The Ruins of Washburn A Mill, Minneapolis

Dec 30, 2019

The tasteful ruins on the banks of the Mississippi River from which rises the Minneapolis’ Mill City Museum serves as a reminder to the site...

Child Birth by Centrifugal Force

Dec 28, 2019

In 1965, George and Charlotte Blonsky, a childless New York couple were granted patent for a peculiarly weird invention—an ”Apparatus for F...

Corona Spy Satellite: The Humble Beginning of Satellite Espionage

Dec 27, 2019

There is not a square-inch of earth that has not been photographed and mapped by satellites today. These spying eyes, flying hundreds of mil...

Creepy Victorian Christmas Cards

Dec 24, 2019

Victorian Christmas cards were a mixed bag of iconography, ranging from religious to everyday things. But one theme common in these season...

The Australian Floating Hotel That Ended Up in North Korea

Dec 24, 2019

For little more than a year in the late 1980s, a seven-story five-star hotel floated over John Brewer Reef, about 70 km off the coast of Tow...

The Termite Mounds of Okavango Delta

Dec 23, 2019

The Okavango Delta is a place like nowhere else on earth. It’s a vast swampy inland delta where a river disappears instead of emptying into ...

Sargasso Sea And Sargassum

Dec 23, 2019

The Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean, near the Caribbean, is unlike any other sea in this planet. The boundaries of the sea are defi...

Villa Girasole: The House That Rotates

Dec 21, 2019

In the hills of northern Italy near Verona stands an L-shaped house called Villa Girasole, which means “sunflower” in Italian. And just li...

Britain’s Hundred Million Pound Banknotes

Dec 20, 2019

Scottish banknotes are weird. Although they are used all over Scotland and the rest of the UK, they are not legal tender, which means a shop...

Australia’s Rock And Ocean Pools

Dec 20, 2019

A defining feature of the Australian coastline, particularly in New South Wales, are the rock pools—outdoor swimming pools carved out of the...

Seljavallalaug: Iceland’s Hidden Swimming Pool

Dec 19, 2019

Tucked in a narrow valley in South Iceland, a short hike away from the Ring Road that encircles the country, is an outdoor swimming—arguably...

Fata Morgana Mirage

Dec 19, 2019

The atmosphere plays unusual tricks with light in the polar regions, especially at sea, creating strange shapes like a looming island, a flo...

Döllersheim: The Village That Hitler Destroyed to Crush a Rumor

Dec 18, 2019

About one hundred km northwest of Vienna, in northern Austria, lies a small village called Döllersheim. Eighty years ago, this tiny Austrian...

The White Cliffs of Iturup Island

Dec 18, 2019

Stretching from Hokkaido, Japan to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the north Pacific Ocean, are a string of volcanic i...

China’s Trackless Trains

Dec 18, 2019

After two years of testing, a new futuristic train that runs on virtual tracks was launched for the first time in Yibin, in the province of ...

The Moon Villages of South Korea

Dec 17, 2019

After the Korean War ended in 1953, many war refugees and other impoverished people moved to the rapidly developing urban centers and began ...

The Elephant Bird

Dec 17, 2019

Not too long ago, a gigantic, flightless bird roamed the island of Madagascar. It stood nearly 10 feet tall and weighed 700 kg. For centur...

Haystacks of Rishikesh

Dec 12, 2019

Haystacks are often constructed around a central pole, or a tree. Bales of hay are loosely arranged around the central structure to prevent ...

The Hellfire Club And Caves

Dec 12, 2019

Throughout history men have formed clandestine clubs where rich young aristocrats met and indulged in drunken orgies, gambling and carousing...

Machine de Marly

Dec 11, 2019

Water features form an impressive part of the gardens in the Palace of Versailles in Paris. There are fountains, cascading waterfalls, calm ...