Every Day Is Special: April 22 – Anniversary of the Global Selfie Earth Day

April 22 – Anniversary of the Global Selfie Earth Day

Posted on April 22, 2015

As you start to zoom in on the images of
Earth, you begin to see the individual
selfies that people sent in!

You probably already know that today is Earth Day, right? You can check out my posts about this important holiday, from previous years, here and here.

Did you know that NASA encouraged everyone to send in “selfies” last year and assembled all the photos into a global “we are here” portrait? Sometimes we hear about a cool project like that, and then we forget to check out the product! Well, on the NASA website, you can check out the zoomable 3.2 gigapixel image, created from 36,422 individual images that were posted to social media sites on last year's Earth Day.

There is also a delightful video to watch recapping just a few of the more than 50,000 selfies sent in.

Today I want to highlight a couple more world-wide projects...

Here is the website of a guy who spent 11 years walking around the world. Here is a summing-up article about that loooong walk.

I've always loved the videos created by Matt, who started out dancing badly all over the world. As the years went by, Matt changed to dancing and juggling and just hanging out with mobs of people all over the world.

Wired Magazine presents NASA's best images of Earth from space from last year. Also, Space-dot-com presents amazing images of Earth from many different years – with the amazement mostly coming from how far away the cameras were, not from the beauty of the photos themselves.

There are lots of blogs of world travelers. This is one by a wonderful young woman who I have known since she was just one month old!

Lots of people have done the project of sending stuffed bears around the world as a geography project (here is one example), in a sort of Paddle-to-the-Sea cooperative journey. Of course, it doesn't have to be a teddy bear; it can be any stuffed animal.

The BBC followed a shipping container for a year to explore the world economy.

You could try postcrossing, which is a way of getting postcards from random places in the world. Check it out here.

Consider mailing off a box with perhaps 30 inexpensive things from your own corner of the globe (maybe a local postcard or T-shirts with a local team imprinted on it)? You would include a note that urges each recipient to take out one of the original items (in a bag marked “original items”) and put in something that represents their own country or culture. Start by mailing it to someone you know and trust - someone who has agreed to the project of trying to get the box around the world and back to you again - someone who will only send it to someone that he or she knows and trusts, too.

Also on this date: