Travel Archives - Page 555 of 582 - BRANDMOIAHORA

Say WOW

Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

Everything is a Brand

Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire, England

June 16, 2020

Woodchester Mansion may appear complete on the outside, but on the inside it’s missing a large portion of its floors and rooms. But it hasn’t been demolished—the mansion was abandoned mid-construction in the 1870s, and has remained in this state ever since. Between the 17th and early 19th century, the estate of Woodchester Park was owned by the wealthy Ducie family, and in 1788 their manor house was visited by King George III. It was then sold to William...

Astrid Lindgrens Hem (Astrid Lindgren’s House) in...

June 16, 2020

Astrid Lindgren is one of Sweden‘s most famous authors. She wrote more than 30 books for children, and is best know for creating Pippi Longstocking, a book that has been translated into more than 75 languages and adapted into several movies and television series. Lindgren lived in this house in Stockholm form 1941 until her death in 2002. Since her passing, her family has decided to preserve the house in the state it was in before her death, and...

Castle of San Zeno in Montagnana, Italy

June 16, 2020

The small walled town of Montagnana, in Veneto, was an important city during the Middle Ages thanks to its strategic position in the middle of the countryside, halfway between the domains of Padua and Verona. Contested by many local powers, the area was conquered by the troops of the feudal lord Ezzelino III da Romano, who ruled most of Veneto during the 13th century. After conquering and pillaging Montagnana, Ezzelino III da Romano ordered the construction of a new...

Hatch the Mary Rose Dog in H...

June 16, 2020

In 1981, during the underwater excavation of the Tudor warship the Mary Rose, divers discovered the incredible well-preserved skeleton of the ship’s dog. When the Mary Rose sank in 1545, the pup died, along with many of the ship’s crew. The cause of the sinking remains a mystery. Because the skeleton was found near the entrance of the ship carpenter’s cabin, a sliding hatch door, the research team named him Hatch. Some have claimed that the dog passed away while trapped...

A Stately English Lawn Is Going Wild...

June 16, 2020

In one of England’s most iconic corners of history and intellect, a colorful and very modern transformation is taking place. After some three centuries as a perfectly manicured formal lawn, the grass behind the storied King’s College Chapel, at the University of Cambridge, has burst into the “glorious, Monet-style chaos” of a wildflower meadow—all in the name of biodiversity. Those are the words that the college’s head gardener, Steve Coghill, uses to describe the view from where he sits...

Sold: Isaac Newton’s Notes About the Bubonic...

June 15, 2020

Starting in the spring of 1665, an outbreak of bubonic plague devastated England. The disease was swift and brutal, leaving sufferers woozy with headaches, damp with fevers, and dotted with buboes—firm, tender lymph nodes that could swell to the size of a chicken egg. More than 7,100 Londoners died in a single week in September 1665, according to the National Archives, and by the time the outbreak subsided, around 15 percent of the city’s residents had perished. Those who...

Abbey of Santa Maria a Mare in...

June 15, 2020

The Tremiti Islands are a small archipelago in the Adriatic Sea, located off the coast of Italy‘s Gargano Peninsula. Sparsely populated and far from land, the islands have always been a place of confinement. One of the islands, San Nicola di Tremiti, was said to be home to a hermit during the fourth century. According to the legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to the hermit allowing him to find the legendary tomb of Diomedes, a hero in Greek mythology....

The Bright Blue Graves of Safed Cemetery

June 15, 2020

At a graveyard in northern Israel, pilgrims seek to spiritually ascend with the help of Jewish mystic holy men buried beneath bright blue graves. The cemetery is in Safed, which spent 500 years as a small Galilean settlement before becoming the world capital of Kabbalah, the best-known form of Jewish mysticism, during the 16th century. Thousands of graves and burial caves are carved in the rock. Some of the graves, painted blue, belong to the holy men, tzadikim. According...

Sesshōseki (Killing Stone) in Nasu, Japan

June 15, 2020

Near the famous Nasu hot springs in Japan, there is a stone that is rumored to kill anyone who comes in contact with it. In traditional Japanese culture, the kitsune or foxes are frequently depicted as mischievous spirits with shapeshifting powers. The most infamous of such creatures is Tamamo-no-Mae, who took the form of a beautiful woman to seduce the Emperor and become his mistress in the mid-12th century. Legend has it that Tamamo-no-Mae’s true identity was a nine-tailed fox, at least...

Lyells Ek (Lyell’s Oak) in Östermalm, Sweden

June 15, 2020

On the outskirts of Stockholm, there is an ancient oak tree that has been used to measure changes in sea level. During the last Ice Age, a layer of ice more than three kilometers thick covered the Nordic countries and Canada. All of this mass compressed the earths mantle, lowering the land by several meters. After the ice melted, the mantle started to puff back up slowly—very very slowly. Only by about half a centimeter a year, a negligible...

The Chagall Windows of St. Stephan’s in...

June 15, 2020

Established in the year 990, the Church of St. Stephan stood for centuries before suffering extensive damage in World War II. When restoration was finally completed in the 1970s, Klaus Mayer, the pastor, wanted to incorporate new symbols of peace into the rebuilt house of worship. Mayer reached out to the artist Marc Chagall, whose life had been shaped by wartime events, and invited him to design stained-glass windows. The participation of Chagall, a Jew who was born in...

Comecos Cemetery in Granite, Oklahoma

June 15, 2020

On the back roads of southwestern Oklahoma is the town of Granite, the latest home of the Comecos Cemetery a collection of fake headstones (made of real stone) with epitaphs that range from the silly to the goofy to the groan-inducing. “I told you I was sick.”“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” “Here lies John Yeast / Pardon me for not rising.” The funny cemetery was originally created by a veterinarian and his wife, Dan...

The Chained Oak in Alton, England

June 15, 2020

The Chained Oak is an old tree wrapped in chains to prevent its branches from falling. This is due to an alleged curse put upon the tree when, in 1821, the 15th Earl of Shrewsbury refused a woman’s pleas for money. It is said she then put a curse upon the nearby oak: For every branch that falls from the tree a member of the Earl’s family would die. Later that night, one of the Earl’s relatives died suddenly...

Inside Ethiopia’s Endangered Wild-Coffee Forests

June 15, 2020

Walking into the montane cloud forests with a small group of coffee collectors, ducking under mossy, low-hanging branches, ropey lianas, and slender wild coffee trees broken by baboons trying to reach their sweet fruit, is like returning to a time when rivers ran unimpeded and great forests ruled the land. Hazy sunlight pierces the dense canopy. Black-and-white colobus monkeys sit quietly observing from above, heavy silvery-cheeked hornbills lift off from treetops with the deep whooshing of wingbeats, and electric-green...

Praglia Abbey in Teolo, Italy

June 15, 2020

During the Middle Ages, many monks manually copied ancient books so they could be passed on to future generations. The invention of the printing press made this work largely obsolete, but thousands of old books remained stored in monasteries. You can find many of those volumes in the library of the Praglia Abbey, an almost 1,000-year-old monastery located among the Euganean Hills. Founded in 1080, the structure was largely restored or rebuilt multiple times, including in the 1800s, when...

555 of 582
« Previous
1
…
553
554
555
556
557
…
582
Next »

© 2021 BrandMoiAhora. All Rights Reserved

Powered by Curiosity