ROC Wide Angle Camera mosaic of the lunar South Pole region (photograph by NASA/Wikimedia)

The UK scientists and engineers behind Lunar Mission One successfully completed a £670,000 (nearly $1 million) Kickstarter campaign this week. As reported in Popular Science, the funds will support the start of a decade-long project to send an unmanned landing module to the Moon's less-explored south pole, where it will drill deep into the surface to access 4.5-billion-year-old rock. The module will also leave something behind: a 21st-century time capsule containing a thorough record of life on Earth as well as millions of personal "digital memory boxes."

The goal of the project is to "discover the geological composition of the Moon, the ancient relationship it shares with our planet, and the effects of asteroid bombardment," in order to increase our understanding of how the Moon and the Earth were formed, as well as their relationship to one another and to our solar system. The Lunar Mission team will also be investigating the possibility of building a permanently manned base on the Moon, and the project will strive to engage more young people in space exploration and the STEM fields. 

More than 7,000 people contributed to the Kickstarter campaign, which featured rewards like attendance at the rocket's launch, a place in the viewing gallery at Mission Control, and an inscription of the donor's name on the spacecraft itself. To meet the projects continued funding needs, Lunar Missions Trust will sell many more digital memory boxes to individuals and groups who want their own "place in space." The time capsule can hold tens of terrabytes, so millions of people will be able to upload photos, songs, and messages that will be stored under the Moon's surface for about a billion years.

The mission has been backed and endorsed by some of the world's most respected scientists and research institutions, including Chair of the UK Parliamentary Space Committee Adam Afriyie, National Space Academy Director Anu Ojha, and Professor Steven Hawking. As University of Surrey Physics Professor Jim Al-Khalili said, "Lunar Mission One is much more than the next big space mission, it is an opportunity for everyone to be involved in humanity’s next great adventure."

photograph by Alessio Mesiano/Flickr

Barely a month after opening, Milan's Bosco Verticale has won the 2014 International Highrise Award, a biannual prize given by the City of Frankfurt and Deutsches Architekturmuseum. The jury called the towers "a striking example of a symbiosis of architecture and nature,” and jury president Christoph Ingenhoven added that the project is “an expression of the human need for contact with nature."

The towers were originally proposed in 2011 by architect Stefano Boeri as part of his "BioMilano: six ideas for a bio-diverse metropolis." Bosco Verticale, which means "vertical forest," comprises two 27-story luxury high-rise residential towers teeming with cantilevered balconies and planted with almost 900 trees and more than 2,000 shrubs and bushes. His firm describes the towers as "a model for a sustainable residential building, a project for metropolitan reforestation that contributes to the regeneration of the environment and urban biodiversity."

photograph by lorenzoclick/Flickr

The towers are an important addition to Milan, which is one of the most polluted cities in Europe. In 2003, a study suggested that breathing the air there was as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Among other initiatives, the city is working on a huge environmental revitalization project called Metrobosto, which will "turn the existing green spaces around Milan into an enormous metropolitan lung, stretching the whole way round the city."

Bosco Verticale's extensive greenery provides apartment dwellers with shade in the summer and filtered sunlight in the winter, as well as cleaner air and reduced noise pollution. The building is also equipped with solar panels and a gray water recycling and irrigation system. In 2011, while the project was still under construction, Financial Timescalled it "the most exciting new tower in the world."

Atlas Obscura visiting the Times Square New Year's Eve Ball in 2013 (photograph by Allison Meier)

As we reach the end of 2014, we are celebrating an incredible year of the Obscura Society. Over the past 12 months, the events branch of Atlas Obscura has hosted a cocktail party in a crypt, falcon flying in the desert, a rogue taxidermy fair, and a stargazing evening at an observatory. While our events this year were mostly based in New York City and Los Angeles, we're thrilled to be launching an Illinois Obscura Society focused on Chicago and beyond in 2015, as well as extensive events in Washington, DC, and Philadelphia. 

Below are some of our favorite events of the year. Thanks so much to each and every adventurous soul who joined us on these gatherings and made them such an extraordinary success! We are so inspired for the year ahead. And we are always thrilled to have new people at the Obscura Society. Join our mailing lists for New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to find out first about our next gatherings, and keep an eye on the events listings as we go behind-the-scenes at museums, step into abandoned spaces, learn about curious history, and get hands-on with the world's hidden wonders.

Eastern State Penitentiary (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

[January 11] Obscura Society NYC hit the road, heading to Philadelphia to view the medical oddities of the Mütter Museum, the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, and take a tour off-limits at the dilapidated Eastern State Penitentiary. (Event produced by Megan Roberts, Head of Obscura Society NYC)

Allis Markham's taxidermy studio (photograph by Erin Johnson)

[March 22] Obscura Society LA visited Allis Markham at her new taxidermy studio in downtown Los Angeles. Markham performed a skinning demonstration on an arctic fox pup and shared behind-the-scenes stories about death at the zoo, flesh eating beetles, and a secret diorama hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. (Event produced by Erin Johnson, Head of the Obscura Society LA)

Lock Picking Party (photograph by Steven Acres)

[March 28] Obscura Society NYC invited master lock pick Schuyler Towne to the John M. Mossman Lock Collection of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen. 300 guests received a crash course in picking locks and their very own kit of tools. In between sipping cocktails and dancing to Jason Prover and the Sneak Thievery Orchestra, attendees spent the evening practicing their new skill set amidst the grandeur of the two-tiered reading room and the world's largest collection of vintage bank vault locks. (Event produced by Megan Roberts, Head of Obscura Society NYC) 

Philippe Petit performing for the Obscura Society (photograph by Steven Acres)

[April 30] Obscura Society NYC and Riverhead Books invited 40 guests to take a risk and join us on a mystery excursion to an undisclosed location. On a dark and rainy night, the destination was the Green-Wood Cemetery catacombs, where renowned wire-walker Philippe Petit awaited to reward our intrepid guests with an evening of close magic. Burial chambers opened to reveal craft cocktail bars, an ethereal harpist clad in white performed, and an audience member surprised us all by setting up an impromptu tarot card station. (Event produced by Megan Roberts, Head of Obscura Society NYC) 

Falconry demonstration in Palmdale, California (photograph courtesy Falcon Force)

[May 17]Master falconer Vahe' Alaverdian and Rebecca Butcher hosted a falcon flight demonstration in the open desert of Palmdale, California. Diving towards their prey at speeds reaching 280 miles per hour, the peregrine falcon is the fastest living creature on earth. (Event produced by Erin Johnson, Head of the Obscura Society LA)

Cocktails in the Crypt (photograph by Steven Acres)

[May 24] Obscura Society NYC held a brassy jazz party underground in a historic Harlem crypt. Loren Schoenberg, artistic director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, joined the Lucky Chops Brass Band for a steamy night of Prohibition-era cocktails and jazz. (Event produced by Megan Roberts, Head of Obscura Society NYC) 

Screen Novelties (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein)

[June 14] Obscura Society LA got the rare chance to peer into the magical world of stop motion animators Screen Novelties. Known best for their work on the Spongebob Squarepants stop motion television special and the Flight sock puppet parody from the 2013 Oscar telecast, Screen Novelties showed us their private collection of puppets and puppet films, materials, and sound stages. (Event produced by LA Field Agent Sandi Hemmerlein) 

Mount Wilson Observatory (photograph by Steve Grant)

[June 29] Obscura Society LA gathered at the Mount Wilson Observatory to gaze at planets, galaxies, and globular clusters through the historic 60-inch telescope, the very same telescope that Harlow Shapley used to discover that the sun’s position was not the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. (Event produced by Erin Johnson, Head of the Obscura Society LA)

Mountain View mausoleum (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein)

[June 21] At the beautiful Mountain View Mausoleum in Altadena, California, Obscura Society LA was honored to have Caitlin Doughty from the Order of the Good Death, Judson Studios, the vintage sounds from Hot Club of LA, and hundreds of guests join us for a magical moonlit evening in the cemetery. (Event produced by Matt Blitz, Head of the Obscura Society DC)

Moore Lab of Zoology (photograph by Erin Johnson)

[July 12] Obscura Society LA visited the Moore Lab of Zoology, a research lab and collection containing over 60,000 specimens in Los Angeles. (Event produced by Matt Blitz, Head of the Obscura Society DC)

Landscaping at the Brand Library (photograph by Erin Johnson)

[August 24] Obscura Society LA toured the fascinating Brand Library and Art Center in Glendale, California, including the historic mansion, Japanese gardens, Victorian "Doctors' House," and the mysterious family cemetery. (Event produced by Hadley Hall Meares, LA Field Agent)

Rogue Taxidermy Fair (photograph by Steven Acres)

[October 5] Obscura Society NYC joined forces with our friends at Morbid Anatomy to host a Rogue Taxidermy Fair at Brooklyn's Bell House. Innovative taxidermy artists and collectors from around the northeast displayed prized pieces as we toasted the book release of our host for the night, Robert Marbury with his Taxidermy Art. Katie Innamorato of Afterlife Anatomy joined us for an only slightly bloody squirrel taxidermy demonstration and our favorite local brass band the Lucky Chops joined us once again, closing out the party with an exuberant set. (Event produced by Megan Roberts, Head of Obscura Society NYC) 

Houdini séance reenactment (photograph by Roger Fojas)

[October 31] Bess Houdini, Harry Houdini's mourning widow, organized a séance every year for ten years after his passing to see if she could speak to Houdini beyond the grave. The final 1936 séance was in the hills of Hollywood. Obscura Society LA, in conjunction with the Alchemy, reenacted this historical event. (Event produced by Matt Blitz, Head of the Obscura Society DC)

Brookhaven National Laboratory (photograph by Mark Roberts)

[November 7] Obscura Society NYC visited the awe-inspiring campus of Brookhaven National Laboratory for a private tour of several cutting-edge research facilities. We learned about studies being conducted with the manipulation of infinitesimally small particles at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, visited the accelerator beams of the brand new National Synchrotron Light Source, and were completely blown away by the National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider — one of only two particle accelerators in the world — where scientists are recreating the conditions of the Big Bang to study the building blocks of life and foundation of all matter. (Event produced by Megan Roberts, Head of Obscura Society NYC)

The Robotic Church (photograph by Robert Wright, courtesy Amorphic Robot Works)

[November 25] Artist Chico MacMurtrie hosted a very special performance of the Robotic Church at his Red Hook, Brooklyn, workshop, housed in a historic sailor's church. 42 kinetic robots of various shapes and sizes, each designed to create its own musical tone while moving, filled the space with a cacophony of sound for an entirely surreal and immersive experience. (Event produced by Megan Roberts, Head of Obscura Society NYC)

Read more about our Society Adventures on Atlas Obscura, and follow our events page and mailing lists for New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to join our next gatherings. Thanks to all the intrepid attendees who joined on our explorations and celebrations, and for your enthusiasm and dedication which is inspiring us for another fantastic year of events in 2015!

It's been another amazing year of discovery at Atlas Obscura, from a handmade amusement park in an Italian forest to an eerie island temple supposedly guarded by snakes. As we did in 2013, we're celebrating our favorite new additions for the year.

Below are the 20 most incredible new places from 2014! Thanks to all our fantastic users who have contributed. Have a curious destination you want to share? Join Atlas Obscura and start participating in our international community of explorers. 

AI PIOPPI PLAYGROUND
Treviso, Italy 

Ai Pioppi Playground (photograph by Oriol Ferrer Mesià)

A 40-year project of one man's lifetime, the Ai Pioppi Playground hidden in an Italian forest is a handmade amusement park, including a colossal merry-go-round, a swinging bridge, and other rides that all operate without electricity. Read more >

ABANDONED MARX GENERATOR
Sychëvka, Russia

Abandoned Marx Generator (via esosedi.ru)

This Soviet-era lightning machine, known as a Marx Generator, was built in the 1970s in a forest near Moscow to test insulation. It's mostly abandoned now, but was explored by a drone earlier this year, and was restarted in August. Read more >

GUSTAVE EIFFEL'S SECRET APARTMENT
Paris, France

The Eiffel Tower's secret apartment (photograph by Serge Melki/Flickr)

Even the world's most iconic destinations have their secrets. On the third level of the Eiffel Tower in Paris is a private apartment built for Gustave Eiffel himself to entertain the science elite, including figures like Thomas Edison. It recently opened for visitors to peek into. Read more >

RA PAULETTE'S HAND-CARVED CAVES
Ojo Caliente, New Mexico

Ra Paulette's caves (via racavedigger.com)

Artist Ra Paulette has spent over 25 years carving New Mexico caves into intricate art meant to inspire meditation. He plans to leave the subterranean sites quietly in place as something to be discovered through serendipity. Read more > 

GOA GAJAH
Ubud, Indonesia

Goa Gajah (photograph by mastahanky/Flickr)

The gaping maw of Goa Gajah leads into an ancient Indonesian temple. Known as the "Elephant Cave," there aren't any pachyderms, but there are a lot of incredible monsters carved amongst stone flames. Read more >

THE HELIX
Caracas, Venezuela

The Helix (photograph by Damián D. Fossi Salas/Wikimedia)

El Helicoide, or the "Helix," was meant to be Venezuela's point of pride, a 1960s modernist shopping center topped with a dome by Buckminster Fuller. Instead, funding ran out, and it was shadowed in its reputation as a prison and headquarters of the secret police. Read more >

CLOWN MOTEL
Tonopah, Nevada

Clown Motel (photograph by librarianguish)

We've seen a lot of terrifying things at Atlas Obscura... mummies, ossuaries, snake islands. But the Clown Motel — situated on the edge of a Nevada desert, decorated with thousands of clowns, overlooking an abandoned graveyard — might be our new winner in horror. Read more >

PRORA
Rügen Island, Germany

Prora, Germany (photograph by Klugschnacker/Wikimedia)

Prora in Germany was meant to be a Nazi resort with 10,000 rooms. With WWII, the complex was abandoned, and remains looming half-finished on the coast. Read more >

ROYSE CITY FUTURO HOUSE
Royse City, Texas

Royse City Futuro House (photograph by amboy)

Finnish architect Matti Suuronen imagined a 1960s architecture of prefabricated UFOs that could fit any living situation. However, only around 100 were ever built and fewer survive, including this one out in a Texas field. Read more >

CROSSNESS PUMPING STATION
London, England

Crossness Pumping Station (photograph by Amanda Slater/Flickr)

London in 1858 was plagued by the "Great Stink," where sewage festered in the river. The Crossness Pumping Station, a Victorian wonder of ironwork, saved the city from the stench. Read more > 

MUMTAZ BEGUM
Karachi, Pakistan

Mumtaz Begum (via wkitravel.com)

For over 40 years at a Pakistani zoo, Mumtaz Begum has told fortunes from her cage. The half-fox, half-woman is actually played by a performer who inherited the role from his father in a curious family tradition. Read more >

BARCELONA SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER
Barcelona, Spain

courtesy Barcelona Supercomputing Center

What to do with a disused center of faith? In Spain, a 19th-century church has held the Barcelona Supercomputing Center since 2005, one of Europe's most powerful supercomputers. Read more >

TOWER OF THE SUN
Suita, Japan

Tower of the Sun (photograph by takato marui/Flickr)

This year, Japan's Tower of the Sun, the symbol of Expo 70, reopened for the first time since the world's fair, so visitors can once again see the trippy insides of the 233-foot psychedelic architecture by Tarō Okamoto. Read more >

SERPENT D'OCÉAN
Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, France

Serpent d'Océan (photograph by Yves LC/Wikimedia)

In 2012, artist Huang Yong Ping unveiled a skeletal sea serpent off the coast of France. The Serpent d'Océan stretches 400 feet, its silver bones revealed by the rise and fall of the waves. Read more >

KELENFÖLD POWER STATION
Budapest, Hungary

Kelenföld Power Station (photograph by Jennifer Walker)

Budapest's Kelenföld Power Station once lit up the city, but now its Art Deco architecture is only occasionally revealed for rare tours, the early 20th-century glass ceiling as stunning as ever amongst the old machines. Read more >

THE KING'S CROSS ICE WELL
London, England

King's Cross Ice Well (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Before refrigeration, there were ice wells. One of these 19th-century wonders was recently revealed beneath London's King's Cross Station, and is welcoming the public to descend into the cooling chamber. Read more >

SARCOFAGI OF CARAJÍA
Luya, Peru

Sarcofagi of Carajía (photograph by Gaston E./Flickr)

The Sarcofagi of Carajía are giant mummy holders dating to 15th century. Thanks to their remote location 700 feet above the Peruvian valley floor, some of the original skulls still top their human-like forms. Read more >

GEAMANA
Geamana, Romania

Geamana (photograph by Sergiu Bacioiu/Flickr)

The Romanian village of Geamana thrived until 1978. Then when copper was found in the region, the town was flooded as a dumping site, with some ruins still rising above the toxic lake. Read more >

TANAH LOT
Tabanan, Indonesia

Tanah Lot (photograph by Fabio Gismondi/Flickr)

Atop a Balinese sea crag, the Hindu temple of Tanah Lot is said to be guarded by sea snakes, including one legendary gargantuan serpent that supposedly winds its way beneath the waves. Read more >

NOVA CIDADE DE KILAMBA
Angola

Nova Cidade de Kilamba (photograph by Santa Martha/Wikimedia)

Not all ghost towns are old; many have been built this century. Nova Cidade de Kilamba was funded by oil money with 700 eight-story apartment blocks in the 2000s, but the housing ill-fits the region and sits hauntingly vacant.  Read more >

Thanks to all the Atlas Obscura contributors who made 2014 a year of discovery! We look forward to uncovering more of the world's wonders in 2015, and welcome you to join our community and contribute to our growing portrait of a curious planet. 

Swimmers run to the frigid water at the 2012 New Year's Day Coney Island Polar Bear Club Plunge (photograph by Kim/Flickr)

On a gray, windy New Year's Day years ago, after a romantically traumatic New Year's Eve, I stood barefoot and nearly naked in the snow at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, about to do something drastic, all because of the inventor of the penis pump.

Next to me stood a very large woman in a one-piece bathing suit and neoprene booties. She spread her arms, tilted her face toward the hazy disk of the sun, and said in a heavy Russian accent, "Too warm this year!" Then we plunged into the frigid water, led by members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club and a hundred or so non-member participants like me. Later that day, I got a call from a friend who said he'd seen me on TV news, and the reporter said I seemed to be enjoying myself.

"What in the world were you doing out there?," he asked.

"Wiping the slate clean."

Well-dressed participants have a tea party in the water at the 2014 Coney Island New Year's Day swim (photograph by Allison Meier/Atlas Obscura)

Polar Bear Club banner at Coney Island (photograph by Kim/Flickr)

Starting the year with a screaming, slate-cleaning plunge into a cold body of water has become a tradition with winter bathing clubs worldwide. The oldest such club in the United States is the Coney Island Polar Bear Club. Its annual New Year's swim, once attended only by club members and a few dozen outsiders, now attracts thousands of registered (and often costumed) bathers and curious onlookers. Its purpose is no longer mere icy invigoration: last year's swim raised $65,000 for Camp Sunshine, a retreat for terminally ill children and their families. Check to see if there's a New Year's fundraising plunge in your area: if you follow the club's instructions it's great, safe fun.

The Coney Island Polar Bear Club was founded in 1903 by "physical culturist," showman, publishing magnate, sensationalist, and daredevil Bernarr Macfadden. (Née Bernard McFadden: he thought Bernarr sounded like a lion's roar, and Mac seemed to him more manly than Mc.)

Bernarr Macfadden cabinet cards (via Houghton Library at Harvard University)

The supremely confident and singularly energetic Macfadden has been described as "a cross between Teddy Roosevelt and P.T. Barnum." On New Year's Day, 1903, Macfadden led about 50 hardy men and women to the beach at Coney Island for calisthenics followed by an invigorating swim. 90 years later, after my night of rom-traum, I happily participated in the tradition. I needed a cold bath.

Many early 20th century physical fitness promoters like Macfadden claimed that frequent cold baths were necessary for vitality. Modern research has not borne out that claim. (Given his penchant for icy dips, it's no surprise that Macfadden was the inventor of the penis pump for male enhancement, which he called the Peniscope). However, it seems reasonable that leaving the house on a short winter day, joining like-minded people for exercise in the fresh air, followed by a brief, bracing, laughter-filled swim, might be healthier than semi-hibernation with Netflix and a pint of ice cream.

Today's Coney Island Polar Bear Club makes no direct health claims.

"It's fun!" says club president Dennis Thomas, whom I met recently.

"I did it three times, and that was enough!" Thomas' girlfriend laughed.

"It's not for everyone," Thomas smiled. He's taken the plunge about 700 times in the past 30 years (member swims happen every Sunday, in every weather, November-April). There may be a bit of extremist blood in the Thomas family: Dennis' twin brother Donald is a four-time space shuttle astronaut.

I asked Thomas what he derives from the experience. "When you're in there, you don't think about other issues in your life. Everything is erased for a bit. Coming out of the water is like a rebirth, every week."

The 2014 Coney Island Polar Bear Plunge on New Year's Day (photograph by Allison Meier/Atlas Obscura)

Support Camp Sunshine by joining the Coney Island Polar Bear Club this New Year's Day. 

A wall of skulls in St. Leonards Church in England (photograph by Michael Rowe/Wikimedia)

Though the European bone houses are some of the most famous in the world, there are similar charnels in Asia. Located in Biru County in the Nagchu Prefacture in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is the Biru Skull Wall, or the Dodoka Skull Wall. The Biru Skull Wall is located on the grounds of the Dodoka (also Duoduoka) Monastery and contains an estimated 1,000 skulls.

The Dodoka Monastery Complex sits on an area of approximately 4,000 square meters and is comprised of living quarters for the monks, a celestial burial pool made of cobbles, a stone slab to rest corpses for sky burials — all of which is surrounded by a wall. Within the western and southern portions of the wall are charnel shelves where skulls, the remnants of hundreds of sky burials, are stored. Pictures of the skull wall can be seen here and here.

Vulture flying at a sky burial site (photograph by Lyle Vincent/Flickr)

During a sky burial, a corpse is arranged in a sitting position so vultures can eat the soft tissue off of the body. Once the vultures have consumed the flesh from the corpse, the monks crush all of the bones and blend them with barley flour, tea, and butter and serve them to other birds of prey. The Biru Skull Wall is unique because instead of disposing of all of the bones from the sky burial, the monks of Dodoka preserve the skulls on the charnel shelves within walls of the monastery.

There are no written records that report why the Biru Skull Wall was started or by whom. Below are a couple of the most accepted origin stories for the Biru Skull Wall.

Early in the 20th century, an eight-year-old Tibetan boy witnessed the murder of three people; the story doesn’t say whether or not the victims were family or friends to him. The little boy was so traumatized by what he had seen that he went to reside with the living Buddha at the Dodoka Monastery. After the boy became an adult, he was chosen to be the sky burial master. During the boy’s tenure he kept the skulls and put them on the shelves in the western and southern walls to ward off the murderer he saw as a child. The skull wall was left behind after his death 40 years later and maintained by his successors.

Another version states that decades ago, the living Buddha started the Biru Skull Wall as a monument to remind visitors about the impermanence of life and to inspire them to do good deeds with the time that they have.

Biru Skull Wall (photograph via chinkayak.com)

It’s believed that only three monasteries in Tibet, all in Biru County, displayed human skulls: Ridazeng, Quedai, and Dodoka. But by the early 1980s, most of the skulls from Ridazeng and Quedai had disappeared. The practice was reportedly stopped during China’s Cultural Revolution, between 1965 and 1968, but was revived by the monks at Dodoka within the last ten or so years.

The Biru Skull Wall now benefits from a “supportive governmental policy” that preserves religious relics, and the charnel attracts visitors to this remote region of the TAR.

For more fascinating stories of forensic anthropology visit Dolly Stolze's Strange Remains, where a version of this article also appeared. 

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

References:

A wall piled up by skulls. (2013). Retrieved from: http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_curiosity/2004-11/10/content_63052.htm

Biru Skull Wall. Retrieved from: http://www.tibetguru.com/nagqu/attractions/buri-skull-wall/

Biru Skull Wall. (2014, November 16). Retrieved from: http://www.chinatravel.com/nagqu-attraction/biru-skull-wall/

Skeleton wall: Mysterious sky burial. Retrieved from: http://www.tibettravel.org/tibet-travel-guide/skeleton-wall.html

Van Huygen, M. (2014, March 11). Give my body to the birds: The practice of sky burial. Retrieved from: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sky-burial

The notorious ooze of Rancho La Brea (photograph by Daniel Schwen/Wikimedia)

"Pitch lakes" represent surface deposits of oil bubbled up from subterranean reservoirs through faults or fissures, often formed when the layers of sedimentary rock that contain hydrocarbons are folded or squashed in tectonic upheaval. Evaporation removes the oil's lighter elements to produce mucky ponds of asphalt, colloquially called pitch or tar, and technically referred to as bitumen.

Such seeps are widely scattered across the planet, both on land and in the oceans. One of the world’s biggest is Pitch Lake along Trinidad’s western coast, visited by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595. A bizarre tract of semisolid asphalt strung with oily channels and pools, the lake — a popular tourist attraction — spans some 100 acres and plunges to 250 feet deep.

Trinidad's Pitch Lake, one of the biggest asphalt lakes on Earth (photograph by Shriram Rajagopalan/Flickr)

Trinidad's Pitch Lake (photograph by Shriram Rajagopalan/Flickr)

Multiple local legends explain the creation of this otherworldly landmark. One story suggests that deities opened the asphalt morass to swallow a Chaima village whose inhabitants, celebrating a victorious battle, recklessly feasted on sacred hummingbirds. (Incidentally, hummers are common sights around the lake today.)

A 19th-century photograph of Trinidad's Pitch Lake, from a 1900 issue of Popular Science Monthly (via Wikimedia)

There are also numerous pitch deposits elsewhere in the Caribbean, as well as in northern South America, notably in Venezuela, where many are locally known as "menes." Eurasia has important examples, including the Binagadi tar pit on Azerbaijan’s Absheron Peninsula, and the Great Okha Asphalt Lake on the Russian island of Sakhalin. The Dead Sea historically coughed up shreds of bitumen; its storied, salty waters were once called Lake Asphaltites. Southern California famously supports a number of prominent pitch lakes, including the Carpinteria, McKittrick, and Rancho La Brea tar pits, in addition to offshore tar seeps in the Santa Barbara Channel.

Given the substance’s wide-ranging utility as an adhesive, waterproofing agent, and pavement, humans have mined the asphalt from pitch lakes for thousands of years. The Chumash people of the California coast and offshore islands caulked their sturdy driftwood-carved sea canoes, or tomols, with tar from Rancho La Brea in the Los Angeles Basin and other regional seeps. Sir Walter Raleigh used Pitch Lake’s glop on his ship and professed it “most excellent good.” Since the early 1800s that deposit has been commercially tapped—including for pavement on roads far from Trinidad's shores.

Death Traps

Beyond providing a readymade source of asphalt, pitch lakes are widely known as repositories of biological remains. Most celebrated is Rancho La Brea, given its astonishing and well-studied inventory of Pleistocene fossils. Since the early 1900s, scientists have retrieved better than a million vertebrate bones from these natural asphalt deposits, not to mention loads of invertebrate and plant remnants. (These are tar “pits” because of those excavations.)

Los Angeles’s own prehistoric boneyard has provided so much knowledge about ancient North America that paleontologists have named an entire Pleistocene span after it: the Rancholabrean North American Land Mammal Age. This period dawned with the arrival, some 200,000 years ago, of the bison — the most numerous big herbivore sepulchered at La Brea — in the New World.

Robert Bruce Horsfall's 1913 depiction of Rancho La Brea in its Pleistocene heyday, showing a Smilodon square off against dire wolves over a bogged Columbian-mammoth carcass (via archive.org)

Rancho La Brea showcases tens of thousands of years of deep history. The site’s environment is particularly propitious for fossil preservation; high winter streamflow out of the nearby Santa Monica Mountains annually washed in sediments that buried tar-bound carcasses.

The La Brea pits entombed a rich array of grazers and browsers. Besides the ancient bison — which appear to have been seasonal visitors to the tar pits, passing through the area in late spring — there are remains of western horses, camels, mastodons, tapirs, ground sloths, pronghorn, peccaries, and Columbian mammoths.

But carnivores significantly outnumber the plant-eaters, making up 90 percent of the catalogued large-mammal fossils. The dire wolf — a hulking canid more solidly built than its gray-wolf cousin — is better represented than any other large mammal: Fossils of more than 4,000 have been identified. More than 2,500 saber-toothed cats — Smilodon fatalis, specifically — are recorded from the site, and there’s been a healthy haul of coyotes. Other carnivores of Rancho La Brea include the American cheetah, the American lion, and the short-faced bear, a horse-sized (and all-around terrifying) ursid that may have actively run down ungulates or simply outmuscled wolves and big cats from their kills.

The formidable skull of a Rancho La Brea dire wolf, as displayed in John C. Merriam's 1911 The Fauna of Rancho La Brea (Vol. 11) (via Wikimedia)

This plethora of killers suggests Rancho La Brea may have functioned as a "predator trap." A mired bison, horse, or camel might have lured multiple predators and scavengers into the dangerous seeps. In addition to the mammalian carnivores, this raucous rogue's gallery included a diverse roster of scavenging birds — from eagles, vultures, and condors to titanic "teratorns" with wingspans of 12 feet or better.

Entrapment of big mammals likely mainly occurred between late spring and early fall, when warm weather made the Rancho La Brea asphalt especially gummy. An ungulate — particularly a young or weakened one — may have become bogged down after entering the pitch pools to drink, or perhaps when chased by predators. Either way, the phenomenon was probably a relatively infrequent one. According to the on-site Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, a once-in-a-decade "entrapment episode" involving 10 large mammals would be enough to account for all of the fossils identified so far.

Sculptures recreating ancient animal deaths in the La Brea Tar Pits (photograph by Kevin Stanchfield/Flickr)

A skeleton of Bison antiquus, the most common large herbivore represented in the Rancho La Brea fossil beds (photograph by Ed Bierman/Wikimedia)

Less dramatic than mastodon bones or sabertooth fangs, the plant remains uncovered here nonetheless provide powerful insights into the Pleistocene ecology of the Los Angeles Basin. As the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County notes, vegetation communities native to the basin during the ice ages, from coastal sage scrub to canyon redwood groves, suggest a wetter, moister maritime climate similar to today's Monterey Peninsula far to the north.

Rancho La Brea may be the best-known pitch lake for fossils, but others also boast prehistoric treasures, some perhaps comparable to southern California’s boneyards. Venezuala’s menes, many of which haven’t been formally inventoried, appear to be fossil-rich. The site called El Breal de Orocual, in which systematic excavations only began in the mid-2000s, has yielded several dozen species so far, from llamas to caimans. Pitch Lake has turned up a few odd fossils, too, including the tooth of a mastodon. Azerbaijan’s long-studied Binagadi asphalt lake reveals, through the petrified remains of cave hyenas and other beasts, some 200,000 years of Caucasus paleoecology.

From Tar Pits to Methane Lakes: A Galactic Detour

Earth’s asphalt lakes aren’t just registries of the planet’s prehistoric flora and fauna, they may also offer clues about the potential existence of extraterrestrial life. Scientists researching Pitch Lake in Trinidad have discovered that multitudes of microbes inhabit its seemingly inhospitable glop, apparently metabolizing the oil amid hot, water-deficient conditions. This particularly intrigues astrobiologists, because Pitch Lake offers something of a parallel to evocative environments over 700 million miles away.

Huge seaways and lakes of liquid methane, ethane, and other hydrocarbons have been identified on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Its biggest, Kraken Mare (named for the legendary sea beast), spans some 154,440 square miles. These features, best documented around the moon's polar regions and the only surface liquid known in the solar system outside Earth, may harbor "about 2,000 cubic miles (9,000 cubic kilometers) of liquid hydrocarbon, about 40 times more than in all the proven oil reservoirs on Earth," according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Reflected sunlight shimmers on Kraken Mare, the largest of the hydrocarbon seas of Titan (via NASA)

Titan’s physical geography shows parallels with Earth. Its hydrocarbon lakes, rivers, clouds, and rain may integrate in a "methanological cycle" similar to our planet's water cycle, and there's some evidence for both volcanic and tectonic activity on the moon. These Earth-like conditions make Titan one of the solar system's more promising zip codes for the existence of life. If microbial organisms can prosper in our planet's own hydrocarbon mires, perhaps Titan's remote, alien seas conceal extraterrestrial counterparts.

Island hopper Anna Marlis Burgard is the creative force behind hundreds of illustrated books and gift products and is the author and principal photographer for Islands of America: A River, Lake and Sea Odyssey. Anna began visiting islands before she could walk courtesy of her family's vacations in Maine, Maryland, and North Carolina; at last count, she's explored 80+ in the United States alone. She lived on Georgia's Tybee Island and now resides on Narragansett Bay's Aquidneck Island. As part of a "United Islands of America" collaboration with Atlas Obscura, she's sharing her best offbeat island experiences in a monthly series. This is the introduction to that series.

A Lummi Island, Washington, sea star (photograph by Anna Marlis Burgard)

An island is essentially terrain that remains above the waterline through all times and tides — bigger than a rock, but smaller than a continent. Purists contend that causeways or bridges connecting to the mainland are disqualifiers, that a true island must be reached only by boat or plane. In the St. Lawrence Seaway's Thousand Islands, it's said that spots of land in the water need to support at least one tree to earn the term "island." As with all things, there are exceptions: the sea stacks along the Oregon coast and Mono Lake's tufas aren't considered islands, although they are indeed isolated sections of terrain surrounded by water.

The shorthand visual may be a dry spot in tropical waters with waving palm trees casting shadows on sugar sand beaches, but America's islands manifest in many forms. They can be created over time from alluvial silt that shifts with a river's flow (the towheads of the Mississippi); they are the projecting tops of the world's largest mountain range (the Hawaiian archipelago), they are grass-covered salt domes (Avery Island in Louisiana) or the exposed masses of ancient coral reefs (Florida's Keys).

A member of the bison herd on Antelope Island, Utah (photograph by Jason Savage)

Honor-system payment for crab bait on Orcas Island, Washington (photograph by Anna Marlis Burgard)

What physically constitutes an island may vary, but what islands represent is more universal: their allure is ancient, deep-seated and of mythic proportions. In The Odyssey, Robinson Crusoe, Jurassic Park, Lost, Lord of the Flies and countless other tales, authors have presented fictional islands that invite us to explore other worlds, other rules, other experiences than are possible on the mainland. There may be no literal "Land of Lotus Eaters" or dinosaurs for us to see, but real islands offer similar transformations and adventures, leading us to shed the everyday and become our best selves — or very different selves. We start to live through our muscles and senses rather than our brains' thinking, planning, and worrying. We turn to the sun and tide charts rather than watches alone to plan our days, merging into nature's pulse.

All of our islands aren't pleasure domes, though; some function as homes for prisons and jails (Alcatraz in San Francisco, Rikers in New York); some served as immigrant processing and quarantine centers (Angel Island on the West Coast, Ellis Island on the East). Their isolation positions them as homes to a surprising array of communities including four Serbian Orthodox nuns on St. Nilus Skete in Alaska, where the faithful clad in black habits nap on bright green moss beneath towering Sitka spruce trees in between chanting prayer services, reading religious texts, foraging for mushrooms and salmonberries, and canning salmon. While fishermen, surfers, and kayakers are common residents, there is no such thing as a typical islander, other than the instinct for independence and a remarkable self reliance.

Father Adrian of St. Michael's Skete on Spruce Island, Alaska (photograph by Anna Marlis Burgard)

Howard Haslam of Melita Island in Montana’s Flathead Lake, a Boy Scouts of America camp where he lives year-round (photograph by Anna Marlis Burgard)

According to the U. S. Geological Survey, there are 16,896 named islands representing all 50 states in our rivers, lakes, and coastal areas. From Alaska to Florida, Maine to Hawaii, and Minnesota to Texas, we have a stunning collection — whether they're resorts, private retreats, major metropolises, nature preserves, or tribal lands — with myriad histories, architecture, flora, fauna, and cultures. They appeal to a wide variety of desires, curiosities, sensibilities, and needs, and are endless sources of wonder, entertainment, beauty, and charm. They often have more in common with one another than with the states that claim them, offering similar enticements and battling the same issues.

Nearly half of our population lives in coastal counties, but most remain unfamiliar with the full insular wealth — wild, weird, and wonderful — in and between the shining seas. From famous islands like Martha's Vineyard, Maui, and Key West to more obscure locations including Wadmalaw, Mackworth, and Petra Islands, I’ve visited 82 of our water-framed wonderlands in 22 states thus far. This odyssey has allowed me to interview artists, captains, chefs, divers, farmers, marine biologists, mayors, philosophers-in-residence, and even a former President of the United States. The images and stories I'm collecting are a portrait of small town America through a maritime lens — a celebration of these diverse kingdoms surrounded by moats. It will be my pleasure to introduce you through this series on Atlas Obscura to the personalities, animals, quirks, and histories of these places over the next months. Welcome ashore!

Moss-speckled gray whale skeleton in a small private wood on Lummi Island, Washington (photograph by Anna Marlis Burgard)

A Deer Isle, Maine pond reflecting the Milky Way’s starlight (photograph by Jack Fusco)

Anna Marlis Burgard is the author and principal photographer for Islands of America: A River, Lake and Sea Odyssey. As part of a monthly "United Islands of America" series, she's sharing some of the more obscure destinations she's discovered on her journeys to over 80 islands in 22 states.

The fence decorated as a memorial at the Cross Bones Graveyard site in London (all photos by the author)

Long closed to the public and lost beneath a concrete lot, Cross Bones Graveyard in London may finally transform into a memorial garden, albeit a temporary one. The cemetery is best known as the believed resting place of medieval prostitutes, but it was more accurately a potter's field, an unconsecrated place of interment for the poor, stillborn, and otherwise marginalized people until its closure in 1853.

As London SE1 and then Londonist reported this month, the Bankside Open Spaces Trust made an announcement at the end of 2014 that permission to built a three-year temporary garden was granted from the Southwark Council at the Cross Bones Graveyard site on Redcross Way. The agreement includes a three-year lease from Transport for London which owns the property and has had its eye on developing it in the heavily commercial area of London. Some preliminary work was actually initiated last summer, as London SE1 reported in August, including the relocation of the metal gates that with knotted ribbons and entwined plastic flowers have become a public memorial.

Much of the attention to the graveyard has been spurred by the Friends of Cross Bones and particularly writer John Constable, with their vigils held every 23rd of the month encouraging attention to the site. Much of this has centered on the women believed to have worked in 16th-century Southwark brothels. A plaque installed at the site for the "Outcast Dead," adorned with a bird representing the "Winchester goose," a nickname for the prostitutes, states that it "was an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes" in medieval times before becoming a burying ground for the indigent in the 18th century.

As Bess Lovejoy wrote last October in a thorough essay on the graveyard for Smithsonian Magazine, an excavation in the 1990s by the Museum of London during Jubilee Line construction unearthed only about one percent of the dead, with over half being children, "reflecting the high rates of infant mortality in that section of London during the 19th century, when Cross Bones served as a pauper’s cemetery."

Although it is only for three years, the garden plan is a promising step in turning the disused lot into a respectful space for the thousands of people anonymously buried beneath the ground. Cemeteries for the poor and downtrodden can easily get lost in a highly developed urban landscape like London; for example, over in New York the Second African Burial Ground is almost entirely forgotten beneath Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Community green space can be a balance between honoring the dead and contributing to the development of an area, such as at the Brooklyn Navy Yard where its former hospital cemetery is planned to become part of a non-invasive greenway. Hopefully a positive partnership between the public interest in commemorating the sad history of Cross Bones and the need to turn valuable property into development can continue after the garden's end.

h/t London SE1 & Londonist

New Year's Eve at the Pratt Institute steam whistles (all photographs by the author unless noted)

At midnight in Brooklyn on New Year's Eve, the deafening blare of steam whistles salvaged from lost ships, retired trains, and closed factories shuddered through the crowd gathered for the final hurrah of the 50-year tradition. A huge cloud of steam engulfed the revelers who uncorked champagne bottles or just screamed joyously against the roar. Since 1965, Pratt Institute's Chief Engineer Conrad Milster has staged this unique ritual of welcoming the new year with the bone-jarring whistles, but as the clock ticked over to 2015, the tradition ended.

The 2014 New Year's Eve was announced as the final sounding of the whistles at Pratt Institute. Milster told Atlas Obscura he hopes that the whistles, as well as other retrotech marvels he's collected at his home on campus, find their way to a museum or other place where they can continue to be shared with the public. He noted that the ongoing spectacle has been an important meet up for a group of aficionados and collectors of steam technology, once the driving force of the 19th century.

Sounding of the whistles (photograph by Mark Roberts)

Conrad Milster with the steam whistles (photograph by Sam Stuart for Pratt Institute)

Preservation of sound isn't something that's often considered, but listening to the incredible blast of the whistles screeching and bellowing at once, I was reminded that these noises were once a regular part of the industrial world, especially New York City where steamships in the harbor called day and night. Now even if you see the old technology in a museum, you rarely get to experience it up close. Milster's office at Pratt is right in the steam engine room, which powered the college campus until 1977. Now an art-focused school, Pratt started as an institution of engineering. Milster is one of just four chief engineers to ever work at Pratt, and along with a small colony of cats that sleep in the warm corners of the two-level room, keeps the antique red-painted machines churning away in beautiful condition. 

Over the years the cacophony has altered a bit; a homemade steam calliope was introduced in 1999, hooked up to a keyboard and able to play prerecorded airy tunes like a slightly off-key "You're a Grand Old Flag" or have players lead a sing-a-long to "Auld Lang Syne." And other collectors brought their own whistles salvaged or bought on eBay, sometimes hearing them for the first time through the 250-pound pipes that connect the whistles to the Pratt boilers. Others were regulars, like the powerful whistle from the SS Normandie — a magnificent French ocean liner that caught fire and sank in the Hudson River. 

The steam engine room

The end of the steam whistles at Pratt was a decision reported in 2013. Held during holidays, all the labor to work the whistles that weigh between 20 and 150 pounds has been volunteer, and officials at Pratt had previously given concerns about safety and insurance as the crowds grew each year. Yet even as word about the event got out and attracted a broader audience outside of its Clinton Hill neighborhood, it still felt like an underground wonder that despite all the development in New York evoked a century long gone.

New Year's in New York might be defined for much of the world by the raucous festivities of Times Square, but here something as simple as one man sharing his obscure collection became just as important a tradition for the city. Long after the last sonic blast after midnight, people still lingered late in the engine room with its Christmas lights draped above rotating machines, where down below Milster in his railroad engineer's hat talked with an endless stream of enthusiastic fans who seemed reluctant to let the night go.

Blasting the whistles at midnight

Conrad Milster controlling the steam pipe

Steam calliope

Awards given to the engine room cats

The engine room

Office of Conrad Milster

The engine room

A miniature steam engine 

The steam calliope

Listening to the steam calliope (photograph by Sam Stuart for Pratt Institute)

The steam whistles (photograph by Mark Roberts)

In the steam cloud (photograph by Mark Roberts)

The steam whistles on their last night at Pratt (photograph by Mark Roberts)

Anyone wishing to honor Conrad Milster's steam whistles tradition is invited to donate to a scholarship fund set up in honor of his late wife through Pratt’s secure online giving page. Indicate the Phyllis and Conrad Milster Endowed Scholarship under Special Instructions.

New Year's Eve at the Pratt Institute steam whistles (all photographs by the author unless noted)

At midnight in Brooklyn on New Year's Eve, the deafening blare of steam whistles salvaged from lost ships, retired trains, and closed factories shuddered through the crowd gathered for the final hurrah of the 50-year tradition. A huge cloud of steam engulfed the revelers who uncorked champagne bottles or just screamed joyously against the roar. Since 1965, Pratt Institute's Chief Engineer Conrad Milster has staged this unique ritual of welcoming the new year with the bone-jarring whistles, but as the clock ticked over to 2015, the tradition ended.

The 2014 New Year's Eve was announced as the final sounding of the whistles at Pratt Institute. Milster told Atlas Obscura he hopes that the whistles, as well as other retrotech marvels he's collected at his home on campus, find their way to a museum or other place where they can continue to be shared with the public. He noted that the ongoing spectacle has been an important meet up for a group of aficionados and collectors of steam technology, once the driving force of the 19th century.

Sounding of the whistles (photograph by Mark Roberts)

Conrad Milster with the steam whistles (photograph by Sam Stuart for Pratt Institute)

Preservation of sound isn't something that's often considered, but listening to the incredible blast of the whistles screeching and bellowing at once, I was reminded that these noises were once a regular part of the industrial world, especially New York City where steamships in the harbor called day and night. Now even if you see the old technology in a museum, you rarely get to experience it up close. Milster's office at Pratt is right in the steam engine room, which powered the college campus until 1977. Now an art-focused school, Pratt started as an institution of engineering. Milster is one of just four chief engineers to ever work at Pratt, and along with a small colony of cats that sleep in the warm corners of the two-level room, keeps the antique red-painted machines churning away in beautiful condition. 

Over the years the cacophony has altered a bit; a homemade steam calliope was introduced in 1999, hooked up to a keyboard and able to play prerecorded airy tunes like a slightly off-key "You're a Grand Old Flag" or have players lead a sing-a-long to "Auld Lang Syne." And other collectors brought their own whistles salvaged or bought on eBay, sometimes hearing them for the first time through the 250-pound pipes that connect the whistles to the Pratt boilers. Others were regulars, like the powerful whistle from the SS Normandie — a magnificent French ocean liner that caught fire and sank in the Hudson River. 

The steam engine room

The end of the steam whistles at Pratt was a decision reported in 2013. Held during holidays, all the labor to work the whistles that weigh between 20 and 150 pounds has been volunteer, and officials at Pratt had previously given concerns about safety and insurance as the crowds grew each year. Yet even as word about the event got out and attracted a broader audience outside of its Clinton Hill neighborhood, it still felt like an underground wonder that despite all the development in New York evoked a century long gone.

New Year's in New York might be defined for much of the world by the raucous festivities of Times Square, but here something as simple as one man sharing his obscure collection became just as important a tradition for the city. Long after the last sonic blast after midnight, people still lingered late in the engine room with its Christmas lights draped above rotating machines, where down below Milster in his railroad engineer's hat talked with an endless stream of enthusiastic fans who seemed reluctant to let the night go.

Blasting the whistles at midnight

Conrad Milster controlling the steam pipe

Steam calliope

Awards given to the engine room cats

The engine room

Office of Conrad Milster

The engine room

A miniature steam engine 

The steam calliope

Listening to the steam calliope (photograph by Sam Stuart for Pratt Institute)

The steam whistles (photograph by Mark Roberts)

In the steam cloud (photograph by Mark Roberts)

The steam whistles on their last night at Pratt (photograph by Mark Roberts)

Anyone wishing to honor Conrad Milster's steam whistles tradition is invited to donate to a scholarship fund set up in honor of his late wife through Pratt’s secure online giving page. Indicate the Phyllis and Conrad Milster Endowed Scholarship under Special Instructions.

$500 United States bill (via moneyfactory.gov)

Throughout the history of paper money, there have been instances of bills printed that go into the millions, billions, trillions, and even the quintillions. Some are historical relics worth much mainly to collectors, while others are still in use today.

The United States $100 bill is known the world over. According to former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, two-thirds of all $100 bills circulate outside of the country. The United States also printed $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 bills until the 1940s. In 1969, denominations of US currency over $100 were declared obsolete by executive order of President Nixon, and there are no plans to resume their printing, partly for concerns of their use in organized crime.

The $10,000 bill would have bought over $64,000 worth of goods in today’s US dollars, and Benny Binion famously displayed 100 of these bills — a million dollars in cash — at Binion’s Horseshoe casino in downtown Las Vegas until 2000. The largest denomination bill printed by the US, however, was the $100,000 gold certificate, with a portrait of President Woodrow Wilson (shown at left courtesy the National Museum of American History). Only 42,000 of these were printed in the 1930s for use within the Federal Reserve. They are considered government property and illegal for collectors to own, but one specimen is kept by the Smithsonian and exhibited on occasion.

A Series 1890 $1,000 Treasury Note depicting George Meade (via National Museum of American History)

$1,000 Gold Certificate, Series 1928, with Grover Cleveland (via National Museum of American History)

Throughout the world, currency with denominations higher than 100 regularly circulates. The European Union currently uses a €500 note. Canada's C$1,000 bill, with its pink printing and nicknamed the “pinkie,” circulated, albeit rarely, until 2000 when it was retired, again, due to organized crime concerns. Japan prints a 10,000 yen bill. Indonesia prints a 100,000 rupiah note. Italy printed a 500,000 lira note until it adapted the euro, and Vietnam prints a 500,000 dong note today. This bill as of this writing is worth about US$24.

500,000 lira, showing Raffaello Sanzio (via OneArmedMan/Wikimedia)

One could feel like a millionaire with only one bill in the currencies of Romania and Turkey, before they were revalued in 2005 by their respective governments. Until then, they were considered at various points the world's least valuable currencies by the Guinness Book of World Records. Romania had printed 1 and 5 million leu notes. Turkey had printed 1, 5, 10, and 20 million lira notes. The 20 million lira note in 2005 was worth US$13.50. Romania and Turkey revalued their currencies in 2005 by lopping off six zeroes and then reissuing bills in smaller denominations.

Million Romanian leu from 2003 (via aes.iupui.edu)

The Bank of England uses very large denomination notes for transactions between it and the Banks of Scotland and Northern Ireland. A "giant" is one of these notes that is backed by one million pounds, and a "titan" is backed by 100 million pounds. Only for these transactions — not for the general public — are the notes kept in vaults.

 £100,000,000 Titan (photograph by James Oxley, via Bank of England)

The above examples of large denomination bills were printed in stable, or relatively stable, economies. If a country undergoes a period of hyperinflation, currencies devalue in a very short amount of time, and the government may continue to print out very large denomination bills to compensate, sometimes in the millions, billions, and trillions.

Brazil and Austria once printed 500,000 cruzeiro real and kronen notes. Argentina and Georgia had one million peso and laris notes. Peru printed a five million intis bill. Bolivia printed a 10 million peso bill. Axis-occupied Greece printed a 100 billion drachma bill. As Yugoslavia was dissolving, it printed 500 billion dinar notes. Weimar Germany printed bills of long-scale billion, or short-scale trillion, Marks. Zimbabwe had printed bills up to its largest, 100 trillion dollars, in 2009. According to the Wall Street Journal, this bill would not have even bought bus fare in the capital of Harare at the time.

One billion Zimbabwe dollars (photograph by Samantha Marx/Flickr)

Later Zimbabwe Z$100,000,000,000,000 Note (via Camp0s/Wikimedia)

The world's worst case of hyperinflation was in post-war Hungary until August 1946. Collectors recognize some Hungarian pengő bills as those with the highest denomination ever. During this period a long-scale 100 million billion, or short-scale 100 quintillion (1x10^20, a 1 followed by 20 zeroes), pengő bill was issued. While printed, a long-scale milliard billion, or short-scale 1 sextillion (1x10^21), pengő bill was not issued.

It would barely have bought anything of real value at the time. Hungary introduced its new currency in 1946, the forint, and a famous photograph showed a street sweeper sending very large pengő bills into the sewer. One new forint was exchangeable for 400 octillion (4 x 10^29) pengő.

 
Sweeping large amounts of pengő away (via Timur lenk / Hungarian National Museum)

Hungarian 1 Sextillion Note, considered by collectors the highest denomination bill (via Peter.orosz/Wikimedia)

Some of these very large bills are now curious collectors’ items, so anyone can feel like a trillionaire or beyond, if only for a fleeting, hyperinflated moment.

The names given to streets, corners, and bridges are not only essential to finding our way around, they can also tell a story. However, the story may not always be a pleasant one. How about a leisurely Sunday drive down Shades of Death Road? Or a peaceful afternoon down by the water that earned its name after a day it ran red with blood?

Here are seven places in the United States that might make you ask next time you look at a sign: what really is in a name?

BUCKET OF BLOOD STREET
Holbrook, Arizona 

Bucket of Blood Street (photograph by Peter Eimon/Flickr)

In a time and place that was known for violence, the Terrill's Cottage Saloon set itself apart after one evening that left its floors covered in blood and an unknown number of men dead.

In the mid-1880s, Holbrook, Arizona, was a town dubbed "too tough for women and churches," due in part to there being no law enforcement to get in the way of rampant gunfights, and the moving in of various rival gangs of ruthless cowboys. Two of these groups of cowpushers — the Hashknife Outfit, known as the "theivinist, fightinist bunch of cowboys in the west," and the Dalton Gang — are each connected to two of the more prominent stories as to why Terrill's Cottage Saloon, and the street it sat on, took on its notorious moniker: Bucket of Blood.

In 1886, the Hashknife Outfit were tied to 26 murders in Holbrook, a town of around 250 people. That same year, a brutal gunfight broke out at the saloon between members of the Hashknife Outfit and another group accusing them of stealing cattle. There is no record of how many men were killed, only the description that "buckets of blood" were left in the aftermath. In another version, the notorious Dalton Gang was responsible for all the blood. Allegedly, Dalton Gang member Grat Dalton, a man named George Bell, and two others were engaged in a game of cards and an argument erupted over a hand. Dalton fired his .45 at two unidentified men, leaving them bleeding to death on the floor while he and Bell fled the scene. According to the story, the floor looked like it had a bucket of blood spilled on it. Either way, the name stuck, with the street changing its name from "Central" to "Bucket of Blood" soon after.

The Bucket of Blood Saloon closed in the 1920s, and remains sitting on the street that took its name, heavily surrounded by trees and boarded up, only a few minutes off historic Route 66. A painting that hung inside the Bucket of Blood Saloon is now at the Historic Navajo Country Courthouse: a woodsy scene of trees and water, broken up by two distinct bullet holes.

SHADES OF DEATH ROAD
New Jersey

Shades of Death Road (photograph by Daniel Case/Wikimedia)

On the border of Pennsylvania, New Jersey's Warren County is no stranger to long and winding rural roads surrounded by trees. Running through the middle of the county is one that shatters the serene surroundings: the seven mile-long Shades of Death Road.

One of the earliest stories of the death-soaked road states it was first referred to as "The Shades." Around 1850, a malaria outbreak in the surrounding community resulted in the more sinister addition. 

Other origin tales are more deeply rooted in cold-blooded murder. Due to the low hanging trees, the road was a base for a band of ruthless squatters who were assumed responsible for a number of murders and disappearances. For all the lore about Shades of Death Road, the name is not by any means unjustified, and there were three confirmed cases of brutal murders connected to it in the 1920s and 1930s. In one incident, a man was bludgeoned to death with a tire iron from his own car and robbed of some gold coins. In another, a man by the name of Bill Cummings was shot to death before his body was dragged out to lay on the side of Shades of Death Road. In the third documented killing a local woman murdered her husband, decapitated him, and buried his head and torso on opposite sides of the road.

JENNY JUMP STATE FOREST
New Jersey

Jenny Jump State Forest (photograph by Famartin/Wikimedia)

Because Shades of Death Road isn’t creepy enough on its own, sitting alongside the road in Great Meadows, New Jersey, is the Jenny Jump State Forest, known for its hiking, wildlife, and its unfortunately straightforward name.

According to one story, Jenny was a young girl living in the mountains. She was out with her father when they were spied by several American Indians. As they moved closer, her father yelled out "Jump Jenny Jump!," and she obeyed, jumping off of a cliff to her death. In another version, Jenny lived with her elderly father in Warren County and was engaged to be married to a local doctor named Frank Landis. Another man, Arthur Moreland, asked Jenny for her hand, but she denied him and told him to never speak to her again. On her wedding day, Jenny was walking along the mountains and suddenly came face-to-face with Moreland, who again asked her to marry him. Frightened, Jenny backed up to the edge of the cliff and threatened to jump. When Moreland said if she jumped she would be killed, she responded: "Death would be preferable to dishonor. If you come one step nearer."

Jenny kept her word, and when Moreland stepped closer, she jumped from the cliff to the rocks below. Although badly injured, Jenny, in this tale, survived her fall.

DEAD WOMAN’S CROSSING
Weatherford, Oklahoma

Dead Woman's Crossing (photograph by Nate/Flickr)

Walking along the banks of Deer Creek in Weatherford, Oklahoma, visitors get a tranquil picture of a bridge ominously called Dead Woman's Crossing.

The name is hard-earned as the place. In the summer of 1905, the body of a young mother was found decapitated. On July 7, a 29-year-old woman named Katy DeWitt James got on a train with her 14-month baby Lulu Belle. The previous day, she'd filed for divorce from her abusive husband and her father, Henry, had seen her and Lulu off at the train station on their way to visit a cousin. Henry normally received frequent letters from his daughter, so when he had not heard from her in several weeks he hired detective Sam Bartell to find out why communication had suddenly gone cold.

After weeks of investigation, Bartell found that rather than get off the train where her cousin lived, James and her baby left the train in Weatherford with a woman named Fannie Norton, known to the townspeople as a notoriously shady prostitute. The women spent the night with Norton's brother-in-law William Moore, and the next day Norton convinced James to ride with her to a nearby town. Witnesses later recalled that a buggy with the two women and the baby disappeared near Deer Creek for 45 minutes before Norton returned with only the baby, leaving it with a boy on a farm and instructing him to take the child to his mother to care for her. The clothes the baby was wearing were bloodied. Detective Bartell tracked Norton down to the town of Shawnee, Oklahoma, where she was questioned aggressively. Norton vehemently denied any knowledge of the missing mother or the bloody baby. Later that evening, Bartell stepped out and Norton began to vomit violently. She had poisoned herself, and died shortly after.

On August 31, 1905, a local man and his son were fishing along the banks of Deer Creek when they found a skeleton next to a wooden wagon crossing. The skeleton was fully clothed and still wore a gold ring, but the head was separated three feet from the body, and the skull had a bullet hole behind the right ear. A .38 caliber gun was found nearby. James' abusive ex-husband had a solid alibi at the time of the murder, and it was concluded Norton had robbed and killed Katy DeWitt James before abandoning her baby and fleeing to Shawnee. Mr. James was granted custody of their daughter, and after settling the estate of his wife he moved away into obscurity.

The wooden bridge where the body of Katy DeWitt James was found was torn down 80 years after the murder, but soon after a cement bridge was built nearby which was quickly dubbed Dead Woman’s Crossing. 

BLOODY POND
Lake George, New York

 Bloody Pond (photograph by Doug Kerr/Flickr)

Located on Route 9 south of Lake George Village, New York, is a pond hidden from view and deeply in need of care. Looking at it, one would never know that this was a pivotal point in the French and Indian War that would lead to a British victory. The bloodshed would stain the water, and name of Bloody Pond would stay for the rest of history.

The Battle of Lake George took place on September 8, 1755, and that evening a large group of American Indians and Canadian troops were discovered by Nathaniel Folsom's company of the New Hampshire Provincial Regiment and the New York Provincials under Captain McGennis. The ensuing battle was brief, but the violence was devastating, with losses numbering between 200 and 300 men. The dead were rolled into the water, coloring it red.

LEG-IN-BOOT SQUARE
Vancouver, Canada

Leg-in-Boot Square (via Vancouver Public Space)

One of Vancouver's most bizarre stories is in the name of a seemingly innocent shopping plaza: Leg-In-Boot Square.

According to an account by Stuart Cumberland, an entire half of a human leg, still encased in its boot, washed up on the shores of nearby False Creek. The Cumberland account theorizes the leg was all that remained of a man's encounter with a cougar, but rather than investigate the matter the police decided to display the leg as a sort of gruesome lost-and-found. The limb was stuck on a pike outside of the precinct to wait for its owner.

The owner never arrived to claim the leg, and after two weeks it was taken down and disposed of. 

DEAD HORSE BAY
Brooklyn, New York

Dead Horse Bay (photograph by Allison Meier/Atlas Obscura)

The beach between Marine Park and Jamaica Bay in New York City is a strange place. The garbage strewn across the beach is not at all modern, with some pieces being nearly a century old. The old bottles, shoes, pieces of metal from yesteryear, and even horse bones all contribute to the grimly-titled Dead Horse Bay.

The bay earned the name in the 1850s when it was surrounded by, among other facilities, two dozen horse-rendering plants. Up until the first decades of the 20th century, horse and other animal carcasses were used to make glue and fertilizer here, and after the bones were used the remnants were often dumped onto the beach, permeating the air with a putrid smell, adding to the manufacturing wasteland. The industry of rendering animal carcasses moved on, but the name remained, even when it later became the site of a landfill. The dump was capped in the 1930s, and then burst in the 1950s, causing an ongoing stream of trash to wash up onto the beach to this day.

Miniature brass locket with 12 albumen print portraits of Tom Thumb & Lavinia Warren (1863) (all images courtesy the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, © New York Public Library)

Social sharing of photography was prolific long before Instagram, even if it took a different form, such as brass lockets shaped as suitcases to carry portraits of the most celebrated miniature wedding of the 19th-century. 

The marriage on February 10, 1863 of General Tom Thumb, born Charles Sherwood Stratton, to Lavinia Warren, had P. T. Barnum frothing at the potential for commercialization. Both Tom Thumb and Warren were human oddity performers at Barnum's American Museum. Already exploited for their unusual stature — both were under three feet tall — Barnum saw another opportunity to make their union part of the circus.

A fold-out locket of 12 of their tiny albumen wedding prints is currently on-view at the New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue as part of Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography. The exhibition has over 500 images from the NYPL collections divided by themes including photosharing, such as an Ansel Adams coffee can; streetview, including Eadweard Muybridge's San Francisco panorama; and crowdsourcing, with the September 11 Photo Project. The Tom Thumb wedding album is one of the NYPL's recent acquisitions, and certainly qualifies for an exhibition on the "public eye" of photography.  

As Kara Fiedorek wrote on the NYPL blog last October:

"Grand" is perhaps an understatement for this so-called Fairy Wedding. Cartes de visite (small photographs pasted onto slightly larger cards) of the couple sold in the hundreds of thousands in the mid-1860s. Barnum pleaded with Tom Thumb to delay the wedding by a number of months in order to reap as many financial rewards from the huge public excitement as possible. On the wedding day, roads were blocked as thousands of onlookers waited outside the church on Broadway and 10th Street to witness the couple’s arrival in a miniature horse-drawn chariot, a gift from Queen Victoria.

The 1863 wedding in Manhattan's Grace Episcopal Church was also a unifying distraction from the ongoing violence of the Civil War. The delicate album, its front labeled "Somebody's Luggage," was likely the property of a stranger not a friend of the bride or the groom. And as such it's a somber emblem of what it meant to be a living curiosity in the 19th century, and how photography shared the spectacles of a nation.

Tom Thumb's wedding album is on view in "Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography" at the New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building through September 4, 2014.

Objects of Intrigue is a feature highlighting extraordinary objects from the world's great museums, private collections, historic libraries, and overlooked archives. See more incredible objects here >

 Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine (all photographs by the author unless indicated)

There is perhaps no more beautiful spot in Los Angeles than the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades. Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, this meditation garden and shrine is operated by the Self-Realization Fellowship (SFR), a religious order that follows the principles of Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952). The lakeshore is dominated by the Golden Lotus Archway, a "wall-less temple." Behind this white archway is the Gandhi World Peace memorial, dedicated by Yogananda in 1950, which features an ancient Chinese sarcophagus containing some of the ashes of Mohandas K. Gandhi, India’s martyred liberator. The story of how the ashes got to Los Angeles is part of a broader story — a tale of family feuds, intrigue, and national politics — that has still not been fully resolved.

When Gandhi was assassinated on January 10, 1948 by a Hindu extremist, he had every reason to believe that all his earthly remains would be taken to the sacred city of Allahabad and poured into holy Ganges River at its confluence with Jumna, per Hindu tradition and his wishes. His body was cremated, and afterwards bone fragments were sifted by his two younger sons (noticeably absent was the troubled Harilal, his estranged eldest son) and, according to reports, "dipped in red earthen brass pots containing milk and honey from the Jumna." The remains then took one last journey by a flower and incense filled third-class train from New Deli to Allahabad. On February 13, the Los Angeles Times reported that the ashes of Gandhi had joined "the immortals in heaven":

Devadas and Ramdas Gandhi, the martyred leader's sons, tilted the urn and spilled the cremated remains into the muddy green holy water from a white-painted wartime "duck." A crowd estimated at between two million and three million lined the funeral procession or massed on the sandy river bank. As the ashes touched the water, the multitudes joined in a great roar of "Mahatma Gandhi ki jai" — victory to Mahatma Gandhi. Some wept. Some stood mute, their hands clasped before their faces.

Gandhi's funeral (1948 photograph, via Wikimedia)

Gandhi's cremation (1948 photograph, via Wikimedia)

Consigning Gandhi's ashes to the Ganges (1948 photograph, via Wikimedia)

But not all of the remains took the long train ride from New Deli to Allahabad. To appease the mourning Indian public, steel urns containing Gandhi's ashes were sent all over the country for public services meant to end in their dispersal in local bodies of water. This does not seem to have happened in every case, and portions of the ashes were kept by government agents and friends of Gandhi. Some made their way to the Aga Khan, who enshrined them at his palace in Pune India. Yogananda in Los Angeles, who had a friendship with Gandhi spanning decades (he is said to have initiated Gandhi into the practice of Kriya Yoga in 1930), received his portion of remains from Dr. V.M. Nawle, a journalist who was friends with both men.

He wrote to Yogananda: "Regarding Gandhi ashes, I may say that [they] are scattered and thrown in almost all important rivers and seas, and nothing is given outside India except the remains which I have sent to you after a great ordeal. You are the only one in the whole world who received Gandhi ashes outside India."

Memorial for Gandhi's ashes at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine

This statement proved to be false. Over the past two decades, Gandhi's ashes have been found in several locations. In 1996, India's Supreme Court ruled that a box of ashes, long held in secret in a bank vault at the State Bank of Calcutta, be returned to Gandhi's great-grandson, who then returned them to the Ganges River. In 2008, the family requested that ashes given to a museum in Mumbai by an unnamed businessman be given back to the family. These were scattered into the Arabian Sea by Harilal's daughter, Parikh. In both cases, the family felt that in honoring Gandhi's final wishes, they had completed Harilal's duties to his estranged father, and thus healed the family's wounds. Most surprisingly, in 2010, ashes from a steel urn kept in secret for decades by a family friend in South Africa (where Gandhi began his activism) were scattered off the coast of that country. 

It is likely that there are still more of Gandhi's remains in little steel urns around the world. And though there have been conflicting reports on whether the family wishes the ashes to remain in Los Angeles, in 2008, his great-grandson commented on the two known shrines at the Aga Kahn Palace and SRF Lake Shrine: 

Taking these out would require breaking the shrines which the family does not want. I hope there are no more out there. The family is aware that the ashes could be misused by politically motivated people and damage the Mahatma's name.

So for now, a little bit of this immortal leader rests in this quaint lakeside oasis, for all Angelinos to revere.

Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine

Das Streckbett (stretching ladder) (all photographs courtesy of the Kriminalmuseum des Mittelalters, sourced by Leipzig Tourismus)

If you were on a currywurst crawl through the backstreets of central Leipzig, Germany, you might never expect to find a rather grim museum up a dank, narrow staircase flanked by fast-food vendors, just around the corner from the birthplace of the composer Richard Wagner. I thought sitting through an entire Wagner opera was torture enough before I set eyes on some of the gruesome instruments housed at the Medieval Crime Museum (the Kriminalmuseum) on Nikolaistrasse.

Displayed in Leipzig since 2010, most of this astonishing private collection was sourced from Bohemia and dates back as far as the 1300s; though some wooden implements have been repaired or reconstructed, all metal parts are original. Visitors will hardly notice the creaking floorboards and rather kitsch wall-to-wall red crushed velvet with their eyes locked on these contraptions designed to inflict unimaginable pain, maim, and kill.

Staff were initially upset that I wanted to take photos, explaining they didn't want pictures to be taken out of context since the museum's stance is staunchly anti-violence. They relaxed as soon as I assured them I didn't think they actually liked torture, and were even happy for me to touch some of the wooden components, inviting me to pull down on a lever to gage the weight of the bade attached. (I could barely make it budge.)

Hexenstuhl  (witch-chair or interrogation chair, from a 17th-century original)

It’s not a particularly anglophone-friendly museum, but you don't need to read a plaque to feel squeamish about the foreboding machinery on show. Most items are accompanied by illustrations, woodcarvings, and prints from the era to show how bodies fit around and into various nooks, crannies, and spiky bits; it's not always self-explanatory. Details about the crimes that warranted the use of these contraptions are fascinating: the simple saw, it turns out, was a popular punishment for homosexuals.

There's a sort of beginner's torture kit with all the basics: the obligatory French guillotine, stocks for public humiliation (also known as a "shrew's fiddle") in which the constrained prisoners would endure the contents of chamber pots being smeared in their ears, and a stretching rack that dislocates the victims' shoulders as a prelude to the actual torture. As a non-German speaker, I reveled in the names for each device, which for all I'd know could have otherwise been Krautrock bands or types of marzipan: das Streckbett for the rack, or Hexenstuhl for the "witch" chair widely used for interrogations, studded with iron points that could be heated by fire for that little bit of extra discomfort.

The Scavenger's Daughter

My personal favorite looks like something that would go down well at an S&M party. Known enigmatically as the "stork" or "scavenger’s daughter," in use circa 1500-1650, this binding apparatus would cause muscle convulsions for hours or days on end. Try getting out of that, Copperfield.

Yep, that's the Breast Claw

One I’d least like to be used on me — though I’m not putting my hand up for anything else — is the "breast claw" (Brusthralle), 1300-1700. The pincers, cold or red hot, would be manipulated to mangle the breasts of unmarried mothers as well as women accused of heresy, white magic, abortion, and other female misdeeds.

So how does this place sustain itself in a small East German city like Leipzig? It is a town with a rich medieval history; Goethe's Faust was partly inspired by the author's favorite drinking den here (the 15th-century Auerbach's Keller), and Leipzig now boasts a thriving punk scene as well as the largest gothic festival in the world, the annual Wave-Gotik-Treffen.

The Kriminalmuseum collection does look a little like a goth's wishful Ikea catalogue: everything is rusted, rigid, unwieldy — certainly worse than anything I've seen in Game of Thrones. It was all used in real life, day-to-day, in small villages all over Europe. And as the museum's curator is keen to point out, ancient and barbaric as these apparatuses are, torture is still very much in practice around the world.

A Graf Zeppelin flying over the mountains (via SDASM Archives)

Zeppelins were the great helium hope of the early 20th century. Floating above the ground like silvery clouds, they represented an optimistic, international future of travel. However, deposed by the airplane and tarnished by epic disasters like the Hindenburg crash in 1937, the airships became obsolete. Now remains of their infrastructure linger like phantoms of an alternative future, from vacant gargantuan hangars to unused docks on the Empire State Building in New York and the InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile tower. Below are seven of these ghosts of airships. 

GOODYEAR AIRDOCK
Akron, Ohio

The Goodyear Airdock in 2009 (via Historic American Buildings Survey)

One of the impressive engineering feats of the airship age is the Goodyear Airdock in Akron, Ohio. Constructed in 1929, it's around 200 feet high and over 1,000 feet long. The cavernous interior generates its own weather, including sporadic rain. It was designed as a space for building dirigibles, which were released once completed by massive opening doors. It's now owned by Lockheed Martin and used mainly for storage.

The Goodyear Airdock in an archive photograph (a man is standing up at the top!) (via Historic American Buildings Survey)

Airship construction at the Goodyear Airdock in an archive photograph (via US Navy)

HANGAR ONE
Moffett Field, California

Hangar One in 2007 (photograph by FlyingToaster/Wikimedia)

At Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, Hangar One looms as one of the world's biggest freestanding buildings. Built in the 1930s, it sprawls over eight acres, giving it, like the Goodyear Airdock, a distinct weather that sometimes includes hovering fog. As a naval hangar, it housed the USS Macon — constructed at the Goodyear Airdock — but later became part of the NASA Ames Research Center. However, it underwent a massive restoration recently due to hazardous substances that necessitated cleaning, and is now being  being leased to Google's Planetary Ventures. Their plans include aviation projects along with robotic and space technology, potentially revitalizing the hangar for the next age of flight. 

Construction of Hangar One in the 1930s (via NASA/Ames Research Center)

The USS Macon in Hangar One (via NASA/Ames Research Center)

View of the USS Macon from Hangar One in 1934 (via US Navy)

TUSTIN BLIMP HANGARS
Tustin, California

Tustin Blimp Hangar in 2014 (photograph by Nandaro/Wikimedia)

In Tustin, California, two hangars covering nearly seven acres at the Marine Corps Air Station represent the Lighter-than-Air (LTA) Base set up in 1942 for World War II airship operations. Decommissioned following its military use, a new zeppelin project was recently underway by the Worldwide Aeros Corp to construct a new prototype blimp. Unfortunately, a roof collapse in 2013 reportedly wrecked the new dirigible "beyond repair." 

The air station when it was in military use (via the Tustin Area Historical Society)

Aerial view of the air station when it was in use (via the Tustin Area Historical Society)

AERIUM
Brandenburg, Germany

A water park in a former Luftwaffe air hangar (via Tropical Islands Resort)

Some airship hangars have entirely new lives far from aviation. The defunct Aerium hangar in Brandenburg, Germany, is now the extravagant Tropical Islands Resort. Originally built in 1938 for the Luftwaffe at almost 400 feet high and over 1,000 feet long, the water park opened in 2004 with an indoor rainforest and artificially sunny beach that can host 6,000 guests at a time. 

Inside Tropical Islands Resort (photograph by Immanuel Giel/Wikimedia)

Aerial view of Tropical Islands Resort (photograph by Bmalina/Wikimedia)

RIGA CENTRAL MARKET
Riga, Latvia

Panorama of Riga with the airship hangars (photograph by Andrey Upadyshev/Flickr)

Less ostentatious than Germany's indoor water park, four zeppelin hangars in Riga, Latvia, represent a different type of reuse. 3,000 vendors installed in 778,000 square feet of the defunct hangars represent one of Europe's largest indoor markets, a thriving example of recycling large scale, obsolete architecture. 

Inside the Riga Central Market (photograph by Charlie/Flickr)

Central Market in Riga (photograph by William Whyte/Flickr)

ZEPPELIN MUSEUM
Friedrichshafen, Germany

Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany (photograph by Daderot/Wikimedia)

Relics of zeppelin travel's brief heyday are preserved in Germany's Zeppelin Museum, located in Friedrichshafen where the Hindenburg was built. The museum houses a replica of the doomed airship's cabin alongside other historic collections. It's a rare trove of the optimism that characterized the early days of dirigible travel, when technology transformed more basic hot air balloons into huge passenger airships. 

Zeppelin cabin lounge reconstruction (photograph by Daderot/Wikimedia)

Zeppelin Museum (photograph by Gary A. Baratta/Wikimedia)

HINDENBURG CRASH SITE
Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey 

Hindenburg memorial site in 2007 (photograph by Paxswill/Wikimedia)

As for the belated Hindenburg, the great icon of zeppelin failure, it is remembered with a relatively humble memorial. At the site of its crash in New Jersey, a concrete outline represents where on May 6, 1937, 35 people were consumed by the flames of the airship's fiery collapse at Lakehurst Naval Air Station. (Designed for inflation with helium, it was instead filled with hydrogen, an earlier and more flammable zeppelin lifting agent.) The disaster wasn't the only nail in the airship coffin, but it certainly didn't instill a sense of security in the astonishing new form of aviation. 

The Hindenburg landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey, just before crashing in 1937 (via International News Photos)

Crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 (via Wide World Photos/Pathé)

Hindenburg memorial site (photograph by Mike Romano/Wikimedia)

The McBarge from Expo 86 in 2006 (photograph by Taz/Flickr)

Before the 2010 Winter Olympics, Expo '86 was the biggest event Vancouver, British Columbia, had ever produced. Held to celebrate the city's centennial, this world's fair is often credited as launching Vancouver into a major tourist destination. And while several stadiums and other buildings built for the event have served the city's civic life well enough in the years since (the SkyTrain and BC Place, for example), one rusting relic sits forlornly in a nearby inlet, despite ongoing attempts to save it.

The "McBarge," as it has been lovingly nicknamed, was built as either the world's first or second floating McDonald's (another was in St. Louis, and accounts differ). Officially named the Friendship 500, its construction was part of a strategic attempt by McDonald's to appeal to class-conscious Yuppie consumers who began increasingly rejecting chain restaurants during the 1980s. The reportedly $8 million construction (one of five McDonald's on the Expo site) featured a futuristic exterior and an interior with wooden floors, potted plants, wine-colored accents, and panoramic views of the Expo grounds.

The McBarge at Expo 86 (via Now I Know)

Inside the abandoned McBarge (photograph by Anna Rematore)

Unlike other McDonald's around town, the kitchen was well-hidden, and the food delivered to a front counter via conveyer belt. By all reports, the restaurant was a success: while it didn't exactly make McDonald's seem elegant, patrons enjoyed eating their burgers and fries on the water and watching the Expo unfold onshore. There was even a little boat called the Tidy Tug that went around collecting the plastic wrappers and cups frequently tossed into the water.

The Friendship 500 was meant to be portable, and McDonald's hoped to locate another site for it once the six-month Expo ended. But efforts to find a more permanent location failed, and in 1991, the new owners of the Expo site where the barge was moored asked the company to tow it elsewhere. The Friendship 500 was moved near an oil refinery in Burrard Inlet, and more or less forgotten about for at least a decade.

It was rediscovered in the early aughts, perhaps thanks in part to its use a filming location for Blade: Trinity. Developer Howard Meakin and his wife Kathy bought the boat in early 2010, and have submitted a proposal to the Mission, British Columbia, city council for a waterfront development that would use a refurbished McBarge as the centerpiece. The plan is to create a destination restaurant complex called Sturgeon's on the River, complete with several restaurants, a marina, and a seaplane terminal. According to discussions on the Sturgeon's on the Fraser Facebook group (formerly called “Save the McBarge”), the plan has local support, but is currently mired in bureaucratic red tape.

Meanwhile, the McBarge is a sorry memory of its former self these days. It's vandalized and graffitied, its walls and carpets transformed from sparkling Yuppie playhouse into a colorful constellation of rust, moss, and bird poop. Saving it will take a concentration of money, time, and cleaning chemicals, but Vancouver has been known to display a certain fondness for relics of the Expo, an event that was so important in making the city what it is today.

McBarge in 2008 (photograph by Ashley Fisher/Flickr)

McBarge in 2008 (photograph by Ashley Fisher/Flickr)

Inside the abandoned McBarge (photograph by Anna Rematore)

Inside the abandoned McBarge (photograph by Anna Rematore)

Inside the abandoned McBarge (photograph by Anna Rematore)

Inside the abandoned McBarge (photograph by Anna Rematore)

McBarge in 2008 (photograph by Ashley Fisher/Flickr)

Have you ever experienced that distinct feeling of rising terror when walking through the "girls' aisle" at a toy store? Or wanted to cower in fear at the idea of being dressed head-to-toe in PINK by Victoria Secret? In a deeply sociologically-motivated study, we set out to determine whether those dusky visions of Hell flitting before our eyes have root in the natural world, or the manmade. After extensive research, the answer to that particular question remains unclear, though one thing is certain: out in the wild, there’s good cause to fear the color pink. Here are five reasons. 

LAKE NATRON
Tanzania

Lake Natron in Africa from above (via NASA)

Generally speaking, lakes are among Earth’s lovelier features. Yet Lake Natron at the border of Kenya and Tanzania is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. The lake is a simmering hell-pit of all that could go wrong in a body of water.

Salt-loving cyanobacteria lend the lake a pinkish-orange hue while making the water itself nearly as basic as ammonia. If that weren't enough, temperatures inside the lake hover at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, making Lake Natron thoroughly non-potable in every way possible. On the aesthetic side of things, the blindingly monochromatic landscape is helped out by 2.5 million flamingos that call Lake Natron home for god-knows-what-reason, compounding the crucial pink element in a hyperbolic fashion.

BRUGMANSIA FLOWERS
Worldwide

Brugmansia (photograph by Denish C/Flickr)

Sure, children go through a phase where they learn about new things by putting them in their mouth, but so do teenagers and hippies. Enter: brugmansia. The entirety of this exotic houseplant with pretty pink flowers is toxic, but its hallucinogenic punch hasn't deterred generations from experimenting.

According to all accounts, tripping on it is like roulette: you either surivive with a mostly terrible experience  — like the guy who, according to Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, amputated his penis and tongue after drinking a single cup of flower tea  — or you end up one of the hundreds of Floridians admitted to hospitals each year as a result of brugmansia-alkaloid poisoning. The family of plant exists worldwide and, for reasons that make sense given its extremely high toxcicity, has only been sparingly incorporated into indigenous practices. One of the more chilling in Bogogta involved dosing women and slaves with a mixture of brugmansia, beer, and tobacco then burying them alive alongside their masters. Long story short: nothing good comes of these flowers, even when they don't kill you. Run away.

APPLE SNAIL EGGS
Worldwide

Are you a fire ant? Didn’t think so. Then do not tarry here; Neurotoxins a-go-go. (photograph by Matthew Paulson/Flickr)

Just think of the apple snail as a slimy version of the grim reaper, scattering bright pink eggs like hand grenades across the land. Each egg sack is laced with one of the most universally deadly neurotoxins of all, thanks to a molecular compound that mimics the immune system of other animals.

The only creature immune to the eggs' poison is the fire ant. That’s it. Meanwhile, the embryonic snails contained therein convert the neurotoxic goo into the nutrients they need to hatch and prosper, meaning these snails are basically powered by death.

CERRO FITZ ROY
Border of Argentina and Chile

Cerro Fitz Roy's pink alpenglow at sunrise (photograph by Lior Shani/Wikimedia)

This mountain has a million ways to kill you, but none of them directly are a result of its renowned pinkness. We’re still fine with that, so it gets to stay on our list.

With a summit guarded on all sides by steep rock faces that demand the most difficult, technical climbing to ascend, Cerro Fitz Roy regularly makes the list of most dangerous mountains on Earth. The true source of peril for climbers lies in Patagonia's legendarily unpredictable weather and supreme isolation. Everything about this mountain is extremely dangerous, and its famed pink alpenglow is merely the icing on the cake for your survival. But get caught staring at that rosy light and it will surely be the death of you! 

FOUNTAIN PAINT POTS
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Yellowstone's Fountain Paint Pots (photograph by rachel dale/Flickr)

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming is a hotbed wonder, home to half of the world's geothermal features. But all that geothermal splendor has a dark side, and the Lower Geyser Basin's Fountain Paint Pots are the perfect place to find out what it would be like to drown in roiling Pepto Bismol.

While not quite as deadly as a supremely ill-advised swim in the park’s hot pots, walking anywhere near the mud’s crusty edges, which are prone to unexpectedly breaking underfoot, can leave you flailing in pink mineral mud, heated to scalding by the Earth's core. All-over skin grafts from pink mud: that’s the kind of super painful, best-case-scenario story you'd be stuck telling forever.

Boiling pink Paint Pots (photograph by Tony Hisgett/Flickr)

Sincere tip of the hat to Maggie Ryan Sanford for her contributions to this list.

Know of a deadly pink thing we missed? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

There are many legends about cities consumed by the waves. Every civilization has its Atlantis story, its deluge myth. Then there are the cities we have chosen to drown. Sometimes only the spires of submerged churches point above the water, to serve as reminders of those lost places.

Bell tower of a church in Lake Reschen, Italy (photograph by Sander van der Wel/Wikimedia)

In the modern era, our continued population movement into urban areas has led to an increased need for water in environments that simply cannot provide enough. Our solution? Dams. Unfortunately, in order to create reservoirs large enough for cities like New York, Shanghai, or Los Angeles, entire valleys need to be flooded, and in the early 20th century, little consideration was given to the populations of these valleys, whether human or animal.

Perhaps the most famous of these drowned towns is the "Lion City" of Shi Cheng in China. An ancient city, Shi Cheng dates back hundreds of years, and is now beneath the waters of Qiandao Lake. The city was drowned in 1959 to provide a reservoir for a hydroelectric dam, and now the white stone buildings seem to glow beneath the water.

Church of the old Petrolândia (photograph by Andre Estima/Flickr)

Old Petrolândia in Brazil is another drowned town, although it is nowhere near as well preserved as the Lion City. It was lost during the 1950s and 60s when vast construction programs and modernization works sprang up across Brazil. Critical to these advances was the construction of huge dams, to supply both hydroelectric power and vast reservoirs of fresh water. Entire towns were built as housing for those working on these construction projects, only to later be lost beneath the water.  

Another drowned community in South America can now be seen again, as the reservoir that submerged it has shrunk, thanks to a drought blamed on El Niño. Potosí, Venezuela, was evacuated and then flooded in 1985, and has since been slowly uncovered again. At the time of its drowning, the city was home to 1,200 people. The image of the rising cross from a surviving church in the water was symbolic for the former inhabitants of the town, marking the location of their abandoned homes. 

Cross of the drowned church of Potosí in 2005 (photograph by Juan Tello/Flickr)

Potosí revealed in 2009 (photograph by Edprada/Wikimedia)

In the United States there are a number of towns swamped by progress. St. Thomas, Nevada, was founded as a Mormon settlement in 1865. It was flooded beneath Lake Mead, the reservoir that formed behind the Hoover Dam when it was completed in 1936. The remains of St. Thomas are visible again, as the water levels in Lake Mead are now low enough for the town to be almost as dry as before.

Perhaps the largest number of submerged towns in the United States are in New York State, with the construction of a number of dams and reservoirs over the years, particularly for New York City. Of the towns consumed to feed Gotham's need for water, the most ironically named would have to be Neversink, now beneath the waters of the Neversink Reservoir. A new iteration of the town was built on higher ground above the reservoir when construction began in 1941. 

Vilarinho das Furnas in ruins (photograph by Benkeboy/Wikimedia)

However, it's not always modern settlement that's lost, as we've already shown with China. In Italy, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Macedonia, and Russia there are dozens of architecturally beautiful and (in some cases) historically important towns beneath reservoirs. In Portugal, the village of Vilarinho das Furnas was flooded in 1972 — after more than 2,000 years of occupation. Vilarinho das Furnas is estimated to have been founded in 70 AD, as Roman roads were being constructed through the region.

San Romà de Sau, Spain (photograph by Roberto Al/Flickr)

In Spain, the town of San Romà de Sau, which was more than 1,000 years old, was flooded in the 1960s. Also found in Spain is the opposite of a drowned town: the Temple of Debod. Donated by the Egyptian government as a way of thanking the Spanish for helping to repair the temples of Abu Simbel, the Temple of Debod was due to be flooded beneath the Aswan Dam. It now stands in Madrid. 

Templo de Debod, Madrid (photograph by Andrew J. Kurbiko/Wikimedia)

In Asia, and in India in particular, there are a number of temples and other sites that have been submerged, mostly through natural causes. However, the Jal Mahal (Water Palace) is a beautiful example of an architectural marvel lost to the need for water. The exact age of the palace is undetermined, although it predates the 16th century. The reservoir in which the palace now sits was dammed in the 16th century, to combat drought in the region, and the water level keeps the lower four levels of the palace beneath the water.

The Jal Mahal palace (via by the Jal Mahal Project)

We now live in an age where cities and towns are less likely to be drowned beneath dams and reservoirs — but will the rising sea levels promised to us through global warming provide new sunken cities? Urban areas like New York, Mumbai, Tokyo, and other major cities are below the predicted sea level rises of the future. These cities may even someday provide future archaeologists and historians with time capsules for looking into life of the 21st century.