Search

Byline: JEFF WISE UP SHIP CREEK WHEN A CARGO SHIP GOT STUCK IN THE SUEZ CANAL TO THE TUNE OF $10 BILLION LOST DAILY IN GLOBAL TRADE, AN AMUSED PUBLIC [...]

The defendant looked uncomfortable as he stood to testify in the shabby courtroom. Dressed in a dark suit and somber tie, he seemed aged, dimmed, his posture noticeably stooped. The [...]

Byline: Jeff Wise DOWN IN THE VALLEY THE HELICOPTER RIDE SHOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE ANY OTHER: A SHORT, SCENIC CHOP TO THE MAMBA SPORTS ACADEMY, HOME IN TIME FOR DINNER. [...]

FOR DECADES, the pollsters at Gallup have been asking Americans if they trust their media. In 1974, the year Woodward and Bernstein brought an end to Richard Nixon's presidency, 69 [...]

AT A SECRET FACILITY, AEROSPACE ENGINEERS ARE PLOTTING TO END THE HELICOPTER AS WE KNOW IT, AND DEVISING RADICAL NEW ROTORCRAFT TO REPLACE IT. THE RESULT MAY CHANGE MILITARY OPERATIONS--AND [...]

Dad! Hold the tail down!' David Barford shouts to his 73-year-old father, Paul, who shuffles along the grass while supporting a slender spar that connects the rear stabilizers to the [...]

Alli Rainey was clinging to a sheer rock overhang 120 feet above the ground when she felt her fingers go numb. She'd spent the last 40 minutes painstakingly working herself [...]

Accidents are the leading cause of death among U.S. men 18 to 50 years old, accounting for 37,000 of the roughly 148,000 annual fatalities. Some instances of unintentional death, to [...]

Alan Meekler's drive to succeed has never flagged. In grade school, he taught himself to read by poring over his father's newspapers. In high school, he earned spots on multiple [...]

In December 2012, multimillionaire entrepreneur John McAfee went on the lam following the murder of his neighbor in remote Belize. For this writer, it was just another twist in the [...]

A huge, spindly, spiderlike contraption arches over the AstroTurf of an indoor soccer stadium near Toronto, its X-shaped trellis of carbon-fiber tubing so diaphanous that it's hard to make out. [...]

Sue Groves, a 25-year-old hydrologist, parked her truck beside the dirt road that ran next to a creek in Colorado's Mancos River Valley. It was early on a crisp December [...]

PREDICTING THE END OF THE WORLD IS BOTH A sure bet and a fool's errand. Eventually, the total destruction of civilization, the human race, and, indeed, the world is a [...]

THE HIKER WHO LEAVES A well-marked trail and wanders off, cross-country. The pilot who flies his perfectly maintained airplane into the ground. The kayaker who dives into a hydraulic whitewater [...]

It was a warm, clear morning in West Texas, a fine day for flying as Mark Stull cruised low over rocky, cactus-filled rangeland. With a popping sound, the control stick [...]

ON THE AFTERNOON OF Aug. 9, 2010, eight passengers climbed into a single-engine De Havilland Otter floatplane at a fishing lodge near Dillingham, Alaska. A light rain was falling from [...]

LAUNCH SITE: BRISTOL, ENGLAND EVENT: GORDON BENNETT CUP DATES: SEPTEMBER 25-29, 2010 LAST SEPTEMBER, AS THE SUNSET over the English city of Bristol, 20 giant jellyfish shapes shivered into the [...]

IT'S A PITCH-BLACK winter night and Troy Espiritu is in the middle of a forest somewhere in western Georgia. Espiritu, a compact, wiry man with close-cropped hair, jogs along the [...]

BEFORE HE EVEN KNEW WHAT HE WAS doing, Tom Boyle Jr. was out of the truck and running. He'd been in the front seat of a pickup with his wife, [...]

THE SUN HAS JUST RISEN, AND already the heat is shimmering over the dry lakebed. Craggy brown mountains loom over the towers and hangars of Edwards Air Force Base, the [...]

AS ADAM WALKER waded into the Hawaiian surf', he felt supremely confident. An aspiring long-distance, open-water swimmer, he'd already mastered the bitterly cold English Channel, so the swim that lay [...]

SEVEN MILES ABOVE THE EMPTY EXPANSE OF THE SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN, on May 31, 2009, an Air France A330 passenger jet cut through the midnight darkness. The plane had taken […]

THE WATER IS RISING, Already the murky, greenish sea is swirling around my feet, and it's coming up fast. Fortunately, I'm staying dry inside a 54-in.-wide watertight acrylic sphere attached [...]

It's impossible to see more than a few feet through the thick smoke, but what I can make out is bad enough. The deck has buckled upward, and fragments of [...]

ONE PIECE AT A TIME. THE WORLD'S MOST IMPRESSIVE SHIPS ARE NOT BUILT FOR WAR OR TRADE--THEY'RE MADE FOR PLEASURE. THE LARGEST CRUISE LINER EVER CONSTRUCTED NOW SITS IN A [...]

A heap of ripstop nylon, damp with dew, stretches 132 ft. across a farmer's hayfield near Amherst in western Massachusetts. The predawn air is humid, still and cool--'Perfect weather for [...]

IT WAS THE WEEKEND they'd been waiting for all year. After an early season marked by disappointing snowfall, friends Jason Crawford, 27, Brett Toney, 27, and Kris Rains, 26, awoke [...]

SO here we are, skimming over the bright blue Mississippi on a flawless summer afternoon--the river broad, the sun taking on a tinge of gold as it settles toward the [...]

Frank Tong is peering into another man's mind. The Vanderbilt University neuroscientist is sitting in front of a bank of monitors inside a dimly lit room. On the other side [...]

The world floats sideways as I press on the steering pedal. A mirror-smooth lake wheels beneath a dimming orange sky. A warm breeze rushes over my cheeks. It's twilight, and [...]

TOUGHEST BRIDGE NEW BAY BRIDGE LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO PRICE TAG: $6B COMPLETION DATE: 2013 HEIGHT OF TOWER: 525 FT. TRAFFIC LANES: 10 TONS OF STEEL REQUIRED: 100,000 >> FOR 15 [...]

AT TWILIGHT ON A CLEAR NOVEMBER EVENING, CBP-104 rolls onto the tarmac at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., revs its 900-hp turboprop engine and takes off into the ruby desert sky. Banking [...]

THE TEMPERATURE: 10 BELOW ZERO. THE LOCATION: the middle of frozen Waite Lake in the Northwest Territories, 1000 miles north of the U.S. border. I'm with six Canadian ice-road experts [...]

WHEN ASSESSING THE State of the Union in 2003, President Bush declared it was time to take a crucial step toward protecting our environment. He announced a $1.2 billion initiative [...]

The future of aviation is wobbling. Looking like a giant albino queen ant, the 117-ft.-long Dynalifter airship trundles down a grass airstrip in eastern Ohio, its white, ovoid envelope bobbling [...]

IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT AT A BUSINESS park in a quiet suburb northeast of Dallas. The place is all but abandoned, the parking lot empty except for a cluster of cars [...]