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Dec. 9 (UPI) -- The world's oldest known wild bird has laid an egg at the estimated age of 74 on a North Pacific island, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. The wildlife service Pacific region said on social media that Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, was seen nesting with a new partner and has laid an egg at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, located on the northwest edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago

Wisdom the albatross, photographed in 2022. Image credit: Keegan Rankin/USFWS The oldest known wild bird – an albatross named Wisdom – has laid an egg at the ripe old age of 74, after finding a new mate earlier this year. Wisdom was first identified and banded by biologists after she laid an egg at Midway Atoll in 1956. As albatrosses do not lay eggs before the age of five, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service now estimates her age to be at least 74 years old. Every year in November, this population of albatrosses returns to Midway Atoll in the...

On June 4, 1942, the US and Imperial Japanese navies faced off a few hundred miles from Midway Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean. The US Navy learned many lessons from the battle that helped win the war. Even now, 79 years later, the battle is still studied extensively — including by China. Today, however, a similar fight between the US and Chinese navies would likely play out much differently. Longer-range weapons would increase the distance over which both sides' could operate. Anti-ship missiles in particular have raised the stakes for surface ships and added to the importance of airpower...

Deep-sea explorers scouring the world's oceans for sunken World War II ships are investigating what they believe could be the third ship of seven lost to the Pacific during the Battle of Midway. Hundreds of miles off Midway Atoll, nearly halfway between the United States and Japan, a research vessel is launching underwater robots miles into the abyss to look for warships from the famed Battle of Midway. Weeks of grid searches around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands have already led the crew of the Petrel to one sunken warship, the Japanese ship the Kaga. This week, the crew is deploying...