Part of what has come to be known as the frontier defenses between England and Scotland, Cessford Castle is a 15th-century castle that was once the stronghold home of the Ker family. It is thought that Andrew Ker began building this castle around 1450. The Ker family spent much of the 1500s in a bitter feud with the Scotts of Buccleuch, a fight that began after a man working for the Kers was killed by a Scott. In an attempt……
On July 2, 1942, a German aircraft crashed at the eastern side of Hansakollen in Nordmarka, Oslo, on its way to Gardermoen. It was a rainy and foggy day, and the pilot did not see the steep hills. Three Germans on board were killed and the tree tops in the area were chopped off by the plane. You can still find the remains of the Dornier DO17 aircraft, together with an information placard about the incident, around 2.4 km……
Valentín Gómez Farías was President of Mexico during two separate one-year periods in the 1830s and 40s. As vice president to Antonio López de Santa Anna, Valentín was never elected into the position, but became the acting president when Santa Anna was unable to occupy the position, usually due to military campaigns. This small park was named after Gómez Farías due to his home being located nearby. Following his death in 1858, he was actually buried in the court……
Secret Obsessions is Altas Obscura’s new column where we ask wondrous people to take us down a rabbit hole. This edition features British pop singer/songwriter Maisie Peters, as told to Atlas Obscura Associate Editor Sarah Durn. I can’t remember where I was when I first read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I think I was maybe a teenager on holiday with my family. Maybe in Italy or Spain? Maybe on the beach? Probably somewhere warm. It’s so funny because……
MADRID (AP) — Police in Spain detonated a suspicious envelope discovered at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Spanish officials said Thursday, a day after a similar package sent to the Ukrainian Embassy ignited upon opening and injured an employee. “We can confirm a suspicious package was received at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, and are aware of reports of other packages sent to other locations throughout Spain,” the American embassy said in a response to an Associated Press inquiry….
LONDON (AP) — Prince William’s office said “racism has no place in our society” as he sought to prevent the backlash over his godmother’s treatment of a Black advocate for survivors of domestic abuse from overshadowing his trip to the United States. Lady Susan Hussey, 83, resigned Wednesday as an honorary member of the royal household after the chief executive of an east London women’s refuge said Hussey repeatedly asked her where she “really came from” after she told…
Imagine entering a 3D virtual story world that’s a digital twin of an existing physical space but also doubles as a vessel to dream up speculative climate stories and collective designs. Then, those imagined worlds are translated back into concrete plans for our physical spaces. Five multidisciplinary teams recently convened at MIT — virtually — for the inaugural WORLDING workshop. In a weeklong series of research and development gatherings, the teams met with MIT scientists, staff, fellows, students and……
Hidden away in a 15th-century cellar, the Kraków Pinball Museum is dedicated to pinball machines and arcade games. Inside there are dozens of machines, more than 50 of which are flippers and 35 video games. This interactive museum offers a unique and varied collection and a hefty dose of nostalgia. The museum’s oldest machine is Race the Clock, which dates back to 1955. Their most recent is a Guardians of the Galaxy pinball machine dates back less than a decade……
All week we’ll be giving you a peek at the gifts we here at Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura have on our wishlists. For some people, the best gift is more than a simple object; it’s a project. These kits will let those DIYers on your list build everything from a miniature spacecraft to a larger-than-life insect. Or show off your own talents and gift handmade tie-dyed fabric and personalized perfumes. Metal Earth International Space Station For the would-be……
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit the Flagg Grove School in Brownsville, Tennessee, which has become a museum dedicated to its most famous student: Tina Turner. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their……
A gallery beneath the Cutty Sark is home to the Long John Silver Figurehead Collection, the world’s largest collection of the elaborate wooden carvings that decorate the bow of a ship. “Long John Silver” was Sydney Cumbers (1875-1959). He lost sight in his left eye as a child in an accident with a toy gun, and took to wearing a distinctive eye patch (hence the nickname, a reference to the famous pirate from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island). He was a successful businessman……
Electronic health records (EHRs) need a new public relations manager. Ten years ago, the U.S. government passed a law that required hospitals to digitize their health records with the intent of improving and streamlining care. The enormous amount of information in these now-digital records could be used to answer very specific questions beyond the scope of clinical trials: What’s the right dose of this medication for patients with this height and weight? What about patients with a specific genomic……
For the first time, researchers at MIT, Caltech, Harvard University, and elsewhere sent quantum information across a quantum system in what could be understood as traversing a wormhole. Though this experiment didn’t create a disruption of physical space and time in the way we might understand the term “wormhole” from science fiction, calculations from the experiment showed that qubits traveled from one system of entangled particles to another in a model of gravity. This experiment performed on the Sycamore……
To clear the way for planting wheat in November, a farmer in Punjab, India, sets aflame the leftover straw, or stubble, of a harvested rice paddy crop in October. The burning residue fills the air with carbon monoxide, ozone, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that will make it harder to breathe for days afterward and for miles around. It’s a scene that’s replicated on about 2 million farms in the Punjab and Haryana states of northwest India every autumn……
The winter of 1867 came bitter and merciless to the Chinese men that tunneled through the transcontinental railroad’s most formidable section, a nearly 1,700-foot stretch of granite at the Donner Summit in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. The men, immigrants from subtropical Guangdong, had never before known snow, let alone the relentless blizzards of the kind that, just 20 years before, forced the Donner party into cannibalism a few miles away. The laborers, who worked around-the-clock to drill the tunnels……
