A man sits in his living room, quietly watching a Disney show on television in the 1960s. Suddenly, the devil, dressed in a red onesie and sporting a forked tail, pops up behind the man: now he’s watching a burlesque routine—a woman dancing in a bikini. After her pasties bobble back and forth, the man watching gets visibly uncomfortable and turns to devil. “I wanted to watch a Walt Disney show!” shouts the man. “I didn’t even care when you dug graves in my backyard, but this is enough!”

So goes part of the plot of the 1964 movie, My Tale is Hot. It’s one of many similar films of the time, and the story of a man being pranked by the devil is wholly secondary to the main focus of the movie: gratuitous nudity. My Tale is Hot is a sexploitation film—a type of B-movie which alludes to sex and nudity as a selling point, though the content is not necessarily explicitly pornographic and actual sex may or may not be shown. These films, many of which were made in the 1950s through the 1970s on a very low budget in many different countries, feature sin, vulgar images, and extremely tenuous plots. The acting is sometimes so bad it’s good. Sexploitation films, needless to say, have a cult following.

Sexploitative and pornographic films have been around since the 1910s, but a new spin on the genre emerged in the 1950s and '60s with supernatural elements. Technology allowed for more home-taught directors, like Russ Meyer, who became popular for his campy humor and big-breasted stars in titles he directed, like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Mondo Topless and The Immoral Mr. Teas. Some actors and actresses who got their start in cult and fringe films, including sexploitation pictures, continued to hone their skills and appear almost exclusively on the cult circuit.

Since 1930 in the US, cinema was largely regulated by the Hays Code, a non-legally binding yet influential industry standard that banned“lustful kissing” and nudity, among other things. While films were considered art under the First Amendment by the late 1950s in the United States, sexploitation filmmakers were creatively attempting to skirt commercially regulated cinema in a just-barely legal way. Many got away with their content because of their obscurity; often these films were not shown in regular theaters and were not advertised to the larger public.

Among these nude films, the devil was often a character or plot device amid excuses to get the female protagonist naked. In My Tale is Hot, Lucifer learns of the “most faithful husband alive,” which, of course, incites the devil to convert this man to a life of sin. “I’m not getting any converts like I used to, not a good man gone wrong in months,” says the devil, who sits with his devil-wife and their naked, silver-painted attending ladies, who are used as furniture. Lucifer’s wife dares him to try to convert the world’s best husband, and oh does Lucifer try. The plot, to say the least, is rather loose. From then on out increasingly more of the movie is devoted to naked women, women in lingerie, and the eventual corruption of the husband.

There were many kinds of plots for sexploitation films, from sexy female aliens on Venus to erotic adventures in Siberia; many hundreds of these fly-by-night projects were made. Prior to the late 1960s, these movies were often shown in portable movie theaters that hit the road with their traveling sin-filled stories, according to James Traub’s bookThe Devil's Playground. The movies also found a home in city spaces, which gave way to 1970s grindhouse theaters that often welcomed exploitation films and porn. Traub writes that “video peeps” became one of the most popular ways to view these movies in the 1960s, which entailed theaters and shops in cities like New York building booths for private viewings. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanded the First Amendment in 1952 to consider even explicit films an art. This made all films fully legal to make and show, though state and local ordinances could still regulate where and when people saw risqué films. As a result, the genre continued to grow.

Since the devil himself represents sin, movies including the devil may also let the viewer poke fun at the idea that he or is about to be part of that sin as a voyeur partaking in the appeal of cheap thrills. Of course, some fans love sexploitation films specifically because of their campy nature; one of the titles in the genre is The Horrible Sexy Vampire.

Sexploitation films seem “to promise so much, and yet can never live up to the images they suggest to the imagination,” wrote Jeffrey Sconce in Sleaze Artists. “What film, after all, could live up to the mental theater evoked by the words Nude for Satan?” Salacious photos and paintings on movie posters “translate in theater into brief and badly exposed moments of nudity,” Sconce wrote, but that’s also what made them conform to legal and social standards, and not always exactly porn per se. Sconce added that generally all films that exploit the body “remain so central to trash film culture. Nowhere is the gap dividing internal fantasy from public representation so profound.”

At some points, the line between sexploitation and sexually exploitative horror movies blurred: sexploitation movies sometimes mirrored popular horror cinema and adopted aspects of popular movie plots, especially those that had to do with Lucifer. The movie Satan’s Slave from 1976, for example, is supposedly about a girl caught up in her uncle’s devil cult and the dead returning to haunt her as a result—which, of course, involves her being tied up naked. The Toy Box, a horror-murder sex-filled movie from 1971, adds gratuitous violence and cannibalism into the mix.

And, of course, some rode the coattails of more popular, major devil-centric movies. “Several sexploitation films released during this period evoked violent and sexual transgressions featured in The Exorcist,” wrote Christopher Olson and CarrieLynn Reinhard in Possessed Women, Haunted States. Such films were sometimes given multiple titles and originally were imported from other countries, including one film marketed as Possessed by the Devil, Beyond the Darkness, and Devil’s Female.

The devil and sex continued to appear together in sexploitation and B-movies for decades, and the sexploitation genre remains alive with titles like the 2008 film Zombie Strippers to assault any fine film sensibilities you might have. If you’re intrigued—and if the poor acting and wonky plots don’t get in your way, remember that you have a long line of old-time dirty filmmakers to thank.

On Thursday afternoon, in South Yorkshire, England, it was a bit wet on the M1 near junction 37, about 23 miles south of Leeds. A motorist who had just picked up a Ferrari 430 Scuderia found that out the hard way. He lost control of the sportscar in the wet conditions, police said on Facebook. The car briefly went airborne, came to rest 50 yards from the road—and caught fire.

This is what the car looked like after burning for a while:

And this is what the car looked like after burning even longer:

The driver, somehow, emerged with just cuts and bruises. Police do not think speed was a factor in the accident, and instead said that this should be treated as a teachable moment to encourage others to adjust their driving to road conditions.

And, indeed, the driver appears to have learned a very hard lesson.

"Officers asked the driver what sort of car he 'had,' to which he replied 'It was a Ferrari,'" authorities wrote on Facebook. "Detecting a sense of damaged pride, he then said, 'I've only just got it, picked it up an hour ago.'"

One of the beauties of fishing is that it doesn’t require a great deal of expensive equipment to do it. Sure, you can spend a king’s ransom on top-of-the-line gear, but as one Kansas man recently discovered, even the cheapest kit can snag a big fish.

Kansas man catches 80-pound catfish https://t.co/aMn8orltCYpic.twitter.com/1zGcWFnESw

— Junction City Post (@JunctionPost) July 20, 2017

As the Witchita Eagle is reporting, local fisherman Charlie Henning recently caught a whopper in Wichita's Marion Reservoir using pretty much the most basic tools around. Calling it an “el’ cheapo outfit,” Henning used a $20 Walmart rod and reel, swap-meet hooks, and an old duck decoy as a floater to cast out a line. For bait, he simply put bits of smaller fish on the hook.

With that simple load out, Henning was able to bring in a catfish weighing over 80-pounds, and measuring over 50 inches long. According to the Eagle, locals have speculated that it might be the largest pulled out of the lake in 50 years.

Henning says says that he could buy better equipment, but that his low budget gear works just fine. And now he’s got the catch to prove it.

Cartographer Sasha Trubetskoy didn’t set out to create a subway-style map of the Roman roads of Britain—not specifically. He had seen plenty of fantasy transit maps online and, he says, “I figured I could do better.” He just needed a subject, and he landed on ancient Rome, which no one had tackled before, despite its extensive network of roads across its vast empire.

His first fantasy transit map covered the whole empire. After he published it, fans clamored for another installment, specific to the network in Britain.

Roman roads in Britain have been a subject of fascination for hundreds of years. After the Romans invaded the Isles in 43 A.D., they set about building an extensive system to transport troops and goods across the newly conquered territory. Eventually, there were thousands of miles of roads criss-crossing Britain, but after the empire retreated in the 5th century, they were largely lost. Some were converted into more modern paths, while others disappeared.

In the past century or so, enthusiasts have dedicated themselves to finding these roads and mapping their full extent. It is often a passion project: As M.C. Bishop writes in The Secret History of the Roman Roads of Britain, “The study of the roads of Roman Britain has always been the province of amateur scholars, by and large.” Clues to the ancient routes might include a modern road’s design (Roman roads tend to be very straight), historical accounts, legal documents, medieval maps, and fieldwork that reveals actual remains. In more recent years, aerial photos and lidar maps have revealed new examples, too. But because of the hobbyist nature of the pursuit, “Some areas invariably get left out of the system,” writes Bishop. The most complete maps are “as much a record of archaeological endeavours as it is one of Roman strategic thinking or infrastructure planning.”

Trubetskoy’s map, though, didn’t need such detail. He sought the major routes, the superhighways of the Roman world. Using the websites Roman Britain and Pelagios (which is based on the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World) as guides, he picked out road locations and place names. On the scale he was working, he found that there is usually consensus about the routes. (If there was real ambiguity, he let design guide his choices, as when he extended Icknield Street from Danum [Doncaster] to Eboracum [York], when this route could also be considered part of Ermine Street.)

Ultimately, Trubetskoy was trying imagine the transit map Roman officials might have made, given the chance. “I tried to design the map from the perspective of the Roman government, even including official seals and writing everything in Latin,” he says. “I just think this mixture of new and old turns an ostensibly utilitarian map into something mysterious and exciting.”

An impending storm darkens the sky above the splintered canopy of Caribbean pines. Milanne “Mimi” Rehor points out plants that once sustained the herd of wild horses that inhabited this limestone crescent in the northern Bahamas until just two years ago. “Palm fronds. They ate the palms, and briars, and of course the grass,” she says, and then nods toward a shiny green tree on the edge of the road. “Also this. Don’t brush up against this. It’ll give you blisters. Poisonwood. But after fires, the horses used to eat this, too, once the oils burned off.”

Equines long roamed the forests that blanket Great Abaco Island, but the last horse died in 2015, marking the extinction of a historically and genetically significant sub-breed of the threatened Colonial Spanish Horse. The Abaco Barb, like most feral equines, was compact and sturdy thanks to generations of surviving in the wild. The horses stood about 13.2 to 14.2 hands (54 to 58 inches) at the withers and each weighed an average of 800 pounds. Their feet were hard and well-shaped from trekking across the island’s rocky surface in search of food.

However, unlike most other wild horses in the Americas, the Abaco Barb spent generations in geographic isolation. According to equine geneticist Gus Cothran, who analyzed the DNA of 22 Abaco Barbs for Rehor in the 1990s, the horses were little changed from those brought across the Atlantic more than five-hundred years ago.

About half were blue-eyed “splash white” pintos, with belts and bonnets of white thrown against a brown hair base. Others were roans, with ivory hairs running throughout mahogany or copper coats, giving them a faded appearance. Most were “gaited,” meaning that in addition to the four types of movements most horses use (walk, trot, canter, and gallop), they had the capacity for very smooth lateral gaits in which both legs on each side move in unison. Similar movements are seen in other horses with old roots, including Paso Finos, but not in more modern Spanish breeds.

Strike up a conversation with Great Abaco Island’s long-time residents and many have childhood memories of spotting the horses during family road trips. They’re also likely to have a theory about why they disappeared. Though the Abaco Barb thrived on the island for generations, beginning in the 1960s, human actions and environmental changes weakened the herd and ultimately led to its demise. As Rehor, Director of the Wild Horses of Abaco Preservation Society, fights to bring the animals back from extinction, she’s highlighting their contentious history and uncertain future.

Nobody knows how or when the horses first came to the Abaco Islands. One story claims they swam ashore, survivors of the frequent 16th-century shipwrecks that fed the archipelago’s salvage-based economy. A second tale suggests that Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution brought their horses with them to the island. Still another, the one that Rehor favors, traces the horses to the island’s 19th-century logging operations, when companies imported equines from Cuba to haul lumber and later turned them loose.

According to Cothran, the genes indicate that any of these tales could be the reality. “What we [had] there on Abaco is the old actual colonial introduced horse rather than a more modernly introduced Spanish horse,” Cothran says. Such a clear link to the equines that were introduced to the Americas in the 15th century is rare. Most modern sub-breeds of the Colonial Spanish Horse have long interbred with released stock horses.

Though their entire genome has yet to be sequenced, the Abaco Barbs’ rare profile could hold useful information “particularly if you consider what’s going on ecologically. Perhaps you have some genes that have value in the future that would not exist anywhere else,” Cothran says, referring to climate change.

From a scientific perspective, that’s what makes their disappearance such a tragedy.

The Abaco Barb’s genetic significance is a key factor behind Rehor’s mission to clone “Nunki,” the lone survivor who died in 2015, and attempt to re-introduce the herd. But to Rehor, who watched over the herd and has fought for their interests since 1992, there’s a social justification as well. “There was here a piece of history. Various events destroyed that history,” she says.

In the 1960s, a logging company cut a road through Abaco’s pine forests, running the length of the island, to harvest large quantities of pulpwood. This simultaneously gave local hunters increased access to remote parts of the island and destroyed the horses’ habitat. The hunters likely shot the horses in addition to the wild pigs that were their main target, and their dogs frequently killed foals.

But humans had an even darker role in the first major assault on the Abaco Barb herd. Specific dates remain hard to pin down, but sometime in the 1960s, an unattended child tried climbing atop one of the horses, but was kicked and killed. Angry townspeople began killing the horses on sight, running the animals down on roads and shooting them in the pine forest. Nobody knows exactly how many horses were killed, but the herd was effectively culled. In the middle of the 20th century, estimates placed the herd at 200 individuals. By the close of the 1960s, only three remained.

Former Senator and MP Edison Key told Rehor he learned of the slaughter in the early 1970s when, while clearing land for a ranch called Bahama Star Farm, he came across horse carcasses. With the help of his friend and brother-in-law, he moved the remaining three horses onto the property to rebuild their ranks.

Once the herd reached 12 horses, they were again released in the nearby pine forest, where they seemed to flourish despite severe genetic bottlenecking. By the time Rehor anchored her wooden sailboat off the coast of the Abacos in 1992, they had bounced back to about 30 individuals. However, by 1997, only 16 remained. Though nobody can confirm why the horses began disappearing again, local lore suggests the animals were being hunted for both sport and food.

In 1999, Hurricane Floyd dealt what might have been the final blow, destroying the forest understory that had supported the Abaco horses for so long. In search of food, the horses found their way back to Bahama Star Farm, which had been converted into a citrus orchard. Irrigation and crop-dusting gave the horses a new diet of pesticides and high sugar grasses which, combined with a reduced need to move about looking for food, led to a host of health and reproductive problems.

Around 2004, it became clear the herd wouldn’t return to the forest on its own, so Rehor and the local government moved them to a fenced-in parcel among the pines. The government granted 3,800 acres for the horses, but at any given time, they only roamed a portion—initially 200 acres, then increased to 1,000 acres—of that area. The population never recovered, and when Nunki died in 2015, the breed was gone.

Originally from the U.S., Rehor decided to turn a visit to the Abacos into a permanent move upon learning of the Abaco Barb. The avid sailor and lifelong horse lover spent the next 23 years working to get the herd the attention and protection it deserved. For several years she simply observed and photographed the horses, but in response to their 1997 decline, she founded the Wild Horses of Abaco Preservation Society. In addition to partnering with local vets and trying to bring in farriers and veterinarians from the United States to help address the horses’ growing health problems, Rehor led the effort to have their DNA analyzed.

She also had the foresight to preserve cells from Nunki, sending them to ViaGen, a Texas-based laboratory, in the hopes that one day cloning could help revive the herd. Since no cloneable tissue remains from Abaco stallions, Rehor’s plan is to make two clones of Nunki and breed them to a similar stallion in an effort to preserve at least some of the rare genes Cothran found in his analysis and to return horses to the island.

Rehor argues humans owe the Abaco Barb at least this effort, citing the succession of aforementioned human and natural events for the herd’s demise. Echoing the larger debate over de-extinction at times, some wonder whether the project is worth the considerable funding and human efforts it will require, and question Rehor’s competence as a steward. The government of the Bahamas has long been stretched thin when it comes to caring for the horses, and other wildlife and environmental efforts—those in the interest of indigenous flora and fauna—take priority.

“[Mimi always] had a real interest in the well-being of the horses,” says David Knowles of the nonprofit Bahamas National Trust, which manages Bahamian national parks. “My question at the time was whether she was qualified. We tried to get our vets to work with the horses, but we were stretched thin…. Personally, I think it was a tragedy that we lost them all.”

Today, Rehor still fights to maintain her vision of returning Abaco Barbs to their island via cloning. Nunki’s cells have been cultured in anticipation of the cloning process and are being stored at ViaGen labs, as researchers await a go-ahead from Rehor. But funding has dwindled and, despite approval from the federal government, she is tired and frustrated. “They say that one door closes [and another one opens],” she says, shuffling a pink Croc-clad foot in the dirt. “Ain’t nothin’ openin’. I’m getting tired." She wonders if she should abandon it all. After all, she notes, "the genes are safe.”

A celebrity dolphin made a couple of appearances in Louisiana this week. Pinky, an albino dolphin with a distinctly pink coloring, showed up in the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana's Cameron Parish, a coastal area that meets the state's western border.

The dolphin was first spotted in this area a decade ago and has appeared on occasion since then. Last week, Pinky brought along a dolphin with more common coloring and was photographed by the local dolphin paparazzi. Later last week, Pinky was spotted again and filmed cresting through the waters of a shipping channel.

Albino dolphins are quite rare, but there are at least five that have been spotted in this part of the world, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Pinky's skin is actually devoid of color, but appears pink because of the blood running through it.

Times may have never been better for some of the world’s oldest animals. There's something about today's unbalanced oceans—disrupted by climate change, overfishing, and nutrient runoff—that make them especially hospitable to certain kinds of jellyfish. As these conditions worsen, jellyfish populations have billowed and bloomed all over the world.

Dealing with jelllyfish infestations, which can foul up power plants, swimming areas, and fisheries, is no easy task. While South Korea has deployed swarms of autonomous robots to grind the animals into a paste, Danish researchers have taken another tack: get them into the snack aisle. They have developed a way to turn cnidarians into something resembling potato chips.

The technique involves soaking the jellyfish in alcohol, and then letting it evaporate off to turn semi-sentient goo into crunchy, snackable discs. “In alcohol some gels simply collapse, and that is exactly what we see a jellyfish doing. As the jellyfish collapses, the water is extracted from it and its volume is reduced,” said gastrophysicist Mie Thorburg Pedersen to the Summit County Voice. “The mouth-feel and the aesthetic appearance in particular have gastronomic potential.”

Eating jellyfish is nothing new. People in the Philippines, South Korea, and other places have eaten them for years—but preparing them for consumption takes well over a month and produces a gristly texture, unappetizing to the Western palate. Even if the chips don’t catch on, the new method should help speed up traditional ways of making the invertebrates ready for plates.

But if Western diners do get on board with jellyfish chips, they’ll find them a healthy snack alternative—low in fat, high in selenium. They'd also be high on environmental friendliness.

Russell Taylor lives in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. In the 1990s, he first began to notice a problem among the hilly jumble of winding side streets and blind corners in his neighborhood. If cars are parked on both sides of the street, he observed, emergency vehicles simply can’t get through. Taylor mustered his fighting spirit and a can of yellow spray paint and put some clumsy, irregular lines down along the edge of Holloway Road to prevent parking there. And he's kept them there for two decades.

“The council won’t do anything,” he said. Wellington City Council told stuff.co.nz they are aware of Taylor’s homespun parking lines, which they call a “fake traffic device.”

But Taylor’s one-man crusade is also about fighting the forces of gentrification, he told the BBC. When he moved to the street in 1979, hardly anyone had had a car. “Now,” he said, “it has all changed as the area has become more middle-class and gentrified.”

Taylor is a particularly long-tenured example of a deep tradition of traffic signage vigilantism. Earlier this year, an Omaha group called PSA (“Plungers for a Safer Aksarben”) installed 120 standard toilet plungers along the edge of the bike lane of an especially dangerous street. After just three hours, city officials had plucked them from the street.

Group glues 120 toilet plungers onto Omaha street to show what a protected bike lane could do https://t.co/5XHamPfqwCpic.twitter.com/sxr5d31HIU

— Omaha World-Herald (@OWHnews) May 17, 2017

Other militant cyclists have gone further. New York's "street justice activists," who go by Right of Way, made headlines in 2013 when they painted a brand new cycle lane onto Manhattan’s Avenue of the Americas after a near-fatal accident involving a cab driving on the sidewalk. For the last 21 years, they’ve also stenciled in "street memorials" for pedestrians or cyclists killed by drivers. Similar DIY cycle lanes have also appeared in the dead of night in Los Angeles.

In the United Kingdom, a former Royal Marine, Donald Ligertwood, drove his neighbors around the bend after he began issuing homemade parking tickets, instructing parkers to “READ YOUR HIGHWAY CODE” and threatening to call the police. His guerrilla public service proved deeply unpopular with other local residents, who fumed to The Sun that he even painted a large box on the side of the road to prevent people from parking across from his driveway.

More popular, however, was a fake freeway sign in Los Angeles. On August 5, 2001, in broad daylight, artist Richard Ankrom hoisted a ladder up to a green highway sign and installed his own modification to help drivers onto a poorly marked hairpin exit. He even pre-dusted his addition with "smog-sheen" so it wouldn't stick out. Eventually, the sign was removed during scheduled maintenance, but the city took his advice, and replaced the whole thing with a new sign that includes his suggestion.

Taylor's parking lines may prove similarly successful. While the council plans to remove his illegal markings, they've planned a formal consultation on the road for later this year. Sometimes traffic vigilantes are onto something.

Three years after RMS Titanic had a deadly encounter with an iceberg, RMS Lusitania joined it on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The latter British ocean liner, however, was sunk by a torpedo fired by a German U-Boat (and is even today the subject of a number of conspiracy theories involving contraband and explosives). Today, the wreckage lies just off the southern coast of Ireland, and is the subject of ongoing controversy involving its venture capitalist owner and the Irish government. Amid the debate over the future of the wreck, another piece of it has been brought to the surface—this time one of the ship's telegraphs.

The engine order telegraph was used to control the ship's speed and direction by sending a signal from the bridge to the engine room. The heavy metal control, along with the pedestal it was mounted on, almost made it to the surface back in July 2016, LiveScience reports, but machinery being used to raise it failed, and the artifact fell back to the ocean floor, where it was lost. The Irish government criticized the removal effort because an archaeologist wasn't involved. The telegraph was recently re-located, and was brought up last week, this time under the supervision of a government archaeologist.

The owner of the salvage rights, venture capitalist Gregg Bemis, plans to put the telegraph and its pedestal in a nearby museum, alongside other items pulled from the wreck. Bemis's handling of the site has been criticized by the Irish government, who see the ship as an important archaeological site that should be fully under government control. Bemis hopes the ship's wreckage contains clues to its cargo, so rumors that the ship was secretly carrying supplies from (then) neutral America to Allied Britain during World War I can finally be confirmed or refuted.

The Northern Great Plains of Canada are expansive grasslands, where shrubs and trees are few and very far between. But the flat landscape is increasingly interrupted by signs of human development—oil and natural gas pumps and roads crisscrossing the prairie. Roughly 135 square miles of grassland are impacted each year by the oil and gas industries, and all these disturbances fragment the prairie ecosystem. It's along the edges of those fragments that ecologists are seeing changes in how species interact.

The brown-headed cowbird is a native of these grasslands. Jacy Bernath-Plaisted, a graduate student researcher at the University of Manitoba, is coauthor of a recent paper in the journal Royal Society Open Science that shows the edges of fragmented prairie in the Northern Great Plains is helping cowbirds populations. "They evolved on the Great Plains and it's generally thought that they would travel with bison herds," says Bernath-Plaisted. "However, they've expanded their range greatly since then, in large part thanks to human activity." This may be good news for the cowbird, but it's bad news for the songbirds that share the prairie—because cowbirds are what are called brood parasites.

"They don't create their own nests, they don't raise their own young," says Bernath-Plaisted. "They find the nests of other species, they lay an egg in there, and then they just let the other species raise their young." Some species in the cowbird's native range have figured out how to spot cowbird eggs among their own and get rid of them (though in some cases cowbirds retaliate by destroying the host’s eggs, so-called “mafia” behavior), but species that didn't evolve alongside the cowbird aren't as adept as recognizing the trespasser's eggs, and will raise the chicks as their own. In the past, cowbirds were highly mobile—they followed bison herds to eat the insects the large mammals stir up—so their impact in any one place or on any given species wasn’t severe. But that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore.

Songbird species such as the Savannah sparrow are common victims of cowbird parasitism, and these interloping eggs and chicks are a waste of valuable energy, drawing food and attention away from the sparrows’ own young. Cowbird chicks tend to be larger than sparrow nestlings, "so they'll oftentimes outcompete their host species and get all the food that the parents are bringing," says Bernath-Plaisted. Cowbirds are also much louder, which can help predators find nests hidden in the grass. Out in the field, Bernath-Plaisted and his colleagues found cowbirds were having a significant impact on Savannah sparrows. "We found that nestling success was lower for nests that were parasitized, and in addition to that, even the ones that ended up being successful and fledging their own young, they fledged fewer young than unparasitized nests."

The larger problem now is that this parasitism isn't random—it’s location, location, location. "It was pretty stark that almost all the parasitism, basically, took place at infrastructure sites," says Bernath-Plaisted. Some ecologists have hypothesized that the perches created by the oil and natural gas pumps allow the cowbirds to scope out nests for their eggs. The roads leading to these pumps are also critical infrastructure linked to cowbird parasitism, since the birds may like to forage for insects and seeds on them. It is, in ways both subtle and obvious, a major change from the relative monotony of untouched prairie, where a herd of bison might be the only thing disrupting the landscape for miles around.

"Both cowbird abundance and parasitism rates were about four times greater at infrastructure sites," says Bernath-Plaisted. But if oil companies are willing to plan ahead, there are strategies for minimizing the number of cowbird-attracting structures and roads to help songbirds survive. Burying the power transmission lines that lead to pumps, for example, reduces the number of vertical structures on the landscape, as does the practice of horizontal drilling, which uses existing wells to drill horizontally underground to new deposits.

Economic reliance on cheap oil means more pumps and roads are coming, which means cowbirds will continue to linger in certain areas and sneak their eggs into songbirds’ nests—until, perhaps, those host birds aren’t there anymore.

Sarah Pratt has the Iowa butter-sculpting niche cornered. After twenty-five years working with butter as an artistic medium, she has mastered the practice.

Since 2006, she has assumed responsibility for creating the Iowa State Fair's iconic butter cow, which is 5.5 feet high and 8-feet-long and receives regular media coverage. Clocking in at around 600 pounds, the cow is large enough to butter roughly 19,200 pieces of toast.

The tradition of creating butter sculptures for state fairs began in Ohio in 1903 and took root in Iowa eight years later. Ever since, much hype has surrounded what beloved person—or creature—will be featured next.

In 2016, Pratt sculpted a cast of Star Trek characters in her 40-degree cooler in honor of the 50th anniversary of the show. She fashioned Captain Kirk, Spock, Uhura, and Dr. McCoy the way she best knew how.

This year at the Iowa State Fair, which begins August 10th, Pratt has a new challenge: for the 150th birthday of the Little House on the Prairie, she'll be crafting a buttery Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In the early 1820s, a document entitled “A Free Examination into the Penal Statutes” circulated throughout the British Parliament. Though its complete contents are now lost, excerpts show that it argued for something remarkable: a softening of punishments against men who had sexual relationships with other men.

In England, intercourse between men had been punishable by death since King Henry VIII’s Buggery Act of 1533. (Intercourse between women was not acknowledged.) But elsewhere in Europe, that was changing. Around the turn of the century, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Tuscany had abandoned capital punishment for homosexuality; France, meanwhile, decriminalized it entirely.

Of course, as historian Charles Upchurch writes in Queer Difficulty in Art and Poetry, “elimination of the death penalty was less a sign of greater tolerance for these acts than an attempt to better align the severity of the punishment with the nature of the infraction.” But the changing tides forced the British Parliament to re-examine its position, and in 1819, it created the Committee of Inquiry Into the State of Criminal Law to evaluate its use of the death penalty.

“A Free Examination into the Penal Statutes” appeared soon after, but its plea for leniency in punishing homosexuality did not sway members of Parliament. The Buggery Act remained on the books. But the document had, for the first time in centuries, opened up debate on the topic.

Enter Lord Byron.

Well, sort of.

The famed poet had a long history of affairs with men and women, though for much of his life, few knew. The Guardianrecounts how, when a former lover began spreading rumors that he had engaged in intercourse with other men, his world imploded. He wrote, “I was advised not to go to the theatres, lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament, lest I should be insulted.” Fearing for his life, he decided to flee his home country. In April 1816, he left England.

After Byron's death in 1824, a group of his friends agreed to have his papers burned. But years later—long after "A Free Examination into the Penal Statutes" had fallen out of circulation—a poem attributed to Byron surfaced. It was entitled “Don Leon,” and its front page noted that it formed “Part of the Private Journal of His Lordship, Supposed to Have Been Entirely Destroyed.” (Its full contents can be read here.)

The poem—a sprawling manifesto of more than 50 pages—used Byron's personal experiences to argue in favor of Parliament dropping the death penalty, making the then-radical claim that homosexuality was normal.

God, like the potter, when his clay is damp

Gives every man, in birth, a different stamp.

According to most modern scholars, Byron himself almost certainly did not write the poem. Its author attached Byron's name to attract attention. But the poem's accounts of Byron's multiple love affairs appear to be accurate, suggesting that at least one of the authors was a close friend of Byron's.

Its publication history, like its authorship, is murky. The first edition was written in the late 1820s or early 1830s—historians don't agree.

The first record of the poem only appeared later, in 1853, when a person named “I.W.” wrote in the London journal Notes and Queries that he had seen a copy printed outside of Britain. In 1866, William Dugdale, a notorious salesman of pornographic books, re-published the title, apparently genuinely believing Byron to be its author. His edition first catapulted the poem into public prominence.

Fortune Press attempted to publish “Don Leon” again in 1934, but London police seized it on charges of obscenity and destroyed most copies. Even a century later, the poem's claims about sexual equality alarmed many.

In fact, the author—posing as Byron—used "Don Leon" to excoriate supporters of punishments for homosexuality for their intolerance:

’Tis you that foster an illicit trade,

And warp us where a strict embargo’s laid.

‘Twere just as well to let the vessel glide

Resistless down the current, as confide

In charts, that lead the mariner astray,

And never mark the breakers in his way.

The poem goes on:

Thou ermined judge, pull off that sable cap!

What! Can'st thou lie, and take thy morning nap?

Peep thro' the casement; see the gallows there:

Thy work hangs on it; could not mercy spare?

What had he done?

...What bonds had he of social safety broke?

Found'st thou the dagger hid beneath his cloak?

He stopped no lonely traveller on the road;

He burst no lock, he plundered no abode;

He never wronged the orphan of his own;

He stifled not the ravish'd maiden's groan.

His secret haunts were hid from every soul,

Till thou did'st send thy myrmidons to prowl.

At points, "Don Leon" levels direct attacks on politicians who have previously endorsed harsh punishments for homosexuality. Referring to Colonel Richard Martin, who fought against animal cruelty but was supportive of the death penalty for gay men, the author decries, "Martin has mercy—yes, for beasts, not men."

The author then turns to another politician, James Brogden:

And Brogden’s modesty his voice impedes,

Who, when the sections of the a bill he reads,

With furs of coneys, to a gentle hush

Subdues his tone, and feigns a maiden’s blush.

And to James Mackintosh, he asks: "But answer, Mackintosh; wert though asleep?”

Why gull the nation, with thy plans to mend

The penal code in speeches without end,

And, like a jelly bag, with open chops,

Dwindle and dwindle into drizzling drops?

But the emotional heart of the poem lies with its accounts of Byron's romantic interests. The poem chronicles his early attraction to men and women, and his inability to act on those desires.

Thus passed my boyhood: and though proofs were none

What path my future course of life would run

Like sympathetic ink, if then unclear,

The test applied soon made the trace.

Ultimately, the poem did not immediately achieve its aims. Between 1806 and 1835, 56 men were killed for having sex with other men.

But even that was changing. In 1835, the last execution for sex between men took place. And in 1861, the death penalty for such acts was officially abolished, though it remained a crime worthy of imprisonment. "Don Leon" likely did not contribute to this shift, but it remains a significant piece of cultural history—proof of a LGBT resistance to oppression long before it was supposed to have existed.

Ghost snake? Blank snake? Plain snake? An incredibly rare snake with pure white scales has been discovered in Australia, but the real mystery might be what to call it. (It's not albino, for one thing.)

The snake was handed over in June to authorities at the Territory Wildlife Park in the country's Northern Territory. The snake is commonly known as a slatey grey snake, which are usually brown in color, but this one suffers from a genetic mutation known as leucism, resulting in a lack of pigmentation, according to USA Today. (A true albino snake would have pink eyes, which this snake does not.)

The park said it was taking measures to protect it.

"The nocturnal snake will be placed in quarantine at the Park to ensure it is free of any nasties," the park said in a statement after the snake was found, "and then be put on display for everyone to marvel at."

There is no word, alas, on what they will be calling it. My humble suggestion? Milk Snake.

Over the weekend, Volker Ritzinger, a mushroom hunter in Utah, found a giant porcini in the woods. At close to 5.5 pounds, 15 inches high and 15 inches in diameter, this is the largest mushroom ever found in Utah, reports the local Fox affiliate.

Ritzinger, who calls himself “the mushroom king,” was born in Austria, where his family taught him to hunt mushrooms as a young boy. After coming to America, he opened a bakery in Utah and devoted himself to expanding the area’s farmers markets. He continued his family’s tradition of mushroom hunting, though; before this weekend’s discovery, his son held the record for the largest mushroom ever found in the state.

This year, the family’s mushroom hunting ground were unusually wet, creating ideal conditions for these porcini mushrooms to grow large. When Ritzinger found this giant mushroom, he could hardly believe it.

“I thought it was a tree stump, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he told the local news station. He thought it could be large enough to break not just the state’s record, but the world’s; it was just 1.5 pounds short. Still, that’s one very large mushroom.

Wastewater treatment plants need to clean their sediment filters out somewhere. Often, that somewhere is the closest fast-moving waterway—and Niagara Falls is no exception.

So around 4 p.m. on July 29th—which was, as Buffalo News put it, "a beautiful Saturday afternoon at the height of tourist season"—sightseers, boat-cruisers, and others hanging out around the continent's most famous waterfall watched as a smelly cloud of black sludge crept into the Niagara River and engulfed the shoreline around the Rainbow Bridge.

Spewing Sewage: Tourists, Businesses Disgusted After Foul Smelling Wastes Engulfs Niagara Falls https://t.co/zPA02AdUfIpic.twitter.com/3GftJLzLKS

— Latest Politics (@LatestComPols) July 31, 2017

As the city's Water Board Executive Director, Rolfe Porter, later explained, the plant normally discharges its wastewater basins in the spring and fall, when not so many people are around. But the plant was scheduled for upgrades this past Monday, so they decided to risk a summertime cleanout to prepare.

People noticed. "It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie," helicopter tour operator Pat Proctor told Buffalo News. (In true sci-fi movie fashion, as soon as he noticed the spreading black cloud, he called the mayor, Paul Dyster.) Maid of the Mist cruises also contacted Dyster, this time via tweet:

.@PDyster: Why the smelly black discharge into Niagara River on very busy tourist weekend? @NiagaraFallsUSA@NYstateparkspic.twitter.com/XLnikKkHCr

— Maid of the Mist (@maidofthemist) July 29, 2017

Porter said that the black cloud was caused by built-up sediment, along with small carbon particles from the filtration system. The bad smell was caused by what you'd expect.

Although Porter says that the discharge was within the limits set by the Department of Environmental Conservation, New York governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered an investigation.

The Water Board has promised to provide better alerts in the future.

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.

Every year, the southern Italian port town of San Foca celebrates the Catholic festival of Madonna of the Sea, in which the Virgin Mary is called upon to bless seafarers, sailors, and the beach. Normally, this includes processions, a special mass, and other celebrations. This year, it involved a paddle boat.

Local priest Don Mario Calogiuri is known for heading down to the local beach for the annual blessing. This year, he brought a five-foot statue of Madonna with him, but when he arrived, Calogiuri decided he needed to do more than a seaside service. He took to the ocean. A local retailer provided a small plastic paddle boat and the Virgin was hoisted on top. Amid the buck and sway of the waves, two helpers held the icon in place while Calogiuri proclaimed his blessing through a megaphone.

In previous years, Calogiuri has preached the gospel from between the deckchairs and ice-cream stands, wearing only tiny sky blue swim shorts. "I want to meet people under their beach umbrellas, in a place where you do not usually think about religion," he said to Urban News. "But you should not forget Jesus."

Though the festival originally called on the Virgin to shield fishermen from the elements, it now seems to have expanded to cover beachgoers and revelers. No word on whether Calogiuri asked her to protect these bathers from sunburn.

On August 21, 2017, the moon's shadow will cut a swath across the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina. In towns and cities in the path of totality—where the moon completely blocks the sun—hotels are in high demand. Airlines are promoting flights that coincide with the eclipse, and one is even offering a special eclipse-viewing charter flight. Millions of Americans near the path of totality are expected to hit the road to witness the first eclipse to cross both coasts since June 8, 1918. Still others will attend special events to be around fellow eclipse enthusiasts, including Atlas Obscura's own Total Eclipse festival in Eastern Oregon. There is, in short, eclipse madness, and not for the first time.

Ninety-nine years ago, the East Oregoniandescribed otherworldly scenes of the eclipse: “Along the streams the crows flew to their roosts in the weird darkness of midafternoon, and the sensations as the unnatural gloom deepened was one of the impending end of all things. All the traditional thrills and creepy feelings ascribed to eclipses proved a part of the real thing and the experience of a lifetime will never be forgotten by those who passed through it.”

Witnessing the eclipse itself is not safe for the eyes (except during the brief period of totality), so NASA recommends using certified eclipse-viewing glasses only—even the darkest sunglasses won't cut it. There was no certification for eclipse glasses in 1918, and one of the recommended ways to view the phenomenon then was through smoked glass. A “stamp a squint” promotion by the War Savings Stamps salespeople allowed passersby to pay to peek through smoked glass. Today, however, we know this to be an ineffective method of protecting the eyes. Other early suggestions for safe eclipse-viewing included watching the reflection in a bucket of water or oil in a place “where it may not be agitated by the wind” (notably more effective than smoked glass).

Regardless of the eyewear or historical period, eclipse-viewers have always shared—and will share again this year—the same sense of wonderment. To kick off Atlas Obscura's coverage leading up to the eclipse, we have compiled a selection of vintage photos of people caught in the throes of that wonder.

In celebration of the eclipse and the Total Eclipse festival in Eastern Oregon, Atlas Obscura is presenting Eclipse Madness, a selection historical, scientific, and cultural takes on the astronomical phenomenon.

For a brief moment during the total solar eclipse coming later this month, lucky North Americans will find themselves overtaken by the moon’s shadow as it slides between the earth and the sun. But this rare, majestic phenomenon isn’t the only way to experience the visual effects of our planet’s orbit.

These sculptures and installations employ shadows as part of their appeal. Under the right circumstances, the shadows transform into images that eclipse the impressiveness of the object that created them. Sometimes it’s intentional, other times it’s a coincidental trick of light. If you can't witness the total eclipse for yourself this year, these shadowy wonders are another fascinating way to see the solar system in action.

Pyramid of Kukulcan at Chich'en Itza

Chich'en Itza, Mexico

A shadowy serpent slithers down the side of this Mayan pyramid during the spring and autumnal equinoxes. An illusion of light and shadow creates seven triangles alongside the staircase. Starting from the top, the shadows creep downward until finally connecting with the massive stone serpent head resting at the bottom, creating a light show that appears to highlight Kukulcan, the ancient feathered serpent god.

Sky Gate

Honolulu, Hawaii

During “Lahaina Noon,” the semiannual event when the sun is directly above Honolulu, Hawaii, this curvy sculpture’s shadow forms a perfect circle. For 363 days of the year, the twisted shadow mimics the sculpture that cast it. But on the two times each year when the sun is directly above it, the ring casts a completely symmetrical hoop.

Anthem Veterans Memorial

Phoenix, Arizona

On Veterans Day each year, November 11, at 11:11 a.m., the shadows of these monuments align to showcase the seal of the United States. The monument is composed of five pillars, each of which represents an arm of the U.S. military. The circle formed by their aligned shadows represents the country’s unbreakable border.

Threshold

Rochester, New York

When the sun hits this industrial eight-story sculpture at just the right angle, it causes the shapes of various plants and animals to appear within its shadows. The monument, which was created with scraps left over from the sculpture that greets visitors arriving at the Saint Louis Zoo, is meant to honor both the creative and construction side of steel work. Though some of the shadowy figures it creates are obscure, the images of trees, geese, and a rhinoceros are clearly visible.

The Shadow Pilgrim

Santiago de Compostela, Spain

A random trick of light causes the shadow of a pilgrim to appear each night under the corner of the clock tower in Spain’s Plaza de la Quintana. He wears the traditional outfit of a religious pilgrim: a cloak, a broad-brimmed hat, and a staff. Local legend says it’s the image of a priest who, on the night he planned to elope with his lover, waited in the shadows beneath the tower for a woman who ultimately never came.

Dialogo

Chicago, Illinois

According to campus legend, this sculpture at the University of Chicago casts the shadow of a sickle and hammer—the symbol for communism—every May Day at noon. Intentionally installing a statue with anti-capitalist sentiments would’ve been a bold move for the university, as Dialogo was implemented in 1971 while the Cold War was still in full swing. Though some say the May Day connection is a hoax, others still tell tales of the ghost of communism lurking in the shadow.

Wave Field

Ann Arbor, Michigan

The shadows cast by the dips and ridges in this unique piece of landscaping are meant to mimic the patterns of mathematical sine waves, and make the site look like it’s always changing with the passing sun. Designed by the artist Maya Lin, who also created the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the rippling patch of earth is meant to be a place of peace and reflection. Unless, of course, it's being used by students playing frisbee.

Believed to be made of linoleum and asphalt crack sealant, the license plate-sized, colorful mosaic tiles have been seen in about two dozen major American cities since the 1980s. They’re known as the Toynbee Tiles, and their origin and purpose are a bit of a mystery.

Typically inscribed with the phrase “TOYNBEE IDEA IN MOViE `2001 RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPITER,” the tiles were originally discovered in Philadelphia but have also been documented in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Margate, New Jersey, Chicago, Boston, Kansas City, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., New York City, and even South America.

After a lull in installation that appears to have begun around 2011, new tiles started to appear again in the past few years, in New York and Philadelphia. The reason behind the hiatus is unclear—could it be that the age of the tiler and the decades of installing artistically cryptic tiles by night had caught up with him? Had they fallen ill, or even passed away? Some speculate the hiatus was sparked from the attention drawn by the 2011 documentary, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of The Toynbee Tiles. The 30-year span in which the tiles have been installed adds to the mystery of the true identity of the Toynbee tiler.

The tiles are generally laid in the summer months. After the design is created, it is believed that the tiles are wrapped in tar paper—a material commonly used during roofing installations. Tar paper is laid between the shingles and the roof to create a waterproof barrier, but in this case it is most likely used to prevent damage or removal before the tiles fully adhere to the asphalt.

The tiles are put into position and stuck to the ground with asphalt sealant. The weight of car tires and foot traffic combined with the summer heat help to gradually fuse each tile to the street and wear down the tar paper, revealing the messages and images carved by the unknown artist. No one is certain about the length of time it takes for a tile to fully adhere to asphalt, given that there’s no telling exactly when one has been laid, but given the materials used it is assumed that installation can take two weeks to a month to complete.

Fans and followers believe that the typical tiles are created by one person and that they are being laid simply by being tossed out of a hole in the floorboard of a car—a theory that was popularized by Resurrect Dead. This could explain the puzzling placement of some tiles and could be the reason no one has ever laid eyes on the tiler.

Christian Hauslein is a Toynbee Tile fan and former graffiti blogger who came across the tiles as he would walk around Philadelphia. “One of my favorite things to do is just go on really long walks with no real destination in mind. As I would do this I would notice Toynbee Tiles in the street, but never really know how they got there or what they meant,” he says. “When I ran the blog I kept a running collection of the Tiles as well as their locations. Not surprisingly, there were many others who found them as interesting as I do. It was also good because people would send me [photos of] tiles that I hadn't seen before.”

Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey focused upon a man who was reborn on a mission to Jupiter, and the Ray Bradbury short story “Toynbee Convector” is about a time traveler who returns to the present to inspire his contemporaries to build a future for themselves. Combine this with an excerpt from 20th-century philosopher and religious historian Arnold J. Toynbee—in which he shares his belief that the afterlife is not automatic, it is man made—and you’ve got yourself the fuel for a puzzling array of artistic tiles.

Though the media didn’t officially recognize the tiles until 1994, a 1983 Philadelphia Inquirer article briefly talked about a man with an apparent connection to the project, James Morasco. He had created the Minority Association, a group that hoped to be able to colonize Jupiter by resurrecting the dead there. Not surprisingly, the group was laughed out of most publications.

Colin Smith, a producer, writer, and co-star in Resurrect Dead, has seen Minority Association documents that make mention of multiple people being involved in the group. The Minority Association didn’t last more than a few years and allegedly had only four members. By the mid-90s, tiles began appearing claiming that the tiler was just one man.

Smith also moderated a message board linked to the film’s website, but it became a source of speculation about the people mentioned in the film and began to get out of hand. Although the board didn’t work out, Smith says he and those involved with the film have had great experiences with fans. The tiles bring out people who love a good mystery and the Resurrect Dead crew has enjoyed being able to meet those people at speaking engagements and hear from them via their Facebook page.

In addition to the main message, tiles began appearing with additional side messages attached to them, such as “MURDER EVERY JOURNALIST I BEG OF YOU.” This brings us back to the Minority Association, which has led many to believe that James Morasco, a social worker from Philadelphia, was behind the tiles. Morasco had contacted newspapers and talk shows to discuss his hopes to colonize Jupiter with the dead people of Earth, claiming to have come across the idea in a book by Arnold J. Toynbee.

A few longer tiles have been found with accounts of how the media had wronged the tiler—the tale includes the mafia, FBI, and NBC journalists and lawyers, an attempted hit on our beloved unknown artist causing them to flee the country only to be found in Dover, England and brought back to the states. Connecting the dots, it would appear that the tiler felt targeted for their beliefs of resurrection—but has returned and been able to spread their message anonymously through art.

Copycats have been found in the states and as far away as South America, with some translations of the original message made as well as small robots. The most notable is the House of Hades movement, which, much like the Toynbee Tiler, could be one artist or multiple. Their tiles usually feature a nod to the strife of the Toynbee artist in that their main messaging is “HOUSE OF HADES TILES MADE FROM THE GROUND BONES OF DEAD JOURNALISTS.” Some tiles are framed by a woman’s legs splayed open, something the Toynbee tiler wouldn’t have done, but they’ve also been known to create exact copies of the Toynbees. Interestingly, House of Hades is known to distribute their art through the mail, sending tiles to people in various locations to have them installed by someone else, which explains how widespread they’ve become over the years.

There are many theories on who the Toynbee tiler truly is, but no concrete evidence has been found. Smith and the documentarians behind Resurrect Dead believe they’ve cracked the case, but aren't disclosing any identities. Justin Duerr, the lead in the film, claims to have stood face-to-face with the artist. He’s also claimed to have met one of the anonymous members of the House of Hades, though much like everything else surrounding the tiles, the details of their conversation remain a mystery.