Textiles from 3,000 years ago (Photo: Cambridge Archaeological Unit) 

Three thousand years ago, not far from what's now Cambridge, England, a small settlement stood in a swampy area, its round houses lifted over the water by wooden stilts, until one day, something went wrong.

Maybe it was a cooking fire, or an attack on the houses. But two of the houses caught fire, and when their roofs collapsed the houses fell into the water, sinking into the muck, where they were preserved for millennia.

The excavation site (Photo: Cambridge Archaeological Unit) 

Now, a team of archaeologists have begun excavating the site, "the best preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain," the Guardian writes.

They have already found a trove of incredibly preserved objects from the daily lives of these Bronze Age people–"jewelry, spears, daggers, giant food storage jars and delicate drinking cups, glass beads, textiles and a copper spindle with thread still wound around it." 

A dagger found at the site (Photo: Cambridge Archaeological Unit)

These artifacts have the potential to revolutionize modern understanding of how ancient people lived, which is why it's being called "Britain's Pompeii." 

A ring that was probably part of a shoulder belt ((Photo: Cambridge Archaeological Unit) 

Already, the artifacts uncovered indicated that these people had more wealth than previously imagined. The finds include carefully constructed cups and glass beads, as well as a cow spine, indicating that these families ate well and had "a sophistication not usually associated with the Bronze Age," the BBC writes. 

Bonus find: Medieval fish trap

Every day, we highlight one newly lost or found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something unusual or amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to sarah.laskow@atlasobscura.com. 

A Dutch branch shows off a hair ice wig. (Photo: Ronaldhuizer/WikiCommons CC BY 3.0)

Weird winter fashion has hit the forests of Scotland. As the weather cools down, rotting trees have started sporting thick coats of "hair ice"–a fungus-water hybrid that looks like a tufty white wig.

Hair ice forms late at night, giving normally bald sticks everything from Santa beards to sausage curls. Its tenure is modishly brief–as soon as the world starts warming up in the morning, the new 'dos vanish like cotton candy in a puddle. 

Look what I found today in West Lothian. Exquisitely beautiful hair ice. Loads of it around on the dead wood. pic.twitter.com/rLbfs1B0Ic

— Ben Dolphin (@CountrysideBen) January 8, 2016

Like any complex style, hair ice requires specific conditions: in this case, high humidity, temperatures hovering just below zero, and the presence of a particular fungus called Exidiopsis effusa.

This fungus enables the ice to keep its strange shape by providing "recrystallization inhibitors," which prevent large ice crystals from replacing the smaller ones, scientists told the BBC. 

Lovely "Hair Ice" found today, Lethen, Nairn by @lisawood81@metoffice@bbcweather@BBCSpringwatchpic.twitter.com/Wit4pFBDeI

— Lisa Wood (@lisawood81) January 9, 2016

Lately, hair ice has been showing up in Scotland and New York, but it can appear pretty much anywhere if the atmosphere is right. If you're in the market for a January makeover, go for a sunrise walk and check out nature's newest toupée line before it melts away.

Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.

The Dupont Underground's east platform, which the organization will be opening first. (Photo: Dupont Underground/Pat Padua) 

In the upscale Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Dupont Circle, where galleries, bars, and bookshops jostle for room, a 75,000-square-foot expanse in the heart of the quarter has been almost untouched for 20 years. That’s because in order to access it, you have to grab a flashlight and descend 25 feet below ground, into the vast, abandoned streetcar tunnels that flank Connecticut Avenue.

For the past 60 years, the city and its residents have wondered what to do with this vast subterranean space, whose history features a long list of failed attempts to repurpose it, including plans to make it into a gym, a greenmarket, and a storage facility for funeral urns.  

Inside the Dupont tunnels. (Photo: Preston Rhea/flickr)

Today, the tunnels look much the same as they did in their mid-century heyday; the tracks and tiling are still intact, and the closed off stairwells to the aboveground streets have melted into the background of the neighborhood, filling with trash and largely ignored. In late 2014, after a decade of campaigning the city, an arts coalition called the Dupont Underground signed a five-year lease on the space for $30,000 a year, with plans to transform the barren tunnels into a cultural hub that could host concerts, art installations, and other programming.

“Nobody wanted the space,” says Braulio Agnese, the Managing Director of Dupont Underground. “It had largely been forgotten. It’s a very unusual development on a number of fronts, and there’s absolutely no precedent for something like this in DC.”

But transforming a neglected tunnel network into a place where visitors could be allowed to enter comes with huge challenges. In order to bring the space up to code, ventilation, sewage, and electricity systems need to be installed or expanded. And unlike an aboveground space, there’s not much room for altering the fundamental structure of the station. “It’s a concrete box,” says Agnese. “There are just inherent difficulties: The entrances are where they are, and you’ve got to work with that. But we understand some of the ways to make things happen.”

It isn’t the first attempt to repurpose the area below Dupont Circle. The twin tunnels were debuted in the late 1940s to relieve traffic on the busy Connecticut Avenue commuter trolley line. By the time the Dupont tunnels opened, streetcars, threatened by the rising popularity of cars, were already in decline. The station was only in operation for a little more than a decade until streetcar service, replaced by buses, ended in January 1962.

The former Dupont Down Under food court in 2011. The establishments were shaped like train cars. (Photo: ep_jhu/flickr)

In the late ‘60s, the tunnels were briefly used as a fallout shelter, but vandals broke in and stole the emergency supplies. In 1975, architect Arthur Cotton Moore, who had designed the Canal Square mall in Georgetown, won approval from the city to transform the tunnels into an underground shopping mall, but the project collapsed when he was unable to finance the project.

The city opened up the space for developers’ proposals again in 1982. But no new development took place in the tunnels until the early ‘90s, when Mayor Marion Barry approved the creation of Dupont Down Under, a mall-style food court to be built on the western platform of the Dupont tunnels. A line of fast food dinners—operating, naturally, out of streetcar-themed booths—would serve up pizza and subs to the public, flanked by a Laundromat, a newsstand, and a grocery store.

The south endpoint of the Dupont Underground. (Photo: Dupont Underground/Pat Padua) 

The project opened in March 1995, and was initially celebrated by Washingtonians. In the Washington Post, architecture critic Benjamin Forgey hailed the projects as “a delightful occurrence, way overdue…it repairs a civic eyesore—or rather, a number of them—and adds a touch of much needed commercial vitality” to the area.

But as Forgey also noted, the food court, from the beginning, was plagued with problems. When it opened, only seven of the proposed 16 vendors had settled in. The design of the platform meant that the businesses closest to the entrance got all the food traffic, leaving the ones farther away without many customers. The space had no working elevators and no way for, say, a truck to get in, which meant that supplies and trash had to be carried in and out by hand.  Plus, the tunnels, with their dank atmosphere, were more of a novelty than an attractive dining atmosphere.

On top of that, the developer, Geary S. Simon, came into the project with legal baggage. He had been convicted of several felonies, including mail fraud, in the 1980s, and had served time in jail. (A Washington Post headline about the project read “City Residents Unconcerned By Developer’s Criminal Past,” probably not the right note to start on.)

A photo illustration of the scope of the Dupont Underground space. (Photo: Dupont Underground/Hunt Laudi Studio)

By May 1996, just over a year after Dupont Down Under opened, the food court had fallen behind on its rent payments to the city. Seven of the original tenants joined to sue Simon for breach of contract, claiming that he had failed to develop the site as originally guaranteed. Several contractors and suppliers also sued Simon for payment they were owed. Only three fast food stalls and a booth that offered back rubs remained. Finally, in September, the city terminated its lease with Geary.

At the end, just one tenant remained—a Pizza Express, which had been shut down by the fire marshal for stealing electricity from a nearby meter. Dupont Down Under’s power was officially turned off by the following month. The stairwells were again locked to the public.

When Dupont Underground first leased the space, nearly two decades after the food court retreated, you could still find plastic trays stamped with the “Dupont Down Under” logo scattered on the floor of the abandoned stalls.

A rendering of the projected use of the space, with live music, dance, and experimental theater performances. (Photo: Dupont Underground/Hunt Laudi Studio)

Although reminded at almost every turn by the space’s design challenges and history of failed reinventions, the arts coalition is hoping to gradually revitalize the giant underground space, starting with the platform where the food court once stood. They plan to open up the tunnels piecemeal, in order to bring people in as soon as possible, and raise funds to slowly bring the rest of the tunnels up to code. In time, Dupont Underground envisions all kinds of events in the space—music recordings, experimental theater, pop-up restaurants, using the space for film and television.

Currently, the tunnels hold 750,000 plastic balls, part of a summer art installation that turned the National Building Museum into a giant ball pit. Agnese is using the balls as part of a design competition; the winning artist will use them in a site-specific installation to open in the Dupont Underground space this May. In the future, below Dupont Circle, there may be whiskey tastings, gallery openings, and film screenings. But a food court? Probably not.

Update, 1/12: An earlier version of this story noted that the food court was on the eastern platform. It was on the western side. We regret the error. 

The rules are simple: kick the ball in the hole. (Photo: National Club Golfer)

FootGolf, a fusion of soccer and golf, is often described with the tagline, “the best game ever invented.” Those are strong words for something that most people still haven't heard of. Yet with participation in traditional golf on a widespread decline, FootGolf has been showing potential; the British FootGolf Association claims it is the country’s fastest-growing sport.

The second annual FootGolf World Cup took place this month in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with 230 players hailing from 26 countries. And while that World Cup was male-dominated, FootGolf seems to be bringing more diversity in race, age, and gender to golf courses than ever before. 

Some struggling golf courses have eagerly embraced the new activity, as a means to boost revenue and bring in new customers. There are even courses now dedicated exclusively to FootGolf. Most importantly “fun” levels for the sport are extremely high, according to a survey by the National Golf Foundation, the same foundation which reported a loss of five million golfers over the last decade. Sixty-three percent of respondents rated the sport “extremely fun to play” (giving it a 10 out of 10), and over 90 percent gave it a rating of 8, 9, or 10. Almost all say they are likely to return and play again. 

Competition gets intense as footgolfers plan their putts. (Photo: Las vegas footgolf/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 4.0)

FootGolf is not a revolutionary idea, following more or less the same rules and strategies as golf: get the ball into the holes, in this case, with as few kicks as possible. One source says it was conjured up in Holland in 2006, but harken back to 1929 and you’ll encounter an American named William Edward Code, the inventor of codeball, a sport virtually identical in its rules that didn’t quite catch on. Mr. Code would be pleased to see that over 80 years later, codeball, now FootGolf, is an official sport (as of 2012) overseen by the Federation for International FootGolf (FIFG).

A round of FootGolf takes half the time of a normal round of golf, and the only equipment required is a size 5 soccer ball. The simplicity of the sport has helped attract soccer players and golfers, adults and kids alike. A typical FootGolf uniform features knee-high argyle socks and shorts, with many athletes opting for newsboy caps. Cleats, however, are off limits. 

According to Juan Fernandez, director of marketing for the American FootGolf League (AFGL), there are now 450 courses in 49 states. “The golf industry is embracing FootGolf right now; at the beginning they were just looking at us,” says Fernandez, who has worked at AFGL since 2012. “Now they see that FootGolf is here to stay.”

 FootGolf holes are 21 inches in diameter, with the same ball-hole ration as in golf. (Photo: CK Golf Solutions/flickr)

But even he concedes there’s still a long way to go. FootGolf may be catching up, but it’s not succeeding everywhere. Rod Metzler, the CEO of Empire Golf, manages four golf courses in the Sacramento area, once described by the Sacramento Bee as “the FootGolf capital of America.” (There are currently seven courses there.)

Seeing FootGolf as an alternative source of revenue, Metzler’s team added FootGolf to one course, built a separate website, and hired someone for marketing and promotion. At its peak, they had 200 rounds of FootGolf a month, but regular golfers were peeved by the distraction, and ultimately, Metzler decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

Metzler, a long-time golf professional, recalls how existing golf courses just couldn’t keep up with demand when golf was booming in the '80s and '90s. That’s not happening yet with FootGolf, he says, even as traditional golf craters in popularity. 

He chalks the decline of golf up to its difficulty level, time commitment, and to a lesser extent, its expense. “It’s a very difficult game, and we’re kind of in the instant gratification phase,” he says.

Enter FootGolf. 

 In more recreational play, the knee-high argyle socks are not required. (Photo: National Club Golfer)

At the Copper Hill Golf Course in East Granby, Connecticut, Friday and Saturday FootGolf nights were completely booked over the summer, says Paul Banks, owner and general manager. Next year, he plans to offer FootGolf every day of the week after 4 p.m.

At his course, FootGolf has so far proved popular with local soccer teams, staffers at office team-building events, and birthday party attendees. In all cases, there has been a good gender balance. 

Notably, the course at Copper Hill is set up so that golfers and foot-golfers will not mix on the golf greens, thus avoiding the annoyances that scuttled Metzler's FootGolf experiment.

Looking forward, Fernandez, of the American FootGolf League, compares FootGolf to rugby. Eventually, there will be sponsored professional leagues and competitions broadcast on TV. But right now, their first objective is to make sure that you have the opportunity to play FootGolf near where you live.

“You should try it,” he says, adding that everyone seems to come back from a round of FootGolf with a smile on their face.

Annette Kellerman in one of her more scandalous swimming ensembles. (Photo: State Library of New South Wales)

In the summer of 1907, an Australian woman by the name of Annette Kellerman made a startling appearance on the sands of Revere Beach just north of Boston. Amid the female sunseekers wearing the standard bathing costume of the time—blouse; skirt; stockings; swimming shoes—she strolled toward the water in a short-sleeved unitard cut to two inches above the knee. 

For this stunt, Kellerman was promptly arrested for indecent exposure. “She was denounced as a wanton,” reported the New York Times, “and dark prophecies were made as to the future of America.”

The incident, which ended with a judge dismissing Kellerman on the proviso she wear a robe when walking to the water, was just the kind of publicity Kellerman needed on her quest to bring recreational swimming to American women.

A typical turn-of-the-century swimming costume: restrictive, cumbersome, and certainly no good for doing laps. (Photo: Eddowes Bros/Library of Congress)

In 1907, Kellerman was “the world’s most famous woman swimmer and diver,” declared Ohio's Chronicle-Telegram. Born in 1886 and raised in seaside Sydney, the woman known as the "Australian mermaid" learned to swim during childhood in an effort to strengthen the weak legs she had developed due to poliomyelitis. After discovering she had natural speed and grace in the water, Kellerman began entering swimming races—which at the time were a new and rare thing for women—demonstrating her balletic diving among the fish at the Melbourne Aquarium, and training for long-distance swims.

In 1904, aged 18, Kellerman traveled to Europe, where she promptly flung herself into many of the continent's most notable rivers. A 26-mile swim in the Thames was followed by a race in the Seine, in which she placed third against 17 male competitors. After winning a 22-mile race in the Danube, she headed to the English Channel. She was intent on swimming across it, starting in southern England and ending in northern France, a feat that had only been accomplished only once, by Matthew Webb in 1875. Coated in porpoise oil and wearing a men's racing suit, Kellerman made it about three-quarters of the way before having to admit defeat after 10 hours, saying she "had the endurance but not the brute strength."

Having given distance swimming a solid go, Kellerman switched her focus to vaudeville, becoming a pioneer of the underwater ballet moves now seen in synchronized swimming, Weeki Wachee, and aquatic incarnations of Cirque du Soleil. In 1905 she began performing at the London Hippodrome, which earned her an invitation to showcase her mermaid skills at a private event for the Duke and Duchess of Connaught. For this event, Kellerman was not permitted to wear the leg-revealing men's swimsuit she had grown accustomed to donning in the more sartorially casual Australia. Improvising, she took her usual suit and sewed stockings onto it, thereby creating the first one-piece swimsuit for women.

Kellerman in her newfangled one-piece swimsuit for women. (Photo: Bain News Service/Library of Congress)

When her season at the Hippodrome ended, Kellerman headed to the United States. Her focus, again, was vaudeville, but along the way Kellerman took up another important mission: to teach American women to swim. A big part of this quest was the issue of the swimsuit. “American women have too long been handicapped in the enjoyment of this excellent sport by silly styles in bathing costumes that make real swimming well-nigh impossible,” Kellerman wrote in her 1918 book, Physical Beauty, How to Keep It.

A few months before her arrest at Revere Beach, Kellerman penned a swimming-focused editorial, published in Ohio's Chronicle-Telegram. In it she offered recommendations on what to wear in the water: “The best costume is the cheap, ordinary stockinet suit, which clings close to the figure, and the closer the better," she wrote. "It should be sleeveless, and there should be no skirts…They are very pretty and appropriate for the seaside, but not for the swimming pool.”

At a women-only lecture delivered at the Colonial Theater in New York on November 23, 1909, Kellerman told her audience that “if more girls would swim and dance and care for athletics, instead of rushing into matrimony as the only joy in the world, there would be fewer divorces.” Having made this declaration, the 'Australian mermaid' stripped off her black velvet gown to reveal a black one-piece swimsuit, and jumped into a water tank to demonstrate her aquatic agility. A Cincinnati Enquirer report on the evening noted that “many a woman went away vowing to learn to swim if she had to break ice to do it.”

Champion swimmer Rose Pitonof models the daring Kellerman swimsuit style in 1910. (Photo: Bain News Service/Library of Congress)

Over the ensuing decades, Kellerman lived multiple lives in parallel—vaudeville performer; silent film star; author—but they all centered on swimming. This mix of athletics and the arts was not entirely unusual at the time—another champion long-distance swimmer, Rose Pitonof of Massachusetts, was headlining vaudeville shows circa 1910—but Kellerman's particularly fetching fusion of swimming and entertainment had a beguiling appeal. “The average genius in athletics or the arts is apt to be a frump," wrote an Oakland Tribune reporter in 1908. "Miss Kellerman escapes this charge; she is gifted with both beauty and style.”

The totally non-frumpy Kellerman was so fetching that in 1905 she even garnered a marriage proposal while spluttering across the English Channel covered in porpoise grease. An accomplished male swimmer who was splashing alongside her to keep pace lasted a mere half-hour in her shining presence before he turned to her and proposed.

“I told him I preferred waiting until I saw him out of the water,” Kellerman said in 1907. Having re-encountered him at a supper given in her honor, she discovered he was “of short stature, so I declined his flattering offer.”

Kellerman and fellow distance swimmer C.M. Daniels in 1907. (Photo: G. G. Bain/Library of Congress)

Looks were important to Kellerman, but her approach to beauty was influenced by the expectations that had been placed on her. In 1910, Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent, director of the Harvard University Gymnasium, dubbed her "the perfect woman," having run a tape measure around every part of her body, and concluding that her measurements corresponded almost exactly to those of the Venus de Milo, the famous ancient Greek statue. Kellerman's water ballet shows were subsequently promoted using that "perfect woman" tagline, often alongside a detailed list of her measurements. Apparently a female performer's wrist circumference was of scintillating interest to Edwardian theatergoers. 

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Kellerman's legacy is the way in which she acknowledged the desire for, and appeal of, beauty while advocating female strength, confidence, and self-determination. Swimming was her solution, and she was determined to convince American women of its merits. In a 1907 newspaper column she even provided swimming lessons for readers who didn't live near water, advising them to “perfect the rudiments of the essential stroke” by lying prone on a chair “in one’s own boudoir,” extending the arms and legs, and flailing them elegantly until tired. (If that seemed too daunting, Kellerman advised the reader to “throw one’s self first across the bed” and try the leg-arm wiggling there.)

“I insist that swimming is not only a splendid sport for women, but that it is the sport for women," she wrote in Physical Beauty, How to Keep It. Not only did she deem swimming the one factor "to which, more than any other thing, I owe my personal development and success in life,” she declared it “more beneficial to the complexion than all the skin lotions that were ever invented.”

The Statue of Liberty at Legoland in Denmark. (Photo: Loozrboy/flickr)

George Washington once wrote that “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." That certainly rings true for Lady Liberty, who now appears on everything from coffee mugs to toilets—and in the form of hundreds of statues around the world.

New York's Statue of Liberty, officially titled Liberty Enlightening the World, was dedicated in 1886. Designed by Frederic Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel, its construction process suffered from multiple delays caused by lack of funding. But following 10 years of aggressive fund-raising and petitioning of the French and American public, Lady Liberty rose triumphantly into existence and became an instant symbol of freedom and revolution.

Since Liberty was installed in New York Harbor, copycat statues have popped up everywhere from Tokyo to Norway to Brazil. Here are 10 of the most notable.

1. Odaiba Statue of Liberty

Tokyo, Japan

(Photo: EO Kenny on Flickr)

The Odaiba Statue of Liberty is easily the nicest of all the copycats. The 39-foot-tall statue was erected in 1998 as part of a one-year tribute to Japan's connection with France, but has remained to this day due to its popularity. Its nearby footbridges allow for great closeup shots, and stunning views over Tokyo Bay. With the large suspension bridge extending behind the statue, it's easy to pretend you're really in New York. 

2. Bordeaux Statue of Liberty

Bordeaux, France

(Photo: Julienbzh35/WikiCommons CC BY 1.0)

In 1888 Bartholdi was commissioned to build a giant fountain in Place Picard in Bordeaux, and topped it off with his already-famous Lady Liberty. During the Bordeaux statue's (and its replacements') lives, it has been melted down by Nazis, spray painted, lit on fire and been made the subject of an artistic protest. 

3. Visnes Statue of Liberty

Visnes, Norway

(Photo: Sjoehest/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)

The small village of Visnes, Norway, has a big claim to fame—its copper mine, which was active for over 100 years, allegedly supplied the copper used to build the Statue of Liberty located in New York. This much smaller replica proudly commemorates the copper mine and its contributions to one of the most famous monuments in the world, even though this claim hasn't been fully verified. 

4. Lviv Statue of Liberty

Lviv, Ukraine

(Photo: Aeou/WikiCommons CC BY 3.0)

Atop the State Museum of Ethnography of Ukraine is a unique, sitting version of the Statue of Liberty, who's sometimes referred to as the “lazy statue.” She was designed by Polish sculptor Leandro Marconi, and is flanked by two hunky shirtless men. Breaking free from the shackles of oppression is hard work, so can you blame Lady Liberty for wanting to sit down for once?  

5. Salvador Dali's Statue of Liberty

Vacoeuil, France

(Photo: isamiga76/flickr)

You would expect Salvador Dali, the surrealist artist known for his paintings of melted clocks, to do things a bit differently than others. Unsurprisingly, he put his own twist on the Statue of Liberty when he created The Victory of Liberty in 1972. The design is quite true to the original statue, but with both arms raised. It sits outside at the Chateau de Vascoeuil arts center, among sculptures by other well-known artists.

6. Original Statue of Liberty Model

Paris, France

(Photo: Rama/ WikiCommons CC BY-SA 2.0)

Ironically, the Statue of Liberty in NYC is actually a copy of this pint-sized version in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris. Lady Liberty was designed by Frederic Bartholdi, who made several models before he was happy with the look. This final version, along with other artifacts relating to the Statue of Liberty, can be found in this industrial design museum. 

7. Rio de Janeiro Statue of Liberty Replica

Bangu, Brazil

(Photo: Carla Felizardo/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 4.0) 

Bartholdi was an early purveyor of Statue of Liberty copycats, and reused his design on numerous occasions. This statue in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro was commissioned from him in 1899 to commemorate the country's anniversary of independence. It changed hands and locations a few times over the last century, but now resides permanently in the Miami Square in Bangu, a lower-middle class neighborhood in Rio's West Zone. 

8. Lego Statue of Liberty

Billund, Denmark

(Photo: fdecomite/flickr) 

Lego is the toy you can really do anything with, and there's plenty of evidence of that at Legoland, Billund. Monuments from around the world have been recreated there, including the Statue of Liberty. Legoland says that 20 million pieces of Lego went into Miniland, the section where these replica world monuments are located. 

9. Arraba Statue of Liberty

Arraba, Israel

(Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)

The Statue of Liberty copycats aren't always faithful to her original form, and this version in the small city of Arraba, Israel is no exception. The origins of this heavy-set 15-foot replica are mysterious, but she still manages to draw in the occasional tourist. 

10. Tomb of the 72 Martyrs

Guangzhou, China

(Photo: Chintunglee/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 4.0)

Imperial China was toppled by revolutionaries in the early 20th century, but not without a few casualties. After one uprising in which these 72 men were lost in Guangzhou, they were buried near where they died, and given a large tomb to remember them by. The Statue of Liberty there, which was China's first of many copycats, was placed on top in the 1920s to symbolize the struggle for freedom. It was forcefully removed and replaced several times during China's turbulent political history. Since 1981 a new copy of the statue has maintained a vigil of the 72 martyrs of Guangzhou. 

In the first recorded instance of multigenerational parthenogenesis, a whitespotted bamboo shark gave birth to a female shark that also reproduced asexually. (Photo: yvonne n/Wikipedia Commons CC BY 2.0)

While we’ve known about parthenogenesis, also known as animal virgin birth, for a while, we've never seen this kind of asexual reproduction happen for multiple generations. Until now. 

A study published in the Journal of Fish Biology contains the first recorded instance of two virgin births in a family of whitespotted bamboo sharks. A captive female bamboo shark gave birth to nine offspring without copulating with a male shark, and remarkably, one of the offspring females reproduced asexually again, herself producing viable offspring. 

Prior to this study, animal virgin birth has been thought of as an anomaly and an evolutionary dead end in sexually reproductive animals. Because the offspring from this type of parthenogenesis only contain the genetic makeup of one individual, their chances of survival are pretty low. These offspring have also been regarded as infertile. But the bamboo shark births show that an animal conceived by parthenogenesis is itself capable of reproducing via second-generation parthenogenesis.

The type of parthenogenesis, involving animals that typically reproduce sexually, happens as a result of a process called automixis. Females provide both sets of chromosomes by fusing the egg with a cell containing a set of “sister” chromosomes; a second individual is not required. Originally it was thought that these types of births could only occur in captivity, until instances in the wild were recorded with a smalltooth sawfish and a pit viper.

The double virgin birth disproves the idea that parthenogenesis can only occur in one generation and produces infertile offspring. (Photo: Sander van der Wel/Wikipedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.0)

Animal virgin births are also not as rare as they would seem: another study finds that parthenogenesis occurs in up to 20 snake species that otherwise reproduce sexually. Though there is still a lot to be uncovered about why such virgin births occur, these latest findings provide support to the idea that parthenogenesis is an evolutionary alternative to sexual reproduction. 

The second shipwreck (Photo: Australian Transport Safety Board)

The remains of Flight MH370 have eluded almost two years of multi-pronged recovery attempts, efforts that began as soon as the plane was reported missing in March 2014. But searchers keep finding something else: 19th century shipwrecks. 

In the middle of December, one of the vessels that are searching the Indian Ocean for traces of the lost plane made “an anomalous sonar contact,” the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said, in a new operational report. Whatever the searchers had found, it looked to be manmade. 

The Australian team suspected they’d found a shipwreck, so they sent down an autonomous underwater vehicle to take a closer look. Early in January, that vehicle captured another sonar image, this one higher resolution. It showed, more clearly, the wreck of a ship, which shipwreck experts at the Western Australian Museum believe likely dates to back to the 19th century.

There are a few clues in the image that hint at the ship's age, including the shape of its hull and its current condition. It's relatively long for its width, a shape that became more common towards end of the 19th century, as materials like iron or steel were used to build ship hulls.

The completeness of the ship, too, indicates that it's like made of more than wood. "Even in deep water, there’s all type of things that would eat wood. It would be unusual to have wooden ship that would look to be in as good shape as that one," says Kevin Crisman, the vice president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M. 

Shipping traffic in this part of the world was relatively thin for most of history. "If they were doing this search in a place like coastal Europe, I would expect there would be dozens and dozens of ships," said Crisman.

Regular steam shipping started to cross the Indian Ocean in the mid-1800s, and wrecks are more common in certain treacherous places, like the coast of Western Australia. Some of the most fascinating wrecks in this ocean have only been found in the past decade or so; the oldest Indian Ocean wreck ever found was discovered in 2003 and first explored by professional marine archaeologist in 2011. 

The wrecks found during the search for MH370–this one and another found in May 2015–will likely stay undisturbed at the bottom of the ocean. They’re both more than two miles deep underwater–far enough down to make them difficult (and expensive) to explore. But at least now we know they’re there.

Every day, we highlight one newly lost or found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something unusual or amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to sarah.laskow@atlasobscura.com. 

Flyting from Norse folklore and Old England should be incorporated into American politics. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)

Imagine a world that had swapped its guns for puns and its IEDs for repartees. Such a planet is possible if only those in power would manage their conflicts with flyting, the time-honored sport of verbal jousting.

Flyting is a stylized battle of insults and wits that was practiced most actively between the fifth and 16th centuries in England and Scotland. Participants employed the timeless tools of provocation and perversion as well as satire, rhetoric, and early bathroom humor to publicly trounce opponents. The term “flyting” comes from Old English and Old Norse words for “quarrel” and “provocation.” 'Tis a form of highly poetic abuse, or highly abusive poetry—a very early precursor to MTV’s Yo Mama and Eminem’s 8 Mile.

“Court flyting” sometimes served as entertainment for royals such as Scottish kings James IV and James V. The most famous surviving exchange is The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, which was performed in the early 16th century by William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy for the court of James IV. A medieval rap battle between two clever men, it featured the first recorded instance of poop being used as an insult. The moment Kennedy called Dunbar a “shit without a wit,” he ushered in a whole new era of scatological humor.

James V, pictured on the left, was known to enjoy some good flyting. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)

Some choice lines from Dunbar and Kennedie, translated from the Middle Scots, include:  

“Gray-visaged gallows-bird, out of your wits gone wild,

Loathsome and lousy, as wet as a cress,

Since you with worship would so fain be styled,

Hail, Monsignor! Your balls droop below your dress.”

Those are just four lines of 128—it’s well worth checking out the rest if you want to up your insult game.

Of course, flyting was not humanity's first foray into competitive insults. The popular 1938 book Homo Ludens, written by Dutch historian and theorist Johan Huizinga, makes the basic argument that the dawn of civilization was the moment when people started insulting each other rather than (or in addition to) physically attacking each other. There appear to be forms of verbal jousting in pretty much all cultures; for example, one finds similar rituals in Japanese Haikai, naqa’id in Arabic poetry, the Mande practice of Sanankuya and the Nigerian game Ikocha Nkocha. 

This is the frill-necked lizard's version of flyting. (Photo: Matt from Melbourne, Australia/WikiCommons CC BY 2.0)

Forms of ritualized combat exist not only across cultures but also across species and spiritual universes. Gods in Norse literature have been known to flyte, and the concept behind flyting exists in the animal kingdom with agonistic behavior, when creatures establish dominance over each other without actually fighting. 

Flyting lacks much written history, but flute-like exchanges of insults exist in early classics such as the epic Old English poem Beowulf and Shakespeare's King Lear, in which Kent describes Oswald as, among other things:

“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a

base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,

hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a

lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,

glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue”

The obvious modern-day equivalent of flyting is the rap battle, but it's unclear whether the two forms of verbal combat have common ancestry. One academic, the late Ferenc Szasz, was convinced of a clear link between flyting and rap battles, applying his theory that American slaves adopted the tradition from Scottish slave owners.

The overlap of European and African culture in the South, and the question of how much European influence went into the rap battle, is a contentious issue, says Wald, author of The Dozens: A History of Rap's Mama. “The fact is, there are much stronger survivals of deep African traditions than most people realize,” he says. “But, there also has been an amazing ability of African American culture to adapt and reuse stuff they’ve picked up from European culture.”

One of the major examples, says Wald, is rhyme. “There is no history of rhyme in any African language,” he says. “And that continues to be true in African American culture—right up until the 1880s or 1890s, well after the Civil War, virtually the only rhyme that you find in African American culture is from people trying to do European forms.”

By the 1930s and 1940s, however, rhyme was inseparable from and central to black hip culture. Part of this shift came in the form of "The Dozens," a battle of insults tracing back to America’s 1920s and 1930s, customarily played out in front of an informal audience that keeps going until one person concedes.

For young African American men, the Dozens was a rite of passage. “The Dozens can be tricky, aggressive, offensive, clever, brutal, funny, inventive, stupid, violent, misogynistic, psychologically intricate, deliberately misleading—or all of that at once, wrapped in a single rhyming couplet,” writes Wald in his book. “Yo Mama” jousts, popularized by MTV, are a successor of the Dozens.

Regardless of whether flyting and the rap battle have an official link, they are ultimately part of the same art. We don't necessarily need to bring back flyting; we just need to give the rap battle flyting status by making it part of political protocol. The hit musical Hamilton has recently proven that when politicians do rap battles in cabinet, everyone wins. Time to spit a rhyme, powerful people.

From the 1940s to the 1990s, the secretive USSR created a massive constellation of ghost geography. Hundreds of cities. Over a million people living off the map. Not "off the grid"—towns were literally left off of Soviet maps, kept from prying eyes. If you lived there, your city had no public name and as a citizen you were a non-person. 

In one of these secret cities, established in 1960 and known as "Military Unit 26266 in closed townlet number one," young Russians were trained to be launched into the skies and beyond. Star City, located just east of Moscow, became the home of the Cosmonauts.

During the 1960s the Soviet Union planned extensively for a lunar landing and trained over 60 cosmonauts. Star City blossomed into a real town with its own post office, movie theater, railway station, and a couple of schools—all very, very secret. Its citizens were given special passports so they could enter and leave. Star City was a small world onto itself, kept hidden not just from other countries but from fellow Russians. 

The space program was once a powerful point of pride within the great communist dream, but in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it left Star City and the cosmonauts in serious trouble. At the time, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was on board the Mir space station, with the landing site in Kazakhstan suddenly no longer part of the USSR. Sergei was left on board Mir for months as Russia struggled with the Kazakhstan government. 

Star City adapted and began working more closely with NASA. By the mid 1990s, the curtain of secrecy of Star City had lifted slightly. For the first time, visitors could catch a glimpse of the tank where cosmonauts practice their space walks under water, or the gigantic centrifuge where the soon-to-be space travelers are swung around at dizzying speeds under eight times the force of gravity.

In 2008 control of Star City was officially handed over from the Russian military to space agency Roscosmos, making it a civil rather than military organization. It marked the first time since its establishment in 1960 that Star City became open to the general public, though still only with permission. Among the many travel packages currently available is a ten-day "Cosmonaut Overview Training" experience, a $90,000-per-person package that includes centrifuge simulator training, use of a space suit, spacewalk simulation in a buoyancy tank and dinner with a cosmonaut. 

Cosmonauts and their families, both past and present, still live in Star City, including Valentina Goryacheva, the wife of deceased cosmic pioneer Yuri Gagarin, and Valentina Tereshkova, who was the first woman in space. The town has recently built a new Russian Orthodox church, added a museum of space travel and human exploration, and established a monument to Laika, the first dog in space.

The new face of Internet shame: Jon Arbuckle. (Courtesy of Tumblr)

Over the past couple of days, a new meme has been rocketing through Tumblr. It seems that the internet pitchforks have been raised against a new offender: Jon Arbuckle.

That would be, the cartoon owner of cartoon cat Garfield. The world of Jim Davis' comic strip has been fodder for digital hijinks before, as it can be terrifying as well as soothingly nostalgic. A shocking number of fake Twitter accounts have tried to inhabit the laughless existential melancholy of the cat, to varied effect. Garfield Minus Garfield, a digitally-altered strip made by an Irish IT manager, became huge in 2008, spawning a book of the same name. Davis himself has called such internet remixes "fascinating."

But now, the focus has shifted Garfield’s owner, Jon Arbuckle. Quick to anger and often needlessly cruel to both of his animals (lest we forget poor, horrible Odie), Jon has previously been painted as a lonely lunatic in Garfield Minus Garfield and Garfield Without Garfield’s Thought Balloons. But a bigger storm is brewing over in the recesses of Tumblr, where a small-but-vocal group of activists are taking a stand on the “I Hate Jon Arbuckle” blog, with the rallying cry, “DOWN WITH ARBUCKLE!!!!!”

Rather than trying to find what drives one of fiction’s most hated men, the blog simply looks at all of the instances Jon being awful, making a case that he must be stopped. A few choice examples of Arbuckle’s nastiness:

If treating his pets like (sometimes) silent accomplices to his crimes, and cathartic dumping grounds for his bottomless loneliness weren't enough there is an entire section of the blog devoted to Real True Facts About Jon Arbuckle that are clearly made up, but somehow entirely believable.

According to the FAQ, I Hate Jon Arbuckle is no joke. As the author puts it, "although jon arbuckle has never done anything to me personally, i have empathy so i care deeply about the people and animals he has hurt." And apparently they are not alone. "Arbuckle Adversaries," as the blog has dubbed those faithful to the anti-Jon cause seem to be a rapidly growing base. Many of the posts have well over a hundred likes and comments, and allied blogs have even begun to pop up, like Ban Jon Arbuckle and I Hate Grandma Arbuckle. There are also jokes-on-the-joke blogs like I Hate Don Jarbuckle and I Hate Jonar Buckle.

If you want to join the Arbuckle Adversaries, you can go ahead and share the below poster that pretty much sums up this weirdly identifiable outrage.

Art on display at Louisiana State Penitantary's hobbycraft sale. (Photo: Courtesy The Angolite)

Chances are, you've heard of Angola, The Louisiana State Penitentiary. It's the largest maximum security prison in the United States, and an Angola reference is a fixture in any film or television series based in the south, from True Detective to No Country for Old Men. Sprawling across 8,000 acres of farmland–once a plantation–it's named after the country in southern Africa where the former slaves that worked on its land came from. And, on one weekend in April and on every Sunday in October, it hosts the Angola Prison Rodeo, the longest continually-running prison rodeo in the country.

Thousands of visitors enter the prison complex to see the show and, last year, I was among them. However, bucking broncos don't interest me; I was there for the "Inmate Hobbycraft Sale," which runs alongside the rodeo. After a bag search more thorough than any I’ve ever experienced at the hands of the TSA, and a solemn promise to a security officer that I would not take photos, I entered the prison complex to peruse the wares. They were proudly arranged atop rows of tables; the shopping experience was complemented by a soundtrack of thrashing hooves and the roar of the rodeo crowd.

The variety of items for sale was astounding (even more so considering the myriad limitations inherent to creating art while incarcerated), the talent and expertise of the inmate artists even more so. In just one aisle, I saw a hand-carved bureau; a cow skull garnished so beautifully it seemed plucked from Georgia O'Keefe's canvas; a Lilliputian metal motorcycle; a pair of ornate guitars constructed from paper and plastic bags; and a stunning, still-life pastel of gardenias, care of a genial, bespectacled "lifer.” While hesitant to give his name or get into a sweeping conversation about his “craft,” the artist mentioned that he derives 100 percent of the inspiration for his art from photographs sent to him by family and friends.

The entrance to Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as 'Angola'. (Photo: msppmoore - Angola Prison/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 2.0)

Some inmate artists were there in the yard selling their works that day, but others were still in lock up. At Angola, minimum and medium security prisoners are given the privilege of creating and selling their art at the Hobbycraft Sale, but you won't find maximum security inmates mingling with the public.

After I left the fair, I found myself wanting to know more about the inmates creating these intriguing artworks. Since May, I've been in touch with several of Angola’s artists via Jpay as well as snail mail, and was able to remotely interview them about their work. Jpay is essentially Facebook for prisoners. You can look up inmates by their Department of Corrections (DOC) number, and pay for virtual "stamps" to send them emails, e-cards and pictures, all of which are monitored by their institution. At Angola, prisoners do not have access to the internet, so Jpay is the sole way to communicate electronically with them.

"I get engrossed in a painting and hours pass without my being aware," Angola artist Emerson Simmons writes me on Jpay. Incarcerated as a teenager, Simmons, 38, has spent more than half of his life behind bars. His mother is an artist, and taught him how to sketch basic figures, and how to see the beauty in all art. "I call on those lessons every time I paint," Simmons says. He cites the disruptive penitentiary environment as one of his largest artistic hurdles: "Prison is typically a loud place," he explains. "People are always talking, wanting to be heard—having to stop for all of the distractions causes your 'process' to slip." Above all, Simmons is thankful for the ability to express himself. "I enjoy the release, and wish I would have begun earlier in life."

A painting by Benjamin Williams. (Photo: Courtesy Benjamin Williams)

Benjamin Williams, a 56-year-old who creates surrealist paintings, also tells me that painting is relaxing, enabling him "zone out in a place away from prison." Drawing his inspiration from "beautiful things, life in prison and poetry," Williams insists that creating art in prison "isn't a big challenge, so long as you're determined to do it." All the artists in Angola work in the "hobbyshop," where materials are plentiful, so long as "you have your own money to send out for them," as Williams puts it.

Joseph Woods is a 59-year-old leather craftsman who sells wallets and other accessories at the rodeo. He confirms Williams' report on the way art creation works at Angola, and expanded on the obstacles inmate artists face. "Time and space [are an issue]," he says, along with "security problems," which force the hobbyshop to close.

Since Angola inmate artists only have two opportunities a year to sell their work, and much of that money typically goes to buying more supplies, funds for necessities can be scarce. "Art feels like an expression—and a job," Woods admits. Yet art is also an invaluable boon to his life behind bars. For subject matter, Woods relies on memories of wildlife and nature, as well as recollections of the best moments in his life. "All of my art comes from a positive place," he says.

The hobbycraft sale is run alongside the Angola Prison Rodeo. (Photo: Courtesy The Angolite)

Angola doesn't have an art program per se, explains Kerry Myers, an inmate and editor-in-chief of the award-winning, inmate-run magazine, The Angolite. Still, "Art is encouraged as a productive way of using time," Myers tells me. "There is a competition twice each year on the first day of the rodeo, for artists and craftsmen to enter their creations in any number of categories—paintings of different medium, metalwork, woodwork and carving, jewelry, leather, glass etching, wood-burning and more."

Angola artists are concerned about the sale of their art, and rightly so, says Myers. "Often it is how they support themselves and also help their families.” Myers helps support himself by selling his handmade custom pens, but his passion lies in writing and photography. “I miss creative photography and cannot wait to reawaken that part of me again,” he says.

"Where there's a will, there's a way," declares Dennis Sobin, director of Safe Streets Arts Foundation, an organization supporting inmate artists. Sobin, a writer and producer, speaks from experience: he is a former inmate.

Sometimes, he says, the lack of distractions in prison can even benefit the art. "I was in solitary for six months," says Sobin, "and I actually learned how to read music there. Even though I had no instruments, I visualized the whole thing, the whole system for sheet music, all in my head." Equating this process to that of a professional golfer mentally envisioning his swing to perfect it, Sobin notes that by the time he rejoined the general prison population, his technique had worked. "I got out of solitary and said, 'I have a system for reading music, it's in my head. Give me some sheet music.' And I played it!... It was miraculous."

A drawing by inmate Frederick Thompson. He used the stippling method to make his drawings, taking him about 40 hours each. (Photo: Courtesy Safe Streets Art Foundation)

In addition to selling and exhibiting the art of imprisoned artists, Safe Streets also provides these artists with critiques, arts supplies and instruments, and mentors. Or, as Sobin puts it: "We provide an escape from prison. We allow people to create their own world through their writing, through their art...and then the prison walls disappear,” he adds.

There are 5,000 jails and prisons in this country, and the availability of art programs is different at each one. "Some will be very liberal, making music instruments, supplies, canvas, anything, available to inmates to keep them occupied and out of trouble, and to give them something positive to do," Sobin remarks. "Other prisons are extremely conservative and give nothing but a pencil and a piece of paper. And the only reason they do that is because, legally, they have to provide some way for inmates to communicate to the courts."

Often, incarcerated artists have to get creative when it comes to acquiring supplies. One found his canvases in an unlikely place: the maintenance shop. According to Sobin, "He discovered that the various parts that had come in were wrapped in canvas and, while the insides of the canvas were dirty, the outsides could be—and have been—put to use for artistic work."

Sobin has seen fascinating artwork emerge from even the most stringent environments. "Some of our most beautiful pieces are in pen and pencil, done on 8.5-by-11-inch paper, and, at times, on the scraps or on the backs of grievance forms—any kind of paper they can get," he says. "If you have nothing more than a pencil and paper, you can write books, you can make art, you can create whatever you want."

A first place entry on display at the hobbycraft sale. (Photo: Courtesy The Angolite)

After an afternoon spent wandering through the Inmate Hobbycraft Sale, chatting with the "vendors" and buying enough art to fill a suitcase, I was later struck by the normalcy of it all. Apart from the barbed wire and the bizarre rigmarole of getting inside, the whole thing was extremely similar to the countless art fairs and gallery openings I've attended over the years in New York. In that setting, I wasn't mingling with prisoners—I was talking with artists about their work. When I mention this to Sobin, his expression brightens.

"What we try to do is show, through their art and writing, the humanity and feelings of men and women in prison and let the public know they are caging fellow, talented human beings here who have real feelings and real abilities," he says. His goal at Safe Streets is to encourage the public to think twice about harsh sentences and about denying alternatives to incarceration.

"Art makes us open our eyes in a way that nothing else can," Sobin says. "You can go to a lecture from the ACLU about what's being done wrong with our criminal justice system, but everyone—conservatives, liberals—is attracted to art. If you can get people to view art, you'll gain audiences that you wouldn't be able reach in any other way."

If you'd like to get in touch with any of the inmate artists featured here, whether to commission a piece or just to say hello, send an email to staff@safestreetsarts.org with the artist's name and a link to this article. 

Sergey Gorbunov excavating the mammoth (Photo: Pitulko et al., Science (2016))

More than 40,000 years ago, in the Arctic reaches of what’s now Russia, the population of mammoths was at a peak. This was before the last glacial maximum–the last era when ice sheets reached down to cover extensive parts of Asia, Europe and North America–and even in the far north, mammoths would have had large expanses of open landscape in which to roam.

Astonishingly, according to a new study, published in Science, humans may have followed them there, on the hunt, further north into the Arctic than anyone ever realized humans had traveled that early in history.

New evidence, of human-made marks on mammoth bones, shows that humans had already populated the Arctic as early as 45,000 years ago, a team of researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences reports in the new study. That would put our species in that region 10,000 years earlier than any previous evidence has shown.

The latest evidence comes from a single mammoth carcass, first discovered in August 2012, not far from a weather station in Sopochnaya Karga, an area of Russia that stretches further north than the northernmost points of Scandinavia. That summer, a student was walking along the river bank when he spotted bones in an exposed bluff.

In the Russian Arctic, it’s not so unusual to find a frozen carcass of a prehistoric mammoth, but it’s still a notable event. The director of the weather station duly notified the Mammoth Committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and that fall, a team arrived to excavate the carcass.

As they worked, the team leader, Alexei Tikhonov, noticed that the mammoth’s tusk looked somewhat unusual–a hint that this ancient mammoth might have had an encounter with ancient humans. The mammoth carcass was also unusually complete, with frozen soft tissues still intact. It looked to be relatively young and healthy; what killed it?

The carcass went into storage over the winter, and the block of frozen ground sat waiting for inspection, until the spring of 2013, when it was delivered to St. Petersburg, still frozen, to be cleaned and studied.

“When the frozen block with the carcass arrived to St Petersburg, I went to the Zoological Museum to look at the bones and tusk,” says Vladimir Pitulko, the lead author on the Science paper. “The second bone which I picked up (that was the fifth left rib) had a clear pattern of human impact–a slicing cut mark made by some sharp lithic implement.”

As they examined the carcass, Pitulko and his colleagues found other evidence of injuries. There was a small, round hole on one skull bone. There was another injury on a right rib. The mammoth had been hit multiple times in its shoulder blade. Those injuries all happened when the mammoth was alive, but there were signs of damage after its death, too. Its jawbone, for instance, was broken, and its tusks had been modified.

These injuries were not consistent with a bone disease or with a non-human carnivore, according to Pitulko. The hole on the skull bone, for instance, was created by some sort of sharp, pointed tool.

“We were absolutely certain about human involvement into the death of the animal,” he says. “It was killed, clearly. Except we did not know when.”

By dating both the bones and the stratigraphical layers of earth in the place where the carcass had been found, the team was able to establish its age. The layers of earth above the mammoth carcass were in the vicinity of 35,000 years old, which meant the mammoth carcass itself would be even older. Carbon dating the tibia bone gave the team an age of approximately 45,000 years before the present.

Outside of this mammoth carcass, there are a couple of other sites that put humans in the Arctic in the period before the last glacial maximum, tens of thousands of years ago. But this is the evidence that goes furthest back into the past, putting humans in the Arctic tens of thousands of years before this area was thought to have been first inhabited by people.

In the study, the researchers conclude by noting that “the early arrival of humans in the area close to the Bering land bridge may have provided an opportunity for humans to enter the New World before the Last Glacial Maximum.”

Right now, the best archaeological evidence indicates that humans did not cross into North America until the end of the glacial period, a relatively short 15,000 years ago (give or take a couple of millennia).  If humans were hanging out in Siberia before the ice started to creep southward, though, it raises the question of whether they might have crossed from Asia to the Americas tens of thousands of years sooner.

“These finds are bringing more questions than ready answers,” says Pitulko. At the very least, it opens up a new picture of human expansion over the globe, of humans traveling north, into lands rich with giant mammoths, just waiting to be taken down.

The two new kittens (Photo: National Parks Service)

Researchers in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California, have been running a long-term study on the area's mountain lion population since 2002. Which means that they carefully track new mountain lion births. Which means mountain lion kittens.

These kittens were born late in 2015, to a cat the researchers call P-19. After a mountain lion in the study gives birth, the researchers do a home visit, during which they examine the kittens. In this case, they implanted the kittens with tracking devices, and collected DNA samples, in order to find out the identity of their father.

Until recently, researchers were tracking one or two male mountain lions in the area. But towards the end of 2015, they found a third male mountain lion in the area, whom they call P-45. This small population of mountain lions is at risk of inbreeding—the mother of these cubs conceived two previous litters with her own father—and new genetic material would help its long-term success. Researchers are doing a paternity test to find out if these kittens are the offspring of this new addition to the area. 

Mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains don't often make it to maturity: they're in danger from cars, other mountains lions and human influences, like rodenticide. In December, the park said that four of another mountain lion's offspring had died. Two were killed by an older, male mountain lion, and two were killed by an unidentified predator. That may be the way of the world, but it's hard not to hope these two strangely squeaky bundles of fur will survive.

Bonus finds: 45-star flag, the brightest supernova ever found.

Every day, we highlight one newly lost or found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something unusual or amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to sarah.laskow@atlasobscura.com. 

Venus as painted by Henri-Pierre Picou. (Image: Wikipedia)

In February 1916, two prestigious northeast American liberal arts colleges engaged in a spirited war of words, goaded by the media. The conflict, between Wellesley in Massachusetts and Swarthmore in Pennsylvania, did not pertain to academics, admissions, suffrage or sporting teams. They were fighting over which college’s female students most closely resembled the Venus de Milo.

At the time, American women were still getting used to breathing easily, having wrestled free from the tightly laced corsets and bulky bustles of the Victorian silhouette. But in the absence of these strictures they faced a new kind of aesthetically minded pressure: the need to make their measurements correspond to those of a Greco-Roman goddess. The soft curves of Venus—Aphrodite to the Ancient Greeks—were being exalted once again as the paragon of female beauty.

Accordingly, the nation embarked on a quest to find a living, breathing woman whose body was of exact Venusian proportions.

Venus de Medici. (Photo: Yair Haklai/Wikipedia)

The Wellesley-Swarthmore tiff began on February 10, 1916, when Wellesley released the composite data of its students' measurements. They seemed close enough to Venus' proportions to invite goddess comparisons—the average young woman at Wellesley apparently had a waist circumference within half-an-inch of the hallowed Venus de Milo trunk circumference.

But on February 15, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that Wellesley’s “composite Venus” was “outdone by Miss Margaret Willett, the beauty of Swarthmore college and leader in women’s athletics, according to measurements of Miss Willett made public today by her friends.” Willett’s supporters insisted that her figure trumped the collective beauty of Wellesley women since her measurements varied from those of the Venus de Milo by mere fractions of an inch. Her bust, in particular, was “practically the same.”

A woman being measured by a thoracimeter at the physical training department of Wellesley College in 1915. (Photo: Bain News Service/Library of Congress)

In America, the detailed measuring of college students had been standard practice since the 1890s, when the physical culture craze took off at universities. Over the next few decades, physical educators, particularly Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent, director of the Hemenway Gymnasium at Harvard University, collected measurement cards from students all over the northeast. Participating institutions included prestigious women’s liberal arts colleges such as Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Mount Holyoke, in addition to Wellesley and the co-educational Swarthmore and Oberlin.

These measurement cards did not require just height, weight, bust, waist, and hips. There were 60 required measurements per person, including instep, wrist, forearm, armspan, and “ninth rib.” And all this data was being put toward new and novel applications. In 1893, Sargent used composite figures from female students' measurements to sculpt a statue and exhibit it at that year's Chicago World's Fair. This figure came to be known as the "Harvard Venus." Visitors to the fair were invited to examine it, reflect on how their own bodies compared, and submit themselves to be measured for Sargent's data collection project.

Professor Sargent: physical educator; lady measurer; data hound. (Photo: Bain News Service/Library of Congress)

As the 20th century kicked into gear and the physical culture craze continued at institutes of higher learning, the idea of using measurements to search for a Modern American Venus became more overt. In 1910, Sargent was quoted extensively in a New York Times article entitled "Modern Woman Getting Nearer the Perfect Figure."

In it, Sargent derided the "overwomanized" silhouette of the Victorian era. "The American woman of to-day is becoming more like the Greek ideal of the beautiful," he declared. "True beauty consists of symmetrical and proportionate development of parts with adipose [fat] enough to cover the angles and hollows."

Venus of Arles at the Louvre. (Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikipedia)

By this time, Sargent had collected the measurements of over 10,000 female students, yet he claimed he had still not encountered the ideal woman. “Among the many thousands who have been measured at the gymnasium, not one has fulfilled every requirement,” he told the Times. The closest was Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer and vaudeville star who stood five-foot-four-and-a-half and sported a 35.2-inch bust, 26.2-inch waist, and 37.8-inch hips. Sargent called her the "perfect woman" for publicity purposes, but he was rounding up.

Over the next decade and a half, Sargent and other physical culture enthusiasts continued to scour the nation to find their human Venus. New contenders were discovered frequently. A Washington Post headline in 1912 proclaimed "Cornell Has Perfect Woman," and named basketballer Miss Elsie Scheel of Brooklyn as its Venus de Milo equivalent.

In 1913, the Oakland Tribune declared "New Venus is Found By Harvard Savant"—the savant in question being Sargent and the Venus being 19-year-old swimmer Madeline Berle of Revere, Massachusetts. In 1916, New Yorker Irene Kelynack, 21, was dubbed a "flesh-and-blood replica" of the ancient statue, while in 1919 the Tribune blared “Los Angeles Has Perfect Girl of Venus Physique,” and identified athlete Rosalind Smith as the new paragon of female perfection.

The ridiculous thing about all this—well, one of the ridiculous things—is that these women’s measurements varied from one another by several inches. Not only that, but they were being compared to different standards, for there were multiple versions of the Venus de Milo’s measurements. Some physical culture practitioners quoted the statue’s bust-waist-hip stats as 39-26-38, while others believed she measured in at 34.75-28.5-36. The only stat everyone could agree on was the Venus de Milo’s height, which was set at five-foot-four.

By 1919, the physical perfection of Venus was being questioned. “I do not consider the Venus de Milo perfect,” huffed anthropometrics specialist L.E. Eubanks in Social Progress. “Any woman with a 26-inch waist and a 39-inch bust should have an ankle larger than 7.4 inches.”

The Venus de Milo: a total uggo, according to L.E. Eubanks. (Photo: Tom King/Wikipedia)

Still, the Modern Venus searches continued. In October 1922, a particularly contentious competition took place at the Physical Culture Show and Beauty Contest held at Madison Square Garden. At this event, according to the Pittsburgh Press, five male judges, all sculptors, “led the young women contestants into a private room in the Garden and minutely inspected the competitors one by one.”

The women were naked during these inspections, “wearing not even so much as a pair of slippers on their feet.” One of the contestants, Ann Hyatt, told the Press that she was instructed to remove her bathrobe and then bathing suit. When she murmured that the situation was “very embarrassing,” Herman Moens, the head judge, remarked, “But the body is far more beautiful nude.” Then, according to Hyatt, “[t]he other four repeated in a kind of chorus, ‘Yes, indeed. By all means. It certainly is.’”

After every contestant had been subjected to a thorough visual inspection, 18-year-old Dorothy Knapp (five-foot-three; 35.5-25-35) was declared the winner. This devastated Hyatt (five-foot-four; 34.75-28.5-36.5), who had been determined to claim the Miss American Venus title. Refusing to accept the judges’ decision, Hyatt sought the services of a lawyer, who announced his client’s plan to take the case to the Supreme Court of the State of New York. “Miss Hyatt is really, in fact, the most perfectly formed woman in America, the modern Venus of the United States,” her lawyer, David Steinhardt, said. “[I]t is a matter of serious importance to herself, to her husband, and to her children that she should not be defrauded of this conspicuous distinction.”

Dorothy Knapp, the winner—wrongfully, according to some—of the 1922 Miss American Venus contest. (Photo: Bain News Service/Library of Congress)

Miss Hyatt did not have a husband or children. She was just thinking ahead. Her lawyer even laid out a plan for how the Supreme Court could verify Miss Hyatt’s rightful claim to the Modern Venus title over Miss Knapp: “we are prepared to set up in the court room a life-size statue of the great Venus de Milo, and produce our client in court to establish by a series of minutest measurements that Miss Hyatt’s figure more closely follows the dimensions of that accepted masterpiece of art.” (For the arms, famously missing from the statue, Hyatt and her legal team planned to consult the “well-known restoration as made by the distinguished artist, Henri Rochefort.”)

Sadly for Miss Hyatt, her case was judged to be without merit. But times were changing anyhow—the flapper fashions newly in vogue looked best on tall, slender figures, and the Venus de Milo was starting to look a little too plump. In April 1923, the New York Times introduced the world to the “new Venus, whose proportions have been reduced by the athletic tendencies of the modern girl.” To be a true American Modern Venus, women now “must be 5 feet 7 inches in height, a perfect 34, with 22-inch waist and 34-inch hips.” Furthermore, “[t]he ankle should measure 8 inches and the weight not exceed 110 pounds.”

By 1931, magazines were touting a slimmer Venus whose measurements were much altered from those of the Venus de Milo. (Image: Silver Screen/archive.org)

And just like that, the beauty rules changed again. After decades of searching and dozens of contenders, America hadn’t found its perfect living, breathing reincarnation of Venus—because she didn’t, and couldn’t, exist.

Three months after the "new Venus" proportions were announced, Dr. R. Tait McKenzie, sculptor and former director of physical education of McGill University, told a crowd of female college students that he had given up on looking for ideal figures among America's young women. Having studied hundreds of measurement cards from colleges in the country's east, he declared that the women were all "slab-chested and knock-kneed"—the "antitheses of Venus," according to the Oakland Tribune. 

But the fruitless quest for Venus was not the fault of the many thousands of women whose measurements were scrutinized and deemed imperfect over the years. The mistake was in equating human beings with lifeless, albeit carefully sculpted marble. Even L.E. Eubanks, the statue-scrutinizing anthropometrics guy who once declared the Venus de Milo “a trifle top-heavy,” acknowledged the folly of trying to compare live women to ancient sculpture.

“Be a statue perfection itself, it still leaves too much to the imagination,” he wrote in 1919. “[T]here are too many important elements of physical excellence expressible only in life and movement that a mass of stone cannot show.”

This looks like the good kind of laughter. It's not always this way. (Photo: CC Tanzania)

A laughter epidemic sounds like a welcome neighborhood contagion. But laughter is not so simple. 

It seems that laughter isn't just a joyful noise; it can be a signal of distress, spurred by anger or sadness or intertwined with mania. The most famous example of a laughter epidemic happened in Tanzania (then Tanganyika) in 1962, but this kind of psychological behavior happens on a weekly basis around the world, particularly among populations experiencing chronic stress. An example of a recent and similar incident is an instance of unexplained nausea and dizziness among students at a school in Lancashire, England this past November. There is also abundant evidence of such events in places of instability like Kosovo, Afghanistan, and South Africa.

The 1962 outbreak began in a girls’ school and then spread to other communities, with uncontrollable laughter affecting perhaps 1,000 people, lasting several months, and causing the temporary closure of 14 schools. Most cases of mass psychogenic illness begin with a single individual—in this case, one schoolgirl likely fell into a fit of anxiety-induced laughter, setting in motion a chain effect, until the girls around her were also engulfed in desperate laughter. Slowly, it spread beyond their school and region and into other at-risk populations.

Sufferers’ symptoms included recurring attacks of laughing and crying that lasted from a few hours up to 16 days. These fits were accompanied by restlessness—aimless running, occasional violence—but there was no evidence of organic causes. Christian Hempelmann of Texas A&M University, who has done research on the incident, describes the laughter epidemic as a case of mass psychogenic or sociogenic illness, a malady that has the capacity to strike in a variety of high-stress settings. The stress factors here among the schoolgirls may have included the unfamiliar expectations imposed in the British-run schools and the uncertainties created by Tanganyika’s independence, achieved barely a month before the incident. 

“On the one hand it sounded too good to be true, and on the other hand, people were citing it in support of all kinds of things, across the spectrum, and contradictory things,” says Hempelmann. “So I thought—I’ve got to look at this again and see, did this actually happen and what does it tell us about humor.”

Tanzania, known more for its wildlife than its history of laughter epidemics. (Photo: Pixabay)

While it did indeed happen, it doesn’t tell us too much about humor, and it annoys Hempelmann when humor researchers use the Tanganyika incident as evidence of laughter being contagious. Psychogenic illness has all kinds of so-called nerve symptoms, he explains, and laughter is just one of them. Though the Tanganyika case is closed, similar cases of mass psychogenic illness occur among groups of people unable to extract themselves from a stressful situation.  

In this type of situation, the person has no power over the stress and can come up with no other response. Such a person is more commonly young than old, female than male, and employee rather than a supervisor. “It has to express itself bodily, that gives the person a way to say—see I'm suffering; something is going on; I'm not just depressed or withdrawn,” explains Hempelmann. It wasn’t just a group laugh—rather, experiencing the same stress, people subconsciously copy a complex of symptoms, of which laughter is just one.

Are Yeltsin and Clinton laughing out of mirth? Pain? Discomfort? Malice? Tough to tell. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)

Hempelmann recalls an instance from his time living in Layafette, Indiana. Workers at the local DMV were exhibiting respiratory distress to the point that the building was repeatedly shut down and eventually relocated. When the environment was tested for contaminants, nothing was found, and ultimately the local media reported the case as a sort of mass psychogenic illness. 

“It was just a terrible work environment, nobody wanted to work at the DMV, they had particularly bad supervision there, and they just subconsciously found a way out of the situation that they could copy from each other,” says Hempelmann. “It's not as crazy as one would think.” 

Hempelmann says that while mass psychogenic illness is fairly common, it’s often not reported under that name. “If you are referring to somebody as suffering from this, you are in a way still calling them hysterical,” he says. “You're saying: You don't have a valid disease, you don't have an issue, you're just being crazy because that gets you out of trouble.” The stigma is still there. As they begin to recognize recurring themes, doctors are trying to figure out the best ways to approach patients of the illness. Yet cases like the group of high school girls in New York who developed facial tics continue to perplex the media.

A laughter yoga session, where laughter is actually supposed to be contagious. (Photo: Lisle Boomer/flickr)

Recent developments in the field of laughter, an area of research known as gelotology, include humor and laughter therapy, laughter meditation, and laughter yoga—in which feigned laughter becomes real, bringing with it supposed mind and body benefits. Laughter has been linked to reduced stress hormones and increased endorphins, providing both physical and psychological relief. 

As far as that last idea, Hempelmann says it’s the classic Freudian theory of humor, where “we build up some magical psychic pressure, and laughter lets us release it, through whatever metaphorical valve we have for that.” He doesn’t think that is a good theory for the role of laughter and how humor works. “Statistically in this case, this did not release anything. These people were suffering, expressing their suffering through that,” Hempelmann explains, “Nothing got better because they laughed.”

An 1892 lithograph by Joseph E. Baker depicting a more fanciful interpretation of the Salem witch trials. (Photo: Public Domain/Wikipedia Commons)

New for 2016: the exact location of the 1692 Salem witch trial hangings. A team of experts known as the Gallows Hill Project team has confirmed that 19 of the 20 executions took place at a site called Proctor’s Ledge, at the base of the Gallows Hill.

Today, Proctor’s Ledge overlooks a Walgreens parking lot.

“The site of the executions has been known and lost at least twice, thanks to a collective amnesia,” says Emerson “Tad” Baker, a Salem State University professor who was part of the efforts to uncover the site.

The Gallows Hill Project was established five years ago in an effort to pinpoint the precise location of the hangings, which were previously believed to have occurred at a higher point on Gallows Hill. The team—a mix of writers, professors and historians—used a combination of historical evidence and modern technology to conclude that the victims were hanged at Proctor’s Ledge. All of the executions in the Salem witch trials took place by hanging at Proctor's Ledge, with the exception of one man, who was pressed to death by heavy stones. 

Corey was the only victim of the Salem witch trials not to be hanged to death at Proctor's Ledge. (Photo: Dana Huff/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

The writings of 19^th century Salem historian Sydney Perley proved to be immensely useful in deducing the location of the hangings. “His interpretation of the Proctor’s Ledge site is right on the money,” Baker says. “We are really just confirming his work—but using multiple lines of research to do it, including a couple modern ones he did not have access to. He deserves the bulk of the credit.”

Marilynne Roach looked at several historical testimonies from the Salem witch trial court records, and tracked down a few key eyewitness accounts. On August 19, 1692, a woman accused of witchcraft named Rebecca Eames testified that on her way into Salem for questioning, she was able to see five people being executed from her location at a house on a hill. Roach later established that the house was probably the McCarter house on Boston Street or one of its neighbors.

Benjamin Ray and his colleagues at the University of Virginia used aerial photos and geological information systems for “viewshed” analysis of the eyewitness accounts, explains Baker. The team knew where two of the eyewitnesses were standing when they saw the hangings, and used the viewshed map to surmise that they could see Proctor’s Ledge from where they stood, but not the higher points on Gallows Hill.

A viewshed map showing what Rebecca Eames, an accused witch, was able to see from McCarter House when she testified in Salem on August 19, 1692. (Photo: Benjamin Ray/University of Virginia)

The city of Salem, Massachusetts intends to memorialize the site by erecting a plaque. “Our goal is not to create another tourist attraction,” says Baker. “I am sure [the site] will attract people, but it is really not an appropriate site for a large memorial and lots of visitors. It is on a postage stamp sized lot, in the back yards of a half dozen homes, with no parking close by.”

As for the Walgreens next door? They don’t seem too fussed by the fact that the lot next door was the site of what were arguably the most famous hangings in America’s history. “Yeah, it’ll bring more people to the area,” says the store manager. “The downtown store is busy around October, because of all the tourists. We’re kind of off the radar over here, so I think that it will bring a lot more people.”  

A harrowing moment from "The Queens-bound 7 Line." (Image: DJ Hammers/YouTube)

Stressed out from your long subway commute? Chill out with a calming video of a long subway commute. 

A mysterious YouTuber has been taking long  train's-eye-view videos of different subway lines around New York City, and they're surprisingly calming, achieving the escapism and smooth motion of a great ride without all the crowding and pizza rats.

According to his Twitter bio, the filmmaker, who goes by DJ Hammers, is a "video journalist covering the NYC Subway" and a New York Transit Museum volunteer, and has an "encyclopedic knowledge of trains." Though this particular behind-the-scenes series is new, his YouTube channel boasts literally hundreds of videos of public transit around the country.

The collection has a little something for everyone: adventure-seekers might enjoy the tunnel-heavy J train timelapse footage, while those looking for a little relaxation can soar over the city via the real-time Queens-bound 7. And then there are the deep cuts: commuters who are distressed about the upcoming L train shutdown can hang onto some of its finest moments with "L Train Action at New Lots Avenue." Whoever you are, DJ Hammers, keep on trainin'.

Green mamba. (Photo: Orest/Wikimedia Commons)

Want to know about all the heroic cats, insect swarms, and medieval reliquaries of the world but not sure where to look? Welcome to the Week in Google News Alerts, where we profile some of the most rewarding terms to keep as an email alert. (To sign up for one, go here.) This week’s search term of art is “snake found.”

This search term came to me after a friend became the proud owner of a baby corn snake. Corn snakes are widely considered one of the most appropriate breeds to keep as a pet, but—as my friend smartly pointed out—are, like all snakes, infamous escape artists. That's probably why my "snake found" Google Alert sends me a story nearly every day.

This week, let's look at some of the best snakes found.

The most seasonally-appropriate snake discovery this week occurred in Australia, as a Sunshine Coast family discovered a green tree snake sleeping at the top of their Christmas tree, perhaps hoping for a new life as a tree-topper. Similarly, a 4.5-foot grass snake relaxing in a Christmas tree lot in England got a little tired of the foot traffic and found a new home inside the engine housing of a BMW, to the driver's considerable alarm. In both cases, the snakes were native species and were safely relocated to their natural habitats.

In much more alarming news, a highly venomous—and highly pregnant—eastern brown snake was found under a woman’s fridge in Adelaide. A professional snake catcher described the area underneath the fridge as “the perfect place for a snake,” which was surely very reassuring to the homeowner. After being captured, the snake went on to lay 12 eggs, guaranteeing at least 12 more snakes to be found at a later date.

However, not all snakes found are native species. A Florida jogger realized what appeared to be a fallen tree branch was actually a likely an escaped (or released) pet. Escaped, non-native snakes are a serious wildlife issue in Florida, with breeds such as the Burmese python wreaking havoc on the ecosystem of the Everglades and other areas. Similarly, California has found an alarming and unprecedented number of yellow-bellied sea snakes over the past year, with the latest discovery made on Tuesday. The sea snakes—which frequently wash up in Australia (the preferred continent of highly venomous snakes)—are migrating farther north due to the water-warming effects of El Niño. While Tuesday’s snake is being sent to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Australians have a slightly more cavalier attitude, with one expert encouraging people to “throw [the snakes] back in”.

In the hopefully-soon-to-be-found category, we have the monster snake of Nerang National Park. Despite having been spotted by various individuals over the past 18 months, park workers have been unable to catch the python, which may be up to 16 feet long.

Finally, a local Pennsylvania newspaper unearthed a historical found snake Saturday, with the story of a 35-foot snake being discovered in an area home in 1941. Given that the largest recorded snakes top out at around 30 feet, the story seems fairly unlikely. If the snake did exist, the homeowners missed out on the $50,000 reward offered by the New York Zoological Society for the delivery of a live, 30-foot snake.

Snakes: always escaping, sometimes being found.

Other Alerts of Note

Let's look at the most interesting stories from my other Google Alerts this week. 

"Ancient ruin" Justin Bieber managed to bring ancient Mayan ruins into the headlines this week when he was instructed to leave after climbing onto roped-off structures at the Mayan fortress at Tulum. Tabloids are luridly adding that Bieber chose to remove his pants during his climb, although the only source for this version of events is Spanish-language newspaper La Razón. No word on whether it’s too late for the pop singer to say “Sorry.”.

"Haunted" KTHV takes us inside Little Rock, Arkansas' most haunted house, now a AAA 4-diamond bed-and-breakfast. "It was built with a lot of love and a lot of revenge," according to the owner, and it's currently up for sale.

"Mummy"  In 1991, a frozen Copper Age mummy was discovered in the Otzal Alps. Because he was so well-preserved, Otzi has proven a valuable window into the lives of Copper Age humans. Now, researchers have made startling discoveries about human migration patterns by examining the bacteria in his stomach, including the possibility of a previously-unknown mass human migration from Africa.

"Infested" Similarly, although the Roman Empire is known to have introduced a new level of sanitation and hygiene to human civilization, new research indicates that its citizens remained infested with parasites. Researcher Piers Mitchell believes this may have been due to Roman diet, which included uncooked fish, and notes that these parasites weren't unknown to Roman medical practitioners, although their treatment methods left something to be desired.

I hope you enjoyed this week's news bounty. Please suggest other topics for news alerts and keep your eyes peeled for unexpected snakes!

Epiphany bathers line up at an ice hole in Nerli in 2008. (Photo: Aleksey Nikolskyi/WikiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)

Marking a tradition so cool it's cold, scores of Russian Orthodox Christians dove headlong into icy water last night to celebrate the Epiphany, The Moscow Times reports.

The Epiphany marks the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, and is celebrated on January 19th, one of the least obvious times of year for swimming. For the ritual, known as "The Great Sanctification of the Water," a priest blesses a body of water, and devotees immerse themselves in it.

Until fairly recently, this "immersion" usually meant a church-style sprinkling, but starting in the 1990s, Russians began embracing the Polar Bear Plunge aspect. Now thousands spend the 19th cutting cross-shaped holes in icy rivers, cannonballing into local pools, or charging into the Black Sea.

 

A man dips into the icy waters of a lake as part of celebrations for Orthodox Epiphany on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, January 18, 2016. #orthodox #epiphany #water #ice #dip #celebration #church #minsk #belarus #christ #christian #icy #immerse

A photo posted by RT (@rt) on Jan 19, 2016 at 2:31am PST

Temperatures last night fell well below freezing, but the devoted still dunked themselves three times in a row, as tradition dictates. The truly hardcore started at midnight, but celebrations continued throughout the day, as more light-oriented swimmers took the plunge and everyone warmed up.

 

Морж💪🐬🌀 #amazing#winter#river#me#swimming#Epiphany#dipping#dip#cold#freeze#fun#funny#happy#the#19#of#January#like#a#seal#lol#strong#love#adrenaline#wonderful#together#brr

A video posted by Дарина Цветанская (@tsvetanskaya_) on Jan 19, 2016 at 5:34am PST

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.