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Category / Editor’s Picks

Let’s Take a Tea Break at Beatrix Potter’s Cottage

It’s time for a little breather, don’t you think? So today, we’re popping over to Beatrix Potter’s old village, in the calm of England’s Lake District. We’ll stop by Buckle Yeat for a cup of tea, and stroll through the garden where so many of her children’s book characters — namely, Peter Rabbit — got…

Streamliner Trains that Oozed the Elegance of Old World Travel

Say, can I get that train pamphlet in a framed poster? That’s not something you’re likely to wonder about any of the marketing coming out of today’s rail travel industry. I found this gorgeous vintage pamphlet design by Union Pacific Railroad and it sent me on a cyber hunt for more memorabilia from a glittering era in train travel between the 1930s to the…

History Conveniently Forgot to Tell us about the Transgender Roman Emperor

His reputation has suffered at the pens of historians for centuries – a suspected revisionist attempt to hide the fact that a powerful Roman Emperor was among the first persons in history to seek a sex reassignment surgery. Emperor Elagabalus (or Heliogabalus) came from a prominent Arab family in present-day Syria, where he served as…

Amelia Earhart’s Forgotten Fashion Line (could probably do with a comeback)

The idea of the celebrity fashion line dates as far back as 1850, when a wildly popular Swedish opera singer named Jenny Lind decided to top up her high-grossing ticket sales with a range of Jenny Lind-branded merchandise, including gloves, bonnets and shawls. Then came silent film star Irene Castle, dubbed the “best-dressed woman in…

Discovering the Real African Queen

Key Largo! For lovers of all things nostalgic, the name of this small, charming island off the coast of Florida, brings to mind hard-boiled, 1940s film noir……Bogart and Bacall. Whilst on a recent trip exploring the Keys, your stateside correspondent came across something quite remarkable – and entirely suited to the golden age of Hollywood.…

The Last House of Fans, Paris

There was once a secret language used by women for centuries to communicate unspoken sentiments across the room. It was the code of duchesses and ladies-in-waiting; women who made bi-weekly trips to the opera armed with an exquisite accessory that with a simple flick of her wrist, could declare her true feelings for a gentleman sat across…

Where America’s Lost Luggage Ends Up

Every traveler has experienced it at some point: that sinking feeling of watching all the other suitcases reunited with their weary owners at baggage claim but not seeing your own slide down the conveyor belt. While you stand there forlornly, wondering where your luggage has gone without you (and how many pairs of underwear you…

Before the Internet, there was the 1960s Dial-a-Poem Hotline

On any given night in 1970, a teen somewhere in rural America could dial a number and hear the radical wisdom of Patti Smith, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Bourroughs – the list of poets was long, and painfully hip. One needed only the ten sacred digits of “Dial-a-Poem,” a revolutionary hotline that connected…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. DLXIII)

1. Inside America’s Largest Abandoned Mansion with over 110 rooms 2. What the Leaning Tower of Pisa looks like Inside Totally empty! More found here. 3. Sylvia Plath’s recipe cards for Sale Including Fish Chowder, Cherry & Cottage Cheese Cobbler, Drop Molasses Cookies, Carrot Cake, Beef Stew and a much-coveted recipe: ‘Ted’s Mother’s Scots Porridge…

Deep in Italy, One Man’s Surrealist Mini-City Sleeps

It’s a labyrinthine citadel more surreal than even the weirdest of Fellini sets. “La Scarzuola” is a modern wannabe-Utopian estate imagined by one man and built amongst the pointy trees of Italy’s Montegabbione in the 1950s. This esoteric wonderland and its elaborate surrealist structures are awaiting your visit… Echoing the dreamlike worlds of Dali and…

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