Europe

In February 1945, the British submarine HMS Venturer sank the German U-boat U-864 off Norway’s Fedje island, killing all 73 people aboard. More than eight decades later, the wreck has become the centre of a very different problem: a potentially massive mercury cargo that remains on the seabed. In June 2026, Norwegian authorities recovered 22…

Broad beans in the pod. Image Credit: Wikipedia A broad bean grown by the same Somerset family since 1875 has become part of a national collection of heritage vegetables. Known as Grandfather Bean, the variety has been maintained by the Burge family for around 150 years, with seed passed down through generations. In 2025, it…

Image Credit: Picpedia.org The England & Wales High Court has ruled on the will of Mark Briant, a 92-year-old man who changed his will while living with his daughter and son-in-law in 2022. The change reduced his wife Rosemary’s inheritance to a life interest in half of his estate, leaving her without an automatic right…

For nearly three centuries, layers of plain paint and plaster hid a remarkable secret inside one of Rome’s long-neglected Renaissance villas. Now, restorers peeling back those layers are bringing colourful scenes of gods, goddesses, soldiers and mythological figures back into view, as per a report by Smithsonian Magazine.The rediscovered artwork is inside Villa Silvestri Rivaldi,…

The House of Dreams Museum began in 1998. Image Credit: Stephen Wright official website A London artist has spent decades turning his home into a dense and colourful record of his life, covering walls, ceilings and outdoor spaces with thousands of discarded and collected objects. Stephen Wright’s House of Dreams in East Dulwich began as…

PC: Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) Archaeologists have uncovered a rare Roman-era workshop area in western Dortmund, Germany, during an excavation of a settlement dating from the 1st to 5th centuries AD. The site contains several areas with pits, furnaces, and hearths. It also has the first pottery kiln found at the site and exceptionally well-preserved workshops…

PC: Cambridge University Press Archaeologists have identified at least 500 forged iron bars recovered from the Danube in Upper Austria as the largest known assemblage of Iron Age iron in Europe. The discovery was made in 2019 during gravel extraction at Deinham, when workers found double-pointed iron objects in material taken from beneath the river’s…

As much as wind turbines are important, once their blades are decommissioned, all that’s left for them is to live in landfills for years. Europe is on track for a record win year, with 8.8 GW of new capacity installed in the first half of 2026, a 30% jump year on year. That’s enough electricity…

Bulgaria’s Griffon Vulture population has returned to Vrachanski Balkan Nature Park after more than 60 years without breeding there. Between 2010 and 2020, conservationists released 61 rehabilitated and captive-bred Griffon Vultures from Spain, France and European zoos as part of a long-term reintroduction programme. The effort eventually led to successful breeding in the wild, with…

Puffy Coat drawing. Image Credit: Little Inventors A 7-year-old British student has seen her ocean-inspired idea move from a child’s drawing towards a real prototype. Lillie’s Puffy Coat was one of four inventions selected from hundreds of entries in the Little Inventors programme, supported by Dogger Bank Wind Farm and South Tyneside Council. Inspired by…