Hundreds of scientists and volunteers combed Central Park on a recent 24-hour marathon to catalogue every living species they could find. Some climbed trees; others dove muck-filled ponds. "It's not just pigeons and rats, but a pretty good cross section of wildlife," said one participant.

Seeking to boost the commercial space race, a St. Louis foundation plans to award U.S. ten million dollars to the first team to send a trio to the edge of space and back in a reusable spacecraft. This story airs tonight on our U.S. cable television program National Geographic Today.

Nestled along the mountainous border of Bolivia and Peru at 12,530 feet (3,820 meters), Lake Titicaca's manmade "Floating Islands" built from totora reeds are under threat. Pollution is stunting the growth of the totora reed threatening not only the foundation of the islands but the culture of the Uros tribe who constructed them.

It's a long way from Timbuktu to Edinburgh—about 2,700 miles (4,350 kilometers) as the crow flies. But at the 37th annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., one can make the journey from the culture of Mali to the culture of Scotland via a short detour through America's culture, Appalachia. Includes three photo galleries of Appalachia, Mali, and Scotland at the Festival:

This Fourth of July, Willows will weep, Palm Trees will sprout, Chrysanthemums will flower, and Salutes will boom over hundreds of thousands of awestruck spectators in cities across the United States. Many of these firework shows will be produced by a family that has been in pyrotechnics for 150 years.

How do you move a delicate American icon like the Liberty Bell without turning its famous crack into an infamous one? That's the dilemma National Park Service curators will face when they move the crack-prone chimer later this year.

The story of Sinbad, a sailor born in Baghdad, and his seven voyages around the world, has survived for more than a thousand years. In its latest Hollywood incarnation, it's easy to forget that Sinbad's adventures are part of the One Thousand and One Nights, Arabic folktales from antiquity.

OK, so there's no such thing as a gamma ray machine that zaps scientists and turns them into giant green monsters. But the science behind Hollywood movies is turning increasingly sophisticated. As audiences grow more science savvy, filmmakers strive to make their movies as realistic as possible.

Although precise figures may never be known, an estimated 56,000 men perished in Civil War prisons, a casualty rate comparable to that of any battle during the war's bloody tenure. Scholars say the high death rate was spurred not by malice, but ignorance about disease and proper dietary and sanitation conditions.

Driving a car that has been obsolete for nearly as long as he is old, a 71-year-old retired orthodontist is attempting to re-create America's first cross-country car trip. The endeavor is one of several to mark the hundred-year anniversary of the first transcontinental car trip in America.

New York City's Central Park hosts concerts, rallies, weddings, and over 25 million visitors each year. It's also a hotspot of urban biodiversity. Starting tomorrow, hundreds of scientists and volunteers will swarm through the park during its first-ever, 24-hour "bioblitz" to catalog every plant and animal species they can find.

Folk healing is in transition in Paraguay. Medicinal plants are in vogue—so much so that some plants are facing near-extinction because of the demand. At the same time, some Paraguayans are converting to modern medicine.

Licensing and monitoring ivory carvers could effectively control the illegal poaching of elephants and at the same time ease the tensions between conservationists and African countries with ivory surpluses, according to new research.

Yesterday, climber Ed Viesturs summited Pakistan's Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth highest mountain. The feat makes Viesturs the first American to climb 13 of the 14 world's 8,000-meter (26,000-foot) peaks—without the use of supplemental oxygen.

The deaths of 14 firefighters on Colorado's Storm King Mountain in 1994 reawakened public awareness about wildfire dangers. Now, with wildfires taking hundreds of homes, those concerns are once again front and center out West. Tom Foreman talks with author Sebastian Junger about the often uncontrollable infernos.