YouTubeGoose Creek Tower as seen from above. There’s a whimsical structure in Alaska that locals have taken to calling the “Dr. Seuss House.” Like something Seussian, it rises an impossible distance into the sky, and looks like mismatched houses stacked together. But the house, officially called Goose Creek Tower, is very real. Located in Talkeetna, Alaska, the house is 185 feet high and was built by Phillip Weidner, an Anchorage attorney who proudly calls the structure his “poem to the sky.” Weidner has not yet completed the project, but reportedly hopes to one day use it as a home for his family. In the meantime, it’s become one of the strangest sites in Alaska, a colorful oddity people can enjoy as they pass along nearby roads. The Inspiration Behind Goose Creek Tower Phillip Weidner didn’t intend to build such a strange structure – at least not in the beginning. At first, the Anchorage-based attorney envisioned constructing a two-story cabin, nothing too fancy. YouTubePhillip Weidner stands in his unfinished tower. “Originally I was going to build a 40×40 scribed log cabin, which we built,” Weidner told Exploring The Obscure in a rare interview in 2015. But Weidner had always been interested in construction. As Vice reported in 2016, he’d graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968 with degrees in Industrial Management and Electrical Engineering. Though Weidner had gone on to study law at Harvard, he still had an engineer’s mind. And he applied it to his house in Talkeetna. After building the original structure, alongside a concrete foundation and basement, Weidner realized that he could use 12 by 12 uprights — which he called the “eight sisters” — to build his home even higher. “I put a house on top of a house, and I liked that,” Weidner told Exploring The Obscure. “So I just kept going and I just kept going.” YouTubeGoose Creek Tower as seen on a wintery day. The house began to take on a teetering, cartoonish look, which led some to dub it the “Dr. Seuss House.” But Weidner doesn’t like the nickname. “It’s not a Dr. Seuss house, because Dr. Seuss is fantasy and this is real,” he stated. “I’ve never had any permission from Dr. Seuss to refer to him and I don’t think people should be referring to that.” Weidner called his dream house Goose Creek Tower. So what’s it like? What The ‘Dr. Seuss House’ Is Like Today, Goose Creek Tower is a fantastic mix of ladders, staircases, and decks which look across a stunning vista of Alaskan wilderness. “There’s eight decks you can walk completely around,” Weidner told Exploring The Obscure. “So at each level of the eight, including the very top, you can walk around 360 degrees.” From this perspective, visitors to Goose Creek Tower would find a fantastic panorama. Depending on how you count the house’s staircases, it has between 14 and 17 stories, and stands 185 feet tall. YouTubeA close-up of Goose Creek Tower, also known as the Dr. Seuss House for its whimsical design. Weidner purportedly would have made it even higher, but risked scraping federal airspace, which begins at 200 feet. Why build Goose Creek Tower so high? Based on his interview, Weidner seems to have enjoyed the creative challenge of building a supertall house. But one theory suggests that he wanted a view of Denali, and kept building until he had had a good one. No matter the motivation for the ambitious project, Goose Creek Tower has taken a considerable amount of time to complete. In fact, it still isn’t done. Though passionate, Weidner’s career as an attorney in Anchorage left him little time to work on the project over the past several decades. The Plans For Goose Creek Tower While the skeleton of Goose Creek Tower is complete, it’s still missing windows and doors. There’s also a lack of furniture and decoration, and decks without safety measures like railings. YouTubeA look inside one of the many unfinished rooms of the tower. Over time, the tower even became the target of trespassers, some of who damaged or defaced it. But Phillip Weidner remains optimistic about the future of Goose Creek Tower — both for himself and for those who come after him. “I plan for it to stand 1,000 years,” he said. “So we’ll see what people do with it.” In the more near future, Weidner wants Goose Creek Tower to be a place for his family; a place where they can enjoy the stunning landscape, the Northern Lights, and views of Denali and other mountains in the distance. “I’m going to primarily use it for my family,” he said. “I have children and grandchildren and it’s surrounded by 500 acres of homestead… ” FacebookGoose Creek Tower as seen from below. The very top room, he continued, the “the octagon room,” offers an especially impressive view of the surrounding area. There, Weidner hopes to spend his days writing poetry. He also hopes to install railings above the octagon room where the house’s “mast” is, so that people can enjoy an especially stunning panorama of the landscape. Though Goose Creek Tower has become known as the Dr. Seuss House, Weidner sees it as a much more romantic, and majestic, piece of architecture. He calls the stunning 185-foot tower his “poem to the sky.” And while the house isn’t open for visitors, Goose Creek Tower is still visible to the public from the nearby road. From that perspective, it’s still a stunning, surprising, truly Seussian sight: a series of cabins stacked on top of each other. But the view from the road is surely nothing like the view from Goose Creek Tower’s top floor, with its 360-degree view of the landscape. That perspective, however, is saved for Phillip Weidner, his family, and whoever else might be around in 1,000 years. After reading about the fantastical Goose Creek Tower in Alaska, also known as the Dr. Seuss House, discover the whimsical works of architect Antoni Gaudí. Then, take a look at these 35 photos of the architectural style people love to hate, brutalism. The post The Whimsical Story Of Goose Creek Tower, The Alaskan Curiosity Known As The ‘Dr. Seuss House’ appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Throughout maritime history, certain ships have become legends, their tales woven into the fabric of seafaring lore. These vessels are renowned not only for their design and voyages but also for the tragedies, mysteries, and heroic feats associated with them. Their stories continue to captivate and resonate, serving as poignant reminders of the unpredictable and ...

Eight parchment pages bound in furry sealskin recently donated to the National Library of Norway may be the oldest book in Norway. For decades the book was at the Hagenes farm in Bergen, passed down through the generations, until the family decided to give it to the National Library earlier this year. According to family lore, the manuscript originated in a monastery in Western Norway. Library conservators examined the book for condition issues, and quickly realized that it was unique. It is a book of religious songs that dates at least to the 13th century and may be even older. Norway was fully Christianized by 1200, with cathedrals, parish churches and monasteries. They had strong ties to Christian hierarchies and communities elsewhere in Europe. There used to more pages, but only eight survive to the present. Pages are made of calf skin, which was frequently used to make parchment, but the sealskin is much rarer binding. Even rarer is for there to be surviving fur on the skin. Samples of the binding and parchment have been taken for protein and DNA analysis to confirm the animal origins. “With DNA we can determine the age of the materials, which seal species was used for the cover, and where the animal that became the parchment lived,” says [conservator Chiara] Palandri. Some seals swim far, others stay in one area. If the cover is from a specific seal species and the calf turns out to have grown up in Norway, then the origin becomes clear. Library conservators reached out to experts in other countries for input. A French binding expert pointed to the sealskin as evidence that the book was produced in a Nordic country if not in Norway itself. The way the Latin in written also points to the book having been locally made. The Latin script has a rustic, simple quality. This was not the elegant hand of someone making books for the elite, but for practical usage. The songs in the book are sequences, songs that were sung to celebrate a particular saint or feast/holy days on the ecclesiastical calendar. They would be sung by a cantor or the priest during mass. Norway embraced the Reformation, becoming Protestant by 1537. Old Latin books were no longer deemed of value, and with the advent of the printing press, manuscripts were cannibalized to use their parchments as premium bindings for printed volumes. “A lot of our oldest cultural heritage has not been preserved,” says [head of the Visual Media and Conservation section at the National Library Arthur] Tennøe. That makes the little book that has now arrived at the National Library all the more valuable. “We have so few writings from this period, and our research often relies on fragments of manuscripts. When we heard that several handwritten pages had come in, still in their original binding, it was unbelievable. This will greatly expand our knowledge base,” says [University of Bergen professor of medieval Latin Åslaug ]Ommundsen. She especially appreciates that it appears to be a book meant for use. “Early modern book collectors were usually interested in luxurious works with gold, beautiful illustrations, or rare texts. This book feels incredibly authentic. It’s the kind of thing a priest or cantor would carry to use in church,” says Ommundsen. “A simple practical book like this would not always catch a collector’s eye. That’s why there aren’t many of them from this period, not even in the rest of Europe,” she says.

1838 - Victor Hugo's tragic play "Ruy Blas" premieres in Paris 1920 - Rupert Bear by illustrator Mary Tourtel first appears in the Daily Express newspaper in the UK 1953 - Salazar's party wins all parliamentary seats in Portugal 1972 - Stock Exchange Tower, the new 26-story home of the London Stock Exchange opened by Queen Elizabeth II 1974 - British peer the Earl of Lucan disappears and is never seen again after his nanny is found murdered in London 1981 - Christian Democrats looses Belgium parliamentary election 2008 - John Key leads the National Party to victory in New Zealand's general election, defeating Prime Minister Helen Clark and her Labour-led coalition after nine years government 2018 - Qatar delivers $15 million in cash to pay civil servants in Gaza after earlier sending fuel to increase electricity from 4 to 8 hours a day More Historical Events »

Library of CongressBlack Southerners hoped to find a better life in the West – but the journey wasn’t easy The Civil War ended slavery in the United States. But by 1877, federal policies put in place to protect newly freed Black Americans in the South were threatened by the end of Reconstruction. So thousands of Black people, dubbed Exodusters, decided to leave the region entirely. Many of them made their way to Kansas, which was both easily accessible from the South, and the one-time home of the famous abolitionist John Brown. During the Great Exodus of 1879, some 20,000 Exodusters migrated to Kansas in search of a better life. But the West was not always a welcoming place, and many Exodusters didn’t find the “promised land” they had been hoping for. Steamboat captains refused to carry Black passengers up the Mississippi River, white communities were often unwelcoming or outright hostile, and there was little support for the Exodusters once they arrived. Yet many of them settled in Kansas, even establishing new, all-Black towns. The Events That Led To the Great Exodus Of 1879 After the Civil War ended in 1865, life dramatically transformed for Black Americans across the nation. Slavery was abolished, and the policies of the Reconstruction era were put into place to protect Black Americans’ rights. But things were far from ideal. Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, a man who had escaped slavery before the Civil War and later made his living as a carpenter in Nashville, Tennessee, witnessed the violence of the Reconstruction era first-hand. According to Tennessee State University, he and other freedman in the city despaired about poverty and crowded conditions, racial violence perpetrated by whites, and the defeat of the Republic ticket in 1869. Wikimedia CommonsPap Singleton guided hundreds of Black Southerners to Kansas, calling himself “Moses of the Colored Exodus.” “These men would tell all their grievances to me in Tennessee – the sorrows of their heart,” Singleton later testified before the Senate in 1880. Singleton and others believed that Black Americans should leave the South entirely. Land in Tennessee was too expensive, so, in the early 1870s, they began to survey real estate in nearby Kansas. In 1873, Singleton led a group of 300 settlers to Kansas to create “Singleton’s Colony.” In 1875, at a “colored people’s convention” in Nashville, Singleton championed Black migration out of the South and declared himself a “Moses of the Colored Exodus.” And in 1877, Singleton helped establish the all-Black settlement of Nicodemus, Kansas. Library of CongressNicodemus became one of the most successful Exoduster colonies in Kansas. That same year, Reconstruction ended with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South. Southern states quickly began to institute “Black Codes” which were designed to reinforce segregation, limit Black men’s right to vote, and maintain white supremacy in the region. This triggered the Great Exodus of 1879, and the mass migration of tens of thousands of so-called Exodusters. The Migration Of The Exodusters Who were the Exodusters of the Great Exodus of 1879? As Andrew Pollard, a former state senator from Mississippi who joined the Exodusters put it, they were “refugees, fleeing from bondage.” Reverend W.D. Lynch, who worked closely with Exodusters, similarly stated that “the mainspring of all this exodus movement [came from the idea that] slavery is not dead, but sleeping in disguise, as if it were a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Library of CongressBlack families lined the Mississippi River, as shown in an 1879 engraving of a scene in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Exodusters made their way west, mostly to Kansas, for several reasons. First of all, Kansas was easily accessible from the South. Second, the Homestead Act of 1862 had promised migrants 160 acres of cheap land, provided that they farmed it for five years. And third, Kansas held a special place for many Black Americans. Not only had Singleton marketed it as “Sunny Kansas,” a promised land, but it was also the home of the abolitionist John Brown. “I am very anxious to reach your state, not just because of the great race now made for it but because of the sacredness of her soil washed by the blood of humanitarians for the cause of Black freedom,” wrote a Black Louisianan to the governor of Kansas. Public DomainAbolitionist John Brown in 1846. By the thousands, Exodusters began heading west, many encouraged by false rumors that the government would pay for their transportation. According to one white eyewitness, the banks of the Mississippi River were soon “covered with colored people and their little store of worldly goods . . . and families who seem to think that anywhere is better than here.” Yet Kansas did not prove to be the “land of opportunity” that many had hoped for, as Exodusters faced harsh conditions, disease, and discrimination. Riverboats often passed them by completely. White mayors told them not to come at all. St. Louis mayor Henry Overstolz even sent a telegram that read: “It is my duty to warn the colored people against coming to the city without money to support themselves and to pay their way West. The City of St. Louis is totally unable to support them or to furnish them means of reaching their destination. There are no opportunities of obtaining employment here at present, much suffering and destitution must certainly be endured by colored people coming to this city without money or friends.” National ArchivesFour Exodusters from Tennessee, who made their way to Kansas during the Great Exodus of 1879. But Black leaders like Charlton Tandy organized relief efforts in St. Louis to support the Exodusters, as did local clergy and business leaders. However, though they collected food and money, lack of shelter for the migrants became a huge issue. And yet the Exodusters continued to flee the South. Reactions to the Exoduster Migration The Great Exodus of 1879 divided Black Americans. Black ministers in the South regaled their congregations with tales of Moses escaping from Egypt, encouraging families to take the journey. “Conductors” like Singleton led families west. And nearly 100,000 Black people signed a petition created by the “Colonization Council” stating they wished to leave the South. However, some Black leaders like Frederick Douglass took the opposite approach. They warned that abandoning the South would harm those left behind. Douglass hoped that white Southerners would recognize the value of Black Americans and stop terrorizing them. He called emigration movements like Singleton’s “delusional and a scam.” National Archives and Records AdministrationTwins Elsie and Lela Scott, born to Exodusters in Kansas in 1889. Meanwhile, white Southerners also tried to block Exodusters from leaving because they depended on the cheap labor provided by Black Americans. Those considering migration found themselves assaulted, arrested, and imprisoned. Intimidation scared countless more from taking steps to leave. And by the beginning of 1880, the Great Exodus had slowed to a trickle. But in spite of the challenges, thousands of Exodusters made the journey. Many stayed in Kansas; Between the census years of 1870 and 1880, Kansas’s Black population skyrocketed from around 16,000 to over 43,000. “[The Great Exodus] was the first major instance of African Americans… ‘voting with their feet,’ demonstrating their discontent with the South,” Damani Davis, reference archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), told National Geographic in 2024. Exodusters also continued their journey west, settling in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and other western states. And though the Great Exodus of 1879 was short-lived, it ultimately marked the beginning of a much larger movement. As violence and terror continued to haunt Black Americans in the South, thousands would chose to leave home in search of a better life. After reading about the Exodusters and the Great Exodus of 1879, discover the stories of Black soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Or, learn about the Buffalo Soldiers, the Black rangers who patrolled the Wild West. The post The Story Of The Exodusters, The Black Americans Who Fled The South For Kansas During The ‘Great Exodus Of 1879’ appeared first on All That's Interesting.