reliable way to stay in touch.

"On Saturdays, we have meet-with-the-family time," astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson said in a 2013 NASA video. During these weekly video chats, they can catch up on everything that's been happening at home.

On December 25 last year, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — the two astronauts who were unexpectedly stranded on the space station — wore Santa hats, decorated cookies, and contacted their families, The New York Times reported.

Holidays in space can be tough even for astronauts who expect to spend an entire year away from home. "Thanksgiving, where you're used to having it with loved ones, those kind of tend to hit home a little harder," Rubio said during the podcast.

There are also no Champagne toasts since NASA doesn't let its astronauts drink alcohol on the job.

Homesickness isn't just about missing family members. Astronauts often long for many comforts Earthlings take for granted.

Karen Adkins is a NASA psychological support coordinator who works on morale and well-being for people heading to ISS for lengthy missions. She and other team members start meeting with astronauts two years before their mission, and "we start developing what we call their in-flight support resource plan," she told "Houston: We Have a Podcast" in 2024.

It includes everything from figuring out how they'll contact their family to deciding what special items they might want to bring on board. They also set up a crew personal webpage, stocked with TV shows, movies, podcasts, music, and other entertainment.

In the late '90s, NASA figured out how to help astronauts participate in US elections. Before they leave Earth, they fill out a request for an absentee ballot. County officials then email the ballot for the astronaut to fill out and send back.

In the past, astronauts have created mini "voting booths" in the crew quarters. "The voting clerks love getting pictures of crew voting on board," Marta Durham, a former NASA flight operations Instructor, told "Houston: We Have a Podcast."

If humans are going to live on Mars, they must first perfect space gardening. Fresh produce is key to providing necessary nutrients.

The Vegetable Production System, or Veggie, is the space station's six-plant garden, per NASA. It's helping astronauts learn how to make food without gravity and sunlight. They've grown peppers and lettuce on board.

Long spaceflights change astronauts' bodies in a lot of ways. The lack of gravity affects their balance and ability to walk. The brain adapts to the lack of gravity, and some of these changes can become permanent, University of Florida researchers recently found.

Astronauts routinely track their own health, taking saliva samples and wearing monitors for heart rate, sleep, and temperature. Not only will such data be helpful for future missions, but some research could affect people on Earth, too, especially those who live in remote areas with less access to medical care.

Six months can be a long time to go without a haircut. Astronauts can get a trim, provided they have a vacuum on hand to capture the clippings.

As the ISS orbits the Earth, it experiences the sun rising and setting 16 times a day. That's just one reason astronauts may have trouble catching their z's.

Rubio described crew quarters as a phone booth. Inside, there's a sleeping bag attached to the wall to keep sleeping astronauts from floating and knocking into walls. He actually enjoyed the weightless sleep, but for some people, it takes some getting used to, he said.

When the ISS needs maintenance or repairs, astronauts get suited up for a spacewalk. There have been over 270 since 1998, per NASA. Some have been only a couple of hours, others have taken over eight hours.

The suits are equipped with oxygen and water. Before heading out into space, astronauts breathe pure oxygen to rid their bodies of nitrogen and avoid getting "the bends," which is a condition often associated with scuba diving.

Astronauts actually do a lot of training underwater on Earth before doing a real spacewalk. Nothing can quite prepare them for the real thing, though, astronaut Nick Hague told "Houston: We Have a Podcast."

"You just can't replicate that floating around in a spacesuit in the vacuum of space," he said. "The only place you do it real for the first time is in space."

One of the major perks of spending time on the ISS is its view of the Earth. Astronauts have seen hurricanes, lightning, and glittering cities.

They have incredible photos to prove it. Some astronauts, including Don Pettit, are known for their astrophotography. He brought a lot of equipment on board to help himself and his fellow crew members take even better pictures, he told "Houston: We Have a Podcast."

The ship's size, its famous passengers, the unfathomable loss of life, and the harrowing tales from survivors instantly made it headline news.

Interest in the disaster continued, especially in 1985 when Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel found the shipwreck during a secret US Navy mission.

It's far too fragile to raise. Artifacts and small pieces of the ship have been recovered, but the rusting remains will stay on the ocean floor.

It's risky and expensive to visit the shipwreck — five people died when a submersible visiting the Titanic imploded in June 2023 — and conditions are murky at that depth. The digital twin offers an ultra-clear view that's impossible to see from a submersible.

Two submersibles, Romeo and Juliet, spent three weeks photographing and measuring the ship and the debris surrounding the two halves. The digital model is made up of the images and scans to reveal areas of the ship that are hard to view from trips to the wreck.

Other techniques have been used to create photo mosaics of the Titanic, but this photogrammetry process captured every inch of the wreck — down to its rivets — and its surroundings without losing resolution or details.

"You can zoom right into an area of interest, right down to a floor tile on the ocean floor," Stephenson told BI. "It is amazing."

Stephenson, who appears in the documentary, has viewed the Titanic a few times from crewed and uncrewed submersibles. He said that in person, it's difficult to see much of the ship through a 7-inch viewport. That meant he was glimpsing the ship section by section instead of as a whole. "What you really need to make sense of all this evidence is context," he said.

"It's how it's all put together and presented as a whole that's the paradigm shift here," Stephenson said. "That's what's going to be the future of deep ocean exploration."

Crew member Frederick Fleet described hitting the iceberg as a narrow shave, thinking they'd avoided disaster. Many passengers didn't realize the ship had struck anything. Yet the collision was deadly.

The Titanic's builders designed the ship to withstand four of its 16 compartments flooding. Edward Wilding, a naval architect who worked on the design, speculated from the beginning that the iceberg scraping alongside the ship punctured more than four sections. Enough water flowed in to pull down the entire ship.

The portion of the ship that struck the iceberg slammed into the seafloor when it sank. It's now buried in mud. Even if it were visible, it would likely be difficult to tell the difference between the damage before and after sinking.

For the documentary, researchers from University College London and Newcastle University put together a simulation to find some potential answers. Using the ship's blueprints and estimated speed, they found that the iceberg may have torn open an 18-square-foot gash along six compartments, enough to take down the Titanic.

The simulation aligned very closely with Wilding's speculations from over 100 years ago.

"He really knew that ship," Anthony Geffen, the film's producer, told BI, which is perhaps why they match so well.

With much of the bow sunk in the mud, we may never know the full story of the iceberg's effect, Stephenson said.

In Cameron's movie, the ship basically cracks in half. Passenger Jack Thayer later wrote that part of the ship rose into the sky and seemed to hang there, and then, "with the deadened noise of the bursting of her last few gallant bulkheads, she slid quietly away from us into the sea."

"Even Jim Cameron, today, will say that the way he depicted it in the movie is not correct," Stephenson said. It was based on what was known in 1997, which was eyewitness testimony, like Thayer's.

The way it broke apart may have been far more explosive. The model shows large pieces of the hull scattered around the wreck that may be evidence of such an event.

"It was a giant, catastrophic fracture," metallurgist Jennifer Hooper said in the documentary, which caused a domino effect of compression and buckling that destroyed roughly 20% of the ship.

That might explain why the two large sections of the ship are a third of a mile apart, Geffen said. "Something massive must have happened," he said. "It didn't just float apart."

Before the ocean liner disappeared under the water, survivors recalled its lights still being on. The model gives a clear view of boiler room two. That's likely where the Titanic engineers stayed until the end, shoveling coal to keep the ship illuminated and the wireless transmitting calls for help.

Further away, a valve can be seen in the open position, indicating that steam continued flowing to generate electricity.

"These boilers tell us about a very personal story about the people" who stayed behind on the ship, Geffen said.

First-class passengers John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, two of the wealthiest men on the boat, both lost their lives — the documentary revealed that the crumbling ship may have come apart right where the first-class cabins were located.

The crew's and passengers' possessions are scattered for miles around the Titanic. Researchers have been able to identify the owners' of some of them from these new images, and Geffen said AI could help find more.

For example, there's a shark tooth that seems to have been attached to a pocket watch belonging to a first-class passenger, Colonel John Weir.

The Titanic site is a graveyard, where hundreds of people lost their lives. "I think sometimes that gets lost," Geffen said, but their belongings can help tell their stories.

The new scans have frozen the Titanic in time. It's already covered in rusticles, the pointy structures created by deep-sea bacteria. As it continues to deteriorate, more evidence will be lost.

As well as being dangerous and expensive, some also consider visiting the site via submersible disrespectful. Geffen said there are plans to put the digital twin in simulators so people can do virtual dives to the wreck, instead. Eventually, people will be able to put on a VR headset and walk around the site.

"With this digital twin, we can now bring the entire Titanic wreck site up to the surface and make it available to everyone," Stephenson said.

"Titanic: The Digital Resurrection" premiered on National Geographic on April 11 and is available on Disney+ and Hulu.

The first time the Bellagio fountains put on their famous light-and-water show, it was in front of what was then the most expensive hotel in the world.

Steve Wynn developed the hotel to appeal to an upscale crowd, stocking it with designer stores, exclusive restaurants, and paintings by Van Gogh and Monet. Spending $40 million on the fountains and $300 million on art, Wynn eventually dropped the equivalent of $3.2 billion in today's dollars.

It has 3,900 rooms, over a dozen restaurants, and enough casino space to nearly fit three football fields.

The Bellagio has changed hands a few times. Most recently, Blackstone acquired the property for over $4 billion, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in 2019. It was the city's highest price for a resort casino ever.

In general, casinos have a lot of moving pieces that inflate the cost, Barr said, including hotels, restaurants, and gambling spaces. "So they're just vast," he said.

Hospitals are huge buildings that run for 24 hours and operate special equipment, all of which use a lot of energy.

That's one reason the Royal Adelaide Hospital was built to be as efficient as possible, with rooftop gardens to protect it from the sun and the ability to use waste heat to power some systems. Sensors and sophisticated software also help automate heating and cooling, The Guardian reported in 2017.

Packed with cutting-edge tech, the project was already pricey, but costs swelled and work stalled due to a soil contamination problem, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in 2015.

Since opening, the 800-bed hospital has faced struggles and scrutiny, including when it was operating above capacity in 2023, per ABC. During that time, patients were left waiting in ambulances due to overcrowding.

Many luxury homes have their own movie theaters, but few have built-in salons and private ice cream parlors.

Built for billionaire Mukesh Ambani and his family, the 27-story Antillia is often described as one of the world's most expensive residences, ranking up there with Buckingham Palace. Ambanii is head of the conglomerate Reliance Industries and is India's richest man.

Architectural Digest India estimated the cost of the palatial 400,000-square-foot building at between $1 and $2 billion. The residence is named after a phantom island that cartographers included in 15th-century maps but which explorers couldn't find.

Antillia's design followed principles of Vastu shastra, traditional Indian architecture principles relating to how energy flows, Forbes reported in 2008. The home has modern touches, too, including nine elevators, a six-story garage, and helipads.

One of the tallest buildings in the world at over 2,000 feet high, the 128-story Shanghai Tower stands out even amongst its neighbors in the city's Lujiazui financial district. Its sleek facade twists up toward the clouds.

It holds dozens of floors of office space, a hotel, and numerous observation spaces. There's a sky-high swimming pool on the 84th floor. Dizzying views stretch for 30 miles, according to NPR.

Elevators race up and down the building at 67 feet per second, CNN reported in 2017. At that time, they were the world's fastest.

Shops and restaurants are found on the building's lower floors, and there are "vertical gardens" scattered throughout the building to bring more green space to the urban structure, according to the architects.

Las Vegas is known for making its own version of touristy sights — the Eiffel Tower, an Egyptian pyramid — and Macau's casinos replicate those on the Strip, Stefan Al told BI. He's the author of "Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives" and "The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream."

The Venetian is one example. "That was more or less copied one for one," he said. From its Grand Canal to duped Renaissance art, it's a little slice of Venice in China.

Macau tends to focus more on gambling than Vegas, which also emphasizes its entertainment, Al said. To that end, the Venetian is awash in slot machines and poker tables. It's 550,000-square-foot casino is one of the biggest in the world.

Those looking for more to do could stay in one of the hotel's 3,000 suites or spend hours exploring the restaurants and stores. The resort has a million square feet of shopping options, according to Condé Nast Traveler. That's nearly enough space to fit seven Costcos.

A few years after building the Bellagio, Wynn put his own name on a Vegas casino. The curved structure held over 2,700 rooms, more than 1,800 slot machines, and a Michelin-star restaurant.

Interior designer Roger Thomas evoked a surrealist atmosphere with brightly patterned carpets and hanging parasols. "Brandscents" — Wynn-patented scents — wafted through the building, designed to evoke an emotional response in customers, according to "The Strip."

Instead of spurting fountains, it had a bubbling lake that changed colors and burbled along with music every 30 minutes. In the casino's early days, visitors were able to gaze at Picasso's "La Rêve" painting, which was on display in the gallery. Guests could also play a round of golf at the 18-hole course.

The rebuilt World Trade Center complex was a controversial undertaking as people debated how to replace the Twin Towers destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Most of the new structures have been built, including the One World Trade Center, which opened in 2014. Its height is a symbolic 1,776 feet, in honor of the year the country's founders signed the Declaration of Independence. It's also the tallest skyscraper in the US.

Architect David Childs wanted its angular shape to be as memorable as the Washington Monument, he told Time Magazine in 2014.

Visitors can take in views from the sky lobby or play table tennis to take a free yoga class, according to The New York Times.

Barr said part of the building's enormous cost likely came from security measures. "That probably is one of the most expensive buildings in the world on a per-square-foot basis, simply because of all the extras that were associated with that," he said.

It didn't just cost billions of dollars to construct one of the world's heaviest buildings. Workers demolished about a fifth of the city, displacing 40,000 residents, to create the mammoth palace and its lengthy road, deliberately created to be larger than the Champs-Élysee, according to The Guardian.

Over 700 architects worked on its design, and 20,000 laborers toiled night and day to complete the building. The interior contains tons of marble and crystal and gold-leaf ceilings.

Construction started in 1984 at the behest of Nicolae Ceaușescu, who was Romania's communist dictator at the time. Five years later, he and his wife were executed in the Romanian Revolution. The Palace was completed in 1994 and now houses the Romanian government, though 70% of the building remains vacant, CNN reported in 2014.

There are guided tours for those who are curious to explore some of its more than 1,000 rooms.

Emirates Palace was built for tourists instead of as a residence for royalty. The hotel is over 2 million square feet but has only 394 guest rooms, including several suites. Domes line the roof, and visitors have access to a private beach.

Ornate ceilings are covered in gold-leaf that needs replacing every few years, CNN reported in 2018. They're also dripping in Swarovski crystal chandeliers.

Coldplay, Rihanna, and Christina Aguilera have all performed at the Palace. The hotel also appeared in "The Fast and the Furious 7."

Consisting of two 50-story towers, the Cosmopolitan marketed itself as sophisticated, hoping to distinguish itself from the Las Vegas Strip's bright, buzzing competition.

"There's probably an element of these developers competing against each other by adding more bells and whistles to their respective casinos, which is going to dramatically increase the cost," Barr said.

If the energy in the Cosmopolitan's casino feels different, it might be because it has something many others lack: windows. "I think people will enjoy knowing what time of day it is," the Cosmopolitan's chief executive told The Los Angeles Times in 2010.

One of its most iconic sights is the three-story Chandelier Bar, which is covered in 2 million crystals.

A spaceship. A glass donut. However you describe it, Apple's building at its headquarters in Cupertino is distinctive.

Before his death, Steve Jobs announced Apple had "a shot at building the best office building in the world." Initially, he envisioned a clover leaf-like structure that would facilitate employees running into each other and casually discussing their projects, Wired reported in 2017. Eventually, the idea morphed into a single large ring.

In 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek reported the building's cost had skyrocketed from $3 billion to $5 billion. Making it a "net-zero energy" structure with miles of curved glass contributed to the high price.

The ring building has a capacity of 12,000 people, distributed across four floors and covering 2.8 million square feet in total. The curved glass gives views of thousands of drought-­tolerant trees. Four miles of trails wind over the campus.

Employees can also visit the on-site medical clinic or work out at the fitness center, according to The Sacramento Bee.

Two LA teams, the Rams and Chargers, call SoFi Stadium home. Rams owner Stan Kroenke built the 3.1-million-square-foot facility, which seats over 70,000 fans.

Rising costs, the death of two construction workers, bad weather, and COVID all delayed the project, which took four years to complete, The Los Angeles Times reported in 2020.

There's a curved roof, part of which is transparent, but the open sides let the air flow in.

One of the stadium's defining features is its double-sided videoboard. It's 70,000 square feet and weighs 2.2 million pounds, USA Today reported in 2020.

There's also space for cultural events. The venue doubles as a 6,000-capacity performing arts space. Documents, artwork, and other items from the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection are on display at the stadium.

You could spend a weekend in Singapore's Marina Bay Sands and not see everything. A museum, 270 stores and restaurants, a convention center, a skating rink, a luxury hotel, and a casino fill the trio of towers, which are each 55 stories.

A skyway connects the towers at 653 feet in the air. On the 57th floor, a huge infinity pool measuring 450 feet long offers dazzling views. The most luxurious suites cost more than $26,000 a night.

Star architect Moshe Safdie designed the project, which is part of Las Vegas Sands.

In 2011, "The Lion King" musical made its debut in Southeast Asia at one of the Marina Bay Sands' theaters, according to Playbill. Shots of the resort were shown in "Crazy Rich Asians."

"It's really become an icon for Singapore," Al said.

The Saudi government built the Abraj Al Bait complex to help accommodate the millions of Muslims who visit Mecca each year, according to Sotheby's. It's hard to tease out how much each building costs individually, but together the seven skyscrapers are estimated at $15 billion total.

The Clock Tower is the tallest of the seven, with its crescent spire topping out at 1,972 feet. It houses the Makkah Royal Clock Tower Hotel, which has 1,650 rooms and views of the Masjid al-Haram, the largest mosque in the world.

An astronomy center and observation deck a both located at the top of the building, according to the Skyscraper Museum.

During daily prayers, the tower's clock, the largest in the world, illuminates 21,000 green and white LED lights, per Architectural Digest.

Another complex of buildings, Hudson Yards boasts some expensive real estate. The team behind the massive project secured $5 billion in financing for 30 Hudson Yards alone in 2015.

Several office buildings, a residential tower, an arts center, and a shopping mall make up the completed structures. Eventually, 16 buildings will be clustered in the area, creating space for 4,000 apartments and 55,000 workers, The New York Times reported in 2019.

The scope of the project is what makes it stand out, Al said. "Very often, that is compared to the Rockefeller Center — built a hundred years ago — in terms of magnitude," he said. That added to the cost, but there were other factors as well, like creating a platform above a rail yard.

"In terms of the scale, the cost of the land, the complexity of the building above an operating rail yard, all of that adds to the costs," he said.

Though she only traveled to the pyramids once, Amelia Edwards had an enormous impact on the study of Ancient Egypt, especially for other British women.

Inspired by Lucie Duff-Gordon, an English writer who lived and wrote about Egypt in the 1860s, Edwards traveled to the Giza pyramids, Dendera temple, and other sites for several months between 1873 and 1874.

While Duff-Gordon's "Letters from Egypt" were focused on modern Egypt and her experiences there, Edwards was fascinated by the country's ancient monuments and history. In 1877, she published "A Thousand Miles up the Nile," describing her travels up the river and the sights along the way. It was an instant hit, going through several editions and reprints.

She described crawling into tombs and temples, occasionally worried about being buried alive in a cave-in. Her lush descriptions of the glittering desert, pink mountains, and misty chasms captured readers' imaginations and spurred many to make their own journeys.

With its vivid imagery and rich historical detail, Edwards' book served as a kind of template for Western women travelers, Sheppard said. She told them where to go and the significance of the monuments they would visit.

In 1882, Edwards founded the Egypt Exploration Fund, which still exists today as the Egypt Exploration Society. Subscribers would help pay for expeditions and receive detailed reports in exchange. Edwards put women in charge of running the fund, while men did the excavation.

When she died in 1892, she left money to the University College London for a department of Egyptology, but there were several stipulations. Some were about who would chair the department — no man above 40 who was affiliated with the British Museum was eligible — while another ensured that women would benefit from her bequest, too. Classes, scholarships, and exhibitions had to be "open to students of both sexes," according to Edwards' will.

There was a specific reason UCL received the money, too. "They were the only ones in 1892 who were allowing women to take degrees on equal terms as men," Sheppard said.

Egyptologist Flinders Petrie spent years excavating important sites in Egypt. For a while, he brought Margaret Murray along to record his findings.

"He specifically would bring Margaret Murray out to sites because his handwriting was so horrible," Sheppard said. "So if he tried to catalog anything, no one could read it."

Murray would go on to have her own successes in the field.

"She had this amazing 70-year-long career because she started in Egyptology when she was 30, and she lived till she was 100, and she was still working when she died," Sheppard said.

For many of those years, Murray was training future Egyptologists. She'd been the one to develop the two-year program at University College London and served as the instructor, drawing on her experiences in Egypt. Students learned about geology, mineralogy, history, religion, languages, and more.

Some of the students became famous in their own right. "They're known to history, to everybody else as Petrie's pups because Petri trained them in the field," Sheppard said. Yet many acknowledge Murray's influence as well.

In 1908, Murray performed Britain's last public unwrapping of mummified remains. It was controversial, even at the time.

Letters in the newspaper suggested Khnum-Nakht, the man who Murray was going to unwrap, should be left in peace. Yet 500 people came to watch her at Manchester University as she peeled off layers of linen, which were then given out as souvenirs.

For her own research, Murray published an influential report about a structure she said was used for worshiping the god Osiris. Her discredited folklore work on witchcraft has overshadowed her work in Egyptology.

Still, her legacy remains thanks to her many students and their followers. "People who are still alive today can trace their academic genealogy back to Margaret Murray in the 1930s," Sheppard said.

In 1894, Margaret "Maggie" Benson went to Egypt, hoping to ease her rheumatism, which affected her joints and lungs. Like many of the other women Egyptologists, the 28-year-old fell in love with the country, Sheppard said."They go home, and they keep wanting to go back."

During her first trip, she went with one of the popular Thomas Cook & Son tours, which took thousands of tourists up the Nile each year, per The BBC. They traveled in comfort and style, with daily excursions to see tombs at Saqqara or Beni Hasan's cliffs.

Benson decided she wanted to kickstart her own excavation. There were granite statues sticking out of the earth at the dilapidated Temple of Mut in Luxor.

Though Benson had no formal training in archaeology, neither did many of the men who were excavating tombs and temples. It wasn't yet the careful, scientific discipline it would become in the next century.

Money was the workaround. "If these women had enough money and if they had enough time, they could go be archeologists too, because that's all that the men had at that point," Sheppard said.

Using her connections and supplying her own funding, Benson got permission to excavate the temple, making her the first woman who was officially allowed to do so. Nearly two dozen Egyptian men and boys did the digging and the hauling and sifting of dirt. Benson's brother Fred lent his expertise, having worked on excavations in Athens before.

By the end of the first season in 1895, the excavators had dug up dozens of statues, coins, and other artifacts. The next year, they found over a dozen lion-headed statues and countless fragments of others.

One of Benson's most important collaborators at the site was Janet "Nettie" Gourlay, with whom she had an intense, long-lasting relationship. Together, they published "The Temple of Mut in Asher" in 1899, "which became a groundbreaking report, revealing the temple as it had never been seen before," according to "Women in the Valley of the Kings."

Today, archaeologists meticulously track the locations of artifacts when they find them, but this wasn't always the case.

"In British Egyptology, you have these stories of people going in and using explosives to get through a wall so they can pull out the big statue, and you don't need to record what was on that wall," Sheppard said.

Luckily for Theodore Davis, he had Emma Andrews by his side. The two wealthy Americans were in a relationship, though Davis also had a wife. By 1900, they'd been traveling to Egypt for over a decade, often with a copy of Edwards' "A Thousand Miles" in their luggage. Together, they helped fund or excavate 24 tombs.

In 1902, Davis received the coveted permission to excavate the Valley of the Kings, where many rulers were buried. It soon paid off, with his team rediscovering tomb 46, which belonged to Yuya and Thuya, Tutankhamun's great-grandparents. Unlike many looted tombs, it still had many of its treasures inside.

While Davis marveled over an exquisite chariot or gilded chair, Andrews documented artifacts, drew maps, and kept a list of visitors to the site. These records were crucial because Davis could be slipshod in his own accounts. "Her diaries are the most accurate record historians and archaeologists have for over a dozen tombs," Sheppard wrote.

Andrews also wrote about the work the Egyptian men did at the tomb, including much of the physical labor, something often omitted in official reports.

In 1908, Davis started excavating a different tomb, KV55. He believed the mummified remains belonged to Queen Tiye and wrote his report based on that incorrect assumption. Archaeologists are still unsure whose tomb it was, though they've learned the body belonged to an adult male.

Both Davis and Edwards left money and hundreds of Egyptian artifacts to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Two of Margaret Murray's students were Guy and Winifred Brunton. The UCL students were married and spent their lives working at archaeological sites.

Together, they worked at Lahun, a site in Faiyum, Egypt, in 1914, alongside Petrie. They found a tomb belonging to an unknown princess from around 1897 to 1878 BCE. Though people had plundered the tomb during antiquity, they left behind several items of jewelry, including a gold diadem adorned with gems.

Winifred Brunton was an artist and painted portraits and scenes from the excavations. Some of her best-known works were her Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt. She published books of portraits of Tiye, Nefertiti, Ramesses II, and other rulers.

Construction began on the Temple of Seti I, now known as the Great Temple of Abydos, in the 13th century BCE. Ramesses II, Seti I's son, completed the temple to honor the deceased pharaoh.

Scenes of the king making offerings to the gods and receiving the symbols of life decorate the walls of the temple's seven chapels. In the late 1920s, it was difficult for photographs to accurately reflect all the nuances of the artwork or inscriptions.

To preserve these scenes, Egyptologist James Breasted created a laborious process for creating detailed copies that evolved over the years. Using a lighted tracing board, an artist would trace the lines of the enlarged photograph to pick up as many details as possible. An on-site expert would then compare the drawings to the original to make sure everything was identical.

"It's neck cramping," Sheppard said. "It's backbreaking." Amice Calverley was one artist who was very skilled at it.

In the late 1920s, she became field director for the Abydos temple project, doing much of the work herself along with help from an Egyptian staff. Fortunes literally changed when John D. Rockefeller Jr. visited and donated the equivalent of over $1 million to the project, Sheppard said. It "was a huge coup in Egyptology at the time," she said, because one of the requirements was that Calverley continue to lead the project.

Due to the funding, Myrtle Broome, one of Margaret Murray's first students, joined the team. Together, they eventually published four volumes of "The Temple of King Sethos I at Abydos," with their intricate recreations of the scenes. With the onset of World War II, several volumes were left unpublished.

Caroline Ransom Williams earned her PhD in 1905 from the University of Chicago, becoming the first woman in the US with an advanced degree in Egyptology. Nearly 30 years had passed since Amelia Edwards published "A Thousand Miles up the Nile." Sheppard said Ransom WIlliams followed her and other female Egyptologists' examples.

"All of these women who came before Caroline set up these steps that she could follow along," she said.

In 1910, she began working in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Egyptian Art Department. By then, she'd already been a professor in art history and archaeology at Bryn Mawr and spent months traveling in Egypt.

One of her most influential projects at the Met was her reconstruction of Perneb's tomb. British Egyptologist Edward Quibell had uncovered it a few years earlier, and Edward Harkness bought it for the museum. Ransom Williams went through over 600 boxes of limestone.

She preserved both the stone and its artwork by sealing everything in a varnish-like coating. Prepping and rebuilding the tomb indoors took about three years, and Ransom Williams and her team completed the work in 1916. Visitors can still see the tomb on display today.

In the accompanying booklet, Williams explained that the tomb's hieroglyphs said that Perneb's family visited him regularly, helping to personalize the life of someone who had lived over 4,000 years earlier.

Drawing on her expertise in art history, Ransom Williams said the artists' use of the Egyptian blue pigment was significant and part of "a sophisticated color scheme."

Over a decade after finishing Perneb's tomb, Ransom Williams helped refine Breasted's epigraphic process for capturing scenes and reliefs on tomb and temple walls, which Myrtle Broome and Amice Calverley would use soon after.

The combination of the way Ransom Williams' presented Ancient Egypt to the public as a museum curator and her work with the University of Chicago's Epigraphic Survey made her career one of the most significant in Egyptology at the time.

"If she had been a man, we would be talking about her way more than we talk about even James Breasted or Howard Carter because she was so impactful with the work that she did," Sheppard said.

The country is a little bigger than Mexico. It's also much colder. About 80% of Greenland's 836,330 square miles are buried in snow and ice. An enormous national park, the world's largest, covers much of the northeast.

The island has long made it of interest to many other countries for military purposes and as a source of natural resources, from rare minerals to natural gas and oil.

But to Greenlanders, it's simply home.

Pre-Inuit groups, including members of the Saqqaq culture, came to the island around 2,500 BCE via Canada. They settled in northern, western, and southeastern Greenland. Today's Greenland Inuit population is descended from the Thule people, who moved into the country's north from Alaska through Canada around 1,000 years ago.

Between 985 and roughly 1450 CE, Vikings lived and then died out in Western Greenland. Erik the Red was the one who called the icy island Greenland. In Greenlandic, its name is Kalaallit Nunaat.

Danish-Norwegian missionary Hans Egede established a settlement in what's now Nuuk, Greenland's capital, in 1721. Over the centuries, Denmark's culture profoundly changed the country.

Greenland remained a Danish colony until 1953 and became an autonomous territory in 1979. It has its own parliament, known as the Inatsisartut.

While the country self-governs its domestic matters, Denmark retains jurisdiction over defense and foreign affairs.

Around 56,000 people make Greenland their home.

Just under 90% are Inuit, though most also have some European ancestry, according to genetic testing published by the American Society of Human Genetics in 2015. Danish people make up the rest of the population. Most live in coastal cities or communities.

Kalaallisut, also known as Greenlandic, is an Inuit language and is the official language of the country. It's widely spoken, though some groups in the east speak Tunumiit, according to the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.

Most residents also speak Danish, which is taught as a second language in schools.

The population has long depended on fishing for their livelihoods. However, it's not enough to support the entire country. Denmark heavily supplements its budget with about $511 million annually, according to The BBC.

"The economy has been difficult," Stenbaek said. Tourism and the country's natural resources may be its future.

Whether they're hoping to spot narwhals or want to glimpse glaciers, nature-loving tourists are drawn to Greenland.

For a long time, it was difficult to get to the island by plane. Nuuk only opened its international airport in November 2024. Before that, only a few airports had runways long enough to land large jets.

Ilulissat, which has an ice fjord on UNESCO's World Heritage list, and Qaqortoq are also getting international airports, Reuters reported. Later this year, Americans will be able to hop on a direct flight from New York to Nuuk for the first time.

To get ready for the surge of tourists, some residents are buying snowmobiles to rent out, The New York Times reported. New hotels are opening, too.

Greenland has a history of mining cryolite, which is used in aluminum smelting. A recent documentary, "The White Gold of Greenland," claimed that for over 100 years, Danish mining companies extracted billions worth of the mineral, and Greenland reaped very little of the benefit, Variety reported.

That's not a history it would want to repeat if it taps its deposits of uranium, gold, natural gas, lithium, and other resources. While some see mining as an opportunity to enrich the country, others have concerns.

"Greenlanders are very hesitant about many aspects of mining because it impacts the nature so much," Stenbaek said.

There are also worries about how it could affect the fishing industry, while residents in Narsaq are concerned about their health if a company moves forward with mining radioactive uranium at a nearby proposed site, The Guardian reported.

Danish culture is visible in Greenland's healthcare system, educational institutions, and government. "To that extent, it has had a huge impact," Stenbaek said. At the same time, authorities contributed to the loss of many aspects of the Inuits' way of life.

Between the 1950s and '70s, the Danish government forced Inuit populations to relocate from smaller settlements and communities to cities, Reuters reported. During this time, doctors implanted IUDs in thousands of Inuit girls and women, sometimes without their consent, The BBC reported. Denmark is investigating the matter and has offered counseling to those affected, AP reported last year.

Members of the Inuit community were also pressured to give up their culture and language.

"We were told to act more Danish, to speak Danish, if we wanted to be something," Nadja Arnaaraq Kreutzmann, a Nuuk resident, recently told Reuters.

From sewing national costumes to making jewelry to carving animal tusks, Inuit people in Greenland are finding ways to continue traditional practices.

"I'm concerned if we do not give the old traditions to younger people, it'll die out within 35 years," Greenlander Vera Mølgaard told National Geographic.

Qupanuk Olsen, a new member of Greenland's Parliament, has spent over five years gaining more than 300,000 Instagram followers by highlighting the country's food and traditions.

Some estimates put Greenland's Lutheran population at 90%, heavily influenced by Hans Egede, the missionary who came to the island in 1721. His statue stands in Nuuk, and some want it removed, saying it's a symbol of the start of colonization, the AP reported.

Many Greenlanders incorporate traditional religious practices into their services, Stenbaek said. They also sing hymns in Greenlandic, she said.

The city's architecture is Scandinavian, but its artwork incorporates Inuit tales, according to Lonely Planet. That duality is Nuuk in a nutshell.

"It's very much, in many ways, like a modern Scandinavian city," Stenbaek said. "And at the same time, the Greenlandic culture, the traditional culture, is still there."

There are plenty of cafés, restaurants, and shopping for residents and tourists to visit.

Small settlements remain along the west and east coasts, Stenbaek said. Some have fewer than 100 people.

"They live very much like they would have lived 100 years ago," Stenbaek said. That means relying on fishing and other traditional knowledge to survive.

In the more remote areas of the country, it's not always easy to get from place to place.

"If you have to go from settlement to settlement, it's either by boat or dog sleigh or skiing," Stenbaek said.

If the water is too icy for boats, Greenlanders might have to jump in a helicopter. There are dog sled races in Uummannaq, but it's also a practical mode of transportation in the snowy weather. The same goes for snowmobiles.

Far north regions experience polar nights in the winter, when the sun doesn't rise above the horizon. The opposite happens in the summer, when Greenland gets nonstop daylight for a couple of months.

Both are significant to Greenlanders.

Since the sun is not visible in the winter, when spring comes it brings life back," photographer Inuuteq Storch told The Guardian in 2024. "That time of total darkness is very spiritual."

Greenland is a maritime culture, according to Stenbaek. "Everything depends on ice and water," she said.

In some parts of the country, winters can last through April. The temperatures can be frigid, with some regions getting down to -30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Summers in northern towns are still chilly, averaging around 41 degrees Fahrenheit, per The Guardian. Temperatures are getting warmer, though.

Greenland has a very literary culture, Stenbaek said. "It's an old tradition that goes back 100 years," she said. It's long been a good way to pass a polar night. Local authors are published in both Greenlandic and Danish.

There are plenty of other types of Greenlandic art, too, including theater, sculpture, and music.

"Greenlanders are very artistic," Stenbaek said.

Plenty of Greenlanders' pastimes involve braving the cold.

"Many of them are connected directly to nature, like fishing, hunting, skiing," Stenbaek said.

The snowy landscape and arctic waters surrounding the island are habitats for musk ox, reindeer, seals, polar bears, whales, and dozens of bird species.

Berries, flowers, and cottongrass also grow in some parts of the country.

Sled dogs aren't just companions. They're often working animals, and have a long history of surviving alongside humans. Greenland's first dogs arrived with the Thule people hundreds of years ago.

The husky-like dogs have thick coats, muscular bodies for pulling sleds, and a digestive system suited to high-fat diets, as reported by Newsweek.

Some dog sled races ban the use of other breeds, according to the Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation.

Long before there were grocery stores in Greenland, locals survived by hunting and fishing. Since the island doesn't have a lot of plant life, they got their vitamin C from whale skin, The New York Times reported.

Even today, there isn't much farming in Greenland, though people do raise sheep in the south.

While supermarkets sell imported food, like milk and vegetables, they'll also stock local fare, including fish, seal, and whale. Some Greenlanders also supplement their shopping by hunting reindeer, ox, and other animals.

"In Greenland, we have the world's wildest kitchen," chef Inunnguaq Hegelund recently told NPR.

As the planet heats up, Greenland has started to melt. Its glaciers are shrinking, and the permafrost is disappearing. In 2016, researchers found that the Greenland ice sheet was losing the equivalent of 110 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of water each year.

"It had an influence on roads and airports and houses when all of a sudden the earth starts to unfreeze," Stenbaek said.

It's started to change animals' migration patterns, and polar bears have had to adapt to a new way of hunting without sea ice.

The US National Science Foundation has been studying Greenland's ice sheet for decades.

The country's location also makes it the perfect location to obtain ice cores, test cold-weather engineering, monitor climate change, and study the elusive Greenland shark.

Over the years, Greenland has become increasingly independent from Denmark. In 2008, it voted for a referendum granting them more autonomy. Many want to go even further and become completely independent from the Danish kingdom.

About 80% of Greenlanders support the move, according to recent polling. Yet one longtime backer of the movement has recently become a bit more hesitant.

Aqqaluk Lynge is the former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, a nongovernmental organization representing Inuit people in several countries. He recently told NPR that he now supports Greenland staying tied to Denmark because "if Greenland secedes from Denmark, it will be taken by United States."

"This is surprising because Aqqaluk used to be head of much of the independence movement," Stenbaek said.

Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to buy Greenland. In a recent speech to the US Congress, he said that if Greenland chose to join, "we welcome you into the United States of America."

It may be one of the reasons the Democratic party, which advocates for a slow approach to independence, won in recent elections, Stenbaek said. The majority of Greenlanders, 85%, according to a recent opinion poll, don't want to become part of the US.

"Greenlanders want to remain Greenlandic," Stenbaek said.

She said she thought it was important for Greenland to strengthen connections with other countries, Canada in particular. They have a lot in common in terms of environmental concerns and large Inuit populations, she said.

"Both are Arctic countries," she said. "They would be quite strong."

In 1948, Kim Il Sung came to power and served as the country's ruler until his death in 1994.

Japan colonized the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945. Kim Il Sung was born in 1912, and his father was later jailed for his activism for independence. Visiting his beaten and bruised father in prison sparked an anti-Japanese zeal in Kim Il Sung, according to his memoir, quoted in "Becoming King Jung Un."

Both of his parents died young, his father at 31 and his mother at 40.

In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, a region of China. Kim Il Sung led Chinese and Korean guerilla fighters in killing Japanese police and soldiers. He and his group then made their way to the Soviet Union in 1940 as pressure from the Japanese troops increased.

There, he received military training and became captain of a Red Army brigade.

Kim Jong Suk was in her late teens when she met up with Kim Il Sung in Manchuria in 1935. First helping in the kitchens, she became a fighter, and Kim Il Sung credited her with saving his life in his memoir. The two married in the early 1940s.

Much about their lives together at this point is unknown. "The records are sort of foggy," Madden said.

The couple was still in the Soviet Union at the time. Later, officials would alter Kim Jong Il's birth to a year later, to match more closely with his father's, 1912.

The Soviet Union and the US divided the Korean peninsula in two in 1945. Despite fierce competition for the role, Kim Il Sung became the leader of the northern portion with the help of the Soviet Union.

Three years later, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was established.

The cause was an ectopic pregnancy, according to Kim Il Sung's memoir.

Kim Il Sung's memoir contributed to some of the myth-making around Kim Jong Suk. Not only did she save his life, she sacrificed her hair to use as insulation for his boots.

It was important that she also be seen as nurturing, Pak said: "She supported her husband, the revolutionary."

In 1950, North Korea invaded its neighbor, quickly capturing Seoul. The war lasted three years, during which the US heavily bombed the northern part of the peninsula. It ended with an armistice but no peace treaty.

Though the peninsula remained split, Kim Il Sung declared it a victory for North Korea.

Two of Kim Il Sung's children, Kim Jong Il and Kyong Hui, moved to China during the Korean War, away from the fighting. A third child, Kim Man Il, drowned in 1947.

During the war, Kim Il Sung married Kim Song Ae, whom he began an affair with during his first marriage. The couple eventually had at least two sons.

"It's got to be devastating trauma" for the siblings to return after the war ends to find a new family, Madden said.

As Kim Il Sung continued his rule in the 1950s, he pushed his idea of juche, an ideology of Korean socialism that explained away difficult living conditions as necessary for creating a great nation.

He became part paternal authority figure, part Santa Claus, with the power to both punish and reward.

"After all, without Kim Il Sung, they as a nation and as a people would not exist, which schoolchildren learned in their textbooks and through lectures about their 'father's' heroic deeds and adventures," according to "Becoming Kim Jong Un."

Given his mythological status, it was unclear who would rule the country next.

Initially, Kim Il Sung's younger brother, Kim Yong Ju, seemed a potential candidate for succession in the late 1960s. His children from his second marriage may have also had a claim to the position.

By the late 1970s, though, Kim Il Sung had chosen his son Kim Jong Il as the country's next leader. While Kim Jong Il lacked his father's military background and force of personality, he had already secured leadership positions by that time.

"Kim Jong Il's very ambitious," Madden said. "He's got axes to grind." That included conflict with his stepmother and half-siblings. He used his clout to have his half-brother Pyong Il sent to a distant post.

With his storied history as a guerilla fighter and decades to build up his deified image, Kim Il Sung was a tough act to follow. "Kim Jong Il did not have those credentials, and they had to make things up for him," Pak said.

According to legend, a shining star appeared in the sky on the day Kim Jong Il was born. He could walk and talk by the time he was 2 months old. As a kindergartener, he understood military tactics.

One of Jong Il's earliest posts was cultural arts director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. A fan of James Bond and Elizabeth Taylor, he parlayed his interest in filmmaking into a way to feed the mystique around his father and his legacy.

He was also known as a partier and womanizer, according to "Becoming Kim Jong Un."

North Korea spent years isolated from other countries, with a declining economy and a cowed population. "Their tools were coercion, violence, repression, and propaganda to create a culture of fear," Pak wrote of the Kim family.

By 1994, the Soviet Union had recently collapsed, so Kim Jong Il had also lost his father's biggest ally. He saw nuclear weapons as the key to holding onto power. In 2006, the country announced its first nuclear test.

While Jong Il didn't seem to mind the spotlight, he kept his private life under wraps. His wives and domestic partners were hidden in lavish homes around Pyongyang.

He had children with Song Hye Rim, Kim Young Sook, and Ko Young Hui.

"Having multiple wives and children would have undermined Kim Jong Il's own political leadership succession in North Korea," Madden said.

His mother, Song Hae Rim, was a North Korean actor who divorced a novelist before having a child with Kim Jong Il in 1971.

Jong Il was worried his father would disapprove of Song Hae Rim, who was born in South Korea, and his son. He kept them isolated but spoiled Jong Nam with foreign comics and TV shows, which were severely restricted to other North Korean residents.

In 1978, Jong Nam started going to school in Moscow and then Geneva. He spent a decade getting an education outside of North Korea.

Ko Yong Hui was an actress who was born in Japan in 1952. When she was a child, her family moved to Pyongyang as part of the country's program to bring back Koreans who lived and worked in Japan.

"Her connection to Japan is not something that's acknowledged" by the leadership, Pak said. "The Korean-Japanese history goes back to the colonial period, and it's a painful period for Korea."

In the 1970s, Ko Yong Hui was a dancer with the Mansudae Art Troupe when she met Kim Jong Il. They had their first child together in 1981, a son named Kim Jong Chol.

Soon after, his brother, Kim Jong Un, was born. (The exact year of his birth isn't clear.) Sister Kim Yo Jong followed in 1987.

In 2011, Kim Jong Chol was reportedly seen in Singapore at an Eric Clapton concert. Madden said he's more artistic and sensitive than Kim Jong Un. "He's younger than his brother, but his personality is so headstrong and charismatic," he said of Jong Un.

The siblings went to school in Switzerland and seemed to grow close during their time away from North Korea.

Ko Yong Suk, Kong Young Hui's sister, took care of Kim Jong Un during his time in Switzerland.

"We lived in a normal house and acted like a normal family," she told The Washington Post in 2016. During school holidays, they would go to the French Riviera or the Alps. Back home in North Korea, they stayed at their family's luxury homes or traveled to a private resort on the country's eastern coast.

In 1998, Ko Yong Suk and her husband defected to the US.

Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Chol were both older than Kim Jong Un, leading some analysts to speculate they were next in line for succession.

In some ways, Jong Nam lived a lifestyle similar to his father's, with a rowdy social life. However, Kim Jong Il may have worried that his son was too Westernized. In 2001, Jong Nam reportedly used a fake passport to try and go to Tokyo Disneyland.

"The first son had been outside North Korea for a long time, and so you can imagine that he would not have the networks or the connections" necessary to run the country, Pak said.

It's not clear if Jong Chol was passed over or took himself out of the running to be leader. "You need to have some strength and personality if you want to take that title," Madden said. "And Jong Chol didn't have that."

In contrast, Kim Jong Un seemed like his father in appearance and demeanor, Madden said.

"She was a very prominent North Korean elite," Madden said. She had several roles in the important Workers' Party of Korea and became a general in the Korean People's Army.

Though he was once seen as having a powerful role in the government and possibly mentoring Kim Jong Un, Jang Song Thaek was accused of corruption in 2013, according to The BBC.

A military tribunal ruled that Kim Jong Un's uncle had attempted to overthrow the state, and he was executed by an antiaircraft gun soon after.

In 2017, two women smeared a nerve agent, VX, on Jong Nam's face at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Jong Nam quickly died from exposure to the lethal substance. The woman said they thought it was part of a prank and were later released.

In 2018, the US State Department accused North Korea of being behind the attack. North Korea has denied any involvement.

What role the North Korean leader potentially had in his brother's death is unclear.

"There are definitely people in KJU's ear who would be stoking tension between his brother," Madden said.

Kim Han Sol spent most of his childhood in Macau, China.

He periodically gave interviews. In 2012, the teenager said, "I've always dreamed that one day I would go back and make things better, and make things easier for the people back there."

In the 2017 video, Han Sol said he was with his mother and sister. The video was edited but ended with Jung Nam's son saying, "We hope this gets better soon."

"Kim Yo Jong has unfettered access to her brother," Madden said.

Her role has expanded in recent years beyond promoting Kim Jong Un's image to include acting as a political advisor and becoming involved with the military.

"She's kind of an attack dog," Pak said. "She says nasty things about the South Korean president and South Korea and about the US."

Kim Yo Jong appears to have two young children, who may one day play a role in a future leader's cabinet.

"I would anticipate the sister's children being supporters," Pak said. "But their place in the inner circle is completely dependent on how much they show their loyalty to the leader," she added.

Ri Sol Ju was born in 1989. She's played a bit of a first-lady role, attending summits and delegations alongside her husband.

"He can present her as a vision of what North Korean motherhood or womanhood should be," Pak said. "She's supportive. She's pretty. She's dressed in a very modern way and in a non-threatening way."

More recently, she's been less in the public eye. Reports state that she has three children with Kim Jong Un. They were born in 2010, 2013 and 2017, according to reports.

When basketball player Dennis Rodman visited Pyongyang in 2013, he met one of Kim Jong Un's children, a daughter named Ju Ae. More recently, Ju Ae, now a teenager, has been photographed at events with her father.

"If we're looking at succession, you would want to craft that narrative of somebody who is devoted and committed to advancing and possessing a nuclear weapon program, that has the luster of revolution, that the revolutionary blood is coursing through her veins," Pak said.

She added that it's impossible to know if Kim Ju Ae really is being considered as the country's future leader.

"She's definitely had protocol lessons," Madden said, from comportment to how to shake hands with officials. "I'd say her mom and her aunt Kim Yo Jong would definitely be involved in that stuff."

Whether or not it's Ju Ae who inherits the title, her presence is meant to cement the notion that there will be a fourth-generation leader from the Kim family, Madden said.