Author: Ms. R.

Cooking rice on a stovetop can be fraught. Add too much water and you end up with porridge. Without a keen sense of timing, you end up with undercooked grains. But for others, making rice is as easy as pressing a button. In a recent viral video, Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng reacted dramatically to a BBC personality cooking rice with a saucepan rather than using a rice cooker. “World War Two is over, use technology!” he admonished viewers in……

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About 4,500 years ago, a large stone was placed on a sloping hill on England’s Salisbury plain. It was followed by another and another, until an entire henge had been formed, with its iconic “sarsen trilithons” towering over its human creators. But at some point after that construction work several millennia ago, the location of the original quarries were lost to time. Only recently were the Preseli Hills of Wales pinned down as the source of the henge’s smaller……

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If you are a visitor to Sheffield, or even a jumpy local, you may be taken by surprise if you walk through the city centre at the right time. Since 1874, a siren has sounded by the entrance to HL Brown, a watchmaker and jeweler, every day. Those with a keen eye will see a small metal plate, much like a street sign, reading “1 o’clock time signal,” alongside the siren that alerts all who hear it that it is indeed……

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Roberson Mansion is well known in the Binghamton area. Attached to the Roberson Museum and Science Center, this Gilded Age home has all the trappings of wealth and status. It was built for Alonzo and Margaret Roberson in 1904. Both were in their 40s when they decided to move from their Main Street home to Front Street. And they were willing to pay a lot. Before the mansion was built, there were two homes on the site. The Robersons purchased……

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Today, when someone finds human remains that appear to have died tragically, it might make the news, and hopefully be followed by a respectful burial or cremation. But propping up those remains as some kind of attraction is a thing of the regrettable past. But this was often done (including in ethnographic and natural history museums). Fet-Mats is an example of this practice. Fet-Mats was a so-called “petrified man” whose remains were found in 1719. Miners found the body……

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During his reign, Napoleon was seen as invincible, but in 1808 the French Empire saw some defeats in Spain, and this encouraged the Austrian Empire to join the Anti-French Alliance. The war moved to the Alps and saw fighting at Fort Malborgeth commanded by Austrian Captain Friedrich Hensel. For three days, from May 14 to 17, 1809, the commander and his men heroically fought to their death. His actions delayed the French Army long enough to allow Austrian Archduke……

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In the Hampshire village of Kingsclere, an unusual legend surrounds a curious decoration upon the village’s church, a weather-vane in the shape of a hissing bed bug. According to the story, during the early 13th-century, King John was caught in a thick fog after a day of hunting. Unable to return from whence they came, the King and his party stayed overnight in Kingsclere. Some tales say they chose to rest in a nearby inn, others claim they stayed with……

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The Shrine of the Immaculate Virgin was erected in 1935. The stone masonry niche was constructed so that it faced St. Elizabeth’s, the girls’ dormitory at Mount Loretto, once the largest orphanage in New York State. Mount Loretto opened in 1883 and was operated by the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin. It housed more than 1,000 orphaned children at its peak. By 1947, the facility encompassed 700 acres and 42 buildings north and south of Hylan Boulevard. Across the……

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