When a thief stole a multimillion-dollar painting by Vincent van Gogh from a small museum in the Netherlands, Octave Durham almost immediately found himself a person of interest. “It’s not a coincidence, because most of the time I did it. But now I’m retired.”
My name is Brent and with my friend Jon, I purchased the former mining town of “Cerro Gordo”. The town was originally established in 1865 and by 1869 they were pulling 340 tons of bullion out of the mountain for Los Angeles. The silver from Cerro Gordo was responsible for building Los Angeles.
Nokia dominated the first decade of the cellphone boom, becoming a beloved brand around the world and pumping billions of dollars into the Finnish economy. Then, along came Steve Jobs and his iPhone in 2007 and ruined everything. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost. Nokia sold its phone business to Microsoft. And Finns took a serious hit to their country pride.
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is more than a hundred years old, but still it gives physicists headaches. Not only are Einstein’s equations hideously difficult to solve, they also clash with physicists’ other most-cherished achievement, quantum theory.
This Hotel lists hotel, hostel and bed & breakfast recommendations from trusted experts like New York Times, Lonely Planet, Fodor’s, Frommers, CNN and many more.
One Twitter user recently posted that her family never got to say goodbye to her grandpa when he died a few years ago, but when she visited her grandpa’s farm through Street View, there he was, sitting at the end of the road. Thousands of people responded with their own Google Street View stories.
Operating in cash costs countries about 0.5% of their GDP every year. But cost isn’t the only incentive to move towards a cashless future. Many countries are going cashless at great speed. What are the advantages of ditching hard cash and what are the dangers?
Guatemala remains one of the Western Hemisphere’s last true culinary terrae incognitae. Due to centuries of isolation in the volcano-strewn highlands, many members of the 23 distinct Maya groups in rural Guatemala still wear the same outfits that their great-great-great-great-grandparents did.
It was the spring of 1992 in the small town of Martensville. Rumours were spreading that a local family were members of a secret satanic cult, abusing children at their home daycare and at a property outside of town. A horde of devil worshippers was allegedly on its way, looking to attack in the dead of night.
Nearly half of 3- to 6- year old girls say they worry about being fat. For decades, the medical community has ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and futile war on fat people, poisoning public perception and ruining millions of lives. It’s time for a new paradigm.
In a valley in the Albanian countryside, a group of celibate Iranian dissidents have built a vast and tightly guarded barracks that few outsiders have ever entered. Depending on whom you ask, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Jihadists, are either Iran’s replacement government-in-waiting or a duplicitous terrorist cult.
Hong Kong has more ultra-rich people than any other country, yet 1 in 5 people still live in poverty. SBS Dateline’s Marc Fennell asks why the gap between rich and poor is so extreme.
For 700 years, the Richard de Bas paper mill has produced some of the world’s finest paper. The French constitution is printed on paper from this mill. And artists like Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall were customers. Emmanuel runs the business today. His great grandfather bought the mill in Ambert, France, during World War II, and it has stayed in the family ever since.
In Quintero, oil leaks and pollution from heavy industry is taking a heavy toll on the health of local citizens. The air often tastes metallic, rather than of the sea. Even the beach looks darker than it should be. Now the fight is on to clean up one of Chile’s so-called “sacrifice zones”.
A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition that spared him.
The reality is that there’s no new technology but a technique that allows hearing sounds as if you were in the middle of it. That feeling of music that runs through your head, thanks to the use of headphones, is the result of equalization techniques, panning and effects combined together.
In the early years of aviation, the Gander Airport in Newfoundland, Canada served as an obligatory stop for refueling between Europe and America. This made the small town of Gander into an unlikely international hub, hosting celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and the Queen of England.
In 2017, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) found that 8.4 million households in the U.S. were without bank accounts. Nearly 53 percent of these households listed “not having enough money” to put into an account as the reason why, while another 30 percent cited not trusting banks.
Forty years ago, Mark Pavelich played a crucial role in the U.S. hockey team’s triumph over the Russians. He is unquestionably the least understood of the ’80 Olympic heroes, and someone who may have been betrayed by the very sport he loved. Was there a steep cost for his lifetime on the ice?
For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life. But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate’s life upside down. His fate would come to depend on a band of drug-fuelled jungle pirates – and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King.
Divers flock from all over the world to see the wrecks for themselves each year — and last spring, they were joined by an unusual interloper: an autonomous boat named BEN. BEN is a self-driving boat that’s been tasked with making maps, and to help lay bare the long-lost secrets of the lakebed.
One key reason we don’t control our devices is that the companies that make them seem to think – and definitely act like – they still own them, even after we’ve bought them. The companies say they still own the software, and because they own it, they can control it.
With intensive development in urban areas and the impacts of global warming becoming ever more apparent, numerous cities around the world are now taking steps to reduce their temperatures and develop a more sustainable urban environment. Here are 3 innovative ways to bring temperatures down.
One of the most acclaimed shorts of the year, and a frontrunner for Oscar. Mohamed is a shepherd in rural Tunisia with his wife and two young sons. Their world is shaken when their oldest son returns after a long journey with a mysterious woman he says is his wife.
People on long-term foreign assignments often find it hard to adjust once they return home. Many leave their company within a few years, and some leave the country entirely. Long absences can play havoc with a person’s sense of identity, a feeling that is intensified by the length of time away and how often they visit home.
Medical debt is a uniquely American phenomenon, a burden that would be unfathomable in many other developed countries. According to a survey in the American Journal of Public Health, nearly 60 percent of people who have filed for bankruptcy said a medical expense contributed to their bankruptcy.
Michael Oswald’s film The Spider’s Web reveals how at the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions.
In the world of art, architecture, and design, the golden ratio has earned a tremendous reputation. The Parthenon, the Pyramids at Giza, the paintings of Michelangelo, the Mona Lisa, even the Apple logo are all said to incorporate it. The golden ratio’s aesthetic bona fides are an urban legend, a myth, a design unicorn.
She was once billed as “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman,” and that bored her. She wanted to fight Nazis, and to be taken seriously for her technical knowledge and creativity. She wanted control.
A Coen Brothers-esque tale about knuckleheaded kitchen staffers at the All-Star Café, a Hollywood A-lister, the Mona Lisa of baseball cards and a plan that went horribly wrong.
One in four single people under the age of 35 use dating apps. Being single is very expensive, maybe paying a premium matchmaker thousands of dollars to meet someone isn’t so crazy.
In an effort to further boost its economy and leverage its unique position on the doorstep of Singapore, Malaysia are raising four artificial islands from the waters of the Johor Strait and constructing a USD $100BN smart city from scratch.
The two qualities sound like opposites, but they can go hand in hand. Narcissists believe they’re special and superior; humble leaders know they’re fallible and flawed. Humble narcissists bring the best of both worlds: they have bold visions, but they’re also willing to acknowledge their weaknesses and learn from their mistakes.
Oliver Sacks on the Psychological and Physiological Consolations of Nature: “In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.”
‘Bauta’ takes a lingering glance at Norway’s government and administrative buildings—as well as public spaces—both inside and outside of the country; celebrating the poetics of everyday architectures, and the beauty to be found in buildings made by and for the people.
You’ve no doubt heard the well-worn advice that “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” It’s a nice idea but a total myth. When we equate work we love with “not really working.” This type of mentality leads to burnout, and the consequences can be both dire and hard to detect.
I found myself single in a town where the non-student population is 1,236 people. I briefly considered flirting with the cute local bartender, the cute local mailman. For the first time in my life, I decided to date online. But finding someone fully and messily human was harder than I thought.
Commercial airlines often prioritize boarding for passengers traveling with small children, or for those who need extra assistance, before starting to board the faster passengers. It’s counter-intuitive, but it turns out that letting slower passengers board first actually results in a more efficient process.
