Author: Ms. R.

On the promenade by the Mediterranean beach in Alexandria stands a tall column topped with a statue of Saad Zaghloul. A revolutionary who played a key role in the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, Zaghloul served as Prime Minister of Egypt from January to November 1924 after the country gained independence from British rule. While nothing from antiquity remains today, unlike such other places in the city as the Serapeum and the Roman Theater of Kom el-Dikka, the location of the……

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Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we travel back to the eve of World War II, when there was one place that was the source for all good stories: the Hotel Imperial in Vienna. It exuded luxury and power, and in the 1920s and ‘30s it was also the converging spot for foreign correspondents who were warning the world about the rise of dictatorship…….

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The children all knew the story of the Yara ma tha who. In the Aboriginal communities of the southeastern Australian coast, parents warned their sons and daughters about the little red men who hid in the boughs of the wild fig trees. Wayward boys and girls who wandered alone through the dense forests were the favored prey of these spirit men, who had lived alongside Aboriginal people since the Dreaming, when the land and its creatures were created. The……

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Sitting on the Pacific coast in northwest Washington State, Tacoma is no stranger to high winds and stormy waters. But in November 1940, the strongest gusts in years twisted the massive Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Steel beams gyrated, the road warped, and, after a final creak, the whole structure collapsed. More eerie than the spontaneous failure was the myth that bubbled up around the disaster—that it was caused not by 40 mph winds but by the meaty arms of a……

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A seemingly out-of-place comic book surprise sits on the 21st floor of the tallest university library in the world.  When. Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turt, it was an unserious and unambitious personal project that quickly spiraled their lives into unexpected stardom. Laird was born in North Adams, Massachusetts in 1954 where he then went on to study fine arts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1970. Turtlemania, as it began to be……

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Guanyin, a bodhisattva sometimes called the “Goddess of Mercy,” is revered by Chinese practitioners of Buddhism, Daoism, and folk religion alike as a savior of fishermen and sailors. Appropriate, then, that a small island off the coast of Taiwan would have a pilgrimage site dedicated to her.   In a sacred cave hidden in the hills of Green Island, the slow process of erosion by dripping water has, over the course of tens of thousands of years, created a stalagmite……

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Oxford is not only a city of dreaming spires, but also of gargoyles and grotesques, often silly and strange. The best examples of those may be found on the outer walls of Magdalen College, which are adorned by a cornucopia of creepy creatures, cartoonish chimeras, and humorous human heads. The bizarre menagerie consists of miserable-looking dragons, ugly goblins and feeble fiends, many of them screaming, while the humans go wild and unhinged in their nonsensical mania. Some taunt the……

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Fuzzy tails, wide eyes, long and distinguishable ears, and an ever-twitching nose—the rabbit seems fairly unassuming at first glance. Yet ancient beliefs about the Leporidae family refer to the creature as something crafty, otherworldly, and a bit spooky. It turns out rabbits provoke an ancient fear, one that has rippled in civilizations across the globe, from ancient Egyptians to Celtic peoples. For many, it’s okay, maybe even wise, to be afraid of bunnies. For the Irish in particular, hares……

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