beautful african nature

The flora of Tanzania is equally as diverse as the animal population. The eastern arc is represented by small patches of tropical rainforest which host an array of indigenous plant life. These tropical rainforests once covered Tanzania, but today are relegated to the Udzungwas and the Ulugurus Mountains among other places. Outside of the mountain ranges, the country is covered by miombo, or moist woodland. There are also plains, savannahs and wooded hills, however, the most common vegetation found in Tanzania are various types of Brachystegia trees. Recent years have seen steps taken by the Tanzania National Parks Authority to encourage conservation. One of the main goals is to encourage community involvement in preservation efforts. Conservation areas including national parks and reserves cover more than 42,000 square kilometres (16,000 square miles), making up one-third of the country’s territory. Poaching has proven to be a major challenge in Tanzania and the govern...

Valentine's Day is a time to celebrate romance and love and kissy-face fealty. But the origins of this festival of candy and cupids are actually dark, bloody — and a bit muddled. Enlarge this image Though no one has pinpointed the exact origin of the holiday, one good place to start is ancient Rome, where men hit on women by, well, hitting them. Those Wild And Crazy Romans From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain. The Roman romantics "were drunk. They were naked," says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile. The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the fes...

Three stories beneath the streets of Washington, DC, I stood on the bottom level of the  Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture  — for just a moment alone — as people flowed in all around me. In front of me stood a  stone block . Dating from the 19th century, the block, made of marble, once could be found in Hagerstown, Md. On it, enslaved people brought to the U.S. from Africa were sold at auction. Some moments before, I had viewed a piece of timber from the Portuguese slave ship  São José , which wrecked in 1794 while carrying 400 enslaved people en route from Mozambique to Brazil. Half of those people  died  as a result of the wreck. The Atlantic slave trade went on to become the world's largest  forced migration  of men and women by sea. In those purposefully "hushed, claustrophobic halls" — as  The Atlantic's  staff writer  Vann R. Newkirk II describes them  — I had also seen  i...

Euro 2016 has been hogging the back pages in recent weeks but English clubs are working tirelessly behind the scenes to add to their squads. Manchester United have made another bid for Dortmund man Henrikh Mkhitaryan, despite the Bundesliga side saying he is not for sale. Chelsea, meanwhile, have identified Kalidou Koulibaly as the man to strengthen their defence. And the Blues could also rival Arsenal for Spain striker Alvaro Morata. To keep up date with every Premier League transfer so far, check out our comprehensive list.