Author: Ms. R.

One night in 1949, a 43-year-old acupuncturist in Nagoya named Hidenobu Maeda had a strange dream that compelled him to build a daibutsu, or great statue of Buddha. Although a total amateur in sculpture, Maeda decided to do as he was told, and completed the reinforced concrete statue five years later.  Standing (or rather, sitting) 60 feet tall, the Hotei Buddha is the largest privately owned daibutsu in Japan, even bigger than the famous Great Buddha of Nara. This Buddha is……

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Tucked under the glimmering gold dome of the Georgia State Capitol building in Atlanta is a curiosity that has many visitors seeing double. Proudly on display next to the introduction to the Capitol Museum is a stuffed, two-headed calf born in the town of Palmetto in 1987. It was originally introduced alongside other taxidermied animals in a display that celebrated the state’s natural resources, and that has since been removed from the museum. The beloved two-headed oddity was too popular not……

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Constructed during the 1860s, Goathland Station has managed to survive the changing times and remains part of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, where steam trains seasonally travel throughout the national park. It’s a beautiful village station and attraction in its own right, but Goathland’s claim to fame is definitely its appearance as Hogsmeade Station in the first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone or Sorcerer’s Stone depending on which side of the pond you’re based. The station’s……

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With the sultry humidity of Tennessee summer hanging in the air, a small group dressed in white gathered on a Saturday morning, under shade trees at Freedmen’s Mission Historic Cemetery in Knoxville. The little patch of earth adjacent to Knoxville College, a historically Black liberal arts school, is dotted with weathered headstones. Prior to the pandemic, and since 2015, nearly 100 community members would have filled the small cemetery’s rolling terrain on this distinctive date—August 8. They would come……

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The market town of Oswestry, situated close to the Welsh border, is said to be named after the Anglo-Saxon King Oswald of Northumbria. Born in 604, he was crowned king of Northumbria at the age of 30. It’s believed he died only eight years later during the Battle of Maserfield in 642, where he lost to the pagan king, King Penda of Mercia. Oswald has since been venerated as a saint.  Upon his death, his body was dismembered and according to legend,……

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Hōryū-ji Temple in Ikaruga City, Nara Prefecture, houses the world’s oldest wooden structures, many of which have stood for well over 1,400 years. It’s believed they were constructed sometime between 552-710, undergoing various repairs and renovations over the centuries. A pine tree-lined avenue leads to the towering main gate. Beyond that gate is the temple’s courtyard. This is where the main hall or main temple and a five-story pagoda are located. The pagoda is the oldest structure at the complex…….

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This striking right-angled lighthouse tower on a rocky headland to the south of Port Ellen harbor is one of the first sights travelers see when arriving on Islay on the Port Ellen ferry. The lighthouse tower was constructed in 1832 by the Laird of Islay, Walter Frederick Campbell in memory of his wife, Lady Ellinor Campbell who tragically died at the age of 36. She passed the same year the tower was built. During her later years, she struggled……

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In the early 1960s, Julia Child and her husband handed Barbara Ketcham Wheaton the keys to their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The famous couple was going to California for the summer, but they wanted their young neighbor to be able to continue one of her favorite activities: perusing Child’s collection of historical cookbooks. Now an honorary curator of Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library Culinary Collection, Wheaton was then in her early 30s, with young children at home. She had left……

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Deep in the Morne Seychellois National Park, perched on a mountaintop are the ruins of a mission named after Henry Venn, an Anglican missionary.  Venn’s Town was a mission set up in 1876, and it consisted of a boarding school, dormitories, a laundry building, kitchens, washrooms, and dwellings for laborers, teachers, and the school principal. In order to sustain its operations, the mission cultivated vanilla, coffee, and cocoa among other produce over a large swath of land (approximately 50……

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