Phantom of the Opera fans can now spend the night inside the opulent Parisian opera house that inspired the beloved musical and novel.
Airbnb and the Opéra National de Paris have teamed up to transform one of the Palais Garnier’s chambers, the Box of Honor, into a lavish bedroom. While the box is typically reserved for visiting dignitaries, two lucky read more

The Year of the Rabbit: An illustrated guide to Lunar New Year
Grab your favorite red shirt; it’s time to celebrate the Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival. Saying goodbye to the Tiger, we enter the Year of the Rabbit on January 22, 2023. Millions of families worldwide are preparing celebrations for one of the year’s biggest festivals. If you’re a Lunar New Year newbie, read more

(quote)

You probably wouldn’t win a staring contest with it, though you’d be hard pressed to look away. Taller than a mailbox, with an eight-foot wingspan, the shoebill is quite a kick to observe! This hefty bird with its lesson-in-gray plumage is endemic to swamps and wetlands of Central and East Africa. Solitary in nature, even when paired with another, the birds like their space and will feed at opposite ends of their read more

(quote)

A photographer snapped snow-capped Stirling Castle shrouded in mist as he compared it to something out of Harry Potter. Scotland has been in the grip of an icy cold snap all week, with temperatures plunging to -17C in Braemar in the Highlands. Twenty years ago, Harry Potter author JK Rowling actually transformed Stirling Castle into her famous school of witchcraft and wizardry, Hogwarts.

read more

(quote)

Qatar welcomes M-E’s first pandas ahead of World Cup
Qatar is the 20th country in the world that has the giant pandas. The public will have the opportunity to visit the giant panda park at the time of the launch of the World Cup 2022. (Ging Ging) Panda meaning in Chinese language Shining Crystal, is the male panda. It was born on Sep. 19, 2018, it given the read more

(quote)

Floridians are facing devastating scenes after Hurricane Ian, one of the strongest storms ever to hit the U.S., swept across the state.
The storm, which made landfall in southwest Florida as a powerful Category 4 hurricane Wednesday, flooded numerous buildings and streets, ripped off roofs, left people trapped in their homes and knocked out power to millions of read more

(quote)

Every year, a wonderful event celebrating the beauty of nature and humanity’s connection with it takes place over a weekend in Scotland.
The European “Land Art” Festival and Stone Stacking Championships were held for the fifth time in Dunbar on the shores of Scotland. Organized originally as the “John Muir Stone Stacking Challenge,” taking the name read more

(quote)

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt’s quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. read more

(quote)

In the 1930s, a group of archaeologists and explorers looking for the remains of the Mayan civilization went deep into the rainforest, where they did not find the remains of the Mayan civilization, but unexpectedly discovered many tunnels. Most of these underground tunnels are distributed in Brazil and Argentina. At the same time, there seems to be no unified construction standard for these tunnels. read more

(quote)

Two surfers filmed whizzing along Venice’s busiest canal have evoked the wrath of the city’s mayor. Videos of the two people foil surfing between boats and water buses on the Grand Canal sparked outrage after being posted online. Surfing – along with sports such as paddle boarding and canoeing – is prohibited on Venice’s Grand Canal. In footage posted online, the two appear to be whizzing read more

(quote)

Vice-chairman of the DB Regio Works Council, Ralf Damde, said around 400 trains were overcrowded on each day.
“Platforms and trains were full all over Germany, and in several cases overcrowded trains had to be cleared – but fortunately – no stations.” He said that passengers had to be turned away from trains, or people were told they couldn’t take read more

(quote)

Italy’s rustic hut Rifugio Guide del Cervino is technically two-thirds Swiss due to glacier movement.
Swiss ski resort Zermatt and Italian resort Cervinia share a border and together form the interconnected ski area Matterhorn Ski Paradise. Year-round skiing happens on the shared Plateau Rosa glacier, currently one of the only European glaciers with lifts still turning this summer read more

(quote)

It’s so hot, roads are buckling, they’re putting foil on a bridge and roofs are melting around the world
The deadly heat waves of the last week have sparked strange infrastructural events around the world as millions endure searing temperatures that are still on the rise.

It’s so hot, the runway at a London airport melted
The United Kingdom read more

(quote)

Since 1985, people in the United States have celebrated Park and Recreation Month in July to promote building strong, healthy and resilient communities through the power of parks and recreation, and to recognize the more than 160,000 full-time park and recreation professionals — along with hundreds of thousands of part-time and seasonal workers and volunteers — that maintain our country’s local, state and community parks.

read more