It's been a year since the dramatic rescue of the 12 members of the junior football team and their coach from the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in Chiang Rai Province, Thailand. The rescue put a spotlight on spelunking and the adventures to be had underground. Caves have an almost primal appeal—they hold the secrets to our past and are mysterious in and of themselves. They are home to mini-ecosystems that are otherwise impossible above ground and are the last vestige of exploration.
Truly vibrant red was elusive for many years: until a mysterious dye was discovered in Mexico and how a crushed bug became a sign of wealth and status. Although scarlet is the colour of sin in the Old Testament, the ancient world’s elite was thirsty for red, a symbol of wealth and status. They spent fantastic sums searching for ever more vibrant hues, until Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors discovered an intoxicatingly saturated pigment in the great markets of Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. Made from the crushed-up cochineal insect, the mysterious dye launched Spain toward its eventual role as an economic superpower and became one of the New World’s primary exports, as a red craze descended on Europe. .
Life-size sculptures submerged underwater—accessible primarily to divers and snorkelers—are part tourist attraction, part ecological experiment in Jason deCaires Taylor's innovative art installations. "Instead of seeing the world as a hidden, endless resource that we can treat how we want, I tried to change our relationship to it and turn it into a more intimate space," says deCaires Taylor, a British environmentalist and sculptor.
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932–March 23, 2011) was a British-born American actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend.
