Take a Virtual Tour of the Firefly Forest, a Kansas Park Turned Gnome Village
In the spring of 2013, local news stations in Overland Park, Kansas began reporting sightings of peculiarly magical structures along the wooded Tomahawk Creek Trail. Miniature houses with doors,...
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How Cab Drivers Changed the London Landscape
On a cold, snowy night in January 1875, Captain G. C. Armstrong couldn’t get a cab. Cabs at the time were single-horse, two-wheeled hackney carriages, with a small interior that barely protected the...
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Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Canada
Just north of Maine across the Canadian border, you'll find Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, the only town in the world with not just one but two exclamation points in its name. This small town was founded in...
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The Deer Moat Pedestrian Tunnel in Prague, Czech Republic
Inside the walls of Prague Castle there are buildings dating as far back as the 9th century. Even the newer ones are from the Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance periods, and together, along with the...
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The Quiet Failure of Sony’s Giant Cassette Tape
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.Roughly a year and a half ago, I made a pitch that we were due for a...
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Chicago Water Cribs in Chicago, Illinois
The Chicago water cribs are the only visible portion of the century-old tunnels that carry drinking water to city taps. The circular stone structures protect intake vents that connect with brick-lined...
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Museum of Business History and Technology in Wilmington, Delaware
Hidden within the otherwise mundane offices of a legal software firm you'll find an impressive collection of office machinery through the ages.There are hundreds of typewriters here, including,...
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Quo Vadis in Prague, Czechia
One of David Černý's many sculptures spread throughout his hometown of Prague, Quo Vadis depicts the iconic East German Trabant walking on four human legs. It is a tribute to the many East Germans who...
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Rudolph Grotto Gardens in Rudolph, Wisconsin
The Rudolph Grotto Gardens includes St. Jude's Chapel and wild gardens, but the real draw are the Wonder Caves. They resemble catacombs and consist of 26 shrines and dioramas along a .2 mile tunnel....
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Grave of David Rice Atchison in Plattsburg, Missouri
There may be one president we're forgetting about.In the annals of who has been president of the United States, due to interpretation of the laws of succession, there is potentially one man who was...
View ArticleWatch Two NASA Astronauts Replace Batteries In Space
Even the International Space Station needs its batteries changed every once in a while. This past Friday, NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson took on the task, beginning the swapping-out...
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Pooh's House in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Pooh's house is a tiny, painted door at the base of a tree stump that has been a fixture of the Harvard University campus for decades, though it has a complicated history that's not always sunny. It's...
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The Long, Unusual History of the Pickled Cucumber
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.Of the many things that we lost in 2016, one of the saddest losses might have...
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A Massive Tunnel Tree in California Has Fallen
One-hundred-and-thirty-seven-years ago, someone carved a tunnel in the base of a massive sequoia tree in Calaveras County, California. For all the years since then you could walk through it, or just...
View ArticleWatch a Snail Lay Pink Eggs
Do yourself a favor and skip straight to minute 3:30 of this life-changing video.You'll see little Pepto-Bismal-colored pink bloops glide out of this snail's somewhere-or-other. What you've just...
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Sod Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida
Football is big at Florida State University, and steeped in tradition. There's the wearing of team colors, tailgating with friends, planting of the spear with Chief Osceola and Renegade, the war chant...
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Space Chess Is Here, But No One Is Playing
If Lieutenant Commander Spock is known for one thing, it's his signature Vulcan handsign for "Live Long and Prosper." But if he's known for a few more things, one of them is definitely his mastery of...
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Found: Historic Ketchup, Buried Under a Music Venue for More Than a Century
In 1985, the Astoria opened in London as a live music venue, where for decades some of Britain’s greatest bands played for packed houses and London’s LGBTQ nightlife thrived. But before this spot on...
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Old Dragon's Head in Qinhuangdao Shi, China
The "10,000-mile-long wall" (万里长城), or the Great Wall of China as we know it, is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Every year, thousands of tourists flock to climb the stone stairs at Badaling,...
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The Bird-Like Soviet Flying Machine That Never Quite Took Off
One day in 1932, Russian avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin ventured from his studio in Moscow’s ancient Novodevichy convent to a country field. After five years of work, he wanted to test what would...
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