Places Edited by Molly McBride Jacobson

The ruins of the suspension bridge hang over Kingsbury Run as a ghost of racial prejudice.

The medieval castle built as headquarters for the Pope's secretive Knights Templar.

The first Russian Orthodox church in North America and an Alaskan landmark.

One tiny triangular park commemorates the victims of a yellow fever epidemic—many of whom are buried right below the grass.

A faux European lane smack dab in downtown L.A.

No one knows who painted this mysterious mural in a Penn State basement.

An Anglo-Saxon cross inscribed with possibly the oldest written work of English literature.

Japan's largest collection of Western-style mansions in the port city of Kobe includes a recreation of Sherlock Holmes' 221B Baker Street quarters.

The 55-pound trichobezoar was removed from the stomach of a cow.

Housed in a memorial lighthouse, this museum relays the history of surfing, beginning with the antics of royal Hawaiian teenagers.

This mummified mermaid corpse is an aquatic curio that was eventually revealed to be a fake.

A floating cat sanctuary on an Amsterdam canal.

Walk through Czech history in Prague's largest graveyard.

On a dusty county road sit the ruins of a ghost town's abandoned church.

The inventor of the iconic Pringles can was so proud of his invention he was buried in one.

Canada's oldest sugar maple has been growing since around 1500.

Formerly secret, precariously perched boulders.

Hidden behind Lincoln's head is a chamber containing enamel plates documenting American history, sealed in a teakwood box in a titanium vault.

A sobering account of the vibrant multicultural neighborhood that was destroyed under apartheid.

A monument to a survivor of harsh pioneer life, frostbite, and primitive surgery.

The skeletons, demons, and corpses serve as a warning of the terrors of Buddhist Hell.

The largest manmade caves in Europe now function as a motorbike club's headquarters.

A statue commemorate Tommie Smith and John Carlos's brave protest at the 1968 Olympics, a watershed moment for civil rights.

One of the world's tallest waterfalls wasn't revealed to the world at large until 2006.