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Clever Cockatoos' Tool Use Is Off the Hook

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The Goffin's cockatoo, it turns out, is no featherbrain. At the University of Vienna, researchers were astounded and delighted when a crackle of cockatoos fashioned hooks out of green pipe cleaners to extract a tantalizing piece of cashew from a clear tube. The crowning glory of this achievement? Many had likely never seen a hook before.

In a second test, they had to unbend their original pipe cleaner to push food out of a different tube. Several birds mastered one task or the other, and one was even able to solve both problems. Solutions, researcher Isabelle Laumer said in a release from the university, were highly individualized, and their success seemed to have no bearing on their prior experience with similar tasks.

That cockatoos can solve these kinds of problems at all is surprising. In the wild, cockatoos don't "specialize" in what is called "tool-assisted foraging," said Alice Auersperg, head of the Goffin Lab where the experiments took place. "Goffin’s cockatoos have to actively invent the solution to the problem, rather than retreating to inborn stereotyped behavioral routines," she said. "It seems that, at least for now and for this particular species, we can get the innovative aspect of hook bending off the hook."

The experiments come on the back of experiments conducted with New Caledonian crows. In the early 2000s, a crow named Betty shocked the scientific community when she bent wire into a hook to retrieve a small basket from a tube. Studies since have suggested that this is a common behavior for the species, as similar behaviors were observed in the wild. At that time, the study of cognition in birds was unusual, but now scientists say that crows and parrots seem to be as capable of certain complex thoughts and behaviors as monkeys, apes, and humans, and have similar neuron counts in the corresponding brain regions.

What exactly constitutes tool use among animals has long been the source of some debate. Some scientists are content to describe it as "an object carried or maintained for future use," while others say that to be a true tool it must have been "modified to fit a purpose" or be "used in some way to cause a change in the environment." By either definition, tool use has been observed throughout the animal kingdom. In 1990, Jane Goodall, the British primatologist, famously observed a chimpanzee using a blade of grass like a Fun Dip stick to extract termites from their nests. Other chimps and bonobos have fashioned proto-sponges out of leaves and moss to wash themselves, or created shelters from the rain out of leaves. Elephants use branches to swat away flies, dolphins use conch shells to scoop up fish, wild bears use stones to exfoliate. Even bees can be taught to use tools or pull a string to receive a reward.

Actually making tools, as the crows and cockatoos in the experiments appear to, is far rarer and shows even greater cognitive ability. Birds are particularly impressive in this regard. Crows can fashion probes out of twigs or wire to impale larvae, and woodpecker finches adapt cactus spines to help them catch or spear slow-moving insects. This may be the first time Goffin's cockatoos have been seen altering tools in this way, but they are in good parrot company. The kea, a New Zealand mountain parrot, strips twigs and puts them into traps to trigger them—apparently only because they like the banging noise they make.

Whatever the reason, corvids and parrots put human children to shame when it comes to problem solving of this sort. Most human children fail the same task set to the cockatoos completely up to the age of five, and it's not until they get to about eight that they're able to successfully bend the wire.


A Brief History of Napkins, From Soft Dough to Paper

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

The first napkin was edible.

We can thank the Spartans in Ancient Greece for that. In those days, they ate everything by hand. That led to the common use of a soft dough to clean off the fingers, a food object called apomagdalie.

“Table cloths and napkins were unknown; the place of the latter was taken by soft dough, on which the fingers were rubbed,” explains 19th-century archaeologist Hugo Blümner in The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks. “At large banquets, sometimes towels and water for washing the hands were handed round between the courses, and this was always done at the end of a meal. The practice of using the fingers for eating made this indispensable.”

The Romans also introduced two kinds of cloth for napkin-related purposes—the sudarium, a “sweat cloth” of sorts for the face, and the mappa, a large cloth for eating while reclining.

Paper, which is said to originate from China, found one of its earliest uses as a napkin in the second century AD, according to researchers Joseph Needham and Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin, who write that napkins folded into squares were used inside of baskets that held tea cups.

Of course, the Middle Ages had a way of recalibrating things. For a while in Europe, there weren’t really napkins at all. People wiped their hands and faces with bread, their shirts, whatever else was around. Napkins eventually came back in a big way and added an air of formality to many settings—particularly as a variation of tablecloth called a surnape, which those of sufficient status received at their table places. These cloths eventually made it to less formal settings, too.

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A big turning point for the role of the napkin actually might have been the fork. In an 1887 edition of Good Housekeeping, writer Albert Aylmer noted that the fork, which took a while to gain acceptance in Europe, made the napkin a bit less essential for most meals.

“The introduction of the fork, however, caused eating to become so cleanly a process, especially in contrast to the recent past, that the napkin no longer held its ground as an article of use, but became merely an ornament and a thing of ceremony,” he explained. “It was found that, with a little care, one could retire from the table without the necessity for cleansing the hands.”

It wasn't the first time the napkin took a hit to its reputation—and it wouldn’t be its last, either.

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As for paper napkins, those didn’t develop as an industry until the late 19th century, thanks to the help of the Japanese market.

It started in 1887, when souvenir table napkins took off in the United Kingdom, particularly in the U.K. After the British firm John Dickinson Ltd. acquired decorated napkins from Japan, it overprinted logos and other marketing-related information on top, turning them into souvenirs.

According to The Encyclopedia of Ephemera, it was a bit of a strange mix of delicate and crude. “Most of the border designs were fairly dedicated, but the overprinting was commonly primitive,” author Maurice Rickards explained. (In case you wanna get a close-up look at some decorative napkins from the era, Princeton has a few.)

But even as they gained in prominence, they were seen as a scourge of formal dining. In a syndicated column from 1896, Helen Thompson of Brooklyn Magazinenoted some initial skepticism around paper napkins:

“Paper napkins! Who ever heard of such nonsense! What good are they?" were among the many exclamations uttered by good housewives when they first learned that wiper napkins were being sold for table use. They pictured to themselves squares of thin, white paper that would break at the first attempt to put them to use, and sighed over the frivolity of the Japanese for bothering to make such articles.

Now, however since their value has become known, every picnic party must be well supplied with these little squares of Japanese art. Hotels and boarding-houses have begun to use them, greatly to the delight of their guests, and it will not be long before restaurants, steamboats and even private families will have them in use.

Paper napkins were seen as something of a faux pas in social settings until around the 1950s, when the product improved and convenience won out. A major turning point came in 1948, when American etiquette author Emily Post gave paper napkins a partial seal of approval. When asked whether it was better to reuse a cloth napkin or use a fresh paper one, she went with paper.

“It’s far better form to use paper napkins than linen napkins that were used at breakfast,” she said at the time.

Of course, paper napkins have a major difference between comparable cloth ones—they're disposable. But are they recyclable?

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As it turns out, not necessarily, for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, they’re near the end of their life cycle already. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, paper can generally be recycled five to seven times before it runs out of uses. And napkins, paper towels, and other kinds of waste paper tend to be near the end of that cycle, basically formulated from a slurry of water and old paper. (This video, showing the process of creating toilet paper, offers up a pretty good idea of what that recycling process looks like.)

If you’re using a napkin that’s been recycled, odds are much of the material in that napkin has gone through the recycling process multiple times, with fibers too short to be reused again. In a way, a recycled napkin is already a reusable success story.

Germs may be an issue, too, depending on the use case. A 2011 study from the American Journal of Infection Control notes that unused paper towels tend to already have germs baked in—and at a rate of 100 to 1,000 times more in recycled paper towels than virgin pulp paper.

(However, it should be noted that there were no reports of consumers getting sick from using these recycled sheets of paper, and the researchers said that the real issue in this case was the use of recycled napkins in hospital settings, where patients have lower immunities.)

The bigger issue, it turns out, is contamination.

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You know how you’re not supposed to recycle pizza boxes? (Wait, you didn’t know?) The reason for that comes down to the fact that the box is naturally contaminated with the oils from the food, which is difficult to sort out in the recycling process. Likewise, used napkins often fit into this category.

This actually can prove a big issue for municipal bulk recyclers. The reason? Municipal recyclers get paid more for their recycled materials when they’re “clean,” and don’t have much in the way of contaminants. Throwing in paper covered in contaminants can reduce the value of the recycled materials.

“By providing clean recyclables, you can actually save your city (and ultimately, taxpayers) money,” writer Kiera Butler explained a Mother Jones article.

The best option here, as a result, is composting, which is generally OK for napkins and paper towels, as long as they aren’t greasy. In fact, one major napkin-maker, SCA, certified its Tork brand of napkins as compostable under the Biodegradable Products Initiative in 2011.

Of course, it'd be better if people relied on reusable napkins, but they're actually going in another direction entirely at the moment.

In August 2017, the paper napkin brand Vanity Fair, owned by the paper conglomerate Georgia Pacific, attempted to make a hip napkin commercial, if you’d believe it.

It’s not exactly high art, but according to AdvertisingAge, this is apparently a strategy that the Koch Industries-affiliated napkin brand feels it has to make.

"We're trying to make Vanity Fair Napkins, as well as the broader napkins category, more relevant to today's consumer," explained Lloyd Lorenzsonn, Georgia Pacific’s brand building and innovation leader of napkins (what a title!), in comments to the magazine. "These are universal situations we can all relate to and [the spots] serve the job of reintroducing the napkins within that context."

And there’s a reason for all that. According to research firm Mintel, younger people see paper towels as being just as good as napkins. According to stats reported by The Washington Post last year, 86 percent of consumers bought paper towels, while just 56 percent bought napkins.

Now, you might be asking yourself, “What’s the difference? It all goes the same place anyway, and Georgia-Pacific owns Brawny anyway!” The secret here is that it’s one less thing that the average household is buying, which means that it’s one fewer item Georgia Pacific is selling to consumers. The company, per the Post story, noted that around four in 10 people buy napkins on a regular basis, down from six in 10 fifteen years ago.

This latest trend highlights the fact that our habits in regards to napkins, which started with edible scraps and eventually moved to disposable pieces of heavily recycled paper, are fairly malleable.

It wouldn’t be surprising if, even considering Georgia-Pacific's massive size and foothold on the market, the public moved away from paper napkins or towels altogether at some point.

If you look in aggregate, the world has constantly been changing its napkin habits forever. How much do we lose if the paper isn’t pre-folded?

Nothing says that we have to use napkins.

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

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China's Seaside Library Mimics the Rhythms of the Ocean

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Reading alone by the ocean as the waves crash before you is one of the great, rare, solitary pleasures. Now, at Nandaihe Pleasure City’s seashore library, you can see what that feeling looks like converted into architecture.

When Dong Gong, the architect behind this creation, was brainstorming ideas for a seashore library, he casually glanced over a picture that was lying on his desk, of a painting by American realist Andrew Wyeth. It depicts an old man sitting on some rocks, staring at the waves. It evokes a sense of loneliness, Gong explains, but also a deep connection with nature, which he tried to imbue in his 5,000-square-foot structure.

The library is arranged in tiers, with the books in the back, and a dramatic wall of windows and doors facing the East China Sea, so every reader can enjoy the unobstructed view from wherever they are sitting. Or, as the architect puts it, the library is like “an auditorium and the sea is the ongoing play.” Further, all the spaces have been designed to maximize natural light and fresh air at specific times of day, to mimic the ocean's natural rhythms.

It seems to call for something more than your average beach paperback. Death in Venice, maybe? The Woman in the Dunes? The Sea, or The Sea, The Sea?

The Delicate Art of Illustrating Ancient Sharks

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Three hundred million years ago, long before the Discovery Channel invented the most successful marketing scheme in the history of television, every week was shark week. On the geological calendar, this is the Carboniferous Period, or, as it’s known to selachimorphaphiles, the “Golden Era of Sharks.”

It was a time of unparalleled marine diversity: big sharks, little sharks, spiral-jawed sharks, anvil-finned sharks. In books, on television, and across the internet, the Great White’s ancient ancestors are often depicted as more monster than fish, straight out of a scuba diver’s nightmare. But these pictures are, in fact, more aesthetic interpretation than perfect snapshot. They are works of scientific illustration, one of few professions where the austere rationality of science collides with an artist’s creativity.

One such artist is Aaron John Gregory, a scuba-diving scientific illustrator. When he’s not in the recording studio laying down bass for his band, SQUALUS—Latin for "shark"*—he’s working on book covers, museum displays, and comic books, like Godzilla: Rage Across Time. But his muse is the prehistoric shark—the more monstrous, the better.

Take Edestus giganteus, a fearsome beast, thought to have been more than 20 feet long. According to Gregory, Edestus may be the “most horrifying shark to have ever lived.” And his illustration of the colossus certainly lives up to the hype; teeth like serrated shears, jaws bulging with veins, a tail built for thrashing.

The temptation to take this portrayal as objective truth is strong; it fits the narrative of a hostile, primordial pre-human world. But Gregory is the first to point out that this is an artistic take on Edestus; it shouldn’t be upheld as indisputable fact. Other illustrators’ representations of the ancient shark are markedly different, both in anatomical detail and style. In this sketch by paleo-artist Dmitry Bogdanov, which shows up under the Wikipedia entry for Edestus, the creature is hardly differentiated from today’s sharks.

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Because nobody has ever seen an intact Edestus, scientific illustrators are required to play detective, using what evidence remains to flesh out a complete picture. As with all prehistoric creatures, the fossil record is our main resource in determining how these creatures looked and lived.

For bony animals, like the Tyrannosaurus rex, fossilized remains give archaeologists pretty reliable blueprints. When you find an entire skeleton, not much is left to the imagination. Sharks, on the other hand, are soft-bodied animals. They are made almost entirely of cartilage, which rarely fossilizes. So the artist takes on a bigger role, drawing upon knowledge about other sharks, anatomical structures, and limited fossil evidence to reverse-engineer the creature in question.

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In Edestus’s case, the only fossilized remains that have been discovered are her jaws. This means that the preponderance of Gregory’s illustration is based on educated guesswork. The gaping, carnivorous maw? Empirical grounding, the basis for everything we know about Edestus. The rippling, bulging masseters? Probably required to operate such hefty teeth. The curved body? A nod to sharks’ cartilage vertebrae; at a certain length, Gregory postulates, a shark’s soft body can’t support a perfectly straight spine (or, perhaps, this particular shark just has a bad case of scoliosis).Some of these decisions are also informed by Gregory’s style. It’s no accident that he capturesEdestus in attack mode, seemingly ready to devour its prey whole. Gregory aims to both inform and inspire with his illustrations; he wants you to be excited about massive prehistoric sharks, so he infuses his work with action.

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There’s a tension here, between scientific accuracy and artistic expression. Finding the right place on this spectrum is a huge responsibility for illustrators; people often experience scientific discovery through their work, whether in magazines, books, or on television. Space art and photography have been key in galvanizing (waning) public support for NASA missions. A six year old doesn’t want to be a paleontologist because she has a passion for dusting old bones. According to Gregory, “It’s because dinosaurs look awesome.”

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Of course, artists can’t go around adding fangs, wings, and aliens to their illustrations to make the science a bit sexier. At the end of the day, they are educators, and play a huge part in shaping the public image of natural phenomena. Just as a bad metaphor or an irresponsible study can engender distrust in the science community, a sensationalized drawing or a dishonest rendering can spread misinformation and encourage science denial.

In 2013, for example, the Discovery Channel aired a Shark Week “documentary” about the possible survival of the Megalodon shark, a prehistoric behemoth that has been extinct for millions of years. Through fictionalized interviews with “scientists” (actors), and “dramatized events” (plot devices), Discovery Channel floated the conspiracy that Megalodon is still alive, now preying on fishing boats instead of ancient whales. Only at the end of the segment were viewers informed that the program wasn’t pure fact, and by then it was too late. The damage was already done. To this day, Gregory said, people will swear to him that the Megalodon is still out there. After all, they saw it in a science documentary.

The Megalodon debacle may seem like a benign example, but it demonstrates the danger of undermining hard science in service of entertainment. The images we have of things too old to have witnessed, too small to be perceived, too large to comprehend are foundational in our conception of the world. We owe many of these pictures to scientific illustrators; at some deep level, they affect how we see things. Are sloths cute or hideous? Depends on whether you’ve seen them napping in trees or bathing in feces. It’s a matter of perspective. To some extent, so is scientific illustration—something between science and art, one person’s understanding that can both illuminate and obfuscate truth.

*Update: We originally said that Gregory's band is named Giant Squid. That's the name of his old band.

The Meteorite Hunters of British Columbia Are Out in Full Force

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When a meteor passes overhead, two exciting things happen. The first is the fireball that streaks across the sky, seemingly out of nowhere. The second, provided there's no damage, is the aftermath: when enthusiasts roam around, seeking treasure in the form of tiny space rocks.

As the CBC reports, that's what is happening right now in and around Meadow Creek, British Columbia, where a bollide terminated after rocketing over the province on the night of September 4th. Although most of the space rock burned up in the atmosphere—thus the fiery display—it may well have left small pieces of debris, called meteorites, scattered over the land after its disintegration.

In Canada, property-holders can claim ownership of any meteorite found on their land. After getting it officially certified by a meteorite-testing facility, they can sell them to collectors, auction them on eBay, or keep them forever as fairly dull-looking but secretly cool keepsakes.

For some of the searchers, the stakes are fairly high. "Employment is bad in the [area]," the local general store owner, Mark Healy, told the CBC. Depending on their quality and size, certain meteorites can fetch a fair bit of money. "So they're out looking."

Meteorites can be tough to find, given that most of them somewhat resemble Earthly rocks. If you're seeking them, physicists and astronomers recommend looking out for small objects with black, dull crusts. Some are also magnetic.

Unfortunately for Meadow Creek's searchers, the terrain there is good camouflage for meteorites. It's rugged, uneven, and full of, well, normal rocks. But when that big of a wishing star shows up in your neighborhood, you never know what might happen afterward. Best of luck, everyone.

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.

The Quest to Rediscover New Zealand's Lost Pink and White Terraces

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Roughly the size of a city block and up to eight stories high, the Pink and White Terraces of New Zealand were one of the top tourist attractions in the British colony during the 19th century. Visitors came from around the world to admire the dramatic, colorful, cascading formations—formed by the mineral-rich waters of a geothermal spring—on the shores of Lake Rotomahana, at the foot of Mount Tarawera on the country's North Island. Willy Bennett saw the terraces as a child and described them for a New Zealand radio program in 1954: "The White Terraces were not actually white, but their silica coating, tinged here and there with the palest of pinks, gave you the overall impression of old ivory tinted a faint yellow. Likewise, the Pink Terraces, which ranged from a rich salmon pink to a soft rose, were themselves, in places, almost as pale as the White."

It wasn't just the color of the terraces that attracted admirers to Lake Rotomahana's shores. "The color and sparkle of moving water constantly spilling over them gave the terraces a liveliness and almost a personality of their own. Truly, they were a thing of beauty and a joy forever for the few who saw them," recalled Bennett. He was just 12 years old when Mount Tarawera erupted in June 1886.

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"I was no sooner out of my bed than I was on the floor, the earthquakes were so severe that one couldn't stand unless one held onto something," he added. "As soon as we got outside, we could see the trees and buildings swaying to and fro, and it was rumbling like long-distant cannons going off." The Tarawera eruption lasted about five hours, buried the region in ash, and dramatically reshaped the landscape. A 10.5-mile fissure cracked open along the mountain's lava domes. The original Lake Rotomahana at the base of the mountain was "blown sky-high." The Pink and White Terraces were thought lost forever.

The fate of the terraces—blown to bits or buried or something else—is a mystery, well and truly lost. The only survey of the terraces before the eruption, completed in 1859, wasn't rediscovered until 2010, when a research librarian found it in a diary in a family archive in Switzerland. Even with that, the precise locations of the terraces is unknown, which has meant that no one could determine whether they survived the eruption. Finally, 131 years after the Tarawera eruption, there's new hope the terraces can be rediscovered, and perhaps even resurrected, thanks to that 1859 diary.

The diary belonged to Christian Gottlieb Ferdinand von Hochstetter, a German geologist who traveled with the Austrian Novara voyage that set out to circumnavigate the globe. When the expedition reached New Zealand, Hochstetter led a surveying expedition on a nine-month tour of the British colony. "At the time of Hochstetter's survey in 1859, very little of the inland areas of the North Island of New Zealand had been surveyed," research librarian Sascha Nolden told Atlas Obscura in an email. "Surveys tended to be limited to populated areas earmarked for subdivision and the establishment of settlements. By the time Mount Tarawera erupted in 1886, New Zealand had been completely mapped, but there were vast areas that were not surveyed in any detail." The eruption completely altered the landscape, changing the size and shape of Lake Rotomahana and burying geothermal features. Hochstetter's diary, with the survey of the affected region, wound up far from New Zealand in Hochstetter's family's library in Switzerland, where Nolden rediscovered it.

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Over 100 years later, New Zealand's GNS Science agency (roughly equivalent to the U.S. Geological Survey) conducted a bathymetric survey of Lake Rotomahana. The surveys, conducted between 2011 and 2014, turned up evidence the agency said suggests the terraces are now located under the lake. "That's what led me, in fact, to [propose a plan] in 2014 to operationalize their findings and lower the lake 40 meters and recover the terraces from where they stated they had found them," says Rex Bunn, an independent researcher who developed an acute interest in the fate of the terraces. GNS Science suggested Bunn halt the project when it discovered there was a magma chamber under the lake, which could be affected by the movement of so much water.

Bunn was disappointed and shelved the plans, but as he was writing up the failed project he got in touch with Nolden, the librarian. When Nolden sent him the pages with the survey from Hochstetter's diary, says Bunn, "it was one of the most exciting moments of my life. I knew that it was a survey and that it had compass bearings that we could use to finally establish the locations of the terraces." He spent the next six weeks deciphering the diary's handwritten German notes with Nolden. The team eventually matched the diary's survey points with the modern landscape, detailed in a paper for the Royal Society of New Zealand's journal, published in June. It turns out that draining Lake Rotomahana is entirely unnecessary—according to Hochstetter's survey, the terraces may be located on land, under 3o to 50 feet of volcanic ash.

The next step will be confirming the terraces survived there before attempting an expensive excavation. To do that, says Bunn, he'll lead a team on an expedition to locate the terraces using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) in the near future. "If the GPR does show encouraging imagery, I would think it's almost inconceivable that the next step would not be taken," says Bunn. If they can confirm the locations of the terraces, Bunn plans to collect core samples from each to be analyzed by a chemist. It can then be compared to a known sample collected before the eruption, which Bunn says suggests the famous colors were the result of antimony and arsenic sulfides in the spring's water. A match will likely mean the team will move on to excavating the terraces under archaeological supervision.

Even if Bunn's team finds, identifies, and excavates the terraces, there's no guarantee that they will look anything like the ones lost in 1886. "Geothermal springs of course vary over time, like volcanoes, due to crustal shifts and so on, and it's almost certain that the hydrothermal springs that powered the Pink and White Terraces are no longer functioning, given time and also the 1886 Mount Tarawera eruption that transformed the landscape," says Bunn. "Whether the terraces are intact to a greater or lesser extent on those locations can only be answered by excavation, ultimately."

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He can only speculate about the future of the terraces. Restoring them, he says, is "a wish list at this stage. It might even prove to be a pipe dream. It may or may not be possible and it's well down the track." Before that can happen, all his planned work must go through the local Maori tribe that owns the land. But Bunn is optimistic that Hochstetter's survey is accurate, and that history will be made. "I think we're probably closer to finding the Pink and White Terraces than any other research group in the last 131 years."

To Shield Historic Cabins From Wildfire, Wrap Them in Foil

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With wildfires raging all across California, people are scrambling to protect what they can, put out fires where they can’t, and flee when they must. In order to protect some historic cabins in the Nelder Grove Historic Area, this means wrapping them in foil. Nelder Grove is an area of Sierra National Forest that covers around 1,540 acres, and is home to a pair of historic cabin, which were moved there in the 1980s but date back much further. The rustic dwellings were originally built in the late 1800s, and are now the second and third oldest in the entire forest.

As the fires continue to threaten areas across the state, the U.S. Forest Service branch in the Sierra National Forest posted photos of their preventive efforts to preserve the cabins: wrapping them in heat-shielding material. From the base up to the roof, the pictures show the progression of the cabin’s encasement. By the final photo, with the roof completely covered in the protective sheeting, the cabin looks like a giant, decoratively shaped bundle of leftovers.

The reflective material should protect the cabins from some of the heat of the fire, depending on how close it comes. These cabins have stood for over a century, so let’s hope that wrapping them like shiny gifts will preserve them for another one.

The Coral Reef Loss Data Hidden in Old Navigational Charts

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In 1774 and 1775, as the upper part of North America girded for war, a British surveyor named George Gauld was sailing around the Florida Keys, putting together maps. The British Admirality had sent him, and he made a point of marking, directly on his charts, wherever the natural landscape could affect naval movement. "The Bank is full of Coral Patches and no Vessel ought to venture into less than 3 fathoms," he wrote along the coast of one island in the South Keys. He captioned blocks of water, carefully noting where "Coral" gave way to "Large Rocks," or "Fine white Sand & Clay."

Nearly two and a half centuries later, a different group of people are eager to know what he found. For a recent paper in Science Advances, a group of environmental scientists and historians teamed up to compare Gauld's detailed maps to contemporary satellite surveys of coral reefs, in order to calculate how much reef cover has diminished over the past 250 years. This long view, they think, could provide a more nuanced look at where coral is, was, and could be.

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Scientists hoping to get a handle on historic species populations have long turned to creative sources, many repurposed from more commercial endeavors. Researchers working on the Census of Marine Life's History of Marine Animal Populations project, for example, have looked at whaling records, fishery statistics, and even restaurant menus to estimate species counts. Oyster fisheries have mapped out their beds since the late 19th century, and the same era's nautical charts can help current geographers keep track of shoreline changes.

When Loren McClenachan came across Gauld's maps nearly 10 years ago, in the archives of the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, she knew they'd prove similarly useful. "There was a lot of ecological information in them," McClenachan, the study's lead author and an environmental studies professor at Colby College, says. "He wrote down where the turtles nested, and he described the mangroves." It did take her a while to figure out exactly how best to make use of them, though. "I actually printed out a life-size replica and put it on my wall of my graduate student apartment at the time, and just sort of looked at it for a while."

Eventually, it clicked. Gauld had been particularly careful about coral in the Keys, noting exactly where and how deep down the reefs were—the 18th century version of high-resolution data. Meanwhile, a number of recent surveys, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Unified Florida Coral Reef Tract Map and the United Nations' Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project, had done satellite sweeps of that same area. "We figured out that we could compare [Gauld's observations] to the satellite data," McClenachan says.

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To do this, the researchers first translated Gauld's various notes and markings into 143 geographically discrete "coral observations," basically dots on a map that meant "coral was here." They then used a composite of three modern satellite surveys to check whether it was still present in that spot. For over half the space surveyed, the answer was a resounding "no." "We estimate a 52 percent loss in the occurrence of corals in the Florida Keys over 240 years," the researchers write. "That is, just more than half of the historical coral observations are in locations where coral habitat does not exist today… Our analysis demonstrates that entire sections of the reef that were present before European settlement are now largely gone." They call these sections "ghost reefs."

When the researchers examined their results more closely, they also found that the coral vanished asymmetrically: the areas that lost the most reef cover tended to be closer to the shore. Meanwhile, the farther out you went, the more coral stuck around. In fact, "the alignment of historical and modern coral is nearly exact in some locations," the researchers write, "suggesting little change to the overall reef structure."

This also posits a diagnosis for the disappearance. "We can't pinpoint the reasons for decline—we just have these snapshots of then and now," says McClenachan. "But other lines of evidence make it seem likely that those [inshore corals] were lost due to human impacts," such as dredging, shoreline hardening, and the rechanneling of the Everglades, which changed the salinity of Florida Bay.

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Coral today also live precarious lives: pollution is choking them out, careless boating is breaking them up, and climate change is warming and acidifying their habitats, killing off the algae that bring them to life. (Hurricanes, like the one currently barreling toward the Keys, also don't tend to do them any favors.) If you're used to reading coral studies, which regularly describe 75 percent declines in live coral over mere decades, a 52 percent loss over centuries might not seem so bad.

But McClenachan is quick to point out that this study is diagnosing a completely different category of disappearance: this 52 percent loss happened so completely, we no longer even look for coral in those places, because we don't remember that it was ever there. "It's not a decline in live coral," says McClenachan. "It's the entire loss of those reefs."

To McClenachan, this recontextualization is part of what makes historical studies meaningful. "If you don't know about change, you're not going to recognize it," she says. "When that happens over time, we have these lowered expectations for nature generally." It's not just that we have a better idea of the destruction we've caused: expanding our historic imagination allows us to improve research in the present, and to think bigger for the future.

Currently, the Florida Keys are very invested in restoring coral reefs, re-seeding baby corals on existing reef sites and researching ways to make species more resilient as oceans change. Knowing where the coral used to be could influence these plans. "If you don't know that it's there it doesn't make sense to look for it," McClenachan says. But if you know that George Gauld once kept his eyes peeled, you might start, too.


Found: The Forgotten Metal Markers of a 100-Year-Old Ecology Study

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In 1916, William S. Cooper, who Alaska Public Radio calls a “godfather of modern ecology,” set up study plots in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Cooper had been inspired to come to this spot by reports from the famous naturalist John Muir, who visited in the late 19th century, and wrote that the glacial ice found there by 18th-century European travelers had retreated. As the glacier disappeared, the land had been left bare.

This condition fascinated Cooper, who studied plant succession—the development of plant communities over time. Places covered in plants don’t stay the same; new plants move in, and once-dominant plants can disappear. For Cooper, Glacier Bay represented a unique opportunity to study the change in plant communities over decades, as they moved into this newly available neighborhood.

For decades, Cooper and his successors studied these same plots, monitoring, measuring, and recording the ecological conditions as the bare rock was colonized by herbaceous plants, which gave way to mossy, mat-forming plants. But after the death of Donald B. Lawrence, the Cooper student who had taken over the study, the locations of the plots were lost.

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Last year, though, 100 years after Cooper first started his study, researchers from the University of Alaska Southeast led a project to rediscover those plots. Brian Buma, an ecology professor who studies forest disturbance and climate change, went to University of Minnesota, where Cooper’s notebooks are archived, to unearth clues to the plots’ locations. Cooper left behind “exhaustive notes, photographs and sketches,” APR reports, but even so it was difficult for Buma and his colleagues to find what they were looking for.

Sometimes Cooper measured distances in paces; in all cases, the once-bare plots had been overgrown with shrubby trees. The plots had been marked with iron rods, centered in cairns, but the scientists still needed a metal detector to find those rods and be sure they were in the right place.

Over a couple of weeks, though, they were able to locate Cooper’s eight original plots and continue the research that he started 100 years ago, to understanding how plants develop and redevelop a newly available stretch of land.

Cooper predicted that “the value of this study … will only increase with time,” and he has been proven correct. There are few opportunities for scientists to study plant succession in real time, and these plots—thanks in part to Cooper’s work lobbying to make this place a National Monument—have stayed almost entirely free of human interference for the past century. Now, as far as the researchers know, their update to Cooper's work makes the study “the longest-running primary succession plot network in the world."

The Early Master Plans for National Parks Are Almost as Beautiful as the Parks Themselves

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In the beginning, there was Yellowstone: more than 2,000,000 acres of mountains, fields, forests, geysers, and rivers, a place of such commanding beauty that, according to an early account describing the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, “language is entirely inadequate to convey a just conception of the awful grandeur and sublimity of this masterpiece of nature's handiwork.”

Yellowstone was declared the country's (and the world's) first national park in 1872, and by the time the National Park Service (NPS) was established in 1916, the program had grown to include Casa Grande Ruins, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia, and Yosemite, among others. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt reorganized and expanded the NPS in 1933, there were 137 parks and monuments across the country (today, the National Park System includes 417 areas, including the White House)—all of which required, and still require, significant management and planning.

The first master plan—a document packed with maps and recommendations for preserving and monitoring a park and the visitor experience—was drawn up in 1929 for Mount Rainier National Park, 369 square miles in Washington state. It was created by Thomas Chalmers Vint, landscape architect and, from 1933, Chief of the NPS Branch of Plans and Designs. It served as a kind of blueprint for the plans to come, and included proposals for a new hotel complex and an expansion of the facilities on the south slope of the glacier-covered volcano.

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Throughout the 1930s, a series of master plans for parks and monuments followed. They became the essential documents for the management of every square mile of protected land. “Its use is to steer the course of how the land within its jurisdiction is to be used,” stated Vint. “Each project, whether it be a road, a building, or a campground, must have its construction plan approved. In the course of approval it is checked as to whether it conforms with and is not in conflict with the Master Plan.”

Vint was a crucial figure in the early decades of this form of park planning. When designing or overseeing the design of facilities for national parks, his priority was to complement the natural environment. “The work has to do with the preservation of the native landscape and involves the location and construction of communities, buildings, etc within an existing landscape,” Vint wrote in a 1928 analysis.

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The plans themselves, drawn up by resident landscape architects, often featured decorative covers, an excerpt about the purpose of the park as stated by law, and plans for existing and proposed facilities. As Brandi Oswald, Cartographic Archivist at the National Archives (where the original plans are now held), notes, “the plans contain valuable information about the development of our national parks.” They might include access points by road or rail, hiking trails, museums, lodgings, and administration buildings—all of which is crucial in satisfying the overarching goals of the NPS: to conserve scenery, history, and wildlife, and provide for their enjoyment.

The cover images for these plans are particularly striking, and including either hand-drawn illustrations or hand-colored photos, and neat, elegant lettering. Many parks had multiple editions over the years as conditions and proposals changed. The Dinosaur National Monument plans from 1939 and 1940 kept the same cover but recolored its dinosaur from a dull beige to a vibrant green.

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By contrast, the 1936 plan for the Vicksburg National Military Park has a evocative, somber, charcoal cover featuring a bare tree and a row of cannons, while the 1939 edition shows a cheerier green vista with trees (though it still contains a cannon). Unfortunately, none of the plans are signed, so the artists behind the cover illustrations remain unknown.

The master plans held at the National Archives Cartographic Collection are a little-seen glimpse into the early years of stewardship of America’s national parks—for all to enjoy, now and in generations to come. Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from the plans.

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Atlas Obscura's Fall Destination Staff Picks

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Labor Day is behind us and fall is nearly... fallen? In any event, it's a great time to start thinking about wondrous new places to visit and soak in that autumnal wonder. We polled the staff here at Atlas Obscura about where they'd most like to go this fall. So if you're looking for new destinations to dream about as the seasons change, let us give you a few suggestions.


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House on the Rock

Spring Green, Wisconsin

For me, autumn (my favorite season) evokes a sense of decay and coziness, which in my head gets conflated with over-stuffed antique collections and haunted houses. The perfect confluence of all of that imagery is probably Wisconsin's House on the Rock.

A decades-old curio collection that sprawls out across a complex of buildings and features a staggering collection of items: carousel horses; a recreated town from the early-20th century; an assortment of automatic music machines; and so much more. The eccentric collection dates to the 1940s and is featured in Neil Gaiman's American Gods.

Despite its renown, House on the Rock still manages to maintain an air of mystery, with who-knows-what hiding in its many nooks and crannies. For any wannabe Goonies such as myself, exploring those musty secrets would make for the perfect fall expedition.—Eric Grundhauser

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Rainbow Mountain

Pitumarca, Peru

On television, young people have all the fun. But researchers who study happiness say it's older people who are happier and living their best life. And doesn't that make sense? Decades of trial-and-error are a good way to learn what makes you grin like a 5-year-old being handed ice cream.

I'm no octogenarian, but I've wised up over my 28 years. When I travel, I ignore the guidebook checklists in favor of places and experiences that combine a few of my favorite things: endorphin-fueled exertion and beautiful scenery. That's why I want to trek to Rainbow Mountain in the Peruvian Andes this fall: a multi-day hike that features hot springs, candy-colored vistas, and the satisfaction of knowing that your tired legs carried you to a true hidden wonder.—Alex Mayyasi

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American Pigeon Museum

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Pigeons are the nexus of so many of my interests: urban wildlife, birds, animals that no one likes. But I don't really mind if no one else likes them. Having met a bunch of pigeons at various wildlife rehabilitation volunteering gigs, I can proudly say that I like pigeons.

It's probably not surprising then that I've been itching to go to the American Pigeon Museum since I first flipped by the entry for it in my early days at Atlas Obscura. I want to immerse myself in pigeon knowledge: What is the history of the human-pigeon relationship? What celebrity pigeons have there been? How can I be friends with pigeons? There aren't many outlets for a pigeon fan to discuss and learn about these birds. That's why I'd be thrilled to visit the museum this fall, a place where people like pigeons just as much as I do.—Lex Berko

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The Tree That Owns Itself

Athens, Georgia

Fall: it’s all about trees. The year 2017: it’s all about not being able to decide whether the stress of contemporary life is a) inspiring you to find strength and self-possession you never knew you had, or b) encouraging constant, rushed decisions that will eventually undermine you to the point of collapse. In other words, it’s the perfect time to visit The Tree That Owns Itself, a stately white oak in Athens, Georgia.

Is this tree constantly playing itself, Khaled-style, you ask—or has it simply gained the right to make autonomous decisions? Good news! It’s the second one. Legend has it that before an upstanding Athenian named William H. Jackson died, sometime around 1832, he granted a tree on his land power over its own destiny “for all time.”

“For and in consideration of the great love I bear this tree,” Jackson supposedly wrote, “I convey entire possession of itself and all land within eight feet of the tree on all sides.” That’s right: the tree in question does not merely own itself, it also owns land. This makes it far more accomplished than me, another good reason to pay my respects.

Sadly, even proprietorship does not protect one from death, and the Tree That Owns Itself perished in a windstorm in 1942. It was replaced by one of its own acorns, which has since grown into another healthy, sprawling, self-ruling oak, known as the Son of the Tree That Owns Itself. One last theme of Fall 2017: get in with the right people (or plants) and they’ll take care of you.—Cara Giaimo

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Jarlshof

Shetland Islands, United Kingdom

If I could pick one place to explore this fall, it would have to be Jarlshof in Scotland’s Shetland Islands. The site is rich with layers of history piled atop each other, with structures that range in age from as far back as 2500 BC to more “recent” ruins from the 17th century. It’s like some sort of archaeological time warp that whirls through a blend of Shetland’s Pictish, Norse, and Scottish past.

Though the long, relatively mild days of summer are often an ideal time to visit Scotland’s subarctic archipelago, fall offers an opportunity to combine my interest in the country’s expansive history with a shot at glimpsing one of nature’s most impressive acts: the Northern Lights, a spectacle I have yet to witness from the ground. The darkening autumn days can be a good time to catch the aurora borealis before the even colder, wetter winter sets in. Though, since this is Scotland we're talking about, there’s always a risk of stubborn clouds blocking any light show.—Kerry Wolfe

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Shelburne Farms

Shelburne, Vermont

I always make sure to get back to my home region of New England when the fall foliage is at its height. This year, I hope to jump in a family car and go to Shelburne Farms, a gorgeous historic farm on the Vermont coast of Lake Champlain.

Whenever anyone visits New York City, I always insist that they budget more time for Central Park than they have already. The magic of our park is in the act of getting lost in it. Frederick Law Olmsted (et. al.) preserved some of the vertiginous terrain of Manhattan, and weaved the park's acres with footpaths designed to delight visitors with, literally, every single turn of a corner.

Shelburne Farms is a project Olmsted completed decades after Central Park. He maintained his design philosophy, which was derived from Impressionism with its focus on overwhelming first glimpses, in the design of the 1,400 acres. I've never been, but I'm curious about how that will manifest in a context quite different from a park in the middle of a metropolis.

I hope to add to the Atlas Obscura entry on the farm with photos of it after the leaves have turned and before they've fallen, because as the "leaf peepers" who flock to New England in tour buses during the foliage season know, you haven't truly seen the region until you've seen it decked out in red and orange.—Luke Thomas

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Issyk Lake

Enbekshikazakh District, Kazakhstan

As a creature of New England, autumn has always been my favorite season, ushering in all of my favorite things: fall foliage, the start of school (I loved school!), soccer season, wool socks and sweaters, reading by the wood stove, and Thanksgiving. But one of my most magical autumn moments took place on an October visit to Kazakhstan during my year abroad in China.

Keeping cozy and warm in jeans, sneakers, and a thick sweater, my friend and I hopped in a car and slowly wound our way up into the coniferous forests of the mountains outside of Almaty—foothills of the majestic Tian Shan range, the "Heavenly Mountains" that unfurl across Central Asia. As the snow became brighter and the air grew colder and crisper, we turned a final bend to discover Issyk Lake, shimmering a bright turquoise.

When we learned the tumultuous history of the lake, involving a fatal mudslide followed by a rebuilt dam that shrank the body of water to half its original size, the brevity of our visit, and the ultimate ephemerality that autumn will always represent—felt that much more poignant.—Tao Tao Holmes

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The Sacred Cod

Boston, Massachusetts

Boston’s Sacred Cod may seem an odd choice—and to be fair, lately it’s Italy, not Massachusetts, that I've been lusting to visit—but there’s nowhere like New England in the fall.

The foliage is beautiful, the air is perfectly crisp, and the apples (and more importantly, apple cider donuts) are delicious. I just finished reading Mark Kurlansky’s Salt, so am unusually obsessed with the history of the fish trade at the moment, and hence the cod. Despite being the object of numerous thefts and pranks, a proud wooden codfish has been hanging in the State House since the early 1700s, a reminder of the colonial era's booming fishing trade. I also just love quirky local traditions like this—they are some of the most delightful places in the Atlas.—Meg Neal

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Pando the Trembling Giant

Richfield, Utah

I’d like to see the leaves turn on Pando, the Trembling Giant, the grove of aspen trees in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest. Pando’s 47,000 individual trees are a single organism: They’re genetically identical, and nourished by a collective root system. Pando, which has been around for more than a million years, is one of the oldest living things on the planet, and also one of the biggest. (It used to hold the world’s biggest title, but it’s been supplanted by a giant fungus in Oregon. Fungus! That shouldn’t even count!)

Pando’s in danger, enfeebled by overgrazing from deer and elk. Arborists have launched a lively effort to save it, and I hope they do. But Pando is still huge and gorgeous, and I want to see its fall foliage, golden-yellow leaves against the white bark, beneath the dry, blue Utah sky.

Plus, while I’m in the neighborhood, I could visit my favorite state park on this or any planet, Goblin Valley.—David Plotz

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Kochia Hill

Hitachinaka, Japan

As far as dramatic fall colors go, it's hard to beat Hitachi Seaside Park in the northern Kantō region of Japan. I'd like to take a long, leisurely walk among the kochia plants, armed with a camera. During the rest of the year these summer cypress bushes are fairly nondescript, but in the fall, they turn a deep red and tend to sway in the breeze, like some sort of enchanted crimson sea.

Kochia Hill, where the most dense collection of "burning bushes" live, is located in the middle of a massive public park that includes a small amusement park, so I'd finish the day with a ride on the nearby Ferris wheel. I'm a sucker for a good Ferris wheel, and there's no better way to get a bird's eye view of Kochia Hill's gorgeous annual display. —Sommer Mathis.

How Do You Decode a Hapax? (Also, What’s a Hapax?)

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The story of the werewolf is perhaps the most famous anecdote from Petronius’ Satyricon, a staple of Latin literature written in the first century. In the tale, a guest at a dinner party offers a marvelous tale of transformation and mystery. A Roman slave and a houseguest rush off into the night. In a cemetery shrouded by ethereal moonlight, one of them is delivered of his human form and given new life as a ferocious beast.

In addition to its absurdity, the werewolf episode is special for its language. In the entirety of Latin literature, the only known usage of the word “apoculamus” (“we rush off”) is in section 62 of the Satyricon. As a result, this verb is considered a hapax legomenon, a word that occurs only once in a text, an author’s oeuvre, or a language’s entire written record.

The Satyricon contains a number of hapaxes, including “bacalusias” (possibly “sweetmeat” or ”lullabies”) and “baccibalum” (“attractive woman”).

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Hapaxes are not limited to Latin. They appear in every language, from Arabic to Icelandic, even English. But where do these words come from, and what is their purpose?

Various theories have been posited about the role of hapaxes. In a 1955 lecture, philologist Joshua Whatmough suggested that the poet Catullus inserted them to draw attention to a specific moment, just as poet Ezra Pound would do centuries later. Others hold that authors do not pay attention to the frequency of specific languages in their writing, suggesting that words become hapaxes only by chance.

There are various methods applied to translate hapaxes that aren’t conventional words. In the case of “apoculamus” from the Satyricon, classicists can use context and precedent to define the term. At this point in the story, the narrator is describing how he and his companion departed from their house. From the ending “-mus,” we know that this word is a first-person plural, present, active, indicative verb. Therefore, “apoculamus” can be interpreted as a form of movement.

Given the influence of ancient Greek on Latin, scholars have also relied on etymology for translation hints. The prefix “apo” means “away from” and the noun “culum” refers to a person’s buttocks. Hence, “apoculamus” might be defined as “hauling your posterior away from” something.

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Some scholars disagree with these suggestions, arguing that “apoculamus” was not in the original text. The Satyricon has come to us in fragments, which means that the language might not be accurate to the original version. Therefore, it is possible that Petronius used a different verb, which was miscopied by a scribe at some point. Like the game of telephone, the most recent copy of the novel may have been altered from its initial form, prompting scholars to question the correctness of “apoculamus.”

There are a number of words from classical Greek and Latin that we will never be able to translate with certainty. One that has stumped scholars is “πολεμοφθόροισιν” (“polemophthoroisin”), which can be found in line 653 of Aeschylus’ The Persians, a Greek tragedy written in the fifth century B.C. The play narrates the return of the Persian king Xerxes from Greece, following his disastrous defeat at the Battle of Salamis. In this scene, the chorus is praising the former king, Darius, who is remembered as a just ruler for not “prompting the downfall of his men through meaningless wars,” as opposed to his son. Based on context of the section, classicists assume that the term relates to war in some way. “πόλεμος” (“Polemos”) was, for the Greeks, the divine personification of battle, while “φθείρω” (“ftheiro”) translates as “destroy.” Hence, the combination of the two might mean “destruction by war,” which is what Xerxes has done by attacking the Greeks.

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Catullus, a poet who wrote in Latin during the first century B.C., used hapaxes often, “ploxeni” in Poem 97 being an especially notable example. The word is of Gaulish origin and refers to a “manure wagon,” a term put to perfect use in this invective against a man named Aemilius. The poem is a virulent attack on his appearance and malodor. Catullus describes Aemilius’ gums as “looking like a manure wagon” on account of their filth. The term “ploxenum” was not used in any other poems, likely due to its obscure derivation.

In Homer’s Iliad, written around the eighth century B.C., we find a hapax in book 2, line 217. The poem chronicles the epic battle between the Greeks and Trojans after the Spartan king Menelaus’ wife, Helen, was abducted by Prince Paris of Troy. Odysseus, the craftiest soldier in the army, is inciting the Greek troops to arms with an stimulating oration. However, he is interrupted by Thersites, a man described as unattractive and odious. Though he is characterized in only a brief passage, Thersites receives the harshest of words: “evil-favored” with “disorderly thoughts” and “rounded shoulders.” The term “φολκός” is among these details. This hapax has been translated as “bow-legged,” an apparent blow to Thersites’ honor.

One of the most famous Shakespearean hapaxes is “honorificabilitudinitatibus,” meaning “able to achieve honors.” The word appears only in Act V, Scene 1 of Love’s Labour's Lost and is the dative form of a medieval Latin word, “honorificabilitudinitas.” After Shakespeare, authors such as James Joyce and Charles Dickens incorporated it into their works as well.

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It is estimated that there are thousands of hapaxes in the Bible. Greek and Latin literature allow us to translate many of the terms from the Septuagint or the Vulgate, the Koine Greek Old Testament and the Latin Bible, respectively. However, since the Old Testament is almost all we have of the ancient Hebrew language, hapaxes can be restrictive. The Song of Songs, which is the last section of the Tanakh and part of the Christian Old Testament, contains an especially high number of hapax legomena, forcing scholars to rely on the Greek version for translation hints. The Song of Songs is, at the surface, a story of love between a man and a woman, in which they describe their passion for each other. It has the greatest number of hapaxes in the Bible, rendering the book enigmatic and mysterious. For instance, in 4.13, the male compares the lady’s “selahim” to an orchard. The term is a hapax, but scholars have suggested “branches” as a translation, such that the text describes the woman’s body.

A linguistic phenomenon similar to hapaxes is the nonce word. Authors can, in effect, produce hapaxes by creating words. Shakespeare is famous for his frequent usage of such terms. In the Taming of the Shrew, a play about matrimony and courtship, the main character Katherina, describes herself as being “bedazzled” by the sun. This word was coined by the bard for this scene, but has now received commercial fame courtesy of a rhinestoning device.

Despite the uncertainty that comes with hapaxes, one thing is clear: these words form an intriguing linguistic phenomenon, one which we may never be able to solve.

The Ceiling for Unpowered Flight Just Went Up 2,000 Feet

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Most commercial flights jet through the skies between 30,000 and 40,000 feet. Okay, now imagine going even higher, but without any sort of engine. That's what Jim Payne and Morgan Sandercock did on September 3 when they set a world record for highest unpowered flight, soaring over the Andes to 52,172 feet in the Perlan 2 glider.

The glider was towed to 10,500 feet by a powered plane, then released to fly silently on its own. Without an engine to help them climb, the pilots relied on a phenomena known as mountain waves. Winds that blow over mountain ranges generate waves of air on the leeward side, which gliders can ride. But these waves aren't strong enough alone to carry the Perlan 2 to that world record altitude. In this case, the team has to wait for something called the stratospheric polar night jet, which are strong winter winds that trap cold polar air and form polar vortices. For this flight, the Perlan 2 team flew out of the airport in El Calafate, Argentina, where it's winter and the Southern Hemisphere polar vortex is nearby.

A series of polar night jet waves took Payne and Sandercock up to the record-setting altitude, which beats the previous mark of 50,722 feet set by Perlan 1 glider pilots back in 2006. And Perlan 2 isn't done—it's engineered to go even higher, with a wingspan of 84 feet, the weight of a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, and a cockpit that is pressurized with an oxygen rebreather system for the pilots. The carbon fiber glider is designed to reach 90,000 feet, which would break the record for any wing-borne flight.

The Airbus-sponsored project is about more than records, though. It's trying to fly so high to better understand mountain waves, which can affect climate models and commercial flights that may one day fly at such altitudes. Conditions at these altitudes also are close to atmospheric conditions on the surface of Mars, where the air is very, very thin and cold, so Perlan glider designs could inform the design of spacecraft shuttling people to the red planet. Setting impressive records is just a layover.

Herman the Sturgeon Has Survived Another Catastrophe

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As Oregon Live reports, after five days of terrible destruction, firefighters have begun to contain the Eagle Creek wildfire in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge—one of several currently scorching the northwestern United States.

In response to the flames, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife evacuated three fish hatcheries in the fire's proximity, which led some fish aficionados to wonder: What's going on with Herman, the famous 79-year-old sturgeon, who lives at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery and is widely regarded as "an Oregon icon" and "the state's most famous fish"?

"Herman is fine," Michelle Dennehy, a spokesperson for the ODFW, told the outlet yesterday. (A more recent update from Herman's Facebook page confirms this was still true as of press time.)

He has been riding out the fire out in his home, a special tank at the hatchery's Sturgeon Viewing Interpretive Center. If things keep heating up, his keepers are ready to evacuate him and the rest of the hatchery's stock in special trucks.

At ten feet long and almost 500 pounds, Herman's age and bulk make him special on their own. But he is a very charismatic fish as well: for about 50 years, he was the main attraction of the ODFW's booth at the Oregon State Fair, where hundreds of thousands of fairgoers marveled at his beauty, size, and calm demeanor. Although he retired in 1985, people still travel to Bonneville to see him, and like any celebrity worth his scales, he maintains a healthy Facebook presence.

He's also no stranger to danger. In 1983, when Herman was 45 years old, someone tried to kidnap him from his viewing pond, and injured him badly in the process. (Fishery workers spent months helping him heal.) On another occasion, a person jumped into the pond and stabbed Herman with a knife. He bounced back from that, too.

As Herman "himself" put it on Facebook when addressing his concerned fans, "This isn't my first rodeo, if you know what I mean."

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.

African Wild Dogs Vote on Crucial Pack Issues by Sneezing

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When faced with a group decision, African wild dogs can't fill out a ballot or raise a hand (paw). But they can sneeze. And that, scientists reported Tuesday, is how they seem to decide important matters, like whether it's time for the group to head off. Other animals may voice their views in similar situations through grunting (monkeys), screeching (meerkats), or buzzing (bees, unsurprisingly).

But this seems to be the first recorded incidence of animals using sneezing as a means of communication in this way. An international team working at the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust observed this democratic behavior over a period of months in 2014 and 2015, and recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Within a group of dogs, one or two alphas tend to lead the pack, in the same way that human politicians shape a country's path. Also like politicians, lead dogs hold "rallies," or "high energy greeting ceremonies," ahead of some collective decision. If they're successful, the pack will head off into the sunset. If they aren't, they'll stay where they are. But a good indicator of which way it's likely to go is how the pack sneezes. Dog parliamentary procedure seems a little looser than the human equivalent (sometimes). Each member can sneeze as much as it likes to get a point across, and some votes are worth more than others. In the end, the achoos have it.

African wild dogs are particularly social and particularly rare animals who live in permanent packs of up to 27 canines. The structure is complicated, with separate, intricate dominance hierarchies for males and females. These dictate who breeds with whom, and who may be cast out of the pack and into a new one—usually to prevent inbreeding. It's unsurprising that they have a way to make group decisions, researchers say. "Their 'open social system' is defined by pervasive cooperation," the article notes. But the manner of doing it seems surprisingly on the nose.


Ancient Purple Scroll Stains Turn Out to Be Caused by Marine Microbes

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Deciphering ancient religious scrolls is a project that is never really finished, but the results can be especially fascinating when one looks beyond the text—like the researchers who recently studied and interpreted some mysterious purple spots on a secret Vatican manuscript.

As Live Science is reporting, Italian researchers think they have finally solved the mystery of the strange purple spots that appear on animal skin parchment from a wide range of times and places. By studying an 800-year-old goatskin manuscript from the Vatican Secret Archive (which is much more well-known and studied than it sounds) that had been afflicted by the stains, the scientists were able to determine that they had been left by microscopic marine bacteria. The solving of one mystery, however, led to another: The document hadn’t been anywhere near the sea. “When my students came to me, saying, 'Luciana, we found marine bacteria,' I told them, 'Repeat, please; there is a mistake. There must be a mistake!'" Luciana Migliore, the toxicologist with the University of Rome Tor Vergata who was behind the discovery, told Live Science.

The scroll preserves the story of a young soldier named Laurentius Loricatus, who accidentally killed a man and spent the rest of his life violently punishing himself in ritual penance for the sin. The document is a petition for his sainthood, created by his fellow villagers. The strange purple spots are found all over the parchment and nearly completely obscure the last section. Using bits of the parchment that had flaked off on their own, the researchers were able to identify the salt-loving, ocean-going bacteria, which were likely introduced when the skin was first washed (in seawater) to help preserve it, before it had ever even been written on. As the marine bacteria thrived over the years and centuries, they left behind the purple pigment.

Eventually the marine bacteria died off, and other bacteria came to live in the newly promising conditions they left behind, causing the purple spots to flake off and damaging the parchment. Hopefully, this revelation will help conservators repair similar parchments affected by the no-longer-mysterious purple blight.

Spielberg's Forgotten 'L.A. 2017' Dreamt of Today's Dystopian Future

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Long before Close Encounters of the Third Kind or E.T. put Steven Spielberg on the map as one of the greatest science fiction visionaries of all time, he was a hungry young director aiming to elevate the look of early 1970s television. Back then, Spielberg was dipping his toes into the cold, electric waters of sci-fi storytelling with such efforts as an all-but-forgotten TV episode titled “L.A. 2017,” a weird, dystopian vision of what is now present day. In this then-futuristic imagining of Los Angeles, milk is only for the rich and jokes are nothing more than strings of digits.

In the early 1970s, before Spielberg had broken into the world of major motion pictures, he was taking work as a television director. His first gig for the small screen was an episode of the Twilight Zone follow-up, Night Gallery, and during this period, he also directed episodes of Columbo, Marcus Welby, M.D., and his first feature-length effort, the automotive thriller Duel. But in January of 1971, less than a year before Duel (originally a TV movie that was later released in theaters) hit the airwaves and established him as a serious filmmaker, Spielberg directed an episode of the show The Name of the Game titled “L.A. 2017.”

The Name of the Game was a bit of an odd duck, and “L.A. 2017” was an even stranger installment. “The Name of the Game was unusual, being an omnibus that featured three different leading men,” says Barry Monush, a curator with the Paley Center for Media in New York and author of the forthcoming Steven Spielberg FAQ. The show was a “wheel series,” where each episode focused on one of the three leads, Tony Franciosa, Gene Barry, or Robert Stack (better known today as the former host of Unsolved Mysteries), all of whom played characters who worked for a fictional magazine outfit, Howard Publications.

Most of the episodes during The Name of the Game’s three-season run were relatively grounded tales of crime, drama, or suspense, but every so often they would produce a more experimental genre installment featuring Barry’s character, Glenn Howard. An “elegant corporate aristocrat” and owner of Howard Publications, Howard featured in an episode set in the Old West (a flashback to one of Howard’s ancestors), one where he got amnesia, and one where he has to investigate a coven of witches (featuring guest star William Shatner!). And in the show’s final season, there was “L.A. 2017.”

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As the title implies, the episode, written by the sci-fi author Philip Wylie, contrives to send Howard 46 years into the future, where he witnesses a world (well, an L.A.) ravaged by ecological disaster. “This episode falls under the category of 'message' science fiction, which was very much in vogue at the time,” says Monush. “‘L.A. 2017’ was a statement about the prevalence and danger of pollution, and how a callous disregard for our environment could put the human race in a precarious position of having to rethink our way of living.” And like any number of environmentally minded pieces of sci-fi, “L.A. 2017” was far from subtle in its message.

The 76-minute episode starts as Howard is driving along, dictating a letter to the president about the dangers facing the environment. With little warning, Howard falls asleep at the wheel, and when he wakes up, he finds himself in the year 2017, where the world has become a hazy, blasted wasteland. For reasons that become obvious by the episode’s end, the mechanics of Howard’s time travel are of little concern.

Howard is soon scooped up by gas-masked paramedics and transported underground, where most of the population is now forced to live. From here, the episode takes Howard on a grim tour through a thoroughly ‘70s vision of the horrors of 2017. As he moves through the world of the future, meeting the president, being acclimated to high society, becoming disillusioned with future society, and joining a revolution, the episode visits a number of science fiction tropes that are at once cliché and bizarre. Jokes are passed along as strings of numbers. A retirement home for “discards” is populated with old hippies who are still playing in a grimly ironic flower-power band. Howard discovers that a mass die-off of algae in the Indian Ocean poisoned the surface air, forcing much of humanity underground, to be ruled by corporate overlords. Because the pollution killed off most animals, L.A. only has one cow, and milk is treated with the reverence of a century-old scotch. There are also dystopian greatest hits such as thuggish government stormtroopers, a eugenics-inspired breeding program, and an oppressive system of constant surveillance.

While the episode had a huge budget for the time at $375,000, it retains the cheap-looking high-dialogue/low-effects ratio of much televised science fiction of the day. Still, Spielberg was able to add some visual flare that sets a number of scenes apart. “One of the most successful accomplishments of the episode is the sense of disorder and dread that Spielberg creates from the opening sequence: a desolate landscape, deliberately discolored photography, and the sense of disorientation that the main character feels,” says Monush.

What may be the episode’s best sequence sees Howard come upon an old acquaintance from 1971, who is now held in an asylum and brutally interrogated for his scientific knowledge. Held in a straightjacket at the bottom of a futuristic operating theater, with shadowy figures looming above him, the sequence looks like something out of 1984 by way of Terry Gilliam (whose science fiction works wouldn’t appear until years later). “Shooting [him] from a low angle, with the voices of his inquisitors heard echoing above him, the scene is unsettling and emotionally effective. Spielberg really makes us feel his plight,” says Monush. “Clearly, someone at Universal Television realized that the unusual nature of this episode required a special touch and entrusted Spielberg with it.”

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In the end, (SPOILER ALERT!) Howard wakes in his car, the L.A. of 2017 having been nothing but a bad dream. Once again, all is right with the world… for the moment.

The Name of the Game would air its final episode just months after the premiere of “L.A. 2017,” and Spielberg would be on his way to becoming one of the biggest names in filmmaking by the end of the decade, the episode itself fading quickly into obscurity. Monush says that because of the length of the episodes, and a general ambivalence toward The Name of the Game after it ended, the program was only ever briefly picked up for syndication. “Therefore this episode kind of dropped off the face of the Earth, along with the rest of the series.”

Today, “L.A. 2017” remains a barely remembered bit of sci-fi history, and a fascinating window into the early influence of one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed directors. Beyond its first season, The Name of the Game was never released on DVD, so the episode is extremely hard to come by, and virtually unavailable on the internet beyond individual clips. But it has been preserved by the Paley Center Archives, who will be hosting a screening of "L.A. 2017" along with some of Spielberg’s other early TV work, on October 1, 2017. If you can’t make it to one of the screenings, the episode is always available to view in person at the Paley Center Archives in New York or L.A., in 2017 and beyond. Bring your own milk.

Correction: Previously we stated that The Name of the Game never went to syndication, which has been changed to reflect that it actually did, for a brief period.

The History of Passport Photos, From 'Anything Goes' to Today's Mugshots

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Face the camera directly. Wear the clothes you normally wear—no hats, no headphones, no glasses. (If you can’t take off your glasses, you’ll need a doctor’s note. If your religion necessitates some kind of head covering, you’ll need a signed statement.) Eyes open. Neutral facial expression or, perhaps, a so-called “natural” smile. And—click!

These regulations, among others, rule the American passport photo. They differ a little from country to country, however: New Zealand's is still black and white, while Mexico, India, and the United States are three of the only countries that use a square aspect ratio. A grim-faced expression, required in the United Kingdom since 2004, helps facial-scanning software make matches.

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But it wasn’t always this way. Though passport photos have been in place in some countries since 1914, most initially had no regulations at all, says Martin Lloyd, author of The Passport: The History of Man’s Most Travelled Document. “Its adoption seems to have caught the authorities by surprise,” he told the BBC. “They made no rules on how to pose for a picture. They were simply asked to send one in. So they did.”

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Photo-based identification had a somewhat unusual start, at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In the wake of admission problems with similarly colossal exhibitions in London and Paris, Philadelphia introduced “the photographic ticket” for exhibitors and other free-pass holders. Each ticket had a number, the name of the holder, and a stamped photograph. This now-quotidian form of identification was a totally revolutionary, radical idea—so much so that it wasn’t until decades after their inception that photographs became standard practice on passports.

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Before that, they listed distinguishing features, such as the shape of your chin or the color of your eyes. “I don’t know how you could understand that the person in front of you is the one written in the passport,” says Neil Kaplan, an Israel-based passport collector who’s been amassing the documents for almost three decades. Kaplan also blogs about his collection and has a large Twitter following.

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Compared with today’s high level of standardization, early passport photos didn't appear to have many rules at all. Images might be cut out of group photos, show people decked out in full religious garb or a hat, or even be portraits of people doing the things that they loved. Others were transplanted from one document to the next, stamps and all. Sometimes, Kaplan says, this was because some people were frightened to leave the house to have a photograph taken—refugees, for example. Alternatively, passport holders may not have been able to afford new photographs. (In 1929, in New York, the fee varied from between the equivalent of $10 and $30 today, plus the cost of the passport itself. Together this would be close to $200 in today’s dollars.)

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The notion of a single passport for a single person was also a later one. Deep into the 1930s, married American women were footnotes in their husband’s passports, listed simply as, “Mr. John Doe and wife.” Single women were entitled to their own passports, which they could use to travel alone, while married women could not use the document without a husband present. This practice continued, despite the efforts of women’s rights advocates, until 1937, when the State Department issued a memo explaining that “because our position would be very difficult to defend under any really definite and logical attack, it seems the part of wisdom to make the change.”

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Family passports did continue to exist under particular conditions as late as 2012 in the United States. (And there are still some countries that will permit children to be part of a parent’s passport.) This caused problems with photography, however: The New York Times described the difficulty of fitting all the faces into one frame “of not more than 3 by 3 inches. One such family reported five unsuccessful attempts to fulfill this official requirement.” Picture an entire family squeezing into a photo booth—minus the joy.

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Rarer still are collective passports, where as many as 20 faces were affixed to the same sheet. “Usually, they all traveled together with one or two group leaders, who would have the collective passport,” Kaplan says. These were especially common for groups of refugees requiring swift evacuation, such as Jews escaping the pogroms of Eastern Europe, or leaving Germany for the United States in the 1920s. Other examples include Polish worker groups seeking employment in France or sports teams attending international events.

But, from 1920, the worldwide, individual passport standard began to emerge and develop, and what had been thought of as an emergency document (outside of times of crisis, passports weren’t always strictly necessary for international travel) became a permanent fixture. This coincided, in the United States, with regular steamship travel to Europe—passport required. Perhaps surprisingly, people seem to have felt threatened by the standardization of the passport photo. The stark, frontal, “mugshot” style reminded many of images of criminals and ruffians from “rogues’ galleries” circulated as a form of entertainment.

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Moreover, says Craig Robertson, author of The Passport in America: The History of a Document, middle- and upper-class people found the idea that they would need to prove their identities somehow morally affronting. “It’s like, ‘Look at me, I’m white, I’m upper-middle class, I’m dressed well, I’m not a suspicious person, I shouldn’t be the target of any form of identification document,’” says Robertson. This was a time before documentary infrastructure, and there was genuine resistance to the idea of being reduced from a person to a legal paper. “The passport seems to have become the poster child for that,” he adds. “That if you’re a traveler and you can afford your cabin, you should not be part of the suspect population.” Passport photos, then, triggered an association with being recorded and requiring recording, which made some people deeply uncomfortable.

"If you think about it,” says Robertson, “if you’ve never had to present a document in any capacity and your word is always taken literally and figuratively at face value, to suddenly be asked for not only the passport but also all the supporting documents -- it suggests you can’t be trusted any more.” In 1929, the New York Times described how bothersome this seemed to the privileged: “Foreign-born fare best. They are used to bureaucracy and documents which irk the native citizen.” In the 10 years before and after that editorial, Americans acquired personalized charge cards, drivers' licenses, and, finally, social security numbers. All these developments gradually increased American official-document literacy and tolerance, as people became increasingly comfortable being represented by cards, papers, and records.

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Even with acceptance, there remained a feature of passport photos that people have always disliked: the way they look in them. A New York Times editorial from 1930 seized upon this middle-class anxiety and described passport pictures as “notoriously unpleasant and unflattering. The mildest mannered man looks like a thug or a gunman, and a bright eyed miss becomes a heavy-featured half-wit. Few travelers ever feel anything but a pang of horrid surprise, almost disbelief, upon first looking at the photograph which is to identify them in a foreign country." Even celebrities, they said, who might ordinarily appear beautiful, amiable, or “generally attractive,” have a “criminal or imbecile cast of countenance.”

A passport, says Robertson, creates an identity that we have to prove matches our own. On the face of it, it seems peculiar that a glowering, unflattering mugshot should be made to represent who we are better than, say, a smiling portrait, a glamour shot, or a photo of one playing the guitar. The document may say, “This is who I am,” but it does so the most depersonalizing way possible.

Found: Evidence That a Lavish Burial Honored a Viking Warrior Woman

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In the 19th century, an archaeologist working on excavations of Birka, Sweden, a thriving Viking settlement founded in the 9th century, discovered a grave filled with astonishing objects. Buried alongside the deceased were a sword, an axe, a spear, arrows, a knife, and shields, along with two horses, a mare, and stallion. The skeleton held a board game—a strategy game, used for war planning—indicating that, in life, this person had proved their military prowess.

It was, as one archaeologist told The Local, the “ultimate warrior Viking grave.” Archaeologists had previously assumed that it belonged to a man, because everyone knew that only Viking men were warriors.

Now, in a new paper, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, a team of scientists has offered new evidence that this ultimate Viking warrior was, in fact, a woman.

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Anna Kjellström, an osteologist at Stockholm University, was first intrigued by the warrior skeleton when she was examining it for a different project, The Local reports. For a man’s skeleton, it didn’t look quite right, she thought. It had slimmer cheekbones and wider, more feminine hipbones. To the osteologist, it looked a lot like a woman’s skeleton.

It turned out that an osteological analysis in the 1970s had identified the skeleton as female, and, as Kjellström wrote in a 2016, in all, “three different osteological examinations all found that the individual was a woman.” But that didn’t convince scholars that this individual could have been a Viking warrior woman. After all, everyone just knew that Viking warriors were men.

In the new paper, Kjellström and colleagues extracted and analyzed DNA from the individual left canine tooth and left arm bone. Among the results of the test: There was no Y-chromosome anywhere to be found. This person was a woman.

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Should that be surprising? As the authors of the new paper write, there are written reports of Viking women warriors, but still “women warriors have generally been dismissed as mythological phenomena.” Even when other women have been found buried with weapons, they write, archaeologists have argued that the women were given these grave goods for some other reason—that they“could have been heirlooms, carriers of symbolic meaning or grave goods reflecting the status and role of the family rather than the individual.”

If men are buried with armaments, though? Clearly warriors.

Maybe it's time to just admit it: Even if most Viking warriors were men, Viking women warriors definitely existed, and, if this grave is any evidence, they could be very, very good at their job.

The International Hide and Seek Championship Starts Today

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Have you ever started a hide and seek game that got out of hand? Perhaps people ended up high in trees, or underneath abandoned buildings. Maybe someone hid too well, and got lost for hours. You end up talking about it for years afterwards, unsure exactly what alchemy occurred to make it so memorable.

Back in 2010, a few friends in Italy played that kind of game: the kind that was so good, they wanted to bring other people into it. And so they did. Starting today, September 8th, they're hosting the eighth annual Nascondino World Championships, a weekend-long romp that bills itself as "the only hide and seek international competition."

Hide and seek, the Championship's organizers write, invites "unabashed and carefree abandon." The competition aims to take that childhood feeling of wonder and terror and scale it way up. As the Local reports, this year, 80 teams of five people each have signed up, and they come from 11 different countries, including the U.S., Japan, and Australia.

Each team member must hide in a particular section of the huge hide-and-seek arena, a massive field studded with hay bales, screens, and other obstacles for hiding behind. They then have to make it back to a central base before they're tagged by any seekers. The games are played tournament-style, and the top prize for the winning team is called the Golden Fig Leaf. Competitors bring their A game, dressing like Waldo or disguising themselves with greenery.

The competition takes place in the town of Consonno, a village in northern Italy that was built as a nightlife capital but largely abandoned after a landslide. Although players aren't allowed to hide in the abandoned buildings—too rickety—the "bizarre, decadent buildings," as the Championship's website describes them, are meant to lend the game a certain aura.

Most of that hide-and-seek feeling, though, is baked in. "Hide and seek has been played all over the world as far back as history can remember," the website says. "Hiding is an animal instinct." One that, if you're good enough, can get you a world champion title.

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.

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