Atlas Obscura's new series 'What the Light Knows' explores how historic buildings and landscapes can be read differently when light falls on them at an angle. Writers move from archaeologists tracing notches in stone to authors photographing village squares at dawn.
Some stretches of Tajikistan's Pamir Highway count as the longest road through 'almost nothing' anywhere in the world. About 250 kilometres pass without a single village. Drivers still treat handing over the wheel as a small celebration despite the cold.
The Rings Loop trail in Essex, California, takes hikers through a slot in volcanic tuff using iron rings bolted into the rock. It is one of the most unusual short routes in the Mojave National Preserve. Wind funnelling through the gully and weathered stone make the walk a memorable one.
On the south-eastern edge of Manchester, in the town of Sale, the Cosgrove Hall Films Archive preserves the backbone of British children's animation in the 1980s. Stop-motion puppets, sketches and script notebooks tell the story of characters that defined a generation of viewers.
Stone sculptures placed by Mallorcan artist Joan Bennàssar along the coastline of Can Picafort have drawn art historians as well as island tourists. The works fuse Mediterranean mythology with local stonemasonry traditions.
A 17th-century brass astronomical instrument once owned by an Indian royal house sold at auction for a record price for the category. Specialists describe the device as one of the most sophisticated calculators of its era.
Europe is marking the 81st anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender. Wreaths, ceremonies and museum events recall the legacy of 8 May 1945 amid today's political tensions.
Scientists have used DNA analysis on skeletal remains to identify four additional crew members of the Franklin expedition, which vanished in 1845. The work uses modern forensic tools to revisit a 19th-century Arctic tragedy.
The Norwegian Arts Centre on Cardiff's waterfront began life as a place of worship and welfare for Norwegian sailors who flooded into the Welsh capital during the 19th-century coal boom. Today the white timber building survives as a reminder of the once dense links between the Bristol Channel and Norway's North Sea ports.
The Bluetooth wireless standard, developed by Ericsson engineers in Lund, Sweden during the 1990s, was named after Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson, the 10th-century king who unified Denmark and Norway. A Viking-age runestone in Lund makes the surprising tie between the medieval ruler and modern wireless technology tangible.
Wing Chun master Ip Man, born in Foshan in 1893 and the teacher of Bruce Lee, was buried near Fanling in Hong Kong's New Territories after his death in 1972. Popularized internationally by the Donnie Yen film series loosely based on his life, the grave has become a quiet pilgrimage site for martial artists.
In 1461 the poet François Villon was thrown into a pit-dungeon under the Château de Meung-sur-Loire on the orders of the Bishop of Orléans. Released only when Louis XI passed through and granted a general pardon, Villon went on to write Le Testament, widely regarded as the masterpiece of medieval French poetry; the dungeon can still be visited today.
In Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery lies Frank Morgan, the actor remembered for playing the title role in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. He is buried under his birth name, Wuppermann, which often leads visitors to walk past the grave without realizing whose it is.
The Pamir Highway crosses passes at 4,280 and 4,655 meters and is only fully open a few months a year. A 22-kilometer stretch between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan runs through unmaintained no man's land without a manned border post, the legacy of a road planned during the 19th-century Anglo-Russian "Great Game."
Completed in 1890, the San Francisco Chronicle Building was one of the Bay Area's earliest tall office structures, fusing Beaux-Arts decoration with the new vocabulary of the steel-frame skyscraper. For decades it served as the headquarters of the Chronicle, mirroring the city's rise as a major American metropolis.
Scattered through the interior of French Guiana, more than two hundred granite domes survive as the eroded remnants of the 1.7-billion-year-old Guiana Shield. Known collectively as the Inselberg Savane-Roches, these rock islands rise abruptly above the Amazonian canopy and host a string of microclimates with their own endemic plants.
In Vincennes, Indiana, on the campus of Vincennes University, the Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy chronicles the life and work of the entertainer born there in 1913. Its galleries trace Skelton's journey from a teenage runaway in a traveling medicine show to a fixture of American radio, film and primetime television.
In the heart of California's Mojave National Preserve, the Hole in the Wall area is sculpted from welded tuff, volcanic ash that fused as it settled millions of years ago. The Rings Loop Trail threads visitors through this hoodoo-and-cavern landscape using a series of iron rings drilled into the canyon walls.