ravan

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vluchtoord

During the First World War there were lots of Belgian refugees in the Netherlands. In the town of Uden, a refuge called Vluchtoord was created. (“Vluchtoord” loosely translates as “refuge.”) A complete village of temporary housing, schools, a church,  and a hospital was built in a matter of weeks. In total about 10,000 Belgian refugees lived here.

They also took with them their hobbies and made a cycling track, the remnants of which are  still visible in the woods. You can easily walk the total length of the track. and the nearby woods have nice walks. 

On the site there are several informational signs with highlight the history of the site and the refuge. Fun fact: The refuge was the first in the region to have electric power. Which annoyed the residents of Uden, who had to wait a few more years before they got electrical power. 

At the end of the war, the refugees returned and in a few weeks the site was emptied out. No original buildings (except the generator building) were left standing. The generator building is now in use as a theater. And the name Vluchtoord lives on as the name of an industrial zone nearby. 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/vluchtoord

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/route-66-electric-vehicle-museum

“Study the past if you would divine the future.” These words of Confucius clearly resonate with Roderick Wilde, the owner of the world’s largest collection of antique electric vehicles. Dreaming of creating a museum devoted entirely to EVs, Wilde first displayed part of his collection at the 2014 Route 66 International Festival in Kingman, Arizona. The exhibit was so successful that it became a permanent museum inside Kingman’s historic Powerhouse.

Electric vehicles aren’t a 21st-century innovation, they date back to the 19th century. For a brief time in the early 1900s, they even competed with gasoline cars, before cheap fuel and limited battery technology rendered them impractical. For much of the 20th century, electric power was relegated to small vehicles like golf carts, mobility scooters, and “neighborhood electric vehicles.”

The museum’s collection includes those everyday models alongside celebrity-owned golf carts (including ones belonging to Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson), a 2008 Tesla Roadster, and a record-breaking electric race car.

Though the Powerhouse space currently displays only part of Wilde’s collection, the museum plans to expand into a larger downtown location in the future.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/route-66-electric-vehicle-museum

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/long-bar-singapore

The Long Bar, nestled in the corner of Raffles Hotel, is the birthplace of Singapore’s most iconic drink. The Singapore Sling is a heritage drink that reflects both Singapore’s colonial past and the secret rebellion of women who defied patriarchal expectations in the early 1900s.

Whilst the exact date of the bar’s establishment is unclear, the hotel was originally a privately owned beach house in the 1830s, only to become a hotel in 1878. After the passing of Dr. Charles Emerson, the founding owner, the Raffles Institution acquired the property as a boarding house. Immediately after its first lease expired, famous Armenian hotel tycoons the Sarkies Brothers took over the property. It was their acquisition that transformed Raffles into the iconic hotel it is today. The Raffles Hotel grew from a humble home with fewer than 10 bedrooms into a grand hotel with 75 rooms.

On a hot summer day, watching their husbands play cricket, the women of early 1900s colonial Singapore needed a drink that would quench their thirst. However, due to patriarchal standards, women were not allowed to drink alcohol publicly. Realising there’s a solution to this unnecessary problem, Ngiam Tong Boon, a Hainan man who worked his way to being a bar captain, created the Singapore Sling. A cocktail ingeniously disguised as fruit juice. As gin was his speciality, it naturally became the base of the cocktail. Other ingredients included in this delightful cocktail are pineapple juice, lime juice, curaçao, Bénédictine, grenadine, and cherry liqueur. The drink quickly gained popularity among women, then across Singapore, and ultimately became the international icon it is today.

The Long Bar continues its tradition in serving Singapore Slings, contributing 70% of the bar’s total revenue, earning SGD 15 million (USD 11 million) in annual sales. The staff make nearly 800 - 1200 Singapore Slings daily. Every 27th of June, to honour the cocktail’s legacy, the Long Bar hosts Singapore Sling Day. As a fun nod to the drink’s tropical roots, guests can exchange a pineapple for a free Singapore Sling. With a focus on sustainability, ingredients are delivered in reusable ecoTOTE containers, and biodegradable potato starch straws are used in place of plastic, significantly reducing waste.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/long-bar-singapore

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cemiterio-dos-prazeres

Founded in 1833 to address the high mortality of a cholera epidemic, the Prazeres Cemetery is located on the western side of the city and was built around a hermitage dedicated to Our Lady of Prazeres. It has a beautiful view over Alcântara Vale, the 25th of April Bridge, and the Tagus river.

In 1838 the Municipality of Lisbon requested the regulations and map of the Père Lachaise Cemetery from the city of Paris and, the following year, started to sell plots of land for the building of family mausoleums in Prazeres. The influence of the Père Lachaise style is evident in the cemetery's design.

Most of Lisbon's aristocratic families of the 19th century bought plots in the cemetery, choosing the best artists and architects of the time to create their family mausoleums, resulting in beautiful works, rich with symbolism and art.

Many important personalities are buried here, such as the poet Fernando Pessoa, the fado singer Amália Rodrigues, the writer Aquilino Ribeiro, the painter Maluda, the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi, the artist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, the painter Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, and Portugal's former President Mário Soares. 

Through the glass doors of the mausoleums one can see the funeral decorations, flowers, stained glass windows, altars with photographs of the deceased and images of saints and, also on display, coffins. Made of expensive woods, carved, painted or decorated, with metal handles with funerary symbols, some mausoleums are like time capsules from the past.

In this cemetery one can find the Palmela Mausoleum, considered the largest private mausoleum in Europe, with capacity for 200 remains, designed by the Italian architect Giuseppe Cinatti for Pedro de Sousa Holstein, the 1st Duque of Palmela. Built in 1848 and comprised of a pyramid on top of a cubic underground crypt, this mausoleum rises in a separated plot, with a path flanked by cypress trees and the graves of the Palmela family servants. Inside, sculpted works by Italian neo-classical artist Antonio Canova, French artist Anatole Calmels and the Portuguese artists António Teixeira Lopes and Vitor Bastos, make this mausoleum a must see work in European funerary art.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cemiterio-dos-prazeres

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/highwayman-higgins-house

On quiet, leafy Gaskell Avenue in Knutsford stand two white houses known today as Heath House. Their calm façades conceal the story of Edward “Squire” Higgins, a man who, according to local history, lived among the Cheshire gentry while secretly robbing them blind.

Parish records show that in 1757, Edward Higgins—described as a yeoman—married Catherine Birtles and settled in Knutsford. To his neighbors, he was every inch the gentleman: he rode with the local hunt, hosted soirées, and kept a fine home. But folklore insists that behind his polished manners, Higgins was a career highwayman whose “rent-collecting trips” were convenient covers for robbery.

Stories tell that he was once sentenced to transportation to the American colonies, escaped, and returned to England under a new guise. His luck, legend says, ran out in 1767 after a bungled burglary in Wales. Captured and condemned to hang, he supposedly forged his own pardon—but the deception failed.

The most enduring tale claims that, ever the schemer, Higgins sold his body to a London surgeon to provide for his family. When the dissection began, the astonished anatomists found him still alive.

Though it’s difficult to separate fact from embellishment, Heath House remains tied to his name—and to a story that Knutsfordians still whisper. On still nights, some say you can hear the faint tread of hooves on the old Chester Road—Squire Higgins, riding once more into the dark.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/highwayman-higgins-house