1. Hegra, an Ancient City in Saudi Arabia Untouched for Millennia
The archaeological site, now open to tourists, offers clues about the mysterious empire that built it and its more famous sister city of Petra in Jordan. Previously, foreign tourists had to obtain special permission from the government to visit, which fewer than 1,000 did each year.
Hegra contains 111 carefully carved tombs. A majority of the remains date from the Nabataean Kingdom. The challenge with getting to know the Nabataeans is that they left behind so little first-hand history.
Experts have hypothesized that the site had lost all of its urban functions beginning in the late Antiquity (mainly due to the process of desertification).
Read the article about Hegra on The Smithsonian.
2. These Hobbit-inspired AI-generated Rooms
Conjured using a blend of Midjourney AI, Photoshop and Topaz by Ben Myhre.
3. A highly unusual NYC Zillow listing includes a waterfall that pours from the lofted bed above
Also boasts a moated living area. Currently listed at $7.5 million. See the listing here.
4. Wishing more stores did this:
I shared this image with my girlfriends. One replied: “I don’t know why shops generally don’t lean into the experience aspect of shopping and create little worlds for clients. It makes so much sense!”.
“Seems like an interesting career path for interior designers too”, I thought.
The article was found on The Spaces.
5. Book Donkeys of Colombia
Travelling with his two loyal donkeys, Alfa and Beto, Luis Soriano has been spreading the joy of reading to children in rural Colombian communities for over 20 years.
Learn more on BBC “The Amazing Donkey Libraries of Columbia” found via Present & Correct.
6. How Disney animations were made back in the day
7. The world’s biggest collection of obsolete sounds.
Listen to some of them here.
8. Scheele’s Green, a popular pigment in the 1800s made with deadly arsenic
One famous death was of a flowermaker, who dusted the pigment onto fake foliage. “She vomited green waters; the whites of her eyes had turned green, and she told her doctor that ‘everything she looked at was green.’”
Full article found on The Paris Review.
9. A Wikipedia List of Unusual Deaths recorded throughout history
Including one Mary Reeser, who was found by the police in her St. Petersburg, Florida home almost totally cremated where she sat, while her apartment was relatively damage-free. Some speculate that she spontaneously combusted (also actually a thing).
Find the list of unusual deaths here.
10. Picturing Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe
When the womb began to appear in printed images during the 16th century, it was understood through analogy: a garden, uroscopy flask, or microcosm of the universe. Rebecca Whiteley explores early modern birth figures, which picture the foetus in utero, and discovers an iconic form imbued with multiple kinds of knowledge: from midwifery know-how to alchemical secrets, astrological systems to new anatomical findings.
Find the full article on the Public Domain Review.
11. The Best Cat Box ever?
Found on Reddit Aww.
12. “The Last Time I Saw Paris” (1954, Full Movie)
The movie “The Last Time I Saw Paris” accidentally entered the public domain 10 years early because its copyright notice used Roman numerals improperly: it came out in 1954 (MCMLIV), but there was an extra X in the notice, so it was mistakenly assumed that it came out in 1944 (MCMXLIV).
13. Recreated from real ads in the mad men era, “In a parallel universe”
By artist Eli Rezkallah