It’s a beautifully clear day in the tropics. The water is warm and still; there’s no wind, no clouds to block the bright sunshine. It looks like a perfect day in paradise–until you stick your head underwater.
Where coral reefs once flashed magenta and tangerine, mustard and scarlet, there are instead fields of bone white.
Thanks to the warm waters of El Niño, coral reefs are in the midst of the third-ever-recorded global coral bleaching event. Corals are losing much more to El Niño than their color– in fact, bleaching has scientists worried about the future of these tiny castle-building animals on our warming planet.
“We live in world with a shifting baseline of a warmer and more acidic ocean, making it harder for corals to live,” says Andrea Grotolli, an Ohio State University researcher investigating coral resilience. Fifty years ago, she says, bleaching didn’t exist on many reefs, or was a rarity. "Now, bleaching is common, its ubiquitous, it happens regularly, and it's devastating.”
KAHULUI POINT- HAWAII
Though reef-building corals form structures so enormous they can be spotted from space, most depend on something very tiny: billions of cells of plant-like algae, called zooxanthellae, living within the corals’ tissues.
The coral-algae relationship is an elegant tit-for-tat. The algae find shelter in the coral’s exoskeleton, and use its waste to perform photosynthesis. In exchange, the algae gives the coral oxygen and energy-rich sugars, plus a built-in waste management system. The algae also paint their coral hosts with their famous colors–the riotous colors of a reef are actually a symbol of one of the world’s oldest alliances.
But what happens when these allies split?
When a coral is stressed, it can take drastic measures and expel its photosynthetic roommates. This removes the need to share nutrients, but also takes away the coral’s main food source; according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), up to 90 percent of the sugars that algae produce are donated to the coral. If the algae don’t return within a few weeks, the coral will die.
And when corals die, they can take an entire section of the ecosystem with them, like a line of dominoes sent tumbling.
GREAT BARRIER REEF - AUSTRALIA
“Coral are the building blocks of reefs,” explains Grottoli. “They provide the texture and framework for worms and crabs and shrimp and small critters; they’re where fish find meeting and reproduction places, hide from storms, where larger fish feed on smaller fish."
When a reef dies, algae, ironically, often takes over: the animals that keep coral surfaces clear may die off without the reef to support them, allowing the empty coral skeletons to become covered in a thick layer of macroalgae that only a few fish species can eat. "All this connectivity is associated with the reef’s texture," says Grottoli. "If you lose the coral, you lose all of the organisms using that texture."
Before the turn of the century, bleaching had primarily been caused by local stressors, like pollution. But in 1998, the world experienced the very first global bleaching event due to abnormally warm ocean temperatures, a sight that has become increasingly common. Most coral species can only withstand a very narrow temperature range; a change of just two degrees can be devastating. Windless, cloudless days, where warm water sits atop reefs, are the deadliest.
Corals can recover from bleaching events if they are able to recapture algae from the water. But the algae’s return is the start of an uphill battle. Corals grow slower, reproduce less, and become more vulnerable to disease for years after a bleaching event. If one bleach-causing stress follows another– such as if temperature spikes become normal, or ocean waters become more acidic as they absorb carbon dioxide– even the strongest of reefs may continually bleach to death.
AMERICAN SAMOA
“As climate change is intensifying, and there is so much use of near-shore waters, the intensity and frequency of these major disturbances is so rapid there’s no time for recovery,” says Ruth Gates, coral researcher at the University of Hawaii. “It’s a constant insult. Nobody can be hit over and over again with a big stick, and that's essentially what we're doing with climate change.”
If you don’t live anywhere near a reef, you may be asking: why should I care?
If you love fish for their beauty or their taste, know that corals support a quarter of the ocean’s fish biodiversity– many species of which end up on dinner plates. Coral fish provide food for over a billion people, 85 percent of whom can’t get their protein anywhere else.
In laboratories and hospitals, scientists are learning how to improve human health with coral compounds. A steroid corals use to fight disease is already used to treat asthma and arthritis. Scientists believe that reefs likely host a wealth of medicines that we haven’t even discovered yet.
KAHULUI POINT, HAWAII
And for island nations, survival by coral is even more personal: reefs form the first buffer against ocean waves, protecting these dots of land from eroding and vanishing into the sea.
Between fisheries, diving and snorkeling tourism, and coastal protection, coral reefs contribute close to $30 billion to the global economy every year.
And in many places, the threat of vanishing corals connects with something deeper.
“The loss could be one of perception; the reef is almost dead, so I am very sad,” says Clive Wilkinson, a researcher at Australia’s Reef and Rainforest Research Center, who has monitored reefs for over 45 years. This year, he watched as huge swaths of Australia’s famous Great Barrier Reef experienced the worst bleaching ever seen.
GREAT BARRIER REEF, AUSTRALIA
The future of coral reefs is not entirely without hope; some reefs appear better equipped to survive the temperature stresses expected from climate change. Corals benefit from large fat stores that they can draw on if they expel their algae. They can also prepare themselves for future stresses if they can take up a more heat-tolerant algae species after bleaching occurs.
However, Grotolli cautions that many corals won’t be able to adapt this way.
AIRPORT REEF - AMERICAN SAMOA
“Most corals will suffer, and some species will suffer more than others,” she says. “And even if some corals are persisting, that doesn’t mean they’re thriving. In many scenarios, the coral still isn’t growing as fast, and so they’re less able to compete for space, or keep up with dramatic sea level rise. The number that will thrive may be very small.”
We are not looking at an ocean without coral reefs entirely, says Wilkinson. It will be an ocean with fewer fish, fewer barrier islands, and many fewer colors–but reefs, in some form, will continue to slowly soldier on.
“It is certain there will be many local extinctions of coral species, and probably some other beasts. But reefs will still be there. We will just have to call it the ‘Just Ordinary Barrier Reef’ or ‘a bit like a barrier reef’ instead.”
Everything has its price, including the electromagnetic spectrum. In India, that will soon mean an entire band of the spectrum, as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India plans to auction off the rights to the 700 MHz band, which is used for cell phone signals, in what could be the most expensive spectrum auction ever in the country. This is not the first time India has auctioned off use of specific electromagnetic bands, but it is the first time they are selling off an entire signal band in one go.
Spectrum auctions are a common occurrence worldwide, allowing countries to regulate and profit from cell phone companies using specific frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum to broadcast signals. In India alone, they have held spectrum auctions almost every year since 2010, selling off the rights to each new block of the spectrum as cell phone technology changes, requiring different frequencies.
This latest auction is controversial, however, in that it is set to license an entire bandwidth. Since January, the TRAI have priced the access to the frequency at ₹114,850,000,000, or around $1,726,000, also making it the most expensive spectrum auction in history. For the winning company, though, that price might be cheap, since while few now use the 4G LTE service the frequency is planned for, that business, TRAI argues, will eventually come. Still, in the short term, that’s one steep cell phone bill.
The auction is set to take place around May or June, and it remains to be seen whether the TRAI will budge on its price or the breadth of its license. But for the time being it looks like better coverage in India isn’t going to come cheap.
Note to self: Seb Lester's handwriting makes even the most mundane scribbles look like royal decrees.
Lester is a British calligrapher who shares video snippets of his impeccable penmanship on YouTube and Instagram. Take, for example, the video above. It's a weekly shopping list in which the word "Pop Tarts" somehow conjures images of gleaming silverware and starched tablecloths.
Lester also jots down the odd note on a Post-It:
He deploys a wide range of lettering techniques, including this incredibly precise, squared-off type:
And here is his version of a quick doodle:
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.
When a music festival like Glastonbury roars into town, it generally leaves behind ringing ears, trampled fields, and millions of crushed plastic cups.
This year, organizers are hoping to mitigate some of this damage with a kind of bare-bones collectible—a reusable pint cup sourced from local steel, reports Digital Spy. Would-be revelers will buy one for £5 along with their first drink, and keep swapping it for clean ones until the last day, when they can keep, return, or donate it.
According to their website, the festival has ordered 200,000 of the cups. "It has been a major fight to get this scheme off the ground," says Lucy Smith, the festival's sustainability coordinator, citing the massive scale, weights and measures concerns, and "crushability tests." A promotional video shows the highlights of the cup-forging process, which includes a lot of melting, spinning, stacking, and buffing.
The cups were developed by a Sheffield-based company and made in Birmingham. Britain's steel industry has been suffering from job cuts and international competition, and festival director Michael Eavis hopes this move will "encourage other UK businesses to think about how they can support our steel industry during these very challenging times."
If nothing else, it's extremely metal. Cheers to that.
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.
Dinosaurs might have been dying out long before a massive asteroid struck Earth millions of years ago, killing them for good, scientists said recently.
The new theory means that the beasts' extinction likely wasn't just because of the asteroid strike, but also a gradual consequence of the Earth's long-term cooling, from a generally warm place to a climate that more closely resembles what we have now.
Dinosaurs, scientists think, were much more suited to the warmer climates, while mammals fared better in the cooler ones.
"We were not expecting this result," Manabu Sakamoto, a paleontologist who led the new research, told the BBC."Even though they were wiped out ultimately by the impact of the asteroid, they were actually already on their way out around 50 million years before the asteroid hit."
Dinosaurs were first seen over 230 million years ago, going extinct around 165 million years later. (Avian dinosaurs, incidentally, probably survived the extinction event.)
So was there ever a chance that we could have lived alongside a Tyrannosaurus rex? Probably not. But it's nice to dream.
The most important thing to know about eggs Benedict is that they have nothing to do with the famed traitor Benedict Arnold.
In fact, some give credit for the dish to Pope Benedict XIII, who ruled the Vatican from 1724 to 1730, and was put on a strict eggs and toast diet while there–dressed in a lemon-based sauce, at his request. But it wasn’t eggs Benedict, exactly, and that pope’s ultimate legacy was sartorial, not culinary: he forbade the wearing of wigs by the cardinals.
Pushing aside stories of traitors and popes, it seems the real source of eggs Benedict was New York City in the Gilded Age, an era when rich people were starting to party in public instead of private homes, in plain view of commoners who also liked staying out late and spending money in restaurants.
This was the era where brunch truly came into its own, and this classic dish was one of the things that helped define it. In general, eggs Benedict features an English muffin, split open, with each side topped with a slice of Canadian bacon, a poached egg, and hollandaise sauce. The magic is in the sauce, which is a whisked-together blend of egg yolks, butter, and lemon.
It is emphatically not a breakfast dish; the proper time to eat eggs Benedict has always been after 10 a.m. Though the tradition of a luxurious mid-morning meal probably comes from British fox hunting parties (the servants would go ahead and have a meal set up in a field for the horseback aristocrats), it hit its stride as the wealthy both moved into urban centers and became aware of the concept of the weekend.
In 1895, the British writer Guy Beringer wrote an impassioned ode in the now-defunct Hunter’s Weekly that both explained and promoted brunch. It was absolutely recommended as a hangover cure: ''Brunch is cheerful, sociable and inciting,'' wrote Beringer. ''It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.''
Across the pond, American leisure classes were also enjoying the thrills of brunch. There are two Manhattan restaurants most associated with the Gilded Age, both important to the field of culinary history even apart from the dish in question. Yet each can lay reasonable claim to being the location where eggs Benedict was invented. Let’s look at both arguments.
Some believe that eggs Benedict was cobbled together at Delmonico's, a restaurant opened in New York by a Swiss family in the 1830s. They had visions of grandeur: they told everyone that the exterior columns of their building were discovered among and imported from Pompeii’s ruins.
Two of the restaurant’s regular diners in the 1860s, a Mr. and Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, are reported to have requested the elements of eggs Benedict one morning, after which it became a popular off-menu item.
However, a more fun, and perhaps true version gives credit to Lemuel Benedict, a man from a rich family who shamed his people by marrying an opera singer (the scandal of it all!) and drinking at taverns with all manner of hoi polloi. He was also known as a very generous tipper–in other words, he was a man of the people, his elevated status notwithstanding.
The story goes that Lemuel went to the Waldorf Hotel one hungover morning in 1894 and asked for “some buttered toast, crisp bacon, two poached eggs, and a hooker of hollandaise sauce.” (A "hooker" is what we now call a "glug" or a "slug.")
You’ll notice that Lemuel’s requested combination isn’t exactly the same one we know today. “Credit” for the shift to Canadian bacon is given to Oscar Tschirky, maître d' at the Waldorf Hotel, who had previously worked at Delmonico’s. He was a bit of an American culinary pioneer, having also created the Waldorf salad and turned Thousand Island dressing, briefly, into an upscale condiment.
Now, it only makes sense that the ultimate brunch dish was invented by a hard-partying rogue with money to burn. But Lemuel’s contribution to daytime gluttony might have been forgotten, were it not for his descendent Jack Benedict, a man passionate about his family history who became inflamed by a 1978 Bon Appetit feature that gave credit for eggs Benedict to the Benedict couple (no relation) who frequented Delmonico’s.
Jack made it his later life’s work to reclaim the dish for his family. He opened the L.C. Benedict Restaurant & Tavern in Winter Park, Colorado. He served the eponymous dish two ways: Lemuel’s Way, with toast and bacon, and Oscar’s Way, with English muffin and Canadian bacon.
He also tried to partner with McDonald’s, proposing an “Eggs McBenedict”, but apparently the Egg McMuffin was already in the works by the time Jack made contact.
Eggs Benedict took about 100 years to become a brunch classic–a 1984 Christian Science Monitor article about brunch still needed to define the dish–but thanks to the hungover desperation of Lemuel and the dogged campaign of Jack, the Benedict family made a lasting impression on American weekend culture.
Elephants are regular targets of poaching in Africa, mainly, of course, for their tusks, which are lucrative items on world black markets, particularly China.
One way officials have taken to fighting poaching is simple: destruction. If there aren't tusks to buy, the logic goes, buyers won't. (Stockpiles of seized tusks are notoriously hard to keep secure, often because of corruption.)
And so for decades now countries have resorted to public burnings, inspired in large part by one of the first, in 1989 in Kenya, where 12 tons of tusks and ivory went up in flames.
The burning happened in a public space in Yaoundé, the country's capital, with no less than U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, in attendance. The inferno is expected to burn for three days.
With each burning, questions are raised as to whether destruction is really necessary, and the process has also been criticized as merely a public relations ploy, though Power defended it.
NASA's Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars in a self-portrait. (Photo: NASA/Public Domain)
If Matt Damon couldn't survive without potatoes on Mars, NASA is probably thinking that they can't either.
A plan for Martian potatoes is in the works, and starts in a Peruvian desert, one of the driest places on Earth, according to the Wall Street Journal. At Pampas de la Joya, part of the Atacama Desert, NASA scientists are collecting hundreds of pounds of soil to experiment with trying to grow potatoes in dirt mostly devoid of the one thing essential to life: water.
“It’s got to be a Martian potato that tastes good,” Julio Valdivia-Silva, a NASA astrobiologist, told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s a big challenge to take a living organism somewhere else."
Water isn't the only problem, of course. Conditions on Mars are also harsh, with sand storms, little oxygen, and constant subzero temperatures. Scientists will start by trying to grow a variety of potatoes in the soil in the Earth's atmosphere; if that is successful, they will attempt the same on Mars, experimenting with a variety of fertilizers and water delivery systems along the way.
They have plenty of time to figure it out. Missions to Mars are still years, if not decades, away from becoming a reality. NASA has said that their earliest plans for a manned mission to the Red Planet are for the 2030s.
Attendees of the Secret Garden Party at Marble Cemetery in New York, by one of the winners of our photo contest, Christine Catalano.
Secret garden parties and cemetery tours. Tunneling and tree-climbing. Abandoned zoos and ghost signs. These are just some of the experiences that occurred around the world on April 16, 2016—Obscura Day.
Across 25 different countries, 160 events took place to celebrate the undiscovered and rarely seen. Fortunately for us, our intrepid attendees have been sending in their photos from the day as part of the Obscura Day Photo Contest. We’ve now chosen our top 10 submissions and each winner will receive a copy of the upcoming Atlas Obscura book. We also added in a few extra favorites from Instagram, because who can resist the opportunity to glimpse a global celebration of wonder?
The Mundaneum in Mons, Belgium by Robin Charlebois
Pasaquan in Buena Vista, GA by Neva Watford
Backstage at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles, by Elissa James
Nota Roja Walking Tour in Mexico City by Javier Cuervo
The Many Peculiarities of the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, PA by Mo Manklang
Secret Garden Party at Marble Cemetery, NY by Nathan Williams
Warlock Mine and Tunnel Tour, CA by Brian Riggs
Tree Climbing With a Canopy Expert in Franklin, TN by Stephanie Schrenk
Lily Simonson in mid-sketch, at Antarctica's Lake Bonney. (Photo: Peter Recjek)
In October 2014, teetering on the edge of a hole in the ice in the middle of Antarctic's McMurdo Sound, Lily Simonson took a deep, brisk breath. The air around her was sub-zero, and she was about to dive into the water.
It's a rare adventurer who chooses to scuba in Antarctica. But Simonson, a painter, wasn't jumping in the water for the thrill of it. She was doing it for beauty—and beauty came through for her. Even a year later, describing the sights, she enters a kind of reverie: "The sea ice is all these crazy colors… gold, neon green turquoise. There are these huge stalactite-type things made of ice crystals. They look like giant feather boa chandeliers."
As soon as she slipped under the water and opened her eyes, her nerves calmed. "It's so magnificent, you almost don't even notice your body," she says. "The first 10 or 15 times I dove, I didn't feel cold."
A pair of pteropods—one of Simonson's favorite subjects. "They're really beautiful and charismatic," she says. "They look like tiny butterflies." (Image: Lily Simonson)
This past weekend, Simonson exhibited some of the work inspired by those dives, filling Los Angeles's CB1 gallery with midnight sunbeams and sea life. Her wall-sized paintings push viewers into that same sea that dazzled her. Multicolored mollusks called pteropods hover, hundreds of times larger than life. A blue and green seal emerges through yards of darkness. Some of the paintings, positioned under blacklights and swabbed with fluorescent pigment, glow from within. Others seem to surge and sway.
Simonson has always sought inspiration in less-than-obvious places. She has a particular thing for crustaceans, and the search for subjects has sent her everywhere from grocery store lobster tanks to deep-sea research ships. But after meeting a scientist who studies Antarctic oceans, she knew her next journey would be even further afield.
"When he showed me photos of life under the sea, i just knew immediately that to me, that was the most beautiful place in the world," she says. "I thought, I have to see it for myself."
A unique angle on a solo seal. (Image: Lily Simonson)
After an early foray with a geologist who "needed an extra pair of hands," Simonson found another patron: the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, which has shipped poets, photographers, filmmakers, and historians to the bottom of the world since the 1980s. Creatives who make the cut spend three months living alongside scientists at McMurdo Station, the continent's (relatively) bustling metropolis.
A 1922 black-and-white photograph by Herbert Ponting. In early expeditions, most art focused on the basics of life on the new continent. (Image: Public Domain Review/Public Domain)
Simonson's medium brings specific challenges, she says: she could only work outside for 20 minutes before her paints froze, and it is difficult to get, say, a nudibranch on the go to stay still for a portrait. She had toundertake 50 practice dives before she could first venture under the ice, and speaks of sending early drafts, painted at the station, back to her LA studio "on vessels."
After a month of near-daily dives, she left McMurdo Station to camp in the continent's Dry Valleys, and at the top of Mount Erebus—the world's southernmost active volcano, which boasts, embedded in its frozen peak, a permanent lake of molten lava.
Getting close to subjects as small as pteropods and as large as a whole continent meant grappling with their fraught situations. Climate change is literally reshaping the continent,and ocean acidification disproportionately impacts cold water, leaving Antarctic mollusks with increasingly thinning shells.
"It's this paradoxical relationship, where there's no human population there and it's extremely remote, yet it's very susceptible to human-induced change," she says.
An extremely southerly sea cucumber. (Image: Lily Simonson)
This lack of residents translates to a new kind of visibility challenge. Back in California, Simonson works to address this, writing up guides to the species in her paintings and holding scientific panels in conjunction with her exhibits. At gallery shows, she fields all kinds of questions: "People often look at the work and think that my subjects are invented," she says.
When they learn the truth, they want to know more. "It's hard to put what would be in a whole scientific paper into a painting, but the painting acts as a jumping off point for a conversation."
For Simonson, now an old pro at both scuba and malacology, the biggest hurdle isn't logistical or scientific—it's aesthetic. The Antarctic sea teems with opposites: it's alien and familiar, pitch black and rainbow bright, freezing and brimming with life. On-site photographs can help her nail down specifics, but how to conjure this larger impression for an audience, especially one sipping wine in a swanky LA gallery?
Some creature-free Antarctic sea. (Image: Lily Simonson)
Fluorescent paints and mural-sized canvasses help, but Simonson is always seeking new ways to bring people in. "It was probably one of the most exciting challenges I've ever had as an artist, to have experienced so much beauty," she says. "I feel like I've really pushed myself as a painter, being so concerned with conveying that experience."
It's an experience she'd love to repeat—"It's a really addictive place," she says—but it's tough to get to the edge of the world, and she has already exhausted many of her potential routes.
But even if she doesn't manage it again, the continent has frozen itself into her mind's eye: "I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this subject," she says. "What I saw down there, I feel like I could spend a couple more decades painting."
More pteropods, with no surface in sight. (Image: Lily Simonson)
Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.
For anyone who has gotten through a frugal time by eating instant ramen noodles, you have have one man to thank for your continued survival: Momofuku Ando.
In the 1970s, the father of the instant noodle—and the namesake of the New York restaurant chain Momofuku—helped turn what was a distinctly Asian staple food into a cornerstone of the global food industry. He then went on to establish the World Instant Noodles Association (WINA), an organization that makes sure the quality of instant noodles around the world is maintained and that when someone peels back the lid of a Cup Noodle, or opens a packet of Top Ramen, they know what they’re in for.
“Instant noodles’ unique adoptability and versatility helped the product grow to a global food,” says Norio Sakurai, the current Deputy Chief Executive of WINA. But the instant noodle as we recognize it today was first invented by Ando in the 1950s.
After World War II, Japan was facing a national food shortage, and received aid from the United States in the form of wheat flour, a grain that was theretofore not popularly used by the Japanese. The Japanese government encouraged the people to use the flour to make bread for meals, but after seeing a long line of hungry people at a fresh ramen stand, the pragmatic Ando had a better idea. He suggested that the wheat flour be used to make noodles, which the populace was much more familiar with, but his idea was initially criticized because the noodle industry was not robust enough to keep the entire country fed.
So he revolutionized it.
Momofuku Ando among other historic greats in an exhibit in the Cup Noodle museum. (Photo: Guilhem Vellut/CC BY 2.0)
After a year of trying to develop his own system, the story goes that he stumbled upon his method of flash-frying the noodles when, on a whim, he added some to the tempura oil his wife was using to make their dinner. Ando released the first pre-cooked instant noodle, Chikin Ramen in 1958. Containing a noodle block with the flavoring already held within the noodles, the product became, pun so very intended, an almost instant hit. While Chikin Ramen was initially seen as a luxury item, costing more than a bowl of prepared soup at the time, it quickly became a staple in Japan thanks to its ease of preparation.
As the popularity of Ando’s instant ramen soared, he created a truly historic industry with his invention of cup noodles in 1971. By containing the noodles and seasoning in their own waterproof container, Ando was more easily able to get instant noodles to appeal to international markets. Now, the noodles didn’t even really need to be cooked, making the product much more universal. With Cup Noodles, Ando’s dream of a global instant noodle empire quickly became a reality.
As the market exploded, countless other manufacturers in addition to Ando’s company, Nissin, got in on the action, making instant noodles available in nearly every country in the world. “The point is that with this core method each country was able to develop its own local flavors reflecting the food culture of the country,” says Sakurai. By the mid-1990s, the people of Earth were consuming around 40 billion instant noodle units a year, and Ando, still caring about the future of his invention, saw the need for a regulatory body that would make sure the instant noodle business didn’t fall victim to poor quality and lack of oversight. “Consequently, International Ramen Manufacturers Association (IRMA), the forerunner of WINA, was formed in 1997.”
Ando passed away in 2007 at the age of 96, but not before he got to see his famous food even make it to space when Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi, brought some instant noodles with him on the Discovery spacecraft.
Even after Ando's death, the industry has only continued to grow, and is now estimated to sell a staggering 100 billion units globally each year, with over half of them being sold in China alone. In his stead, WINA continues to work towards Ando’s dream of bringing delicious instant noodles to the world, by uniting companies across the globe to maintain the quality of the product, no matter where it is. “WINA has a total of 67 instant noodle manufacturers from 21 different countries/regions as its regular members,” says Sakurai. “Besides noodle manufacturers, WINA has approximately 100 associate members, who are engaged in the businesses related to instant noodles such as suppliers of materials.”
While it seems ubiquitous, WINA still uses its global reach to increase awareness of instant noodles, and focus on maintaining food safety standards. Every two years, the organization hosts a World Instant Noodles Summit where manufacturers trade news and innovations. They provide instant noodles to disaster relief efforts (instant noodles are terrific in emergency situations due to their long shelf life and lightweight poundage). Ultimately, WINA makes sure that those packages of ramen maintain their reliable, inexpensive, uniform taste and function, no matter where you are.
Much like Ando, WINA is also constantly looking to the future of instant noodles. According to Sakurai, it could lie in something he calls a nutri-noodle. “Instant noodles have great potential to be a vehicle to supply customized micro-nutrients and functional substances,” he says. In theory, instant noodles could have the ability to be tailored to the specific dietary needs of just about anyone.
Ramen noodles are often taken for granted as a cheap food option, but to people like Momofuku Ando, the gatekeepers at WINA, and the billions of people around the world who eat them regularly, they are the most important meal of the day.
When a two-headed calf is stillborn on a farm somewhere in Iowa, a local media outlet may or may not produce a short item, depending on the relative busyness of the news cycle. But at Edward Meyer’s office, it’s all hands on deck. As the VP of Exhibits and Archives for Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, it’s Meyer’s job to bring that two-headed calf home.
So what’s it like being the man who has brought over 20,000 items into the collection over a 40-year career? There aren’t many jobs that require knowledge of the shrunken head market or long phone calls to convince a man who built a replica of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge out of toothpicks to sell his creation. Since he first joined Ripley’s as cartoon editor in 1978, these activities have been just another day’s work at the Orlando-based company. “There isn’t a day that goes by when I’m not excited by something,” says Meyer. He describes himself as “Mister Gee Whiz”—a slightly old-timey title for a job that feels like something out of the past.
Robert Ripley.
When Ripley’s Believe It Or Not made its first appearance at the World’s Fair in 1933, it was an “I told you so” moment for founder Robert Ripley. He was a newspaper illustrator whose subjects were “literally and figuratively all over the map,” as Meyer says. But what he was drawing was so strange that it bordered on the unbelievable. People actually addressed letters “To the World’s Biggest Liar.” (Perhaps more surprisingly, the post office seemed to know whom the letters were addressed to.) Creating his empire of odditoriums was a way for Ripley to prove that what he drew in his cartoons were real.
Today, of course, there’s the internet and sites like Snopes.com to take care of concerns like these. Even in his time, Ripley’s focus moved to bringing his assorted holdings to a wider audience. He took human oddities like “the owl man” Martin Laurello, who could turn his head 180 degrees, out of the sideshows and onto Broadway. Meyer said that Ripley made it comfortable and acceptable for people to stare. “You can come to my big fancy theater, pay a quarter, and see some of the strangest people in the world.” Eventually (and thankfully), the idea of putting people on display like animals in a zoo became repellent. Today Ripley’s locations might bring in entertainers to give museum-goers a special treat—sword swallowers or people who can lift weights with their eyes—but only on special occasions.
In addition to 32 odditoriums, Ripley’s also has 3 aquariums, 8 “marvelous mirror mazes,” 3 mini-golf courses, and more. Though the majority of the odditoriums are still run by Ripley’s a few are franchised the fee for which includes the right to borrow items from the Ripley’s warehouse which is located in Orlando. Every new item purchased by Meyer and his team goes through the warehouse before being displayed. At any given time there may be as many as 10,000 items stored there.
Meyer believes humans thrive on curiosity and that the information gleaned off a screen can only do so much. “You’ve heard about it before but here it is,” Meyer says. Sure, people today have seen a lot but Ripley’s trusts that they can keep discovering new things.
One of the Ripley artifacts, a 'lunar bible', part of a microfilm bible that was carried to the moon by Edgar Mitchell.
Though he does jump on a plane from time to time, Meyer says that the majority of new items coming into Ripley’s are brought to them. “The really good stuff finds us.” When that two-headed cow is born, they’re often returning phone calls from the farmer—not tracking him down. “People not only want their 15 minutes of fame,” Meyer says. “They feel we’re the best people to give it to them.”
While some items—animals with too many appendages, dinosaurs, mummies, and baseball—never go out of style, Ripley’s does acquire items that could be described as “trendy.” When asked for an example of such an item, Meyer hardly misses a beat before answering, “Justin Bieber.” He says that they have seven “pieces of art” that portray the no-longer-teenage heartthrob. “When I bought them he was the hottest star on the planet and now nobody wants a part of him.” Even space-themed items have their ebbs and flows. When movies about space come out or NASA does something exciting, “the popularity of space artifacts goes up almost overnight.” Then, slowly, people forget why they were ever excited in the first place.
Ripley’s itself feels like an oddity until you realize how much it runs like any other museum. Their items are carefully catalogued. Visitors are occasionally asked to fill out surveys so Ripley’s can figure out which items they should send back to the warehouse and what they should request more of. They have a corporate office and worry about whether items are “family friendly” enough to display.
A portrait of Justin Bieber made entirely from candy.
Taylor Swift in gumballs.
Before acquiring a new item, Meyer’s department has to research and catalogue freight costs which can cost as much as the item itself. “We have to deal with things as small as micro-miniatures that you can’t see with the naked eye to items as big as dinosaurs.” (It’s easy for items to be as big as a dinosaur when they actually are dinosaurs.) Buying a new item is about more than deciding how high its cool factor is—they have to calculate whether it’s worth it once all the shipping and customs and other fees are taken care of.
As it turns out, there are some aspects Meyer hates about his job: accountants, lawyers, and customs agents. But those are not uncommon enemies.
Another threat to Meyer’s working life are thieves, like the people who have stolen things like the Joe DiMaggio baseball bat and two shrunken heads yanked from the Times Square location.
Even the archives aren’t immune from their sticky fingers.
A matchstick replica of the International Space Station.
Meyer describes “some risqué photos of Robert Ripley at a house party with torture device called an iron maiden” that went missing under suspicious circumstances. They were in the Ripley archives and then they were gone. “Only two or three people ever knew they existed,” Meyer says. Maybe it’s not a big deal for a couple out of the thousands of items in the Ripley warehouses to go missing. But he feels responsible for the items—all of the items—under his care.
But it’s loss, not stealing, that seems to have broken Meyer’s heart. And Meyer has experienced that as well. The saddest day of his entire career was when he lost a gentleman’s lifetime work: 32 years of Mardi Gras Indian footage. This happened over 25 years ago and Meyer still speaks of the event quietly and cautiously, like bringing up a beloved pet that he accidentally harmed. “I left it where I shouldn’t have left it on a Friday night,” Meyer said. When he came back on Monday, the janitorial staff hadn’t just thrown it away—they’d tossed it into the incinerator. “It was priceless and irreplaceable and just a total weird little fluke,” he says.
Meyer, with some of the Ripley's collection.
While compared to a shrunken head that can fetch tens of thousands of dollars, the Mardi Gras footage is likely of little monetary value—the historic and personal significance is staggering. At the time the footage was incinerated, Mardi Gras Indians were a sizable presence in New Orleans. But it’s struggled to make a comeback since Hurricane Katrina. There’s no longer much footage to record. Some things really need to be seen to be believed.
British angler Jeremy Wade and his Animal Planet crew were searching for a rare fish; instead they found a fisherman who’d been separated from his boat and castaway on an uninhabited island.
The crew was traveling in waters off the northern coast of Australia, looking for a Queensland grouper, when they spotted a cooler on the beach of an island. A moment later, they saw a man, mostly undressed, shouting to them, splashing into the ocean, and asking for water.
He was an experienced fisherman who had become disoriented and been separated from his boat. He had spent about 60 hours stranded on the island in incredible heat, with temperatures topping 100 °F. He was at risk of dying from dehydration; without water or shelter, a person can only survive about three days in such conditions.
The film crew brought the man to their boat, gave him water and dehydration pills, and took him back to a more populated place for medical treatment.
The fisherman’s lesson from his ordeal? He said he would start smoking again: with a lighter, he would have been able to start a fire.
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.
The ancient punishment for very serious crimes in the Jewish world is called kareth, or “cutting off,” which could mean either capital punishment or excommunication. Crimes worthy of kareth include incest, bestiality, sacrificing one’s own child, and, um, eating bread during Passover.
Most likely no one has been executed for eating a sandwich during Passover in quite some time, if ever, but the fact remains that the dietary laws during the holiday, beginning at sundown this Friday, are very, very serious. And yet they’re also completely muddled and chaotic: people obey totally different rules based on where they’re from, and every once in awhile a prominent rabbi looks at an old rule and says “this is stupid” and that rule no longer counts. To this day, groups of scholars issue rulings on whether it’s okay to, say, eat quinoa. (The ancient Jews, being very far from the Andean home of quinoa, were unable to properly rule on the food.)
At the risk of generalizing, Jews love to argue, and the rules about what is acceptable for Jews to eat during Passover is an excellent topic about which to argue. There are stakes, at least theoretically, from that kareth punishment, meaning there is some pressure to figure out the answer. The rules themselves are sort of conceptual, which means there’s endless wiggle room to debate. And debate we have, for literally thousands of years, with no real end in sight.
The Passover dietary restrictions originate from one detail in the Passover story, one of the oldest stories and thus one of the oldest holidays on the Jewish calendar. While fleeing persecution in Egypt, goes the story, the Jews had such little time to prepare that bread wasn’t even able to rise. But this unleavened bread, now called matzoh, proved hardy and easy to transport, and sustained the Jews as they fled.
To commemorate this incident, and to remember the suffering our ancestors went through, Jews attempt to, sort of, emulate this diet. Here’s one of the many possible translations of a passage in Deuteronomy that spells this out:
You shall not eat leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat with it unleavened bread, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), so that you may remember all the days of your life the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.
The word used in Deuteronomy for “leavened bread” is chametz, and Jews for whatever reason decided to take this prohibition incredibly seriously. You can’t just not eat it; you have to ritually expel it from your house, you are not allowed to sell it, and you must be careful not to let any chametz even come into contact with anything you might eat during Passover. There are ancient prayers to render any stray crumbs that might still be in your house “ownerless” and “nullified.”
But before you can chant Aramaic at a crumb to officially orphan it, you have to decide what actually qualifies as chametz, and this turns out to be a complete nightmare of a proposition. The Talmud, essentially the opinions and thoughts of ancient scholars about how the dictates in the Torah should be carried out, offers a basic sort of idea: chametz includes grains that rise, or ferment, when exposed to water.
The Talmud helpfully lists five of these, except only two of them can today be identified without doubt (barley and wheat). The other three are usually translated as rye, spelt, and oats, but it’s unlikely that either rye or oats actually grew in Israel when the Talmud was composed. Some scholars have decided the translations of the original five chametz grains might include farro, or sorghum, or maybe just another kind of barley.
A commonly, but by no means exclusively, accepted ruling is that any grain that has been combined with water for 18 minutes or more qualifies as a chametz product and is thus forbidden. The 18-minute rule dates to a conversation between two scholars held sometime around 200 CE; one rabbi, an enormously fat scholar named Shimon ben Lakish, opined that the time it takes for chametz-potential products to become actual chametz is “as long as it takes a man to walk from Migdal Nunaiya to Tiberias.”
On Google Maps, Migdal Nunaiya, now called Migdal and known as Mary Magdalene’s hometown, is about five miles from Tiberias, or one hour and 42 minutes by foot. It is unclear how this trip ever took 18 minutes. Today, in a car, it takes 11.
So the 18-minute mark is not always obeyed; scholars up to the modern day have debated exactly how long it takes for chametz-potential ingredients to ferment into chametz. After all, some products take longer to ferment than others—surely this should be taken into consideration! There’s no conclusion on that, partly because there’s no conclusion on any of this.
But the concept of fermentation extends even further. Take alcohol, for example: beer is made from fermented barley or wheat. Therefore it is forbidden on Passover. But wine is made from grapes: just fine on Passover. (In fact drinking wine is a major part of the Passover seder.) The prohibition then gets even more granular: since fermented alcohol becomes vinegar, you have to make sure even your vinegar comes from the right place. Malt vinegar, made from beer? Nope. Apple cider vinegar? Fine. Plain white vinegar? Ah ha, you must investigate this, because white vinegar is made from a neutral alcohol (basically vodka). Some of it comes from wheat: bad! Some comes from potatoes: fine!
A weird thing about Judaic rules is that they vary widely based on community. For much of Jewish history, Jews have been scattered all over the planet, following the opinions of individual rabbis or sects. There is no centralized rule-making force as there is in the Catholic church; the rabbis and organizations involved in this story are simply people who have studied a lot and have opinions and are good at arguing those opinions.
Sometime around the destruction of the first Temple in Jerusalem in 587 BCE, the Jews dispersed, and began to develop separate customs based on where they ended up. The two largest groups still remaining are the Ashkenazi, who ranged from Germany to Russia, and the Sephardi, who settled around the Mediterranean, from the Middle East to Spain. These groups are exceedingly different; they speak different languages, eat different foods, and have different religious customs, all within the framework of Judaism.
Those differences extend to how they cope with chametz, especially with a wide subsection of plants known as kitniyot. Kitniyot technically refers to legumes, but during Passover it gets even broader, and can include rice, corn, sesame seeds, and lentils. The Ashkenazi Jews traditionally do not eat kitniyot during Passover; the Sephardi do. Sort of.
The ban on kitniyot is about 800 years old, and by this time it’s basically been a rule for so long that observing it is less a statement about how true-to-the-Talmud it is and more about just keeping traditions alive. But in late 2015, two major scholarly groups both decided that kitniyot are now just fine to eat. These groups do not declare what people should do; they simply espouse learned opinions. And those learned opinions were, basically, that the Ashkenazi ban on kitniyot is stupid.
“In our opinion it is permitted (and perhaps even obligatory) to eliminate this custom,” writes Rabbi David Kolinkin in one of these. For those Ashkenazic Jews who pay close attention to the rulings of learned Israeli Rabbis, this year might be the first in which they happily partake in rice and corn during Passover.
Four thousand miles away in Kosovo, though, Clinton devotees can dress like their heroine every day of the year. That's thanks to the Hillary boutique—a shop smack in the middle of the capital city, Pristina, and filled wall to wall with tasteful trouser suits.
Shop owner Elda Morina-Ymeraga sees the American Secretary of State and presidential candidate as both a role model and a style icon. "She is not only a person who, with her family, has helped Kosovo enormously... she also has unique taste in clothing," Morina-Ymeraga told Agence France-Presse on a recent visit. "This was why we started to promote Hillary's style in Kosovo, offering clothes to women that are identical to those worn by Hillary."
Kosovo has been full of Clinton fans since the late 90s, when President Bill launched NATO air strikes that drove occupying Serbian troops out of the city. Morina-Ymeraga's father first opened the boutique in 2002, and it quickly became a go-to spot for Kosovo professionals—and international tourists, who sometimes stop by after visiting a nearby statue of a waving Bill. There is also a sister shop, Hillary 2.
AFP describes the store as full of "sharp suits, bright blouses, and elegant dresses." As of a 2015 VICE News visit, the most sought-after item was a beige pantsuit. Clinton herself visited the shop in 2010, and was gifted a navy-blue ensemble.
Recent customers were duly inspired. One cited her work ethic and competence, another Kosovo's own strive towards gender parity.
Kosovo shops celebrate Hillary Clinton and her style. Boutique is on Bill Clinton Blvd https://t.co/TVnUcG3TiN
A third was slightly more practical: "If (Clinton) can successfully run all of her campaign wearing the same style of outfit throughout, why would I not do the same while running my business?" She had come to the right place.
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.
At Atlas Obscura, we write about places, people, and phenomena that engender wonder and delight. Usually that’s stuff like bone churches, hidden beaches, and abandoned amusement parks. But what qualifies as “wondrous” depends on so many things. For some, New Jersey can be a wonder, especially if you happen to have grown up outside of the United States.
Another wonder might be a form of dinner theater—the ultimate dinner theater of the '90s—that never actually went away.
The Medieval Times chain of castles offers a “dinner and tournament” experience intended to evoke the Middle Ages. Guests eat a four-course feast with their hands while watching six knights fight one another in front of the host king. Founded in Majorca, Spain, Medieval Times opened its first U.S. venture in Florida in 1983. There are now nine castles in North America.
On the afternoon of April 14, 2016, two Atlas Obscura reporters, Ella Morton and Urvija Banerji, made a pilgrimage from New York to the Medieval Times in New Jersey. This is our story.
The Pre-Trip Expectations
Ella: Like many others whose adolescence coincided with the mid-’90s, my introduction to Medieval Times came by way of The Cable Guy. I watched Janeane Garofalo as a fed-up serving wench and Jim Carrey putting chicken skin on his face in a Silence of the Lambs homage and thought, “America: what a place.”
Ella: Indeed, Medieval Times seemed to epitomize the United States’ most enticing offerings, what with its gift shop full of tchotchkes, overabundant food, carefully choreographed spectacles, and unlimited Pepsi refills. [Ed.: Ella grew up in Australia.]
Urvija: I have never watched The Cable Guy, so I had no idea what everyone was talking about. When Medieval Times first came up in a conversation a couple of years ago (because of course it did), I immediately put it on my U.S.A. bucket list. What could be more American than fake British accents and pseudo old-world kitsch? [Ed.: Urvija grew up in Singapore.]
I read this Yelp review of Medieval Times in preparation, which was written by this very nice frat bro who went to the NJ castle with all his frat bro pals. In the review, the frat bro enthused that his experience was as Game of Thrones as one can get outside of Westeros, and mentioned that he particularly enjoyed eating with his hands and drinking beer out of huge tankards. Given that the new season of GoT is close upon us, this review was more than enough for me to attempt to bring out my inner Khaleesi while there.
Ella: The whole “Millennials going to Medieval Times ironically” thing seems to be something people do, but there was nothing ironic about my visit. I was genuinely excited. It felt like we were going on a real quest. Or even a crusade.
The journey to New Jersey Medieval Times begins at the Port Authority. (Photo: Jason Kuffer/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Journeying to the Castle
Ella: It has oft been noted that New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal is a less-than-enchanting place. The commuter hub links midtown Manhattan with New Jersey, meaning our trip to the castle began amid a bunch of nine-to-fivers just looking to get home. After queueing alongside them in the terminal, we boarded our chariot. By which I mean the 199 bus to Lyndhurst.
Urvija: I think there’s something pretty magical in emerging, bleary-eyed, from within the belly of the Lincoln Tunnel into New Jersey. The view of Manhattan is fantastic.
The view of Manhattan from the bus.
The Arrival
Ella: The Medieval Times castle is located just down the road from a Courtyard Marriott and a Quality Inn. Our journey from the Port Authority took approximately 18 minutes. I was giddy the whole time. And then I saw it in the distance: the castle turret.
Urvija: As we walked from the bus stop toward the castle, our excitement only grew; so much so that once we reached the Medieval Times parking lot (a solid moat replacement, albeit a bit gravelly), we had to pause to catch our breath. And take photographs. Many enraptured, overeager photographs.
Urvija: Since we were arriving a few hours before the show began, we had been instructed to forgo the main entrance for a side door. At first this seemed a little disappointing, but soon became an adventure in its own right. Under strict instructions, we followed a side path along the castle, as though we were stealthy pillagers or castle robbers or something.
As we reached the side door, we had been told to look out for a mighty Medieval Times carriage. It ended up being a truck, with the Medieval Times logo painted on it, and “1-800-WE-JOUST” emblazoned beneath.
Ella: When we stepped inside, the first thing I noticed was the smell of horses. You know. Manure. But in a “we’re on a farm” way. It wasn’t an offensive odor. There was a pastoral warmth to it.
Behind the Scenes
Ella: Our backstage tour began with a visit to the stables, where we met an elegant Andalusian horse.
Urvija: An equally elegant lady rider stood by his side: Assistant Horse Trainer Amanda Kenny. The stables were surprisingly quiet for a few hours before the evening show, and the trainer and her horse cut a strong figure against the calm surroundings.
The stables. (Photo: Urvija Banerji)
Urvija: Amandaexplained that the horses at Medieval Times are bred at Chapel Creek Ranch in Sanger, Texas, which is essentially a ranch dedicated to breeding horses for Medieval Times. The stallions work at a given castle from the ages of three to 15-19, after which point they retire back at the same ranch. The horses work the nightly shows on rotation, and each is given between two and three days off a week.
Training is needed for humans, too. Most beginner knights arrive at Medieval Times without any experience on horseback whatsoever, and it is her job to get them into shape to perform the complex stunts and maneuvers we see during the show.
On our way out of the stables, we passed by the costume room, a wonder in itself, and the knight’s locker rooms, which we were obviously, but nevertheless unfortunately, not allowed to enter.
Where servers and salespeople collect their medieval attire. (Photo: Urvija Banerji)
Ella: We next ventured into the castle arena. This was big. (Both literally—it has over 1,400 seats—and in terms of emotional impact.) A great swathe of sand lay before us, surrounded by color-coded seating sections.
Ella: Each section was devoted to a particular knight, for whom we would all later cheer. You can’t choose your knight. Your knight is given to you, like a gift. We ended up being aligned with the blue knight. Just like Jim Carrey in TheCable Guy.
When you walk into the castle, you are given a crown. The color of the crown determines the knight for whom you will cheer.
Ella: Before the show each evening, the knights come out into the sand and fight each other—ostensibly for rehearsal and safety reasons, but it seemed like they were also doing it for funsies. Each knight wore a “Get Medieval” shirt with their last name printed on the back. This was the first of many moments in which we felt like we were at a sporting match.
Urvija: Neither Ella nor I could resist the temptation of holding one of their 20-pound weapons for ourselves. Can confirm, they are heavy, and unsurprisingly, very empowering to hold. The blades themselves are dulled down, but all of Medieval Times’ weaponry is made from the same titanium steel that would go into making a functional weapon of its kind.
Knights practice their fight choreography before the show.
Ella: The head knight, Adam Panissidi, gave us the lowdown on the knight-training and qualification process. While there is no minimum height—or minimum hair length—the knights tend to be tall, with lustrous flowing locks.
Urvija: We learned that the requirements to become a knight are strict. Adam, who has been with Medieval Times for nine years, trained for three and a half months to get into the show, although for some knights the training process can last for up to a year. “The more athletic you are, the easier it seems to come,” Adam said.
Ella: The standard “corporate career path” for a knight is to begin as a stablehand or squire. Squires are essentially the stagehands for the show—they pick up broken jousting poles, set up rows of flags, and walk in front of the mounted knights whenever they parade around the arena.
Urvija: Once the squires become comfortable in the arena and around the weapons and horses, they take a “Head-Leg-Shoulder” test, which determines whether the squire is physically fit enough to start training to be a knight.
Each year, a corporate head knight travels to every Medieval Times castle in the country, and the knights in each one are required to pass a fitness test to show that they are keeping in shape. Adam told us that the test consists of a mile run in under 10 minutes, 30 pushups, 50 situps, and a minimum of five pull ups. This is the moment Ella and I realized that neither of us could be knights.
Ella: Also, there are no lady knights. There should be lady knights. That may be anachronistic, but so are the flashing laser swords sold in the gift shop.
Each knight's armor weighs a total of about 20 pounds.
Urvija: Adam explained that the knights do their best not to get injured in carrying out their fierce battles and jousts, but that it happens from time to time. “The concept is that the fights are choreographed so specifically so that you don’t [get injured],” he said. “But sometimes, Mother Nature takes over: a sword breaks, I’ve gotten stitches in the forehead, I’ve slammed my finger with a big bola because I wasn’t holding it correctly. Sometimes it’s inevitable, but it’s usually few and far between.”
Ella: Once we had watched the knights fight each other for a while, we went to meet the king. In Medieval Times lore, he’s known as Don Carlos, but he introduced himself to us as Joshua Callahan. Josh has been at Medieval Times for five years.
Your correspondents with King Don Carlos, a.k.a. Josh.
Ella: As well as playing the king, Josh manages staff in the show's other speaking roles: princess and lord chancellor. He said that if you want to be a Medieval Times king, princess, or Lord Chancellor—the three speaking roles in the cast—you need to submit a job application, then perform a prepared monologue on camera so the higher-ups at corporate can see if you fit with the vibe of the castle.
Urvija: Josh explained that most of the people in the show cast had prior acting experience, or if not, they had backgrounds in speaking or performing in some way. If Medieval Times has a full house, being part of the show cast is like performing for a theater full of almost 1,500 people—roughly, the seating capacity at most Broadway shows.
The king, the princess, and the lord chancellor.
Urvija: There is one big difference between this and stage acting, however, which is the huge amount of improvisation on the part of the show cast. Before the show begins each night, the three characters are outside in the entrance hall of the castle, greeting and interacting with guests.
Beyond that, the show itself is live, with guests often seated right next to the stage. Guests can misbehave, too. Josh told us about a woman in the green booth who “thought it would be really cool to walk on stage to try and play the princess". He had to get her offstage without breaking character.
A place setting in the arena awaits a pre-determined four-course meal.
The Dinner and Tournament
Urvija: So the one thing I could not contain my excitement for was the food—the glorious four-course meal that you are obligated to eat with your hands. Never mind that I had read several Yelp reviews (because why would you even go to a restaurant without reading the Yelp reviews) that told me that the food was only “pretty good” or “average.” I didn’t care. I wanted to pick at a chicken with my fingers. I wanted to slurp soup from a bowl. When the food was presented in front of me, my expectations were pleasantly surpassed. The chicken was juicy and tender, the soup was tasty, and garlic bread is, well, garlic bread. You can’t go wrong there.
Ella: They really nailed the dramatic arena lighting and immersive sound effects at this 11th-century tournament. The show began with a voiceover spoken in a British(ish) female voice, accompanied by choral voices and a harp: “In myth and legend, the knight and the horse are forever linked…” The lights dimmed and that same Andalusian horse we met earlier—or maybe another one, they all look very similar—came bounding out onto the sand. There was an audible “Ooooh.”
Ella: Before the main action got underway, the king and princess read a list of announcements—shout-outs to people in the crowd, essentially. You could buy one of these announcements for $10 in the lobby before the show. A five-year-old got a birthday shout-out from his family. A woman celebrating her 36th birthday got one, too. As did a guy who was having his retirement party at Medieval Times that night. The wide range of announcements reflected the demographically diverse crowd. We saw families with kids; couples; groups of adults. And, yes. Some frat bros.
Urvija: The show commenced, and literal sparks began to fly as the knights began fighting one another with their weapons. The sparks, we had learned earlier, are a result of the ridges on the edges of the titanium swords that spark when they make contact at the right angle. The squires file the swords down before the start of each show to make sure that the sparks don’t fly into the knights’ faces, but create a kind of controlled mini-firework display instead.
Ella: Look, the jousting and fighting and horse prancing and all that stuff was wonderful, but here is what impressed me the most: our server, Sean, had this incredible timing-based technique for pouring the perfect amount of Pepsi to refill your tankard in the dark. When we talked to him later, we discovered he has been working at Medieval Times for 16 years.
Urvija: Not sure how that can be more impressive to you than the actual sword fighting that was going on in front of our noses. We had seen earlier that the knights choreograph each blow administered to one another in order to prevent injury, for example by pivoting their swords at exactly the right moment when hitting an opponent. The entire combat performance feels like a dance, in that way, in which you and your partner are doing your level best not just to get the moves down, but also to not seriously maim or injure one another.
Ella: The crowd got pretty riled up and vocal, but not in an obnoxious way. Except for the guy behind us who kept yelling, “Yeah! RIDE that HORSE!” Could have done without that.
The Coronation
Ella: At the end of the final joust, the winning knight goes into the crowd and chooses a Queen of Love and Beauty. On this special evening, the blue knight, accompanied by the princess, stepped from the tournament arena, walked past many deserving young girls, and stopped when he reached me.
Urvija: As the knight walked over to our section, I was entirely expecting him to stop at a seven-year-old girl waving the $30 flag her parents bought her.
Ella: As was I. But no. Sorry 'bout your dreams, kid. Tonight, this tiara and sash were meant for me.
Ella: There is something incredibly validating about being crowned queen by a victorious knight who chooses you personally from a pool of, in theory, 500 candidates. You start to think, “What is it about me that exudes such elegance; such royalty?” In this case, the answer was probably “the knight got told by the marketing guy that the lady in the fifth seat was here reporting a story.” But still. It makes you think.
Australia is big, and much of it uninhabited, owing to harsh climates and dry weather. A lot of it, too, is farmland, nearly 30,000 square miles of which just sold to Chinese investors.
That's a lot of land. It's almost as big as the state of South Carolina, or one percent of the land in the entirety of Australia.
The price? $370 million Australian dollars, or around $288 million American dollars, which seems pretty cheap, likely because the vast majority of the land's residents are tens of thousands of cattle.
There are 150,000 to be exact, many of which will be slaughtered and exported as beef. The investors are a Chinese firm that also gave a small stake to Australian investors to pass muster with local regulators, which still need to approve the deal.
Every now and then, one stumbles upon a corner of YouTube that is entirely unexpected. Such is the case with these extensive combat ration unboxing videos, in which a narrator opens and explores the contents of assorted ready-to-eat military food boxes from around the world.
These very thorough videos, which are each about 20 minutes long, are certainly a commitment to watch. But there's something soothing about their slow pace and careful attention to detail that makes them appealing.
Not only does the narrator go through each item in the combat rations, he tastes them as well. (This often has the byproduct of making the viewer very hungry). Some of the MRE (Meal, Ready-to-Eat) boxes, such as the Swedish Army combat ration unboxing in the video above, contain an extensive amount of snacks and paraphernalia, such as gum and peanut butter, while others, like the Japanese one below, are fairly simple.
We went down the MRE YouTube rabbit hole, so you don't have to. Here are some of our favorite unboxings.
The Japanese Army combat ration is sparser than the others featured, but looks delicious nonetheless. The ration packs often have heating mechanisms to allow soldiers to heat up or cook their food before eating. Around the 6:30 mark, you'll see the narrator fill up the pack with boiling water, after which the pack swells up and steams like a kettle.
The two packs of rice come with a sautéed pork dish with ginger, and plenty of packets of dry "Furikake" seasoning to flavor the rice. Watch to the end of the video to watch the narrator's adorable daughter try out the Japanese ration for herself.
The food in the Singapore Army combat ration wouldn't be out of place on a restaurant menu. The meals, which are halal, consist of Mongolian fried noodles, chicken masala rice, and a dessert made of peanuts and lotus root. Each ration pack is intended to provide a soldier enough food for one day, and though the meals don't look like much, it would probably be amazing to have fried rice and hot noodles in the field.
The Norwegian combat ration contains a very Norwegian dish: Chicken Tikka Masala.
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.
On Wednesday, scientists in Australia sounded their most urgent alarm yet, saying that half of the reef, which stretches for over 1,400 miles along the country's eastern coast, was dead or dying.
The cause? Elevated temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, made worse by global warming.
"Our estimate at the moment is that close to 50 percent of the coral is already dead or dying," Terry Hughes, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, told Reuters.
The situation is slightly better in the southern portion of the reef, though if the bleaching continues, the scientists said, it was approaching utter disaster.
"In the northern Great Barrier Reef, it’s like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once,” Hughes said.
Nobody wanted Saul Bellow's writing desk, until they did.
Our story begins in March, when, in the Wall Street Journal, potter Daniel Bellow, son of the writer Saul Bellow, said he was having a hard time selling his famous father’s desk. An ad in the New York Review of Books didn't find any takers, and, as Daniel said then, "It's not going very well."
That was, at least, until the Wall Street Journal story ran, after which emerged a flood of interest, and, finally, a sale, Daniel told Atlas Obscura Wednesday in a short phone interview.
“I met people that you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “It was quite a piece of guerilla marketing if I do say so myself.” All of a sudden, everyone from famous journalists to doctors from the Mayo Clinic contacted him about purchasing his father’s desk.
“Everyone was so kind, and so respectful. It was really a good experience,” says Daniel.
Bellow used the Victorian roll top desk to write a number of his novels by hand, including Mr. Sammler’s Planet and Humboldt’s Gift. But despite the literary pedigree of the furniture, Daniel’s initial attempts to sell the piece were unsuccessful. Priced at $10,000, the ask might seem steep, but a fine vintage desk from that era has the potential to sell for around the same price, even without being haunted by the ghost of literary greatness. As the WSJ points out, it's likely that it is sometimes harder to find a home for famous people’s stuff than one might think.
"We have a whole storage locker full of ‘great man’ crap," said another unnamed scion quoted in the WSJ.
In the end, though, Bellow's desk was sold to his son's niece, who matched the top bid at the auction, and kept the desk in the family. “It’s really nice that it’s staying in the family. There were a couple of movements to keep it in the family, so everyone is well-pleased with the way it turned out,” says Daniel. The desk will be put in his niece’s new home in Hudson, New York.
As for the money from the auction, Daniel says he is going to use it to build a kiln chimney in his new pottery studio. “It’s a nice last gift from pop.”
Coral bleaching. (Photo: acro_phuket/shutterstock.com)
