Wild Life: Prairie Dog LanguageEach week, Atlas Obscura is providing a new short excerpt from our upcoming book, Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders (). In the early twentieth century, some prairie dog towns stretched for hundreds of miles.
The Supermarket Scanner Changed the Way We Buy Groceries ForeverInvented 50 years ago, the curious box deciphered an arcane kind of code to offer shoppers a trip into the future.
Five Types of Trees You Can Safely Plant Close to Your HouseIf you would like to plant a tree in your yard but you’re not sure that you have the space because you've heard it's a bad idea to plant a tree too close to your house, you’re in luck.
UK's Graduate Visa programs may stay, but Sunak plans crackdown on foreign education agentsUK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to announce a crackdown on agents marketing graduate visa schemes overseas, aiming to project a tough stance on migration before this year’s general elections.
Recycled sewage, public health and the memory of the world: Books in briefThe cover of this revolutionary book shows a recycling symbol, with arrows of clear blue water. Yet the subject is sewage. Environmental and water journalist Peter Annin is satisfied that recycled sewage can be drunk, after studying water recycling for two decades.
The Professor Protesting Columbia’s Own StudentsShai Davidai, a self-described “lefty Israeli,” made himself the face of the campus-protest backlash. Professor Shai Davidai woke up on Sunday morning and asked Columbia University for backup.
Scientists Imaged and Mapped a Tiny Piece of Human Brain. Here’s What They FoundResearchers have made a digital map showing a tiny chunk of a human brain in unprecedented detail. Based on a brain tissue sample that had been surgically removed from a person, the map represents a cubic millimeter of brain—an area about half the size of a grain of rice.
What does divesting from Israel really mean?And is it feasible? Plus three other questions about the student protesters’ demands. A core demand at the heart of the protests over the war in Gaza currently roiling college campuses across the US and around the world: that universities divest from Israel.
DOJ Filing: Steve Bannon Is a “Co-Conspirator” in a $1 Billion Fraud CaseIn a little-noticed court filing earlier this month, federal prosecutors described Steve Bannon as a “co-conspirator” in a massive criminal fraud and racketeering case against a flamboyant, far-right Chinese fugitive, compounding the legal headaches of the former Donald Trump adviser.
A Brief History of the World’s First PlanetariumIn 1912, Oskar von Miller, an electrical engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum, had an idea: Could you project an artificial starry sky onto a dome, as a way of demonstrating astronomical principles to the public?
Olympics: New sports vie for places: Dodgeball, frisbee, teqballAfter succeeding Jacques Rogge as IOC president in 2013, Thomas Bach was forthright in his assessment of what the Olympic Games needed to do to stay relevant. For all that London 2012 reached a record-breaking global audience of 3.6 billion, the IOC had concerns.
The 9 worst court decisions since Trump remade the federal judiciaryThis is what happens after four years under an insurrectionist president. It will get much worse if he gets eight. Former President Donald Trump’s four years in the White House were, in many ways, a revolution interrupted. They transformed the federal judiciary and led to the fall of Roe v.
How a Few Secret Donors Are Fueling the New Right-Wing InfrastructureIn early 2021, Stephen Miller—former White House senior adviser to Donald Trump and architect of the 45th president’s hopeful second-term mass deportation agenda—announced his next venture: America First Legal (AFL).
Trump Campaign Hid Settlements With Women, New Complaint SaysA sex discrimination lawsuit against Donald Trump’s campaign has triggered new accusations that Trump’s lawyers have intentionally covered up settlement payments to women in violation of federal law.
We’re in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreatIn 1776, Americans, living in a British colony, put their lives on the line and fought for independence from the king of England. They wrote the strongest democratic constitution that had ever been written as they created a new nation. That was a pivotal moment in American history.