GOODY

The Inca are to Peru what the Mughals are to India. Before the Europeans arrived, they built one of the most powerful empires in South America that once stretched 4,800 km across parts of Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. The Inca were skilled engineers who built great cities, impregnable forts, amazing bridges and an extensive network of roads. Since they had no written language, their history has been pieced together with the help of their magnificent archaeological remains. To date, it is not known how they built their stone walls without any mortar. The most striking examples of Inca architecture are at Machu Picchu and Cuzco, their sacred capital located high in the Andes Mountains of central Peru. The Inca had a rich art and culture which is still evident in local Andean traditions, handicrafts and textiles. Andeans still follow agricultural practices dating back to the Inca Empire.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) is a simple way of utilizing the longer hours of daylight during summer months. Several countries use DST by setting their clocks one hour ahead in the spring time (summer) and one hour back during the fall (winter). This way, these countries stand to gain one extra hour of daylight, DST schedules are useful in countries in the northern hemisphere where the durations of daylight during the summer and winter months differ greatly. In the US, DST begins on the second Sunday in March and stays until the first Sunday in November. This year, Americans adjusted their clocks one hour ahead of standard time on March 14, at 2 a.m. and will keep it that way until it goes back to standard time on November 7. To help remember how to adjust their time, US citizens follow the popular saying “Spring forward, Fall back”.

This honor belongs to the Atacama Desert, Chile in South America. The average rainfall here is pegged at 1mm per year while some parts have not seen rainfall since record keeping began! Yet it is home to nearly a million people who live in the coastal cities, fishing villages, oases and mining towns. Farmers try to grow olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers with drip-irrigation systems. With a terrain akin to Mars, animals are rarely found here. On the flipside, Atacama could become the world’s largest power generation plant, exploiting the immense source of solar energy to produce water and electricity through the Atacama Solar Platform project. Australia is the continent with the least rainfall, after Antarctica.