Category: International

  • Triangle

    With a name like Triangle, I expected some actual triangles. I pondered that possibility as I sat on Interstate 95 during heavy weekend traffic, returning from an overnight trip to Richmond. I found plenty of time to consider that notion too as I traveled through Triangle on the interminably slow route on a notoriously congested…

  • Connecting Through Midway

    I hadn’t flown through Chicago’s Midway Airport much until recently. Then Southwest Airlines started offering flights at my local airport and many of its connections passed through Midway. I always hated connecting flights — and flying in general — although I admitted a preference for Midway over O’Hare. I never pondered its name though. Midway…

  • Richmond Ad Infinitum

    I came across an interesting naming string as I researched Noble Layers. It didn’t quite fit the definition of that earlier article. Even so I found it fascinating in its own right, and it deserved recognition. Richemont, Seine-Maritime It began, maybe, in a remote corner of Normandy a millennium ago. There stood the village of…

  • Venice of Whatever

    I kept running into places that compared themselves to Venice as I uncovered canal superlatives. Literally dozens of places described themselves that way. It made things easy for Twelve Mile Circle too. I could select whatever examples I wanted today because I couldn’t possibly cover them all. That seemed like an excellent opportunity to create…

  • On Canals

    In Latin, the word canna means reed, the root of canalis meaning “water pipe, groove, [or] channel.” The French language retained this term as it evolved from Latin, and the English language adopted it to describe a pipe for transporting liquid. This transformed to its modern English usage by the Seventeenth Century to represent an…

  • Weather or Not

    Several places named Hurricane — all found far from a coastline — interested me a few weeks ago. From there I wrote a simple article I called Inland Hurricane. I also wondered if the same peculiarity extended to other weather phenomena so I began to search some more. I found mixed results. Even so I…

  • Moorish Revival

    Occasionally Twelve Mile Circle likes to feature lesser known architectural styles. For example Rock Cut, Pueblo Deco, Egyptian Rivival and Octagons all appeared in these pages. I came across another one I found both fascinating and rare that I wanted to share. I’d never heard of Moorish Revival before. This design became modestly popular during…

  • Where’s Waldo?

    I selected US Route 23 through Ohio as we drove back from Michigan. This would have been a long detour in normal circumstances. However I wanted to count a few new counties so I cut through a quiet slice of the state instead. So hours passed, boredom hovered nearby and I invented little non sequiturs…

  • Brought Home from the Mexican War

    Texas claimed its independence from Mexico in 1836 as a result of the Texas Revolution. It became a sovereign nation. Even so, Mexico considered Texas part of its rightful territory. Texas faced many difficulties during its early years as a new country as it struggled to keep going and it pushed to join the United…

  • Last Places in Commonwealth Countries

    The series of Last Places continued. One should feel free to consult the previous articles, Last Place in England and Last Places in Asia, to understand the premise. I found it more difficult to uncover examples this time so I broadened the base, extending my search to the entire set of the Commonwealth of Nations…