The New Zealand Christmas tree's bright red blossoms look a bit like fireworks and are a common Christmas decoration on the South Pacific islands. Its densely branched form is a common sight on New Zealand cliffsides. Also known as the pōhutukawa, the tree is part of Māori tradition and lore, and its tough wood was used for tools and boats. But according to new research, this distinctly Kiwi tree isn't originally from New Zealand at all, but rather its neighbor Australia.
The pōhutukawa and its botanical cousins, all members of the myrtle tree family, are found all over the South Pacific. Species have taken up residence in places such as Hawaii, Tahiti, South America, Africa, and even sub-Antarctic islands. The one place these trees are not found is Australia. The family has a fairly efficient seed dispersal method that managed to help it spread so widely, so scientists aren't quite sure why they aren't found in Australia today.
While modern trees may not live on the continent, their ancestors certainly did. The oldest known fossils of trees in the pōhutukawa genus date back to 35-40 million years ago and were found in Tasmania. An Australian research team has found two new fossilized species in the genus, also in Tasmania, that date back to 25 million years ago. The newly discovered species weren't as widely distributed as the older fossils, said University of Adelaide researcher Myall Tarran in a press release. "These species may not have been as well adapted for long-distance dispersal as those other species, and so it is likely that they originated [in Australia]."
In early February 1943, Dionisio Pulido—a farmer in the south Mexican state of Michoacán—began to feel strange tremors across his cornfield. The shaking appeared to originate from a small hole, no more than three feet deep, which the local kids liked to play around. They said it emanated an odd warmth.
Then, on February 20, as the tremors grew stronger, the hole expanded into a large fissure. Thick smoke billowed into the air. And—incredibly—from the middle of Pulido’s farm, a volcano burst forth.
The resulting lava engulfed Pulido’s farm and much of the nearby forest; perplexed villagers evacuated the site.
The volcano—dubbed Parícutin—created a global sensation. Scientists and journalists mobbed the small Mexican village, anxious to gain access to a rare sight: a newborn volcano.
Among those who heard the news was the cartoonist and collector of oddities Robert Ripley, of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! fame. Since childhood, he had dreamed of owning a volcano—and, after Parícutin, he was determined to make it a reality.
According to Ripley's biography, he grew convinced that owning Parícutin would fill a spiritual void in his life. He also saw an enormous profit motive: not only might there be rich natural resources in the area, but he could also, perhaps, channel the baby-volcano media frenzy into a baby-volcano tourist frenzy. “I could have charged admissions and made money off it,” Ripley reportedly said.
Ripley started peppering Pulido with requests by phone and by mail, asking how he could purchase Parícutin. According to a TIME article, Ripley’s negotiations began around New Year’s Eve 1944, when a friend informed Ripley that Parícutin was for sale. The magazine gave a tongue-in-cheek endorsement: “[Ripley] already had a gilt telephone, an apartment crammed with hundreds of statuettes, swords, costumes, paintings, vases and two secretaries—one American, one Chinese. But he did not own a volcano.”
Apparently, by January 1945, Ripley believed “that he was about to become the owner of a volcano … This week the cartoonist, after delicate and mysterious negotiations, expected to clinch the deal.” The question of whether Pulido could actually claim ownership over the new volcano was murky; Ripley did not care.
But the deal fell through: “Mexican law frowned on foreign landowners and the Mexicans might want to keep their volcano themselves.”
Instead, Dr. Gerardo Murillo Cornado, a.k.a. Dr. Atl, a muralist who had become obsessed with Parícutin, bought the land. In 1952, the Arizona Republic reported that the farmers had "sold what they considered to be their worthless parcels of lava-covered soil for 100 pesos each (about $12), and figured it was a good deal."
This did not faze Ripley. Even shortly before his death in 1949, he remained steadfast in his conviction to take control of Parícutin. The same newspaper wrote that Ripley “tried to buy the volcano from Murillo. Believe-it-or-not the doctor refused to sell at any price. He likes volcanoes."
Yet Ripley and Murillo are, curiously, not the only historical figures who owned—or badly wanted to own—their very own volcano. In recent centuries, many private individuals have claimed ownership over volcanoes.
For instance, Whakaari (also known as White Island), is an island off the coast of New Zealand that also happens to be an active volcano. It has had—and still has—a series of private owners. After a Danish trader named Phillip Tapsell bought the island from the indigenous Māori people “allegedly for the price of a few barrels of rum,” a number of companies battled to install mining operations there.
In 1874, John Alexander Wilson purchased Whakaari in hopes of extracting sulfur from it. But his promises of extravagant riches never came to fruition, and in 1887, he was burned in effigy. The land changed hands a few times until, in 1936, stockbroker George Raymond Buttle bought Whakaari. His reason? Like Ripley, he “rather liked the idea of owning a volcano.” Though he briefly contemplated trying to mine Whakaari, he ultimately decided against it. Basically, he just wanted to say the volcano was his own.
When the New Zealand government tried to wrest control of the volcano from him in 1952, he refused to sell it, though he allowed the island to be designated a private nature reserve. Today, the Buttle Family Trust owns the volcano, one of a few volcanoes still under private management.
Other volcanoes that have been privately controlled include the Pisgah Volcano, a cinder cone in California that was mined beginning in 1948 under a series of proprietors. The Newberry Volcano in Oregon was the subject of an extended legal battle because of mining-related ownership claims. And Crater Hill, the only remaining privately owned volcano in the Auckland volcanic field in New Zealand, is the property of another family trust.
In the U.S., whether individuals can actually own volcanoes is an open question—though there do not appear to be any laws prohibiting it. Dr. Seth Moran, Scientist-in-Charge at the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory, notes that cities like Portland, Oregon and Bend, Oregon both have volcanoes within their limits. Still, Moran says that in the Cascades, where he works, “all major Cascade cones and volcanic fields are administered either by the USFS [US Forest Service], NPS [National Parks Service], a [Native American] Tribe, or some combination thereof.”
Regardless of whether a person can own a volcano, they do not seem to have a right to the lava that results from it.
In 1977, in Kobayashi v. Zimring, the Hawai'i Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether residents could claim ownership over new land created by volcanic eruption—a dilemma not too dissimilar from that of Parícutin.
According to a summary of the case, the issue centered on new land created by cooled lava, known as "lava extensions," and whether they could be applied to the accretion of land statute, which states that soil naturally added to land remains the property of the original owner. Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided that the lava extensions fell under state, not individual, control—a significant decision, considering lava extensions have accounted for over 500 acres of new land since 1983.
So, in some places you can still own a volcano—but lava extensions are probably off-limits.
This likely would have been unwelcome news to Robert Ripley, whose private volcano fantasies also proved short-lived. Ripley died before he could call Parícutin his own. And, according to his biography, his attempts to purchase Parícutin led the Mexican legislature to "hastily pass a bill making the volcano state property."
Just when you think a historic site has given up all of its secrets, new wonders sometimes rise to the surface, as was the case at Michigan’s Fort Michilimackinac, where researchers recently found a brass lock dating back to the Revolutionary War.
According to Muskegon Chronicle, the centuries-old lock was discovered during the excavation of a an old fur trader’s house. Unearthed in the root cellar, the ornately-styled lock is made of brass, and is thought to have come from a chest or trunk circa 1760-1770. The artifact measures almost three inches tall, significant compared to the tiny beads and other bits of history that is usually found at the site.
Once the lock is cleaned, it will be put on display, proving that even after some places become historic tourist destinations, they can still provide some surprises.
At a routine archaeological dig at a Viking site in Denmark, archaeologists stumbled upon a feature they weren’t expecting: a bathroom.
Middens and other waste pits are common features of archaeological digs. But students of Denmark’s Viking age tend to think that countryside settlements like this one didn’t have dedicated bathrooms for humans. Instead, they believed that people probably used their feces as fertilizer for fields and may have used their barn as a toilet, mixing their own waste with animal waste.
But Anna Beck, a PhD student working with the Museum Southeast Denmark, found a pit with a layer that, after analysis, they determined was human feces. The layer had high concentration of mineralize seeds, pollen, and fly pupae—all signs that this layer had formed from feces. The pollen indicated that it was human waste, since that high of a concentration of pollen would have come from honey, used as human food, not animal food.
Beck also found two postholes, indicating that the toilet was in a stand-alone building. Dating the layer, the archaeologists found it was about 1,000 years old, which would make this the oldest known bathroom in Denmark.
As Ars Technica writes, though, there’s controversy around this find. Not everyone believes the evidence adds up definitely to a toilet, and the director of another Danish museum argues that the first countryside toilets didn’t appear until the 1800s, according to other sources.
On Monday, August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will darken a narrow path across the continental U.S., from Oregon to South Carolina. The eclipse’s path of totality, where the sun will be entirely obscured by the moon, is set to pass over 14 states (technically it includes a sliver of uninhabited Montana wilderness, and a teeny corner of Iowa).
During the event, the midday skies will turn to night anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on where in the path it is viewed from. For many, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience a total solar eclipse, and just two months out, finding a good spot to view the celestial wonder is already becoming a challenge.
With anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of people expected to swarm prime spots along the path of totality, space in hotels is pretty much booked in most areas, with some locations even reporting reservations being cancelled and available rooms going for as much as a $1,000 a night. But since much of the eclipse’s 70-mile-wide path crosses over rural portions of the country, many cities and towns are offering space for camping as part of their eclipse celebrations, which may be your best bet at this point.
Every state within the path of totality is celebrating with festivals, fairs, and multi-day events. For those of you who still need to make plans, we've put together a guide to the best options still available in each state.
Hey, it's us! Our multi-day eclipse extravaganza, presented with our partners at Elysian Brewing, will take place on a secluded farm in Eastern Oregon, where you can camp amid gorgeous northwest wilderness. Special guests include speakers such as Scientific American’s Clara Moskowitz and our very own co-founder, Joshua Foer; live performances by Psychic Ills and Sun Ra Arkestra; an interactive activity station presented by Science Friday; and night sky photography workshops presented by National Parks at Night. We'll also have a night sky/solar viewing and photography station with high-end equipment for attendee use provided by B&H Photo Video.
Tickets are still available for camping-based accommodations during the event. Don’t miss one of the best eclipse celebrations in the entire country (if we do say so ourselves…).
NASA has chosen Idaho Falls as one of its official viewing sites, and the city is celebrating accordingly as part of the larger Eastern Idaho Eclipse Festival. On the Saturday before the eclipse, there will be a concert featuring country stars the Brothers Osborne, as well as a rubber duck race down the Snake River.
The hotels and motels in the area are mostly all booked, but to accommodate the massive crowds expected, the city of Idaho Falls has created a couple of “eclipse villages,” where people can reserve a spot for camping or RV parking. To reserve a spot and see what's still available, check the Idaho Falls website here.
The city of Casper is going all out, with events scheduled from August 16 through August 21. Over the days leading up to the eclipse there will be street fairs, astronomy talks, museum tours, fun runs, and even a murder mystery walk based on the history of Casper during Prohibition. On Monday, the city is also offering a number of public and private options for places to view the eclipse.
Casper is expecting around 35,000 guests, so most if not all of the hotels in the city are booked, but a representative for the event suggests that people check Craigslist and other such sites as lodging options are appearing there sporadically. There are also a number of options for camping, details for which can be found on the festival’s official website.
Located just north of the city of Alliance, Carhenge—that odd homage to Stonehenge—is inviting spectators to come and view the eclipse from their automotive druid’s circle. In the days leading up to August 21, there will be multiple events in the city of Alliance and the surrounding area, including planetarium shows, music, motocross races, and educational seminars. For the main event, viewing space at Carhenge itself will be first-come first-serve, but they say that many of the neighboring fields surrounding the installation will be opened up for viewing as well.
With as many as 10,000 extra visitors expected to arrive for the event, the scant lodging options in the area have been booked for months, but there are still spots open for dry camping. For more information on parking and camping, see Carhenge's official eclipse page.
Kansas City, Kansas, will be celebrating the eclipse’s passing with viewing parties and a golf tournament. The city is located on the edge of the path of totality, so it will only receive a few seconds of complete coverage, but it is a great base of operations to visit one of the smaller Kansas communities that sits closer to the center of the path, including Atchison and Hiawatha.
Unlike most locations in the eclipse’s path, Kansas City, Kansas, still has hotel rooms and lodging available to reserve, although they too are expected to sell out soon. To find a place to stay in Kansas City, check their listings here.
Jefferson City is putting on a number of events during the weekend leading up to the eclipse, including such options as “Brunch with an Astronaut,” a corn maze, and a free concert by a Pink Floyd cover band. The festivities will also include a vendor village and a live NASA broadcast.
Some 50,000 visitors are expected to descend on the city for the eclipse, and hotel rooms are long since reserved, but there is still space to reserve camping spots in the surrounding areas. To find a place to lay your tent, check the Jefferson City official site.
Birds are said to stop singing during a total solar eclipse, but if you don’t care about all that, the city of Carterville, Illinois, has the event for you. Moonstock 2017 is surely the loudest music festival to take advantage of the eclipse. Running August 18-21, the heavy metal line-up includes bands such as Papa Roach, Saliva, and Five Finger Death Punch. The concert series culminates in a performance by none other than Ozzy Osbourne, who will begin his set at the dawning of the eclipse by playing “Bark at the Moon.” Perfect.
There are still Moonstock 2017 tickets available, including spots for camping on-site. If the rest of the country’s eclipse festivities seem a little soft, this might be the celebration for you. Check the official website for tickets and reservations.
If you’re going to be in Kentucky during the eclipse, you’ll want to head to the city of Hopkinsville, which is calling itself the “point of greatest eclipse” or “Eclipseville.” During the eclipse weekend, the city is offering a full line-up of happenings including a sci-fi convention (Eclipse Con), a lecture on science and faith from one of the Vatican’s chief science observers, and a local distillery that's offering moonshine brewed from corn that has been to space and back.
The little city is expecting up to 100,000 visitors, essentially doubling their normal population. Remarkably, they say that there are still a few hotel rooms available, but they must be booked directly through the specific hotels. There are also a number of camping options still available on their website.
Located exactly beneath the center of the path of totality, Spring City is expecting at least 4,000 people to come in for the big event. A relatively low-key affair with respect to some of the nation’s larger gatherings, Spring City will offer events and activities at their local parks the weekend prior to the eclipse, and viewing parties will be held on the day of the event.
The hotels in town have long since been sold out, but officials say there is still room at nearby resorts and marina properties, which must be booked directly through each establishment. Space for camping and RV parking is also still be available in the area. For more details, call City Hall at 423-365-6441.
The organizers of this three-day festival in Blairsville, Georgia, are marrying their love of the environment to their love of the eclipse. Focusing on themes of sustainable energy, health, and agriculture, there will be live music, belly-dancing lessons, and lectures by special guests including “green cowboy” David Freeman.
North Carolina will only see totality cross a small tip of the western part of the state, but there are still festivities to be had if you find yourself in the area. We like the looks of the Downtown Sylva Eclipse Festival. Among the attractions taking place between August 18-21 are a number of concerts, a "Midnight Madness" shopping event where some local businesses stay open late and offer special deals, and astronomy seminars at the local community college.
Check the Jackson County lodging page to find out what's still available in the area, which may include camping, cabins, and even a few hotels.
Columbia, South Carolina, is in a prime spot for totality, so unsurprisingly, the city is going all out. During their special eclipse weekend, there will be multiple concerts, museum tours, historic walks, and a tailgate party at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds on the day of the eclipse.
According to a festival representative, there is still some hotel availability and lots of space in camping and RV grounds in the surrounding area, including around Lake Murray, which they say will offer a more peaceful eclipse viewing experience.
The residents of Los Alamos, New Mexico—a town that wasn’t supposed to exist—lived in a viscous state of secrecy during World War II. To disguise the existence of the nuclear bomb being built there, the group of Manhattan Project scientists, security personnel, and families needed to consider and reconsider their every move. They couldn’t leave “the Hill,” as Los Alamos was known, without required passes. Their mail reached New Mexico through a series of forwarding addresses set up across the United States, arriving in a P.O. box 20 miles away in Santa Fe. Food was purchased from a single commissary; a trip to Santa Fe was “a major event.”
When they first arrived at Los Alamos, they were told to buy train tickets to New Mexico from a variety of locations. One Princeton physicist recounted how he and his colleagues had to avoid the local train station, because it was so small, and too many people purchasing tickets to Albuquerque from there might raise suspicions.
The importance of silence at Los Alamos was doubly true for scientific breakthroughs. One woman, Adrienne Lowry, only learned that her husband Joseph Kennedy had discovered plutonium when she was cataloguing books and kept seeing the acronym “PU.” When she asked her husband about it, he confessed that “PU” stood for plutonium—an element he’d helped to identify a few years earlier.
Though Los Alamos was not the Manhattan Project’s only site—others existed in Tennessee and Washington—its responsibility for the ultimate design of the nuclear bomb mandated special precautions.
One of the most significant features of this elaborate security apparatus was the scientific library, a virtually unknown space that, during the 1940s, housed the secrets of the nuclear bomb.
Nestled alongside the massive Los Alamos lab—which Lisa Bier in Atomic Wives and the Secret Library at Los Alamos described as emanating an “aura of utilitarian haste” with its unpaved streets and barbed wire gates manned by guards—the library appeared quite bleak. The photos that exist today show a small space crammed with books, shelves, file cabinets, and a Ditto machine (an early copier). Because the library was expected to be demolished after the war, everything was built from cheap wood.
The library had two sections: the main area, pictured at the top, and the document room—a locked vault containing reports and designs from Los Alamos and the other Manhattan Project sites. The library's all-female staff—a mix of wives and Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps officers—needed to catalog, secure, and distribute thousands of books and manuscripts in a matter of months.
The rapid pace made the work so intense that, when one WAAC officer was offered a job at the library, she “took a look at the huge stack of technical reports from chemical companies, piled up ‘like a teepee,’ the classification of which would be her primary task.” According to Atomic Wives and the Secret Library at Los Alamos, “she avoided this sentence, which she termed ‘solitary confinement,’ by opting instead to drive trucks.”
But if library work was among the most tedious on the Hill, the award for the most unenviable job likely belonged to its head librarian: Charlotte Serber, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, statistician, and freelance journalist who at one point interviewed Frank Lloyd Wright for The Boston Globe.
In 1942, J. Robert Oppenheimer selected Serber to spearhead the project in part because of her lack of librarian experience. He wanted someone who would be willing to bend the rules of cataloguing.
Her appointment was a victory for the women on the Hill. Though women were integral to the success of the Manhattan Project—scientists like Leona Woods and Mary Lucy Miller played central roles in the creation of the bomb—none occupied leadership positions.
In this respect, Serber stood alone. As the head of the scientific library, she became the Manhattan Project’s de facto keeper of secrets, a position that soon saw her targeted for an FBI probe—and almost ended in her being fired from the project.
Here is a puzzle. You have no library experience, and you are tasked with a) heading a top secret facility, b) devising security protocols to ensure the U.S. military’s greatest secrets stay hidden, and c) importing thousands of documents to a site in the middle of nowhere—all in a vanishingly small window of time as World War II unfolds. How do you do it?
The answer, according to Serber: work over 75 hours per week.
Upon accepting the position, Serber taught herself the Library of Congress’ Dewey Decimal System, and teamed up with Oppenheimer’s secretary to develop a pass system for accessing the library’s secure vault, requiring that each scientist present a “typewritten letter” bearing Oppenheimer’s signature rather than a badge.
Tasked with apprising all of the scientists of any new breakthroughs in the labs, Serber and her staff had to familiarize themselves with obscure science in order to accurately record and distribute news across the Hill.
Serber also battled apathy toward security protocol in her library. In an obvious breach, scientists sometimes left top-secret technical documents out in the open overnight, where someone without clearance could easily access them. So Serber pioneered nightly sweeps of the library. Those scientists who failed to put away documents were either “required to pay a fee to obtain his documents” or be “forced to become a night inspector for the next shift.”
The library was also tasked with delivering the mail. All mail to Los Alamos arrived at a single post office box in Santa Fe, and one of the wives, along with a guard, made the twice-daily pilgrimage to retrieve it. For security reasons, Serber required that the woman keep the mailbag locked to her arm. Serber had the only key. She had to report back to Serber in order to be freed.
But Serber’s greatest challenge proved to be importing thousands of esoteric textbooks, journals, and manuals to a town that isn’t supposed to exist—without raising suspicion. To do it, the Los Alamos librarians ordered close to 1,200 books and complete backlists of 50 journals through an interlibrary loan program with the University of California at Berkeley, where Oppenheimer had previously worked. The books were first sent through a forwarding address in Los Angeles, where they would attract less attention. From there, all thousand-plus of them landed at a single P.O. box in Santa Fe.
Serber also requested orders from the local Santa Fe library: in a July 1945 newsletter, they reported sending “between 3,500 and 4,000 current magazines, 500 books, and many paper-bound books” as well as 100 books for kids to Los Alamos.
The most secretive documents, however, were not sent through mail. A courier carrying a number of black suitcases transported them to the Hill. But when he arrived, the library’s vault wasn’t finished. Serber therefore had to store the documents in an “ancient” safe that functioned so poorly, it opened only if Serber kicked it at a particular point while typing in the lock combination.
But any success the Los Alamos librarians may have had in keeping the project secret was ruined by the Manhattan Project scientists themselves.
The Santa Fe Library kept a registry of all visitors who checked out books. When one of their letters to borrowers reached scientists at Los Alamos, a small crisis ensued. The security teams demanded to know how the Santa Fe Library had obtained the names of so many Los Alamos scientists. As a result, “a dark and cryptic gentleman appeared to find out how this flood of mail happened to be sent them and where All Those Names were obtained.”
Turned out, many scientists, impatient with the long wait for books, had gone into Santa Fe and checked them out themselves, under their real names—a major security violation.
When the Santa Fe librarians explained this, the man left. “If a strange character with a long cigar and his hat over his eyes tailed the staff members, they were not aware of it and feel that he could rarely have had a duller assignment,” the library later wrote.
Charlotte Serber’s husband, Robert, was a physicist on the project and Oppenheimer’s protégé. In 1942, before the Los Alamos project commenced, both Serbers lived in the garage over Oppenheimer’s Berkeley home. In an obituary,The New York Times described Robert Serber as “the intellectual midwife at the birth of the atomic bomb.”
Oppenheimer’s trust in the Serbers was immense: at one point, when Santa Fe residents began speculating about what the masses of scientists and military personnel on the Hill could be up to, Oppenheimer enlisted the Serbers to trek down to Santa Fe and personally spread false information.
The book Bomb recounts how the Serbers entered a local bar with the express intent of telling residents that the Los Alamos scientists were building “an electric rocket,” rather than a bomb. But no one seemed to care. At one point, Charlotte danced with a local man, all the while pestering him about Los Alamos. “What’s your guess about what cooks up there?” she asked. “Beats me,” he said. “Don’t care. May I have another dance later?”
But Oppenheimer’s trust did not save Charlotte Serber from nearly getting booted off of the Manhattan Project. On October 16, 1943, the U.S. Army’s security team recommended that the Serbers be terminated, as they were “entirely saturated with Communist beliefs and all of their associates were known radicals.”
Unbeknown to the Serbers, the FBI had been keeping files on them, specifically on Charlotte, and had even wiretapped the couple on the suspicion that they were subversives. The fact that both Serbers occupied such pivotal roles likely exposed them to greater scrutiny: after all, Robert was a primary developer of the bomb, while Charlotte was the gatekeeper of its secrets.
The FBI consulted a source close to Charlotte for information regarding her political leanings. Her file notes that both she and her husband “were reported to be pacifists at the start of World War II, but later made a turn about face and joined the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies in the spring of 1942.”
Though both of the Serbers leaned left, Charlotte was much more politically active than her husband. During the Spanish Civil War, she dedicated much of her energy toward raising funds for the antifascist movement. And at Urbana, Illinois, she became the publicity chairman for the League of Women Voters, according to her FBI file.
But it was the Serbers’ associations that ultimately damned them. After some investigation, the FBI concluded that the Serbers, especially Charlotte, had a history of befriending “a group of younger faculty members and their wives all of whom were reputed to be extreme liberals and labeled by many as Communists.”
It didn’t help that each of them came from liberal, Russian-immigrant families. Charlotte’s father was a notorious leftist, and he ran the house “as a political and artistic salon.” According toAmerican Prometheus, “Charlotte took her politics straight from her radical father” and became a “fervent activist” for liberal causes in the 1930s.
Robert's upbringing, too, raised concerns. His stepmother—also a relative of Charlotte’s—was at one point a member of the Communist Party.
But what provoked the Serbers’ near-exclusion from the Manhattan Project was testimony from Oppenheimer himself.
According to the FBI file, when the security team asked Oppenheimer for the names of possible Communists at Los Alamos, he listed Charlotte. “Dr. Oppenheimer advised General Leslie R. Groves while Charlotte Serber was employed by the Manhattan Project, that it was known to him that Charlotte Serber came from a Communist family in Philadelphia and was at one time herself a member of the CP,” although “it was his belief that she was no longer affiliated.” Of his protégé Robert Serber, meanwhile, Oppenheimer told the FBI: “‘I think it is possible [that he is a communist], but I don’t know.’”
Still, Oppenheimer’s ultimate faith in the couple appears to have spared them. After he informed the FBI of their political leanings, Oppenheimer “probably vouched personally for the Serbers’ loyalty,” stating that Robert Serber had told him of the couple’s leftist activities prior to joining the Manhattan Project, and that they had promised to drop them for the sake of the mission.
Despite the FBI investigation into her personal life—which she would only find out about after the fact—Charlotte’s work continued. Her library soon functioned not only as a source of information and a hiding place for the bomb’s secrets, but also as a social hotspot. Los Alamos, barren as it was, had few communal spaces. For many residents, especially for the wives of the scientists, it became a venue to catch up, trade concerns, and exchange gossip.
As the race to finish the bomb reached its fever-pitch, the scientific library proved instrumental. Through Serber, scientists could access and share confidential information at a rapid pace.
Oppenheimer later commemorated Charlotte Serber’s work in the Los Alamos scientific library, writing, “I have never had a complaint of how the Library or Document Room were run” and praising her “surprising success in controlling and accounting for the mass of classified information, where a single serious slip might not only have caused us the profoundest embarrassment but might have jeopardized the successful completion of our job.”
Even so, when the nuclear bomb was tested at the Trinity Site in July 1945, Charlotte Serber was not invited to attend. She was the only group leader not allowed to watch the test; Oppenheimer claimed he could not accommodate her because the Trinity Site did not have the proper “facilities” for women.
After the Manhattan Project drew to a close, the Serbers returned to Berkeley, where Robert began teaching.
Accusations of communism and disloyalty continued to dog the couple, especially with the dawn of the Cold War. Oppenheimer himself battled similar rumors, largely because his wife had at one point joined the Communist Party; in 1954, despite swearing loyalty to the U.S., his security clearance was revoked.
Charlotte Serber likewise struggled to obtain another high-profile librarian job. Her application to work in the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory was rejected because she couldn't get clearance, probably because of her political background. In 1951, the Serbers moved to New York, and Charlotte reversed courses to become a production assistant at the Broadway Theatre. She died 16 years later.
Though throughout his life, Robert Serber maintained his support for the use of the nuclear bomb, one wonders how Charlotte felt about her role in a weapon that killed so many. As Oppenheimer said: her secret library was pivotal in its construction—for better or worse.
June in Chicago means hot dogs, art fairs—and angry red-winged blackbirds that fly down out of the trees and swoop at your head.
"Reports [of attacks] are increasing... within the area of Lincoln Park and other more rural areas of the city," DNAinfo Chicago reports. As ornithologist Josh Engel explains to the outlet, violent birds are generally protecting their nests, which by this time of year are bursting with chicks.
"They are highly territorial," Engel says, and will fly at pretty much anything that seems threatening, from fellow birds to hapless joggers.
But there does seem to be something about the Windy City that particularly riles them up. One Grant Park jogger was attacked at least five times last year, and told CBS Local that a bird got stuck in her ponytail. And a 60-year-old woman just sued a Chicago hospital for failing to warn passers-by about "vicious" birds on the premises, which she says knocked her down.
If a bird is coming after you, experts have just one suggestion: look it dead in the eyes. Good luck out there.
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.
Atlas Obscura is partnering with Red Bull to spread the word on Stems of Chicago, a crowdsourced project to collect the sounds of the city. The audio will serve as raw material for a track produced by an emerging Chicago producer inspired by this city’s history, diversity and communities. Atlas Obscura sent Leyla Royale, a seasoned cellist and field recorder, to the landmark Fine Arts building to explore the space and capture its character and sounds.
The old Studebaker Building in Chicago (the front facade still bears the name) was constructed in 1885 by the architect Solon S. Beman, and originally designed to house the Studebaker company. By 1898, Studebaker had secured a bigger location. The family renamed the structure and converted it into artist studios.
Inside, there are dozens of offices and rehearsal spaces. A light-filled courtyard takes up most of the fourth floor, while the Studebaker Theatre operates out of the first floor. The building is little-changed since 1898; the woodwork is original, as are the elevators. After 120 years, the Fine Arts building still offers the same sights and sounds from the turn of the century.
The first sounds to greet visitors as they enter are footsteps. The floors are marble, causing the slap of every step to echo an announcement of arrival. The decorative handrails are shiny smooth while the stairs have worn into grooves from the thousands who’ve walked them over the years.
Each office offers unique sound bites of the goings-on inside. Carving and chipping can be heard from one of the many luthiers working on building and repairing delicate stringed instruments. Elsewhere, dance teachers count off beats and young children pluck their first chordophones. Echoing dramatically through the open stairwells of the top floors, snippets of arias mixed with the sounds of piano scales can be heard. The open hallways and stone walkways create a reverberant space reminiscent of the of a cathedral.
The most ubiquitous sounds in the building may be those emitted by the central elevator system. Built in the 1890s, they are the last in the Loop to still have full-time operators. Continuously in-use, the static whirr of engines and chains backgrounds every experience in the building.
The main elevator bank rests in the arched stone hallway of the first floor. Between the elevator doors a diamond-shaped metal cover contains a white button in the center. Pressing it activates a ringing buzzer straight from the 1890s that, somehow, manages to sound polite as it pings through the shaft. Less cordial is the high–pitched screech of metal that signals the movement of the car. Metallic squeaks chime in as each elevator glides into view, then jerks to a stop.
The operator opens the doors. They’re wooden pocket doors with lavish details at the foot and large glass windows. They slide open and thump to the side while the operator coolly waits for riders to enter. Everyone on board, he takes one hand and slides the doors shut with a clang. “What floor?” he asks, and the riders respond with a number, or perhaps just the name of the shop they’re visiting — the operators know the name and location of everyone here.
As the car ascends, riders can catch a glimpse of each floor as they pass it. Between the shutter of concrete floors, numbers are visible. These digits are intended to orient the operator, but you’re unlikely to see the attendant so much as glance at them. In a building so well-worn and familiar, few operators need them.
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The elevator halts with a jolt and dull thud when the requested floor emerges. The gears start and stop with a few thunks as the car adjusts to the floor level. The operator pulls the doors open once more, and with a chorus of “thank yous" riders disembark. The doors clunk shut, and the whirr of chains and metal resumes as the elevator returns to the call of the buzzer, ringing below.
The building sounds much as it would have 120 years ago. The musicians who practice here today work to master the same arias and symphonies that challenged their predecessors over a century ago. The quiet scratchings of pencil on wood remind visitors of the proud tradition of luthiers in the building.
In the background hums the base of all sound in the Fine Arts Building: the ancient mechanical system of elevators and operators. The drone of engines, the clank of chains, and the buzz of the call button were once constant in Chicago. Now, they can only be experienced here.
There are over 3,000 mystical artifacts on display at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Cornwall, England. These range, says photographer Sara Hannant, “from cures to curses, from spirit houses to spells for sailors, from the tools of wayside witches to the ceremonial robes worn by Western ritual magicians.” It’s the largest collection of magical objects in the world, and one that Hannant got to know well during an artist's residency at the museum.
“Much of my recent work concerns magical beliefs, rituals and folklore," says Hannant. "I have always been interested in folk magic and I have also been exploring, through a long-term project, the personal connections we have to objects and the significance and memories we attach to them.” During her residency, she photographed ritual items that have been imbued with supernatural meaning, including “wax dolls, wands, statues, daggers, pendants, robes and amulets.” These images are now part of her most recent book, Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.
With such a large collection to choose from, Hannant selected the items she found “the most resonant”—but also those that show the range of the museum’s holdings, so “objects related to cunning folk, ceremonial magic, Freemasonry, Satanism, alchemy, and Wicca are included, plus objects from the witch trials in the early modern period.” Each object was photographed in the same way, a deliberate choice by Hannant, who says she “found it best to photograph at night, enabling the objects to emerge from the darkness, where it is said magic begins.”
Hannant has a particular interest in ceremonies and items of supernatural significance. Her previous book documented British folk customs “rooted in cycles of nature: dramatizing the wheel of the year with costumed processions, fire rituals, mumming plays and traditional dances that mark seasonal change.”
Atlas Obscura has a selection of Hannant’s images of magical objects.
In 2011, in the German province of Saxony-Anhalt, archaeologists were surveying a battlefield from a long-ago war when they detected the edge of a pit. As they probed the area further, they found that they had discovered a mass grave.
They began to excavate a pit about 11.5 feet by 15 feet in size, but from the moment news of the discovery began to spread, the archaeologists, who worked for government agencies, worried that treasure hunters would start to raid the site. They had already found evidence of illegal excavations.
Usually, a find like this might be carefully dissected in the place where it was found. But in this case, in part because of their worries about theft, the archaeologists decided to “block lift” the bones from the site—to cut the entire mass grave out of the ground and transport it somewhere safe.
There were other reasons to keep the grave intact, too, as the archaeologists write in “The Face of War,” their recent PLOS One report. “By coincidence, or perhaps intentionally, the last body placed in the grave was lying in a different position to the other individuals, in a cruciform pose on top of the other deceased. This crucial aspect of the overall impression would have been lost if the usual method of ‘dissecting’ the block had been applied," they write.
But perhaps most importantly, keeping the grave intact conserved the powerful image, seen above, of these 47 individuals who died in the war. To the archaeologists, it was “a representation of war in all its cruelty."
The people in this grave died during the Thirty Years' War, the 17th-century conflict that reshaped the Holy Roman Empire, and they died in a battle known as one of the more pivotal and grisly conflicts of the war. Thousands of soldiers—perhaps as many as 9,000—died during the Battle of Lützen. The casualties included the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, who had been fighting to extend Sweden’s territory and power.
How do archaeologists approach the analysis of a mass grave? In this case, after deciding to block-lift the grave out of the ground, they had to cut it in half, to keep pieces of the brittle block from “breaking off during recovery.” They used a wire saw to split the block in two; even then, each section weighed about 25 tons.
Once the grave was secured, the archaeologists began working in one corner of the burial feature, removing the soil until the skeletal remains emerged. In a mass grave, says Nicole Nicklisch, the lead author of the PLOS One paper, “It is important to recognize the position and orientation of the body, which may be very difficult in a mass grave; it can change from body to body.” Using small wooden tools and brushes, the archaeologist cleared the area around the bones.
Until this point, they proceeded as they would have if the bones were still in the ground. But since they'd decided to preserve the grave as a whole, they did not remove the bones, which meant they could not observe some of the features in detail. Since there were only two layers of bodies, though, they were able to turn the block over, to examine the grave from the “back” and gather more information.
In the PLOS One report, the archaeologists describe the details of what they were able to learn about the people buried in this grave. There were 47 of them, most likely all men, although because they were not able to examine all the bones individually, there were 11 cases where they could not conclusively determine the person’s sex. They also tried to document how these people died, in order to better understand the realities of warfare at the time.
“I’m an anthropologist and osteoarchaeologist, so I’m always interested in analyzing skeletal remains to get information about cause of death,” says Nicklisch. “From the scientific perspective they tell us a lot about their fatal injuries and what happened on the battlefield, or at least in one area.” The Thirty Years' War was fought in the period when guns were becoming more common on battlefields, and the evidence of it showed in the grave. “I’ve never seen so many gunshot wounds,” Nicklisch says. The team found that more than half of the men had gunshot wounds; others showed no obvious injuries and have may have died from gun wounds to their soft tissue.
Beyond the scientific reasons for excavating the grave and keeping it whole, the team also thought there was a powerful reason to preserve and display the grave, which was exhibited publicly for a period. “From an ethical point of view I have to emphasize that the exhibition of this grave was a statement against war,” says Nicklisch. “When we look at this mass grave, then we look in the face of war.”
In Dawson City, in Canada's Yukon Territory, there is a bar called the Sourdough Saloon which serves a drink called the "Sourtoe Cocktail," which is a shot of whiskey with an amputated toe. As the Sourdough Saloon explains, "you can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips have gotta touch the toe.”
Which is great.
But early Sunday morning, the toe—there is just one toe in circulation currently, though the Sourdough Saloon has gone through many toes over the years—was stolen, apparently by a (possibly drunk) man who had previously boasted of his intention to steal the toe, according to a press release issued by the bar.
Yesterday brought better news. Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the toe had been returned:
On Tuesday afternoon, June 20th, Dawson City RCMP received a phone call from the alleged suspect, stating that he had placed the toe in the mail, addressed to the Downtown Hotel. The man then called the Downtown Hotel and provided the same message to staff, along with a verbal apology.
Earlier today, on Thursday, June 22nd, the expected package was received. To ensure the package was safe to open, Corporal Jeff Myke from Dawson City RCMP attended the location to open it.
Located inside the package was an apology letter, as well as the stolen toe.
At the time that the package was opened, the toe was believed to be in good condition.
Which is good news, and a nice ending for a story that looked for a minute like it might end poorly (the bar's owner came out firing in the news release, referring to the thief as a "low life," which are fighting words.)
Here is a picture of the toe, which I've so far avoided showing you because it is gross:
The Amish settlements of Nappanee and Elkhart-La Grange are less than an hour’s drive apart and both about a three-hour drive north of Indianapolis, Indiana. The flat, almost treeless landscape is home to horse stables and barns, white wooden houses, antiquated farming equipment and nearly 30,000 Amish. Regardless of the decade, these communities seem to remain constant in appearance.
Permissible technology for the Amish varies by community depending on the bishop—the local religious leader who determines the rules. Some, like Northern Indiana’s Amish, allow gas to power laundry machines and indoor lighting, or business owners to use cell phones and email at work. Generally, though, modern technology beyond work purposes is prohibited, and no matter how progressive the community, operating a motor vehicle, even for work, is out of the question.
But there’s more than meets the eye, and it only takes a bit longer in the region to take notice—the number of Recreational Vehicles (RVs) such as campers, fifth-wheel trailers, or motorhomes. Trailers are pulled behind trucks, and tour bus-sized coaches squeeze through the small-town streets.
According to the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association, RV manufacturing is a $50 billion business in the United States, employing nearly 300,000 Americans. Most of the RVs in America—80 percent—are made in Northern Indiana.
The Amish in this region don’t just live near the RV epicenter—they’re building the vehicles. According to Steve Nolt, Senior Scholar at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College, most of the Amish men under 65 work in factories. The majority of these manufacturing plants either assemble RVS or supply parts such as cabinets or windows.
Such increased Amish involvement in the non-Amish workplaces has had irrevocable consequences on their community. In the PBS documentary American Experience: The Amish, Donald B. Kraybill even called the shift the “most significant and the most consequential change since they came to North America.”
Unlike other Amish communities across the U.S., Northern Indiana Amish have always had some relationship to the outside world. After they came to the region in the 1840s, they didn’t live in such close proximity to non-Amish as they do now, but they were never isolated.
When most Amish men were farmers, it was common for them to work seasonally with non-Amish in town, on more traditional things like cabinet making or carpentry, or even making cigar boxes, boats and band instruments. Nolt, who conducted interviews in the late ‘90s with Amish workers in the boat-making industry, said interviewees pointed to the fact that making the wooden boats was similar to wood working.
So when Milo Miller started the first RV manufacturer in Elkhart County in 1933, it wasn’t out of the realm for Amish to begin participating in the seasonal work it offered—something Nolt explained was an “already established pattern that seemed inviting.” And there were a lot of chances to participate in this industry. Miller’s company quickly started to attract more suppliers and manufacturers to the region. By 1948, Elkhart County had already been dubbed the “RV Capital of the World” and continued to supply America’s post-war demand for affordable recreation.
Yet, how did the RV situation shift from a comfortable, seasonal job for some of the Amish, to employing 56.3 percent of men in the Nappanee settlement and 53 percent in the Elkhart-LaGrange settlement, according to Nolt’s data?
The big reason, says Nolt, is what he called an “economic squeeze and demographic crisis,” a shift in the 1980s that pushed the Amish (and other farmers across the country) from the farms into the factory. By the time the 1980s Farm Crisis hit, Amish families had already grown larger and larger,and there were fewer opportunities for them to own land. Today, most people who own farms inherited them. Buying land and farming is not only out of most people’s price ranges, but it’s a tough business to compete with America’s mega-farms.
The strong RV industry provided jobs for Northern Indiana’s Amish once farming was no longer a plausible option. Year-round, Amish men go into work at 4:00-5:00am, riding into town in a bike or buggy, and working until they complete their day’s quota. The faster they work, the sooner they go home. In Newmar’s Nappanee factory, for example, once workers finish eight RVs, they’re done for the day. Some might not even have to work a full eight-hour day, and wages are relatively high—reported to be around $4,000 a month and up.
The more the factory work immerses the Amish in the outside world, though, the more they struggle to find a place to thrive economically while holding onto their values. The transition from occasional seasonal work to the majority of men working in factories has created a cultural conflict that few anticipated.
“The good thing is they put a lot of meat on the table and feed a lot of families,” says Ola Yoder, the Amish CEO of Kountry Wood Products and a former factory worker. The change it’s caused is “tremendous, and I’m not sure if it’s a good thing.” Born in an Amish community in Arthur, Illinois, he moved to the Nappanee settlement over four decades ago when he heard the factory jobs were paying “a big $5” an hour. Now, it’s upwards of $15.00.
Although many believe the high factory wages create a fairer society—the rate forces Amish businesses to pay competitive rates, otherwise they’d lose employees to RV industry—others allude to the potential for problems. Two of the Amish’s most important values are humility and equality, but Amish factory workers now speak openly about wages and compare them often. With their increased salaries, they buy bigger boats and advanced hunting equipment, stirring a subtle hierarchy.
Erik Wesner, author of Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive and the man behind the popular blog Amish America, has written about local perceptions of the industry. Wesner explains that given the volume of manufacturers in the region, it’s hard to generalize one workplace over the other, but Amish have three major concerns with the industry: money, work environment, and stress. Compared to traditional farm work, “it’s a fast-paced environment, it’s stressful, there’s swearing, stories about drugs,” says Wesner. “By the nature of the work, you have to be sharp and on your toes.”
M. Yoder, an Amish man who works in a trailer factory in Shipshewana, said he doesn’t “like getting mad at all” but he can’t help but feel the pressure of the adrenaline. He’s had arguments with his superiors. The speed required has also made him wasteful–it’s easier to throw away excess materials in a time crunch than put them back where they belong.
L. Yoder would rather be working on his apple orchard or taking care of his bee colonies, but to be able to pay his high mortgage (a trade-off he made to be able to live on expensive property close to friends and family) he feels like he has no other choice than to work in the factories.
The RV industry in northern Indiana has long been a benefit to the local communities, Amish and non-Amish, as well as depended on the strong workforce the region provided. The Amish factory workers, who otherwise would never have contact with motor vehicles, are doing fast-paced physical labor and reaping the economic benefits, but not without a cost. Less time on the fields means more time with families and more money means the ability to buy expensive land—something that the community is grateful for. The critics, though, are quick to point out their skepticism. They have to ask, says Ola Yoder, “Where’s this going to end up at?”
Militaries across the globe have dabbled in the use of bicycles as part of their arsenal. Nations including Germany, Sweden, and Japan have all employed regiments of bicycle cavalry at one point or another, but most were only used for a short time. In the United States, after a single, hellish, 1,900-mile ride in 1897, the idea of a permanent bicycle infantry was more or less permanently shelved.
The U.S.’s first foray into military cycling was the brainchild of Major General Nelson A. Miles, a proponent of modernization in the armed forces during the late 1800s. In an 1894 newspaper article in The Outlook, Miles expressed his enthusiasm for military bicycles, saying, “There is no doubt in my mind that during the next great war the bicycle, with such modifications and adaptations as experience may suggest, will become a most important machine for military purposes.” In his view, the bicycle could be used for everything from simple courier work to troop and gear transport, and possibly even in combat.
Bikes seemed like a great alternative to the traditional horse, needing no food, water, or handlers, as well as being quieter and easier to conceal. But the bicycle was still an untested piece of military equipment. It had been employed by some U.S. militia groups, but still needed to be vetted in an official capacity. So in 1896, Second Lieutenant James A. Moss, an avid cyclist and fellow proponent of adding bikes to the military arsenal, was given the go-ahead to create the nation’s first bicycle corps.
Moss, having graduated dead last in his class from West Point, had been given what was seen as an undesirable post at the time, joining the all black "Buffalo Soldiers" of the 25th Infantry Regiment at Montana’s Fort Missoula. The 25th in Montana was mostly tasked with keeping the peace and building up the fort.
With the support of General Miles, Moss acquired a fleet of bicycles from the A.G. Spalding Company (precursor to Spalding sporting goods) as a donation to the Army. Moss worked with the company to modify the vehicles for military service. The bikes were outfitted with a canvas tent, sleeping bag, and blanket that rolled up and attached to the handlebars, and a hard shell case that fit into the space in the middle of the frame, for further storage. Fully equipped, the bikes weighed around 59 pounds, according to the account from the Fort Missoula Museum. Armed with 50 rounds each, the soldiers would carry their guns on their backs.
During the summer of 1896, Moss and members of the 25th Infantry began embarking on relatively short trips in the area, testing the bikes in rugged, rocky terrain. In August, Moss and a group of riders rode some 800 miles to Yellowstone National Park and back. In total, the trip took 23 days, and despite rotted tires and poor weather, Moss considered the trip a successful demonstration of the bicycle’s usefulness as a military vehicle.
As the object of the trip is to test most thoroughly the bicycles as a means of transportation for troops, the route should be long and the geography of the country of such a nature as to afford all possible conditions. By selecting St. Louis as our objective, we have a long route with high and low altitudes; stoney roads of mountains; the hummock earth roads of South Dakota; the sandy roads of Nebraska and the clay roads of Missouri.
The terrain would be hard, and the trip would test the limits of the men’s will, but Moss figured that if the bicycle was going to be used in the field, it would need to hold up to anything they could put it through.
Thus on June 14, 1897, Moss and company set out for St. Louis. Moss was accompanied by 20 men from the 25th Infantry who had volunteered for the expedition; a surgeon who acted as his second-in-command; a reporter from the Daily Missoulian; and Sargent Mingo Sanders, the oldest in the group and the senior enlisted man who handled much of the day-to-day work during the expedition. After receiving a cheering farewell as they pedaled out of Missoula, things seemed to be off to a fine start, before almost immediately taking a turn.
The hardships began on the very first day as rain turned their route to mud, forcing the men to walk their bikes for much of the way through the “gumbo.” They were soaked, muddy, and tired. According to Moss’s report on the day, they averaged a total of 5.4 miles per hour. Despite the fact that much of the trip ended up being uphill, in general, things went downhill from there.
Over the next 40 days, Moss and the members of the 25th encountered flooded roads, snow, hail, sand, rocks that caused riders to crash, extreme heat and cold, and just about every other type of calamity Mother Nature could devise to throw at them. Walking and carrying their bikes was often as common as riding them. They also often had to resort to traveling over rail tracks that shook the men numb.
If slow progress wasn’t dispiriting enough, food and water was often scarce. The group was expected to cover 50-60 miles a day and only carried enough rations to cover the expected distance. Supplies were sent ahead to various points across the route, roughly 100 miles apart, but the slow going made it difficult to reach each of them on time, often leaving the group hungry.
During the back leg of the journey, temperatures sometimes reached over 100 degrees Fahrenheit going through South Dakota and Nebraska. The only available water was often found in railroad tanks, which would grow stagnant. Thus a number of expedition members became sick from the rotten water, delaying their trip even further.
Then there was the reaction of the people they passed. The sight of 20 black men riding bicycles through areas where neither was a common sight often caused bystanders to stare in bewilderment at best, and react with hostility at worst. Some of the farms they would pass through inquired whether the men were Union soldiers, telling them to get off their land.
Despite all of their hardships, Moss, Sanders, and the rest of the Bicycle Corps arrived in St. Louis on July 24, 1897, having lost just one man, whom Moss had sent back to Ft. Missoula due to his negative effect on morale. The group was greeted by a large crowd who came out to see them perform bicycle drills to commemorate their arrival.
Moss remained upbeat, noting that they ended up traveling much faster than they would have on horse, that many of the men actually got stronger from the work out, and that the trip had personally cost him just $43. But during their journey, any enthusiasm the Army had had waned. Moss wanted to continue on to St. Paul, Minnesota. His request was denied.
The Bicycle Corps returned to Ft. Missoula by rail, and was officially disbanded, the bikes sent back to the Spalding Company. Still, Moss, tried to get another expedition off the ground, this time to San Francisco, but no one was having it. The dream of the U.S. Bicycle Corps was dead.
With the ever-evolving nature of military technology, it's unlikely that the Army will revisit a bicycle corp any time soon, but thanks to the epic journey of the 25th Infantry, at least we can say they tried.
Fidget spinners are all over the place these days, serving as a symbol of school yard cool, and threatening pogs as the most inane fad of all time. But the coolest kid at middle school had better watch his back, because a group of Russian YouTubers have created the world’s largest spinner out of a trio of old cars.
Well, sort of. Here's the tape:
According to the BBC, the members of Garage 54, an automotive-focused YouTube channel out of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, welded the front half of three Lada Samara cars together. They left the engines and front wheels intact, though, and then joined them in the three-pronged shape of a spinner toy.
It took some doing, but with a driver in each of the three driver’s seats, they managed to get their creation moving in a distinctly circular pattern, although nothing like the crazed spinning speed of a real fidget spinner.
In the end, the giant junkyard spinner was gleefully torn apart by an SUV with a chain. Which maybe should be the fate of all fidget spinners.
As an aviculturist at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California, Sara Mandel is always looking for ways to make her penguins' lives more interesting. She and her fellow staffers blow bubbles for their charges. They've thrown them penguin parties, complete with confetti and a disco ball.
So one day in 2013, when Mandel happened to have her iPad at work, she asked her boss whether it might be ok to show it to the penguins. She had already downloaded a game, "Game for Cats"—in which mice, lasers and butterflies scurry across the screen, and react to touch—for her pets at home. "I bet they'll ignore it," her boss said, but he told her to go ahead and give it a try anyway.
So she booted it up. One penguin, a one-year-old named Newsom, "immediately put his bill on it," remembers Mandel. "It made a sound. And all of a sudden he was in hunting mode. He just kept doing it over and over again."
Sitting in one place and tapping on a screen may seem like a fundamentally human pursuit. But over the past few years, more and more animals have begun to use computers—for scientific studies, for rehabilitation efforts, or, like Newsom the penguin, just to have something to do. And a whole lot of those species, from pigeons to wolves to black bears to tortoises, seem to actively enjoy it.
"Our animals appear to really like the work," says Lina Oberliessen, a researcher at the Wolf Science Center in Ernstbrunn, Austria. "Some of them are kind of workaholics." The WSC's stated mission is "to investigate the common characteristics shared by wolf, dog, and man," which they accomplish through behavioral and cognitive research. Oberliessen, for instance, is studying whether or not wolves have a sense of fairness by asking them to choose how food rewards are distributed between themselves and other wolves.
To make studies like this easier, the wolves and dogs that live at the Center are trained early on, with food rewards and clicker reinforcement, to be comfortable using touchscreens. "They learn that they have to touch it, and that it's good," says Oberliessen. Depending on the study, they're then taught to associate particular symbols with corresponding outcomes—say, one versus two treats being dispensed—and to choose between them by bumping the screen with their noses. (Some particularly excitable wolves also use their paws.)
This system makes things much simpler for the researchers, who take advantage of the flexibility the screen offers to design a variety of tests. "It's really simple—if the animal knows how to use a screen, you can modify the symbols and change the tasks," she says. It also makes for eager study subjects, some of whom have truly internalized their training.
"Some animals love the touchscreen so much that it seems they don't really care what happens," says Oberliessen. "Sometimes they don't even take the reward." They wait eagerly for their turns with the machines, and if a certain wolf or dog isn't scheduled to use one on a particular day, "they seem disappointed," she says. "They look like [they're asking], 'I'm not being tested? Why!?'"
And when faced with the wolf-touchscreen equivalent of the spinning pinwheel of death, she says, they react just like humans: "If they do it wrong and the screen turns white again, they get frustrated. They press again right away, and don't wait until the next symbol comes."
"It's really cute," she adds.
Other researchers have similar stories. Dr. Jennifer Vonk, a cognitive scientist who, over the course of various projects, has trained black bears, orangutans, and silverback gorillas to use touchscreens, posits that her study subjects enjoy the intellectual stimulation the computers provide (although the food rewards, and the opportunity to interact with humans, certainly don't hurt). "They voluntarily participate in an environment where there are other things to do," she writes in an email. "The bears would run indoors from the outdoor habitat when they saw us coming. The orangutans used to spit and poke at me until it was their turn to 'play.'"
It's not just mammals, either. In 2014, a team of researchers from the University of Lincoln and the University of Vienna trained tortoises to use a touchscreen in order to test their spatial awareness. Not only did the tortoises quickly figure out what they were being asked to do—faster than dogs given the same task—there's no reason to think they weren't having a good time, writes Dr. Anna Wilkinson, the study's lead author, in an email.
"They readily worked on it, which suggests that they did not dislike it," she writes. ("One way to tell if a tortoise is comfortable in a situation is to examine its neck length," she adds. "As you can see from the video [below], Esme looks comfortable in there.")
Onboarding these new users isn't always easy. Sarah Ritvo, a doctoral student at York University who specializes in animal-computer interaction, told a story about a colleague who ran into a problem while using touchscreens to test whether orangutans prefer pictures of their own species to those of other apes. "There was a big male orangutan, and he didn't want to physically touch pictures of other male orangutans—it was basically a dominance thing," she says. "He started picking up a stick and touching the screen instead." The hack caught on: "All of a sudden, all the other orangutans refused to touch the touchscreen," she says. "We ended up having to buy everyone wooden dowels."
Such investments are generally worth it. For scientists, it's a win-win when animals dig computers. It makes a day's work easier, both for them and for their research subjects. For others like Mandel, who are focused on making the lives of captive animals better, the fun itself is the point. After Newsom took so strongly to Mandel's iPad, a volunteer donated an old tablet to the aquarium. It's now a regular part of the penguins' enrichment rotation, along with more traditional playthings such as soap bubbles or floating toys. "When I bring it out, they get really excited," says Mandel.
By this point, Newsom the penguin, who is now four years old, has largely outgrown the screen. But the younger penguins, who might otherwise be a bit bored during breeding season, tend to really take to it. "Every summer we get new penguins, and every summer they have to figure out what life is like for a penguin," says Mandel. "For some reason, they're all interested in the iPad."
Zoos, aquariums, and rescue centers across the world have picked up on the trend. Game for Cats is popular—besides its permanent place at the penguin exhibit, it has helped rehab an injured pigeon, and made an appearance at a big cat sanctuary in North Carolina. Orangutans at the Melbourne Zoo are playing XBox Kinect. One researcher working with a great ape sanctuary in Des Moines has even designed what he calls the "RoboBonobo"—a squirt-gun-wielding robot ape that the primates on display can control with an iPad, in order to squirt the less hairy primates watching them.
Some experts think games are only the tip of the iceberg. Orangutans at the Miami Zoo are already using tablets to give their keepers dinner suggestions—someday, animals might use touchscreens to control many things about their own environments, from temperature to light levels to whether or not they are visible to guests. "Here's an interface that's programmable, and it can be big or small, it can provides light, sound, smells, even tactile information," says Ritvo. "It's such a spectacular way to broaden their worlds."
In the meantime, there are ways in which we can learn from them, too: "I would be very surprised to see an orangutan sitting in front of a screen all day," says Ritvo. "They prefer to wrestle and play."
Ever since Londoner Bridget Driscoll became the first pedestrian to die in an automobile accident in 1896, companies have raced to solve the problem of car deaths. The 1930s saw the introduction of a particularly novel solution: the pedestrian catcher.
Also known as the safety scoop and the car catcher, this device was designed to bring pedestrian deaths to a permanent halt. "This Roller Safety Device Sweeps Away Fallen Pedestrian," declared a triumphant Modern Mechanix headline in 1931, elaborating that it "will literally sweep a fallen pedestrian before it and thus save him from being crushed to almost certain death beneath the heavy wheels."
According to CityLab, the device featured a "grooved roller" attached to an extension beam on the car. Inactivated, it acted akin to a bumper. But when a pedestrian was in danger of getting hit, the driver needed only to pull a lever, and the grooved roller deployed to the ground.
“A flick of the lever, and the scoop has another mouthful,” the British Pathé narrator says, as the video shows a pedestrian catcher scooping up a jaywalker, demonstrated by one of the inventors. “When the scoop is open, a jaywalker simply can’t get run over, and sometimes that’s more than he deserves.”
The pedestrian catcher, however, was not as foolproof as it claimed. If the car was going too fast, or if the driver didn't pull the lever fast enough, the pedestrian was in trouble.
Yet the pedestrian catcher of the 1930s is not the only incarnation of this car safety advice. This one from 1927 (pictured above) is perhaps even more impractical.
CityLab also uncovered a "shovel on a car" being tested in Paris in 1924. And still another pedestrian catcher, which trapped people on the hoods of cars, was tested in 1974.
Video Wonders are audiovisual offerings that delight, inspire, and entertain. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
When it comes to bird eggs, the softly rounded chicken eggs in your refrigerator are pretty boring. Common Murres, for example, have pointy, teardrop-shaped eggs, while Great Horned Owls lay spherical eggs. There have been plenty of theories about what determines egg shape over the years—Aristotle thought male birds hatched from pointier eggs, and today's ornithology textbooks say nest type or incubation styles drive egg shape evolution. But now an international team of scientists have a new explanation: Egg shape is related to how well a species flies.
The team relied on physics, math, and data characterizing close to 50,000 eggs from about 1,400 species of birds from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at University of California, Berkeley. They looked at variables that have all been proposed as influences of shape in the past — including nest form, the number of eggs laid at a time, diet — and another variable known as the hand-wing index, which measures how efficient birds fly. While modern textbook explanations for egg shapes make logical sense, only the hand-wing index correlated with egg shape.
Egg shape varies in two ways — how elliptical they are, and how asymmetric they are. The pointy, oblong eggs of the Common Murre are both very elliptic and asymmetric. Round owl eggs are neither. Birds, including the Common Murre, that are efficient flyers have more elliptical, asymmetric eggs. The researchers write that this might be related to their streamlined body shape, and in turn, their narrow pelvic openings. This also explains variation in egg shapes among flightless birds. Kiwis and ostriches lay eggs that are fairly symmetrical, while penguins, which have streamlined bodies for swimming, lay pointier eggs. Among birds that fly, the species that spend more time in the air or rely on powerful bursts of flight to catch food tend to have the more elliptical, asymmetric eggs.
For the past few days, Tropical Storm Cindy has been raining down huge amounts of water on Gulf Coast states, most heavily on Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Twelve inches alone have come down on Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
In many places that rain has created flooding, a phenomenon residents down south are all-too-familiar with. They may be less familiar with floating masses of fire ants, which authorities recently warned also may be happening this year.
The masses form when red ants' natural homes—soil—become overrun with water, which leads ant colonies to make themselves into floatable balls, which then drift on top of the water, hoping to reach dry land.
"These amoeba-like masses contain all of the colonies’ members—worker ants, brood (eggs, larvae, pupae), winged reproductive males and females, and queen ants," the Alabama Cooperative Extension System said on its website.
Fire ants can be deadly in the most severe cases but usually aren't, though as ACES says, "If ants contact the skin, they will sting."
So, what to do? Don't touch them, obviously, but also don't touch them with your oar if you're in a rowboat. And wear rubber boots and gloves if you're walking in flooded areas or in structures that were recently flooded, since the ants may have transplanted and found new (indoor) homes while you were gone.
One expert told the Washington Post that the ants can stay in a ball for up to 12 days—which means that residents may have to stay vigilant until early July.
Close to a century ago, in 1920, the people of Newport, Wales, found a pair of medieval kilns while they were working on the construction of their town’s Memorial Hall. Although one of the kilns was preserved, over the years, they were neglected and more or less forgotten; now the town is cleaning up and re-excavating the site.
Since they began the project, they’ve found not one but both of the kilns, which date back to the 15th century, when this area had a thriving pottery industry. Now, reports the BBC, the excavators have found about 10,000 piece of pottery dating back 500 years at the site.
“Archaeologist Nick Taverner said he had recovered more in 10 days than in a 40-year career in the field,” the BBC says.
These are small pieces of what were once pots and jugs; some even have the fingerprints of the medieval potters preserved on them. There are so many artifacts at the site that the team is hoping for volunteers to help wash and preserve them, to keep alive the memory of one of the best preserved medieval kilns in all of the United Kingdom.
George Bennie wanted to revolutionize transport. In 1920, while examining an early engine, he decided that trains would move more efficiently if they abandoned coal power for propellers. Further: he wanted this new vehicle to ride above the ground, so that other traffic could not slow it down.
Nine years later, in the heat of a massive advertising blitz, Bennie began testing his eponymous George Bennie Railplane outside of Glasgow. Two propellers, one on each side, pushed the Railplane, while two bogies—frameworks with wheels, also known as "trucks"—attached to the top rail held it in place. A series of electric motors provided the power. To brake, the propellers would be reversed, and the Railplane would slow to a halt.
Though the test track proved too small to allow such speeds, Bennie estimated that, in full operation, his invention could reach 120 miles per hour, meaning that the Railplane could shuttle passengers between Glasgow and Edinburgh in 20 minutes—quite a feat, considering even today that trip takes 50 minutes by train.
There were also plans to extend the Railplane into London, even into Paris. One such proposal boasted a three-and-a-half hour trip between London and Glasgow—two hours faster than it takes by rail today.
The fact that Bennie planned to build his Railplane above existing train lines would have also minimized both the cost and the environmental implications of the project, and would have allowed Railplane passengers to avoid the congestion caused by freight trains on the more typical rail lines.
Bennie’s Railplane even promised luxury: it had carpets, plush chairs, carpets, and curtained, stained-glass windows.
But the project never received the financing it needed to take off. Apparently, one reason is that railroad companies feared Bennie’s invention was too efficient, and they fretted over the potential revenue hit their other lines would take.
By 1937, Bennie had spent all of his own money promoting the Railplane, eventually going into bankruptcy. Though the test track has since been scrapped, the shed in which the Railplane was first built still stands today—with a plaque in Bennie's honor.
Video Wonders are audiovisual offerings that delight, inspire, and entertain. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
