Author: Ms. R.

This area was once inhabited by the chocho-popolcas, and was the central political power in the Tehuacán Valley in pre-Hispanic times. The ancient city is located on top of a mountain, and the tomb itself is located at the highest point. Also, the area has a very rich biodiversity of cacti and desert vegetation, as well as fossils from an ancient seabed. …

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Alex Lewis has spent many evenings searching for and gathering 100 rocks. After collecting various shapes and sizes from the west coast of Scotland, he returns home, numbers each from one to 100, weighs them, and measures their width and thickness. He’s looking for stones that fit comfortably in his palm, are heavy and light, and vary from circular to square. He then records all his data in a little black book full of tables and near indecipherable calculations…….

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The Blue Sulphur Springs Pavilion is a historic Greek Revival structure located in Blue Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The pavilion is the only surviving structure from the Blue Sulphur Springs Resort, a 19th-century mineral spa. The location is also where Robert E Lee’s war horse Traveller was born….

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The Latvian Riflemen were a military battalion of the Imperial Russian Army when first founded in 1915.  The purpose of this battalion was to defend the Baltic territories against the Germans during World War I. Initially, the Riflemen were made up of volunteers, but from 1916 onwards, the battalion was formed by conscription. Around 40,000 troops were drafted into the Latvian Riflemen Division. The battalion was used as an elite force in both the Imperial and Bolshevik armies. Despite suffering from……

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In the 1940s, Mr. Pete Daffin and his wife Jean created “the world’s largest candy store.” In the 1960s they moved to this building, keeping a factory that still offers tours in nearby Farrell. In 1970, Pete realized his vision of a Wonka-esque wonderland, which he called “Daffin’s Chocolate Kingdom.” Over the years, the cast of mammoth chocolate characters and creatures have changed. Recently, this surreal attraction welcomed a 125-pound turtle and a 75lb bunny made of solid milk……

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Chōgen-ji Temple in Manriki, Yamanashi, is home to a bizarre legend of a man-eating crab monster and the marks of its claws to prove it. One evening in the early 18th century, the temple was visited by a 10-foot-tall pilgrim, who gave its head priest a riddle: “I am eight-legged, able to sidle at will, and heavenward-eyed; what am I?” When the head priest failed to guess correctly, the monk struck him dead and ate him, and continued this……

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Inconvenient rock features are nothing unusual on the Colorado Western Slope. Indeed, billions of dollars have been spent on infrastructure linking tiny towns and navigating the high cliffs and mountain passes of the region. However, the Earth has a way of reminding humans that our geography is still a work in progress.  On May 24, 2019, a small natural disaster befell State Highway 145, north of Dolores, Colorado. Thousands of years of freeze-thaw cycles had widened cracks in the……

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The Greenfield Savings Bank Money Tree is a whimsical ATM in an otherwise mundane American shopping plaza. The 25-foot-tall fiberglass tree features hidden animal carvings.  Greenfield Savings Bank President Becky Caplice had long toyed with the idea of a money tree. In 2008, her vision came to life with the help of a design firm, some seriously skilled sculptors, and a ton of fiberglass. …

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Nested in the outskirts of Babelsberg stands an elegant villa with a fascinating past. President Harry S. Truman lived in the house for a mere 17 days during the Potsdam Conference in 1945. During his stay, Truman called the residence the “Little White House,” but today it’s named after him. Originally known as Villa Erlenkamp, the house was built in 1891 as a summer residence for Berlin publisher Carl Müller-Grote. It was designed by architects Karl von Großheim and Heinrich……

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Overlooking the nearby hills, the S.K. Pierce Mansion in Gardner, Massachusetts, is hard to miss with its dark gray and red paint and stunning architectural detail. There are countless historical homes and mansions across the state and New England but few claim to house paranormal activity and even fewer have achieved a reputation like that of the S.K. Pierce mansion. What started off as a home for one of the city’s wealthiest residents took a turn for the worse……

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Few museums in Philadelphia are filled with a collection of art and artifacts quite as strange, random, and fantastic as the Ryerss Museum and Library. And what’s really surprising is that the whole place is free. There are literally hundreds of items to see in the large rooms of the museum section in this old Victorian home, so this is one of those places that benefit from repeat visits. A few notable pieces include the museum’s mascot, Snapper (a……

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As new territory was added to the growing United States of America in the mid-1800s, public lands were officially recorded through a process of survey that mapped sections of land into one-mile square parcels, each containing 640 acres. When Congress created the Idaho Territory in 1863, in the midst of the U.S. Civil War, it originally included parts of what are today the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Because President Lincoln and Congress were concerned with other pressing……

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