Author: Ms. R.

The world’s longest rainbow road appeared in the summer of 2024 on Toronto’s Hanlan’s Point. Fifty-three years after Canada’s first Pride event was held here, artist Travis Myers painted the colorful installation to recognize and celebrate the area’s importance to the city’s LGBTQ+ community. The main attraction of Hanlan’s Point for many is its nude beach—it’s one of two official clothing-optional beaches in Canada. Located at the western edge of Toronto’s Islands, it boasts some of the best views of……

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The statue of the Iguanodon, commissioned in 2021, stands proudly in front of Maidstone railway station, greeting both visitors and locals alike. This majestic sculpture serves as a poignant reminder of the Iguanodon skeleton discovered in a Maidstone quarry in 1834. The big, bulky herbivores lived during the Cretaceous period. They could grow up to 36-feet-tall and had large “thumb spikes,” thought to be used for defense.  Today, the skeleton is housed in the Natural History Museum in London…….

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This castle once had humble beginnings. Originally built near the medieval road to Alcalá de Henares, Alameda Castle was a small structure with a moat and an artillery barrier. The castle had a rectangular floor plan with rounded corners and two towers—one square and one cylindrical—as well as a central courtyard with a water fountain. The construction of irregular limestone masonry was completed in 1476. In 1575, the castle got a serious makeover into a Renaissance-style leisure villa. Large……

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On Mt. Baker ridge, above the I-90 tunnel, a line of 12 basalt stones stand, each with a perfect vertical line cut down their centers. On the summer solstice—the longest day of the year—the stone at one end will perfectly align with the sunset, which will set 36 degrees north of due west. On a certain day of each passing month, the next stone in the line will frame the sunset. The last rock marks the winter solstice, the……

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In the early 1960s, 16-year-old Karl-Ludwig von Bezing stumbled across some odd pottery fragments poking out from the soil on his family’s farm in South Africa. As an amateur geologist and archaeologist, the young man’s curiosity was piqued. Between 1962 and 1964, Von Bezing went on to excavate and collect what eventually were identified as the oldest African Iron Age artworks from south of the equator. Once reconstructed at the University of Cape Town, a total of seven ceramic heads were……

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Asukayama, or Mount Asuka, is a small hill in Kita-ku, Tokyo, standing 83 feet tall. The mound is informally considered the smallest mountain in the metropolis, though the Geospatial Information Authority has refused to officially recognize it as a mountain. Whether a proper mountain or not, the hill is still home to a large public park known for its cherry blossoms, a popular hanami, or flower viewing, spot since the early 18th century. In 1720, Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune had……

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The Museo San Colombano – Collezione Tagliavini in central Bologna features the unusual sight of a Renaissance-era church decorated with frescoes and filled with harpischords, pianos, and other keyboard instruments. The story of how this museum came to be housed within a deconsecrated church is complicated. Originally, the site held a church built in the seventh century, though little of the original structure remains. In 1591, an oratory was built on top of it, and later its interior was……

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