Showing posts from December, 2017

The Russian Woodpecker

Dec 29, 2017

Anyone who listened to shortwave radio or was a ham radio operator from the mid 1970s to the late 1980s will be familiar with a sharp, repet...

The Fortified Villages of Khevsureti

Dec 28, 2017

Tucked away in the Caucasus Mountains in the north of Georgia, is the historic province of Khevsureti. Its men were once renowned in martial...

Britain’s Thankful Villages

Dec 27, 2017

War memorials are a familiar sight in towns and villages across Britain, somberly remembering the sacrifices made by millions of ordinary yo...

Poles of Beauty

Dec 22, 2017

An image recently published by one of my favorite blogs, Astronomy Picture of the Day, made me realize that our planet earth posses perhaps...

Checkpoint Charlie

Dec 20, 2017

For nearly thirty years until the end of the Cold War, Berlin lay divided both physically and ideologically by the infamous Berlin Wall that...

Ethiopia’s Churches In The Sky

Dec 19, 2017

The ancient Kingdom of Axum, now a part of Ethiopia, was one of the first nations in the world to adopt Christianity. The religion took stro...

How Clowns Trademark Their Face By Painting On Eggs

Dec 15, 2017

Every clown’s face makeup is unique, or at least, they should be, for there is an unwritten rule within the clowning community that no clown...

Toronto’s Camouflaged Electric Substations

Dec 14, 2017

More often than not, industrial infrastructures are an eyesore, especially when they are smack in the middle of a beautiful city like Toront...

Cultybraggan: Britain’s Last POW Camp

Dec 12, 2017

The Cultybraggan camp located near the Scottish village of Comrie, in Perthshire, is one of the last remaining World War 2 Prisoner of War C...

Decorating Fences With Trash, The New Zealander Way

Dec 9, 2017

New Zealanders have a unique way of discarding their trash—they hang them on fences. Bras, boots, toothbrushes, bicycles, everything that ha...

The Dark Legacy of Gruinard Island

Dec 8, 2017

Halfway between the villages of Gairloch and Ullapool in the North-West Highlands of Scotland, sits a small oval-shaped island named Gruinar...

Leiden’s Love Affair With Poems And Equations

Dec 7, 2017

Scattered throughout the city of Leiden, in The Netherlands, are over one hundred poems carefully hand-painted on the exterior walls of buil...

Chateau de Chenonceau: The Chateau Built Over A River

Dec 6, 2017

Château de Chenonceau, located near the small village of Chenonceaux in France, is one of the best-known chateau of the Loire valley. The ch...

The Southern Pole of Inaccessibility

Dec 6, 2017

The cold hard stare of Lenin penetrating the icy air is the only thing you’ll come across the vast frozen landscape in this part of Antarcti...

The German Hyperinflation of 1923

Dec 5, 2017

There was a time when an average German carried billions of marks in their pockets but could still buy nothing. A loaf of bread cost 200 bil...

The Fungus That Makes Mummies

Dec 4, 2017

In 1647, construction workers carrying out repairs on the Church of Saint Andrew in the small city of Venzone, in the province of Udine, Ita...

The Abandoned Hotels of Kupari

Dec 4, 2017

Affixed to the wall near the city gate in the town of Dubrovnik on Croatia’s beautiful Dalmatian Coast, is a map showing the scale of damage...

Derbent: Russia’s Oldest City

Dec 1, 2017

Located on a narrow strip of land between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains in the far western end of Eurasia, is the city of Derbe...