Between the 11th and 13th centuries, the city was the capital of the region, and monasteries, pagodas, and over 2,000 total structures survive to this day as evidence.
Many of those continue to live on, but some others weren't so lucky.
This was far from the first time that Bagan has been hit by an earthquake, surviving dozens just this past century, including some, like one in 1975, that were just as powerful as Wednesday's.
In this video, the famous Sulamani Temple can be see in the distance.
The epicenter of this year's earthquake was closer to Chauk, a city about 20 miles to the south of Bagan. But Bagan is a major tourism draw for Myanmar, and the country's president, Htin Kyaw, was already at the scene on Thursday to see what repairs are needed.
The Sulamani Temple was rebuilt in the 1990s, along with many other structures, in part to repair the damage from the 1975 quake. This isn't the first time Myanmar has had to repair its ancient jewels, and it probably won't be the last.
The human species may not (yet) have encountered extraterrestrial life, but our planet is pockmarked with the scars of alien visitors of a different sort: the giant rocks that have come hurling out of space over the millennia, hitting the Earth’s surface with such force a gaping hole is left behind as a cosmic souvenir.
There is a certain unearthly beauty to these meteorite craters dotting the planet. In fact their unique geology has been used as an analogue for outer space to help astronauts train for the Moon landing or missions to Mars. Others have given rise to gorgeous lakes and ancient cults or wiped out the dinosaurs and other forms of life on the planet.
Whatever their effect, each of these nine impact craters in the Atlas has a story that’s quite literally out of the world.
About 7,500 years ago, a huge rock from space came hurtling toward the Earth, leaving nine total craters on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. It was the last giant meteorite impact to occur in a densely populated region, and you can hardly blame the ancient peoples of Kaali for operating a mysterious ancient cult around the resulting landscape.
The most interesting crater in the field is the largest, Kaali crater, a gently sloping bowl filled with stagnant, murky water. It is believed to have been a sacred site for many centuries, in part due to its cosmic origin. Archaeologists believe it is possible the site served as a stronghold for an ancient cult settlement: As evidenced by the unusually large quantity of animal bones found around its borders, the Kaali crater lake was not only a watering hole but also a place of sacrifice. Some even believe that ancient offerings still remain undiscovered at the bottom of the lake.
Nordlingen is a town nearly 15 million years in the making. Although it has only been populated in a modern sense for the last 1,200 years, the town is neatly centered in the middle of a crater caused by a giant meteor crashing into the Bavarian countryside.
Miraculously, the meteor left a perfectly bowl-shaped depression about 100 to 150 meters into the earth, forming a unique valley for the town. Fully embracing their cosmic past, Nordlingen residents have incorporated many parts of the meteor into the structures of the town. The church is even encrusted with meteorites.
Imaging from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission STS-99 reveals part of the 180 km (110 mi) diameter ring of the crater. The numerous sinkholes clustered around the trough of the crater suggest a prehistoric oceanic basin in the depression left by the impact. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Public Domain)
Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid or comet the size of a small city came hurdling towards Earth. With a force of 100 million megatons of TNT (two million times stronger than the most powerful man-made bomb), it crashed into our planet and created catastrophic consequences for both the dinosaurs and all other life.
The explosion’s shockwaves triggered earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunamis, and global firestorms. A cloud of dust covered the Earth, blocking sunlight and preventing photosynthesis for years.
Buried beneath thousands of feet of limestone in the Yucatán Peninsula, the remains of the Chicxulub Crater spans over 110 miles wide, with about half of it resting below the Caribbean Sea. After millions of years of erosion and sedimentation, however, evidence of the cataclysmic event is hard to see today. Even standing high above the crater’s center, the impact’s effects are not apparent. Perhaps the most telling features of the surrounding landscape are the cenotes. These water-filled sinkholes, once used by the Mayans in sacrificial ceremonies, dot the crater’s edge where the rock was weakened.
This almost perfectly circular lake of the Ungava Peninsula in Quebec, Canada, was formed by a meteorite plummeting from space and impacting the earth almost 1.4 million years ago. The lake is made unique by its lack of inlets or outlets. Precipitation is the only source of water, and loss of water can only be the result of evaporation. As a result it is one of the clearest lakes in the world, and is said to be the purist freshwater lake on Earth.
A similar geological anomaly is found some 4,200 miles to the east, in Romania, where the Lacul Sfanta Ana crater lake is likewise supplied exclusively by rainwater and precipitation in the area, making the water held inside of the crater lake almost as pure as the distilled water one can buy in a store.
In the small village of Vredefort, a huge bowl is all that remains from the largest impact crater in the history of the Earth. Today the crater has largely flattened with erosion; the remaining ripples and rings of the huge earthen wound are only fully visible from space. Yet it serves as a reminder of the planet's violent past and possible future.
The original crater is thought to have been around 190 miles in diameter, and is one of the only ancient impact sites to feature multiple rings, which speaks to the sheer violence of the collision that occurred billions of years ago.
A well-preserved crater in the Australian outback marks the earth-fall of a giant meteorite that scarred the planet with its arrival thousands of years ago. And the ancient meteor that left this picturesque hole must have been huge. The space rock likely touched down around 300,000 years ago.
The diameter of the crater stretches to almost 3,000 feet, and is almost 200 feet deep. Given these measurements, researchers theorize that the hole was probably created by a meteor of some 50,000 tons. Supposedly small fragments of the original meteor can still be found littering the area.
From the 2009 FMARS mission (Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station) created by the Mars Society. (Photo: Mars Society/Used with Permission)
Roughly 23 million years ago, a large rock hit the earth near what is now Northern Canada, resulting in the Haughton Crater, one of the world's northernmost impact craters. The crater lies in a type of polar desert environment called a "frost rubble zone". It is the only impact crater known to exist in such an environment, which, among other factors, makes the freezing, desert-like landscape the closest approximation to the Martian environment that can be found on Earth. It has made the crater an excellent practice ground and research site for what one day may be the first human voyage to a neighboring planet.
While Haughton's arctic conditions make it a unique Mars analogue, it is certainly not the only crater used to approximate outer space. In a remote volcanic field in the Nevada desert, the Lunar Crater was used to train astronauts for moon landings. The basin looks much like a meteor crater, and the site was selected as one of the several “Terrestrial Analogue Sites” used by NASA.
Over in Arizona, the agency used hundreds of pounds of dynamite to blast out a fake Moon field to test the Moon landing on a field of manmade craters on a former volcano site (chosen because its volcanic gravel was similar to Moon rock). Astronauts also used the desolate, alien landscape of the Hole in the Ground crater in central Oregon (thought to be of volcanic origin, rather than the result of an ancient meteor impact) to train for landing on the Moon.
50,000 years ago, give or take, a meteorite came screaming from the sky and slammed into the Earth, leaving a scar across the Arizona landscape. It’s known simply as "Meteor Crater" to most, but scientists call it the "Barringer Crater" after Daniel Barringer, the man who first suggested that the giant hole was made by a flying space rock.
In 1903, along with his partner, mathematician and physicist Benjamin Chew Tilghman, Barringer conducted land surveys and collected documentation supporting his meteor theory. Despite his efforts, he was met with skepticism and disbelief from the scientific community. Planetary science didn't mature enough for geologists to swallow Barringer's impact theory until the '50s and '60s. Unfortunately, Barringer died in 1929 and was never vindicated in life. Eugene M. Shoemaker, who discovered the minerals, was given credit as the man who uncovered the first unarguable proof of extraterrestrial impact.
This raised bullseye visible from space was the subject of an intense geologic controversy for decades. Scientists disputed whether Upheaval Dome was the result of a meteorite impact or the remnants of an ancient salt dome, which are common in southeastern Utah. The geological details didn’t quite align with either theory. The layers that make up Upheaval Dome form a raised, roughly circular shape, surrounded by a ring-like depression. It doesn’t quite look like anything else on earth.
In recent years, the meteorite hypothesis has taken the lead. The theory is that the current Upheaval Dome is an impact crater that has been modified considerably from its original form. Around 60 million years ago, scientists argue, a meteorite hit the site and created only a partially-collapsed crater. The discovery of shocked quartz seemed to settle the matter, as quartz can only exist in such a form after undergoing incredible pressure—exactly like the pressure generated by a massive rock from space hurtling into the ground.
New Orleans' French Quarter, at the corner of Ursuline Avenue and Royal Street. (Photo: Ken Lund/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Tucked between dog-eared title records and 19th-century floor plans were the dismembered corpses of two young flappers, expertly diced. Limbs eternally akimbo and packed into their respective trunks, they would dance the Charleston no more.
The grim Times-Picayune article from October 28, 1927 is filed into a binder at the Williams Research Center of New Orleans. Headlined “Bodies Found in Trunks,” it tells the ghastly end of Theresa and Leonide “Lonie” Moity. Their “Trunk Murders,” a forgotten chapter of the city’s lively history, involved clandestine streetcar flirtations, severed fingers, and the possible emergence of a “sausage ghost.”
In 1927, Theresa and Leonide shared a crowded existence with their husbands—brothers Henry and Joseph—and Theresa and Henry’s three small children in the second-floor rooms of 715 Ursulines Avenue. Before the women’s dispatch and disassembly, there were whispers of their “familiarity” with men other than their husbands.
The Historic New Orleans Collection's Williams Research Center. (Photo: Lauren George)
For their part, Henry and Joseph were odd-jobs men, described by sources as “shiftless” and perpetually short on the funds needed to support their families. Theresa and Leonide also worked, expressing frustration at having to manage their children while taking on sewing jobs to bring in necessary cash. After separating from her husband, Joseph, Leonide continued to live with Henry and Theresa, and Henry fretted over her influence on his wife.
In New Orleans of the 1920s, even people of modest means might afford domestic assistance. When housekeeper Nettie Compass arrived to clean the Moitys’ apartment on the morning of October 27, 1927, a scene of bloody disarray greeted her. The frantic cleaning lady was soon joined by two insurance men who were conveniently nearby and who, in turn, tipped off local reporter, George William Healy. In his 1976 memoir, Healy described their discovery:
We found red stains on the floor and saw a large trunk in a bedroom, partially open. When I pulled up the trunk lid, a woman’s body, arms, and legs severed from the torso, was exposed.
Healy borrowed a neighbor’s telephone, requesting a second reporter before suggesting that it “might” be appropriate to alert the coroner. When the coroner and Healy’s female colleague, Gwen, arrived,
she charged into the apartment and sighted several objects on a bed. “Look,” said Gwen, holding up these objects. “Lady fingers.” Four fingers had been cut from a woman’s hand ... After placing the fingers back on the bed, Gwen moved to a second bedroom, found a second trunk, and opened it. It contained a second woman’s body.
Resting on the torso was a bloodied cane knife, of the type used on sugar plantations. The “lady fingers” were discovered to have belonged to Theresa Moity, whose missing wedding ring was later retrieved from a gaping wound in her back. A gold bracelet still hung delicately from the wrist of an arm, now unburdened of its owner. Clumps of hair lay on the floor, caught in the shadows cast from Ursulines Avenue.
The Times-Picayune from October 1927. (Photo: Times-Picayune)
Theresa and Leonide’s personal effects lay strewn among the gore: children’s clothing, unfinished sewing projects, the women’s lace garments, silk stockings, and beauty creams. In a turn worthy of pulp fiction, a manuscript written in Leonide’s hand was discovered hidden in the cabinet of her bedroom. Rife with grammatical errors, its thinly veiled autobiographical story cautioned young girls to “be careful, for marriage is a life sentence.” The rejection slip from her submission to a popular confessions magazine lay in a pool of her own blood.
As reporters and police took stock of the grisly tableau, there was one thing notably missing: Henry Moity. Henry had worked briefly as a butcher, and the Times-Picayune gleefully pointed out that “the manner in which the two bodies of the women were mutilated and dismembered indicated a man familiar with this trade.” Radio dispatches alerted departing steamer ships to be on the lookout for a stowaway passenger answering to Henry’s description: tattooed and, according to the newspaper, “singularly hairy.”
The room which shares a wall adjacent to crime scene. (Photo: Lauren George)
The ensuing manhunt led through swamps and shipboards before a bedraggled Henry was pulled from nearby Bayou Lafourche. At first he maintained that the murders had been the work of a redheaded Norwegian seafarer, whom he had been forced to assist. By Tuesday November 1, however—less than a week after the murders—Henry had made a full confession, abandoning his tale of the villain seaman.
From a New Orleans prison cell, Henry smoked, attempted to paint, and received curious visitors. He also divulged the details of his lurid crimes, and his furious jealousy of Theresa’s lover, Joseph Caruso. The married Caruso operated a real estate office from the ground floor of 715 Ursulines. From the time the Moitys moved in, Theresa and Caruso “were pretty thick,” Henry claimed in his confession to the District Attorney. The November 2, 1927 Times-Picayune repeated portions of this confession, in which Henry alleges that Theresa and Caruso took “friendly excursions on streetcars,” and carried out a brazen flirtation under his nose, stealing hugs and passing notes in the darker corners of 715 Ursulines.
The facade of 715 Ursulines Avenue by day. (Photo: Lauren George)
On Wednesday October 26, things had come to a head in the Moity household when Theresa and Leonide revealed their plans to move out. According to a 1957 letter from a Louisiana State Penitentiary prison warden, Theresa “is alleged to have flaunted a ten dollar bill in [Henry’s] face and bragged that she could make more in an hour (as a prostitute) then he could in a week.”
Later that day, Henry returned home to find Theresa and Leonide packing their belongings into two large trunks. An enraged Henry began drinking, interrupting his bender to purchase the murder weapon. When night fell over the quarter, the Moity women and children retired to their beds while Henry paced restlessly, drinking and contemplating the hidden cane knife. In his confession to the District Attorney, Henry admits that he considered killing himself and the children, but changed his mind when he imagined his wife “running around with Joe Caruso and the rest of them.”
A newspaper report of the crime at 715 Ursulines Avenue. (Photo: Spokesman Review)
As he stood over the sleeping form of Theresa, studying the angles of the knife, he suddenly found himself swinging like a man possessed. As he later recounted to the DA, “She didn’t say a word or move. She just relaxed and the blood rushed.” Rushing into Leonide’s bedroom, he struck her as she tumbled from the bed where she had been sleeping. Afterward came the grim work of cutting up the bodies, as Henry stuffed the women into the trunks they had packed hours earlier. It wasn’t the departure they had anticipated.
In March 1928, Henry was convicted of Theresa’s murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Throughout his trial and imprisonment, he insisted that he still loved his wife, even claiming to be married in the 1940 US Census, years after her death. His 1941 appeal for a pardon was rejected by the governor and in 1944, he briefly escaped from the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Excepting his prison escape, the warden’s 1957 letter claimed that Henry was "one of the best prisoners we've ever had.” He continued to paint in prison, his portrait of Huey Long even making its way into the Baton Rouge governor’s mansion, where it hung for many years. In 1957, he died of a stroke in California’s Folsom Prison, where he is buried.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of the sensational “Trunk Murders” is how completely they have been forgotten. While tour guides repeat tales of New Orleans’s more famous criminals, they exclude the murders that the 1927 Times-Picayune proclaimed to be “the most brutal committed in New Orleans crime history.”
Though the legacy of Henry’s crime may persist in another local legend: the “Sausage Ghost.” Recounted in the 1945 Louisiana folklore collection, Gumbo Ya-Ya, the tale tells of a woman murdered by her butcher husband and turned into—you guessed it—sausages, to be sold to unsuspecting customers on Ursulines Avenue.
The "sausage ghost" legend also takes place on Ursulines Avenue. (Photo: Lauren George)
Is it possible that the Big Easy’s version of Sweeney Todd was born of the 1927 trunk murders, altered in retellings to more nightmarish proportions? Though details differ between the Sausage Ghost legend and the trunk murders case, Henry Moity’s November 2 proclamation through the bars of his prison to Times-Picayune reporters certainly nags the question: “If I ever get my hands on that Joe Caruso I’ll chop him up into little pieces, not big pieces like my wife, but little pieces—My God, I’ll make him look like something that’s been run through a sausage mill!”
Yosemite National Park is almost impossible to visualize in its entirety, with its 747,956 acres of mountains, rivers, forests, and myriad species galavanting about, or eating each other.
Imagine a map that gathers all that geographical wonder in one place. It exists in Joseph Mora's 1931 cartographic homage to the great and treasured national park in California. It's a colorful, humorous and eccentric mapping of Yosemite in all its glory.
"There is so much grandeur and reverential solemnity to Yosemite that a bit of humor may help the better to happily reconcile ourselves to the triviality of man," Mora wrote at the top of his artwork.
The map portrays every element that figures into a trip to Yosemite. The arrival by train or by car. Passage into the park's grounds, advice from local rangers, the camp sites, and the wide range of activities on offer for adventurous tourists.
Summer and winter pursuits are illustrated in small cartoons along the left-hand border, and along the bottom, with lively scenes of riding, tennis, dancing, skiing and swimming. The map is, by the admission of its creator, not entirely truthful, and offers a "tithe of mirth" to enhance the reader's reverence for Yosemite.
The bottom left-hand side of the map imagines a family’s jaw-dropping repose after their first look at the national park’s stunning scenery.
The main body of the piece shows key monuments and significant sites, from the valley floor up to the park's highest peaks, like the famous "Cloud's Rest." Mora, a Uruguayan-born artist who became famous for his artistic maps, has a comic and literal take on many of these.
It’s even possible to play a game akin to “Where’s Waldo” with your favorite Yosemite locations. There is a person staring at their reflection in “Mirror Lake.” George Washington stands atop “Washington Column.” And a woman in a white wedding dress lingers over “Bridal Veil Falls.” These cartoons are repeated across the map.
Stephen Mather founded the National Park Service 100 years ago last week, on August 25, 1916. This map was dedicated to him after his death in 1930.
An inscription on the bottom right-hand corner of the map thanks Mather, "whose untiring efforts and devotion to the ethics of the Service have been so fruitful in making Yosemite a vacation mecca for the people of the present and future generations."
Charming scenes play out in different parts of the map. A man takes a photograph of a bear, a fisherman falls asleep by a river and a mother attends to a crying child. Elsewhere a man looks through binoculars, a family descends the train at El Portal, and a couple hug and gaze over “Inspiration Point.”
The center of the map shows how families camped along the valley floor. Deer, fox and bear eat or scavenge for food. There are more than 400 animal species at Yosemite.
Humans have lived in the area that became Yosemite National Park for thousands of years. Until the late 18th century, the Miwok people were its main inhabitants. The first non-Indians to venture into the region were a government-backed militia group, who were there on the pretext of taking control of the Fresno River Reservation.
On countless occasions militia groups, and the army, tried to remove Indians from their land, killing many. These missions were, however, largely unsuccessful in the early days. The state of California took control of Yosemite in 1864 and Galen Clark, a man who had spent time alone in the park and an expert on the local flower and fauna, became its first guardian two years later.
At the turn of the 20th century, after the California gold rush had brought many people to the area, the number of Indians decreased dramatically. Thousands were killed, died of starvation or forced to relocate. The National Park Service razed the last Yosemite Indian village in 1969, according to the National Park Service. In the 20th century, Yosemite became a popular destination for tourists and naturalists alike.
The park is famous for its waterfalls and rock formations, and both feature prominently in Mora's creation. Water descends the Nevada Falls, drawn on the top right-hand corner, down through Vernal Falls and forms a river across the valley floor. And the 3,000-foot "El Capitan" appears on the opposite corner, scaled by a rock-climber for the first time in history in 2015.
Duke Humfrey's reading room at the Old Bodleian Library. (Photo: Diliff/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Summer is nearly over; no more frolicking at music festivals and sleeping till afternoon. It's time to hit the books again, and the best way to ease this seasonal transition is to do so in a truly beautiful library. No need to hunker down in a dusty basement somewhere, not when there are so many lovely libraries in which to study. Careful though: The majesty of some of these rooms might end up distracting from the books themselves.
Imagine yourself as a medieval university student in one of these libraries, frantically flipping the pages of a book chained to its shelves while you scribble with a quill by the light of a dim lantern. Luckily, these old libraries have transitioned to include the conveniences of the 21st century, but the spirit of academia still thrives in their antiquated stillness.
Even if you’re not a student, sing a fight song, don a lettered sweater, and get into the collegiate spirit in these hallowed halls.
Though this library is part of the University of Helsinki, it is open to the public and any Finnish citizen may register to borrow books. The National Library is comprised of two buildings, the Fabiana and the Rotunda, which were built after a devastating fire destroyed a collection of 40,000 volumes on Finnish history. These buildings, which have been renovated continuously over the years, are a breathtaking combination of beaux arts architecture, art nouveau filigree, and modern conveniences.
Trinity College’s cathedralesque Old Library is equal parts museum and functioning research facility. It was built between 1712 and 1732 when the college was already 200 years old, and the Long Room (the library’s main hall) houses some of the most important artifacts of Irish culture. Among these are illuminated manuscripts like the Book of Kells, which were hidden at the college during Oliver Cromwell’s raids, and a medieval Gaelic harp.
Andrew Dickson White, Cornell’s bibliophile first president, donated his entire 30,000 volume collection to the college. Not only did this increase the college’s number of books by a third, but it was left with the world’s largest collection of architectural books at the time, around 4,000. Cornell’s first architecture graduate was charged with constructing a library to house the books, and ended up building a campus gem. The library is intricately structured, with latticed walkways and ladders connecting the stacks, which facilitates wandering.
This medical library has chandeliers, dark wood, and all the other trappings of an old Ivy League library. It actually isn’t as old as it might look (only built in 1941), but on the shelves are ancient texts dating back to the Renaissance and beyond, as well as novelties like historical tobacco advertisements. For added spooky old world flair, the basement houses the Cushing brain collection.
This “cathedral of books” was built in 1879 as part of America’s first music conservatory. It’s all marble and brass, with natural light flooding in from the glass paned ceiling, so no wonder it is frequently featured in films and television as a symbol of 19th century architectural beauty. It’s now part of Johns Hopkins University, and though it does not circulate its collection, the library is open to the public.
The man this library was named for was not an academic, but rather a Victorian textile magnate. After his death in 1888, his widow commissioned the library’s construction as a lavish memorial to her late husband. It is considered one of the most remarkable examples of neo-Gothic architecture in Europe. Not only are the John Rylands Library’s Hogwartsian charms striking, it is also the site of pioneering conservation techniques like air filtration.
Unlike many of these libraries, the Library of the Sárospatak Reformed College is in a small town rather than a bustling hub of metropolitan activity. The college was founded as part of the Calvinist Reformation, and though the institution existed as early as the 1530s, the library building wasn’t constructed until three centuries later in the 1840s. Its stately architecture reflects this era, with high windows and a trompe l’oeil domed ceiling.
Codrington Library was built in 1751 and has been in consistent use ever since then. Oxford and its colleges are steeped in tradition and antiquity which can often be exclusionary. It comes as a pleasant surprise then, that Codrington is open as a “gentleman’s reference library” to all Oxford students, rather than just the fellows of All Souls College.
Duke Humphrey Plantagenet was “son, uncle, and brother of kings”, which is a nice way of saying he was the only guy in his family who didn’t get to be a king. Still though, he lived a life that epitomized medieval chivalry, particularly his education. Duke Humphrey (sometimes spelled Humfrey) was a patron of literature, translating many Greek and Latin works himself, and donated his 281 manuscripts to Oxford upon his death. These were mostly destroyed during the Reformation in an attempt to erase all traces of Roman Catholicism, but the library was reestablished when Sir Thomas Bodley financed a newer, larger collection. Today, Duke Humfrey’s Library has but three books from its original collection, but its reading room retains all the charms of ancient academia.
John Hay Library is a classic Ivy League library: prestigious, columned, and just a little bit stuffy, albeit beautiful. Its pristine white walls and dark wood tables are illuminated by natural sunlight from ceiling-high windows by day and by hanging lanterns by night. Its collections are equally impressive, containing original writings by H. P. Lovecraft and John Hay, personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln. Perusing through the stacks may result in a shock though: The John Hay Library hosts three anthropodermically bound books, otherwise known as books bound in human skin.
After owning his home for over 25 years, a resident in Edmonton, Alberta recently discovered that a simple depression in his back lawn was actually the mouth of a deep pit. As Global News reports, the shaft was only covered by a thin bit of sod.
For a long time, Brian Day didn’t think much of the small depression in the lawn near his back porch. But when he went to fill it in, thinking he could just pull up the grass and add a little soil, he discovered the deep pit.
Lowering a light down, he discovered that it was no natural sinkhole, as there were boards shoring up the walls of the shaft. The pit, it turns out, was an old water well created in 1928, according to Global News. It sank down some 88 feet. According to local records, the well had been tracked and reported, but was incorrectly placed just off of Day’s property in the official accounting.
Day will have to fill in the well himself. He says he stepped on the grass depression a couple of times just to test it out, but was luckily held up by nothing more than the intertwined roots of a healthy lawn.
Now, he says, the hole could be a cautionary tale for other local home owners.
“What we found last Sunday… that was a surprise,” Day told Global News.
Joy-seeking swimmers: were you hoping to catch some of the summer's waning rays at Cahoon Hollow Beach in Wellfleet, Massachusetts? Are you now ready to head there to take in the spot's "dramatic landscapes," "massive dunes," and "popular seaside bar and restaurant"? Had you, perhaps, saved this happening spot for last, knowing it would be one of the best beachgoing experiences of the season?
I regret to inform you that the seals got there first. As CapeCod.com reports, the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment has closed the beach for several days, because it's full of seal poop.
A test last Friday revealed "high levels of fecal coliform and total coliform" in the water, says CapeCod.com. A retest the following Tuesday failed as well.
Experts blame a combination of poopy seals, heavy rainstorm, and weed-filled water. "We do have seaweed that floats in and out and traps seal feces so it could be a function of seaweed plus seals," Suzanne Grout Thomas, the Wellfleet beach administrator, told the outlet.
Thus far, this is a contained problem. "All of the bathing beaches are tested weekly and Cahoon Hollow is the only beach in Wellfleet to fail," writes CapeCod.com. Clean up soon, Cahoon.
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.
A ranger at Hardangervidda, in central Norway, was walking around Friday when he came upon a gruesome discovery: over 300 dead reindeer, killed, officials, think, after lightning strikes in the area.
Norwegian authorities aren't entirely sure the deaths were caused by lightning, but haven't been very successful in coming up with other ways to explain the mysterious massacre. A press release on Sunday blamed lightning and recent "bad weather" in the area.
According to the Local, the scale of the deaths may have been because reindeer tend to group together in bad weather, out of fear. But samples will now be taken from some of the animals to determine the exact cause of death.
Reindeer are most common in Siberia, not far from the North Pole. The Norwegian pack, though, were residents of Hardangervidda, a relatively southern habitat for the animals, about 150 miles to the west of Oslo.
Some 10,000 reindeer are said to make that part of the world their home, according to the Local, even if the weather doesn't always cooperate.
This day last year six scientists entered a dome on a mountain in Hawaii and lived as you might on Mars. They slept in tight quarters and only entered the outside world in spacesuits, while also trying to deal with the psychological pressures of seeing only the same five other people each day, every day, for 365 days.
That, in fact, was the main focus of the experiment: Could anyone live peacefully, long-term with five other people in a dome the size of a small house?
It turns out, they mostly can, though not without a few difficulties.
"It is kind of like having roommates that just are always there and you can never escape them," the mission's commander, Carmel Johnston, said, according to the BBC. "I'm sure some people can imagine what that is like, and if you can't, then just imagine never being able to get away from anybody."
The mission was funded by NASA, and, more than the psychological study, was also an opportunity to conduct research, while the scientists—four Americans, a German physicist and a French astrobiologist—subsided in almost total isolation on a mountain in Mauna Loa, though they were still able to write blog posts.
“Given what it takes to keep people alive in the void—to keep them healthy on Mars for just a year—I can basically promise that by going to space we’ll learn what it takes to keep people healthy in places with heat, light, and gravity," one crew member, Sheyna Gifford, wrote in a post. "We’ve already started."
NASA's experiment was 365 days long, though it fell short of the record, held by Russia, which previously stowed away a crew of six for 520 days. That group emerged, mostly fine, in November 2011.
A large record collection and vintage knickknacks grace the wood-paneled interior of Paddlers Coffee. (All Photos: Amelia Ayrelan Iuvino)
Tokyo is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with 37 million residents. Portland, Oregon is the 26th largest city in the United States. Population: 600,000. But in Tokyo, I passed more than a few people wearing PDX sweatshirts, and even someone with a Portland Timbers hat on.
Voodoo Doughnuts, Portland’s original weird and whimsical doughnut shop, is opening an outpost in Tokyo. The Japanese men’s lifestyle magazine Popeye (the “Magazine for City Boys”) recently produced an issue devoted to the Pacific Northwest city.
It’s clear: Tokyo hipsters have a big crush on Portland.
“‘Portland’ is a magic word,” says Yasunori Fujikawa, a graphic design student living in Tokyo. “Using the word ‘Portland’ anywhere adds sophistication.”
A promoter handing out flyers near Tokyo's Shibuya Station wears a Portland Timbers cap and a jacket from Adidas (whose North American headquarters are in Portland).
Much of the effort to bring Portland to life in Tokyo is being led by a handful of small business owners who have a personal connection to the West Coast city known for its quirkiness and creativity. Americans may be sick of those pretentious, self-involved Portlanders, but over in Japan, Portland's image carries a more profound meaning, and the Portland-style cafes and bars that are cropping up have personal significance to their owners. Many of them studied abroad years ago in Portland or in the state of Oregon, and are now capitalizing on their insider knowledge of a region with quickly rising cache.
PDX Taproom, a beer bar in Shibuya, offers a funhouse version of Portland that seems eerily familiar to Pacific Northwesterners. The walls are covered in Portland paraphernalia, including a drawing of Portland’s tiny transit system, which looks laughably quaint in comparison to Tokyo’s myriad subway lines. All of the beers on tap are from Oregon, and they proudly display a copy of Willamette Week’s newest Beer Guide—which had only just been published when I visited in spring 2016. On the menu is a dish of tater tots with blue cheese and bacon (a very popular snack at Portland Timbers matches, it assures me).
PDX Taproom, on the second floor of a commercial building in a busy part of Tokyo, advertises craft beer from Portland, Oregon with a backdrop of Japanese high-rises.
There are a number of bars almost exactly like this one in Portland—not the coolest ones, the kind more likely to be geared toward tourists—that play off a crystallized and somewhat stereotypical vision of the city’s identity. The owner of PDX Taproom, Miyuki Hiramatsu, studied abroad in Portland in the early nineties and then worked for Columbia Sportswear Japan (which is headquartered in Portland) as an adult, noting the city’s growing craft beer trend.
“I thought, what if I proposed Portlanders’ lifestyle through craft beer in Japan?” she says. Her customer base is about 70 percent Japanese and 30 percent foreigners.
Beer from Rogue Ales, brewed in Oregon, is easy to find in Japan if you know where to look.
Daisuke Matsushima, who studied in Oregon in college, owns a Portland-themed coffee shop in Tokyo called Paddlers. Located in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood west of Shibuya, Paddlers features wood paneling, vintage-modern decor, and a large collection of records. It serves only Stumptown Coffee, the pride of Portland.
Matsushima traces the origin of the Portland-in-Japan trend back to 2011, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake caused a huge tsunami that killed almost 16,000 people in Japan.
“It made people here start questioning how they’re spending their time and what they’re doing with their lives,” he says. “People in Japan are usually really career-oriented, but now some young people think, maybe we should do whatever we want with our lives too, like people in Portland.”
Several other Portland-themed business owners that I talked to echoed similar sentiments — Portland seemed to symbolize a place of freedom in their minds, where everyone was either an artist or an artisan, pursuing only their passions and living only the kind of life they want.
Kohei Hareru, the owner of a small and quirky cafe/bar not far from Paddlers called ME ME ME, wants his business to reflect this aspect of self-determination.
At ME ME ME, a tiny Tokyo breakfast cafe and bar, visitors revel in vintage Americana decor.
Hareru, who also studied in Portland as a teenager and now visits the city a few times a year, says that because of Japan’s manufacturing history, “we have been expected to conduct ourselves organizationally, which produced negligence of our individuality for a long time.”
As a result, Hareru also believes that Japanese culture has become obsessed with consumerism, preventing people from experiencing real happiness. He’s hopeful that people are realizing “that there might be some potential for what we’ve been looking for in Portlanders’ weird and sustainable lifestyle.”
“ME ME ME stands for, ‘the answer is not anywhere outside of you,’” he says. “I believe everything is all up to you—your curiosity, your interest, your eyes—to find the positive side of life.”
It’s not a very common sentiment in Japan, which has a culture famed for its communally oriented behavior and ways of thinking, but perhaps it reflects a change in Japanese society embodied by the younger generation.
Forty-eight performers remain poised on waterskis as they glide down a waterway in Linyi, Shandong, China. Slowly and with impressive ease, 24 of these acrobatic waterskiers climb onto each others shoulders until the team creates a perfect quadruple, four-tier human pyramid.
In 2012, the Jiangxi Team of Chinese Youth Waterski Show Team from China and the United States Rock Aqua Jays Water Ski Club, Inc. joined forces to break the world record for the largest human waterskiing pyramid.
Creating a multiple-tier human pyramid on solid ground is already a difficult feat, but doing so while speeding behind a boat adds an entirely separate element of danger to the stunt. These performances require both artistic ability and extreme athleticism. Water ski show teams choreograph acts and practice rope work and pyramids in swimming pools and gyms. The performance art version of the extreme water surface sport boasts many teams nationally and globally. And for some, waterski performing is a family tradition.
“It’s just a good family sport,” Todd Benjamin, a performer for the United States Water Ski Show Team, told the New York Times. “It’s pretty athletic, and if you like performing in front of a crowd, it’s a lot of fun.”
The Jiangxi Team of Chinese Youth Waterski Show Team and the Rock Aqua Jays Water Ski Club, Inc. pyramid was beaten in 2013 when Big Pull 2013 built a 60-person pyramid on waterskis. Perhaps the record will be broken again at the upcoming 2016 World Water Ski Show Tournament beginning on September 9 in Wisconsin.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Emailella@atlasobscura.com.
One day in Venice, sometime near the end of the 14th century, a busy merchant found himself with a few spare moments. Maybe it was a slow day at the docks, or he arrived home too early for dinner. Whatever the reason, he did what people of his era tended to do when they had some time—he took out his notebook and his set of pens, and he put together a page-sized patchwork of his afternoon.
Over 600 years later, you can still open that notebook and see that day. Written in spidery loops are daydreamy calculations regarding how large a particular tree is, and how long it might take to get to Rome. There's a sketch of a pair of colorful ships, and another of two tradesmen in green hats, examining a meal of bread and fish. Keep flipping through, and a whole life emerges. Scribbles and sketches fill each page. Personal anecdotes and hard-won lessons nestle alongside gathered material, including prayers, copied quotations and lists of spices.
Welcome to the world of the zibaldone. A strange melange of diary, ledger, doodle pad, and scrapbook, these volumes—along with similar "hodgepodges" and "commonplace books"—served as a pattern for interior life from the 14th century onward, bringing comfort and inspiration to everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Lewis Carroll.
They helped citizens of a rapidly changing world to make sense of what they were reading, seeing, and becoming, opening the way for more contemporary recording forms, like blogging, tweeting, and sharing on Tumblr. And according to the newest generation of zibaldone fans, it may be just the right time to bring them back.
Although it's impossible to pinpoint exactly who wrote the first zibaldone, he likely resembled our daydreaming friend above. As scholar Eve Wolynes explains in "A Living Text: Literacy, Identity and Fourteenth-Century Italian Merchants in the Zibaldone da Canal," the 13th and 14th centuries saw a sharp ramp-up in literacy among middle-class merchants, accountants, and artisans. Unlike their upper-class counterparts, who mostly stuck to Latin, these tradesmen wrote in the Italian vernacular; they also were more likely to crib together all kinds of work and play into one small, portable book. They called each volume a zibaldone, Italian for "a heap of things," possibly after a type of mixed-up stew.
As the merchants traveled Europe, so did this invention—which, like most good ideas, fused with others that had arisen elsewhere. In Ancient Greece, Aristotle had suggested his students keep scrolls of notes from their studies, organized by subject, so that they could return at will to any topic's "place." Renaissance-era teachers resurfaced this idea, and by the 17th century, students at Oxford were required to keep "commonplace books," organized notebooks stuffed with useful texts from elsewhere.
Meanwhile, back in Italy, a young poet named Giacomo Leopardi lent the genre a new whiff of literary integrity. Leopardi, who died young, was both brilliant and gloomy—at least one modern scholar has compared him to Kurt Cobain—but mostly, he was prolific. His Zibaldone di pensieri begins with a moonlit encounter with a barking dog, and launches into 2,000 pages of frustrations, insights, poetic fragments, and copied passages. After him, the zibaldone was no longer a stew. It had become, in the words of another high-minded hodgepodger, "a salad of many herbs."
Thomas Jefferson had two commonplace books—one for legal matters, and one for literary ones. This page from his literary book contains a painstaking copy of Homer's Odyssey. (Photo: Library of Congress/Manuscript Division)
This heady combination of usefulness and prestige meant that by the 19th century, pretty much every serious literary figure traveled with a notebook and pen specifically for zibaldoning. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau collaborated on a commonplace book, collecting and sharing poems they each admired. Oscar Wilde wrote down his own favorite aphorisms, and Lewis Carroll spent a lot of time sketching exacting labyrinths. H.P. Lovecraft's book is filled with germs of horror stories, abbreviated "Hor. Sto." and tucked among quotations from Hawthorne and the New York Times. ("Hand of dead man writes," reads one story in its entirety.)
Non-literary types weren't spared, though. At least one scholar has argued that Carl Linnaeus came up with his taxonomic system because he was so used to thinking like a hodgepodger. The commonplace book of William Byrd II, founder of Richmond, Virginia, is full of scripture, meal logs, and 18th-century sex tips, all of which have proved fruitful to modern scholars hoping for a glimpse at colonial American life. The British sailor Henry Tiffin shows up in zero history books, but filled his own book with 28 years' worth of sea shanties, ship notes, and gorgeous watercolors.
A page from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's commonplace book, kept from 1831 through 1841. (Photo: Archive.org/Public Domain)
Today, it's a rare layperson who keeps a notebook like Tiffin's. But it's also hard to find anyone who doesn't have some type of hodgepodge, whether in the form of a Twitter timeline, a Pinterest board, or an smartphone notepad. In fact, some media scholars argue that commonplace books and zibaldones were precursors to the Internet, which is similarly scrappy and mixed-up, rich in influences and perfectly willing to zig-zag between genres.
"It's sort of built into the web," says Deb Chachra, an assistant professor of materials scientist at Olin College. "Bookmarks were added to browsers very early, so there's always been a way to get these breadcrumbs in an online space."
Chachra does a lot of online record-keeping—"Pinboard is my commonplace book," she says—but she also has a decade's worth of physical zibaldones on her desk, which she uses to store stray thoughts, quotations, and ephemera. "It's the place that has the intellectual things that I'm going to come back to," she says She flips through her current one while on the phone and, again, a picture of a life emerges: a ticket for a colliery mine tour, a Margaret Atwood poem, stickers from the British Museum.
Two of Deb Chachra's zibaldones—a full 2015 one and an empty 2016 one—at the turn of the new year. (Photo: Deb Chachra)
Chachra mostly reads books on her Kindle, so after she finishes one, she'll write a squib about it in her zibaldone. That way, she can feel its continued presence somewhere, even if not on a shelf. She'll do the same for films and concerts. "Having physical mementos of experiences is not a new thing," she says, but in a world of cell phone photos and saved web histories, it's easy to forget that if we want to remember the offline parts of our lives, we'll have to do some of the legwork.
Plus, unlike so many modern tools, it doesn't even pretend to be about productivity. "It's not like budgeting," she says. "It's more like, what am I spending my life on? What are the things that I do and that I've done?"
All you need to start your own zibaldone or commonplace is a blank notebook, a pen, an open mind, and maybe a roll of tape. But if you'd like inspiration from those who came before, you might turn first to Erasmus of Rotterdam, a Dutch humanist committed to embracing the muchness of life. In his De Copia, from 1512, he lays out a rich trove of bookworthy discoveries.
"Whatever you come across," he writes, "you will be able to note down immediately... be it an anecdote or a fable or an illustrative example or a strange incident or a maxim or a witty remark or a remark notable for some other quality or a proverb or a metaphor or a simile." You can feel him savoring the possibilities, as though he's ogling a dessert buffet.
Giacomo Leopardi's Zibaldone di pensieri, on display at the National Library of Naples. (Photo: Carlo Raso/Public Domain)
These scribes' scribes also have practical tips. If you want a strictly thematic commonplace book, advises Erasmus, try preparing your topics ahead of time, so you know where to put everything you come across. (He suggests starting with "impiety" or "strange cults," but your mileage may vary.)
But organization is far less important than commitment. Virginia Woolf hammers this home in her 1917 essay "Hours in a Library," in which which she refers to "those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning"—emphasis on that last word. "Most of the pages are blank, it is true," she continues. "It suddenly stops in the month of June."
I considered copying down this quote, and filing it in my commonplace book under "pure cheek." But instead I wrote out one from Leopardi, still the form's truest advocate. "You learn about a hundred pages a day about how to live," he wrote in his own zibaldone, about halfway through adulthood. "But the book (this book) has 15 or 20 million pages." Time to start filling them in.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
When I recently wrote about airport stores, one of the most interesting (albeit minor) facets of the piece was the fact that airport travelers are generally considered a captive audience, making it easy for shops to jack up prices.
Airports, though, are amateur hour compared to the college textbook industry.
And, as students across the country return to school, this is probably the perfect time of year to ask: Was it always this way? The answer: no, and you can blame a big shift in the '70s.
Like graphing calculators, textbooks have a price that's artificially inflated based on its use case.
It wasn't always that way—at some point, the way textbooks were produced fell out of whack with the expectations of students. Priceonomics suggests that the major upward shift in prices for college textbooks occurred sometime in the 1970s, and since then hasn't stopped.
What happened in the '70s? Let's ask someone from the '70s: In a 1975 piece for the The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, journalist Phillip Whitten, who spent time running his own publishing firms, said that shifts in the uptake in textbooks, driven by a desire to standardize curriculum as well as to make things easier for students, led to a significant increase in the use of textbooks during this period.
But textbook companies of the era didn't have it easy. In his piece, Whitten crunched the numbers of a hypothetical textbook, one sold for $12.50 but generally offered to college stores at a wholesale price of $10. (In today's dollars, the book would have sold for $44.73 before markup by the bookstore—not a bad price, actually.)
In Whitten's example, the book sold 50,000 copies, netting half a million dollars in sales, but was offset by a variety of costs, including royalties, marketing, and manufacturing. Still though, the book made $79,000 in pre-tax profit, a solid 15.8 percent margin. But he noted that the game for publishers was generally not that easy, due to the existence of both fixed and variable costs.
"If Sociology in Modern World had sold 20,000 copies, we would have lost $75,000; had it sold 10,000 copies—and there are many texts that do not do even that well—our loss would have been greater than $126,000," Whitten wrote.
(How does that compare to the modern day? Priceonomics writer Zachary Crockett, who spent time working for a textbook publisher, breaks down the math similarly to Whitten, though these days, publishers tend to make $40 in pure profit on a $180 book—a 22 percent margin.)
Whitten closed out his essay noting that the publishing space had been getting increasingly competitive, and implied that only a few large publishers will survive.
Educational publishing, for the remainder of the 1970s, will not resemble at all the halcyon days of the late 1960s. In a time of economic retrenchment and static enrollments, only those publishers who can develop techniques to reduce their financial risk will survive; and only those publishers who can learn to produce quality books consistently, with the maximum innovative pedagogical features permitted by existing constraints, will prosper. It is a worthy challenge.
Instead, what happened was something different: College publishers figured out that, to improve their margins, all they had to do were two things: raise prices and release new editions of the same text, forcing students to buy new textbooks even if, in many cases, they didn't need them.
Another factor? Improved printing technology, which led to more visuals.
In the 1960s, for example, it was somewhat uncommon for a textbook to have much in the way of pictures. Some books, like Knopf's History of the Modern World, had just a handful of pictures in their nearly 1,000 pages.
But by the 1980s, this changed, a change that at first was seen as generally positive for students, according to a 1986 study done by Georgia State University researchers Brenda D. Smith and Joan M. Elifson. The duo noted the picture-free material tended to be comprehended just as well as material with pictures, but students preferred the more vibrant option.
"Student preference proved to be overwhelmingly in favor of pictures," the researchers wrote. "Of the 145 students, 119 chose the passage with pictures, while only 26 chose the passage without pictures."
Soon enough, if you were a textbook publisher, you couldn't get away with just two colors anymore, and the number of pictures in textbooks increased dramatically between the 1960s and 1980s, and, with that, of course, also costs.
And, perhaps surprisingly, the forces driving prices up have won out against some powerful forces driving them down, like the increase in paperback books and the rise of the used book trade.
In fact, it was 1933 when Princeton University, in the midst of the Great Depression, launched its Student Loan Library as part of an effort to help students struggling to make ends meet.
The library, made up of used books from students who had read them in prior semesters, represents one of the earliest examples of the used book trade in colleges, one that picked up a few years later, when New York University students launched a used bookstore—the result of an outcry after four students were arrested for "peddling without a license."
As for paperback books, college professors were more supportive of them for literature than their K-12 peers.
"Many teachers and college administrators report that paperbacks have had a noticeable effect upon the reading habits of students," New York Times scribe Edward A. Walsh wrote in 1960. "The world of books suddenly appears more inviting. Students crowd bookstores to buy required volumes, stay to browse among the tastefully designed offerings and come away with several additional purchases whose colorful appeal they could not resist."
Both of these factors helped, but only so much—as anyone enrolled in a university can tell you.
Last year, two separate incidents occurred that raised the ire of textbook critics. In some ways, they kind of dovetail into one another.
The good professor, punished: Last October, Alain Bourget, an associate math professor at the California State University at Fullerton, received a formal reprimand after choosing not to give his students the $180 textbook recommended to him by the school, instead offering a cheaper $80 option, supplemented by online offerings. The school said this broke the rules, because he veered from the book every other introductory linear algebra course was using at the school. He fought the reprimand, but failed. (His hometown paper treated him like a hero.)
The economist who's made bank from a single book: Harvard University Economist Gregory Mankiw was raked over the coals by The Oregonian last year for the high cost of his tome Principles of Economics, an introductory book that sells on Amazon for $333.35 and can be rented on Chegg for $49.99. The absurdity of Mankiw's book, which exemplifies many of the economic disparities covered in the book, was further highlighted by writer Richard Read's story. When asked if he'd ever write an open-source textbook, Mankiw had this to say: "Let me fix that for you: Would you keep doing your job if you stopped being paid? Why or why not?" A fair point—until you realize that Mankiw has, by some estimates, made $42 million in royalties from this book alone.
What's fascinating about the second example is that the professor that brought the book to Reed's attention, Mike Paruszkiewicz, notes that he assigns the book reluctantly, though he admits that he wouldn't if it wasn't easy to rent it out or acquire prior versions for cheap.
But it's worth asking—if professors know these textbooks are absurdly expensive, why assign them? Well, the answer involves a couple of factors, basically: Many professors simply don't know the prices of the textbooks, and, far less frequently, sometimes the professors themselves wrote the book. (The American Association of University Professors, while not opposing it entirely, discourages this practice.)
The former case is generally more common than the latter—with the Daily Texan noting earlier this year a case of a German book increasing in price from $90 to $200, catching both the professor and students off-guard. Though this, too, highlights a another factor: a limited number of options, as five major publishers control 85 percent of the market.
When I was in college, I remember feeling like a genius because I spent a lot of time looking around Amazon and eBay, finding copies of the textbooks I needed, sometimes for ten cents on the dollar. It felt good to get one over on the man as I ate my Life cereal with rice milk.
My eBay victories came during the brief window after the launch of Napster, which introduced a lot of students to the power of the ethernet pipes in their dorms, but before the launch of the last big innovation in textbooks—the rental marketplace Chegg.
But will textbooks ever move to the Napster model? Probably. In fact, it's already happening.
OpenStax, a nonprofit project of Rice University, has been working to both release open-source textbooks and to tailor-make books for professors that can be sold at college stores for much lower costs.
Community colleges, whose students feel the pain of textbook costs more acutely than students at larger schools, have been quick to jump on the open education resource model, which is spreading more and more.
“The educational materials and publishing industry in five to 10 years will be completely remade," OpenStax's Richard Baraniuk told University Business in 2014, "just as the music industry, the newspaper industry and the computer software industry were completely remade by the internet."
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
A young piabeiro (aquarium fisherman) heads out to collect Cardinal Tetras using a simple hand net. (All photos: Mike Tuccinardi)
Deep in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, the tiny city of Barcelos stands as a slowly crumbling monument to the country’s colonial past and centuries of hard-fought struggle against the encroaching jungle. Two days by boat from Manaus, the nearest big city, Barcelos lies along the banks of the Rio Negro, one of the Amazon’s largest tributaries.
But what sets this city apart from countless other small jungle outposts in the Amazon basin is that Barcelos has, for the past 50 years or more, been the epicenter of a unique trade—harvesting millions of colorful tropical fish destined not for the local food markets but for home aquariums the world over.
Barcelos’ waterfront—the city can only be reached by boat or sporadic flights from Manaus.
Barcelos, with a population of around 30,000 people, is close to the geographic center of the Amazon, and like many other cities in the region it has a long and bloody history. Originally a settlement of Manaus Indians, it became part of the Portuguese push into the interior of Brazil in the 18th century, when it was established as the capital city of what would become the state of Amazonas.
It remained a quiet colonial outpost until the late 1800s, when global interest in the jungle’s native rubber trees turned Barcelos into a center of the “rubber boom,” during which vast fortunes were made off the suffering and enslavement of millions in the Amazon Basin, as businesses in the rapidly industrializing U.S. and Europe clamored for the sticky latex of the rubber tree.
The city has weathered many hardships in its nearly 300-year history, but the decline of the aquarium fish trade has both locals and outside observers worried for its future.
The city today still retains traces of this past, but faded 19th-century buildings have given way to generic concrete storefronts and municipal buildings along the few dusty blocks that qualify as Barcelos’ “downtown.” After the Amazonian rubber trade—which was based on tapping wild rubber trees within the forest—collapsed due to competition from more efficient plantations in Asia, Barcelos sank into quiet recession, and became a backwater once again.
It was only the discovery of a brightly colored fish in 1956 that gave the town its second—and much more benign—boom, and Barcelos once again found itself a transit hub for a valuable commodity.
Freshly-collected Cardinal Tetras in the region’s characteristic “black” water. These fish will likely end up in pet shops and home aquariums in Europe or the US.
This fish—the cardinal tetra, known to scientists as Paracheirodon axelrodi—is a small, beautiful schooling species with a deep red body adorned with a fluorescent blue stripe. Among the most colorful of all freshwater species, cardinals are some of the most popular fish sold for home aquariums, for which they make ideal residents. For decades, nearly all the cardinal tetras in aquariums around the world would have first passed through Barcelos en route to being shipped, by air cargo, to importers in the U.S., Europe, or Japan.
The discovery and subsequent popularity of the cardinal tetra led to the development of a major industry in Barcelos during the 1960s and ‘70s. Thousands of families in the city and municipality of Barcelos were employed in collecting these fish, a task that evolved into a bona fide occupation in the region; the fishermen and women who specialize in catching tiny aquarium fish became known as piabeiros.
A bicycle-mounted fish seller makes a sale. Live fish for aquariums are generally worth much more than food fish on the local market.
In town, several families are employed as patrons, who front fuel and supplies to fishing families further upriver, and arrange transport and sale of their live haul, in a variation of the elaborate aviamento trade system originally used by rubber traders over 100 years earlier.
Just across the river from the city’s main street, several small transfer stations hold fish in plastic trays, consolidating the fish from dozens of fishing villages before shipping them by ferry to Manaus, a remote metropolis 250 miles down the Rio Negro, so named for its acidic “black” waters. Barcelos relies heavily on this trade, with some researchers estimating that 60 percent of cash incomes in the region derive from tropical fish collecting, sale, and transport.
‘Hotel Ornamental’, one of only a few lodgings in town, is owned by a retired aquarium fish trader.
The impact of this trade can be felt and seen almost everywhere in Barcelos. In the main square, overlooking the river, a statue of Christ, arms outstretched, is adorned with painted cardinal tetras and discus, another popular aquarium fish. The Hotel Ornamental, one of the few small hotels in town, alludes to the “ornamental” fish business (another name for aquarium fish) and is owned by a retired fish trader.
Barcelos’ ornamental fish festival is held each year to celebrate the importance of the aquarium fish trade. Two teams, representing Cardinal Tetras and Discus (another popular species) compete for the crown with elaborate dances.
But the most tangible effect this trade has had on the city is undoubtedly the raucous annual festival held in honor of—what else—aquarium fish. This carnival-style festival, complete with hours-long choreographed dance competitions and elaborate floats, is the cultural event of the year in Barcelos, with people from outlying communities flocking to the city for the days-long party.
A statue of Christ in the town’s main square atop an image of Barcelos’ main commodity—tropical fish.
By the 1990s, 10 million or more cardinal tetras were being exported annually from Manaus, most having come through Barcelos on their way to tropical fish distributors, neighborhood pet shops, and, ultimately, home aquariums. Despite these seemingly alarming figures, ongoing research indicates that the area’s trade in tetras has had a minimal impact overall on populations of the fish due to their unique reproductive cycle. Each year, as the Amazon basin floods, mature cardinal tetras produce huge numbers of offspring which grow quickly in the food-rich environment of the flooded forests.
As the floodwaters recede, only a small portion of these tetras will make their way back to the main river channel—most are destined to die as they get caught in drying swamps and puddles. The Piabeiros, who can only effectively collect fish during the dry season, harvest from these remnant populations, which would otherwise be doomed to die from lack of oxygen or predation from birds.
Barcelos continues to serve as a transport hub linking remote villages upriver to the city of Manaus.
The trade is “not only sustainable, but results in a net benefit for both the people of the region and the environment,” says Scott Dowd, Senior Aquarist at New England Aquarium and Executive Director of Project Piaba, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing the sustainability of the Amazonian fish trade. (This reporter has also volunteered with Project Piaba).
Because of the economic opportunity the fishery provides, locals are less likely to resort to destructive practices like slash-and-burn agriculture, illegal logging, or gold mining—issues which plague many other areas of the Amazon today. The cash income provided by collecting these tropical fish also provides a strong incentive for fishers to protect the pristine rivers and forests which they rely on for their livelihoods— “a very effective driver of environmental protection,” Dowd explains.
Just across the river from Barcelos, small transfer stations hold thousands of Cardinal Tetras in these net pens before they are sent to exporters in Manaus.
Sadly, the future of this fishery—and the city which relies on it so heavily—is anything but certain. In an uncanny echo of the collapse of the rubber trade, the Barcelos aquarium fishery is in steep decline due to competition from farm-raised cardinal tetras produced in Asia.
Many fishers have already been forced to find other sources of income locally (a difficult prospect) or have migrated towards Manaus in hopes of finding work. A recent spike in sport fishing tourism based in Barcelos also failed to live up to its vaunted potential for the city, as few full-time jobs materialized and several companies have gone under after an initial frenzy of construction and hiring.
The city’s small main street goes quiet during the mid-day heat.
In spite of these challenges, hope remains for the city’s future. Although “all possible efforts are being made to preserve the fishery from the threat of collapse,” says Dowd, it is unclear whether Barcelos’ ties to the aquarium trade will remain a central fact of life for the locals for years to come, or whether the colorful fish paintings dotting the town will fade away, much like the crumbling monuments to Portuguese rule and the rubber trade already have.
The older fishers worry, of course, about the fate of their children, but maintain a cautious hope that their longtime source of livelihood—the colorful piabas of the Rio Negro—will continue to sustain them. Like the annual rise and fall of the Amazon, life along the river has always ebbed and flowed, and the people of Barcelos have weathered booms and busts, privation and hard times.
Hershey products from Pennsylvania are among the sweets stashed in the candy desk. (Photo: Bev Sykes/CC BY 2.0)
Here's an unusually sweet political secret: one of 100 desks in the U.S. Senate chamber has a drawer full of communal candy.
The "candy desk" has been a proud political tradition since 1965, when California senator and former Hollywood song-and-dance man George Murphy began keeping sweet treats in his Senate desk drawer. Murphy shared his candy stash with any senator willing to stop by his back-row spot on the Republican side of the chamber.
Murphy departed the Senate in 1971, but his candy desk lives on. Conveniently located right next to the Senate's eastern entrance, the desk is currently occupied by Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey, who accepted the title of candy desk custodian in January 2015.
His pun-laden press release referred to the “Mounds of responsibility” involved in candy desk duty and assured he “campaigned for this assignment on the platform of life, liberty and the pursuit of Peeps.”
The candy desk's multicolored offerings. (Photo: Public Domain)
When senators take over the candy desk, they use it as an opportunity to promote sweets from their home state. Toomey has thus far stashed the drawer with the pride of Pennsylvania—Hersheys bars and kisses, along with Hot Tamales, Twizzlers, and Three Musketeers bars.
The previous custodian, Senator Mark Kirk from Illinois, supplied Milky Way bars, Jelly Belly beans, and Snickers chocolate, all donated from suppliers in his state.
Other former keepers of the candy desk include presidential hopefuls John McCain and Rick Santorum, whom the Pittsburgh Post-Gazettedescribed as a "prolific candy distributor." When Santorum left the Senate in 2007, Craig Thomas, a Republican from Wyoming, inherited the special desk.
The location of Mark Kirk's candy desk is highlighted in yellow. (Photo: Public Domain)
As the Wall Street Journalreported at the time, this caused a bit of trouble—Wyoming is not exactly known for its high-volume candy production, and Thomas had to compete with the outgoing Santorum's Pennsylvania-sourced snacks. Wyoming-made "moose doodles"—chocolate-covered almonds shaped like deer droppings—were the suggested star product.
Though the candy desk has always been located on the Republican side of the chamber, Democrats are welcome to cross party lines when those 3 p.m. snack cravings hit. Yet talk has emerged in recent years of another candy desk having been established on the Dems' side. Last year the Post-Gazettereported that Democratic senators had been slipping cash to West Virginia senator Jay Rockefeller, who made bulk candy purchases on their behalf. Rockefeller, however, departed the Senate in 2015.
With him gone, the official candy desk on the Republican side is now the main option for snack-seeking Democrats in the chamber, a sweet and rare symbol of bipartisanship.
Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com
Roald Dahl's book Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was brought to life in 1971. Chocolate rivers, candy-laden trees and edible tea cups; the film made a child's imagination explode with excitement. Willy Wonka, the eccentric and beguiling man in charge of the factory and candy laboratory epitomized the magical world in which the audience was immersed.
Gene Wilder, the actor who played Wonka, sadly died this week in his Connecticut home, aged 83. Wilder was synonymous for his expert renditions of manic behavior on stage and on screen. The mysterious, and at times unnerving, Willy Wonka contains tell-tale Wilder traits. It was a memorable performance.
This video provides a behind-the-scenes look at the 1971 film set. We see Wilder in discussion with Roald Dahl, the man who wrote the original children's book. The video takes us through some classic scenes; a candy toadstool perched on the bank of a chocolate river and Oompa Loompas turn a wheel. Harper Goff, seen throughout, designed the enchanting set.
We're treated to more gems from the film as Charlie and Grandpa Joe float around bubbles, giant chocolate bars are wielded around by the small orange workforce, and other zany contraptions appear, with the voice of Wilder loud in the background.
Among his many accomplishments, Wilder will perhaps be most fondly remembered for singing "Pure Imagination," the bewitching song that felt like a ubiquitous presence during the film. It's an apt way to finish the video, too, as Wonka takes a bite from a tea cup.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Emailella@atlasobscura.com.
As it turns out, the Great Barrier Reef, might not be the only great thing sitting in that portion of the ocean. According to Smithsonian and other outlets, a newly-mapped reef also lies in the waters near the famous Great Barrier Reef. But it isn’t made of coral.
The existence of this reef has been known about for decades, but, up until recently, its exact scope and scale has never been truly known. But with the use of new laser mapping technology, the natural formations have become much more clear, and appear to be much grander than previously imagined.
What's been hiding beneath the Great Barrier Reef? A deeper, massive reef. https://t.co/4MV6FQtZgq
Just beyond the Great Barrier Reef, it turns out, there are huge swaths of doughnut-shaped mounds known as bioherms, that cover over 2,000 miles of deep-sea real estate. The mounds are formed from algae which become flakes of limestone when they die, piling up on each other and creating new geologic structures. These structures easily overshadow the nearby coral reefs in terms of size, and are three times larger than researchers even estimated.
While the scale of the newfound reef is impressive in its own right, scientists are also hoping that by studying the bioherms they can gain more insight into the ecosystem surrounding the endangered Great Barrier Reef.
A mushroom cloud forms after a nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the western Pacific Ocean in 1954. (Photo: Public domain)
If humans weren't trying to consciously destroy the Earth, you wouldn't really know it. The dawn of the Industrial Age in the late 18th century brought with it the mass use of fossil fuels, laying the seeds for climate change; in the 1940s, we invented nuclear bombs, exploding over 2,000 in the ensuing years, laying the seeds for the current situation, where we sit a mistake or two away from global nuclear apocalypse.
It's not great, in other words. But scientists are now saying that we may have done something else with all that fission and fossil-fuel burning: created a new human epoch. The current epoch, the Holocene, began around 12,000 years ago, when the most recent ice age ended and the Earth's climate stabilized into what it is today: a livable—in many places temperate—place to expand the human race.
But climate change and radioactive elements scattered across the Earth are now threatening all that, or at least, scientists say, changing the planet permanently. On Monday, the Working Group on the Anthropocene, a group of geologists, told the International Geological Congress that the epoch—which began around 1950—should be declared, according to the Guardian.
The recommendation was the result of nearly a decade of research, though should the Anthropocene epoch become official, it will probably take at least a few more years of research and debate. Monday's recommendation was the first of many steps, since changes to the geological time scale, quite like time itself, can take awhile.
“One criticism of the Anthropocene as geology is that it is very short,” Jan Zalasiewicz, the chair of the WGA told the Guardian. “Our response is that many of the changes are irreversible.”
Concerned citizens have been abuzz about a recent rash of clown sightings in the woods outside the Fleetwood Manor apartment complex in Greenville, South Carolina. But just as it seemed things were starting to cool off, even more clowns have appeared outside nearby apartment complexes, the Associated Press reports.
As BuzzFeed News tells it, the first reported sighting was on August 20th, when an anonymous caller complained about a few clowns in the woods. The next day, resident Donna Arnold phoned in a report citing "several clowns in the woods flashing green laser lights," who soon fled. Her son had seen "ten at one time," Arnold told BuzzFeed. "It's getting a little ridiculous."
Police investigated the reports, but found nothing. ("Every time we have gone out there we have not seen any clowns," the county's Master Deputy, Drew Pinciaro, told People.) Last Wednesday, Fleetwood Manor Apartments issued a letter to residents acknowledging complaints "regarding a clown or a person dressed in clown clothing taking children or trying to lure children in the woods," along with some safety tips:
In a just world, that would have been the end of things. But last night, more clowns were reported, AP says. A kid saw one outside Emerald Commons, another apartment complex about 20 minutes from Fleetwood Manor. Another pair was sighted by a 12-year-old resident outside Shemwood Apartments, also nearby.
Police responded to both calls, but once again came up clown-free.
In the past, when clowns have appeared seemingly unbidden, it has often turned out to be a marketing trick. Gags the Green Bay Clown, who became famous in early August for his black balloons and shuffling walk, was quickly revealed to be a shill for an upcoming Wisconsin-based clown movie. With a remake of Stephen King's It in the works—as well as god knows how many lesser-known clown films—these creepsters could be doing the same thing.
On the other hand, clowns sometimes just show up, and we can't know how or why. Maybe it's because we keep writing about them.
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.
When one reads a physics paper in an esteemed journal, one does not generally wonder if it was written by a cat. But such was the case for an article in the 1970s credited to co-author F.D.C. Willard—the Cat Who Published.
Jack H. Hetherington was a professor of physics at Michigan State University in 1975, when he finished what would become an influential and often-cited physics paper. The academic writing, entitled, Two-, Three-, and Four-Atom Exchange Effects in bcc 3He, was an in-depth exploration of atomic behavior at different temperatures. It would have flown over the heads of most lay people, not to mention cats.
He was all set to send it to Physical Review Letters, which today describes itself as “the world’s premier physics letter journal.” However, before he dispatched it, Hetherington gave the paper to a colleague to get one one last set of eyes on the piece. This is when he ran into a strange problem. Hetherington had used the royal "we" throughout the paper. As his colleague pointed out, Physical Review Letters generally only published papers using plural pronouns and adjectives like “we” and “our” if the paper had multiple authors.
Now I Know points outthat in 1975, Hetherington couldn’t have simply done a find-and-replace to correct the offending articles. In fact the whole paper had been produced on a typewriter.
In the 1982 book More Random Walks in Science, Hetherington gave other reasons for not wanting to add another human authors, including the fact that the compensation for a published piece is changed with each additional author, that a scientific writer’s reputation is tied up in what they publish, and that prestige can take a hit when multiple authors are involved.
F.D.C. Willard was a Siamese cat just like this one. (Photo: rehaji/Public Domain)
Hetherington wrote that after giving the issue “an evening’s thought,” he decided the paper was so good that it required rapid publishing. Unwilling to go back and replace the plural voice in the document, he did the next best thing and just added a second author: his Siamese cat, Chester. Of course just listing “Chester” as a co-author probably wouldn’t fly, so he invented the name F.D.C. Willard. The “F.D.C.” stood for “Felix Domesticus, Chester." Willard had been the name of Chester’s father.
Portraying F.D.C. Willard as one of his colleagues at Michigan State, Hetherington submitted his paper, and it was published in issue 35 of Physical Review Letters.
Hetherington didn’t feel too bad about the deception, recognizing the possible publicity value of such a stunt. In More Random Walks in Science, he wrote: “Why would I do such an irreverent thing? ... If it eventually proved to be correct, people would remember the paper more if the anomalous authorship were known. In any case I went ahead and did it and have generally not been sorry.”
After the paper was published, it didn’t take long for Willard’s true identity to come to light. The first time anyone outside of Hetherington’s close colleagues learned of the cat scientist was when a visitor to the college came looking for the authors. Hetherington was away. As quoted in a piece on Today I Found Out, Hetherington said, “Everyone laughed and soon the cat was out of the bag.”
After that casual reveal, Hetherington leaned into the joke and even issued a handful of article reprints signed by both authors. His was a standard signature, while Willard's was a pawprint. Clearly, Hetherington wasn’t too worried about how the community would take to his kitty co-author. He even began describing Chester/Willard as the university’s “Rodentia Predation Consultant.”
University officials seemed to love the idea of the cat as a sort of physics mascot. In 1975, the college's Physics Chairman, Truman Woodruff, even wrote a letter to Hetherington, asking him if he could persuade Willard to join the department full time. The letter read, in part, “Can you imagine the universal jubilation if in fact Willard could be persuaded to join us, even if only as a Visiting Distinguished Professor?”
According to Hetherington, the only people who didn’t think the joke was very funny were editors.
Willard went on to publish another paper in 1980, this time being credited as the sole author (assumedly Hetherington helped out a little, too). This paper, written completely in French, was published in the popular science magazine, La Recherche. While it didn’t hold the prestige or exciting surprise as his first published piece, who knew the cat spoke French?
Willard’s short but sweet publishing career did have a lasting effect on cat-authored physics papers. Inspired by the kitty's contributions to physics, the American Physical Society declared in 2014 that all cat-authored papers would now be available as open-access documents. The date of this declaration? April 1.
