Clik here to view.
London Is Still Paying Rent to the Queen on a Property Leased in 1211
Earlier this October, at a ceremony at the Royal Courts of Justice, London paid its rent to the Queen. The ceremony proceeded much as it had for the past eight centuries. The city handed over a knife,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hindu Temple of Florida in Tampa, Florida
Less than ten miles north of the Tampa International Airport, on an unassuming side road that rolls through the flat terrain and lush vegetation typical of Florida's bay area, an architecturally...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Surprising Success of Halloween Pop-Up Stores
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.“I didn’t invent temporary sales. But I feel like I invented temporary...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Steampunk HQ in Oamaru, New Zealand
For the uninitiated, steampunk is a branch of science fiction/fantasy that imagines an alternative industrial future that diverged from our past somewhere in the Victorian era, at the height of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Digging Through the Archives of Scarfolk, the Internet's Creepiest Fake Town
Let's take a moment to explain the picture above. In 1978, the town of Scarfolk, in northwest England, cut its police budget in half. This drastic measure was followed by a wave of violent crime. To...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The 1942 Ghost Blimp That Bewildered a California Town
On August 16,1942 something very strange happened in Daly City, California, a quiet suburb near San Francisco. Around 11:30 a.m. a sagging Navy blimp descended from the sky and headed for Bellevue...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Corpus Museum in Oegstgeest, Netherlands
In the outskirts of Leiden in the Netherlands, there rests a giant, 115-foot-tall man colored orange. Sitting on a two-story platform beside an eleven story glass building, this towering orange man...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Karlskirche (St. Charles's Church) in Vienna, Austria
The Karlskirche cathedral is a unique architectural curiosity, a mix of ancient Greek and Roman elements with Byzantine, Renaissance, and Baroque styles. Commissioned by the Habsburg Imperial Court to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Persistent Problem of Trying to Rig Elections with Dead People
Over the weekend, Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani made headlines after resuscitating an old political stereotype. "Dead people generally vote for Democrats rather than Republicans," he told CNN's Jake...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Viana Desert in Rabil, Cape Verde
In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean off of Africa's western coast sits the island of Boa Vista, known for its marine life, traditional music, and something more unusual: a small patch of desert on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Only the Vatican Has More Christian Relics Than Pittsburgh
Troy Hill, population 3,000, is situated on a small plateau overlooking Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s a historically German, but quintessentially Pittsburghian, neighborhood characterized by cozy row...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Galápagos Tortoise Skeleton in Los Angeles, California
Meet Gunther. He’s been at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County for over a hundred years, and most visitors never even see him.At the far end of a long hall leading to the Museum’s Research...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Dry Stone Walls of the Aran Islands in Aran Islands, Ireland
The dry stone walls of the Aran Islands—endless, mortarless, often ridiculous, always gorgeous—are a clever and scenic solution to a tricky problem. How do you create arable land on rocky, windy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Strangely Glamorous World of a 1980s Ronald McDonald
Author, performer, and educator Tim Arem has inhabited one of the most famous clown personas in the world. But he was one of many.Working in and around L.A., Arem was able to not only able to perform...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Spit and Spat in Saratoga Springs, New York
The focal point of Saratoga Springs' Congress Park is the fountain featuring two mermen using marble conch shells as water guns.The fountain was commissioned for the Canfield Casino in 1903, when...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Steeple in the Edersee in Waldeck, Germany
About 75 miles north of Frankfurt, Germany is a reservoir called the Edersee. During normal weather the manmade lake covers over four and a half square miles, but these last few seasons have been...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dial a Ghost on Thomas Edison's Least Successful Invention: the Spirit Phone
Thomas Edison seated in his laboratory, c. 1904. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-55339)In the late 1920s, not long before his death, Thomas Edison reportedly gathered with other scientists in a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Let's Choose a New Name for 'Indian Summer'
In mid-October in 2016, the trees might be near peak fall foliage, but the temperatures are not dropping. In fact, the high in New York City is forecasted to top 80 degrees. In North America, since at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Wendel House in New York, New York
Before Donald Trump's moniker was stamped all over New York City, there was another super-rich surname that dominated Manhattan real estate, and another bizarre story attached to it. Around the turn of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Macy's Wooden Escalators in New York, New York
Macy's Herald Square is famous for a lot of things: Its animatronic window displays are the talk of the town, and it is the site of the "Miracle on 34th Street" as well as home to the world's top...
View Article