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Lionfish Kabobs: Teaching Old Sharks New Tastes
Photo by Jens Petersen via WikimediaLionfish, though stunning creatures, are very, very dangerous to marine life, given their venomous spines, sophisticated hunting techniques, and extremely high...
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A Graphic Guide to Cemetery Symbolism
To convey the lives of the people buried beneath them, and the expectations for what comes after death, symbolism has long been part of tombstones. Below is our guide to some of the most prevalent...
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The Suicide Caves Beneath St. Louis
The entrance of the Lemp Mansion (photograph by Scott Neale)St. Louis, Missouri, has always been a beer town. There, 1854 was known as “the year the beer ran out” because the city’s residents simply...
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From Elephant Tongues to Faulty Air Conditioners: The Geographical Origins of...
As the international medical community works to deal with the current Ebola outbreak, a lot of work is being done to isolate the disease vector, the animals that carry and spread the disease. Most...
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The Worst Ghosts of the Southwest
If Halloween is the time of year for frightening tales of apparitions, night monsters, tombs, and vampires, these hauntingly normal ghosts of the Southwest dispel the myth that the supernatural beings...
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Creepypasta, the Science of Fear, and All the Days of the Dead: Roundup...
Our weekly roundup of fascinations around the world and the web. Happy Halloween!Vintage Halloween postcard from the New York Public Library Picture Collection, via Public Domain ReviewThe science of...
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Photographs from Mexico's Day of the Dead, Where Candles and Heaps of...
Day of the Dead in Mexico (all photographs by the author)Last year, I made a pilgrimage to Mexico to experience how Day of the Dead is celebrated at its country of origin. The three places that were...
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Mussolini's Secret Bunker Now Open After 70 Years
Villa Torlonia Bunker (image via CRSA-Sotterranei di Roma)During World War II, Italy's Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini insisted that he would "wait for the bombs on his balcony," never fleeing...
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A Graphic Guide to Space Animals
Today marks the anniversary of the first Earth-born creature circling our planet from Space. Laika — a pointy-eared petite mutt found as a stray on the streets of Moscow — boarded Sputnik 2 and was...
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Objects of Intrigue: Every Skull Has a Story
The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia (all images courtesy the museum)Araschtan Gottlieb, age 19, suicide by potassium cyanide, suspected unfaithfulness of his mistress... Veronica Huber, age 18, executed...
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Could Urban Algae Farms Clean Up Our Air?
All images via O. Arandel and the Cloud CollectiveOn an overpass above a densely trafficked highway in Geneva, Switzerland, international design group Cloud Collective set up a fascinating urban...
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Uncovering Tsingtao beyond the Brewery: The Subterranean Relics of Germany's...
The 19th century was an age of empires, and yet some of those empires are better remembered now than others. The British, Spanish, and French, for example, all left indelible marks across their...
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An Abridged History of Funambulists
Con Colleano on a slack-wire, circa 1920 (image via Wikimedia)This past Sunday, Nik Wallenda, a seventh-generation aerialist and member of the Flying Wallenda circus family, walked 94 feet on a...
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Society Adventures: Serving Spirits in the Green-Wood Cemetery Catacombs
Inside the Green-Wood Cemetery catacombs this fall for a mysterious moonlit cocktail gathering (photograph by Mitch Waxman)The New York Obscura Society recently celebrated the arrival of autumn with a...
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Djerbahood's Graffiti Dreams: Street Art Takes Over Tunisian Village
Piece by Belgian-based artist ROA (all photos by Aline Deschamps via Djerbahood)Erriyadh is the oldest village on the North African island of Djerba, known as the "Island of Dreams." This summer,...
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The Strange Specimens of a Mysterious Thai Apothecary
Tucked into the entrance of the War Museum in Kanchanaburi, Thailand is what appears to be an old fashioned Thai apothecary, caked in dust and packed to the brim with animal specimens. It sits open and...
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Monkeys, Moose, and Britain's Most Famous Phallus: Geoglyphs From Around the...
Russian moose geoglyph (image via sott.net / Google Earth)In Russia's Zyuratkul National Park is the world's oldest geoglyph — a large work of art made by arranging stones, earth, or other objects...
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Poisonous Bees Meet Hitler & Beauty Queens in a Mazelike Thai Museum
The War Museum in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, is a strange beast. First of all, it is not to be confused with Kanchanaburi’s other, and more popular war museum, the JEATH Museum, which can be difficult, as...
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Where Mass Tourism Overrides Memorialization, Chernobyl Is Far from a Time...
There is a popularly held myth concerning Chernobyl, and, more pertinently, concerning the abandoned city of Pripyat which stands at the heart of Ukraine’s radioactive “Zone of Alienation.” Namely,...
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Secret Libraries of Paris
From majestic medieval towers and chandelier-lined 17th-century reading rooms, to medical collections that will make your skin crawl, Paris boasts some of the world's most impressive bibliothèques....
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