United Kingdom - England - Presbytery Ceiling / Vault at Saint Alban's Cathedral

Presbytery Ceiling - The great vault forming the Presbytery ceiling was constructed in the thirteenth-century.

Sent by Marina from London, England.

The presbytery vault at St Albans is one of only two thirteenth-century wooden vaults over a main span to survive in England. A programme of cleaning and conservation carried out between 1997 and 2002, coupled with an analysis of the source and date of the timber used in its construction, significantly advanced our understanding of both the late thirteenth-century presbytery campaign at St Albans and thirteenth-century timber vault construction generally. As the inevitable density and restricted circulation of the final report on that work has hindered its wider reception, the following paper offers a summary, drawing attention to two features that may have wider implications for an appreciation of vaulting in timber. The first is that, although the general form adopted at St Albans is one associated with masonry vaulting, the wooden boards used for the vault webbing required a junction between the wall and the ridge rib, meaning that shallow liernes were originally deployed to run parallel to the central ridge. It is difficult to see this as imitative of vaulting in stone; rather it is likely to be the result of carpenters developing their own solutions to the constraints imposed by timber. Secondly, the late medieval remodelling of the vault replaced these liernes with false tiercerons, and rather nicely illustrates the ease with which timber vaulting could be modified. 

The dendrochronology gives a date range of 1273–93, and a date of around 1285 is suggested for the primary build. The major late medieval alterations are here associated with the second abbacy of John of Wheathampstead (1452–65) (read more).

Austria - Belvedere Palace

Vienna - Belvedere Palace.

It is a part of Historic Centre of Vienna, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Sent by Ilona from Vienna, Austria.

The Belvedere is a historic building complex in Vienna, Austria consisting of two Baroque palaces (the Upper and Lower Belvedere), the Orangery, and the Palace Stables. The buildings are set in a Baroque park landscape in the third district of the city, on the south-eastern edge of its centre. It currently houses the Belvedere museum known in German as the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (in English, referred to both as the Belvedere Museum and Austrian Gallery). The grounds are set on a gentle gradient and include decorative tiered fountains and cascades, Baroque sculptures, and majestic wrought iron gates. The Baroque palace complex was built as a summer residence for Prince Eugene of Savoy.

The Belvedere was built during a period of extensive construction in Vienna, which at the time was both the imperial capital and home to the ruling Habsburg dynasty. This period of prosperity followed on from the commander-in-chief Prince Eugene of Savoy's successful conclusion of a series of wars against the Ottoman Empire (read more).

Canada - Alberta - Royal Alberta Museum

ROYAL ALBERTA MUSEUM - DOWNTOWN

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Sent by Alexandria from Edmonton in Alberta, Canada.

The Royal Alberta Museum (RAM) is a museum of human and natural history in Downtown Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, located north of City Hall. The museum is the largest in western Canada with more than 7,600 square metres (82,000 sq ft) exhibition space and 38,900 square metres (419,000 sq ft) in total.

The museum was established by the Government of Alberta in December 1967 as the Provincial Museum of Alberta. The museum received royal patronage from Queen Elizabeth II, and was renamed the Royal Alberta Museum in 2005. In 2011, plans were announced to move the museum to a new building. The museums continued to operate from its original building in Glenora, Edmonton until it was closed to the public in December 2015. Although the museum was closed to the public, a number of its departments continued to operate, either preparing the museum's collection for the move, or conducting fieldwork. The new building was completed in August 2016, and was opened to the public in October 2018.

The museum features expansive galleries chronicling Alberta's natural and cultural worlds, a feature gallery showcasing travelling exhibitions from Canada and around the world, an interactive, 650 square metres (7,000 sq ft) dedicated children's gallery, and a bug room with live invertebrates and visible nursery (read more).

Coca Cola Ad Card (13)

Sent by Hemm from  Åland Islands, Finland.

USA - Illinois - Windy City

The Windy City - Chicago, Illinois.

Sent by Pat who lives near Chicago, USA.

The city of Chicago has been known by many nicknames, but it is most widely recognized as the "Windy City".

The earliest known reference to the "Windy City" was actually to Green Bay in 1856. The first known repeated effort to label Chicago with this nickname is from 1876 and involves Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. The popularity of the nickname endures to this day, more than a century after the Cincinnati rivalry ended.

There are four main possibilities to explain the city's nickname: the weather, as Chicago is near Lake Michigan; the rivalry with Cincinnati; the World's Fair; and the politics (read more).

USA - South Dakota - Sioux Falls

Scenic illustration of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Sent by Jason from Texas, USA.

Sioux Falls is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Dakota. Founded in 1856, the city was abandoned, sacked, resettled and later grew to become a city with a 2020 Census population of 192,517 people.

The history of Sioux Falls revolves around the cascades of the Big Sioux River. The falls were created about 14,000 years ago when the last glacial ice sheet redirected the flow of the river into the large looping bends of its present course. Fueled by water from the melting ice, the river exposed the underlying Sioux quartzite bedrock, the hard pinkish stone of the falls. The quartzite itself is about a billion and a half years old. It began as sediments deposited on the bottom of an ancient, shallow sea (read more).

USA - California - Laurel Canyon

Laurel Canyon, in the Hollywood Hills, the birthplace of the "California Sound," remains a peaceful, natural escape in the heart of Los Angeles.

Sent by Alison from Los Angeles, USA.

Laurel Canyon is a mountainous neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills region of the Santa Monica Mountains, within the Hollywood Hills West district of Los Angeles, California. The main thoroughfare of Laurel Canyon Boulevard connects the neighborhood with the more urbanized parts of Los Angeles to the north and south, between Ventura Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard.

Originally inhabited by the Tongva people, by the early 20th century real estate developers situated a vacation site along the slope of neighboring Lookout Mountain; this formed the nucleus of what would become the Laurel Canyon neighborhood. It later developed into a celebrity enclave: the remote, rugged nature of the land and its proximity to many of the movie studios in nearby Hollywood made it an ideal location for many movie stars to site their homes, especially during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Raymond Chandler's first novel The Big Sleep sets lurid scenes there, and in The Long Goodbye (1953), his private detective Philip Marlowe is residing in 'the Laurel Canyon district'.

By the 1960s, the neighborhood had become a local center for counterculture, and many prominent folk and rock musicians moved into the area, making it a nexus for musical collaboration. By the late 1970s, criminal activity in the neighborhood, including distribution of drugs, was controlled by the Wonderland Gang (named for a Laurel Canyon thoroughfare), and the neighborhood became associated with the Wonderland murders, a grisly quadruple homicide in 1981 (read more).

USA - South Dakota - The Mount Rushmore State

Map and information about the U.S. State of South Dakota.

Sent by Larry from New Jersey, USA.

The Many Nicknames of South Dakota

The Mount Rushmore State.

The Sunshine State.

The Swinged Cat State.

Of all the nicknames for South Dakota, perhaps none is more unusual than” The Swinged Cat State.”

This nickname originated from remarks made by South Dakota’s first governor, Arthur C. Mellette, according to an article from the South Dakota State Historical Society – State Archives.

In 1890, South Dakota was in the midst of a drought. Mellette was doing everything in his power to help settlers and keep them from leaving the state. On a trip to Chicago for aid, Mellette was met by Moses P. Handy, a friend and newspaperman. Handy asked Mellette, “Well, governor, how is South Dakota?”

Mellette replied, “Oh, South Dakota is a swinged cat, better than she looks.”

By swinged, Mellette meant “burnt” or “singed,” according to the article.\

The next day, the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper had a story about Mellette, governor of the “swinged cat State.” (read more)

USA - Wisconsin - Wisconsin Dells

"Duck" amphibious vehicle (tour boat) touring the Wisconsin Dells river near the "Hawk's Bill" rock formation.

Sent by Amy from Minnessota, USA.

Wisconsin Dells (formerly Kilbourn) is a city in Columbia, Sauk, Adams and Juneau counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 2,942 at the 2020 census. The city takes its name from the Dells of the Wiscosin River, a scenic gorge that features sandstone formations along the banks of the Wisconsin River. It is a popular Midwestern tourist destination, home to several water parks and tourist attractions. Wisconsin Dells is about 42 miles (68 km) northwest of Madison, the state's capital city.

The natural formation of the Dells was named by Early French explorers as dalles, a rapids or narrows on a river in voyageur French. Wisconsin Dells is located on ancestral Ho-Chunk and Menominee land. The Ho-Chunk name for Wisconsin Dells is Nįįš hakiisųc, meaning "rocks close together".

According to Indian agent Joseph Montfort Street, the Sauk leader Black Hawk sought refuge with Ho-Chunks near the Dells of the Wisconsin River at the end of the Black Hawk War of 1832 before surrendering to the United States, but more recent research has argued that this was a mistranslation of the true location. The U.S. acquired the land in treaties with the Ho-Chunk nation in 1837 and with the Menominee in 1848, but Ho-Chunk people who resisted the U.S. policy of Indian removal continued to return to the area and eventually acquired small homesteads (read more).

USA - Ohio - State Bird (3)

The Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is the state bird of Ohio and six other states (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia).

Sent by Claire from Ohio, USA.

My other postcards of Ohio State Bird are here and here.

The New Yorker - Nov 29, 2004

Thanksgiving Special by R. Crumb.

Sent by Norbert who lives near Hamburg, Germany.

Read the issue here.

Remarkable Women #9 - Maryam Mirzakhani

Maryam Mirzakhani, Iranian mathematician and professor.

Sent by Jitka from Ostrava, Czech Republic.

Maryam Mirzakhani (Persian: مریم میرزاخانی, pronounced [mæɾˈjæm miːɾzɑːxɑːˈniː]; 12 May 1977 – 14 July 2017) was an Iranian mathematician and a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. Her research topics included Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, ergodic theory, and symplectic geometry. On 13 August 2014, Mirzakhani was honored with the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, becoming the first woman to win the prize, as well as the first Iranian. The award committee cited her work in "the dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces". Mirzakhani was considered a leading force in the fields of hyperbolic geometry, topology and dynamics.

Throughout her career, she achieved milestones that cemented her reputation as one of the greatest mathematicians of her time, such as the "magic wand theorem", which tied together fields such as dynamical systems, geometry, and topology. After completing her PhD at Harvard University in 2004, Mirzakhani became a research fellow at the Clay Mathematics Institute and later joined Princeton University as a professor. In 2009, she moved to Stanford University, where she continued her pioneering research until her death. Her work focused on the intricate and complex dynamics of geometric structures, with particular emphasis on moduli spaces and Riemann surfaces. Her approaches and profound insights significantly advanced the field, earning her widespread acclaim and recognition, leading her to win the Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics (read more).

Malaysia - Federal Territory - Putrajaya

Putrajaya, an administrative capital of Malaysia.

A scenic view of the Perdana Putra, which serves as the Prime Minister's office complex.

Sent by myself. The place on the postcard is less than 10-minute drive from my residence.

Putrajaya (Malay pronunciation: [ˌputraˈd͡ʒaja, ˌputrəˈd͡ʒajə]), officially the Federal Territory of Putrajaya (Malay: Wilayah Persekutuan Putrajaya), is the administrative centre of Malaysia. The seat of the federal government of Malaysia was moved in 1999 from Kuala Lumpur to Putrajaya because of overcrowding and congestion, whilst the seat of the judiciary of Malaysia was later moved to Putrajaya in 2003. Kuala Lumpur remains as Malaysia's national capital city per the constitution and is still the seat of the head of state (Yang di-Pertuan Agong) and the national legislature (Parliament of Malaysia), as well as being the country's commercial and financial centre.

The establishment of Putrajaya was the idea of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and Mayor of Kuala Lumpur Elyas Omar. First thought of in the 1990s, Putrajaya was envisioned to be "a laboratory for a new form of electronic government" that would emphasize new adoption of and investment in internet, media, and digital communications. The development of Putrajaya began in August 1995 and was completed at an estimated cost of US$8.1 billion. On 1 February 2001, Putrajaya became Malaysia's third federal territory, after Kuala Lumpur in 1974 and Labuan in 1984. Putrajaya is enclaved within the state of Selangor, on the central west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. It is also a part of MSC Malaysia, a special economic zone that covers the Klang Valley (read more).

Philippines - Chocolate Hills

Chocolate Hills, a famous natural attraction located in Bohol, Philippines.

Sent by Rey from Albay, Philippines.

The Chocolate Hills (Cebuano: Mga Bungtod sa Tsokolate, Filipino: Mga Tsokolateng Burol, or Mga Burol na Tsokolate) are a geological formation in the Philippine province of Bohol. There is a minimum of 1,260 hills and possibly up to 1,776, spread over an area of more than 50 square kilometers (20 sq mi). They are covered in green grass that turns a chocolate-brown during the dry season, hence the name.

The Chocolate Hills are featured on the provincial flag and seal to symbolize the abundance of natural attractions in the province. The site is on the Philippine Tourism Authority's list of tourist destinations in the Philippines, and it has been declared the country's third national geological monument, as well as being proposed for inclusion in UNESCO's World Heritage List.

The Chocolate Hills form a rolling terrain of haycock-shaped hills—mounds of a generally conical and almost symmetrical shape. With an estimated 1,268 to 1,776 individual mounds, these dome-shaped hills are actually made of grass-covered limestone. The domes vary in size from 30 to 50 meters (98 to 164 ft) high, with the largest being 120 meters (390 ft) in height. One of Bohol's best-known tourist attractions, these unique hills are scattered by the hundreds throughout the towns of Carmen, Batuan, and Sagbayan (read more).

France - Île-de-France - Hôtel Lutetia

Hôtel Lutetia

45, Boulevard Raspail

75006 Paris

Sent by Roman from Paris, France.

The Hôtel Lutetia (French pronunciation: [otɛl lytesja]), branded since 2025 as the Mandarin Oriental Lutetia, Paris, located on Boulevard Raspail, in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, is one of the best-known hotels on the Rive Gauche. Opened in 1910, it is noted for its architecture and historical role during the German occupation of France in World War II.

In the late 1930s, the Lutetia was a frequent gathering place for anti-Nazi German exiles, among them Heinrich Mann, Willi Mutzner and the young Willy Brandt. In the Nazi regime's propaganda of the time, these exiles were disparagingly called "The Lutetia Crowd".

The war began in September 1939, and numerous refugees fled to Paris from conflict areas and places occupied by German forces. The Lutetia attempted to accommodate as many as possible. Because of its reputation, it was filled with a number of displaced artists and musicians. However, the French government evacuated Paris beginning June 14, 1940 and the Germans entered and occupied the city. A number of the Lutetia's residents escaped; others were captured by the Germans. The hotel itself was requisitioned by the Abwehr (counter-espionage), and used to house, feed, and entertain German officers such as Alfred Toepfer and the French collaborator Rudy de Mérode.

When Paris was liberated in August 1944, the hotel was abandoned by German troops and taken over by French and American forces. From then until after the end of the war, it was used as a repatriation center for prisoners of war, displaced persons, and returnees from German concentration camps (read more).

New Zealand - New Plymouth

Based on the iconic "We Can Do It!" poster, which originally served as a World War II propaganda image to boost worker morale, the image has been modified to feature New Zealand-themed text. "NEW PLYMOUTH SWEET AS!", referencing a city in New Zealand and a popular Kiwi slang phrase. The central figure is Rosie the Riveter, a cultural icon representing women who worked in factories and shipyards during WWII.

Sent by Tad, an old local mate who is now residing with her family in New Plymouth, New Zealand. 

New Plymouth (Māori: Ngāmotu) is the major city of the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It is named after the English city of Plymouth, in Devon, from where the first English settlers to New Plymouth migrated. The New Plymouth District, which includes New Plymouth City and several smaller towns, is the 10th largest district (out of 67) in New Zealand, and has a population of 90,100 – about two-thirds of the total population of the Taranaki region and 1.7% of New Zealand's population. This includes New Plymouth City (60,200), Waitara (7,720), Inglewood (3,970), Ōakura (1,780), Ōkato (561) and Urenui (429).

The city itself is a service centre for the region's principal economic activities, including intensive pastoral activities (mainly dairy farming) as well as oil, natural gas and petrochemical exploration and production. It is also the region's financial centre as the home of the TSB Bank (formerly the Taranaki Savings Bank), the largest of the remaining non-government New Zealand-owned banks.

Notable features are the botanic garden (i.e. Pukekura Park), the critically acclaimed Len Lye Centre and Art Gallery, the 13 km (8.1 mi) New Plymouth Coastal Walkway alongside the Tasman Sea, the Len Lye-designed 45-metre-tall (148 ft) artwork known as the Wind Wand, Paritutu Rock, and views of Mount Taranaki.

New Plymouth was awarded the most liveable city (for a population between 75,000–150,000) by the International Awards for Liveable Communities in 2021. In 2023, New Plymouth was awarded New Zealand's most beautiful small city by Keep New Zealand Beautiful. It also won multiple awards in 2008. The city was in 2010 chosen as one of two walking & cycling "Model Communities" by the government. Based on New Plymouth's already positive attitude towards cyclists and pedestrians, the city received $3.71m to invest into infrastructure and community programmes to boost walking and cycling (read more).

Canada - Prince Edward Island - Pituamkek National Park Reserve

Pituamkek National Park is Canada's newest national park, located on the northwestern shores of Prince Edward Island in Canada.

Sent by Anni from Yarmouth in Nova Scotia, Canada

Pituamkek National Park Reserve (also Hog Island Sandhills) is a Canadian national park reserve encompassing a chain of barrier islands along the northern coast of Prince Edward Island. The park reserve was formally established on July 4, 2024, with a proposed protected area of approximately 30 km² (12 sq mi), although the boundaries of the park reserve are not yet finalized.

The national park reserve includes a 50-kilometre (31 mi) chain of barrier islands stretching from the Cascumpec Sand Hills in the northwest to the Malpeque Sand Hills in the southeast, with Conway Sand Hills in between. The area also includes Oulton's Island near Alberton, Hog Island near the Lennox Island First Nation, and several small islands in Malpeque Bay including Bird, Ram, and Courtin Islands, and also includes a strip of land along the Prince Edward Island shore. The estimated area of the park reserve is 30 square kilometres (12 sq mi); the boundaries of the protected area have not been finalized.

The barrier islands separate Cascumpec and Malpeque Bays from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and protect the main shore from severe weather events. Both bays are designated Important Bird Areas which include the respective sand hills and some of the islands. The sand dunes provide habitat and nesting ground for several threatened species including the piping plover and little brown bat. Situated within the chain is Iron Rock, an unusual igneous rock formation and the only volcanic incursion in the province (read more).