207 years ago today, Spain sold Florida to the United States as part of the Adams-Onis Treaty. It settled a standing border dispute between the two countries and was considered a triumph of American diplomacy. The cost was equivalent to $537.8 million in today’s dollars priced in gold, but was just 5 million Spanish dollars at the time. Spain had long rejected repeated American efforts to purchase Florida. But by 1818, Spain was facing a troubling colonial situation in which the cession of Florida made sense. READ how it happened… (1819)

An Indian teacher who has established more than 800 learning centers across India for children who have never attended school has been named the winner of the $1 million Global Teacher Prize from GEMS Education.

What started as a simple chair volleyball game at a senior living community in Belton, Texas, has grown into a meaningful intergenerational friendship.

The sporty seniors, who proudly call themselves “The Hit Squad,” regularly host friendly chair volleyball matches with members of the Lake Belton High School volleyball team.

What started as a simple chair volleyball game at a senior living community in Belton, Texas, has grown into a meaningful intergenerational friendship.

The sporty seniors, who proudly call themselves “The Hit Squad,” regularly host friendly chair volleyball matches with members of the Lake Belton High School volleyball team.

A four-week-old baby giraffe is becoming a social media sensation, thanks to his remarkable tuft of hair.

His new name, Eugene, chosen from public suggestions, has proven to be a perfect fit for the young giraffe’s charming personality.

Our partner Rob Brezsny, who has a new book out, Astrology Is Real: Revelations from My Life as an Oracle, provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How All of Creation Is Conspiring To Shower You with Blessings. (A free preview of the book is available here.)

198 years ago today, the first issue of the Cherokee Phoenix was published using the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah. Sequoyah, also known as George Gist, was a Cherokee polymath who was one of the few people in history from a pre-literate group who created the original written system for that group’s language. Just as Sequoyah’s Cherokee language is still in use, the Cherokee Phoenix is still in print today, nearly 200 years after its first publication. READ more about its origins… (1828)

For the first time in over 180 years, a giant tortoise population is once again walking the landscapes of Floreana Island—launching the largest restoration effort ever undertaken on the Galápagos islands.

Scientists called “astonishing” the first indisputable evidence of a new species of Spinosaurus found in over a century—uncovered in a remote area of the Sahara Desert.

In what was noted to be a bit of a reversal of traditional roles, a dog was rescued by mountaineers after spending a frigid night in a hollow below a mountaintop.

Five dogs and four hikers were approaching the summit of Fionn Bheinn in the Scottish Highlands near Achnasheen recently, when their dogs fell through a “cornice,” a term for a large buildup of snow on the edge of a cliff face or overhanging ledge.

From Thailand comes a story that’s pure Hollywood: police going undercover as festival lion dancers to nab a suspected art thief.

Dressed as the rump and head of a large Asian lion costume during Lunar New Year festivities, the police sprang upon the suspect and took him into custody, phone cameras mercifully recorded.

14 years ago today, a team of Russian botanists successfully regenerated 36 specimens of Silene stenophylla from frozen samples of the plant’s fruit buried in the Russian permafrost between 40 and 60,000 years ago by squirrels. Surpassing the previous record for regeneration by more than 10 times, placental cells extracted from the frozen fruit were radiocarbon dated to 29,800 years BCE. READ what the plant looked like after it was grown… (2012)