Glass: An Oscar-winning documentary short on Dutch glassblowing from 1958

Glass is a 1958 non-verbal documentary short by Bert Haanstra that contrasts glassblowing techniques used inside the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory with more modern industrial machines. The first half shows several men at work using traditional glassblowing to create ornate objects like vases and mugs..
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The Art of Landscaping a Volcano: At Tabacon Hot Springs

The art of landscaping doesn’t get hotter than at Arenal. One of Costa Rica’s seven historically active volcanoes – and the country’s most active until 2010 – the 1,633 meter-high Arenal is a baby at under 7,500 years old. Which might explain a temperament that can cause a heat of 89 degrees Celsius (192 Fahrenheit) at its base.
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Japan Is Getting High-Speed “Invisible” Trains

Reflective material will make them blend into the landscape.
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Ten unique Basque words you need to learn right now

The Local looks at some key unique words in Basque you can try out during your next visit to northern Spain.
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The world according to tobacco consumption

To mark World No-Tobacco Day, we’ve mapped the world according to cigarette consumption.
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5 Tips For Packing Light

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Afghanistan's carpet makers have long made "war rugs." What's the latest? Drone rugs.

The war rug tradition of Afghanistan has its origins in the decade of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979, and has continued through subsequent military, political and social conflicts. Afghan rug-makers began incorporating the apparatus of war into their designs almost immediately after the Soviet Union invaded their country. They continue to do so today in the wake of the United States' 2001 invasion of Afghanistan which ousted the Taliban government of Mullah Omar but has failed to bring an end to violence in the country. These days, with the ongoing drone war, these have started creeping up.
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Is Exclusion Still the Norm? Saudi Arabia and Women in the Olympic Games

After considerable international pressure, Saudi Arabia agreed to send two female athletes to the London 2012 Games–the first time in history the nation sent female athletes to the games. Qatar and Brunei’s female athletes at the London Games were also the first female members in the history of their Olympic participation, but in both of those countries, the policies restricting women in sports are significantly less harsh.
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Global Slavery Index 2016 Estimates 45.8 Million People Trapped In Modern Slavery

The Global Slavery Index 2016, released Tuesday, found that India topped the list with the highest absolute number of people in modern slavery.
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Russian Dad Saves Kids From Fire by Throwing Them Out Of 5th Floor Window

This dad THREW his two kids OUT OF A WINDOW to save them from a fire in Russia
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American Archeologists Need To Get Wet

Sea levels were lower during the ice age, when the first humans made their way into North America. That means the next big find is underwater.
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Beautiful Photos from a Summer Spent on Japan's Trains

Photographer Hiroyuki Ito captured his home country while riding the rails for an entire summer.
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Why Girl Scouts Are Still Mostly White

The 104-year-old organization is having trouble recruiting black and Latina kids. Why? 
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Sexist, maybe? Extra wide, pink parking spots for women in China

The Chinese Internet was awash in debate over sexism Monday, spurred on by an unlikely subject: parking lots.
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The Scary Truth Behind the Honey Sold in Grocery Stores

Do you buy honey at the grocery store? If so, you're probably buying honey that's been laundered, meaning honey that is diluted with fillers like high-fructose corn syrup yet labeled and sold as pure honey.
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Remembering Sherman’s Army

The story of the Grand Review of the Union Armies in May, 1865 and of the veterans of Sherman’s March who believed that it was their campaign that helped bring the Civil War to its end. By Anne Sarah Rubin.
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Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

Finland is an active front in an online “information war” between Russia and the West. When a journalist there confronted pro-Putin agitators, she became a target.
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In pictures: 19th-century India through the eyes of Samuel Bourne

An upcoming exhibition of the British photographer's work demonstrates its significance in the history of visual culture.
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Watch a man released from prison after 44 years react to today's technology

One man's story of reintegration with the modern world.
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This Unique New Bookstore Is Filled With Optical Illusions

An unusual new bookstore has recently opened in Hangzhou, China. Zhongshuge Bookstore, designed by XL-MUSE, uses mirrors to make the spaces seem huge and never-ending.
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The Delightful Perversity of Québec's Catholic Swears

Québec is bilingual, but reluctantly. As a French province with small pockets of English, and a few larger pockets that will willingly use both languages, the signs, by law, are in French. The language on the street is French. Ordering food or browsing a store will likely involve some amount of standard conversational French, and should you get in trouble with the law, it's going to be time to find a Francophile lawyer. The profanity, though, is pure Québec.
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Inside Iran

Impressions and moments captured from behind Iran’s closed curtain, as I traversed the Islamic Republic during the country’s “Ten Days of Dawn” celebrations and rallies, to mark the anniversary of the 1979 revolution.
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The multimillionaire founder of MySpace now travels the world taking jaw-dropping photographs

Jealousy guaranteed.
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Vintage Illustrations of Trains by Koyata Yasui

Kodomonokuni was a Japanese kids magazine that was published between 1922 - 1944. Featuring full-page illustrations, the magazine helped elevate the genre of illustration, which was previously considered secondary to text. The magazine also helped many illustrators becomes household names and one of those was Koyata Yasui.
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I was invited to a pre-opening of the New Shanghai Disney Theme Park

I went this weekend, the official opening day is June 15, 2016
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These Lovely Maps Trace the Most Picturesque Routes of Every City in the World

Mapbox's Eric Fischer has been working on the "Geotaggers' World Atlas" for five years, using locations of photos uploaded on Flickr over a decade. In his city maps, which now span the world, he connects the dots between subsequent photos taken by a photographer—representing their path in sketchy lines that criss-cross across the city.
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When the River Rises: The Wimberley Floods of 2015

The Wimberley fire chief pulled on his tactical boots and stepped out into the rain. He climbed into his pickup truck and drove down a bluff, toward the river. Chief Carroll Czichos could have found his way there blindfolded. He was 62, with blue eyes and gray hair, and had lived along the Blanco River all his life. He knew its rhythms well enough to predict with surprising accuracy when the river would rise. The Blanco, after all, ran right through Texas’s “Flash Flood Alley,” one of the most notorious floodplains in the country.
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Wanda Opens First China Theme Park as It Takes Aim at Disney

 Billionaire Wang Jianlin Saturday officially unveiled Dalian Wanda Group Co.’s Wanda City
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When the River Rises: The Wimberley Floods of 2015

In Texas’s Flash Flood Alley, it only takes a few hours to cause lifelong devastation.
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Onbashira Matsuri, Japan

Log riding!
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Mountain Monastery

Located near the city of Paro in the Kingdom of Bhutan, the Tigers Nest Monastery (or Taktsang Palphug) is located 3000 meters high up in the Himalayan Mountains. Mountain Monastery by David Lazar
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How England's First Feline Show Countered Victorian Snobbery About Cats

The 1871 cat show ushered in a new era of appreciation for the furry rat-catchers.
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Walter Molino’s lush illustrations of people in peril

These illustrations of people in various states of peril were painted by the extremely prolific Italian artist Walter Molino. Most of these pieces date from the 1950s.
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Central-Mid-Levels Escalators

The world's longest outdoor covered escalator system transports commuters through Hong Kong's hilly terrain
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10 of the best British graffiti artists you should know about.

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Thailand Begins Planting Millions of Trees by Dropping "Seed Bombs"

Thailand has found a unique way to regenerate its forests.
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Out of this world: the surreal deserts of the United States – in pictures

Photographer David Clapp visited Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona as part of his project on other-worldy locations, with surreal results
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Eighty years on, Spain may at last be able to confront the ghosts of civil war

Following the end of the Spanish civil war in 1939, the bodies of 1,700 Republicans –soldiers, civilians, people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time – were carted through the centre of Barcelona and dumped here without dignity or ceremony, after summary execution by the fascist forces of General Francisco Franco. Their bullet-ridden corpses were covered in quicklime before being thrown into a pit, the better to ensure their rapid decomposition. In a grim example of fascist humour, the medical certificates of many of the dead reported the cause of death as “internal haemorrage”.
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The Great Swiss Bank Heist

The computer technician who exposed the darkest secrets of the global super-rich. The story of Hervé Falciani, who took client data from H.S.B.C., and was indicted in Switzerland, jailed in Spain, and celebrated in France.
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Tales of African-American History Found in DNA

Geneticists have studied clues in the DNA of African-Americans about the history of slavery and the Great Migration.
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Rural road in Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan

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A River’s Tale

On the journey of Alice Albinia, tracing the mighty Indus from sea to source. By Saba Imtiaz.
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Jews, refugees and the (im)possibility of history

A few years ago I received a phone call from the current Energy and Resources minister, Josh Frydenberg. He called me in response to an email I had sent only hours earlier on behalf of Jews for Refugees (JFR), drawing his attention to the case of the MV Struma. The Struma was a ship carrying 781 Jewish refugees from Romania that, on 23 February 1942, was towed from the harbour in Istanbul to the Black Sea, leaving the ship adrift. The next day the Struma was torpedoed and sunk by a Russian submarine.
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Fez celebrates Morocco's women through sacred music

A festival celebrating sacred music brought together artists from across the world in Morocco's Fez.
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Mystery of Morbid Aztec Skull Masks Solved by Archaeologists

Eight masks made from human skulls were found at a temple in Tenochtitlán, Mexico, over three decades ago. Their purpose and origins have always been somewhat mysterious. But a new archaeological analysis suggests that these morbid masks may have been made from slain warriors and other elite members of ancient Aztec society.
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Mecca's Other Pilgrimage

It was well past midnight. Lit with fluorescent tubes in the colors of the Saudi flag, the petrol station had the energy of a middle-aged man toiling through a graveyard shift. Men stood beside a few cars out front. More were parked in the back for the night, forming a sort of question mark on the station’s perimeter. A man approached me with a question about my destination: “Mecca? Mecca, Mecca, Mecca.”
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Watch These Chinese Kids Scale A 2,600-Foot Cliff To Get To School

Never complain about your commute again.
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A red Moon Rising

The full moon last week rose very red. The color was already fading by the time I got the camera out, but the result had a very spooky effect
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‘Manhattanhenge’ arrives this weekend, here’s how to best capture it

Find out what is "Manhattanhenge," and how to capture the event with a camera.
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Sunk

How a Chinese billionaire’s dream of making an underwater fantasy blockbuster turned into a legendary movie fiasco. (Open in incognito mode)
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