Author: Ms. R.

Each week, Atlas Obscura is providing a new short excerpt from our upcoming book, Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders (September 17, 2024). Can you imagine a crab the size of a cat scuttling around your backyard, climbing up trees, and quietly sneaking away with your shiniest pots and silverware? No? Then perhaps you’ve never had the privilege of meeting a coconut crab. Coconut crabs are the world’s largest land-based crustaceans. These mostly gentle giants……

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When entering a small town in Wisconsin, a 100-foot-tall Dutch windmill is probably not the first thing one expects to see. But that’s exactly what you’ll see in Little Chute. The windmill was designed as if it had been constructed in the 1850s in the Dutch region of North Brabant, by fourth-generation millwright Lucas Verbij. It was initially built in the Netherlands, then disassembled and shipped overseas to Little Chute, where construction was completed in 2013.  Currently, the windmill is……

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On the 16th of October, 1908, Samuel F Cody, in his British Army Aeroplane No.1, made the first powered, manned, and sustained flight in the United Kingdom.  Samuel Cody was an American Wild West showman who, having developed an interest in flight, settled in Farnborough, which was already a center for aviation development. Here, Cody designed and built a flying machine, using materials from the Farnborough Balloon Factory. In 1907, Cody began constructing a powered aircraft of a similar……

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Hopkinton is a relatively small town around 25 miles slightly southwest of Boston surrounded by other equally small towns in the Metrowest area. However, once a year this town becomes the focal point for national attention as hundreds of thousands of people participate in the Boston Marathon. The Boston Marathon began in 1897 inspired by the success of the world’s first Summer Olympics a year earlier. The original starting line was located near Metcalf’s Mill in the neighboring town……

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In 2008, kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato rescued a shiba inu named Kabosu from a puppy mill. Like many pet owners, she took a lot of photos of her dog and posted them on her blog. One of those photos wound up capturing the attention of the internet. In the now-iconic photo, Kabosu is looking at the camera with a skeptical side-eye, paws crossed daintily in front of her. You might not know Kabosu by her actual name, but by……

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Hope you brought your boards for this deep dive into the world of surfing. In the Atlas Obscura archives, we found the Hawaiian princess who saved the sport from extinction, the man who made California’s beaches a more inclusive place, and an intrepid community that turned surfing the Great Lakes in winter into an actual thing. These Intrepid Surfers Chill Out Riding the Great Lakes’ Wintry Waves by Eden Arielle Gordon Icy wind rolls off the shores of Lake……

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The exact origins of the modern term “fan” are disputed, but most look to the 1880s, where it was first used by American newspapers to describe particularly invested baseball enthusiasts. But “fan” was just one of the words the press, leagues, clubs, and baseball enthusiasts themselves were using at the time. They were called “enthusiasts,” but also a whole host of other names, from “rooters” to “bugs” to “fiends” to “cranks,” sometimes spelled—as in the German word for “sick”—as……

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