As the birthplace of jazz music, New Orleans, Louisiana, has no shortage of music venues. Amid the eclectic street performers on Frenchmen Street and numerous jazz halls dotting the city, one institution stands out for its legacy of preserving, protecting and perpetuating traditional New Orleans Jazz, the aptly named “Preservation Hall.”
In the far northwest corner of Mongolia, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) across Russian and Chinese mountains from Kazakhstan, there is a community of 87,000 people that still live by the traditions of their ancestors. The Kazakh eagle hunters that inhabit these lands are descendants of Huns, and Turkic, Mongolic and Indo-Iranian indigenous groups who lived in this area.
Long before there was a modern trend of minimalistic living, the British Romani, or gypsies knew how to live simply. As a nomadic culture, they traveled only with what they could carry or fit into a cart or wagon.
Longyearbyen, Norway, a small coal-mining town near the Arctic, might be one of the most interesting cities in the world, despite having just over 2,000 residents. Why the intrigue? It’s illegal to die here.
In the 1930s, London city apartments were decorated with protruding cages that stuck out like air conditioning units. Babies were placed in these baskets as parents enjoyed the idea of actively “airing” their toddlers out to promote health, a fad that emerged in many popular parenting books at the time.
Oh, those wacky Swiss. As if those giant horns, yodeling, and Heidi weren’t crazy enough, consider the antics that transpire around New Year’s Eve in the tiny Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, in North-East Switzerland.
Nellie Bly was the pen name of Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, one of America’s first investigative journalists. Bly was born May 5, 1864, in Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania. She began her career in 1880, at the age of 16, writing on “women’s” subjects such as homemaking, gardening, and society for the Pittsburgh Dispatch.
For anyone who thinks one person cannot make a difference, just look at the example of Antonio La Cava. The retired Italian schoolteacher has decided to spend his golden years bringing the joy of reading to his local region in southern Italy.
Born in Argentina to a Russian Jewish family in 1925, Adolfo Kaminsky is a former member of the underground French Resistance. During World War II, Kaminsky helped as many as 14,000 Jewish people escape persecution by forging identity papers.
Located near Big Sur in coastal California, about 120 miles south of San Francisco and 330 miles north of Los Angeles, Carmel-by-the-Sea is an enchanting European-style town that has inspired artists, poets, and writers and lured world travelers for decades.
