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A 'Holy Grail' for Botanists Has Been Found in California

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Somewhere outside Antioch, California, which is about 40 miles northeast of San Francisco, there lies a patch of wildflowers so rare that botanists aren't disclosing their location, for fear of tourists or vandals. 

The wildflowers, known as Mount Diablo buckwheat, or, by their Latin name, as Eriogonum truncatum, were thought to be extinct for nearly seven decades, until a small patch of them were found in California in 2005. 

But the latest discovery, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, is much, much bigger: some 1.8 million flowers, large enough that botanists are hoping it will provide clues as to how to make the wildflowers more sustainable in the future. 

Botanists have refused to say exactly where the flowers are located, and even held back from disclosing that they found the Mount Diablo buckwheat for several months before making the announcement on Wednesday. 

That's mostly because the flower has been called a "holy grail" for botanists, because of its rarity, but also because of its illustrious past. It was first discovered in 1862 outside Brentwood, California—not far from the latest discovery—but seemingly disappeared in 1936, and was presumed lost forever. 

But a student found some in 2005, marking the flower's comeback, though it has largely resisted efforts to reintroduce it into the wild, making the discovery all the more remarkable. 

“I had personally hoped to find this thing for so many years, and then I suddenly walk up to this population that was so numerous,” botanist Heath Bartosh told the Chronicle. “It was like, wait a minute, this can’t be real. I’m dreaming.”


9 Bizarre Schools That We Promise Actually Exist

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Gladiator School's leaders in full garb. (Photo: Gruppo Storico Romano/Used with permission)

It's back to school week across the U.S. for everyone from preschoolers to graduate students. And while there are myriad approaches to education in all disciplines, from calculus to literature to language to chemistry, if you want to learn about magical people hiding under rocks, say, or unconventional physics, you might have to look outside the realm of traditional schooling. If you're hoping to further your education, consider these nine schools in the Atlas that diverge somewhat from the standard curriculum.

Álfaskólinn (Elfschool)

REYKJAVIKICELAND

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An illustration of the hidden people, provided by the Álfaskólinn. (Photo: courtesy of The Elfschool)


Around 50% of Iceland's population believes in elves, a 1998 poll revealed. This belief is so fundamental to Icelandic culture that the placement of boulders where the "wee folk" live is taken into consideration when constructing roads. So it follows th there's an entire school dedicated to the study of these hidden people. Located in the city of Reykjavik, the Álfaskólinn offers a five-hour crash course on Iceland's elves that includes a tour of proven elf habitats, as well as a dress-up portion, and a section on identifying the 13 types of elves one might find in the wild. The class ends with a coffee and pancake breakfast and a signed diploma that certifies you as an official elf expert.

The Conjuring Arts Research Center

NEW YORKNEW YORK

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The rare book reading room. (Photo: courtesy of The Conjuring Arts Research Center)

The Conjuring Arts Research Center is an organization "dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of magic and its allied arts, which include psychic phenomenon, hypnosis, deceptive gambling, science and history of playing cards, mentalism, ventriloquism, juggling, and sleight of hand techniques." The locus of this preservation is a small but robust library housed in an unmarked Chelsea office building. By making a research appointment with the center's librarian, one can come peruse their collection of uncommon books on magic for up to two hours at a time. If you're lucky, you may even witness some feats of illusion at the hands of a conjurer.

Larry Spring School of Common Sense Physics

FORT BRAGGCALIFORNIA

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Larry Spring and some of his homemade instruments. (Photo: courtesy of Larry Spring Museum of Common Sense Physics)

Larry Spring, a former pilot and lifelong radio enthusiast, started his own school of "common sense" physics. Put simply, Larry taught a view of physics based on the idea that light is neither particle nor wave but a "magnesphere," or a pure magnetic sphere of alternating polarity that drives electrons. The amateur physicist taught lessons of his own design for decades. Though he was never accepted into the mainstream scientific community, Larry's school is now a museum dedicated to his theories.

The Body Farm

KNOXVILLETENNESSEE

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A sign marking the entrance to the Body Farm. (Photo: Lisa Bailey/CC BY 2.0)

The University of Tennessee's Body Farm doesn't grow bodies, but it does cultivate them. The small plot of land in Knoxville belongs to the university's forensic anthropology department, which studies human remains. This is a difficult field of study, given that most corpses are either controlled by the state or by next of kin when an individual passes on. However, when bodies are donated to science, there's a chance they end up at the Body Farm. Here, they are left to nature, or partially buried, or put in trees or underwater—anywhere a body might end up in the real world—so that the anthropologists can study what happens to them over time. The Farm is growing, despite the fact that everything here is dead.

Rome's Gladiator School

ROMEITALY

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Gladiators in full regalia. (Photo: courtesy of Grupo Storico Romano)

Sergio Iacomoni, or as he's known during business hours, "Nero," operates a private, historically accurate gladiator school in Rome. The school offers lectures and classes for would-be warriors of all ages to engage in mock life-or-death combat. Students learn to properly wield shields and swords. No word on whether nipple plates and leather kilts are supplied.

Tree Climbing Planet

OREGON CITYOREGON

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One of the "schoolrooms" of Tree Climbing Planet. (Photo: Atlas Obscura user akovar)

Tom Kovar loves to climb trees, so he makes his living teaching others how to do it too. As Master Tree Climbing Instructor, Kovar teaches people how to tie proper knots, safely hang sleeping hammocks, and carefully ascend the branches of a tree, all on his own farmland. Though this might seem like some sort of playground for adults with rampant Peter Pan syndrome, Kovar's classes are actually more targeted towards professionals who might need instruction in climbing trees, such as parks workers and nature researchers. However, there are also lessons offered for civilians who just want to get up into the canopy.

The Monroe Institute

FABER, VIRGINIA

article-imageA debriefing session at the Monroe Institute. (Photo: Atlas Obscura user lesliefrance)

If the class descriptions are to be believed, this is the only school in the world dedicated to inducing an out-of-body experience—though whether the Monroe Institute is an actual school or just a complex scheme to sell founder Robert Monroe's patented "Hemi-Sync" technology is up for debate. The Monroe Institute offers classes such as "Gateway Voyage," for those who want to travel out-of-body, or "Using Hypnosis to Relive Past Lives," which is pretty self-explanatory. Even if you don't believe in Monroe's parapsychology, the Monroe Institute offers (perhaps questionably so) continuing education credits for psychologists, counselors, and massage therapists.

Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School

MIDLAND, MICHIGAN

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The Santa Claus schoolhouse (Photo: courtesy of Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School)

For a more seasonally oriented education, you can attend The Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School. Established in 1937 by a former Macy's Santa, the school is the oldest Santa school in the world. It's also the best, and is referred to as "the Harvard of Santa schools". Dedicated to upholding the traditions, image, and history of Santa Claus, the school offers classes like proper dress and makeup, radio and TV experience, live reindeer habits (with real reindeer!), and Santa sign language. The building, located in a wooded area of Midland, Michigan, looks like it would be more at home at the North Pole. The gingerbread house exterior and Christmas workshop interior sets the right tone for the intensive three-day course that occurs near the end of October, just in time for the Christmas season.  

Tempest Freerunning Academy

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

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Parkour facilities at the gym. (Photo: courtesy of The Tempest Academy)

If you're more of a gym class sort of person, The Tempest Freerunning Academy is a parkour paradise run by the Los Angeles-based Team Tempest, a group of professional freerunners who have been featured in action movies and television commercials. They've created a huge space full of walls, ramps, and bars to run around, jump off and climb to your heart's delight. They offer classes for aspiring freerunners and parkour traceurs. While you might not be doing flips or jumping across rooftops in your very first class, it beats getting picked last for dodgeball.

How the FBI Tied Tupac's Death to Eazy-E, Death Row Records, and the Jewish Defense League

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(Photo: marycsalome/CC BY 2.0)

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

On September 7th, 1996, rap icon Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas by unknown assailants, leading to one of hip hop’s greatest mysteries: who killed Tupac?

While the Las Vegas Police Department launched their own, ultimately unsuccessful investigation into the murder, Shakur’s FBI file, first released in 2011, reveals that the Bureau had begun an inquiry of their own as early as October.

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What’s more, the FBI investigation linked the shooting to a larger criminal conspiracy involving the recently deceased Eazy-E, who along with Shakur had been receiving death threats.

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The Bureau had first been tipped off about the extortion scam via an unnamed informant on September 11th, 1996 - just a few days after the shooting, before Shakur had succumbed to his wounds. The informant also identifies one of the groups involved as the JDL.

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In case you were wondering, yes, it’s that JDL - the Jewish Defense League, a right-wing Zionist organization identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist group and by the FBI as domestic terrorists.

As for what interest the JDL had in the rappers, at first the Bureau believed the motive to be primarily financial - a simple shakedown.

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But as the investigation continued, things started to get a bit murkier. First, there was the issue of whether these extortion efforts were part of some larger funding campaign by the JDL …

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and then, gradually, evidence started to come in linking the threats to the infamously-contested ownership of Ruthless Records

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and, finally, there was the implication that Shakur’s death specifically might have been part of a financial retaliation against Death Row for poaching talent from Ruthless.

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So what did the FBI do with this compelling case it built up? Not a whole lot, though it’s not clear why. Months in, the investigation stalled, and interviews gave way to newspaper clippings and printouts from the Tupac webring.

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Which, to give credit where it’s due, are impressively annotated by no doubt the most dedicated agent in the Bureau.

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By July of 1997, the whole thing had dried up, until an exciting new lead threatened to blow this whole thing wide open…a profile of Shakur in the New Yorker by staff writer Connie Bruck.

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The Los Angeles Field Office request requested to interview Bruck, and while it’s unclear if the request was ever granted …

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one thing is certain: as far as the FBI is concerned, this mystery remains unsolved.

Read the full file embedded below.

Mapping the Hidden Structures of New York City's Internet Networks

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A construction worker sprays a cryptic telecommunication marking. [Photo: Z22/CC-BY-SA-4.0]

Some of the most underappreciated, complicated architecture lies hidden beneath the city’s surface. Buried below asphalt and concrete is an intricate labyrinth of lanes carrying beams of information—the flowing data of the internet. Our emails, cat gifs, work files, Facebook messages, and most private secrets are funneled through miles of copper, coaxial, and fiber optic cable built just beneath our feet.

While hidden, a lot can be discovered about a city’s underground network from spray painted cryptic codes and special language left behind from construction.

“When I first got interested in finding the spray paint markings, I kind of couldn’t stop seeing them,” says 29-year-old, Brooklyn artist and writer Ingrid Burrington. “I have folders and folders of photographs on my computer of just spray paint on the ground.”

Burrington diligently deciphers the tiny marks scattered around city streets, discovering what kind of cables serve which buildings and what company oversees them. For the better part of the past three years, she wandered the streets of Manhattan identifying paint on asphalt, designs of manhole covers, historical data centers, cell phone towers, and inconspicuous WiFi nodes in subway stations. In her new book Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure released August 30, Burrington maps the complex world of telecommunications in New York City, revealing hidden pieces of the internet embedded throughout the city’s fabric.

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Can you spot the faded telecommunications markings on this street? [Photo: Public Domain]

Burrington became interested in the strange way we interpret and represent the internet in 2013, when the news was filled with stories about Edward Snowden and network security. Stock images of strings of code on a laptop or blue-tinted stills of white men looking at screens are commonly attached to news articles about the internet or technology. The abstract visualizations feed into a misrepresentation, making networks appear as a nebulous, magical entity. “It can scare and alienate people, that sort of black screen, matrix syn-art,” Burrington says.

With this mindset, she decided to use elements of cartography in order to clearly define real aspects of the internet. “Maps are really interesting historical instruments for inventing reality and for deciding the makeup of a state or a place,” she says. “I think with telecommunications and the dominant technology companies, I like to map out and understand the power dynamics in those spaces and how they got to be that way.”

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This map illustrated by Burrington shows locations of major carrier hotels and data center buildings in Downtown and Lower Manhattan. [Photo: © 2016 Ingrid Burrington]

New York City, which is over 300 years old, has a rich and messy telecommunications history. In most cities, technology and telecommunication networks must follow the groundwork that has already been established in the design plan. The glass tubules of fiber optic cables follow the coaxial cable television lines, which follow the copper telephone and telegraph lines laid down in the 1880s, which followed the railroad tracks. Now, the 2012 LinkNYC challenge to install 7,500 free Wi-Fi kiosks throughout the five boroughs are replacing old payphone booths. This will require some new fiber lines, but it’s mostly patchwork, Burrington explains.

“[The network] gets built up in this strata,” she says. “You use what’s already built out.”

In South Bend, Indiana, for example, a developer is trying to build a large data center hub in an old central train station because of the fiber that runs adjacent to the railways. In fact, a lot of data centers and “legacy fiber” runs along the Iowa and Nebraska border, which is the location of the initial transcontinental railroad tracks.

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New York Stock Exchange in the Financial District. [Photo: MarshalN20/CC BY-SA 3.0]

If you want to see a lot of neon arrows, lines and network markings, Burrington suggests you visit the Financial District in lower Manhattan. There are countless construction zones taped off between the tall gleaming buildings, completely riddled with the orange spray—a national standard color code for communications, alarm, signal lines, cables, and conduit. The area is known for its abundance of telecommunications buildings and structures because the stock market on Wall Street demands super speedy internet service (less lag equals faster trades).  

Burrington stared at the ground and noted signs such as the "f" and "o" bisected by a two-tipped arrow that signifies 'fiber optic' cables and the diamond pattern that denotes duct width, which she writes looks a lot like TIE fighters in Star Wars. However, she found that the signs would differ significantly from site to site.    

“Depending on the particular stylistic decisions being made by the utility locator, they’re going to vary a lot,” she says. Since they didn’t look uniform, she opted out of using her photographs and instead draw each of the symbols and all the illustrations throughout her book by hand. The guide is meant to be used around the city, so she “didn’t want people to be looking for a photograph image,” she says.

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An illustration of the Time Warner Cable manhole cover. The logo is supposed to be an eye merging with an ear. [Photo: © 2016 Ingrid Burrington]

Manholes—entry points to the city’s underground cables, power grid, and gas system—also get worn down from traffic. New York’s manhole covers are emblazoned with the insignia of the company that owns the lines underground. However, there are some mystery manhole covers. Burrington found that many companies do not replace covers of the new manholes they acquire, the cost being a lot higher than having recognition. Some manhole covers don’t reflect the company that owns the line. During the dot-com era, there was a boon of companies that merged and broke off and then re-merged, resulting in a twisted mess of cables. Now, there are more generic designs that indicate a water or communication line.

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An illustration of a generic communication manhole cover. [Photo: © 2016 Ingrid Burrington]

The information Burrington collected has already proven valuable in addressing inequities in internet access in New York City. A previous, self-published edition of Networks of New York was used in a lawsuit regarding lack of internet access and digital divides in the Bronx. The attorney presented the book to try and obtain maps of cable ducts in the area.

“[The company] refused to give it to her on the grounds of national security and business secrets, but one piece of evidence introduced was this book,” Burrington says, the attorney arguing that someone had already made a “tour guide” for finding the cables. “It’s nice when the book encourages a broader interest or expands into issues that are related to access and equity.”

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Burrington hopes others will be inspired to create other guides or crowdsourced maps of network infrastructure. [Photo: Jonathan Minard]

For those who do not live in New York City, you can still use Burrington’s guide. The spray paint markings are nationally used, and the manhole patterns are commonly found across the United States. Currently, a man in Phoenix, Arizona is working on a guide, and Burrington assisted a colleague in making a miniature infrastructure guide to London. Burrington hopes that the book inspires people to not only make network guides for other cities, but to pay attention to discreet facets of urban design that allows a city to function.

“One of the things that you’re not supposed to do as a New Yorker is look down and look up,” Burrington says. “But doing that has made me a lot more cognizant of the volume of stuff and history and labor that goes into it being possible for me to check my email while standing on a street corner.”

Picturing the Strange and Surreal World of Duos and Dopplegangers

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(Photo: Kostis Fokas/ compilation © 2016 by Sandrine Kerfante)

Humans have long had a fascination with duos and doubles. The ancient Egyptians believed that every person had a ka, a spirit version of themselves. In German folklore, meeting your double—your dopplegängerwas a sinister occurrence that lead to death. And then of course there is the more literal double, the twin. Around the world there are yearly twin festivals, including, suitably, in Twinsburg, Ohio. 

This is the subject of a new photo book, Two of a Kind. The book grew from a blog by Sandrine Kerfante titled Twin-niwt, where she collected “images on the themes of reflection, doubles, symmetry and twins.” As she writes in the introduction, “These shots are the witnesses to the great paradox of the double: one after another they beckon, offering both reconciliation and opposition.”

In one photo, two sets of jeans-clad legs dangle over a beige wall. In another, a pair of horse-shaped balloons hover together on a ceiling, as though surveying the room below. These images have been drawn from photographers all around the world, but they all share a slightly surreal quality. AO has a selection from this an intriguing ode to clones and doubles.

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(Photo: Matthias Heiderich/ compilation © 2016 by Sandrine Kerfante)

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(Photo: Frieke Janssens/ compilation © 2016 by Sandrine Kerfante)

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(Photo: Matthew Schenning/ compilation © 2016 by Sandrine Kerfante)

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(Photo: Lukas Cetera/compilation © 2016 by Sandrine Kerfante)

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(Photo: Samm Blake/ compilation © 2016 by Sandrine Kerfante)

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(Photo: Carson Gilliland/ compilation © 2016 by Sandrine Kerfante)

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(Photo: Paula Perrier/ compilation © 2016 by Sandrine Kerfante)

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The cover of Two of a Kind by Sandrine Kerfante, published by Chronicle Books. (Photo: Courtesy Chronicle Books)

Disaster Response Now Includes Rapid Mapmaking

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NASA's rapid-response map of rainfall in Louisiana. (Photo: NASA/JAXA, Hal Pierce)

When Louisiana was hit with historic flooding, in August 2016, the federal government’s response teams went into action, including one relatively new one. At NASA, rapid-response mapmakers started pulling data from satellites and analyzing where the rain had fallen hardest—where the most help might be needed.

This rapid-response team, which, GCN reports, was only created in the past year, was using satellite data not just to monitor storms but to help with an on-the-ground response. And the NASA team wasn’t the only one leaning on information siphoned from satellites to create flood maps that could help disaster response. The Rapid Mapping service module of the European Union’s Copernicus program was also activated, and in the following days the flooding service produced 47 maps showing the affected areas before the flood, and the extent of flooded areas.

These quickly-made maps are just one example of an increasingly efficient and popular use of “satellite-based emergency mapping” (SEM), as part of the response to natural disasters. A recent paper ,published in Science, counts more than 1,000 SEM activations between 2000 and 2014. The frequency with which these tools are used has risen sharply; in 2000, there were 7 activations and in 2014, there were 123. “In almost all regions of the world, SEM activities have risen in number substantially during the past 5 years,” the authors of the paper write.

In August, for instance, the EU’s Copernicus service was activated for forest fires in Spain and Portugal, for a flood in Skopje, Macedonia, and for the devastating earthquake in central Italy. The speed of these responses has increased, too, from about 4.5 days in 2006 to 2.5 days in 2014, according to the Science paper.

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Abbeville, La., reference map from Copernicus. (Image: Copernicus/European Union)

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Abbeville, La., map showing flooded areas. (Image: Copernicus/European Union)

The goal in creating these maps is to speed and focus the response to disaster. They can show where the most damage might have occurred and mark changes in the days after. They can also be used to monitor disaster response. During the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, for instance, the United Nations’ satellite program invoked the disaster charter so that WHO workers on the ground would receive free satellite imagery from space. They initially used those images to navigate remote areas where geographical information was limited; later, WHO workers used satellite imagery to check on the construction of treatment centers. (This was the first time SEM was used to respond to a health crisis.)

The growth of disaster response from space began three decades ago, when the UN’s General Assembly resolved that satellite capabilities should be directed toward this end—to “promote the protection of mankind from natural disasters.” By the mid-2000s, satellite mapping campaigns were regularly aiding disaster relief, in the wake of tsunamis, forest fires, landslides and earthquakes.

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti was a major turning point for the field: it was the first time satellite-based mapping was providing too much information. In just two weeks, mappers created more than 300 map products, of varying quality and varying use to people on the ground. It was largely unhelpful. Since then, a working group has created a series of guidelines to standardize the sorts of maps produced in this situation, and more coordination is in place to clarify which group will take on the response.

In the five years since, the use of SEM has become more routine, and the authors of the Science paper conclude that the initial hurdles to connecting satellite data to disaster operations have been overcome. There are plenty of opportunities to make use of it today: some of the disasters in which satellite-based emergency mapping has proven useful, like flooding and drought, are likely to become more common as global temperatures rise. It’s already happening: an early analysis of the August flooding in Louisiana attributes the extreme amount of rainfall to anthropogenic climate change.

The Future of Animatronics, From Disney to the U.S. Military

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This ain't your dad's animatronic... dad. (Photo: Courtesy of Garner Holt Productions/Used with Permission)

When you think of animatronics, you may flash to the janky mechanical pizza parlor bands of your youth, or maybe a stiff row of founding fathers that your parents made you go see even though the rest of Disneyland was literally right there.

But the field of animatronics has come a long way from its pneumatic roots. Now the world’s largest animatronics company, Garner Holt Productions is pushing its creations into more realistic and more diverse dimensions, moving us closer to an age where interacting with life-like robots is the norm.

Animatronics are robots that are meant to simulate some kind of life, and in many ways, it is the industry most likely to give the world the type of human-like robots often seen in science fiction. Aside from the occasional Boston Dynamics robo-beast, many non-industrial, research robots are created to run for a short time in lab conditions, and demonstrate a single task. Animatronics are often asked to do much more.

“In our world, we’ve got to make stuff that works for 12-16 hours a day, every single day,” says Bill Butler, Director of Creative Design for Garner Holt Productions. “Typically, we design things for a 20-year service life, minimum. But there are some animatronics at Disney theme parks that are 50 years old, and they’re still running.”  

The Garner Holt company was founded back in 1977 by Garner Holt himself, when he was just 16, working out of his garage. “I started back in 1976-77, and there weren’t really any schools that had anything related to robotics like there is now,” says Holt, who still works at the company. “I was pretty much self-taught with books and trial and error.”

From his Apple-esque garage tinkerings, Holt began creating animatronic features for haunted houses and trade show exhibits, until he was able to begin creating the kind of animatronics he wanted. “I started out with birds, and we just got bigger and bigger and more elaborate,” says Holt.

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A dinosaur built by Garner Holt. (Photo: Courtesy of Garner Holt Productions/Used with Permission)

His company then began working on parade floats and theme park attractions at places like the MGM Theme Park in Las Vegas (now defunct), and the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in California. Eventually they started doing work for Disney parks and even the military. Now, just a year shy of their 40th anniversary, Garner Holt Productions is the world leader in animatronic technology, and one of the primary providers of animatronics to Disney and Universal theme parks around the world.  

As the industry has grown over the years, Garner Holt Productions has worked on an incredibly diverse number of animatronic projects. They’ve created everything from animatronic chandeliers for a grocery store chain to robotic presidents to all of the animated features at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Recently they’ve made full-size versions of Thomas the Tank Engine characters with moving, expressive faces, and almost 500 automated Chuck E. Cheese bands for franchises all over the world.   

Nowadays, the company creates a relatively even split of human figures and fantasy characters, and according to Holt, it’s this diversity that keeps the job interesting. “Just about the time you’re getting tired of building Thomas Jefferson, somebody comes along with a 40-foot fire-breathing dragon," he says. "Then about the time you’re tired of building dinosaurs, somebody comes in with a Marilyn Monroe."

It is also this diversity that keeps the company innovating. “We’re the only animatronics company in the world that maintains a research and development department,” says Butler. For most of their history, animatronic figures have run on hydraulic and pneumatic systems that gave them a limited amount of movement and expression. But as Holt explains, the rise of computer technology, and the development of smaller, lighter, quieter motors, has allowed the animatronics industry to take on new levels of dynamic realism.

“[In the past] probably the average was seven to eight functions in a figure, now we have figures that are up to 150 different functions,” says Holt. “We have a figure here, a yeti, that has up to 150 different moves. We have a human character that has 120 different functions.” Garner Holt now works with motion capture, CGI modeling, and facial recognition programs to create more and more uncanny creations.

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Garner Holt's signing yeti. (Photo: Courtesy of Garner Holt Productions/Used with Permission)

This increased range of realism and interactivity has also opened the doors to what purpose their creations can serve. For instance, their yeti character, which was created in-house for research purposes as opposed to being requested by a client, may have applications in interacting with the hearing impaired.

“His hands are so complex that we’ve experimented with actually performing sign language with hearing impaired children,” says Holt. The seven-and-a-half foot tall beast (which Holt compares to Harry from the '80s film Harry and the Hendersons), is such a hit with kids, that Holt hopes it might even be used to interact with children with autism.

Garner Holt Productions' work with the military on training animatronics is also resulting in some amazingly versatile creations. The company has been creating animated figures for the Infantry Immersion Trainer at California’s Camp Pendelton for years. The mixed reality training course simulates a third world village complete with sounds and smells. It is populated by role-playing humans and animatronic figures, which stand in as both civilians and enemy combatants.

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A figure from the Immersion Trainer. (Photo: Courtesy of Garner Holt Productions/Used with Permission)

Just six months ago, Garner Holt Productions was able to upgrade many of the figures to make them more life-like than ever. Holt told us that now some of the characters can actually shoot non-lethal guns, and even throw grenades, as well as react to being shot. “You can shoot them, and if the bullet hits them in the head or the chest, they’ll double over and fall on the ground,” he says. “When the group leaves, they’ll stand back up and dust themselves off and be ready to engage again.”

One of the fields in which Garner Holt spends a great deal of research is in creating life-like facial expressions on their characters, which has also improved their military simulation figures. “We’ve been doing a lot with expressive facial technologies to where we are creating human heads that look just like a real human head does,” says Holt. “With all the different expression, the smiles and frowns, and enunciating the words, and all of that type of thing.” Some of the figures in the Immersion Trainer will appear to be civilians until the trainee speaks with them, and then their expression will change to indicate hostility. Maybe they’ll even reveal a hidden weapon.

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The new Abominable Snowman in Disney's Matterhorn ride. (Photo: Courtesy of Garner Holt Productions/Used with Permission)

While animatronics is still largely the domain of the amusement industry, these new applications seem to be just the first steps in how the technology can be used to usher in a wider use of life-like robotics. “We enjoy looking at what we can do that will change our industry, that can go in different directions,” says Holt. “When I started in animatronics 40 years ago, I thought that I’d probably be building birds in the garage the rest of my life. I didn’t really realize that I’d be training soldiers, and possibly helping people train to be nurses and doctors using our animations.”

But even with all of these innovative uses for animatronic technology, Garner Holt Productions is still firmly invested in creating amazing amusement park attractions. For the Disney parks alone, they company has recently replaced the famous snow man in Disneyland's Matterhorn ride with a newer, more versatile model. Just this week it was revealed that they will be bringing Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas to life for the first time as part of the Haunted Mansion’s Halloween makeover. 

The details and innovations of high profile creations such as those for the Disney parks, have to be kept tightly under wraps. When asked whether they would have a hand in creating the recently announced Star Wars attractions at the Disney parks, Butler responded, “What Star Wars attraction?”

Whether they're in Star Wars or real wars, animatronics will probably only prove to be more remarkable and versatile in the years to come if Garner Holt Productions has anything to say about it.

Here’s What an Underground Nuclear Test Actually Looks Like

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Subsidence craters left by underground tests in Nevada. (Photo: Dept. of Energy)

North Korea has conducted an underground test of a nuclear weapon, its fifth in a decade. According to South Korea, which measured the force of the resulting earthquake, the bomb being tested was the most powerful yet, the equivalent of 10 kilotons of TNT, the New York Times reports.

Since the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, the world's major nuclear powers have tested their weapons underground. The treaty barred nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space, or underwater. In the decades that followed, the U.S. and the Soviet Union conducted hundreds of underground nuclear tests; all in all, from 1945 to 1998, the U.S. performed 215 tests above ground and 815 underground.

The aim of the test ban treaty was to limit fallout in the atmosphere and exposure to radioactive materials. When a weapon buried deep enough, its explosion can be contained in the ground; how deep depends on how big the bomb is. If the bomb is not buried deep enough into the ground, it will not necessarily produce a classic mushroom cloud, but it will explode a giant cloud of dust and dirt into the sky, as seen above.

The largest underground test the U.S. ever conducted, Cannikin, used a 5 megaton bomb, which was buried more than 6,000 feet below the surface of the earth. Even then, the force of the explosion lifted the ground twenty feet. Here's what that looked like:

Or here's a shorter version with more dramatic music:

Underground tests still risk contaminating the land or water surrounding the test site. Cannikin took place on Amchitka Island, in Alaska's Aleutian islands, and the Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management still monitors environmental conditions there. After the last monitoring visit, in 2011, the DOE announced that seafood harvested around the island was safe to eat; the next monitoring visit is scheduled for this year.


Why the Purple Skittle Tastes Different Outside America

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Succulent blackcurrants waiting to be picked. (Photo: Public Domain)

Pop quiz: What flavor is the purple Skittle? If you grew up tasting the rainbow in the U.S. of A, the answer is clearly grape. But in other countries, including the U.K. and Australia, purple Skittles taste like another fruit altogether: blackcurrant.

Most American mouths have never tasted the sweet yet tart tang of the blackcurrant berry. There’s a big reason for that: in the early 20th century, the growing of blackcurrants was banned on a federal level in the U.S. after legislators discovered that the plants, brought over from Europe, had become vectors for a wood-destroying disease known as white pine blister rust.

During the 1960s, the federal ban on the berry was relaxed in favor of state-by-state jurisdiction, and most states now allow it to be grown. But the damage had already been done—the blackcurrant jams, juices, pastries and cakes that are standard throughout Europe are nowhere to be found stateside. 

The fruit's taste, when sweetened, is sort of a cross between a blueberry and a cranberry. “People consistently love the flavor, but they just didn’t grow up with [blackcurrants]," says farmer Jim Riddle, who enjoys blackcurrant jam with peanut butter on toast. “They do have a stronger taste than the American palate is used to.”

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Blackcurrant jam. (Photo: Karen Jackson/CC BY-ND 2.0)

Greg Quinn has been growing blackcurrants in New York's Hudson Valley for the last 13 years. Quinn, who first discovered the berry when running a restaurant in Germany's Bavaria region, was so sold on its merits that in 2003 he successfully lobbied lawmakers to overturn the state's ban on growing them. 

He now has 10,000 blackcurrant bushes in his backyard, and has made it his mission to reintroduce blackcurrants to the American palate, believing their unique taste and nutritional benefits deserve a second chance. Quinn's CurrantC-branded blackcurrant concentrates and juices have already proven popular in some restaurants and cocktail bars. But it can be a hard sell.

“When I started this thing in 2003 right after the law changed, Americans, for the most part, did not know what blackcurrants were,” he says. "To confuse the matter, in the 1920s there was a dried grape from Greece that was mistakenly called the currant. So not only did Americans not know what a currant was, they didn’t know what a currant wasn’t.”

To figure out how to grow the berries, and what products to make from them, Quinn toured farms across the world and scoured supermarkets for blackcurrant-flavored items. "I would buy everything I could find made from blackcurrants,” he says. “At one point I was up to 183 different items."

Some of those products, including shredded wheat cereal with blackcurrant filling and a blackcurrant-topped cheesecake, were made by American companies who create them for international markets but don't offer them for sale domestically.

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The purple part of the Skittles rainbow tastes a little different outside America. (Photo: Luke Gray/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Americans' lack of enthusiasm for the mighty blackcurrants—which have four times the vitamin C of oranges, more potassium than bananas, and twice the antioxidants of blueberries—is puzzling to many European and other expats. ”Eastern European countries are absolutely rabid about currants,” says Quinn. “Blackcurrant juice is as common there as orange juice is here.”

Expats are among Quinn's most eager customers. “No-one’s blasé about it," he says. "I get calls and emails all the time saying ‘I’m so happy I found you, I never knew about this! I had blackcurrants back home, my grandmother grew them and my mother baked pies.’ I get all these anecdotes and stories.”

By 2008, CurrantC products were being sold in 4,000 supermarkets nationwide and the company, says Quinn, had just received a contract for its drinks to be sold in Starbucks. Then the global financial crisis hit, and things went south fast. Blackcurrant juice, "considered to be sort of a high-end item," was suddenly a risk.

Stores withdrew orders, contracts were cancelled, and CurrantC had to regroup. Quinn reinvented the company as an e-commerce business. After years of online-only sales, he is now gearing up to get his products back in bricks-and-mortar stores.

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The Ribena-brand blackcurrant drink: huge in the Commonwealth, not so much in the U.S. (Photo: Reedy/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Quinn is joined by a few other American farmers who believe in the blackcurrant—Blue Fruit Farm in Minnesota, for example, has been growing the berry since 2010. Farm owners Joyce Ford and Jim Riddle travel to regional food shows armed with samples of blackcurrant jam, hoping to lure foodies with a taste test. 

A common sales pitch is to suggest substitutions for known flavors. “I often mention how they’re a great replacement for cranberry sauce,” says Riddle. “That’s something they can get their head around.”

America may not be switching the flavor of the purple Skittle any time soon, but the blackcurrant comeback tour is well underway. Blue Fruit Farm has sold berries to a distillery that makes sloe gin, as well as a brewery, ice cream maker, and creators of pastries, jams and jellies. Quinn's CurrantC now supplies blackcurrants to an increasing number of New York businesses, including the Michelin-starred Brooklyn restaurant Meadowsweet, which serves a cocktail containing vodka, blackcurrant, rosemary, honey, and lemon.

In recognition of a certain Hudson Valley farmer's persuasive blackcurrant rhetoric, the name of the drink is the Mighty Quinn.

How Nevada Became the Only State Where You Can Vote for 'None Of These Candidates'

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An empty senate chamber, circa 1873. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-cwpbh-03299)

Sometimes voting feels like a very tough SAT question: none of the choices seem right. What to do when you can't put your heart into any of those empty bubbles? In most states, voters are forced to register dissatisfaction with what's on offer by writing someone in, going for a protest candidate, or simply staying home.

In Nevada, though, malcontents have another option: they can cast an official vote for no one. 

The "None of These Candidates" option has appeared on statewide Nevada ballots since 1975, when it was introduced as a convoluted get-out-the-vote tactic. According to the Washington Post, after Watergate, officials wanted to make sure that even people who were totally fed up with politics had a reason to come to the polls—even if it was just to vote against everyone.

Since then, the option has won four elections—most recently in 2014, when it beat out eight actual human beings in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. As "None Of These Candidates" has no body, and thus cannot technically take office, the runner-up was given the slot. In other elections, it has served as a potential spoiler: in the 1996 presidential race, Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in Nevada by just 4,730 votes, a smaller margin than the 5,608 garnered by the "we hate 'em all!" option. 

Critics argue that the measure has failed to accomplish its original purpose. "Nevada has experienced a nearly uninterrupted decline in turnout since its creation," writes Dennis Myers of community group Nevada Humanities. Why vote for no one when you could just stay home?

But at least one recent poll indicates that fans of no one will turn out in full force this year—as of July, 4% of voters plan to choose that option, according to a Monmouth University poll. Perhaps we need new backyard signs. 

Watch a Mysterious Video of a Truck Driving Through an Interstate Flood

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Deadly flooding this year in Louisiana has been a slow-moving disaster for the state, displacing hundreds of thousands of residents and causing millions in damage. 

It got pretty bad, in other words, though not for everyone, including, in the video above, two truckers who decided to drive on through. 

The video of the first trucker seems, in the beginning, to be mostly surreal. Shot by someone on a boat, you at first see a huge wave in the distance, quickly approaching. Then, the truck comes into view, calmly moving down the interstate, leaving a huge wake. 

At the 1:50 minute-mark, the video takes an even stranger twist, as you see a red truck in the opposite side of the highway—but going in the same direction as the blue truck—quickly pass the blue truck, never to be seen again. 

What's going on here? It's hard to say. The video was posted two days ago to the Facebook account of the Walker, Louisiana Police Department. They say it was shot on Interstate 12, where the blue truck was traveling in the westbound lanes, while the red truck was traveling west in the eastbound lanes. (Early in the video, you can see that the eastbound lanes are considerably less flooded, which probably accounts for the red truck's speed.) 

That's all the information the police could provide, though. At the moment, it's just another strange artifact from this year's floods: two trucks, a mountain of water, and gutsy determination.

Watch This Tiny Rainbow Peacock Spider Dance the Performance of His Life

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Male spiders will do a lot for the loving attention of a female. The famous peacock spider has quite the demonstration. He sways, struts, bobs, shudders, waves his arms, and exposes his brightly colored rear to lure in the ladies.

These fabulously colored and patterned spiders, found in Australia, have made millions coo at their adorable fluffy bodies and awkward dance moves. The peacock spider, of the genus Maratus, has gleaned many fanatics, attracting the likes of a West Australian swimwear designer—who used the spider's coloring as inspiration when designing bikini bottoms—and Star Wars fans who have even changed the peacock spider courtship dance into an amazing lightsaber wielding performance.

It all started when mite biologist for Australia’s Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, Jürgen Otto (also known as the “peacock spider-man”), posted stunning footage and photographs of the cute arachnids.

“It’s a very flamboyant species,” Otto told the Sydney Morning Herald.

While they can easily fit on the nail of your thumb (measuring four to five millimeters), males put on a massive display for their body size. Other spiders, such as the closely related jumping spider, have intricate courtship dances, but the peacock spider’s moves are “among the gaudiest and most complex ever discovered,” National Geographicreports.

The male will first try to catch a nearby female’s attention by sending vibrations through the ground—a move scientists have named the “grind-rev” and “rumble-rump.” If he strikes her fancy, the male will flip up his flashy, iridescent abdomen and wave his super long and specially colored arms, bobbing back and forth in a crab-walk manner.

But for a male to perform this elaborate parade of courtship displays is a major risk. If the female isn’t impressed, the tiny dancing male may become her dinner. Otto has filmed females, which are about twice as large as the males, pouncing and gobbling up a male who was unsuccessful at his mating display.

At the three-minute mark, you can see the species Maratus amabilis (“amabilis” means lovely) slowly crawl from under a twig, approaching the mottled brown female. Then, he climbs on top of her, every move gentle and with extreme caution. Luckily, the male Maratus amabilis in the clip is more than successful in seducing females with his vibratory movements and arm waves.

“Coming across a group of organisms that are colorful and cute, enigmatic and have never been documented before,” Otto told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s like finding the birds of paradise.”

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

A Chinese Billionaire is Likely Behind a Huge Aluminum Stockpile in the Mexican Desert

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(Photo: mjneuby/CC BY 2.0)

In 2014, photos taken from the sky revealed that around six percent of the world's aluminum—or around a million tons—was sitting in a desert in Mexico

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the stockpile "quickly became an obsession for the U.S. aluminum industry."

What was it doing there? Theories abounded, but, as the newspaper writes, only one theory checked out in the end: that of a Chinese billionaire, who had shipped the aluminum there in an apparent attempt to avoid tariffs. 

If he could ship aluminum to Mexico first, and then on to the U.S., he might reap the benefits of NAFTA. But only if U.S. officials didn't know that the aluminum originated in China

The billionaire, Liu Zhongtian, who controls a massive Chinese aluminum company, denied involvement in any scheme to the WSJ, but, scheme or not, Liu's plans for the aluminum, over the years, went badly awry. 

For one thing, American officials at some point became convinced that the aluminum was from China, denying the company any tariff benefits under NAFTA. In addition, a manager at the Mexico plant was accused of mishandling company funds, while plans for a plant in Barstow, California, also came and went.

Finally, in what seems like an admission of defeat, much of the aluminum has been shipped back to Asia over the last several months. 

Six percent of the world's aluminum is no longer sitting in Mexico, waiting to get dispersed. 

The UN General Assembly Plans Meeting Over 'Superbugs'

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SUPERBUGS! (Photo: John Voo/CC BY 2.0)

UN meetings aren’t all boring commissions on tariffs and diplomacy, sometimes they are about creating a worldwide defense against “superbugs.” According to Science Alert, the UN General Assembly is set to meet in order to discuss strategies for combating the growing number of drug-resistant pathogens.

The trouble is that as good as we have become at creating drugs to battle diseases and plagues, they seem to be much better at evolving to meet us. Unfortunately, after centuries of anti-bacterial science and medicine, it seems as though we might be at the end of the rope for the time being. We have begun to discover strains of bacteria that are resistant to even the strongest antibiotics such as colistin.

The UN meeting hopes to bring together strategies that were previously being explored at lower levels of governments around the world, to create a unified plan for combatting what could very quickly become a global crisis. Some of the plans of action include measures to strengthen the power of antibiotics themselves, and even employing bacterial parasites that might attack diseases in the system.

While no concrete plans are expected to come out of the meeting, it signals an important political commitment from world leaders to an issue that is often invisible, and usually addressed far too late. Also, at least it’s not another meeting about flags.

An Ode to Concrete

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Buzludzha monument in Bulgaria. (Photo: decar66/CC BY 2.0)

In the middle of the 20th century a new wave of modernism swept over the architectural world, and it was made of concrete. The material’s low cost and quick construction made it a natural choice for rebuilding post-war Europe as well as expanding the swelling universities in the United States. The new Brutalist architectural style taking hold with the younger generation centered around rugged and raw exposed concrete structures as a symbol of anti-bourgeois, unpretentious honestly touted as progressive and modern. It follows that these bold concrete monoliths associated with a socialist ideology and postwar austerity were a popular building material in communist nations throughout the 1960s and '70s.

By the end of the 1980s the zeitgeist had largely turned against the crude and ever-divisive material, but not before our midcentury concrete love affair poured into existence some incredible structures so novel they look almost alien. Below are seven otherworldly concrete beauties found in the Atlas. And if we've missed any, be sure to add it to the Atlas.

1. Francois Hennebique's Concrete Manor

BOURG-LA-REINE, FRANCE

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Villa Hennebique. (Photo: Jc7447/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Any ode to concrete ought to begin with Francois Hennebiques, the man who introduced reinforced concrete to the world—and demonstrated its genius by using it to build his own house. In 1910, the self-taught engineer designed a manor made of concrete, an experiment that would allow him to explore the strength and solidity that reinforced concrete could provide. The design and construction of his massive yet elegant concrete house allowed Hennebique to demonstrate the infinite possibilities offered by his revolutionary invention. He subsequently built more than 1,200 reinforced concrete structures around the world. While his name may be unfamiliar to you, you're probably surrounded right now by what he created over a hundred years ago.

2. The Kruševo Makedonium

KRUSHEVO, MACEDONIA

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Kruševo Makedonium. (Photo: vesnamarkoska/CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Makedonium almost looks like a giant concrete heart valve, except it's white and has around 10 massive stained-glass skylights poking out from its circular base. This space-age monument was erected to remember an early 20th century uprising in Macedonia against the Ottoman Empire. However if the artist and surrounding memorial park didn't state explicitly that the building was in honor of the Ilinden Uprising, it stands to reason that no one would ever make the connection. There are no statues of soldiers holding a flag or grand statements of statehood. There is only an oddly-shaped modernist structure. Maybe that's the point of the monument—it is looking toward the future.

3. Saint John's Abbey Church

ST. JOSEPH, MINNESOTA

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(Photo: Sarah Brumble/Used with Permission)

Built between May of 1958 and August of 1961, the church of Saint John's Abbey bursts forth from the plains of central Minnesota like a concrete demon from a galaxy far, far away. Lording over the campus of Saint John's University, the concrete behemoth looks more like an imported relic from Eastern Europe's post-Soviet glory than a homegrown feature of soybean fields and flyover country.

This epic brutalist church was created by the legendary designer and architect Marcel Breuer. Inside, the ceiling folds like a great fan above two areas of seating for the congregation: a loft whose back presses against the bright honeycombed north wall, and an expansive lower level of seating that surrounds the altar in a semicircle. A Star Trek-esque abbot's throne hovers in the back of the asp, framed in gold. With such flowing and pleated grace, it's mind-boggling that everything at Saint John's is made of concrete poured on-site by the monks themselves.

4. Wotruba Church

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

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(Photo: [AUT]side/CC BY-ND 2.0)

Sitting atop a grassy hill in Vienna, this cubist church building looks like some sort of alien Stonehenge—an asymmetrical jumble of stark concrete slabs precariously threaded together. The modernist chapel takes its name from the visionary architect behind its creation, Fritz Wotruba. The sculptor-cum-architect began building the strange building in 1974, inspired by elaborately gothic Chartres Cathedral, though you could be forgiven for not seeing the connection, given the brutalist church that he ended up designing.

Built on the site of a former Nazi barracks, the church is formed from 152 concrete blocks, bolted together like a Jenga tower in mid-tumble. The windows are built into the irregular spaces between the blocks. This chapel may seem a bit cold and abstract in comparison to more traditional churches, but the experience of walking into a giant brutalist sculpture is heavenly in its own right.

5. Buzludzha Monument

KRAN, BULGARIA

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(Photo: Scroch/CC BY-SA 4.0)

On the remote Buzludzha peak in the mountains of Bulgaria stands an unusual abandoned saucer-shaped monument. The peak itself was the site of a battle between the Bulgarians and the Turks in 1868, and in 1891 a group of socialists met on the peak to plan for Bulgaria’s socialist future.

To celebrate these historic events, the government in power during the height of Soviet influence decided to erect a monument commemorating communism. Large images of Lenin and Marx looked over the arena built for state functions and celebrations. Above it all blazed a red star-shaped window in honor of Soviet Russia. However, after the communist government’s fall from power in 1989, the site was abandoned and became a target of vandalism. Most of the artwork has been removed or destroyed, but the concrete structure still stands against the elements.

6. Kosmaj Monument

NEMENIKUĆE, SERBIA

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(Photo: CrniBombarder!!!/Public Domain)

The Kosmaj Monument (Kosmaj Spomenik in Serbian), is made of six freestanding concrete structures, each roughly 40 meters high, that taken together look a bit like a spaceship sent through time from a future envisioned in the 1970s. This spaceship-like Serbian monument reaches for the stars in celebration of the fallen fighters of fascism. Built in 1970 by an unknown artist, the brutalist monument celebrates a group of partisan fighters in World War II who battled against German occupation in the south of Belgrade.

7. Igloo City

CANTWELL, ALASKA

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(Photo: Malcolm Manners/CC BY 2.0)

Sitting empty in a remote region, this four-story concrete structure is so large it can be seen by airplanes at 30,000 feet. Thing is, it never even opened for business. Intended to one day serve as a hotel, Igloo City in Cantwell, Alaska, was never completed. These days the abandoned giant concrete igloo has become an attraction nonetheless. It has proven impossible to keep curious passersby from wandering in to explore the imposing concrete structure.


Do You Know the New York Accent Better Than a New Yorker?

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But what does it sound like? (Photo: W45lin/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Can you tell where in New York someone is from based on their accent? A new online survey is testing whether even native New Yorkers can tell the difference between the various accents that exist in the city's five boroughs.

As we’ve looked at previously, Americans aren’t especially great at differentiating between regionally-specific accents, and now a professor from Reed College is putting that to the ultimate test. Developed by Assistant Professor of Linguistics Kara Becker, the online quiz lets participants listen to a trio of short lines of dialogue spoken by a different person from either Manhattan, Queens, The Bronx, Brooklyn, or Staten Island. After listening to a clip, you are asked to choose which borough you think the speaker’s accent hails from.

The quiz also asks you whether you are a native New Yorker, meaning you were born or raised in the city, pitting the ears of non-natives against those of transplants and tourists. After you answer each of the questions, you can see how many other participants voted like you did. Then, at the end of the quiz, the quiz reveals where each of the speakers is actually from, and, having taken the quiz ourselves, it's probably safe to say that neither natives nor transplants are that good at picking out the accents of one's neighbors.

The study behind the quiz hopes to shine a light on whether or not there is even such a thing as a borough accent. To check it out yourself, go here!

Watch a Clip from the Glory Days of the Pageant Swimsuit Competition

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It's that time of year you've been counting down on your calendar: pageant season. Who will be deemed most beautiful in each of all those many nations? Who will hit the high notes in the talent portion? And how did Savvy "Miss Arkansas" Shields, newly crowned winner of Miss America, get away with such a bipartisan answer when grilled about the nation's two presidential candidates?

And what about that swimsuit component, eh? Just this summer, Miss Teen USA bid the swimwear section farewell, though some—Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas among them—defend the scant getup as a celebration of confidence in one's skin. 

But let's not worry ourselves with the future of this tradition, and instead harken back to the simpler, purer days of pageants. This swimsuit competition in the 1981 Miss USA showcase, emceed as usual by a fully clothed man, has the feel of a glitzy meat auction. France's annual Salon International de l'Agriculture has got nothing on old-school Miss USA, whose contestants descend a beautiful staircase while their name, height, and weight are announced.

Height and weight announcements are no longer part of the proceedings for today's aspiring pageant Misses, but the swimsuit competition continues to be a component of Miss USA, Miss America, and, of course, Miss Universe.

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

There's a Tiny Utopia in the Middle of Queens

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article-imageAn award-winning playground. (Photo: Jack Goodman)
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New York City has many glorious and terrible attributes. One thing it generally isn’t, though, is utopian. One fifth of the population live below the poverty line, yet it has the highest cost of living in the U.S., with few of the egalitarian living arrangements typical of utopian communities. Yet there is one place in the sprawling metropolis, however, that is literally a Utopia. 

Utopia, Queens, is a tiny neighborhood surrounded by Jamaica Estates, Fresh Meadows, and Flushing. 

It purportedly got its name from the Utopia Land Company, which in 1903, tried to re-house Jewish families living in Manhattan’s squalid Lower East Side. The plan never came to fruition, but the name lived on in the form of the Utopia Parkway, which influenced the naming of the nearby Utopia playground, and of course the neighborhood itself.

article-imageYou're wrong, Google. This is not Utopia. (Photo: (c) 2016 Google)

Exploring Utopia, getting a sense of how "utopian" it is, and speaking to people who live there, it turns out, is not straightforward. Figuring out if the neighborhood bears any relation to paradise depends who you ask and where you look. Some people there will even claim it doesn't exist.

Google Maps, however, is certain that it does, so I set off to find it. According to Google, the quickest way to get to Utopia from Manhattan’s Upper West Side is via the F train to 169th Street, and then the Q30 or 31 bus. The route seemed simple enough, even if I never thought I'd enter any kind of utopia on a city bus. But as the bus meandered along the final leg of the journey through Flushing, it was exciting to watch the blue map dot move closer to the area designated “UTOPIA”.

I rang the bell to exit the bus at Utopia Playground, a nearly three-acre green space replete with a climbing wall, tennis and basketball courts, and a rainbow fence. The park “lives up to its name,” said Parks and Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe, who bestowed it with the honor of "Park of the Month" in December 2009. Impressive.

article-imageThe tree that wrongly marks Utopia. (Photo: Jack Goodman)

The geographic heart of Utopia, according to Google Maps, was off Utopia Parkway on 67th Avenue and 180th Street. An attractive tree marked the spot: here was Utopia. The area has a distinctly suburban feel. The lawns in front of the two-story detached houses are neatly trimmed, and the flower beds well-tended. 

This part of Queens is well-off. Donald J. Trump grew up round the corner in Jamaica Estates. The mean household income is $80,000, house prices in the area keep going up, and more people have college degrees than the city average. The quiet, tree-lined streets give off the impression, in accordance with the statistics, that this is a nice place to live.

A few houses down 180th Street from the exact location of Utopia, a man sat at a desk under his garage roof, filing what looked like newspaper clippings. When asked, he was adamant that this area was not Utopia. He’d never heard of a neighborhood called Utopia, only the street called Utopia Parkway. This was Flushing, he said.

Was Google wrong? Well, maybe just confused.

article-imageThe layout of Utopia, according to Community Board 8. (Photo: (c) 2016 Google)

Turns out, it was foolish to follow Google so blindly. According to the Community Board 8 website, Utopia has a clearly defined geography, south of where it is marked on Google Maps. The demarcated area runs from Utopia Parkway and Union Turnpike to 188th street and up to 73rd Avenue. I headed to a stretch on Union Turnpike, where Jewish delis coexist with Chinese supermarkets and Mexican taquerias. 

“Truth of the matter is, there is no utopia in any place unfortunately. We just try to maintain sanity and goodness as much as you can,” says Tami Hirsch, sipping a cappuccino inside Lulu’s Bakery, an Italian-American bakery on Union Turnpike.

Hirsch has lived in Utopia for 50 years, and speaks in glowing terms about a friendly, prosperous and family-oriented place; a hidden jewel in New York City. She knows the area better than most people, as she is the president of the Civic Association of Utopia Estates.

article-imageTami Hirsch, president of the Civic Association of Utopia Estates. (Photo: Jack Goodman)

The Civic Association's motto “We Are Our Neighbors Keepers”, has a distinct air of utopianism. The group meets four times a year and, says Hirsch, regularly lobbies local politicians on behalf of its residents. Whereas the fortunes of some parts of New York City rise and fall, Utopia has remained consistently pleasant, she says.

It isn’t clear how the Utopia neighborhood came into existence. Unlike the Utopia Parkway, the neighborhood was never officially named. The district manager of the Community Board, Marie Adam-Ovide, says it is more of a sub-section of the Fresh Meadows neighborhood. And Tami Hirsch’s Civic Association, says Adam-Ovide, probably has a lot to do with the fact Utopia even exists at all.

Utopia, Queens, doesn’t appear on business addresses. Charles Tola, the owner of Lulu’s Bakery, says he knows some people call the area Utopia, but he’s only ever used Fresh Meadows for business purposes. Other nearby establishments and homes are listed as Fresh Meadows or Flushing. To confuse matters further, Wikimapia, Google Maps, the New York City census map, Community Board 8 and locality.nyc all provide different boundaries for Utopia. 

article-imageThe post office along Union Turnpike. (Photo: Jack Goodman)

Although it seems like an appealing designation for real estate purposes, too—who wouldn't prefer to live in a neighborhood named Utopia?—local agents are more pragmatic. “No one has ever referred to it as Utopia,” says David Yudell, a real estate agent for Exit Realty, based in the area. When described over the phone, Yudell says that area is really Fresh Meadows, or part of Flushing. 

Yet Utopia, Queens, clearly does exist, at least to the people who are aware they live in it. As the area changes and more people move in and out, it may be up to idealistic civic associations like Tami Hirsch's to make sure neighborhoods as small as Utopia have a future. We all deserve our own piece of paradise, well-defined or not.

Driver Jailed After Calling Police to Ask Them to Stop Following Him

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Last February, Bruce Dewey, a "laborer of no fixed address," according to British police, had a bad day. 

He was driving a Honda Legend in West Sussex county, England—about 50 miles south of London—when local police recognized him and, knowing that he wasn't properly licensed to drive, tried to pull him over.

But Dewey refused, even calling police during the 50-minute-long chase to ask them to stop following him, police said. 

In video of the incident released Monday, you can see Dewey swerving in and out of traffic while police attempt a variety of maneuvers to get him to stop. They do eventually succeed, blocking him with two police cars before pulling him out of the Honda. 

Dewey was sentenced to 15 months in jail for the stunt, while Sussex police took the chance to make some cheeky comments at his expense. 

"A driver being pursued by police in West Sussex dialled 999 and asked us to stop following him," they wrote on Facebook. "We did as he asked, but not before he stopped with us!"

It's a toss up, on the evidence, whether Dewey's phone call was worth the try. Though perhaps, like many in the digital age, he was simply working the viral long game. 

The Illustrated Map of America's Worst Utopias

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(Graphic by Michelle Enemark)
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There are many who want to believe that a utopia—a perfect society, an ideal world—can exist. Even in America.

Yet, as quickly as leaders eagerly build utopias, they often crumble in a glorious heaping mess. Some fall to sex scandals, others toil in hunger, while many are struck with bad luck. From nudist colonies to bioterrorist cults, we map and explore six of the most disappointing and unfortunate utopias in the United States.

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The Home Colony and the Radical Nudists

The Pacific West was riddled with an assortment of communitarian settlements in the late 19th century, including names such as "Freeland" and "Equality". But, none are quite as remembered as Home—an independent group of free love supporters and anarchists who were later involved in a great nudist feud.

On February 1896, three anarchists seeking individualistic freedom roamed to a quiet, small inlet 10 miles across the Puget Sound from Tacoma, Washington. Here is where they established the Home colony. The leaders, George H. Allen, L.F. Odell, and Oliver A. Verity, had previously been members of the failed commune Glennis in south Tacoma. They collected the last remaining dollars left from Glennis to start Home. “The founders backs were as strong as their idealism, and they quickly erected a few cabins on carefully marked plots carved from the forest,” Charles Lewarne wrote in the journal Arizona and the West.

It started off as a quaint community, growing to about 90 residents by 1901. There was a small store, believers had private homes on leased two-acre plots of land, and a small newspaper. In its later years, over 200 people called Home their home. The free-spirited philosophy attracted radical celebrities, freethinkers, anarchists, communists, food faddists, radical feminists, free-lovers, cross-dressers, and nudists, and others who did not fit in with mainstream society. Throughout Washington, people often gossiped about the colony’s “horrible sex orgies” and lewd obscenities, wrote Steward Holbrook in The American Scholar.   

Home was left in peace, until the famous 1911 Great Nude Bathing Case, when fissures within the community began to form. Nude bathing had been a normal excursion for a decade at Home without attracting any trouble. The local authorities received a complaint about male and female anarchists bathing nude together, and arrested half a dozen colonists. The trials made the front page of many newspapers. Jay Fox, a radical Homeite, wrote an editorial titled “The Nude and the Prudes” landing him in jail, and sparking a free speech debate. Home eventually broke apart, when World War I hit and anarchism faded.  

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Rajneeshpuram Red Vermin and Salmonella Salsa

In the 1980s, people throughout Wasco County, Oregon had heard of the notorious “Red Vermin” or “Red Rats.” For six years, the spiritual Rajneeshpuram utopia plotted extravagant schemes to take over towns and invade local governments, launching the first and largest bioterrorism attack in the United States.

The Rajneeshpuram colony in The Dalles, Oregon originated overseas in 1970 in Poona, India. Baghwan Shree Ranjneesh, known as the “sex guru,” created the spiritual movement Osho, which supported an odd mixture of capitalism, meditation, ethnic and dirty jokes, and open sexuality. By the 1980s, he had tens of thousands of followers in India. Ranjneesh and his aid Ma Anand Sheela were set on establishing a utopia for the followers in the United States, Ma Anand Sheela informing the Portland Oregonian that they were seeking “a desert kind of land, away from the people so people’s neuroses did not have to bother Bhagwan’s vision or work… a place which was our own.”

They came upon the Big Muddy Ranch in Wasco County, a 64,229-acre property of hills and streambeds, which was named Rajneeshpuram. Ranjneesh’s utopia promised spiritual reassurance, all the comforts in the world, and worldly recognition and achievement. Approximately 7,000 followers came to Rajneeshpuram. The growing utopia consisted of a 4,200-foot airstrip, fire department, restaurants, public bus transport system, and sewage reclamation point. The utopia even created its own zip code, 97741.

The members, donning all red, worked on communal farms and relentlessly protected the area. The “Peace Force” carried submachine guns and drove around the ranch with a Jeep equipped with a machine gun. Ma Anand Sheela, who was named Queen of Rajneeshpuram, armed herself with a .357 magnum. “They were impatient, insistent, and implicitly threatening, and often directly confrontational,” Carl Abbott wrote about the Rajneeshees in Pacific Historical Review.

In 1983, the Red Vermin started taking over nearby towns and tried to weasel representatives into government positons to gain control of the area and independence. Locals grew resistant and began to worry about the Rajneeshpuram utopia’s presence. Then, Wasco County turned into a battle zone when the Rajneeshees wanted to expand their city up on a mountain but city officials rejected the request. Enraged, the Rajneeshees bused in 2,000 homeless people to vote Rajneeshee members into the county government. However, the county did not recognize the homeless as voters.

The Rajneeshees then came up with an extravagant backup plan: poison the restaurant salad bars in the area with salmonella to prevent locals from voting against them. The Red Vermin created a brown liquid mixture of salmonella, carried it around in bags labeled “salsa,” and contaminated wherever they could—salad dressings, produce, water. After the salmonella salsa raid, 751 people fell ill, 45 were hospitalized, and two Oregon officials got sick. Thankfully, no one was killed.

Locals suspected that the salmonella plot was the Rajneeshees doing, and voted against their candidates. But salmonella was the least of Oregonians worries. Later, the government investigated the ranch and found a full-blown bioterrorism lab with salmonella “bactrol disks,” papers on how to create explosives and military biowarfare,” and an assassination plan against the United States Attorney for the District of Oregon.

Because of the scandal, Ma Anand Sheela and the leaders of Rajneeshpuram fled the country, causing the utopia to collapse in 1987. The Osho movement lives on in small pockets around the world.  The only reminders of the horrifying reign of the Red Vermin are those still-operating restaurants in Oregon that were victims of the salmonella contamination.

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Octagon City: The Short-Lived Extravagantly Designed Vegetarian Utopia

Imagine living in a completely octagonal world. You leave your eight-walled house to work in your octagonal barn that is built on one of eight farm lot wedges of an octagonal plot of land. At the end of the day, you may convene to the townhouse building, another octagonal structure located in the center an octagonal village—one of four that comprises a large Octagon City.

While this may sound like a futuristic world, the Octagon City was an elaborately planned and designed utopia in 1856. Journalist, entrepreneur, and vegetarian Henry Clubb created the octagonal haven so people could live in an anti-slavery and vegetarianism lifestyle. Though Clubb and the Octagon Settlement Company put in a lot of effort into the colony, it is one of the shortest lived utopias in American history, lasting a few dismal months.

About five years before the Civil War, Clubb read of the debates on which states were going to support slavery as the United States continue to settle the west. After the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Clubb became one of many who sought land in Kansas and claimed an area in the western bank of the Neosho River west of Fort Scott to be the site of his Octagon City. Inspired by Orson Fowler’s octagon house architecture, the Octagon City would have a central park with eight radiating roads that divide the octagonal land plot into wedged farm lots. The main octagonal building in the central park would contain the market, school, townhouse, and church. The shape was intended to create “distinct urban and architectural forms to bring about individual and social reform,” wrote Irene Cheng in a report about geometric utopias.

Clubb advertised the utopia to be rich with water-power, timber, coal, mineral resources, scenic prairie hills, and pure springs. Some ads even stated that two full crops of corn could be produced within the year. About a hundred people were sold on the Octagon City, and vegetarian blacksmiths, farmers, carpenters, and other emigrants came to the utopia. But when they arrived, the followers were met with disappointment. Many of the structures that had been described in brochures had not been built, and the pure springs were all but a trickling creek.

“Not a house [was] to be seen,” Miriam Davis Colt, a member of the Octagon City, later recounted. “The water is so low in the summer-time that one can walk over it on the stones.”    

The colonists faced rough conditions. The land was infested with mosquitos, and settlers became ill with chills, fever, and flu-like epidemics. There were frequent thunderstorms and the springs dried up. Octagon City also faced immense pressures from nearby pro-slavery activists groups and Indian tribes who stole crops. By the spring of 1857, only four of the original settlers remained. Many of the elderly and children died, and those that could left. Today, the only landmark of the Octagon City is the small stream that is still known as Vegetarian Creek.

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Starving in Fruitlands

Despite its name, the lack of food led to Fruitlands’ demise.

English Transcendentalists and abolitionists Charles Land and Bronson Alcott, the father of Little Women writer Louisa May Alcott, founded Fruitlands in June 1843. It was a quaint community that comprised of a 90-acre farm and small farmhouse overlooking Nashua Valley in rural Harvard, Massachusetts. Alcott, a member of the radical Nonresistance Society, believed in the “systematic oppression of all human institutions opposed to divine law.” He and Lane created the Fruitlands utopia to escape the corrupt society, and built an economy based on simplicity.

There were approximately 14 “spiritually elite” residents of Fruitlands. The settlers bathed in cold water, wore linen and canvas, didn’t use artificial. They produced little, believing living in excess was a sin. The limited production also enabled them to remain independent and avoid temptation of embarking in trade. But of all their practices, Fruitlands followers were most strict about their vegan diet. “Neither coffee, tea, molasses, nor rice tempts us beyond the bounds of indigenous production,” Charles Land wrote. “No animal substances neither flesh, butter, cheese, eggs, nor milk pollute our tables, nor corrupt our bodies.”

However, the settlers did not realize how difficult it would be to produce food and farm with such restrictions. The settlers couldn’t use manure to help fertilize crops or animals to improve labor. Citizens grew malnourished and realized the challenges of farm life. Disputes among leadership eventually led to Fruitlands demise in 1844. Louisa May Alcott, who was six years old when the Alcott family lived in Fruitlands, later wrote about the stresses of living in a utopia in a satirical editorial, “Transcendental Wild Oats.”     

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Upton Sinclair’s Helicon Home Colony

“I have lived in the future,” wrote Upton Sinclair. “I have known those wider freedoms and opportunities that the future will grant to all men and women.”

From 1906 to 1907, the famed author of The Jungle—an exposé of the Chicago meatpacking industry—lived in a colony in Englewood, New Jersey to escape familial responsibilities and be among creatives. After becoming successful from his book, Sinclair announced the idea for the Helicon Home Colony, or Helicon Hall, in June 1906 in The Independent magazine. He sketched a plan for a cooperative colony that would support communal child raising, cooking, and living.

“Helicon Hall can in part be viewed as a progressive solution to the mundane servant problem,” wrote Lawrence Kaplan in American Studies.

There was a rigorous screening process for the applicants, including a restriction against those of color. “The colony should be open to any white person of good moral character,” the application stated, Helicon Hall specifically excluding blacks. Taking up an old boys’ school, 46 adults and 15 children came to Sinclair’s utopia. A board of women directors took turns supervising the children, and were paid a monthly fee. Children were encouraged to play and explore freely. Having less responsibilities with childrearing and cooking, men could pursue more creative endeavors. It’s said that Sinclair created the colony so he could spend more time thinking creatively and less time caring for his son and wife.

Helicon Hall was not immune to bad press as New York newspapers gossiped that the commune was a sex cult. It wasn’t created to be a free love community along the lines of the Home colony in Washington, but Sinclair did have mistresses and even introduced one to his wife in hopes of gaining her approval. She wasn’t happy of the news, and he broke off all his relationships with other women. The true fall of the Helicon Home Colony was in the early morning hours of March 16, 1907. Sinclair woke to the smell of smoke, and by the time he realized the state of the building it was too late. All he and the residents could do was stand in the cold snow and watch Helicon Hall be consumed in flames. It is suspected that the fire could have been arson, some residents having found dynamite in the cellar and removing it without any suspicions.

“I look back on Helicon Hall today, and this the way I feel about it,” he reflected in 1962. “I have lived in the future and all things about me seem drab and sordid in comparison."

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The Rugby Colony: A Community of British Culture in the American South

In the late Victorian England, land was inherited by the eldest son often leaving educated, wealthy second sons with nothing. In 1880, Christian socialist Thomas Hughes decided to remedy younger sons’ problems by creating a utopia in the United States where they could own land. Hughes started the Rugby Colony, which has been called “England’s Second Colonization of America” and a new wave of English immigrants in America’s south, wrote Brian Stagg in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly.

At its height, there were 400 inhabitants in Rugby, which consisted of literary and dramatic societies, tennis courts, a church, a school, a well-stocked library, business and residential houses, and the Tabard Inn hotel. There were a total of about 45 buildings. Hughes, who had contributed $75,000 into developing Rugby, attracted press and worldwide attention. There was certainly bad press, such as London’s Daily News accusation that Hughes simply started “pleasure picnic.” Nonetheless, Rugby’s well-funded community experienced several years of “shimmering glory,” wrote Stagg.

However, funny enough, there were disputes among the colonists over land titles, and some had a difficult time becoming accustomed to the United States. Then, in late 1881, there was a typhoid epidemic which killed seven of the colonists. Because of the outbreak, the press wrote of the colony’s “unhealthfulness,” deterring other settlers from coming to Rugby. Another tragedy hit in 1884, when the Tabard Inn burned down. In a last ditch effort, Hughes built a tomato cannery to keep the colony going, but the residents were not experienced enough to produce enough tomatoes. By the 1900, the entire colony had been deserted and only vestiges remain in the town of Rugby, Tennessee.

All graphics by Michelle Enemark.

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