Science World

On July 10th, Princess Leonor of Spain completed three years of military training, becoming the first woman in Spanish history to train as an officer across all three branches of the country's armed forces.

Her path started in August 2023 at the General Military Academy in Zaragoza, then moved to the Naval Military Academy in Marín, where she spent five months at sea aboard the training ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano, sailing across Latin America and stopping in New York. Her final stretch was spent with the Air Force in Murcia, where she completed a solo flight in a military training aircraft and qualified as a paratrooper, the first member of the Spanish royal family to ever earn that distinction.

At the closing ceremony at the Air and Space Academy in San Javier, her father, King Felipe VI, awarded her the Grand Cross of the Aeronautical Order of Merit, the same honor he received in 1988.

The 20-year-old heir to the Spanish throne will now enter university, studying Political Science at Carlos III University in Madrid, before eventually taking on her constitutional role as commander-in-chief of Spain's armed forces.

Three years. Three branches of the military. And a future queen who chose to earn her place the hard way before ever sitting on a throne.

Lions defeat hundreds of people a year in parts of Africa. Tigers have a long, documented history of attacking humans in regions like the Sundarbans. Even leopards, elusive as they are, have defeat when cornered or provoked.

Cheetahs have no confirmed record of ever knocking a wild adult human, anywhere, at any point in recorded history.

For an animal that can hit 70 miles per hour and take down a gazelle in seconds, that is a strange thing to be true. The answer comes down to what a cheetah's body was actually built for. Speed, not strength. Their frame is light, their claws barely retract, and their skull and jaw are simply not built to overpower something the size of a human. Everything about them is optimized for the chase, not the fight.

There is also temperament. Cheetahs are famously skittish, quick to flee rather than confront, and tend to avoid humans entirely given the option. Safari guides regularly rank them as the least concerning big cat to encounter in the wild.

To be fair to the historical record, some 19th century newspaper accounts in India described deaths attributed to cheetahs, though those reports often lumped cheetahs and leopards together under one term, making them impossible to verify. No confirmed, individually attributed case has ever held up.

The fastest predator on land, and somehow also the one least likely to ever see you as anything worth the risk.