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The 25-Year Battle For a Folk Remedy from the Rainforest to Gain FDA Approval
A view of an Amazon tributary in Peru. (Photo: Paul Alexander/flickr)Steven King had to learn the hard way that wearing G.I.-style boots in the Amazon jungle was not a good idea.It was the late 1970s,...
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FOUND: Ancient Rats the Size of Modern Dogs
Imagine a rat about 10 times larger than this little guy. Much less cute. (Image: Jean-Jacques Boujot/Flickr)Archaeology can yield a lot of surprises, as researchers from the Australian National...
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Bonfires on the Levee for Papa Noel in Lutcher, Louisiana
The locals of St. James Parish, Louisiana have their own unique, long-standing tradition of lighting teepee style pyres on fire for Christmas Eve, some of which are packed with fireworks as...
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The Frisbie Pie Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut
The Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut was started in 1871 by a Civil War veteran, and by the 1950s they were selling around 80,000 pies a day.William Russell Frisbie returned to his home...
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Fleeting Wonders: The World's Fastest Lawnmower
Blurring its way to a world title. (Photo: Norwegian Speed Factory/Facebook)On Friday November 6, an unusual vehicle sped down the rain-slicked runway of Norway's Torp Sandefjord Airport. It wasn't a...
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The Quixotic Quest to Find the Fairytale Capital of the World
Joseph Noel Paton's 1849 painting of Oberon and Titania, fairies from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)Fairies are renowned for causing mischief, so it is little...
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The Bruce Peninsula Grotto in Ontario, Canada
Hidden in the cliff face of an escarpment in Ontario's Bruce Peninsula, the lovely seas cave known simply as "The Grotto," has long attracted visitors with its startlingly blue waters and secluded...
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Blair Museum of Lithophanes in Toledo, Ohio
One man's singular interest and dedication to the odd art of the lithophane has resulted in this charming little museum that celebrates the art and beauty of carving art onto stone.A lithophane is a...
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See Aerial Reconnaissance Photos of WWI Battlefields
A Breguet 14, a bi-plane bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, is photographed over enemy territory in Kortekeer in 1918. (All photos: Courtesy Yale University Press/ Mercatorfonds)Aerial photography was...
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Object of Intrigue: The Dummy Paratroopers of WWII
A "Rupert" dummy paratrooper at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. (Photo: Ella Morton)In the hours before sunrise on D-Day, June 6, 1944, Allied soldiers sat bundled on ships and strapped into...
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In the Early 1900s, Robber Barons Bought Dozens of Centuries-Old European...
Crates of monastery stones and statue of the King of Seville arrive in Miami. St. Bernard de Clairvaux was dismantled and shipped from Spain by William Randolph Hearst. (Photo: Bettmann/Corbis)We had...
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How China Revamped National Singles' Day into The World's Biggest Consumer...
Your only responsibility to celebrate is to online shop. (Photo: Pixabay/Public Domain)A holiday named “Bare Sticks” may not sound very celebratory, but it might be the most important day in the year...
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Fleeting Wonders: Seattle's Gum Wall
Goodnight, sweet Gum Wall. (Photo: jareed/Flickr)For 20 years, the Gum Wall in downtown Seattle has been growing into a sticky technicolor mural bonded together by hundreds of thousands of strangers'...
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Abandoned Longhorn Grill in Amado, Arizona
Last known as the Longhorn Grill, the abandoned commercial space in Amado, Arizona that makes visitors walk through the nose hole of a giant longhorn skull is one of the most iconic buildings in the...
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The Open-Air Philippine Prison Where Inmates Dance For Tourists
The entrance to Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm. (Photo: Audra Williams)The signs for Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in the Philippine city of Puerto Princesa start about a five-minute drive from the gate:A...
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Found: Cloud UFOs Invade Cape Town
A particularly saucer-y lenticular cloud, over Dublin in June. (Photo: Omnisource5/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 4.0) This past weekend, eerie shadows passed over Cape Town, South Africa. Those who looked up...
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Twede's Cafe in North Bend, Washington
The Double R Diner found an uncannily perfect setting in Twede’s Cafe — before it was Twede's Cafe, and before Twede's Cafe took a hiatus from being the Double R Diner.Built in 1940, the restaurant...
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The Siren on Your Starbucks Cup Was Born in 7th-Century Italy
Three two-tailed melusines with mirrors. (Photo: cea +/flickr)On a late October morning, the wind howls through the winding streets of ancient Otranto. Whitecaps curl up from a bright blue sea,...
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BoatHenge in Columbia, Missouri
At first glance, BoatHenge seems like nothing more than a bunch of boats stuck oddly into dry land; but, like most of America's great art installations created in a similar vein, it is only upon...
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U.S.S. Albacore in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Now a free exploration museum that allows tourists to sit at its helm and haphazardly spin its knobs and dials, the U.S.S. Albacore was once the speediest sub in the sea, a Cold War vessel full of...
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