A member of the US Capitol Police maneuvers a bomb disposal robot through Washington D.C. (Photo: Jay Tamboli/CC BY 2.0)
Earlier this month, a robot normally used to defuse bombs made a strange kind of history when it became the first police robot to intentionally kill a target. After a standoff that left five officers dead, the Dallas Police Department repurposed the robot as a weapon in order to blow up suspect Micah Xavier Johnson, who was hiding in a parking garage.
That robot was far from the only one out there. At that time, Atlas Obscuraresurfaced a 2015 map from Bard College's Center for the Study of the Drone showing the number and locations of other surplus military robots owned by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies around the country.*
Last week, the Center brought their map up to date—and in the process, uncovered some surprising police robot trends.
First of all, 2016 has already been a banner year for police robots. "There were more transfers in the first half of 2016 than in any year previous," says Dan Gettinger, founder and co-director of the Center. Thus far in 2016, there have been at least 201 instances in which robots joined domestic law enforcement departments. (Although the Center did not detail the overall number of robots transferred, it's safe to assume it exceeds this, as several robots may be transferred at once.) By contrast, all of 2015 saw 81 transfers. From 2003 to 2010, there were only eleven.
In addition, police departments are now receiving bigger, better robots. In the past, Gettinger says, the model most likely to show up in police stations was the MARCbot IV, a small bomb disposal robot that was originally designed to to search out IEDs in Iraq. Experts think the robot deployed to kill Johnson was likely a MARCbot.
Though this bot is still popular, starting in December 2015, police departments began receiving a lot more of the Packbot510—a more expensive model known for its wide range of uses, including surveillance, vehicle inspections, and explosive detection. "It's a newer, larger, more capable robot than has been transferred in the past," says Gettinger.
The PackBot 510, newly popular within police departments. (Photo: Outisnn/CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Center has also looked into robot distribution. While the biggest individual robot hauls went to FBI agencies in San Francisco and Dallas, local California police departments—including the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department, and the Covina and West Covina Police Departments—were close behind. State by state, California has received by far the most robots (272), followed by Texas (125), Arizona (53), Alabama (40) and Ohio (40).
Gettinger doesn't see these trends slowing anytime soon. For one thing, many IED robots were sent into Iraq and Afghanistan as part of various troop surges, and are no longer needed. "As the main infantry commitment to these countries decreases, you have more and more robots that are just extra," says Gettinger—meaning they're likely to keep switching over to domestic police work. For another, the government awarded 42 police robot-related contracts and grants in 2015 — more than ever before.
If you'd like to know more about what your local police robots are up to, there are a few options. Gettinger suggests looking through publicly accessible police data and isolating situations, like bomb threats, where a robot may have been used. More clues might be found in the resources used by bomb disposal teams, like this presentation from the Port of Seattle Police Department.
If you're thinking of digging deeper and filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, J. Patrick Brown, a public records expert at Muckrock, suggests repurposing language from their recent government drone census. He also recommends checking your local police department's press release archive, Facebook page, or Twitter account. "Often, the first you hear about police tech is when the police are salivating about the possibility of using it," he says.
*The map is based on data from the 1033 program, which transfers robots and other surplus military hardware from the Department of Defense to local law enforcement agencies, and from public contract announcements. Since law enforcement may also procure robots in other ways, it is not a comprehensive list.
If you find out anything interesting about police robots in your city, let us know at cara@atlasobscura.com.
The other day, I was driving along a road in upstate New York when I saw a deer. This isn’t an unusual sight in itself, but this fawn, young enough to still have was still spots, was bounding, flying, across the lawns beside the road, so fast and heedless that my husband worried it would jump right into a car and die.
What was even more striking than its speed, though, was how high it seemed to get, as it left the earth and almost hovered, for a moment, in the air, over and over again. It look something like this, but even more dramatically air-borne:
So effortless, so much air. Why couldn’t I do that?
In theory, say some experts, jumping should not be just the provence of a few lucky animals. One evening in 1949, after dinner at the Royal Institution in London, a scientist named Archibald Vivian Hill delivered a speech in which he argued that, based on the basic properties of muscle and on simple dimensional reasoning, “similar animals of different size should be able to jump the same height.”
Jumping relies on basic physics: any animal that jumps is using energy to leave the ground. This is true whether they are bounding, leaping, high jumping, jumping straight up into the air, or lifting all four feet off the ground while "stotting" or "pronking."
Jump from a running start, and you have horizontal energy to put into it. Jump from a standstill, and you only have the energy your body can create from that state of rest. No matter what, though, the aim of a jump is to lift the center of gravity from the ground, as high as possible.
You’d think that a smaller animal might get less air, since it has less muscle and shorter legs and can create less power. But it also has less mass to move. Hill noted that in the standing long jump, kangaroo rats and humans could jump about the same distance. As a rule, animals with equal proportion of the muscles used for jumping can cover about equal heights or distances.
The idea that all animals should jump the same distance had been around for centuries before Hill outlined it, but, of course, it’s not that simple. Think about it this way: small animals have shorter legs, which means that as they bend their legs and push off their ground their muscles, even if they were incredibly strong, don't have much time to do the work of jumping. They basically can use only one of two tricks to improve their jumping prowess, explains Jim Usherwood, a senior research fellow at the Royal Veterinary College’s Structure & Motion Lab. They can extend the time in which they make the jump or increase its power.
Longer legs allow more time for muscles to gather energy before the animal leaves the ground. This is why good jumpers have disproportionately long or strong legs. And excellent jumpers, like fleas, locusts, and other insects, do not rely on the power of muscle alone. They have other tricks—their legs include catapult-like mechanisms that store energy and release it at the right moment.
Still, even accounting for these tricks, Usherwood points out that humans aren't that bad. "I can jump higher than a locust, or frog, or flea is able to," he says. In the end, it does matter how big you are to begin with.
The tiny fawn didn’t have noticeably long legs, so I asked Usherwood if he could explain how it go so much air. We considered this image, by Eadweard Muybridge of a similarly airborne fawn:
The front legs of these sorts of animals would have good, long tendons, Usherwood explained, which help it slow, right before the jump, and ping up its legs into the air. Then, it relies on its back, muscly legs, to kick off.
But part of this deer’s jump is just show. It’s pulled up its legs up towards its body, leaving an impressive gap of air beneath it. But the measure of a good jump isn’t actually how much air you can clear, so much as how high can you get your center of mass away from the ground. In other words, the deer wasn’t doing anything so special.
Humans are decent at this, although not great. We don’t run particularly fast, and we don’t have springy legs. But, really, there’s not much separating me from that fawn. In fact, in one of Hill’s examples, mule deer and humans were measured as jumping the same distances if they started from a run.
People are often impressed that deer can jump 8-foot fences, but humans can, too, if properly trained. The current high jump record for humans is just over 8 feet, and that's under rules requiring jumpers to launch from one foot, a restriction that limits the height they can reach. Using two feet, and a series of energy-gathering flips, people have cleared bars even higher, of 9 or 10 feet. These are highly trained athletes, whereas among deer clearing a tall fence seems more commonplace. But the deer often have a stronger motivation for jumping fences (like access to a tasty garden). If the reaching best food required jumping 8 foot fences, we'd all probably be pretty good at it, too.
According to an amazingly-headlined story over on the NT News, a pair of roommates in the municipality of Bee’s Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory recently woke up to find a live crocodile in their bathroom.
One of the residents, Corine Myers, 16, got a picture from her roommate of the beast after she was discovered earlier the previous morning. The creature, a saltwater crocodile measuring over five-and-a-half feet long, clearly didn’t wander in on its own. The croc’s mouth was tied shut with some kind of pink cord, suggesting that it was not simply a wild animal looking for a new habitat, though how it got there remains a bit of a mystery.
Bee’s Creek is a rural area of Darwin, and crocodiles are not an uncommon sight among fishermen. When Myers first saw the picture, she thought it was a prank left there by her mother, who had just returned from a fishing trip. But it apparently wasn’t, and, according to NT News, they now suspect it was left there by a different pranker, identity unknown.
In the end, an animal control ranger came to collect the croc, which was said to be in rough shape, but was taken to a farm to be cared for, and no one was injured. The mystery, however, remains.
As the blaze bore down upon his neighborhood and the humans were rushed out, one forgotten resident took matters into his own claws. According to KABC-TV Los Angeles animal control officers found a 75-pound tortoise on the side of the road, "fleeing as quickly as he could."
He is now at Castaic Animal Care Center in Santa Clarita, resting comfortably after his workout—along with an ark's worth of other critters, including 228 horses, 52 goats, 29 chickens, seven rabbits, five cats and two dogs. If you're from the Santa Clarita area and you were separated from a pet in the fire, you might be able to find them there.
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.
In northeastern Australia, archaeologists have discovered the teeth and bones belonging to two perviously unknown species of kangaroos that went extinct about 18 million years ago. According to their analysis, published in Memoirs of Museum Victoria, these ancient kangaroos were members of the rat-kangaroo family and “are related to bettongs and potoroos," PerthNow reports. Only, relative to these current-day species, the ancient kangaroos were pretty giant.
Let’s unpack all this. First of all, you may be wondering, what is a bettong? What is a potoroo? They almost sound like made up species, but in fact they are diminutive marsupials, about the size of rabbits, that live in Australia. Here’s a bettong:
The term “rat-kangaroo family” makes more sense now, right? The ancient teeth that the scientists found looked a lot like the teeth of modern rat-kangaroos, but the animals they belonged to would have been much larger—at least twice the size of bettongs and potoroos, or about the size of a rather large and fat cat.
Now imagine a cat-sized, rat-like thing hopping around the forest, and once again be thankful that you live on Earth in a time where the creatures we share the planet with have been scaled down quite a bit.
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.
When it comes to finding success, practice does really make perfect.
That’s the message behind this 1913 allegorical map entitled “The Road to Success,” a drawing that turns the figurative journey towards artistic triumph into a cartographic depiction of an actual climb towards victory.
The map appeared first in an October 1913 edition of The Etude, a magazine covering musical topics that was also known as Presser’s Musical Magazine, named for its editor Theodore Presser.
Map collector PJ Mode, whose more than 800 maps are being added to a Cornell University digital collection, says the editor’s finicky ways informed the content of the map. “Mr. Presser had his own method for teaching people how to be musicians. And if you look carefully at this map, you’ll see there’s something about the people who don’t have method, don’t have technique,” Mode says. “They fall into the pit.”
Taking shortcuts won’t get you anywhere except to the bottom of the River of Failure, which threatens to sweep away anyone who’s not up to the challenge of putting in hard work. And don’t just blow hot air, or you’ll end up in the clouds.
Among other moral failings that will interrupt your climb to the top are the pit of Illiteracy, a Bad Habits fan that blows you backwards, a daunting mountain called Lack of Preparation, and the distracting Café Bohemianism. Check into Hotel Know-It-All if you like, but don't expect to ever leave.
“But if you follow the method, then you get to success,” Mode says. “And you notice that success at the top has this musical symbol.”
How to do it, according to Presser? Board the train to success at the Right System station, pursue True Knowledge, which leads you on a path up the Lack of Preparation mountain, and on through the Gate of Ideals.
“It’s interesting that there’s a link between those maps, which are religious—they’re intended to reinforce religious values—and [allegorical maps like this], which are about the conduct of life, but not so explicitly religious,” says Mode.
“They all have the theme of an allegorical journey to get to where you want to go, whether it’s heaven or it’s happiness and success.”
But the resemblance to an earlier drawing by the National Cash Register Company that appeared in a 1913 edition of the Willmar Tribune is even more uncanny.
In fact, “The Road to Success” borrowed elements almost directly from it (Presser cited his source). This map that served as inspiration, entitled “Picture Sermon to Men and Boys—Illustrating the Difficulties on the Road to Success” was originally intended to illustrate how to be a successful businessman, and Presser adapted it to suit musical education.
In the Mexican state of Veracruz, men climb a 100-foot pole to ask the gods to end drought in a death-defying, 450-year-old tradition known as Danza de los Voladores or Dance of the Flyers.
In this GoPro video, four men clamber up the pole, which according to the original story represents the tallest tree in the area. With the poise of a gymnast, and without a harness or safety net, the first man stands up, takes out a wooden pipe attached to a drum and plays a short ditty. The guy is now standing upright on an area that looks no bigger than a hubcap, playing two instruments at once.
Impressive—but the dare-devilry is just beginning.
The three other dancers then tie rope around one and other. Without warning they lurch back, causing the rope to unravel and the dancers to swing around the pole. Arms extended, the flyers soar through the air, still only attached to a piece of rope at their waist. The camera zooms in on one of the dancers, who even manages a smile.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Emailella@atlasobscura.com.
Sometimes you just want to get away. Like really away. Like "bottom of the ocean" away.
Maybe you want to submerge for a week or two, or perhaps just head underwater for long enough to grab a bite to eat. Either way, in the following luxurious spots you can sleep and eat in the height of luxury, but instead of the standard metropolitan fare outside your window, you can expect to see lush, peaceful ocean life.
If we neglected to include your favorite aquatic establishment, don't hold out, add it to the Atlas!
A Princess Diana lookalike smiles at a diver outside her porthole. (Photo: Jules' Undersea Lodge)
Despite the fact that it's named for Jules Verne, Jules' Undersea Lodge isn't exactly 20,000 leagues under the sea. It rests only two fathoms down, at the bottom of a lagoon, and if you understand the nautical conversion of fathoms to leagues you should probably book your stay now.
A scuba dive is necessary to even get into the lodge, and once you're in, you've seen most of it. The lodge is more 1970s submarine than full-service hotel, but staff will deliver you a pizza via airlock. If solitude is what you're looking for, Jules' Undersea Lodge is a good bet. No other patrons and no hustle and bustle of city sounds here—just the occasional fishy visitor and the peaceful "bloop" of bubbles.
Fish await the arrival of exclusive Ithaa Undersea Restaurant patrons. (Photo: Hilton Rangali Island)
To call Ithaa Undersea Restaurant exclusive is an understatement. To access the glass-domed dining room guests must walk out onto the water atop a thin jetty, into a small thatched hut, and descend a five-meter (16-foot) spiral staircase into the ocean. The restaurant can only seat 14 people, and "children are welcome at lunch, but not dinner."
Once inside, diners can watch tropical fish, sharks, sting rays, and the like swim around them as they eat.
Part hotel, part marine life observatory, and part art installation, the Utter Inn on Sweden's Lake Malaren offers a stay like no other. Guests are picked up by raft, dropped off at the inn (the name of which translates to "Otter Inn"), and left to their own devices. Their only means of transportation is a small rowboat attached to the inn, with which they can explore nearby islands.
The top floor of the tiny cabin contains just a toilet and a small cooker, but down a narrow ladder a whole new world opens up. The bedroom, too, is itty bitty (just two twin beds and a flower pot), but beyond its four windows is the expanse of the lake where pike and other underwater life abound.
Six meters submerged at Subsix. (Photo: PER AQUUM)
As with most of these underwater hot spots, Subsix is hard to get to, which only contributes to its exclusivity and appeal. The Maldives restaurant/bar/club is in the Indian Ocean in a coral reef amongst eels, sharks, and turtles. The reef has been tended to by a marine biologist, and as it grows around the restaurant the marine life will proliferate and bloom. Subsix allegedly only closes once the last guest has left, so you can party with the fish as late as you like.
Fish-eye view of the Underwater Room (Photo: The Manta Resort)
It looks like a floating dock, where guests can lie on the boards to sunbathe, stargaze, and dive right from their doorway into the ocean. But if you're staying in the much-desired Underwater Room at the Manta Resort, it's as though you've entered another world. In a sense, you have. Most of the bedroom walls are windows to the ocean outside. Looking out, one feels totally alone—except, of course, for the hundreds of fish.
And I think it has a lot to do with the way that it shifts social order in an unexpected way.
Here's why: If you see a group of people standing in an otherwise empty park, all from different walks of life, brought together by this game, it looks spontaneous from a distance—totally unplanned, as if they all stumbled there independently. (There, of course, is a rhyme and reason to it—and it's that a dumb app told them to go there.)
But it got me thinking a bit about the nature of spontaneity, the cosmic way that we do things on the fly, and the way those things connect together.
As it turns out, I'm not the only one who sees Pokémon Go as a spontaneous teaching moment. Just ask the libertarians.
The past year has been a wild roller coaster of emotion in the political sphere, with the very high levels of dislike for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton turning the whole election cycle into a wild card.
But what might be a bigger surprise is the fact that the biggest non-politics story at the moment—the phenomenal rise of Pokémon Go—is seen by some libertarians as a validation of a philosophy that's key to their economic ideals: spontaneous order, the idea that in a world of chaos, order eventually organizes itself.
Pokémon Go players spotted in Central Park, New York. (Photo: oinonio/CC BY-SA 2.0)
The theory basically follows as such: If you do nothing to set order or regulate flow, order will eventually show itself. By forcing order onto a structure, however, you limit possibilities and outcomes, and the weight of the system eventually falls over on itself. Here's how Hayek puts it in his landmark 1974 Nobel Prize speech, "The Pretense of Knowledge," which argues against heavy social engineering of economic structures:
In the physical sciences there may be little objection to trying to do the impossible; one might even feel that one ought not to discourage the over-confident because their experiments may after all produce some new insights. But in the social field the erroneous belief that the exercise of some power would have beneficial consequences is likely to lead to a new power to coerce other men being conferred on some authority. Even if such power is not in itself bad, its exercise is likely to impede the functioning of those spontaneous ordering forces by which, without understanding them, man is in fact so largely assisted in the pursuit of his aims.
(It's worth noting that libertarians don't have a monopoly on theories involving spontaneity. In fact, another well-known theory on spontaneous actions is generally more closely associated with communism or Marxism. Revolutionary spontaneity, as it's called, is the idea that groups of people from lower levels of society will rise up without the help of a political party or an outside force. That theory is associated with the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as the Arab Spring.)"
So, where does Pokémon Go fit into this?
To put it simply, the design of the game is very hands-off, and its growth is basically pushed forward by the use of spontaneous social systems.
People come together with the game, but not through force—they find each other, go outside, and the spark of human interaction just shows itself. It adds something without creating limits.
"It was absolutely beautiful to watch. With an element of fantasy and the assistance of marvelous technology, we experienced the common humanity of our neighbors and strangers in our community," argues the Foundation for Economic Education's Jeffrey A. Tucker. "This kind of experience is key for building a social consensus in favor of universal human rights."
Compare this to, say, a mixer during a business event. The approach is heavily designed, meant to bring people together in a somewhat contrived, forced way. If there's alcohol there, a giant room, and some name tags, clearly you'll talk to someone, right? As any wallflower will tell you, it often doesn't work out that way.
But with a design like Pokémon Go, there are no wallflowers, because everyone is brought together by a shared experience, one that appears on its own without any additional contrived strategies on the part of the creators of the game.
"The game provides the opportunity for building social institutions, but it’s the actions of the individuals in the game that build it, forming a beautiful spontaneous order 'of human action, not human design,'" argues Tyler Groenendal of the Acton Institute.
Young Americans for Liberty, a Ron Paul-affiliated nonprofit that brings together millennials who get excited about laissez-faire economic theory, has recommended the game as a perfect activity for its loose network of chapters.
"You can find classical liberal ideas playing out in the real world every which way you look, even in your games," the group's Derek Spicer writes. "Pokémon Go is just one in the litany of examples of how spontaneous order affects how we play video games."
The question is, of course, whether the broader public will make that connection. Or even Pokémon Go players specifically, who already know plenty about chaos.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
The Space Shuttle's main thruster burning hydrogen. (Photo: Public domain)
Quantum computing is the future of computing, and, like traditional computing, can get pretty complicated. But one of its chief advantages over traditional computing, which, at its base, is a way to compute binary code—ones and zeroes—is that it can deal with pieces of information that are capable of being both a one and a zero at the same time.
This capability is a principle known as superposition, and the pieces of information are known as qubits. And it's because qubits are capable of superposition that they might be able to help model parts of our universe that contain other forms of superposition—like chemical reactions, which are very difficult to model on computers that deal with only ones and zeroes.
Last week, scientists from Google as well as a range of universities said they had successfully simulated a hydrogen molecule using just this method, achieving what they described as a breakthrough in quantum computing.
More precisely, the scientists said they had simulated the molecule's energy, adding that if they're able to more accurately simulate the energy of other molecules, those simulations could have a vast real-world impact.
As Science Alert points out, that could lead to everything from better batteries to better fertilizer for our farms. We're getting closer and closer, in other words, to a better, more simulated world.
The 1948 presidential campaign, which would later result in one of the most famously wrong newspaper headlines in American history, was complicated. For the first time ever, three candidates—Democrat Harry Truman, Republican Thomas Dewey, and Progressive Henry Wallace—were nominated at conventions in the same city: Philadelphia.
Philly, of course, is also hosting this year's Democratic National Convention, for reasons that have a lot to do with Democrats' attempts to win Pennsylvania in the fall, and less to do with simple logistics. But in 1948, for both Democrats and Republicans, Philadelphia was a choice that was mostly about logistics: the logistics of getting on television, to be specific.
That's because Philly sat on top of a television coaxial cable that gave each party access to millions of eyeballs—TV-watching eyeballs—using a then-novel technology that both sides were trying to exploit. And while tens of millions more listened along with their radios—TV would not truly define a presidential election until 1960—there, for the first time, live on television, was the future of our nation, broadcast for all to watch.
And while American political conventions have always been gaudy spectacles of tastelessness, this was also the first time many Americans laid eyes on the raw show itself, which some commentators then predicted would lead conventions to tone down the madness. It was just all too classless and undignified, you see.
"Many viewers indicated that they found the recurrent carnival spirit not in keeping with the dignity they felt should prevail in the business of selecting a presidential nominee," a New York Times columnist wrote, going on to predict that television would force the political parties to "pare away bombast and high jinks associated up to now with [conventions]."
If only. Still, the 1948 conventions made history, even if, by today's numbers, the amount of viewers remained small. The U.S. population was less than half the size it is today, or around 148 million people, but just a small fraction of those—up to 10 million—are thought to have watched, primarily because the broadcasts were only available along the Eastern Seaboard, from Boston to Richmond. (Coaxial cables in 1948 only went so far.)
So, what, exactly, did viewers see? A lot of sweat, for one thing. The Philadelphia conventions that year were the last time political conventions were held in a venue that didn't have air-conditioning. And in video of Truman's speech at the convention, convention-goers are seen getting creative in how they fanned themselves, many using what appeared to be programs, mostly in vain.
On stage, things were considerably worse, mostly because of the lights. If the convention was to be televised, networks told convention organizers, the dais would need to be lit up. And, because of the primitive camera technology of 1948, that meant highly lit up. As a consequence, convention speakers, many of whom could be seen with visible sweat stains, probably had it the worst of anyone. (Their wives, sitting behind them, didn't have it much better.)
The Republicans were the first into the spotlights, arriving in late June and assembling at the now-demolished Convention Hall. There, the heat and lights were omnipresent, but so was something else that would become a staple of TV: makeup. Public figures were still figuring out their makeup game, or how to look good both in person and to the viewers at home. Dewey, for example, brought his own, but still fared poorly, thanks to his beard complicating things. Others simply refused to wear makeup, opting to go natural. But no one got it worse than Clare Boothe Luce, the wife of publishing magnate Henry Luce and a former congresswoman, who was scorned for her look on TV.
"Newspapers reported Clare Booth Luce looked fine in the hall, but terrible on television," Reuven Frank, a former president of NBC News, wrote in 1988, while one syndicated columnist "expressed horror at what the cameras did to Mrs. Luce."
Truman with the famous headline. (Photo: Public domain)
At the Democratic convention, which began a few weeks later, the issues were similar. There was the heat of 15,000 bodies packed into one steamy hall, and there was the makeup, who would wear it and who wouldn't. And there were even a lot of doves, thanks to a convention-goer who had set them loose in the convention hall.
Perhaps pushed along by the heat or the fact that it was televised, not long after the convention started something rare in modern conventions also emerged: true conflict. The party had narrowly voted to add a civil rights plank to their platform, the first for any Democratic party ever, which prompted, live on television, many southern Democrats to simply walk out.
This, for Truman, was a disaster, and dimmed his chances at the election in November. Still, on July 14, the convention's final day, he roused himself to deliver a defiant 24-minute call to arms, taking to the rostrum around two in the morning, yet hardly seeming fazed by the heat, or the hour, or the moment.
And later that year, when no one remembered the heat, or the doves, or the makeup, Truman, in fact, won, beating Dewey in an upset.
That day, Truman hoisted up the Chicago Daily Tribune's infamous front page, which trumpeted "Dewey Defeats Truman".
"Ain't the way I heard it!" he said then, beaming.
For people concerned about shielding their internet activity from the many data-gathering spots on the internet, the Tor network has long been a go-to tool. The network routes a user’s activity through a series of relays, which keeps websites from collecting information about their location or tracking what sites they visit.
But the advantage of using that network relies, to some extent, on the presumption that the nodes used to mask people’s activities aren’t themselves collecting data. But as ZDNet reports, two computers scientists have found 110 nodes in the network that are “misbehaving”—snooping on users’ behavior and sometimes using the data collected against the Tor network.
Not all of the malicious nodes had the same level of sophistication, the researchers wrote in their paper, which they will present at a major hacking conference in early August. Some of these nodes were easier to locate than others. Representatives of the Tor project told Threat Post that these nodes were a known “annoyance” and that a new design of the system will deal with the problem.
The snooping nodes don’t necessarily have a dark intent—they could be set up be other researchers, for instance. Another likely source is law enforcement trying to investigate sites on the dark web. But the danger for Tor users is that the data collected by these nodes could be used to identify and disable websites or services that are hidden. While Tor can be used to mask criminal activity, it’s also used by privacy activities, journalists and others who want to protect information.
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.
Precious scrawls and squiggles. (Photo: David Plotz)
At first glance, it’s hard to see why New York's Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History would hold the above letter in its collection. The yellowed paper holds a few lines of loops that look to have been lazily scribbled in pencil—the kind of thing you might doodle out of boredom when a call center operator places you on hold. The catalog entry lists its contents as "Mostly illegible scribbles."
Beneath these scribbles, though, is a clue: the phrase “Charley loves his Father very much,” written with the same pencil, but in a legible, even elegant, hand.
The Charley in question was Charley Burpee, who was about four years old in 1864—the year he scrawled those loops and scribbles. He was writing to his father, Thomas, a soldier from Connecticut who began serving in the Civil War as a Union Army captain on July 12, 1862. Within a few months of receiving his son's letter, Thomas was wounded at Cold Harbor, Virginia. He died two days later. Charley's scribbles were among the personal effects given to the family when his body was shipped home.
More scribbles from Charley. (Photo: To Thomas Burpee, Charllie Burpee, Courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC02744.297)
Charley’s letter is a rarity. While many letters written by Civil War soldiers have survived, there are few remaining letters that were written by soldiers’ families and delivered to the battlefield. “In general, letters from home don’t survive,” says Sandy Trenholm, Curator and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Soldiers had to carry every possession in their haversacks, and non-essential items, even ones with sentimental value, tended to be jettisoned.
For Thomas Burpee to have held onto Charley’s letter, “it must have really meant something to him,” says Trenholm. “I think it survived because he missed his children and he wanted to feel close to them. He was holding onto it.”
A letter from Thomas Burpee to his youngest son. (Photo: To Charley, Thomas F. Burpee, Courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC02744.318)
The Gilder Lehrman Institute, which maintains an extensive collection of Civil War documents, has over 500 items relating to Thomas Burpee, his wife, Adeline, and their two children. From these papers, it's been possible to get a sense of the soldier's life and his relationship with his family. "You feel like you know them," says Trenholm, "like they’re a friend of yours.”
Captain Burpee kept another letter from Lucien, his elder son. Written in February 1864 when Lucien was about eight, it's a stream-of-consciousness insight into life back home in Connecticut: "I go to school every day. Mother says that she will get me a present if I will learn well. We have had two snow storms. Did you get that Valentine I sent you."
Knowing Lucien penned those words within months of his father's death is sobering, especially when you discover that Thomas Burpee's story had a gruesome final twist. "This is a little disturbing," says Trenholm, "but one of the letters we have, it’s from a chaplain in his regiment, and it sounds like they forgot to embalm him before they sent the body home. The chaplain was trying to explain that it wasn’t his fault—that he thought everything was taken care of.”
The delivery of Thomas’ unpreserved body seems to have had a significant effect on the Burpee family. Adeline, says Trenholm, was "horrified at what happened," and expressed this in a letter to the army chaplain.
Though Charley would have had scant memories of his father, both sons became advocates for the memory of Thomas Burpee. “There’s a lot in the collection where they’ve written, talking about their father, or doing things in their father’s memory," Trenholm says. "It was very, very strong in them, that they needed to keep his memory alive."
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
Some complain about the expanding role of technology in our lives. This time, it’s music to our ears.
In this video, a coordinated and synchronized orchestra of eight floppy disk drives plays “Through the Fire and Flames”—appropriately renamed “Through the Fire and Floppies”—by English metal band DragonForce.
The video was posted by the YouTube account Sammy1Am, whose page hosts an entire collection of floppy drive symphony videos, including a rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King.”
To make the music, the programmer responsible uses a code he developed to make the floppy drive’s stepper motor—an electric motor that splits a continuous rotation into steps, allowing the drive to control the position of the read/write head of the disk—to operate at a specific frequency.
Who would have thought that a collection of some of history’s most obsolete electronic devices could be repurposed to create some bumping beats?
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Emailella@atlasobscura.com.
It's a highway commuter's morning nightmare—lines of gridlocked vehicles, with no end in sight. Travelers on Philadelphia's chunk of Interstate 95 have been facing this for days, stuck in stop-and-go traffic while the Democratic National Convention clamors on nearby.
But this particular snarl isn't due to pileups, protests, or even straight-up closed roads (though there are all of those, too.) "Basically, it's because tons of truck drivers violated a Secret Service weight restriction," writes Anna Orso at Billy Penn. As she explains, because of the DNC, the top brass has banned trucks over 5 tons from a particular nine-exit stretch of I-95. The ban includes everything from delivery trucks to cement mixers.
A bunch of drivers didn't get the memo, though, and so the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has set up a couple of weighing stations along the highway. And to make sure all the big guys get filtered through the weighing stations, they've turned an entire lane into a crawling line of trucks. "Let’s reiterate that point," writes Orso: "every single truck on I-95 is being weighed."
This has clogged things up pretty well for everyone else, now squeezed into three lanes instead of four. Those trucks that fail the inspection are rerouted through a maze of smaller roads, while those who pass are let loose on I-95 once again—back into all that traffic.
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.
John Muir, c. 1875. (Photo: Fotosearch/Stringer/Getty Images)
It’s quite possible that America’s future was changed on the evening of March 6, 1867, in a factory that manufactured carriage parts in the booming railroad city of Indianapolis.
The large workroom, typically smoky and bustling with workers, was near empty. Factory manager John Muir’s task was simple: The machine’s drive belts, which looped around the vast room like the unspooled guts of a primordial beast, needed to be retightened so the following morning they’d run more efficiently. Muir had already made a name for himself as an impressive backwoods inventor. His “early rising machine” was an intricate alarm clock that tipped the sleeper onto the floor. His “wood kindling starting machine” used an alarm clock to trigger the release of a drop sulfuric acid onto a spoonful of chemicals, generating a flame, igniting the kindling. For the carriage factory, this unique mind was a boon. Muir had already improved wheel design and cut fuel costs.
In the darkening workroom he grasped a file and grinded it between the tightly-woven threads of the leather belt. The file slipped, sprang up pointy end first, and sank deep into the white of Muir’s right eye. Out dripped about a third of a teaspoon of ocular fluid. “My right eye is gone!” he howled back at his boarding house, “closed forever on God’s beauty.” In fact, thanks to a mysterious immune response known as sympathetic blindness, his left eye was gone too. The promising young machinist was blind.
Now, of course, we remember John Muir quite differently. If you can measure America’s regard for someone by how many things get named in their honor, John Muir may be one of the country’s greatest heroes. He has at least one high school, 21 elementary schools, six middle schools and one college named after him, as well as a glacier, a mountain, a woods, a cabin, an inlet, a highway, a library, a motel, a medical center, a tea room and a minor planet.
He has been called “The Father of our National Parks”, a “Wilderness Prophet,” and if you visit a National Park this summer you may indeed have Muir to thank. His writing and activism are credited with inspiring Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Mount Rainier, among other parks. This August, the National Park Service celebrates its centennial—Yellowstone was established by Congress in 1872, but it wasn’t until August 25, 1916, that President Woodrow Wilson, in an effort to put America’s sprawling park system under one department, signed an act creating the National Park Service. Galas are planned and Muir is featured prominently—his visage will be cast into gold, on a $5 coin alongside President Teddy Roosevelt.
His brand, as they say, is strong. But do we really know this man? Over the past few years, Americans have confronted the country's past with vigor, removing problematic early leaders and symbols like Confederate flags from monuments and money and street signs. College and government institutions are regularly fielding calls to remove more. It might be time to reassess Muir’s legacy, as we tend to see only the pictures of the explorer in later life, greeting presidents amid the jaw-dropping splendor of America’s West. Largely absent from the official record is his early journey through Appalachia and the Deep South, one that helped shape his future adventures and worldview. A close reading reveals some ugly truths about the paternity of American park systems.
Dunbar, Scotland. Muir was born in the house on the left; later, his father bought the bigger building on the right to be the family home. (Photo: Public Domain)
Muir was born in Dunbar, Scotland, the third child of a zealot Christian father and a mother who enjoyed flowers, poetry, and walking alone in the countryside—her husband eventually forbid this unchaste activity. Muir’s childhood was strikingly brutal for a contemplative future tree-hugger. He built a homemade gun and fired it at seagulls, he asked the town butcher for a pig’s bladder and then played football with it, and he was a prolific schoolyard fighter. Then, in 1849, at the age of 11, he moved to America.
Upon settling with his family in rural Wisconsin, young Muir was immediately put to work, preparing the land for farming. Days were often 16 to 17 hours long; grinding scythes, tending cattle, harvesting corn, potatoes and wheat. Single-handedly digging a 90-foot well through solid sandstone with nothing but a mason’s chisel, 18-year-old Muir nearly died of choke-damp—a condition common in mines, when oxygen levels drop too low for sustaining human life. Still, there was time on the occasional holiday, and a few hours on Sunday, for romping through the woods to gorge on dewberries, hickory nuts and wild apples, or riding his horse Nob, who he fed live field mice, or hunting deer, muskrats, Canadian geese and even a loon. “The bonnie things, but they were made to be killed,” his father told him, “and sent for us to eat as the quails were sent to God’s chosen people, the Israelites, when they were starving in the desert ayont the Red Sea.”
Later, as his new homeland was being torn apart by civil war, young Muir escaped his tyrannical father and slipped into the woods. Near Niagara Falls he fended off a pack of wolves, and in the frozen swamps of Ontario, according to letters written to friends and family, he discovered an orchid so beautiful he cried. But by 1866 he had settled back down, earning his job at the Indianapolis carriage parts factory.
Just months before the accident, Muir had enthusiastically written to his brother Daniel: “I really have some talent for invention, and I just think that I will turn all my attention that way at once.” But blighted and bedridden, Muir realized he was on the wrong life track. It was not the machines he missed most, but his beloved plants. A month later, his vision miraculously returned. Muir was like a man resurrected. “I have risen from the grave,” he wrote in a letter.
Goodbye now to the world of machines, he would follow his plant heart after all. Inspired by 18th century adventurers like Mungo Park, who journeyed deep into Africa, and Alexander von Humboldt, who trekked across South America, Muir burned for a botanical adventure. Although he wanted to see the Amazon, his first trip would be the American South. He packed books and a plant press into a rucksack and on September 1, 1867, at the age of 29, starting at the Indiana/Kentucky border, Muir embarked on a 1,000 mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, it was a bit like walking across Iraq. Some 250,000 Southern men had been killed in the Civil War, certain Tennessee towns lost nearly an entire male generation, and much of Appalachia remained thick with bandits. Yet Muir, with twinkling eyes, a scratchy beard and just one change of underwear, lit a course straight through the territory.
It is here, in Tennessee, where Muir, who went on to become a respected mountaineer, climbed “the first real mountains that my foot ever touched or eyes beheld.” Further along, in Georgia, while camped in Savanna’s Spanish-moss draped Bonaventure Cemetery, Muir realized death was not the hellfire his father claimed it to be, but “stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.” And in the swamps of Florida, Muir spied his first palmetto, and wondered whether or not plants had souls. You can see it forming, Muir’s aesthetic, nature not just as a wellspring of vitality, but a forgotten religion, where plants, animals, and even frost crystals and bacteria are an extension of god.
“Many scholars feel that Muir’s baptism happened in California,” says Muir historian James Hunt, whose 2012 book Restless Fires examines Muir’s thousand-mile walk. “That’s just not true, it happened by walking through the South.”
Ranger Travis Bow wears a tan uniform with a gun on his hip and a Muir-like beard. But before leading the way to the remote canyon where he imagines the derailment happened, Bow, who grew up on the Cumberland Plateau, a swath of steep forested ridges and sandstone cliffs in northeastern Tennessee, points out that Muir wasn’t too enamored with the local populous. Muir describes neighboring Jamestown as, "poor, rickety, thrice-dead...an incredibly dreary place."
From a man whose pen breathed so much beauty, vulgar descriptions like this seem ill-fitting. Yet they characterize a part of Muir that gets little attention. While he revered the plants discovered on his walk to the Gulf, he rejected many of the humans.
“Muir dismissed people he thought were technologically backwards,” says Hunt. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, Muir was a technophile, “very much oriented towards the values of the Industrial Revolution."
After all, Muir was an inventor. His mind’s gears turned towards efficiency and progress, a preoccupation shared by the nation. In a rabid quest for farmland and minerals, America had forgotten about the plants. Muir was there to remind them. “In the wake of industrialization,” says Hunt, “there is a moral purpose for wilderness.”
Bow leads the way up wooden steps and onto a rocky finger of land that juts over a steep cliff like the prow of a ship. A gnarled bonsai-like tree arches delicately into the void, a Virginia pine, perhaps twice as old as the country. That night stars spill across the sky. Jupiter, Saturn and Mars are visible too, blazing like hot coals. Pickett State Park, recently named a “Dark Sky Park” by the International Dark-Sky Association is the darkest spot in Tennessee. The distinction, says Bow, once belonged to the Smokey Mountains, protected since 1940 as a National Park. But in recent decades, cities neighboring the park, like Asheville and Knoxville, have grown, and tarnished the once dark skies. National Parks were put aside for the people, and the people have come. This in turn has changed the wilderness experience.
Muir much preferred sleeping beneath the stars than under a roof. “Only by going alone in silence,” he wrote, “without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.” Yet, Yosemite’s Majestic Hotel—formerly the Ahwahnee—has a solarium, valet parking, and rooms, according to one luxury hotel website, “accented with original Native American designs.” Less than five miles from the rim of the Grand Canyon is a chalet-style hotel with an indoor pool and spa. The Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch Resort, in Death Valley National Park, the hottest place on earth, has an 18-hole golf course, spring-fed swimming pools and a stately dining room that serves steak, rabbit and omelets.
“I’ve thought many times,” says cultural critic Stefany Anne Golberg, via email, “that Muir’s project was almost too successful.”
Whether or not Muir truly got lost in Pogue Creek Canyon, he made it out, climbed through the rugged mountains of southeastern Tennessee and eventually crossed the Hiwassee River, in North Carolina. The “very rough” channel and “leafy banks” impressed him. It was here, in the Smokey Mountains that in 1838 the Cherokee Indians were evicted from their homes in the dead of winter by white settlers’ hungry for their land and gold—even though a U.S. treaty and a U.S. Supreme Court decision guaranteed their land rights—and forced to walk more than a third of the way across the continent to Oklahoma, a march that would kill 4,000 people and come to be known as the Trail of Tears.
Muir, apparently, was ignorant of this history. He described the Cherokee homes he found as, “the uncouth transitionist …wigwams of savages.” He described the homes of the very settlers who may well have drove them out as, “decked with flowers and vines, clean within and without, and stamped with the comforts of culture and refinement.” For a man who supposedly walked with eyes wide open, this is a profound moment of blindness.
Today, the wigwams are gone, but the Cherokee aren’t, and on a recent June afternoon Sonny Ledford sits sharpening axes under a shade tree in front of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. It’s a beautiful spot, hidden among deeply forested mountains, and has been occupied by Ledford’s tribe and their antecedents for more than 11,000 years. Ledford wears a pair of bear claw necklaces. Lightning-shaped tattoos streak his arms. His head is shaved, except for a ponytail of hair that sprouts like a plant from the middle of his skull. And as the hot June Smokey Mountain sun beats through the leaves, beams glint off his metal axes, and flash in the rapt eyes of the small crowd gathered around.
“Everyone out there is lost,” says Ledford, gazing past the mountains, toward the exurbs, the interstates, burger joints, malls, John Muir middle schools. “You go to college to sit in some class for four years so you can get some piece of paper that gets you some general manager position so you can do some job you hate, just so you can be fired for a reason you don’t even understand…forget that,” says Ledford. “I don’t need some piece of paper to tell me who I am, I have this,” and he holds up a sacred turtle rattle.
When asked what John Muir means to him, Ledford, after first having to be told who the man was, scoffs at the question. “My people commonly walked from here to Florida,” he says. “The difference is, we were all touched with that desire to be in nature, we just did it. And we didn’t glorify this one man.” Native American tribes, Ledford wants us to understand, were full of John Muirs, and between Spanish explorers, Christian missionaries and American settlers, a countless many John Muirs were killed. For Americans to idolize a figure who suddenly believed what his people had always believed was the ultimate irony. “We’ve accomplished so much that we don’t get recognition for,” sighs Ledford. “It has always been like that.”
Ledford is not alone. “This isn’t something that we are really jumping up and down about,” says a battle-worn Barbara Durham, historic preservation officer for Death Valley’s Timbisha tribe, when asked what John Muir and the National Park Service’s upcoming centennial meant to her. Durham’s community is located just downhill from the sumptuous Furnace Creek Inn and Ranch Resort. The Timbisha are the only Native American tribe that officially resides within the bounds of a national park, a privilege the tribe fought long and hard to guarantee—at one point park policy was to knock their earthen homes down with powerful hoses then take over the land. In 2000, just before leaving office, President Bill Clinton signed the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act, formally recognizing the Timbisha tribe’s right to exist.
But relationships remain tenuous. Durham says National Park Service officials recently asked her to talk at an upcoming centennial event. She refused. “It is their celebration,” says Durham, “not my celebration.”
This is the dark side of the Muir mythology, and one that was highlighted on his Southern journey. The man who thought of nature as a cathedral, and regarded, “whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats,” and even “invisibly small mischievous microbes” as divine, regarded Native Americans as subhuman. Later, in California, he called them: “dirty,” “garrulous as jays,” “superstitious,” “lazy”. Such denigration is particularly surprising, as Muir’s spiritual embrace of nature could have been taken right out of a Native American mind. “Frankly, I think that is where he missed the boat big time,” says Hunt. “He totally missed the beauty and knowledge that Native American culture could offer, and what that could add to his own world view.”
Was Muir so caught up in Manifest Destiny that he refused to notice what came before? Was he so caught up with plants that he failed to notice who first tended them? Was he still under the influence of his parochial father, who once said, in a debate with a Wisconsin neighbor, “it could never have been the intention of God to allow Indians to rove and hunt over so fertile a country and hold it forever in unproductive wildness while Scotch and Irish and English farmers could put it to so much better use.” Or, was Muir’s aversion to Native Americans merely a product of his dislike for people he saw as technologically backwards? The distinction might not even matter.
On October 15, 1867, John Muir arrived in Florida via a steamship from Savannah, allowing him to bypass the Georgia coast—an “unwalkable piece of forest.” He immediately bought some bread, and darted into the woods, but the vegetation was so impenetrable that Muir could barely step off the path to inspect it. “Oftentimes,” he wrote, “I was tangled in a labyrinth of armed vines like a fly in a spider-web.”
Later, after a difficult night sleeping on a soggy hillock and out of bread, Muir spotted a shanty occupied by a logging party. “They were the wildest of all the white savages I met,” he wrote. Nevertheless, they shared with him a meal of yellow pork and hominy. Still, Muir remained skeptical of Florida’s swampy citizens. They were too poor, too dirty, too primitive.
“He really despised dirty peoples,” explains Harold Wood, an educator with the Sierra Club, the environmental organization Muir founded in 1892. “He couldn’t understand why people were dirty when bears and deer were not dirty.”
Outside of Gainesville, Muir came across the “most primitive of all the domestic establishments I have yet seen.” A couple was seated around a fire, in the ashes Muir noticed a “black lump of something”—it turned out to be a young boy. “Birds make nests and nearly all beasts make some kind of bed for their young,” wrote Muir, “but these negroes [sic] allow their younglings to lie nestless and naked in the dirt.” The following day the dirt parade continued, as Muir came to a hut, weary and hungry. “I saw only the man and his wife,” he wrote. “Both were suffering from malarial fever, and were very dirty…the most diseased and incurable dirt that I ever saw, evidently desperately chronic and hereditary.”
Those are hateful words, though not the sum total of Muir's perspective. In other writings about his trip through the South, he sympathizes with African-Americans he meets, and bemoans the bigoted mindset he encounters amongst whites. His views on humanity, though, reflect deep ambivalence, and in nature, he seems to see a blank slate, a chance to write his own story upon the land.
The problem for Muir, for the National Park Service, for all of us, is that America was never a blank slate. And we know now Muir’s story was wrong. As new research by ecologists like Kat Anderson, of University of California Davis, shows, Native Americans in California, including those in Yosemite Valley, intentionally used fire to open land, increase pasturage, prevent even larger more catastrophic fires, and promote biodiversity. Muir’s sacred Yosemite was not a garden tended by God, as he wrote so passionately about, it was a garden tended by Native people.
Muir’s blurry human vision is something Native writers and historians have been grappling with for some time. “We do not know why Muir was blind regarding the original people in all of the beautiful National Park locations he waxed about so eloquently,” wrote Native author Roy Cook. “Indian people are the true conscience of the American character.”
It is also true that Muir’s views did change over time. He was 29 on his walk to the Gulf, and not much older when he first entered California. Later in his life, he traveled to Alaska. Muir lived among various tribes, including the Chukchis and Thlinkit. “He grew to respect and honor their beliefs, actions, and life styles,” wrote scholar Richard Fleck, in a 1978 article in the journal, American Indian Quarterly. “He, too, would evolve and change from his somewhat ambivalent stance toward various Indian cultures to a positive admiration.
As we sweat through summer, and laud this American hero anew and even cast him in gold, it is indeed important to remember his nature writing and his nature story. But it is equally important to remember, as we celebrate the creation of the National Park system and all of the beauty contained wherein, that a powerful story has already been written upon this land. It is sometimes the thing hiding in plain sight.
From bullets to ballet, this old shot tower is being put to good use. (Photo: Stephan Bain/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Who knew munitions factories could be so lovely?
The little metal shot balls that were once the standard projectile for all manner of guns used to be made using little more than heat and gravity, in tall spires called shot towers. Most such towers operated in essentially the same way: melted lead would be poured through a funnel at the top of the tower and drip down the length of the tower, naturally forming into little spheres as it fell and cooled.
While bullet manufacturing has gotten more high-tech and industrialized since the days of the shot tower, you can still find the towers all over the world—most of them long since abandoned. Check out 10 of these monolithic reminders of a bygone trade.
Taroona Shot Tower is both the oldest and tallest shot tower in the Southern Hemisphere. It claims to be the tallest in the world, though that is disputed by Melbourne's Clifton Hill Shot Tower. [Read more]
Built in Philadelphia in 1808, the Sparks shot tower was a family business that ran for four generations. Today, the tower sits near a playground. [Read more]
Built in 1856 in Dubuque, Iowa to provide ammunition for the military, this tower allowed for the efficient and reliable manufacturing of nearly perfectly spherical lead to use in muskets. When in full operation, it could produce up to eight tons of lead balls daily. [Read more]
This shot tower looks like it is supposed to be part of a castle. (Photo: James Cridland/CC BY 2.0)
Baltimore's Phoenix Shot Tower, also known as "the Old Baltimore Shot Tower," was the tallest structure in the United States when it was built in 1828. Its cornerstone was laid by Charles Carroll, the last living founding father and the richest man in America at the time. [Read more]
There are indications Chester was a lead-mining site going back as far as the Roman era, so a shot factory seems a natural progression in the city's industry. Chester Leadworks produced shot for the military during the Napoleonic Wars, and was in use for the same purpose as late as 2001. [Read more]
The shot tower on Cheese Lane in Bristol is unique because of its distinctive shape, but also because it's relatively new. It was built in 1969 to replace the world's first shot tower and today is one of only three left standing in England. [Read more]
In 1908 the Juhl & Sons Lead Foundry and Machine Factory (a.k.a. "Bleigießerei und Maschinenfabrik Juhl & Söhne") built the five-story "Schrotkugelturm," or Shot Ball Tower, in Berlin. [Read more]
At 263 feet tall, Clifton Hill Shot Tower vies with Taroona Shot Tower (above) as the tallest in the world. Built in 1882, it is also the oldest of two remaining towers in Melbourne. The other is Coop's Shot Tower (below), which now houses a museum dedicated to the history of Melbourne and shot production. [Read more]
Once the tallest building in all of Melbourne, Coop's Shot Tower was soon eclipsed by gargantuan skyscrapers and other modern urban behemoths, but rather than being torn down in the name of progress, a giant cone was built over the historic bullet factory to keep it safe. [Read more]
It's unclear whether the abandonment, the foreclosure, or the series of fires (one of which burnt for a week straight) came first for the Remington Arms factory and its shot tower, but either way the buildings have remained unused for quite some time. [Read more]
The Dutch pitcher Loek van Mil, who, at 7'1", is the tallest player in professional baseball. (Photo: Eargus/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Men and women, for decades, have only been getting taller, growing by several inches in the last 100 years alone. This is thought to be due to a range of factors, including better nutrition and better healthcare. But tall people also have a number of evolutionary advantages: they are at less of risk for heart disease, they earn more money, and they have longer life expectancies.
A long-term study from researchers based in London published Tuesday revealed the nationalities that have grown to be world's actual tallest: Dutch men, who average five feet, eleven inches, and Latvian women, who average five feet, seven inches, according to the Guardian.
The world's shortest? Guatemalan women, who average four feet, ten inches, and the men in East Timor, who average five feet, three inches.
The study also revealed that South Korean women in particular have bolted up over the past 100 years, growing by an average of nearly eight inches, while in Iran, men there have grown faster than any other place on Earth, or about 6.5 inches on average in the past century.
In the U.S., men and women are among the slowest growing humans on the planet, having grown just around a couple of inches since 1914, according to the study. But that's because we had a pretty quick head start: in 1914, American men and women were among the top-five tallest in the world.
Eat well, take care of yourself, and go see the doctor every once in a while. Future, taller generations are depending on it.
In a summer filled with one of the most oppressive heat waves in memory, it’s not like beach-goers need something else to worry about, but now there are unconfirmed reports of a shark patrolling the waters off the coast of Massachusetts’ Duxbury Beach, according to Boston’s WCVB News.
There have reportedly been at least two sightings of a shark haunting the waters just off the coast, although there has yet to be any concrete documentation of the beast's’ existence. Whether it’s true or not, visitors to the beach have taken to etching a warning into the sands, drawing in super-size letters, “BEWARE SHARK.” The status of the beach is currently "swim at your own risk."
The Duxbury harbormaster’s office is looking into the sightings, issuing a warning for beach-goers to remain alert, and to report any further sightings. According to experts, a number of tagged white sharks have been roaming closer to shore lately, but whether this is an anomalous behavior remains to be seen. In the meantime, it’s probably a good idea to stay close to shore.
An image from Curiosities of Street Literature, 1871. (Photo: Public Domain)
A series of brutal murders took place in 1635, and news of this quickly spread across England. Single incendiary sheets of paper, known as broadsides, were sold on the streets, detailing the gory exploits of Thomas Sherwood, a.k.a “Country Tom”, and his accomplice Elizabeth “Canbery Bess” Evans.
The “many other robberies and mischiefs” attributed to this renegade pair make them seem something like the 17th-century Bonnie and Clyde. A rough woodcut image of the pair’s subsequent hanging graces the page, which details how “For being flushed with human blood, They thirsteth still for more.” Titled Murder upon Murder, the broadside begins:
“List Christians all unto my song, ’Twill move your hearts to pity, What bloody murders have been done, Of late about the city:”
Right before the story begins, the reader is informed that they can sing this bloody account “To the tune of Bragandary Downe,” a well-known ballad of the day. 17th-century English readers especially loved broadsides, which were single-topic fliers of songs, advertisements and announcements that were sold on the street and often written anonymously.
From the 15th century onward, everyday English people passed broadsides around, sang their songs, and gossiped about the news contained within. Unlike books or early newspapers, broadsides and pamphlets were not curated nor intended for a specific, upper-class audience. This early form of journalism and storytelling was sold on the cheap, and many took no time at all to read.
From "The Crying Murder", 1624. (Photo: Public Domain)
Broadsides were usually one page long, but longer tales were released in sets of two, or folded into multi-page pamphlets featuring a single woodcut illustration. Similar to zines or today’s social media posts, anyone with an opinion and the means could distribute their ideas, or print stories of local witches, murderers, robbers and scandals. Once the slips of paper were in hand, a broadside reader would spread news, songs, and legends by word-of-mouth and even literally post the documents on their walls. Broadsides were the Facebook posts and tweets of their day.
Some broadsides tell tales of faraway adventures; The Caesar’s Victory describes a merchant ship fighting pirates in the East Indies. Others reported more local news. One broadside from 1685 mocks James Scott, First Duke of Monmouth, for his unsuccessful rebellion, titled Monmouth Routed And Taken PRISONER With his Pimp the Lord Gray. A SONG to the tune of King James’s Jig. Later in the 1700s, broadsides would announce the untimely deaths of Dukes and even announce breaking news of the Jacobite Rebellion.
From 1746, "Effigies of the late Earl of Kilmarnock and the late Lord Balmerino who were behaded in Tower Hill"; underneath their portraits, a scene of the execution. (Photo: National Library of Scotland/Public Domain)
Many of the pamphlets distributed along with broadsides contained longer, juicy stories with gratuitous, gory scenes. A 1624 pamphlet titled The crying Murder reports of a group of four men and women who disemboweled, murdered, and decapitated a man named “Mr. Trat.” The defendants maintained their innocence, and Mr. Trat was reportedly seen alive. While it’s impossible to know whether the four were innocent or not, the murder inspired creative images for the broadside: the artist illustrated strewn body parts to accompany the sensationalist text.
Unlike early newspapers, broadsides or pamphlets were one-off, anonymously written, unsourced accounts and rants: a Facebook echo chamber gone Renaissance. Many pamphlets preached about social matters; one pamphlet called Look on Me London from 1613 warns young men to avoid scams in the city: “you must be armed with more experience than the capacity of your young years, or else, assure yourselves, repentance will unloose your fetters,” the author says. Another argues the immorality of attending the theater in A Shorte Treatise against Stage-Playes, and in 1616 A Discourse Against Painting and Tincturing of WOMEN, denounced any woman who scandalously painted their faces with lip tint and rouge. “Do not take away God’s picturing, and assume the picture of a harlot,” it warns.
"The Apprehension and Confession of three notorious Witches", c. 1589. (Photo: Public Domain)
Sometimes, this early reporting included a questionable 17th century-style backstory that involved a miracle of God, or magic. A pamphlet called The Most Cruel and Bloody Murder from 1606 reports the execution of a murderer who killed the family of an eight-year-old girl, cut her tongue out by the roots, and made her throw it into a river. Four years later, the tongue grew back by a miracle of God so she could testify.
Another popular topic at the time: witches. Many of these were believed to be true word-of-mouth accounts. One pamphlet from 1589 announces the “Apprehension and Confession of three notorious Witches.” The similarly named Joan Cunny, Joan Prentiss and Joan Upney were hanged for harming and murdering men women and children. The broadside described the women training imps to do their horrible bidding; Cunny had two black frogs named Jack and Jill, Prentiss had a blood-sucking ferret named Bidd, and Upney kept a toad and a mole. A woodcut image that accompanies it, titled "a witch and her imps" shows the hanged women, including one before her hanging, lovingly surrounded by devilish familiars.
From "Cruel and Inhuman Murder Committed upon the body of Captain Lawson". (Photo: Public Domain)
The people of the Renaissance era ate this up, and likely took the story at face value. Historians Joseph Mashburn and Alan Velie write in their collection of ballads and pamphlets, Blood and Knavery, that "everything we know about the period leads us to believe that the judges conducting the trials were men of integrity." The confessions reported from the three witches probably really happened, and their belief in their powers to inflict harm likely followed suit, though the many witch trials surrounding them featured hundreds of women who maintained innocence.
News that included supernatural events was common, and integrity of the author was assumed. One broadside reports the adventures of “Matthew Hopkins, Witch Finder,” a lawyer who was later hung for his scam of finding and apprehending witches, mostly because he must have been a wizard himself to find them all. Any questionable reporting likely began with vague, word-of-mouth accounts that were misconstrued rather than consciously made up. (17th-century thinkers were, after all, still working out whether flies spontaneously popped into existence from rotting meat).
A later broadside, "Account of a most Barbarous and Inhuman Murder", c. 1826. (Photo: British Library/Public Domain)
Many broadsides provided only passing glimpses of current news stories and gossip, and were generally never saved or cherished. However, like those of us who retweet or share funny or incisive tweets or posts, some eccentrics collected the broadsides, and those exist today in various official collections at universities and government archives. While they became less popular over time, broadsides entertained the public well into the 1800s, though they soon took a backseat to books and newspapers. Today, more people consume citizen journalism and user-generated content than ever before; giving the broadside concept a kind of revival.
A broadside with an illustration showing "The solemn mock procession of the Pope Cardinalls Jesuits fryers &c: through the city of London November the 17th 1679". (Photo: Houghton Library/Public Domain)
While no longer pasted on the walls of local pubs or passed around with glee and horror, broadsides provide a perfect snapshot of what your everyday English Renaissance person thought was, fleetingly, important. Maybe our own idiosyncratic voices and opinions will be studied and archived in the future—something to think about when posting your own rants online.
