Wherio #22 — August 3rd, 2026

Paraguay’s independence movement began on the night of May 14, 1811, when local officers and political leaders confronted the colonial government. By the following day, Spanish governor Bernardo de Velasco accepted a new governing arrangement that placed authority in local hands. A junta was then established to govern the province. The largely bloodless revolution ended effective Spanish rule without immediate intervention from neighboring territories.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated on the Mediterranean shore of Alexandria, Egypt, a gleaming tilted disc of glass and granite commemorating the ancient Library of Alexandria lost in antiquity. Its main reading room was the largest in the world at completion, with shelf space for eight million volumes in Arabic, English, French and more. Conceived as a revival of the ancient world’s greatest center of learning, the library and cultural complex has become modern Alexandria’s intellectual landmark, boosted by donations including half a million books from France.

Taiwan lifted martial law on July 15, 1987, ending restrictions that had been in force for thirty-eight years. The martial law period had limited political organization, the press, and public dissent under Kuomintang rule. Its termination accelerated political liberalization and allowed opposition parties and independent publications greater freedom. The change became a major step in Taiwan’s transition toward multiparty democracy.

Deep in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, treasure looters stumbled on the jungle-choked terraces of an ancient city of the Tairona people, reachable only by climbing some 1,200 stone steps. Known as Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City, and to indigenous descendants as Teyuna, the site of 169 mountainside terraces, tiled paths and circular plazas is believed to have been founded around 800 AD, predating Machu Picchu by roughly 650 years. Once looters’ gold trinkets surfaced in markets, archaeologists followed, and today a multi-day trek brings visitors to the ruins.

Illegal metal-detectorists digging on the Mittelberg hill near Nebra, in eastern Germany, unearthed a bronze disc inlaid with gold symbols: a sun or full moon, a crescent, and a cluster of seven stars read as the Pleiades. The Nebra sky disc, about 30 centimeters across with arcs marking the solstice angles, is interpreted as one of the oldest known depictions of the cosmos. Recovered from the black market in a police sting, it is now a UNESCO-recognized treasure and the centerpiece of the museum in Halle.