Atlas Obscura

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During the peak of summer off the coast of Maine, a female lobster approaches the den of a potential mate. Male lobsters are aggressive, so she’s whipped up a love potion to win him over. The persuasive concoction is her own pee, full of seductive and disarming pheromones, which springs from a surprising source. “I hate to tell this to people who love to eat lobster,” says Ellen Prager, marine scientist and author of Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime: The Oceans’ Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter. “Everybody thinks [their bladder] must be under their abdomen, but no, it’s actually between their eyes.”

This themed crossword comes from Zhouqin (C.C.) Burnikel, who grew up in Xi’an, China, before moving to the United States in 2001. She’s the author of Sip & Solve Easy Mini Crosswords.

THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE DECEMBER 2, 2023, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE .

As a city known for its festivals and food, it’s no wonder New Orleans has a special gustatory way of celebrating the Christmas holidays. Although modern festivities no longer require celebrants to stay up all night, revelers can still indulge in the nearly 200 year old feast of Réveillon every December, as the Catholic French Creole inhabitants of the city did before them.

Prepping for winter requires serious effort. By the time autumn falls brisk and wet, tree squirrels are already hard at work hoarding and hiding the nuts and seeds they’ll need to sustain themselves through the coldest months. Moles are busying themselves capturing and immobilizing earthworms in underground dungeons. And acorn woodpeckers are drilling and storing up to 50,000 acorns in the dead limbs of “granary trees.”

We all have them. Those holiday ornaments that we put up every year thinking, “Maybe it’s really time to retire this cracked pickle ornament?” But nonetheless, every year, they go up, like a bowhead whale that just won’t die. After a few years, the cracked pickle has become a beloved holiday tradition. It’s how a lot of the most unusual ornaments and decorations turn into holiday mainstays.

Not long after the light first burst from the furnace at the heart of the realm, chaos reigned. Cosmic islands were careening into one another, fracturing and shattering, then melding and building. The most colossal orbs emerging from the pandemonium often had companions of rock or ice dancing around them. One stood largely alone, its fiery surface bubbling away, as another, Theia, approached at breathtaking speed. Soon a white-hot, soundless blast sent an eruption of diamantine matter out to the stars. It took an eon to see the outcome of this massive collision. In the end: a world of green and blue, and its pale companion, Selene.

Vietnam has long drawn travelers in search of street food—traditional dishes passed down and perfected over decades by multi-generational food hawkers. Never was this more apparent to global audiences than when Anthony Bourdain and President Barack Obama famously met over bowls of bún chả, a northern Vietnamese grilled pork noodle salad, at a family-owned establishment in Hanoi back in 2016.

A few years ago, at a reception at the Polish embassy in Bern, Switzerland, an elderly Jewish man pulled the ambassador aside and relayed an unbelievable story. They were standing on holy ground, the man said, a place where near-secret acts of heroism played out during World War II. Intrigued, the ambassador, Jakob Kumoch, tasked his staff with looking into the man’s claims. Soon, an incredible history emerged.

It began on September 1, 1944, in the sleepy community of Mattoon, Illinois, at the home of Aline Kearney and her three-year-old daughter, Dorothy Ellen. Her husband was away, serving in the Navy, and Aline’s sister Martha was staying with her. That evening, Aline noticed a “sickening, sweet odor,” though Martha didn’t report smelling anything unusual. Abruptly, Aline’s legs seemed to become paralyzed, and she felt a tightness and a dryness in her throat.

Just off of East Highway 246 in the town of Solvang, California, an eye-catching sign depicts an adult male ostrich, its black and white feathers spread like the fans of a performer in a Vegas show. Just beneath the display, in big block letters: “OSTRICHLAND USA,” and “FEED THIS BAD BOY!”

To be a fan is to be a perpetual collector, and that doesn’t just mean autographs or action figures. Acquisition is an important part of many fans’ lives, from the material, such as concert merch or rare comic cover variants, to the intangible—facts, memories, interpretations, arguments, ideas. They save images, curated and annotated lists of fanfiction, data about fictional universes for wikis, clips from their favorite shows for vids. They deconstruct their obsessions, and build something new from all the little pieces. Sometimes they do this alone, but often, they do it together—the shared act of creation often defines a fandom.

Markus Füchtner works the lathe in the workshop that doubles as his home—or maybe it’s his home that doubles as a workshop. The small, one-story building is set in the forested hills of Seiffen, near Germany’s border with Czechia, and has been used by his family of carpenters since 1786. It was here in the early 1870s that his great-great-great-grandfather, Wilhelm Füchtner, made his first nutcracker—and laid the foundation for a global Christmas icon.

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This story was originally published on Narratively. Subscribe to their newsletter here.

Out in a flat plain of reddish sand against a wide blue sky, a group of men set up a baseball field. The home base is made from a green plastic crate propped on a tire, and the players stand in an outfield, stark figures against an expansive horizon. Spanish phrases interlay the general chitchat in Arabic. The batter crouches, ready for the ball, as the pitcher pivots his leg to throw. His ball strikes the ground far ahead of the plate, and the batter stands straight as if to say, ‘Come on? Really?’

When the wooden gunboat Spitfire sailed into battle as part of a flotilla engaging British naval forces on Lake Champlain in 1776, she carried an unlikely crew: ragtag American soldiers with little naval experience, under the command of a swashbuckling patriot and hero, Brigadier General Benedict Arnold. Arnold, still years away from becoming the nation’s most infamous traitor, sacrificed several vessels in what would be called the Battle of Valcour Island, after one of the islands dotting the narrow, deep lake that stretches from Québec south along the New York-Vermont border. The clash ended in defeat for Arnold, but bought valuable time for the Continental Army.

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.