Author: Ms. R.

In order to bring water to the nearby monastery of St. Benedict, a massive aqueduct was built during the 9th century in what is now the historic center of Salerno. At the time the city was thriving as one of the most important centers of Italy, under the rule of the Lombards. The aqueduct consists of two separate branches, joining near the monastery and the old city walls. Here, the tall arches of the aqueducts have been renamed Ponte……

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Redwoods are synonymous with the forests of Northern California, but nestled in the foothills of Orange County, hundreds of miles south of their native range, you can find a three-acre oasis of these tall wonders in Southern California. Dating to the mid-1970s, these trees were saplings being given away by a local bank. The leftovers were donated to the county, which planted them in the shadow of the Carbon Canyon Dam.  At less than 50 years old, the tallest……

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Founded in the early 12th century, Waverley Abbey was Britain’s first Cistercian monastery. The small monastic order prospered throughout the medieval period until the 1530s, when the abbey was shut down during Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. After shuttering, it remained abandoned for centuries, though some of its stone was extracted and used in the construction of nearby homes. One such home, the Waverley Abbey House, was erected just a few hundred meters north of the abbey’s ruins……

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Among the snow-capped peaks, freshwater lakes, and grassy valleys of Altai Tavan Bogd National Park, thousands of ancient petroglyphs cover the rocks of the Tsagaan-Salaa Valley. Located in the westernmost province of Mongolia, the 15-kilometer site is home to at least 10,000 figures painted during the Neolithic Period and the Bronze Age.  Many of the petroglyphs depict humans herding or hunting wild animals, offering a glimpse of how the hunter-gatherer lifestyle would eventually give way to the domestication of……

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It is not uncommon for monuments to be disassembled and rebuilt in a new settlement—there’s the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Cloisters in New York, or the Egyptian Temple of Debod. The Ermita de San Pelayo y San Isidoro (Hermitage of Saint Pelagius and Saint Isidore) had the same fortune. But in this case, a lot of people native to Madrid, don’t know that in a corner of this park there is a real Romanesque hermitage that was not always was……

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Along Coyote Creek on a far-flung San Jose, California trail, a mysterious plaque sits next to a bike path. At first glance, it appears to be entirely covered in ones and zeroes. But from a different angle, the words “Santa Clara Valley” are faintly visible, etched beneath the numbers. The reason for the plaque’s strange location is that it marks the geographical center of the Santa Clara Valley, which may be more familiar by its other moniker: Silicon Valley. The……

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In 1891, Joshua Slocum, a Nova Scotia–born sailor living in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, began rebuilding Spray, an old oyster boat that had been gifted to him.  He launched the newly refurbished boat on June 21, 1892. It was just the beginning. “I had resolved on a voyage around the world, and as the wind on the morning of April 24, 1895 was fair, at noon I weighed anchor, set sail, and filled away from Boston, where the Spray had been moored snugly……

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