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June 2015

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Features

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Plutonic Love

For almost half his life, Alan Stern has been crazy about a cold and distant world. Now, they're finally going to meet

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Animal Magnetism

He's famous for getting dangerously close to his fearsome charges at his private wildlife sanctuary in South Africa. But what can the self-taught "lion whisperer" teach us about ethical conservation—and ourselves?

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Aftershock

The criminal conviction of Italian geologists for failing to predict a temblor has been overturned, but the shaky science of earthquake prediction is still on trial

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Gilded Colorado

When city slickers went looking for wild times in Rock Mountain National Park a century ago, they invented a new kind of American vacation

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Rocketeers

The space-age jet pack still takes our imaginations on a wild ride

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Dream State

The Kurds of Iraq, America's most important allies in the battle against ISIS, are closer than ever to fulfilling their hope of founding a new nation

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Napoleon's Last Charge

On the bicentennial of the most famous battle in world history, a distinguished historian argues that Waterloo never should have been fought

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Discussion

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Phenomena

The Wheel, Re-Invented

The unusual history of summertime's great amusement

Phenomena

True West

A noted photographer goes back home on the range

Phenomena

Face Time

The most distinctive human feature? It might be our chin

Phenomena

Did this Map Guide Columbus?

Researchers decipher a mystifying 15th-century document

Phenomena

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The government of Dubai is taking this abstract structure to the next level