The city of Erie in Pennsylvania on the east bank of Lake Erie, is considering the creation of a new ship museum using a Cold War era, Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate. The connection is Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the 19th century American naval commander, who...
Le Musée des 24 Heures du Mans (“The Museum of the 24 Hours of Le Mans”) sits right next to the famous 24hr racetrack outside the city of Le Mans, and this year the museum is celebrating its 60th anniversary. History of the 24 hours of Le...
The ‘We Have Ways to Make You Talk’ podcast has become hugely popular with WW2 history fans, experts and historians alike since it began in March 2019. Last weekend many of them gathered in some fields near Silverstone, Buckinghamshire, for the first 2-day ‘We Have Ways Fest’...
The Rotonde Ferroviaire (‘railway roundhouse’) at Montabon in La Vallée du Loir* is very much a ‘work in progress’ and it is going to be fabulous in a few years. The roundhouse and turntable were originally built in 1891 on the edge of the village of Montabon...
The Battle of Agincourt Museum, or le ‘Centre Azincourt 1415’ as it is officially named, was redesigned, expanded and improved, a couple of years ago. It is now a centre of discovery and learning for all age groups with a mission to explain the background and events...
Italy’s Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini, has announced the winner of a technical tender to design and build a new stage floor for the 2,000 year old Colosseum. The original wooden arena floor covered an underground network of rooms and corridors, which housed the waiting animals, gladiators...
The French seaside town and ferry port was expecting its famous mechanical dragon to be operating in the build up to Christmas and New Year, but COVID-19 struck again and so the Compagnie du Dragon has been using the downtime for a bit of maintenance. I got...
Last week the U.S. National Park Service announced $2,208,110 in grants from the American Battlefield Protection Program to protect 169.03 acres of America’s Civil War battlefields. Unlike the UK, where so many of our battlefield sites are already lost to history, or under threat from developers (See...
The Salis Flying Museum (Musée Volant Salis) has an amazing collection of around 50* historic aircraft at its hilltop airfield, 35 kms south of Paris. It’s the drip trays you notice. Drip trays are a rare sight in most aviation museums because, before they go on static...
Keen to reconnect with its fanbase, Ducati is reopening its museum today (5 Oct) at their motorcycle factory in Borgo Panigale, Bologne, Italy. The museum’s new coronavirus protocols mean that visitors have to book online and register a specific date/time slot in advance. The 15-min time slots...
This is a niche blog about technically-minded travel. It reflects my own interests in the mechanical, technical, historical, engineering, transport and military world.
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