Author: Ms. R.

Passersby could be forgiven for overlooking the tall loblolly pine a few hundred feet south of Grosvenor Lane in Bethesda, Maryland. After all, the sole indication that it’s anything more than a stately conifer is a worn wooden plaque at the base marked only with the number 12. As a matter of fact, this specimen is one of the “moon trees” grown from seeds carried on Apollo 14, deposited here among care homes and condominiums by the unexpected history……

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Memorials for terrorist attack victims were relatively rare in France prior to 2015; with just half a dozen plaques commemorating events that occurred between 1974 and 2015. Sadly, this changed, with an increase in attacks on French soil beginning in 2015. One such attack occurred in Nice on the evening of July 14, 2016, Bastille Day.   A cargo truck was driven into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais. The attack resulted in the deaths of 86……

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Opened in 1941, Molina’s Cantina is Houston’s oldest still-operating Tex-Mex restaurant and a venerated institution. The original location at 1919 West Gray was known as Old Monterrey. It was purchased by Raul Molina Sr., who had worked there for a decade, originally as a dishwasher and busboy, and his wife Mary. Today, the business is helmed by the family’s next generation—Raul III, Ricardo, and Roberto.  Start off your Tex-Mex feast with staples like the original “Jose’s Dip,” which blends……

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Leiden is a historical city with buildings that go back to medieval times, most of which are still inhabited. Like in Amsterdam, these buildings are largely protected and kept in their original state. For this reason, you will rarely see one of these houses painted in a bright color—except for this one, which is a rosy shade of pink. The pink house was built in 1635. Architecturally, it isn’t all that different from the hundreds of other houses from……

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Texas is home to not one, not two, but four subtly distinct styles of barbecue: Central, Southern, Hill Country, and East. The latter is often distinguished by its low and slow cooking style; use of oak, hickory, and pecan wood; and emphasis on pork. And in Houston, the best East Texas barbecue can surely be found at the four locations of Burns Original BBQ.  A mainstay of Houston’s historic Acres Homes neighborhood, the original Burns was opened in 1973……

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When it comes to essential American regional breakfast dishes, Texan kolaches could give New York bagels a run for their money. Much like bagels, kolaches arrived in the United States via European immigration. A pastry originally of Czech origin, Texan kolaches feature a pillowy dough and fillings both sweet, like apricot or cream cheese, and savory—featuring sausage and jalapeño kielbasa.  It’s worth noting that the original Czech kolaches were almost exclusively sweet, and savory varieties were actually called klobasniky…….

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According to Ancient Greek-Sicilian mythology, the Fonte Ciane was the location where Hades entered the underworld with his bride Persephone, daughter of the goddess Demeter. As the Roman author Ovid recounts, Ciane—a water nymph and companion to Persephone—attempted to prevent Hades from absconding with his unwilling bride. When her rhetoric failed to persuade the god of the underworld, the nymph Ciane was overcome with grief and dissolved into tears, creating this azure lake.   Diodorus Siculus’ The Library of History……

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Set in an Asiatown strip mall, Cajun Kitchen is Houston’s preeminent destination for Viet-Cajun—a hybrid cuisine that emerged when Vietnamese refugees along the Gulf Coast began applying the techniques of Southeast Asian seafood boils to local crawfish. Though it can be found nationally nowadays, Viet-Cajun is undeniably a Houston specialty.  Originally opened in 2005 as a traditional Cajun crawfish restaurant, Cajun Kitchen took on a more Viet-Cajun focus in 2015 when current owner John Nguyen assumed the reins. Nguyen,……

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Cachoeiras do Horto encompasses three waterfalls, which can be accessed by a medium-difficulty hike in the woods. They’re some of the many waterfalls found in the Tijuca Forest, a national park in the heart of Rio de Janeiro and the world’s largest urban forest. Tijuca National Park is a 40 square kilometer swath of the Atlantic forest, a vast ecosystem that contains impressive biodiversity. The Atlantic forest once covered over 350 million acres, but logging, development, and other human activity……

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A flicker of firelight illuminated the campers’ faces as they leaned in to hear the lost legends of the forest. “It was a night kind of like this,” began award-winning storyteller Gary Ferguson. “The river was whispering in the distance. The smell of pine was in the air.” Just then, a whip of wind stirred the embers. Clouds enshrouded the moon and a lone howl rose up from the blackness beyond the campfire’s thin ring of light. Ferguson continued,……

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While everyone else is talking about the Tour de France, we here at Atlas Obscura are focused on the off-beat cycling competitions you’ve probably never heard of, from the all-uphill 30-second sprint of the George Hill Challenge in Worcester, Massachusetts, to the sleepless nights of the 1,155-mile Silk Road Mountain Bike Race through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. The Quirky Victorian Invention That Inspired a Risky Race by Indi Bains “It’s a combination of flying a helicopter and riding a……

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