Author: Ms. R.

Ecologist Julia Ryeland was on the hunt for emu nests. These trampled patches of vegetation, padded with grass and twigs, measure a few feet across but can still be tricky to spot. At Ryeland’s field site a few years ago, about 300 miles northwest of Sydney, Australia, the nests were camouflaged among clumps of low-growing plants. When she found one, she would gather the gorgeous, deep turquoise eggs carefully—each one weighs more than a pound—and take them to a……

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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 the Haitian Monument in Savannah, Georgia, which was built to commemorate the Haitian soldiers who came to the rescue of patriots fighting in the Revolutionary War. 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……

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“The original cause of trouble” was when a nine-year-old girl received a copy of Arabian Nights. At least, that’s how Freya Stark would explain her wanderlust more than 30 years later in the preface of her 1934 travelogue, The Valley of the Assassins. Fast forward more than a century later, and another book, this time female explorer Alexandra David-Néel’s My Journey to Lhasa, inspired a different young girl’s adventures to far-flung corners of the globe. That child is now……

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The Old Mulgrave Castle was constructed in the 13th century as a defensive residence, replacing the earlier Foss Castle also located in Mulgrave Woods. Since then, it has been home to the de Mauley family, the Bigot family, the Radcliffe family (not that one) and Edmund Lord Sheffield, though none undertook the monumental efforts to sufficiently restore this now historic castle ruin.  The castle was built piecemeal on a narrow ridge between the Sandsend and East Row Becks starting……

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The town of Comrie in Perthshire is known as the “Shaky Toun” due to its history of being a haven for earthquakes and tremors. Following the largest earthquake recorded in the region (4.8 on the Richter Scale in 1839) the Comrie Pioneers, a local postmaster and a local shoemaker respectively, created the world’s first modern seismometer in 1840. It was decided to house it in this small building in The Ross, Comrie. It became the world’s first dedicated observatory……

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Yul Brynner is remembered in Hollywood for such iconic roles as the Siamese king in The King and I, the cold-hearted pharaoh in The Ten Commandments, and as the leader of the heroic gunslingers in The Magnificent Seven. However, the only monument dedicated to him is not in Tinseltown, save for the star on the Walk of Fame—but in his hometown of Vladivostok in the Russian Far East. Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Briner on July 11, 1920, at his four-story home……

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This article is adapted from the March 12, 2022, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here. This week, I summoned the spirit of spring by making Shaker lemon pie, one of the sunniest sweets I know. It doesn’t sound like much: a simple combination of sugar, lemons, egg, and pastry crust. But this sweet-and-sour treat is an absolute delight, and I’m bummed that more people don’t know about it. So I’ve become something of……

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For Women’s History Month, Atlas Obscura is living on the edge with Women of Extremes, our series dedicated to those who dared to defy expectations and explore the unknown. On May 4, 1912, women in white paraded through the streets of New York City. Some 10,000 people marched to Carnegie Hall, where leaders in the women’s suffrage movement rallied their supporters. Just outside, another woman spoke from a makeshift perch. “In the vestibule,” read a New York Times account……

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Hidden between freeways lies the Aiea Cemetery, also known as the Aiea Plantation Cemetery. Crumbling cement crosses and gravemarkers out of wood and steel decorate the cemetery. Typical Japanese gravestones and Western-style gravestones are also present, this makes the cemetery a unique collection of funerary art.  Standing on this little field, surrounded by so much concrete, makes this place seem unreal. The graveyard was once around two acres, but the military took over the makai section during World War……

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This small park is a tribute to Mr. Fred Rogers of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1928, and would become known throughout the world. This park at the corner of Main Street and Jefferson Street—not far from Rogers’ childhood home—is dedicated to the television star. The small park features a fountain and a bronze statue of Rogers in one of his iconic cardigan sweaters….

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Canberra’s memorial to the Holodomor of Ukraine was dedicated in 1985 and stands on the grounds of the Ukrainian Orthodox Center in the capital of Australia. The Holodomor was a devastating famine that took place in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933, while the country was part of the Soviet Union. In 2006, the Ukrainian parliament was recognized it as a deliberate act of genocide against the country’s people. While the exact number of deaths resulting from this tragedy is unknown,……

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This story was originally published on The Conversation and appears here under a Creative Commons license. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, Project 523—a covert operation launched by the Chinese government and headed by a young Chinese medical researcher by the name of Tu Youyou—discovered what has been the most powerful and effective antimalarial drug therapy to date. Known in Chinese as qinghaosu and derived from the sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua L.), artemisinin was only one of several……

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