Frank Jacobs's User Profile - Atlas Obscura

Frank Jacobs

Journalist, writer, atlas enthusiast, weirdness fan, ‘Strange Maps’ columnist

https://twitter.com/VeryStrangeMaps

2023
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What Are the World’s Roundest and Most Rectangular Countries?

Mind-boggling as it is, they're often one and the same.

Explore the View From Humanity’s Most Distant Spacecraft

Launched in 1977 and now nearly 15 billion miles from the Sun, Voyager 1 continues its journey at 38,000 miles per hour.

The Most Popular Person in European Street Names Is a Woman

Can you guess who it is?

Octopuses (and Their DNA) Suggest Antarctica Will Melt Again

Two geographically separate populations of cute cephalopods once mated a very long time ago.

A 19th-Century Family Portrait of Comets

The thrills and horrors of strange heavenly bodies, condensed into one attractive snapshot.

The Coast-to-Coast American Road Trip Is 120 Years Old

In 1903, a Vermont doctor bet $50 that he could cross America by car. It took him 63 days, $8,000, and 600 gallons of gas.

Why Does America Have So Many Towns With Classical Names?

There are nearly 100 named "Troy."

The Mysterious Dodecahedrons of the Roman Empire

The first of many of these puzzling objects was unearthed almost three centuries ago, and we still don't know what they were for.

Explore This Map of More Than 3,000 Scottish Witches

An Edinburgh University project uses data to track the victims of Scottish "witch-prickers" in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Strange Tale of SS Warrimoo, the Ship That Existed in Two Centuries at Once

On New Year's Eve 1899, the captain of this Pacific liner steamed into history. Or did he?

How Did the Chess Pieces Get Their Names?

One player’s pawn is another’s farmer. And at one time, the queen was the virgin, and rather powerless.

Colorado Is Not a Rectangle—It Has 697 Sides

The Centennial State is technically a hexahectaenneacontakaiheptagon.

The Mysterious Underground City Found in a Man’s Basement

How a renovation project in Turkey led to the discovery of a lifetime—a lost city that once housed 20,000 people.

How a Map Mistake Saved a Forest of 300-Year-Old Trees

Minnesota's "Lost Forty" survived the lumberjack's ax thanks to a improperly drawn lake.

How Njoya the Great Put His African Kingdom on the Map

A representation of the Bamum kingdom is a rare example of early-20th-century indigenous African cartography.

Europe’s Oldest Map Shows Tiny Bronze Age Kingdom

Discovered in 1900, the Saint-Bélec slab languished unrecognized in a castle basement for over a century.

‘Cockeyed’ Map Shows Both Glamour and Margins of 1930s Hollywood

Legendary cartoonist John Groth's pictorial map captures L.A.'s film factories in their Golden Age.

The Paratethys Sea Was the Largest Lake in Earth’s History

The Black, Caspian, and Aral Seas are the last surviving fragments of a body of water that stretched from Austria to Turkmenistan.