Right behind the grandstands of a local high school football field and perched on the edge of a small cliff, is a location that once instilled fear into the hearts of early colonial settlers. The Devil’s Den is the name of a small cave located within the town of Ashland. It is a talus cave that was created when irregularly shaped rocks were piled atop one another. When Puritan settlers first arrived in New England, the fear of the……
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. As part of Women’s History Month, The Atlas Obscura Podcast is bringing you classic episodes from the archive. Here, meet filmmaker and artist Jessica Oreck, who has spent the last 30 years collecting odd and forgotten objects. Now, they’re all beautifully curated and on display in the Office of Collecting and Design in Las Vegas, which you can follow on Instagram. Our podcast is an audio……
Although the U.S. Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibits discrimination in mortgage lending, biases still impact many borrowers. One 2021 Journal of Financial Economics study found that borrowers from minority groups were charged interest rates that were nearly 8 percent higher and were rejected for loans 14 percent more often than those from privileged groups. When these biases bleed into machine-learning models that lenders use to streamline decision-making, they can have far-reaching consequences for housing fairness and even contribute to……
With its chic restaurant scene and world-famous chefs, Paris attracts foodies of all stripes. Groups of female diners are an everyday sight, happy socializing as they enjoy exquisite dishes. But that hasn’t always been the case. In fact, there was a time when women were barely accepted as restaurant-goers. In the mid-19th century, France, defeated at Waterloo but still culturally dominant, invented modern haute cuisine. Eating out became a pastime rather than a necessity for the country’s bourgeoisie, an……
SUVs don’t often get called beautiful. Rugged, cool, maybe even stylish on occasion. Marketing departments like to pepper SUV launches with adjectives that tap into our primordial instincts to haul stuff or ram through forest roads, but the typical Range Rover, Toyota RAV4, or Volvo has long since left its utilitarian roots behind. Looks, as opposed to actual ability, are increasingly important with SUVs. Looks are also entirely subjective, but we’ll go ahead and say it: Inside and out,……
In August 2021, a new mural was unveiled in central Budapest. It honors the Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, who, with her research on RNA, developed the basis for the effective mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines. The 220 square-foot mural is titled A jövőt magyarok írják (“The future will be written by Hungary“). It was painted by artists from Színes Város, and took 11 days and 197 liters of paint to complete. Katalin Karikó was born on January 17, 1955, in Szolnok, Hungary. She……
Scotland’s earliest castles took the form of mottes, these fortifications usually consisted of a wooden keep built on top of an artificial mound. Some mottes also came with a bailey, an enclosed courtyard fortified with a ditch and palisade which would contain additional wooden buildings. Mottes were not just defensive structures, this type of medieval earthwork castle acted as a symbol of the lordship of the area. The first mottes in Scotland were built during the reign of David……
CLEVELAND (AP) — The Cleveland Browns have agreed to terms with free agent center Ethan Pocic, who will compete with Nick Harris for the starting job and gives the team more depth up front. Pocic was selected in the second round of the 2017 draft by Seattle and started 40 games for the Seahawks. The 26-year-old Pocic has more experience than Harris, and the pair will compete to replace JC Tretter, the team’s longtime reliable center who was released…
The little County Antrim Coast village of Cushendun is a quaint village with the typical local pub and local shop. But it is home to a set of caves that attracts hundreds if not thousands of visitors every year—all because of a TV show. The Cushendun Caves were formed over 400 million years ago through the impact of the sea and the local weather weathering down the rock causing natural erosion. The caves are rather short and open up……
There are some things about Antarctica that may not be apparent to a person who has only seen it in two dimensions. In addition to being the coldest and driest continent, for example, it also has the highest average elevation. Even after scaling craggy mountains and reaching Antarctica’s vast interior plateau (elevation: more than 9,000 feet), an adventurer will find that the terrain is striped with sastrugi, wind-sculpted snow ridges that can be six feet high or more. And……
Something about the painting made Tianyi Yu pause. The artwork, depicting tropical plants crowded together in a riot of color, had been painted in 1876 by prolific botanical illustrator Marianne North. The wealthy Victorian woman had traveled the world, usually on her own, documenting in bold oils the plants and landscapes she saw. During a trip to Borneo, North had filled this canvas with plants from a particular spot in the forests of the island’s northwest corner. The viewer’s……
Franklin Public Library was the first public lending library in America. When it was established in 1778, the town’s designated name was to be Exeter. But the citizens opted to call the town Franklin, after founding father Benjamin Franklin. The town then asked Franklin to donate a bell for a church, but he donated books instead, and asked that they be used to create a library. The town agreed, and in 1790 voted to lend the books to all……
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. As part of Women’s History Month, The Atlas Obscura Podcast is bringing you classic episodes from the archive, including this story of the women who stepped up to produce thousands of guitars during World War II, only to be written out of history. 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……
MIT’s graduate program in engineering has again topped the list of U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings, released today. The program has held the No. 1 spot since 1990, when the magazine first published these rankings. The MIT Sloan School of Management also placed highly, landing in the No. 5 spot for the best graduate business programs along with Harvard University. Among individual engineering disciplines, MIT placed first in six areas: aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering, chemical engineering, computer engineering, electrical/electronic/communications……
Most of us know someone affected by hearing loss, but we may not fully appreciate the hardships that lack of hearing can bring. Hearing loss can lead to isolation, frustration, and a debilitating ringing in the ears known as tinnitus. It is also closely correlated with dementia. The biotechnology company Frequency Therapeutics is seeking to reverse hearing loss — not with hearing aids or implants, but with a new kind of regenerative therapy. The company uses small molecules to……
