The Podcast Team    In the s and s, the British Government tested atomic bombs in Australia, mostly at the Woomera site in the state of South Australia. The first tests took place in , near the Montebello Islands off Western Australia. Later tests took place on the Australian continent, first at Emu Field...

Meg St-Esprit    Bunsen is a well known name to anyone who ever had a chemistry class, as his burners are still widely used today. Using this burner, Bunsen was able to pioneer research in the emission spectra of heated elements and became one of the most famous scientists of his generation. Robert Wilhelm...

Robert M. Thorson    In the middle of Wellington’s Victoria Park, you can find a filming location from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. You might recognize this little ledge in the forested park as the spot where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin get off the road to hide from the Nazgûl. In real life,...

Colin Dickey    Tucked up a series of ascending trails and steps, a small Buddhist temple and surrounding buildings overlooks this small mountain hot springs town of Arima. It is a well marked path starting across from and just to the hill from the bus station. With a history that dates back over, years,...

The Podcast Team    Interested in learning what language you’re speaking when you sing Kumbaya Curious about where the expression acres and a mule comes from Want to know where gumbo was invented Spoiler alert it wasn’t in Louisiana. Stop by the Gullah Museum in Georgetown, South Carolina. These questions...

AO Puzzles    Aranjuez is a first class historical destination, and not just because of its famous palace surrounded by beautiful gardens. There are other corners that could be considered well kept secrets because they are much less known than they deserve; two of these secret corners are located in the Jardà n...

Sarah Lohman    In November , a series of unauthorized statues of menacing pigs, dressed in overcoats and standing upright like humans, mysteriously appeared overnight in prominent locations in major cities across Western Europe. Dubbed My Inner Beast, Danish sculptor Jens Galschi t had made the...

Frank Jacobs, Big Think    Located in the Royal Northern College of Music’s basement in Manchester, England, is a collection of over musical instruments, curiosities, and memorabilia. It was created thanks to three bequests to the college two made by Henry Watson donated in and and another by Josiah Chapman...

Christina Ayele Djossa    Northeast of Monument Valley, in the southwest corner of Utah, is a foot meter tall rock formation that may seem small compared to the mountains behind it but looks immediately distinctive. This rock formation is topped by a broad, flat, orange red sandstone with a diameter of feet ...

April White    Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit a one room museum located in the basement of a church turned community arts center, crammed with mementos from a pretty spectacular period in history...

The Podcast Team    More than a millennium before Ferdinand Magellan landed in the archipelago that he called Filipinas, the islands were filled with thriving communities, ruled by their respective datu rulers . They have sophisticated pottery and artifacts developed from trading with the surrounding civilizations in...

Erika Mailman    The southwest Texas desert stretches for miles in Big Bend National Park nearly percent of the park is desert land, after all. All told, there are miles of trails, ranging from desert landscapes to majestic mountains to riverside splendor. Mexican persimmons grow alongside bursts of color...

   After the United Kingdom passed the Slave Trade Act of , prohibiting the slave trade, they then had to enforce it. This was the job of the Royal Navy, which patrolled the coast of Africa looking to capture slave ships. When ships were captured, they were most often brought to the port of...

   Filing teeth is not exactly unheard of in ancient societies. The Vikings were known to carve grooves into their incisors for status or intimidation, similar to the Maya of Central America and Zappo Zap people in Congo, among others. But while examining Viking skulls from the island of Gotland in...

   This story was originally published on The Conversation. It appears here under a Creative Commons license. The abandoned fieldstone walls of New England are every bit as iconic to the region as lobster pots, town greens, sap buckets, and fall foliage. They seem to be everywhere, a latticework of...

   On an unseasonably cold day in late March, I took a nearly empty ferry to Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. The sun was shining, but a brutal, frigid wind meant it was hardly a day for a picnic, a popular reason to visit the island in the summer. I disembarked onto a nearly deserted island, one...

   Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we need your help Tell us about your hometown’s weird or unique local tradition. Walk us through what goes down who’s there and what’s happening Is there an...

   This themed crossword comes from Zhouqin C.C. Burnikel, who grew up in Xi’an, China, before moving to the United States in . She’s the author of Sip Solve Easy Mini Crosswords. You can solve the puzzle below, or download it in .pdf or .puz. Note that the links in the clues will take you to...

   Scio pronounced sigh o is a village in Oregon about miles south of Portland. Formerly home to a large immigrant community from Czechoslovakia, Scio’s historical culture practices are now half remembered ghosts. The culinary impact of the Czech community is becoming equally forgotten, a fate...

   It’s not if, but when: Californians live with the certainty that someday, the Big One will hit. The Big One is an earthquake with a magnitude of at least . on the Richter scale. Because of the plate tectonics at work under California, big quakes like that hit the area every to years. The...

   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 , . Wilbur, Porky, Peppa Pig across cultures and through generations, pigs have inspired humans to great heights in art and...

   Wonder is everywhere. That’s why, every other week, Atlas Obscura drags you down some of the rabbit holes we encounter as we search for our unusual stories. We highlight surprising finds, great writing, and inspiring stories from some of our favorite publications. The Untold History of...

   Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. This week wasn’t special only because of the eclipse. We also recorded our first live show, during the Atlas Obscura Ecliptic Festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast,...

   It was early, south of a.m., when four ultrarunners gathered inside a historic post office in Placerville, California in March . A small crowd of onlookers clutched cups of coffee as the group known as History Expeditions spoke about a man called Snowshoe Thompson. They listened intently,...

   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,...