What makes Paris look like Paris? (According to Google)

Most Parisians can recognize a picture of Paris pretty instantly. From the Haussmann facades to the way the cobblestones are patterned in the street and the look of the drain pipes. But scientifically, what makes Paris look like Paris? Five scholars from Carnegie Mellon and the École normale supérieure have tried to answer this using…

The Art of Stuffing People into a Subway Train

Thank God it’s Friday. Because if you were on your Monday morning commute in Tokyo right now, the day probably wouldn’t be getting off to the greatest start. I had never before seen this practice of “stuffing” people into subway cars. I also had no idea subway staff are hired to do just that… [youtube…

10 Easy Recipes you could probably make while Drunk

I say probably because I wouldn’t want to encourage being drunk in an environment surrounded by gas fires and kitchen knives. Nessy is not surprisingly, a pretty messy chef. And I hate cleaning up. Nessy also hates reading long recipes and always gets bored half way through. So here are my favorite recipes, so easy,…

The Circus is in Town

A troupe of elephants and a zebra walk down 33rd Street in Manhattan in 1968 to mark the arrival of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. What a sight that would have been. As a great animal lover, the idea of the circus makes me all kinds of uncomfortable. But then again, the things…

A Guide to Sheep Pageantry in Senegal

You might think this sounds a little odd but sheep pageantry is in fact not all that different to the dog and cat shows we put on in the western world. In Senegal, sheep and rams are like pets. In 8 households out of 10 in Senegal, there are live-in sheep and rams because it’s…

The Town That Spent 25 Years Underwater

This is Villa Epecuen, an old tourist town south of Buenos Aires that spent a quarter of a century underwater. Established in the 1920s on the banks of a salt lake, the town was home to over 5,000 residents and a holiday destination to thousands more vacationers from the Argentinian capital. In 1985, a dam…

Custom Embroideries by Cheeky Booom

I know it’s still a little early to be talking Christmas gifts, but if you’re one of those people that likes to give something better than a box of sweets you picked up in the line at the supermarket, I think I’ve found the perfect idea. Cheeky Booom is a “micro maison de broderie“, a…

Meet North Korea’s American Film Star

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il was a known film enthusiast, or what we might call a ‘movie-buff’. He especially loved the kind of movies that portrayed America as the evil imperialist devil– but there weren’t too many of those floating around Hollywood. So to take matters into his own hands, Kim poured a whole load…

10 Photos of the Caribbean Pompeii

This is the caribbean island of Montseratt in the West Indies. In the 17th century, Britain colonized the island and held on to it ever since. But the British didn’t consider the consequences of building their paradise around a volcano (probably because they were too busy benefiting from the sugar and rum economy they built…

London’s Subterranean Secret: The Forgotten Mail Train

As a former Londoner, born & raised, who thought she knew everything there was to know about the city, finding out that there’s been a secret Royal Mail underground train line beneath our feet for over 85 years was just a little bit shocking. A reader sent me a tip this morning about a group…