January 31, 2023

GASTRO OBSCURA  Italy’s War on Pasta  In 1932, Italian culinary magazine La Cucina Italiana awarded their Best Pasta Sauce prize to one chef’s Sugo Marinetti, or Marinetti sauce. Said sauce stood out not only for its unique combination of chopped pistachios and artichokes sauteed in butter, but also for its ironic title: the firebrand poet Filoppo Marinetti, for whom the pasta sauce was named, was at that very moment fighting to banish pasta from Italy, since he considered pasta “an absurd Italian gastronomic religion.”  READ MORE →   SHE WAS THERE Forgotten Warrior Queens Throughout history, there have been countless wars—and sometimes, in the midst of those wars, there have been warrior queens. In their book War Queens: Extraordinary Women Who Ruled the Battlefield, father/daughter historians Jonathan and Emily Jordan dig into all the twists and turns of a handful of battle-hardened queens, including Italy’s fortress-seizing countess, Catherine Sforza and Angola’s battle-hardened Queen Njinga. We sat down with Emily Jordan to talk about why so often these women’s stories go overlooked. READ MORE →   LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM Street Cat Bob Memorial Statue There is one unorthodox statue in London that’s dedicated to a furry, famous Londoner who once walked on four legs. In the south-east corner of a park in the borough of Islington, lies a life-size bronze of a cat named Bob, who rests perched on a stack of books. This feline was immortalized in a series of novels written by his adopted owner, James Bowen. These two individuals were able to look after one another, and in turn, their lives became the stuff of legend. READ MORE →   SPONSORED BY VISIT ARIZONA Arizona’s Ancient Petroglyphs One ranch in Winslow, Arizona, hides a whole lot of history. Specifically, Brantley Baird’s Rock Art Ranch contains a canyon covered in thousands of ancient petroglyphs created by Ancestral Pueblo people. Archaeologists have found these petroglyphs to be up to 10,000 years old, according to some estimates. LEARN MORE →   UNUSUAL LISTS Spies Are Forever When you think of a spy, the image of James Bond, neatly dressed and dapper, might immediately come to mind, but the actual life of a spy is far less glamorous. Sure, getting them to tell you their day to day might be a little tricky, but there are several locations around the globe where you can walk in the footsteps of past spies. From an espionage ship to a painfully obvious spy house, these are some of our favorite places to explore the world of spycraft. READ MORE →   MALDONADO, URUGUAY Puente Laguna Garzón The mile-long Laguna Garzón Bridge is among the most unique in the world thanks to an empty, near-perfect circle at its center. The structure was born equally of safety concerns—the road’s complementary one-way, half-circles force motorists to slow down, thereby breaking up the mile-long stretch that otherwise might have been a tantalizing speedway—and of a need for amusement. The bridge has already gained international acclaim for its design. READ MORE →   KEEPING YOUR COOL Enter the Iceman Ice delivery was booming in the late 1800s, particularly in big cities, where fresh ice was a necessity. Ice kept dairy and meat products fresh, which improved and diversified urban diets and restaurant offerings as fresh fish, ice cream, and other foods became available. With the rise of ice came the rise of icemen—very buff icemen who would have to cart ice inside homes and chip away at the block—and with that came the unfortunate association of a working-class lothario, sort of a 19th-century version of a buff pool boy. READ MORE →   WILSONS PROMONTORY, AUSTRALIA Skull Rock (Cleft Island) Skull Rock, formally known as Cleft Island, is a small, but remarkable granite island that sits among the Anser group of islands off the southwest coast of Wilsons Promontory, Victoria, Australia. Little is known about the history of the island, but it is said that more people have been on the moon than inside Skull Rock. READ MORE →   ATLAS OBSCURA PUZZLES “Homecoming” Satogaeri, which translates to “Homecoming,” was created by a Puzzle Communication Nikoli reader with the pseudonym Ichinokoto. It was the evolution of a puzzle called Bonsan that the reader had created before, involving numbers, arrows, and symmetry. The puzzle is inspired by global migration; the goal is to move the circles within the puzzle to send them “home,” so that each outlined area contains just one circle. Help them get home today. PLAY NOW →   ATLAS OBSCURA COURSES The Art of Death In this online course, we’ll take an inquisitive and interdisciplinary approach to thinking about death and dying. We’ll learn about different practices in rituals surrounding dying, death, and mourning, and draw upon materials and experts in all kinds of death-related fields, from death doulas to scientists who use flesh-eating beetles to clean carcasses. By the end of the course, we’ll investigate not only what happens to the dying and dead, but also what happens to the living as we come to think deeply about the other side. ENROLL NOW →