Author: Ms. R.

For decades, the public toilet facilities in Amsterdam’s De Wallen Red Light District, perhaps the most well-known of the city’s three red light districts, consisted mainly of freestanding metal public urinals that were often dirty, smelly, and offered little privacy. No facilities were available for women or wheelchair users. Recognizing the need for better toilet facilities in the Red Light District, Jan Otten, the long-time owner of the erotic theatre Casa Rosso and several other sex-related businesses, opened the……

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Every spring and summer, a Jurassic limestone cave in the Mount Lebanon range turns into a 800-foot waterfall. The Baatara Gorge Waterfall drops through the Three Bridges Chasm. At the bottom, the water falls into a cave system and reemerges in the Dalleh Spring nearly four miles away. The hole and cave were formed by the rock’s Upper Jurassic limestone reacting with weak acids naturally occurring in rainwater, causing erosion. Freezing winter temperatures also caused the rocks on chasm’s……

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Just off of Atatürk Boulevard, one of the city of Eskişehir’s main thoroughfares, lies a tidy park dedicated to Uğur Mumcu, an investigative journalist who was killed in a car bombing outside his Ankara home in 1993. The wreckage of that car, raised on a marble pedestal and preserved under glass, serves as the park’s centerpiece. The pedestal features a quote from Mumcu urging us not to forget victims of political violence. It comes from his 1975 poem “Sesleniş,”……

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With no explanatory captions to be found, the Cabinet of Curiosities at the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra artfully rearranges a 700-year-old museum collection. Inspired by 18th-century curiosity cabinets, the display includes taxidermy (from monkeys and birds to manatees), natural history specimens preserved in jars, minerals, cultural artifacts, rare skeletons, and a stuffed donkey with six legs.  Few museums worldwide would have such an extensive collection to draw from—the items on display represent less than 1 percent of……

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Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is usually just another Mediterranean beach resort town which doubles as the “capital” of the Camargue wetlands region. For two days in May, however, it is a meeting point for Romani from across France and Europe who come to ritually bathe in the waters here. This is done in honor of the Three Marys, regarded as the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, and their servant Sarah the Black, unofficial patron saint of the Romani people. Throughout the rest……

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Tucked away on a Danish island in the Baltic Sea is a small cemetery holding an often overlooked history. Located a stone’s throw from the picturesque yellow church in the coastal village of Allinge is the final resting place of World War II Russian Soviet soldiers who died on the island of Bornholm between May 1945 and April 1946. V-E Day, or Victory Day, marks the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied forces on May 8, 1945. Why, then, would……

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