Richard Rude Junior of the United States, competes on his way to win the UCI MTB Enduro Men Elite, Mountain Bike World Championship, Monday, September 1, 2025, in Fiesch, Switzerland. (Photo by Maxime Schmid/Keystone via AP Photo)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)

Austrian artist Erwin Wurm (R) stands next to an extra of his participation sculpture “Hose lueften, Haende hoch” (air out pants, hands high) at the garden of the Staedel Museum, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 06 May 2014. The series “Wurm: One Minute Sculptures” include painted or written instructions tell the person what they have to do and where for 60 seconds. The exhibition runs from 07 May to 13 July. (Photo by Arne Dedert/EPA)

A broken picture frame is left in the tsunami-hit Arahama area, three months and two days after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami on June 13, 2011 in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. Japanese government has been struggling to deal with the earthquake and tsunami as well as the troubled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The fear on outbreak of virus infectious disease are mounting due to the humid rainy season on the corner and delay of the clearing the debris. (Photo by Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images)

“Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German-born rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and, subsequently, the United States”. – Wikipedia

Photo: German-born American engineer Dr. Wernher von Braun with a model of the Explorer orbiting space satellite which he designed. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1958

In time for Halloween the Maniac Pumpkin Carvers, creative art studio, held the Cotton Candy Machine workshop in Brooklyn, N.Y., demonstrating techniques and tools to create intricate pumpkin art. Maniac Pumpkin Carvers, which focuses on elevating the art of pumpkin carving, were a past winner of the Food Network's Halloween Wars. Their work has been displayed at MOMA, the Whitney Museum and Yankee Stadium. Here: A Tara Bonethrower pumpkin created by the Maniac Pumpkin Carvers at Cotton Candy Machine in Brooklyn, N.Y. on October 18, 2014. (Photo by Siemond Chan/Yahoo Finance)

Jean-François Leroy launched Visa Pour l’Image, the international photojournalism festival, in Perpignan in 1989. Before heading up the festival, Leroy was shooting reportage for the agency Sipa Press and also working for Photo-Reporter, Le Photographe, Photo-Revue and Photo Magazine. He is the chairman of the company Images Evidence. Photo: 2008 Visa d'or Feature: Brent Stirton. Conservation Rangers from an Anti-Poaching unit work with locals to evacuate the bodies of four Mountain Gorrillas killed in mysterious circumstances in the park, July 24, 2007, Virunga National Park, Eastern Congo. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Exclusive by Getty Images)

“The Net thrower”. The fisherman are conducting activities on Situgunung Lake. Photo location: Situgunung lake, Sukabumi, West Java, Indonesia. (Photo and caption by Dody Kusuma/National Geographic Photo Contest)