In Turkmenistan's expansive Karakum Desert, there is a 230-foot wide hole that has been on fire for more than 50 years. Its glow can be seen for miles around, and locals know the crater as "The Gates of Hell."

Though it’s been more than 50 years since anything was mined here, it doesn't seem right to call it "abandoned." The Widow Jane has had a remarkably diverse career since shutting down as a cement mine in 1970. Aside from being a popular hiking and biking destination, it has been a mushroom farm, trout nursery, supplier of whisky water, performance venue, and a recording studio.

In August 1952, a torrential flood swept through the English seaside town of Lynmouth, killing 34 people and causing massive property damage. The disaster got locals wondering about government conspiracies, weather control, and if human beings could actually, truly for real, make it rain.

Built in 1923, Seljavallalaug may be the oldest swimming pool in Iceland. The 82-foot-long pool is built right into the rocks, in a shallow valley created by a pair of verdant, craggy hills.

In 1959, a squirrel monkey named Miss Baker became the first primate to travel to space and return to tell the tale. After she passed away in 1984 she was buried in a grave outside of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, where she given a proper headstone next to her first husband, a monkey named Big George. Visitors often leave bananas at the memorial.

With millions of flammable particulates floating in the air, flour mills are essentially powder kegs. And on May 2, 1878, the Washburn A Mill blew. Today on the site of the disaster the ruins of a later mill still stand, braced with steel. The Mill City Museum and Mill Ruins Park honor those lost as well as the progress that flour milling brought to Minneapolis.

Deep in the forests of northeastern India, these centuries-old bridges are not built—they are grown. These root bridges come in all shapes and sizes, and have been known to grow as long as 170 feet. Most have just a single span, but some notable bridges have more, arranged side-by-side or stacked one over the other.

An abandoned Russian mining village literally frozen in time. This outpost on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is estimated to remain as it is for at least 500 years, thanks to the Arctic climate.

This graveyard in Barre, Vermont—the "Granite Capital of the World"—pays tribute to the stone cutters and artisans who are now buried amongst the sculptures they created while they lived.

In the Beartooth Mountains of Montana, a rapidly disappearing glacier holds the key to a forgotten species, a century-old entomological mystery, and … an opera?

In Northern France, a swath of land still bears the scars of destruction from World War I, which is so bad that, in some cases, humans have never been allowed to return.

These six small houses form the largest intentional cluster of Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the world. They're the remnants of a partnership between Wright and a Milwaukee developer to build houses for low- and middle-income Americans.

In 2013, Louis Vuitton commissioned a permanent James Turrel installation to occupy a hidden space on the fourth floor of its CityCenter store. The piece, titled Akhob, consists of circular openings leading into two huge chambers filled with slowly changing, rotating light.

In a field in Virginia, dozens of giant busts of U.S. presidents are slowly crumbling away. The 20-foot-tall heads were on display at Presidents Park in Williamsburg, until it closed down in 2010.

This impressive monument in Ba Dinh Square contains a glass casket, which holds the perfectly preserved remains of former Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.

One of Moscow's most macabre attractions can be found in Red Square. Frozen in time, Vladimir Ilych Lenin's embalmed body lays within a red granite and black labradorite step-pyramid. Visitors may gaze upon the modern mummy in the dark, cool interior of the tomb.

Part wildlife conservation preserve, part ophidiophobic nightmare, this area outside Winnipeg sees tens of thousands of garter snakes arrive each year to sleep and mate in huge slithering piles of serpentine chaos.

The world’s oldest rose is so tough that it managed to survive being bombed in World War II. This extraordinary specimen of flora has been creeping up one of the walls of Hildesheim Cathedral since the early ninth century.

After a profound show of devotion for his master, this golden Akita named Hachikō became a symbol of loyalty known all over Japan. Though Hachikō died in 1935, his taxidermied remains are on display at this Tokyo museum.

From his home in San Francisco’s Mission District, Mark McCloud has amassed a curio of the Acid Age that is rumored to be larger than that of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. The lower level of his Victorian house is a gallery of chemically inactive acid blotter sheets and individual samples of acid that date back to the 60s.

In Belgium, a living library is hidden inside a baking corporation’s research center. Here, 105 sourdough starters and counting are stored and fed, in a long-term project to research and preserve bread biodiversity.

Iceland is home to around half of the world's puffins, and the Westman Islands host the largest colony. It is an annual tradition for the children of Heimaey, the archipelago’s only inhabited island, to form patrols to rescue lost and disoriented young puffins, which they call pysjas.

Mike the chicken was not even six months old when he got his head cut off, but almost two years old when he finally died. This sculpture in his hometown honors the life and legacy of "Miracle Mike the Headless Chicken."

This boxy, Brutalist building in Silver Spring, Maryland, contains one of the greatest collections of disease, injury, and human body bits ever assembled. There are more than 24 million medical items, from anatomical specimens and antique instruments to the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln.

Amazingly preserved despite centuries of conflict and siege, this cistern was built in 532 by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I to store water for the palace and nearby buildings. Nicknamed Yearbatan Sarayi, or "The Sunken Palace" in Turkish, it is known in English as the "Basilica Cistern" because of its location on the site of an ancient basilica.

The Disgusting Food Museum invites guests to expand their palates and challenge their prejudices by interacting with 80 different foods from around the world. From maggot-infused cheese from Italy, to Iceland's ammonia-scented shark to the United States’ meat-and-gelatin Jell-O salads, there's something for everyone.

A grand library in Portugal has some unexpected nighttime caretakers—tiny bats. They patrol this magnificent 18th-century space in search of book-eating pests.

This abandoned house looms over a salt marsh, its pale pink paint looking like a mirror of the colorful sunsets that so often streak the sky. A local legend says that it’s a spite house, one man’s way of getting the final say against his ex-wife.

This ranch on the outskirts of Aptos, California, features a magical machine that dispenses music, joy, and 18 of the freshest eggs in the land.

A carefully curated collection of miscalculations, this library in Edinburgh serves as a warning for the danger of gullibility, especially when it comes to money.

Thousands of birds have flown to their death over the small village of Jatinga. This bizarre Bermuda Triangle of avian death remains largely unexplained, despite studies by India’s most prestigious ornithologists.

In February 2014, car collectors around the world winced in horror when eight rare vehicles vanished into a sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky.

These World War I shooting range tunnels are now haunted halls that can be accessed through the roots of a tree. The dark and decrepit tunnels attract graffiti artists and plenty of teen lore.

This beloved statue of a girl and her geese is a celebrated icon of the German city. At an annual festival, she is festooned with flowers and kisses by local scholars, celebrating their freshly minted PhDs.

Built by indigenous people thousands of years ago, the Newark Earthworks are part cathedral, part cemetery, part astronomical observatory, and, today, part golf course.

In East Detroit, artist Tyree Guyton transformed a largely abandoned street into an immersive, living museum—which then grew into something even bigger.

Just beneath the surface of this picturesque stretch of river is a natural booby trap that has claimed a number of lives. The Bolton Strid, a small section of the River Wharfe in Yorkshire, is often called “the deadliest body of water on Earth.”

The desert of Badain Jaran in China is home to the Booming Dunes, and possibly the coolest sand sounds you’ve ever heard.

On the 61st floor of one of New York City’s most iconic buildings, there are eight unusual, impressive residents: gleaming silver eagles.

In the 1930s, a community came together to build this schoolhouse. Several decades later, they came together again to build it a second time and preserve its legacy.

This might be the world’s largest collection of fraudulent, nefarious, or otherwise ineffectual medical machinery. It once made up the Museum of Quackery and Medical Fraud, but when that closed down in 2002 it found a second life as the Science Museum of Minnesota's “Questionable Medical Device” collection.

In the busy, traffic-packed capital city of Bolivia, traffic lights and street signs feel more of a suggestion than a requirement. Despite the nonchalant attitude toward the rules of the road, the number of traffic incidents has been on the decline, thanks to a group of plush, fun-loving zebras.

At the Black Panther Party's height, over 60 percent of its membership was made up of women of color. These organizers, activists, and teachers were often at the front lines of many of the party’s battles for equality and social change. Yet, many of their contributions have been lost to the pages of history. This mural aims to recapture and highlight their legacy.

In October 2000, a dead humpback whale was deposited onto one of the busiest beaches in Ubatuba, Brazil. After attempts to move the carcass failed, the city dug a hole for the massive mammal where it remained for eight years. Today, the whale's skeleton has been installed outside the Ubatuba Aquarium.

Four lonely graves stand on a peninsula off Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. Three belong to members of an ill-fated expedition to the Northwest Passage, and the last belongs to one of the men who went looking for them.

This seafoam green nuclear power plant was designed with the capability to power most of Long Island. However, following the disasters on Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, public opposition forced the local power company to halt operations.

In 1927, Thomas Parnell began an experiment that's still running today. Though at room temperature pitch appears solid and can even be shattered by a hammer, it is, in fact, a very high-viscosity liquid—and the University of Queensland professor wanted to prove it.

The Beverly Clock was invented in 1864 by Arthur Beverly and is located in the foyer of the Department of Physics at the University of Otago in New Zealand. It's not a perpetual motion machine, but it does come closer to that impossible goal than most clocks.

For over 170 years, the Oxford Electric Bell has been chiming almost continuously, the composition of its power source uncertain. Currently located in the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford, the Bell is an experiment that consists of two brass bells, each stationed beneath a battery, with a metal sphere (or 'clapper') swinging between them to produce a ring that has occurred on the order of 10 billion times.

This museum is going to break your heart. And that’s a good thing. When Croatian artists Olinka Vistina and Drazen Grubisic separated, their reluctance to part with the sentimental reminders of their fizzled love inspired them to open the Museum of Broken Relationships, so that the items could remain together.

A renegade art project in this small Vancouver park galvanized a community, pitted residents against city government, and ultimately resulted in a new name for an extremely chill park.

Few places in the world speak of an evolutionary tale as rich and captivating as that of Wadi al-Hitan, Egypt’s “Valley of the Whales.” Amid a wind-sculpted landscape of sand and rocks, lies a large collection of the most unexpected of animal remains—whale fossils.

The span of this bridge across the Charles River was calculated using a system of measurement instituted by an MIT fraternity pledge in 1958: the Smoot.

In the base of the ruins of the Jupiter Baal Temple lie three hewn stones that, together are known as the “trilithon.” Each is estimated to weigh over 750 tons. The Baalbek Trilithon is not only one of the most well-preserved Roman ruins on Earth, but also an often-overlooked architectural feat.

Bison are native to the Great Plains region of the United States. The farthest west their natural habitat ever stretched was northeastern California—nowhere near Los Angeles. Yet today, in southwestern California, on an isolated island an hour-long boat ride from the beaches of L.A., live 150 massive, shaggy Great Plains bison.

Typically, space junk winds up somewhere deep in the Pacific Ocean. But in 1962, a Soviet satellite plunged back to Earth and landed on a street in small-town Wisconsin.

Though she was born in St. Louis, entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist Josephine Baker spent the latter half of her life at this Renaissance castle overlooking the Dordogne River.

A massive bur oak tree believed to be approximately 500 years old is the centerpiece of this quiet urban greenspace.

Located in Southern California near the Mexican border, the Salton Sea is a shallow body of water with a high level of salt. Its natural course was diverted by humans desperate to bring water to the desert basin, creating a lake the size of Los Angeles—that eventually turned toxic.

Does this sprawling mansion in San Jose, California, live up to its reputation as one of the most haunted places in the world?

The de facto symbol of Copenhagen is this bronze fairytale statue, which has a bad habit of losing her head.

In a wee pasture tucked between a hospital and a suburb in Palo Alto, California, there are two donkeys named Perry and Buddy. While they might seem like nothing more than a pair of odd community pets, one of them is actually a movie star (sort of).

A giant has lived quietly in this forest for the past 80,000 years. Pando, also known as the Trembling Giant, is an enormous grove of quaking aspens that is technically a single organism. The approximately 47,000 trees are genetically identical and share a single root system.

Inside this museum is a mausoleum that some say is Oslo’s best kept secret. It’s the underrated masterpiece of a mostly unknown artist, who was overshadowed his whole life by his more successful brother.

It's not easy to track down this Brooklyn park’s most elusive—and perhaps magical—resident. But the quest for this white squirrel might change the way you look at the world around you.

The Forbes Pigment Collection, part of the Harvard Art Museums, holds over 2,700 pigments that have been quietly coloring the world around us since the beginning of human history.

The American chestnut tree once dominated the eastern United States. But around the turn of the century, chestnut blight began tearing through these trees. Today, scientists, academics, and tree lovers are desperately trying to bring them back from the edge of extinction.

This industrial water tank–turned–concert hall in the high deserts of Colorado is nothing less than a sonic wonder of the world.

Åtvidaberg’s sun cannon is the only functioning time piece of its kind in the world that still works. When the sun reaches its highest point, a lens focuses the sunlight on a small charge of black powder loaded into a six-pound cannon. The intense sunlight sets off the cannon—and boom! Everyone in town knows it’s time for lunch.

Controversially claiming the title of world's biggest bass drum, the University of Texas's "Big Bertha" was briefly (and accidentally) made radioactive by the Manhattan Project.

The subantarctic Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku is home to the world's lonelist tree: a Sitka spruce whose nearest neighbor is 170 miles away.

The Good Vibrations Antique Vibrator Museum in San Francisco displays models from the Victorian era through the 1950s.

Tucked away under a stadium in Tucson, Arizona, this manufacturing laboratory constructs the giant mirrors that have revolutionized telescopes around the world. The lab is responsible for many important telescope mirrors including the Giant Magellan Telescope at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Nepal's more than 100 distinct ethnic groups have produced over 1,300 different designs of musical instruments. That struck a chord with Ram Prasad Kadel, who began collecting Nepali instruments in 1995. Today, he showcases a significant portion of his impressive collection of some 650 instruments in a museum he opened in 2002.

Erika Nelson didn’t set out in life to become one of the foremost connoisseurs of large things. But her museum in Lucas, Kansas, has become the ultimate tribute to the roadside attraction.

Just off of Staten Island’s poetically named Arthur Kill Road is the last remaining Kreischer Mansion, a lovely Victorian home that is said to be one of the most haunted places in all of New York. That may actually be true—if one is referring to being haunted by memories of murder and death.

Initially discovered by a construction worker and his son while they were looking to build on the land, the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota would prove to yield one of the largest deposits of prehistoric mammoth remains in the world. But strangely, all the remains seemed to be males.

Inside the Maryland Medical Examiner's Office are the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. These painstakingly crafted dioramas include functioning locks and lights and details such as overturned cups, bullet-holes, and boxes of chocolates as well as miniature corpses in a variety of macabre positions.

This California county park is home to a descendant of two white fallow deer given to Henry Miller by wealthy publisher William Randolph Hearst.

Over 60,000 meticulously strung together pieces of seashells and corals decorate this stunning underwater-themed temple in the hills of Taiwan.

This facility in Minneapolis is home to one of the quietest rooms on earth. It is used by various manufacturers to test product volume and sound quality—and it can also drive a person mad.

Deep in the Luray Caverns, the largest cave complex in the eastern United States, sits the largest musical instrument in the world. At first, the Great Stalacpipe Organ appears to be a normal organ. But instead of using pipes, the organ is wired to soft rubber mallets poised to gently strike stalactites of varying lengths and thicknesses. When the keyboard is played, the entire subterranean landscape becomes a musical instrument.

Johann Konrad Dippel was rumored to create potions, perform electrical therapies, and partake in gruesome experiments involving stolen body parts from the graveyard. Born in the Castle Frankenstein in 1673, it’s disputed whether or not he was the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s mad scientist of the same name, who did some cadaver experiments of his own.

With its army of glassy-eyed clown dolls and convenient proximity to a Wild West cemetery, this clown-themed motel might seem like the product of a horror writer’s fevered imagination. But the dusty little lodging is just a fan of merriment. They swear.

Believed to have been built between the 11th and 12th century, this wood and plaster church is nestled inside a natural cavern in Ethiopia. The protection from the cave has likely kept the church from deteriorating completely over its centuries of service.

The Capitoline Wolfe is a bronze sculpture that depicts an encounter between a wolf and two young boys—a scene from the legend of Rome’s founding.

At this Buddhist park in Singapore, you can visit the Ten Courts of Hell, a series of dioramas depicting the horrible fates that await those who behave badly here on Earth.

It’s almost impossible to see everything in this house in one visit. The sprawling complex of buildings, exhibits, and gardens is filled with oddities and antiques. Some of the highlights include self-playing instruments, the world’s largest carousel, and a room with hundreds of mannequin angels hanging from the ceiling.

In April of 2017, this former Lutheran church in Denver reopened as a place of worship for the followers of a brand new religion: “Elevationism,” dedicated to the spiritual benefits of cannabis.

Above this pedestrian walkway in Sydney, scores of birdcages are suspended in the air. From below come the calls of long-vanished birds. This sculpture, called "Forgotten Songs," combines art and ornithology to remember birds that once thrived in Sydney.

Jessica Oreck has spent the last 30 years collecting odd and forgotten objects, from lost buttons to dollhouse furniture. Now, those objects are beautifully curated and on display in the Office of Collecting and Design in Las Vegas.

The Sunny Jim Cave Store has the only entrance to any sea cave in California that you can access via land. The entrance is a narrow and dim tunnel that leads from the store to a staircase made of 145 damp steps that descend directly into a colorful sea cave.

This temple complex dates back to the 11th century and covers 400,000 square feet full of rich, intricate sculptures and carvings, and soaring architecture. One of its festivals even gave rise to the word “juggernaut,” meaning an unstoppable force. But the real story behind it is far more complicated.

It’s easy to dismiss the yeti, the Loch Ness monster, and other cryptids as fodder for the X-Files. But the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Main shows that when investigations into unknown creatures are done right, they can have real scientific value.

In 2008, sculptor and art professor Sam Van Aken created a a horticultural marvel. Known as the Tree of 40 Fruit, this small tree has dozens of stone fruit trees grafted onto a single trunk. That first tree lives at Syracuse University, but now there are dozens of them spread across the country.

Opened in 2014, this zoo of tiny things sets out to show how interesting and beautiful the invisible world all around us can be. The Amsterdam museum focuses on the bacteria and microbes that live on and among us every day.

This small museum in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, is home to geological samples that may rival those in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Scott Harrison once distracted himself from the ravages of the Vietnam War with a music box. Its calming power stayed with him, and more than a decade after he returned to his home in Colorado, Harrison bought a used carousel and created a fully-functioning, life-sized version of his music box miniature.

This post office on the Galapagos Islands runs on luck and the goodwill of visitors. Established in the 1700s, the site consists of a barrel and a sign—and it has a knack for bringing strangers together.

In 2006, a shipment container stuffed full of Doritos fell overboard into the ocean near North Carolina. The bags washed up on Hatteras Island, where locals then salvaged—ate—the surplus of shipwrecked snacks. At the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos is displayed among other less delicious victims of the sea.

This national park in southwest Uganda is home to nearly half the world’s population of endangered mountain gorillas. They and the local community rely on each other to survive.

John Milkovisch spent 18 years covering his Houston home in some 39,000 beer cans. The house has been preserved for visitors since John’s death in 1988.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama, bills itself as “the nation’s only retailer of lost luggage.” If you’ve ever lost a bag during air travel, it probably wound up there—along with many other treasures and oddities.

Stopping to smell the flowers behind this set of imposing black gates could actually kill you. Alnwick's Poison Garden is dedicated entirely to plants that are narcotic or deadly.

The largest theater pipe organ in the world lives in a restaurant in Mesa, Arizona. Phenomenal musicians play requests while diners feast on pizza.

An unusual museum in Iceland gives visitors a chance to explore the ancient lore of the occult, learn how to steal milk from you neighbors, and laid you eyes upon a pair of pants… made of human flesh.

This massive underground reservoir supplied drinking water to all of Copenhagen from the 1850s until the 1930s. Today, it has been repurposed as a contemporary art cave.

At the world’s largest surviving community of spiritualists, there are plenty of ways to connect with the dead—even if you don’t believe in ghosts.

At the ruins of an ancient economic powerhouse’s capital city, Great Zimbabwe, a colonial empire was determined to rewrite its story.

The Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, Poland, is the final resting place of famed composer Frédéric Chopin’s heart—smuggled there by Chopin’s sister after his death.

This Alaska farm aims to domesticate a species that used to roam Earth at the same time as the saber-toothed cat and woolly mammoth.

In 1993, Bob Cassilly began to turn an old shoe factory into a massive interactive museum that now includes a plane fuselage, caves, and a ten-story slide.

This Boston church was cemented in American history by Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride. But now the ringers who play its bells in a centuries-old style are adding a new twist.

Haiti’s Citadelle Laferrière is as striking as it is imposing. The defensive structure was built to ensure the island remained free after Haitians defeated French colonizers.

At the Boulder’s Beach Penguin Colony, you can get up close and personal with the strange, prehistoric birds that seem right at home (despite their generally chilly reputation).

This unique neighborhood in Los Angeles characterized by its historical relationship to Black liberation.

The Theater of Electricity inside the Boston Museum of Science is home to the world’s largest air-insulated Van de Graaff generator, a massive machine that creates cracking displays of indoor lightning.

The crown jewel of the Queens Museum is a nearly 10,000-square-foot architectural model of the city that was originally built for the 1964 World's Fair.

On a small bit of wide-open pasture in Lincoln, Massachusetts, broken-down rocking horses, plastic ponies and other assorted horse toys have been holding court for more than a decade.

This 122-foot-long, 25-foot-tall folk art dinosaur that was almost pushed to extinction due to lack of a building permit.

Before she founded the American Red Cross, Clara Barton had a tremendous humanitarian impact by locating thousands of missing soldiers.

Ireland has around 3,000 holy wells and at least 15 of them are dedicated to St. Brigid. But this one in particular plays an integral role in the story of how a pagan goddess became a Christian saint.

Strategically-placed grooves in this California road play the finale of the William Tell Overture as you drive over them.

A pile of gigantic pieces of the United States Capitol sit in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.—waiting for anyone willing to step off the beaten path.

Inside Dubai’s Ibn Battuta Mall, you can find an elaborate elephant-shaped water clock at the that is a tribute to 800-year-old engineering brilliance.

Some 8,000 years ago, the first inhabitants of what is now Los Angeles built a village around a sacred spring. Today, their descendants are still working to protect it.

This ancient structure was built in the 27th century B.C. for the burial of the Egyptian Pharaoh Djoser. It is widely thought to be the oldest intact pyramid in the world.

The ancient ruins of Torre Argentina in Rome were the site of Julius Caesar’s assassination. The site also happens to double as an enormous sanctuary for cats.

The cryptic click-click-clicking of the corpus clock comes primarily from its disquieting locust escapement, grinding away the hours as its gaping mouth moves in the effort to live up to the sinister title of “Chronophage”, meaning “time eater” in Greek.

Carved into a French mountainside, the Chemin de la Mâture was created as a brute force solution to Louis XIV’s lack of usable naval lumber. Today it is a hiking path, and one of the most scenic routes to the French coast.

In the backstreets of Çukurcuma, sloping towards the Bosporus from Istanbul's main pedestrian commercial thoroughfare of Istanbul, is the Museum of Innocence, a collection of items straight from a work of fiction. It is the work of novelist Orhan Pamuk, whose novel The Museum of Innocence was conceived of and created along with the museum itself.

These 17 interconnected towers rise like inverted ice cream cones, the tallest reaching over 100 feet. Built by an Italian immigrant construction worker from 1921 to 1954, they may be America’s most famous example of self-built architecture.

In Crawfordsville, Indiana, the first spinning jail built in the United States is the only one in the country that still works. While the jail no longer holds incarcerated people, it still stands as a strange example of innovation outstripping utility.

It’s not unusual to see a lawn gnome in someone’s yard. Maybe even a few. But in Wellington Mill, Australia, thousands of the weird little statuettes have dominated a roundabout for more than 20 years.

Despite his international fame and acclaim, jazz legend Louis Armstrong retired to an unpretentious home in a quiet Queens neighborhood. Today it is a museum dedicated to the musician.

Located just off the coast of Nagasaki, this Japanese island was once the most densely populated place on Earth—until, almost overnight, everyone left.

Set in Joshua Tree, California, the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum is several acres of open land displaying Purifoy's assemblage sculptures, all of which were created on-site between 1989 and 2004.

This underground oasis in Fresno, California, is a winding maze of rooms and passageways filled with lush citrus trees. They were created by Baldassare Forestiere, a Sicilian immigrant and self-taught artist and builder who came to America in 1901.

Thousands of years ago, a young Samish woman named Ko-kwal-alwoot crouched beside tide pools, looked into the water, and saw a face looking back at her that wasn’t her own. Today, her descendants are still telling the story of what happened next.

Sitting in a corner of the Bois de Vincennes, the Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale (or “The Garden of Tropical Agriculture”) is a true curiosity. Open to the public today as gardens and managed by the city of Paris, it is based around the ruins of a colonial exhibition from 1907.

How a street lamp, a tangle with municipal government, and a love of the stars led a man to Goblin Valley, Utah, a place “certified” to please lovers of the night sky.

The United States’s oldest funicular railway glides up and down a steep Pittsburgh street. When it was first built, it offered coal and steel workers a respite from the smog of industry.

For those who have yet to make it to Pisa, Italy, you can find a similar—albeit scaled down—version of the famous Leaning Tower in Niles, Illinois. Built in 1934, the Niles tower was originally intended to store water for public swimming pools.

Originally established by Napoleon, the cemetery languished in obscurity until its directors conducted an elaborate publicity campaign culminating in their claiming the remains of Molière. After this, citizens clamored to be buried with the stars, so to speak, and demand skyrocketed. Today, the cemetery is home to the graves of Oscar Wilde, Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf, and more.

In the spring of 1987, Jim Reinders enlisted family and friends to help him arrange old cars in a pattern modeled after Stonehenge, England’s iconic prehistoric monument. The installation has become a symbol of the town of Alliance, Nebraska. But its residents haven’t always been fans…

When it first opened in 1829, this Philadelphia prison was intended to revolutionize incarceration for the better. But its practices of silence and solitude unintentionally created new horrors.

The world’s oldest edible ham was originally cured in 1902 by the Gwaltney Foods meat company. Then itwas lost in storage. On its rediscovery two decades later, the elated Pembroke D. Gwaltney Jr. made the piece of pork his “pet ham.” He put a brass collar on it and paraded it around various expositions to prove to customers his meat could be kept without being refrigerated. Today, that same ham is housed in the Isle of Wight County Museum.

A copper and brass goat created by the "welding nun" has been chewing up litter in Spokane’s Riverfront Park for more than 40 years. The metal goat sculpture has a vacuum inside that allows the goat to "eat" small pieces of garbage. The statue will inhale just about any piece of refuse that will fit into its mouth.

At this museum you can find the Hodges Meteorite. It is not remarkable for its size or shape, but after careening through an Alabama woman's house and hitting her while she napped, it went down in history. At two in the afternoon on November 30, 1954, Ann Hodges had just settled into a nap when a meteorite rocketed through the roof.

James Cawley began rebuilding the set of Star Trek: The Original Series in 1997. He used copies of the original show’s blueprints he obtained from costume designer William Ware Theiss, and spent hours researching thousands of photographs to ensure its precision. The result has been described as a religious experience by the multitude of Trekkies who flock to see the exhibit.

In 1997, the Ghanaian politician and and revolutionary leader Kwame Nkrumah led the Gold Coast, now Ghana, to its independence from Britain. Nkrumah became the first prime minister and president of Ghana, and to celebrate his nation’s newfound autonomy, he commissioned the construction of a huge public square.

Roger Williams, who founded the state of Rhode Island, was laid to rest on three separate occasions. On one of those occasions, all that was found in his coffin was a twisted, Roger-shaped root. That ancient root is now tacked to a coffin-shaped board on display at the John Brown House.

Standing over Route 66 in Tulsa is a 21-foot tall space cowboy. The giant roadside attraction welcomes visitors to Buck Atom's Cosmic Curios on 66, a gift shop selling a variety of souvenirs, clothing, neon signs, and other memorabilia dedicated to the mystique of America's Mother Road.

In 1928, when Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute received a set of mangled machine parts, they had no idea what it was. The pieces included a boy’s porcelain head and hands along with a pile of brass springs, levers, and gears. But when those pieces were reassembled, the machine revealed its identity: an intricate automaton, capable of creating beautifully decorated poetry and charming drawings.

Catoosa, Oklahoma, is the home of a massive landlocked whale. Smiling from the side of Route 66, this whale may be the greatest anniversary gift of all time.

In addition to the gambling and the shows, Las Vegas, was once the preferred tourist destination for watching weapons of mass destruction explode. The National Atomic Testing Museum is home to more than 12,000 artifacts that tell the story of the U.S. nuclear program and its impact on Nevada.

The world's largest key collection features keys to the White House, Frankenstein's castle, and Hitler's bunker. And most of those keys are hanging from the ceiling of a bed and breakfast just outside Denver, Colorado.

When a new member registers with Clowns International, a replica of their personal makeup design is carefully painted onto a ceramic egg and added to the Clown Egg Register. Since 1946, this collection of ceramic eggs has served as a record of clowns around the world—and to some extent, a clowning code of conduct.

In 1892, South Dakota was begging for settlers. In order to showcase their magnificently rich soil, local officials commissioned the building of the Corn Palace in the middle of Mitchell, a town that bills itself as the "Corn Capital of the World."

This garden in Lynchburg, Virginia, is the key to unlocking the writing and mind of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer.

This ranch in Texas, trains people in jousting and sword-fighting with the goal of making them knights of the highest order—for the Medieval Times dinner theater chain.

In the swamp lands of Sheldon, South Carolina, stands an authentic Yoruba village founded in the 1970s by Oba Oseijeman Adefunmi I. His followers came from New York, Chicago, and Indiana to establish the Kingdom of Oyotunji, now the oldest genuine African Village in North America, with the aim of reigniting African culture.

There are a number of advantages to keeping things underground. The temperature stays constant, energy costs are lower, and—in the massive, 55,000,000-square-foot space under Missouri known as SubTropolis—there is a whole city of workers who can keep your goods safe.

Inside this Arizona fast food franchise, you’ll find a small but in-depth museum. It’s not about the history of burgers, but rather the Native American veterans who developed an unbreakable secret code during World War II.

Within the first four years of owning his 1947 Cadillac, Louie Mattar had installed a shower, mini-bar, washing machine, stove, sink, hookah, and a microphone connected to a speaker under the hood, for offering suggestions to other drivers on the road. This was just the beginning of his quest to build the ultimate road trip vehicle, which now lives at the San Diego Automotive Museum.

This giant limestone cave system outside of St. Louis, Missouri, has served as a Native American shelter, a saltpeter plant for the Union Army during the Civil War, and a hideout for the notorious outlaw Jesse James.

The Brown Dog Statue is, obviously, a good and very handsome boy, yes he is. Less obvious, though, is the contentious political and scientific history he represents. A memorial in Battersea Park marks the life of a pup who sparked riots over animal rights issues in London, England.

Sitting in a storefront on an otherwise banal street corner in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the Mothman Museum is the only public collection devoted solely to the mysterious insect creature that is said to have plagued the area in the 1960s, since then becoming prominent enough to give Bigfoot a run for its money. 

For nearly 200 years, the same family has harvested ice from a small pond in eastern Maine. The Thompson Ice House is one of the only places in the United States where people gather every winter to take part in the age-old process. 

Medellín cartel founder Pablo Escobar built himself a sort of Jurassic Park-meets-Disney World resort. After his death in 1993 the resort fell into disrepair, but the four hippopotamuses he had brought to Columbia multiplied into a herd that still lives on the land around the estate.

Located on the edge of the Bangweulu Wetlands, Kasanka National Park, the smallest national park in Zambia, is home to a massive migration of bats. Every year between November and December, some 5 to 10 million straw-colored fruit bats descend on the park to feast on musuku, mufinsa, and other fruit trees.

High in the Andes in Argentina, there is a toxic lake near a volcanic caldera. It is home to microbes that provide a window to our planet’s past—and a key to securing its future.

This 19th-century Queen Anne-style home is not only Atlanta’s oldest house museum, but also a cultural center and event space dedicated to preserving the tradition of African-American folklore.

On a perch 60 meters above the North Sea, Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse is slowly being claimed by shifting sands that led to the structure’s abandonment. But in 2019, a community effort and a pair of giant rollerskates moved the lighthouse, buying it a few more decades.

This beautiful, all-in-one museum, private residence, and bed and breakfast houses a rich collection of African art.

What do you do with a science museum where the science is actually folk art? In 1954, Larry Spring claimed that he had independently verified the speed of light. It was the beginning of his theory of "common sense physics," which is on display at this California museum.

Surrounded by turquoise water and white sand beaches, Puerto Rico's Culebra Island is a stunning Caribbean landscape. But its beautiful shores have some unexpected decorations: rusting tanks from World War II.

A radical puppet collective has shaped the small New England town of Glover, Vermont, for decades. The theater operates under the "cheap art" philosophy, which hopes to "reestablish the appreciation of artistic creation by making it available to a wider audience and inspire anyone to revel in an art-making process that is not subject to academic approval or curatorial acceptance."

There's a glow coming from the depths of this historic zinc mine in New Jersey. Formerly pale, flat, unlit rocks and minerals turn vibrant orange, pink, and green when the overhead lights are turned out and the black-light turned on. They streak with red or develop otherworldly glowing veins of light that were definitely not visible before.

Tina Turner, the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll once attended the one-room Flagg Grove School in Brownsville, Tennessee. Today, it's part of a museum dedicated to its most famous student.

This abandoned hospital outside Boston, Massachusetts, was originally conceived as a place to help people with mental health issues. But it wound up doing more harm than good.

At a former meatpacking plant in Chicago, Illinois, people are working to create a new kind of community in the city’s post-industrial remains. The 93,500 square foot building is home to a variety of sustainable food businesses, including a brewery, bakery, kombucha brewery, a cheese distributor, and a coffee roaster, among others.

The history of medical clowning extends back to Ancient Greece and the time of Hippocrates and is taught today in workshops throughout the world. But Haifa University is home. to the world's only official college program focused on "clown therapy."

Chicago is known worldwide for its wealth of jazz history, and the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge on the north side of the Windy City is the the cream of the crop. Located in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, the Green Mill Lounge is home to more than 100 years of history, a century of world-famous musicians and American mobsters alike.

Inside this old Vermont mill is a collection of images that are frozen in time. The Jericho Historical Society is home to a collection of images created by Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, who was the first person to photograph a snowflake.

While most cemeteries are content with their tranquil natural vistas, a caretaker at Ecuador’s Tulcán Municipal Cemetery decided that he was going to step it up a notch. He eventually transformed the graveyard’s tall hedges into a sprawling topiary wonderland.

Though this building has stood since around the year 1130, archaeological excavations indicate there were at least three buildings there before the church that stands today. Scholars believe church ground has been a site of Christian worship at least since the early 11th century.

Entering Lee’s Marble Museum, the first thing visitors will notice is hundreds of marble-filled jars lining the walls. All around the museum, display cases show off specific marbles, methodically organized by category. This place has become a pilgrimage site for serious collectors, and a curiosity for the casual passerby.

This Moorish-style building built of stuccoed masonry stands on one of the first pieces of land owned by the United States government but located outside of the country. It was a gift from “America’s first friend.”

Among the lodestones, telescopes, and other scientific instruments on display at the Museo Galileo, there is a small glass egg that holds the preserved middle finger of the legendary astronomer, physicist, and engineer Galileo Galilei.

Sigmund Freud spent the majority of his life in Austria, but after he was exiled by the Nazis, the pioneer of psychoanalysis brought his life to London. The home he shared with his family is now a museum that holds his extensive library, collection of antiquities, furniture, and the crown jewel: Freud’s famous couch.