Arctic Firsts (designed by Michelle Enemark) (click to view larger)

Robert Peary and Frederick Cook battled it out to be first at the North Pole, but that wasn't the end for intrepid expeditions to the Arctic where people keep pushing achievement to the limit. Here's our chart to some of the greatest arctic firsts, from the first airship crossing to the first scuba divers to swim into the icy depths of the North Pole. 

Polar Week is January 27 - 31, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #PolarWeek), Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and Kinja. 

The Andreée expedition balloon crash (via Tekniska museet)

Few images are more strange and haunting than those discovered on some frozen film in 1930. They reveal the mysterious fate of the S. A. Andrée Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897, where a hot air balloon meant to sail over the North Pole instead crashed into the ice.

Swedish balloonist S. A. Andrée had set out with team members Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel to make history, but planning and the harsh conditions of the Arctic cut their journey incredibly short. The balloon launched from Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean in July of 1897. However, inadequate testing of the balloon, Andrée's insistence on using a "drag-rope" method of steering that trailed ropes on the ice, and just the quixotic nature of the expedition resulted in death for all three expedition members.

After just two days of flight, the balloon lost hydrogen and plummeted to the ice. The men were completely unprepared for a land expedition, and set up camp on the uninhabited White Island in the Svalbard archipelago. There, the Arctic winter eventually consumed them and they perished in the unforgiving environment of ice and howling winds.

It wasn't until the remains of their camp were discovered in 1930 that anyone knew what exactly happened to the Andrée crew. Since then, Roald Amundsen had accomplished the feat of sailing over the North Pole in his much sturdier Norge airship in 1926. Remarkably, the remains of not just the three expedition members — their bodies gnawed by scavenging polar bears — were found, but diaries, cameras, and film as well. Even more incredibly, 93 photographs were able to be saved. Below are some of the eerie photographs of the unfortunate journey of the Andrée balloon expedition from that discovered film and other sources.

A found expedition camera (via Tekniska museet)

The found film (via Tekniska museet)

The team before their departure. From left to right: Nils Gustaf Ekholm, Nils Strindberg, & S. A. Andrée (via Wikimedia)

Preparing the balloon (via Perspektivet Museum)

Readying the rigging (via Perspektivet Museum)

The balloon takes off (via Perspektivet Museum)

The balloon over the water (note the trail from the drag ropes (via Perspektivet Museum)

Watching the balloon disappear from shore (via Perspektivet Museum)

After the balloon crash (via Tekniska museet)

Posing with the wreck (via Tekniska museet)

A shot seagull (via Tekniska museet)

The empty balloon and bearing (via Tekniska museet)

Moving a boat through the icy waters (via Tekniska museet)

Setting up camp, raising the Swedish flag (via Tekniska museet)

At camp (via Tekniska museet)

With a polar bear kill (via Wikimedia)

Camp on White Island (via Tekniska museet)

The 1930 funeral for the remains of S. A. Andrée, Nils Strindberg, and Knut Frænkel in Stockholm (via Wikimedia)

Schoolchildren viewing an 1930 exhibition of Andrée expedition artifacts in Stockholm (via Wikimedia)

Artifacts from the Andrée camp in the Polarmuseet in Tromso, Norway (via Wikimedia) 

Polar Week is January 27 - 31, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #PolarWeek), Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and Kinja. 

Herbert George Ponting documenting Antarctica in 1912 (via National Library NZ)

There is something so magical and evocative about a vintage film —the strange voice overs, the flickering black and white images, the faces of people long gone. Join us on a video journey to the world's polar places, as they were viewed in the 1900s to 1960s.

Encyclopedia Britannica's Eskimos (Winter in Western Alaska) from 1950 shows a day in the life of an Inuit family. The colonial perspective in this film is regrettable, nevertheless it is a fascinating moment in a culture's history, and contains some fun details, like "their pillow is a log," and "Can you see what he's bringing in? It's a piece of hard packed snow to melt for morning tea."

The U.S. Army Air Force created this training film Land and Live in the Arctic during WWII, and, while it's full of helpful tips for survival in harsh Arctic conditions, it is rife with hilarious voice overs. One is our trusty narrator, giving sage survival advice, and the other from the man who is reluctantly surviving. A few choice quotes:

On frostbite: "My schnoz looks like a vanilla popsicle."

On standing still if you see wolves: "Mister, you stand still. If wolves come around to take census, they'll be interviewing me from the top of a tree!"

And on taking off layers if you start to sweat: "All I gotta say is this is one hell of a spot for a strip tease!"

In gorgeous desaturated color, the US Navy's A Portrait of Antarctica from 1961, takes us to the South Pole via sea, air, and land, including a glimpse of Mt. Erebus, many an icy beard, and a slide-whistle sound effect for penguins hopping out of the ocean. 

Lastly, a strange and somewhat melancholy film, The Truth About the North Pole from 1912, was created by Fredrick Cook in an attempt to prove that he did indeed arrive at the North Pole (in 1908) before Robert Peary, as he claimed. Whether or not Cook actually stood at the exact spot of the North Pole (or simply somewhere else nearby) continues to be a subject of debate today. The silent film, though incredibly slow and somewhat confusing, is absolutely captivating to watch. There is a haunting quality to it, created by a man attempting to prove his accomplishment, and us knowing that he never did receive the recognition he so desperately wanted, and that his reputation as an explorer never recovered from the controversy.

Polar Week is January 27 - 31, 2014 at Atlas Obscura. Follow along on Twitter (hashtag #PolarWeek), Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and Kinja. 

Romania's Merry Cemetery is deceptively named.

True, the wooden crosses of the small cemetery of Săpânţa are vibrantly illustrated with cartoonish depictions of the deceased, but it's not only the best moments of the departed that are preserved, but the tragic as well. Among the some 800 markers is one of a man named Ion Saulic, a soldier decapitated in World War II by a Hungarian soldier. 

photograph by BudapestDundee/Flickr user

You can see what look like guard dogs lined up before the deceased, and then the painted blood dripping from the detached head, all carved by hand onto the wooden cross. Other crosses in the cemetery show car accidents and a drunk with the foreboding skeleton of addiction reaching towards him from down below. 

photograph by Janrito Karamazov

However, most are less macabre, with the village professions of shepherds and weavers alongside mothers caring for their children accompanied by irreverent and witty epitaphs, most the work of woodcarver Stan Ioan Pătraş. For example, here's one of the humorous inscriptions:

Under this heavy cross
Lies my poor mother in-law
Three more days she would have lived
I would lie, and she would read (this cross).
You, who here are passing by
Not to wake her up please try
Cause' if she comes back home
She'll criticize me more.
But I will surely behave
So she'll not return from grave.
Stay here, my dear mother-in-law!

The sculptor started carving the memorial markers in 1935 and continued to his own death in 1977 (of course carving his own cross prior to his passing). His legacy has since been continued by his apprentice Dumitru Pop. Visitors continue to journey to the rural wonder to see the crosses, each capturing in rich colors something of the deceased, more than most of the plain granite markers that clutter the cemeteries of much of the rest of the world. 

Below are more photographs of the "Cimitirul Vesel."

photograph by Gabi Marian

photograph by Dan Cristian

photograph by Adam Jones

photograph by Adam Jones

photograph by Remus Pereni

photograph by Remus Pereni

photograph by Adam Jones

photograph by Richard Mortel

photograph by DaniRadu/Wikimedia

photograph by Roamata/Wikimedia

photograph by Adrian Libotean

photograph by Dan Cristian

photograph by nrares/Flickr user

photograph by Remus Pereni

photograph by Brandon Atkinson

photograph by Camil72/Wikimedia

THE MERRY CEMETERY, Sapanta, Romania

Curious Facts of the Week: Helping you build your cocktail party conversation repertoire with a new strange fact every week, and an amazing place to explore its story. See all the Curious Facts here>

Thread City Crossing Bridge (via Wikimedia)

Drive through tiny Willimantic in Eastern Connecticut, and you may notice an amphibian obsession. Many local businesses are named after frogs, or feature frogs in their logos. Colorful statues of frogs dot Main Street. Frogs even feature in local graffiti.

Willimantic's more rural borough, Windham, sees even more frogs turning up in schoolyards and on houses. And near Willimantic's center is a bridge flanked with four columns, each topped with an 11-foot-tall frog staring majestically into the distance.

Willimantic Brewing Company, a Local Microbrewer (courtesy Willimantic Brewing Company)

So what's with all the frogs? The answer rests in the town's early days. One summer, in the 1750s, the town had been suffering a heat wave of several days' duration, when late one night they were woken up by terrifying noises in the woods, unlike anything anyone had ever heard. Some thought it was attacking wolves or bears, and others feared it was an invading army. Still others were terror stricken that it was trumpets heralding the end of the world.

The terrified town posted a guard overnight, and come morning — when the noises finally ceased — they sent a search party to investigate. About 100 yards into the woods, they reached a local pond, and discovered it was nearly dried up. Lining the pond's dry bed were the carcasses of dozens and dozens of bullfrogs. The frogs, they sheepishly realized, had been the source of the noises which had terrified everyone the night before.

Windham Historic Frog Pond (photograph by the author)

Windham faced an uncomfortable few years as the story of their cowardice got out. But then, rather than trying to live it down, Windham chose to embrace the story as part of its identity, giving a frog a place of honor on the official town seal. Frogs and Windham have been linked ever since.

The site of the "Bullfrog Battle" — located near Windham's border with nearby Scotland, Connecticut, alongside a state highway — is now privately owned. The town erected a marker next to it in the 1920s, but recently moved it to Windham's green after underbrush threatened to obscure it. Fittingly, the town green is where many residents huddled in fear of the froggy chorus.

Windham Green With Frog Pond Marker (photograph by the author)

The biggest frog landmark in Willimantic is a bridge, officially named "Thread City Crossing." The original state DOT design was more straightforward, but residents turned it down, asking for something with more "character." Designers then added the frogs, perching each one upon a spool of thread in homage to Willimantic's former heyday as a textile mill town.

The frogs even have names: "Willy" and "Manny," after Willimantic; "Windy" for Windham; and "Swifty," after Willimantic's purported Algonquin meaning, "land of the swift running water." The bridge opened in 2000, and won a Federal Award for Excellence in Highway Design in 2002.

Thread City Crossing Frog Sculpture (photograph by the author)

The frog statues' design inspired a "Frog Parade" in 2005, akin to similar community art projects in other cities. Local artists each decorated one of 20 fiberglass frogs, which were then displayed around town before being auctioned off for charity. Some of the sculptures can still be spotted throughout town. One sits beside the door to Windham Center Elemetary School, near Windham's Green, while another adorns the lobby of WILI-AM, the local radio station. Still another sits eight miles away in Storrs, Connecticut, in the University of Connecticut's biology department building. 

UConn Frog (photograph by the author)

Speaking of UConn's biology department, one of their Assistant Professors-in-Residence, Susan Z. Herrick, grew up in Windham herself, and has an interesting theory about the original incident. Traditionally, the story claims the frogs were fighting for the dwindling water in the pond, but Herrick, who specializes in frog behavior, suspects the frogs may have been trying to make love, not war. In bullfrogs — the species in Windham's pond — males usually carve out their own territory on a pond bank, then call to attract a mate.

"The noises are what we call 'advertisement' calls," says Herrick. "An advertisement call tells other males about the male making the call — body size, condition, the fact that he has a territory, the fact that he is in the market — and is also telling females about the male making the call."

But rather than trying to out-shout each other, Herrick's research has found neighboring frogs will take turns. First one calls, then the other. Other species take a less-cooperative approach — rather than picking a territory and luring females in, they crowd together where females may be, all shouting for attention. "Kind of like the single's bar scene in humans," Herrick jokes.

Willimantic Frog Sculpture (photograph by Cometstarmoon/Flickr user)

Frog View Marketplace (photograph by Doug Kerr)

In the course of her research, Herrick learned that in extreme situations, other frog species sometimes switch from one mating strategy to another, and she suspects that may have been the case in Windham:

"As the shoreline shrank, the males were losing their territories physically, as well as getting pushed closer together. At some point, they reached the situation where there were simply way too many males in far too small of a pond. I think all the males gave up on having any territory at all and focused strictly on at least getting a female. With no coordination of calls, it must have been a God-awful noise, and I think this is what the villagers heard."

Herrick is continuing her research into frog behavior, and credits the famous story with sparking her interest in the first place — one more monument to Windham's frogs.  

 Windham Town Seal (photograph by the author)

Bands in the Astrodome (via Wikimedia)

Last week the Houston Astrodome was added to the National Register of Historic Places, but that doesn't mean it's clearing of the looming wrecking ball. In fact, the sad truth of the register is that's it's never guaranteed salvation, or even ongoing preservation, for historic sites. 

As David Bush of Preservation Houston told KTRK: "The big misconception that you constantly hear is that it's listed on the National Register, it can never be torn down. That's not true. It has never been true." A National Register of Historic Places historian stated in1999, that at the time some 982 properties on the register had been removed due to their destruction. (113 places are currently listed on the possibly incomplete "Former National Register of Historic Places" on Wikipedia.) 

The Astrodome, in terms of sports history, has a lot going for it. Completed in 1964, it was declared the "Eighth Wonder of the World" as the first domed stadium. The mid-century athletics icon was the longtime home of the Astros baseball team, with Mickey Mantle swinging the stadium's first home run (the Yankees still lost that first game, though). However, its initial innovations were long ago surpassed by more modern stadiums, and last November a proposal to renovate the now vacant structure into a revamped entertainment complex was rejected by voters in Harris County. Part of the stadium was subsequently demolished that month. According to the New York Times, the county's top elected official Judge Ed Emmett stated that the listing "would have no practical effect on the county’s ability to either repurpose the Astrodome for future use or to demolish it." 

Meanwhile in New Mexico, Fort Bayard, an 1886 station of the Army's Buffalo Soldiers named a National Historic Landmark in 2004, is potentially going up for sale due to a lack of funding. As the Associated Press reports, ads seeking offers were published in the Wall Street Journal and a major New Mexico newspaper, but if there's no takers, demolition may also be in its future. The report also notes that historic properties in rural Colorado and South Dakota are in similar situations. 

The 1892 Isaac Ziegler House in Knoxville, Tennessee, formerly on the National Register of Historic Places until it was torn down (photograph by Jack E. Boucher, via Library of Congress)

So why does such a major designation seem to not stop demolition and development projects from edging in on history? What National Register listing really means is a 20% federal tax credit for structural investing, along with any state tax incentives, but that's often not enough to make preservation a more appealing option over razing and starting over. This is especially true with a giant stadium like the Astrodome, which has fewer options for repurposing than, say, an old theater or a historic home. 

That's not to say that it means nothing, and listing on the National Register certainly gives something of an economic incentive for preservation, as well as a national profile for these sites and a strong platform from which to argue for a place's preservation. However, what historic sites ultimately need is sustainable funding, and programs like the Save America's Treasures program started by Hillary Clinton have been cut in recent years, while the National Parks Service which oversees many conservation and preservation sites has also had its funding slashed. 

There is definitely an argument to be made that tax dollars may be better employed elsewhere than to preserve outdated architecture or rural historic sites whose visitors have trickled to a stop. However, it also means a loss of history. Putting some more financial federal muscle behind preservation could help make National Register listing more meaningful beyond the commemorative plaque. 

Inside the Astrodome (via Library of Congress)

Simulated data modeled for the CMS particle detector at CERN (via CERN)

We live in an age when the apocalypse has become passé. From street preachers with placards to ancient Mayan prophecies, the notion of the "end times" is bandied about with such careless enthusiasm that the very words themselves have been rendered meaningless. We can't even open a newspaper these days without being confronted by catastrophic earthquakes, nuclear arms races, or ill-advised scientific experiments.

In this guide, however, we're going to be taking a look at seven places that could pose a realistic threat to our continued existence on this planet. So buckle your seatbelt and dust off the ration packs, as you join us on a tour of places that could destroy the world. 

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
CERN, Switzerland

Although CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research — has been around since 1954, it wasn't until 2010 that it became a household name due to some groundbreaking science. Based outside Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border, CERN operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world.

CERN's main site seen from above (photograph by Brücke-Osteuropa, via Wikimedia)

The main project at CERN’s Swiss headquarters is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator built 100 meters (328 feet) under the ground in a circular tunnel with a circumference of 27km (16.78 miles).

On March 30, 2010, the LHC was successful in smashing two proton particle beams into a head-on collision, a feat that director Steve Myers likened to "firing two needles across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other." The resulting event had a value of 7 trillion electron volts.

CERN Office Building 40 (photograph by Gillis Danielsen)

In March 2012, CERN upped their game as they began engineering increasingly larger events. The ultimate goal of the project was to identify new sub-atomic particles, and moreover the holy grail of particle physics: the Higgs boson, or "God particle." Remarkably, the Higgs boson was confirmed that July, and in 2013 its predictors Peter Higgs and François Englert jointly received the Nobel prize in physics. 

As exciting as this might all sound (particularly to physicists), the reactions taking place in the LHC are the largest ever generated in experiments, leading to concerns of dire implications, namely the formation of black holes as a result of imploding particles. CERN confirmed that the black hole theory is indeed one possible outcome — adding, however, that any such black holes would exist purely on a sub-atomic level, and would more than likely evaporate before they could do any damage.

The Large Hadron Collider's magnets direct the proton beams (via Creative Commons)

For many non-physicists following the events taking place at CERN, the only familiar concept here is "black holes"; which, understandably, has led to widespread concern about the experiments. However, there are scientists, too, who have shared their doubts about the project. In March 2008, the botanist, biologist, and physicist Walter L. Wagner filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court, in an effort to bring these experiments to a halt — fearing that CERN could ultimately tear a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum.

Writing for the New York Times, science correspondent Dennis Overbye explained these concerns, summarizing: "Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead."

Later, when the project encountered setbacks in 2009, the theoretical physicists Holger Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya posited that CERN was trying to stop itself, by sending a "ripple backward through time." Their published papers carried titles such as Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal, and argued that the project's discoveries could be so "abhorrent to nature," that they were traveling back to prevent the discovery of the Higgs boson particle in the first place.

Let’s just hope the scientists at CERN are right, and that these particle anomalies do simply evaporate... rather than incurring the wrath of God, or dragging the whole planet backwards through a sub-atomic tear in the fabric of Switzerland.

photograph by Phil Plait

FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR POWER STATION
Fukushima, Japan 

The Nuclear Power Plant at Fukushima in Japan has been making regular news ever since its catastrophic systems failure on March 11, 2011. Since then, much of the media hype has died down, leaving the plant's team to get on with the clean-up operation. However, some experts are claiming that we should be paying more attention to Fukushima right now.

Reactor control room at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (photograph by Kawamoto Takuor)

The accident happened when the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake caused a tsunami, hitting the power plant and instigating a double core meltdown. As many as 300,000 people were evacuated from the area, and the Fukushima disaster became the largest radiological event since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 — earning a rating of Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

At first, that seemed to be the extent of the crisis. Without undermining a figure of almost 1,600 deaths believed to have been caused as a result of the rushed evacuation, or the forecasted increase in the local susceptibility for conditions such as cancer or leukemia, the radiation appeared at least to be contained.

The Fukushima Nuclear Plant after the earthquake and tsunami (via Digital Globe)

However, things weren’t so simple. When the reactor was struck, thousands of tons of contaminated water leaked out of the plant, into the earth, and eventually to the Pacific Ocean. This uncontrolled radioactive waste has caused untold damage to the fishing industry, while the continuing clean up operation still poses severe risks that could have catastrophic effects worldwide.

Writing in the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, independent consultants Mycle Schneider and Anthony Froggatt claimed:

“Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date, releasing three times the radioactive material of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, or 14,000 Hiroshimas.”

Radiation hotspot in Kashiwa, near Fukushima (via Wikimedia)

The full danger of the ongoing disaster at Fukushima has only gradually come to light, and many have accused the Tokyo Electric Power Company of dealing with the meltdown in a secretive and incompetent fashion. Staff are now preparing to extract unstable radioactive fuel rods from the wreckage, in something akin to an apocalyptic, crane-operated version of the game Pick-up sticks. One clumsy move, and it'll be the worst manmade disaster in history. 

A few expert commentators are already recommending a full evacuation of the Northern Hemisphere. Japanese scientist David Suzuki went on record saying, "everyone on the West Coast of North America should evacuate." While Suzuki was labelled a scaremonger by some, and later expressed his regret at making such an extreme statement, he did not however deny his belief in such a dire prognosis; and the Center for Research on Globalization is just one of many websites to have collected similar concerns from a range of respected scientists.

Even if calling for a widespread evacuation of the Northern Hemisphere proves to be an overreaction, it cannot be overstated just how serious of a catastrophe this event has been — and will no doubt continue to be in the years to come.

Fukushima Power Plant prior to the disaster (via Wikimedia)

THE KOREAN PENINSULA

The threat of global nuclear war has existed since the technology itself came into being, so perhaps to pin that threat onto one specific place is to undermine the size and scale of the dangers posed by worldwide nuclear armament. Nevertheless, a list like this wouldn’t be complete without a mention of "the bomb," and in the last year in particular, that threat has been linked most frequently to North Korea.

The statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang (photograph by J.A. de Roor)

In 2013, tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated to new levels of hostility, and for a time the threat of nuclear engagement felt closer than it had since the Cold War. As the United States moved more and more of its armed forces into South Korea, the embittered North Korea released news of an underground nuclear test on February 12, and then in May launched a test missile into the Sea of Japan. The two tests, combined, represented a grave threat for the nation's perceived enemies; though analysts believed that North Korean technology was as yet incapable of delivering a nuclear payload as far as the United States, as they had threatened.

By April of 2013, North Korea's government was making threats of nuclear bombardment. To make matters worse, Japan vowed that if any of these test projectiles entered Japanese air space, it would be considered a breach of the uneasy peace between the two countries.

Though the 2013 saber rattling ended in a begrudging cease-fire between North and South Korea, the north has far from abandoned its nuclear armament programs.

Unha-9 rocket model (photograph by Steve Herman/VOA)

The Institute for Science and International Security estimates North Korea currently possesses between 12 to 27 warheads; in 2013, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute gave a more conservative estimate of 10. However, thanks to a naturally occurring resource of uranium ore, it’s almost certain that their nuclear arsenal will continue to grow over the coming years.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, there now exists somewhere in the region of 17,300 nuclear warheads globally. Those countries armed, in order of estimated firepower, are: Russia, the United States, France, China, the United Kingdom, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea. Only five of these nine are members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and there are enough historical rivalries between these countries to prompt serious concern all around.

We can’t help but wonder what would actually happen, should the warheads start flying. According to the experts at Physics Today, it would take 100 nuclear bombs to bring about a full "nuclear winter," with massive fallout and the lowest temperatures this planet has seen for a millennium. And 1,000 bombs? Well, by that same reckoning we could say goodbye to the human race.

Victorious Fatherland Liberation Monument in North Korea (photo by Hanneke Vermeulen)

HAARP
Alaska, United States

The project known as HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) operates out of a subarctic facility in Alaska. Co-funded by the US Air Force, US Navy, the University of Alaska, and the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the stated aim of the project is to analyze the Earth's ionosphere. This research would open possibilities for developing advanced ionospheric technology, with major implications for radio communications, as well as improved surveillance systems.

HAARP Antenna Array (photograph by Michael Kleiman, US Air Force)

However, critics of the project suggest that communications are just the tip of the iceberg. It is believed by many that the battery of future-tech tools being developed at HAARP — including high-power radio frequency transmitters, ionospheric sounding devices, and UHF radars — have a disturbing potential for weaponization.

According to some critics, such equipment could supposedly be used to manipulate the weather, disable electronic communication networks, and severely damage whole ecosystems. Other theorists have gone so far as to claim that such a project could be investigating methods for the widespread control and augmentation of human moods and mental states... so do be sure to have those tin foil helmets at the ready.

Aerial view of HAARP (via United States Federal Government)

Should we be worried? Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a well-regarded expert in ionizing radiation, has spoken directly about the environmental consequences of such a project: "HAARP is a gigantic heater that can cause major disruption in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding this planet."

More controversial theories blame the project for droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods; for plane crashes, space disasters, and even Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The website Columbia's Sacrifice claims that HAARP technology was responsible for the tragic loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003. You can read theories on Stop HAARP which link the ionospheric research program to the New World Order, while Endtimez Ministries quotes Biblical scripture to prove that HAARP is, in fact, the antichrist’s own weapon of choice.

photograph by Jigme Datse

While some of these theories seem more plausible than others, one thing is clear at least: the HAARP program represents technology the likes of which this world has never seen, and it may be some time yet before we understand its full potential.

BEIJING GENOMICS INSTITUTE
Beijing, China

The Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) is one of the world’s leading centers for genome sequencing; that is to say, research into the very building blocks of human DNA. 

An ABI PRISM 3100 Genetic Analyzer (photograph by Mark Pellegrini)

Amongst the many accolades of the BGI, they are able to claim responsibility for sequencing the first ancient human’s genome, as well as sequencing the first giant panda genome. The institute has successfully sequenced genomes for plants such as soybean, rice, and cucumber, in addition to honeybees, lizards, silkworms, and more than 1,000 forms of bacteria. It is reported that the BGI produces over 500 cloned pigs each year, for use in chemical testing.

Advances such as these have led to the development of proposed eugenics programs, which (among other effects) would allow would-be parents to select their offspring before birth, choosing between all of the potential genetic outcomes of their pairing.

Genetically Modified Mice (via Wikimedia)

According to an interview with one of the project's participants, China predicts that this choice would tend towards the selection of more intelligent offspring; and that as a result, each new generation could be expected to have an IQ score that averages 15 points higher the random norm. Over the course of a century or so of improvements — each generation smarter, faster, and stronger than the last — descendants of the project will be effectively evolved into the ultimate, genetically enhanced (potential) master race.

In the West, such experiments are generally countered by a wave of religious-based fears about meddling with "God's design"; even the word "eugenics" still rattles from association with the Nazi experiments of WWII. China, meanwhile, apparently unhindered by such stigma, is currently leading the way in the global genome race.

The first printout of the human genome in book form, at the Wellcome Collection in London (photograph by Russ London)

It isn't just the religious amongst us, though, who feel that tampering with human DNA just might not be that great of an idea. We're not quite at the stage of test tube-grown clone armies however, and the chances of accidental mutation may seem equally unlikely. For now, China's reported eugenics program is something of a slow burner and we're not likely to see the results for a long time yet.

CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL
Atlanta, Georgia, United States 

The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) runs a number of research and treatment facilities across the United States. Its headquarters in Atlanta contains enough dangerous contagions to fuel a serious epidemic — rabies, bird flu, tuberculosis, monkeypox, and more. Of course, these hazardous samples are stored under the tightest of security, in a state-of-the-art biosafety department built at a cost of $214 million in taxpayers’ money. Today, the CDC is one of the only two official smallpox repositories in existence.

The CDC Headquarters in unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia (via Wikimedia)

The complex itself is an imposing, industrial affair, as you might well expect from a facility with such a need for airtight security. Before you get too comfortable though, on February 16, 2012, there came proof that even the CDC's own biosafety procedures were fallible: in the form of an air leak from Building 18.

According to congressional sources, an air filter backfired in one of the building’s germ labs and air destined for the powerful HEPA cleaning filters was channeled the wrong way — back into a clean-air corridor outside the laboratory. There were even visitors in the corridor at the time, who reported a puff of air blowing through the hatch on a lab door.

As luck would have it, there were no experiments being conducted in the laboratory at that precise moment. Had there been, those touring visitors could have been exposed to any number of deadly contaminations.

Electron micrograph of malaria (via Wikimedia)

On the CDC’s own website, a tongue-in-cheek feature offers advice to citizens in the case of a zombie outbreak, but if ever there were to be an aggressively contagious global biohazard disaster, the CDC itself is one of the few facilities on the planet with the means of instigating it. As a matter of fact, in May of 1994 the CDC admitted to having provided the Iraqi government with "biological warfare agents" between the years 1984 and 1993; a heinous list of contagions including West Nile virus, Dengue fever, and Botulinum toxin — the most acutely toxic substance in the world.

When pressed on the subject, CDC lab director Thomas Monath described the transaction as the "free exchange of biological samples among medical researchers." 

YELLOWSTONE CALDERA
Wyoming, United States

Famous for its majestic bison, belching geysers, breathtaking mountain scenery, and diverse ecosystems, most people wouldn’t immediately associate Yellowstone National Park with the threat of global disaster. As it stands though, the Yellowstone Caldera is one of the more likely contenders on our list, based on the simple logic that what has happened three times already, can probably happen again.

The 1990 eruption of Alaska's Mount Redoubt would be dwarfed by Yellowstone's supereruption (via United States Geological Survey)

The caldera we know today was formed 640,000 years ago, a byproduct of the explosive Lava Creek eruption. Previous to that was the Mesa Falls eruption dating 1.3 million years ago, and further back still, the Huckleberry Ridge eruption at 2.1 million years ago. Suffice to say, it doesn’t happen very often, but packing a punch quite unlike any volcano we've seen before, once would be enough for us.

To give a sense of scale, in 2010 the volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted in Iceland, bringing air travel to a halt across the UK and the majority of northwest Europe. Data suggests that Yellowstone’s last eruption produced 600 cubic miles of dust and ash — that’s roughly 10,000 times the size of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, and even just a series of small eruptions would be enough to bring the entire planet to its knees.

Yellowstone River in Hayden Valley (via National Park Service)

Reading the temper of a supervolcano is incredibly difficult to do, but take a look at the intervals between the Yellowstone Caldera's past eruptions: 800,000 years between the first two, 660,000 years between the second and the third... and now 640,000 years since the last. Could it be that we’re due for another sometime soon?

The truth is, Yellowstone could erupt next year. It could erupt this year for all we know, wiping out half the Western States before your next birthday. The world's leading volcanologists are betting 10,000 against one, however, that it isn't going to happen within our lifetimes.

Although having said that, there is the "Ring of Fire" to consider.

Tuff Cliff in Yellowstone Park, formed by the Lava Creek eruption (via National Park Service)

In case you haven’t heard of it, the Ring of Fire is a series of both active and dormant volcanoes that circles the Pacific Ocean. It falls along the edges of one of the planet’s main tectonic plates, featuring a total of more than 450 volcanoes. Recent quakes in Japan, New Zealand, and Chile can all be attributed to the Ring of Fire, which locates 90% of the world’s earthquakes in addition to 75% of its active volcanoes.

Somewhat alarmingly, the volcanoes comprising the Ring of Fire have seen a noted increase in activity over the last six months. There have now occurred ten major eruptions in that time, including some sites which have been dormant for decades until now.

Just recently, Ring of Fire volcanoes have erupted in Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. As the ring also includes the entire West Coast of the USA — as well as the south coast of Alaska — some are now predicting that Americans, too, should be preparing for the very real threat of volcanic activity.

The Pacific Ring of Fire (via Wikimedia)

It’s a sobering thought that for all our nuclear warheads, our genetic research, atmospheric interference, and laboratory-born black holes, the human race might yet meet its demise at the hands of Mother Earth herself. But then, looking back along this list of manmade horrors, weapons of mass destruction, and attempts at playing God, perhaps one could hardly blame her for wanting to shake us off.

Of course, it's probably going to be fine. We most likely have nothing to fear from any of the seven places listed above; but whatever that thing is that you keep talking about and still haven't quite gotten around to doing yet... well, now might be the time.

Expo 67 postcard (via Joe Wolf)

After visiting Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, and New York City, Atlas Obscura's tour of World's Fair relics stops next in Montreal, Canada, which only hosted one fair — but it left two of the city's most eye-catching buildings behind.

Montreal Biosphere (photograph by Hilverd Reker)

One of the landmarks remaining from Montreal’s Expo 1967 is a visitor from Canada's neighbor to the south that stayed long after the fair. The Biosphère was originally the United States Pavilion — a 20-story geodesic dome designed by Buckminister Fuller. Fuller championed the geodesic dome as a design for a livable space that used only one-fifth the materials used in a more conventional building.

Expo 67 Geodesic Dome (photograph by Shawn Nystrand)

The dome's eye-catching design proved Fuller right — it was made of only a steel framework was sheathed in a clear acrylic skin. Inside were exhibits on such Americana as patchwork quilts and Raggedy Ann dolls, various presidential campaign memorabilia, exhibits on NASA’s space program, props from popular Hollywood films, and Elvis Presley's guitar.  

Fair organizers left the giant dome behind after the Expo, and for a while the city of Montreal used it as a general recreational space until a fire in 1976 burned the  acrylic skin away. The sphere was then closed to the public for 15 years.

Fire At The Biosphere (photograph by Gilles Herman)

Then, in 1995, the City of Montreal and Environment Canada re-opened the Biosphere as an environmental museum and eco-study center, with an emphasis on the ecosystem of the Great Lakes and the St. Laurence Seaway. The free museum also offers a changing series of exhibitions on environmental issues, such as pollution, climate change, biodiversity and sustainable development.

Inside the Biosphere (photograph by Alex Williams)

Another architectural marvel at the Expo was more home-grown.

The Habitat housing complex, presented as a model “future community,” was  designed by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie as his master’s thesis project at nearby McGill University.

photograph by Jean Hambourg

Inspired by how Lego blocks snapped together, he proposed a similar sort of modular design for constructing apartment complexes. The Habitat complex, built using his design, became an exhibit in its own right, allowing curious visitors inside some of the sample module housing units; part of the complex also served as housing for visiting dignitaries to the fair.

After the fair, the individual apartments were put on the real estate market. Safdie originally hoped the modular units would be a means to develop affordable housing, but the building’s high popularity have since resulted in equally high costs. 

photograph by Pascal Walschots

Habitat 67 (via Wikimedia)

While those are two of the Expo 67's most architecturally magnificent, there was much more to the Montreal World's Fair. Below are some photographs of the grand event, in all its futuristic 1960s glory:

The Expo-Express train station (via Wikimedia)

The USSR Pavilion (via Wikimedia)

Inside the USSR Pavilion (via Wikimedia)

Ontario Pavilion (via Wikimedia)

The Canadian Paper Pavilion (photograph by Laurent Bélanger)

The monorail (photograph by Laurent Bélanger)

France Pavilion (photograph by Laurent Bélanger)

Ethiopia and Morocco Pavilions (photograph by Laurent Bélanger)

Mexico Pavilion (photograph by Laurent Bélanger)

The Kaleidoscope (photograph by Laurent Bélanger)

British Racing Motors car (via National Archives UK)

Man in the Community and Man and His Health Pavilions (via Wikimedia)

photograph by Shawn Nystrand

 
The opening ceremonies site today (photograph by colink./Flickr user)

Stay tuned for more in our series on World's Fair relics, and be sure to visit Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, and New York City. 

In the Photo of the Week feature, we highlight an exceptionally amazing photograph submitted by an Atlas Obscura user.

This week we're spotlighting a picture from user Journeylism who snapped this candid moment between two surprisingly nonchalant Roman soldiers in the Buenos Aires religious theme park, Tierra Santa. Journeylism had this to say about how he stumbled upon these strange simulacra:

"We always look for weird places when traveling and looking out of our airplane's window while landing on Buenos Aires' domestic airport we saw Jesus and a couple of his companions hanging out in what looked like a theme park. We couldn't resist looking into it once we had our feet on the ground, and a day or so later we walked with hundreds of school kids amongst Bible stories in a somewhat outdated decor."

TIERRA SANTA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Thanks to all of our adventurous users who keep submitting such amazing shots! Want to have your photograph featured? Keep adding your captures to our ever-growing compendium of wondrous places (just click the "Edit This Place" link at the bottom of each place). And watch here each Friday for another Photo of the Week. 

George Thompson, "A view of the river Thames" (1814) (© Museum of London), showing the last Frost Fair

From about 1550 to 1850, the world was in what scientists have deemed a "Little Ice Age." The frigid centuries included the spectacular sight of the River Thames in London freezing over, sometimes with ice so solid people decided to go out and have a festival on the river.

The Frost Fairs were staged on the frozen Thames in 1683-4, 1716, 1739-40, 1789, and 1814. Parallel exhibitions commemorating the 200 year anniversary of the last Frost Fair in February of 1814 are being held at the Museum of London in the City of London and the Museum of London Docklands. Frozen Thames: Frost Fair 1814 shows the winter bacchanalia from the Frost Fair, where the main trade was booze and the principal activity was having as wild a time as possible without breaking the ice. 

Through etchings, paintings, mementos printed by enterprising press owners, and even a 200-year-old block of gingerbread — the "only surviving piece of gingerbread bought at the 1814 Frost Fair" — you can get an idea of the joy and chaos of the Frost Fairs. It seems the artists most delighted in showing people falling on the ice (one of the drinks served along with beer and gin was a highly intoxicating concoction called "Purl" that involved wormwood), but you can also spy participants roasting sheep, playing games like bowling and "throwing at cocks" (that seemed to involve hurling things at roosters), and even fox hunting and bull-baiting. Some reports even claim an elephant walked across the ice, but sadly it did not make it into these tableaux. 

Of course, every ice event has its seasonal end, and the Frost Fair would conclude tumultuously with the sounds of cracking ice and inebriated revelers scrambling for the shores. While with the current climate and the alteration of the architecture of the Thames it's not likely there will be another Frost Fair, you can find memories of it in the city. Under the Southwark Bridge, Richard Kindersley created a series of engravings on slate remembering the fair with this inscription: 

Behold the Liquid Thames frozen o’re,
That lately Ships of mighty Burthen bore
The Watermen for want of Rowing Boats
Make use of Booths to get their Pence & Groats
Here you may see beef roasted on the spit
And for your money you may taste a bit
There you may print your name, tho cannot write
Cause num'd with cold: tis done with great delight
And lay it by that ages yet to come
May see what things upon the ice were done

Below are more photographs of the Frost Fair courtesy the Museum of London. (Be sure to click on them to pull up a slideshow with larger views.)

Abraham Hondius, "The Frozen Thames, 1677," (© Museum of London)

Detail of Abraham Hondius, "The Frozen Thames, 1677," (© Museum of London), showing snowball fights and treacherous crossings

"Frost Fair on the River Thames, 1684" (c.1800), unknown artist (© Museum of London)

Detail of "Frost Fair on the River Thames, 1684" (c.1800), unknown artist (© Museum of London) showing bull-baiting and fox hunting

Detail of "Frost Fair on the River Thames, 1684" (c.1800), unknown artist (© Museum of London) showing "the drum boat" and "boyes slideing"

Detail of "Frost Fair on the River Thames, 1684" (c.1800), unknown artist (© Museum of London) showing "men throwing at cocks" 

"Frost Fair on the River Thames, 1684" (c.1812), unknown artist (© Museum of London)

"A Frost Fair on the Thames at Temple Stairs," 1684, Abraham Hondius (© Museum of London) 

Detail of "A Frost Fair on the Thames at Temple Stairs," 1684, Abraham Hondius (© Museum of London) 

"A View of Frost Fair, on the Thames, February 1814," Unknown artist (© Museum of London) Note the drinking tents called "Wellington," "Good Gin," and "Moscow," and on the right are boats stuck in the ice and a printing press selling souvenirs. A donkey race is also at the top right. 

Detail of "A View of Frost Fair, on the Thames, February 1814," Unknown artist (© Museum of London), showing swings and people falling on and into the ice

"February – Frost Fair 1814," (1838), George Cruikshank (© Museum of London), with masts of marooned ships visible in the background 

"Gambols on the River Thames. Feb 1814," George Cruikshank (© Museum of London), note the man with his wooden leg stuck in the ice

"The fair on the Thames, February 1814," Luke Clennell (© Museum of London)

"The fair on the Thames, February 1814," Luke Clennell (© Museum of London)

Detail of "The fair on the Thames, February 1814," Luke Clennell (© Museum of London)

"View of the Thames off Three Cranes Wharf, 1814," Burkitt & Hudson (© PLA Collection / Museum of London)

Printed keepsake, 2 February 1814 (© Museum of London) "This simple, hastily produced example conveys the urgency and excitement of being there."

"Printed keepsake, 5 February 1814" (© Museum of London) "It is a comic message from A Thaw to Jack Frost telling him to leave the Thames. Printers and other stall holders had to withdraw hurriedly from the ice when it began to melt on 5 February 1814." 

"Frostiana title page, 5 February 1814" (© Museum of London)

"Gingerbread and wrapper, 1814" (© Museum of London) "This is the only surviving piece of gingerbread bought at the 1814 Frost Fair. At 200 years old it is now a little hard, but still smells of ginger and spice. "

Gingerbread and wrapper, 1814 (© Museum of London)

Frozen Thames: Frost Fair 1814 is at the Museum of London in the City of London and Museum of London Docklands through March 30, 2014. 

Saint Valentine's holy name may now be inextricably linked to pastel hearts and Hallmark cards, but he's the patron saint of much more than love. Bee keepers, plague victims, and epilepsy sufferers also fall under his posthumous jurisdiction.

Despite being one of the most known saints, the exact identity of Saint Valentine is itself rather fuzzy. There was a priest named Valentine, as well as a bishop, who were both martyred in the third century by Claudius after they defended Christians. The priest was beaten to death and decapitated after being imprisoned. The multiple Valentine identities somehow merged, which accounts for the whole horde of Valentine relics, including numerous skulls.

Skull of Saint Valentine in Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome (photograph by Lawrence OP)

You might notice that there's a bit of romance missing from these stories. This is because the source of the courtship and love that has been linked into Valentine's feast day doesn't come from the departed saint at all. 

According to Alice and Clare La Plante's Heaven Help Us: The Worrier's Guide to the Patron Saints:

"The association of Valentine with romantic rites is due to largely futile efforts of early religious Christian leaders to do away with pagan festivals by substituting a Christian observance. February 14 was traditionally the Roman festival of Lupercalia, an important day to honor Juno, the Queen of Heaven and protector of women. The wife of Jupiter, Juno was said to bestow her blessing on courtship rituals or marriages celebrated that day."

Saint Valentine shrine in Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin (photograph by blackfish/Wikimedia)

So Valentine's Day is more accurately a continuation of Lupercalia shrouded in Catholic appropriation. It also helps that Valentine's February saint day coincides with the slow dawn of spring when birds are said to select mates. But where do bees, plague, and epilepsy come come in? Well, curing the sick, including epileptics, is one of the miracles attributed to Saint Valentine. In a 2009 paper in Epilepsy & Behavior journal on "St. Valentine--patron saint of epilepsy: illustrating the semiology of seizures over the course of six centuries," 341 depictions of Valentine curing epilepsy are cited dating back to the 15th century. The plague may have been a later attribution when Europe, struck by the devastating disease, turned to any saint for aid that had any powers of healing. The bee keeping may be more a part of the iconography of fertility attached to Valentine, although sources vary.

To add onto this, Catholic.org mixes in travel, happy marriages, fainting, "greetings," and engagement to his patronage. It's clear that whatever Saint Valentine means today is very detached from the lives of the people behind the original saint, but Valentine has long been a reflection of contemporary needs for love and healing rather than any individual. 

Read more about the many relics of Saint Valentine. 

Curious Facts of the Week: Helping you build your cocktail party conversation repertoire with a new strange fact every week, and an amazing place to explore its story. See all the Curious Facts here>

The Year of the Horse being celebrated at the Hsi Lai Temple

To celebrate the Chinese New Year and usher in the Year of the Horse, the Los Angeles Obscura Society headed east of LA to the suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley (SGV). The SGV has the largest diaspora of ethnic Chinese immigrants in the United States. Nestled in the hills of Hacienda Heights — one of the cities that makes up the SGV — sits the Hsi Lai Temple.

The temple was constructed in 1988, and Hsi Lai translates to "coming west," signifying the first foothold of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order in the Western Hemisphere. This Buddhist order is the largest from Taiwan, and the Hsi Lai Temple is the largest Buddhist temple in North America. The temple was built to serve as a spiritual and cultural center for those learning Buddhism and Chinese culture.

In non-holiday periods, the temple, while still majestic, is much more serene and zen-like. Our visit was at the most festive and busiest of Chinese celebrations, so it was more of a carnival atmosphere with decorations all over the temple and vendors selling their wares and food items. Our tour started at the gateway structure at the front of the temple. The Chinese characters on the back of the gate list the four universal vows of Buddhism: "To save all sentient beings, to eradicate all worries, to study the boundless Dharma, and to attain supreme Buddhahood."

The LA Obscura Society poses in front of the Gateway

I explained to the group that the Fo Guang Shan organization had difficulty building the temple and encountered stiff neighborhood resistance in selecting a site for it. The organization was rejected in the South Bay and Alhambra by people suspicious of the group, but they were able to finally succeed in their third site in Hacienda Heights. 

The Hsi Lai Temple has overall been a beneficial presence within its community, but it did get some unwanted attention back in 1996 when it became embroiled in campaign finance controversy during the presidential campaign related to a luncheon for Al Gore. Several of the nuns and employees were indicted, and one nun was convicted, while two others fled back to Taiwan and never returned.

The Gateway

Following the initial history lesson, we entered the temple through the gilded Bodhisattva Hall. Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings, sort of "buddhas in training." Five bodhisattvas are honored in the hall, and there are two more bodhisattvas outside the shrine — those two serve as guardians and represent stronger and fiercer aspects of Buddhism.

After passing through the Bodhisattva Hall, the group was greeted with a kaleidoscope of colors and scents. The entire spectrum, especially red and gold, was in the decorations. The scents were a mix of incense and the very distinct rotting garbage odor from the stinky tofu sold by the vendors. The large central courtyard, which is normally barren, was filled with all types of decorations highlighting the Year of the Horse, along with many ways to increase one's chances of good fortune for the new year.

Performing a ritual with an incense stick

Costumed figures at the celebration

One way to get good fortune was to to toss a coin and ribbon up the golden tree and hoped it sticks on the branches

There was a golden tree that was decorated with hundreds of crimson red ribbons. Participants were encouraged to throw golden medallions with red ribbons at the tree, hoping they would get caught in its branches to signify good fortune.

Nearby there was a makeshift tent with hanging plastic bottles partially filled with red water. If you stood underneath it, it was another way to get good luck. Over at the Arhat Garden, people were encouraged to throw coins and try and hit a bell for good luck. In front of the main shrine, they were handing out free incense sticks — again another way to cleanse the past year away. Candles in pineapple shaped vases were sold and lit as the prickly fruit is a symbol of prosperity.

Pineapple prosperity candles

Pineapple shaped containers for candles

In the temporary exhibit on Buddhism, worshippers were allowed to bathe a Buddha statue

The information center, which normally looks more like an office, was transformed into a temporary museum on Buddhism. Again there were a variety of ways to try and get good fortune by either bathing a Buddha statue with a cup of water, or writing down your wish on paper and sticking it on a "wishing wall."

The main shrine, which usually is the focus of the temple, seemed more of a side attraction trying to compete with everything else going on. The shrine's name means "Precious Hall of the Great Hero." On an ordinary day, the church is where they hold mass. Inside the main shrine are three large statues of Buddhas, each one a different incarnation of the divine being. If you look closely at the walls, you notice over 10,000 Buddha statues. 

The last two sections of the temple we visited were more serene. Even covered in gold paint, the statues in the Avalokitesvara Garden seemed tame compared to everything we saw earlier. People could throw coins at the fountain in the middle for good luck. We ended the tour visiting the small museum inside the temple called Fo Guang Yuan Hsi Lai Art Gallery, which gives you a better understanding of the history of Buddhism and the order that established the temple. 

The columbarium at Rose Hills Memorial Park

After departing the temple, we headed west to the neighboring city of Whittier to Rose Hills Memorial Park. By size, it's the largest cemetery in the United States, and holds the graves of Alvin Ailey, Jr, Timothy Carey, Jaime Escalante, Nguyen Cao Ky (prime minister of South Vietnam), and Eazy-E. But we weren't here to focus on the graves of celebrities and politicians. We were there to visit the Buddhist Columbarium at the very top of Rose Hills.

The Buddhist cemetery alongside the columbarium

The Buddhist columbarium

Some of the niches in the columbarium have personal effects memorializing the deceased

Built in 1999, it is the largest Buddhist pagoda and columbarium in the country. The three-story structure contains 21,000 places for cremated remains.The complex is guarded by statues of the four deva-kings in the front, and surrounded by 60 Buddha statues. We ended our day at this serene place as it's where the members of Fo Guang Shan's Hsi Lai Temple are buried and was specifically built to house their ashes. (However, contrary to all the good luck activities of the temple, the Chinese ordinarily avoid visiting cemeteries in the New Year because they consider it bad luck.)

After the sensory overload we experienced at the Hsi Lai Temple, the Buddhist Columbarium was a perfect and peaceful way to end our exploration and celebration of the Chinese New Year.

Statues receiving sentient beings of this Saha world encircle the columbarium 

View to LA and the San Gabriel Valley from the third floor of the Columbarium

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure!

All Upcoming Obscura Society Events

A glamorous guest pondering the grandeur of the New York Masonic Lodge (photograph by Steven Acres)

Ever fascinated by the impenetrable Freemasons, the New York Obscura Society recently delved into the fascinating world of secret societies with an elaborate cocktail gala at the Grand Masonic Lodge of New York.

Founded in 1782 and at one time holding the largest membership of any Masonic lodge worldwide, New York' s Grand Lodge contains floor after floor of ornate hallways and decadently designed rooms, all discreetly hidden within a rather nondescript 23rd Street location. Typically accessible only to initiated Freemasons, the building is as grand and full of mystery as the historic organization itself.

An impressive entryway to the Masonic Lodge (photograph by Steven Acres)

Each guest selected a thistle, lavender, or rose before joining our "society" for the evening (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

The truly gorgeous setting for our cocktail party (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

The antique organ of the Grand Lodge's Renaissance Room (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

We were welcomed to the lodge by the Livingston Masonic Library's head librarian Tom Savini, who shared a rather cryptic history of Freemasonry before inviting us all to enjoy the transcendental nature of our lavish surroundings.  Occult America author Mitch Horowitz delved further into the hidden and esoteric in his discussion of historic secret societies, and Denny Daniel brought a fascinating array of Mason-related items from his Museum of Interesting Things for guests to explore.

Occult expert Mitch Waxman captivates the crowd (photograph by Steven Acres)

Guests engaged in Mitch's esoteric musings (photograph by Steven Acres)

A resplendent crowd, fit for the most exclusive society gathering (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

A fascinating collection of antique treasures inviting hands-on exploration and discovery (photograph by Steven Acres)

With an open bar designed by cocktail historian Orr Shtuhl — author of An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails— featuring drinks traditionally rooted in high society members-only clubs, and the vintage jazz melodies of the Hot Club of Flatbush, our immaculately dressed crowd reveled in the beauty and heady symbolism of the Grand Lodge, enjoying exclusive access to a truly enigmatic and special place.

(photograph by Mitch Waxman)

The fabulous Hot Club of Flatbush (photograph by Steven Acres)

The Hot Club of Flatbush (photograph by Steven Acres)

May the dancing begin... (photograph by Steven Acres)

Reveling in the night's festivities (photograph by Steven Acres)

Masonic Mysteries and Secret Societies: An Atlas Obscura Cocktail Gala took place January 31, 2014 in the Renaissance Room of the Grand Masonic Lodge of New York.

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure!

All Upcoming Obscura Society Events

Buddhist relics from His Holiness Supreme Patriarch of Thailand in Wat Khung Taphao (photograph by Tevaprapas Makklay)

Human beings as a whole are obsessed with leaving behind a legacy. And our religious practices around death certainly reflect that desire.

European saints are always leaving behind finger bones, vials of blood, breast milk, bloody faces on towels. As recently as 1983, even Jesus’ holy foreskin was paraded through the Italian village of Calcata on the feast day of the Circumcision (January 1, in case you were wondering, although the foreskin has since gone missing).

So what are pious Asian holy figures leaving behind?

On a trip to Hong Kong, I first encountered sarira in the innermost sanctum of a museum, housed within a giant bronze Buddha. Surrounded by bulletproof glass and nestled within golden vessels and velvet platforms, the shiny nubs were hard to make out. Squinting, I could see what looked like pinkish sea glass before I was yelled at for even thinking of taking out my camera and for not just scurrying past like everyone else. While sharing a vegetarian lunch at the adjacent monastery, I inquired a bit into sarira. None of my tablemates seemed to know too much, but my interest into these “human pearls” was piqued. 

An exhibition of sacred Buddhist relics (courtesy Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour)

Although the term sarira comes from the Sanskrit word for “body” (शरीर), and can be used for relics like teeth or parts of Buddha’s skull, it typically refers to the crystalline traces that remain after a respected Buddhist’s corpse is burnt. After cremation, monks will sift for sarira through the dusty ashes of venerated saints and teachers. In Korea, unburnt bits of bone are set aside to be ground up, mixed with meal, and then left for animals. The sarira themselves stand out as little chunks of crystal or colored stone.

Interestingly, this means that sarira are foreign to the body, neither bone nor flesh. Instead, these strange beads are seen as the final distillation of a Buddhist life well-lived, a physical manifestation of piety and devotion.

Collected sarira (courtesy Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour)

In some cases, sarira are said to grow from the bodies of living people, usually at the culmination of a religious experience. For example, a Tibetan yogi named Chosyang Dorje Rinpoche allegedly spent 45 years meditating on love and joy. At the end of these long years, 2,000 pearl-shaped sarira were said to have dangled from his hair.

Shakyamuni Buddha's Blood Relics; saffron threads are a common offering stored with sarira. (courtesy Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour)

Depending on which part of the body the sarira grew from, various colors and sizes are possible, each with a distinct traditional name. For example, yellowish churira are typically the size of mustard seeds and originate from the liver, while white pea-sized sharira are associated with the head, and nyarira manifest themselves from lung tissue. 

Reliquary holding remains of Gautama Buddha (photograph by Teresa Merrigan)

As with any relics, a host of legendary properties have been attributed to sarira. Sarira have been known to mysteriously multiply, grow, or decrease in size while inside their containers, depending on the purity of the keeper’s thoughts. When placed on the crown of the head, the sarira are said to heal and purify the body.

Healing with sarira (courtesy Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour)

Of course, skeptics have propounded all kinds of explanations for sarira. They might be just natural minerals that collect in human bodies (like gallstones) that we typically don’t bother looking for at the crematorium. Or they might be crystalline structures that form under the heating conditions of cremation.

You can go with a scientific or spiritual rationalization, but you can also judge for yourself after checking out the traveling Heart Shrine Relic Tour, a dual exhibition of hundreds of sarira, a collection to which the Dalai Lama donated eight relics. The two exhibitions open this Friday, February 14, in Morelia, Mexico, and Hobart, Tasmania, respectively, and continue later this month to Querétaro, Mexico, and Eudlo, Queensland. You can find the full schedule online.  

EXPLORE MORE RELICS OF BUDDHISM:

TIAN TAN BUDDHA, Hong Kong: The inside of the giant Buddha holds cremated remains

WAT MAHATHAT, Bangkok, Thailand: One of Bangkok's oldest temples was originally built as a reliquary 

TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH, Kandy, Sri Lanka: This elaborate temple was built around one of the Buddha's teeth

Louisiana Purchase Festival Hall (via Wikimedia)

After visiting Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, New York City, and Montreal, Atlas Obscura's tour of World's Fair relics stops in St. Louis, Missouri.  

The 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, otherwise known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, spanned 1,200 acres, boasted 1,500 buildings and 75 miles of roads and walkways, and included 62 foreign nations and 43 states in its exhibitions. Incredibly, though, only a few of those original buildings still stand — the rest were designed to be temporary structures, which were easier to construct and easier to dismantle. 

The fair’s Palace of Fine Art now houses the Saint Louis Arts Museum. In 1904, the palace boasted a grand sculpture hall with a scale inspired by the recently-excavated Roman Baths of Caracalla in Italy.

The art museum at the fair in 1904 (via Amy Arch)

Saint Louis Art Museum (photograph by Chris Lawrence)

An administrative building for the fair also still exists. Now known as “Brookings Hall,” it's home to administrative offices for Washington University.

Brookings Hall (photograph by grabadonut, via Flickr)

Elsewhere in St. Louis, visitors can find a third relic. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC built a "Flight Cage" for the fair — a huge walk-through bird cage showcasing flocks of a variety of birds.

1904 Flight Cage (photograph by Robert Lawton)

The Smithsonian intended to dismantle the Flight Cage after the fair and bring it back to DC, but St. Louis citizens rallied to keep it. St. Louis bought the Cage outright a few years after the fair, and used the structure as the foundation for the Saint Louis Zoo. 

Cypress Swamp Exhibit (photograph by Tom Bastin)

A fourth landmark now rests outside of St. Louis.  As part of its exhibition in the fair, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, commissioned a mammoth statue in cast-iron to pay homage to its iron and steel industries. Italian artist Giuseppe Moretti designed a 56-foot statue of the Roman god Vulcan, holding a newly-forged spear in his right hand. 

Vulcan (photograph by Alby Headrick)

However, the Vulcan statue suffered something of a spotty fate immediately following the fair.  The statue had to be disassembled to load it onto the train back to Birmingham, but when the freight costs went unpaid, the pieces were unceremoniously dumped alongside the railroad tracks. Vulcan's spear was lost along the way.

Birmingham civic leaders retrieved the pieces, but then spent over a year arguing about where to put the statue before finally placing it at the Alabama state fairgrounds. There the statue was occasionally pressed into service as an advertising tool, as local businesses paid to have the statue hold a sample of their product — an ice cream cone, a pickle, or the like in the hand that once wielded the spear. The statue also endured a few poorly-done paint jobs. 

Vulcan Statue in Birmingham (photograph by David Gunnells)

Finally, Birmingham civic leaders proposed a restoration and relocation of the statue as a possible WPA project in the 1930s, and a team of artists renovated the statue while work crews cleared ground for a park on Red Mountain, just outside Birmingham. The statue was moved to the newly-created Vulcan Park in 1939, where it stands today.

Here are some more photographs from the grand 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition:

photograph by David R. Francis

via Missouri State Archives

 
The Liberty Bell departing for the fair (via Library of Congress)

War Department Exhibit (via Wikimedia)

Battle Abbey (via Wikimedia)

Gateway to China (via Wikimedia)

The Illinois State Building and the Ferris wheel (via Wikimedia)

Grand Stairway of Cascade Garden (via Wikimedia)

Grand Basin (via Wikimedia)

Electricity Building (via Wikimedia)

Palace of Electricity (via Wikimedia)

Festival Hall (via Wikimedia)

"Bird's Eye View" (via Wikimedia)

On the Pike (via Wikimedia)

Sunken Garden (via American Libraries)

Agricultural Building (via cosmorochester collects)

Geronimo at the fair (via Library of Congress)

Philippine village (via New York Public Library) 

via New York Public Library

Recreation of the Battle of Paardeberg, Boer War (via New York Public Library)

Cairo (via New York Public Library)

Elephant "shooting the chutes" (via New York Public Library)

The swinging colonnade (via New York Public Library)

"Cairo" (via New York Public Library)

Biggest wheel on Earth (via New York Public Library)

Stay tuned for more in our series on World's Fair relics, and be sure to visit Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, New York City, and Montreal.

Dome of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

A long-languishing icon of Brooklyn architecture has been meticulously restored, and Atlas Obscura got the first public tour of the revitalized building. Last Saturday we visited the Williamsburgh Savings Bank whose gold-accented dome looms up alongside the Williamsburg Bridge at 175 Broadway.

The Williamsburgh Savings Bank — the "h" alongside its name a leftover from when the neighborhood was its own town of Williamsburgh until the later part of the 19th century — was purchased in November of 2010 by Juan A. Figueroa and Carlos Perez San Martin. Now after three years of restoration it is opening as an event space called Weylin B. Seymour's. Aside from the same initials, the name is a tribute to a 19th century man-about-the-neighborhood who is said to have loved a good party. 

Exterior of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank (photograph by Allison Meier)

After a detailed presentation on how everything from the cast iron fence outside had its hundreds of missing elements restored to the process of recreating the 6,500 feet of the bank floor with Siena marble, we explored the bank space with its towering double domes. The bank was constructed between 1870 and 1875 after a design by George B. Post, an architect who also gave a stately air to the New York Stock Exchange and the Wisconsin Sate Capitol. The building is something of a Beaux Art fusion of monumental Roman classicism and Renaissance details, all filtered through the spare-no-expense grandeur of 19th century New York wealth. Later, a 1906 modification added onto the building, which was followed by a 1941 addition. 

The centerpiece is definitely the mural by Peter B. Wight, that graces the 110-foot cast iron dome with a starscape in blue encircled by ornate nature-inspired patterns. However, when the building was purchased in 2010 from HSBC, which was operating it as a branch, the painting had practicually disappeared into black, and a sheetrock wall divided this dome from its neighbor. The wall has since been torn down and the huge pile of trash that had been left in that adjacent room removed, and through months of painstaking work the mural on the dome is again vibrant.

Meanwhile, throughout the building what was impossible to restore or was missing has been replicated, such as another Wight mural that has been remade in wallpaper — complete with small mistakes to give it some "human error" as it would have originally appeared — and even the elaborate door hinges have been reinstalled. The safe, with a Napoleon III medal embedded inside, has been turned into its own room, while other spaces are covered with 19th century-style wallpaper. Even the Bird Cage elevator is operational and unchanged from its 1911 installation

Below are more photographs from our exclusive preview tour of the bank that show the floor-to-dome restoration. 

Interior of the bank (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

View of the dome mural (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

View of the dome mural (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

The Atlas Obscura tour group (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Exploring the interior (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

A Peter B. Wight mural recreated with wallpaper (photograph by Allison Meier)

Signs for the Cashier and Clerk's Entrance (photograph by Allison Meier)

The original intercom system, where you could blow on the openings and they would sound a whistle in the listed rooms (photograph by Catherine Penfold-Waxman)

Detail of the intercom (photograph by Catherine Penfold-Waxman)

The vault (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Detail of the vault (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Napoleon III medal on the vault (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

View to the second dome (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

A passageway between the two main spaces (photograph by Allison Meier)

Looking up between the two domes (photograph by Catherine Penfold-Waxman)

The balcony (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Tiffany glass globe in the balcony space (photograph by Allison Meier)

View from the balcony (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Archway between the two domes (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

The second dome (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Oculus of the dome (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Fish fountain (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Fireplace in the former bank president's office (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Detail of the deer fireplace (photograph by Allison Meier)

Detail of the 19th century-style wallpaper (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

One of the ornate door hinges (photograph by Catherine Penfold-Waxman)

Even the toiler paper holders are beautiful (photograph by Catherine Penfold-Waxman)

Griffin detail (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

View to the first dome (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Restored tile floor (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Board of Trustees above the vault (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Detail of the exterior (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Exterior of the bank (photograph by Allison Meier)

Anthony Pisano's doorstep, February 2014 (all photographs by the author unless indicated)

There is something so alluring about 102 E 7th Street in Manhattan’s East Village that even in the dead of winter, as I lurk the sidewalks nearby, a couple of young women can’t resist stopping to consider its doorstep, try the knob, and peer into it’s salt-dusted window panes.

I’ve come back to this familiar street scene in the snow, four years after I first crossed the hearth of this peculiar storefront, seeking the glow of the warm red neon heart that first beckoned me with this declaration: “It’s Time.” But while this beautiful broadcast still exists vividly in my memories of New York, sadly, the bulbs are cold, and the storefront here is pale and shadowed.

The neon heart in 2010

I tell the women reaching out hesitantly to touch a plane propeller decking the front door to keep coming back. “Anthony Pisano lives here. This is his apartment. But he lets you walk right in and it’s magical.” I know I sound crazy. But one of the owmen smiles and says, “Thank you, I will!”

I know he’s still here, I’ve gotten at least this much from the vaguely obliging woman who lives next door and from inquiring in all the surrounding restaurants and shops. “I haven’t seen him in a few weeks,” says one clerk, and my heart sinks. For years, I’d wanted to come back to this place of personal New York mythology, to revisit a story I’ve told delightedly many times to people in all corners of the world outside this City to most effectively illustrate what it is I love so much about New York. And the story goes like this:

2012 photo of Anthony Pisano, courtesy Marty Wombacher; 2014 photograph of the front door

One evening as it was getting cold, I was walking up and down every block of the East Village because I couldn’t stop exploring (even though I didn’t have enough cash to imbibe, shop, or loiter anywhere long enough to recover my swollen feet). I had come to feel at home, even constantly moving, so long as I was on the outskirts of Alphabet City and Tompkins Square Park. And it was there, on 7th St between Avenue A and First Avenue, that I saw the neon heart and heard music coming from within. And mixed in was a conversation, low and jovial and thickly New York accented, two men sharing memories or jokes.

Suddenly, they were looking at me. I had stepped over the doorstep and was standing inside either the most authentically curated throw-back of an oddities shop or quite possibly someone’s bedroom. Turns out, it was both.

“Hi there, come in!” Anthony Pisano greeted me immediately with such a pleasant gleam in his eye, I didn’t second guess that I was walking into a place meant to be shared. He asked me right off: “Are you a musician?” I said I was and how did he know? He said he could just tell and gestured deeper into the apartment, where I saw a big, old grand piano. Just beautiful. A neighborhood friend was leaning leisurely against it and a comfortable house cat lounged there too, eyeing me indifferently. “I’m a musician,” Anthony said, “and I’ve recorded many musicians here over the years. Sit down and play us something!”

A cuckoo clock and the piano in the shop (courtesy Marty Wombacher)

I had moved to New York months earlier to pursue music, not that anyone would know it. I’d stopped playing. In the tradition of starving artists, I’d had to sell my beloved instrument to buy things like bulk ramen noodles, weekly metro cards, and “casual business attire” for job interviews. It was a simple request to play this beautiful old piano, but no one had asked me to play anything since I’d arrived in New York. This was the first and only time that year and I teared up a little with the weight of it, but obliged. Anthony readied his big, old recording equipment, and I sat down to that well-loved piano and played a song that, to this day, only Anthony and his friend and his cat have heard and that I couldn’t recall now if I tried.

I’ve since moved out of the New York City and live in the Midwest, where people have a somewhat outdated perception of the city and seem surprised to hear a story like this. So, they might ask, he turns out to be a schizophrenic, right? Or asks you to do a smutty film? No. Anthony is a native New York gentleman with a big heart and an undeniable charm. Just ask anyone who knows him from the neighborhood, or ask any one of the hundreds of people, like me, who have looked up from their wandering and suddenly fallen in love with his vibe.

Anthony has been living in this storefront residence for 34 years, but in the last couple of years, he’s received some long-overdue recognition, with the making of a 2012 documentary short film called This Is My Home and media coverage by everyone from New York magazine to Business Insider. His residence even has a listing on Foursquare. And when I first discovered this new wave of fans, I was jealous. Like a discovery I’d considered very much my own over the years, there was a pang in knowing that the secret was out. I half expected a small crowd when I arrived to his doorstep this time around. But the street was quiet. And as I stood there washed in memory, people hurried by.

As the winter day starts to fade, it seems as if I’ll leave with only the story I came with, which I recount to my friend Marc when he joins me outside Anthony’s door. Before we leave to find a warm place to catch up, however, I take my plane ticket out of my purse and turn it over. I draw a heart just like the one on the window pane and I write: “Dear Mr. Pisano. My name is Shannon. I was here four years ago and I’ll never forget that day. I’d love to talk with you again. Wishing you all the best.” And I add my phone number. An hour later, Marc and I are sitting just around the corner in the Odessa cafe on Avenue A, and I answer an unknown number hopefully:

“Shannon? This is Anthony! I got home and noticed a piece of paper on the floor. Dear, you drew a heart there and it touched mine. Thank you so much. Four years, my god, you deserve an award! So tell me who you are, I wish I could place you! You sound very pretty….”

And this is where we reconnect. I finally get to impart to him how important that moment of connection was for me in a very difficult time. And because Anthony inspires this curiosity and joie de vivre in so many all year round, I tell him I believe Seventh street between First and Ave A must be the most serendipitous block in the world.

“The kids with the music in their ears, “ Anthony says, “they don’t always notice. You’re special, you’re different, you're kind, because you wanted to know…” He explains that his store is for the ones who wander in, the ones that possess the curiosity and the willingness to engage another human being they've never met before and share some time. And as his neon sign urges, "It’s Time" for that, indeed.

“I believe this is a lucky place,” he says to me over the phone as I stare at my pierogis and smile into space. He further illustrates this with a story about a pretty and forlorn-looking pair of red headed dolls holding an envelope I had noticed earlier in his storefront window. He tells me of the woman who made them, a frequent visitor who had come into Anthony’s home one day distraught over losing everything — her apartment, her job, her lover — but had still come in especially to bestow twin dolls she had made for his eclectic window display. Anthony loved them and put them up right away. He’s often given tokens, totems, gifts, and oddities and delights in exchanging items with others.

A fish tank in the storefront (courtesy Marty Wombacher); a still from "This Is My Home"

“Nothing is for sale here, nothing,” he pauses in the story to reiterate. “It’s very important people know that.” But when the dolls were placed in the window, two very well dressed men stopped and inquired inside: Who made them? Where did they come from and how could they be purchased? Loving a good mystery, Anthony didn’t say much at first. He instructed them to open the envelope in the dolls’ hands. The gentlemen did and inside they found a hand scrawled name card with the doll creator’s contact information. He gifted the two men this card. And that very night, as he was turning off the neon and calling it a night, the woman came running into the storefront, ecstatic, exclaiming she’d just been offered a contract by fancy toy makers and that she’d be making and selling three hundred dolls right away.

As Anthony tells this story so enthusiastically, lingering on details, I can almost see inside the shop in my mind’s eye. It's as if he has taken the story down from a high shelf and is handing it to me to hold and examine for a moment. Stories like these, he says, are what gives him light and life. “And that you remembered me after four years! And that you drew the heart. Because this is all for you and people like you who understand it.”

Anthony is headed upstate to tend to an ailing brother, so we don’t meet in person this time around. But a few days later, Anthony and I talk over the phone again. And I ask him if people have always “gotten it,” his open door policy and his neon love. After all, the neighborhood looked a lot different 34 years ago.

“The neighborhood was the same... the buildings, the cellars, the houses the doorsteps still remain. The change was a transition of people, the way people lived at that time, it was so different. When I got here in the beginning, there was mostly drug addicts that lived in the area. Nobody wanted to live here that had any decency. Drugs and burglars and what have you... a lot of squatters living in halls and basements. I never had that feeling of being in danger although I lived within it. Everything that surrounded me was off base but I never felt threat.”

His response to all the chaos around him? Create beautiful, colorful, and clean chaos inside of it. What Pisano found was a living, breathing neighborhood. And he knew this environment could nurture something positive, even while it fed something darker in it’s underbelly. So he circled off his doorstep with brightly colored chalk and threw open the door, letting music seep out into the summer nights, while most people were putting metal gates on their windows and boarding up their doors.

“[My place] was all boarded with metal gates. I removed that. I thought possibly, maybe if I did that, maybe other owners would tear down their metal doors and window bars and people would be less afraid and maybe the whole neighborhood would change. If you’re taking care of something, caring for your neighborhood, then show people you’re not afraid to live there. I decided to take everything down that was Fort Knox, you know. One or two store owners did the same. We got together to talk about what the neighborhood could be. It proved to be beneficial.”

And the music that drew me in to meet Anthony in the first place? Turns out that music has been pouring out since the beginning, part of Pisano’s beautification strategy and part of his essence. He himself is a jazz musician and plays trumpet, a likeness of which is in, what else, neon on the front window pane.

As for what else is inside of that mysterious shop of nothing for sale, the collection changes, but there are some statement pieces, as documented in this great blog entry by writer Marty Wombacher. I remember an imposing, mesmerizing aquatic tank and many old instruments. Marty and I have made plans to share our respective experiences some night over coffee, as we coincidentally both moved back to our hometown — Peoria, Illinois. I wonder if Anthony realizes the web of connections that start at his doorstep?

When we say goodnight, Anthony makes certain I know I am always welcome at his home. “This is all for you,” he says, and I know he means us — the wanderers, the endlessly fascinated and curious, those of us holding out and digging deeper here or there for new evidence that something mysterious has survived the over-saturated and exhaustingly meta-internet culture we live and breathe daily — we that know instinctively something magical has somehow escaped contemporary irony and cynicism.

If this is you too and you’re in the New York metro area as Valentine’s Day approaches, can I ask a favor? Take the F train to 2nd Ave with a Valentine addressed to Anthony Pisano. Slip it in the mail slot of 102 East 7th Street, if that neon heart is still cool and the windows still dark, and just let him know we’re out there. And as the weather warms up, drop by again to experience your own personal NYC moment of magic. It’s time.

Drawing of a vessel in the shape of a heart held by a hand from the 16th century (via Wellcome Library)

Just as you might give a heart-shaped card to a loved one to show your affection, European royalty once bequeathed their actual hearts cut from their corpses to places they cared for. Heart burial had its high point of fashion in the 12th and 13th centuries, although it continues as a romantic funereal tradition to present day. 

This trend of heart burial coincided with Middle Ages military campaigns like the Crusades, where people were journeying far from home, and often dying there. Rather than send the whole body back, sometimes just the deceased's heart was transported, preserved in lead or ivory boxes, often with spices to keep it from smelling too much. Also, you tend to get more prayers and venerations when you're split up, as the religious would well know from the relics of saints. Occasionally these hearts were even buried in miniature effigies showing tiny knights in full armor. And according to Clare Gittings and Peter C. Jupp's Death in England: An Illustrated History, "it is possible that some small monuments traditionally claimed to be the tombs of children are in fact heart monuments."  

As Stephen and Thomas Amidon wrote in The Sublime Engine: A Biography of the Human Heart:

"The dispersed burial of monarchs and other dignitaries was common. After Henry I's death in Normandy in 1135 from eating poisonous eels, his heart was sewn into the hide of a bull for preservation and transported back to England to be buried, while the rest of him was interred where it was. The heart of England's Richard I — whose nickname, Couer de Lion (Lionheart), is rumored to have come from his ripping out and consuming the heart of a lion to acquire its courage — had his legendary cardiac muscle buried separately from his other remains."  

The tomb of Richard the Lionheart's heart (photograph by Walwyn/Flickr user)

The brave heart of Richard — a king who may or may not have eaten a lion heart in front of his court, per the 13th century outlandish legend— was buried in Rouen, France. The heart rested there from 1199 until it was exhumed in 2012 and analyzed by scientists. While they weren't able to find out much about his death, they did find out a lot about heart embalming, including the use of frankincense for a biblical tone along with spices, vegetables, myrtle, daisy, mint, and even some mercury.

This was a more elaborate treatment than most hearts were likely to get. As Eric Edwards of the Pitt Rivers Museum wrote in an article on their own preserved heart, charmingly kept in a crude heart-shaped lead container that was found in Christ Church in Cork in 1863, "it is thought that hearts were removed by those deemed apt for such a chore and these included butchers and cooks." 

Illustration of a what appears to be the heart niche at Leybourne Church (via Wikimedia)

Elaborate, full-size effigies like Richard's were not uncommon for the highest of royalty — queen consort Eleanor of Castile's heart interred at Blackfriars in London was memorialized by a huge monument topped by a metal angel that was destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century — but sometimes the memorials were more intimate.  

Sir Roger of Leybourne who died in 1271 during the Crusades, has his heart in a tiny casket alongside one for his wife in a niche in Leybourne Church in Kent. Reportedly, Victorians opened the caskets during a restoration, and found his heart enclosed in lead. However, the second for his wife was found to be empty, likely because she remarried after his death.  

Monument to René de Chalon (via Wikimedia)

To list the tiny heart burials of the Middle Ages elite would be a monumental task in itself, and to see the most striking of heart burials you have to jump ahead to the 16th century to Bar-le-Duc in France. There is one of the most haunting of heart burials, where a statue of a rotting corpse stretches its right arm up to the heavens with its heart in its hands.

This is a memorial to René de Chalon, Prince of Orange, who was killed at the age of 25 in 1544. The monument by Ligier Richier was completed in 1547, and originally the skeleton held Chalon's very organ in a heart-shaped red box. Unfortunately, the reliquary was stolen during the French Revolution, and although the mortal terror-inducing statue remains, it just holds a heart facsimile.  

Monument to René de Chalon (via Wikimedia)

As a side note, the French Revolution really was an unfortunate time for royal hearts. Louis XIV's mummified heart was also swiped. Reportedly part of it was accidentally eaten by geologist William Buckland in 1848 when he was examining a silver locket with a strange object in it (he'd apparently put it in his mouth to figure out what it was, perhaps the way he examined rocks). Meanwhile, the heart of the dauphin Louis XVII was kept by a surgeon dissecting the young prince after his death during revolutionary imprisonment, and in 1975 it finally was relocated to the Saint-Denis Basilica in Paris where it is presented in a clear vase. 

Heart of the dauphin (photograph by the author)

Grave of Thomas Hardy's heart (photograph by Michael Day)

While heart burial became something of an oddity by the 14th century — with just outlandish monuments like the one for the Prince of Orange sporadically created — it still made appearances. The idea of being able to be buried in multiple places at once, and the significance of the heart as a source of emotion, was part of its endurance. For example, writer Thomas Hardy's heart is buried in St. Michael's churchyard in Dorset, while his ashes are in Westminster Abbey, so that he is both venerated as a British literary icon and rests alongside his family. However, story has long had it that the surgeon who sliced out Hardy's heart in 1928 stored it in a cookie tin, where his cat discovered it and had it for a meal. Rumor is that an animal heart had to be buried beneath Hardy's monument instead, although this remains something of legend instead of fact. 

And of course, we can't leave out Percy Bysshe Shelley. After he drowned in 1822, his friends had a makeshift funeral pyre for his body, where Edward Trelawny pulled out a macabre memento from the poet. As Bess Lovejoy wrote in in an article for Atlas Obscura: "Trelawny reported that he reached in and snatched out Shelley’s heart. (Or what he thought was the heart—some say it was more likely the poet’s liver). After a brief custody battle the heart went to Mary Shelley, who kept it in a silk bag in her desk until she died."  

Burial place of Pierre de Coubertin's heart in Greece (photograph by David Holt)

Heart burial still occurs, sometimes like the Middle Ages royalty to express fondness for a place. Pierre de Coubertin, who died in 1937 and was the founder of the International Olympic Committee and integral in reviving the contemporary Olympic Games, has his heart interred in Olympia, Greece. Just in 2011, the heart of Archduke of Austria and Royal Prince of Hungary Otto von Habsburg was buried in a silver urn in Hungary's Benedictine Abbey, while his body remained in Vienna, a way to posthumously embrace both sides of his heritage. 

There is something hopeful about heart burial, where you feel that some part of you might remain with this organ, even while it has long stopped beating. And even if the bloody heart, a delicate but strong engine for your whole being that's only a bit bigger than your fist, is just another part of your temporary being that will all someday be gone, there is something oddly romantic about giving such an important piece of you to a beloved place. 

The pyramid holding sculptor Antonio Canova's heart in Venice's Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (photograph by Anna Fox)

The mourner holding the urn with Canova's heart (photograph by rjhuttondfw/Flickr user)

The burial place of a heart thought to belong to Robert the Bruce (photograph by Andrew Bowden)

Monument to the heart of François I in the Basilique Saint-Denis in Paris (via Wikimedia)

Child-sized gas masks in an elementary school, Pripyat, Chernobyl zone of exclusion (all photographs by Oleg Mastruko)

Journalist Oleg Mastruko has spent eight years searching for the eerie edges of civilization, those areas that seem "dehumanized" and left to abandonment. Now he's compiling those photographs into a book called Without People to show a world where humanity has vanished. The book is currently crowdfunding on Indiegogo. 

While many photographers are interested in abandoned spaces, Mastruko also focuses on the history of why a place has turned to ruin, pairing the story with the striking image. "We've all seen empty hospital rooms or abandoned garages, but if it's an abandoned garage in Pripyat or underground air force base, then it's something special," Mastruko explained to Atlas Obscura. "Many times I've heard from the friends who don't get this magic — 'Why did you travel halfway around the globe to photograph this? I have something similar to that on my father's farm.' Yeah, but, you know, you didn't have the Chernobyl catastrophe or Korean demilitarized zone or former submarine base or Soviet satellite communication outpost built on your father's farm — at least not that I know of."

The photographs include piles of children's gas masks at Chernobyl, ghost towns in Nevada, Cairo's City of the Dead, and the old Teufelsberg listening station in Berlin. Yet even without their histories immediately attached to the images, there's a haunting solitude to them, and something suggestive about the people who once were there. "Some places in this series are not even abandoned in strict sense — just empty, devoid of humans, dehumanized enough for a moment to suit my taste," he stated. "Also, despite the name of the series, there are actually people in some photographs. However, they look as if they don't belong."

Following the crowdfunding campaign, he aims to release the book later this year. It's planned to be part of a trilogy that also focuses on photographs of religious temples and the sea. Below are some selections from the Without People series. 

City of the Dead, Cairo, Egypt

Spring in full swing in one of the depopulated villages in the Chernobyl zone of exclusion 

Detail from the abandoned silver mine, Nevada, USA 

Ghost town, Nevada, USA

Former NSA listening post, Teufelsberg, Germany 

Naissaar island, Estonia, former Soviet naval mine factory

Yanov Station, Pripyat, Chernobyl zone of exclusion

Without People is funding through March 13 on Indiegogo.  

The Soap Man at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (photograph by Dave Hunt, via Smithsonian Institution)

For this edition of Morbid Monday, our series on the historical macabre, we welcome a guest post from Dolly Stolze of Strange Remains, a site that focuses on forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology. 

From 1786 to 1787 the graves in Paris' Cemetery of Innocents (Cimetière des Saints-Innocents) were dug up to move the bones to the abandoned mines beneath the City of Lights, what would become the famous Paris Catacombs. Fourcroy and Thouret, French scientists who supervised the exhumation and studied the decomposing bodies, found a waxy gray substance covering some of the children's remains. They called it adipocere, from the Latin adeps (fat) and cere (wax).

Adipocere, also known as corpse wax or the fat of graveyards, is a product of decomposition that turns body fat into a soap-like substance. Corpse wax forms through a process called saponification and tends to develop when body fat is exposed to anaerobic bacteria in a warm, damp, alkaline environment, either in soil or water. Grave wax has a soft, greasy gray appearance when it starts to form, and as it ages the wax hardens and turns brittle. Saponification will stop the decay process in its tracks by encasing the body in this waxy material, turning it into a “soap mummy.”

Two of the most famous “soap mummies” are the Soap Lady and the Soap Man. Both were exhumed in downtown Philadelphia in 1875, when city improvements near a cemetery required some graves be exhumed. These mummies formed when water seeped into their caskets and turned their body fat into adipocere. Researchers initially believed the Soap Lady was about 40 when she died, but x-rays taken in 1986 revealed that she was probably in her late 20s. At first they believed she died in 1792 during the Yellow Fever epidemic, but the x-rays also showed pins and buttons in her clothing that were not manufactured until the 1830s.

The Soap Lady is currently on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. X-ray images taken of the Soap Man reveal that he was in his 40s when he died, likely between 1800 and 1810. The Soap Man is stored in a controlled environment, stockings and all, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Research on both “soap mummies” is ongoing.

The Soap Lady at the Mütter Museum (photography by John Donges)

One of the weirdest cases of soap mummification was discovered in 1996, when a headless body, fully encased in grave wax, was found floating in a bay of Brienzer See in Switzerland. This torso, nicknamed “Brienzi,” baffled scientists for years because they had no idea who this person was or how long the body had been in the water.

Then in 2011, researchers from the University Zurich published the results of their investigation on the waxy remains. They found that Brienzi was a man who drowned in the lake in the 1700s. After he drowned his body floated to the bottom and was covered by sediment, where adipocere formed and coated the torso in corpse wax. Adipocere is a great research opportunity for archaeologists, but can be bad news for a graveyard

A cemetery full of soap mummies is a problem for a burial ground that needs to reuse plots every couple of decades, and was an issue for some German graveyards in 2008. It's common practice for many German cemeteries to recycle graves every 15-25 years, when bodies are expected to be completely skeletonized. But due to the soil condition in some German cemeteries, the corpse wax buildup got so bad that bodies weren’t decomposing at all. When gravediggers started exhuming graves to turn over the plots, they found that many of the bodies had turned into soap mummies. Some cemeteries solved this macabre problem with burial chambers and expensive soil reconditioning.

For more fascinating stories of forensic anthropology, including a visit to the Paris Catacombs, visit Dolly Stolze's Strange Remains, where a version of this article also appeared. 

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

Sources:

The Soap Opera. (2013). Retrieved on February 14, 2014 from: http://www.collegeofphysicians.org/mutter-museum/collections/

Colimore, E. (2008 May 17). Learning secrets of the ‘soap lady’. Philly.com. Retrieved on February 14, 2014 from: http://articles.philly.com/2008-05-17/news/24990312_1_x-rays-forensics-yellow-fever

Parry, W. Goo of Death Helps Solve Mystery of Headless Corpse. LiveScience. Retrieved on February 14, 2014 from: http://www.livescience.com/14472-waxy-corpse-adipocere-decomposition-investigation.html

Thadeusz, F. (2008 January 7). Germany’s Tired Graveyards: A Rotten Way to Go? Spiegel Online International. Retrieved on February 14, 2014 from: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-tired-graveyards-a-rotten-way-to-go-a-527134.html

Thali, M.J. Lux, B. Losch, S. (2011). ‘‘Brienzi’’–The blue Vivianite man of Switzerland: Time since death estimation of an adipocere body. Forensic Science International. 211 (2011): 34-40. Retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/779655/_Brienzi_-_the_Blue_Vivianite_Man_of_Switzerland_Time_since_death_estimation_of_an_adipocere_body

Trescott, J. (2010 September 3). Natural History Museum’s Origins of Western Culture hall will close for a 3-year renovation. The Washington Post. Retrieved on February 14, 2014 from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090204957.html

Ubelaker, D.H. Zarenk, K.M. (2010). Adipocere: What is known after two centuries of Research. Forensic Science International. 2008 (2011): 167-172. Retrieved from: http://pawsoflife-org.k9handleracademy.com/Library/HRD/Ubelaker_2011.pdf