Author: Ms. R.

Just a few blocks away from the iconic George Restaurant in Pune Cantonment, lies a stone monument within a triangular garden. It is a quiet and peaceful spot to explore, particularly on a Sunday afternoon. The memorial is in the center of the garden. An inscription on the top reads: “In memory of those men of Maharashtra who laid down their lives in the war of 1914-18.” Nearly 1.8 million Indian soldiers fought for the British Indian Army in……

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Being rich in the 18th century often included commissioning art for your large mansion. These could be portraits, still life, landscapes, artistic representations of historical events, or chickens with heads of your court ladies. The painting was commissioned by Count Karl Tessin, who collected and commissioned art. The painting depicts six hens (single ladies) with a rooster in the background, which was meant to be Tessin himself. This painting was a private one, intended to be seen only by a……

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On quiet farmland just outside York, one of the most significant battles of the English Civil War was fought on July 2, 1644. Indeed, it is thought that it is the largest battle ever fought on British soil.  Throughout that summer, Parliamentarian forces under the command of Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Manchester were joined by Scottish Covenanters who had been besieging the Royalist stronghold of York. On the Royalist side, Prince Rupert of the Rhine had gathered……

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The Museum Žeravica founder Milivoj Žeravica started collecting old tractors in the 70s. It started while he was trying to get a Fordson 10-20 HP tractor that his father Milorad Žeravica had owned working again. Soon after, he began gathering other old tractors. That collection became a museum exhibition in 1991 when Museum Žeravica was opened by his son Čedomir Žeravica.  Initially, the small collection of tractors was housed in an old shed. Today the tractors—along with old vehicles, electronic devices, toys, musical……

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This story is excerpted and adapted from Alastair Bonnett’s Elsewhere: A Journey into our Age of Islands, published in November 2020 by the University of Chicago Press. Outside the United States and Canada, Elsewhere is published as The Age of Islands: In Search of New and Disappearing Islands (Atlantic Books). So, you want to build an island. You’ll have some questions, such as where, how, and of course, what shape? Strange-looking islands are sprouting in shallow seas all over……

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Australia‘s fishing zone extends from three to 200 nautical miles from the coast, the third largest fishing zone in the world. Every fishing season, as the trawlers and longliners leave the shore to meet their quotas for rock lobster, prawns, and tuna—several other marine species not intended for food find themselves entangled in their nets or ensnared by hooks.  The Shark and Ray Rescue Centre has become a lifeline for these creatures, mostly bottom-dwelling sharks and benthic rays who are often……

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Despite her small stature, Tama Matsuoka Wong is a woman who commands authority. After graduating from Harvard University in 1983, she practiced law in Hong Kong for over two decades. After food-related allergies began to affect her family, she moved to the United States to start a new life on a weedy patch of grass in New Jersey. Wong’s path to meadow doctoring would start with those weeds in her yard. “It was basically this thing that just took……

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“Dear friends of mine, Please write a line / In this little Wash Tubbs book of mine. / Help me Keep you in my Mind” So begins the inscription on the spine of a hulking tome that was once a source of idle amusement for clients at the Bungalow, a barbershop in Fredonia, Kansas. In 1928, the barber, I.A. Persinger, began compiling this collection of “Wash Tubbs” comics, a well-loved daily newspaper strip by artist Roy Crane, whose adventure……

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While trekking through the Peruvian rain forest, an eight-hour boat ride from the nearest jungle settlement, biologist Aaron Pomerantz saw what seemed like tiny invisible jets zipping across the trail. “I was out there with a net trying to catch things,” he says, “and these just changed direction and vanished.” It was his first close encounter with clear-winged butterflies, insects that inhabit Central and South American forests and have a remarkable means of camouflage: see-through or “glass” wings that……

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