Author: Ms. R.

A center of modern culture in Tokyo, the Roppongi Hills development complex is known for its collection of international public art, including a version of the famous “Maman” sculpture. Keyakizaka Street, which runs through Roppongi Hills, is also decorated with 10 pieces of public art created by 13 artists from across the world, as part of the complex’s “Streetscape” project. Dubbed the “Street Furniture,” they add some spice to the scenery although few passengers stop to take a look at them,……

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Bird in Hand, a gift shop in downtown Chico, is home to the U.S. National Yo-Yo Museum as well as the largest functioning wooden yo-yo in the world. Modeled after Tom Kuhn’s No-Jive Three-in-One, the gargantuan yo-yo earned its place in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1982 as the world’s biggest working wooden yo-yo. Not even the strongest of yo-yo-tossing humans could take on this four-foot tall, 256-pound toy; only a giant crane has been able to……

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A colossal marble left foot is tucked at the end of a small alley near the Pantheon in Rome, giving the adjacent street, where it was originally found, its name: Via del Piè di Marmo (Marble Foot Way). The foot is actually four feet long, which has led archaeologists to believe that the complete statue must have been some 25 feet tall. The foot is believed to be a fragment of a colossal statue from the Temple of Serapis……

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Probably never before in the history of the industry has a maker of bridge cranes—the kind that are mounted on a gantry—been asked to slow one of its machines down. There’s a practical reason for that: The machines are usually used in factories and warehouses to move heavy things around and, after all, time is money. But the world of science doesn’t cling to the same view of time. “We contacted the company in charge of the bridge crane……

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The debate over historical monuments currently roiling the United States is, in fact, nothing new. Back in 1876, none other than Frederick Douglass himself took issue with a Washington, D.C., statue of Abraham Lincoln, which activists are now lobbying to have taken down. Only now, however, do historians have proof of what Douglass thought of it when it went up. The statue in Lincoln Park, known as the Emancipation Memorial, depicts the 16th president beside a Black man who,……

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Rovaiolo Vecchio is an ancient village in the mountains in the province of Pavia, halfway between Milan and the sea. Or at least it was. Before the construction of highways and railways, the road that passes through the town was of primary importance for the importing of salt to population centers in the Po Valley.  One day in 1960, local officials ordered the immediate evacuation of the whole village: The mountain was sliding down onto it. Within a few……

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This piece was originally published in SAPIENS. On a sunny, cloudless afternoon in Croatia, a fierce wind known as a bora can whip over the Velebit mountain range and across the Adriatic Sea. When it reaches hurricane force, this cold, dry wind can render the steep, arid terrain freezing at midday. This coastal region is dominated by karst, a porous rock topography. Despite the area’s challenging conditions, humans eked out an existence here thousands of years ago. Archaeologist Vedrana……

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