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National Geographic celebrates 125 years
  • A lion climbs a tree to sleep, in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth Park.
  • Seeking to capture the throng in Churchgate Station, Olson coached a local assistant through the laborious process needed to get this shot, because the perfect vantage point was closed to foreigners. “After four hours we had this picture—and a small victory over Indian bureaucracy.”
  • A single frame can transport us to one of our planet’s far-flung and beautiful places. In this one, stalactites and a sunbeam spotlight a swimmer in the Xkeken cenote, a natural well in the Yucatán thought by the Maya to lead to the underworld.
  • On Skye's Trotternish Peninsula, basalt pinnacles loom over the Sound of Raasay. Rising from the debris of an ancient landslide, they bear witness to the geologic upheavals that shaped these lands.
  • Floating on dreams and whispers, girls from a West Bank village cool off in the salt-laden waters of the Dead Sea. With its main tributary, the Jordan, at less than a tenth of its former volume, the inland sea has dropped some 70 feet since 1978.
  • Under the black clouds of burning oil fields during the Gulf War, camels forage desperately for shrubs and water in southern Kuwait. Front-line photographs of regions ravaged by human strife can also illuminate war’s environmental cost.
  • Noor Nisa, about 18, was pregnant, and her water had just broken. Her husband was determined to get her to the hospital, but his car broke down, and he went to find another vehicle. The photographer ended up taking Noor Nisa, her mother and her husband to the hospital, where she gave birth to a baby girl.  
  • A single frame can transport us to one of our planet’s far-flung and beautiful places. In this one, stalactites and a sunbeam spotlight a swimmer in the Xkeken cenote, a natural well in the Yucatán thought by the Maya to lead to the underworld.
  • Destined to melt, an 800-pound chunk of ice glowed in the moonlight. It washed up in a lagoon created by a receding glacier, part of a worldwide shrinkage of glacial ice.
  • A lion pushes through a dust storm in Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, South Africa. The weather had worsened to the point that it didn’t notice the photographer's approach. "I shot three rolls of him and just one picture turned out—serendipity," says photographer Chris Johns.
  • Its image mirrored in icy water, a polar bear travels submerged—a tactic often used to surprise prey. Scientists fear global warming could drive bears to extinction sometime this century.

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