Travel
Discover facts about travel. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Travel
Your cruise-ship cabin was built somewhere else
Your luxury floating hotel room wasn't meticulously hammered together on the high seas. To save time and money, shipbuilders construct the entire…
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Florida interstate 75 is a perfectly straight swamp road
Enjoy miles of pure, unadulterated marshland. This heavily fenced highway cuts straight through muddy wilderness, giving drivers nothing to look at besides…
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Tajine refers to both the dish and the clay pot
Why name the food when you can just name the cookware? The conical lid constantly returns condensation back to the stew, creating impossibly tender meat that…
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The mountain painted in natural rainbow stripes
Mother Nature occasionally dabbles in psychedelic art, and the Peruvian Andes are her masterpiece. Striking layers of sedimentary minerals like iron, sulfur,…
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Why a taxi from Narita can cost over $250
Nothing welcomes you to the Land of the Rising Sun quite like immediately filing for bankruptcy outside the arrivals terminal. Narita International Airport is…
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Milford Sound is technically categorized as a fjord
This famous New Zealand aquatic landmark isn't a sound at all. It’s actually a massive valley carved out by moving glaciers and then violently flooded by the…
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That airplane blanket may not be freshly washed
That little plastic-wrapped fleece might look pristine, but it is a lie. Unless you are on the very first flight of the morning, that blanket has likely just…
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A penguin is a general in Norway's royal guard
Nepotism is alive and well in the animal kingdom. Sir Nils Olav III is a resident of the Edinburgh Zoo, but he officially serves as the mascot and…
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Coordinated universal time anchors our suffering
UTC is the absolute standard against which all worldly time is measured. It doesn't observe daylight saving and it never changes, acting as the stubborn,…
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A miniature Europe where buildings really work
Taking incredibly detailed model making to an obsessive extreme, this sprawling park reconstructs famous continental landmarks with terrifying accuracy. Many…
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Neapolitan pizza takes just 90 seconds
Patience is apparently not an Italian virtue. Authentic Neapolitan pizza is blistered in a blindingly hot wood-fired oven for a grand total of ninety seconds…
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Petra’s Treasury was never a treasury
Despite the glamorous name implying endless hidden riches, this massive carved facade held absolutely zero gold. It was painstakingly chiseled into the red…
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Why Japan and Singapore have the world's strongest passports
Unlike your sad, geographically restricted booklet, these two passports are the ultimate VIP club cards. They routinely tie for first place on the Henley…
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How Texans summon earthworms with music
Because digging for fishing bait is terribly inefficient. Competitors use bizarre techniques, from playing musical instruments to furiously rubbing wooden…
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Why coffee abroad may arrive in a tiny cup
Requesting your morning caffeine overseas usually yields a cup perfectly scaled for a dollhouse. While some nations normalize serving gigantic buckets of…
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Why TSA allows pies but confiscates water
Aviation security remains highly selective about what constitutes a threat. While your half-empty bottle of Dasani is treated like a biological weapon, you…
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When bowling balls are frozen turkeys
Because regular bowling balls are profoundly unimaginative. Participants utilize aggressively frozen poultry as heavy projectiles, violently hurling the stiff…
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A bicycle path runs through the Rijksmuseum
Only in a deeply cycling-obsessed culture would a premier national art gallery purposefully include a road straight through its core. The massive building…
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Quebec City still has its original walls
Holding on tightly to colonial paranoia, this Canadian metropolis is the absolute last of its kind on the continent. The original fortified stone walls…
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Ancient taxis counted fares with pebbles
Instead of a flashing digital screen overcharging you, ancient hired carts operated by dropping a single small rock into a metal bowl for every specific…
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Cheetahs overheat quickly while sprinting
Hitting highway speeds requires a massive biological sacrifice. These cats generate so much internal heat while sprinting that if they do not catch their…
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Why Venice banned giant cruise ships
The sinking city finally realized that letting massive floating shopping malls displace millions of gallons of water was rapidly drowning their historical…
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Why some street vendors serve food on tiny stools
Serving meals on hilariously miniature chairs is a calculated strategy to dodge permanent establishment fees. By keeping their entire operation totally mobile…
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Italy invented modern pizza in the region of Naples
Transforming peasant bread into a global culinary obsession. The iconic Margherita was specifically designed to mirror the colors of the Italian flag using…
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