This week, the world gasped when South Florida’s coastal water temperatures reached the upper 90s °F, shattering records and shocking locals and visitors alike. The Audubon team at the Everglades Science Center has recorded water temperatures in Taylor Slough, part of Everglades National Park, for more than 30 years. The team saw temperatures climb to 96.7 °F on July 12—one of the highest recordings ever taken by Audubon in Florida.

Apparently lost while trying to follow GPS directions, two men in a sedan tried to cut across a salt flat in Death Valley National Park, only to strand their car in the flat and land one of the two in a hospital suffering from the heat. The event, back on the Fourth of July, also led to a court appearance for the two for driving off-road and damaging the salt flat.

As the Civil War raged in the mid-1860s, a bucolic pocket of Kentucky stood out as a beacon of freedom for enslaved men and women, though it proved elusive as the nation struggled over what was morally right.

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