Fela Kuti (well the character Fela Kuti in Broadway’s Fela! anyway)

Since New York is always under construction, they’re creative about it. The barrier around a demolished building has been turned into public art showing pedestrian signs from around the world. 

This Year in History - 1500

In honour of our 1500th follower, I give you the year 1500. In 1500, Portuguese explorer Diogo Dias is the first European to see Madagascar.

Pictured is the bookshop at the London Missionary Society and Bible Society in Tananarive (now Antananarivo), Madagascar, c. 1931.

Select Bookshop Bangalore

Today in History - September 23, 1212

The Golden Bull of Sicily issued by Frederick II to create the position of King of Bohemia

Oldtimer Restaurants, Austria, 2007

An EAT! bistro ripoff in India?

(submitted by Stu Taylor)

Lubna Hussein has now been convicted for wearing trousers. Hussein, a UN worker, resigned her post so that she would be tried as an ordinary Sudanese citizen, and also refused a presidential pardon. Her goal was to call attention to Sudan’s repressive law, and also to the hideous punishment of 40 lashes for the offense. Presumably in an effort to reduce worldwide attention to the case, she was sentenced only to a fine, rather than to a fine and a flogging (as is customary). But Hussein is not letting the Sudanese government divert attention in this way. She’s now refusing to pay the fine. And she’s still wearing those trousers.

The stage at Austrian Bregenzer Festspiele’s 1999 production of Verdi’ s opera “A Masked Ball” was a giant book being read by a skeleton . (I had to dig for this because the original poster just put up the image with no context. Shame on your laziness.)

booklover:meanoldpotato:iheartmyart:mazes

Outdoor book market, Essaouira, Morocco

somerset:

Iraqi chess player Delbak Ismail contemplates her next move during the Iraq chess championship on August 6, 2009 in Baghdad, Iraq.

janitoroflunacy:

Snake charmers from Tangiers

la-vie-boheme:

bip:

Typographic World Map

grebnekkah:

acrossthelines:

Havana, Cuba

Somehow managed to snap this from a bus. The whole aesthetic of Havana is so interesting. You can see its former beauty in the faded colour, in the architecture where it hasn’t crumbled, but to see it now is sort of heartbreaking.

The world’s largest Koran in Palembang, Indonesia