Bike lanes are pretty clearly not parking spaces, but, as any city cyclist knows, cars and trucks still insist on parking in them. In New York City, cyclists have become aggrieved enough about cars in bike lanes that in September activists launched a name-and-shame, crowd-sourced map of offending vehicles. It turns out, though, that this persistent misbehavior hasn't just been around for a few years, but for more than a century.
In the 1890s, New York City started laying asphalt down on city streets, in large part because of lobbying from cyclists. Sometimes whole stretches of road would be paved, but sometimes the city would lay down asphalt strips specifically for cyclists to use. Right away, other vehicles started blocking them.
As The Bicycling Worldwrote in 1897, "it would seem as if an asphalt strip a few feet in width would fulfill every requirement of the cyclist, but it does not; and the reason why may be summed up in one word—'wagons.'"
But it wasn't just wagons. It was carts, trucks, carriages, and other vehicles, too. By 1899, one city councilman was pressing his colleagues to pass a law that would fine these bike-lane blockers, as the journal Public Improvements reported:
That $10 fine would be the equivalent of hundreds of dollars today, although the journal doesn't report if the law actually passed. If it did, it had disappeared a century later, when in the 1990s, the New York City Council was again considering a fine for blocking a bike lane. In 2016 it is illegal to park in a bike lane in New York City; the fine now is $115. Perhaps after a century of trying to chase other vehicles out of bike lanes, it's time for a new strategy—prioritizing protected bike lanes, for example—or a steeper fine.
It's that time of the month. Yesterday morning, those making their way to work and school in Zurich were greeted by a strange sight—the fountains decorating their commute had been dyed a bloody red.
A group called "Aktivistin.ch" filled thirteen city fountains with red food coloring between 5:30 and 6:30 yesterday morning, the Local reports. They did it to raise awareness of issues surrounding menstruation—and secondarily, presumably, because it's fun to dump food coloring in fountains.
When asked about the protest, spokeswoman Carmen Schoder cited the "tampon tax"—while most daily-use items are taxed at 2.5% in Switzerland, menstrual products are subject to the 8% tax usually applied to "luxury items." The same is true in many countries, and similar protests have proliferated in recent years—although very little has changed legislatively as a result.
But she also spoke about society's generally squeamish attitude towards Aunt Flo, and how it harms individuals. “Many people still see menstruation as something shameful,” she said. Protesters propped up encouraging signs alongside the fountains: "#happytobleed" and "if you bleed and you know it CLAP YOUR HANDS!!!"
Although fountains can't clap, they seemed fairly enthusiastic about their new condition, spraying jauntily as ever, mist tinted pink in the morning sun.
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.
From Texas to Connecticut, sightings of strange clowns are on the rise, and accordingly, police officers are now in a position to have to deal with them. The clown epidemic has also hit Utah, and in the wake of a series of online threats posted by some self-identified clowns, some people are getting scared.
Luckily the police officials in the city of Orem, Utah are keeping a level head about It all, and would prefer if citizens did too. In a recent Facebook post, the department addressed the issue in a statement that begins, “Here's seven words we never thought we'd be saying.....’Let's have a serious talk about clowns.’”
From there they go on to remind concerned citizens that while they will show up if someone reports seeing a suspicious clown in the area, there is really not much they can do if the bozo isn’t breaking any laws. It isn’t illegal to dress up like a spooky circus freak.
However, they also don’t rule out that they COULD shoot a suspicious clown, but they just say that it’s complicated.
“‘Can I shoot or take action against someone that is dressed up like a clown?’ That's not a simple yes or no question. It has a lot of variables to it,” the statement says. They also link to the Utah laws regarding use of force against another person, in case anyone is still having trouble deciding whether they should enact some vigilante justice against clowns.
Whether you think the creepy clown fad is hilarious, unsettling, or just dumb, the use of force against them is not recommended. If you find them suspicious, just call the cops. “This goes for when you see, Joe Citizen in a dark parking lot or someone dressed up like a Clown.”
The Japanese climate is not exactly conducive to mummification. There are no peat bogs, no arid deserts, and no alpine peaks perennially encased in ice. The summers are hot and humid. Yet somehow a group of Buddhist monks from the Shingon sect discovered a way to mummify themselves through rigorous ascetic training in the shadow of a particularly sacred peak in the mountainous northern prefecture of Yamagata.
Between 1081 and 1903, at least 17 monks managed to mummify themselves. The number may well be higher, however, as it is likely some mummies were never recovered from the alpine tombs.
These monks undertook such a practice in emulation of a ninth-century monk named Kūkai, known posthumously as Kōbō Daishi, who founded the esoteric Shingon school of Buddhism in 806. In the 11th century a hagiography of Kūkai appeared claiming that, upon his death in 835, the monk did not die at all, but crawled into his tomb and entered nyūjō, a state of meditation so profound that it induces suspended animation. According to this hagiography, Kūkai plans to emerge in approximately 5.67 million years to usher a predetermined number of souls into nirvana.
The first recorded attempt at becoming a sokushinbutsu, or “a Buddha in this very body,” through the act of self-mummification took place in the late 11th century. In 1081, a man named Shōjin attempted to follow Kūkai into nyūjō by burying himself alive. He, too, was hoping to come back in a far distant future for the good of mankind, but when Shōjin’s disciples went to retrieve his body, rot had set in. It would take nearly two more centuries of trial and error before someone figured out how to mummify himself and, they believed, cheat death to enter a state of eternal meditation.
The process of self-mummification is long and arduous, taking at minimum three years of preparation before death. Central to this preparation is a diet called mokujikigyō, literally “tree-eating training.” This diet can be traced through Shugendō to the Taoist practice of abstention from cultivated grains.
For a thousand days, the mokujikigyō diet limits practitioners to only what can be foraged on the mountain, namely nuts, buds, and roots from trees. Some sources also report that berries may have entered the diet, as well as tree bark and pine needles. Time not spent foraging for food was passed in meditation on the mountain.
From a spiritual perspective, this regimen was intended to toughen the spirit and distance oneself from the common human world. From a biological point of view, the severe diet rid the body of fat, muscle, and moisture while also withholding nutrients from the body’s natural biosphere of bacteria and parasites. The cumulative effect was to arrest decomposition after death.
At the completion of a thousand-day cycle on this diet, practitioners were considered spiritually ready to enter nyūjō. However, most monks completed two or even three cycles to fully prepare themselves. After the final cycle, the devout would cut out all food, drink a limited amount of salinized water for a hundred days, and otherwise meditate upon the salvation of mankind while waiting to die.
Many believe that some adherents at this stage drank tea made from Toxicodendron verniculum tree bark. A kind of sumac, the Japanese lacquer tree is called such because it is used to make traditional Japanese lacquer, urushi. Its bark contains the same toxic compound that makes poison ivy so poisonous. If ingested by these monks, urushi tea would have both hastened death and made the body even less hospitable to the bacteria and parasites that aid in decomposition.
When the devout felt death approaching, his disciples would lower him into a pine box at the bottom of pit three meters deep in a predetermined spot. They would then pack charcoal around the box, insert a bamboo airway through the lid, and bury their master alive. Sitting in total darkness, the monk would meditate and regularly ring a bell to signal that he was still alive. When the ringing ceased, the disciples would open the tomb to confirm their master’s death, remove the bamboo airway, and seal the tomb.
A thousand days later, the monk would be disinterred and inspected for signs of decay. If any such signs were found, the body would be exorcised and reinterred with little fanfare. If not, the body was determined to be a true sokushinbutsu and enshrined.
The last person to become a sokushinbutsu did so illegally. A monk named Bukkai died in 1903, more than three decades after the ritual act was criminalized during the Meiji Restoration because the new government deemed it barbaric and backwards.
By then Japan had entered the modern age, and most people considered Bukkai more madman than sage. His remains were not disinterred until 1961 by a team of researchers from Tohoku University, who were amazed by Bukkai’s pristine condition. Though he entered nyūjō in Yamagata, his remains now rest in Kanzeonji in neighboring Niigata Prefecture. There are 16 extant sokushibutsu in Japan, 13 of which are preserved in the Tohoku region. Seven of the eight found in Yamagata remain in the vicinity of Mt. Yudono, making it the ideal place for a pilgrimage.
The oldest and best preserved of these mummified monks can be found at Dainichibō, mentioned above. His name is Shinnyokai, and he entered nyūjō in 1783 at the age of 96. Like all the others, he sits in the lotus position behind glass in a box on small shrine within the temple that looks after him. His skin is an ashen grey, pulled taught over the bones of his hands, wrists, and face. His mouth is stretched into an eternal jackal’s grin, his face turned towards his lap.
Shinnyokai’s elaborate robes are ritually changed every six years, twice as often as all the other sokushinbutsu. The old robes are cut into small squares and placed inside padded silk pouches that can be purchased for ¥1,000 as protective amulets. Testimonials sent in by people swearing by these talismans’ miraculous effects are plastered around the base of Shinnyokai’s shrine.
Another sokushinbutsu, Tetsumonkai, resides at nearby Churenji, also mentioned above. Tetsumonkai entered nyūjō in 1829 at the age of 71, and of all the sokushinbutsu, his life is perhaps the best documented. Tetsumonkai was a commoner who killed a samurai and ran away to join the priesthood, an act that allowed him full legal protection. Later, Tetsumonkai visited the capital city Edo, present-day Tokyo. There he heard about an ophthalmic disease afflicting the city and gouged out his own left eye as an act of merit that might counteract the malady. Incredibly, Tetsumonkai is one of several sokushinbutsu to auto-enucleate—remove one’s own eye—as a charitable act.
Samantabhadra, one of the 13 Buddhas of Shingon Buddhism. (Photo: PHGCOM/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Tetsumonkai once served as head priest at Honmyōji, a short drive from where his remains are now kept. Here he was charged with looking after another sokushinbutsu, Honmyōkai, the oldest self-mummified monk in Yamagata. The samurai-turned-priest Honmyōkai spent a mindboggling 20 years in ascetic training until May 8, 1681, when his disciples lowered him, delirious with hunger, into a pit behind the temple and buried him alive. A massive, moss-covered stone epitaph marks the site where Honmyōkai entered nyūjō amid a grove of pine trees only a few dozen meters beyond the hall where his remains are now displayed.
These three sokushinbutsu are by far the closest to Mt. Yudono and the sites of their respective training. Dainichibō and Churenji are accustomed to tourists, and on weekends visitors are likely to encounter gaggles of retirees being ushered on and off the air-conditioned coaches that stop by these temples on their way to or from Mt. Yudono. The ¥500 admission Dainichibō and Churenji each charge, along with sales from protective amulets and other trinkets, keep the temple doors open and their history alive. Honmyōji charges no admission and receives fewer guests, but they’re still happy to show off their wish-granting mummy. The temples are happy with the attention and even went so far as to issue a sokushinbutsu stamp card in 2015, along with Nangakuji in the nearby city of Tsuruoka, to encourage visitors to stop by all four temples.
Nangakuji houses Tetsuryūkai, who was mummified in 1878, a decade after the practice was made illegal. Tetsuryūkai died of illness before he could complete his training and so is not technically a sokushinbutsu. His body is artificially treated in order to better preserve it, and the relatively simple shrine surrounding his remains offer the closest look one can get of a mummified monk in Yamagata. Tetsuryūkai’s failure to properly enter nyūjō is written all over his face, the skin of which is peeling away from his nasal cavity.
Kaikōji houses two sokushinbutsu. Chūkai, who died in 1755, and his former disciple, Enmyōkai, who died in 1822, now sit side by side in eternal meditation. Despite their difference in age you’d think they were brothers. They have the same taut, glossy and blackened skin, as well as the same bony hands, sunken eyes, and gaping toothy mouths.
Un Regard Moderne in Paris. (All illustrations by Bob Eckstein)
For the past two years I have been looking for and illustrating the world’s greatest bookstores, for my latest book. My selections were based on their local contributions, their history and their beauty and uniqueness. I collected the stores’ best stories from the owners, employees, customers and some of today’s great artists and thinkers.
The list started with 150 bookshops comprised of recommendations, research and personal experience and was ultimately trimmed in half. While finding the top 75 was a difficult, yet interesting, task, the following four bookstores were—quite literally—the hardest to find.
Un Regard Moderne
Paris, France
“It's extremely easy to walk past it. Even now, knowing exactly where to find it, I don't ‘see’ it unless I'm really, really looking for it. It's almost like it appears magically in the wall,” Jenny Hart, an artist, designer, and author, said of Paris’ Un Regard Moderne. “The last time I stepped in was 2007 and there was only room for one person in the passages. My work had gained a lot of attention by that time and Juxtapoz had done a nice feature on me and there was a copy of the magazine right on one of the stacks. For me, this was something I never could have imagined! It was like a personal dream come true to be inside this bookstore in that way. It’s like a holy site and you feel anointed.”
Un Regard Moderne houses thousands of volumes–mostly art and pop culture–and it’s affectionately considered by many to be the greatest bookstore on earth. Customers have ranged from William S. Burroughs to Sonic Youth.
I asked my cousin, Allen Stone, to speak with the notorious owner because he’s a writer and could speak French. “It was the strangest place I’ve ever been in. The front of the shop is non-descript. All you see in the window are stacks of books to the ceiling. You don’t see it until there it is. The joint is packed, not much room to move around in and unless you've been there before, you'd never know where or how to look for things. When I spoke to the famous owner, Jacques Noel, and started to explain about your book, he immediately went ice cold and said ‘Je n'existe plus’ (‘I'm no longer here’). Why he no longer existed, I do not know,”’ Stone said.
Word on the Water
London, England
It took awhile to find this bookstore, as I was given the very general address of Regent’s Canal which snakes along quite a ways. It’s not even seen when you are in the vicinity as the canal is below street-level and accessed by descending stairs. Once strolling along the canal, one looks for the modest signage for Word on the Water, London’s only floating secondhand bookshop, among all the beautiful boats.
The 100 year-old Dutch book barge hosts poetry slams, book readings, and live music events on the roof stage on top of the boat. Stephen Fry and Russell Brand, among many others, are some of the many who have been on board.
The ship’s Captain, Jon Privett, explained to me how Word on the Water was elusive to him as well: “Back in 2002, I was evicted from my squat in Hackney, which was auctioned and the buyer had to pay us to leave. I used my share on a boat; I was homeless if I didn’t. It was an old 1950s Norfolk Broads cruiser, half-sunk, which took a lot of looking after and then literally fell apart one night. It actually split in two. So I bought an ex-police boat (by borrowing some money off my mum) that I kept for seven years, during which time I acquired this one. I planned the Word on the Water business with my friend Paddy: seeing this boat for sale, but not able to afford it, we asked the seller if we could rent it, showed him our business plan, and then he turned around and said he’d sell us the boat for a share. So we own a third each. We started out moving every couple of weeks, but it’s impractical to do it with a boat which is a hundred years old…The Canal & River Trust keep writing to ask us to leave, and we keep ignoring them. We’ve even given them a petition of 5000 names – and yet they still don’t acknowledge us. It’s shockingly expensive to live on a boat in London but still a fraction of what it costs to live in a house.”
Librairie Avant-Grade
Nanjing, China
In Nanjing, China there’s a road which goes down a hill and disappears into the ground, all very James Bond-like, leading to a former bomb-shelter that was later an enormous underground parking garage, before it became Librairie Avant-Grade, the world’s largest hidden bookshop. And one of the most beautiful. Many consider it the most beautiful bookstore in China. Inside the tunnel is a double yellow-striped road lined with books, while above you is a huge black Christian cross.
The owner, Qian Xiaocha, first owned a bookstore across from St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, converting to Christianity after he kept hearing the hymns.
“Reading,” Qian said, “is our religion and this place is the heaven for book lovers.” After the cross you’re met by a replica of Rodin’s “The Thinker,” which then leads to the main store filled with 300 chairs to read in, a coffee shop, event space and literally miles of books.
Underground Books
Coober Pedy, Australia
A mining town in the middle of Australia known as the “opal capital of the world,” Coober Pedy is one of the strangest towns in the world. With it’s impossibly high temperatures, this town is completely underground because residents can’t live on the surface.
Yet there is a bookstore. In the ultimate illustration of the perseverance of bookstores, Underground Books, is, as its name suggests, a bookstore built underground. It’s not only the only bookstore Coober Pedy, but also the only bookstore for hundreds and hundreds of miles in any direction in this remote region of the country.
"We sell a lot of books on Indigenous culture and history and the early central Australian explorers,” the owner says.
Inside, the store is extremely comfortable and the books more or less perfectly preserved, as the air below the ground is cool—without all the humidity.
It's October and local grocery stores are well-stocked with Halloween candy, some that are specially made for the fall holiday. Like sushi body part gummies.
Spot, who posts all kinds of review videos to his YouTube channel TheReviewSpot, purchases and eats the odd Halloween-themed candy found at check-out stations. He found the body part edition of the Sushi Gummy Candy featured in the clip above at a place you'd least expect: a Michaels arts and craft store.
"Probably of everything that I've reviewed during Halloween, this is probably the most interesting and coolest candy I have seen to date," Spot says. The tray has eight pieces of sushi topped with gummy eyeballs, fingers, nose, ear, and a brain, which can be eaten with a pair of chopsticks included in the package. Too bad it doesn't come with some candy blood soy sauce.
Spot also reviews some of McSteven's "Vampire Brew" or blood red hot chocolate, which he mixes in a special Halloween skull mug. It really tastes like your standard glass of hot chocolate, minus the pinkish hue (or Frankenberry cereal milk color, according to Spot).
He takes a few chewy bites out of a creepy, two and a half-foot long gummy worm—the "world's largest" gummy worm in fact. The half blue, half red candy is denser than the typical gummy worm or gummy bear, the texture more solid and "beefy," he says. Spot recommends that you probably should not consume the entire the gummy worm in one sitting. That's a lot of sugar.
Spot came across caffeinated Stay Puft Quality Marshmallow candy. Yes, it's inspired by the same Stay Puft Marshmallow Corporation mascot featured in the 1984 film Ghostbusters. The marshmallows have a "homemade" taste to it, according to Spot, and he suggests the ingenious idea of making Stay Puft Marshmallow rice crispy squares. Hear what else he has to say about the sugary treats below:
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.
When a SpaceX rocket exploded on the launch pad in early September, the initial speculation about the disaster was that it was a simple accident. Building rockets and going to space is incredibly hard, especially for a private company, and this wasn't the first time SpaceX had failed on their mission to make space travel cheaper and easier.
But on Friday, the Washington Post reported that investigators were considering a different explanation: sabotage, possibly by United Launch Alliance, a fierce rival of SpaceX.
On video taken the day of explosion, the Post reported, there appeared to be an "odd shadow, then a white spot on the roof of a nearby building leased by ULA."
And, later, when a SpaceX employee asked to get access to the roof, presumably to investigate further, ULA denied SpaceX's request. Access to the roof was later given to Air Force investigators, who didn't find any evidence of sabotage.
Still, the episode hints at something Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder, has also gestured at, as the enigma of what happened that day in Cape Canaveral, Florida lingers.
“We’ve eliminated all of the obvious possibilities for what occurred there,” Musk said recently, according to the Post. “So what remains are the less probable answers.”
Sabotage or not, the rocket's explosion has confounded investigators. As Musk has written on Twitter, it occurred during a routine operation, and there were no apparent heat sources nearby. All investigators know now is that it was set off by a breach in the rocket's helium system. How that breach occurred remains a mystery.
"Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation," Musk has said. "Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years."
A modern-day replica of the Porter Garden Telescope. (All photos courtesy of Russ Schleipman)
You know what a backyard telescope looks like. A sleek metal cylinder pointed to the heavens. An eyepiece at one end to peer into. A tripod to hold it all up.
Not always.
In 1923, Vermont artist, Arctic explorer, and amateur astronomer Russell W. Porter created an Art Nouveau telescope intended to serve as both garden ornament and functional scientific instrument. Cast in bronze, the reflecting telescope was adorned with sculpted lotus petals and curving leaves. The optics were disguised in overlapping bronze leaves, while the motion controls were hidden in a pair of cylindrical flowers.
The beautiful botanical details of the Porter Garden Telescope.
Porter created fewer than 100 of his garden telescopes, according to the Smithsonian, which holds one of the devices in its collection at the National Museum of American History. Their rarity was partly to do with cost—at around $500, the telescopes were beyond the means of most Jazz Age stargazers.
The sundial base of the telescope.
Intended to be kept in the garden year-round, the telescope was, in the words of a 15-page pamphlet written by Porter, “ever ready to entertain one’s guests—whether it be the study of the heavens, or to see what Neighbor Jones is doing to his place across the valley.”
The stem holding the optical elements could be dismantled easily. When these parts were removed, the telescope transformed into a handy sundial.
Russell W. Porter gazing toward the heavens.
As an amateur telescope designer, however, Porter did have a lasting effect on astronomy. Five years after debuting his garden device, Porter was invited to help design the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory just north of San Diego. From its dedication in 1948 until 1993, this telescope was the world's largest.
The telescope's removable optics kit.
Porter's original garden telescopes turn up at auctions from time to time, in varying states of preservation. But if you'd rather get a brand-new one, there is an option—as long as you're not on a tight budget.
Since 2007, Telescopes of Vermont has been creating made-to-order versions of Porter's telescope, using patterns made from the amateur astronomer's original design and adding 21st-century optics. At $125,000, they're not cheap, but Russ Schleipman, President of Telescopes of Vermont, says they're a hit among luxury buyers. "At that level, everybody's got the same toys," he says. A 110-pound Art Nouveau telescope stands out.
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
Karam Chand, who is believed to have been in the longest marriage in the world, has died, according to the BBC.
Chand died Friday at the age of 110, after over 90 years of marriage to his wife Kartari, 103, who survives him.
The couple, who were said to "never argue," were married longer than Queen Elizabeth has been alive. They moved to England from India in 1965, when they'd already been married for 40 years.
They have eight children and 27 grandchildren, the fruit of a marriage that began in 1925 in the Punjab region of India, when that country was still ruled by Britain.
They celebrated their 90th anniversary last December in West Yorkshire, where the couple are local celebrities, leading a parade there last year.
"It's one of those things nobody can stop," Karam Chand's son Paul told the BBC, "everybody has to go."
A postcard from 1917 showing a "Cigarette Fiend", in a spell from "Madame Nicotine". (Photo: Public Domain)
At the dawn of the 20th century, the United States fell victim to an incredibly dangerous drug. Children were easy prey for the menace, one so toxic that even casual use turned the most mild-mannered man into a criminal maniac. “[T]he brain becomes sluggish . . . [a]t the same time the mind is full of wild fancies,” wrote Dr. Carlton Simon in the New York Journal. “[T]he actions are not guided by the will. Normal deeds vanish, and theft, murder and other horrible crimes result.”
What was this frightening Jekyll-and-Hyde drug? The “dope stick.” The “coffin tack.” The lowly cigarette.
You have to be kidding me, you’re probably thinking. My Uncle Ted smoked two packs a day for 30 years and he never hurt a fly. But cigarettes were still a novelty back in the early 1900s, with most still hand-rolled Turkish affairs; the vast majority of smokers chose cigars or chewing tobacco over the “paper pipe.” Philip Morris came to New York in 1902 and introduced Marlboros, manufactured (like all cigs of the time) from bits and bobs left over from producing other tobacco products. Nicotine was already established in medical research as a deadly poison, but exactly how it affected the human body was up for debate. (Some pioneers did voice a concern over “cigarette cough” and possible correlations to heart disease.)
One thing everyone seemed to agree on, however, was that it ruined the mind, creating the “cigarette fiend—a deplorable soul whose habit “sap[ped] the moral and mental life of its devotee.”
A signed pledge card from the Primitive Methodist Anti-Cigarette League, with a promise "to abstain from the use of tobacco in every form, until I am at least 21 years of age." (Photo: Wellcome Images, London/CC BY 4.0)
The theory that regular cigarette smoking invariably turned the user homicidal was so widespread that it became a regular part of the insanity defense:
1899: George W. Schan fatally shoots his father twice in the head. Despite ongoing tension at home over an inheritance feud, friends claim “the excessive use of cigarettes unbalanced his mind.”
1900: John Garrabrant beats his 16-year-old schoolmate to death. Another boy, Casmer Teresnick, uses an ax to murder a local canal boat captain. They are arraigned on the same day as “cigarette fiends both, with the yellow stain of the poison on their bony hands . . .”
1901: Jim Harris shoots John Allen, a wealthy and eminent shopkeeper, in the doorway of his own home. Though “ugly rumors” persist about a relationship between Harris and Mrs. Allen—possibly branding her an accomplice—Harris’ defense was he “had been a cigarette fiend since he was two years old.” (Mrs. Allen was acquitted.)
1905: Martin Paulsgrove shows little concern or remorse after fatally shooting his girlfriend. This, of course, is due to his being “a confirmed cigarette fiend . . . [n]o doubt the defense will be insanity, caused by the excessive use of the deadly cigarette.”
One of the most publicized “cigarette fiend” cases was that of 16-year-old Charles Cross. Sometime between the 7th and 9th of November, 1899, he brutally beat 60-year-old Sarah King to death. Cross lived with Mrs. King and her husband, Freeman, a printer who was frequently out of town for business. Mr. King hired the boy to do chores and generally help his wife around the house in his absence. After a brief period of denying he’d been involved, Cross finally confessed, stating an uncontrollable “desire to gratify his passions” caused him to attack the woman, smashing her head repeatedly against the floor when she resisted.
The New York Journal from November 14, 1899, with a report on the case of "cigarette fiend" Charles Cross. (Photo: Library of Congress)
The public was outraged by the vicious crime, but also confused; surely such a young boy, particularly one who had no recorded history of violence, could not have done this and been in his right mind. It had to be mental instability – and they didn’t have to look far for a cause. “The boy is not responsible. His mind is diseased,” claimed Dr. Simon, just before Cross’ sentencing. “Any boy that smokes one hundred cigarettes in a day is bereft of moral self-control.”
Similar pleas were published in newspapers across the country, and everyone from the governor to the Board of Pardons received petitions begging mercy for this “moral degenerate.” Unfortunately for him, Cross was hanged on July 20, 1900, 19 days after his 18th birthday. He was one of the youngest people ever sentenced to death in Connecticut.
An anti-smoking advertisement from 1905. (Photo: Public Domain)
This carcinogenic “Twinkie defense” lasted well into the 1910s, especially where juvenile delinquents were involved. Study after study flooded newspapers about the number of boys in prisons or hospitals thanks to “their minds [being] weakened by the excessive smoking of cigarettes.” Reform schools insisted “the most hardened of the boys were all cigarette fiends,” and “more than any other one factor starts [them] on the road to criminal life.” It took World War I, when the ease and convenience of pre-rolled cigarettes followed soldiers home from war, to stub out their evil reputation.
Still, you might want to steer clear of Uncle Ted, just in case.
As the nights draw in and the temperature drops, access to a remote, cozy cabin becomes an appealing prospect—especially when the cabins are the architectural wonders that are found in the new book The Hinterland: Cabins, Love Shacks and Other Hide-outs.
The book explores the wondrous forms that the humble cabin can take. In the Southern United States, for example, there is a three-bedroom cabin built into the trees. Connected by rope bridges adorned with fairy lights, this cabin is part-tree house, part magical hideaway.
From the Italian mountains to a Danish archipelago, the locations of the cabins are almost as appealing as the architecture itself. Among the more unique in the book is an observation hut perched above the wilderness of Latvia, and a wooden cabin nearly camouflaged from view under snow-covered trees in Hungary.
Here is a collection of the most remarkable of the tiny houses:
On Facebook, Paul Jones announced a gruesome find. "Today at Great Yarmouth we found what looks like a dead Mermaid washed up on the beach," he wrote.
Great Yarmouth is on the eastern coast of England, on the North Sea, across from the coast of the Netherlands. It's not so far from Copenhagen, where Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid is memorialized in a statue—so perhaps it counts as traditional mermaid stomping grounds.
This mermaid, though, is not doing so hot.
Is this a real mermaid? As the Daily Mail notes, "Mr Jones’s Facebook profile shows him to be a keen modeller - particularly of creepy figures. He is a member of the ‘Horror and Halloween DIY’ Facebook group." So even if we were inclined to believe in mermaids, that weighs heavily against this one being real.
Still, those exposed intestines are an innovation in "real mermaid" finds. In that pantheon, recycled over and over again to create videos of mermaid sightings, plenty of the mermaids are desiccated or otherwise gross-looking. But there aren't any examples of mermaid internal organs!
The real question is: what should we name this specimen? The "Yarmouth mermaid" would be traditional, but we're open to other suggestions.
Archaeologists in northwest China have discovered a shroud made of cannabis plants in an ancient grave, adding further evidence to the notion that even thousands of years ago, people liked to stay up.
As National Geographic is reporting, a recently unearthed burial site, dating back around 2,500 years, was found to hold a cache of (assumingly legally obtained) cannabis plants. The 13 complete plants were arrayed over the male body inside like a burial shroud, covering the corpse from crotch to chin.
The discovery occurred during excavation of the ancient Jiayi cemetery in the area of Turpan. Cannabis seeds and fragments have been previously found in other graves in the cemetery, but this is the first time that complete plants have been discovered as part of the burials, allowing the researchers to determine that it was grown locally. The graves have been attributed to members of the Subeixi culture, who are thought to have been the first permanent residents of the Turpan basin.
While the exact significance of the cannabis plants as part of the burial rituals is not yet confirmed, the dank stash is seen as further evidence that the plant was used mainly for its psychoactive properties, much as it is today.
It’s entirely possible that someone alive today on Earth will be the first person to die on Mars. The private company Mars One expects that, after a one-way flight, its interplanetary travelers will remain there for the rest of their lives.
Billionaire space magnate Elon Musk has said that, eventually, he’d like to die on Mars himself. His company, SpaceX, is planning a return flight on its Mars journeys, but, as Musk said last week, with the risk of death so high, anyone who goes on the first Mars flights must be prepared not to come back. If humans reach Mars, at least a few of us are likely to die there.
This would be a milestone of its own. In the history of humanity, only three people have died in space—cosmonauts on the Soyuz 11 mission when their return capsule depressurized at 104 miles above sea level, well past the boundary between Earth and the rest of the universe. No one’s ever been buried, cremated, or left to the elements on another planet.
If a person did die on Mars, what would happen to their body?
SpaceX concept art for Martian landing. (Image: SpaceX)
If left out on the Martian surface, a human body would last a very, very long time. On Earth, post-death destruction starts with decomposers, which move in fast and start using organic matter to fuel their own little lives. Mars has no biology, that we know of.
In the immediate aftermath of death, a body would still start to decompose there: the bacteria inside, transplanted from Earth, would go to work. If a dead body was left outside at the Martian equator, where temperatures sometimes reach pleasant-enough highs during the day, this could go on for a few hours. Without an insulating atmosphere, though, the planet cools quickly, and even balmy Martian nights are as cold as polar nights here. The body would freeze, stopping the work of the bacteria, and begin the slow, dry process of mummifying.
Working against the preservation of the cold would be ionizing radiation, which destroys organic compounds and bathes Mars at levels unheard of on Earth. One plausible explanation for why we haven’t found any traces of life on Mars is that the high levels of radiation there zapped any organic compounds into gases that show no trace of their former life.
Eventually, radiation would do away with more of the body, but it would take eons—100 million years from the first human death on Mars, it’s possible that the person’s bones could still be found.
Being human, Mars colonists probably wouldn’t just throw bodies out on the ground and leave them there. If a body was buried, though, it would be even better preserved than if it were left on the surface—the conditions would still be cold and dry, but the body would be protected from radiation.
To dispose of a body, Mars explorers or colonists would have to resort to cremation or deliberate decomposition. Either is possible; Mars One already chosen cremation as its method for disposing of the dead. A cremation fire would require two resources that Mars missions are already looking to extract or manufacture on Mars: oxygen and fuel. But even if the settlement is not manufacturing fuel, there could be enough leftover from the trip there to feed a fire.
The other option is less conventional, since it would basically amount to composting human bodies. However, a space bioethicist told Slate that this option seemed unlikely—“There are societies that desperately need fertilizer, and even they don’t use their dead bodies for the purpose,” he said—but it seems to be one of the first options that pops into people’s minds.
It makes sense: Any semi-permanent Mars colony would benefit from a composting system that reserved food waste and recycled it back into new plants, and astronauts already violate earthly taboos about waste by drinking recycled urine, for instance. If it’s possible to get past the taboo of death, actively composting a human body isn’t so different than burying it in the ground.
Besides Mars One, Mars-faring expeditions haven’t been so clear cut about their plans for death, though. NASA, presumably, would use a similar approach to its current preparation for astronauts—”contingency” or death sims, in which, astronaut Chris Hadfield has written, an entire team works through the basic questions: what to do with the corpse and its smell? How quickly will a body decompose? How should the person’s family be notified? How should the PR team respond?
Of course, we have to get to Mars first for any of this to be relevant. But planning ahead for end-of-life is always advisable.
If you're not familiar with the Pallas's cat, it's time you got introduced. This guy is housecat-sized, with soulful yellow eyes and more fluff than you could imagine. It looks like a cat in a fur coat.
It is also endangered and poorly understood. Luckily, researchers at an international conference on the Pallas's cat recently agreed to set aside a 14-square-mile patch of land to preserve and study it, the Siberian Times reports.
The Pallas's cat may look like he belongs at the foot of your bed, ready to star in Youtube videos and keep your feet warm. But they actually live in the rocky steppes of southern Siberia, Mongolia, and China, where they spend most of their time hiding out in caves and hunting for pika.
This new sanctuary, located within Sailyugemsky Nature Park in the Altai Mountains, is meant to protect the cats from poachers, and to enable further study. At this point, we know very little about these reclusive cuties: "The latest data on this species... hasn't been updated over the last 3 or 4 decades," researcher Alexey Kuzhlekov told the Siberian Times. They're not even sure exactly how many live within the new reserve.
So first comes a count—and after that comes, hopefully, the kind of true and rare understanding that bonds two species for eternity. Good luck, Pallas's cat ambassadors.
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.
Claude Monet's San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, painted in 1908. (Photo: Public Domain)
On any given day in a lab in New Jersey, a humming machine traces the lines of a hand-drawn image: a woman’s face drawn by Matisse. The machine highlights each new line it sees, recording and cataloging its thickness, shape, and the artist it was created by.
But the computer isn’t merely scanning the image, it’s learning. The Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Rutgers University is currently teaching the machine to appreciate and understand art, and the subtle differences within a painting or drawing.
“The A.I. will be able to tell a Van Gogh versus a Matisse, for example, based on the visual elements that are somehow unconscious to the artist,” explains Ahmed Elgammal, Professor and Director of the lab.
Scientists have been exploring artificial intelligence in relation to art for years, and while artificial intelligence systems can now make paintings of their own dreams, humans still have the only brains capable of appreciating them. This is where the Art and Artificial Intelligence lab comes in. Computer scientists there hope to bring artificial minds closer to mimicking human intelligence, and their work may also help solve a problem that has plagued the art world for hundreds of years: art forgeries.
From the machine at the Rutgers Laboratory, which tries to trace individual lines for analysis, used here on a work by Egon Schiele. The various colors are to differentiate the lines. (Photo: Courtesy Natalie Zarelli)
There is great potential foran A.I. detection system to identify counterfeit artworks. But first the researchers have to teach their electronic brain to learn many centuries worth of art history and technique. To do this, Elgammal and his fellow computer scientists took pictures and high-resolution scans of thousands of paintings, and entered them into their computer system. Over time, the computer traces each line in the drawing, and analyzes the image against others using machine learning algorithms, which the computer uses to count and quantify different tiny aspects of what it “saw.”
All of this is happening inside the "brain" of the computer, which uses information in its artificial neural network to recognize visual patterns in the artwork. We can see what the computer “sees” based on its output data, which is shown as a flat image on a screen that summarizes the computer brain’s results. When the computer is learning how Matisse tends to draw, it colors the lines it has learned and differentiates one small stroke from the next, remembering it forever.
The artificial intelligence that was developed at the Rutgers University lab has yet to be used in any investigative capacity to detect a forgery for a gallery—it’s still in its early stages. However, it is pushing past previous research where A.I. was used to detect forgery, using similar techniques.
Nearly a decade ago, art forgery research from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands found that the number of brush strokes in a given painting were indicative of whether a painting was authentic; Van Gogh, for example, tended to make the same number of brush strokes in a given area. When compared to a famous counterfeit Van Gogh painting, one of dozens sold in the 1920s by the German art dealer Otto Wacker, a computer decided there were far too many brush strokes for it to be a true Van Gogh, something that humans eyes would never be able to see on their own.
The National Gallery in London. AI could also help with the study of art techniques. (Photo: Xiquinho Silva/CC BY 2.0)
New research at the Art and Artificial Intelligence lab will also be able to understand this concept in deeper detail, using the texture and exact shape of each brush stroke to develop a range of characteristics that exist, on average, in an artist’s work.
Considering that contemporary art forgery scandals disturb the value of art while calling the abilities of art historians and dealers into question, it’s possible this technology could help clean up the art trade, though the primary goal of the A.I. lab at Rutgers University is to help an artificial brain think more like a human. “Art, and engineering art, is an ability that only humans have over other creatures,” says Elgammal. “If a machine is going to be intelligent, it also has to have this ability of looking at art and understanding art.”
These days, when a computer scientist asks the A.I. to notice something—for instance, which of several paintings is the most innovative for its time—the computer’s artificial intelligence is able to draw those conclusions. Recently, the lab’s computer began to pinpoint characteristics from individual artists; as it learns, it will be able to tell whether a painting seems authentic by analyzing minute characteristics of an artist’s brush, pencil or pen strokes. Using high resolution scans and photographs of paintings and drawings, the Artificial Intelligence can get a good look at thousands of details humans aren’t able to analyze.
The neural network is building on past research; last year the lab taught their computer to categorize roughly 62,000 paintings and rank them by how innovative the images were. The computer was able to note similarities in paintings created centuries apart; the resulting map of art placed paintings by Goya, Michelangelo and Vermeer (who is one of the most forged artists of all time) among the top most creative images for their eras, with the “Mona Lisa” by Da Vinci, and paintings by Durer and Ingres closer to the bottom.
The authorship of this painting, now attributed to Vermeer, was under scrutiny for many years. AI can be used to differentiate the visual cues of artists and so help spot forgeries. (Photo: Public Domain)
The computer learned composition, subject matter and color during that time, but today it is ignoring those characteristics, and learning to recognize the smallest brush stroke. Once that is mastered, says Elgammal, “then we can reach something that can avoid forgers being able to manipulate the machine.”
After looking at hundreds of various artists’ drawings, the computer’s A.I. can now identify the individual strokes of Matisse and Picasso with an accuracy of up to 80 percent, according to Elgammal. “If the machine can tell what are the characteristics of certain artists, advances can lead to the machine also reading art based on style, although that will still be ahead in the future,” he says. Currently, the AI can detect a line’s thickness, curvature, shape, tone, and smoothness. Eventually, the technology will be able to read a broader set of details within context.
Artificial intelligence critics, some of whom believe computers may one day replace human value in society, are likely to be wary of a robotic mind appreciating art. But Elgammal believes that artificial intelligence is not likely to replace art historians and aficionados. “In reality we are far behind in replicating human intelligence, even of that of a toddler,” says Elgammal. “The machine really complements human ability, it’s not a competition, and we will not be at a stage where it will be replacing the human identity—at least, not anytime soon.“
The Artificial Intelligence Lab’s system is also meant to complement other technologies that verify a painting’s authenticity, such as testing the age of the canvas and the chemical composition of pigments, and using infrared and hyperspectral imaging. The lab also employ artists and art historians to lend their knowledge to the computer base. Elgammal and his team will be publishing the results of their work soon, hopefully by the end of 2016.
Visitors at the Art Institute of Chicago. AI can be used to learn about composition, color and subject matter. (Photo: Phil Roeder/CC BY 2.0)
The computer scientists at Rutgers believe that not only will studying art help artificial intelligence systems become a better tool for art historians and art dealers, they may help us understand how and why we understand art ourselves. In the past few years some neuroscientists have theorized that art directly stimulates certain neurons in our own brains, and reverse-engineering this process for computers could potentially shed light on the process.
Indeed, the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab uses models of human neural networks in their research. The technology can also help uncover new facets of art history over long stretches of time using statistical analysis to learn exactly how styles and techniques evolved.
“That’s opening doors for me and new questions about art which I think is very interesting, because art and science has somehow been two different camps,” says Elgammal, whose own love of art is what drew him to the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab. “Now it’s time to make science and art come back together again and start asking these questions.”
Plus, if the fear of human workers being replaced by A.I. ever materializes, it may be somewhat comforting to know that our robot overlords are the cultured sort.
In 1986, Kleenex released this commercial in Japan. It's a simple, almost minimalistic premise: a woman in white and an ogre child sit on a pile of hay and enjoy their Kleenex brand tissues while the song "It's a Fine Day" by Jane & Barton plays in the background.
Almost instantly, TV stations and Kleenex corporate allegedly began receiving complaints regarding the ad. Perhaps it was its overall strangeness, perhaps it was the minor key of the song, but people were almost ubiquitously unnerved by the commercial and requested that it be taken off the air.
As mass media is wont to do, the advertisement sparked a number of urban legends. Several rumors began to circulate about the cast. One claimed the entire film crew met untimely deaths in freak accidents. Another reported that the ogre child had died immediately after filming. Still others circulated that the actress, Keiko Matsuzaka, died, was committed to a psychiatric hospital following a mental breakdown, or became pregnant with a demon baby.
The song, in particular, seemed to unnerve people. Many asserted that "It's a Fine Day" was a German curse, despite the fact that it was in English. Others claimed that when the ad came on late at night, the singer's voice transformed from that of a young soprano to a raspy old woman's.
Kleenex eventually pulled the ad and replaced it with this one, which was also arguably creepy, though didn't inspire the urban legends that its predecessor had. Though none of those legends hold any weight (Matsuzaka is alive and well), you can't say it wasn't a successful ad campaign.
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.
Today, a baker might show off their skills with cronuts, which take three days to prepare correctly, or a towering cake modeled after a famous piece of architecture. But in the early 1600s, when literacy was still low, women displayed their domestic and scholarly prowess by baking perfect pastry letters. This craft was once the height of fashion, but today it's all but disappeared, except in the Netherlands, around Christmas time, and in Iowa.
Edible letters, Professor Wendy Wall argues in a new book on early English recipes, were a part of a 17th century "kitchen literacy" that created opportunities for women to practice and perfect reading and writing. This craft extended from decorative swirls, similar to what might adorn cursive handwriting, to actual pastries formed in the shape of letters.
One desirable skill for women of the era was creating decorative "knots" of interlocking lines, either on the page or in food. In a simple form, these knots might be made from two strands of dough, twisted together and formed into a loop, before being baked. These sort of flourishes resembled the twists and turns that cursive letters might take—as Wall reports, writing manuals at the time considered knot-making a key tool for developing cursive writing skills.
When they were shaping delicate pastry and cookie dough into swirls, braids, and knotted loops, women were actually practicing the same art they'd use to write their letters.
Peter Binoit's 17th century still life featuring letter pastries. (Image: Peter Binoit)
Pastry letters were not quite as ornate as cursive handwriting, but they required more deftness to master. The instructions of recipes at the time were so vague that women would have to know exactly what they were doing: one recipe for "cinnamon letters" instructs the baker to roll the dough into long rolls and then "make fair capital Roman letters, according to some exact pattern."
These letters were a step above cookies or pastries in simple knots—they were "the hallmark of elegant dining and a source of intellectual contemplation," Wall writes.
Hundreds of years later, the recipes don't give many hints at how pastry letters might have been presented. Was it more impressive to bake the whole alphabet or to focus on the hardest-to-form letters? (B seems like it would be a challenge.) Would pastry letters spell out words, even sentences? Or was it enough to just pick a few?
One possibility, Wall suggests, is that pastry letters made puzzles. In one of the only clear pictures of this art, a still life by Peter Binoit, there's a pile of letters—a P, a B, a T, and an R—all letters from the artist's name, she notes. Perhaps the letter pile was meant to be an anagram of sorts.
It's a charming theory. Indeed, the letters resemble the sort of puzzles Graeme Base would have used in The Eleventh Hour, and word games were popular at the time. And, to the extent that letter pastries are still made, they are associated with names.
The social cache of making pastry letters diminished with the increase of literacy, and the art has all but disappeared. Today, they're more of a cute trick for kids, easily shaped by cheap cutters or molds.
But the 17th century practice does survive in a few places—most prominently in the Netherlands and in Iowa, where they show up around Christmas time. In the Netherlands, Christmas pastries include letterbanket, formed into the first initials of children's names. Good kids might get this treat as a sign that Sinterklaas favors them.
In Victorian England, the scariest boogeyman was a fire-breathing devil-man who could jump unnaturally high. Some said he was demon, while others thought he was just an extraordinarily agile human, but no matter what you believed about the legend, Spring-Heeled Jack was a name that inspired fear among the folk.
His name legend survives today mainly in the form of plays and references in various forms of media, but his legend still holds a bit of the original creep factor it had when it first bubbled up out of the public consciousness.
Reports of the wraith that would become Spring-Heeled Jack first started to appear in 1837. As described in historian Mike Dash’s exhaustive history of the figure’s reported appearances, residents of a London neighborhood began to report bizarre attacks—really more like harassments— from “a ‘ghost, imp or devil’ in the shape of ‘a large white bull.’”
Mainly attacking women, the figure/monster would ring a doorbell, and when someone would answer, it would ravage their clothes with its claws. Other sightings have him simply ambushing people who were out walking. Similar reports continued to trickle in throughout the rest of the year, with strange crimes being attributed to assailants in the guise of a ghost, a bear, and/or a devil. These disparate reports would eventually lead to the theory that this mysterious monster might have been a group of well-to-do men dressing up and scaring people on a bet. Others reported the figure as wearing red shoes, or armor.
The descriptions were all over the place, and so outlandish that when these tales hit the pages of the major London papers, Dash notes that most of the press was rightfully skeptical. The Lord Mayor of London, John Cowan, even came out in January of 1838 to address the growing number of stories, bringing up the theory that the attacks were perpetrated by a gang of wealthy jerks. However, that didn’t stop the legend from growing, and as the papers reported more accounts, the devilish figure came to be called Spring-Heeled Jack, as many of the reports involved the creep leaping in front of or away from his victims in such a way that no mortal man would be capable of.
Jack really took shape after two of his most well-known attacks. According to an account that was widely publicized at the time, in February of 1838, a man rang the doorbell of Jane Alsop, screaming that they had caught Spring-Heeled Jack, and that they needed help. When she brought the man a candle there in the dark street, he proceeded to breathe blue flame in her face and tear at her clothes and skin with metal claws. She ran back towards her house, but he continued to cut her with his claws, until Alsop’s sister came to her rescue, scaring off the attacker. Alsop described Jack as having eyes like red fireballs, and wearing a helmet and tight-fitting white outfit. It was a bizarre account, but Spring-Heeled Jack’s reputation as some kind of devil grew.
Just days later, another attack took place in a different part of London. Lucy Scales was walking with her sister when a shadowy man jumped out and also allegedly blew blue flames into her face, causing her to have some kind of seizure. While many of the initial reports of Jack’s attacks took place in outlying hamlets and villages, both the Alsop and Scales cases took place closer to the city, and received a great deal more attention, stoking the fires of Spring-Heeled Jack’s legend. Their testimonies also informed what would become his popular look as a gentlemanly devil figure.
After the attacks and attention given Spring-Heeled Jack in 1838, the figure became a popular boogeyman across England. He became a character in a number of cheap penny dreadfuls, many titled, “Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London,” where he was alternately portrayed as everything from a jilted brigand to a supernatural menace. All of these depictions just served to cement his boogeyman status. Parents would tell stories of the jumping devil to scare their kids into submission. Mysterious unsolved crimes would be attributed to Jack by sensationalist reporters looking to sell papers. This elusive monster now belonged to Victorian nightmares.
Eye-witness reports of Spring-Heeled Jack continued popping up all over the country, if less frequently and from much less substantial sources as the spate of occurrences in 1837-38. Copycat attackers were captured here and there, trying to take advantage of the legend. The mischievous devil made a series of appearances at the Aldershot military base, where he harassed and terrified sentry guards in 1877. Then in 1904, Jack made what is considered his last confirmed appearance in Liverpool, where he was witnessed leaping up and down the street before jumping onto the rooftops and bounding away forever.
But even if official sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack have stopped, his legend still survives. Characters inspired by Spring-Heeled Jack can be found from steampunk novels to mainstream comic books. The conspicuously Victorian air of the gaunt, springing devil continues to evoke the era in which his legend grew, making him a popular template for scare stories. Although today we might remember his name, for better or worse, Spring-Heeled Jack may never again inspire the kind of terror he once did.
Beer from the deep. (Photo: Mike Nash/Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Sydney Cove collection)
In 1796, the Sydney Cove sailed from India with a cargo of goodies, including tea, tobacco, and, most importantly, booze. The ship was headed towards Sydney, Australia, but, rounding the continent’s southern coast, it sank near Preservation Island, where the wreck was discovered centuries later, in 1977. Among the artifacts found in the ship were still-corked bottles of wine and beer. Now, 220 years after the ship sank, a team of scientists have rescued surviving brewer’s yeast from those bottles and used it to make new beer.
“The beer has a distinctly light and fresh flavour, giving a taste that has not been sipped for two centuries,” David Thurrowgood, a museum conservator and one-time chemist, told Australian Geographic.
The bottles were brought to the surface in 1990 and decanted. Twenty-five years later, Thurrowgood started wondering if the alcohol samples might still contain yeast. A team of DNA specialists examined the samples and found two types of live yeast, one a common yeast used in breweries, the other, Brettanomyces, a throwback that’s not often used in beer these days.
There’s an obvious question here: how do they know the yeast is old and not modern yeast that happened to find a home in the very old beer? The scientists considered that. The yeast DNA “have genetic sequences unique to science,” Thurrowgood told Australian Geographic, which convinced the researchers that they’re dealing with granddaddy yeast.
Right now, there are limited opportunities to taste this beer, but the museum is looking to put its old yeast to work making a commercial beer, that could help financially support the collection of artifacts from the shipwreck. Beer fermented by this yeast probably won't taste dramatically different from beer by a yeast lineage that didn't come from a shipwreck, but, as gimmicks go, this is an excellent one.
