Places Ruben Stemple Wants to Go

The oldest playground in America.

One of the world's largest tanks mimics the experience of watching rare whale sharks, giant rays, and deep sea creatures from the ocean floor.

A bronze sculpture honors the 12 black students who attended the first integrated public high school in the segregated South.

The origin of the Nixon tapes is rooted in technological incompetence as much as secrecy.

This spot in St. Louis, marked with a simple sign, has seen more pro baseball than just about anywhere else in the world.

Every animal in the torah taxidermied and crammed into a Brooklyn townhouse.

A micro-communist utopia in Spain with no police, no mortgages and full employment.

Wheels of chrome by the thousands adorn this California Historical Landmark.

A unique book shop with a collection of rare tomes and a nostalgia museum.

As lake waters recede, a German village reemerges after more than a hundred years.

Bell tower juts out from a village buried under a lake.

A cemetery and the town it served sinks beneath the sea during the volcanic birth of Mt. Vulcan.

As can be expected from a centuries-old church built in a canal city, the undercroft of this house of worship is beautifully flooded.

This Tuscan lake hides a 13th century town that is still visible when the water recedes.

This anonymous businessman sculpted in bronze became an enduring memorial after 9/11, and had been mistaken by rescue workers for a survivor in the rubble.

The South African dialect's complex history is immortalized in stone, in one of the world's only monuments dedicated to a language.

An enormous, 30-story-deep hole in the middle of Guatemala City.

A treasure trove of rare and fine fabrics from around the world.

Believe it or not, the now-ubiquitous California avocado originated in Guatemala.

A collection of oddities including Dr. Kevorkian's suicide device, the Thanatron.

This 140-year-old beacon off the Florida Keys marks the wreck of a Navy ship that once roamed the Caribbean hunting pirates.

A memorial in coal country commemorates the victims of an all-too-preventable mining disaster.

The historic home still shows the scars from a little run-in with the British in 1813.

In the middle of an extremely unforgiving and desolate high desert is the most secret military facility in the world.