North America

Today is Groundhog Day, a North American festival which reckons that "if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees…

In the early days of mass automotive travel, fuel stations often resorted to some wacky gimmicks to differentiate themselves from the pack and lure in customers, such as novelty architecture that made the station building even more of a roadside attraction than the fuel they were selling. Today, many of these wacky 1930s-era stations are icons to thousands of visitors every year.

While most visual artwork is intended to please the eye, some artists strive to reach the other senses as well.  Some of them create large-scale sculptures which create sounds from natural sources - generally wind or water. Our first example…

To celebrate the holiday season this year we'll take a look at Christmas Trees, whose "leaves are so unchanging. Not only green when summer's here, but also when 'tis cold and drear"1. In the United States, an estimated 31 million…

A few years ago we took a detailed look at Canada's Grand Railway Hotels (parts 1, 2, 3). To look at things from the opposite perspective, there are a surprising number of train carriages around the world which serve as…

To the south-east of Austin, Texas, there is a brand new motor racing track called the Circuit of the Americas, being used this weekend for its inaugural event - the Formula One United States Grand Prix. While Street View shows…