Places Edited by Wythe Marschall

The "first cat," "first dog," and even a presidential pygmy hippo all get their due in this museum.

In the early 1800s, surgery was also a show.

Huge masonic hall in Philadelphia with lavishly themed rooms.

Macabre headstones carved with winged skulls, dancing skeletons, and pithy reminders of impending death.

Hauntingly beautiful totem poles left by the Haida.

Fish raining from the sky are the cause of a yearly celebration in this small Honduran town.

A 16th century chapel decorated with bones, skulls, and entire bodies hanging from the wall.

"World machine" built by an untrained Austrian farmer.

A mosaic-tiled house built by graveyard sweeper Raymond Isidore.

A castle built by an eccentric medieval enthusiast in suburban Ohio.

A working steam clock, one of only a few in the world, located in Vancouver's Victorian Gastown.

Fossils, railroads, and waterfalls!

The single richest source of elemental discoveries in the world.

See the sky in a new way through this art installation.

This one has sailed five times as far as Sir Francis Drake's famous ship.

The curious underground history of keeping Paris clean.

London's smallest police station is barely the size of a phone booth.

A morbid secret lies hidden within the beautiful walls of the Boston Athenaeum.

Light still pours into the ruins of this ancient Islamic observatory.

The largest medical and anatomical collection in France lies hidden from the public.

This derelict superstructure was a very important warning system for the Soviet military.

Gods clash with machines in a power plant regenerated as a museum.

A New England curiosity cabinet, one hundred years on.

A museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction.