The moving reason a mother built a staircase into this Mississippi grave

La Berta, the greatest lighthouses, and the forgotten trans history of the Wild West. Email not displaying correctly? View in your browser. June 26, 2019 Trans Wild West Despite a seeming absence from historical record, people who did not conform to traditional gender norms were actually a part of daily life in the Old West. Read More → Natchez, Mississippi Gravestone Staircase When Florence Irene Ford died at the age of 10, her mother made a strange request. She asked that her daughter’s coffin be fitted with a small window, with stairs leading down to the casket so she could still comfort her dead daughter during storms. Read more → Atlas Obscura Trips Just Announced: Arctic Expedition Join us on a 14-day trip next July as we journey with scientists, historians, Inuit artists, and culturalists to three distinct Arctic regions on this exciting voyage aboard the Ocean Endeavour expedition ship. Learn more → Florence, Italy La Berta According to legend, this disembodied head, dubbed “La Berta,” has been sticking out of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore since medieval times, but its exact origins are unknown. Read more → Community Greatest Lighthouses From a lighthouse perched on a thin spire of rock in Greece to a seahorse-shaped lighthouse in Malaysia, tell us about the most unforgettable lighthouses you’ve ever discovered. Read more → First Australians For thousands of years, stories have been passed down about the Australian ancestors who arrived from the north. Scientists now believe they understand how—and just how many—of those ancestors first arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago. Read more → Barentsburg, Norway Secret Cat The town of Barentsburg sits on the shores of the beautiful Grønfjord like a time capsule of its past. It’s also home to a most peculiar resident: a cat who has spent years masquerading as a fox. Read more → From our friends at Quartz Highway Boulder A giant boulder in Colorado crashed onto a highway and the Department of Transportation decided to leave it. In doing so, this 8.5-million-pound boulder offers a profound philosophical life lesson to keep in mind. Read more → Visit AtlasObscura.com · View in Browser · Unsubscribe · See All Newsletters 61 Greenpoint Ave #622, Brooklyn, NY 11222