Author: Ms. R.

Esie is a small town in Nigeria’s Kwara state that lies in the south-central part of the country. It is most famous for being home to the largest collection of stone carvings in Africa. These stone carvings were first discovered by a hunter in 1775. The true origins of the Esie figurines remain unknown, though many theories have been put forward to explain them. The figurines are made from steatite stone, also known as soapstone. When they were found, the……

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New York has a lot of well-known cemeteries, with a surfeit of burial grounds throughout Queens. Holy Cross Cemetery in central Brooklyn isn’t as famous, but it can boast of at least one celebrity burial to its name: Baseball legend Gil Hodges, who played first base for the Dodgers and later managed the New York Mets. Gil Hodges wasn’t a Brooklyn native, as he was born and raised in Indiana. He was signed to the Dodgers in 1943, but……

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In a small churchyard of the Kirkcaldy Old Kirk Trust and Cemetery stands a headstone devoted to an acclaimed writer. Her name was Marjorie Fleming and she died at the age of eight. The stone figure of Fleming shows a small girl, seated, who appears to be looking up while holding a book and a feather quill. At the encouragement of her cousin, Isabella Keith, Fleming kept a diary while she stayed with Keith in Edinburgh. Aged just six……

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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 island of Cayo Santiago, or “Monkey Island,” off the coast of Puerto Rico. There, more than 1,500 imported monkeys have been studied for decades. 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……

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Methuselah isn’t like most fish. She seems to like belly rubs and chin scratches and dines on restaurant-grade prawns and ripe, seasonal figs. She also has both lungs and gills, and she’s about 90 years old. Methuselah—named for the Biblical patriarch said to have lived 969 years—is a lungfish, a species thought to be the evolutionary link between fish and amphibians. She arrived at the California Academy of Sciences in 1938; no one knows exactly how old she was……

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Every February 2 since 1887, a groundhog named Phil has made an appearance before a group of tuxedo- and top hat–wearing local gentlemen in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. In earlier decades, the reason the little rodent may have been tempted to dive back into the ground had nothing to do with six more weeks of winter—or Bill Murray having a midlife crisis—but rather with the very legitimate danger that some of the spectators might be planning to eat him. “There was……

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We find a small park not far from the central station of Leiden that has one small building on it, standing next to the shore of a small lake. Most people would not give the place a second glance, but an interesting story is tied to it, as this was once the retirement home of the world’s first transgenic animal. Stier Herman (Herman the Bull) was the result of a 1990 Dutch experiment. A total of 1,154 cow egg……

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The polar desert of Ellesmere Island’s northeast corner knows only two colors: frozen winter white and the dull brown of a short summer. There, at the world’s northernmost wildlife research station, run out of the Canadian Forces Station Alert military base, scientists embarked on an unprecedented project. It began with an adorably fluffy, brilliantly white Arctic hare. Researchers who tagged animals in 2018, and fitted some with tracking collars the following year, refer to the hares by the color……

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