Author: Ms. R.

In 1804, workers repairing a stretch of the old Braddock Road uncovered human remains buried in the roadbed. The discovery was at Great Meadows near what is now Farmington, Pennsylvania. Among the remains, they found buttons from the uniform of a high-ranking British military officer, which helped to identify the body as that of Major General Edward Braddock. The burial site was near the location where Braddock reportedly died from wounds suffered during the Battle of the Monongahela. In……

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The story of Rome’s unlikeliest lake begins with fake maps, an angry community, and a patch of very dry land. In the 1990s, at a construction site just a couple miles east of the storied Colosseum, a crew was digging into the ground, excavating the site of a planned underground parking lot. It was part of a grand development project to turn a sprawling old textile factory, squeezed between train tracks and the busy Via Prenestina, into a massive,……

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Millions of years ago, this park was part of the ocean floor. Once it dried up, erosion continued what water had probably already started: eating away the sandstone underneath massive boulders. This has resulted in massive boulders impossibly balanced on top of small sandstone protrusions. It is not hard to see why thousands of years ago, humans were attracted to the mystic that shrouds this place. Between three and four thousand years ago, humans started drawing geometric patterns, animal……

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The Rheinsberg Nuclear Power Plant (in German: Kernkraftwerk Rheinsberg or ‘KKW Rheinsberg’) was commissioned in 1956 as East Germany‘s first commercial nuclear reactor, using Soviet technology and designed through cooperation between East German and Soviet engineers. The nuclear plant was intentionally hidden deep in the Brandenburg forest in an area chosen for its low population density. The exact location of the plant, and the existence of the railway leading to it, was kept a tight secret.  Nearing the end……

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La Palma is one of the more rural Canary islands, home to beautiful nature and massive telescopes. It is visited with a lesser frequency than other islands in the archipelago and as a result, many local traditions are strong and mostly unchanged to fit tourists. The largest of these celebrations is La Bajada de la Virgen de las Nieves, or the “Descent of the Virgin of the Snows,” celebrated once every five years. Outside of this narrow time slot, the……

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Located on a country road near to the town of Maldon in rural Victoria stands the Porcupine Flat gold dredge and dragline. Despite being easily accessible, this site is not well-known to tourists. It consists of two very large, rusting structures from bygone years. Work on the site started in 1958 when it was discovered that there was a source of gold in Porcupine Creek. The owner of the mine brought in some heavy equipment to help with their……

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A veil of mystery surrounds the ancient settlement of Pinara. There are rare mentions of this location in recorded history.  One of the most reliable ones is that of Manecrates, a Lycian historian from the 4th century B.C., who reported that the town of Xanthos was experiencing overpopulation, and three settlements were under construction to help alleviate the problem. Another documented mention of Pinara relates that it fell to Alexander the Great in in 334 B.C. What is special about……

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