Atlas Obscura

“A fast-spreading bacteria could cause an olive-oil apocalypse.”

They’re wondering, more than 130 years later, how to describe the dazzling, jarring preparation, stripped of skin and pulled away from the bone. Whose body this is, and what would it mean if one of the university’s oldest fixtures never knew that she would spend her afterlife on display?

In 1900, Baron Eduard von Toll buried a cache of food in the Arctic to aid a lengthy expedition and despite attempts to locate it, the store went undiscovered until 1973. They big surprise? The contents remained edible, preserved by the Arctic permafrost for over 70 years: “a box with 48 cans of cabbage soup, a sealed tin box with 15 pounds of rye rusks [dry biscuits], a sealed tin box with 15 pounds of oatmeal, a soldered box containing about four pounds of sugar, 10 pounds of chocolate, seven plates and one brick of tea.”

Back when Indonesia’s tiny Banda Islands were thought to be the world’s only source of this curative spice, the Dutch murdered and enslaved the Indigenous people to create a nutmeg monopoly. What few accounts mention is how the Bandanese people had already cornered the nutmeg market, and that their trading operations outlasted the colonists.

“One of the world’s most hazardous jobs is known for its intense pressure.”

China’s revolution made it difficult for Chinese abroad to stay in contact with their families. Now many in the diaspora are searching for their roots.

After centuries of war, Catholicism and science reconciled over meridian lines.

The huge, hidden cost to severing the bond between art and science.

A close examination of the wilderness icon’s early travels reveal a deep love for trees, and some ugly feelings about people.

Barbara Williamson co-founded one of the most famous radical sex experiments in America. Then she got wild.