Frederic Edwin Church, The Natural Bridge, Virginia, 1852, oil on canvas, 28 x 23 in. The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Gift of Thomas Fortune Ryan. “Alexander von Humboldt and ...

Atlas Obscura on Slate is a blog about the world’s hidden wonders. Like us on Facebook and Tumblr, or follow us on Twitter. Today, in search of a way through a constantly expanding morass of ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland at the foot of the Chimborazo volcano, painting by Friedrich Georg Weitsch (1810).

His contemporaries considered Alexander von Humboldt the most famous man in the world after Napoleon, and Thomas Jefferson called him “one of the greatest ornaments of the age.” There are more plants, ...

“I’ll take Alexander von Humboldt for $500, Alex.” Katie Hondorf Celebrated for his vast knowledge, competitive nature, and humble personality, Ken Jennings is known to millions as a game show ...

Between the 1820s and 1850s Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most widely admired public figures in the world. In the U.S., the name of this international renowned scholar has vanished from the ...

Alexander von Humboldt sought to see and understand everything. By the time he drew his self-portrait at age 45, Humboldt had tutored himself in every branch of science, spent more than five years on ...

Packing his bags before his voyage on the Beagle in 1831, and knowing space was tight in his small cabin, Charles Darwin asked the captain if he could take Alexander von Humboldt’s “Personal Narrative ...

On September 14, 1869, 25,000 people marched through New York to celebrate the centennial of the birth of German scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Manhattan’s cobbled streets were lined with flags and ...

The history seems barely credible. A Prussian aristocrat, born in 1769, works for five years as a mine inspector. After his mother’s death, he uses a good chunk of the family fortune on a five-year ...

We have all read about famous scientists who helped to shape and steer our knowledge of the world. Back in the 19th century, there were the likes of Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, Thomas Edison, ...