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Budapest, Hungary

Jewish Ghetto Wall

Hungarian Jews were ghettoized during the Second World War, but little remains of the original wall that closed the Jewish people off from the rest of the city.
Prague, Czechia

Hunger Wall of Prague

Local folklore claims that this wall was not built for defense, but to provide labor during a time of famine.
Berlin is home to more than half the world's working gas streetlamps. They first illuminated Unter den Linden, Berlin’s central boulevard, almost two centuries ago.
politics

The Last Days of Berlin's Gas Streetlamps

Looking at the German city in a different light.
Alex Rennie June 1, 2023
After the destruction caused along the Miami beaches by Hurricane Andrew, in 1992, five new lifeguard stations were created, striking colorful, geometric figures on the waterfront. Another wave of these buildings appeared in 2015.
forests

Kick Off Summer With 7 Unique Beach Reads About the Beach

Surprising stories from where land meets sea.
April White June 1, 2023
Spellman Museum of Stamps & Postal History
Weston, Massachusetts

Spellman Museum of Stamps & Postal History

The oldest philatelic museum in the United States.
Mbala, Zambia

Propeller from the SS Good News

The propeller from the first steamship launched on Lake Tanganyika.
cars

The Coast-to-Coast American Road Trip Is 120 Years Old

In 1903, a Vermont doctor bet $50 that he could cross America by car. It took him 63 days, $8,000, and 600 gallons of gas.
Frank Jacobs June 18, 2025
In Asbury Park, New Jersey, summer visitors are known as "bennies." On the southern Jersey shore, the same visitors are "shoobies."
beach

Are You a Shoobie or a Benny?

When summer visitors arrive, so do the colorful and sometimes perplexing local nicknames.
Laura Kiniry May 26, 2023
Braddock's Rock and plaque.
Washington, D.C.

Braddock's Rock

The "Key of Keys" for Washington, D.C. and the apocryphal landing place for the military campaign that started George Washington's career is now at the bottom of a well.
Koguma’s “Showa-retro” interior.
Tokyo, Japan

Koguma

This cozy café is housed in a repurposed pharmacy originally built in 1927.
Baked Alaska has taken on many forms.
food

Meet Baked Alaska's Prototype, 'Alaska, Florida'

This parlor trick of a dessert has a long, complicated lineage.
Diana Hubbell May 18, 2023
trains

Podcast: The Fugitive Train Wreck

Near the remains of a famed movie scene, an older, true story of injustice.
The Podcast Team May 18, 2023
Monterrey, Mexico

Museo del Ferrocarril Antigua Estación del Golfo

A Beaux-Arts architectural surprise and a charming nostalgic tour through northern Mexico’s railway revolution.
No knife and fork needed to eat the original Caesar.
food

The Original Caesar Salad Was Finger Food

The world's most famous salad started as a Tijuana trend.
April White May 17, 2023
Framingham, Massachusetts

The Old Field of 1800

Two stone markers honor the Nipmuc people who first settled here millennia ago.
The Bar Hill Comb was part of a collection of more than 280,000 artifacts recovered in Cambridgeshire, England, between 2016 and 2018.
archaeology

In England, Bar Hill's 'Skull Comb' Is an Iron Age Mystery

The unusual artifact hints at how ancient communities may have treated their dead.
Line Sidonie Talla Mafotsing May 17, 2023
St. Malo, perhaps the oldest Asian community in the United States, as depicted in an 1883 report by <em>Harper’s Weekly</em>.
food

7 Must-Read Stories to Mark AAPI Heritage Month

Some of our favorite tales of tragedy, joy, protest, love, and surfing.
April White May 17, 2023
Great Yarmouth, England

Suspension Bridge Disaster Memorial

On May 2, 1845, crowds gathered to watch a clown and four geese sail upstream in a bathtub. Then disaster struck.