Even the new pope himself alluded to the fact that church had reached farther than ever for its papal pick.

CNN: First Latin American pope 'very exciting,' faithful say

Each year I guide ski expeditions across the pack ice to the North Geographic Pole and each year brings new surprises -- severe storms rarely seen in these parts, vast tracts of first-year ice where there should be years of accumulation, pack ice drifting faster and farther than ever before.

CNN: The story

And it adds up to a significant accord -- one that takes us farther than we have ever gone before as an international community.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama at Copenhagen Climate Change Conference-Morning Plenary Session | The White House

Because it was too expensive to deploy all the computers needed to serve small local markets, fiber-optic backbones now serve mainly as cross-country thruways, but the shift to optics could let fiber networks extend farther into neighborhoods than ever before.

FORBES: Hooked on photonics

House Republicans as a group are farther to the right than they have ever been.

NEWYORKER: The House of Pain

Simply put, this groundbreaking program will result in vehicles that use less gas, travel farther, and provide more efficiency for consumers than ever before all while maintaining safety, protecting the air we breathe, and laying the groundwork for automakers to create jobs, develop advanced technologies, and improve quality of life for America's families.

WHITEHOUSE: Our Top Stories

If they ever traveled, it was seldom farther than Hong Kong, less than a four-hour flight away.

FORBES: Not East or West

While we've been waiting for BlackBerry 10, Apple and Google have pulled even farther away from the pack and established two entrenched ecosystems that are now harder than ever to pull people away from.

ENGADGET: Editorial: BlackBerry 10, the waiting and the damage done