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Fleeting Wonders: Winter's Toughest Bugs Have Antifreeze Blood
A snow fly does its thing. (Photo: D. Sikes/Flickr)It's winter. You're cold, you can't get anywhere, everything smells like road salt, and shoveling is both mandated and dangerous. At least there...
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Tinku in Macha, Bolivia
In the Bolivian Aymara tradition, tinku has its origins in a ritualistic form of combat dating back to the time of the Spanish Conquistadors, who arrived in the region of Potosí and enslaved the...
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The Women Who Rose High in the Early Days of Hot Air Ballooning
Spectators watching French balloonist Jeanne-Genevieve Labrosse ascending in a balloon on 28 March 1802. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)On the evening of July 6, 1819, British tourist John Poole...
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Walterboro Water Tower in Walterboro, South Carolina
Walterboro, South Carolina is a small city of about 5,000 people, 50 miles or so west of Charleston. They have an annual Rice Festival, an Army Airfield with a Tuskegee Airmen Memorial, and an 800-acre...
View ArticleVideo Wonder: Mountain Unicycling
Think mountain biking looks tricky? Remove a wheel, and you’ve got mountain unicycling.As Ross, a 52-year-old unicyclist, notes in the video above, this unusual sport is “a very very inefficient way to...
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Were Portuguese Explorers the First Europeans To Find Australia?
Is this the first map of Australia? (Photo: Wikipedia)Did a secret search for Marco Polo’s islands of gold lead Portuguese explorers to be the first Europeans to discover Australia? According to some...
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The Witch of Pungo Statue in Virginia Beach, Virginia
This statue, off a busy road in Virginia Beach is dedicated to Grace Sherwood, aka the "witch of Pungo."The last individual known to have been convicted of witchcraft in the Commonwealth of Virginia,...
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An Afternoon At Boston's Newest Parody Storefront, 'Cash For Your Warhol'
Cash For Your Warhol, Inman Square's newest fake business. (All Photos: Atlas Obscura)Inman Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a quiet neighborhood that feels distant from the city’s universities,...
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Hal W. Adams Bridge in Luraville, Florida
While Florida is a bridge heavy state, the Hal W. Adams bridge something special, at least for Floridians.With a structure length is 687 feet, the state's very first suspension bridge is made with...
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Colón Cemetery in Havana, Cuba
When you think of world-class cemeteries, places like Paris, London, New Orleans, or Buenos Aires might come to mind. But this cemetery in the heart of Havana is as stately and impressive as any of the...
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Du Cane Court in London, England
Du Cane Court is a strikingly beautiful Art Deco apartment building in Balham, South London. It opened in 1937 with 676 apartments, making it one of the largest blocks of flats to be found anywhere in...
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West End Overlook in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
If one sees a picture of the Pittsburgh city skyline, most likely it was taken at this small parklet that was once a Native American lookout, but has now turned into just an incredible vista for urban...
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The Century-Old Comic Strip Devoted to Cheese-Fueled Nightmares
The stuff dreams are made of: Welsh rarebit. (Photo: Fanfo/shutterstock.com)The relationship between greasy midnight snacks and unusual dreams began logically enough–when Americans started staying up...
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Object of Intrigue: Soviet Space Dog Jug
(Photo: El Pantera/Wikipedia)The best way to drink vodka is not from an ice luge or in a martini that's shaken, not stirred. It is from a rocket full of Soviet space dogs.Vintage porcelain jugs bearing...
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Augsburger Puppenkiste in Augsburg, Germany
In Ausberg Germany there is a theater/museum that is haunted by decades of dangling wooden homunculi that have been delighting audiences for the better part of a century. The Augsburger Puppenkiste...
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FOUND: A New Beatrix Potter Story About a Cat with a 'Double Life'
Potter in 1915 (Photo: Wikimedia)In 1914, Beatrix Potter was working on a new story featuring her cast of mischievous animals. It was called the "The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots," and it featured "a...
View ArticleVideo Wonder: A DIY Backyard Luge Track
Think you know sledding? You ain't got nothing on these kids, who transformed their entire backyard into a home-made luge run perfect for plastic saucers.In the video, the sledders double as...
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Gustavianum Anatomical Theater in Uppsala, Sweden
Despite its candy-colored paint job, the University of Uppsala's anatomical theater has, to some, been a nightmarish theater of horror for going on four centuries now. Inside the university's old main...
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How the ‘Einstein of Sex’ Kept the World’s First LGBT Movie Safe from Nazis
A scene from Different from the Others, in which Körner meets his blackmailer (Photo: Courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive)The first LGBT film ever made was released in Berlin, not long after...
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Lake Yamanaka in Yamanakako, Japan
Mount Fuji is a couple of hour’s drive southwest of Tokyo, and it is surrounded by the area known as Fuji-Goko, or Fuji Five Lakes. The "Fuji Five" of Fuji-Goko refers to the cluster of lakes around...
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