Travel
Discover facts about travel. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Travel
Alhambra palaces rely entirely on strict geometry
Rather than relying on paintings or sculptures, the builders of this sprawling fortress complex obsessed over pure mathematics. Every single courtyard, tile…
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Portland’s tiny park is barely two feet wide
Calling a microscopic, neglected patch of dirt containing a single sad fern a 'city park' is easily the most aggressively hipster thing Oregon has ever…
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Train cabooses functioned as rolling mobile offices
Far from just being the cute red car at the end of the line, conductors desperately used these heavily swaying boxes to manually sort through massive stacks…
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Walt Disney had a secret apartment above a firehouse
The intensely highly aggressively completely wildly ambitious corporate creator of the entirely famous highly completely massively successful California theme…
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Japan has competitions for walking in formation
Because aggressively organized pedestrian traffic is clearly a competitive sport. Teams of sharply dressed individuals practice furiously to march in…
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Sandboarding requires aggressively waxing the board for runs
Sliding down a massive golden dune sounds like an incredible tropical alternative to winter sports until you realize hot sand creates an absurd amount of…
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Crossing the Afghanistan–China border changes your clock by 3.5 hours
Walking across the incredibly narrow border from Afghanistan directly into China forces you to instantly adjust your watch by three and a half hours. It is…
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At Katz's, losing your ticket triggers a massive surcharge
Welcome to the only sandwich shop that treats a simple slip of paper like a highly valuable bearer bond. This iconic New York tourist spot forces a paper…
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Sahara dust reliably travels across the entire ocean
You cannot even escape the desert when you are thousands of miles away. Massive storms sweep African dirt high into the atmosphere, eventually dumping an…
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Reading a book on winding buses guarantees an awful headache
Staring at a page of text while hurtling around tight mountain corners is a terrible life choice. The violent disconnect between your completely still eyes…
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Sweden has over 90,000 recognized inland lakes
If you throw a rock in Scandinavia, you will probably hit a body of water. Almost ten percent of the entire Swedish landmass is just thousands of fresh water…
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Why hotel TVs block your HDMI cable
Management blocks external inputs so you are forced to stare at their wildly overpriced movie rentals. Many major chains intentionally disable the ports on…
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Human walking speed is surprisingly slow
Despite thinking of ourselves as highly advanced beings, the average person strolls at a pitiful three miles per hour. Almost any motivated land mammal on…
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Why hotel doors slam shut
You aren't imagining things when the room door slams with the force of a tiny earthquake. They are heavily weighted and spring-loaded to seal off oxygen in…
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The Swiss railway that climbs at a 48-degree angle
Why take a scenic hike when you can dangle off the side of a Swiss mountain at an absolutely unhinged 48-degree angle? Built in 1889, this mechanical marvel…
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The canyon that beats the Grand Canyon
America’s famous hole in the ground has some serious competition. This massive network of plunging valleys across the border is deeper and wildly more…
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Why sloths move so slowly
Moving at a glacial pace is actually a highly evolved survival tactic. By barely traveling at all, they conserve immense amounts of energy and grow literal…
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Wave Rock genuinely looks like frozen water
In the Australian outback stands a massive granite cliff shaped exactly like a breaking ocean wave, entirely carved by millions of years of wind and stubborn…
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Why so few Caribbean islands are inhabited
Despite the massive quantity of tropical real estate, the vast majority of these rocks remain completely desolate. It turns out most of these idyllic sandbars…
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Japanese vending machines serve hot meals
Forget the sad, stale bags of chips you find in western waiting rooms. These glowing street corner boxes dispense everything from piping hot corn soup to…
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Why holding a door can seem sexist in Sweden
Chivalry isn't dead, but it has definitely been updated. In highly egalitarian societies like Sweden, rushing to hold a door specifically because of gender…
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Why rubbing chopsticks can insult the restaurant
That friction ritual you do to remove imaginary splinters tells the restaurant you think their wares are absolute garbage. Unless you are literally eating in…
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Why red ink can offend in South Korea
Because using the wrong colored pen is a perfectly rational way to wish someone a gruesome demise. In Korean culture, red ink is historically used to record…
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You can check a moose's antlers as airline baggage
If you thought paying a fifty-dollar fee for a slightly overweight suitcase was annoying, wait until you see the guy behind you checking a decapitated moose.…
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