Author: Ms. R.

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit the last Sears in New York City, and a Brooklyn landmark, with two people whose lives were shaped by the department store. 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……

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It’s early December, and somewhere on a mountain on the Japanese island of Shikoku, there’s a citrus tree laden with golden-yellow fruit, each one no larger than a kumquat. There aren’t many of them in the wild. This one might have grown from a large seed, dropped by a bird feasting on the fruit of its cousin from elsewhere. These rare trees cannot survive unless their surroundings are just right, with plenty of sun, space, well-drained soil, and warm……

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Every Dutch child will know at least some of the lyrics to Berend Botje and his adventures in Zuid Laren and America. To commemorate this, the titular town constructed a statue in his honor.  The song is a very old one, thought to date back to the early 19th-century, and refers to a young man called Botje who fled his mandatory military service for Napoleon’s army by sailing away forever. Since then, many different versions of the song have……

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“By an Indian breakfast by no means must be understood that simple bread, tea, and butter, which compose an English one.” Edward Fane, the nephew of the British General Sir Henry Fane, devotes a lot of time to describing breakfasts in his memoir of their travels through India, then a British colony, in 1858. Describing the morning meals of local English families, he notes that they include meat and fish and eggs, as well as “the eternal curry and……

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Built in 1894 by Dominion Bridge Company, this defunct bridge still connects Porter’s Island to St. Patrick Street. It remains a rare example of a multi-span, pin-connected truss bridge in Ontario. Ottawa’s first major outbreak of smallpox was reported in 1871. When the existing hospital infrastructure was deemed unsuitable for patient isolation, Porter’s Island became the new location. In 1894, an isolation hospital and bridge were constructed. While the bridge remained intact, the hastily-built hospital fell into disrepair and……

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According to protocol, the royal family should never be left waiting. But sometimes waiting is unavoidable, like at a train station where it might prove impossible to reschedule all incoming trains to accommodate the royals. In such a case, the wait should be as comfortable as humanly possible. The royal waiting room of Amsterdam Central Station is the perfect example. The entirety of the central station is designed by the architect P.J.H. Cuypers in 1881, five years after he……

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In Lemon Cove, California, not far from Sequoia National Park, a roadside statue pays tribute to a man who was instrumental in the birth of America’s national park system. This wooden statue of John Muir was carved in 1989 by artist R.L. Blair. Born in Scotland in 1838, Muir moved to Wisconsin in 1849, at the age of 11, and found his way to the Yosemite Valley in 1868. His writing about the landscape and environment helped inspire President……

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