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The Surprising Truth About Pirates and Parrots
A friend to pirates everywhere. (Photo: peasap/flickr)Ever since Long John Silver clomped around on a wooden leg with a parrot on his shoulder, the literary and pop-culture conception of pirates has...
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The Dutch House in Brookline, Massachussets
Just past some fairly ordinary single-family houses and apartment blocks sits a building that would look far more at home in a well-preserved section of Amsterdam than it does in its Boston suburb....
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FOUND: A Tennis Ball-Sized Diamond, the Largest Discovered in a Century
The diamond. It's giant! (Photo: Lucara Diamond)In a mine in Botswana, the Lucara Diamond Corporation has come up with the largest diamond discovered in the past century and the second largest ever...
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Rome's Gladiator School in Rome, Italy
Tucked away on a side-street of the Appian Way, one of the most crucial and strategic of all Roman roads, the Gruppo Storico Romano (Historic Roman Group) has been recreating one of the most brutal and...
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Wing Sang Building in Vancouver, Canada
The Wing Sang Building on Pender Street is the oldest building in Vancouver's Chinatown, one of the largest Chinatowns in the Western Hemisphere. A “time capsule” of a building, the original owner and...
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Fleeting Wonders: Thanksgiving Turkeys in Every Color of the Rainbow
(Photo: Aldo Hynes/flickr)Ah, autumn. The brightly colored leaves! The crisp Thanksgiving turkeys! The ... brightly colored Thanksgiving turkeys? Every year for decades, the folks at Gozzi's Turkey...
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Christ Church Cathedral in Stanley, Falkland Islands
Consecrated in the town of Stanley in 1892, Christ Church Cathedral is one of the crown jewels of the Falkland Islands.The church that graces the capital also graces the nation's paper money, and...
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Filitosa in Sollacaro, France
Although standing stones are typically associated with Brittany and the British Isles, the Mediterranean island of Corsica is likewise home to many examples of these mystifying prehistoric monuments....
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Real Jardin Botanico in Madrid, Spain
Founded by King Ferdinand IV's royal decree, the Real Jardín Botánico is a two-and-a-half centuries-old wonder, occupying 20-acres of lush terrain in the heart of Spain's capital city.Housed in its...
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How a Small-Town Crime Syndicate Stole Kentucky's Bourbon
Welcome to Wild Turkey Bourbon! (Photo: Chris Breeze/flickr)It started as early as 2006, when bottles of whiskey started disappearing from distilleries in Kentucky. These weren’t one-off petty thefts....
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Wotruba Church in Wien, Austria
Sitting atop a grassy hill in Vienna is the Kirche Zur Heiligsten Dreifaltigkeit (Church of the Most Holy Trinity), what looks to be an asymetrical jumble of stark concrete slabs precariously threaded...
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Shrine of The Pines in Baldwin, Michigan
Sitting on the scenic banks of the Pere Marquette River in Baldwin, Michigan, the Shrine of the Pines looks more like it was grown than carved, but each piece of hand-carved furniture on display in...
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In Defense of the Cassowary, the Maligned Killer of the Bird World
Bloodthirsty killer or misunderstood introvert? (Image: Steve Wilson/Flickr)Do a quick Google search of “cassowary” and other than the Wikipedia entry on the bird, you will find that almost everything...
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See a 400-Year-Old Book Made Entirely from Feathers
The title page of The Feather Book. The banner hanging from the branch reads: 'Dionisio Minaggio, gardener to His Excellency the Governor of Milan was the creator, and he made [this book] in the year...
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This Is the Only Photo of Charlie Parker Playing His Sax in His Hometown
Charlie "Bird" Parker, playing in Kansas City. Photo from the 1939 Kangaroo UKC yearbook (Photo: University Archives, UMKC)In the photograph of Charlie “Bird” Parker playing his saxophone in his...
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The Epic 1959 Battle Between a New York Town and Thousands of Starlings
Starlings on a telegraph pole. (Photo: David Prasad/flickr)The city of Mount Vernon New York was under siege. The distraught residents had tried to drive their tormentors away with shotguns, fire...
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The South Fremantle Power Station in North Coogee, Australia
High in the dunes of C.Y. O'Connor Beach stands a monument of urban decay and days of industry gone by. The ruins of the South Fremantle Power Station have stood empty since 1985, home only to urban...
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Fleeting Wonders: A Tap-Dancing Songbird
A blue-capped cordon-bleu. (Photo: Heather Paul/Flickr)Scientists studying the courtship behaviors of the blue-capped cordon-bleu (Uraeginthus cyanocephalus) have discovered what Fred Astaire fans have...
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FOUND: A Fossilized Forest That Helped Change the World
A drawing of the fossilized trees (Image: University of Cardiff)In the present time, the archipelago of Svalbard is located about as far north as humans care to live, edging up into the Arctic ocean....
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Sochaczew Narrow Gauge Railway Museum in Sochaczew, Poland
Poland is home to one of Europe's largest collection of antique narrow gauge rolling stock, encompassing the earliest horse-drawn vehicles up through a pair of still-functioning diesel locomotives,...
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