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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

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Monastery Penteli in Penteli, Greece

May 19, 2020

When Bishop Timothy of Evia visited Mount Penteli in 1578, he found dozens of monks living in poorly maintained buildings with dozens more living in caves on the side of the mountain. With backing from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and financial assistance from a wealthy Athenian family, he acquired land on the south side of the mountain. The land was the site of a 10th-century monastery destroyed by the Ottomans in 1465. Bishop Timothy and the local monks constructed...

Stew Pond at Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire,...

May 18, 2020

No one envied medieval monks for their diets. On the four days a week they didn’t fast, meat was still largely forbidden, barring illness or special occasions. Their one carnal luxury was fish; they made sure to keep plenty on hand. Many abbeys featured early fish farms called stew ponds, where fish could breed, live, and grow into monks’ favorite lunch. With the dissolution of monasteries in the 1500s, many stew ponds were reclaimed by nature. The one at...

Schaakstukkenmuseum (The Chessmen Museum) in Rotterdam, Netherlands

May 18, 2020

Hidden below the Rotterdam cube houses is the cute-as-a-button Schaakstukkenmuseum, or Chessmen Museum. With hundreds of complete, unique chess sets on display, this tiny museum has something for everyone—even the chess averse. Schaakstukkenmuseum opened in 2006. Many of the pieces on display inside come from the private collection of the museum’s founder, Ridder Dijkshoorn. The collection is changing all the time as new pieces go up for display and temporary exhibits rotate through the space. In a recent count, the museum held...

A Viking Burial Barge Is Being Swallowed...

May 18, 2020

Vikings have been plagued by a lot of misconceptions. Their mythos would lead you to believe they wore horned helmets, for example. (They didn’t.) And that they set their funerary barges alight with a flaming arrow shot from the shore. (Also untrue.) Real Viking burials did involve ships, though not where you might expect them. Viking leaders were buried in boats that were dug into the dirt, then covered over with earth and turf, forming a tumulus, or burial...

Thailand’s Spirits Have a Taste for Red...

May 18, 2020

They are everywhere, ubiquitous to the point where they are nearly synonymous with the spirits themselves: small, plastic bottles of strawberry Fanta, placed solicitously in front of shrines, straws helpfully tilted towards the gods for easier sipping. Turn the corner just off of Bangkok’s Charoen Krung Road, and you’ll spy a single Fanta in front of a simple concrete spirit house. At the popular night market Asiatique, a battalion of crimson bottles vie for space before the resident spirits....

Ludus Magnus in Rome, Italy

May 18, 2020

Ancient Rome‘s brutal gladiatorial games have lived on in legends and stories long after the games themselves ended. The Colosseum is an impressive architectural feat that continues to draw in vast numbers of tourists every year. But another, lesser-known historic attraction stands nearby: the ruins of the Ludus Magnus, the Great Gladiatorial Training School of Rome. Originally constructed under the reign of Emperor Domitian in the late first century, the Ludus Magnus was the largest of the four gladiatorial...

Lesson Plans: The Last Incan Bridge in...

May 18, 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the shape of the world, one of the more dramatic changes is in the lives of teachers, parents, and kids. With most schools closed, summer camps canceled, and kids home, both parents and teachers are challenged with giving kids engaging and interesting activities. That’s why Atlas Obscura teamed up with Nomadic Learning, an online education company, to build a series of interactive lessons that take kids to amazing spots around the world, ask...

Steubenville Steelworkers Memorial in Steubenville, Ohio

May 18, 2020

This memorial shows a heavily clad steelworker sampling molten steel. It was created in 1989 by artist Dimitrios Akis, and moved from its original location near State Route 7 and placed across the street from the Steubenville Library in 2015. The memorial recalls the prosperous years of the the steel industry during the Second World War and the post-war era. The area’s steel industry has been in steady decline since the 1980s. Huge steel works in Steubenville and Weirton,...

Grzyb skalny w Zegartowicach (Zegartowicach Mushroom Rock)...

May 18, 2020

Poland is full of small hamlets and villages that are by some considered to be unremarkable. Some of these places have something that makes them notable, like Skrzyńsko Parish Church, the legendary home to a massive spider. Bigorzówka is another one of those places, mostly due to its notable mushroom-shaped rock. Mushroom rocks, sometimes called pedestal rocks, are geological structures that, over thousands of years of erosion, develop a wide top supported by a narrower base—not unlike a capped mushroom....

From Tending Sheep in the Sicilian Mountains...

May 18, 2020

When Lorenzo Reina picked up his phone on a sunny morning in December 2017, he thought it was a prank. “The voice on the other side said I had been selected for the Venice Biennale,” he says. “I thought it was a joke and hung up.” Two days later, he received an official email from Mario Cucinella, curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture, stating that Reina’s work, an open-air theater called Teatro Andromeda,...

Bron-Yr-Aur in Machynlleth, Wales

May 18, 2020

On the outskirts of the quaint Welsh town of Machynlleth stands Bron-Yr-Aur, an 18th-century cottage famous for its associations with Led Zeppelin. The cottage was used as a holiday home during the 1950s by the family of young Robert Plant, who would become the band’s lead singer and lyricist. Despite its lack of running water or electricity, Plant eventually returned to the cottage with his bandmates in 1970. The retreat was designed as a respite after the band’s North...

The Lindens in Washington, D.C.

May 18, 2020

Hidden amid the affluent Kalorama neighborhood, home to several political heavyweights, is the oldest home in Washington, DC. However, the house was originally crafted far away from the city. Constructed during the 1750s, the home was designed for wealthy shipowner and merchant, Robert Hooper, who went by the nickname “King”. After Hooper lost the house to creditors, it changed hands several times over the next few generations. The house’s drawing-room was sold to the Kansas City Museum by a...

Museum of Ancient Wonders in Cathedral City,...

May 18, 2020

Located in a small shopping center, the Museum of Ancient Wonders is an unexpected surprise sandwiched between Big Lots and Bambino’s Pizza. When visitors enter this museum, they are instantly transported to epochs from centuries past. The space is larger than it appears, large enough to house 375 artifacts and fossils. Exhibits explore a wide range of subjects, from the life of King Tutankhamun⁠—to the creatures of the Mesozoic period. The King Tut exhibit features reproductions of the king’s...

René Lévesque Park in Montréal, Québec

May 18, 2020

It’s fitting that one of the first sculptures visitors encounter in René Lévesque Park is about feet. David Moore’s “Site/Interlude” consists of five colossal steel legs, each filled with rubble. Spaced along a path like a series of mysterious footprints, they beckon viewers further into the park. Sprawling and spacious, the park does require a lot of walking. At 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 square meters), it’s one of the largest outdoor sculpture gardens in Canada. Twenty-two monumental works by...

Bunkers in Staatswald in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany

May 16, 2020

In the 1950s during the Cold War, American forces constructed 28 above-ground bunkers throughout the Waldwald state forest. They were used as ammunition and supplies depots. Around 60 workers were employed to build the bunkers. Initially, concrete was mixed at the base camp and laboriously transported to the construction site. Later, a concrete mixing plant was set up at the site and concrete was pumped through long pipes into the formwork walls of the bunkers. After completion, the bunkers...

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