Mealtime on board the USS Olympia, 1899. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-128415)

 It's easy to take salt for granted. Cheap and plentiful, it’s not the sort of the thing you expect to find mixed with the dregs of human existence, especially when you're seasoning a nice cut of meat. But salt in earlier centuries was not the same as the salt we have today. According to one account of French bay salt in 1746, it was “always mixed with dirt and nastiness which makes up a full seventh part.”

“The filth arises from putrefied human bodies, dead fish and the carcasses of animals,” the writer continued, “and from most immense quantities of different kinds of rotten weeds together with innumerable other unwholesome mixtures brought into the salines by the tide.”

An illustration titled Saturday Night At Sea from a book of songs, published in London in 1841. (Photo: Thomas Dibdin/Public Domain)

Now imagine that mixed into a boil and poured atop chunks of freshly butchered beef. And then imagine that being one of your only sources of food for the next three months on a ship at sea. That's about as luxurious as it got for sailors in the 17th century, in a time before canning or refrigeration. Things often spoiled, and nutritional value suffered, often a direct result of how food and drink were preserved. Things that could keep became staples, such as ship biscuit, beer and wine, a balanced breakfast be damned.

But researchers want to go beyond diaries and journals to find out how ship diets worked. They want to make the food itself. On a boat.

"No one really knows if the food they were eating was really that bad, or if [diaries] were written by sailors who just really hated the food, or whose ship happened to get a bad batch of rations," Grace Tsai, a PhD student specializing in nautical archaeology at Texas A&M University, tells me over the phone.

Past studies, according to Tsai, have tried to derive nutritional information based on historical documents, rather than in the lab, with little success. Which is why, since 2014, Tsai and her team of fellow PhD students have been preparing to make salted beef, ship biscuit, beer and wine as closely as possible to how they were made in the 17th century—right down to the type of ingredients and storage containers used. Next August, those foods will go on a simulated voyage in a real ship, and be sampled every ten days for nutritional and microbial analysis over a period of three months.

A staple to a sailor's diet - a ship's biscuit, from 1875. (Photo: Wellcome Images, London/CC BY 4.0)

The hope is to paint the most accurate picture yet of shipboard food quality and sailor health at sea, said Tsai, the project's director, which is jointly funded by the university and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. But making those rations accurately will be no small feat.

There's a reason past experiments have tried, unsuccessfully, to extrapolate nutritional content from modern day foods and ingredients instead. Making historical food in the present day is hard. The team has given itself over a year to test their methods and gather supplies.

To start, Tsai consulted manuals and cookbooks dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, which detailed various methods and guidelines for obtaining and preparing ingredients, as well as documentation kept by ships and ports. Unsurprisingly, some ingredients have been easier to track down than others. Ship biscuit, for example, was essentially just a cracker—"unrefined wheat, flour, mixed with water, sometimes a little bit of salt, sometimes a little bit of yeast, then it was baked twice," Tsai explains—and so hasn't posed much of a problem. But on the other hand, finding the right type of salt for the salted beef has been difficult. Tsai says they may import it from Europe, sans the human and animal remains, of course.

The beer is a little bit easier. Christopher Dostal, the project's historical beer consultant, says historical recipes brewed today taste "surprisingly not as different as you might expect” because the ingredients and processes are in many ways the same. Nevertheless, while they know the water profile of their intended English Ale, which is specific to the location of where it was brewed, and the hops and grain that were likely used, the specific strain of yeast is impossible to know. “People don't really know what was used in the past,” Tsai says.

Portugese galleons from the 16th century. (Photo: British Library/Public Domain)

And then there's the challenge of actually making the food. The team's cattle specialist Meg Hagseth believes they've tracked down the specific breed of cattle, a Devon, which still exists today. But butchering the meat is another matter. In those days, if you cut too large, the salt couldn't penetrate deep enough into the meat, and the meat would rot from the inside out. Too small, and you exposed more of the meat to oxygen, which caused it to degrade faster (and also, increased the risk of contamination, when you're handling more meat directly).

"It needs to be pretty precise, otherwise it probably won't hold up for very long," Tsai says.

Four Naval officers raising a glass in the title page to The Royal Toastmaster, a 1791 book "to give brilliancy to Mirth and make the joys of the glass supremely enjoyable." (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-71693)

As far as storage and transport goes, the project is being modeled on an English galleon, the Warwick, that sunk off the coast of Bermuda in 1619. The ship spent three months at sea, which is how long Tsai hopes her project will run. The materials will be stored in casks of the same size and wood as the originals, based on items recovered from the ship that Grace examined last spring. The ship biscuit was stored in canvas bags.

Of course, there are only so many variables within the team's control. The containers will be stored, not on a wooden ship like the Warwick—hard to find in the best of conditions, but especially so in Texas—but a 19th century tall-ship, the Elissa, docked at a museum in Galveston. The Elissa is made from iron, and won't be exposed to the same changes in environment that it would at sea (not to mention, it's docked), which they hope will be close enough. Samples will be gathered and tests will be performed every ten days—which, in the case of the salted beef, will actually require opening the barrel, and re-sealing it each time—in addition to measurements the team can "see, feel, touch, but not taste," says Tsai.

The Elissa, in port in Galveston, Texas. (Photo: Bill Staney/CC BY ND 2.0)

But when I talk to Dostal, there's a slight difference of opinion.

"Of course we're going to drink the beer!" he tells me with a laugh. "I'm personally not going to eat any salted beef that's been ageing for a while, but beer's beer."

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2013. (Photo: Joka Madruga/CC BY 2.0)

Venezuela has been suffering a punishing drought, which has been particularly harmful because hydroelectric power is a main source of energy in the country. 

As with droughts occurring elsewhere in the world, the suspected culprit is El Niño, the weather pattern that causes irregular warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean.

El Niño's effects are not expected to significantly let up until September at the earliest, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the meantime, some countries are having to resort to emergency measures.  

For Venezuela, those measures have included more holidays. (When workers stay home, the reasoning goes, they use less hydroelectric power.) The country was officially on holiday for a whole week following Easter, and, on Wednesday, President Nicolás Maduro said that workers would be taking off quite a bit more: every Friday until the end of May. 

In Caracas, Bloomberg reports, the extended post-Easter holidays saved centimeters—of water, that is. The non-work week conserved 22 centimeters (8.7 inches) of water at the Guri Dam, supplier of 40 percent of the country's energy. The water depth is currently at 243 meters (797 feet). If it were to dip below 240 meters (787 feet), the dam would need to be shut down to avoid damage.

That shutdown would have the effect of deeper electricity rationing, sending the country further into crisis. 

“I call on families, on the youth, to join this plan with discipline, with conscience and extreme collaboration to confront this extreme situation,” Maduro said. 

Details of the work-free Fridays plan are due to be released later today.

Sweden's official Twitter handle, @Sweden, has, every week since 2012, been operated not by a social media intern, or a government press officer, but by a random Swede. After some early controversy, Sweden stuck with the practice; this week tweets are being written by a registered nurse. 

Recently, the Swedish Tourism Association announced a similar, if slightly more inspired gimmick. A phone number, for anyone in the world to reach a "random Swede," to talk about anything. The number, if you dare, is +46 771 793 336. (International calling rates apply.)

And you really can talk about anything, according to Mashable, with a news release suggesting topics as varied as meatballs and suicide rates. 

"In troubled times, many countries try to limit communication between people, but we want to do just the opposite," Magnus Ling, general secretary and CEO of the Swedish Tourist Association, said in a statement. "We are making Sweden the first country in the world with its own phone number and giving our fellow Swedes the opportunity to answer the calls, express themselves and share their views, whatever they might be."

If you're Swedish and want to be one of the answerers, an online sign-up is available. For the rest of us, if you're truly desirous of chatting with a random Swede, maybe wait a few days. When Adweek called, the person on the end of the line was an Associated Press reporter working on a story about the number. 

(Photo: National Human Genome Research Institute/Public Domain)

A version of this story was originally published in the journal Limn.

The first “clearing house” for human genetic diversity data was established in 1951 in a small building at the back of the Royal Anthropological Institute in Bedford Square, London. There, at the Nuffield Blood Group Centre, a librarian, clerk, and statistician collated and ordered a vast paper archive of blood-group data, overseen by Arthur Mourant, a hematologist affiliated with the World Health Organization. At the time, blood groups were one of the very few human traits with clear genetic inheritance, and blood-group data was being abundantly produced in the context of blood transfusion.

The humble setting of Mourant’s clearing house belied its lofty ambitions. Announcing the new Centre, the U.S. magazine Science News-Letter claimed that blood-group data would offer nothing less than a new way of understanding human history and diversity, revealing "the genetic relationships of different groups of people" and making visible the "past nomadic wanderings and migrations of early human tribes over the face of the earth."  

Mourant’s archival ambitions were made possible by his practices as head of the Blood Group Reference Laboratory a few miles down the road in the London borough of Chelsea. Blood groups are inferred by testing blood samples against antibodies (antisera) extracted from the blood of human donors; Mourant’s Reference Laboratory made and distributed standardized antisera to hospitals and transfusion centers around the world. Established in 1946 as part of Britain’s peacetime blood transfusion service, Mourant’s lab was designated the central blood-grouping laboratory of the WHO, which Mourant perceived to be a golden opportunity for the large-scale collation of blood-group data. 

(Photo: Limn)

The brutality of the First World War had made people into resources for procuring blood, but the Second World War produced the conditions for the large-scale, centralized management of donors, which in turn became a plentiful resource for geneticists. Barely two months after recruitment to Britain's Emergency Blood Transfusion Service began, the Times announced that the service had registered its first 100,000 donors. 

In the years following the end of the war, Britain’s Ministry of Health attempted to standardize—right down to the level of typography—the management of blood and people. As transfusion was scaled up, more and more blood groups were discovered, and the specificity of blood became a new focus of bureaucratic concern. With so many people on its registry the new, peacetime National Blood Transfusion Service had reliable supplies of the common blood types, and it became increasingly focused on donors with unusual blood. While the “search for rare blood” became a dramatic narrative theme in films, plays, and newspaper reports, Mourant—by then one of the principal authorities within the transfusion service—oversaw the production of a new bureaucratic technology: a nationwide “rare blood panel” comprising a list of 2,000 donors with the rarest blood types. If a hospital anywhere in the country needed rare blood for a patient, it would telephone Mourant’s laboratory in London and consult the nationwide panel for a match. Only with large numbers of registered donors in a standard nationwide service was the specificity of rare blood made visible.

(Photo: Limn)

The specificity of blood types became sharper as the donor registry became larger. Whereas in the 1920s a person could be A, B, AB or O, by 1950 a patient could be identified by six separate blood-group systems, of which perhaps only the Rhesus system has joined ABO in the popular understanding of blood. Mourant used this increased specificity in his anthropological archive: the greater the quantity of data he could accrue, the more detailed his geographic maps of human genetic diversity. 

Around the same time, UNESCO endorsed the value of blood-group–based population genetics to an international public in a high-profile campaign to undermine racial prejudices. Blood-group gene frequencies – the argument went – affirmed the existence of biological differences between human populations, but also flattened and neutralized racial hierarchies: for UNESCO they were the perfect mediators of racial difference. Moreover, the kind of endeavor carried out by Mourant – to map blood-group frequency diversity and thereby produce a picture of human history – was highlighted as proof of the virtues of taking a population-genetic approach to race.  

An Eldon card. (Photo: Limn)

Later that decade, the process behind blood collection also began to change. In the mid 1950s, Danish physician Knud Eldon invented a technology that combined blood with paper. Blood grouping using ‘Eldon Cards’ involved applying blood samples directly onto a card impregnated with antibodies. More widely enduring was the "Guthrie" card, invented in the early 1960s by US clinical microbiologist Robert Guthrie for testing newborns for the genetic condition phenylketonuria. Today, Guthrie Cards are still routinely used to collect the blood of newborns for an array of protein and genetic tests. 

The 1960s saw even more technological change. First, blood was refracting into an array of new protein polymorphisms: techniques such as gel-electrophoresis (separating proteins using an electrical charge) revealed hemoglobin and enzyme variants that were, like blood groups, genetically inherited. And human chromosome preparations—also made from extracted blood—gradually became a compelling new area of research. Second, novel technologies of cold storage had made possible a new material form: the freezing of blood samples. Whereas in the 1940s blood-grouping tests had been possible only on freshly extracted blood, now protein polymorphisms could be resolved from freezeable samples. And not only known genetic variation: frozen serum was stable enough to be kept for genetic tests that might be discovered in the future. Now blood itself, with its apparently unlimited potential, could be archived in frozen form, prompting enterprises such as the large-scale blood collection projects of the International Biological Programme. The decades-long medical pursuit for a reliable supply of blood, in other words, was over. Now all scientists had to do was study it. 

Lemurs take lotus position to the next level.

During their morning sunbathing rituals, ring-tailed lemurs sit back, open up their arms, and hug the universe. It's almost like they've gotten high—then again, it wouldn't be the first time.

Ring-tailed lemurs, native to Madagascar, know how to live that island life, even in zoos far from home.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

A recreation of a duel's aftermath, by photographer Katharine Sheward Stanbery and circa 1900. (Image: Katharine Sheward Stanbery/Library of Congress LC-USZC2-5986)

Those who take up political office in Kentucky are often caught off guard by one of the job's very first requirements. Tucked into the state's oath of office, among the standard promises to serve one's community and faithfully uphold one's duties, is this unusual provision:

"I, being a citizen of this State, have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State nor out of it, nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person thus offending, so help me God."

This strange promise, the product of an decades-long quest to stop the citizenry from dueling, is a reminder of a hard-won legal lesson. In order to convince their constituents to stop shooting each other over every breach in etiquette, 19th century Southern lawmakers had to find a way to overreach their legal authority: They had to turn dueling into social suicide.

Today, taking up pistols over a small slight seems like a patently antisocial reaction. But in times past, as historian Jack K. Williams details in his 1980 exegesis of the practice, Dueling in the Old South, the people most likely to trade gunshots were those who wanted to elevate their status. Accepting a challenge from a social superior was a way to potentially climb up to his level. This speculative social benefit was why it was so difficult to get people to stop.

An cartoon illustration of a late 18th century British duel. (Image: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ds-07973 DLC)

The link between violence and honor has a long history: in one form or another, high-class dueling shows up in the Viking sagas, carved onto the pottery of Ancient Rome, and in at least one Egyptian epic. As cultures and weaponry changed over the centuries, duel customs constantly shifted to keep up. These rules remained largely unwritten until 1777, when a group of Irish gentlemen, tired of people playing loosey-goosey with pistols, put together a set of guidelines they called the "Code Duello." Its 25 rules, which instructed participants in a complex choreography of apologies, blows, and gunshots, set the tone for future fights in Europe.

They also introduced yet more formality to the proceedings, upping its prestigious reputation. Early New World settlers had made do without the Code Duello—Massachusetts colonists fought the first recorded American duel in 1621, just a year after the Mayflower landed. But in the late 1700s, as new generations of Europeans headed to America, they brought the rules with them, and turned the newly codified practice into a bonafide fad. As Williams writes, "duels between gentlemen were recorded in New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and elsewhere."

Because it could so easily morph into socially acceptable murder, many states passed anti-dueling legislation early on. This alone failed to stop many dedicated duelers—Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton held their famed bout in New Jersey to sidestep New York laws. But as duels grew bloodier and more common, and an American national identity began to take shape, the practice gained a fair share of prominent detractors. "How can such miserable Sinners as we are entertain so much Pride, as to conceit that every Offence against our imagined Honour merits Death?" Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1784.

Fencers dueling near Paris in 1874. The French were instrumental in popularizing duels in America. (Image: G. Durand/Public Domain)

Even George Washington spoke out against it, pointing out that under dueling's logic, progress was impossible, as essentially any decision could result in deadly blows. As these leaders' instincts were borne out by the needless deaths of important figures, Northern dueling eventually declined, and then disappeared. (Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, it was tooritzy to ever catch on—Williams describes how Western frontiersmen preferred knife fighting, "sometimes while tied to each other, arm to arm.")

There was one place dueling wouldn't give up its hold, though. Even after it had all but disappeared from the rest of the country, dueling remained "epidemic" in the South, writes Williams. Southern newspapers of the time are rife with matter-of-fact duel announcements, with headings like "Unhappy Transaction" or "Dastardly Assassination," depending on the writer's view of the outcome. One South Carolina editor covered a trio of duels in Camden in one week in 1817, and a visitor to New Orleans reported that in 1834, the city saw "more duels then there are days in the year."

Duel-hating Southerners did their darnedest to stem the tide. As the 19th century progressed, more and more states banned dueling, and politicians, newspaper editors and religious leaders used their platforms to speak out against it (one minister, Mason Locke Weems, even wrote a tract called God's Revenge Against Duelling). Concerned citizens formed full-on anti-dueling associations, pledging non-participation and attempting to forestall what they called "fashionable murders" by writing diplomatic letters to the parties involved.

Yet still, the sentiment against the practice refused to take hold in the South, Williams writes: "Public opinion generally refused to regard duelists as criminals." According to an account by British visitor Harriet Martineau, New Orleans's anti-dueling society apparently folded after a group of disagreeing members couldn't keep their pistols holstered during a meeting.

The idea of not showing up for a duel remained metaphorically embarrassing through the 1880s. (Image: Boston Public Library/CC BY 2.0)

Flummoxed, lawmakers tried a new tack. Rather than simply outlaw the practice, they appealed to certain gentlemen's ladder-climbing natures by making it illegal for anyone caught dueling to hold public office. From then on, if a rivalrous chap had his eye on City Hall, he knew he had to keep his pistol under wraps. 

As Lawrence Lessig writes in his 1995 work "The Regulation of Meaning," this may have changed the conversation. Before these ordinances, refusing a challenge was a double-bind—if you said you didn't want to duel, you were a coward; if you pointed out that it was against the law, and you didn't want to go to jail, you were still a coward. After the ban against duelers holding public office went into effect, however, it was possible to read things differently: you could bow out by asserting that your obligation to serve the state outweighed your own honor, and this would be an honorable exit.

According to both Lessig and Williams, these rules were also ignored for a while—judges kept pushing their effective dates forward in order to avoid disappointing their friends, or infringing upon what they saw as an individual's right to defend his honor. It took the Civil War, with its major overhaul of class considerations, to convince people in positions of power to actually uphold duel-related statutes.

The last arrest-free duel attempt in the historical record belongs to two young lawyers from Savannah, who met up to fight in 1877 and, after hemming and hawing over the dusk and their mutual nearsightedness, decided not to go ahead with it after all. "The unwritten law gave way to the written," Williams writes, "and the code of honor died a less than honorable death."

Like any good fighter, though, the duel has left a lasting mark. Attempts to remove the dueling ban from Kentucky's oath of office have thus far proven unsuccessful. Some of those who have taken the oath find it embarrassing, saying "it perpetuates that image of Kentucky as being backward." But there are ways in which it actually throws the state's progress into relief: No one has come to blows over it.

 Vermilion Cliffs, Justin Beaulieu. (All Images: Courtesy Chronicle Books/ Creative Action Network) 

America's national parks have been enthralling visitors for over a century. The very first park to be established was Yellowstone, which was described by Ferdinand Hayden in his 1871 survey as a "land of wondrous beauty." There are now 58 national parks around the U.S., covering an astonishingly diverse 84 million acres of land. It's not hard to understand why some ambitious tourists make the effort to visit every single one of them.

This year, as the National Parks Service celebrates its centenary, the dramatic landscapes also inspired a striking series of posters. Taking inspiration from the iconic "See America" posters created under the Work Projects Administration (WPA) of the 1930s, artists from around the world have participated in a new visual celebration of America’s parks and monuments. The crowd-sourced initiative led to the creation of over 1,000 posters.

A selection of this work has now been brought together in the new book, See America: A Celebration of Our National Parks and Treasured Sites. Behold some of the most beautiful posters, below. 

One of the WPA posters, created by Alexander Dux in the late 1930s. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZC4-4243)

Statue of Liberty, Shane Henderson.

Congaree Park, Vikram Nongmaithem.

Gettysburg National Park, Matt Brass

California Coastal Monument, Cabbage Creative

Muir Woods, Shayna Roosevelt

Channel Islands, Scott Smith

San Antonio Missions, Joshua Sierra 

The cover for See America: A Celebration of our National Parks and Treasured Sites. (Photo: Courtesy Chronicle Books)

A gathering of bollards in Los Angeles, Calif. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

How does one become a bollard photographer? For Andrew Choate it all started inadvertently, when he was living in California's Canyon County—“an abysmal suburb where everything had been built within the past 20 years,” he says.

On bike rides that would take him on path behind a bunch of strip malls, Choate would photograph the backs of buildings, and eventually he started noticing that the strongest compositional elements in those shots were the bollards. Soon, he started taking photos of bollards on purpose, and that was the first step towards a bollard obsession.

A Vienna, Austria, bollard. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

What is a bollard? Originally, it was a metal post that was used to moor a ship. In the 20th century, a bollard became a post meant to obstruct cars and other traffic—to separate cars from people, cars from buildings, cars from...anywhere cars shouldn’t be. Become a bollard spotter, and you will see them everywhere.

“They’re so easy to not pay attention to,” says Choate, who posts his bollard photos as @SaintBollard on Instagram. “Once you pay attention, the variety and creativity involved in them is so intense.”

Bollards serving their original purpose in Akaroa, New Zealand. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

Anecdotally, English speakers from Commonwealth countries are more likely to be familiar with the term “bollard” than American English speakers, but regardless, bollards appear across the world, usually in cities, which often have particular bollard styles.

Berlin bollards, Choate has found, are different from Paris bollards. In New York, bollards are most often found flanking fire hydrants. Wellington, New Zealand, has bollards with their tops curled into the spiral shape of koru plants. For decades, Amsterdam used bollards to distinguish people spaces from car spaces on streets without elevated sidewalks; those bollards have their own special name, Amsterdammertje. In Mexico City, Choate found bollards shaped like little pyramids.

Koru-shaped bollards in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

Bollards can occur in isolation, or in groups. Sometimes, Choate finds bollards in places where there’s no obvious reason for a bollard to be there—on a hike down a volcano, for instance. Due to security concerns, bollards have become more common in American cities in the past decade or so: after 9/11, federal buildings were more likely to have bollards protecting them. Choate is in touch with urban planning types "who go to Washington and discuss bollards,” he says.  

Bollards in Durham, N.C. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard) 

Not all bollards are permanently embedded in the ground. Some can be detached, to allow cars to pass through, on special occasions. Some newfangled bollards can sink into the ground. On a recent trip to New Zealand, Choate got video of an electric bollard rising back up into the sunlight. He had never thought he might get live video of a bollard moving up and down, and his mom, who he was traveling with, declared the entire trip worth it. “She was joking and serious,” says Choate. Bollards will do that to you.

Join @SaintBollard to hunt bollards in the wilds of Los Angeles onObscura Day, a worldwide day of exploration on April 16.

 Bollards in L.A. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

More L.A. bollards! (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

Los Angeles has many different styles of bollards. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard) 

Bollards in Mexico City. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard) 

Minneapolis, Minn., has some squat bollards. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

Bollard doing double duty in Oamaru, New Zealand. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

A bollard in Timaru, New Zealand. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

Bollards in Vienna, Austria. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

A Wels, Austria, bollard. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

An outdoorsy bollard in Aoraki, New Zealand. (Photo: Andrew Choate/Saint Bollard)

The Pegasus sculpture. (Photo: Ines Hegedus-Garcia/CC BY 2.0)

It would be hard to mistake Gulfstream Racetrack’s Pegasus Park for your standard-issue giant animal roadside attraction, like the Jersey Shore’s Lucy the Elephant or Atlanta's Big Chicken.

First, the 110- foot, $30 million Pegasus sculpture isn’t really by the side of any road. It is located on the grounds of a thoroughbred racetrack in Hallandale Beach, Florida. The Pegasus is part of a retail and entertainment complex adjacent to the track and casino; it shares a parking lot with The Container Store and Pottery Barn. 

Second, it’s not really a Pegasus so much as a fire-breathing dragon.

A postcard for the Gulfstream Park Race Course, c. 1930s. (Photo: Boston Public Library/CC BY 2.0)

The Pegasus is the brainchild of Frank Stronach of Canada’s The Stronach Group. A native of Austria, Stronach moved to Canada where he made his fortune in auto parts. As of February 2016, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $1.4 billion. The 83-year-old has made major headlines across the globe for his outsized projects: After Hurricane Katrina, he financed a modular home community in Simmesport, Louisiana, for displaced families from New Orleans that became known as Canadaville. In 2013, he founded a political party in Austria called “Team Stronach.”

These days he focuses on his passion for horse racing. The Stronach group owns racetracks and equine facilities around the world, including Hallandale Beach’s Gulfstream. Stronach’s vision behind the Pegasus, per the website, is to “celebrate the contributions that horses have made to human civilization.” 

Gulfstream calls its Pegasus and Dragon the “iconic centerpiece” of Pegasus Park and “the world’s largest horse sculpture and one of the largest bronze statues ever made.” The dragon breathes real balls of fire into the air as fountains shoot water into the air around the sculpture. The soundtrack for the whole show is reportedly Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” but that show hasn’t officially debuted—it’s slated for spring of 2016. 

While nothing can realistically compete with the Disney/Universal entertainment industrial complex in Central Florida, the Pegasus represents some of the best and worst that Florida has to offer. With its enormous size and its enormous cost, the Pegasus has the flash and extravagance that South Florida is known for around the world. Sure, there’s a dignified statue of Cigar—Horse of the Year in 1995 and 1996—on the grounds of the track itself, but with the Pegasus, Stronach has taken the idea of equine speed, grace, and dexterity to its ultimate expression. The Pegasus, in all of its Dragon-smiting glory, for good or ill, has swagger.

The Hallandale Beach Pegasus is bigger than 'Big Betsy', the giant lobster sculpture in the Florida Keys. (Photo: karlnorling/CC BY 2.0)

Jayson Hanes, a Tampa resident who was in Hallandale Beach for a conference, took the opportunity to film the Pegasus with his drone for his YouTube channel. “We could see this large horse thing from our hotel window and we wanted to get a closer look,” Hanes says. Hanes’ video gives a whole difference perspective on the whole size and scope of the Pegasus. “I was surprised by the detail in the sculpture,” he says. 

The point of a roadside attraction or a Vegas Strip spectacle has never been practicality. Stronach himself told City & Shore Magazine in 2015 that he wants Gulfstream and the Pegasus to be an international equestrian destination. And, as for the statue itself? “Call it a trademark, call it a destination. When people look at it, they will say, wow, that’s crazy.”

Gotta get that philosopher's stone. (Photo: Chemical Heritage Foundation)

Isaac Newton didn’t believe in magic, but he did believe in the philosopher’s stone, a legendary concoction that could turn lead to gold.

In Newton’s time, chemistry had not been developed, and alchemy was a perfectly respectable pursuit for a scientist. Newton was a devotee and studied the combination of strange substances as avidly as he did physics. (If you’ve read Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, none of this is news to you.)

Recently, the Chemical Heritage Foundation acquired a document that showed just how deep he got into alchemy. The document includes Newton’s handwritten copy of a recipe for sophick mercury, the key ingredient to the philosopher’s stone.

The recipe for “Preparation of Mercury for the Stone” came from George Starkey, a Harvard scientist and leading alchemist. As the Washington Post notes, Newton probably had access to this recipe before Starkey published it: he was in the inner circle of alchemists.

Newton lived from 1642 to 1727; the discovery of elements and gases like hydrogen and carbon dioxide and the theory of atoms came decades after his death. Alchemy wasn’t all bad: around the time of Newton’s death, scientists started making a distinction between chemistry—basically, the useful, scientific threads of mixing chemicals together—and alchemy, the more mystical parts.

Alchemy, naturally, got the “turning lead into gold” part of the practice: they never did figure out how to make that one work.

Bonus finds: A skull.

Every day, we highlight one newly found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to sarah.laskow@atlasobscura.com. 

Looking out on Ashfield from the inside of Will Elwell's Thoreau cabin replica. (Photo: Will Elwell)

Standing by his new hand-hewn cabin frame at its dedication last month, Massachusetts resident Will Elwell proudly accepted the honorary name “Earth Badger.” Once home, upon a quick Google search, he found that badgers are small, ferret-like animals that mostly keep to themselves; however, when provoked, they have been known to attack creatures much bigger than themselves.

“I thought—wow, that’s perfect!” says Elwell. “I just try to stick to myself, but if you’re gonna try to come and, you know, bulldoze a pipeline through my town without me having any say about it, I’m not gonna sit there and let you do that.”

Neighborhood folks help Elwell raise the beams of the cabin. (Photo: Will Elwell)

Earth Badger Elwell, a timber-frame builder who lives in Ashfield, a quiet hill town of under 2,000 residents tucked among the farms and forests of the state’s western reaches, has been provoked, and by a daunting predator: the Kinder Morgan TGP Northeast Energy Direct pipeline. In response, Elwell has built a cabin—modeled after the one in which Henry David Thoreau lived and wrote his signature book, Walden—and has placed it directly on the path of the proposed pipeline.

The 416-mile pipeline would run through much of the local county, including some of the state’s most sensitive ecosystems, on its way from shale fields in Pennsylvania through New York state all the way to Dracut, Massachusetts. While it is unclear whether there is any regional need for the project (and there is evidence that the natural gas may be exported abroad), more than anything, locals are deeply distressed by the possibility of pipelines snaking through their peaceful backyards, in some cases just 50 feet from their bedroom windows.

Like many others, Elwell began by putting up signs, both in his front yard and along the highway—but within days, the signs had mysteriously disappeared. Elwell decided he needed to find a more effective way to express his opinion. The 67 year-old had previously been planning to retire from his career as a builder, and get back to working in his garden, when he realized, “Oh my god, I think I’ve got to do this—I’ve got to build a cabin.”

Elwell kicked into gear. He drove out to the Concord town library to find the blueprints of Thoreau's original 10-by-15-foot cabin, where the writer, naturalist, and abolitionist penned his essays on nature and simplicity. He inspected its measurements, and then found timber left over from other projects, including some hand-hewn beams taken from a local 19th-century barn.

Though usually he employs a crew of five or six, Elwell spent three weeks chiseling the cabin’s bare-bone timber frame all by himself. “I wanted to do it just kind of as a meditative act,” he says. “Thinking about why I’m doing this, what I wanted to do, energizing it.”

The Thoreau cabin reconstruction at the Walden Pond State Reservation, on the original site. (Photo: Miguel Vieira/CC BY 2.0)

Though Elwell had grown up close to Concord, and often went fishing at Walden Pond, he’d never really thought much about Thoreau. But he knew that Thoreau had written about civil disobedience, intertwined with philosophy, society, government, and nature.

“Thoreau felt that if the government is not taking care of those who it governs, then there’s a right for citizens to express their opinion about that,” says Elwell. “And also if they need to create some kind of civil disobedience to change things, instead of just sitting around and accepting the status quo.” Not that Elwell wanted to end up in jail—he’d rather be in his garden—but he felt compelled to make a statement. He made a Facebook page, naming it the Thoreau Cabin Pipeline Barricade; he didn’t really know where the idea was going, but he knew the Thoreau connection was important.

Elwell was right. The cabin as a symbol of community defiance and discontent has struck a chord with many, both near and far.

A portrait of Thoreau hangs above a building permit (by virtue of which the builders will be notified of any planned demolition). There is also a cabin journal, where passersby can leave any thoughts, quotes, or comments. (Photo: Will Elwell)

The cabin was erected in the field of Larry Sheehan, Elwell’s good friend and neighbor, smack dab in the middle of the pipeline’s still-invisible path. On a chilly day at the end of March, 150 people turned up for a dedication ceremony led by woman named Delta; it was here that Delta, who is of Native American heritage, gave Elwell the name "Earth Badger." Pine boughs and cedar branches were placed on the top of the cabin’s frame, to commemorate the building and bless it with longevity, protection, and goodwill. Since then, others have come by to see the cabin, and Elwell has even pondered its potential as a center for education.

It’s currently up to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) to decide whether the pipeline serves the “common good” of the northeast. If FERC and the DPU give Kinder Morgan the go-ahead, Elwell envisions swarms of protesters descending upon the cabin, chaining themselves to its frame.

Elwell admits he’s not an expert on alternative energy, though he mentions solar, hydro, and electric as under-utilized options. In his mind, the pipeline seems to only bring liabilities—massive and noisy compressor stations, the potential for accidents and leakage, tainted water, and decreased land value. It feels like Kinder Morgan ends up with all the rewards, if there are any. “I hate to think of it as a reward,” says Elwell. “I just don’t equate rewards with any of this.”

Elwell and his wife Donna posing with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren at an event in Springfield, Massachusetts, where she came out against the pipeline. (Photo: Will Elwell)

Efforts, of course, don’t end with the cabin. Elwell and others are constantly on the lookout for other sources of leverage. Just the other day, he found a yellow-spotted salamander in his barn, and immediately thought: "Oh my god, maybe this is it, that can stop the pipeline!"

While it turns out the salamander is not an endangered species, there’s another creature that is: America’s beloved bald eagle. There have been local sightings (in 2015, researchers counted 30 eagle pairs in the state), and if one of their nests were to be found along the pipeline’s path, the game might be won.

Will Elwell standing in his wood frame cabin, in the early spring snowfall. He won't be going anywhere. (Photo: Will Elwell)

So far, between America’s soft spot for Thoreau, our devotion to bald eagles, and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s recent anti-pipeline statements, things are looking up for those opposed to the pipeline in Ashfield and its neighboring towns. Compromise seems unlikely. 

Elwell brings up a statement he made on the radio the other day. “I said you can take my signs, but you can’t take my cabin.”

Guangzhou restaurant fires its robot staff for their incompetence https://t.co/bcWc104JdIpic.twitter.com/fkXNqfhghj

— Lifeboat Foundation (@lifeboathq) April 7, 2016

After piloting early AI server programs, three Guangzhou restaurants have engaged in mass robot firings, Shanghaiist reports.

Two of the formerly robot-employing restaurants have closed down entirely, and the remaining one has fired all but one of their nonhuman staff members.

"The boss has decided never to use them again," a human waiter said of his former colleagues.

Said boss and his compatriots originally hired the droids to save money—after an up-front investment, robot workers are much less expensive than humans, because you don't actually have to pay them. (The owners had also anticipated the weird factor, which drew tons of customers.)

But even the hippest, cheapest worker isn't worth it if it can't do the job. "The robots weren't able to carry soup or other food steady," one of their ex-coworkers remarked. Another added, "They can't take orders or pour hot water for customers."

Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.

Telstra free data guy clocks up almost a terabyte of downloadshttps://t.co/MXxCvoIrl1pic.twitter.com/WGsIe0ylBq

— Canberra Times (@canberratimes) April 4, 2016

Customers of Telstra, Australian's largest telecommunications company and a provider of mobile service for millions, have had a rough couple months, after three major outages in that span.

To compensate, the company offered users a deal: free data all day on Sunday, allowing customers to download to their heart's content.

John Szaszvari, a 27-year-old from Sydney, took the deal seriously. Maybe a little too seriously. By the time he was done, Szaszvari had downloaded 994 gigabytes of data, or, as one company official put it, about how much the average mobile user might download in 40 years. 

The goal, he told the Sydney Morning Herald, wasn't revenge so much as just wanting to get the most bang for his buck. Using his LG G4 phone as a WiFi hotspot, Szaszvari then logged on to his computer and started working, one download after another, until he compiled an impressive list. 

From the Sydney Morning Herald: 

And then the downloads began: 14 seasons of MythBusters; 24 seasons of The Simpsons; the entire Wikipedia database; Microsoft software for his job; updates for his Xbox games; and "a lot of random other stuff."

He also synced all his Spotify playlists offline. About another 100GB was used to upload backups of personal files, including photos and videos, to the cloud.

Some lucky positioning helped Szaszvari on his quest: He was able to get download speeds of up to 150 megabytes per second because he lived near a 4GX tower, capable of giving him faster data service than the more common 4G standard. 

Telstra officials seemed impressed with Szaszvari's feat, adding that around 2,686 terabytes of data had been downloaded by all users Sunday, a number which well surpassed a previous free data day earlier this year. 

"I'm thinking two Simpsons episodes per evening for the next foreseeable while to remind me of when I was a child," Szaszvari told the Sydney Morning Herald. For the millions of Americans still hungering for fast connections (looking at you, Fios in New York City), he's the hero we deserve, if not the one we need right now. 

You might be thinking at this very moment that you've reached a certain age and that you've, you know, seen things. Maybe you're also thinking, perhaps a bit smugly, that you've seen everything. 

The above video is here to prove you wrong. 

Have you, for example, ever seen a dog fly a small plane in the shape of a figure eight? I'm going to gently propose that you probably haven't. 

The dogs—rescue dogs, in fact—spent four months in flight simulators before taking to the skies, where video was shot to prove their piloting skills.

The dog trainer behind this wonder is from New Zealand and named Mark Vette. Vette was also responsible for a sibling endeavor you might have previously seen (or not): Dogs driving cars. 

Flying, of course, is a little more dangerous, but these dogs got it down. 

"Staying focused," as the video's narrator says mid-flight, "will be everything." 

(Photo: robmcm/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Three mariners set out early Monday in a 19-foot boat planning to skip from one Micronesian island to another. 

But they never got there, and a U.S. Navy plane Thursday found out why: they were marooned on a deserted island in the South Pacific. 

They were spotted waving their life jackets on the beach, not far from where they'd spelled "help" in palm fronds, according to NBC News.

They were rescued and taken to another Micronesian island, authorities said, though their identities weren't released. 

Tom Neale, the New Zealand castaway who ended up on a tiny Pacific atoll populated only by cats, wouldn't be impressed with this, of course. Talk to him after it's been 16 years. 

An Egyptian ship taking tourists on recreational cruises of the Red Sea. Soon, the boat may be entirely optional. (Photo: V Manninen/CC BY-2.0)

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has announced that his country will partner with Egypt to build a bridge across the Red Sea, linking the two countries and creating “a qualitative transformation that will increase trade between the [African and Asian] continents to unprecedented levels.”

A completed Red Sea bridge would indeed be unprecedented, but the idea of bridging Africa and Asia via the Red Sea is nothing new.

It’s fair to say that the idea of crossing the Red Sea on foot has fascinated humans for thousands of years. Some researchers believe that the narrowest point of the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, is the most likely site for the mass migration of early Homo sapiens from Africa that underpins the widely-accepted single-origin hypothesis of human evolution. (Around 60,000 years ago, the Red Sea was considerably shallower, making such a passage more plausible). Since at least ancient Rome, the body of water has played an important role as a sea road for trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia, so an additional way to cross the sea could have many benefits. But divine intervention is unpredictable at best, and drastically altering the Red Sea’s depth is probably unlikely.

That leaves one solution—building a bridge—and the Saudi Arabian-Egyptian partnership isn’t the first attempt.

Moses (Charlton Heston) parts the Red Sea in 1956's The Ten Commandments. Probably not a sustainable Red Sea-crossing strategy. (Video: Movieclips/Youtube)

In 2008, a group led by Tarek bin Laden—one of Osama bin Laden’s many half-brothers—attempted to bridge the Bab-el-Mandeb strait in partnership with the government of Djibouti, which borders the strait in Africa. The Bridge of Horns, as it was called, boasted the world's largest suspension span (5km), although it was 7km short of being the world’s longest bridge, according to Abu Dhabi’s The National. The project faced heavy criticism, first for its hefty price tag, of which there were wildly varying estimates. The National listed it at $25 million, but an earlier BBC report pegged it at $70 million, and The Economist claimed the entire project, including the two new cities planned at each end, would cost over $200 billion.

Aside from cost, a few other small concerns came up, such as the bridge’s location (the proposed site happened to be in the middle of an earthquake zone) and the involvement of arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin (The Economist argued would “fuel conspiracy theories among Arabs").Phase I of the ambitious project was delayed in 2011, and that was apparently it for the Bridge of Horns, although the project’s flashy promotional video will live on forever via YouTube.

Al Noor City Corp's promotional video for The Bridge of Horns project (Video: Asantalos1/Youtube)

The details that sidelined the Bridge of Horns—location, cost, timeline, name—haven’t yet been revealed for the new Red Sea Bridge project. There’s already some speculation that these may well be problems. Tthe BBC suggests that, based on previous similar proposals, the cost could be around $3 to $4 billion, and Al Jazeera notes that the narrowest point of the Red Sea between the two countries (probably the easiest place to put a bridge) is at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, where the countries are just 16 km apart. If this bridge is actually built, it may be considered a miracle.

A regular-sized Bowie knife. (Photo: Mika Järvinen/CC BY-2.0)

Everything is bigger in Texas,” the saying goes, and the saying is definitely now true for Bowie knives, as Bowie, Texas unveils what may be the largest knife in the world, at 3,000 pounds and 20 feet long, with a 14-foot, 5-inch stainless steel blade.

The name Bowie—both the town and the knife—comes from James “Jim” Bowie, who is best known for his role in the Texas Revolution and the Battle at the Alamo. Bowie first began carrying a large knife in 1827 after he was shot at by Norris Wright, a local sheriff and banker who developed a mutual enmity with Bowie after refusing him a loan. The knife—allegedly made by Bowie’s brother Rezin—earned its moniker when Bowie used it in the Sandbar Fight, an 1827 Mississippi post-duel brawl that was so notoriously vicious the New York Times recounted it in detail for an 1895 article about the family. The Times describes the original knife vividly:

The blade was nine inches long, and it and the handle together measured fifteen inches. When James Bowie received his knife from his brother he was told by him that it was “strong and of admirable temper. It is more trustworthy in the hands of a strong man than a pistol, for it will not snap.”

Presumably, the town of Bowie was named in honor of its namesake’s connection to Texas history rather than his fighting skills, and the town celebrates Jim Bowie Days every June.

The giant knife has been in the works for nearly three years, after the Bowie Chamber of Commerce took up the project in memory of Bob Hadley, a local resident who first suggested the monument before passing away unexpectedly in 2013. In addition to fulfilling Hadley's dream, the Chamber of Commerce is optimistic the attraction will also increase tourism in the area. Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Diane Thomlinson told KFDX. "For Bowie, we are hoping to get people off of the highway—off of 287—and into town. We want them to spend their money of course, but we want them to see there is so much to do and see in Bowie.”

The project’s $170,000 cost was funded entirely by private donations—including an anonymous contribution of $100,000, presumably from someone who really admires the town, Jim Bowie, knives, or some combination of the three. In June, the monument will be formally dedicated during the 2016 Jim Bowie Days festival, and town officials hope to have representatives from Guinness World Records on-hand to certify the knife is the largest in existence.

The largest Bowie knife in Texas also happens the only Bowie knife in Texas. Or the only legal one. Bowie knives, along with other large blades, are considered illegal knives under Texas law and are unlawful to carry in the state. A recent effort to remove Bowie knives from the definition of illegal knives was left pending in the state legislature last year. So for the time being, Texas’ Bowie knife enthusiasts will have to be content in the knowledge that the state’s only legal Bowie knife upholds the state’s unofficial slogan.

Hitler's birthplace: Salzburger Vorstadt 15 in Braunau am Inn, Austria. (Photo: Thomas Ledl/CC BY-SA-4.0)

It's a modest building, on a quiet street. It is also the house where Adolf Hitler was born. What to do with such a place?

For years, the Austrian government dedicated to uses purposefully at odds with the notorious dictator’s agenda of hate but, still, the stain could not be erased. Yesterday, the government of Austria announced that is taking major steps to ensure the house cannot continue as a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.

“We are currently examining the creation of a law, which would force a change of ownership and pass the property to the Republic of Austria,” interior ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundböck explained to Agence France-Presse. The government turned to expropriation in a last-ditch attempt to resolve a five-year dispute with the building’s owner, during which the house has sat empty in downtown Braunau am Inn. 

The house at Salzburger Vorstadt 15 operated as a pub and boarding house when Hitler was born in 1889. In 1912, the building was purchased by the family that owns the house today; the building was briefly owned by Hitler’s private secretary Martin Bormann, who Spiegel Online claims hoped to turn the building into a monument “on par with the birthplaces of Stalin and Mussolini” when he purchased it in 1938. Bormann’s plan never materialized (although his initials remain in the iron grillwork above the front door), and the building was seized during the Allied liberation of Austria, with ownership restored to the previous owners in 1952.

In 1972, to avoid the house becoming a pilgrimage site, the Austrian government began leasing the building from Gerlinde Pommer—a descendent of the 1912 buyers—with the lease stipulating that the building could only be used for “educational, social, or bureaucratic purposes,” according to a 2015 article in the New York Times. Beginning in 1976, the building housed a facility for disabled adults, Lebenshilfe Oberösterreich, which moved out of the building in 2011. The tenants were forced to relocate after Pommer refused to authorize renovations for accessibility. Since then, several new uses of the building have been proposed, each time igniting a fury of debate within the town.

In 2012, a small controversy erupted when mayor Johannes Waidbacher hinted in an interview with Austrian’s Der Standard that he supported converting the building into residential units. The New York Daily News canvassed locals regarding the idea, and the response was entirely unenthusiastic. As Erika Doedl put it, “[Living in the house] wouldn't be pleasant for the tenants—once they moved in they would be asked about this all the time.”

As reported by Spiegel Online, Mayor Waidbacher also expressed disdain towards using the house as some form of Holocaust memorial or museum, “One should also ask the question in general as to whether a further Holocaust memorial makes sense when there are already so many in the area.” Unsurprisingly, this comment triggered backlash from local politicians and residents, and Waidbacher later walked back the statement, saying he was open to “all possible uses” of the building.

Russian MP Frantz Klintsevich apparently took Waidbacher’s openness to heart, floating a proposal to purchase and destroy the house“demonstratively” a few months later, according to a report in the International Business Times. The plan didn’t go far: the house is located in Braunau’s historic downtown district, and is therefore marked for preservation.

After the apartment plan was scuttled, a group of local historians led by Andreas Maislinger proposed converting the building into a "House of Responsibility" museum and remembrance project, in the hopes that making the house a “clear and just symbol against Nazism” would eliminate its appeal to current-day admirers of the fascist leader. Simultaneously, political leaders and others floated the idea of turning the building over to a local aid organization to provide language classes and adult education for immigrants and refugees. Unfortunately, every suggested purpose has been halted by Pommer’s refusal to allow any renovations, as historian Florian Kotanko explained to the BBC:

“She does not accept any proposal of using the house for offices or other purposes. She does not allow any changing of the house, so you can't rebuild any rooms, you can't build modern bathrooms or put in a lift. It is difficult.”

A memorial carved from stone quarried at Auschwitz has been placed on the public street in front of the home. (Photo: Anton-kurt/CC BY-SA-3.0)

By early 2015, the Austrian government was officially fed up. In January, Mr. Grundböck told the New York Timesthat the interior ministry had made an offer to purchase the house outright from Pommer, indicating that the government would investigate options for dispossessing Pommer if she refused. Yesterday’s announcement shows that the government is ready to make good on their threat, although they promise to compensate Pommer fairly in the event that the house is expropriated.

Ironically, the struggle to address the house’s place in history began with an attempt to destroy it. According to the New York Times, in the days after Braunau am Inn surrendered to Allied forces in May 1945, a group of German soldiers attempted to raze the home where Hitler was born rather than allow it to be seized. American soldiers prevented the destruction, ensuring the house would remain a point of contention for the town in decades to come.

Two men wave life jackets and look on as a U.S. Navy P-8A maritime surveillance aircraft discovers them on the uninhabited island of Fanadik. (Photo: U.S. Navy/Public Domain)

If you think the proliferation of smartphones, high-speed internet, and satellite imaging means it’s impossible to be stranded on an uninhabited island in 2016, we have bad news. Just this week, three men were rescued from the small island of Fandika, north of Papua New Guinea, after their skiff capsized a few hours into their trip, forcing them to swim to the island’s shore.

Obtaining rescue required more primitive technology than a ride-hailing app—the three men used palm fronds to create a giant “HELP” sign on the beach, standing by the sign and waving their orange lifejackets to help attract attention.

Luckily, the makeshift signal was spotted by a Navy plane searching the area after the men were reported missing Tuesday morning. Miraculously, the plane had only begun the search two hours earlier, according to a U.S. Coast Guard news release. Lieutenant William White attributed the rapid rescue to "many different resources" of "combined efforts". 

These collaborative search-and-rescue efforts are facilitated by AMVER, a worldwide reporting system, established by the Coast Guard in 1958, that allows rescue coordinators to enlist participating commercial vessels’ assistance in rescue operations. Over the past two weeks alone, the Coast Guard 14th District—responsible for the region of the Pacific where the men were stranded—has saved 15 people in coordinated rescue efforts with the help of AMVER vessels.

This is particularly impressive when you consider that the 14th District covers an area almost twice the size of Russia—12.2 million miles of land and sea.

The Coast Guard isn’t taking all the credit, however. In an official Facebook post, the Coast Guard explained that the “[i]ngenuity of these men to build their sign and the preparedness of having lifejackets also contributed to their safe rescue.” After the men were spotted by the Navy plane, their families were notified of their safety and a ship was dispatched to pick up the men and transport them back to their departure point, the island of Pulap.

The lesson here is clear: always wear a lifejacket, and keep basic sign-making techniques in mind the next time you head out to sea.

This stunning map of the skies is the work of Frederik de Wit, a Dutch cartographer from the 17th century. (Photo: Frederik de Wit/Public Domain)

For time immemorial, humans have turned their gaze upward to the heavens in an attempt to make sense of the stars. Since the 14th century our way of mapping the patterns we see in the night sky has been to create constellations–88 of them, in fact, named after mythological figures or the shapes they seem to take. These constellations often ended up on star charts, which were not just objects of great beauty, but navigational and study tools, too.

The above star chart is from 17th-century Amsterdam, and was created by artist and cartographer Frederik de Wit in the year 1670. As you can see, the celestial map shows solar orbits and the lunar phases in addition to mapping and stunningly illustrating the constellations visible from earth. 

The careful attention to detail given to the main star chart carries onto the borders of the map, which feature cross-hatched blue clouds and lettered pink scrolls. It is in the main star chart, however, that the details become a little more bizarre. Notice the upside-down puppy dog in the middle of the skies, the large horse with rainbow wings, and the strange creature in the upper right that appears to be half mammal, half fish.

The mythological stallion is usually depicted as entirely white, but de Wit's map portrays him with rainbow-colored wings.

This beautifully-rendered horse with rainbow wings in the upper left of the map is actually the mythical creature known as Pegasus. He is said to have created the fabled Hippocrene, a fountain on Mt. Olympus, by digging his hooves into the ground. The constellation named for the winged stallion was one of the 48 listed by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD, and is one of the 88 we recognize today.

The imagery around this constellation originated the phrase, "Dog Days of summer."

This upside-down canine depicts Sirius, the brightest star in the Earth's night sky. It appears so bright because of its intrinsic luminosity, but also its relative closeness to our planet. Observations of Sirius date back to the earliest astronomical records in ancient Egypt, where it was known under the name Sopdet. The ancient Greeks noticed that the appearance of Sirius in the sky marked the beginning of summer, and the constellation is where we get the phrase, "dog days of summer." Sirius is said to be chasing the nearby constellation Lepus, the hare. 

The tale behind this monstrous oceanic figure is almost as gruesome as he.

In between Pisces and Aries stretches the figure of an enormous sea monster. Known as Cetus, this mammal-fish hybrid  derives from Greek mythology. As the tale goes, the goddess Cassiopeia incurred the wrath of Poseidon, god of the seas, when she proclaimed that her daughter Andromeda was more beautiful than the sea nymphs known as the Nereids. A furious Poseidon sent the sea monster Cetus to attack, and to satisfy the beast Andromeda was tied to a rock on the sea. Perseus learned of this, and arrived in time to save Andromeda and slay the beast.

Map Monday highlights interesting and unusual cartographic pursuits from around the world and through time. Read more Map Monday posts.