  Circa 1962 Hans A. Buchdahl pioneered a program -- and made significant
progress -- seeking vacuo configurations in pure $\mathcal{R}^{2}$ gravity [H.
A. Buchdahl, Nuovo Cimento 23, 141 (1962)]. Unfortunately, he deemed the final
step in his calculations impassable and prematurely suspended his pursuit.
Since then, his achievements on this front have faded into dormancy.
Unbeknownst to Buchdahl himself, the $\mathcal{R}^{2}$ vacua that he sought
were within $\textit{his}$ striking distance. In our recent three-paper body of
work published in Phys. Rev. D, we broke this six-decades-old impasse and
accomplished his goal: A novel class of metrics, describing non-Schwarzschild
spacetimes in quadratic gravity and carrying a hallmark of higher-derivative
characteristic. Intriguing properties of Buchdahl-inspired spacetimes and their
associated Morris-Thorne-Buchdahl wormholes -- summarized herein -- embody a
new branch of phenomenology that transcends the Einstein-Hilbert paradigm.
