Author: Ms. R.

Hoover Dam has tight security, especially in this post-9/11 era. There are strict limits on where the public is allowed in the vicinity of the dam. In particular, views of the dam from downstream are not available to the public, with one exception: an authorized float trip that puts into Lake Mohave, which is backed up by Davis Dam downstream, just below Hoover Dam. This launch point is reached on a road that otherwise is closed to the public…….

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Beyond recipes, cookbooks contain the stories of their creators. Between the pinches of salt and handfuls of sugar, a great-grandmother’s cookies or a 19th-century church group’s cake often reveals something far more precious than a mere dessert. Here at Gastro Obscura, we live for these stories that hide among ingredients and instructions. Perhaps no place embodies this better than Morris Press, the United States’ largest community cookbook publisher. This year, we visited Morris and combed through their treasure trove……

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The Willamette River, the historical heart of western Oregon, flows north through its eponymous valley to join the Columbia at Portland. It has long been both a north-south highway and a barrier to east-west travel. To this day, the Wheatland Ferry provides the only crossing of the Willamette (wil-LAM-et) between Salem and Oregon State Route 219 outside Newberg, a distance of roughly 25 river miles. This ferry was started by Daniel Matheny in the 1850s and has been in……

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Onhoüa Chetek8e means “From Yesterday To Today,” and it is the result of a man’s strive to share knowledge about the Huron-Wendat Nation. The main structures of the village are a longhouse, a shaman’s hut, and a tepee.  Between these larger structures are also a sweat lodge, a smoke room, a dryer, a totem pole, and a hut with some canoes. The centerpiece of the village is the longhouse, which embodies and mirrors the social structure of the Huron-Wendat……

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Remember the toy Comeback Kid? Weeble? Or maybe you called it roly-poly toy? You know, that little guy who stood back up on his round bottom every time, no matter how you pushed it. That was because he had a weighted sphere (his bottom was much heavier and from a different material, therefore, he was inhomogeneous) and a very low center of mass. He actually had a stable point of equilibrium. In 1995, world-famous Russian mathematician Vladimir Igorevich Arnold……

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In 1881, the Count of Canet commissioned his nephew Lluís Domènech i Montaner, architect of Palau de la Musica Catalana and Modernist place of Sant Pau in Barcelona, ​​to enlarge the family castle with the aim of recreating a romantic past following the 19th-century archetype of a knight’s castle. Originally, the legendary castle was built as a Visigothic fortress from the foundation of an ancient Roman domus. Tradition explains that the castle is so old, that one of its……

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For decades, the Indian city of Mumbai operated under multiple time zones. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims wore bawdy badges to ward off the plague. In ancient Georgia, spring was ushered in with whips, wine, and mud. WWII “houses of horrors” trained American spies for combat using cardboard Nazis. Here at Atlas Obscura, it’s no secret that we like to explore the unexpected side of history. So as one more year drifts into the historical record, we’re here to……

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Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this second installment of a classic two-part episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we continue our adventure tied to an infamous Arctic expedition. Tune in to learn about two groups of adventurers, separated by more than 170 years, and play witness to the disasters that befell them all. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes,……

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“What is art … but nature concentrated?” wrote French novelist Honoré de Balzac. At Atlas Obscura, we often find wonder and beauty in the Earth and its creatures, especially when they’re seen from different perspectives. From above, from below, from up close, these striking images can be reminiscent of abstract art—but they aren’t entirely abstract. They almost always hold interesting stories about the planet, how it is changing, and the processes of climate, geology, and biology. We call these……

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Art and function don’t always go hand in hand, and when they do, people will often insist on what they consider better and more practical solutions. The ‘Svampen,’ or “Mushroom” is no different. Despite this, it is a beloved landmark to most in the city.  The ‘Svampen’ is a concrete rain cover designed by Holger Blom in 1937. It was originally constructed as a rain cover and designed to house a small kiosk that was built around the central……

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Too often these days, the news seems like a drumbeat of relentless loss: the loss of lives from Covid-19, the loss of whole species and landscapes to the ravages of climate change. And we’ve only just begun to calibrate what we’ve lost from such a long time isolated from each other. But, as these stories from 2021 show, there’s always light in the dark. Sometimes, that light comes from stars unobstructed by pollution, seen from a New Zealand dark……

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Surrounded by faux rocks and under a large, sprawling tree, the bronze statue of Daniel O’Connell McCarthy stands seven feet tall, and the plaque indicates it is a memorial to the pioneer spirit of the many thousands who, like McCarthy, tried their luck in the 1949 Gold Rush. Originally the statue was located near the Carthay Circle Theatre movie palace. When the theater was demolished in 1969, this statue was moved to Carthay Circle Park, little more than a……

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