Author: Ms. R.

Piles of discarded metal, rubber, wood, and plastic greet workers and visitors alike to Asmara’s Medeber market. Here, scrap material is repurposed by welders and craftspeople to make new kitchen appliances, furniture, bicycles, household utensils, and more in Eritrea’s capital city. The open-air workshop was used as a caravan trade post in pre-colonial days, until Italian architect Odoardo Cavagnari redesigned the city of Asmara in the early 1900s, about three decades after Italy occupied and colonized Eritrea. From the……

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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 City Museum where, in 1993, Bob Cassilly began to turn an old shoe factory into a massive interactive museum that now includes a plane fuselage, caves, and a ten-story slide. 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……

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As noted in the Illustrated Map of America’s Worst Utopias, the experimental society of Fruitlands was founded at Harvard, Massachusetts, in June 1843 by English Transcendentalist and reformer Charles Lane and Bronson Alcott, father of Little Women writer Louisa May Alcott. It lasted seven months. The author was 10 when her family moved from Concord to the little farmhouse to live by Bronson and Charles’s ascetic ideals. She would later give the society the name “Apple Slump” in her comic tale Transcendental……

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This is one of the oldest functioning post offices in the United States. It’s in the tiny town of Three Rivers, just outside the south entrance to Sequoia National Park. Built from local cedar and redwood in 1910, the building measures just 12 feet by 15 feet. It has remained in almost continuous operation since then—though as of 2010, it is no longer a full-service post office. Today the office is manned by volunteers and serves about 50 people……

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When the Swedish armies descended upon Poland in 1655, they laid waste to the kingdom and pillaged whatever they could. Among the spoils stolen from the city of Jaktorów was one of King Sigismund III’s most prized possessions: an ornate drinking horn, longer than a grown man’s arm and as thick as an elephant tusk. Although the artistry was exquisite, the horn’s true value had little to do with the metal wrapped around its circumference. In life, the horn……

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Ladies and gentleman, start your vacuums. Have your paintbrushes, thick and thin, at the ready. Tools out! It’s cleaning week at Dresden’s glorious Frauenkirche, a beloved house of worship and international symbol of reconciliation and resilience. “It’s just a big praying room,” says its lead architect Thomas Gottschlich, a soft-spoken man whom calling understated is, well, an understatement. Gottschlich’s duties include overseeing the iconic church’s maintenance, including the annual January spruce-up, when every inch of the interior gets a……

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Placed here in 1983, the Maiden of Deception Pass has continued to both guard Sharpe Cove and educate visitors about the beautiful story of Ko-kwal-alwoot, who married the king of all sea creatures to ensure that the bay would always be teeming with life and continue to provide for the Samish people. The statue also serves to commemorate and remember the Samish people, who called Fidalgo Island, north of Deception Pass, home. Their federal recognition was lost due to……

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The Rwenzori mountain range is home to Margherita peak, which at 16,762 feet is the third-highest mountain peak in Africa, after Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya. It’s considered the more challenging of the three, however, because of the rainforest trek required to reach the top. The Rwenzori range is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, noted for its exceptional beauty and biodiversity. The name Rwenzori is said to come from the nearby Bakonzo people’s rwe nzururu, which means……

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In a workshop hazy with sawdust, just a few steps away from the main canals of an idyllic Provençal village, Alain Pretôt crafts a small, wooden boat. It’s one of two or three he’ll make this year, in a style unique to the Sorgues River. The workshop, decorated with posters of Georges Brassnens, The Rolling Stones, and AC/DC, is narrow. There’s just enough space to circle the long table where the boat’s skeleton takes shape. This is a place……

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The cemetery that holds Cuba’s soul. Inside the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba resides a tomb that holds a handful of soil from every country in Latin America. The tomb of Jose Marti, a Cuban patriot and central figure in Cuba’s War of Independence from Spain. The soil is there to symbolize Marti’s influence in the hemisphere. As in much of Latin America, and indeed the world, cemeteries in Cuba are a grand affair. Many house museum-worthy……

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Probably the first commercial application of aviation was carrying mail. Then as now, customers would pay a substantial premium for the swift delivery of an important message. But early aircraft navigation was primitive; With radio in its infancy and radar nonexistent, pilots had to rely on visual landmarks such as railroads and natural geographic features—and even then flight was practical only during daylight hours. Furthermore, a lack of distinctive landmarks—not to mention bad weather—could still lead to navigational errors…….

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On May 26, 1966, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation designating the village of Waterloo, New York, as the birthplace of Memorial Day in the United States. It is only fitting that Waterloo is also home to an extraordinary tree that is a living monument to wartime sacrifice. The Scythe Tree is a Balm of Gilead poplar growing on a small farm between Waterloo and Geneva in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. In 1861, James……

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