When we think of sunken wrecks, we usually flash on some downed Spanish galleon waiting to be discovered in the murky depths. But sometimes a shipwreck is a train. As Michigan Live is reporting, some wreck hunters recently discovered a locomotive at the bottom of Lake Superior that sank over a century ago.
The Canadian Pacific Railway Locomotive No. 694 was chugging along in 1910 when it collided with a rocks that had covered the tracks. The crash sent the train careening into Lake Superior, taking the lives of three crewmen, one of whom died trying to jump from the train before it hit the rocks. Once derailed, it fell 60 feet into the waters, where it remained undisturbed until just recently.
In 2014, a small team of shipwreck hunters discovered a number of the train’s boxcars, but the locomotive remained elusive. However, last month, another team of hunters was able to locate the locomotive using the previous teams coordinates. The steamer was hiding over 230 feet below the surface amongst a field of boulders.
Initially, the hope was that if the locomotive was found it could be dredged up and placed on display. But the train was so damaged and destroyed that the salvagers seem content to just leave it where it lays.
Deep in the waters of British Columbia's Fraser River lurks a creature straight out of myth. He's longer than a tall man, and wider around than a curbside mailbox. His nose is totally flat, from some unimaginable altercation. This is Pig Nose—a 650-pound sturgeon who haunts the the town of Lillooet, tempting sportsmen even as he weaves through their nightmares.
“This fish has been the talk of fishing and sporting goods shops for years," Jeff Grimolfson, another river guide, told Global News Canada. But on Tuesday, the outlet reports, river guide Nick McCabe brought the legend to the surface: he reeled in Pig Nose.
McCabe's coworkers at River Monster Adventures have dubbed him "the sturgeon whisperer," because he can catch pretty much any fish he puts his mind to. To get Pig Nose, the 19-year-old took a group of clients downstream from town. It took the group two hours to pull him in.
McCabe and his clients were careful with the fish, who is pushing 80. They took photos and measurements, and scanned his ID microchip, implanted during a previous victory of man over fish. And then, as befits a true legend, they let him go. As Grimolfson says, "the living legend has been captured and lives on."
Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.
Hiding deep within the Earth are the ruins of dead cities, complete with crumbling skylines and apocalyptic vistas. Or at least that’s what it looks like. So-called “ruin marble,” is made up of stunning slices of polished stone that have randomly produced what appears to be silhouettes of human-made ruins and blasted landscapes. But it’s all just the result of a specific regional geology.
Also known as ruiniform marble, landscape stone, and Pietra Paesina, ruin marble is mainly found around the city of Florence in Tuscany. It has been found in places outside of Italy, such as Austria, but the geological conditions needed to create the unique forms are rare.
Ruin marble is not actually marble, but a conglomeration of limestone and other minerals, mainly iron oxides, that co-mingle to form shapes that seem uncannily geometric. Most ruin marble was likely formed around 50 million years ago, as groundwater seeped up through still-forming minerals mixing and aligning the stones into their miniature city-like formations.
A more technical description comes from a 1953 entry in the American Journal of Science: “Ruin-marble is a kind of compact calcareous marl, showing when polished, pictures of fortifications, temples, etc. in ruins due to infiltration of oxide of iron.”
In addition to the patterns created by liquids, small fossils and algae can often get caught up in the stone, creating more natural, but nonetheless eye-catching shapes. Unlike the sharper, more architectural forms, these natural imperfections can create the feel of foliage, or smoke. These wrinkles give the little worlds even more texture.
Color-wise, ruin marble tends to run the gamut from bleak grays and blacks, like the piece held in the London Museum of Natural History. It can also take on hues of brighter oranges and reds as the iron and limestone come together.
Ruin marble is very rare because it is not something that can be identified from the surface. Outside of focusing on the areas around Florence where it is known to occur, finding the perfect piece of limestone sediment is just luck. It is not impossible to shine much of the stone from the area into a lovely little landscape (see the video here to watch the process in action), but finding a section that looks just like a city skyline is no easy feat.
The finished polished stones tend to be fairly small. Due to the size of the undulations in the stone, and the amount that gets taken off in the polishing process, finished pieces of ruin marble can usually fit in the palm of your hand.
Ruin marble has been sought after for centuries as a decorative piece of art. Renaissance furniture makers were known to incorporate pieces of the stone into their creations, while others put them on display as curiosities of their own. Some people would even paint other images on the polished rocks to alter or accent the natural patterns. Many of these pieces have ended up in museums, which is still the best place to catch a glimpse of these ruined limestone landscapes.
Boys admire redwoods in Sequoia National Park, California. (Photo: Stephanie/CC BY-ND 2.0)
In the latter half of the 19th century, the West had been won. The frontier was closed, and America was feeling panicked about its identity. Who were we if not the gunslinging pioneers of the Wild West? Were we soon to be soft-bellied city-slickers? Not if Teddy Roosevelt had anything to say about it. Once the cowboy president was in office, he signed the Antiquities Act, which gave commanders in chief the ability to designate national monuments. Over the years swaths of land were set aside for protection, but in 1916 Congress solidified the movement by founding the National Parks Service. On hundred years and about 400 parks later, the National Parks Service is still going strong.
The National Parks are intended to be a living "textbook" to America's history. They were here long before the United States of America, and are, as historian Wallace Stegner put it, "Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than at our worst." We forget sometimes how big the country is, but the fact that the Everglades and Joshua Tree fall under the same administration serves as a helpful reminder how vast and varied the States are.
The Grand Canyon and Old Faithful are certainly not to be missed. But national parks are huge! In addition to the classic sights, there are a million hidden wonders just waiting to be found, from ancient artifacts to clandestine caves. In celebration of the National Parks Service's 100th birthday, admission to any national park is free between August 25th and 28th, so no better occasion to spend some time reveling in the natural wonders the U.S. has to offer.
To aid your exploration, here is a list of places in the Atlas that are hidden tucked away within National Parks and National Forests. Get out there and find them.
Havasupai Falls are a well-kept secret of the Native American tribe they are named after and owned by. Understandably reluctant to open the falls to throngs of tourists, the Havasupai people issue a few camping permits a year to would-be visitors. If you're one of the applicants lucky enough to receive one of the permits, your choices of reaching the falls are by helicopter, mule, or 10-mile hike. The Havasupai Falls are colored a shocking turquoise blue by the high levels of calcium carbonate in the water, which gives both the waterfall and the tribe their name: Havasupai roughly translates to "people of the blue-green waters."
The propeller, salvaged from the mysterious airplane wreck, surrounded by 14 commemorative stones. (Photo: Atlas Obscura user kurtregner)
Early on November 17, 1955 an Air Force DC-4 plane carrying 10 CIA scientists and 4 flight crew members took off from Burbank, California and headed to Area 51. It never arrived—the flight was reported missing a mere hour later. The plane had crashed at the peak of Mt. Charleston, killing all of its passengers. All of this information—from the flight itself, to the crash, to the identity of every person involved—was classified for 40 years. It was only once Boy Scout leader Steve Ririe had stumbled upon the wreckage and made it his mission to find out what happened that the details of the crash were released. Still, we don't know the reason for the flight or why it crashed. Today, the propeller of the DC-4 is part of the Silent Heroes of the Cold War Memorial, the only National Memorial of its kind. It is dedicated to the anonymous individuals who lost their lives under Cold War's blanket of secrecy.
Nestled amidst the rugged mountain landscape of Glacier National Park is an enforced tunnel, which looks like it might have been dug by dwarves for some kind of ancient fortress. In actuality, Ptarmigan Tunnel is just a small, human-made structure, but its existence allows for some incredible views of Glacier National Park. The tunnel was dug in 1930 with two jackhammers on either side of the rock wall and a healthy amount of dynamite. Though the tunnel is completely unlit and just a little bit creepy, passing through it saves hikers the treacherous trip over the wall from Many Glacier to Belly River Valley.
The abandoned rocket, viewed through a tiny hole in its cover. (Photo: Brett Levin/CC BY 2.0)
In the fervor of the Space Race, NASA began to experiment with different methods of fueling the mechanical behemoths that were to shuttle mankind into space. The Aerojet testing grounds were deep in the swampy Everglades, easily hidden from the Soviets. NASA ended up using a different kind of fuel than what Aerojet was testing, and the facility was abandoned. But when you've got a failed secret rocket in a hole in a national park, it's difficult to find someone to take it off your hands. No attempts to repurpose the land ever took off, and so the facility, rocket and all, remains as secluded and abandoned as ever.
In the early years of the 20th century, it was thought that fresh air and spring water could be cures for consumption (aka tuberculosis). Dr. C.H. Diehl opened the Welch Spring Hospital on these grounds after purchasing the land for just $800. It wasn't the pseudoscience that caused the hospital to close its doors for good, but its inaccessible location. Sick people had trouble making the hike through the Ozarks, and when the doctor died in 1940 his buildings were left to nature.
They say you can't be two places at once, but Tri-State Peak begs to differ. Here, you can be three places at once: the great states of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. This site, which is nondescript enough that it might be overlooked, is also the beginning of the trail forged by folkloric frontiersman Daniel Boone.
When Donald R. Currey was just a graduate student, he made the biggest mistake he possibly could have. He was researching the Little Ice Age by taking samples from ancient trees, and had zeroed in on a grove of bristlecone pines in Nevada. After two unsuccessful attempts at boring holes into a tree Currey estimated to be about 3,000 years old, he convinced the Forest Service to let him cut it down to date it. After felling it, he realized it was much older than he thought. In fact, it was much older than anything—the tree, named Prometheus, had been growing for upwards of 5,000 years, and was the oldest ever dated. Its stump, which measures eight feet across, still sits in the pine grove.
A pocket of abundant fall foliage in the middle of an arid desert. (Photo: Fredlyfish4/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Guadalupe Mountains National Park is in west Texas, where dry dusty desert stretches for miles. But McKittrick Canyon is a lush oasis in the middle of it all. Protection from the surrounding mountains make it a perfect little pocket of flora. Here, desert plants like yucca and cacti flourish, but so do unexpected ones like ash and maple trees, as well as an abundance of wildflowers. It may be hard to get to, but the canyon is far from undiscovered. Archaeological finds indicate people lived in "the prettiest spot in Texas" as long as 12,000 years ago.
Capitalist E.C. Waters wanted to make a profit off of the growing popularity of Yellowstone, the first national park, and he did so ferrying passengers across the lake with a series of steamboats. This might have worked out okay, except for the fact that Waters was not a nice man. He vandalized a geyser, infuriated customers, and opened a game show and zoo that landed him with allegations of animal abuse (in the late 19th century, so you know it had to be bad). To top it all off, in 1906 Waters hired his biggest boat of all and named it after himself. Park officials were over his bad behavior though, and by the very next year a sign was posted that read "E.C. Waters... having rendered himself obnoxious during the season of 1907, is... debarred from the park and will not be allowed to return." E.C. Waters (the boat) was left to languish in the lake, where its rotting hull still sits.
You could call the Skunk Ape (Big Foot's stinkier cousin) Dave Shealy's white whale. Despite the fact that the National Parks System dismisses the Ape as a "local myth", Shealy asserts there are between seven and nine living in the park and has made it his life's work to find them. He doesn't want to poach the cryptids though—he loves the Skunk Ape, and in teaching about it he has raised awareness about the Everglades' ecosystem. His headquarters, situated on a campsite in the park, contain educational artifacts like footprint casts and ape droppings as well as souvenirs.
Near Humphrey's Peak (the highest point of elevation in Arizona), the scattered metal remains of an Air Force B-24 lie among the rocks. The plane crashed in 1944, tragically killing all eight of the men aboard. The location of the crash is very difficult to access, hence why pieces of the aircraft remain on Humphrey's Peak rather than a monument. Advanced hikers may attempt to find the wreckage, but for the less adventurous of us, the glinting metal atop the peak can apparently be seen from parking lot on sunny days.
Sliding Rock is nature's Slip 'n Slide. (Photo: Jared/CC BY 2.0)
Take a ride down a waterfall on a gently sloping rock, smoothed by eons of water, into a natural basin. It's as though nature intended for you to have fun. This is actually one of the less-hidden spots on this list—Sliding Rock is growing more crowded, and apparently even has its own lifeguards now.
Rush used to be the second largest city in Arkansas. It thrived off profitable zinc mining, but when that industry dried up so did the town, and Rush was declared officially abandoned in 1972. Because the town's buildings and mines were left within the bounds of a national park, the Parks Service elected to preserve them as a historical resource. Some of the structures date back as far as the 1880s, and little has been changed.
This verdant trail in Olympic National Forest looks like something out of a fairytale. The Hall of Mosses is located within the Hoh Rainforest, which (as you might expect) gets a lot of rain. Fourteen-plus feet of precipitation per year cause the trees to grow stunted root systems, which in turn causes them to fall more easily. Moss quickly grows over the graveyard of trees. Walking this path is much like exploring ancient ruins. It's magical, otherworldly, and very old.
The kitchen of the Holzwarth dude ranch, preserved in its original state. (Photo: daveynin/CC BY 2.0)
When the Holzwarth family emigrated from Germany to Colorado, they sustained themselves by ranching. Their homestead on the Colorado River was a pristine site, with views of the surrounding mountains, and it attracted guests almost from the moment they moved in. They expanded, turning their home into a trout lodge and bed and breakfast-style ranch. The lodge remained open until 1974, when, upon purchasing the land from the Holzwarths, the National Park Service razed several buildings. However, the original lodge was left standing as a historic site, and now visitors can see exactly what it was like to live on the Colorado River in the early 20th century.
Lava hardens from the outside in, meaning that as the parts that are exposed to the air form a hard shell, a river of lava still pumps through the center. This kind of volcanic activity leaves behind almost perfectly circular tubes, which appear manmade, but were formed of nature's own accord. This is the case with the lava river caves in Coconino National Forest. Through an unremarkable hole in the ground one can enter into a winding maze of cave tunnels that intersect and loop around each other.
The original summit house, built in 1873. The gift shop and restaurant operate out of a newer building just feet away. (Photo: mark byzewski/CC BY 2.0)
Scaling Pikes Peak isn't as difficult as it was for its first ascendant in 1820 (now you can go by car or rail), but the Summit House will be there to greet you no matter how hard your trek was. There are the predictable keychains and postcards available for purchase here, but the Summit House's real selling point is its donuts. Because of the 14,115 foot altitude, water boils at a lower temperature, and food must be cooked differently. The Summit House has been frying its signature cake donuts with the same secret recipe since 1916. Some hikers claim the trip up the mountain is worth it for the pastries alone, but the view from Pikes Peak is pretty awe-inspiring as well.
It was this very vista that prompted Katharine Lee Bates to write "America the Beautiful" in 1893, just over two decades before the National Parks Service was born.
Update, 8/25: This article mistakenly included National Forests as part of the Nationals Parks Service. We have updated the article to note that National Forests are part of a different agency. We regret the error.
Mount Aspiring National Park in New Zealand. (Photo: Public domain)
Over a month ago, a young Czech couple hiking in New Zealand's Mount Aspiring National Park went missing, and after several weeks had elapsed, were presumed to be dead.
But this week, one of them turned up, in a hut in the park, apparently having subsisted on food from a nearby lodge, according to the BBC.
The hiker's husband was dead. She said he fell from a slope just four days into their hike, which began in late July. She later found the hut, and holed up there in the midst of the New Zealand winter. After around a month had elapsed, the woman was finally spotted by a team of searchers.
The searchers had been looking for the couple for days, after Czech officials alerted the country that they were missing.
The rescuers' jobs were made difficult by heavy snowfall, but when the woman was finally found, officials said, she was in good health. Officials are still looking for her husband's body.
The country says that, from April to October, certain trails should "only be attempted by fit, experienced and well equipped people."
Some New Zealand hikers, according to the Guardian, have expressed skepticism over the woman's story, saying it would be unusual for someone not to be found for such a long time, since other hikers traverse the trail in the winter.
Good afternoon! For a while now, Atlas Obscura has been talking about an advice column—and now, we have the perfect Atlas Obscura advice columnist.
Meet Zardulu, myth-maker extraordinaire—her adventures with, say, training rats or creating the three-eyed Gowanus catfish have been written up in the New York Times and featured on Reply All and elsewhere. She's going to take an unusual approach to answering any and all life questions. In her words:
"When the answers elude you, call upon the secret wisdom of the ancient world. Call upon Zardulu. As a practitioner of various mystical traditions, she offers practical advice, opinion and commentary with a unique perspective. She is best known for fabricating dozens of viral news stories in publications from National Geographic to the New York Times, an art she calls 'Zardulism'.
Drawn from the principles of Surrealism, her art similarly has its origins in visionary imagination and symbolic thought. This lead to an interest in the work of psychologist Carl Jung whose theories on these subjects, and esoteric leanings, lead her to practicing tarot and other forms of supernatural query. But it's not all academic; the advice she gives is equally rooted in her own, diverse life experience and she is ready to address both your most ordinary, and unordinary, questions and concerns."
Zardulu will be taking your questions about any topic—from family drama to travel advice. For the next week or so, we'll be taking your questions for her first column, so please be in touch with us at askzardulu@atlasobscura.com. Be sure to let Zardulu know whether you want your real name or identifying info used. Let Zardulu decode the mysteries of your life!
The USS Iowa firing her nine 16″/50 and six 5″/38 guns during a target exercise. [Photo: Public Domain]
New York City’s waterfront isn’t short of piers, but one of those piers is truly unusual: it is the remnant of an incomplete, abandoned naval base built during some of the most fraught years of the Cold War. In the 1980s, the U.S. Navy proposed and built a 35-acre, multimillion-dollar homeport at Stapleton, a neighborhood on Staten Island’s northeastern waterfront, to permanently station a fleet of ships potentially armed with nuclear warheads.
The construction of the Stapleton Navy base was a result of the nuclear fear that swept the world during the “Second Cold War.” Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were high, with the latter country’s rapid nuclear weaponry development. U.S. president Ronald Reagan decided to bolster military defense and grow the Navy fleet from 400 to 600 ships. The vessels, capable of carrying nuclear missiles, were going to be stationed at new ports scattered across U.S. territory.
By dotting the country with Navy ships, Navy Secretary John F. Lehman reasoned the Navy couldn’t be crippled by a “Pearl Harbor type of catastrophe,” Clifford D. May wrote in New York Times in 1987.
President Ronald Reagan ordered the U.S. Navy fleet grow to 600 ships. [Photo: Public Domain]
In July 1983, the Navy proposed the Stapleton base, a 45-foot canal and 1,410-foot pier that would house the reactivated World War II battleship USS Iowa and six support vessels. Stapleton was chosen as the preferred homeport over other cities that fought for the Navy’s business, as it would provide an easy portal to Britain, Greenland, and Iceland.
Federal and local officials, including New York’s Mayor Ed Koch, also believed the base would drive up the economy of the New York metropolitan area, provide thousands of jobs, and clean up Stapleton’s dreary ports.
The base, which faced Manhattan from a run-down section of Staten Island's east shore, was also intended to make the public feel safer: “The reality of America’s nuclear vulnerability—now publicly confirmed by Presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan—has become a steadily growing part of the public consciousness,” journalist L. Bruce van Voorst wrote in the 1983 issue of Foreign Affairs, adding that “the cavalier attitude of many senior Reagan Administration officials toward nuclear issues has contributed significantly to the widespread fears outside government.”
Stapleton first hosted ships along its waterfront when it started a ferry service in 1752. New York City built piers in 1920, which were used during World War II by both the Navy and the Army as the New York State Port of Embarkation. After the war, the shipping industry shifted to New Jersey, causing the waterfront to lose traffic and fall into a state of disrepair. The naval presence would revitalize the area, the shiny new base costing an estimated $799 million.
“There was a time when New York City was the No. 1 home port,” Mayor Koch told the New York Times in 1983. “And we want to make it that again.”
Despite governmental support, many still feared a nuclear accident. The government’s policy prohibits the Navy from confirming or denying if ships carry any nuclear weapons. The ships at Stapleton may not have even had any onboard, but even the possibility riled up antinuclear groups, particularly religious organizations in favor of peace and disarmament.
While many Americans had been vocal about atomic warfare since the 1940s, antinuclear organizations in New York and New Jersey attracted people who had never been involved with any kind of political activity before. Roman Catholic bishops, rabbis at reform synagogues, and Quakers in Manhattan all fought to freeze testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons in both the United States and the Soviet Union.
In 1982, the New York Timesreported growing opposition to nuclear arms in the New York area, with petition drives on the Staten Island Ferry, church meetings in New Jersey suburbs, and even a high school essay contest in Rockland County. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s 1983 Notre Dame commencement speech included a strong plea for nuclear disarmament:
“Because the nuclear issue is not simply a political but also a profoundly moral and religious question, the Church must be a participant in the process of protecting the world and its people from the specter of nuclear destruction.”
The Riverside Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan ran a disarmament program that did everything it could to make the public aware of the harms of a nuclear accident, even producing a propaganda map that states: “The basing of the Nuclear Navy at Staten Island threatens us all.”
“It’s a striking poster,” says PJ Mode, a persuasive map collector who owns a copy of the 1984 Riverside Church Disarmament map titled “Accident.” The poster shows splattered red paint over the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area, and dubious statistics about "a cloud of plutonium dust 28 miles long" that could arise should an accidental fire or explosion occur onboard.
The debate waged on until the Navy finally began building the base on March 1987. Five ships were stationed at the pier, but the USS Iowa retired after one of its turrets exploded. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, military spending was scaled back, which halted the construction in 1993. The incomplete Stapleton base was decommissioned in 1995.
Over the last two decades, there have been many different proposals to transform the abandoned waterfront space, from a NASCAR racetrack to a movie studio. Soon, people will be able to live on the nuclear navy ship base. In 2013, construction began on a massive $180 million redevelopment project that will build 350 housing units, restaurants, recreation centers, and waterfront esplanade. This will comprise the new Stapleton waterfront.
Today, many have forgotten the controversy over the base as the Navy’s presence slowly disappears. But Stapleton’s pier remains as a reminder of Cold War military tactics—a New York shoreline altered by nuclear panic.
Out in the open plains and savannas in Central Kalahari, Africa, this young springbok jumps between members of the herd, popping up high above the tall grass. This specific springing pattern often seen among antelopes, such as the springbok, and other deer is known as “stotting” or “pronking.”
Pronking involves a series of repeated jumps. When the animal springs up, all four legs are kept stiff and the back is curved. While the display isn't as graceful as a leap or bound, pronking is quite entertaining to witness as the people recording the footage above chuckle in amusement. The springbok in the clip jumps up in place, but can also shoot off in different directions like someone losing control over his or her jumping on a pogo stick.
Since springboks and gazelles in Africa dwell in large herds in wide-open spaces, they are visible to cheetahs, wild dogs, and other predators. Yet, pronking is most often seen when the animal is startled by a predator. The peculiar behavior has baffled scientists since it makes individuals even more vulnerable and easily spotted. Pronking is energy-draining, and is not as fast as running—nimble-framed gazelles can reach speeds up to 60 miles per hour in short bursts.
Scientists have tossed around several explanations for pronking, from it being a signal to others in the herd when a predator approaches to a confusion tactic if multiple springboks pronk at once. The most popular theory is that springboks pronk to show off to predators. A pronking springbok signals to an approaching predator that the individual has a ton of energy to spare, and it would be costly to chase, BBC Naturereports.
To learn more about animal jumping behaviors, take a look at our deep dive into pronking, bounding, and leaping.
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.
Self-driving cars are our future. And in a few decades, it's easy to imagine them as ubiquitous, dominating the streets with an efficiency that no human driver can claim to match.
On Thursday, six self-driving cars made their debut in Singapore, becoming the first self-driving taxis in the world to zoom around on public streets, according to the Associated Press.
A few caveats: the taxis don't go just anywhere, can only be used by invitation, and still have humans inside as a backup in case anything goes off the rails (or road).
The cars are operated by a U.S. company called nuTonomy, which beat competitors like Google, Volvo, and Uber to market with the first public self-driving trial. (Uber will launch their own in Pittsburgh in a few weeks.)
In the meantime, though, expect a lot of starts, stops, and, likely, accidents. It will be a long time before the perfect robotic car is here, a truth nuTonomy acknowledged during Thursday's rollout.
"I don't expect there to be a time where we say, 'We've learned enough,'" the company's CEO Karl Iagnemma said.
In 2004, a historian named John Thorn sent the librarians of Pittsfield, Massachusetts on a strange quest. Deep in the archives, they flipped through reams of 18th century bylaws, newsletters, and meeting transcripts. They were looking for any mention of baseball—decades before it was thought to have existed, in a state far from where it was supposedly born.
After 10 days, the chasers caught their wild goose. On a yellowing piece of paper from 1791, in the middle of a host of council minutes, they found this admonition: "for the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House, no Person or Inhabitant… shall be permitted to play at any Game called Wicket, Cricket, [or] Baseball."
For generations, the honor of being "Baseball's Hometown" had hopped around between New York and New Jersey—from Cooperstown, New York, the scene of the sport's most famous, if likely mythical, origin story, to Hoboken, New Jersey, site of the first organized matchup, and then to New York City's Greenwich Village, where "the manly and athletic game" was played in 1823.
Pittsfield welcomed its new title with glee. But this steal wasn't just a feather in the town's ball cap. It was yet another score for Western Massachusetts—a humble region that, improbably or not, has managed to come up with a disproportionate chunk of America's favorite sports.
"There are a number of reasons why Massachusetts was a hub of sporting inventiveness," says John Nauright, a Professor at the University of North Texas and an international sports history expert, before elaborating on three of them.
First, Massachusetts benefited from its ties to other innovative areas—particularly Britain, which has a long roster of sports inventions, and Canada, still part of the British Empire at that time. "Canadians such as James Naismith, inventor of basketball, taught in the state," says Nauright.
Indeed, Naismith played an outsized role in Western Massachusetts' destiny as a sports empire—netball was largely inspired by his creation of baseball, and volleyball was invented by a protege of his who stayed close by.
More recent international ties have kept Massachusetts recreationally creative, too. "Through the migration of English and Portuguese workers to the many mills in the state, places like Fall River became a hub for soccer in the USA," Nauright points out.
Second, Massachusetts has long been a center of higher education. This means a couple of things: energetic young men and women looking for interesting ways to stay healthy, and a propensity for the kind of scrupulousness that turns a pastime into a sport. As Steven A. Reiss recounts in The New Sports History, modern sports tend to share a few characteristics, including "bureaucratization," "quantification," and "record-keeping."
In fact, candlepin was invented so that recreational bowlers could finally compete with one another. Even if people were tossing balls into peach baskets for fun long before Naismith, if they didn't keep score or write down hard rules, we may never find out.
Third, there's the weather. Many of the sports in question, from basketball to bowling, can be played easily even on the snowiest, coldest days. "These new indoor games enabled men and women to compete in sports without the need to be outdoors through the winter months," Nauright says.
Of course, attempting to pinpoint the origin of particular sports involves a certain amount of playfulness. It's a rare game that was invented out of whole cloth, as basketball seems to have been—most evolved slowly, moving around without regard for borders or arising spontaneously in a number of places.
As Thorn himself wrote after his Pittsfield discovery, "we can only suppose that if baseball was banned in Pittsfield in 1791, it was not a nuisance devised in that year.... [rather], baseball appears to have sprung up everywhere, like dandelions."
Arguing over where those first seeds came from feels like a sport in itself—in which case, this Massachusetts resident just made her first play. To the rest of the country, I say: your move.
In a crumbling basement in the gritty part of Budapest’s VIII District, the clock was already ticking. Various clues lay scattered around the subterranean chamber, and we had an hour to gather clues and solve the interconnected problems to get out of this Rubik’s Cube-themed room. A series of logic puzzles, some hidden, led us on a trail to keys, codes and even more puzzles that opened up even more challenges. After the first two minutes of panic and confusion, being locked in the room with four Hungarian girls I had never met before, the adrenaline kicked in and my problem-solving synapses snapped into action.
Parapark is no ordinary room escape game—it’s the first of its kind in the world. In the summer of 2011, Attila Gyurkovics, the man behind the concept, opened the doors to the interactive game in Budapest, not knowing that this interactive game would cause an intellectual epidemic that would infect the whole world.
“Of course, my inspiration partly came from computer games,” Gyurkovics says from the crumbling, street art-covered courtyard of Bujdosó Kert, one of Budapest’s many “ruin bars,” whose basement houses three of his games. “I played a lot of hidden object games and I saw how it hooked people. But the idea to create real-life room escape games came from wanting to apply this idea to small group setting.”
Parapark in Budapest, first live room escape game of its kind. (Photo: Courtesy of Parapark)
Indeed, scurrying around the basement solving puzzles offers a nostalgic throwback to classic hidden object games—your brain reacts somewhat similarly— with players experiencing a feeling of leaving or forgetting the outside world for a while. Research even backs this up: when you’re thrown into a locked room with a team and a challenge, a focused mental state called “Flow” kicks in. First identified by Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszenmihályi, the Flow Effect is common during game work, and in optimal conditions, players move into a state of hyper-concentration and creativity.
“I was really inspired by Mihály Csíkszenmihályi’s concept of ‘Flow’,” says Gyurkovics. “I felt that by bringing those games to life, with those elements, would be something that would offer people a great experience.”
In an escape room, flow occurs when a group undertakes a difficult but not impossible challenge, and is given clear goals and feedback about how they’re doing. Of course, being so immersed in an objective can lead to a distortion of time—something that becomes very apparent when suddenly you have just one minute left to open the safe to reach the final key to get out.
Many of Budapest's room escape games are set up in formerly abandoned basements. (Photo: Courtesy of Parapark)
People are trying to break out of locked rooms the world over. In Budapest alone there are dozens of live escape games spread across the city, and you’ll also find break-out games from Sydney to Los Angeles that follow the Parapark concept.
It might seem like the Hungarian origin of room escape games is merely coincidental, but if you look more closely, a distinctive pattern emerges, linking the country and the worldwide craze it introduced to a robust lineage of creative problem solvers. For a country about the same size as Indiana, with a unique, almost indecipherable language largely unrelated to others in Europe, Hungarians have managed to populate history with creative inventions in science and design, from the Rubik’s Cube to the ballpoint pen. One can think of the very first Escape Room as arising from various Hungarian influences carried along the wires byTivadar Puskás’s first telephone exchange into a new, exciting idea.
Csíkszentmihályi, whose TED talk on creativity and the flow state has now been viewed 3.4 million times, is the most cited influence, but Ernő Rubik, inventor of the famous Rubik’s Cube, is another obvious connection. Just like the puzzle piece we found behind a panel, the professor of architecture who became famous for his iconic multi-colored puzzle cube fits neatly into the Hungarian oeuvre of problem solving, but he’s not the only one. One of the world’s most famous escape artists also came from Budapest.
The House of Houdini is one of Budapest's newest museums, formally opened in June 2016. (Photo: Courtesy of House of Houdini)
Across the river and up on the Castle Hill in the I District, there is another door requiring another riddle to open it. At the House of Houdini, if you can answer with the right magic number inspired by a deck of cards, the door opens up into a treasure chest that leads you into the complex world of Harry Houdini. The brand new House of Houdini museum, which opened in the summer of 2016, contains original props, documents, and memorabilia about the illusionist and escapologist. It all culminates with a live magic show.
But beyond the theatrics, what’s most interesting about the House of Houdini is its owner, David Merlini, a Hungarian-Italian escapologist, whose passion for the craft began when he chose locks and handcuffs over more conventional toys at the age of four. “I have wanted to be an escape artist since I was a child,” he says.
Merlini followed in the footsteps of his idol in his adult years, escaping live in front of an audience after being embedded in a concrete block and hurled into the Danube River. In between stunts like escaping from a burning pyre and being unfrozen from a block of ice by blowtorches after spending 33 hours locked in a refrigerator cell, he spent nearly two decades going to auctions and looking for pieces about Houdini.
Can you answer the riddle to get through the secret door? (Photo: Courtesy of House of Houdini)
As Merlini’s collection grew, the idea of creating a dedicated museum in Budapest started to feel more and more logical. His years-long passion for collecting artifacts about Houdini, who was born Erik Weisz in 1874, manifested in a collection Merlini wanted to share with the public. Since Budapest was Houdini’s home town, it seemed appropriate to found the museum on local ground. The House of Houdini now works with the National Széchényi Library to unravel the myths and truths surrounding Houdini’s legacy.
“There is a common belief that Houdini was born in the United States, in Appleton, Wisconsin, but he was born in Budapest,” Merlini says. “This is actually documented.” Houdini’s first home was on Csengery utca (street), but “the Weisz family moved residence every two years before moving to America.”
Still a household name 90 years after his death, Houdini joins a slew of other 20th-century Hungarians heralded for their problem-solving prowess, including Rubik; LászlóBiró, who invented the ballpoint pen; and 13 Nobel Prize winners.
A street in Budapest's VIII district, where Parapark is located. (Photo: tutu/CC BY-SA 2.0)
“It’s interesting how Hungary is such a small country, yet produced so many masterminds” and “people who think differently,” says Merlini.
“Perhaps there is something in our language, or way of thinking,” Gyurkovics wonders.
Either way, it’s hard to deny that cultural factors led to the creation of escape rooms. Whether it was the backdrop of Houdini or Rubik, or Csíkszentmihályi’s psychological theories, or even the many ruined spaces around Budapest that gave rise to ruin bars and escape games in the early 2000s, it seems Hungary provided the perfect starting point for live escape challenges.
Although Gyurkovics claims he was more inspired by computer games, it’s hard to imagine a better fusion of escapology and puzzle cubes than the room escape craze he ushered into being.
Great white sharks are the ocean's top predators, and now, off Long Island, scientists have found one of the places where they are being born. According to ABC 7, the site might be the very first birthing site found in the North Atlantic.
The site was discovered by Ocearch, an organization of scientists and fishermen that works to track and protect marine animals like the great white. For years the organization has been tracking the movement of Great Whites by placing a tracker in their dorsal fin that pings a satellite each time the fin breaches the surface. Realizing that wherever they are giving birth is likely where the sharks are most in danger, they set out to find the site using the past few years worth of tracking data that they had amassed—like the sharks themselves, their birthing sites can be elusive.
After finding the spot off the coast of Montauk, New York, Ocearch thought they would catch maybe a single juvenile to tag, but instead they were able to capture nine of the young beasts. Not a lot of research has been done on sharks this early stage in their development, meaning we might, soon, learn quite a lot.
August 2015's Great Shade Ball Rush was a full year ago, which means time flies faster than a horde of fist-sized spheres cascading down an incline. It also means we're about due for a shade ball report.
If you're not familiar, shade balls protect water by covering its surface. They've been deployed in reservoirs across LA to them safe from sunlight, dust, birds, and other threats. Said deployment is really fun to watch, involving what looks like an entire goth ball pit tumbling down a slope and massing in the water.
Emily Guerin of Southern California Public Radiorecently checked in on everyone's favorite environmentally-friendly balls. She reports that although many of them have since been replaced by tarps, those that started last summer's craze—the 96 million bumping around in the LA Reservoir—are still going strong.
"It has worked exactly as we planned it to work," Richard Harasick, director of water operations at LA Department of Water and Power, told Guerin. Same goes for the million in nearby Las Virgenes's Reservoir #2, which you may recognize from this other hit video:
Those guys have been such a smashing success, both virally and anti-virally, that their caretaker, Dave Pedersen, gave one a face and named it Wilson. Nothing like shade ball fame to make you feel like Tom Hanks.
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.
Two Laysan Albatross stand beak-to-beak on a grassy patch of land on a tiny island in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, Hawaii. The bird on the left quickly "dabs" before both wail and then the real moves come out. Both dip their long white-feathery necks up and down and then touch beaks. "No, no, no, you can't touch me," gestures the dancer on the right.
This dance is a mating ritual. The performance includes all the dipping, head-shaking, mooing and beak rattling in the video. The Laysan variety of albatross, which breeds in northwestern Hawaiian, knows 25 of these cool movements.
Many of the islands where the albatross live form the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, which is now the largest protected place on Earth. President Barack Obama recently announced that the marine sanctuary would quadruple in size. It is 582,578 square miles of some of the most varied marine and land-faring species in the world. Around a quarter of its inhabitants are unique to the area.
The news gives these albatrosses an actual reason to dance in the knowledge their special home is cared for. The Laysan was poached at the beginning of the 20th century, and conservation authorities still consider it a vulnerable species.
The video ends with more sophisticated grooves. The bird on the right gets in a "dab" but this is returned by the opponent who points to the sky in triumphant repose.
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.
Everyone knows the story of the alien craft that supposedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, but who was appointed to deal with it?
According to UFOology diehards, it was a group known as the Majestic 12, and there are top secret documents to prove it. The FBI says the whole story is "bogus." Yes, that's a quote. They wrote “BOGUS” across the documents.
The relevant files can be easily accessed on the FBI’s website, and nothing in there has been redacted. But no matter how many times the Majestic 12 case gets debunked, true believers stay interested.
Mark Fenster, author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture has done extensive research into modern-day conspiracy theories including those surrounding 9/11. He points out that the enduring appeal of the Majestic 12 has to do with the government’s response. “If you wanted to bluff as the FBI, you would redact nothing," he says.
To believers, the story of the Majestic 12 (also known as the MJ-12 or MAJIC) goes back to 1947, but as far as supposed hard evidence is concerned, it begins in 1984. Documentary producer Jaime Shandera is said to have been reading a magazine at home when a mysterious envelope was dropped through his mail slot. The envelope, which bore a New Mexico postmark, contained a roll of undeveloped photo film. Not a UFOologist himself, Shandera supposedly took the mysterious film with him to dinner with friend and avid conspiracy theorist, William Moore. Once Moore heard Shandera’s strange tale, he apparently ditched dinner and went to his house to develop the images.
The pictures were not of people or places (or aliens), but of eight pages of classified documents. While they weren’t exactly the candid shots of an alien autopsy that Shandera and Moore had likely hoped for, the top-secret pages told an explosive story that, if true, not only confirmed the Roswell incident, but also detailed the people behind its research and cover-up.
The most prominent file, dated 1952, described a number of UFO encounters, including the Roswell crash, from 1947 on into the 1950s. While these descriptions all seem vague enough to be easily dismissed, the real gold in the document was the revelation that President Truman had appointed a committee of scientists, government officials, and military men—the Majestic 12—to figure out just how to deal with the Roswell crash, and any other alien incursions that might occur in the future. These were the original men in black.
According to the documents, members of the original MJ-12 included Dr. Vannevar Bush, an inventor, engineer, and head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II; Retired Admiral Sidney Souers, the first Director of the CIA; and Dr. Donald Menzel, theoretical astrophysicist and avid UFO debunker.
Shandera and Moore would spend years trying to verify and validate the documents that had fallen into their laps, while word of the Majestic 12 spread among UFOlogists and believers. The existence of a secret government cabal working to hide and control our first contact with extraterrestrials was just too juicy to stay buried. The documents' claims began to take hold, both in the UFOlogy community, and in the larger culture it touched, worming its way into the standard alien conspiracy narrative.
But the seemingly incriminating documents didn’t hold water for long. Prominent members of the UFOlogy community, like skeptic Philip Klass, began to point out flaws and inconsistencies in the allegedly top-secret papers. Among the many issues that have been raised regarding the Majestic 12 documents are some incorrect ranks assigned to the members of the group, odd formatting that didn’t match with standard government briefs of their vintage, and some anachronistic verbiage, specifically the use of the term “media” as opposed to the term “press.”
The most damning issue with the Majestic 12 documents was their origin. None other than Carl Sagan himself denounced the documents in his book, The Demon Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark. “Where the MJ-12 documents are most vulnerable and suspect is exactly on this question of provenance—the evidence miraculously dropped on a doorstep like something out of a fairy story, perhaps ‘The Shoemaker and the Elves,’” he wrote.
Moore soon became the presumed perpetrator of a hoax. As the central figure behind the dissemination of the documents it was assumed that he had simply had them forged.
By the late 1980s, the FBI and the Air Force had gotten wind of the Majestic 12 documents and launched investigations into their veracity, mainly trying to determine whether someone was disseminating classified documents. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations looked into the matter before handing it over to the FBI around 1988. Their investigators were able to determine that the pages were bunk. In their final assessment on the Majestic 12 documents, an FBI official wrote “The document is completely bogus.” To drive the point home, the word “bogus” was then scrawled across the filed documents in giant capital letters.
It’s almost as if the FBI is sick of talking about MJ-12, or more likely was not quite sure how to respond. “If you don’t respond, then it seems as though you’re confirming the conspiracy theorists and you’re leaving these theories out there,” says Fenster. “But if you DO respond, you can’t truly debunk the conspiracy theory, and you’re giving it more oxygen. There’s almost no way to successfully respond to it.”
Still, the Majestic 12 live on. There are those in the UFOology community, such as prominent voice Stanton Friedman, who still believe that the documents are real, and continue to argue the point. There have even been further documents that have surfaced claiming to support the originals, but none have gained such a strong response.
In a more broad sense, the Majestic 12 seem to be thoroughly ingrained into the larger UFO narrative at this point, appearing in some form or another in shows like The X-Files (as the Syndicate), and movies like Men in Black (as, you know…the Men in Black). Even if the truth isn’t in the Majestic 12 documents, some people still seem to want to believe.
Around 583,000 square miles of ocean off Hawaii are now protected, President Barack Obama announced on Friday, expanding a national monument first established by former president George W. Bush in 2006.
Obama made the announcement—creating the largest marine reserve in the world—a day after the National Park Service celebrated its 100th anniversary, having been founded by Congress on August 25, 1916.
The area in Hawaii is home to a variety of endangered species, including Hawaiian monk seals, which don't have ears and look like this:
Obama's executive action, made possible by the U.S. Antiquities Act—signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt—means that commercial fishing is prohibited in the area, which mostly encompasses the smaller islands northwest of Hawaii's bigger land masses. (The area protected by Bush included the waters around the state's bigger islands; National Geographic has a handy map here showing as much.)
Obama also noted in his proclamation that the waters include untold amounts of wreckage from World War II, all with its own claims to historical importance.
But, really, this is about the animals. Monk seals, we're rooting for you.
An artistic interpretation of the Library of Alexandria based on archaeological evidence by O. Von Corven. (Photo: Public Domain)
In the Hellenistic Era—that's 323 BC to 31 BC, for all you numbers fans—the Library of Alexandria, Egypt was a research hub of high prestige. But while certainly the largest of its time and the most famous, the Library of Alexandria wasn’t the only institution of its kind. Libraries throughout the ancient world competed to be the best Greek library, in rivalries that proved as dangerous and unscrupulous as actual wars.
Perhaps the most vicious rivalry of all was between the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum in the city of Pergamon—present-day Bergama, Turkey. In this conflict, the ego-driven kings of both cities enforced various sneaky maneuvers to stunt the growth of the opposing collections.
“The library was a means [for the kings] to show off their wealth, their power, and mostly to show that they were the rightful heirs of Alexander the Great,” says Gaëlle Coqueugniot, an ancient history research associate at the University of Exeter.
When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, his empire stretching from Macedon to the western border of India was divided into three dynasties: Antigonids, Seleucids, and Ptolemies. All of the kings of Macedonia competed to become the commander’s rightful successor. The struggle for royal supremacy spilled into scholarship and preservation of Greek culture, giving way to a new wave of elaborate libraries.
Rulers grew their cities to prove that they were the rightful heir of Alexander the Great. (Photo: Berthold Werner/CC BY-SA 3.0)
The libraries that existed previously in Mesopotamia and in Egypt were primarily personal collections or kept in temples. In the third and second centuries BC, there was a boom in the number of institutions that kept books.
The Library of Alexandria, which ultimately consisted of approximately 500,000 scrolls and boasted early texts by Euripides, Sophocles, and Homer, was first conceptualized by King Ptolemy I. The Ptolemaic dynasty was able to spend big on the institution thanks to the riches of Egypt’s fertile land and resources from the Nile, including papyrus, the ancient world’s main writing material. As a result, the library had an edge in development over others. The Ptolemaic kings were determined to collect any and all books that existed—from the epics, tragedies, to cookbooks.
“The Ptolemies aimed to make the collection a comprehensive repository of Greek writings as well as a tool for research,” wrote former classics professor at New York University, Lionel Casson inLibraries of the Ancient World. To obtain this comprehensive collection, “the Ptolemies’ solution was money and royal highhandedness.”
During the Ptolemaic hunt for centuries-old books from Greece, it’s said that a new industry emerged of forging ancient books to look more antique, thereby increasing the rarity and value. While the evidence of such a forgery trade is difficult to determine, Coqueugniot finds it probable since the kings were so bent on having the most prestigious texts in their library.
“Of course the Library of Alexandria was probably the largest one, but out of all the other kings that tried to be in competition with the Ptolemaic kings, Pergamon was the closest,” says Coqueugniot. It contained about 200,000 scrolls.
The Library of Pergamum wasn’t built until a century after the Library of Alexandria. Pergamon was originally part of the Kingdom of Antioch, but when it gained its independence in the late third century BC, the monarch wanted to be among the elite international powers. To better support Greek culture, the city started building the library. There’s a legend, wrote Casson, that citizens who moved to the growing acropolis and happened to own some of Aristotle’s prized collection buried the books in a trench to keep them hidden from royal officials. King Eumenes II finished the library of Pergamum, eagerly trying to catch up to Alexandria’s in size and quality.
“If we can believe tales that went the rounds in later centuries, the Ptolemies were not at all pleased by the challenge on the part of an upstart dynasty to the preeminence of their famed institution,” wrote Casson.
They were competing for the same books, the same parchments, and even the scholars’ of the two institutions had conflicting interpretations and edits of texts, says Coqueugniot.
“The Library of Pergamum managed to attract some scholars on editing and commenting on Homer—the Iliad and the Odyssey—which was exactly the main specialty of the main Library of Alexandria,” she says. Since Homer’s poems were meant to be read aloud, there are several written versions. Both libraries tried to obtain all of them, comparing which were the oldest and most genuine.
A fragment of Homer's Iliad on papyrus. (Photo: Public Domain)
Much like how athletes are drafted to rival teams in today’s sports, libraries “attracted scholars by offering one better wages than the other kings,” she says. The rivalry “probably stimulated the production of the scholars in both centers, but it was also quite unhealthy meaning that some scholars we know were imprisoned so they couldn’t leave to the other part of the world.”
It’s said that Ptolemy V threw Aristophanes of Byzantium, a grammarian and critic, into prison after hearing rumors that he may leave Alexandria to join the academics in Pergamum, wrote Casson.
One of the Ptolemies’ most drastic schemes to strike down the Library of Pergamum was the sudden cut of its trade of papyrus with the city of Pergamon. The Ptolemies hoped that if the main component of books was limited and hard to obtain, it would prevent the Library of Pergamum’s collection from growing. However, Pergamon came up with an alternative. Roman writer and scholar Marcus Terrentius Varro documented the event: “the rivalry about libraries between king Ptolemy and king Eumenes, Ptolemy stopped the export of papyrus … and so the Pergamenes invented parchment.”
Papyrus plant, Egypt banned trade with the city of Pergamon. (Photo: mauroguanandi/CC BY 2.0)
While it’s not possible for Pergamon to have invented parchment since scriptures on stretched leather have been found earlier in the east, the lack of papyrus may have pushed the king to expand the use and development of leather as a writing material, Coqueugniot says. The word for parchment in Latin, “pergamīnum” literally translates to “the sheets of Pergamum,” she says.
Even though the rivalry between the great libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum may have made the world of academia messy and political, the effort poured into the institutions’ development changed the state of scholarship and preservation. Without the feud for royal power and respect for Greek culture and academics, libraries may have never gotten the attention they needed.
A few years ago, in Great Britain, there was a big scandal. People—humans, eaters, fellow denizens of this Earth—were disgusted: horsemeat had been found in some meat products that were being sold as ground beef.
There are no health risks associated with eating horsemeat and it is, indeed, consumed safely in many countries across the world, but still, the basic deception at the heart of it rankled. Before, Britons thought they were eating the dead muscle tissue of a cow; now it was revealed that some of that dead muscle tissue might in fact have come from a horse.
Investigations ensued. Slaughterhouses were raided. The government began some probes. And, this week, authorities announced results: charges against three men, all for fraud.
Authorities didn't say what led them to the three men, or outline much evidence against them, only alleging that they conspired to mix the meats and then sell them to the public as beef. Each will be summoned to court in September, and later go on trial.
Or, in the measured way stated by the Crown Prosecution Service: “After carefully considering evidence from the UK and overseas, the CPS has decided that there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest to charge these three men."
This is a case that serves the public interest in avoiding mystery meat, in other words.
Back by popular demand, Atlas Obscura is hosting its signature autumn event, Into the Veil, not once but twicein the next two months.
In this video from last year's inaugural event, you can catch a glimpse of the unique and mysterious evenings that lie in wait. This year, you have two chances to wander your way down candlelit paths into an evening of discovery: first on September 10 at Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery, and then on October 15 at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Tickets for both are going fast: get yours soon!
When you lift back the veil and venture forth, what is it that you'll find? Tucked within the sweeping grounds of these historic cemeteries—in trees, in crypts, in mausoleums—you'll stumble upon soaring aerialists, the sorrowful sigh of the stringed erhu, fire dancers, tarot readers, and much, much more.
