This long-serving postbox sits outside the ticket turnstiles of Kent Station along the station’s western wall, no ticket is required. It changed in color from red to green over the decades. Cork recently added a banner recognizing its record tenure in Gaelic and English….
Columbus, Indiana, is a city of just over 50,000 people located in the southern part of the state about 45 miles (75 km) from Indianapolis. At first, Columbus may seem like an average city, but Columbus is a haven for modern architecture filled with innovative and unusual buildings. The modernist architecture movement started in Columbus with the First Christian Church, which is located within the city’s downtown area. The church was designed by Finnish-American architect Eliel Saarinen and his……
While decades of discriminatory policies and practices continue to fuel the affordable housing crisis in the United States, less than three miles from the MIT campus exists a beacon of innovation and community empowerment. “We are very proud to continue MIT’s long-standing partnership with Camfield Estates,” says Catherine D’Ignazio, associate professor of urban science and planning. “Camfield has long been an incubator of creative ideas focused on uplifting their community.” D’Ignazio co-leads a research team focused on housing as……
Banoffee, or Bannofi, Pie was supposedly first created by Nigel Mackenzie and Ian Dowding at the Hungry Monk Restaurant in Jevington, where there is a blue plaque commemorating the invention. Beginning with an American recipe for “Coffee Toffee Pie”, Mackenzie and Dowding, owner and chef of the Hungry Monk respectively, adapted this pie, creating their soft toffee by boiling an unopened can of condensed milk for several hours. They then began experimenting with adding fruit, after apples and oranges proved unsuccessful,……
In 2016, a Lexington, Kentucky, gift shop unveiled a taxidermied black bear that had been recovered by the store’s co-owners, Whitt Hyler and Griffin VanMeter. It wasn’t just any taxidermy bear—this is Cocaine Bear. In 1985, this bear overdosed on cocaine dropped by a drug smuggler in Chattahoochee, a story that inspired a movie almost 40 years later. The story goes back to 1985, when a black bear was found dead in the woods after eating roughly $15 million……
Sven Persson (1861-1928), a self-assured goat farmer known as “Bagga-Sven” or “Baggen” (“The Ram”), left behind a legacy that defies convention. In 1906, he inscribed a tribute to himself on a naturally flat upright stone near his cottage in the forest outside Ballingslöv in southern Sweden. The immodest inscription reads: “Memory of Laborer Sven Persson, The Wisest in the Christian Religion and the Greatest Astronomer in the World.” Alongside his role as a shepherd, Sven also wrote three self-published books, notably……
The 1986 novel It by Stephen King is not only a classic, but a cultural phenomenon. As many people know, Bangor, Maine was the inspiration for the fictional town of Derry where the novel takes place. The prolific writer famously lived in a Victorian house in the town for years. However, most people do not know is that the terrifying opening scene where Georgie is attacked by the evil Pennywise is based on a real location. If you go to the……
A favored sight in the waiting rooms of doctor’s offices and lobbies of laundromats, the coin-operated gumball machine has fallen on hard times of late. In Wilmington, Delaware, however, there’s still one place to get your nostalgic gumball fix–a utility box in the hip Trolley Square neighborhood. Trolley Square skews young and hip, with a bustling restaurant and nightlife scene. Also known as Forty Acres, the origin of the area’s name dates back to the 1850s, when the Wilmington……
Astronomers at MIT, NASA, and elsewhere have a new way to measure how fast a black hole spins, by using the wobbly aftermath from its stellar feasting. The method takes advantage of a black hole tidal disruption event — a blazingly bright moment when a black hole exerts tides on a passing star and rips it to shreds. As the star is disrupted by the black hole’s immense tidal forces, half of the star is blown away, while the other half is flung around……
When medical devices such as pacemakers are implanted in the body, they usually provoke an immune response that leads to buildup of scar tissue around the implant. This scarring, known as fibrosis, can interfere with the devices’ function and may require them to be removed. In an advance that could prevent that kind of device failure, MIT engineers have found a simple and general way to eliminate fibrosis by coating devices with a hydrogel adhesive. This adhesive binds the……
In the small town of Palmyra, Missouri, northwest of Hannibal (the hometown of Mark Twain), a historical property has taken on new life as Cole’s Hearth Room. Now an elevated American restaurant, the Hearth Room was a farmstead whose original barns and silo were built in 1846. During the Civil War, gurneys filled the halls of the main building so the home could function as a hospital. When the farm’s owners lost the home during the Great Depression, the……
This story is excerpted and adapted from Bob Eckstein’s Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums: Stories and Memorable Moments from People Who Love Museums, published in May 2024 by Princeton Architectural Press. All rights reserved. Museums are reflections of everything we’ve created and accomplished up until now on this planet. These are really giant selfies. While researching museums, I heard literally hundreds of stories from museum lovers, museum curators, and tourists. Here are my top 10 weirdest and most……
Located southeast of Taiwan’s mainland is Green Island, a small island about a fourth the size of Manhattan. The island’s natural beauty has long made it a famous destination for Taiwanese vacationers. History buffs are also attracted by the Green Island Human Rights Culture Park and Museum, which commemorates the island’s past as a prison and reeducation camp for political dissidents during Taiwan’s White Terror. But people have lived on the island for centuries. Long before Chiang Kai-chek sent suspected……
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we catch up with Amir Siraj—friend of the show, scientist, and world wanderer—who visited a new observatory in a Chilean desert that could help his search for rogue planets. Check out other episodes we’ve done Amir here and here. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take……
Steel is one of the most useful materials on the planet. A backbone of modern life, it’s used in skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, bridges, and more. Unfortunately, steelmaking is an extremely dirty process. The most common way it’s produced involves mining iron ore, reducing it in a blast furnace through the addition of coal, and then using an oxygen furnace to burn off excess carbon and other impurities. That’s why steel production accounts for around 7 to 9 percent of……
