Author: Ms. R.

Along Route 299 in the township of Kanna stands a wall of mountain cliff known as the Sazanami-iwa (“ripple rock”). Discovered in 1953 during the construction of a road, it was initially believed to be just that—a rock with ancient ripple marks; but it later turned out to be something much more. Often referred to as the “ripple marks of Sebayashi” after the former village it is located in, the rock was thoroughly researched by Gunma University upon its discovery…….

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You’ve just been invited to a dinner party in third-century Rome. It’s going to be a swanky affair with high-profile guests, and you’re determined to make a good impression. You’ve figured out your outfit and you’ve packed your spoon and napkin (Roman hosts did not provide these). There’s just one part of the evening that concerns you: conversation. The other guests will be well-traveled and well-read, especially in the Greek literature popular with Roman elites. What if you don’t……

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Step into the annals of history and explore the captivating journey of Chimopar, the venerable cornerstone of Romanian chemical ingenuity. Created in 1895 under the visionary leadership of General Eremia Grigorescu, Chimopar, also known as Dudești Chemical Enterprise, rises as a time-honored emblem of innovation. Its legacy, steeped in the alchemy of creation and destruction, harkens back to an era when it stood tall as a vital producer of gunpowder and specialized compounds. It is currently a large, abandoned……

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Located just three miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, Frontera Sculpture Oasis is a unique celebration of the Earth as envisioned by a singular artist working in the borderland near Columbus, New Mexico. This fascinating sculpture garden is the work of Taras Mychalewych, a German emigre raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. After wandering through New Mexico for four days after his car blew up in the midst of a cross-country drive, he decided to move there and build a sculpture……

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This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com. He knew the missing skeleton was here. Somewhere. It was 2014, and Daniel Franklin, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Western Australia, was on Beacon Island, a tiny patch of land off Australia’s west coast. The remains he was looking for belonged to a traveler who, in 1628, boarded the Batavia, one of the most……

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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 a community in rural central Virginia that has been testing an interesting premise for decades—that maybe three, or four, or more parental figures are even better than two. This episode is part of a collaboration we did with Freakonomics. You can find a larger episode on this topic here. Our podcast is an audio guide to……

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Atlas Obscura‘s weekly crossword comes to us from creator Stella Zawistowski and editor Laura Braunstein, members of Inkubator, which publishes crossword puzzles by women and nonbinary constructors. You can see more puzzles in their book, Inkubator Crosswords: 100 Audacious Puzzles from Women and Nonbinary Creators. You can solve the puzzle below, or download it in .pdf or .puz. Note that the links in the clues will take you to Atlas Obscura pages that may contain the answer. Happy solving!…

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When you’re a kid, sometimes it feels like your home is the center of the universe. Well, in Chanute, Kansas, one Google software engineer named Dan Webb had the wherewithal to actually make that happen, and in turn, the town recognized his achievement through one of America’s oddest murals. The story actually begins with the work of a different engineer, Brian McClendon, who was a co-founder of the company that eventually became the basis of Google Earth. McClendon was……

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“Music is found everywhere in Cuba,” the guide said while climbing the stairs towards the entrance of Cueva del Indio, where an older gentlemen played the guitar. Past the entrance, there is a narrow trail curing around stalactite and stalagmites before coming to another set of stairs leading down to the water. A waiting boat takes visitors on a journey through the cave. The boat captain uses a laser pointer to point at a variety of geological features and their names……

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