In the early 20th century, some members of the U.S. Congress, pressured by lobbyists, feared that setting aside land for National Forests would starve the timber industry. As such, funding was minimal and the nascent U.S. Forest Service was forced to find creative solutions to complete their directive.
In the Kaibab National Forest, a large area spreading across both sides of the Grand Canyon, the Forest Service lacked the budget to build towers to spot the smoke of early fires. So it used the tall structures that were already there, the massive Ponderosa pine trees.
Forest Service employees would hike up to the highest vista in an area and from there would find the tallest tree. They would then construct a ladder against the side of the tree and saw off the top, building a platform on the flattened trunk.
The tree platforms were equipped with a telephone, map, and compass. Each was staffed by two people: a lookout who kept an eye on the horizon for wisps of smoke, and a patrolman who would run towards early fires and attempt to put them out. If the patrolman was unable to put the fire out on their own, the lookout would use the telephone to call for more help. Dozens of these lookout trees were constructed by the Forest Service in the name of wildfire prevention.
Beginning in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps, a government program launched during the Great Depression, began constructing steel towers in National Forests to replace the lookout trees. The use of lookout trees continued through the 1940s, but as more steel towers were constructed they were eventually phased out and forgotten.
In 1987, the Forest Service began a survey of disused fire towers across the National Forests and included the old lookout trees. Of the dozens of tree towers that once formed a network across the Kaibab National Forest, only 11 were located. The others either had since deteriorated and become unrecognizable from the surrounding trees or were simply not found. The 11 remaining trees were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
During the Great Depression, under the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, the Works Progress Administration was created by the federal government to put people back to work building infrastructure in hopes of stimulating the economy. Many examples of those projects still exist throughout the U.S., and one of the grandest examples is preserved in the heart of downtown Akron, Ohio.
The "Glendale Steps" were constructed as a WPA project during a time when Akron, which was especially hard-hit among American cities, was trying to rebound from massive layoffs in the rubber industry as auto sales plunged during the 1930s. The 242 sandstone steps cover a 200-foot slope between South Walnut Street above and Glendale Avenue below, acting as a connector between two neighborhoods in Akron.
Sadly, for many years, the stairway was covered with vegetation, graffiti, and trash, until local Akronites banded together to clear out the area. They cleaned the steps and brought them back into the public eye. They now stand as a monument to the stone craftsmen who hand-laid the magnificent stairway during that difficult era. These days, you can walk the steps and marvel at the craftsmanship put into their construction, and get a great view of downtown Akron in the process.
At 9:10 a.m., Nilesh Shankar Bachche picks up the dabba (lunchbox) labeled “B 5 W 6N2” from an apartment building in Borivali West, a neighborhood in Mumbai, India. Inside the dabba, or tiffin, lies three to four stackable cylindrical compartments. One compartment will typically contain rice or rotis. Another might hold dal or a curry, then vegetables, yogurt, or dessert. In this one, there are four compartments: one with a yellow dal, one with long-grain Basmati rice, another with bhindi masala (Indian spiced okra), and the last with fluffy rotis and a tiny box of jaggery—an unprocessed precipitate from sugar cane juice—for dessert.
Bachche is a dabbawala, a term meaning “lunchbox person,” and has been collecting meals since 8:30 a.m. this morning. On average, he collects 20 to 25 such dabbas in a day. He and an army of close to 5,000 others are employed by the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust, a cooperative ensuring that 200,000 office workers and college students receive hot meals—each typically cooked at the recipient’s home—to their doorstep, five to six days a week.
The dabba system, as we know it today, officially started in 1890, when Mumbai was still known as Bombay, and India was a part of the British Raj. The British built extensive railway and road networks over the archipelago of Bombay for the purposes of streamlining exports out of India. Back then, Bombay thrived as the country’s trade hub, and Indians from each corner of the country flocked there to work. With the opening of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway in 1853 as well as the establishment of Bombay’s first cotton mill in 1854 and the University of Bombay in 1857, jobs were plenty and Bombay was more than just a big city; it was on its way to becoming a metropolis.
By 1891, Bombay’s population had reached nearly 820,000 people. Parsis, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Jains worked side by side as merchants, lawyers, engineers, doctors, railway construction and dock workers. Each community developed their own distinctive cuisine, informed by both their heritage and this cultural exchange. Hindu fare from Gujarat, for example, was starkly different from the local Maharashtrian Hindu fare. Gujarati fare is always sweet and largely vegetarian, but Bombay, being a port, is hugely partial to seafood.
Legend has it that the system has its roots in the late 1800s when a Parsi banker hired a Maratha worker to pick up the banker’s homemade lunch from his house, then deliver it to his office four miles away. Mahadeo Havaji Bacche, the delivery man, was one of many men parked at a nearby intersection wearing topis, or caps, and ready to work odd jobs. But Bacche saw this one-off as an untapped opportunity to provide home-cooked meals for office workers around Bombay; in 1890, he hired 100 Maratha workers to join him in making it a reality.
While in those days, dabbas were made at home, by either a wife or a housekeeper, today dabbas are sourced from a multitude of places. In addition to foods cooked at home typically by a mother, grandmother, aunt, or wife, dabbawalas also have connections with several kitchens that specialize in home cooking, many employing a woman-driven workforce, including widows and underprivileged women, in an effort to encourage them to support themselves independently.
Present-day Mumbai has a population of 18.4 million people. But gridlock traffic—with roughly 265 cars per mile—doesn’t get in the way of dabbawalas, who deliver 200,000 lunches per day with near-perfect accuracy. Instead, they rely on the world’s busiest railway network to pick-up and deliver lunch to their intended eaters.
The individual label on each dabba is crucial to ensuring it gets to where it needs to go. Since dabbas change hands multiple times, with different people picking up, sorting, transporting, and delivering them, each one is assigned a string of numbers and letters, not unlike a postcode. According to Bachche, in the case of B 5 W 6N2, the “B” and the “W” stand for Borivali West, its origin. The 6N2 denotes the destination: The “6” refers to the locality for delivery, “N” represents the building where it’s to be delivered, and “2” is for the floor number. The “5” refers to the destination station, in this case Churchgate Station. This code works to streamline this daily relay race, and ensures a startlingly consistent and on-time delivery rate. The system is so reliable, it bears a 99.9999 percent accuracy rate. That’s one goof for every 16 million deliveries.
Bachche, like most dabbawalas, got into the dabba system through a friend. Bachche hails from near Pune, a city southeast of Mumbai, which is where the majority of dabbawalas come from. In the past, most dabbawalas came from farming communities and entered the city and the dabba system out of economic necessity. Today, however, it isn’t the pay that attracts men like Bachche, who makes 15,000 rupees per month (a little over 200 U.S. dollars), but the work itself. “We get to feed people food on a daily basis,” he says in a mixture of Marathi and Hindi. “There’s no other job like this one—people need their food to live and to work, and work well.”
The recipient of this particular dabba, “B 5 W 6N2,” works in the stock market. He’s left home by 7:15 a.m., to reach work his job in Fort, a neighborhood 25 miles away from his house in Borivali, by 9:00 a.m. Like most office workers in Mumbai, he too takes the train, but can’t carry his dabba with him because of the crowds. At 10:15 a.m., the dabba arrives by bicycle at Borivali Station. From there, it moves on to Andheri Station, a pivotal hub in the locality of West Mumbai. At Andheri, it gets placed in one of several batches, depending on where the dabbas’ destination stations are.
After being placed into the appropriate groupings, the dabbas are loaded onto crates, which are each balanced on a dabbawala’s head (sometimes it’s a two-person job) and raced to the platform. Each crate contains around 40 dabbas and weighs roughly 130 pounds. Then, in less than 40 seconds, the crates are loaded into the luggage compartment of the destination train, and off they go.
Once the crates reach their respective stations, another set of dabbawalas takes over their transport and delivery. By 12:15 p.m., the crates traveling to Fort are offloaded at Churchgate Station, and dabba “B 5 W 6N2” is among them. It makes off with other dabbas headed for the Fort area by bicycle, though some dabba deliveries happen by foot, and others by cart. In midday traffic in this part of the city, cycle is the most efficient way to get around because standard traffic laws, including stopping at lights, don’t apply to cyclists.
At 12:50 p.m. sharp, “B 5 W 6N2” reaches the stock market and the hands of its hungry recipient.
While the dabba system might seem antiquated, it’s arguably much more effective, in terms of accuracy and on-time delivery, than its modern-day counterparts. Despite the ongoing popularity of delivery apps, such as Swiggy and Scootsy, Bachche gets a handful of new customers every month or two. The distinguishing feature with dabbas, he notes, is the fact that he delivers home-cooked food, for which there is no compromise.
Once lunch is over, the same relay is carried out—this time in reverse. The now-empty “B 5 W 6N2” dabba is picked up, sorted at Churchgate station, transported, and dropped back home again in Borivali. All this happens for a price of a mere 1,200 rupees (around 15 U.S. dollars) per month.
While there have been attempts to recreate the dabba delivery system elsewhere in India, notably Bengaluru and New Delhi, the need and the scale of these other systems is in no way comparable to the original. Moreover, since these are comparatively less congested cities, the use of the rail network isn’t a necessity, since most office workers in New Delhi and Bengaluru travel by auto-rickshaws, buses, metros, and car, over shorter distances.
By the time dabba “B 5 W 6N2” is delivered home, then washed, dried, and ready for another pick-up the following morning, it’s nearing six in the evening. With his shift over, Bachche goes straight home and, in his own words, is "in bed by ten to do another rewarding day’s work the next morning.” It’s a work-heavy life, but, Bachche says, excitedly, “[I] wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The Plum Brook Station is part of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio. Here, highly specialized facilities allow NASA and the international space community to carry out complex and innovative ground tests.
Plum Brook Station is located on 6,400 acres of land near Sandusky, Ohio, about 50 miles west of the main Glenn Research Center campus. It has served a number of functions over the years, and some facilities have been decommissioned, including the Plum Brook Nuclear Reactor, which NASA once used for space-related nuclear energy research and development.
Today, a handful of test facilities are currently operational at Plum Brook, all of which rank among the largest and most powerful space environment simulation facilities in the world.
These include the Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility, which is like something from the wildest dreams of Spinal Tap. The world's most powerful spacecraft acoustic test chamber, it’s capable of simulating the noise of a spacecraft launch up to 163 decibels, or as loud as the thrust of 20 jet engines.
Then there’s a wind tunnel called the Hypersonic Tunnel facility, which allows NASA to test the aircraft of the future at speeds up to seven times the speed of sound. And at the Mechanical Vibration Facility, spacecraft launch conditions can be tested in what is the world's most powerful spacecraft shaker system.
The Space Power Facility, meanwhile, is the largest vacuum chamber in the world. It’s used for testing full-scale space hardware, including parts of rockets, Mars landers, and space stations. It was also used to shoot some scenes from the 2012 Marvel movie The Avengers.
Despite the undeniably impressive facilities at Plum Brook, the station has its problems. In 2015, a report from NASA’s inspector general made the disconcerting announcement that all but one of the major test facilities at Plum Brook Station had few or no customers. And considering the cost of maintaining them, this was no small issue.
Some of the main facilities hadn’t been used for years. The B-2 Spacecraft Propulsion Research Facility had last been used in 1998, and both the Hypersonic Test Facility and the Cryogenic Components Laboratory hadn’t been used in four years. Plum Brook’s newest addition, the Combined Effects Chamber, which was designed to simulate the conditions found on the surface of the Moon or Mars, had never been used.
The only real success story in terms of actual customers was, and still is, the Space Power Facility. The cavernous vacuum chamber continues to attract a steady stream of customers, including SpaceX, which has tested both its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft at the facility. NASA also used the Space Power Facility to test its Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.
Whether funds continue to pour into Plum Brook Station remains to be seen. Some facilities have already been penciled in for demolition, including the Cryogenic Components Laboratory. The fate of the other facilities will largely depend on the whims of politicians and humankind’s continued desire to reach beyond our planet.
Santa María del Mar is one of the many iconic churches found in Barcelona. It dates back to the 14th century and was named after St. Mary, the patron saint of sailors, probably because of its location close to the sea. The church has lived through a lot over the years: earthquakes, occupation by Napoleonic forces, bombings, and Francoism, to mention a few.
In 1936, however, Santa María del Mar was damaged by fire after being set on fire by anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. More or less the whole interior of the church was destroyed, and still today stones blackened by fire bear witness to what happened.
Renovations began in 1938, but it would take until the 1960s before the damaged windows were replaced. The project was running low on funds so a fundraising campaign was started in which numerous organizations, including Futbol Club Barcelona, were asked to contribute. FC Barcelona obliged, but only if their coat of arms would be included in one of the stained-glass windows.
To most visitors, this detail probably goes unnoticed, but if you look carefully you will find the FC Barcelona coat of arms embedded in one of the windows of this majestic cathedral.
Venilale is a sleepy town in inland East Timor known for its cool weather, comparatively speaking. In its colonial past, this town was a prime destination for Portuguese settlers wishing to escape the heat.
At the outskirts of Venilale are a set of tunnels that are steeped in World War II history, from when the eastern part of Timor was controlled by Portugal, and the western part by the Dutch. In 1942, Australia deployed troops on the island as a response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. This was designed as a precautionary move, not really expecting Japan to launch a full-on attack on Timor. But East Timor was particularly vulnerable, as the Portuguese were counting on their declaration of neutrality as a deterrent against Japan. (In hindsight, this was an obvious miscalculation.)
When Japan attacked, it did so with an unexpected intensity and number of troops. Those Australian and Dutch troops that managed to survived were forced to retreat to the harsh and mountainous interior of East Timor to join another renegade Australian contingent. Timorese people either joined the fighters or supported them by other means, and from here, guerrilla warfare was waged against the Japanese occupation.
During the six months that it took Japan to gain control of the island, Japanese forces had to venture further and further inland, and Venilale became a Japanese stronghold. It was at this time that a set of tunnels was dug out to be used as shelters.
The story may have ended here, but it didn’t. Fast-forward events to 1974, when the Frente Revolucionária de Timor-Leste Independente (commonly referred to as FRETILIN) was founded. East Timor was still Portuguese territory, and FRETILIN was a pro-independence movement whose members were freedom fighters that adopted the guerrilla warfare approach to gain independence for East Timor. In 1975, soon after East Timor gained independence from the Portuguese, Indonesian forces invaded it, and in their struggle against the Indonesian forces, FRETILIN fighters also used the Venilale tunnels as hideouts. The tunnels that were once a reminder of a long and bloody occupation, became instrumental to the achievement of the country’s independence.
On a side note, Timor-Leste and East Timor are synonymous, but Timor-Leste is the name used by Timorese people. Timor means East in Tetum, the local language, and Leste means East in Portuguese. Basically, whether you use the local or the English forms, the name is still "East-East."
Cancoillotte is a very creamy cow's milk cheese that’s almost liquid when hot. Native to the Franche-Comté region in eastern France, it has a reputation as a cheap, but restorative food.
Historically, it was an affordable cheese for farmers to make, as it was produced using leftover skim milk from the butter-making process. After draining and pounding skim milk–based curds and leaving them to dry, cheesemakers then cooked the mixture over a fire with saltwater and lots of butter until it became smooth.
At the beginning of the 20th century, cancoillotte also featured prominently in a frugal dish known as le poulet de l'horloger ("the watchmaker's chicken"). The dish is actually vegetarian. As the story goes, watchmakers were poor and couldn't afford meat, so the "chicken" was actually boiled potatoes covered in warm cancoillotte.
The cheese remains incredibly popular in its native home. Today, 90 percent of cancoillotte is consumed in Franche-Comté. The regional love is so strong that one company began sterilizing and canning the cheese so that local soldiers could bring it to the front during World War I.
Nowadays, cancoillotte is often eaten alone, on bread, but it is also the base of numerous recipes, including other regional products such as Saucisse de Morteau à la Cancoillotte and Saucisse de Montbéliard à la Cancoillotte. Both use the cheese-coated potatoes base of le poulet de l'horloger, but with one key addition: sausage.
The early Christian community in the ancient port city of Ephesus traced its origins to the apostle and evangelist St. John, the so-called Beloved Disciple. According to church tradition, John wrote his gospel in Ephesus, and, after a period of exile on the island of Patmos during which time he wrote the Book of Revelation, returned there and died.
An apocryphal tale claims that John's prayers shattered Ephesus' Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Ironically, the 6th-century basilica dedicated to St. John, built in Ephesus by the Emperor Justinian, would become one of the wonders of the medieval world. Built on the supposed site of the saint's tomb, the church formed part of a building program that included the massive Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna.
In its medieval heyday, the basilica was a major pilgrimage site, sitting directly on the overland route to the Holy Land. The architectural icon of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice copied the design of St. John's, which like its Venetian counterpart was lined with gold mosaics depicting saints and gospel stories. Now-lost relics once held in the basilica included a piece of the True Cross that John carried around his neck, a garment worn by the saint made by the Virgin Mary, and the original manuscript of John's Book of Revelation.
The church's major attraction was, of course, St. John's tomb, and its marble encasement is still visible today. An old story relates that when the saint's tomb was opened by Constantine, no relics were found, attesting to the saint's miraculous assumption into heaven.
Another account claimed the saint was sleeping beneath the tomb, and his breath stirred a fine ash, called manna, to form upon the tomb. This latter tale attracted thousands of pilgrims to the tomb each year on the saint's feast day, May 8, to collect some of the holy manna for themselves. One of these pilgrims was the 13th/14th-century Catalan mercenary Ramon Muntaner, who claimed to have personally witnessed the ash bubbling up over the tomb. He wrote that the manna could cure both fevers and gallstones, that it could calm a storm when tossed in the sea, and could induce birth in a woman when consumed with wine.
Today most tourists stroll past the remains of St. John's basilica on the way up scenic Ayasuluk Hill and its imposing Byzantine-Turkish fortress. Piles of brick and marble, crumbling columns and wayward capitals sketch a skeleton outline of what was once one of the most sumptuous houses of worship in the world. After the Oghuz Turks conquered Ephesus in the 14th century, the church was briefly converted to a mosque—soon earthquakes forced the abandonment of the crumbling relic.
Atlas Obscura recently collaborated with Caitlin Doughty, the mortician and activist behind Ask a Mortician, to explore the Most Holy Trinity Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. The cemetery is unique because of its metal headstones, originally installed as an attempt to blur class distinctions. Painted grey to resemble traditional granite grave markers, these monuments were deceptive for a time. Over the past 165 years though, the materials have fallen victim to the elements. In the video above, Atlas Obscura Senior Editor Ella Morton joins Doughty at the cemetery for a discussion of the origins and consequences of this unusual headstone technique.
The story then continues below, as Doughty goes into more detail about the decay and corrosion that have shaped the cemetery's metallic headstones. The surviving monuments are twisted and discolored, each metal reacting in its own way to produce a different weathered appearance. While the effects of time have warped these grave markers, as Doughty puts it, "there is a beauty in the idea that the elements decay, the same way that a human body, or a community, eventually decays."
Some natives of the American South have fond memories of waking up to the smell of butter rolls on cold winter mornings. And yet, few people outside the South have ever heard of this sweet, cinnamon roll–like treat, and even in their native region, they have largely disappeared from breakfast and dessert spreads.
Southern butter rolls are essentially spiraled pastries that bake while swimming in a sauce of milk, sugar, vanilla, and sometimes cinnamon. Recipes vary by family but often involve covering buttermilk biscuit dough in butter, sugar, and spices such as nutmeg or cinnamon, then rolling it into a log. After cutting this sweet, buttery log in half or into discs, bakers place everything in a pan and bathe it in the sweet sauce.
The end result is sweet, hot, sticky, and comforting. A good butter roll should sit in your stomach and make you want to curl up and take a nap by a fireplace.
History’s most famous footstep may well be Neil Armstrong’s, from the Eagle module to the surface of the Moon. “One small step,” to be sure, but it was the result of big engineering from countless dedicated people—including the ones who designed the historic shoe on his foot, one more precise in its specifications than Cinderella’s slipper.
This need for the boots, and indeed all parts of the spacesuits, to be perfect means that there were rejects, models deemed unfit, even for the smallest reasons. RR Auction in Boston has one such prototype up for sale. (At press time, the bid is about $8,000.)
The boot, fitted specifically for Armstrong, measures 8 inches tall, 12.75 inches long, and 5.5 inches wide. It was produced by the International Latex Corporation (ILC) in Dover, Delaware, in either late 1968 or early 1969, not long before the Apollo 11 mission took flight, in July 1969. It’s insulated with radiation-deflecting aluminized mylar, padded with baby blue silicon, and studded with golden Kapton tape, which is particularly good for space travel, since it can handle temperatures ranging from -452 degrees to +500 degrees Fahrenheit. Most striking, however, is the name stitched in Beta cloth along the top of the boot’s interior—“Armstrong,” unadorned and declarative, like a football player’s name on a jersey.
The name is the strongest indication that the boot was designed for the Apollo 11 mission. We don't know why it never made it to space, and we can only speculate as to whether Armstrong wore it in training, says William Ayrey, ILC’s company historian. Ultimately, he says, there could be any number of reasons why it wasn’t used. A sewing error within 1/32 of an inch, for example, would have been considered too risky. RR previously auctioned an X-ray of one of Armstrong's boots, taken barely a week before launch, that was conducted to catch even the tiniest imperfection or foreign object that might have slipped into Armstrong’s boot and created havoc.
The prototype is missing two key ingredients: the outer Beta cloth layer and Chromel-R fabrics that adorn the boots Armstrong actually wore. The Beta cloth is fire-resistant, and addressed pressing concerns following the Apollo 1 fire that killed its three-member crew. The Chromel-R, meanwhile, was used with the Moon in mind. No one had ever walked there before, so the Chromel-R, “woven chromium steel” in fabric form, a Kevlar-like material, was added to protect against sharp rocks, Ayrey says. At roughly $3,000 per yard, it makes sense that the prototype would go without it.
As for the real boots, don’t expect them to hit the block any time soon. They’re still up there, says Ayrey, where Armstrong had to abandon them to offset the weight from the moon rocks he and his crewmates brought back to Earth.
I'm not crying—it's raining. Or... uh... I've got something in my eye. Yeah! Sure! It's definitely not from reading hundreds of amazing stories about real-world places that are so astonishing they've actually made people weep.
Okay, fine. So a few weeks back, we asked Atlas Obscura readers to tell us about the last place they visited that brought them to tears. We received stories of wild elephants, a military battlefield, a tower, an eclipse, and so many more moments of happiness and overwhelming emotion. Many of them are touching, some are a little sad, but all of them will transport you.
We've compiled some of our favorite responses below—fair warning as you read them, it may be difficult to avoid a tear or two coming to your eye. And if you've got more crying places you'd like to share, head over to our brand new community forum and add your own!
“A cemetery may seem a rather obvious place to cry, however it is the longevity of life that brought me to tears among the rows of ancient tombs at the striking Recoleta cemetery. I studied in Buenos Aires, and lived a few blocks from the notably beautiful cemetery. In a failing relationship and struggling with loneliness and confusion I often went for long walks in the neighborhood. I initially avoided the cemetery, however one day, for no reason in particular I ended up wandering the monuments for hours. The sheer age of the tombs was incomprehensible, as I myself felt restless at 21 years. Ultimately the sprouting of a green plant on a mausoleum from 1785 moved me to tears. Something about the life among death struck a chord in me. I went back many times that semester and could easily get lost in the contradiction, a gentle reminder that ephemera and permanence can coexist.” — Ariella Levitch, Rome, Italy
Chobe National Park
Serondela, Botswana
“As we were driving very slowly around near the Chobe River, we spotted a few elephants drinking and some throwing dust over themselves. Out of the bushes on the left, more elephants came walking in, then more on the right and then behind us! We were surrounded by about 300 elephants of all ages! Even our guide took out his camera and started to shoot. It was such an incredible situation with absolutely no danger and nothing but beautiful elephants everywhere!” — B.J. Mikkelsen, Hudson River Valley, New York
Avachinsky Bay
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia
“I've crossed the whole country to see Kamchatka. To be honest, I still can't believe that I've seen this land of volcanoes, black sand, and dark water with my own eyes. Well, here is the story. I have a fear of deep water. So, what do you think I did first? Took a six-hour boat trip to the Pacific Ocean. When we were floating around Avachinsky Bay, I found myself in a state so emotional that I couldn't help crying. Peering at the milky volcano tops through the mist and drizzling rain, watching huge bold waves coming by, a bit freezing, and breathing in fresh salty air, I finally felt so calm. I admired the wild nature. I was so far away from the routine that it made me the happiest girl ever.” — Anna Barabanowa, Moscow
Ansel Adams Wilderness
Sierra Nevadas, California
“While hiking the John Muir Trail in 2016, I made it over Donohue Pass out of Yosemite and into the beauty and majesty of the Ansel Adams Wilderness. It was beyond stunning and majestic. It took my breath away and I just stood there with tears in my eyes. There are many gorgeous places along this trail, but this one really brought home the extreme privilege I had to have the time and ability (and permits!) to be out there immersed in this stunning landscape for an entire month.” — Michele Maynard, North Carolina
South Island
New Zealand
“There were countless exhilarating and emotional sights on the South Island of New Zealand. Taking refuge from the downpour of this temperate rainforest in a 150-year-old miner’s tunnel. Chinese immigrants desperately searching these foothills for gold, fought their way through this rocky cliff face. That was a moment. Then there was the Tasman Sea. I stood on the famed Pancake Rocks of Punakaiki at sunset and thought no sight could ever be more beautiful. But only a few hours later, I was awakened by a full moon lighting the Tasman Sea. And finally, near the Canterbury Plain, with Lyttelton Harbor to my left, and the Bridle Path to my right, I stood on the rim of the volcano in the brilliant sunshine. I thought of all the English settlers arriving in this harbour, and the difficult climb over the Bridle Path and on to Christchurch. This was the place I’d read about in histories and novels. In those quiet moments, the landscape changed, and I was reminded of a more ancient time and more ancient people: the Maori. They called this island Aotearoa. It was a name I had never truly understood, until this moment. It literally became the Land of the Long White Cloud in front of my eyes.” — Brooke Maner, Knoxville, Tennessee
Indian Beach
Oregon
“[I was] hiking the trail, and it opens up to a view of the Pacific. The forest itself was the most beautiful, surreal place I had ever experienced. Very rarely have I found myself in a place that can only truly be described as magical. It's that extra aspect of it that's inexplicable, just out of reach. The type of experience that you could never fully explain to someone who has never seen it in person.” — Cameron Jay, Indianapolis
“The beauty took me so by surprise that I had to sit down and just let the tears run down my cheeks. A small group of people walked by me, and a woman asked if I was okay. I said that I was, but she said she’d sit with me a few moments to take it all in. She did! I will always remember that trusting lady.” — Char Young, Arizona
“The last place that made me cry was Milan’s Duomo. My husband and I were on a three-week tour of Europe, but I found myself alone that day. I entered the cathedral at 9 a.m. with almost no one in sight. I stared at the stained glass windows and the tall columns, looking at the biggest church I’ve ever seen. It felt like being physically there was a marker of achieving my dreams, backpacking through Europe and seeing ancient things. The cathedral was built in the 1200s and houses a nail from Jesus’s cross, but it was so well-preserved. It’s true that the people of Milan treated it like a treasure, tied to their identity. When I was standing there, my tears would not stop at all. Since I’ve never felt this way before, I was confused. Was it possible to be touched by a single place’s beauty? Now I can say, the answer is yes.” — Crystal Faith Neri, Cebu, Philippines
Little Bighorn Battlefield Memorial
Crow Agency, Montana
“It was so quiet, despite all the tourists, and so many gravestones where the soldiers and Native Americans fell.” — David Ryan McAnally, Lubbock, Texas
Gokyo Lake
Nepal
"It was the last place on the list of our Everest Base Camp trek. It was day 18 and we were tired after all the hiking, passes and glaciers crossed. So when I finally took the last step over that hill and the lake unraveled before my eyes... I had to stop. It was breathtaking and not just because of the altitude. The sun was just right, already up in the sky, shining over the most amazing blue that I will ever see in my entire life. The image of those houses on the lake shore and the gigantic mountains in the background... While waiting for my friend to catch up, I just let all the tears fall. And it felt like all the days of walking and all the last painful years were just a trip to that place, to that serenity of blue lakes and mountains." — Irina Crismaru, Bucharest, Romania
The Serengeti
Africa
“My breath was taken away, the beauty of the Serengeti was more than I could have ever imagined.” — Jill Mistretta, San Francisco, California
The Summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro
Tanzania
“After five days of grueling hikes, fighting altitude sickness, and months of planning, to summit, and see the sun rise from the highest point in Africa with three good friends was the most emotional adventure I’ve been on.” — Joel Bryant, Los Angeles, California
The 2017 Solar Eclipse
Greenville, South Carolina
“I will tell you I shed a few tears last summer in Greenville, South Carolina, during the total solar eclipse.” — John Moran, Gainesville, Florida
Artist Point
Wyoming
“To see one of the major contributing places that led to the birth of the National Park System, was a very emotional moment.” — Kelli Kennedy, Colorado Springs, Colorado
“Chaco culture, the outlier sites, the enormity of human presence and history. El Morro is only one tiny site amid countless. The sacred carvings of the Ancestral Puebloans always catch my breath, usually accompanied with misty eyes. As if those ancients are reaching into the present with a secret whispered message…” — Kim McKee, Colorado
Punjab
India
"My mum is Indian, and my dad English. I grew up in Ireland but my parents made sure to take us to spend time in India every year to make sure my brother and I kept up with our heritage. India is a glorious country, and I knew that from an early age. It’s full of life and color and the people are some of the most hospitable and outgoing I’ve met. Over the years I got busy with college and other responsibilities, and the journey from our home in Ireland to my mum’s hometown in the far north meant I wasn’t able to visit as often as I could, I got caught up in life in Ireland and every now and then I would feel that part of me slipping away. At one point I visited India again after almost two years, and I could only stay for two weeks. I realized how much I missed everyone there, my friends, my family, the many animals one finds there. The sky, the stars, the ground, the fields. I knew I wouldn’t feel that again for a long time, and that part of me longed to stay. As my plane took off from Delhi airport back to London, I looked out at the saffron sky, shed some tears and thought about just how much I would miss India." — Lara Garnermann, Ireland
Smailholm Tower
The Scottish Borders
“There is a wild beauty in the Scottish Borderlands that moves me to the core of my being. I could not get enough of the landscape as we wound our way through the countryside in search of one of the few remaining restored tower homes from the 15th century. The low-grade buzz of anxiety that is always with me melted away as I stood on the raw, windswept land beneath Smailholm Tower. I had a feeling that I had come home, maybe for the first time. I could not stop the tears, it was as if a long held grief was released as I made my way up the craggy path to the entrance of what remains of a complex that was built to withstand the English raids of the time. How could I know a place so well, where I had never been before? How could rocks and sky speak my secret name and know me? I do not have answers to these questions, but I am somehow more complete for having been to this land. A place that now holds my tears and my heart.” — Lea Goode-Harris, Santa Rosa, California
Sainte-Chapelle
Paris, France
“My wife had been to Paris before and visited Sainte-Chapelle, and said it was incredible. Not knowing much about it, I gladly went with her and entered into a dark, low-ceilinged room, with a tiny gift shop in the corner and a few items from the church scattered around. Thinking this was the whole thing, I was less than impressed. We walked up a winding staircase to what I assumed would be another, similar room. As we reached the next level, I turned the corner into a tall, thin room filled with bright light and an incredible amount color as the sun beamed through huge stained glass windows. I was so unprepared and overwhelmed by how beautiful it all was, that I broke down and stood in the middle of the room just staring at everything. Eventually I pulled myself together and unintentionally eavesdropped on a tour and learned so much about the meaning and history of the church.” — Matt Scribner, Salt Lake City, Utah
"Some friends and I went day-tripping to the Salton Sea and made a side-trip to Salvation Mountain: that glorious, gaudy technicolor monument to God out in the middle of nowhere. Leonard Knight, the creator of Salvation Mountain, was still alive at the time, though quite old and frail. He happily took us on a tour of his creation, hobbling around on arthritis-stiff legs, all the while chattering about this next big project. As he spoke he drew his plans in the air, his eyes, ice blue and nearly blind, shining with excitement. When we returned to the car, I broke down and cried. That one man alone could literally move a mountain out of sheer passion, and then continue to dream and believe even when his body was beyond creation… Well, I wanted to feel that kind of passion in me. His beautiful vision made my life seem small, and it moved me to tears." — Naomi Alper, Los Angeles, California
Wadi Rum
Jordan
“I was on an tour of the Wadi Rum desert, and as we left the village and started to make our way across the massive desert, I was so overwhelmed by the beauty before me that I started to cry. I have been to a lot of deserts in my lifetime, but I have never really seen one that rivals the immense beauty of the Wadi Rum!” — Rob Coons, San Francisco, California
The Zugspitze
Germany
“I love mountains. I've visited lots of beautiful places, but they're the only ones that affect me so. My husband, children and I had taken a ski trip to Germany's highest peak, the Zugspitze, several years ago. The view from the top was overwhelming! I felt as though I could see the whole world. I was filled with awe, and got a little emotional. It is now my favorite place.” — Sheryl Donley, Charlottesville, Virginia
Desert Mountain
Montana
“A narrow road leads to the top of this mountain, which is rather scary in a car. You crest the top, full of adrenaline, and step out to overlook the valley. As you take in the view, the grandeur of the mountains, the beauty of the valley brings tears to your eyes.” — Tina Bowen, Kalispell, Montana
Standing tall above the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, St. Anne's Church has watched history unfold around it. The 500-year-old church remains a prime example of Gothic architecture so beautiful, it's said Napoleon Bonaparte fell in love with the cathedral.
The Church of St. Anne was built for Anna, Grand Duchess of Lithuania, and wife to Vytautas the Great. The church was burned down in 1419 and then rebuilt in brick on the orders of the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Alexander I Jagiellon. Consecrated back in 1500, the facade seen today is largely unchanged since its reconstruction in the 1400s.
It is unclear exactly who is the genius architect behind St. Anne, although theories point to Michael Enkinger—an architect of a church of the same name in Warsaw— or Benedikt Rejt. What is clear is that St. Anne is a stunning example of Gothic architecture, using dramatic archways, a symmetrical facade, and ornate pillars.
According to legend, the church is so captivating that Napoleon Bonaparte—who spotted the church during the Franco-Russian War in 1812—wished to carry the church home with him to Paris "in the palm of his hand."
The botanical garden at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) was founded in 1959 by a pair of botanists who wanted to create a space on campus dedicated entirely to the study and preservation of Mexico's extraordinarily diverse flora.
Mexico is one of the most biodiverse countries in terms of its vegetation, home to more plant species than the U.S. and Canada combined. It also has the highest diversity of cactus plants in the world at an estimated 800 recorded species.
Historically, Mexico City is no stranger to botanical gardens. The Aztec emperors kept numerous planted areas of ornamental, medicinal, and edible plants collected from all over the empire, long before the arrival of the Spanish. The UNAM botanical garden continues this tradition, but with an added focus on conservation, environmental education, and advancing botanical and taxonomic science.
Fittingly, the collection has an enormous collection of endemic cacti, and many of the species on display here are highly endangered due to habitat destruction, overexploitation, and climate change. But the gardens contain much more than just cacti.
There are areas planted with beautiful ornamental plants, a medicinal plant garden with species used traditionally by indigenous communities, an orchidarium, and many waterlily pools also home to plump koi carp and languid turtles. The green spaces here make for an ideal place to come and relax away from the chaos of Mexico City life.
The garden is also notable for being built on and around strange volcanic rock formations that were formed by lava flows during the Xitle volcanic eruption, which destroyed the nearby Cuilcuilca civilization in Mexico's distant past. As such, many of the gardens' meandering footpaths pass under, over, and around naturally formed grottoes, ponds, mini waterfalls, and rockeries, making for a unique experience.
Wildlife can be seen here, too, and it is a particularly good area to spot birds such as woodpeckers, owls, orioles, and hummingbirds. Also found here are reptiles like rattlesnakes, milksnakes, and lizards; numerous species of butterflies; and even the rare Pedregal tarantula, an endemic species that is found only in this small area of Mexico City.
When Lieutenant Nils Egelien of the Norwegian King's Guard visited the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in 1961, he became enamored with the penguin colony at the Edinburgh Zoo. When the guards returned to Edinburgh in 1972, Lieutenant Egelien arranged for the regiment to adopt a penguin, naming him after the lieutenant himself and after Norway's King Olav V. The regiment then went a step further by giving the animal the rank of visekorporal, or lance corporal.
Each time the King's Guard returns to the zoo, Nils (the penguin, that is) receives a promotion. After his promotion to Sergeant in 1987, the first Nils Olav sadly died. He was replaced by a two-year-old who was named Nils Olav II.
During the King’s Guard’s visit on August 15, 2008, the then-Colonel-in-Chief received a knighthood approved by King Harald V himself, who described the penguin in a citation read aloud at the ceremony as being "in every way qualified to receive the honor and dignity of knighthood." With this, the second Sir Nils became the first penguin to receive a knighthood in the Norwegian Army, a superlative that brings to mind the knighted penguins of other nations' militaries.
Sometime after his knighting, Sir Nils died and was replaced by another look-alike, who was promoted during the regiment's most recent visit on August 22, 2016, becoming Brigadier Sir Nils Olav III.
A statue of Nils stands in the Edinburgh Zoo, donated in 2005. Another statue also stands at the King's Guard compound at Huseby, Oslo, though the Brig might be disappointed to learn that while he now officially outranks the lieutenant who started all of this, he's generally only referred to in Norway as a "mascot."
Since word of the alleged "city of gold" reached Europe in the mid-1500s, "Timbuktu" has become slang for a destination so extremely remote it's practically unreachable—or perhaps even imaginary.
Among the fabled settlement's most famed icons are the Djingareyber Mosque, a (very real) holy structure and learning center that was built in 1327 and is still in operation today as one of the three mosques that make up the University of Timbuktu.
The Djingareyber Mosque, which was built almost entirely out of mud, straw, and wood, has weathered a long succession of wars, conflicts, and political upheavals over the course of the last eight centuries. The most recent of these occurred in 2012 when militant Islamists captured the city and began terrorizing the local population.
After seizing control of Timbuktu, militants quickly instituted their own draconian version of Sharia law, stoning women for failing to wear proper Islamic attire and cutting off the hands of musicians who were caught violating the totalitarian ban on all forms of music. Soon, their attention turned toward Timbuktu's historic cultural artifacts, including its ancient Muslim shrines, which they declared forbidden by Islam. The militants destroyed the tombs of seven Muslim saints with hoes and pickaxes, two of which were at Djingareyber.
The Islamists were pushed out of Timbuktu in early 2013 by French soldiers sent to liberate the city. Despite their defeat, Timbuktu remains a dangerous place to visit and, while Djingareyber and the adjacent museum that houses some of the mosque's most cherished Islamic manuscripts, are technically open to visitors, reaching the city via commercial means has become practically impossible.
In the cities of food-obsessed Myanmar, ethnic minority cuisine is easier to find than ever before. But while diners in the capital feast on dishes from the states of Kachin, Rakhine, and Shan, food from the state of Chin is still a rarity. Formerly known as Burma, Myanmar has seven major recognized ethnic groups, besides the Bamar majority: the Chin are one. Given that Chin cuisine is elusive even within Burmese cities, it might be a surprise to find chefs cooking authentic Chin sabuti in America’s heartland.
Sabuti is something of a hybrid dish, and one that exemplifies Chin cuisine. “If you don’t know sabuti, you’re not Chin,” says Than Hre, owner of the Chin Brothers Restaurant and Grocery in Indianapolis, Indiana. While the diet of Myanmar’s Bamar majority is based around rice, easily grown in the central lowlands, the use of corn typifies food from mountainous Chin country. Sabuti is a meat and white corn soup, with the corn ground according to an Indian method, Hre says. The ground corn is then stewed with beef or pork bones, offal, and split peas. In Myanmar, sabuti is served alongside bottles of salt and MSG powder. Atop each table at Chin Brothers, there are also small containers of salt, chili, and MSG.
Even off the menu, sabuti remains a firm favourite of Hre and his family. “We grew up on it,” Hre says. It’s not the only Chin offering at this Burmese restaurant. They also serve vok ril, a Chin pork blood sausage. While Hre recreates flavors from the tiny village in the state of Chin where he spent his childhood, other Burmese minority foods may prove equally intriguing to Burmese and non-Burmese alike. Shan and Rakhinese noodles both feature on the menu, and popular dishes from across Myanmar are available on request.
To many, the restaurant provides a taste of home. When Chin Brothers offers breakfast on Saturdays, the restaurant bustles with customers. Many come for the breakfast dish of pe pyot, sprouted yellow beans boiled with turmeric and fried onions. According to Hre, Chin Brothers “also serves as a meeting place for the Chin community.” In Myanmar, most socializing takes place in tea shops, but there were no Burmese tea shops in Indiana when Hre arrived in 2002.
Hre was among the first group of Chin in Indianapolis. Hre, his wife, and his young son came to the United States from Myanmar via Guam, clutching only a single bag of belongings. Chin migrants were fleeing persecution by the military government, including human rights abuses: from forced labor to arbitrary killings. In Myanmar, ethnic minorities suffer under programs to create a single Burmese national identity. One notorious example, the government maltreatment of the unrecognized Rohingya minority, is widely considered ethnic cleansing. Chin people are especially targeted for their religion: Chins are 85% Christian in a country that’s nearly 90% Buddhist. As a Bible student at Chin Christian College, Hre was involved in actions against the government and began to attract attention. He fled to Guam in 2000, and hasn’t visited his homeland since. “I'm scared to go back.”
Though only three percent of Myanmar’s population are Chin, they comprise more than 80% of all Burmese migrants in Indiana. While Christian crosses were destroyed in Chin State, in Indiana Chin people have established more than 40 churches. Once some Chin had arrived in Indianapolis, the community attracted others: currently, around 17,000 live in the Hoosier State, earning its capital the playful moniker “Chindianapolis.” Hre says Indiana’s appeal lies in its warehouses and factories, where jobs are plentiful. “Most Chin refugees have only finished high school,” Hre says. “But here, the pay is good, you can work overtime, and they have good benefits and a decent salary. Here we can have a house and a car and a job. If we work hard, we can have the American dream.”
Work hard Hre did, juggling two jobs: one in a Best Buy warehouse in the day, while cleaning offices on nights and weekends. After five years, he purchased a former Indian grocery store. But when he went to officially register the change of ownership, he hadn’t even chosen a name. “I didn’t have any business experience,” he says. “I hadn’t thought about it.” He settled on “Chin Brothers.” The term Chin covers a number of different tribes and sub-tribes (exactly how many is contested) who speak more than 20 languages, not all of whom even accept the term Chin. But according to Hre, “We all are brothers and sisters. We are all Chin.”
But thanks to politics, business wasn’t always easy. When Hre opened the grocery store in 2007, the United States had comprehensive sanctions on Myanmar, deeming its military government a threat to national security. “We couldn’t import any products from Myanmar, so we got everything packaged in Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia. Once the products had been packaged elsewhere, they could be exported to the US,” says Hre. “It was a lot of trouble and very expensive.” However, after democratic elections resulted in a landslide victory for the National League for Democracy in 2016, the United States government lifted its sanctions. Then, Hre could import products directly from Myanmar.
The grocery store could almost double as an exhibition on Chin identity. For sale are Chin bibles, English/Chin dictionaries, and traditional costumes featuring the famed Chin weaving, alongside Burmese staples such as lahpet, fermented tea leaves, Rakhine noodles, and dried shrimp powder. Despite having no experience as a chef, Hre recognized the need for a community hub. After about a year and a half of running the grocery store, he opened the adjoining Chin Brothers restaurant.
Hre made the decision not to sell alcohol at Chin Brothers. “I’m not opposed to alcohol, but it’s not part of our culture and I don’t want to prioritize it just to increase profits,” he says. Instead, Chin Brothers offers a wide range of beverages reflecting Burmese tea shop culture. The drinks include an array of indulgent options, perhaps closer to desserts: Din chin, drinking yogurt served with jaggery syrup, and moh let saung, tapioca balls or sticky rice in coconut milk, sweetened with palm sugar. For those without a sweet tooth, Burmese green tea is a revelation: it has a milder, more rounded flavor than Chinese green tea, with hints of caramel, grass, and smoke.
Hre estimates a fifth of his customers are non-Chin Indiana locals. Hre’s wife, who manages the restaurant, often talks curious American customers through their first sampling of Chin food. “She’s good at talking to people. I’m too blunt,” Hre laughs. Chicken fried rice is a popular introductory dish at the restaurant, as is the Burmese take on Chinese hot pot, since it can be enjoyed by a group.
Hre is deeply committed to his community, but he’s still keen to adapt. “If you want to do business, you have to have an open heart for change,” he says. He’s a board member of the Chin Community of Indiana, an organization that helps new migrants find work opportunities and prepares them for interviews. He is also a proud member of the Indiana Chin Baptist Church. When the first Chin police officer was inducted earlier this year, Hre and other community leaders attended his graduation from the academy.
Just as Hre described the Indian influence on sabuti, the influx of the Chin and Chin cuisine into Indiana illustrates how lived cultures aren't sealed or static. Chin identity is flourishing in this unlikely haven. “We remember our motherland, but when we became citizens we promised to support and defend the nation,” says Hre. Initially, Indianapolis locals “had a little bit of concern” about Chin migrants, says Hre. But “now they accept us: we cooperate and work together.”
To the north of the ridge summit of Cefn Bryn lies a Neolithic burial ground, a chambered cairn known in Welsh as Maen Ceti and in English as Arthur’s Stone. A well-known and documented attraction for more than half a millennium, it has also attracted its fair share of colorful legends.
Maen Ceti sits on the northward-facing slope of Cefn Bryn, with spectacular views across Llanrhidian Sands, the mouth of the River Loughor and onto Carmarthen Bay. The inspiring location alone helps to explain why men chose this location to build a chambered cairn sometime around 2,500 BC, if not earlier.
The double-chambered megalithic tomb is formed by a massive capstone perched on a series of pointed stones. The quartz conglomerate capstone weighs an estimated 25 tons, and measures around 13 feet wide and 7 feet high. It was once larger than this, but at some point a 10-ton section of the stone broke off and now lies cracked at the side of the cairn.
Various theories exist as to why this piece broke away. Some say a miller chipped away at the rock to make a new millstone, but the piece was too heavy to move. Others suggest that it was struck by lightning during a violent storm, or that St. David cleaved the stone apart with his sword in protest of Druid worship. The more likely but far more prosaic theory is that the portion became detached through frost action in a natural crack.
The size of the capstone impressed ancient scribes so much that Maen Ceti was once referred to as one of “the three arduous undertakings accomplished in Britain.” But raising the capstone onto its stone supports may not have been quite as arduous as it appears. The glacial boulder was likely deposited, quite naturally, precisely where it now sits. Workers then created the chamber beneath it by excavating below the massive boulder and placing the supporting stones as they dug – so no heavy lifting involved.
Still, it remains an impressive tomb, and one that has attracted visitors for hundreds if not thousands of years. One notable visit was by Breton soldiers marching to the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, who found the time and energy to take a 60-mile detour just to see it.
Various legends have also attached themselves to Maen Ceti over the centuries. Its English name, Arthur's Stone, is derived from a legend that tells how King Arthur, while marching to the Battle of Camlann, found a pebble in his shoe. He tossed it a great distance and it fell on Cefn Bryn. Either the great King Arthur was a giant with giant-sized shoes, or the stone itself grew with pride having been touched by the legendary British leader.
Another colorful tale tells of how the stone travels down to the sea (some say a stream) each day (others say on New Year’s Eve) to quench its first before returning to its spot near the ridge of Cefn Bryn.
And, of course, there’s a legend of young lovers, as so often there is. According to this tale, maidens used to come to Maen Ceti with cakes made of barley meal and honey and wetted with milk. They placed the cakes on the stone before crawling around it three times. This would reveal the intentions of their lovers. If the young men were faithful and willing to marry, they would appear at the magical stone. If not, the maidens would know that their lovers were not for keeping.
Unassuming from the outside, this small building goes unnoticed to most people who walk down Gran Via Avenue. Yet right behind this important artery of the city of Madrid, there is a church whose austere façade reveals no clue as to the spectacularly beautiful baroque interior.
Inside the church, the domed ceiling and the walls are richly decorated with frescoes, leading it to be dubbed "the Sistine Chapel of Madrid." The elaborate frescoes depict the life and miracles of the titular saint of the church, St. Anthony of Padua.
Built in the 17th century, this church initially served as a hospital for Portuguese citizens who came to Madrid while Portugal was under Spanish rule. After Portuguese independence, it was dedicated to German pilgrims and its name was changed to the current name, Iglesia de San Antonio de los Alemanes (Church of Saint Anthony of the Germans).
Around 1660, the church's dome began to be painted according to sketches by the Italian artists Coloma and Mitelli. The frescoes were started two years later, painted by Carreño de Miranda and Francisco de Rizzi, commissioned King Felipe IV of Spain.
A fresco of St. Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan born in Lisbon in 1195, occupies the most important place in the dome. He is depicted kneeling on a cloud receiving the Child Jesus and Virgin Mary with open arms. The different miracles of the saint are represented along the entire upper level of the church, while several sainted kings from history are represented below them.
Under the church, there is a curious crypt with several niches that house corpses of the Spanish royal family, some dating back to the Middle Ages. Nearby there are more niches, where children and some unknown bodies were laid to rest.
The Seattle Center Armory has been through plenty of changes since its construction in 1939. Built as a near-impenetrable armory building, it has since hosted everything from half-ton tanks to Duke Ellington, the 1962 World’s Fair, and modern Seattle foodies.
After a few years of lobbying, the Seattle Field Artillery Armory was finally completed in 1939. Built by the Washington National Guard for use by the 146th Field Artillery, the 66th Field Artillery Brigade, and the 41st Division of the National Guard, the huge structure covered an entire city block at a cost of $1.25 million.
At the time, it was a state-of-the-art example of armory construction: a poured-in-place concrete structure with walls thick enough to be almost impenetrable, and yet designed with a certain consideration for style, with its curved edges and decorative concrete eagles sitting proudly above the main entrance.
Initially a storage point for tanks and other armaments, it wasn’t long before the armory began to morph into something else. When the U.S. entered World War II in December 1941, the building was refurbished to house visiting servicemen, with the addition of 500 beds, restrooms, showers, and air conditioning. The Women’s Ambulance Corps also trained in the armory, and for a while, it served as the headquarters for the Civilian Protection unit, tasked with providing enemy-aircraft warning information.
At the same time, the building was used for community events. Scout meetings, proms, dances, and concerts took place during and after the war, most famously when Duke Ellington and his band played at the University of Washington’s 1941 junior prom.
In the 1950s, the armory found itself at the heart of a grand new project: the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Many buildings surrounding the armory were demolished to make way for the 74-acre fairground, but the armory was converted into a 52-stand culinary exhibition known as the Food Circus (complete with a 12.5-ton layer cake). And around it sprung up iconic landmarks like the Space Needle, the monorail, museums, and sports venues that form part of what is now called the Seattle Center.
The next renovations came in the early 1970s, when the Food Circus was renamed Center House and the focus shifted from food to include public arts programming, family entertainment, the Children's Museum, and a wide range of cultural events.
The next big change came in 2012, with extensive renovations to mark the 50th anniversary of the World’s Fair. The walls were stripped back to their original concrete, removing much of the detritus that had built up over the years. Many of the old food stalls, with their equally outdated food, were replaced with hip new restaurants like Skillet Counter, Bigfood, Plum Pantry, and Eltana.
With the focus shifted back towards eating, and with more of the building’s history on show, the name was changed from Center House to Seattle Center Armory. And along with the much-improved food, the armory still hosts more than 3,000 free public performances each year.
As for the history, not quite all of it is on show. Deep in the basement and off-limits to the public is the armory’s former shooting range, its walls still dotted with bullet marks. Near the range are the remains of a half-finished swimming pool originally built for recruits, but never completed and later filled in with dirt.
