Hurricane Danielle and its 40-foot-tall waves drove Expedition Titanic back to port on Monday, but not before crew members recorded this haunting HD video of the RMS Titanic on August 29th. Each time I watch this footage, I feel a sense of awe and emptiness. So much silent, eerie, lacy beauty, so much spooky preservation–all under […]
Paleo
Remember that billowing cloud of ash from Iceland that floated over Britain and other parts of northern Europe this past spring, shutting down airspace from London to Hamburg and filling airports with fuming travellers? It wasn’t all bad, I discovered yesterday. In fact if you were an archaeologist, particularly a British archaeologist, that plume of […]
In the early 8th century A.D., the great Maya city state of Tikal reached the zenith of its sophistication and power. Its kings sipped frothy chocolate and smoked elegant cigars in their chambers, listening to the music of trumpeters and drummers. Its painters rendered brilliant court scenes on vases. Its architects designed pyramidal masterpieces that […]
I’ve always wanted to enroll in gladiator school. I once took a course in fencing, but it seemed far too precise and finicky and I hated the drills. I’d prefer to bash it out like Russell Crowe does. The next best thing to attending gladiator school is watching Terry Jones, one of the guys from […]
Like millions of other readers I’ve turned into a couch potato this summer, curled up with Stieg Larsson’s addictive page-turners. I could be out accompanying my dog Max as he tears through his favorite park hunting for forgotten sandwiches on summer evenings. Or dallying on the beach with g&t in hand. But no. I’m at […]
When Henry VIII wasn’t off wooing new wives and attending to the pressing affairs of state, he was well…eating. Check this out: it’s a look behind the scenes at Hampton Court’s massive, factorylike kitchen. Now here’s a monarch who would have absolutely loved Julia Child.
Patricia Sutherland is a very stubborn woman, the kind of damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead brand of stubbornness that the Scots and their descendants long ago perfected. Sutherland is an archaeologist at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa and one of the world’s leading experts on the prehistory of the Arctic. Silver-haired, bespectacled, and notably fond of […]
Last week a British treasure-hunter, Ian Snook, barely escaped a rather unpleasant end when his metal detector began clicking madly on a beach in Dorset, England. Answering the siren call of potential loot, Snook began digging furiously, only to find a battered metal sign. It read “Precaution–bombs fire instantly on breaking in air. Stringent precautions must […]
