🎠 The park Walt Disney copied | Bulletin #162

This week: the story behind a 9-minute snooze đź’¤

September 09, 2026

Byer Evans House 📍 Denver, Colorado, USA 📸 Marjorie Becker Photo

Hey Adventurers! ⏰ In 1956, General Electric's Telechron division built the "Snooz-Alarm" and hit a small, gear-shaped wall: the mechanism couldn't divide itself into exactly ten minutes, only nine and some loose change, or ten and some loose change. Engineers chose nine. It turned out to be an accidental kindness, since ten minutes is apparently long enough for the body to slide back into deeper sleep, making waking up feel like betrayal. A mid-century gear limitation became a permanent feature of modern life, hardwired into our iPhones by nothing more than habit and the faint ghost of a 1950s engineer's compromise.

THIS WEEK IN AWA AWESOMENESS

💌 You’ve got mail
🎡 Inspiration behind Disney World
🎓 Reshaping higher education
🎒 A collab of our dreams

Celebrating one of our favorite things: the slow, deliberate pleasure of snail mail, a letter licked shut and trusted to strangers, arriving days later like a small scheduled surprise.

Tivoli Gardens 📍 Copenhagen, Denmark 📸 Marjorie Becker Photo

THE PARK THAT WAS NEVER FINISHED

When Georg Carstensen promised King Christian VIII he'd build a pleasure garden outside Copenhagen, he also promised it would never be finished. That 1843 philosophy is why Tivoli Gardens remains Europe's fifth most visited amusement park, and why Walt Disney went home with the blueprint for Disneyland after his visit to the gardens…

Johns Hopkins University 📍 Baltimore, Maryland, USA 📸 Marjorie Becker Photo

A NEW CAMPUS CLASSIC

Johns Hopkins didn't just want his university to teach knowledge, he wanted it to create it. In 1867, the Baltimore businessman (yes, Johns Hopkins: singular person, plural-sounding name) funded what became North America's first research university, a place where professors and students would collaborate to produce discoveries, not just memorize them. That same philosophy now has a new headquarters…

Topo Designs x AWA Light Pack

A JOURNEY IN EARNING YOUR PATCHES

AWA teamed up with our friends at Topo Designs for a tote and pack collection built around patches, the kind of thing you'd expect to earn on an Adventure rather than buy off a shelf. Each embroidered patch is pulled from a real photo submitted by the AWA Community: Cape Byron Lighthouse in Australia, the Hostess cupcake motel in New Hampshire, the Adventures book cover itself, and more!

Feeling lost? This week’s secret link prize could show you the way! Find the secret link for a chance to win an AWA compass. Make sure you check all over this email: north, south, east, and west! 🧭