Author: Ms. R.

People who love extreme dining praise it as gritty and high-octane, a way to push back against older dining traditions imagined as stuffy and overly refined. But dining in the past was more dazzling, and more dangerous, than we could ever imagine. Robert May (c. 1588–1664), a celebrity chef in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, made his name by staging elaborate feasts full of atmospheric effects, sensory experiences, and dramatic, even downright risky, stunts. At May’s banquets, clouds of gunpowder……

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Only a 15-minute walk from the train station lies Martonvásár’s wonderful, cute little town center, and nestled within it is also a cute little history museum. This museum has been running in Martonvásár since 1995 and it displays the history of kindergartens in Hungary, from their invention to various schooling tactics and toys owned by children over the years. Kindergartens in Hungary were invented by a member of the nobility family known as the Brunszviks, who had an estate……

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Deep within the pine-forested hills north of Leadville, Colorado, there’s a tiny restaurant with a peculiar requirement. If you want one of its coveted tables, you’ll have to get there under your own steam. In the summer, diners arrive for their reservations in hiking boots. In the winter, they ascend to the Tennessee Pass Cookhouse via snowshoes or skis.  While a snowmobile is available for guests unable to make the walk, diners are encouraged to travel the mile-long approach……

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In Lake City, Colorado, you can rent ice axes and climb walls of shimmering blue ice—for free—at the city’s sprawling local park. The park is set against the wild backdrop of the San Juan Mountains, a range known for its serrated ridgelines, deep snow, and brittle frozen cascades. Ice climbing in these mountains is usually reserved for experts and pros. But at the Lake City Ice Park, ice climbing is accessible to beginners. Some of the walls tower up……

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In the United States, November is Native American Heritage Month, and the day after Thanksgiving—November 24 this year—is officially designated not as Black Friday, but as Native American Heritage Day. Atlas Obscura is celebrating the occasion with stories from across the continent, from the oak forests of central California to the grave houses of Oklahoma and the dance traditions of the Yup’ik community in Alaska. Plus: 14 notable monuments, museums, and historical sites dedicated to Indigenous life. The Wildlife……

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Nestled within the anatomical wing of the University of Basel lies a hidden museum filled with medical specimens. it is one of the oldest museums to focus specifically on human anatomy. The museum was established in 1824 under Professor Carl Gustav Jung, who wanted to create a museum that laid bare the secrets of the human body. Since it was built as a teaching tool for the training of future medical professionals, the setup of the museum is rather……

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An Atlantic cod is suspended in alcohol in a clear, rectangular container. It’s one of a smattering of specimens, all floating on shelves beneath the massive ribs of long-dead whales. This room in the University Museum of Bergen, a natural history museum on Norway’s western coast, is purpose-built to hold marvels from the sea. Cod isn’t as startling or unfamiliar as the fish that dwell in the ultra-dark deep and look alien to our landlubbing eyes. Yet something about……

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Excerpted and adapted with permission from American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America by Martyn Whittock, published November 7, 2023 by Pegasus Books. All rights reserved. Beginning in the eighth century, raiders exploded out of Scandinavia in a way that shocked their contemporaries in Western Europe. Their victims used various names for their attackers from the north. In Anglo-Saxon (Old English) writings the terms “Danes,” “Northmen,” “pagans,” or “heathens” were the ones most……

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Sometime around the 1980s, maybe, a rough, yellow-tinged piece of fabric, slightly larger than a placemat, was pulled from a peat bog in Glen Affric, Scotland. The cloth is a swatch of tartan, the fabric associated with Scottish kilts, featuring the telltale interlocked stripes of various sizes and colors. (The term also applies to the pattern, which many know as plaid. But not all plaids are tartan, and to add to the confusion, in Scotland a plaid is a……

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