This week in One-Line Adventures, we look back at our favorite travel moments of 2013, and our plans for the year ahead.

"Before going to Istanbul for ten days in January, [Atlas Co-Founder] Dylan warned me that that city would change my life; he was right. This photo was taken right after I said aloud, without exaggerating at all, 'This may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.' (By 'thing' I meant Istanbul, in all its perfect chaos.) Next up: dispatches from Mexico City in March." — Sarah Brumble [Tumblr Editor]

"2013 has been a banner year for travel, but my favorite trip was Washington's Olympic National Park; mountains (Hurricane Ridge pictured), dark winding forest roads, driftwood beaches, natural hot springs, and temperate rain forests — this park has it all. Looking forward to ruins, mountains, Mediterranean beaches, and homemade alcohol in Albania in 2014!" — Michelle Enemark [Graphic Design, Video Production]

"My favorite travel adventure of 2013 involved traveling to Patzcuaro and Janitzio Isle, Mexico, where the Day of the Dead traditions originated. For 2014, my goal is to visit all five national parks in Utah, along with a couple of desert wonders in Arizona." — Robert Hemedes [Field Agent, Los Angeles]

photograph by Seán A. O'Hara

"I spent five intense days during a full moon yoga and Tantrik teachings retreat at Ratna Ling Tibetan Buddhist Retreat Center, deep in the redwoods of Sonoma, and during my time there, toured their enormous Dharma Publishing facility where 24/7 they reproduce hundreds of thousands of copies of sacred Tibetan texts and then distribute them annually for free throughout the world to Tibetan libraries and at sacred events." — Beth Abdallah [Field Agent, San Francisco]

"When I was at the circus cemetery in Hugo, Oklahoma, on a blazing summer day — somewhere I'd long wanted to visit but hadn't been able to make the long drive — I wasn't expecting it to be the place that stuck most in my mind at the end of the year, but there was something so touching about all the modest graves to acrobats, animal trainers, and big top showmen resting in the red dirt beneath epitaphs like: 'There's nothing left but empty popcorn sacks and wagon tracks — the circus is gone.' Now with the sprawl of 2014 ahead, I'm hoping for finally reaching other longtime wish list places like Marfa, Texas, where you can find the unexpected in the quieter corners of the States." — Allison Meier [Editor, Articles]

"My favorite travel adventure in 2013 by far was the week in May I spent in New York City with the rest of the Atlas Team. As one of the few staff members that works remotely from a different city (Los Angeles), it was fantastic to get to know my co-workers better, and get a tour of this electric city from the most amazing tour guides one could possibly ask for. Never have I packed so many explorations, adventures, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences into so few days. Sleep No More, Night Heron, cemetery tours, Explorers Club, and nighttime trekking through Central Park and Manhattan were highlights to an endless list of awesome.

Next year, besides returning to New York to do more marathon exploring, a road trip from California to New Mexico to tour the ghost towns is on the agenda, with the final destination being the Trinity Bomb Site, only open to visitors two days out of the year." — Rachel James [Senior Editor]

Members of the Atlas Obscura team at the Times Square Hum

One-Line Adventures are snapshots of some recent explorations from the Atlas Obscura Team. Click here to see more > 

For most people parking lots are no slice of heaven and can sometimes seem worse than any circle of hell, but for others these concrete sprawls are where they spend their eternities. While most cemeteries are constructed as a sacred space separating the worlds of the living and the dead, these two worlds collide when a final resting place is in the path of progress. With much of their surroundings of statues and greenery replaced by hood ornaments and hubcaps, these stranded grave sites stand as a stark reminder of a nearly forgotten and paved-over past.

THE GRAVE OF MARY ELLIS
New Brunswick, New Jersey

photograph by Richard Arthur Norton

Doing laps in a parking lot of movie theater looking for a spot can be expected, but coming upon a tombstone situated seven feet above the concrete surrounded by a gate in the parking lot is much more unexpected.

Situated among the parking spots of the Loews Movie Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is the grave of Mary Ellis, the broken-hearted sea captain's girl. In the 1790s, Mary Ellis moved to New Brunswick to live with her younger sister and brother-in law. While living there, she fell in love with a former Revolutionary War soldier turned sea captain who pledged his undying love to her and promised a happy life together. However, before long the captain — whose name has been forever lost to history — told Mary he would be leaving on a voyage, but he promised to return to her, leaving his horse in her care. As Mary watched him sail down the Raritan River to the Atlantic, she was unaware this would be the last she would see of her sea captain.

Every day after, Mary would ride the horse to the banks of the river hoping to see him return to her, but that never came to pass. Mary kept the tradition every day, eventually purchasing the piece of land along the water in 1813. The captain never returned. Upon Mary's death in 1827, she was buried on the land so she could continue looking out over the river for the captain's return. Over the years, family members of Mary (and rumor has it, the captain's horse) were added to the graveyard, yet as time wore on redevelopment threatened the final resting place of the Ellis family.

In the 1960s, the trees were removed and the land leveled for a parking lot, and although the buildings have changed and the original tombstone replaced, the gravesite of Mary Ellis has remained forever looking to the Raritan River, still patiently waiting for the return of the sea captain.

THE GRAVE OF JOHN KNOX
Edinburgh, Scotland

photograph by Kim Traynor

Born in the early 1500s in the Haddington area of Scotland, John Knox would grow into a leader of the Protestant Reformation and the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

When religious opinions clashed with Knox’s profession as a clergyman and his personal beliefs, Knox was captured and imprisoned in France, later released to England, and then lived in Europe before finally returning to Scotland in 1559 determined to rid his homeland of Catholicism. He improbably succeeded in his mission and approximately one year later the Reformed Protestant church became the official religion of that country.

Knox was named minister of the main church in Edinburgh — St. Giles — where he was buried upon his death in 1572. Despite his status as a vital part of Scottish history, Knox was not immune to the rising need for space in the growing city, and when the cemetery was paved over Knox’s body remained underneath. Today the gravesite of John Knox, the man who led the theological conversion of Scotland, is marked by a single tile in parking spot #23 at St. Giles Cathedral.

TULLAHASSEE CREEK INDIAN CEMETERY
Sand Springs, Oklahoma

photograph by Rachel K.

Atwoods Plaza in in Sand Springs Oklahoma, has it all. Retail, groceries, and an Indian burial site.

Back when the spot consisted of rolling grassland, the area was populated by the Creek Indians who used this spot as a burial ground between 1883 and 1912. In 1908, philanthropist Charles Page bought 160 acres of this land with the intention of creating a haven for orphaned children officially starting the “modern” history of Sand Springs.

As modernization moved forward, the town and surrounding area of Tulsa County became more heavily populated. In order to meet the subsequent rise in consumerism, the land was bulldozed and paved over in the 1960s to create a parking lot for a strip mall. Stipulations in ownerships protected the cemetery from total destruction, and today the burial ground, containing approximately forty graves, sits in a corner of the parking lot separated from the now-concrete plains by a small sign and white fence. 

HILLENDAHL FAMILY CEMETERY
Houston, Texas

via Wikimedia

Nestled into the corner of an auto repair shop parking lot in the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston Texas sits the 1,100 square foot Hillendahl Cemetery.

In the early 1850s, a German immigrant by the name of Heinrich Hillendahl purchased 80 acres of land for the price of $160 and built up a family farm like many other German immigrants in the area. The farmer became very successful and over the years he founded the local Evangelical Lutheran church and expanded his land to 130 acres — including the family plot. The section of land containing the cemetery remained in Hillendahl family hands but the size diminished from 130 acres down to seven before being split up and finally being sold due to high city taxes in the 1970s.

Having been historically designated and surrounded by a fence in 1962, the tiny cemetery has prevailed against development due to the condition that the land would be sold only if the graves remained untouched. Today that request continues to be honored with the 19 members of the Hillendahl family remaining at rest while the world continues to build up all around them.

THE GRAVE OF ARMISTEAD T. THOMPSON
Fairfax County, Virginia

photograph by Martin Prochnik

Located in Fairfax County, Virginia, between a Safeway and Starbucks sits the tiny Thompson Family Cemetery and the headstone of Armistead T. Thompson.

Thompson was a Confederate soldier in the Civil War who died on November 23, 1865, at the age of 27. He'd contracted typhoid while held for 17 months at the notorious Union prison camp at Point Lookout, Maryland. Although initially buried on the camp grounds, his remains were collected and brought back home by his family in the 1880s to be buried in the family cemetery. Over time, the Thompson family sold pieces of land and highways expanded, leaving behind this small plot with two visible stones — although rumors are that there are up to 70 members of the Thompson family still buried under the pavement.

Occasionally those passing by will see small Confederate or Virginia flags decorating the grave of this now seemingly out-of-place soldier whose tombstone still tells of his tragic passing:

"In memory of Armistead T. Thompson Son of Lawson T. & Fannie L. Thompson A member of Co. G, 8 Regt. Va. Vols Who died at Point Lookout, Md. a prisoner of war Nov. 23, 1865. After an imprisonment of 17 months. Aged 27 years. Mouldering though thy body be Yet in our dreams thy form we see: Our tears in torrents duly fall O! thee we would but can't recall. Thou art gone to Christ, thy God He who bought thee with His blood Enabled thee to run the race: Raised thee now to see his face."

MOUNT MOOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN CEMETERY
West Nyack, New York

via Wikimedia

West Nyack, New York, is a retail destination with the Palisades Center shopping mall, but in the center of the mall’s expansive parking lots is the Mount Moor African-American Cemetery — the final destination for nearly one hundred people, including veterans of the Civil War, Spanish American War, both World Wars and the Korean War.

Established in 1849, the cemetery was deeded to William H. Moor, Stephen Samuels, and Isaac Williams by James and Jane Benson to serve as an African American cemetery. When ground was broken for the shopping complex in October of 1993, it was determined that the construction would not disturb the graves and that the needed parking would be placed around the three acre cemetery.

The site was registered and has been maintained by Mount Moor Cemetery Association, Inc. since 1940, and in 1994 the location was added to the National Register of Historic Places. 

BETTIS FAMILY CEMETERY
Memphis, Tennessee

photograph by Thomas R Machnitzki

Memphis, Tennessee, has forged a reputation on barbecue, Elvis, and soul, but today one of its founding families has found their final resting place in back of a strip mall containing a grocery and a home improvement store.

The family of Tillman Bettis was the second family to move to Memphis after the 1818 Jackson Purchase granted the United States the land from the Chickasaw Indians. The Bettis family quickly established and it was here that Mary Bettis, the first child of the new settlement, was born. The cemetery was part of the Bettis farm and numerous members of the family were buried in this ground, including Tillman Bettis himself upon his death in 1854.

Like so many, this small cemetery containing the remains of at least eight of the Bettis family was split up and sold off with the land, at one time used by the Convent of the Good Shepherd where the nuns continued to farm as the city grew. Through many years of development the cemetery has remained in place, with the current stores surrounding it vowing to maintain the remaining graves and monument to Tillman Bettis.

In the Photo of the Week feature, we highlight an exceptionally amazing photograph submitted by an Atlas Obscura user.

The origins of this strange collection of spires — known colloquially as the "Cement Cemetery" — are unknown, however their mystery has been capturing the imagination of Winnipeg locals for decades. Atlas Obscura user prairiegal has been enthralled with the enigmatic location for most of her life, and had this to say about the stark photograph she took of the concrete obelisks:

"This photo was taken with a Holga plastic camera on expired slide film at the Cement Cemetery, which is probably my favorite shooting location in Winnipeg. I used to hang out here when I was a teenager (longer ago than I care to admit) and its dystopian creepiness keeps drawing me back as an adult. I probably have 300 photos of this spot from all angles and in all seasons."

CEMENT CEMETERY, Winnipeg, Canada

Thanks to all of our adventurous users who keep submitting such amazing shots! Want to have your photograph featured? Keep adding your captures to our ever-growing compendium of wondrous places (just click the "Edit This Place" link at the bottom of each place). And watch here each Friday for another Photo of the Week. 

Vintage view of the Pan Am Worldport (via Save the Worldport)

As we gear up for another year of discovering the wonders of the world, we look back at some extraordinary places we lost in 2013. From a utopian rooftop villa in Beijing to striking Brutalist buildings, here are 11 destinations that met their demise. 

HIGGINS ARMORY MUSEUM
Worcester, Massachusetts

via Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism

The Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts had a collection of arms and armor second only in the United States to the Metropolitan Museum. The museum had its final open day on December 31 and its shields, helmets, swords, and other warrior accouterments are being relocated to the Worcester Art Museum where a gallery opening in 2015 will be devoted to the collection. As for its fortress-like former home — believed by many to be the first American glass and steel structure — its future still remains uncertain.

BROKEN ANGEL
Brooklyn, New York

Broken Angel eviction party (photograph by Allison Meier/Atlas Obscura)

This March, after having its towering structures diminished, a fire, and other woes, the vernacular architecture marvel the Broken Angel had its eviction party in Brooklyn. Over three decades, the Clinton Hill home had been transformed into a stunning construction of towers, mosaics, and embedded art, and while it's sad to see it go, at least it got a celebratory send off. 

WONDERLAND
Beijing, China

photograph by Zoetica Ebb, Alternative Beijing

What was once meant to be a theme park on par with Disneyland on the outskirts of Beijing was abandoned before it was completed. However, the castle that did get built and the other whimsical structures of Wonderland were later surrounded by cornfields in an otherworldly scene. Sadly, this April most of these buildings were torn down, although reports say that the castle still stands. 

PAN AM WORLDPORT
New York, New York

photograph by Glenn Beltz/Flickr user

One of the survivors of the mid-century golden age for airports, the UFO-like Pan Am Worldport met its demise this fall as it was torn down to make way for an airplane parking lot at JFK Airport. It had turned into a Delta terminal in recent years after its original operator Pan Am left, but even then it retained its unique character. However, you can still find some of its glory days remembered at the site of Save the Worldport, which tried to the end to preserve the vestige of aviation history.  

CYCLORAMA
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

photograph by lcm1863/Flickr user

The strikingly modernist Cyclorama building — which was once home to a circular painting of the Battle of Gettysburg— was demolished in March. As we wrote in our own eulogy, "Civil War buffs felt victorious, but architecture fans mourned," as the wreckers cleared the battlefield of the controversial building. However, lovers of the Brutalist design by Richard Neutra mourned the demolition of the concrete cylindrical building.

PRENTICE HOSPITAL
Chicago, Illinois

photograph by htomren/Flickr user

The downtown Chicago hospital was another cylindrical Brutalist building on the chopping block demolished this fall. Using early computer modeling, the 1970s Prentice Hospital designed by Bertrand Goldberg was the only building of its kind in the world. While made of concrete, the cloverleaf building seemed to soar with a smooth shape that contrasted to the right angles all around it.

HOFFMAN SHOWROOM
New York, New York

photograph by Ezra Stoller, via steinerag.com

Maybe it was just a bad year for circular building. The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Hoffman Showroom (later used by Mercedes) on Park Avenue in Manhattan was suddenly torn down this April before preservationists could intercede. It seems shocking that a Wright building could disappear so quickly, especially with a sloping curved interior design not dissimilar from his Guggenheim Museum, but no matter the fame of an architect there can still be these staggering losses. 

ROOFTOP VILLA
Beijing, China

A rocky villa complete with draped plants and spindly trees was built by a professor on top of a 26-story Beijing apartment building. Alas, the dream of a private hanging garden was dashed as there was an official government order last year to demolish it. In December that decision was executed and the little manmade mountain above the city was destroyed.

CLOCKTOWER GALLERY
New York, New York 

photograph by Allison Meier/Atlas Obscura

The experimental Clocktower Gallery art space up on the top floor of the 1890s McKim, Mead & White building in Lower Manhattan closed this November, where rooms were regularly taken over by immersive installations or strange performances. Luckily, for now, despite the building being sold by the city and condos likely moving in, the stunning clock itself is still operating. Each Wednesday it gets wound for another eight-day cycle, and hopefully will continue to be ticking well into the future. 

HEIDELBERG PROJECT
Detroit, Michigan

photograph by E-ren Chow

The Heidelberg Project in Detroit is still an ongoing series of art houses, but unfortunately the number of these architectural wonders was greatly diminished last year. Four of its seven homes were destroyed by arson. Additionally, taxes and foreclosures threaten the future of the little colony of colorful buildings, which some see as remedying blight, and others see as an eyesore. 

5 POINTZ
Long Island City, New York

Tags on a whitewashed 5 Pointz (photograph by Steven Severinghaus)

5 Pointz was a legal place for street artists and taggers to collaborate in Long Island City. The massive warehouse covered with murals was one of the most iconic buildings in New York City. However, prior to its imminent demolition, the building was whitewashed by its developers and will soon disappear entirely for new glassy apartments. 

The gloomy, long-defunct corridors of Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary  (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein, Avoiding Regret)

This coming Saturday, January 11, the New York Obscura Society is heading to Philadelphia for the first event in our brand new Road Trip series. Tickets are available to join us as we drive south for a full day of exploring some of our very favorite Philadelphia locations.

We've compiled a collection of images featuring a few of the fascinating places we're looking forward to visiting in Philly this coming weekend:

The Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site:

The humble entrance to the historic home of one of America's greatest authors (photograph by dolescumFlickr user)

A sinister raven sculpture keeps watch over Edgar Allan Poe's Philadelphia residence (photograph by Kevin Burkett)

Barren rooms in a house full of history (photograph by Jenn Bridgens)

Isaiah Zagar's Philadelphia Magic Gardens:

A glimpse into folk artist Isaiah Zagar's whimsical world (photograph by Paul Josheph)

Colorful passageways lead to elaborate mosaic grottoes at the Philadelphia Magic Gardens (photograph by Kevin Burkett)

The Mütter Museum:

Disturbingly detailed medical model at the Mütter Museum of Human Pathology (photograph by istolethetv/Flickr user)

The Mütter's renowned Hyrtl Skull Collection (photograph by istolethetv/Flickr user)

Eastern State Penitentiary:

Eastern State Penitentiary's gloomy hallways and long-empty cells (photograph by Adam Jones)

The prison cell of notorious mobster Al Capone (photograph by Thesab/Wikimedia)

 This is just a glimpse into next weekend's upcoming Philadelphia adventures.  If you'd like to come along, tickets and more detailed information can be found here.

Atlas Obscura's Road Trip to Philadelphia >

In last week's Morbid Monday, we brought you the strange case of the Fisk mummy coffin— a metal casket shaped like a draped corpse. It turns out that the Victorians' interest in metallic memorials didn't end there. Some were proposing that corpses be electroplated and turned into statues. 

The metal embalming was brought to our attention by History Banter, and while it sounds like something out of a Hammer horror film, it turns out that electroplating the dead was very seriously proposed by at least two inventors. As the Montana Digital Newspaper Project cites in their post on the electroplating, one Paris physician avowed that “modern Cleopatras may now smile in their last moments, knowing full well that their beauty will be handed down to future generations." An illustration from a 1971 book called Victorian Inventions by Leonard De Vries, has a mad scientist interpretation of Varlot's process, charmingly showing a child in a sort of limp pose propped up inside a bell jar. 

This French practitioner they refer to is one Dr. Varlot, who appears to be the first to suggest electroplating to turn people into statues in the mid-19th century, but was not the last. 

via US Patent Office

Quigley's Cabinet discovered a 1934 patent by one Levon G. Kassabian for a "Method of Preserving Dead Bodies" which involved "the coating or plating of the bodies which have preferably been embalmed with metal or metals." Kassabian elaborates how to coat a body with wax and cover it with a conducting solution before wrapping it with copper wire and then carrying out the electroplating process so your dearly departed is turned into a gilded ornament. Curiously, in Christine Quigley's book The Corpse: A History she adds another name to the trail of electroplating doctors, stating that Dr. Thomas Holmes, the "father of embalming," patented an electroplating process to turn bodies "into statues." Considering Holmes died in 1900, it's presumed that his patent was at the same era as Varlot, but it's unclear who gets the gold in the race. 

Despite the 1930s patent, it seems that electroplating had its heyday — at least in media attention — in the 1880s. You may be wondering, but what of the rotting flesh within? Wouldn't your golden grandpa start smelling up the place after a time? Well, assuming all was done well, it should be no problem. An 1887 article in Cassell's Saturday Journal proclaimed that "the body being hermetically sealed within its metal inclosure, merely dries up and assumes the aspect of a mummy." 

Yet if it worked, shouldn't we have funerary gardens full of proudly standing plated war heroes or hunched over figures of our elderly relatives? It's hard to find proof that the process actually worked. However, an 1886 edition of The Sanitary Era bulletin by William C. Conant noted that electroplating the dead was "not mere theory, but fact." The author states that "more than eleven human corpses have been treated by this method, and samples of the results were on exhibition at the Paris Expositions of 1881 and 1885." He concludes that electroplating is "sanitary, cheap, highly aesthetic, and avoids one great objection which can be validly urged against cremation, that it gives opportunity for the defeat of justice by destroying the evidence of crime."

In other words, this would keep murders from being covered up by having bodies burned... turning your victim into a statue could be an even more sinister killing method, similar to the 1953 Vincent Price film House of Wax. In fact, the idea has already been irresistible to crime writers like  Dorothy L Sayers who used it in her story "The Abominable History of the Man with the Copper Fingers."

If it all seems too outrageous, don't worry, the Victorian skeptics have beat you to it, and heartily so. An 1887 issue of the jovial Gentleman's Magazine published in London and edited by Sylvanus Urban, "Gentleman," could barely surpress a chortle at the idea: 

"A very amusing outbreak of pseudo-science appears in one of the Saturday journals. [...] We are told that 'in effect it transforms the corpse into a beautiful statue — form, features, and even expression being perfectly preserved.' This may appear so very charming to those who think it desirable to furnish their homes with a collection of the dead bodies of departed friends and relations, that I must beg them to pardon me for the following." 

The author, W. Mattieu Williams, goes on to totally shred not just the process of sprinkling graphite on the corpse for battery current, but that it would at all preserve a living beauty. Rather, the "lineaments of the beloved deceased would be covered with metallic warts, especially on the prominent parts, such as the end of the nose."  He concludes: "The poetic visions of the above-quoted writer would be sadly marred if at a dinner party the housemad should announce to the hostess, "Please, mum, your grandfather in the drawing-room is busted.'"

via Daily Argus News, 1887

Still, it's an irresistible image, this idea of perhaps a home gallery where instead of family portraits, you had their actual eternal presences as sculptures. One 1887 frontpage article first published in the Philadelphia Record — whose headline declared electroplating "A Scheme that Outrivals the Mummies of Egypt" — crowed that "ancestors plated with silver or nickel would be far more artistic ornaments than the rusty and ancient suits of armor which are so highly prized in these days."

Unless there are indeed some old souls with their forms frozen in bronze, copper, brass, or gold collecting dust and cobwebs in someone's basement, it doesn't seem that there's any proof that the electroplating process was ever carried out. So any fantasies of a steampunk zombie novel with clanking undead killing machines will have to remain the stuff of fantasy, although some future where we turn to statues that shine in the sun rather than be entombed deep below a somber tombstone does have a potent romanticism. 

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

Join us on Twitter and follow our #morbidmonday hashtag, for new odd and macabre themes.

The unsettling celebrated Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic is best known as the "Bone Church" — and with good reason. It's estimated the bleached bones of between 40,000 and 70,000 dearly departed souls grace the walls. However, in all the skull garlands and charming touches like a bone bird plucking at a gaping eye socket, the centerpiece is without a doubt the chandelier.

photograph by jeffr_travel/Flickr user

It can be hard to make out in the ornate jumble, but there's at least one of every bone in the human body in the chandelier. It's arguably the masterpiece of the macabrely eccentric Frantisek Rint, a woodcarver who approached the ordering of the thousands of bones in 1870 as an artistic task. Perhaps surprisingly to everyone but Rint, the ossuary has become quite the tourist destination. 

Why are there so many dead people in this one small space? Story goes that back in the 13th century, the Sedlec Monastery Abbot brought back some earth from the Holy Land. Unfortunately, he didn't carry much, so the spare land where he sprinkled the dirt became quite crowded with people who wanted to rest eternally in its gritty grace. So the ossuary was the result, where everyone in a way could be close.

As for the chandelier, once you know that a whole anatomy is up there details like femurs and jawbones start to emerge. The crowning touch is the ring of skulls topped with candles, which are illuminated each year on All Soul's Day. 

photograph by Tom Magliery

photograph by Clark & Kim Kays

photograph by Tom Magliery

SEDLEC OSSUARY, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic

Curious Facts of the Week: Helping you build your cocktail party conversation repertoire with a new strange fact every week, and an amazing place to explore its story. See all the Curious Facts here>

Illustrated panorama of the 1900 Paris Exposition by Lucien Baylac (via Library of Congress)

Say “World’s Fair” and many think of grand culture shows that happened once in a great while, at some time in the past. However, these celebrations of artistic and technological achievement have been going on nearly every year since 1851, in scores of cities on five different continents. While most World's Fair organizers opt for cheaper, temporary buildings, some permanent structures and monuments still exist from these grand events — so many, in fact, that we're posting a series on the cities where the fairs most guided their character today. 

Here we start with Paris, home of the most fairs — and one of the most-visited relics.

PARIS
Host to six fairs — 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, 1900, and 1937

Photographic print of the Eiffel Tower in the 1900 Paris Exposition (via Brown University)

In addition to being Paris’ most famous landmark, the Eiffel Tower is less commonly known as a World's Fair landmark.

The Eiffel Tower was the entrance arch to Paris’ 1889 “Exposition Universelle,” but the tower itself wasn’t quite finished by the fair’s opening day. A team of dedicated construction workers spent the entire night before finishing a second floor observation deck, so visitors could at least climb that far. Relatives of Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s architect, gratefully said of the workers that "no soldier on the battlefield deserved better mention than these humble toilers, who will never go down in history."

View from the Eiffel Tower during the 1889 Exposition Universelle (via Wikimedia)

The greenspace surrounding the Eiffel Tower, the Champ de Mars, has a much longer history — one that stretches before the World's Fair. It was a military parade ground first, in the mid-1700s. Then in the 1790s it was the site of the first Bastille Day celebration, and had also seen a particularly bloody battle during the French Revolution. Napoleon III chose the site for Paris’ second World's Fair in 1867, and all subsequent Parisian fairs have taken place there.

View of the Champ de Mars from the Eiffel Tower in 1900 (via Brown University)

Champ de Mars today (photograph by Tambako the Jaguar/Flickr user)

Across the Seine is the Grand Palais, an exhibition hall built for the World’s Fair of 1900. The Grand Palais was a showcase for French art and cultural exhibits, and its design incorporated elements of the then-new Art Nouveau design movement. It was built on the site of a yet earlier exhibition hall — the Palais de l’Industrie —from the 1855 fair. Today, the Grand Palais’ west wing is home to a science museum — the Palais de la Découverte — while the east wing is an exhibition space for art, fashion, and other events.

The Grand Palais in 1900 (via Brown University)

The sculpture exhibition in the Grand Palais in 1900 (via Brown University Library)

The Grand Palais today (photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra)

Finally, near the Grand Palais are the Jardins du Trocadéro, part of the fairgrounds for the 1878 and 1937 fairs. The 1878 Fair mainly used the space for the Palais du Trocadéro, a largely administrative hall that provided meeting space for various international organizations. But the 1937 fair renovated Trocadéro for more general exhibition space and fairgrounds, with the Palais de Chaillot — a pair of Art Deco exhibition halls located on the foundation of the old Palais du Trocadéro. Today, the Palais de Chaillot is home to France’s naval museum — the Musée national de la Marine — as well as the Musée de l'Homme, an ethnological museum. A theater space, the Théâtre national de Chaillot, is also on the site.

The Palais du Trocadéro (ca. 1890-1900) (via Library of Congress)

Trocadéro today (photograph by isamiga76/Flickr user)

One last, and lesser-known, relic from the 1937 fair rests far outside Paris. A stainless steel sculpture, "Rabochiy i Kolkhoznitsa" ("Worker and Kolkhoz Woman"), was originally mounted on the Soviet Union’s exhibition hall for the 1937 fair. The fair’s organizers had placed the Soviet hall directly across from the German hall, at a time when tension between the Soviets and Germany’s Third Reich were high. The Soviets' representatives wanted to show up the Germans, and turned to sculptor Vera Mukhina to create an especially eye-catching monument for their own hall. The sculpture, depicting a man and woman each holding up a hammer and a sickle, was relocated to Moscow after the fair, and today sits on the grounds of Moscow’s All-Russia Exhibition Center.

The Soviet Union (right) and Third Reich (left) pavilions at Expo 1937 (via Wikimedia)

The statue in Russia today (photograph by Sylvain Kalache)

Here are more photographs from the Paris World's Fairs: 

Opening ceremony in 1900 (via Wikimedia)

The machine exhibition in 1889 (via Brown University Library)

A food exhibition hall in 1889 (via Brown University Library)

The Palace of Illusions in 1900 (via Brown University Library)

Hot air balloon races in 1900 (via Brown University Library)

A giant telescope on display in 1900 (via Wikimedia)

Inside the Grand Palais (via Bibliothèque de Toulouse)

Italian Pavilion in 1900 (via Brooklyn Museum)

The Esplanade des Invalides in 1900 (via Brooklyn Museum)

The Eiffel Tower in 1900 (via Library of Congress)

The grand entrance in 1900 (via Library of Congress)

Aerial view in 1900 (via Brooklyn Museum)

Panorama in a lithograph, as viewed from a hot air ballon at Tuileries (via Library of Congress)

The Palais de l'électricité and le Château d'eau in 1900 (via Wikimedia)

The 1900 World's Fair at night (via Brooklyn Museum)

The World's Fair in October 1900 (photograph by Eugène Trutat, via Museum of Toulouse)

Stay tuned for more relics of the World's Fairs. 

Jacob's Well in Texas (photograph by Patrick Lewis)

There are places in the world where it feels like you can swim forever into the Earth. Known as blue holes, the geological phenomenon is when a cave or sinkhole fills with water and becomes a vertical void in the landscape. Some descend hundreds of feet, others connect to mysterious systems of tunnels. And some people are brave enough to swim into the gaping abyss. 

Below are six of the world's most fascinating blue holes:

GREAT BLUE HOLE
Belize

photograph by wstera2/Flickr user

We start with the largest: the Great Blue Hole off the coast of Belize. The underwater sinkhole is 410 feet deep, and 984 feet wide, and looks like a massive blue chasm opening in the sea. It's ringed by a coral reef, and was formed during the last glacial period when a limestone cavern collapsed into a "vertical cave." As you descend, the geological formations become more otherworldly and complex. 

photograph by Robert Scales

photograph by John C. Bullas

DEAN'S BLUE HOLE
Bahamas

photograph by Christian Afonso

But for the deepest blue hole in the sea, you have to head to the Bahamas in a bay west of Clarence Town on Long Island. Dean's Blue Hole is a flooded sinkhole 663 feet deep, nearly twice as deep as the blue hole average of 360 feet. As you go down into the void, the cave expands from 82 feet in diameter to 330 feet. It was here that diver William Trubridge set a free-diving record of 331 feet on just one breath, but it was also the site of a tragedy that called into question the practice of such treacherous diving. In November of last year, diver Nicholas Mevoli died after an attempt to break that record. 

William Trubridge in Dean's Blue Hole (photograph by Igor Liberti)

RED SEA BLUE HOLE
Dahab, Egypt

photograph by Mark Edley

While diving in any blue hole has its dangers, the Blue Hole of the Red Sea in Dahab, Egypt, is infamous as the "Diver's Cemetery." It's estimated that at least 40 divers have perished in its depths, although some people think it's twice that many, and there's even a memorial ridge overlooking the water with commemorations for the lost. Nevertheless, divers are there each day, attempting to swim some of the 462 feet depth of the blue hole, and the elusive tunnel through a reef that links it to open water. 

photograph by mindgrow/Flickr user

photograph by Matt Kieffer

Memorials to dead divers (photograph by Tim Sheerman-Chase)

photograph by Jürgen Donauer

photograph by Tim Sheerman-Chase

photograph by Mark Edley

BLUE HOLE AT THE AZURE WINDOW
Dwerja, Malta

photograph by Darren Barefoot

The Azure Window is a 328-foot archway that towers over the Blue Hole in Gozo, part of the Maltese Islands. The two geological phenomena side-by-side make the site especially popular with divers and tourists, and octopi, fire worms, and even the occasional sea horse can be seen enjoying the waters. To access the blue hole you journey through a 262-foot tunnel that connects two underground limestone caverns.

photograph by Sebastian Sachse

photograph by Michael Aston

photograph by Martin Lopatka

photograph by David Locke

SANTA ROSA BLUE HOLE
Santa Rosa, New Mexico

photograph by davidd/Flickr user

The Santa Rosa Blue Hole might not look like much compared to other blue holes on this list, but the swimming hole located off of Route 66 in New Mexico has a secret. The beautifully clear waters go down to 80 feet, but then the caves begin. It's unclear exactly how far back the cave system goes, and in 1976 two young divers perished while exploring. A grate was then placed over the entrance and the caves were almost entirely forgotten until the ADM Exploration Foundation investigated last year. Even then much of the tunnels was left unseen, their secrets still hidden for now while up above swimmers and scuba diving students enjoy the blue waters without knowing their true depths. 

photograph by davidd/Flickr user

photograph by davidd/Flickr user

photograph by Autopilot/Wikimedia

JACOB'S WELL
Wimberley, Texas

photograph by Patrick Lewis

Another swimming hole — Jacob's Well in Texas — is popular with scuba divers and swimmers with its 30-foot-drop, but also incredibly dangerous. A dozen people have suffocated after becoming trapped in the narrow caves hidden in the waters, and a local diver even went so far as to install a grate over the entrance to stop further tragedies. However, he later found it removed and a plastic note in the water with these words: "You can't keep us out."

photograph by Patrick Lewis

photograph by Patrick Lewis

Explore even more blue holes on the Atlas Obscura >

The cheese horse at the Horniman Museum
(all images courtesy Horniman Museum and Gardens)

One of the smallest wonders in the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London is a horse made of cheese.

The edible stallion is only a few centimeters long, and was given to the museum in the 1950s, so considering its lactose roots it's held up pretty well. However, its story had been lost by the time the Horniman examined it in 2012 for their three-year Collections People Stories project where they were delving into their anthropology collections. All they knew was it came from Poland. 

However, once they posted about the horse on their blog, the Polish Cultural Institute in London directed them to Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz at the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow. In the Polish museum, there just so happened to be another cheese horse, along with five deer, a rooster, and three additional horses — one with a rider, with the latest made in the 1990s. It turned out that the horse is what is known as a Bar'ańczyk, which means sheep after the type of animal milk the cheese was made from, but was bestowed on all cheese animals made by Polish shepherds. 

The horse at the Ethnographic Museum is a little more detailed than the Horniman horse — although they both were likely molded by hand from cheese and covered with butter, with possible supports in their legs so they could stand upright on their sculpted hooves. The Krakow horse carries a little saddle with a couple of barrels representing the containers used to carry sheep's milk. As described on the museum site, the cheese animals — which were sometimes sheep, roosters, ducks, deer, and also horses — were often sold by shepherds roaming the land, or at fairs for small gifts or toys to children. So it's remarkable they survived so long not just for their material, but that no eager child gobbled up the adorable little animal morsels. 

Read more about the cheese horse at the Horniman Museum & Gardens blog.  

OBJECTS OF INTRIGUE is a feature highlighting extraordinary objects from the world's great museums, private collections, historic libraries, and overlooked archives. See more incredible objects here >

A ball court in Mexico (photograph by Dennis Jarvis)

The Olmecs started it, the Maya tweaked it, and the Aztecs nailed it. The Mesoamerican Ballgame, played with a solid rubber ball — weighing at around 10 pounds — and teams of one to four people, makes a regular appearance throughout Pre-Columbian history. Though added later, stone ball courts have been found from Arizona to Nicaragua.

A ceramic depiction of a ball game in the Museo Rufino Tamayo of Oaxaca (photograph by Thomas Aleto)

Though the exact rules of the game aren't known, it is generally believed that the game was played more or less like today's volleyball (net‐less) or racquetball. Players wore helmets, pads and thick protective yokes around their mid‐section and kept the ball in play by hitting it off their hips. 

The Mesoamerican ball game makes its first appearance among the Olmec around 1500 BC in the central Gulf Coast of Mexico, an area known at the time for latex production. Many balls have been discovered in the region as part of burials and as ritual offerings at shrines, suggesting the balls and other ballgame accoutrements were a sign of status or wealth.  In fact, this idea has been reinforced by the evidence of ball courts being found near chief’s homes in Olmec sites. The game the Olmecs played was associated with prestige and social standing, and only the wealthy and therefore upper class could afford to put on a game. The giant stone heads found in the region also depict chiefs wearing the ball playing helmet. 

Olmec head in the Parque Museo La Venta in Mexico (photograph by Steven Bridger)

Carving of a human sacrifice after a ball game in Veracruz, Mexico (photograph by Thomas Aleto)

The game continued to be played throughout Mesoamerica when it was adopted by the Maya, who added their own special twist. Humans and the lords of the underworld battled it out by playing the game, according to the creation story the known as the Popol Vuh. In this way, the ball court was a portal to Xibalba — the Mayan underworld. The Maya used the game as a stand‐in for warfare, settling territory disputes and hereditary issues, and to foretell the future. Captives of wars were forced to play (undoubtedly rigged) games that resulted in their sacrifice when they lost. 

Sacrificed ball player in the Anthropolgy Museum of Xalapa, Mexico (photograph by Maurice Marcellin)

Two ball players on a carving in Guatemala (photograph by Simon Burchell)

The Aztecs continued this proud tradition of loser‐lose‐all, as many vases and sculptures depict the inevitable decapitation of the losing team. There are even some depictions of ball players playing with the heads of the losers in place of a ball. Whether this actually occurred is up to artistic speculation. The Spanish who observed the game reported horrendous injuries to those who played it — deep bruising requiring lancing, broken bones, and even death when a player was hit in the head or by an unprotected bit by the heavy ball.

A ball court in Oaxaca (photograph by Matt Barnett)

Shadow of a stone hole at a ball court (photograph by Erik Bremer)

The Great Ball Court at Chichén-Itzá in Mexico (photograph by Daryl Mitchell)

There are many of these fine ball courts one can visit today. The great ball court at Chichen Itza, built around 800 AD, is the largest and best preserved yet found. The Maya added the stone ring for bonus point opportunities, but putting the ball through the hoop was a very rare event. In fact, mayan ball courts can be explored at just about every archaeological site including: Palenque, Yaxchilan, Tikal, Uxmal, Ek Balam, Copan, and Calakmul. And while you can't do much playing now at these historic sites, a slightly less gruesome version of the game called Ulama still survives is played in Mexico today.   

An ulama player (photograph by Manuel Aguilar)

The Lullaby Factory in London (via Studio Weave)

Soundscapes are just as fascinating to explore as any landscape, with each place having its own unique noise composition of movement and activity. Yet too often the terrain of sound goes unnoticed, lost in the drone of a city. But it can be a powerful experience. Here are three examples of artists who are using unexpected sound to bring magic to unexpected places.

LULLABY FACTORY
London, England

via Studio Weave

The Lullaby Factory is a system of horns and pipes laced over the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. They're hidden in a courtyard that was serendipitously created when a new building went up next to the brick hospital, and Studio Weave designed the Lullaby Factory as a secret discovery for the young patients to experience. The rambling design, completed in 2012, was inspired by the drainage pipes on the building. The old hospital is planned to be demolished in 2028, but until then the "factory" is churning out soothing music created by sound artist Jessica Curry. It's even piped into hospital rooms through radios for children who can't go outside. 

via Studio Weave

via Studio Weave

via Studio Weave

via Studio Weave

ZIMOUN TANK
Dottikon, Switzerland

via Zimoun.net

An abandoned toluene tank in Switzerland is the unassuming home of a permanent installation created by Swiss artist Zimoun in 2013. While outside the tank is drab and rusted grey, just beyond the door is a blaring white space. And up on the walls are 329 DC motors each powering a cotton ball that pound in a mesmerizing rhythm against the tank. 

via Zimoun.net

via Zimoun.net

via Zimoun.net

TIMES SQUARE HUM
New York, New York

photograph by Rachel James/Atlas Obscura

Thousands of people crowd through Times Square everyday, but likely few notice the unmarked sound installation under their feet. Created by Max Neuhaus and called simply "Times Square" — and is now sometimes known as the Times Square Hum— it haunted a pedestrian island grate on Broadway between 45th and 46th streets from 1977 to 1992. Then after a decade of silence (or as quiet as it gets for the busy intersection), it was reinstated and is now maintained by the Dia Art Foundation. However, it still remains without a sign, you just have to keep your ears open. 

Max Neuhaus installing "Times Square"

In the Photo of the Week feature, we highlight an exceptionally amazing photograph submitted by an Atlas Obscura user.

The Turkish region of Cappadocia is one of the most eye-popping historical regions in the world, with whole cities carved into mountains and esoteric stone art that boggles the mind. The region is so full in fact that Atlas Obscura user adrianfarwell, who uploaded this week's otherworldly photo, thinks it needs a lot more entries:

"I'd visited this same spot ten years earlier and was astonished to see how much it had been developed over that time. Luckily Cappadocia still has a wealth of rarely visited gems if you get away from the crowds. But listing it as a single entry on Atlas Obscura is like listing Belgium; it has many sights that justify an entry all of their own!"

CAPPADOCIA, Turkey

Thanks to all of our adventurous users who keep submitting such amazing shots! Want to have your photograph featured? Keep adding your captures to our ever-growing compendium of wondrous places (just click the "Edit This Place" link at the bottom of each place). And watch here each Friday for another Photo of the Week. 

The 1893 Chicago World's Fair (via Boston Public Library)

From exploring what remains of the World's Fair in Paris, we continue in our World's Fair series by looking at what survives from the fairs in Chicago. The Windy City sports relics from just two World's Fairs — compared to the six in Paris — but they’re two of the most famous fairs in history, with many relics.

CHICAGO: Host to two World's Fairs — 1893 and 1933

"Captive" balloon and the ferris wheel at the World's Columbian Exposition (1892-1893) (photograph by Charles Dudley Arnold, via the J. Paul Getty Museum)

Chicago’s 1893 World's Columbian Exposition was particularly successful — and famous — thanks in part to a staggering array of cultural and technological marvels which debuted there, including some of the first demonstrations of electrical power, the world’s first Ferris Wheel, and the first servings of the candied popcorn that would later be dubbed "Cracker Jacks."  Nearly all the halls and pavilions at the fair were temporary, but a handful of buildings still stand — although not all of them are still in Chicago.

A mammoth and giant octopus model in 1893 at the World's Fair (via the Field Museum)

The fair’s Palace of Fine Arts, located in today’s Jackson Park neighborhood, housed over 10,000 artistic works from around the world; mostly oil paintings from across the United States and throughout Europe. But natural history displays caught the public’s attention more, and the Palace of Fine Arts became the “Columbian Museum” after the fair, created to give these exhibitions a permanent home.

In 1905, department store magnate Marshall Field became the museum’s first big benefactor, and the Columbian Museum re-christened itself the Field Museum. The museum also changed its location — in 1920, it moved to a new location nearer the downtown Loop business district, leaving the Palace of Fine Arts empty. A new science museum moved in — the Museum of Science and Industry, which opened just in time for the 1933 World’s Fair.

The Palace of Fine Arts in 1893 (via Project Gutenberg)

The Palace of Fine Arts today, now the Museum of Science and Industry (photograph by Allison Meier/Atlas Obscura)

The Field Museum relocated from one building to another — but in the case of another 1893 fair structure, the building itself moved. The Norway Building, constructed for Norway’s exhibits, caught the fancy of Chicago businessman C.K.G. Billings, who bought the structure outright at fair's end and shipped it to his vacation estate in Wisconsin, where it became his summer home.

After Billings’ death, ownership of the Norway Building passed through several hands until the 1930s, when another Norwegian-born Chicago businessman founded “Little Norway,” a living-history recreation of an old Norwegian village. Little Norway’s founder, Isak Dahle, purchased the Norway Building and moved it permanently to Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, where it sits today. 

The Norway Building at Little Norway, Wisconsin (photograph by Clarissa Peterson)

Another piece of Norway’s exhibition is elsewhere in Illinois. In 1880, Norwegian archaeologists excavated a burial mound and discovered a complete 9th Century Viking ship, and were understandably keen to show it off — but reluctant to part with the real thing. Instead, Norwegian shipbuilders constructed a replica they called simply The Viking, and a crew of eleven men actually sailed it from Norway to Chicago.

After the Fair, The Viking stayed docked just nearby the (now former) Field Museum, then was temporarily moved to New Orleans before relocating to a wooden shed in Chicago’s Lincoln Park in 1919. Then in the 1990s, the Lincoln Park Zoo sought an expansion and evicted The Viking again. The Museum of Science and Industry claimed the head and tail of the ship, although both pieces are kept in storage. A non-profit group claimed the rest, moving the ship to Geneva, Illinois, where they currently offer tours of The Viking and work towards finding it a more permanent home.

A replica of the Gokstad viking ship in 1893 at the World's Fair (via Wikimedia)

Some of the landmarks from the 1933 fair were also relocated. The 1933 Fair, dubbed the “Century of Progress” fair, was designed to feature upcoming innovations in architecture, science, and technology. Among the exhibits were a series of “Homes of the Future” — model homes meant to show off different design or technological innovations, such as a private airplane hangar, novel construction materials, and the like. After the fair ended, developer Robert Bartlett bought five of the model homes for a planned community in Beverly Shores, Indiana. The five houses didn’t attract customers initially — some of the “innovations” from the 1930s proved to be liabilities only 20 years later.

Then in the 1970s, the National Parks service included the five homes as part of the Indiana Dunes National Park, and began repairing and restoring the houses. The state of Indiana also offered househunters a unique chance to lease the homes as their own residence, in exchange for serving as live-in caretakers. The homes are used as residences today, but occasionally open to the public for tours.

The Florida model home at the 1933 A Century of Progress fair (via UIC Digital Collections)

The Florida Century of Progress home today at Indiana Dunes (via Indiana Dunes)

Here are more images of the World's Fair in Chicago:

The Court of Honor (1893) (via Brooklyn Museum)

Columbian Fountain (1893) (via Brooklyn Museum)

The Agricultural Building (1893) (via Brooklyn Museum)

The Liberal Arts Building (1893) (via Brooklyn Museum)

Visitors eating lunch in 1893 (via Smithsonian Institution Archives)

Ferris wheel view in 1893 (via Brooklyn Museum)

The Fisheries Colonnade (1893) (via Brooklyn Museum)

The Ferris Wheel in 1893 (via the New York Times)

A replica of one of the ships sailed by Columbus (1893) (via Smithsonian Institution Archives)

Fire Boat and Agricultural Building, with a fire department boat shooting water cannons (1893) (via the Field Museum)

A day in 1893 at the World's Fair (via Smithsonian Institution Archives)

The Grand Basin at night (1893) (via Brooklyn Museum)

Stay tuned for more in our series on World's Fair relics, and click here to revisit Paris. 

Before local anesthesia could manage the pain, one early 20th century dentist distracted his patients with showgirls and brass bands. Painless Parker — or Edgar Parker as he was born in 1872 — found that a bit of the old razzle dazzle not only added enough commotion to keep a person from focusing too much on a tooth pulling, it drew an audience of prospective patients.

Painless Parker's bucket of teeth (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

Parker graduated from the dental school at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1892, and it's there that two of his greatest props from his 59 years of dentistry remain: a necklace of 357 teeth he wore and claimed to have pulled in a single day, and a bucket of thousands of teeth yanked out of sore mouths from his traveling career.

He found that business was slow when he started his practice in Canada, so he decided to hit the road and wandered far and wide throughout the country and the United States, adopting the name "Painless Parker." But he didn't just bring much-needed medical care to the cities and the countryside — he brought them a show. 

Decked out in a white coat and a top hat, he stood at a chair on a horse-drawn wagon amidst dancing nurses and buglers, offering his patients a cup of whisky or cocaine-based "hydrocaine" to buck them up. Parker wasn't the only vaudevillian dentist, as many took up gimmicks and a heavy helping of the theatrical to draw patients before regulated licensing. However, he was the most famous, helped in large part by a former publicity agent of P.T. Barnum. although this didn't win him many friends with serious dental community. The American Dental Association declared him a "menace to the dignity of the profession."

Painless Parker with his necklace of teeth; the necklace in the Dental Museum at Temple University (photograph by Michelle Enemark) 

According to Ann Anderson's book Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones: The American Medicine Show, Parker proclaimed himself "the greatest all-around dentist in this world or the next," and at the Flatbush Avenue office he set up in Brooklyn, his sign crowed: "Painless Parker. I am positively IT in painless dentistry." The staggering "IT" loomed four stories tall. Yet even in a respectable, permanent location, he just couldn't give up the lure of a crowd and would sometimes hit the streets with a brass band or hire tightrope walkers and "human flies" to climb his building. Later he opened a chain of dental parlors on the West Coast and even bought a circus in 1913, so his carnival included acrobats, magicians, jugglers, and even Parker riding atop an elephant himself. 

At one point, his "Painless Parker" moniker was maligned as false advertising, so in 1915 he legally switched his first name to "Painless." He could then keep his catchy brand until his death in 1952.

Despite all his theatrics, Parker was an active supporter of preventative care before it was widely promoted, as well as local anesthesia. And Temple University still embraces their most flamboyant alumnus with the display of that bucket of teeth in their dental museum that is as much anything proof of his legacy of happy customers.

HISTORICAL DENTAL MUSEUM, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

Curious Facts of the Week: Helping you build your cocktail party conversation repertoire with a new strange fact every week, and an amazing place to explore its story. See all the Curious Facts here>

Burials on Hart Island in 1890 (photograph by Jacob A. Riis, via the Museum of the City of New York) 

Since 1869, some 850,000 people have been buried on Hart Island in the Long Island Sound off the coast of the Bronx. But their graves remain unmarked and almost impossible to visit. Now a city councilwoman in Queens is reintroducing a bill that would make the potter's field a public park. 

The 100-acre island has long been under the control of the Department of Correction in New York City, with prisoners from nearby Rikers Island interring the unclaimed, unknown, and indigent dead in mass graves. Any relatives wanting to visit their loved ones must apply through the prison system, and others who want to pay tribute to the thousands of dead are not allowed (although that hasn't stopped some explorers).

A restricted area sign at the ferry to Hart Island (photograph by Alan Houston)

The bill, co-sponsored by councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, got lost in the committee stage on New Year's Eve, but now revived would transfer control of Hart Island to the Parks Department. As Crowley told the New York Daily News: "Every New Yorker should have the right to visit, without having to go through the [Department of Corrections] process. My goal is to open up more of the island, and make it more visitor-friendly." 

It may seem strange, a cemetery as a park, but it wouldn't be the first potter's field in New York city to become public space. Few people who enjoy Washington Square Park, Madison Square Park, or Bryant Park know that they were also once potter's fields — places where the poor or the unclaimed were anonymously laid to rest. (Although their history isn't totally buried — back in 2009 an intact tombstone was unearthed in Washington Square during the park's renovations.) And then there is the Friends Quaker Cemetery that Prospect Park was built around, which still quietly operates behind a fence. A cemetery in the Navy Yard in Brooklyn is also being turned into a park, and other burial grounds like the Second African Burial Ground in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower Museum remain less documented and less known, but still a presence beneath the city streets. 

Aerial view with Hart Island on the right alongside City Island (via Wikimedia)

Proponents for the park argue that it would be a better memorial for the thousands of dead on Hart Island than the anonymous place below the earth they have now, and that this cemetery, the largest tax funded burial ground in the world, should be open to the public. One of the most vocal advocates for more visibility has been the Hart Island Project started by Melinda Hunt, which hosts a large gallery of photographs on their site and has been active in getting burial records released to the public. 

Ruins on Hart Island (photograph by Francisco Daum)

Hart Island still has around 1,500 burials a year, most of them infants and stillborns, with adult caskets stacked three deep and children five in a constant accumulation of the forgotten or the downtrodden. Around these burial sites are the crumbling brick buildings from the island's previous identities as a Civil War prison camp, a women's mental institution, a tuberculosis hospital, a reform school, and even a home for Nike missiles during the Cold War.

Those buried here deserve better than to be lost beneath the ruins, and opening the land as a public space could serve as both place of memory and a community resource in a city where open areas for the living are often as rare as places to bury the dead. But to leave it as it is now, a constant filling of soil with the thousands of simple coffins confined to obscurity, is a disrespect to the humanity of those interred, and a wasted opportunity for engagement with the city's history and its relationships between the living and the dead. 

View of Hart Island from City Island (photograph by Francisco Daum)

If you want to be part of the dialogue on the Hart Island park proposal, this Saturday is a public meeting at the City Island branch of the New York Public Library. Much more on Hart Island is available on the Hart Island Project website. 

A view of the mosque attached to Bara Imambara from the top of the labyrinth. (photograph by Kristen Zipperer)

It was a summer that felt like forever — perhaps because all we had access to was slow dial-up internet, or maybe it was just so hot, the sun so overpowering, that everything seemed to move as if drenched in honey. Maybe it was because Lucknow, a city in India’s northwest, felt so trapped in its own history that time moved slower there. It seemed to inch by even more for those of us who moved to the sleepy town to learn Urdu, a language that had been wiped away from the region.

But when we ventured into the throbbing heart of the old city — maybe following the scent of charred meat dripping fat from skewers or whole barbecued chicken with sesame naans — the physical vestiges of some of the Urdu language’s greatest champions were hard to miss.

The Nawabs, who ruled the region around Lucknow before the British tightened their hold on the city — and eventually, the entire subcontinent — were famous patrons for the arts. Some of their greatest relics are not palaces, surprisingly, but a religious site. Tall, white gates mask towering minarets and the fine latticed plaster of a pair of Imambaras.

These elaborate ritual sites are spaces for Shia Muslims like the Nawabs to mourn the brutal killing of the Prophet Mohammad’s next of kin in a siege on their camp in Karbala, Iraq, 13 centuries ago. During the month of mourning, Shias still gather to hear the epic tale of defeat, told by members of the community, year after year with a day-by-day recounting of the month-long battle.

Women weep behind black shawls as each mounting loss is described in detail — some dying of thirst and others of arrow wounds. Men — as well as some children — perform acts of ritual penitence, beating their chests with tight fists, and, sometimes, with small curved daggers.

Outside of Muharram — the Islamic calendar month when this ritual mourning takes place — most visitors to the site are pilgrims and tourists who want just to take in the spiritual and architectural wonder of the two Imambaras which are called, fittingly, Bara and Chotha, or big and small Imambara.

A replica of the tomb of Hussain, the martyred grandson of the Prophet Mohammad that Shia Muslims use in processions to mourn his death along with that of other early Muslims including Hussain’s brother, Hasan, during the Islamic calendar month of Muharram (photographs by Francesca Chubb-Confer)

To be honest, I don’t remember much of the latter. It’s Bara Imambara to which my memory — and imagination — has clung since I last saw it about three years ago. I remember well the feeling of passing through its gates into a whimsical garden with fountains ordained with colorful twin fish — a symbol of the Nawabs, who are thought to have carried it to east India from their ancestral home along the Mediterranean.

The building that the garden’s paths lead to — which provides great refuge from the scorching summer sun — is a massive, cavernous hall divided into a carpeted prayer hall, and a storage space for objects important to Shias, like the large installations which are carried through the streets in Muharram. Each community has its own way to construct these, and the ones in the Bara Imambara were pyramids about six feet tall covered in what looked like metallic, Christmas wrapping paper.

The most remarkable part of the Imambara is far less adorned.

A passageway through the labyrinth in Lucknow’s Bara Imambara, a site of ritual mourning for Shias created by the region’s pre-colonial rulers and there are many rumors about the reason for the labyrinth. (photograph by Beenish Ahmed)

Climb up a dark, well-worn set of stairs at an outdoor corner of the building means stepping into a maze. A true labyrinth of high, white-washed walls, dirtied by the fingerprints of centuries of people feeling their way through the narrow passageways. Down a few steps and the narrow halls split off in two — go right and meet a dead-end. In fact, there are hundreds of passageways through the labyrinth and a nearly 500 identical doors to further confuse. A number of these turn into balconies overlooking the hall below, or the road on the opposite end of the building. Though these vantage points should provide some sense of place, turning from them and walking just a few paces means totally losing one’s bearings in the structure which seems like it was built out of a myth and not the rough cement that actually comprises it.

I tried to find my way through the labyrinth a few times during that summer in Lucknow. The first time, I wandered in with a friend from home who was spending her summer in Kolkata. After just a few turns in, we called upon our guide to see if he might give us just the slightest sense of how to proceed, but he turned and ran off ahead like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

About 15 minutes of wandering later, our guide reappeared (of course, out of nowhere) and asked if we’d given up. I wanted to keep going, if only he would point us to where the exit actually was, but he said he had something else to show us and asked me to walk a hundred paces and lean against the wall.

I did as I was told, looked back, and saw the guide lean into the wall and begin to whisper. And, those hundred or so meters down, I heard his voice carry through the plaster in the way that sound carries through tin cans held together with string.

I heard his voice in a muffled tone ask, “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

“There was a special kind of plaster used on these walls,” he said as I walked back toward him and my friend. “The Nawabs used it so that they could hear their servants and know if they were planning some kind of uprising.” 

A view of the mosque attached to Bara Imambara from the top of the labyrinth. The building is a site of ritual mourning for Shias created by the region’s pre-colonial rulers and there are many rumors about the reason for the labyrinth. (photograph by Beenish Ahmed)

I asked if they ever would really climb to the stairs up to the labyrinth and put their ears to the wall. It seemed unlikely that any ruler in the gold and silk that the Nawabs wore would make such an effort. He just shook his head at my disbelief. When I asked why the labyrinth was here atop this religious site anyway, he had a more ready answer.

“It was built to evade the British should they ever invade this place,” he said resolutely. So much of modern South Asian history has been written in opposition to the British who first came to India as private traders and then began to rule large swathes of it and eventually most all of it in 1757. The Bara Imambara came under construction around the same time as the British residency in Lucknow. This gated community of houses, a school, and church was home to the British Resident General — who sat on the court of Lucknow — as well as troops and their families as well as the support staff required to make India as comfortable as possible for British officials.

In time, the British soldiers came to be a sort of mercenary army supporting the Nawabs and their holdings against the encroaching Delhi Sultanate. But as they began to exert more and more control over domestic affairs, local rulers united against them as a threat, even if they were unwilling to admit so publicly.

Despite the covert hostilities, it seemed absurd to me then to think of the Nawabs racing around the labyrinth for an escape. If an attack was made by the British, wouldn’t it come in the form of canon and mortar fire and not a chase through a maze?

Implausible as it seemed, something about this strange attempt at duplicity awed me. Enough so that I went on believing this for years. After all, why else would such rulers extend such an effort to build such a complex maze — and it is complex — atop of an architectural feat built to house ritual mourning?

This Muharram, as I watched televised mourning processions in Pakistan where I now live, I got to thinking about Lucknow’s Bara Imambara and its mourning processions, but mostly, its oddly-placed labyrinth. After all these years away, I finally found myself looking up the maze and the reason for its making. Of course, like most things that rest so firmly in one’s memory — it wasn’t  the sort of wonder I had filed away. 

A sign indicating the stairway up to the second floor labyrinth atop Bara Imambara in Urdu, Hindi, and English. The maze is atop a site of ritual mourning for Shias created by the region’s pre-colonial rulers. The Bara Imambara along with its labyrinth are among the most popular tourist destinations in Lucknow, India. (photograph by Kristen Zipperer)

It turns out that that elaborate structure was built to support the one below it. The labyrinth actually evens out the weight from the enormous, totally unsupported vaulted hall below it, which was built on marshy land to boot. Some have also postulated that the labyrinth’s doorways helped servants drop down lanterns into the ceiling of the floor below. In a time when opulence meant domestic servants galore and not the latest gadget, I suppose this makes sense.

Now, the labyrinth offers far more wonder than the massive space below it. For residents and tourists, its narrow passageways, many turns, and incredibly resonant plaster offer an opportunity to get lost in that history — and the rumors that surround it.

Learning a language all those summers ago taught me something of mystery in a time when anything seemed possible while in a world away, trapped in its own past which was everywheren, but harder to find one’s way through than I first thought. 

A terrace outside of the labyrinth on the second floor of the Bara Imambara in Lucknow, India. (photograph by Kristen Zipperer)

© National Museums Scotland

A stunning set of 32 celestial charts manufactured in the 1820s was attributed only to a mysterious "lady," and if you held them up to the light you could see the stars.

Known as Urania's Mirror, or A View of the Heavens — named for the Greek muse of astronomy Urania — the constellation illustrations show different personifications of the night sky, from Canis Major depicted as a collared greyhound, to Taurus charging in as if racing through Pamplona. Perhaps the most enjoyable, however, are those constellations that have fallen out of favor, such as Officina Typographica, which was indeed depicted as a little easel work stand, and the Musca Borealis, or "Northern Fly," the insect shape of which was absorbed by Aries.

© National Museums Scotland

© National Museums Scotland

On each of these 8 by 5.5 inch cards are star perforations so that if you held one up to the light, the constellation would shine out as if in the night sky. The first edition avowed to show all the constellations visible to the British Empire, but the next edition downgraded that claim to Great Britain. 

National Museums Scotland, which holds examples of the charts in their collections, shared the charming charts in this post. While the charts were widely sold, each card was hand-colored and is unique. Aimed at the astronomy amateur, this edition of "Urania's Mirror" was published in 1823 in London by Samuel Leigh and engraved by Sidney Hall to accompany A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy by Jehoshaphat Aspin. However, the artist was not named. 

© National Museums Scotland

© National Museums Scotland

As Kristi Finefield at the Library of Congress wrote in a post on the cards, the title page of the 1833 edition stated: "A View of the Heavens: Consisting of Thirty-two cards, On which are represented all the constellations visible in Great Britain; On a plan perfectly original. Designed by a Lady."

Who was this mysterious lady? It wasn't until 150 years later that the true eye behind A View to the Heavens was revealed. In 1994, P.D. Hingley — librarian for the Royal Astronomical Association — published an article in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, based on a curious document he had discovered. It was a proposal paper that cited one Reverend Richard Rouse Bloxam seemingly definitively as the author. As to why the minister adopted the anonymity of a young lady, Hingley wrote that it might have been for "commercial reasons" as "many books and magazines of the time were titled to suggest female involvement, perhaps to make them seem less forbidding, to either sex." However, he notes that it also might have been "good old-fashioned modesty," but "doubtless this further question will never be answered."

© National Museums Scotland

A new edition was published in 2004 by Sterling Publishing, and you can view more of the charts on the National Museums Scotland website. Through the images you can still catch some of the wonder that 19th century aspiring astronomers must have felt in seeing the illumination of the heavens in their own homes. 

OBJECTS OF INTRIGUE is a feature highlighting extraordinary objects from the world's great museums, private collections, historic libraries, and overlooked archives. See more incredible objects here >

The dam before the disaster (via documentingreality.com)

When it collapsed on March 12, 1928, St. Francis Dam became — and still is — the second worst disaster in California's history, and the greatest civil engineering failure of the 20th century. There are no living witnesses to the break itself, and there is much debate over where the blame should be placed, as well as over exactly how great was the loss of human life. Shortly after the centennial celebration of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Los Angeles Obscura Society gathered at the dam site to explore its incredible ruins, and to learn how Santa Clarita and San Francisquito Canyon have figured prominently in the water and power supply for Los Angeles.

Second only to the San Francisco Earthquake (and resulting fires) in terms of death toll, the "official" number of those lost to the flood is 450, but it's likely many more given the undocumented immigrant workers who were living in encampments along its path. Over 12 billion gallons of water rushed down San Francisquito Canyon, from Santa Clarita, 54 miles all the way out to the Pacific Ocean — carrying everything in its path, including trees, houses, livestock, and people, along with it. 

The rebuilt Power Plant #2, with penstocks behind the building (via Avoiding Regret)

The dam was built to create an emergency reservoir for Los Angeles' water supply, which was being fed at the time primarily by the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Situated between Power Plant #1 (up San Franciquito Canyon Road) and Power Plant #2, this was 1.3 miles downstream from where the dam once stood. Although the building for Plant #2 was completely destroyed by the flood (spare its turbines, two of which are still functional today), Power Plant #1 — first put into service in 1917 to control the water flowing down to Los Angeles from the Owens Valley — was fortunately located upstream and survived the disaster, and remains today.

Our LADWP tour guide, Ron, taking us into Power Plant #1 in San Francisquito Canyon (via Avoiding Regret)

In December, the Obscura Society was led on a private, detailed tour of the working power plant, with water audibly rushing through the pipes, letting gravity bring water from the Aqueduct into the plant to be converted into power.

Viewing the massive (and loud!) equipment that controls water from the LA Aqueduct and converts it into electrical power (via Avoiding Regret)

Technology hasn't changed much in the last century, and much of the equipment is original, though some of it has been upgraded (mostly to increase efficiency) and other machinery requires the occasional repair. However, for the most part, while standing in this facility, you experience working history that most people never visit, or even know about.

Belt-driven pump (via Avoiding Regret)

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power staff not only work at Power Plant #1, but live there, too — in Pelton, an unincorporated company town with cabin-like residences, where workers can arrive quickly if needed. This plant never stops working, and is staffed and monitored every day, all day, and night.

The board at Power Plant #1 that actually controls six power plants in the region, 24/7 (via Avoiding Regret)

In fact, its control room holds knobs, switches, buttons, alarms, and monitors not only for the performance of this power plant, but for a total of six power plants in the region. 

The "Tombstone"

We knew that much of what had originally been left standing of the dam — the center section, later nicknamed "The Tombstone" — had been blasted with dynamite after it took its final victim: a young boy who climbed to its top and fell off a year after the dam broke. We also knew that the rushing waters had broken the rest of the massive concrete dam into numerous pieces, most of which were washed downstream. But since some larger and heavier ones didn't make it very far, we set out to find whatever was left of the St. Francis Dam, and to remember those lost.

Rebar in rubble from the Tombstone (via Avoiding Regret)

When the dam broke only two years after its completion, it wasn't even known to most of the residents in the area. It didn't open with the same fanfare as the aqueduct with its grand opening at the Cascades in 1913. When residents situated downstream from the flood were warned of the oncoming wall of water, many replied, "From where?"

The remaining rubble from the dynamited Tombstone, as seen from above (via Avoiding Regret)

Even today, the dam disaster site is relatively obscure, even to residents of Los Angeles County. Parking our cars in a turnout off of San Francisquito Canyon Road (which was once filled with water when the dam stood), traveling down Old San Francisquito Canyon Road (which was decommissioned in the 2000s after storms washed it out), we came upon a recognizable pile of rubble, all that remains from when the Tombstone was blasted.  Since then, enough people have visited the disaster site that their footsteps have flattened the remnants, grinding much of the concrete into a fine powder, reducing the 200-foot wall to gravel and rebar. It can be seen from the road or hiked to, but our Obscura Society members — stalwart explorers that they are — braved a windy day during a rare Southern California cold snap to climb a steep ridge to see the disaster site from above.

San Francisquito Canyon today, where the "bowl" of the dam once held water (via Avoiding Regret)

It was this aerial view which really revealed the scale of the former reservoir, whose contents created a wall of water initially 180 feet high, racing down the Santa Clara River Valley, wiping out everything in its path of destruction.

Walking along the remaining wing of the dam's dike to the west abutment (via Avoiding Regret)

The best-preserved section of the St. Francis Dam is along the west abutment, which was leaking groundwater at the time of the disaster, but not enough to make it break in the way that it did. The real problem was in the east abutment, where movement from an ancient Paleolithic landslide in the schist rock (along what is now known as the San Francisquito Canyon Fault) was so dramatic and quick, even the road had moved several feet in one day. The entire east abutment of the dam is now gone, leaving only a scar in the canyon wall.

On the west side, however, a 588-foot-long wing dike had been built along the top of the ridge to the west abutment in order to accommodate a ten-foot increase in the dam's height from its original 1923 plan — one of Chief Engineer William Mulholland's many decisions that may have contributed to (or certainly didn't prevent) the disaster's occurrence. If you can weather the wind and the steep trail up to the top of the ridge to get to it, it is very much worth the trip.

Many thanks to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for the tour of Power Plant #1, and to the participants who bundled up for a cold day of exploration!

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure!

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Our team at Atlas Obscura is always exploring the overlooked and unexpected, whether in our own backyards or in far-flung locales. In One-Line Adventures, we send out some quick dispatches of recent discoveries. 

Roller coaster tunnel in Spreepark

"This week a friend and I sneaked into Spreepark, a Berlin theme park that has been abandoned since 2002. It was a thrilling day of walking along roller coaster tracks, entering dark and dusty tunnels, and clambering around old rides overgrown with weeds." — Ella Morton [Head Writer, Book Team]

Ella trying out Spreepark transportation

Exploring an abandoned water ride in Spreepark

The Forevertron

"Trespassing through a junkyard, scaling a snowbank, and braving -10 degree weather (mittenlessly risking frostbite), on a day so cold they didn't officially open, Dr. Evermor's Forevertron lived up to our expectations as outsider art royalty, totally worth the painful extremities." — Michelle Enemark [Graphic Design, Video Production]

Rose Parade float

"Most people are unaware that at 2 am on New Year's Eve, all the Rose Parade floats are lined up on Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena under bright flood lights. This is my favorite time to avoid the crowds, see the floats up close, admire all the details, and smell all the flowers and herbs and spices that are used to create them." — Robert Hemedes [Field Agent, Los Angeles]

Ancient rock art at Grimes Point

"I spent Christmas among the rock art of a people who died 8,000 years ago at Grimes Point, Nevada, leading me to wonder, 'What will be left of our civilization in 8,000 years?'"
— Tre Balchowsky [Field Agent, San Francisco]

One-Line Adventures are snapshots of some recent explorations from the Atlas Obscura Team. Click here to see more >