Claire Coustier will chat about The History of Horror Fiction. Ms. Coustier’s talk will focus on Horror fiction, both supernatural and taken from the real world. She will discuss the genre from its earliest Gothic beginnings to current day and how horror fiction affects the reader as a possible alternate existence.
The Alameda Community Reads Program this year focuses on Speculative Fiction. This theme includes sub-types, …

Join Atlas Obscura at The Bone Room for a show-and-tell tour with the owner and founder, Ron Cauble. Explore the wonders of Berkeley’s venerable natural history store with the man who knows it best. Hear behind-the scenes stories and get a chance to ask all those questions we know you have.

RSVP here: http://obscuraday-berkeley.eventbrite.com/
Cost: Free

Obscura Day is an international celebration of unusual places taking place …

As part of the 2010 Atlas Obscura Day, Join Stanford University Hospital chief engineer Leander Robinson on a tour of one of the largest pneumatic tube networks in the world. Snaking through the medical center’s walls are four miles of tubes that shuttle specimens and paperwork around the facility at 18 miles per hour. Robinson will explain how this incredible system works.
Meet at the fountain …

Join us at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View for a demonstration of their amazing Victorian Computer, the Difference Engine #2. Regarded by many as the first example of a mechanical computer, the Difference Engine was only one of many inventions by the mathematician Charles Babbage. Due to his difficult personality and the enormous technical challenges involved in building his designs, the machines were …

Please join us for a reception at The Long Now Foundation Museum & Store from 5-7pm on March 20th for Atlas Obscura Day.
Several of the engineers and project staff working on the 10,000 Year Clock and Rosetta Project will be on hand to give explanations and demonstrations of artifacts in the Museum. We are walking distance from Musee Mecanique and our space in San Francisco …

Get ready for something different in March. Instead of the usual large lecture format, this month Ask a Scientist is partnering with the Exploratorium to bring you a small-scale, participatory event. The event will take place at Bazaar Cafe, with a 60-person limit. RSVP is required.
Tiny Science, Big Questions
If you use sunscreen, you’ve probably benefitted from the use of nanotechnology in medicine. But did you …