Jillian Kelly is a California gold miner. (Yes, they still exist, remarkably!) But her most recent discovery was a shiny, valuable rock of a different sort—a 1.5 carat diamond.

Kelly had a dig site in Foresthill, California, where she searches for gold, by excavating and breaking down pieces of ancient riverbed, which are then sluiced for gold. Earlier in August she turned up a raw diamond: There, in her pan, it was “shining back at me,” she told the Sacramento Bee.

It’s rare but not unheard of for diamonds to show up in California. The SacBee reports that hundreds of diamonds have been found by gold miners since the days of the California gold rush. Most of those rocks, though, are small and not suitable to be made into jewelry. In other words, they’re not particularly valuable.

This one is big enough that it may have some worth, although it’s impossible to know until it’s cut. Still, it’s not every day that you find a diamond—even when you’re looking for gold.

"I was like, I just found a diamond! In a 70 million year old section of river," Kelly told the Bee. "It was like a miracle. It was awesome."

In 1959, Time reported that California real estate developer M. Penn Phillips claimed to have sold more parcels of land than any man alive. Two years later, though, his development flops led to the suspension of his business license in the state and Phillips looked north to Christmas Valley, an unincorporated community in the high desert of Central Oregon.

About 30 miles from the nearest highway in the “Oregon Outback,” Christmas Valley was a sparsely populated town that didn’t have electricity until 1955. Between ancient rock structures lay fields of sagebrush, stretching for miles. To this day, it’s so empty in some places you can hear the scurrying of quails and jackrabbits or the slow approach of a cougar or bobcat.

Still, all Phillips saw was potential. He built an airport, an A-framed lodge, rodeo grounds, and a nine-hole golf course. Before he hit Oregon, Christmas Valley didn’t even have a school. Inspired by the town’s name—which is most likely an homage to pioneer stockman Peter Christman—Phillips assigned equally festive names to the streets: Snowman Road and Christmas Tree and Glitter Lanes. While Phillips’s vision held some promise, there was a reason the area had yet to be developed.

The Christmas Lake Valley basin was formerly an inland sea. Previously, homesteaders had populated the region, but frustrated that they couldn’t make a living, most abandoned their homes for greener pastures. The unpredictable weather—living up to the name, it’s been known to snow on the 4th of July—and other difficulties of surviving with little access to arable water meant Christmas Valley was not for the faint of heart.

“Christmas Valley was just a place where two roads came together,” says 68-year-old Alan Parks, a hay rancher who lives between the town and neighboring Fort Rock. His grandfather, Henry Parks, was a geologist who came to the area in 1921 after receiving a grant from the State of Oregon to irrigate the aquifer beneath the basin. But the 1929 economic crash halted his project, and he survived on the profits of 3,000 laying hens until his death in 1945.

Henry’s son Merritt decided to stay in the area, marrying a woman from Iowa with whom he had Alan. At the time, it was 12 miles to the post office and 80 to the nearest doctor. Parks says he was one of two students in his seventh grade class in Fort Rock, even with children bussed in from neighboring areas.

One of those other students was Wanda Lanear. She moved to Christmas Valley from Colorado in 1955 with her mom Evelyn and stepfather Johnny. Lanear remembered exploring the desert around her parents’ ranch, discovering Native American artifacts as well as homesteads that people had abandoned so abruptly there was still food on the table. As she got older, she and friends chased the strange lights they saw in the sky. To this day, she thinks they might have been aliens.

Lanear says it wasn’t a shock when Phillips came to town. She remembered running into local land speculator Phil Pittman, who had helped bring electric power to the high desert. “Pittman came up to my mother and said, ‘Evelyn, you need to get your real estate license. I just sold a whole damn desert.’ I remember that. And he had. He had sold it to Penn Phillips,” says Lanear.

In 1960, Pittman sold over 72,000 acres of Christmas Valley to the Penn Phillips Company, which soon began an ambitious infrastructure project. Phillips laid out the town and installed a water system. He also added an artificial lake known as Christmas Valley Lake, today referred to as Baert Lake. This was accompanied by an equally calculated advertising campaign. Phillips pitched Christmas Valley as both an agricultural hotspot for prospective farmers and as the ideal American town for retirees.

Lanear remembers the families Phillips flew in from Los Angeles and San Francisco for the day to be wined and dined. Parks also recalls watching the airplanes land and take off, although he says that Phillips’s “sales force did not encourage the customers to mingle with the locals too much. It might have damaged the sale percentage.” The all-too-brief-visits didn’t allow the visitors to see the difficulties of living in a town that didn’t even have a doctor in residence.

“Well, what little I remember, a lot of the locals were reasonably critical,” Parks says. “It didn't make any sense that people were going to come out here and farm 20-acre parcels and 40-acre parcels when we were having a time making a living on 5,000 acres.”

In the short term, Phillips’s efforts were successful. According to the Oregon Historical Society, he had sold close to 100 percent of the land in the first three months.

To an extent, this prosperity expanded to Christmas Valley’s residents. Lanear, like both her parents, became a real estate agent. She described this era, when she benefited financially from the development, as the “good old days.”

“I would say if you were a local out here at the time and wanted a job, you got one,” Lanear says. “Hands down, you could have a job.”

But this didn’t mean that the new landowners were quick to arrive. When asked where the town’s new residents were, a Penn Phillips Company representative responded in a July 1967 Oregon Journal article, “They are coming. There will be no boom, but I believe in land. There isn’t enough of it.”

But the migration never actually materialized. In 1962, the company had estimated the population would reach 5,000, but by 1972, only 150 people lived in the development, according to OHS. A year later, Phillips abandoned Christmas Valley.

Some, like real estate agent Rebecca Law, only realized their relatives owned land in Christmas Valley after those relatives died. In Law’s case, it was her father. “No one knew why he bought it,” she writes on her website. “He faithfully paid the $30 property taxes for many years, but never saw the property. His parcel is in an undeveloped area surrounded by sand dunes and has a negligible market value.”

For the residents of Christmas Valley, Penn Phillips has a nuanced legacy. Lanear is glad the town has stayed almost as small as it was when she moved there over 60 years ago. “I’ve just been here for so long,” she says. “I love the laid backness. You know most people. It’s like that old saying, ‘I don’t need to use my turn signal. They know where I’m going.’ You walk into the store, and they all know you.”

Fran Baxter, who owns a seasonal antiques shop in what she believes is Phillips’s old office, says she likes the trust that exists in a small community and the wide-open spaces. “It's beautiful here,” she says. “When you can look out into your driveway and look at a bald eagle sitting on the end, how can you do better than that?”

Carl Shumway moved to Christmas Valley in the 1980s, after the failure of Phillips’s plans. He says that the streets of abandoned properties are an “eyesore,” but he’s optimistic. Shumway, who can often be found on the golf course designed by Phillips, says that recent developments, including the possible reopening of the lodge, are hints that Christmas Valley’s future could be bright.

“There are very few rural communities in the Northwest that have this caliber of assets,” he says. “And these are things that Penn Phillips put in place when he initially developed this. So Penn Phillips gets a lot of flack for some of the stuff that people disagreed with, but look at what we got today.”

Phillips’s mixed legacy is reflected not only in Christmas Valley, but also his other developments. Right before he set his sights on Oregon, he had finished his largest and most iconic development, Salton City in California. The resort, which included a luxury hotel and yacht club, attracted Hollywood elite, such as Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. Although many invested, few actually built property, much like in Christmas Valley. During the mid-1970s, Salton City was flooding from agricultural runoff, and by the end of the decade, it was mostly abandoned.

As the population of Christmas Valley stagnated in the 1970s, there was growth, albeit modest, in Hesperia, another California development that Phillips financed with support from famed boxer Jack Dempsey. Phillips and his wife were also major benefactors to Claremont McKenna College, where a hall is named in their honor. For some, he’s remembered as a real estate tycoon. For others, he’s a crook who was a better salesman than developer. Whichever the case, it’s clear that Phillips had big dreams of taming the West and building an empire, whether they materialized or not.

Although Christmas Valley never reached Phillips’s initial goal of 5,000 inhabitants, the population today is about 1,300, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Christmas Valley is not much more than a central main street surrounded by scattered houses, but the town has more to provide than what Phillips left behind. Residents can order a B.L.T. at the new Sagehen Cafe, where the waitstaff wear Christmas aprons; find treasures at a handful of antique shops; or even seek medical care in town. Relics of Phillips’s influence are still present, from the whimsical street signs poking out of the sagebrush to the mid-century buildings that have more or less survived the last four decades. But less than artifacts of a bygone area, these structures are testaments to the resiliency of a town that refused to die, whether abandoned by inexperienced homesteaders, those with dreams of agricultural fortune, or the man who put it on the map.

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

Modern hair combs are unusually simple tools—perhaps our simplest. Their single row of bristles, usually black, are designed to do one thing—separate and organize your hair follicles into a more attractive format.

They do this effectively, without the need of any electricity. And they’re cheap, too—you never have one when you need one, but you can buy a pack of 72 of them for eight bucks, or 11 cents each.

But even these simple devices carry an air of mystery. Specifically: Why does my comb need to announce itself as “unbreakable?" Does it matter these days? And, of course, has anyone successfully broken one?

The answer, it turns out, lies in the past, as it was the inventiveness of Charles Goodyear proved a turning point in American history, not just for combs, but for manufacturing. His 1843 discovery of the vulcanization process, which cured and toughened rubber in ways that made it a more useful material, was not an easy one to get to. His early efforts, according to Rubber: An American Industrial History, earned respect from major politicians like Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, but his products struggled on the market and he at one point faced bankruptcy.

But once he figured out his vulcanization process, Goodyear was in a position to reinvent numerous industries, with combs being near the top of the list.

(If you're curious: Goodyear died nearly 40 years before the tire manufacturer named for him was created. And while there was also an industrialist named Charles W. Goodyear who came to prominence in the late 19th century, the vulcanized rubber inventor was unrelated.)

At the time, combs tended to be made using fragile materials like bone, wood, and ivory, which, when dropped, could easily break. But Goodyear’s combs were different: Rubber wasn’t a shatter risk, of course, and it was also firm enough to be used while offering a degree of flexibility. The combs, at first, were not cheap, but according to Chauncey Depew’s 1895 book 1795-1895: One Hundred Years of American Commerce, Volume 2, they soon reinvented the market:

The first article made in hard rubber to any considerable extent was the comb. It is said that Goodyear's first experiments in this line made his combs cost twenty times as much as the ivory combs then in use ; but the rubber comb has now practically displaced all other kinds. Probably five hundred varieties of rubber combs have been made since the beginning of this industry.

Goodyear, who died in 1860, left behind a growing comb market, with two companies allowed to sell the devices under his patent—the India Rubber Comb Company and the American Hard Rubber Company. Eventually, though, Goodyear’s patent expired, and competition started to build up in the comb space, leading to more aggressive advertising in newspapers and trade publications. One of the common phrases that gained currency in the late 19th century was “unbreakable,” something highlighted by the Hercules Combs sold by the Butler Hard Rubber Company.

“Various kinds of so-called unbreakable combs have been offered to the public at different times, and the trade is cautioned against accepting any not bearing the gold stamp ‘Hercules,’ Warranted Unbreakable, on the one side, and The Butler Hard Rubber Co. in black on the other,” an ad for the device in American Druggist said in 1891.

It wouldn’t last, thanks to the eventual use in plastic, but there was a time when people thought of the word “Goodyear” and combs came to mind—rather than tires.

Eventually, though, the inevitability that was plastic came, and from the moment that John Wesley Hyatt, came up with one of the first usable plastics, celluloid, it was obvious where things were going. Hyatt was inspired by an 1863 contest that offered a $10,000 prize for anyone who could come up with a billiard ball that wasn’t made of ivory. Hyatt never came up with the billiard ball, but he soon was producing combs. In 1878, he was awarded a patent—one of many he would receive in his life—for “improvement in the manufacture of combs from celluloid.”

It makes sense that plastic combs quickly found a home on the market. The use case was perfectly matched for the type of material, for one thing, but it was also an object that was very easy to make and mold into a specific shape. When new types of plastic, such as nylon, appeared, combs often used the materials first.

They also became more utilitarian, and less elaborate than the bone, wood, or ivory combs that had come before.

“With the rise of mass-production plastics, the fanciful decorative combs and faux ivory dresser sets so popular in the celluloid era gradually disappeared,” the author Susan Freinkel noted in a book excerpt on Scientific American. “Combs were now stripped to the most essential elements—teeth and handle—in service of their most basic function.”

And after World War II, a truly “unbreakable” material—polypropylene, a flexible plastic invented by two European scientists in the 1950s—quickly became the high watermark for plastics, and, ultimately, redefined the comb yet again.

A 1975 Philadelphia Daily News article, colorfully, highlights the way that combs became a difficult business to stick with. Clement A. Belusar, the marketing director of the then-recently shuttered Ajax Comb Company, broke down how the move to an “unbreakable” plastic permanently did in the company.

“Then came polypropylene and the unbreakable comb. Our downfall,” he explained. “The only time you had to replace a comb was when you lost it. And when you lost it, somebody else could find it and he wouldn’t have to buy one. We’re out of the business …”

I lose combs pretty often, so I assume that they should’ve just waited for me to be born.

“Oh wow, maybe it really is unbreakable.”

Of the many unusual activities that can be found on YouTube, one of the weirdest involves a subsection of kids who feel compelled to test the claims of unbreakability parlayed by cheap modern combs picked up at such fine establishments as Sport Clips.

Some were successful, even unexpectedly so. Others weren’t so lucky.

(Fun discovery when watching some of these clips: In at least one instance, I ran into a pre-roll ad for Red Lobster highlighting its Crabfest—before, you know, watching someone bending a comb in a very similar way. They know.)

Of course, the truth of the matter is that combs were aiming for a very specific kind of unbreakability—the phrase refers to the fact that the teeth aren’t designed to fall out if you drop the device on the ground, not the idea that an 11-cent device would survive an endurance test.

We’re not talking Unbreakable in the M. Night Shyamalan sense here. Cheap combs don’t possess superpowers.

What they do possess, however, is the ability to reliably comb your hair.

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

Everything you believed as a child is a lie. Your Furby doesn't know who you are. The Tamagotchi you cherished, then killed with neglect, was never actually alive. Sea monkeys don't look like monkeys—they're cryptobiotic brine shrimp! And astronaut ice cream? The stuff that you made your parents buy in the museum gift shop that comes in foil packets and vanilla, raspberry, and chocolate flavors that more or less taste the same? It never actually went to space.

But there is such a thing as astronaut ice cream. As a group, these intrepid explorers, scientists, and pilots love the stuff. So they were very excited, according to NPR, when earlier this week a shipment of 30 individual Bluebell ice cream cups and some Snickers ice cream bars were shot up to them, 250 miles above the surface of the Earth. Let's see Amazon Prime try that. (Patience.)

The frozen treats came as part of a usual resupply mission to the International Space Station. Some 6,400 pounds of lab equipment, supplies, and food arrived in the SpaceX Dragon capsule. The challenge for ice cream in space is storing it once it gets there. Sure, space is very cold, but you can't hang the ice cream outside like a six-pack in a mountain stream. Astronauts have limited freezer and refrigeration space, mostly used for storing blood and urine samples—not what you want to root through in search of a popsicle. However, the supply capsule, which returns to Earth, has freezers to bring back those samples, leaving a little extra cold storage in the orbiting station.

The catch, if you want to call it that, is that the astronauts are going to need to that freezer space back, so they have to launch into a full-scale ice cream party. They have just a few weeks to empty the freezer. "It's a really special treat, but when it gets there, they have no place to put it," Vickie Kloeris, from NASA's Space Food Systems Laboratory, told NPR. "It's tough duty, but they'll manage to eat it in the time allowed."

There are other goodies among the supplies: citrus fruits, carrots, even a surprise avocado or two. Astronauts can live at the International Space Station for as long as a year, and when one spends that long in a confined, alien space, the psychological impact of food becomes very important. After an initial phase where astronauts were given free rein on what to eat, Kloeris and her colleagues decided to put together a standardized menu that maximizes variety and minimizes repetition. "Now," she said, "all the managers in the space station program are aware how important it is to be sure these crew members get coffee the way they like it."

One thing that has little psychological impact in space, however, is freeze-dried ice cream. Given the choice, it turns out, adult humans don't really like it, especially if the real stuff is available, even occasionally. NASA did originally commission the product for one of the Apollo missions, but never made it part of the space program. "It wasn't that popular; most of the crew really didn't like it," Kloeris said, in a NASA feature.

In Neustadt, Germany—in the western part of the country, not far from the French border—a truck with 20 tons of chocolate, including a lot of Nutella (primarily sugar and palm oil), went missing last weekend. It was probably stolen, according to the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The problem for the thieves behind such a caper is how one goes about profiting from such a haul. Fence it all as quickly as possible for cents on the euro? Feed it into Europe's chocolate black market? Set up a stand on the corner?

"Anyone offered large quantities (of chocolate) via unconventional channels should report it to the police immediately," German authorities said in a statement, which begs the question of how often large amounts of chocolate pass through unconventional channels.

Police said the stolen truck, which was also carrying Kinder Eggs and other chocolates, contained $82,000 worth of goods, and could've been towed away by a bigger truck. They also suspect the crime is connected to an earlier theft of an empty truck.

Have you been offered a large amount of chocolate through unconventional channels recently? If you see something, say something.

The Great American Eclipse is nearly upon us! In just a couple of days, the Moon’s shadow will cut a wide swath right through the center of the country to the delight, wonder, and fascination of millions of eclipse watchers. To prepare you for the once-in-a-lifetime (for some) event, we asked you what you most want to know about the spectacular celestial event. You did not disappoint!

We picked 15 of the most-asked and most-intriguing questions sent to us, and then scoured the internet and reached out to experts to get you answers. Before you witness this most jaw-dropping natural event, here’s everything you wanted to know about the eclipse (and probably a few things you didn’t know you were curious about).

Bob from Absecon, New Jersey, asks:

What date and between what times will I be able to see the eclipse from my town?

By far the most frequently asked question was whether the eclipse would be viewable from where you are. The most stunning views of the eclipse will be within the path of totality, where the Sun will be completely obscured by the Moon. There, camping sites and lodging have been sold out for months (even years, in some cases), and millions of people are expected to flood rural communities nationwide for the best views. So, expect traffic and crowding if you plan to seek totality at the last minute.

But even outside of the path, the skies will darken with a partial eclipse over the entire country (Hawaii and Alaska, too) at some point on August 21.

Thankfully, NASA has an exhaustive database of materials and resources that can tell you exactly when the eclipse will darken your patch of sky, and by how much. There are also interactive maps from NASA and eclipse fanatic Xavier Jubier that can provide even more granular data about every moment.

However, no matter where you are, your view of the eclipse is going to depend greatly on the weather. A simple cloudy day could block your view entirely. Be sure to check the weather if you plan on making an event of it. —Eric Grundhauser, Staff Writer

Jacob from Miami, Florida, asks:

Why do you have to wear special glasses when watching an eclipse?

Many readers had questions about that most iconic piece of eclipse gear, the glasses. We asked Rick Fienberg, press officer for the American Astronomical Society for the lowdown eclipse eye protection. "Eclipse glasses are thousands of times darker than ordinary sunglasses and block almost all the sun's ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light," he says. "Ordinary sunglasses block 50 percent. Eclipse glasses block 99.999 percent. They are made of special materials that absorb and/or reflect the Sun’s radiation at all wavelengths that could potentially harm our eyes."

There is, during the eclipse, a very small window of time when you can remove the glasses—totality. "Eclipse glasses are meant for use during the partial phases of the eclipse, when the Moon blocks part—but not all—of the Sun’s bright face," he says. "You can also use them on any sunny day, though there’s not much to see unless there happens to be a ginormous sunspot, i.e., one big enough to be visible to the safely filtered but otherwise unaided eye. The only time it is safe to remove the filters and look directly at the Sun is during totality, when the Moon covers the entire bright face of the Sun and the solar corona is visible." All of that being said, this is by no means an exact guide, so always take the proper care when looking at the sun.

Also, Feinberg warns people to never ever use eclipse glasses as protection when looking through telescopes or binoculars. There are special filters for that (see below). —EG

Julie from Chicago, Illinois, asks:

Have there ever been any documented cases of eclipse blindness?

Surprisingly, for all the risk associated with staring at the Sun, there are few known cases of eclipses completely blinding people. An investigation of the question on Live Science states that there have been more than 100 documented cases of serious or permanent vision damage caused by eclipses, which isn't bad considering the frequency of eclipses and how many millions of people have experienced them, even without eclipse glasses.

The damage, technically called "solar retinopathy," is not caused by the eclipse itself, but people watching it tend to force themselves to stare, and overcome the normal reflex to look away. The lowered amount of perceived light makes that easier to do.

Most people who have reported problems with their eyesight after an eclipse find that the effects fade with time. But permanent damage is a real risk, so wear those glasses, or don't look for too long, even if you're shading your eyes. —EG

Vince from Florida asks:

How will this eclipse affect werewolves?

Multiple people asked how the eclipse will impact werewolves. Sure enough, there is lore on how solar eclipses affect lycanthropes. According to the blog Ask Mystic Investigations, the eclipse could cause werewolves to transform prematurely and act erratically. Resource blog Your Lupine Life states that lunar eclipses tend to make werewolves "extra agitated an (sic) extra horny as weird as that may sound you also experience mood swings and your strength and speed will become increasingly strong."

Those who think they have this terrible affliction (and the people around them), should take the appropriate precautions, up to and including an eclipse cage of some sort. —EG

Ken from Grand Island, Nebraska, asks:

I've read that I need a special filter for my camera. Where do I find one?

Multiple people had questions about their cameras and how to take pictures of the eclipse, and any advice depends on the camera you’re using.

The vast majority of people trying to photograph the eclipse are going to do it with a smartphone, and Apple told USA Today that direct sunlight has little ability to damage the digital image sensor on a smartphone. The cameras on phones are usually very wide angle, meaning the sun will be just a tiny dot in photos taken with them. A more pressing question is why one would bother—unless your phone camera is covered by a solar filter (the one you use for your eyes will do), any attempt at photos of it shy of totality are going to be washed out by glare. And even with a filter, the sun will still be little more than a tiny, pixelated speck. A better way to remember the moment might be to capture the scene around you, maybe with the eclipse in the background.

More serious cameras with larger lenses, such as SLRs, are more susceptible to damage from the Sun. Picture a magnifying glass, a sunny day, a line of ants, and a sadistic child. The large, magnifying optics of zoom lenses, especially the large ones needed to get a tight image of the eclipse, can focus the sunlight in a way that can damage a sensor as easily as it can damage an eye. Solar filters, widely available at camera stores, take away this risk by reducing the light from the sun by about 100,000 times, and are a necessity for useful pictures. Just remember not to use the viewfinder to look at the Sun.

This all changes at the moment of totality, however. Your eclipse glasses can come off, and your solar filter might as well be a lens cap. Eyes and cameras are completely safe during this brief period.

A few more tips: Don’t get so caught up in fiddling with a camera that you forget to watch the eclipse. Make sure your flash is off—it will not illuminate the Moon, but it will annoy everyone around you. And those people are going to make great photographic subjects, too. —Samir S. Patel, Deputy Editor

Mary Jane from New Baltimore, Michigan, asks:

Is there an increase in automobile accidents during an eclipse?

The short answer is no. At least not so far.

The United States last experienced a major solar eclipse in May 2012, when people in California, Texas, and a few other states saw one. A scan of American newspapers for the following days reveals just a single car accident linked to the eclipse—a driver in San Francisco, who told police she was temporarily blinded by the eclipse, hit a mother and daughter in a crosswalk. The daughter’s arm was broken.

That's enough for authorities to issue stern warnings to drivers about keeping their eyes on the road and not taking pictures. But they seem more concerned with congestion. With millions traveling to the 70- to 90-mile band where a total eclipse will be visible, transportation departments have compared the situation to Super Bowls and music festivals. They warn drivers to plan ahead, and they have suspended construction projects in eclipse areas. To the extent that police officers and insurance agents expect more accidents, it is due to heavy traffic, not an act of God.

But since total solar eclipses are rare, no one knows for sure if there will be a leap in automobile accidents. The 2012 eclipse was an annular eclipse—the sun still appeared as a ring of fire around the moon, providing more light than the total eclipse will.

“Total eclipses are so rare,” says Michael Barry of the Insurance Information Institute, “there is not enough data to indicate whether the number of U.S. auto accidents increase when eclipses take place.”

A total eclipse last swept across the country like this in 1918, when the Ford Model T still dominated roads. Monday will see totality cross some of the world’s densest highway and road systems. Given that experienced eclipse chasers recommend being mobile, in case a cloud appears in your viewing area, it’s worth being extra cautious and aware of thousands of eclipse watchers driving frantically, in search of the perfect view. —Alex Mayyasi, Gastro Obscura Editor

Johnny from Florida asks:

If we didn't have eclipses, how would we have tested general relativity, or, in your opinion, would the theory have been resigned to the trash bin for lack of any way to test it?

Albert Einstein himself proposed three tests of his theory of general relativity. Just one, which measures how the Sun's gravity bends light from other sources, could only be measured during an eclipse in the early 20th century. He also suggested that the orbital ellipse of Mercury would change because of the sun's gravity, and that starlight reaching Earth from large stars would shift to the red end of the visible light spectrum. These have all been observed. Other tests have been devised since then, and some are still in progress. The European Space Agency's Gaia satellite will observe 500,000 quasars and measure how their light is deflected by massive objects like the Sun. Gravitational waves, first detected in 2015, also help test the theory, which predicted their existence. Proving the theory without eclipses would just have been a matter of time. —Kelsey Kennedy, Editorial Fellow

Jim from Cincinnati, Ohio, asks:

What are 'Baily's Beads'?

Despite what it may look like here on Earth, the Moon is not a perfect sphere. It's covered in mountains, valleys, and craters, and they're most obvious when the Moon passes in front of the Sun. During a total solar eclipse, sunlight shines through those peaks and valleys right as the moon's edges line up with the Sun, creating beads of light—Baily's Beads, named for astronomer Francis Baily, who described them in 1836. When the Moon moves so that there's just one bead of light, it's known as a diamond ring. —KK

H.T. from Missouri asks:

What exactly is the phenomenon known as ‘shadow snakes'?

"Shadow snakes," sometimes called "shadow bands," are a bit mysterious. These waves of shadow can be seen just before and after totality, most easily on white surfaces, and were described as far back as the ninth century. But scientists still aren't entirely sure what causes them. They're unpredictable, and the most likely explanation is that they're caused by the same atmospheric turbulence that makes stars appear to twinkle. —KK

Harley Boy Snigglesnort from New Orleans, Louisiana, asks:

As a dog, how dangerous is it for me to look at the eclipse? Should my man-friend keep me inside the entire time?

We received a couple of questions from ... users, about whether the eclipse will negatively affect pets.

Though your pet will look adorable in a pair of eclipse glasses, they probably won't need them. Animals are much smarter than we are, in their way, so they tend not to gaze at the Sun, even when it looks weird. On top of that, total solar eclipses can be a bit scary for animals. It may be a struggle to get them out from under the bed at all, at least until the darkness has passed. Just in case, perhaps it is best keep them inside with the blinds down. (You'll have plenty of time earlier in the day to get your Instagram snaps of Lucky in his safety glasses.) —Natasha Frost, Editorial Fellow

Ella Mae from Arkansas asks:

When will the next eclipse occur?

The next total solar eclipse is a little less than two years out, in Chile and Argentina. If you miss that one, there's another about 18 months later, in the same general place. But you won't have to go that far for another shot. In just seven years, another total solar eclipse will pass across a large swath of the United States—which means that some lucky people—the residents of Carbondale, Illinois, will get to see both from the comfort of home. If you're thinking even further ahead, there are another seven coming between now and 2050. In fact, we've compiled details on all the notable upcoming eclipses just for you! —NF

Micki from Coral Springs, Florida, asks:

Why does the eclipse travel from west to east when the sun travels from east to west?

One of the strange-seeming things that will happen during the upcoming eclipse is that the shadow of the Moon will move from the west side of the continent to the east, in apparent opposition to the usual course of the Sun across the sky from east to west. An article on Space.com tackled this question, and the answer is that the movement of the shadow is dictated by the Moon, not the Sun. The Moon's orbit goes west-to-east, and so goes the shadow! —EG

Andrew from Boulder, Colorado, asks:

Are there eclipses on other planets?

On August 20, 2013, the Curiosity Rover took a break from snuffling around the surface of Mars to watch something really cool: the larger of Mars’s two moons, Phobos, passing directly in front of the Sun. Unlike Earth’s moon, Phobos is too small and/or far from Mars to pull off a total eclipse. Instead, it did the best it could, interrupting the Sun’s brightness without obscuring it completely. Together, three photographs the Rover took look like a muppet rolling its eyes.

As astronomer Christa Van Laerhoven recently told Live Science, you really only need two things for an eclipse: a sun and a moon that orbits it on the same plane. While Mercury and Venus don’t meet this criteria, the rest of the planets in our solar system do, to varying extents. Mars gets the aforementioned partial blockouts, called “annular” or “ring” eclipses.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have numerous moons (Jupiter has 69, though only 53 have names so far!) so if you could stand on one of those gas giants, you would see eclipses fairly regularly—total ones when the moon in question is big or close enough, and partial ones when it’s not. Every ten years or so, three of Jupiter’s largest moons pass over the sun at the same time, and the planet witnesses a triple-eclipse. (It's worth noting that the Sun appears much smaller in the sky from these more-distant planets than it does on Earth.)

Everyone’s favorite almost-planet, Pluto, also gets solar eclipses. It takes Pluto 248 Earth years to orbit around the Sun once. Twice during this period, Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, take turns getting in the Sun’s way, eclipsing each other once every single Plutonian day for about three Earth years. Then they quit it again until the next time.

Eclipses now probably seem like a dime a dozen! But if space tourists could pick anywhere in this solar system to see one, though, they’d probably come here, because our home planet’s moon is the perfect size for celestial drama. As Van Laerhoven explains, “When the Moon passes in front of the Sun, the photosphere [the Sun's luminous outer shell] gets covered, but the corona [the sun's upper atmosphere] remains visible.” This results in that classic view of an almost-completely-shrouded Sun, its light just barely peeking out around the edges. So rest assured: If you can catch totality, you’ve got the best eclipse view for billions and billions of miles. —Cara Giaimo, Staff Writer

Stephanie from Union, Missouri, asks:

How do eclipses affect tides?

A handful of readers wrote in to ask whether the eclipse will affect the tides, and answer is yes! As we mentioned in our very own list of great places to experience extraordinary tidal forces, when the Sun, Moon, and Earth all align, it creates what is known as a "spring tide." This powerful variety of tide produces the greatest difference between high and low tides. A spring tide occurs after every new and full moon, but they also happen during an eclipse. So if you plan on watching the eclipse near the water, you might want to wear flood pants. —EG

Ben from Atlanta, Georgia, asks:

What's the funniest thing that's ever happened during an eclipse?

This is a tough one. Since most people are too busy staring at the sky in awe to crack jokes, there's not a whole lot of hilarious anecdotes out there, but we asked amateur astronomer and eclipse chaser Mike Kentrianakis, the man behind what is probably the most joyful (and pretty funny own its own right) eclipse video in existence. "[There's a] story of an airplane cleaning woman who got locked into a flight that had to depart and they wouldn't let her out because they had to leave exactly on time," he says. "She ended up being the luckiest woman in South America because she saw was the only woman from South America to see the eclipse from the plane!" That might be funny? —EG

Still hungry for more eclipse knowledge? Check out all of our eclipse stories here!

Terrifying. Adorable. Portentous. However the sight of 1,069 humanoid robots dancing in mesmerizing unison makes you feel, it is most definitely record breaking.

Shared over on Boing Boing, Guinness World Records put out a video of the 1,069 wiggling robots to announce that the performance had set a new world record for “Most Robots Dancing Simultaneously.” Staged by the WL Intelligent Technology Co, Ltd in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China, the spectacle beat out the previous record holder, a performance in 2015 that featured just 1,007 robots.

The robots were all commercially available Dobi bots, the primary purpose of which seems to be dancing. Arrayed in a giant grid, the robots seem to be able to stay in formation pretty well, although they slip out of there lines a bit, and few of the little guys fell over.

Still, it’s a whimsical vision of a future where robots are only stealing our sick dance moves, and not our jobs.

When Prince Albert died in 1861 at the age of 42, his wife, Queen Victoria was very upset. She never again wore anything but black in public. As another sign of mourning, she introduced black swans to a lake on the grounds of Rosenau Palace, Prince Albert's birthplace in central Germany. The tradition of keeping black swans there has continued to this day, and recently, a female black swan found herself in need of a new companion following the apparent death of her partner in the jaws of a fox. Swans famously mate for life (though divorce is possible).

And so, as the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports, caretakers earlier this month posted a call for help on a government website, requesting a black swan, of either sex and ideally over three years of age, as a new companion. A breeder in Ingolstadt, about two-and-a-half hours south of the palace, responded within days and provided a nine-month-old black swan to the palace.

On Thursday, a palace official told Deutsche Welle that so far everything looks good. "Both swans are swimming happily on the lake," he said. "It's going well."

Officials won't know the new swan's gender for more than two years, when it turns three. Though, as they said in the original ad, "The sex of the animal isn't important." They just want an end to the loneliness.

On Monday, August 21, Elise Ricard, like millions of others across the United States, will stare at the sky for about ninety seconds to watch the moon fully eclipse the sun.

Just before that, though, she's going to try to spend five minutes or so watching a squirrel. And afterwards, if her mind isn't too blown, she's going to find that same squirrel, and watch it again.

We more or less know what people will get up to during the eclipse. They might renew their wedding vows, or scream, or listen to an appropriate and beloved pop song. Most will be looking upwards. But Ricard, a driving force behind the California Academy of Sciences' "Life Responds" eclipse research project, is one of many researchers around the world who are dying to know something else: what are the other animals going to do?

People, including scientists, tell tales about watching animals react to an eclipse: seeing llamas line up calmly to observe it, or coming across whales throwing a pre-totality splash party. But many such stories are just that: stories, unsupported by broader data. In the past, when researchers have tried to ask this question more rigorously, they've had to be content with small-scale answers, necessarily focusing on one population of one species in one place. One paper, written in 1998, tells of schools of reef fish that "swam with alarm" when the sun disappeared. Another, about a 1991 eclipse, details the behavior of colonial orb-weaving spiders, which greeted the darkening sky by destroying and eating their own webs—a response that seems less dramatic when you consider that they do the same thing every night.

But as technology makes collaboration easier, some researchers have gotten more ambitious. In 2010, during a solar eclipse that passed over India, about a hundred volunteers took part in a project called EclipseWatch, using an online form to submit observations about animal behavior. (Some highlights: "dogs seemed unaffected," and red-wattled laplings bathed "where they normally do not.")

Seven years later, such possibilities look even brighter. For "Life Responds"—which also asks citizen scientists to record observations about how wildlife behave just before and just after the eclipse, using an existing app called iNaturalist—"we have this great confluence of fortunate things coming around," says Ricard. One is the location of the path of totality, which cuts a large swath across the continental U.S. and happens to pass over dozens of national parks and open spaces.

Another is the eclipse's popularity—if just a small percentage of eclipse-watchers participate in the campaign, that will still mean thousands of responses. Ricard hopes this will not only shed light on what individual animals do, but answer larger questions. "For instance, what percentage of eclipse coverage do you need to get a response from plants and animals?" she says. "Is 80 percent enough? Do you need to be in the 90 or 100 percent range?"

Megan McKenna, of the U.S. National Park Service's Natural Sounds and Night Skies division, is working on answering similar questions in a different way. With help from researchers across the country, she's putting audio recorders in remote areas of various national parks and monuments, where they can capture the private reactions of birds, insects, and other animals to the eclipse.

Changes in light tend to provoke some of nature's noisiest times: "We're trying to figure out what happens during an eclipse, and how it relates to a typical dawn and dusk chorus," McKenna says. Seventeen parks and monuments are participating in the initiative—15 in the path of totality, and two just outside of it, for comparison's sake.

So what does everyone expect will happen? For one thing, a lot of animals might try to go to sleep: "Birds will settle in their nests," says ranger Joe Reasoner of Fort Laramie National Historic Site. "Chickens and cows will head toward the barn thinking it is evening time." "Some mammals simply lay down," adds another of the Fort's rangers, Mike Evans. Meanwhile, nocturnal animals may think it's their time to shine, and come out to eat and chat. "Crickets might start chirping," writes Alvis Mar, a ranger at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, in an email. "Some toads might become more active. Owls may hoot."

All of these plans, of course, will be quickly scuppered when the sun reappears. At that point, researchers expect the animals might jump back into their daytime routines: coming out of the barn, greeting the "daybreak" with song, or (for the nocturnal ones) hiding again. As Shelley Buranek of John Day Fossil Beds National Monument puts it, "anecdotal evidence… suggests that [certain animals] will behave as if the day is ending and beginning anew." In other words, they'll treat the eclipse like regular life, but on fast-forward.

In some cases, though, experts are holding out for more surprising reactions. At the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, caretakers will be keeping a close eye on the American alligators, which tend to rumble during thunderstorms, and the ring-tailed and red-ruffed lemurs—which, as the zoo's primate expert Chelsea Feast details in a press release, have a special relationship with the sun. "They are very in tune with the light cycle," Feast says. "They may react with vocalizations…[or] they may sit quietly and just watch the sky."

An understandable response, but one we're interested in all the same. "We plan to have two GoPro cameras in the lemur exhibit," assures the zoo's communications director, Thom Benson. We wouldn't want to miss their reactions just because we'll be looking at the same thing.

Learn more about how you can participate in the "Life Responds" project here.

As Sun is blocked by the Moon on August 21, solar power production across the United States will drop by about five gigawatts. Utility companies say there won't be blackouts, but they are concerned about the impact of the eclipse on the electrical grid. The 2017 eclipse is an important chance to track the effects of an eclipse on solar power and learn lessons that will be useful in 2024, when another eclipse will sweep from Texas to Maine. But this isn't the first time utilities have paid close attention to the grid during a solar eclipse. Back in 1925, the electrical companies serving New York City were interested in the eclipse that passed over Manhattan, and set out to measure its impact.

On January 24, 1925, the total solar eclipse was visible from Minnesota, across the Great Lakes, to New York. The Consolidated Gas Company and the New York Edison Company (who have since merged and are known today as ConEdison) decided to join in scientific investigations happening during the celestial event. "It was felt that some of the industrial and social aspects of the extraordinary phenomena, as affecting the light and power services in the territory involved, would be of interest," wrote John W. Lieb, the vice president and general manager of the New York Edison Company at the time. Lieb penned the forward to a small pamphlet released by Consolidated Gas after the eclipse, which detailed the results of their experiments. These efforts included measuring the exact southern edge of the path of totality, gauging the change in sunlight intensity, and assessing the impact of the eclipse on the electrical grid. They also sought to answer another question: Should the street lamps be turned on "in the zones traversed by the stupendous cosmic shadows"?

To find the exact edge of totality, the companies positioned people on rooftops along Riverside Drive, on the western shore of Manhattan. The New York Times had predicted on January 23 that the southern edge would cross Manhattan at 83rd Street, but observers with the electrical companies stretched from 71st Street to 134th Street. One man on each rooftop was supposed to "look a little north of west to watch the oncoming shadow." And another was responsible for watching the eclipse to see if the Moon completely covered the Sun from each vantage point. Their observations were compiled, and "it was possible to establish a definite line between No. 230 Riverside Drive (just south of 96th Street) and No. 240 Riverside Drive (just north of 96th Street)." The two rooftops were separated by about 225 feet, and the estimate given the day before was off by about 13 blocks.

While employees from the New York Edison Company recorded the intensity of sunlight (during totality it was "comparable to a moonlight night"), employees of other electric companies throughout the region were carefully recording the load on their grids at regular intervals. Not everyone chose to brave the bitterly cold temperatures that day—electricity demand spiked as the sky darkened. But demand didn't drop suddenly once the eclipse was over. The author of the pamphlet explains, "The failure to return to normal soon after the eclipse is the usual condition following any reduction in normal daylight, as people turn on lights and then neglect to turn them off."

Some areas, including the Bronx and Yonkers, actually saw a reduction in loads because businesses gave their employees the day off. And while the area had been hit with a snowstorm about a week before, electrical loads came entirely from lighting, not heat. "In New York at that time, most people heated their homes, believe it or not, with coal," says Bob McGee, a spokesperson for ConEdison.

If a total solar eclipse occurred over New York City today (something that won't happen until May 2079), McGee says it wouldn't have an effect on the electrical grid. "If anything, it will mean people use less electricity," he says. If the eclipse were to happen in summer, when hot weather has people turning on their air conditioning, a brief respite from the sun might convince people to take a break from cooling their homes and businesses. Otherwise, he says, "it wouldn't be any more of a problem than the use at night."

There's a mystery at the heart of physics. Two decades ago, in 1998, cosmologists discovered that the universe is not just expanding—a discovery of the early 20th century—but that the rate at which it’s expanding is getting faster.

That’s not what they expected to find, but it made a kind of sense. If the expansion of the universe is accelerating, there needs to be a cause; not knowing exactly what that was, physicists called it “dark energy.” In theory, dark energy interacts through gravity, is spread out homogeneously through the universe, and is not particularly dense. If you total up all of the forces that make up the universe, it would account for 68.3 percent of matter and energy.

Account for dark energy, and certain theories of physics start to click. It helps explain the rate that galaxies rotate and reveals a more sensible age of the universe—without dark energy, scientists were finding that some stars were supposedly older than the universe as a whole. But almost 20 years after this discovery, physicists still know only a little bit about it. In order to learn more, scientists from dozens of institutions in 23 countries have been working together to create the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a giant, digital camera that has the power to capture the light of several billion faint galaxies, millions of light years away.

“All the existing telescopes with cameras were built before the discovery of dark energy,” said Paul O’Connor, a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. “We expect the LSST to map the entire sky and find out where all that dark matter has been hiding.” O’Connor has been working on the project’s camera sensors for more than ten years, and at Atlas Obscura’s Total Eclipse festival on Sunday, he explained how the telescope, when it goes into operation on a mountain in Chile, could transform our fundamental understanding of the universe.

For millennia, scientists and scholars have been looking at the night sky and recording their impressions with the best technology available. Starting in the 18th century, with the advent of photography, astronomers started taking pictures of the stars and other celestial phenomena; in 1851, a daguerreotypist, Johann Julius Berkowski, took the first photo of a solar eclipse. In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble used what was then the world’s largest telescope to established that spiral nebulae were whole other galaxies, millions of light years distant from our own. The human understanding of space changed; we saw for the first time the extent of empty space, “punctuated by these disc-shaped assemblies of stars, hundreds of billions of stars, which are the galaxies,” as O’Connor puts it.

In the 1970s, scientists at Bell Labs created a technology that used a “charge-coupled device” to capture lights as digital images. In 1981, the astrophotographer Jim Gunn used a CCD camera to create a 500 by 500 pixel image of a faint star cluster. He called that camera a “nearly perfect device.” This same technology, refined, is what kicked off the revolution in consumer-grade cameras and has given us the astounding images of the universe captured by the Hubble Telescope and other instruments. Today, there are dozens of huge telescopes, with top-notch CCD cameras. The question for the team building the LSST, O’Connor says, is: “Why are we going to the trouble of building another one?” What will the LSST do that existing cameras will not?

If you looked up at the sky on a dark night, you might see 2,500 stars with your human eyes. The LSST would see a billion stars, O’Connor said this weekend, and those stars would be outnumbered by distant galaxies, three to one. The camera’s field of view is ten square degrees—about the size of a dime, held up to the sky. “Every photograph we take of that size of the sky gets us another million galaxies,” O’Connor said.

One of the jobs of the LSST is to survey as many of these galaxies, over as wide a region of sky, as possible.

When the LSST goes into operation, which is scheduled for 2020, it will spend a decade scanning the sky, again and again. Over about 3,000 nights, the instrument will scan and capture each patch of sky one thousand times. “We’re really going to be making a movie of the universe,” O’Connor said. The LSST was specially designed to make this possible—it has a relatively wide field of view, it can scan each tiny section of the sky quickly, and it can look deep into the depths of the universe, to capture the faintest, most faraway galaxies.

With the information collected, cosmologists hope to start to better understand dark energy, the force that is causing those distant galaxies to speed away from us at an ever-increasing pace. This line of inquiry has the potential to transform the field of physics. “The acceleration of the universe is, along with dark matter, the observed phenomenon that most directly demonstrates that our theories of fundamental particles and gravity are either incomplete or incorrect,” the Dark Energy Task Force wrote in 2006. By looking at these faraway galaxies and understanding more about how they move, scientists may unlock fundamental truths about the nature of time, space, matter, and the forces that hold our world together, that have so far escaped our understanding.

That’s the reason they’re building the LSST. One of the reasons, at least.

The Sun Ra Arkestra has always had a special connection with the sky. The ensemble’s founder, Sun Ra, took part of his name from the Egyptian sun god, and in the 1930s, he experienced a vision of traveling to Saturn. The Afro-futurist band’s repertoire includes tunes called "Space Walk," "Take Off," "Space Idol," "We Travel the Spaceways," and "Song of the Sun."

Even after Sun Ra’s death, the band has continued on in the same path-breaking tradition. Atlas Obscura caught up with Marshall Allen, who joined in 1958, and Danny Ray Thompson, who joined in 1967, to talk celestial bodies before their headlining performance at this weekend's Total Eclipse festival in Eastern Oregon.

How did you each come to join the Sun Ra Arkestra?

Marshall Allen: There was good variety and sound that drove me to pursue that man and find out if I could get in. I went and met Sun Ra and did a lot of talking about the Bible and ancient Egypt and outer space and going to the moon. I was ready to play, I was only thinking about music. But he was a poet, you know. A lot of talking and explaining. It was something to learn, anyway, so I stuck with it.

Danny Ray Thompson: I met Sun Ra through Marshall… I saw these guys in a corner… there was a different vibe, different from anything I’d ever felt. Marshall was there, and he said, “Come on over,” but I was scared. Finally I got up enough nerve, and I put up my hand, and everyone was like, "Hey." It was like, what was I scared of? It was Sun Ra. I met Sun Ra.

I went down to see them play. They started playing at 9 o'clock. I had to leave at 3 o'clock in the morning and they were still playing. I had never seen anything like that. It just blew me away. The next day, I’m knocking on Sun Ra’s door. He said, “What do you want?” What’d he tell you, Marshall?

Allen: He said, “What’d you sent that boy over here for?” I said, “I didn’t send him over, he followed me over.”

Thompson: So that’s how I got in the band. I kept going and going, and I eventually got in the band.

What’s the relationship between the music you play and the sky, space, and other celestial elements?

Allen: Sun Ra was talking about outer space. Going to the moon. Sputnik, he was talking about going to the moon. All his songs are like that.

Thompson: We’re here to bring out the happiness and show the people of this planet that there’s something else out there than all the sadness they got out here. Because it’s crazy out here now. Sun Ra was writing about this 40, 50 years ago. He was really ahead of his time.

What are some of the stranger places you’ve played?

Thompson:Cappadocia. We played in an ancient monastery, a 4,000-year-old monastery. We performed in Tuva, Siberia, where at that time, no bands were going. The Republic of Tuva is at the base of Siberia, near Mongolia. They were building a Buddhist temple that the Bolsheviks had blown up, or something.

How did you choose what you’re going to play on the eve of the eclipse?

Allen: Through vibrations. It’s the way I feel today. I feel what should be played. I hope I do it right, but I hope I do it right. Play music for everyone to get something out of.

We got our standard songs, so you usually play your standards, that people know. In between, you do some creative things.

When you think about the moon passing in front of the sun, what does that make you think of?

Allen: It’s like one of his songs—the sky is a sea of darkness when there is no sun.

[Allen singing]

There is a sea of darkness

When there is no sun to light the way.

[Together]

When there is no sun to light the way

There is no day. There is no day.

There is only darkness. Eternal sea of darkness.

Thompson: The creator brought us here. He knew there needed to be somebody to bring the sun back. We’re going to bring the sun back.

What do you think Sun Ra would have thought about the eclipse?

Allen: He was always thinking about that.

Thompson: We were just talking about that, I was telling Marshall, what do you think Sun Ra would have thought? He would have said, Let’s do it fellows. They got us here to bring the sun back. We don’t want the moon just to block it all out. The sun has to come back. This planet has to grow.

Anything else people should know about Sun Ra Arkestra as the eclipse approaches?

Thompson: We bring happiness.

Allen: That’s what we do. We try to play what people need, not exactly what people want or like. Things you need to open the doors to other worlds. To enlighten the people that there are other worlds, we know not of, there’s something out there.

On Monday, a swath of the United States will witness a spectacular celestial phenomenon: The skies will blacken as the Sun skirts behind the shadow of the Moon. For many, the rare chance to glimpse such an awe-inspiring occurrence is a celebratory occasion. But throughout history, sudden darkness has also been interpreted as a signal that the end is upon us.

Human beings have long been quick to read both solar and lunar eclipses, as well as othercelestial wonders, as cosmic clues capable of foretelling our final days. But looking for inklings of the apocalypse isn’t limited to scanning the skies. It can be a more down-to-earth activity, too.

Across the terrestrial world people have long sought out or misinterpreted signs of armageddon. They have scoured ancient Mayan artifacts, searched religious paintings, and taken the hellish red waters of a Texas lake as doomsday prophecies come to life. Here are four places here on Earth that, like the eclipse, turned out not to be signs of humanity’s imminent demise.

The Mayan 2012 Prophecy Carvings

Villahermosa, Mexico

“Mayan Doomsday" mayhem filled much of 2012, largely thanks to a calendar carved on a stelae (monument) found within the ruins of the city of Tortuguero. The person who carved it illustrated thousands of years’ worth of calendar days before stopping abruptly on December 21, 2012.

To add even more fuel to the conspiratorial flames, the calendar was accompanied by a prophecy saying the date was the end of the 13th b’ahktun, or cycle, and after which there would be nothing more. Naturally, some people assumed this ancient, cryptic message from a long-gone carver spelled doom. However, given the way Mayans tracked time (and the fact that we're all still here), it’s more likely the end of the cycle was more akin to the end of an era, not the actual end of the world.

The Dresden Codex

Dresden, Germany

The stelae carvings weren’t the only Mayan relic to put apocalypse enthusiasts in a frenzy. The Dresden Codex is believed to be the oldest surviving book from the Americas. Named for its final resting spot, this pre-Columbian artifact was most likely taken from Chichen Itza in 1519. Scholars have scoured its 78 pages of Mayan hieroglyphs in search of any clues that may hint at humanity’s demise. In reality though, the codex is mainly an almanac and calendar for ritual celebrations. It includes a detailed astronomy log, complete with charts of the Moon and Venus and precise calculations of lunar eclipses.

Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls

Rome, Italy

One of the four major basilicas of Catholicism, this massive cathedral, which was built in the 4th century, has narrowly escaped its own doomsday multiple times. It’s been struck by lightening, raided by pirates, and was once nearly reduced to ashes. According to local legend, this stalwart survivor may hold the hints to its—and the world’s—final days.

A row of papal friezes graces the wall above the columns of the main hall, with some spots still open for portraits of future popes. Supposedly, the pope to fill the final frieze will be the last one to ever reign, as it’s believed whoever is pictured in that slot will be the one in power when the Second Coming begins. As of right now, there are just six empty spots left.

O.C. Fisher Reservoir

San Angelo, Texas

In 2011, this artificial lake in Texas turned a disturbing shade of deep, murky red. A drought of near biblical proportions gave the water its bloody hues and caused the once-healthy stock of fish to suffocate and rot. Naturally, people viewed the mucky mess as a clear signal the end was nigh.

In reality, it was bacteria that brought this scene from a nightmare to life. Chromatiacea bacteria, which thrive in oxygen-deprived water, are common in stagnant pools. Their presence, coupled with the massive drought, concocted the perfect conditions for giving the lake its macabre makeover. Fortunately, the area has since largely recovered, and the reservoir’s aquatic inhabitants were the only ones to suffer the death foretold by its hellish-looking water.

The jet ant’s working day is long, unfettered by union codes or health and safety regulations. The hours are unlimited, rest comes only in the form of hundreds of tiny power naps to propel them through the drudgery of their instinctual labor. Worker jet ants go out into the wide world (they range across Eurasia) to forage for honeydew from little insects such as aphids. When they find it, each fills its social stomach—part of the esophagus—with this sugary liquid. Next, like a bucket brigade, one worker ant pukes its sweet cargo into the mouth of colony-mate, who passes it onto another until the spoils of their labor make their way back to the nest (a process called trophallaxis).

But there’s a sleeper agent that undermines this smooth operation: the nitidulid beetle, also known as the highwayman beetle. It risks life and limb by posing as an ant—exploiting their low-resolution eyesight and, likely, the bleary fug of months of working through the night—to steal food from the ants’ very mouths. The behavior of these parasitic bugs is under investigation, in a new journal article by Arizona State University researchers Bert Hölldobler and Christina L. Kwapich, in PLoS One.

The beetles hover at the entrance of the nest, waiting for foragers to return with their sugary booty. “Let me take that off your hands!” they suggest. Glands around their heads and mouths secrete a mysterious "appeasement compound" that distracts the hapless worker ant. “At the beginning of the interaction, where the food stealing is happening, the ant is transfixed by the secretion,” ASU postdoctoral researcher Christina Kwapich told ASU Now. The ant then leans in and gives the undercover agent everything it’s got—1.8 times as much honeydew as it would pass on to an ordinary coworker.

Workers inside the nest are more skeptical of these intoxicating strangers. And when their tricks fail, things can rapidly go south for the beetle. The punishment dished out to the thief by the ants is a brutal one. First, they try to flip the interloper over, and if they succeed, they tear off its antennae and legs—a slow and unpleasant demise. Fortunately for the beetle, Kwapich said, its hairy legs sometimes allow it to grip the ground and prevent this initial flipping. “When an ant perhaps notices the beetle isn’t an ant, the beetle can really suction itself to the ground. It makes a perfect little cup on the ground that’s difficult to pry up.”

As any successful embezzler knows, the key to success is not gumming up the works enough to get caught. The highwayman beetle seems to have figured this out, Kwapich said. “It’s not occurring at high enough numbers to affect the success of the colony.” The ants march on, and on, and on, for the good of the collective, while the highwayman is out only for itself.

Eclipse chasers may seem a little intense—they often go to great lengths to see total solar eclipses around the world, booking hotels and flights years in advance. If you didn’t plan years ahead for totality on August 21, or if you find yourself addicted after experiencing it, you’re in luck. The next eclipse is just less than two years out, and another chance comes to the United States in just seven years. Here’s a list of notable upcoming total solar eclipses, and some of the stunning places you can view them.

July 2, 2019, or December 14, 2020

The next possible opportunity to see a total solar eclipse is in Chile and Argentina in 2019, but the air might be a little brisk and clouds could get in the way—July is winter in the Southern Hemisphere. But the 2020 eclipse passes over the same countries during the summer. Both Termas Geometricas, a cluster of hot springs in Chile, and the caves of Villarrica Volcano lie in the path of totality. They might not be the best places to view the eclipse itself, but they’ll make for great stops once it’s over.

April 8, 2024

It’s unusual for the same region to experience two eclipses in close succession, but the United States will have another total eclipse soon, this time from Texas up to the Great Lakes. Mexico and Canada will catch totality, too. The path of totality for this eclipse even crosses the August 21 path, so some places—Carbondale, Illinois, aren’t you lucky—will get to see two in less than a decade. And this time around, totality will last nearly twice as long as for the 2017 eclipse. There will be plenty of picturesque places to watch. Unique viewing locations include El Faro de Mazatlán, a lighthouse in Mexico, or next to a model of Earth in Houlton, Maine. Hopefully April showers won’t be an issue.

August 12, 2026

This solar eclipse makes landfall in just two places—western Iceland and Spain—but the view will be great no matter which country you pick. Iceland's famous Blue Lagoon lies right in the path of totality, and so does Reykjavík. Farther south in Spain, there are plenty of castles and monastery ruins that would make stunning backdrops.

August 2, 2027

At its height, this total eclipse will last a whopping six minutes and 23 seconds near Luxor in Egypt. Gibraltar, the northern coast of Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Somalia also lie along the path of totality. If you’ve been looking for an excuse to check out Oran, Tangier, or Luxor, this eclipse fits the bill. Or you could watch the eclipse from a small sliver of Spain in Morocco, or the ruins of an ancient Roman city on the Libyan coast.

July 22, 2028

Some parts of Australia will experience five total eclipses in the next 30 years. This particular one has a path of totality that passes directly over Sydney. The Royal Botanic Gardens or the Sydney Observatory are sure to be great spots to watch, but if you like an eclipse with a side of weird geology, the Devil's Marbles or the Bungle Bungle Range are perfect choices. The eclipse will also be visible in New Zealand, with Milford Sound and the Moeraki Boulders in the path of totality.

September 2, 2035

China's and North Korea's capital cities both lie along this eclipse's path of totality, along with part of Japan, north of Tokyo. The Beijing Ancient Observatory may have been constructed to view distant stars, but visitors will be able to experience one minute and 33 seconds of totality there. Alternatively, you could watch the eclipse surrounded by Japanese macaques at the Jigokudani Monkey Park in Nagano, Japan.

August 23, 2044

Only a small slice of Montana and a swath of Alberta and the Northern Territories will see this total solar eclipse, but that includes some incredible landscapes. The unearthly rock formations of Makoshika State Park, in eastern Montana, will offer a quiet place to watch the eclipse (and impressively dark skies for stargazing). The Hoodoos of Drumheller Valley are similarly strange rock formations in Alberta, and also lie in the path of totality.

August 12, 2045

If, by the time this eclipse rolls around, coast-to-coast paths of totality seem like old hat to you, you can spice up your eclipse-viewing experience with a trip to the Caribbean or South America. The path of this one starts in Northern California and bends down to pass through Florida (right over both Disney World and Miami), but the location of longest totality—six minutes and five seconds—is in the Bahamas, near the Great Isaac Cay. Book your boat now. Nearly all of the Dominican Republic and the northern coast of South America, from Venezuela to Brazil, will also see full occlusion.

August 2, 2046

People along the path of totality through Angola, Botswana, South Africa, and virtually all of the nation of Swaziland will be treated to nearly five minutes of darkness during this eclipse. Some areas in the path are not especially comfortable—such as the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, which you will likely have all to yourself—but an ancient stone calendar in South Africa would be a fitting setting.

Other Notable Total Solar Eclipses

Two eclipses will be visible from parts of Indonesia, and a small bit of Australia on April 20—first in 2023 and again in 2042. Another eclipse visible in Australia, as well as parts of southern Africa, will take place on November 25, 2030. Australia and New Zealand will see other eclipses on July 13, 2037, and December 26, 2038. Some of the least accessible eclipses include one on November 14, 2031, that just barely grazes Panama, another on March 30, 2033, that will only be visible in northern Alaska and a tiny bit of Russia, and one on December 15, 2039, that can only be seen in remote parts of Antarctica (remote even by Antarctic standards). Parts of Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China will see an eclipse on March 20, 2034, and Africa will catch another on April 30, 2041.

Make your plans accordingly.

The post originally published on August 15, 2017.

Nobody came to Eleanor Rigby’s funeral, but the right person may be able to spend forever by her side. The woman who may have been the inspiration for the famous Beatles song is buried in St Peter’s churchyard in Woolton, Liverpool, where John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met at a church fete. In an auction next month, The Guardian reports, deeds for her family grave space will go under the hammer, alongside an 1899 miniature Bible inscribed with her name, and, in a separate lot, the original handwritten score for the song.

In the United Kingdom, grave spaces are sold with a 99-year "exclusive right of burial." After that expires, another person may purchase the plot and be buried there, but only after 75 years have passed since the last full burial in the plot. The last person in Rigby's family grave was buried there in 1949. Seventy-five years, then, is only six years off.

But Eleanor Rigby was very nearly lost in the fog of time altogether. McCartney originally chose Miss Daisy Hawkins for the name of the song’s protagonist, but it didn’t scan as well as he’d hoped. Rigby, he said in 1984, he found on a storefront (despite the presence of the grave in such a pivotal place in Beatles lore). “I was wandering round Bristol one day and saw a shop called Rigby. And I think Eleanor was from Eleanor Bron, the actress we worked with in the film Help! But I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural." He came across Father McKenzie, the song's other character, in the telephone book, he said.

Rigby and McKenzie are just two of a whole cast of named characters in Beatles songs with borrowed or invented names. Many are women identified only by first names--Sexy Sadie, Lovely Rita, Michelle, Martha, Miss Lizzy. Others sound more like Clue characters: Mean Mr. Mustard in the dining room, or Sgt. Pepper in the library. Only a handful have both first and last names: Desmond and Molly Jones,Loretta Martin,Dennis O’Dell,Billy Shears.

There’s no record of the inspiration for the name Molly Jones (of "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" fame), though her husband, with his barrow in the marketplace, was allegedly named after Jamaican ska artist Desmond Dekker. Dennis O'Dell (from "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)," the B-side to "Let It Be") was the associate producer on their film A Hard Day's Night. Many of the others inspire fierce, unresolved debate and speculation among Beatles superfans. Loretta Martin, says one fan, is named for comedian Marty Feldman’s wife. Another swears that it was McCartney’s nickname for Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono.

Billy Shears is the leader of the fictional Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. A popular fan theory posits that McCartney died in a car accident in 1966, and that Billy Shears is the alter-ego of journalist William Campbell, who they believe replaced McCartney in the band. “When The Beatles found out about his death,” the theory goes,“they instantly planned a lookalike contest where they found William Campbell Shears. Paul’s best friend at the time, Mal Evans, took Billy on a trip to Africa, where they stayed for several months. While they were there, Billy had multiple surgeries done to his face, such as reconstruction of the nose, in order to transform into Paul McCartney.” By contrast, Eleanor Rigby’s tale seems positively straightforward.

The song, which spent eight weeks on the charts, seems to have caught and retained the public imagination. Loneliness never goes out of style. Omega Auctions is hoping these items will inspire “fierce bidding from across the globe,” auctioneer Paul Fairweather told The Guardian. “To have both to come up for auction at the same time is an incredible coincidence and it will be exciting to see how they perform.” He hopes the score might fetch nearly $26,000, and the grave space and Bible up to $5,200. The sale takes place on September 11 in Warrington, Great Britain.

Tales of Alaska’s gold rushes, which began in the 1890s, are full of larger-than-life men—bold, cantankerous fellows who drank and swore and shot as they chased promises of gold across the stark, untrammeled tundra. But nestled among all the stories of men is the story of Fannie Quigley, a five-foot-tall frontierswoman who spent almost 40 years homesteading and prospecting in Kantishna, a remote Alaskan mining region that would later become part of Denali National Park.

Like the men around her, Quigley drank, swore, and shot bears—but unlike those men, she used her bear lard to create the legendarily flaky crusts of the rhubarb pies she served to her backcountry guests.

Over her decades in the backcountry, Quigley acquired a reputation as not only a renowned hostess and cook, but one of the finest hunters the region had ever seen. Her guests—who were many, despite the fact that her cabin was only accessible by foot or dogsled—were universally impressed by the woman who “tracks her own game, prefers to hunt alone, skins and dresses, packs and caches even such massive beasts as moose and bear, skins out the cape and horns of mountain sheep and can both butcher and cook any game meat to the queen’s taste.”

Quigley was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, in 1870 to a community of Czech-speaking immigrants from the Bohemian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her upbringing inured her to unforgiving environments and ruthless austerity, and her family subsisted as farmers during a time of record-breaking blizzards, plagues of locusts, systemic financial collapse, and a drought that lasted seven years. Still, something in the harsh landscapes and scarce resources of her childhood captured her fascination, and Fannie spent the rest of her life deliberately seeking out the demanding freedoms of the frontier.

At the age of 16, Fannie left home and headed west following the rapidly expanding Union Pacific railroad, where she took jobs cooking in work camps. It was in these camps that she honed her rudimentary English—and, likely, acquired the rich vocabulary of cuss words (once described by a visitor as “figurative language that was fairly Shakespearian [sic] in its rugged raciness”) that would grow to be a cornerstone of her reputation.

After arriving on the West Coast, Quigley heard whispers of gold in the North and latched onto reports that it was impossible to find decent food. Counting on her experience as a camp cook, she joined the rush surging north to the Klondike and landed in Dawson City, Canada, in 1897. She quickly learned that miners, in their haste to be the first on site to stake new claims, would stampede into the backcountry without even the most basic essentials needed to feed themselves. Capitalizing on this lack of foresight, Fannie earned herself the nickname “Fannie the Hike” by walking dozens—sometimes hundreds—of miles into the wilderness with her sheet-metal Yukon stove and kitchen gear to set up shop fixing meals for ill-prepared miners.

Though Fannie entered the gold rush through cooking, she quickly got into the mining game herself, and in 1900, staked her first claim in Clear Creek, which lay over 100 miles east of Dawson. Here, she met her first husband, Agnes McKenzie. The pair married on October 1, 1900, and together they operated a roadhouse near the small settlement of Gold Bottom. The two were well-known drinkers, and their relationship was punctuated with screaming matches, broken furniture, and mutual black eyes. In 1903, Fannie walked out of both her front door and her marriage—and kept walking for 800 miles down the Yukon River before crossing out of Canada and landing in the town of Rampart, Alaska.

After a handful of years chasing rumors of rich claims in the frontier towns of Tanana and Chena, Quigley set out in 1906 towards whispers of gold in Kantishna, a remote patch of tundra that lay hundreds of miles and multiple mountain passes from the nearest town. No roads led into the region, and supplies were arduously pulled in by dogsled. It was here, amidst rolling hills that looked out on the jutting peaks of Mt. McKinley and the Alaskan Range, that Fannie crossed paths with her second husband, “long legged” Joe Quigley. Although the pair lived together for over a decade before becoming officially married in 1918, friends and community referred to them as man and wife out of a discomfort with the societal shame of unmarried cohabitation.

Despite its initial promise, Kantishna never truly panned out as a mining region, and within a decade, its population had shrunk to fewer than 50 residents. Although she staked 26 claims between 1907 and 1919, Quigley’s dreams of striking it rich never materialized. Instead, she honed the skills that would eventually cement her reputation as an unparalleled backcountry cook. She learned to hunt bear, moose, and caribou, and to set trap lines for lynx, wolverine, and fox. She built a series of raised garden beds that allowed her to grow a rich array of vegetables out of the reach of the frigid tundra permafrost, and she planted grass to spread as bedding for visiting dogsled teams. She perfected her recipe for potato beer, and used the temperature differentials in Joe’s mine shafts as her own calibrated refrigeration system.

News of the Quigleys spread to the outside world only by virtue of the fact that their cabin lay along the route for mountaineering expeditions setting out to conquer Mount McKinley (which is what Denali was officially called between 1917 and 2015, when President Obama restored the original Koyukon name). The Quigleys’ fortuitous location ensured that the couple saw a steady stream of visitors over the years, including such notables as the writer Jack London. In later years, people became so curious about “the little witch of Denali,” that visitors would make the trek to Kantishna solely to meet the infamous Fannie Quigley.

In a 1913 article in Outing Magazine, painter and mountaineer Belmore Browne wrote of meeting Quigley while returning from an attempt to summit Denali:

“Our hostess was one of the most remarkable women I have ever met … She lived the wild life as the men did, and was as much at home in the open with a rifle as a city woman is on a city avenue … From a physical standpoint she was a living example of what nature had intended a woman to be and, furthermore, while having the ability to do a man’s work, she also enjoyed life as a man does … In this wilderness she had built a home that would do credit to civilized communities ... A fresh-killed moose skin was nailed to the floor, hair side down, and a magnificent sheep head hung on the wall. There was a liberal supply of reading material, and a large range in the corner gave promise of pleasant things in prospect for the inner man. From the window you could see a flower garden, while below a truck garden flourished inside a pole fence.”

In the same article, Browne described one of Quigley’s feasts:

“First came spiced, corned moose meat, followed by moose muffle jelly. Several varieties of jelly made from native berries covered the large slices of yeast bread, but what interested me more was rhubarb sauce made from the wild rhubarb of that region … These delicacies were washed down with great bowls of potato beer, ice-cold from the underground cellar.”

Quigley succeeded in building an impressive home for herself, but she felt the weight of its isolation: for the majority of her time in the Kantishna region, she was the sole member of her gender. And while she was often disdainful of other women, Quigley missed them. In a letter to her friend Charles Sheldon, who was seminal in the founding of Denali National Park, she wrote, “I went to Fairbanks last fall. that [sic] was my first trip to town in seven years. I didn’t see woman for three years. I tell you, I got lonsome. [sic] I have not seen automobile yet.”

All told, Fannie Quigley spent over 30 years living in Kantishna. She and Joe divorced in 1937 after Joe fell in love with a nurse while convalescing from a mining injury in a hospital in Fairbanks; Joe moved south to Seattle, and Quigley remained. In 1944, at 74 years of age, Quigley died alone at in her cabin: by all accounts, it seems that she built a cooking fire and lay down to rest before lighting it, and simply passed away in her sleep.

Quigley’s final cabin, complete with cupboards and counters built to suit her diminutive stature, still stands out at the end of the 90-mile dirt road that runs into Denali National Park. Now operated by the National Park Service, visitors can enter her cabin and see the home where, in the words of her Fairbanks Daily News Miner obituary, “One of Alaska’s most colorful pioneers came to the end of her tread.”

Each day, robots and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming more and more sophisticated, and are infiltrating nearly every part of our lives. It is perhaps only a matter of time before arming AI-powered robots starts to seem like a good idea (or they decide to arm themselves). More than 100 tech luminaries and CEOs of robotics companies recently lent their names to a request to forestall this future, which what they call a “third revolution” in warfare.

As shared in a story by The Guardian, an open letter from experts across the world is appealing to the United Nations to ban autonomous weaponry under the same international rules that govern chemical weapons. They hope it will also inspire discussion of the issue at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). Like a similar letter presented at the IJCAI two years ago, this statement stresses that automated weaponry could lead to warfare that humans would likely not be able to control. The letter argues that things such as autonomous tanks, drones, and guns could enact war “at timescales faster than humans can comprehend.”

Among the high-profile names that have signed the open letter is tech figurehead Elon Musk, who also signed off on the previous letter and recently had a showdown over AI with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. With both AI technology and automated weaponry developing at what some feel is a dangerous speed, Musk and the others hope that serious discussion and regulation will keep things from getting out of hand too quickly. Autonomous robotics (What's your Roomba up to right now?) are becoming more and more a part of our lives each day. These experts want to make sure they're not also part of our deaths.