Month: November 2016

When setting out to write, it’s hard not to compare yourself to those classic authors whose work has endured for hundreds of years. Don’t let the thought of competing with Dickens or Austen leave you paralyzed, though. Harness their writing habits and tips to further your own work. Here are 15 tips you can take away from the famous authors of yesteryear, in honor of National Novel Writing Month:

1. KEEP YOURSELF MOTIVATED BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY // FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

The 18th century poet and playwright reportedly had an ingeniously weird way of keeping himself motivated at his writing desk. He kept a bunch of rotting apples in his drawer, claiming they sparked creativity. The writer definitely thrived on discomfort. Since he wrote at night, he would take extreme measures to keep himself awake, including sticking his feet into tubs of cold water.

2. IGNORE THE HATERS // EZRA POUND

Pound may have been giving advice to aspiring poets in this quote from 1913, though his words apply to writers of all stripes: “Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work.”

3. DON’T WAIT AROUND FOR INSPIRATION // JACK LONDON

“Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it,” the author advised in a guidebook for aspiring writers. His other piece of advice? Make it a habit. “Set yourself a ‘stint,’ and see that you do that ‘stint’ each day,” he wrote.

4. DON’T GET TIED DOWN BY LESSER PURSUITS // ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

Women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton once wrote to publisher and fellow suffragette Susan B. Anthony complaining that Anthony hadn’t written to her in a while. She joked, “Where are you, Susan, and what are you doing? Your silence is truly appalling. Are you dead or married?” Stanton herself was married with seven children, so she knew what she was talking about. Even if you aren’t married, it’s important not to let your creative pursuits disappear under the weight of your other responsibilities.

5. FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY // FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

In a series of 1882 letters to another writer, the philosopher—who also wrote poetry throughout his life—recommended that writers know where their work is going to go before they sit down to write. “First, one must determine precisely ‘what-and-what do I wish to say and present,’ before you may write,” he told her. “Writing must be mimicry.”

6. DON’T WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT YOUR “PROCESS” // LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

“Dear Sir,” Louisa May Alcott began in a letter to a fan and aspiring writer. “I never copy or ‘polish’ so I have no old manuscripts to send you; and if I had it would be of little use, for one person’s method is no rule for another. Each must work in his own way; and the only drill needed is to keep writing and profit by criticism.” Whatever your writing habits, she continued, write plainly and avoid fanciful language: “Young people use too many adjectives and try to ‘write fine.’ The strongest, simplest words are best, and no foreign ones if it can be helped.”

7. LOCK YOURSELF AWAY UNTIL YOU FINISH // VICTOR HUGO

Sometimes, we all need to shut ourselves in to get down to work, as even the most successful writers would tell you. If you’re having trouble getting started, you’ve just got to give yourself no other options. When he was writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo pursued this artistic isolation in a particularly extreme fashion. He had a servant hide all his clothes and wore only a full-length knitted shawl around his body so that he couldn’t go outside, no matter how much he was tempted to. Presumably it deterred anyone from visiting, too. He successfully cranked out the novel in six months.

8. DON’T WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT ORIGINALITY // MARK TWAIN

While reading his friend Helen Keller’s biography in 1903, author Mark Twain was shocked to hear of an incident more than a decade prior (when she was 11) when she had been accused of plagiarism in one of her short stories. In a letter to her, he told her not to worry too much about echoing the works of other writers. “The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism,” he declared. “For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.” The lesson here? Prioritize your language.

9. KEEP YOUR DIALOGUE NATURAL // JANE AUSTEN

In 1814, Jane Austen’s niece, Anna Austen, was writing a novel that she naturally sent along to her Aunt Jane for editing notes. “I do not like a lover speaking in the 3rd person,” she wrote. “I think it not natural.” However, Austen maintained that the author knows best, even over the advice of a famous writer like herself. “If you think differently,” she wrote, “you need not mind me.”

10. READ YOUR IDOLS // H.P. LOVECRAFT

In 1920, the horror writer advised young writers on the importance of careful reading of literary masters: “No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce. In these masterpieces one may find that unbroken sequence and linkage of incident and result which mark the ideal tale.”

11. TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS // CHARLOTTE BRONTE

In reply to a critical review of her work, Charlotte Brontë observed that she could not predict what her next book would be like until she had written it. “When authors write best, or, at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems to waken in them which becomes their master—which will have its way —putting out of view all behests but its own, dictating certain words, and insisting on their being used, whether vehement or measured in their nature, new moulding characters, giving unthought of turns to incidents, rejecting carefully elaborated old ideas, and suddenly creating and adopting new ones.” Basically, there’s no point in trying to counteract your writerly muse.

12. DON’T BE LONG-WINDED // D.H. LAWRENCE

In a 1906 letter to his future fiancé, Louie Burrows, the then-21-year-old D.H. Lawrence haughtily panned an essay she wrote, giving his ladyfriend a few tips on tightening up her prose. “Do be careful of your adjectives—do try and be terse, there is so much more force in a rapid style that will not be hampered by superfluous details,” he wrote. “Just look at your piece and see how many three lined sentences could be comfortably expressed in one line.” Despite the fact that he insulted her writing as wordy “like most girl writers,” four years later, the two would be engaged. (They cancelled the pending wedding 14 months later.)

13. WRITE BELIEVABLY (AT LEAST TO YOU) // JOSEPH CONRAD

“In truth every novelist must begin by creating for himself a world, great or little, in which he can honestly believe,” Joseph Conrad wrote in 1905. “This world cannot be made otherwise than in his own image: it is fated to remain individual and a little mysterious, and yet it must resemble something already familiar to the experience, the thoughts and the sensations of his readers.”

14. APPRECIATE THE EXPERIENCE // THOMAS JEFFERSON

The writer of some of America’s most important founding documents had several general rules for living, which he documented in a letter to his granddaughter in 1783. One of them every writer should take to heart: “Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.” Writing a book of any length is hard work, but for true writers, it’s also a pleasure. Jefferson knew what he was talking about, too. He sat down at his writing desk every day from sunrise until 1 p.m. answering letters to friends, scholars, political colleagues, and admirers, sending off almost 20,000 missives throughout his life.

15. DON’T COMPARE YOURSELF TO ANYONE ELSE // RILKE

It can be crippling to think about all the authors who are more successful, more well-known, and who you may perceive as more talented than you. But as Rainier Maria Rilke wrote to a young admirer in 1903 (later collected in the book Letters to a Young Poet), such comparisons are useless to you as an artist. “You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you—no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.”

If you’re working on the next Great American Novel, you don’t have time to waste shopping around for car insurance. Instead, get a quote from GEICO. In just a few minutes, their friendly customer service team can help you find excellent coverage that could save you money. (How’s that for a happy ending?)

John Lennon and Paul McCartney are one of the most famous—if not the most famous—songwriting duos of all time. But their magical chemistry turned into bitter resentment when The Beatles disbanded in 1970. In an undated letter signed from John and Yoko Ono to Paul and his wife Linda, that post-breakup animosity is on full display. Now NME reports that the cringeworthy piece of music history is currently up for bid.

The typed letter, which includes several handwritten annotations from John, is believed to date back to 1971, around the time when John and Yoko moved to New York. It was written in response to a previous letter from Linda, with John writing, “I was reading your letter and wondering what middle-aged cranky Beatle fan wrote it.”

The letter features some colorful language, with John making digs at both Paul and Linda. Despite the salty tone, John insists that he doesn’t resent Paul, as you can see in the passage below:

“Don’t give me that Aunty Gin shit about ‘in five years I’ll look back as a different person’—don’t you see that’s what’s happening NOW!—If I only knew THEN what I know NOW—you seemed to have missed that point….

Excuse me if I use ‘Beatle Space’ to talk about whatever I want—obviously if they keep asking Beatle questions—I’ll answer them—and get as much John and Yoko Space as I can—they ask me about Paul and I answer—I know some of it gets personal—but whether you believe it or not I try and answer straight—and the bits they use are obviously the juicy bits—I don’t resent your husband—I’m sorry for him. I know the Beatles are ‘quite nice people’—I’m one of them—they’re also just as big bastards as anyone else—so get off your high horse!—by the way—we’ve had more intelligent interest in our new activities in one year than we had throughout the Beatle era.”

He ended the letter on the most conciliatory note possible, writing, “inspite of it all love to you both.” But he couldn’t resist adding a post-script calling them out for not addressing their letters to Yoko as well as himself (as he had specifically addressed his letter “Dear Linda and Paul”).

The letter is now up for auction through RR Auction in Boston. Bidding is currently above $4000, with the final selling price expected to exceed $20,000 by the time the online auction closes on November 17.

[h/t NME]

In July 2015, Carole Desforges spotted a large, weird creature prowling around the lawn near her home in Plymouth in southwestern England. She thought it was a fox at first, but after a second glance, decided it was much too big, with long, cat-like legs that made it seem more like a leopard or a panther. And it was all black, unlike the foxes native to the region, which are generally red. Carole managed to snap a few shots of the creature before it skulked away. Friends suggested it might be a puma or a lynx.

She wasn’t the first Briton to behold such a sight. Far from it, in fact.

Stories of large felines roaming the countryside have long permeated the culture of rural England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. In his book Rural Rides, written in the 1820s, author William Cobbett wrote about spotting a cat that was “as big as a middle-sized spaniel dog” near the ruins of the Waverley Abbey in London, claiming it was hanging out inside a hollow elm. A few centuries before that, a medieval Welsh book talked about the Cath Palug (“Clawed Cat”), a black kitten who grows into a huge cat and stalks the Isle of Anglesey eating warriors—nine score of them, to be precise. And since the 1930s, the region of Buchan in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, has been home to many sightings of a beast described as a huge black panther. Throughout the centuries, they’ve been known by a few different names: phantom cats, mystery cats, Alien Big Cats or ABCs (referring to the fact that no such animal is native to the area), or British Big Cats (BBCs).

No one’s entirely sure whether these things are real or not, and as you might expect, there are more than a few theories out there. Some cryptozoologists take the “alien” in ABCs quite literally, positing that the cats come from another world and are linked to UFO sightings, while others insist that British big cats are the remnants of Ice Age fauna, having survived in small numbers, as living fossils, for thousands of years. Others, perhaps more reasonably, figure that the British big cats are nothing more than the progeny of escaped pets, as it was fashionable among wealthy people in the first half of the 20th century to keep exotic animals in private homes (that is, until the Dangerous Wild Animals Act banned this practice in Britain in 1976). A lot of people say they’re just stray dogs, and some similarly suggest that the phantom black dog of British folklore, which brings bad luck to anyone who crosses its path, has been conflated with the apocryphal big cats.

But the big cats crop up in modern times regularly, too. Reports of the Beast of Exmoor, described as a gray or black cat standing 4 to 6 feet tall and hunting livestock in the moorlands of Devon and Somerset, began in the ‘70s, and in 1983, a farmer in South Moulton said it was responsible for slashing the throats of more than 100 of his sheep. Other regions throughout England have come with their own phantom cats, most of which are black: The Beast of Burford, the Wildcat of Woodchester, the Fen Tiger of Cambridgeshire. In the Forest of Dean, near the Welsh border, the local legendary leopard is simply known as Boris.

There are so many reports of big cat sightings throughout the UK—about a thousand every year—that there’s even such a thing as the British Big Cat Society, a network of people across the UK who research, catalogue, and analyze stories—and possible evidence—of big cats in the area. “The BBCS enables the public to report their sightings and Big Cat ‘incidents’ to an ‘understanding ear,’” its website explains, “and we can react appropriately where necessary.”

Then there’s Danny Nineham, who works solo with just his “legs and brains,” to analyze cat sightings for various police forces, collecting photos (and feline skulls); he reports that about 90 percent of the BBC sightings are black cats. However, “that’s because black stands out,” Nineham says in an interview on the Scottish Big Cat Trust website. “It’s conspicuous out in the fields, whereas brown blends in more.” In a 2013 interview with the Welsh newspaper Daily Post, Nineham said he received reports of big cat sightings every single day, from people across the country.

Carcasses of animals displaying bite marks similar to those of large cats have also been showing up in British forests for decades. At the Royal Agricultural University in Gloucester, an animal scientist named Dr. Andrew Hemmings has studied at least 20 such animal skeletons, with three of them bearing bite marks that could belong to a big cat. However, it’s hard to differentiate between bite marks left by a dog, badger, fox, or other carnivore and those left by an unknown species of cat whose teeth haven’t been studied. As such, none of the tests have been conclusive.

And speaking of carcasses, a few have turned up as possible culprits as well. A Canadian lynx was shot and killed in Devon in the early 1900s, and its teeth showed that it had spent a significant amount of time living in captivity. Much later, in 1980, a puma was captured in Inverness-shire, Scotland, after sightings spanning several years; it was sent to a zoo for the rest of its life, where it was found to be reasonably docile (it enjoyed being tickled). As well, the skull of a leopard was discovered by a young boy on Scotland’s Bodmin Moor in the 1990s. It was at first thought to be evidence of the terrible Beast of Bodmin, but the Natural History Museum in London determined that it’d been discarded on the moor after being imported to the UK as part of a leopard skin rug.

Despite all of these consistent sightings, it’s apparently been difficult get a clear photo of any of the elusive black kitties. In 2000, an 11-year-old boy had perhaps the closest encounter with one so far, when he was left with long scratches on his face after a juvenile “tiger-like” animal attacked him as he played in a field with his brother in Trellech, Monmouthshire. The boy clashed with the creature after “following a black tail” into the grass, which he thought belonged to his pet cat, Sylvester, and got a faceful of claws for his trouble. Even a subsequent police search by helicopter with heat-seeking devices turned up no trace of the animal.

The British Isles do have a wild member of the cat family that some folks think are being mistaken for BBCs. The Scottish wildcat is found in the highlands in the northern half of Scotland and numbers only about 4000 at most; they’re elusive, living in underground dens and hollow trees. However, they don’t really match the descriptions of these phantom cats. Scottish wildcats aren’t much bigger than a house cat, and they’re certainly not anywhere near the size of the “panthers” and “leopards” that have been reported. They’re also not black—they’re more along the lines of a tabby on steroids.

Meanwhile, it should be said that the United Kingdom seems to have a significant problem with large felines escaping from zoos. Since the late 18th century, dozens of lynxes, caracals, panthers, and pumas have slunk out of their cages (and have mostly been apprehended or killed shortly thereafter).

The debate shows no signs of stopping, seeing as the big cat sightings haven’t either—whether they’re real beasts who’ve been terrorizing the sheep of the United Kingdom for centuries or are just campfire stories made up to scare British children.

Biological fieldwork can be grueling—and often dangerous. Countless researchers and support staff have died in the pursuit of knowledge that could protect vulnerable places and species, and enable people to live safer, healthier lives.

Journalist Richard Conniff, author of The Species Seekers, has compiled a “Wall of the Dead” on his blog to memorialize scientists, naturalists, and conservationists killed in the field. We’ve picked out just a handful of the dozens of names from that list. They are people whose passion and dedication to their profession ultimately cost them their lives. In some cases, they anticipated the risks. In others, they most definitely did not. Visit Conniff’s full list for a fascinating, and often somber, dive into the lives of these explorer-naturalists.

1. MARGARITA METALLINOU // ZAMBIA, 2015

Margarita Metallinou, a 29-year-old evolutionary biologist and herpetologist, had been working in Zambia’s Kafue National Park, studying the impacts of climate change on the area’s reptiles. While in the field with two colleagues one afternoon, she suddenly spotted an elephant charging toward them. Her scream warned the others, who were able to outrun the elephant. But Metallinou was trampled to death.

2. DIAN FOSSEY // RWANDA, 1985

Who killed Dian Fossey? The 53-year-old American primatologist studied and protected mountain gorillas on the Rwandan side of the border with a passionate love and ferocity that no one disputes earned her many enemies. Yet her 1985 murder in the Virunga Mountains remains unsolved more than 30 years later.

Fossey was known for confronting poachers, even going so far as to kidnap the child of a tribesman who had snatched a baby gorilla (both the child and gorilla were returned unharmed). One of Fossey’s student researchers and a former employee were ultimately charged with her murder. The student fled back to the United States; convicted in absentia by a Rwandan court after only a 40-minute trial, he has long insisted that he was a scapegoat. The tracker was later found hanged in his jail cell. But other theories emerged in the years following her death that cast suspicion on political elites involved in animal trafficking and those threatened by her opposition to ecotourism, which she feared would be detrimental to the endangered gorillas.

Fossey is often credited with bringing the plight of the mountain gorillas to the public. Through her research and engagement with media, she generated sympathy for gorillas and showed people that they were not the savage, violent beasts they’d been portrayed as, but curious, human-like creatures. Fossey’s legacy continues in the nonprofit conservation organization she founded, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. Three years after her murder, Fossey’s story was brought to the big screen in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver.

3. JOHN CASSIN // UNITED STATES, 1869

A leading 19th-century ornithologist, John Cassin described nearly 200 bird species, several of which bear his name. He authored several volumes on birds identified in his travels, from North America to Chile to Japan. Cassin was a methodical taxonomist, working tirelessly as curator of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. He died at 55—not due to some misadventure in the field, but from arsenic poisoning, the result of decades of handling bird skins preserved with the chemical.

4. SAFARI KAKULE // DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, 2009

In some places, conservation work is inherently dangerous. That’s certainly the case for the Congolese park rangers who protect endangered gorillas in Virunga National Park as violence flares endlessly around them. Since the 1994 Rwandan genocide prompted more than a million refugees to flee across the border and plunged the Congo into conflict, the park has been caught between armed groups seeking control of territory and generating revenue from deforestation, illegal crops, and poaching.

The rangers here do what’s been described as the most dangerous conservation job in the world: At least 140 have been killed in the past two decades, while hundreds more park staff and their families have been displaced. One of those killed was Safari Kakule, a young ranger who colleagues say showed the characteristic dedication of Virunga rangers determined to defend imperiled gorillas and other vulnerable wildlife despite low wages and constant danger.

In 2009, rebels attacked a ranger station in a section of the park that served as a refuge for 18 endangered eastern lowland gorillas. They killed the 33-year-old Kakule, shown here observing a male gorilla in the field the year before his death.

5. JEAN BAPTISTE AUGUSTE ETIENNE CHARCOT // ICELAND, 1936

Jean Baptiste Charcot left his career as a physician to become an oceanographer and polar explorer; this transition was made easier by the inheritance he had received from his father. At a time when interest in the polar regions was increasing, Charcot made several expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. He charted South Pole islands and led a series of summer expeditions to the Arctic. In September 1936, at age 69, he was shipwrecked off the coast of Iceland during a storm. Only one man survived; Charcot perished along with more than 30 others.

6. JOY ADAMSON // KENYA, 1980

Millions of fans know conservationist Joy Adamson from her 1960 bestselling memoir Born Free and its subsequent film adaptation. The book and film chronicle how Adamson and her game-warden husband, George, raised an orphaned lion cub at a Kenyan national park and eventually reintroduced it to the wild to save it from being removed to a zoo. The book and film helped shift public opinion about lions from dangerous predator to noble, imperiled creatures. It also stirred some controversy about the ethics of returning a semi-tamed animal to the wild.

Joy Adamson’s life ended violently at 69: she was found murdered at her camp in Lake Naivasha, not far from Nairobi in the Great Rift Valley. A former employee, a teenager named Paul Nakware Ekai, confessed and was convicted of the crime. Almost a quarter of a century later, Ekai claimed he had acted in self-defense after Adamson shot him in the leg. He claimed he had been tortured into confessing. But the following year, Ekai changed his story again, denying any involvement in the murder.

Nine years later, her husband and his two Kenyan assistants were shot and killed by poachers who ambushed their Land Rover.

7. GREGORY FELZIEN // UNITED STATES, 1992

For most of the 20th century, federal predator control programs all but eliminated mountain lions [PDF] from Yellowstone National Park. But by the 1990s, a small mountain lion population had reestablished itself in the park. Gregory Felzien, a 26-year-old biologist, was part of a University of Idaho team studying the lions. He was killed in February 1992—not by a lion, but in an avalanche.

Felzien had snowshoed to the base of Mount Norris in pursuit of a radio-collared mountain lion he was studying. According to the book Death in Yellowstone, Felzien paused in a steep drainage when the avalanche, 100 yards long, 10 yards wide and five feet deep, buried most of his body. He died before rescuers reached him.

8. PLINY THE ELDER // PRESENT-DAY ITALY, 79 CE

Roman military commander and naturalist Pliny the Elder produced several major writings, the most famous of which is the 37-volume Natural History. This expansive set of texts includes vast explorations of astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, geology, and medicine. The encyclopedic collection was a mixture of fact, observation, and superstition, but for centuries it was considered the authoritative text on the sciences (until the scientific method called into question its more speculative conclusions).

Pliny was commanding a fleet in the Bay of Naples in 79 CE when word arrived of a strange cloud emanating from Mount Vesuvius a short distance away. It turned out to be the massive volcanic eruption that destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Pliny took to the shore to investigate and rescue a friend. He was killed by the powerful volcanic gases (or possibly a heart attack). He was 56.

9. NOEL KEMPFF MERCADO // BOLIVIA, 1986

On the fateful September day in 1986 when Noel Kempff Mercado landed in the Amazon Basin near the Bolivian border with Brazil, he and his colleagues thought they’d arrived at an abandoned air strip. The 62-year-old Mercado was a prominent Bolivian biologist and conservationist. He had traveled to the remote province to explore the newly-designated Huanchaca National Park, a vibrant wilderness area that contained an abundance of biodiverse habitats largely unknown to the outside world. Kempff Mercado had long advocated for its protection.

But the abandoned airstrip turned out to be a cocaine factory, and its guards killed Kempff Mercado along with a colleague and the pilot of their plane. The incident followed on the heels of scaled-up operations against cocaine labs by Bolivian authorities and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials, and there was speculation that the guards had mistaken the men for law enforcement. The murders led to a public outcry, and two years later the park was renamed the Noel Kempff Mercado National Park in honor of its fallen champion. In 2000, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

10. RALPH HOFFMAN // UNITED STATES, 1932

Born and raised in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, Ralph Hoffman moved to California and directed the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History from 1925 to 1932. He was an ornithologist and avid plant collector who made dozens of collecting trips to the Santa Barbara Channel Islands, sometimes dubbed the “North American Galapagos” for their incredible plant diversity and endemism.

Hoffmann made many important contributions to the understanding of the islands’ unique ecosystems, and probably would have made many more. But on a summer day in 1932 while collecting on the remote, windswept island of San Miguel, Hoffmann fell to his death from a cliff.

11. DAVID DOUGLAS // HAWAII, 1834

The Douglas fir is one of about 80 flora and fauna named for David Douglas, the son of a Scottish stonemason who transcended his humble origins to become a highly regarded and prolific botanist. He left school at 11 to begin working as a gardener on a series of large estates. At the age of 20, Douglas was appointed to the botanic garden at Glasgow University, where he befriended leading British botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker. He became Hooker’s assistant, and Hooker later got him a job as a botanical collector for the Royal Horticultural Society.

Douglas made three collecting trips to the Pacific Northwest and California. In 1833 he sailed to Hawaii, enthusiastic to continue documenting the endemic plants of the islands he had first encountered three years before. It was to be his last expedition. While walking one morning en route to Hilo, Douglas apparently fell into a deep pit covered over with dirt and brush, commonly used at the time to trap wild cows. It appeared that the 35-year-old Douglas, who had poor eyesight, went crashing through, where he was crushed and mauled to death by a bull who had also fallen into the pit.

Some have speculated that Douglas was actually murdered. Suspicions fell on the shady former convict with whom Douglas had met earlier that day, but the charge remains unproven. Douglas was buried in Honolulu, and the place where he died is now called Kaluakauka, translated as the “doctor’s pit.” There is a memorial to Douglas on the island of Hawaii and in the churchyard of the Scottish village of Scone, where he was born.

12. ABEL FORNES // ARGENTINA, 1974

Fornes was part of a scientific team trying to prevent the spread of bovine rabies by controlling populations of disease-carrying vampire bats. As Fornes was collecting bat specimens roosting in a water well he had treated with cyanide gas, his gas mask leaked and he fell to his death.

13. ULDIS KNAKIS // USSR (PRESENT-DAY REPUBLIC OF KALMYKIA, RUSSIA), 1970

For thousands of years, the saiga antelope have roamed across the harsh terrain of the Eurasian Steppe, migrating by the tens of thousands between summer and winter pastures. Today they are critically endangered, largely due to oil and gas exploration, road construction, the encroachment of domesticated livestock and illegal poaching for their meat and horns, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Uldis Knakis was a young Latvian biologist who devoted his life to studying and protecting the saiga. The week before he turned 31, Knakis was shot and killed by poachers unhappy with his efforts to crack down on illegal saiga hunting. The murderers were never identified.

14. FERDINAND STOLICZKA // INDIA, 1874

Ferdinand Stoliczka, a Czech paleontologist, geologist, and naturalist, participated in several expeditions to the Himalayas. During a time of heightened tension between the Russian and British Empires, Stoliczka was selected to participate in an enormous diplomatic expedition to Central Asia’s Chinese Turkestan (today the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) that required thousands of horses and porters. He did not survive this final trip.

The expeditionary team succeeded in reaching their destination in Turkestan, but on the way back, the 36-year-old Stoliczka began to feel ill. He had extreme breathing difficulties and terrible headaches that intensified as they reached the barren Karakoram Pass, which straddles India and China at an altitude of 18,000 feet. According to accounts from others in his party, Stoliczka had frequently suffered from severe headaches during their mountain journeys. But this time, acute altitude sickness overwhelmed him. He died on the pass and was buried in Tibet.

15. KEITH CLIFFORD BUDDEN // AUSTRALIA, 1950

Only 20 years old, amateur herpetologist Keith Clifford Budden was in a remote part of Queensland searching for an extremely venomous snake, the coastal taipan. The snake is often described as the most dangerous snake in Australia, and although it prefers to slither away, when it feels threatened, it is prone to attack with a series of snapping bites.

Budden successfully caught the snake with his bare hands. But as he maneuvered it into a bag, the snake struck his hand. The following day he died from the powerful venom, which attacks the nervous system and interferes with blood’s ability to clot. Budden’s death was not completely in vain, however: researchers were able to “milk”—extract venom—from the live snake, a first step in creating the anti-venom necessary to treat victims of the coastal taipan.

You just never know how your contributions will change the world. In the case of Arctic birds, those contributions are drippy and white. Poop. We’re talking about poop. A recent study found that gases produced by huge quantities of seabird guano can increase cloud cover, thereby slightly reducing air temperature. The study results were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Climate change is a serious issue all over the globe, but it’s especially pronounced at the poles, where glaciers are vanishing and ecosystems are shifting at a dramatic rate. Understanding the many factors effecting these changes is essential if we want to protect our planet. Some factors, like a damaged ozone layer, are fairly obvious. Others are a little stealthier.

Take those bird droppings, for example. The Arctic is home to dozens of bird species and millions of birds, and they’ve all got to poop somewhere. Their runny poop—actually a combination of urine and feces—dribbles down the walls of their cliffside dwellings, accumulating in puddles and streaks.

Animals have excretory systems in order to get rid of materials they don’t need. We simply push them out of our bodies into the world around us. But the story doesn’t end there. The contents of our waste alter the environment they enter, often imperceptibly. The uric acid in bird poop, for example, releases ammonia (NH3) into the air.

A few years ago, researchers decided to find out exactly how much NH3 those birds’ butts were making. They conducted a global survey of 261 million breeding pairs of seabirds, then built a database listing the birds’ location and ammonia output.

Now, a team of climate and biology researchers from universities in Canada and the U.S. have put the excellent database to a very specific use. They were interested in figuring out if Arctic seabirds in particular were making enough NH3 to affect local weather. To find out, they pulled information on the birds’ productivity, then fed that information into a model that simulated the movement and transformation of ammonia particles in Arctic air.

They found that molecules of the birds’ ammonia could influence the growth of new particles, which could then expand and expand until they created new clouds. The clouds, in turn, could reduce the temperature above the bird colonies. Not by a lot, mind you; we’re talking about teeny, tiny changes. But we’re also talking about millions of birds in a swiftly shifting environment.

The results highlight just how linked we are to our planet, the authors write. Even as our lives and bodies are touched by the heat and air, we are touching back.