As one accustomed to traveling with some frequency, sitting at home these past two months has certainly instilled in me a certain desire to go forth into the world once again – even an otherwise unexciting business trip would do at this point. So when I looked over my shelf of books awaiting a reading (“shelf”… singular? Oh who am I kidding?) John van Wyhe’s new “Wanderlust, The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer, the First Female Tourist” quickly caught my attention.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “imperial” is defined as: imperial (adj.) late 14c., “having a commanding quality,” from Old French imperial, emperial “imperial; princely, splendid; strong, powerful” (12c.), from Latin imperialis “of the empire or emperor,” from imperium “empire” Looking a bit further into “imperium,” we find: imperium (n.) “authority to command […]
Just what would you do for a pet fish? Would you pay $100 for one? $1000? $10,000? Would you lie? Cheat? Steal? Would you kidnap another person? Would you kill for one? While this may seem hyperbolic, when it comes to the Asian Arowana, the subject of Emily Voigt’s The Dragon Behind the Glass; A […]
Although the new Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum officially opened its doors to the public for the first time on 28 April 2015, the full history of this extraordinary new museum in fact goes back in time for more than a century and a half.