Author: Ms. R.

Picture this: It’s dark out, the kind of pitch black that comes with winter in the far north. You’re walking with friends around town when you hear a noise, followed by some heavy breathing nearby. Two large figures emerge from around the corner, one carrying a harpoon, the other wearing seal skins and holding a long chain. Both have faces smeared with soot and distorted by tightly wound strings across their noses. You start looking for an exit, but……

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L’église de Saint-Salvayre is a 12th-century church that sits 750 meters above the medieval town of Alet Le Bains in the Aude. Like many places in the region, it plays its part in the Grail legends that radiate from ground zero for conspiracy aficionados, Rennes Le Chateau. Indeed, this rough, minuscule building claims one of the biggest secrets of all. The church and the adjoining hamlet sit at the end of a rutted, narrow road that climbs inexorably from……

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In a gallery room of the National History and Archaeology Museum in Constanța, Romania, lives a very old snake. This is the Glykon, an ancient serpent god with a lamb’s snout, human hair, lion’s tail, and snake’s body, all carved out of marble. The Glykon was a protective deity of family and home, and also considered a god of fertility. He was worshiped throughout the Roman Empire’s provinces, particularly near the Black Sea. One of the most striking aspects……

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At Atlas Obscura, we’re obsessed with the unknown. Whether it’s a tale of ghostly murder that still induces chills two centuries later or a taxidermy marvel that seems to defy reason, we love a rabbit hole with no clear end in sight. This year, we followed a “huntress of lost treasure” in pursuit of one of the great wedding dresses of history, accompanied scientists looking to uncover the meaning behind thousand-mile-long hexagonal patterns etched into salt flats, and marveled……

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Nearing the town of Iola, Kansas, you’ll pass a billboard that reads “Our square is bigger than yours!” In fact, Iola is home to the largest downtown square in the United States, as determined by the local Chamber of Commerce, and the town has aligned its tourism around its big central tract of land. The downtown square was formalized after the completion of the Allen County Courthouse in 1904, but it wasn’t until recently that the town began to……

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Our understanding of the world and what’s in it changes every day. Basement renovations have uncovered underground cities and entire continents have gone missing (then been found again). In 2023, Atlas Obscura’s community helped us share the stories of more than 2,200 places from every corner of the world. Among them was a big milestone: our database of curious and unusual places grew to more than 25,000 entries. Some of these places are ancient wonders shaped by the movement……

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Chapada Diamantina is an enormous national park in Brazil, a little larger than the state of Maryland. It consists of mountainous plateaus edged by cliffs, some of which are 2,000 feet high. Trekkers in the area can see vistas of wide-open valleys, waterfalls, swimming holes, and underwater lagoons the color of sapphires. From Lençois, a town that serves as the most popular gateway to the park, it’s about a half-hour drive to the trailhead for Morro Do Pai Inácio……

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Louisiana’s state bird is the brown pelican. It should be the early bird. High school students in the Bayou State start school on average at 7:30 a.m. That is much earlier than anywhere else in the United States. But it is doubtful those Louisiana students will catch the worm. Studies show that early school starts contribute to sleep debt in adolescents, which is detrimental to their health, both physical and mental. No earlier than 8:30 a.m. That is why……

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The Bucket Fountain is a kinetic sculpture situated on a pedestrian walkway in Wellington’s Cuba District. A series of colorful buckets fill with water until they tip, spilling water into the pool below. The clumsy movement of the buckets seems to miss the pool and splash a considerable amount of water on anyone who dares to walk too close.  Erected in 1969, the fountain was designed by Graham Allardice of Burren and Keen. The sculpture was controversial when it……

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