Business • October 30 2024

Creators of 'the traveling cactus'

How many cacti have they produced to sell over the years? On a recent day their greenhouse setup featured six long tables filled with 100 trays per table, with 64 plants per tray -- or 38,400 cacti!

Travel • October 30 2024

Dec. 8, 1941 was a day of infamy in Southeast Asia

It’s easy to forget that the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 in Hawaii was the morning of Dec. 8, 1941 in Southeast Asia.

Travel • October 29 2024

The fascinating history of Oman

Oman, along the north shore of the Indian Ocean, was actually a maritime empire stretching from east Africa to India in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Travel • October 29 2024

Lisbon: Mixed history, architecture, interpretations

Lisbon, Portugal was actually the center of the world in the 1500s.
Portugal was the leader in trade, combining navigation and ship-building skills with fearless adventurers to discover new markets in northern Europe and west Africa, and then circumventing the Ottomans and the Red Sea to deal directly with merchants in India and the South China Sea after passing the Cape of Good Hope.

Travel • October 28 2024

Indonesia's theme park of history

If you ever in Jakarta, use some of your time to visit the “Mini Indonesia” theme park.
It is from the 1970s and was an attempt by the then president to unite the nation’s 500 different ethnicities, who speak 700 different languages on the nation’s 9,000 inhabited islands. (The country is 3,000 miles wide — although it’s mostly water.)

Travel • October 28 2024

The story behind the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

If you have an interest in Christianity, here is an attempt to describe a religious site like no other.

Travel • October 15 2024

Jordan and the "Lost City" of Petra

Jordan is a country carved out of the old Ottoman Empire 100 years ago.
It is 80% percent desert (looking very much like Arizona) and serves as a buffer between Egypt, Israel, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.