Atlas Obscura is hosting the second annual International Obscura Day on April 9, 2011, in partnership with Hendrick's Gin. This is a day set aside for "expeditions, back-room tours and hidden treasures" in places near or...

You'll be forgiven if you first read that as "The Eye of Sauron." Astronauts were the first to notice this 50-kilometer wide geological formation in Mauritania, in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Read about it and o...

(YouTube link)We once featured an Euler diagram that explained the British Isles, the United Kingdom, and Great Britain. This video explains all that clearly but quickly, then goes on to explain the British Empire, the C...

What a neat idea! Type the name of each state in the US into the Google search field one at a time, and see what autocomplete suggestions come up. Then make a map of them. That's what happened at Very Small Array, wh...

Atlas Obscura presents their "Wonders of Salt", nine interesting places around the world based on salt: lakes, buildings, mines, plains, manmade sculptures, or natural caves like Kitum Cave in Kenya. For a very long tim...

The Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites are sending back images of Earth in false color. Not only are they useful to scientists and cartographers, but they can also be called works of art. The image here shows phytopl...

by Tim Palucka Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania During a recent automobile trip to Washington, D.C., the author noted with alarm that two cities, Washington and Baltimore, appeared to be moving away from each other. F...

Click here for larger image This map rearranges the world by correlating the population of a country to actual size. Some countries (the United States, Yemen, Brazil and Ireland) remain in their original location. Ind...

Andrew Shears created this US Map with a TV show to go with each state. It's good to see that TV sometimes happens outside of New York and California! Shears also explains why he choose each show. You can enlarge the...

Andrew Goldsmith made this representation of the United States using words to represent the geographic boundaries of the named states. I wonder how Africa would look. Click Andrew's name to enlarge his work. v...