Plus: The secret life of a Vestal Virgin; life on a polar volcano; a 100,000-year-old forest that shouldn't exist.
| Extraordinary people, discoveries, and places | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY DEA/ALBUM | | | The secret (and sacred) lives of ancient Rome's Vestal Virgins | | Chosen as young girls, these priestesses were protectors of the city's sacred flame, keepers of divine secrets, and were believed to possess magical powers. Remarkably, they were also allowed rights and privileges unavailable to other women in Rome—rights that came with a steep price. | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY O. LOUIS MAZZATENTA | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY ACACIA JOHNSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC | | | Life is thriving on this eerie polar volcano | | Deception Island has erupted several times since humans first set foot here around 1820. While life here may seem bleak and inhospitable, it's home to a diverse array of species that National Geographic has been photographing for decades. | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY OCTAVIO ABURTO | | | This mangrove forest shouldn't be here | | Usually tethered to narrow zones on coasts, somehow these trees were found dozens of feet above current sea level and above a set of waterfalls. What's even more remarkable: Their ancestors arrived at this spot about 100,000 years ago. | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY CHARLIE HAMILTON JAMES | | | Think 'birdbrain' is an insult? Think again. | | Until this century, birds (and most mammals) were thought to be robotic simpletons, capable only of reacting instinctively to things that happened to them. Now we know better: from crows that give gifts, to pigeons that can distinguish paintings by Monet and Picasso, and chickens that can do basic math and show signs of empathy. | | | |
 | | Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of the richest and most powerful Roman citizens ... Yet he nearly lost it all, his life included, when he was accused of being too intimate with Licinia, a Vestal Virgin. He was brought to trial, where his true motives emerged. | | READ ON: The secret (and sacred) lives of ancient Rome's Vestal Virgins | | |
 | | COURTESY NASA | | | See how a massive supernova released the building blocks of life | | Supernova remnants—what's left over when a star explodes—contain the essential elements for life. That's why scientists have been studying supernovae, such as a well-known one called Cassiopeia A. This visualization by NASA shows how that explosion, thought to have occurred in 1680, may have happened. | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS DAVIS, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE | | | It was a toxic wasteland. Now it's a national park. | | Over the past 16 years, a former junkyard near the Cuyahoga River was transformed from a Superfund site into a wetland teeming with birds and plants. It's the most extensive and expensive of the hundreds of ongoing reclamation and rehabilitation projects overseen by the National Park Service. | | | |
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