Atlas Obscura

Not long ago, if you ordered Neapolitan pizza at an Italian restaurant, you might have ended up with a slice of custard pie.

Reprinted with permission from The Globe: How the Earth Became Round by James Hannam, published by Reaktion Books Ltd. Copyright © 2023 by James Hannam. All rights reserved.

Bull sharks, says marine biologist Ryan Daly, “like to bite.”

THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE SEPTEMBER 17, 2023 EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE .

Secret Obsessions is Atlas Obscura’s column where we ask wondrous people to take us down a rabbit hole. This edition features chart-topping pop duo Aly & AJ—sisters Aly and AJ Michalka.

THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE AUGUST 26, 2023, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE .

In the northern reaches of Lake Michigan, the Emerald Isle ferry—departing from Charlevoix at the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula—takes about two hours to reach the lake’s largest island. As it approaches, homes, a lighthouse, and a red-roofed research center pop into focus amid dense forest. Docked boats herald the ferry with honks, and dogs bark from ship to shore. Upon arrival on Beaver Island, a lively community center and welcoming crowd beckon family and visitors ashore. On the island it’s customary to wave, or at least lift a finger, for each passing vehicle—every single one.

Atlas Obscura’s Wondersky columnist Rebecca Boyle is an award-winning science journalist and author of the upcoming Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are (January 2024, Random House). She shares the stories and secrets of our wondrous night sky.

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If an autumn breeze blowing through an alpine forest at the base of a majestic mountain fills your heart with joy, Colorado is a fantastic place to be in the fall. And if ghost-hunting in historic hotels, mines, and abandoned villages with Halloween around the corner is more your speed, Colorado also ticks those spooky boxes. Whether you have a penchant for mountain life or the afterlife, Colorado has your name written all over it. To help you make the most of your fall visit this year, we rounded up 10 ways to explore Colorado’s haunted and wholesome wonders, from scenic byways and sky-high railroads to spooky hotels, abandoned villages and more.

If you spend a lot of time outdoors at night in the summer, you might be used to seeing shaky, silhouetted creatures flitting above. Maybe you’ve stopped to watch them skim over your garden at twilight, or you’ve caught them while you’re camping near a lake, or you just sense a brief flash of movement outside your window. Birdwatching is great, but bat-watching is another world entirely.

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Since leaving my native Norway, I find myself constantly telling people about brunost. Pronounced “broon’ust,” it simply means “brown cheese.” But brunost is nothing like any other cheese.

Sometime around 1933, two teenage cousins, Harry Hall and Will Cubbon, paid a visit to a new friend of theirs named Gef. Gef lived in a remote, windswept farmhouse on the Isle of Man. He was very shy, and the cousins could hear and talk to him, but never saw their new friend. From behind a wall, Gef would guess heads-or-tails when a coin was flipped or play catch with a rubber ball through a hole in the attic ceiling.

Far from their usual forest hideouts, lynx hunt in fallow fields and fall asleep on asphalt roads. Wolves thrive in abandoned villages, denning and breeding in cemeteries. Throughout the Polesie State Radioecological Reserve (PSRR) in southern Belarus, the density of both species is exceptionally high. And another apex predator visits often: Brown bears pass through almost every summer.

After Austrian Empress Elisabeth married Emperor Franz Joseph in Vienna in 1854, her wedding dress disappeared. Commonly known as Sisi, the Empress has long been quite the celebrity in Europe. Her rebellious nature has been depicted in films like Corsage and the chart-topping Netflix series The Empress. Yet, despite her popularity, Empress Sisi’s wedding dress has been veiled in secrecy for almost 200 years. Now, thanks to a series of clues, Austrian researcher Dr. Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner may have solved the ancient sartorial puzzle.

Between 1850 and 1852, a mighty, squat stone fort rose from a low-lying island in the Milford Haven Waterway in Wales. Originally proposed by Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII, more than 300 years earlier, Stack Rock Fort—about 800 yards off the coast—was built to protect the Royal Dockyard at Pembroke Dock from attack by sea. It had a 30-foot tower, walls nine feet and nine inches thick, and housed three large cannons and one smaller one. A few years later casemates were added, and by 1870, the fort got a major makeover, inspired by the threat of Napoleon III. A new battery was added, able to hold up to 175 soldiers and five officers. Most of the fort’s useful life was spent undergoing upgrades, and it only really saw active use during World War I. In 1929 it was finally decommissioned, disarmed, and scoured for useful materials. Since then, the lonely three-story fort has sat vacant but for crashing waves, nesting gulls, and opportunistic plants.

This story was originally published on The Conversation and appears here under a Creative Commons license.

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THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE JULY 15, 2023, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE .