Explore 3899 History Collections - Atlas Obscura
Places near me Random place

3899 Items Tagged

History

Share
Clowns in American circuses were once considered a form of adult entertainment.
19th century

Today's Creepy Clowns Have Roots in Bawdy and Crass 19th-Century Circuses

Pennywise, Art the Clown, and other modern, face-painted menaces recall an era when their kind were strictly adults-only entertainers.
Madeline Steiner October 31, 2022
Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Museum of the Old Bridge

Carefully reconstructed after the Bosnian War, this 16th-century bridge stands as a symbol of the country's enduring multicultural heritage.
A surf mural in the interior of Dogtown Coffee.
Santa Monica, California

Dogtown Coffee

Grab a latte at the birthplace of modern American skateboarding.
This 1833 painting by Alexandre Hesse in the Louvre in Paris depicts the funeral rites of the painter Titian after his death from plague.
plague

Venice Is Almost One Big Plague Graveyard

A city built on water was always going to struggle with burials—especially when a deadly pandemic came to town.
Vittoria Traverso October 27, 2022
Mount Roosevelt Friendship Tower
Deadwood, South Dakota

Mount Roosevelt Friendship Tower

Seth Bullock, the sheriff of Deadwood, built this town immediately after Teddy Roosevelt’s death in 1919.
Lexington, Massachusetts

Prince Estabrook Memorial Plaque

This stone in Lexington honors a formerly enslaved man who fought during the American Revolution.
Reading tea leaves.
witchcraft

The Ancient Art of Kitchen Divination

How to try tasseography, cromniomancy, and other mystical gastronomic arts.
Diana Hubbell October 17, 2022
The Black Castle in South Queensferry, Scotland.
Edinburgh, Scotland

The Black Castle

This severely painted building has a twisted connection to the witch hunts of the 1640s.
These eggs see all.
witchcraft

The Long, Extremely Witchy History of Telling the Future With Eggs

From ancient Greece to the Salem Witch Trials.
Diana Hubbell October 13, 2022
islands

Podcast: Providence Island

Join us for a daily celebration of the world’s most wondrous, unexpected, even strange places.
The Podcast Team October 13, 2022
Maltese bone cookies are a tradition with a murky past.
bones

In Malta, ‘Dead Men’s Bones’ Are a Sweet, Spiritual Tradition

The cookies are just one way that the island nation remembers the dead.
Alice Levitt October 11, 2022
Captain Thunderbolt Statue
Uralla, Australia

Captain Thunderbolt Statue

The last of the bushrangers in New South Wales.
Prayer flags on the front of the chanting hall.
Staten Island, New York

Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art

The collection is exhibited in a Staten Island building modeled on traditional Himalayan architecture.
Russian painter Valery Jacobi's 1878 <em>Ice House</em> depicts the jester, Mikhail Golitsyn, and the Kalmyk woman, Avdotia Buzheninova, being paraded to their icy bed chamber.
castles

The Time a Russian Empress Built an Ice Palace and Forced Her Jester To Get Married In It

Cruel joke, power move, or both?
Sarah Durn October 4, 2022
museums

Podcast: The Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama

Join us for a daily celebration of the world’s most wondrous, unexpected, even strange places.
The entrance to the Silver Cliff Cemetery leads visitors down roads less traveled.
cemeteries

What's Really Behind the Ghost Lights of Colorado's Silver Cliff Cemetery?

Tucked between rugged mountains, this lonely graveyard is home—allegedly—to ethereal, glowing orbs that dance among the headstones.
Sarah Scoles October 1, 2022
objects of intrigue

How One Tiny Bead Can Reveal A Global History

Hint: There is a laser involved.
Line Sidonie Talla Mafotsing September 30, 2022
Chertsey, England

Blanche Heriot and the Curfew Bell

A statue of the heroine who stopped time to save her betrothed.