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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Gravesite of Ferdinand Paleologus in Church View,...
The House of Palaiologos ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1259 to its fall in 1453, the last of its reigning dynasties. The lineage seems to have continued until the end of the 17th century, and one of its last members is buried on the Caribbean island of Barbados. Born in 1619, Ferdinand Paleologus was the youngest son of Theodore Paleologus, an Italian assassin who had moved to England in the late 16th century, coming from a family that claimed to have descended from...

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Antarctica Roundabout in Azuqueca de Henares, Spain
Spain is filled with unique roundabouts, many of which stand alone as works of art. Azuqueca de Henares in the province of Guadalajara in Spain happens to have one of the most curious roundabouts in the whole of the country, the Antarctica roundabout, which reproduces the frozen continent to scale and was built to commemorate the fourth International Polar Year. The roundabout is a stone representation of Antarctica, with plenty of faux ice and snow. What are the links...

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Make Ancient Roman Brain and Rose Soufflé
There are some food pairings that just seem meant to be. Peanut butter and jelly. Rice and beans. Brains and eggs. Of course, nowadays, you won’t see brains and eggs on a menu too often, but before concern over the “Mad Cow” outbreak of the early 2000s and other factors shifted our preferences, brain and eggs was a popular breakfast pairing in the American South, up until as recently as the mid-1900s. It was also a common combination in...

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The Letterbox With a Crown in Pune,...
The Pune Head Post Office, or the Pune GPO (General Post Office) as it is popularly known, is housed in a grand 19th-century stone building constructed during the British era. The architectural style pays tribute to the works of the 16th-century Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, who inspired several institutional buildings during Victorian times. A bright red letterbox stands on the premises of the post office complex, next to the porch. Its top is adorned with the design of...

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The Beauty of Catalonia's Modernist 'Wine Cathedrals'
In 1919, the people of Gandesa, the tiny Catalonian capital city of the Terra Alta region in Spain, combined their wealth and their harvests to build a wine cathedral. It took 48 families only eleven months—a modern-day miracle—to construct a winery that any passing pilgrim would confuse for a church. Perhaps it was a way for them to entice extra blessings on the grapes that fermented in the concrete tanks inside. Or maybe cathedrals were on the mind of...

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'Buttbrunnen' in Berlin, Germany
Nestled in an inconspicuous corner of the Museumsinsel, a funny little fountain shaped like a flatfish spurts out a steady stream of water, flanked by a pair of staircases leading up to the Eiserne Bridge. This “Buttbrunnen,” or the “flounder fountain”—pleasantly alliterative in both German and English—was designed by local sculptor Robert Schirmer and installed here in 1916 as a whimsical homage to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, who envisioned the Neues Museum. He nicknamed himself “Butt” within his...

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'City of Paris' Stained Glass in San...
Compared to many of the world’s major cities, the metropolis of San Francisco is relatively young, dating back only a few centuries. In 1906, a devastating earthquake and ensuing fires decimated much of the landscape. There isn’t much left today that harkens back to the early burgeoning days of the city’s establishment.      Situated on the corner of Stockton and Geary Streets, kitty-corner to the city’s Union Square, stands the Neiman Marcus department store. Even this Dallas-based fashion...

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The Low Down on the Greatest Dictionary...
Madeline Kripke’s first dictionary was a copy of Webster’s Collegiate that her parents gave her when she was a fifth grader in Omaha in the early 1950s. By the time of her death in 2020, at age 76, she had amassed a collection of dictionaries that occupied every flat surface of her two-bedroom Manhattan apartment—and overflowed into several warehouse spaces. Many believe that this chaotic, personal library is the world’s largest compendium of words and their usage. “We don’t...

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Podcast: Montezuma Well
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit a mysterious sinkhole in Arizona that has befuddled an exclusive group of divers who’ve gotten a glimpse of a strange world at its sandy bottom. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some...

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Benefits of Hyper-Personalisation in Revenue Management
Question for Our Revenue Management Expert Panel: What are the benefits of hyper-personalisation in revenue management? What do hotels need to do in order to achieve hyper-personalisation, and are their efforts worth it? (Question by Nikolas Hall)   Our Revenue Management Expert Panel Tanya Hadwick – Group Revenue The post Benefits of Hyper-Personalisation in Revenue Management appeared first on Revfine.com.

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How Canned Food Went From Military Rations...
THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE NOVEMBER 11, 2023, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. Let me ask you a question. What pops into your mind, when you envision a can of food? For some of us, it’s a simple can of cream of mushroom soup. For others, the meal of the moment is an expensive tin of fish imported from Portugal. Perhaps you get a sense of nostalgia seeing tinned pumpkin pureé,...

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Pozo Amargo (Bitter Well) in Toledo, Spain
Toledo, the imperial city, as it is also known all over Spain, is a city rich in history and traditions, but also abundant in legends and episodes based on what has been passed on for generations. One of the most popular legends has to do with this humble-looking well. The well was once part of the patio of the house of a well-known Jewish family from Toledo and it witnessed a story of impossible love. As the story goes,...

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Priory Church of St. Mary in Bridlington,...
Set near the North Sea in East Yorkshire, the Priory Church of St. Mary, Bridlington has been a staple in this village since the 11th century. It is among the many monasteries in England suppressed by Henry VIII, however, the church itself was saved for use as the parish church. The Priory was founded in 1086 by Walter de Gant, and during medieval times, became one of the largest and richest monasteries of the Augustinian order. This structure, still...

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Modern Cloisters of Valira Park in La...
Along the banks of the Valira River, which makes up the western border of Valira Park in La Seu d’Urgell, lies a set of cloisters, unusual in that they are detached from any building. What makes these cloisters even more unusual is that they do not feature saints and demons, but rather famous people from the modern era. Figures such as Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, and Sigmund Freud adorn the capitals of the pillars. The modern cloisters...

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Opera House, Royal Tunbridge Wells in Royal...
One of the largest pubcos in the United Kingdom, JD Wetherspoon runs almost 900 boozers across the country, several of which repurpose Grade II-listed historic buildings. One of its finest examples can be found in the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells, housed in a grand opera house built in Edwardian Baroque style. Boasting a capacity of 1,100, the Opera House originally opened in 1902 and was purchased by Union Cinemas in 1931 to be converted into a cinema. Though...

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