(All screenshots by Eric Grundhauser)

Since 1996, The Realm Online been occupying its fantasy world on the edges of the mainstream internet. It’s not clear who is running it or how, but still it persists, and even more incredibly, there are still people playing in it.

The Realm (the “Online” was added later) might well be the world’s oldest still-operating multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). It was first released in late 1996, by then industry giant, Sierra Games. The game was a very early version of a MMORPG, featuring Dungeons-and-Dragons-style character creation, and an open world where you could meet up with other player characters and quest for loot, hunt monsters, or just chat. Today these features seem unremarkable, but in 1996, when the connectivity and community on the internet was still figuring itself out, The Realm was revolutionary.

Unfortunately, the cartoony (and frankly, quite ugly) two-dimensional art, and text-heavy interface were nearly instantly dated. Having taken influences from waning genres like graphical MUDs (text-based adventures that integrated crude images and animations), and the point-and-click adventure games Sierra was better known for (King's Quest), The Realm’s initial novelty didn’t last too long. It was quickly eclipsed by games like the more robust Ultima Online in 1997, and Everquest in 1999, which truly kickstarted the MMORPG genre with its fully 3D environments.

Your hero in the troll-skin orange.

As the popularity of the game dwindled, Sierra unloaded it to game publisher Codemasters in the early 2000s as part of a bundle of properties. Codemasters didn’t know what to do with the quickly aging game any more than Sierra did, so they put the game up for sale. In 2003, it was purchased by its current owners, Norseman Games, a small Michigan company started by, Scott Wochholz, a longtime player of The Realm.

“It was his idea, when he heard it was up for sale, that the family make a purchase of it,” says Lynn Crow, Wochholz's sister and former Norseman Games employee and player of The Realm. “I didn’t know a lot about it myself, but we all became convinced it would probably be a good idea.” Using a few hundred thousand dollars from a family trust, Wochholz bought the game. According to Crow, at the time of the purchase, the average number of players to be found in The Realm was around 200, down from its heyday of around 3,000. But through all of this, The Realm refused to die.

“Being introduced to different cultures and such a wide variety of people in a fantasy world was very overwhelming to me,” says Steve Murphy, who has played The Realm on and off since 1996. He is also active on the forums of The Realm Reawakened, an effort by one of the game’s original programmers to create a new (and unrelated) version of it for mobile. These forums have become one of the major gathering points for fans of The Realm. “The Realm Online was a game that, for the first time, offered me something that I never would have dreamed of in video games.” Even with unchanging gameplay and graphics, and a plummeting player count, there has always remained a core group of Realm fans who have continued to spend time in the world.

Norseman Games was aware of how dated the game seemed when they bought it, but they had every intention of improving on the game, and growing the small but devoted player base. According to Crow, many of the diehard players of The Realm stuck with the game mainly out of nostalgia, while others enjoyed the leisurely pace that allowed them to easily chat with others while questing. “There was a lot of individuals who had disabilities who enjoyed playing the game, because the controls are much easier than some of the more fancy games now,” she says.  

Don't trust those banshees. 

For better or worse, the planned improvements to the game never materialized. Crow, who had met her husband in the game, and even had an in-game character wedding, was forced out of the company in 2004, due to both familial and business conflicts with her brothers. She and her husband were also banned from the game, and she has had little contact with anyone at the company for years. There are no interviews with the employees of Norseman Games to be found, and complaints that they are unreachable litter the forums and Facebook groups. Multiple attempts at contacting them for this article through email (no response), phone (wrong number), and Facebook (no response), were a dead end. And yet, their website still runs, and The Realm servers, which go down from time to time, only to be mysteriously repaired, are still keeping the world alive.

The Realm’s website itself looks like something straight out of 1996, all janky iframes, broken JPGs, and a banner that still advertises “Dial-Up Friendly” and “Basic System Requirements” beneath some paperback fantasy art that is a far cry from the actual game’s crooked cartoons. However, you can still enter your credit card number and create a sign-in (I do not recommend this, as I learned the hard way that once an account is created, the link to your account settings, including removing your credit card, seems to be broken). The game is $7.99 a month, which either seems high or low depending on how you look at it. But for all of the appearance of an abandoned website, a created login will actually allow you to enter The Realm.

Once I logged in, I was able to join a server that had 14 other people in it. I created a human thief (hello again, Baerf the Reporter) with a mustache, and headed in to explore. Other options included being an orc, an elf, or even a giant.

Look at that handsome man.

The world of The Realm is set up in a massive grid of interlocking static screens, and you travel between them by clicking on the appropriate side of the game window, or on entrances elsewhere on the screen. In essence your character travels from one pixelated tableau to the next.

You begin in the central town, which has such pixelated fantasy sights as a market fair,  weapons shops located in crude huts, and non-player characters ready to dole out quests and medieval insults. It is all very charmingly basic fantasy fare, but I was truly shocked when I quickly stumbled upon another player character. It was a sprite in green tunic wearing what looked like a variation of that mask from the movie Gladiator. The character was standing still and didn’t respond to my chat of “Are you a real person?” so, I thought it might have been a mistake. Maybe those 14 “people” who were supposedly logged in were just old, dead accounts, whose avatars would stand like statues in the game world until the powers at Norseman finally let it die.

But sure enough, a few seconds later, another actual player entered my same screen. I felt like I’d discovered some lost tribe of gamer who hadn’t been touched by the modern world since the mid-90s. The character was some kind of purple witch named Trillion. They suggested that I try to find a hunting party to take me to some cool dungeons and then left the screen. I tried to follow, but couldn’t navigate fast enough to keep up. The players were real, although I wasn’t able to find a hunting party. When I would return to the town square later, more players, each in some garish combination of high-level gear, had gathered, just standing there, saying hi before going off to different parts of the world.

That man in orange is named Jeff. 

None of the NPCs I talked to had any quests for me, save for one tavern owner who gave me the first-RPG-quest classic of clearing his basement of rats. Longtime Realm quester Murphy had suggested a few of his favorite places for me to check out including dungeons with names like Fuloran's Abode, Festering Hate Pool, and Tulor's Caverns. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of in-game map feature, so locating a specific location in the world was impossible, at least at my low level.

I decided to just strike out and see what else the world had to offer, and I headed due east. I found myself traveling through endearingly rendered forests, that turned into deserted scrublands or foggy swamps, or at least the 1996 pixel versions of them.

Nearly every screen was filled with enemies including banshees, zombies, bats, bounty hunters, and demons. Every character in The Realm has a two-part animation with one view straight on, and another from the side, giving even the large dragons a silly paper cutout quality. At my low level, fighting any of them was instant death, so I would flee as soon as any of them engaged me in combat, just trying to get as far out in the world as I could. Without a map, I wandered aimlessly, but it wasn’t unenjoyable. After 20 or so screens of random enemies I was able to feel truly lost, and when I was finally killed by a Lich, sending me back to the home where I’d first spawned, I wanted to just head out in another direction to see what there was to see. There didn’t seem to be any urgency to any of it.

Those dragons LOVE taking in their surroundings. 

Also, since the whole game is in many ways a trumped-up text adventure, getting to read the action narrations in the text box was also a cheesy surprise. A selection of my favorite lines that popped up on my adventure include: “Troll King leafs through a spellbook, pretending it can read.”; “Wizard of Light looks at her broken fingernail.”; and of course every time I ran from a fight, “Baerf fled like a scared dog.” The jokey, incidental descriptions may be the most '90s aspect of the entire game.

I wasn’t able to locate any of the game’s specifically remarkable locations, but after spending a few hours in the world, I can see why people still play it 20 years on. Like no other retro-inspired game, The Realm provides an incredibly nostalgic trip back to gaming in 1996. It doesn’t feature any of the bells, whistles, or intensity of modern MMORPGs, but it also doesn’t seem to have the kind of toxic competitiveness or demanding skill curve. It’s just a big, simple fantasy world, and when you’re one of the (very, very) few people experiencing it, it seems much more uniquely yours.

Murphy described his feelings on the game by saying, “Look, we all have had our first loves in life. [...] The Realm Online is the video game version of that to me.” The Realm isn’t pretty, it isn’t exciting, and you may never be able to get your credit card information back, but it continues to survive.  

3️⃣ : Des milliers de litres de #vin déversés dans les rues de #Setehttps://t.co/lBjXmPixZK#WineMorning🍷⚡️ pic.twitter.com/VRDMfV88qA

— Rhonéa (@RhoneaOfficiel) August 3, 2016

On Tuesday night, residents of Sète, a small town in the South of France, woke suddenly. Sirens blared, and fire engines careered around the corners. People climbed from their beds to peer out of their windows, only to see the streets literally running red. It was a nightmare... or was it a dream? Block after block, the streets had been flooded with red wine.

"The plonk flooded into local basements, car parks, and even some people's homes," the Local reports. (For non-Europeans: plonk means, essentially, "cheap wine.") The wine was all from Biron, a local distributor. Midi Libre adds that it was "very fragrant."

Emergency services cleaned it the scene up quickly. But the perpetrators remained a mystery until Wednesday morning, when they proudly came forward. It was the work of the Comité Régional d'Action Viticole, or CRAV—a "radical group of wine producers" who are upset about the recent influx of cheap foreign stuff.

CRAV have committed a number of crimes, many of which were much less silly—they have bombed buildings, hijacked trucks, and taken credit for the deaths of two vineyard mavens, who died in a helicopter crash.

This time, the only victims were Biron—which lost over 13,000 gallons of wine—and whoever's car now smells like Pinot forever.

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.

Mounted polar bear found by game wardens at Jones Airport in Oklahoma https://t.co/79CkQHvnJ9 via @kjrh2hd

— tom allison (@tallison46) August 5, 2016

Game wardens seized an entire stuffed polar bear from an Oklahoma airport recently, according to NewsOnSix.com. 

The stuffed bear, which was “harvested” in 1969, was originally the property of the man who killed it. But after he died, the animal's ownership transferred to an unnamed new owner, who wittingly or not, did not have the proper permits.

Still, it remained on display in a hangar at Jones Airport in Jenks, Oklahoma, until recently, when game wardens were tipped off to the situation after the original owner's family came looking for it. 

The officers then hefted the bear, display case and all, in to the back of a pick-up truck, taking it into custody. It’s unclear if any charges will be filed, but it’s safe to say that this was probably the easiest bear capture the game wardens have ever seen.

Runners carry the Olympic Flame from Greece to Germany during 1936's "Nazi Olympics." (Photo: German Federal Archives/CC BY-SA 3.0)

This evening, Rio will kick off the 2016 Summer Games with the kind of hoopla reserved especially for televised international athletic events. Although the opening ceremony's masterminds are keeping the details a secret, we can count on seeing some genre standards: a lot of song and dance; a long parade of athletes; maybe a weird costume or 100; and the lighting of the Olympic flame, by the latest in a long line of Olympic torches.

But whatever happens to the torch in Rio, it can't possibly top what it's been through for the last few decades.

The torch must operate according to special rules. Months before the Games begin, it is lit in the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece, by a group of actresses dressed as Vestal Virgins. After a ceremony featuring much dancing and flute-playing, the lead faux-Virgin dips the torch into a special parabolic mirror, which concentrates the sun's rays into a fiery burst—the Olympic Flame. According to the Olympic Charter, this is the only official flame, and it must be kept going until the games are formally closed. (For emergencies, there are generally a few backup flames, conjured at the dress rehearsal.) 

The torch makes it doggedly through Rio. (Photo: HVL/CC BY 3.0)

This year's torch has been through a lot. The 2016 Olympics have been dogged by protests, as many residents object to local corruption, rampant inequality, and the Games' high cost. Plenty of those upset have focused on the flame, attacking it with fire extinguishers and buckets of water. One group, in the beach town of Angra do Reis, even managed to put it out. 

But this is not the first weird trip the torch has had. Fragile, blatantly symbolic, and asked to travel the world, this fiery beacon has always been a magnet for grievance-airing and strange braggadocio. Here are five of the strangest things we've done to it.

1. The All-Aryan Torch Relay (1936)

Children admire the Olympic Flame in Berlin in 1936. (Photo: Josef Jindřich Šechtl/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sure, the idea of a torch relay seems pretty Greek. But although the flame itself is a tradition that dates back to ancient times, the torch didn't show up until the 1936 Berlin Games, now better known as the Nazi Olympics. The whole shebang, from the lighting ceremony to the international relay to the final lighting of the cauldron, was carefully designed by Nazi leadership, meant to drum up publicity for the Games, but also to draw a connection between Ancient Greece and the Third Reich.

"Taking inspiration from ancient ways, the Organising (sic) Committee of the Berlin Games had initially planned to convey the flame by means of a bundle of slow-burning fennel stalks," writes Olympic.org. Instead, the first torches were made by Krupp, the steel company that would later outfit the German army with cannons and artillery, with a workforce that included Jewish slaves. As this new tradition played out, even international commentators bought into the implied message. "He's a fair young man in white shorts," said the BBC, as one Aryan athlete ran the torch into the stadium. "He's beautifully made."

2. The Underwear Torch (1956)

The real 1956 torch... or is it? (Photo: McKim/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Since 1936, a number of anti-torch protesters have specifically cited its Nazi origins when going after it with fire extinguishers and buckets of water. But plain old dousing is child's play compared to history's best torch prank, which occurred in Australia in 1956.

En route to the Olympic Stadium in Melbourne, the torch was run through Sydney by a cross-country champ, who was meant to pass it off to the city's mayor, Pat Hills. Just before the appointed hour, an unusually sweaty man in unusually fancy clothes came trotting up the Town Hall steps with the torch, and passed it off to Hills. As the crowd applauded and the man retreated, Hills noticed that his hand was surprisingly sticky. The torch, it turned out, was not the torch—it was a plum pudding can nailed to a chair leg, recently spray-painted silver, and fueled by a kerosene-soaked pair of underwear.

The man was not a cross-country champ, but Barry Larkin, a veterinary student at Sydney University. (A different student, dressed more appropriately, had been meant to deliver the torch, but he got too nervous and passed it off to Larkin, yelling "Run, you bastard!") Larkin and his friends escaped the scene just before the real torch arrived and pandemonium broke out. "Most of the students were a bit upset about the way the torch was being regarded as a bit of a god," he told the Sydney Herald in 2000. Now he gets to be a god instead.

3. The High-Tech Torch (1976)

Montreal's 1976 Olympic stadium definitely looks like it could pick up a satellite signal. (Photo: Acarpentier/CC BY 3.0)

Like many artists, Olympic Flame Relay directors are always trying to outdo themselves. In the first 40 years of its existence, the torch had traveled by running human, swimming human, airplane, boat, and horse, to name just a few conveyances. So when faced with the task of bringing the flame to Montreal in 1976, they had to think hard—what new transportation was available? What ground was there to break?

It was the '70s, and the answer was soon clear—it was time to beam the flame to space and back, via a specifically designed contraption and a telecommunications satellite. "The flame will be placed in a special electronic altar which will convey it through echo waves and via satellite to light up a torch in Ottawa seconds later," explained Connecticut's Bridgeport Post at the time. The details on this are slightly fuzzy, but it seems the "altar" in Greece contained a sensor, which transformed the light of the flame into radio waves. That signal was then beamed, via satellite, to Montreal, where it triggered a laser that lit the new flame.

Organizers billed it as "the first Olympic record broken" during that year's competition, as what usually took at least the length of a plane ride had been condensed into a few seconds. Although not everyone was into it—Greeks, especially, felt something was being lost—the whole thing went off without a hitch. Twelve Canadian athletes then ran the flame to Montreal on their boring, earth-bound legs, and lit the cauldron. A few days later, perhaps in protest, a rainstorm put it out. Thinking quickly, a nearby official rekindled it with another impressive piece of technology—a cigarette lighter.

Unimpressed by these lightning-fast instincts, the organizers insisted on putting out the relit flame, and replacing it with fire from the reserve. When it comes to modern technology, lasers beat Bics every time.

4. The Underwater Torch (2000)

What this reef needs is more flames. (Photo: Toby Hudson/CC BY-SA 3.0)

In 2000, perhaps fearing it was growing complacent, the organizers decided to bring the torch face to face with its ultimate enemy—water. On its way to the Sydney Olympics, they diverted it down to the Great Barrier Reef. "The torch spent three minutes submerged at a popular diving spot," the BBC reported. Scientists designed a special flare, which burned at such a high pressure that it blocked water from entering the torch. It was carried by a diver dressed in a silver wetsuit.

Not to be outdone, organizers of the Sochi Olympics sent the torch underwater again in 2014. This time, it went to the world's deepest freshwater lake, Russia's Lake Baikal, and the final torchbearer burst out of the water via jetpack. Onward and upward.

5. Torches In Space (2014)

Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin carries the torch into the ISS in 2013. (Photo: NASA/Public Domain)

Ok, the flame "went" to space way back in 1976. But as of 2013, despite two jaunts on space shuttles in 1996 and 2000, the torch had yet to truly experience that cold, dark void. This would not do. On November 7th of that year, a rocket docked at the International Space Station bearing a suitably international delegation—an American astronaut, a Japanese astronaut, a Russian cosmonaut, and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Torch.

Unwilling to be left out of even the most ridiculous of Earthly traditions, the new and old ISS astronauts proceeded to pass the torch around the station (which, in NASA's words, is about as big as "a house with five bedrooms"). Then two of them, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazan, took a historic leap—they brought the torch outside, and passed it to each other once again. Then they sent it back home, where it was immediately handed to an International Olympic Committee member.

Regulation, drama, slow-mo movements at ridiculous heights: only one aspect was missing. "The torch was not lit in orbit, as combustion is impossible in outer space," Olympic.org reminds us. (Also, "safety regulations strictly prohibit flames on board the space station.") Put your lighter away, trigger-happy Canadian official.

Compared to all these adventures, this year's torch journey doesn't seem so out of place. The torch has made it through terrible eras and great pranks, goofy technology, water, and the vacuum of space. It will almost certainly make it to Rio tonight—regardless of how many people don't want it to. That's the indomitable human spirit for you.

Coastguards alerted to beached 'pod of whales' off Sussex coast - https://t.co/RzB0reZhnJpic.twitter.com/vDBjaPrIzy

— Brighton Argus (@brightonargus) August 4, 2016

Off the Sussex coast in the United Kingdom, authorities are building a massive wind farm. Part of this work involves plopping giant bags of rocks in the ocean. The bags, for now, are holding cables to the sea bed as builders erect the turbines further off shore. 

The bags of rocks, from a distance, do seem a bit curious: all have the same shape, as well as a strange center bump that one might mistake for a dorsal fin. 

And, indeed, that's just what happened recently, according to the Argus: a person walking by and looking out into the ocean called the local coast guard to say they thought there might be a pod of beached whales out there. 

Officers responded, finding just the bags of rocks, which indeed were beached, but for a different reason. 

"Officers attended and nothing was seen," officials said, curtly, according to the Argus. "Incident closed."

Better safe, we suppose, than sorry. 

Marine Park today. (Photo: Timothy Krause/CC SA: BY 2.0)

The design to redevelop Marine Park, in Brooklyn, had been beautifully sketched in oil onto a large rectangular canvas. The map showed a thin canal, almost perpendicular to the South Brooklyn shoreline, which ran into a circular pool. It lay ready for inspection in a spacious exhibition hall, just outside the monumental Olympic Stadium in Berlin.

The drawings, signed in a calligraphic style on the bottom righthand corner by their creator Charles Downing Lay, were the American entry into the 1936 Summer Olympics—also known as the Nazi Olympics—for a category that seems improbable today: Town Planning.

Yes, from 1928 until 1948, town planning was an actual Olympic sport. 

Town planning fell under an "architectural design" category at the Olympic art competition. The field that year was dominated by German entries. Yet the first U.S. medal of the Olympics went to Lay, a New York architect, for his ambitious blueprint to modernize Marine Park in Brooklyn.

Charles Downing Lay, silver medal winner. (Photo: Heidi Forseth/Public Domain)

Lay received a silver medal, finishing between two German designers, who competed under the Nazi crest. His design for Marine Park intended to make it larger than Central and Prospect Park combined, and the "greatest municipal recreation and sports center in the world," said the Brooklyn Eagle. At a projected cost of somewhere between $30 million to $50 million dollars, the elaborate plans included a golf course, swimming pools, a 125,000-seat stadium, tennis courts and mooring space for yachts.

The victorious Lay said he was very glad to win a silver medal at the Olympics. Clearly the success didn’t go to his head. “But you understand. I did not win the Olympic medal in a contest,” Lay told the Associated Press. “It was much more of an exhibition.”

Eighty years later, the 1936 event is better known for others things, like the athletic brilliance of Jesse Owens and the ignominious presence of Hitler and high-ranking Nazis in the stands. 

Along with town planning, the lineup of events also included painting, sculpture, literature and music. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Games, believed art and architecture were a vital component for his vision of the Olympics. The first four decades of the modern Olympic Games saw runners and swimmers competing alongside authors and urban planners. 

Aside from Lay, the U.S. team was not well represented for art at the Berlin Games. German artists won the majority of other medals in the art competition. The German March brothers won the gold medal for the Reich Stadium, where the Games were held. An Austrian, Theodore Naussbaum, came in third for his town plan of Cologne. 

Aerial shot over Marine Park, Brooklyn. (Photo: Denver Gingerich/CC SA: BY 2.0)

Lay had actually finished his designs for Marine Park four years earlier, in 1932, and they were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum a year after that. Lay disliked architectural competitions. They were “too hard to do.” But the requirements for entry into the Olympic "architectural design" competition were easy, and so he went ahead and submitted his plans for consideration. 

Marine Park was a rugged, open parkland that backed onto the Rockaway inlet in South Brooklyn. Lay would transform the 1,500-acre spot into a recreational space geared towards sports and healthy living, with a design that "fused the formal splendor of the Renaissance with a progressive social agenda," writes Thomas Campanella.

Lay's proposal would reshape the shoreline and in doing so remove Plum Beach, Gerrison Inlet and Deadhorse Bay.

Inside the Olympic stadium. (Photo: A. Frankl/CC SA: BY 3.0)

But despite the fact that his visionary drawings earned him an Olympic medal, by 1936, New York City officials had all but shelved Lay's plans. 

Work on the park took years to progress and had many setbacks. Robert Moses, as head of the Parks Department and then as the city's mayor, did not support Lay's grand plans. He thought they were too expensive, and so he hired two architects who favored a more modest redesign. Moses was well-known for his preference of roads over parks.

The stadium was quickly scrapped, as were most aspects of Lay's revolutionary blueprint. Eventually a golf course was built, and today there are facilities for kayaking, something akin to the original idea. 

Lay was already a prominent figure when he designed the park and founded Landscape Architect, an academic journal. He studied architecture at Columbia University and Harvard and spent most of his professional career in New York City, where he ran a landscape architecture practice.

Lay lived in Germany in 1934 after the Oberlaender Trust, a fund run by a German-American from Pennsylvania, paid for him to study landscape architectural practices there. He had moved back to the U.S. at the time of the Games, but was likely influenced by his time abroad.  

Lay's design for Marine Park was in keeping with German park design during the Weimar and Nazi periods, according to the Hidden Waters blog. This may have been a reason why the German judges awarded Lay, in a competition dominated by Germans, the silver medal. 

As the summer sun sets in central Texas, you may see a dark, ominous cloud undulating in the sky. But this is no cloud of smoke. It’s a colony of Brazilian Free-Tailed Bats emerging from their limestone lair—the sound of their beating wings like millions of pieces of paper rustling in the wind.

These medium-sized, broad-eared, reddish-black bats fly 50 miles every night for their evening meal of moths, beetles, flying ants, and other summer insects. The magnificent exodus captured in the video above lasts mere minutes, the bats flying in close proximity and at rapid speeds averaging four meters (13 feet) per second. But, what you can’t see with the naked eye is a chaotic dance of bats colliding, recovering, and moving together in one gigantic swarm.

“We have found, shocking to us, that bats crash into each other quite often,” scientist Nickolay Hristov says in the video filmed and produced by bioGraphic.

Brazilian Free-Tailed Bats, species Tadarida brasiliensis, roost closely together in groups of dozens to millions. They arrive in central Texas in the spring from Mexico and Central America, taking up homes in caves, mine tunnels, wells, and even houses. While these bats’ long, slender wings are efficient for long distance flights, the morphology is not optimal for maneuvering around other individuals and obstacles in flight paths, explains Hristov.

Scientists Hristov and Louise Allen wanted to understand what was happening in a column of flying bats. In order to study the flight patterns, they use advanced high-speed and thermal cameras originally developed for military purposes to observe the thousands of individual bats as they pour out of the cave. After collecting the footage, Hristov and Allen create visual computer models to track and analyze the flying behavior.

At the 5:20-mark yo can see the bats bumping and smashing into each other in slow-motion. Even though the bats crash, the scientists have found that few, if any, become injured.

“It’s a messy situation, but generally it’s very safe and it works well,” Hristov says. 

(Photo: Gage Skidmore/CC BY-SA 3.0)

As the 1972 presidential campaign wore on, George McGovern, the Democratic candidate for president, began hearing some troubling rumors about his chosen running mate, the Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton, according to the rumors, had been hospitalized for depression and given electroshock treatments, treatments which up until then had been kept secret from the public. 

By late July, it was becoming clear: McGovern had to do something to quash the rumors. And so, on August 1, 1972, McGovern did, asking Eagleton to step down as the nominee three months before the election. 

A presidential or vice-presidential candidate had never quit a race in modern history before the Eagleton affair, but this year might offer an even grander political spectacle, thanks to Donald Trump. In recent days, Republicans have been expressing increasing nervousness about Donald Trump's candidacy, with many urging him to quit. Trump might also quit on his own volition, having done the math and decided that bowing out now is better than losing by a landslide in November.

Would Trump actually quit though? Who knows! But we've never seen a candidate like him, and for someone who seemingly entered the race on a whim it wouldn't be outrageous to see him exit in a similar fashion. 

And from the standpoint of Republican Party rules, Trump quitting, while unprecedented, would, in fact be a reasonably easy problem to solve. That's mostly because the party's rules lay out pretty clearly what would happen next. 

"The Republican National Committee is hereby authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for President of the United States," according to the GOP's own Rules of the Party.

The rules go on to define a simple process of replacement: another vote by members of the RNC that could happen at a second national convention or remotely. Whichever candidate gets a majority of the votes, wins the nomination. (The candidates, in this scenario, could come from anywhere—not just those candidates that ran in the primaries and caucuses, which is why some Republicans see House Speaker Paul Ryan getting the nod.)

Thomas Eagleton. (Photo: Public domain)

A far trickier problem, however, are the actual ballots. And it's that process, separate from the nominating process, that could be a bit messier, and is also where timing becomes important. In the U.S., each individual state controls the election process, from making and printing ballots, to counting votes on Election Day, to certifying election results.

Election law in the U.S. is a 50-state patchwork. From voting machines to filing deadlines, each state has different rules. And it's the deadlines in particular that might concern party officials should Trump quit. That's because the closer it gets to the November election, the harder and harder it will get to keep Trump's name from appearing on state ballots, as state deadlines for certifying nominees' names come and go. 

It's already impossible, in fact, to keep Trump off all 50: according to the Daily Beast, Delaware's deadline to certify names for the ballot has already passed, meaning that even if Trump quits today you'll still be able to vote for him in Delaware in three months. 

Even so, most of these deadlines aren't until September or October, meaning that, for the next few weeks at least, Republicans could likely still get another name on the ballot in most states by November. 

State control of elections provides for other sources of potential mayhem, however, because of the Electoral College. Electors in most states are party officials, loyalists who have pledged to vote for their party's nominee should they win a majority of that state's votes. But should state party officials rebel, the national party would have little recourse in stopping it. State parties could, in theory, nominate a different candidate for president, or make their electors unpledged, meaning that they are obligated to vote for no one. 

George Wallace, left, attempting to block the integration of the University of Alabama in 1963. (Photo: Public domain)

This has happened only a handful of times in modern political history, most recently in 1964, when George Wallace, a Democrat from Alabama, ran against the incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson. That year, Democratic party officials in Alabama opted to make their electors unpledged, and Johnson's name simply didn't appear on ballots across the state. Instead, voters chose between Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee, and the unpledged electors, in effect handing the state to Goldwater, though Johnson won the election handily. 

The system is designed to handle sudden jolts, in other words, even if the jolt is often a sign of a broader dysfunction within the country or a particular campaign. The results rarely turn out well.

When Eagleton stepped down in 1972 he was replaced by Sargent Shriver, an in-law of the Kennedys and the father of Maria Shriver. McGovern and Shriver went on to lose in November to the incumbent President Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, in what was then the biggest landslide in modern political history. 

Rival, ND. (Photo: Ghosts of North Dakota/Troy Larson)

Far into the sparsely peopled lands of North Dakota, less than ten miles from the Canadian border, there is a place called Rival. Founded in the first years of the 20th century, Rival is the only town in all of the United States with that name—if you can call Rival a town at all. It was started with the intention of going up against nearby Lignite, but it never fulfilled its destiny. Today, the only thing that stands there is an abandoned grain elevator.

Troy Larson, who co-founded the site Ghosts of North Dakota, first heard about Rival when a local correspondent sent in a picture of its grain elevator, tall and lonely. It would soon be torn down, she thought, and it seemed worth it to have at least one picture of the only building left standing. A few months later, Larson visited himself. He’s been to a lot of ghost towns, but this was the only one he’d ever been to where the sole structure remaining was a tower used to store and convey grain. 

“It’s just a grain elevator in the middle of nowhere,” he says. Once, train tracks ran by here, though, and standing there in the tall grass, he could see the straight line where the railroad used to be. There was rubble and bricks still lying about, and inside the elevator what looked a coffee pot and a device that you might use to pan for gold. “There’s no gold around here, so I don’t know what it was,” Larson says.

Rival, ND. (Photo: Ghosts of North Dakota/Troy Larson)

When the Rival post office opened in 1907, this spot was on the Soo Line railroad—a nickname for  the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad. (Sault is pronounced “soo” in this part of the country.) Nearby, the Great Northern Railroad, which went all the way from St. Paul to Seattle, ran through Lignite. “Railroad competition was fierce,” says Larson. “People were always putting up grain elevators and post offices every eight miles along the track, trying to make their fortune. That’s the idea behind Rival, but Lignite won that fight. It wasn’t even a battle.”

It’s not entirely clear who founded or named Rival, but Larson believes it was probably Chester Teisinger, who was listed as the postmaster. Often these towns were founded by local farmers or businessmen, who would set up a post office in their house and try to get in on the railroad rush. In this case, it just didn’t work.  

Lignite isn't exactly a bustling metropolis—as of the 2010 census, 155 people lived there. But it's still kicking. Rival was left a ghost town, with one metal-roofed grain elevator, which is still standing—for now. 

"I hope that if I lost my leg that someone would return it to me, too," Jason Franklin said. https://t.co/3I5D2ek4nD

— Journal Sentinel (@journalsentinel) August 8, 2016

Two men were canoeing in a creek in northern Wisconsin when they were startled to see a foot sticking out of a beaver dam.

"I was sure we had found a dead body that someone dumped into the creek,” one of them told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

As they approached the pile of sticks, though, it became clear that they had found a prosthetic leg.

The leg, it turned out, belonged to a Green Bay man who had lost it while fishing about three weeks before. His canoe had flipped, and in the rush to salvage his stuff, the leg had gotten away. It was an older model of prosthetic, the man told the Journal Sentinel, which he used on outdoors trips for exactly this reason.

His friends convinced him to post an ad on Craigslist, though, in case the leg reappeared. The two boaters found the ad and reunited the leg with its owner. It had traveled three miles through the water from the place where it was lost, to the dam that caught it.

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. 

Belmont tunnel, LA.(Photo: Erin Johnson)

For Rivals Week at Atlas Obscura, we’ve compiled a list of upcoming competition-themed events taking place around the country. From insect farms and murder mysteries to city development and graffiti meccas, we've got all sorts of adventures in store. They’re listed here in chronological order, so stretch your limbs, rev your engines, and get exploring!

1. Obscura Society LA: Inside the Insectary

Los Angeles, California
August 26

(Photo: Straynger Ranger)

Humans have faced off in a long-lasting battle with bugs. Are they helpers, pests, or food? On this tour, we'll talk to bug growers at the Associates Insectary, a pioneer in sustainable pest management, which was founded in 1928 to provide beneficial bugs to farms and vineyards hoping to combat nuisance bugs. And that's not all! Afterwards, we'll also check out the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, the world's largest collection of bird eggs and nests dedicated to research, education, and conservation.

2. Obscura Society IL: Preservationists vs. Developers

Chicago, Illinois
August 27

(Photo: Chicago Tribune Historical Photos)

Celebrate Rivals Week with a non-partisan walking tour along Chicago's iconic lakefront, the battlefield of the century-long war between the city's developers and conservationists. We'll cover nearly two miles while learning about court battles, crusades, and even a few compromises. 

3. Obscura Society LA & Cartwheel Art Tours: Graffiti Rivalries at Belmont Tunnel

Los Angeles, California
AUGUST 27

Graffiti in Echo Park. (Photo: Alonzo/CC BY 2.0)

There's a graffiti mecca hiding in plain side in an abandoned subway tunnel in Echo Park—come with us and take a look! On this tour, we'll have access to the now private park and duck inside the Belmont Tunnel & Toluca Substation. Along with Cartwheel Art Tours founder, Cindy Schwarzstein, and author of Graffiti LA, Steve Grody, we'll wander back to the 1980s and explore rivalries within this competitive art form.

4. Obscura Society NY: Atlas Obscura Live! RIVALS!

Brooklyn, New York
AUGUST 31

(Photo: Atlas Obscura)

On the final night of August, Atlas Obscura is hosting its first ever variety show in front of a live audience. The event, held at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, will feature our own writers and editors bringing our editorial content to life around our month's theme: Rivals! We'll gather together musicians, scholars, comedians and our audience members to share amazing stories of bitter duels and contests. Did we mention there will be prizes?

5. Obscura Society NY: "Printed Rivals," a 19th-Century Murder Mystery

New York, New York
SEPTEMBER 17

(Photo: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library/Public Domain)

The media world of the 1890s was dominated by rivals Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, visionaries who redefined journalism and created the 24-hour news cycle long before the dawn of television. On this immersive, participatory tour, we'll split up into teams to solve the 1897 murder mystery that incited a competitive explosion of tabloid journalism. After charting clues and retracing historical footsteps, we'll end at a secret location to share drinks and celebrate our detective work.

House on the notoriously disputed Bangladesh–India border. (Photo: Moheen Reeyad/CC BY-SA 4.0)

For something invisible and very often arbitrary, geographic borders have an enormous impact. In the history of the global geopolitical land-grab, innumerable wars have resulted over bits of Earth being claimed by more than one—and sometimes several—different nations.

Other times, these territory disputes result in a more unexpected situation. Bizarrely drawn boundaries have led to geographic anomalies like the tiny library that operates in two countries at once, the rare four-sided border situated at the summit of a mountain, and the jagged international boundary drawn in a puzzling zig-zag.

But sometimes a boundary, however strange, is never decided upon. Today there are about 100 disputed territories around the world, including a handful of surprisingly odd cartographic feuds. In honor of Rivals Week this week, here are 10 of the most bizarre territory disputes in the Atlas.

Marble Hill

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

The Harlem River Canal and Marble Hill. (Photo: Luke J Spencer/Atlas Obscura)

Disputed territories are very often islands, and the island of Manhattan is no exception. There is a small part of Manhattan that's physically part of the New York's Bronx borough to the north: the quaint neighborhood of Marble Hill. The two boroughs have been playing tug of war over this former island neighborhood for over a century.

The quarrel started with the building of the Harlem Ship Canal, which cut right through Manhattan's northernmost neighborhood, turning Marble Hill into an island. That is until 1914, when the old creek was eventually filled in, making Marble Hill now physically part of the Bronx, but still legally part of Manhattan.

The Kuril Islands

KURIL ISLANDS

Volcano on the Kuril Islands. (Photo: Eliezg/CC BY-SA 3.0)

A world war hangs in the balance of this disputed string of volcanic islands in the Pacific—not the start of a war, but the end of one. The dispute, between Russia and Japan, has prevented the two nations from signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II. Lying equidistant between the two rival countries, this island chain is rich in natural resources, including potentially large oil and natural gas reserves under the seas.

Known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the South Kurils, four of these islands have lain at the center of a dispute over ownership that continues to this day. While dozens of potential solutions to the conflict have been floated over the years, talks between the superpowers have led to a stalemate—which means it seems unlikely that Moscow and Tokyo will officially end the Second World War any time soon.

Preach Vihear Temple

KULEAEN, THAILAND

Preah Vihear Temple. (Photo: Khao Phra Viharn/Public Domain)

Sitting majestically atop a perilous cliff among the Dângrêk Mountains, the ninth-century Preah Vihear Temple is a gem of Cambodian temple architecture. But for a long time, many fought for this jewel to be part of Thailand's crown.

The Dângrêk Mountains lie on the border between Cambodia and Thailand. The site's ownership became an issue between the two countries when the temple was rediscovered in the early 20th century. Both sides wanted to own the ancient site and its rich trove of artifacts, and the dispute even went to the Hague. The international court decided that the temple belonged to Cambodia, a ruling that stands today.

Märket Lighthouse

SWEDEN

Märket Lighthouse. (Photo: Havang/CC BY 2.0)

The longstanding dispute over this quaint Nordic island began because an architect built a lighthouse on the wrong side of the island. In the late 19th century, when the Soviets occupied Finland, Märket Island was a tiny uninhabited island divided between Finland and Sweden. It was also a treacherous piece of land, contributing to the sinking of several ships. Fed up, Russian tsar Alexander III ordered a Finnish architect to build a lighthouse on the island, which he did on the island’s highest point—which happened to be on the Swedish side of the border.

Even though the lighthouse was officially on Swedish soil, the Finns fought for it. Tensions flared between the two countries, and eventually, in 1985, they came to a mutually palatable decision: re-draw the island's boundaries into a haphazard Z-shape to place the lighthouse on Finnish land.

Liberland

CROATIA

(Photo: Liberland Official Facebook Page)

This self-proclaimed sovereign micro-nation is the odd result of the ongoing border dispute between Croatia and Serbia, two countries separated by the Danube River. The nature of the border dispute leaves about four square miles of current Croatian territory that Croatia believes actually belongs to Serbia. But Serbia doesn't claim it.

The tiny patch of land was "terra nullius," or "no man's land,” until April 2015, when Czech political activist Vít Jedlička snatched it up and proclaimed it the “Free Republic of Liberland,” an aggressively libertarian micro-state.

Dahala Khagrabari

PANCHAGARH, BANGLADESH

Dashed line is an international border; Bangladeshi farmer in foreground. (Photo: Brendan Whyte/Used with Permission)

Dahala Khagrabari is a geopolitical anomaly. It's a piece of India that until very recently was completely surrounded by a piece of Bangladesh, which itself was completely surrounded by India, which was again completely surrounded by Bangladesh.

The spot is known as a third-order enclave. An enclave is a piece of one country's territory which is entirely surrounded by another country's territory, and the India-Bangladesh border was filled with them before a 2015 treaty eliminated most. A second-order enclave is an enclave inside an enclave, and the world has a handful of them. But Dahala Khagrabari is the only third-order enclave in the history of the world.

Three Country Cairn

FINLAND

The tripoint monument from Norway, Sweden and Finland (Treriksröset) in the lake "Goldajärvi" in Lapland, Finland. (Photo: Veraldar/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Known alternately as Treriksröset in Swedish, Treriksrøysa in Norwegian, and Kolmen valtakunnan rajapyykki in Finnish, the name of this monument translates roughly to "Three-Country Cairn." It was constructed in 1897 to settle a border dispute between the three countries. After much negotiation, the trio finally agreed on their borders and decided that the point where they all met was in the middle of a lake. Not that that stopped the construction of the stone.

Point Roberts

POINT ROBERTS, WASHINGTON

Stop. Return to Canada. (Photo: doviende/CC BY-SA 2.0)

A number of problems arose during the drafting of the 49th Parallel, the boundary between the U.S. and Canada—including the fact that Vancouver Island was split in two by the imaginary line. After some dispute, a deal was eventually made that determined the entire island would go to Canada. However, both parties failed to notice the existence of the Tsawwassen peninsula, located to the south of Vancouver proper. Once it was discovered, it was too late: the agreement had accidentally cut off a tiny piece of Canada and given it to the United States.

Today the residents of Point Roberts, an American exclave at the south end of the peninsula, must cross an international border every time they leave town.

The Spratly Islands

SPRATLY ISLANDS, SOUTH CHINA SEA

Subi Reef, Spratly Islands, South China Sea. (Photo: United States Navy/Public Domain)

Scattered over 400,000 square kilometers (154,441 square miles) of ocean, these islands might seem insignificant. By a twist of geography and international politics, however, they have managed to be at the center of a dispute between no less than six countries.

China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei have all deemed these scattered islands important enough to lay claim to them, establish a military presence on them, and even attempt colonization of them. Buy why? Unsurprisingly, oil is at heart of the conflict. 

Machias Seal Island

UNITED STATES/CANADA

Seal in front, Machias Seal Island and lighthouse in back. (Photo: Melissa McMasters/CC BY 2.0)

Most Americans and Canadians are unaware that the U.S. and Canada hold five border disputes to this day. While four of these fights are over a water area (one of them due to differing interpretations of the French word "jusqu'à" in an 1825 treaty), Machias Seal Island in the Gulf of Maine is the only piece of land claimed by both of the neighboring nations. Neither country is in the mood to give it up.

The little island was never paid any attention by colonial powers until after the American Revolution, when the Treaty of Paris placed it under U.S. ownership, to the chagrin of Canada who felt it was still rightfully theirs. From the late 1700s on, Machias Seal Island was claimed by both countries. Today there is only one structure on the island, a lighthouse built in large part to secure Canada’s dibs on the island. The U.S. still has refused to recognize the lighthouse's existence.

Inter diehard Penny Razzolini (left) and Grêmio diehard Adriano Maffei meet beneath the highway overpass that's become yet another point of contention between the team's two fans. (Photo: Andrew Jenner)

Sport Club Internacional was having a great year in 2010. One of two top-flight soccer teams in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, the club, known locally as Inter, had won that year’s Copa Libertadores, an annual tournament featuring the best club teams from South America and Mexico. Next up, Abu Dhabi and the Club World Cup.

It was to be a brief trip. In their first game, Inter was upset 2-0 by a team from the Congo called TC Mazembe, whose goalie marked the occasion with another entry in the sport’s distinguished history of celebration.

Back home in Porto Alegre, a software consultant named Penny Razzolini watched it unfold with shock and bitter disappointment. Meanwhile, a dark glee warmed the heart of Adriano Maffei, who was listening on the radio. Razzolini is a die-hard Inter fan (a Colorado, in local slang); Maffei is a Gremista—a zealous supporter of Grêmio, Inter’s crosstown rival.

This competition has extended even into architecture of the city. 

The rooftops of Porto Alegre, Brazil. (Photo: Mitch Altman/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Red Colorados and blue Gremistas are the cultural yin and yang of southern Brazil’s largest city, where club soccer comes first and the country’s storied national team is an afterthought. The 107-year-old rivalry between Inter and Grêmio is said to be the fiercest in all of Brazil. It is no joking matter, this rivalry, surely fiercer, by several orders of magnitude, than any in American sport—a third rail of polite conversation in the city, the basis for arguments, fistfights and the mass brawls that periodically erupt at regularly contested “Grenal” matches between the two. (On July 3, Grêmio won the most recent edition, 1-0).

“Red clothes? Never,” says Maffei. “Not socks. Not underwear. Not a hat. Nothing red.”

Pont #Mazembeà #PortoAlegre / Bridge #Mazembe at #PortoAlegre..... Lol! #Blague#Joke@Poa_FCpic.twitter.com/2oHVJGS1TL

— TP Mazembe (@TPMazembe) May 30, 2014

He lives with an Inter fan. They get along fine as long as they never speak of soccer, in which case, Maffei says, they might kill each other.

In Razzolini’s view, the one and only thing better than an Inter victory: a Grêmio loss. “A Colorado’s joy,” he says, with a malicious smile, “is a Gremista in disgrace.” 

Maffei and Razzolini were Facebook friends, once, until some soccer-related trolling brought things to an abrupt and angry end.

Back in 2010, when Inter made its quick exit from the Club World Cup, Brazil was beginning preparations to host the 2014 World Cup (the actual big-deal tournament contested by countries, not clubs). In Porto Alegre, infrastructure upgrades included a new highway overpass to ease congestion near Inter’s stadium, which hosted five games during the tournament. Curiously, the superstructure of the bridge was built in the shape of a giant M, looming 100 feet high, in full view of the stadium. 

Maffei (left) and Razzolini have different views on the significance of the giant M on a recently built highway overpass in Porto Alegre. (Photo: Andrew Jenner)

To the city’s Gremistas, it might as well have been Christmas. The M-shaped bridge was, obviously, an enormous, concrete memorial to Mazembe, cheekily erected on Inter’s doorstep. While the overpass is officially named for Abdias do Nascimento, a Brazilian civil rights leader, the true-blue Gremistas of the world immediately began calling it the Mazembe Overpass. It is the stuff of the meme-makers’ dreams; TC Mazembe itself endorsed the name via its official Twitter account.

“It’s right in front of their stadium, a giant ‘m’ that doesn’t make any sense,” says Maffei. “It was designed by a Gremista—in our minds, at least.”

Razzolini says it’s simpler than that. The father-and-son pair of engineers responsible for the project—Martin and Marcos Beier—must have simply been commemorating their own first initials with a giant “m” on the city skyline.

Porto Alegre's soccer stadium. (Photo: Cleber Rech/CC BY 2.0)

Reached by phone, Marcos Beier confirmed, in a way, both of these theories. He is indeed a Gremista, but the M is indeed simply a reference to their names. He didn’t make the Mazembe connection, he said, until his other Gremista friends pointed it out (he admits to being amused by the whole affair). Unintentional though it may have been, Beier continued, it isn’t surprising: everything in Porto Alegre gets dragged into the Inter-Grêmio rivalry somehow.

Intent and backstory aside, the giant M is now a fact on the ground in Porto Alegre. Life goes on, soccer rivalry goes on, and what goes around comes around. 

There will always be jokes,” said Razzolini. “And there will always be a comeback.”

Dressed in a long white tunic decorated with beads and glass, and gold headgear covered in a patchwork of brightly colored stones, the Ottamthullal dancer is almost ready to take the stage. 

Just time to practice some of the quivering facial expressions that form a vital part of the act. As this video shows, the Ottamthullal performer is able to contort his face muscles with incredible elasticity, variety and speed.

Ottamthullal is a traditional 18th-century dance from Kerala, a state in southern India. Ottamthullal is one of three types of Thulla dance. In each, the performer expresses the story through gestures. Someone off stage recites verses from the script and a small orchestra provides the musical accompaniment. The main genres of Thulla are political satire, social commentary and humor. 

A famous Keralan poet, Kunchan Nambiar, created this art form. Nambiar wanted to introduce more satire into the public arena and the performances are normally at festivals. The characters parody local landlords and other prominent citizens. 

Rumor has it that the genesis of Thulla was an act of revenge. According to folklore, Nambiar was ridiculed and dismissed for once falling asleep on stage. An embarrassed Nambiar returned the following night and performed an entire Thulla show that no one had ever seen before. The show he had invented overnight had the audience in raptures. 

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.

All-American mules, more than worthy of our pride. (Photo: Irving Rusinow/National Archive and Records Administration)

On May 31st, 1976, about 200 well-muscled animals lined up in Frankfort, New York, ready for the race of a lifetime. Bred to perfection, there were Arabian stallions, arch-necked and strong-boned and favored to win by almost all observers and Icelandic ponies, famous for their smooth gait and Viking pedigree. There were the tall Irish thoroughbreds, and there were striking Appaloosas.

And then there was Lord Fauntleroy the mule.

Lord Fauntleroy—"Leroy" for short—was the choice steed of Virl Norton, a steeplejack from San Jose, California. Along with their many rivals, Norton, Leroy, and his backup mule, Lady Eloise, were set to travel 3,500 miles through 13 states for the "Great American Horse Race." They would challenge history, expectations, and a whole lot of fancy horses. 

The United States spent 1976 gripped by a sort of bicentennial fever. Stir-crazy after 200 years of freedom, citizens nationwide took the opportunity to throw themselves into patriotic passion projects. America has always been sweet on its own land, and many of these tributes took the form of long, winding journeys across it. Millions turned out to watch the Freedom Train, a traveling museum that chugged through 48 states, and nautical parades, in which tall ships sailed up the coast, flags flying. Railroads companies even gave regular trains new paint jobs, sending them criss-crossing the country in red, white and blue.

Into this atmosphere high-stepped the Great American Horse Race. Dreamed up by Chuck Waggoner and Randy Scheiding, two horse-loving salesmen from the Midwest, the race offered a more historically authentic nationalist experience, molded on that of early European settlers, who lacked trains and automobiles. "This race will give people a chance to see the country in a way it has not been seen in 100 years," Waggoner told the Los Angeles Times before it began.

The Bicentennial Freedom Train, in Georgia in 1976. (Image: Mrpoundsand/CC BY-SA 3.0)

The route was fittingly nostalgic, incorporating bits of the Oregon Trail, the Pony Express Trail, and, somewhat alarmingly, the Donner Party's doomed journey.The pace, though, was new—3,500 miles over 14 weeks, farther and longer than any organized race within memory. People bit hard. As soon as Scheding took out an ad in Western Horseman—"The adventure of a lifetime for the common American who regards his horse as something special," it read—registrations came pouring in, along with $500 entry fees.

By the start of the race, 91 teams were lined up and raring to go. Each rider was allowed two horses, and humans and mounts alike represented a diversity of demographics. The youngest was an 18-year-old country-western singer from Oregon; the oldest, a 69-year-old horse trader from Tennessee. There were chiropractors, pediatricians, grad students, nurses, famers, cowboys and at least one university president.

Some were just in it for kicks, but others took the race, and its $25,000 prize money, quite seriously. Of those, most leaned hard on their horses' pedigrees. One Californian rode a horse called "Nature's Ballet"—the only Russian Orlov stallion in America, descended from a horse that once belonged to Nikita Kruschev. Iceland shipped over ten high-born Viking ponies, which did high-altitude training in San Francisco before heading to New York to start the race. ("It [will] be sort of like driving a Cadillac at the Indianapolis Speedway," the ponies' handler told the New York Times.) France sent over dozens of horseman to ride out of competition, dressed like the Marqius de Lafayette's soldiers. Other countries, including Australia, Denmark, and Japan, also drummed up impressive contingents. Everyone was sure their breed would take home the win.

Pony Express rider Frank E. Webner, definitively not on a mule. (Photo: NARA/Public Domain)

Then there were Norton and his mules. Norton, then 54 years old, knew horses—he had spent his Wyoming youth breaking wild ones and selling them to ranchers—and despite the non-inclusivity of the contest language, he, too, regarded his mounts as something special. Sure, ponies were probably the right choice for high-speed mail delivery, and an Arabian could beat a mule over one mile, or ten, or a hundred.A race this long and grueling, though, full of rough terrain and elevation changes, was a different game. Even the race's organizers predicted only a 25 percent finish rate. In these conditions, Norton gave his mules—and himself—a clear upper hand. When his neighbor at the starting campsite lost her horse to an injury a few days before the race started, he even talked her into borrowing Deacon, his backup mule.

And so they were off. Day by day, the race was less a neck-in-neck sprint than a kind of friendly, prolonged shuffle. The hundred or so riders were accompanied by their second mounts, along with a support staff of about 750, mostly friends and relatives who had volunteered to caravan along in pickup trucks and trailers and carry supplies. The whole posse moved along the same prefabricated route, from camp to camp. There were mandatory vet checks every ten miles. "What's the slowest race ever? The Great American Horse Race," joked the Dover, Ohio Daily Reporterwhen the group hit their town in June.

Pace notwithstanding, it was as grueling as anyone had guessed. Like their pioneer predecessors, horses and riders got tired, injured, or just fed up. The group burned through around 18,000 horseshoes. Despite their enthusiasm, Waggoner and Scheiding hadn't been able to drum up a budget to match their dreams, and money was constantly running low. In Missouri, veterinarians and crew members quit en masse when they realized they were about to stop getting paid. At one point, the riders staged a mutiny of sorts, attempting to remove the organizers from responsibility. Some main mounts went lame, and were swapped out for the riders' seconds. Some of those went lame, too.

An Arabian stallion, Lord Fauntleroy's main competition and the crowd favorite. (Photo: Arabian Horse Registry of America Stud Book/Public Domain)

Eventually, Lady Eloise suffered an injury, and Norton took her out of the race. But he and Leroy stuck to their plan, taking it slow and steady. Most of the other riders grew to know Norton as an honorable man, who, despite his own goals, wouldn't think twice of stopping to help them. He'd let youngsters pose with Leroy in small towns, making up the time by skipping water stops. Leroy was described as "a seventeen-hand mule slash puppy dog." Together, they walked through prairies and deserts, mountains and small towns, across the whole top of the country and home to California.

Norton and Leroy were the 31st team to saunter across the finish line, before a crowd of cheering spectators at the State Fair in Sacramento. They settled in for hay and water, and waited for the other finishers. It would take a while before the organizers could total up everyone's ride time, tack on any penalties, and declare a winner.

But Leroy seemed to already know. As he crossed the stadium, the Associated Press reported, Leroy flopped his ears and gave "a victorious hee-haw." When the final count came through, it was Team Mule by a landslide, with 315.47 total hours in the saddle. (The second-place horse, an Arabian, clocked in at 324.6 hours with penalties—he had gone lame just before the final leg.) The top ten, when released, was practically a show stable, with two long-eared exceptions: Lord Fauntleroy, five Arabians, one Appaloosa, one Irish Connemara—and Deacon, Norton's other mule.

Mules getting ready to best the Grand Canyon. (Photo: Sebastian Toncu/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Everyone was shocked, particularly the other teams' sponsors. "[The associations] think it's hell," Norton told the Associated Press. "I'm not too popular with them, especially the Arabian associations." Some riders even accused Norton of cheating. (He told them he'd wire his winnings to a bank in New York, and that they could race back to it.) Newspapers, on the other hand, had a field day. "Mule Runs Away With Great American Horse Race," yelled the Toldeo Blade. "Lord Fauntleroy Is No. 1."

About the only one not surprised was Norton, who, grinning at the finish line, told United Press International that the other mounts were no match for his mules. "They're just too much competition for horses," he said.

Norton picked up his $25,000 prize money and headed back to his ranch in San Jose. For the rest of his life, he referred to himself as the Great American Horseman. And Lord Fauntleroy, the Great American Horse, lived out his days in a green pasture in California, a fitting end for an animal who pulled off a very American dream.

A fun new between-sets activity? (Image: WikiCommons/Public Domain)

Summer music festivals come with plenty of health woes—sunburn; dehydration; nausea; various overindulgences. You might dance too hard, or sprain your fingers making devil horns, or permanently trap yourself in a wristband.

This summer, though, there's a new bad guy in town: as the BBC reported this morning, many of the season's biggest gatherings are playing host to a nasty bout of measles.

"Music festivals including Glastonbury have become a hotbed of measles this summer," the outlet writes, citing a report from Public Health England. Reports of the disease have quadrupled since this time last year, with 234 cases reported in the first half of 2016.

Festivals are "the ideal place" for measles to spread, PHE explained, because everyone is hanging out together grooving and fist-bumping each other. "If you think you might have measles, please don't go to any of these big events," entreated Dr. Mary Ramsay, PHE's Head of Immunization. And if your new best friend is covered in tiny red spots, stop high-fiving him and tell him to go see a doctor.

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.

Oil rig runs aground off coast of Lewis as Scotland hit by high winds https://t.co/MYbzM2ZVpcpic.twitter.com/oARQUjvzU2

— STV News (@STVNews) August 8, 2016

A massive oil rig with over 300 tons of diesel on board has run aground on the coast of Scotland, according to the BBC.  

The rig was being moved with the aid of a tugboat, but got detached during a recent storm, washing ashore on Dalmore Beach on the Isle of Lewis, the largest island in Scotland. 

No one was on board, according to the BBC, but authorities have closed the beach anyway for safety reasons, as crews arrive to salvage the rig, which weighs nearly 19,000 tons. 

The rig came apart around 4:20 a.m. Monday, after a tow line severed in weather that produced winds of up to 70 mph, according to STV News.

The beach is a popular spot for surfers, owing to big waves and its seclusion, on the north side of the United Kingdom. 

It's unclear where the oil rig was going, though Scotland's oil rig graveyard might now be its current destination. 

Huge 'Snake Dynasty' tomb w/body, gifts & hieroglyphs found in 7/8thC AD #Mayan temple https://t.co/O1nSJxTK7upic.twitter.com/v6a3ENmkr7

— Susan Oosthuizen (@DrSueOosthuizen) August 7, 2016

A Mayan temple devoted to a long dead snake god sounds like it belongs in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, but, recently, archaeologists have found evidence that it is all too real. According to the Guardian, a recently unearthed tomb in the ancient city of Xunantunich has shed more light on the snake-headed dynasty.

The structures at Xunantunich in Belize were still being explored when researchers discovered the new tomb. Researchers were investigating a large pyramid temple when they discovered a staircase buried by the ages. At the bottom of the staircase was one of the largest tombs yet discovered in Xunantunich. Inside the tomb, archaeologists found the remains of a muscular male, who was likely the tomb's honoree, as well as jaguar and deer bones, ceremonial stone blades, and a host of other artifacts.

However, the most amazing find in the tomb was the set of hieroglyphics that shed a little more light on the so-called “snake dynasty,” which is thought to have been a power around the 7th century, so-called because the symbol of their house and power was a snake.

The new hieroglyphics are thought to have been taken from another site, and placed in the tomb as a way of obscuring the victories and history of the powerful house. That might have been an effective move in its day, though, as it turns out, they've just been better preserved for our own understanding.

Percival Lowell's Martian canals map may have been troubling in the 19th century, but it now serves as a stunning piece in Michael Plichta's globe manufacturing studio. [All Photos: Michael Martin Plichta/Planetenkugel-Manufaktur]

In a workshop in Mannheim, Germany, Michael Plichta carefully and slowly aligns paper gores, or segments, by hand onto a globe of Mars. But the topography reflected on this replication of the Red Planet isn’t one based on the sophisticated data and satellite imagery collected by NASA.

Instead, Plichta’s collection of globes uses astronomer Percival Lowell’s strange and controversial maps charting Martian canals as their template. The 19th century astronomer and his Martian canals theory were the topics of high controversy and mockery among astronomy scholars between the late-1800s to early-1900s, flaring up debates about signs of intelligent life on Mars.

“The map basically looks like a spider's web spun around a sphere,” says Plichta, who is one of the last remaining traditional globe makers.

Applying one paper gore takes Plichta about one hour. It's the most difficult step in the globe making process.

The spinning, three-dimensional maps produced at Plichta’s globe manufactory, Planetenkugel-Manufaktur, are not of the planet we inhabit, but of other worlds in our solar system. For his globes, Plichta seeks out historical planetary maps that modern astronomy has deemed defunct—the globes providing a new perspective on old observations. Then, he painstakingly fashions these maps into globes with traditional techniques that required over two years for him to master. 

Plichta, a senior scientist and trained psychologist at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Zurich, Switzerland, describes himself as an amateur astronomer. At the age of 15, he began peering at celestial bodies from his telescope. He was most fascinated by the surface of Mars, impressed by the polar ice caps and dark blue-green splotches contrasting against a reddish ochre backdrop.

Traditional globe making requires a stead hand. 

He started making globes in 2014 after finding a 1960 globe of the moon—part of which was blank because satellite information had yet to be obtained. Curious about what old astronomical observations might reveal when turned into a 3-D form, he decided to make this Planetenkugel-Manufaktur's unique specialty. 

“Since distances in space are so large, our imagination often fills the gaps in knowledge,” Plichta says. “Lowell described in his famous book, Mars and Its Canals, that when he was observing Mars with his telescope, he felt like he was traveling without moving.”

A copy of Percival Lowell's mars canal map that Plichta uses for his globes.

The story of the Martian canals begins with Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who first observed a series of lines he called “canali” on the surface of Mars. He published a map of his findings in 1878, and marked the lines as geological features. After analyzing Schiaparelli’s maps and making his own observations of Mars, Lowell thought that the directions and positions of the lines were too intentional to be valleys or mountain ranges.

"For Lowell, it was clear that the canals couldn’t be natural features," explains Plichta.

The canals were long straight lines, sometimes two running parallel to each other. Lowell declared that the canals were a part of a complex irrigation system that could have only been built by an intelligent, ancient civilization on the brink of extinction. He believed that when the polar caps melted, the canals carried water to other parts of the dry, dying Red Planet.

Percival Lowell's Martian canals. [Photo: Public Domain]

By the end of his life, Lowell had charted and identified over 700 canals, his map showing the vast cobweb of straight black lines crisscrossing over the entire planet. He even gave mythological names to each of the canals, such as Agathodaemon, Eumenides, and Orcus.     

The maps were attacked by other professional astronomers who didn’t observe the canals, but Lowell was still convinced that his charted cartography of Mars was correct. We know today that Lowell’s Mars canal theory holds no merit.

NASA’s Mariner mission in 1965 took close-up photos of Mars, and in 1972 was able to map the planet, reports Space.com. No canals were found. Scientists now believe that the lines that Lowell and Schiaparelli saw were an optical illusion caused by the telescopes.  

Inside Plichta's studio in Mannheim, Germany. 

Plichta realized he couldn’t find a globe of the infamous map from Lowell’s book Mars and Its Canals, and decided to make it his first project. He turned to antiquarian books about globes and globe makers, and used the 1960 moon globe as his guide.

Plichta creates his Mars globes in a traditional manner by first shaping a sphere out of plaster of Paris with a high-precision, metal-revolving machine. He then uses a compass to draw the orientation lines onto the sphere to guide him as he places the paper gores pieces by piece. Gently brushing special glue, he flattens the football-shaped clipping of the map onto the surface.

Plichta carefully inspecting the shape of a plaster sphere.

“You have to be very precise here, since every error is multiplied by Pi,” Plichta explains, since the spherical shape requires constant re-measuring for the pieces of the map to fit on the globe. “I have practiced this step over and over again.”

Applying one paper gore takes about one hour. After placing all 12 to 24 onto the globe, he positions the polar caps, varnishes the sphere, and mounts it. The whole process for one globe takes about six to eight weeks, he says. The finished product is a stunning cream and turquoise sphere ornately detailed with all of Lowell’s black canal etchings.  

Depending on the size, a globe requires 12 or 24 paper gores. 

“The Mars canal globe shows interesting phenomena that cannot be easily inferred from the 2-D map,” Plichta says. “Straight lines on a 2-D map are curved on a sphere. The globe shows that the canals are mostly the shortest connections between two points of the sphere.”

Plichta continues to add to his historical planetary globe collection. He is currently planning out a globe of Venus using a small globe that Vatican employee Francesco Bianchini made in 1728, and a moon relief globe, which will show the shadows, craters, and hills in a realistic view. Plichta will showcase his latest creation in an exhibition in Germany this fall.

The finished product, one of many different kinds of historical planetary globes to come.

Customers have also commissioned Plichta to create fictional planets, Flash Gordon’s Mongo and author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom, a romanticized version of a dying Mars. To his knowledge, his business is the only one that specializes in handmade planetary spheres based on past maps and observations.

“Historically, a globe has always been a sign of power and it encapsulates the knowledge of mankind about the earth and space,” Plichta says. “As long as humans explore their surroundings and add fantasy and imagination, I am sure to have enough material to build more fantastic worlds at the borderline between science and fiction.”

Map Monday highlights interesting and unusual cartographic pursuits from around the world and through time. Read more Map Monday posts.

Beachgoers in Sardinia. (Photo: Ross Huggett/CC BY 2.0)

Italy is home to some of the busiest beaches in the world, which have been popular with vacationers throughout Europe for decades. 

But that popularity comes at a price, Italian officials have said recently, in the form of tourists rudely trying to save their spot at the beach with a lonely towel, umbrella, or beach chair, according to the Guardian, by leaving the gear there overnight. 

It's become such a problem that the Italian coast guard has started fining people 200 euros, or around $220, for the offense, in addition to seizing the offending towels, umbrellas, or chairs. 

And it's apparently senior citizens that might be most guilty of the practice. The Guardian says that Italy previously fined a group of tourists—all over 60—for laying out towels before a beach opened in Liguria, in northern Italy. 

And La Repubblica, the Italian newspaper, said that reserving your spot was an "ancient" habit, which probably started just after World War II, as tourists began to pour in. 

Be patient on your beach vacations, tourists of Italy, and consider your life choices. It's just a spot in the sand, after all.