For one day in August, the residents and visitors of South Queensferry in Edinburgh, Scotland, are treated to a rather unusual display. A man is dressed from head to toe in burrs, a prickly part of a plant that is similar to thistles, and paraded around this port town along the Firth of Forth estuary. The exact origins of this spectacle have been lost to the mists of time, but there is speculation that is deeply rooted in folklore……
Hwaeomsa, or the “Flower Garland Temple” is a head temple of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. It is home to Korean National Treasure No. 35: the Four-Lion Three-Story Stone Pagoda. It is thought that this pagoda dates from the golden age of the Unified Silla Period but this is not known for sure. It is thought of as a non-standard pagoda because of its atypical shape and design. Among non-standard pagodas, it is considered to have a higher degree of……
What explains how often people travel to a particular place? Your intuition might suggest that distance is a key factor, but empirical evidence can help urban studies researchers answer the question more definitively. A new paper by an MIT team, drawing on global data, finds that people visit places more frequently when they have to travel shorter distances to get there. “What we have found is that there is a very clear inverse relationship between how far you go……
On July 20, 1881, 10 fishing boats were caught in a storm while traversing the North Sea. Six of these were sixareens, a multi-compartment vessel widely used since the 1700s. Sixareens were used on a collective type of fishery known as haaf, based on the actual haafs that were land stations where fish were processed and salted for export. The haaf system involved the entire town, as children, women, and older men assisted with the salting and drying process…….
Beryl Markham was born in 1902 into a pastoral English village. At the age of four, she moved with her father to Kenya; she developed a taste for adventure as she grew, and was soon raising her own horses. That taste for adventure also led her to learn to fly; she was one of the first bush pilots in Kenya. In 1936, she took off from a field in Addington, England on an ambitious solo flight to New York…….
If you want to ride the waves along this rugged coastline, you’re going to need a very, very tiny surfboard. What appears to be a gull’s-eye view of the ocean crashing on a rocky shore is actually a microscopic image of a gem called a prase opal. The green part of the specimen is the opal, while the brown “coastline” is the host rock, “a silica and iron-altered serpentinite,” says professional gemologist Nathan Renfro, who captured the image. “The……
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit a carefully curated collection of miscalculations in Edinburgh, Scotland, that serves as a warning for our gullibility, especially when it comes to money. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people……
The price of gasoline is up more than a dollar on average in the last 12 months, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Used car prices are also up nearly 25%, partly due to a lack of inventory on the used market. This combination might make you more inclined to seek out a fuel-efficient vehicle for your next purchase. To streamline your search, Edmunds’ experts have highlighted five used vehicles worth considering. We chose a mix of cars…
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Belarus’ authoritarian president defended Wednesday his decision to tell a passenger jet to land in his country and accused European leaders of waging a “hybrid war” to “strangle” his nation by ordering up new sanctions for diverting the flight and arresting an opposition journalist who was aboard. Speaking before lawmakers and top officials, President Alexander Lukashenko maintained his contention that there was a bomb threat against the Ryanair flight and called it an “absolute lie”…
The possibility of federal student loan forgiveness grabs all the headlines. But experts say no single policy — not even wiping the slate clean for millions of borrowers — solves the root causes of the nation’s $1.74 trillion student loan debt crisis. That debt has been fueled by decades of wages not keeping up with the rising cost of college. And unless wages increase and college costs decrease, students will still need to take on debt to complete degrees,…
Over the years, robots have gotten quite good at identifying objects — as long as they’re out in the open. Discerning buried items in granular material like sand is a taller order. To do that, a robot would need fingers that were slender enough to penetrate the sand, mobile enough to wriggle free when sand grains jam, and sensitive enough to feel the detailed shape of the buried object. MIT researchers have now designed a sharp-tipped robot finger equipped……
NEW YORK (AP) — Brooklyn is more than just its Big Three. There’s also Joe Harris and his 3s. Even if a team can contain Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden, it still has to stop the NBA’s most accurate 3-point shooter. That’s a lot of problems to solve, and Harris understands why teams don’t make him the priority. “I think it’s just sort of, this is the reality of the matter,” Harris said. “I mean, we have…
In 2015, fluid physicist Roberto Zenit had a short conversation that turned into a five-year research project. Zenit, who calls himself a “bubble expert, despite how funny it sounds,” was intrigued when a student told him that bubbles play a crucial part in the production of mezcal, a distilled liquor made from agave plants by rural communities in Mexico. The student, whose family had distilled mezcal for generations, told him that producers tested if the liquor had the right……
Meryl Streep as Julia Child, on her way to meet a famous cookbook writer in Julie & Julia. Audrey Tautou as Amélie Poulain, running into her future lover in Amélie (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain). Steve Buscemi as a clueless American tourist in Paris je t’aime. Shot far from the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the glamour of the French capital, these scenes capture the gritty realism of Parisian life, albeit with a touch of movie magic…….
At an altitude of 1,300 meters, this overlook offers a wide panoramic view over the southern half of the district of Guarda, the northernmost sectors of the district of Castelo Branco, and the western parts of the provinces of Salamanca and Cáceres in Spain. A small tower is visible from the road—walk up to it and you might hear some goat bells clanging and see the shepherd on the tower with binoculars. He’s either birdwatching or on fire watch…….
