1. An abandoned theatre in Portugal for sale
Theatre 1854 is the sixth oldest theatre still standing in Portugal. In Portugal’s Portalegre, it’s asking €400,000 and is classified as a building of municipal interest, meaning its future restoration, conversion, or adaptation would be subject to planning consent. More found on The Spaces.
2. Watched Gladiator II yet? Check out this fascinating thread on the mysterious flora & fauna that were found growing in the ruins of the Colosseum.
“When botanist Richard Deakin examined Rome’s Colosseum in the 1850s, he found 420 species of plant growing in the ruins: cypresses and ilex, pea plants and more than 50 types of grasses. But some flowers growing there mystified him. They were so rare they were found nowhere else in Europe. The mystery perplexed Deakin – until eventually he came up with a seemingly unlikely solution. Deakin proposed that the plants had been carried as seeds on the fur of animals like lions and giraffes, brought from Africa to perform and fight in the Roman arena.”
Discover the full thread on Bluesky found via Kottke.
3. An archaeologist’s 200-year-old note left on a French excavation site, discovered by students
A team of student volunteers on an archaeological dig at a site in northern France discovered a 200-year-old note left by an archaeologist who had performed an excavation of the site in 1825.
“It was the kind of vial that women used to wear round their necks containing smelling-salts,” said team-leader Guillaume Blondel, who heads the archaeological service for the town of Eu.
It read as follows:
“P.J Féret, a native of Dieppe, member of various intellectual societies, carried out excavations here in January 1825. He continues his investigations in this vast area known as the Cité de Limes or Caesar’s Camp.”
“Sometimes you see these time capsules left behind by carpenters when they build houses. But it’s very rare in archaeology. Most archaeologists prefer to think that there won’t be anyone coming after them because they’ve done all the work!”
Found on the BBC.
4. How a 500 year old French chapel visited by Joan of Arc ended up on a Milwaukee University Campus
A 15th-century chapel, said to have been visited by Joan of Arc, is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The chapel was originally built in the Rhône River Valley in France and shipped to Long Island in 1927. The chapel was reconstructed there for its new owner by John Russell Pope and attached to a mock French Renaissance chateau. Although the chateau burned down in 1962, the chapel was not damaged. After Gavin died, her estate passed to Marc B. Rojtman and his wife, Lillian, who decided to present the chapel to Marquette University in 1964. Then in 1966, the chapel was moved to the campus of Marquette University where it remains today. According to a sign on display at the original site in France, Joan of Arc may have visited and prayed at the chapel on 9 March 1429 after meeting King Charles VII of France. Legend relates that Joan prayed to a statue of the Virgin Mary while standing on a flat stone that is now behind the altar. Joan is said to have kissed the stone; ever since, the temperature of that stone has been reported to be colder than those surrounding it. The building was abandoned after the French Revolution and fell into ruin.
Found on Wikipedia.
5. Madeleine Riffaud, hero of the French Resistance, has died at the age of 100.
Madeleine Riffaud, a French Resistance hero who survived three weeks of torture as a teenager and who went on to celebrate her 20th birthday by helping to capture 80 Nazis on an armored supply train, died on Nov. 6 at her home in Paris. She was 100.
She was propelled into the anti-Nazi guerrilla underground in November 1940 by a literal kick in the backside from a German officer. He sent her packing after he saw Nazi soldiers taunting her at a railway station as she was accompanying her ailing grandfather to visit her father near Amiens, in northern France.
“That moment,” Ms. Riffaud said in a 2006 interview with The Times of London, “decided my whole life.”
Read the full article on The New York Times.
6. The female firefighter uniform from the Achille Serre Ladies Fire Brigade in London, 1926
Found on Reddit.
7. Tree FM — listen to random forests around the world.
Step into the forest with Tree FM. Found via Present & Correct.
8. Diagramming Dante: Michelangelo Caetani’s Maps of the Divina Commedia
More found on the Public Domain Review.
9. An underground football pitch in a Salt Mine
In Romania, there is an incredible underground salt mine in the barely known town of Cacica in the north of the country in southern Bucovina. This is no ordinary salt mine though – it has a football pitch too.
More about the mine here.
10. Nasa’s Abandoned Launch Sites
Roland Miller has spent nearly half his life chronicling these landmarks before they are lost forever. They are contemporary archeology sites,” says Miller, who is compiling his life’s work in Abandoned In Place.
11. Designing a 19th-Century Kindle: An E-Reader for Dickens
“Explain something modern/Internet based to someone who lived and died before 1900.” When faced with that prompt for a design class, Rachel Walsh, a student at Cardiff School of Art and Design, elected to describe the Amazon Kindle e-reader to Charles Dickens. Since a 19th-century author wouldn’t have had any concept of downloads, e-readers, or the Internet, Walsh had to create a metaphor for the device that would resonate with Dickens. Realizing that a Kindle is just a lot of books inside a big book, she created an old-school version consisting of literal little books inside a larger book. She put together 40 tiny versions of classics—a mixture of her childhood favorites and books Dickens supposedly enjoyed—such as Don Quixote and The Catcher in the Rye. Then, she placed them inside a normal-sized hardcover book, and voila: a very portable reader.
Article found on The Atlantic.
12. The Elementary School where you can Smoke Cigars and Sleep in Class
Portland’s McMenamins Kennedy School might be the only school in the country that has its own indoor pool, movie theater, brewery, whiskey and cigar room, and a detention room that comes complete with a keg and pool tables…
The Kennedy Elementary School opened in 1915, and after years as a fully-functioning school, it was bought and converted into one of the coolest hotels in the country. With 57 awesome guest rooms, many of which still have their original chalkboards, water fountains, and desks, guest can spend a week relaxing without ever having to leave the building.
Information for visiting here.
