Atlas Obscura - Latest Articles and Places

Bluetooth was developed by a group of engineers who worked for Ericsson in Lund, Skåne, during the 1990s. The technology was officially launched in 1999 and has since become a standard for wireless communication. The name "Bluetooth" comes from the Danish king Harald Bluetooth, who was known for uniting Denmark and Norway during the 10th century. Just as the king united different tribes, Bluetoot…

The capital of Wales may seem like an unusual place to find anything labelled “Norwegian”, yet the Norwegian Church at Cardiff Bay is locally recognized as one of the city’s historic landmarks.  The building is in fact a reminder of how Norway was once linked to South Wales. In the 1860s, the British coal industry was thriving, and Cardiff was one of the country’s major ports for exporting coal. …

The first time it happened, my father had been dead for one week. My mother and I were in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, in April, trying to do something with ourselves. We were walking an overlook with long views across the ridgelines when something appeared in the air in front of us. Not in a photograph. Not on a screen. In the air. A shaft of colored light — blues and greens — moving as we …

The waterfront of the beach promenade in Can Picafort is only partially suitable for swimming due to offshore rocks and a rugged transition from the coast to the sea. However, while taking a stroll, one notices the droll figures made of stone and cement, standing partly alone and partly in groups, directing their rigid gaze toward the sea or the land. The stylistically shaped figures appear prima…

The hulking sculpture bLINK , unveiled in 2025 in Gothenburg, rises in vivid magenta above a railway bridge, sharply contrasting with the structure beneath it. At first glance, it could be mistaken for a coerced industrial relic, as if a chunk of infrastructure had been painted and left behind. Created by German artist Katharina Grosse, the massive structure - roughly the size of a three-story bu…

Symbolizing liberty throughout the land, Little Lady Liberty is right before the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge and customs entrance to Canada from Niagara Falls, NY. This historical marker was constructed by the Boy Scouts of America in 1951  and was apart of a nationwide movement for Americans to be reminded of how precious their liberty is.  "The statues were installed around the country by Sc…

At Kiwanis-Teledyne Park on Pine Lake in La Porte, Indiana, there are seven chimes, ranging from 7-9 feet tall, with two mallets on which a joyful noise can be made. A trained ear will instantly note that when striking these chimes, the pitch is one octave below middle C. They are considered contrabass, or double bass. In 2017, the Joyful Noise Outdoor Instruments were installed as part of a coop…

Sources of surface water are extremely rare in the Mojave Desert, as might be expected, and a perennial creek is anomalous indeed. Unsurprisingly, this occurrence was of extreme importance both for wildlife and humans. The source of the water, which causes an incongruous lush green watercourse along this otherwise unprepossessing desert canyon, is groundwater out of the sediments filling Lanfair …

Plainview, Nebraska’s Klown Doll Museum is exactly what its name promises. Inside, nearly 8,000 clown dolls line shelves, fill display cases, and peer out from every corner. Some are cheerful and brightly painted, while others lean toward the eerie, with frozen expressions that seem to follow you as you move through the space. The museum got its start early in the 1950s, when a group of locals st…

Before Arbor Day was a date on calendars across the U.S., it was an idea taking shape inside this sprawling Nebraska City estate. Arbor Lodge began as a modest home in 1855, but its owner, J. Sterling Morton, expanded it over time until it ended up a 52-room mansion. Morton, a newspaper editor and later U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, believed trees could make the plains of Nebraska feel more hosp…

Three miles east of Chadron, Nebraska, the Museum of the Fur Trade occupies what was once James Bordeaux’s trading post, established for the American Fur Company in 1837. Today, visitors can walk through a reconstructed version of the trade site that was built on the original foundation stones and postholes. The site’s story is bigger than a simple log outpost on the plains, however. In the after…

Rising sharply from the plains of western Nebraska, Scotts Bluff was a critical landmark for 19th-century emigrants traveling the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails. After weeks of navigating by rivers and rutted tracks, wagon parties would spot this towering formation and know they were on the right path. Today, from overlooks reached by steep trails or a winding summit road, that same geogra…

Metro Station Hötorget, a glimpse of the 1950s in Stockholm.  The metro station opened in 1952 under the name Kungsgatan. In 1957 it was changed to Hötorget. The station is a good example of a preserved architecture from the beginning of the metro in Stockholm. The station has a very high conservation value with well-preserved 1950s architecture, including original tiles in seven different shades…

The White Gravel Mines began as a vital white quartz gravel source owned by the Warren family and is located in Minford, Ohio. It was founded in the early 20th century. The workers used dynamite and muscle to make a living by supplying the gravel and sand to the growing residential and industrial needs of the region.  The gravel was then sold to the General Refractories Company. The workers worke…

The Gowanus Canal is 1.8 miles long, stretching through the neighborhoods of Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope and, of course, Gowanus. It was an important entryway into those neighborhoods for cargo-laden ships, with five bridges placed at ground level to allow automobiles to travel back and forth between each side. Three of these bridges are bascule bridges – what you may think of as the “s…

Dams the South Fork Flathead River. Creating the Hungry Horse reservoir. The dam stands at a height of 564 feet (172m). At the time of its completion it was both the fourth tallest and fourth largest concrete dam in the United States. Now it's the tenth tallest concrete dam. The dam shares its name with the nearby community of Hungry Horse. The community exists because of the construction of the …

A breathing museum, a museum that breathes. Andetag is an immersive art museum built around woven optical fiber textile, a material that carries light through its threads. The artworks pulse slowly, synchronized to a shared rhythm transmitted over the internet to sibling pieces scattered from Seattle to Costa Rica to Portugal. Every work inhales and exhales together, at the same moment, across th…

Hoosier Gym in Knightsville looks like the kind of small-town basketball court that could only exist in Indiana, which is exactly why it became unforgettable on screen. The gym served as the home court of the Hickory Huskers in Hoosiers , transforming a real high school gym into one of the most recognizable settings in sports movie history. More than a filming location, it feels like a shrine to …

In World War II, Amsterdam’s large Jewish population and notable Jewish institutions were particularly hard hit by the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands.  The Jewish people were stripped of their rights and of their possessions, over 100,000 Jewish people were killed, and over 100,000 other Jewish people were deported from the country. One of the many locations in Amsterdam affected by the Holocau…

By 1860, the trans-Atlantic slave trade had long been outlawed, and most slaves in the United States were born on American soil. However, this didn’t prevent an avaricious pair of Americans from illegally purchasing 110 slaves in West Africa and bringing them to Mobile, Alabama. Under cover of darkness, the slaves were smuggled into the country and the ship, the Clotilda, was burned in order to h…