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The 10 Most Beautiful Ceiling In The World

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Castello di Sammezzano, Leccio, Italy The mesmerising ceiling, vaults and decor of the Peacock Room in this abandoned Italian palazzo near Florence speak for themselves. Peacocks, and other exotica, were the source of the inspired decoration to be found throughout the seemingly endless empty rooms of this daydream building. The Moorish-style makeover of what was a much older palace was the life work of Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d’Aragona. Although the aristocratic Italian architect, engineer, botanist, philosopher and politician never visited the Levant or the Orient, he imagined a world of exquisite and highly exotic forms and colours that he brought to life in Leccio between 1843 and 1889. A hotel in the 20th Century, the palazzo and its polychromatic Peacock Room are in limbo today. Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire Completed in 1334 by the royal carpenter William Hurley, the exquisite timber lantern over the central octagonal tower of Ely Cathedral is one of the greate...
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World's Most Trafficked Mammal

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Many people in the West have never even heard of the pangolin, yet this “scaly anteater” is the source of a billion-dollar criminal industry that threatens to push it to extinction. BBC Future met a team of Hong Kong’s ecologists and activists trying to save these creatures from extinction. For millions of years, the pangolin’s natural reserve had been its best defence. The only mammal with hard, plate-like scales, it looks something like a badger in chainmail – and at the merest hint of danger, the pangolin simply roles up into a tight ball that is nearly impossible for a predator to penetrate. The shell is so tough that it can  even resist the teeth of lions , tigers and leopards . Not that many scientists have even been able to witness this behaviour themselves. There are eight species of pangolin across Asia and Africa, and they are all nocturnal, and notoriously shy, hiding in burrows and hollow trees for most of the day. Even conservationists working extensively in their...
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Surprising Knife Capital in Europe's

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I’d been drawn to this small Auvergne town (population 11,600) by its long history of craftsmanship. Knives were being made here at least as far back as the 15th Century, and probably as early as the 13th, according to the ancient grindstones found just below town by the Durolle River, which powered the mill paddlewheels. And knives have been made here ever since. In fact, the man showing me the knife in his shop, his fingertips cracked and blackened, had made many of them himself. Dominique Chambriard, wearing a traditional blue workman’s tunic, proudly led me to a version of the area’s iconic knife, ‘Le Thiers’, which was designed in 1993, when the Confrerie du Couteau Le Thiers (Brotherhood of the Thiers Knife) was set up to make a knife distinctive to their town. Fifteen local master knife-makers (including Chambriard), over a period of months, designed a simple, subtle, organic design for ‘Le Thiers’, based on ideas from their 16th-Century guild forefathers. “We had two p...
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When People Eat Carnivorous Plants

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Mount Kinabalu is one of the richest biodiversity hotspots in the world. With the  4,095m-high altitude brings more cold than you might expect in the heart of the tropics.  It is packed with life in varied forms, including some animals and plants that don’t live in the wild anywhere else such as several species of carnivorous pitcher plant. These plants use a variety of techniques ‒ such as nectar, smells and colours ‒ to lure insects, and their traps deploy sheer drops, smooth surfaces that cannot be scaled or blockades of bristles to prevent their prey from escaping. Seemingly unfazed by the sticky humidity, market vendors in the city of Kota Kinabalu, from where most journeys up and down Mount Kinabalu start, sell a variety of local foods to hikers returning from the summit. Amid the sizzle and clatter of food stalls and the enticing aromas of buttered prawns and barbecued fish, pouches of sticky rice in dull, mottled wrappers aren’t the type of snack that catches at...
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Nobody expect, Johannesburg attracts expats looking to accomplish a lot and integrate quickly, bursting with the energy and pace of a big city but with the friendliness town. “The thing I love most about Joburg is that it is a city of opportunity,” said Crystal Espin, originally from Cape Town and founder of local blog  Joburg’s Darling . “You get the feeling that everyone is here to make something of themselves.” Gerrard Hattfield, originally from Cape Town and founder of travel site  Flight Factory , agrees, calling the city ‘The Silicon Valley of South Africa’. He explained that “compared to Cape Town, which is more laid back, Joburg is extremely hard working.” South Africa’s largest city has significantly invested in the growth of small businesses, with the creation of the Ministry of Small Business Development in 2014. The city also recently hosted  The Global Entrepreneurship Congress , which brought together entrepreneurs, investors and researchers from 16...
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Mangroves Keeping Vietnam Afloat

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By: Safwan Salleh The rising of sea levels threaten to drown the Mekong Delta, which produces the majority of Vietnam’s rice. The only thing standing between the country and the ocean is a tree. The  Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment   predicts that the ocean will swallow more than a third of the region by the year 2100, taking a swath of Ho Chi Minh City with it. Halfway up the coast from the Mekong Delta, Hoi An’s prognosis is better, but it’s not immune. The city sits where the Thu Bon River meets the South China Sea. Its inhabitants are already used to hauling furniture upstairs during seasonal floods. Mangroves are the climate superheroes of the natural world. They grow in swamps along the coasts with thin trunks and tangled, spidery roots submerged in dark, briny water. The roots filter saltwater and can expand eroded coastlines. They also create natural storm barriers and protect agricultural land from saltwater infiltration. And on top of everyth...
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By: Safwan Salleh Secret Underground Hospital In Hungary A three-year-old Erzsebet Seibriger and her family headed underground to one of Budapest’s many natural caves where they were safe from tanks, bombs and gunfire in autumn 1956, as Soviet troops suppressed the Hungarian uprising against the country’s communist regime. But their location in underground hospital where Seibriger’s surgeon father treated both Hungarian revolutionaries and Soviet soldiers would haunt them for years. Due to a heart condition, Seibriger’s father was not jailed but he did lose his medical license.After Soviet troops crushed the rebellion, tens of thousands of Hungarians were imprisoned or executed for participating, including doctors who treated injured freedom fighters. Even though the government declassified the hospital’s existence in 2002, and this year it will celebrate its 10th year as the Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker Museum, the space remains frozen in time, full of mysteries and untold ...
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