Helen Donahue

This piece has been corrected.

The abandoned village of Houtouwan, a fishing village east of Shanghai on the island of Shengshan, was once home to over 2,000 fisherman and their families. Throughout the 1900s, families left the island for opportunities offered by mainland cities, and by 1994 Houtouwan was empty. Today, hundreds of tourists pass through daily, lured by tales of the town’s vine-draped buildings.

Hundreds of musicians and spectators came together for a celebration of Swiss culture on July 26 at the Lac de Tracouet in Nendaz, Switzerland. The occasion: this year’s annual three-day long Alpenhorn Festival.

Play is vital to a child’s development. Not only does it help with school and social skills, play also teaches counterfactual thinking, or what psychologist Alison Gopnik described for the Smithsonian as “thinking about different possibilities.”

Every summer since 2007, residents of coastal Chinese city Qingdao have been greeted by a mysterious “algae bloom.” No one can fully explain where it comes from. But in 2013, the New York Times reported a theory that nearby farms of porphyra (the nori in our sushi), were attracting the algae, which was then swept out to sea to blossom into a mushy green carpet.