HOUSTON (AP) — Rookie Casey Mize tossed seven scoreless innings for his first career win and fellow rookie Akil Baddoo homered again as the Detroit Tigers got a 6-2 win over the Houston Astros on Monday night in manager A.J. Hinch’s first trip to Houston since he was fired for the team’s sign-stealing scheme. Renato Núñez and Grayson Greiner also homered as the Tigers jumped on Zack Greinke (1-1) for six runs to snap a four-game skid. Hinch spent…
California’s deadly, damaging wildfires worsen by the year. The state’s naturally dry landscapes, parched by a changing climate, have turned into tinderboxes. A stray match or lightning strike has the capacity to incinerate forests, fields, and neighborhoods. Last year saw a summer and fall of choking smoke and blood-red skies over huge portions of the state. To avoid fiery disaster, local governments often clear away dried brush from the hillsides and fields surrounding homes and streets. But one professor……
Most Americans haven’t heard the name Virgil “Bus” Carrell. But drive across the country and you’ll see Carrell’s work. And if you’ve entered a national forest, driven to a natural monument, or crossed the Continental Divide, you’ve probably even pulled over and snapped a selfie next to one of his creations. Those quirky brown-and-cream trapezoids, with the retro typeface that welcomes you to a U.S. Forest Service-managed site, are his legacy. Over the last half-century, those signs have become……
Tiger Global has invested in DealShare, a startup in India that has built an e-commerce platform for middle- and lower-income groups of consumers, just three months after the Indian firm concluded its previous $21 million Series C funding round. The New York-headquartered firm has led the $100 million Series D round in three-year-old social commerce startup DealShare, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Tiger Global declined to comment, and a founder of the Indian startup didn’t return……
The MIT Press has launched MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies, a robust digital collection of classic and previously out-of-print architecture and urban studies books, on their digital book platform MIT Press Direct. The collection was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Humanities Open Book Program, which they co-sponsored with the National Endowment for the Humanities. For years, the MIT Press has fielded requests for e-book editions of classic, out-of-print……
The Palazzo del Tè was built in the 16th century as a leisure palace for Federico II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua. Italian artist and architect Giulio Romano, who had been a student of Raphael, designed the building. Today it is widely considered to be Romano’s masterpiece. The palace is filled with elaborate decorations and paintings—one room, known as the Sala dei Giganti (Chamber of the Giants), is particularly impressive. The fresco that covers the walls and the ceiling of this room……
This story was originally published in The Conversation and appears here under a Creative Commons license. Among the human remains in Harvard University’s museum collections are those of 15 people who were probably enslaved African American people. Earlier this year, the school announced a new committee that will conduct a comprehensive survey of Harvard’s collections, develop new policies, and propose ways to memorialize and repatriate the remains. “We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which……
Wongaksa Pagoda is a 12-meter (40-foot) pagoda located in Seoul, South Korea. The 10-story marble building is hidden away in Tapgol Park, in the center of the busy city. The pagoda was constructed in 1467 as a part of Wongaksa Temple, which King Sejo had established two years earlier on the site of an older temple. An inscription on the upper part of the pagoda states it was built in the 13th year of the king’s reign. The temple was……
In 1935, Florida adopted Stephen Foster’s melody Old Folks at Home as the official state song, and by 1950, at the behest of pharmaceutical magnate Josiah Lilly, a culture center was opened beside the Suwannee River to honor the quintessential American composer. The Culture Center’s museum features three large rooms filled with pianos, Foster-themed artwork, and a handful of Foster’s personal items. There is also a video room where short biographical films play on a loop. Foster’s music plays……
Created in 1960 by Ray Neon Signs, this sign originally advertised the “ultra-modern” Civic Pharmacy. The blocky, pastel-colored letters exemplify Googie architectural design — a futurist space-age aesthetic popular during the Atomic Age in the 1950s and 1960s. A well-known example of this era is the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign. The sign was the first of its kind in Canada, notable for its combination of illumination and independently rotating letters. This was made possible because the word……
Standing proudly outside an extension to the Finnish Parliament building is an oversized steel strawberry patch. In 2005, the Finnish Parliament commissioned six pieces of artwork to decorate the new Finnish Parliament Annex, also known as “Little Parliament.” Out of 1,719 competition entries, this design by Finnish artist Jukka Lehtinen was chosen as the only one visible to the public outside of the building. It is located in front of the annex next to a pool. The planting basin……
The world’s longest bridge fountain is located on the long Banpo Bridge overpassing the Han River in Seoul, South Korea. The bridge is already a curious structure, as it’s designed on top of the previous Jamsu Bridge, forming the upper half of the first double-decker bridge in the country. On both sides of the less than a mile-long (1.5-kilometers) bridge are nearly 10,000 LED lights over 3,740 feet (1,140 meters) sections. Here, 38 water pumps and 380 nozzles per……
Task Force 2021 and Beyond is entering the next major phase of its work to position MIT for the post-Covid world, co-chairs Rick Danheiser and Sanjay Sarma announced today in a letter to the MIT community. In the first phase of the task force’s work, which ran from last June through December, nearly 200 MIT faculty, staff, and students served in working groups that generated more than 50 discrete ideas intended to help MIT emerge strong from the disruption……
The details for Ant’s overhaul have arrived. Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba controlled by Jack Ma, will become a financial holding company that will bring more regulatory scrutiny over how it lends and generates profits, China’s central bank said on Monday. Ant started as an online payments processor for Alibaba marketplaces and has over time blossomed into an empire of payments, lending, wealth management and insurance. Its encroachment onto the existing financial industry had not been particularly……
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit a swath of land in Northern France that still bears scars of the destruction of World War I—destruction so bad that, in some cases, humans have never been allowed to return. 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……
