Jane Birkin’s ultra-rare Hermès Birkin Voyageur, gifted in 2003 and inscribed with her handwriting, will be auctioned in Abu Dhabi/ Image: X In a remarkable follow-up to July’s record-breaking sale, Sotheby’s has announced the auction of another Hermès Birkin bag once owned by the late English-French singer and actress Jane Birkin, whose name gave rise […]
Record-breaking Hajj 2026: 72,000 UAE pilgrims compete for only 6,228 spots, highlighting historic demand and rigorous selection process / AI-generated illustration The UAE’s General Authority for Islamic Affairs, Endowments, and Zakat has reported a historic surge in Hajj 2026 applications, with approximately 72,000 residents applying for a quota of just 6,228 pilgrims. This unprecedented number […]
NEOM’s ambitious mega-city project in Saudi Arabia advances rapidly, showcasing futuristic designs and sustainable construction innovations, captivating global attention / AI-generated illustration Saudi Arabia’s NEOM megacity, particularly its centerpiece project ‘The Line,’ has captured global attention as a futuristic urban experiment. Originally pitched as a 170-kilometer, zero-carbon, car-free city, NEOM promised to redefine urban living […]
A small painted stone found on Indonesia’s Wetar Island is offering archaeologists a glimpse into the symbolic world of ancient seafarers. It dates to about 4,090 to 3,900 years ago and features a red design of concentric circles and radiating sun rays that is linked to the Austronesian Painting Tradition (APT). The discovery is significant […]
PC: Guinness World Records At 14, Sheri Lynch was given a small grey hippopotamus plush by her best friend. She had no idea that the birthday present would still be part of her life more than four decades later, or that it would eventually sit alongside more than a thousand other hippo-themed objects. The US […]
For much of its history, Florida’s Kissimmee River did not run in a straight line. It wandered through central Florida, spreading across a broad floodplain that filled with water during the rainy season. That slow, shifting landscape supported fish, wetland plants and large numbers of birds. Then, in the 1960s, the river was reshaped into […]
In 1993, an art historian walked into a museum storeroom in Vienna and came across a large painting that had slipped almost entirely from view. The picture was not recognised as an important work by a woman artist. Instead, it became the first clue in a search that would stretch across more than three decades. […]
At a cave on the slopes of Mount Carmel, thousands of small reptile bones accumulated alongside the remains of animals hunted and gathered by people more than 11,000 years ago. For years, their presence raised a straightforward but difficult question: were the snakes and lizards food, or had they ended up there through the activity […]
Representative Image of a 150-acre Vermont landscape where a historic dairy farm has become a thriving nature preserve (AI-generated image) In 1944, Christine Hires, a member of the family behind Hires Root Beer, was vacationing in Vermont when she fell in love with the landscape and decided to buy a 150-acre dairy farm in what […]
There is a saying among bibliophiles: Never judge a book by its movie. For true readers, nothing any director dreams up can ever match the cinema playing inside one’s head, to borrow a line from Anurag Kashyap’s greatest villain. Two rare adaptations that arguably hold their own against their source novels are Mario Puzo’s The […]
