Author: Ms. R.

Every night at 8 p.m., around 20 elderly musicians in formal purple gowns take the stage in Naxi Concert Hall, a 400-seat theater in Old Town Lijiang, China. Painted white cranes drift across the indigo walls. A young woman introduces the band in Chinese, then English, as the “Dayan Naxi Orchestra, reformed in 1981 by our master Mr. Xuan Ke!” Then come the thumping beats of the da gu, a drum as big as a person. The centuries-old instruments……

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John Brisben Walker was a self-made millionaire with a wide portfolio of ventures to his name. Born near Pittsburg Walker cofounded the Locomobile Company of America, invested in Stanley Steamer steam-powered automobiles, and edited Cosmopolitan magazine. But it was in Colorado where he made his biggest mark. In 1905, Walker relocated to Colorado where he boosted farming by introducing irrigated alfalfa as a crop, developed the Riverfront Park area of Denver, and purchased over 4,000 acres of land. Forty of……

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Long before Deadmau5 and Honeymoon Suite became notable musical exports from Niagara Falls, a composer, organist, and music professor named Robert Nathaniel Dett did his part to change the image and direction of Afrocentric music in the early 1900s. Dett showed his flair for music at an early age. Encouraged by his mother, Dett started taking piano lessons at age five. Years later, while studying at the Oberlin Conservatory, Dett heard the music of Antonín Dvořák and was inspired……

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Many fathoms below the surface of the sea, mysteries still abound—mostly invisible to human eyes. Sunlight disappears and water pressure mounts, making the deep sea one of the least explored and understood environments on the planet. Even today. Still, humans have found ways to sate their curiosity, from diving bells (first envisioned by Aristotle) to scuba gear to remotely operated vehicles, and the 4K video cameras they now carry. The latter technology has enabled a group of Australian scientists……

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Though the modern tradition of an American president officially pardoning a turkey at Thanksgiving began with George H. W. Bush in 1989, the idea is believed to have originated with Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s pardoned turkey was actually gifted to the First Family in 1863, just a month after the president declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. Though meant to be Christmas dinner that year, the turkey was quickly adopted by Tad Lincoln, the president’s 10-year-old son. Tad named the bird……

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This large white horse consists of six tons of chalk and is approximately 93 feet long and 65 feet high.  According to the National Trust, the first figure was originally crafted by four men in 1836. It was carved again in 1924 by one of the original creator’s grandsons. The technical term for this type of figure is a geoglyph. The predecessor to this amazing creation is the Uffington White Horse.  The reason behind the creation of the Litlington White……

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Built between the third and seventh centuries, kofun are ancient Japanese burial mounds that served as elaborate tombs for powerful clans. The most common form of kofun was the zenpō-kōen-fun, a massive tomb erected in the shape of a keyhole. While it’s estimated that there are over 160,000 kofun scattered throughout Japan (with 700 in Tokyo alone), they’re quite difficult to spot; to the untrained eye, they may look like mere mounds of earth. For this reason, the burial……

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Built between the third and seventh centuries, kofun are ancient Japanese burial mounds that served as elaborate tombs for powerful clans. The most common form of kofun was the zenpō-kōen-fun, a massive tomb erected in the shape of a keyhole. While it’s estimated that there are over 160,000 kofun scattered throughout Japan (with 700 in Tokyo alone), they’re quite difficult to spot; to the untrained eye, they may look like mere mounds of earth. For this reason, the burial……

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Located inside Pollino National Park, the largest protected area in Italy, Romito Cave is the site of important research into early humans, an archaeological park that explains it, and a large carving of a bull that’s estimated to date back at least 12,000 years. Since its discovery in 1961, the cave has intrigued researchers, who estimate that it was inhabited since the end of the Paleolithic era. In addition to the bull carving, which depicts an auroch (a type……

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