Showing posts from October, 2017

Madam Coudray’s 18th Century Manikin For Midwife Trainees

Oct 31, 2017

This crude fabric doll of a small child emerging out of a fabric womb was one of the first life-sized obstetrical manikin used by Angélique ...

Sheela-Na-Gig: The Mysterious Medieval Carvings of Women Exhibitionists

Oct 30, 2017

The Church of St Mary and St David at Kilpeck in the English county of Herefordshire is famous for its Norman carvings of writhing snakes an...

The Rock Houses That Inspired Tolkien

Oct 28, 2017

In 1777, a certain Joseph Heely of Birmingham published a guide book to the three great West Midland gardens of the mid-18th century with a ...

Medieval ‘dos-à-dos’ Book Bindings

Oct 27, 2017

Back in mediaeval times, when people didn’t have Kindles to carry a thousand books, some book binders bound two separate books together in a...

Japanese Milk Delivery Boxes

Oct 25, 2017

For many western countries, doorstep milk delivery is a thing of the past, but in Japan, millions of people still rely on the milkman for fr...

The Forgotten Soviet-Era Murals

Oct 25, 2017

Telling stories through mosaics and murals is a tradition that goes back to antique times. During the Soviet era, murals were used extensive...

The Sacred Grove of Bomarzo

Oct 24, 2017

Once upon a time there was a young nobleman who, after the death of his beloved wife, became so distraught with grief and anguish that he de...

Vozrozhdeniya, The Anthrax Island

Oct 24, 2017

In the 1920s, the Soviet government began searching for an isolated place where they could build a military complex to test biological weapo...

The Forgotten Nubian Pyramids of Meroe

Oct 21, 2017

About 200 km northeast of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in a valley known as Nubia, lies the remains of three ancient Kushite kingdoms. He...

The Squatters of Grande Hotel Beira

Oct 20, 2017

You might not know this, but Mozambique is one of the fastest growing tourist destination in the world. Its wild beauty and untamed nature h...

The Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan

Oct 18, 2017

The granite quarries located along the Nile, in the city of Aswan, supplied some of the finest quality stones for the construction of temple...

The Buddhas of Bamiyan

Oct 17, 2017

On the cliff face of a sandstone mountain, visible from the ancient Silk Road near the town of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, are two massive voids...

Jealous Wall: Ireland’s Largest Folly

Oct 17, 2017

The Belvedere House and Gardens located on the shores of Lough Ennell near Mullingar, County Westmeath in Ireland, contains several architec...

The Floating Fish Farms of China

Oct 14, 2017

In the sheltered coastal waters of the Bohai Sea, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the South China Sea, there are large fish farms whe...

The Spectacular Sets of Early 20th Century New York Theater

Oct 13, 2017

Many theatrical set designers today follow the maxim of “less is more”, but in the old days when theaters had to compete with moving picture...

Joe Reginella’s Memorials to Disasters That Never Happened

Oct 11, 2017

Most remember October 29th, 1929—also known as Black Tuesday—as the day when the New York stock market crashed. However, it was also the day...

Inside The Strange World of Soviet Sanatoriums

Oct 11, 2017

In Soviet Russia, vacations were as purposeful as work. Many state workers of the era, instead of wasting time in idleness, used the holiday...

Alexander Graham Bell's Tetrahedral Kites

Oct 7, 2017

Alexander Graham Bell is best remembered for inventing the telephone, but the great Scottish inventor’s interests weren’t limited to just on...

Moscow’s Bagel House

Oct 6, 2017

In the early 1970s, Russian architect Evgeny Stamo and engineer Alexander Markelov came up with plans for an unusual house in the capital ci...

Rivers of Blood: The Aftermath of Eid al-Adha in Dhaka

Oct 5, 2017

Early last month, a macabre image of a little girl posing in what appears to be a street flooded with blood-stained rainwater went viral ove...

The Earth Pyramids of South Tyrol

Oct 4, 2017

At many places across South Tyrol, in northern Italy, one can see a peculiar geological formation called “earth pyramids”. They consist of t...

Ireland’s Famine Follies

Oct 4, 2017

In the grounds of the Castletown Estate, near the Irish town of Maynooth, is a large stone structure comprising of interlocking arches, ador...

A Garden In A Sinkhole

Oct 4, 2017

The region in the southeast of South Australia, near Mount Gambier, is littered with many volcanic and karst features such as volcanic crate...