Entertainment types aside, the Colosseum of Ancient Rome had a lot in common with modern-day arenas, especially when it came to seating tiers. If you were a wealthy person—a senator, say—you could take in the spectacle from marble benches in the front rows. If you were a knight, you could choose a spot on the second or third levels. If you were the emperor, you got a special box all to yourself.

If you were a regular person, though, you had to squint down at that lion fight or gladiatorial match from way up in the fourth and fifth levels, the ancient Roman version of the nosebleed section.

Now, modern-day people from all walks of life will finally be treated to a plebe's-eye view of the Colosseum. After forty years of being blocked off to the public, the fourth and fifth levels of the ancient arena will be included in tours of the building, the Telegraph reports.

Starting on November 1st, visitors will be able to book a special walkthrough focused on those areas, which provide a great view of the building's interior, and the city beyond.

Besides the upper levels, a connecting tunnel has also been reopened, where, the Local promises, "tourists will be able to spot traces of six Roman toilets."

The Colosseum has been under renovation since 2013. Over the next few years, there are plans to restore and re-open the underground vaults—where wild animals and prisoners were kept before they died—and even the arena floor, which, Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini has said, may host "cultural events."

In other words, the ordinary people of today may soon be able to take in spectacles from the nosebleed seats once again.

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.

In general, the sky isn't a great medium for creativity. Your options are limited to a banner pulled behind a plane, or using special smoke to write giant letters that will get swept away by the wind—maybe before you reach the end of the message. But there's another way that pilots express themselves, though it's not immediately apparent to the ground-bound. Using a flight tracking program called CloudAhoy, pilots around the country have been drawing some intricate designs in the sky for a contest to see who can most effectively merge their skills in the air with their creative flair.

The contest, called the Wild Blue Doodle and put on by aviation company Lightspeed, challenged pilots to "create a work of art in the sky" with their flight paths, as tracked by the software, for a chance to win a new headset (worth $850). Pilots around the country took advantage of the chance to show off. The large-scale designs include a sneaker, Snoopy in his "World War I Flying Ace" guise, a howling wolf, and even a self-portrait of sorts—one pilot flew his DA40 plane in the shape of a DA40.

Creating these images took some careful planning. Brian Danza, the pilot of the DA40, told Flying magazine that he used Photoshop to create the outline of the plane, then traced that outline in Google Maps to get the coordinates of all the turns he'd need to make after taking off from Leesburg, Virginia. He then uploaded those coordinates to his aircraft's GPS system, which guided him through the 80-mile-wide image.

After judges pick the top 10, based on artistry and challenge, other users of the software will then vote to see who gets that high-end headset, or one of the fancy leather flight bags for second and third place.

A few weeks ago, I reported on the lead-up to this year's Great Salt Lick Contest, a unique sculpture competition that's been held in Baker City, Oregon, since 2007.

As with many art events, the works in question are made by community members, judged by local luminaries, and auctioned off for charity. The twist here comes from the material of choice—lunchpail-sized salt blocks—as well as the artists: cows, deer, and sheep, which spend weeks licking the cubes into unusual shapes.

The auction's mastermind, local writer Whit Deschner, donates all of the proceeds to Parkinson's research. His goal for this year—the event's 11th—was to put the total donations over $100,000. Thanks to big earners like the above mosaic-based work—as well as a running gag that saw the auctioneer selling one block over and over again—they accomplished this, and more. "It was hectic and wonderful all at the same time," Deschner says.

As usual, Deschner cannot vouch for the judges' decisions. He is particularly flummoxed by the high showing of a piece called "Belgian Waffle," which is basically a large divot in a squat white block of salt. "I thought [that one] was the worst," he says. "But who am I to judge art?"

Take a closer look at the rest of this year's winners below:

Sure, some horror films begin in gloomy castles or moody forests, but more of them seem to start ordinary little places, where everything seems serene—all the better to scare you with. In Croft-on-Tees and Dalton-on-Tees, two picturesque neighboring hamlets in North Yorkshire, England, everything seemed fine. Pretty bridges and churches carried on being pretty, leafy neighborhoods continued to leaf—until the sudden, unexplained disappearance of seven black cats, reports The Telegraph. Not seven cats—seven black cats. A couple have returned, most have not. Some spooked villagers are beginning to wonder whether there's something sinister afoot.

It all began in August, when two black cats, brothers Austin and Arthur, disappeared within weeks of one another. Just a week later, their neighbor's black cat, Tom, had also slipped into the night. A farmer down the road, who has several other cats, was mystified when her two black cats vanished, before reappearing a few days later. They did not appear to have been injured, she told The Telegraph, but she was in the dark on where they had been. Two other black cats are reportedly still unaccounted for. Many of the cats are microchipped, and none of them are known to roam far afield. Police are investigating.

"We've come to the inevitable conclusion that someone is taking the cats and we're trying to imagine why," Harriet Boyd, Arthur and Austin's owner, said. "I have been thinking in terms of witchcraft or perhaps the closeness to Halloween. It's a disturbing thought but it's still there." In the past, animal rescue groups in Italy have claimed that tens of thousands of black cats are killed each year by superstitious people concerned about their luck. But in Britain, black cats are generally thought to be lucky, though they retain some tenuous link with the occult. Halloween is still weeks away, so there's plenty of time for the missing felines to make their way home—or for more to go missing.

The various forms of cancer are the second-most common cause of death in wealthy countries after heart disease, and claim an estimated 8.2 million lives worldwide each year. New cases are expected to rise by about 70 percent over the next two decades. By contrast, cancers are rarely observed in old remains found at archaeological sites. Speculation on why this is varies widely, but the trappings of modern life—including processed food, pollution, smoking, and longer life spans in general—often appear among the explanations.

However, a new study published in the journal The Lancet is challenging this assumption that cancer is a disease of modernity. A team of scientists from Italy's University of Pisa has examined the mummified remains of 11 wealthy individuals from Renaissance Naples. Several of them had cancer. "Despite the small number of specimens, the cancer prevalence of 27 percent that was found is close to the 31 percent found in modern countries," the university's Raffaele Gaeta wrote in the paper.

"The rarity of cancer in antiquity is a highly debated problem and the main reasons are apparently the short lifespan of past populations, the scarcity of mummified remains, and the technical difficulties of detecting neoplastic lesions [tumors] in mummified tissues," the researchers write. Indeed, average life expectancy for a man living during the Roman Empire was around 22, and only went up to 33 in medieval Europe, and just short of 50 for 18th-century America. And unless tumors impact bones, they leave little skeletal evidence. It often takes a mummy to preserve a tumor.

In this case, the team took advantage of the good preservation of the naturally mummified remains of King Ferrante I of Aragon, who ruled for most of the 15th century, and some of his court, from Naples's San Domenico Maggiore church. All of the individuals examined were long-lived for their time—between 55 and 71 at death. Perhaps the rich lifestyle contributed to their conditions, but the researchers concluded that, at least among this population, cancer was about as prevalent then as it is today. They write, "the assumptions that cancer was an extremely rare event in past populations should be revised."

Most visitors to San Antonio know it for the Alamo, the Missions, or the Riverwalk. These well-known tourist centers draw millions to the city. But for the past 25 years, a steady stream of oddity seekers has used the road less traveled to see a local bastion of folk art. His work isn’t displayed in a trendy gallery or exhibition, but it is appointment only. Visitors drive into the heart of an upper-class neighborhood called Alamo Heights until they arrive at a garage. When the metal doors swing open, there stands Barney Smith and 1,300 toilet seats.

The 96-year-old Smith is a retired master plumber who was inspired to put artwork on toilet seats by the hunting mounts made by his father. His first seat is adorned with deer antlers, but he’s found inspiration in almost anything under the sun. For the past 50 years, he’s poured thousands of hours and nearly every thought into making toilet seat art. Why?

“Because I’m still alive,” he exclaims. “Is that a good enough reason?”

He didn’t make his collection viewable to the public until 1992, when another artist saw Smith’s seats during a garage sale. After Smith showed off the the full collection, word got around. His phone started ringing off the hook.

“People demanded to see it,” he says. “It’s the people’s museum.”

It’s also the only museum of its kind in the world. His visitors come from all over that world, usually leaving behind a memento for Smith to place on a toilet seat. He has commemorative toilet seats to mark guests from Israel, Brazil, Greece, Japan, and several others.

He promised his wife of 74 years that he’d stop when he reached 500, but he just kept on going. Creating the collection has largely been a solitary labor of love, with long hours spent in the garage making and maintaining the seats. It was only last year that he admitted that he wanted some help.

“I call myself his museum assistant, but he calls me his helper,” says Carye Bye, laughing. She’s a local artist who moved to San Antonio recently from Portland, Oregon, where she ran the Bathtub Art Museum. She helps out a few times a week with opening the museum and keeping regular hours.

“Right now we’re on ‘Project Reglue,’” she says. “Sometimes things fall off the seats and he just puts those things in a catch-all bowl. We’ve restored probably 75 seats so far.”

According to Smith’s detailed records, the museum averages about 1,000 visitors a year. On a recent rainy weekday afternoon, a geocache enthusiast from Fort Worth was surveying the grounds while two women, one local and one from Los Angeles, marveled at the sheer numbers of the collection.

Patricia Fetters, the Angelino, says that she frequently makes “wunderkammer,” or “curiosity cabinet” trips.

“We read about this museum and Barney’s story and we had to come see it,” she says. “It’s amazing. I love folk art. There’s all of this detail captured on a toilet seat. I never expected it to be this phenomenal.”

As visitors look through the two-room garage, Smith is quick to point out toilet seats that are the most special to him. His walking stick will direct you to the seat with a piece of debris from the exploded Challenger shuttle. He’ll point out the toilet seat that came from the private plane of Aristotle Onassis, several seats that serve as a hub for geocachers, and a toilet seat from Saddam Hussein's palace sent to him by a member of the armed forces.

His mind is still sharp. He can tell you the story behind every one of his seats, which he will do if you get him going. With his advanced age and his body growing weary, he wants to sell the collection. But he won’t just let it go to anybody.

“I want somebody to keep it as a museum,” he says. “I don’t care whether it goes to New York or Kalamazoo, Michigan. Wherever they want to take it, they’ve got to keep it together.”

Smith has fielded several offers, none of which have satisfied his criteria. His recent partnership with Clorox has taken the search national with a website showcasing Smith’s favorite seats. Rita Gorenberg, a public relations associate with Clorox, says that Smith displays a new appreciation for the bathroom.

“We really wanted to share that appreciation with others,” she says. “So Clorox is really trying to find that right buyer for his collection.”

Bye wants to keep it local, arguing that it’s time for someone to step up and give Smith the recognition he deserves.

“My sense is that it’s because he’s an outside artist and visionary,” she says. “He’s a folk artist but he’s not a part of the art scene. He isn’t well known for his art, he’s more well known for the whole picture. It’s the package of Barney and the art that matters more than the art.”

She has put together a small group that is searching for a location in town to keep it free and open for anyone who wants to appreciate an artist who made his mark in folk art.

“If his art, and other art like his, was in one space in San Antonio, people would flock to it,” she says. “It would become huge.”

All of this doesn’t matter to Smith. He just wants to keep making toilet seats until his last day.

“I’ve got ideas running out of my ears,” he says. “I may be making more toilet seats in place of wherever [the collection] goes.”

If you ask him about his favorite seat, he shows you something less flashy. Centered on the seat is a piece of paper so worn that its words are unreadable. You won’t have to read it, though, as Smith will immediately recite Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted,” from memory. He’s known it since it was assigned to him in the fifth grade. The poem describes a world with no critics, where everyone works “for the joy of the working,” realizing their own vision.

“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ll eventually paint my last picture and then I’ll be gone from this old world...And I’ve left quite an impression on a lot of people. Everybody needs their day. I got mine.”

The winner of the 1940 Miss Subways beauty contest was Mona Freeman, a fresh-faced teenager who went on to appear in more than 20 films. Its 2017 victor was a 61-year-old performance artist, who achieved some notoriety for a public appearance in a Brooklyn art gallery in which she sat naked on a toilet.

This contest intitially ran from 1941 through 1976 under the auspices of the precursors of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), and was resuscitated as a pageant by the MTA in 2004 as “Ms. Subways.” This year it has returned again, but it’s nothing to do with the MTA. This incarnation, held at the City Reliquary in late September, was a protest against everything the contest had once stood for: beauty contests, commercialism, the glory of the MTA, even femininity itself. Instead, the organizers welcomed contestants of all genders, encouraged viewers to join the Riders Alliance advocacy group, and proclaimed 2017 the subway “Summer of Hell.”

In its origins, the Miss Subways competition (it was more contest than staged pageant) was designed to draw straphangers’ eyes up to smiling faces of beautiful women and then, presumably, over to advertisements for cigarettes or chewing gum. Each month, at the beginning at least, a new queen was crowned, and each month a new poster was made, with a caption highlighting the winner’s hobbies, career, dreams, and, often, marital status. The copy was written by ad men, and sometimes stretched the truth dramatically. At first, the winners were chosen by the advertising company that ran the contest, often from women who wrote in or via a tap on the shoulder, as in the case of the stunning young manicurist at the Waldorf who did some ad man’s nails. Then, in 1960, members of the public were allowed to vote for a winner from among six finalists. Answers on a postcard, please, and no more than one per person.

Miss Subways was the pretty girl next door, with aspirations to marriage, family, and a trip to Bermuda. But she reigned over the wilds of the IND, BMT, and IRT. “They were a snapshot of typical New York working women,” says Amy Zimmer, journalist and author of Meet Miss Subways: New York's Beauty Queens 1941–1976.“These were working-class women, accessible and inspirational.” They were women whom other women felt they could be, and whom men felt they could date. (Winners often received marriage proposals, flowers, and, once, a three-foot lemon meringue pie.)

The beauty contest tracks the highs and lows of 20th-century, and now 21st-century, urban feminism, says Kathy Peiss, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania who contributed an essay to the book. She writes, “Miss Subways opens to view hidden histories of everyday life in New York that touch upon the changing ideals and aspirations of women, the struggle for civil rights, and the rise of a modern culture of beauty, consumption, fashion, and image-making.”

As the competition began, women were charging into the workforce with the beginning of World War II. By the 1950s, they felt the siren call of the suburbs and homemaking. The pageant winners evolved with the times: women who traveled alone for fun, or took to the skies as air hostesses and, in the case of the 1976 winner, a pilot. But it was the rise of second-wave feminism and the 1970s fiscal crisis that seemed to have left the pageant for dead. Soon women were loath to ride the subway, which was thought of as very dangerous. Lisa Levy, the performance artist and 2017 winner, was born within a few years of when the last Miss Subways winner was born, and saw many of these changes first hand. “I have seen a lot,” she says. “I try to really stay in the moment about New York. It changes and evolves, in good ways and not so good ways.”

In 2012, Zimmer released Meet Miss Subways with photographer Fiona Gardner, supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts. For the book, they tracked down as many of the winners as they could, and interviewed them about their lives after the pageant. Initially, winners held their titles for a month, then two, and finally six. Some had divorced and remarried, moved away and could not be found, or passed away.

Some spoke of the contest with derision, others considered it a crowning achievement. Dorothea Mate Heart, who won in 1942, believed that her win went beyond “a pretty face.” “I was a volunteer with the Office of Emergency Management. I think I was a role model.” As she recalled in the book, “It may be superficial, because it’s only looks, but it has helped me over the years.” Meanwhile, Enid Berkowitz Schwarzbaum, who won four years later, pooh-poohed the whole thing. “I don’t regard being selected as an accomplishment,” she told Zimmer. “I think someone who’s really done something, who’s really given something or made something of himself, that’s really an accomplishment.”

Winners in the 1940s were, like many women at the time, involved in the war effort. Singing “triplets” (actually twins and another sister) Dawna, Doris, and Dorothy Clawson claimed to have “sung at every camp within 50 miles—but their hearts belong to [the] Navy.” Others said they passed the time writing letters to “boy friends” serving far away. In the 1950s, women began to try to reconcile professional aspirations with family life. In 1950, Patti Freeman mentioned as her ambition “success in both theater and marriage,” and in 1951, Frances Carton said she hoped to be “an interior decorator but chose marriage.”

Even when Miss Subways winners had, and had achieved, lofty career goals, their press coverage was depressingly sexist. An early Asian-American winner, 1954’s Juliette Rose Lee, was “a Physics technician at Columbia U. Ambitious to be a physicist.” Lee went on to achieve considerable success in particle physics, but at the time was described by gossip columnist Walter Winchell as “a china doll, most tempting Chinese dish this side of chop suey.”

To keep the competition relevant, the competition’s administrators marshaled the forces of feminism. When Bernard Spaulding, sales director for New York Subways Advertising, took over the competition in 1960, he stated that he would not be prioritizing competitors’ good looks. “Prettiness is passé,” he said. “It’s personality and interesting pursuits that count.” Other kinds of political action were woven into the competition as well. Berkowitz’s entry was motivated at least in part by an attempt to prove that someone with an obviously Jewish surname could not win. “I did it as a test,” she recounted later. But New York had a large, and growing, Jewish population, many of whom regularly rode the subway and looked up at those advertisements by her face.

In the late 1940s, nearly 10 percent of New Yorkers were black. The first black Miss Subways, Thelma Porter, won in 1948, 35 years before the first black Miss America. Black newspapers in the city had been campaigning for an African-American Miss Subways, and New York Amsterdam News columnist Dan Burley observed, in 1942, that “Harlem’s younger female set is mad as hell about the implied insult to them in the subway cars.” Like contemporary ad men, the minds behind Miss Subways saw that there was money to be made in embracing diversity. The last winners in the 1970s reflect the fact that by then almost half of New York was non-white.

Some winners, who dreamt of more than a secretary’s pink-collar opportunities, hoped that a win could get them discovered and launch a glittering career, says Zimmer, “whether in modeling, or acting, or on-stage, singing.” For one contestant it did, sort of. Ellen Hart Sturm, who won in 1959, went on to open all-singing, all-dancing Ellen’s Stardust Diner in midtown Manhattan. Its walls are lined with the advertisements of former winners. “My fantasy on the Miss Subways poster said I was going to be a famous singer,” she related to Zimmer. Instead, she got married at 21 and was pregnant “right away, because in those days we knew so little about sex.” The first legal contraceptive pill went on the market the year after her win, and two years before she got pregnant. “I didn’t work hard enough to be a star,” she said. “You have to give up everything.”

The final winner, in 1976, Heide Hafner, told Zimmer: “I didn’t want to be a dopey beauty queen. I just wanted to promote aviation. It was my first love, more or less.” By then, the competition was decided by public vote, so she bought and stamped 500 postcards, which she gave to people she met. “By that time, Miss Subways was losing its glamor. But we didn’t want the glamor scene any more,” she said. “I was happy with the results, just to know I got aviation out there.” By then, the subway was at a low ebb, with the MTA saddled with a $500 million deficit.

A scathing New York magazine feature that year described how winners were mortified to see themselves defaced (“sex organs [balloon] from her ears”) on the graffiti-covered cars, and hated the advertising copy and chintzy bracelet they received. Men they met asked them questions about the “size of their tunnel” or doodled obscenities coming out of their mouths on the signs. The winners would have been happier to just get a subway pass instead. The days of aspiring to the “glamor” of ruling New York’s underground (often from a distance, the 1941 winner had never handled a pole or hung from a strap) were over. Within months of the publication of the magazine story, the competition was over.

Two years after that, Lisa Levy, who spent her early years in the city, had returned to New York after more than a decade away. Following an incident with a pickpocket, when she pushed to get off the train and hit with a newspaper, she suffered a panic attack and was unable to take the subway for years. In the time since, Levy worked first as a commercial illustrator and then an art director in advertising for a quarter-century. She’s also launched a career as a performance and conceptual artist: Levy sold “Studio 54 Reject” T-shirts to those who failed to get in to the famously debauched club, starred in a documentary about not wanting to get married, and launched an advice show, Dr. Lisa Gives a Shit, on Radio Free Brooklyn.

This year, she decided to enter the new incarnation of the Miss Subways pageant. Unlike their forebears, the 2017 entrants at the City Reliquary did not, generally, appear to be seeking husbands in the burbs or careers in Hollywood—at least not as traditional leading ladies. Filmmaker Dylan Mars Greenberg writhed on the ground, shoveling dirt into her mouth, in a vigorous display of how to handle a public masturbator (disturbingly not-all-that-rare on the subway). Drag queen Glace Chase, who gives tours of the city, sported a luxuriant merkin over her fishnets. And, perhaps most bizarrely, “Sundae Fantastique,” aka Carrie-Anne Murphy, dressed up as a kind of haute subway rat to perform a crying soundscape over the distant strains of a 3 a.m. Q train that would never arrive. In the 1970s, women felt the pageant pigeon-holed and objectified them. At the City Reliquary, beneath a great rusted ladder that rose into the air like a ship’s mast, rigged fairy lights illuminated a ramshackle crew of all genders and all ages. Pigeon-holing of any kind would have been impossible.

Levy declared that she wanted to be the first postmenopausal Miss Subways, to communicate something important about aging, femininity, and the discomfort women are supposed to feel in their changing bodies. “I feel really passionate about the lack of consciousness around women’s sexual currency,” she says. “Women need to own that, and we need to take charge of that ourselves. I don’t think we’re ever going to have equal rights unless we own our value, in getting older, for better or for worse.”

Sexual currency was not among the criteria for this year’s pageant, which prized charisma, the quality of answers to questions, and performance. In a long red dress, Levy gave a monologue about her experiences on the subway, while her husband (she got married after all), artist Phillip Buehler, beamed at her from the audience. After she was crowned, he watched recorder-clutching journalists and flashing cameras envelop his wife. “I guess I’m Mr. Subways now,” he said, looking almost dizzy with pride. “The First Subways.”

There’s something fitting in the idea that a woman who was once too afraid to take the subway late at night now “rules” over it. “You were really judged, on how cool you were, on whether you would go out and take the subways at all hours of the day or night, or go over to Avenue B or C,” Levy says. “I really was a nerd, I was afraid of that, and it limited my cool factor. I wasn't really that cool, because I was truly afraid.” She barely remembers the original version of the beauty contest, despite having ridden the train at the time. "I don’t have a really strong memory of it," she says, “but it’s not unfamiliar, either.”

For Levy, like so many others, Miss Subways was just woven into the fabric of New York’s underground life—a fleeting piece of pop culture and an artifact of the lives of women in a modern city. Levy is going to wear her crown for a year—presumably not all the time, but she is a performance artist, so who knows?—and then, the folks at the City Reliquary suggest, pass the title on to the new winner.

War happens fast. When the passengers on the SS Athenia, a British passenger liner, left Glasgow on a fall day in 1939, the world was not officially at war, though tensions between Germany and England were reaching a breaking point. Two days later Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went on the radio at 11 a.m. and announced that the country was at war with Germany.

Less than 9 hours later, around 7:40 p.m., a German U-boat torpedoed the Athenia, and it sank slowly into the ocean, finally disappearing the next morning, just 24 hours after the war’s official start.

During World War II, thousands of ships sank, and most of them have been rusting anonymously beneath the ocean waters, including the Athenia. Now, though, a shipwreck hunter believes he has relocated it.

At the behest of the BBC, David Mearns went looking for the wreck of the Athenia and found it without ever venturing out on the water. Scanning sonar data from the Geological Survey of Ireland, he found the signature of a boat with the dimensions of a 1930s liner, near the location the Athenia reported sinking, with a split in the aft section that looks to have been cause by a torpedo.

“There’s a very, very high probability that that’s Athenia,” Mearns told the BBC. “Everything fits.” A remotely operated vehicle sent down to the wreck could confirm its identity with more certainty.

It’s not so uncommon, even decades after World War II, for long-lost wrecks to be relocated. Just this week, an Australian ship, the SS Macumba, sunk by Japanese aircraft in 1943, was found relatively intact—still standing upright, Mashable reports. Better sonar data and ROVs have made it easier to locate and study ships that fell deep into the water.

But finding and publicizing the locations of these ships can also endanger them. As The Guardian has reported, some wrecks have disappeared, the victims of salvagers who illegally dismantle the boats for their metal. The United Nations does have convention to protect cultural heritage underwater, but not all member states have ratified it. The ocean is vast and not exactly convenient to police or map. Which means there are still many more World War II wrecks—war graves, really—out there waiting to be rediscovered.

Weather radar maps are pretty neat. Using just colors, the maps can indicate whether rain, snow, or sleet is passing over. Every once in a while, though, even experts aren't quite sure what a particular big blob is.

Such was the case at around 1 p.m. on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 3. At that point, someone from the National Weather Service in Boulder, Colorado, looked at their ZDR radar, which indicates shape as well as size, and saw a strange pink cloud swooping over the Denver metro area.

The pink color indicated large, round objects. Based on previous experience, the NWS offered up a diagnosis. They included a GIF of the visitors, and helpfully labeled it, “Birds.”

Look at what's flying into Denver! Radar from last hour showing what we believe to be birds. Any bird experts know what kind? #ornithologypic.twitter.com/EAqzdMwpFU

— NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder) October 3, 2017

Then the controversy began. Jeff Wells, tweeting under the authority-burgeoning username @Bird_Wells, pointed out that most bird species actually migrate at night, not at 1 p.m. “Thanks for the insight, Jeff,” the NWS responded.

Another, Phil Stepanian (aka @RadarAndStuff) then presented his guess: insects. But the NWS shot it down, saying that when bugs show up on the radar, they’re usually more randomly dispersed.

The NWS doubled down on their interpretation, telling a local news station they were “confident it is local bird migration.” But then the reports started coming in from the ground. “Downtown #Denver is covered in butterflies right now, mostly Painted Ladies!” tweeted Joe Szuszwalak.

By the next day, the NWS was singing a different tune. “We believe migrating butterflies are the cause of yesterday’s radar signature,” they wrote.

4/4: Migrating butterflies in high quantities explains it. Today, the butterflies are staying close to the ground. #cowx#Sciencepic.twitter.com/rkpwmPRnsi

— NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder) October 4, 2017

They had been tricked, they explained, by the sheer size of the impression: "Things with big wings need to fly together in the same direction with the wind to generate that signature."

One mystery remained. Painted ladies normally migrate south for the winter, but this blob appeared to be going north instead. Our old pal Stepanian provided an explanation for this off-kilter path: The butterflies were trying to go south, but had been buffeted by headwinds, which pushed them northwest.

Like this: pic.twitter.com/5P8UYIyCY1

— Phil Stepanian (@RadarAndStuff) October 4, 2017

Properly identified at last, the butterflies then continued on their way, and the Boulder NWS went back to tweeting about clouds.

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.

Florida is the boating capital of the United States: In 2016, the state had more registered recreational boats than any other. But to Julie Duggins, an archaeologist for the state’s Division of Historical Resources, that nautical achievement is only the modern iteration of a history that goes back more than 6,000 years.

“Florida has always been a capital for watercraft and boating,” she says. More impressive than the state’s current boating record is its archaeological one. Florida has the highest concentration of archaeological dugout canoes of anywhere in the world—more than 400 wooden boats that show, as Duggins says, “how early Floridians navigated our rivers like highways.”

The most recent addition to that collection is a battered canoe spotted by a photographer out for a bike ride following Hurricane Irma in September. It has not yet been officially dated, but this newly discovered dugout—a canoe made from a single, hollowed-out log—has metal nails and other features that indicate it’s anywhere from a few decades to centuries old

For a Florida dugout, though, that’s not a particularly impressive age. Of the canoes in the state’s database, almost three-quarters are considered prehistoric, meaning that they were made before 1513, when Juan Ponce de Léon first documented his experiences on the peninsula. The earliest canoe ever found in the state is close to 7,000 years old.

Archaeologists there first started collecting information about these discoveries in the late 1970s, after a drought revealed a lot of long-preserved wooden artifacts. Barbara Purdy, who was an archaeologist at the University of Florida for many years, started surveying these ancient canoes and publishing ads that asked anyone who had found an ancient boat to call and report it.

There were heartbreaking moments in her quest. In 1985, a large company told Purdy its earthmovers had uncovered a trove of canoes and other artifacts. She and her colleagues took a sample of one boat and promised to return when the water table was lower, so they could excavate. That small sample indicated the canoe was 3,300 years old—the oldest they had discovered at the time. But when they came back the next year, the entire find had been destroyed.

By 1990, the state’s archaeologists had documented more than 200 canoes and found a much older example, dating back 5,120 years. One of the most intriguing aspects of these discoveries was that some canoes appeared in groups of up to nine boats, usually found on the shores of lakes. Purdy and her colleague Lee Ann Newsom wondered what might account for these concentrations. “There are accounts from other areas that Indians deliberately sunk their canoes if they were going to be gone for awhile in order to prevent their destruction from natural or enemy forces,” they wrote in 1990. Perhaps, they imagined, a group of people had used the canoes seasonally, sunk them for safekeeping, and never returned.

These dugout canoes turn up so often in Florida in part because the state is covered with expanses of peatland, wet and boggy soil where organic material decays slowly. Sunk in the muck, locked away from oxygen, wooden canoes can last for thousands of years with relatively little damage. Most often, they’re reemerge in times of drought, when the level of lakes and other waterways drops away.

The largest concentration of prehistoric dugout canoes found in Florida—most likely the largest cache of such boats anywhere in the world—appeared in 2000 on the shore of Newnans Lake, near Gainesville. That year, a severe drought had lowered the lake’s level, and hikers and bird watchers started spotting boats on the new shoreline. State archaeologists who documented the finds later wrote, “Every additional search revealed the remains of more canoes.” Sometimes, they’d be excavating a newly discovered canoe, and would reveal a few more in the process. In the end, they found 101 dugouts, the oldest dating back to 5,000 years ago.

When the locations of all the dugouts discovered in Florida are mapped, two concentrations stand out—Newnans Lake and another in the north central highlands. Duggins says this suggests that people were purposefully caching canoes in certain places. “It’s starting to look like perhaps those canoe sites represent points on the landscape that were strategically located between watersheds,” she says. She compares it to riding a bike to a subway station and locking it up there, so that on your return trip, the bike will be waiting for you. In other words, these canoe concentrations could represent nodes in an extensive transportation network that would have allowed people to travel efficiently over long distances.

Part of the reason Duggins and her colleagues encourage the public to report dugouts when they find them is that the boats are incredibly delicate. Once exposed to light and air they can disintegrate rapidly, especially if moved. “Our rule of thumb is to leave it in place,” says Duggins. “If it’s been preserved for thousands of years in the bottom of the lake, the most protective thing is to leave it there.” The alternative is to place it in a bath of polyethylene glycol for a year or more, while the waxy substance replaces the structure of the wood. Every canoe, even ones that aren't preserved like this, can be added to the state's database and help fill out the picture of how people used these boats over thousands of years. “Even if it has been in someone’s barn for 50 years," Duggins says, "we still want them to report it."

The Liberian Greenbul is one of the world's rarest songbirds—so rare, in fact, that experts are beginning to wonder whether it ever existed in the first place. This little bird, with its butter-yellow chest, was allegedly first spotted in a West African forest about 25 years ago. Just one specimen exists, with a spattering of distinctive white spots across its plumage that differentiate it from its common cousin, the Icterine Greenbul. Unless, of course, they don't. New DNA analysis and research from the University of Aberdeen suggest that this handsome little fellow is, in fact, just an Icterine Greenbul, and that those spots are just an "unusual plumage variant." The Liberian Greenbul is so hard to find because, well, there is no Liberian Greenbul.

Beyond the obviously mythological (unicorns and the like), species like the Liberian Greenbul, that were once thought to exist but no longer are, are few and far between. They crop up most often in paleontology, and have lumped some beloved dinosaurs together with others. Triceratops, for instance, may have been juvenile versions of the "rarer" torosaurus, scientists said in 2010, though other scientists disagreed a few years later. Paleontologists also haven't always been able to make up their minds about brontosaurus—the field has gone back and forth on whether they've just been apatosauruses all along. It's estimated that as much as a third of all known dinosaurs may have never existed as separate species.

In more recent times, the sweet little Hunter Island penguin was thought to have lived around Tasmania, Australia, and gone extinct. Like the Liberian Greenbul, there were few specimens available. DNA testing earlier this year, however, showed that the bones from which the species was identified were actually a smorgasbord of other penguins: the Fiordland crested, the Snares crested, and the little fairy. Just like that, the Hunter Island penguin was gone. The eastern cougar, native to Canada's New Brunswick, is almost certainly just a regular cougar, say local zoologists. The kouprey, an endangered Cambodian ox with huge, curving horns, was in 2006 revealed to be a feral hybrid of ordinary wild oxen. And the panther? It is to a leopard what a black Labrador retriever is to a golden retriever. Same species, different look.

How would Botticelli’s Birth of Venus appear if it were painted as a cerebral cortex? Would you eat a Big Mac covered in an old man’s face? What if Freddy Krueger was composed not of mottled flesh, but Dunkin’ Donuts?

These are the questions that, one can only imagine, kept digital artist Chris Rodley up at night. Then he found a way to answer them, using an image-generating neural network developed by Artificial Intelligence researchers at the University of Tübingen. Conceptually, it’s pretty simple—you upload any image, and then apply the style of another image (think brushstrokes, lines, colors) to the initial one. It’s not just an picture mash-up; according to Rodley, it’s better to think of it as “texture synthesis.” The style-transfer network, known as DeepArt, which was originally developed to emulate painting styles, was already widely known in the tech world. But whereas in the past it had been used to transform pictures of Mom into Michelangelos, Rodley began testing its limits with an eye toward the macabre.

The results? Unrealized counterfactuals turned into unsettling realities. Rodley had effectively created his own genre, which he calls Algohorror—art that is not only horrific, but horrific in a way that is “distinctly algorithimish.”

When he says something is algorithimish, Rodley means that the image looks like it was created by a computer. There are certain characteristics that these images share—strange warpings, blendings, and incoherences—that a person wouldn’t think to include in an art piece. This is not to say that DeepArt is somehow more creative; oftentimes, the generated images are just blurry and incomprehensible. It simply means that algorithms pick out different visual patterns than we do, and the results can get freaky.

It’s a bit like giving Salvador Dalí Photoshop along with a generation’s worth of pop-culture references and telling him to go crazy.

Throughout his creative process developing Algohorror, Rodley has learned quite a bit about what people find horrifying, and how algorithms can be used to enhance the horror in our lives.

Anatomy, for example, is a widely shared source of dread. “Eyes and teeth,” Rodley says, “are sort of a hundred times more scary than other objects.” While it’s a bit odd that such familiar face parts can disgust, there’s no question that Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Eyes & Teeth wouldn’t make the best summer home. Whatever the biological cause of this visceral reaction, it’s likely the same mechanism that activates trypophobia (warning: click at your own risk), a feeling that is both stomach-churning and perversely interesting.

Likewise, Botticelli’s Cerebral Cortex of a Patient with Epilepsy During Surgery is another eerie display of blood and guts mapped onto beauty. Of course, neither of these images is particularly groundbreaking. Horror connoisseurs are well-aware of the main tropes that comprise the genre: bio-mechanical creatures, monsters, clowns and dolls, body horror.

Some Algohorror images are just an extension of the latter, preying upon our natural distaste for gore. But what Rodley is really trying to do with Algohorror is venture outside of these narrow archetypes. To that end, he’s aimed less for gruesome and more for unsettling.

This means blending images that aren’t traditionally horrifying—some of his best creations are cocktails of banality. We expect eyes to unnerve people; but stock photos (Rodley actually finds them “creepy because they’re so perfect”) and golden retrievers? Not so much. And yet, there’s something about Stock Photo Model Botticelli and Golden Retriever Botticellithat makes one a bit queasy. In violating our expectations, these images create the sort of subtle horror that comes from feeling that something isn’t quite right.

Rodley has also had success preying upon people’s pareidolia, the natural human inclination to see familiar patterns in chaotic places. Strawberry Skulls is a great example of this phenomenon; at a cursory glance, it just looks like some fruit. But if your eyes linger, you can make out the skulls hidden in the seeds, like picking constellations out of the stars.

Another tactic Rodley uses to wring horror from modest images is visual metaphor. Toothpaste Advertisement Trump, for example, derives most of its unsettling nature from the content rather than the composition.

Rodley thinks the horror in this particular picture comes from the facade of gleaming incisors. In real life, he says, “It’s the ones with the perfect teeth that are often the bad guys.” In other words—you’re a lot less likely to be carved up by Freddy Krueger than bamboozled by a billionaire who had braces.

For all the Halloween enthusiasts out there, Algohorror should be seen as reason for unbridled optimism. You can find horror in anything, as long as you have an algorithm to help you out.

Want to create your own works of Algohorror? Visit DeepArt.io—and share the extra-freaky ones with us by sending them to ella@atlasobscura.com.

In 2015, writer Maryam Omidi found herself in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, during a trip across Central Asia. She was only a short distance from Khoja Obi Garm, a Soviet-era sanatorium that specializes in radon water treatments. She found herself strangely smitten, “in awe of the architecture, the treatments and the hospitality … The more I read about sanatoriums, the more fascinated I was by them.”

Two years later, after visiting 39 sanatoriums across 11 former Eastern Bloc countries, and after a successful crowdfunding campaign, Omidi and London-based publisher Fuel have released Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums. Omidi worked with eight different photographers who specialize in the region to capture both the architecture and the people who still visit these once-popular—once-state-mandated—vacation destinations.

In 1920, Lenin issued the decree “On utilizing the Crimea for the medical treatment of working people.” The Labor Code of 1922 formalized mandatory vacations, and throughout the Soviet years, sanatoriums were built on the Crimean Peninsula and around the USSR. “Sanatoriums were a mix between medical institution and spa,” explains Omidi, in an e-mail. “Soviet citizens stayed at sanatoriums for at least two weeks a year, courtesy of a state-funded voucher, as part of the 'work hard, rest hard' ideology of the time.”

On first arriving at a sanatorium, a guest would consult with a doctor, who would then prescribe a series of treatments. In the early years of the sanatoriums, everything was rigidly scheduled—even time spent sunbathing. “Rest and recuperation at sanatoriums did not involve idly lolling about, but instead consisted of a schedule of different treatments and exercises that in the early days was quite rigidly upheld,” says Omidi. “Although sanatorium culture relaxed over time, in the 1920s and 1930s, visitors went without their families, and weren't allowed to drink, dance, or make too much noise. The idea was that it was a time for contemplative reflection on socialist ideals and an opportunity to reenergize before returning to work.”

The idea was also that everyone would derive the benefits of the sanatoriums, and that this would create a healthier and more productive workforce. With vouchers, called putevki, guests could stay either for free or at a subsidized rate, at a predetermined destination. However, these ideals didn’t always live up to the reality. “In practice,” writes Omidi in the book’s introduction, “the best accommodation usually went to those with money and connections.” Some sanatoriums, such as at Kyrgyzstan’s Aurora, took this preferential treatment a step further. Aurora was built in 1979 specifically for the Soviet elite, and had more than 350 staff for 200 guests.

Sanatoriums were constructed throughout the Soviet Union right up until its collapse in 1991, which explains the wild range of architectural styles among them. Khoja Obi Garm, the site that first intrigued Omidi, is a tiered, brutalist slab of concrete hewn into Gissar Mountain Range. Ordzhonikidze, in Sochi, Russia, is neoclassical in style and palatial in proportions, with a fountain, pool, and outdoor cinema. It was built in 1936, in the era of Stalin's purges, and is named after an associate of Stalin's who later died under mysterious circumstances. Reshma, which opened in 1987, is a red-brick monolith near the Volga River, about 300 miles northeast of Moscow. Its guests included cosmonauts and those impacted by radiation exposure at Chernobyl.

Nearly all of the sanatoriums featured in the book still offer a range of treatments—some more unusual than others. One particularly startling entry is the National Speleotherapy Clinic just outside Minsk, Belarus. Speleotherapy is a form of respiratory treatment that involves breathing inside a cave. In this case, that cave is a salt mine nearly 1,400 feet underground. While it does offer some facilities on the surface, the consultation rooms, activity areas, and dormitories are all situated in tunnels. According to the book, more than 7,000 children and adults visit each year.

Omidi was most surprised by the crude oil treatment at Naftalan, in Azerbaijan, a “petroleum spa town.” The oil found at Naftalan has specific properties that are supposedly beneficial, though some experts argue they’re more likely carcinogenic. “Crude oil of differing levels of purity is used for everything from bathing to gargling with,” Omidi explains. “Although it feels pretty luxurious to be in a bathtub full of crude oil, the whole experience is quite slippery so not the most graceful.”

Today, a night’s stay at the Soviet-era Chinar sanatorium in Naftalan costs about $105. (There are 11 sanatoriums in Naftalan, but only one that predates 1991). Other sanatoriums, like the exclusive Aurora in Kyrgyzstan, can reach $200 per night during the summer. According to Omidi, some of the visitors today treat the sanatoriums more like hotels, to take advantage of their proximity to beaches, for example. “Others take them much more seriously, returning annually to treat certain ailments or to undergo treatments as a prophylactic measure.”

Regardless of the reasons for a visit to a sanatorium, "vacation" is a different concept today than it was in Soviet Russia. As metal fitter S. Antonov wrote in a newspaper column in 1966, “I receive my vacation once a year and I try not to waste a single day of it in idleness.”

Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from Omidi's book, which was released today.

Beneath the gilt and glamor of King Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles wafted a terrible smell. The French Sun King had spent vast fortunes to transform an unassuming hunting lodge into his own golden wonder court, one of the most astounding palaces in the world. But the building’s location, far from a river, made sewage disposal challenging, and its marshy foundations gave off a rank odor. A lack of facilities apparently led courtiers to defecate around the palace and grounds with abandon. The few bathrooms there were poorly maintained and often overflowing with waste.

There was another, more sinister stench discernible there as well, one more troubling than the commonplace stink of humanity. In the late 1660s and early 1670s, influential members of the French nobility began to die, unexpectedly and close upon one another. Autopsies showed their insides blackened and corroded. A fever for poisoning and witchcraft seemed to have infected the court, and in 1679 Louis XIV was forced to establish a special tribunal—a Chambre Ardente, or “burning room”—to investigate and prosecute the murders.

The “Affair of the Poisons,” as it came to be known, is a misleading name for one of the largest witch trials in modern history. Over just five years, from 1677 to 1682, 319 subpoenas were issued, 194 individuals arrested, and 36 executed (with perhaps dozens more dead from suicide, or in prison or exile). In total, it claimed between two and three times as many lives as the Salem witch trials across the Atlantic, 10 years later. It began with what appeared to be an isolated case, but then door after door after door opened, eventually implicating rich and poor alike.

“What’s noteworthy about the Affair is that it shows how people from the top to the bottom of the social spectrum participate in a shared magical understanding of the world,” says cultural historian Lynn Wood Mollenauer, of the University of North Carolina Wilmington. “This could only have been possible in a very religious society, because the power that’s attributed to magical ritual and practice almost entirely relies on Catholic sacerdotals and rituals—the Eucharist. It says something profound about religiosity.” The Affair was confusing, complex, convoluted—and persistent because everyone, however powerful, had a common fear of witchcraft, poisoning, and the unknown.

This strange series of events took place against a backdrop of extreme disparity, both economic and social. While many outside the court’s walls lived simple, even impoverished lives, those within could blow an entire fortune in single morning at the gambling table. And, while Louis XIV conspicuously attended daily Catholic mass, he and his court were described as the most libertine in Europe. The Spanish noble the Duke of Pastrana was more direct: The court, he said, was “a real brothel.” It was politically tempestuous and unforgiving, and its ruler a ruthless, albeit charming, womanizer.

In most cases, writes Anne Somerset, author of The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV, “the investment required to live at court far outweighed the gains.” To keep up appearances, aristocrats squandered lavish sums on “fine clothes, household expenses, servants and carriages,” even while income from their lands was shrinking. Ruin loomed over every extravagance. Excess bred boredom, which bred a taste for transgressive pastimes: Fortune-telling and palm-reading joined gambling as popular court activities, against a backdrop of superstition and belief in witchcraft. Murder, in this setting, could be just another diversion. And this diversion didn’t involve blades and blood, but poison.

Marie de Brinvilliers

It was in this context that, in 1672, French police were called to investigate a break-in at a laboratory belonging to one Gaudin de Sainte-Croix, a devilishly handsome, and recently deceased, young army officer. There, they found a red leather trunk of letters, vials, and mysterious substances. The contents of the trunk seemed to link Sainte-Croix’s two passions: his lover, the very married Marie de Brinvilliers, and poisoning. While incarcerated in the Bastille for three months for his affair with de Brinvilliers, in 1663, Sainte-Croix apparently befriended Italian Egidio Exili, rumored to have been a master poisoner.

Before vanishing, Exili seems to have taught the Frenchman quite a bit. At the time, poisons were poorly understood, and hard to detect as a cause of death. Consequently, many specific crimes likely went unpunished, much to the fright of the French people. In the xenophobic French court, it was often seen as an Italian art, dating back to the time of Catherine de Medici. It was said that the Italians had found a way to poison a stray glove—further alarming the populace.

In the years before his death, possibly of an accidental self-poisoning, Sainte-Croix “perfected” his art, which involved both trying to turn base metals into gold and trying to create an odorless, tasteless, untraceable poison. The first was out of reach—the second was not.

Sainte-Croix and de Brinvilliers shared their passions, and began to test this new substance (likely arsenic), allegedly by lacing cakes and other sweets with it, and giving them to unsuspecting patients in a nearby public hospital. Seemingly, the thrill was their only motive. Letters in the trunk unambiguously implicated de Brinvilliers in the recent deaths of her father and two brothers as well, a sad turn of events that put her in line to inherit a fortune. Upon the discovery of the trunk, she fled Paris for the countryside and then abroad, where she managed to remain on the lam for four years before being arrested in Belgium.

Historians seem to struggle to reconcile de Brinvilliers’s “uncommon physical attractions” with her toxic pastime. A 1911 biography by Hugh Stokes is especially onanistic. “Her soft smile, her blue eyes, her graceful figure,” he writes, “concealed the unbridled passions of a tigress.” Eventually, in a letter found in her convent cell, she confessed to having attempted to poison her sister, daughter, and husband.

Stokes reads the confession as the work of a dangerous sociopath. “Heart had she none, not even for the men she loved,” he writes. Modern observers are more inclined to see these actions as the work of someone who was deeply damaged, perhaps because of the prolific childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her brother she mentions in the letter. Somerset posits: “This might explain, even if it cannot excuse, her extraordinary callousness and psychopathic tendencies."

Later, de Brinvilliers attempted to distance herself from this admission, claiming feverish madness, but it was much too late. She was found guilty and subjected to “water torture” to force her to name accomplices. Stripped naked and bound, she had 24 pints of water forced down her throat. (Looking at the numerous buckets, de Brinvilliers is said to have remarked: “No doubt all this water is to drown me in? I hope you don't suppose that a person of my size could swallow it all.") She was then beheaded and burned at the stake, and had her ashes cast into the wind.

The beauty and wickedness of this lurid case captured Paris’s imagination. Madame de Sévigné, an aristocrat famous for her witty letters, was present on the day of de Brinvilliers’s execution. “Never has Paris seen such crowds of people,” she later wrote. “Never has the city been so aroused, so intent on a spectacle.”

But, more than a spectacle, the revelations were cause for anxiety, even terror, at court. Just before she died, de Brinvilliers allegedly said, “Out of so many guilty people, must I be the only one to be put to death? … Half the people in town are involved in this sort of thing, and I could ruin them if I were to talk.” De Sévigné wrote jokingly that, since the citizens of Paris had inhaled de Brinvilliers’s wicked ashes, “with such evil little spirits in the air, who knows what poisonous humor may overcome us?” Indeed, Paris was about to go mad. In the next seven years, dozens of nobles would perish, by torture, suicide, execution, or poison.

Following the execution, prior deaths of prominent figures, which had not seemed unusual at the time, were looked upon with fresh eyes. De Brinvilliers, apart from being beautiful, was also noble-born. If a woman of her stock could be guilty of such crimes, no one was above suspicion. At court, Louis XIV already harbored particular anxieties about assassination, which concerns about poisoning exacerbated. A possibly apocryphal story suggests that vichyssoise is served cold because, by the time it arrived at the King’s table, it had been before both his taster and his taster’s taster.

An alarmed king appointed Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie, Lieutenant General of the Paris Police, to oversee an investigation. Previously charged with the Sisyphean task of cleaning up Paris, La Reynie had earned fame and respect for implementing, in a matter of months, “city safety, gun control … street cleaning, flood and fire control,” and even a mud tax. This investigation promised a whole other challenge for him, since it was impossible to know quite how much of the iceberg was beneath the surface, even for a man intimately familiar with the deepest machinery of the city’s society.

It was not long before arrests began. Police descended upon alchemists, counterfeiters, and poisoners, amid rumors of a royal poisoning plot. The Affair was about poison, to be sure, but it was also about witchcraft—the two were bedfellows. According to historian Frances Mossiker, police uncovered troves of lethal chemicals (arsenic, nitric acid, mercuric chloride), equipment (furnaces, forceps, cauldrons, vials), and foul natural ingredients (flowers, deadly nightshade, “blobs of hanged-man's fat, nail clippings, bone splinters, specimens of human blood, excrement, urine, [and] semen”). It looked as much like a plague of dark magic and poisoning together, and rumors abounded. Then, in 1679, La Reynie made another hugely important arrest, from another stratum of society, an arrest that gave him the rattling keys to Paris’s criminal underworld. Later, this enabled a full-scale investigation.

Catherine Monvoisin

Catherine Monvoisin, also known as La Voisin, was apprehended outside her parish church on March 12, 1679. By profession, she was a “divineress,” something between a fortune-teller and an amateur apothecary. If you had a toothache, a lost treasure, or a future in need of reading, La Voisin and her professional peers would be there for you, mostly to exploit your vulnerabilities and your pocketbook. They offered a range of more sinister wares, too: grisly proto-abortions, love potions, poisoned posies, and more. Though arsenic was the poison of choice, the ingredients ran to the extravagant—even powdered diamonds were not unheard of. Repeat clients who came seeking a horoscope or herbal remedy might eventually walk out seeing the appeal of “darker” magic. Desperation can make strange things—poisoning one’s troubles away with arsenic, for example—seem reasonable.

La Voisin was a practitioner of some repute, allegedly known to virtually every woman in Paris, and prone to crapulence and excess. “She had as much money as she wanted,” a fellow divineress is quoted as saying, in the Bastille archives. “Every morning, long before she got up, [clients] would be waiting for her.” That she was arrested leaving mass was no accident. La Voisin, despite her nefarious trade, was a “high priestess of Christian congregations,” writes researcher Benedetta Faedi Duramy, “and a pious worshipper, who conceived her occult powers as a gift from God.” She would often encourage clients to pray for what they wanted—and then offered them seamier alternative means for bringing their prayers to life.

Sometimes alternative means were the only option for women of the period. They were treated, by law and practice, as secondary to men. Husbands had absolute legal, economic, and physical authority over wives. Adultery was illegal for all, but carried virtually no penalty for men. Women, however, could face imprisonment, beatings, or loss of dowry for sullying a husband's honor and the legitimacy of his heirs. So women, it appears, turned to abortifacients or poisons to liberate themselves from unwanted pregnancies, lovers, or husbands. These potions often had uterine origins—menstrual blood or placenta—as if to liberate their users from the bindings of womanhood. Male authorities seem to have been particularly pricked by this effort for women to wrest some self-determination.

La Reynie learned a lot about this world from La Voisin after she was arrested. She named names. Professional peers were swiftly ushered into neighboring cells at the Château de Vincennes, until they held a veritable coven of members of the Parisian underworld. Her list of customers, too, was deeply troubling to authorities, and included prominent faces in court, including a countess whose husband had recently and mysteriously died. More shocking still, her confessions seemed to implicate one of the King’s former lovers, Madamoiselle des Oeillets, whose four-year-old daughter was one of his many illegitimate children. The King, already terrified of poisoning and exposure, panicked. He demanded from then on that the notes from La Reynie’s interrogations be put on loose pieces of paper. Those relating to sensitive matters could then easily be removed and burned, and kept from the eyes of a scandal-hungry public.

Eleven months after her arrest, La Voisin was burned alive in a public square now known as the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. She was wheeled in after three days of torture, and as the flames began to lick at her feet, she swore profusely, frequent execution observer de Sévigné noted, and went very red in the face. “Paris is full of this kind of thing,” La Voisin said in her interrogations, echoing closely the foreboding words of de Brinvilliers, “and there is an infinite number of people engaged in this evil trade.”

By this time, La Reynie was becoming convinced that there was an epidemic of poisoning in Paris, with “a frightening amount of effort … devoted to its purchase, sale and manufacture,” writes Somerset. Staggered by the scale of the problem he was uncovering, he called on Louis XIV to declare a full-scale investigation, with a special commission to investigate and prosecute the cases: the Chambre Ardente. It would be expensive, certainly, but the health of the court, and potentially the royal family, seemed to hang in the balance. The King agreed.

The Chambre Ardente

The Chambre Ardente’s name came from its decor. The “burning room” was located deep in the bowels of the Arsenal, a royal munitions warehouse. (Today, entirely refurbished, it is a library.) It was lit only by flaming torches. Below windows shrouded in black cloth, 13 magistrates gathered to interrogate prisoners. The term, which first emerged in the mid-16th century, was a general one for an extraordinary court of justice, usually for the trials of heretics. Doctors and pharmacists were on hand to corroborate evidence and provide medical reports, alongside a smattering of additional staff, but the actual proceedings were conducted in absolute secrecy. Within these walls, during the course of the poison investigation following La Voisin’s arrest, five people were sentenced to life imprisonment, 23 banished, and 36 sentenced to death. Of those, 34 were executed: decapitated, hanged, strangled, broken on the wheel, or burnt alive. These were just a fraction of the 442 people charged with crimes related to “‘involvement in evil spells and composing, distributing, and administering poison.”’

The affair had begun with a woman of rank. Now, one after another, people of similarly high status were being hauled into the prison at Vincennes. Others, seeing flames in the future, fled, and lived the rest of their lives as fugitives elsewhere in the continent, never to return to France. The atmosphere at court began to change. The initial titillation of scandal gave way to depression. Overseas, the French court’s reputation changed, from one of sophisticated, if libertine, refinement to a place of vice and murder. The French public changed its tune as well, to disbelief and even mockery, as the poison-related inquisition cast out charges, but offered little conclusive evidence of the plague of poisonings itself.

But it continued. The Secretary of State for War, writing to a high-ranking Chambre official, said that no one should be spared questioning, no matter their position. “It would be worse if it was seen that his Majesty had given protection to people accused of crimes of the sort,” he wrote. The King, the official replied, was steadfast, and no one would be exempt in a manner this grave.

Athénaïs de Montespan

In late 1680, a name began to emerge from the widespread interrogations. Athénaïs de Montespan, then about 40, had once been the King’s favorite mistress. She came to court in the mid-1660s, and worked as one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, having left her family and husband behind in the countryside. But de Montespan had higher aspirations: the bed, and heart, of the King. Though blessed with good looks—one Italian observer, upon seeing her blonde hair, azure eyes, and “aquiline but exquisitely formed” nose, described her face as “sheer perfection”—it seems to have been her tireless pursuit that won her her place under the King (as well as the simultaneous pregnancies of his wife and his previous favored mistress). Between 1669 and 1678, de Montespan bore him seven illegitimate children.

The claims attached to her name were various and shocking. She had poisoned the mistresses that preceded her. She had tricked the king into falling for her by shoveling aphrodisiacs into his food and drinks. Even that she had called for a bloody “black mass” in which, entirely naked, she had conjured the King’s love with a series of diabolical rites, including infanticide.

The King and La Reynie were shaken. It would be deeply humiliating for the King to be seen to have been persuaded by a love potion, especially as he had legitimized all their many offspring. (Two died in infancy, seemingly of natural causes.) But the commission had sworn to crack down on everyone, regardless of rank, position at court or proximity to the King. La Reynie and the King chose instead to stall for months in 1681. Then, after 16 hours of secret, undocumented argument, the King declared that he wanted the commission to continue, but that any evidence against de Montespan be thrown out.

It’s impossible to know whether this was because he believed in her innocence, or because he did not want to submit his surviving children by her to any further embarrassment. In court, the King had typically cast out those who may have posed a risk to him, but de Montespan hung on. She was still invited to parties and events, despite no longer being the King’s sexual partner. (Perhaps as a result of having borne so many children, she was no longer the slim young woman who sparked his romantic interest.)

The Dying Embers

The Chambre Ardente continued, and many more people were hanged. But the deliberative pause surrounding the accusations against de Montespan stripped away some of its fiery intensity. Commissioners were bored and disheartened, and the inquiry had lost some of its bite. Most of the key players had been executed, or chained up in fortresses and forgotten. In April 1682, La Reynie acknowledged that it might be time to let go. By July, the King, who had long since had enough, agreed. The entire enterprise had been built on many confessions extracted under torture—confessions that often bore no reasonable or demonstrable semblance to the truth. False leads proliferated and confusion grew. The primary victim of the poisoned air de Sévigné had so archly observed seems to have been the overactive and paranoid imaginations of those in charge.

The last of the secret documents about the Affair were burned, and the investigation was over. Life at court, with its parties and feuds, carried on. The myths and misconceptions that had set the scene for the Affair—about science, chemistry, magic, witchcraft, gender—seemed as much in place as ever. The dark magic of the underworld that the commission seemed to have opened up sank once again. De Montespan remained at court for many years before retiring to a convent in the early 1690s. La Reynie had been tasked by the King with a massive overhaul of the city’s moral fabric, a task scuppered, ultimately, by the monarch’s own interests. The police officer returned to municipal management, and spent his spare time collecting and cataloguing ancient Greek and Latin manuscripts.

The King’s fear of scandal overcame his fear of being poisoned, and ultimately the “burning room” was snuffed out. Returning his former life, he ruled judiciously and carefully—albeit with fewer romantic dalliances—for the longest reign of any European monarch, at 72 years. The Affair was at once over and unresolved.

When Anna Bertha Roentgen's husband spent seven weeks obsessed in his lab in late 1895, she was supportive. She silently brought him hot meals when he forgot to eat, and otherwise left him to his work. And when he needed a hand, she patiently provided one. In fact, her left hand became the subject of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen's most famous image, "Hand mit Ringen," which helped him win the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.

It is a ghostly picture of her hand, unlike any ever taken before, with long, shadowy finger bones and a large dark wedding ring. The image is the first radiograph, a photograph exposed by X-rays instead of light, ever taken. It was an image that sparked a craze for the invisible rays that could shine through the opaque and illuminate the inner workings of the human body, and it catapulted Wilhelm Roentgen to worldwide fame.

Those seven weeks that produced the image had started when Wilhelm noticed a strange light when he was fiddling with some Crookes tubes. Crookes tubes, glass tubes with a vacuum inside, were a popular scientific apparatus in the late 1800s. Researchers ran electricity through attached cathodes and anodes to create a stream of light called a cathode ray—made up of what we now know are electrons. Wilhelm was investigating something a colleague had noticed, that a small bit of aluminum could be used to redirect some of the cathode ray onto a fluorescent screen next to the tube, which would make the screen light up.

In early November, he repeated the experiment in the dark in his lab at the University of Würzburg in Germany. But then he noticed something happening far away from the Crookes tube. A screen coated in barium platinocyanide, the fluorescent material that was used on photographic plates, was sitting on a chair near the experiment, and every time Wilhelm turned on the electricity, the screen glowed. Not quite believing what he was seeing, he dedicated his time to rigorously testing and documenting the strange rays, which he called "X." He put objects made from different materials on photographic plates and exposed them to X-rays, and found that the mysterious rays passed through some but not others. Eventually, a few days before Christmas, he asked his wife to help him in the lab. Anna held her left hand on a photographic plate for 15 minutes while Wilhelm beamed X-rays at it. According to legend, she said, "I have seen my death!" and never set foot in his lab again.

Anna may not have been receptive to seeing her own bones, but Wilhelm knew a few people who would be. He mailed copies of some of his images, along with a draft of his paper detailing the discovery, to fellow physicists at universities throughout Europe, including Arthur Schuster at the University of Manchester.

Schuster had dabbled in several different fields in physics, including magnetism, spectroscopy, and astronomy. When he received the paper in early 1896, he replicated the experiment in his own lab. He captured radiographs of hands, frogs, limb joints, even his six-year-old son's foot. Schuster also clearly recognized the medical value of X-rays—his images from early 1896 include one of a bullet lodged in the base of a brain. Schuster's experiments with X-rays also led him to the conclusion that the new rays were, in fact, the same as rays of light, but much more energetic due to a much shorter wavelength.

The potential medical applications are why Wilhelm Roentgen decided not to patent X-rays. The technology was quickly put to use by both the medical community and the general public. In the book Naked to the Bone, Bettyann Kelves describes "X-ray slot machines" that let customers see the bones in their hands. Because the parts needed to create X-rays were so easy to obtain, people could create the images in their homes. Kelves mentions one man who used a 10-hour exposure to create a radiograph of his wife's broken hip.

The X-ray frenzy, however, didn't anticipate the negative impact of the phenomenon. While X-rays are invisible, we know today that they aren't harmless. The woman with the broken hip developed burns, as did other patients subjected to them, along with hair loss and blistering. Clarence Dally, an X-ray technician in Thomas Edison's lab, was exposed to such high levels of radiation that he had to have both arms amputated, and later died of metastatic skin cancer at the age of 39. Fortunately, the doses needed for a modern radiogram are a fraction of what these early X-ray subjects endured, so there's little to nothing to worry about from the modern version of the procedure.

Eventually scientists figured out how to measure the amount of radiation a person was exposed to when sitting for a radiograph. Wilhelm Roentgen became a household name after his discovery was published—radiographs were often called roentgenograms or roentgenographs. Those names didn't stick, but the one for the unit of measurement for X-ray dosage, the roentgen, did. And in Germany, X-rays are still known as Roentgen rays.

A small group from a British Antarctic Expedition, led by Robert Falcon Scott, reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912. They arrived just 34 days after a Norwegian group led by Roald Amundsen. The small British team's diaries and photographs, detailing their harrowing, and ultimately fatal, attempt to trek back to the ship were found by a search party eight months after their deaths on the ice. Scott's poor planning has been cited as the reason the group failed to return, but new research may clear his name. Instead, it now appears that Scott's second-in-command, Edward Evans, was to blame.

Scott had reservations about Evans early on in the expedition, at one point writing, "Teddy Evans is a thoroughly well-meaning little man, but proves on close acquaintance to be rather a duffer in anything but his own particular work." He decided not to take Evans with him to the South Pole, and sent him back to their base, with orders to send a dogsled team to meet Scott's group. But Evans was not so well-meaning on this trip back to the base. He apparently failed to send out the dogsled team, and at each food cache on the journey back, he ate more than his share, leaving little behind for Scott's team.

In documents discovered by Chris Turney, a professor at the University of New South Wales, Evans's delinquency is detailed. "The new documents suggest at the very least appalling leadership on the part of Evans or at worst, deliberate sabotage, resulting in the death of Scott and his four companions," said Turney in a statement. "The documents also show how public records were altered in later recounts of the expedition and why a Committee of Inquiry into the expedition was rapidly shut down almost before it began." Evans went on to become an admiral in the British Navy and sat in the House of Lords. He died in 1957.

It's September 8, 2017, at 7:10 p.m., and the Boston Red Sox are taking the field against the Tampa Bay Rays. The atmosphere is relaxed. It's a home game, and the Sox are leading the American League East, coming into this series off a two-game win streak. But nothing is over until it's over, and it's only the top of the first.

Four levels above the on-field action, Josh Kantor, the park's organist, has his own challenge to deal with. He's trying to learn the theme song from Game of Thrones. "Somebody wanted to hear it," he explains, his fingers working. "It'll be a little bit of an adventure in about 40 seconds."

The 40 seconds pass. "Drop It Like It's Hot," the DJ's latest pick, fades out. Kantor's organ cranks up, and Fenway Park transforms, briefly, into a land of war and dragons.

By the song's end, there are two outs on the board. "That was pretty good!" I say. Kantor nods: "Passable." In the stands, someone, somewhere, is smiling at his phone.

Everyone knows what a baseball game is like. There are the sights: bright green grass, striped ump shirts, bases that look tiny from the cheap seats. There are the tastes and smells—hot dogs, popcorn, sweat—and that pleasantly crushed feeling that comes with being taken out with the crowd. And there are the sounds: the crack of the bat, the rolling applause, and the wheezy, cheerful organ, which soars over everything like a solid double.

At first glance, it may seem like hardly anything about the experience of a professional baseball game changed in the last century. But a trip to any modern ballpark offers a number of examples of how America's pastime has evolved to face the future, whether it's with big data or live fish. Thanks to musicians such as Josh Kantor, who use technology to find new possibilities in old-school entertainment, the organ is catching up, too.

This is baseball, so let's get our stats straight at the outset. Kantor is 44 years old, and has been Fenway Park's official organist since 2003. In his nearly 15 seasons with the Red Sox, he has missed exactly zero home games, which means that as of the end of September 8, he had been present for 1,239. During this time frame, the team's home game win percentage has been a respectable .594, something Kantor occasionally, and half-jokingly, reminds Internet haters.

When there's a full house—which has happened fairly often since he started—Kantor is playing for 38,000 people, nearly twice as many as fit into the city's next-largest music venue. You can hear him everywhere in the park, from the press box to the top of the Green Monster. But if you want to see him, you have to ride a few flights of escalators up to what he describes as his "non-glamorous perch" within the State Street Pavilion Club.

The club itself is ritzy—you can't get in without a special season ticket—and it would be easy to mistake Kantor for a weird sort of hidden piano man, another amenity for exclusive guests. But a closer look reveals a larger operation. To Kantor's right is his Macbook, opened on the padded piano bench, and a long-necked flexible lamp. To his left, there's a window with a decent view of the first base line, and a briefcase-sized television, off for now. He'll turn it on once the game starts, along with the red LED clock above it, which counts down the time left in the commercial breaks. Another huge screen—hung on the wall to his right, for the benefit of the Pavilion Club's diners—is already going.

He's wearing gray slacks, a blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up, a black headset microphone, and a pair of red earbuds that join just under his stubbled chin. (There's another mic, fuzzy-headed, jutting out from the smaller television.) His cell phone is sitting on top of the organ, along with a small digital watch, which he's placed face-up on the console, almost like a finishing touch.

The whole thing looks less like a traditional musician's lair and more like an air traffic control booth, and in a way, it is: Kantor is constantly conversing with an entire production staff, which works together to keep the park's audio well-oiled. "I've got eight conversations in this ear," he says. "I've got the organ in this ear. I've got an extra earbud for figuring out songs. You learn what you can tune out."'

Baseball organs aren't quite as old as baseball. They've been a part of the sport since April 26, 1941, when Chicago's Wrigley Field brought in a musician named Roy Nelson to entertain fans. He played a lot of then-popular music, but had to stop half an hour before a game actually began. (As the Chicago Tribuneexplained at the time, "his repertoire includes many restricted ASCAP arias, which would have been picked up by the radio microphones," breaking copyright law.) Despite rave reviews—Sporting News praised his "restful, dulcet" playing—Nelson's career lasted only two games. The next time the Cubs were out of town, stadium management quietly removed his organ.

Kantor is also generally not broadcast, for the same rights-related reasons. It's a restriction that, paradoxically, gives him an enormous amount of freedom. He can play whatever he wants. His own favorite organist is Nancy Faust, who played for the White Sox from 1970 through 2010, and became famous for her clever song choices. If two people were running bases, she might treat the crowd to the Mario Bros. theme. Kantor approaches his soundtracking in a similar spirit, with a few twists of his own. "Happy 76th anniversary of MLB organ music," he tweeted this April 26. "I'm sure Ray Nelson (1st MLB organist) would approve of the Flo Rida jams I'm busting out tonight."

It also means that listening to him play is exclusively a live experience, a rarity in this time of cell phone cameras and instant concert recordings. At exactly 5:40 p.m., 90 minutes before the action starts, Kantor starts running through his own kind of warmup, a 35-minute medley meant to entertain the pre-game guests. To a rookie like me, the Pavilion Club offers near-endless distractions: soft puffs of air from the swinging restroom doors; the clatter of dropped forks; the smell of spicy fries, which comes in waves. Feet from us, a table full of businessmen loudly compare appetizers. Every once in a while, through the window, a ball arcs in and out of view. Outside, the players are warming up too.

Kantor, unfazed, moves seamlessly through decades and genres, trimming the fat from songs and stringing them together like Fenway Franks. He brings "Come On Eileen" straight from the first chorus into the slowed-down, catchy bridge, then moves into something classic-sounding that I can't quite put my finger on. Around the sixth song, the guy checking tickets at the Pavilion's back door comes over, leans against the wall, and listens.

Kantor plays a Yamaha Electone AR-100, which he's had since 2005. (After the 2004 Red Sox shocked everyone by winning the World Series, the organ company that had rented out the instrument to the park took it back, as it was clearly touched by magic.) Of all the technology in an organ booth, the axe itself is the most important, and Kantor has customized his for flexibility and nostalgia alike.

Programmed presets in the keys let him quickly ape all kinds of contemporary rhythms, from reggaeton to post-punk. At the same time, the instrument's robust, zippy tone is meant to emulate that of Boston legend John Kiley, who manned Fenway's organ for 36 years, beginning in 1953. "I like the idea of having the people who came here a generation or two ago recognize it," Kantor says.

The sound proves surprisingly versatile. As the preshow continues, Kantor adds his name to the long list of musicians who have interpreted the jazz standard "All of Me," then to the slightly shorter list of people who have covered Squeeze's "Tempted." At one point, he throws in some Gin Blossoms. Kantor plays by ear, and all the songs are chosen pretty much on the spot, based solely on the various vibes available: the stakes of the game, the mood in the park, the weather. "It's just whatever's in my head," he says.

Around 6:15 p.m., he begins the last chorus of his last song—another just-elusive chestnut—and hops on the microphone to inform TJ Connelly, the park's DJ and music director, that it's his turn. "Wrapping up," he says. When the blast of recorded music takes over, it seems overstuffed.

Connelly is Kantor's closest collaborator. They've soundtracked Fenway together for well over a decade, and they're in constant communication, from their traditional pre-game check-in all the way through the last notes of the exit music. "We're almost like an old married couple at this point," Kantor says, flicking on his earpiece. He updates Connelly, practically giggling: "We're talking about you! Maybe your ears are burning."

Connelly works on the park's Media Level, which is one floor above Kantor's booth, and after the pre-show medley is over, we go up to meet him. He's shaggy and tall, the Hobbes to Kantor's Calvin. Connelly is a music geek too—he has a radio show, and also DJs for the Patriots—and it quickly becomes clear that for both he and Kantor, part of the fun of the job is trying to outdo the vast jukebox in the head of the other.

They've devised various challenges to accomplish this. "Sometimes, he plays a song, and I'll play a song it reminds me of," Kantor says. "We also do theme nights." Earlier this year, when members of the '67 pennant-winning team were in attendance, they only played songs from 1967. On July 20, the anniversary of the first moon landing, they always stick to songs about space. "Fans will get into it, too," Connelly says, if they notice. When the April 21 game became an impromptu Prince tribute, it made national news.

Still, it's clear these meta-games are mostly for them. The two give off a palpable conspiratorial energy. As they go over the few times they've shamed themselves by accidentally repeating a song during a game, an older man pipes up from across the room, to share his fondness for "Mr. Sandman."

"Oh yeah," Kantor replies. "I played that yesterday, when they were putting new dirt on the pitcher's mound." Immediately, as though he can't help himself, Connelly offers up his own suggestions. "Fixing a Hole," he murmurs. "Concrete and Clay."

By 7 p.m., Kantor is back on the fourth level, in ready position. His hands hover over the keys. It's the pregame show, and everyone the announcer names—the night's various honored guests, the members of the starting lineup—gets a little introductory "dun dunnnn," like a steamboat whistle. Extra attention must be paid in case something unexpected happens, as it did a few weeks ago, when the ceremonial first pitch hit a bystander dead in the crotch. (Kantor was ready, and punctuated the moment with what Esquire called "a jaunty riff.")

But most of the time, the real fun starts with the first inning. If you want to talk to Josh Kantor during a game, and you're not on the other end of any of his microphones, your best bet by far is Twitter. Kantor takes requests at @jtkantor, and here, too, his particular talents get a workout. If he knows your song, he'll almost definitely play it. (Exceptions include overly happy songs during a losing game, or "Don't Stop Believin'," which is reserved for the playoffs.) If he doesn't know it, and he wants to, he'll find it on Youtube, and practice until he's got it down. Learning a new song usually takes him no more than a few minutes.

Kantor started soliciting requests on Twitter six years ago, at Connelly's suggestion. (Connelly does the same thing, at @senatorjohn.) He now gets between 3 and 20 asks a night, and does his best to accomodate the good ones. Like most professionals, his work habits have been somewhat upended by this particular technology. He still logs all the new songs he learns in his huge paper notebook, but his dreams of organizing it are slowly fading. "If I'm just going to learn requests all night, why bother having a database?" he asks. Some of his game-time priorities have shifted too. "Before Twitter, I watched every pitch," he says. Sometimes he even filled out a paper scoresheet. Those days are gone.

But even as he's paid slightly less attention to the games, he's been able to spend a lot more time getting to know his audience. Management has moved Kantor and his organ around a lot over the years, between rooms and floors, he says. Up in the Pavilion Club, he's become kind of a Fenway Easter egg, like the rooftop garden or the red Ted Williams seat—fun to stumble on, but not an obvious destination.

Over the course of this Friday night game, just three sets of fans come by to visit on purpose: a dad trailing two kids, a group of older women who yell "We were wondering where you were!," and a large drunk man who stops briefly to dance outside the window. "This happens the majority of the nights," Kantor says, when the man leaves. It is, he says, a bit off-putting. "Sometimes you feel like an animal in a zoo. People are just watching you and you can't talk to them."

Virtually, though, a whole stream of fans is now poking their heads in, saying hello, getting comfortable, and chatting about music. "Someone just asked for Robyn!" Kantor says, grinning, around 7:30 p.m. "I haven't played her in years." He quickly unspools a flawless "Show Me Love." As the innings slide by, and the Sox rack up runs, Kantor keeps fielding requests. "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones. "Dynabeat" by Jain. Britney Spears's "Toxic," which also requires a quick study session, and which he hums on and off for the rest of the night.

Kantor is far from the first baseball organist to take requests. That honor also goes to Nelson: after he debuted in 1941, the Chicago Tribune suggested mailing him suggestions for "any little number you'd like to have rippled off some afternoon." He's also not the first to do so over Twitter. That would be the Atlanta Braves' Matthew Kaminski, who's known for concocting esoteric musical puns from players' names.

Half of North America's 30 major league ballparks currently employ live organ players—a slight improvement from ten years ago—and Kantor attributes some of this resurgent interest in the organists' improved accessibility. "There's been a tiny bit of a renaissance," Kantor says. "Some of us are embracing social media. There's a bit more interest now than when I started in having live music be a part of ball games."

What makes Kantor stand out from his peers is his remarkable enthusiasm. Here is an organist who once spent an entire morning soliciting suggestions for history's worst hit song, replied to over 400 suggestions, polled based on the results, and played the winner that afternoon. (It was Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart.") Another time, he promised to play "Seven Nation Army" to dozens of requesters, and then rickrolled them.

He invites fans upstairs to see (and sometimes play) the organ. If someone compliments him, he takes the time to thank them. If he can't get around to a request, he apologizes, with true regret. For this reason, every time the Red Sox social media manager suggests tweeting about him from the team's 2 million-follower account, he demurs. "I'd get 200 requests a night," he says. "I'd have to say no, and people would be disappointed."

Each game, every baseball organist gets one guaranteed moment in the spotlight: the seventh-inning stretch. In the bottom of the sixth, a cameraman walks into the Pavilion Club, ready to go. Evan Longoria's line drive lands in Dustin Pedroia's glove, the Sox jog off the field, and the cameraman stands on a chair and points his lens straight at Kantor.

All at once, Kantor's face appears on the Jumbotron, cheesin'. He mouths along with his own introduction ("sing along with Fenway Park organist Josh Kantor…") and launches into "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," for (at minimum) the 1,239th time in his life. As usual, 38,000 fans provide lusty vocals. This isn't the same as busting out a Mountain Goats deep cut and blowing the minds of exactly five people, but it's definitely another kind of good time.

Earlier in the night, I had tweeted a request at Kantor: Fleetwood Mac's "Secondhand News," my own attempt at being germane. A little later, I hear him bring Connelly up to speed on it—"I was thinking I might do it for the mid-seventh fill, if you're cool with that"—and now it was go time. As he launched into the opening notes, I felt as though, standing in the middle of the crowd, I had snagged a foul ball.

By the bottom of the eighth, the Pavilion Club has mostly emptied out. Restaurant staff is sweeping up. The fans he'd invited upstairs can't visit tonight, and so Kantor plays the crowd out, and then prepares to leave himself.

Earlier, the older guy on the media level—the one who professed his love for "Mr. Sandman"—had also offered his own take on the moon landing. "Do you think they really did it?" he asks. "I heard it was a soundstage." Kantor—who respects the fans and the spectacle—answered like a true 21st-century magic-maker. "Either way," he said, "they worked really hard on it."

In a stroke of luck, the National Museum of American History has uncovered film footage, lost for more than two decades, of the singer Selena Quintanilla. A segment for Tejano USA, shot in 1994, the film shows the young singer talking about her “big year”—she had just won a Grammy and was on her way to the next level of fame and fortune.

After the singer was murdered in 1995, the production manager of San Antonio’s KWEX-TV, which created the segment, “looked everywhere” for this tape, according to the museum. But he never found it. It was only by chance that the footage ended up in the hands of the National Museum of American History.

In the past couple of years, the museum has started work to document the history of Spanish-language broadcasting in the United States. Although the museum’s collections include extensive television footage and artifacts, it only had a few items connected to the development of Spanish-language TV networks. By 2016, the curators had started a concentrated effort to collect “business records, traffic log books, photographs of station personnel, scripts, recorded television footage and promotional objects” from early Telemundo and Univision stations across the country.

As part of that initiative, Univision sent over an old TV camera, with an unlabeled tape included, simply to “show the format the camera had used,” the museum reports. But when that tape was digitized, the museum found this long-lost footage.

Selena’s rising fame coincided with the booming growth of Spanish-language TV networks in the late 1980 and early 1990s, when Telemundo and Univision emerged from the consolidation of smaller companies. The museum’s growing collection on this chapter of American history will include oral histories about the growth of Spanish-language broadcasting, personal items from some of the networks’ star news anchors, and artifacts from the Tanairi, a pioneering telenovela.

Decades after her death, Selena's work and story still have influence and power. The National Museum of American History is also running an exhibit about how she changed the history of marketing; Forever 21 is selling shirts with her face on them; and a new TV series retells the story of her life and death. This newly discovered tape is one more haunting artifact of her short life, another memory of what she might have done had she lived: "I see a lot of things happening, bigger things, for you," the anchor tells her.

The road to Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park in Napa, California, follows a range of twists and turns up a rocky, sparsely vegetated hillside. Eventually, a row of trees shading a series of sweeping glens appears, along with a pair of imposing gates. At first glance, Bubbling Well—which was immortalized in the 1978 Errol Morris film Gates of Heaven and features a burbling fountain to back up the name—looks like an ordinary cemetery, but a closer look reveals the graves are actually for cats, dogs, the occasional rabbit, and a few other species.

I came to Bubbling Well to explore the wide, and growing, world of pet death care. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, some 30 percent of U.S. households have cats, and 36 percent have dogs—that adds up to a lot of animal remains every year. Pet guardians may spend time thinking about where their pets go when they die on a more metaphysical level, but the question of what happens to the remains of Fido and Fluffy at the end of their lives is one that’s been vexing humans for millennia.

“Disposition,” as the industry euphemistically describes what to do with the body, has evolved into a large industry that will bury or cremate your pet, sell you a headstone or urn, and even outfit your animal with a lavish casket. For some grieving pet owners, the combined costs can climb into the thousands—though for most, still below the $7,000 to $10,000 median human funeral cost. But while the options were once limited to burial in a backyard or abandonment at the vet’s for disposal, pet owners now can access a spectrum of services that rivals—and sometimes exceeds—those available to humans.

Burial is certainly the most traditional of options, one that has a long history in the human-animal relationship. The oldest known pet burial is a 14,000-year-old grave in Bonn-Overkassel in Germany that contains the remains of two humans and a domesticated dog. But growing urbanization has made backyard burials more unusual, especially with many people moving house frequently and not wanting to leave the late Lassie behind.

The response: pet cemeteries. In the United States, Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, the oldest pet cemetery in the country, has been home to variety of deceased animals, including a lion cub, since 1896. But purchasing a plot for your pet in one of nearly 700 pet cemeteries across the United States is just the beginning.

Perusing pet headstones at Bubbling Well reveals that some families spend thousands of dollars on elaborate laser-etched headstones, while others opt for simple handmade markers. Many of those headstones are bedecked in flowers, and the remains underneath may be shrouded in plastic or fabric, or encased in wood, metal, or biodegradable caskets. Embalming, while a popular option for human funerals, is not as common when it comes to animal companions, according to Donna Shugart-Bethune, Executive Director of the International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories. This is partly because of cost and partly because many facilities aren’t equipped to perform the process.

Since cemetery plots can cost hundreds of dollars, some pet guardians turn to the less expensive option of cremation. There are two primary kinds of cremation: “group,” wherein the ashes of a single animal are mixed with the ashes of others, or the more pricey “private,” which ensures the only ashes you receive are the ashes of your companion.

But here lies another parallel to the human death industry. When people started turning to cremation as a low-cost option for their human loved ones, the industry pivoted to catch up with elaborate urns, costly columbarium niches, and delightfully kitschy “memorials”—so it should come as no surprise to learn that the pet funeral industry has done the same. These days, a grieving guardian can store their beloved pet’s ashes in a German Shepherd-shaped urn, a statue of an unsettlingly dyspeptic-looking bronze cat in a basket, or a ceramic paw-print plaque.

If the pet funeral industry is following human trends with respect to “traditional” disposition, it also appears to be taking cues from the growing alternative death movement. Humans are changing the way we think about death and dying, and the result is a new approach to death care that’s spilling over into animals, too.

When it comes to burial, pets—or rather, their guardians—can opt for the natural route if they don’t like conventional, manicured cemeteries. So-called “green cemeteries,” designed primarily (though not exclusively) for humans, only accept unembalmed bodies in shrouds or caskets made from simple, biodegradable materials, like willow. Graves are shallow, allowing remains to break down more quickly, and the cemetery is left untouched, without landscaping. Some green cemeteries have a separate pet section, while others allow for “whole family” burial, mingling humans and pets together just as they have been for thousands of years.

John Wilkerson of Glendale Memorial Nature Preserve in Florida explains that he and his family started the green cemetery as a way to retain family land, but didn’t think to bury animals until a customer brought it up. At cemeteries like Glendale, mourners are encouraged to get involved, digging graves and participating in as much of the process as they’d like, whether they’re burying pets or people.

At Resting Waters in Seattle, operators Joslin Roth and Darci Bressler offer yet another option—and one that hasn’t widely extended to humans yet, thanks to regulatory challenges. Instead of traditional burial or cremation, they perform alkaline hydrolysis (AH), sometimes known as “aquamation.” Bodies are dissolved in a chemical solution, yielding water and hard tissue that can be ground down, just like cremated remains. The process, Roth says, “is very gentle,” acting effectively like an accelerated version of what happens in nature. She sees it as the future of both human and animal death care, if they can overcome the stigma—a situation akin to that faced by cremation when it was first introduced on a large scale.

Thanks to the limited regulations surrounding pet death, those looking for unusual ways to memorialize a loved pet have a lot more options than people looking to do the same for humans. Some pet guardians opt for taxidermy or freeze drying, or even articulation of full or partial skeletons.

Taxidermy and skeletal articulation draw upon practices used for hundreds of years to preserve animal remains, usually in the form of anatomical specimens or hunting trophies. Companies like Precious Creature in Southern California, though, specialize in caring for pets, a nod to a market of deeply attached pet owners.

Freeze drying, yet another option, preserves whole bodies by bringing them to very low temperatures and low pressure, forcing frozen water to turn to gas over a period of weeks or months. Companies promising a meticulous preservation process give a new meaning to never letting go, likewise reflecting a sea change in the way we think about companion animals.

As I leave Bubbling Well, I see an open grave. Two adults and a child stand awkwardly, a large Golden Retriever panting by their side, as cemetery employees carefully lower a cloth-wrapped body into the hole. I hear snatches of conversation on the breeze and the child kneels, dropping something in. Though the business of pet death has changed, after thousands of years, we’re still leaving Fido with something to play with in the afterlife.

In America, the month of October means two things: frightful tales of fear and doom, and the annual culture war over pumpkin spice, a combination of nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves whose omnipresence provokes joy and hate and in equal measure.

Usually, these two elements are kept separate. But this year, at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Baltimore, they came together. On Thursday, October 5, the entire school building was evacuated due to the smell of pumpkin spice.

According to the school's official statement, it all started at 2:30 p.m., when students on the third floor "reported a strange odor." Students and staff were evacuated.

UPDATE: A spokesman for the Baltimore City Fire Dept has confirmed the source of the odor was a pumpkin spice air freshener https://t.co/JvYiezuFvJ

— ABC2NEWS (@ABC2NEWS) October 5, 2017

"Emergency personnel, including the HAZMAT team of the Baltimore City Fire Department," were soon on the scene, evaluating people for exposure. Five were eventually taken to nearby hospitals, "as a precautionary measure." The fire department then tested the building and determined that all was well.

The official diagnosis is absent from the school's report, but Baltimore Fire Chief Roman Clark gave WBAL-TV the details. "This plug-in air freshener that basically puts out the odor every so many seconds, and it's a pumpkin spice," he said. "That's exactly what, if you go in there, you can smell."

"It is not hazardous at all," he added. Take that, haters.

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.