Fantasy worlds

Atlantis was a real estate scam – and 9 more crazy fictional worlds

Image: Artem Sapegin

Fiction has given us worlds beyond comprehension—realms where logic collapses, physics defies expectation, and imagination reigns supreme. From cities in the sky to entire worlds beneath our own, some of these fictional places have captivated us since their creation. Join us on a fantastical journey through some of the quirkiest and most head-scratching of these imagined worlds.

Image: Alex Muromtsev

Lewis Carroll’s 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland conjured a world where words, rules, and even size lose all meaning. Time halts at tea parties, cats vanish mid-sentence, and logic itself becomes nonsense.

Carroll, a mathematician and Oxford don, infused what at first glance seems like just a children’s story with riddles, puns, and complex paradoxes. The book’s wordplay critiques Victorian social norms while subtly introducing mathematical and logical concepts.

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A technicolor realm of talking animals, magical shoes, and wicked witches, L. Frank Baum’s 1900 classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz reshaped children’s literature forever. Baum’s storytelling introduced a vivid fantasy world filled with unique characters, whimsical landscapes, and moral lessons that appealed to both children and adults.

Characters like the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion have become iconic figures in American popular culture for generations. The 1939 MGM film starring Judy Garland cemented the book’s imagery, leaving an enduring influence on film, theater, and the broader cultural imagination.

Image: Andrew Sharples

An island where no one grows up and pirates battle endlessly, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan debuted in 1904 and quickly became a lasting symbol of escapism. Barrie first introduced the character in a 1902 play before expanding the story into his 1911 novel, embedding themes of adventure, imagination, and the tension between childhood and adulthood.

Psychologists and literary scholars often reference Neverland as an allegory for arrested development, representing the desire to remain permanently in a state of innocence and freedom.

Image: Hari Nandakumar

A wardrobe that opens to another world, talking lions, and epic battles of good versus evil—C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia (first published in 1950) created a richly imagined fantasy universe.

Drawing on Christian allegory, classical mythology, and his own experiences in World War I, Lewis crafted seven novels that explore courage, faith, and moral growth through fantastical adventures. The series has had a profound cultural impact, inspiring stage adaptations, radio dramas, films, and countless illustrated editions.

Image: Etienne Desclides

A floating island of science, invention, and eccentric rulers, Laputa appears in Jonathan Swift’s 1726 Gulliver’s Travels. The island hovers in the sky, controlled by magnets, and is inhabited by scholars obsessed with abstract mathematics, music, and astronomy—often to the detriment of practical life below.

Swift, a master of satire, used Laputa to lampoon the scientific and political elite of his time, highlighting their detachment from practical, everyday concerns. Its striking imagery has also had a lasting impact on the depiction of futuristic societies and utopian civilizations.

Image: Andres Iga

Rolling hills, cozy hobbit holes, and a peaceful, pastoral life—J.R.R. Tolkien’s Shire, introduced in The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), embodies an idyllic, pre-industrial England beneath the veneer of a fantasy world.

Tolkien, a scholar of languages and mythology, infused the Shire with intricate customs, poetry, and festivals, aiming to create a mythology for England that he felt was missing—one that celebrated simplicity, community, and harmony with nature.

Image: Derek Owens

A hidden plateau where dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures survive, Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel The Lost World introduced readers to a thrilling world untouched by time. Doyle’s story follows Professor Challenger and his expedition as they encounter giant reptiles, ape-men, and other wonders on a remote South American plateau, blending adventure with early paleontological speculation.

Doyle was likely inspired by Mount Roraima, a flat-topped plateau in South America’s Guiana Highlands. Its sheer cliffs, isolated ecosystem, and mysterious cloud-covered summit provided a tangible model for the novel’s prehistoric world.

Image: Mikhail Preobrazhenskiy

A legendary sunken city, Atlantis was first described by Plato in his dialogues around 360 BCE. According to Plato, Atlantis was a powerful and advanced civilization that sank beneath the ocean in a single day and night of catastrophic events, serving as a cautionary tale about hubris and moral decline.

Despite its origin as a philosophical example, many scholars believe Atlantis was inspired by the real-life Minoan civilization on Crete. The Minoans were an advanced maritime society whose cities, such as Knossos, were eventually devastated by natural disasters, including the volcanic eruption of Thera (Santorini) and subsequent tsunamis.

Image: Yoshihiro

A hollow Earth filled with prehistoric creatures and lost civilizations, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar (1914) imagines a world at the center of the planet, lit by an eternal inner sun. The series follows David Innes and his adventures among tribes of humans, dinosaurs, and other strange beings, blending swashbuckling action with imaginative geography.

Burroughs drew inspiration from the era’s fascination with unexplored frontiers and the Hollow Earth theories popular in the 19th century. Pellucidar has influenced later science fiction and adventure literature, inspiring works that explore hidden worlds and isolated ecosystems.

Image: martin bennie

A mysterious Scottish village that appears for only one day every hundred years, the legend of Brigadoon draws on deep-rooted folklore from the Scottish Highlands. The tale likely originates from myths of fairy-haunted glens and hidden villages, where magic protected communities from outsiders and the passage of time.

Such stories often emphasized the danger and allure of the supernatural, reflecting local beliefs about enchanted landscapes and the thin boundary between the human and fairy worlds.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

Stranger Than Fiction: 10 Unbelievable Events That Actually Happened

Image: Diana van Ormondt

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and some of these historical events are living proof of this old adage.

Brace yourself for a rollercoaster ride through history, where the strange and unexpected take center stage in the theater of reality. From absurd battles to mysterious weather phenomena, these 10 astonishing tales will leave you thinking long and hard about the complexities of human history.

Image: Sharon Co Images

Wars are typically waged between nations, but in 1932, Australia faced an unusual adversary: emus. After large numbers of these flightless birds invaded crucial farmland within Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, the government decided to intervene by sending soldiers armed with machine guns to reduce the emu population in the area. However, most attempts were ineffective at most, killing very few birds and costing thousands of dollars in supplies and ammunition.

As soon as the first shot was fired, the seemingly tame emu dispersed way beyond the range of the machine guns, and apparently switched to guerrilla tactics of sorts, avoiding all further military ambushes and frontal attacks while still feasting on the farmer’s crops. The government’s futile attempts were ridiculed and physical barrier methods to manage wildlife were preferred from then on. Sadly, they give no medals for having endured the Great Emu War.

Image: Hannah Skelly

In 1518, the town of Strasbourg, France, was gripped by a strange and inexplicable phenomenon - people suddenly began dancing uncontrollably in the streets. The dancing madness persisted for weeks, with some of the affected succumbing to exhaustion or even death. The authorities at the time did not know how to react, and some people even joined the dancers voluntarily, as they feared it was a punishment from Saint Vitus (and presumably wanted to stay on the safe side).

After many efforts to fight the strange epidemic, the dancing eventually subsided and people in the town could resume their normal lives. While theories range from mass hysteria to hallucinogenic substances and neurological disorders like Sydenham's chorea, the event remains a historical enigma that challenges our understanding of the human mind and collective behavior.

Image: Nima Sarram

In 1908, a massive explosion flattened over 80 million trees in the remote Tunguska region of Siberia. The cause? A mysterious airburst, likely caused by the explosion of a meteoroid or comet in Earth's atmosphere. It is now estimated that the event had an explosive energy of 3 to 5 megatons, equivalent to over a thousand Hiroshima bombs. The resulting shockwave broke windows, and knocked people down hundreds of miles away, reaching an equivalent of an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale in some areas.

A bright glow was observed in night skies in Asia and Europe for days after the event due to high-altitude ice particles that formed as a result of the explosion. For all its magnitude, the explosion left no visible crater and minimal debris beside the devastated forest. The Tunguska Event serves as a stark reminder of the potential cosmic threats that lurk in the darkness of space.

Image: British Library

Miscommunication can often lead to chaos, but rarely on the scale witnessed in the Battle of Karánsebes in 1788. The Austrian army, at the time facing the Ottoman Empire, descended into total anarchy when two different scouting parties mistook one another for the enemy, fired on each other, and raised the alarm.

Making matters worse, the Austrian army was made of men of different nationalities who more often than not could not understand each other. All attempts to end confusion and the ensuing friendly fire on the part of the Austrian emperor himself were in vain, and after a while - deeply demoralized - he was forced to give the order of retreat. When the Ottoman army arrived two days later, they found an empty battlefield and were able to take the city of Karánsebes without any resistance.

Image: Aswathy N

In 1807, eight years before Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte had a humiliating defeat at the hands of a strange opponent - a horde of rabbits. During the celebrations that followed the Treaties of Tilsit - which effectively ended the war between the French and Imperial Russia - Napoleon’s chief of staff Alexandre Berthier had the idea of organizing a rabbit hunt to entertain its guests.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary for the time, but when the rabbits were simultaneously freed along the edges of a grassy field, instead of scattering as expected, all these fluffy beasts began running toward their amused hunters. But the fits of laughter didn’t last long, as the now-hunted hunters realized that there was nothing they could do to stop the relentless animals as they swarmed their positions and had no other choice than to flee. Some accounts state that Berthier had gathered around 3000 rabbits, so not even mighty Napoleon was a match for this unexpected army.

Apparently, the chief of staff's mistake was buying tame rabbits from local farmers, accustomed to being fed by humans, instead of trapping wild hares for the hunt. If we learned anything from the Great Emu War, the lesson is clear: never underestimate animals!

Image: Mitsuo Komoriya

In the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia - the largest in at least 1,300 years - 1816 became known as the "Year Without a Summer." The volcanic ash floating in the atmosphere led to climate abnormalities worldwide, resulting in crop failures and widespread famine in the most affected areas.

In Europe and North America temperatures plummeted, and most crops suffered irreparable damage due to the persistent frost. In the United States, a "dry fog" was observed in the eastern regions, dimming sunlight so much that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Also, the high level of volcanic particles present in the atmosphere caused strange optical effects in the following years, such as strong red hues during sunsets, which can be observed in many paintings produced at the time.

Image: Tiana Attride

It seems that wars against unusual adversaries are a fashionable trend in human history because the Roman Emperor Caligula declared war in the year 40 AD on no one other than the god Neptune himself, king of the raging seas.

Known for his eccentricity, Caligula allegedly ordered his legionnaires to "attack" the sea with swords and spears, after which he declared victory against the powerful god and told the men to gather seashells as trophies of war. One can only imagine that the soldiers had a fun -albeit puzzling- day.

Image: Tim Mossholder

In the late 1980s, Pepsi briefly possessed the sixth-largest navy in the world. In exchange for commercializing Pepsi products in the Soviet Union, the company received 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer.

However, the fleet was composed of obsolete and unseaworthy vessels that were destined to be turned into scrap almost immediately. The payment was made in the only resources the USSR could gather easily at the time, and it provided a way to establish profitable international relations - and open up to the world.

Image: Garry T

The American Civil War started and concluded with a curious connection to Wilmer McLean, an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. The conflict's first major battle, the First Battle of Bull Run, took place in McLean's farm in 1861. A cannonball fell directly through the kitchen fireplace of the McLean’s house, which was being used as headquarters for the Confederate Army, destroying the dinner that was being prepared by the stationed officers - something that was noted not without humor by the Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard.

The McLean family moved to Appomattox, Virginia trying to escape the war, but just four years later, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's parlor, marking the conclusion of the Civil War. Unintentionally, McLean was a prime witness of one of America’s most defining conflicts. Later, he said of this: "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."

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Genghis Khan's vast empire and brutal military campaigns had an unexpected impact on the Earth's climate. A recent study suggests that the Mongol invasions in the 13th century led to a significant reduction in global carbon dioxide levels, as large areas of cultivated land returned to forests.

This had the unintentional effect of scrubbing as much as 700 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, roughly equivalent to the global annual consumption of gasoline today. This drastic ecological shift highlights the effect that land use, and particularly deforestation can have on our planet at a large scale.