Author: Ms. R.

Saint Clement’s Caves is a four-and-a-half-acre network of ancient tunnels and caverns beneath Hastings‘ West Hill in its Old Town. The earliest written reference to the caves, from 1783, tells of an elderly man and woman who lived there after being evicted from Hastings’ workhouse. Discovered by authorities at the end of the 140-foot “Monk’s Walk,” the pair claimed that the caves went no deeper, despite the acres of hidden tunnels and caverns beyond. They may have been covering for……

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It was a muggy summer evening more than a decade ago in Apopka, Florida. Spanish moss hung like tattered capes on the gnarled oaks that loomed over cabins where, as day turned to night, tired campers made their way to their bunks. After a long day of archery, arts-and-crafts, and waterskiing, there was still one more activity for a willing audience: the nightly ghost story. The dim glow of a flashlight illuminated the faces of a dozen tween boys…….

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Area 51 might be barricaded by barbed wire and military guards, but this open-air exhibit welcomes all intrepid travelers. Signs that say Abducción Gratis (“Abduction Free”) and the looming figure of a crashed UFO greet visitors, encouraging guests to meet ET’s distant relatives. Situated atop a hill on the outskirts of Cusco along a winding path, visitors can pose with an assortment of extraterrestrials of all shapes, sizes, and home planets. However, this is more than a kitschy roadside……

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This 18th-century mill is home to one of the four remaining silk ribbon-weavers in the United Kingdom. These skilled craftspeople are officially an endangered species. Whitchurch ribbons are not your run-of-the-mill ribbons. Woven on looms dating back to the 1800s, they can be produced in any width, with satin stripes that shine when the ribbons are folded into bows. The real silk makes a satisfying scrunching sound—the technical term is “scroop.” For this reason, Whitchurch ribbons are the top choice for……

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The Jawor Peace Church may be smaller than its more famous sister church in Świdnica, but its interior is no less stunning, and its location further off the beaten track means that a visit here often feels more intimate. Prior to the two World Wars, the Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants (1618-1648) had been the deadliest conflict in modern European history, leaving large parts of Central Europe devastated and depopulated. As part of the Treaty of Westphalia in……

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The Imperial Canal of Aragon is a civil engineering achievement of the highest order. Built in the 18th century, it aimed to provide irrigation water for lands to the southeast and above the level of the River Ebro, as well as a means of navigation linking Aragon to the sea. But some important citizens of Zaragoza did not support the building of the canal, due to the social changes it could bring about in the agrarian community. They openly……

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Observatories often have an otherworldly feel, not just because of the telescopes housed inside, but due to the sometimes-unusual style in which they are built. Cointe Observatory is no exception, with its iconic red bricks and retractable roof that may have inspired Futurama’s Planet Express building.  The observatory consists of a snaking collection of buildings, the oldest of which dates back to 1881, with the newest additions as recent as the 1980s. Most of the structure is built in……

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If you’re going to write the history of a place, you’ll need a lot of paper. And for a time, there was no finer paper to be had than from the Curtis Paper Mill in Newark, Delaware. Today, a neighborhood park attracts birds and the occasional visitor to what was once the site of the oldest operational paper mill in America. Although the site is now known as Curtis Mill Park, it predates the Curtises entirely. The mill’s history……

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Most of what is now Split’s historic center was once the palace of Roman emperor Diocletian, surrounded by thick stone walls. What is now the Church of St. Martin was then a passageway for the walls’ guards. His rule lasted from 284 to 305, and was partly known for the Diocleniatic Persecution, an official and bloody attempt to remove Christianity from the Empire (before Emperor Constantine made it the preferred religion in 324, a little over a decade after……

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In the summer of 1861, weeks after Confederate troops fired the first shots of the Civil War, educator and abolitionist Frederick Gunn assembled his own troops—about 30 boys and a dozen girls who were students at his Washington, Connecticut, boarding school. Gunn, an early proponent of outdoor education, had led students on camping trips before, but this time he had something a little more regimented in mind. Like the gathering Union forces, they would march—42 miles to be exact—to……

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Happening upon a foraging deer or dam-building beaver can turn an ordinary walk in the woods into your own personal safari. But you don’t have to wait for a chance encounter to get up close and personal with wildlife. Finding clues left behind by animals was an essential skill for ancient humans and remains a free and fun way to connect with nature today. “All of a sudden the world begins to open up,” says Casey McFarland, a field……

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Founded in 1903 as an electronics store in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood, Denkiya Hall transformed itself into a café after its skilled workers went away to fight in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Back then, electricity (or, in Japanese, denki) was considered a trendy thing. Asakusa’s famous liquor, Denki Bran (electric brandy), invented in 1882 at Kamiya Bar, attests to that. As it turned out, Denkiya Hall was more successful as a café with a quirky name than as a dime-a-dozen electronics store…….

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