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A Giant, Secret Lake May Have Just Been Discovered in Antarctica

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(Photo: Joe Mastroianni/Public Domain)

Antarctica is home to one of the most unique natural ecosystems in the world: subglacial lakes, which are massive pockets of warm, fresh water that are sealed in ice. They exist beneath the continent's many, massive glaciers. 

The largest is Lake Vostok, which scientists say is over 4,800 square miles of water, and could contain life forms never before seen by humans. 

Researchers said last week that they may have just discovered another such lake, almost as vast as Vostok. This one is in eastern Antarctica, in an area of the continent that has not been extensively studied, according to New Scientist

For now scientists can only report they have a strong suspicion the lake is there, based on satellite imagery that reveals topical grooves similar to those found on top of other subglacial lakes, nearly 400 of which are known to exist. 

Scientists think the new lake is around 62 miles long and six miles wide, a leader of the project told New Scientist. Researchers have flown over the suspected location of the lake to gather radar data that could confirm their hypothesis. 

What could be inside? Literally anything. Many glacial lakes have been sealed off from the outer world for millions of years, meaning that life forms were left to evolve at a pace all their own.

Either way, it may be awhile before we find out. At Lake Vostok, for one, scientists have worked for years—unsuccessfully—to send in a probe. 


The Billiken is Much More Than the Strangest College Mascot

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A Billiken statue in Japan that just wants you to chill out. (Photo: twoKim/Shutterstock.com/Used with Permission)

Go Tigers! Go Falcons! Go... uh... Billikens?

Most sports teams, college or otherwise, are associated with a team mascot that's some mighty animal or burly stereotype. But St. Louis University's athletics team is represented by something a fair bit stranger: a portly little goblin called a Billiken. As bizarre as the little munchkin figure is as a college mascot, it has a history that dates back to the early 20th century and incorporates President Taft, Japan, and one enterprising illustrator.

The Billiken was first brought into the world in 1908 by Kansas City teacher and illustrator Florence Pretz. The illustrator was living in a studio space she called “The Eggshell” with a pair of other creators when she took to drawing chubby little fairy figures that would eventually evolve into the Billiken. The proto-creatures first appeared in a series of short stories that ran in the Canadian periodical Canada West, where their lighthearted antics first caught the attention of the public.

The stories took their inspiration from the fantastical poems of Canadian poet Bliss Carman, of whom Pretz was a fan. In fact the name “Billiken” seems to have been borrowed straight from his poem Mr. Moon: A Song of the Little People, published in 1896. The name is mentioned among a roll call of fairy figures who are calling at the moon to come to Earth and play.

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Billiken figures from 1909. (Photo: Joe Mabel/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Pretz originally drew Billikens as sprightly, fat baby nymphs in motion, with wings and long, pointed feet,. Later, she removed the wings and plumped up the figure. The top of the head was drawn up into a point, and the cherubic little figure was put in a sitting position, with the flats of its feet showing forward. Finally it was plastered with a mischievous little grin between its pointed ears.

The new figure resembled a sort of trickster Buddha, and the Asian influences that Pretz had incorporated were in full effect when the creature was revealed in the pages of the May 1908 Chicago Daily Tribune. The paper heralded the billiken as a “Good Luck God,” and featured images of Pretz in a kimono, lighting incense before a small Billiken statue. Later that year, she filed a patent on the figure. The popularity of the weird little cherub was already catching on.

Pretz sold her patented god design to the Billiken Company in Chicago, although it is unclear whether the company was named that previously. Regardless, they began to produce small chalkware figurines of the Billiken, eventually including a pedestal that named him “The God of Things As They Ought to Be.” The lore went that you could rub the figure’s belly, or the soles of its feet for good luck. According to one ad from a November 1908 paper, the Billiken "is more lucky than a rabbit's foot in the hind pocket of the seventh son of a seventh son."

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A trio of Japanese Billikens. (Photo: Guilhem Vellut/CC BY 2.0)

The character was a hit, creating a fad that spread across the world. Billiken merchandise, authorized or not, began flooding the market. There were decorative plates, banks, dolls, and all manner of other tchotchkes. In Alaska, locals began carving stylized Billiken charms out of walrus ivory and elk horns. In Japan the figure fit right into the pantheon of good-luck gods that had inspired it in the first place.

Comparisons to President Taft, who had been elected in 1909 and was known for his equally rotund appearance, becamecommon, with Billikens appearing that had been given the mustachioed face of “Bill” Taft. This also inspired the creation of Teddy-Billiken dolls, eerie looking toys with the goblin head of a Billiken, attached to a plush body. After the previous success of Roosevelt’s teddy bear, it was hoped that a Billiken could become a best-selling toy for the Taft generation. Unsurprisingly, the market for Teddy-Billiken dolls was short-lived.

By 1912, the Billiken mania that had exploded over just a couple of years died down just as quickly. The manufacture of Billiken products all but ceased, and the good luck figure all but disappeared from the American consciousness, like pogs and the Macarena. Well, except in St. Louis.

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An ad for Saint Louis University. (Photo: Paul Sableman/CC BY 2.0)

The exact story of how the Billiken came to be the mascot of St. Louis University is a bit unclear, but it all has to do with former football coach John Bender. In 1910, Bender took over the St. Louis University football program, and the press took notice of his cherubic looks, which inspired him to be compared to a Billiken. Versions of the story say that Bender noticed an editorial illustration in a St. Louis drug store, or that someone in town gave it to him, but however it happened, the football team soon came to be known as “Bender’s Billikens.” Bender only coached the team for a single year, but the name stuck, and the Billiken became the mascot for all of the university’s athletic teams.

Over the decades, the St. Louis Billiken has been redesigned a number of times, and the mascot is now a far cry from the original God of Things As They Ought to Be. Like sports mascots, he is an energetic figure who runs around getting the crowd pumped up—nothing like the plump don’t-worry-be-happy figure that took the nation by storm in the early 20th century. However, the original Billiken is still remembered by a brass figure of the god that has been installed outside of the Chaifetz Arena at the school. The feet and belly have been rubbed to a sheen by people looking for a little luck, just as it ought to be.

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The Billiken statue outside of Chaifetz Arena, just as it should be. (Photo: Wilson Delgado/Public Domain)

A Devilishly Detailed Map of the Most Hellish Places in America

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In 1846, a brief item in the New Orleans Daily Picayune entitled “A Hot Quarter” told readers of an unusual neighborhood in Mississippi. “There is a section of the town of Holly Springs, Miss., known as ‘Hell’s Half Acre,’” the newspaper reported. “We learn this fact from the Guard, published there, although we do not find it upon any map.”

This is a familiar refrain, as Hell's Half Acre is one of the most consistent place nicknames in American history. For roughly the next 100 years, the name Hell’s Half Acre was applied to scores of places across the United States, from Bangor, Maine, to Honolulu, Hawaii. It spread through war, through westward expansion, through simple word-of-mouth. And yet, as the Daily Picayune noted, it was not often found on the map. What's its story? 

The first instance of its use is unknown but the label was generally attached to areas known for heavy drinking, gambling and prostitution—like a notorious red-light district frequented by cattlemen in late-1800s Fort Worth, a rough-and-tumble corner of rural Kentucky where Harland “Colonel” Sanders got his start as a restaurateur or a corner of Honolulu's Chinatown that gave its name to a 1954 film noir.

“Matters have come to such a pass that a resident of Hell’s Half Acre would as soon think of leaving off his pantaloons as neglecting to carry his revolver or razor, and he entertains no fear that he will be caught or punished,” according to an 1887 article in the Nashville Daily American about the Hell's Half Acre in that city. “The fear of law has passed away from them.”

In other cases, the name was given to forbidding natural landscapes that were difficult to farm or traverse.

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Welcome to Hell's Half Acre, Wyoming. (Photo: Jeff Goetz/CC by 3.0)

“The name has been applied to those vice areas of those communities but also to physical geographical terrain that is also deadly, or very dangerous, or very arduous to try to cross: lava fields and basalt fields and things like that,” said Marilyn Hudson, author of Tales of Hell's Half Acre: Murder, Mayhem, and Mysteries of Early Oklahoma and Oklahoma City.

But mostly, newspapers titillated readers while condemning drunkenness and debauchery in Hell’s Half Acres that ranged from Wild West-era saloon districts in Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado to poor urban slums, including struggling African-American neighborhoods in the Southeast and white working-class enclaves in Chicago, Philadelphia, Brooklyn and Minneapolis.

The name came to particular prominence after 1863, when soldiers at the brutal Civil War Battle of Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, dubbed one bitterly contested section of the battlefield“Hell’s Half Acre”. Both sides saw about a 30 percent casualty rate in the battle overall, but the fighting at that area, more formally known as Round Forest, was particularly devastating for the Confederates, who failed at four attempts to break through Union lines. 

“It was about as vicious a fight on the battlefield as you’ll see,” says Jim Lewis, a park ranger for the National Park Service at Stones River National Battlefield. “There’s a tendency when soldiers survive something that...they start searching out a way to make that fight or that area stand out above the rest.”

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From the 1954 movie. (Photo: Republic Pictures)

After the war, says Texas historian Richard Selcer, Confederate soldiers returning to Texas may have been instrumental in passing the name to the Fort Worth neighborhood offering liquor, prostitution and other entertainment to cowboys driving cattle through the growing city.

“I just think it’s a name that kind of rolls of the tongue, and the veterans took it with them,” says Selcer, who is the author of Hell's Half Acre: The Life and Legend of a Red-Light District. “A place like Hell’s Half Acre in Fort Worth, which was the red-light district, had its share of bloodshed, excitement, uproar, death and destruction.”

The name first appeared in a local paper in 1874, Selcer wrote in an article for the Texas State Historical Association, and the neighborhood quickly expanded with the arrival of railroad service in Fort Worth. By 1881, it actually spread over multiple acres convenient to the city’s Union Station train depot.

“At that time, it’s a playground, amusement center, whatever for cowboys and buffalo hunters and gamblers who liked to call themselves sporting men,” he said. “And that kind of people found a convenient place to operate and set up shop.”

The name soon came to refer to similar areas throughout the West, Selcer said, just as cemeteries across the region were given the moniker Boot Hill.

Traveling cowboys could arrive in a new town and ask for directions to “The Acre,” and even the names of individual saloons were often deliberately copied from place to place to make them feel at home, Hudson said.

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More from the Wyoming branch. (Photo: Jeff Goetz/CC BY-SA 3.0)

“I think it really came into its own in the Old West, because it kind of was just very picturesque and very descriptive of [that] kind of rough and tumble rowdy existence,” she says. “Their own existence—they lived in Hell, so when they got some free time and they got the opportunity to have a drink and take their boots off and see a pretty woman, they wanted to raise Hell too.”

Later on, during Prohibition, a community on the outskirts of East Liverpool, Ohio, earned the name Hell’s Half Acre from its reputation for bootlegging, gambling and prostitution. Its spot along the Pennsylvania border reputedly made it a headache for law enforcement officials from both states.

And in Oklahoma City and other Oklahoma land rush boomtowns created after the federal government opened the area to settlement in 1889, there just wasn’t much in the way of law enforcement for the first few years, said Hudson, and settlers looking for alcohol, prostitution and gambling quickly formed a Hell’s Half Acre of their own.

“In that first year, basically Oklahoma City operated without any official law,” she said. “The only law were the few federal marshals that were also trying to cover the entire area and the military units that were temporarily stationed near the city.”

In some more established areas, areas called Hell’s Half Acre came under fire not just for vice but for violating social mores around interracial mixing or simply for housing large poor or minority populations. “From time immemorial, the predominating element of Hell’s Half Acre has ignored social laws and morals,” according to a sensationalist account of an 1896 Natchitoches Parish murder in the New Orleans Daily Picayune. There has been a mixing of Spanish, Indian, French and negro blood, while intermarriage is extremely common.”

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Hell's Half Acre was also name for the bunker on the seventh hole at Pine Valley Golf Club, pictured here in 1921. (Photo: Public domain)

And in Nashville, the Daily American article that claimed neighborhood denizens would as soon be caught pantsless as unarmed also luridly described residents congregating “regardless of sex and color,” even within houses of ill repute. In Fort Worth, too, Hell’s Half Acre fell under continued suspicion as it transitioned from providing entertainment for cowboys and other transients to catering to African-American and Mexican residents in need of housing and often excluded from other neighborhoods of the city, said Selcer. Ultimately, much of the area’s most notorious activities came to a halt during World War I, when Army regulations forbade red-light districts near facilities like Camp Bowie outside of town.

But all around the West, civic leaders in the early 20th century were ready to crack down on their own Half Acres and, whenever possible, wipe the name from the city map, Hudson says.

“Hell’s Half Acre is no more; now is law-abiding,” read a 1913 headline in the St Louis Post-Dispatch after a licensing crackdown replaced rowdy bars with schools and churches. Property owners now seek to sue those who in future apply the name.”

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A sign for the Dallas/Ft. Worth half acre. (Photo: Nicolas Henderson/CC BY 2.0)

And even some purely geological features named Hell’s Half Acre disappeared from atlases, says Hudson—“I think that just became a [name] that they did not want to associate with themselves or the community any longer.” 

Within the next few decades, a fair number of the remaining Half Acres joined impoverished areas around the country in falling to the wrecking ball and bulldozer of urban renewal. Even Fort Worth’s sprawling Half Acre was largely demolished to make way for the city’s convention center, Selcer said. But in recent years, the name’s been somewhat revived by businesses around the country looking to capture the mystique of the old Half Acres: Hell's Half Acre has been the name of at least two lines of craft beer, a handful of rock bands and a Glendale, Arizona, bar.

“After it’s gone, all the romance gets attached to it, and people start using the name,” says Selcer.

Here Are the Medals Given to Eugenically Healthy Humans in the 1920s

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A Fitter Family medal. (Photo: David Plotz)

On August 17, 1920, the Topeka Daily Capitalreported an exciting development: a new class of competition had been added to the livestock judging categories at the Kansas Free Fair. Class 2.603, part of the Division 203, “Human Stock,” allowed families to submit themselves for judging by the fair's eugenics department. If they were deemed the most pleasing specimens at the fair, they would win the title of “Fitter Family.”

Though the category was new, the judging of humans according to the principles of eugenics wasn’t a novel concept in 1920. For at least a decade, state fairs across America had been holding “Better Baby” competitions, in which infants were examined, measured, compared to growth charts, and awarded trophies for good health and genetic superiority. University of Michigan history professor Martin S. Pernick writes that such contests “rivaled livestock breeding and hybrid corn exhibits in popularity.”

Fitter Family competitions, which spread from Kansas across America during the 1920s, were an extension of the Better Babies idea. The advantage of examining older children and adults was that, unlike babies, these specimens could talk back. They also had more life experience for judges to draw upon when making their evaluations.

For every family, representatives from the Eugenics Society of the United States of America would fill out the Fitter Families Examination form. The required details for each family member included their date and place of birth, any serious illnesses, their education, occupation, “physical, mental or temperamental defects,” and “special talents, gifts, tastes, or superior qualities.”

The whole judging process lasted about three-and-a-half hours, and took place in the fair's Eugenics Building. Tacked onto the walls were posters declaring that within three generations, careful breeding could eliminate "unfit human traits" such as feeblemindedness, criminality, pauperism, and epilepsy. 

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Attendees at a West Virginia fair in 1921. Fitter Family contestants who did not win medals were sometimes encouraged to drink more milk and try again next year. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-nclc-04435)

Entrants supplied blood and urine samples, had their height and weight measured, took an IQ test, and answered a battery of questions about their daily habits, medical history, and social behavior. After all these tests had been taken and results logged, each family member received a letter grade.

Anyone scoring a B+ or better was given a bronze medal bearing the phrase “Yea, I have a goodly heritage.” This phrase was swiped from Psalm 16:6—the full sentence is, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.”

Though the Better Baby and Fitter Family contests attracted their fair share of gawkers, and the trophies and medals added flair, the competitions weren't intended as entertainment. Public health workers used the baby contests as a way of disseminating medical information to parents at a time when infant mortality was of greater concern. Similarly, the American Eugenics Society sponsored the Fitter Family contests in order to collect genetic data for research and spread the gospel of careful, considered breeding.

Fitter Family contests were nominally open to any state resident, but York University history professor Molly Ladd-Taylor writes that competitors “were almost always white, native-born, Protestant, educated, and from a rural background; they had no family member with a congenital disability and surely already considered themselves to be fit.”

Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com

Found: Harper Lee’s Own Article About the ‘In Cold Blood’ Murders

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The house where the Clutter murders were committed. (Photo: Spacini/CC BY 3.0)

When Truman Capote went to Kansas to report on the Clutter murders, which would become the subject of In Cold Blood, his childhood friend, Harper Lee, came with him. She wasn’t yet famous in her own right—To Kill a Mockingbird would be published the next year, in 1960—and she had come to Kansas to help Capote out. But, her biographer recently discovered, she also wrote about the murders.

As Charles J. Shields told the Guardian, he was searching for any clues to Lee’s life and work he’d missed in previous versions of his book. He found one. He came across a small announcement in a Kansas paper that said that, “The story of the work of the FBI in general and KBI Agent Al Dewey in particular on the Clutter murder will appear in Grapevine the FBI’s publication. Nelle Harper Lee … wrote the piece.”

The staff of Grapevine had long passed around a bit of lore, the Harper Lee had once written for them. But there was no piece in their archives with her byline. In March 1960, though, not long after the Kansas notice was posted, the magazine did publish an account of the Clutter murders—presumably the one Lee wrote.

The story is short, compared to In Cold Blood, and focuses on the FBI work, rather than the murderer. Lee also gave her friend a shout-out: “Truman Capote, well-known novelist, playwright, and reporter was sent by the New Yorker to do a three-part piece of reportage on the crime, which will later be published in book form by Random House,” she wrote.

Bonus finds: A building for Egypt's first female pharaoh

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

Bought: The Most Expensive Pumpkin Seed Ever

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Would you pay over a thousand dollars for just one pumpkin seed? (Photo: IvanNedialkov Paparaka/CC BY-SA 3.0)

In a modern day Jack and the Beanstalk tale, a British horticulture company recently spent £1,250 (almost $2,000) on a single pumpkin seed, making it the most expensive pumpkin seed of all time. Why? Well, to grow the world’s largest pumpkin of course.

English mail-order seed company Thompson & Morgan (T&M), bought the giant seed at an auction that took place at the World Pumpkin Commonwealth Conference in 2015. Measuring about two-inches long, and dwarfing the size of a normal pumpkin seed it looks to have about as good a shot of growing a record-breaking pumpkin as any seed ever has, but it also has a respectable pumpkin pedigree. The seed came from one of the largest gourds in the world: a 2,323-pound monster grown by Swedish gardener Beni Meier in 2014, current holder of the record for heaviest pumpkin.

But T&M aren’t leaving their chances at producing a record-breaking pumpkin to, well, chance. On April 13th, they delivered the seed to Matthew Oliver, a horticulturalist with the Royal Horticulture Society, whose own crop has yielded pumpkins weighing upwards of 500 pounds. According to T&M’s website, Oliver expressed some concern about being able to produce a pumpkin that would break the world record since they are growing it outdoors, which makes the growing variables much more unpredictable, but in an interview run on the Independant.ie, T&M horticultural director Paul Hansford expressed his confidence in Oliver, saying, “Matthew's enthusiasm and devotion for pumpkins was evident."

Hansford hopes to bring the world record to British shores for the first time, as a pumpkin grown on U.K. soil has never held the title. They’ve got until October 8th to pump that pumpkin up for the official British competition at the Autumn Pumpkin Festival. For now, though, they’ll have to settle for one world record: the most expensive pumpkin seed ever.

The California Teens Reinventing the Science of Space Ballooning

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A trio of Earth to Sky Calculus members, with their handiwork in the background. (All photos: Earth to Sky Calculus)

Just after the 2012 election, a couple of hikers in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains saw a small object crash-land a little off the trail. When they chased it down, they found some strange detritus: two candidate bobbleheads, one Obama and one Romney, strapped to a lunchbox along with a GoPro, and in pieces from its recent descent. "What is this?! It fell out of space!" one shouted. The other grabbed Obama's head off the ground: "I don't know, but these people are sick!"

As they will proudly inform you, the sick people in question are Earth to Sky Calculus—a group of high schoolers in Bishop, California who habitually dedicate their afterschool hours to making things fall out of space. They are incredibly good at designing, building, and launching stratospheric balloons, which are elephant-sized spheres packed with enough helium to carry small packages into the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

In the six years it has been in operation, Earth to Sky has successfully sent about 120 balloons to the edge of space. In the process, it has turned itself from a juiced-up chess club into a reputable research institute, collaborating with NASA and professional microbiologists and keeping itself afloat with spacey sponsorship deals.

"It was definitely not planned," says Aaron Lamb, one of Earth to Sky's founding members, and now a midshipman at the California Maritime Academy. "We didn't sit down and form a Soviet-type committee that had a five-year plan for ballooning." Instead, the club was the product of three equally potent, intersecting forces: A dedicated dad, teenage curiosity, and small-town boredom.

Dr. Tony Phillips, a former Caltech astrophysicist, had been teaching math and physics to his daughter and her classmates at lunchtime since they turned 10. When they tired of his lectures, he decided they should get into something more hands-on. Space ballooning seemed like a good place to start.

It was an inspired choice. A stratospheric balloon is the kind of research tool that stays exciting—prone to both soaring successes and dramatic pops, and flexible enough to absorb, and pay off, a certain level of craziness. Take their first flight: looking around for a vessel, the kids settled on one member's lunchbox, says Lamb. They stuffed it with trackers, tied it to the huge balloon, and let it go.

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Three Earth To Sky members, holding the balloon down until the right moment.

The spot trackers lost touch in midair, and when the balloon went down, the team had to scour the desert for hours. "When we found it we were so happy, we were dancing around," says Lamb. Way better than lunch.

These days, the operation is slightly slicker. They still use lunchboxes, which turned out to be great temperature-regulators, but their contents are more considered. For one thing, the high schoolers have started taking on university-level research projects, delivering payloads to and from the edge of space so efficiently that scientists seek them out.

"They're experts," says Dr. Shiladitya DasSarma, a researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has used Earth to Sky as an atmospheric courier service. DasSarma studies extremophiles—microbes that thrive at far-out temperatures, pressures, and radiation levels—and wanted to see how well they could hack it in the stratosphere, which is a good analogue for the surface of Mars. DasSarma's microbes survived the journey, and made it back to his lab in less time than it takes to FedEx something across Bishop, says Lamb.

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Too windy to launch.

The students have also developed their club into a profit-turning LLC, and some of their launches are dedicated to high-altitude fundraising. There are "Visit Space!"-style sponsor deals: companies and individuals have hired Earth to Sky to float up business cards, sports drinks, and roof tiles. There are holiday promotions—for $49.95, you can buy your mom a pressed "space rose," part of a bouquet that spent some time at 116,000 feet. In order to give sponsors more bang for their buck, the students have tricked out some of their lunchboxes, enabling them to mount GoPros at crazy angles. Lamb estimates they've raised $40,000 from sponsorships.

Even at five figures, the process never gets any less goofy. The members of Earth to Sky are serious scientists and businesspeople, but they're also teens. They haze new members by making them lay underneath the balloon, wrestling it down as it strains at its tether. They swap war stories about 20-hour retrievals, and the time one particular junior had to go out and fetch the lunchbox alone, while the seniors were at prom.

Two years after graduating, Lamb calls Dr. Phillips "boss" and his fellow original team members "The Magnificent Seven." When telling the bobblehead story, he can hardly keep it together. (After that launch, they released a video of the Obama bobblehead spinning through the air and headbanging to Coheed and Cambrida.)

There is one difference, though—they've have stopped dancing when they track down the lunchbox. "[Dr. Phillips] gets nostalgic nowadays that no one dances," says Lamb. "He keeps saying, 'I wish you kids would still jump up and down when we launch the balloon.' And we say 'Boss, we're 20 now.'"

Bubble Runner Again Picked Up By Coast Guard, Which Is Tired of This

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This past Sunday, Coast Guard officers spotted a man running on the ocean, inside an enormous inflatable hamster wheel.

Stranger than the sight itself was its familiarity. The man inside, Reza Baluchi, has been trying to run an oceanic ultramarathon for a couple of years now. His goal is to raise money for children in need while visiting a variety of countries. As his website sums up, he's aiming for "a life threatening journey at sea for charity!"

On his last attempt, in October of 2014, Baluchi made it 70 miles east of St. Augustine before signaling for help. "Part of his effort was to make world peace, but he got caught up in the Gulf Stream," Coast Guard public affairs specialist Mark Barney told CNN at the time. "The chances of muscling out of the Gulf Stream were pretty low."

This time, the regional Coast Guard picked him up on sight. They then engaged in a brief social media shaming campaign, informing their followers that Baluchi's pod was "manifestly unsafe" and that taxpayers had borne the brunt of his previous rescue.

They also posted a letter written by a Coast Guard captain last week after an apparent meeting with Baluchi. "I hereby order you not to depart," the letter reads, citing "a lack of planning and concern for your life."

According to a 2012 CNN profile, Baluchi has been a transportation escapist from a young age, running away from home in Iran, and then leaving the country altogether by joining a German cycling team. After years spent traveling by bike and foot, Baluchi crossed into the United States by accident, and was granted political asylum after promising to run across America to benefit 9/11 victims. Since then, he has undertaken a number of ambitious long-distance projects.

If the heat, the distance, and geopolitical borders can't keep Baluchi down, it's not clear whether the Coast Guard will be able to, either. As he told CNN in 2012, "Until my heart stops beating, I'll keep running for peace."

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


How Turmeric Became a Cure-All Product in India

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Freshly-ground turmeric, which is bright yellow in hue. (Photo: saptarshikar/CC BY-ND 2.0)

At Brooklyn juicery Botica & Co, you can stop by on your way to a yoga session and grab a $5 Turmeric Shot, which contains fresh turmeric, lemon, ginger and turmeric elixir. Throughout the U.S., health food stores and delis stock a range of Temple Turmeric juice blends, which were created after the company's founder traveled to Hawaii in 2008 and "discovered the life-changing and healing power of raw, organic turmeric."

Turmeric is trendy. In the West it has recently entered the health-and-wellness spotlight, both as health fad and home-remedy—a Google search for DIY wound care shows turmeric is one of the favored pantry items for healing cuts. But the concept of turmeric-as-healing-remedy isn't new. It seems as though our modern-day ritual of using turmeric for its health benefits echoes its use in Indian civilizations going all the way back to 3,000 years ago.

The vividly yellow powder you can buy at the grocery store derives from the root of the turmeric plant, also known as the Curcuma domestica. The broad-leafed plant contains pinecone-shaped stalks and bulbous roots that look like ginger, although once you cut into the root you’ll find a fleshy yellow interior. The root is boiled, dried, and ground down into a fragrant yellow powder, which has a pungent, slightly bitter flavor.

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Turmeric plants growing in a field in Kothapally, India. (Photo: Rajkumar6182/CC0)

C. domestica is native to South Asia, and has been cultivated there for thousands of years. It is frequently mentioned in ancient Hindu literature. For example, it is cited in an early Sanskrit lexicon from the fourth or fifth century A.D., and has been identified as one of the plants mentioned in the Vedic book of spells, the Atharva Veda. The word itself, “turmeric,” is a Sanskrit synonym for the color yellow. Its other names across Asia, such as halud or haldi, directly pertain to the color yellow.

As the yellow spice pervaded Indian cuisines, it also became prominent in other aspects of life: in domestic rituals, in ayurvedic medicine, and as a form of skincare. Thousands of years ago, if you fell ill on the Indian subcontinent, you would visit your village healer and explain your ailments to him. He would then prescribe you a treatment that most likely included turmeric to remedy the problem, be it a wound, or jaundice, or even weak nerves.

In the novel Mistress of Spices, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni includes turmeric's role in ritual as a mystical do-gooder with protective properties. “Turmeric the preserver, keeping foods safe in a land of heat and hunger,” she writes. “Turmeric the auspicious spice, placed on the heads of newborns for luck, sprinkled over coconuts at pujas, rubbed into the borders of wedding saris.”

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A turmeric flower in Maharashtra, India. (Photo: Sankarshansen/CC0)

Turmeric continues to play a widespread role in Indian marriage rites all across the country, most prominently in Hindu ceremonies. Though there are several variations of the process, in general the custom sees the bridal couple being smeared with a thick turmeric paste a few days before the marriage. This is believed to have a twofold purpose: the spice shields the couple from evil spirits, and it is said to bring them happiness, wealth and children. In some Indian cultures, these rites are performed exclusively by women.

In the past, turmeric was also used during the now-obsolete practice of sati, when a widow committed suicide by burning on her husband’s pyre. Before the act became outlawed in the 19th century, women would be taken to the burning-ground in shrouds that were dyed yellow with turmeric.

Just as with saffron in the Mediterranean, the yellow color of turmeric adopted certain erotic connotations in India. In Indigenous Uses of Turmeric (Curcuma domestica) in Asia and Oceania, David E. Sopher writes: “In Indian classical literature, similar erotic associations are attached to yellow blossoms, while a woman is considered particularly seductive when her face and body are a shining yellow.”

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The haldi ceremony at a Bengali wedding, in which a family member applies turmeric paste on the bride's face. (Photo: Jubair1985/CC BY-SA 3.0)

These erotic associations may have lead to turmeric’s widespread use in Indian skincare, with traditions of rubbing the yellow pigment into the skin beginning in antiquity and continuing into the modern-day. While many sophisticated skincare products containing turmeric have emerged, the simplest form of the treatment involves creating a paste with the powder and applying it on the skin like a mask. 

Recent clinical studies on the active ingredient in turmeric, a compound called curcumin, have had mixed results. Last week the New York Timesreported that "a few small clinical trials have found curcumin to be as effective as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for alleviating the stiffness and swelling of rheumatoid arthritis." The same story said that clinical trials of curcumin among people with Alzheimer’s disease and depression have been inconclusive. 

Science will continue to look deeper into curcumin's health benefits as turmeric continues to pop up in trendy juices, cleanses, and health foods. But regardless of how the data shakes out, turmeric will remain a staple in India. Over several millennia the yellow powder has secured its place in the subcontinent, leaving a bright and indelible mark on its culture.

Watching Sheep Herding Online is the New Counting Sheep

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Why are we told to count sheep when we can't sleep? Is there something specific about sheep that makes them particularly sleep-inducing over, say, cows or goats or bison? Is it because their fluffy white wool is reminiscent of pillows and soft bedding?

The video above, which shows what sheep herding looks like from the skies, provides a pretty good answer. The mesmerizing shots show hundreds of sheep being shepherded from one New Zealand field to another, and are coupled with calming music. As you watch, you'll find yourself being slowly lulled by the undeniably soothing images. If you're feeling ambitious, you can even try to count them.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

Sheepdog Quits Job, Runs 240 Miles to Return Home

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Sometimes, new jobs just don't work out. Maybe your boss is too demanding, or your co-workers smell, or it's just not the right "fit." Or maybe you just miss being home. 

This is all to say that Pero, a 4-year-old sheepdog who walked off his job in England to return home, probably had his reasons.

It had only been a few weeks since Pero was sent to work on a farm in Cumbria, England, in March. Yet, on April 8, he decided he'd had enough, going missing from the farm where it was his job to help round up sheep. 

Remember when you worked at Blockbuster for a couple weeks in the summer of '99 but it wasn't all that stellar and you missed your cool colleagues at Subway? This was kind of like that. 

They treated Pero just fine in Cumbria, the pay (dog food) was good enough, but, you know, something was just missing. In this case, that was his owner, friend, and former boss Alan James, on whose doorstep the dog appeared on April 20. 

“My husband Alan went out to check on the animals after supper," Shan James told the BBC, "and there was Pero on our doorstep. It was a bit of a shock, and the dog was going crazy after seeing Alan.”

The trip was 240 miles in all, to the Jameses' home near Aberystwyth, Wales. Shan James told the BBC that Pero seemed perfectly healthy after the trip, meaning that he probably found food to eat along his journey. 

For now, the family will keep Pero at home, where he helps out on their farm. And why shouldn't Pero stay? Good jobs are hard to come by. 

Can You Taste Where Your Water is From?

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Natural water has a distinctive taste of place. (Photo: Alden Chadwick/CC BY 2.0)

Tap water in Tokyo is not the same as what streams from a San Francisco sink, in the same way that San Pellegrino spring water, sourced in Italy, tastes distinct from Kona Deep, bottled in Hawaii. Natural waters are like snowflakes, in that no two are exactly alike.

A sense of place imbues the water from every tap and spring. Just as Merlot from Napa Valley and Merlot from Bordeaux have unique flavors to the discerning tongue, so does the water that sustains those vineyards.

However, when water is rendered “pure” by purified water companies, its sense of place is erased. With everything sucked out, says water expert Martin Riese, the water at that point is essentially dead, left with no more of its natural benefits.

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What is "pure"? What is "purified"? Why does it need minerals? (Photo: Tao Tao Holmes)

Riese is America’s first and only certified “Water Sommelier.” He began his water tasting career in Germany, where he received a professional certification in 2011. Hoping to increase the appreciation and understanding of water, he created his first "water menu" in 2005, and has since created water programs across Los Angeles.

In his Water 101 Class, he educates students on the qualities and characteristics of mineral water, explaining how you can taste the region and depth from which the water comes—called terroir—and mineral levels, which influence flavor. Our bodies need minerals—magnesium, calcium, potassium—to survive, and in water, minerals provide taste and prevent damaging corrosiveness.

Most people have no idea what they’re actually buying when it comes to water, says Riese, and the term “purified” is very misleading. People love the idea of “pure,” but don’t know what it signifies. This stuff is not normal or natural, he says. “Purified water is nothing else than processed food.” As the U.S. Geological Survey explains it, “Pure water is a kind of theoretical concept.”

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Aquafina "demineralized water by reverse osmosis" relies on a "pixie dust" mineral additive. (Photo: Diego Torres Silvestre/CC BY 2.0)

When bottled water companies such as Dasani and Aquafina purify water before putting it on shelves, they take all the naturally existing minerals, gases, and organic matter out, and then add other elements back in. In his book, Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, environmental scientist Peter Gleick refers to this mysterious mineral additive injected into the water of brands like Dasani and Aquafina (owned by Coca Cola and PepsiCo) as “pixie dust.”

Pixie dust is the additive that makes every bottle of purified water taste the same, no matter which brook it first babbled from. This means that whether Dasani is sourcing tap water from Sacramento, Jacksonville, or Philadelphia (and disproportionately from drought zones), every single bottle will taste identical, all sharing a tasteless placelessness.

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Nestle bottled water, guaranteeing more purity. (Photo: Tao Tao Holmes)

Aquafina, Dasani, and others will not disclose what’s in their pixie dust; the contents of these mineral additives are not publicly available. “Apparently that information is proprietary; they don’t give it,” says Susan Richardson, a professor of chemistry at the University of South Carolina. “It’s so strange to me, I couldn’t find the levels [of minerals] they add either. I’m just guessing they don’t want their competitors to know, to copy them.”

What’s also odd, says Richardson, is that as a chemist, she could easily find out the water’s mineral composition, so competitors too, could run samples. She guesses that the “pixie dust” involves a combination of magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride, and sodium chloride, which are all things you naturally find in water and which prevent corrosiveness. (It’s the same thing that happens at desalination plants, she points out: adding back minerals after everything gets sucked out.)

However, our tap water is still more controlled and regulated than bottled water, says Richardson, the former overseen the the EPA and the latter by the FDA. Not all bottled water is tested, whereas almost every batch of tap water is monitored.

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Halite, the mineral form of sodium chloride, is a likely ingredient in "pixie dust." (Photo: Géry Parent/CC BY-ND 2.0)

In a video detailing Aquafina’s “HydRO-7™ Process,” Tanya Peacock, Pepsi Bottling Group’s Quality Assurance Manager, states: “Aquafina has recently been portrayed as tap water, just bottled in our facilities. And that is so far from the truth.”

Peacock explains Aquafina's seven-step purification process (which includes prefiltration, high-intensity light, reverse osmosis, two polishing filters, and ozonation), and adds, “in these seven steps, we remove everything else—so all you’re left with is just pure water.”

Pixie dust is left unmentioned.

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This bottle of Aquafina is simply repurposed Ayers, Massachusetts tap water. (Photo: Tao Tao Holmes)

Riese, the water sommelier, always advises people not to buy purified water when it’s already on tap. The majority of people he meets, he says, look dumbstruck when he explains the fundamentals of water.

“Most Americans have no clue the difference between purified, mineral, and spring water,” says Riese, with more than a hint of frustration. He explains that mineral water always comes from a spring, and while every mineral water is a spring water, not every spring water is a mineral water.

Mineral water has to contain a level of at least 250 milligrams of minerals, with higher mineral content meaning saltier and more tasteful water. Spring water, in contrast, has less than 250 milligrams, and your taste buds can easily detect the difference, each providing a distinct “mouthfeel,” or sensory impression.

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Poland Springs comes from a select group of Maine springs, listed on their label. (Photo: Tao Tao Holmes)

Mineral and spring waters cannot be altered, except perhaps to add carbonation. “That means I can taste mother nature,” says Riese. In stark contrast, purified water requires a mineral level so low that nobody’s taste buds will be offended.

That consistency, along with the bottled water industry's effective marketing, is why so many consumers buy purified water, instead of mineral and spring waters, even though it's highly unlikely to win any prizes at the "Oscars of Water."

“Water is not just water,” says Riese, reminding us to appreciate the cool and soothing taste of place.

Half of All Western European Men Are Descendants of a Bronze Age King

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Stonehenge in England, believed to have been built during the Bronze Age. (Photo: Qalinx/CC BY 2.0)

Half of men in Western Europe are the descendants of a single Bronze Age ruler, a new study claims, based on genetic research into the Y chromosome of 1,200 men. 

The study was published Monday in the journal Nature Genetics. Its authors told the Telegraph that a single man fathered several elites, who were responsible for an explosion in reproduction some time around 4,000 years ago. 

"We can only speculate as to what happened," Chris Tyler-Smith told the newspaper. "The best explanation is that they may have resulted from advances in technology that could be controlled by small groups of men.

“Wheeled transport, metal working and organized warfare are all candidate explanations that can now be investigated further," Tyler-Smith added. 

The Y chromosome is only passed from father to son, making it possible to track how men are related to each other and chart growth over thousands of years. 

Among the study's other findings is that, throughout history, there have been several mysterious population explosions of men, making for uneven human growth over the last 50,000 years. 

Do we need another explosion in the population of men? I'm going to say no. I don't think we do

Why a Bunch of Rivers in France Were Dyed Neon Green

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People all over France woke up Monday to a lot of green, specifically in the water: 12 rivers had been dyed the bright color, in a move that environmentalists hope will bring awareness to pollution in the country. 

Le Figaro reports that the environmentalists struck ahead of a conference in Paris, and that up to 12 departments, or regions, of France were hit with dye. 

The environmentalists, who were also protesting a diminishing amount of state money devoted to environmental causes, claim that the dye, a type of fluorescein, is harmless. (This may not be true.)

Harmless or not, the dye is different than what Chicago uses to famously turn the Chicago River green every St. Patrick's Day. The formula for Chicago's dye is top secret

The Epic Century-Long English Battle to Rid Itself of American Squirrels

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A grey squirrel in a London park. (Photo: Pixabay/Public Domain)

They’re aggressive. They’re big. They’re stealing resources from the natives, they carry disease. They cost Britain millions of pounds a year and they’re breeding.

And they’re squirrels.

You’d be forgiven if you thought that sounded like a xenophobic rant against foreign invaders. But it’s a mark of just how heated—and how strange—the debate over the fates of two photogenic rodents, the introduced North American grey squirrel and the native red squirrel, has become in Britain.

North American grey squirrels first entered Britain as pets for the upper classes in the Victorian era, but it wasn’t until 1876 that they escaped their cages. The story goes that Thomas Unett Brocklehurst, master of Henbury Hall in Cheshire and world traveler, brought a pair of grey squirrels to this tiny island because he thought they’d look nice gamboling around on his estate. That’s the story, but the historic record isn’t clear on whether Brocklehurst really did bring the squirrels—the current owners of Henbury Hall have no record of anything pertaining to squirrels and the local historical society doesn’t either. If Brocklehurst was indeed the man, he was also something of a trendsetter. Several years after Brocklehurst, the 11th Duke of Bedford, Herbrand Russell, reportedly brought 10 pairs of the fecund little animals from New Jersey and released them onto his estate, Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire. Russell, ironically the president of the Zoological Society of London and a keen supporter of animal conservation, was instrumental in distributing grey squirrels around the country: He set them loose in Regents Park and Kew Gardens in London and gifted them to squirrel-less friends. The population of grey squirrels, sturdy of body, chattering and robust, steadily rose.

“This is entrepreneurial Britain, so these guys hadn’t got anything to do with their money,” says Adrian Vass, Squirrel Accord manager for the Forestry Commission and red squirrel supporter, explaining that importing rare breeds of arboreal rodents was a kind of status symbol. “And of course they didn’t realize what would happen.”

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Thomas Unett Brocklehurst, master of Henbury Hall, pictured, reportedly introduced grey squirrels to the UK. (Photo: Viewfinder/CC BY-SA 4.0)

What happened was that as the population of these furry lawn ornaments increased, the native red squirrels declined. Rapidly. 

The grey squirrel, as it turns out, is a tremendously successful introduced species. Larger than its European cousin, it eats more and has been known to dig up red squirrels’ caches of seeds and nuts. The grey also has the ability to digest the unripe seeds of broadleaf trees, such as the oak; red squirrels can’t, and so when it comes time for them to harvest seeds later in the season, there aren’t many left. The greys live in higher population densities, crowding out the reds, and even though the grey male cannot mate with the red female, they’ve been known to scare off would-be red suitors. According to the UK government, they carry the squirrel poxvirus, a disease that has little effect on them but is lethal to red squirrels. And though much of the wide geographic distribution of grey squirrels can be attributed to squirrel-spreading Victorian gentlemen, they are also keen explorers themselves and will frequently seek out new territory to colonize. “I always think they’re a bit like a Roman legion,” says Vass, of the grey squirrels’ impulse to seek new areas. “They have their scouts, the youngsters go out and check what habitat is ahead of them and they then pass those messages back to the cohort behind them.… I think they’re enormously efficient, they’re lightyears ahead of red squirrels.”

Within 50 years of Brocklehurst’s alleged introduction, the grey squirrels had made it as far as Wales; people had long noticed that where there were grey squirrels, there weren’t red. In July 1928, the UK Forestry Commission investigated the squirrel situation; an offended New York Times reported in November of that year, under the headline “American Squirrel on Trial for His Life in England”, that the grey squirrel was the victim of a “crusade” against him. By 1932, the crusade had succeeded: Releasing grey squirrels in the UK became illegal; in 1937, failure to report a grey squirrel sighting was punishable by a £5 fine (the law remained on the books until 2014). But unenforceable laws did little to limit the impact of the grey squirrels’ introduction, and even the bounty on grey squirrels’ heads (or tails, rather), half a shilling eventually raised to 2, couldn’t stop their spread.

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A red squirrel spotted in Scotland. (Photo: Peter G W Jones/CC BY-ND 2.0)

Now, upwards of 3 million grey squirrels live in the UK, having taken over southern England; roughly 160,000 red squirrels remain, holdouts primarily in northern England and Scotland where grey squirrels are less prevalent. In a video made by the Red Squirrel Survival Trust titled “The Red Squirrel: A Legacy for the Future” and narrated by Alan Titchmarsh, Britain’s favorite television gardener, red squirrel supporters make it unequivocally clear: “The red squirrel’s problem is the grey squirrel.” Without intervention, they say, the red squirrel could disappear completely within 15 years.

In 2014, Prince Charles, one of the country’s most outspoken conservationists, decided that it was time to do something about the squirrel problem. He invited a cohort of 35 woodland, timber industry and conservation organizations to form the Squirrel Accord. The Accord acts a kind of central clearinghouse, coordinating the efforts taking place across the UK to “control the grey squirrel population” and save the reds; Vass is the Accord coordinator for the Forestry Commission. The Squirrel Accord doesn’t exactly shy away from the fact that “control” largely means killing, but it doesn’t exactly spell it out, either.

And this is where things get messy. To start with, the language used by some red squirrel supporters comes across as unnecessarily martial at best, and at worst, chillingly xenophobic, and protectionist. From the beginning, how people talked about the squirrels was clouded by patriotism bordering on nationalism. In the 1920s, for example, one government official was quoted in the Times of London calling them “sneaking, thieving, fascinating little alien villains.” In the 1930s, after it became an offense to release the squirrels, headlines decried the “alien pest”, and even now, many publications label the greys a “plague” and an “invasion”.

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A "slow for red squirrels" sign in Southport, near Liverpool. (Photo: David Hawgood/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Though many squirrel supporters shy away from uncomfortable words like “eradication”, some red squirrel supporters embrace it. In 2007, a New York Times Magazine article painted Rupert Mitford, the 6th Baron Redesdale and a prominent red squirrel supporter, as a trigger-happy, old-moneyed relic, gleefully massacring the greys in an ecological cleansing and chortling over their deaths; a 2008 Guardian story did nothing to ameliorate this image when it quoted Mitford saying, “We only call ourselves the Red Squirrel Protection Partnership because if we called it the Grey Squirrel Annihilation League people might be a bit less sympathetic.” Other vocal red squirrel supporters use the language of protectionism to great effect. In 2012, Janice Atkinson-Small, a director of a center-right thinktank called WomenOn “which seeks to challenge the left dominated Guardianista feminist view of the world of women”, declared in an op-ed for The Daily Mail, “If there was a band of illegal immigrants that cost our economy an estimated £14m per annum, carried a fatal disease that killed off most of the indigenous population and threatened our wildlife and woodlands too, wouldn’t you be keen to go to war with them?”

While there is no data to support the idea that people who champion red squirrel conservation also ascribe to right-leaning political views—and Mitford, for example, is a Liberal Democrat, a center to center-left party—there are some uncomfortable correlations. 

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An alert for red squirrels in the south of England. (Photo: Mike Russell/CC BY 2.0)

“It does sound remarkably like Donald Trump, doesn’t it? ‘We should build a wall and we should make those grey squirrels pay for it,’” jokes Hugh Warwick, an ecologist, hedgehog champion, and writer for The Guardian. Warwick has written in the past about the problems with pitting the squirrels against one another and he’s not the only one: In 2006, journalist Tim Luckhurst wrote in The Sunday Times, “Squirrels cannot speak. But I fear that if they could the newcomers would be entitled to ask: ‘Is it because my fur is grey?’ After all, being immune to a killer virus, adapting to the local habitat and thriving on available food are all evidence of evolutionary success. To accuse them of spreading disease sounds like a classic anti-immigrant slur.” In 2012, Chris Packham, a popular BBC wildlife program presenter, accused red squirrel conservationists of having “lost the plot when it comes to purity and perfection”, and declaring them “a small band of lunatics who are insidiously bogged down and blinded by sentimental racism”. After the signing of the 2014 Squirrel Accord, journalist Oscar Rickett accused Prince Charles, who has conducted several grey squirrel culls on his vast Duchy land holdings, of dressing nostalgia up as environmentalism and “battling furiously against a rising tide of change, much of it entirely imagined”.

“We do have this sort of feeling that there was a time that it was better,” says Warwick, about the kind of nostalgia supporters of the red squirrel evoke. “But the grey squirrel is now part of our ecosystem. The point is they’ve been here for a good long time, they’ve settled themselves in. If we’re saying, ‘Right, we don’t want grey squirrels,’ what else are we going to say we don’t want?”

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Grey squirrels in Richmond Park, London. (Photo: Alex Groundwater/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Warwick doesn’t count himself as a grey squirrel champion, exactly—he accepts that killing the grey squirrels might, in the end, be the only way to rebalance the British landscape. But he also notes that for many urban people, grey squirrels are their first contact with real wildlife. And that’s important. “For someone who doesn’t have much opportunity to see wildlife, my goodness, it’s wildlife,” he says. Grey squirrels, with their ubiquity and the fact that it’s really funny watching them try to extract food from feeders in the shape of horse’s heads, are a “gateway” animal: “You get to close to wildlife, you form a much more intense bond… if you get lucky, or the natural world gets lucky, you might just love them. Squirrels, love them or hate them, they’re a way in.”

The grey squirrels do have other defenders, although they are far less politically connected as the Prince of Wales. Angus MacMillan and his son, Neil, both of Glasgow, are Professor Acorn, a chipper grey squirrel with a website trying to counteract the negative PR campaign battering the “alien” squirrels’ image. They say that first and foremost, killing grey squirrels is cruel. “Although they say they destroy them humanely, it’s really not humane,” says Angus MacMillan, noting that many squirrels are live trapped and then hit on the head with a blunt instrument. The first blow doesn’t always do the job. But the MacMillans also object to the overtly protectionist nature of supporting red squirrels over greys. “I know there is a great difference between humans and animals—or is there?—but the sort of general policies denote racism,” he says. “They’re killing [grey squirrels] because they come from another country, I don’t accept that.” 

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The title page from Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. (Photo: Public Domain)

The image of the animals in popular culture has been shaped as much by fiction as lived experience. People on all sides of the squirrel debate blame Beatrix Potter and her twee Windermere fauna for shifting opinions on the squirrel: Potter created an anthropomorphic universe in which rabbits wear jackets (but no trousers), hedgehogs do laundry, and Squirrel Nutkin, with his rust-colored fur and flame-tipped ears, is the embodiment of cheeky charisma. (Notably, Potter also penned a story about Timmy Tiptoes, a grey squirrel who is accused of being a nut thief; Timmy wasn’t then and isn’t now as popular as Nutkin.) Squirrel Nutkin gave the red squirrel a personality, but he also cemented the red squirrel’s place in British imagination; when the squirrel’s actual place in the British landscape came under threat, affection helped propel the squirrel’s cause to the front pages of newspapers. And it does make an easy, good story: The plight of the red squirrels was even explicitly referenced in the 1940s—a time when the country’s very way of life was under ferocious attack—in A Squirrel Called Rufus, the story of the brave red squirrel defending his homeland against the evil invading greys. That, in many ways, is the same story some supporters of the red squirrel still tell.

So what is it? Racist thinking ported to small mammals or a genuine environmental problem? Unfortunately, the emotionally-charged debate can obscure even basic facts. For example, the numbers of red and grey squirrels are reported with surprising variety—the Forestry Commission says there are 140,000 to 160,000 red squirrels in the whole of the UK, versus around 2.5 to 3 million grey squirrels. But the Conservative Telegraph, possibly accidentally, puts the numbers of red squirrels at only around 15,000 in the whole of the UK, and right-leaning Daily Mail puts the numbers of grey squirrel much, much higher, around 5 million—both might be guilty of overestimating the threat. 

The real reason why the Forestry Commission, for example, wants to reduce the invasive grey squirrel population might not even have anything to do with the native animals. “The UK Squirrel Accord and our supporters are not driven in any way by ‘sentimental racism’ and it is really nonsense to suggest this,” Vass later clarified in an email. “The need to control grey squirrel numbers in the United Kingdom is driven by economic factors.” According to him, the damage to rooftops caused by greys tops £20 million and the horticultural pain is “impossible to calculate in absolute financial terms.” Then there’s the not-so-silent other victim: Songbirds, whose eggs are destroyed or eaten by squirrels.

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A notice from the Penrith and District Red Squirrel Group for sightings of grey squirrels or sickly red squirrels. (Photo: Richard Dorrell/CC BY-SA 2.0)

But perhaps the most significant victim is the trees. The government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and others agree that the grey is responsible for a significant amount of damage to the broadleaf trees through what’s called “ring barking”. Squirrels strip the bark off trees in bands, creating open wounds prone to infection; between 35 to 40 percent of the broadleaf tree population is affected, resulting in some cases in the death of the tree. This destruction puts in danger the government’s promise to meet the international Biodiversity 2020 target, an agreement to halt the loss of biodiversity by that year, but perhaps more importantly, it has huge negative consequences for the native timber industry, including as much as £14 million a year in damage. Says Vass, “It’s not really about eradicating a grey mammalian species, it’s about managing the damage they do to trees.”

Vass and the Squirrel Accord advocate alternatives to culling, such as contraception for squirrels; other recent research shows that the introduction of the pine marten, another threatened native species and a predator that kills squirrels, has resulted in the decrease of grey squirrel numbers and a stabilization of red squirrels. This all gives hope that there might be a more ecologically, emotionally comfortable way to curb the grey population. But that doesn’t satisfy the MacMillans—they believe that the only thing to do about the squirrels is nothing: “I think we should be leaving these animals alone and the populations will sort themselves out,” says Angus MacMillan. Asked whether we have a duty to “fix” the situation, MacMillan responds, “In a word, no.”

The MacMillans are outliers, but they’re not lonely. A recent rash of books—Where Does the Camel Belong? by plant biologist Ken Thompson and The New Wild by journalist Fred Pearce—suggest that invasive species might not be so “invasive” after all. In their paper, “The Rise and Fall of Biotic Nativeness”, Matthew Chew and Andrew Hamilton of Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences dismantle the notion of “nativeness” all together, exploring how place, time, naming, and even human preference combine to create a kind of false authority. “None of the relationships comprising biotic nativeness is an inevitable, permanent or dependable object supporting a conception of belonging,” he and his fellow researchers concluded. “Nativeness” is outmoded.

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The introduction of Pine Martens may have reduced grey squirrel numbers. (Photo: Peter G W Jones/CC BY-ND 2.0)

Warwick isn’t exactly a proponent of the native-as-construct concept, but he agrees that supporting red squirrels over grey squirrels is a somewhat arbitrary decision. “Where are we going to draw the line about what is a native species?” he asks. “At what point in our history are we saying that is the eco system we want in this country?” That perspective highlights just how bound up in emotion and perception the debate about the squirrels, like any debate about an “invasive” species, is.

For the moment, the future of the red squirrel is tentatively positive. In 2015, newspapers thrilled to the news that red squirrel sightings were on the rise in the northern part of the country: “'Squirrel Nutkin' fights back in battle against grey rivals”, cheered The Telegraph, while The Mirror crowed, “UK natives fighting ‘plague’ of greys”. The Isle of Wight and Anglesey have both seen success in encouraging the red, although by destroying the grey population. There’s even talk of reds naturally acquiring an immunity to the pox virus, as well as a pox virus vaccine that could protect them from the lethal infection.

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A grey and a red squirrel on a tree stump in Cumbria. (Photo: Peter Trimming/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Meanwhile, the numbers of grey squirrels don’t seem to be shifting too much, despite a series of highly publicized and controversial culls. Intermittent efforts to get the grey squirrels out of the trees and onto British plates have also been met with resistance (they don’t, it seems, have very much meat on them or taste very good). That said, in September 2015, the Red Squirrels United group received £1.2 million in money from the national lottery to continue their preservation efforts, which in part means killing grey squirrels where they are likely to directly threaten the red.

As with most things, there are no easy answers on the squirrel question. Says Warwick, “These systems are complicated. The take-home message from the whole squirrel issue is simply that it is complicated.”

For the foreseeable future, at least, squirrels will be squirrels and the people who champion them, will be people.


Found: Rare Footage of the Beatles Obsessing Over Their Hair

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In November of 1965, the Beatles appeared on a TV special on "The Music of Lennon & McCartney." Naturally, before they went on TV, they needed to get beautiful.

A make-up artist for the show shot some footage of the Fab Four goofing off and primping in their dressing room. Recently, her daughter donated the movie to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, which released it to the public for the first time, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Mostly they seemed concerned with getting their famous hair just right. First, Paul brushes his back. Ringo combs his sideburns. George ruffles his. Then, more combing. More sideburn perfecting.

By 1965, the Beatles' moptop mushroom haircuts were part of their signature style, though, so it was important that they get them right. When Ringo joined the band, John told him, specifically, to lose the beard he was wearing. But, the drummer was told, he could keep his sideburns. 

Bonus finds: Mystery box

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

Enormous KFC Chicken Bucket Crashes Into Long Beach

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A freak windstorm that felled trees and ripped awnings across Long Beach, California also claimed a more finger-lickin' victim—an enormous KFC bucket sign.

The sign crashed down from an Atlantic Avenue storefront early Monday evening, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reports. Pictures show a downed bucket roughly the size of a water tower, draped with yellow caution tape and peeled open to reveal a surprising amount of infrastructure.

It's one thing to, in a fit of grease and excitement, drop your chicken bucket on the ground. It's another to lose an entire franchise's (symbolic) supply. "We love this sign," restaurant owner Shahid Chaudhry, who plans to replace the bucket, told CBS News. "It's sad."

Although the sign fell into the drive-through lane, customers have flocked to the location—though snoopier ones noted the downed container was empty of chicken. That's a rough way to find out you have no wings.

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

For Sale: Solar Panels at IKEA

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While they disappeared for a little bit there, IKEA shoppers in the UK can once again buy some solar panels in-store to power the unbelievably low-priced corner lamp they just picked up.

The Swedish superstore chain first tried selling solar panels sourced from a Chinese company starting in 2013, offering them in their UK locations. But as the Guardian reports, due to the end of their contract with their Chinese supplier, as well as a 65% cut to government subsidies provided to solar power users, IKEA stopped selling the panels earlier this year. 

However after just a few months in the dark, the flat-pack furniture giant has once again renewed their solar panel offerings. Now sourced from London-based company Solarcentury, IKEA’s mountable solar panels are being sold in “solar shops” opened up in their locations in Glasgow, Lakeside, and Birmingham, with the rest of their UK locations to resume selling the panels by the end of the year.

Unlike the majority of their offerings, the IKEA solar panels are not sold straight from the store (despite being relatively flat), and do not carry a signature, baffling product name. Instead, buyers get the panels and installation directly from Solarcentury. IKEA claims that the typical home (using around 10 panels) would cost around £4,550, or about $6,600.

The return to selling solar panels is a part of a larger move by the company to focus on reversing climate change and promoting sustainability. There is no word as to whether IKEA will bring their solar initiative to the United States or elsewhere, but there is no telling how much energy costs could be lowered by creating solar powered bachelor pads the world over.

How To Drive A Six-Ton Potato Without Causing A Five-Car Mashup

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The Big Idaho Potato Truck is looking for a dedicated Tater Team. (Photo: The Famous Idaho Potato Tour/Used With Permission)

Do you wish your job offered more opportunities to travel, but also had more to do with a giant potato? Maybe a job driving the Big Idaho Potato Truck is the career you’ve been looking for.

The promotional vehicle, which consists of a semi cab hauling a 12-foot-tall replica potato, travels around the United States to draw attention to the prize spuds of Idaho. Operated by the Idaho Potato Commission, the truck is currently on its fifth annual tour of the country. Funding concerns mean this could be the last year, but a recent, unexpected endorsement from Kobe Bryant—he name-dropped the truck in an ESPN interview—may have helped secure its future.

To find out what life on the road with the Big Potato is really like we spoke with Larry Bathe, who is not only the current driver of the trailer, but has been with the project since the very beginning.

The Big Idaho Potato Truck first hit the road in 2012, as a promotional tour commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Idaho Potato Commission. As Bathe told us, the idea for the truck came from Linda Kaufman of marketing company Foerstel Design, who was inspired by an old novelty postcard that showed an impossibly massive potato on the back of a flatbed.

Bathe, a lifelong truck driver, was brought in to help figure out exactly how to create and pilot a giant potato around the country. Originally, the huge tater was set to be 16 feet tall, and hold a museum inside, but at that scale it wouldn’t have fit under most bridges. The potato creators scaled the tater back to its current 12-foot-tall size, and began to test drive it, which is when Bathe first took the wheel.

The truck did its first nine-month tour in 2012, mostly visiting grocery stores to hand out information on Idaho spuds. That was supposed to be the extent of its service celebrating the Potato Commission’s anniversary, but the vehicle proved so popular that it was allowed to hit the road again in 2013. More and more venues began requesting that the truck make an appearance, from Nascar events to the Kentucky Derby. After the Big Idaho Potato Truck’s second tour it had gained so much notice that the program was given a three-year contract, 2016 being its final guaranteed year.

“Some people love it in the commission, and some people don’t, or at least they act like they don’t,” says Bathe. “But in the end we win them over pretty easily.” Despite yearly funding worries, the Big Idaho Potato Truck continues chugging along. Having turned down the first two tours to be with his family, Bathe returned to the truck tour in 2014. He has driven the potato every year since.

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Potatoes are patriotic. (Photo: The Famous Idaho Potato Tour/Used With Permission)

According to Bathe, driving around with the heavy carb load is both challenging and rewarding. The potato is 12 feet wide  and 28 feet long wide, making it nearly impossible to see what’s directly behind it. “It’s difficult for mirrors to see behind it, so I don’t have an idea of the traffic pattern [behind the truck],” says Bathe. Turning the huge tater is also a challenge, that Bathe nearly always has to navigate by instinct and experience. 

But the driver of the Big Idaho Potato Truck is not alone. There are also two other “ambassadors” on board who look after the logistics of the tour. In addition to the responsibility to interact with the public that each of the potato team shares, one of the ambassadors takes care of photography, video, and other documentation, while the other looks after social media and managing the venues and locations. It takes a team to drive a six-ton potato.

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The giant potato keeps movin' on... (Photo: The Famous Idaho Potato Tour/Used With Permission)

All three of the team ride in the cab while they are on the road, but the Big Potato itself isn’t empty. “You can’t have something that can’t be inspected inside, be as big as that potato,” says Bathe. To allow for this, there is a door in the potato that leads to the hollow insides which have been fitted with shelves and lockers for the potato team to store their stuff.

Even with the close quarters and the challenges of driving a giant potato around, Bathe loves his gig. “The amount of people that wave at you every day when you’re driving the Big Idaho Potato is just outrageous," he says. "I get thumbs up, waves, people taking pictures. It’s just a feel-good job.”

Since each year could possibly be the last for the truck, its overseers have ended up filling the positions last minute. But Bathe hopes that this will change as the popularity of the Big Potato Truck grows, along with its crew. Oscar Mayer's promotional, giant-hot-dog-shaped Wienermobile is 80 years old, Bathe points out. The Big Potato "is just five years old. It’s just getting going.”

The Queer Black Woman Who Reinvented The Blues

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Ma Rainey poses for a studio group shot with her Georgia Jazz Band in 1924 or 25. (Photo: JP Jazz Archive/Redferns/Getty Images)

If you poured one out for Prince or Beyonce this week, you may want to save another for Ma Rainey. In the 1910s and '20s, long before The Purple One strut his stuff or Queen Bey threw her wedding ring at the video camera, America vested its quick-changing emotions in The Mother of the Blues—a gender-role-flaunting singer with sky-high charisma, great business sense, and a voice that could bring people from laughter to tears and back again.

Ma Rainey spent decades touring the country, inspired generations of imitators, and knocked the roof off any space she performed in. She also wore diamond tiaras, recorded nearly a hundred records, and threw at least one illegal queer orgy. She was, in the words of historian Robert Philipson, "one of the first black divas in history." 

Before Ma Rainey was the Mother of the Blues, she was a young musician named Gertrude Pridgett. Born in Columbus, Georgia on April 26, 1886, Pridgett was a traveling performer by the age of 14, singing cabaret in talent and tent shows around the South. According to Sandra Lieb's Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey, Rainey first encountered the blues at one of these shows, when a fellow performer stood up and began singing a "strange and poignant" song about a man who had left her. Rainey was so captivated, she learned it that day, and began using it as an encore in her own act.

Rainey loved the blues so much and so immediately, she claims to have invented the genre's name in "a moment of inspiration"—though Lieb points out that this is unlikely, as the term was in use long before then. What is certain is that she quickly made it her own. A few years into her career, she married William "Pa" Rainey, a traveling entertainer who specialized in comedy and vaudeville. The two traveled with a variety of troupes, including the Smarter Set, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, and Tolliver's Circus and Musical Extravaganza, which billed the couple as "Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues." As Rainey's star rose, she began headlining solo acts, under the name "Madame Gertrude Rainey"—"Ma" for short.

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Ma Rainey in 1917, wearing one of her trademark beaded gowns. (Image: Public Domain)

Like most shows that traveled the South in the 1910s, Rainey's generally followed the harvest from city to city, and brought celebration-minded audiences a little bit of everything. A typical program might include chorus lines, contortionists, acrobats, and comedy skits (one popular act featured trained chickens that would "fly all over the stage," Lieb writes). When Rainey finally appeared to end the night—often decked out in a gold gown, a diamond tiara, rings for every finger, and a necklace made out of $20 pieces, carrying an ostrich plume in one hand and a gun in the other, and smiling a gold-capped smile—she uniformly brought down the house.

"By all accounts, she electrified her audience," writes Lieb. Poets wrote odes to her—Sterling Brown's "Ma Rainey" describes fans pouring in "from anyplace/Miles around," to hear Ma "do her stuff," laughing at her jokes and weeping at her songs. "She would moan, and the audience would moan with her," Brown later recalled. She would always end with "See See Rider," a surefire showstopper, stay on for the inevitable encore, and then bring down the house with a massive finale, featuring dancing from the night's entire cast. White people sometimes hired her to play quieter parties—but after she finished "she would go to a dance at the local black cafe behind a gas station, to entertain and socialize with her own people," remembers Sam Chatmon, one of her guitarists.

Starting in 1923, Rainey translated her live reputation into a series of massive hits for Paramount Records. Over the next five years, she released nearly 100 singles for the outlet, including now-classics like "Bo-Weavil Blues," "Dead Drunk Blues," and "Don't Fish in My Sea." She racked up even more fans, moving enough units that some credit her with single-handedly saving the label.

Due partly to limited recording technologies, and partly to Rainey's uncontainable stage presence, the records don't begin to capture her impact—but Rainey played even this to her advantage. For the first show of her 1924 Northern tour, at the Grand Theater in her home base city of Chicago, the curtains opened to reveal an oversized gramophone playing her "Moonshine Blues." When Rainey stepped onstage and began to sing, blasting the recording out of the water, the crowd lost it. That night, she got seven curtain calls.

Rainey's themes and lyrics were as innovative as her methods. Although Rainey's songs are full of infidelity, abandonment, and heartbreak—she sang the blues, after all—their protagonists are more likely to brandish a pistol or to cheat right back than to hang their heads and cry. As Angela Davis points out in 2011's Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, Rainey's songs are full of women who "explicitly celebrate their right to conduct themselves as expansively and even as undesirably as men," drinking, carousing, even baiting law enforcement. In "Blues the World Forgot, Part II" an anonymous male interlocutor warns Rainey that there's a policeman standing on the corner. In response, she hams it up over a jaunty trumpet: "Tell the sergeant I said come on in, and bring all the corn mash he has with him!"

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Bessie Smith, another queer black jazz performer and a close friend of Rainey's. (Photo: Carl Van Vechten/LC-USZ62-94954)

Rainey also didn't let the law drive her away from other then-taboo modes of self-expression. As Robert Philipson details in his 2011 documentary T'Ain't Nobody's Bizness: Queer Blues Divas of the 1920s, Rainey was one of a number of jazz-age blues musicians who modern audiences might describe as queer.

Rainey's sexuality wasn't public knowledge, but she didn't try too hard to hide it, either. "I believe she was courtin' Bessie [Smith], the way they'd talk," Chatmon remembered of Rainey's collaborator and protege, another pioneering blues singer and herself romantically linked to Lillian Simpson, a girl in her chorus. Others of Rainey's peers—the tux-rocking, piano-slaying Gladys Bentley, for example—were even more openly queer. Because it was edgy already, "the blues was the area where alternative sexuality was most visible," says Philipson.  

It was this that eventually did bring the sergeant knocking, after a 1925 party that got too rowdy. As Chris Albertson writes in a biography of Smith,"[Rainey] and a group of young ladies had been drinking and were making so much noise that a neighbor summoned the police," who arrived "just as the impromptu party got intimate." Everyone but Rainey fled through the back door, and she was arrested for "running an indecent party." Smith bailed her out the next morning.

Fans speculate this incident might have inspired "Prove It On Me Blues," a 1928 song that, had it been released in 2008, would have still turned heads. "Went out last night with a crowd of my friends," Rainey sings over a strutting beat. "They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men. It's true I wear a collar and tie, Makes the wind blow all the while."

Paramount's ad for the song featured a drawing of Rainey in a three-piece suit and a fedora, chatting up some ladies while a policeman watches from across the street. ("What's all this? Scandal?" the ad copy asked. "Don't fail to get this record from your dealer!") The song was "basically an explicitly lesbian anthem of celebration," says Philipson. "You didn't see that anywhere else." In a 1997 paper, Jack Halberstam points out that the accompanying illustration "also suggests the popularity and even relative acceptability of a particular form of lesbian drag."

That year, 1928, also marked Rainey's last year of recording music. Times and styles were changing, and Paramount ended her contract. After a few more years spent touring, Rainey settled back down in her birthplace of Columbus, where she opened a couple of profitable movie theaters. She died in 1939.

These days, it's difficult to recreate the experience of listening to Rainey. Her Paramount recordings are notoriously tinny and hollow-sounding, especially when compared to the rapturous descriptions of her performances. But her legacy remains engraved in the popular consciousness. Besides the bureaucratic tributes—a postage stamp, a spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame—Rainey is constant invoked, both explicitly and implicitly, by other artists. Six months after Rainey's death, Memphis Minnie recorded the first Ma tribute song. August Wilson wrote a play about her. In Langston Hughes's "The Blues," the character Simple imbues her with timelessness: "I will not deny Ma Rainey, even to hide my age. Yes I heard her! I am proud of hearing her! To tell the truth, if I stop and listen, I can still hear her."

Decades later, contemporary musicians—who rock tuxes, who invite scandal on their own terms, who explore heartbreak with their heads held high—still hear her, too. 

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