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Kingston, Jamaica

Shaare Shalom Synagogue

One of just five sand-floor Jewish synagogues in the world.
Tags of Ernesto “Che” Guevara can be found all over the Smara refugee camp.
colonialism

Welcome to the Little Cuba of the Sahara Desert

The surprising story of how Spanish, baseball, and arroz cubano came to permeate some desert camps in Africa.
Andrea Prada Bianchi and Pesha Magid September 19, 2023
Thetford, England

Statue of Maharaja Duleep Singh

A bronze sculpture of last Sikh maharaja of the Punjab, outside the English estate where he once lived.
Shingled roofs and shutters are typical <em>bod os</em> features throughout Freetown and its surrounding villages.
architecture

The Surprising Southern Roots of Sierra Leone’s Krio Homes

Freetown's Krio homes preserve an enduring legacy of resilience—but the question of how to save them looms.
Laura Kiniry August 24, 2023
Detail of a plate illustration of medicinal plants published in the 1930s in a botanical reference book by Éditions Larousse.
botanical gardens

Addressing the Colonial Legacy of the World's Scientific Botanical Collections

Some 70 percent of specimens are located in developed countries with colonial histories. A new project seeks to make them more accessible.
Daniel Park August 14, 2023
A herd of Hereford cattle roam a lush green pasture in Australia, home to several of the world's largest private landholdings.
maps

What Do King Charles III, the Pope, and the Canadian Inuit Have in Common?

Meet the world's largest landowners.
Frank Jacobs, Big Think August 11, 2023
Children play in the monsoon rains that pour down on the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh every year from late July till September.
perfume

How Indian Perfumers Capture the Smell of Rain

In Kannauj, perfumers have been making monsoon-infused mitti attar for centuries.
Zinara Rathnayake August 2, 2023
George Town, Malaysia

Church of St. George the Martyr

The oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia.
Panama City, Panama

Iglesia de la Merced

This church was transported brick by brick from the ruins of a 16th-century city into Panama City's current historic district.
A circular central garden is surrounded by Korean-style buildings
Gwangju, South Korea

Lee Jang-woo's House

This traditional home is a rare example of 19th-century Korean architecture.
In May, the massive sculpture sometimes called Monument 9, or an "Earth Monster," was repatriated to Mexico, where it had been looted years earlier.
sculptures

An Olmec 'Earth Monster' Returns to Mexico

The repatriation of an ancient sculpture highlights the influential early Mesoamerican culture.
Karl Taube June 19, 2023
Sydney, Australia

Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair

A 19th-century perch for spotting sailing ships now boasts one of the most iconic views in the Southern Hemisphere.
Framingham, Massachusetts

The Old Field of 1800

Two stone markers honor the Nipmuc people who first settled here millennia ago.
Digitizing gravestones from the colonial era preserves them for future study and makes them more accessible, but it also raises questions about how to study this period of American history.
cemeteries

Burial Hill's Historic Gravestones Are Coming to Your Screen

Digitizing markers at the Massachusetts cemetery makes them more accessible.
Anya Gruber May 8, 2023
One of the earliest works of botanical horror, written by H.G. Wells in 1894, featured a fictional orchid with a taste for human blood.
horror

What Stories of Scary Plants and Other Botanical Horrors Say About Us

From bloodthirsty orchids to body-snatching pods, fictional flora are often symbols of societal fears.
Kate Golembiewski May 4, 2023
Children dance around a modern maypole in Boston; a few centuries earlier, a similar celebration was cut short by Puritan axes. Was it part of a practice run for a far more violent and bloody campaign?
religion

Was a May Day Attack by Pilgrims a Practice Run for a Massacre?

One historian of early New England sees the event as a harbinger of deadly violence.
Peter C. Mancall May 1, 2023
There are many depictions of the bunyip, but one common iteration is a cow-sized, aquatic wombat-like creature.
cryptozoology

The Child-Eating Bunyip Haunts Australia’s Wetlands

But its complex Aboriginal Australian origins have today been commodified and suppressed.
Sarah Durn May 1, 2023
Tree roots and vines have claimed much of the architecture.
La Antigua, Mexico

Casa de Cortés

This atmospheric ruins are truly a sight to behold.