March 02, 2021

In Lava with a Volcano For Boris Behncke, a volcanologist living on Mount Etna, the latest eruption in late February was a delight, featuring lava fountains that spouted up maybe 6,500 feet, over twice the height of the world’s tallest skyscraper. Etna is a hyperactive volcano with over 3,500 years of historically documented eruptions, and it’s also a bit strange. This conical colossus can produce both explosive eruptions and those that ooze lava, sometimes simultaneously, making it one of nature’s greatest displays. And Behncke gets to watch it all from home.  READ MORE → GASTRO OBSCURA The Trials of Germany’s Tofu King In 1980s Germany, if you were making tofu, you’d best watch your back. At the time, both soy milk and nigari, a coagulant commonly used to make tofu, were illegal. Until a court battle in 1989, around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dairy lobby managed to keep soy milk and derivatives such as tofu strictly verboten, with authorities even throwing a few purveyors into prison. But Bernd Drosihn—dubbed by some as the “Tofu King”—persisted. Today, he presides over a soy empire that generates more than €60 million in annual revenue. How did this change? READ MORE → MGXOTYENI, SOUTH AFRICA Hole-in-the-Wall Just south of Coffee Bay, a tiny resort town along South Africa’s Wild Coast, a massive rocky sentinel sits astride the surf, as if guarding the mouth of the Mpako River. The shore-side cliff is composed of 260 million-year-old sandstone and shale, and capped with volcanic dolerite. At its base, the Indian Ocean thunders and roars through a gaping, almost-round hole through the rock. It is known to the amaXhosa as esiKhaleni, the “Place of Sound,” but is commonly known as the Hole-in-the-Wall. READ MORE → ATLAS OBSCURA COURSES Quilting Culture We’re due a few more weeks of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, which means that we’re looking for ways to keep warm. Enter: quilts! Join Southern textile artist Aaron Sanders Head for a six-part interdisciplinary exploration of quilting, stitching together history, culture, community, and practicum. You’ll learn to create a quilt from start to finish—exploring fabric selection, traditional blocks, improvisation, making a quilt sandwich, and binding and quilting. ENROLL NOW → Wasps to the Rescue Battle wasps, to war! At least that’s the way it sounded when conservators in England recently announced that they were going to deploy an army of wasps to fight a moth infestation at Blickling Hall, reportedly the birthplace of Anne Boleyn and a celebrated example of both Jacobean and Georgian architecture. The wasps are on guard against common clothes moths, which can munch their way through tapestries, textiles, and other treasures. But if you were hoping for a wasp v. moth showdown, we’re sorry to disappoint—it’s less an epic battle and more like a quirky rom-com (with a little parasitism thrown in). READ MORE → KLEITORIA, GREECE Styx Waterfall Near the summit of Mount Chelmos along the Peloponnese lies a mythical secret to immortality. Here you’ll find the Styx Waterfall, a 200-meter-high waterfall that marks the site of Achilles’s immortal baptism at the mouth of the River Styx. Hey, what’s good for Achilles is probably good for mortals, right? READ MORE → FROM THE ARCHIVES Medieval Book Protection Methods In the Middle Ages, creating a book could take years. So in order to protect their hard work, scribes and book owners used the only power they had: words. At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses, not hesitating to use the worst punishments they knew. Steal a book, and you might be cleft by a demon sword, forced to sacrifice your hands, have your eyes gouged out, or end in the “fires of hell and brimstone.” You were warned. READ MORE → CORONADO, CALIFORNIA Hotel del Coronado The “Hotel Del,” as it is known to locals, is just across the water from San Diego. It’s one of the only surviving examples of an American genre of architecture, the wooden Victorian beach resort. Most famously, writer L. Frank Baum stayed in the hotel while writing parts of his Wizard of Oz series. READ MORE → SPONSORED BY FLORIDA’S SPORTS COAST Pioneer Florida Museum When you think of Florida, you might think of the turquoise waters of the Florida Keys or the glitz and glamor of Disney World. But go back a little further in time, and you’ll find that the Sunshine State’s history includes one-room schoolhouses, butter churns, and steam engines—an important part of its history and culture. See how you can safely travel back into the past and experience what life was once like at the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village. READ MORE →