November 22, 2021

Give The Gift Of Wonder Looking for a great gift for that hard-to-buy-for person on your list? Atlas Obscura has you covered! Our Online Course Gift Card is the perfect choice for anyone who thrives on curiosity and a sense of adventure. Our online courses offer interactive and fun learning opportunities in a wide range of under-explored topics from lock picking and taxidermy to perfumery and honey tasting. Your recipient is sure to find a course that piques their interests!  BUY NOW → Rainbow Taboos The next time you see a rainbow, perhaps resist the urge to point at it. All around the world, cultures have developed taboos around pointing at the many-hued natural phenomenon, from the Lakota of the northern plains in North America to isolated islands in Melanesia. For years, Robert Blust has been searching for these rainbow-themed taboos, trying to understand each cultural taboo and the motivations behind the beliefs. READ MORE → MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA Owamni At Owamni, the debut restaurant of chef Sean Sherman, diners dig into dishes like cedar-braised bison with amaranth leaves (served in tacos made from nixtamalized heirloom corn) and rabbit preserved with aromatic conifers and served with fermented blueberries. The menu draws heavily on carefully sourced game meats and freshwater fish, such as trout from Lake Superior, along with produce and grains local to the Americas, such as wild rice and quinoa. What guests won’t find here is any trace of pork, chicken, beef, cane sugar, dairy, or wheat—all ingredients introduced to North America by European colonizers. READ MORE → Preserving Plastic Pasts Conservators are racing against time to preserve East Germany’s colorful plastic past. For decades, plastic objects shaped daily life in the former German Democratic Republic, with people enthusiastically looking to plastic as a material that could solve a lot of problems. East German plastic once represented a utopian future, but today, the most notable examples are half a century old, and their caretakers are increasingly concerned about how to preserve this material culture for future generations. It’s a lot harder than you might think. READ MORE → RWANDA Nyamunini Island Known jokingly as “Napoleon’s hat” for the similarities between its shape and Bonaparte’s unique headgear, Nyamunini Island has become a destination for locals and foreigners alike. Hidden near the eastern shores of Lake Kivu on Rwanda’s shared border with Congo, Nyamunini is home to thousands of fruit bats. As many as 50,000 straw-colored fruit bats of the Eidolon helvum species have their home on the island, the largest colony of this kind in Rwanda. READ MORE → ATLAS OBSCURA EXPERIENCES Inside a Supersonic Concorde What's it like inside a plane that can go twice the speed of sound? Join Atlas Obscura and the Intrepid Museum as we take you on a live, virtual journey of their Concorde jet to find out, guided by one of the pilots that actually got to fly it! GET TICKETS → World’s Largest Dry-Stone Maze Deep among the Sitka spruce and Scots pine of England’s Dalby Forest is an enormous square clearing. Muddy underfoot, it’s unmistakably a building site, but the four concentric walls taking shape at its center make it clear that this is no ordinary undertaking. When this project is completed, over 4,000 tons of local sandstone will be pieced together like a puzzle to form the world’s largest dry-stone wall maze. Dalby Forest’s maze aims to do something new: transform the ancient art of dry-stone walling into a modern attraction, repurposing practical agricultural innovations of previous millennia to entertain curious visitors of the 21st century. READ MORE → ROME, ITALY Servian Wall at McDonald's McDonald’s may be one of the last places you’d expect to see the remains of an ancient structure, but in Rome, that’s not outside the realm of possibility. In the heart of the city, the Roma Termini station is home to two McDonald’s, one on the ground floor and another located on the basement floor. If you stop in for an order of McNuggets at the latter, you can’t help but notice their unusual decorations: the ruins of an ancient Roman wall. READ MORE → FROM THE ARCHIVES Lunar Sculpture Across the many missions to the Moon over the years, countless bits of flotsam and jetsam have been deposited on the lunar surface. From Soviet sensors to a couple of golf balls, there are roughly 800 manmade objects up there. There is, however, one of them that’s different than the others. In 1971, the crew of Apollo 15 left a piece of aluminum, 3.3 inches long, on the lunar surface. It is called Fallen Astronaut, and it is the first (and only) art installation on our closest neighbor. READ MORE → PUERTO INCA, PERU The Boiling River of the Amazon Hidden in the dense jungle of the Peruvian Amazon is a percolating, roiling river. The steaming turquoise waters, which can reach up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, are guided by ivory-colored stones and guarded by 60-foot walls of lush forest and vegetation. According to legend, a giant serpent spirit named Yacumama or “Mother of the Waters” who gives birth to hot and cold waters heats the river. This scalding hot river was thought to be a myth—until one geoscientist made it his quest to study the waters. READ MORE → ATLAS OBSCURA EXPERIENCES Charm School: Recycled Leatherworking Leatherwork dates all the way back to the Stone Age in 5,000 BC. It was one of our earliest textile-like materials and predates traditional woven fabric by about 1,500 years. In this episode of Charm School, we’ll talk about some ancient uses for leather, then go on to some basics of leatherwork including wet molding, punching, stitchwork, and finishing. With an eye toward sustainability, we will use recycled leather from scraps or cut from old handbags, gloves, or clothing. GET TICKETS →