As this turbulent election season marches on, it's easy to forget that, throughout the history of world politics, a small but steady role has been played by goats.
During June's European Union referendum, something called gifgoat.party convinced nearly 10,000 people to register to vote by showing them videos of frolicking kids. One of Donald Trump's personal tax-cutting strategies includes pasturing goats on two of his New Jersey golf courses, making them, legally, large (and strangely barren) farms. And then there's President George W. Bush's favorite emergency reading material, The Pet Goat. If three's a trend, we're already there.
Less apparent is the potential originator of this campaign staple—none other than President John F. Kennedy, who, during his very first political race in 1942, walked a billy goat around Boston and stole the city's heart.
It's tough to imagine such a storied personage walking a goat. But before he was a Democratic wunderkind, JFK was just Jack Kennedy, a young man trying to figure out what to do with his life. Both of Kennedy's grandfathers had been politicians—his dad's dad, P.J. Kennedy, served many years as a Massachusetts congressman and senator, and his mom's dad, John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, was a two-term mayor of Boston. His father, Joseph, was a successful businessman with a web of political ties. He had been grooming his oldest son, Joe, to take up the family game, while Jack traveled, tried his hand at journalism, and finished up an eventful stint in the Navy.
But in 1944, Joe was killed in action in World War II, blown up in an Air Force plane over the Blyth Estuary. Suddenly, the Kennedy political mantle was up for grabs. Joseph was determined to place it on Jack's shoulders. "He demanded it," Kennedy later told a reporter. "It was like being drafted."
And so in 1946, at age 29, Jack put away his pen and began his first political campaign. If this new career felt like a war, its front lines were Massachusetts's 11th Congressional District, a swath of Boston that encompassed much of West Roxbury and Charlestown, as well as pieces of Cambridge and Somerville. The district was having a special election to replace Congressman James Michael Curley, who had just been elected Mayor of Boston. The Democratic primary, scheduled for June 18th, was the real contest—the district was staunchly partisan, and whatever donkey made it to the general was a shoo-in for the Washington seat.
Kennedy's main opponents were formidable: John F. "Spring" Cotter, a Charlestown local, and Michael Neville, a city councilman from Cambridge. Both had experience, and strong community ties. Kennedy didn't. "He was virtually a stranger to Boston," writes historian J. Anthony Lukas inCommon Ground. Worse, his chief assets—his name recognition and his dad's money—counted as demerits in the largely working-class areas where he was campaigning. "[Kennedy] is registered at the Hotel Bellevue in Boston, and I daresay he has never slept there," one opponent accused. A local newspaper renamed him "Jack 'Jawn' Kennedy," calling him "ever so British."
"His patrician gloss, the elegant ease acquired at Choate and Harvard and cultivated in London and Palm Beach, was not calculated to go down well in the waterfront saloons of Charlestown, the clammy tenements of the North End, or the bleak three-deckers of East Boston, Brighton, Somerville and Cambridge," writes Lukas. The political establishment ignored him, too. "He was rich, he was young," of his staffers, William J. "Billy" Sutton, later recalled. "They figured he wouldn't catch on."
But Jack was determined to try anyway. He set up a number of offices, hired enthusiastic young people to get the word out, and hit the streets. "It was pretty much a blitz campaign," Sutton said. "One day he made thirty-four speeches, including a trip to the Navy Yard and the Revere Sugary… for a fellow who was supposed to be injured during the war, he really wore me out." He'd talk to commuters on the street, mailmen in the post offices, firemen in the firehouses, and wait staff in the restaurants where he ate lunch. As Sutton summed up, "It was a meet-the-people program... anywhere people would gather, you'd see Mr. Kennedy."
One popular gathering place was the local Knights of Columbus chapter, the Bunker Hill Council. Smack in the middle of Charlestown, pretty much every Irish Catholic in town was either a Bunker Hill Knight or related to one (the organization was, and is, literally an old boy's club, inducting only men over 18). Kennedy's advisors counseled him to join up, and quick, and so Kennedy put himself forward for the annual induction ceremony.
The induction parade was, fittingly, on St. Patrick's Day. As Lukas tells it, the 50 or so candidates seeking inclusion were told to march a prescribed route to the Knight's Hall, each carrying a symbolic "relic," like a key or a cross. Kennedy, though, didn't get off so easy. "Jack was assigned a special burden," Lukas writes, "a live, frisky billy goat which the future President hauled on a leash past hundreds of amused spectators." While other relics symbolized certain of the group's core attributes—authority, mercy—the goat stood for something different: humility."
The candidate might think he was leading it," Lukas explains, "but as would eventually become clear, the goat was leading him."
The young candidate spent a couple of hours getting goat-yanked three miles around the streets of Charlestown. The only known photo from the event, above, shows him gamely holding the bearded animal by the tether, flanked by campaign staffer Sylvester Colbert and Grand Knight Warren McCully, and with a few new giggling fans in the background. That and a secret oath, and he was an official Knight of Columbus.
Maybe it was the goat, or maybe it was the hours spent hitting the pavement, or maybe it was the charisma and talent that would power him through increasingly high-stakes contests, but Kennedy won the primary by a landslide, doubling Neville's vote total and more than tripling Cotter's. "Almost overnight," writes Lukas, "Jack Kennedy had become an honorary Townie." He proceeded to beat his Republican opponent in the general election, and, eventually, everyone else he ever ran against, bringing him from Congress into the Senate and eventually into the Presidency.
Kennedy never forgot his goaty roots. In 1961, when he was snug in the White House, he invited the Knights of the Bunker Hill Council and their families to a lawn party, inviting them to parade around his new place, huge and elegant and distinctly livestock-free.
If you want to anger a linguist, try bringing up a speech pattern called General American. “General American is a concept for which I’ve struggled to find a satisfying definition,” writes Ben Trawick-Smith of Dialect Blog. Dennis Preston, a dialectologist and sociolinguist at Oklahoma State University, goes even further. “General American doesn't exist,” Preston says, “He was demoted to private or sergeant a long, long time ago.”
But the concept persists: we believe that, for example, newscasters, maybe some actors, and certainly some people, somewhere, speak an unaccented variety of American English. For instance, when Stephen Colbert explained his vocal patterns to 60 Minutes, he said:
"At a very young age, I decided I was not gonna have a Southern accent. Because people, when I was a kid watching TV, if you wanted to use a shorthand that someone was stupid, you gave the character a Southern accent. And that's not true. Southern people are not stupid. But I didn't wanna seem stupid. I wanted to seem smart. And so I thought, 'Well, you can't tell where newsmen are from.’"
The name of this accentless accent varies; sometimes it’s called Standard American, or Broadcast English, or Network English, or, as it was created by two independent linguists in the 1920s and 1930s, General American. It is a neutral accent, one without distinguishing features.
But where does General American come from? Is there a place where people, young and old, speak like newscasters?
George Philip Krapp was the first major scholar to use the term “General American.” In his 1925 book, The English Language in America, he roughly described the concept as the variant of English spoken by the majority of the country. Essentially, he said that New England has a regional dialect, the South has a regional dialect, and then everybody else, and sometimes people in New England and the South, spoke General American.
John Kenyon quickly followed up on this theory, writing in 1930 that 90 million Americans spoke General American in another book, American Pronunciation. Kenyon actually laid out some linguistic and geographical guidelines for General American. The concept caught on outside the linguistic community. Accent coaches and acting coaches still to this day train in General American, which is sometimes phrased as “losing an accent,” as Colbert says he did, rather than adopting General American. “Some irresponsible speech pathologists actually engage in this, for money,” Preston said (practically yelled). “Us linguists, of course, hold them in nothing but contempt.”
Stephen Colbert, who decided to lose his accent. (Photo: BagoGames/CC BY 2.0)
Kenyon grew up in Northeastern Ohio and stayed in the region to teach; his specific linguistic maps of sounds for General American was heavily influenced by the way he spoke, which is to say, how upper-middle-class non-recent-immigrant white people from Northeastern Ohio spoke. I’m using the past tense here for a reason, which is that by the early 1960s, linguists began noticing something very different in that region. The entire vowel system of the parts of the country along the Great Lakes, stretching from New York cities like Rochester and Buffalo straight through to Chicago and Detroit, began to dramatically change.
This change was dubbed by Bill Labov, the godfather of American linguistics, as the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. The classic Midwestern accent is exclusively a result of that shift. Some examples: the vowel sound in the word “bag,” before the Shift, was pronounced with the tongue fairly low in the mouth. After the Shift, that vowel sound was, as linguists say, raised: the tongue begins much higher in the mouth. And that’s not all the tongue is doing for Midwesterners: it’s also forming what’s called a “centering diphthong.”
A diphthong is a compound vowel, made up of two simpler vowels, which are called monophthongs. The vowel in the word “coin” is a diphthong: it starts as “oh” and moves to “ee.” For Midwesterners before the Shift, and basically everyone else (besides Canadians) both before and after, the vowel in the word “bag” is a monophthong. But Midwesterners, in addition to raising that initial sound, also move their tongues toward the center of their mouths. So “bag” becomes something closer to “byeg.”
“Byeg” is not part of General American by any definition, not Kenyon’s (because it happened after his time) and not in any modern accent coach’s (because it’s so instantly identifiable with the Great Lakes area). So right away, if we wanted to simply peg General American to the place where the guy who basically created it was born and raised, we’re already out of luck: people in Northeastern Ohio do not speak that way anymore, if they ever did.
Within the linguistic community, the idea that General American had any relation to any actual geographical place was quickly destroyed. The field of American linguistics advanced very quickly in the mid-20th century, and by 1950 numerous studies were released that found that even within Northeastern Ohio, there were multiple distinctive accents and dialects, and that certainly Kenyon’s rules for General American did not apply to the vast part of the country he claimed. The Northern Cities Vowel Shift work further combusted any idea that General American described the way people talk in the Midwest.
Minneapolis. The classic Midwestern accent is a result of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. (Photo: Joseph Sohm/shutterstock.com)
But the vaguely Midwestern basis for General American has stuck around in surprising ways. Most Americans do not really believe they have an accent; this is a reasonable, if inaccurate, thought, as most people are surrounded by others who speak the same way they do. But the Midwest is a particularly bizarre place, and Preston knows that better than anyone.
Preston is a pioneer in the study of perceptual dialectology, the study of how normal people think about dialects: where they come from, where they are, what they consist of. A 1996 study of Michiganders’ beliefs about their own accents asked them to rank states based on how “correct” their accents are, and found that by far, Michiganders ranked the English of Michigan as the “most correct.” The “least correct,” according to Michiganders, was Alabama, and the only states that sounded near to as correct as Michigan? The states immediately nearby—except for Illinois. The study is a good indication that, generally, Americans tend to believe that the accent they’re most familiar with is the most correct.
But Preston also gave this test to Southerners, specifically to respondents at Auburn University in Alabama. Here's where things get weird: the Alabamans did not rank their own speech as particularly correct. In fact, the only states the Alabamans considered worse than Alabama were nearby states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The Alabamans ranked highest the Mid-Atlantic area: Maryland, Delaware, Virginia. The pride that Midwesterners have in their own accent, and their contention that Midwestern English is very correct, is nationally unusual.
Even crazier: Midwesterners tend to not actually hear the very things that distinguish them to the rest of the country. Another study told Michigan speakers to listen to a Detroit speaker say the word “last,” which a Midwesterner will often pronounce with a notable Shift-influenced diphthong as “lee-est.” Then the respondents were given three synthesized other recordings: these had been altered so that that accent was dialed up or down. The respondents were told to match up the original pronunciation with the most similar synthesized one. Not a single one could do so; instead, every correspondent picked an accent that was lessened, closer to the way the word is pronounced outside the Midwest. Michiganders, apparently, have trouble hearing their own accents—which begs the question, how can you know your accent is correct, when you can't even really identify it?
This is all to say that when we talk about an accent-less newscaster way of speaking, we have to acknowledge that we are extremely bad at actually hearing accents. This is motivated by all kinds of things; Preston’s theory is that we instinctively associate the way some groups speak with the way we feel about those groups. So a New York City accent sounds aggressive and impatient; a Southern Californian accent is slow and ditzy; a Southern accent is dumb and uneducated. (Let us not even discuss what white Americans think about African-American Vernacular English.) These associations have, of course, no basis in reality, but they’re the reason why Colbert wanted to sound less like a Southerner. An actor or a newscaster does not want to be associated with any of those groups or those preconceptions about those groups, so they don’t want to speak like them, either. But what they think those groups sound like is not usually all that accurate.
All accents are semi-consistent groups of sounds. (Syntax is a bit more strict; all dialects have their own rules which are not usually broken, but the way words sound is more fluid.) And Americans have a very weak understanding of which distinctive sounds actually make up a regional accent. Based on what we’re taught and what we see in the media, we come up with a too-short list of identifying features that can tell us where a speaker is from.
A Bostonian drops his or her final R’s. A New Yorker exaggerates the first vowel in “coffee,” turning it into “cwaauughfee.” A Southerner changes some diphthongs into monophthongs, as in the word “guide”: In the North, that’s a diphthong, moving from “ah” to “ee,” but in the South, the vowel doesn’t shift, instead sounding more like “gad.” A Southern Californian pronounces “think” as “theenk” and “milk” as “melk.”
Each of those regional accents includes dozens of other signifiers, and then there are many accents that are unique but simply not well-known in the rest of the country: think of the Philadelphia accent, or the New Orleans accent.
Any attempt to sound accent-less would therefore vary wildly based on where the speaker is from, whom the speaker is addressing, and what those people recognize as an accent signifier. A Midwesterner trying to sound accent-less will speak differently than a Southerner trying to sound accent-less. And that fact, that the newscaster accent isn’t consistent, makes it less a single accent than a broad spectrum of related accents.
As an experiment, try listening to some news broadcasts around the country. These newscasters all supposedly speak in the accent-less General American way, so they should all sound pretty much the same, right? “I can take any handful of broadcasters you want, and unless you cheat and get them all from the same area, I can show you acoustically and probably by ear pretty convincingly that they still have for the most part the same acoustic system they had growing up,” says Preston. I wasn’t sure I believed it, but, well, look. Or rather, listen:
Madison, Wisconsin:
Listen around 0:17 when the newscaster introduces Abby—or as she says, Eeyehbby.
Columbus, Georgia:
Georgians, like most of the rest of the South, do not distinguish between the vowel sound in “pin” and “pen.” Listen to the way this newscaster says “news at 10" at 0:19. Sounds an awful lot like “news at tin,” doesn’t it?
San Diego, California:
Go to 0:35 and listen to the way the correspondent says “first aid kit.” Southern California English is most characterized by the California Shift, in which a series of vowels change: dress becomes drass, trap becomes trop, and, in the classic example, kit becomes ket.
These are minor things, but the point is that they are audible differences, noticeable quirks that can identify even a supposedly accent-less broadcaster as a native of somewhere specific. Newscasters and anyone else trying to sound accent-less will change the most obvious things, but not everything, and the way they speak is not consistent across the country.
One thing that is consistent, and is not exactly an accent but is related, is in their enunciation. “They don't really change their language, as such; they change their articulatory precision,” says Preston. This is probably a remnant from the way performance worked live; to reach the entire crowd and make sure you’re speaking comprehensibly to everyone, it was important to enunciate very precisely. Very precise enunciation can actually change the way someone sounds; it may be an effort to be more proper, but it can also shift you to that theoretical General American zone.
One example: the letter "w". When Americans pronounce the name of this letter, it’s almost always shortened in some way. Most stereotypically, those from the South will shorten it to “dubya.” But nobody says “double-you.” Even in the North and West, the name is typically shortened to something more like “dubba-you.” Go ahead, ask someone to spell the word “white.” They’ll compress it, somehow. Newscasters, in the interest of proper enunciation, will say “double-you.” Another example: most Americans will do something called palatization in a phrase like “did you,” turning it into “did joo.” Newscasters will not, for precision’s sake.
This kind of stuff can add to the feeling of nowhereness, because English really isn’t spoken that way anywhere.
When listening to accents, we tend to rely on a list of general identifying features, like a New Yorker's pronunciation of "cwaauughfee". (Photo: Songquan Deng/shutterstock.com)
So now that we know that there is really no accent-less, standard, broadcaster-type accent, we’re left with a grab-bag of different accents in which everything is enunciated excessively precisely and which does not include a varying selection of accent quirks that a particular audience will identify. And given Preston’s theory that we associate accents with specific groups about which we have opinions, that means that if we want to find the most accent-less place, we have to look for the place about which we know the least.
Let’s take, for example, Colorado, or Wyoming, or Nebraska. These places do, of course, have accents, both inasmuch as everyone has an accent and inasmuch as these accents have traceable, studied elements: the caught/cot merger, the pin/pen merger, use of the “positive anymore” (a use of the word “anymore” which means something like “these days,” as in “I really love eating anchovies anymore.”), various flattening or fronting or gliding of vowels.
But these are relatively unpopulated states, without major cities. Nationally, most Americans don’t really know that much about the people who live in those states, which means we also haven’t constructed elaborate and unreliable legends about the ways people in those states speak. And because the way we see people is the primary factor in the way we hear them speak, if we don’t know much about a population? We don’t hear much of an accent, either.
As it turns out, the search for an accent-less accent is more about our own perception and lack of understanding of linguistics than any objective, observable pattern. In other words, we are hearing what we want to hear, not what people are actually saying.
One of the pins issued to members of the Caterpillar Club. (Photos: Jacek Halicki/CC BY-SA 3.0)
If you ever see someone sporting a golden caterpillar on their lapel, you’ll know they’re a member of a prestigious—and quite baffling—club. But the wearer of the gleaming bug brooch didn't pay any dues to join this obscure club: membership is involuntary.
The sole requirement for joining the Caterpillar Club is to make an emergency escape from a failing aircraft, then plummet to earth with the aid of a parachute. Should you survive, you automatically become a member.
The Caterpillar Club, which has no officers, no local chapters, and no formal organization, has been around since 1922. On October 20th of that year, Harold Harris, an army test pilot, engaged in combat practice in a monoplane over Dayton, Ohio. Harris lost control of the aircraft, slid out the top of the fuselage, and deployed his never-before-used parachute. He landed shaken but very much alive.
Prior to the incident, reported the Oakland Tribune in 1928, “there was more or less skepticism among air men as to the ability of the flier to think and act rapidly enough to get free of a falling plane and operate a parachute before too great a loss of altitude for safety.”
Harris’ survival was proof that parachutes could indeed save lives.
A parachute being tested at McCook Field, Ohio in 1922. (Photo: Public Domain)
In the weeks following Harris’ daring escape,Dayton Herald newspapermen Maurice Hutton and Verne Timmerman and government parachute engineer M. H. St. Clair became inspired to start the Caterpillar Club, so named because parachutes were made of silk. As St. Clair toldFlying Magazine in 1932: “The lowly silk worm or caterpillar spins a cocoon, crawls out and then flies away from certain death.”
Parachute manufacturers soon got wise to the promotional opportunities offered by the Caterpillar Club, which Flying Magazinecalled“a somewhat mythical group” that “[n]o one seeks to join.”
The Irvin Air Chute Co., which had been in the parachute-making business since 1919, issued membership cards and golden caterpillar pins with amethyst eyes to anyone whose life had been saved by one of their products. (Some versions of the Caterpillar Club origin story hold that founder Leslie Irvin was part of the 1922 discussion that invented it.) The Switlik Parachute Company also sent black-and-silver caterpillar pins to those who had deployed its chutes in an emergency.
By 1928, the Oakland Tribunereported that there were 87 living members of the Caterpillar Club in the United States. These included Charles Lindbergh, who, thanks to a wild couple of years in the mid-20s, was “a member of the Caterpillar Club by virtue of no less than four emergency leaps, two of them at night, while flying the air mail.”
Female flyers were caterpillars, too—in 1925, Irene McFarland became, in the words of the Modesto News-Herald, “the first woman to invade the club” after an aerial circus stunt went wrong in Cincinnati, Ohio. The publication also noted that the designers of the caterpillar pins “may have chosen a masculine design because no one thought that feminine adventurers would wear them.”
World War II saw an exponential increase in Caterpillar club members. A 1977 count conducted by Irvin Aerospace—the successor to the Irvin Air Chute Co.—found that 11,332 men and 12 women had been sent a gold pin and membership card after their emergency use of an Irvin chute had been verified.
The Caterpillar Club may be less relevant now—the initial enthusiasm for it, at least among the parachute manufacturers who issued pins, was to promote their products, which were little-trusted. With parachutes now standard, and made of nylon rather than silk, caterpillar pins have become scarce.
That said, if you've ever bailed from a failing aircraft, parachuted to safety using an Irvin product, and want something to show for it beyond the glory of being alive, get in touch with Airborne Systems, which owns the parachute producers Irvin Aerospace, GQ Parachutes, Para-Flite and AML (Aircraft Materials, Ltd).
In accordance with the Irvin protocols established in the 1920s, the company still issues gold pins and membership cards to Caterpillar Club members.
Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com
It's a great time to turn 18 in Italy. Thanks to a government initiative, all teen residents who reach that milestone this year will be given a "Cultural Bonus"—a cool €500 to spend on movies, books, theater and concert tickets, museums, and national parks, reports The Local.
"The initiative sends a clear message to youngsters, reminding them that they belong to a community that welcomes them once they come of age," said Tommaso Nannicini, the parliamentary undersecretary who is overseeing the fund. "It also reminds them how important cultural consumption is."
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi first hinted at the program nine months ago, in the wake of the Paris attacks, when he told reporters that Italy would be earmarking €2 billion to make Italy both safer and more enriching. "The Italian way is to spend a euro [on] culture for every euro spent on security," Renzi said.
Five hundred euros is about $565 US dollars—enough for about a movie a week, unless you're an IMAX fan. Teens will get the money via an app called, fittingly, "18app," and they'll be able to use it until the very last day of 2017. Be safe and have fun, everybody.
Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.
For the most part, numbers are simply cold indicators, unable of expressing menace or guile, but then there’s Belphegor’s Prime, a supposedly sinister numeric palindrome that has a NUMBER of odd qualities. Or at least that’s what one mathematic trickster would have you believe.
The number known as Belphegor’s Prime is exactly, 1,000,000,000,000,066,600,000,000,000,001. For those without the fortitude to stare directly at the infernal number, that’s a one, followed by 13 zeroes, followed by the traditional Number of the Beast, 666, followed by yet another 13 zeroes, and a trailing one.
The first thing to know about Belphegor’s Prime is that it is a literal prime number, which if remember from math class means that it is divisible only by itself, and one. Being a prime number is not exactly a claim to fame in and of itself, but given the ridiculous enormity of Belphegor’s Prime, its primality is not immediately evident, but can be proven using a primality algorithm (like here!). In addition, it turns out that it is also part of a calculable system of prime numbers.
According to author, mathematician, and “father” of Belphegor’s Prime, Cliff Pickover, the infernal number was actually first discovered by prime number hunter Harvey Dubner, who determined that it was part of a sequence. The set of primes could be reached by altering the number of zeroes on either side of the 666 to appropriate amounts. This is to say that the number 16,661, with no zeroes at all, is also a prime number. Then the next time a similar palindromic number becomes prime is when you have 13 zeros (Belphegor’s Prime!), then again when you have 42 zeros, etc. “Harvey Dubner determined that the first 7 numbers of this type have subscripts 0, 13, 42, 506, 608, 2472, and 2623,” says Pickover.
While natural prime numbers are as rare as any number (which is to say that they are not rare at all, considering that theoretically, an infinite amount of numbers exists), Belphegor’s Prime also stands out for its poetic symmetry. Another way to express the infernal number is 10(13)6660(13)1, which truncates the 13 zeroes into modifiers in the parentheses, thus joining the Number of the Beast in the center of the string, with a pair of traditionally bad luck numbers on either side. Furthermore, the number contains a total of 31 digits, which, as some have pointed out, is simply a backwards 13! Circles within circles.
But even with these notable elements, and the abstract connotation to Western concepts of “evil” numbers, the number known as Belphegor’s Prime is simply just another number. It wasn’t until Pickover got his hands on it that it became the cursed number it is today.
Pickover seems modest about creating the concept of Belphegor’s Prime, but it was his ability to give the large number character that is the reason is known today. “I am not actually the 'creator' of the number, in the sense that people have known about beastly palindromic primes before I gave a name to a very eye-catching number with 13 zeros, to help focus broad attention on it,” says Pickover. He has authored dozens of books on subjects ranging from mathematics and death to puzzles and medicine. His stated goal is “to expose a broad audience to the wonders of science and math,” and he does so using playful, but complex concepts like “vampire numbers” and “magic hypercubes.” Belphegor’s Prime is just another of his attempts to tease out the strange wonders of math.
Pickover named the number after Belphegor, one of the seven princes of Hell, who is known primarily for tempting mortals with the gift of discovery and invention. Why Pickover chose Belphegor exactly is unclear. On Pickover’s own site, he warns people not to stare at the number too long, and to look away and take a deep breath, after a few seconds. He also links the number to a symbol from the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, a work that may itself be some sort of massive troll. Belphegor’s Prime is said to be represented in the manuscript by a glyph that resembles an inverted pi symbol. How diabolical.
Ultimately, Belphegor’s Prime is a sort of mathematical creepypasta. While it’s based on an actual number that holds a number of interesting properties, even Pickover himself urges it not to be taken too seriously. “I wouldn’t focus on too much of the fun details on my web page, because there’s some humor there, as I use my playful imagination,” says Pickover.
Even though there is no truly demonic power held by Belphegor’s Prime, it sure makes numbers fun. And if you still find it scary, as one Reddit user points out, you can take solace in the fact that 1000000000000077700000000000001, is also a prime number, so it looks like Heaven’s in the math game too.
The world’s largest pearl may have been discovered in an improbable setting: beneath a fisherman’s bed in the Philippines. For the last 10 years, according to the International Business Times, the fisherman had thought of the lustrous gem as a good luck charm.
The giant, irregularly shaped pearl is said to have been discovered in 2006 near the island of Palawan, when the fisherman’s anchor caught on a large shell during a storm. Working to free his boat, the fisherman dove into the water to pull up the anchor by hand, bringing the shell with him. Inside was the record-breaking pearl.
Apparently unaware of the pearl’s true value, the fisherman simply brought it home and put it under his bed as a good luck talisman.
There it sat for a full decade. It was only after a fire forced him to move out of the house that he decided to hand the super-sized pearl over to local officials. The pearl measures a foot wide and over two feet long, and has been estimated to be worth somewhere near $100 million dollars.
Gemologists are being brought in to take a closer look at the pearl, but if it all checks out, it will break the world record for largest pearl about five times over. The current record holder, the Pearl of Lao Tzu, was also found off the coast of Palawan.
For the time being, the pearl is being put on display in the Puerto Princesa City Hall, where people hope it will become a new source of tourism for the Palawan city.
A representative beard from August's DefCon hacker convention. (Photo: Big Monocle)
In 1969, a Bell Labs scientist by the name of Ken Thompson had a problem: he was having trouble finding a computer he could reliably use to play Space Travel, a primitive video game he’d written which involved piloting a lonely rocket through a monochrome solar system by tapping out key commands. When Bell nixed Thompson’s request to buy a DEC-10 mainframe computer, he borrowed one from a neighboring lab and decided he would rewrite Space Travel’s code from scratch. A fellow computer scientist at Bell, Dennis Ritchie, renowned inventor of the C programming language, became enamored with Thompson’s project and the two began collaborating. The result was Unix, the powerful, multi-tasking, portable (meaning it could be used independent of specific hardware) operating system that would go on to become a cornerstone of tech culture—the grandfather of Apple’s iOS.
Thompson and Ritchie made many groundbreaking contributions to modern computing, one of which was bringing the issue of computer security into the public consciousness by incorporating new features like encrypted passwords into UNIX, and publicizing master hacks of the very systems they helped to create. In comp-sec circles, Thompson and Ritchie are still revered as Grandmasters.
This urban myth, that a coder’s computational prowess corresponds to the bushiness of his beard, was actually tested in 2004 by Tamir Khason, now a development manager at General Motors in Israel. Khason’s analysis suggests that programming languages developed by the aggressively bearded indeed trump the popularity of bald-faced competitors. Beards have long been associated with wisdom (Socrates was also referred to as “the Bearded Master”), zealotry (the Taliban forbids beards shorter than 4 inches) and the anarchist streak associated with pirates and tech titans alike. Historically, beards have also been used as a convenient means of disguise; masters of espionage still tote a toolkit of fake ones.
All of which makes a beard the perfect hacker accessory.
Most women, of course, don’t have the option of growing a beard or, ergo, access to its symbolism. The feminine equivalent to a Unix beard — crone-like hair? overgrown eyebrows? — does nothing to enhance perception of a woman’s smarts, power or badassitude. Quite the opposite. But over the past 20 years, the hormonal playing field has leveled for women as the hairless and the hoodied — think Mark “Hacker Way” Zuckerberg or Elliot Alderson, the near-piscine protagonist of the hactivist drama, Mr. Robot — have replaced the hirsute hackers of yore in the public imagination
Within a small subset of the hacker community, however, the Unix Beard endures. At the annual Beard and Mustache Competition this year at DefCon (the world’s oldest and largest hacker convention) by far the biggest pool of entrants fell somewhere on the spectrum between Jesus and Ewok.
But has the Unix beard retained any of its meaning, or has it morphed into something more modern? In the privacy-obsessed world of DefCon where contestants rarely use their real names, does a beard somehow make hackers feel more secure? (Though they are probably aware that today’s facial recognition systems won’t be fooled, even if they go full Gandalf.) Or are these facial shrouds meant to make others feel more secure? Hacker beard as metaphor: your password’s safe with me.
I began my highly unscientific investigation at the Barnstable Municipal Airport in Massachusetts by asking the only man with a Unix Beard at the gate whether he was heading to DefCon. He wasn’t, but he did work as a developer of bioinformatics software and was wearing a HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) t-shirt. When I asked the man, who preferred to remain anonymous, whether his beard — an impressive thatch that could have doubled as a ski mask — made him feel more secure, the answer was decidedly hackery: “No. We generally tend to rely on harder-to-fake shibboleths.” But the decision to start growing his beard back in high school had everything to do with getting people to trust him. “I was already coding, doing a lot of grown-up stuff, and the beard was all about seeming grown up. Then it just became my look.” He also admitted that the hacker lifestyle did lend itself to a certain style — or rather, non-style — of beard. “Having a goatee seems like a bad idea, trope-wise. I don’t want to be a vizier.”
At the DefCon Beard and Mustache Competition, Ed Provost, a contestant old enough to remember BASIC, helped embellish the legend of the hacker beard for me. “I once heard there's a relationship between how long your beard is, and how many points of root access you have to [various] devices.” In other words, the longer your beard, the more systems you've hacked — and still have access to. (Provost declined to comment on whether he thought this was true, perhaps because his beard was long and he didn't want to reveal how many points of root access he had open…)
But for most millennial contestants, the hacker beard was merely the outgrowth, so to speak, of the work itself. “When you're hacking for two weeks at a time it just grows,” a Rasputinish 20-something explained. Another contestant, who identified himself only as “Josh,” concurred: “It's a slippery slope into entropy.”
Some even viewed their mountain-man beard as a liability in today’s sanitized start-up scene. “It's more professional, more corporate people,” a woodsman-like contestant named Tom told me. “This is generally frowned upon.” A shaggy beard, Tom explained, is better for hackers who “work in jobs where nobody gives a shit, which is actually my situation now.” In other words, omnivorous beards demand privacy, rather than create it.
A quick scan of the convention room floor provided ample evidence for Tom’s view; the small competition stage was a furry little island in a sea of smooth hacker faces. The Unix beard, it seemed, was going the way of the mainframe computer.
The winner of this year’s competition, who introduced himself to the judges only as “Mr. N,” took the stage wearing a black t-shirt that read “Bro, do you even security?” Mr. N had the Unixiest beard of them all — he could easily have qualified as a member of ZZ Top — and handily beat a panoply of Dumbledores, lumbersexuals and a Captain Hook lookalike who had hairsprayed his goatee into a menacing spike, proving that tradition still has its place, even at a convention as future-forward as DefCon.
Or maybe it just proves a new rule: the bigger the beard, the wilier the hacker, for Mr. N. also delivered a bribe to the judges’ table: a bottle of Jameson and a $300 donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
For four days in May, the small population of about 4,000 in Angels Camp, California grows more than tenfold. Tens of thousands flock to the tiny former mining town to witness and participate in the Jumping Frog Jubilee during the Calaveras County Fair. It’s exactly what you think it sounds like: an annual contest of competitive frog jumping.
“Frog jockeys” from around the world have been motivating their trained frogs to jump the farthest since 1863, when the competition was first held in nearby Copperopolis. The contest moved to Angels Camp, and is most famously known for being the setting of Mark Twain’s 1865 short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras.” Twain came across the frog jumping competition when he was traveling through the mountains east of San Francisco between 1864 and 1865.
The video above shows highlights from the 1965 Jumping Frog Jubilee. While beginners can rent bullfrogs from the “Frog Spa” at the fair, many of the frog jockeys catch their own frogs and train them. The arena consists of three large rings, with a pad at the center where the frogs are initially placed. Then, the jockeys perform a range of rather strange tricks to motivate their frogs to jump.
There's a special technique (and even a science) to frog jumping. Families have passed down secrets down through generations, Smithsonian Magazinereports. These methods have pushed frogs to jump beyond the average, reaching anywhere from six to seven feet per jump. Biologists at Brown University who study the movement of frogs attended the Jumping Frog Jubilee to better understand how jockeys are able to jump so far and reported their findings in 2013.
The scientists found that the jockeys essentially take on the role of a deadly predator. The process generally begins by massaging a frog’s hind legs before dropping it a short distance to the center pad. Only moments after the frog hits the ground, the jockey alarmingly dives after it head-first, Smithsonian Magazine describes. Some competitors let out a mighty cry or blow on the frog. In the video below, you can see jockey Morgan Kitchell pounce behind her frog and give a loud cry.
The distance of first three jumps is measured and combined for a total score. No one has been able to beat the world record set back in 1986 by “Rosie the Ribiter” and jockey Lee Guidici. Rosie jumped a total of 21 feet and 5 ¾ inches, which is 7.16 feet per jump.
In downtown Angels Camp, you can walk down the "Hop of Fame" where the champion frogs' names and jumping lengths have been commemorated in brass plaques since the 1920s. The winners of the Jumping Frog Jubilee are awarded with a massive trophy, $900, and ultimate frog jumping bragging rights.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Emailella@atlasobscura.com.
Interactive map at the bottom of the article. [Photo: Google Maps 2016]
The flashing lights, the sounds of the steel ball bouncing off the bumpers, the infuriating, frustrating, intensely addictive experience of trying to control chaos. Pinball, which nearly went extinct in the 1990s, has had a major comeback. It is a 19th-century game I have come to love.
Evolving from the game of Bagatelle, modern pinball was born in 1871, when Montague Redgrave added the spring-loaded plunger to the older, billiards-derived game. Pinball became a favored pastime in saloons and drugstores during the Great Depression.
By the 1940s, though, pinball's reputation had soured. New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia even went on a pinball machine-smashing tour of the city, declaring parlor owners to be "slimy crews of tinhorns, well dressed and living in luxury on penny thievery." For the next 34 years pinball was illegal in New York, and many other cities across the U.S.
But in 1976, Roger Sharpe, a young writer and pinball champion, played a masterful game in a city council meeting. After he successfully proved to onlookers that pinball was a game of skill not luck, the ban was lifted in New York City. Many other cities followed suit. Alas, the second golden age of the game was short lived.
As arcade games became more popular, pinball faded away, hitting its low point in the 1990s. By the 2000s, only one company, Stern, was still producing new pinball machines. But pinball, seemingly irrepressible, wasn't out of quarters yet. Starting in the early 2000s, the 130-some-year-old game began to see a resurgence.
Around the country pinball museums began opening up. Private collections of hundreds of machines were made public and competition among serious players started to grow. In 2013 a new company called Jersey Jack began creating brand new pinball machines (although not always to rave reviews) and the International Flipper Pinball Association now counts over 30,000 ranked players. Pinball is back.
Here's a guide to a perfect pinball road trip, a way to transverse the U.S. via its greatest pinball parlors. The map at the end of the article has 37 of the best places to play pinball around the country—though there are many more—and the article below features 11 of the most unusual and best stocked pinball locations in the country.
My love of pinball started in my local laundromat. We might as well start there, too.
As you pass a few classic pinball machines and a row of washing machines, you might notice something strange at the very back of the Sunshine Laundromat. Move closer and you realize that what looks like a stacked pair of washing machines is actually a door to another world. A world of pinball.
Those who push through the disguised doors will find themselves surrounded by over 23 pinball machines, each one a classic. Among the collection are very rare machines including the Safe Cracker and the Big Bang Bar, which sells on eBay for around $20,000. According to Francesco La Rocca, New York's rep from the International Flipper Pinball Association, Sunshine has "all the top titles and great machines,” and is "the best public venue around.”
Even the bartenders are pinball pros. Bartender Alberto Santana is ranked 88th in the world by the International Flipper Pinball Association and is happy to share some advice on how to up your score. Up front the washing machines and dryers still spin, as the laundromat is fully functional.
This arcade isn't much to look at from the outside: it's a large boxy building in a 1970s strip mall off Route 38, near Pelham, New Hampshire. However, hidden behind that bland facade is the Northeast’s single greatest pinball bonanza. What makes the Pinball Wizard unusual is that the condition of the machines is impeccable, each one restored to near perfect condition.
Any owner of a serious pinball operation has to be part mechanic, part antiques collector, part vintage restorer, and part museum curator. The owner of Pinball Wizard, Sarah St. John, fits the bill perfectly. Despite the machines sometimes being worth five figures, they aren’t kept behind glass, and every single one is meant to be played.
A retro hub of flashing bulbs, mechanical bells, and cartoon figures shines brightly on the Asbury Park boardwalk. The Silverball Museum Arcade is home to more than 180 functioning pinball and arcade machines that transport the beach-goer to a 1960s diner.
The various interfaces evoke multi-generational nostalgia. Take a look at Beat Time, the pinball machine created at the height of Beatlemania, or the 1979 KISS and 1980 Mohammed Ali games. The younger generation might enjoy taking a whack at The Sopranos or Simpsons games. The museum reflects the evolution of American pop culture through the arcade’s display of celebrities, sport teams, and dance moves.
After besting the high score of a favorite game, celebrate at the Arcade’s café with a hot dog, funnel cake or New Jersey’s classic salt-water taffy.
The Roanoke Pinball museum opened its doors in 2015 and is home to over 50 pinball machines, ranging in date from 1948 to the late 1990s. In this case, every exhibit is also playable. One of the oldest pinball machines in the collection is the Screwball, which dates to 1948, and is one of the earliest machines with flippers.
Many city officials believed that if you could “win” at pinball by letting a silver ball bounce around some bumpers, than it was gambling. The industry’s solution was to add flippers, which came about in the late 1940s. Still, in many places it took decades before the bans were lifted.
The museum recently celebrated its one year anniversary with pinball competitions and a "barcade" area."
Circus by D. Gottlieb & Co. [Photo by Atlas User Joparkman]
The Asheville Pinball Museum has over 30 vintage tables and more than 20 classic video arcade games to admire, but that’s not even the best part. Located in the old Battery Park Hotel in downtown Asheville, the Museum offers its visitors a pretty sweet deal: one entry fee gets you in the door. No quarters are required to visit this buzzing, flashing pinball playground.
Each machine in the collection features a plaque with its date of production and its place in pinball history. The Museum’s home, the old Battery Park Hotel, is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Pinball Hall of Fame is a treasure trove of bright flashing lights, dinging bells, and furious button-pushing. Located not far off the Las Vegas strip in an unassuming building, the Pinball Hall of Fame is beloved by locals and travelers alike.
More than 200 games fill the warehouse; mostly pinball, but there are a few sports-themed games, some great get-the-ball-bearing-in-the-right-hole games, and one strange safe-breaking game, dating from the 1940s era to the modern day. A few games cost 10 cents per play, most cost 25 cents, and the newest pinball games cost 50 cents.
The seed for Pinball Hall of Fame was planted in 1972, when a 16-year-old boy in Michigan purchased a used pinball machine and charged the neighborhood kids to play it. Tim Arnold grew up to operate a number of arcades in Michigan, and did well enough that he was able to "retire" to Las Vegas in the early '90s. The Pinball Hall of Fame opened in its current location in 2009, and Arnold donates the profits to charity.
If pinball was born in a pizza parlor, raised in a bar, and went to school in a bowling alley, it has grown up and gotten a real job at the Pinball Museum.
The museum, opened in 2013, claims the title of the largest pinball arcade in the world. It is set up inside a warehouse once used for aerospace and defense manufacturing. While it may seem like a step down to go from aerospace to pinball, the industrial set up of the warehouse turns out to be quite useful for the museum. The 600 pinball machines and 300 other arcades draw a huge amount of power but the building, which can supply 480 volts of electricity, has no trouble keeping up.
The space was created by one-time arcade owner John Weeks, who began collecting machines in 2004 to open a new barcade in LA. After struggling to make it work, Weeks set his sights higher, he decided to build the biggest arcade in the world. Among the hundreds of machines are some particularly novel ones. These include a Hercules, a huge pinball machine that uses cue balls in place of pinballs, and Joust, which is a two person head to head, player vs. player pinball machine.
The oldest game in the collection is from the 1840s and contains literal pins. There are also numerous "electro-mechanical" machines which combine mechanical pinball workings and video game like displays. The museum isn't currently open for drop-ins, but opens for numerous events and competitions throughout the year.
People playing to their hearts content. [Photo: Brookpeterson on Flickr/Creative Commons BY-ND 2.0]
During the Depression, a coin-operated pinball machine sold for $17.50, so saloons and drugstores quickly made back their investment on this table-top game.
The Pacific Pinball Museum offers over 90 "playable, historic pinball machines" with the signature lights, bells and whistles of the greatest models. Like most museums, the PPM owns a much larger collection—over 400 machines—but only some are available for the public to see.
Located in Seattle's Chinatown are 54 classic pinball machines collected by a married couple with a passion for the game. Some of the machines date back to 1963, others are unique versions created by artists, and all of them are playable. Clearly a labor of love, both the owners continue to hold down regular jobs while running the pinball museum on the side.
The museum has an admission cost of $13 but once inside all the machines are free to play.
Inside a cavernous 10,500 square-foot former dollar store, a huge collection of over 400 vintage arcade games and pinball machines awaits. An astonishing 1,200 more machines are in storage awaiting repair and restoration.
In addition to having many machines, the Pennsylvania Coin Operated Gaming Hall of Fame and Museum, or PinballPA for short, also has some very rare machines. The collection spans over 70 years and includes a machine called Thunderball, of which only 10 were ever produced. Today only four remain, and just one is playable: The machine at the Pennsylvania Coin Operated Gaming Hall of Fame and Museum.
Hundreds of machines are setup for the tournaments. [Photo courtesy papa.org]
After your cross-country pinball roadtrip you are ready for the big time.
Twice a year the doors open and the greatest pinball players in the world stream into the World Headquarters of the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association (aka PAPA). Here in the massive, century-old warehouse space the best pinball players go head to head to see who is the most talented, most determined, and in some ways, the luckiest pinball player in the world. It is here where the one and only "World Pinball Champion” is crowned.
Longtime pinball fan Kevin Martin began using his own collection to stage tournaments in Pittsburgh. In 2004 he staged the first new pinball championship in its Pittsburgh home. Five days after that first competition, his entire facility was destroyed by hurricane Ivan. But Martin still had one ball left.
Slowly over time the collection was rebuilt, to over 500 machines. In 2013 PAPA began streaming the tournaments and other pinball events over Twitch. They made three times their $20,000 goal. While the PAPA headquarters isn't generally open to the public, during the twice-yearly pinball competitions anyone is welcome to come play and even compete, in the Rank D division.
The next championship is April 5-9, 2017. Who knows, maybe you're the next "Pinball Wizard."
The White House in Nintendo 64's Cruis'n USA. (Photo: rusha/YouTube)
Have you ever completed the Nintendo 64 version of Cruis’n USA? If you have, or if you saw a friend beat it sometime in the late ‘90s, you may remember that the game’s cross-country road race — which takes you across the Golden Gate Bridge and through a redwood forest at speeds close to 200 MPH—ends up in Washington D.C., at the White House. Once you’ve triumphed, the camera pans upward and a farm comes into view on the White House roof. Cows and secret service agents surround your victorious car as it spins on a platform. [screengrab]
This might strike you as a very subtle commentary on the Arkansan upbringing of then-president Bill Clinton. But the scene wasn’t meant to be subtle.
It turns out that the arcade version Cruis’n USA — the original — has a slightly different ending. In this version, before showing the roof, the screen flashes “Political Cartoon” for a moment. And once the camera’s panned up to the roof, a different cast appears: among the secret service and cows sits Bill Clinton, relaxing in a hot tub placed in the back of a pickup truck. Accompanying him are two smiling, bouncing women in pink bikinis — one a tall-haired blonde, the other: present-day Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The roof of the White House, complete with Bill Clinton hot tub, in the arcade version. (Photo: YesterPlay 80/YouTube)
For those of you who’ve never sat down to play Cruis’n—either on N64 or in an arcade—the game’s premise is simple: you participate in a series of races that take you across the USA, west to east. First is San Francisco, then down the California coast, across Beverly Hills, Nebraska, Iowa, Chicago, West Virginia, finally the District of Columbia. At the height of its popularity, the game was ubiquitous in arcades and basements all across the United States. Known not only for its high-speed action, but also for its campy disregard for physics, Cruis’n USA presented an alternate reality in which school buses bounce off your car’s bumper, shirtless men pump their fists at every finish line, and the soundtrack samples breathy female oohs and aahs. (The track in question is “House Special,” though “Deadwood Ride” is worth a listen.)
But why did a game meant to thrill and titillate contain a “Political Cartoon” that — in light of Hillary Clinton’s current candidacy — seems so relevant more than 20 years later? And why did Nintendo see fit to excise the scene from its home console version?
The reason for the discrepancy was Nintendo’s interest in editing out racy and political content for the home video game audience in 1996. The Clintons and the hot tub were gone. So too was the ability to hit and explode cows and deer at high speed. And the gyrating woman who presents a trophy after each stage? She had changed outfits, from bikini top to t-shirt.
Nintendo also insisted on removing a more subtle political moment from the arcade game. In the N64 version, about halfway through the D.C. racetrack, you pass through a tunnel whose walls are plastered with $100 bills — pixelated Ben Franklins repeat endlessly as you scream by at 180 MPH. Another subtle commentary, it seems, this time on money in politics. But the arcade version had a different face grafted onto the bills: Hillary Clinton’s, smoking a cigar.
Once news had broken about the upcoming N64 port, infuriated gamers penned anti-censorship letters to Nintendo headquarters. At the time, Eugene Jarvis, the director of the original arcade game, vented his frustration to a game news website. “It seems like they don’t have any sense of humor,” he said of Nintendo. “I don’t know what’s wrong with those people.”
When I reached Jarvis earlier this week, he seemed to have cooled off. “The whole censorship thing bothered me back in the day,” he wrote in an email, “but it is understandable as Nintendo does have a strict policy against political content.” He also wanted to clarify that the scene was not meant to be as politically pointed as it might seem in hindsight. “There was not really any political agenda per se,” he wrote. “Just having a little fun with the ‘body politic.’”
That said, there is some unexpected specificity to the hot tub scene.
In 2011, Cruis’n’s lead programmer, Eric Pribyl, fielded questions about Cruis’n on Reddit, and identified the blonde in the hot tub as Gennifer Flowers, an actress and model who had made her affair with Clinton public in 1992.
In Cruis’n World, the 1996 sequel to USA, the hot tub reappears, again with Hillary and a blonde to Bill’s left and right, though this time they’re on the moon— for some “lunar hot tub lunacy,” as Jarvis put it. Hence Bill’s memorable line as the tub leaves the surface of the moon: “Hold on, Hillary!”
And in 1999’s Cruis’n Exotica, the third installment (tagline: “Get Exotic!”), Bill and his hot tub appear once more, though Hillary’s been replaced by a cow, and the bikini blonde to his right has gone brunette. A nod to the Monica Lewinsky scandal? Jarvis wouldn’t confirm it.
The road map in the Nintendo 64 game. (Photo: rusha/YouTube)
Revisiting the Cruis’n controversy turns out to be unusually timely, not just because of another Clinton’s bid for the White House. “Coincidentally we are working on a new Cruis’n game right now,” Jarvis wrote. But he downplayed the notion that a President Trump would be a natural fit for the hot tub. “Trump seems a little too angry to have Bill’s joie de vivre.” Of course, if Trump does win the upcoming election, Jarvis could see the Trump clan enjoying themselves in the presidential hot tub in “photogenic bliss.”
In the end, elements of Jarvis’s original joke turned out to predict certain elements of the future. The Clintons did maintain a small vegetable garden on the White House roof, and in 1997, after undergoing knee surgery, President Clinton did install a hot tub on the White House grounds.
The platform at Potsdamer Platz, which was one of the "ghost stations" during the Berlin Wall era. (All Photos: Claudio Galamini/berlin_memories)
Berlin’s metro system, the U-Bahn, is a vast underground network that stretches across 90 miles and 173 stations. It carries more than 530 million passengers per year. The system's expansive size makes Claudio Galamini’s Instagram project all the more impressive: he has photographed every platform in the entire U-Bahn network.
The project began after Galamini moved from New York to Berlin. “After riding the Berlin U-bahn for about three weeks, I started noticing the colors, art, tiles, shapes, lights.” He was particularly inspired by the Konstanzer Strasse station, which opened in 1978—an era that is reflected in its brown, orange, and yellow lines of tiles. “Stations built in the 70s are clearly recognizable,” he says. “They almost have a feeling of stereotypical colors, shapes from the 70s.”
It’s not just recent history either. “In many stations you can clearly see the time period. Some stations are rich with details (mosaics, columns, paintings—one stations in particular resembles a cathedral) to express the wealth of a particular borough or era,” he says. “Others are extremely minimalistic because Berlin was going through a recession.”
The city’s U-Bahn system also felt the impact of the Berlin Wall, which divided the city for nearly three decades. Many train lines pre-dated the Wall, so some of the West Berlin lines necessarily passed through East Berlin stations. These stations were closed and guarded, and became known as ghost stations. The guards were visible to the West Berlin passengers as the trains slowly moved through the dimly lit stations.
The former East Berlin stations built during the German Democratic Republic (DDR) are "extremely colorful, almost to fight the grey of the above ground buildings," says Galamini. "Of course there's a logical explanation for the colors—the stations are color coded for impaired citizens—but it's still really surprising and amazing.”
Part of the appeal of Galamini’s project is his photographic aesthetic. Each platform is shot straight and devoid of people, so a viewer's attention is drawn to design details like colors, fonts and tiles. “I believe that a particular person or moment in the shot would be just a distraction to the memory of the particular station,” he says.
Unsurprisingly, the project took months to complete. In addition to the sheer slog of methodically traveling each line and disembarking at each station to shoot before moving onto the next one, Galamini also had to wait for the station to be virtually empty of people.
“It's about long waits, being patient, finding the perfect shot," he says. "The fun part is just discovering each station with the eyes of the explorer."
You can check out the whole project on Instagram @berlin_memories and see Galamini’s new project on Munich’s U-Bahn at @claudiogalamini.
Berliner Strasse, which opened in 1971.
The Kottbusser Tor platform, opened in 1926.
Tree motif on the walls of 1994's Lindauer Allee station.
Colorful mosaics at the Jungfernheide platform. The station opened in 1980.
Tiles at Alexanderplatz.
Görlitzer Bahnhof, which originally dates from 1902.
The animal-themed platform of the Zoologischer Garten station, which is close to the Berlin Zoo.
Tiled stripes at the Konstanzer Strasse, which opened in 1978.
Senefelderplatz station, which opened in 1923.
Originally called Tempelhof (Sudring), this station opened in 1929.
Wilmersdorfer Strasse station, which opened in 1978.
The U-Bahn platform at Lichtenberg station, which also serves overground trains.
You know Smokey the Bear—but have you met Woody the Smiling, Animated Log? (Image: Forest History Society)
Earlier this month, as wildfires blazed up and down the West Coast of the United States, Smokey the Bear turned 71 years old. This past summer has been terrible for fires, as record dry weather and average human incompetence have combined to turn forests from California to the Canary Islands into tinderboxes. You can almost picture Smokey checking the news, staring at his candleless cake, and sighing a bear-sized sigh.
But Smokey wasn't always alone in his publicly fire-hating ways. Since the 1940s, American organizations have marshaled a whole menagerie of spokesflora and fauna to guilt, tempt and cajole us into giving a darn about the environment. (The Forest History Society's blog, Peeling Back the Bark, has a running series profiling many of them.) Although all were eventually defeated by Smokey and his sidekick, Woodsy Owl, they still have things to teach us. Below are six of the country's lost forest protectors, from Woody the Log to Johnny Horizon to Howdy the Good Outdoor Manners Raccoon.
In the early 1940s, American Forest Products Industries, a trade group representing the country's lumber interests, found themselves in the thick of a PR crisis. Forest fires were on the rise, public opinion was sinking, and government regulation threatened. The AFPI figured if they could get their side of the story out there, the American people would be on their team again. "They wanted to educate locals about trying not to start forest fires, because trees were, in essence, standing capital," explains Jamie Lewis, a historian at the Forest History Society. "But they also wanted to help them to understand logging and the benefits of good forest management."
In 1944, the group debuted a versatile solution: a cartoon mascot named Woody, described in his introductory press release as "a smiling, animated log." Essentially a chunk of wood with arms, legs, a twig nose, and a big grin, Woody was tasked with getting across these various forest-related messages.
In one early ad, he strikes a jaunty pose as an accompanying text box explains how a forest is "a farm that can produce forever." In another, he leaps a high, wooden wall while decked out in an army helmet and an ammo belt, to remind citizens of the role wood plays in wartime pursuits. ("But—Woody's ready for peace, too," assures an inlay, showing a demure white picket fence, presumably made of softer Woodys.)
Woody was perfect for the job—a round peg in a round hole, if you will—and by the 1950s, he was everywhere, predicting forest fire danger on road signs, shilling for redwoods on dinner placemats, and holding hands with Santa on Christmas cards. Costumed Woodys (some inexplicably frowning) showed up at festivals and department stores. Kids could even read about the exploits of their favorite log in special miniature comic books, in which he stops their less well-educated peers from burning down the forests, like chumps.
But all wood things must come to an end, and Woody was eventually chopped out of the public consciousness, overshadowed by newer, fresher mascots—like those we'll meet below.
There were few activities dearer to your average midcentury American's heart than driving, smoking, and taking in some choice scenery. But in the 1930s and '40s, a steady increase in forest fires forced officials to confront the dangers of indulging in all of these activities at once. "The constant fear was, as people drove through the woods, they would flick their cigarette butts out the window," says Lewis.
Enter the Guberif—a strange-looking bug that, starting in 1950, swarmed the public life of Idaho. The inspired creation of the state's Keep Green campaign, the Guberif was a dopey menace, with drooping antennae, half-closed eyes, and an unending arsenal of smoking equipment. Nobody wanted to be a Guberif—and they were reminded of this fact frequently, as they pulled anti-Guberif postcards out of their mailboxes, ran into human-sized Guberifs at educational events, and drove over "DON'T BE A GUBERIF—PREVENT FOREST FIRES" painted on the tarmac outside highway rest stops.
Open season on Guberifs proved all too successful, and the bug eventually sank into obscurity, although Lewis says there's still at least one highway pulloff that bears his insignia. But he was successful enough in his own time that Idaho Firewise, a new fire prevention group, may bring him back. Next time you're in Idaho, watch out for a dopey bug, probably vaping this time.
After the Guberif, when agencies sought to shame people out of burning down the forest, they generally refrained from inventing new species. Instead, they began turning to tried-and-true critters—like Howdy, the Good Outdoor Manners Raccoon. A small creature with a large name, a cute hat, and a flannel shirt, Howdy was introduced in 1959 by the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, and went on to have a brief but illustrious career in litter prevention and outdoor etiquette.
"The idea with most of these mascots was, if you get the kids indoctrinated, they'll convince their parents," says Lewis. In this spirit, Howdy was named by first grader John Hoyes, who won a contest that drew thousands of entries. For his first public foray, Howdy was plastered on 100,000 book covers, designed so that when children wrote their names on their books, they also signed his "Good Outdoor Manners Pledge,"promising to feed birds, protect flowers, and stop fishing in their neighbors' streams without permission.
Some Howdy/Smokey cross-promotion, at the 1964 Dauphin County Firemen's Parade. Howdy and his values proved popular enough that both were adopted by a dedicated Seattleite, Margaret Robarge, who started a Good Outdoor Manners Association over on the West Coast. Through GOMA, Howdy soon had a new batch of fans, along with his own monthly magazine (he was also billed first in a 30-minute film, Recreation or Wreckreation?). But Howdy, too, lost the limelight, perhaps because of Woodsy Owl—whose slogan, "Give A Hoot, Don't Pollute" was somewhat more memorable than Howdy's unwieldy surname.
If any mascot came close to taking over for Smokey, it was Johnny Horizon—a clean-cut, square-jawed ranger whose love of country showed through his kind eyes and his strong hands, which seemed to constantly point downwards at the land. Introduced in 1968 by the Bureau of Land Management, Johnny won hearts and minds from coast to coast. "He's not as well known as Smokey the Bear, but if the Department of the Interior can help it, Johnny Horizon soon will be," wrote Michigan's Argus-Press in 1975. "At least he's sexier looking."
For over a decade, this appeal brought Johnny far. His highest times came during the runup to the 1976 bicentennial, when he spurred the campaign to "Clean Up America For Our 200th Birthday." He made cameos on Fat Albert. Kids signed Johnny Horizon pledge cards, and went hunting for pollution with their Parker Brothers Johnny Horizon Environmental Test Kits. Singer Burl Ives put his considerable voice behind Johnny. "He showed up on the Johnny Cash show to sing the Johnny Horizon song!" says Lewis. "Nobody's sung the accolades of Woodsy Owl on a national program."
A Johnny Horizon pledge card.
But even this was not enough to dethrone the bear and place Johnny at the helm of America's environmental conscience. In 1976, the campaign's heads asked to double Johnny's budget; in response, the Department of the Interior cut his funding entirely, and he went striding off over the horizon that was his namesake. Farewell, Johnny—we hardly knew you.
The Giving Tree, the 1964 Shel Silverstein classic, tells the tale of a tree who so loves a little boy, she gives up everything for him—her apples, her branches, and eventually her whole trunk.
Sam Sprucetree: My Autobiography Sort Of, from around 1978, seems to be going for the same kind of thing, but through a slightly different lens. "The current-day analog that I like to point out is, here in the South you'll pass barbecue restaurant signs on which you'll see a pig pouring barbecue sauce on himself and smiling," says Lewis.
A much cultier classic, Sam Sprucetree's tale was written by Consolidated Papers, Inc., a Wisconsin paper company that hoped to convince savvy '70s readers that its cutting practices were good for the environment. "Over the years, our mills have used many of Sam's brothers, sisters, cousins, and kinfolk of all classes," the introduction begins.
Sam faces down a fire.
Sam himself goes on to describe his situation—"I'm about to be sliced into pulpwood," he explains—and to relay the travails and triumphs of his woody life, including facing down a forest fire, which looks like a four-footed octopus. By the end, he has sung the praises of the era's new, responsible logging practices, and has left us with an all-American lesson: "As I go rolling down the line I'm going to be thankful that I'm leaving a better chance in life for my seedlings and grand-seedlings than I had when I was young."
A character who martyrs himself for the cause is, by definition, not long-lasting, and Sam appeared only in this one publication.
In the mid-1980s, the definition of "forestry" was changing once again, expanding past the forests proper and into towns and cities. To reflect this, the nonprofit American Forestry Organization developed an Urban Forestry Program, focused on teaching people how to care for trees closer to home. For this new initiative, they needed a mascot who could draw in America's youth—not through goofiness or fearmongering or paternalism, but through pure, unadulterated cool. They needed, in the words of AFA leader Hank DeBruin, "a young dynamic City Squirrel"—a Spunky Squirrel, if you will.
"I love Spunky because he's ahead of the curve," says Lewis. "He's got the baggy pants, the high-top shoes, and the hat he sometimes wears backwards." An early draft of Spunky, in which he's a bit more square, was returned to artist Rudy Wendelin with the note "This one is OK if we needed a Grandpa Squirrel."
The strategy worked, and soon kids all around were wearing Spunky Squirrel buttons, flinging Spunky Squirrel frisbees, and watching the rodent himself appear on Romper Room. A 1984 PSA shows Spunky somersaulting out of a tree and sharing some tree-protection tips after being spotted by Danny, who yells "It's a squirrel! It's Spunky Squirrel!"
Even that kind of name recognition couldn't save Spunky from his fate—within a few years, he was smothered, like all the others, by the all-consuming power of Smokey. Fire prevention is no place for biodiversity.
Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.
Taking an elevator is a distinct sensory experience. There's the gleam of the metal, the "ding" of the sliding doors, the lurch of being carried up and down. If you happen to be elevating yourself in a San Francisco BART station, there's also the sharp, unmistakable scent of human urine.
In order to deal with this unique bouquet, BART has announced a new trick—a spray made up of a bacteria-eating enzyme, which will be misted into elevator shafts once per hour, SFGate reports. Trials of this "self flush and sanitizing system" will begin at Civic Center station, near City Hall; if all goes well, it will spread to additional stations downtown and in Oakland.
Out-of-place peeing is a problem in pretty much every city, but San Francisco has been hit particularly hard—last year, they introduced a urine-repellant paint that splashes the offending liquid onto the perpetrators shoes. BART elevators are such targets that crews are also replacing the wood and linoleum floors with epoxy-sealed ones for easier cleaning, says SFGate.
"They laid out the plan at a recent BART meeting under a slide titled 'Dealing With The Smell,' the outlet writes. Let's hope these whiz kids know what they're doing.
Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.
The world’s oldest sewing needle has been discovered in Siberia’s Denisova Cave, and it doesn’t look like it was made by Homo sapiens. According to the Siberian Times, the little needle was likely created by an extinct species of human known as the Denisovans.
The needle is made of an unidentified bird bone, measuring just under three inches long, and is thought to date back some 50,000 years. It even has an eye carved in the top through which to string thread. As the article points out, it’s probably still usable today.
Researchers in the Denisova Cave have previously found sewing needles in their excavations, but none as old as this one. While the cave is remarkable for showing signs of habitation from at least three distinct species of human (genus Homo), including Neanderthals, and modern humans, the needle is thought to have been the work of the Denisovan species.
Previous evidence of this extinct race of humanity, named after the cave, has dated back only 40,000 years, but the new needle provides evidence that the Denisovans were using advanced tools as long as 10,000 before that.
Excavation work continues at the Denisova Cave, but it may be a while before they unearth something as remarkable as this needle.
Getting sick in the first century was only tolerable if you were not a picky eater. The cure for the flu or any bad fever was simple, according to physicians of the time: mix exactly seven bedbugs with stew, and swallow. Four, if you were a child.
Instructions for preparing “cimices of ye bed”—as bedbugs were known— saw them being “put in meat with beanes, and swalloewed downe before the fitt” as a remedy for sweating sickness,” says a translation of De Materia Medica, a pharmacopoeia written by the Roman army medic Dioscorides of Anazarba.
If you suffered from “scabs of the privities,” bedbugs were equally effective. For eye infections, though, first pound the parasites “in salt and women’s milk,” then apply.
For at least 3,500 years, humans have wanted to be rid of bedbugs. Finding their round, flat bodies at home today causes panic, paranoia, and expensive extermination treatments; many move away from their homes or discard infested objects they once held dear. But from ancient history onward, some physicians used the parasites, in earnest, for medical cures and recipes. The creatures were a medical cure-all beginning in the waning years of the last century B.C.
A digitally colored scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of a bed bug. (Photo: CDC/Public Domain)
The 2nd century Roman physician Quintus Serenus Sammonicus even wrote a medical advice poem touting bedbug, or “wall lice” recipes:
Shame not to drink three Wall-lice mixt with wine, And Garlick bruised together at noon-day. Moreover a bruis’d Wall-louse with an Egge, repine Not for to take, ‘this loathsome, yet full good I say.
As the centuries progressed and medicine mostly did not, bedbug-based cures for jaundice, vomiting, lethargy, ear infections, and snake bites snuck into later medical texts. Instead of causing hysteria, bed bugs were actually thought to cure it, specifically the false medical condition of “female hysteria,” which went forward from Ancient Greek thought into western culture, bringing with it the bedbug remedy claimed as its cure.
“In earlier times, having these creatures was sometimes a sign a dirtiness, but was sometimes a sign of holiness—the mortification of the flesh, like an imitation of Christ, was something people in the Middle Ages thought was a good thing,” says Lisa Sarasohn, an Oregon State University historian who is writing a book about the social history of vermin.
While it may seem strange to use creatures that parasitize us as medicine, vermin “had a whole lot of meaning for people in the past,” says Sarasohn, as bugs that shared our most intimate human spaces. Also, bedbugs and other vermin mentioned in cures were plentiful, easy to find, and free.
The preparation of medicinal bedbugs varied depending on the sicknesses they were meant to treat, according to both Pliny the Elder, a devout advocate of bedbug medicine, and De Materia Medica. Swallowing them without beans can help those who were “bitten by an Aspick,” but drinking them with wine or vinegar will expel horse leeches. If “put into the Urinary Fistula”, pulped bedbugs would “cure the Dysuria,” or difficult or painful urination.
De Materia Medica became the precursor to western pharmacologyand influenced medicine for the next 1,500 years, with some of its bedbug cures surviving in Europe for centuries. The 16th century medical book Treasury of Health by Humphrey Lwyd, for example, was a translation of an older Greek medical book with commentary added in. For malaria, then called “melancholy putrified,” Llwyd recommends stuffing a bean with bedbugs, to “take awai the fever.”
An engraving from 1860 showing different parts of a bed bug. (Photo: Public Domain)
These were far from fringe medical practices at the time; in fact using bedbugs are a cure was fully in line with the tenets of homeopathy devised in the 1700s. “If something looks like or is the same color as the disease you can cure the disease” was the line of thinking, Sarasohn says. At the time many medical experts believed in another ancient Greek medical theory called the four humours, which sought to fix a perceived imbalance of blood, phlegm, yellow bile or black bile.
The smell of bedbugs was especially key to their supposed medicinal qualities. Just sniffing any kind of lice could cure a nosebleed, and the scent of mashed bedbugs could reverse cataracts, lethargy, earaches, and even kidney stones. “They thought that bedbugs smelled a lot —apparently they do smell a little bit like coriander, and that was considered a terrible odor in the 18th century,” says Sarasohn. “When anybody is writing about bed bugs, they’re writing about how nauseating they smell.”
This smell supposedly treated hysteria, a now-disproven condition that Plato (and many doctors into the 1800s) believed plagued women with a “wandering womb,” meaning their uteruses detached and floated around the body, causing libidinous behavior and anxiety. In some cases, a strong smell was said to lure the wiley organ back into place: The 18th century French naturalist Jean-Étienne Guettard, “recommends Bugs to be taken internally for hysteria; and a Dr. James says “the smell of them relieves under hysterical suffocations,” notes Frank Cowan in Curious Facts in the History of Insects.
The title page of Thomas Muffet's The Theatre of Insects, from 1658. (Photo: Public Domain)
Thomas Muffet, a 16th century medical enthusiast and writer who may have inspired the “Little Miss Muffet” nursery rhyme, thought bedbug-derived cures were genius, and tells readers all about them in his 1658 volume The Theater of Insects, (published posthumously). One favored remedy included mixing bedbugs with tortoise blood to cure snakebites. Another saw the creatures mixed with wine, admittedly “a remedy to be despised.” Other vermin proved effective as well: “Many English men have learned by experience,” Muffet adds, “that one dram and a half of Sheeps Lice given in drink will soon and certainly cure the Jaundies.”
The scientific method seems to have been applied to bedbug cures with some rigor as well: Muffet cites how Conrad Gesner, a 16th century physician, tested bedbug-based medicines “amongst the common and meaner fort of people in the Countrey” with success. Not only could bedbugs cure bites and stings, but will “provoke urine” as a diuretic and “stop children’s water that goes from them against their wills”—a cure for bedwetting.
Bedbugs, however useful, were not wanted in the bedroom in the 17th century, and even more so in the 18th, when common attitudes toward the parasites began to change. “As Europeans come into contact with other people around the world, they really start to not want to be around parasites, and really start using them to characterize anyone they didn’t like,” Sarasohn says. “The English, for example, thought the Scots were teeming with lice, and called Scotland lice-land.” By then, people were examining their world with microscopes, and the upper classes began to use cleanliness to distance themselves from the lower classes.
“The first exterminators who advertise they can rid you of bed bugs arrive in the 18th century,” Sarasohn adds. Bug killers from that period are sometimes even more elaborate than bug-filled cures. One bedbug-killing recipe calls for “Smoke of cow dung and rotting cucumber and ox scale combined with vinegar,” another asks for “Droppings from a roasted cat with egg yolks and oil to form an ointment which could then be rubbed onto infested furniture.”
Popularity of bed bug cures declined. While bed bugs and lice were still home-made cures for tumors and goiters in the late 19th century, Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal writers criticized old-school remedies, saying they “can see nothing very extra ordinary in such demonstrations consequent on swallowing a bed bug.”
The idea that parasites had the ability to heal didn’t disappear completely, though. In 2002, the authors of the pest management guide Ask the Bugman found an unexpected repository of Ancient Greek medical knowledge in the Midwest. “In some parts of Ohio, eating seven bedbugs mixed with beans is considered a cure for chills and fever,” they wrote. It was exactly the same number of bugs recommended in De Materia Medica.
While some of these cures seem strange, in many ways human terror of bedbugs was exactly what drove people to turn to them for relief—they wanted to find some way in which the creatures’ torments made sense. As Muffet once said, “by the conduct of nature hath produced nothing that in some part is not good for man, and therefore that which the Comedian God thought hurtfull, mans posterity hath found beneficiall.”
Generations of American kids forced to sing “Yankee Doodle” have grown up justifiably puzzled by its lyrics.
Though the song, set to an upbeat melody, appears to satirize Americans, it is today treated as a patriotic anthem. Anyone who is not given proper context—that “Yankee Doodle” was originally created by the British to ridicule Americans, and that American soldiers reclaimed it during the Revolutionary War—might well question the point of the song.
But perhaps the most confounding part of “Yankee Doodle” is its opening. To the average listener, the first verse appears to describe an American man who confuses a feather for a piece of pasta:
Yankee Doodle went to town A-riding on a pony, Stuck a feather in his cap And called it macaroni.
The “macaroni” in question does not, however, refer to the food, but rather to a fashion trend that began in the 1760s among aristocratic British men.
On returning from a Grand Tour (a then-standard trip across Continental Europe intended to deepen cultural knowledge), these young men brought to England a stylish sense of fashion consisting of large wigs and slim clothing as well as a penchant for the then-little-known Italian dish for which they were named. In England at large, the word “macaroni” took on a larger significance. To be “macaroni” was to be sophisticated, upper class, and worldly.
In “Yankee Doodle,” then, the British were mocking what they perceived as the Americans’ lack of class. The first verse is satirical because a doodle—a simpleton—thinks that he can be macaroni—fashionable—simply by sticking a feather in his cap. In other words, he is out of touch with high society.
But what is fascinating about those fashionable British macaronis is how quickly they fell out of favor—and how, within a decade, a word that once denoted worldliness became synonymous with excess and male femininity.
It helps to think of the macaronis in waves. The first wave—those aristocrats returning from the Grand Tour in the 1760s—made macaroni fashion emblematic of social status. While their rather large wigs and slim clothes were seen as a bit feminine, they remained well within the bounds of acceptability, and actually became quite trendy.
But in the 1770s, as macaroni fashion spread beyond its aristocratic roots, these traces of femininity were amplified many times over. Thus came the second wave, when macaroni men were defined by their effeminacy.
As The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazinenoted, at this time the word macaroni “changed its meaning” from a sophisticated Brit to “a person who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion.” Seemingly overnight, the term “macaroni” became one of ridicule, and entire industries sprung up in order to deride these macaroni men.
The new macaronis were characterized in a relatively singular way: most were gaunt men with tight pants, short coats, gaudy shoes, striped stockings, fancy walking sticks, and—most recognizably—extravagant wigs. Humorous depictions showed macaroni men wearing giant wigs topped off by comically small tricorn hats and attached to thick pigtails. Often these wigs were heavily powdered and were nearly half the size of the macaronis themselves. One representative comic showed a macaroni with hair so long that he needed a servant to carry it around for him.
A macaroni doffs his hat in the street as behind him, his hairdresser supports the weight of his wig. (Photo: Wellcome Images, London/CC BY 4.0)
In England at the time, masculinity was about moderation: masculine men were polished but not extravagant, and their wigs were sober. Women, in contrast, did not wear wigs, but they padded their coiffures with so much decoration that their hair became famous for its height. (According to “Hair, Authenticity, and the Self-Made Macaroni," a popular joke at the time “held that because their hair was so tall, ladies were forced to sit on the floors of their carriages in order to fit inside.”)
One song described a macaroni as thus: “His taper waist, so strait and long, / His spindle shanks, like pitchfork prong, / To what sex does the thing belong? / ’Tis call’d a Macaroni.”
The Oxford Magazinesimilarly described the macaroni as not belonging to the gender binary: “There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male, nor female, a thing of neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasure, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.”
A 1773 illustration by Philip Dawe. (Photo: Public Domain)
Whether these critiques of macaronis insinuated homosexuality is debated. Certainly it is difficult to generalize one way or other: though some commentators appeared to frame macaronis in terms of same-sex attraction, not all did. Regardless, macaronis became a fixture of popular imagination for their rejection of traditional gender roles. Rumors circulated that macaronis drank only milk, avoided eating roast beef at all costs, and disdained popular gathering places like bars and coffeehouses. According to "The Darly Macaroni Prints and the Politics of 'Private Man,'" they were also frequently compared to devils, reptiles, monkeys, and butterflies.
In fact, the public shaming of macaronis grew so commonplace that it became an industry: in the early 1770s, Mary Darly, a cartoonist by trade, devoted so much energy to caricaturing macaronis that her store in London became known as “The Macaroni Print Shop.” Darly’s ridicule of macaronis became the first widespread use of the caricature as a means of social commentary.
In one caricature, entitled “What, is this my son Tom?,” a farmer pokes at his son’s wig with a whip, unable to believe that his son has taken on such an effeminate dress. The son, meanwhile, is presented as ridiculous: his hair and pigtails are gigantic, his cane is inexplicably tousled, and he carries around a decorative sword.
The cartoon’s description captures the remorse of an older generation convinced that its youth were wrecking the culture:
The honest Farmer, come to Town, Can scarce believe his Son his own If thus the Taste continues Here, What will it be another Year?
In the 1770s, satirical prints like these proliferated, and they came to define macaronis in the public consciousness. Today, it is difficult to separate these caricatures from the actual macaronis. It is even likely that portrayals of macaronis were highly exaggerated; by some accounts, macaroni dress in the 1770s did not in fact stray too far from the norm.
And though humor was a primary driver of these caricatures, some scholars—like Amelia Rauser—argue there is also another motive: cartoonists, like the public at large, were attracted to the striking singularity of the macaronis. Macaronis were certainly odd, but they were also brave. In a society that emphasized individuality, it is not hard to imagine that they became folk heroes of a kind—and that many of the people who laughed at them felt a tug of longing for the freedom with which they lived.
By the time the macaroni fashion trend died in the early 1780s, the legacy of these early gender-role rebels was preserved almost entirely through caricatures. Well, and through that peculiar song, where a man confuses a feather for macaroni.
The sausages are nicely burnt, there's a fly drowning in a cup of tea and it's clouding over. How could this vision of the British summertime get any better? Simple: with a game of Wellie Wanging.
Wellie Wanging, or to use the American translation, throwing a rain boot over your shoulder, can be found at a variety of rural events across Great Britain. Wanging is popular at summer school fetes, weddings, village fairs or county shows. Never mind coming second in the Olympic medal table, these countryside occasions showcase the best of Britain: growing an exceptionally large parsnip, perfecting raspberry jam or other such larks as running in the "Dad Race" or winning at the coconut shy.
None of these, however, compare to the excitement of competitive Wellie Wanging. A Wellie is short for Wellington Boot, named after the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. The aim of the game is thus: launch a rain boot as far as possible. That's it.
As we see in the above video, two gentlemen, possibly after a few too many pints of ale, are wanging head-to-head.
Judging by the pastel-colored neck ties, the venue of this bout could be a field at the back of a wedding reception. As the men warm up with some arm lunges, someone in the crowd heckles: "Get on with it you two!"
The boots soar through the air and land with a rubbery bump. No celebration from either competitor, as they stroll off back to eat meringue. (Although these participants appear to be competing at the beginner level, there is a World Championship event that takes place in northern Britain every year.)
We hear one of the shirted men say, "I think that proves something." We'll never know what.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Emailella@atlasobscura.com.
Lili von Baeyer carefully examines an old timepiece. (Photo: Lili von Baeyer)
The making, restoring, and repairing of clocks is an endangered trade, still held somewhat captive by an old boy’s club. But 31-year-old Lili von Baeyer is pushing forward as a pioneer in preservation.
Our world is full of elderly clocks, once the premier technology of their time. Today, these wizened timepieces need expert care in order to stay ticking, and von Baeyer is one of very few young people choosing to dedicate themselves to the field. She currently looks after over 200 historic clocks at the Pennsylvania State Capitol, while also providing her services to other institutions and individual clock-owners.
Clocks are complex creatures. (Photo: Lili von Baeyer)
Von Baeyer compares a clock to a car: it is always running, and once you’ve serviced it, you feel bound to the object. It’s not like restoring a painting, she says, because when it’s done, it must continue to function. Many clock owners, she says, aren’t well versed in their clocks and don’t realize how finicky and delicate they can be.
As for the over 200 clocks at the State Capitol under her care, each needs to be oiled every two years and cleaned every three. Since they’re all over a century old, sometimes they will randomly stop functioning; von Baeyer must then make service calls to diagnose what’s wrong, and take them off-site.
Von Baeyer's favorite projects are those for major institutions. (Photo: Lili von Baeyer)
There are not many clockmakers left in general, and female ones are even rarer: von Baeyer has met only two other woman clockmakers in her life. Her own foray into clockmaking had its beginnings in art. As a painting and art history major, she became interested in kinetic art, and decided to try working with clock movement.
She called a local clockmaker, and he showed her how to take everything apart and put it back together. She quickly realized how much she liked the tactile, 3D nature of working with timepieces, and after a one-year program at the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC) and several apprenticeships, von Baeyer turned clockwork into her career. She's now been working with historic clocks for eight years.
Runs like clockwork. (Photo: Lili von Baeyer)
However, the NAWCC clockmaking course that taught von Baeyer the trade was shut down the year after she graduated, and the future looks grim. “Long term, there’s not going to be enough people to service them—finding a qualified person to service a fine clock is going to be increasingly difficult,” says Jordan Ficklin, Executive Director of the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute (AWCI).
Yet there’s a huge need for experts right now: clockmakers are leaving the profession, but there’s an increasing number of clocks to be serviced. Ficklin says that most people entering the clock profession today—often clock collectors and hobbyists who can’t find someone to service their own clocks—are either self taught or apprenticing.
Von Baeyer works with time pieces of all different sizes and styles. (Photo: Lili von Baeyer)
Yet scoring an apprenticeship in clockmaking is a feat in itself, says von Baeyer. It's quite rare for clockmakers to take on apprentices, as they are often skeptical of the younger generation’s commitment to taking the craft seriously. “The training is just petering off completely,” she says. (Training in watchmaking is not suffering the same fate, since it benefits from private funding; the OSUIT School of Watchmaking, for example, which accepts no more than 14 students each year, is sponsored by Rolex.)
But where clockmaking is concerned, Ficklin knows of only two programs that offer proper clock coursework, one at the York Time Institute in Pennsylvania and the other at Gem City College in Illinois. Continuing education courses for trained clockmakers, like those offered at AWCI, are more common than programs that teach the craft from scratch.
Taking care of time. (Photo: Lili von Baeyer)
Luckily, von Baeyer is committed to showing a younger generation of clock novices how the traditional timepieces tick. On Saturday, August 27, she will lead an Atlas Obscuraworkshop in Philadelphia where she will run through the fundamentals of how to take apart and put together a small, tricky novelty clock—all without breaking anything.
Elsewhere in her workshop, you can examine the bigger, more complicated clocks that she works on, like Morbier clocks from France, which she describes as both clunky and skeletal. Any well-made timepiece like this is a pleasure to work on, she says.
Hopefully, von Baeyer can be a mentor to aspiring clockmakers to come. Otherwise, we may just lose track of time.
Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have made a stunning discovery 20 years in the making: an exoplanet that circles around Earth's nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Scientists have been looking for this world since the first exoplanet—a planet that orbits a star outside our solar system—was discovered in 1995.
The newly discovered exoplanet is thought to be the closest place for life to exist outside our solar system. The planet is close enough for scientists to study and to determine whether human life could flourish there.
The planet, named Proxima b, orbits its parent star every 11 days and has an estimated surface temperature that would allow for the presence of liquid water. Astronomers say the surface is rocky and 1.3 times bigger than our Earth.
Astronomer Guillem Anglada-Escudé, from Queen Mary University of London, led the mission, called the Pale Red Dot campaign, to find the exoplanet. They looked for the tiny back-and-forth wobble of the star that would be caused by the gravitational pull of a possible orbiting planet.
"Many exoplanets have been found and many more will be found, but searching for the closest potential Earth-analogue and succeeding has been the experience of a lifetime for all of us," said Anglada-Escudé in an ESO release. "Many people’s stories and efforts have converged on this discovery. The result is also a tribute to all of them. The search for life on Proxima b comes next."
Proxima b is in an "inhabitable zone" because of its distance from the star it orbits. For astronomers the world-over the news is a game changer.
"It's the holy grail," Mercedes López-Morales, an astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tells Atlas Obscura.
The next step for López-Morales and her team at Harvard is to detect whether the new planet has an atmosphere and an ozone layer. The presence of an ozone layer means oxygen, which means air. It will certainly keep the team busy over the next couple of years.
Astronomers will be cautiously optimistic, says David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University. His team is also involved in research related to the new discovery, and will be working on it closely in the future. Kipping is in no doubt about the potential impact of this news. "If independently confirmed, this would be a historic discovery shaping the entire future of our field," he tells Atlas Obscura.
And while this was a monumental discovery, the early predictions suggest the atmosphere may be damaged because the star is highly active and has powerful winds. This means, as the first indications show, the atmosphere may be eroded, says López-Morales, and not like Earth's.
Nonetheless, no one will know until the tests are done with a powerful telescope. The astronomers will now undertake research that asks a legitimate question: does life already exist on this new planet, and will it be conducive for human life in the future?
To reach this point is a major step forward, and the team involved in the discovery deserve huge plaudits, says López-Morales.
The entrance to the Bhaja caves in Maharashtra state, India. (All Photos Courtesy of David Efurd)
Two thousand years ago, merchants traversed the monumental Western Ghats to reach India’s busiest ports. This sprawling mountain range was a gateway to traders who facilitated lucrative business deals with the Roman Empire.
The Buddhists who navigated the valleys and hills created a spiritual refuge in the basalt rock, by carving temples from it. These ornate places of worship survive today as relics from an ancient era, providing physical evidence of the architectural traditions that existed in a Buddhist society that has few remaining monuments.
“We have no examples from this period that have survived apart from the caves,” says David Efurd, a professor of art history who spent years photographing cave temples in Maharashtra, India.
Kanheri cave, like most of the Buddhist temples in the region, is carved out of the think basalt rock in the Western Ghats.
Efurd has visited and photographed some 70 cave temple sites in India, where he studied Buddhist architecture as a Fulbright scholar. Roughly half of these fell within his sphere of expertise: caves built and used between the 2nd century B.C. and the 3rd century A.D.
Some of the sites are easy to visit and popular with tourists visiting from Mumbai or Pune, the two biggest cities within range of the caves. Others were so remote he trekked for several hours, relying on the directions of local guides or even 19th century maps. Through his investigations, Efurd has pieced together a picture of the eras in which these incredible structures were built.
Buddhists still come to worship in the Bedse cave in Pune district, Maharashtra.
In the ancient world, architectural thinkers exploited the permanence of rock. Monks have lived in caves since the origins of Buddhism in northeastern India, around the 6th to 4th century B.C. According to early texts, rudimentary caves used as dwellings were transformed over time into spaces with clear elements of architectural design. These inspired the caves found in Maharashtra, which more clearly resemble the interiors of domestic and religious structures from, at the earliest, the 2nd century B.C.
Maharashtra has the greatest concentration of Buddhist cave temples in India. It is thought that the monks directed the construction of the temples, which were excavated along popular trade routes. Descriptions at the sites indicate that there was a division of labor. This means some workers were simply involved in the heavy lifting, and others were specialists in sculpture.
Karla temple.
Worship at the temples took place in the chaitya, a prayer hall with a stupa at the end. Traditionally the monk conducts the ceremony from the stupa, the dome-shaped object at the back. The chaitya at Karla near Lonavala consists of a large prayer hall, as the image above shows, and columns that flank the cave. Lions are carved into the pillars at the entrance to the temple.
One of the Ajanta caves.
The sites often consist of more than one temple. For example, there are several carved into the hillside at Ajanta. These caves, built in the 5th or 6th century, have some of the most ornate interior decorations, and some of their wall paintings survive today.
A statue of Buddha at the Kanheri temple.
Some of the most impressive features of the temples are the sculptures. Above is an example of a tall statue of the Buddha, which appears to be in excellent condition at over 2,000 years old. In each of the caves Efurd photographed, the walls and ceilings are engraved with religious patterns or figures. The sculptures found at the Buddhist caves are in effect permanently attached to a geological structure, so it is rare to find them in museums.
The Archeological Survey of India, a government agency, has designated some of the caves as protected sites. There has also been some restoration work to maintain the interiors and exteriors of the temples. Yet the majority of the sites remain unchanged and a tribute to the workmanship and sheer strength of the basalt rock. (Natural disasters have caused nearby religious spots carved into sandstone to collapse.)
Buddhism prospered in Maharashtra until the 11th and 12th century, when it largely disappeared. To Efurd, the caves preserve a unique form of Buddhist art that history may have otherwise forgotten.
