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This Goat Video Is Good

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Maybe this goat is a teenager, and is just going through some stuff. Maybe its vandalism—shattering a glass door before absolutely booking it away from the scene of the crime—is an omen of a deeply criminal future, in which simple vandalism gives way to more complex antisocial behavior, in which, next time, the door shattering will be only the beginning of a Rube Goldberg-esque sequence that ends with the paper towels missing, the printer smashed on the floor, and the chairs piled up in the center of the room. Maybe this goat is a starving artist. Maybe it thought it was locked in a battle with another goat. Maybe it thought it was locked in a battle with glass. Maybe it just didn't know. Have a look for yourself:

This took place in Louisville, Colorado, on Sunday, at a polyurethane manufacturer's office. Greg Cappaert, spokesman for the company, told The Daily Camera that when the shattered glass was discovered on Monday morning, they suspected a robbery, until they reviewed security footage.

Cappaert has his own theory about what the goat was up to. "For like 20 minutes he sat and banged on the front door," he said. "He must have seen his reflection in the door and thought it was another goat. He was trying to beat up the whole building."

Okay, maybe, if you choose to believe that this particular goat is not the smartest in its herd. But then again, look at how expertly it avoids the falling glass.

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That's the work of a goat that's either very lucky or very good.


This Blind Kitten Got a Wheelchair, Thanks to Some Eighth-Graders

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The world can be a pretty dark place, almost as much as it can be a delightful place. File a group of eighth-graders who recently designed and built wheelchairs for a blind kitten with a spinal condition under delightful.

This kitten's name is Ray, and he's received some much-needed help from a group of middle school engineers. Born with eyes so small he is blind, in addition to spinal issues, Ray was cute, and happy, but could only use his front paws for getting around, according to Seacoast Online.

Luckily, Ray’s owner’s neighbor, middle school teacher Erin Bakkom, had an idea. She tasked two teams of eighth-grade students from her school to design a set of wheels for Ray. They then took the winning designs to the local library, using a 3D printer to build four- and two-wheel model wheelchairs, with Razor scooter wheels.

All of which means that Ray has now joined the ranks of other animals that have been equipped with makeshift wheelchairs. You can follow his journey on Instagram.

The Computer That Ran for School President

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In the spring of 1975, at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a computer ran for student-body president.

It was the leading edge of the era of personal computers. The IBM 360, first released in 1964, was the first big overhaul of IBM’s computer mainframe since 1952. It had what was, at the time, notable amounts of storage—1024 KB. It was the computer that had helped men reach the moon.

It could probably handle student government.

The IBM 360 ran at the top of the ticket of the Pro-Apathy Party, with Rick Horton as its first Vice President and Ray Walden as its second Vice President. The party had been formed by a group of students who wanted to “make the point that student government was pointless and elitist,” says Walden. (Few students voted, and the party that won always featured candidates from the Greek system, which voted together.) The Pro-Apathy Party planned to declare victory when—yet again—only 10 percent of the student body turned out at the polls.

“We also advocated for pencil sharpeners in every classroom and some other things that seemed funny at the time,” says Walden.

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The leadership of the Pro-Apathy Party came from an experimental university program called Centennial, which didn’t have regular classes. Instead, Centennial installed faculty as fellows who proposed and approved projects that students in the program could take on. It was mecca for coeds who wanted to live differently and challenge authority. (It has since been shut down.) Centennial students had previously formed a Surrealistic Light People's Party, which promised to build an actual 60-by-90-yard platform as part of its platform, and even tried to levitate the campus bell tower. (There were many less-than-totally-seriously student political parties in this era in Lincoln, including a “Cut the Crap” party.)

The Centennial students who formed the Pro-Apathy Party carefully read the school’s election rules and discovered that while students had to submit their names for office, different names could appear on the ballot. So while Horton, Walden, and the party’s slate of senators all ran under their own names, Brian Thompson, the apathetic presidential candidate, did not put his own name on the ballot. He had the IBM 360 run in his place.

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The ploy for attention worked. Pro-Apathy campaign posters featured a shot of Horton, Walden, and the IBM 360. (There were also posters featuring senatorial candidates snoozing in their chairs, and one with the party holding up spoons, a riff on a popular cereal ad campaign.) The party took the race seriously enough to argue for a slot in the debates, where Horton proposed strategies to reform the student government. The campaign also made the Daily Nebraskan, the student newspaper: “Pro-Apathy presidential candidate is a computer,” read the headline.

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The competition for student body president that year was fierce. According to the Nebraskan, there were “enough independents to form a football team.” When it came time to vote, however, the Pro-Apathy Party was proven right. Only a fraction of students bothered—around 10 percent, as usual.

The IBM 360 did not win the election, but it did come in third in the large field, with 278 votes. “So we didn't get to the point of having to deal with having some actually apathetic guy winning the presidency under the name of the mainframe,” says Walden. At least they made their point, and they had great pictures to prove it.

Found: A Letter to the Future From 1995

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In 1995, 39-year-old Greg Wilkinson was renovating his home in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, and decided to leave a letter in the wall of the last room he worked on. He had spent some time renovating homes in London, where he usually found old newspapers beneath the flooring. He had found it fascinating to have that glimpse from the past, and he wanted to give whoever eventually tore down the wall the same pleasure. He began the letter, “Hello, whoever you are.”

That “whoever” turned out to be Sasha Ilic, a tradesman who was renovating the kitchen of the same house, 22 years later.

He wasn’t sure it was real, the Sydney Morning Herald reports, until he saw the photo Wilkinson had included of himself and his wife, Rosyln.

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He and Roslyn had bought the house in 1989, Wilkinson wrote, when it was uninhabitable. They had gut-renovated the place, and now it was almost finished. Roslyn was pregnant with their first child. The couple had met in a pub in England.

In his letter, Wilkinson painted a picture of life in 1995. “The big deal at the moment is the Internet,” he wrote. “Every man and his dog wants to ‘surf’ the Internet. Please tell me this expression has now died.” At the time, AIDS was one of the biggest issues of the day, and Rupert Murdoch was making a big play to transform Australian rugby. Wilkinson also made some predictions. Families would go back to having one income, he thought; China would democratize and become a major economic player.

On one prediction, though, he was dead wrong. “Ros reckons you will be reading this in the year 2020. I built the wall, and I reckon closer to 2060,” he wrote.

Ros, who died from breast cancer in 1997, was correct.

Atlas Obscura's Total Eclipse Festival Is Officially Sold Out

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To everyone who's already purchased a ticket to Atlas Obscura's Total Eclipse Festival, happening August 19-21 in Eastern Oregon: Thank you! As of today, the event—an extravaganza of science, live music, and celestial wonder presented with our partners at Elysian Brewing—has officially sold out.

If you didn't manage to snag a ticket, there are still plenty of ways to celebrate the upcoming solar eclipse with us. Be sure to follow our coverage in the coming weeks, as we have an amazing package of stories and features planned for the run up to August 21. During the event itself, we'll also be reporting live from the festival grounds. A great way to avoid missing out any of this is to subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

For those of you who will be joining us, we're so excited to share this experience with you. We'll be reaching out to ticket holders soon with additional details, as well as announcing the final festival lineup. Keep an eye out for an email from us, and check the event page for the latest updates on speakers and performers. Several new presenters have already been announced, including Summer Ash, Daniel Whiteson, Jorge Cham, and Helado Negro.

The Remains of a Swiss Couple Have Been Found, 75 Years After They Went Missing

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Seventy-five years ago a couple, Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin, left home to milk their cows in a meadow above Chandolin, Switzerland, high in the Swiss Alps.

They never returned, and their ultimate fate has been a mystery for decades. But last week, worker near a ski lift saw two bodies that were exposed because of a melting glacier. The remains had identifying papers and had been dressed in clothing appropriate for 1942. Authorities later confirmed the bodies do indeed belong to the lost Dumoulins, who apparently died after having fallen into a crevasse. “They were perfectly preserved in the glacier and their belongings were intact," an official told Le Matin, according to The Guardian.

“I can say that after 75 years of waiting this news gives me a deep sense of calm," Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, the youngest of their seven children, told Le Matin.

Marcelin was a shoemaker and Francine a teacher. Udry-Dumoulin said this was the first time her mother accompanied her father on such a trip, since she had spent many of the prior years pregnant. After they disappeared, their children were separated and "became strangers," Udry-Dumoulin said. Now they plan to have the funeral for their parents they have been waiting over seven decades for.

“We spent our whole lives looking for them, without stopping," their daughter added. "We thought that we could give them the funeral they deserved one day."

Mysterious Sheet Music Confirmed to Be Lost Work of Gustav Holst

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Years after being discovered in a New Zealand symphony’s standard archive clean-up, pages of hand-written sheet music have been confirmed to be lost compositions by famed composer Gustav Holst.

Best known for his sweeping orchestral suite, The Planets, Holst has become one of the 20th century’s most renowned classical composers, and the Bay of Plenty Symphonia, where the handwritten sheets were found, were more than a little surprised by their discovery. As announced on their website, the symphony was conducting a standard clearing of their music library a few years ago, tossing out old photo copies and such, when they found what appeared to be pages of original Holst music from 1906. Most remarkable among the music being a previously unpublished version of, “Folk Songs from Somerset,” a collection of folk songs that Holst once conducted.

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Uncertain if they were authentic, but intrigued enough to keep them around, the symphony squirrelled away the pages in a drawer. It was only recently that they were verified as being hand-written by Holst. Among the evidence that the pages were real was one of Holst’s addresses written at the top of one page, and handwriting and signatures that matched that of the composer’s other work, which were confirmed by the Holst Archive in England.

While the find is remarkable, the symphony is unclear how they ended up in their library. As far as they can trace back, it is likely that they were added to the collection by a flautist who worked with a previous incarnation of the BOP Symphonia.

What will happen to the music now is still undecided, but the symphony says they would like to get it into the hands of Holst researchers. Until then, they perform it.

A Large Asteroid Impact Might Explain Mars' Geological Nuttiness

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Mars is close, so sometimes it can seem almost familiar, but it's important not to forget that it is a profoundly strange place. It also two oblong moons made up of an unusual combination of materials, its northern hemisphere is smoother and younger than its southern half, and its mantle contains some rare elements not normally found in planets. New research offers a possible explanation: Mars is so geologically weird because was struck by a massive asteroid over four billion years ago.

Stephen Mojzsis, a geologist at University of Colorado, Boulder, and Ramon Brasser, an astronomer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, analyzed Martian meteorite samples and computer models, and found that only an asteroid at least 745 miles across (Texas-sized, roughly) could explain the planet's distinctive features. An asteroid that large could deposit the rare elements, including platinum, osmium, and iridium, that are found in the planet's mantle in sufficient quantities. It would also be large enough to significantly alter the landscape of the northern hemisphere and create a ring of debris around the planet. That debris, a mixture of Mars and asteroid material, would then have coalesced to form Phobos and Deimos, the two moons.

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A massive impact on Mars is not a new idea. The concept was first proposed 30 years ago, and is known as the single impact hypothesis. But there are competing explanations for the difference between the planet's hemispheres, including plate tectonics, erosion, and oceans. Computer modeling and studies such as Mojzsis and Brasser's are making the single impact hypothesis a more popular option.


They're in: Your Stories About Cheese on Apple Pie

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If you are the type to add cheese to apple pie, you might not realize that you are at the center of a long controversy. In a recent article, we discussed the historical roots of the divisive culinary practice, and asked you to vote on whether or not adding cheese to pie is a sin. (Within the Atlas Obscura office, friendships were edged to their brinks over this question.)

Though many people who grew up with it expect their apple pie to be served with cheese, especially cheddar, others distrust the concept. One commenter perfectly encapsulated this: “Why in God's name would you put cheese on a pie?”

The survey shows a handy victory for cheese-with-apple-pie fans: fewer than 40 percent of Atlas Obscura readers believe it is wrong to add cheese to apple pie.

Many of you also wrote in with your reactions. Some wanted to voice their disapproval, like Kevin from Oklahoma:

Cheese on pies is horrific enough. But to put something as wretched as Cheddar cheese on apple pie? Despicable. Because nothing tastes better when covered with cheddar.

Others pointed out regional variants in the types of cheese added to apple pie:

In the Ozarks, apple pie is more commonly served with American cheese than cheddar. I've heard a few reasons for the difference, but the two biggest relate to convenience (Route 66 diners not necessarily having cheddar on hand) and heritage (cheddar is an English cheese).

Or referenced similar recipes outside of the U.S.:

Fruit cake with cheese is very popular in England, fruit cake and Wensleydale being a particular favourite.

But most of you discussed your own encounters with cheesy apple pie, and we are highlighting a few of those below. The stories are lightly edited for length and clarity. When needed, we are including each reader's home state or country.

Gill:

In 1976 I was taking Amtrak home to Michigan from San Francisco. I was treating myself to dinner in the dining car. The waiter said in his southern drawl that they had some fresh apple pie, and would I like a slice for dessert? I'm thinking why not... So I asked him if they had any cheddar that I could have with it? But of course sir was his instant answer.

So sippin' my coffee, waiting for my pie... I see my waiter coming down the isle, with my pie... with the biggest pile of aerosol cheddar cheese mounded on top. Even from 13 feet away you could tell the pie was as great as he had sold it to me... ruined with faux cheese piled on top of it. On arrival he blurted out... this isn't what you meant was it?

I explained how white sharp cheddar that would burn the roof of your mouth is what I'd grown up with... I swear I saw the light go on over his head, and he offered to take it away, no way was I gonna waste some good apple pie, so I just scrapped it off. He assured me he was going to try it at home, so perhaps I helped to spread the word.

Ari:

One of my favorite memories from a college history class about Early Modern England was when the professor got distracted from his lecture by talking about Yorkshire, which led to talking about Wensleydale, which led to him telling us that the best Wensleydale cheese he ever had was actually in Portland, Oregon where it had been crumbled over hot apple pie: "a combination that is, in my opinion, one of the better reasons for being alive."

I've always remembered that story because I was DETERMINED to try Wensleydale at some point! (Finally managed it on a visit to England a couple of years ago.)

Annie (Oregon):

My family ate apple pie regularly. Keep in mind that somewhere along their migrations from New England and Virginia to the Pacific NW, pie became a staple, not merely a dessert. It was often eaten for breakfast (the first one, before you did chores). On a special occasion, we'd get out the ancient ice cream crank to mix up some custard ice cream, but the ice cream was far more likely to be served on its own rather than accompanying pie.

When I was in junior high, we were encouraged to explore outside our own food traditions. I found a recipe for apple pie that included grated cheddar in the crust. That was about as exotic as I could go in those days, and so I made a beautiful pie, with a cheesy crust. My classmates loved it. I didn't, and have not made one since.

David (Arizona):

It's cheese with apple pie. The cheese is a palate cleanser, much like pickled ginger is with sushi. A nibible of cheddar cleanses the palate of all that sweetness so you can continue to eat way too much pie. Grapes with a nibble of cheese is pretty amazing too.

Allan:

My Great Aunt, whom I considered my second grandmother, was born and raised in Broken Bow, Nebraska. She made apple pie from her own apple trees. She insisted that each slice be topped with sharp cheddar cheese. As a kid raised in Chicago and used to sweet desserts, I found this to be extremely odd. Yet no one questioned anything edible from our family’s greatest baker. I learned to accept this combination of sweet and sharp flavors. She made her own ice cream, yet she did not serve her apple pie a-la-mode. It was cheese.

Bret:

When I was growing up in Northern Virginia, the Roy Rogers fast food restaurants offered a dessert called 'Apple Cheese Crisp', basically an apple cobbler with a cheese-streusel crumble topping.

Curt:

In the 1960s I frequently took the train to Spartanburg [South Carolina]. Once out of Union Station, the "last call" for the dining car rang out. I had saved up to splurge on dessert, apple pie with cheddar cheese. It was a thick cold slice on the warm pie and I enjoyed it past Charlottesville.

I have ordered apple pie, warmed and with a slice of cheese, and gotten very skeptical looks from servers. Many places only have American slices, which are not a sharp or tasty, but better than nothing. There's a secret ingredient for apple pie in general that especially works well with the cheese option. [optional spoiler: fennel seed]

André:

When I was growing up in the Boston area in the '50s, apple pie was a common breakfast or snack food (the balance shifted to muffins long ago). At drugstore counters, it was invariably served with a container of light cream, as was a cup of coffee. (In some other parts of the country coffee was generally black, and iced coffee therefore did not exist.) Cheese was fancier; ice cream was for dessert. I do think that pie for breakfast - i.e., not just dessert - which is a New England tradition makes a difference in how it's accompanied.

Mary (Illinois):

I have never had apple pie with cheese but my mom made something very similar, just without the pie crust. Everyone went crazy over this—it's easy to make and tasty. The ingredients are: apple filling (like pie filling), pre-cooked breakfast links (maple or plain) cut into segments, and extra sharp cheddar cheese crumbled (Cracker Barrel). All of these things are mixed and layered on top of a bed of noodles. I think it is baked it at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes. The cheddar and the apples are perfect together!

Second Giant Squid of the Year Caught Off the Coast of Ireland

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What is happening off the coast of Dingle, Ireland? For the second time in recent months, a fishing trawler there has pulled a giant squid out of the waters.

According to the BBC, the trawler Cú na Mara caught the rare squid in its nets on Tuesday, just two months after catching their first squid, which measured around 20 feet long. The first catch was the first of its kind since 1995, when Captain Patrick Flannery’s father landed a two giant squids in the same year as well.

For perspective, there have only been seven reported giant squid caught off Ireland since 1673. As the BBC points out, four of those have now been captured by members of the same family.

The newest one is a bit smaller than the last, measuring in at just under 19 feet, but still more than enough to appear in your next nightmare. If you want to see it anyway, it is to be put on display in the Dingle Oceanworld aquarium, where future generations of the Flannery family can go to view their family’s chosen nemesis.

This Japanese Scroll Was Re-Printed a Million Times—700 Years Before Gutenberg

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Empress Shōtoku occupied the Japanese throne twice. She ruled first from 749 to 758 C.E. as Empress Kōken, abdicating because she fell into a depression. In 761, following her mother’s death, a Buddhist monk named Dōkyō was brought in to help her. The two grew close, and Shōtoku soon promoted him to high levels of government far out of step with his nominal political experience. Her cousin Fujiwara no Nakamaro questioned her judgment, and a battle ensued that ended in the cousin's death and Shōtoku’s renewed claim to the throne.

With Dōkyō at her side, she ruled as Empress Shōtoku from 764 to 770. But there was a problem. In killing her cousin, Shōtoku had committed parricide—a significant sin. It was almost certainly Dōkyō who suggested the way to absolve her: the copying of a dhāranī, a Buddhist ritual speech, the act of which was believed to provide spiritual benefits.

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So Empress Shōtoku did something that would reverberate throughout world history: she ordered the printing of one million dhāranī texts. Once copied, these texts would be sent to the 10 largest Buddhist temples in Japan.

The one million figure was, in the words of John Bidwell, Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at the Morgan Library & Museum, “a notional number” meant to exemplify Shōtoku’s power. But to some observers, the mere concept might seem impossible: this was nearly 700 years before Johannes Gutenberg printed his famous Gutenberg Bibles, a book that many incorrectly attribute to the beginning of mass printing.

In fact, printing has existed since at least the early 700s. The Hyakumantō dhāranī—as Shōtoku’s scrolls came to be known—were printed using a woodblock technique in which the texts were carved into slabs of wood. Then ink was applied, and the wood was pressed into paper. The technique was most likely pioneered in China and then migrated into Japan.

Though there are printings dated before the Hyakumantō dhāranī, these other samples, according to Bidwell, “don’t survive the way the thousands of these [Hyakumantō dhāranī scrolls] have survived."

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In the case of the Hyakumantō dāranī, an expert craftsman likely cut the woodblock. Then the rote work of filling the woodblock with ink and copying it onto paper an astronomical number of times probably fell to Buddhist monks, as printing was still too new and too rare for “printer” to be a paid profession.

Each scroll was inserted into a mini wooden pagoda, which measured roughly 13.6 centimeters (5.4 inches) in height and had an inner cavity. Once the scroll was inserted, a “seven-tiered spire” was placed on top. Together, the pagoda and the dhāranī text inside could be sent to the Japanese Buddhist temples.

When Gutenberg printed his Bibles, he did not, like Shōtoku, use woodblock printing. His preferred technique was movable type, in which documents were printed using a series of single-symbol pieces. Yet even this predates him: wooden movable type existed in China in the 11th century, while Korea has used a metal movable type similar to Gutenberg’s since the 13th century.

Gutenberg’s genius was different. Though he did not invent the metal movable type, he did commercialize it for a Western audience. Because Gutenberg used a Latin-based alphabet, which has very few characters (letters), movable type was uniquely suited for success. Instead of individually copying whole sums of writing for woodblock printing, or logging thousands of characters for movable type, Gutenberg’s system used Latin letters to easily form infinite combinations.

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Whether Gutenberg heard of the idea from East Asia or created a system that had already been invented is unclear. According to Eva Hanebutt-Benz of the Gutenberg Museum, “the question if there was a direct influence from [East Asia] on the invention of printing with movable type in Germany around 1440 cannot be solved so far in the context of the scholarly research.”

Two of the Hyakumantō dhāranī scrolls and their mini pagodas now reside in the Morgan Library and Museum. Appropriately, the Morgan also displays three of Gutenberg’s original Bibles.

Downtown Atlanta’s Lost Psychedelic Theme Park

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Today the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, is the headquarters of a multinational news corporation. Inside, photo-snapping tourists mix with serious people in business attire, buzzing about, waiting for the next big news story to break. But what many people who didn't grow up in the Atlanta area don't know is that just decades ago, this physical nexus of straight-faced news was the home of a psychedelic indoor playground where you could ricochet around in a giant pinball machine, ride a crystal unicorn carousel, explore a world of living hats, or watch a puppet Elton John descend from the ceiling.

It only existed for a fleeting moment, but the specter of The World of Sid and Marty Krofft can still be felt, even decades after the space was transformed into a much less silly place.

The brothers Sid and Marty Krofft were behind some of the most iconic children’s entertainment of the 1970s. With shows such as H.R. Pufnstuf, The Bugaloos, Land of the Lost, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Lidsville, and other far-out celebrations of unleashed imagination, they created a whole universe of unique characters and concepts. Krofft shows played like live-action cartoons, and were known for their bizarre, fully costumed characters, cosmically high concepts, and bubbly musical numbers. Both at the time, and in the decades since, the Kroffts' work has been assumed to be the product of drugged-out dreaming, but they have said that drugs had little to do with their creations, even while admitting that many of the people watching were probably high as a kite.

By the mid-1970s, their star had risen to the point that the brothers were able to open their own theme park.

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The Omni International Complex opened in downtown Atlanta in 1976 as a grand commercial extension of the Omni Coliseum, which had opened just a few years earlier. Where the coliseum had the Atlanta Hawks and concerts by the likes of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra to draw crowds to the inner city, the complex space needed its own anchor. When it opened, it was home to two office buildings, a luxury hotel, shops, restaurants, and an ice-skating rink, but the jewel in its crown was The World of Sid and Marty Krofft, one of the first all-indoor amusement parks.

The Kroffts had no formal experience creating amusement parks, but their thriving television empire, with its surreal costumed characters and proudly artificial settings, seemed custom suited to such an attraction. Unsurprisingly, the finished park suggested a hallucinatory dream world, albeit contained within a massive shopping mall.

The park, much of which was open to the complex’s central atrium, consisted of multiple levels that visitors could make their way through starting at the top, and heading down. Guests would enter by riding up an eight-story escalator, where they would pass under two 18-foot mime statues that guarded the first level of the park, the Fantasy Fair. Described in one ad as a “wacky, wonderful spoof of the age-old carnival,” the floor featured roving live performances by sword-swallowers, psychics, jugglers, and clowns, all decked out in Krofft-ian strangeness.

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One level below that was Tranquility Terrace, where the vibe was decidedly hectic. The main attraction on this floor was the Crystal Carousel, a merry-go-round with concentric spinning rings where riders could mount unicorns, whales, and other creatures made to look like they were sculpted from crystal. There were also shops, places to eat, and an amphitheater with live performances by famous Krofft television characters such as Pufnstuf and Sigmund.

Below that was Uptown, which was home to the park’s largest ride, the Pinball Machine. It put guests inside of a cart shaped like a giant pinball and sent them pinging through the massive game. Fittingly, the ride spit riders out into an actual arcade.

After Uptown, there was Lidsville, a level of the park modeled after the Krofft’s show of the same name. This level was filled with hat-shaped buildings that were the homes of hat-shaped people (Krofft-logic), for guests to explore. It also featured a theater that hosted the park’s musical extravaganza, a showcase for puppet versions of popular music stars including Stevie Wonder and David Bowie. According to the brochure, the show also incorporated a patriotic finale with eagles, pilgrims, and the Liberty Bell.

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The final section of the park lowered guests below the main floor in a mine shaft elevator to the Living Island Adventure, a cart ride through the world of H.R. Pufnstuf. During the ride, visitors were chased by Pufnstuf baddie Witchiepoo. Especially noteworthy was the grim Heavenly Slumber Cemetery, which was home to bizarre talking mushrooms “with the faces and voices of Cagney, Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson.”

The park marked its opening with a grand celebration on May 23, 1976. It was a star-studded, tux-and-tails affair that saw some 3,000 guests come out to inaugurate the attraction. In attendance were celebrities of the day including the singer Tony Orlando and the ice skater Peggy Fleming, as well as local big shots such as then-Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson and then-Georgia Governor George Busbee. According to the Atlanta Constitution, Mayor Jackson called it the “greatest opening since the opening of Gone With the Wind.” Orlando, who was friends with the Kroffts, summed up the spirit of the park by calling it the “innards of their minds” and a “megastructure thought up at a mega-moment.” A perfectly 1970s encapsulation of a perfectly 1970s creation.

But the good times, as they say, didn’t last.

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From the outset, The World of Sid and Marty Krofft was expensive, with an initial cost estimate of $14 million (that's about $60 million in 2017 dollars, adjusted for inflation). But even before it opened its doors, project costs had well risen past projections, and after the park debuted things only got worse. The carousel, which the Kroffts would later say had to be designed by “aerospace guys,” and the pinball coaster both experienced maintenance issues that drove up costs as well. By the end of its brief life, the park was projected to have cost as much as $20 million (or $86 million in today's dollars).

In the beginning, curious crowds arrived in promising numbers, but they quickly dwindled for a number of reasons. For all the psychedelic sound and fury packed into every corner of the park, the entire experience only took about five hours. The ticket prices ($5.75 for adults, $4.25 for children) were also considered pretty high at the time. The only other amusement park in the region, Six Flags Over Georgia, was much cheaper, and offered many more hours of entertainment per visit.

But the main reason the Kroffts have often cited in the years since the park’s demise is that people simply didn’t want to bring their families to what was then considered a bad part of town. Atlanta officials had promised that downtown was going to improve, and it did, but in 1976, it was still a far cry from the tourist-friendly city center it is today.

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The park was built to accommodate 6,000 visitors a day. When it closed on November 7, 1976, just months after opening, it had only brought in an estimated 300,000 guests.

The Kroffts sought additional funding to keep the park open, but ultimately failed to convince any additional backers. They said they planned to reopen at a later date, and even open similar parks in other locations, but neither of those pledges would come to pass.

Today, the Kroffts continue to create children’s programs with their singular flair. Most recently they've relaunched updated versions of some of the properties that made them famous, including Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. They've never launched another theme park.

In 1987, CNN relocated its operations to the Omni International, eventually rebranding the entire thing as the CNN Center. Nearly all traces of the Krofft’s park have been wiped away, but the giant escalator, still the record holder for the longest free-standing escalator in the world, remains. Today it delivers people into a scale model of Earth, but its very existence recalls a time when it led to places far stranger.

This Moving Light Fixture Mimics a Blooming Flower

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The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has on permanent display a light fixture that mimics a blooming plant. The installation, called Shylight, was designed in collaboration with artists and scientists in order to capture the process of nyctinasty—a circadian reaction to darkness that certain species of flowers (such as tulips and poppies) experience. When night falls, these flowers close their petals. Sunrise triggers them to reopen.

Made of silk, the Shylight flows toward the ground in a series of movements that parallels those of nyctinastic flowers in the morning. At its apex, the Shylight opens up to reveal the light inside of it. Then it retreats back into itself and buries the light, signaling the onset of evening.

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Video Wonders are audiovisual offerings that delight, inspire, and entertain. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

Mysterious, Yellow, Sponge-Like Globs Are Fouling French Beaches

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Recently, on France's western coast, thousands of sponge-like balls have been appearing, strewn across 18 miles of beaches, from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Le Touquet. And no one seems to know where they are coming from.

The balls, which are not pieces of marine sponges, have disturbed locals, though officials have said that they are not toxic or dangerous.

According to BMFTV, a clean-up is now underway. The president of a French environmental organization telling the broadcaster that sponges smell like an "oil product," and could be the scattered remains of some kind of building material.

Alternatively, as Gizmodo points out, the sponges could be the result of some minor environmental disaster: Sea foam created when water and air are bound together by some kind of human-generated stuff in the waters off the coast—like a detergent of some sort, or raw sewage.

Whatever it is, it'll surely ruin your day at la plage.

The Abstract Beauty of One of the World's Harshest Climates

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Humans are not built to withstand extreme heat: sunburn, heatstroke, dehydration. All indications are that heatwaves, of the kind that recently grounded flights in Arizona, damaged fisheries off Tasmania, and resulted in the highest temperature ever recorded, in Iran, are going to become more intense and frequent. Even deserts, already among the hottest and most inhospitable places on the planet, will feel the impact. The remorselessness of deserts seems somehow more symbolic and urgent today than ever before.

In these regions—some of the most sparsely populated in the world—it’s essential to be prepared. Otherwise, says photographer Luca Tombolini, “you just aren’t in the condition to photograph because you’re probably thinking about how to save yourself.” Tombolini photographs deserts with an eye for “plays of symmetries and purity.” His large format images show pastel-hued dunes that form sweeping, abstract shapes, and endless horizons under bleached blue skies.

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When he shoots deserts—which he does primarily in the Moroccan Sahara and Canary Islands—Tombolini explores in a 4x4 and either sets up camp or stays in the nearest village. “GPS is a huge help as once night comes in, the place changes radically and directions that seemed easy during the day are very tricky to find at night,” he says. There’s also an inevitable unpredictability to deserts. “Sandstorms are a great experience, which puts you back very quickly to your realistic role on Earth: Land and sky merge, it’s like standing in the middle of a blank, noisy canvas.”

Given the pace of climate change, it is uncertain how much longer will humans be even able to visit such extreme landscapes. “Climate change is the outcome of this new relationship we established with nature,” says Tombolini. “It’s a gamble we are in the making without even knowing who we are playing against.”

Atlas Obscura has a selection of Tombolini's abstract desertscapes.

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The 19th-Century Lithuanians Who Smuggled Books to Save Their Language

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In 1899, a pair of smugglers were crossing the border between Lithuania and East Prussia. Clutching their packs, they lay on a bank along the Prussian part of the river Šešupe, and for hours they studied the movements of the guards on the other side. They could not afford to get caught.

When it was dark, they pushed across the Šešupe and ran 10 miles to a distribution center in the Lithuanian village of Pilviškiai. There they discovered that Russian authorities were searching for them.

Soon they would return to Prussia, where they would hide out for several weeks before deciding to abandon the region entirely. Within a year, they would be on a boat to Scotland.

But that first night, before they fled, they needed to drop off their smuggled goods—the very reason that authorities were after them. They opened their packs, and out poured books.

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In 2004, a Lithuanian man named Jonas Stepšis recounted this story. The two smugglers were his father and uncle, and they had joined what became a nationwide book-smuggling movement as a part of their opposition to the Russian Empire.

Tsarist Russia had dominated Lithuania after Poland-Lithuania, a Commonwealth formed in 1569, was annexed and divided up among Prussia, Austria, and Russia in 1795. The majority of Lithuania fell under Russian control.

Tsars tried early on to enforce loyalty, finding a particular target in the Roman Catholic Church—an historic Lithuanian institution that Russia saw as a threat to its power. Russian authorities demolished numerous chapels and prohibited the construction of wayside shrines, which were essentially omnipresent throughout Lithuania (there were roughly two shrines per kilometer). Not prepared to give up their culture, Lithuanians built new shrines anyway.

Though a group of Lithuanian university students and clergy led a violent uprising against Russia in 1831, resistance had long operated on a small scale. Lithuania had a tiny population (around one million people) and stood little chance of defeating a military power like the Russian Empire.

But by the middle of the 19th century, that was changing. The resistance had intensified.

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In 1863, a massive insurrection: some 66,000 Lithuanians serfs, traders, and clergy took up arms against the Russian government. Soon after their rebellion was crushed, leaving thousands dead or exiled to Siberia, Tsar Alexander II issued a harsh crackdown.

In 1864, the Governor General of Lithuania, Mikhail Muravyov, forbade the use of Latin Lithuanian language primers—a proclamation that, two years later, led to a total ban on the Lithuanian press.

Language had long been a point of contention in Tsarist Lithuania. In the middle of the 19th century, in order to assimilate the peasant class, the Russian scholar Alexander Hilferding proposed that the Lithuanian language, which uses a Latin alphabet, be converted to a Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

The Lithuanian press ban was therefore an attempt to eradicate the Lithuanian language and promote loyalty to the Russian cause. Lithuanian children were also required to attend Russian state schools, where they would learn the Cyrillic alphabet through books printed by the Russian government.

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According to historians, Russia thought little of the ban when they first initiated it. They didn’t see Lithuanians as belonging to a unique nationality, and they assumed that resistance, if anything, would be minimal.

They were wrong.

Almost immediately, individuals sprung up to spread Lithuanian writing. Since they couldn’t publish books in their homeland, many Lithuanians began printing them abroad and smuggling them back into their own country.

Thus appeared the first of the knygnešiai—or book-carriers—who, in a desperate bid to save their language, transported books across the border and illegally disseminated them throughout Lithuania.

Initially, the knygnešiai worked alone. They carried books in sacks or covered wagons, delivering them to stations set up throughout Lithuania. They performed most of their operations at night, when the fewest guards were stationed along the border. Winter months—especially during blizzards—were popular crossing times.

Lithuanians went to great lengths to conceal their illegal books. TheForty Years of Darkness by Juozas Vaišnora reports of female smugglers who dressed as beggars and hid books in sacks of cheese, eggs, or bread. Some even strapped tool belts to their waists and pretended to be craftsmen, disguising newspapers under their thick clothes.

Bishop Motiejus Valančius, a historian and author of religious and secular works who later earned the label “the greatest Lithuanian personality in the 19th century,” organized the first large-scale attempt to smuggle books across the Lithuanian border. In a bid to publish more prayer books, he sent money to neighboring Prussia to construct a printing press there. Beginning in 1867, he tasked a number of priests with bringing the books back into Lithuania and distributing them to locals.

Though at first Valančius only published Latin reprints of religious texts, as his operation grew, so did his ambitions. He began to commission original works, including many he had written, and his burgeoning team shuttled them across the border.

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The fact that so many of these early smugglers were priests is not surprising. Lithuania’s strong Catholic roots—and Tsarist Russia’s historic hostility to the Church—made the Catholic Church an instant symbol of resistance to Russian authority. But as the smuggling operations continued, they became more secular in character. In addition to prayer books, Valančius started printing journals and almanacs in Latin Lithuanian with the hopes of teaching Lithuanian history and culture. He was responsible for the printing of over 19,000 books in East Prussia.

Following the lead of Valančius, individual knygnešiai soon organized themselves into larger smuggling societies that bore optimistic names like the Morning Star, Stimulus, Rebirth, the Sprout, the Truth, Compulsion, and the Ray of Light. They began importing books from as far away as the United States, where the sizable Lithuanian-American populated assisted them in printing. (Over 700 copies of Lithuanian books were published there.) These new organizations distributed textbooks, yearbooks, science books, fiction, folklore, religious sermons, and other publications.

Despite its popularity, smuggling was far from easy. The risks were high, and the Lithuanian border was not easy to cross. Three lines of Russian security forced the knygnešiai to exercise extreme caution.

The first line comprised soldiers along the border “filed so densely that they could see each other.” In the second line, another row of soldiers waited, this time spread further out. The last defenses were the gendarmes—or Russian Empire policemen—who rode on horseback through villages and sought information from local informants.

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Those who failed to beat the Russian border security were “tied to a post and whipped,” then either imprisoned, sent to Siberia, or—if they tried to run—simply shot.

Soldiers confiscated any books and journals found on the smugglers—and burned them.

The number of book smugglers that were caught or punished is unclear, but the first major arrest seems to have occurred between 1870 and 1871, when Russian forces sentenced 11 associates of Valančius. Eight of the smugglers—five priests, a farmer, and a noble—were exiled to Siberia. Valančius’ operation was permanently compromised. A few years later, in 1875, he died.

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His de facto successor was a peasant: Jurgis Bielinis, an ardent Lithuanian nationalist who inherited his political edge from his father.

Bielinis met Valančius in 1873, a year after he graduated from a university in Rīga, Latvia. By then, the resistance was in full swing, and as a passionate defender of Lithuania, Bielinis wanted in. His contact with Valančius determined him to defend the language he loved. He would not rest, he said, until “the Muscovites got out of Lithuania.”

In 1885, Bielinis created the Garšviai knygnešiai society, which grew to be the largest book-carrying operation in Lithuania, later earning him the title of “King of the Book Carriers.” Members of the Garšviai knygnešiai society—who soon numbered in the thousands—pooled together money to buy books from Prussian publishers and then distributed them to paying “subscribers” throughout Lithuania. Bielinis is credited with smuggling nearly half of all of the books brought into Lithuania from East Prussia (and even passing some along to Lithuanians living in Latvia).

By the 1890s, Russian authorities were on his case, and a reward was placed on him. Several manhunts ensued, but Bielinis consistently managed to evade capture.

At the turn of the century, despite his fugitive status, Bielinis even created a Lithuanian newspaper of his own, which he delivered to residents who bought a subscription from him. The newspaper, known as the White Eagle, was printed on one of the only presses active in Lithuania.

He worked on the project with fellow smuggler Steponas Povilionis, who recalled:

"In my house, there used to be a book warehouse of Bielinis, which continuously increase or decrease in volumes. In autumn 1896, Bielinis brought from Prussia a small printing press and decided he wanted to publish a newspaper of his own. I made a draw for letters, and Bielinis taught me to assemble them"

Yet Bielinis’ trajectory from peasant to intellectual and defender of the Lithuanian language was not uncommon: since the Russian Empire abolished serfdom in 1861, a new class of peasant-intellectuals had begun to take shape in Lithuania. Many became active in the national cause.

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In fact, peasants, which Zigmantas Kiaupa in The History of Lithuania describes as “the most faithful user[s] of the Lithuanian language,” comprised the vast majority of the knygnešiai. According to the same book, roughly 86 percent of smugglers were peasants. Bielinis was only the most visible member of a rising national peasant movement.

By the late 1800s, the knygnešiai were getting creative. Some managed to enlist the help of Russian police—for example, in 1895, the head officer of Ariogala in central Lithuania joined the smuggling conspiracy. Others exploited loopholes in the press ban. In one instance, Lithuanians printed texts on slabs of clay as the Babylonians had once done. To the chagrin of authorities, clay tablets weren’t considered books, so they technically weren't illegal.

Locals also set up secret schools that taught Lithuanian children their language using illegal books. To avoid attention, Lithuanian children still attended Russian-operated state schools, but it was in the Lithuanian schools, they were told, where their real education happened.

It is unclear how many Lithuanian books were printed and smuggled illegally, but between 1891 and 1901, Russian officials confiscated over 173,259 publications, a rate that nearly doubled in the remaining few years of the ban (1901-1904). This has led some historians to estimate that the actual numbers of smuggled books totaled in the millions. Regardless, nearly every town and village had a stockpile of illegal books and a secret Lithuanian school to go with it.

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By the height of the book smuggling operations at the end of the 19th century, all sorts of Lithuanians participated: once the illegal publications were ferried across the border, everyone from traveling salesmen to poor widows, farmers, students, doctors, and organists conspired to distribute them. Mere possession of illegal books could incur harsh punishments, but this did not faze Lithuanians who felt they had little left to lose.

By the 1880s, channeling a growing restlessness, secret newspapers like Aušra—meaning The Dawn—rallied against Russification and whispered of independence.

Lithuanians began organizing choirs and performing secret plays that spoke of the resilience and beauty of Lithuanian language and culture. By the end of the 1900s, “picnic outings”—wherein Lithuanians met to discuss politics among themselves—came into vogue.

The Lithuanian national rebirth was underway.

Father Julijonas Kaspervacivius writes, “the work of restoring Lithuania’s independence began not in 1918 [when Lithuania declared itself a state], but rather at the time of the book carriers. With bundles of books and pamphlets on their backs, these warriors were the first to start preparing the ground for independence, the first to propagate the idea that it was imperative to throw off the heavy yoke of Russian oppression.”

In other words, what had begun as an attempt to assimilate Lithuanians to Russian culture in fact made the region more fiercely independent than before.

By the turn of the century, Lithuania peasants organized local board meetings and petitioned the Russian Empire to end the ban—the Russian government fielded over 100 such requests.

Even in Russia, the ban became unpopular, especially among intellectuals who opposed its wide and often vaguely defined scope. In 1897, Russia’s Council of Ministers first declared the ban a failure; it was finally rescinded in 1904, in an attempt to reconcile minority groups within the Empire during the Russian-Japanese War.

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It was, however, too late. Lithuanian resistance to Russia was at a high.

Driven by the national zeal, Bielinis soon began talking more openly of independence from Russia. He became the de facto spokesmen for a Lithuanian patriotism that would provide the force behind the February 1918 Act of Independence of Lithuania.

Bielinis just wasn’t there to witness it: he died in January 1918, a month before independence was formalized.

Today, Bielinis is memorialized not only through stamps and statues, but also through a holiday: the Day of Knygnešys, or the Day of the Book Carrier, which takes place every year on his birthday.

Bielinis has, in many ways, become a symbol of pride both in Lithuania and abroad. He is remembered not only as a national patriot, but also as a hero for those who profess the power of the written word—historical proof that a rag-tag group of rebels armed with books really can triumph over an empire.

A Kid Found a 1.2-Million-Year-Old Stegomastodon Fossil By Tripping Over It

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Jude Sparks wasn’t looking for fossils; he was running around with his brothers on a desert walk. He wasn’t looking where he was going. He tripped.

He had fallen over the fossilized bones of a creature that died at least 1.2 million years ago.

At first, Sparks and his family thought it might be fossilized wood, The New York Times reports, but soon suspected it might be a bone. The Sparks family got in touch with Peter Houde, a professor at New Mexico State University, who was able to identify the bones. Sparks had found a stegomastodon, an elephant-like creature that’s long extinct and a “really very unusual” find, Houde told the Times. The bones young Sparks had found are likely only the second complete stegomastodon skull found in the state.

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Usually, fossils like this are delicate and disappear soon after erosion frees them from the ground. It was a stroke of luck that Sparks tripped over the fossils so soon after a storm exposed them.

After Houde found out about the fossils, he and the Sparks family covered them back up, while he worked to get funding and permission to excavate them properly. Now, the full, preserved skull, which weighs about a ton, is at the university’s Vertebrate Museum, where it will be on display.

A Parthenon of Banned Books, Built at a Former Book-Burning Site

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In Kassel, Germany, the art exhibition documenta 14 is displaying a replica of the Greek Parthenon made of steel, plastic sheeting, and over 100,000 banned books.

The Parthenon of Books, as the work is known, is built behind the Fridericianum museum, where Nazis burned some 2,000 books as part of their "Campaign against the Un-German Spirit" in 1933. (The Fridericianum was at that time still a library.)

The documenta 14 website describes the installation as "a symbol of opposition to the banning of writings and the persecution of their authors," a kind of celebration of the written word and its threat to those in power.

This isn't the first time that Marta Minujín, the artist behind the project, has used banned books in her work: in 1983, she built the very similar installationEl Partenón de libros after the fall of the U.S.-supported military junta in her native Argentina. This Parthenon featured all of the books that the junta government had banned. After five days, Argentinians were encouraged to take titles from the installation and bring them home.

In preparation for the installation in Kassel, the art festival requested that authors, publishers, and individuals donate their banned books. With the help of professors and students from the University of Kassel, a long-list of 70,000 banned books was compiled. The list includes titles like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Alchemist, The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity, The Poet in New York, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Metamorphosis, The Satanic Verses, and The Grapes of Wrath.

Video Wonders are audiovisual offerings that delight, inspire, and entertain. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

The 60-Mile 'Hail Scar' Left by a South Dakota Storm

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Since the Middle Ages, farmers have wanted to prevent hail from falling on their fields. It's no minor problem—the storm-generated ice clumps cause hundreds of millions of dollars in crop damage every year. It was thought in medieval times that the ringing of church bells could prevent hail from falling on French vineyards, a practice that evolved into the firing of what are known as "hail cannons" every few seconds into coming storms. This troubled neighbors more than the hail—there's no evidence they had any impact at all.

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No amount of hail cannons would have prevented the damage that afflicted central-eastern South Dakota on June 22, when a severe storm plowed through with golf-ball sized hail and 90 mile-per-hour gusts. It dimpled cars, broke windows, and necessitated the evacuation of an assisted living facility.

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The storm also left a scar visible from space. "Hail damage is spotted frequently with satellites when there are major events that occur over a long distance," said NASA meteorologist Andrew Molthan in a statement. "It is particularly evident in the Midwest during times when crops—corn especially—are tall and uniformly green across a large area."

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Images captured by cameras on NASA’s Aqua and Landsat8 satellites show the 60-mile swath of crop destruction stretching from Thomas, South Dakota, to Marshall, Minnesota. It is hard and time-consuming to assess the impact of hailstorms on the ground, so NASA scientists are using satellite images like these for damage assessment.

A Sea Cave in Indonesia Contains a 5,000-Year Record of Tsunamis

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Earthquakes are incredibly capricious. New data, from a cave in Indonesia, confirm that, even in hindsight, we can't know with any precision when they'll happen, how strong they'll be, or what kind of tsunami they may produce.

A team of researchers from Singapore, Indonesia, Ireland, and the United States uncovered a 5,000-year record of tsunamis in the layers of sediment at the bottom of a cave on the Indonesian coast. The deepest layers date to roughly 7,400 years ago, while the top layers are about 2,900 years old. More recent sediment was washed away by the massive tsunami that struck the region in 2004, but rocks at the entrance of the cave protected most of the silty record. Dark layers are made up of droppings from bats living in the cave and other organic debris, while the lighter bands of silt were brought in by tsunamis.

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The earthquakes that caused these tsunamis, and the 2004 catastrophe, occurred along the Sunda Megathrust, a fault about 3,300 miles long that stretches from Myanmar to Sumatra. The layers of silt show an erratic series of 11 earthquake events. Out of the 5,000 years of the record, one century was unfortunate enough to see four tsunamis, while two entire millennia saw none. A couple of general patterns were discernible, though. Smaller earthquakes tend to have happened in clusters, while big earthquakes occurred after long periods of quiet along the fault. It's not enough information to help scientists predict future earthquakes there, but it's clear evidence of the unpredictability of the Sunda Megathrust.

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