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Articles
30 articles
Centralia, Pennsylvania's Endless Underground Fire
Somewhere beneath the scrubby, cracked asphalt of what used to be Route 61 in Centralia, Pennsylvania, an underground coal seam has been on fire since 1962. Smoke still seeps through fissures in the ground. The earth radiates warmth underfoot. In win...
Gdańsk: One of Poland's Greatest Cities
At 4:45am on 1 September 1939, the German warship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish military transit depot at Westerplatte, on the outskirts of Gdańsk. The 182 Polish defenders held for seven days against overwhelming German force. It was ...
Randers, Denmark
Most travelers to Denmark go straight to Copenhagen, maybe Aarhus, and call it a country. But drive into central Jutland, to the point where Denmark's longest river spills into a long sheltered fjord, and you'll find Randers — one of Denmark's oldest...
Portugal's Oldest Places: A Guide to Ancient Sites
Portugal is one of the oldest nation-states in Europe annd its borders have remained essentially unchanged since 1139 AD. Here are the ancient and historic sites that every visitor seriously interes...
Canal Street: The Grand Thoroughfare of New Orleans in the 1900s
Canal Street at the turn of the 20th century was one of the most impressive commercial boulevards in the United States. At 171 feet wide — one of the widest streets in the country, a width that required two sets of streetcar rails and still left room...
Ancient Persia to Modern Iran: 10 Historic Sites That Make This Country One of the Greatest Open-Air Museums on Earth
Iran isn't just old — it's one of the cradles of human civilization. When Rome was still a village, Persia was building an empire that stretched from Egypt to India. When most of Europe was in the Dark Ages, Isfahan was the "Half the World" — one of ...
How People Got Around Los Angeles in the 1940s — And How It Explains Everything About the City Today
Everyone knows Los Angeles as a car city. Five-lane freeways, parking minimums, the 405 at rush hour, the assumption that no one walks anywhere. But this wasn't always the case — and the story of how Los Angeles transformed from one of the world's be...
Laramie, Wyoming in the 1940s: Why People Came and Should I Visit Now?
Laramie is 7,165 feet (about 2,200 meters) above sea level in southeastern Wyoming, with the Laramie Mountains to the east, and the Medicine Bow Mountain Range to the west. Why People Came to Laramie in the 1940s The Union Pacific Railroad ...
Denver Union Station: From Wild West Railroad Hub to the Heart of a Modern City
Denver Union Station opened in 1881 and immediately established itself as one of the most important railroad junctions in the American West. At its peak, 80 trains a day passed through its platforms. Today, after a $500 million regeneration, it's the...
Denver's 16th Street Mall: The History Behind Colorado's Most Famous Boulevard
Walk the length of Denver's 16th Street Mall today and you'll pass chain restaurants, hotel lobbies, coffee shops, street performers, and the constant swoosh of free mall ride buses. It's pleasant and busy — Denver's version of a downtown promenade. ...
Angel Falls and the Tepuis: Venezuela's Natural Wonders Explained
In the Gran Sabana region of southeastern Venezuela, flat-topped mountains called tepuis rise like islands above the surrounding forest — some reaching 3,000 metres, their cliff faces vertical and unbroken, their summits isolated for so long that evo...
Why Is Greece Called Greece? What the Hellas that about?
If you ask a Greek person what they call their country, they will say Hellas (Ελλάς or Ελλάδα). They call themselves Hellenes (Έλληνες). The Greek language is Helleniki. Greece, in the eyes of the Greeks, has always been and remains Hellas. So where...
The Oldest Historic Place in Greece: The Palace of Knossos, Crete
If you want to stand somewhere ancient, and not just old, but the birth of civilization old then the Palace of Knossos on Crete is going to be it. The palace you see today was built around 1700 BC, and rebuilt after an earthquake destroyed an even ea...
Sana'a: Capital of Yemen, Cradle of One of the World's Oldest Cities
At an elevation of 2,300 metres above sea level and with a recorded history stretching back over two and a half millennia, Sana'a is among the most remarkable capital cities in the world. It is the capital of Yemen – a country that sits at the so...
Bryggen: Bergen's UNESCO World Heritage Hanseatic Waterfront
The row of pointed gables lining Bergen's eastern harbour – red, yellow, ochre, and weathered brown – is one of the most recognised skylines in Scandinavia. Bryggen (simply "the wharf" in Norwegian) was for four centuries the most important node in...
Viking Age Norway: History, Myths, and Where to Experience It Today
The Viking Age – broadly defined as the period from the first recorded Norse raid (Lindisfarne Monastery, 793 AD) to the Battle of Hastings (1066 AD) – transformed medieval Europe and established Norse seafarers as the most wide-ranging explorers of ...
Machu Picchu and the Inca Empire: History, Mysteries, and How to Visit
Nearly 600 years after its construction and 113 years after its re-introduction to the outside world by Hiram Bingham, Machu Picchu remains unexplained in ways that continue to fascinate. Not unexplained in the tabloid sense — the Inca built it, pr...
The Marshall Islands: Nuclear History, Ocean Culture, and a Nation Between Tides
The Marshall Islands occupy 1,225 islands and islets forming 29 coral atolls in the central Pacific — a nation that has endured one of the most devastating legacies of the 20th century and continues to face existential challenges from rising seas. Un...
Warsaw: The City That Refused to Die — History and What to See
No major European capital suffered more in the Second World War than Warsaw. By January 1945, when Soviet troops entered the city, it was a sea of rubble — 85% of its buildings destroyed, its entire pre-war population of 1.3 million expelled or kille...
The Odessa Catacombs: Ukraine's Vast Underground World
Every great port city has its secrets. In Ukraine's largest Black Sea city, Odessa, the secrets are buried — literally. Beneath the limestone bluffs and wide boulevards of this famous city lies the largest catacomb network in the world: an estimated ...
The Galápagos Islands: Darwin, Evolution, and One of the World's Great Wildlife Encounters
In September 1835, a 26-year-old naturalist named Charles Darwin stepped ashore on the Galápagos Islands and began making observations that would, over the following decades, reshape humanity's understanding of life on Earth. Nearly 200 years later...
A Brief History of Algeria: From Ancient Numidia to Independence and Beyond
Algeria's history is one of the most dramatic and layered in all of Africa. Understanding it isn't just academic — it directly shapes the Algeria you'll experience today, from the ruins you'll visit to the attitudes you'll encounter. Here's a conci...
Where Americans Loved to Travel in the 1960s
The 1960s were the golden age of American travel. The Interstate Highway System was brand new. Jet passenger service had just become mainstream. America was prosperous, optimistic, and eager to explore. Here's where people actually went — and why it ...
A Brief History of Cuba: From Columbus to Castro to Today
You can visit Cuba without knowing its history — but you'd be missing the point. Every crumbling mansion, every vintage car, every slogan painted on a wall tells a story that stretches back five centuries. Cuba's history is dramatic, painful, triumph...
Why Is Puerto Rico Part of the USA? The Full Story
When you arrive at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, you do not clear customs or immigration. The currency is the US dollar. Signs are in English and Spanish. Police drive Ford Explorers with lights and sirens identical to those...
Oslo's Viking Ship Museum: The World's Best-Preserved Viking Vessels
On the Bygdøy peninsula — Oslo's museum quarter — stands a cross-shaped building of modest exterior and extraordinary interior. The Viking Ship Museum (Vikingskipshuset) holds what is beyond reasonable argument the finest collection of original Vikin...
What Was LoDo? The Remarkable History of Denver's Lower Downtown District
LoDo or, Lower Downtown Denver is the roughly 25-block area bounded by the Platte River to the west, Larimer Street to the north, 20th Street to the east, and Speer Boulevard to the south. It is today Denver's most densely packed dining and nightlife...
The Oldest Cemetery in the United States
Ask which cemetery in America is the oldest and you'll start an argument. The honest answer is that it depends entirely on what you mean by "oldest" — and the most defensible title belongs to a small, unassuming plot of ground in Duxbury, Massachuset...
The Stanley Hotel: The Night That Gave Stephen King The Shining
On the night of October 8, 1974, a young, not-yet-famous writer named Stephen King checked into a grand old hotel in the Colorado Rockies with his wife Tabitha. It was the very end of the season. The hotel was closing for winter the next day, the sta...
Why Is It Called Budapest?
The name Budapest is a well-known city name in Europe in terms of tourism and one of the least known in terms of its actual history. Budapest was formed in 1873 by the administrative merger of three separate cities, Buda, Óbuda, and Pest. What Doe...