Great news! Looks like I'm getting published by National Geographic again! Hard work pays off, even if you don't always see immediate results. Get busy and make sure that what you do today counts, friends!
And go to the gym.๐โ๏ธ๐ช
An Englishman paid for them. Paris named them after him. France never officially thanked him.
Sir Richard Wallace was born illegitimate and largely self-made. He had lived in Paris most of his life, inherited a fortune, and built one of the great private art collections in Europe. When the Franco-Prussian War put the city under siege in 1870, most of the wealthy left. Wallace stayed.
He spent an estimated 2.5 million francs of his own money on ambulances, soup kitchens, fuel, and housing for the city's poorest residents. Clean drinking water had become a luxury. The poor bought it from street vendors at prices they could barely afford, or drank from the Seine.
In 1872, Wallace commissioned sculptor Charles-Auguste Lebourg to design cast-iron drinking fountains: ornate, elegant, placed on the busiest pavements of every arrondissement (district). The first was installed on Boulevard de la Villette in July 1872. Fifty more followed within the year, each paid for entirely out of his own pocket.
The four female figures holding up the dome are caryatids representing Kindness, Simplicity, Charity, and Sobriety. Each fountain originally had tin cups chained to it so anyone could drink. The cups were removed in 1952 for hygiene reasons.
Around 120 of the original grand model fountains remain in Paris today, still delivering free drinking water.
Wallace died in 1890. He never received formal recognition from the French state.
ยฉ ForeverParis
Honey Mushrooms (Armillaria sp.)
Honey mushrooms (Armillaria sp.) growing near the summit of the heavily forested Little Mt. Si in North Bend, Washington, showing three distinctive phases of cap growth. As with many mushrooms, exact species are hard to distinguish and the taxonomy keeps changing, but luckily all of these honey mushrooms are edible and quite a commonly-collected type prized by forest foragers. It is advised that these be thoroughly cooked as these mushrooms are said to have variable levels of toxicity when eaten raw.
See more at: https://t.co/LMQmmI0x1v
Queen (Danaus gilippus)
Queen butterfly feeding on a wildflower in the Big Cypress National Preserve. This is a butterfly nearly always found in and around wetlands in South Florida with lots of wildflowers.
See more at: https://t.co/xW97w2xsvj
Further, Iโve never seen so many people
out on a Sunday night at the Lincoln Memorial to see the reflection. Decline is a choice - as is refusing decline, putting in the work to keep things beautiful and being proud of our capital city/our incredible country. ๐บ๐ธ