Author: Ms. R.

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this installment of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we bring you a classic episode: a visit to the oldest (maybe) swimming pool in Iceland, a stunning oasis built into the side of a lush hill. 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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Modernist architect Antoni Gaudí was commissioned to remodel this summer house, gardens, and adjoining farms located on the outskirts of Barcelona that his patron, Eusebio Güell, had inherited from his father. The Catalan genius designed the gatehouse, the stables, and the brick walls in the Mudejar style, with his unmistakable seal. But the most remarkable part of this complex is the extraordinary iron gate, where a horrible dragon welcomes visitors. The dragon is actually a symbolic tribute that Güell……

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Charles Kellogg was a popular Vaudeville singer from northern California known for his impeccable imitations of bird songs sung from the throat instead of by whistling. When he would return home, he would see his beloved redwood forests under threat, and thought of a new way to spread a message of conservation.  In 1917 the Pacific Lumber Company donated a fallen redwood trunk 11 feet in diameter from their lands and Kellogg cut a 22-foot section to mount onto……

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The first state is home to three covered bridges, with the 154 foot long Smith’s Bridge in Wilmington being the longest. Originally built in 1839, this one-lane, Burr arch-truss bridge spans Brandywine Creek in New Castle County Delaware, just south of the Pennsylvania state line. The bridge was torched by arsonists in 1961 only five years after being restored to include the addition of piers and steel beams. The year after the fire, the bridge was reconstructed without the cover……

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This story was originally published on The Conversation and appears here under a Creative Commons license. Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” redefined Christmas in America. As historian Steven Nissenbaum explains in The Battle for Christmas, Moore’s secular St. Nick weakened the holiday’s religious associations, transforming it into a familial celebration that culminated in Santa Claus’s toy deliveries on Christmas Eve. Nineteenth-century writers, journalists, and artists were quick to fill in details about……

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The Sierra Buttes are a spectacular set of glacier-carved pinnacles that anchor the northern end of the Sierra Nevada. A Forest Service fire lookout, still in use, was built on the topmost pinnacle and is accessed by three long and exposed flights of stairs. An open-grate catwalk surrounds the lookout, with the grate on the outward side suspended over a cliff several hundred feet high, the head of a glacial cirque. The views are obviously stunning, but those with……

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There’s nothing like a good mystery—criminal, historical, scientific, artistic, culinary—to make for a great read. This year, Atlas Obscura investigated unsolved cases from around the world and through the centuries—from a 16th-century shipwreck off the coast of Australia that may or may not exist to a modern Midwestern ice cream flavor that just might be made with beaver secretions. A few of these unknowns may eventually become known through technological breakthroughs or newly discovered archival documents, but most are……

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Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this installment of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we bring you a classic episode: a visit to an old cement mine in Rosendale, New York, that has been used as everything from a mushroom farm to a recording studio. 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……

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