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The Queen's Hamlet

The Queen’s Hamlet is a charming attraction in the park of the Palace of Versailles, built for Marie Antoinette in the 18th century. It consists of a group of rustic cottages and farm buildings, arranged around an artificial lake, that served as a place of leisure and education for the queen and her children. The hamlet was inspired by the naturalistic movement in art and architecture, and by the model farms that were popular among the French aristocracy at the time. The hamlet was also a way for Marie Antoinette to escape the formalities and pressures of the court life, and to enjoy a simpler and more intimate lifestyle. The hamlet was designed by Richard Mique and Hubert Robert, who also modified the landscape of the Petit Trianon, where the hamlet is located. The hamlet has three distinct areas: the reception area, where the queen entertained her guests in the boudoir, the billiard room, and the Queen’s House; the farm area, where the animals and crops were raised and the dair
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Flying Free in Space


Bruce McCandless, the Nasa astronaut who was the first one to fly freely and untethered in space, died in 2017. He was famously photographed in 1984 flying with a spacewalker’s jetpack, alone in the cosmic blackness above the Earth. He traveled more than 90m (300ft) away from the space shuttle Challenger during the spacewalk.

“The iconic photo of Bruce soaring effortlessly in space has inspired generations of Americans to believe that there is no limit to the human potential,” senator John McCain said in a statement. The Arizona Republican and McCandless were classmates at the US naval academy.

In an interview in 2006, McCandless said he had not been nervous about the historic spacewalk. “I was grossly over-trained. I was just anxious to get out there and fly. I felt very comfortable ... It got so cold my teeth were chattering and I was shivering, but that was a very minor thing,” he told the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado.

During that flight, McCandless and fellow astronaut Robert Stewart pioneered the use of Nasa’s backpack device that allowed astronauts walking in space to propel themselves from the shuttle. Stewart became the second person to fly untethered two hours after McCandless.
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