Quantcast
Channel: Atlas Obscura: Articles
Viewing all 11432 articles
Browse latest View live

French Teens Break Into Police Barracks While Playing Pokémon Go

0
0

Picture this: you're in southern France, in hot pursuit of a rare Pokémon, maybe a Snorlax. You know it's close, but just as you're about to get in range, an impossibly high wall stretches up before you. It's a police barracks. Real life has impinged.

There are two options here: you walk home, consoling yourself by racking up Pidgeys on your way back. Or you climb the wall and GET THAT SNORLAX.

Recently, two French teens did just that, the Local reports, scaling the wall of a former Gendarmerie in Saint-Hilaire, phones waving.

Police didn't need a Pokéball to catch the pair. They were arrested, but quickly released: "Police decided it was a one-off incident," the Local reports.

France got Pokémon Go on Sunday, and the country has since been swept up in the same catch-em-all fever other countries have been experiencing for weeks. People are crashing cars, sprinting through public parks, and invoking the wrath of politicians, some of whom fear the game encourages self-absorption and a lack of curiosity. (They are also provoking the wrath of Rihanna, who recently warned concertgoers "I don't want to see any Pokémon up in this bitch.")

Law enforcement, though, mostly just seems worried. "Don't lose track of reality!" tweeted one police prefecture. Parisian firefighters offered their take: "Catch them, but not at the cost of your life!"

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 tocara@atlasobscura.com.


Check Out This New Fleshy Metamaterial for Prostheses, Smiles

0
0

Scientists from Tel Aviv University have developed a soft, flesh like material that can be “programmed” to produce whatever pattern they would like, according to Haaretz. Of course the first thing they made it do was create a smiley face.

The new "soft robot" metamaterial is actually quite simple. It consists of a cube of rubbery, 3D-printed material, that, when compressed, deforms into a specific shape. This is achieved by creating smaller, precise blocks that make up the larger block, each one printed into a very specific shape, so that the geometry of the material itself is where the desired effect is coded. So by changing the shape of specific components within the material, they can make it do whatever they want in response to a physical stimulus. It's more or less the same process that atoms go through to create and program cells, this time writ large. For their first demonstration, they made it push out a smiley face.

The applications for the new flesh range from more reactive, comfortable prosthetics to commercial applications that could produce more interactive products. And while this first demonstration of their creation has manifested as a cube of a gel-like material, by changing the chemical composition of the material, it could also be formed out of harder, softer, or even gaseous stuff. This shapeshifting geometric wonder may be the next step in materials science, which could put a smile on the face of scientists and amputees everywhere.

The Strange World of Japanese Hangover Cures

0
0
article-image

Bottled hangover cures on sale in Japan. (Photo: Daniel Leussnik/AFP/Getty Images)

Here’s something weird: scientists basically have no idea why hangovers happen. “The alcohol hangover is an intriguing issue since it is unknown why these symptoms are present after alcohol and its metabolites are eliminated from the body,” opined a survey published in 2008. This is part of the reason we don’t know how to fix them. A review of eight different potential hangover remedies found that precisely none of them had any noticeable effect on mitigating the effects of a hangover. 

Humans, of course, keep trying. Different folk remedies vary by national or regional culture, and range wildly in popularity. Recognized American cures include water (drunk during and after alcohol consumption), “hair of the dog” (an alcoholic drink after one has sobered up, like a Bloody Mary), and the devouring of a greasy breakfast the following morning. Other countries take different tacks: leche de tigre (the marinating liquid left over from making ceviche) in Peru, oxblood soup in Korea, pickle juice in Eastern Europe.

But perhaps no country has stranger and more thorough hangover cures than Japan. What makes Japanese cures different is their breadth: the majority of other national hangover cures are simply foods or drinks. In Japan the culture of curing a hangover is closer to homeopathic medicine: these are preventative or curative potions designed to heal specific organs. Even the foods that make up Japanese hangover cures are specifically thought to heal organs, in direct contrast to, say, the British full breakfast or its American descendent, the greasy diner breakfast.

And Japanese cures are extremely popular, raking in around $178 million per year in sales.

article-image

A packet of Ukon no Chikara, “the power of turmeric.” (Photo: Amazon)

 

Most of the Japanese cures or treatments are centered around the liver. The basic thinking, according to several residents of Japan I talked to, is that because this internal organ is tasked with breaking down alcohol into its component parts, any ingredient that claims to help the liver—whether it actually does or not—can be made into a hangover cure. “In the West people seem to talk about settling stomachs and rehydrating... but I think it's fair to say in Japan the remedies are a lot more medically specific,” says Nicholas Coldicott, a food and drinks writer who has lived in Japan since 1988 and has had a drinks column in the Japan Times. “There are pictures of livers on some of the bottles.”

Perhaps the oddest of these is Hepalyse, which contains as its main ingredient...liver. Beef liver, to be precise. Hepalyse is in a long line of potions and cures that feature an animal’s organ as an attempt to heal or cure the same organ in humans, like tiger penis soup (believed to be an aphrodisiac in parts of China).

Many cures either include turmeric (like Hepalyse) or make it the focus of the potion. The most popular is Ukon no Chikara, literally “the power of turmeric.” Turmeric, a mildly-flavored but vividly colored yellow root, is kind of having a moment; turmeric tea and and a turmeric-dairy concoction called “golden milk” litter the pages of homeopathic blogs throughout the western world. In the US, at least lately, in some corners, turmeric is believed to have all kinds of wondrous toxin-cleansing effects. In Japan, it’s specifically thought to enhance liver function and aid in digestion. (This is basically unproven but not impossible.) Turmeric can also be found in pill or powder form for the same purpose. Luckily by all accounts Ukon no Chikara is very tasty. Both Hepalyse and Ukon no Chikara are supposed to be drunk before you go out drinking.

article-image

Shijimi Clam soup. (Photo: GanMed64/CC BY 2.0)

Another one, also tasty: shijimi clams, a freshwater clam somewhere in between a mussel and a littleneck clam in flavor. Shijimi clams are alleged to have some sort of amino acid that restores liver function—again, unsupported, but they are commonly found in miso soup and ramen which are eaten as a hangover cure. 

Then there are the Japanese versions of sports drinks. One of the most popular is Pocari Sweat, which is not dissimilar from Gatorade: basically just water with some salts and sugars. Pocari Sweat is so named because it’s designed to have similar ingredients and components as human sweat: water, sodium, potassium. “People definitely reach for Pocari Sweat to cure hangovers, and there are times people have bought one for me if I'm looking hungover in the office,” says Coldicott.

article-image

A Pocari Sweat vending machine in Japan. (Photo: jam_232/CC BY 2.0)

Another analog would be Lipovitan D, an energy drink that predates Red Bull but is sold in tiny bottles like Five-Hour Energy. With a high dose of taurine, Lipovitan would have the dual effects of fighting off sleepiness and sluggishness, as well as, according to some recent studies, breaking down some of the component parts of alcohol more efficiently.

Perhaps the grossest is Solmac, a combination of various herbs and greens that is supposed to settle the stomach. Counterintuitively, basically all sources I can find say it tastes absolutely horrific, like eating a pile of grass clippings.

article-image

A bottle of Lipovitan-D. (Photo: Dynomat/CC BY-SA 3.0)

There are also a few foodstuffs that are often said to, Coldicott says, cure a hangover. These include persimmons, watermelon, and umeboshi (the latter is a pickled fruit often referred to as a plum but which is more closely related to an apricot). Persimmons, a fruit not particularly popular in North America but prized in Japan, contain catalase, an enzyme which, amazingly enough, might actually have some promise in breaking down alcohol in the body. Watermelon is said to be good for nausea; unproven, but certainly the fruit’s high water and sugar content could ease some of a hangover’s effects. And umeboshi, heavily salted, could replace lost salts in a similar way to energy drinks.

Like any other culture’s hangover cures, Japan’s tend to fall into one basic category: might help, but if not, you won’t be any worse off. And given how embarrassingly little we know about hangovers, that seems about the best we can hope for. 

The 17th-Century Language that Divided Everything in the Universe into 40 Categories

0
0

article-imageJohn Wilkins. (Photo: Wellcome Images/CC BY 4.0)

In the mid-17th century Anglican bishop John Wilkins set out on a not-so-small quest: to refine human communication with a language that would classify every concept, thing, and idea within the universe into just 40 categories. 

Wilkins' goal was to propose a system that would eliminate the confusion—the sense of lawlessness—that characterized human language, which was rife with synonyms, idioms, and other elements that didn't strike at the heart of what the speaker really meant to say.

“It [would be] a man-made language free from the ambiguity and imprecision that afflicted natural languages,” writes Arika Okrent, an American linguist, in her book In the Land of Invented Languages. “It would directly represent concepts; it would reveal the truth.”

Today, Wilkins' language resonates all around us—library classification systems, Linnaeus' taxonomy of living things, and Roget's thesaurus all borrow ideas from his work. But the language itself, published in Wilkins' 1668 Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language, was, and is, a fascinating failure.

article-imageWorks like Isaac Newton's Principia were made possible with new developments in mathematical notation. (Photo: Andrew Dunn/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Wilkins' goal wasn’t necessarily to completely revolutionize the way mankind communicated, to replace an existing system with a radically different one. He hoped to suggest a way to impose order on language, a human phenomenon that seemed unpredictable and often downright clunky, just as scholars during the Scientific Revolution—scholars whose work he took great joy in promoting and making accessible—had found systematic ways to describe the universe around them. As as he explains in his manuscript,“by its facility and usefulness, (without the imposition of Authority) [the language] might invite and ingage men to the learning of it; which is the thing here attempted.”

His 600-plus-page Essay contained an extensive explanation of some features and history of language itself, a nearly completed classification of everything he could think of in the universe—fellow scholars Francis Willoughby and John Ray consulted him on the classification of plants and animals—and a roughly 160-page dictionary to top it all off.

article-imageThe title page of Wilkins' masterwork. (Photo: Wellcome Images/CC BY 4.0)

The structure of the categories resembles the taxonomic classification we see today in the way we sort all living things. Each of the biggest of the groups, the 40 all-encompassing umbrella categories, he called a genus. These were further divided into differences

article-imageThe list of Wilkins' 40 genuses. (Photo: Internet Archive/Public Domain)

Under the genus Discourse, one could find the differences Elements, Words, Grammar, Logic, Common to Both,—propositions, adages, orations, and epistles, to name a few—and Modes of it, which included the species Question, Answer, Affirmation, Negation, Confession, and Recantation, for example.

In the genus Space, he included three differences—Time, Place, and Situation. Some of the species under Time included Newness, Soonness, Perpetuity, and Everness.

One question remained, though—how would this wealth of categories translate into usable speech or writing?

Wilkins had it covered, or so he thought. Each genus, or largest category, he contended, could and would be assigned an arbitrary and easily pronounced syllable. Do signified a metal, Ca a corporeal action. Te was reserved for manners, and any word beginning with To was classified under the genus Disease, for example.

Next came the differences, which Wilkins wanted to assign one of any nine consonants depending on their order. B would follow the genus sound for the first difference, D for the second difference under the same category, G for the third, and P, T, Z, C, S, and N would follow for the remaining nine in that order.

To identify the species under the differences, a speaker would attach one of nine vowels or diphthongs to these nine consonants.

article-imagePart of a diagram Wilkins included to illustrate how to pronounce sounds he included in his language. (Photo: Courtesy of King's College London, Foyle Special Collections Library)

Sounds difficult? You’re not wrong. Even Wilkins’ own description of this sound-combination process leaves the reader bamboozled.

“If (Ti) signifie the Genus of Sensible Quality, then (Tid) must denote the second difference, which comprehends Colours,” he writes. “And (Tida) must signifie the second Species under that difference, viz. Redness: (Tide) the third Species, which is Greenness, [et cetera].”

Expressing the idea of greenness—or anything, for that matter—now became a lengthy cognitive process. That meant, too, that if one speaker said, “Teb,” his or her interlocutor would have to identify the genus assigned the syllable Te—the genus Manners—then the first difference, Virtue, identified by the consonant b. It may not be a mouthful, but it’s a brainful.

Wilkins also devoted several pages to laying out which consonants and vowels could be inserted where to indicate adjectives, adverbs, the active and passive voice, opposites—among countless other grammatical elements. Hardly any grammatical feature escaped his rigid classification system.

That took care of the “Philosophical Language” part of Wilkins' essay. What about the “Real Character”?

To make international communication a reality, the devoted clergyman created what he thought could be a universal system of writing, using a collection of short lines and shapes that combined in reference to each word’s place in the hierarchy. He even translated the Lord’s Prayer to show how easily the character could relay information across once-impassable linguistic boundaries. Gone were the days of not being able to understand one another in speech or writing, he thought.

article-imageWilkins' translation of the Lord's Prayer into his universal character. (Photo: John Wilkins/Public Domain)

With the years of work that went into the language, it’s no wonder Wilkins referred to his Essay as his “darling.” In 1666, when The Great Fire of London destroyed his original manuscripts, Wilkins, having already tasted the sweet fruit of his efforts, wasn’t shaken and started again. By 1668, he was ready to present his work to the Royal Society, which embraced him warmly.  

According to Barbara Shapiro in her book John Wilkins, 1614-1672: An Intellectual Biography, natural philosopher Robert Hooke called the language “so truly Philosophical, and so perfectly and thoroughly Methodical, that there seemeth to be nothing wanting to make it have the utmost perfection, and highest Idea for any Character of Language imaginable, as well as for Philosophical as for Common and Constant use.”

But as time has revealed, the project was never meant to be.

“It’s impossible to use," says Okrent of Wilkins' language in an interview. “Every word is a formula in itself, like a mathematical formula of meaning. When you choose a word to use or to speak, you first have to know exactly what you want to mean, and we don’t do that at all while we’re speaking ... It’s not suited for our spontaneous communication.”

Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets is the president of the Language Creation Society, an international community of constructed language enthusiasts, or “conlangers.” He calls Wilkins' language a "tremendous effort" that was "doomed from the beginning." The hierarchical systems Wilkins proposed to classify everything in the universe, he says, were “too rigid to be able to describe a constantly changing world” and provided no grammatical infrastructure for how words should combine to make sentences.

“It's basically a bag of construction materials when what we need is a finished house."

And Wilkins’ flawed vocabulary system meant that words from similar groups were pronounced similarly and made the “usable” more specific words the longest in length, leading to confusion in learning.  

So the 600-page work faded into the background of the perception of the scientific community. The fizzling out of enthusiasm for Wilkins’ “darling,” though, didn’t discourage language constructors that followed.

Today the concept of language construction might seem like a failed experiment doomed to the annals of history, some sort of spectacle lost forever in time. But in many communities, creating a language is hardly a foreign concept. In fact, language enthusiasts everywhere have been seeking supplements to natural communication long before Wilkins and his contemporaries, and they still are.

Their efforts have led to some of the most successful constructed languages, like Esperanto, which is spoken by between one and two million people worldwide and natively by a few thousand. Then there are the obscure conlangs, like Solresol, a language that can be communicated on a musical instrument or through colored flags.

article-imageThe flag of Esperanto, one of the most successful constructed languages. (Photo: Gabriel Ehrnst GRUNDIN/Public Domain)

And then there are those created for fictional universes, such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish or Star Trek’s Klingon, in which Okrent and many other constructed language learners have earned a first-level certification.

But many that seek to address an existing “problem” with language, Okrent says, haven’t learned from the failures of the past.

“I don’t think people realized that there was this history of failure, and if they did know about it, they thought it had to do with some surface feature that—if they tweaked it or changed it—that things might turn out differently,” she says. “No one really looked at the main problem, which is that no one is out looking for this kind of thing.”

Wilkins might have been one of history’s most dedicated “conlangers,” but by trapping the universe into 40 boxes, he essentially trapped himself. The world just wasn’t ready to think so hard before it spoke.

Places You Can No Longer Go: Doggie Diner

Watch This Hawk Investigate A Weather Camera

0
0

A weather camera high up on the 1011 News building looks over downtown Lincoln, the state capital of Nebraska. As this video shows, a very inquisitive hawk may occasionally interrupt the view.

The hawk, eyes bulging, seems to take issue with the camera, or is maybe just complaining to the folks at 1011 about the weather. (Taking the train in this heat is bad enough, imagine flying with all those feathers?)

In the video the marvelous bird of prey stays fixated on the camera for almost a minute, arching its head and giving the lens a sideways glance. It even takes a little nibble. The weather team in Lincoln now has a new friend. 

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

Australia Kmart Locks Down Cadbury Chocolate After Series of Thefts

0
0

A Kmart in Melbourne, Australia, recently put some of its chocolate in locked plastic cases after thieves couldn't resist stealing it.

Some customers were seen opening the chocolate and eating it while they walked around the store, according to Preston Leader. And, curiously, it was just a single variety: blocks of Cadbury chocolate. This kind of chocolate now has to be presented to a cashier to be unlocked, purchased, and, finally, eaten. 

An anonymous security guard told Preston Leader that the store—it appears to be the only one to have done so so far—instituted the locks, which apparently just appeared this week, as a result of the thefts. 

Which is probably for the better. If you're going to enjoy a block of Cadbury chocolate, you'll probably enjoy it more having earned it. 

Ukraine Is Planning to Build a Massive Solar Farm at Chernobyl

0
0
article-image

The Chernobyl plant in 2006, covered in a protective containment structure. (Photo: Carl Montgomery/CC BY 2.0)

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred 30 years ago, leaving dozens dead and hundreds of square miles of land unlivable. But now Ukraine says it has an idea what to do with that radioactive land.

The idea is a massive solar farm, according to Bloomberg, which would give the country a new source of renewable energy while also making use of Chernobyl's unused power lines. The lines are a remnant of the nuclear plant and, presumably the top-secret Duga-3 military base, and capable of carrying up to four gigawatts of energy out of the area.

Since it's situated in the south of Europe, Ukraine is among the best-positioned countries on the continent to utilize solar energy, getting more sunlight yearly than, say, Britain or Scandinavia. 

Developers plan to install solar panels on the site capable of generating up to four gigawatts of energy by the end of 2016, according to Bloomberg, which would allow the country to rely less on Russian natural gas, a reliance which has been problematic in recent years as the Russia-Ukraine conflict has ground on. 

It would also make the massive Exclusion Zone—which won't be safe to live on again for hundreds of years, despite the efforts of some illegal settlers—useful again. The ghost town, in other words, might finally make itself useful. 


New York's Favorite Corpse Flower Is Finally Blooming

0
0
article-image

Corpsey is finally opening up to us. (Photo: Blake Olmstead)

Attention lovers of life and death: after days of waiting, the New York Botanical Garden's corpse flower, the celebrity plant of the season, has finally begun to bloom. 

Fans have been waiting with bated breath and pinched noses since this past weekend, when staff suspected the bloom would begin. After nearly a week of teasing, the plant finally started the process today, opening its outer layer to reveal a crimson center. 

The corpse flower, named for its distinctive stench, is native to Sumatra, Indonesia, and only opens up for extreme heat. Its blooming process is long and sensuous, involving the slow unfolding of its spathe (a special kind of petal), and about 36 hours of patented "decaying body" odor, meant to attract insect pollinators who are into rotting meat.

This is New York's first corpse flower since 1939. Back then it was called a "Giant Krubi," and so captivated the city that it was made the Bronx's official flower, only dethroned by the day lily in 2000. 

Garden staff have been pampering this one for 10 straight years, waiting for this day. Local devotees can see (and sniff) the putrid prince in person in the NYBG's Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, while the rest of us will have to make do with this unisensory livestream. Smellovision can't come fast enough. 

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.

 

Found: A Star Hundreds of Light-Years From Any Others

0
0
article-image

CX330. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

CX330, as far as anyone can tell, is a star. Astronomers first caught sight of it using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, but soon they discovered, using data from other instruments, it was emitting optical light, too. It was also surrounded by warm dust, the sign of an outburst. The more data they gathered, the more astronomers came to believe: there was only one thing this could be.

Of all the explanations they considered, “the only one that makes sense is that this rapidly growing young star is forming in the middle of nowhere,” the lead researcher, Dr. Christopher Britt, said.

But CX330 is a strange kind of young star. Stars need gas and dust to form, and usually they sit in star-forming areas that have those resources in abundance. CX330 is all alone, hundreds of light-years from any such field. “Young” means it’s less than a million years old, but even in the few short years the scientists have observed it, it’s been outbursting and increasing in brightness, hundreds of times over.

Understanding the star’s formation will help astronomers better grasp how stars are made: what is this one doing all alone? Are there more like it? All we know right now is that it’s sitting isolated in space, shining.

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 Pitfalls of Publishing a Video Game Magazine in 1982

0
0
article-image

Video game coverage just isn't what it used to be. (All images: Video Games Player Magazine/Fair Use)

Video game reporting makes up a healthy segment of the internet in this day and age, but back in the early 1980s no one was even sure if anyone cared enough to read video game news of any kind. In those early days of the industry, magazines like Video Games Player were not just bringing the latest news to the burgeoning fan base, but also helping to shape video game culture into what it is today—even if the writers and editors didn’t know it.

To find out what it was like to be working on the front lines during the earliest days of video game culture, we spoke with prolific children's author Dan Gutman, former editor-in-chief of defunct underdog gaming magazine Video Games Player.

First released in 1982, Video Games Player was one of only a handful of magazines catering to arcade and video game culture at the time, and it is a fascinating time capsule from a bygone age of gaming, and publishing. The first issue alone featured news, game company profiles, hints and tips, jokey bits about arcade culture, and even a contest in which you could win a year’s supply of quarters (which would have been a dream at an arcade, and not just a cruel prank). Video Games Player essentially got to invent its own form, during its short four-year lifespan.

Gutman told us all about the magazine’s roots in the smut business and how he still doesn’t know anything much about video games.

How did you get started with Video Games Player?

I honestly didn’t know anything about video games, and I still don’t. I was working on a girly magazine. A skin magazine called Stag. Chip Goodman, son of Martin Goodman, who started Marvel Comics back in the 1940s, he used to publish all these men’s adventure magazines like, “I Chopped Off My Arm To Survive The Nazi Death Camp,” sort of thing. When Playboy came along in the early '50s, those magazines either had to become skin magazines or go out of business. So Stag went from being a men’s adventure magazine to a sex magazine.

Coincidentally, I had been in graduate school in New Jersey, studying psychology and hating every second of it, so I decided to move to New York, where all the starving writers go. I answered an ad in the New York Times for writers of what was called “men’s sophisticate” magazines. I didn’t know what that meant, but it was basically a euphemism for “sex magazine.” I ended up writing an article for Stag magazine. It was about professional wrestling. It was the first thing I ever published.

article-image

The cover of the firs issue of Video Games Player Magazine. (All images: Video Games Player Magazine/Fair Use)

I’d moved to New York, I needed some money, I didn’t know what to do. So I contacted the editor who I had written this article for, and I said, “Look, I’ll sweep your floors, I’ll do anything. I’ll work for free!” And he hired me!

This was 1980. I worked at the magazine for a few years and learned the whole magazine business as a result. But i didn’t want to become a pornographer. This was a time when my publisher, Chip Goodman, was trying to legitimize himself by branching out into non-sexually-related magazines. The Pac-Man phenomenon had exploded in 1981. I went to my publisher one day and I said, “How about we start a video games magazine? I’ll do it in my spare time.” Because I saw that as a way to get out of porn.

He said, “Sure, you can do it in your spare time. I’ll finance one issue and see how it goes.” I knocked myself out working at Stag during the day and doing Video Games Player at night. And I put together the magazine almost single-handedly.

Having said you didn’t know much about video games, what was your editorial vision for the magazine?

In the beginning, arcade games were really big. There was the Atari 2600 with a home system, ColecoVision came out, Intellivision came out. There were a few other home video game systems, but they were very primitive compared to what we have today. So we pretty much focused on the arcade world. We just tried to chronicle the new games coming out, and the people who were into it. We’d interview people who designed the games, or kids who had scored a million points on Centipede or whatever.

article-image

The welcome page from the first issue. (All images: Video Games Player Magazine/Fair Use)

 In the first issue of Video Games Player, there are a lot of similar features to those found in men’s magazines (Playboy-style comics, a centerfold poster in the middle, etc.). How much influence did you take from men’s magazines?

Yeah. There was that centerfold there. I think it was Zaxxon, because it was a beautiful game at the time. Some of the cartoonists who we used for the men’s magazines, I enlisted them to do some video game cartoons too.

[For the magazine images] my plan was to photograph the game screens, and run the photographs in the magazine. My art director convinced me that photographs of the game screen would not look very good and we needed to hire an illustrator to draw the games. There was a big arcade right [in Times Square] called Playland, so I took [the illustrator] there. This was before computers, so she sketched everything with a pad and pencil. I said, “This is what Donkey Kong looks like. I need the monkey here and I need the barrel here, and I need the Mario here. Draw that.” I brought along a bunch of quarters and gave them away to kids so that they could play the games and she could see what it looked like.

What was the response from readers? Did they want more news? More tips on how to win?

I don’t think they wanted tips on how to win, because at the time there was some best-selling books out that basically walked you through some of these games. Pac-Man and so on. We did provide some tips and hints in the magazine, but mostly I think people wanted news. They wanted to know what was coming out, what companies were working on.

Did the magazine pick up a loyal readership?

Like any magazine we got letters from readers, saying they liked stuff or didn’t like stuff. It wasn’t an overwhelming number. Honestly I don’t think the magazine was all that successful. With circulation or with advertising. It was a little quickie thing that was put out by a small company, and if a company like Esquire had decided to put out a video game magazine, they would have gone all in, and put a lot of money into it. But this was just a little two-bit publishing company.  

article-image

Today this sounds a bit like a threat. (All images: Video Games Player Magazine/Fair Use)

Did you come to a better appreciation for video games while running the magazine? How much did you immerse yourself in video game culture?

I tried to get into it. I played the games, because you had to to familiarize yourself with the field you’re in. But the funny thing is, when you’re an editor on a magazine, no matter what the field is, people view you as an expert no matter how much you know or don’t know. I didn’t know squat, but everybody acted like I was an expert because I was the editor-in-chief of this magazine. I don’t think I ever really felt the need to become an expert because I wasn’t really into the technology myself. I’m interested in sports, and old technology, and history.

What happened when the magazine folded?

Well I had these credentials as an editor-in-chief, and I basically used that to write articles in the computer field. I had a syndicated newspaper column [on computers] for about 10 years that ran in the Miami Herald and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and other legitimate newspapers, even though I was a total fraud. I didn’t know anything about computers. But I wrote about them.

I didn’t enjoy doing it because I was really an imposter. So I decided to try and write about something that interested me more, which was sports. And I was able to write a couple of books about baseball. So I did that for a few years.

Then in 1990 my son was born, and I started reading a lot of children’s books. So I thought, let's try writing for kids, and as soon as I started writing for kids, I thought, “This is what I’m good at! This is what I should have been doing all along!” I switched over to writing for kids and I’ve been doing it ever since.

How do you feel about you and the magazine’s place and contribution to video game culture?

There are some people in the field who are really pioneers. Like [Atari founder] Nolan Bushnell and Ralph Baer [the "Father of Video Games"], and they’re really the innovators. If I contributed in some very, very small way to the culture, then I’ll take that and be proud of it.  

article-image

Goodbye, brave warriors. (All images: Video Games Player Magazine/Fair Use)

This interview was edited and condensed.

The 'Betty Crocker House' Is For Sale

0
0

Betty Crocker was designed to be the image of the perfect homemaker, a fictional avatar of good food and the nuclear family. Many of Crocker's recipes were produced by Janette Kelley, who ran General Mills' test kitchen and made many of the brand’s famous recipes in her Norwell, Massachusetts home, about 25 miles southeast of Boston. 

That home, according to Mass Live, which is known locally as the “Betty Crocker House,” is now up for sale. Built in 1681 (albeit with modern updates), the house is on the market for $675,000.

It was there that Betty Crocker was partially born, a prototypical homemaker figure first created in the 1920s. As her character grew and evolved, introducing Betty Crocker Coupons and America’s ubiquitous cooking bible, the Betty Crocker Cookbook, more people became involved, and there are a number of real world figures who could be labeled the “real” Betty Crocker. Kelly was one of these people.

A nutritionist and entrepreneur who lived in the Massachusetts house in the 1930s and '40s, Kelly is thought to have developed a number of the recipes that would later become staples of American home cooking.

Which means that, for the right price, you as well can recreate some of the home-cooking magic.

The Incredible Chevalier d'Eon, Who Left France as a Male Spy and Returned as a Christian Woman

0
0

A profile view of the Le Chevalier d’Éon. (Photo: Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale/Public Domain)

When the Chevalier d’Eon left France in 1762, it was as a diplomat, a spy in the French king’s service, a Dragoon captain, and a man. When he returned in July 1777, at the age of 49, it was as a celebrity, a writer, an intellectual, and a woman—according to a declaration by the government of France.

What happened? And why?

The answer to those questions is complex, obscured by layers of bad biography, speculation and rumor, and shifting gender and psychological politics in the years since, as well as d’Eon’s own attempts to reframe his story in a way that would make sense to his contemporary society. (Note: In consultation with d’Eon’s biographer, I have decided to use the male pronoun when talking about d’Eon before the gender shift and the female pronoun after.) Professor Gary Kates of Pomona College is one of the first modern academics to look closely at the life—or lives—of the Chevalier d’Eon, in his comprehensive biography Monsieur d’Eon Is a Woman. Kates had access to d’Eon’s personal papers, a treasure trove of manuscripts, diaries, financial records, documents, and letters housed at the University of Leeds, and his work is widely considered the best place to start when considering d’Eon. 

The story Kates tells is a complex narrative, involving Ancien Regime intrigue, secret spy rings, political necessity, burgeoning celebrity culture, and nascent feminism. The meaning of d’Eon’s transformation has been dissected for centuries; feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft praised d'Eon in their lifetime and contemporary trans groups have named themselves in d'Eon's honor.

Even so, Kates cautions that the history of this fascinating figure is far from complete. “I don’t think I’ve written the definitive book on d’Eon,” he says. How could he? This is a person who lived enough for three lifetimes.

The King's Secret

Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont was born October 5, 1728, to a minor aristocratic family in Burgundy; despite later claims, there was no hint of anything unusual about his birth and he was declared a boy. After a largely uneventful adolescence and completing his studies in Paris, d’Eon’s family’s connections secured him a place in civil service. He steadily climbed the ranks until, in 1756, d’Eon became secretary to the French ambassador to Russia.

This traditional role, however, was just a cover: D’Eon was also tapped for another royal service—le Secret du Roi, or “King’s Secret”. The Secret was a network of spies and diplomatic agents established by Louis XV in the 1740s with the aim of putting his cousin, the Prince de Conti, on the Polish throne and turning the country into a French satellite. The Secret was so secret, it was hidden from and sometimes acted against the official French foreign ministry. D’Eon was charged with fostering good relations with the Russian court of the Empress Elizabeth and getting her behind installing Conti in Poland, as well as promoting France’s interests generally. Though d’Eon was competent, by all accounts hardworking, charming, and clever, the geopolitical reality was grim: That same year, France had entered what would become the Seven Years War with Britain.

The war did not go well for France and by March 1762, Louis XV called for peace talks to begin. In August 1762, d’Eon, who had left Russia for a stint as a Dragoon in the French Army, was appointed secretary to the French ambassador who was then negotiating the peace with Britain; he was also admitted to the prestigious royal and military Order of Saint Louis, a huge honor for a man only 35 at the time, and allowed to call himself “Chevalier”, the equivalent of “Sir”. When the peace treaty was signed in February 1763, France found itself stripped of its colonies in North America, saddled with enormous debts, and desperate for revenge. So the Secret regrouped with a new purpose: Invade Britain. In April 1763, d’Eon was named minister plenipotentiary, with the status of ambassador, to the British court—an excellent cover for directing a survey of the English coast to find a good place to mount an invasion and cultivating members of Britain’s opposition party in Parliament.

article-imageLe Chevalier D'Éon. (Photo: Wellcome Images, London/CC BY 4.0)

Things seemed to be ticking along for d’Eon’s career, but within months, it would all crumble. For starters, he had expensive tastes, much to the frustration of his cash-strapped government, and was reprimanded for importing too much wine. And he wasn’t really the ambassador. The real ambassador, the Comte de Guerchy, was a man with little diplomatic experience and not well-liked or particularly competent; he was expected to arrive within the year, and d’Eon would be demoted to secretary. The awkwardness was compounded by the fact that though d’Eon was under Guerchy in his above-board ministerial position, he was above and sometimes at odds with Guerchy in his work in the Secret. The situation, d’Eon claimed, was untenable and he let his superiors know that in a series of increasingly angry letters.

On October 4, 1763, just six months after he’d been given the job, d’Eon was fired for his insolent behavior. He had until the 19th to come home for chastising. 

D’Eon wasn’t going. He had real reason to fear that he was headed for the Bastille – other inconvenient noblemen had disappeared for less – however, d’Eon also knew that his position in the Secret afforded him a measure of protection. Louis XV ordered d’Eon be extradited back to France, but the British foreign minister refused, declaring that d’Eon was free to stay in Britain as a private citizen. D’Eon wasn’t out of danger yet—the French Foreign Ministry made several attempts to kidnap and arrest him. In retaliation, d’Eon intimated to his superiors in the Secret that he would tell everything if he wasn’t vindicated. And in March 1764, he fired a warning shot: He published a scandalous book, the first of several promised volumes, of all his diplomatic correspondence since being named minister plenipotentiary.

The effect was staggering. D’Eon went from a somewhat minor figure on the European political stage to the central character for a short time, talked about not only by heads of state but by newspapers, in cafes, even in aristocratic households as well: Kates includes a contemporary letter from a 16-year-old girl to her friend in which she dishes about d’Eon’s “treasonous impudence”.

article-image

King Louis XV, who established le Secret du Roi in the 1740s. (Photo: Palace of Versailles/Public Domain)

It was shocking, it was libelous, but it worked. In some sense, d’Eon had thrown himself not on the mercy of the British government, but the British people, which gave him a kind of celebrity protection. And the fact that he had made himself an open enemy of the French Foreign Ministry made him even more useful as a spy, allowing him to entrench more deeply in British society. Louis XV quietly gave D’Eon a lifelong pension of 12,000 livres annually, in exchange for reports about British politics and handing over the incriminating documents about the Secret he possessed. D’Eon’s next volumes in his tell-all never appeared, however, and he was forbidden from returning to France. He spent the next decade in exile in London, still in service to his King. 

But when Louis XV died in 1774, his son, the ill-fated Louis XVI, wanted the Secret eliminated. He saw no utility in having effectively two foreign policies, one secret, and, moreover, he no longer wanted to invade Britain. So d’Eon was again a problem.

Enter Pierre Beaumarchais, playwright and representative of the French government. In 1775, Beaumarchais approached d’Eon to negotiate his return to France and, crucially, the return of any documents he possessed pursuant to his spy work. After several months of discussion, d’Eon signed The Transaction, as the agreement was called: He would give up all papers and return to France as soon as possible. The king would pay some of his substantial debts and his pension, and he would publicly recognize d’Eon as a woman.

'All the World Says It'

The only thing that made the plan at all plausible was the fact that a lot of people, including the French government, already thought d’Eon was secretly a woman. As early as 1770, rumors began circulating in Britain and France that the Chevalier was actually a Chevalière, and once they started, they didn’t stop. One French aristocrat wrote to a friend, “All the world says it. Final incontestable proof!” The groundswell of gossip was enough that in 1771, London bookmakers started taking bets on his gender—3:2 odds that he was a woman, at first, before sinking to even money. The bizarre public debate made d’Eon’s life difficult; he couldn’t leave the house without armed guards, owing to the many people who wanted to see him naked, yet his understandable refusal to publicly reveal his gender prolonged the debate for years. 

But there may have been more to his refusal than simple pride. In May 1772, a French secretary in the service of the Secret allegedly came to London to investigate the claim that d’Eon was a woman; he left in June, fully convinced that d’Eon was indeed female because that’s what d’Eon told him. From that point on, Kates wrote, the French government took it as fact that d’Eon was a woman. Kates believed that d’Eon planted the rumors himself, so that when Beaumarchais came calling in 1775, d’Eon was armed with a fictional narrative that he’d been born female but forced into the role of a son by a tyrannical father. This would have enabled him to retire from the Secret and return to France, as Kates suggested, a “heroine who had dressed up as a man in order to perform patriotic acts for Louis XV” in the eyes of the public, rather than as a “trickster”.

article-image

Nicholas Pocock's painting The Battle of Quiberon Bay, during the Seven Years' War between France and Britain. (Photo: National Maritime Museum/Public Domain)

Strangely, the scheme worked, although it would be another 18 months of squabbling with Beaumarchais and others before d’Eon would finally leave England, but in July 1777 he did. By then, most of Europe knew d’Eon’s story, or at least the version d’Eon wanted everyone to know: Born female, d’Eon was raised male by a father who wanted a son; he excelled as a diplomat and soldier; and was now coerced by the new king and propriety to adopt the appearance of his birth gender. As a condition of the Transaction, d’Eon was meant to return to France in women’s dress, but d’Eon was still wearing his Dragoon captain’s uniform, as much a symbol of his political power as gender, when he stepped off the boat. It took several months and a royal decree, but he was eventually coaxed out of it. He was handed over to Rose Bertin, famous clothing director to Marie Antionette, in whom he supposedly confided, “Truthfully, Mademoiselle, I do not yet know what I need…. I only know that it is more difficult to equip a lady than a company of Dragoons from head to foot.”

On November 21, 1777, Mademoiselle la Chevaliere d’Eon was formally presented at the court at Versailles, “reborn” after a four-hour toilette that included powdered hair, an elaborate dress and make-up. Contemporary reports nastily remarked that d’Eon was not an attractive woman: “She had nothing of our sex but the petticoats and the curls which suited her horribly,” declared one female courtier.

article-image

A fencing match featuring Mademoiselle la Chevaliere d’Eon at Carlton House in London, 1787.  (Photo: Royal Collection/Public Domain)

After a period of adjustment, d’Eon appeared to embrace womanhood and her persona as an “Amazon” woman, although contemporary reports suggest that she never really comported herself quite in the style of other aristocratic women. It didn’t matter: Most of society accepted her story as fact and hailed her as a heroine in the mold of Joan of Arc. But the reality of life as a woman was also disappointing, and her political, patriotic voice was essentially muted. When France joined the American War of Independence in 1778, d’Eon petitioned the government to allow her to wear her Dragoon captain’s uniform once again, which she believed would enable her to go to war for France. Far from being moved, the government pressured her to enter a convent; others at Versailles, where she was now living, told her that the only way she could have any political influence was through marriage. When d’Eon continued to demand the government allow her to go to war, she was arrested and thrown into a dungeon beneath the Chateau of Dijon. She was released after 19 days and the promise that she would stop asking. Every political effort d’Eon made from then on would be immediately quashed by the French government, who eventually forced her into retirement on her family estate in rural Tonnerre.

Last Days in England

In 1785, she moved back to England, ostensibly to settle some debts but in reality, seeking the freedom from monarchic despotism that Britain seemed to enjoy; she was welcomed in society as a heroine. But when the French Revolution began in 1789, d’Eon’s annual pension was suspended, and she found herself broke. A sale of her famous collection of books couldn’t cover her debts and by 1791, d’Eon, now in her 60s, resorted to putting on fencing exhibitions for money, styling herself as a kind of swordswoman-warrior. Though lacking money, she still enjoyed a modicum of celebrity: In 1792, her portrait was painted by Thomas Stewart, with d’Eon wore a full cockade hat, in support of the French Revolution, and a dusting of stubble on her cheeks.

article-imageMademoiselle la Chevaliere d’Eon. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-101757)

The portrait, now housed at the National Portrait Gallery in London, was painted not long after d’Eon offered to lead an army of women for the fledgling French National Assembly. Her sword-fighting career lasted until 1796, when she was badly injured during a tournament and was forced to retire. Not long after, she was driven by poverty to share a flat with another elderly woman, a widow by the name of Mrs. Cole. She became a virtual shut-in, often too ill to leave her bed, and saw very few people.

She died May 21, 1810, at the age of 81. And then, Mrs. Cole made a startling discovery when she went to dress her friend’s body for burial: The woman who’d become a man to serve her king was biologically male. D’Eon’s obituary a few days later described her as a “political character” most remembered for her “questionable gender”, which, the papers said, could now be reported as definitely male. Hardly what d’Eon would have wanted.

article-image

A view of London and the Thames, 1794. (Photo: Public Domain)

The facts of d’Eon’s life are confusing, as are her real motivations for becoming a woman in the public and private eye. She left behind some 2,000 pages of unpublished manuscripts, including drafts of her autobiography, some of which was outright fiction and shed only partial light on why she did what she did. Viewing her decision with a 21st century lens, however, is almost certainly inappropriate: She is not exactly the 18th century Caitlyn Jenner, nor is she, “Britain’s first openly transvestite male”, as National Portrait Gallery curator Lucy Peltz told The Guardian in 2013.

“I see d’Eon’s gender transformation as a mid-life crisis which has very much to do with a reaction to the hyper-masculinity of diplomacy and politics of the Old Regime,” explained Kates, who said that d’Eon had come to see political life itself, backbiting and detestable, as the cause of her misfortunes. During the period after she was disowned by the French Foreign Ministry, d’Eon began collecting books on famous, virtuous women throughout history and early feminist thought, eventually amassing one of the largest collections of feminist writing in Europe; women, d’Eon came to believe, were more decent than men. “I think it’s at that point in his life that living as a woman comes to him as a way to transform himself morally and away to escape this hyper-masculine box he found himself in,” says Kates.

 article-image

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, playwright, pictured in 1755. (Photo: Institution:Comédie-Française/Public Domain)

Kates also sees d’Eon’s transition as a moral choice propelled by her re-found, fervent Christian faith; D’Eon himself referred to his transition as a “conversion from bad boy to good girl”. “[D’Eon] believes in two things: One is that whether we live as a man or a woman is a choice that all of us have and that women in the 18th century are living lives that are morally superior to men, and therefore we should choose, we men should choose to live as women,” explains Kates. In the context of her faith, said Kates, “It is the Christianity that empowers him to cross the gender barrier.”

That d’Eon had a choice at all Kates sees as emblematic of the progression of “bourgeois individualism”, as people with the means were increasingly able to decide against set roles and modes of behavior to do what fulfilled them. “This is obvious in the sense of occupations... Our occupations just followed us and we didn’t have any choice, but somewhere in the early modern world, we realized that we ought to have choice,” said Kates. “In that way, we’re just extending this to gender.”

Womanhood as Survival

Not all scholars accept that view of a revolutionary d'Eon. Dr. Simon Burrows, historian of the Enlightenment at Western Sydney University, is the editor of a collection of essays on d’Eon and has explored the story in the context of burgeoning celebrity culture. Though Kates asserts that d’Eon was in charge of his own destiny, Burrows doesn’t believe that d’Eon planted the rumors that she was actually a woman to furnish her later escape plan; he says there is evidence to suggest that d’Eon disguised herself as a woman in the 1760s to evade the French Foreign Ministry, and that it’s possible the rumors stemmed from those incidents. Burrows does, however, think it’s very possible that d’Eon didn’t dispel the rumors because he was accepting payment from betting houses to keep his gender a mystery.

Burrows says that d’Eon was in a tight spot when Beaumarchais approached her—she’d long been living beyond her means and the French government rarely paid on time. “D’Eon really has little option but to agree, but it also has advantages for him…. He needs money, doesn’t he? And in Britain there’s risk he’ll be locked up as a debtor, so he does it for his own safety,” said Burrows. “I think Beaumarchais out-maneuvers him at a time when he really wants to go back to France.”

article-image

Mademoiselle de Beaumont or The Chevalier D'Eon. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ds-03347)

The d’Eon that Burrows describes is more reactive, less considered and more survivalist. It could easily have been Beaumarchais’s idea to allow d’Eon to come back to France only as a woman—D’Eon’s court-ordered gender re-assignment effectively politically neutered a dangerously out-spoken celebrity, for one thing, and for another, Beaumarchais had bet a lot of money on d’Eon’s gender being exposed as female. D’eon, says Burrows, is “to some extent being tricked into a position; he’s able to milk certain advantages, but it wouldn’t have been his first choice.”

Burrows does agree that d’Eon’s later writings reflect the kind of penitent decision-making Kates believes was at the heart of d’Eon’s transition—but more of “retrospective moral justification” than anything else. “I disagree with Kates to some extent because I don’t think it’s worked out in advance, or even as he goes along,” Burrows says.

By the end of her life, it seems clear that she identified as a Christian woman. But the question of D’Eon’s agency in her transition is central to understanding what kind of legacy she leaves behind, and it is something we’re unlikely to ever really know. So what d’Eon means, what we project on to her, is dependent on contemporary gender and social politics.

In d’Eon’s own lifetime, feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft heralded her as proof that women could outstrip men if given the opportunity. A 19th century biographer would claim that d’Eon was simply cross-dressing in order to better seduce married women, reinforcing some kind of macho, masculine ideal; in the 20th century, d’Eon’s story was analyzed in psycho-sexual terms and early sexologist Havelock Ellis coined the term “Eonism” to describe transvestitism. In the 21st century, she’s become a transgender heroine—the Beaumont Society, a support organization for the transgender community, has taken her name in admiration (the Society did not return an email for comment)—as well as an anime star.

article-image

An engraving from 1787 of Mademoiselle la Chevaliere d’Eon. (Photo: Wellcome Images, London/CC BY 4.0)

Burrows has struggled with how to make sense of d’Eon’s life. “In some ways, he leaves less of a legacy than we might think,” he says, “He doesn’t leave a set of followers, he doesn’t leave a number of people who behave the same way, but he is important in terms of how people are beginning to define themselves.”

Kates is less equivocal. “I think what makes d’Eon so historically significant and such an important pioneer for today is not what he did but the extent to which he thought about it and gave ideas to it,” he said. In d’Eon’s philosophy and to some extent, the philosophy of 18th century European society, gender is not essential, it is fluid; one can make a decision about where to land in a kind of continuum, not only of gender but of morality as well. “This whole discussion we’ve been having the past 6 months about which bathrooms people should use and where we’re groping towards is that a person should use the bathroom they feel most comfortable with, society shouldn’t be making that decision for them, this is right out of 1750s thinking,” says Kates.

D’Eon is a complex figure, whether that figure is dressed in a Dragoon Captain’s uniform or a Versailles ball-gown. Perhaps d’Eon was a victim of the power of an unchecked political state. Perhaps it’s simply that she was a woman, a person, so ahead of her time, that it’s taken more than 240 years to catch a glimpse of what she was trying to do.

Blue City, Rollercoaster Bridge, and 7 Fascinating New Locations in the Atlas

0
0

Every day our community of travelers and writers unearths fascinating places from the hidden corners of the world and adds them to the Atlas, helping to build our collaborative database of over 9,000 hidden wonders. And while each and every place is worth a wander off the beaten path, some stand above the fray as particularly extraordinary. These seven unusual locales are some of the most curious and enticing places we came across this week.

Blue City of Jodhpur

JODHPUR, INDIA

article-image

Overlooking a sea of blue. (Photo: Premaram67/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Once an indicator of social class, the color blue has come to define this city on the edge of the Thar Desert. A sea of boxy indigo houses stretches for more than 10 kilometers (six miles) along the historic walled old city. A blue pigment coating on a house used to indicate that a Brahmin—the priests of the Indian caste system—dwelled there, but over time the color became a badge of identity for non-Brahmins, too.

Washington D.C. Mormon Temple

KENSINGTON, MARYLAND

article-image

The temple from the visitor’s center. (Photo: Evyatar Guttman/Atlas Obscura)

Mormon temples are known for their splendor and beauty, and few rival the temple in Washington, D.C. It is the third-largest Mormon temple in the world by square footage, as well as being the tallest. Located adjacent to the Capital Beltway, the massive temple is well known to the thousands of drivers who pass by on their daily commute, its towering spires looking like something from another world. 

Rollercoaster Bridge

SAKAIMINATO, JAPAN

article-image

The bridge connects two cities across Lake Nakaumi. (Photo: mstk east/CC BY-SA 2.0)

The approach to the Eshima Ohashi bridge may give drivers a sense of trepidation. From afar, the almost vertical climb and descent are of rollercoaster proportions. The bridge is about a mile wide and at 44 meters (144 feet) tall, one of the highest in its class of bridge in the world, with a rigid frame structure. The view from either end of the bridge amplifies the actual incline, hence the rollercoaster nickname. It looks terrifyingly high.

Sunshine Laundromat

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

article-image

This laundromat is more than it seems. (Photo: Dylan Thuras/Atlas Obscura)

Walking past Sunshine Laundromat, one might assume that unless they had a load of dirty laundry to do there would be no reason to wander inside. They would be mistaken. As you pass a few classic pinball machines and go through the row of washing machines you notice a strange stack of washing machines at the very back of the laundromat. Come closer and you realize that through those back washing machine doors it's not laundry that you see but another world. A world of pinball.

Bexell's Talking Stones

VARBERG S, SWEDEN

article-image

What are these stones saying? (Photo: Hrnick/Atlas Obscura)

For decades, hundreds of engraved stones covered in moss were lying around in this forest just waiting to be discovered. They were engraved in the late 1800s by Alfred Bexell, a landowner and member of Parliament—why he did this is unknown until this day. So far over 600 names of famous writers, philosophers, scientists, politicians and statesmen been identified in the carvings, as well as more than 180 aphorisms, sayings, quotes from literature and pieces of Bexell's own thoughts. It's a sort of petrous journal. 

The Confederate Holdout Town In New York

ALDEN, NEW YORK

article-image

Item commemorating the readmission of Town Line to the Union in 1946. (Photo: Chriskyddwr/CC BY-SA 3.0)

The last holdout of the Confederacy was, surprisingly, a town in New York on the Canadian border. Today’s Town Liners have no idea why their forefathers sided with the Southern States in the Civil War one fateful day in 1861. What's even more curious is that it took the town until 1945 to rejoin the Union.

The Hill Where the Book of Mormon Was Buried

PALMYRA, NEW YORK

article-image

A monument on the Hill Cumorah commemorates the location of the plates. (Photo: Ken Lund/CC BY-SA 2.0)

If you've seen the Broadway musical Book of Mormon, you'll be at least somewhat familiar with the story of Joseph Smith's golden plates. It's a story so significant to the Mormon faith it's reenacted every July on a huge stage set up at the spot where it's believed to have taken place: this New York hillside not far off I-90.

Watch More Than 200 Rubik's Cubes Turn Into Pokémon Art

0
0

One artist is putting an interesting twist on the concept of cubism.

In this time-lapse video, a single pair of hands belonging to artist Kyudan arranges 240 Rubik’s Cubes into a stunning Poké-picture 15 cubes wide and 16 cubes tall. That’s a lot of cubes!

The subject of his masterpiece is Flareon, the reddish-orange fire type Pokémon that evolves from the creature known as Eevee. But Kyudan has posted even more videos of constructions of the Bitcoin logo, the Canadian flag, a Flappy Bird pop-art piece, and countless other Pokémon, just to name a few.

According to the artist, he specializes in CubeArt timelapses, “pixelated mosaics that use nothing but the stickers of cubes to make images." He says, too, that a project like this one takes around four hours of work and careful planning to complete.

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.


The Mock Mayors Who Pretend to Rule Bits of Britain

0
0

If you were traveling across England in the mid-1700s, and you happened to come upon the village of Yarmouth on a certain summer day, you were in for a strange sight—a man, covered in robes and seaweed, being carried around town in a boat. 

For centuries, as most of Yarmouth made do with a traditional government, the town's fishermen elected their own "Seaside Mayor," who settled angling disputes and encouraged good cheer. Once a year, he was paraded around in a boat, having costumed himself "as much like Neptune as circumstances would permit."  

In past centuries, much of Britain was rife with "mock mayors"—satirical officials whose main duty was thumbing their noses at the powerful, and encouraging the populace to do the same. In recent years, the custom has slowly but surely trickled back into public life, as new generations of men and women take up the goofy mantle.

"There's a whole ancient tradition,"says Alan Myatt, who has been in charge of the City of Gloucester's mock mayorship for 33 years. "We've resurrected it."

article-image

An actual Lord Mayor, John Stuttard of London, in 2006. (Photo: David Iliff/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Mock mayors' titles can be counterintuitive, as they're often named after nearby villages—Gloucester's is the "Mock Mayor of Barton." But in the U.K., all mayorship is relatively confusing. Recent legislation opened up the way for directly-elected mayors, with more power and responsibility, and a few towns and cities, including London and Gloucester, have gone that route. Others vest power in their local council managers, and make do with Lord Mayors—appointed rather than elected, tasked mostly with administrative duties.

Mock mayors have very few actual duties, political or administrative. Instead, they let a town air out its id—its frustrations, its lunacies, its long-lasting quirks. In the city of Penryn, the Mock Mayor of Mylor was attended by torch-bearers, a band, and sergeants armed with "monstrous cabbages." His supporters, the "nutters," returned from hazelnut harvesting and ran through town, kindling bonfires and setting off fireworks.

Launceston had a "Mayor of the Pig Market," who was plied with beer, covered in flour, and paraded around town with a frying pan tied to his hair. In Exeter, the sole duty of the "Mayor of the Bullring" was keeping animals off the streets, and he was allowed to order people to carry their horses out of town on market day. 

But if real mayors often boast serious titles and silly duties, mock mayors are their fitting opposite—their silliness was born from serious situations. In most towns, the tradition came out of a particular moment of disenfranchisement. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, the first Mock Mayor was elected in 1850 by local members of Parliament, who had just lost the power to choose the real mayor.The people of Weston took up the tradition in the 1830s, after they were denied access to local medicinal springs.

In Gloucester, the mock mayorship dates back even further, to the 1650s. During the English Civil War, the city sided with Parliament over King Charles II, and successfully prevented the monarch from claiming its land. When he returned to power a few years later, Charles II punished the people of Gloucester for their politics by narrowing the city's borders so that much of the populace was stranded outside. "The area was stripped of its civic representation," says Myatt.

A few years later, at the annual town fair, "one of the sheep farmers put his sheep in the wrong pen when he was drunk," says Myatt. This was just the excuse the other revelers needed for a little political humor. "They said, 'You're worse than the Mayor of Gloucester,'" says Myatt. "Next thing you know, they made him mock mayor for the day, parading him around outside the city gates, making fun of the real mayor. It was a big windup."

In many places, the tradition sputtered out after a few centuries. Yarmouth's Seaside Mayors hung up their slimy crowns in the mid-19th century, when the local herring harvest moved offshore. In 1827, the Mayor of the Pig Market lost out to a new form of amusement—cricket. By the time the New York Times wrote about the trend, in 1892, it was already seen as a dying art: after describing some of the "strange assortment of functionaries," the puzzled reporter wrote that "most of the old Cornwall mayors… have vanished."

In Gloucester, mock mayors kept their seat until the 1920s, when they were ousted for a fittingly ridiculous reason: "There are various accounts of the two brothers who organized it having a fight, because one forgot to put the mutton in the pot for Sunday dinner," says Myatt.

Over the last few decades, though, mock mayors have slowly crept back into the national consciousness, one town at a time. Golowan, Abingdon, and Polperrol have all reinstituted theirs within the past quarter century. This year, the tradition is returning to Penryn, and promises musicians, cabbages, and nutters, just like old times.

Gloucester, a bit ahead of the trend, resuscitated theirs in 1983. Their first modern mock mayor wore a gold medal decorated with a chamber pot, and was required to drink a full yard of ale, in a long beaker-shaped glass, upon his inauguration. But things have changed somewhat from the days of goofy protest. "No longer do you have to be an idiot or a fool," says Myatt. "We usually choose somebody who does a lot of good work in the community." (This year's mock mayor, whose name will be revealed in August, has served as a real mayor in the past.)

Each mock mayor serves a one-year term, which they mostly spend "kissing babies and cutting ribbons," says Myatt. On Gloucester Day, he or she leads a parade, surrounded by supporters, shouting the traditional chant of "up yours!" and dressed in the real mayor's torn-up old gown.

article-image

The streets of Penryn, back in the day. (Photo: British Library/Public Domain)

In some ways, the modern celebration belies its radical roots. "The hoi polloi, the county sheriff, leading politicians—they all want to be there on the day," says Myatt. "All the cultures, the community groups, the clubs, the churches, the veterans'  associations—everybody comes out of the woodwork."

This inclusivity might account for its rising popularity—but Myatt offers another, simpler explanation. "We're all very eccentric here in England," he says. "We'll take any excuse to dress up, parade round the town, get drunk, and have lots of fun."

The Soviet Travel Brochures That Made Estonia Look Like a Fairytale

0
0

A scene from the dance festival of school children in Tallinn, 1972. (All Photos: Courtesy The Tallinn Collector

"The restaurant of Hotel Viru serves excellent food,"the brochure reads, under a photo some fondue, before continuing, "and is a pleasant place to relax and rest". These were the words in a brochure produced about Tallinn's Hotel Viru by Intourist, the USSR’s official travel agency that dictated visas, visits and itineraries. Hotel Viru first opened in 1972, and it was one of the few hotels to accept international visitors. It also contained a KGB station for listening into foreign guests. 

By the 1970s, Estonia had been under Soviet rule since 1940, with the exception of a period of Nazi occupation during World War II. It was an era when only one airline serviced Tallinn airport, Aeroflot, and visits were largely limited to within the capital itself. A ferry service opened up between Estonian and their neighbor across the Baltic Sea, Finland, in 1965.

So when Tomas Alexandersson moved from Sweden to Estonia, he was intrigued to discover tourist brochures from this era in second hand stores. At first, he was drawn to the images. "It was exciting to see the past – how places, houses, streets etc were represented." As he trawled second hand stories for more materials, he also noticed the specific way that Tallinn was represented. 

article-image

The food at Hotel Viru.  

"Of course the tourist books mostly mentioned Tallinn as a beautiful city and its sights, but very often the political messages and propaganda came through these lines of text," he writes in an email. He noticed that the presentation seemed "staged"—"like most of the images were almost part of a theatre scene background." 

After eight years living and working in Estonia, Alexandersson is now back across the sea in Stockholm, continuing to build his archive, The Tallinn Collector—some of which comes from friends, from their families, or from strangers who like the project. Atlas Obscura has a selection from Alexandersson's archive, from the 1970s. 

article-image
From the Hotel Viru brochure, published in the USSR (year unknown): “But if you have a long evening and a leisurely morrow ahead of you, then you will probably visit our night club, dance and watch the floor show.”

article-image

A view of Rataskaevu Street. in 1978. Says Alexandersson, "One of the main streets in Tallinn old town. The houses today look much better, renovated, than on this image".

article-image

The 1980 Olympics were hosted by the USSR, but the sailing events took place in the then-Soviet republic of Tallinn. This postcard shows the beach at Pirita.

article-image

Tallinn's Polytechnic Institute. From  T. Tomberg, Tallinn, Planeta Publishers, Moscow, 1975 (Photograph by V. Salmre), “Four of Estonia’s institutions of higher education are in Tallinn, with an enrollment of more than 10 thousand students in the largest, the Tallinn Polytechnic.”

article-image

“The new Radio House with contemporary computing centre (architects A. Eigi, J. Jaama, P. Põldre).” by H. Gustavson, Tallinn, Eesti Raamat, Tallinn, 1975. 

article-image

A postcard from 1980, “A view of the town at night.” 

article-image

Hotel Tallinn in 1977, and the first hotel to be open to international tourists. 

article-image

Tallinn airport. During the Soviet era—1945 through to 1989—the only airline to service this airport was the Russian carrier Aeroflot. 

article-image

A Tallinn cinema, featured in a 1976 brochure along with the text:“The old cobblestone pavement is particularly attractive when viewed together with some modern construction. Cinema “Eha” (Sunset Glow) in Tartu Road.”

article-image

“Interior of “Old Toomas” Café. Old Toomas (right, on the wall) is Tallinn’s symbolic watchman.” From Tallinn, Progress Publishers, Moscow, (year unknown).

Watch Colorado Firefighters Make a Complex Horse Rescue

0
0

Late yesterday afternoon, the Colorado South Metro Technical Rescue Team got an unusual call. A horse named Cupcake had fallen in knee-deep water, and couldn't manage to rise herself. Her owner wouldn't leave her side. It was time for the experts to pull on their boots and wade into the situation.

As they explained to KFOR, the team can't usually talk about their job for privacy reasons. But since their charge this time was a horse, not a human, they took the opportunity to show the public their work, via a series of dramatic Tweets posted over the course of the two-hour rescue.

The first wave of responders shielded Cupcake from the sun, kept her head above water, and comforted her while more team members hiked up with rescue tools. But when the tools arrived, the horse was so exhausted, it was difficult for her to push herself out.

So they called in Cupcake's veterinarian, who gave her some fluids to help her stand up. (Note: some of the Tweets say "Buttercup" due to an initial patient misidentification, later corrected.) Finally, helped by a contraption made of ropes and pulleys, Cupcake stood up, dazed. The team managed to guide her all the way out of the mud and back on safe ground—tired, but safe.

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.

The First Global Urban Planning Conference Was Mostly About Manure

0
0

article-imageElectric streetcars eventually began to replace horse-drawn cars in the early 20th century. (Photo: Brown Brothers/Public Domain)

The sticking point at the world’s first international urban planning conference was a load of crap.

When delegates from around the globe gathered in 1898 to hammer out a solution to one of the greatest problems facing their cities, whose consequences they could no longer ignore, they weren’t talking about infrastructure challenges, a shortage of resources, or even crime.

The problem was horses. And their copious poop.

article-imageA view of a muddy and manure-covered New York City street in 1893, found in an 1898 book about street cleaning. (Photo: Internet Archive/Public Domain)

The manure issue had become particularly acute as horse populations swelled in rapidly growing urban centers. It was considered such a looming threat to cities that an 1894 article in the Times of London estimated that within 50 years, dung piles would rise nine feet high.

A similarly concerning New York City prediction argued that by 1930 manure would reach third-story windows. Moreover, 19th-century New York was already unsettlingly unsanitary, with whole swathes of the city dominated by "a loathsome train of dependent nuisances" like slaughterhouses, facilities for fat melting and gut-cleaning, and "manure heaps in summer" that stretched across entire blocks. 

But after three days of brainstorming and debate that went nowhere, attendees of the conference, frustrated and resigned, called it quits on what had been planned as a 10-day affair. Participants had hoped to hammer out a solution to the horse problem and its smelly attendant consequences, but instead, seeing no way out of the morass, they disbanded and went home.

article-imageHorses were once vital to the operation of trams, like this one in London from the end of the 19th century. (Photo: Oxyman/Public Domain)

After all, how could they come up with a substitute for an animal that had served humans for thousands of years? Horses were essential to the transportation of people and cargo, as well as a source of prestige and power for militaries.

But crammed together in such tight spaces—the human density of New York City rose over the 19th century from just below 40,000 people per square mile to above 90,000—the beasts became less of an object of convenience and more of a debilitating nuisance.

article-imageThe crowded Mulberry Street in New York City around 1900. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZC4-4637)

At its peak, New York had an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 equine inhabitants. Each of those horses produced anywhere from 15 to 30 pounds of manure per day, coupled with around a quart of urine that ended up either in their stables or anywhere along their street routes.

And as equestrian enthusiasts are well aware, horse poop begets flies. Lots of flies. One estimate cited in Access Magazine claimed that horse manure was the hatching ground for three billion flies daily throughout the United States, flies that spread disease rapidly through dense human populations.

article-imageA view of a street in Riverside, California, with horse droppings littering the roadway. (Photo: CC Pierce/Public Domain)

By the end of the 19th century, once-vacant lots around New York City housed manure piles that stretched dozens of feet—often between forty and sixty—into the sky. The problem of horse manure had quite literally become larger than life.

And the problem comprised more than just excrement. When a horse, worked to the bone, plopped over dead, the city then had a rotting carcass to address, not to mention the flies and road congestion that accompanied it.

According to Raymond A. Mohl’s book The Making of Urban America, by 1866 the city's long Broadway had become littered with “dead horses and vehicular entanglements,” and in 1880 alone, New York City removed around 15,000 horse carcasses from its streets. As late as 1912, Chicago carted away nearly 10,000 carcasses.

article-imageA view of New York City's South Street crowded with horses and carriages. (Photo: Library of Congress/Public Domain)

Some respite came in the late 1880s and 1890s with the introduction of the cable car and electric trolley car to American cities, but it wasn't until the private automobile became available in the early 20th century that horses began to be phased out of daily life. As prices for hay, oats, and land rose, and fears of horse pollution became more urgent, the masses began to adopt the fledgling technology.

By 1912, the number of cars on New York City's roads had surpassed the number of horses. Buyers found cars to be cheaper to own and operate and much more efficient—not to mention more sanitary. The once-essential horse came under fire from magazines like Harper's Weekly and Scientific American, which praised the automobile for its economic sustainability and ability to reduce traffic.

And so, by some miracle, the problem that had plagued planners and had sent them into a panic began to disappear. Had they known at the first international planning conference that their most pressing challenge would essentially resolve itself in years to come, perhaps they wouldn't have wasted so much effort arguing about waste.

Found: A 3,000-Year-Old Ball of Yarn

0
0
article-image

This is 3,000 years old. (Photo: Must Farm Archaeology)

The ball of yarn above is 3,000 years old. For much of its existence, it has been buried underground, in boggy land, along with the rest of the remains of three small houses built millennia ago, near what's now Cambridge, England.

Ever since archaeologists discovered Must Farm, which has been called Britain's Pompeii, they have been uncovering small clues as to what life was like for the families that lived here. This ball of yarn is one of the most delicate finds--extraordinary in its survival over all these years.

In the week since the yarn was first found, the team has carefully cleaned it up. "Excavating and cleaning artifact this fragile is not easy but seeing them up close like this really shows how remarkable these finds are," the team wrote on their Facebook page

It's easy to imagine how one wrong touch could cause the small ball, just over 1 cm in size, to break apart into nothing.

Viewing all 11432 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images