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Good morning! It's Sunday, Aug. 16, and welcome to our Sunday Edition. August marks the start of the grape harvest season in Napa Valley, so we took a look at the history and characteristics of the esteemed wine region. After that, we explored photos from the recent total solar eclipse (News in Context), America's infrastructure (Civics), a real-time global air quality map (Etc.), and much more.
📖 Our Sunday edition digs deep into the context and rabbit holes behind the news. We'll be back with our regular Daily Digest tomorrow through Saturday.
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A Trip to Wine Country
Napa Valley is a roughly 30-mile-long valley (see video overview) about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. The combination of warm and cool conditions is ideal for grape-growing. Different grapes flourish in different areas of the valley depending on their optimal growing conditions.
> Explore the wineries of Napa Valley with an interactive map of its hundreds of wineries, vineyards, and tasting rooms. (More)
> Napa Valley has unique growing conditions, a quality the wine industry refers to as "terroir." (More)
The Indigenous Wappo people originally inhabited the area. Their practices, like controlled burns of dry brush, helped shape the land's fertility for future agriculture. In the 19th century, European settlers arrived and kick-started the valley’s wine industry, with the area’s first commercial winery opening in 1861.
> Napa Valley was the second officially sanctioned wine-growing region in the US. (More)
> The Charles Krug Winery is the oldest winery in Napa Valley. (More, w/video)
> The 19th-century Gold Rush and its sudden influx of European residents helped turn California's Napa Valley into wine country. (More, w/podcast)
Napa has over 400 wineries that employ upward of 44,000 people and draw around 4 million annual visitors. Despite its outsized influence in California wine, Napa produces only 4% of the state’s annual wine production.
> Wildfires and rising temperatures have seriously affected Napa's winemaking in the 2020s. (More)
> View a detailed list of Napa Valley wines, dating all the way back to the 1991 vintage. (More, w/map)
Discover more:
> A root lice infestation, transported from the East Coast, once destroyed around 70% of Napa's vines. (More)
> Napa Valley became a player on the international stage in the mid-1970s, when judges in a blind taste test deemed its wine superior to France's. (More)
> A 1980s soap opera helped popularize Napa Valley, broadcasting the idyllic wine country to millions of American viewers every week. (More)
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News in Context
1440 brings you the knowledge and context behind the week's stories:
President Donald Trump secretly switched planes in Turkey amid an Iranian missile threat, US officials revealed this week. (More)
> See photos of how Air Force One has changed over the years.
> Teddy Roosevelt was the first sitting US president to travel abroad while in office.
A total solar eclipse swept across the Arctic and parts of Europe on Wednesday. (More w/photos)
> Why viewing a solar eclipse requires eclipse glasses.
> Total solar eclipses will no longer exist in the distant future as the moon drifts farther from Earth.
A Roman-era shipwreck was discovered off the coast of Sicily, alongside hundreds of well-preserved clay jars. (More)
> Explore a database of more than 220,000 shipwrecks.
> Watch footage from the moments the Titanic wreck was discovered.
Former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner are reportedly buying the Los Angeles Lakers in a deal that values the team at $12.5B. (More)
> Watch the top 10 moments in Los Angeles Lakers franchise history.
> Experience over 100 years of basketball history with a visual, interactive timeline.
1440 Civics
Experts forecast that $5.4T will be spent on public and private infrastructure in the US between 2024 and 2033—but engineers estimate the country needs $3.7T in spending beyond that to bring its infrastructure into good repair.
> See how your state's infrastructure stacked up across 17 categories in its 2025 report card. (More, w/visuals)
> Learn how critical services, infrastructure, and people would be affected by a US-wide blackout. (More, w/video)
> President Dwight D. Eisenhower's terrible 1919 cross-country road trip helped inspire him to create the interstate highway system. (More)
Want more? Explore hundreds of our favorite Civics-related resources.
Your Body’s Overlooked Health Signal
Your gas may reveal more about your health than you think. In an episode of the "1440 Explores" podcast, Health & Medicine Editor Dina Fine Maron reveals how gas forms in the gut, what’s actually in it, and why scientists are studying it for clues about our digestive health. Listen to the episode here—or click below to follow the illustrated journey of how gas forms.
PS—Click here to listen on Spotify or YouTube.
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Etcetera
Find your next read from a list of great books that can be read in a single day.
This brand is leaning into nostalgia tech, selling Polaroids, cassette tapes, and Tamagotchis.
A real-time global air quality map with data reported from more than 10,000 stations.
Sea otters eat urchins that feed on kelp forests, helping save sources of shelter and food for over 800 species.
The 19th-century "Fiji Mermaid" hoax fooled crowds by sewing the body of a monkey to a fish.
🫶 Humankind: Mystery caller inspires a Michigan pizza shop to create a "meal wall" bulletin board where customers can prepay for a plate for those in need.
Revisit "Tulip mania," the 1630s Dutch craze that may have been the first financial bubble.
Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth, features a rare lava lake that erupts regularly.
Visualize network coverage for mobile carriers worldwide with maps of upload speeds.
The most iconic images captured by American photographer Dorothea Lange.
Explore the risks of "forever chemicals," extremely durable human-made chemicals used in everyday products.
Historybook: Gold is discovered in Canada’s Yukon Territory, sparks Klondike gold rush (1896); Babe Ruth dies (1948); Sports Illustrated is first published (1954); Madonna is born (1958); Elvis Presley dies (1977); Aretha Franklin dies (2018).
"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away."
— Elvis Presley
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