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Jólabókaflóðið, Iceland's Brilliant Christmas Book Flood Tradition
When the festive season descends upon Iceland, the nation transforms into a booklover’s paradise. Unlike the frenzied last-minute...
C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater: A Story of Transformation and Unlikely Partnership
In the early 1970s, Durham, North Carolina, was a city deeply divided by race. Although the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954...
Debbie Harry Painted by H.R. Giger: The Collaboration Behind KooKoo
In the spring of 1980, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, the creative minds behind Blondie, crossed paths with the visionary artist H.R....
The Sprinter Who Came Back From the Dead: Betty Robinson’s Olympic Story
On a freezing Chicago afternoon in 1928, a sixteen-year-old girl sprinted flat out towards an elevated train platform, her coat flapping...
Bertrand Russell’s Delicious Response To British Fascist Oswald Mosley
In the strange interwar theatre of British politics, few figures stood further apart in temperament and ideology than Bertrand Russell...
Why Is English So Hard to Learn?: The Ingenious Poem, 'The Chaos' by Gerard Nolst Trenité
In 1920, Dutch writer, traveller, and linguist Gerard Nolst Trenité, better known by his pseudonym Charivarius , released a textbook...
After Slavery In America: Loved Ones Found In Wanted Ads
The Aftermath of Emancipation The abolition of slavery in the United States, formalised by the 13th Amendment in 1865, marked a pivotal...
Recoil In Horror At The Story Of The Man Who Cut Out His Own Appendix
Leonid Rogozov lying down talking to his friend Yuri Vereschagin at Novolazarevskaya Most people get squeamish just thinking about an...
T.E Lawrence, Was He Just 'The Dynamite Guy'?
When the Imperial Camel Corps thundered into the dusty port town of Aqaba in the summer of 1918, they rode not only into a...
When an 11-year-old boy led Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu in 1911
High in the rugged folds of the Peruvian Andes lies one of the world’s most recognisable archaeological sites: Machu Picchu. Often draped...
The Final Day Of The Romanov Family
When Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate in March 1917, it marked not only the end of the Romanov dynasty but the close of centuries...
Why Welsh Archers Were The Most Feared In Europe
When north Wales exploded into open revolt against an exploitative English elite. Countless towns were laid waste, their populations...
The Good Maharaja: How a Princely State in India Became a Refuge for Polish Children During the Second World War
When Feliks Scazighino was just six years old, the world as he knew it collapsed. Along with millions of other Polish civilians in 1940,...
The USS Indianapolis Monologue: Unravelling the Origins of Quint’s Chilling Speech in Jaws
One of the key and most chilling moments in the film Jaws comes when Shaw's character Quint delivers a harrowing four-minute monologue...
Captain Blood, The Man Who Stole the Crown Jewels – and Got Away With It
447 years ago, in an event that seems less like real history and more like a Monty Python sketch, a small band of men actually stole the...
Native Americans Acknowledged 5 Genders, And Then European Christians Showed Up.
Before European contact reshaped the continent and its many cultures, Native American societies offered a markedly different view of...
Hear Dylan Thomas Recite His Classic Poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
As a young child, Dylan Thomas enjoyed listening to his father, David John Thomas, reading Shakespeare to him before bedtime. Despite his...
When Aldous Huxley Was Dying And Took LSD in His Final Hours And Had The 'Most Beautiful Death'
Novelist Aldous Huxley, known for his work "Brave New World," received a cancer diagnosis in 1960, leading to a gradual decline in his...
This Timelapse Animation Lets You See the Rise of Cities Across the Globe, from 3700 BC to 2000 AD
In 2016, a research project led by Yale developed a groundbreaking dataset that documented the evolution of urban settlements over a...
The Collyer Brothers: A Tragic Legacy of Hoarding
The tragic tale of the Collyer brothers stands as one of the most bewildering and distressing accounts of compulsive hoarding in history....
Before The Internet, What People Asked New York Public Library's Librarians?
Before the advent of the Internet and Google, the primary method of seeking answers to urgent inquiries was by visiting the local library...
The Frost Fairs of River Thames
During the period spanning from the 13th to the 19th centuries, the northern hemisphere experienced a period known as the “Little Ice...
Queen Elizabeth’s Childhood Playhouse
Located in the garden of Windsor's Royal Lodge in Berkshire, England, there is a small thatched cottage with white-washed walls, hidden...
Kaspar the Savoy Cat: A Mascot of Tradition and Mystery
At the heart of London’s luxury, nestled by the Thames, stands the renowned Savoy Hotel—a place rich with history, grandeur, and...
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