The Yamadera area of Yamagata is best known for the eponymous temple complex, but east of it lies another sanctuary visited by far less tourists. Deeper into the woods at the back of Senju-in temple, the Mine-no-ura or “Other Yamadera” area was once a sacred place where Buddhist saint Ennin practiced his asceticism in the 9th century. The most notable...

On the left bank of the estuary of the River Corrib in Galway, Ireland, stands an impressive medieval structure. Built in 1584, the Spanish Arch is the remainder of a bastion, added to the Irish town's walls to protect merchant ships from looting. At the time, it was known as Ceann an Bhalla, or "Head of the Wall." This length of wall was originally...

Hanamaki City in Iwate Prefecture is notable for its associations with Kenji Miyazawa, a poet and author of children's literature best known for his fantasy novel Night on the Galactic Railroad, written circa 1927 and posthumously published in 1934. The story follows the adventures of a lonely boy named Giovanni and his friend Campanella as they...

When the Knights of St. John controlled the islands of Malta, they oversaw the construction of many public works buildings that would benefit the general populace. One of their projects was the construction of windmills for providing flour, and these buildings became central parts of the villages in which they were located. These Maltese windmills...

In Japan’s stormy summer of 1983, Ikuo Ishiyama couldn’t stop thinking about a chilling pattern among his patients. They were dead, but that wasn’t what troubled him. As a specialist in forensic medicine at Tokyo University, Ishiyama was accustomed to seeing dead bodies. However, these victims—numbering in the hundreds—shared a similar demise. “The...

A charming museum dedicated to the history of not only the Ouija board, its connection to the city of Baltimore, and the complicated past that goes along with it. The idea of a "talking board" emerged from a 19th-century spiritualist movement, the belief that the dead can communicate with the living through specific methods. In 1890, Baltimore businessman...