New Orleans

The Haunting Weather Statement That Saved Lives During Hurricane Katrina

Most of us don’t think much of the weather statements that meteorologists from the National Weather Service make every single day. Until there’s a natural disaster, of course. But a forecast issued as Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf states ten years ago today made history for its eloquence—and changed the way forecasts are written.…

Nearly 200 Years Ago, Awful Crimes Were Committed In This Lovely House

New Orleans visitors interested in macabre history are required to pass by the LaLaurie Mansion, located at 1140 Royal Street. Its genteel exterior masks its horrifying history, revealed 181 years ago today when a fateful fire broke out and the secrets within its walls were unleashed. As the History Channel reports, the source of the…

The Tricentennial Tower is Like the Space Needle With Gondolas

US Thrill Rides, the company that plans to bring us the world’s tallest roller coaster, has just unveiled designs for its latest project: The Tricentennial Tower, a 320-foot tall structure that looks like the Seattle Space Needle with a gondola ride slapped on. The tower, which is planned for the New Orleans waterfront, emerges as…

The World As Seen By a Self-Driving Car

For self-driving cars to work safely, we need better maps—much better maps. These maps will not only need to know where the roads are. They’ll need to show real-time details as general as traffic patterns and as specific the number of inches to the curb. They’ll also need to cover millions of miles worth of…

No, New Orleans Is Not Getting Another Katrina This Weekend

New Orleans really doesn’t need to worry about a hurricane barreling into them right now, even if you see a Facebook post proclaiming, “SHARE THIS IMMEDIATELY!” You can stop calling the National Weather Office in a panic now. Like most viral misinformation, a tiny glimmer of truth hides within the fear-mongering. In this case, it’s…

These giant pipes help keep an entire city safe

You may think this is some real life level of Mario Bros. Or that it’s an organ pipe made for a robot giant but it’s actually one of the pump stations that keep beautiful New Orleans safe from flooding. It sucks in water from one side and spits it out on the other. What you’re…

Watch How American Cities Grew Through Thousands of Historic Maps

Good thing it’s almost the holiday weekend and you don’t need to be productive because the USGS just launched a heck of a time-wasting website. Now you can explore cities through beautiful old maps, some dating all the way back to 1884. But here’s the best part: You can mix and match many maps to…

Why Brad Pitt’s Nonprofit Is Building Homes for Native American Tribes

Make It Right launched in 2007 to rebuild homes in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Now the nonprofit founded by Brad Pitt has moved on to other communities in need—and its next project will be building sustainable homes for Native American tribes in Fort Peck, Montana. At last weekend’s…

Beautiful photos of haunted New Orleans

Born and raised in New Orleans, Frank Relle takes us round his home town in these hauntingly atmospheric nightscapes. Frank uses long exposures and some serious lighting—mounted on stands sometimes three stories high—and works with city authorities to shut down street lights during his shoots. The resulting photos display a beautiful combination of colors and…

Quakes, Brands, 7-Story Buildings: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week

This week! Why a huge earthquake didn’t actually cause all that much devastation in Chile. How a not-so-tall building could be the end of a New Orleans neighborhood. And where brands killed Manhattan. Let’s take a look at What’s Ruining Our Cities. A really big earthquake didn’t really ruin Chile The earthquake that struck Northern…

Redesigning New Orleans for flooding, new buildings in Williamsburg that don’t suck, and a skyscraper in L.A. that will soon be the tallest west of Chicago. Plus: Google’s urban expansion and dying department stores, all in this week’s Urban Reads. How New Orleans’ new water plan will dramatically reshape the city’s streets and canals to…

The Mississippi River Is A Land-Making Machine: Dredgefest 2014

For the last four years, the Dredge Research Collaborative has been looking at dredging and erosion control as a form of often unacknowledged landscape architecture. Part of their work is a series of festivals they’re calling DredgeFest that celebrate and examine the role that dredging plays in landscaping. Their next event is in Louisiana. Gizmodo…

New Orleans Gets the Country’s First Vending Machine-Equipped Taxis

Occasionally you’ll luck out and climb into a taxi cab with such amenities as free tissues, discarded newspapers, or all the tourist pamphlets you can carry. But if you find yourself in New Orleans, you might end up in one of the 250 vehicles in the Orleans Carriage Cab fleet that now feature soda-dispensing vending…

Witches will be casting their sexy spells over New Orleans in American Horror Story Season 3

We now have the title and theme for American Horror Story’s third season: Coven. Ryan Murphy will be taking his regular AHS players and a few new faces down to New Orleans, where they’ll be up to plenty of magical hijinks. Actress Francis Conroy teased the witchcraft plot a few days ago, but, thanks to…

New Orleans schools ban creationist curriculum, shun Texas revisionist textbooks

Sanity wins this round — at least for six schools in New Orleans. By a unanimous vote, N.O.’s Orleans Parish School Board voted on Tuesday to keep creationism out of its classrooms. Hallelujah. “No teacher of any discipline of science shall teach any aspect of religious faith as science or in a science class,” reads…

In the 1870s, Charles Darwin was the theme of a downright deranged Mardi Gras parade

One of the coolest sites on the internet is Tulane University’s Louisiana Research Collection of Mardi Gras costume and float designs. Here, thousands upon thousands of pieces of concept art detail parade pageantry dating back to the mid-1800s. In the Tulane collection, you can find ridiculously meticulous artwork of century-old parade floats showcasing battles from…

The New Orleans Saints hired a Voodoo priestess to fight a ghostly football curse

Today, the New York Giants and the New England Patriots battle for football supremacy, while fans sit at home with their lucky jerseys and their game day rituals. But some teams need a bit more mystical help than others. In 2000, the New Orleans Saints called in the big guns to combat the ghostly curse…

Watch This Gorgeous and Terrifying Simulation of Hurricane Katrina as It Gathers Strength

This dramatic visualization of hurricane Katrina masterfully captures the monster storm for a period of 1.5 days as it gathers strength over warm ocean waters. Scientists at the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications crunched terabytes of data gathered by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, to help…

World’s Biggest Water Pump Under Construction In New Orleans, Would’ve Been Cooler Four Years Ago

The Army Corps of Engineers has broken ground on a serious construction project: a 150,000-gallon-per-second, $500m pumping station charged with keeping the city of New Orleans a little, uh, dryer than it has been in the last few years. The pump is just a small part of a larger $14bn plan to seal up New…

Gargantuan NOAH ‘Ark’ Proposed to New Orleans with Straight Face

How do you know when your building plan has gotten unnecessarily crazy and pretentious? When it’s named after a Biblical figure who was fabled to save life as we know it…that might be a clue. NOAH (New Orleans Arcology Habitat) is a massive, 1200-foot city within a building that’s hurricane-proof and can actually float (don’t…