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Oct 4, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | J.W. Ocker |April White |Sarah Durn |Suzie Dundas
They have survived in the shadows for millennia. Their names have been whispered over hearths and campfires, invoked as warnings to disobedient children, or perhaps known but never said aloud for fear of attracting their attention: the wendigo, the bunyip, the capelobo. Around the world, Indigenous communities have passed rich storytelling traditions from one generation to the next from time immemorial. Many of the stories have been lost in the upheaval and destruction of the colonial era.
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May 3, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | April White
The wampus cat appeared in the American South, seemingly out of nowhere, at the turn of the 20th century. In the newspapers of the day, the frightening figment was, for most, nothing but a name associated with feral violence.
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May 1, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | April White
The children all knew the story of the Yara ma tha who. In the Aboriginal communities of the southeastern Australian coast, parents warned their sons and daughters about the little red men who hid in the boughs of the wild fig trees. Wayward boys and girls who wandered alone through the dense forests were the favored prey of these spirit men, who had lived alongside Aboriginal people since the Dreaming, when the land and its creatures were created.
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Apr 30, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | April White
In Honduras, she is La Cigua. In Costa Rica and Nicaragua, she is La Cegua. In El Salvador, she is La Cihuatnawal. And in the old neighborhoods of Guatemala City, she is La Siguanaba. There, she has been seen wandering for centuries, through Ojo de Agua, along Santa Cecilia Avenue, near the Santa Cruz del Milagro church.
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Apr 29, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | April White
The beast-fish was terrifying. It stretched at least 14 feet long—or maybe 18. Its enormous head was shaped like a leopard, or a dog, or an otter, depending on who you asked and when. It used its strong, wide tail to steer through the currents of East Africa’s rivers. Some reported it had the long, white tusks of a walrus and an armadillo’s impenetrable scales. Its feet—for yes, the beast-fish had feet—were as large as a hippo’s, but with the sharpened claws of a T. Rex.
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Apr 29, 2024 | 
flipboard.com | April White
NowCNN — It may be spring, but it’s not too soon to look ahead to summer weather, especially when El Niño – a player in last year’s especially brutal summer – is rapidly weakening and will all but vanish by the time the season kicks into gear. El Niño’s disappearing act doesn’t mean relief from the …
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Mar 19, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | April White
Four hundred years ago, the Dutch established the colony of New Amsterdam on the southern tip of the island of Mannahatta. A map of the settlement circa 1660, known as the Castello Plan, offers a birds-eye view of a thriving community of about 1,500 people. There are houses, businesses, extensive gardens, windmills, piers, and boats bobbing along the rocky coast. Near the southern end of the island stands Fort Amsterdam flying the flag of the Dutch West India Company.
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Feb 23, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | Sonya Vatomsky |Joseph Hayes |April White |Joshua Adair
A Victorian-era sitter is clamped into position using a metal frame before having his portrait taken. We can’t seem to get enough of the Victorian Era, and the denizens of that mid- and late-19th century period that saw fascinating changes in science and society. Our obsession with everything from their fashion sense to their prudery has led to countless wondrous stories. Some are mere historical embellishment (you’ve heard about those “sexy” furniture legs?) but other wacky tales are all-too-true.
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Feb 6, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | April White
The Buffalo Medical College laboratory was under guard, and the few scientists permitted entrance had been ordered not to discuss the experiments underway inside. Among the most reticent of them was Dr. Herman Matzinger, who told a journalist only that he “would have no leisure from his work,” the Buffalo Courier reported. It seemed like no one had rested since President McKinley died in the early morning hours of Saturday, September 14, 1901.
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Jan 9, 2024 | 
atlasobscura.com | April White
The quest started with a single, black-and-white photograph. A massive telescope dominates the frame. In May 1921, when the image was captured, the 54-foot-long, 1,200-pound refracting telescope at the University of Chicago’s Lake Geneva Yerkes Observatory was the largest of its type in the world, capable of revealing unseen corners of the universe. Beneath this behemoth is a crowd of scientists. One, with a shock of wild gray hair, stands out.
