During World War II, Japanese naval forces in Okinawa, led by Rear Admiral Minoru Ota, built an elaborate underground headquarters, with hundreds of meters of connecting tunnels under a hill in... »

Memento Mori, Ossuaries, Catacombs, Crypts, & Cemeteries, Ghost Towns, Disaster Areas, Subterranean Sites | Edited by spinkk, Dylan and others

On Monday, August 6th, 1945, at 8:15 am, a US bomber dropped the first nuclear weapon used in warfare over the city of Hiroshima. Estimates of the number killed vary from 90,000 to 166,000... »

Museums and Collections, Strange Science, Unique Collections, Memento Mori, Ghost Towns, Disaster Areas | Edited by spinkk and Dylan

The Kiev Pechersk Lavra in Kiev, Ukraine is many things. Also known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, first and foremost it is a a historic Orthodox Christian monastery, built on top of a... »

Miniatures, Microminiature art, Memento Mori, Relics and Reliquaries, Catacombs, Crypts, & Cemeteries, Curious Places of Worship, Subterranean Sites | Edited by Dylan

As the criminologist Cesare Lombroso examined the skull of the autopsied the body of Giuseppe Villela, the notorious Italian criminal he had just dissected, he discovered a cranial anomaly known... »

Museums and Collections, Wonder Cabinets, Strange Science, Medical Museums, Unique Collections, Memento Mori, Hoaxes and Pseudoscience | Edited by Dylan

When the carving of Mount Rushmore began in 1927, the local Lakota Indians objected loudly. The Black Hills of South Dakota, by treaty, belonged to them. But rather than simply protest, Chief... »

Unusual Monuments, Memento Mori, Cultures and Civilizations , Outsider Architecture, Repositories of Knowledge | Edited by M Rebekah Otto and stanestane

The thing about skulls is that, it can be remarkably hard prove whose they were. Of course, one can tell things like gender, age, sometimes history of disease or injury from a skull, therefore... »

Strange Science, Unique Collections, Memento Mori, Relics and Reliquaries, Instruments of Science | Edited by wythe

Even great industrialists have heroes. Such was the case of Henry Ford and his idol Thomas Edison. Ford grew up on a rural un-electrified farm, and as a young man he followed Edison's meteoric... »

Strange Science, Unique Collections, Memento Mori, Relics and Reliquaries, Inspired Inventions, Retro-Tech | Edited by Dylan

Down a set of dimly lit narrow stone steps, in a vault underneath the church, lay dozens of coffins, and one mummy ready to shake your hand. The mummies in the basement of St. Michan's church in... »

Memento Mori, Mummies, Catacombs, Crypts, & Cemeteries, Curious Places of Worship | Edited by CPilgrim

In an area of less the 20 square kilometers, roughly an area the size of half of Manhattan over there were 700,000 casualties and some 230,000 men died, during the nearly year long battle of... »

Memento Mori, Ossuaries, Disaster Areas | Edited by

By all obvious appearances it is a quiet, metal bridge over the modest Embarras River. Listed on the National Register of Historical places it is just the sort of peaceful, bucolic spot one might... »

Memento Mori, Disaster Areas | Edited by zenomott, littlebrumble and others