A slightly creepy gallery of plaster cast models in the same museum as Michelangelo's David.

The middle finger of modernity.

The remains of Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, serve as a tool to educate about conservation.

Fittingly, America's museum of architecture is itself a magnificently designed old building.

A former major munitions plant that has been converted into a sprawling art space.

The little-known, 300-year history of the area includes former lives as a bustling tobacco port, parking lot, and industrial dump.

Herbert Hoover's "Brown House" rural presidential retreat was a PR disaster amid the start of the Great Depression.

Behind an abandoned storefront is an example of pioneering 1930s gas station architecture.

This poor little statue is the most vandalized memorial in Washington.

The United States Capitol's former columns still stand.

You could be standing at the site of one of D.C.'s most fatal tragedies and not even know it.

One of the dwarven trees dates back to 1625 and survived the Hiroshima bombing.

An ancient instrument used to measure the waters of the Nile so Egyptian farmers would know whether to expect famine or flood.

The massive cave church of Cairo's Zabbaleen community is one of the largest Christian churches in the Middle East.

In Egypt's expanding metro area, many of the neighbors are dead.

Source for a sizable portion of Egypt's freshwater supply is more than an optical illusion.

An alien landscape of chalk-rock in the Egyptian desert.

It might not be the prettiest pyramid in Egypt, but it may be the muddiest.

Egyptian treasure trove of fossils documenting the whale's transition from land mammal to sea creature.

Brightly painted boulders scattered throughout the Sinai Desert.

Charnel house at the foot of Mount Sinai.

Nine Gardens in one—with tea service.

A beautiful bamboo trail tucked in this famous Japanese Shrine.

The sound of swaying stalks in this stunning grove has been named a governmentally recognized sound.