The American Midwest is known for three things: endless cornfields, polite people, and a deep, unexplainable urge to build gargantuan tributes to absolutely random objects. When you’ve got that much flat, open space, I guess you start getting creative. Forget the Grand Canyon or the Statue of Liberty; true cultural enlightenment is found off a […]
Sarah Winchester built a massive, confusing mansion in California over 38 years. She married a famous rifle maker. Legend says she believed angry ghosts haunted her. She kept building to hide from these spirits. This house fits perfectly on Weird and Wacky Wonders. It packs many strange features. You will find stairs that lead straight […]
The Legacy of Giants in American Folklore Exploring the Myths and Legends of Giants Towering over the shores of Lake Bemidji in Minnesota are the colossal, incredibly famous statues of legendary folklore lumberjack Paul Bunyan and his giant blue ox, Babe. Built in 1937 for a winter carnival, Paul stands a massive 18 feet tall, […]
Located on the rugged Oregon coast near Cape Perpetua, Thor’s Well is a massive, seemingly bottomless sinkhole carved into the rocky shoreline that appears to be continuously draining the Pacific Ocean. It is actually a collapsed sea cave roughly 20 feet deep. At high tide or during winter storms, the ocean waves rush underneath the […]
In the Racetrack Playa, a dry lakebed in California’s Death Valley, heavy rocks mysteriously move across the completely flat desert floor on their own. For decades, they left long, parallel trails behind them, baffling scientists and sparking wild theories about aliens and magnetic fields. In 2014, the mystery was finally solved using time-lapse cameras. During […]
Flowing out of the Taylor Glacier in Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys is a five-story waterfall that looks exactly like a continuous stream of blood. Discovered by a geologist in 1911, the crimson color actually comes from an ancient, iron-rich subglacial lake that has been trapped beneath the ice for nearly two million years. As the […]
Deep in the woods outside Gryfino, Poland, sits a grove of about 400 pine trees that grow with a bizarre, 90-degree bend at their base. Planted in the early 1930s, the trees all sweep northward before curving back up to grow straight toward the sky. The exact cause of this strange formation remains one of […]
Located in the Nevada desert, Fly Geyser is a stunning, brightly colored anomaly that was completely accidental. It was created by well-drilling in 1964 when engineers struck a geothermal pocket of boiling water. Left uncapped, the mineral-rich water began erupting, building up massive, alien-looking mounds over the decades. Thermophilic algae thrive in the hot, wet […]
Rising out of the barren Atacama Desert in Chile is a massive, 36-foot-tall stone hand. Built by Chilean sculptor Mario Irarrázabal in 1992, it looks like a buried giant reaching desperately for the sky. It is a surreal, isolated masterpiece located miles from any major civilization. Irarrázabal is known for his works exploring human suffering, […]
What a distraction? While researching content for Weird and Wacky Wonders, I stumbled down a digital rabbit hole. Here are 10 completely useless—but strangely addictive—websites to waste your day on, including some truly bizarre sites that you won’t be able to stop clicking on. Exploring the World of Useless Websites
If you are looking for a landscape that looks straight out of a sci-fi movie, head to British Columbia, Canada. Located in the Okanagan Valley, Spotted Lake (known as Kliluk to the indigenous Syilx people) transforms into a massive, colorful polka-dot canvas every summer. Why Does It Turn Into Spots? The lake is landlocked and […]