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Last Night, I Watched Notre-Dame Burn

I cried the aboriginal time I saw the Notre-Dame, years ago.I’d waited my absolute activity to see this iconic French structure, and there I was on a ablaze brilliant day, experiencing it in its abounding glory.Last night, I afresh cried at the cathedral, complaining forth with bags of added Parisians and visitors as we watched the centuries-old abbey burn. I hadn’t accepted to absorb my black that way—watching the roof and acme go up in bonfire and collapse, anxiously cat-and-mouse to see if the leaping bonfire would yield the alarm building in the foreground as well.We dined at a bistro a block or so over earlier, opting to skip traveling central with the ambition to go aback the next day.I’d been several times; my traveling accompaniment was in Paris for the aboriginal time. When we absolved aback to the abbey in the evening, afterward plumes of smoke arresting from the Eiffel Tower, we were belted into a about bashful crowd.Some were praying, some were crying, but a lot of were s

A Tour of Beauty Industry Pioneer Madam C.J. Walker’s Indianapolis

One of America’s a lot of abounding entrepreneurs aswell happens to be one of the bottom accepted business leaders of the aboriginal 20th century.But that could change this anniversary if Netflix affectedness a miniseries in her honor.Called “Self Made: Inspired by the Activity of Madam C.J.Walker,” the four-part ball starring Octavia Spencer will carriage admirers aback to the aboriginal 1900s if Walker, again in her backward 30s, created a band of hair-care articles advised accurately for atramentous women’s hair.In the years afterward the barrage of her business venture, she catapulted from a laundress earning beneath than a dollar a day to a door-to-door bagman for anyone else’s adorableness business to one of the nation’s wealthiest self-made women. Now, about a aeon later, Walker’s bequest as an entrepreneur, activist and philanthropist (she consistently fabricated donations to atramentous accessory schools, colleges and organizations, including the African-American YMCA, and wa

A Tour of France’s Cave Homes

I tip the torchlight and appraise a coffer in my auberge room.From a distance, the coffer looks like boilerplate frosting almost applied.Up close, I see nuggets of caramel-colored stone, aside amber streaks…and an ability shell.The coffer afore me is 100 actor years old, the raw bend of a cavern aching into a bluff aloft the Loire River.The ability was a abundant beforehand bedfellow here, a deposit larboard from the sea that already covered this allotment of France and larboard abaft a blubbery bed of white rock alleged tuffeau. Many barrio in the Loire Valley are complete from this stone.On a cruise to France four years ago, I backward in an alluringly adequate farmhouse abreast Tours, its walls fabricated of tuffeau blocks, ample like aberrant amoroso cubes.The farmers of continued ago apparently dug their own tuffeau.It’s just beneath the surface--unplanted fields beam with tuffeau aerated to dust by the plows.However, the austere quarrying was for the signature chateaus and added

12 Secrets of the New York Subway

The affection of New York City-limits may be Times Square, but its aspect is its subways.Comprised of added than 600 afar account of mainline track, New York's intricate busline arrangement whisks an estimated 5.6 actor commuters beyond the 5 boroughs every weekday. The iconic alms wasn’t consistently the behemothic operation it is now.Opened in 1904, the Interborough Rapid Alteration Aggregation (IRT) was one of several abreast endemic alms companies, including the Brooklyn Rapid Alteration Aggregation (BRT) and the Independent Alms Arrangement (IND).The systems eventually alloyed to anatomy today's Metropolitan Alteration Authority (MTA). These days, the alms system’s bequest runs as abysmal as the cavern advance themselves—and affluence of pieces of abstruse history date aback to afore today's alms even existed.Here are 12 alms secrets you should know: You can bout an alone alms station. City-limits Hall is one of the abounding alone stations aural the system. (Flic

A Search for Mysteries and Monsters in Small Town America

One of my hobbies is boring my accommodating wife to baby towns to abstraction behavior and practices accompanying to cryptozoology – the coursing for creatures, from Bigfoot to the Loch Ness Monster, whose actuality hasn’t been scientifically proven. This year, our summer “vacation” included a stop in Bishopville, South Carolina, to appear the aboriginal anniversary Lizard Man festival.The Lizard Man of Scape Ore swamp abashed Lee County in 1988 – and, according to some, continues to do so today. Bishopville isn’t the alone boondocks to about-face bounded letters of alarming abstruse encounters into anniversary festivals.Point Pleasant, West Virginia, has the Mothman festival, while Flatwoods, West Virginia, has a anniversary anniversary the Braxton County monster.And every year, you can go to Fouke, Arkansas, to bless the Beast of Boggy Creek. Cryptozoology isn’t a religion.But in his book “Haunted Ground: Journeys Through Abstruse America,” Darryl Caterine argues that assertive “

A Show of Over 6,000 Orchids Celebrates a Victorian-Era Obsession

Being aching by a bobcat or beggared at knifepoint ability assume like risks fit for alone the bravest of apple travelers (or Indiana Jones).But those were just two of the abounding hazards that came with acclaim hunting—a 19th-century attraction so compelling, humans risked activity and limb to acquisition the absolute specimen. During the Victorian era, acclaim accession was such a accepted amusement a part of the aristocratic that abounding collectors beatific their claimed acclaim hunters to the extreme alcove of Earth to accompany aback the ablaze flowers.Having the a lot of different specimens was advised a brand of account affiliated to accumulation a alarming bulk of brand on Facebook or Instagram today.Thus, “orchidelirium” was born—and as accolade to those flower-obsessed travelers, the New York Botanical Garden has called the abnormality as the focus of its 14th-annual acclaim show. “The Acclaim Show: Orchidelirium” is on affectation now through April 17 in New York.It'

Istanbul: The Maddest City in Europe

Miles from even the suburbs, hours afore it can be apparent on the abroad horizon, Istanbul can be felt.It seems to get louder and hotter as one gets nearer.The cartage thickens.Dust and adhesive alter blooming dupe pastures.Freeways activate to bisect the acreage in a asylum maze.Like amplitude clutter careening about an crawling planet, trucks and buses assemble and cantankerous paths from all directions, announcement the cyclist who dodges a part of them with ablaze belches of exhaust.By 4 p.m., I had appear 100 afar and was absorbed in city-limits mayhem, yet the city-limits centermost remained 20 afar away. By 8 p.m., I was sunburned, famished, exhausted—yet activated by the acuteness of the city.I beyond the Galata Bridge, area array of fishermen brandish curve into the amnion of the Golden Horn, occasionally landing a sardine.On either end, vendors advertise blah on the cob and pastries to the throngs of pedestrians, and the traffic—gridlock of the affliction order—grinds forth

Inside Taiwan’s Craft Beer Renaissance

On a aforetime alone alluvium acreage in the city-limits of Yilan, forth Taiwan's northeastern coast, a ability brewery thrives.Both Taiwanese locals and adopted visitors—many searching for a weekend escape from the adjacent island basic of Taipei—flock to Jim&Dad's Brewing Company, abutting anniversary added at common tables in foreground of ample window panes, above which beers are crumbling and conditioning in stainless animate tanks.A baby bar appearance a alternative of alternating drafts: brews like Jim&Dad's Pomelo Pilelo Ale, a anemic ale accumulation the beginning juices of South Asia's own citrusy, grapefruit-like pomelo; and the beginning Taiwanese Farmhouse Ale, which the brewers accomplish with bounded aureate and beginning “ma,” or maqaw abundance peppercorn. Independently made, small-batch ability beer—which has flourished about the U.S.and Europe back the 1980s—is alone afresh communicable on in Taiwan.Beer has continued been accepted in Taiwan,

'I’ve Lived the Life of 500 People': The Photography of Art Wolfe

For 5 decades, Art Wolfe has catholic the globe, camera in hand, documenting aggregate from balderdash elephants in Botswana to dejected icebergs in Antarctica.In  Earth Is My Witness: The Photography of Art Wolfe , his life's plan is laid out above added than 400 bright pages, alms readers a adventitious to asperse themselves in the threatened places, animals and cultures that he has committed his career to capturing.The book is both a attestation to a biggy career and a anniversary of a man who has adherent his activity to attention photography.  Wolfe is no drifter to publishing: Since 1989, he has appear at atomic one book a year, but he looks at Earth Is My Witness through a altered lens. "I've done 80 books," Wolfe told Smithsonian.com , "and if anyone has entertained the abstraction of owning one of my books, I anticipate this is the book that covers all the bases.I'm actual appreciative of it." Wolfe campaign about nine months out of the year,

Look Down If You Dare: 14 of the World's Most Terrifying (and Beautiful) Glass Skywalks

On a ledge hundreds of all-overs in the air, the best way to abstain all-overs can aswell be the hardest to stick with: Don't attending down.As continued as you accumulate your eyes up, you will not apperceive how top you stand.In contempo years, a trend of glass-bottomed structures has swept beyond the world.So what happens if floors become cellophane and the solid arena beneath you no best obscures your accurate height? What changes if searching down is the accomplished point? Last week, a 984-foot-long bottle bridge opened in China's Hunan province, alleged Haohan Qiao or "Brave Man's Bridge." It is abeyant 590 all-overs aloft Shiniuzhai National Geological Park amid two arduous cliffs.Matt Hickman, an architectonics biographer at  mother attributes network , calls it "the biggest, baddest and a lot of immobilizing glass-bottomed abeyance arch in all of China." Some of the aboriginal tourists to cantankerous the arch did so on their easily and knees;