Quantcast
Channel: Atlas Obscura: Articles
Viewing all 11432 articles
Browse latest View live

Meet the Winner of Atlas Obscura's First Journey!

0
0

The prize includes $15,000 to fund a meaningful, life-changing trip.

Last week, Atlas Obscura announced the five finalists for First Journey, the competition we launched earlier this year to send one of our readers on their first real journey. The idea was inspired by our co-founders, Dylan Thuras and Josh Foer, who both went on transformative journeys of their own when they were younger. This year being Atlas Obscura’s 10th anniversary, we decided to celebrate by giving someone out there—a person with an amazing idea who just needed the means to pull it off—$15,000 to take a meaningful, life-changing trip.

Thousands applied, and our panel of judges spent weeks narrowing down an incredibly impressive field of applicants to just a handful of finalists. Each of the four runners-up is being awarded $500, which we hope will serve as seed money toward making their journeys a reality.

And now, at last, we couldn’t be more thrilled to announce that the winner of First Journey—who receives $15,000, logistical support, and will be featured on Atlas Obscura—is… Jenn Smith of North Adams, Massachusetts!

article-image

Growing up in Western Massachusetts, Smith had a classic 1980s American kid’s bedroom, with a few twists. The walls were pink and bordered with unicorn wallpaper. The My Little Ponies were kept in a small suitcase. The Archie and Batman comics were plentiful. And on one wall was a poster, scooped up at a yard sale, of the Taj Mahal. It coordinated nicely with the globe she received as a gift during elementary school. On that globe, right on the spot marking Kolkata, India, was a hand-drawn star.

Smith was born in an orphanage in Kolkata and has no memories of her birthplace. She was adopted at a young age by a loving U.S. family of Irish-Polish-Lithuanian descent, and raised as an only child. Now 37, she’s never traveled back to India, despite long yearning to do so. With her $15,000 prize, she’ll spend three months traveling around India this fall, with plans to participate in up to a dozen different festivals.

“I’m just really excited to be there,” says Smith, “to learn and find the things that I don’t get a chance to read about in books or see on mainstream TV.”

As “a bookworm of a kid,” Smith took any opportunity to immerse herself in information about India. At the children’s library, she gravitated toward the geography section. For social-studies assignments, she’d write about Indian elephants. In middle school she made a valiant attempt to cook puri, a fried, unleavened Indian bread, at home. With no deep fryer in the house, she improvised with oil in a soup pot, but the oil wasn’t hot enough and the flour wasn’t right. She ended up with “small, slightly puffy fried dough balls” and a kitchen that reeked of burned vegetable oil.

In college at Syracuse University, Smith took a South Asian studies course and met some Indian students. Talking to those who grew up in Indian families brought forth some thorny issues about identity—namely, says Smith, “feeling fraudulent about it. I have this identity, but I wasn’t raised or taught in this culture. So how Indian am I, really?”

article-image

In her First Journey application, Smith wrote that she “worked multiple jobs during the school year and throughout the summer” to be able to afford college, and was never able to study abroad or save up for the trip to India she so badly wanted to take. Working multiple jobs turns out to be a bit of a theme in Smith’s life—she currently has two, one as a community engagement editor and reporter at the local newspaper, the Berkshire Eagle, and another at Tunnel City Coffee, a coffee shop and bakery in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Smith is grateful that both of her employers have agreed to let her take time off to go on her journey, and says she’s relieved that she’ll be able to “set people up for success to fill in for me while I'm gone.”

Both of Smith’s jobs require her to be relatively outgoing, but during her journey, she does wonder how she’ll manage without being able to speak Hindi or Bengali, the latter being the most commonly spoken language in Kolkata. On her trip, “I’ll blend in, I’m sure, in facial appearance, but if I open my mouth I’m clearly not from India.” That feeling of not fitting in and potentially being judged for it is something she’s a little nervous about. But such worries also provide an opportunity for self-reflection, against the backdrop of India’s caste-system legacy. After a lifetime of absorbing information about her birth country from across the world, Smith is ready to immerse herself in it.

“I think the biggest thing I’m craving is context,” she says. “Tangible, first-hand, visceral sensory context. I’m sure I have my own notions and even unconscious biases, but I don’t want to feed into that. I really want to let India, let this culture, let all these festivals I’m hoping to take part in speak for themselves.”

“All these festivals” means a dozen in 90 days, all over the country. It’s an ambitious itinerary, and one that promises an explosion of sights, sounds, and flavors: “The best food, the best, most beautiful flowers, the most traditional songs.” Festivals are amazing because, says Smith, “you try to have your best attitude, put away your differences, and just get along with people to have a good day. Or in the case of Indian culture, a good, like, eight days.”

article-image

One standout festival on her itinerary: Ganesh Chaturthi, a birthday celebration for the elephant-headed Hindu god. The week-and-a-half-long commemoration ends with a procession of clay Ganesh idols toward a body of water. These idols, which have been crafted by artisans, are then immersed in the lake, river, or sea. “There’s something I kind of dig about creating something for hours, making something so beautiful, and then just lowering it into the ocean,” says Smith.

By attending festivals like these, Smith hopes to experience—and share with Atlas Obscura readers—a version of India that goes beyond stereotypes, simplifications, and fear-based reports of the country. When you think of the common perceptions of India, she says, “you think of terrorism, or sex trafficking abuses; pollution.” Or yoga retreats. “I just know that there’s so much more to the country. And that’s something that I want to experience for myself, but I also want to share with others.”

Smith took a similar approach when she went on a reporting exchange to Pakistan in 2014. The very idea of that trip made her mother, Cheryl, cry, but Smith was determined to see aspects of the country that go under-reported in the U.S. media. “That was my big thing,” she says. “What people can I meet that will prove my theory that this country is so much more than how it’s been typecast?”

Despite being right next door, Smith still didn’t make it to India. When she finally gets there this fall, she expects she’ll continue to seek out untold stories—and her mom will continue to worry about her. But that’s just a reflection of how close-knit their family is, and how encouraging they have been toward their daughter. “I’ve known a lot of adoptees, and some adoptees are not ever told about where they came from or their past,” she says. “But my adoptive family was so supportive in letting me know that I came from a different country than the one I lived in.”

article-image

Other major supporters: friends, particularly the “amazing” Ed, a kayak engineer and Jenn, a puppeteer and Smith’s best friend in high school. Mutually obsessed with the 1993 martial arts film Only the Strong, the teenage Jenns would “pretend to capoeira each other in the hallway.” In 2014, Smith officiated Jenn and Ed’s wedding. And a couple of years ago for Smith’s birthday, Jenn and Ed gave her a card and some seed money for a very specific purpose: that trip to India she’d always been talking about. It was “a vote of confidence” that made Smith even more determined to go. She wrote in her journal that she would like to make the trip before age 38. In August, aged 37 years and five months, she’ll arrive in Delhi.

Smith’s itinerary has her traveling from Delhi down to the west coast, to Goa and Kerala. Then she’ll head northeast to Kolkata, where she’ll finally see the birthplace she’s spent so much time imagining. “I have this Google Earth image of the address where I was born,” she says. “Just being able to stand there for a moment, just be there? I’m really looking forward to experiencing that.”


What's Silver, Purple, and Very Well-Traveled?

0
0

The Codex Argenteus—a beautiful and mysterious bible from the sixth century—is now safely stowed in Sweden.

Tucked into a far corner of the annex to Carolina Rediviva, the main library at Sweden’s Uppsala University, a book sits alone behind bulletproof glass. You might think its remote placement indicates its minor significance. But look closer and you'll see a work of visual splendor—a uniform script in silver and gold ink, written on purple parchment, as bright and vibrant as if it were brand-new

This is the Codex Argenteus, or Silver Bible. Created more than 1,500 years ago in northern Italy, it was commissioned by the ruler of a people long since vanished. But their lost language is preserved on the pages of the book before you.

Fittingly, the story of how this bible ended up on display at a Swedish university is as mysterious as the book is beautiful.

article-image

The codex arrived here in 1669, when Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, a Swedish nobleman of French ancestry, donated it to his alma mater. His hope was that it would remain there forever, and thus strengthen the historical bond between the Swedes and the Goths, a lost people believed to be their ancestors.

But the Silver Bible’s journey to Uppsala began in the sixth century, in the northern Italian city of Ravenna. The king there, Theoderic the Great, wanted to turn Ravenna into a capital city worthy of his imperial ambitions. The Silver Bible was part of his plan, and it’s clearly a book that’s meant to impress—a copy of a fourth-century translation of the Bible from Greek to Gothic, an extinct Germanic language once spoken from the Black Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean. Of its original 336 parchment folios, only 187 remain today. All of them are dyed purple, a color so expensive to produce in the ancient world that it was reserved exclusively for emperors.

But by the time of his death, in 526, Theoderic’s kingdom had broken apart. Soon after his passing, Ravenna’s importance began to fade too. The Silver Bible disappeared, and for a thousand years its whereabouts were unknown.

article-image

In the middle of the 16th century, however, the opulent bible was rediscovered—on a shelf in the library of a Benedictine monastery in Werden, Germany. No one knows for sure how or when it arrived there. Nor does anyone know who found it or broadcast its existence. What we do know is that in 1569, parts of the Gospel of Mark showed up in the Netherlands, printed in Gothic. The origin of those excerpts could only have been the Silver Bible.

Seven years later, in 1576, Rudolf II ascended the throne as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. An eccentric obsessed with the occult, Rudolf established his court at Prague Castle, where he began collecting books from all over Europe. One of the books he acquired was the Silver Bible.

The book remained in Prague until the end of the Thirty Years War. Though hostilities had ceased by the summer of 1648, the Swedish army staged a final push to strengthen its position at a peace congress then under way in Westphalia. In July, the Swedes descended on Prague, and when the city fell, a looting spree began. One of the books carted off to Sweden by the victors was the Silver Bible. Once it reached Stockholm, it became part of Queen Christina’s personal library.

Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie and Queen Christina were friends, with a close relationship that went back years. But in 1653, after a falling out, the queen banished him from her court. Soon after, she converted to Catholicism, abdicated the throne, and left for Rome. Her court librarian, the Dutch scholar Isaac Vossius, joined her on the journey. Strapped for cash, the queen paid his back salary in books—one of which was the Silver Bible.

article-image

Meanwhile, De la Gardie’s luck turned again. Queen Christina’s successor, Charles X Gustav, was the nobleman's brother-in-law, and he soon appointed De la Gardie chancellor of Uppsala University. De la Gardie contacted Vossius, who was then in Amsterdam, and purchased the Silver Bible for 400 marks, or $15,000 in today’s U.S. dollars.

For the next three centuries, it seemed as if the Silver Bible had found a safe home. But on April 15, 1995, the book’s existence was upended once again. Two men wearing gas masks walked into the Carolina Rediviva, smashed the bible’s glass display case, and grabbed what was inside. As they ran off, they sprayed tear gas to elude capture. A month later, the stolen goods were discovered in a deposit box at Stockholm Central Station. The perpetrators have never been identified.

Today, the Silver Bible is encased in bulletproof glass, bathed in the soft glow of a light designed to protect its ancient pages. If its benefactor De la Gardie has his way, it will remain there forever this time, in the university's “eternal possession.”

These Cheeky Statuettes Were Part of Edo-Era Japan’s Answer to Pockets

0
0

Ornate netsuke were practical status symbols.

Sixteenth-century Japan had a wardrobe problem. Citizens of every class all wore kimonos, T-shaped robes wrapped around the body and held in place with sashes called obis. Kimonos are functional and elegant but lack a crucial element rather helpful for everyday life: pockets. People have always needed to carry things, and medieval Japan was no exception. The practical solution to this sartorial problem evolved into netsuke, one of the most distinctive and diminutive art forms in a country known for them.

Netsuke were, from their creation, a gentleman’s game. Japanese women made do by tucking small objects into their baggy, sewn-up sleeves, creating a kind of makeshift purse, Hollis Goodall, a Japanese art curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, told Christie's. But men had no such luck, with their open, unsewn sleeves. To carry small objects such as tobacco or medicine, they crafted sagemono—generally, “hanging things”—that were suspended on a cord from an obi. They functioned like detachable external pockets or tiny purses, and to keep them in place, men fastened small carved ornaments, netsuke, to the loose end of the cord. The totems acted as counterweights that helped cradle the pockets between the wearer’s waist and hip. “It’s like a fob or a toggle, a giant button,” says Robert Mintz, deputy director of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and a scholar of Japanese art. “You pop the giant button under your belt and it keeps your suspended object from falling.”

article-image

The first netsuke were observed during the 16th century, in Japan’s Muromachi Period, and were simple, natural paperweights, frequently a chunk of wood or a dried gourd, Japanese netsuke expert Barba Teri Okada wrote in a 1980 issue of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. After all, any small object could work. The only requirement was that the item must have a place to thread a cord and be smooth all over to avoid snagging on the delicate silk of a kimono. But the artistic possibilities of the ornaments were endless, and Japan’s evolving social structures led artists to transform these mundane objects with an entirely new class of craftsmanship.

The first to wear netsuke were warriors, or at least men from the warrior class. When shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu ascended to power in 1603, he instituted stringent neo-Confucian code that stratified society into four distinct classes, Okada writes. Warriors were at the top, followed by farmers, artisans, and finally lowly merchants. The shogun established laws to govern seemingly every aspect of daily life, including sumptuary laws to dictate how people were to dress, Japanese art scholar Terry Satsuki Milhaupt wrote for a netsuke exhibit she curated at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. For example, as members of the highest class, samurai were allowed to wear two swords as symbols of their rank. But Japan was in the midst of a luxurious, 300-plus-year period of peace, and samurai soon began to spend their money elsewhere. They began carrying fancy pillboxes called inrō, which, like any hanging thing, required a counterweight and anchor.

article-image

But in the 17th century, netsuke shifted from functional items to must-have accessories, when they became part of a widely spreading addiction. The Portuguese had just introduced tobacco to Japan, and pipe-smoking became a new craze. Many Japanese men carried tobacco and a lighter on their person at all times, stoking demand for yet more netsuke, Okada writes. The items had also become status symbols for a newly rich and ascendant merchant class that sought to flaunt wealth without breaking sumptuary laws, Milhaupt writes. Though the shogun passed an edict forbidding the use of tobacco in 1609, the law was repealed in 1716 in the hope that tobacco production would help lift the economy. It did.

article-image

Netsuke carving had grown from a hobby of traditional artists such as mask carvers or sculptors into its own form. Artists began to specialize in netsuke and developed their own schools and styles. In Shimane Prefecture, carvers of the early and celebrated Iwami school never made the same netsuke twice. Netsuke, as a form of art, grew into political and social commentary that seemed to escape the watchful eyes of the government. Craftspeople began to carve objects satirizing leadership or expressing subversive religious thoughts and feelings, Okada writes. Some even veered into the ribald, conveniently small enough for any grotesque or erotic theme to be unnoticed by a passing Tokugawa military authority, according to Milhaupt.

article-image

But netsuke came in many forms, Okada writes. Most common were the tiny sculptures known as katabori netsuke, three-dimensional carved figures. But there were also anabori netsuke (hollow trinkets carves from clams), ryusa netsuke (discs so intricately carved that light could pass through), and mask netsuke, which resembled tiny theatrical masks. Certain netsuke led elaborate double lives, perhaps as an ashtray to catch smoldering ashes from a gentleman’s pipe, or as a compass. Other historical examples functioned as whistles, sundials, abacuses, brush rests, and even firefly cages. There were even trick netsuke, crafted out of mundane moving parts that would open to reveal a surprise, such as a tiny goddess nestled between two halves of a nut.

According to Okada, the most common netsuke depicted figures from Japanese and Chinese legend, such as the shishi (lion-dog) or the creatures of the zodiac. Human-shaped netsuke were rarely heroes, but rather characters from folklore or kabuki actors, which could be rendered in far less detail but remain recognizable. At the dawn of the 19th century, netsuke began to reflect scenes from everyday life, such as ordinary townsfolk doing daily chores.

article-image

The most status-granting carvings were made from any material considered rare. While many were carved from ivory, artists also experimented in wood, amber, antelope horn, persimmon, boxwood, narwhal tooth, boar tusk, hornbill beak, and many other mediums,art collector Anne Hull Grundy wrote in Netsuke Carvers of the Iwami School.

As netsuke become flashier and more intricate, it no longer was enough to just have one fancy example. The flashy and stylish began wearing season-specific netsuke, and it was highly unfashionable to wear one at the wrong time of year. “If someone wears a chrysanthemum and it’s not an autumn month, you’d say, 'Oof, why is he wearing a chrysanthemum?'” Mintz says.

article-image

The golden age of netsuke art arrived at the beginning of the 19th century, according to Contemporary Netsuke by Miriam Kinsey. Professional carvers abounded in major cities, and to prove their prowess, true masters might etch entire poems on the bottom of the figurines, which could only be read with a magnifying glass. As certain carvers became famous, Mintz says, sneaky, less-accomplished carvers might forge the name of a great on their own substandard creations. “There are a few famous carvers whose names were used over and over, even after they died, because they were popular and famous,” he says. “But the crude ones are still really kind of charming.”

If netsuke’s rise in popularity was always tied to tobacco, so was its fall. When Commodore Perry landed on Japanese shores in 1953, foreign trade reopened for the first time in over two centuries, Okada writes. Japanese men began dressing in Western clothing—styles notoriously packed with pockets—and replaced small-bowl pipes with cigarettes, which eliminated the need for a tobacco pouch.

article-image

Netsuke disappeared as a functional item and status symbol, but found a second life as collector’s items. People from the United States and Europe grew fascinated by the intricate miniatures and began acquiring them, Kinsey writes. This passion persists today, with a subculture in collecting similar to the collector’s market for Japanese swords or snuff bottles. In the 21st century, the art of netsuke is far from forgotten. Today, many netsuke artists eschew ivory, in compliance with international bans on trading African elephant ivory, according to National Geographic. These contemporary netsuke makers instead opt for the plastic elforyn, or sustainable natural materials including wood, deer antler, metal, and stone.

article-image

Founded in 1975, the International Netsuke Society publishes a quarterly journal describing netsuke of note and spotlighting modern artists—many of whom hail from outside Japan—and workshops open to the public. Like kimonos, netsuke are still worn today, though usually not the vintage examples, which live in the cabinets of museums and dedicated collectors, as a distinctive national art form. “If you think of quintessential Italian art, you imagine frescoes or oil paintings, while the symbol of Japan is this tiny little goofy sculpture,” Mintz says. “I find that kind of amazing.”

The Kyoto Seishu Netsuke Art Museum is the only museum in the world dedicated to these tiny treasures. Housed in a beautifully restored two-story samurai residence, it specializes in contemporary work and displays around 400 figurines at a time, from an aviator penguin chick to beavers in love. While the museum displays the most intricate examples under magnifying glasses, it wouldn’t hurt to bring your own.

Embracing the Mysteries of a Trove of Hungarian Photos, Rescued From the Dustbin of History

0
0

Glimpses of a century of everyday life.

The woman with the fashionably-angled hat looks wary and weary, as she sits next to a decorated soldier, preoccupied, it seems, with his hands and thoughts. His beer is almost empty; she doesn’t seem to have one, or has she pushed that fuller glass aside? Are they preparing to dine in the tent? What is the occasion?

Many of the photos in the exhibit Every Past Is My Past carry a similar air of mystery. Curated from Hungarian online archive Fortepan, this collection started with images found in the trash in the late 1980s, by Fortepan founders Miklós Tamási and Ákos Szepessy. Many of the pictures, which have since been augmented by many more from other sources, have no captions or identifying information—no explanations. These are moments of everyday life from throughout the 20th century, frozen in time and often open to interpretation. We’ll never know what the woman in the hat is waiting for.

article-image

Every spring in Budapest there is a tradition called lomtalanítás, in which everyone throws their garbage out on the street, creating a hellish trashscape for sanitation workers and a playground for dumpster divers. “Walking through Budapest at the height of lomtalanítás days is an experience akin to setting out into a post-apocalyptic city where no apocalypse has occurred,” writes Nick Robertson in an article on We Love Budapest, “... sidewalks are buried under meters-high mounds of myriad junk, forcing pedestrians to wander down the middle of the road in a muddled haze.”

For decades, these “junk clearance days” declared by city officials have allowed people to chuck anything they don’t want, from a year’s worth of newspapers, to yesteryear’s furniture, to appliances that haven’t worked for years—without limit or cost. People place their items out well before the appointed date, when trucks come through and clear everything out. The period leading up to this are a bonanza for scavengers, scrap metal collectors, artists, and other enthusiasts of the discarded, such as the founders of Fortepan (which is named for a discontinued brand of Hungarian photographic film).

The rescued snapshots offer glimpses of ordinary moments, across a wide range of Hungarian life. One image shows four uniformly dressed young women from 1904 in a lush garden, leaning in and touching heads. Another depicts the festive solidarity of Hungarians attending a parade to celebrate their version of Labor Day, May 1, in 1957, complete with balloons and streamers. A more sobering scene shows us the cool gaze of a Soviet soldier in a wrecked Budapest during the last year of World War II.

article-image

First launched online in 2010 with 5,000 found images from lomtalanítás and rummage sales, Fortepan now contains more than 115,000 photographs, thanks in part to a continuous stream of donations from individuals and institutions. According to Fortepan’s editor and manager András Török, the message of the photos is resilience, how the “private drive to live a happy, full life was hindered, but not blocked, by the terrible 20th-century Hungarian history.”

Besides providing a wealth of fascinating stories and curious little mysteries for browsing, the archive is community-based, which is atypical of such historic collections. Registered viewers can tag and add keywords to images for all to see, or chat in forums about attempts to identify locations in the pictures. Hungarians have written letters to Fortepan expressing surprise at seeing a friend, relative, or even themselves in an old photograph. Fortepan also offers all of their materials to download and use for free. Fortepan is so popular that a sister website, focusing specifically on Iowa, launched in 2015. Török hopes that “archives, all over the world will sooner or later adopt our approach.”

Every Past Is My Past is on exhibit at the Hungarian National Gallery through August 25, 2019. Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from the archive.

article-image
article-image
article-image
article-image
article-image
article-image
article-image

These Hidden Treasures Hold Clues About Jewish Life in Medieval France

0
0

Found in 1863 but not displayed till now, they spent 500 years concealed in a wall.

In 1863, a mysterious terracotta pot was discovered in the wall of a French sweet shop. Handymen stumbled upon it while renovating the building in Colmar, a commune in the riparian region of Alsace. Upon closer inspection, this proved to be no ordinary piece of pottery. The pot held a collection of medieval treasures: 384 silver coins and 14 gold and gem-encrusted rings, to be exact.

Now these precious items, which date to around the year 1300, are on display at The Met Cloisters in New York City, on loan from Paris’s Musée de Cluny. One artifact in particular—a ceremonial wedding ring—is giving art historians insight into who owned the treasure chest and why it was concealed.

Made of gold and decorated with colored enamel, the wedding ring is the most ornate and skillfully constructed piece in the collection. When it was discovered in the 19th century, after having been hidden for 500 years, it was still in good condition.

“Even when buried, gold retains its luster—unlike silver or copper, for example,” says Barbara Drake Boehm, curator of the exhibition. However, “it has lost its green translucent enamel, which [was paired]with the red enamel that remains.”

A clue found in the goldsmith’s handiwork reveals that this ring was made specifically to celebrate a Jewish union. Its centerpiece is a structure that looks similar to the lost temple of Jerusalem, and it features Hebrew letters that spell out “Mazel Tov,” or “Congratulations.”

Fourteenth-century Jews in Colmar were citizens of the Holy Roman Empire,” says Boehm, “and until the Black Death broke out, theirs was a thriving community. The treasure was found on the ‘Rue des juifs,’ or ‘Street of the Jews'—an area where Jews and Christians had lived alongside one another for close to a century.”

article-image

At the time, Colmar’s Jewish and Christian populations not only lived in harmony; they also shared the same class status and held similar tastes. Boehm says that jewelry similar to the pieces found in this Jewish family’s treasure chest is described in the wills of Christian families too.

“Judging from the size and contents, I believe the treasure belonged to one Jewish family of the merchant class,” says Boehm. “There’s the tiniest whisper as to who the owner was [hidden in the ring]: A belt in the treasure bears a small inscription that reads ‘ANCH,’ which might be the medieval equivalent of ‘Annie.’ So maybe this is ‘Annie’s’ family’s treasure.”

The bubonic plague devastated Europe in the middle of the 14th century, and more than half of the Holy Roman Empire’s Jewish population died between 1348 and 1351. Colmar’s Jewish community’s synagogue, mikveh (ritual bath), and school were demolished.

“It had long been thought that the treasure was the only legacy of the medieval Jewish community of Colmar,” says Boehm. The family in possession of these coins and jewels may have hidden the pot in a wall as racial tensions rose with the onset of the pandemic. Or simply because that was the wisest place to sequester family valuables.

Recently, Judith Kogel of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris has begun reconstructing the library that belonged to the Jews of Colmar, after discovering illustrated Hebrew manuscripts and prayer books in the region. Centuries after they were written, these pieces of literature—now coupled with one medieval family’s personal jewels—are finally starting to tell the story of Colmar’s Jewish community and its long-obscured history.

Fed Up With Fatbergs, an Australian Water Company Recorded a Jazzy Jingle About the Sewer

0
0

Only flush the “three Ps,” please.

Australia’s landscapes are famously full of wondrous creatures, and that includes the ones in South Australia: The long-snouted numbat noshes on termites in the Yookamurra Sanctuary and beyond. The chicken-sized malleefowl mounds sand and leaves into nests on the ground. And the greater bilby—which looks a bit like a bunny that happens to have a pointy snout and sharp claws—burrows. Bilbies don’t go deep—less than a foot at a time—but they’re avid diggers. In fact, a single bilby can upturn some 20 tons of topsoil each year, according to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

Much deeper underground, there’s a whole other ecosystem—one engineered by humans and made of pipes. While you won’t find birds or marsupials moving through the sewer sludge, pipes in South Australia are home to an inanimate creation that looks a bit like a swamp monster—shaggy, gloopy, and meddlesome. Perhaps worst of all, it’s made from the stuff people flush down the drain.

article-image

Like London, New York City, and Charleston, South Carolina, South Australia has got a fatberg problem. Made of grit and saponified fats clinging to a matrix of sticky solids (such as wet wipes and condoms), the hulking pipe-cloggers can snake through a city’s underground guts, impinging the flow of water and causing nasty backups of sewage.

Combating fatbergs requires a range of approaches and artillery, from blasting the behemoths with water (to break them down into a slurry) to hacking at them with pick-axes (to break them into manageable bits).

But defeating the clogs is an expensive and time-consuming business, so prevention plays a big role too—and water utilities around the world have recently launched campaigns urging residents to pause before they pour cooking oil (or, for that matter, entire Yorkshire puddings) down the train. In February, New York rolled out a series of comic book–style public-service announcements. In July, the South Australian utility SA Water released a jazzy jingle.

The 17-second earworm has a simple backbone—a folksy guitar and a singsong voice reminding listeners that nothing belongs in the toilet except for the “three Ps”—“paper, pee, and poo.” (New York’s ad campaign adds a fourth “p” to the mix—"puke.")

“Everything else—the wet wipes, the nappies, the tampons, the pads—[doesn’t] break down,” SA Water innovation manager Anna Jackson told ABC Radio Adelaide. The cheerful jingle instructs listeners to think before they flush: “If it ain’t the three Ps,” the ditty goes, “pop it in the bin, please.”

article-image

Compared to, say, the monsters that have sprawled beneath English streets—a particularly gnarly one in London spanned more than 820 feet and weighed more than 130 tons—South Australia’s fatbergs are downright petite. But the cost to extract them is still hefty—$400,000 a year, according to SA Water.

Australia's South West region is also fighting fatbergs. There, The West Australian reported, it can cost as much as $50,000 to unclog a blockage at a single pump station.

Meaning the best kind of fatberg is one that never exists in the first place.

For Sale: Your Very Own (Extinct) Volcano

0
0

The regrettably named Posbury Clump could be yours for just $60,000 and change.

Apparently you don’t need to be a god to own a volcano—you just need $60,890 to spare and a yen for country life. Deep in Devonshire, England, an unusual property has gone up for sale—4.9 acres of woodland sitting on top of a volcano. If you’ve ever wanted to feel like a volcanologist, now’s your chance.

This volcano is extremely affordable by most geological standards, for a couple of reasons. One, it’s been extinct for more than 250 million years, meaning it’s less a volcano than a fossil of one. Two, it’s got a rather stodgy British name. The land is called Posbury Clump, a self-effacing moniker for a plot of land that once streamed red-hot lava on a daily basis. Think of it as the Sir Ian McKellen of volcanoes—Posbury paid its magmatic dues long ago and is now very happy to cash in on that clout in an upcoming movie about humanoid cats.

Like many extinct volcanoes, Posbury isn’t what it used to be. The elderly volcano is just 500 feet high, providing visitors with a sweeping but not particularly expansive view of the surrounding area, according to a description provided by the Jackson stops real-estate agency. But that view is beautiful, featuring farms and woodlands in the rolling hills of the Devonshire countryside.

article-image

Unlike some clumps, the Posbury clump is considered a site of scientific interest, according to Natural England, the government’s advisory arm on natural spaces. The volcanic woodland housed a prominent, basalt-rich quarry that operated in the 19th and early 20th centuries and, according to Jackson Stops, provided the building blocks for other Devonshire buildings of note, including Crediton Church and Medland Manor. Traces of this historical extraction can still be found in the woodland canopy that shades Posbury, including an old track that leads to the mouth of the quarry.

While Posbury’s days of fire and fury are long gone, there is some historical precedent for owning an active volcano. In 1943, a farmer in Mexico named Pulido watched as a baby volcano emerged in the heart of his land. The volcano, later named Parícutin, swallowed the farm and the surrounding forest. When Robert Ripley, the titular creator of the famous belief-questioning book, heard of Pulido’s strange luck, he was determined to buy the volcano for himself. Ripley negotiated with Pulido over the phone until a muralist named Gerardo Murillo, aka Dr. Atl, swooped in and purchased the land for himself.

Elsewhere in the world there are rare examples of privately owned volcanoes, such as the Pisgah Volcano in California and the Newberry Volcano in Oregon. But while some places will allow you to own a volcano, you generally relinquish the rights to the lava.

Luckily, the future owner of Posbury will have no lava to relinquish—just a lovely mound with a fire-breathing past and a benign, bucolic future.

The Fruitcake Prison Break That Reshaped Irish History

0
0

You'll never guess this dessert's key ingredient.

What may have been the most consequential fruitcake of all time was—like most fruitcakes—left uneaten. In an unlikely scheme so gimmicky that it’s now a television trope, this 1919 loaf freed one of Ireland’s most influential statesmen and helped forge a nation.

Eamon de Valera was no stranger to prison. A devout Catholic who politicized around Irish republicanism and rose quickly through the ranks of the Irish Volunteers (forerunners of the Irish Republican Army), the man known by comrades as “Dev” headed a battalion during the Easter Rising against the British in 1916. Overtaken and imprisoned, de Valera was spared execution and given a one-year sentence. (“My name was next on the list to be shot,” he told audiences in the years that followed.) General Sir John Maxwell, commander of the British forces, judged the lithe, hook-nosed former math teacher “[unlikely] to make trouble in the future.”

Once freed, de Valera immediately began making trouble. Aside from being elected to parliament, he led the emergent, revolutionary Sinn Fein party, toppled the long-dominant Irish Parliamentary Party in 1918 elections, published a manifesto vowing to secede, and helped form Dáil Éireann, a separatist parliament that refuted Crown rule. Making up for heinous misjudgment, the British sloppily detained de Valera and 72 fellow republicans—on later disproven allegations of conspiring with Germany—and incarcerated him in Lincoln Prison, which, in its 46-year history, had seen no escapes.

A good Catholic, he became an altar boy in the prison’s chapel and pilfered the chaplain’s master key, making impressions in handfuls of wax he had softened with his own body heat. De Valera had an artistically-inclined fellow inmate draw a Christmas postcard depicting a drunken man trying to fit a large key into a small hole—a ruse that delivered the key’s dimensions to his co-conspirators without arousing suspicion from prison-mail censors.

article-image

Weeks later, Fintan Murphy arrived at Lincoln Prison with a cake for de Valera, a replica of the postcard key baked into the corner. “The head Warder was called,” recalls IRA affiliate Liam McMahon, “who brought a very thin knife, and started prodding the cake. Fintan was in agony over the thing … but he never contacted the key and the cake [got] in.” De Valera remembers feeling “joy at having got [the key], [but] was qualified by a feeling that it was too small.” Indeed, the initial key did not fit the locks.

De Valera sent a more precise design embedded within an even more intricate Celtic symbol, yet upon its arrival in a second cake, found this key didn’t take either. With the cake deliveries growing increasingly suspicious, de Valera’s accomplices mailed him a blank key and a set of files within a subsequently “rather heavy … oblong fruit cake,” remembers McMahon, whose wife Susan baked the cake. Another inmate dissected a prison lock with a contraband screwdriver so as to perfectly sculpt this blank. Then, in the evening hours of February 3rd, 1919, de Valera and two comrades became the first men to escape Lincoln Prison. They walked to the still-standing Adam & Eve Tavern where a taxi whisked them to a safehouse, and then on to Dublin where de Valera was greeted with a hero’s welcome—and the presidency of Dáil Éireann.

Irish historian Diarmaid Ferriter called de Valera “a man of international significance and a role model in the 20th century struggle for small nations to challenge and defeat imperialism.” Despite backing the defeated party in the Irish Civil War, he formed the Fianna Fail party, which won parliamentary elections throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and he won the taoiseach (Prime Ministry) in 1937, 1951, and 1957, which made him the longest serving in Irish history. During his first term, de Valera amended the Irish Free State Constitution to further assert Irish sovereignty, declaring Gaelic the national language, officially recognizing the Catholic Church, extricating all roles of “the King,” and naming the sovereign state Éire, or “Ireland.” No small feat for an oblong fruit-cake.


In Syria, War and Modernity Are No Match for the World's Oldest Soap

0
0

The artisans of Aleppo keep plying their ancient trade, one bar at a time.

When I was a kid, my father would sometimes come home with a suitcase full of earthy-smelling olive-green soap. It was knobbly and waxy and marked with curious Arabic inscriptions that I couldn’t yet read or understand. I wanted to use the same soap my friends were using: a familiar, machine-pressed bar of pink Imperial Leather, whose fragrance mimicked the artificial perfumes in my cosmetics. But my father insisted I use only the Aleppo soap. It was a cleaner, healthier choice, he said. It was a better soap.

Many years later, after my father died, I was sorting through his belongings. I came upon the small leather suitcase he brought with him to the U.K. the first time he left Syria. Inside was a scrunched paper bag filled with Aleppo soap, now aged and turned the color of deepest gold. I decided to investigate: Why did he care so much about this soap?

What I learned was a historical legacy too good to keep to myself. And I may have learned it just in time, as violence is threatening to wipe Syria’s cultural heritage clean off the earth.

The Syrian Civil War has been raging for eight years now. In that time it has decimated the ancient tradition of soap-making in Aleppo. Nearly the entire industry’s workforce was forced to flee when the fighting started—some to other cities, some to new countries altogether.

article-image

Today, though the war rages on in parts of Syria, government forces have mostly regained control of Aleppo, and the city is slowly coming back to life—and going back to work. That includes some of Aleppo’s traditional soap-makers, who are renovating their workshops and reviving production. With help from government organizations and charitable funds, the soap is again becoming a popular and profitable Syrian export.

Aleppo soap, known as ghar in Arabic, or Savon d’Alep, is revered by aficionados around the world. Many historians consider it to be the world’s first modern soap bar—solid, rectangular, and used for bathing and personal hygiene. Made by hand, it contains just three ingredients: olive oil, laurel oil, and a tincture of lye. It has no animal fats or derivatives, no harmful chemicals or artificial colors. The result? An intensely moisturizing and delicate balsam widely used by those with sensitive skin, including small babies and those who suffer from eczema, psoriasis, and acne.

For thousands of years the leaves and berries of the laurel tree—Laurus nobilis—have been a symbol of wealth and prosperity in the Mediterranean. The tree's fronds crowned the heads of ancient Greece’s powerful elite, figures in classical sculptural works, Roman emperors, and victorious gladiators. But it's the elixir of the tree's berries that contain the magic ingredient of Aleppo soap—an essential oil with medicinal properties shown to contain anti-fungals, anti-microbials, anti-inflammatories, and more.

article-image

While its genesis is lost in the mists of time, Aleppo soap may have evolved from the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia (modern-day Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Kuwait). Sumerian textile traders are known to have used a saponaceous liquid solution, created from a concoction of animal fat and wood ash.

Several of Mesopotamia’s great cities remain today, including two in Syria. One is Damascus, the 11,000-year-old Syrian capital widely believed to be the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city. The other is Aleppo, thought to have been continuously inhabited for 8,000 years.

The soap's lineage becomes a little clearer between the years 100 and 200, when Syria was a Roman province. It was at this point that large heated bathhouses, or thermae, first appeared in the area and kick-started the hammam bathing tradition (known today as Turkish baths). In these social settings, men compared their soaps and tonics—a practice that led to the crafting of fine soaps.

As centuries passed under the rule of various empires and dynasties—Byzantine, Umayyad, and Ottoman, to name a few—the public bathing tradition became more refined, and more opulent. The soaps used by bathers became more sophisticated too, laying the groundwork for the Aleppo soap we know today.

article-image

When the Crusaders returned to Europe loaded with treasures from the East, news of the fine Syrian soap they’d found reached the masses. Subsequently, soap production increased in Aleppo, and soon became integral to the city’s economy. Exporting it was simple, thanks to Aleppo’s key position along the historic Silk Road trading route.

Soon European soapmakers were replicating the product as best they could. The celebrated Savon de’Marseille and Castile soap are believed by some to be two such iterations. But the Aleppo soap’s centuries-old production process, and the select precious ingredients unique to the Syrian region, cannot be fully replicated.

The harvesting process begins in the fall in Syria's mountainous north, when the inky-black berries of the tree are ripe. From October to December they’re picked by women whose livelihoods are tied to the harvest. The collected berries are then sold to oil merchants in Aleppo or Damascus, or processed closer to home by the communities that harvest them.

Once the essential oil has been distilled, it’s mixed with olive oil, which comprises the vast majority of the soap’s content. The greater the ratio of laurel oil to olive oil, the more expensive the finished product. A single bar today will usually cost $4 to $10, depending on its laurel oil content.

Next comes the saponification process—a chemical reaction between an acid and a base to form a salt. In this case, the oil mixture is heated with small amounts of lye until a thick, dark green solution is produced. The solution is poured onto the stone floors of large drying chambers beneath each soap factory, forming a thick carpet of green gloop the size of a tennis court.

article-image

Once the gloop cools and hardens, it’s cut into blocks by one of two methods. The first involves wooden shoes with blade attachments, which resemble ice skates. One worker will strap on a pair of the shoes and offer up his arms to fellow workers, who propel their colleague along the soap slab. An alternative method uses a rake-like device instead of shoes. But the same principles apply. After one worker mounts the device, his colleagues pull him along with ropes.

Whichever method is used, the green sheet is neatly sliced into rectangular hunks roughly five inches long by four inches wide. Each bar of soap is then stamped with the maker’s mark, as well as the Arabic name for Aleppo: Halab (حلب)—an important distinguishing feature and stamp of authenticity.

The final stage in the process is drying and curing. Hundreds of bars are arranged together into attractive vertical shapes—usually a pyramid or a dome—which allows each bar to receive maximum exposure to the air. These soap towers are then left out for months in the factory cellar, where temperatures are relatively constant—neither too hot nor too cold. The soap cures throughout the winter and early spring before it's sold to the public.

Yazan Sabouni’s factory was among the first to reopen after the government regained control in Aleppo. Together with his two brothers, Abdullah and Zaher, the 23-year-old Yazan runs a business that’s been in his family for over a century. Even their last name, “Sabouni,” means “soapmaker” in Arabic.

The war has badly roiled their ancient tradition. “[During the fighting] almost all of the soap-makers left Aleppo,” says Sabouni. “Some traveled to other cities, and some left Syria altogether … [after their factories and shops were] demolished. We thank God that we just lost our money and buildings, and not our lives.”

article-image

Reparations and renovations in the city are now under way, but it will take time for the industry to fully recover. Not only were buildings damaged and destroyed; costly equipment was stolen from the factories by looters.

The result has been a literal decimation of the ancient Aleppo soap industry. “Before the war there were more than 200 large [soapmaking] labs and small workshops,” says Talal Anis, another prominent soapmaker. “Now there are no more than 20.”

Soapmakers aren’t the only ones whose livelihoods have been imperiled by the war. Many of Aleppo’s famous soap-selling districts were within the walls of the Ancient City of Aleppo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Much of the Ancient City—including the Al-Madina Souq, a covered market that’s home to numerous khans and bazaars—suffered severe damage in the 2012 Battle of Aleppo. These merchants are still recovering as well.

But for many of Aleppo’s soapmakers, preservation hinges on a speedy recovery. Like the Sabounis, the Anis family business has been passed down through generations. Talal Anis began working with soap when he was 16, under the guidance of his father. He doesn’t want to be the last generation to practice the family trade.

“I want to make sure that the Aleppo soap industry is here after me,” he says. “For my family, for all residents of Aleppo, and for the world.”

article-image

Yazan Sabouni agrees. “Our people have taken care of themselves and their bodies for thousands of years,” he says. “Aleppo soap is as important as French perfume, Swiss watches, or Italian pasta.”

But the real recovery process begins with the full return of the workforce—the displaced men and women who, together, form the lifeblood of the industry. Anis is optimistic. “With support and time,” he says, “the industry will recover.”

However much things may yet change in Aleppo, one thing that can never be washed away is the humble bar of soap. Its recipe and story will continue to be passed down through the hands of Aleppians, whether in the souks of the Old City or the suitcases of migrants.

For Sale: A Bison's Skull Straight From the Ice Age

0
0

The safe way to encounter horns this big.

Bison everywhere have, at some point, been pushed to the brink. American bison went from up to 60 million individuals before 1800 to about 300 a century later. The other surviving species, the European bison (also known as wisents), was rescued from the brink of extinction after World War II. Both species are descended from the steppe bison, which wasn’t so lucky. Now the skull of one of these ancient ungulates is for sale.

Like many large Ice Age species, the steppe bison went extinct around 12,000 years ago, likely due to a combination of overhunting and a shifting climate. It once roamed a massive range known as the “great buffalo belt,” stretching from the Americas to Asia.

"It's clear that at the start of the Holocene, 11,500 years ago, things got warmer and the steppe disappeared, and with it, the steppe bison," says Juliette Funck, an ancient bison researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Some of their descendants evolved into the modern bison we find now."

The animal was huge, up to six feet tall at the withers and weighing up to a ton. Its horns measure three feet tip to tip, about half a foot wider than the horn spans of bison today. They were not to be messed with.

article-image

Last year, scientists in Alaska ate extinct steppe bison in a stew, taken from the frozen remains known as Blue Babe. (“It tasted a little bit like what I would have expected, with a little bit of wring of mud,” one reported.) The skull for sale is from a European population of the same species. "In Europe," writes zoologist R. Dale Guthrie, "Neanderthal families were still lounging on bison robes beside their fires, eating bison that closely resembled Blue Babe."

The skull was found in the Rhine River, in Germany. “The light highly aesthetic color,” says the auction house, Ancient Resource Auctions of Montrose, California, “is a result of this well-preserved example being buried deep in a protective layer of gravel.” Though it is not known how the bison met its demise, early humans and Neanderthals were known to have hunted the species. The skull comes from a private Dutch collection, so it would be difficult to ascertain the location of the rest of the bison’s skeleton for more evidence.

article-image

The species famously appeared in cave paintings in Altamira in Spain and Lascaux in France, so it clearly made an impression on early humans in Europe. Researchers have suggested that the modern European bison is a hybrid of the steppe bison and the aurochs, a gigantic wild cow species that humans drove to extinction in the 17th century—the direct ancestor of modern domestic cattle.

Why a South African Petrochemical Plant Is Like Catnip to Servals

0
0

The wildcats are an example of resilience and adaptation.

Secunda Synfuels Operations is a gray place, even by day. Located in the small town of Secunda, South Africa, around 87 miles east of Johannesburg, the coal liquefaction plant produces tens of millions of barrels of synthetic fuel, a variety of other petrochemicals, and enough carbon dioxide to make it one of the largest point sources for emissions in the world, according to Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative. Each day, the plant’s four enormous cooling towers paint the sky with enormous billowing clouds of steam. Beneath all of that, though, the plant’s grounds are just crawling with wildcats.

Almost a decade ago, one employee at Secunda Synfuels spotted something in the distance, a flash of yellow fur and black spots. A cheetah, maybe? It was a strange sight on the heavily industrialized grounds, which didn’t appear to be a friendly, healthy ecosystem, let alone one sturdy enough to support big cats. A group of researchers set out to track down these elusive critters, which, didn’t turn out to be cheetahs at all. To their great surprise, they found the Secunda plant is home to one of the densest populations of servals, a wild African cat that’s a bit smaller than a cheetah but just as elegant, ever recorded.

article-image

Daan Loock, a researcher at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, led the team and proposed a scientific study on Secunda’s servals. Loock, now the head of the Secunda Serval Research Project, took some camera trap photos of the elusive cats to the plant’s management to secure funds for a larger-scale study of the petrochemically inclined predators.

The plant was game, and in 2014, Loock and fellow researchers Samual Williams and Lourens Swanepoel from the University of Venda in Thohoyandou, set out to document the entire reclusive population around Secunda. They laid camera and live traps in the approximately 30 square miles of land between the plant’s buildings and an encircling fence. The area encompasses a variety of undulating grasslands interrupted by the occasional rocky outcrop or wetland. As the pictures started streaming in, the research team was bewildered by just how many cats they were seeing. Over the course of two years, the researchers photographed 61 unique individuals—a surprisingly high number. Servals have spot patterns as unique as fingerprints, which makes it easy to tell individuals apart. According to their extrapolated estimates, the Secunda area seemed to support more than one serval for every square mile, the highest density ever recorded. This held up year after year, indicating a stable population. They published their findings in Nature in November 2018.

article-image

So what keeps the servals there? First, and perhaps least surprising, is the rats, according to the study. Like any human-influenced area, Secunda swarms with a small, opportunistic prey animals. In the swamps of South Africa, these come in the form of vlei rats, large and shaggy critters that make a perfect meal for a small carnivore. The marshy meadows that support them are abundant in the wake of human disturbance, which also create the patchy, broken-up habitat the rats thrive in, the authors write. Secunda also hosts a population of guinea fowl, another species servals consider rather delicious.

There’s also the chain-link fence that encircles the plant, originally intended to keep humans off the potentially toxic industrial site. It also happens to keep out farmers and ranchers who see servals as a threat to livestock. Leopard communities, for example, only reach around 20 percent of their potential population density when they live in proximity to livestock, due to persecution by farmers, the authors write in the study. And finally, the fence shuts out larger carnivores that could outcompete the cats for their plump vlei prey, while letting servals and other medium-size animals pass through. Lions, hyenas, and cheetahs are out of the picture.

article-image

Before humans, carnivores sat comfortably atop of food webs around the world. But large carnivores have frequently been the first species to disappear when humans move into an area. That makes this highly concentrated serval population pretty remarkable, Williams says. Servals are elusive, but aren’t threatened or endangered in their sub-Saharan range. That doesn’t mean they're not clear of risk. The grasslands of South Africa are rich in coal, and have undergone a rapid transformation in recent years, according to the study, putting the serval’s preferred wetland habitats at risk.

But despite the rich potential for food and security for these cats, there’s no forgetting what Secunda Synfuels is. “There could potentially be costs to living in such a modified environment,” Williams says, pointing to evidence that noise pollution affects communication in populations of dwarf mongooses in the area, for example, as proven in a 2016 study of South Africa’s Sorabi Rock Lodge Reserve. “This, along with chemical pollution, has the potential to make life in these areas much more stressful and disease-prone than [for] servals living in less disturbed habitats.” Light pollution could be an issue as well—a potential disruptor of noctural hunting patterns and a possible topic for future study.

article-image

There are other places where industry and nature coexist, however uneasily, such as industrial Teeside in northeast England, where a nature reserve sits amid a nuclear power station, an incinerator plant, oil refineries, and a Saudi industrial chemical complex. When the study first came out, Williams reports, he heard that some scientists believed he and his colleagues were positing that such degraded industrial habitats are a good thing. He wants to set that record straight. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he says, adding that one of the most important goals of conservation is to preserve intact, less-disturbed habitats.

The story of the servals at Secunda is a story of silver linings, of adaptation and survival. Williams hopes the research presents an opportunity for people and companies to make a conscious effort toward behaving in an environmentally responsible manner. “We are not saying that to conserve servals more industrial plants should be built,” he says. “But what I think is fascinating about the servals at Secunda is how they throw into sharp contrast just how adaptable wildlife can be, and how even huge industrial plants can contribute towards conservation.”

The Roman Baths of Caracalla Will Not Be Getting a McDonald's After All

0
0

The relationship between Rome's cultural heritage sites and the burger chain is long and contentious.

Who knows? Emperor Caracalla, who ruled Rome from 198 until 217, might’ve been just fine with a McDonald’s opening up alongside the extravagant public baths he commissioned for the city. The UNESCO site's columns curve just like the chain's golden arches, and the 1,600 Romans who could fill the complex at any given time may have been happy to pay up for a post-soak Big Mac.

But Caracalla isn’t calling the shots anymore. This week, Italy’s Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli announced that the fast food chain’s plans to build a new restaurant adjacent to the cultural heritage site and popular tourist attraction had been overturned. The reversal comes after the mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, intervened last week and voiced her opposition to the plans. “The wonders of Rome must be protected,” Raggi tweeted on July 31, when the restaurant’s cancellation was confirmed.

Opponents of projects like the Caracalla McDonald’s are motivated by more than the preservation of aesthetic integrity, though Bonisoli and Raggi both clearly framed their positions in those terms. The Local reports that the cancellation is consistent with Rome’s ongoing efforts to clamp down on a host of activities and businesses which allow litter to accumulate and other annoyances to prevail. In 2017, Mayor Raggi banned the practice of dressing in historical costume in the city’s historic center, in part to prevent Roman centurion impersonators from hassling tourists for photos. While that ordinance is perfectly specific, other recent regulations address the oddly vague matter of “eating in a slovenly fashion,” according to The Local.

article-image

Still, other McDonald’s locations abound near the city’s historic sites, with another planned restaurant near the Pantheon still in the works. Italy’s very first McDonald’s opened in 1986 by the iconic Spanish Steps; today, a stately plaque commemorates its historic role as “il primo Ristorante McDonald’s in ITALIA.” It opened despite considerable protest, and resulted in the founding of the international Slow Food Movement, which seeks to preserve regional culinary traditions diluted by the expansion of global restaurant chains.

But while Rome's administrators halted McDonald's latest encroachment, Burger King recently won out in a similar battle in the hamburger's home state. Last year, protesters in Norwich, Connecticut, fought against Burger King’s plans to build near a historic 19th-century graveyard, with demonstrators donning period garb to emphasize their emotional connection to local history. Yet plans for the Burger King went ahead following a negotiated settlement, in which the developers agreed to enhance the buffer between the restaurant and the graveyard, and to honor the site's history as best they can. "This will be like no Burger King you’ve ever seen," promised Bill Sweeney, the development company's attorney. “Its design will pay respect to the historic community." Future activists may well seek to preserve the greasy homage amid a forthcoming wave of corporate expansion.

Wuppertal's Beloved Floating Monorail Is Moving Again

0
0

All aboard!

Every city needs a mascot, animate or otherwise. Oakland, California, for instance, has the algae-green Midcentury Monster.

The German city of Wuppertal has the Schwebebahn—a sprawling suspension railway so beloved that when it reopened on August 1, 2019, after nearly nine months of renovations, locals greeted it with cheers and workers doled out celebratory waffles and ice cream at the stations.

The route spans 20 stops, stretches a little more than eight miles, and hauls more than 65,000 riders a day. Construction began in 1898, and members of the public first climbed aboard in 1901. The railway was badly damaged during air raids in 1943, and for a few years, the route carried only emergency shuttles. It was fully functional again by 1946, but a handful of accidents have put the monorail out of commission for a few days, weeks, or months since.

(Some have been fatal, and others just zany—such as the day in 1950 when a young circus elephant named Tuffi tumbled from a rail car into the river and lived to trumpet about it.)

article-image

But the railway has never been immobile this long. It had been closed for repairs since November 2018, when a portion of it collapsed. Now, commuters can climb on board once more, surveying the streets and the Wupper river much as a bird would.

The mayor, for one, is thrilled to have it back in action.

“Wuppertal is rather attached to its suspension train,” Mayor Andreas Mucke told the crowd that turned out to inaugurate its return. The train “amounts to the city’s trademark,” he told The Guardian.

Speaking to the local Westdeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Mucke went even further, describing the railway as iconic and inseparable from the city it crawls above. Wuppertal without the Schwebebahn, Mucke said, would be “like Paris without the Eiffel Tower.”

The 'Moby-Dick' Musical Is Swimming With Sea Shanties and Nurdle Ballads

0
0

We watched it with a whale anatomist to see if the cetacean science holds water.

Joy Reidenberg and I sit on folding chairs, directly under the 21,000-pound, foam-and-fiberglass replica of a blue whale that arches from the ceiling of the American Museum of Natural History’s Milstein Hall of Ocean Life in New York. We’re talking about Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

“It's very long,” she says. “And it’s very detailed. You have to really want to read it.” That’s 135 chapters, plus an epilogue, and Reidenberg and I have both sailed through it. She wasn’t so much in it for the story—the tale of the crew of the Pequod and its captain’s single-minded stalking of the ornery sperm whale that made off with his leg. Rather, she says, she read “for the accuracy of the descriptions of whales.” Reidenberg knows whales inside and out—literally. She is a comparative anatomist at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine specializing in cetaceans, and she often dissects them when they appear on beaches around the city. Not only that—she’s a fan. She had arrived to the museum that July day wearing a sperm whale T-shirt, and told me she often sprawls out beneath the blue whale, even when the museum is crowded, to imagine what it would feel like to see a giant like that passing overhead.

We’ve met at the museum to see a staged reading of excepts from composer Dave Malloy’s new musical adaptation of Melville’s novel, ahead of the production’s debut in December 2019 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Reidenberg and I were there to listen to the songs the same way Reidenberg read the novel—with special attention to the marine mammals that inhabit them.

article-image

“I was very impressed with how much anatomy [Melville] knew and how much biology he knew,” she says. Melville had drawn on several sources to learn about whaling, in addition to his own experience at sea, and based his eponymous character on tales of Mocha Dick, a sperm whale “as white as wool” that infamously troubled whaling crews for several decades in the 19th century. The book is notorious (and sometimes knocked) for dense, detail-packed passages: entire chapters devoted to whale skeletons, to the “fountains” erupting from blowholes, to spermaceti, the slick, thick, multipurpose oil found in sperm whales’ heads.

“Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items contingent,” Melville writes, as he clears his throat before one such chapter, packed like a clot of seaweed. It works on the page, sure, but will any of it make sense when sung to the rafters above the blue whale model? I was eager to see how Malloy’s production would handle the detailed information that makes up so much of the novel. Reidenberg agreed to be my guide to the literary whale world.

The performers and musicians—including a cellist, hornblowers, percussion, and Malloy, on the piano—are on a small, undressed, elevated stage, clad in street clothes. A long platform juts out from the stage, and surrounded by a room full of spectators sitting around it or up in the balcony, surrounded by waterless dioramas of the sea. With only a brief prologue and a single “Call me Ishmael” joke, the cast launches into it, beginning with the novel’s first page. Nick Choksi—call him Ishmael—recites much of Melville’s language about a journey to sea being the only salve for a morose spleen and the urge to doff people’s hats. The songs that follow tell the entire story, often with the original language, but the novelty of the performance rests with its winking updates.

article-image

The staged reading doesn’t include all of the final songs, and doesn't really wade into the densest passages of maritime and scientific exposition. But during one interlude, Malloy runs down a few of the scenes that will augment the full version, including an extended depiction of whalers extracting spermaceti and slicing meat. (Through his agent, Malloy declined to speak with Atlas Obscura for this story.) He promises they will be suitably gross and granular—and partly illustrated by puppets. For the reading, he says, the cast would “skip the boring stuff.”

“That’s too bad,” Reidenberg mumbles. She's into the nitty-gritty details; this is a woman who once used spermaceti to grease some knives before sharpening them. However, many of the plot-driven songs that were performed were still stuffed with details about whales.

One song draws on chapter 133, “The Chase—First Day,” to describe the sight of Moby Dick when the whale is still deep underwater. The cast sings about “a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel.” Reidenberg says that sort of checks out: She’s spotted the white of a humpback’s flipper when it is still deep down, and says “animals that have white markings, on a sunny day, in relatively calm waters, can be seen pretty deeply.” But the description then takes a fanciful detour. The book passage goes on to describe the shape “magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom.” Sperm whales have been known to slam into ships—it’s even been somewhat controversially theorized that their blocky heads might have evolved as battering rams—but Reidenberg says a sperm whale probably wouldn’t charge with its mouth open. “I think that’s a little bit of fantasy,” she says. “I wouldn’t expect to see teeth.” Sperm whales only opens their mouths to feed when they’re hunting underwater, she says. Melville’s description of the whale’s “glittering mouth …. beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb” raises the stakes and danger of the encounter. Even with a closed mouth, the danger was real. Whalers “were slaying dragons, when you think about,” Reidenberg says.

article-image

In another song, “The Quarter-Deck,” which is based on chapter 36, Ahab gets amped up describing Moby Dick’s distinctive blow. The crew sings about a “bushy spout,” which the novel also likens to a “white cloud” and “a whole shock of wheat,” and Ahab badgers his men to keep an eye out. Reidenberg says that’s not bad advice—different species have different styles of spouts. “Blue whales have relatively tall, straight, smokestack-like spouting; humpback whales have a sort of Valentine-heart shape to the spouts; right whales have a very V-shaped [one]; and sperm whales have an asymmetric blow,” she says. While baleen whales have two nostrils as blowholes, toothed whales, including sperm whales, have just one (Moby Dick’s spout would have been on the left side of his head, and angled a little forward). “When you see a whale off at a distance, you’re going to be able to spot exactly which species it is,” Reidenberg says, but studying the shape of the exhalation wouldn’t help identify a particular individual. Unless Moby Dick had been the only sperm whale in that part of the ocean, there would have been no way to know for sure that the off-kilter plume was his.

But another detail in the song offers a more useful a hint about how to properly identify a whale—by studying the flukes, or the lobes that make up a whale’s tail. Ahab tells the crew to keep watch for a whale with “three holes punctured in his starboard fluke.” That makes sense to Reidenberg. “To have a marking that identifies this whale as an individual whale is very realistic,” she says. “These are used almost like fingerprints to identify individuals.” It would be conceivable, she adds, that a fluke could be punctured just as the story and performance describe if another toothed whale, maybe an orca, had bitten down on it.

article-image

The cast also sang a jolly, jovial tune about extracting the spermaceti, based on chapter 94, “A Squeeze of the Hand.” In the book, Ishmael describes plunging his hands into the oil; in the production, the cast chimes in with a hearty refrain of “Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! All the morning long.” (“I thought they were talking about masturbation,” Reidenberg says.) Both the song and the book note that the globules in the spermaceti have the “smell of spring violets.” Wait—the gunk inside a sperm whale’s head smells like a bouquet? It’s hard to say: Some historic candlers seem to have prized the material precisely because it didn’t smell like much of anything, unlike tallow, for example. Reidenberg, for her part, isn’t sure exactly what fresh spermaceti smells like either—every whale she gets a look inside of is long dead and reeking. “If it was violets,” she laughed, “it would be pretty faint and pale in the distance compared to the rotting flesh around us.”

The production is affectionate toward the original text, but riffs on it, too. It’s adapted to make it feel grounded in 2019—with everything from references to subways, to grappling with racial inequality, to mulling over whether God is cisgender. It also talks about the ocean in a way that would never have occurred to Melville, because a lot has changed since 1851. The whaling industry is belly-up in America—if revived in Japan—and the waters themselves have changed, too—more acidic, warmer, polluted by industry. “These animals are swimming in what we have turned into a toilet,” Reidenberg says. The oceans are particularly deviled and befouled with nurdles, lines, and other little pieces of plastic.

article-image

Malloy’s adaptation is a product of now, and seems to imply that there’s no way to sing about the ocean in the 21st century without grappling with garbage. In a song called “Whalesong Interlude II,” the harpooners Tashtego and Daggoo sing long, low, and slow—exaggerated and muffled so they sound a bit like blue whales off in the distance. They serenade plankton and krill and lament the plot of “plastic trash in the Pacific” twice as big as Texas. “Will it all be ok?” they ask. They offer an answer, sad and sure: “It won’t.”

When the performance ends, Reidenberg and I sit in front of some walruses and chat. It was ambitious and wacky—a little serious, fairly goofy, and unmoored in time. It would be impossible to fit every detail of the novel into a musical—marathon readings are known to stretch across several days—but it was weird and wonderful to hear some of familiar ones put to a tune. Reidenberg thought that some of them carry important messages, too. “It was nice that they put something in there that was an environmental-awareness issue,” Reidenberg says. “I thought that was great.” She’s worried about the trash-strewn waters, and believes whales are great ambassadors for what’s at stake. “Everybody loves the whales—before, they used to be afraid of them,” she says. “They’ve gone from dragons to unicorns.”

Eat Like Royalty With This Cookbook From the Emperor Who Built the Taj Mahal

0
0

Shah Jahan developed one of the most famous cuisines of India.

It was the mid 1600s, and Friar Sebastian Manriquea, a Portuguese priest who had come to visit the Mughal Court, wanted to witness a royal supper. It was a rare sight. The Mughal emperors, who ruled territory across the northern Indian subcontinent, usually didn’t dine with anyone but their wives and concubines. But on this day, Shah Jahan—the Mughal ruler who commissioned the Taj Mahal—would be dining with his wazir, advisor Asaf Khan. Sensing an opportunity, the curious priest found an ally: A court eunuch, one of the many third-gender people who enjoyed an elevated status as guardians of women in the Mughal palace, smuggled the Portuguese friar into the inner chamber to watch Shah Jahan at his meal.

The exact meal Manriquea witnessed has been lost to history. But thanks to The Mughal Feast, a recently-translated Mughal royal cookbook, we have some ideas. Salma Yusuf Husain, a Persian-language scholar and culinary historian, dubs her version of the book—which includes literal translations of recipes as well as cultural and historical notes—a “transcreation” of the Persian-language Nuskha-e-Shahjahani. One of the only extant culinary texts from Shah Jahan’s court, the manuscript had sat in the British Library for years without being available in English. Illustrated with ornate Mughal miniature paintings, the new translation details an elevated courtly cuisine, in which Indian ingredients such as mango and tamarind fused with Persian soups and meats, and every grain of rice was covered in costly silver.

The book’s recipes for qormas, biryanis, and pulaos reveal the roots of one of India’s most globally recognized cuisines: Mughlai food, a culinary tradition descended from the Mughal court, enjoyed across North India, and disproportionately exported abroad. Walk into an Indian restaurant outside of South Asia today, and you’re almost guaranteed to encounter menu items descended from Shah Jahan’s kitchens.

article-image

The Mughal Feast reveals a cuisine shaped by conquest. The Mughals came from Central Asia, and traced their roots to Genghis Khan and to the great Central Asian king Timur. The first Mughal king, Babur, rode into the subcontinent from Kabul with his followers in 1519. He had conquered his way across North India by the 1530s. When Babur arrived in India, says Husain, he would have found a relatively simple cuisine which was, at least among certain Buddhists, Jains, and caste Hindus, often vegetarian. Used to a nomadic lifestyle, Babur brought meat. While the kebab—cut or pounded sections of meat cooked in a tandoor oven—became an art in North India, its early counterpart in Babur’s army was strictly utilitarian. “They would take the meat piece, put it under the saddle, sit on it, and gallop,” says Husain.

Under Babur’s descendants, Mughal cuisine became increasingly complex. Emperor Akbar, who married a Rajasthani queen, brought influences from that desert region; Emperor Humayun, who was exiled to Iran, returned with a taste for Persian food. But, says Husain, the most intricate flowering of Mughal cuisine came under Shah Jahan. Compared to his bellicose compatriots, “Shah Jahan was not a warrior; he was never a soldier," says Husain. "He loved to eat.” During Shah Jahan's reign, the empire was relatively stable, and he frequently entertained visiting dignitaries. Manriquea may have been the only European to spy on the emperor’s dinner, but there was extensive contact between European delegations, often made up of Christian clergy, and the Muslim Mughals. In one incident from Shah Jahan's youth, the Mughal royals and their Jesuit visitors celebrated Easter in a feast that included Easter eggs, tight rope walkers, and the burning of a firework-stuffed effigy of Judas.

article-image

So what did Manriquea witness in the Shah Jahan’s chambers? A typical meal, served on gold plates, might have included thick, sometimes-leavened naan bread; Persian-inspired aash or soup; bharta or smoked mashed vegetables; meat kebabs; and pulao or zeer biryan, rice and lamb cooked on a low flame for hours until the lamb juice suffused the rice. Dried fruits and nuts, such as raisins and cashews, were common flavorings, but some of the more complex spice mixtures of contemporary North Indian cuisine were not. Decorations, from warq silver-coated rice to intricately colored desserts, were lavish. Everything that could be coated in sugar syrup, including savory kebabs and biryani, was. Even the water was high-end: The food was cooked in a mixture of rain water and water from the Ganges river, considered sacred by Hindus.

Some ingredients that we today consider typical of Indian food don’t appear in the Nuskha-e-Shahjahani. “The use of potato came in the later period,” says Husain, as did chillies and tomatoes. (There was no spicy butter chicken in tomato-based gravy during Mughal times.) Chillies were brought to India by the Portuguese, and used originally as a medical treatment. Love for their hot flavor, however, quickly spread, resulting in the chilli-heavy Indian cuisines we know today. By Muhammad Shah Rangeela's reign in the early 1700s, chillies had become common in North Indian cuisine, and they remain so today.

While some recipes in The Mughal Feast may be challenging for modern home cooks—one recipe calls for boiling lamb liver multiple times before frying it and shaping it to resemble bone marrow—Husain says the recipes can be replicated at home. “It’s a canvass,” she says. “Fill in the colors.” Today’s curious gastronomes may not be able to sneak into Shah Jahan’s inner chambers, but by trying out a recipe from The Mughal Feast, they can still eat like emperors.

article-image

AMBA PULAO
Serves: 6-8
Sweet and tangy mango lamb rice

Ingredients

Lamb, cut into pieces / 1 kg (2.2 lb)

Rice 4 cups

Ghee 1 cup

Onions, sliced 1 cup

Ginger (adrak), chopped 4 tsp

Coriander (dhaniya) seeds, crushed 4 tsp

Salt 4 tsp

Cloves (laung) 1 tsp

Raw mangoes (kairi) 1 kg (2.2 lb)

Sugar 3 cups

Cumin (jeera) seeds / 2 gm (1/2 tsp)

Black peppercorns (sabut kali mirch) 1 tsp

Cinnamon (dalchini), 2 sticks 1˝ each

Pistachios (pista), fried ½ cup

Almonds (badam), fried ½ cup

Raisins (kishmish), fried ½ cup


Method

1. Make yakhni with the lamb pieces, ghee, onions, ginger, crushed coriander seeds, and salt. Strain the stock and separate the lamb pieces.

2. Add half the mangoes to the stock, and cook until tender. Remove from heat and keep aside to cool. Squeeze the mangoes by hand to extract thick pulp. Strain and keep the mango stock aside.

3. Make a sugar syrup of one-string consistency.

4. Cut the remaining mangoes into pieces, boil in water, and then float in this sugar syrup and cook until tender. Remove from the syrup and keep aside.

5. Add the syrup to the mango stock and parboil the rice in it.

6. In a separate pan, spread the cumin seeds, followed by the lamb pieces. Add the whole spices and 2 tbsp sweet stock; cook on low heat until syrup is absorbed.

7. Spread the rice over the lamb, pour some ghee, and cook on dum.

8. While serving, arrange the mango pieces on the pulao and garnish with fried dry fruits.

Cooking methods as listed above:

Dum

Dum literally means ‘breath’. This process involves maturing the prepared dish after the completion of the cooking process. The pot is sealed as tightly as possible with dough or a heavy weight on the lid. This pot is then placed on hot ashes or an iron griddle on very low heat. A few coals are also placed on the lid, if possible. This process allows the individual flavors of the dish to blend into their own juices. The pot should be opened only before serving.

Yakhni

This is a meat stock. Boil meat with or without bones with salt, coriander seeds, onions, and ginger. When tender, separate meat pieces from the stock and keep aside. Strain the stock through a muslin cloth. For 1 kg meat, use 4 cups water if cooked in pressure cooker, or 8 cups if on coal fire. Adjust ingredients according to recipe.

One-string sugar syrup

Boil 2 cups sugar with 2 cups water, and then cook on low heat, adding juice of 1 lemon. When syrup is of one-string consistency, remove. Adjust ingredients according to recipe.

Excerpted from The Mughal Feast: Recipes from the Kitchen of Emperor Shah Jahan by Salma Yusuf Husain, published by Roli Books.


Found: A Spaceship-Shaped, 500-Million-Year-Old Sea Creature

0
0

High-altitude fossils from the deep, deep past.

During Earth’s Cambrian explosion, around 550 million years ago, life made its big leap forward, and the diversity of species expanded many thousands of times over. The period was so significant to the development of life as we know it that all the time prior to it—seven-eighths of the planet’s 4.6 billion–year history—is referred to as “Precambrian,” as if it was just a preamble to when things got really interesting. Known most for species such as the innumerable and kind of charismatic trilobite, life in the Cambrian was a crowded smorgasbord of bizarre, alien-seeming species. This week, scientists announced the newest addition to the Cambrian wunderkammer, found in Canada’s high-altitude Burgess Shale fossil deposits: Cambroraster falcatus, a vacuum-sucking, carapace-wearing, UFO-resembling, filter-feeding arthropod.

“We’re used to seeing bizarre animals at the Burgess Shale,” says Joe Moysiuk, who first joined the Royal Ontario Museum’s excavations on the site in 2014, “but Cambroraster was a real oddity.” In the Cambrian, that’s saying something.

The Burgess Shale sits high in the Canadian Rockies, with exposed portions in Yoho National Park, about 500 miles from the sea. Despite being a world away from today's oceans, it’s proven to be a trove of aquatic creatures from the deep, deep past—through a combination of plate tectonics and lots (and lots) of time.

article-image

“Burgess Shale creatures were living at the edge of the continental shelf, in moderately deep water,” says Moysiuk. “In the long time since the Cambrian, North America has moved from close to the equator to where it is now, and the Rocky Mountains have been pushed up by the moving plates.”

In the formation, ancient marine fossils seem to tumble off the mountainside like massive dandruff flakes. The researchers in Canada have since found dozens of Cambroraster fossils since the first specimen; the animal was just fortunate to have died there—otherwise it’s unlikely to have been preserved at all.

“It’s not an ordinary fossil site,” says Moysiuk. “At the Burgess Shale we also get preservation of soft tissues, eyes preserving, nervous systems and digestive tracts, sometimes even holding the animal’s last meal.”

When Moysiuk’s team uncovered the first known Cambroraster fossil, they weren’t sure what they were looking at. As they found more, each fossilized in a different position or different angle, they were able to get a fuller picture of the hand-sized creature. That’s how it often works with these unusual, very ancient animals: piece by piece. “We were able to piece it back together, jigsaw puzzle–style,” says Moysiuk.

article-image

Along with its shell-like carapace, Cambroraster also had a circular mouth, with featherlike sweepers that Moysiuk speculates helped pull food to its mouth. It wasn’t huge by today’s marine animal standards, but Cambroraster was a giant of its time, and would have fed on smaller creatures on the ancient seafloor. Due to the shape of its exoskeleton, the animal was originally nicknamed “the spaceship.” The researchers went with it, so when the time came to give it a scientific name, they turned to one of the most famous spaceships ever imagined, and called the species C. falcatus.

“We knew we had to keep the nickname,” says Moysiuk. “It just looked like the Millennium Falcon.”

30 Years On, the 'Worst Car Ever Built' Has a Fervent Fan Club

0
0

Made in the former East Germany, Trabants have inspired many a mean joke—and a devoted community.

In the 1991 German comedy film, Go Trabi Go, a family from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) goes on a road trip to Italy in their beloved Trabant 601—the most popular car in East Germany before the collapse of the Iron Curtain. At one point their vehicle's head gasket blows, and the father makes an emergency phone call. When he tells a mechanic over the line that he's driving a Trabant 601, the mechanic chuckles and says, “I hope you've got some sticky tape.”

Over the years, the “Trabi” (as it's affectionately known) has been the butt of endless jokes associated with East Germany. With its bare interior, oddly-designed stick shifter, and an exterior made of Duroplast—a rust-resistant, cotton-reinforced resin plastic that's lighter and stronger than steel (and more importantly, could be manufactured in the GDR)—the standard four-seater Trabi sedan has been referred to as one of the “worst cars ever built,” and “East Germany's terrible car that will never die.” Add to this its two-stroke engine, the same kind used in lawnmowers and Asia's tuk-tuks, and it’s understandable why there are quips like “Why does a Trabi have a heated rear window? To keep your hands warm while you push.”

Produced from 1957 until 1991, the Trabi has earned the nicknames “spark plug with a roof” and “cardboard racer” because of its seemingly shoddy design. To many Westerners, Trabis remain a prime example of East German repression and the governing Socialist United Party's archaic ways. Trabis had no fuel gauge, air conditioning, turn signals, or brake lights, and could only reach a maximum speed of 62 miles per hour. Once the Wall came down, Trabis just couldn't compete with Western vehicles, and seemingly overnight East Germany's most coveted car became almost obsolete.

article-image

Europe's advanced emission standards mean you'll see few original Trabis on the road today, though there are believed to be around 34,000 still registered in Germany. For collectors of this smoke-spewing, motor-sputtering vehicle, the Trabi is their pride and joy. It's a car that calls to mind memories of Cold War-era holiday road trips into Germany's Thuringian Forest and nude beaches along the Baltic Sea; one that some GDR families waited up to 16 years to receive, and that could be fixed using household tools. Trabis provided some independence in a country where independence was almost nil.

“Trabis have a soul, I think,” says 42-year-old Romy Löbel, a Trabi enthusiast and German native who first started collecting Trabants in 1996 (she now has two). “[When you're driving one], it's only the street, the little two-stroke engine, and the world around you. “Löbel grew up in the former East Germany in a town called Chemnitz, then known as “Karl-Marx-Stadt.” For her, Trabis were a part of everyday life. “They provide a special kind of freedom,” she says.

“I really love the smell and sound of Trabis,” says Florian Vogel, a 28-year-old from Kaiserslautern, Germany, who also says its simplicity of upkeep is a major selling point (“It’s so easy to maintain,” he says. The Trabi has an especially potent exhaust smell that's a 50:1 mix of gasoline and two-stroke oil, and its engine makes a vroom vroom noise.. Vogel currently owns four of the cars—a 1984 white and a 1989 blue sedan, each with the original two-stroke engine, and two 1991 station wagons with four-stroke VW Polo engines (these were part of the final Trabant production models released in 1990-1991). At 18, “I wanted to have an old car that I could repair mostly by myself and that also had a sort of 'cult' status,” he says, “and there were four [brands] I was considering: the Citroen 2CV, Austin Mini Cooper, original VW Beetle, and Trabant. Then I thought about it. I decided I will never drive a French car, the Austin Mini Cooper is too expensive and rusts easily—same as the VW Beetle—so I chose the Trabant.”

article-image

Vogel and his wife Kate recently spent nearly 1.5 years driving across Europe in their blue Trabant with a small trailer, a journey he chronicled (in German) on his blog, www.traveltrabi.com. “I saw Trabis in places where I'd never expect them,” he says, “in countries like Spain and Scotland.”

Ronny Heim, 44, got his first Trabi in 1996 in exchange for a box of beer. “Trabis weren't worth anything [after the Wall fell],” he says. “[Because] everyone wanted a 'Western car.'” That same year he served in the Bundeswehr, or unified armed forces of Germany, and brought his Trabi with him to the country's northwest. “Half the team wanted to take the Trabi for a round in the barracks,” he says, “They'd never experienced anything like it before.” Since then the Heringsdorf resident had three other Trabis—including one equipped with a VW engine “that went up to 165 km (102 miles) an hour,” says Heim.

There's also Sebastian Sonntag, 37, a Dresden native whose family left East Germany for Felsberg immediately after the Wall fell. It was there that Sonntag and his twin brother had an opportunity to tinker with their first Trabi—the same kind of car their grandmother drove. “The community center where we were staying acquired a Trabi for local youth to work on, in part because it was so inexpensive,” says Sonntag. “We painted ours yellow, orange, and green—like a rainbow.”

Today he and his brother have five Trabants between them, including a silver '89 Trabant that Sonntag has named Foxe, and which he has completely rebuilt and refinished.

article-image

Trabi fans aren't found exclusively in Europe. Professional race car team crew member, Gus Jackson, who's in his late 50s and lives just outside of Nashville, Tennessee, absolutely adores his baby-blue Trabant. “I actually got it as a joke,” he says, “it was surely cheap enough and came with a whole trunk of parts. But now I love the thing. It's zero maintenance, and its cute and quirky appearance is off the charts. People in the U.S. flock around it like they were seeing an alien or something.”

Another thing Trabi collectors can't get enough of: the strong community that’s devoted to the cars. In May 2019, the International Trabant Meeting celebrated its 25th anniversary, with hundreds of Trabi enthusiasts coming together in the German town of Anklam from countries such as Italy, Hungary, and Norway. They swapped stories, sipped beers, and participated in Trabi-related events like seeing who can toss a Trabi engine the furthest. Today there are Trabi clubs throughout Germany, greater Europe, and even in the United States. In fact, Washington D.C.'s Spy Museum hosts its own Parade of Trabants every November.

Löbel was Germany's Chemnitz Trabi Club chief officer when she met her future husband, then the chief of Erzgebirge's Trabi club, through Europe’s Trabi community. “It was love for the rest of our lives,” she says. “We even married at a Trabi meeting.”

article-image

Sonntag met his girlfriend, Manuela Pester, at a Trabi event seven years ago. “She lives in the former East Germany, so I also pick up spare Trabi parts when I visit.”

For Vogel, engine troubles led him and his wife to a new friendship. “Last year we were driving through the Netherlands on holiday when our Trabi broke down,” he says. “We slept in the car for a night, then a family arrived and asked what happened. It turns out the father worked as a mechanic on large containerships, so they towed us to their home and [we] stayed there for four days, while he helped us get a new engine and start the car running. We're still in contact.”

Heim says Trabifangemeinde, or Trabi get-togethers, in places like Zwickau, Germany, attracted upwards of 10,000 Trabi owners in the late '90s, though they have since shrunken to a small core group. “We're all about the same age and bring our kids, who look forward to seeing each other because they're become friends over the years.”

While an electric, four-door Trabant was unveiled at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show with hopes of bringing back the former GDR's most infamous vehicle, its makers never acquired the necessary funding to get it off the ground. But that's okay with the Trabi's cult-like fan-base.

“It's rare to see another Trabi on the road,” says Sonntag, “but when we do it's really something special. We're all one big family.”

Found in a Cemetery: A New Species of Beetle

0
0

It's alive!

Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, composer Leonard Bernstein, and 19th-century New York’s notorious “Boss” Tweed are a few of the notable residents of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Oh, and now Agrilus 9895—a previously undiscovered species of wood-boring beetle.

The National Forest Service (NFS) discovered the species in 2017, the Brooklyn Paper first reported, during a survey of the cemetery, a National Historic Landmark and accredited arboretum that is home to more than 7,000 trees. Agrilus beetles are well-documented around the world, says NFS forest health technician Marc F. DiGirolomo, with several hundred species identified in North America and more than 3,000 more around the world. But as DiGirolomo studied 9895 under a microscope, he saw that something wasn't quite right—it was unlike its known cousins. DNA analysis narrowed its closest relatives down to a small group of Agrilus species in Europe, but DiGirolomo says that even those are sufficiently different from 9895 in size, shape, color—and genitalia.

The key distinction, however, lies in 9895’s choice of home—European beech trees. Though the beetle’s close cousins are European, none are known to bore into European beech, and DiGirolomo says that 9895 could not have ended up in the tree by accident. Wood-boring beetles, he says, “have evolved over thousands of years to have specific relationships with different kinds of trees.” A beetle like that is far more likely to die than find a replacement tree. And while there are other Agrilus beetles who like European beech, DiGirolomo says they clearly belong to other species as well. That leaves only one option, that in the middle of Brooklyn, in 2019, scientists found a completely new species of bug.

article-image

The tree hosting the 9895 specimens—eight of them, to be exact—“was stressed out a little bit,” says DiGirolomo. Some of the outer branches were missing leaves, and other foliage appeared to be yellowing prematurely. It’s not clear whether the beetles caused this damage or simply capitalized on it, but Agrilus beetles can definitely wreak havoc on a tree when given the chance. DiGirolomo points to the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), for example, as a “tree-killer” that has caused “unprecedented damage” in Michigan. While more work remains to determine the extent of the threat posed by 9895, its discovery comes at a time of increased arboreal concern for Green-Wood: One of its trees was recently diagnosed with the oak wilt disease.

Though it’s possible, admits DiGirolomo, that 9895 is native to the region, its similarities to European species and its preference for European beech trees strongly suggest that it was carried from across the Atlantic. It’s only fitting: Also buried in Green-Wood is John D. Sloat, a 19th-century Navy commodore who was tasked with establishing a naval base safe from destructive, wood-boring shipworms. Within decades, however, the worms were gnawing their way into Sloat’s supposed sanctuary.

31 of the World's Most Alluring Lighthouses

0
0

Atlas Obscura readers share their favorite maritime beacons.

The world is home to more lighthouses than you probably ever imagined. Tall ones, short ones, new ones, old ones, shining bright or long dark, they really do have an undeniable, enduring appeal. It could be their lonely mystique, or the seaside vistas they command—or of course, their continued usefulness as maritime beacons—but whatever it is, lighthouses continue to be a source of fascination. We recently asked Atlas Obscura readers in our Community Forums to tell us about their favorite lighthouses, and the responses were nothing short of incredible.

Check out some of our favorite reader recommendations below, and if you'd like to see even more amazing lighthouses, or nominate a favorite of your own, head over to the forums and keep the conversation going!


article-image

Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse

Rockland, Maine

“My favorite true lighthouse is probably the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse.” sontaron


article-image

Koh Lanta Lighthouse

Mu Koh Lanta National Park, Thailand

“On the southern tip of the island of Koh Lanta in Thailand, there's a lighthouse in a sensational setting. On either side of it are a rocky beach and a sandy beach. With a magnificent forest surrounding all of this.” liverpoolpreetu


article-image

Fastnet Lighthouse

Fastnet Rock, Ireland

“A fave since childhood, as I saw it blinking in the nighttime. Shipping forecasts use it to reference the region. An amazing feat of granite construction from the 1890s, that was manned until 1989.” philipbee


article-image

Tillamook Rock Lighthouse

Seaside, Oregon

“I’m a big fan of ‘Terrible Tilly,’ the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse on the coast of Oregon, U.S.A.” tuckeredpup


article-image

Kjeungskjær Lighthouse

Ørland, Norway

“Three great lighthouses I have seen include the Kjeungskjær and Landegode Lighthouses in Norway. There are wonderful lighthouses all along the Norwegian coast. Also, the Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse in Nova Scotia, Canada.” kld123


article-image

Kiipsaare Lighthouse

Saaremaa, Estonia

“It is the target of an unforgettable five kilometer walk.” Gradius


article-image

Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse

Chesapeake Bay, Maryland

“After many years of sailing on Chesapeake Bay, I would have to pick the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse.” Fort_Hill


article-image

Phare de Sergipe

Sergipe, Brazil

Asta


article-image

Point Pinos Lighthouse

Pacific Grove, California

“Not one of the world’s greatest perhaps, but it's the oldest [continuously operating] lighthouse on the West Coast of the United States.” Martin


article-image

St. Augustine Lighthouse

Anastasia Island, Florida

“I lived and worked under the beam of this beacon for almost ten years. It gave a genuine sense of calm at night to see it glowing over the neighborhood, despite its reputation for being haunted by a little girl. I’ll never forget the ruckus one morning when a wacko climbed to the roof in a tiger costume to promote his anti-pedophilia children’s book. I can’t make this stuff up.” Ssshannon


article-image

Wind Point Lighthouse

Racine, Wisconsin

“The Wind Point Lighthouse, near my hometown of Racine, Wisconsin, was built in 1880 and is still operating on Lake Michigan. On July 6, I got to climb to the top for the first time in my life! That’s what happens when you move away and become a tourist in your hometown.” leahkorn


article-image

Peggy's Cove Lighthouse

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia

“I spent many hours playing on the rocks in Peggy’s Cove as a child. Now there are many tourists there during cruise ship season. A few inattentive ones still get washed off the rocks by rogue waves most years.” darbyfish50


article-image

Klein Curaçao Lighthouse

Willemstad, Curaçao

“The small island used to be a place where slaves would be held in quarantine before being brought to other islands. It is now uninhabited, and there are multiple shipwrecks littering its shores (no doubt because of the lack of functioning lighthouse).” kateelizabethbauer


article-image

Heceta Head Lighthouse

Florence, Oregon

“I am very partial to the Heceta Head Lighthouse near Florence, Oregon. They have a terrific bed and breakfast that is part of the property. You stay in the Keeper’s Cottage. They serve a fine multi-course breakfast that is well-loved and impressive… yeah, but THAT LIGHTHOUSE!” caliboy


article-image

Cape Finisterre Lighthouse

Galicia, Spain

“Finisterre, at the end of the Camino de Santiago (and the westernmost point on mainland Europe), in Galicia, Spain. Great sunsets!” dwilkinsboise


article-image

Abrolhos Lighthouse

Bahia, Brazil

“This is Abrolhos Lighthouse, in Bahia, northeastern Brazil, some 36 miles offshore, and signaling the largest coral reef bank in the South Atlantic. It was built in the late 19th century as many along the Brazilian coast, and boasts a beautiful Fresnel lens.” josepalazzo


article-image

Point Arena Light

Mendocino County, California

“For anyone who is a fan of lighthouses, a visit to the Point Arena Lighthouse in California is a bucket list item. It sticks out about two miles into the Pacific, about 150 miles north of San Francisco, and has several houses for rent. It’s great for whale watching and for general chilling out and getting away from everything. We’ve been there three times and can’t wait to go back.” predsontheglass


article-image

Cape Canaveral Light

Cape Canaveral, Florida

“Cape Canaveral Lighthouse, Florida. Erected in 1868. Once very isolated, it is now located among the missile launch pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The lighthouse is now owned and maintained by the U.S. Air Force. The light itself is maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard.” jacksonmcdonald


article-image

Reykjanes Lighthouse

Reykjanesbær, Iceland

“Reykjanes Lighthouse on the southwestern point of Iceland, arguably the easternmost lighthouse in North America, as it is sits to the north and west of the rift between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates!” thudson3055


article-image

Currituck Light

Corolla, North Carolina

“Currituck Light in North Carolina is interesting, being all brick. I always like that.” davidkk260

article-image

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

Buxton, North Carolina

“My favorite lighthouse has got to be the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Not only is it the tallest brick lighthouse, it was also moved 200 feet, 20 years ago!”meltingknight


article-image

Ardnamurchan Lighthouse

Lochaber, Scotland

“Ardnamurchan Lighthouse, on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula the most westerly point of the U.K. mainland. Very isolated by British standards. Stunningly beautiful area.” srgreen13


article-image

Chantry Island Lighthouse

Chantry Island, Ontario

“Chantry Island Lighthouse on Lake Huron! Travel up the stairs to the top of the lighthouse, turn slowly around, and look at the back half of the small island. Shock! Desolation! Black, dead trees, so many! Commodore birds in all tree branches. Creepy AF.” kimberly


article-image

Sidi Ifni Lighthouse

Sidi Ifni, Morocco

“Not the tallest, but an unusual Art Deco–style lighthouse in the former Spanish enclave of Sidi Ifni, Southern Morocco.” jethro247


article-image

Rathlin West Lighthouse

Rathlin Island, Rathlin

“Check out the Rathlin West Lighthouse, on the north coast of Ireland. Not only is it red rather than white, but it is built upside down! The light is at the bottom of the tower.”kevinlowe1502


article-image

Minot's Ledge Lighthouse

Scituate, Massachusetts

“I grew up off Minot’s Ledge upon which the lighthouse stands. It is not the original lighthouse, it’s the second one. The current lighthouse is haunted, and blinks a lovely message, ‘1-4-3,’ based on the romantic lore. The base of the lighthouse could only be built during a super low lunar tide, the only time the ledge is actually exposed.” 143chicago


article-image

Cape Byron Lighthouse

Byron Bay, Australia

AmandaLynn


article-image

Beachy Head Lighthouse

East Sussex, England

“Beachy Head Lighthouse (opened in 1902), in the English Channel.” Asta


article-image

La Corbière Lighthouse

Jersey, Channel Islands

“Corbière Lighthouse in Jersey, Channel Islands is my favorite.” helencook76


article-image

Sanibel Island Light

Sanibel, Florida

jedwardboring


article-image

Rock Island Lighthouse

Door County, Wisconsin

“Pottawatomie Lighthouse on Rock Island, Wisconsin, is my favorite. It stands on the site of the oldest lighthouse in Wisconsin (1836) and was rebuilt in 1858. It can be toured from Memorial Day to Columbus Day.” blz68

Why Are so Many Different Drinks Called Horchata?

0
0

An ancient medical elixir is the ancestor of a family of drinks.

Mexican horchata is the agua fresca that dreams are made of. While sweet and slightly creamy, it usually isn’t dairy-derived. Instead, it’s made by soaking white rice in water and cinnamon for several hours, straining, and adding sugar. Vaguely reminiscent of a delicate rice pudding, there’s nothing more refreshing than a cold cup of horchata on a hot summer day.

But long ago, horchata was more than just a refreshment. While the Mexican version of the drink first appeared in the 16th century, its roots date back to an ancient Roman medical elixir made from barley. In fact, the word horchata comes from the Latin hordeum (barley) and hordeata (drink made with barley). From its role as medicine in antiquity, the beverage took a circuitous route across Europe and across the Atlantic to Latin America. Along the way, horchata became a whole family of drinks made from various grains, nuts, and seeds.

article-image

Ancient doctors thought that barley, the oldest cultivated cereal in the Near East and Europe, possessed cooling properties. Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician who famously said, “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” recommended barley water for the healthy and sick alike. But while it was hydrating and nutrient-rich, the ancient drink was fairly tasteless. Prepared by boiling barley in water, it had to be flavored with honey and fresh herbs.

Cato the Elder, the Roman statesman, orator, and author, recommended drinking barley water on a hot day in his 2nd century BC work De Agri Cultura (On Agriculture). He also advised mothers to feed it to their fussy babies as a soothing aliment. Later, the Roman physician Galen praised barley water as “nourishing” in his De alimentorum facultatibus (On the Properties of Foodstuffs). By the 6th century, Byzantine physician Anthimus prescribed a barley and water concoction to lower his patients’ fevers.

Ancient texts and the recipes they contained spread throughout France and England during the Middle Ages. In France, an early recipe for barley water appears in 1393’s Le Ménagier de Paris (The Parisian Household Book), which offers tips on running a household, recipes, and medical advice. The instructions call to “take water and boil it” before adding barley, licorice or figs, boiling again, and straining into “goblets with a large amount of rock sugar.” In a nod to its medicinal roots, the author recommended the beverage for invalids. A variation called orgemonde (from orge mondé, or hulled barley) contained ground almonds, and in England, herbs and raisins were a common addition.

In Spain, the drink pivoted from both its medicinal and barley roots when the Moors–who ruled parts of the country from 711 to 1492–introduced the chufa, or tiger nut, from North Africa. (The chufa, a tuber, is called a nut simply because it looks like a hazelnut.) Historical Persian and Arabic documents mention the chufa as energy-giving and healthy. Medieval physicians and botanists such as Ibn Bassal cited the chufa plant in their works on medicine and agriculture. Soon, this nut-like tuber was used to make a new refreshing beverage: horchata de chufa.

article-image

A popular legend proclaims that King James I of Spain coined the word horchata, when a young peasant girl served it to him on a hot 13th-century day. After taking his first refreshing sip, Aragon exclaimed in Valencian dialect, “Aixó es or, xata!” (This is gold, pretty girl!) While only a legend, a first recipe featuring something like the contemporary beverage is from the 1324 Catalonian manuscript Llibre e Sent Soví, where it appears as llet de xufes, or chufa milk. The mixture of soaked and ground tiger nuts, sweetened with sugar and flavored with cinnamon and lemon rind became a common drink among Hispano-Arabs in Spain.

article-image

Simultaneously, as part of the diffusion of Islamic culture, horchata wended its way to West Africa. Refreshing and invigorating on a hot Nigerian day, kunnu aya is yet another version of horchata, but one of the rare versions not to bear the name as well. In the Hausa language, kunnu refers to any milky drink made from cereal, grains or nuts, and aya is the tiger nut.

But horchata couldn’t be contained to the Old World. In the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors brought rice, sugarcane, and cinnamon to Mexico, but they didn’t bring tiger nuts. A new drink, made with the rice instead, perhaps offered the conquerors a taste of home. While Mexican horchata is traditionally made with rice, cinnamon, and sugar, some variations feature dried cantaloupe seeds, coconut, and even oatmeal. In northern Mexico, there’s version still made with barley called horchata de cebada: literally “a drink made with barley of barley.”

article-image

After horchata took hold in Mexico, it begat countless descendants across Latin America. Puerto Rican and Venezuelan horchatas showcase sesame seeds. The Salvadoran incarnation is made with ground seeds of the morro, a green, hard-shelled fruit that is part of the calabash family. Horchata makers remove the morro’s lentil-shaped seeds from the fruit’s pulp and dry it in the sun, before grinding them up for horchata. In addition to cinnamon, horchata de morro is spiced with nutmeg, coriander seeds, and allspice.

Ecuador’s horchata lojana is quite different. Named after Loja, the province that popularized it, the South American staple is bright pink. No nuts or grains are used. Instead, it is an infusion of eighteen different herbs and flowers. Among them are rose, geranium, carnation, borage, and flax seeds. Escancel, or bloodleaf, and red amaranth give it vibrant color. Since many of the plants used are medicinal, the drink is consumed for its therapeutic benefits, much like its ancient ancestor.

article-image

But in England, the age-old drink of barley water was showing its age. In the 18th century, barley was dropped altogether for a drink called orgeat, which consisted of almonds instead. Sweetened with sugar, flavored with orange flower water, and served cold much like one would serve lemonade today, orgeat became a popular summertime refreshment for Regency, Georgian and early Victorian-Era ladies. By the 20th century, barley water itself was considered stuffy and old-fashioned. (In the children’s book series Mary Poppins by Australian-English writer P.L. Travers, the children stipulate that their nanny must “never smell of barley water.” ) There are some holdouts, though. Since the 1930s, Robinsons Lemon Barley Water has been the official drink at Wimbledon.

Most modern horchatas share little with their ancestors, flavor-wise, yet they are culinary and etymological cousins. Orgeat has become a sweet syrup flavored with almonds, used primarily in cocktails. And in Valencia, horchaterías still abound. Some, like Horchatería Santa Catalina, have been in business for over two centuries. While recipes vary from one horchatería to the next, none stray too far from the original 14th-century formula.

Viewing all 11432 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images