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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Fred’s Lounge in Mamou, Louisiana
The most important thing to know about Fred’s Lounge is that it’s only open on Saturday mornings from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The second most important thing to know about Fred’s Lounge is that you may have to dance.  For over 75 years, this virtually windowless bar in a tiny Louisiana prairie-town has reigned as “The Cajun Music Capital of the World.” The doors open at about daybreak each Saturday, serving canned beer, well-liquor, and “Fred’s Omelet”—Bloody Mary...

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Ciderville Music Store in Powell, Tennessee
Ciderville defies simple categorization: It’s a country music store, it’s a live music venue, it offers music lessons from area bluegrass musicians, and it’s something of a flea market, but it’s also home to an array of utterly unique installations, monuments, and folk art. One thing it does not do is sell cider. Not anymore, at least. Owner and musician David West was born on the property, nestled along the Old Dixie Highway, which his family has owned for...

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Johnny Cash’s “One Piece at a Time”...
Plenty of songs have been inspired by cars: Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally,” War’s “Low Rider,” and Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” to name a few. There’s likely only one car, however, that’s been inspired by a song: Johnny Cash’s “One Piece at a Time” Cadillac, located in Bon Aqua, Tennessee. His 1976 song of the same name, written by Wayne Kemp, was Cash’s last song to make the Billboard Hot 100. It’s a bouncy number about a Detroit auto worker...

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Podcast: St. Brigid’s Well
Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit St. Brigid’s well in Clare, Ireland, a site integral to the story of how a pagan goddess became a Christian saint. 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 fascinating people and hear...

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Levitt Shell in Memphis, Tennessee
Of the 27 public bandshells built across the U.S. under President Roosevelt’s Depression-era WPA program, the Levitt Shell in Memphis, Tennessee, is one of a handful still standing. It probably didn’t hurt that it happens to be the site of Elvis Presley’s first concert.  Originally named the “Overton Park Shell,” the open-air amphitheater—built for a humble $12,000 in 1936—primarily hosted operas, musicals, and orchestras in its early years. It began hosting big bands in the 1940s while making all...

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Muddy Waters’ Cabin in Clarksdale, Mississippi
In 1941, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax traversed the Mississippi Delta taking field recordings of blues musicians for the Library of Congress. The recordings disseminated the early works of many now-iconic blues acts, including Son House and David “Honeyboy” Edwards. Lomax recorded one guitarist named McKinley Morganfield in the very sharecropper’s cabin in which he lived.  Morganfield went on to become Muddy Waters, six-time GRAMMY Award® winner, and “The King of the Chicago Blues,” while his cabin would go on to...

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Writing a New History of Women
There’s nothing the Atlas Obscura community loves more than a surprising story hiding in plain sight, a wondrous tale either forgotten by history or overlooked today, just waiting to be uncovered by the curious. Too often, the stories of women are the ones that have gotten lost over the years: names left out of the history books, replaced by “his wife” or “his mother” or “his daughter,” or simply erased. In celebration of Women’s History Month 2022, the editors,...

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Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, Mississippi
This squat, cinderblock building in Yazoo County is the oldest active juke joint in the state of Mississippi. There’s no stage—those brave enough to pick up a guitar in such a storied juke stand on the floor or sit in a chair to play. There are no real windows either, making midday feel like midnight. Faded photos and memorabilia lining the walls bring blues legends long-deceased back to life, and show the cafe’s proprietor, GRAMMY Award®-nominated Jimmy “Duck” Holmes—one...

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The Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee
There are famously over 10,000 caves throughout the state of Tennessee—but only one of them is home to “The Greatest Show Under Earth.” Yes, The Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee, is a giant hole in the ground, but it’s a hole that after much time and effort has been transformed into an industry standard, 1,200-person subterranean music venue with everything you’d expect from its terranean counterpart: There’s beer, state-of-the-art lighting, a topline sound system, bathrooms, coat check, and concession stands....

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Dew Drop Jazz and Social Hall in...
Hurricane Ida was none too kind to Mandeville, Louisiana—Katrina and Zeta didn’t pull their punches either. Through it all, the Dew Drop survives, a wooden shack elegantly framed in Spanish moss. It’s too storied to succumb to a 100-year storm: this building was the headquarters of a historic Black benevolent society and remains the oldest virtually unaltered jazz hall on earth. Built in 1895, the structure was once home of the Dew Drop Benevolent Society, an association offering social...

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Teddy’s Juke Joint in Zachary, Louisiana
Lloyd “Teddy” Johnson, proprietor of Teddy’s Juke Joint, will tell you he’s only ever had one address. It’s here, at the end of a dirt road off of Highway 61—one of the last remaining juke joints on the “Chitlin Circuit,” a word-of-mouth network of venues that welcomed Black musicians across the American South during segregation. Teddy was born here in what was once a shotgun shack in the thick woods north of Baton Rouge. After touring the country as...

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Swamp Pop Museum in Ville Platte, Louisiana
Don’t know “swamp pop” by name? You certainly know it by sound. Indeed, the south Louisiana musicians who created the genre didn’t even have a name for their sound until long after the genre had peaked in popularity. Hits like Phil Phillips’ “Sea of Love,” Bobby Charles’ “See You Later Alligator,” and Cookie and the Cupcakes’ “Mathilda” are examples of Swamp Pop standards that left their mark on the American songbook, but also speak to the unique musical background...

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What Data is Most Valuable To Hotels...
Question for Our Revenue Management Expert Panel: What information is most important to hotels when forecasting? What data should be prioritised by revenue management teams? (Question proposed by Daniel Feitosa) Our Revenue Management Expert Panel Chaya Kowal – Director of Revenue Management, Potato Head Family Theresa Prins – The post What Data is Most Valuable To Hotels When Forecasting? appeared first on Revfine.com.

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An Ancient Croc Stepped in Poop and...
Thirty-three million years ago, give or take, a crocodile stood on a shallow riverbank in what’s now Vietnam and took a dump. Then, it stepped in its own poop, leaving imprints of its long scaly fingers stamped on the turd, which was enveloped by the soft muddy ground and eventually became a fossil. To bring this ancient scene into focus, scientists had to push a car through a muddy coalfield, pop into an enclosure at a crocodile farm, and...

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Bolivia's Dance of the Devils Is a...
As part of a special series for 2022, we’re doing a deep visual dive into fascinating Carnival traditions around the world. More than 12,000 feet above sea level in western Bolivia, in the small city of Oruro, every year for centuries has seen a battle between good and evil. Dancers wearing elaborate, horned, technicolor masks perform the Diablada, or “Dance of the Devils,” trying and ultimately failing to defeat the Archangel Michael. Though it might be the festival’s most...

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