Shanty Dreams

A Quest for the Forgotten Stories of the Tennessee River. By Clay Duda. (July 21, 2016)
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Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s

Anne Sebba’s account of the French women who dared to say no to the Nazis is compelling.
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Let them eat stale bread. The diet of the poor in the Regency

Britain was running out of bread in 1800.The Napoleonic blockade was beginning to have an effect and British domestic production had not yet started to increase.
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The British-American coup that ended Australian independence

In 1975 prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died this week, dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy. The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price. By John Pilger. (October 23, 2014)
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Weaving the Bridge at Q’eswachaka

Every year, local communities on either side of the Apurimac River Canyon use traditional Inka engineering techniques to rebuild the Q'eswachaka Bridge. The old bridge is taken down and the new bridge is built in only three days. The bridge has been rebuilt in this same location continually since the time of the Inka.
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Review: ‘Mercy Street,’ a Civil War Hospital Drama on PBS

This six-episode Civil War series shares Downton Abbey's style: genteel melodrama, talky, sentimental and lightly comic, with the occasional action sequence (an escape, a bomb plot) to spice things up.
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The Real Reason Women Love Witches

It’s not about broomsticks or cats. It’s about power. By Anne Theriault.
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The Case For Leaving City Rats Alone

Kaylee Byers crouches in a patch of urban blackberries early one morning this June, to check a live trap in one of Vancouver’s poorest areas, the V6A postal code. Her first catch of the day is near a large blue dumpster on “Block 5,” in front of a 20-some-unit apartment complex above a thrift shop. Across the alley, a building is going up; between the two is an overgrown, paper and wrapper-strewn lot. In the lot, there are rats. “Once we caught two in a single trap,” she says, peering inside the cage.
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‘He Was a Crook’

Hunter S. Thompson's scathing obituary of Nixon, originally published in Rolling Stone on June 16, 1994.
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Disney Wants to Track Park Visitors By Secretly Photographing Their Shoes Like a Creep

With millions of tourists visiting its theme parks around the world each year, it makes sense that Disney would want to track how visitors move about its attractions to help minimize lines and crowds and also to provide a unique experience for each guest. But does it have to sound so incredibly creepy?
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Lincoln’s Rhetorical Fireworks

When the Confederacy opened fire on Fort Sumter in April 1861, Abraham Lincoln responded within hours, ordering a naval blockade of Southern ports and calling for 75,000 volunteers to “maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union.”
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21 bizarre laws that still exist in the UK

In the UK, it's illegal to handle a salmon in suspicious circumstances.
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America’s Birthday Under Fire

July 4, 1861 dawned on a divided America, and the holiday itself became a battleground.
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Silicon Is Just Sand

Money, murder, and sadomasochism: A journey into the hidden world of Silicon Beach and the Los Angeles tech world. By Stephen Elliott.
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The Weird and Wonderful World of Renzo Picasso

A little-known Italian architect wanted to build seven-layer "superstreets" through American cities.
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Are churches key to solving social problems? Fewer Americans now think so

A majority of U.S. adults still say religious institutions contribute either “a great deal” (19%) or “some” (38%) to solving important social problems, but the combined figure of 58% has fallen significantly in recent years.
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Where are the world’s most water-stressed cities?

More than 2.5 billion people don’t have access to basic levels of fresh water for at least one month each year – a situation growing ever more critical as urban populations expand rapidly
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New York City Battles on Against Dutch Elm Disease

To many people in New York City, a beautiful summer day is all about the trees. To be more specific, the American elm trees in the Central Park Mall, which form a promenade through the heart of the park. The beauty, though, is not everlasting. Like elm trees across the globe, the elms in Central Park are stricken with a ruthless beetle–fungus alliance known as Dutch elm disease.
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DNA Analysis Reveals Potential For Previously Unknown Species Of Human

Not only did modern humans leave Africa to find a world populated with Neanderthals and the more mysterious Denisovans, but it seems that there may have been another as yet unidentified human added to the mix.
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Ukrainian Women Bring Back Traditional Floral Crowns To Show National Pride

A Slavic workshop of stylists and photographers called Treti Pivni have decided to bring back one of the more amazing Ukranian traditions by giving it a new meaning. They've produced a portrait series of modern Ukranian women dressed in traditional Ukranian floral headdresses.
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Was That A Russian Spy, Or Am I Getting Paranoid?

When you start packing for a reporting trip to Russia, you get a lot of advice. Take a clean phone, advised my journalist friends in Moscow. Take a clean laptop. That means one that has been wiped and re-imaged and from which I've never logged on with my usual user accounts and passwords. The reason? Russian intelligence will be monitoring you from the moment you land, they said. "Really?" I replied. "You think they'll be that interested in a random American reporter flying in?"
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What If Russia Invaded the Baltics—and Donald Trump Was President?

A former NATO general imagines a frightening scenario.
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Petey Ulatan's warped world of cubic landscapes

Petey Ulatan has created a surreal series of cubic landscapes that 'flatten' views of natural and urban panoramas.
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Resurfacing a street in Russia

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Donald Trump’s Appeal to Russia Shocks Foreign Policy Experts

“Being shocked into speechlessness is not the sort of thing you’re really used to in the business of foreign policy analysis,” said one expert after Donald J. Trump called on Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s email server.
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Remembering the Korean War

Sixty-three years ago today, on July 27, 1953, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed, ceasing hostilities between North Korean Communist forces, backed by China, and South Korean forces, backed by the United Nations. The war had raged across the Korean Peninsula for three years, leaving hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians dead. The Armistice formed the famous Demilitarized Zone that still separates North Korea and South Korea, technically still at war with each other. On this anniversary of the armistice agreement, a look back at the people and places involved in the conflict sometimes called "the forgotten war.”
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The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!

Unprovable and non-disprovable DNC leak conspiracy theories.
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The Slave Who Stole the Confederate Codes—and a Rebel Warship

When three Confederate officers decided to go ashore for a night in Charleston, they left their gunboat in the hands of an enslaved pilot. It was a critical mistake. By Christopher Dickey.
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Flashback: The 1924 Democratic Convention Was A Violent, Racist Clusterf

The marathon party gathering featured fist fights, a Klan rally, and 103 ballots. By Jake Offenhartz. (July 26, 2016)
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10 international drinking rules every traveler should know (infographic)

Alcohol: There’s no better way to loosen up and really ingratiate yourself with the locals. Alcohol: There’s no better way to completely make a fool of yourself and really alienate yourself from the locals.
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By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines

Russia was behind the hacks into the Democratic National Committee’s computer network that led to the release of thousands of internal emails just before the party’s convention began, U.S. intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded. The FBI is investigating. WikiLeaks promises there is more data to come. The political nature of this cyberattack means that Democrats and Republicans are trying to spin this as much as possible. Even so, we have to accept that someone is attacking our nation’s computer systems in an apparent attempt to influence a presidential election.
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Harvard University study reveals link between firearms, crime and gun control.

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9-year-old boy chained and tortured in church for weeks: This is why I hate religion.

A 9-year-old boy was rescued from a church in Ogun state Nigeria, after weeks of being chained and tortured. The Celestial church of Christ had been keeping the emaciated child in chains and tortured him in a bid to rid him of demonic possession. This was said to be with the consent of the child’s father, a pastor.
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Woodwasp and Mantis, both by Venom

It's good to be ouside. :-)
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Why Putin hates Hillary

Behind the allegations of a Russian hack of the Democrats is the Kremlin leader’s fury at Clinton for challenging the fairness of Russian elections.
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Revealed: the £1bn of weapons flowing from Europe to Middle East

AK-47s, machine guns, explosives and more travel along new arms pipeline from Balkans to countries known to supply Syria
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South Africa: Tembisa Tornado - 100 Injured, 400 Houses Uprooted

At least 100 people have been injured and 400 homes destroyed after a tornado hit the Tembisa township in the East Rand, government has said.
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How Maritime Law Works

"Maritime law is confusing, but interesting (I hope.)"
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Norway is building the world's first 'floating' underwater tunnels

Norway has an ambitious plan to ease the congestion of local ferries by building a series of underwater tunnels that allow travelers to cross the nations bodies of water. The “submerged floating bridges” would consist of large tubes suspended by pontoon-like support structures 100 feet below water. Each will be wide enough for two lanes of traffic, and the floating structures should ease the congestion on numerous ferries currently required to get commuters from Point A to Point B.
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Ur-Fascism

I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it. By Umberto Eco. (June 22, 1995)
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That time when the Mafia almost fixed the Democratic National Convention

Lucky Luciano, Al Capone and FDR walk into a Democratic convention... By James Cockayne.
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Like a sick joke: [Michigan governor] Snyder appoints BP lobbyist to head MDEQ

It's a stunning look into the way the governor views the state's responsibility to protect Michigan's environment, and Michiganders' health. (July 15, 2016)
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Hostage killed in Normandy church siege was priest, say French police

Two men armed with knives take five hostages in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, northern France, before being shot dead by police
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On his third birthday, here's one gift Prince George really does need

It’s Prince George’s third birthday today. As his loyal subjects, it’s only right that we celebrate. Only this morning, as I cracked open the Bollinger on my private flight back from the holiday home in Tuscany, I thought to myself, ‘I should probably send him a gift’. By Holly Baxter.
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Michelle Obama's Speech for the Ages

The First Lady took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention, and united a divided hall.
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Early humans used mammoth ivory tool to make rope

Artifacts recently unearthed in Germany suggest some early humans used specialized ivory tools to make rope.
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UK: lost, divided and alone

The Brexit vote was a insurrectionary protest against neoliberalism, globalism and cultural contempt. It will break up the UK, and split England forever. By Paul Mason.
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Pink Tentacle

+ Video
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This Company Is Turning Coffee Grounds into Coffee Cups

What if instead of getting buried into garbage bags, old coffee grounds could be recycled into something useful and sustainable? That's the goal of Kaffeeform.
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Photos That Captured Incredible Moments from History

Sometimes, one simple picture can tell you more about history than any story you might read or any document you might analyze. These photographs all tell stories about the historical figures or events that they represent. Once taken simply to document their present, they now help us witness the past.
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