“Yucca is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the agave family, Agavaceae. Its 40-50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry (arid) parts of North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Early reports of the species were confused with the cassava (Manihot esculenta). Consequently, Linnaeus mistakenly derived the generic name from the Carib word for the latter, yuca. It is also colloquially known in the midwest United States as “Ghosts in the graveyard”, as it is commonly found growing in rural graveyards and when in bloom the flowers appear as an apparition floating.” – Wikipedia

Photo: A yucca standing among flowers bursts forth a very large stalk of flowers as a heavy wildflower bloom on June 21, 2005 in the Angeles National Forest northwest of La Canada, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

For more than a century, the Barcelona skyline has been graced (or marred, depending on who’s talking) by the spectacle of the Basilica designed by Anton Gaudi, first started in 1882. If you want to know what it’ll look like when finished, don’t fret — 2026 is right around the corner. Or you can watch this video, released last week on YouTube by Basílica de la Sagrada Família and titled simply “2026 We Build Tomorrow,” a 3-D artists’ rendering of the building stages through completion.
(If 144 years sounds like a long time to finish a cathedral, keep in mind that there were decades that they didn’t work on it — and that Notre Dame de Paris took 182 years, although the 13th century Parisians didn’t have diesel-powered industrial cranes.) Now, if only the video could show us what the admission and hours will be in 2026 (and how to avoid the inevitable long lines).

It’s a classic tale of dictatorship gone wrong and the fight for freedom. Like in any good battle, there’s fire, albeit from firecrackers, but the ammunition in this one is – flour. It takes place in a Hemingway-esque Spanish village. The battle of “Enfarinats” in celebration of the Els Enfarinats festival, rages on on December 28, 2012 in Ibi, Spain. Citizens of Ibi annually celebrate the festival with a fight using flour, eggs and firecrackers. The battle takes place between two groups, a group of married men called “Els Enfarinats” who take the control of the village for one day pronouncing a number of ridiculous laws and fining the citizens that infringe them and a group called “La Oposicio” who try to restore order. At the end of the day the money collected from the fines is donated to charitable causes in the village. The festival has been celebrated since 1981 after the town of Ibi recovered the tradition but the origins remain unknown.

Photo: A Reveller smokes during the battle of “Enfarinats”, a flour fight in celebration of the Els Enfarinats festival. (Photo by David Ramos)

High-wire artist Kane Petersen successfully walks a tightrope 300 metres above the ground at Eureka Skydeck on September 16, 2015 in Melbourne, Australia. The walk was the highest tightrope walk ever attempted in the Southern Hemisphere. The stunt is to mark the arrival of the film “The Walk” to Australian cinemas in October. The stunt saw Kane mimic the film's French high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who successfully walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

Freya Smith aged three, leads one of Erth’s giant dinosaur puppets across the road on August 6, 2019 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Australian theatre company Erth presents their best-selling show Dinosaur’s Zoo as part of Underbelly’s Fringe programme. Featuring giant dinosaur puppets which walk, roar and blink like the real thing, Dinosaur’s Zoo is a perfect example of edutainment for children of all ages, taking place at the McEwan Hall every day of the Fringe at 11am. (Photo by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)

A Ford Motor Company 1954 V8 model car parked in a garage in the village of Quivican, south of Havana, October 11, 2009. (Photo by Desmond Boylan/Reuters)

A motorway bridge crosses the icy Hunhe River in Shenyang, China on December 12, 2019. (Photo by Costfoto/Barcroft Media)

People sit near a fully loaded in Madama near the border with Lybia on January 1, 2015. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian paid a surprise visit to northern Niger on January 1, to visit a base being built to combat the growing flow of weapons and jihadists from neighbouring Libya. Le Drian travelled from Chad to Madama, a desert outpost about 100 kilometres from Libya, where he saw in the New Year with troops at a French base. Madama is situated on the route used by jihadists and arms smugglers in southern Libya to reach northern Mali and Niger. (Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP Photo)