An early version of ethical consumption.

Around 1828, a handful of British publications contained a very unusual advertisement. A certain B. Henderson wanted to inform the "Friends of Africa" that her china warehouse in England was selling assorted basins for sugar. These basins came emblazoned with bright golden letters, which read "East India sugar not made by slaves."

Several such sugar bowls still exist, including the above one from the British Museum. They were part of a widespread movement in Britain and beyond to boycott products produced by slaves in the Caribbean. Slavery had made sugar products widely affordable for the first time in history. By the late 18th century, it was Britain's largest import. But for some Britons, the harsh reality behind their cheap sugar was unconscionable. Starting in the late 18th century, abolitionists called for sugar boycotts to undercut slavery.

The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade led the charge for decades. In 1787, the same year the association was founded, the potter Josiah Wedgwood released a famous design that would appear on cameos (a type of jewelry), medallions, and abolitionist china: a kneeling slave pleading for freedom, often accompanied with the phrase "Am I Not A Man and a Brother?" In 1788, William Cowper, Britain's most famous poet at the time, sniped at those who stayed neutral, writing:

I own I am shock'd at the purchase of slaves,

And fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves;

What I hear of their hardships, their tortures, and groans,

Is almost enough to draw pity from stones.

I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,

For how could we do without sugar and rum?

The next year, Olaudah Equiano published his memoirs, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, one of the first widely read chronicles of slavery by a freed former slave. At the same time, abolitionists distributed hugely popular pamphlets that explained to sugar consumers that their sweets were directly connected to slavery. By 1791, hundreds of thousands had signed anti-slavery petitions, and when an abolition bill brought to Parliament failed, activists kickstarted a massive sugar boycott. It was one of the earliest economic boycotts in history.

By 1792, some 400,000 Britons were either abstaining from sugar or sourcing it from India. (Many consumers believed that East Indian sugar, while still produced in grim conditions, was preferable to sugar produced under slavery.) James Wright, a Quaker shopkeeper, advertised that he would no longer sell sugar, "till I can procure it through channels less contaminated, more unconnected with slavery, less polluted with human blood." Pro-slavery politicians soon complained that the popular press was against them.

These campaigns, however, didn't destroy the vast slave-sugar industry. Even after the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act banned the purchase and sale of enslaved people in 1807, many British slavers defied the new law. They continued trading slaves across the Atlantic, sometimes simply by sailing under a different flag.

Yet historian Clare Midgley argues that sugar-abstainers permanently tied sugar to slavery in the public mind. When sugar produced by enslaved people continued to pour into the country, it inspired another boycott in the 1820s, as well as B. Henderson's abolitionist sugar bowls. After more furious campaigning, Parliament passed the Slave Emancipation Act in 1833, which gradually ended British slavery in the Caribbean.

The eerie windows of one Romanian town are watching for political corruption.

In Sibiu, Romania, the houses are watching. Up on the rooftops, narrow windows are slit into the shingles, with dark openings at their center. They were designed to ventilate attics where meat, cheese, and grain were stored, without letting much sunlight through.

These windows look unnervingly like eyes, giving the houses a chilling, anthropomorphic gaze. And in the past months, they have become a symbol of protest in Romania, under the banner “Vă vedem”—“We see you.”

Starting in the winter months of 2017, hundreds of thousands of people in Romania came out to protest, after a newly elected government moved to decriminalize corruption and put laws into place that could help politicians escape investigation. According to Transparency International, Romania is one of the most corrupt countries in the European Union and those February protests were some of the largest in Romanian history. That slogan, Vă vedem, appeared on their streets under suspicious, slanted eyes.

Almost a year later, in December 2017, protests continued, and in Sibiu, where the Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis, had served four terms as mayor, a group of protesters adopted the “Sibiu eyes” as their logo. Sibiu is one of country’s cultural capitals and more developed cities. The silent protestors said their were creating a “corruption free area” with the Sibiu eyes as a symbol of their continued vigilance. Allies sent photos of the Sibiu eyes symbol from all over the world—people were watching from Berlin, Paris, and London, Chicago and Canada, Singapore, Sydney, and Kuala Lumpur.

The political controversy that sparked these protests has not gone away. Just in the past weeks, President Iohannis fired the head of the National Anticorruption Directorate and parliament pushed forward changes to the criminal code that would limit prosecution of abuses of political office. The protests in Sibiu and elsewhere are continuing, though they’re nowhere near the scale of the marches in 2017. In Sibiu, there is a silent protest every day at noon, with the Vă vedem banner and the Sibiu eyes there to witness everything that’s happening.

A restaurant job turned into a collecting passion.

We've all fiddled with our chopstick wrappers when eating out at an Asian restaurant. Creating a chopstick stand is common; folding the paper wrapper into a crane is a bit more advanced. In Japan, the practice is particularly widespread. So much so that six years ago, Yuki Tatsumi began collecting the little origami sculptures left behind, and now has around 15,000.

The massive project had a humble beginning. "My interest in collecting started when I was studying at university and working part-time at a restaurant," says Tatsumi, who is now 27. As a "poor, hungry student," he found clearing tables tedious. But one day, he picked up a tiny paper circle fashioned by a customer. It had been "transformed into a work of art," Tatsumi says, and he was so struck by it that he slipped it into his pocket. He started keeping an eye out for chopstick wrapper origami and picking them off tabletops.

Soon, it became a passion. Tipping isn't a common practice in Japan, but Tatsumi came to consider the tiny works of art as a symbol of appreciation from diners. "What I once considered trash had now become a treasure, a tip from the customer!" he says, adding that many Japanese people are taught origami as children. Keeping an eye out for the little sculptures made his job more enjoyable, and his collection grew to the point that he decided to go all-in. He called the project Japanese Tip, and traveled around Japan collecting chopstick-wrapper origami from restaurants. Some restaurateurs, Tatsumi told one news network, were befuddled that he wanted something destined for the trash. Yet in a year and a half, he collected 13,000 pieces. He's still gathering them today, and currently has "about 15,000."

Some of the pieces he's gathered appear on his website. The designs range from flowers to dogs to geometric shapes: anything that can be created with a long, thin paper wrapper. "There are many birds," Tatsumi says. Colors range from simple white to vibrant yellow, with some pieces carefully folded to highlight lettering or the wrapper's printed design. Some are crude, while others have an elegance that belies their humble origins.

When hundreds of chopstick-wrapper origami are displayed together, the effect is extraordinary. While he is currently working in an aged-care facility in Kyoto, Tatsumi has started exhibiting the collection in Japan, with pieces pinned against white walls like so many colorful butterflies. In September 2018, Japanese Tip will leave the country for the first time and appear in South Korea. So there's plenty of time to practice your chopstick-wrapper origami skills if Japanese Tip comes to a city near you.

May Wah Vegetarian Market in Chinatown has everything from squid to beef.

One of the most unassuming landmarks in New York's Chinatown is a 23-year-old grocery shop with a bright green awning. Its frozen aisles are filled with chicken wings, pork belly, and spot prawns.

But these are no run-of-the-mill meats. In fact, they’re not meats at all—but rather mushrooms, soybeans, and cognac (a Japanese yam flower), all shaped and flavored to behave exactly like animal protein. In this world of Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat, plant-based meat may seem like a new phenomenon. But it's actually a centuries-old tradition, popularized by Buddhism and Taoism, and this shop, May Wah Vegetarian Market, has long been a prime destination for those seeking impressively analogous meat substitutes.

Many Buddhists and Taoists believe in doing no harm to living things, and correspondingly follow a vegetarian diet. In several parts of East Asia, meat-based cuisines have long dominated. So, several centuries ago, many temple kitchens, whose cooks were skilled in pastries and noodles, started coming up with creative substitutions. They would mold soybeans into exact replicas of cooked duck breasts (complete with the scored skin), meld mushrooms into plump pieces of mutton, and sculpt cognac into a whole fish that flaked just like the real thing.

In Taiwan, where Buddhism and Taoism are the most commonly practiced religions, many restaurants that serve meat will automatically sell a mock meat version of every dish. “Even if you go to a 7-Eleven, the fake meat will be available, next to any meat,” says Lily Ng, the operating manager of May Wah Vegetarian Market. Her mother, Lee Mee Ng, started the market in 1995. Lee Mee and Lily immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan in 1979, and are both Taoists. Frustrated by the lack of vegetarian options in New York, Lee Mee decided to open a shop dedicated entirely to the mock meats that she felt homesick for.

At the time, according to Lily, only one vegetarian restaurant existed in Chinatown; plant-based eating had yet to hit the cultural zeitgeist. Business was rough in the first few years. “People didn’t believe in our stuff, and thought it was weird,” says Lily. “We were giving things out for free just to convince people.” Even the local Taoist and Buddhist populations were hesitant about mock meat. “They had gotten so used to eating just vegetables in the U.S.,” explains Lily, “So they were iffy about our stuff.”

Then, as the new millennium hit, vegetarianism suddenly became trendy. PETA and other animal activist groups started reaching out to May Wah about partnerships. Around then, May Wah also launched an e-commerce store—becoming one of the first Chinese grocers in the area to do so. “We just kind of blew up,” says Lily. Soon, the shop was packed with not just Buddhists and Taoists looking to stock up on mock duck, but vegetarians of all stripes.

The Ngs work with a Taiwan-based manufacturing company called Chin Hsin Foods, which ensures that the mock meat they are getting is as good as it is back home. She has tried a few of the longstanding American brands of imitation meats, such as Morningstar Farms, but “the texture is a bit off,” Lily says. “The package looks good, but once you open it, it is just a lump.”

By contrast, at May Wah, the chicken nuggets (made with soy protein) have the exact same fibers you’ve come to expect when pulling apart a McNugget. The shrimp, made with cognac, has that familiar curvy shape, pinkish hue, and soft crunch—plus the fishy taste of shrimp, thanks to the addition of seaweed. Even the drumsticks, also made with soy protein, have a bone in them (made of wood, of course). Craving shark fin? May Wah has you covered with its plant-based gelatin version.

The storefront started as a tiny, 400-square-foot space, and has slowly expanded throughout the years to over double that size. The lime green walls match the awning, the cash registers are decorated by string lights, and the shelves are meticulously organized by product type—jerky, seafood, hams, bacons—each package adorned with a different-colored label. Interestingly, the section dedicated to tofu—the most well-known meat substitute in Asian cuisine to many—is by far the smallest.

Every year, Lily and her mother go to Taiwan to meet with Chin Hsin Foods, discuss potential new products, and test prototypes. On a recent trip, they tried out an egg yolk substitute made of soybean and tofu. “That was really, really bad,” says Lily, making a face. “The texture and taste was really weird. We were like, ‘No, this is not going to sell at all.’”

Over time, the customer base has expanded beyond just Asian customers. Lily says that the shop now works with a variety of individuals, restaurants, and grocers. One of her favorite parts of her job, she says, is seeing how creative different people get with the product. Guyanese people, she says, use May Wah’s mutton (made of mushroom) to make a version of oxtail stew, and the spot prawns to make coconut shrimp. Indians use the mock chicken to make biryani and korma. One particularly inventive customer thinly sliced the mock pork belly (the white, fatty layer is made of cognac, and the meat layer is made of soybean), smoked it, and made prosciutto.

Joel Capolongo, the co-owner of the vegan spot Strong Hearts Café, in Syracuse, uses May Wah’s products at his restaurant, as well as at the food stand he runs at the New York State Fair. “We didn’t know how vegan food was going to do at an event where people eat bacon-wrapped, deep-fried stuff,” he says, but May Wah’s vegan chicken wings, which he batter-fries and coats with barbecue and buffalo sauce, were instantly popular. “I have never had anything so similar to meat,” he says. “The taste and texture is spot on.”

As mainstream, American discourse on vegan food remains primarily dominated by white people, Lily is quick to clarify that while the store does serve a broad audience, “we are in Chinatown, so we want everything to be most convenient and recognizable to Asian communities.” This ranges from the types of products to the look of the store to the languages spoken by the staff. “Our top priority is our products, which are Asian food,” she adds.

Richard Lau, who owns Panda Garden in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, heard of May Wah through a friend. When he sold a version of General Tso’s Chicken made with May Wah’s textured soybean-based mock chicken, the dish was so popular with customers that he created an entire vegetarian menu centered around the market’s mock meats. He claims that the meat-free menu at one point accounted for 30 percent of all sales at the restaurant. “I’m not even a vegetarian, but the taste is very good, pretty healthy, and so close to real meat,” he says.

As vegan food only grows more popular, business at May Wah has been steady, says Lily, and the shop continues to introduce new products. The Ngs are working on rolling out more gluten-free items, made with mushrooms and cognac instead of soybeans, to keep up with current trends. You can now buy mock barbecue ribs, scallops, and soon, crab cakes, at the store.

The Ngs don’t feel threatened by forces such as the Impossible Burger and other Silicon Valley-backed creations, either. “My mom finds it hilarious and fascinating that all these people are just making burgers,” says Lily. “She is like, ‘Why don’t they make other stuff?’ Yeah, you all can do burgers. We’ll make everything else.”

Think Citgo in Boston or Amoco in St. Louis—tell us about your favorites!

Looking across the water from Manhattan to the Long Island City neighborhood in Queens, you sure do crave a Pepsi. While the huge bottling plant that used to operate here is long gone, its monumental “Pepsi-Cola” sign remains. Today it's more local icon than advertisement—the sign was granted landmark status in 2016.

All over the world, historic advertisements and signs have outlasted their original purpose and evolved into landmarks that are worth saving—and we want to hear about your favorites! St. Louis, Missouri, has its massive Amoco sign, which now sits atop a BP. Stockholm, Sweden, has held on to a giant neon toothbrush that once advertised Stomatol toothpaste. And in Boston, locals love their Citgo sign so much that they recently fought to save it.

If you have a favorite old sign or ad that has evolved into an important local landmark, please tell us about it via the form below. Even better, if you have any terrific images of your favorite landmark sign, please email them to eric@atlasobscura.com with the subject line, “Landmark Signage.” Please send high resolution images if possible (though feel free to send as many versions as you'd like). We’ll feature our favorite submissions in an upcoming article.

One blueprint gave California two totally different landmarks.

If you visited Hollywood, California, you would likely walk by the Chinese Theater and try to avoid the heckling, slightly off-trademark superheroes cajoling people for tips. If you pushed through the tourist-laden crowds and walked a couple of blocks north, you might also glimpse a turreted building nestled at the foot of the Hollywood Hills with the words “The Magic Castle” emblazoned in front. If you were lucky enough to know a member and get inside this private club, you would be dazzled by its five bars adorned with oddities such as stuffed owls and a miniature floating blimp, as well as its four theaters that range in size from 26 seats (for intimate, close-up magic) to 130 seats (for stage magic).

If you traveled 80 miles east of Hollywood to the small, palm tree-lined town of Redlands, you might stumble across Kimberly Crest, an elegant mansion inspired by 16th-century French chateaus and surrounded by a little over six acres of manicured gardens. If you happened to be there on a day they gave tours, you could walk through the house’s well-preserved rooms, which reflect the rich life of the family that had lived there for three-quarters of a century.

What you might not realize, however, is that these two landmarks—the Magic Castle and Kimberly Crest—started out as nearly identical buildings.

But nothing remains static. Over the last century, California has changed, and these buildings have changed with it, becoming two distinct landmarks that represent two different towns. Their paths diverged early in their histories, causing their very architecture to shift in ways that reflected their residents and the community around them.

How they each got to their current state is a story in itself.

1897-1909: The Beginning

It began in 1897 in Redlands, California. Cornelia Hill, a well-to-do woman who had traveled across the globe, moved to the area from New York’s Hudson Valley after losing her husband and at least three of her six daughters to tuberculosis. She bought three-and-a-half acres on a hill and had the home built that same year for $13,000. The building was in the châteauesque style, inspired by the castles that dotted Europe in the 16th century. This elaborate house was the only one of its kind in Redlands (one of the few on the West Coast, in fact) and was surrounded by a citrus grove that covered most of the land, save for a fountain and a small lawn.

Hill didn’t spend many years in the house, however, and in 1905 she sold it to John Alfred Kimberly for $29,000. Kimberly was one of the founders of the multinational personal care company Kimberly-Clark, and he and his wife Helen moved from Wisconsin to Redlands, ostensibly to retire. The mansion soon became known as Kimberly Crest, and the couple did a few immediate renovations, including enclosing an outside portico and removing most of the citrus groves to put in Italian-style gardens.

Soon after the Kimberlys settled in Redlands, they became acquainted with Rollin Lane, another Wisconsin native who was an officer at the local bank. In addition to knowing each other through business (Lane was likely involved in the deal in which the Kimberlys bought the house), the Lanes knew the Kimberlys socially; an article from the time talked about Rollin and his wife Katherine winning a card tournament at a party held in the Kimberlys honor.

According to the architectural historian George Siegel, Lane liked Kimberly Crest so much that he used its blueprints when he built his own house in Los Angeles. The Lane Residence, which was commonly called the Holly Chateau, was completed in 1909 on a small notch of land carved out of a larger tract that encompassed the hill that rises abruptly behind the house. Given its smaller lot size, the building did not have gardens on the same scale as Kimberly Crest and was surrounded by commercial lots and residential plots for more modest homes.

At first, the only major difference between the two structures was that, for unknown reasons, the large tower and the turret on the south side of the buildings were swapped.

1910-1945: Two Prestigious Private Residences

The first few decades of the houses were similar, with both the Lanes and the Kimberlys holding parties with the other socialites in their respective towns.

At the Holly Chateau, little of note happened during this time, save for Katherine Lane entertaining people ranging from children at a local orphanage to the president of the Hollywood Women’s Club. At Kimberly Crest, the family oversaw some additions to the estate. In 1925, they constructed an additional bedroom that enclosed part of a second-floor porch. This bedroom was a refuge for John Alfred Kimberly, who was in poor health.

Kimberly died in 1928; his wife Helen followed him a few years later in 1931. With the death of the Kimberlys, ownership of the estate went to their daughter Mary Kimberly Shirk, who had lived at the house since 1920 to help her aging parents. Shirk oversaw and resided in Kimberly Crest for almost 60 years, and became a well-known figure in town. “Some people called her the Queen of Redlands,” says Larry Munz, member of the Board of Trustees of the Kimberly-Shirk Association, a non-profit that runs the estate. Shirk did a lot for the area over the decades, including stepping in as the President of Scripps College in Claremont during World War II.

1945-1960: Their Paths Diverge

Rollin and Katherine Lane lived longer than the Kimberlys, but passed away in 1940 and 1945 respectively. While Kimberly Crest stayed under the steady ownership of Shirk (the most significant change to the Redlands mansion during this time was the addition of an elevator in 1951), the Holly Chateau experienced a tumultuous few years.

After Katherine Lane’s death, ownership of the house went to their son, Rollin Lane, Jr. “The house by then was 35 years old,” says Siegel, who has studied the history of the Lane Residence/Holly Chateau. “It was not in good repair, and Rollin Jr. wanted to get rid of it, but he was having trouble finding a buyer. In order to help defray the costs of keeping the building up, he decided to turn it into a rooming house.”

From 1946 to 1948, Rollin Jr. continued to try to sell the building, much to the chagrin of his tenants, who were a mix of young artists and students benefiting from the building’s low rent.

“The people who lived here were getting very low rent and wanted to hold on to that as long as they could,” Siegel says. Certain tenants were more creative than others in trying to prevent Rollin Jr. from selling. “Whenever tours came through with prospective buyers,” Siegel explains, “this one woman named Tish would go to the laundry chutes and make ghost noises and claim that the place was haunted and full of bugs, and that everybody had tuberculosis. She did everything she could to chase people away.”

Tish’s efforts aside, Rollin Jr. managed to lease the building in 1948 to a woman named Patricia Hogan, who reopened it as “Franklyn Castle” and advertised it as a 10-room apartment building or hotel, which was a bit of a stretch given the layout of the house. As Siegel explains, “The individual rooms had been bedrooms. Half of them had shared bathrooms; they had no kitchen facilities. It did not really qualify as apartments, even in a basic sense, and perhaps not in a legal sense.”

Legal or not, Franklyn Castle quickly closed as Hogan had several outstanding debts she wasn’t paying. Rollin Jr. continued to own it from 1949 to 1955, but instead of a rooming house, he advertised it as a convalescent home or a home for the elderly. In 1955, Rollin Jr. finally sold the building to Thomas Glover, a real estate developer in the area. From then until 1961, the usage of the building is a bit murky, and at different periods, it was either vacant or used as a home for people living with mental disabilities.

1961-1980: The Metamorphosis Into the Magic Castle

In 1961, Milt and Bill Larsen made a deal with Glover for the former Holly Chateau. The brothers planned to use the building as a private club for the Academy of Magical Arts, a magician association they founded around the same time. In 1963, after extensive clean-up of the building, the newly renamed Magic Castle opened its doors.

The Magic Castle went through dramatic changes over the years, many of which are explained in detail in the book The Magic Castle: Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors by Carol Marie. Some of the most significant construction in the first few years included enclosing the waiting area for the Close-Up Room (a small theater housed in the large tower of the building) and extending the dining room to encompass the porch over the old main entrance.

In 1969, the second floor of the castle saw the construction of the Mezzanine Owl Bar—a bar covered with, you guessed it, owls—from an enclosed portico, the same portico that the Kimberlys enclosed on their building in the early 1900s. In the same year on the same floor, the Castle also built the Houdini Séance Room, a unique dining experience, séance included, that sits in the same place where Shirk’s bedroom was in Kimberly Crest.

The largest piece of construction during this time, however, took place in 1976 when the Castle grew to encompass the two-story parking structure next to it.

The initial expansion into the parking garage was temporary, and was done to meet last-minute capacity constraints for a booked party. The Larsens, however, decided to make it a permanent fixture and enclosed the entire parking structure. The parking lot now houses three theaters and two bars, including the Palace Theater, the largest venue in the club that rests in the middle of the former parking space, and the Parlour of Prestidigitation, a 58-seat room with a larger-than-life statue of a topless woman welcoming you into the show.

1980s-Today: Two Separate Landmarks

When Shirk died in 1979, she left Kimberly Crest to the “people of Redlands.” To this day, the estate is managed by the Kimberly-Shirk Association, which holds events throughout the year and offers tours of the building. It is adjacent to Prospect Park, a 39-acre area of conserved land, which gives Kimberly Crest a peaceful, idyllic setting. The estate is now an indelible part of Redlands. Locals with children of their own remember spending time there as a child, and the community congregates for events like the annual Christmas Tree Lighting (they now light an exceedingly tall palm tree on the property, as the old magnolia tree used in previous years became too large to light).

The Magic Castle has had its own recent changes, the most significant of which was a fire in 2011 that required some rebuild. Today, the neighborhood around the building is one of the busiest in Los Angeles, and the Castle stands as an appropriate landmark that reflects the quirkiness and whimsy of Hollywood. The structure, which continues to be the private club for members of the Academy of Magical Arts, is also a destination for the magic community, a place where magicians around the world dream of visiting and performing. One only has to visit the Castle to see its success; on any given evening, hundreds of members and their guests flock to the club, eager to explore the building’s eclectic decor and enjoy a night of wonder.

And while the two buildings have become two distinct landmarks, the drive of the people who influenced them—the Kimberlys, the Lanes, and the Larsens—are similar. “You have a whole string of energetic, ambitious, creative people who are not just out for fame and reward,” Siegel says. “They wanted to get things done.”

Their accomplishments and their histories live on through the landmarks so intimately connected to their lives. But these buildings—Kimberly Crest and the Magic Castle—have become more than a reflection of those few who have lived in them. As the years have passed, they’ve become something more: an embodiment of the ever-changing communities around them.

Native Land highlights territories, treaties, and languages across the U.S., Canada, and beyond.

For centuries, Indigenous peoples and their traditional territories have been purposefully left off maps by colonizers as part of a sustained campaign to delegitimize their existence and land claims. Interactive mapping website Native Land does the opposite, by stripping out country and state borders in order to highlight the complex patchwork of historic and present-day Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages that stretch across the United States, Canada, and beyond.

Visitors to the site can enter a street address or ZIP code into the map’s search bar to discover whose traditional territory their home was built on. White House officials will discover that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is found on the overlapping traditional territories of the Pamunkey and Piscataway tribes. Tourists will learn that the Statue of Liberty was erected on Lenape land, and aspiring lawyers that Harvard was erected in a place first inhabited by the Wamponoag and Massachusett peoples.

The map, which is also a mobile app for Apple and Android, was created by a Canadian programmer named Victor Temprano, who started educating himself about Indigenous land rights and ownership when he got involved in anti-pipeline activism in British Columbia three years ago.

“The map is really about me, as a settler, trying to educate other settlers, to plant a seed in their historical consciousness,” he says. “I want it to get the message to people who don’t already agree with me already, who don’t think about this stuff. People who haven’t thought about Indigenous history or Indigenous land ownership.”

Temprano lives in Vancouver, a city built on the traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Like most of mainland B.C., the land is unceded, meaning that it was never officially signed away or won through treaty and war. (The British neglected to negotiate treaties with the estimated 40,000 Indigenous people living in the colony of B.C. when they declared it the property of the Crown in 1858.)

Temprano started collecting information about the territories around him in B.C in 2015, and Native Land grew from there, first across the rest of Canada and into the U.S., and then to parts of Latin America and Australasia.

Maintaining the map is no small feat; older areas are continually reworked and edited based on community feedback. Temprano estimates that over the last three years, he has received thousands of emails from people with suggestions of fixes. He spends between 10 to 15 hours a week on the non-profit project, and recently hired two employees, one for social media and the other for research.

“I’m surprised how much people are willing to forgive the problems with the map,” Temprano says. “I often worry about how good our sources are, if we're being transparent, if we are potentially misrepresenting histories. Occasionally, people acknowledge those criticisms, but for the most part the feedback has been very encouraging.” The most common issues flagged are omissions and the incorrect labelling or grouping together of nations or territories.

Sourcing is a challenge, given that different recorded, written, and oral histories clash. Indigenous maps of Indigenous territories, which Temprano obtains online or in collaboration with a group or nation member, surpass all other sources. Next are the email fixes and personal requests. Failing that, Temprano turns to dedicated academic studies of a particular nation that rely on meticulous cross-referencing and book sources. Old colonial maps come last because, Temprano explains,“they are usually full of mislabeling and misdrawing of territory.”

At the end of the day, disparities between sources are inevitable—but that’s okay, Temprano says, because the map’s fundamental goal is not to accurately pinpoint territories for legal or academic purposes. Instead, it is to encourage visitors to engage with “the broader narrative and think: What is colonization? Are there Indigenous people here, and who are they?”

(If the map were to be a valid academic resource, he adds, it would also need a time slider to specify different time periods, separate existing and historical nations, and highlight the movement of nations across time. That would be a huge logistical challenge, Temprano says, requiring time, sources, and resources not currently available to him.)

One person who reached out to Temprano with a fix was Leena Minifie, a journalist, media artist, and filmmaker from the Gispwudwada (Killerwhale) clan of the Gitxaala Nation in Tsimshian territory. While Temprano had accurately mapped the parts of Tsimshian territory on the coast of B.C., he had omitted its extension into the southern tip of Alaska. “I sent some evidence—I had some links and murals to show him what I was talking about,” Minifie says. “He was very appreciative, and changed it right away.”

She will soon become a member of Native Land’s board of directors, which will be finalized next month and comprise Indigenous individuals with expertise in mapping, geographic research, and forming and advising nonprofit Indigenous organizations. According to Temprano, the board will help him determine Native Land’s future direction, keep him “accountable in terms of continuing to grow and build the organization,” and advise him on complex questions like “who should be on the map—who is Indigenous.”

Like Temprano, Minifie sees the map as an educational tool, but has different ideas about its primary audience. While she acknowledges the project’s value for non-natives and newcomers to the U.S. and Canada, she believes the map is a cultural tool that enables Indigenous individuals, communities, and their allies to continue a centuries-old Indigenous tradition of verbally acknowledging whose traditional land they are on when visiting places in the Canada and the U.S., a practice that is particularly important when visiting other Indigenous nations.

“Knowing who your neighbors are and which territory you are in not only shows respect and follows protocol, but its part and parcel of our basic social mores when we go anywhere. We always ask: Whose territory is this?” says Minifie.

Land acknowledgements are increasingly common at events on university campuses and in progressive spaces in Canada. Last year, on the 150th anniversary of Canada, Native Land’s data was integrated into a web app called On Whose Land, which allows people to learn the correct acknowledgement for their location. Another website called Whose Land borrows the data for similar purposes.

Temprano purposefully keeps Native Land’s data open so that it can be embedded on other websites, and he estimates that it has been used in “hundreds of courses at different levels,” from elementary schools to universities and professional training workshops. Minifie uses the tool at the different technology, democracy, and nonprofit digital strategy conferences she attends. “It helps people understand where they are situated, where they reside, who is in their backyard, who their neighbors are,” she says.

Mapping traditional lands using Western cartography must be done conscientiously given Western maps’ pernicious history and continued application as a tool for companies and foreign nations to exploit and colonize. “The most important piece is that these projects happen under the direction and with the consent of the communities that are involved, and that ultimately it’s Indigenous peoples’ decision about how and when they map their territories,” says Tyler McCreary, a geography professor at Florida State University who researches geographies of indigeneity and colonization. According to him, maps like these “are useful [to Indigenous peoples] for the sad, but necessary practice” of defending their lands against various forms of intrusion.

There are obvious contradictions in trying to map Indigenous peoples’ relationship to land using techniques designed around European ideas about nationality and territory. One of Native Land’s most distinctive qualities is its dappled mish-mash of colors. Borders overlap and cross each other.

“There’s overlapping borders and people say, is that a problem?” says Minifie. “In my view, that [question is] really tied in with Western ideas of geography and ownership. My feeling on this—and I can only speak to my own experience—is that we always had shared places, so that’s not a difficult concept.”

She points out that Indigenous peoples’ relationship with land—one where humans are “beholden to it”—is a far cry from the Western concepts of land possession. “Land determines our language, our food, and our DNA,” she says. “Our ecology system decides our housing, our regalia, how we organize, how we decision-make, how we produce children, how we treat those children […] Land is everything and it kind of decides everything.”

As a result, she adds, the team behind Native-Land have “a big responsibility to figure out how to lead this conversation and discourse, and to make the map both exciting and representational to what people want to see and what their knowledges are.”

Paleontologists describe the largest dinosaur footprint ever found.

Apparently, this is the summer of Bigfoot news. Generally, cryptids stay on the margins of public consciousness, but this one is having a moment. The East Coast Bigfoot Researchers Organization hosted its first conference early in July, Bigfoot, the Musical premiered in Las Vegas, and Whitehall, New York, declared Bigfoot the town’s official animal.

But there's a new type of Bigfoot edging in on the spotlight—one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered, which has been named after the legendary Sasquatch. Bigfoot the Dinosaur left behind footprints more than three feet wide.

When this footprint was discovered in 1998, in the Black Hills of Wyoming, not much else was known about this dinosaur. Now a new paper in PeerJ reports that it would have belonged to a Brachiosaurus-like creature that once lived in the area that’s now eastern Utah up through northwestern Wyoming.

This particular specimen would have been “a dinosaur of enormous proportions,” the researchers report. Its hip would have been about 13 feet tall. That makes it the largest specimen found in this particular geologic formation. Some dinosaurs found elsewhere in the world would have been larger overall, but their feet weren’t preserved. This is the largest dinosaur foot anyone’s ever found—a very, very big and very, very real foot, by any standard.

In waterways around the world, the teeny tiny shreds are a big problem.

On a recent sticky summer afternoon in Manhattan, a team of scientists took to the Hudson River to trawl for trash. There weren’t any mangled bags, plastic bottles, or other waterlogged debris bobbing on the water’s gray-green surface, but that’s not what the researchers were looking for, anyway—I tagged along as they piled into a boat to skim a fine-mesh net across the top of the water and ensnare the teeny pieces that only come into clear view beneath a microscope.

Microplastics, which are shards measuring less than 5 millimeters in diameter, can take many forms—they might be pellets, foams, films, lines, or nurdles (the goofy name for plastics made to be melted down into other plastics)—but they’re all pretty hard to spot with the naked eye. Increasingly, researchers are concluding that many waterways are host to a slurry of itty-bitty plastic pieces. Baseline data for microplastics in the Hudson River is pretty sparse, though, and mitigation tactics are still somewhat foggy. The surest way to track microplastics’ sprawl and scope is to collect samples over time. So, we cruised up and down the watery corridor between the New York City and New Jersey skylines at a speed of around five knots, on a mission to scoop them up.

At Pier 40, near Greenwich Village, they measured the water temperature and coordinates, then looked to flags flapping on the shore to see which way the wind was blowing. Since irascible weather and choppy water could affect their collection results, they estimated conditions on the water using the Beaufort scale, where 0 is a mirror-calm day, and 12 indicates hurricane-force winds. This was a 1, said Carrie Roble, the director of science and stewardship at Hudson River Park, and the project’s leader. “A pretty chill day,” she said, and as good as any for collecting nearly invisible trash from the park’s estuarine sanctuary.

We headed south, where the Statue of Liberty towered in the distance; jet skiers bounced past, shooting north, and white sailboats clustered farther afield. All the while, Emma Samstein, a high-school volunteer, sat with a foot on the net, to keep it from splashing up out of the water. (This is a free alternative to rigging up weights, and it’s also “a good thigh workout,” Samstein said.) The goal was to keep the net steady—since plastics float to the surface—without adding turbulence, which could cause them to disperse. As the boat puttered along, water and shards of plastic flowed into the net, which billowed alongside the vessel like a windsock. The trapped debris dropped into a plastic collection cup affixed to the bottom of the net. The irony of using plastic to find plastic, in a crusade against plastic, was not lost on anyone involved.

Humans shed plastic waste all over the world, and nearly no portion of the planet’s waters is free of our fingerprints. Very few places are devoid of microplastics—certainly not the oceans, but not rivers, not lakes, and not sediments, either, the University of Toronto ecologists Chelsea Rochman and Kennedy Bucci recently pointed out in an article for The Conversation. Most infamous, perhaps, is the detritus swirling around the soupy Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where wind and waves churn microplastics into a long-simmering stew. But plastics—and microplastics in particular—have made their way pretty much everywhere.

This April, a team of Japanese researchers analyzing photos and videos from more than 5,000 dives conducted between 1983 and 2014 found widespread evidence of single-use plastic products in the deepest parts of the ocean, more than a thousand kilometers (621 miles) from shore. These were even wedged into the depths of the Mariana Trench, some 10,898 meters (35,756 feet) below the water’s surface. This finding indicated “a clear link between daily human activities and remote environments where no direct human activities occur,” the researchers wrote in a paper, poetically titled “Human footprint in the abyss,” in the journal Marine Policy. In June, researchers from Greenpeace and the University of Exeter released the results of a plastic-sleuthing journey around the Antarctic Peninsula, where they detected microplastics—including polyester, propylene, and acetate foam—in all eight of the surface-water samples they studied. The scientists weren’t able to tell whether these had sloughed off nearby, from fishing boats or nets, or whether they had been carried long distances on the current. "What is clear is that our plastic 'footprint' extends even to the ends of the Earth, to areas we may hope and expect to be pristine," said research scientist David Santillo in a statement.

In the last 10 or 15 years, researchers have mostly been asking where microplastics are. “Now that it’s established that they’re pretty much anywhere you look—in water, in air—we’re trying to move into, where do they come from, how do they move around, where do they end up?” says Julie Dimitrijevic, a graduate student at Simon Fraser University who studies microplastics and blue mussels. “We understand that we are putting microplastics in the water, whether through mismanaged waste, or through our wastewater treatment plants,” but have a murkier understanding of the specific load, Dimitrijevic adds. (Miscalculations are also possible, Dimitrijevic says, when a suspected microplastic isn’t submitted to spectroscopic analysis.)

Though microplastics are all around us, we’re still not quite sure just how harmful they are. Previous research has found that these little menaces tend to work their way up the food chain—one species ingests them, and then another gobbles up that plastic-eater, and so on. In addition to potentially screwing with marine creatures’ endocrine systems and metabolisms, microplastics could also make their way into human bellies. Scientists in the ecotoxicology research group at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, recently detected microplastics (mainly microbeads, fibers, and fragments) at all of the locations they sampled in Lambert Channel and Baynes Sound, which sit within the heart of British Columbia’s major oyster-growing region. “It would be be prudent to assess the degree to which oysters from this region are ingesting microplastics,” the team wrote in a recent report in PLOS One.

Some studies have offered projections about how many microplastics a human might consume via the seafood that they eat, but that’s a bit of a moving target, too, because various species interact with microplastics in different ways, Dimitrijevic says—the number of microplastics you might guzzle from an oyster wouldn’t necessarily hold steady for a mussel or a clam. Overall, “the exact nature and scale of the threats that microplastics pose to marine ecosystems have not yet been fully determined,” the Greenpeace team noted in its report. To come closer to understanding it, many researchers are calling for more data—and in New York City, that means putting boats out in the water, and eyeballs up to microscopes.

Between June and October, Roble and crew sample a handful of sites spanning the Hudson River Park’s estuarine sanctuary. (They spend 15 minutes at each location, and when they’re covering a small distance, the crew steers the boat in circles to run down the clock.) Each of the locations presents different challenges—which also means they’re ripe to reveal different types of data.

At Pier 26, downtown, Roble gestured toward shore to point out a pipe opening up into an inlet. There, soft plastic whales and inflatable dolphins enclose an area where kayakers can paddle. This is also a discharge point for combined sewer overflows. When the sewer system is especially taxed—say, after a deluge—more water pours out of its mouth.

As a changing climate promises a wetter world, researchers are eager to learn more about the relationship between rain and the volume of plastics entering waterways. Roble has noticed a difference between wetter and drier years, even over the two years that the team has been sampling. In 2016, the samples averaged 188,657 pieces of microplastic per square kilometer; in 2017, the average was half that—99,692 pieces—and Roble attributes this difference to a drier year. “There's a correlation between rain, wet weather events, and the abundance of microplastics in the system,” she said. It's not necessarily that there were fewer pieces of plastic to enter the system, but rather that there was less rain to flood the waterways with them.

Reducing the number of microplastics sullying the waterways might involve changes both upstream and downstream, from companies to governments to consumers, Roble said. It would entail reminding residents, during downpours, to hold off on long showers, running dishwashers, or other behaviors that contribute to overloading systems. It would involve companies pledging to remove microbeads from their face wash or other beauty products (and replacing them with biodegradable alternatives). It would require city-wide efforts, such as reducing single-use items like straws—which degrade into microplastics—and doubling down on green infrastructure that would capture and slowly release stormwater instead of sending it barreling straight into the waterways. “We want to find solutions that fit the scale of the problem,” Roble said.

That sounded frustrating, I thought, because the problem is somewhat intractable. Tallying microplastics, let alone halting them in their tracks, struck me as a Sisyphean task. Even when more data about microplastics does come into clear view, there will still be nanoplastics to contend with. These are generally accepted to be particles smaller than one micron, Dimitrijevic says. (A human hair and a single leaf of paper are both significantly thicker.) How do you grapple with a problem that’s everywhere, and invisible, and so difficult to wrangle or keep hold of? “Doing these projects, yeah, I don’t anticipate that it’s going to be an uplifting discovery or finding,” Roble told me, up on the dock. But she thinks that data and education are a place to start.

Each time the 15 minutes are up, Roble’s team hauls the net out of the water. It looks brown; it has snagged plastics, but other things, too, and the team spritzes it down with a water-filled squirt bottle to dislodge whatever has caught. They rinse everything down into the plastic jar, and then transfer the contents into a glass mason jar labeled with the site location and date.

Back on shore, each sample will spend 24 hours drying out in a sieve, and will then sit in wet peroxide to dissolve any organic material that has held on. Then, the team will slide the samples under a dissecting microscope and sort the plastics by hand, using tweezers to isolate one piece at a time and logging each as a nurdle, pellet, or whatever it turns out to be. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell, even with the help of 30x magnification. The group showed me a photo of a green object that I was certain was a leaf—it was green, vaguely oval, and it even appeared to be lined with veins. “Fakeout,” Roble said. Since plastics and organic materials can look really similar, the team also uses hot probes to see whether something smokes (suggesting it’s organic material) or melts (indicating that it’s plastic). In the corner of the photo, I noticed two little wisps: melted plastic.

On the boat, in between trawls, I held one of the mason jars up to the sun and swirled the water inside. To my eye, it contained an entire world: smears of sand; squishy little jellyfish that looked like globs of clear hair gel; fingernail-sized isopods with scrambling legs; a tangle of rippling brown rockweed. So many signs that the opaque waterway is teeming with life. Then, one of the scientists pointed to a just-visible microplastic bobbing on the surface of the sample—a little chunk of porous-looking foam.

It’s easy to forget what what happens outside our field of vision. City dwellers who don’t discover the water up close may tend to “only think of it on a surface level,” Roble said. “You can’t see below the surface, you can’t see that there’s 70 species of fish, you can’t see that the ecosystem is pretty dynamic.” It’s easy to forget the threats to that ecosystem, too, in the form of a little problem that keeps on mounting.

Revealing photos of works-in-progress.

If you ever find yourself traveling by boat along New York City’s East River, stand out on deck as you pass under the Manhattan Bridge. For a fleeting moment, as you look up, you can glimpse the underbelly of the great landmark. From here, it takes on a new dimension: vast beams of steel cross and overlap, appearing like a metal runway stretching across the sky. But as soon as you emerge from its shadow, it reverts to its usual form, an elegant suspension bridge amid the city’s towering skyline.

It isn’t always possible to find an unusual perspective on famous landmarks, but photos taken during their construction can often provide one. In black-and-white or grainy color, they’re filled with promise but not yet substance—scaffolding around a skyscraper skeleton, pieces of a sculpture in a workshop, the foot of a tower reaching into nothing.

The construction of great landmarks is often thought of in terms of statistics—how high, how big, how wide—or hyperbole: the tallest, the longest, the most amount of concrete. But there’s always more to the story than just figures. Many landmarks are built under clouds of controversy. In February 1887, just after construction began on the Eiffel Tower, a group of artists and writers published a letter in Le Temps newspaper, “Protest Against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel,” proclaiming their distaste for what they called a “stupefying folly.” A more humorously cutting criticism came from the French writer Léon Bloy, who called the tower a “truly tragic street lamp.”

There’s also often a human cost. At the time that some of these landmarks were built, safety standards could be lackluster. Workers on the Sydney Harbor Bridge would frequently hitch a ride up onto the structure with the crane hook, which was known as "riding the hook." In fact, there were often no harnesses or handrails. During the nearly 9 years it took to build, 16 men lost their lives.

Not all landmarks need to be visible, monumental structures. The London Underground is an icon, yet it hides underneath the city’s more prominent, and often more ancient, landmarks, its presence only betrayed by the instantly recognizable red and blue logo that pops out from entrances and exits. A photo of its construction shows a team of workers, standing on piles of rubble, forging a tunnel through the earth. And some landmarks are considerably more recent: it’s hard to picture Hong Kong’s vista of skyscrapers without the Bank of China tower, which opened in 1990.

Once completed, landmarks dominate a landscape, but as these photos show, it can be even more interesting to see present-day icons when they were still taking shape.

Landmark Baptists believed that an unbroken chain of Christians kept alive the true teachings of the New Testament.

In 1931, the year he died, a small book by Baptist minister James Milton Carroll was published. Titled The Trail of Blood, it traced the history of the Baptist church for 2,000 years, from the very first Christians to 20th-century America, as recapped in the chart below. This history was meant to make a particular and controversial point. In Carroll’s thinking, true churches were the ones that adhered to key “landmarks” of Christianity—ideas about church governance, baptism, and membership. Through persecution and challenge, there was an unbroken line of churches that had maintained these standards over geography and time—and this line culminated with select Baptist churches in parts of the southern United States.

“Landmarkism” started in the 1850s, when immigrants were bringing varied ideas about Christianity to America and Baptists were raising questions about religious authority. Of all these churches, competing against each other, which was the one true path to God? James Robinson Graves, the publisher of the Tennessee Baptist newspaper, along with a handful of like-minded men, began arguing that only Baptists could claim this legitimacy. They backed up their claims with arguments about "church successionism," tracing their beliefs and practices step-by-step, back to the beginnings of Christianity.

"Baptists had been historically a people who didn’t worry about their roots," says Alan Lefever, director of the Texas Baptist Historical Collection. "Landmarkism came at a time that some Baptists were pointing out that we had only been around since the 1600s. To the Landmarkists, that wasn’t good enough."

Successionism wasn't the only principle of Landmarkism. Graves and other Landmarkists advocated for stricter boundaries between Baptists and other Christians. They took their name from two passages in the Bible—“Do not remove the ancient landmark that your ancestors set up" (Proverbs 22:28), and “The wicked remove landmarks” (Job 24:2). In the Bible, these "landmarks" were physical markers that delineated property lines, but they also came to serve as a powerful metaphor. Some churches, for instance, were open to baptisms made by a minister who hadn’t had a full baptismal immersion himself. But for the Landmarkists, only Baptist rites of immersion and communion should be accepted, and pastors from other denominations shouldn’t be allowed to preach in Baptist churches.

These ideas, as one might expect, were divisive. Landmarkists’ views were more exclusive and dogmatic than what other Baptists were willing to accept. By the end of the decade, the Landmarkists had broken with the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination first organized in 1845, and started organizing their own movement. Their ideas spread across “the Landmark belt” that stretches from western Tennessee down to Louisiana, west through Arkansas and Oklahoma to Texas, and north to Kentucky, southern Illinois, and parts of Missouri.

In The Trail of Blood, Carroll details a history of the church that traces the landmarks of legitimacy across Africa, through southern Europe, up to Wales, and into Germany, before crossing the Atlantic to America. While the Catholic Church was pursuing new doctrines of infant baptism, indulgences, and purgatory, a few persecuted Christians chose to hew closer to the teachings of the New Testament. Carroll mentions obscure groups, from the early Donatists and Paterines to the later Henricians and Waldenses, who maintained the line that led to the American South. On the chart, the red circles represent churches marked with martyr’s blood, while the darker dots represent “erring churches.” Through it all, the true Christian "landmarks" survived, Carroll believed.

Today, Landmark Baptist churches can still be found in the South and beyond. Many of them prize the independence and localism that Graves and others advocated for. The Trail of Blood, too, is still being reprinted by churches and small religious presses: Decades later, Carroll's ideas still resonate for some.

HOPE Outdoor Gallery is a local landmark. Will its spirit follow it to its new location?

Helena Martin remembers when she first learned to let go. The Austin, Texas-based muralist regularly spends hours out in the hot sun, covering walls with color. It doesn’t always pay off, but on this particular occasion, she’d made something she was proud of.

She doesn't quite recall what it was—probably a portrait, or a dreamy-looking animal. But when she went back the next day to check on it again, her heart sank. “It had a big graffiti over the top of it—bubble letters,” Martin says. “And I cried! I cried about it.”

She took some time, talked to some of her peers, and found some peace. "Now, when I paint there, I have the expectation that it won’t last longer than when I see it," she says. "It really helps me with non-attachment, you know? Being in the moment."

In most cities, graffiti and street art spread horizontally across the landscape, splashing color onto brick walls and overpasses. But while Austin has its fair share of murals and tags, many of its aesthetic assets are currently concentrated in one place: a community paint park called HOPE Outdoor Gallery. Located at 1008 Baylor Street in the middle of downtown, the concrete-studded hillside is a riot of shapes and colors, seized in a cycle of constant morphing. In the eight years since its founding, it has hosted thousands of street and graffiti artists, from big names like Shepard Fairey to wide-eyed little kids, all spraying and painting and bubbling over each other.

After this summer, though, the walls are coming down. Another HOPE Outdoor Gallery is opening in a different location, about 10 miles southeast. The current space, with its layers of paint, sweat, and tears, will be demolished to make room for a development. In the meantime, the gallery's many creators and fans are fielding new questions. How do you transplant the spirit of a place? And when do you just have to let go?

Before the HOPE Outdoor Gallery was a successful art space, it was a failed real estate project. Developers bought the lot in the mid-1980s, and began to build what local reporter James Rambin has described as a "massive turkey of a condo," a multi-story stack of identical housing units that covered the hill. The building was eventually found to be unsound, and by 1990, it had been torn down. All that was left was the foundation: a set of concrete rectangles, jutting straight out of the ground, enticingly blank.

Graffiti artists started treating the area like a 3-D canvas. They called it "The Foundation," a homage to the space's origins that could also be read as a tongue-in-cheek invocation of all the things it was not: funded, official, legitimate. Then, in 2010, Andi Scull Cheatham—the founder of a nonprofit production company called Helping Other People Everywhere (HOPE), which links artists with social causes—decided to try and change that. She reached out to the property owners, who had also tried and failed to build on the lot, and found that they were enthusiastic about this alternative use, and that they wouldn't be developing the land for at least three years.

This seemed like enough time to try out her plan, which she describes as "a visual open mic:" a place for artists to test out new ideas without worrying about aesthetic or legal consequences. "A lot of this art form is done nervously in the dark," Scull Cheatham says. "There aren’t really canvasses for people to just practice on, or gain their confidence."

Cheatham and her team worked to make the site more user-friendly. "We very much started from scratch," she says, at times literally: "We… had to go out and clear all of the thorns and poison ivy." Contractors removed trailers full of trash, "some of it unmentionable," as one told the Austin Chronicle. By March 2011's South by Southwest Festival, the gallery was up and running. Shepard Fairey, who is also HOPE's cofounder, contributed the first major installation, a long stretch of black-and-white wheatpaste posters. Others began registering to participate. Layers of paint piled up.

The gallery slowly gained a reputation among artists, in the city and beyond. "It's the best legal graffiti wall I've ever seen," says Martin, who moved to Austin in 2013 partly because of it. "It's got a lot of fame and renown because of its size, location, and accessibility." She rattles off good memories: the joy of watching kids use spray paint for the first time; the pride of finally supporting herself through her art; the sweaty camaraderie of collaborating with other painters in the July heat.

"It's like Mars there in the summertime," she says. "We’d be out there working really hard, but you’re just driven by this passion—you get to share your art with the world, and you don’t have to be looking over your shoulder for a cop." Others were drawn by its democratic spirit. "It really is a space that is available to everybody," says illustrator and muralist Val Brains, who began painting there in 2017. "Toddlers can spray, or your 89-year-old grandma… anyone can come, any background, any skill level."

It wasn't just contributors who took to it, either: The colorful, ever-changing spot is now a prime hangout for tourists and locals alike. Some bag a quick selfie and then skedaddle. Others shoot music videos, take quinceañera photos, or practice tap dancing and tuba playing. UT Austin students hang out there on Friday nights, and then volunteer to come clean up on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, fans become artists: Scull Cheatham likes to tell the story of a dentist who started spraying for fun a few years back, and now gets mural commissions elsewhere in the city. "No one was expecting the public to receive it in the way they did," she says, adding that the space now hosts between 50 and 200 visitors every hour.

Like other popular Austin spots—the bridge full of bats, the cathedral made of trash—the gallery provides a mix of friendliness and offbeat energy that many people like to associate with the city as a whole. "[It's] as close to a sacred site for the new generation of the Keep Austin Weird set as anything we've got these days," writes Rambin, adding wryly that "the only remaining step for its canonization… is for it to shut down."

The space's martyrdom approaches. In 2017, the longtime owner of 1008 Baylor Street, Vic Ayad, sold the property to a local developer. He and his former co-owner had held onto it longer than they had originally planned, paying about $30,000 in property taxes annually in order to support the site's artistic use. But they finally got the offer they were looking for, and the gallery began to plan its next move.

"We always knew it would be a temporary project [in this spot]," says Scull Cheatham, who has been scoping out new locations for four years. In November of 2017, she announced the fruits of this search: The HOPE Outdoor Gallery will be moving to a six-acre lot within Carson Creek Ranch, a riverside event space near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. From her perspective, this is entirely good news. The current site lacks basic amenities, like bathrooms and water fountains. People are always getting parking tickets and spraying on the neighbors' cactuses. "Even if we could stay there—if we had all the funds in the world—it still isn't in an ideal space for all the activity, and what people love about it," she says.

The new location, she adds, will preserve the most important quality of the current one: "A safe place to be able to paint for hours in peace outside." Certain sections of the gallery will be curated, so that special pieces can stick around for longer. There will be fewer drive-by Instagrammers, and tourists can visit on their way to or from the airport, when they might be more likely to actually buy a print or a T-shirt from the artists there. The infrastructural elements of the site will be arranged to spell out "HOPE" from above, so that people flying in and out will know exactly what they're looking at.

Artists and fans are appreciative of Ayad's generosity, as well as Scull Cheatham's tirelessness. Many are excited to check out the new location. (A fundraiser, in which fans can pay to get their name carved onto a brick and placed in the space, has garnered hundreds of takers.) There's also a sense of inevitability—as Martin puts it, "we're lucky we had it as long as we did." Public art spaces can't often outcompete condos—just look at 5Pointz, the recently whitewashed graffiti mecca in the Bronx—and Austin is one of the fastest-gentrifying cities in the United States. "I think that's probably the last undeveloped tract in central Austin," says Chris Neely, the city hall reporter for Community Impact Newspaper. "This was all to be expected eventually."

But there's a certain amount of mourning, too. In January, Austin's Historic Landmark Commission officially voted to demolish the current gallery. Neely reported on the meeting, and so many people read his story about it, the paper's web server broke. "It was known that the graffiti park was moving," says Neely. "I don't think people realized it was getting demolished." Editorials started popping up. "We're losing a site-specific art gallery that can't just be replaced and moved," says Laura Doan, who penned one for UT's campus paper, The Daily Texan. "The layers and layers of art that are in HOPE outdoor gallery will not all be translated to this new space." Others, including Neely, think it's doomed to lose some flair. "I doubt that the new location will be as cool and natural-feeling as the current graffiti park," he says.

Earlier this month, HOPE released an updated timeline. The Carson Creek Ranch gallery is slated to open next spring, and the current site will stick around until then. According to a recent press release, Scull Cheatham and the developers are working on ensuring that the park's legacy is "forever recognized on Baylor Street," and a chunk of one of the walls is being moved to the new site. The Austin Historic Commision has decreed that the park undergo "comprehensive photo-documentation" for posterity.

In the meantime, each day, the people who continually create the HOPE Gallery show up to paint. After all, they're street artists—they know that something can fill your field of vision one day and then simply disappear. When that happens, there's nothing to do but pack up your colors and move on. "I feel like if there is an audience [at the new gallery], people will continue to spray," says Brains. And either way, she's not too worried: "People who are creative will always find another place."

During the Victorian era, such behavior was not only common but expected.

In 1860, a concerned tourist wrote to the London Times decrying the “foolish, vulgar and ruthless practice of the majority of visitors” to Stonehenge “of breaking off portions of it as keepsakes.” Today, taking a hammer and chisel to a Neolithic monument seems like obvious vandalism, but during the Victorian era, such behavior was not only common but expected.

English antiquarian tourists, who were mostly upper class, had developed the habit of taking makeshift relics from the historical sites they visited during the 18th century. By 1830, the practice was so widespread that the English painter Benjamin Robert Haydon dubbed it “the English disease,” writing, “On every English chimney piece, you will see a bit of the real Pyramids, a bit of Stonehenge! […] You can’t admit the English into your gardens but they will strip your trees, cut their names on your statues, eat your fruit, & stuff their pockets with bits for their musaeums.”

For centuries, both locals and visitors had taken pieces of Stonehenge for use in folk remedies. As early as the 12th century, rumors of the stones’ healing properties appear in the writing of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and in 1707, Reverend James Brome wrote that their scrapings were still thought to “heal any green Wound, or old Sore.” In the 1660s, the English antiquarian John Aubrey reported a local superstition that “pieces or powder of these stones, putt into their wells, doe drive away the Toades.”

Eventually, tourists were not just taking from Stonehenge, but also leaving their mark, too. By the middle of the 17th century, tourist graffiti was appearing on the stones. The name of Johannes Ludovicus de Ferre—abbreviated “IOH : LVD : DEFERRE”—is etched, and so is the engraving “I WREN,” which may refer to Christopher Wren, the famed architect who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral.

As early as 1740, the archaeologist William Stukeley was decrying “the unaccountable folly of mankind in breaking pieces off [the stones] with great hammers,” and by the end of the 19th century, according an 1886 commenter, “Almost every day takes some fragment from the ruins, or adds something to the network of scrawling with which the surface of the stone is defaced.”

In his book Stranded in the Present, the historian Peter Fritzsche has argued that, in the wake of the French Revolution and in the face of increasing industrialization, Europeans stopped seeing the past as a reliable guide to the future. As the world became more and more unrecognizable, they felt disconnected from what had gone before. Fritzche writes, “The past was conceived more and more as something bygone and lost, and also strange and mysterious, and although partially accessible, always remote.”

For English tourists traveling to historical sites, taking a piece of the place as a souvenir offered a tangible link to this disappearing past. Also, breaking off a piece of prehistoric stone, or carving one’s name into it, altered the historical landmark, physically leaving one’s imprint on history.

In her book The Discovery of Britain: The English Tourists, 1540–1840, the historian Esther Moir writes that “all” 18th-century English upper-class tourists “recounted the triumphs they enjoyed in securing trophies on their travels, whether they came by them by honest means, by craft, or by outright theft.” The building of railroads in the early 19th century made domestic travel more accessible to the middle and working classes, and as more Britons began to travel, greater numbers of tourists plundered historical sites.

Stonehenge became easier to visit in 1847, when the railroad was extended to nearby Salisbury, and even easier when a direct line from London opened ten years later. The increased vandalism that went hand-in-hand with increased tourism became a topic of public discussion beginning in 1860, thanks the aforementioned letter printed in the London Times. The anonymous writer reported that, during a visit to Stonehenge some years prior, he had seen “an old lame man” from the nearby town of Amesbury, who would sell tourists pieces of the stones “which he had barbarously knocked off.” But another letter, printed three days later, defended the man, arguing that he was the monument’s caretaker, and that he actually deterred vandals, in part by selling alternate souvenirs.

Stonehenge had long had a caretaker, but this was a self-appointed, unpaid role, according to the archaeologist Christopher Chippindale. In 1822, an itinerant lecturer named Henry Browne arrived in Amesbury to give a series of talks on ancient history. He became so fascinated by the stone circle—he believed it pre-dated Noah’s flood—that he installed himself as the self-identified “first custodian of Stonehenge.” After his death in 1839, his son, Joseph, took up the role. But since the custodial position offered no salary, each man had to hustle to make the job worth his while. Henry Browne wrote and sold guidebooks, while his son hawked paintings and plaster miniatures of Stonehenge out of a wheeled contraption one visitor described as “half-wheelbarrow half-peepshow.” Joseph Browne’s successor, a photographer named William Judd, did a brisk trade taking photographs of tourists, then developing them in his mobile darkroom, which was stationed near the stones and pulled by a white horse.

Naturally, these self-appointed guardians were more concerned with earning tips by holding visitors’ horses or lecturing to them on Stonehenge’s history than they were with protecting the stones. Moreover, at the end of the 19th century, the custodian’s day off was Sunday, perhaps the busiest day of the week for visitors. According to an 1886 report on the state of the monument by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, “There was a caretaker, but there was very little evidence of any care being taken.”

Stonehenge was, at this point, privately owned. Aside from one reference to “the way leading to Stonehenge” in a 1379 claim for access rights, medieval records don’t mention the stone circle at all, but we know that from the time of the Norman conquest in 1066, when it seems to have belonged to William the Conqueror, Stonehenge passed through the hands of various noble families, until the land was sold around 1628 to Sir Lawrence Washington of Garsdon, an ancestor of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Over the next 200 years, several other aristocratic families had possession of the site, until it was purchased by Sir Edmund Antrobus, 1st Baronet, in 1824.

In 1871, The Times published another series of letters regarding the state of Stonehenge, initiated by a writer who signed off as “A Vacation Rambler.” “There were many visitors,” the Rambler wrote of a recent visit to the site, “and a constant chipping of stone broke the solitude of the place.” The monument’s owner, Edmund Antrobus, 3rd Baronet, retorted in a published response a week later that “considering the thousands who annually visit it, I think the public deserve much credit for the very little damage done.” Antrobus did report several disturbing tales of vandalism, however, including an exchange with a “respectable paterfamilias,” who, upon being asked by Antrobus not to use his hammer and chisel, shot back, “And who the deuce are you, sir?” Told that Antrobus was the owner, the man responded that he believed the stones to be “public property.”

Though privately owned, Stonehenge was, at this point, part of a national conversation regarding the government’s role in sites of historical import. The 1882 Ancient Monuments Act offered government support to protect and restore designated sites—Stonehenge among them—but made it voluntary for owners to submit their property to government guardianship. Sir Edmund Antrobus, 3rd Baronet, lobbied against the act in Parliament, and refused to cede control over Stonehenge to the Commissioners of Works, who would oversee the site as designated under the act.

The 3rd Baronet died in 1899, and his son, Edmund Antrobus, 4th Baronet, assumed control of Stonehenge. The next year, two of Stonehenge’s sarsen stones collapsed, causing much concern in the newspapers that the monument was in a dire condition. In 1901, the 4th Baronet constructed a barbed-wire fence around the stone circle and began charging a shilling per person for admission.

This fence proved hugely controversial. Photography magazines debated the extent to which the barbed wire obstructed the photographic view of the stones, while a group of archaeologists protested the “artistic” destruction it had wrought. Members of a group advocating for public access to land even sued Antrobus, but the court dismissed the suit.

Antrobus argued that the fence was necessary to protect the stones, and the entrance fee justified by the cost of paying two new custodians to watch over the site. He had another reason for putting up barbed wire, though: He wanted to sell Stonehenge to the government. Antrobus offered the monument for the princely sum of £125,000, threatening that if the government declined to purchase it, he would be forced to “sell the stones to some American millionaire, who would ship them across the Atlantic.” Still, the Chancellor of the Exchequer rejected his offer. Antrobus lowered the price to £50,000, but the government refused to spend more than £10,000, so the monument remained in the baronet’s hands.

In 1915, the 4th Baronet died and the estate containing Stonehenge passed to his younger brother, Cosmo, who divided it up and sold it at auction. A local barrister named Cecil Chubb purchased the triangular section containing the stone circle for £6,600 “on a whim,” he said, as a present for his wife. (She was reportedly less than pleased, as he was supposed to be buying a set of curtains.) Three years later, the Chubbs gave the monument to the nation, stipulating in their deed of gift that the public retain “free access” and that visitors not be charged more than a shilling for admission.

The entrance fee has increased significantly over the ensuing century (currently, it’s £17.50 for an adult, if you book in advance), and while the public can still visit the stones, defacing them in any way is now a criminal act, rather than a routine and accepted occurrence.

Feet, hands, and lives were at risk.

To work for a 19th-century railroad, it helped to be fearless, tireless, and a little reckless. Railway workers spent long shifts maintaining tracks, coupling and decoupling cars with swift and practiced moves, or unloading goods in train yards, and throughout all those exhausting hours one unlucky moment could cost them a hand, or a leg, or more. “They suffer as if they were fighting a war,” said Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, in 1892. In the United States, in 1889, one in every 35 railway workers was injured each year, and in the more dangerous “running trades” that put some of them in close proximity to trains, that rate jumped to one in 12. Fatalities were common, too. One out of every 117 workers died on the job. In Britain, railway accident reports contain more than one incident where the body of a man struck and killed by a train flies through the air to hit and injure a coworker.

Railway work was so dangerous that an entire medical specialty developed to deal with it. In the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, companies hired “railway surgeons” to staff private hospital and health care systems. An on-call doctor could rush to the scene of an accident, or be ready to receive a bleeding, injured worker sent to them by train. They were pioneers in emergency medicine and specialized in amputations and prosthetics. Some consider them the world's first trauma surgeons.

In the 1800s, it was generally rare for a private company to take such an interest in its employees’ well-being, but railway surgeons were not celebrated figures. Workers resented having their wages garnished to pay the surgeons’ salaries, while other doctors scorned them as lackeys of the railroads. Today, even in a world still full of railroad enthusiasts and obsessives, they have been all but forgotten.

“I’ve been to railway museums all over the country and very seldom do you see anything connected to railway surgeons,” says Robert Gillespie, a pediatric nephrologist and founder of the online Railway Surgery Historical Center.

Even in the railroads’ heyday, the problem of worker injuries went relatively unremarked upon. Dramatic crashes made the papers, but not the daily grind of injuries resulting in disability or death—even as those numbers added up. In Britain, in the years before World War I, for example, for every one passenger casualty, there were nine among workers. “The worker cases, they’re not news. They fade into the background,” says Mike Esbester, a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, whose project, Railway Work, Life and Death, is gathering accident reports in a database. “It’s almost as if there hasn’t been anything to forget, because people haven’t been so aware of it.”

The database shows just how dangerous a railroad career could be. Volunteers from the National Railway Museum in York have been logging handwritten reports created by the Railway Inspectorate from 1911 to 1915, building a database of around 4,000 accidents so far. These inspection reports represent only about three percent of all incidents in those years, and it’s not entirely clear how inspectors chose which cases to document or investigate; they range from fatalities to “someone who pinched their thumb,” Esbester says.

But the reports include vivid accounts. A platelayer was hit by a train twice in three weeks. A carriage cleaner died trying to save a colleague from being hit. A man was crushed between two wagons 18 hours into a 26-hour shift. They also show how some continued to work after serious injuries: a man who needed new artificial kneecaps every four to six months, or a “good driver” of “excellent character” with a wooden peg leg.

“People were being asked to work in dangerous situations,” says Esbester. “The companies, which were profit-oriented, didn’t have the same concept of safety culture as we do now. If workers died or were injured, there was some compensation payable, but my hunch is, there was a trade-off, in the minds of management, between the cost they had to pay out when someone was killed at work and the costs of changing a particular mode of working.” In Britain, the companies encouraged their workers to learn first aid, and sometimes funded local hospitals. But for the most part, they didn’t bear the full cost of the dangerous nature of the work.

In the United States, starting around 1849, railroads began to hire doctors, and took a slice of employees' wages to help fund their salaries. By the 1890s, there were around 6,000 railway surgeons across the country, 1,500 of whom were members of the National Association of Railway Surgeons. Their patients were often in bad shape, according to accounts that Gillespie dug up—“tied up with rope, old rags, soiled handkerchiefs, or anything else lying about.” By the time the patient arrived, an injured limb might look “like nothing but bloody rubbish,” and the patient would be likely to bleed out. If the doctor could make it to the scene of an accident, he or she might have to work in the woods, on a back porch, or in a hotel room.

Railway surgeons might not have earned the admiration of their peers, but they had a sense of purpose about their work. “We are the selected servants of the great railway companies of the whole continent, honored by them with the special appellation, ‘Railways Surgeons,’” said one orator at the annual conference, to which the surgeons traveled on discount railway passes. “Our mere summons to service carries with it the thought of a mighty and restless mangling force.”

“They really had to make do with what they had, and they had a sense of pride in that,” says Gillespie. “They felt what they were doing was harder than what most hospitals were doing.”

Because of the type of traumatic injuries they were dealing with, railway surgeons developed new techniques and methods. They made their own portable emergency kits, and they were on the forefront of using sterilized gauze and other instruments. They designed hospital cars that could travel to the scene of an accident, which served as models for ambulance train cars used during World War II. In The Railway Surgeon, the journal of the national association, they wrote about foot and spinal injuries, heart surgery, skin grafting, infected fingers, and other, more gruesome insults to the human body. (Once these journals were so rare that Gillespie rejoiced to find a set on eBay. Now a few are available on Google Books and the New York Academy of Medicine holds copies for anyone interested in digging deeper.)

Other medical societies were critical of the surgeons for accepting salaried positions from the railroads, but they were curious enough about the work that they sent spies to the railway surgeons’ conference. Some of the techniques railway surgeons pioneered would appear later in the pages of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the most prestigious medical publication in the country.

The surgeons did consider the question of their obligation to both their employers and their patients, and concluded that they could serve both, even when they were called upon to testify at legal hearings related to accident compensation. Nineteenth-century employers and workers had a different understanding of workplace safety and liability than we have today. The carelessness of workers was often cited as the cause of any accident—they should have checked to see if a train was coming before stepping on that track! In the United States, judges usually accepted the idea that workers had agreed to shoulder the risks of dangerous workplaces when they took jobs. Over the decades when railway surgeons worked, though, primarily from the 1880s to the 1920s, that began to change. In 1908, a new U.S. law made railroads responsible for compensating employees for injury, if a company was found to be at least partially at fault.

But both workers and surgeons exhibited a dedication to their jobs because they believed in the role of the railroads in society. At one time, trains were modern marvels, the height of transportation technology, and the people tasked with keeping them running took their work seriously. “Workers bought into the idea of public service,” says Esbester. “They knew that if they couldn’t get the work done on time, it would cause a delay, and they might take a shortcut. I think it’s important that there’s some agency for the workers involved. They took active decisions very often for really really good reasons, but that had very bad consequences.”

It's probably about five times as briny as the Dead Sea.

For decades now, we’ve been searching for water on Mars. We've known for good while that it should be there—“No doubt there is water on Mars,” NASA wrote in 1967—we just needed to answer the very big questions of how much there was, what form it took, and where it could be found.

Since then, we've found gaseous water in the atmosphere and frozen water on the ice caps, but until now, we’ve never found a body of water in liquid form. In 1987, the astronomer Stephen M. Clifford theorized that liquid water might be hiding, deep below the planet’s polar ice caps. In a new paper published in Science, a European team of researchers reports that they’ve found what seems to be “a stable body of liquid water on Mars,” right where Clifford predicted it’d be.

It's most likely extremely briny or muddy. It could take years more research to confirm it's there. But water on Mars is water on Mars—pretty darn cool.

For the past 12 years, a spacecraft-mounted radar called MARSIS has been sending radio waves down to Mars, which reflect back information about the make-up of the planet below. Between 2012 and 2015, MARSIS scanned an area called the Planum Australe on the southern ice cap of Mars. When the team of scientists analyzed the data, they discovered a “very sharp change” in the signals, which resembled the signal of water hidden under the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.

After ruling out other explanations, they believe that the signals could reveal a patch of liquid water, more than 12 miles across and about a mile beneath the ice.

How would this work? It’s terribly cold on Mars, particularly at the poles, but the ice creates an insulating layer so that temperatures further down can actually be warmer. The pressure also changes the melting point of water. One key factor, though, is that this isn’t a font of pure H2O. The analogous Antarctic lakes are chock full of minerals that make them extremely briny—around 200 PSU, or practical salinity units. The Dead Sea, by comparison, clocks in at 40 PSU. The Mars water would have to have a similar make-up to actually be liquid. As National Geographic reports, what the researchers found may be “a deposit of dampened sludge, more like muddy sediments than a pocket filled with liquid.”

The water on Mars, then, is trapped deep under the ice, and you probably wouldn’t want to drink it. (Although opinions may differ on that count.) This isn’t a lovely pool of water that’s going to slake the thirst of Mars colonists in years to come. But it’s a clue to how the terrain of Mars developed and to the planet’s long term climate. It’s also a place where extraterrestrial life could be flourishing. On Earth, places like these are home to bacteria adapted to the extreme conditions of sub-glacial, briny lakes. If there are tiny microbial aliens on Mars, this may be where they live.

There is another satellite orbiting Mars right now, but it hasn't detected what MARSIS did. It's less powerful in some ways, although if there were a pool of pure water, it is possible that its instruments could find it. That could mean that the "mucky sludge" explanation is correct; it could mean there's another explanation entirely. To find out for sure would require a new orbiter to head towards Mars and check the results.

The recipe calls for fresh feathers or lizard feet, clay, heat, and a whole lot of pressure.

Millions of years ago, some bird met the end of its life. Maybe it happened to flutter to the ground in a special place at a special time, where maybe, just maybe, the conditions were right to preserve its remains for millions of years. It might then have made its way to us, in the the black, scabby outcrops of British Columbia’s Burgess Shale, or the limestone of the Solnhofen region of Germany, or the layered sediments of the Huajiying Formation in eastern China.

Fossils are accidents. Only the barest fraction of bones wind up this way, owing to very particular combinations of location, temperature, pressure, and time. Most bones are broken and ground down, so anything that becomes a fossil is a rare exception, not the rule. And within this realm of outliers, there’s an even more unusual category of “exceptional” fossils—ones that preserve feathers, skin, or other anatomical structures.

A prehistoric feather would have the best chance of sticking around if it happened to be buried—while still fresh—in fine-grained sediment in a low-oxygen environment. (The prolific fossil sites listed above all had this going for them.) Evan Saitta, a postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, compares the scenario to a video game, in which a player has to keep overcoming obstacles and leveling up. “Your earlier levels are things like getting buried by sediment and avoiding microbial decay,” Saitta says. “You have to pass those levels with organics still intact.”

Fossils that clear those hurdles and persist for millions of years are loaded with information for scientists. Some might have preserved melanosomes, which researchers can use to reconstruct the color of an animal’s skin or plumage. Structures in the feathers can help explain how they emerged and evolved. But exceptional fossils like these are so rare that paleontologists who study taphonomy—the process of how fossils form—are left with a lot of questions. What molecules do and don't persist? How are the ones that endure changed by the heat and pressure?

Saitta believes that he, his graduate advisor Jakob Vinther, from the University of Bristol, and their collaborator Tom Kaye at the Foundation for Scientific Advancement have cooked up a way to dig into these questions: by reverse-engineering their own fossils in a lab.

In a new paper in Paleontology, Saitta and company outline the recipe for a DIY fossil. They packed modern lizard limbs, chicken feathers, and plant material—“basically as fresh as you can get,” Saitta says—into clay tablets, and then heated these in standard lab ovens at around 410 degrees Fahrenheit, at a pressure of 3,500 psi.

Since the organic material was encased, there was no way to tell for sure when it was good and ready without breaking the parcel open. After some experimentation, the researchers found that 24 hours seemed to be the sweet spot for mimicking the maturation of a fossil under geothermal heat and deep time. Ratcheting up the heat could compensate, a little, for time, Saitta adds, so he wasn't too concerned about overcooking it.

This is not the first time that researchers have tried to mature "fossils" on a tight schedule, but Saitta thinks that their technique is more successful than previous efforts. In addition to failing to yield the results researchers hoped for, some of these attempts got a little foul. When a fossil forms in the ground, proteins can leak out as they degrade. In previous trials in sealed capsules, keratin proteins in feathers and scales were contained, and festered into a rank goo that smelled like burnt hair, Saitta says. This time around, the organic material was encased in porous sediment that left room for these proteins to leach out, leading to better results and less of an ick factor. Their baked fossils look like the real deal, and when they studied them under a scanning electron microscope, they saw melanosomes. “That’s an indication that what we’re doing is comparable to the natural system of fossilization,” Saitta says.

Maria McNamara, a paleobiologist and expert in exceptional fossils at University College Cork, who was not involved in developing this experimental protocol, told Discover that, even though process isn’t a perfect analogue for what happens over millions of years in the ground, it’s a credible effort. “We cannot replicate the natural environment. We can never know all of the variables that were at stake,” McNamara said. “So the only way we can investigate fossilization is by using controlled experiments. I think this study is a nice attempt to bridge that gap.”

Now, the goal is to refine the process, and create “something more and more like a fossil,” Saitta says, “so we can then go play around with how these things work.”

The alcoholic “proof” system dates back to this centuries-old practice.

Nowadays, a flaming alcoholic beverage is either the handiwork of a skilled bartender or a terrible mistake. But just two centuries ago, this ritual was commonplace among members of the British Royal Navy. Setting fire to rum helped sailors regulate their spirits—and perhaps, find a small sense of control amidst an otherwise chaotic life at sea.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, life aboard a Royal Navy ship entailed brutal battles, unavoidable disease, and, to deal with it all, an inordinate amount of alcohol. To keep the seamen fed, hydrated, and in high spirits, the Victualing Board ensured that the fleet was supplied with an appropriate amount of salted meats, cheese, biscuits, and booze.

Initially, beer was the British Navy’s drink of choice. Water spoiled at sea, so sailors were allotted a whopping gallon of the brewed beverage each day. The Victualing Board owned its own breweries, and experimented with a few different brews, including stronger ales that could be diluted at sea, and spruce beer, believed to help ward off scurvy. But even beer didn’t hold up so well in the heat. After sitting in the damp, hot bowels of the ship, the wooden kegs would grow mold, turning the beer rancid. The Navy needed a more resilient spirit, one that could withstand time and temperature—and, perhaps, boost the bravery of the sailors, too.

Rum wasn’t the immediate first choice. The Royal Navy experimented with brandy and arak, a particularly strong distilled drink from the Middle East, introduced by the East India Company. But as the Triangular Trade and slave labor in the Caribbean made rum more accessible, and an important British business interest, it became the beverage of choice among the fleet.

Sailors received a “tot” of rum, equivalent to nearly half of a pint, each day. It could be drained on the spot, taken with lemon or lime juice to prevent scurvy, or used to settle debts between sailors. Rum was even prescribed to treat various ailments, such as scorpion and spider bites. Though revered for its supposed medicinal properties, it frequently led to intoxicated injuries, alcohol poisoning, and death. William Warner, a naval surgeon, observed in his medical notes, “drunkenness nowadays in the navy kills more men than the sword.”

Despite the dangers, sailors were more concerned about not being drunk enough. Wary that the ship’s purser might be serving watered-down rum, the seamen needed a quick, simple system to test the legitimacy of their spirits.

So, quite literally, they brought the fire. Harking back to a 16th-century system used by British tax collectors when calculating liquor tariffs based on alcohol content, the sailors implemented a resourceful (and rather dramatic) proof system. First, a few grains of gunpowder were mixed in with a small sample of allotted rum, and then set to a flame. If the liquid caught fire, the flame was “proof” that it wasn’t a diluted tot. If there was no reaction, the purser would face the fiery wrath of a shorted crew.

By 1740, an admiral by the name of Sir Edmond Vernon saw the constant drunkenness of his fleet as a bit of a problem. In an attempt to sober up the unruly troops, he established a new rule buffering the sailors’ buzz. From then on, the purser of each ship was required to dilute the rum with water, giving birth to a booze dubbed grog, which was doled out in two daily servings. The moniker is likely taken from Old Grog, a nickname attributed to Vernon for the infamous, gum-stiffened grogram coat he sported.

Though diluted, the new drink didn’t exactly usher the British Navy towards immediate sobriety. The total amount of rum between the two servings of grog supposedly still neared eight ounces. Over time, however, things began to shift. The invention of the hydrometer in 1816 dispelled the need for such an explosive proof method. Eventually, the temperance movement of the 19th century began curbing the sailors’ rum intake. By the 1950s, the rise of technology and advanced weaponry forced the Royal Navy to prioritize mental precision over drunken valor. On July 31, 1970, Black Tot Day marked the official eradication of rum from the British Navy, much to the chagrin of the sozzled seafarers.

Despite the gradual disappearance of torched tots and unadulterated intoxication aboard Great Britain’s naval ships, much of the language from the old maritime proof system still exists today. In England, spirits comprised of more than 57% alcohol (the lowest concentration that would catch fire) are considered to be “naval strength,” or overproof. The United States, too, uses proof terminology, though it varies slightly from the British vocabulary: A drink that contains 50% alcohol is considered “100 proof.” Even the word “groggy” harks back to the disoriented feeling one might get from guzzling too much grog—which, any 18th-century sailor might tell you, is an unsettling state to be in when dealing with explosive drinks.

“The rest in your hair!” and other perfect sayings, cheers, and salutes.

Raise your glass and sing a song of celebration! It's time for a toast. We asked Atlas Obscura readers to send us their funniest, most heartfelt, most memorable drinking salutes, and our cup runneth over.

We received hundreds of submissions. They include old-country sayings passed down through multiple generations, goofy toasts heard at the local bar, and (unprintable) blue rhymes your embarrassing grandpa trots out on holidays. Many celebrate togetherness, or triumphing over a world that's trying to keep you down, but nearly all of them are unforgettable.

Fill your glass and check out some of our favorite submissions below. You might just pick up a few new ways to salute your crew. But either way, just for reading, here's to you!

To Your Health

May your beautiful lips never blister!

“It was my dad's favorite toast and he was the BEST! Every holiday and party started with that toast and still does, only now the second toast is, 'here's to dad!'" — Hedy Schmidtchen, Frederica, Delaware

May you live for as long as you want, and never want for as long as you live!

“This was a toast I've seen Bud Abbott (of Abbott and Costello) use many times.” — Greg Firestone, Louisville, Kentucky

Strike hands with me. The glass is brim. The dew is on the heather. And love is good, and life is long, and friends are best together.

“A Scottish toast used in a Quaich Ceremony, for newlyweds. There is another verse after the one above, for the couple. I did not include it here.” — Abbie Jenks, Pelham, Massachusetts

To absent friends, and to ourselves, as no one is likely to concern themselves with our welfare.

“It is a combination of two classic Royal Navy toasts; the former customarily given on Sundays and the latter on Wednesdays. We always toast seated, as is the naval custom.” — lycanthropejeff, Florida

Health to those I love, wealth to those who love me.

— Kitty, United States

I drink to myself and another and may that other be he who drinks to himself and another and may that other be me!

“I have fond memories of my mother often lifting her glass with this toast, many moons ago. I don't know where or when it originated.” — Gini Kuhn, Denver, Colorado

You’re born in pain, you live in fear, you die alone, Merry Christmas.

"Heard it at a holiday concert of Scottish musicians. So, so Scottish. And you don’t need to wait for Christmas." — Bob Hicks, Florida

To the Poets, Philosophers, and Wise Men and Women

We lit the candle from both ends, it wouldn't last the night, but ah my fellows and my friends, the flame it burned so bright.

— Robert Baker, Santa Ynez, California

May the best of the past be the worst of the future.

“Got it from an old friend of mine.” — Roger Steinbrink, New Orleans, Louisiana

To high winds and mermaids!

“It says so much but one might have to think about it for a second to catch its drift. I don't remember who first shared it with me but it is one I come back to frequently and when I do, my companions often nod their heads in agreement.” — Dorothy Granger, Bloomington, Indiana

Rejoice, and be of good cheer! For THEY are out there, and WE are in here!

“One of Hugh Hefner's friends announced his arrival at a quiet party with this joyful declaration. I like the idea of old drinking buddies having a close enclave, where knaves are not welcome.” — Scott Myers, Rochester, New York

May our children have wealthy parents.

“Years ago, but as for who or whom... no clue. Seems pretty universal in terms of appeal (which I've tested in a number of countries and cultures) and ALWAYS bring out smiles and heads nodding in approval.” — John Fogg, North Garden, Virginia

Here's to it, and from it, and to it again, and if you don't do it when you get to it, you may never get to it to do it again!

“I learned it when I was in my 20s, and a ski bum at a resort in Utah called Alta. We called it the ‘Alta Toast.’ It was fun to try to say when inebriated." — Leah Sanford, West Valley City, Utah

May the roof above these friends never fall in, and may the friends beneath this roof never fall out.

“I can't remember when or where I first heard it, but it became a tradition at an annual Christmas party that my late husband and I had each year for friends and family. Many of them are gone now, so the toast is dear to my heart.” — Shirley Outen, Plant City, Florida

I'll drink to those who do, I'll drink to those who don't, but never the ones who say they will and later decide they won't. But the ones I'll toast from the break of day to the wee hours of the night, are the ones who say, "I never have, but just for you I might."

“I think I first heard this from my sister's third husband, but I'm not positive!” — Diana Dunkley, Kansas

It matters not if the wine glass is half empty or half full, clearly there's room for more!

“Saw it on a sign, somewhere.” — David Pue, Jacksonville, Florida

Here’s to it, down to it, damn the man that can’t do it, shovel it over to me cause I’m used to it!

“From my dad and his drinking days.”— Frank, Colorado

Here's to roses and lilies in bloom, and you in my arms, and me in your room. A door that is locked, a key that is lost, a bird and a bottle and a bed that is tossed. And a night that is 50 years long.

“This was the favorite toast of the late Herb Caen, longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist and man about town.” — Keith Dawson, St. Paul, Minnesota

You’re a gentleman and a scholar and a good judge of bad liquor.

“My grandpa had all sorts of great sayings. This is one of them.” — Caryl Heard, Hoboken, New Jersey

We’re only here for a short time, let’s make it a good time!

“It was introduced in the early 2000s in Scotland. After our first round of golf, we went to the local pub and a local toasted us with that quote. It’s something I try to do every day. ‘I’m only here for a short time, make it a good time.’” — Bob Burdt, El Dorado Hills, California

Life is short, but sweet.

“The more popular form of cheers in Tanzania is ‘maisha marefu,’ which is Swahili for 'long life.' But once when I said this to someone, he responded, ‘maisha ni mafupi, lakini ni matamu,’ ‘life is short, but sweet.’" — Jess Littman, Arusha, Tanzania

The wonderful love of a beautiful maid, and the love of a staunch true man, and the love of a baby unafraid, have existed since life began. But the greatest love, the love of love, even greater than that of a mother, is the tender, passionate, infinite love of one drunken sod for another.

“This poetic toast is painted into a very old and wonderful earthenware goblet that I have that was made in England. It makes me smile each time I read it.” — Glen Cabbage, Boston, Massachusetts

To the Liars and Cheats

Here's to cheating, stealing, and drinking. May you cheat death, steal hearts, and always drink with me.

“My grandparents had all kinds of plaques with sayings and toasts on them. They were all over the walls of their basement bar (complete with a slightly out of tune piano for singalongs) and that was one of my favorites.” — Kristen, New Hampshire

May you always lie, cheat, and steal. Lie beside the one you love, cheat the devil, and steal away from bad company.

“This toast was proposed by my wife's elderly uncle during our wedding reception. I’ve used it many times since then.” — Hugh Smith, Diamondhead, Mississippi

May we never go to hell but always be on our way.

“I read it somewhere when I was in college and it has always stuck as a favorite “ — Marie Albrecht, Canandaigua, New York

To Travelers and Those Far from Home

À nos amours!

“It means ‘to what we love.’ Learned it from a French friend.” — Sebastian, Berlin

Por un buen principio y un buen final!

“I’m from the south of Mexico and we clink the upper part of the beer bottle (for a good beginning) then clink the lower part of the bottle (and a good end). Salud!” — Edgar Santos, Mexico

Ullas!

“This is our Bengali version of cheers!” — Prasadranjan Ray, Kolkata, India

Por ti, por mi, y por lo bueno que vamos a pasar.

“I was in college and a friend from Colombia taught me this toast from his country (if not the region he was from). It's done with two people (I think) but you touch the rims of the cups together when you say 'Por ti,' touch the bottoms of the cups when you say 'por mi,' and rub the sides together on 'y por lo bueno que vamos a pasar.' For you, for me, and for the good times that'll happen between us. Something like that.” — Ananda Walker, Maryland

Lang may yer lum reek.

“It means ‘Long may your chimney smoke.’ In other words may you have a roof over your heads and fuel to keep you and your family warm. It's something which was traditionally said at Hogmanay in Scotland but it's also used at any family get together when the whiskey is passed around.” — Chris Dunn, Edinburgh, Scotland

Na krásu našich koní a rychlost našich žen.

“This is a cheeky toast often used amongst historical fencers here in Bohemia. It started a long time ago as ‘I toast to speed of our horses and beauty of our women.’ But it was later twisted into a word play that translates as ‘I toast to the beauty of our horses and speed of our women.’” — Vojtěch Ptáček, Pardubice, Czech Republic

Por lo que ayer dolió y hoy ya no importa, salud!

“Translation, ‘Here's a toast for what hurt yesterday and today doesn't matter anymore!’ I learned it from my grandmother, she had it as a child and also went through a hard divorce, but she managed to go on. That's why she toasted with this quite often. Preferably mezcal.” — Antuan F., Guadalajara, Mexico

Aan do!

“This phrase is in 'Haryanvi,' a dialect of Hindi from the State of Haryana in northern India, and loosely translates as 'bring it on.' While this isn’t a traditional toast (at all!) my friends and I have been using it since early undergrad days as a tribute to this state that borders New Delhi, especially because those were years of binge drinking and when bars shut for the night in Delhi, the best way to access more alcohol was with liquor shops across the border in Haryana! So, “aan do” ;)” — Aakanksha Batra, India

Будь здарова как карова и богата как земля

“In Russian, ‘Be as healthy as a cow and as rich as the earth! ‘This toast is considered vulgar/funny, usually happens when the party has had a few too many toasts already. Enjoy!” — Elena Rynkevic, Los Angeles, California

Up to it. Down to it. We do it ‘cause we’re used to it. Bermuda!

“I learned this cheers in Bermuda. I’m not originally from there, but it will always remind me of my time living there. A warm and inviting toast that celebrates individuals doing things their own way. Just like Bermudians.” — Brittney Woodrum, Bermuda

Here's chamor in your atchk!

“I had an uncle whose first language was Armenian. He didn't teach his children to speak it, but he made my aunt promise to teach the family this toast, which means, here's mud in your eye! I use it often as it brings back such a joyous memory of him. And it's so fun to say!” — Jamie Hunnicutt, Columbia, Missouri

Sto lat!

“My father left Poland after WWII for Canada and taught me to love and respect my heritage. ‘Sto lat’ literally translates to ‘100 years,’ which is the life expectancy you wish someone you like as you raise a fine glass of Polish vodka.” — Marie-Louise, Canada

Ichi-go ichi-e.

“I had a friend from Japan who used to say this often, especially at special events. It roughly translates to ‘for this time only.’ Even if that group were to get together in the same place at another time, all of the nuances would never be quite the same. I always appreciated that reminder to enjoy the people you were with in that moment and space.” — Morgan Miller, California

Zwischen leber und milz, passt immer ein pils!

“It roughly translates as, ‘between the liver and spleen there is always room for beer.’ It's the first German I ever learned, I even have it on a t-shirt.” — Brad, Germany

Arriba! Abajo! Al centro! Adentro! [Accompanied by raising the glass in the appropriate direction, "Up! Down! To the center!" And then drinking: "Inside!"]

“I learned it in Chile, although I understand that it's common in other Spanish-speaking countries as well. Our Chilean guide, Victor, taught it to our tour group, and we shared many mealtime toasts this way.” — Mark Schaeffer, Oakland, California

Gezuar!

“This is a toast used in Albania. It literally means, ‘I'm glad!’ I served in the Peace Corps there and would toast with the locals at weddings, birthdays, or even just regular evenings. Now that I live back in the United States I still use it. It reminds me of my service.” — Kate, Las Vegas, Nevada

To the Funny and the Clever

Here’s to friends and family who know us well, but love us just the same.

“I learned it about 20 years ago. We use it often within the family. We’re all a bunch of goody two-shoes, so it’s meant as a bit tongue in cheek.” — Sally Edmonds, California

Let us drink to bread, for without bread, there would be no toast.

— Sean, Seattle, Washington

May all your ups and downs be under the covers!

“My father was infamous for toasting this at many a family wedding.” — Kevin McCarthy, Santa Monica, California

Success to temperance!

“My father-in-law always used this toast.” — Kris Riordan, Brisbane, Australia

Here's to Dame Fortune; may she smile upon you. May you never meet her daughter, Miss Fortune.

“It was my uncle's favorite toast. I love the play on words.” — Mary Devine, Eagan, Minnesota

God in goodness sent us grapes to cheer both great and small. Little fools drink too much, and great fools not at all!

“It always makes people smile.” — Dianne Gardner, Florida

The past is history, the future is a mystery, but today is a gift, because it's the present.

“Dave Cremin, a 30+ year bartender at the most excellent Irish pub in Astoria, Cronin & Phelan. Great guy, and a literal magician with a wry sense of humor. Local treasure who never disappoints.” — Matt, Queens, New York

Remembering good St. Patrick, who by strategy and stealth, drove all the snakes from Ireland. Here's a toasting to your health. But not too many toastings, lest you lose yourself, and then forget about good Patrick, and see all those snakes again.

— Rev. Carl Bowers, Wurtsboro, New York

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if it weren't for our ass, our belly would bust!

“A favorite of my gruff, crusty paternal grandfather, Frank Arbter. I must have been about five years old when I first heard him use it.” — William "Arbie" Arbter, Styrgeon Bay, Wisconsin

If the ocean was beer and I was a duck, I'd swim to the bottom and drink my way up. But the ocean's not beer, and I'm not a duck. So raise up your glasses and shut the fuck up.

“I learned this toast when I was in the U.S. Marine Corps. I have been out of the Corps for 10 years and now live in Riga, Latvia. I still use this toast and my Latvian friends still get a kick out of it. Also ‘Priekā!’ is the traditional Latvian toast, so I usually throw that in on the end.” — Maikl Stark, Riga, Latvia

Here's to being single, drinking doubles, and seeing triple.

— Lauren Mulcahy, Cape Town, South Africa

IwlIj jachjaj!

“Okay, this is Klingon, the constructed language from Star Trek. It means, ‘May your blood scream!’ I am a fan but the language has a special place for me. They have websites, international meetings, books, plays, an opera. All this for a race and culture that doesn’t exist.” — Tim Haggerty, California

Over the teeth, over the gums, look out stomach here it comes.

“When I was a kid taking medicine. Then I discovered that it could cover just about anything you drank.” — Bob Cantrell, Arkansas

Here's to the men we love, here's to the men that love us, but the men we love aren't the men we love, so fuck the men and here's to us!

“Usually done at a girl's night out! Obviously! Don't remember where I heard it, a very long time ago though.” — Kim Mueller, Huntingtown, Maryland

Here's to you and here's to me, and if by chance we disagree, to hell with you! And here's to me!

“It's a toast I learned from my grandfather (to my mother's chagrin) while growing up in Vermont. It always made us laugh though.” — Conrad, Romania

The rest in your hair!

“Said with shot of Acquivit in hand. After tossing it back, the shot glass is inverted above one's head, insuring that all present drain their glass. Learned at a glorious Midsommär in Sweden when you would think I was old enough to know better.” — Brian Wertheimer, Seattle

Here's to your nose, here's to your chin, here's to the hole, in-between it goes in!

“This was one my wife's grandmother used. I drank sherry with her like shots!” — Captain Chris, The Beach on Cape Cod

Here's to those that love us! And for those that do not love us, may God turn their hearts. And if he cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles; so that we may know them, by their limping.

— Joe Regan, Long Beach, California

Here's to the bird that flew so high, I hope it never loses a feather. If I don't marry the gal I love, I'll drink this stuff for ever!

“My son came back from preschool with this toast when he was five.” — Greg Curry, Lubbock, Texas

Here's to it and from it and to it again, if you don't do it when you get to it, you'll never get to it to do it again.

“I learned this from a very astute, self-made man the family called Grand Dad Cain. He emigrated for England at a very young age worked hard and became very, very successful. He said the toast was all you needed to succeed.” — Ian Donald, Burlington, Ontario

To History and Victory

To the confusion of our enemies!

“I don't remember where I first heard, or read, about it. It has special meaning for me because I am a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp (1944-45) and of exile by the Stalinist regime to a small Hungarian village (1951-52). — Thomas T. Schweitzer, Toronto, Canada

To the regiment! [Group replies] I wish I was there!

“When I lived in Beijing, a group of my British and Irish mates there used to use this as a toast. One of the English guys just started saying it and it caught on. I didn’t know what it meant, or where he got it from, and we never discussed it. (I’ve just Googled it, and it actually comes from a British sitcom called Early Doors, which takes place in a pub. Even on the show, it was just a toast that some of the characters used, it was never explained.) I just liked the sound of it. It was kind of ridiculous, but fun to say, and it sounded like something a grizzled, stiff upper-lipped British World War II officer might say. There was a camaraderie to it, which chimed in a way with what you experience when you live abroad. In my group, hardly any of us had family with us. Your friends became your family. So I guess—and we would have ridiculed each other for suggesting this—a little toast like this boosted that sense of being in it together. Beijing is a transient city, people are always coming and going. So one by one, those friends moved on, and now we’re all in different places. I haven’t said it for years, and I don’t think I would try it in a new group. It’s all about that place, Beijing, that bar, Paddy O’ Shea’s, those times and that group of friends. And though life is great, there are times when, yes, I wish I was there.” — Iain Shaw, St. Louis, Missouri

Here's to the Council of Trent! [All repeat.] For putting the ban on the meat [All repeat.], and not on the drink! [All repeat.]

“From Avram Davidson, who said it was an ‘authentic Irish toast.’” — Michael Gushue, Washington D.C.

Up a long ladder, down a stiff rope, here's to King Billy, to hell with the pope!

“Learned this in Canada 100 years ago.” — Blue Robinson, Maui, Hawaii

Poison all around.

“Friends in France say it. It’s a throwback to the idea that toasting was to cause a mix of fluids to make sure if one glass contained poison, they all now did.” — Jason Nadler, Long Island, New York

Fish, tin, and copper!

“This is a traditional toast from Cornwall, in the U.K. The toast refers to the historical industries of Cornwall, fishing and mining for tin and copper in which my Cornish ancestors were engaged. If I needed a toast, apart from 'The Queen' I would use 'Fish, tin and copper.'” — Gael Phillips, Australia

To Those Making It Up as They Go Along

Nice driveway!

“It was the custom in my Polish/Slovak family to toast with na zdravie, which is Slovak for “(to) your health!” A sister-in-law, not yet familiar with this phrase, politely asked why everyone was wishing each other “nice driveway.” It became a favorite family joke.” — Leslie, Texas

To crime, punishment, and the interpretation thereof.

“I work on the Alcatraz Night Tour. Those of us who do research and give tours are called ‘historical interpreters,’ and what we do is called ‘historical interpretation.’ This is our toast.” — Sharlene Baker, San Francisco

Up yours!

“For many years, I worked overseas in the oil industry, in small towns and camps in 10 or 15 different countries. I was often the only American in my company housing. We bachelors were usually housed in shared accommodation, so I was often sitting around in the evening with people of several different nationalities. The after-dinner recreation often turned to drinking and the conversation sometimes turned to 'What’s the common toast in your country?' As the answers went around the room, the Frenchman saying “A votre Santé,” the Finn saying "Kippis”, the Irishman saying “Sláinte,” the Brit saying “Cheers,” I did not want to admit that we Americans just copied the Brits and said “Cheers.” After all, I’m not just the only American in the room. I’m a Texan. So when the conversation came round to me, I raised my glass and said “I’m from Texas, and in Texas, we say ‘Up yours!’” — Don Pollock, Austin, Texas

Here's to not pissing yourself!

“It just occurred to me, during one session, that dry pants are worth celebrating.” — Thirston Quarthammer IV, Massachusetts

First one today!

“My father-in-law John Sadowski, long retired, was a hard working man. He liked to unwind at the end of his work day by sitting in front of his garage and drinking beer. Welcoming all to join him in his relaxation routine, when asked how many had he had, his answer was always the same, ‘First one today!’ When I married into the family, it was a rite of passage to learn this traditional Sadowski toast. When we travel, we make an effort to learn how say these three words in other languages (ie: Erste Heute, Le Premier du jour, Primo per Oggi). Ultimately, it is a reminder of the love of family and friends, celebrating together, around the world!” — Wally Walsh, Long Island, New York

May the wind at your back be from the cabbage at lunch.

“Made it up as I was tired of hearing trite toasts.” — Reverend Max, Wenatchee, Washington

Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

In 2012, Australia's Powerhouse Museum discovered that something strange was happening with some of their swimsuits.

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, had a problem: Their Speedos were oozing.

Since 1991, the institution has been home to the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of Speedo swimwear. The earliest suits in the archive date back to the 1930s and are made from navy blue cotton knitwear; more recent designs, such as the LZR Racer full-body suit, are so technologically advanced that they’ve been banned from the Olympics for making swimmers too fast. But the oozing, which conservators discovered in 2012 during a routine check of the collection, was limited to Speedos produced in the 1980s and early ’90s.

“It was a bit of a shock, in fact, to find this group of swimwear deteriorating in storage where it's kept in the dark,” said Suzanne Chee, a textile conservator at the museum. “We keep our relative humidity constant and the temperature down in our storage facility, so something strange was happening in the drawers.”

To diagnose the affected swimsuits, Chee and her fellow conservators had to first determine their chemical composition. So, they selected a suit from the 1986 Commonwealth Games and subjected it to a series of in-house tests. (They also sent some fibers to the University of New South Wales for additional analysis.)

Eventually, they fingered the culprit: The Lycra in the suits contained ester-based polyurethane, a plastic that deteriorates when it comes in contact with water. Even in the Powerhouse Museum’s climate-controlled storage area, there was enough moisture in the air to cause a gradual breakdown in the chemical bonds that resulted in stickiness and oozing.

These Speedos fell victim to what conservators call “inherent vice”—when the materials that make up an object cause it to deteriorate, even self-destruct. Despite its flashy name, inherent vice is “no joke,” notes Sarah Scaturro, head conservator for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s a really distressing characteristic of an object for a conservator.” Certain methods of storing or displaying can help stabilize the item temporarily, she says. “But in the long term, we know that there’s nothing that can really be done to stop it” from falling apart.

The issue isn’t limited to swimsuits, or even clothing. The hand-drawn animation cels from classic Disney films such as Snow White, for instance, were manufactured with unstable plastics that have since caused extensive wrinkling and yellowing. But inherent vice has resulted in a strange quirk of textile conservation: A cellulose acetate dress from the 1960s, for example, could be in far worse condition today than Coptic linen dating back to the 4th century. It all depends on the composition of the textile—natural fibers like linen, cotton, and wool are relatively stable. But add in metallic dyes or a plastic like polyurethane, and there will be a problem somewhere down the line.

Yet for swimwear, in particular, the risk is worth it. Newly-developed materials like spandex and nylon (or the more recent “Fastskin,” modeled after the skin of a shark) can determine an Olympic champion.

Speedo didn’t start out making swimsuits. In 1910, a young Scot named Alexander MacRae moved to Australia; four years later, he founded MacRae and Company Hosiery to manufacture underwear and knitwear. But as beach culture began to flourish in Sydney in the 1920s, the company diverted much of its energies into making early bathing suits. (The name “Speedo” emerged from a 1928 staff competition to brand these new garments, in which the winning slogan was “Speed on in your Speedo.”)

Made of cotton and wool, these suits weren’t necessarily uncomfortable, “just heavy,” says Powerhouse’s curator of fashion and dress Glynis Jones. “Once you get a lot of water into wool and cotton, you get a lot of drag from them.” A better option was silk, which is lighter—but also more expensive and much more revealing when wet. “Concerns around modesty were really significant in the ’20s and ’30s,” Jones noted, “so to have this really clinging swimsuit was not seen as desirable.”

Speedo experimented with silhouette as well as material, revolutionizing competitive swimwear in the late 1920s with the introduction of the racerback, which kept straps from slipping off mid-swim. “That was them starting to think about streamlining, thinking about speed through the water with those innovations in the design,” Jones notes.

Then came World War II, which was followed by the widespread introduction of brand-new, synthetic materials. “There was this moment of technological optimism, where technology was seen as the solution to everything,” Scaturro says. “In fact, there was a moment where, if you look through the manufacturing and industry literature, they were worried that they were going to run out of natural fibers to make clothes. It was seen as a necessity to have fibers that were manmade, it was seen as actually helping humanity to make these fibers.”

Even without this context, swimwear would have embraced synthetics. Nylon, unlike cotton or wool, is light, dries quickly, and has good stretch—ideal qualities for a bathing suit. Soon, Speedo was hammering out deals with manufacturers like British Nylon Spinners. “They were very keen to promote this new wonder fiber,” notes Jones.

In 1969, American chemical company DuPont opened an Australian branch and began to tinker with with nylon/Lycra mixes specifically for racing swimwear, which had “more stretch and were lighter than fashion fabrics,” Jones adds. They granted the now-dominant swimwear company exclusive rights to use their textiles, making Speedo the first swimwear company to design with a nylon/Lycra blend.

Of course, it’s also the Lycra that caused the oozing in the 1980s suits. There are actually four kinds of plastics that will undoubtedly show inherent vice, says Scaturro, but the one she’s most worried about—polyurethane—is the one that may have doomed a decade of Speedos.

“The beauty of polyurethane, the reason why it's used so much in the industry, is that it's infinitely customizable,” she explains. “You can totally do a boutique style polyurethane for anything you need.” This helps to explain why only a decade of Speedos were affected in the Powerhouse collection. Invista USA, who supplied the Lycra for these suits, briefly changed their recipe to include ester-based polyurethane during that period.

But identifying the precise chemical composition of polyurethane requires time-consuming scientific testing. (After six years on the job, Scaturro is still working her way through analyzing the Met Costume Institute’s collection of more than 35,000 items.) “I feel like it is the sleeping time bomb in a lot of fashion collections,” she warns.

At the Powerhouse Museum, they’d identified the bomb—now they needed to figure out how to defuse it. Since the issue was moisture, they hypothesized that a low-humidity chamber might do the trick. So they built a tank and tested a few suits in there. When the outcome was encouraging, the museum secured a grant to build a bigger storage chamber where they could store the approximately 80 affected swimsuits indefinitely.

This issue has actually changed the ways in which the museum collects, says Jones. The institution has an ongoing relationship with Speedo Australia, and these days, she requests two examples of every competition swimsuit rather than just one. That way one can stay in storage and never get displayed, hopefully to increase its lifespan.

As both Chee and Jones are acutely aware, the 1980s swimsuits will not be the last with conservation issues. “In the 21st century, where there’s lots of plastics coming in and different compositions of the plastics, it's going to be an uphill battle,” Chee notes. New materials continue to be a linchpin of Speedo’s business. Although the full-body LZR suit may be banned, they continue to use “Fastskin” in their most recent designs for Olympic athletes. And as each one of these high-tech suits eventually enters the Powerhouse’s collection, it’s overshadowed by a looming question: How long before things start going wrong? Because in the end, the designers aren’t thinking about longevity—they’re thinking about speed.

Ellen G.K. Rubin has more than 9,000 pop-up and movable books.

With more than 9,000 pop-up and movable books in her collection, Ellen G.K. Rubin has earned the nickname of Popuplady. Today, pop-up books are often thought as of strictly for children, but they've long been used to instruct adults on mathematics, astronomy, astrology, and medicine. Rubin says she considers herself a cheerleader for paper engineers, the professionals who make movable books come to life. Through her collecting, she's become an expert resource to those who study this skilled craft.

In the video below, Atlas Obscura takes viewers on a tour of Rubin's private collection. For more on Rubin and her work, read our recent profile.

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