Deir el-Bahari
A complex of mortuary temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor, Egypt.
Frillback pigeon
The Frillback is a breed of fancy pigeon developed over many years of selective breeding.
Rollie Free
Rollie Free was a motorcycle racer who broke the American motorcycle land speed record in 1948. He was prone to wearing a bathing suit.
Rondo Hatton
Rondo Hatton was an American actor who had a brief, but prolific career playing thuggish bit parts in many Hollywood B-movies. He was known for his brutish facial features which were the result of acromegaly.
Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher was a Jesuit priest and scholar, sometimes called the last Renaissance man, important for his prodigious activity in disseminating knowledge. To illustrate his belief in the magnetic relationship between the sun and the vegetable kingdom, Kircher designed this heliotropic sunflower clock by attaching a sunflower to a cork and floating it in a reservoir of water. As the blossom rotated to face the sun, a pointer through its center indicated the time on the inner side of a suspended ring.
Ireland Shakespeare forgeries
The Ireland Shakespeare forgeries were a cause célèbre in 1790s’ London, when author and engraver Samuel Ireland announced the discovery of a treasure-trove of Shakespearean manuscripts by his son William Henry. Among them were the manuscripts of four plays, two of them previously unknown. Such respected literary figures as Johnson biographer James Boswell and poet-laureate Henry James Pye pronounced them genuine, as did various antiquarian experts. Sheridan, the leading theater manager of his day, agreed to present one of the newly-discovered plays with John Philip Kemble in the starring rôle. Excitement over the biographical and literary significance of the find turned to acrimony when it was charged that the documents were forgeries. Edmond Malone, the greatest Shakespeare scholar of his time, showed conclusively that the language, orthography, and handwriting were not those of the times and persons to which they were credited, and William Henry Ireland, the supposed discoverer, confessed to the fraud.
Linnean herbarium
The Linnean herbarium at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm comprises some 4000 herbarium specimens, several of which are types formally designated by various experts. The specimens were once distributed by Linnaeus to his disciples and eventually they became part of the collections of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is a private garden created by Charles Jencks. The garden is inspired by science and mathematics, with sculptures and landscaping on these themes, such as Black Holes and Fractals. The garden is not abundant with plants, but sets mathematical formulae and scientific phenomenae in a setting which elegantly combines natural features and artificial symmetry and curves.
Frederick Courteney Selous
The life of Frederick Courteney Selous was filled with extraordinary adventures, from elephant-hunting and diamond-prospecting, to an early expedition to found Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the European scramble for Africa.
Plitvice Lakes National Park
Within the boundaries of this heavily forested national park, 16 crystalline lakes tumble into each other via a series of waterfalls and cascades. The mineral-rich waters carve through the rock, depositing tufa in continually changing formations.