Fantasy of Flight is an aviation-themed Florida exhibit showcasing vintage aircraft from the world's largest private collection, themed immersion experiences, interactive exhibits and more. Now through February 11, Fantasy of Flight is celebrating National Black History month with its Fourth Annual Legends & Legacies Symposium Series with a visit from famed World War II heroes, the Tuskegee Airmen as well as a student essay contest honoring the aviators' leadership, excellence, advocacy and determination.

"It is an honor and a privilege to welcome back the Tuskegee Airmen and their families to Fantasy of Flight for our Fourth Annual Legends & Legacies Symposium Series," said Kim Long, General Manager. "We couldn't think of a better way to honor the Tuskegee Airmen and celebrate Black History Month than by engaging students to learn more about these brave aviators and express what they've learned through written essays."

During "They Dared to Fly," the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation's first African-American military aviators, will share their personal stories of what it was like to serve as a pilot in the military during segregated America. Three Tuskegee Airmen will be appearing including Leo Gray, 91, who served as a consultant on the recently released Lucas Red Tails film, as well as Daniel Keel, 89 and George Hardy, 88. Of the original group of nearly 1,000 trained pilots and 15,000 ground personnel that made up the Tuskegee Airmen, roughly 50 pilots and 200 ground crew are alive today.

On a steep hill overlooking the Vale of Sparta in southwestern Greece stands the last capital of the Roman Empire.

In 395 AD, beset by enemies, the empire split into western and eastern halves. The Western Roman Empire was soon overwhelmed. The east flourished. Its capital was at Constantinople, modern Istanbul. Known as the Byzantine Empire, it developed a distinctive style of art and architecture and protected the Greek Orthodox Church of its citizens.

Byzantium declined as civilizations always do, and suffered a serious blow during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Crusaders, who had originally set off to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims, decided to capture Constantinople instead. With its capital gone, Byzantium shattered into three small states. Byzantine art and the Greek Orthodox Church survived.

The Crusaders built an imposing castle on the summit of a hill overlooking the Vale of Sparta, one of a number of fortresses to protect their new domains. That didn't work. The Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologos recaptured Constantinople and steadily pushed the Crusaders out of the lands they had conquered. The castle at Mistra was handed over to the Byzantines in 1262 and a fortified city gradually began to take shape around it. Mistra became the regional capital of the Morea, as the Peloponnese was then called.

The Palaeologian dynasty was the last to rule the Roman Empire. It was a time of political and economic decline, with the Turks pushing in from the east, the Venetians dominating trade, and numerous other enemies nibbling away at the borders. Morea was one of the last wealthy regions of Byzantium and despite the empire's troubles witnessed a renaissance in art, learning, and culture.

Mistra is only seven kilometers outside of Sparta. It's an easy walk but I was anxious to start my visit and so I took a taxi and decided I'd walk back through the olive groves. After a week of cloudy, cold weather, the sky had cleared and the air was cool and pleasant. The winding road up the hill is dominated by the massive town wall. Passing through the gate, I found myself walking along steep, narrow lanes between the remnants of homes, palaces, and churches. Several of these Orthodox houses of worship are still open.

These churches are deceptive. On the outside they are prettily made with patterned brick and a series of small domes and half domes around a large central dome. It's inside that they show their true splendor. Frescoes cover the walls, domes, and pillars. Every available space is decorated with Biblical scenes and images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints, all painted in a rich but somber style.

Gallery: Mistra

There aren't many places where you feel the urge to wear your wedding ring around your neck and begin dodging fictional forces of evil.

New Zealand's Tongariro National Park, however, is exactly one of those places.

As anyone who has been to a movie theater in the last ten years probably knows, New Zealand was the setting for the epically popular Lord of the Rings trilogy which introduced us to the adventures of Middle Earth.

Arguably one of the best known movie series of an entire generation, the movie saga has simultaneously done wonders for the New Zealand tourism economy by displaying the country's enchanting and other worldly scenery to a global audience of millions. While Middle Earth tourism has sculpted out its own niche for diehard fans (my 2012 New Zealand road atlas, for example, points out where each scene was filmed), as a casual viewer there are only a few place names I actually recognize.

One of these, of course, is Mt. Doom, and as I set out from the campervan into the volcanic cinder of the Tongariro Crossing-one of New Zealand's most heavily trafficked walks-I found myself standing directly beneath it.

So what exactly is Mt. Doom?

Well, to begin, its real name is Mt. Ngauruhoe, it is 7,516 ft. high, and from the best I could tell there aren't any quivering, flaming black eyes located anywhere near it. While Mt. Ngauruhoe doubled as Mt. Doom, the surrounding bits of Tongariro National Park provided the scenery for Mordor, the fiery and terrifying volcanic wasteland that serves as the home of evil.

As it happens, Tongariro is actually pretty cold, even during the summer months. Lacing up my hiking boots at 6am with about 100 other trekkers, the morning dew had frozen and blanketed the campervan beneath a thin layer of frost.

"Weird", I thought. "There's not supposed to be snow in Mordor."

It's been a lifelong dream of mine to see the Northern Lights, that glorious display of eerie green "smoke" that appears to float above the nighttime sky of some of the furthest northern reaches of our globe. But now I have another sight to add to that list: the Southern Lights. Also know as "Aurora Australis", it's the southern hemisphere equivalent of the auroras that occur up north, captured in stunning time-lapse fashion near Melbourne, Australia by photographer Alex Cherney. Give the video above a click and watch as the Milky Way gracefully dances across the southern sky, punctuated by the mesmerizing warm pulses of pink, yellow and orange.

Germany and Switzerland have long been known as bastions of cool efficiency, where the trains run on time, locals scold visitors for jaywalking and everything works. But travelers might be surprised to know that these countries are also home to four of the world's most crooked towers, all of which lean more dramatically than the much more famous Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.

Since the completion of a decade-long restoration project reduced the angle of the Pisa tower's tilt from 5.5 to just 3.99 degrees, a host of other towns have stepped forward to proclaim that their towers are the world's biggest leaners, in the hopes that tourists will follow. In 2007, Reverend Frank Wessels, the pastor of a leaning church in the northwest German village of Suurhusen, contacted Guinness World Records, which confirmed the church as the world's "Farthest Leaning Tower." (see image above)

Wessels recently told Der Spiegel that the church now receives about 10,000 visitors per year. Not bad, but still quite modest compared to the 426,000 tourists who visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa last year, according to a tourism official quoted in The New York Times. But a number of other leaning towers have emerged in the wake of Suurhusen's crooked anointment.

Gallery: Battle of the Leaning Towers

A medieval defense tower in Dausenau, in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, claimed a slightly greater tilt at 5.24 degrees, compared to 5.19 for Suurhusen, but Guinness rejected the bid because the tower is a crumbling ruin, not a functional, freestanding structure. A 12^th century tower in St. Moritz, the tony Swiss ski resort, might have laid claim to the record, but a recent stabilization project reduced St. Mauritius' slant from 5.4 degrees to 5.08.

Meanwhile, a 174 foot tall church bell tower in Bad Frankenhausen, a spa town in the eastern German state of Thuringia, has its own claim. The degree measurement of its slant is more modest than that of Suurhusen's, but because its tower is nearly twice as tall, its total margin of deviation makes it appear even more crooked.

In 2011, I had the spectacular good fortune to go on two trips that fit the "once in a lifetime" category. One was to Antarctica, the other to Tanzania. Both were the kind of trips where you want to take your best photo gear, weight be damned, because, dude, how likely are you to be twice in Penguinistan or Elephantlandia? So schlep my gear I did, my heavy Nikon, the big telephoto, a video camera, a pocket camera, a zillion miles of cable, pockets full of camera memory and spare batters and oh, yeah the laptop for additional storage and backup.

Hauling that much electronica across the planet and back has its challenges -- before I had a decent camera pack, I used a standard day pack which plunged, before my very eyes, from a hook on the back of a door in Bangkok to a hard tile floor. The result? An irreparable 200 lens and a somewhat depressed traveler. Thankfully, it was the end of the trip.

I now use a pack especially designed for camera gear. I'm partial to my Kata Digital Backpack. I tried the Timbuk2 messenger bag -- it's nice but it doesn't really fit my geometry. Quiksilver -- yeah, that surf brand -- now makes the Shutter Speed pack, a bag designed to get your gear from the top to the the bottom of the planet in safety. The short wrap? This is a great bag for transit, but I'm not sure it makes the cut for regular use.

To find out if this is the bag for me, I gathered my usual kit and stowed it in the Shutter Speed. There are loads of pockets, internal, external, zippered, mesh, I had no trouble getting my complete kit, flash included, into the bag. And it was all very well organized. I moved the Velcro secured pads around so they held my gear in place and zipped the bag shut. Nice. My stuff didn't rattle around, it was very secure. I didn't drop test it, I'm just too traumatized by the last time that happened, but I feel like the camera would survive the fall.

I also put in a binder, a laptop, a water bottle, and a few other odds and ends. Everything was beautifully organized. There's a security pocket at the small of the back for your stealables (I mean beyond your equipment stealables) -- you're not going to have your wallet or passport lifted if you stow them there. There's a stowable rain cover, some lashing straps on the outside for your coat, and did I mention the zillions of pockets? All good.

The first-ever Teva Winter Mountain Games get underway today in Vail, Colorado, where some of the top pro and amateur outdoor athletes have gathered to compete in a variety of sports. The event, which lasts through the weekend, will also feature a number of concerts, gear giveaways, clinics, and more.

Some of the sports that the athletes will be competing in including ice climbing, Nordic and telemark skiing, snowshoeing, and on-snow cycling. Even man's best friend can get in on the action, as there are several events for dogs to compete too. But the biggest event of the weekend is the Ultimate Mountain Challenge, which features three different sports spread out over three days. In order to be crowned the King or Queen of the Mountain, a single athlete will have to fend off all the competition in a Nordic Freestyle race today, than follow it up with an up-hill cross country skiing competition tomorrow. On Sunday, those same competitors will then square off in the toughest stage of all – a skiing race up, over, and back down, Vail Mountain.

A large group of spectators are expected to be hand over the three-day event, cheering on their favorite athletes. That crowd won't have to sit on the sidelines without getting the opportunity to join in on the fun however, as they'll get the chance to take part in photo competitions and clinics, test out some gear, and hone their own winter outdoor skills. They can also enjoy an adventure film festival, listen to some live bands, and join the celebration at several parties.

The inaugural Teva Winter Mountain Games is a natural extension of the summer Mountain Games, which will be taking place later this year. If you're an outdoor enthusiast who loves to run, ride, or climb, you'll certainly find a lot to love at both events.

Most of our favorite travel memories are from summer: school's out and the days are long, you can hit the beach, sit in a park, or people-watch at a sidewalk cafe. Spring and fall are great shoulder seasons for lower prices and fewer crowds, but winter tends to be underappreciated for travel. Outside of visiting family for holidays, winter travelers generally head to the ski slopes or Caribbean islands to escape the cold. But winter can be a lovely time to travel, whether you are enjoying the museums and bathhouses of Moscow or taking a country walk through the snow in an English village. Today's Photo of the Day by Flickr user Kumukulanui is from St. Ann's Well and Cafe above the spa town of Great Malvern, England. The snow outside makes it even more picturesque, inviting you to get cozy inside with a hot cup of tea and savor the long nights of winter.

Add your favorite winter scenes to the Gadling Flickr pool and you might see it in a future Photo of the Day.

An Iraqi man who was found dead in his Birmingham hostel room earlier this week has been identified by police, BBC reports.

The man has been identified as Bakhitar Ahmad Kheder Mirawdali, 40. He was was found by a member of staff at the hostel in Soho Road, Handsworth on February 2 and is believed to have died of a wound to the neck.

BBC is reporting that Mirawdali had been granted political asylum and had been living in the UK for a number of years, but was planning to return to Iraq to get married.

West Midlands Police believe his body had lain undiscovered for two days before being found on Thursday.

A man has currently been arrested in relation to the case, but police are still urging anyone with information to come forward.

Let's just say we won't be visiting this hostel anytime soon.