Author: Ms. R.

Overlooking a relatively busy intersection in quiet Woodley Park is a portrait of the iconic Marilyn Monroe. The pop legend is painted above Salon Roi, located where the William Taft Howard Bridge and Duke Ellington Memorial Bridge meet. In 1981, part-owner of Salon Roi, Charles Stinson, commissioned artist John Bailey to craft the portrait for co-owner Roi Barnard’s 40th birthday. Since, Monroe’s iconic countenance has gazed upon passersby, offering a familiar face to many. When describing why the mural so……

Read More

Located at the foot of the great Mount Fuji, Aokigahara is commonly referred to as the “Suicide Forest”. While the forest is known worldwide, its rich natural history often goes unmentioned. The forest was destroyed by an eruption of Mount Fuji in 864. Over the next 12 centuries, trees returned and animals slowly did as well. The eruption created several lava tubes that are scattered around the forest. Two of the most notable are the Fugaku Wind Cave and the……

Read More

The temple of Santa Prisca, erected in 1758, is considered one of the most magnificent Churrigueresque churches in Mexico. Built in just seven years, the rose-colored church boasts two towering belfries, a nave, a chapel, and a small ossuary. To guard it, a sculpture of a skeleton brandishing a scythe was placed over the side door.  This part of the church is believed to have been used during the processions of the Cofradía de la Buena Muerte (Brotherhood of……

Read More

Now home to an art gallery, this classic saltbox house with brick-red wooden shingles on Centre Street in Nantucket, Massachusetts, was constructed in 1760 by Captain William Brock. It later became the home of Captain George Pollard, Jr., whose ill-fated voyage on the whaling ship Essex became the basis for Herman Melville’s opus, Moby-Dick. Born in 1791, Pollard was a native son of Nantucket and grew up around the lucrative 19th-century whaling industry for which the island was famous…….

Read More

More than a century ago, a Pittsburgh based glass producer opened a burgeoning plant right in the middle of rural central Ohio. The PPG Glass Company constructed its massive Works #11 plant in Mount Vernon, Ohio near the shores of the Kokosing River in 1907. The plant churned out glass products of all manner for about 40 years. During the 1970s, it permanently closed, leaving the huge brick behemoth to slowly molder away and crumble. Parts of the structure……

Read More

It is a spectacle etched into Robert Dann’s memory. When the sun sets on the Kimberley, it almost looks like the earth is bleeding. Warm rays of light strike the ground at a sharp angle, deepening the color of the unique red soil for which this region of Western Australia is renowned. They also silhouette another icon of the wildest corner of a wild country: the bulbous trunk and spindly branches of the boab tree. Since he was a……

Read More

Science can be seen by many as a rigid discipline, only dealing with facts and objective truths. While this is true, many people seem to forget the humans behind the science. There are many links between scientists and places related to their discoveries across the globe. Pictures, equipment, and sometimes a sink shed light on the faces behind some of the world’s greatest discoveries. This apple tree in a Lund botanical garden is related to one of humanity’s greatest discoveries…….

Read More

On many days, when her lab is open, Stefanía Briones’s workstation is padded with paper towels stained with swirls of purple and blue. It looks a little like a madcap tie-dye experiment, but she is actually poking around for the bones inside bat penises. It’s a tricky task, because the bats Briones works with tend to be pretty small—just a few inches long—which means that their penises are even smaller. The bones inside them are often just millimeters long,……

Read More