Author: Ms. R.

Iñigo Lopez de Recalde (St Ignatius) after being wounded in the defense of Pamplona against French troops and renouncing his military career, began a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. At a stop in the neighboring city of Manresa in 1522, the young Ignatius said to be wearing only a sack robe, decided to live as a hermit in a cavern near the river. Between history and legend, he was involved in mystical experiences and miraculous events. His visions and……

Read More

Visitors to Hove Park will find an unassuming pathway that blends into the ground seamlessly. What most don’t know is that this pathway is actually a public work of art and a maze designed to look like a giant’s fingerprint. The public display was created in 2006 by local artist Chris Drury, who was also commissioned by the City Council to craft a separate art display in 2004. The maze is made from York flagstone and lime mortar. Drury……

Read More

In Egypt, a decade of excavations at the ancient Red Sea port of Berenice (Berenike) has revealed what some researchers are calling the world’s oldest pet cemetery. Nearly 600 animals, mostly cats, but also dogs and imported monkeys, have been found buried just beyond the walls of what was, almost 2,000 years ago, a bustling port. Many were laid to rest wearing metal or delicately beaded collars, their bodies covered in textiles or ceramics. But were they pets? And……

Read More

This story is excerpted and adapted from Brandy Schillace’s Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher: A Monkey’s Head, the Pope’s Neuroscientist, and the Quest to Transplant the Soul, published in March 2021 by Simon & Schuster. A grainy black-and-white film shuddered across television screens in the last days of May 1958. A man in a long white lab coat gestures to a corner, where a figure waits, shadowy and indistinct. He leads the creature into the light of a courtyard,……

Read More

In a small park just off the promenade of the seaside town of Portobello stands a plinth inscribed with the words: “This fountain has been erected in remembrance of Dr Hugh Dewar, Portobello, by his grateful patients and numerous friends, who deplore the loss in the prime of manhood of a kind friend and skillful and beloved physician. His quiet charity was known to the needy. 1866-1914” However, recent research has uncovered a more sinister backstory than this epitaph……

Read More

Of course, we have all heard the expression, “Fit for a king.” Well, in the capital city of Scotland, there is a thoroughfare that was solely constructed for a touring member of royalty. This might be a bit of an exaggeration, but nonetheless, in 1819 a road was christened by Leopold I of Belgium. Access to capital from the south was hampered by several difficulties. It would take a few centuries before technology could match the desire to have a……

Read More

When the Providence Children’s Museum moved from their original location in Pawtucket, Rhode Island to the big city, they fortuitously acquired a dragon who was in need of a home. The year was 1997. Boston‘s Museum of Fine Arts was closing an exhibit on Chinese paintings, and a beautiful dragon head that had been constructed for the exhibit would no longer be needed. With the dragon facing homelessness—or worse—the Children’s Museum of Providence welcomed the dragon in to grace……

Read More