Frank Jacobs's User Profile - Atlas Obscura
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road trip

The Coast-to-Coast American Road Trip Is 120 Years Old

In 1903, a Vermont doctor bet $50 that he could cross America by car. It took him 63 days, $8,000, and 600 gallons of gas.
May 26, 2023
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strange maps

Why Does America Have So Many Towns With Classical Names?

There are nearly 100 named "Troy."
May 19, 2023
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shapes

The Mysterious Dodecahedrons of the Roman Empire

The first of many of these puzzling objects was unearthed almost three centuries ago, and we still don't know what they were for.
May 12, 2023
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witch burnings

Explore This Map of More Than 3,000 Scottish Witches

An Edinburgh University project uses data to track the victims of Scottish "witch-prickers" in the 16th and 17th centuries.
May 5, 2023
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strange maps

The Strange Tale of SS Warrimoo, the Ship That Existed in Two Centuries at Once

On New Year's Eve 1899, the captain of this Pacific liner steamed into history. Or did he?
April 28, 2023
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chess

How Did the Chess Pieces Get Their Names?

One player’s pawn is another’s farmer. And at one time, the queen was the virgin, and rather powerless.
April 21, 2023
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shapes

Colorado Is Not a Rectangle—It Has 697 Sides

The Centennial State is technically a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon.
April 14, 2023
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cities

The Mysterious Underground City Found in a Man’s Basement

How a renovation project in Turkey led to the discovery of a lifetime—a lost city that once housed 20,000 people.
April 7, 2023
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cartography

How a Map Mistake Saved a Forest of 300-Year-Old Trees

Minnesota's "Lost Forty" survived the lumberjack's ax thanks to a improperly drawn lake.
March 31, 2023
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cartography

How Njoya the Great Put His African Kingdom on the Map

A representation of the Bamum kingdom is a rare example of early-20th-century indigenous African cartography.
March 24, 2023
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bronze age

Europe’s Oldest Map Shows Tiny Bronze Age Kingdom

Discovered in 1900, the Saint-BĂ©lec slab languished unrecognized in a castle basement for over a century.
March 17, 2023
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hollywood

‘Cockeyed’ Map Shows Both Glamour and Margins of 1930s Hollywood

Legendary cartoonist John Groth's pictorial map captures L.A.'s film factories in their Golden Age.
March 10, 2023
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cartography

The Paratethys Sea Was the Largest Lake in Earth’s History

The Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas are the last surviving fragments of a body of water that stretched from Austria to Turkmenistan.
March 3, 2023