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Sweden's Plan to Physically Move a City Before It Sinks into the Ground

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The Kiruna Church—congregation and building alike—is getting ready to move. (Photo: Christoffer Sawicki/CC BY-SA-2.0)

Maybe you remember moving to a new town as a child; the uneasiness of your first day at a new school, the alien landscape of your new neighborhood. But what would it feel like if your entire town moved along with you? The citizens of Kiruna, Sweden are about to find out, as their entire town center prepares to move two miles east of its current location.

Why the mass relocation? Unlike the climate refugees of Oceania, Kiruna’s relocation hasn’t been necessitated by climate change, although the reason behind the move is man-made. As Francesca Perry explains in the Guardian, Kiruna was founded in 1900 after the Luossa-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) mining company was established in 1890 to tap a vast reserve of iron ore. As the mine grew, so did the town, which is now home to around 20,000 people despite the usual Arctic Circle months of darkness and snow (Kiruna is Sweden’s northernmost city).

While the mine has greatly contributed to Kiruna’s economic vibrancy, it’s also the source of its troubles. According to the New York Times, the mine’s expansion over the past century has pushed its western border underneath the town itself, “literally undermining the ground it sits on.” The result is ground deformation, which leads to sinkholes, cracked building foundations, and collapsing structures.

Before Kiruna becomes another sinking ghost town, mine and city officials are working to relocate the city center and its residents via an elaborate 20-year plan. This week, Sweden released a 10-minute documentary to explain what will happen. The Kiruna Church and other historically significant will be physically moved to the new city center, but many others will be demolished, including the current Town Hall. Citizens whose homes are slated to be torn down will be offered 125 percent of the building’s market value or a free new home in the new city center; similarly, renters will be offered rent subsidies to help them find new apartments.

Housing costs are a central concern for those who aren’t fully sold on the project. Green Party member Timo Velgits explained to the Guardian that LKAB is not providing guarantees that the planned replacement homes will be completed in time, creating concerns that displaced citizens who accept the free-home offer may be left out in the cold. Similarly, many point out that rents are likely to be higher in the new city center, and the rent subsidies may not be sufficient to address the issue. Aside from the financial impact on individual citizens, there’s a general unease that the project’s one billion dollar price tag is being funded by the mine’s profits—iron ore prices have been on the decline in recent years, and just recently hit a two-month low. As a local teacher told The Guardian, “I’m concerned that the iron ore prices are going down, which implies LKAB are running out of money. I’m worried that they will destroy the buildings in the city and not have enough money to rebuild them.”

But for many, the cultural and social concerns outweigh potential administrative issues. The Guardian spoke with Lars Jarlemyr, the minister of Kiruna Church and described his concerns.  “What troubles Lars is not the buildings—they can easily move, he says. It is the social networks and relationships in the town that he hopes will not be affected by the city’s changes.”

Fortunately, these matters are heavily on the minds of those behind the project as well. Asa Bjerndell, an architect working on the project, told Gizmodo:

The systems of social and economic ties are what binds Kiruna, and if there is anything to be moved, it is these connections and relationships. If we are going to talk about successfully moving a city, we have to make sure that the move strengthens existing relations and helps create new ones in the process.

For many in Kiruna, the staging of the plan means their moves are some years away and the whole idea may still seem abstract. Hopefully when the time comes, the citizens will be eager to shape their new city center into the town they’ve always dreamed of.


Canadian Couple Invites 1,000 Cats to Their Wedding

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A cat actively participates in a bridal party. (Photo: lemonjenny/CC BY-ND 2.0)

Cat lovers, we have a new item for your “#RelationshipGoals” check list: get married before an adoring army of feline friends. The pioneers of cat-centric wedding planning? Canadians Louise Veronneau and Dominic Husson, who wed this week in front of 1,000 guests—all of them cats.

Veronneau and Husson bonded over their shared values and love of animals (especially cats), according to an interview with local ABC affiliate KFSN. In 2012, the bride visited The Cat House on the Kings sanctuary in Fresno, California. The shelter is North America’s largest no-kill, cage-free cat sanctuary and adoption center, providing a home to hundreds of stray and surrendered cats and kittens. Upon visiting the shelter, Veronneau told KFSN,“I felt in love. I felt in love with the work Lynea and her team is doing for the cats and the rescuing.”

Shortly after visiting the sanctuary, she began dating Husson; three years later, the couple decided to tie the knot—and Veronneau knew the perfect spot for a destination wedding.

The couple didn’t stop at the all-feline guest list—after some cajoling, they managed to convince the sanctuary’s owner, Lynea Lattanzio, to become ordained so she could officiate the first wedding ever held at Cat House on the Kings. In an interview with the Sacramento Bee, Veronneau said that she “hoped we’re the first of many around the world” who decide to marry at the sanctuary, “because it will bring the sanctuary some recognition for the work they do.” In that spirit, the happy couple have asked that well-wishers donate to the shelter in lieu of gifts.

We’ve embedded Fresno Bee videographer Craig Kohrluss’ video of the couple and their 1,000 guests below; if you’d like some additional feline footage for your Caturday, more of the wedding celebration can be seen at KFSN.

An Incredibly Rare Bird Has Been Rediscovered in Brazil

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An 1893 illustration of the blue-eyed ground dove. Until recently, the bird had never been photographed. (Illustration: John Gerrard Keulemans/Public Domain)

In 2015, the IUCN Red List, which assesses the conservation status of animals and plants worldwide, listed 218 bird species as critically endangered. One of the rarest species on the list is the blue-eyed ground dove; the species’ population is so small that it has only been observed a handful of times, most recently in 2007. But this week, a team of Brazilian scientists are reporting that they have not only observed the doves in the wild; they’ve found a population in an area the birds have never been proven to inhabit before.

No one knows very much about the blue-eyed ground dove. It has blue eyes (and blue spots) and it spends most of its time on the ground, as its name suggests. BirdLife Internationalprovides a fairly detailed physical description and….not much else. We’re not even sure what this bird sounds like. And let’s be clear: that’s pretty unusual. Bird enthusiasts and ornithologists meticulously document bird species, creating databases like the Internet Bird Collection, which provides photos, videos, and and audio recordings for the majority of birds existing today.

Of course, when the species population is somewhere between 50 and 249 individuals, it’s not so surprising that they’d be a little challenging to find. Until this week, only three populations of blue-eyed ground doves had been observed in the vast Cerrado region of Brazil, where the birds are endemic. Of those three populations—located in the Brazilian states Mato Grasso and Mato Grasso do Sul two are considered possibly extinct. Historically, specimens had also been found in Goiás and for many years it was assumed that 75-year-old reports of sightings in Minas Gerais were erroneous; now, however, those historical reports appear to have been accurate.

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A distribution map of the blue-eyed ground dove based on IUCN data. The populations in orange are extant, while the populations in red are possibly extinct. (Illustration: Netzach/CC BY-SA-4.0)

Speaking with Brazilian newspaper Estadão, researchers from the Observatório de Aves at the Instituto Butantan and SAVE Brazil announced the rediscovery of the blue-eyed ground dove and explained how they stumbled upon the new population. In June 2015, ornithologist Rafael Bessa was undertaking an expedition in the Cerrado when he noted an unfamiliar bird call. The next day, Bessa told Estadão (per Google Translate):

I returned to the place and I could recreate this vocalization with my microphone. I reproduced the sound and the bird landed on a flowering bush, coming towards me. I photographed the animal, and when I looked at the picture carefully, I saw that I had recorded something unusual. My legs started shaking.

Not only had Bessa managed to spot the incredibly rare blue-eyed ground dove, he also took the first photograph and first recorded vocalization of the bird, which until now had only been presented to the public through taxidermied specimens. Immediately, he contacted researcher Luciano Lima, who confirmed his findings, and the pair reached out to SAVE Brazil, which helped the ornithologists form a research team with scientists from SAVE Brazil and Louisiana State University’s Museum of Natural Science.

The research team continues to observe the site where the birds were first discovered, and has since documented 12 blue-eyed ground doves. While they work to gather more information about the species for the scientific record, they’re also developing a conservation plan to ensure the population’s long-term survival.

Given the species’ critically endangered status, developing a conservation plan is hugely important. As Bessa explained to Estadão, the blue-eyed ground dove was incredibly rare even before the Cerrado became subject to what the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology refers to as“massive and and more or less uncontrolled habitat modification” to support large industrial agriculture activities. According to BirdLife International, by 1993 two-thirds of the Cerrado had been heavily or moderately altered by grazing, invasive grasses, annual burnings, and agriculture conversion. SAVE Brazil’s Warner Nogueria, a member of the research team, believes that the the blue-eyed ground dove’s natural habitat is a very specific “micro-habitat” of the Cerrado, and may be as rare as the bird itself.

The blue-eyed ground dove’s small population and rare habitat has inspired the research team to raise concerns that a new constitutional amendment designed to relax environmental licensing regulations for infrastructure projects could wipe out the species and others like it in the Cerrado. The scientists believe that the story of the blue-eyed ground dove is an example of how even small projects could devastate entire species. According to Lima:

What we call the Cerrado is a set of different ecosystems. Therefore, an animal in a Cerrado region does not necessarily exist throughout the biome. So if we destroy a piece of forest in a specific location, we may be leading to endangered species that only live there.

As they continue their work, the research team hopes they will motivate additional exploration of Brazilian biodiversity, thereby increasing the quality of life for all species that call Brazil home.

British Cemetery Haunted by Peanut-Butter-Loving Baby Fox

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Another fox "haunting" a cemetery. (Photo: Dan Davison/CC BY-2.0)

It’s Saturday evening. You’ve stopped by the local cemetery to pay your respects to your dearly departed grandmother. Only a few other mourners drift through the grounds, and the air is cool and still. Suddenly, you hear a knocking sound.

There’s no one nearby.

The sound seems to be coming….from a grave?

This eerie scenario played out at the Salisbury Crematorium in Wiltshire, England recently. But don’t worry the Salisbury Crematorium isn’t facing a poltergeist haunting or armies of the risen dead; just an adorable baby fox with a dangerous enthusiasm for peanut butter.

Fortunately for the fox, the visitor who noticed the sound didn’t call the Ghostbusters, instead reaching out to area animal rescue Creatures in Crisis. When the rescue team arrived, they discovered the kit, who had trapped her head inside a plastic peanut butter jar and was attempting to lick out the remaining peanut butter inside. Sanctuary founder Kevin Drew was able to free the vixen with assistance from his son, Callum, and brought her to the sanctuary to recover.

“The jar was stuck fast on its head. If we had been there any later it very well may have died,” Drew explained to SomersetLive. The jar was stuck so tight on the animal that Drew and his son couldn’t fit their fingers between the jar and the fox’s neck. Luckily, they were able to cut the jar off of the fox using wirecutters, and although the fox was “subdued” and in poor health upon being freed, she was uninjured.

The kit, appropriately nicknamed “Peanut,” is now recovering with another rescued fox kit; Drew estimates that she will be ready for release in about three months.

To prevent further graveyard hauntings and ensure other animals don’t trap themselves in search of food scraps, Drew urges people to fully wash out plastic and glass jars before disposing of them.

The Invention that Tamed America, and the Town Obsessed with It

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Different types of barbed wire on display at the Barbed Wire Museum in LaCrosse, Kansas. (Photo: David Howells/Getty Images) 

Could anything be less friendly than barbed wire? Its whole purpose is to deter, to turn back, to prevent both entry and escape. For 150 years it has stuck cattle, ensnared soldiers and encircled concentration camps. It is not a friend to living things. So why on Earth would the small town of La Crosse, Kansas, proudly proclaim itself the Barbed Wire Capital of the World?

La Crosse (population 1,289, or a crowded New York subway train) is obsessed with the devilish stuff. It plays host to the annual Kansas Barbed Wire Collectors Association Swap and Sell, as well as its showcase event, the World Champion Barbed Wire Splicing Contest, in which contestants race against the clock to try and repair a stretch of snapped wire. The town even contains the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum, displaying around 2,000 unique varieties dating back to the middle of the 19th century.

It is this remarkable ability of a single piece of twisted wire to take on a multiplicity of forms that helps explains La Crosse’s peculiar attraction to it. And of course there is its storied history.

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A tangle of barbed wire against a blue sky. (Photo: SonNumber4/shutterstock.com)

Alongside the Colt pistol and the railroad, barbed wire is usually listed as one of the three main factors in how the West was won. Following the Homestead Act of 1862, millions of acres of the western United States were opened up to farming and new settlers needed something to protect their crops from free-roaming cattle and bison. Wooden fencing was expensive because the plains lacked trees, and furthermore it was susceptible to fire. Simple wire fences were light, inexpensive, and easy to erect. Wind didn’t blow them down and snow didn’t pile up against them. However when a wire fence was placed between a 1,000-pound Texas longhorn and a patch of lush green pasture, it proved to be something of a pushover.

Thorny hedges were perfect barriers to cattle, but planting thousands of miles of bushes was impracticable. Some kind of fence that mimicked the thorn bushes was needed, but how could you make such a fence? So began a low-tech prairie version of the internet boom in which hundreds of entrepreneurs from across the country rushed to create a new type of spiky fencing. In 1867 the sharply-monikered Alphonso Dobb created the first recorded type of fence with defensive points or barbs. Named “The Picketed Strip” it looked ominously medieval and was meant to be attached to existing fencing. It was not a success. That same year the more prosaically named Lucien B. Smith created a more prosaic invention, “thorny wire”, in which he took a normal wire fence and hung it with wooden spools hammered with nails. Although visionary, it too was unsuccessful.

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Barbed wire in a meadow. (Photo: Eric Sonstroem/CC BY 2.0

Between 1867 and 1874 alone as many as 200 different types of spiked fencing were patented. As depicted in the fittingly christened Jesse James’ interminable tome, Early United States Barbed Wire Patents, these fences were covered with “prickers”, “prods”, “brads”, “spurs”, “prongs”, and “teeth.” It was not until 1871 that Lyman P. Judson named his projecting metal points “barbs”, and the term we now use stuck, even though Judson’s design didn’t. 

The problem with many of these early designs was that the barbs had to be clamped to their wire individually by hand. This was a slow, tedious and often painful business. What’s more the fact that the barbs were not firmly held in place meant that if the fence was struck by lightning its barbs would often run together and fuse into a molten lump, leaving stretches of the fence barb-free.

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An 1874 patent by J. F. Glidden for improvements to barbed wire. (Photo: NARA)

 It was in 1874 that inspiration struck. Unfortunately it hit two people at once. Joseph Glidden and Jacob Haish both patented a type of double stranded barbed wire in which a barb could be mechanically placed on one wire with the other wire being twisted around it to hold it in place. This simple design innovation is the basis for the barbed wire we know and fear today. A patent battle ensued between Glidden and Haish with Glidden eventually triumphing and magnanimously branding his design, “The Winner.” He soon became one of the richest men in America.

Haish, meanwhile, saw himself as a martyr to the barbed wire cause. He published an extraordinary piece of poetry in the Regulator magazine, rich in Biblical allusion, that was entitled “Be Happy as You Can” and was directed at those ‘scalpers’ he thought had stolen his invention:

"This life is not all sunshine,

As Barb Fence scalpers have found;

The crosses they bear are heavy,

And under them lies no crown;

And while they’re seeking the roses,

The thorns full oft they scan,

Yet let them, though they’re wounded,

Be happy as they can."

Unable to be credited as the father of barbed wire, Haish made sure he could be titled the father of barbed wire poetry. 

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An 1874 advertisement from a Texas newspaper. (Photo: GeoTrinity/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Yet although Glidden’s invention was extremely popular it was not the last word in barbed wire. Pioneers were unable to stop themselves from tweaking and tinkering with the form. It became a form of American origami; a homespun folk art that hardened pioneers could indulge in without any accusation of femininity. Barbs were created that were pyramidal, five-pointed, spiral twisted. Many of them are remarkably pretty and have the names to match—the Sunderland Kink, the Barber Perfect, the Jayne Hill, the Hold Fast, the Necktie, the Buckthorn, the Untorn Ribbon, the Corsicana Clip, the Nadel Two-Twist, the Underwood Tack.

In those halcyon days at the end of the 19th century, a poetry of wire sang out across the plains announcing itself as a true native art form, albeit with an inbuilt practicality that forswore any suspicion of urban artifice. Of course every new art form has its critics, but by the 1960s barbed wire had drawn to it thousands of connoisseurs—self-proclaimed “barbarians”—who sought out rare examples from across the country. (There are still dozens of different varieties being sold, be they 2-point or 4-point, straight or concertina, razor or ribbon, Iowa-style or Australian Standard.) 

And so La Crosse became a kind of macho art capital, a downhome Louvre of the West, a safe place for menfolk to appreciate real American artistry. It is the one place in the world where barbed wire does not keep people out but instead draws them together.

Why the First Cremation in the U.S. Was So Controversial

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LeMoyne Crematory in Pennsylvania. (Photo: Lee Paxton/CC BY-SA 4.0)

"Things were a little ghostly," wrote a reporter for the Philadelphia Times, setting the scene for a morbid public spectacle. The press had been invited to the first "modern" cremation performed in the United States. It was December 6, 1876.

The Times reporter was among a crowd of journalists and townspeople gathered at the top of a hill in Washington, Pennsylvania to witness the first run of a new crematory built by Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne. The furnace, designed by LeMoyne and built on his own property, was based on a working model presented at the Vienna Exposition in 1873. The remains to be cremated were those of Joseph Henry Louis Charles, Baron de Palm, a Theosophist who was fascinated by "Eastern" philosophy, and besides that had once known a woman who had been buried alive, and was terrified by the prospect.

Burning the dead is an ancient practice, and in some cultural traditions, it's a thousands-year-old norm. Today, cremation in the U.S. is soaring in popularity; by 2018, the Cremation Association of North America predicts that over 50 percent of Americans will choose to have their bodies cremated.

But in late 19th-century America, cremation was a radical, tradition-bucking idea. LeMoyne and other cremation advocates believed that burying the dead in the ground allowed germs to seep into the soil, thus contributing to the spread of diseases like cholera, typhus, and yellow fever. Cremation promised to sterilize human remains and bypass the altogether slow and icky process of decomposition. When performed in a state-of-the-art indoor furnace, it was a sanitary and high-tech alternative to burial.

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Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne. (Photo: Public Domain)

Cremation was also a solution to an urban problem. As cities expanded, they surrounded burial grounds that had once been miles away from town—and rested on prime real estate. “In and about New York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City, 4,000 acres of valuable land are taken up by cemeteries," wrote Hugo Erichsen in his 1887 pro-cremation treatise The Cremation of the Dead. "It is calculated that with the probable increase of population in the next half a decade, 500,000 acres of the best land in the United States will be enclosed by graveyard walls. … It is an outrage!”

But cremation didn't catch on with the masses right away. LeMoyne had first approached a local cemetery with an offer to build the crematory on their land; they dismissed him with disgust. The Times reporter who witnessed the de Palm cremation was horrified: "If [de Palm] could have foreshadowed the startling scenes his poor bones would have to go through he would have thought twice before he jumped into the fire." Anti-cremationists put aside their religious discomfort with cremation to argue that burning bodies would encourage crime—you can't exhume a cremated corpse!—and dismissed the public health claims of cremationists as unfounded fear-mongering. (They weren't wrong; there's no evidence that in-ground burial encouraged the spread of epidemics.)

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Inside the Detroit Crematorium columbarium at Woodmere Cemetery. (Photo: Amy Elliott Bragg)

Throughout the 1870s and '80s, as debates about cremation raged in the papers, local cremation societies were organized to argue their case and — more importantly—to raise funds to build crematories. The first public crematory in the U.S., at Lancaster, Pennsylvania—funded by the Lancaster Cremation and Funeral Reform Society—was built in 1884. By 1887, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Los Angeles, and Detroit had all built crematories, many of them designed to look like chapels, with stained glass and stonework. These crematories operated independently of cemeteries, which saw cremationists as competitors.

A few of these early crematories still exist; in Cincinnati, the building is hiding behind deceptive new construction.

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The opening pages to 1887 book The Cremation of the Dead. (Photo: Internet Archive)

Sometimes the dead traveled hundreds of miles to have their last wishes fulfilled. When Barbara Schorr died in Millersburg, Ohio in 1887, her family honored her wish to be cremated by sending her body to the Detroit Crematorium—nearly 200 miles away, it was nonetheless the closest crematory. But it was still under construction, so Barbara Schorr lay in state for several weeks while it was completed.

Today, a portrait of Barbara Schorr, commissioned by her sons, hangs in the columbarium at Woodmere Cemetery, honoring her as a pioneer of the cremation movement in Detroit.

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 A stereoscope view of Lancaster Crematorium, Pennsylvania. (Photo: New York Public Library)

Because cremation was a moral crusade for the betterment of public health, it attracted sympathizers from other moral causes to its ranks, including no small number of women activists. The suffragist Lucy Stone was the first person cremated at the Forest Hills Crematory in Boston in 1893. Frances Willard—suffragist, temperance activist, and avid bicyclist—was also a vocal advocate of cremation. In 1900, the New York Times ran a satirical news item about the cremation of Willard's cat: “Each of Toots’s human friends will sprinkle a little myrrh or frankincense over the body, and while it is being consumed the incense will counteract any odor which might be emitted through the furnace chimney.”

By the early 20th century, the sensationalism of cremation had waned, and the practical case for cremation was winning minds. After all, cremation, which requires no elaborate monument marker or plot purchase, is significantly less expensive than in-ground burial. Eventually, cemetery directors realized they might be better off joining the cremationists than trying to beat them. In 1899, Mount Auburn Cemetery—famously one of the original rural cemeteries in the U.S.—hired an architect to renovate an existing chapel on the grounds into a crematory. It was the first cemetery crematory in the state of Massachusetts, and it marked a turning point in the history from what was once a "ghostly" spectacle to an agreeably American way of death and burial.

Found: A Rare ‘Werewolf’ Kitten Born Without a Breeder

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Here's Eyona. (Photo: TEARS Animal Rescue)

In Cape Town, South Africa, volunteers for an animal rescue group have found a kitten belonging to what’s sometimes called the “world's rarest breed of cat”—Lykoi cats, whose hair grows in an unusual, wolf-like way.

This kitten was found under a bush with a litter of other, normal-looking kittens. Lykoi cats’ difference comes from a rare genetic mutation, and after testing, the group determined that this kitten had that same quality, which makes it the 35th cat discovered to have developed the mutation spontaneously.

Back in 2010, though, breeders in American started raising cats that showed this quality. Because of the mutation, the cats lack hair on their faces. They also cannot grow an undercoat and can molt so that at times they’re bald. These changes give them a shaggy appearance, which the breeders thought resembled that of a wolf. They named the cats Lykoi after the Greek word for wolf.

The kitten found in South Africa was named Eyona, which means “the one.” The rescue group is keeping him safe; he’s much in demand, but they want to give him a chance to grow up happy and safe before anything else.

Bonus finds: Hidden walls covered with old murals, treasure shipwreck

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.

These Stunning Maps Highlight the Tricks in a Cartographer's Toolkit

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46.0167° N, 7.7500° E, Bundesamt für Landestopografie, Zermatt, 1997. Scale 1:25,000 (shown at half size)
. Cartographic Grounds, Princeton Architectural Press. (Photo: Harvard Map Collection/Harvard Library/Harvard University) 

When cartographers create maps, they are faced with an extremely difficult challenge: They must lay out our complex world on a flat surface. In many ways, cartographers need to be visual translators, devising the best ways to communicate space and geography.

“Good cartographers do an amazing job of synthesizing an incredible amount of geographical information into an accessible and legible depiction of the surface of the earth,” says Harvard landscape architecture professor Jill Desimini. “They don’t just see the world; they see the relationship between the visual information offered by the world and the languages used in maps.”

Desimini and fellow Harvard professor Charles Waldheim explore 10 conventions that are essential to map making in the upcoming book Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary. The book, set to be released on June 14, contains 275 pages of vivid maps with explanations detailing the methods used by their cartographers. 

Today, there is an immense pool of raw data to swim through, but in the early days, map designers were often trying to depict unknown lands. Cartographers in medieval times had to imagine and visualize lands that had yet to be explored, Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of Harvard Graduate School of Design, explains in the book's forward. While their maps, mappa mundi, were based more on fiction, they were the most accurate renderings of world at the time and they helped shape European intellectual life for more than 300 years.

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81.3500° S, 163.0000° E, United States Geological Survey (USGS), Nimrod Glacier, Topographic Reconnaissance Maps of Antarctica, 1963. (Photo: USGS)

These days, the array of geographic technology has enabled cartographers, architects, and designers to harness and process this data and create maps that are closer to real landscapes than ever before. But according to Desimini, visualizing data doesn’t always call for interpretation, which can be a problem. “Since we can show more, we tend to do it without as many questions about what should or should not make it on the map or drawing. In a sense, we have lost some of our critical and aesthetic attitude,” she says.

That’s not to say data and technology aren’t needed to ensure accuracy. Maps must retain geographic fidelity, scale, and projection, says Desimini, but the best ones also have a visual clarity and graphic integrity equivalent to any art form. The 10 cartographic conventions can help lead to more beautiful and informative maps, adding to the richness and diversity of representations of our world.  

“I’m hoping these maps can stoke our imaginations, can help us see more deeply the sheer diversity of our landscapes and to be able to see them, draw them, read them and design them in as many responsible and even beautiful ways," she says.

1. Sounding / Spot Elevation

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37.7166° N, 122.2830° W, Alexander Dallas Bache, Entrance to San Francisco Bay California, 1859. (Photo: Harvard Map Collection/Harvard Library/Harvard University)

This cartographic component includes two measurements for showing depths and heights above and below sea level. "Soundings" pinpoint depths of water and are noted by a number on a nautical chart, while "spot elevations" are the numbers that show the position and altitude. 

In this map, Alexander Dallas Bache, a cartographer who ran the NOAA Coast Survey from 1843 to 1867, rendered the San Francisco urban coastline, using spot elevations to depict the water’s edge.

2. Isobath / Contour

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18.4517° N, 66.0689° W, James Corner Field Operations, University of Puerto Rico Botanical Gardens, 2003–6. Scale: 1:2,500 (shown at half size). (Photo: © James Corner Field Operations)

Isobaths and contours are lines that connect points of equal value on maps, showing the morphology of the ground. The map of the University of Puerto Rico Botanical Gardens show a series of color ribbons and swaths that represent the topography.  

3. Hachure / Hatch

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6.2359° N, 75.5751° W, Gustavus Bechler, Map of the Sources of Snake River, 1872. (Photo: Harvard Map Collection/Harvard Library/Harvard University) 


This convention is a series of short lines that perpendicularly fill the space between contours and show slope, shadow, relief, and texture. Topographer Gustavus Bechler designed this map of the sources of Snake River, which has hachures, or reliefs, that are “particularly soft and warm, allowing ridgelines to dissipate into plateaus,” Desimini and Waldheim write.

4. Shaded Relief

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22.3000° N, 114.1667° E, Zaha Hadid, The Peak, 1982–83. (Photo: Zaha Hadid Architects)

Shaded relief is the depiction of shadows with tonal gradients. This marks changes in elevation and landform in raised relief maps and models. The Blue Slabs painting from late architect Zaha Hadid’s The Peak shows an abstract block colorization of the sprawling city of Hong Kong. The shadows make the building beams look like they are flying from the cliffs.  

5. Land Classification

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37.6374° N, 122.3601° W, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, Bayou Bienvenue, 2010. (Photo: LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio)

This is the taxonomic method of describing spatial distribution of vegetation and agronomic land uses. It’s used to distinguish types of soil, vegetation, and activity. The image of greater New Orleans codes different projected land uses with colors and patterns.

6. Figure-Ground

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40.7145° N, 74.0071° W, Herman Bollmann, New York, 1962. (Photo: © Bollmann-Bildkarten-Verlag, Braunschweig, Germany/Harvard Map Collection/Harvard Library/Harvard University)

This technique helps distinguish space, usually urban spaces, from other entities, such as a building and the rest of the urban environment. In this 1962 map created by German cartographer and graphic artist Herman Bollmann, the aerial view of New York City shows the high-rises without blocking the ground and streets. The map was made for the New York World’s Fair.

7. Stratigraphic Column

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48.8742° N, 2.3470° E, Service Géologique des Mines, Paris et Ses Environs, 1890. (Photo: The David Rumsey Map Collection)

Stratigraphic columns rely on color to show locations of rocks, visualize geologic time, and signify soil and sediment type. This extremely elaborate 1890 geological map of Paris shows known, invented, and hidden layers of underground rock with the city above.   

8. Cross Section

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48.8742° N, 2.3470° E,
Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Animation Still, 2012. (Photo: Robert Gerard Pietrusko)

A cross section is a vertical slice through the Earth’s surface, which specifies elevation, depth, and structural and material composition.

9. Line Symbol

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45.5547° N, 69.2466° W, The Appalachian Trail Conference, Guide to the Appalachian Trail in Maine. (Washington, DC: The Appalachian Trail Conference, 1936). (Photo: The Frances Loeb Library/Harvard University Graduate School of Design/The Appalachian Trail Conservancy)

This cartographic convention marks off boundaries, borders, property lines, rivers, infrastructures, and routes. In this map of the Appalachian Trail in Maine, lines distinguish roads and trails from streams and mountains

10. Conventional Sign

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35.1559° N, 136.0599° E, Tonsai Fujita, Ezo Kokyo Yochi Zenzu, Tonsai Fujita Royo, Hashimoto Ransi Shukuzu, 1854. (Photo: The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division)

These are symbols or icons that denote different entities on map, such as schools, churches, highways, restaurants, or airports. This map of the Ezo region of Japan (now Hokkaido), illustrated in 1854, has yellow circles along the coast line that mark cardinal directions.

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The cover of Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscrape Imaginary. (Photo: Princeton Architectural Press)

Map Monday highlights interesting and unusual cartographic pursuits from around the world and through time. Read more Map Monday posts.


Sydney’s Jazz Age Criminal Queens Ruled the Streets With Razors

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The mugshots of Tilly Devine. (Photo: Courtesy State Archives of New South Wales)

In the 1920s, Australia was under the dominion of British King George V. But on the streets of Sydney, two female monarchs ruled the people. Tilly Devine, the Queen of Waterloo and Kate Leigh, the Queen of Surry Hills were at the head of two razor gangs that terrorized the city and took trouble with them wherever they went.

Before life threw them together, Devine and Leigh were both busy preparing themselves for careers in crime. Tilly Devine had started life as Matilda Twiss, becoming a sex worker on the streets of England as a young teen. It was in London, in 1917 that she met an Australian serviceman, Jim Devine, and took the name she would come to be known for. After Jim moved back to Australia in 1919, Tilly followed, continuing her work in Australia. Prostitution was a dangerous day-job, however, and Tilly racked up 79 convictions in just five years.

None of these convictions had resulted in serious penalty until early 1925 when she received two years' jail for wounding a man named Sydney Corke, with a razor. Corke recounted the events to the police, attesting, “she said 'There he is, the bastard'’…rushed at me and swung her arm … and I felt a sting in my hand ... and when I looked at it the blood squirted in my face.”

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Tilly Devine's police record. (Photo: Courtesy State Archives of New South Wales)

For her actions Tilly Devine became known as “The Worst Woman in Sydney.” Her time in the State Reformatory did turn her life around, but not in the way the state might have hoped. With the hope of being safer and making more money, Devine moved on from prostitution to become a madam.

Meanwhile another queen was being crowned, in a different part of Sydney. Kate Leigh was Australian-born, the eighth child in a family that had neglected her throughout her early years. At 13 she had become pregnant, and then married two years later. The marriage gave her the last name she kept for life, but itself lasted only a few years. Leigh was a petty criminal before becoming a madam, sly-grog seller, and the head of her own gang. A little more street-smart perhaps than Devine, she was rarely convicted of the violence she was almost certainly taking part in.

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Kate Leigh's mugshots and prison form. (Photo: Courtesy State Archives of New South Wales)

It was the introduction of several vice-quashing laws that made these women’s criminal careers thrive. Street prostitution was prohibited in 1905 in the southeast Australian state of New South Wales, making sex workers move towards brothels in greater numbers. That same law however, only stated that men could not benefit financially from the sale of female sex work. This left a loophole for madams, and presented an opportunity for both Leigh and Devine.

Leigh, for one, had further criminal aspirations. Between 1906 and 1927 three laws were passed that dampened legal recreational activities, banning the sale of cocaine by chemists, criminalizing off-course horse betting and mandating early closure of bars. But people still wanted to drink, bet and snort coke. Leigh was there to help, peddling alcohol in over 20 sly-grog establishments, offering illegal betting and selling coke on the streets via women masquerading as prostitutes.

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Downtown Sydney, 1920. (Photo: State Records NSW/Public Domain)

The two women collected men and women around them, to create gangs that helped run their businesses, provide protection and sell their product. They were to become known as razor gangs, for their weapons of choice. In 1927 the NSW Parliament legislated against concealed firearms, enforcing serious punishments on those carrying pistols or handguns. Razors, cheap and easily purchasable, became the weapon du jour for Sydney gangs.

Violence between the gangs was at a head in the 1920s, with a personal enmity growing between the two ladies. Their henchmen would often attack one another if they saw each other in the street and Leigh and Devine would send their people to trash each other’s brothels and grog shops. Afterwards they’d tattle on each other to the police.

The ladies were not above violence themselves. In 1929 the Canberra Times reported that Devine had an altercation with one of Leigh’s friends, Vera Lewis. The paper added that “Lewis alleged that Devine scratched her…and getting her teeth on her little finger would not let go until the police intervened.”

Despite her violent ways, Devine’s life was going well. She’d made substantial investments in real estate and became known for her finery, Pomeranians and fabulous parties. Leigh, too, was famous for her fur and diamonds, financed by her thriving grog trade. The money, allegedly, was not all going on herself however. After Leigh ended up back in court for more criminal behavior, the Barrier Miner reported on a softer side of the Sydney Queen, commenting that a detective who followed her one day “found her bound on a noble errand of supplying food to unemployed.”

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A map showing the razor gang areas of Sydney, c. 1927. (Photo: State Records NSW/Public Domain)

She may have been generous, but a reminder was to come that Leigh was still a gangster. An altercation between her right-hand man Gregory Gaffney and Frank Green (Tilly’s henchman) saw bloody battle come right to Leigh’s doorstep. Green had been set upon by Gaffney earlier the day and had retreated to Tilly’s home to rest and await the next attack. Jim Devine laid in wait, shooting a man he saw come over his fence. Jim Devine reported his side of events to the police, stating that he found the man he had shot was Gaffney and had brought the wounded man some brandy. Gaffney died but Jim Devine wasn’t convicted, having successfully claimed self-defense.

Though prostitution and alcohol weren’t top concerns of the police, the burgeoning violence was. Laws were introduced to curb gang association and punish those who carried razors, but the gang violence continued. Police Commissioner McKay spoke with Devine and Leigh in 1935, threatening to bring down the full powers of the police against them both, unless they cooperated with reducing violence and cocaine distribution. The two women agreed.

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Part of the police evidence about finding a blood-stained razor in the streets of Surry Hills. (Photo: Courtesy State Archives of New South Wales)

The Second World War saw plenty of business for both women, with servicemen from the US filling their brothels and buying their beer. But after the war things began to go downhill for the two feuding favorites of the underworld. Devine’s marriage had always been violent, with theBrisbane Courier reporting in 1933 that her husband “was charged in the Central Police Court to-day ... with shooting at Matilda Devine ... with intent to murder her.” In 1944 the violence had become too much for her and Devine divorced her husband.

Ultimately, Sydney's criminal queens were brought down by something much more mundane than razor battles: tax law. The Tax Department came after Leigh first, charging her with unpaid taxes and fines dating more than a decade old. Following these fines she was found bankrupt. In 1955 Devine was handed down a £20,000 fine. Though her business continued afterwards, it began to diminish. Her last brothel was sold in 1968.

Leigh died in 1964, after living out her old age dependent on her nephew. Though she had faded fiscally, Leigh still had many admirers, and her funeral was attended by 700 mourners. The press remembered the wily woman not only for her crimes, but for her patriotism and generosity to the poor. Six years later, Devine died in a hospital—not from a razor wound or after a nasty altercation, but from the bronchitis that had plagued her for 20 years.

Hundreds of Yellow Butterflies Attend Ceremony for Gabriel García Márquez's Ashes

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After the death of patriarch José Arcadio Buendía in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the residents of the town of Macondo experienced an unusual rainfall. "When the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling," writes Gabriel García Márquez. "So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by."

Yesterday, as hundreds of enormous yellow butterflies perched in the nearby trees, some of Marquez's ashes were laid to rest in the cloisters of Cartagena University in his childhood home of Cartagena, Colombia. They are hidden in stonework beneath a bronze bust of the author, also unveiled during the ceremony. Most of the 400 attendees dressed in white, Agence France-Presse reports.

Marquez died in 2014, at age 87. During his lifetime, he became one of the world's foremost literary figures, winning the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature and breathing new, magic-tinged life into Latin American history through his multigenerational novels. Although Márquez had a state funeral after his death, there was some argument over where his ashes should end up—in Aracataca, Colombia, where he was born, or in Mexico City, where he lived out most of his days.

In the end, some of his ashes stayed in Mexico, while others are in Cartagena. Residents of both places may want to keep an eye out for strange, poetic precipitation.

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.

India Launches Its First Space Shuttle

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(Photo: ISRO)

The international space race got a little hotter Monday, after India said they'd successfully launched a tiny space shuttle 43 miles into the air, taking another step forward in its efforts to deploy a reusable spacecraft.

The shuttle was perched atop a rocket, and launched from a pad in Sriharikota, India, on the country's eastern coast, according to the BBC.

The unmanned shuttle, called the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV-TD), was to shoot miles into the air before falling back to earth, likely getting destroyed in the process. Indian scientists hope to get data on autonomous landings, and the leap to hypersonic speeds, the BBC said. 

In addition, the shuttle was relatively cheap, as far as spacecraft go: just one billion rupees, or about $14 million. 

India has said that a manned space shuttle could be in operation in under 10 years. Several other countries have also pursued a reusable spacecraft, which would be the first in operation since NASA retired the Space Shuttle five years ago. 

But few are trying to build space shuttles, like India, instead looking for ways to better reuse rockets

Mars Will Soon Be the Closest It's Been to Earth in 11 Years

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Mars is usually a long ways away: up to 250 million miles, in fact. But it can also get much closer, the distance varying according to its orbit. 

On May 30, according to NASA, that distance will be its closest in 11 years, or nearly 47 million miles. That's because both planets will be in rough alignment on the same side of the sun. 

Mars' orbit around the sun takes 687 days, meaning that Earth and Mars fly by each other around once every two years. But because their orbits are shaped differently, Mars is sometimes closer and sometimes farther.

The closeness this year, at any rate, is good news for stargazers, since if you look up at night in the right place, you should be able to spot the Red Planet with the naked eye. 

It's also good news for NASA, which used the Hubble Space Telescope to snap some new photos of the planet. 

This century so far has seen a few close Mars encounters, including, in 2005, when the planet came as near to Earth as it had in 60,000 years: a mere 34.6 million miles. It will next come that close in 2287.

See The Bosch Parade's Bizarre, Buoyant Works of Art

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The skeleton of a mermaid floats down a river. A man rides a giant horn along the currents. A man desperately tries to put out the fire on his sinking boat. Though these images may feel as though they come out of a waking dream, they are all in fact floats in the Bosch Parade: the Netherlands' annual bizarre, floating theater. 

The Netherlands is a country connected by rivers, a fact the Bosch Parade celebrates and takes full advantage of. The celebration, which takes place mid-June, draws its name from 15th-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, who created the compelling and confusing Garden of Earthly Delights. His alternately delightful and apocalyptic imagery would not look out of place at his namesake parade, floating down the river behind a group of Smurfs.  

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.

A Dry Town Goes Wet After More Than a Century

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Kelly Green Brewing Co. on Broadway in Pitman, NJ. (Photo: Jackson Kuhl)

On its second night open, Kelly Green Brewing Co. unlocked its front door promptly at 5 p.m. By 5:05 the line from the bar stretched to the door; by 5:30, it was over the threshold and onto the sidewalk. Behind the counter, a bartender told patrons they would have to wait a few minutes for the beer they wanted–the tap had already sputtered and a keg swap was in process. It was a Thursday.

"This town is thirsty," said Justin Fleming, a Kelly Green co-owner. And no wonder: Kelly Green is the first place to serve beer in the borough of Pitman, New Jersey, since 1871. The historically dry town of 9,000 citizens has gone wet.

Drinking alcohol was never really illegal in Pitman–you just had to cross the town line to get it. While the state regulates alcohol in New Jersey, municipalities control the issuance of liquor licenses. Pitman has never issued licenses, resulting in an orbit of bars and package-good stores just outside the border. But in 2012, New Jersey amended its laws to allow microbreweries to sell their beer for consumption on the premises. Since these brewery licenses come from the state government, the microbreweries don't require a local license to operate. In other words, they don't actually need the town's permission to make and serve beer.

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The line at 5:30pm on a Thursday evening. (Photo: Jackson Kuhl)

Located across the Delaware River about 15 miles south of Philadelphia, Pitman has a long history of temperance. The town began as a Methodist meeting camp–and Methodists are teetotalers. Since at least the 1790s, preachers of various stripes–mostly Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians–would organize countryside worship services, in the open air or inside a tent or simple pavilion. Farmers and frontiersmen with time on their hands would travel to the site, pitch a tent, and spend a week or two relaxing and hearkening to sermons.

By the Victorian period, "vacation camp meetings" to escape the urban swelter were popular for Methodists. Some 600 tents were pitched for the first camp meeting in August of 1871. For 10 days straight, preachers paraded across the tabernacle stage at 10 a.m., 2:30 p.m., and 6 p.m. By the following year, an estimated 10,000 people attended the camp. "The woods is literally full," said an early Pitman camp goer. "One boarding house fed 1,000 for dinner. Good Preaching."

Soon, concessions were granted to restaurants, a barber, a butcher, and other services to set up just outside the Grove area. Meanwhile the campers, dissatisfied with sleeping on straw in canvas tents, began building cottages on the lots, icing their eaves with gingerbread moldings. Gas lights were installed along the boulevards and the camps ran longer, with the menfolk commuting 26 minutes by train to their jobs in Philadelphia. Families began living in their cottages year-round, and by 1905 there were enough of them to establish the borough of Pitman. 

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The original entrance to the Pitman Grove. (Photo: Courtesy of the Pitman Museum)

The New Jersey Conference Camp Meeting Association, the Methodist group which organized the camp at Pitman, forbade a number of behaviors in their lot leases. No liveries or stables were allowed (horses were kept outside of the Grove for sanitation); no businesses could operate on the Sabbath; and most of all, absolutely no manufacture or sale of "spirituous malts, intoxicating liquors of any grade or preparation, or substance in nature thereof."

This in turn became a selling point for the borough: a 1906 pamphlet encouraging immigration touted Pitman's anti-saloon policies, a tradition that carried down to the present day. (Not everybody seems to have read the pamphlet: that same year, a measure before the council called for the establishment of a town prison to house the many drunks wandering Pitman's temperate lanes.)

But after more than a century of being a dry town, last December Pitman’s council voted 4-2 in favor of the town solicitor drafting language for an ordinance to finally issue liquor licenses. This was somewhat of a sea change: In 2007, 61 percent of voters defeated a public referendum to issue liquor licenses; but in 2013, perhaps due to an influx of young families, an ordinance passed overwhelmingly to allow BYOB drinking at restaurants with outdoor seating.

According to Pitman Mayor Russell Johnson, the councilman who pushed for the vote did so on economic grounds. "We already have wine being sold in town and will have beer being sold, but the town receives no revenue from it," Johnson said.

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A vintage postcard of the Pitman Grove cottages. (Photo: Courtesy of the Pitman Museum)

As a planned community, Pitman has seen better days commercially. Its main drag, Broadway, is straight and wide, anchored by the vaudeville-era marquee of the Broadway Theatre, still in use today. But of the 52 storefronts tallied between Broadway's main cross-streets, almost a fifth are vacant. The roof of an imposing Greek revival bank is collapsing, while across the street, the former Bob's Hobbies–containing an estimated 10,000 feet of retail space–sits empty.

"We're hoping the breweries will help attract other businesses," says Mayor Johnson. That's breweries plural; a second microbrewery,Human Village, is slated to open two doors down from Kelly Green this summer.

Fleming and his wife Jeanette, who along with friend David Domanski co-own Kelly Green, are born-and-bred Pitmanites who believe a microbrewery is the vaccine for the town's ills. "We saw that it was a dry town, kind of struggling," Justin said, explaining why they chose the location on south Broadway.

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The entrance to the Pitman Grove today. (Photo: Jackson Kuhl)

About six years ago, the two men decided they needed a hobby, and an ad for a brew kit popped up on Domanski’s computer screen. Fast forward to last year, when Fleming quit his job as a security guard working the third shift at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant to open Kelly Green under New Jersey's revised limited brewery license.

The license is very specific to distinguish microbreweries from bars. Kelly Green can only sell beer "in connection with a tour of the brewery," so a flatscreen in the corner there loops a video of Kelly Green's crew making beer while a window in the taproom allows patrons a peek into the back-of-house workings. They're not allowed to sell food or operate a restaurant, so the bowls of pretzels on the tables are free.

Kelly Green certainly fills a vacuum for a neighborhood tavern. On a recent Thursday evening, two old-timers leaned against the bar like they had been there for 20 years. A group of strangers ticked other South Jersey breweries off their craft-beer tourism lists. Young parents wearing Baby Bjorns parked their strollers on the sidewalk and joined the line. A return visit on Friday revealed lines chalked through several beers on the menu.

"The [attention] is high for us," said Fleming, noting they're not only the first microbrewery in Pitman but in the entire county. "There's aspects relying on us to bring a spotlight to this town."

Watch a Drunk Man in a Zoo Enclosure Trying to Shake a Lion's Hand

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There are some things that you should never do, especially while drunk. Like, for example, enter a literal lion's den. 

Meet Mukesh. Mukesh is 35, and works as a laborer for a railroad company and, on Sunday, had a lot to drink, according to the Hindu. At some point during his journey of intoxication he thought he wanted to shake a lion's hand.

This was convenient, since Mukesh was drunk at a zoo. And so he did something that, in the moment, may have seemed rational: Mukesh jumped into the Nehru Zoological Park's lion enclosure. 

"Please come to me my darling, please," he told the animals, according to the Hindu.

They did not come. Instead a nearby trainer beckoned the animals with food, and a video of the incident shows the two lions running away from Mukesh, who was then helped out of enclosure with the help of park security. 

“When asked to explain his actions, he said he wanted to see the lion up close and shake its hand," a police official named Harish Kaushik matter-of-factly told the Hindu. "We will question him again after he sobers up.”

The animals likely didn't attack because they live in a zoo, used to having human handlers, officials said. 

“Mukesh was lucky that he got away," an official told the Hindu. "He was completely drunk when he jumped in."

Mukesh likely woke up this morning with a throbbing headache, and maybe still wondering if that strange dream he had about meeting a lion was in fact reality. 


Watch Two Rare Albino Alligators Get Gnarlier Than Usual

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In the chorus of her recent hit song "Formation," singer/dancer/force-of-nature Beyoncé implies that the animal incarnation of a "hater" is an albino alligator.

Unlike haters, however, albino alligators are very rare creatures. The alligators are technically leucistic—a term used to described animals with whiter coloring due to a lack of pigment, but who are not in fact albino—though are more often referred to by onlookers (and Beyoncé) as albino. According to an article in The Telegraph, in 2009, there were only 12 such alligators left in the world. 

These two blue-eyed gators live within the safety of Alligator Bay, a wildlife park in Normandy, France. Leucistic alligators are not well suited to survive in the wild. Their skin is highly sensitive to sunlight, and their coloring makes camouflage an impossible feat (unless they relocate to the Arctic).

So, while American alligators are native to the southeastern U.S., if you ever happen to see a white one, it will almost certainly be in captivity, and if it's anything like these feisty creatures, it'll be snapping at its friend. Don't be haters, alligators—you are both rare and special.

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.

Found: A Hidden Population of Tasmanian Devils

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A devil at rest. (Photo: Wayne McLean/CC BY 2.0)

Tasmanian devils aren’t doing so hot. There’s only one known place in all of Tasmania where wild devils live without developing facial tumor disease, a cancer that can be transmitted from devil to devil and is characterized by gross growths on the devil’s face. There’s a group that lives in isolation and cancer-free, but part of the problem is that the devils’ gene pool is not very diverse, which limits its ability to fight the disease.

That’s why it’s a big deal that scientists at the University of Sydney have found a previously unknown population of Tasmanian devils, living in isolation. These devils have been hanging out in an isolated area in the southwest of Tasmania, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The scientists have sequenced the DNA found in the droppings of the newly discovered devils, and those samples shows that this population has new genetic variations not known in the populations. There’s so little diversity in those groups of devils that they’re basically clones, one scientist told the Herald.

This new population may still be infected with the cancer — the researchers haven’t been able to determine that yet. But if they can introduce some of these genetic variants into the captive population, it could make the species stronger and its survival that much more likely.

Bonus finds: A 5,000-year-old brewery

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. 

This Relaxation Competition Finds Out Who Can Chill the Best

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This past Sunday, at a public park in Seoul, dozens of citizens sat on small blue blankets, wearing athletic numbers and looking straight ahead. But they weren't stretching, hydrating, or otherwise gearing up for the main event. This was the main event—the annual "Relax Your Brain" competition.

The contest challenges participants to chill out without their smartphones, Agence France-Presse reports. It drew competitors of all ages. Checking your watch is forbidden, as is moving around. The person with the most stable heartbeat throughout wins.

"Relax Your Brain" was first held in 2014 by local artists. It struck a particular nerve: this year, it drew 1,500 applicants for the 60 competition spots. It also gained the support of Seoul's City Council, who hyped it up in a statement: "Let our brain -- never free from information overload from a smartphone, TV or computer -- relax! Let's enjoy just thinking nothing!"

Of all the world's countries, South Korea has the highest percentage of smartphone-owning citizens. While a competition may seem like a strange way to de-stress, participants seemed enthused. "This event is highly recommended for those who have migraines or complicated thoughts," said the winner, Shin Hyo-Seob, aka Crush, a popular rapper who entered the contest to unwind after recording an album.

Jealous? This is the kind of contest you can do yourself, at home: on your mark, get set, chill.

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.

What the Most Alluring Women of 17th Century England Looked Like

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A portrait gallery at Windsor Castle, royal residence of Charles II. (Image: Public Domain)

On a wood-paneled wall in the Communications Gallery of London's Hampton Court Palace hang 10 portraits in a line. All are of women, and all the women look remarkably similar: frizzy-haired, goggle-eyed, double-chinned, and swathed in great gathered folds of silk. These are the Windsor Beauties—the 17th century equivalent of the Maxim Hot 100.

The Windsor Beauties were chosen to be immortalized because they were the most alluring and powerful women at the court of Charles II, who became king of England, Ireland, and Scotland in 1660. Being selected for a Windsor Beauty portrait meant becoming a celebrity pin-up; copies of the portraits and engraved prints of the women circulated among admirers. Baptist May, Keeper of the Privy Purse and “court pimp,” in the words of Samuel Pepys, kept a stash of eight portraits in his private lodgings. Half of the women among those eight were royal mistresses.

And really, at that time, who wasn't carrying on with Charles II. The king's reign, which came after more than a decade of Puritan-fueled political upheaval, was so characterized by hedonism and licentiousness that he earned the name “the Merry Monarch.” 

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Charles II, the party-hearty king, in a coronation portrait by John Michael Wright. (Image: Public Domain)

Attractive women were a necessary part of the king’s party ethos, and he wasn’t about to let a little thing called marriage get in the way of pursuing them ardently. Charles II kept multiple mistresses and fathered at least a dozen children, none of whom were born to his wife, Catherine of Braganza.

Women held unprecedented power during the Restoration era—as long as they were attractive and down for a sexual relationship with a monarch. (“Female beauty in England seems to have commenced its reign about the same time as that of Charles II,” wrote George Steinman in 1871.) For women of the court, physical attractiveness was an instrument of ambition, a conduit to pleasure and a magnet for sleaze.”

Beauty meant being noticed by Charles II, which could lead to mistress status and its associated party invitations, financial security, and a free apartment conveniently located near the king’s bed chamber. If a mistress gave birth to one of Charles II’s children, the king was inclined to recognize the child as a noble, which boosted the social status of the woman. Charles II also bestowed duchess titles on his favored mistresses as a reward for bearing his children and being general good sports about the whole arrangement.

Even the most attractive court women, however, had to be smoothed out a little when depicted in paintings. During the 1660s, chief court artist Peter Lely painted three-quarter-length portraits of the 10 court women who would go on to be known as the Windsor Beauties. Looking at the line-up, though, it’s hard to tell one from the other. Lely idealized the women’s features, applying the 17th-century equivalent of photoshop to ensure they all conformed to the prevailing beauty standards. In addition to having near-identical features—and that signature I’m-sleepy-but-sexy-and-also-judging-you facial expression—the women were shown in similar poses and décolletage-baring outfits.

These two Windsor Beauties portraits, for example, do not depict the same woman:

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Mary Bagot, Countess of Falmouth and Dorset. (Image: Public Domain)

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Frances Brooke, Lady Whitmore. (Image: Public Domain)

The following trio of Beauties is also, despite appearances, comprised of three distinct women.

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Anne Digby, Countess of Sunderland. (Image: Public Domain)

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Henrietta Hyde, Countess of Rochester. (Image: Public Domain)

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Elizabeth Hamilton, Countess of Gramont. (Image: Public Domain)

Public opinion of the Windsor Beauties was mixed and often mercurial. The most notorious and well-known Beauty, Barbara Villiers—variously described as a “beautiful shrew,” a “lady of a thousand charms,” the “all-powerful queen of love,” and “the female Don Juan”—attracted a special kind of attention. Granted, Villiers, who bore at least five of Charles II’s children, was unafraid of scandal and forthright about pursuing money and sex—from Charles II and others. Her “greed of gain,” wrote royal biographer W.R.H. Trowbridge in 1906, “was only equaled by her man-hunger!”

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Barbara Villiers, depicted by Lely as Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom and war. (Image: Public Domain)

At least when it came to Charles II, the appetite was mutual. In January 1663, less than a year after Charles II married Catherine, Samuel Pepys noted that the king visited Villiers at least four evenings a week, usually staying the night and slinking back through the garden to his own room in the morning. Villiers had such a hold over the king that he even forced Catherine to employ Villers as one of her ladies of the bedchamber in 1662, which granted her a salary and lodging. When Catherine learned that she would be employing her husband's favored mistress, she experienced an immediate, violent nosebleed, briefly lost consciousness, and had to be carried away to recover.

Villiers is the ultimate example of how beauty blessed and cursed the women of the Restoration court. Her attractiveness won her favors and admiration, even when her behavior was reprehensible—when Villiers left her husband, Roger Palmer, in 1662 to go be with Charles II, Pepys mused how "strange it is how for her beauty I am willing to construe all this to the best ... though I know well enough she is a whore." A year later, however, having sighted Villers in person, Pepys wrote that she was "not so handsome as I have taken her for, and now she begins to decay something.” Villiers was 23 at that time.

Of course, being a mistress is not a lifetime position. In the early 1670s, Charles II found a new favorite mistress: the beguiling, baby-faced Louise de Kérouaille. Villers lost her position as lady of the bedchamber and was ousted both from Charles' affections and the court. After a few more affairs and a marriage in 1705, Villiers died at Walpole House in Chiswick in 1709, aged 68. Her spirit was said to haunt the building, according to a 1907 book, "wringing her hands and bemoaning the loss of her beauty," even as her portrait still hangs.

How One Man's Desire to Flaunt His Wealth Became a Book of Psalms

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A representation of a sheep's pen. (Photo: Unknown/Public Domain)

Many people in the Middle Ages learned to read and worship by studying their psalters, or personal copies of the Book of Psalms, often collected together with other religious texts and a calendar of feast days. The intricately painted Luttrell Psalter, commissioned by an English lord in the 14th century, is one of the most beautiful surviving examples. What makes the Luttrell Psalter unique, however, is that it was largely intended to show off its commissioner's wealth.

Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, a knight who was Lord of the Manor of Irnham in Lincolnshire, lived between the years 1276 and 1345. The title page of the psalter reveals that Luttrell felt his impending death was near, and commissioned the psalter to serve as a record of his life, grand as it was. However, the psalter is also populated by illustrations of unhappy-looking laborers, now considered to be some of the most realistic depictions of pastoral life from that time. 

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In the lower margins, two men thresh a bundle of grain stalks with flails. (Photo: British Library/CC0)

The psalter was created over a period of several years, sometime between 1320 and 1345, by one scribe and at least five different artists, who each had slightly different styles. Its 309 vellum leaves are richly illustrated with quotidian scenes from Luttrell’s rural estate.

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A page in the Luttrell Psalter with an illustration depicting Sir Geoffrey mounting his horse with the assistance of his wife and daughter. (Photo: Unknown/Public Domain)

Luttrell ensured that the psalter was filled with evidence of his wealth. The above image, for example, shows a page illustrated with the lord himself mounted upon a war-horse and displaying his family’s arms. The words ‘Dominus Galfridus Louterell me fieri fecit’ (Lord Geoffrey Luttrell caused me to be made) caption the image as a friendly reminder as to who created the psalter.

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An illustration in the Luttrell Psalter depicts Sir Geoffrey Luttrell seated at the center of the dinner table, surrounded by his family and two friars. Servants wait on them and more approach on the adjacent page. (Photo: Unknown/Public Domain)

In addition to serving as a testament to Sir Geoffrey’s wealth, the Luttrell Psalter’s pages feature various images that are often humorous in nature. Two knights joust on one page, while wife beats her husband with a spinning rod on another.

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Two knights joust at the bottom of a page. (Photo: British Library/Public Domain)

Today, the Luttrell Psalter resides at the British Library, and although scholars recognize that its pages probably present an idealized version of reality, the volume has been used to research the clothing, daily life and habits of medieval peasantry and nobility. You can read a digital version here.

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A cat and mouse detail. (Photo: Ioreth/Public Domain)

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

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