Atlas Obscura
On a rural road in Western Australia, tucked back next to a driveway, there is a traditional London police call box. If you watched the television series Doctor Who, you might suspect that it's bigger on the inside. This a full-size replica of the TARDIS, the time and space travel machine hidden inside a call box. This one is electrified, with lights...
The Convent of the Holy Apostles, the largest and most impressive in northwest Romania, stands on a plateau looking down on the Iza River. It was rebuilt starting in 1993 on the site of an old monastery abandoned during the 1790s and is now home to an Orthodox community of nuns. The church, designed by the architect Dorel Cordoș and built by a team...
Watching over the city of Kathmandu, and the university students who daily pace back and forth beneath this belfry, the Ghantaghar clock tower has withstood the test of time. The name translates literally to “hour house,” and it has dominated Kathmandu’s skyline since it was built in 1894 by Premier Bir Shumsher of the prominent Rana family. This...
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 tarubá. Fermentation is an important step in cassava processing—the raw root has chemicals that can turn into cyanide in the human body. Native peoples found that a bit of human saliva...
Since 2021, Barry Enderwick has charmed the Internet with his unfiltered reviews of “olden tymee” sandwiches. There’s the 1936 banana, cheese, pickle sandwich (“I thought it was going to be weird, but it’s not bad actually”) and the 1926 Crisco sandwich, made with creamed vegetable shortening on white bread “like some evil frosting,” he says. “You could...
Hachi, also known as Hachiko, is arguably one of the best-known dogs—or historical figures, even—in Japan. He famously waited for his master outside Shibuya Station for a decade after his death, becoming a symbol of loyalty. Now a statue of Hachiko stands on the spot, an iconic meet-up spot in Tokyo. Unbeknownst to most, there's another Hachiko statue...
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