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The Linguistic Turf Wars Over the Singular 'They'

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The use of the word "they" has been debated by linguists and copy editors alike. (Photo: zebicho/shutterstock.com)

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A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Of all the turf wars that have complicated the landscape of grammar over the past few hundred years, the most complicated and frustrating may be that of the singular they.

It may be the most controversial word use in the English language—because it highlights a hole where a better-fitting word should go.

It creates a conflict between writers and editors who want things to follow the natural symmetry of Latin, and people who find they the only logical option for referring to a single person without a gender attached.

And there has been a lot written about it—it's something of a hot topic this year, thanks to a vote by the American Dialect Society to name they its word of the year for 2015.

“In the past year, new expressions of gender identity have generated a deal of discussion, and singular they has become a particularly significant element of that conversation," Ben Zimmer, the chairman of ADS' New Words Committee, explained back in January. "While many novel gender-neutral pronouns have been proposed, they has the advantage of already being part of the language.”

The group voted the way it did in part because of they's increasing importance as a way to make room for people who don't fit a predefined gender binary. (It helps that the word drops the added complication of "he or she.")

If the English language did permanently embrace a singular gender-neutral pronoun, it would be far from alone—254 of the 378 languages tracked by the World Atlas of Language Structures Online don't specify for gender at all with their pronouns.

Alas, this problem isn't as easy to solve as a vote from a dialect society. The problem is something of an emotional one—and it's sparked debate for centuries.

For some word purists, the singular they is the linguistic equivalent of an ingrown hair, but for others, the solutions for getting around the problem are way messier.

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Geoffrey Chaucer, user of the singular they, along with Shakespeare and Jane Austen. (Photo: Public Domain)

For centuries, the singular they was not only accepted by the public but by some of our most famous authors—Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, and Shakespeare, just to name three.

But around the late 18th and early 19th century, something happened: Critics of this specific usage appeared. The reason for this critical reassessment came about partly out of prescriptive vibes around the English language at the time. Long story short: We wanted English to be more like Latin, and that meant rethinking the use of plural nouns in singular contexts.

In 1975, researcher Ann Bodine broke this down in a landmark paper, Androcentrism in Prescriptive Grammar: Singular ‘They,’ Sex-Indefinite ‘He,’ and ‘He or She’. The text, republished in the 1999 book The Feminist Critique of Language, notes that the influence of Latin grammar played an important role in the increase of rules around the English language—and specifically gave the world the "generic he," a term that followed Latin form but didn't mesh with modern concerns about gender equality.

Around the time of Bodine's paper, things started to turn against the generic he. Students started complaining about its use at Harvard. But they faced resistance from the professors who taught them.

"The fact that the masculine is the unmarked gender in English (or that the feminine is unmarked in the language of the Tunica Indians) is simply a feature of grammar," a group of 17 professors and teaching fellows wrote in a 1971 open letter published in the Harvard Crimson.

And Bodine noted that the then-recent attempts to ditch the generic he were really attempts to roll back a controversial change.

"Intentionally or not, the movement against sex-indefinite 'he' is actually a counter-reaction to an attempt by prescriptive grammarians to alter the language," she wrote.

Grammarians didn't give up on squashing the singular they easily. Some who tried to remedy the problem caused by this attempt to make English more like Latin have been tried to patch things up. For hundreds of years, English-speakers have tried to invent words that fill the language's most unsightly gap. Nearly all of them have failed.

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The New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society decided to make the singular they its word of the year. (Photo: PSD photography/shutterstock.com)

University of Illinois professor Dennis Baron, a longtime supporter of the singular they, has long maintained a list of gender-neutral pronouns that people have attempted to add to the English language, the most recent example from 2015, but most of the interesting ones from the 19th century. Terms like "thon," "e," and "um" were among the most prominent attempts to improve the language. Additionally, Baron notes, people complaining about the common use of the singular they were fairly common during the 19th century.

"If only occasionally found in the best writings, it is because the proofreader interposes his correction before the sentence reaches the public, for every editor [knows] how often even careful writers make the mistake," a writer for the Findlay, Ohio Jeffersonianwrote in 1877.

Baron, in introducing the concept in an essay, is quick to stick a knife in its heart before it even had a chance to fly:

These pronouns fill a need, but none has been widely adopted, hence they are the words that failed. What has succeeded is singular they, which arose naturally in English hundreds of years ago, and is used both by speakers and writers concerned that their pronouns be inclusive, and also by many who don’t give the matter much thought at all.

Even in the modern day, some critics of the word use persist. Blogger Freddie deBoer, for example, argues in an essay that the singular they issue is an infrequent problem at worst.

"Using 'their' for singular antecedents is one that I think people need to just give up on," deBoer writes in his essay. "As I've argued, it only occurs in a very limited set of circumstances, and those circumstances very unlikely to produce confusion about what is meant."

Over at the dearly departed site the Toast, linguist Gretchen McCulloch blames the root cause of this fissure on "a series of historical accidents," but suggests that the issues raised by grammarians are practical in nature, even if the solutions are in many ways worse than the problems in the first place.


Really, if this problem is ever to go away, it's going to be up to professional copy editors to speak up. And at least some of them appear to have made peace with the change.

Last year, prominent Washington Post copy editor Bill Walsh (who was not a football coach for the San Francisco 49ers) drew a line in the sand in favor of the singular theyrevealing in a deeply nerve-wracking blog post that he had been wanting to make the big change for years, despite how divisive it was for some.

"What finally pushed me from acceptance to action on gender-neutral pronouns was the increasing visibility of gender-neutral people," he wrote.

Walsh, the author of some popular books read by copy editors, is seen as something of a trailblazer on this issue, even though he pledges his desk will use the term sparingly.

Still, it won't be easy to win over everyone else in the journalism world. The issue is that many copy editors simply struggle with the conundrum that the word creates, some treating it as a pet peeve even though it's common in regular speech.

In a blog post last year, the Baltimore Sun's John E. McIntyre noted the lingering controversy, citing one Facebook feed that called the singular they an "idiot epicene."

"I know any number of editors who share this visceral dislike of the singular they," McIntyre wrote. "It cuts no ice with them that linguists have demonstrated widespread use by reputable writers for centuries … or that we somehow contrive to use you in both singular and plural senses without growing red-faced and shouting."

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Copy editors have differing views on the use of a singular they. (Photo: Billion Photos/shutterstock.com)

Copy editors may never find peace on this issue, even though the American Copy Editors Society has been laying the groundwork for such a change, noting with positivity last January the American Dialect Society's move to make the singular they its word of the year.

But a shift like that isn't enough to convince one of the toughest copy editors in the business—Mary Norris, the "comma queen" at The New Yorker.

"Many ACES stalwarts—copy editors, journalists, grammarians, lexicographers, and linguists—stand ready to embrace the singular 'their.' But not us. We avoid it whenever we can," Norris wrote earlier this year.

In that same blog post was a video where she discussed how her desk replaced an instance of the singular they in a George Saunders story with a generic he. (The linguistics blog Language Loghad a field day with this whole saga.)

And, sooner or later, the Associated Press Stylebook will probably weigh in as it has in other linguistic controversies, like, recently, when it decided to allow “more than” and “over” to be used interchangeably.


 Perhaps the most interesting comment on this whole issue comes not from a vintage study or an old academic paper, but from a Christian Science Monitor columnist who wrote about they last month.

Ruth Walker, the writer of the publication's Verbal Energy feature, makes an astute comparison between grammar and "desire lines"—the pathways that people create on their own when the sidewalks prove inefficient paths.

Walker isn't exactly psyched about the singular they right now, but she sees the case for it going forward.

"Whatever the motivation, and however we feel about it, singular they is a kind of shortcut through the traditional grammar rules that is coming to be more accepted all the time," she wrote. "It’s like that shortcut at the library—which rejoins the main path, and may someday get paved." 

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

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The Original Assassins Were a Feared Cult That Ordered Hits All Over the Middle East

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Alamut Castle, home of the Assassins, can be seen perched atop this massive rock. (All Photos: Sherwin Shams)

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If you were a member of a secretive, banned religious sect in the 11th century, chances are that you’d be fairly concerned about your safety and security, and you would probably go to great lengths to hide that knowledge from the public eye. With the penalties for holding such heretical beliefs ranging from forced conversion and wealth confiscation to torture and death, it could even make you quite paranoid.

One such leader, Hassan-e Sabah, took that paranoia to an extreme level, holing himself up in an impregnable mountain fortress for the rest of his life while orchestrating a stealth campaign of targeted killings of political rivals. Perched high upon a massive rock in the Alborz Mountains in what's now modern-day Iran, the castle was the stronghold and nerve center for one of the most mysterious and feared groups ever to operate in the Middle East: the Assassins. 

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The fortifications as seen from the valley.

A millennium after the sect Sabah founded became a byword for secrecy, fear and terror, the only approach to the Assassins’ former hideout remains a narrow, winding path that weaves its way around the back and sides of the mountain, barely wide enough for a single laden donkey to make its way up to the summit–the way in which it was first constructed. Squinting up against the sun, the earth-colored rock north of Qazvin, Iran, seems unclimbable, not to mention unconquerable.

Despite the fact that the path has since been refurbished, shored up, and provided with handrails to allow easier access, it’s a tough uphill walk. To launch an attack up it, however, would be laughable against even the slightest opposition from overhead.

In Sabah’s day, rocks were reputedly kept in readiness along the cliff edges, and could be dropped across the path from complete safety, letting gravity and solid mass make short work of any foolish enough to attempt to take the castle.

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Approaching the internal castle keep – the inner stronghold where Hassan Sabah ruled.
Nor would have a siege have been an easy task. Built deep into the foundations of the fortress were massive storehouses of grain and water silos, estimated to have been enough to keep the garrison alive for up to two years. The sheer height and strength of the rock rendered traditional siege engines like catapults irrelevant, while also making any enemy troop movements visible from afar. There was no water source to poison or cut off, and no weak point to target.

So far, so secluded. But how would a ruler command from such a position of isolation? The answer lay in Sabah’s extended network of spies and agents across the region, from modern-day Afghanistan to the Mediterranean shores of Syria and Egypt. An adept and well-traveled purveyor of intrigue and conspiracy, in hushed meetings from city to city he had witnessed first-hand how his co-religionists were already skilled at hiding in plain sight, and knew that he could rely on their devotion.

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The sole entrance to the castle, with modern doorframe.

Having been converted to Ismaili beliefs—a sect of Shia Islam that was seen as radical and unorthodox—as a teenager, he swore an oath of allegiance and then journeyed across Persia and the Islamic world of the time, eventually arriving in Egypt to continue his religious education. Details on Sabah’s life vary from source to source, as first-hand sources are rare and much of what is known about him comes from unverifiable myths and rumors intended to paint a negative picture of the Assassins and their beliefs. What we do know, however, is that when he returned to Persia from Cairo around the year 1080, he was an ardent preacher, attracting people to his cause, and spreading his network from place to place.

The vizier of the time, Nizam al-Mulk, of Persia’s Seljuq Empire, was strongly opposed to these activities, believing them to undermine the state and spread sectarianism. He therefore sent a party of soldiers after Sabah to bring him in and silence his preaching. Sabah, who was in Qazvin, escaped into the nearby Alborz mountains, where he hid for several years.  

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An overview of the castle structure along the ridgeline, as seen from the highest lookout point.

It was here that he came across Alamut castle for the first time, and realized that it would make a perfect base for his operations. In what would be a first clear example of his particular brand of cunning and manipulation, he orchestrated a bloodless coup against the then-ruler of the castle, infiltrating the guards and domestic staff with his own followers.

Having gained control of this incredible defensive position, Hassan-e Sabah began his much more widespread campaign of terror, targeting select individuals who opposed him and his sect, and dispatching killers to take them out.

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A water silo dug deep into the rock.

It is generally believed that the group used highly trained followers to get close to targets and either threaten them or dispose of them. These agents, like modern sleeper cells, would often lie in wait for years, working their way into positions of influence and responsibility before waiting for the command to strike. One of the most notable of the killings attributed to them was that of Sabah’s nemesis, the vizier Nizam al-Mulk, who was stabbed on the road to Baghdad by an assailant posing as a wandering holy man, or dervish.

So well-known and feared were the group that today's word “assassin” entered the English language directly as a result of their actions. However, this was not the name they used for themselves, and the word’s origins are disputed. One theory is that it comes from the narcotic hashish, which was supposedly used as a form of mind control while indoctrinating youthful recruits, or as a way to make their agents fearless in the face of almost certain death. While romantic, this idea doesn’t seem to have too much evidence behind it; other etymologies propose that it was a Western mishearing of a word meaning “faithful,” or a term of disrespect used by their enemies.

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A view from the castle of some of the spectacular rock formations sheltering the valley.

These enemies were certainly numerous and, faced with a hidden threat which could strike anywhere, even within the supposed safety of their own palaces, they concocted wild stories about the Assassins’ beliefs, rituals and practices, leading to claims of the most extreme behavior taking place within Alamut’s walls.

While many of these derogatory accusations are hard to verify, what we do know about the stronghold is that, besides the parts meant for defense and survival, there was a well-stocked library—one of the world’s foremost repositories of holy texts at the time, housing practically the only collection of the Ismaili scriptural writings. There was also a series of inner chambers, secluding the leader still further from the outside world and any possible treachery—only his most trusted deputies and guards were allowed to approach him directly. This paranoia apparently served Sabah well, however, as he lived safely in isolation within the citadel for nearly 35 years. 

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The view over the village below, still inhabited after more than 900 years. It is now famous for its cherry orchards.

His dynasty survived him, with the Assassins occupying Alamut for more than 130 years after his death. Eventually the fortress fell, though not to direct military means. When the Mongols invaded and conquered several other Assassin castles in the region in 1256, word was sent from their leader to surrender the castle without resistance, in exchange for the lives of all contained within. For the second time the citadel changed hands, again without bloodshed, and the reign of the Assassins at Alamut came to an end. The new conquerors demolished much of the fortress, rendering it uninhabitable, and burnt almost all of the priceless library.

For this reason, much of the documentary evidence of Hassan-e Sabah and the Assassins was lost, so the castle, perhaps appropriately, retains many of its mysteries and secrets to this day. A devoted organization with a ruthless leader at its head: it’s hard not to wonder what era-defining plots and schemes took place within these walls, high above the plains below.  

NASA Refuses To Return Apollo 11 Bag They Accidentally Auctioned Off

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Houston, we have a problem—with that astronaut’s bag you auctioned off.

According to the Associated Press, a bag which was used on the Apollo 11 mission, and which carried the first lunar sample, was mistakenly sold at auction last year. And now it's at the center of a legal dispute, after the owner sent to the bag to NASA for verification and the space agency refused to give it back.

The circular white bag was sold at government auction in February of 2015 for $995, to collector Nancy Carlson of Inverness, Illinois. But it that wasn’t the bag that was supposed to be sold. Due to an inventory number mix-up, the Apollo 11 bag was confused with a similar bag from the Apollo 17 mission which flew in the lander, but was never taken out. The Apollo 11 bag is special due to its significance to the original mission, and because its fibers are said to be laced with lunar dust.

NASA didn’t become aware of the mix-up until Carlson sent the bag in for authentication. Once it was back in the hands of the space agency, NASA decided that is where it belonged, and now they won't give it back, instead offering Carlson a refund, which she declined, before later suing NASA for the bag's return.

But NASA is now asking a judge to rescind the purchase, leaving it up to a jurist to decide who might ultimately be holding the bag. 

Found: A Lot of Planets, Minerals, and Strange Creatures in 'No Man's Sky'

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Planets and creatures. (Photo: No Man's Sky)

At midnight of this past night, after a whole lot of anticipation, the game No Man's Sky was released. It is a game about exploration: you find yourself on a planet, somewhere in the universe, and your task is to survive and explore. The expanse of the game is so vast that it's essentially unlimited.

Here’s what it looks like:

As you move around, the game generates new planets—you could play forever and never reach its end. On those planets are alien creatures and structures, which you, the explorer, can name if you like. The Vergehas a good description of what you might find as you move about a planet:

It looks like some sort of gigantic rodent, complete with a wispy rat-like tail, but that’s about all I can learn, as it darts away as I approach it. The building, meanwhile, is much more useful. Though abandoned, I find a mysterious, still-functioning computer inside. I choose a selection of numbers at random and apparently discover a new star system. I’m not really sure what I did but it has supposedly endeared me to an as-of-yet undiscovered alien race. Also inside are blueprints for a technology that lets me scan my surroundings, making it possible to locate resources and secret, undiscovered areas. I put it to use right away: about five minutes from the settlement I find a mysterious block, called a "knowledge stone." When I scan it, I learn a new alien word. I do this a few more times and start to really get a vocabulary going.

Here's a taste of what players have found in the first hours after the game's release.

You might start on a planet like this:

And then move on:

 

A photo posted by Ricky Rod (@rickyrod) on

Some have advantages:

Some do not:

Some are just cool.

 

A photo posted by Bill Conway (@bewlconway) on

Some of the animals are noble-looking:

Some are not:

 

Someone already found Rango #nomanssky #nomansskyhype #nomansskygame

A photo posted by Z4PP3D (@z4pp3d) on

Players have also discovered that alien animals don't work exactly like Earth animals.

This is just the beginning, though: we can only imagine that as people explore these worlds they will find stranger and more unique creatures and places. There could be a whole new taxonomy of alien creatures. We'll have to wait and see what players discover in this great wide digital world.

When Ancient Romans Had Their Clothes Stolen, They Responded With Curse Tablets

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A Roman curse tablet from Bath. (Photo: Mike Peel/CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Famed for its healing waters and once home to Jane Austen, the southwestern British city of Bath also boasts a history rich in Roman magic. In antiquity, individuals came in droves to soak in Bath’s hot springs—and to use “curse tablets” to get revenge on people who stole their clothes.

In 1979, when archaeologists first excavated the Roman-era King’s Bath, the murky waters of what was once a sacred spring yielded hundreds of tiny objects. These votives included about 130 rolled up pieces of metal dating from the first few centuries A.D. These were curse tablets, common across the Greco-Roman world from the fifth century B.C. to late antiquity.

The standard definition of the curse tablet, as put forth by David R. Jordan, is: “inscribed pieces of lead, usually in the form of small, thin sheets, intended to influence, by supernatural means, the actions or welfare of persons or animals against their will.”

Although Julius Caesar first invaded Britain in the 50s B.C., he didn’t press his conquest. A century later, doddering Claudius, he of I, Claudius fame, brought Britain into the imperial fold. Over the next several centuries, an influx of new people brought new goods, ideas, and gods. 

In ancient Bath, curse tablets were often addressed to Sulis Minerva: a conflation of the goddess Sulis, who was said to guard the spring, and her Roman counterpart, Minerva. The Romans employed such religious hybridization, calledinterpretatio Romana, translating deities of the people they conquered into their own pantheon.

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An ancient Bath bath. (Photo: Grand Parc - Bordeaux, France/CC BY 2.0)

Christopher Faraone of the University of Chicago, who has written extensively on ancient magic, delineates two categories of curse tablets. The first is binding curses, or defixiones, “primarily used to restrain competitors” in love, sport, and law. The second category, “prayers for justice,” included the Bath tablets, which mostly discussed theft. Here, tablet writers essentially appointed deities as divine bounty hunters, tasking them with tracking down the thieves and administering justice.

Curses from many urban centers addressed “mundane daily problems,” says Andrew Mark Henry, a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University studying late antique religion. “Theft would have been a relatively common occurrence, as it is today, and curse tablets would have served as a readily available strategy for someone to cope with theft in lieu of a robust police force.”

If the victim of theft knew the name of the person who had wronged them or of potential suspects, they would include it on the tablet. “I have given to the goddess Sulis the six silver coins which I have lost,” reads one Bath tablet. “It is for the goddess to exact them from the names written below: Senicianus and Saturninus and Anniola.”

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One of the curse tablets found at Bath. (Photo: Mike Peel/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Next, says Faraone, devotees would demand “on the grounds that justice be performed, that the god or goddess make this person sick until they come to the sanctuary and return the material.” One tablet reads, “Solinus to the goddess Sulis Minerva. I give to your divinity and majesty my bathing tunic and cloak. Do not allow sleep or health to him …who has done me wrong, whether man or woman, whether slave or free, unless he reveals himself and brings those goods to your temple.”

The Bath tablets may have been displayed publicly and read aloud to the public before being dropped in the sacred pool. Faraone compared the Bath texts to those of the Sanctuary of Demeter at Cnidus, Asia Minor; those texts were set up publicly so that worshippers, who would hear them being read aloud, “might provide missing information about unsolved crimes and … might also bring social pressure to bear upon the alleged criminals … and thereby resolve the conflict.”

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Modern Bath, built atop the ancient springs. (Photo: Diliff, CC-BY 2.5)

A cheap way of seeking justice, curse tablets were accessible to many. “Most people estimate ancient literacy around the 10-15 percent range, and curse tablets were definitely written by everyone in that group,” says Katherine McDonald, a research fellow in classics at Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University. This would have included slaves, craftsmen, and soldiers. But the tablets are “far from showing us the whole range of people in Roman society.”

Perhaps the visitors at the baths were poor—their tablets often complained about the theft of small items—so they couldn’t afford to hire guards or buy slaves to protect their belongings while they bathed. Or maybe the survival of so many tablets discussing theft was due to the durability of the materials on which they written.

The relative ease of making a tablet allowed many people to curse, says Stuart McKie, Ph.D. candidate at Open University studying curse tablets. “All you really needed was a piece of lead and a vague understanding of what to do.”

This Bridge Has a Cool, New Feature: A Bike Path to Nowhere

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Later this week, Montreal's Mercier Bridge will reopen after two months of intense construction. The bridge links the borough of LaSalle with the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, and is the fastest way to get from the city to the U.S. border. Post-fixup, it boasts a couple of cool amenities: a brand new deck, and even better, a two-lane bike path.

The bridge hasn't provided bike access since 2009. But delighted cyclists should think twice before trying this one out. As the Montreal Gazette explains, it disappears halfway across the river.

The repairs were done on the south side of the bridge, which falls under federal jurisdiction. The south side is, instead, provincial turf. "There are as yet no plans to continue the path on the provincial side of the bridge," writes the Gazette. "Nor are there current plans to link it to bike paths at the foot of the bridge on the South Shore side."

The Gazette goes on to explain exactly why this is—it has to do with planning for the future, the difficulties of coordinating different branches of government, and other muddy concerns. But the immediate consequences are clear. For the foreseeable future, the Mercier Bridge will tempt two-wheeled commuters with a bike path just out of reach—one that, if they used it, would plunge them straight into the water.

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

How to Tell an Australian From a New Zealander

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Australia and New Zealand, mostly affectionate southern siblings. (Image: Public Domain)

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To Australians and New Zealanders, the differences between the two countries’ cultures, accents, and national characters are glaringly obvious. To the rest of the world, Australia and New Zealand can often get mentally mushed into one archipelago where everyone speaks with oddly shifted vowel sounds and uses the same inscrutable slang.

Add the fact that the countries’ flags are nearly identical—despite multiple campaigns to overhaul the design of each one—and you’re left with a high propensity for mistaken identity.

There are, however, some subtle yet easily spotted hallmarks of each nation’s accent and slang that will allow you to recognize the true home country of a suspected Auszealander. 

The first clue is in the vowels. New Zealanders switch the “i” sound (as in “bit”) for something resembling a “u.” The classic example of this is that they say “fush and chups” instead of “fish and chips.” A New Zealand “e” also sounds like an “i”—“bed” will be more like “bid,” while “he may be dead” sounds like “he maybe did.” To make things extra challenging, the “i” sound in a New Zealand accent is more like an “e.” Watch out for the six/sex confusion. It has felled many. 

Australian vowels tend to be more drawn out, with their pronunciation leisurely and flexible. This is particularly apparent in the word “no,” which can sound like “nor,” “nahhh,” or the multisyllabic “naaouuuo,” depending on how much time the speaker has available. The “i” sound for Australians can be closer to an "ee" or "oi."

This video breaks down the vowel differences in a way that's easy to hear:

If you don’t have an ear for accents, the easiest way to spot an Australian or New Zealander is the slang. Australians wear thongs on their feet in summer; New Zealanders wear jandals. Australians carry an esky to a picnic to keep their soft drinks cool; New Zealanders carry a chilly bin for their fizzy drinks. Both countries, however, say “bring a plate” to mean “bring food.” Commit this to memory before turning up to a picnic carrying only a piece of china.

Over-reliance on questions as statements is another way to spot an Australian. Phrases like “How good’s the weather today?” and “How tasty does that fairy bread look?” are not intended to garner responses, but merely function as statements of communal appreciation. (Fairy bread, incidentally, is sliced white bread spread with margarine, then covered in sprinkles. It is a staple at children’s birthday parties in Australia and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand.)

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Fairy bread can be a red herring—while popular in Australia, it is also found in New Zealand. (Photo: Dani Lurie/CC BY 2.0)

If vowel sounds and slang aren't giving you any clues, there is one final way to determine the speaker's home country: ask yourself whether you find their accent attractive. Time Out's 2015 Global Dating Survey of 11,000 people found that Australian accents were ranked fourth most alluring in the world, right above French and Italian. New Zealanders, sadly, did not appear in the top 10. The accent may be enjoyable to listen to, but apparently it's not that sixy.

During the Nazi Occupation of Norway, Humor Was the Secret Weapon

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Anti-Nazi graffiti on the streets of Oslo, reading "Live" above the monogram for the Norwegian king, who had fled when the Germans invaded in 1940. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

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One cold morning in April 1940, the streets of Oslo awoke to the sights and sounds of thousands of invading German troops, paving the way for an occupation that would last for the next five years. One of these Nazi officers had the misfortune to pass an elderly gray-haired lady on the street, who responded by remarking on his rudeness and smacking his hat off his head with her cane. After he apologized and fled, she chuckled to herself: “Well, we'll each have to fight this war as best we can; that's the fourth hat I've knocked into the mud this morning.”

It was one of the first displays of the humor resistance that would accompany the underground papers and military operations against the Nazis until 1945.

The occupation years in Norway were characterized by German-imposed food shortages, press censorship and far-fetched propaganda that rebranded the well-known “heil” salute as an ancient Norwegian tradition dating back to the Vikings. In the face of such cultural theft, the underground press, amounting to around 300 publications and involving as many as 15,000 people, printed materials to combat the propaganda and distributed news from BBC Radio. This was done in collaboration with the exiled government in London, aiding the efforts of Milorg, the resistance group that eventually grew to 40,000 soldiers strong by the end of the war.

Meanwhile on the civilian front, the Norwegians spent their subsequent holidays greeting each other with “Merry Norwegian Christmas” as opposed to the usual “Merry Christmas,” and unified by wearing red stocking caps that served as symbols of their Norwegian identity. 

Displays of such kind were unusual in their particularly defiant attitudes. In comparing the Norwegian jokes to those of Russia and Romania which tended to communicate terror of the oppressors, Kathleen Stokker observes in her book Folklore Fights the Nazis: “The Norwegian material portrays instead the oppressed taking the upper hand, deprecating the occupiers to their faces and refusing to be intimidated or even to alter the slightest details of their lifestyles in deference to German regulations.” As survivors of a two-month long resistance against Nazi invasion—second in timeframe only to the Soviet Union’s efforts—it seems the Norwegians didn’t give up quite so easily even when things looked bleak.

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German vehicles arriving in Oslo, May 1940. (Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-0762-281-30/Möller/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The Germans did not appreciate the defiance, which they viewed as support for the Russian Red Army, and ended up confiscating any red item of clothing. As Stokker writes, “the police department had trouble finding room for all the confiscated red clothing.” The punchline was obvious: “Their rapidly growing supply of toggery led to jokes about women coming to the police department asking directions to the dress department.”

What the officers did appreciate, however, were all the Aryan women at their mercy. As one SS document states, it was “expressly desirable that the German soldiers conceive as many children as possible with Norwegian women, regardless of whether it is within or outside of the bonds of matrimony.” The now notorious Lebensborn program was a state-sanctioned organization whose aim was to breed as many Aryan children as possible. In Norway the numbers were particularly high, with as many as 12,000 children born to these unions. The rest of the population did not look too kindly on these pairings, as women involved with German officers could get their heads shaved or be branded with swastikas. The hostility was such that even after the war, the children were ostracized and often sent away – one such child fled to Sweden to escape a similar fate, and is now world-renowned as Frida of ABBA. To be sure, many women pursued these affairs on their own, but some were subject to serious consequences if they didn’t oblige the German advances.

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The Norwegian Parliament Building under Nazi occupation in May 1941. (Photo: Public Domain)

One expression of this horrible, uncomfortable situation was personal diaries that were circulated among friends, and sometimes even published. A typical entry, like this one by Cecilie Schou-Sorensen, a young woman in Oslo who kept a diary during this time, reads:

“A nurse is walking home in the evening, a German follows her; neither one speaks. He follows her up the stairs, but she manages to squeeze through the door without him. The next day she gets a notice that if she doesn't apologize to the German, she'll have to go to jail for three months.”

Such diaries, which contained numerous humorous anecdotes and widely circulated jokes, were also subject to severe punishment for their owners. Following a 1942 decree that announced the death penalty for perpetrators of anti-Nazi sentiment, the diarists resorted to creative ways to hide the books away from middle-of-the-night raids. If discovered, the Germans would have found multiple jokes consistently depicting them as no better than animals, such as the following:

A German officer who has heard about the sassiness of the street urchins in Bergen asks one of them: "Have you seen a car full of monkeys drive past?"

"What's the deal? Did ya fall off?”

But these sentiments were best reflected in real-life incidents where the Nazi officers became the public objects of ridicule on the city trolleys (trikk), which was the primary mode of transportation for Norwegians and Germans alike from all classes and backgrounds. In this unique setting, a unified “ice front” formed spontaneously against the Nazis — that is, no one wanted sit near them, even if it was the only seat available.

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A 1944 notice stating: "Forbidden to stand as long as seats are available." (Photo: Public Domain)

In response, the Germans again imposed strict punishment, saying that it was “Forbidden to stand as long as seats are available.” But the hostile attitude of the citizens of the stolen country remained. A few months after the invasion, one underground paper wrote, “What the Germans suffer most from here in Norway is the coldness they feel from the people, and their exclusion from contact. Let them feel this chill to their very marrow.”

Even newspaper corrections were repurposed as resistance. As the Nazis imposed press censorship from day one, publications resorted to “innocent typos” to get their message across. When asked to print that the Germans were “superior in men and cannons,” (menn og kanoner) editor Oskar Hasselknippe of Ringerikeblad instead wrote "men and rabbits" (menn og kaniner). Another paper, Norges idrettsblad, made up a news item announcing winners of a ski contest, but the athletes’ initials spelled out the sentence “God damn Hitler.”

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An anti-Nazi stamp from 1941 showing Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian politician and German collaborator, with the words "Quisling's conduct has brought dishonor and contempt on himself". These were printed in Britain and released by Royal Air Force aircraft. (Photo: Public Domain)

Such acts did not go entirely unnoticed by the Germans. After using a mocking drawing of Hitler and Quisling on the cover in 1943, Norske Ukeblad was shut down for the remainder of the occupation, though it immediately reprinted the edition upon liberation.

These seemingly harmless jokes and images, especially those of the symbolic trolleys, were significant in boosting morale and presenting a unified front for the Resistance, which wasn’t always in harmony. Neither was the Norwegian population always as strongly resistant towards the Nazis. In fact, Nasjonal Samling, Norway’s fascist party, saw a membership that rose exponentially, counting up to 43,400 in 1943. But this was where humor came to play such an effective role, as it could easily unite people from all segments of society. 

Perhaps it’s no wonder why the Germans took the humor resistance so seriously, as it undermined the very superiority they were desperate to show. Indeed, the Germans may have considered these acts a threat that could significantly weaken their authority in the country, as such civil disobedience was punishable by arrest, while distributors of the underground press were sent to prison camps or even executed. Stokker wrote about the effectiveness of such civil disobedience, stating that “humor served this vital function both by creating an early forum for articulating fundamental resistance principles and by contradicting the prevailing Nazi propaganda.” Nothing sums this up so well as the symbolism of the trolley: “The image of a united trikk- ridership ridiculing the Nazi passenger suggested a consensus of values consistent with the resistance tactic of marshaling Norway's traditional democratic social ideals against the Nazis' precept of rule by the elite.”


Watch Women Face Off in an Intense 1927 Tug of War Competition

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Two teams of seven to eight mighty women line up along the length of the rope, ready to demonstrate their strength. In this 1927 clip, the Sudbury, England tug of war team known as the “Nippies” pull with all their might to get their opponents to slip past the line.

“The girls think it great fun,” the video archived by multimedia resource, British Pathé, says.

Tug of war is a serious and competitive sport. The rules of the game are simple: pull the opposing team across a specific distance from the starting center line to win.

Between 1900 and 1920, the game was played at six Olympics—but only by men. The first tug of war competitions at the Games allowed teams of five to six, and members were permitted to participate in other Olympic sporting events. 

Boots and shoes play an important role in tug of war. For example, in the 1908 Olympic Games, the Liverpool Police team were criticized for their footwear which people said were “enormous shoes, so heavy in fact that it was only with great effort that they could lift their feet from the ground.” In the above video, the teams kneel on the ground for their shoes to be inspected for any spikes. At the beginning of the clip, you can see a man walk down the line and check the heel of one team member's shoes.

The International Olympic Committee removed tug of war from the Games in 1920 after deciding there were too many sports and too many athletes competing. Ever since, countries and players passionate about tug of war have organized associations and world competitions. The Tug of War International Federation still continues to push for the sport to be reinstated into the Olympic Games. If the game ever returns to the Olympic Stadium, let’s hope women get their chance to show their prowess.

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 Wawa Fan's Confession: I Think I Might Like Sheetz

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A Sheetz. (Photo: Ildar Sagdejev/CC BY-SA 4.0)

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It’s hard to say quite when it started, or where, other than in an anonymous cluster of fast-food options along a Pennsylvania highway, but in recent years I have felt my loyalty wavering.

Since moving to the Philadelphia suburbs at age 11 and later landing in New Jersey, I have been, naturally, on team Wawa. I may not have a Wawa tattoo; I may not have wed there. But when it came to gas station/convenience store/made-to-order food chains, I never questioned which was the best one, because the answer was so clear.

A few years ago, though, a drive across Pennsylvania included a stop at Sheetz. The doubt grew stronger in the past year and half. Sheetz shone as a quick, cheap and tasty food option at the midway point of a five-hour drive, and I started to wonder: Had I been wrong all along? Was Sheetz not only equal to but maybe even...better than Wawa?

For people living outside of the mid-Atlantic region, and in particular New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, this might not mean much. In short, Wawa and Sheetz are both chain stores that started as Pennsylvania dairies and survived the 20th century by becoming convenience stores. They both sell customizable sandwiches and other quickly prepared food, which customers order on touch screens. Sheetz had the touch screens first and for many years was more likely to build stores that were also gas stations. These days, though, stores from either chain tend to offer both food and gas; they both have surcharge free ATMs, as well.

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A Wawa. (Photo: Minale Tattersfield/CC BY 2.0)

Sheetz and Wawa might pretty similar on paper, and in May, Chris Gheysens, Wawa’s CEO admitted as much to the Philadelphia Inquirer“Sheetz and Wawa, underneath the veneer of what the stores look like, are very similar—food service, lots of innovation around fresh food,” he said. “The Sheetzes run a good company. We're friendly.”

But this is how great rivalries work—they build between two places, teams, companies or people who are similar enough that they must compete. It’s the details that matter most. Trust me when I say that, as a Wawa fan, even considering that Sheetz might be an acceptable place to buy food is a betrayal of the highest order. If I let on to my little sister, a true Wawa loyalist, that I had dared to consider the merits of Sheetz, she would probably disown me.

I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that I was letting my heart get in the way of my head (and my stomach). I decided that, to end this dilemma, I would have to pit Wawa and Sheetz against each other and judge them as fairly and objectively as I could. I would consider speed, quality, variety, and price, along with cleanliness, aesthetics and other X-factors. At the end, I would know the truth.

Wawa: Circa 9:00 p.m. on a Friday night

The route my husband and I take from Brooklyn to Ithaca, New York, his hometown, goes across northern Jersey, into Pennsylvania and up past Scranton, until we cross back into New York just south of Binghamton. Along the way, there are many opportunities to stop at Wawa or at Sheetz, and after much consideration, we decide the fairest way to compare them is to arrive with an appetite—we would stop at Wawa on the way up and Sheetz on the way back down of one weekend trip. 

Some of our criteria would be quantitative: We would time how long it takes to order and how long it takes to receive our food. We would weigh cost, calories and the number of food options available. In our qualitative judgments, we would try to test like against like. One of the sandwiches must be made-to-order and exactly the same at both meals; the other, a wild card—a tempting but unique sandwich from the menu of specialties. But we would also consider the decor, the representation of local culture, and the general vibe.

We arrive at Wawa around 9 p.m., and it’s bustling enough. There are maybe a dozen people in the store, and we’re not the only ones ordering food. The touch screen is bright with the swirling promotional colors of the summer Hoagiefest, which means any classic sub sandwich is just $4.99.

Our standardized sandwich is a turkey sub: wheat bread, turkey, provolone cheese, lettuce, cucumbers (not a hoagie standard, but that’s what made-to-order is meant for), mayo, and mustard. You can quibble about whether that’s a classic enough sandwich to judge on, but it has this going for it: it is very hard to mess up. The touch screen tempts us into adding a side, apple slices.

When we consider wild card options, it’s quickly clear that we must choose some variety of cheesesteak, not only because it’s a Philly classic but because there are so many inventive cheesesteak options. We land on the buffalo chicken cheesesteak, because it sounds amazing, and though I had planned to order a plain iced coffee, we are lured by the fancier coffee drinks and add an iced mocha latte.

The stats: Two minutes, forty-five seconds to order. Two sandwiches, one side, one fancy coffee. Total cost: $14. Total calories: 1,760.

While we wait for our order, I poke around the rest of the store. There are plenty of pre-made food options, including wraps, hummus and veggies, fruit and cheese, and a quinoa salad. Wawa still has its own brand of milk, as well as tea and apple juice. You can still buy eggs and bacon here, as well, and there are mini bottles of Martinelli’s apple juice.

But I don’t have much time to look around. The food comes in two minutes and fifty seconds—almost exactly as long as it took us to order it.

We eat outside on the back hood of the car, with Wawa’s goose logo flying above us. The store’s exterior might be called tasteful, but right now, it just seems drab.

The turkey sandwich does its job right. Good turkey. Good lettuce. The bread may be a little chewy, but the mayo level is spot on. The buffalo chicken cheesesteak, which had the potential to be gross, is not gross. There are perhaps too many jalapenos. For a person who didn’t like jalapenos, there would definitely be too many jalapenos.

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A chicken cheesesteak sandwich, under the gentle light of the Wawa sign. (Photo: Sarah Laskow)

But the chicken is tasty, and the cheese sauce gooey. Bonus: I do not feel like I have consumed anything that is going to sit like a rock in my stomach for the hours of driving to come. The mocha latte tastes like pure sugar syrup, but overall, we are satisfied.

In the very clean restroom—there’s even a clean restroom promise on the door—I overhear another woman talking on her phone about the merits of Wawa and how she only has to spent five dollars here, compared to nine at 7-11. My heart is warmed, and I start to think that Wawa might win after all.

Sheetz, around 4 p.m.

It’s much more exciting to arrive at Sheetz. The gas station pavilion is soaring and bright red, and inside the store, the high ceilings make the place feel larger than it is. Sheetz also has a clear advantage over Wawa in variety. Here they have a deep fryer and a grill: you can order burgers, wings, onion rings, fried pickles, and jalapeno poppers. If Wawa is either a better version of Subway or an almost-as-good version of a local hoagie shop, Sheetz is that, plus a short-order lunch counter—a Subway and McDonald’s combined.

“My money’s on Sheetz,” my husband says, as we walk from the car, and I have to agree. As much as our Wawa meal had made me think Wawa might hold up, now that we were here, I felt the siren call of Sheetz again.

The first temptation comes quickly. As we order the turkey sandwich, Sheetz offers us the option of the “ultimate topper”—fries. This is not sandwich sacrilege so much as a regional innovation. Every sandwich at Pittsburgh’s famous Primanti Bros. comes with fries on it (and in fact there is a rare Primanti’s branch less than a five minute drive from this Sheetz). We want the fries. We decline only for the sake of the experiment.

When the menu of sides appears—where Wawa tried to lure us apple slices or a cookie—we have a second shot at deep-fried greatness. We given the choice of fries, fried cheese curds, or mozzarella sticks. We go with the mozzarella sticks, even though the wildcard sandwich I order is called the Big Mozz. It is basically a chicken parm sandwich, with a phalanx of mozzarella sticks smushed between chicken and bun. It takes the idea of putting fries on your sandwich and translates it into the Italian idiom. It will either be delicious or a stomach-bomb of greasy grossness.

Three minutes, forty-five seconds to order. Two sandwiches, one side, one fancy coffee. Total cost: $20. Total calories: 2,440.

The temptations at Sheetz do not end at the touch screen, though. As I wander the store, I find fruit, cheese, hummus, vegetables and wraps, same as at Wawa. But there are fewer pre-made options and fewer healthy ones. Instead, there are Shweets. (Sheetz had a thing where it gives things cute, Sheetz-y names: subs are Subz, wings are Shwingz, and so on.) There are Sheetz-branded donuts of all sorts, including piña colada-flavored donut holes, which I am weirdly curious about. There are cookies and parfait, and “muddy bites,” the delicious cereal/chocolate/powdered sugar concoction otherwise know as puppy chow. There’s even fancy Talenti ice cream in the fridge.

When the coffee, a frozen Kona mocha arrives, it lives up to this promised expertise in sweet. It is everything a sugary coffee drink should be. Sweet, but not too sweet. Icy, cold, with a sprinkle of tiny chocolate chips. It takes a whole four and a half minutes to arrive, though, and the rest of the food even longer, closer to five minutes. We settled outside—Sheetz has tables to sit at!—and start to eat.

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The Big Mozz is not a photogenic sandwich. (Photo: Sarah Laskow)

The first warning sign is the Dr. Pepper-branded BBQ sauce. As a Dr. P fan, I’d always been intrigued by it, and in preparation, I had asked for an extra thing of BBQ sauce at Wawa to compare. The Wawa BBQ sauce had been surprisingly subtle—not too sweet, interestingly spicy. The Dr. Pepper BBQ sauce, though, was everything BBQ sauce should not be. I recoiled at the first taste, of sickly sweet cherry syrup, with a backdrop of jalapeno spice. It was a fruity chili sauce, of the kind you buy from William & Sonoma but which is never actually good. Also, it had cost an extra 40 cents.

We had expected the turkey sandwiches to be basically identical—how much variation could there be between two simple turkey subs?—but from the first moment, it was clear that there would be differences. The turkey was cut into thick slices that were not entirely appealing; there was too much lettuce heaped on. The cucumber were visibly less crisp. When my husband took a bite, his judgment was immediate. The Wawa sandwich had been better. There was something off with this one—the lettuce was less crisp, the turkey less flavorful. In the end, half the sandwich went uneaten.

The Big Mozz, though, tasted just like a chicken parm sandwich, but better. It wasn't gross or greasy; it had an extra oomph and crunch to it. 

But it had a lot to make up for, after the BBQ sauce and the turkey sandwich. The mediocre sandwich, in particular, violated the promise the stores in the Sheetz/Wawa game make. The main attraction of these places is that you can get decent food for fast and cheap, and you can control what exactly goes into it. If you don’t like tomatoes, it’s not a special request to keep them off your sandwich. If you don’t like mayo, no big deal. But if your food doesn’t taste good, the illusion that you’re doing something smart by choosing this over McDonald’s or Subway is shattered. You're just eating cheap, crappy food.

There's no accounting for taste

Still, even after the Great Turkey Sandwich Disappointment of Scranton, I wasn’t sure Wawa was the winner. I started tallying up the categories in which each meal had won.

On quantitative factors, Wawa was the clear winner. We had gotten our order in more quickly, received our food more quickly, and paid less. We also ordered fewer calories—and while the mozzarella stick were responsible for a big chunk of those, even counting those out, the Sheetz order was still less healthy.

On the food and drinks, Sheetz had more variety, better coffee, and the better wild card sandwich. But it had done badly on the standardized test and that BBQ sauce was a nasty surprise. Wawa had done the simple thing, the turkey sandwich, right.

There were other positives in Wawa’s column. While Sheetz had more overall variety, Wawa had more options for vegetarians and more obviously healthy options. It also upsold less aggressively. At every tap of the touch screen, Sheetz was trying to sell us more topping or sides for 40 cents here, a dollar there. One suggestion I got for comparing the two was "ease of ordering while stoned" (a very real scenario), and I believe that anyone ordering stoned at Sheetz would end up padding the price of their order with some guac here, some fries, hey, why not some extra cheese curds and four different dipping sauces. It would add up. Wawa’s upsell was more gentle; a stoned person might end up with an extra cookie or two, at most. Sheetz was more fun, though, more razzle-dazzle. And it had a place to sit.

The Wawa CEO, Gheysens, had told the Inquirer that the difference between his company and Sheetz was “just the veneer of the brand.” In a head-to-head match up, he said, “We come off a little bit more conservative and they would come off a little bit more flashy.” When they did compete directly, he said, “neither of us have a lot of fun.” It’s fun to go up against a big company like McDonald’s by doing something a little different. It’s hard to go up against your rival, when the distance between you is smaller.

For me, Wawa wins. Maybe, even after all the careful examination, that’s just blind loyalty talking, or the fear of losing even a smidge of my little sister's love. But I was a vegetarian for many years, and I like that Wawa takes care of people who don’t eat meat. I want to know that my basic turkey sub is going to taste good—those reliable, simple sandwiches are why I love Wawa to begin with. If I had to eat at one of these places every day—and some people do!—I would choose Wawa.

That doesn’t mean I will shun Sheetz, though. That Big Mozz sandwich was good.

The World's Largest Aircraft Has Just Left Its Hangar

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The world's largest aircraft—some 302 feet long, 143 feet wide, and 83 feet wide, and weighing over 22 tons—is the hybrid of an airplane and airship.

Capable of taking off vertically and horizontally, a British company has spent some £25 million, or around $33 million, trying to make the Airlander 10 come to life, according to the BBC.

This weekend, it finally emerged from its hangar, looking very white and very fleshy, like the rear end of a Scandinavian who hasn't sunbathed nude in many years. 

The butt has been in development for nearly 10 years, first by the U.S. Army, and then, in its last stages, by a company called Hybrid Air Vehicles, which built it at a hangar in Bedfordshire, around 50 miles northwest of London. 

The company says it can be used for a variety of purposes, from surveillance to carrying passengers. 

Its unclear when Airlander might actually fly; first a battery of tests must be completed. But when it does, like extremely pale skin on a beach, you probably won't be able to miss it. 

8 Roadside Attractions Vying to be the World's Biggest

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The world's largest lobster? (Photo: Dennis Jarvis/CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Roadside attractions are all about the showmanship, and few things draw a crowd like claiming that something is the biggest in the world.

Of course, holding onto that claim is no easy task. Something about creating over-sized attractions seems to breed a certain competitiveness among people, leading to oddities that compete for the same title: largest lobster; largest garden gnome; most giant ball of twine.

Below are eight roadside attractions that are competing to be the largest. You can decide for yourself who the real winners are.

The Largest Lobsters

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Betsy the Lobster. (Photo: karlnorling/CC BY 2.0)

There are two giant roadside lobsters that want to be the biggest catch. One, a giant crustacean living in an artist's village in Florida, is around 40 feet long and named "Betsy." Then there is the self-proclaimed "world's largest lobster" in Shediac, Canada, which is over 30 feet long, and has a little fisherman standing just inside of its claws. Depending on how you measure them, either could probably claim the title, but either way they are both pretty impressive specimens.   

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The Shediac Lobster. (Photo: Mark Goebel/CC BY 2.0)

The Largest Frying Pans

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The Brandon Frying Pan. (Photo: sawdust_media/CC BY 2.0)

Breakfast, anyone? No matter how hungry you are, America's rival oversize griddles could make a meal large enough to sate your appetite. The giant frying pan in Long Beach, Washington has a surface measuring nine feet and six inches across. It is a replica of an oversized metal pan that was once made so a woman could strap bacon to her feet and skate across it. Then you have the largest frying pan in Iowa, somewhat of a pretender to the throne to world's largest. It's a bit smaller than its Washington counterpart at nine-foot-three from rim to rim, but a hilariously large pan nonetheless.   

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The Long Beach Frying Pan. (Photo: Joel Friesen/CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Largest Garden Gnomes

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Elwood the Gnome. (Photo: Ethan Prater/CC BY 2.0)

Gnomes are known for being small, but there are at least a few that are trying to be the world's largest. In Accord, New York, there is the 13-foot-six "Gnome Chomsky," who is part of a farm-based mini-golf course. Built in 2006, Chomsky briefly held the title of world's largest garden gnome, but has since been overshadowed. In Ames, Iowa, there is "Elwood," a 15-foot-tall garden gnome that would still be the tallest were it not for an 18-foot fiberglass rival in Poland. Now Elwood is known as the largest concrete gnome. Still a fine distinction.

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Gnome Chomsky. (Photo: Facebook_1091730875/Atlas Obscura)

The Largest Balls of Twine

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The Cawker City Ball of Twine. (Photo: Ethan Prater/CC BY 2.0)

The giant ball of twine is the quintessential roadside attraction—both impressive and a bit silly. So it's no surprise that there is more than one vying for the title of world's largest. In Cawker City, Kansas there is a big ball of string that measures over 11 feet wide. Over in Darwin, Minnesota, there is another 13-foot-wide ball that once claimed to be the world's largest, but has now recontextualized itself as the world's largest twine ball created by one man. No one knows what the point of such a ball could be, but they sure are nice to look at.  

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The Darwin Ball of Twine. (Photo: Scott McLeod/CC BY 2.0)

The Largest Fire Hydrants

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The Busted Plug Fire Hydrant. (Photo: Jason Eppink/CC BY 2.0)

The world's largest fire hydrants might not have any water flowing through them, but what they lack in moisture they make up for in stature. The original largest hydrant, which measures 24 feet tall, was created as a stunt to promote 101 Dalmations and somehow ended up in Beaumont, Texas where it has been on display ever since. But then a 40-foot-tall hydrant was installed in Columbia, South Carolina, a work of public art by local artist Blue Sky. They've both held the title of world's largest, but it's unclear if this has made them any more popular with canines.

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The Beaumont Fire Hydrant. (Photo: Lori Martin/Shutterstock)

The Largest Eggs

article-imageThe Winlock Egg. (Photo: Ray Schauweker/CC BY 2.0)

Not even the dinosaurs had eggs as large as the contenders for world's largest egg. In Winlock, Washington, a 12-foot-long egg is perched on a 10-foot pedestal. It has been rebuilt a number of times since its first appearance in the 1920s to celebrate the area's booming egg industry. And in Mentone, Indiana is a similar monument to their own egg industry, a 10-foot-tall ovoid emblazoned with a picture of the state, and the city nickname, The Egg Basket of the Midwest. Both have yet to hatch or even crack. 

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The Mentone Egg. (Photo: Stepshep/CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Largest Chairs

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World's Largest Office Chair. (Photo: Qqqqqq/CC BY-SA 3.0)

The battle of the largest chair may be the most contested competition in all of roadside attraction history. Countless giant chairs have been created all over the world, as both attractions and pieces of carpenters' showmanship. In Anniston, Alabama there is a 33-foot tall chair (with a 15-square foot seat), that holds the claim to the world's largest office chair, while in Casey, Illinois you can find the world's largest rocking chair, which stretches over 56 feet high. 

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World's Largest Rocking Chair (Photo: Drew Tarvin/CC BY 2.0)

The Largest Crosses

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The St. Augustine Cross (Photo: Richard Smith/CC BY 2.0)

Giant Christ figures can be found across the globe, but giant crosses are a thing too. The most commonly cited winner of largest cross in the world is The Cross At The Crossroads in Effingham, Illinois. At 198 feet tall, it makes a compelling case, but there is an even taller cross in St. Augustine, Florida that is over 200 feet tall, giving it a claim as the world's tallest—even if it can't hold onto the world's largest. Both of them are impressive displays of faith nonetheless.

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The Effingham Cross (Photo: Doc Searls/CC BY-SA 2.0)

See NASA Test the World's Most Powerful Rocket With a Special Camera

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By 2018, NASA's Space Launch System, which is replacing the Space Shuttle program, might have finally reached space, if things remain on schedule. Until then, there's a lot of work to be done, including testing the massive rockets that will power the system's capsule into the air. 

And recently, part of that work was captured by a specially made camera in the video seen above, which shows footage of the rocket firing. The surprisingly precise footage is a rare example of what a rocket blast actually looks like. 

Most of the time, in film, television, and in real life, rocket blasts appear like this: 

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(Photo: NASA)

That's because the flames are too bright for the camera, overexposing the image and rendering the flames as white. But in the images that NASA captured, you can see the flame in all of its colorful glory, with shades of purple and blue streaming out. 

NASA invented a whole new type of camera to make this happen. They call it the High Dynamic Range Stereo X project, and they use it to capture multiple exposures of the blast, combining them into one, evenly-lit image: what you see in the video above. 

Capturing the image wasn't a complete success, though, according to NASA. After a few minutes of recording, the camera's power was mysteriously cut off. The reason? The rocket's blast, which shook the ground enough to unplug the cord. 

Mark Twain Had a Lifelong Feud with the United States Postal Service

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Mark Twain, pictured in 1907. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ds-05448)

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When it came to speaking his mind, Mark Twain was rarely one to pull punches. Twain was often critical of others, whether it was calling President Theodore Roosevelt a “bully” or pillorying the writings of Jane Austen (“Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone,” said Twain in a 1908 letter.) However, Twain’s most heated rivalry was not with another author or president but rather an entire branch of government: The United States Postal Service.

Twain’s opposition to the post office spanned several decades, with the acclaimed author making many of his gripes public. He published newspaper articles with harsh criticisms of new regulations, publicly feuded with members of the service, and even scored a meeting with Britain’s Postmaster General in an effort to makes overseas shipments more affordable. The creator of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn put nearly as much effort into his battles with the postal service as he did into his storied works. So what was it about the post office that made this man of letters clash with a service that conveyed letters? 

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A crowd waits in a Post Office, c. 1890. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-89496)

If prompted, most people could come up with valid complaints about the post office, but few have harbored a resentment toward it quite like Twain. During a short-lived position in the office of Nevada senator William Stewart in 1867, he even tried to prevent new ones from being built. When the senator received a request for a post office in a Nevada mining camp, Twain took the liberty of responding, stating that there was no need for a post office, and offered a new jail instead.

Twain often shared his frustrations about the post office in editorials for local newspapers, with particular ire reserved for Postmaster General David M. Key, a senator who served in the role from 1877 until 1880. Key’s new, stricter regulations on mailing letters and packages infuriated Twain to no end. In an 1879 letter to the Hartford Courant, Twain expressed discontent at Key’s most recent addition to the postal regulations, which required envelope addresses to be more specific (addresses before were not required to list streets or states, often times a name and city would suffice). Twain complained that these new regulations were a waste of ink, time, and money for all citizens. “Isn't it odd that we should take a spasm, every now and then,” Twain remarks, “and go spinning back into the dark ages once more, after having put in a world of time and money and work toiling up into the high lights of modern progress?”

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David Key, the Postmaster General, c. 1860s. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-cwpbh-04495)

Twain’s editorial prompted a response from Thomas Kirby, the private secretary to the Postmaster General, who tried to explain that the new regulations were created with good reason. Twain had Kirby’s letter published in the Hartford Courant with his response attached, which accosted Kirby for “meddling” in affairs that did not concern him. “You seem to think you have been called to account,” Twain opens. “This is a grave error. It is the Post Office Department of the United States of America which has been called to account.” Twain lambasts Kirby for several paragraphs, going on to refer to the Post Office as “the dog” and Kirby as “the tail” and states that Kirby “endeavored to wag the dog” when he should instead be waiting for “the dog to wag you.”

However, Twain was not piqued by all post office workers and rules. When a letter announcing Twain’s election to the New York Press Club was mailed without the proper postage, a postmaster named James paid the postage himself and forwarded the letter, which included a party invitation, to Twain. Unfortunately, Twain was unable to make the reception, but sent a response explaining the mishap, and complimenting James. 

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A post box in 1911. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-hec-00561

Twain wrote, to the New York Press Club: “Had your unpaid letter passed through the average Post Office of the land I should have received my invitation about three months from now through the Dead-letter Department, after much correspondence [&] ruinous outlay of postage. I [wish] that there were more Postmaster Jameses in the land.” 

Of course, Twain also took offense to the use of a Dead Letter Office, where some 30,000 daily letter and parcels that could not be delivered for failures of handwriting, postage, or other reasons ended up, in Washington D.C. In an 1876 letter to the Saturday Evening Post, he gripes about how a letter sent to him was one penny short on payment, forcing it to be sent to the Dead Letter Office. The post office mailed a request for the missing penny, and when Twain sent the payment (through a mailed envelope, tacking on another three cents) and received the letter, he was saddened to discover it was only a doctor’s bill. The sardonic author sent his letter to the Post covered in stamps “amounting to thirty-nine cents, when three cents would doubtless have answered every purpose,” states an editor’s note.

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Mark Twain writing in his study, c. 1870s. (Photo: Internet Archive/Public Domain)

He didn’t just criticize it; Twain actively tried to improve the mail service himself. The author once pitched his invention of a “postal check” to the service, a sort of pre-paid, mailable money order that could be cashed at a post office and used to purchase items. Twain prepared a lengthy pitch, which included a scripted dialogue of a “Wisdom Seeker” explaining the check to a “Statesman.” A bill regarding a postal check reached Congress but was never adopted.

Twain even considered taking the position of postmaster in San Francisco, he revealed in an 1868 letter to Elisha Bliss, then the president of the American Publishing Company. The author had received the support of a number of high-ranking officials in the city, where he was then living, but bowed out when he realized it was too strenuous a job to be able to work and write simultaneously. One has to wonder if the acceptance of the position would have remedied Twain’s discontent for the postal service or exaggerated it. Maybe a shifted point of view would have changed Twain’s opinion on the department entirely. 

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The Mark Twain commemorative stamp being unveiled in 2011. (Photo: Dannel Malloy/CC BY 2.0)

In 1907, Twain complained of the high cost to send a letter to England, stating that the established price of one dollar per pound of letters was “downright robbery.” Twain even organized a meeting with the British Postmaster General on the subject, which he saw as “petty larceny”, where he proposed that mailing letters between England and America should only be a penny each way, stating that the lower price would increase the number of letters sent, and would result in higher revenue for the postal service. Needless to say, his proposal was not adopted.

Twain had strong feelings about the requirement of stamps on letters, too. "When England in 1848 invented stamps,” Twain remarked before his meeting with the British Postmaster General, “my feelings were decidedly anti-English.” Twain saw stamps as an inconvenience and stated that his letters “arrived all the same” without them. Ironically, the USPS released a commemorative stamp depicting Twain in 2011, meant to honor his legacy as a hero of American Literature. Twain would surely be furious at the idea of a “forever” stamp that only worked domestically. If he wanted to send a complaint to England, he’d have to add two more.

A Massive Blue Ox in Minnesota Was Felled By A Thunderstorm

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Paul Bunyan’s best pal, Babe the Blue Ox recently got cow-tipped by a heavy storm. The giant fiberglass replica of the folklore favorite was thrown to its side late last week according to the MPR News.

The 20-foot tall ox stands outside of Minnesota’s Paul Bunyan Land theme park, next to an animatronic statue of Paul Bunyan that greets guests as they enter the park. Given Paul and Babe’s strong ties to Minnesota (they are said to have created the 10,000 lakes, among other fantastic deeds), there are a number of monuments and replicas of the figures to be found, and the amusement park’s versions are some of the most iconic.

However, not even the legendary strength of the ox could keep it from tipping over in the face nature’s wrath. The thunderstorm had knocked out power across parts of Northern Minnesota, knocking over both power lines and trees.

Luckily, the only damage the statue sustained was a broken horn, which was able to be repaired. The theme park’s owner was able to borrow a crane and hoist the mythic ox back to her feet the next morning as well. Babe is once again standing tall, but her brief takedown is a good reminder that the destructive power of nature is no myth.


The Microsoft Office World Championships Feature Blood, Tears, and Very Little Sweat

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Athletic regalia at the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championships. (All photos: Copyright Certiport)

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Ryan Catalfu's hard work is finally paying off. Over the past year, he has put in hundreds of hours of training, earning a spot on the renowned United States team. Last week, he traveled far from home, met his competition, and settled in for the week of his life. And on Monday, August 8th, the 17-year-old North Carolinian woke up ready to take on the best in the world.

When he heard, later that day, that his event had been delayed, Catalfu didn't let it faze him. He got in a few more practice reps. He called up an old coach for last-minute pointers. He ate some lunch. And when his name was finally called, he walked into the arena calm, focused, and ready to absolutely crush everyone at Powerpoint 2013.

Catalfu is a proud contender in one of our era's most unique challenges—the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championships. Held annually since 2001, the MOSWC pits software-savvy 13- to 22-year-olds against their peers from around the world. Some take home scholarships, medals, and their home countries' undying adoration. Others leave with nothing but sore fingertips and slightly bruised pride.

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A competitor shows some Ecuadorian pride. 

During the competition, students are given a complex printed document and asked to recreate it, pixel for pixel, in their chosen program. They're judged on accuracy and speed. "It's kind of like the nerd Olympics," says Craig Bushman, who has run the event for six years, and is Vice President of Marketing at Certiport, the company that runs Microsoft's certification tests. "It's very intellectual. But the same emotions that the Olympic athletes go through—anticipation, sizing up the competition—are there."

Forty countries, from Australia to Macedonia to Zimbabwe, sent delegations to Orlando, Florida for the 2016 Championships. Competitors sport their countries' flags and trade patriotic pins; this year, Team Thailand wouldn't even hit the pool without their matching orange jacketsThis nationalism is tempered by incredible good-naturedness. "Even though there's this competitive spirit, everyone's very nice," says Daniela Pavlova, a Powerpoint 2013 competitor from Bulgaria. "It's a very nice and friendly atmosphere."

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Team Brazil, representing. 

If the MOSWC is the nerd Olympics, Catalfu, who hails from Cary, North Carolina, is this year's beloved underdog. Last year, after beating every other American in Microsoft Word, he placed second at Worlds, losing the gold by a hair. "I was so close," he told the Raleigh News & Observer at the time. "I wish I knew what was different, or what I did that was wrong."

He wanted another shot—but MOSWC rules don't let former competitors try again in the same event. To avenge last year's loss, Catalfu had to switch to a whole new sport: Powerpoint. So, like Michael Jordan signing with the White Sox, he went back to square one.

He spent this year training hard (at last count, he said, he had taken over 300 practice tests) and, unlike with Jordan, it paid off: he won another slot on the US team. "I really loved it here, and so I really, really wanted to come back," he says. "That was my motivation."

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Team Thailand, getting their blood up.

The organizers embrace this. Yesterday, they had former astronaut Story Musgrave talk to the students about the benefits of licensing ("Can you say you're a pilot without a license? No!"), and then took them all to Disney World, like true Super Bowl champs. Today, they'll announce the winners during a pomp-filled ceremony, which will be livestreamed. "It's always very emotional," says Bushman. "There's screams and excitement. When the students return to their home countries, many of them are received at the airport as conquering champions."

That's a strong response for what is essentially a gussied-up certification program. But although tech-savvy youths like Catalfu will likely end up running the world someday, reaping all kinds of social and economic benefits, this isn't always clear to the teens themselves. Many of them credit the MOSWC with increasing their confidence, and getting them excited about their potential future careers. It translates a different kind of hard work into the hoopla usually reserved for winning football teams.

If nothing else, these teens could teach Olympians a thing or two about sportsmanship. "Whoever wins, I know that person is talented and has worked very hard, and I will be happy for them," says Pavlova. "Everyone here is already winners."

Update, 8/10: As was announced this morning on the livestream, Ryan Catalfu took home the gold in Powerpoint 2013. "The category was so competitive, he won by one point," says Certiport PR Manager Allison Yrungaray. 

Found: An Underground Meth Lab in a Walmart Parking Lot

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It’s not at all uncommon for police to find meth labs. Just in the past couple of days, police have found a meth lab in Detroit, a one-pot meth lab in Ohio,another three in Wisconsin, a "shake-and-bake" meth lab in Alabama, a lab in Pennsylvania less than 500 feet away from a school, and, presumably, many other meth labs that didn't make the local news.

But it’s not every day that someone finds an underground meth lab.

Police in Amherst, New York, just outside of Buffalo, were on a routine preventive patrol, spot-checking places that people “might be using for no good,” Captain Scott Chamberlain told the local NBC affiliate. In a culvert below a Walmart parking lot, police found evidence of meth production, in an underground space tall enough to stand up in.

This discovery did not interrupt the normal course of business at the Walmart. “As Walmart shoppers ran their errands, two first responders in full hazmat suits were lowered beneath the parking lot through a man hole,” WIVB reported.

Police are now considering securing the culvert so that people can no longer use it for such purposes. 

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. 

A Visual History of the Human Pyramid

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Sportsmen in France form a human pyramid, 1919. (Photo: M. Rol/Ullstein Bild/Getty Images)

In the 16th century, Franco-Italian artist Juste de Juste sketched a series of prints showing men defying the laws of gravity and balance. They stand on each others shoulders, muscles popping. While there’s speculation about why Juste created the drawings, there’s no doubt about what we’re looking at: a (logistically impossible) human pyramid.

While their standard triangular layouts are usually associated with cheerleading stunts and circus acrobats, human pyramids take some extraordinary forms around the world. Take the Catalan region of Spain, where, since at least the 18th century, groups have competed to create castells—castles—for festivals. Effectively human towers, these precarious-looking structures are only completed once the top tier moves into position. Given they can run to ten levels high, the participants study and practice for months to ensure the safety of the group. 

By digging through old archives, Atlas Obscura has found a variety of human pyramids from history—featuring acrobats and gymnasts, involving everything from horses to motorbikes. Here, a short visual history of this feat of balance, strength and showmanship.

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Juste de Juste's etching of an impossible human pyramid from the 1540s. (Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Rennes/Public Domain)

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A 17th-century carving of a human pyramid in Vietnam, from theVietnam National Museum of Fine Arts. (Photo: Daderot/Public Domain)

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An Italian  print of different formations of human pyramids—with torches—from c. 1652. (Photo: New York Public Library/Public Domain)

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An Austrian engraving of contortionists Lawrence and Redisha from 1838, showing off both their balancing skills and double-jointed legs. (Photo: New York Public Library/Public Domain)

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A pyramid complete with horses, acrobatics and vault, from an 1890s American book on circus life. (Photo: Library of Congress/Public Domain)

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Students in Waterford, Ireland, create a pyramid in 1909. (Photo: National Library of Ireland/Public Domain)

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Athletes at the Overbrook School for the Blind, in 1911. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ggbain-09148)

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Young members of the Sokol gymnastics organization in the Czech Republic, 1924. (Photo: Šechtl and Voseček/Public Domain)

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A motorcycle-base pyramid at a festival in Germany, 1931. (Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-11804/CC-BY-SA 3.0

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Child acrobats in 1930s Sydney. (Photo: State Library of New South Wales/Public Domain

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Gymnasts from Tokyo's Keio University in 1931. (Photo: Public Domain)

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A four-person pyramid in Egypt during World War II. (Photo: Heinz Schmidt, Bremerhaven/CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)

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A supported human pyramid in Berlin, 1973. (Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-M0805-407/Häßler, Ulrich/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

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The Dahi Handi festival in India, where a human pyramid is formed to reach a clay pot. (Photo: AKS.9955/CC BY-SA 4.0)

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The base of a castell, a tower-like human pyramid structure built for festivals in Catalonia. (Photo: Núria i JC/CC BY 2.0)

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An impressively high castell in action, in Barcelona. (Photo: Steve/CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Olympic Diving Pool Turned Green For Some Reason

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Most Olympic attention goes, deservedly, to the athletes. No matter how strange or dramatic a stadium design, it's never as grabby as the world's top-tier swimmers, runners, and leapers.

Yesterday, though, one piece of Olympic infrastructure decided to put on a show of its own. Sometime in between the men's synchronized diving finals on Monday and the women's on Tuesday, the diving pool at the Maria Lenk Aquatics Centre transformed from a crystal blue into a deep, murky green.

This was no slight tinge, either. Athletes reported that, when immersed, they couldn't see their diving partners. Observed beside the neighboring water polo pool, it looked downright sinister, like the Wicked Witch of the West standing next to Glinda.

Those in charge appeared as flummoxed as anyone else. As the New York Times put it, "Officials released a brief statement that did not address the main questions: What had happened, why had it happened so quickly, and why wasn’t there a simple explanation, given that this is the sort of thing that commonly happens to swimming pools?"

Although they assured everyone that the water was still clean, top brass refused to take any questions from the news media, which responded by taking matters into their own hands: Gizmodo has diagnosed it as an algae bloom, which New Scientist thinks means it ran out of chlorine.

Meanwhile, the divers kept diving. "We got a personal best score," American diver Jessica Parratto told the Sydney Morning Herald. "Maybe we should ask for a green pool from now on."

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.

Watch a Mongolian Throat Singer Perform on a Mountain

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Sitting in the foreground of an enormous mountain vista, a solitary man named Batzorig Vaanchig does some soothing Mongolian throat singing. 

Throat singing has been a part of Mongolian culture for centuries. Singers like Vaanchig are vocal acrobats, able to produce more than one pitch simultaneously. Throughout the world there are several different styles of throat singing, which is also known as overtone singing.  

Vaanchig plays in a Mongolian folk group called Khusugtun. He's a player of the morin khuur or the Horsehead Fiddle, a trapezoid-shaped stringed instrument that traditionally used male and female horse hair for the two strings. 

He finishes with a flourish; from a seemingly subterranean low note to something akin to a high chord struck on a synthesizer.  

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.

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