A museum dedicated to the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney opened in Bellaghy, Northern Ireland, on Sept. 30. Seamus Heaney HomePlace (45 Main St., Bellaghy, BT45 8HT, Northern Ireland, UK; phone +44 028 7938 7444, www.seamusheaney home.com) explores the real-life inspirations for the poet’s work, with interactive exhibits and video interviews. It also houses a replica of Heaney’s study in his Dublin home. The permanent collection shows personal...

Airlines and cruise lines banned passengers from traveling with Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones after that model exhibited a tendency to burst into flames, as one did on a Southwest Airlines plane on Oct. 6, forcing a landing and evacuation. Samsung enacted two recalls of the phone, the second after reports that some replacement units also had caught fire. Samsung then announced it would no longer produce the phone and would be giving refunds to all owners.

With more than 350 Roman funerary urns and architectural items on display, the catacombs at Sir John Soane’s Museum (13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, England, WC2A 3BP, UK; phone + 44 [0] 20 7405 2107, www.soane.org) finally opened to the public, 180 years after the death of Sir John Soane. Sir John, a 19th-century London architect, built his palatial mansion to house his collection of artifacts and willed that it be made into a museum. However, after he died, parts of the...