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Watch The World's Largest Aircraft Take Flight

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Residents of Bedfordshire, England who happened to look up at the right time yesterday evening were greeted by a strange sight: a massive white aircraft, like two blimps stuck together, whirring overhead. But this wasn't a UFO, or a second, more anatomically correct moon. It was Airlander 10, the world's largest airship, finally freed from gravity's constraints and taking its first-ever test flight.

Airlander 10, which was built by the company Hybrid Air Vehicles, has much to recommend it: it has a low carbon footprint, it can stay airborne for 2 weeks unmanned, and it looks, from some angles, like a huge butt.

For its maiden voyage, the craft took a lap of Cardington airfield in Bedfordshire, England. The trip took about half an hour, during which spectators shouted, "yes!", and took photographs of the aircraft looming against the dusk. "It was beautiful. It's just so unusual," one fan, Donna Seymour, told Sky News.

Airlander 10 has about 200 hours of test flights left until it can, in all its glory, take free reign of the sky. When it's ready, HAV has many uses lined up for it—it might ship cargo, serve as a surveillance aircraft, or even carry passengers. Because airships can land almost everywhere, their uses are manifold. "Imagine a large airship being able to land with a medical emergency department on board, right at the scene of the disaster," airship expert Tim Robinson explained to CNN last year.

You know what they say: when you're a giant butt, everything looks like a seat.

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.

 

Found: Football-Sized Goldfish in an Australian River

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Goldfish are everyone’s favorite training pet… until they’re not. As The Telegraph reports, giant, football-sized goldfish are being found in one Australian river.

Goldfish are a ubiquitous pet thanks to the low bar for care, and their compact size, but also because their lifespan is relatively short, perfect for the notoriously short attention span of children. While most of the little fish die early deaths in their tiny bowls, a significant number of the creatures are “humanely” released into local waterways when their owners grow tired of them.

However the unfortunate truth is that goldfish, originally native to Asia, are a powerfully invasive species in the wild, and will grow quite large in unfettered conditions. And Australia’s Vasse River is apparently being taken over by the former carnival pets. The Vasse, a nutrient rich habitat for the former pets, has started producing huge specimen, likely started from dumped fish.

Researchers have found that the fish can roam as far as 230 kilometers to breed, spreading their habitat, and growing all the way. Unfortunately their explosive growth can also leech an inordinate amount of resources from the ecosystem, as well as running the risk of spreading disease.

All of these real world concerns aside, there is still something a bit magical about giant goldfish.  

Watch One Man Play the Drums on Lake Baikal

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In remote Siberia, north of the Russian border with Mongolia, is Lake Baikal. Baikal teems with weird and wonderful lifeforms, and many believe subterranean monsters swim around its depths. The freshwater lake is more than 5,000 meters deep.

On the surface are miles and miles of ice surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Sometimes there's also a man, playing the ice. As this video by Youtube user "Permafrostvideo" demonstrates, the ice on Lake Baikal has a mysterious sonic quality that creates a soft sound reminiscent of a steel drum played on a Caribbean beach. 

The player lunges down and, without much rhythm or timing, knocks the jagged pieces of ice. Perhaps the size or angle of the ice determines the note, for each bang produces a different note.

Locals discovered the musical powers of the ice by accident. These percussionists went on to make a video that io9 disputed was even real. The article questioned the whereabouts of recording equipment and why only this section of the ice made such a harmonious noise. 

The video still lacks recording equipment, but certainly seems to be shot in a different location. And, it would be an elaborate hoax for an enjoyable yet amateurish video. Lake Baikal is the lake that keeps on giving. 

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. 

Inside the World's Only Surviving Tattoo Shop For Medieval Pilgrims

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Wassim Razzouk tattooing the classic Jerusalem Cross motif known to look exactly like this since at least the early 1600s.(All Photos: Anna Felicity Friedman)

In Jerusalem’s Old City today, you can find a uniquely obscure historical relic—the sole surviving pilgrimage tattoo business, Razzouk Ink. It’s a place where ancient artifacts meet contemporary machines, rich history intersects with modern technology. Twenty years ago, as a budding tattoo scholar, I first read about the adventures of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land and the indelible souvenirs they had inscribed under their skin. I never expected to one day get the opportunity to follow in their footsteps and receive my own.

Just inside the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, you can duck down the second side street to the left, as I did, finding respite from the beating sun and leaving the bustle of the crowded main square. A tiny shop, almost dwarfed by its prominent sign, lies across a quiet cobblestone road. If you didn’t know anything about the incredible, centuries-long history of the family who runs this particular shop, the sign’s tagline might cause you to do a double-take: “Tattoo With Heritage Since 1300” it reads.  

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St. George Street seems a particularly appropriate location, since St. George and the Dragon is a common pilgrimage tattoo motif.

For 700 years the Razzouk family has been tattooing marks of faith. Coptic Christians who settled in Israel four generations ago, the family had learned the craft of tattooing in Egypt, where the devout wear similar inscriptions. Evidence of such tattoos dates back at least as far as the 8th century in Egypt and the 6th century in the Holy Land, where Procopius of Gaza wrote of tattooed Christians bearing designs of crosses and Christ’s name. Early tattoos self-identified indigenous Christians in the Middle East and Egypt. Later, as the faithful came to the Holy Land on pilgrimage, the practice expanded to offer these travelers permanent evidence of their devotion and peregrination. 

Upon entering Razzouk Ink, you will discover a blend of stone walls and exposed beams lending antique character to the space, while the sterile tattoo parlor hides behind a wall. A museum-like case holds family antiques, and an exhibition of pictures on the walls offers glimpses into the family’s past.

Family lore dates the Razzouk's involvement in this cultural practice to 1300, starting first in Egypt among Coptic (Orthodox) Christians and later in the Holy Land for Christians from a variety of backgrounds. “My ancestors were always in association with the church therefore it might be they learned this practice from there,” says Wassim Razzouk, the current family tattooer.

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Wassim Razzouk in his shop which evokes a blend of history and contemporary culture.

Pilgrims’ accounts dating to the late 16th century offer a glimpse into the era’s tattoo culture, and how purveyors such as the Razzouks must have tattooed back then, with sewing needles bound to the end of a wooden handle. Such accounts report designs that have become enduring pilgrimage tattoos such as the Jerusalem cross—a motif consisting of a central, equal-arm symbol flanked by four smaller versions—along with images of Christ, Latin mottoes, dates in banners, and more.

A comprehensive description of the historical technique comes from Reverend Henry Maundrell, a chaplain for the English Levant Company’s office in Aleppo, Syria. In 1697, on the day before Easter, he witnessed the tattooing process in Jerusalem on a group of Christian pilgrims traveling with him. Maundrell writes:

The next morning nothing extraordinary pass'd, which gave many of the Pilgrims leisure to have their Arms mark'd with the usual ensigns of Jerusalem. The artists who undertake the operation do it in this manner. They have stamps in wood of any figure that you desire; which they first print off upon your Arm with powder of Charcoal; then taking two very fine Needles, ty'd close together, and dipping them often, like a pen in certain Ink, compounded as I was inform'd of Gunpowder, and Ox-Gall, they make with them small punctures all along the lines of the figure which they have printed, and then washing the part in Wine conclude the work. These punctures they make with great quickness and dexterity, and with scarce any smart, seldom piercing so deep as to draw blood.

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Photographs hang on the shop’s wall depicting the last four generations of Razzouk family tattooers: (counterclockwise from top left) Jirius (with hand tool), Yacoub (with early machine), Wassim, Anton.

Jirius, great-grandfather to the current generation of family tattooers at Razzouk Ink, settled in Jerusalem’s Old City in the late 19th century, bringing knowledge of tattooing and a set of antique stencil blocks that bore the traditional designs, one dating as far back as 1749. Several other families tattooed in the Holy Land at the time, including Armenian competitors in Jerusalem, with other practices in Bethlehem and Jaffa.

But during the Israeli War of Independence in 1947, many people of Palestinian heritage fled their homes, along with Coptic Christians like the Razzouks, who left for neighboring Jordan. Pilgrimage tattooing became a dying art. After the conflict cooled off, the Razzouks returned to Jerusalem, where they alone became the primary custodians of this craft. “After 1948, [Jirius’ son] Yacoub was the only tattooer left in Israel,” says Anton of his father, a situation that lasted until the 1960s, when Western-style tattooing began to emerge.

Yacoub became the sole practitioner of this service for the Coptic pilgrims who trekked to the Holy Land, particularly at Easter, to worship and mark their faith. Anton relates the story of one man whose arms were covered in dates—each representing a consecutive year of pilgrimage from the 1930s on. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, however, restrictions on travel to Israel by Egyptians made it considerably more difficult for these annual pilgrimages to happen.

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St. George and the Dragon tattoo motif as tattooed from a stencil block that dates to 200 or 300 years ago.

The family carried on. Anton took over tattooing from his father, with a steady enough stream of customers. It seemed that the business might die with him, as none of his children were initially interested in carrying on the family craft. But several years ago, Anton’s son Wassim, who had gone to college for hospitality management, became interested in tattoos through his passion for motorcycle culture. The weight of 700 years of family heritage suddenly hit the young man, impelling him to preserve these tokens of faith and travel.  

Wassim set about learning the business from his father (now retired) and arranged for mentorship by modern tattooers on new techniques and contemporary health and safety standards. In this post-AIDS era, gone are days of being able to use the same tattoo needles used over and over for a year or more, or staunching bleeding with bandages lifted from one customer and applied to the next. The melding of modern hygiene practices with hundreds of years of history allows this historic business to march into a future that must consider potential dangers like bloodborne pathogens, despite trusting in God to prevent unfortunate outcomes.

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Wassim Razzouk with his parents; his father Anton is now retired from the tattoo business.

Wassim revitalized and reinvented the business, expanding beyond traditional pilgrimage tattoos to other genres. His wife Gabrielle joined him, and they work side by side. The family hopes that at least one of their children will follow in their footsteps, but seem disinclined to pressure any of them to do so, a testament to their faith in the power of heritage and a call to service that will likely emerge on its own.

Modern designs aside, the pilgrimage tattoos are what compel people to travel hundreds, even thousands of miles to the Razzouks’ shop. There’s nowhere else on Earth where one can get a traditional Christian design rendered from stencil blocks of such antiquity (some practitioners exist in Cairo, but they lack the Razzouk’s deep family history and collection of verified artifacts).  

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Wassim Razzouk inks a stencil block with carbon-paper ink to create a durable transfer to the skin.

Wassim has developed new techniques for inscribing traditional pilgrimage tattoos faster and better. He starts by rubbing the stencil block with purple ink from carbon-copy paper—a transfer medium used worldwide by contemporary tattooers for decades, but prior to Wassim’s innovation, never used for pilgrimage stamps. This offers significant benefit over the previous techniques, which would dip the block in stamp-pad ink or powdered charcoal—a fugitive transfer pattern subject to smearing and disappearing during the tattooing process.

Now, a durable purple guide holds fast to the skin while the image can be rendered permanently via machine. Although Wassim’s grandfather Yacoub pioneered the use of machines for pilgrimage tattoos, Wassim has perfected a technique that achieves a look that mimics what the blocks look like when printed on paper—he inscribes a first pass over the lines of the stencil, then he goes back and retraces every line, adding graphic weight and ensuring a bold, black motif visible from a distance.

In the 21st century, tattoos have emerged as popular travel souvenirs, but Razzouk Ink offers a truly unique experience—a link to hundreds of years of history through a visceral transaction of bloodletting and pain. While in that fuzzy zone that emerges from endorphins as a tattoo progresses, I channeled the many travelers who have endured a similar fate. And later, post healing, as the ink began to settle into my skin, a glance at the enduring mark conjured a heavy mix of memory and tradition.

The 'Sorority House Door Stack' is a Real Thing and It's Terrifying

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A stack of door stacks. (via Google Image Search)

Over and over again, the ritual is repeated. A handful of smiling girls stand outside ornate doorways, often dressed in matching shirts or identical dresses. They smile, beckoning visitors inside their sorority houses. Then, the doors open.

There, filling the portal, is a singing, clapping, cheering wall of young pledges, ambushing you with spirit. Their heads undulate like a roiling sea. Their fingers flutter in perfect synchronicity. Congratulations, you’ve found a door-stack.  

 

#UPC16 #OpenHouse #Day2 with #DeltaGamma @TexasDeltaGamma "I am a DG. She is a DG. We all are DGs, so be a DG too!"

A video posted by TEXAS Greeks (@utaustinsfl) on

This morning, Twitter woke up to a viral message from University of Texas at Austin sorority Alpha Delta Phi; before being deleted, the Instagram video of a door stack got picked by outlets like BuzzFeed and New York magazine. But that was by far the first time that a terrifying posse has lurked behind an entryway. It’s actually been banned by colleges in recent years.

Door-stacking (also known as “door songs”) is a sorority tradition wherein new pledges form up in a pyramid or bulwark of Greek solidarity in the doorway of the house, singing welcoming songs to visitors and senior sisters. It can involve clapping and movement and any other sort of jazzy choreography, but the one essential component is SPIRIT, and obedience.

According to a post on Sorority Girl 101, at some schools, pledges can be fined for such minor infractions as stepping out of the door frame, making sound before or after the doors open and close, or saying goodbye to onlookers.

It’s an occasion for incoming sisters to celebrate their pride and solidarity in the sorority, but apparently it’s also dangerous.

In 2014, the practice was banned by USC's Panhellenic Council, the group in charge of all sorority activities. An article on The Odyssey Online describes a certain amount of relief among the affected sisters. "Many have reported receiving minor injuries while partaking in the door-stack," author Karina Farris writes. "While they would frantically assume their position, girls would get cut and bruised. Also, singing and hair-flipping within the bounds of the doorway allowed for girls' heads to collide with others."

In a 2015 article over on The Atlantic about the dangers of sorority recruitment, one former pledge describes young women banging their heads on the door frames as well, concluding, “Door-stack concussions are among the plethora of physical risks women face when joining a sorority.”

The aesthetic effect is also distinct. Where some see solidarity in the oscillating pile of sisters, others are struck by its resemblance to a many-headed hydra, or an undifferentiated mass. As one Atlas Obscura editor put it, "I believe door stacks meet Freud's definition of the uncanny."

Luckily, the Internet is full of door stack videos, so you can judge for yourself.

The Fabulous History of JAZZ HANDS!

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via GIPHY

Whether or not you’re a musical theatre aficionado, you are probably familiar by now with the term “jazz hands” (or maybe “spirit fingers”). The motion of splaying your fingers, palms out, and shaking them like they’re fleshy sparklers has become a go-to move for creating a flashy finish, or simply to spice up any interaction.

It's been incorporated into cheerleading and show choir routines (hello, Glee), been featured as a gag on shows like The Office and Archer, and become a cheerful meme, with countless internet cats putting up their little paws. But long before the motion became a cheeky shorthand for musical theatre nerds, jazz hands popped up in improbable places. But where did they really come from? 

The exact origins of jazz hands are a bit murky, but as with most performative dance, it likely has its roots in African dance traditions. "I see one thread of it coming up through the African-American foundation of jazz dance, and that authentic jazz tradition," says Rebecca Katz Harwood, Associate Professor of Musical Theater at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. "In as much as vaudeville grows out of minstrelsy, that’s another step backwards on the family tree of jazz hands."

It's likely that the simple act of shaking your hands as part of the performance came into use when vaudeville performers began taking their cues from these traditions. As vaudeville began evolving into film, it brought jazz hands with it. Some people contend that jazz hands can be traced back to Al Jolson’s 1927 film, The Jazz SingerIn the film, Jolson plays a young man who defies his strict Jewish parents, and becomes a singer. The film is mainly remembered both for being the first ever “talkie,” with dialogue synchronized to the action, and also for Jolson’s incredibly offensive blackface minstrelsy. The performance numbers in the film, which were praised upon its release, are still somewhat unforgettable today (if you can get past the blackface).

Some of Jolson’s moves are reminiscent of what we would call jazz hands, with arms outstretched and hands extended pleadingly to the audience, but his moves lack the signature shake. "When I think of Al Jolson, I think of the blackface and the white gloves over his hands. And of course part of what those white gloves do is draw attention to the hands," says Katz Harwood.

Even if his moves weren't quite up to the jazz hands standard we have today, his use of hands as part of the act were a big step in that direction.  

Of course, the man most closely associated with popularizing jazz hands is famed choreographer and showman, Bob Fosse. A prolific writer and director of stage and film musicals, including such classics as Damn Yankees, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Chicago, Fosse often employed very precise and technical movements in his productions, including jazz hands. In fact, the opening sequence of his stage musical, Pippin, is almost nothing but jazz hands. As the production opens, the stage is dark, with the the only things illuminated being the performers’ hands. The full characters are slowly revealed as the introduction unfolds, but for a time the entire stage is nothing but jazz hands.

According to a 2013 Vanity Fair interview with Fosse biographer, Sam Wasson, Fosse was well aware of how campy his productions and dance moves were, jazz hands included. Speaking about how Fosse approached the production of Pippin specifically, “[...] his experience of Pippin was—What do I do with this hokey stuff? He turned it into something outrageous.” Outrageous as his handsy intro was, it proved to be a classic.

As Katz Harwood points out, the release of Pippin also helped popularize the move by being the first Broadway musical to advertise via a TV commercial. In the Fosse-directed TV spot, three dancers, known among musical theatre aficionados as the "Manson Trio" due to their glassy stares, do a simple dance that incorporates jazz hands at one point. This may have been one of the first times jazz hands were ever brought to the small screen.

Decades after Fosse’s embrace of the spirited move, it came to be associated with musical theatre and its fans. It was the kind of fabulous move you could break out to instantly identify yourself as a lover of the form. While it’s hard to pin down when exactly jazz hands worked their way into the mainstream cultural lexicon, a likely entry point was a scene in the 2000 cheerleading comedy, Bring It On.

In the infamous scene, the cheerleading squad is being trained by an unhinged choreographer named Sparky, who is trying to get them to do spirit fingers. When they don’t give him the appropriate amount of “spirit,” he loses control and smashes a stool to bits. It’s a funny scene, and for many viewers of the film, it sparked a view of jazz hands (spirit fingers, in the movie) as a hilarious movement that was taken ridiculously seriously in some circles.

 

Since Bring It On, jazz hands has achieved meme status, spreading the concept far and wide. Now it is understood by most as a funny gesture to express excitement or elation. But irony or no, the move is undeniably popular. And it’s not just a joke anymore either, with at least one Australian school advocating for jazz hands to replace clapping as a more sensitive show of appreciation for performers.

Jazz hands might be the biggest crossover influence musical theater has ever produced (sorry, Hamilton). As Katz Harwood puts it, "When you want movement that has maximum impact, and minimal skill requirement, jazz hands fit really well into those parameters."

Whether you are a celebrity, a politician, or just some blogger, it’s always a good time for JAZZ HANDS!     

Soccer's Ultimate Con Man Was a Superstar Who Couldn't Play the Game

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Carlos Kaiser played soccer for two decades and never scored a goal. (Photo: Krivosheev Vitaly/shutterstock.com

Brazilian soccer star Carlos Kaiser had it all: exclusive contracts with popular teams, money, fame, and women. The professional soccer star was only missing one thing: the ability to play soccer. Arguably the greatest con artist in all of sports history, Kaiser (birth name Carlos Henrique Raposo) was able to maintain a career that spanned nearly two decades while playing in as few games as possible and never scoring a goal.

Admittedly, Kaiser was not completely devoid of soccer skill. He initially showed promise in youth leagues, signing a professional contract with popular club Puebla in 1979 after impressing scouts, but was quickly let go. However, Kaiser had devised a plan to keep his career going. By riding the coattails of more promising colleagues, faking injuries at pertinent times, and taking advantage of the lack of technology, Carlos Kaiser was able to maintain a professional athlete’s lifestyle without ever having to prove his athleticism.

“Like every other soccer player, I came from a poor family, but I want to be big, have a lot of money so I could give better life conditions to my family,” Kaiser admitted in a 2011 interview with Globo, “I knew that the best way to make it happen was through soccer. I wanted to be a soccer player without having to actually play it.” Most people have felt like this at some point in their life, but few have devised a scheme to fulfill their dream quite like Kaiser, whose career spanned nearly two decades, starting in 1973 until his retirement in the early 1990s.

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Carlos Kaiser.  

Kaiser was fortunate in the early stages of his scheme to befriend soccer stars such as Romario, Carlos Albert Torres, and Renato Gaucho, all of whom saw his physical fitness and would recommend him to coaches, where they would be persuaded to sign Kaiser to a short-term contract. Coaches were not afforded the technology of today, so streaming games and having video footage to scout players was not an option, and Kaiser used this to his advantage. Many of Kaiser’s contracts would only last for three to six months, and upon signing would state that he needed time to regain his fitness, buying himself a month or two to collect a paycheck without having to play.

Once it became time to practice with the rest of the team, Kaiser would fall to the ground, clutching a hamstring or other body part. Again, Kaiser was fortunate to live in an age of limited technology, as doctors were not capable of determining whether or not Kaiser’s injury was authentic, so staffers had no choice but to take him at his word. Kaiser would then proceed to ride out the rest of his contract, living lavishly while planning his next target.

Kaiser worked to maintain his reputation as a soccer star, going so far as to befriend journalists, giving them club jerseys and other memorabilia in an effort to get them to write fraudulent articles about his ability. One article even stated that Kaiser had received an offer to become a Mexican citizen in order to play for the country’s national team.

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The Botafogo flag at Maracanã stadium in Brazil. (Photo: Public Domain)

Another trick Kaiser employed involved the use of a toy cell phone. In the early 1980s, cell phones were a status symbol reserved for the elite, and Kaiser would often carry his fake one with him, pretending to answer calls from interested English clubs in order to make himself appear more valuable to his teammates and coaches. However, while playing at Botafogo football club, fitness coach Ronaldo Torres (who spoke English) overheard one of the conversations and realized it was gibberish. “He was always around, talking to his manager, pretending to speak English, he used to speak it incorrectly,” says Torres. “One day I found out that he was talking to no one. I followed him and did not hear anyone speaking to him through the phone.”

The next season, in an effort to start anew, Kaiser signed a contract with French club Gazélec Ajaccio, a division II team where a friend was playing. He was well-received by the fanbase, who were excited to have a prestigious Brazilian footballer joining their club. The team organized an open invitation team practice session where fans could watch the team train and get a glimpse at their new Brazilian star. Kaiser, wary of having to showcase his skills in front of the anxious crowd, decided to kick all of the team’s balls into the stands, thanking the fans and kissing the team’s badge on his jersey. “The fans went crazy,” Carlos states, “and in the grass there was not a ball.

Without balls to practice with, the team was restricted to doing a physical training session. However, the fans loved the show of team enthusiasm by the new Brazilian striker, although he would fail to show the same enthusiasm on the field, leaving the team soon after without scoring.

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Insider Brazil's Maracanã stadium. (Photo: Leandro Neumann Ciuffo/CC BY 2.0)

Kaiser continued to take advantage of friendships with journalists and players, signing deals with new clubs each time someone started to catch on to his scheme. Despite not scoring a single goal, the media often spoke of Kaiser’s scoring ability. When Kaiser signed with Brazilian club Bangu, one newspaper headline read “O Bangu já tem seu rei: Carlos Kaiser” (“Bangu already has its king: Carlos Kaiser”). However, this reputation came with expectation, and it wasn’t long before Kaiser was called into a game for Bangu. The swift-thinking striker needed a strategy to avoid being found out, and quickly manufactured one. Kaiser saw a particularly rowdy group of supporters shouting at players, so he stormed into the stands and verbally assaulted the group, receiving a red card and being removed from the game before ever stepping into the line of action.

After the game, Bangu club president Castor De Andrade approached Kaiser, demanding an explanation, to which Kaiser replied, “God gave me a father who passed away, but he gave me another [referring to Andrade]…and I’ll never allow anyone to say my father is a thief and that is why I intervened.” Kaiser’s account of the altercation moved Andrade so much that he decided against disciplining Kaiser, offering him a six-month contract extension instead. However, “injuries” kept Kaiser off the field and he left Bangu when his contract expired.

Kaiser continued to bounce around from team to team until the early ‘90s, before finally hanging up the gently-worn cleats. Was he ashamed of his ruse? “I do not regret anything,” he told Globo. “Clubs already deceive so many players, someone had to be the avenger.”

Translations of Portuguese sources by Vitória Ruozzi.

Found: A 300-Year Old Shoe Meant To Ward Off Evil Spirits

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Lucky shoes. (Photo: Courtesy of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit/Used with Permission

Maintenance workers at Cambridge University were just trying to run some new electrical cables in the walls of St. John’s College, when they stumbled upon a 300-year old shoe hidden in the wall. According to a story on Live Science, it was probably put there to ward off demons.

The lucky shoe is thought to date back to the 1600 to 1700s, probably put in place during a latter day renovation of the building. It is a left shoe, approximately a men’s size 6 by today’s measuring. While it had grown delicate with age, the shoe had remained remarkably preserved, still showing signs of original wear, including a hole in the sole indicating that it got a life of wear before it was bricked up in the wall.

Today the area where the shoe was discovered is a lunch or study room, but during the era that the show was likely put into place, it was probably used by the Master of the College. The shoe was likely placed in the wall to provide him with protection from evil, and may have even originally belonged to him. (The superstitious tradition of hiding shoes in the walls, goes back to the 1300s, and secret good luck shoes have been found everywhere from churches to insane asylums.) 

Surprisingly, the Cambridge shoe is not headed for a museum. Instead, the maintenance crew just put it right back in the wall, adding a small time capsule with coins and a newspaper. The university has a long tradition of leaving signature mementos in the walls of their historic buildings during renovations. But it’s been a long time since they left a shoe.     


As Siberia Heats Up, This Lake Turns Pink

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Like most bodies of water, Siberia's Lake Burlinskoye spends much of the year on the cool side of the color wheel: tasteful blue, murky gray.

Once a summer, though, the lake lets loose: it turns a bright, flamingo pink.

As the Siberian Times reports, this year's transformation is currently in full swing. Photos show excited swimmers wading through what looks like a massive basin of powder-made lemonade, stretching towards the horizon. Small waves roll ashore in varying shades, as though someone gave the lake a pink ombre dye job.

As with other, more famouspink lakes, Burlinskoye is extremely salty. It gets its seasonal blush from an overload of Artemia salina, a tiny, salt-loving brine shrimp. (This shrimp is almost as weird as its home—it has three eyes and eleven pairs of legs, and swims with its feet pointed up.)

Normally, it takes until late August for the pinkening to occur. But as the Siberian Times explains, this year's unusually hot weather has given the lake an early sunburn—the video above is from way back in June.

While this particular climate change symptom is less terrifying than, say, unfrozen reindeer anthrax, it's a good visual reminder: When even the water is flushed, you know it's hot.

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.

Say Farewell to New York's Original Apple Store

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An early Apple Mac computer, signed by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. (All photos courtesy of Jack Goodman)

On a busy street just off 6th Avenue in the Flatiron district of Manhattan sits a humble storefront. Rows of Apple Macintosh computers in a variety of colors and shapes line up on shelves behind glass, each one slightly less cuboid than the one to its right. At some point, the beige transitions into candy colored monitor cases.

This is the “Mac Museum” at Tekserve, the computer sales and repair shop that served techies in New York City for 30 years, and it's about to go dark.

The store is a wunderkammer for tech geeks. Next to the computers stands a tall, wooden 1950s Bell telephone booth. Opposite is a cabinet overflowing with transistor radios and next to that, old adding machines. One of the very first models of television lies on the floor. Dick Demenus, Tekserve's founder, owns everything here.

He picks up a radio and runs a finger over one edge as if to admire the workmanship. Demenus views technology and mechanics through his engineer's eyes. The older things were built to last, he says. Too much of today’s gadgets are mere fads.

“I’m very critical of contemporary design,” says Demenus. “A lot of very frivolous stuff that doesn’t stand the test of time.” 

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Preparations for the Tekserve auction in full swing.

Tekserve’s lease on the building expires at the end of August and the rent will triple, prompting Demenus to shut it down for good. Tekserve will be buzzing on August 23rd, however, when almost every item here goes up for auction—by Thursday afternoon, the highest bid for the “Mac Museum” stood at $23,000.

The auction will be a swansong for a main street store that was considered the original Apple store. When Tekserve opened in 1987, its staff catered to the few Mac enthusiasts in New York City. It grew into the nation's largest Apple reseller. Demenus started the business in his loft apartment and then moved around several locations, before they found a permanent home in 119 West 23rd Street, some 15 years ago. Demenus lives next door and will continue living there as the new tenants move in. 

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Tekserve founder Dick Demenus have a vast collection of antique radios like these. 

Way before there was a Genius Bar, Tekserve operated as the city's one-stop-shop for artists, architects, graphic designers and writers who used Apple products. Demenus and his engineers took it upon themselves to learn how the first Apple computers were built. The team became indispensable for users in the city. The business grew from a simple idea: to provide a quality and cheaper alternative to authorized repair centers. 

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A very early model of television.

But it soon became apparent that they had the space, and the ambition, to move into retail. The building has two floors and occupies the width of a block. Classical-style columns stand from floor to ceiling. They started selling the technology too. At the company’s peak, Tekserve employed 200 people.

Demenus has a long-standing fascination for gadgetry; his collection of computers, radios, microphones, cameras and technological miscellany is huge and will fill the store floor on the day of the auction. He built the collection from years of going to auctions and flea markets across the county.

His desk is on the lower level of the building, where many of the antiques were kept hidden away. Behind his chair, and the obligatory Mac desktop, is one item not for sale: a cardboard cutout of Princess Leia. Leia, says Demenus, has been watching over him.

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The Tekserve Blue Robot. 

That afternoon, he had just received a book full of signatures and good luck messages from members of staff past and present. Tekserve employees filled out a local pub on Monday night for an impromptu farewell party.  Demenus was surprised and touched at how many people turned up, but says he always looked after his staff.

“We tried to provide a humane and very supportive work environment. We did things Google are now famous for,” says Demenus. He referred to the company’s policy of free lunches. 

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The "Mac Museum."

Roland Auctions organized Tuesday’s sale, which will take place inside the store and also online. It will mark the closure of another New York tradition; an independent main street-style store. There are seven Apple Store’s within walking distance of Tekserve and Demenus says the company simply couldn’t compete anymore.

The store will close but the collecting may not. Recently, Demenus says he bought a vintage Baker Light radio, to add to his collection of dozens. It’s the thrill of the hunt, says Demenus, that will never go away.

“If you want a hobby, it's better than Las Vegas.”

Watch Wooden Blocks Transform Into a Rainbow of Color Pencils

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As the last days of summer break dwindle away, students begin to mill through stores to stock up on back-to-school supplies and prepare for the upcoming academic year. But, one of our favorite writing utensils—the pencil—has a long journey before it is used in the classroom.

Pencils travel down a winding factory production line to be shaped from slabs of wood, painted, and sharpened. In the video above, Axus, a stationery factory in Shanghai, China, reveals the steps of the precise process of constructing the perfect color pencil.

The pencil production process actually begins outside the factory, where massive wooden logs are chopped into specifically proportioned “pencil blocks.” These are further reduced down to flat slats that are waxed and stained. At around 0:15 mark, you can see truckloads of the the rosé-colored slats make their way to the production line where thin grooves are curved. Lead cores fit snuggly inside the grooves before a second slat is glued on top. The lead-wood sandwiches are cut and shaped into the familiar slim, cylindrical shape of the pencil.    

At 1:34, you can watch rows of vibrantly colored pencils make their way to the end of the line. The final steps include stamping, painting, fastening erasers, sharpening, and packaging. These color pencils are ready to be used by students, artists, and office workers throughout Asia and Europe.

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. 

The Incredible Ruins of 12 Abandoned Islands

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Of all the many places around the world that have been abandoned by their inhabitants and left to slump into obscurity and ruin, islands seem among the most unlikely. What’s not to love about an island? Yet there are dozens of isles scattered throughout the world's oceans that have been deserted by their residents and left all but forgotten.

Frozen in time with nothing but a story to tell, many of these ghost islands have taken on an eerie and enticing second life in their desertion and disrepair. Here are 11 abandoned islands in the Atlas, each of which has a intriguing story behind its decline.

1. Mitsubishi's Gunkanjima Island

NAGASAKI, JAPAN

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(Photo: Jordy Meow/CC BY 3.0)

Once the most densely populated place in the world, this tiny island off the coast of Nagasaki is now a ghost town that’s been completely uninhabited for more than forty years. Gunkanjima was developed by the Mitsubishi Corporation in the early 1900s, which believed—correctly—that the island was sitting on a rich submarine coal deposit. By 1941, the tiny island was producing 400,000 tonnes of coal per year, powering Japan’s industrial expansion. A city grew up around it so dense it inspired the nickname “island without green.”

Then the coal ran out. Mitsubishi closed the mine, and everyone left. The island has been a ghost town ever since.

2. Suakin Island Ancient Ruins

SUAKIN, SUDAN

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(Photo: Bertramz/CC BY 3.0)

For 3,000 years, the port on the island of Suakin was strategically crucial to powerful empires. Located on the Red Sea in Northern Sudan, the port was originally developed during the 10th century B.C.E. and offered an outlet to the Red Sea for trade and exploration. As Islam spread, it became an outlet for Africans on pilgrimage to Mecca. The island remained prosperous throughout its existence and developed into a rich, gated island port, the height of medieval luxury on the Red Sea.

However during the 19th century, Suakin became a hub for the slave trade from Eastern Africa, and this would be the grand island's its undoing. As the slave trade diminished, the port became increasingly unnecessary. By the 1920s, Suakin was falling into complete disrepair. Only crumbling ruins of the once great coral city exist today. 

3. Poveglia Plague Island

VENICE, ITALY

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The Poveglia hospital. (Photo: Chris 73/CC BY-SA 3.0)

This small forbidden island less than half a mile from Venice was used as a plague quarantine station, or "lazaretto" at the turn of the 18th century. The tiny island is said to have hosted over 160,000 infected souls living out their final days and hours there—so many that there are whispers that 50 percent of the soil consists of human remains. 

With a past like this, it's not surprising that Poveglia and its abandoned structures are believed to be haunted, attracting the attention of ghost hunters and paranormal investigators. The island remains for now strictly off-limits to visitors.

4. No Man's Land

NETTLESTONE, ENGLAND

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(Photo: Colin Babb/CC BY-SA 2.0)

No Man's Land exemplifies the strange fates of "Palmerston's Follies", a series of mammoth fortifications built in Victorian times to defend the coast against perceived threats of invasion from France. The most expensive and extensive fortifications ever built in peacetime, these sea forts were outdated by the time they were completed. As deterrent, perhaps they worked, for the French never did invade.

After serving as a defense station against submarine attack in WWI the fort was decommissioned and the artificial island transformed into a luxury resort that unfortunately never took off. The hotel was bought for  £6 million but contaminated water in the hotel pool caused an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease and the business went south. Faced with financial troubles and the possibility of losing the island he did the logical thing: packed up his bags, grabbed the keys, and locked himself into the fortress, where he lived until his eviction in 2009. Future plans for the now-empty, seemingly cursed island are unknown.

5. Disney's Dcovery Island

BAY LAKE, FLORIDA

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(Photo: BestofWDW from USA/CC BY 2.0)

Disney's abandoned animal island was almost the coolest attraction ever. Disney opened it as a lush zoological park as the island was home to a number of exotic animals. When the attraction was closed in 1999, the remaining animals were moved to Disney World's new Animal Kingdom resort, yet the island was simply left to nature, its buildings deteriorating.

Today, the island remains abandoned and off-limits. However some brave urban explorers have managed to infiltrate the island take pictures of what remains. Disney has threatened to ban these adventurers from all Disney properties just for setting foot on Discovery Island, making the whole kingdom seem a little less than magic. 

6. McNab's Island

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA

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Rifled cannons. (Photo: Luke J Spencer/Atlas Obscura

This Canadian island is a veritable garden of decay with countless abandoned structures and ruins dotting the landscape, from military installations to private homes to a soda factory.

Settled by Peter McNab in the 1780s, the family occupied the island until 1934, and virtually no settlements were established since. In fact McNab Island has lain mostly abandoned since World War II and is now mainly an impressive collection of abandoned structures of all sort—among them three abandoned military forts, a cholera quarantine epidemic potters field, ruins of old family homes from the islands few inhabitants, a family burial plot, a former soda pop factory that ran bootleg booze during prohibition, a shipwreck cove, a beach where English redcoats hung navy deserters during the Napoleonic Wars.

7. Deception Island

ANTARCTICA

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Abandoned hangar and fuselage. (Photo: Unknown author/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Considered one of the safest harbors on Antarctica, a famous refuge from storms and icebergs, Deception Island has been coveted—and then deserted—by many nations. The dilapidated shells of buildings, boats and equipment marking the island remain as proof of its productive years as a Norwegian-Chilean whaling station and home of several scientific stations.

The thing is, building and operating expensive equipment on an active volcano is risky business.  In the 1960s, the island had apparently had enough, and kicked everyone off: Erupting twice in two years, it demolished research centers and buried everything left behind in ash. Today visitors can bathe in the volcano’s natural hot springs surrounded by ruined giants of industry.

8. Carnegie Mansion Ruins

ST. MARYS, GEORGIA

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(Photo: Lyndi&Jason/CC BY-SA 2.0)

In a glaring 19th-century example of the privileged 1 percent, the prominent Carnegie family owned 90% of Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia, including a gigantic 59-room Scottish mansion on the south shores the family used as a lavish winter getaway in the late 1800s.

The estate flourished until the 1920s, but was left abandoned during the Great Depression. It sat decaying until 1959, when a fire gutted the mansion, leaving only a skeletal and crumbling group of ruins. Today, many of those ruins still stand as a ghostly reminder of the wealth the island once contained.

9. Ross Island

SOUTH ANDAMAN, INDIA

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 (Photo: Biswarup Ganguly/CC BY 2.0)

Originally established by British colonialists, this 18th century settlement on Ross Island in the Andaman archipelago is now abandoned entirely. The residential structures remain, old houses, a church, a bazaar, stores, a large swimming pool and a small hospital, though their brick is slowly being overtaken by the roots of wild ficus plants.

The island was inhabited initially in 1788-89 after Archibald Blair's survey of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It was controlled by the British until March 1942, when Japanese troops invaded and took control of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands including Ross. Remnants of bunkers constructed by the Japanese remain.

10. Dry Tortugas

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

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Fort Jefferson moat and wall. (Photo: NPS Climate Change Response/Public Domain)

Juan Ponce de Leon first stumbled upon this stretch of islands in 1513, back when they were nothing more than clusters of coral inhabited by sea turtles. Upon his discovery, de Leon named the islands "Las Tortugas" (meaning "the turtles"), and is said to have subsisted off 160 of these very animals while on his journey through the high seas. Dry Tortugas soon became a popular shipping corridor, but despite the passageway's popularity, it also became the site of hundreds of shipwrecks, earning the island the nickname, “ship trap.” To this day, a large collection of sunken treasures still lies beneath the surface waters.

Of all the Dry Tortugas treasures, though, Fort Jefferson remains the crown jewel. It was to be a practically indestructible hexagonal fortress, complete with a massive 420 heavy-gun platform. Though after thirty years of construction, Fort Jefferson was never fully completed, 16 million bricks were laid, making it still one of the largest coastal forts ever built. The fort was abandoned by the Army in 1874. In later years it served as a coaling station, quarantine hospital. Today the Dry Tortugas are considered to be one of America's most remote and least visited national parks. 

11. Stilt Village of Ukivok

NOME, ALASKA

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Deserted stilt village of Ukivok on King Island. (Photo: Captain Budd Christman, NOAA Corps/Public Domain

Located on tiny King Island off the coast of Alaska, the stilt village of Ukivok was once the winter home of sea-faring natives who have left it abandoned for the last half-century. Despite being left for ruin for over 50 years, this ghostly Alaskan village still clings to a steep cliffside.

A local Inupiat population calling themselves the Aseuluk ("People of the Sea") built a small village on one of the slopes using a precarious arrangement of stilts and huts, and the cliff village was in use until the mid-1900's when the population was forced to migrate to mainland Alaska. However the unlikely village still remains, clinging to the seas-swept slope of King Island, essentially left as though they would return the next year.

12. San Giorgio in Alga

VENICE, ITALY

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(Photo: Andy Hay/CC BY 2.0)

The island of San Giorgio in Alga off the Venetian coast (awesomely translated as, "Saint George in the seaweed") has lived a number of lives since humans first made their mark here as early as 1000 CE. Once a hotbed of monastic reform and a base of operations for Nazi frogmen, since the end of WWII it has been abandoned, and today is just an empty isle dotted by crumbling buildings. All of the old military and religious artifacts have been removed finally allowing it pass into its latest phase as a lovely ruin. 

The Unlikely Story Of The Folly Cove Guild, The Best Designers You've Never Heard Of

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Eino Natti's 1950 print "Polyphemus" shows a granite train at work. (Image: Cape Ann Museum)

One by one, the prints unfold before you. One shows sheep leaping in the grass, another, children on a tree-hung swing, the moon shifting above them. All are charming, sophisticated, and unbelievably detailed. They take the essence of everyday objects and activities, and unspool them into mesmerizing patterns.

No matter how much you may want them, though, you can't get these prints on Etsy. In fact, you can't get them anywhere.

They live mere miles from where they were produced, at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester—the last bastion of the nearly-forgotten Folly Cove Designers. Helmed by a children's book illustrator and comprised of her previously untrained friends and neighbors, the Folly Cove Designers were hardworking, tight-knit, and sincere—so sincere, they eventually voted themselves into obscurity.


To children worldwide, Virginia Lee Burton is the beloved hand behind half a dozen classics, including Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Katy and the Big Snow, and The Little House—intricately illustrated tales of close-knit communities. But to her neighbors at Folly Cove, on the north shore of Massachusetts, she was Jinnee Demetrios. Jinnee and her husband, the sculptor George Demetrios, moved to the area in 1932 with their one-year-old son Aristides, who was soon followed by Mike. The couple quickly became community pillars, making art all day, and spending evenings gathering their friends and neighbors for raucous sheep roasts.

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The Folly Cove Designers in 1949, outside the barn where they worked. (Photo: Cape Ann Museum)

"Folly Cove gets its name because it would be folly to bring a ship in and turn it around," says Christine Lundberg, producer of the film Virginia Lee Burton: A Sense of Place, as well as the upcoming Beautiful and Useful: The Art of the Folly Cove Designers. This ethos carried over into the rough-and-ready town life. "You couldn't get pretty little things," says Lundberg. "If you wanted them, you had to make them." An artist through and through, Jinnee surrounded herself with homemade treasures—including, as the story goes, a particularly nice set of block-printed curtains.

One of her neighbors, Aino Clarke, admired the curtains so much she wanted to make her own. Jinnee and Aino struck a deal: Jinnee would give Aino top-to-bottom design lessons if Clarke, a member of the local orchestra, would teach Jinnee's sons the violin. (A less legendary, but perhaps more truthful, version of this tale holds that Clarke suggested Burton give design lessons to her neighbors in exchange for money to buy the necessary paper to illustrate her first book.)

Regardless of exactly how the two came together, Jinnee's flint struck on Aino's iron sparked an artistic movement. Within its rock-hard exterior, Folly Cove harbored a vein of artistic impulse that dated all the way back to the 1800s, when painters had flocked there to take advantage of the seashore's distinct sunlight. ("If you spend time lying on the granite around here, you get creative powers," one resident told Lundberg). As Jinnee and Aino dove into the lessons, other members of the community began joining them.

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The Folly Cove Designers "diploma," presented to each member by Jinnee Demetrios upon their entrance to the guild. (Image: Cape Ann Museum)

Thus began the Folly Cove Designers—a ragtag group of locals united by their desire to fill their lives, and their minds, with a particular form of well-thought-out beauty. Many members were, like Clarke, the children of Finnish immigrants, seeking to combat the economic and emotional hardships of the Great Depression. Others were so-called "Yankees," who had moved permanently to Folly Cove after vacationing there as children and wanted something new to do. Eino Natti, one of the group's few male members, was an army veteran and former quarryman, experiences he drew on for prints like "Polyphemus," of a granite-carting train, and "PT," which shows near-identical soldiers in mid-squat. Elizabeth Holloran, the local children's librarian, printed young people skiing and sugaring. "A majority of them were never artists," says Cara White, director of the Cape Ann Museum's Folly Cove gallery. "They were editors, architects, housewives, accountants."

This didn't matter to Jinnee, who was convinced that—through practice—anyone could learn design. To enable this, Jinnee put her students through a rigorous artistic process that cycled with the seasons. In the fall, members met in the Folly Cove Barn for class, learning Jinnee's guiding design principles and choosing subjects for their prints. Jinnee steered her students away from lofty or imagined subjects, and encouraged them to find inspiration in everyday Cape Ann life.

The resulting familiarity and love, she believed, would come out in the design. Jinnee herself printed everything from commuter trains to spring lambs to her fellow guild members, gossiping over mailboxes cheekily labeled "VLB," "AC," and "FCD."  When it came time to ink these designs, she often chose the greens and browns of an omnipresent local plant—seaweed.


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"George's Garden," by Virginia "Jinnee" Lee Demetrios, printed in her favorite color. (Image: Cape Ann Museum)

During this time, members also did what Jinnee called "homework"—painstaking, repetitive drawing exercises, meant to help the artists get to know their subjects inside and out. "If a student wanted to feature an apple in her design, she had to fully explore the fruit: the whole apple, its sections, the seeds, the blossom," writes Professor Jennifer Scanlon, in an article drawn from ethnographies of the group's members. "Through this examination, and the resulting series of drawings, the apple became hers."

Over the autumn of 1958, for example, veteran guild member Peggy Norton did at least 300 sketches for what would become "Story and a Half House," a study of her own home in Gloucester. The drawings, all in stark black and white, show the house from every angle, repeated in a multiplicity of patterns—large and small, straight and spiraling, tiled, mirrored, and jauntily diagonal. The final print, a kaleidoscope of large and small houses, is the clear result of all these permutations, greater than the sum of its parts.

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Early block print drafts of Peggy Norton's "Story and a Half House," held at the Cape Ann Museum. (Photo: Lilia Kilburn)

At the beginning of winter, members gathered in the barn once again, this time to jury their final designs before a small, rotating group of their peers. Approved drawings would be redrawn on linoleum blocks and painstakingly carved, a process that took anywhere from 60 to 100 hours. Members toted their blocks around like extra children, making time for them in between other responsibilities. Some worked at their kitchen counters, and later joked of finding linoleum hunks in the mashed potatoes. By spring, when the blocks were done, it was back to the barn to ink the linoleum, lay out their chosen fabric, and make the prints, which they did in their typical bootstrapped fashion: by jumping up and down on the block.

In 1936, the designers added a summer element to the cycle—they festooned the barn with their newly-printed cocktail napkins, nightgowns, placemats, and swimwear, and opened it to the public for an informal exhibition. It paid off: "People were just all over what they were doing," says White. Within a few years, they were putting on an annual show, plying attendees with coffee and Finnish nissu bread and selling their wares to tourists and townies alike.

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 Aino Clarke jumping on a printing block. (Photo: Gerda Peterich/Cape Ann Museum)

Those who made it far enough to publicly display a design had also "passed" the class. These new FCD members would receive a diploma, designed and hand-printed by Ginnee herself. Rather than Latin or cursive, this certificate got across the recipient's accomplishments via a 25-panel cartoon that detailed the entire printmaking process, from the initial brainstorming to the final jump.

As the guild grew, Jinnee kept steering it with an iron fist. "She was a woman driven," says White, before doubling down—"no, she was a woman obsessed." In a typical day, she might wake at 5 a.m., work until her sons clamored for breakfast, head out for a quick swim, and then duck back into her studio, where she focused so diligently on illustrations, prints and other work that, according to her eldest son, she "nearly drove herself blind." Outside said studio, she hung a hand-painted sign, featuring a cartoon self-portrait that stuck out her tongue out and waggled her fingers at the viewer. "Working 5 AM to 5 PM," it said. "If you have nothing to do, don't do it here!"  

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Aino Clarke's "Jazz," from 1948, combines expressive characters with geometric precision. (Image: Cape Ann Museum)

She expected similar commitment from her students. Each guild member was required to produce at least one block per year, which they shepherded from a seed of an idea all the way to a fully blossomed print. Everyone, even longtime veterans, had to take Jinnee's class every year to remain in the group, re-doing the homework and re-learning the design principles until they were carved into their collective consciousness like, well, designs in a block. Though some members only stayed for one cycle, many stuck it out year after year, and begrudged this repetition only slightly.As one member put it, "we find new secrets in the darned thing every time." 

In the early 1940s, the group voted in a business manager, member Dorothy Norton. She collected dues from each member, and used the money to buy the guild consistent supplies—good ink, precise carving tools, and acre upon acre of battleship linoleum, decommissioned by the U.S. Government after it proved too flammable for use in navy boats. Eventually, members began acquiring professional-grade acorn presses, which, though less dynamic than the tried-and-true jumping technique, managed a steadier print. Spring evenings would see members criss-crossing Cape Ann, schlepping their blocks and fabrics to the nearest press.


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An acorn press, on display at the Cape Ann museum. (Photo: Lilia Kilburn)

Throughout the '40s,  '50s, and '60s, bigger audience found the FCD. Lord and Taylor dedicated 20 showrooms to displaying the group's designs, and they were showcased in museums from the Metropolitan to the Smithsonian. As the spotlight intensified, the guild steadfastly refused to compromise—when a Macy's representative told Jinnee that if she played her cards right, she'd soon be able to drive a Rolls Royce, she was said to reply "I like my Ford."

Further temptations followed, but the group stuck fast to their principals. After a wholesale company ripped off one of their designs, they began patenting them, locking the originals in a safety deposit box. A porcelain company asked to print Eino Natti's "Roosters" on a set of dishware, but it proved too detailed for their machines. Rather than simplify the design, the guild cancelled the contract.

The money that did come in propelled the group forward—some members made a living off of it. But in the mid-'60s, Jinnee, an avid smoker, developed lung cancer. As she sickened, guild members helped her continue working; Natti even cranked the press for her, an act previously forbidden under the group's DIY ethos. But when she passed away, in 1968, they voted to disband. Over the course of the next year, they sold the barn and gave their inventory to the Cape Ann Historical Society, now the Cape Ann Museum. The members, and all the businesses they had worked with, agreed never again to reproduce any of the group's prints.

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Detail of Virginia "Jinnee" Lee Demetrios's "The Ocelots," on display at the Cape Ann Museum. (Photo: Lilia Kilburn)

In Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, perhaps Jinnee's most famous work, Mike and his machine, Mary Ann, volunteer to dig the foundation for a new town hall. After finishing the job in a single day, they find themselves stuck down there, unable to get out. Rather than scrapping the steam shovel or undoing her work, the community decides to transform her into the town hall's furnace, and Mike into the building's janitor. They figure her indomitable spirit will warm the town for decades to come.

In this way, Jinnee's dedication warmed the community she formed, even after her death. "She wanted people to have art in their daily lives, and she believed that people get something fundamental out of hard work" says Scanlon. "It became an important component of who they were, and how they participated in the world—and, probably most importantly, how they saw themselves in their everyday lives. As community members, as housewives, but also as people who produced something beautiful."

FOUND: An Ancient Mexican Codex-Within-a-Codex

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Top: the original page, Bottom: the document revealed beneath the surface. (Photo: Copyright © Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports, 2016 Elsevier/Used with Permission)

Thanks to a new high-tech imaging procedure, researchers at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries have discovered a rare, pre-colonial Mexican manuscript hidden beneath the surface of an already ancient Mexican codex. According to findings recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, the lost manuscript has been hiding just under the surface for nearly 500 years.

The Selden Codex, a five-meter-long strip of deer hide that has been folded into a 20-page book that chronicles the wars and history of pre-colonial Mexico during the Mixtec era, was first given to the Bodleian Libraries back in 1654. Dating to around 1560, the document is written in a complicated system of brightly colored symbols and pictures, and is considered extremely rare, one of only 20-some records known to have survived from Mexico prior to Spanish colonization.

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A page from the Codex Selden.(Photo: Copyright © Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports, 2016 Elsevier/Used with Permission)

But since the 1950s, researchers have suspected the codex was even more fascinating than it seemed to the naked eye. 

Researchers working on the Selden Manuscript have long suspected that it was actually a palimpsest, or a document created by reusing and covering another work. After discovering the existence of older symbols hidden beneath the gesso surface of the codex in the 1950s, by simply scraping off the top layer, scientists have been trying to find a way to unearth the original document without destroying the existing writings.

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A close up of some of the revealed pages. (Photo: Copyright © Journal of Archaeological Sciences: Reports, 2016 Elsevier/Used with Permission)

Thanks to a groundbreaking new process known as hyperspectral imaging, they have finally discovered that the Selden Codex indeed hides a unique new series of images and symbols.

Only seven of the pages were scanned, and while further study is required, the underlying writing seems to be a new genealogy, which could have links to another Mexican codex in the Bodleian collection. It is also hoped that the new images can further assist in interpreting known archaeological sites.          

Decades Before Oprah, Della Reese was the First Black Woman to Host a Talk Show

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Della Reese performing on her show in 1970. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

Depending on whom you ask, the name Della Reese conjures a different cultural memory. For most, it evokes Tess, the wry, sarcastic, kind-hearted angel she played in mid-'90s staple Touched by an Angel. For others, it’d be the landlady Della Rogers in the '70s television show Chico and the Man or her lead role as Victoria Royal in the short-lived The Royal Family in the early ‘90s opposite Redd Foxx. Or, perhaps, they’d recognize her voice, popularized by such singles as 1959’s “Don’t You Know?” and her 1960 rendition of “Someday (You’ll Want Me to Want You)”..

But Della Reese isn’t just a successful singer or actress. Her legacy is far more profound: Reese was the first black woman to host her own syndicated talk show in the United States. This historic fact, though, has been reduced to a footnote in her biography for a simple, maddening reason.

No full episode of this show, which ran for 197 episodes between 1969 and 1970, exists in the public domain. 

The digital remains are down to two 10-minute clips on YouTube. One is an episode with singer Eric Burdon of the Animals; another is with comedian Lou Alexander. No other trace has surfaced of a show that sits as an entry in the Lost Media Wiki, a crowd-sourced compendium of history’s abandoned media artifacts. Its disappearance has inspired curiosity as to whether these episodes will emerge from obscurity, resulting in at least one man’s dogged efforts to recover the show’s full archive.


Born Delloreese Early to a Cherokee mother and black father in 1931 in Detroit, Reese achieved early success. When she was 13, Mahalia Jackson hand-picked Reese to sing in her gospel group, touring with them from 1945 to 1949. This gave way to a multi-genre music career in gospel, jazz, and R&B that peaked in the 1950s. In the next decade, at a time when black women were beginning to become stars on television—Cicely Tyson ofEast Side, West Side (1963), Nichelle Nichols ofStar Trek (1966), and Diahann Carroll ofJulia (1968) to name but a few—Reese soon parlayed these wins into roles on the small screen. The first of these forays was with Della!; a producer approached her with the proposition of hosting her own show following a live performance in 1968.

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A publicity still of Reese, 1961. (Photo: Public Domain)

Della! was aired every weekday for an hour throughout the States by RKO, a syndication network that eventually dissolved into Warner. The show featured a wealth of that era’s greatest talents, with guests like Muhammad Ali, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, Linda Ronstadt, Soupy Sales, and Jacqueline Susann passing through. Filmed in Los Angeles, each episode was structured as a showcase for Reese’s multivariate talents—she was an engaging, charismatic conversationalist and a mellifluous singer. Along with her sidekick, Jewish-American comedian Sandy Baron, Reese would begin each show by introducing her guests before ceding the reins to them. Each episode would feature two to three guests—either well-established celebrities or up-and-coming talents, like a young Steve Martin.

“We had animals, we had people with gadgets,” Reese remembered. “It was very interesting format.” Occasionally, Reese would join in and sing along with her guests, as she did with Eric Burdon in the above clip, yet the shows were more about her guests than about her. She was not an intrusive host prone to editorializing with her guests or dispensing sage, treacly life advice; she approached her guests with a gentle, probing curiosity aimed at illuminating their work and artistry. Though a few stations in the South expressed reticence about carrying it, fearing that a show headlined by a black woman would be anathema to their audience, the show unpredictably did well in those very states—Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi.

The success was short-lived.

“The man who was selling our show said he couldn’t sell our show because my gums were black,” Reese told the Archive of American Television in 2008. “That was his rationale—that my gums were not pink. Every time I smiled, I turned people off.”

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Reese's 1962 album cover. (Photo: Public Domain

In spite of the show’s abrupt end, it echoed. If people speak of Della! at all these days, it’s because they say Reese paved the way for Oprah Winfrey, who,obviously, achieved popularity on a whole other level than any comparable entertainer before or since.. Winfrey’s show lasted for a quarter century—longer than the talk shows of the black women who came before her, like Reese, Pearl Bailey, and Barbara McNair, whose programs barely lasted a year. Bailey and McNair were actresses and vocalists, primarily known for their work on stage. Their shows—The Pearl Bailey Showand The Barbara McNair Show, respectively—were, like Reese’s, hybrid musical-talk variety shows. Both women are now deceased.


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 A screengrab from The Della Reese show, c. 1969. (Photo: YouTube)

At first glance, it may seem that Della!’s utter disappearance is an instance of history failing black women and minimizing their wider cultural contributions. Implicit in the very practice of archival, after all, is the suggestion of whose cultural contributions we value. Whose stories have we chosen to save? Which gatekeeper deemed Reese’s imprint insignificant?

“It wouldn’t be likely that the importance of a show, the idea that it was idiosyncratic or groundbreaking, would lead to its preservation,” John Hubbell, a filmmaker and media archivist based in New York, told me over phone this month. Hubbell has been searching for Della! since 2007—he’s been producing a feature documentary of a soul musician whose group guest starred on Della! This led him down a circuitous path wherein he contacted people involved in every level of the show’s production hierarchy. Few of them responded. Those who did admitted they were as befuddled as he was about where the show ended up.

Many shows in that period have been lost due to sheer negligence, owed to the prevailing archival and distribution methods of the time. After the advent of the videotape recorder in 1956, shows that were previously broadcast live were now pre-recorded on tape. Eventually, in the sixties, buying new videotapes became obscenely expensive, so studios found it more cost-effective to simply record episodes over existing videotapes. This rendered any trace of the tapes’ original contents obsolete.

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Reese appearing in a Kraft food commercial, 1977. (Photo: Public Domain)

Indeed, a fate similar to Della’s befell the first 10 years of of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, episodes that NBC taped over on videocassette.The last-ditch solution for finding Della!, in Hubbell’s view, would be to adopt a needle-in-a-haystack approach, combing the archives of every station that was once part of the RKO network.

Reese is now 85, and she now lives in Inglewood, California, where she founded a Christian New Thoughtchurch with her husband, and works as a minister. She’s spent the past few years devoted to her faith, remaining a loyal figurehead of her religious community, and she rarely appears on television; her last screen credit was the Hallmark series Signed, Sealed, Delivered in 2014. She didn’t respond to my requests for comment. For now, barring a concerted effort to unearth these lost episodes, the memory of Reese’s show risks dying along with her.

Update, 8/22: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Eric Burdon as the guitarist of the Animals; he was the singer.


Thousands Leave Norwegian Church as Online Registration Backfires

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The "Arctic Cathedral" in Tromsø, Norway—one of the many churches that about 15,035 people will no longer be attending. (Photo: Henrik/CC BY-SA 3.0)

The internet makes everything easier. Sit down at your computer for half an hour, and you can pay your bills, order dinner—and, now, leave the Lutheran Church of Norway, all in just a few clicks.

As Agence France-Presse reports, the Church's recent attempt to help people keep track of their religious status online has resulted in a "one-click exodus," as thousands of former Lutherans click "unsubscribe" on their faith.

Until 2012, Lutheranism was Norway's official religion, and the state has been bugging the church to clean up their messy records for years. To enable this, the church set up a website last Monday to help people check their enrollment status or to sign up.

But they also provided the option to unenroll—which proved far and away the most popular feature. According to the church's website, the first day the page was up, 10,854 people clicked the let-me-out button. By Friday, that number had climbed to 15,035. (About 550 people opted in instead, leaving the Church with a net loss of around 14,500 people.)

Poll data shows that fewer and fewer Norwegians consider themselves Christian, and the church wasn't surprised by the mass exit. As spokesperson Kristin Gunleiksrud said in a statement, "No one should be a member against his will."

Update, 8/22: In 2012, the Lutheran Church separated from the state, and Norway no longer has an official state religion. The article has been corrected to reflect this. Thanks to Malin Abrahamsen for the correction and we regret the error. 

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.

Let's Talk About Puffins

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PUFFIN! (Photo: Richard Bartz/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Right now, environmental groups are lobbying to designate the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts, a marine area about 200 miles southeast of Cape Cod, as a National Aquatic Monument. This preservation effort is very important for a number of environmental reasons, but one reason stands out as the cutest: it could save the Maine puffins who spend their winters there.   

Let’s talk about puffins. They’re cute, curious little seabirds that spend their lives trying to eat delicious fish and breed among the coastal rocks. Unfortunately, humanity is threatening to drive them to extinction. Luckily, there are a number of puffin patrols and rescue societies out there trying to help.

Puffins come from a family of birds known as auks. They live in coastal areas and are instantly identifiable by their black-and-white coloration, thick beaks that turn orange in the spring, and rounded shape. Also known as the “sea parrot,” or the “clown of the ocean,” the adorable birds can be found in a few places across the globe including including along the coast of the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.

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Fly, you fat little hero! (Photo: Trent McBride/CC BY 2.0)

Their colorful beaks and pudgy stature make them a winsome sight wherever they are found, and their friendly attitude doesn’t hurt either. Also, they're total goofs. “They are quite flighty, flying off when people come too close in boats and they are also very clumsy on land (particularly landing and taking off), which can be funny,” says Claire Thorpe, People and Wildlife Officer for the Alderney Wildlife Trust, which looks after a breeding colony on the islet of Burhou in the English Channel. “Overall they have quite a placid temperament—their mating rituals aren't as aggressive as other seabirds and they seem more curious about humans than anything else."

But for all of their cute waddling, puffins the world over are facing some daunting environmental challenges.

Puffin advocates like Thorpe and Kress, Director of Audobon’s Project Puffin Seabird Restoration Program, which manages 95 percent of Maine’s puffins, are acutely aware of the dangers facing the world’s puffin populations. “The main challenges for puffins these days are the effects of climate change on their food supply," says Kress. "Climate change is affecting the food chain from the bottom up. From plankton to foraged fish that the puffins feed on.”

As the world’s oceans warm, fish are dying off or moving to different parts of the ocean, making it hard for puffins to get enough food to raise a chick. As Kress told us, for puffins to get enough food, the right type of fish needs to be available at the right time of year, and in abundance. Even a food fish’s body type can lead to problems. “It has to be just the right shape or they can’t even swallow it,” says Kress.  

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AAAAAHHHHHHH. (Photo: Jacob Spinks/CC BY 2.0)

While the changing global climate is easily the most devastating factor affecting puffins, it is far from the only thing putting them at risk. According to the Witless Bay Puffin and Petrel Patrol, which endeavors to protect the largest colony of Atlantic Puffins in the world, encroaching civilization presents a whole other problem. On their website, they state that as humans move in closer to the puffins’ habitat, baby chicks are confusing the artificial lights from homes and businesses for the stars that would usually guide them to sea.

“The vast majority of seabirds navigate by following the horizon, which always has a glow,” says Thorpe. “[Seabirds] mostly (including puffins), fledge at night without parents as they are protected from predation at this time. So artificial lights can disrupt and confuse the birds causing them to fly towards towns.” While puffins don’t fly as they leave the nest—they generally walk or swim—the problem is just as pronounced for them.

Then of course, there are the predators. Despite their imposing beaks, puffins make for easy pickings for a number of predators. The colony Thorpe helps protect has seen rodents decimate the local puffin population by eating the helpless chicks right in their underground nests. Larger gulls can also be a danger. Even humans have historically hunted puffins for their feathers and meat. While the practice of eating puffin has fallen out of favor across much of the world, the people of the Faroe Islands still see the puffin as food.

For all the problems facing the clownish bird, our efforts to save and preserve them are proving quite effective. Puffin conservation projects have employed a number of different techniques to try to give puffins a leg up in their breeding numbers. Among the techniques Kress and Project Puffin have employed include using wooden puffin decoys to make returning birds feel more at home, and creating protective nesting boxes that provide shelter and a reliable breeding spot to return to. Using these techniques, they’ve managed to rebuild historic puffin colonies that had died out, by relocating puffins from to Newfoundland to Maine.

“Our strategy is to make sure the conditions are proper for nesting," says Kress. "It’s not a big problem if they don’t raise a chick every year, because they’re long-lived, they can live to be 20 years or more. But if they’re not being successful year after year, that does reduce the population, and that seems to be what’s happening in Iceland right now, where most puffins live.”

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Back out to sea. (Photo: Anita Ritenour/CC BY 2.0)

Live puffin cams have also become a popular and effective method of raising the public’s awareness of the birds. “I think some of the best memories for me working with the puffins was when they really began to show up on our cameras,” says Thorpe. “I run the education project and it is quite integral to it that the puffins are present some of the time for the children to see—so once the breeding season really got under way there was lots of activity.” Both Project Puffin and the Alderney Wildlife Trust have live streams of their puffins (you’re welcome).

One person that Kress hopes is watching those streams is President Obama. Project Puffin is currently campaigning for the president to help protect the birds by designating the Coral Canyons and Seamounts as a national monument. Conservation efforts like this, and Adopt-A-Puffin programs, help ensure these little weirdo birds have a future as bright as their beaks.

This Cartoonist Mapped the Tumultuous World of 1920s Greenwich Village

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In the 1920s, Greenwich Village was a "little colony of temperamental intellectuals." [All photos courtesy of David Rumsey Map Collection]

The countercultural reputation of Lower Manhattan’s Greenwich Village was cemented in the 1920s, decades before the flower children and musicians of the 1960s ever called it home. Now dominated by luxury housing and college students, the neighborhood pocketed within Broadway, Houston Street, 14th Street, and the Hudson River teemed with artists and radicals in search of a place that would support their ideas nearly a century ago. 

“During these years, the Village acted as a magnet which drew a wide variety of people with one quality in common, their repudiation of the social standards of the communities in which they had been reared,” Vassar College history professor Caroline Farrar Ware wrote in her 1935 book Greenwich Village, 1920-1930.

While descriptions and records tell us of the area’s history, cartoonist Coulton Waugh’s vibrant and comical map illustrates just how lively and eclectic Greenwich Village was in the 1920s. Waugh’s symbolic map—which he denotes as “Ye symbolic mappe: Greenwich village”—is an interpretation of the habits and customs that were commonly seen by the “Villagers.”

The pictorial map, which appeared in the October 1922 issue of The World Magazine, shows scenes along Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Avenue, and Sheridan Square with short descriptions next to each drawn character. The whole spread is flanked by a snake, Adam, and Eve—perhaps alluding to the birth of a new paradise and way of life.  

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Greenwich Village, the art capital of the world. 

Like several other New York City neighborhoods, Greenwich Village began as a home for immigrants. Right before World War I, the rate of immigrants coming to America was at a million a year. Americans faced a depression, Prohibition, unemployment, and in subsequent years, the trauma of war, Ware notes. Many individuals fled to Greenwich Village, abandoning their homes “in protest against its hollowness or its dominance and had set out to make for themselves individually civilized lives,” she wrote.

Born in Cornwall, England, Waugh was one of the many immigrants who came to the United States in 1907. While the cartoonist lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts when the map was published, he had previously lived in New York City and attended New York’s Art Students League. In addition to creating pictorial maps and charts, he also painted landscapes of the Hudson Valley and designed fabrics. 

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Passionate orators can easily be found among the artists in 1920s Greenwich Village.

Waugh is perhaps most famous for his comic strip Dickie Dare and his 1947 book The Comics, which is the first major study of the field. In The Comics, he wrote:

“Comic books may emerge as the most natural, the most influential form of teaching known to man…. Surely they would be justified if only to keep alive our priceless national art of laughter.”

His comic style can be seen in the colorful character sketches of the Greenwich Village map. Waugh, who was about 26 years old when he illustrated the chart, saw Greenwich Village as a “little colony of temperamental intellectuals” that mystified visitors and embraced artists.

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The Village was never short of parties, cabarets, music, and shows.

Vaudeville theaters, such as the Greenwich Village Follies, attracted dancers, musicians, and actors. At the same time, a steady stream of artists and writers matriculated into the neighborhood. Art, sex, and a disdain for the pursuit of wealth were key points that defined the morale of the area, Ware writes. 

The literary and artistic community in Greenwich Village was a fairly tight-knit group, eating together, criticizing each other’s work, and sharing a common bond that made them feel separate from the rest of the world.

article-imageIn general, the opinion of the neighborhood was that “there are just as many people out of jail that ought to be in as there are in jail," Ware wrote.

At the time, Greenwich Village was notorious for its crime ridden streets, with many residents having spent time in jail. Ware documented the account of a policeman who had been patrolling the streets of Greenwich Village for 20 years. He said:

“My opinion of the people on this street is that from five years up to sixty they are all thieves. They’re all born criminals; I wouldn’t trust any of them over three years old. You try and do something with them! It’s no use; you might as well work on that sewer out there.

You see the tin water drains on the church there? Well, they were all copper once, but the kids stole them all, and when the priest tried to chase them, they threw stones and broke the church windows. In ten years they’ll all be gunmen and gangsters.”

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Visitors easily stuck out amidst the hoards of artists and writers.

Villagers had a distaste for outsiders, particularly “bourgeois people” from northern neighborhoods of Manhattan who knew “nothing of art, but like to wear flowing ties and live in the midst of temptations,” notes Ware.  

However, these individuals began invading the Village, driving up the low rents. In 1922, the American League of Artists reported that prices for studio apartments had shot up so high that poor, struggling artists were starting to be pushed out of the little colony in New York City.

article-imageA poor tenant gets the boot.

After World War I, the bohemians of the 1920s drifted away from their creative paradise. In her 1935 book, Ware questioned if the Village could ever be an artistic capital again: “Has the artist colony of the Village been supplied with new blood as the years have gone by?”

Even though Greenwich Village is a very different scene these days, Waugh's map memorializes the characters—and character—of the neighborhood in 1922.

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

Watch Breathtaking Drone Footage From the Lofoten Islands in Norway

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Clear blue water laps against an icy shore. Snowy peaks surround a mass of deep blue. Look down from a bird's-eye view of a small village and its red roofs are covered with a blanket of snow.

Welcome to the Lofoten islands, a remote archipelago in Norway. Visitors sail through its famous fjords, stay in lakeside cabins or stroll across steep cliffs. This drone video, shot by 3D Robotics, is an exquisite capturing of the expanses of water and mountainside. 

You imagine how cold that water is, or what it would be like to drive across that frozen bridge. It feels like you're there without even leaving your laptop. And residents of Lofoten might prefer it that way.

The mayor of Flakstad, a municipality in the region, has complained recently that too many tourists have been descending on Lofoten. Officials say backpackers are drawn to the area because of the number of Hollywood blockbusters that use the landscape, reported the GuardianThe number of people who came to the Lofoten islands increased by 20 percent after the Disney hit Frozen, which had the backing of the Norwegian tourist board. A Matt Damon film currently being shot there is also expected to increase tourism. 

The Hollywood attention has put a strain on local infrastructure and the environment. The just over 20,000 permanent residents have complained about the influx of cars and vans, and the visitors who have eroded the paths to the most scenic beaches. 

Perhaps we could all do the population of the Lofoten islands a favor. Rather than booking a flight, watch this video, and marvel at their spectacular home from the convenience of your desk. 

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. 

Branded Newsstands, Bad Nachos, and the Evolution of Airport Retail

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article-imageFox Newsstand at Minneapolis Airport. (Photo: Seth Werkheiser/CC SA: BY 2.0)

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

When you travel to different places—in the U.S. in particular, perhaps less so outside of it—the airports often feel like they're designed of a single piece of cloth, despite the fact that they're most certainly not.

While there are some modest design differences here and there, you're ultimately waiting for your flight in an area that has little to distinguish it from the other airports you've been in.

As a guy who travels a few times a year and notices trends, I wanted to answer an important question for myself about airports: Why are the stores branded after TV news networks?


I have this memory from a decade ago of a plate of nachos so disturbing that I wasn't sure what to do with them.

Like a Guy Fieri fever dream that lingers years after the fact, they were huge, loaded with a level of nourishment that no one human being should ever be able to eat. It was like someone took the giant plate of nachos you would get at a sports bar and then doused them with steroids, just to make them bigger and more imposing.

This plate of nachos, which I immediately regretted purchasing, came into my purview thanks to the fact that I had a transfer out of Charlotte's airport—and found myself at the airport's Fox Sports Bar & Grill.  Inside, giant pictures of sports commentators Howie Long, Terry Bradshaw, and James Brown stared down at me as I tried to rush through my meal.

Now, this restaurant isn't unique to the airport experience—there's another location in San Diego, for one thing—but its naming convention is far from uncommon in the microcosm of airport society. Fox Sports' popular cable cousin, Fox News, offers the namesakes for Hudson News-style airport stores in a few cities, including Houston and Minneapolis.

CNN may constantly lose to Fox News in the ratings, but it wins on the airport retail front: The company has at least threestore locations in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, as well as locations at airports in Orlando, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Orange County, California.

Heck, even Univision is getting in on the branded airport store game.

article-imageCNBC News Store in Philadelphia International Airport. (Photo: Wasted Time/CC SA: BY 3.0)

But what might be surprising to cable viewers is that the TV network that is the straight-up champion of this unusual business model is CNBC, a network that is so ineffective from a ratings standpoint that it had to drop Nielsen last year out of concerns the ratings firm was improperly measuring its offerings.

So why CNBC? To put it simply: they were early, it made sense from a marketing standpoint, and they found just the partner to work with.

In December of 2001, the Paradies Shops announced a plan to team up with the network to open a number of CNBC-related shops in airports around the country over a three-year period. The deal gave Paradies—which, at this point, owned 300 specialty stores—a strong brand so it could compete with the then-surging Hudson News. Paradies was so bullish about the deal that they decided to rebrand some of their existing stores with the CNBC name.

(The Hudson News-style store is big business, by the way. In 2014, Skift reported that Hudson Group averaged 90 million consumer transactions in a year. Not bad for a firm that tripped into newsstands back in the '80s.)

“We are very excited to be a partner with this highly respected and recognized brand,” Gregg Paradies, then Paradies' COO and now its president and CEO, said in a 2001 press release. “CNBC is the leading global brand in business news and analysis. The demographic profile of the CNBC viewer and the business traveler is a perfect fit for our airport operation and we believe that our CNBC News operations will become a 'destination' for our frequent travelers.”

article-imageTerminal 3 at Chicago O'Hare Airport. (Photo: Matt Popovich/CC SA:BY 3.0)

The idea—which, as you might guess, emphasized the business network in a number of ways—was so good that not even the 9/11 attacks that year could stop the idea from taking shape. 

The first CNBC location opened in Kansas City in 2002, and from there, they grew like weeds—as of 2008, CNBC had 75 stores. Soon, Paradies was replicating the idea with the help of The New York Times. (The approach apparently worked for Paradies; the firm merged with another airport retailer, Lagardère, last year.)

Hudson, the big name in the airport retail space, soon adopted the trend as well, bringing on CNN as a client. In comments to USA Today in 2008, Hudson spokeswoman Laura Samuels noted that such stores were particularly attractive for news channels due to the high-value demographics of those customers.

Additionally, it has a lot of advantages over traditional advertising approaches for newspapers or networks, because it doesn't get in the way of coverage.

"Airport travelers are a unique customer set, with an unusually high demographic of age and income," Samuels told the newspaper. "These are people who thrive on information." (It should be noted that USA Today published the story to highlight its airport retail stores, which it was just introducing in Detroit.)

You can't convince people to buy your magazines or watch your TV shows? Considering selling them a couple of Twix Bars and a SmartWater instead.


But what about my experience with the Fox Sports-branded restaurant? Is that the best that airports can do when it comes to food?

As it turns out, it isn't. In fact, some of the earliest airport restaurants were known for their swankiness. The first airport restaurant I can find, the Sky Room at the Burbank airport, was known (as was the airport) for attracting the Hollywood crowd in the 1930s and '40s.

"There was always somebody famous at the airport," Charles August Bausback, the son of the Sky Room's original owner, told the Los Angeles Times in 2000. "The stars wanted to be seen where the action was and it was a happy hunting ground for news photographers, who came out here on a regular basis."

Since then, airports have only occasionally had restaurants that punched above their weight. The most notable of those came around in the 1950s, when Joe Baum, a famed restaurateur who later became known for his work with The Four Seasons Restaurant and Windows on the World, launched a restaurant at the Newark International Airport called The Newarker. NJTV notes that the fairly opulent restaurant at one point was so popular that 90 percent of its customers weren't even traveling.

article-imageThe Samuel Adams Tallahassee Brewhouse Restaurant at the Tallahassee Regional Airport in Florida. [Photo: Michael Rivera/CC BY-SA 3.0]

We're so far from those days that we're vaguely impressed when Chipotle tries something new at the dullest airport in the Washington, D.C., area, Dulles. The burrito firm, as a general rule, doesn't serve breakfast at its many restaurants, but in two D.C.-area airports, the company was contractually obligated to be open during breakfast hours, so it tried adding a little egg and potato to its meals.

They weren't impressed with the results, however, and scrapped that idea.

If you're looking for culinary innovation these days, your best bet might be around Atlanta, where restaurants are innovating at airports in a couple of fascinating ways. The Atlanta-area DeKalb Peachtree Airport, a non-commercial airport which is known for amateur pilots and air shows, has two restaurants, one of which is WWII-themed.

Meanwhile at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the airport you've most assuredly found yourself in if you've ever flown to or from the East Coast, is a James Beard-nominated airport restaurant, One Flew South. The concept of an upscale dining facility in an airport has been tried before, obviously, but has been gaining fresh interest in recent years.

Why don't we have more dapper culinary approaches like this? Problem is, One Flew South and other similar high-end spots have run into staffing problems, caused by the location and the requirement to go through an expensive TSA screening process for new employees.

When you can work at a fine dining restaurant anywhere other than the airport, why work at the airport?


CNBC-style collaborations with airport retailers are common, but there's always room for them to go awry. Just ask the folks at Kitson Stores, a boutique department store chain that got into a bizarre spat last year with Hudson Group over the price of water. Hudson wanted to charge $5 for a bottle of water at its branded stores, but Kitson balked. The legal battle ultimately highlighted deeper issues for Kitson, which announced it was closing its entire chain of stores last year.

As dumb as the lawsuit was, it nonetheless highlights two useful points: One, people love their water (it's the most purchased item by airport consumers, according to recent Hudson Group research), and two, airports very naturally offer a "captive audience" for many retailers, who aren't afraid to jack up their prices to take advantage of this market disparity.

article-imageKäfer's restaurant at Frankfurt Am Main Airport, Germany. [Photo: UggBoy/CC BY 2.0]

Part of the reason for this, according to a 2012 Clear Channel Airports survey, is that the audiences that go through airports tend to be demographically attractive, and those consumers tend to buy things they don't need, so they get advertised to a lot more.

“This study identifies a consumer demographic that spends time and money engaging with airport advertising and is very receptive to new products and services," the study, which describes humans in the most inhumane terms possible, states. "The study is clear: airports deliver high returns for advertisers.”

The potential to jack up prices in this way is very tempting, but not every retailer or restaurant chooses to do so. For example, Portland, Oregon's airport bans that kind of activity.

“For us, street pricing is the right thing to do,” PDX airport spokesperson Kama Simonds told The Points Guy. “Travelers are happy, they are eating good meals and purchasing quality products—all while paying a fair price.”

If airports as a whole stopped charging passengers extremely high prices that'd be breaking news, indeed.  

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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.
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