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11 Amazing Things to See and Do in Iceland
Speaking of ice, start planning your journey to the land of fire and ice with these 11 amazing things to see and do in Iceland. You shouldn’t have much difficulty spotting a sheep—the country’s sheep population, as of last year, was more than double its human population.
Last summer, 90-year-old Norma Bauerschmidt was preparing to say goodbye to Leo, her husband of 67 years. The day after he was admitted to hospice, Norma was dealt another blow: Doctors had discovered a large, cancerous mass on her uterus. She barely had time to process the news when Leo passed away. Just two days after his death, Norma found herself at the doctor’s office, discussing how to treat her cancer. Her doctor recommended surgery to remove the mass, but was concerned that she may not survive the operation.
Norma decided the typical late-in-life path—surgeries, nursing homes, assisted living—wasn’t in the cards for her. Her son and daughter-in-law, Tim and Ramie, had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse: to join them on the road. The retired couple spent much of their time roaming the country in an Airstream trailer, but if Norma would join them in their nomadic lifestyle, they promised to upgrade to a 36-footer and see whatever sights she wanted to.
Norma didn’t have to think twice, and said no to the cancer treatment. “I’m 90-years-old,” she told her doctor. “I’m hitting the road.”
Less than two months later, she did. Their first trip was a little over a year ago, when they left Norma’s home in Presque Isle, Michigan, and headed west toward Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone. Tim wasn’t sure if she would make it to South Dakota. Twelve months later, Norma is not only surviving—she’s positively thriving.
“If you could have seen her when we left,” Tim told the Washington Times, explaining that her transformation has been utterly amazing. Not only is she doing better physically, going from 94 pounds to 110, but she’s also been transformed emotionally. “I’m open more now than I used to be,” Norma said.
Since last August, Norma has been to several National Parks, Roswell, the Kennedy Space Center, Walt Disney World, Niagara Falls, the French Quarter, and the Grand Canyon—and that’s just to name a few of the sights she’s seen.
She has served as an honorary Atlanta Hawks cheerleader, dipped her toes in the ocean, experienced her first pedicure, eaten her first oyster, and she shook a lot of hands at the National World War II Museum—Norma is a veteran herself, having served with the Women Accepting Volunteer Emergency Service unit in 1945.
But out of all of the amazing things Norma has experienced in the last year, one of the most memorable may have been the hot air balloon ride she took in January. She and her husband had always wanted to experience a ride together, and while he was in the hospital, Leo said he still hoped to be able to take her someday. After his death, as his family was cleaning out his papers, they found multiple newspaper clippings about balloon rides among his things.
As of Labor Day, the traveling trio was in the Pacific Northwest, where they have visited a lavender farm (one of Norma’s favorite flowers), watched Orca whales, and celebrated the one-year anniversary of the beginning of their journey. Wherever Miss Norma heads now, she’s likely to be one of the main attractions—since starting her journey last year, her Facebook page has gained more than 400,000 followers, and she’s been featured on the CBS Evening News, the ABC News, the Today Show, and the Huffington Post. What’s next for Norma, Tim, and Ramie? Possibly California for a peek at some redwoods. Follow along with her adventures on Facebook—you’ll be glad you did.
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September 13, 2016 – 11:30am
September 13, 2016 – 11:11am
14 of the World’s Coolest Ice Bars
Cool off in one of these 14 ice bars, a far-from-new novelty that’s spanned the globe since 1990.
The Professional Mourners of Arlington Cemetery
Meet the 150 volunteers—called “The Arlington Ladies”—who have one specific responsibility on the site of the Arlington Cemetery: to see that no soldier is ever buried alone.
The oldest hotel in the world was founded in 705 CE in Japan’s Yamanashi Prefecture and has been run by the same family for 52 generations. That is dedication. Read on for 10 of the oldest continuously operated stores from around the world.
A Brief History of One of the World’s Rarest Plants
The loneliest known plant is the London-based Encephalartos woodii, the only remaining tropical tree of its kind in the aftermath of the Ice Age. Its survival will depend upon researchers finding it a companion.
The United States of America, the great melting pot. We take music, foods, words and traditions from all over the world, shake them up and blend them into something distinctly American. We took “O Sole Mio” and made “It’s Now or Never.” We took pizza and put cheese inside the crust. We take names from places all over the world to give to our towns and cities, and once they’re ours, we’ll pronounce them how we want to, thank you very much. Usually we simply use the English version of the word for a place: we don’t say Par-EE, Texas, the French way, but PARE-iss, because that’s how we say Paris in English. However, some towns that have borrowed city names from elsewhere don’t even get the normal English pronunciation. Here are 20 American towns that have really cut the cord from the sources of their names.
When we talk about Greece, we talk about Athens, cradle of Western civilization, birthplace of democracy. But these towns in Kentucky and Illinois are called EIGHTH-ens.
The German capital Ber-LIN has loaned its name to many an American town, but here we’ve turned it into BER-lin.
If we’re talking Egypt, we’re talking KAI-ro. But in Georgia it’s KAY-ro, and in Illinois, KEH-ro.
There’s a city in New York named after the South American country of Chile, which we would call CHILL-ee or if you want to get fancy, CHEE-lay—but there they call it CHAI-lai.
Right over by Chili is Riga, a name shared with REE-ga, the capital of Latvia, but in New York it’s RYE-ga.
Delhi, the capital of India, gets cities named after it in New York and California, but it’s hard to tell because while we are used to calling it “Delly” the people in those cities pronounce it DEL-hai.
Lebanon? Not in LEB-nen New Hampshire.
The capital of Peru is Lima (LEE-ma). The town named for it in Ohio? LYE-ma.
Spain has Madrid (Ma-DRID). But in Missouri they’ve got New MAD-rid. Or wait, is it Missouruh? I don’t think Missourians even agree on that. New MAD-rid though? That they’re all cool with.
Mantua, beautiful Italian city of culture. Opera and Virgil. No wonder we’ve borrowed its name for towns in Ohio and Utah. Oh, except in those places it’s not MAN-tyoo-a, but MAN-a-way.
Milan is mi-LAN, or if you’re really feeling it, mi-LAHN, and it’s another Italian city we pay tribute to in our town names, everywhere from New York to Tennessee to Illinois to Washington State. Except in those places it’s MY-lun.
Sticking with Italy for a little longer, there’s Palermo (Pa-LER-mo), or, as they say in North Dakota, PAL-er-mo.
Michigan honors the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. It’s pom-PAY right? Not in Michigan, where the locals call it pom-pay-eye. What is that extra ‘i’ doing on the end there anyway? Might as well make sure you pronounce it.
Texas has a town named for the whole country of Italy. Itly. Just two syllables.
The country of Russia is represented by a town in Ohio. ROO-shee, Ohio, to be exact.
From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of … Tri-POH-luh? While the capital city of Libya, has miles of Mediterranean coastline, Iowa’s Tripoli has no shore at all. So it goes its own way name-wise too.
When we speak about the palace in France or the treaty that ended WWI, it’s ver-SAI. For towns from Pennsylvania to Illinois, it’s ver-SAYLES.
There are Montpeliers all over the place in the US. How do you pronounce yours? The Vermont way (mont-PEEL-yer) or the more French-style way people sometimes use (mont-pel-YAY)?
When we talk about the Austrian city, the Chicago all beef hot dog, or even the city in Virginia, vee-EH-nuh is the way to go. But for towns in Illinois and South Dakota, it’s vai-EH-nuh.
The Czech city of Prague is full of old-world charm. The Minnesota city of New Prague has a new-world way of doing things, including pronouncing it PRAYG.
This post originally appeared in 2013.
September 13, 2016 – 9:00am
Over the course of nine seasons, Ray Romano endeared himself to audiences as Ray Barone, a Long Island sportswriter juggling work and family, including his parents and older brother, who live right across the street. Here are some facts about the Emmy Award-winning series, which debuted 20 years ago today.
“I was doing stand-up for 12 years,” Romano recounted to Larry King in 2005. “I did my first stand-up spot on Letterman and then the following week his company called me up to say, ‘We want to try to develop a show based around what we saw.'”
“It was a title that, first of all, the critics … it invites hatred,” Romano explained. “It came about from a sarcastic comment my brother made, who is a police officer. And he said, ‘Look what I do for a living, and look at Raymond—yeah, everybody loves Raymond.’ So we used it as a working title. And it just grew on CBS, and we couldn’t get rid of it.”
Doris Roberts was busy directing a play while the Marie auditions were taking place. The play’s producer made sure to have her available for 3:30 one fateful Monday. She beat out over 100 other women for the part.
Peter Boyle had trouble just getting into the studio lot. He then couldn’t find a parking space. Then he went into the wrong building. By the time he reached Romano and show creator/showrunner Philip Rosenthal he was, in his own words, “enraged”—and perfectly in character for Frank Barone. The topper of it all was that, according to Romano, the CBS president was going to give Boyle the gig anyway.
Jane Sibbett (Ross’s first ex-wife on Friends) declined the role once she discovered Romano was both unaware she had been offered the role by the network, and that Romano was pushing hard for Patricia Heaton to play his on-screen wife.
Maggie Wheeler, who played Janice on Friends, auditioned for the role of Debra, too. She ended up playing Debra’s friend Linda over the course of the series as a consolation prize. Heaton wasn’t officially cast until one week before the pilot began shooting.
Brad Garrett, who played Ray’s older brother Robert, was 36 when the series first started. Romano was a few months shy of his 39th birthday.
Monica Horan—who played Robert’s on-again-off-again girlfriend and eventual wife Amy—was married to the show’s creator, Phil Rosenthal. She got used to her arguments with Rosenthal ending up in scripts. Horan told People about an episode where Debra has PMS: “I’m hearing lines from conversations I had with my husband. Ray was telling Debra to take medication, and she was telling him she needed a hug. I was like, ‘Whoa.’ I was crying, then laughing, then crying. It was surreal.”
“Ninety percent of everything you hear on the show has been said to me or Ray Romano or one of the writers,” Rosenthal admitted in the same article. Horan claimed her favorite line to Rosenthal is, “You can say the right thing on TV, but why can’t you do it in real life?”
In the pilot, the kids were known as Matthew and Gregory, but were subsequently turned into Michael and Geoffrey for the rest of the series. Romano’s own twin sons are named Matthew and Gregory; he decided that art was imitating life a little too closely and asked for the names to be changed. Matthew and Gregory not only got new names, they got new actors to play them: Rosenthal cast Sullivan and Sawyer Sweeten as Michael and Geoffrey, respectively. They were the real-life brothers of Madylin Sweeten, who played their TV sis, Ally.
The inclination to separate fact from fiction never seemed to apply to Ally, who kept her character name despite being based on Romano’s real daughter, also named Ally. Not only that, the real Ally (Alexandra Romano) played TV Ally’s friend Molly on the show.
“Well, my brother was—he is a retired cop now, but at the time he would take a lot of stuff from the other cops,” said Romano. “They think it’s a documentary.” While Garrett put his own spin on the character to differentiate Robert Barone from Rich Romano, there was a point where Ray’s brother—an NYPD sergeant—moved back in with their parents.
Chuck Heaton was a sportswriter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer for 50 years. He’s mentioned in the season one episode “Recovering Pessimist” when Debra runs down a list of Ray’s competition for a Sportswriter of the Year award: “Chuck Heaton’s big story this year was ‘too much violence in boxing.’ Thanks for the scoop, Chuck.”
In “Halloween Candy,” Frank gives the same speech about mortality he famously gave to Robert De Niro’s character in Taxi Driver (1976). He also dressed as Frankenstein’s monster, a nod to his work in Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein (1974).
Romano made $1.7 to $1.8 million per episode during the last two seasons of Raymond, surpassing Kelsey Grammer’s $1.6 million per episode salary for Frasier at the time.
“We ran out of ideas,” Rosenthal told The A.V. Club of why the show came to an end. “If you worked for me, I would say to you, ‘Go home, get in a fight with your wife, and come back in and tell me about it.’ And then we’d have a show. But after nine years, if we kept that up, our wives would leave us. And in California, that’s half. So we made sure that we got out before that happened.”
Patricia Heaton fell ill, and by the intended showtime her voice was completely gone. The audience was sent home, and told to return seven days later.
The Voronins, or Воронины, the Russian adaptation which Rosenthal attempted to help, was Russia’s number one comedy, and performed original episodes after going through all 210 of the American installments. Local-language versions of the show were also produced in Egypt (Close Doors); Israel (You Can’t Choose Your Family); the Netherlands (Everybody Is Crazy About Jack); Poland (Everybody Loves Roman, which was canceled after four episodes), and the Czech Republic (Everybody Loves Rudy). In the United Kingdom, a pilot was shot (The Smiths).
September 13, 2016 – 10:00am
Bored with your traditional Rubik’s Cube? You might want to add a few more twists with these challenging variations by Oskar van Deventer. The Dutch research scientist’s spins on the elaborate puzzle promise to stump even the most weathered puzzle solvers.
A longtime puzzle designer, Van Deventer takes the basic Rubik’s Cube pattern and transforms it into a spherical puzzle, a hollow cube, and even a magic gears grid. His creations are sold on Shapeways, meaning they are 3D-printed to order and come in a variety of different materials.
And his creations don’t just baffle users, they also break records. His over the Top 17x17x17 design was recently acknowledged by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest order Rubik’s Cube. The mind-bending design has 1539 parts—to say it’s challenging would be an understatement.
Take a look at some the patterns by Oskar Puzzles below and check out more of his designs on Deventer’s Shapeways page.
September 13, 2016 – 9:30am