Kenji Hall    Dubbed the last lung of Manila, the . acre Arroceros Forest Park had long been a battleground between the city government and pro environment organizations before becoming a modern oasis today. During Spanish colonial rule, the park area was part of the pari n or market of Manila. Later in the...

Sarah Lohman    The Juntura Hot Springs are located on an island in a horseshoe shaped bend of the Malheur river near the small town of Juntura, Oregon. Two pools are on the island and the hotter of the two gets to about degrees Fahrenheit. The springs can be inaccessible when the river is high, with water...

The Podcast Team    Brisbane Water National Park, near Kariong, is home to the amazing Bulgandry Art Site Aboriginal Place. Aboriginal artists used a hard pointed stone to etch the designs into the surface of the flat, exposed Hawkesbury sandstone. One thing that sets the Bulgandry Art Site apart from other...

John Cooley and Chris Simon    Are you looking for an authentic replica of the Shards of Narsil or the Kandarian dagger from Evil Dead The Dragon’s Lair Unleashed may just have the blade you’re looking for. This Ontario store specializes in officially licensed replica weaponry from movies, television shows, and video games,...

Andrew Coletti    Teaching medicine has been one of the core tasks of Leiden University since its founding in , and a large part of this education includes learning about the various diseases and problems that humans suffer from, and how to heal or at least mitigate the symptoms. Most of this information comes...

Corey Buhay    When Sulpice Debauve started selling chocolate in th century Paris, he touted the exotic import as medicinal. Debauve was a trained pharmacist, and, not incidentally, a lumière, one of Voltaire’s enlightened who saw science as the future. He used the utile dulci useful sweet to help the...

Corey Buhay    While plaques featuring monarchs often commemorate significant events or contributions made by royalty, an unusual example of the opposite can be found in the center of Malmö. Situated in a region of southern Sweden that was once under Danish rule, a modern marker embedded in the pavement wryly...

The Podcast Team    According to the National Park Service, the government of Japan presented the lantern to the United States on March , , to symbolize the enduring cultural partnership between the two countries. Carved in , the granite lantern, which stands eight and a half feet tall and weighs two tons ...

AO Puzzles    Bigfoot enthusiasts have their favorite spots across the United States. The Pacific Northwest has been riddled with Sasquatch sightings for hundreds of years. Florida has the skunk ape, which dwells in the Everglades. The Boggy Creek monster put Fouke, Arkansas, on the map for its famous...

Frank Jacobs, Big Think    Ever dreamed of leaving your mark on the world How about leaving your mark on some freshly poured concrete That’s what one frog chose to do while crossing the street in Saint Charles, Missouri. Like the Chicago Rat Hole that became infamous in early , this imprint of a frog caught in wet...

Miles Griffis    If you ever find yourself in Japan, try this little experiment. Ask a local to explain the special appeal of takitate gohan freshly cooked white rice. Not about how filling it is, or its versatility as a complement to savory or sour dishes. Ask about the taste, the texture, and the aroma. There’s...

N.C. Stevens    Slow Food’s Plant a Seed Kit is an initiative that seeks to get Ark of Taste seeds rare, endangered, diverse and distinctive foods into home gardens. And every purchased kit pays for a free kit for a schoolhouse garden. For , the kit includes four grains to grow at a garden scale: Cocke’s...

   Nestled in the th century lanes around Farnham’s St Andrew’s Church, stands a communal pumphouse, a commonplace in the past but now a rarity. Reconstructed in , this is an example of structures that held a significant place in the history of villages and towns across the country. Pumphouses...

   This large townhouse in Brussels was designed by Victor Horta and built between and . The building was commissioned by Armand Solvay, son of industrialist Ernest Solvay who invented the Solvay process used to produce soda ash anhydrous sodium carbonate . With his father’s fortune...

   Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit the city of Melbourne, where every tree was given a barcode and email address in so people could report when it needed maintenance or attention....

   This story was originally published on The Conversation. It appears here under a Creative Commons license. In the wake of North America’s recent solar eclipse, another historic natural event is on the horizon. From late April through June , the largest brood of year cicadas, known as...

   THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE APRIL , , EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. This year, I visited Barcelona around Easter, which meant I got to try coca de llardons. This seasonal Catalan pastry, topped with sugar and pine nuts, is made extra...

   Denver is a city of many facets. It’s both a launching pad for outdoor adventure and a hub of the arts. It’s at once scrappy and sophisticated. It’s home to hundreds of unique lifestyles, cultures, and traditions and about as many approaches to food. That’s good news for eaters: With this diverse...

   Much like its diverse population, the culinary influences of Denver’s food scene span the globe putting various cuisines and traditions on a delicious collision course. Today, Denver’s restaurants and bakeries showcase that rich international heritage. You’ll find everything from unexpected fusion...

   Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we take a look at Meyer lemons, which are so special that restaurants go out of their way to call them out on menus. Martha Stewart loves to bake with them. And...

   This Atlas Obscura themed crossword comes from independent crossword constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley. He has been a professional puzzlemaker since , and his pieces have appeared in dozens of publications. He’s also a member of the Boston Typewriter Orchestra. You can solve the puzzle below,...

   Imagine that you could drill a hole straight through the Earth. Suspend your disbelief for a moment, ignoring the molten core that would fry you. Where would you end up In geographical coordinates, the answer is quite simple: If the coordinates longitude and latitude of a point on the Earth’s...

   Each week, Atlas Obscura is providing a new short excerpt from our upcoming book, Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders September , . In the winter of , a bird went viral. This nonbinary cardinal is flipping gender the bird, announced the queer news site...

   Maharani Mahansar Heritage Liquor is the modern manifestation of a nine generation family tradition that has spanned monarchy, colonization, and independence in India’s northern state of Rajasthan. The Shekhawat family, descended from a prominent baron or thikanedar of Jaipur State in the early...

   Indigenous Brazilians have fermented alcoholic beverages from the cassava root for thousands of years. These beer like beverages go by names like cauim, caxiri, and tarub . Fermentation is an important step in cassava processing the raw root has chemicals that can turn into cyanide in the human...

   The origins of Germany’s Maultaschen are deliciously devious. Legend has it that, in the late Middle Ages, a lay brother named Jakob invented the stuffed pasta dumplings at the Maulbronn Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site founded in by Cistercian monks in southwest Germany. One direct...

   In , absinthe was outlawed in France. In the small mountain town of Pontarlier, the world capital of absinthe, the news devastated the livelihoods of thousands of local workers. Nearly all the town’s distilleries closed their doors or relocated. But one producer, Distillerie Guy, remained open,...