Divers recover Blackbeard's cannons, and more

Divers find Blackbeard's cannons

Divers off the coast of North Carolina have recovered two cannons used by the infamous pirate Blackbeard on a slave ship he commandeered in the 18th century. The wreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge was first discovered in 1996, but divers are only now removing the largest artifacts from its watery grave. Blackbeard captured the French ship in 1717, and sailed it up and down the Eastern Seaboard and around the West Indies. He ran it aground the following year after plundering Charleston, S.C. Along with the 11-foot cannons, divers also raised a 3,000-pound anchor from the deep.

Washington, D.C., hunts for a panda

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The Smithsonian National Zoo’s new red panda staged a daring jailbreak this week, escaping his enclosure in Washington, D.C., for almost 12 hours. Rusty, one of only 10,000 red pandas left in the world, disappeared from the national zoo overnight this week, sparking a citywide panda hunt and a social media frenzy. The cat-sized animal was safely recovered the next day after a Twitter user spotted him in her neighborhood and sent an alert to zookeepers. Rusty only arrived at the zoo in early June, and it’s hoped he will mate with the zoo’s resident red panda Shama.