Celtic ruins on Skellig Michael, Ireland, with Little Skellig shown in the distance; photo by James P. Blair, 1989

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a virtual visit to the Emerald Isle. Meet Clonycavan Man, eerily preserved in an Irish peat bog for almost 2,000 years, right down to his pompadour. Then explore the Celtic realm from its beginnings to modern day worshippers. Wrap up with a trio of Celtic music styles and a quiz on Ireland's capital, Dublin; if you answer all the questions correctly then the luck of the Irish is with you...

• 2007 September--National Geographic magazine. Tales From the Bog. 80-93. Bog bodies have been found all over northern Europe, including in Ireland. Read about Clonycavan Man, found in 2003, who may have been a murder victim or ritual sacrifice. Karen E. Lange explores the mystery surrounding these bodies; photos by Robert Clark.
• 2006 March--National Geographic magazine. Celt Appeal. 74-95. Tom O'Neill reports on a culture that once seemed destined for extinction, but has somehow held on and even flourished: "By clinging to the fringes, geographically and culturally, Celts refused to vanish." Photos by Jim Richardson.

 
Former labor camp near Chara, Stanovoy Khrebet, Siberia; Steve Raymer, 1988

The Way Back, a film co-produced by National Geographic Entertainment, is in theaters now and recounts the story of Siberian gulag prisoners attempting a 4,000 mile trek to freedom across a 1940s-era landscape. See how Siberia has changed in the intervening decades with a couple of hitchhikers who travel 6,000 miles from Vladivostok to Moscow, and at a remote oil outpost that plenty of Russians would like to call home. Finally, a look at Siberia twenty years ago during the waning days of the gulag system.

• 2008 June/July—National Geographic Adventure magazine. 6,000 Miles to Moscow. 64-72, 106-109. McKenzie Funk chronicles a long road trip: "Throat singers, track suits, circus acts, Buddhist prophecies, and car shepherds—a trip across the newly opened Trans-Siberian highway is a glimpse at globalization gone wild." Photos by Aaron Huey.
• 2008 June—National Geographic magazine. Send Me to Siberia: Oil Transforms a Russian Outpost. 60-85. It is boom times in Siberia, with oil revenues funding airports, schools, and lavish salaries. Paul Starobin investigates whether the boom is here to stay. Photos by Gerd Ludwig.

Recovered artifacts bear witness to lives and buildings lost on September 11, 2001. Photos: Ira Block; Source: National September 11 Memorial & Museum

If every object tells a story, the ones displayed here speak of thousands with a common ending: a Georgia man whose wife slipped him a love note 1 for his trip to New York City; a woman with prayer beads 2 at work on the 98th fl oor of the World Trade Center; a husband who always carried a two-dollar bill 3 to remind him how lucky he was to have met his second wife. Collected for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, the objects tell of love, faith (Bible pages fused to metal 4), lifestyles (a Mercedes key 5 and a golf ball 6), and a workday (computer keyboard 7) that came to a tragic end in 2001. The museum, set to open in September 2012, has some 3,000 artifacts so far, hundreds of them bestowed by relatives of those who perished. A ladies’ shoe 8 is one of several objects here that belong to survivors. The four-inch heels carried their owner down 62 fl oors, away from the crumbling south tower, and across the Manhattan Bridge to safety.

—Luna Shyr

Tsunami! A towering wall of water smashing all man creates is the general theme of this entertaining 60s-ish art piece from the National Geographic Image Collection. Truthfully, however, as soon as man began building cities, tsunamis began smashing them. Probably the earliest recorded tsunami struck the Biblical city of Ugarit mid second century B.C. Art by Pierre Mion/National Geographic Stock.

National Geographic's recent focus on water inspired me to write something about "water gone mad" and the efforts of several grantees seeking to understand the frequency of such events.

For most indigenous coastal populations a strong earthquake means one thing—it’s time to run for the hills. As reported by The New York Times most of the 3,000 residents of the fishing village of Tubul, Chile knew to make tracks to higher ground as soon as they felt the onset of a powerful earthquake .

• Click to see more uncommon cents.
  

Few inventors can claim credit for saving more than a million lives, but Nils Bohlin is one of them. Fifty  years ago the Volvo engineer modified an airplane device and came up with the three-point seat belt—one strap across the hips, one across the chest, both anchored to the same point on the car floor.

The 1787 Fugio cent (top) was the first coin authorized by the U.S. government. Four new "tails" for the 2009 penny will pay tribute to Abraham Lincoln's life.

They are buried behind cushions, spit out by parking meters, and cursed by cashiers, yet pennies, apparently, are still loved by Americans. Hence the Treasury is issuing four new designs to honor the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth.