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Mapping Old Rail Routes Like Contemporary Subways

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They're dreamy.

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In 1905, if Angelenos were hot, bored, or stricken with wanderlust, they might make their way to the intersection of 6th and Main Street and climb on a trolley bound for the mountains or the waves.

These lines—pleasure routes operated by the Pacific Electric Railway Company—“reach from the mountains to the sea, and penetrate the valleys that lie between,” a promotional pamphlet proclaimed. Along the way, they made pit stops near all sorts of “points of scenic and romantic interest.” The “Mountain Route,” partway to Rubio Canyon, paused at an ostrich farm, where visitors could admire the long-necked birds behind a fence. When the car stopped beside a riotous field of poppies, riders hurried to gather them into bouquets. The “surf route” offered numerous chances to wade or plunge into the froth at Huntington Beach (named for developer Henry Edwards Huntington, who also owned the railway itself), or stroll above the waves beating against the newly constructed pier at Long Beach. Passengers were deposited at Alamitos Bay to feast on fish hauled fresh from the water.

The rail company operated many routes, including these ones that were pleasant, peaceful, and downright pastoral—nothing at all like the adjectives that would have crawled through Jake Berman’s mind, more than a century later, when he was stuck in gridlock on the notoriously sluggish U.S. Route 101.

To escape the frustration, Berman, an artist, let his mind wander. He got to thinking: Surely there must have been a different way to get around. He pursued the question at the Los Angeles Public Library. “Before long, I was deep down a rabbit role,” he says, “learning about the old Pacific Electric Railway.”

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The system—once the largest electric railway in the world—boasted streetcars, freight trains, and more traveling along than 1,100 miles of track. It fizzled among growing freeways as well as its own maintenance woes and reliability issues, and was dismantled in the decades after World War II. Los Angeles now has a newer, smaller Metro system, and some of the lines run along the old rights of way, Curbed Los Angeles reported; some bus routes follow old corridors, too.

The legacy of the Pacific Electric and its red cars also lives on in a series of prints that Berman has made, portraying long-gone railway routes in the style of more contemporary mass-transit maps.

Berman trawls through old service guides and other primary sources to figure out where the routes led, then plots them out. All the while, he tries to balance legibility with a dash of period-specific styling—though his creations tend to be more colorful than their vintage counterparts. He’s worked his way through San Francisco and Los Angeles, plus Boston and New York. On the East Coast, some old stations endured as lines opened and closed: A predecessor of the present-day Broadway Junction station was born in 1885, for instance, when it was called Manhattan Junction. (Later, construction would replace and consolidate other stations on the same spot.) “I'm not trying to recreate period maps directly,” Berman says. “I'm trying to give the reader in 2019 a sense of what things were like in the past, with a relatable aesthetic.”

Hop aboard a sampling of Berman’s maps below.

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What Children's Story Did You Later Realize Was Awfully Dark and Scary?

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Help us compile a list of the world's most delightfully disturbing kids' books.

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The German author Heinrich Hoffman pretty much set the gold standard for nightmare-inducing children’s stories with his most famous creation, Struwwelpeter, or “Shockheaded Peter.” The title character of Hoffman’s 1845 collection is all insane hair and grotesque fingernails (the story concerns the grisly fate of a young boy who refuses to bathe, trim his nails, or comb his hair), but the book also includes such gems as “The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb.” In that tale, a child who won't quit sucking his thumb gets his digits snipped off by the Scissorman, a terrifying character that would go on to inspire Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands. The book is... a lot. But it's not alone.

Hoffman's morality tales successfully freaked out German kids in the late 1800s, in the best possible way. And in fact, many of the world's greatest children’s stories are so frightening (intentionally or not) that they've left readers with a host of unsettling memories. What are the most delightfully disturbing children's books and stories from your part of the world? We want to hear about them.

Fill out the form below to tell us about a creepy children’s story that you still think about as an adult. We’ll collect some of our favorite submissions in an upcoming article!

For Sale: A Penny Worth a Fortune

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In 1943, copper was supposed to be preserved for the war effort.

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Most pennies are worth a single cent, but one very special 76-year-old coin up for sale this week will net far, far more than that.

Copper pennies issued in 1943 look, in most ways, like any other you might find on the street, but they were never supposed to be made. That year, pennies were to be struck from steel, in order to preserve copper for things such as shell casings and telephone wire, which were vital to the American military effort in World War II. Diligent as the mints were, some leftover copper (or bronze, technically) planchets from 1942 snuck into the coin presses and were struck into pennies in the new year. The few copper pennies that emerged in 1943 were obscured and protected by the millions of “steelies.”

Just 10 to 15 of these mistake coins are believed to be in circulation today. One of them hits the auction block this week at Heritage Auctions, in Orlando, Florida.

With a handful of coppers emerging from mints around the U.S., word of these rarities began to spread, along with a false rumor that Henry Ford would provide a free car to anyone who could supply him with one of the pennies. Eager to save face, the Treasury Department deflected collectors’ inquiries with a firm form letter: “In regard to your recent inquiry,” the Treasury insisted, “please be informed that copper pennies were not struck in 1943. All pennies struck in 1943 were zinc coated steel.”

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In March 1947, a man named Don Lutes, Jr. obtained one of these numismatic blunders from his high school cafeteria in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. But after receiving the Treasury's letter—not to mention a rejection from Ford after asking about a free car—Lutes, Jr. put his penny aside, unable to confirm its singularity or value. Noticing the tension between the reddish hue and the embossed year, he held onto it, despite the naysayers. His instinct was validated in 1958, when another collector’s 1943 copper penny was sold for $40,000, according to the United States Mint. That’s a lot to pay for a penny no matter how you look at it—adjusted for inflation, however, it’s the equivalent of more than $300,000 today.

Over the decades, Lutes, Jr.’s coin became an icon of numismatic errors, and will fetch more than $100,000 at auction this week. Talk about a lucky penny.

Atlas Obscura and The New York Times Journeys Launch Science Weekends

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Our new collaboration offers unique three-day experiences, starting in Los Angeles and London in 2019.

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Since you’re an Atlas Obscura reader, it’s probably safe for me to assume that you’ve been longing for years to join the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries and to wangle your way into an after-hours tour of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s legendary Dinosaur Lab. Well, you’re in luck. We’re thrilled to announce that Atlas Obscura and Times Journeys, The New York Times Company’s travel program, are collaborating on Science Weekends, a pair of science-themed, three-day trips to Los Angeles and London in 2019.

Atlas Obscura and Times Journeys could be the best scientific pairing since Marie and Pierre Curie. The combination of Times journalists and Atlas Obscura’s access to hidden wonders has allowed us to create itineraries that are like nothing out there, offering unique experiences for Atlas Obscura’s community and Times readers.

The first of the Science Weekends, which runs May 10-12, 2019, will show travelers a Los Angeles that’s as far away from the Hollywood Sign as you can get. L.A. is one of the most important scientific cities in the world, having made extraordinary contributions in the fields of space exploration, aviation, and natural history. Our travelers will experience the best of that: You can practice urban astronomy on a downtown rooftop, learn how museum specimens are taxidermied, hear a first-hand account of an Apollo mission, explore L.A.’s famous abandoned zoo, have an after-hours soiree at the Natural History Museum, and much more. Throughout the weekend, you’ll get the chance to learn from astronomers, particle physicists, zoologists, paleontologists, and, of course, New York Times reporters.

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The second of the Science Weekends, which takes place September 19-21, 2019, will celebrate London’s extraordinary history of medical and scientific reporting. Guided by British scientists and Times journalists, you’ll test Victorian pill-making equipment at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum, and study the history of anesthesia at the Anaesthesia Heritage Centre. And your evenings will be unlike anything you’ve experienced before. One night, you’ll watch—or maybe the better word is “endure”—a surgical demonstration at the Old Operating Theatre, an ancient attic and one of England’s most unusual medical landmarks. Another night, you’ll join the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, founded by Royal Charter in 1617, for a full livery dinner, complete with ritual boasts and toasts. On both trips, you’ll get to spend time with an exceptional group of fellow travelers, both New York Times and Atlas Obscura readers.

Read more about the Los Angeles Science Weekend.

Read more about the London Science Weekend. And please email us at trips@atlasobscura.com or call us at 1-646-961-4857 if you have have any questions.

Turning Anatomical Drawings Into Mosaics, Stone by Stone

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An artist is making massive monuments to medical illustration.

The trapezius, the latissimus dorsi, the hamstrings—those were easy. Long swaths of sinew lend themselves to big strips of stone. The short muscles around the ribcage, though—those are hard. The nervous system, branching like lacy coral, is harder still. Even so, John T. Unger, an artist based in Hudson, New York, is working his way through the body—from head to toe and down into the muscles, bones, eyeballs, and belly button—by making massive mosaics based on the work of the 16th-century anatomist Bartholomeo Eustachi.

Eustachi died in 1574, but the first edition of Tabulae anatomicae, a volume dedicated to his findings, wasn't published until 140 years later. In the accompanying copperplate engravings, made by Giulio de Musi, figures contort in effortlessly elegant poses—they're as lithe and nimble as dancers, but nude and stripped of skin. These images remain more obscure than those of fellow 16th-century anatomist Andreas Vesalius, whose De humani corporis fabrica corrected a lot of assumptions that originated when anatomists turned to animal corpses in eras when the church frowned on dissecting human bodies. Unger consulted a 1783 edition of Eustachi's work, digitized by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, which featured hand-colored plates that showcase muscles, bones, and tendons in various ruddy shades. For a mosaicist, Eustachi’s images have an advantage over Vesalius’s renowned black-and-white ones: Since the tissue is already colored in the source material, it’s easier to match stones to the hues.

That’s something Unger has worked hard to get right. “Marble comes in just the right colors to do an anatomical drawing,” he says. Unger is making 14 mosaics in all, each weighing between 300 and 350 pounds, depending on the backing and mortar, and spanning roughly four feet by seven feet. Because he wanted the colors to feel cohesive across them, Unger bought as much stone as he could upfront. (Since marble is so heavy, several tons of it "really fits in a corner of a small garage,” he says.)

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In addition to the images from the National Library of Medicine, Unger also paged through a stack of anatomy books including hand-me-down volumes from his wife, who works as a nurse. To bring the muscles to life, he figured he needed three colors of brownish, reddish stone—that would be enough to create convincing shading. Buying in bulk matters because variation is natural, Unger adds: “If you go to a quarry and buy the same stone by name a week later, the color may change.”

In the illustrations, some of the figures' skin has a pale blue cast. To emulate it, Unger tracked down stone from a specific quarry in South America. He also spent months puzzling out how to convey the crosshatching the engraver had used on the figures’ hands and feet. Eventually, he cracked it, settling on slicing striated limestone lengthwise, diagonally, and into chevron patterns. He stocked up on onyx from Arizona, black marble for belly buttons, and rubies for the figures’ glassy eyes. “By the time I’m done,” he says, “I will have cut two or three linear miles of stone.”

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Unger began the project in earnest in 2015, though he started noodling over it nearly a decade earlier. “I was in over my head from the get-go,” he says, but he’s refined the work over time, graduating from pre-cut squares to the equipment he needs to cut stubborn materials down into fine, tiny pieces just a few millimeters thick. “The deeper I go down this rabbit hole, the better I get at it,” he says.

The mosaics are still Unger’s passion project, in every sense. By day, he fashions luxurious-looking fireplaces made from old industrial tanks. These are the bread and butter of his artistic work—the little domes flanked by carved flames or shooting comets are how he affords to buy supplies for the mosaics, and justifies working on them late into the night. He’ll display what he’s finished so far at an exhibition at the Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson in June and July 2019. Eventually, he hopes to send the finished product on the road as a touring show, and the secure the mosaics a permanent place in a museum collection.

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He’s optimistic about his prospects, because mosaics have staying power—literally and metaphorically. Ancient examples testify to the medium’s enduring appeal and hardiness, and while medical practices and protocol have changed since Eustachi’s day (the title page of his volume shows people poking and prodding at a flayed-open body cavity with their bare hands, while dogs rip into the entrails on the floor), humans are still far from solving all of the body’s mysteries. If Unger can’t find a home for his work, he’ll turn his monumental project into a monument of a different kind. “I may build a vault on the little mountain where I live," he says, "and have them buried around me.”

The Mona Lisa's Eyes Are Not Following You Around the Room

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Maybe the “Mona Lisa effect” needs a new name.

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Leonardo da Vinci’s La Gioconda—the Mona Lisa—holds a special place in the art world, and not just because it is arguably the world’s most famous painting. It also lends its name to a phenomenon well known to fans of both art museums and ghost stories: the “Mona Lisa effect,” or the maddening, fascinating impression that a portrait’s fixed gaze is following you around the room. Even though we know the eyes aren’t moving, the feeling is certainly real.

"Curiously enough, we don't have to stand right in front of the image in order to have the impression of being looked at—even if the person portrayed in the image looks straight ahead," said Sebastian Loth, a cognitive scientist at the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University in Germany in a release. "This impression emerges if we stand to the left or right and at different distances from the image. The robust sensation of 'being looked at' is precisely the Mona Lisa effect."

But, according to a new study by Loth and his colleague Gernot Horstmann, and published in the journal i-Perception, Mona Lisa herself just isn’t that into you.

The Mona Lisa effect is a centuries-old optical illusion that relies on tricky interplay of light and shadow, which shifts our perspective of the subject’s stare. Since canvases are flat, the depth of a painting cannot change, but it can look like it does. This is why some people insist that Mona Lisa’s gaze can look like a skeptical side-eye from one side and a thoughtful glance straight-on. But, according to the new research, the painting that lends the phenomenon its name doesn’t actually display it. “The effect itself is undeniable and demonstrable,” Loth said. “But with the Mona Lisa, of all paintings, we didn’t get this impression.”

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Horstmann and Loth enlisted 24 study subjects to look at an image of the Mona Lisa on a computer screen and try to decide where she is looking. "Our perception is influenced by our beliefs to quite some extent,” Loth said in an interview. Our judgment of things like Mona Lisa’s gaze is inherently flawed, so the research team “could not just go and ask our participants about their impression.” So he and Horstmann had participants determine where her gaze fell on a small folding ruler. The researchers put the ruler varying distances from the monitor, and also used 15 different zoom levels (some participants saw her entire head, some only her eyes) so the rest of her facial features wouldn’t influence the perception of her gaze.

Horstmann and Loth collected more than 2,000 assessments, and determined that the Mona Lisa is never looking directly at you at all, but slightly to the right. “More specifically, the gaze angle was 15.4 degrees on average,” Horstmann said in the release. “Thus, it is clear that the term ‘Mona Lisa Effect’ is nothing but a misnomer.” It says more about the viewer, actually. “It illustrates the strong desire to be looked at and to be someone else’s center of attention—to be relevant to someone, even if you don’t know the person at all.”

7 Big Things That Are Smaller Than This Fatberg

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A water company in Devon, England, found the enormous blob clogging the sewer.

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Wielding lights and clad in reflective vests and waders, the team sloshed through the murky liquid, which squelched against their boots each time they took a step. On both sides of them, debris had piled up, almost like sand banks or soot-blackened snow. But they were far from shore and sidewalks, deep underground in a sewer running beneath the town of Sidmouth, in Devon, England. The heaps weren’t sand or snow, but saponified solids, fat, and trash. The crew was trekking alongside a fatberg.

The water utility South West Water told the BBC that the colossal, congealed mass was the largest they had encountered. In a statement, the water company said that the fatberg was found during routine checks, and estimated it would take two months or so to haul it out and hose down the sewer. Though it’s too soon to account for all the fatberg’s heft, the utility reports that this one seems to be around 210 feet long.

That’s big, but hard to picture as something that sprawls horizontally underground. It’s a bit easier to imagine relative to the height of these other things, which all pale in comparison to the fatberg:

Just a few weeks ago, in a roundup of Atlas staffers’ predictions for the 365 days ahead, I forecast that 2019 would be the Year of the Fatberg. The chunky, gunky sewer-cloggers are murky mirrors into the behaviors of people above the ground, because they hold all the stuff we flush and try to forget about—including cooking grease, napkins, floss, and menstrual products, which don’t belong in the pipes in the first place. I’m not a betting woman, but I’ll say this: It’s already looking promising.

Poop-Eating Mites Are Handy Historians

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These arthropods can tell us about the causes of animal extinctions.

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High up in the Peruvian Andes, the remains of poop-feeding mites have a story to tell. Their populations rose and fell along with those of the Incas and their llamas, according to a study published yesterday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

In 1993, Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a paleoecologist at the University of Sussex and lead author on the study, began studying the wetland near Cusco known as Marcacocha, taking a sediment core in hopes of learning more about the vegetation that used to sprout in the area. To his surprise, “these mites started falling out” of the core—in pretty good condition, too, though many had lost their limbs over the centuries. They’re “beautiful,” says Chepstow-Lusty of the long-dead arthropods. “I get a personal thrill every time I find one.”

These mites in particular had been hungry—for fecal matter, specifically. Whenever llama feces were sufficiently abundant, they were capable of asexually reproducing in large numbers. Marcacocha used to be a pond, and a popular watering hole for Incan llamas moving through the Andes. Analyzing the various layers within the core, Chepstow-Lusty and his colleagues found that the mite population was high during periods of Incan habitation, and low following the Spanish conquest of the area. As Science explains, the Spanish conquest killed many of the Incas and their animals, in turn leaving less food for the aquatic mites. The mite population eventually rebounded after cows and pigs were introduced to the area, but it sank again following an 18th-century smallpox epidemic.

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The finding is significant, says Chepstow-Lusty, because it may provide a new method for studying animal extinctions and their underlying causes. Much previous research has focused on fungal spores known as Sporormiella, which grow on herbivore feces and so, like the mites, can illustrate changes in those species’ populations. At Marcacocha, however, the Sporormiella population only tells part of the story. While it also fluctuated, it did not do so in accordance with historical events, but instead with environmental occurrences, such as the retraction of the pond during dry periods favorable to the fungus—a relevant, but incomplete record.

Chepstow-Lusty hopes that the study will encourage researchers to look beyond Sporormiella when studying the downfalls of animal populations around the world, including Vikings' sheep in Greenland, or reindeer in Norway. Analyzing different kinds of poop-feeders, it seems, can help distinguish between the environmental and historical factors at play. It’s not clear, he says, whether the mites technique will translate beyond small lakes like Marcacocha. What is clear is that these mites are more than what they eat.


How a Blue Tooth Led Scholars to a Medieval Manuscript Mystery

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And illuminated the hidden contributions of a female artist.

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At first glance, there was nothing unusual-looking about the old tooth, or the skeleton of the woman it came from. Neither tooth nor bones showed signs of deformity, disease, or trauma. The tooth was pointy, yellowed, average—and that’s exactly why scientists wanted a closer look.

The plan had been to use the tooth—buried with its onetime owner in a monastery cemetery in Dalheim, Germany in the 11th or early 12th century—to better understand diet and health in the Middle Ages. Teeth, particularly gunk-encrusted ones, can reveal all sorts of habits and behaviors, because tartar, or hardened plaque, is “the only part of your body that fossilizes when you’re still alive,” says Christina Warinner, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany. Bacteria, pollen, and little bits of food can all be trapped in this matrix, making teeth “a little time capsule of your life history,” she says. While archaeologists are often focused on pottery sherds or pieces of metal or stone, Warinner adds, “small artifacts, the kind that are too small to see, often preserve better than anything else.” As the team would discover, this microscopic debris can hold puzzles and clues about life and labor centuries ago.

Warinner and her collaborators first looked at the tooth, from the woman designated B78, under a microscope for a window into the daily life of the women who lived and worked in the small monastery. But the researchers soon realized they were looking at something more unusual. According to Warinner, her colleague Anita Radini, an archaeologist at the University of York, said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s blue.” At first, Warinner thought this might be an exaggeration—maybe it was just a little grayish? But it turned out to be flecked with bits that were resplendently, unmistakably blue—the color of a cloudless sky. “Under the microscope,” Warinner says, “it was clear [B78] had been rather extraordinary.”

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Radini, Warinner, and their team analyzed some of the several hundred blue particles suspended in B78’s hardened plaque, and determined them to be lazurite, the naturally occurring mineral that gives lapis lazuli its brilliant blue hue. They suspected that the crystals came from interacting with a rich ultramarine pigment, made by grinding lapis lazuli into a fine powder. The semiprecious stone had been traded into Europe from Afghanistan, perhaps through Alexandria, Venice, or other trading hubs. But how did it get into B78’s mouth, and stay there?

In a new paper in Science Advances, the team offers a number of theories, which could help rewrite what we know about the roles that women played in the creation of Middle Age manuscripts. The authors suggest that the pigment got onto B78’s teeth as she habitually touched paintbrush bristles to her mouth to taper them to a point, or when she prepared the blue pigment, a process that is known to create clouds of azure dust. In either case, they suggest, she was likely to have been intimately involved with illuminating manuscripts, either decorating them herself or prepping the materials that others used.

“I can’t think of another reason a sufficient quantity of lapis would be ingested, unless it was supposed to have apotropaic [magical or protective] qualities,” says Suzanne Karr Schmidt, curator of rare books and manuscripts of the Newberry Library in Chicago, who wasn’t involved in the research. The paper’s authors also consider and dismiss the possibilities that the pigment was consumed for a medicinal purposes (since the practice wasn’t widespread in Germany at the time), or accidentally ingested during “devotional osculation,” or the ritualistic kissing of an illuminated prayer book. (These kissing rituals didn’t become particularly popular until the 14th and 15th centuries, the authors note, and probably would have also resulted in the kisser picking up other pigments or materials beyond the dazzling blue.)

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For years, scholars believed that women weren’t often actively engaged in the process of creating illuminated manuscripts, the creators of which frequently went uncredited. “There really aren’t many signed illuminations from any period, though I can’t think of any female examples,” Schmidt says. In that era, she says, women were more often associated with textiles or, occasionally, from the 1400s on, embellishing manuscripts with hand-coloring or borders. Only 1 percent of books made prior to the 12th century can be attributed to women, the authors write, and historically it has been assumed that uncredited examples were made by men.

But Alison Beach, a historian at Ohio State University and a coauthor on the paper, has turned up a few examples of female illuminators staking a claim to their work, and compared these known examples against unsigned ones. "Start with what you know," Beach says, "a name, a hand, and move away from there and try to make a match." By comparing handwriting, she has been able to attribute some unsigned manuscripts to female illuminators. Overall, “women produced far more books than has been appreciated before,” Warinner says. The clues tend to cluster in Germany, Beach says, and a single 12th-century female scribe in Bavaria is known to have produced more than 40 books, including an illuminated gospel. Warinner and her collaborators argue that the stained tooth could begin to illuminate the hidden artistic contributions other women made during this period.

Further information about the women of Dalheim has vanished into the ether. It began as a parish church, and then became a female monastery, home to roughly 14 women at a time. They were buried, without gravestones or other identifying information, in the cemetery. Over the years—save for a few passing mentions in a couple of letters—it was largely forgotten after a 14th-century fire swallowed the complex and any records it might have held. Later, monks formed a new monastery there, and today the grounds are home to museum of monastic history, where the foundation of the women’s long-gone quarters are preserved. “The case of Dalheim raises questions as to how many other early women’s communities in Germany, including communities engaged in book production, have been similarly erased from history,” the study authors write. Beach says that we'll never know exactly how many manuscripts women worked on, but Warinner believes that incisors, molars, or bicuspids might hold surprising other insights about women’s life and work—stories that were once thought gone for good.

The Nazi Spy Tactic That Almost Destroyed Britain's Economy

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The German army's Operation Bernhard sought to flood the British economy with counterfeit bills.

During World War II, the German army employed a novel type of espionage that they dubbed "Operation Bernhard." The idea involved Nazi designers creating elaborate printing plates that mimicked British currency, in order to flood the enemy economy with counterfeit bills. Vince Houghton, a curator and historian at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., describes this strategy as economic espionage.

According to Houghton, the plates were impressive in their mimicry. British bills had several protections against counterfeit, including regulated serial numbers, watermarks, and the use of a specific type of paper. The German army printed over eight million fake bills during the war. As Houghton puts it, this tactic “is indicative of intelligence agencies and governments trying to find the edge—the way to defeat their enemy any way possible.” In 1945, the Germans attempted to destroy the evidence of Operation Bernhard in advance of their imminent defeat. The plates and bills were dumped into a deep lake in Austria. The remnants of the operation were only discovered later.

In the video above, Atlas Obscura gets a close-up look at the only surviving plate that retains its intricate design.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to explore more Atlas Obscura videos.

The Life and Legacy of Vietnam's Sacred Giant Turtle

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Hanoi's Hoàn Kiếm Lake was once home to both legendary and real chelonians.

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There is a legend that Vietnamese children learn in school about one of their country’s most revered heroes, a magic sword, and a giant turtle. As the tale goes, a 15th-century landowner known as Lê Lợi gained strength from a heaven-sent blade and drove out the occupying Ming army. Crowned emperor, he later went boating on a lake in present-day Hanoi—but his leisurely trip was interrupted by a large, golden turtle that emerged from the water to retrieve the weapon.

Lê Lợi renamed the lake, today a famous Hanoi landmark, “Hồ Hoàn Kiếm,” or “Lake of the Returned Sword.” The blade was never seen again. But the sacred chelonian, today known as the Hoàn Kiếm turtle or the Golden Turtle, has maintained a curious, high-profile presence in Vietnam.

A symbol of the country’s independence and longevity—even seen as a deity that has protected its capital—the turtle is immortalized in art and architecture around Hanoi. Tháp Rùa, or Tortoise Tower, is a late-19th-century building that sits on an islet on Hoàn Kiếm Lake. Nearby is Ngọc Sơn Temple, featuring a magnificent entrance with a relief of the Hoàn Kiếm turtle swimming away, sword on its back.

But the Hoàn Kiếm turtle also has a status as a kind of Vietnamese Loch Ness monster, a centuries-old cryptid that has captured imaginations and sent the city into a frenzy from time to time.

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Many Vietnamese believe the urban myth is kept alive to delight tourists. But anecdotal accounts of giant turtle sightings increased over the past few decades, according to the biologist Matthew P. Bettelheim. “Some who saw it said it was a monstrous turtle—some even said it was the Golden Turtle itself,” he writes in a 2012 article in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Bibliotheca Herpetologica. For those in the latter camp, any sight of it was a sign of good luck.

As it happens, enormous turtles have really lived in Hoàn Kiếm Lake. Some have even been studied. In 1967, a 550-pound, near-seven-foot-long male climbed to shore and died; it was preserved and placed in a glass box in Ngọc Sơn Temple, along with a plaque noting that it is more than 500 years old—suggesting that it could be the Golden Turtle. Another giant was captured on camera for the first time in 1998. The fuzzy footage, aired on television, set the capital “abuzz,” as one headline reads.

In 2000, believing the turtles in the lake could be a new species, the biologist Hà Đình Đức, a professor at Hanoi National University, named it Rafetus leloii to honor the famous legend. But three years later, a pair of scientists provided evidence that the creatures in the lake were actually Yangtze giant softshell turtles, a species first described by the British zoologist John Edward Gray in 1873 (“the lines on the back have some resemblance to Chinese printing,” he wrote). Today, the species is known as Rafetus swinhoei—the world’s rarest freshwater turtle.

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Far from golden, these specimens are olive green, with yellow-speckled faces and hog-like snouts. Once found throughout the Red River Delta and in rivers in southern China and northern Vietnam, only four are currently known to exist, due to habitat loss and hunting for consumption. Two have been recorded in the wild on the outskirts of Hanoi, and a male and female live in China’s Suzhou Zoo, where mating efforts have so far been unsuccessful.

Unfortunately, the fortuitous sightings at Hoàn Kiếm Lake ended on January 19, 2016, when the last turtle resident died. This one, known as Cụ Rùa, or Great-Grandfather Turtle, was the most famous of its kind and, for most of its life, rather elusive.

“A lot of people didn’t believe it was really there,” says Timothy McCormack, director of the Asian Turtle Program, a Hanoi-based conservation organization. “They thought it was a legend. It’s quite secretive. It would spend a lot of time under the water, making it not all that easy to find.”

By 2011, though, its existence was undeniable. At the end of December 2010, Cụ Rùa surfaced, drawing a crowd of excited locals and tourists who saw it as an indication of a lucky new year to come. But then it appeared multiple times in subsequent months, its skin mottled with ghastly lesions and other injuries from fishing hooks and invasive species. Concern for its health increased. After all, Cụ Rùa was living in a toxic, 12-hectare body of water—a central hub and all-too-convenient dumping site of a fast-growing city. Was Cụ Rùa trying to escape?

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It seemed that way by March 2011, when its head poked out of the muddy water on a daily basis (on one occasion, it even allegedly ate a cat in front of an astonished audience). City authorities decided to capture Cụ Rùa and build it a special hospital—basically, a filtered, fenced-off section of the lake—near Turtle Tower.

After a number of failed attempts watched by massive crowds, a team of 50 or so men successfully netted the 440-pound creature in early April for treatment, keeping it in the sequestered area. As Cụ Rùa’s health gradually improved, the city was forced to face the filthy waters that led to this mess. Sanitation crews worked to clean up the lake, and 60,000 fish were introduced into the water for Cụ Rùa to eat.

The turtle was released in July 2011, but its environment, it seems, was far too toxic for it to survive long. In January 2015 alone, it had surfaced at least six times, provoking worry that it was stressed or ill.

A year later, Cụ Rùa’s body was seen floating in the middle of the lake. It was believed to be over 100 years old.

Its death was a deeply tragic environmental and cultural loss. People were concerned that it would have a negative impact on Vietnam,” says McCormack. “I’m always amazed at how it’s considered so culturally significant. An animal that brings fortune on the country—it’s quite unique really.”

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They may not be tied to a beloved legend, but other Rafetus swinhoei might be swimming in Vietnam’s waters. McCormack and his team have been conducting field surveys throughout much of northern Vietnam to identify potential sites where the species might survive. They also focus on safeguarding the other two known Yangtze softshells in the country.

One, identified in 2007, resides in Đồng Mỏ Lake. The second, in Xuan Khanh Lake, was confirmed only in April 2018, when scientists matched environmental DNA collected from its water with known samples of Rafetus swinhoei. Both bodies of water are commercial fishing sites, which pose threats to the creatures, as do floods, which can wash them towards danger. The Asian Turtle Program’s goal is to establish these lakes as protected habitats.

All the organization’s efforts rely on government support. One ongoing discussion with Vietnam’s Directorate of Fisheries is how to catch and bring the two wild turtles together for breeding. Depending on their sexes, scientists could turn to artificial insemination, as the Suzhou Zoo attempted. There’s even the possibility of mating a turtle from Vietnam with one from China, although such a high-profile exchange would face many bureaucratic hurdles.

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And as for the fate of Cụ Rùa? After it died, its body was sent to Hanoi’s Museum of Nature, where German specialists were brought in to preserve it using plastination. Cụ Rùa is now in a box while museum officials decide where its body will reside, but according to Marco Fischer, a zoology preparator with the Museum of Natural History in Erfurt, one option is to present it at Ngọc Sơn Temple.

Great-Grandfather’s presence has certainly been missed in the capital. The legend of the Hoàn Kiếm turtle is so enduring that some Hanoians have suggested that authorities move one of the Vietnamese softshells to the city lake to keep the story alive, says McCormack. But although the polluted lake was dredged once more at the end of 2017, the risk of introducing a turtle into those waters anytime soon is still too high.

“There is potential that animals go back into Hoàn Kiếm, but the environment would have to go through further cleaning,” McCormack says. “Although ultimately, that would be a nice end to the story.”

For now, he holds hope that the species can one day have a self-sustaining population elsewhere, in a sanctuary safe from fishing hooks, soup pots, and other human threats.

19 Unforgettable First Kisses and the Ordinary Places Where They Happened

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Romance can blossom anywhere. Parking lots. Sidewalks. Even the South Pole.

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A few weeks back, I found myself thinking about the engraved rock that marks the spot where Michelle and Barack Obama's first kiss took place. Located on an otherwise unassuming Chicago sidewalk, it's just such a heartwarming monument to the ways that love can transform an otherwise mundane place into something wondrous. I wanted to know about more such places, so I asked Atlas Obscura readers to tell us precisely where they'd had their first kiss with the person they love. Get out the tissues, because the responses were emotional.

Before the potential overload of schmaltzy sentimentality makes you dry heave, hear us out. Our readers sent us scores of truly charming stories about first kisses in places that otherwise might seem unremarkable. We received tales about swooning romance in cruddy cars, outside a touristy gift shop, in a college dorm common area, and even at the South Pole (okay, that one is pretty amazing).

Check out a selection of our favorite submissions below and start your new year out with a little romantic inspiration. And if you have a story about the location of your own first kiss that you'd like to share, head over to our brand new community forums (they're pretty sexy), and spread the love!

In a 2005 Honda Civic

Rural Indiana

“We had been in England for a week and a half for an orchestra tour, and had been flirting the whole week and hanging out. The night we got back, I went over to his place, and we watched a movie. He drove me home and I was going to get out of his car and he wasn't going to make a move, so I did! I kissed my husband for the first time in his little 2005 Honda Civic, parked in the street in rural Indiana. A little less exciting than having a first kiss in England where we had been for 10 days, but still very memorable!” — Megan Kaercher, Cincinnati, Ohio

On a Bridge in a Public Park

Gympie, Australia

“My wife and I shared our first kiss on a bridge overlooking dozens of ducks and turtles. It was magical. Later on, I found out that she couldn't block her nose, and all she could smell were duck feces. Less magical. We still visit the spot to this day.” — Clint, Brisbane, Queensland

In a Parking Lot

Addison, Texas

“Our first date was supposed to be casual drinks, but we ended up being there for around six hours, just talking, and it felt like no time had passed at all. I knew then that the relationship would be very special. We’re married now and living in the U.K., where he’s from.” — Deanna London, United Kingdom

During a Peaceful Protest

Los Angeles, California

“Students at UCLA were beginning to protest the People’s Park incident at UC Berkeley in May, 1969. My now-husband convinced me to skip class and join the sit-in at the campus administration building. Later that evening, we shared our first kiss, sitting on the floor. The rest is history!” — Stephanie, Los Angeles, California

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In a College Dorm Lounge

Potsdam, New York

“We were friends through our college radio station, and we were hanging out in the lounge in our dorm building with some other friends. This was a dingy room with some old couches and a huge wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the campus. Eventually our friends left and we sat close to each other watching big snowflakes come down. We joked that it looked like plankton swirling in the ocean. We had our first kiss there, in front of the wall of plankton. We’re still together 11 years later!” — Jamie, Queens, New York

Outside a Science Station

Antarctica

“Walking outside by the new station at the South Pole, he said he was going to kiss me, but then I smiled and kissed him first. We met in Antarctica working on the IceCube project in 2009. He is from Sweden. I am from the U.S.A. We are currently living in Sweden and moving to the U.S. next year.” — Misty Attwood, Sweden

In a Dingy Nightclub

Brisbane, Australia

“Met him that night and was trying to pick him up. Nine months later we’re still going steady, to my surprise!” — Gabby, Brisbane, Australia

In a Driveway

St. Paul, Minnesota

“March 31, 1999: Brian and I (yes, we're Brian & Brian) were on our first date and we're both nervous and gave each other the tiniest kiss. He went in and as I walked back to my car, I did the biggest Happy Dance of my life. I felt like I was in some schmaltzy 1940s MGM Technicolor musical.” — Brian Dahlvig, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Right On the Sidewalk, Holding a Pumpkin

Portland, Oregon

"Ned and I had just met and hit it off famously, shortly before Halloween, nine years ago. We decided to go for a walk and stumbled upon a quaint, small church where a choir was practicing an awe-inspiring gospel song inside. I don't recall how we struck up a conversation with the pastor and his wife, but they ended up gifting us a small pumpkin for the holiday. We continued walking down Mississippi Street. I looked at Ned, who was carrying this bright orange pumpkin as the sun beamed down on the leaves, blowing all around us, mirroring the same autumnal colors. I huddled under my jacket against the cool breeze. The air smelled like warm coffee, baked goods, and damp, mossy earth. Out of nowhere, Ned asked if he could kiss me. I nodded, yes. He held me close as he kissed me softly, just as a woman passed by us on the sidewalk. He said, ‘Hey! Did you see that? She said I could kiss her!’ The woman turned briefly to face us and smiled.” — Amie Althaea, Portland, Oregon

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Inside a CVS Pharmacy

Rancho Bernardo, California

“We met for coffee at a nearby Starbucks, and after several hours of sitting and talking, we walked next door to the CVS. We paused in their outdoor garden department and shared a kiss.” — Paul D. Bentz, San Diego, California

Onboard a Shipwreck

Ocean Shores, Washington

“My wife and I were both members of Civil Air Patrol (volunteer Civilian USAF auxiliary) and 18 when we had our first date during a conference at Ocean Shores. We went out to the wreck of the S.S. Catala and stood on the bow where I kissed her. The wreck above the sands was later chopped up and salvaged because some drunk fell off of it and broke her arm. Decades later, we went back to Ocean Shores for one of our anniversary trips. By coincidence, a storm had exposed parts of the Catala, including the spot on the bow where we had our first kiss.” — Dennis Brooke, Auburn, Washington

In a Cinema, Watching Short Circuit

Durban, South Africa

"October 6, 1986: It wasn't even supposed to be a ‘date.’ We were just going to a movie together, him and me and my bestie from high school. Liz and I were on holiday, and Jim was showing us around town. Not too long into the movie, he made his move. We didn't see much more of the movie, and poor Liz was the unfortunate third wheel :) Jim and I have been married for 26 years now." — Jacs Bate, Durban, South Africa

While Parked at a Local Football Club

Welwyn Garden City, England

“We went to secondary school together and he was my first boyfriend when we were 12, but he dumped me! Then when we were 18 we started hanging around and going to pubs together as part of a group. One night he drove me home and for some reason he decided to pull into a small quiet car park so that we could 'chat' but it was me that made the first move. Twenty-six years later we are still together, married for 8 years!” — Hayley, The Netherlands

In a Chain Restaurant

Mexico

“I had been dating him a while. During the lunchtime meal, we had touched on some topics that made me cry, not in a bad way, but in a good way. I appreciated his tenderness in reacting to my display of emotion. Leaving the restaurant, I was overcome with a sense of affection for him and pulled him aside and kissed him full-on right in front of the restaurant with all the noon traffic looking on!” — Tom Harvey, Monterrey, Mexico

In a Historic Cemetery

Raleigh, North Carolina

“We were taking a walk through downtown Raleigh, and passed by Oakwood Cemetery. Oakwood Cemetery is one of Raleigh’s most historic locations, and is notable for the luminaries buried there. Among the statuary and oak trees, I snuck a kiss which was well received thankfully! We then went to Krispy Kreme, because that’s what young lovers do in North Carolina.” — Max, Raleigh, North Carolina

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In a Car in the Suburbs

Beirut, Lebanon

“About a year ago, I was out on the second date with this highly educated, amazing man whose mind had turned me on like crazy. When we left the cafe we were dining at, and got into the car parked on the street, I couldn't hold myself anymore and made the first move. It was really scary for me, and he understood that, so he pulled me in for a second kiss, and that's how it all started. Fast forward a year, and we've set our wedding for May 2019 :)” — Myriam, Beirut, Lebanon

On the Sidewalk During a Scarecrow Festival

Woodstock, Georgia

“It was our second date, and we just finished eating dinner. It was a beautiful fall night. We decided to take a walk around downtown Woodstock, Georgia. The sidewalks were lined with eclectic scarecrows made by local businesses and schools. As we made our way down Main Street, I couldn't help but think, ‘Gosh this woman is beautiful and I want to kiss her, but is it too soon?’ I didn't want to leave it on the table and things seemed to be going well, so I leaned in and kissed her. The scarecrows looked on to see if I made the right decision and I had. She kissed me back and we've been lip-locked in bliss ever since.” — Mike C., Acworth, Georgia

Outside a Bar

Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania

"My husband was always shy and awkward around women. I knew that if anything were going to happen, it would be up to me. So, after going out for a beer, I decided to make my move. I closed my eyes and leaned in close and planted one on his whiskery cheek! He gave me the cheek! Humiliated, I jumped into my car and sped off. About half an hour later, he called me and asked, ‘Did you just try to kiss me?’ Mortified, I stammered for an answer. It turns out that my immigrant hubby thought we were doing the traditional Latino farewell with a kiss on both cheeks. He realized something was amiss when I bolted after only completing half the required cheek kisses. The next time I saw him, he greeted me with a long, slow kiss. The kind that weakens knees." — Katy Kennedy-Rodriguez, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

At the Ernest Hemingway House Gift Shop

Key West, Florida

"I'm from the U.S. and only speak English, she is from Peru and only spoke Spanish. With the help of an app, we were able to communicate with each other. First of all, I didn't consider this a ‘date.’ We had gone out to dinner the night before (with friends) and when I tried to give her a kiss goodnight, she turned her head, I kissed her cheek and she trotted off into the house. I was 100 percent sure that she wasn't interested in me, and I had already promised to take her to the Hemingway House in Key West the next day (she's an avid reader and Hemingway fan.) So considering the kiss attempt the night before, I kept a respectable distance and spoke only when she asked about something. At the end of the tour was the gift shop, and right outside its entrance, was one of those hand crank machines that imprints on pennies. She had never seen one before and was curious about it. I did my best to explain it, but decided it would be best to just show her. I reached into my pocket, and God as my witness, I had two quarters and one very shiny penny. Exactly what the machine required to work. I slid the money in, turned the crank, and out popped the penny, stretched to an oblong shape and imprinted with Hemingway. I gave it to her, she looked it over and smiled. She started to hand it back to me and I said, ‘No, it's for you.’ I swear you'd of thought that I just gave her the Hope Diamond. Next thing I knew, we were passionately kissing right there in front of that machine. We are now married, she speaks excellent English and I'm taking Spanish classes. The penny was made into a pendant that she still loves to wear to this day. It was by far the best penny I ever spent!” — Robert Jankowski, Key West, Florida

Exploring a World War II Gun Battery That's Hiding in Plain Sight

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It's just a short ferry ride from Portland, Maine, and it's really easy to miss.

Many visitors flock to coastal Maine for lobster rolls, kayaking, and potato doughnuts. But military history buffs will find lots to love, too—if they’ve brought waterproof boots and a flashlight.

During World War II, Peaks Island, a popular summer destination in Portland, Maine, was home to a big, bustling military installation. Because the U.S. military worried that the East Coast could be vulnerable to attacks from enemy submarines or ships, the government seized nearly 200 acres on the island via eminent domain and built 58 buildings, where some 800 soldiers lived and worked.

The largest of these was Battery Steele—among the biggest gun batteries ever built in America. The concrete building is several hundred feet long, but easy to miss even if you're right in front of it: From the get-go, it was deliberately concealed with soil and plants. Inside, battleship guns pointed out at the water. They were more than 60 feet long with barrels measuring 16 inches in diameter, and could fire 2,000-pound projectiles roughly 26 miles. Local lore holds that test shots shattered windows across the island. Though the guns were never fired in anger, islanders lived in the shadow of that threat.

In a way, they still do, even though the guns were scrapped after the war. In the video above, Atlas Obscura visits the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum to learn about the island’s wartime history—from dark, damp, graffiti-covered Battery Steele itself to long-abandoned observation towers deep in the forest.

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Scientists Are Using CRISPR to Make Spicy Tomatoes

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The fruit could soon look and taste more like chili peppers.

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The humble tomato is about to get a makeover. Plant physiologists in Brazil and Ireland are researching how to use the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to create the world’s first spicy tomato.

In a paper published in the journal Trends in Plant Science, researchers propose activating capsaicinoid-producing genes in tomatoes. Capsaicinoids are what give peppers their heat, and genetic mapping has revealed these genes’ presence in tomatoes. The proposed process of genome editing would produce a fruit with the same qualities as a chili pepper, but one that’s easy to grow and has a yield capacity 30 times higher than the chili.

So instead of producing a marvelous new tomato, the researchers’ aim is better chilies.

“The proof of concept here is that we can transfer the unique thing endemic to a less-produced plant into another plant that is more widely produced,” says Lázaro E.P. Peres, Professor of Plant Physiology at the University of São Paulo, who is a co-author of the paper.

According to the paper, the tomato is a model species “that is highly amenable to biotechnological manipulation.” On the other hand, chili peppers are notorious for needing specific growing conditions and producing crops with inconsistent levels of heat and pungency. A typical yield of hot peppers is three tonnes per hectare, over four to five months of farming. But the tomato can yield as much as 110 tonnes per hectare within 120 days.

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The specific climates required to produce certain plants and spices once sent Europeans sailing across the world in search of flavor. “If they had this kind of technology in the 16th century, colonization may not have been necessary,” laughs Peres. Seeds for a spicy tomato could make growing a spicy fruit feasible for innumerable more farmers and gardeners around the world.

The scientists have not yet begun implementing their research into an actual red hot chili tomato, but Peres is enthusiastic about the possibility. “The genes in pepper used to make capsaicin exist in the tomato, but … we have to activate them, which is quite exciting,” he says, explaining that this would be a novel use of CRISPR-Cas9. According to their paper, most genetic crop modification has sought to inactivate existing genomes rather than activate them, since the latter process is more technically challenging. The first iteration of the researchers’ work has already yielded a tomato that begins to resemble the chili pepper in appearance. If the researchers are successful in this further iteration, a spicy tomato sauce may be in our immediate future.

Female Parakeets Flock to Birds With Brains

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Problem-solving skills appeal to budgies.

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Bird brains get mocked a lot. Rather unfairly, too. Birds are, in the words of Gizmodo, “freakishly smart.” Crows, in particular, are famously intelligent, but even outside the Corvidae family, our avian pals are constantly surprising us with their cognitive abilities.

And it turns out we aren’t the only ones who are charmed by their intellect. A new study from a team of researchers from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Leiden University in the Netherlands suggests that birds themselves prefer the company of brainier buddies. Their results are published in Science.

Budgerigars, also known as budgies or parakeets, are nomadic birds that call Australia home. Their natural habitats are the grasslands and open woodlands, where you can find them nestled inside the hollow of eucalyptus trees. Their neon green and blue plumage is unmistakable. Budgies travel in flocks of up to 100 and can be seen soaring across the countryside skies. The famous ornithologist and artist John Gould described them as, “the most animated, cheerful little creatures you can possibly imagine,” even though he also ate them.

Budgerigars belong to the Psittaciformes order, members of which are renowned for their intelligence. These birds are capable of vocal learning, mimicking, and can be trained to open boxes. With this innate brain power in mind, the team put their theory to the test.

"The idea that sexual selection might play a role [in the evolution of cognition] has been around, but so far there existed only indirect evidence, such as that males are better at learning a task," says Dr. Carel ten Cate, one of the study's authors, in an email. "However, whether direct observation of a ‘smart’ behavior could affect mate choice had not been studied,” he adds. “So we worked out a way of how this might be tested."

Thirty-four male budgies were paired to 17 female counterparts. The researchers placed the birds together with the female in a two-choice cage. The bird she spent the most time around was deemed more desirable.

After allowing the female bird to choose her preferred partner, the researchers then taught the non-desirable bird how to open two devices containing food, a petri dish and a three-step box—a bird-box if you will, although the budgies weren't blindfolded.

Each male bird was then placed in a cage, along with the box and petri dish, facing the female budgie. The females then watched as the formerly less desirable males successfully solved both puzzles to get food, while the more desirable birds, who did not receive any training, struggled. After this brainy display, the two males were placed back together and the female budgie had to choose again.

In almost every instance, the female bird spent more time next to the previously undesirable budgie. However, when these less desirable birds had free access to food and did not need to solve a problem, the females opted for the males they were more attracted to from the onset, even though the preferred birds had no food. This suggested that it was the ability to solve problems, and not access to food, that mattered to the female birds.

However, there are other ways of interpreting the behavior of the female budgies. According to Dr. Georg Striedter of the University of California, Irvine, who published an analysis of the study in the same issue of Science, the female birds could have been attracted to the strength of the males. "We pointed out that the females may not have realized that the males were solving a complex problem," writes Striedter in an email. "Maybe the females just thought the males were very strong (i.e., brawny)."

Female budgerigars incubate, brood, and feed their young after hatching, while males take care of foraging and bringing back food, hence why solving a problem for food was so attractive. The seeds that budgies eat are plentiful across their range and throughout their habitat. However, if rain becomes scarce, seeds could become a rarity requiring some unique foraging skills to obtain.

"If droughts in their natural habitats last long, such seeds are depleted and they search for other foods in other environments,” says Cate. “This may require exploring and extracting hidden foods. The abilities that budgies may have to cope with such critical bottlenecks in their life will then determine their survival."

While birds have evolved over time to strut, pose, and show off the goods to attract mates, the ability to bring home the seeds can be just as attractive and life-saving as a dreamy plumage.


Whales Remix Each Other's Songs, Nearly 3,000 Miles Apart

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Humpback whales separated by a continent can sound pretty similar.

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Though they’re separated by an entire continent, male humpback whales near Gabon and Madagascar often seem to be singing versions of the same tune.

Researchers have long known that the massive cetaceans sing complex songs, made up of single-sound units (such as moans, trumpets, or woops), multi-unit phrases, and multi-phrase themes. No one has decoded the songs entirely, but researchers suspect that male humpbacks may use higher-pitched songs to woo nearby females, and lower-pitch grumbles to stake out territory and boast to other males.

Though songs can vary from one year to the next and by individual, most males in a given pod sing a similar type. What's surprising is that versions of the same songs can be heard thousands of miles apart, according to a team led by Melinda Rekdahl, a marine conservation scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ocean Giants Program.

Cetacean singers really belt it out during their breeding seasons on separate side of Africa, but Rekdahl’s team suspects that an oceanic jam session of sorts happens when the whales congregate at feeding grounds to the south, around Antarctica. Though they sing less frequently down there—mating is off the menu—the whales are more likely to interact with unfamiliar individuals who sing differently, Rekdahl and her colleagues posit in a new paper in Royal Society Open Science.

“In the animal kingdom, it’s much more common for an animal moving to a new population to pick up the song type of that population, rather than instigate radical revolution in the type of song,” Rekdahl says. But humpback whales seem to embrace new sounds, and repeat and remix what they hear as they trek back north—something like an open-ocean version of a road trip earworm you can’t get out of your head.

Have a listen to how whales on opposite sides of Africa sound, and see if you can hear the similarities and differences:

Rekdahl’s team recorded songs over several years by submerging hydrophones off of Iguela and Mayumba in Gabon, and in Madagascar’s Antongil Bay. When they analyzed the songs statistically, they found that the sounds often had a lot of overlap, which varied year by year and increased over time. Each group took some creative liberties: One pod might break a single unit into two, by replacing a descending cry-woop with a separate cry and whoop. Another might change part of a theme, replacing an onomatopoeic “yap train” with a “snort train” and a grunt. But in the last year of data collection, the songs were largely similar on both sides of Africa.

The team doesn’t yet know how many members of different groups have to mingle in order for songs to evolve, or how cozy the animals have to be. Do they learn up close, or eavesdrop from a distance? While Rekdahl and her collaborators haven’t puzzled out “the mechanism by which a male will say, ‘I’m going to ditch my old song and learn this new one,’” she says, it seems the whales are attracted to novelty—the newest and hottest on the cetacean charts. To learn more, Rekdahl says, researchers would need to get closer to the action in Antarctica, and then listen up.

Your Christmas Tree Could Be Recycled Into Sugar

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Researchers hope for a zero-waste alternative to landfills.

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One day soon, you may be able to have your Christmas tree and eat it too. Because if researchers at the University of Sheffield get their way, we'll turn our Christmas trees into dessert.

In a piece for The Conversation, Cynthia Kartey, a doctoral student contributing to this research, explains that the university’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is researching sustainable ways to convert the pine needles in used Christmas trees into new materials such as sugar and paint. A complex polymer called lignocellulose makes up 85 percent of the composition of pine needles. Since lignocellulosic biomass is rich in carbohydrates, Kartey and her colleagues want to break it down to make edible sweeteners.

Her laboratory is looking into liquefaction, which uses environmentally friendly solvents such as glycerol and water to turn the pine needles in spruce and fir trees into glucose, acetic acid, and phenol. In turn, the glucose can be used to make sugar, the acetic acid converted to paint or vinegar, and the phenol used in manufacturing pharmaceuticals. Even the biochar—the solid that is left over from the liquefaction process—can be put to industrial use.

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“The motivation for working on this is that our fossil resources are finite,” says James McGregor, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield’s Chemical and Biological Engineering department and Principal Investigator for this research. “We need to look at sustainable ways of converting waste materials into fuels and other products we normally get from crude oil.” McGregor’s lab is also looking into using liquefaction to convert waste from industrial bakeries into solid carbon that can be used to remove pollutants from wastewater.

According to the British Carbon Trust, the carbon footprint of a natural Christmas tree that ends up in the landfill is 16 kilos of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent, a standard unit for measuring carbon footprint that takes into account, say, methane emissions). The 25 to 30 million Christmas trees sold in the United States alone each year represent more than 400,000 tonnes of potential greenhouse emissions. The environment pays a high price for our holiday cheer. Using liquefaction to convert this festive biomass waste into usable new materials would help reduce carbon emissions, and, if scalable, might be a harbinger of a sustainable, zero-waste world. Now, wouldn’t that be sweet.

Watch Austrian Train Workers Leap to the Rescue of a Snowed-In Goat

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After their wave of plowed snow stopped it in its tracks.

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Unusually heavy snowfall has swept across Austria—and much of northern Europe—in early 2019. Traffic has been stalled, trees have fallen, and there have been both deaths and near-misses. On January 9, for example, police rescued six German teenagers from an avalanche in the Austrian Alps.

The same day, Austrian Federal Railway workers were clearing snow from tracks in Styria, an alpine region south of Vienna, when they spotted something else in need of help. In the midst of what railway spokesperson Bernhard Rieder calls a “frantic snow situation,” the workers spotted a chamois, or wild alpine goat, that got buried by the snow pouring off the plow locomotive.

The driver quickly stopped the operation, and five railway workers jumped from the train to free the stuck goat, wielding their shovels carefully to keep from harming the animal. It takes a minute, since the chamois was completely buried, but be sure to stick around for the ending.

Two Centuries-Old Riverfront Gardens in India Return to Full Bloom

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A new life for treasures just across the river from the Taj Mahal.

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The Taj Mahal is the widely recognized jewel of India. But lost in the glare of its white marble, just across the Yamuna River, are more treasures: two gardens, every bit as stately and significant as those around the tomb of Mumtaz Mahal. As recently as a few years ago, the Mehtab Bagh (“Moonlight Garden”) and the Garden of the Tomb of I’timad-ud-Daulah were under threat from pollution, urban development, and neglect. Over the past four years, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have led the charge in their conservation and restoration. On January 11, people are gathering at the Garden of the Tomb of I’timad-ud-Daulah to celebrate the completed restoration of these 16th- and 17th-century marvels.

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These historic gardens, originally built for Agra’s nobility, are two of the city’s few riverfront gardens that survive today. The project of bringing them back to their original glory has involved restoring their original plantings, reactivating their water features, and creating a visitor center. Both sites illustrate the Mughal interest in holding nature and architecture together in conversation. “They represent an important moment in Mughal history and present an important opportunity today to invigorate an asset for the community that can provide a welcoming green space, a tourism destination,” says Lisa Ackerman, Interim CEO of WMF. The Taj Mahal is an architectural icon, but it can’t represent alone a culture that spanned centuries.

The project began in 2014, when the WMF and ASI, with students from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, began archival research and developed a system to identify and reintroduce the native plant species. According to Ackerman, the gardens now smell distinctly of jasmine. Restored water channels sustain cypress and pomegranate trees, as well as hibiscus and oleander blossoms. The water is also cleaner and fresher than it was a few years ago. “We all know that green spaces are important for people living in the community,” Ackerman says. “These gardens provide environmental and health benefits … they offer the obvious benefit of providing an oasis in the city.”

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The project culminated with the completion of the new visitor center at I’timad-ud-Daulah. Ackerman says she’s most looking forward to the lamp-lighting ceremony, an Indian ritual that signifies an auspicious beginning. “There will be that magical moment at which we all look at the site together and realize how beautiful these spaces are today and how much enjoyment can come from visiting them in the years to come.”

One Man’s Quiet Quest to Collect Every Local Banana

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In American Samoa, some delicious varieties are getting harder to find.

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A ruddy stalk of oblong orange bananas hangs in the breeze at Tisa's Barefoot Bar in Alega, American Samoa. Run by Tisa Faamuli and her New Zealander husband, known only as Candyman, this casual amalgamation of hut and patio, anchored by a few bottles of rum and one overworked blender, serves as an oasis for expats, sailors, and members of the island's artistic community. If you ask Candyman about the prominently displayed bunch, you’re liable to be there a while. The ensuing tale spans centuries of history and migration, a treatise on vitamin C and potassium levels, with a cameo by the last great Tui of Manu'a.

This banana, known as the Soa’a, comes from the Manu’a Islands, a small archipelago about 70 miles east of American Samoa’s population center and territorial capital, Pago Pago. Candyman suspects it has a royal pedigree. “The Soa'a never spread to other Samoan islands, only on the King’s plantation on Manu’a. We think it came as a gift to the King, from some people coming from near the equator, and that’s why nobody else grew it,” he says. “I’m still looking for one more of the Soa'a [varieties]. We have two. There are roughly three.”

Candyman collects bananas. Acquiring a new one can be as simple as trading with the farmers next door. “I’ll be driving down the road and see a banana that I don’t have, and I’ll turn the truck right around,” he says. Occasionally he travels to outlying islands to identify varieties he hasn’t tried. Sometimes, it’s a matter of figuring out if what one farmer calls a “boiler” is really different from what another farmer calls the “goldenfinger.” When one plantation owner went to prison for assaulting a would-be banana thief with a machete, Candyman had to wait until the farmer returned from his five-year sentence to politely request an offshoot of his famed Misiluki banana.

“I found a survey conducted of the territory from the early 1900s that identified 35 different types of bananas,” says Candyman. To date, he has tracked down and cultivated 22 of those varieties on the volcanic hillside plantations he and Tisa manage above Alega Bay. He hopes to find all 35.

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Candyman's plantations are almost indistinguishable, to the untrained eye, from the emerald expanse of jungle that engulfs them. There are five, about an acre each, spread out across the hillside, chosen for sunlight, slight variations in soil quality, erosion control, and resilience to extreme weather. One snakes up behind the tiny gravel parking lot across from the bar. Another sits below a crest in the ridge that forms the village’s eastern border, sheltered from extreme weather. Except for one unsealed road, small footpaths connect the permaculturist patches of taro, breadfruit, lemongrass, and banana. "We make little footprints," Candyman explains.

Of all his fruits, Candyman holds the little orange Soa'a in highest esteem. “The orange bananas I fell in love with because of the way they grew, the way they looked,” he says. “It took a long time to work out how to plant them. The pigs liked them, and the coconut crabs liked them, so I thought, there must be something good about those bananas." A nutritional analysis conducted by a nonprofit in Pohnpei, Micronesia, confirmed the hunch: 7000% beta-carotene, 300% vitamin C, and 100% daily doses of potassium, respectively, a whopping improvement in all categories on the standard Cavendish, despite being a third of its size.

The banana draws interest at market, as well. “It’s definitely a money crop,” says Candyman. “I can put a bunch of Soa’a by the side of the road, and it’ll be gone in 10 to 20 minutes.” At four or five for two dollars, he sells them for four times more than an average bunch, although they take twice as long to grow.

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Though he often waxes about nutrients and economics, Candyman’s plantations are ultimately the work of an exacting collector and archivist—a historical and culinary labor of love. “Most of the big banana plantations are out towards Leone, where the ground is more flat,” explains Candyman as he glides up the 50-degree incline of his Soa'a plantation, supported by his bare feet and a worn machete. “They grow four or five types for market.”

His Soa’a stand grows 12 feet in the air, creating a cathedral ceiling that shades taro saplings and razor-leafed Samoan pineapple underfoot. Candyman fells a big green bunch to be fried as banana chips for the guests accumulating at the beachside bar. He unceremoniously rips off fruit that’s stunted or has been nibbled by the island's kite-sized fruit bats, shouldering the half-empty stalk and moving on up the mountain. "See, up and down this hill for only about five dollars worth of bananas. There's no money in it!" he declares, with a gleam in his eye.

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In 1994, Candyman came to Alega with a New Zealand contractor to install a water main. He met Tisa, who found him real sweet. She called him her “candyman,” and he’s been publicly known as such ever since. Candyman rigorously studied Samoan culture, agriculture, food, and language alongside Tisa’s father. “When I came to Alega, I asked Tisa’s father, ‘Why are there only four or five types of bananas in the village?’” says Candyman. “He told me, ‘Because those are the only ones that will sell at market.’”

An unincorporated U.S. territory of 55,000 people, American Samoa's traditional foodways wash up against its economic development. Across the harbor from the open-air Fagatogo market, where people sell breadfruit, taro, and coconuts from backyard plantations, a Starkist tuna processing plant—the largest single employer on the island—hums with activity. Market shelves are stocked with long-travelled, subpar produce from the American mainland, and when sea cargo routes were interrupted in June 2018, due to a technical difficulty on an inbound ship, those shelves ran empty. Rates of diabetes and obesity are high, and fast food franchises such as Mcdonald's and Carl's Jr. do steady business. Some stores even import bananas. "At some markets they sell Chiquita bananas!" exclaims Tisa. "The ants won't eat them. That's when you know there's something wrong!"

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Candyman is an erect and somewhat ageless presence. He sports ubiquitous bare feet and is tattooed with the pe’a, the traditional full-body tattoo indicative of Samoan manhood, though as a foreigner, he is excluded from certain privileges, such as legally owning land. His wife Tisa moves with a similar grace, and together they have built an idyllic ecotourism-cum-environmental stewardship operation, including the bar and guesthouses, a yearly tattoo festival, a nonprofit marine sanctuary, and a work-training program for local youth. Tisa and Candyman’s fates aren’t tied to their plantations the same way previous generations of Alega’s residents have been. Instead, Candyman and Tisa farm to expand the flavors in their own kitchen and keep an edible record of the territory’s biodiversity and traditional foodways.

The flesh of their beloved Soa'a is an earthy, carrot-like orange. With a two-year fruiting period, a narrow harvest window, and a stunted size, it keeps you waiting. But at a dinner cooked by Tisa and Candyman in the traditional Samoan ground oven, or Umu, the diminutive fruit performs. In its peel on a bed of banana leaves over glowing rocks, the Soa’a becomes an ember of dank, molten concupiscence, its dense vegetal flavor rendered sweet by the fire and peppered with volcanic char. As I take it in, I recall one of the first distinctions Candyman pointed out about the stalk of Soa'a behind the bar. “It doesn’t bend to gravity, it stands straight up.”

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