Dinorwic quarry is a large former slate quarry, now home to the Welsh National Slate Museum, located between the villages of Llanberis and Dinorwig in Wales. At its height at the start of the 20th century, it was the second largest slate quarry in Wales, after the neighbouring Penrhyn quarry near Bethesda.
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At the site of Berenike, in the desert sands along the Red Sea, archaeologists are uncovering wondrous new finds that challenge old ideas about the makings of the modern world
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In the wake of Hurricane Ike, engineers have been crafting a $34 billion plan to protect the city. Will it work when the next disaster arrives?
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The North’s fruitful partnership with Liberian farmers fueled a steady supply of an essential beverage
When Lulu Hunt Peters brought Americans a new method for weighing their dinner options, she launched a century of diet fads that left us hungry for a better way to keep our bodies strong and healthy
Psychedelic hedgehogs, purple pineapples, living strawberries—welcome to the magical world of nudibranchs
As the Southwest dries, can a city notorious for excess find a way to survive with less and less water?
Modern Athens savors its connections to antiquity—while reappraising its past
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Feminist. Preacher. Abolitionist. Civil rights pioneer. Now the full story of the American icon’s life and faith is finally coming to light
On May 29, 1851, a woman asked to address the attendees of the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron. She cut a striking figure, close to six feet tall even without her crisp bonnet. She was more than likely the only Black person in the room.
A procession of participants had already sounded off about the plight and potential of the “fairer sex” during the two-day gathering. “We are told that woman has never excelled in philosophy or any of the branches of mathematics,” said abolitionist Emily Rakestraw Robinson before noting that women were largely barred from higher education. Lura Maria Giddings lamented: “The degraded, vicious man, who scarcely knows his right hand from his left, is permitted to vote, while females of the most elevated intelligence are entirely excluded.” A dispatch about women’s labor from Paulina W. Davis, who would later create the women’s rights periodical The Una, painted a verbal picture of “mother and sister toiling like Southern slaves, early and late, for a son who sleeps on the downiest couch, wears the finest linen and spends his hundreds of dollars in a wild college life.”
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Major discoveries, an undersea tragedy and international cooperation were some of the biggest saltwater moments of the year
This northeasterly nook of Catalonia’s Costa Brava, between the Pyrenees to the north and the Mediterranean to the south, was the landscape that Dalí called his “ongoing inspiration” and is a recurring motif throughout his work.
While the Casa Natal Dalí took me on a tour of Dalí’s life, its near neighbour, the gigantic Dalí Theatre-Museum (£15; salvador-dali.org), just five minutes’ walk away, was designed by the maestro himself. It opened in 1974 and showcases his style at its most eccentric, not to say egocentric.
With its pink façade and giant white eggs on its roof, like decorations on a cake, this is where you’ll find not only the Mae West “lips” sofa, but also numerous grandiose paintings and drawings, trompe l’oeils and painted ceilings — as well as Dalí’s tomb in the crypt.
The Golden Age is a metaphorical concept shared across cultures through time and space, whether applied to utopian futures or idealized histories.
Often invoked as an imaginary, past time of prosperity, The Golden Age also epitomizes hope for the future, lighting the path towards our highest aspirations. As the curatorial theme for the 18th edition of Design Miami, The Golden Age: Looking to the Future will celebrate a tomorrow of our own creation.
In a time when human beings are challenged in unprecedented ways, The Golden Age could become a source of inspiration to imagine and shape a brighter future for human beings and our planet.
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One of the rare 24-cent misprints sold at auction this week for a record-breaking $2 million
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A new Hollywood epic traces Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall through his checkered relationship with his first wife
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Anthropologist Zelia Nuttall traveled the globe, decoded the Aztec calendar and transformed the way we think of ancient Mesoamerica
On a bright day early in 1885, Zelia Nuttall was strolling around the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán, the enormous ceremonial site north of Mexico City. Not yet 30, Zelia had a deep interest in the history of Mexico, and now, with her marriage in ruins and her future uncertain, she was on a trip with her mother, Magdalena; her brother George; and her 3-year-old daughter, Nadine, to distract her from her worries.
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After 50 years, U.S. veterans commemorate their release from a notorious Vietnamese prison
In March of this year, I followed retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Robert Certain through the entryway of the former Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi. French colonists built the prison in the 19th century, calling it the Maison Centrale and using it to imprison and behead Vietnamese dissidents. During the Vietnam War, American prisoners facetiously called it the Hanoi Hilton. For the first time in 50 years, Certain was about to step inside the notorious compound where he’d been held, interrogated and beaten.
