South of the Cordillera Real, the landscape changes to a huge tilted block with steep escarpments, and a deeply eroded 300km slope to the east. The almost treeless highland area here is called the Puna. In the fertile valleys, agriculture is important, with cereals, alfalfa and fruit crops. Averaging 15°C, the climate is like permanent [...]

Described by a French explorer as a ‘microcosm of our planet’, Bolivia has a wonderful diversity of geographical features, wildlife and flora, mineral deposits and tropical produce, but nowadays it rather lacks in prosperity.
Unlike most South American countries, Bolivia has no sea coast. It is about the combined size of France and Spain and is [...]

In 1968, while America was bogged down in South-east Asia, the Soviet Union faced another challenge to its rule in Eastern Europe. The new Communist party leader in Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek, brought in a series of political and economic reforms recognized as the ‘Prague Spring’. Censorship was abolished, police powers were curtailed and workers had [...]

There was further friction in 1961, when the East German government took steps to stop its citizens fleeing towards the West via East Berlin. On 13 August, the Berlin Wall was put up, cutting the city in half. At first, it consisted mainly of barbed wire. In the months and years to follow, it was [...]

As peace talks got underway in Korea, some dramatic news burst on the world from Moscow. On 5 March 1953, following nearly 30 years as dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin died. For a although, power was shared in between two veteran Communist party officials – Georgi Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev. But in February [...]

With the end of World War II, the fate of the world rested in the hands of the two so-called superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union. They had fought together against Hitler but, as their friendship turned to hostility, the stage was set for a new conflict.
In 1945, the Allied powers met [...]

Freshly cut wood contains a lot of water – on average about 65%. A large redwood, for example, contains enough water to fill a small swimming pool. This means that wood must be seasoned (dried) before it is used, otherwise it shrinks, cracks or warps – it is also more likely to rot. Roughly sawn [...]

In the bad old days, the timber business was nomadic. It would arrive at a tract of primary forest and proceed to clear the region. Once all the best trees had been felled, the sawmills and lumberjacks would uproot and move to new forests. There was no regard to replanting or the effects of deforestation. [...]

Sadly, in several developing nations with large tropical forests, the short-sighted European history of forest exploitation is becoming repeated. The world’s forests are disappearing at an alarming rate without any thought of management for the future. Some kinds of tropical hardwood have now turn out to be extremely rare. It has been estimated that an [...]

From the minute the initial cavewoman picked up a sturdy stick to beat off a hungry wolf, wooden has been a important resource for each human civilization.
Wood has some extremely helpful properties – it is light, strong yet flexible, easy to shape, floats, burns well and is completely biodegradable. These qualities have made it highly [...]