Author: Ms. R.

Connecticut Shorty caught her first ride in the porch of a grainer—the slender, metal cutout on a grain-filled train car—traveling about 200 miles across Northern California, from Dunsmuir to Roseville. It was 1993, and Shorty, then 51, was learning how to hop freight trains from a man known as Road Hog USA. He was a hobo, part of an American tradition that emerged after the Civil War: transient laborers who rode the rails and found short-term work along the……

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Clach Mhic Leoid, as this standing stone is known in Gaelic, is one of many such stones in Scotland. Just in the Outer Hebrides archipelago, visitors can find what is likely the country’s tallest stone, alongside one of the most famous groups of standing stones. Macleod’s Stone is different from these, however, as it is located in plain view of some of the characteristically powder-fine sands and turquoise waters of many Hebridean beaches. The stone is closest to Traigh Iar……

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Known jokingly as “Napoleon’s hat” for the similarities between its shape and Bonaparte’s unique headgear, Nyamunini Island has become a destination for Rwandese and foreigners alike. Hidden near the eastern shores of Lake Kivu on Rwanda’s shared border with Congo, Nyamunini is home to thousands of fruit bats. As many as 40,000 straw-colored fruit bats of the Eidolon helvum species have their home on the island, the largest colony of this kind in Rwanda. According to a biodiversity survey……

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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 meet Jessica Oreck, a woman who has spent the last 30 years collecting odd and forgotten objects Now, they’re all beautifully curated and on display in the Office of Collecting and Design in Las Vegas, which you can follow on Instagram. Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15……

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In the 1960s, many East Germans ate their soft-boiled eggs out of colorful plastic eggcups shaped like chickens. Manufactured in Wolkenstein, a tiny town in Saxony, the popular Huhn eggcup came in cheerful shades of blue, green, yellow, red, and orange, allowing consumers to mix-and-match at breakfast according to their fancy. In all likelihood, the neighbors down the hall in the Plattenbau—a type of prefabricated apartment block still found throughout the former German Democratic Republic—were using the same eggcups,……

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When the Bellagio’s chocolate fountain was unveiled, the casino’s president boasted that it was “nothing short of genius.” In a mesmerizing display, liquid chocolate (dark, medium, and white) drizzled down the 27-foot-tall ode to sweet treats, only to be pumped to the top and drizzle down again. It stands outside the casino’s patisserie, and the Guinness Book of World Records certified it as the world’s largest chocolate fountain.  Who’s their competition? As of 2019, a chocolate fountain in a Zurich Lindt……

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In 1943, only one in a hundred crofts in the Scottish Highlands had access to an electricity supply. This would rapidly change in just a few decades thanks to affordable electricity produced by hydropower stations. One of Scotland‘s earliest hydropower plants was the Tummel Bridge Power Station, which was completed in 1933.  The Tummel Valley collects water from 1,800 square kilometers (690 sq mi) of the Grampian Mountains, with Tummel Bridge Hydro Power Station receiving water from Dunalastair Reservoir……

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Just outside of the rural town of Tapiraí and in the heart of São Paulo‘s Atlantic rainforest can be found an avian Avalon for numerous species of endangered Brazilian birdlife. The Trilha dos Tucanos reserve is situated in a critically important fragment of São Paulo’s Atlantic rainforest that comprises approximately 70 hectares of forest spread across the Paranapiciaba mountain ranges in Brazil. Trilha dos Tucanos began in 2014 when the owner Marco Antonio Neumann, who had inherited the property in……

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