1

Bannerman Castle, New York

Image: Erim Berk Benli

This crumbling fortress sits on a tiny island in the Hudson River, looking like something straight out of a Gothic novel . Francis Bannerman VI built it in 1901 to store his surplus military weapons because, apparently, his wife refused to keep thousands of munitions in the basement anymore.

The castle partially exploded in 1920 when some gunpowder got a little too excited, and it's been slowly deteriorating ever since. You can kayak out to the island or take a boat tour to see the ruins up close, where nature is slowly reclaiming the stone walls in a beautiful, apocalyptic sort of way.

2

Fonthill Castle, Pennsylvania

Image: Leyla M

Henry Mercer built this concrete monstrosity between 1908 and 1912. The guy was obsessed with tiles and built his castle as a showcase for his handmade ceramic collection , resulting in 44 rooms, 32 stairwells, and 18 fireplaces.

The castle has no blueprints because Mercer apparently just made it up as he went along, adding rooms and towers whenever the mood struck.

3

Gillette Castle, Connecticut

Image: Darya Tryfanava

William Gillette, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes on stage, built this eccentric castle in the 1910s and filled it with spy mirrors, secret doors, and wooden locks he carved himself . The place looks like someone dropped a medieval fortress into a blender with a detective novel.

The castle has 47 doors, none of which work like normal doors should, because Gillette apparently thought regular doorknobs were for boring people. Now it's a state park where you can wander through rooms designed by someone who clearly never met a quirk he didn't like.

4

Boldt Castle, New York

Image: Pascal Bernardon

George Boldt started building this Rhineland-style castle in 1900 as a Valentine's Day gift for his wife Louise . Then she died suddenly in 1904, and he immediately halted construction and never returned, leaving behind a monument to heartbreak on Heart Island in the Thousand Islands.

The castle sat abandoned for 73 years until the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority took it over and began restoration. Today you can visit via ferry and explore the grand halls, the powerhouse, and the perfectly intact bowling alley.

5

Castello di Amorosa, California

Image: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

This one's a bit of a cheat since it was built in 2007, but it's so ridiculously authentic that it deserves a spot . Winemaker Dario Sattui spent 14 years and $40 million building a 13th-century Tuscan castle in Napa Valley, complete with a moat, drawbridge, and torture chamber, because apparently wine tastings needed more medieval flair.

The castle used 8,000 tons of hand-chiseled stone and over a million antique bricks imported from Europe. You can tour the dungeons, great hall, and of course, taste wine in a setting that makes you feel like you should be wearing chainmail instead of your Costco polo shirt.

6

Belvedere Castle, New York

Image: Birmingham Museum Trust

Perched on Vista Rock in Central Park, this miniature castle was built in 1869 as a Victorian folly —basically an expensive decoration that serves no practical purpose. It's now home to the Henry Luce Nature Observatory and offers panoramic views of the park, which is considerably more useful than its original job of just looking pretty.

The castle got a major renovation in the 1980s after decades of neglect left it looking more "haunted" than "enchanting." Today it's one of Central Park's most popular spots.

7

Bishop Castle, Colorado

Image: Art Institute of Chicago

Jim Bishop started building this castle by himself in 1969 and worked on it for over 55 years until his death in 2024 . The hand-built stone structure rises 160 feet into the Colorado sky and includes towers, walkways, and a dragon that breathes actual fire—all constructed by one incredibly dedicated (and possibly slightly unhinged) man.

There are no railings on many of the precarious walkways because Bishop didn't believe in them. Admission is still free, though you might want to update your will before climbing to the top of the tallest tower, where the views are spectacular, and the safety regulations remain charmingly absent.

8

Searles Castle, Massachusetts

Image: John Phelan

Edward Searles built this castle in 1888 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, creating a 40-room mansion that combined Romanesque and Gothic styles into something that can only be described as "aggressively architectural." The castle features stained glass windows, carved woodwork, and enough turrets to repel a small army.

After changing hands several times, the castle is now home to the John Dewey Academy. You can't tour the interior since it's a school, but you can admire the exterior and imagine what it's like to do algebra homework in a building that looks like it should contain dragons.

9

Kip's Castle, New Jersey

Image: Birmingham Museum Trust

This English Tudor-style castle was built in 1902 by textile businessman Frederic Kip on a mountain in Montclair . The castle features towers, battlements, and spectacular views of Manhattan, proving that even early 1900s commuters wanted homes with dramatic flair and manageable drive times.

The castle has been through various owners and purposes, including a brief stint as a Prohibition-era speakeasy, because apparently nothing says "secret illegal bar" like a castle. Today it's used for private events, but the grounds are part of a county park where you can hike around and pretend you're visiting distant relatives who happen to be slightly eccentric nobility.

10

Chateau Laroche (Loveland Castle), Ohio

Image: ConlonTT

Harry Andrews started building this medieval castle in 1929 using stones from the Little Miami River , spending over 50 years creating his dream fortress. Andrews was inspired by his time in Europe during World War I and decided Ohio needed more castles, which is hard to argue with.

He built most of it himself using ancient techniques, including a primitive pulley system and sheer determination. Today, the castle is maintained by the Knights of the Golden Trail, a Boy Scout-like organization Andrews founded. You can tour the castle for a few bucks and marvel at what one man with too much time and enough river rocks can accomplish.

1

There's an unexplained billion-year gap

Look closely at the canyon walls, and you'll notice something strange: a clean, sharp line where ancient rock simply stops, and a much younger layer begins directly above it.

This geological puzzle is called the "Great Unconformity," and it represents over a billion years of rock layers that are simply absent , as though that stretch of time never happened. In some spots, rock dated 1.8 billion years old sits directly beneath rock that is only 520 million years old. Where did the missing billion years go?

The leading theory involves the violent breakup of an ancient supercontinent, but scientists are still piecing it together.

2

During the Cold War, it hid a nuclear fallout shelter

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the U.S. government converted part of the Grand Canyon Caverns into a fallout shelter. This dry cave system, more than 200 feet underground, was stocked with enough food and water to sustain 2,000 people. Naturally, it was never occupied, and the supplies were never used.

The caverns have since been transformed into a tourist attraction, with organized tours winding through the same underground chambers that were once intended as a refuge from nuclear war. You can even book a night's stay there.

3

The Federal Aviation Administration was founded after a crash over the canyon

In 1956, two commercial passenger planes collided in midair over the eastern Grand Canyon, killing all 128 people on board both crafts. Rescue teams struggled to reach the wreckage deep inside the canyon, and the extreme heat of the crash had caused the planes' aluminum to fuse with the bedrock. There were no survivors.

The disaster exposed a terrifying truth: the U.S. air traffic control system was dangerously outdated, relying on pilots' visual estimates and rough guesswork from controllers , with no way to separate fast-moving aircraft from slow ones, or instrument-flying planes from those navigating by sight. Congress responded by passing legislation that created both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board.

4

A hoax suggested that an Egyptian civilization had lived there

In 1909, the Arizona Gazette reported that an explorer named G. E. Kinkaid had discovered a vast underground citadel inside the canyon, filled with artifacts linked to ancient Egyptian civilization. He even claimed the expedition had been funded by the Smithsonian.

This story described hieroglyphics on the walls, mummies in the chambers, and relics pointing to a direct connection with the Egypt of the pharaohs. It was incredibly detailed, and it was, of course, a hoax. No evidence for any of Kinkaid's claims ever surfaced.

5

Fewer than 100 people have ever hiked its full length

Among the few people who have completed the through-hike of the Grand Canyon is Jen Hogan, the first woman to accomplish it, finishing her journey in 2021–2022.

It’s a full 800-mile length below the rim. The route involves extreme heat, flash floods, near-impassable areas, and stretches with no water or trail whatsoever. Around 60 or 70 people have reportedly accomplished it. This makes it one of the most exclusive feats on Earth.

6

The Grand Canyon's rocks predate dinosaurs entirely

Visitors scanning the canyon walls for fossils are often surprised to learn they won't find any dinosaur bones here. The rock layers of the Grand Canyon are simply older than dinosaurs. This fact alone can be shocking: staring at its walls means staring at marine fossils from as far back as 1.2 billion years ago. Some of its caves hold the remains of ancient mammals. The canyon is a window into a world that existed long before the dinosaurs, when the land that is now Arizona lay beneath a shallow sea.

7

The park is bigger than Rhode Island

Numbers alone rarely capture the Grand Canyon's scale, so here's a different approach. Rhode Island covers about 1,214 square miles, and the Grand Canyon National Park spans 1,904 square miles.

The canyon's depth exceeds four Empire State Buildings (which is 1,454 feet) stacked on top of one another. That’s 6,093 feet at its deepest point.

8

But it's not the deepest canyon on Earth

For all its grandeur, the Grand Canyon does not hold the depth record. Pictured above, the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in Tibet, China, plunges to 17,567 feet, which is nearly three times deeper. Carved by the Yarlung Tsangpo River as it cuts through the eastern Himalayas, that canyon is so remote and extreme that it remained largely uncharted until the late 20th century.

9

It is home to a pink rattlesnake found nowhere else on Earth

The Grand Canyon Pink Rattlesnake has a pinkish-red coloring that matches the canyon's own distinctive rock walls so closely that it's nearly invisible. It is found nowhere else in the world. Officially classified as Crotalus oreganus abyssus , it has darker diamond-shaped markings along its back that deepen the camouflage further.

10

There's a village at the bottom: Supai Village

For over 1,000 years, the remote village of Supai has been home to the Havasupai Tribe, the People of the Blue-Green Waters. It is located an eight-mile hike from the rim, but sits roughly 3,000 feet deep inside the Grand Canyon.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has called it the most remote community in the contiguous United States, and it has no automobiles and no road access. The only ways in are on foot, by mule, or by helicopter. It is also the only place in the United States where the postal service still delivers mail by mule train.

1

George Wilson (1830): The man who refused his own pardon

In 1829, George Wilson and his accomplice James Porter robbed a U.S. mail carrier in Pennsylvania. Both were convicted in May 1830 on six counts, including putting the carrier's life in jeopardy, and sentenced to hang within weeks.

Porter was executed on schedule. But Wilson's influential friends petitioned President Andrew Jackson, who granted Wilson a formal pardon in June 1830, saving him from the gallows. Then Wilson did something that had never happened before in American history: he refused it.

The case was so unprecedented that it reached the Supreme Court in 1833, housed at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., as illustrated above. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the pardon couldn’t be valid without acceptance. However, Wilson was never executed. He served his prison sentence and was eventually pardoned a second time by President Martin Van Buren in 1841.

2

Richard Nixon (1974): The only president ever pardoned

On the night of June 17, 1972, five operatives were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Investigations revealed that President Richard Nixon had known about the cover-up and actively participated in it. Facing near-certain impeachment, Nixon became the only U.S. president ever to resign from office, stepping down in 1974.

Just 30 days later, his successor Gerald Ford announced from the Oval Office that he was granting Nixon "a full, free, and absolute pardon" for all offenses against the United States committed between 1969 and 1974. No charges had even been filed. The decision was widely condemned. Many historians believe it cost Ford the 1976 presidential election to Jimmy Carter. Nixon accepted the pardon but never admitted criminal guilt, expressing only "regret" for how he had handled the situation.

3

Iva Toguri D'Aquino (1977): The woman they called "Tokyo Rose"

Iva Toguri D'Aquino was a Los Angeles-born 25-year-old visiting a sick relative in Japan when the attack on Pearl Harbor stranded her there in December 1941. The Japanese government declared her an enemy alien and coerced her into broadcasting on Radio Tokyo's Zero Hour program.

This was a Japanese psychological warfare strategy that utilized English-speaking women, eventually all referred to collectively as " Tokyo Rose," to broadcast demoralizing messages intended to weaken Allied troop morale. After Japan's surrender, journalists identified Toguri as one of the voices.

A jury convicted her of treason in 1949, and she was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She served six years. After a 1976 CBS 60 Minutes segment revealed key witnesses had lied, President Gerald Ford granted her a full and unconditional pardon in 1977, on his final day in office. It remains the only presidential pardon ever granted for a treason conviction in U.S. history.

4

Jack Johnson (2018): A champion pardoned 72 years after his death

John Arthur "Jack" Johnson was the first Black man ever to hold the world heavyweight boxing championship. In May 1913, a jury convicted him under the Mann Act (a federal law against transporting women across state lines for "immoral purposes") for traveling with his white girlfriend, whom he had since married.

Johnson skipped bail, fled to Canada, and fought two world title defenses in Paris before losing the belt in Havana in 1915. He surrendered to U.S. authorities in 1920 and served nearly a year in Kansas. He died in a car crash at age 68 in North Carolina in 1946.

After years of bipartisan lobbying and a call from actor Sylvester Stallone, President Trump signed Johnson's posthumous pardon in the Oval Office in 2018, 105 years after the conviction.

5

Samuel Mudd (1869): The doctor who set the assassin's leg

Hours after John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., one April night in 1865, Booth arrived at the Maryland farm of Dr. Samuel Mudd with a broken leg.

Mudd set the fracture and gave Booth shelter. When investigators linked Mudd to Booth, including through prior meetings in 1864, he was tried by a military commission and convicted of conspiracy. Sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor, he was sent to Fort Jefferson, a remote military prison on an island 70 miles west of Key West, Florida.

In 1867, a deadly yellow fever outbreak killed the prison's doctor. Mudd stepped in, treating patients and helping contain the epidemic. A petition signed by 299 enlisted men and officers was sent to President Andrew Johnson praising Mudd's courage. Johnson granted Mudd a full and unconditional pardon in 1869. Mudd was released on March 8 and returned to his Maryland farm. His conviction was never overturned; the pardon freed him, but the guilty verdict stood.

6

Marc Rich (2001): A fugitive pardoned on the last day

Marc Rich was a billionaire commodities trader indicted in 1983 on 65 counts, including tax evasion, wire fraud, and trading oil with Iran during the 1979–1981 hostage crisis. Before facing trial, Rich fled to Switzerland, where he remained a fugitive from U.S. justice for 17 years.

On January 20, 2001, his very last day in office, President Bill Clinton granted Rich a full pardon, bypassing the standard Justice Department review process. T he pardon ignited one of the biggest controversies of Clinton's presidency. Rich's ex-wife Denise had donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes and the Clinton Presidential Library.

A federal investigation led by prosecutor Mary Jo White was launched but ultimately found no criminal wrongdoing by Clinton. Clinton's own Justice Department had recommended against the pardon. Rich died in Switzerland in June 2013 at the age of 78, never having returned to the United States.

7

Patty Hearst (2001): From kidnapped heiress to bank robber

Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, in 1974. She was taken by a radical militant group called the Symbionese Liberation Army.

After weeks in captivity, in which she was kept in a closet, blindfolded, she appeared in a bank surveillance video holding a rifle and participating in the robbery of a bank in San Francisco. She was captured in September 1975. Her defense argued she had been brainwashed and acted under duress. A jury rejected that argument, and she was convicted of bank robbery in 1976 and sentenced to 7 years.

President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence in 1979 after she had served approximately 22 months. She was released and married her former bodyguard. In January 2001, President Bill Clinton granted her a full pardon in the final hours of his presidency.

8

Vietnam Draft Evaders (1977): The biggest blanket pardon in U.S. history

On his first full day as president in 1977, Jimmy Carter signed Proclamation 4483, granting an unconditional pardon to all Americans who had violated the Military Selective Service Act in the span of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The government estimated that approximately 210,000 men had been formally accused of draft violations , while hundreds of thousands more had never been charged. Many had fled to other countries, roughly 90% to Canada, where they had been welcomed as legal immigrants.

Carter had campaigned openly on the promise, calling it necessary to heal a nation still divided by the war. The pardon did not extend to military deserters. Veterans' organizations were furious. Despite the backlash, an estimated 50,000 of those eligible chose to remain in Canada permanently, never returning home.

9

Scooter Libby (2007 / 2018): The spy scandal at the heart of the White House

Lewis "Scooter" Libby served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney during the George W. Bush administration. In 2003, the identity of Valerie Plame (a covert CIA officer) was leaked to journalists, apparently in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had publicly challenged the administration's case for the Iraq War.

Though Libby was not charged with the leak itself, he was convicted in 2007 of four felony counts: obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and making false statements to the FBI. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000. Later that same year, President Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence, calling it "excessive," but left the conviction, fine, and probation intact; he declined to grant a full pardon. Eleven years later, in 2018, President Donald Trump issued a full pardon, completely wiping Libby's record clean.

10

Roger Clinton (2001): The president's half-brother

Roger Clinton is the younger half-brother of President Bill Clinton. Roger was given the Secret Service code name "Headache" during his brother's administration. In 1984, Arkansas state police ran an undercover sting operation that caught Roger selling illegal drugs to an informant. He pleaded guilty in 1985 to charges of conspiracy to distribute drugs and served approximately one year in federal prison, completing his sentence in 1986.

14 years later, on his last day in office, President Clinton granted Roger a full pardon, clearing his criminal record. The pardon drew relatively little public outrage compared to the Marc Rich case.