Image: Guinness World Records In 1985, Denise Bella Vlasis was simply a high-school student who happened to be good at singing and dancing. When her mother asked her to entertain children at a holiday party, she decided to perform a few songs by Madonna, whose career was rapidly taking off at the time. What seemed…
Representative Image of the reconstructed Thomas James Bridge with original sandstone blocks and modern foundations, showcasing flood resilience (AI Generated Image) Thomas James Bridge, also known as Settlers Road Bridge, crosses a creek near Lower Macdonald in New South Wales and holds a rare distinction: it is the oldest in-use vehicle bridge on mainland Australia….
Representative Image of a historic schoolhouse surrounded by oak trees, showcasing restoration efforts after storm damage (AI Generated Image) In February 2021, two oak trees fell onto the Mark Prairie Schoolhouse in Clackamas County, Oregon, crushing the roof and damaging parts of the walls of the 1879 building. The schoolhouse had been built on land…
Trump invoked the Vietnam War to put the US-Iran conflict in perspective TOI correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump has put the Iran war on a diet. Six months, 18 dead American service members, hundreds wounded, global economic pain, and billions of dollars later, he has surpassed what he once termed as a “little…
A grand 19th-century mansion in West Virginia, once the home of a prominent banker, businessman and former mayor, is being offered for sale for the first time since it was built nearly 150 years ago. Known as the Chancellor House, the 5,827-square-foot property at 904 Juliana Street in Parkersburg has remained in the same family…
In 2018, a University of Hawaii study in Honolulu found that a planted green roof could stay noticeably cooler than a conventional white roof, particularly during the hottest part of the day. The research compared an existing white rooftop with a green roof covered in sedum plants, recording temperatures at the roof surface and in…
Sandy Dosanjh with husband Kalwinder Sandy Dosanjh, the wife of Vancouver Police Department detective Kalwinder “Kal” Singh Dosanjh, is no longer running for Surrey City Council in the 2026 municipal election after her husband’s arrest. The Conservative Party of Surrey confirmed that she had been removed from its slate of candidates.Sandy had been contesting a…
The unprecedented scale of Chinese military presence around the region has become a growing concern among officials (Photo: ANI). Taiwan experienced a significant increase in Chinese military activity around its territory on Saturday, with multiple Chinese aircraft and naval vessels around its territory.Taiwan’s ministry of national defence (MND) detected up to 20 sorties of various…
When Hurricane Matthew struck Florida in October 2016, New Smyrna Beach faced winds of more than 90 miles per hour and water levels around four feet above normal. Along the coast, those conditions put shoreline protection to a serious test. But one demonstration site emerged with an unexpected result. A living shoreline project supported by…
Visingsö Oak Forest. Image Credit: Atlas Obscura In the early 19th century, Sweden began an extraordinary project on the island of ‘Visingsö.’ Hundreds of thousands of oak trees were planted to secure timber for naval ships that would be built far in the future. Oak was strong, durable and widely valued for wooden shipbuilding, but…