Author: Ms. R.

It started with a pincushion and a puzzle. In 1921, Washburn Crosby, the makers of Gold Medal flour, held a national contest. If customers completed a jigsaw puzzle and sent it in, they would be mailed a prize: a pincushion shaped like a flour sack. The Minnesota-based company was soon deluged in completed puzzles, along with something they didn’t expect: hundreds of letters from home cooks, asking for kitchen advice. The company took on the challenge gamely, responding to……

Read More

In the early 1990s, in a small back room of London’s Zoological Society, change was afoot. An ecologist named Georgina Mace had invited a group of her colleagues, from prolific and influential conservation scientists to young researchers just getting started in the field, to collaborate on a project. That was Mace’s style; she valued collaboration across disciplines and academic hierarchies, and believed in mentoring the next generation of researchers by finding them room at the table beside giants of……

Read More

Established in 1928 and burnt down in 2020, this theological college was once a highlight of a small village outside of Porto, Felgueiras. Belonging to the Congregation of the Mission, Seminário de Santa Teresinha was used to train Vincentian priests from 1928 to 1967. From 1967, upon the cessation of its function as a college, the building was used as a retirement home, a logical transformation considering the number of rooms located along large corridors. In 1984, the retirement……

Read More

A plaque advertising a 24-hour number for cash and exchange for your Warhol. Also features another brass plaque with a funny message that was left. The number does work, and you can leave a message. The plaque is part of a project created by Geoff Hargadon, who has been pretending to buy Warhols since 2009….

Read More

The Adlerbogen (Eagle Arch) is a triumphal arch located on the eastern side of the Donnersberg. The steel structure was built in 1880, meant to honor Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Shortly after the end of World War II, the Adlerbogen was destroyed—the eagle was shot off the top, the statue of Bismarck beheaded, and the statue of Moltke stolen. But in 2016, the arch was restored to its original design. The Adlerbogen is located on……

Read More

This story was originally published on SAPIENS and appears here under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license. Just an hour’s drive from the center of Lima, Peru, is a palatial architectural complex built of rammed earth and stone. It features labyrinthine passageways, warehouses that once stored foods, and furnished rooms that an Inca emperor—the region’s 15th-century ruler—may have visited. This site, now called the Monumental Archaeological Zone Huaycán de Pariachi (ZAMHP), has been held by many peoples. Between 900 and……

Read More

This unusual building in the Punta Carretas neighborhood of Montevideo was the residence of the architect Humberto Pittamiglio. Its most striking feature is the entrance facing Rambla Mahatma Gandhi, from which a replica of the iconic Greek sculpture the Winged Victory of Samothrace emerges from a round brick tower, crowned by a coat of arms. Pittamiglio was an Uruguayan architect and engineer. He built this house in 1910-1911. The history of the castle is surrounded by stories—some claim that it once housed the Holy Grail…….

Read More

In Goseong, a seaside town only seven miles south of the 38th parallel that divides the Korean peninsula, stand three houses, where the triumvirate of postwar Korea—Kim Il-sung, Syngman Rhee, and Lee Ki-poong—once vacationed in the summer. In a still-unified but Japanese-occupied Korea, Goseong was a resort town for missionaries. In 1938, one missionary named Sherwood Hall commissioned a house on a bluff overlooking the shores of Hwajinpo Beach to a German architect who had fled Hitler’s reign. The……

Read More