Author: Ms. R.

Attendees at the funeral of Adolf Emanuel Kjellén, in the autumn of 1884, received beautiful, solemn keepsakes. Small, sugar-sculpture doves perched among black lace and fabric flowers, all affixed to pieces of black paper. Inside each elaborate wrapper was a morsel of hard candy. Some mourners even flipped such mementos over and left heart-wrenching inscriptions. Adolf’s mother, Maria, wrote the following: “Our beloved son Adolf Emanuel died on October 28—Maria Gustaf Kjellén.” Today, Maria’s somber sweet belongs to Stockholm’s……

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Imagine a world that exists parallel to our own, unseeable to the human eye and full of spirits with their own society, their own tribes and classes, their own laws and schools. Like in our world, some of them are good and some are evil. Like us, they feel passion and pain and joy and suffering. Now imagine that these creatures had the power to enter our realm, to walk among us, and even change the course of our……

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A young mother is rocking her newborn to sleep when suddenly the smell of vinegar fills the air. She quickly pulls the curtain back, and sure enough, the disembodied head of a woman is floating just outside the window, with long, finger-like tendrils slithering out toward her child. In a panic, the mother slams the window shut, just before the apparition reaches her, and breathes a heavy sigh of relief. While folkloric monsters are numerous in Southeast Asia, one……

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The Adirondacks is known for its sprawling rustic private summer homes known as Great Camps, but only one is publicly owned. Camp Santanoni constructed between 1892-1893, is a sprawling log building modeled after a Japanese temple. It sits at the end of a five-mile historic carriage road, on the edge of a mile-and-a-half-long lake dotted with islands and framed by mountains. The building itself is composed of 5,000 square feet of porch space that connects its rooms and forms……

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Shinto, or Shintoism, is a pantheistic and animistic religion that originated in Japan. Lacking a doctrine, it’s more a traditional culture rather than a strict religion for most Japanese people. Reportedly there are over 88,000 Shinto shrines in Japan, so spotting one in the country is rather easy, as most neighborhoods have a jinja (“shrine”) of their own. There are also several Shinto shrines across the globe, particularly in former Japanese colonies such as Taiwan, Palau, and Saipan, as well……

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Before the advent of minting machinery, coins were individually crafted by hand. Referred to as hammered coinage, they were created by placing a blank piece of metal (called flan) between two dies. The metal was then struck on an anvil. During the late 16th-century, the town of Gadebusch was granted the right to mint and produced a number of silver coins for the Principality of Mecklenburg. The mint itself is not widely known due to its relatively short period……

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The Pine Ridge Pet Cemetery occupies approximately ten pastoral acres on the campus of the Animal Rescue League of Boston in Dedham, Massachusetts. The organization’s founder, Anna Harris Smith, established the cemetery in 1907 and envisioned it as a complement to a shelter for abused and neglected animals. It was also a retirement home for Boston’s working horses. It’s the oldest continuously operating pet cemetery associated with an animal welfare organization in the United States. Pine Ridge is the final……

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The Velino river scenically winds a slow path around the historical city center of Rieti, a town located in Sabina, north-east of Rome. When crossing the modern bridge (Ponte Romano or Ponte Velino) visitors will notice the sunken remains of an old Roman bridge in the waters below. The bridge, constructed in the opus quadratum technique, was designed after the conquest of Sabina by the Romans during the 3rd-century BCE. It was part of the ancient Roman road the……

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In September 1978, the Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov was killed in London under highly suspicious circumstances. The playwright had defected from his Soviet-allied home country in 1969 and spent the ensuing years appearing on American and West German radio programs, so his demise was always going to raise eyebrows. It was the cause of death, however, that stood out: septicemia or sepsis, a kind of blood poisoning, likely linked to a telltale puncture wound that had been found on……

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