Author: Ms. R.

Imagine opening your front door, still in your pajamas, on a frosty Swiss morning, only to find a man dressed entirely in black staring back at you. Charcoal trousers, top hat, and boots, a little broom and dustpan peeking out of his bag. He waves an official-looking document in the air and insists on entering your house. A little bemused, you wave the chimney sweep in. Such encounters are common in Switzerland, where these men and women in black……

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So you’ve heard about Gastro Obscura—maybe thanks to our new book—and you’re wondering what it’s all about. Well, you’re in the right place. Gastro Obscura is run by a team within Atlas Obscura of food-obsessed writers, editors, trip planners, and more. Since our launch in 2017, our goal has been to inspire wonder and curiosity about the world through food and drink. And we do that in a few different ways: Articles & Recipes We publish stories about food……

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Initially, this estate was owned by Baron von Ungern, hence the name Ungurmuiža. Later property rights were bought by Landrat Johann Baltazar von Kampenhausen who ordered to rearrange and built the mansion house that we know today. Works were finished in 1732 when the baron’s family moved in. Ungurmuiža manor is the only surviving baroque-style wooden house in Latvia. It blends nicely with the lush countryside and oak grove around the mansion house. The building was decorated with wall……

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Halloween is a huge thing in L.A.,” says Christina Rice, a senior librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library—and she has proof. She oversees the library’s photo collection—an estimated three to four million snapshots of life in the city, housed on a single floor at the Central Library Downtown. The collection was founded in the 1940s to document the rapidly changing city, and has grown through donations ever since. It includes both major news events and less-major ones, including……

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At the turn of the 18th century, the mighty Russian Empire was just beginning to extend its influence across the Bering Sea into their newly acquired territory on their third occupied continent: North America. Spearheading this expansion eastward was the Russian American Company, which had been tasked by Emperor Pavel I with a mission to built trading relationships with the native people and expand Russia’s colonial interests in the New World. Pavlovsk (modern-day Kodiak, Alaska) and Novo Arkhangelsk (modern-day Sitka,……

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William Harley was born in Littleport, England in May 1835. He left his hometown in 1859 for the United States and joined the Army. There, he fought on the side of the Union army in the American Civil War. His son, William Sylvester Harley, was born in the U.S. in 1880 and went on to form the Harley Davidson Motor Company with Arthur Davidson in 1903. This monument in Littleport was commissioned to celebrate the 100th birthday of the……

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A secluded clearing by a stream in the Catoctin Mountain Park in Thurmont, Maryland, was once the site of the notorious Blue Blazes Still, the largest illegal whiskey manufacturing enterprise to operate in Frederick County in the early 1900s. The clearing was also the location of an infamous raid that resulted in the shooting death of Frederick County Deputy Sheriff Clyde Hauver and the destruction of the operation. The practice of distilling whiskey in the mountains of western Maryland……

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