Frank Lowden in December 1923. (Photo: Library of Congress)

Ninety-two years ago, in Cleveland, a bunch of Republicans gathered at their convention to nominate a presidential ticket. 

A few weeks before the Democrats held their own disastrous convention in Madison Square Garden, the Republicans, in early June, met at Cleveland's then still-new Public Auditorium to argue, and vote, and pick who they thought could beat the Democrats in the fall. 

The race for the presidential nominee had a clear frontrunner: incumbent Calvin Coolidge, who had ascended to the presidency after the death of Warren G. Harding, probably the worst American president of all time.

But Frank Lowden, a former governor of Illinois who came within a few votes of being the Republican nominee in 1920—only to lose to Harding—thought he also had a chance. Lowden hoped the infamous Teapot Dome scandal, in which a Harding cabinet member was convicted of accepting bribes from oil companies and sent to prison, would hurt Coolidge, too. 

But Coolidge won the presidential nomination handily, dashing Lowden's hopes, if not his pride. What happened next was what sent the convention into pure farce: Lowden won the nomination for the vice presidency—and then declined it, just as he had vowed he would. In doing so, he became the first, and only, politician to ever reject a major party's nomination for the second highest office in the land. 

This is, of course, unlikely to happen this year. The nomination of Mike Pence for vice president, set to take place this week at the Republican convention in Cleveland, will be a mere formality. A true open Republican convention hasn't happened since 1976, and, since then, political conventions have only become increasingly more boilerplate. 

There are speeches, and votes, and state delegates, and super-delegates, and thick books of party rules, but very few true surprises. At this stage, there is little doubt, for instance, that Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee, even if, by party rules, he isn't officially the nominee just yet.

Live elephants are seen in the lower right, in a shot from outside the Public Auditorium. (Photo: Public domain)

This was not the case in 1924, decades before binding presidential primaries and in the figurative teenage years of political conventions, when they still mattered, and when white men in smoke-filled rooms really decided the future of American democracy. 

After the close race of 1920, Lowden thought that 1924 might just be his year to triumph. But the first ballot in 1924 was something close to unanimous: Some 1,065 delegates voted for Coolidge, a lawyer and former governor of Massachusetts, while two other candidates—Lowden not among them—got just 44 votes.

Coolidge was going to be the Republican nominee. Lowden was not going to be. The only other thing left to do was to choose Coolidge's running mate. 

Which is when the 1924 Republican convention went from the routine to the bizarre. Before the vice presidential vote, a delegate from Lowden's home state of Illinois read a statement to convention attendees. 

"It is with deep regret that Illinois must say to this convention ... the determination of former Governor Lowden not to be a candidate, and in saying he cannot accept the nomination, is final and irrevocable," John G. Oglesby, chairman of the Illinois delegation, told the delegates. 

What happened next was even stranger: the delegates voted for Lowden to be vice president anyway. There were three votes, with Lowden getting a majority on all of them and finishing with 776 votes, or 555 more than his competitors combined, at which point, his nomination was made unanimous. 

And then the real farce ensued, according to a lengthy contemporaneous account given by a delegate named Godfrey Luthy.

Told of the results of the vote by phone, Lowden then sent a telegram to the convention, reiterating his choice to decline the nomination, a message which conventioneers plainly ignored. The convention later received two more messages from Lowden, the first by way of the Associated Press.

"I told the public I was not to be a candidate for Vice President," Lowden wrote. "I will not go back on my word." 

A second message, this time by telegram, was a bit more unequivocal, after the chairman of the convention tried to negotiate with Lowden and, presumably, plead the delegates' case.

"I have said a thousand times, I think, that I would decline if nominated," Lowden wrote. "I must keep my word. To yield now would mean the loss of my self-respect." 

And it was, at this point, that the conventioneers finally got the message: A final vote earned Charles Dawes, a former Army general from Ohio, a spot on the Republican ticket. 

Lowden ran a final time for the Republican presidential nomination in 1928, but came in a distant second to Herbert Hoover, and henceforth retired from public life. He died in 1943 at the age of 82, his highest ambition having turned into not much more than a historical footnote.

(Photo: Bullion Vault/CC BY-ND 2.0)

It's long been rumored that along the Irish border with Northern Ireland there lies a vast trove of gold beneath the surface of the Earth. 

The area had been mined hundreds of years ago, according to the BBC, but whoever did the mining then must have missed the gold. In more recent years, a former physiology professor and his company have been surveying and drilling into swaths of land to try and capture it. 

And recently, the company said they'd found four new zones of land that contain gold, according to the Irish Times. That's in addition to an underground field of potential gold the company has already discovered several miles away.

Conroy Gold and Natural Resources has said there could be up to 20 million ounces, or tens of billions of dollars worth of gold, waiting to be uncovered. Still, it might be awhile before even a fraction of that is harvested, and the company told the BBC earlier that it might cost half of what the gold is worth just to harvest it. 

But the Dublin-based mining company persists, in what has been less of a gold rush than a slow unveiling, one new site at a time.

Cemex mine, Monterey Bay. (Photo: Edward Thornton)

In Northern California's Monterey Bay, a peculiar thing happens every time there's a storm. When wind and rain hit, a pond set back about 100 feet from the water's edge on the beach of Marina, California fills with sand. The sand is then dredged from the pond, to the tune of roughly 200,00 cubic yards, about 8 acres of land a year, and sold. 

This is the last remaining sand mine of its kind in the U.S.—namely, a sand mine that takes its material directly from the beach. 

And it has enemies. For years, Edward Thornton would hike up the coastline to the site, owned by the Mexican company called Cemex. Thornton, a retired coastal engineer, has spent years fighting this operation, taking photos to build up a body of evidence, which backed up his own research, to prove to the authorities the mining was illegal and causing damage to the environment. After a six-year investigation, the California Coastal Commission told Cemex in March 2016 that it was time to end their operation—and that they had been operating without a permit since it took control of the mine over a decade ago.

"The most pristine shoreline, almost in the United States, and it has a big dollar sign on it," says Thornton in a phone interview. 

A beach along Monterey Bay. (Photo: CC BY: SA 3.0)

Sand is a lucrative commodity; the most commonly used resource after water and air, and a thriving multi-billion dollar industry. As a consequence, in some parts of the world an illegal economy has formed out of the competition for this natural resource; people have been literally killed over sand. Beaches have vanished in Indonesia and on islands in the Caribbean, sand piracy has created an ugly vision of heavy machinery dragging sand off pristine seascapes.

The demand for sand is increasing faster than the rate of natural renewal, according to a United Nations Environmental Programreport in 2014. Amidst a global construction boom, sand is the key ingredient needed to produce concrete and satisfy the world’s insatiable appetite to build and expand its modern cities.

Sand mining in Kerala, India. (Photo: CC BY: SA 3.0) 

Historically, the Monterey Bay area is one of the most mined stretches of coastline in the U.S. Perhaps not coincidentally, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, it has the highest rates of coastal erosion in the state of California. Records show that mining activity stretches back to the turn of the 20th century. The Lapis mine has been in operation since 1965.

The Army Corps of Engineers almost brought sand mining in Monterey Bay to an end, when in 1989 the Army shut down five mines. Officials concluded the mining there had caused extensive erosion to the shoreline.

The environmental case for shutting down the Cemex mine is a simple one: Extracting sand at such volume is eroding the coastline and ultimately making the beach slowly disappear. Experts believe the mine removes about eight acres of sand per year, causing two feet of beach loss. For the people who have studied coastal erosion, the shutdown of this mine was a long time coming.

Professor Edward Thornton. (Photo: Edward Thornton)

“There is no question in my mind the sand mining and the erosion are intimately connected,” says Gary Griggs, a professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at University of California, Santa Cruz. Griggs first presented a report of his findings on the link between mining and beach erosion in 1985. 

U.S. Congress designated the Monterey Bay area a National Marine Sanctuary in 1992 to protect one of the most diverse marine ecosystems in the country. Since 2005 a group of researchers connected to the Marine Sanctuary investigated why the shorelines in this area had so dramatically retreated. They too concluded that the Lapis mine contributes to the rapid erosion of the beaches. 

Yet, the mine remains open. One reason is that the nearby city of Marina says it doesn't have the funds to mount a legal challenge against Cemex, which is one of the wealthiest construction companies in the world. Another is that the Coastal Commission only started to investigate the legality of the mine in 2009. Before then it was unclear which governmental body actually had jurisdiction over the mine. 

For its part, Cemex has refused to concede any wrongdoing. In a statement to Atlas Obscura, Cemex reiterated its position that its mining operation is legal and said it has seen no evidence to link the mine with any environmental damage in the area. 

There is hope for the Monterey beaches, though. After the Coastal Commission's investigation found that Cemex lacked the correct permits to mine, there is now something that resembles a united front in the fight to close down the mine. Local environmental groups like the Surfrider Foundation and individual campaigners in the Marina and Santa Cruz area such as Thornton continue to meet in order keep up the pressure on the Coastal Commission as it attempts to close the mine. 

Within a few years, campaigners will hope that a summer storm in Monterey doesn't have to mean that sand will be sold from its beaches. 

If da Vinci had his way, we'd all be swimming in these. (Photo: Tama66/CC0)

Look at that cloth monstrosity above. Was it designed by an irradiated walrus? A hypochondriac Cthulhu? The creators of an upcoming swamp-themed Fallout sequel?

Despite its alt-future aesthetic, this alarming piece of apparel is actually a 16th-century scuba* suit, dreamt up by none other than Leonardo da Vinci. Although there's no record that he actually built one himself, da Vinci considered the suit so powerful that he refused to divulge its details, fearing the technology would be abused by the "evil nature of men."

When we discuss da Vinci's prescient inventions, we often focus on the high-flying ones—his dreamy, if literally unflappable, bird-shaped ornithopter, or his "aerial screw," which has spun into the modern helicopter. 

A page from the Codex Arundel, featuring one of da Vinci's sketches of a diving apparatus. (Image: Leonardo da Vinci/Public Domain)

But the polymath's imagination also dove deep. Although it's unclear precisely when da Vinci came up with his diving suit, evidence suggests he envisioned it as a military technology, potentially meant to help the Republic of Venice beat the much stronger Ottoman navy. At the turn of the 16th century, much of the Mediterranean Coast was in turmoil, embroiled in a series of international border disputes that kept erupting into full-out war.

Da Vinci, then in his late forties, had been living and working happily in Milan for 17 years, but after French invaders began using a statue of his former patron for target practice, he fled to Venice. There, he found yet more conflict—the floating city had been repeatedly attacked by the Ottoman Empire, who had managed to defeat the entire Venetian naval fleet, taking many prisoners in the process.

Da Vinci was inspired by his new home's geography, and spent long days rambling the shores, taking note of the water's properties—its tides, its movements, and the power of its waves. But he was equally inspired by the political situation, and he strove to apply these observations to the cause at hand. "Venice had need at the moment of services such as Leonardo alone could offer," writes Edward McCurdy in The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci. "The problem which he set himself to tackle was how, in the future, to prevent such incursions."

The 1499 Battle of Zonchio, between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, as painted by an unknown Venetian artist. (Image: WikiCommons/Public Domain)

To do this, he took, as usual, to his notebooks. There, tucked within tens of thousands of pages of his lifetime's achievements, are several drawings of different diving apparatuses, annotated with his signature "mirror writing," as though reflected on a still lake. The most complete plans show a leather suit and facemask, with goggles and an inflatable wineskin to enable sinking and floating. Two hollow breathing tubes, made of cane and reinforced with steel rings, lead from the diver's mouth up to the surface of the water—some incarnations show them attached to a floating disc, while others have them leading to a pocket of air trapped by a diving bell. There is even a special pee pouch for the diver, ensuring he can stay down there regardless of whether nature calls.

Some historians think this suit was part of an elaborate plan to attack the Ottoman ships from below, in order to sink them or release prisoners. Others, including McCurdy, say it more likely dates back further, to da Vinci's time in Milan, in which case he may have intended it to attack Venice instead. (It was a time of tumultuous alliances.)

A full body view of the diving suit, complete with pee pouch and a wineskin for buoyancy. (Photo: Tama66/Public Domain)

But regardless of his intended target, there is little doubt that da Vinci considered the technology too dangerous to describe fully, lest it fall into the wrong hands. "I do not describe my method of remaining underwater for as long a time as I can remain without food," he wrote elsewhere in his notebooks. "This I do not publish or divulge on account of the evil nature of men who would practice assassinations at the bottom of the seas, by breaking the ships in their lowest parts and sinking them together with the crews who are in them."

These days, diving suits are usually used for benign purposes—studying marine life, or surfacing buried treasure. But had da Vinci's designs caught on, we might be looking at a very different underwater landscape. After all, if you saw someone wearing that thing and kicking around the bottom of the sea, you'd flee, right?

*While the suit does not include a portable supply of compressed gas—the technical requirement for a contemporary scuba suit—for the 16th century, a diving bell is pretty close! 

Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

Ken Warby and the Spirit of Australia crack the world water speed record in 1978 (Photo: X Swamp/Youtube)

Boating can be dangerous. Trying to be the fastest boat ever recorded is insanely dangerous.

Getting boats up to speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour using rockets and aerodynamics is about as hazardous as it sounds, but the story of the craft that broke the record back in 1978, and which still holds the world record today, is truly remarkable.

Ultra-fast boats pose a number of dangers to the pilots, ranging from hydroplaning out of control, to colliding with a small swell that can send the boat flipping end over end, to a malfunction of whatever powerful engine of choice is riding inches from the pilot’s head. Since 1940, there has been about an 85 percent mortality rate among water speed competitors, making it not only one of the most fatal world record categories out there, but setting the bar for beating it unusually high.

When you think of the kind of sleek, perfectly balanced craft one might attempt to break such a record in, the last thing you would imagine is that it would be built by an amatuer in the backyard of his home, using parts salvaged from random resellers. But that is exactly how Australian dreamer Ken Warby built the amazing speedboat that set the world water speed record.

Donald Campbell in the Bluebird. (Photo: Neil Sheppard/CC BY-SA 3.0)

As a child, Warby looked up to British speed demon Donald Campbell, who had broken and rebroken the world water speed record throughout the 1950s and 1960s in various evolutions of his Bluebird speedboat. Campbell likely would have continued to break water speed records were it not for a fatal accident during an attempt in 1967. His boat spiraled out of control going hundreds of miles an hour and was smashed to bits, decapitating the daredevil in the process. Campbell’s body wasn’t even recovered until 2001.  

Regardless of the danger, Warby, who by the early '70s had become a power tool salesman, never gave up on his dream of walking in his hero’s footsteps (or, rather, boating in his wake).

In his spare time, Warby began drawing up plans for a vessel of his own, that he hoped would be able to once again break the world water speed record. After two years of planning and designing his water rocket, named Spirit of Australia, Warby began actually building the ship in his backyard. He bought the wood and material for his boat piecemeal as he got the money to afford new parts, and put the whole thing together using mostly hand tools.

A model of the Spirit of Australia (Photo: Matilda/CC BY-SA 2.5)

For a propulsion source, Warby bought three small, used jet engines from a Royal Australian Air Force auction. The surplus jet engines were capable of pushing out over 3,000 pounds of propulsive force each, more than enough to get his ship up to record-breaking speeds.

It took Warby another two years to gather all of the parts for the crude initial version of the Spirit of Australia, but he was finally ready to test it. Although it was missing many of the engineering bells and whistles of other record-breaking speed boats, including valves and intakes that would keep water out of the engine and other unwanted places, Warby’s design was sound.

During the ship’s inaugural run on the waters of Lake Munmorah, New South Wales, it reached a top speed of over 160 miles per hour. At the time, the world water speed record was held by American daredevil Lee Taylor, who had gotten his own boat up to over 280 miles an hour in 1967. Warby’s boat was a far cry from the world record, but he was undeterred.

Warby continued to chase the record, making small improvements and tweaks to his boat, increasing his speed with each test. Devoting himself fully to the project, Warby began touring Spirit of Australia around gas stations and malls, raising money for the endeavor. He even taught himself to paint, and sold paintings along the way to help fund his need for speed.

In November of 1977, Warby finally set his first world water speed record on the Blowering Reservoir with a much improved Spirit of Australia. He chose the dammed-up lake for the long “runway” it gave him to get his new and improved boat up to speed. Having trialled and tweaked the vessel over the years since his first test, Warby was able to reach just over 288 miles per hour, beating out Taylor’s record by a little over three miles per hour. He’d finally achieved his goal, but Warby didn’t stop there.

Having built up a small team of experts during his bids to break the world record the first time, Warby worked with them to get the Spirit of Australia over the 300 miles per hour mark—a feat no one had ever managed to achieve. He had input from a wind speed expert at the University of New South Wales, and Royal Australian Air Force engineers were able to fix up the old jet engine he was still using, so that it performed as good as new. Warby had also garnered some sponsorship from various companies like Speedo and local department store chain Fossey’s, although the homemade core of the craft remained intact.

Less than a year after he had broken the record the first time, Warby and the Spirit of Australia returned to Blowering Dam in October of 1978, and pushed the boat to the limit. The craft sped across the water, topping out at a mind-boggling 317 miles per hour. Warby crushed his original record and set a standard that has yet to be beaten.

The world's fastest boat now hangs in the National Maritime Museum in New South Wales (Photo: sv1ambo/CC BY 2.0)

This is not to say that people haven’t tried—it’s just that no one has survived the attempt. Taylor, who held the record prior to Warby, attempted to retake the title in 1980 using a speed boat powered by a rocket. The weather on his test day was not ideal for a speed run, but Taylor went for one anyway as not to disappoint the gathered crowd. Unfortunately, somewhere near the 270 miles per hour mark, the boat became unstable and crashed into the water, coming apart and killing the pilot.

A second attempt to overtake the record was performed in 1989 by Craig Arfons, but again, as the boat reached 300 miles per hour, it flipped off the water, somersaulting multiple times before coming to a stop in the water. Arfons died not long after.

With death ahead and death behind his record-breaking run, you might think that Warby would knock it off with the deadly water speeds. Not so. Warby and his son, Dave, are currently working on Spirit of Australia II, a more advanced version of the original record-breaking boat, set to begin test runs in late 2016. Other contenders from Britain and America are also working on possible record-breaking craft. It remains to be seen who will survive to accept the title.

Captain Sam Buchanan prepares to take a mail parcel on board for a delivery to a passing freighter as traffic backs up on the Ambassador Bridge that connects Detroit to Windsor, Canada. (Photo: Liana Aghajanian)

Beyond the train tracks on the edge of Detroit, in the water that separates the United States from Canada, Captain Sam Buchanan is in a 45-foot tugboat named the J.W. Westcott II, heading towards a freighter to engage in a delicate, centuries-old aquatic dance. 

“The James R. Barker,” Buchanan says as he grins and spins the Westcott’s wheel, pointing across the water to a giant ship. “I built a 10-foot model of that one.” When he’s not on this tugboat, he’s at his second job as a captain of a passenger boat a dozen miles down the river. At home, he’s building miniature wooden replicas of Great Lakes vessels. During the winter, he travels from Michigan to Ohio to work on steamships. Having taken somewhere between 46,000 to 55,000 trips like this  (this is the amount of deliveries he’s made to passing ships on the tugboat), there is perhaps no one else who can so elegantly pull up next to this 1,000 foot behemoth, more a giant steel wall emerging from the water than a ship. Almost immediately, the freighter’s crew lower down a rope into the tugboat as it gently rocks, and a rectangular cardboard package is attached by a Westcott deckhand before being pulled up on board. 

With their engines running, they have to be quick, taking no more than a few minutes to complete the choreography they know by heart. The crew wave goodbye as Buchanan pulls the Westcott away and sounds its powerful horn. It’s a warm day on the river, and as the tugboat passes underneath the traffic-filled Ambassador Bridge connecting Detroit to Canada before it’s docked, it won’t be long before Buchanan is out moving with the rhythm of the water again.

But Buchanan is no ordinary riverboat operator: He’s captain of the world’s only floating post office, one that delivers mail to ships at sea. For over 140 years, this method has not changed. 

Captain Ryan Gazdecki takes the J.W. Westcott II on a mail run in the Detroit River. For many who work at the world’s only floating post office, being on the river isn’t just a job, but a way of life. (Photo: Liana Aghajanian)

The J.W. Westcott Company has served ships carrying cargo that pass through the Detroit River as history has unfolded around it. It’s been here since before Henry Ford test drove his first automobile in Detroit, present for the rise of Motown Records, throughout the 1967 race riots and when the city filed for bankruptcy after decades of economic and social turmoil. As Detroit emerged as the epicenter of the 20th century auto boom, the river became the main method of transporting iron ore, steel and limestone for the industry. Today, the Detroit River retains its title as one of the busiest waterways in the world.

In the 1950s, J.W. Westcott delivered around one million pieces of mail every season, but with the shipping industry and communications technology significantly altered, it’s less than half of that these days. The main mailboat used in all deliveries since it was built in 1949 is the J.W. Westcott II, with a backup boat named the Joseph J. Hogan on standby. 

Eventually, the Westcott Company’s essential role on the Detroit River led them to become the only boat in the country with its own zip code: 48222.

The SS J. W. Westcott, pictured c. 1900. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-det-4a16034)

While technically part of the U.S. Postal Service, Buchanan’s cargo goes well beyond letters.

It’s called the “7-11 of the Great Lakes,” open 24 hours, seven days a week from mid-April to December, with three shifts for a bevy of crew members who have one of the most unique jobs in the country. 

For the thousands of sailors who spend months at a time on the water transporting coal, iron ore and stone to ports in the Rustbelt region, the J.W. Westcott Company is also their only connection to home.

Their “mail in a pail” method has delivered everything from love letters, to coffee, cigarettes, toothpaste, televisions and toilet paper. At some point over a decade ago, hungry ship crews started requesting pizza, and during Ramadan, relatives of Arab-American steel ship workers deliver homemade meals to the Westcott’s offices. Once, a goat destined for a petting farm came on board  and for more than three decades a woman named Arlene Earl has been delivering flowers to captains and crews on the ships via the Westcott. During a lull in deliveries one afternoon, Captain Ryan Gadzecki told me how he once delivered a mistress to her partner  on one of Detroit’s nearby islands, while taking the unsuspecting wife back to shore.

“These people rely on us to get them their stuff,” says Buchanan in between deliveries. “I go out in all kinds of weather, at all hours of the day to try to make sure that they get it.”

At their offices right next to Riverside Park at the end of 24th Street, where Detroiters can be often found fishing during the summer, the Westcott crew sort incoming mail, communicate with approaching vessels and pass their down time by teasing each other, making popcorn and watching hockey.

Bill Redding and Sam Buchanan take the boat out for a mail delivery on the Detroit River. Though summer treats the Westcott crew well, colder months bring an element of risk as they battle freezing rain and ice to deliver mail.  (Photo: Liana Aghajanian)

At the helm of the operation in making sure both mail and meals are delivered to passing ships is Jim Hogan, the fourth generation steering this family business into new waters as the shipping industry has gone through immense change.

Portraits of those who came before him and ran this company line the wall of his office. They are a physical reminder of the timeline that has led to his taking over his family’s business, even though Hogan had other plans, and being in charge of a floating post office wasn’t exactly one of them. 

It was Hogan’s great grandfather, John Ward Westcott who started this service back in 1874, a man whose own history made him destined to spend more of his lifetime on the water instead of the land.

Westcott’s parents David and Mary Jane were the first couple married on a steamer in the Great Lakes and Westcott himself became the youngest captain on fresh water in 1869. It would be just five years later where he would set up a rowboat to deliver messages to ships that would pass by between Lake Eerie and Lake Huron, creating the J.W. Westcott company.

Westcott initially provided “ship to shore” communications, when, before the advent of radio, ships relied on messages from their companies to know where and at which dock their journey would come to an end.

Bill Redding secures a package on board the J.W. Westcott II just before it is pulled up on board by a freighter. Delivering mail 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the boat pulls up next to passing ships in the river several times a day to drop off parcels. (Photo: Liana Aghajanian)

Its survival for close to two centuries has largely depended on the bespoke, one-of-a-kind service it offers—Westcott himself called the company “a general wet nurse” for passing boats in a 1914 issue of Illinois Bell magazine. “It notifies all persons concerned of the times and movements of these vessels when in this stretch, especially navigating the dangerous Ballard’s Ref and while going up or down the new Livingston Channel,” the magazine wrote.

Delivering mail was a natural transition from delivering messages, and though only one location remains today, Westcott opened several more branches at other Great Lakes ports. In 1902, he received some competition from the “Independent Marine Reporting Company,” set up by two former employees who had disagreements with Westcott, according to Gary Bailey’s 1979 book, “Westcott: The First Hundred Years.” The company didn’t last, and in 1948, Westcott signed a contract and became an official U.S. Postal service mail boat.

“There’s no special magic about it, it’s the idea that has stood the test of time,” says Hogan.

Hogan initially set out to be a teacher, but when his dad called requesting backup, he couldn’t say no and signed on as a deckhand, eventually abandoning his teaching dreams and settling into the boating business.

Captain Buchanan and Bill “The Birdman” Redding are the Westcott’s core staff. They call themselves the A-Team, and start most mornings together, with a bowl of oatmeal and a newspaper, waiting to get the first delivery alert of the day. While the regular post office experience is often a frustrating mess full of long wait times, apathetic postal workers and the urge to get in and get out as soon as possible, at the Westcott, relationships have been cultivated and nurtured for decades between the staff and the ships they service, which means that retired employees and boating enthusiasts drop in regularly and always on cue for chats about the latest news and a cup of coffee. 

The crew of a passing freighter pulls up their mail from the J.W. Westcott II. For over 140 years, the J.W. Westcott company has used this “mail in the pail” method to deliver parcels and packages. (Photo: Liana Aghajanian)

In the control room, between sorting mail and taking an order for chewing tobacco, discussion turns to disagreements with wives (“I felt the fire coming through the phone”) to the best methods to soothe a teething baby (“You get some baby Orajel, put him in a car seat, sit him on top of the dryer and you’ll be good.”) Buchanan and Redding both break out laughing. “It’s not just driving a boat,” Redding says of their day to day duties.

When a postal worker comes by to drop off mail, race relations in America is the topic of choice. “They’re always telling you who to hate,” says Buchanan, who grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood. “People need to just get away from this hate,” the postal worker says before she moves on for another delivery. 

Redding grew up about 35 miles north of Detroit with Hogan. He earned his nickname as a sophomore in high school, but everyone at the Westcott still calls him “Bird,” even as he’s turned 60 years-old. In 1979, he was working at GM-owned Pontiac Motors when along with thousands of people nationwide, he was laid off. That's when Hogan asked him if he was interested in working at his family’s business. 

For the last 29 years, he’s been a pillar of the Westcott crew and now heads up the control room, where from two large monitors, he sees how close or far incoming ships are and coordinates their mail service. He also keeps a lending library with titles like “Tanker Operations” and “Survival Guide for The Mariner” for crew studying for their captain’s license during breaks.

Portraits of President Jim Hogan’s great grandfather, grandfather and mother line the walls of his office. Hogan is the fourth generation to head the family company which was founded in 1874 in Detroit. (Photo: Liana Aghajanian)

“This is a crazy industry,” says Redding while gulping down a kielbasa during a brief respite from a flurry of phone calls. “It’s either complete silence or craziness all at once.”

As the first point of contact between ships and the mail service, Redding currently sits at a desk. But he used to be captain—and it was on his watch that he introduced Buchanan to the Westcott some 30 years ago, giving him his first ride in the mailboat one day as a teenager in October 1982.

Buchanan was born and raised in Southwest Detroit in a neighborhood many have referred to as a war zone, but one that he just calls normal. “It was an adventure, I wouldn’t trade it,” he says. “When you’re used to it, it’s your natural environment, it didn’t seem bad to me at the time.”

Perhaps those early adventures prepared him for some of the uncertainties of a job on the water. Both Redding and Buchanan have been involved in different rescue operations, having saved bridge jumpers intent on committing suicide, pulled kids out of a sinking boat and assisted drunk skinny dippers from the river who didn’t speak English.

“They were some of the only people I have rescued out of the water that said ‘Thank you,’” says Buchanan.

Though their roles as ad hoc lifeguards have been accidental, the J.W. Westcott has had to look at other ways of staying afloat. Changes in the Great Lakes shipping industry, which delivers 165 million metric tons of cargo every year have impacted the business, as every 1,000 foot vessel being built sets to replace at least several regular sized ships. Globalization, the closure of steel mills and the growing concern for the environmental impact of coal leave an uncertain future for this often forgotten region in America. If this industry declines, it leaves the Westcott in decline, too.

“This is not the glory days of this industry,” says Hogan. “There are eight-hour stretches when ships aren’t in the area.” These days, instead of seeing around 45 to 60 boats in a day, only around 15 to 20 are serviced on average.

Cans of Campbell’s Soup sit on a table at the J.W. Westcott offices, where sundries are kept for purchase for U.S. and foreign vessels passing by. When the company became an official U.S. Postal service mail boat, it earned the world’s first floating postal zip code - 48222. (Photo: Liana Aghajanian)

Things were especially tough during the automotive industry crisis of 2008, when steel production collapsed.

“It was a little scary for a while, we weren't sure in all honesty if we were gonna be around,” says Redding. “Our company has survived how many wars, a lot of pretty crazy times, and all of a sudden we were looking at this as man, maybe this is it.”

The car industry rebounded and things began to stabilize at J.W Westcott, too, but the company had already begun to diversify. 

They added a pick up and delivery service for ships who order a variety of groceries. They also conduct pilot changes for salt water ships, which means that when foreign vessels come in to the Great Lakes system, a U.S. or Canadian registered pilot must be on board to help guide the ship through the region. They’re currently in talks to reinstate a water taxi service to the industrial Zug Island near Detroit for the United States Steel, which operates a steel mill on the island.

“This new era of new generation of ship owners and operators are coming to know us as quite a bit more than just the mailboat,” says Hogan. “I think we were forced into that due to technology.”

Pigeon holes in the J.W. Westcott’s mail room hold parcels for ships passing through the Detroit River. As technology has changed the way we communicate, the Westcott has seen less and less mail come through. (Photo: Liana Aghajanian)

Indeed, technology has changed the way of life for this floating post office, especially when it comes to mail and the drop in the volume of letters they receive. In the sorting room at J.W. Westcotts, the pigeon hole compartments used to full of mail. Now many of them remain empty.

“Nobody wants to wait on anything anymore,” says Buchanan. “Back in the good old days you would see girls kissing the envelopes and putting perfume on them and you’re thinking about how intimate that is, and now, nothing is really intimate anymore.”

Buchanan doesn’t have much time to reminisce as a call comes in for a freighter heading down the river just as his shift is finishing up. He jumps off the desk he was sitting on, puts on a life jacket and carries a mail sack outside, ready to get back on the water.

The brain has lymph vessels running around it. (Image: Popular Science/Public domain)

One of the the most important systems in the human body is the lymph system, through which immune cells travel to places where they’re needed to fight pathogens. But one crucial part of the body, scientists thought, was cut off from the lymph system: no connection had ever been found between lymph vessels and the brain.

Now, though, scientists at the University of Virginia have discovered lymph vessels in the brain, along with evidence that these pathways could allow the immune system to control behavior and personality, ScienceAlert reports.

The vessels are in the meninges, the layer of connective tissue that surrounds the brain. In the past, scientists have examined this tissue by slicing it up and putting those slices under a microscope. But the UVA lab developed a technique that allowed the scientists there to look at the whole of a mouse’s meninges at once. They saw, under the microscope, trails of immune cells that looked a lot like vessels—and tests confirmed that, in fact, they were.

This was a new detail of mammalian anatomy, and the team found evidence that these vessels were present in the human meninges, as well. The connection between the lymph system and the brain, they think, could help explain the workings of diseases like Alzheimer’s. In a second experiment, the scientists explored how changes in the immune system might affect the brain: they turned off one immune molecule in a mouse, and watched what happened in its nervous system.

They found that it made some parts of the brain “hyperactive,” which changed how the mice in the experiment behaved. They shied away from others, becoming less social. These results have only been seen in mice, but what they indicate, says Jonathan Kipnis, the scientist leading the research, is that “some of our behavior traits might have evolved because of our immune response to pathogens.”

Every day, we highlight one newly found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to sarah.laskow@atlasobscura.com.

The most destructive part of the blast was the misty cloud of radioactive water. (Photo: U.S. Army Photographic Signal Corps)

Seventy years ago, on July 26, 1946, the U.S. military tried a new type of nuclear test.

A joint Army/Navy task force had suspended a nuclear device, oddly named Helen of Bikini, 90 feet below the surface of the water, in the middle of Bikini Atoll, one of the isolated rings of coral and land that make up the Marshall Islands. Arrayed around the 21-kiloton bomb were dozens of target ships.

The Navy had a point to prove. In this new era of nuclear warfare, in which the Air Force could rain down explosives on entire cities, what use was a naval force? The military leaders who proposed the test wanted to show that their ships could ride out a nuclear attack and that the fleet was not obsolete.

But the underwater test was controversial, perhaps even more so than land-based test blasts. Even nuclear scientists questioned its point—would it offer useful, scientific information or was this all just for show?

When Helen of Bikini exploded, it created a giant, underwater bubble of hot gas. In seconds, the bubble hit the seafloor, where it blasted a crater 30 feet deep and at least 1,800 feet wide. At the same time, the surface of lagoon erupted into a giant column of water, 2 million tons of it, which shot more than 5,000 feet into the air, over an area a half-mile wide. In the seconds after the blast hit the surface, a cloud of radioactive condensation unfurled across the lagoon, hiding the column of water shooting upwards; at the top, a mushroom cloud of gas bloomed against the sky.

That first underwater test, the Baker event, instilled new awe for the power of the bomb. The Navy had believed that many of the target ships would survive the blast, be decontaminated, and sail out of the lagoon. But, within two weeks, Navy leaders had to admit that the ships were so soaked in radiation, they couldn’t be saved, and the Marshall Islands became graveyards for irradiated vessels. After that, even in the years that the U.S. and the Soviet Union regularly tested nuclear bombs, only a few were ever underwater. It took almost a decade after Baker for the Navy to try setting off a bomb underwater again.  

A Graveyard of Ships

 The LSM-60 was the first ship to go. The bomb had been suspended directly beneath it, and when the blast burst upwards, the ship was pulverized—it was as if it had disappeared. Only a few fragments were ever found, by Navy men cleaning the decks of other ships.

Arkansas, a battleship, went next, the first ship ever to be sunk by an atomic bomb. YO-160, an oil barge, went down quickly, along with the auxiliary craft ARDC-13. The Saratoga, an aircraft carrier, took seven and a half hours to sink. After the blast, her stern started to drop into the water, and the ship tilted starboard. Nagato, a battleship captured from Japan, sunk four days later, in the night, when no one was watching. Three of the six submarines hidden beneath the water sank, as well.

The true extent of the losses did not become clear for more than a week, though. Even in the first hours after the blast, clean-up crews started heading towards the boats, only to turn back when they measured how dangerously high the radiation levels had risen. The vice admiral heading the task force sent out a crew on tug boats to tow the Saratoga to a nearby island before it sank, but after the radiation turned them back, the crew watched from afar as the ship slowly went down.

A watercolor of the blast, by a Marine Corps artist. (Image: Grant Powers/Public domain)

The problem was the water. In previous atomic tests, radioactive particles spewed into the atmosphere and were spread over great distances as the blast cloud dissipated. Here, the radiation had been contained in the mist of water and fallen directly back into the lagoon, down onto the ships. Even the vessels that survived the initial were so radioactive that initially levels were at 20 times a lethal dose. 

Still, the Navy thought the ships could be saved. The captains of the target vessels wanted their ships back, and Rear Adm. Thorvald Solberg, who was in charge of decontamination, believed the ships could be washed down and sent home. But the clean-up crews were not prepared for how thoroughly contaminated the boats were. They began to hose the ships down with foam and salt water, trying to scrub out the radiation. It was a futile effort: The only way they could have clean them off would have required sandblasting everything down, removing every bit of wood and washing the brass and copper pieces of the ship with nitric acid.

Soon, workers were hitting the daily allotment of radiation exposure—limits set to keep workers safe, which, by today’s standards, were already high. Radiation was spreading everywhere, as the clean-up crews tracked irradiated water back to their “clean” ships. Even the mussels and algae that clung to the hulls of the clean ships were now concentrating radiation and adding to the men’s exposure.

The Baker explosion. (Photo: U.S. Department of Defense/Public defense)

The Navy had to admit that the ships would be impossible to clean. Six vessels, that had been badly damaged in the blast, were sunk right there in the Bikini lagoon. Most of the contaminated ships were towed 200 miles to Kwajalein atoll, where they would stay. A small group of the radioactive ships were towed to Pearl Harbor for examination; more were later taken from Kwajalein to Pearl Harbor, Seattle or San Francisco. But 36 never left Kwajalein. They were towed out to the deep sea and sunk.

One ship, the Prinz Eugen, didn’t wait for the Navy to decide its fate. After being towed the Kwajalein, the leaking boat capsized in relatively shallow water. The wreck is still there, with its propellers exposed to sky.

The Rest of the Tests

There was supposed to be another underwater test in 1946, but after the impact of Baker, the test was canceled. The next time the military tested a nuclear device underwater was in 1955, during Operation Wigwam, which was meant to test nuclear weapons against submarines. This device was planted deeper into the ocean, at 2,000 feet, 500 nautical miles southwest of San Diego.  

Again, nuclear scientists were skeptical: the Atomic Energy Commission would not sign off on it until it was clear that no one in the U.S.or Mexico was at risk and the test area was relatively free of marine life. But the military wanted to know at what range a 30 kiloton explosion could split the hull of the submarine—and if a ship on the surface of the water could send a bomb deep into the ocean without harming itself.

Operation Wigwam. (Photo: U.S. Department of Defense/Public domain)

Compared to Baker, this test went smoothly. But it was still more destructive than anticipated. The USS Tawasa, which carried scientists meant to observe the explosion, was badly damaged, and again a mist of radioactive water spread over the boats. According to the military, no one was exposed to a dangerous dose of radiation. But some of the men who participated died early of cancer, and their families believed the test was to blame.

The U.S. government only tested nuclear weapons underwater three more times. In 1958, as part of Operation Hardtack, the military set off another deep water detonation and another lagoon detonation. In both cases, the devices were smaller than their predecessors, and there were few surprises in the outcome of the tests.

In 1962, the year before the Partial Test Ban Treaty was signed and became effective, there was one last test, Swordfish. This one went off without a hitch.

A kappa doll decorates a water lily pond in Japan. (Photo: pattang/shutterstock.com)

Although the kappa-maki, a slim cucumber roll, is a vegetarian standby on sushi menus all over the globe, few realize that it is named for a folkloric water sprite whose reputation was never so innocuous as his namesake dish. Once thought to inhabit the rivers of Japan, the kappa was known for all sorts of waterside evil, from pranks on farm animals to drownings of children.

Only one talisman could ward off a kappa: a cleverly wielded cucumber. The malicious imp could be appeased by a cucumber thrown downstream, with the name of a family member carved onto it. But eating a cucumber before swimming was considered a deadly mistake.

A mid-19th century scroll showing different types of kappa. (Photo: Public Domain)

Today, kappa repelling measures are a thing of the past: Japan’s people do not so much fear as adore the kappa. A perfect storm of 20th-century pop culture and civic pride initiatives has made the kappa an omnipresent mascot in Japanese life, signifying the kappa’s epic trip from the dank, foreboding depths, to souvenir shelves all over Japan, and even a dedicated temple.

Despite their ubiquity, it can be hard to describe exactly what a kappa looks like. Like a character from the Sanrio wheelhouse, kappa are generally depicted as an amalgam of several different creatures. They often take on the form of an aquatic animal, like a frog or a turtle, and have been known to sport webbed feet, shells, and beaks, but they can also appear more like a human or monkey.

If this does not sounds like an adorable combination of features, the kappa was also not prone to adorable behavior. 

Repelling a kappa with a fart, 1881. (Photo: Public Domain)

If drowning children sounds brutal, then consider the preferred object of their thievery: the human liver. As river dwellers, kappas were thought to lurk beneath the old fashioned toilets that overhung the river and to use that vantage point to truly invade people's private space. By reaching through the anus, kappas could snatch the internal organs of an unsuspecting toilet-goer. Collateral damage in this transaction was a mythical organ called the shirikodama, a little globe that was believed to plug the anus.

The only absolute constant of the kappa’s appearance is the sara, a saucer-shaped vessel attached to the top of its head, that looks not unlike a monk’s tonsure. Since the kappa’s life force was said to be contained in this sara balancing atop his head, its fate was a little precarious. 

An illustration of capturing a kappa alive, from the early 1800s.. (Photo: Public Domain)

Ways to weaken or even kill a kappa are quite plentiful: a person can literally kill a kappa with kindness by engaging it in the ritual of polite bowing. Or if this doesn’t work, sumo is a sport that kappas love, despite the fact that it is not conducive to steady movements or upright posture.

If sumo doesn’t help vanquish the kappa, the creature’s limbs are also not solidly attached and therefore easily pulled off. Much of kappa folklore revolves around humans using a detached limb as a bargaining chip to elicit a promise of good behavior or tips on effective bone-setting (another kappa skill) from the kowtowed imp.

A meditating kappa in the Kappabashi district of Tokyo. (Photo: Vassamon Anansukkasem/shutterstock.com)

But beginning in the 1920s, the kappa’s legend began to evolve beyond its ghoulish origins. In the dystopian 1927 novella Kappa, by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, author of classics like The Nose and Rashomon, the kappa is recast as a familiar, and somewhat pathetic character.

The novella’s human narrator, upon arriving in the realm of kappaland, describes the scene of an infant kappa’s birth: “When it comes to the moment just before the child is born, the father—almost as if he is telephoning—puts his mouth to the mother’s vagina and asks in a loud voice: ‘Is it your desire to be born into this world or not? Think seriously about it before you reply.’”  

This sensitive father kappa, though in a delicate position, has evolved a long way from stealing livers and anus-plugs underneath river bathrooms, and the infant kappa replies in kind. He decides to forego being born because he “shudders to think of all the things he will inherit from his father” and he “maintains that the kappa’s existence is evil.” The kappa had developed a conscience.

Kappa figurines for sale. (Photo: yukinobu n/shutterstock.com)

After Akutagawa brought kappas over to the human side, domesticated them, and perhaps even stamped out their “evil heredity,” the people of Japan were ready to adopt them. Japanese supernatural folklore scholar Michael Dylan Foster attributes much of the change in the perception of the kappa to urbanization of Japan. The old beliefs became quaint—the people of the new urban Japan appreciated their cuteness, and the people of rural Japan recognized the shift and marketed accordingly.

Today, kappa have taken on personalities and roles just about as close to civic engagement as  reformed water demons can get. Kappa on street signs promote traffic safety, or campaign against water pollution. The famous Jozankei hot spring even claims the kappa as a tourism mascot.

Kappa Plaza in Osaka, Japan. (Photo: Chris Gladis/CC BY-ND 2.0)

The presence of kappa in manga and anime has brought attention to the creatures even outside of Japan. The Nintendo video game Yôkai Watch is making sure kappa lore makes it to yet another generation—the premise of this game being that the player has a special watch that helps him sense haunting and mischief in the realm.

This means kids today have more effective options than hacked-up cucumbers when they head down to the riverbeds to face off with a kappa.  

So who's noticed the tropically-turquoise waters off of South Jersey over the last 10 days? Quite unusual, right? pic.twitter.com/gi92oNj1Bj

— Dan Skeldon (@ACPressSkeldon) July 12, 2016

Joe Bongiovanni, beach safety director for New Jersey's Asbury Park, is used to surveying dark, murky waves for swimmers in trouble. These past few weeks, his view has been a little different. "It looks tropical. It really looks tropical," Bongiovanni told NJ.com. "It's been looking that way for most of the summer."

Since July Fourth weekend, the water around South Jersey has been "crystal clear and tropically tinted... much different than the grayish color swimmers know," the Press of Atlantic City reported last week. Locals and tourists alike have flocked to the shore to snorkel, scuba dive, and go on dolphin cruises.

Aerial photo of Brigantine's crystal clear water .... pic.twitter.com/QircgxgxDU

— Brigantine Beach NJ (@BrigChamber) July 14, 2016

The color is caused by phytoplankton—microscopic plants that thrive in cold temperatures, and show up annually around this time. These critters, combined with a dry summer that has kept nearby rivers from piping in mud, have left the Jersey Shore green and sparkling.

This particular bloom was large enough to be visible from space: photos from NASA's Earth Observatory show Atlantic City surrounded by a soothing turquoise blob.

The phytoplankton bloom turning South Jersey tropical. (Photo: NASA Earth Observatory/Public Domain)

Over the past few days, as the ocean warms and the plankton disperse, the fun has started ending. "Area beach patrols and boaters have reported the ocean has returned to its more traditional blue," the Press of Atlantic City wrote this morning. Even the best dye jobs eventually fade.

Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.

(Photo: Carol M. Highsmith/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Since at least Sunday, the Library of Congress has been undergoing a denial-of-service attack on their servers, bringing down websites and forcing the agency to scramble to try to keep the sites online and internal email systems working, according to Federal Computer Week.

Perhaps scarier, no one seems to know the source of the attacks, or the motivations behind them. A Library of Congress spokeswoman told FCW simply that they were still working to repel it. 

The following was posted at the top of the Library of Congress's home page as of early Tuesday afternoon:

"NOTICE: The Library's websites are experiencing technical difficulties and we're working to correct them. Sorry for the inconvenience."

The Library maintains a series of government websites, including Congress.gov, which tracks legislation as it works its way (or not) through Congress. Congress.gov was still down as of early Tuesday afternoon. 

As FCW notes, it's hardly a secret that the Library's computer systems are not the most robust. A report issued just last year by the Government Accountability Office outlined numerous problems with the Library's technological infrastructure. 

Last Wednesday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Carla Hayden, the former CEO of Baltimore's public library system, as the new Librarian of Congress, taking over for James Billington, who served in that post for 28 years.

She'll have her work cut out for her. 

The ribbons of purple and blue tentacles coiling in the video above look like they belong to some kind of alien lifeform. But this sea creature can actually be found floating on the surface of our oceans.

Physalia, also referred to as the Portuguese Man-of-War, is a kind of plankton—soft-bodied animals that drift in both salt and fresh waters. Plankton encompass aquatic creatures large and small, from jellyfish to marine viruses, and hold an important position in the food chain of marine wildlife. Here is a closer look at three of the most majestic drifters in the ocean.

The Portuguese Man-of-War

One section of a Physalia's body acts as a floatation device filled with gas called a pneumatophore. [Photo: NOAA/Public Domain]

The Portuguese Man-of-War is a complex creature known as a siphonophore, which is an animal comprising of a colony of smaller organisms that work together. Physalia have four polyps, each performing a specific function. In the video, the twitching tentacles make up one polyp. The tendrils (which can dip down to 165 feet below the surface) are covered with venomous nematocysts that paralyze and kill entangled small fish and sea creatures—the stings also harmful enough to leave welts on human skin. The muscles in the tentacles slowly pull up captured prey to the digestive organisms of the colony.

The uppermost polyp is a gas-filled chamber or bladder called a pneumatophore that allows Physalia to drift with the current. Sitting atop the ocean’s surface, the Physalia looks like the sails of the 18th-century Portuguese warships that they get their nickname from. You can find them floating in groups of thousands in warm ocean waters.  

Sea Angels

These mesmerizing pink sea angels, or Clione limacina, have been studied extensively for their graceful swimming behavior. These naked sea slugs have wing-like appendages that gently flutter deep in the cold Subarctic and North Atlantic Oceans. Sea angels can paddle their wings at speeds up to 100 millimeters per second and their bodies average around two millimeters in length.

But don’t be fooled by their delicate appearance. Sea angels are vicious predators. They are equipped with six sharp buccal cones, or tentacles, that are concealed in the face. When unsuspecting prey drift by, sea angels lash out their buccal cones and wrestle with its dinner until it’s eaten. Sea angels have also been seen ambushing prey together. 

Lobed Comb Jellies

The lobed comb jelly, a kind of Ctenophore, are oval-shaped animals lined with eight rows of flickering cilia. These six-inch long, bioluminescent creatures emit light from their translucent bodies, giving off a mystical glow. The cilia pulse against the water as their mucous-covered bodies glide.

As the footage from the Monterey Bay Aquarium zooms in on the cilia, the rows look like flickering neon lights of a rainbow ride at a carnival. This shimmering effect occurs because the cilia diffracts light. Often confused with jellyfish, lobed comb jellies don’t sting, but instead bite off chunks of prey nearly half their size—holding their food in their pink expandable guts.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

Have you seen this weed? (Photo: Euclid Police Department Facebook)

While a good portion of Ohio’s police are concerned with making sure that the Republican National Convention in Cleveland runs smoothly, some cops in at least one suburb are still having a good time.

On Tuesday, police in Euclid—just 11 miles outside of Cleveland—asked on Facebook if the owner of a Baggie of weed was interested in retrieving their property. Someone, the police said, dropped their bag of trees in a driveway near the public entrance of the police department, where an officer spotted and seized it.

"To retrieve your bag of marijuana, please come to the Euclid Police Department, Monday through Friday, during business hours," the cops advise the owner. "Please remember to bring ID.'

In the meantime, police in Cleveland, of course, have much bigger issues, like guns and masked protesters. But maybe they could learn a few things from their counterparts in Euclid, where, just 15 minutes away, there is marijuana, and jokes. 

(Photo: Bavarria/CC BY 2.0)

Some time ago, an 8-year-old named Kobus Snyman found some turtle bones on his father's farm in South Africa. He wasn't quite sure what he had, so he did what others might do in the same situation: he took the bones to a local museum.

The six-inch turtle specimen then made its way to scientists studying the ancient evolution of turtles and, specifically, how and why turtles evolved to wear protective shells. 

The researchers had seen other specimens of a 260-million-year-old species of turtle, but Snyman's was the most complete they had access to, offering the scientists a rare look at a well-preserved Eunotosaurus africanus.

It also, they say, solved a mystery. That's because scientists never quite understood why turtles had shells in the first place. Were they always for protection? It seemed like an awfully cumbersome way to go about it, and, as it turns out, the shells weren't originally for protection at all.

Instead, they were for digging into the ground and burrowing, mostly to try and escape the blazing African sun. 

"Why the turtle shell evolved is a very Dr. Seuss like question and the answer seems pretty obvious—it was for protection," says Tyler Lyson, who led the research. "But just like the bird feather did not initially evolve for flight—we now have early relatives of birds such as tyrannosaur dinosaurs with feathers that definitely were not flying—the earliest beginnings of the turtle shell was not for protection but rather for digging underground to escape the harsh South African environment where these early proto turtles lived."

Sometimes your most important defenses, in other words, are unintended consequences. 

A still from Gabriel Over the White House. (Photo: David Inman/YouTube)

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. 

Over the years, the White House has provided ample fodder for films and TV shows of all kinds—whether ass-kicking alien flicks or competingattempts to imagine what it'd be like to be the daughter of the president.

But in the early 1930s there weren't any movies or television shows about fictional presidents at all.

The pre-talkie era didn't generate a single film that imagined the potential of a leader who looked nothing like the one in office at the time. (Maybe people really liked Herbert Hoover? Oh … yeah. Nevermind.)

The Great Depression, however, created the perfect opportunity for the first such film—and, seen today, that film, 1933's Gabriel Over the White House, is a bizarre relic of a previous era, even if it is also capable of offering some trenchant commentary on our current one. 

Gabriel was funded by William Randolph Hearst, a known fascist sympathizer, and creatively influenced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who was reportedly a fan of the movie). It is is a radical propaganda film, offering a vision of the future that is by turns idealistic and disturbing. 

The movie poster. (Photo: Courtesy Warner Bros)

Based on a book of the same name, Hearst, a publishing magnate who was said to have inspired the plot of Citizen Kane, played a significant role in formulating the dialogue, author Louis Pizzitola notes in his 2002 book Hearst Over Hollywood:

It is easy to see why Hearst was attracted to the domestic and international themes in the novel of Gabriel Over the White House. Hearst was not only able to translate these themes into the action of the film, he wrote whole narrative passages and lengthy dialogue sequences to approximate more closely his own views on fighting crime, invigorating the economy, and disarming the nations of the world. Despite Hearst's extensive input, however, he was not satisfied with the end product, which had gone through several editing stages.

The film imagines its leader, President Judson Hammond, as a powerful, noble public official. Played by Walter Huston, who previously portrayed Abraham Lincoln on screen, Hammond first starts out as a corrupt do-nothing along the lines of Warren G. Harding.

But after a car wreck and a coma, Hammond is imbued with the spirit of the archangel Gabriel and miraculously recovers, becoming an FDR-style leader in the process, quickly introducing a series of social welfare programs. (Done, it should be said, before FDR himself had the chance to do the same in real life.)

But he doesn't stop there. When members of his cabinet hold a secret meeting to undermine him, he forces all of them to resign. When Congress won't abide by his plans, he convinces them to vote to disperse, effectively making him a dictator.

And then comes the drive-by shooting, after Hammond, in an effort to end prohibition, nationalizes the sale of alcohol, angering a stand-in for Al Capone, who retaliates as only a gangster would. That attack prompts Hammond to launch a brown shirt-style police force, blow up an illegal distillery, arrest the gangsters, put them on display in a show trial, and then execute them by firing squad.

In the final minutes, Hammond convinces every world leader that the U.S. military is too powerful to stop, urging them to agree to world peace on Hammond's own draconian terms. Not long after the world agrees, Hammond dies, eulogized as "one of the greatest men who ever lived."

It might take a disturbing amount of authoritarianism, the movie seems to be saying, but, yes, America can be made great again. 

We've dealt with a lot of weird portrayals of the White House over the years. Independence Day—in which aliens destroy the White House with a single laser—had Will Smith punching an alien and Jeff Goldblum taking down an the mothership with a Powerbook 5300. There's also an entire film, played for laughs, that imagines "Deep Throat" as two 15-year-old girls.

William Randolph Hearst, who bankrolled the film. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-hec-00535)

Still, Gabriel Over the White House, which was funded by Hearst at the nadir of the Great Depression, stands out, in part because of it's seeming quest to convince viewers that fascism was a noble cause. Great timing, in some ways, since Hitler had just completed his rise to power around the time of the film's release. (The film was supposedly even more extreme before censors got a hold of it.)

But it was enough of a success that it directly inspired another film, 1934's The President Vanishes, which came from similar roots—based on a book by an anonymous author, offering a thinly allegorical tale to critique the political climate—and one of Gabriel's producers, Walter Wanger.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was reportedly an influence on - and a fan of - the film. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-hec-47384)

The William A. Weldman-directed film differed in an important way, however: it was a critique of fascism, rather than a celebration of it. Its president, a peacenik named Stanley Craig (played by Arthur Byron), appeared to be kidnapped by a group of brownshirts. He wasn't—he faked his own disappearance—but it helped him make his case that war is bad and that the U.S. shouldn't enter whatever mess was happening in Europe. (Hearst, incidentally, wasn't involved this time.)

"Unlike 'Gabriel Over the White House,' which was the naïve mouthpiece for the schoolboy nationalism of a powerful publisher, 'The President Vanishes' deserves the attention of sober and intelligent citizens," wrote New York Times critic Andre Sennwald at the time.

Each film, though, presaged a long tradition of movies starring fictional American presidents, even if political critiques in modern times tend to be more subtle and more cynical, or even played totally straight.

But Gabriel and The President Vanishes were similar to the movies that came after in that all of them seemed to understand the powerful role the medium could play. The first two were clumsy, and maybe even dangerous, but they should at least be credited for attempting to raise political questions over America's future, something which, in our current political climate, we're sorely needing. 

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.  

A bioluminescent firefly squid. (Photo: Visuals Unlimited/Getty Images)

Each year on the western coast of Japan, nature creates a particularly unique spectacle. Just under the surface of Toyama Bay, between March and June, firefly squid gather themselves up from the depths to spawn. Their method of attracting a mate is exceptional: from their photophores—light producing organs—they emit electric blue light. For the captivated onlookers, it’s startlingly neon display of bioluminescence. 

Around 80 percent of ocean-dwelling organisms emit light, according to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA). Various types of deep-sea fish, krill, jellyfish and comb jellies, marine worms and plankton are all bioluminescent. Many of these creatures reside in the so-called “twilight zone” of the ocean: the depths between 600 and 3,300 feet, where sunlight barely reaches.

Bioluminescence is created by a chemical reaction, for a variety of purposes—anything from camouflage to communication to attracting prey. Regardless of what it is used for, the other-worldly neon glow of bioluminescent life is extraordinary to behold.

A sea walnut—a type of comb jelly. (Photo: Steven G. Johnson/CC BY-SA 3.0)

An Argyropelecus hemigymnus, a type of deep-sea hatchetfish, feeding.  (Photo: Prof. Francesco Costa/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Noctiluca scintillans - also know as Sea Sparkle - light up the surface of the water in Zeebrugge, Belgium (Photo: © Hans Hillewaert/CC BY-SA 4.0)

A Tomopteris, a type of marine worm that exhibits yellow bioluminescence. (Photo: uwe kils/CC BY-SA 3.0)

A red ctenophore, or comb jelly. They live at around 3,280 feet in depth. (Photo: NOAA Photo Library/CC BY 2.0)

Antarctic krill. The bioluminescent organs are visible at the base of the eyestalk and thorax.(Photo: NOAA Photo Library/CC BY 2.0)

An aequorea victoria jellyfish. (Photo: Kondratuk Aleksei/shutterstock.com)

The zooplankton Beroidae. (Photo: NOAA/Public Domain)

This guy's stinking up the joint and he has no idea. (Photo: Steve Snodgrass/CC BY 2.0)

It's impossible to gaze at a magnificent underwater creature, like a dolphin or a trout, without pondering how it feels—to swim so fast, to dive so deep, to feel so comfortable in such as strange environment. But have you ever wondered, as they go about their watery lives, what they're smelling?

Because all vertebrates come from the sea, smelling actually evolved there, too, says Dr. Keith Tierney, a fish olfaction expert at the University of Alberta. (Indeed, he points out, all olfaction arguably occurs underwater, as it requires the mucus in your nose.) But ever since the first proto-mammal crawled onto the shore, our smellvolution has diverged, leaving underwater creatures with adaptations that seem curious, and occasionally mysterious, to us landlubbers. Here's how some of our aquatic friends sniff around, and what they find when they do.

Fish

Catfish are particularly good sniffers. (Photo: Ude/CC BY-SA 3.0)

If you look closely at your goldfish's face, you might notice two tiny holes in his snout, not unlike the nostrils in your own. Instead of heading down the throat like ours, though, these pinpricks, called "nares," lead into a small chamber padded with olfactory receptors. When water flows into these nares, it brings all the scents of the underwater world along with it.

While your average fish doesn't have too many different receptors (about 100, compared to a mouse's 1300), each of these receptors can detect many unique odors. As a result, Tierney says, fish can really read the room—not only figuring out who is predator and who is prey, but noting when other fish are stressed or ready to mate, and using scent cues to find their way back home. They can also recognize all the new, smelly stuff we've been pumping into waterways. "Sometimes fish will avoid toxic chemicals," says Tierney, "but sometimes they appear to be attracted to them." The nose doesn't always know.

Crustaceans

A spiny lobster, mid-sniff. (Photo: Stemonitis/CC BY-SA 3.0)

When a lobster in a tank waves his appendages in your direction, he's not beckoning you over—he's probably trying to sniff you out. Rather than bringing odors all the way into their faces, crustaceans have external organs called antennules—moustache-looking mini-antennae draped with fine hairs. To smell, lobsters and crabs use these antennule like chemosensitive whips, grabbing smell samples during the downward snap and investigating them during the slower upstroke, explains marine biologist Dr. Mimi Koehl in a 2010 paper. In other words, Koehl writes, "each antennule flick is a 'sniff.'"

Once they've figured out what they're smelling, crustaceans can do a lot with the info: choose a mate, navigate in the dark, and establish urine-based dominance hierarchies. Smelling is so important, lobsters walk far more slowly when they're doing it, like deliberate detectives on the odor beat.

Whales, Dolphins & Manatees

A bowhead whale breaching off the coast of Alaska. (Photo: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve/CC BY-SA 2.0)

For a long time, scientists thought whales couldn't smell at all. The Inupiat, though, knew differently. Twice each year, as they hunted bowheads off the coast of Alaska, they were careful not to light fires on the ice and to build latrines upwind, for fear the smell of smoke or sewage would drive the whales away.

In 2008, anatomist Dr. Hans Thewissen tagged along on a bowhead hunt and came back with four whole whale brains. Dissection revealed a distinct olfactory bulb, connected to the nostrils by a nerve several feet long, and DNA analysis showed plenty of genes that code for smell sensors. While bowheads still have no way of smelling underwater—they would choke—these structures indicates that when they come up for air, they get a whiff of the world. 

This goes for manatees as well, although no behavioral studies have been conducted to see how they react to smells, says Nicola Erdsack of the Mote Marine Laboratory Manatee Research Program. Meanwhile, most toothed whales, including dolphins, lack this olfactory structure entirely, suggesting that they're smell-blind in and out of the water. This is probably good, as whale breath smells, in the words of one observer, like "an unholy mingling of fart and fishiness."

Frogs

An African clawed frog shows off his special dual-purpose equipment. (Photo: H. Krisp/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Frogs, famously, are equally comfortable on land and water. To help them out with this lifestyle, some of them even have amphibious noses.

In the African clawed frog, among other species, the nostrils lead to a special chamber that is divided in half horizontally, like a two-story building. The top floor connects to the lungs, while the bottom floor is self-contained. "Each portion can be selectively exposed to the environment using a flap of skin," explains Tierney. When the frog is out in the air, the top floor is open, and he can breathe in to smell, like the rest of us. When he's submerged, the bottom floor opens up to smell the water—and the top floor closes, so he doesn't croak.

Moles & Shrews

Get you a snoot that can do both, like this star-nosed mole. (Photo: gordonramsaysubmissions/CC BY 2.0)

Land mammals that hunt underwater don't have subdivided noses to help them out. Instead, at least two species have developed a special skill to get by—rapid-fire bubble smelling. As biologist Ken Catania discovered in 2006, if a water shrew or a star-nosed mole meets an underwater object—anything from an earthworm to a piece of trash—he'll blow bubbles at it through his nostrils. As soon as the the bubbles touch the object's surface, he'll suck them back in, providing himself with a small packet of explanatory scent. He can do this ten times per second—about the same rate that a rat sniffs.

Thus far, this behavior has only been rigorously tested in moles and shrews. Thanks to high-speed underwater cameras, though, some people think they have observed it in otters. It is the cutest way to smell, after all. 

Humans

No need to do that yet. (Photo: OCVS/CC0)

Through biology, technology, and chutzpah, humans have figured out how to see, hear, feel, and taste pretty well underwater. When it comes to smelling, though, we're still in the dark. We're no good at bubbles, our noses remain stubbornly attached to our lungs, and all our underwater breathing techniques use boring, canned air.

If we could pull it off, though, odds are we'd know some of the same delight and disgust as our more submerged friends, depending on where we were hanging out. "In rich tropical coastal waters, it might smell like a garden," predicts Tierney. "In sewage effluent it might smell like, well, use your imagination."

Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.

We're thrilled to bring you the first episode of Escape Plan, a road trip podcast from Atlas Obscura and Zipcar. We've been yearning to do a podcast for a long time. In Escape Plan, we hope we've created a show that captures Atlas's love of curiosity and exploration.

In each episode, our CEO David Plotz will be taking a one-day Zipcar road trip with a friend. He'll know where they're going, but his guest will have no idea. For our first episode, David took Atlas Obscura Editor-in-Chief Reyhan Harmanci up the Hudson Valley, north of New York City, to spend a day exploring 19^th century industrial America. They started the trip by driving to Kykuit, the incredible home of four generations of the Rockefeller family, and later visited the ruins of one of America’s greatest factories, the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring.

Listen to Escape Plan here (or in your Zipcar), subscribe in iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts from, and please leave a comment and a rating. And tell us where we should take our next road trip!

Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate. (Photo: Mick Hales), West Point Foundry administration building. (Photo: David Plotz)

Swimmers at shark-netted Bondi Beach in Sydney. (Photo: Tim Grubb/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Gaze over the sprawling mass of humanity toward the horizon from any popular Sydney beach in summer and, if you’re eagle-eyed, you may be able to spot the shark net buoys.

Located around 1,600 feet from the shore, these bobbing markers secure the shark-deterring mesh nets that have been in use since 1937. A minor detail: those shark nets may not work.

Mesh nets were introduced to beaches in New South Wales—the state that’s home to Sydney—in 1937. At the time, the state government was preparing to host international visitors to commemorate the 150-year anniversary of British colonization. Concerned that one of these visitors might encounter a shark during an aquatic frolic, the government installed nets at 18 beaches in the state, including at the famed Bondi Beach.

Preparing a shark net at Stockton beach, circa 1950. (Photo: State Library of NSW)

Three months later, a man was attacked by a shark at one of those netted beaches. Ernest Baker was paddling a long, narrow kayak known as a surf-ski at Cronulla Beach in Sydney's south when he felt “a terrific bump.” The force of the impact threw him into the water. When he surfaced, said a news report at the time, “he was terrified to see a huge shark on the other side of the overturned surf-ski.” Baker was shaken but uninjured, though his surf-ski, “when brought ashore, was found to have deep indentations on the upper and lower sides, such as would be made by the teeth of a shark.”

In the decades since Baker got knocked off his surf-ski, says Natalie Banks, National Campaign Director at conservation organization Sea Shepherd Australia, there have been about 40 shark "encounters" among the now-51 netted New South Wales beaches, “including a fatality and some very serious bites.”

Placed within 500 meters (1,640 feet) of the shore, the nets, which measure around 500 feet wide and 20 feet tall, are intended to function as deterrents, not barriers. “What they’re trying to do is capture sharks to stop them from actually getting to the popular beaches where there are bathers," says Banks. “However, the majority of sharks have been found on the opposite side of the shark net—on the shore side.”

A diagram of the type of shark net found at New South Wales beaches. (Image: DennisM/Public Domain)

In February, Deakin University environmental science professor Laurie Laurenson claimed that an analysis of 50 years of data on shark mitigation programs showed the nets “do nothing.” But faith in them—among the public, the government, and some scientists, remains high. In response to Laurenson's claim, shark expert Dr. Barry Bruce said nets "certainly reduce risk because they catch and kill sharks that have the potential to bite people."

This killing of the sharks—and of other marine animals unlucky enough to get enmeshed—is another big factor in the net debate. Shark nets, says Banks, "are a fishing device, and they will catch and kill, or entangle, anything that gets caught." Turtles, rays, dugongs, seals, and even whales are among the animals who end up ensnared.

It's an issue that inspires impassioned responses. In 2012, Sydney newspaper the Daily Telegraphclaimed "radical conservationists" had been slicing holes in the shark nets of local beaches. A rep from the environmentally-focused Greens political party responded by calling the nets "indiscriminate killers of harmless marine life" that are "next to useless in preventing attacks anyway."

There are shark-deterring options beyond the current style of nets, including aerial surveillance programs, plastic "eco-shark" barrier nets that don't entangle wildlife, and Clever Buoys, which are sonar-equipped floats that scan for sharks in the area. Such alternatives, along with tagging and tracking sharks and the development of a shark safety app, are part of the New South Wales government's current five-year, $12 million Shark Strategy.

A rare enclosed-style shark net at Nielsen Park in Sydney. (Photo: Aidan Casey/CC BY-ND 2.0)

One element that is less manageable is public fear. “Our media plays on fear of sharks, and the idea that you can be taken by these snapping monsters of the oceans who are lurking every time you put your big toe in the water," says Banks.

Shark nets may be less effective than people think, but "it’s so difficult to get that message across, because it’s people’s fears that you’re talking about, or talking to.”

For now, the nets remain in place at New South Wales beaches, but the trialing of new shark detection systems—including Clever Buoy, described as "facial recognition technology for marine life"—points toward a future in which they may no longer be needed.