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Defy Age Using a 3,600-Year-Old Face Cream Recipe With a Deadly Ingredient

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Stanley Jacobs has been fascinated with ancient Egypt for as long as he can recall, but his obsession with one particular passage in one particular document started a little over 15 years ago. At an annual meeting of Egyptology enthusiasts, he hunted down, on the recommendation of a patient, an ancient Egyptian text about surgery known as the Edwin Smith Papyrus.

This document is “one of the two most important medical texts from ancient Egypt,” according to Egyptologist James Allen, and the case studies it contains date back 5,000 years, to the time when Egypt’s great pyramids were built. It's one of the oldest records of surgery in the entire world, and when Jacobs first read through, he was impressed.

A plastic surgeon himself, he found that most of the cases were about “really good reconstruction after traumatic injury, of the nose, the neck, the spinal cord,” and that its techniques were surprisingly well thought out for a millennia-old book. What really intrigued him, though, was a recipe at the back of the book, titled “Transforming an Old Man Into a Youth.”

This section of the papyrus is a long and complicated set of instructions for making what is, essentially, a face cream. The original translator of the papyrus, the Egyptologist James Breasted, hadn’t been much impressed by it, writing that the recipe “proves to be nothing more than a face paste believed to be efficacious in removing wrinkles.”

As a doctor who spends a lot of time thinking about skin, beauty, and age, though, Jacobs wasn’t so quick to discount it. “I realized that if they’re that serious about their surgical treatments, they’re probably serious about this,” he says. 

Jacobs wanted to try this recipe out himself, but when he examined the recipe, he ran into a problem. The key ingredient was “hemayet-fruit,” and he had no inkling of what that might be. 

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Despite the recipe's alluring title, it's no shock that Breasted dismissed the recipe for “Transforming an Old Man Into a Youth." When he was working on his translation of the papyrus, in the 1920s, he was dazzled by the wonderful discoveries to be made in the text—some of the earliest anatomical and pathological descriptions on record, the earliest written reference to the brain. The Edwin Smith papyrus had been in private hands for decades when he was asked to translate it, and no one had recognized its significance.

Edwin Smith had been not an average American, it’s safe to say. Born in the early 1800s, during the “Era of Good Feelings” when America was flush with its success as a young nation, Smith left his home in Connecticut to study in Europe and settle in Egypt. In those antebellum years few other Americans would have chosen to study hieroglyphics and live under Ottoman rule, but Smith made a life as an expatriate in Luxor, across the Nile from Egypt’s most famous monuments, where he lived for 20 years.

Early in his time in Luxor, in 1862, Smith bought a beautifully preserved papyrus manuscript, covered in red and black ink. He knew enough to determine it was a medical document. But when he showed it to more experienced scholars, they didn’t recognize it as anything special. In their own notes, as Breasted wrote later, they “gave no hint of its extraordinary character and importance…. Thereupon it seems to have been totally forgotten by the scientific world.” 

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Breasted first saw the papyrus, which he called “magnificent,” when the New York Historical Society, having inherited it from Smith’s daughter, asked him to translate it. Only after he began his work did he recognize that one side of the papyrus was filled with some of the oldest medical records ever discovered. The papyrus itself dated back more than 3,500 years, but the surgical case studies were even older—already, when this copy was made, they had been handed down for a thousand years. 

Compared to the case studies, which were unique in their age and their scientific rigor, the texts on the verso side of the manuscript, the “incantations and recipes,” as Breasted called them, were nothing special. These, he wrote, were “a magical hodgepodge” of instructions for guarding against pests or treating “female troubles.” They were added at a later date and, to Breasted, seemed to reflect the preferences of the papyrus’ owner, rather than important medical knowledge passed down through the centuries. 

But Breasted wasn’t necessarily right to dismiss them. Even if they weren’t of the same value as the older case studies, recipes for face creams or female troubles were more closely aligned with the medical beliefs of the age than they are now. “They involved the same specialized knowledge of ingredients, amounts, and dosages as medicinal recipes,” says Allen, the Egyptologist, who teaches at Brown University. “As far as we know, dermatology was not a separate branch of medicine, or specialty, in ancient Egypt. Physicians who knew how to concoct a remedy for stomach aches could also come up with one for skin disorders.”

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To Jacobs, the recipe for transforming a man to a youth did seem to involve some serious science. The key ingredient, hemayet, is subjected to a complicated series of manual and chemical procedures—husked, winnowed, sifted, boiled in water, dried, washed, ground, and boiled again. As much as a recipe, it looked like a set of chemistry instructions.

The first translation of hemayet he found, though, identified it as fenugreek, which didn’t make sense to Jacobs. Fenugreek is a wispy plant, its seeds easily harvested: it wouldn’t have needed to be winnowed and boiled so aggressively. But no one seemed to know what else it might be. Jacobs started calling Egyptologist after Egyptologist, asking if they knew what this word might mean, and no one did. Finally, about eight years after he first became curious about the recipe, someone directed him to Allen, who in 2005 had published a new translation of the papyrus.

Allen had an answer, based on the work of an earlier scholar, more experienced than the one who had guessed fenugreek. Hemayet was bitter almonds.

It made sense. Unlike fenugreek, almonds would need to be winnowed and husked, crushed and boiled, for any sort of face paste to be made. And there was another instruction that resonated with bitter almonds, too: the recipe said the boiled and dried hemayet fruits should be washed thoroughly in the river, until the water in the jar had “no bitterness at all therein.”

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But there was another stumbling block, as Jacobs learned when he tried to procure bitter almonds to test. In the United States, they were illegal. 

Bitter almonds are smaller, darker, and flatter than the sweet almonds that grow in California, the ones you’re supposed to eat as a healthy snack. Bitter almonds can also kill a person, quite easily. They contain hydrogen cyanide, and eating just seven or so nuts can be lethal.

Jacobs had to order the nuts from China, under a special research permit. “It was creepy,” he says. “I obviously didn’t want anybody to know I had them." He sent a few to the chemist he had begun working with to understand the papyrus’ formula, and the rest he kept in his cupboard at home.

But once Jacobs and his colleagues processed the nuts, just as the papyrus instructed, they found that all that washing leached the poisonous compounds from the almonds. The bitterness leaving, Jacobs says, meant the poison was gone, too.

After the transformation, one of the compounds produced from the nuts was mandalic acid. For a dermatologist, this compound, a known extract of bitter almonds, would already have been familiar—starting just a few years before Jacobs got interested in the papyrus, dermatologists had started testing it as a treatment for acne and other skin problems. For Jacobs, it was a revelation: since first discovering the secret of hemayet, he has developed a patented formula for mandalic acid-based skin care products and written about his quest in a forthcoming book, Nefertiti's Secret.

This story, in the end, is one more warning against dismissing knowledge that was not considered "scientific" by the scholarly (and stuffy) men of the 20th century. Even in their less surgical treatments, the Egyptians were sophisticated: millennia before our modern dermatologists, they had discovered a chemical compound that can make skin tighter and more elastic—in other words, that can transform the skin of an old man into the skin of a younger one.


Heading to Iceland? Just Make Sure You Don't Die There

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Inspired by the icy allure of the landscape, the rejuvenating hot springs, the majestic fjords, and the surreal dance of the northern lights, more and more tourists are heading over to Iceland. So many in fact, that it is estimated that in 2016, there were more American tourists who visited the country than there are people living in it. 

But what makes Iceland so alluring can also make it dangerous. Looking for unique adventure opportunities, many tourists have fallen prey to the country’s unpredictable nature and met a tragic death.

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Of course, dying while abroad is probably every traveler’s biggest fear, no matter the destination. It turns out, however, that there are places you really don’t want to die in. And Iceland is one of them. Why the discrimination against the beautiful island? Its funeral practices can sometimes make the difficult process of transporting a body even more complicated.

Traditional Viking funerals consisted of cremating the deceased in a funeral pyre. As of 1,000 AD, when the country officially converted to Christianity, burials became more and more common.

Today, funeral and burial practices usually follow the traditions of the National Church of Iceland, the country’s predominant denomination. These traditions include the kistulagninar, a small wake attended only by the closest family members and friends; the burial of the body or, if cremated, of the urn where ashes are contained; and, the posting of an obituary in a newspaper. There is also the tradition of not embalming the body—a practice that has proven to be quite inconvenient for foreign families that face the tragedy of losing a loved one in Iceland.

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The Disposition of Remains Report: Iceland provided by the United States Embassy warns American nationals that “embalming is not performed in Iceland so decisions about disposition of remains must be made quickly.” The maximum period before burial is eight days, so family members have a week to make all the arrangements pertaining to the treatment and shipping of the body and fill out all the necessary paperwork, often from abroad. Under special circumstances, like the need for an autopsy, this period can be delayed, but getting permission may prove difficult and requires even more paperwork.

In the western world, embalming is used in almost all burials, usually to preserve the body long enough for wakes and visits. According to Magnus Magnusson of Útfararstrofa Kirkjugardanna, a funeral home in Reykjavik, embalming is almost never done in Iceland— it is simply not necessary.

"We don't have a hot climate here and we don't have much humidity," he says. "When someone dies, it's usually not long before they are in the morgue and in the cooler, so there's just no need for embalming."

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It's also just not the way things are done in Iceland, which is a country in which traditions hold firm. In Burial Practice in Contemporary Iceland: Tradition and Conflict, Silke Schurack argues that the "tendency to hold on to traditions for the sake of these traditions [...] may play some role in the cause for the lack of alternative burial options.” She explains that funeral procedures in Iceland are very strict, and often include requirements that are unnecessary, and even impractical. For example, family members are required by law to buy a casket for cremation. These caskets are usually very expensive and simply burned along with the body. Urns are required to be buried and those wishing to bury the urn in their backyards or to scatter the ashes may do so only with special permission.

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There seems to be little reason for these strict rules other than the fact that it is tradition. As Schurack claims, Iceland’s mostly homogenous population and its long history of fighting for independence have created a culture in which keeping traditions alive is of utmost importance, “especially in matters touching such ‘traditional’ issues as burial culture.”

This doesn't mean, however, that Icelandic people are completely unwilling to perform embalming, it's more about knowing who to speak to. Magnusson says that if a foreigner or even a national wishes to be embalmed, it is definitely possible to do so. It's just that, unlike in many other western countries, the hospital and not the funeral homes perform the procedure. This is why foreigners who are used to handling the procedure with morticians can sometimes be left confused and in despair. 

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So what can foreigners do if tragedy befalls a relative while they're in Iceland? Act quickly, talk to the hospital about embalming the body, and contact a funeral home as soon as possible. As a U.S. Embassy spokesperson stated, morticians are really the best people to talk to for any questions and concerns that don't pertain particularly to the law.

Watch This Adorable Baby Macaque Roll a Snowball Down a Hill

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It’s a winter tradition to build snowmen, go sledding, and get into massive snowball wars. Not just for humans, but for baby monkeys. At the first sight of snow, young Japanese macaques will start gathering and packing the white powder into a ball, take it to the top of a slope, and watch it tumble down.

During the winter in valleys of Japan's Shiga Highlands, you’ll find juvenile Japanese snow monkeys—also referred to as snow babies—roll and make snowballs. As the narrator in the BBC video above explains, such behavior. “has become a part of their unique culture." At the 1:07-mark, you can see one fuzzy baby macaque take his snowball to the top of a hill, watch it roll, before chasing after it.

“At first they’re just curious, then they get creative,” the narrator says. “Snow monkeys are quick learners.”

The species is privy to an array of intelligent behaviors in addition to playing with snowballs. They will bathe in hot springs to keep warm in frigid winter temperatures, and swim to keep cool during summer. Researchers have also observed adult macaques wash and dip their food in saltwater to both clean and enhance the taste. In communities, individuals will emit “coos” to talk to each other while feeding or moving.

But researchers say rolling snowballs is just a way for young macaques to socialize and have fun.

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.

Cuba Is Trying to Settle a $276 Million Cold War Debt With Rum

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During the Cold War, when Cuba and what was then Czechoslovakia were part of the Communist bloc, the two shared business ties, which, today, linger on in the form of around $276 million in Cuban debt. 

But Cuba, these days, doesn't necessarily have $276 million in cash lying around to settle up, so, recently, according to Agence France-Presse, the country made the Czech Republic an offer: to settle up in rum.

How much rum? According to AFP's calculations, around 135,000 tons of rum, or enough for 130 years of Czech consumption. 

And, indeed, a Czech official told local press that it was an "interesting option," though one that probably won't come to pass. The Czechs, it turns out, do want some cash, or, maybe, the BBC reports, pharmaceutical drugs. 

Marketing the rum to Czech buyers is just one problem.

“These are relatively unknown brands which might be good, but we would have to advertise them and generally launch them into the market,” the country's deputy finance minister told AFP.

Some debts take more than rum to repay. 

Found: A Photo That Might Prove This Famous Jewish Assassin Survived the Holocaust

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When Herschel Grynszpan was 17, he killed a German diplomat, whose death was used as a pretense for Kristallnacht, the 1938 attacks on Jews in Germany that began the Holocaust. Grynszpan himself was taken to a concentration camp, where he was thought to have died in the early 1940s.

But a newly discovered photo from 1946 suggests that he may have survived the war.

Christa Prokisch, an archivist at the Jewish Museum of Vienna, found the photo in the museum’s collection. When she saw the face of the young man in the photo above, she told the Guardian,“I recognized him immediately.”

With Armin Fuhrer, a German historian and journalist who has written a biography of Grynszpan, she sought to prove her instinct right. As the Guardian reports, they had a face recognition test conducted on the photo, and it showed a 95 percent match with other photos of the young man.

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Grynszpan was born in Germany, to parents who had immigrated there from Poland, but by the time he was 17, he was a stateless person living in Paris. As a Jewish person born in Germany, he wasn’t entitled to citizenship there; when he was a teenager, Poland passed a law stripping Polish people who’d lived abroad for more than five years of their citizenship.

In France, Grynszpan was living with his uncle in a Yiddish-speaking community while waiting to immigrate to Palestine, when his family was deported from Germany. They were sent to a refugee camp on the Polish border, in squalid conditions. Grynszpan went to the German embassy in Paris, perhaps intending to kill the ambassador, and shot a high-ranking diplomat instead.

Arrested by the French police, Grynszpan was eventually taken by the Gestapo to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp; the last evidence of his life dates to 1942. His parents, who emigrated to Israel after the war, had him declared dead in 1960. But there have always been rumors that he survived the world and was still alive in France, Germany, or Israel.

If Grynszpan did survive the war, it opens a new mystery: how did he do it?

From Bordeaux to Brie, This Map Plots the Origin of Your Favorite French Food

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So you’ve given into the foodie inside and are planning a culinary trip to the land of gastronomical heaven: France. But besides enjoying galettes in Brittany and sipping champagne in Champagne, how can you know where to best enjoy the wonders of French cuisine?

For starters, you could use this Gastronomical Map of France. With wonderful illustrations, the map details the major products of the country in the regions that they are produced.

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Though the map was made by Jean François Tourcaty in 1809, it is surprisingly relevant in the 21st century. Of course, there are some discrepancies between the map and today's France that reflect the course of history.

For example, Brussels and Geneva are included within the boundaries of the country, and modernity has made certain places unfit to continue providing some of these gastronomic products. No one wants Parisian fish taken from the polluted waters of the Seine, and hunting at Versailles has not been a pastime for many years.

For the most part, however, the change has not been drastic. You can still find expansive vineyards in the Bordeaux region, herbs in the southeast, and beer in the north. The map also gives geographical references to products that we all know and love, such as cognac, brie, and roquefort, which originate from cities that bear their names.

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The map was made for and included in a philosophical and literary book on food, Cours Gastronomique. The tome was written by Charles Louis Cadet de Gassicourt, who is believed to have been the illegitimate son of Louis XV.

The Cours Gastronomique is dedicated to the Caveau Moderne Society, which saw a group of men get together once a month to enjoy a sumptuous meal, as well as song and wine. This society disappeared and was revived numerous times between 1729 and 1939, and was widely recognized in France and abroad. Women were not allowed to partake in the festivities, despite the important role they held in the production, distribution, and preparation of French cuisine.

The cartouche on the left side of the map includes a cave in which a table with wine and food are served under the name Caveau Moderne, and rocks in which the names of some of the members of the society are engraved.

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Food was the central part of the events of the society, which was epicurean by nature. Gastronomical topics would be discussed as part of larger philosophical and scientific debates. As a member of the society, Cadet de Gassicourt was a fervent believer that the study of food was invaluable to scientific progress. Food was not just a bodily need, but a source of great knowledge for the advancement of society. 

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The Gastronomical Map of France, which is part of the wonderful Cornell University PJ Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography, is “less a geography lesson than a testament to the depth and variety of French food and wine,” according to the collector's notes. Printed 10 years after the French Revolution, it shows a country unified by its culinary strengths.

If you ever want to know which French regions produce bovine products, which ones have wild boars and hares, and where to find varieties of wine and cheese, you need only look at this map. Not only is it beautifully detailed and historically interesting, it is also one of the most delicious maps you will encounter.

The Mystery of Why Chattanooga Raised Its Downtown by a Level

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Walk the streets of downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, today and you’ll find little evidence that the town’s residents of yesteryear conducted business in first floors that are now below sidewalks and parking meters. For that, you have to go underground.

“So this is Loveman's,” says Cheri Lisle-Brown, property manager for the 130-year-old Loveman’s Building, which was originally a department store, in the heart of Chattanooga’s downtown. She walks through a pair of metal doors. “This is the original freight elevator. Watch your step.”

Below, the basement of the 19th-century building is made from a mix of cinderblock, brick walls and Tennessee limestone. It has the feel and smells of other old basements. Unlike other basements, however, the northern outer wall has openings in the brick—doorways or large windows—framed with wood leading to an alcove. What looks like a place to enter the building or let in light sits underground. 

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At some point in time, possibly between 1875 and 1905, Chattanooga built up its roads and abandoned the first stories of the buildings in the downtown of the city, turning them into basements. Today, no one knows exactly why or how it happened. The popular theory is that Chattanooga raised its city a story to escape the devastating flooding the Tennessee River wrought every few years. Evidence also points to an attempt to escape the diseases of the day, cholera and yellow fever.

Cities build upon themselves. For example, they pave over cobblestones that were once dirt paths. For Chattanooga, located a few miles from the Tennessee-Georgia state line, the foundations of the buildings echo the story of a construction project more unusual than most.

The best proof of Chattanooga’s hidden layer can be found in the basements of its older buildings. Yet the city’s original first floor is largely off limits to the curious because the locations are on private property. 

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And there’s the mystery of it. Documentation of the construction is scarce. City records don’t point to any motion where city leaders resolved to raise the streets. Newspapers from the time discuss the proposal but did little to document the earth moving project. This leaves modern city historians unable to answer basic questions like “when did this occur?” and “where did the city get the soil?”

“It required concerted effort—and that’s the big question mark—because there’s not a lot of evidence for it,” says Nick Honerkamp, professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, of the massive infrastructure project.

Indeed, utility workers would occasionally find items like a cut tree trunk eight feet below ground, he notes. Honerkamp’s predecessor, Jeff Brown, first posited the theory that the city initiated a project that raised the streets and made first stories basements after he noticed the doors and windows in basements of Chattanooga’s downtown. “It doesn’t make sense to have a window or a door that leads to dirt,” Honerkamp says.

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As part of this theory, some people think that the dirt excavated from the Hamilton County Courthouse was pushed downslope to fill the streets below. The building, according to Honerkamp, features a large basement. “That dirt had to go somewhere and the easiest place to put it was downhill,” he says. The file Chattanooga Public Library’s keeps on the project suggests the soil might have been lifted from one of the nearby hills.

Braving floods was a risk of doing business in Chattanooga during the 1800s and early 1900s. “We had dramatic floods virtually every decade,” says Maury Nicely, a Chattanooga-based lawyer and amateur historian. Chattanooga made its fortunes from the railroad system connecting it to the rest of the South and the Tennessee River. The main streets running from train depot to river were “low-lying troughs” that filled during large floods, according to Nicely.

Ultimately, it was a problem that was solved in 1933 when the U.S. Government created the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built hydroelectric dams along the river and stymied the floods. 

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But in 1875, city leaders were wrestling with what to do after flood waters once again ripped through their town. Robert Hooks, the city’s engineer, floated the ideas of building a levee and raising the streets in the March 4 edition of the Chattanooga Times. “The streets of Chicago, Boston, and many other cities have been raised, both for the purpose of escaping flood and for improving their system of sewerage,” Hooks wrote.

That week, Chattanooga’s Board of Mayor and Alderman considered a proposal to raise 15 miles of street 10 feet high, paid for by the property owners, but the resolution was put off. As Hooks noted earlier, these projects were cost prohibitive.

More motivation arrived in the summer of 1878, when yellow fever spread across the Mississippi River basin, striking its victims with jaundiced skin and black vomit, and killing thousands. In Chattanooga, 140 people in the city of 12,000 died. 

People at the time didn't know the true carrier of the disease, Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes, which can spread the Zika virus of today. But Chattanooga's then-Registrar of Vital Statistics, J. H. Vandeman, was onto something when he wrote: “The more filth, the more yellow fever; the lower the ground, the poorer the drainage and water supply, there you would find this disease the worst.”

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In 1878, people were already trying to raise up the land in downtown Chattanooga, but it was going in fits and starts. During his postmortem of how yellow fever infected the city, Vandeman described how even in the city's downtown the ground never completely dried. He pointed out one building in particular, which is today known as the Loveman’s Building.

The building had been recently built with a commercial first story below the level of the street. It was not a good place to do business, however. It “is constantly exposed to dampness of the soil underneath, amounting at times to large collections of water,” Vandeman wrote.

The lot 100 feet to the east was not helping, either. The developer there placed fill so that the lot stood three feet taller than the ground of the Loveman’s Building. This cut off drainage. In other words, people were filling up Chattanooga a little at a time. Those who did not do so were left with damp ground.

As a result of the epidemic, Vandeman called for the city to improve its sanitation. Build out the sewer system, he wrote, and “increase our surface drainage.” 

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Unlike a city such as Paris, with its maze of catacombs and sewers, Chattanooga’s underground is mostly contained to a dozen or so basements today. Other basements were never first-story floors because they were dug out at a later date. “It’s a lot more localized than most people think,” Nicely says.

As with many places in cities, unused spaces are not long left unused. Today, a portion of the Loveman’s Building is used as storage for the current tenants of the building. Before she had the basement sealed, “I used to get a lot of flooding,” says Lisle-Brown, who managed the property for 10 years.

This is part of the nature of cities: they change and adapt to challenges, says Honerkamp. Sometimes it’s subtle, other times it’s dramatic. “To me, it represents a corporate, combined effort—between city and private individuals—to address a basically pretty horrific problem that was messing up the economy and driving people crazy.”

Illicit Teen Snack Tycoon Got a Suspension, And, Eventually, a Scholarship

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After molding himself into a lawless snack tycoon, a teenager in Turin, Italy is getting a grab bag of responses—ranging from a high school suspension to a college scholarship.

According to the Local, the 17-year-old would take orders for snacks and drinks via WhatsApp, and fill them at a local discount store. Then, he would bring them back to school and sell them at prices lower than the cafeteria's, undercutting the school's snack monopoly and turning a profit for himself.

He was caught last year, and suspended for ten days. When he started his racket again this year, he got a 15-day suspension, which he will spend volunteering with a charity. He also got a bunch of job offers, and a scholarship from the Einaudi Foundation.

Five hundred pupils—about one third of the student body—turned out last week to protest this latest turn of events, and the regional councillor for education called it "a mistake" that the teen be rewarded for rule-breaking.

Others took the opposite viewpoint: "Perhaps the small illegal businessman of today will become the large-scale legal businessman of tomorrow," the school's head teacher, Stefano Fava, told TorinoToday. After all, there's room out there for business people of various scales and legal standing.

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.


Why Scientists Sank a Telescope Into the Deepest Parts of the Ocean

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In 2006, scientists working on the ANTARES neutrino telescope found themselves facing a problem: their brand-new instruments were observing way more light than they had expected. This was particularly confusing given that ANTARES is sunk in pitch-black water, two and a half kilometers below the Mediterranean Sea.

You see, this is no ordinary star-scanning telescope. Rather than hunt for distant cosmic objects, the ANTARES observatory uses highly light-sensitive devices to detect something from space right here on earth: the light emitted by a cosmic neutrino—a subatomic particle, much like a charge-less electron—as it passes through seawater.

 The ANTARES physicists knew when they started that they might see a bit of light from other sources, like deep-sea fishes. But the glow they were seeing was intense enough to hinder their work. Where could it be coming from?

Luckily, unlike most observatories, ANTARES employes oceanographers, geologists, marine biologists, and climatologists in addition to astrophysicists. With further study, these experts discovered that the light was coming from a massive bloom of deep-sea bioluminescent bacteria, stirred into action by water that was being transported from the surface into the deep.

What had first appeared to be a roadblock turned out to be a breakthrough: for their studies of the deep-sea bloom, the ANTARES collaboration was awarded a special prize by the science magazine La Recherche, which awards exemplary scientific research annually, in 2014. Theirs was the longest-ever observation of such a bloom in the deep sea, and without ANTARES, scientists likely would have missed it.

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This is what makes this observatory so extraordinary; it is a true interdisciplinary collaboration, providing data for a group of fields that might otherwise seem wildly unconnected.

“That’s the funny part of this work, because when talk about my project with oceanographers, they say, ‘a telescope, really?’” says Severine Martini, a researcher at the Monterey Bay Research Institute who has used ANTARES for her studies of bioluminescent bacteria. She was among the group that studied the deep-sea bacterial bloom. “Meanwhile, when we talk about bioluminescence and oceanographic phenomena to astrophysicists, we get sort of blank looks. But that’s the good part of working with different fields. We are trying to solve different problems, but we are working together.”

The bottom of the ocean might seem like a strange choice of location for a telescope. But when you’re looking for neutrinos, the deep sea is actually the ideal place from which to search.

Astrophysicists are intrigued by cosmic neutrinos, believed to be produced by high-energy and violent occurrences in space; the only two confirmed sources are the sun and a distant supernova, but physicists are eager to discover where else these particles are coming from. The problem is that neutrinos are only one of the many particles constantly bombarding the earth—and unlike many of these other particles, like x-rays or cosmic rays, neutrinos only interact very weakly with matter, making them particularly hard to detect among the noise.

To make matters worse, neutrinos are also produced in the atmosphere, and can be hard to distinguish from their cosmic counterparts.

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Here’s where the ocean comes in. Neutrinos are the only particles that can pass straight through earth itself, so ANTARES uses the earth as a shield, searching for “upward-going” muons--particles very similar to electrons, but without mass--that neutrinos produce as they pass up through the earth. To detect these muons, the observatory’s photomultipliers look for a tiny burst of light called Cherenkov radiation, produced when a charged particle is moving faster than the speed of light in water.

Positioning a neutrino telescope at the bottom of the sea is therefore like positioning it between two strainers, which filter out only what it is interested in recording.

So putting the telescope at the bottom of the sea theoretically makes it more useful for observing outer space—but it also makes it a lot more useful for observing the bottom of the sea. “In a broad sense, we are opening a new window on the universe,” says Antoine Kouchner, a professor and researcher in cosmology at the Université Paris Diderot, and the spokesperson for the ANTARES collaboration. “But being an observatory cabled to shore enables real time data and monitoring. And that’s where it becomes interesting to sea science.”

Most information from the deep sea comes in small bites; usually, instruments or vehicles are sent to the bottom for only a few hours at a time. Information about the deep sea is therefore usually scattered and disconnected, both spatially and temporally.

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In contrast, the ANTARES observatory has been transmitting data constantly, day in and day out, over the course of years. This information could prove particularly relevant for scientists studying climate change, who need data sets that span many years in order to sift out what is changing in a warming ocean.

“Basically, having an electric plug and an Ethernet cable available at 2500m depth is a big step forward for the earth and sea science studies,” joked Paschal Coyle, particle astrophysicist and former spokesperson of the collaboration. “It was a surprise to me that this community was not already doing what we were doing.”

Thanks to the many sensors that ANTARES provides—monitoring oxygen, temperature, pressure, salinity, seismic activity, and much more—the scope of non-physics projects at ANTARES is now broad, from tracking sediment flow on the seafloor to recording sperm whale calls as they hunt in the deep.

And they’re still studying those tiny spots of light that were noise to the astrophysicists. During her Ph.D. at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, Martini discovered a new form of bioluminescent bacteria that she has been observing almost continually in the deep using ANTARES. In her most recent paper, in November, Martini described the bioluminescence activity of these bacteria for a consecutive year using ANTARES data. She found that the bacteria emitted light even under stable conditions, and that bioluminescent bacteria were more active than bacteria as a whole—suggestion that light emission provides some sort of ecological benefit.

“I think it’s interesting because we discovered something nobody would have ever looked for,” said Martini. “The ecological role of bioluminescence is well described for a lot of macro-organisms, but for bacteria we still don’t really know why they are emitting light.” One theory suggests the bacterium glow when many of them attach to food particles, in hopes of attracting a larger, hungry animal like a fish. For a bacterium, being eaten is a good thing, as being excreted later on can help it spread to new environments.

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The next step for ANTARES is a big one: the collaboration is building a new observatory, dubbed KM3NeT. The new observatory will be 50 times larger than ANTARES and located at three sites, in France, Sicily and Greece. Over its ten years of operation, ANTARES was unsuccessful at detecting cosmic neutrinos; with the new observatory, the collaborators hope to finally solve the puzzle of the particles’ origin, and to learn more about their fundamental properties.

Additionally, the marine and earth science community has been involved in the development of KM3NeT from the beginning. The new stations will host even more sensors, including a camera made for detecting life, radioactivity detectors, and a remotely-operated vehicle—which Coyle, who is serving as the spokesperson for the new observatory, compared to the Disney robot Wall-E—that will be able to explore the seafloor and film what it finds.

“The potential of interdisciplinary, synergetic science with cabled deep sea marine observatories is tremendous,” said Coyle. “ANTARES has pioneered the way, and I am sure many surprises on this front will be forthcoming.”

With the oceans absorbing  huge quantities of heat and acidifying carbon dioxide, changes seem almost certain. But with these collaborative observatories monitoring constantly—acting, as Coyle put it, as “the guardians of the abyss”—perhaps they won’t be so much of a surprise.

Take a Virtual Tour of One of the World's Largest Gingerbread Cities

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In the center of the town of Bergen, Norway, the sweet smell of cloves, cinnamon, and allspice emanates from an old public swimming pool arena. Inside is a massive baked and sugar-coated city made out of gingerbread—claimed to be the largest gingerbread village in the world.

Every year since the Christmas tradition began in 1991, Bergen’s community comes together to construct the miniature wintery wonderland. In the video above of this year’s Pepperkakebyen (Norwegian for “the gingerbread village”), you can take a virtual tour through the rows of delicious houses, towers, trains, cars, and ships that are almost entirely made from real gingerbread. The city contains over 2,000 gingerbread houses flanking a mountainside and dotting around a lake.  

Building gingerbread houses has been a holiday pastime since the early 1800s. It’s said that after the publication of the Grimm’s fairytale Hansel and Gretel, German bakers began creating ornamented candy houses out of gingerbread. The city of Bergen has taken the tradition to a whole new level. 

In 2012, builders showed the labor and collaboration of the construction process in a behind-the-scenes video. Thousands of individuals—“kids from one to ninety-two,” the video captions—contributed to the sweet village.

Even though the inedible components have prevented it from beating New York’s Gingerbread Lane (a 1,020 gingerbread structure) for the Guinness World Record, Bergen’s Pepperkakebyen is still an enormous and impressive feat. You can see the Gingerbread City on display at the Sentralbadet from November 19 till December 31.

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.

How Pleather Saved the DuPont Company—And Some Cows, Too

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

As any cursory watch of an episode of Happy Days will tell you, we’re obsessed with the look of leather—but perhaps not fans of the way leather is produced.

Much like a meal at McDonald’s or a fur coat, we’re more impressed with the final result without any worries about where it came from—because thinking about where it came from potentially raises some heavy ethical questions.

For the plastics industry, it’s long been the perfect opening for a synthetic alternative, and there are plenty of varieties out there, most made from variations of vinyl. Pleather has put up quite a fight in an effort to upholster our cars and replace the linings of our shoes, thanks to the fact that it’s cheap and can be chemically treated in ways that leather can’t. So why hasn’t it won out quite yet?

Well, in some ways, it has. Just not in the places you might expect.


If it weren’t for Fabrikoid, there’s a good chance the chemical conglomerate DuPont might never have become a household name—and General Motors might’ve gone bankrupt long before the financial crisis of 2008.

Like plastic and fabric melded together using a chemical process, the history of the first pleather and GM’s DuPont era are hard to tear apart.

Here’s how it happened: The company’s first modern-day president, Eugene du Pont, died in 1902, offering the company something of a clean break from the past. The firm wanted to find more mainstream uses for their chemical know-how, but that proved challenging at first. Hilariously, for example, the company produced a 1910 manual titled “Farming With Dynamite,” which sounds like the punchline to a great joke.

That same year, however, DuPont was able to find a durable path forward with its purchase of the Fabrikoid Company. The leather substitute maker was a great fit for the company, but not a perfect one, as the material was a little lacking. But DuPont’s chemical experts worked to turn the pleathery acquisition into something groundbreaking.

It helped that the material represented something of a bridge between explosives and consumer goods: Fabrikoid was made with a combination of pyroxylin (a nitrocellulose coating that had previously been used as a plastic explosive called guncotton) and a fabric pigmented with the help of castor oil. After a bit of tweaking, DuPont had a leather alternative that was good enough to put in a car.

DuPont soon found other uses for its chemicals, including another variation on pyroxylin called Pyralin, an early ivory-like form of plastic.

Fabrikoid’s connective tissue proved key for the du Pont family as it staked out a path to the consumer market in the form of the automobile. Starting in 1914, the family began acquiring a significant amount of General Motors stock, soon gaining full control of the company by taking advantage of its precarious financial situation. The family saw some pretty synergistic opportunities in GM—the kind that eventually draw antitrust regulators.

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“Our interest in the General Motors Company will undoubtedly secure for us the entire Fabrikoid, Pyralin, paint and varnish business of those companies, which is a substantial factor,” DuPont executive John J. Raskob wrote in 1917.

Raskob was right about that synergy: GM bought many of its raw materials from DuPont for decades, and the C-suites of the two companies soon had much in common. For example, Pierre S. du Pont was GM’s president at one point, and Raskob, who started as Pierre’s personal secretary, was for a time in charge of the finances of both companies.

Synergy or no, Fabrikoid was along for the ride. DuPont saw significant success with its pitch for using faux leather as the upholstery option of choice in automobiles, with leather alternatives making up 70 percent of the car market by 1915, much of it made by the chemical firm.

“It has the artistic appearance and luxury of real grain leather, and in addition is waterproof, washable, and will outwear the grade of ‘genuine leather’ used on 90 percent of the cars that ‘have hides’,” the company stated in an ad that year.

But neither the investment nor Fabrikoid were built to last. Eventually, newer pleather technologies reached the public, many of them using stronger vinyl mixtures, and by the 1940s, Fabrikoid was old news.

Around that time, the whispers around DuPont and GM’s overly cozy relationship reached fever pitch, and the Truman and Eisenhower administrations started to take an interest.

A breakup that big, however, isn’t one that happens overnight. It wasn’t until 1957—more than 40 years after the du Ponts bought their first interests in GM, and after an antitrust trial that went all the way to the Supreme Court—that the ultra-cozy relationship was broken up. The du Pont family finally divested themselves of GM stock in 1961.

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Raskob’s laying-it-all-out-there quote was cited in the Supreme Court’s decision.

Fabrikoid was a footnote in DuPont’s history by that point—but an important one. It was the first of many success stories for DuPont in the textile space—paving the way for later substances like nylon, polyester, and Teflon.

Not bad for fake treated cowhide.

DuPont wasn’t alone in popularizing pleather, though; alternatives were commonly pushed by all sorts of firms.

And sometimes, the thing that really stood out wasn’t their fake leather, but their brilliant marketing. For example, Naugahyde, a product created by Uniroyal in the 1930s, became notable for its ad mascot, a fake animal called the “Nauga” that, unlike most animals, loved shedding its hide.

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“Naugas do give up their hydes. But they do it willingly and they shed their skins quite often,” a description of the “Nauga” on an old version of the Naugahyde website stated. “They live to give again and again. In fact, Naugas are so willing to please that they often shed their hyde several times a year. No self-respecting hunter would ever try to hurt a Nauga.”

The “Nauga"—an unusual animal with an impressive leather-style hide—was the work of 1960s ad man George Lois, who came up with the strategy to promote Naugahyde, a particularly snazzy looking variant of pleather. The story of the animals was almost too successful, and as a result, Snopes has a page letting the public know that naugas are, in fact, fictional. Naugahyde, a creation of Uniroyal from the 1930s, is still sold today, and the Nauga dolls tied to the old ad campaign remain popular collector’s items.

Back in the Nauga’s heyday, clever marketing was necessary to get the public to even think about buying pleather. But these days, the has gotten a bit of an upgrade in the world of fashion—as well as a slightly different name. In a 2013 interview with The Cut, fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra sang the praises of the advantages pleather (er, excuse me, "poly-leather”) has over similar materials, including traditional leather.

“The poly-leather is incredibly luxurious, the way that it wears over time,” he said. “It doesn’t wrinkle. It travels really well. It’s waterproof, so if you wear it in the rain it completely repels water. There’s something sort of magical about its properties.”

Altuzarra has even combined pleather with real fur in some of his pieces. The Cut’s Jillian Goodman describes pleather as “one of the rare trickle-up fabrics, moving in the last decade from the sex shop on the corner to racks at Barneys.”


Often, faux-leather is purchased with the goal of not hurting any animals, which seems like a perfectly valid reason for not wearing leather if you’re not into that sort of thing.

But from a resource standpoint, it’s a lot more complicated than that. In 2011, Mother Jones‘ Kate Sheppard raised the question of whether pleather was really all that much better for the environment than its derided carnivore cousin. She notes that, from a raw materials standpoint, buying a single pair of leather shoes that last a decade or longer versus a pair of faux-leather shoes that last maybe six months, it’s not really a contest.

“You’re better off focusing on something you know you’re going to keep for a long time, that’s going to stand up to the care or not need as much care,” Texas State fashion merchandising professor Gwendolyn Hustvedt told Sheppard.

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And then there’s the problem of chemicals, which is Greenpeace’s main beef with the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in many leather products. In a 2002 interview with the Environmental Magazine, the organization’s Lisa Finaldi noted that the toxins expelled in the creation of PVC are far worse than the environmental impact of killing a cow.

“Leather has environmental problems as well, but it doesn’t have the global impact of PVC,” Finaldi explained.

If you’re feeling ethically challenged by both the pleather and the leather in your life, perhaps the solution here is to meet the two materials halfway. There’s a name for that, actually: It’s called bonded leather, and it’s the result of recycling old leather, adding a new fabric backing, and combining it with chemically treated plastic. It looks nice enough, and it’s often used to upholster furniture. And recyclers can even gather up used leather from old shoes to help create the material.

That said, Consumer Affairs argues that if you’re buying a couch and quality is your goal, you’re better off with the real thing.

But on the other hand, at least you wouldn’t be killing any more cows.

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

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Whales Are Likely Behind the Mysterious Sound Coming from the Mariana Trench

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Last March, scientists revealed they'd made an astonishing discovery: mysterious and, frankly, kind of terrifying sounds were coming from the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans. 

At the time, it was just another creepy, odd, vaguely frightening new fact that we learned about the world, with the sources of the sound ranging from ships to whales to dolphins.

But one sound was perhaps the most mysterious of all, three-and-a-half seconds of noise that no one could conclusively identify.

Recently, though, scientists at Oregon State University said they'd found the likely source: minke whales, the smallest of the baleen whales. And while other baleen whale calls had been heard down there, this one in particular was unique. 

“It’s very distinct, with all these crazy parts,” Sharon Nieukirk, a researcher at Oregon State, said. “The low-frequency moaning part is typical of baleen whales, and it’s that kind of twangy sound that makes it really unique. We don’t find many new baleen whale calls.”

Baleen whales typically make the sounds when they mate, meaning that this latest one was likely about sex, too. But scientists won't be able to positively identify it without further evidence.

"Our hope is to mount an expedition to go out and do acoustic localization, find the animals, get biopsy samples and find out exactly what’s making the sound," said Nieukirk. "It really is an amazing, weird sound, and good science will explain it.”

Found: A Lot of Terrifying Creatures From the Deep Sea, Thanks to This Russian Fisherman

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Roman Fedortsov is a deep-sea fisherman, working on a trawler based near the Barents Sea, according to the Moscow Times, and he has Twitter. As the Russian website Ruposters discovered, that combination of skills has led Fedortsov to post pictures of the very real, terrifying, and often sharp-toothed creatures his boat pulls out of the depths of the ocean.

For instance:

 

These creatures live deep in the ocean, where it's normal to have giant eyes and sharp teeth. They're adapted to their environment, just like the blobfish, which under the pressure of all the water it lives under actually looks much more like a normal fish. 

That being said, to human eyes, these fish are still monstrous—or, as Gizmodo puts it, "ocean creatures that look like they’re from the most twisted Jim Henson movie ever produced."

Even the ones that are kind of cute are creepy.  

In conclusion, all points to the "oceans are terrifying never go there" faction of humanity. Respect the diversity of living things and the magic of evolution, but these are creatures that will give children nightmares. Then there’s the view espoused by Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras: “I would love to see the Russian version of Finding Nemo starring photorealistic CGI versions of these, and about how life is also suffering.”

The Final Christmas of 4 Catskills Villages Flooded to Create Reservoirs

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On November 3, 1955, anyone observing the east branch of the Delaware River, about two miles downstream from the New York town of Dunraven, would have been treated to an unusual sight: Katheryn Dickson’s stately 12-room home sailing across the water with the aplomb of a steamship. Dickson’s  two-story house was once a showstopper on the main street of Arena, the tiny upstate New York town where she was postmaster for 32 years.

Soon the valley hamlet, nestled in the Catskill mountains, would be under about 200 feet of water. The Dickson home escaped this fate: It was loaded onto a 21-wheel trailer, hauled by two Caterpillar tractors across the river, up the east bank, and transplanted in Dunraven. These are the sorts of improbable things that can happen when you have several years to prepare for a flood.

New York City is famous for its tap water. In July it scored the top prize (again) in a regional tap water taste test sponsored by the EPA. And this water is hard won; it arrives in Manhattan via a massive network of aqueducts, dams and reservoirs. Parts of this system, which comprise one of the world’s largest water supply networks, are more than a century old and were carved into being through feats of engineering astounding for their time. Sometimes, of course, the march of forward progress marches over people’s lives. This is one of those instances.

The city of New York started designing its Catskill water network in 1905; the Catskill Aqueduct System was finished by 1924, and by 1931 the city of New York had won the blessing of the Supreme Court to expand its upstate infrastructure. It was accepted that rural towns who stood in the way of the city’s water supply would be submerged. Pepacton, Union Grove, Shavertown and Arena were the four hamlets that resided in a valley slated to be transformed into the Pepacton Reservoir, the largest ever built by the city.

The lush, rural towns could have been plucked from a Hollywood backlot. Farmers paused their tractors in the road to confer over town business. Fisherman piloted rowboats through their stretch of the Delaware, overhung with trees and spanned by covered bridges. There was Sam’s Place, a formerly run down shack that its proprietor had transformed over three decades into a shop, barber and snack bar encircled by a white picket fence. One longtime Shavertown resident, Amanda Fletcher, was known to locals simply as “Aunt Mandy”. Stan’s Tavern had been serving up beers, Cokes, and food since 1939.

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Reservoir construction had been underway for two years when a crowd of townspeople gathered at Shavertown’s general store in 1949. Every day the work inched closer to completion, and so did the time they would have to leave the idyllic village where their families had lived for generations. The city of New York would dole out compensation for their homes and relocation, but this was a small comfort to some, who didn’t even know when moving day would arrive.

“We are pushing construction as fast as the weather and the good Lord will permit us,” Irving Hite, president of  the Board of Water Supply told the New York Times. They hoped to finish the project by 1955 and promised not to “take a single acre of land until it is absolutely necessary.”

Meanwhile, the villages lived on borrowed time; farmers hesitated to plant or expand their herds.

“The city has no sentiment,” said Inez Atkins, postmaster and owner of the general store, where bespectacled men, women in ankle-length skirts and little kids gathered among walls crowded with drygoods and farming equipment. Atkins, who the Times described as a “short, alert woman of 62,” said, “This has been my home for thirty-seven years. I have friends and know my community. When they transplant me, it will be difficult. There’s no room for newcomers, especially old folks, in a new community.”

The city had already purchased Jack Bouw’s 600-acre Shavertown farm for $30,000 in 1947. ”When the city first came up,” said Bouw, “I realized that we would have to go. I made what I thought were the best possible arrangements. They were fair and they treated me well. Now, as quitting time gets closer, the thought of leaving my home, the buildings I built and the place I raised my family makes me sick.”

Others at the meeting bitterly declared the circumstances “the pestilence that has come down through the valley.”

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As men hacked through the nearby earth and poured concrete to form massive tunnels, residents of the doomed towns were documented by the media as they wound down their daily lives.

“The inhabitants of the little village of Arena are decorating their homes and putting up Christmas lights for the last time,” reported the Oneonta Star in December 1953. That same month the paper recorded that the final New Year’s Eve party of Shavertown would be held in Fletchers Hall. After a night of square dancing, the building would be torn down immediately on January 1st.

Resigned, the towns began holding massive auctions; a moving sale on a grand scale. On a Saturday in April, 1954, a crowd of around 2,000 people poured into Shavertown to snap up items from the Atkin’s General Store, where five years earlier, anxious crowds had pondered their fate for the New York Times. Water officials pitched in, parking over 700 cars. A camera crew from NBC descended to film the event, and women served sandwiches, coffee, cakes and salads as an auctioneer sporting a silk hat and horn-rimmed spectacles awarded goods to the highest bidders.

Four months later, the town of Arena held their own auction in the August heat. At this one, the auctioneer led the crowd of thousands up and down the streets, selling off buildings one by one to be torn down for scrap. Arena’s melancholy auction attracted a boldface gawker in the form of novelist Fannie Hurst, whose life was once of such interest to the public that marriages where husbands and wives lived separately (as the writer and hers did) were once called “Fannie Hurst marriages.”

“I am sorry to see the homes and farms of this lovely old East Branch dismantled,” she told the Oneonta Star. “But I guess we can’t stand in the way of Progress.” Hurst’s attitude echoed the sentiment of the day—the building of the reservoir was met with awe and a sense of inevitability; the loss of the picturesque towns a bittersweet sacrifice to innovation.

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The towns fell like dominos; the same month Arena held their auction, the abandoned town of Pepacton boasted a single building. The construction company commissioned to pulverize the hamlets had flattened everything except a 13-room house commandeered for their headquarters. On a Sunday night they moved all of their equipment out, set the building on fire, and watched it burn in celebration of a job well done.

“I wish we had invited hundreds of people,” the company’s vice president told the Oneonta Star. “In order that they might see how terribly fast a home can burn and how very important it is that people leave their homes when they discover them afire.”

There was also the problem of the towns’ non-living residents. In December 1954, the New York Times reported that officials were responsible for digging up and reinterring 1,330 bodies from the four villages. This means that the act of evacuating the four towns involved relocating more dead than living people. (Accounts of the Pepacton Reservoir relocations put the number of displaced townsfolk at just under 1,000.) The dead were rehomed to the Town of Andes, where the Pepacton Cemetery still sits. The city of New York still maintains it, and announced this year that it would spend $150,000 to spruce the place up.

Today the Pepacton Reservoir, which is 15 miles long and can hold 140.2 billion gallons, supplies about 25 percent of New York City’s daily water. The streets where townsfolk once strolled are now home to large brown trout, beloved by the fishermen who frequent the reservoir. Aside from the Pepacton Cemetery, the reservoir itself is the most visible homage to the submerged town. New York was fond of naming reservoirs after the communities they subsumed. The Neversink Reservoir, for instance, occupies the spot where the towns Neversink and Bittersweet once stood. The Cannonsville Reservoir was also home to a town of the same name.

The Board of Water Supply had made good on their estimate; by the end of 1955 the towns had been evacuated and water was slowly filling the finished Pepacton Reservoir. On a rainy day in October, then-mayor of New York City Robert Wagner toured the half-full site with a crowd of twenty officials, gazing down at the ghost town of Arena, which was not yet fully destroyed—although water crept towards its borders. He told a reporter that he was impressed with the “vastness of the city’s water domain” and that the city was getting its money’s worth.

See the Most Captivating Infographics of the Last Century

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The first issueof National Geographic magazine, published in October 1888, was vastly different to the magazine we know today. It contained no photographs or illustrations. The cover was brown, with just the title and symbol of the National Geographic Society.

The following year, the magazine published a four-color foldout map, the first step towards the all-color charts and diagrams that have since become synonymous with National Geographic. “We’re in the business of using art to explain,”  Kaitlin Yarnall, Deputy Creative Director, explains in the introduction to National Geographic Infographics.

Since then, National Geographic has become renowned for the infographics it uses to break down complex information. The new book, published by Taschen, brings together the best infographics from the magazine’s 128-year history. 

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Found: An Egg With No Yolk

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Would you be unnerved if you cracked an egg and found no yolk inside? Earlier this month a Japanese woman boiled some eggs and when she sliced one open, she found only the white inside. No yolk to be seen—at least on the photo she posted on Twitter. 

Sometimes hard-boiled yolks hide themselves by drifting far to one side of the egg, but in this case it seems that the yolk is actually missing. What's going on here?

Yolkless eggs are actually common enough that chicken keepers have a number of names for them—fairy egg, witch egg, rooster egg, oops eggs, dwarf egg, wind egg, and, most commonly, fart egg. This last and most evocative name derives from the theory that the eggs are produced by chicken farts. In fact, they are formed when a piece of reproductive tissue ends up in an oviduct, which grinds into gear and makes an egg around errant tissue.

Often, though, fart eggs are significantly smaller than normal eggs; perhaps what's most impressive about this yolkless egg is how large it is. Usually these eggs are identified and kept out of supermarket-bound packages, and this one just happened to slip through. (This does seem like a missed market opportunity—a dozen egg-white only eggs would be perfect for people who choose egg-white omelets or recipes that call only for egg whites.)

Really, what's most amazing about the surprise of the yolkless egg is that anyone's surprised at all. The sorting and packaging of eggs obscures all the different ways egg production can go wrong—like many natural processes, egg-laying can get messy.

Watch Salvador Dali in the Greatest Chocolate Commercial Ever

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Salvador Dali: famous eccentric, leader of the surrealist art movement, chef extraordinaire, face of Lanvin chocolates.

If one of these things is not like the rest, let’s keep in mind that in Dali’s universe, nothing makes more sense than something that is out of place. Seen this way, this 1968 advertisement that he did for Lanvin —a brand of chocolates that is part of the Nestlé group— is exactly what you'd expect from him.

With Beethoven as a soundtrack, and snow-covered mounts on the background, he breaks off a piece of chocolate with swift, precise movements that make the common action seem like a deliberate act of rebellion. After he takes one bite, his eyes roll all the way back as he is lost in the pure ecstasy of the flavor, and his iconic mustache shoots up like the hands of a broken clock. Looking at the camera with intense, wide eyes, he declares: “I am crazy for Lanvin chocolate.”

It's the perfect ad for those who like their chocolate sprinkled with surrealism.

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.

Why Researchers Howl At Wolves—And Why Some Might Stop

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When searching for their subjects out in the field, animal researchers rely on a whole bag of tricks. They might hide in hunting blinds until their species of choice comes by, or pinpoint them with satellites. They can set up nets to catch them, bait them into humane traps, or use automatic cameras to figure out whether they've wandered through.

Wolf experts, though, have a different strategy. If they're hoping to locate a pack, they don't usually bother with waiting, or equipment. They just tilt their heads back, purse their lips, and let out a nice, long howl.

This is the gist of a technique called "elicited howling"—biologist-speak for "making noises at wolves so that they'll howl back at you." For decades, elicited howling has been an indispensable part of the wolf researcher's toolkit.

"It's standard for anyone working with wolves who wants to find out where they are," says Dr. Dave Mech, chair of the IUCN's Wolf Specialist Group. And despite the rise of high-tech alternatives, many expect it to reverberate long into the field's future.

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Wolves howl for a few reasons: to find stray pack members, to chat with their friends, and to tell everyone else to stay away. Because it's such a social sound, when wolves hear a howl—or something like it—they typically respond in kind. They're also not very picky: "Wolves will reply to fire sirens, to train whistles, any number of things," says Mech. Scientists can then use those replies to figure out where the pack hangs out, approximately how big it is, and whether there are any pups, which have slightly squeakier howls.

Rigorous elicited howling began in 1959, when a biologist named Doug Pimlott brought a recording of wolf sounds and a playback device with him into the field. Pimlott drove the equipment to various spots in Ontario in order to survey different populations.

For a few years afterward, this method was de rigueur: "I had a battery-operated vinyl disc player that I hauled around with me in a backpack," Mech remembers. "In various places, I would just play the record of wolves howling, and try to get replies." But this was a cumbersome way to do work—and so Mech evolved. "Eventually, I learned to just do the howling myself," he says.

These days, despite the prevalence of radio tracking, GPS, and other high-tech methods, plain old howling is still standard practice for wolf biologists. "In an area where you're starting out and you don't know where the wolves are—or even if there are any there—just about everyone knows that one way to find them is to do this howling," says Mech. Over the course of a long study in 1979, he and his research partner, Fred Harrington, howled a combined 7,600 times. The best practices they laid out after this experience—stick to dusk or nighttime; alternate "flat" and "breaking" styles; wait two minutes between howls—are still cited today.

Despite these prescriptions, Mech insists the process is intuitive. "Most people learn right away," he says. "You just imitate what you hear." In Youtube videos, experts like Wisconsin's Adrian Wydeven and Sarah Boles demonstrate their howls—some barky, some keening, some loud and some quiet, to cover all their bases. They claim about a five percent response rate. If you want to practice with some real wolves, Mech's original study site, Algonquin Provincial Park, has held weekly howls for the public every August since 1963 (no dogs allowed).

Some researchers, though, are moving away from this technique. In a recent article in Bioacoustics, a group of European wolf experts details the merits of "non-invasive acoustic detection"—a less active strategy, which involves leaving sound recorders out and waiting for the wolves to howl on their own.

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"Wolf surveying is a difficult and often expensive task" when undertaken solely by people, writes the article's lead author Stefan Suter, of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. When he and his team used passive recording devices—and ran the results through a spectrogram, so as to look at them visually—the howl detection process was 18 times faster than if they had done the howling themselves.

Non-native howlers can also stress out the wolves, who will assume someone has invaded their territory, says Suter. Their human neighbors may not take it so well, either. Suter enjoys howling—"I get emotionally touched when I hear a wolf," he says—and says that doing it himself gives him a "keen sense" about the creatures he's studying. But he thinks the new tools are crucial, especially in places like the Swiss Alps, where the wolves' recent return is causing problems for sheep herders.

Mech sees the pros and cons. "With a passive system, you don't have to be out there all the time—and sure, that's an advantage," he says. But it also doesn't account for the fickleness of the particular lupine subject. "Wolves don't howl just when you want them to," Mech insists. Only humans do that.

Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.

This Chocolate Festival in Scotland Went Very Wrong in a Lot of Ways

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After a single day of horrors, organizers in Edinburgh cancelled what was supposed to be a weekend-long celebration of chocolate, STV News reports.

The event, the Scottish Chocolate Festival, was to be held at the Biscuit Factory, an "arts and fashion hub" in Leith. While biscuits and chocolate normally get along fine, this time something went amiss.

Festival organizers said they had to clean up "broken glass, cigarette butts, vomit and urine" from an earlier event. (A video on their Facebook page shows an empty warehouse strewn with trash, captioned "7 hours to transform this place into a Chocolate Festival.") Plus, they said, most of the power outlets didn't work, there was no light on the second floor, and the storage facility next door had crushed a "Santa's Grotto" delivered especially for the purpose.

The venue hit back, calling the allegations "categorically false." 

According to the festival's Facebook page, entrance and vendor fees are currently being refunded—but the emotional damage has been done.

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.

Why Some Christians Are Forsaking Christmas

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With four days left until Christmas, people around the world are preparing for the celebration. The Christmas trees have been decorated with ornaments and lights, stockings have been hung, presents have been wrapped, and images of Santa Claus and the nativity scene have been put up.

Of course, there are millions of people who will not be celebrating Christmas, from followers of other faiths to atheists. Among these people, however, there is one particular group you would not have expected to find: fundamentalist Christians.

Given “Jesus is the reason for the season,” followers of the faith are usually enthusiastic to celebrate the birth of their Messiah. Some criticize the commercialization of the holiday, which has placed an emphasis on presents rather than the birth of Christ. But there is a group of Christians that takes the sentiment a step further and has declared outright that Christmas is actually un-Christian.

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It is difficult to say what percentage of Christians shares this view of Christmas, but blog posts and comments on Christian websites show that the sentiments can be strong. Rejection of the holiday is also an official doctrine followed by several churches, including Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of the Restored Church of God.

Why would any Christian be against the celebration of the birth of Christ? The answer lies in interpretations of the Bible, and a rejection of the pagan origins of the holiday. One of the main arguments against Christmas is that early Jews and Christians did not celebrate birthdays. Pagans, on the other hand, believed that on the day of one’s birth one was more vulnerable to spirits, so they celebrated with rituals such as wishing a good day, lighting candles, and eating cake—all of which were believed to help in warding off bad spirits.

The Bible is also used as an argument, as only three birthdays are mentioned in the sacred book, and they all end in disaster and death. In Genesis 40:1-23 the Egyptian King executes his baker to celebrate his birthday; in Matthew 14:3-11, Herod gets caught in the excess of his party and does good on his promise to kill John the Baptist; and in Job 1:4, Job’s 10 children are killed by Satan after celebrating their birthday with an assumably raucous party.

If birthdays were depicted negatively in the Bible, and if Jesus never celebrated his birthday, some Christians argue, then celebrating the birthday of the savior is not actually following his word.

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Besides, December 25 is most likely not the actual date of birth of Jesus. As Time pointed out last year, factors such as the shepherds being out with their flock have put to question the validity of the winter date. One astronomer used software to recreate the night sky at the time of Jesus' arrival and claimed that his birth happened in the summer rather than the winter. Others say the big day was in autumn.

December 25 has long been a significant date, though. Occurring four days after the winter solstice, it marks the dawn of longer days and more sunlight. This has afforded it a special place in the hearts of people in several civilizations, including the Romans, who used to celebrate the feast of Saturnalia in honor of the god Saturn. This feast was surrounded by a spirit of joy, as families would gather together and present gifts to children.

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When Emperor Constantine I declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, it is said that the church purposefully co-opted the date of December 25 to incentivize pagans to convert. After all, it was better to ease them into the new faith by replacing their traditions rather than by changing them.

Thus, Jesus, who is supposed to bring new light into the spiritual state of the world, replaced the Roman god of literal light. His birth was seen by the early adopters of Christmas as a logical symbol for the birth of a new era whose positive change was reflected in the natural world. Some of the most iconic symbols of Christmas, like the decorated tree, the presents, and the date, are the result of syncretism between Christianity and pagan Roman rituals.

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Some Christians believe allowing these two to mesh is a mistake. Otoniel Morraz, who stopped celebrating Christmas five years ago, says: “As a Christian, if the lord warns me, ‘don’t do as the pagans did and say that you do it for me’ then I don’t do it.” Morraz has also stopped eating pig and tries to keep sabbath, in accordance to the scriptures. Rather than celebrating Christmas, he says, true Christians should celebrate the seven holy days that the scriptures command to be kept.

Many Christians argue, however, that Christmas symbols have long lost their association with paganism, making the celebration of December 25 perfectly reasonable. The significance, rather than the origin, seems to matter more to defenders of the holiday, who counter-argue that wedding rituals, months, and the days of the week are also a legacy of paganism—and no one objects to those.

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