The Mega Hotels of Mecca

Nov 30, 2017

A mammoth new hotel is rising in Saudi Arabia’s holy city Mecca. When completed it will have 10,000 rooms spanning more than 1.4 million squ...

The Rise of Vertical Cemeteries

Nov 29, 2017

According to the Population Reference Bureau , there are approximately 101 billion dead people on earth with 7 billion more to join them wit...

Copenhagen’s Urban Birdhouses

Nov 28, 2017

Thomas Dambo—you may remember him from a couple of months ago, where he constructed giant troll-like wooden sculptures and hid them around ...

Modern Potemkin Villages

Nov 27, 2017

In 1787, Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, was scheduled for a grand tour of the newly acquired lands of Crimea and New Russia—now...

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin’s Color Photographs of Pre-Revolution Russia

Nov 25, 2017

Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian chemist and photographer, best known for his pioneering work in color photography during t...

The Coffin Ships of The Great Irish Famine

Nov 25, 2017

During the Great Famine of Ireland in the mid-19th century, tens of thousands of starving Irish families fled the country and emigrated to C...

Victorian Era Murder Figurines

Nov 22, 2017

During the late 18th century, the potteries in the Staffordshire region of England began churning out detailed ceramic figures commemoratin...

The Hairy Secret Behind Indian Temples

Nov 21, 2017

Where do hairs for fashion wigs and hair extensions come from? The answer is: everywhere, but the majority of them come from China and India...

Lebanon’s Thinnest Building Was Built Out of Spite

Nov 18, 2017

Locals call the building “the Grudge” and rightly so. This extremely narrow building standing on a mere 120-square-meter piece of land in Be...

The International Church of Cannabis

Nov 18, 2017

The psychedelic interior of this 113-year-old converted Lutheran church in Denver’s Washington Park neighborhood is appropriate, for it’s th...