….can make millions think. It is a famous quote by George Gordon Byron (better known as Lord Byron), (1788-1824). He was an English Romantic writer and poet. His masterpiece was Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a narrative poem in which he...
This is no ordinary story, it is pure horror. And even though it is centuries old, it is retold every year with even more suspense, even more gore. It takes place in 1790 in Sleepy Hollow (valley), a settlement...
It is not that difficult to place a ship in a bottle. Rigging the masts, attach strings to them, lay them flat on the deck, and slide them into the bottle, ship and all. With the help of...
An age-old folk tale with four main characters: a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster. They have only one goal in mind: to reach the city of Bremen to become town musicians there. They have never been to Bremen. The old donkey...
Macau is a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. It is located 70 kilometers southwest of Hong Kong and 145 kilometers from Guangzhou. Macau lives off tourism and the many casinos located there. It is...
The Greek composer and political activist Mikis Theodorakis died on September 2, 2021, at the age of 96. In 1964, he wrote the music for the film 'Zorba the Greek' and the accompanying song 'Zorba's Dance', or 'Sirtaki'. It stood...
Jan van Eyck (Maaseik, Belgium, ca. 1390 – Bruges 1441) was a painter from the County of Loon, which fell under the Prince-Bishopric of Liège from 1366. Together with Rogier van der Weyden, he is considered one of the foremost representatives of the...
Many of you will have been there: the Passage in The Hague, the oldest existing covered shopping center in the Netherlands. It opened in 1885 and, after several renovations and expansions, still retains that special atmosphere in which...
I read some books more than once. Often, they made a great impression on me years ago and now suddenly turn out to be eerily relevant. Examples of this are: 'The Plague' by the Frenchman Albert Camus and 'The City...
They are often called the Three Kings, but they certainly were not. After the passage of several centuries, they did acquire this title, probably to indicate that they were of the highest lineage. But who were they then...
It is a beautiful little book: 'Sagenhaftes Österreich', containing a sheet of stamps featuring some of the main characters that appear in the book: Basilisks, Venetian Men, Nixe, Der liebe Augustin, 'Wilde Vrouwen' ('White Women'), Waterman, Dwarf, and Dragon. Twenty-three famous stories retold...
The word 'clown' comes from English, where it originally meant 'idiot', 'country bumpkin', or 'clumsy oaf'. It is possibly related to the Dutch word 'kluns'. The clown as we know it today has only existed for a few centuries, but similar figures already existed in...
Julius Maggi was born in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, in 1846, the son of an Italian immigrant and his Swedish wife. His curiosity and entrepreneurial drive were stimulated when he heard about the ideas of the physician and factory director Fridolin Schuler....
Klosterneuburg Abbey (German: Stift Klosterneuburg) is a 12th-century Augustinian monastery located in the town of Klosterneuburg and close to the Leopoldsberg in Lower Austria, just north of Vienna, and offers a view of the Danube River. The...
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a German poet of Jewish descent. He was born Harry Heine, but after his Lutheran baptism in 1825, he changed his name. He only developed a true connection with the faith at the end of...
The 'Enlightenment' was a cultural, philosophical, and intellectual movement in Europe that roughly coincided with the 18th century. It stood for the advancement of science and intellectual exchange, the combating of superstition, abuse of law in church and state, and...
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