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A Dagger Found in King Tut's Wrappings Was Forged from a Meteorite

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Ninety-one years ago, Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who found Tutankhamun's tomb, discovered a dagger on the mummified boy king's side, clothed in the wrappings that surrounded his body. 

At first glance, the blade, above, doesn't appear special. But archaeologists have thought it might be because it was forged from iron, a material that was rare in King Tut's era of Egypt, largely because it would be centuries before the civilization developed iron smelting. 

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Tutankhamun's golden mask. (Photo: Carsten Frenzi/CC BY 2.0)

So where did this iron come from? Likely, according to the CBC, from a meteorite. Iron from meteorites was highly prized in the ancient world, even more so than gold, so it makes some sense that in addition to all the other lavish trappings of Tutankhamun's tomb, a fancy dagger would be included as an accessory. 

Archaeologists had long suspected the blade was made from a meteorite, but recently, an Italian professor offered more confirmation. Using X-rays, the professor found that the blade had very similar levels of cobalt and nickel to 11 other iron meteorites that have fallen from space.

Tutankhamun died in the 14th Century B.C.; writings found by archaeologists from a century after that refer to iron simply as "iron of the sky."


There’s an Art Deco Airport Lying Ruined in Brooklyn

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Howard Hughes arrives at Floyd Bennett Field. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

On the far reaches of Brooklyn’s Atlantic coastline is a forgotten piece of aviation history.

Long before JFK and LaGuardia, there was Floyd Bennett Field, New York City’s first municipal airport. Designed in stunning Art Deco style, it was once the most modern airport in the world, a glittering gateway into America’s principal metropolis. Many of the leading aviators of their day started daring adventures here during the golden age of aviation—pilots like Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and Roscoe Turner, the latter of whom flew with a lion cub as his co-pilot. Wiley Post, the man who was the first to fly solo around the world, took off and landed here in front of crowds of 50,000 fans. When Howard Hughes set the world record for flying fastest around the world, it was from Floyd Bennett that he piloted his gleaming Lockheed Super Electra.

But today many of the old hangars lie empty and abandoned. The deserted control tower looks over runways covered in weeds.  I went to explore the airfield to discover its incredible history, uncovering a remarkable hidden treasure along the way—a graveyard of vintage planes being tended to by a dedicated group of volunteers.


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One of Brooklyn's best kept secrets, Hangar B, filled with vintage aircraft being restored. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

When it opened in 1931, Floyd Bennett Field was the most advanced and sophisticated airport in the United States. Named for pioneering aviator and Brooklyn resident Floyd Bennett, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1926 for flying to the North Pole, the modern airfield was at the forefront of the fledging air travel industry.

Floyd Bennett was built on what was then the marshlands around Jamaica Bay in an area called Barren Island. Located roughly a dozen miles from Manhattan, Barren Island was once home to a small community of fish processing factories. It had a main street, a church and even a hotel. Roughly six million tons of landfill created the foundations for the new airport. 

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Many of the Art Deco styled hangars lie empty and abandoned. (Photo: Luke Spencer) 

The focal point of the roughly 1,400-acre airport was a beautiful terminal, which is still there today. Designed in the Art Deco style with classical Doric columns, it was a suitably grand airport for New York City. In the 1930s air travel was still largely enjoyed only by the wealthy, and well-dressed passengers would arrive at the sweeping drive way in front of the terminal where their luggage was collected by porters and taken underground by twin ramped tunnels which emerged out on the runway. The inside of the terminal was decorated with vast, elaborate murals from the WPA program.

The Art Deco interior housed a ticketing office, a restaurant (the Aviator Bar & Grill), a newsstand, barbershop, photo studio and even a radio studio to broadcast commentaries of the world record attempts that took place here. After checking in, passengers could retire to a cocktail bar that led onto balconies overlooking the airfield, and runways that were amongst the first to be concreted and lit electrically.

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The main terminal was the height of luxury air travel when it opened. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

Today, thanks to the National Park Service who took control of the airfield in the 1970s, the ground floor of the terminal has been recently restored to much of its original elegance. A small museum tells the story of the airfield and the famous aviators who once flew from here.

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One of the last long range propeller aircraft, the C-97 was soon eclipsed by the jet age. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

But upstairs much of the terminal is sadly falling apart. These were once the pilots quarters, where aircrew could rest and office. Peeling paint, empty bedrooms and cracked bathroom tiles are all that remain. Up a narrow ladder is the control tower. All the instruments are long gone, but the views over the mostly abandoned airfield and Marine Park are captivating. “We’re about as far out in Brooklyn as you can get,” says a ranger from the National Park Service. “It is remote enough today, let alone in the 1930s and 40s for a viable passenger terminus.”

That remoteness was its downfall. A new tunnel built in 1940 connecting Queens to midtown Manhattan led the way for a much more convenient airport to be built on the site of the old Gala Amusement Park in northern Queens. Named for the city mayor who championed its development, LaGuardia airport effectively marked the end of Floyd Bennett as New York’s principal airport.


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Aerial view of Floyd Bennett Field in the 1940s. (Photo: U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation/Public Domain)

During World War II, much of Floyd Bennett Field become a Naval Air Station. The runways and roads inside the base were extended and new buildings were constructed for sleeping quarters, munitions, gymnasiums, and even ballfields. Most of the infrastructure from that period today is still used by the Coast Guard and the NYPD, but many of the buildings today lie empty. Mechanics facilities, dormitories and offices are covered in ivy, full of rusted equipment and left for nature to reclaim.

When the National Park Service acquired Floyd Bennett in 1971, it became part of their Gateway National Recreation Area. A vast program encompassing Sandy Hook in New Jersey, Fort Tilden and Riis Park in Queens and much of Jamaica Bay amongst others, Floyd Bennett became protected wildlife preserve. Nature was allowed to reclaim parts of the runway, and community gardens were recreated. There is even a campsite, one of New York’s largest, named after Amelia Earhart, allowing campers the unusual experience of spending the night on an old deserted airfield, by the water where once seaplanes took off and landed.

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When Howard Hughes set the world record for flying around the world, thousands flocked to Floyd Bennett. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

At the far end of the airfield, some ten minutes walk across the abandoned runways lies one of Brooklyn’s best kept secrets. A hangar swiftly built in the Second War, inside is a remarkable plane graveyard, known as Hangar B. Home to a dozen rescued vintage planes, the drafty cavernous hangar is filled with seaplanes, biplanes, fighters and cargo freighters. Some are in better shape than others, who await restoration.

Hangar B is headquarters for several groups of dedicated volunteers. Often retired, ex-Air Force mechanics, or simply history buffs, these veteran plane enthusiasts are steadily keeping the true spirit of Floyd Bennett Field alive. The principal group is known as the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project (HARP), which meets here three times a week. One long-serving volunteer named Artie Kuhnert shows me a hulking old flying boat known as a PBY Catalina. “It was found at the end of a runway in Brazil about thirty five years ago, right in the middle of the rainforest,” he says. According to Kuhnert, it had been leased to the Brazilian government during World War II for just $1—its mission, to patrol the waters of the Brazilian coastline for German U-boats. As we climbed into the seaplane, rescued from the rainforest, walking down the bare steel skeleton of the fuselage and into the old cockpit, Kuhnert told me how is still belongs to the Navy, but the Parks department arranged to bring it in pieces to Floyd Bennett to be restored.

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The abandoned mechanics workshop. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

We walk past an old AT6 trainer plane, painted black with a snarling red mouth and bared teeth, whose wings are unattached and leaning against the fuselage, to a striking yellow biplane, restored to its 1940s polish—a project that took three years to complete. Kuhnert leads the way into a C47, the legendary transport aircraft that was developed from the Douglas DC3. These were the planes that fought at Guadalcanal, dropped supplies to the soldiers trapped at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge and dropped paratroopers behind the Normandy beaches. As we climb into the plane you can still see the cable running along the ceiling that when ordered by the jump sergeant, paratroopers would hook onto. Like a lot of the aircraft in Hangar B, the C47 needs further restoration.

Another volunteer, Dante DiMille, flew reconnaissance missions for the air force in the Korean War. “I was shot at but never fired back,” he tells me. In the Hangar B mess hall he shows me a photograph of himself as a young man and then points out one of the planes the HARP volunteers are most proud of—an exact replica of Wiley Post’s Lockheed Vega, the Winnie Mae.

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Inside the cockpit of the Boeing Stratofreighter on the day the volunteers tested the landing gear. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

In 1933, the one-eyed aviator set the world record for flying around the world solo, going round trip through Floyd Bennett Field. The original Winnie Mae can be found at the Smithsonian in Washington DC, but according to DiMille, “it belongs here because it made the flight from here.” So the HARP veterans decided to make their own. No thanks to the museum (“The Smithsonian wouldn’t give us anything”) they took a toy model airplane kit of the Winnie Mae and enlarged the instruction plans to build an exact scale replica, a labor of love that spanned six years.

But despite the rich aviation history of Floyd Bennett Field, it remains largely unknown and ignored not only by the Smithsonian but also by the City of New York. “No one really knows what to do with it,” DiMille explains, noting that some of the hangars were converted to a sports center, but not much else. “One of our biggest problems is we’re old people. The skills it takes to restore old aircraft, they don’t exist anymore.”

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It was planes like these that saved Berliners during the airlift. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

Hangar B itself was in a fair state of disrepair when I first visited in the winter of 2013, with broken windows and holes in the roof. In the intervening time, Hurricane Sandy had wreaked terrible damage to the 70-year-old hangar, and it eventually had to close its doors temporarily for desperately needed repairs.

Returning to Floyd Bennett Field recently, I saw fences encircling Hangar B, where the plane graveyard still rests inside, and which is due to hopefully reopen in the summer of 2016. But behind the hangar, one plane is still being worked on. It sits out on the forecourt runway, an awe-inspiring piece of machinery from the end of the early days of the Cold War. Around 110 feet long, with a wing span of over 140 feet of gleaming silver steel and chrome, it’s a Boeing C-97, with the suitably magnificent name the “Stratofreighter”. These giant propeller planes were used during the Berlin airlift and the wars in Korea and Vietnam and could transport an astonishing 35,000 pounds of cargo. The one being worked on at Floyd Bennett Field is one of only two still airworthy today.

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A 1930s-era poster for Floyd Bennett Field. (Photo: LC-DIG-ds-08069/Library of Congress)

Nicknamed the “Angel of Deliverance,” it has led a storied life after the war, flying relief missionary work in South America and hauling salmon in Alaska. Tim Chopp, an ex-air force mechanic who served in Vietnam leads the group of dedicated volunteers. “Our aim is to preserve the memory and legacy of one of the greatest aviation and humanitarian efforts in history,” he says. Between June 1948 and September 1949, the U.S. and Great Britain airlifted desperately needed supplies to the half of Berlin entirely surrounded by the Iron Curtain. The Berlin airlift was the deadly focal point of the Cold War conflict.

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New York's first municipal airport, Floyd Bennett's fate was sealed with the opening of LaGuardia. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

With Floyd Bennett’s future uncertain, the plan is to fly the Angel of Deliverance to New Jersey. Like the HARP group, the dozen or so Deliverance volunteers receive no funding from official museum sources; some of the team has been working on the plane for over 12 years. When I visited, they were testing the hydraulics on the landing wheels. Gently raising the 82,500 pound plane on oversized jacks, the small group worked on retracting the huge wheels over and over.

One of the volunteers monitoring the precarious operation knows this plane better than anyone. Master mechanic Berge Jermakian made these planes fly in the Korean War and commercially for Northwestern Airlines. The biggest challenge is paying for fuel, he explained. “We need about 15,000 gallons, and no one really knows we’re here.”

Teen Calls Out Museum for Wrong Radio in Al Capone's Cell

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That radio in the back is... wrong. (Photo: Thesab/GNU)

In a discovery rivaling what Geraldo Rivera found in Al Capone’s secret vault, an eagle-eyed teenager recently found that the re-creation of Capone’s cell at the Eastern State Penitentiary Museum was decorated with a radio that shouldn’t have existed yet.

Philadelphia's ominous Eastern State Penitentiary has been closed since 1971, and now operates as a museum and event space. Among the displays at the museum is a re-creation of the cell that housed Platonic gangster Al Capone. Capone spent hard time in the prison in 1929 and 1930, serving in comparative luxury thanks to his mob connections. His cell was located in a part of the prison jokingly referred to as “Park Avenue,” and his room was no different than many of the other vaulted cement chambers in the prison, but Capone’s was outfitted with a sumptuous desk, oriental rugs, and even a cabinet radio.

Today, the scene has been remade using period furniture, but as 13-year-old Joey Warchal recently discovered, not all of it was of a kosher vintage. As reported by the Associated Press, during his recent tour of the prison, Warchal, already an antiques aficionado at a young age, noticed that the radio in Capone’s cell, a Philco A-361, was not actually released until 1942, more than a decade after Capone would have spent time in the cell. Whoops!

For their part, the Eastern State Penitentiary took the mistake in stride and took up Warchal on his offer to help them locate a period-appropriate radio, which he has already done. The prison museum will receive the new, 1929-era radio in a small ceremony on June 7th. Hopefully now, Capone’s cell will be untouchable.

Letter-Writing Manuals Were the Self-Help Books of the 18th Century

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Detail from Young Girl Writing a Love Letter by Pietro Antonio Rotari (1755). (Image: Public Domain)

Let's say a friend started dating someone who was clearly bad news. How might you tactfully convey your disapproval? In the 1740s, the answer was easy: you'd go to your bookshelf, pull out a thick tome entitled Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, and flip to sample letter number 145, entitled "To a young Lady, cautioning her against keeping Company with a Gentleman of bad Character."

Like all human communication, exchanging handwritten notes is a confusing, anxiety-producing and socially fraught endeavor. And, at one time, it was a new technology. Letter-writing manuals had been around since the 1500s, but the 18th century was the golden age for these publications. At the time, there had lately emerged a form of written communication known as the "familiar letter," which was characterized by informal, from-the-heart prose, rather than displays of intellect, reason, and wit.

Letters Written to and for Particular Friends, written by British novelist Samuel Richardson in 1741, was one of a slew of letter-writing manuals published in the mid-to-late 18th century. These thick volumes contained example letters suited to a wide range of specific occasions, from applying for a job to approaching the courtship of someone dreamy. The letters, penned from the perspective of fictional characters, were designed to be used as templates for those lacking confidence in their written expression skills.

This particular volume flourished because letter-writing, long the domain of the rich and well-educated, became more widespread and accessible. Members of the middle and working classes could now compose persuasive notes to friends, family members, potential paramours, and business prospects. But with many of these people lacking a formal education, they sought help on how to best adhere to current conventions.

This included, of course, form love letters.

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Joseph Wright's Girl Reading a Letter by Candlelight, With a Young Man Peering over Her Shoulder (c. 1760). (Image: Public Domain)

The authors of letter-writing manuals offered grammar advice, etiquette tips, and social considerations to these new authors. One of the main focuses was on writing prose that came across as sincere and natural. “When you write to a friend, your letter should be a true picture of you heart, the style loose and irregular," wrote H. W. Dilworth in his 1758 guide, The Familiar Letter Writer. "[T]he thoughts themselves should appear naked, and not dressed in the borrowed robes of rhetoric; for a friend will be more pleased with that part of a letter which flows from the heart, than with that which is more a product of the mind.”

The British Library calls 18th-century writing manuals "an early form of self-help book." They certainly helped members of the middle class understand how to pen an endearing eloquent note, which could lead to a favorable courtship, a job offer, and a rise in social status. “By demystifying the rules and conventions of letter writing, a social practice traditionally symbolic of power, authors of familiar letter manuals helped middling families pursue their claims to social refinement and upward mobility,” writesKonstantin Dierks in The Familiar Letter and Social Refinement in America, 1750-1800.

Success in love was another promise from the writers of letter manuals. The Lover's New Instructor, a courtship-focused guide published circa 1780, provided a book full of sample letters to "serve as examples for giving a clear idea of the manner in which a correspondence should be maintained on the important points of Love and Marriage." The authors assured its less-educated readers that those who, “through the various avocations of life, have been denied opportunities of attending to the forms of polite expression, may, by giving a grace and polish to their language, improve rusticity into good breeding.”

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The frontispiece of The New Lover's Instructor, a courtship-focused letter-writing guide published circa 1780. (Image: British Library/Public Domain)

As for what the letters in these manuals were like, a glance at the list of 173 sample letter titles in Letters Written to and for Particular Friends shows just how specific the writers got. Letter 70 is entitled "From a Father to a Daughter against a frothy, French Lover," and includes the following warning:

His frothy Behavior may divert well enough as an Acquaintance; but is very unanswerable, I think, to the Character of a Husband, especially an English Husband, which I take to be a graver Character than a French one.

Letter 11, "To a young Man too soon keeping a Horse,"is  a surprisingly lengthy treatise on the perils of premature equine ownership. As is evident from this excerpt, the tone of the letter is classic Disappointed Father, with a hint of passive aggression:

I am sorry to hear you have so early begun to keep a Horse, especially as your Business is altogether in your Shop, and you have no End to serve in riding out; and are, besides, young and healthy, and so cannot require it, as Exercise.

In addition to matters social and familial, Letters Written to and for Particular Friends covers how to write about traumatic and violent experiences. Sample letter 160, "From a Country Gentleman in Town, to his Brother in the Country, describing a publick Execution in London," speaks with sorrow of the merciless crowd, which displayed "a barbarous kind of Mirth, altogether inconsistent with Humanity." 

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An Old Man Reading (1728). (Image: Public Domain)

Ultimately, letter-writing manuals weren't just concerned with instilling good grammar and a flair for narrative—like modern self-help books, they aimed to inspire people to live satisfying and morally luminous lives. The full title of Letters Written to and for Particular Friends ensures readers that the book offers "not only the Requisite STYLE and FORMS To be Observed in WRITING Familiar Letters; But How to THINK and ACT Justly and Prudently, IN THE COMMON CONCERNS OF HUMAN LIFE."

The readers of 18th-century letter manuals would ideally use the letter templates to gain confidence, develop their own style, and become capable of writing their way into—or out of—any situation, whether it involve "an ungracious son," a gentleman "who humorously resents his Mistress's Fondness of a Monkey," or "Lady whose Overniceness in her House, and uneasy Temper with her Servants, make their Lives uncomfortable." We're all just trying to get along.

Found: Rare, 100-Year-Old Hobo Graffiti, Etched into an L.A. Bridge

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Susan Phillips, an anthropologist at Pitzer College, wasn’t looking for markings left by men 100 years ago. She was looking for graffiti of a more recent vintage. But during her exploration of the bridges and walls of the Los Angeles River, she came upon graffiti drawn in the 1910s by itinerant men, the Associated Press reports.

“Hobo graffiti” was a code that let travelers tell each other where they were headed and what conditions were like at this location. The pieces that Phillips found included stylized arrows—“little heart things”—that pointed the direction a person was headed. She found messages from men with names like Oakland Red and Tucson kid, dated back to Aug. 13, 1914, and July 1, 1921.

The most notable graffiti is the signature “A-No. 1.” A-No. 1, or Leon Ray Livingston, was one of the most famous hobos of his time; he wrote twelve books on hobo life. Maybe he left his mark here. Or maybe someone else was just using his traveling name, which happened from time to time.

Hobo graffiti, etched into stone or drawn with grease pencil, has mostly disappeared by now. The graffiti here was preserved after the Los Angeles river was lowered 25 feet, making the bridge more inaccessible both to people and the elements. Phillips is looking for a way to capture it—probably digitally, she told the AP. Graffiti’s by nature ephemeral, and eventually these messages will disappear from these walls as well. Some already have.

Bonus finds: Mating snakes hanging from the ceiling

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 Pollen Coronas Are the Upside of Pollen

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A pine pollen corona in Kuusamo, Finland. (Photo: Mika-Pekka Markkanen/CC BY-SA 4.0)

The whole world may look forward to spring, but pretty much no one is excited for the attendant pollen explosion. Spring means new life and cold drinks and sunshine. Pollen just means itchy eyes and a fine layer of yellow on all your lawn furniture.

But if you're in the right place at the right time, all that sneezy plant dust can turn into something beautiful: a pollen corona! Thanks to a property of light called diffraction—when light waves bend around the tiny objects in their way—having lots of pollen in the atmosphere sometimes sends multicolored rings of light gently emanating from the sun or moon.

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Another corona, peeking out from the side of a building. (Photo: Janne/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Ordinary, circular halos, which are caused by water droplets in the atmosphere, also work by diffraction. But because pollen grains are elongated, pollen coronas are, too. They tend to appear as multi-layered elliptical rings, cinched tight around the celestial body in question. As Bob King explains at Universe Today, the best way to see a pollen corona is to block out the sun (or moon) itself with a tree trunk and look for the glowing aura around it.

Right now, pollen corona season is full-fledged in Finland, says photographer Vesa Vauhkonen over at Spaceweather.com. But coronas can be found wherever pines, birch, spruces and alders have decided to let loose. So next time you screw your eyes closed in itchy discomfort, take a moment to look at the sun first. You might see something nice before you sneeze.

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.

Places You Can No Longer Go: Dair Mar Elia Monastery

How to Travel Safely With a Crocodile

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Two live Siamese crocodiles (Crocodylus siamensis) at the new AMNH Crocs exhibit. (Photo: © AMNH/C. Chesek)

It was in the middle of the night, cruising along the highway somewhere in the Carolinas, that Chad Peeling and his companions noticed something wasn’t quite right with their trailer. They had been rotating drivers on their road trip from Florida to Pennsylvania, but this was the first time they'd noticed any irregular movement. They pulled off at the nearest gas station.

When they went back to take a look, they found that the inside of the trailer had been utterly demolished. One of their massive alligators had gotten impatient, flexed his armor-clad limbs, and burst out of his crate, splintering it into toothpicks.

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This 15-foot saltwater crocodile would probably be a challenge for UPS or your Subaru. (Photo: Molly Ebersold of the St. Augustine Alligator Farm/Public Domain)

They decided their best move was to just keep on driving. “It was a real nail-biter,” says Peeling, remembering the incident, which took place 20 years back. Luckily, they made it to Clyde Peeling’s Reptiland without further incident. “It taught us two important lessons: We want to keep them very tightly confined during shipping, and obviously, the crating has to be built to accommodate their strength.”

Peeling is the Operations Manager at Reptiland, a specialized zoo in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. He helps send crocs and gators, big and small, on journeys short and long, by land and air. He's packed up an 11-foot-plus American alligator that weighed over 600 pounds and sent crocs coast-to-coast across the U.S.

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A Central African slender-snouted crocodile. (Photo: © AMNH/C. Chesek)

Reptiland’s crocodilians hit the road or the airplane runway en route to zoos, museum exhibits, and romantic rendezvous—also known as breeding visits. (“Crocodilian” is a term that covers crocodiles, alligators, caimans, and gharial―not to be confused with crocodylomorphs, an umbrella term for today’s crocodilians and their extinct brethren.)

The company's most recent transport involved getting a small squadron of crocodiles from Pennsylvania right into the heart of Manhattan, for the newest exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, Crocs: Ancient Predators in a Modern World. A couple of weeks ago, five adorable American alligator hatchlings, a Siamese crocodile, two West African dwarf crocodiles, and a Central African slender-snouted crocodile arrived safely to the Upper East Side.

“We often compare it to moving tissues for organ transplants,” says Peeling. “We have to be very careful of the animal’s needs—we move fast to limit stress.”

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A baby crocodylomorph. (Photo: Tao Tao Holmes/Atlas Obscura)

Crocodiles, says Peeling, are very sensitive to temperature―cool temperatures in particular. The first thing Reptiland did as part of their loan to the Crocs exhibit was to send a crew to set up the crocodile habitats, stabilize their temperature, and check the water quality before the animals arrived, were unloaded and transferred into the exhibits.

On the day of their trip, the crocs were packed up early in the morning and driven to New York City in a climate-controlled van. Special crates are built for each individual species, since the crate must be sized to fit the animal so it doesn’t move around too much and hurt itself. The careful dimensions and inside padding keep the croc in the same position for the entirety of its trip.

As for air transports, if a private airplane is used, then climate control is right at the staff’s fingertips. But private planes only work for shorter distances; when it comes to swapping coasts or venturing abroad, Reptiland and others like it rely on commercial aircraft. Major airlines, says Peeling, are willing to ship animals like crocodilians as long as they are packed per regulation―and there are some very, very specific regulations. The crocs fly cargo, in insulated crates designed to regulate temperature. But weather is still a key factor, especially in the cold season if they’re shipping tropical animals, and staff on the ground keep a very close eye.

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This guy (a five-foot-long West African dwarf crocodile) arrived at the Museum of Natural History via the highway. (Photo: © AMNH/C. Chesek)

As for inflight snacks, there's no need, says Peeling. In fact, it’s important not to feed them right before they ship. As it is, crocs only eat once every couple of weeks.

Once the croc arrives via van or trailer to its destination, it still has to get from the vehicle into its new enclosure. For smaller animals, a team of people can simply carry the crate where it needs to go and transfer the animals into its carefully prepared habitat; once the crate is opened, the croc will often walk right in. However, bigger crocs, of the 600- to 800-pound variety, require heavy equipment such as forklifts, cranes, and backhoes, which lift the cargo net or crate from the trailer and then lower the animal into the pool. These heftier chaps often have their jaws secured with surgical tape for safety during transport.

All this upheaval can be stressful for the humans involved, but the reptiles being shifted don't suffer separation anxiety or get sad about leaving home. “Crocs are very complex animals, way more intelligent and sensitive than I think they’re given credit for,” says Peeling. But they aren’t social in that way―they don’t show attachment to each other, except when they come together for breeding or with their young. “In fact, a much bigger factor is making sure they are separated when they need to be, because they are famous for fighting over territory.”


Massive Trove of Fossils Discovered by Road Crew in South Africa

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Crews of workers exploding rock off a highway outside Grahamstown, near the southern coast of South Africa, discovered something historic recently: a trove of fossils, many of which are hundreds of millions of years old, according to News24.

The fossils represent a wide variety of undocumented species, from plants to invertebrates. The majority date to nearly 360 million years ago, when the Earth was made up of supercontinents, and Pangaea had yet to form. 

Most of the fossils are from marine life, which isn't all that surprising: before animals roamed the land on Earth they swam its oceans. Among the findings was a undocumented species of clam, for example, as well as a very well-preserved fertile material from a tree, according to News24

This isn't the first time road maintenance has led to new fossil discoveries; South African crews have stumbled upon fossils at least four times, one paleontologist told News24

After workers are through excavating the fossils from the latest find, they will continue work on what they set out to build: a highway rest stop. There they plan to also post a sign reminding visitors that fossils were once found at this site, and the land they stand on is ancient. 

Watch These Racers Book It on 5-Foot-Tall Penny-Farthing Bikes

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In the late 1800s, racing cyclists looped around tracks on top of two-wheeled penny-farthings—the first machine to ever be called a bicycle.

The video above, captured in 1928, biker C.J. Bowtle peddles furiously, his penny-farthing gliding along the track and passing his competitors in the one-mile race at the Challenge Cup in Herne Hill, London.

Inspired by the wooden-wheeled “boneshaker” velocipede, the penny-farthing was built by James Starley, known as the father of the bicycle industry, around the 1870s. Mechanics found that bikes could reach higher speeds the larger they made the front wheel, which resulted in the outrageously large front wheel. The name penny-farthing comes from the British penny and farthing coins, which, when placed next to each other, are of a similar size ratio to the front and back wheels. 

The penny-farthing marked the beginning of cycling sports. However, bikers perched about five feet high and almost over the front axle on a machine without any brakes made this early form of bike racing extremely dangerous. “In their heyday, a lot of people died riding these,” Richard Thoday, the 2015 UK National Penny Farthing Champion, told the Telegraph.

Penny-farthing bicycles were known for causing headers—pitching riders head-first off the bike if the wheel struck a rock or rut in the road. Crashes sometimes resulted in severe head and neck injuries. Inventors made models with different kinds of handlebars that would prevent headers, like “mustache” handlebars that wrapped around the legs and the “Whatton” bars that went behind the legs.

The penny-farthing’s popularity declined with the advent of the safer bicycles. However, fans of the penny-farthing still partake in competitive races today, and unlike races in the 1800s, these bikers wear helmets. The first ever penny-farthing world series will be held this June in London.

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

The Louvre is Closing as Flood Waters Threaten Paris

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The Seine, which flows through the heart of Paris and connects the city with the English Channel, is flooding. Its waters have risen over 15 feet above normal levels, thanks to heavy rains across France that also led to a rare disruption of play at the French Open. 

For the Louvre, though, there's a bigger threat: to tens of thousands of pieces of priceless art, much of which the museum stores underground. 

On Thursday, the museum said that it was taking emergency measures, with a complete closure slated for Friday and the removal of art to higher ground, according to the BBC. Across the river, the Musee d'Orsay said it would also be closing while taking similar steps. 

The Seine has flooded several times before, but this year's deluge has been worse than usual, with some comparing it to the disastrous 1910 flood that destroyed a swath of the city. 

This year's water levels are lower than they were in 1910, but more rain is in the forecast for this weekend. By then, the Louvre should be ready; the museum had been practicing flood preparations earlier this year, giving themselves 72 hours to get vulnerable art to safety. 

Steady rains and flooding across Europe have been blamed for at least nine deaths, many of them in Germany, in addition to an 86-year-old woman who was found deceased at her home in central France, according to the Guardian.

This article has been updated. 

Read the NSA's Exceedingly Weird Guide to the Internet

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The NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. (Photo: Public Domain)

A version of this story originally appeared on Muckrock.com.

The NSA has a well-earned reputation for being one of the tougher agencies to get records out of, making those rare FOIA wins all the sweeter. In the case of Untangling the Web, the agency’s 2007 guide to internet research, the fact that the records in question just so happen to be absolutely insane are just icing on the cake - or as the guide would put it, “the nectar on the ambrosia.”

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MuckRock’s Michael Morisy initially requested the guide after finding an entry on Google Books. A month later, the NSA responded with a complete release, minus the author’s names …

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Which was a bit odd, seeing as Michael had provided them in his initial request. But hey, gift horses and all that.

Now, at 650 pages, there’s far too much to go into depth here, but fortunately, as you can see from the table of contents …

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you don’t have to go very far before this takes a hard turn into “Dungeons and Dragons campaign/Classics major’s undergraduate thesis” territory.

The preface employs a comical number of metaphors to describe what the internet is and isn’t - sometimes two a paragraph. But don’t take our word for it!

According to the NSA, the internet is …

A Persian’s personal library:

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Sisyphus’ boulder …

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A Freudian psycho-sexual pleasure palace …

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A Borgesian world-consuming knowledge-cancer …

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A labyrinth (with bonus Mino-Troll):

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Two quick asides - one, in case your memory needed jogging as to what aclew was, the footnote helpfully provides that information …

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and two, before you cry foul that the beast in the center of the labyrinth isclearly a centaur, Ovid technically just describes the Minotaur as “half-man and half-bull” without specifying which half is which, so that interpretation is valid, if a bit needlessly obscure.

But while we’re on the subject of pedantic footnotes …

A shape-changing sea-god:

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And finally, jumping ahead 600 pages, an endless frontier/a cemetery of dead ideas/a reminder of your aunt’s 15-minutes of fame:

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After that journey of discovery, Untangling the Web ends perhaps the only way it could: with a back cover design that looks cribbed from a ‘90s Christian rock album.

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Read the full thing here.

Take a Ride on 10 of the World's Most Mind-Blowing Elevators

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This elevator doesn't go to space, it just looks like it. (Photo: motoyen/CC BY 2.0)

Why take the stairs when the world is filled with so many amazing elevators? All over the world, there are elevators that take people to the top of mountains, museums, and more, that turn simple elevation into a ride in a work of art.

Whether it's the gothic ironwork of Brazil's Santa Justa Lift or the futuristic pods of the Mercedes-Benz Museum or the Aquadom lift that carries riders straight through a massive aquarium, some elevators are so amazing, they become destinations in and of themselves. Take a look at 10 of the world's most amazing elevators. We'll hold the door for you.

1. Hammetschwand Elevator

Ennetbürgen, Switzerland

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This elevator could easily cause vertigo. (Photo: Leiju/CC BY-SA 3.0)

This Swiss elevator holds the record as the highest outdoor elevator in Europe, connecting a rocky footpath to a scenic lookout point almost 4,000 feet above sea level. Originally built in 1905, the lift carries riders 500 feet straight up, to the top of the mountain. It looks fairly spindly jutting straight up out of the rock, but it's one hell of a ride.

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(Photo: Gindegg/CC BY-SA 3.0)

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(Photo: Roland Zumbuehl/CC BY-SA 3.0)

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(Photo: albinfo/CC BY 3.0)

2. Mercedes-Benz Museum Elevator

Stuttgart, Germany

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(Photo: Inge Kanakaris-Wirtl/CC BY 2.5)

Sure, the fancy cars are the main attraction at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, but the ultra-futuristic elevators that travel up the concrete walls like steel beetles, are almost as much of a draw. Thin and sleek, the elevators eschew the more popular glass-walled design for a metal pod with nothing but a small viewing window to see out of. These elevators might as well be on a space station. 

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(Photo: Jim Woddward/CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: O Palsson/CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: Cristian Bortes/CC BY 2.0)

3. Lacerda Elevator

Bahia, Brazil 

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Dark skies, lovely elevator. (Photo: Mario Carvajal/CC BY 2.0)

Brazil's first elevator is still in use, connecting the upper and lower district of Salvador, Bahia. First built in 1873, the 27- foot lift is designed in a sort of Art Deco style that has made it a popular landmark in the area. As a public elevator, anyone if welcome to hop in and take a ride in one if its historic carriages, whether you are trying to get down to the port, or escape it. 

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(Photo: Turismo Bahia/CC BY-SA 2.0)

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(Photo: Rosino/CC BY-SA 2.0)

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(Photo: Wagner T. Cassimiro/CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: Ciroamado/CC BY-SA 4.0)

4. The Aquadom

Berlin, Germany

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All of the elevators in Atlantis were like this one. (Photo: G! 37/CC BY-SA 2.0)

If you like the idea of snorkeling, but are terrified of the sea, the Aquadom is the elevator for you. Rising straight through the center of what is probably the world's largest cylindrical aquarium, this all glass elevator lets riders check out the 50 species of fish living in the tank while slowly rising to the top of the Radisson Blu Hotel courtyard in that it is located in. It has not yet caused the bends.

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(Photo: vxla/CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: Eric Pancer/CC BY 3.0)

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(Photo: McB/Public Domain)

5. Oregon City Municipal Elevator

Oregon City, Oregon

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It's like the bus, but as an elevator. (Photo: Steve Morgan/CC BY-SA 3.0)

In New York, commuters take the subway to work. In Oregon City, Oregon, they take the elevator. The only outdoor municipal elevator in the United States, the Oregon City Municipal Elevator was first installed in the mid-1950s to connect two portions of the city that were separated by a dramatic cliff. It has undergone a number of renovations including adding a UFO-like observation deck, but it remains a public resource that shuttles sometimes more than 1,000 people a day, between the two sections of the city.

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(Photo: Ian Sane/CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: Steve Morgan/CC BY-SA 3.0)

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(Photo: Steve Morgan/CC BY-SA 3.0)

6. Skyview Elevator

Stockholm, Sweden

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This is easily the most ballin' elevator in the world. (Photo: CHG/CC BY-SA 3.0)

If you are going to have the largest spherical building in the world, like the Eriksson Globe, you're going to have to have an equally curving elevator to get to the top. Also why not shape it like a sphere too? The ball-shaped Skyview elevator is a glass and steel sphere that allows riders to travel to the top of the Eriksson building without tilting or falling over as the base of the elevator curves as it rises, so that the floor inside if always level. As one of the only ball-shaped elevators in the world, this unique lift both unique and well-rounded. 

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(Photo: kallerna/CC BY-SA 3.0)

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(Photo: kallerna/CC BY-SA 3.0)

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(Photo: kallerna/CC BY-SA 3.0)

7. Bailong Elevator

Zhangjiajie, China

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(Photo: OLOS/Shutterstock.com)

As maybe one of the most stunning elevators on the planet, China's Bailong Elevator, which roughly translates to "Hundred Dragons Elevator," may be the tallest outdoor elevator in the world at over 1,000 feet tall. It is built right into a sandstone cliffside, ferrying passengers to the top in a glass carriage that makes for a harrowing ascent.

The ride only takes about a minute to make it to the top, but if the height is too much for you, the summit can also be reached via a two-and-a-half hour walk, but where's the fun in that? 

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(Photo: Pavel Dvorak jr/Shutterstock.com)

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(Photo: Pavel Dvorak jr/Shutterstock.com)

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(Photo: pburavas/Shutterstock.com)

8. Santa Justa Lift

Lisboa, Portugal

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This elevator could easily be located in Gotham City. (Photo: Mdavids/CC BY-SA 3.0)

This ornate iron elevator in Lisbon, Portugal is as much an elevator as it is a gothic work of art. While the city has a number of funiculars connecting its upper and lower sections, the Santa Justa lift is the only remaining elevator in the city for that purpose. Originally inaugurated in 1905, the intricately decorated lift is all ironwork filigree and baroque flourish. It remains in use today as a stunning mix of industrial severity and cathedral-like atmosphere.  

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(Photo: Luca Galuzzi/CC BY-SA 2.5)

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(Photo: David Sim/CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: ma_ru_yi/CC BY 2.0)

9. Lourve Elevator

Paris, France 

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At the Louvre, even the elevator is art. (Photo: Zach Marshall/CC BY-SA 2.0)

It would be easy to miss this short elevator located in the foyer of the famed Louvre Museum since it actually sinks into the floor when bringing passengers down. Little more than a stark pillar that rises up through the middle of a spiral staircase, this elevator is also unique for its lack of a roof. Riders just step onto the top of the lowered pillar and it pushes them up a floor, where an automated walkway extends for them to disembark. 

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(Photo: Spencer Means/CC BY-SA 2.0)

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(Photo: Spencer Means/CC BY-SA 2.0)

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(Photo: Atsuto/CC BY 2.0)

10. Rising Tide Bar Elevator

Oasis of the Sea Cruise Ship

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(Photo: cruisedotco/CC BY 2.0)

Found in one of the largest passenger ships on the planet, the MS Oasis of the Seas, the Rising Tide Elevator Bar is one of the only elevators that doubles as a cocktail lounge. The long, barge-like platform slowly rises between floors, taking almost ten minutes to do so, allowing people to finish their drinks. The Oasis of the Seas' sister ship, the Allure of the Seas was also outfitted with a Rising Tide elevator bar, and it may appear on more ships in the future. Soon elevators on the ocean will all be filled with drunk people. 

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(Photo: Derek Hatfield/CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: Derek Hatfield/CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: Derek Hatfield/CC BY 2.0)

Honeysuckle Is a Blob-Like Monster Taking Over American Forests

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Amur honeysuckle blossoms. (Photo: Ryan McEwan)

One of the signs of summer, for me, has always been tasting honeysuckle flowers. When I was a kid, they edged the yard of a family friend, and we’d stand there for ages, pulling out drops of nectar to touch against our tongue. As an adult, I spot their white and yellow flowers on the sides of the road or on city fences—they’re everywhere, it seems.

That's not a good thing, though.

In recent years, New York banned honeysuckle bushes. So did Texas, and Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In those states, you’re not allowed to sell or buy honeysuckle. You’re not supposed to plant it in your yard, no matter how nice you think it looks or how convenient a hedge it would make. As a group, Asian honeysuckles are “perhaps the most widespread exotic invasives in the U.S.,” according to the Virginia Cooperative Extension—they can be found from New England, down to the Gulf, and west to the Ozark Mountains. It belongs to the pantheon of plants that grow so fast it can be frightening—kudzu, bamboo, mile-a-minute weed—and have had nothing stopping them. Even laws that ban the sale of these plants can only slow their spread. Once they've established their domains, they dig in and don't let go.

“In some places, it’s creating a monoculture,” says Ryan McEwan, an ecologist at the University of Dayton, who studies these plants. In these forests, you can be encircled by honeysuckle, a veritable "wall of honeysuckle around you." The plant can grow so dense, you have to crawl under it.

Honeysuckle might seem sweet, but it’s becoming a shape-shifting mega-villain that’s able to outcompete average plants, in its bid to try to take over the forest.

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Amur honeysuckle takes over the shrub layer and holds its leaves long after the rest of the forest. (Photo: Ryan McEwan)

Honeysuckle comes in two forms, bush and vine, and there are native species of both in America. The honeysuckle species that have become problem plants—Amur honeysuckle, Morrow’s honeysuckle, Japanese honeysuckle, Tatarian honeysuckle, with its dark pink flowers—came from Asia, often via Europe, more than a century ago.

Amur honeysuckle, which has dark green leaves and garnet red berries, was first cultivated outside its native range by a German botanist working in a St. Petersburg’s imperial garden. Near the end of the 19th century, the St. Petersburg Garden sent seeds to Boston’s Arnold Arboretum and to the New York Botanical Garden.

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Looks so innocent. (Photo: Michelle.Salter/CC BY-SA 3.0)

There was no reason to think the plant might spread wildly: it’s rare enough in its native range that it’s currently listed as endangered in Japan. In Europe, it’s never been a problem. But in America, the stuff went wild. As early as the 1920s, the Morton Arboretum in Chicago noted “its tendency to spread beyond the point of initial planting,” write James Luken and John Thieret in their account of Amur’s “fall from grace.” By the 1950s, there were reports of honeysuckle populations that were neither planted nor cared for by humans. By the end of the century, there were places it had taken over.

In Kentucky, where McEwan grew up, forests can be covered with honeysuckle. As a forest ecologist, he had been to old-growth forests where, standing on top of the slope, he could look far through the trees ahead. In a forest invaded by honeysuckle, the shrub layer of the forest can be too dense to walk through. Over streams, the honeysuckle creates a cave of branches. “You’re standing in the stream, and you feel like you’re in a tunnel,” McEwan says. He wanted to understand how honeysuckle was able to take over so dramatically.

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The honeysuckle grows into a tunnel over the stream. (Photo: Ryan McEwan)

What makes a species invasive isn’t clear cut. There’s a federal list of “noxious weeds,” but states decide independently how to regulate undesirable plants. “Any species that is initially rare and then shows explosive growth, dominating the area, I’d call that an invasive species,” says Bernd Blossey, who studies invasive species at Cornell University. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a non-native plant. But not everyone would agree with that definition. In the end, an invasive species is one that’s unwanted and, often, aggressive in its expansionism.

Amur honeysuckle, the focus of McEwan’s research, just “seems to be better at everything." In one experiment, he found that the plant’s leaves produce a toxin that caterpillars and other plant-eating insects can’t seem to handle. It also seems to suppress the germination of seeds in competing plants. Its leaves have a longer growth period than other plants in the Ohio forests McEwan studies. It can grow in the shade, and it can grow really fast in the sun. It can shape itself to fill holes in the canopy.

“It’s just a blob,” McEwan says. “It can do whatever it wants.”

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Bushy Amur honeysuckle. (Photo: Leonora Enking/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Like any good villain, honeysuckle has its strongholds, as well as territory where it does not have total control. In Ohio and Kentucky, “it’s on the Mount Rushmore of plants you’re worried about,” says McEwan. In New York, says Blossey, it’s closer to the middle of the list. The forests in New York are shadier, which makes them less receptive to honeysuckle bushes than the midwest’s more open forests. It does, however, take over abandoned fields that might have transitioned back into forests, and may slow that change-over.  

In both the forests of Ohio and the fields of New York, though, it’s hard to know what to do with these plants. They’re hard to kill—they resprout like crazy. The tougher thing, though, is that it’s not clear what would happen if land managers were able to kill it all. Would the fields turn back to forests? Would a more biodiverse set of plants grow back in the forest?

In Ohio, the honeysuckle thickets are so thick that eradicating it leaves behind bare earth. In one of McEwan’s experiments, they planted seedlings and left them to fend for themselves. Compared to the other plants that have moved in, they’re not doing so well. If a swath of honeysuckle is cleared, it can also just move back in. Amur honeysuckle produces plenty of seedy fruit, and they’re a favorite of birds, so they spread easily.

Or, another aggressive species could move in. “Our already invaded forest are being subsequently invaded by Callery pear,” says McEwan. As soon as one villain’s beaten, another can rise to take its place.

Do You Live in a Mail-Order Sears Kit Home? These House Hunters Will Find You

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Great find—a Sears "Magnolia" in Canton, Ohio, and its catalog listing. Enthusiasts call the Magnolia the "holy grail of kit houses." (Photo: Courtesy Andrew and Wendy Mutch)

This past Monday, a car rolled through Fort Wayne, Indiana and pulled up outside a decidedly average-looking house. The home was one-story, flanked by two small porches, its peaked roof held up by brick columns. Inside were a living room, a couple of bedrooms, and a kitchen. To the untrained eye, it was a charming but ordinary bungalow.

The eight trained eyes inside the car widened in excitement. The four people they belonged to began murmuring and snapping pictures. One of them, Andrew Mutch, poked his head out of the car window, just as the confused homeowner opened the front door. "Hey there!" he hollered up the lawn. "Is this a Sears Kit House?"

Sears, Roebuck & Co. are best known as purveyors of farm equipment and home appliances. Even today, it's easy enough to imagine outfitting an entire house, basement to bedroom, from a Sears catalogue. But from 1908 through 1940, the company went a step further: they sold entire DIY house-building kits.

Also known as "Sears Modern Homes" or "Sears Catalog Homes," these houses were bought straight out of a mail-order booklet, under 447 different names and designs—from the stately, two-tiered Lexington to the tiny, beach-ready Goldenrod. They came precut and ready to assemble, like extremely ambitious Ikea kits. "We will furnish all the material to build this," Sears Kit House listings promise, from lumber and building paper all the way down to shingles, siding, and seating for the breakfast alcove. 

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A 1920s catalog listing for the Hamilton. (Image: Catarina Bannier/DC House Cat)

Andrew and his wife, Wendy are part of a growing cadre of kit house hunters. For years, they have spent their free time driving around the Midwest, casing neighborhoods for the distinctive homes. Their introduction came through purchasing a kit home themselves (a1926 bungalow called a Hamilton with oak trim and a giant fireplace) in Novi, Michigan. Since learning about their house's history, they treat every road trip as an excuse to expand their repertoire.

Last year, they drove all the way to Ohio to pose in front of a Magnolia, the largest model Sears offered, and what Mutch calls the "holy grail of kit houses." This Memorial Day found them attempting an exhaustive survey of Fort Wayne, along with two other experts, Dale Wolicki and Rebecca Hunter. "We're junkies down here," Mutch says with a laugh.

Luckily for them, the country is chock full of kit houses. Sears sold 75,000 kits to customers in every state and clear up to the Canadian border. Other companies, like Aladdin and Gordon Van Tine, got in on the action with their own lines. Mutch estimates that 70 percent of Sears houses are still alive and kicking, thanks partly to their resilient materials, which include old-growth timber and high-caliber furnishings. The Mutch family's Hamilton still sports its original wood-frame windows, now 90 years old.

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Andrew and Wendy Mutch's Hamilton kit house, today. (Photo: Courtesy Andrew and Wendy Mutch)

The way Mutch describes it, kit house hunting is a bit like birdwatching. First—before you even set out—you have to narrow your range. Despite the homes' ubiquity, some regions are better stocked than others. Cities where Sears or its affiliates had big factories, like Cincinnati and Newark, are especially flush.

Once you've got your region, it's time to to zoom in further, searching for the kit house's preferred habitat. Proximity to a railroad is helpful, as the parts were delivered via boxcar. So are neighborhoods with a long middle-class history—communities that, as Mutch puts it, "are kind of in-between," where kit houses are protected from both upsizing and urban decay. Because Sears sometimes helped their homeowners out with mortgages, more clues can be found in archive offices, and traced back to street addresses.

After that, it's mostly a matter of driving around. Kit house hunters tend to cruise with a camera and a copy of Houses By Mail, which is essentially the Sibley of Sears houses—an exhaustive 1986 guide that contains descriptions and pictures of nearly every model the company put out. Get familiar enough, and you can drive-by spot them. "There's quite a few that we can recognize," says Mutch, even after just a few years in the game.

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The cover of the 1914/15 Sears Modern Homes catalog. (Image: Rachel Shoemaker/Oklahoma Houses By Mail)

Once a specimen is located, the Mutches photograph it from as many angles as they can muster without trespassing. They'll introduce themselves to curious homeowners—many people don't realize they live in kit houses. (If you think you might, look for stamped lumber, shipping labels, and "SR" marks on your plumbing.) Occasionally, they'll even get tours. Then, they move swiftly along. "There's always more houses," says Mutch.

For the unschooled, it can be hard to identify a kit house. Rather than make up new designs, kit house companies generally just parroted existing ones. When Victorians were in vogue, they started offering styles like the 303. When bungalows were in, they jumped on that bandwagon, too. "They were based on popular styles of the day, just like clothing," says Rachel Shoemaker, who has collected, organized, and pored over kit house catalogs since she first discovered them in 2008.

Shoemaker's interest also started local and then expanded. A former firefighter, she was deskridden with a rotator cuff injury when she first got bit by the kit house bug. "I decided to look through Oklahoma," she says. "And I wasn't satisfied there, so I thought, I'll just look everywhere." Shoemaker checks catalog listings for customer testimonials, cross-references the names with public address records, and then looks them up on Google Earth. "It just got out of control," she says. "There were times when I was spending 10 or so hours a day doing it."

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A modern-day Sears 303, next to its 1910 catalog image. The 303 is one of the rarest Sears kit homes. (Images: Rachel Shoemaker/Oklahoma Houses By Mail; Rebecca Hunter/Sears Modern Homes)

Besides cameras, field guides, and Google Earth, the biggest tool in the house-hunter's arsenal is other househunters. "The interest is gaining," says Shoemaker. "More people are becoming aware." Community members use Facebook and a large blog network as a sort of digital workshop, sharing pictures and comparing notes until they settle on a house's model and pedigree. (Judith Chabot, a St. Louis-based kit house enthusiast, has a good blog roundup.) Some have begun contributing to a nationwide master list, hoping to pinpoint exactly where all the houses are, and to enable further study. There are currently 4,400 entries—which, if Mutch's estimate is correct, leaves about 48,000 to go.

As for that unassuming Fort Wayne bungalow, it was indeed a Sears house—an Osborn, to be exact. The caravan of experts showed the homeowner the model in Houses By Mail, answered her questions, and continued on down the block. Another Sears house discovered and, perhaps, another enthusiast brought into the fold.  

Update, 6/3: Houses By Mail was first published in 1986, not 1996. Thanks to David Franks for the correction, and we regret the error.


Found: Baby Falcons, High Up on NYC Bridges

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A falcon on the Marine Parkway Bridge. (Photo: MTA/Patrick Cashin/CC BY 2.0)

Peregrine falcons like to nest in high-up places, and in New York City that means they’re on top of bridges. Every year, the Metropolitan Transit Authority sends a research scientist up on top of its bridges to check for falcon chicks. This year, they found 10 in all, half male and half female.

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An MTA research scientists on the Throngs Neck Bridge. (Photo: MTA/Patrick Cashin/CC BY 2.0)

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Three baby falcons on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. (Photo: MTA/Patrick Cashin/CC BY 2.0)

The MTA puts nesting boxes on top of the bridges, and in the spring, they band the baby falcons, in order to help keep track of the number of peregrine falcons in the city and to identify them if they get sick. Otherwise they leave the falcons, which are on the state’s endangered birds list, to do their thing, turning from fluffy bawls of claws and teeth into sleek killing machines.

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A falcon on the Marine Parkway Bridge. (Photo: MTA/Patrick Cashin/CC BY 2.0)

Bonus finds: Oldest root stem cells, possible Canada lynx kitties

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. 

Fireflies That Blink In Sync Return To Tennessee

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As most nighttime wanderers know, fireflies look pretty scattered. Though their ons and offs may mean something to each other, to us, they tend to look random, like a tiny light show gone haywire.

But for a few weeks each year, a group of fireflies at Great Smoky Mountains National Park does something a little different—they blink in sync.

As detailed on the NPS website, there are at least 19 species of firefly in the park. Only one, Photinus carolinus, is synchronous. Big groups of airborne males all flash at once, like programmed Christmas lights. The females then respond more faintly, from the ground. Visitors are spellbound by the strobing. "This takes seeing fireflies in your backyard to another level," one, Chuck Steinfurth, told the Miami Herald.

The fireflies start up at different times depending on soil, temperature, and other factors known only to bugkind. This year, they got going around the turn of the month. Viewing events are scheduled through June 7th, though getting in this year might require an extremely powerful wish—the spectacle has become so popular that the park only issues parking passes through a lottery. If they let everyone in who wanted to come, the fireflies would likely get trampled, park spokeswoman Dana Soehn explained to WBIR.

As for why they do it—that's still a mystery, the park says. It might be that the males race to flash first, and end up blinking at the same time. Or maybe they just like the attention.

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

The First Woman to Drive Around the World Wore Men’s Breeches and Had a Pet Monkey

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The great Aloha Wanderwell. (All photos: © The Nile Baker Trust/Richard Diamond)

An 18-year-old woman dressed in men’s riding breeches and a scout’s cap lay restless at the foot of the Great Sphinx in Egypt. It was 1924, just two years after archeologist Howard Carter opened the tomb of Tutankhamun. “I could not bear to sleep," the woman wrote in her memoir, Call to Adventure. "I sat on a sand dune and watched the full moon sail in a sky that was a like an upturned goblet of dark, blue glass.

"There were trillions of stars, and not far away I could see the outline of the Sphinx, smiling and sightless.”

This was one of many adventures that Aloha Wanderwell, recorded during her seven-year automobile expedition around the world. Newspaper headlines deemed her the “World’s Most Widely Traveled Girl,” “The Amelia Earhart of the Automobile,” and “The First Woman to Drive Around the World in an Automobile.”

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Wanderwell was only 16 years old when she joined the global expedition alongside "Captain" Walter Wanderwell.

In 1922, Wanderwell joined a race to visit the most countries in the world alongside a former Polish seafarer, who went by the stage-name "Captain" Walter Wanderwell, a camera crew, and a monkey named Chango. Traveling in a small caravan of Model T Fords, she trekked through 43 countries and four continents, journeying through battlefields in France, living with natives in Borneo, and disguising herself as a man to sneak into Mecca and pray. Wanderwell, who served as a cinematographer, photographer, translator, driver, actress, and seamstress, filmed and wrote detailed descriptions of parts of the world that hadn’t been documented yet. Her publicized adventures around the world skyrocketed Wanderwell to fame throughout the 1920s and 1930s, but much of her life remains a mystery today.

“Aloha Wanderwell has been a secret for many, many years,” says Richard Diamond, Wanderwell’s grandson. Diamond archived Wanderwell’s life online, curating all the photographs and films she took during her travels.  

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One of Wanderwell's favorite locations was Cairo and visting one of the world's greatest wonders.

Wanderwell was born Idris Galcia Hall in Winnipeg, Canada. She was a self-described independent tomboy who often rebelled against her teachers at the convent school she attended in France. If her ambitious personality didn’t turn heads, her 6-foot-tall stature, blonde hair, and movie star looks were a rare sight, writes Tracy Landecker in an essay that proceeds Wanderwell’s memoir, Aloha Wanderwell: Call to Adventure. When her father was killed in combat during the First World War, Wanderwell wanted to assume the role of the head of the household. She wrote in her 1939 memoir:  “I ached for action, but I did not know in which direction to go. I had already bothered my mother on the subject of my earning money. I wanted a career and I wanted to become the man of the family.”

At the young age of 16, she came across an ad for the Wanderwell Expedition in the Paris Herald that read, “Brains, Beauty & Breeches — World Tour Offer For Lucky Young Woman…. Wanted to join an expedition...Asia, Africa..”

Valerian Johannes Piecynski, who took on the name Captain or “Cap” Walter Wanderwell, started the Wanderwell Expedition under his Work Around the World Educational Club in 1919 after the end of World War I. Originally, he and his former wife began the “million dollar wager endurance race” to help restore international travel and promote the League of Nations. The entire expedition was funded by souvenir pamphlets, speaking engagements, and screenings of the footage collected on the road. However, when Cap and his wife split, a spot opened up for a new secretary and driver. 

Wanderwell, who was fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, and spoke some Russian, Chinese, and Japanese, was perfect for the role and landed the job. When she joined the expedition in 1922, Cap gave Idris Galcia Hall her stage name, and she became Aloha Wanderwell. “We were off!” she wrote. “The whole world was out there. I reaching for it, the world reaching for me—ecstasy—the ravishing thrill.”

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A poster depicting scenes from the Wanderwell Expedition.

Although she began as a secretary and assistant, she quickly became both the star and director of the films taken throughout the expedition. Wanderwell was in charge of Unit 2, the Model T Ford nicknamed Little Lizzie, which endured a lot of hardships throughout the expedition. But the Model T Fords were picked specifically for this trip.

“This adventure epitomizes the durability of the Model T Ford and demonstrates the bravery of a pair of adventurers who helped forge the early days of romantic motorized exploration,” Dan Treace, a preserver of the Model T car, wrote in an essay about the expedition. The Model T Ford was sturdy, but lightweight and Cap knew replacement parts could be easily found around the world.   

Wanderwell described particularly grueling driving conditions in India and China. She wrote about moments when the team used kerosene in place of gasoline, mixed water and elephant fat for oil, and crushed bananas to collect grease. In 1924, China was also struck by a civil war which made gasoline difficult to come by. She wrote how they had to tow and push the cars through mud and rivers—in Africa, they needed oxen and mules to tow the vehicles.   

She was also a fierce feminist, proudly sporting the required breeches and men’s attire. She wrote about one encounter with a particularly snarky clerk in Marseilles:

“That a little thing like a balky clerk in a Marseilles shipping office should stop me on the way to rejoin our expedition was beyond belief. If I had really been a young man instead of being dressed like one in riding breeches, white shirt, leather jerkin and uniform cap, with my leather flying-helmet slung on my blanket rolls and knapsack, the whole story would have been different. As it was, I was a girl who had her own way about most things.”

During the expedition, the Wanderwell’s fell in love and were married in 1925 when they were in the United States leg of their journey. It’s said that the marriage prevented the FBI from arresting Piecynski who was said to possibly be a German spy during the First World War. The couple continued their travels even after having two children, going abroad to Cuba and South Africa. However, Cap’s adventures were cut short in 1932 when he was mysteriously murdered by an unknown assailant aboard the couple’s yacht, The Carma. At first, a previous member of one of the Wanderwell's trips known to have a grudge against Cap was accused, but his alibi was foolproof and the court found him innocent. Cap’s murder still remains an unsolved crime.  

A year after the Captain’s death, Wanderwell married Walter Baker, a former cameraman who helped Wanderwell start his Work Around the World Educational Club. Landecker wrote in her essay that the media had a field day with the murder and Wanderwell’s second marriage, reporting that she was strangely detached from Cap’s death. The couple ignored press, and continued traveling and filming.

“She kept excellent records, journals, diaries, and scrapbooks during her Around the World trips between 1922 to 1937,” says Diamond. “Unlike Amelia [Earhart], Aloha and Walter filmed every mile for her travel lectures that they would show at each city they stopped in.”

Her descriptions were vivid and captivating. In this excerpt, Wanderwell gives her perspective of the food riots in Germany after World War I:

“There was Germany, with lines of hungry, emaciated persons standing before bakery stores; there were shots fired into crowds, and over everything a terrible, unceasing unrest. It was like traveling along the rim of a spurting volcano.”

Many of her photographs and footage are preserved in various museums and educational institutions. Her film of the Bororos people in Brazil, now archived in the Smithsonian, was the first ever captured of the villagers. Wanderwell submitted her documentary Car and Camera Around the World to Henry Ford, but in 1942 he decided that Little Lizzie’s accomplishments on the expedition did not hold enough historical significance to be showcased in the World War II war effort.    

Wanderwell continued to give lectures and presented her experiences throughout the 1970s, and then shifted to curation and collecting footage in the 1980s. She died on June 4, 1996 in Newport beach, California at the age of 89.

While her life is relatively unknown, Landecker describes Wanderwell’s significance in history poignantly, “She presents a quality that we see over and over in this heroine: She never asks permission for anything.”

American Idol: Coyote Edition

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If you've never had coyotes wandering in your backyard, languorously howling and yapping at the moon, then you're missing out on quite the pre-sleep soundtrack. But this snippet of video can give you a sense of the haunting power of coyote vocals.

The first, piercing yip-howl might catch you off guard (if you'd like to prepare yourself, it's 18 seconds in). This soprano is solo, though coyotes often croon in chorus. While the howl of wolves is longer, lower, and slower, coyotes produce short howls interspersed with yips, yaps, and barks. This diverse set of sounds, as well as the surrounding environment's distortion effects, often gives the illusion that one coyote is actually a whole pack—an illusion known as the Beau Geste effect. 

So, if you're camping in the backcountry and think you hear a symphony of coyotes nearby, comfort yourself in knowing that it might just be one. Key word: might.

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.

Watch A Museum Visitor Touch and Destroy a Priceless Clock

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Even a broken clock is right twice a day, but that still doesn’t mean you should go around putting your hands on delicate timepieces, a lesson one man recently learned first hand when he knocked a rare clock off the wall of the National Watch and Clock Museum in Pennsylvania.

As seen on a security video shared by the museum, a recent visitor to the clock museum seems to have been discussing the inner workings of an elaborate wall-hanging clock designed by artist James Borden, when he decides to give it a little help. The clock itself is an abstract piece of work featuring a number of swinging components including dangling weights reminiscent of those found in a grandfather clock. The clock was not running, so the man in the video seems to try to give it a kickstart by fiddling with the weights, while another interested visitor looks on. Unfortunately, the museum guest in question was no master watchmaker, and after lifting one of the weights, the clock became unbalanced and fell off the wall.

The one-of-a-kind clock crashed to the ground, and pieces of it can be seen scattering across the floor. The touchy visitor can then be seen trying valiantly to reseat the clock, before giving up and walking away to notify museum staff. 

As NBC Philadelphia points out, the National Watch and Clock Museum has around 1,500 clocks on display at any given time, and not all of them run. The museum staff is happy to get them ticking on request, but as this video shows, it’s best not to take things into your own hands. Borden says that no real harm was done, and the clock is fixable.

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