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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.

 
In the Era of COVID-19, Fieldwork Is...
If May 2020 was like any other spring, Daniel Bolnick, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, would be wrapping up a semester of teaching and preparing to head into the field. He and as many as two-dozen collaborators would be fanning out to sites in Alaska and Canada’s Vancouver Island, where they would traverse lush forests with snow-capped mountains in the distance, and splosh into lakes and streams. By day, they would wade into the cold water to...

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Art Challenge: Readers Draw Places They’ve Never...
A few weeks ago, we set out a challenge: Draw a picture of a place from Atlas Obscura using only a written description for reference. The results were beyond impressive. We received submissions from readers young and old, experienced artists and casual doodlers, each with a unique take on one of places in the challenge. We saw submissions that came pretty close to matching the real thing, and others that were something completely fanciful and new. They came in...

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Help Atlas Obscura Explore the British Museum’s...
Over its centuries of domination and expansion, the British Empire collected its fair—make that unfair—share of stuff, much of which now resides in the British Museum. Of course, like most other museums in countries heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the British Museum is presently shuttered. But that doesn’t mean you can’t examine its holdings. Last week the museum opened up about half of the objects in its collections—meaning an astonishing 1.9 million items—for public perusal online. While it’s...

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Judengang in Berlin, Germany
In Berlin‘s Prenzlauer Berg district, a grassy alleyway leads from Kollwitzplatz Square to the Schönhauser Allee Cemetery, a Jewish burial ground that was founded in 1827. Known as the Judengang, or “Path of the Jews,” the walkway has a storied history. During his reign as King of Prussia, from 1797-1840, Friedrich Wilhelm III would often travel between the royal residence in urban Berlin and Niederschöhausen Palace in the Pankow district. The king and his entourage would a spectacle as they strolled down Schönhauser...

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What Atlas Obscura Membership Means
From the very beginning, more than 10 years ago, Atlas Obscura has been driven by our community. One of the early user-created entries in our database of wondrous places—published just a few months after we launched in 2009, by username “bertieinindia”—was The Root Bridges of Cherrapunji, a series of centuries-old bridges grown from the tangled roots of Ficus elastica trees. There was so little published about the bridges at the time that it took work to even confirm they...

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Myddelton Passage Police Graffiti in London, England
Brick walls are certainly a common sight in London, and you’d be forgiven for walking down Myddelton Passage without giving the one that runs along the side of the footpath a second glance. But if you take the time to look a little closer, the wall holds a peculiar relic. A series of numbers, letters, and dates have been carved into the brickwork, but they weren’t put there by any old vandal. These marks make up a unique historical...

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Yawata no Yabushirazu in Ichikawa, Japan
The forest of Yawata is infamous in Japan, so much that its full name—Yawata no Yabushirazu—has become synonymous with mazes, later evolving into an idiom meaning “to get lost.” Even today, entry into the forest is strictly forbidden and an eerie atmosphere surrounds it. Although the forest is often sited as a haunted spot, it’s not ghosts that make this place spooky, but something else. Since at least the early 19th century, it has been said that those who...

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Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point in Victoria,...
On a gently sloping point with sweeping views of the Olympic Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean, a ceremonial altar stands watch over the simply marked graves of hundreds of Chinese immigrants.   Many of the people buried in the Harling Point cemetery were among Canada‘s first Chinese immigrants, arriving in the late 18th to early 19th centuries to work as cheap labor on the Canadian Pacific Railway. Approximately 400 people are buried in the cemetery, with the unmarked remains of an additional...

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Mt.Yashima Ropeway in Takamatsu, Japan
Along the slopes of Mt. Yashima lies a treasured relic of the past. The now-abandoned Yashima cable car is one of the oldest ropeways in Japan. Constructed during the late 1920s, the cable car offered a relaxing way to reach the summit of Mt. Yashima and was a popular attraction.  During the 1940s however, Japan was deep in the midst of World War II. The cable car suspended activities, along with other attractions across the country. The fate of...

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Duomo di Modena in Modena, Italy
Constructed in 1099 by little-known Italian architect Lanfranco, Duomo di Modena also known Modena Cathedral is one of the more important Romanesque buildings in Europe. The massive structure is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and Saint Geminianus. It was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. For scholars and fans of the Arthurian legend, the cathedral is well-known for its north gate, Porta della Pescheria (“Fish-market Gate”). The gate is decorated with high relief...

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The Gastro Obscura Guide to Cooking School-Lunch...
Though students are still studying for finals and finishing up their term papers, they’re not doing it on campus this year. Instead, dorms are empty, quads are deserted, and playgrounds are covered in caution tape. Instead of cafeterias, students are now eating lunch in their own (or their parents’) kitchens, which, depending on the school, might be a step up or down. But a few schools have treats like no other, from an Albuquerque school district’s legendary peanut butter...

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Feast Your Eyes on Delectable Clay Replicas...
Isolated in her Brooklyn apartment since March, Stephanie Shih has folded dozens upon dozens of dumplings. “I find it soothing,” she says. “I can do it without thinking, so it’s almost like meditation.” But Shih’s dumplings aren’t made of dough—they’re made of clay, and the results are delicate and porcelain-white. In the past two years, Shih has made more than 1,000 ceramic dumplings, as well as many other replicas of Asian foodstuffs, from jars of chili oil to boxed...

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The Wide World of Disease-Based Dutch Profanity
Twanna Hines, who grew up in rural Illinois, moved to the Netherlands to pursue a graduate degree at the University of Amsterdam in 2000. Not totally used to the stream of bicycles and trams in the streets of Amsterdam, she wandered into a bike lane and got a mouthful from a passing cyclist. “And my Dutch roommate shouted back, in the Dutch translation, ‘Get cancer, man!’” she remembers. “And I was like, ‘What the hell? That doesn’t make any...

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Schönhauser Allee Cemetery in Berlin, Germany
In the years before it served as a Jewish burial ground, the land where the Schönhauser Allee Cemetery now stands was home to a brewery and dairy farm. Many of the brewery’s architectural elements, such as cisterns, can still be seen in the cemetery today. It was alleged that in one of these cisterns a handful of deserters from the German Army hid to evade capture as World War II drew to a close. Ultimately, these men were discovered...

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‘Mail Art’ Makes a Comeback During Quarantine
In the 1950s, the New York–based artist Ray Johnson pioneered a new form of expression known as “mail art.” The idea was that artists could distribute their work privately, through the postal service instead of through galleries and other exclusive institutions. It’s been observed that Johnson, in some ways, anticipated how the internet and social media would influence the dynamics of the art world. It may be the COVID-19 pandemic, however, that brings his original, analog way of doing...

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