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From WWII to Syria, How Seed Vaults Weather Wars
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault entrance, lit up by fiberoptics the night after its opening. (Photo: Dag Terje Filip Endresen/NordGen Public Domain)Svalbard, the Norwegian island halfway between Europe...
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China's Classroom Maps Put the Middle Kingdom at the Center of the World
The Wanguo Qiantu world map, developed in collaboration with the Jesuits in the 1620s in Hangzhou. (Image: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons)"China" (zhong guo) is made up of the Chinese characters for...
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Macoupin County Jail in Carlinville, Illinois
This building in Carlinville, Illinois looks like a tiny medieval fortress. It’s actually the old county jail.The Macoupin County Jail opened in 1869 and was an early work by architect E.E. Myers, who...
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Fleeting Wonders: 27,581 Pumpkins Colonize a Town in Illinois
One vertex of the 6th Annual Great Highwood Pumpkin Festival. (Photo: Chris Cizek/Highwood Pumpkin Festival)Some October weekends are for setting manageable goals—laundry, grocery shopping, maybe...
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Wild Bill's Nostalgia Store in Middletown, Connecticut
Wild Bill's Nostalgia: A wonderful place full of big surprises, some of which are pleasant… and others not so much.A reliquary of pop-culture marvels, mostly available for purchase Wild Bill's...
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World Famous Crochet Museum in Joshua Tree, California
The insanely appropriately-named Shari Elf was not even thinking of her crochet obsession when she purchased the disused photo-processing booth in Joshua Tree, California that now houses the...
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Bicentennial Chair in Gardner, Massachusetts
Gardner, Massachusetts was once home to the Heywood-Wakefield Furniture Company, a large furniture manufacturer that specialized in handmade, wooden chairs, alongside other manufacturers of fine...
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A Con Man Reinvents Himself...As a Reality TV Magician
Aiden Sinclair. (Photo: Anil Singh)On a July episode of the primetime competition show America's Got Talent, a compact, graying man in ripped jeans and a vest and tie took the stage.Holding up a pack...
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The Turkish Deep State: What Life Is Like When the Conspiracy Is Real
Ataturk and the Turkish flag (Image: Segafredo18/Wikimedia)This past Saturday, two suicide bombers detonated explosives outside an Ankara train station and killed almost 100 people assembled for a...
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Object of Intrigue: Banknotes for a Japanese-Occupied Hawaii
(Image: National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History)In early 1942, the United States government began issuing a special set of banknotes custom-made for Hawaii. The back of each...
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The True Story of Dr. Voronoff's Plan to Use Monkey Testicles to Make Us...
For Dr. Voronoff, all it took to create immortal giants were some monkey testicles and imagination. (Image: Filip em/Wikipedia)The search for a Fountain of Youth has driven humankind down some strange...
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Brighton Beach Flint Sculpture Garden in Brighton, England
The pebble beaches of Brighton are now a tourist mecca for Londoners seeking a boozy weekend beside the sea. Little remains to suggest that the now-thriving city was once an impoverished fishing...
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FOUND: Perplexing Reports of a ‘Skeleton Plane’
Just a random wrecked plane (Photo: Unsplash/Pixabay)When Jamil Omar's aunt came to visit, she had a strange story to tell him. A nephew and his friends, Free Malaysia Today reports, had gone bird...
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Wawel Dragon's Den in Kraków, Poland
There are differing legends about how the city of Krakow got its name. Fortunately, every version involves a dragon.According to the stories, a ferocious dragon once lived in the cave that is now part...
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Fleeting Wonders: Writing a Novel in The Most Terrifying Way Possible
"You can have no sense of structure, no sense of shape," says Cohen. He's just figuring it out as he goes. (Photo: Mark Carrel/shutterstock.com)“You should know that I’m speaking to you completely...
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Green Springs in New Bern, North Carolina
There are two very brief statements you hear down South that sum up the region’s mentality in that storied and bloodied narrative of dealing with the federal government.Those statements are “This is my...
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Walldogs and the Disappearing Art of Painting Signs on Buildings
Factory building of the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company, on Wheeling Island, West Virginia. (Photo: Library of Congress)When the tall, lean 39-year old from Chicago was asked to explain his job, he...
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Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, Illinois
If you dream in 8-bit and the sound of flapping pinball paddles is your mating call, look no further than the town of Brookfield, Illinois to find the pinnacle of fulfillment. At the Galloping Ghost...
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The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures in Kansas City, Missouri
Featuring one of the largest collections of antique toys and miniatures anywhere in the country, The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures stands as a sprawling vision of the playthings of...
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Redd Foxx Walk Of Fame in West Hollywood, California
Inclusion on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is one of the most enduring and honored symbols of celebrity around, but there is another, much smaller, and all but forgotten monument to another group of...
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