Inside the Mystery of an Untranslatable 600 Year Old Book

It’s like Medieval Times, with a kiss of psychedelia. A book in which strange globules float freely, alien plants shimmy across the pages, and female figures slide into a pool of green plasma. Binding them all together? A beautiful, albeit entirely indecipherable script by an unknown author. The “Voynich Manuscript,” is an ancient codex that…

Hong Kong’s Forgotten City of Darkness

It was the most densely populated place on Earth for most of the 20th century, where a room cost the equivalent of US$6 per month in high rise buildings that belonged to no country. In this urban enclave, “a historical accident”, law had no place. Drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes lived and worked alongside kindergartens,…

Time Capsule found in the Basement of a major Internet Hub

There is no feeling quite like it, when you realize you’ve discovering something that’s been entirely forgotten and frozen in time. Cabel is the co-founder of a Mac and iOs software company in Portland, Oregon called Panic– not your everyday time-capsule explorer! But one day, Cabel decided to take a lonesome wander down to the basement…

UNLOCKED! Secret Time Capsule Safe found in a Tennessee Farmhouse

There can be no feeling like it; uncovering a secret treasure buried in the past. A Reddit.com user has documented his discovery of a mysterious safe hidden in a closet of his grandparent’s farmhouse in rural Tenneessee, where they would often read Treasure Island to him as a young boy. “I always dreamed of finding…

The Stylehunters of Soviet Russia

In communist Russia of the 1950s, members of a provocative subculture put their own original twist on street style. Labeled “Stilyaga” or “Stilyagi” (plural) by disapproving outsiders – a name that literally translates to stylehunter – a group of dandy youngsters dressed up in colorful American-inspired get ups to meet on Leningrad and Moscow’s main…

Cape Town’s Lost District, through the Eyes of its Transgender Darling

Once upon a time, at the southernmost tip of Africa, nestled in a hollow between the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and slopes of Table Mountain lived an awesome bourgeoning community of thespians. District Six was home to bohemians, artists, merchants, preachers, students, business people, gangsters and everyone in between. Think New York’s Greenwich Village…

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The “Unknown” Photographer who Documented the Cool Kats of Mid-Century Mali

At a New York art exhibition in the early 90s, three black & white photographs hung on the white walls, credited to a photographer “Unknown“. The portraits of fashionably dressed people and families taken between 1940 and the early sixties were actually the work of a nationally renowned photographer in Mali. Outside of his country however, Seydou Keita…

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The Lost Victorian Mansions of Downtown LA

This is a picture of a Los Angeles that no longer exists. Affectionately knick-named “the Castle”, this elegant Victorian house was one of many in the once prestigious neighbourhood of Los Angeles, known as Bunker Hill. Downtown LA does have history, it’s just buried under gleaming high-rise office blocks and strip malls… Despite once attracting…

The Party Castle Forgotten in the Jungle for Half a Century

There are some places in the world that make you weak at the knees with nostalgia and Paronella Castle is one of them. It was the impossible dream of an ambitious Spanish immigrant who sailed to Australia in 1913 to make a life for himself and his fiancé waiting back home. José Paronella worked for…

Curiosity du Jour: Antique Intaglio Seals

When we stopped writing letters, it wasn’t just our penmanship that went down the toilet, but the entire art of letter-writing, and all the romance and ceremony that came with it. Arguably the loveliest victim to have disappeared from our desks in the wake of its decline? The intaglio seal. Intaglio seals, essentially engraved gems,…