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Atlas obscura
27  mars     22h12
Would You Eat This Purple Tomato?
Diana Hubbell    It looks like the kind of nightshade one might grow in Fern Gully, a lustrous, near black tomato veined with bursts of alien fuchsia. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a Missouri based seed company, has a long history of offering strikingly photogenic heirloom tomatoes. From Queen of the Night, an orange...
    22h00
Yafa Bakery & Café in Somerville, Massachusetts
Rebecca Boyle    On Somerville Avenue, wedged between New England strip malls, a Brazilian dining club, and a public park, is a gem of a neighborhood bakery. Opened in by Abdulla Awad, who is Palestinian from the old city of Jerusalem, Yafa Bakery quickly developed a devoted local following for the finesse of...
    21h00
Nilpferdbrunnen in Berlin, Germany
Leah Hamilton    The hippopotamus fountain stands on the north eastern corner of Wühlischplatz. A bronze hippopotamus figure stands on the edge of a small water basin. When the fountain is in operation, water spurts out of the nostrils. On its back are two figures representing big game hunters: A woman with...
    21h00
Arc of Dreams’ in Sioux Falls, South Dakota
The Podcast Team    What does it mean to follow your dreams A dream can motivate you, but it is inherently incomplete. To fully realize your dreams, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. And if that leap is taken over the Big Sioux River, chances are you’re in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and you have just...
    20h30
Flora and Otto in Christchurch, New Zealand
Caroline Shin    In and , earthquakes wreaked havoc on communities in Christchurch, New Zealand, taking lives and destroying infrastructure. Among the wreckage was residents’ now shattered fine china. A group of volunteers found, gathered, and repurposed the broken fragments, making a mosaic from the...
    20h00
RMS Empress of Ireland Monument in Toronto, Ontario
Hessom Razavi    Many are familiar with the tragedy of the RMS Titanic, but fewer are familiar with the story of the RMS Empress of Ireland. Just two years after the White Star liner sank into the North Atlantic, another passenger ship plunged into icy waters, claiming the lives of, people eight more...
    17h35
Coronium, One of the Most Enduring Mysteries (and Mistakes) in Eclipse Science
The Podcast Team    It was July , and astronomers were making frantic preparations. A total solar eclipse was coming to the United States, and new, fundamental knowledge was going to be there for the taking, by whoever got there first. Scientific expeditions were planned to travel into the path of totality to peer...
    17h00
The Witch’s Skull in Glasgow, Scotland
AO Puzzles    Though the Saracen Head pub, affectionately referred to by the locals as the Sarry Heid or Sorry Head, has been in the Trongate district of Glasgow since the th century, the current building is a more modern drinking den. In the Middle Ages, Saracen described any person who followed Islam....
    16h00
Leuven Historical Measures in Leuven, Belgium
Frank Jacobs, Big Think    Standard measures are so ubiquitous today that it is hard to imagine that every town once had its own definitions of lengths, weights, volume, and even time. They were usually displayed in a public location so that the public could easily make their own copies, and measure the products that they...
    15h37
Quinault Giant Sitka Spruce in Quinault, Washington
Julia Sizek    Known to some as the Valley of the Giants, Washington’s Quinault Valley is home to some of the tallest trees in the world. The trees in the Quinault Rainforest are well watered with an average rainfall of feet a year. Though the redwoods of Northern California have a slight edge when it comes...
    15h00
Dama Ibérica in Valencia, Spain
April White    The Dama Ibérica, a monumental sculpture in the heart of Valencia was created by the sculptor Manolo Valdés with the help of the architect Rafa Rivera and the Fallas artist Manolo Martà n. This impressive work depicts a large, majestic female figure inspired by ancient Iberian women’s heads ...
    14h00
Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home in Jackson, Mississippi
Roxanne Hoorn    On a quiet residential block in northwest Jackson, Mississippi, there sits a modest middle class ranch home, indistinguishable from its neighbors in the Elraine subdivision except for its vivid aquamarine exterior. Yet this unassuming home was once owned by Myrlie and Medgar Evers, and as such, it...
    13h00
Rockheim in Trondheim, Norway
   Dedicated to popular Norwegian Music since the s, this museum was opened in and boasts an incredible collection of music, archives, and even instruments. The exhibition area is organized into rooms corresponding to different decades of Norwegian music. Not only can the visitor listen to...
26  mars     22h00
Fox & Son Fair Foods in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
   The Reading Terminal Market, a , square foot indoor market in central Philly, is home to Fox Son Fair Foods, a vendor selling nostalgic carnival snacks with modern twists. Amusement park vibes span a menu of savory and sweet favorites: corn dogs, cheese curds, loaded fries, and funnel cakes...
    19h50
Why Doomsayers Think the Eclipse Will Bring Disaster to Illinois
   The end of the world will occur in Carbondale, Illinois. That is one of the latest conspiracy theories that’s been floating around the internet over the past year. Seven years ago, this small town experienced a total solar eclipse, the path of which spanned the United States diagonally from South...
    12h00
Podcast: Ganvie Lake Village
   Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, producer Baudelaire Ceus talks with our host Dylan Thuras about his trip to Ganvie Lake Village in Benin, a place referred to as the Venice of Africa. Our...
25  mars     21h00
Go Beyond the Beef at Korean Barbecue
   THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE MARCH , , EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE. I grew up in Flushing, the home to Queens’ Koreatown. Or as we call it, the real Koreatown. It’s where percent of Korean New Yorkers actually live, as compared to the...
    13h00
How to View an Eclipse Safely
   This story was originally published on The Conversation. It appears here under a Creative Commons license. A total solar eclipse will occur across a wide ribbon of North America on April . Millions of people along the path of totality in Mexico, the United States, and Canada will witness this...
    12h00
Podcast: Vent Haven Museum
   Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit the Vent Haven Museum, which is a dream destination or a nightmare depending on how you feel about ventriloquist dummies. Inside, you’ll find more than...
    09h00
The Atlas Obscura Crossword: Beyond the Moai
   Atlas Obscura’s weekly crossword comes to us from creator Stella Zawistowski, a puzzlemaker who is also one of the fastest crossword solvers in America, with multiple top finishes at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and a personal record for solving the New York Times Sunday crossword of...
22  mars     21h20
Which States in America Have the Oldest and Youngest People?
   Maine has the highest median age of any state in the country: years. That’s two years more than retiree magnet Florida and fully years more than Utah, the state with the lowest median age years . Why the big gap Economics and religion. In Maine, jobs are fewer and wages are lower, so...
    17h24
Wild Life: Relocated Tortoises
   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 , . Desert tortoises know how to weather change. Residents of the Mojave for more than three million years, they’ve stuck around even...
    16h05
7 Unexpected Easter Traditions
   In many parts of the world, the Christian holiday of Easter is now synonymous with bunnies and chicks, chocolate and jelly beans, and the decorating and hiding of lots and lots of eggs. But Easter marked in by Western Christians on March and by Eastern Orthodox Christians on May has also...
    13h30
Why Clouds Vanish During Solar Eclipses
   In , a group of umbraphiles gathered in Nova Scotia to witness a total solar eclipse. Just before the celestial event was to begin, clouds completely obscured the view. One of the group members, now retired geoscientist Steve Dutch, recalled that, as the eclipse began, the clouds suddenly fled....
21  février     16h00
Maultaschen
   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...
01  février     14h00
Pont
   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,...
06  décembre     18h00
Lancashire Courting Cake
   Before dating apps, girls in the historic English county of Lancashire would bake romantic cakes for their betrotheds. These were considered love tokens in a time when unmarried men and women were kept apart due to societal norms, but the Lancashire courting cake is still made today, both by...