Author: Ms. R.

When Johnny Cade said to Ponyboy, “Stay gold,” in the beloved Tulsa, Oklahoma young adult classic The Outsiders, it’s unlikely that he was referring to the nearby sign for Meadow Gold Dairy. Yet for decades, the City of Tulsa worked to make the classic Route 66 neon sign would glow again. Meadow Gold Dairy was a regional brand owned by Beatrice Creamery Company, an early 20th-century food conglomerate. In 1934, the sign was constructed by the Claude Neon company,……

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Nonato Mendes ignored the leeches squirming underneath his T-shirt. With a deep breath, he plunged his gloved hand into the net that was piled on the deck of the boat, grabbing the electric eel behind its head. Skillfully keeping its writhing body away from him, he avoided the excruciating jolt—eight times stronger than a police-issued taser. It was his 96th capture that year, the last needed for his field research. For more than 20 years, Mendes, a federal environmental……

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In 1943, German occupiers of Nijmegen built three machine bunkers on the centrally located and strategically important Valkhof-hill. The Valkhofbunker is the only one surviving to this day. The bunker persisted through Operation Market Garden, the largest military operation on Dutch soil during World War II. Valkhof Park was liberated on September 20, 1944. Overtime, the abandoned bunker was buried and went widely unnoticed. Nijmegen residents would stand on its roof without realizing what it was. In 2014, the Valkhofbunker Foundation began……

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In 1521, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León sailed his ship up the southwest coast of what is now Florida. He was looking to start a colony there, but when he and his men came ashore, Calusa warriors met them with shark-tooth war clubs and arrows and spears that were tipped with pointed bone and fish spines. An arrow landed in Ponce de León’s thigh, eventually killing him. That pretty much kept the Europeans from bothering the Calusa for……

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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 visit what is perhaps the cutest and most filling micro-store to pop up during the pandemic. But to find it, you’ll have to trek through rural Vermont and look for the phone-booth sized box filled with baked goods. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take……

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Once a common sight, pay phones are now a rarity. You might be surprised to find one in the quaint D.C. neighborhood of Chevy Chase, near an elementary school. It’s an old-fashioned chrome and black steel telephone on a pole. But this is no ordinary payphone. First of all, it doesn’t cost a cent to use. All one has to do is pick up the phone and make a call. But who wants to make a call on this……

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“The Big One.” The peril of a massive earthquake has been the start of many a work of fiction, but until faced with the danger, no one knows how they will react. This statue in Tacoma, Washington, honors one brave child who rose to the occasion, sacrificing his life to save another, and the long wait to have his story fully told. On April 13, 1949, just before noon, the ground began to shake across the Puget Sound. A……

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In the region of Basilicata stands Pietragalla, a small town that houses Parco Urbano dei Palmenti, a cluster of semi-underground structures for winemaking built from the 19th century onward. In the Tofi area bordering on the town, about 250 palmenti were built over many years. They were built using excavated rock, which allowed the structures to keep the internal temperatures almost constant, allowing the farmers to work without being overly affected by the heat or cold. Furthermore, the ventilation……

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Picture this: It’s 1920 in Longreach in Central Queensland, which is almost in the middle of nowhere. You want to start an airline with a war-spared Avro 504, and you want to become the biggest airline in the world. This museum shows how three folks—Paul McGinness, Sir Hudson Fysh, and Sir Fergus McMaster—did just that. The museum was not founded or run by Qantas, but by an independent group to preserve the area’s history. It is home to a……

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Perhaps no other brand of toilet inspired the level of enthusiasm—or indeed, any enthusiasm at all—as the TOTO, Japan‘s first Western-style flush toilet, which was developed in 1914. Although these porcelain thrones were initially intended to imitate their international counterparts, they soon surpassed them. In 1980, the company debuted the Washlet, effectively an integrated bidet feature. Other luxuries, such as a heated seat, followed.  The TOTO Toilet Museum is a love letter to the Japanese toilet, including the history,……

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The House of Palaiologos ruled the Byzantine Empire from 1259 to its fall in 1453, the last of its reigning dynasties. The lineage seems to have continued until the end of the 17th century, and one of its last members is buried on the Caribbean island of Barbados. Born in 1619, Ferdinand Paleologus was the youngest son of Theodore Paleologus, an Italian assassin who had moved to England in the late 16th century, coming from a family that claimed to have descended from……

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Spain is filled with unique roundabouts, many of which stand alone as works of art. Azuqueca de Henares in the province of Guadalajara in Spain happens to have one of the most curious roundabouts in the whole of the country, the Antarctica roundabout, which reproduces the frozen continent to scale and was built to commemorate the fourth International Polar Year. The roundabout is a stone representation of Antarctica, with plenty of faux ice and snow. What are the links……

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