A modern Nordic Pompeii on the Icelandic island of Heimaey.

An easy-to-miss garden in Boston's North End honors the mother of JFK and others who lost children in WWII.

27-room home built with the fortune of a sugar magnate.

The shortest in the world, this landing strip stretches a mere 1,312 feet before steep cliffs on either end plunge into the Caribbean.

Berthed at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, "Old Ironsides" is the oldest commissioned warship still afloat.

The ancient past meets the retro-future at these dinosaur tracks that are protected by a geodesic dome.

These delicate buggers are some of the rarest fossils that have bubbled up from the Tar Pits.

Sniff the Titan Arum's rotting flesh.

A Pythagorean funhouse that tries, successfully, to prove that math is the coolest thing ever.

Every plane, auto, and bicycle in this collection is kept in working order and are regularly demonstrated to the public.

Offering commanding views of the California coastline, this restaurant was a hub for the artists and bohemians of Big Sur.

Even Henry David Thoreau found this glacial pothole irresistible.

University of New Hampshire holds the documentation and artifacts of local alien abductees.

Stumps of an Ice Age forest, visible only at low tide.

Site of a famous 19th-century transcendentalist utopian community, now abandoned.

A museum dedicated to "science, history and the arts" little changed since 1915.

This is why we can't have nice things on the Incan Trail.

A model of a dinosaur that was named for Andrew Carnegie stands outside the museum that also bears his name.

All that remains of this Massachusetts town, demolished in the name of progress, is a stone marker.

This elegant arc of a waterfall marks a religious turning point.

This eye-popping Icelandic crater lake is surrounded by red volcanic rock.

This handsome giant is said to mark the birthplace of the mythical woodsman and even had a cameo in a Stephen King novel.

A daybeacon pyramid is about all that's left of this island that is said to have sunk due to a pirate's curse.

A gas station and a state sign commemorating the most famous claims of extraterrestrial abduction.