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The Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois
For someone whose reputation rests on rendering historic scenes in terrific precision, it's oddly charming that the world's most respected creator of miniature worlds got her start by depicting...
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Bellows Falls Petroglyphs in Saint Albans City, Vermont
On the bedrock wall at the base of the Great Falls in Vermont, is a prehistoric petroglyph site. Or maybe not. Are those antennae?Bellows Falls is home to two clusters of petroglyphs, located about 50...
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The Rock at Pagua in Atkinson, Dominica
The Rock at Pagua is the setting of one of the most interesting legends of the Kalinago people involving mind control, flowers, and maybe a zombie.According to the folklore of the indigenous Kalinago...
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How Jellyfish Exhibits Became Underwater Dance Clubs
Infinite blue in action. (Photo: Dan90266/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 2.0)Jellyfish are, with all due respect, incredibly weird. They're 95 percent water, and spend their lives being pulled to and fro by...
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Julian P. Kanter Political Commercial Archive in Norman, Oklahoma
The part that radio and television has played in our ever-changing political culture is a fascinating one. Looking back at how these mediums have been used by politicians to secure (or surrender) their...
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H. H. Richardson Complex in Buffalo, New York
Originally the Buffalo State Hospital, the H. H. Richardson Complex was the largest commission of architect Henry Hobson Richardson's prolific career, which sadly ended with his death before its...
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Ginkgo Petrified Forest in Vantage, Washington
As most children can attest, among the most frustrating parental sayings on the planet is "Only time makes ice." Enhancing this annoyance are petrified forests, reminding us mothers the world over...
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The 50-Foot Long Map of Manhattan Only On View for 6 Hours
A piece of the 50-ft. map on display in mid-October. (Photo: Courtesy of Manhattan Borough President's Office.) In 1811, Manhattan’s famous form—its grid of streets and avenues—crystallized. The three...
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Anzob Tunnel in Ayni, Tajikistan
The purpose of a tunnel is to get you from one place to another, preferably alive. The Anzob Tunnel is making no promises in that regard.5,040 meters of tunneled asphalt make up the connection between...
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Fleeting Wonders: Name the Newest Moth
What will you name this moth? (Image: Western National Parks Association)The right to name a newly discovered species generally goes to the person who made the find, but one entomologist has decided to...
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Doll Garden of Sabile in Sabile, Latvia
Sabile is largely known for its lovely wine-growing hill, but near this well-known landmark, is a small and strange garden filled with hundreds of pale straw dolls.All the dolls look rather similar in...
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Doxey Pool in Leek, Staffordshire
The mysterious Doxey Pool can be found on the path that runs across the top of the Roaches, a gritstone escarpment not far from the Staffordshire/Derbyshire border. The pool is relatively small,...
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A 16th Century Pope Buried His Pet Elephant Under the Vatican
One of Raphael's sketches of Hanno (Image: Raphael/Wikimedia)In February of 1962, while digging up the Vatican's Belvedere Courtyard to modernize a heating and cooling system, a group of Italian...
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Here's the Deal: Dirt is Amazing
It's about time we stopped treating soil like dirt. (Image: Natural Resources Conservation Service/Flickr)If there is anything on the Earth more underrated than dirt, you’d be hard pressed to find it....
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How a Fake Priest Smuggled Mezcal Out of Mexico
Mezcal bottles at a factory in Oaxaca. (Photo: ProtoplasmaKid/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 4.0)“Regalos para mis amigos y libros para los ninos.” John Rexer cringed as he heard the words come out of his mouth....
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Object of Intrigue: Postcard from a Cuban Boneyard
(Photo: © Stanley B. Burns, MD & The Burns Archive)Greetings from Havana in 1898, where American soldiers fresh from the Spanish-American War hung out in a cemetery fondling human skulls. The...
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Why There are Still Borders Bookstores in Malaysia, Or The Strange Case of...
The Berjaya Times Square mall in Kuala Lumpur, where Borders is still going strong. (Photo: Davidlohr Bueso/flickr)When bookstore megachain Borders filed for bankruptcy in 2011, it had completed its...
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Itaipu Dam in Paraná River, Brazil
This modern wonder of the engineering world is producing more electricity than almost any other hydroelectric power station in the world.On May 5th, 1984, more than nine years after construction...
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FOUND: 9 Minutes of Lost 'Night of the Living Dead' Zombie Footage
Zombies! (Image: Night of the Living Dead)In the 1960s, when George Romero was making the classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead, one nine minute chunk—supposedly "the largest zombie scene in...
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Siste Skanse in Tromsø, Norway
There's something uniquely thrilling, stubborn, and enchanting about choosing to use antiquated technology in a modern society; few places on Earth better make use of all three of these characteristics...
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