Source: Wikimedia Commons
The home party is remembered as a joke: a living room of women, a demonstration, some faintly humiliating games and a catalogue. It is one of the most…
This is one of those differences that nobody notices until they travel, and then cannot stop noticing.
In the United States, up is on. The toggle points to the ceiling…
There is a pattern in American buildings that is so consistent it looks designed, and in a sense it was.
Commercial, public and institutional buildings use lever handles. Houses use…
An American moving to Europe discovers a washing machine the size of a filing cabinet, built into a kitchen run, with a round glass door and a cycle that takes…
Americans visiting Europe are startled to find that a bedroom has no closet and that storing clothes is the occupant's problem. Europeans in America are startled by the opposite: a…
It is a genuinely strange naming system once you look at it. Two of the five standard American bed sizes are named after monarchs, one is named after a state,…