Author: Ms. R.

In February, Gastro Obscura broke the exciting news that the University of Texas, San Antonio had begun the mammoth task of digitizing the largest collection of historic Mexican cookbooks in the United States. While the spread of COVID-19 has since brought that project to a screeching halt, the university is now turning their handwritten recipes into free e-books. The UTSA Libraries released the first of the mini-cookbooks earlier this month. Postres: Guardando Lo Mejor Para el Principio, or “Desserts:……

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In September of 1833, bands of Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Odawa, and other Anishinaabe and Algonquin peoples gathered in a small fur-trapping town called Chicago, where a shimmering prairie met a vast inland sea. After weeks of coercion, they signed the Treaty of Chicago, transferring to the U.S. government 15 million acres of territory they had inhabited since time immemorial. Though the treaty forced them west, their names for that river—and the town it ran through—stuck. According to some histories of……

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Anyone in the market for 63 acres of pure emerald Ireland is in luck: A 22-bed mansion on the isle’s southeastern edge is up for sale, for a cool $2.87 million. Pulling that price up or down, depending on your perspective, is the site’s rather interesting history. The mansion, known as Loftus Hall, goes back to the 12th century, and has seen several regime changes over the years. The most infamous chapter in its history, no doubt, comes from……

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The Fawside family were owners of this property after Scottish leader Robert the Bruce’s rebellion. The Fawsides oversaw the construction of the general plan of the modern-day castle during the 16th-century. During the Rough Wooing between 1544-1548, an English faction burned the Fa’side castle prior to the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. A fortification stood at the site prior to the castle’s construction that dated back to the late 12th-century and the first Earl of Winchester. The location has also been……

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Since 2010, Indianapolis residents and visitors have been able to enjoy contemporary artwork against the backdrop of unruly nature at the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park. The park brings together the great outdoors with site-specific art installations that invite visitors to examine the unique relationship between art and the natural world. No “stay off the sculpture” signs will be found here, as many of the installations aim to draw visitors to the artwork; first to climb or……

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Atop Goat Hill in Raton, New Mexico lies a layer of rock that tells a story that is guaranteed to intrigue more than just ardent geologists. A thin layer of iridium-rich rock calls this hill home. It’s the type of layer only found in several places across the world. Radiometric dating of these layers found that they actually mark the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods. An anomalous iridium layer was first discovered in the 1980s in Gubbio,……

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In the heart of old town Passau on the Danube River lies the world’s only museum dedicated to dachshunds. The museum is home to a lovingly assembled collection of all things dachshund—from toys, porcelain figurines, and Christmas ornaments, to photos of famous dachshund owners with their pets. The museum was founded by two florists from Passau, Seppi Küblbeck and Oliver Storz. They put together 25 years’ worth of dachshund memorabilia and opened in 2015 on the corner of Residentzplatz. The……

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On March 8, 2008, a fire consumed IBM Building 025. Now, in a parking lot in south San José, between a Lowe’s and an AutoZone, a tiny monument memorializes what was once Silicon Valley’s pioneering tech campus. Built in 1957, the campus was the design of the architect John S. Bolles. Under the mandate of IBM’s president, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., he was instructed to blend “architecture, landscape and art into an employee-friendly environment,” notes an explanatory display sign. If that……

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