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

The Hushed Interiors of 19th Century Libraries

0
0

Main reading room, the New York Public Library, c. 1910. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-det-4a24347)

Public libraries as we know them – government-funded, free to access – have existed since the 1800s. The Boston Public Library was the earliest large-scale library, with 16,000 items available to borrow when it opened its doors in 1854. The library then promptly realized they would need to move to a bigger space. 

In the second half of the 19th century, philanthropist and notable library-lover Andrew Carnegie donated a fortune towards libraries. He believed they would “bring books and information to all people”. His gifts resulted in 2,509 Carnegie libraries around the world, with 1,689  in America.

The wealth that Carnegie and others like him donated to libraries was evident not just through the purchasing of books, but how they were housed. Before it even opened, Joshua Bates gave $50,000 to the BPL for a new books, provided“the building shall be such as to be an ornament to the City, that there shall be a room for one hundred to one hundred and fifty persons to sit at reading tables, and that it be perfectly free to all.” Some 40 years later, the magnificent Bates Hall opened.

article-image

Bates Hall photographed in 1896, just after it opened. (Photo: Boston Public Library/CC BY 2.0)

Today, there are just over 9,000 public libraries with around 16,500 branches across the United States. In 2014, BPL alone lent 3.7 million books and hosted 10,000 public programs. Access to a public library provides not just infinite reading material, but also internet services and a sense of community. Many libraries offer classes and events—everything from children’s story time to resume writing tutorials.

Atlas Obscura went in search of how libraries looked at the turn of the century. Peek into these historic hushed rooms where knowledge was shared, and remember Einstein's words: “The only thing you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” 

article-image

The main reading room at the Library of Congress, c. 1900. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-det-4a17345)

article-image

Book room at Woburn Public Library, Massachusetts, c. 1880. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ppmsca-15350

article-image

Main entrance to Boston Public Library, c. 1890. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ppmsca-15426)

article-image

Interior of Bates Hall, Boston Free Library, c.1091. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-90719)

article-image

Circulation desk, Carnegie Library, St. Joseph, Missouri, c. 1903. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ppmsca-15410)

article-image

Cleveland Public Library, Ohio, c. 1900. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-15720)

article-image

Alcoves and gallery in the book room, Brookline Public Library, Massachusetts, c. 1901. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ppmsca-15406)

article-image

Bedford St, Williamsburg, branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, c. 1900. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-15719)

article-image

Women's Reading Room, Carnegie Library and Music Hall, Alleghany City, Pennsylvania, c. 1900. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ppmsca-15405)


Found: A Mesmerizing Jellyfish With Bright Yellow Gonads

0
0

Starting April 20, a team of scientists set out on NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer ship to explore the Marianas trench, the deepest part of the ocean. They’ve been searching through some of the deepest and least understood parts of the trench, where the ocean goes down more than two miles deep. 

In those deep areas, living creatures have been relatively sparse. But on April 24, while exploring the Enigma Seamount (so-called “because we don’t know much about it,” the scientists explain), they came across the mesmerizing jellyfish above.

The scientists believe this animal belongs to the genus Crossota. In the first part of the video, they think it’s waiting for something to come by and turn into a meal—its arms are outstretched and ready to capture any prey that happens by.

Those bright yellow and red features? The yellow, the scientists write, “look like the gonads” and the red are radial canals, which are part of its digestive system. It’s gross and magical all at once.

Bonus finds: A very sad letter in a bottle, a lot of gold

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. 

Surgery's Open Secret: It Smells

0
0
article-image

Masks will be very important later on in this post! (Photo: Phalinn Ooi/CC BY 2.0)

Here's something most people don't know about surgery—at a certain point in an operation, it can smell. Really bad.

My knowledge of this fact came by accident, when I was about 11 and my surgeon father let me attend one of his operations. But most people experience operating rooms remotely—they’re watching one on a TV or movie screen—or when they’re about to be knocked out by anesthesia. The room is so organized and sterile that it’s hard to imagine it smelling like anything.

But once a procedure begins, the surgeon has to cut into the patient’s body. To do that, the doctor slices through the skin with a scalpel, then, as a general rule, switches to an electric cautery. This tool has a tip of metal that gets incredibly hot—a “low-temp” cautery has the capacity to reach hundreds of degrees. The surgeon uses this tool to slice through the body’s layer of fat and, sometimes, through muscle, to reach the part of the body they’re operating on.

There’s a good reason to use a cautery. By sealing off small blood vessels, it limits bleeding. While it's in use, though, the operating room begins to smell of burning flesh.

In my own memory, this smell is nauseating and overpowering. (I had to leave the operating room soon after this part of the surgery started because I couldn’t handle it.) Cutting through the body creates smoke, and I remember the smell as something like the smell of burning hair, but worse. Way worse.

article-image

An electrocautery. (Photo: SnowBink/CC0)

If you ask a surgeon about this smell, though, most likely they’ll tell you it’s not that big of a deal. For them, it’s not. They get used to it. Some even say it smells good—like barbecue or, if they’re cutting through fat, like "a sizzling New York Strip."

But for the uninitiated? It can be disgusting.

In addition to the smell of burning flesh, another notable smell, in some surgeries, is the smell of cutting through bone, which, apparently, also smells like burning hair. Beyond that, in many surgeries, there aren't any particularly strong smells. Blood has a metallic smell to it. Bile has a smell, but it's not a particularly strong one. Cancerous growths don't smell like anything in particular (although dogs can be trained to smell certain markers in human urine). Brains don't smell, either.

There are certain surgeries, though, that even surgeons think smell bad.

As a rule, these are surgeries that involve dead or rotting tissue, some sort of closed system where bacteria, pus and so forth have been trapped or the bowel. Gas gangrene, in which bacteria infects and kills tissue with particular vigor, reeks. Peritonitis, an infection of the abdomen, is said to smell "pretty much like a rotting corpse." Partially digested blood is also not something anyone wants to catch a whiff of.

One recent night, out to dinner at an Indian restaurant, when I had asked my dad to give some examples of particularly bad-smelling surgeries, one family member pointed to a dark brownish-red dipping sauce and asked if that color, seen in a surgery, might be a sign of an abnormally gross smell. My dad said no, and pointed to the one right next to it—a bright green mint sauce.

That was the sort of color that you’d really need to worry about, he told us.

article-image

So gross, I know. (Photo: Sarah Laskow)

Such green might feature in a perirectal abscess, in which pus collects in the tissue around the anus. To treat it, a surgeon will lance the abscess, to release everything collected inside. As you open it, you can often see pus that's green and white and mixed with the red of blood. (If you are interested in seeing such grossness for yourself, there are videos online.) The odor hits you at the same time.

Fournier's gangrene also has a reputation for being nasty smelling. Gangrene of any kind can have a foul smell; this type is "a genital catastrophe" that affects a person's perineum or genital region and can be life-threatening. It's more common in men, but not exclusive to them, and essentially it involves dead flesh all around the parts of the body that are most likely to smell rank to begin with. The treatment involves both antibiotics and surgery to remove the dead flesh.

The smell? One medical student described it as "like poop and sewage sludge and rot and dead stuff all rolled into one."

Another notoriously stinky surgery involves dealing with dead bowel. This is pretty much what it sounds like: the blood supply is, for one reason or another, cut off from part of the bowel, and a section of it dies. To the eye, it's dark black, when it should be fleshy and pink. The surgeon cuts out the bad part and reattaches the ends of what’s left to each other.

One doctor describes the smell of dead bowel as "the worst possible smell." It's basically is the combination of two smells: the smell of stool and the smell of dead flesh. (Ever a smell a dead mouse? Dead flesh is sort of like that.) It also infuses everything.

“The smell seems to permeate through the gown and gloves and onto your hand,” says my dad. “It just stays with you. It lingers. It’s an overwhelming stench that sticks to you.” Double up on gloves, wash your hands as many times as you want, and it makes no difference. That smell is not going away.

This is part of the job, though, and for the people undergoing the operations, it's better to have all this gross-smelling stuff out of their bodies. How do surgeons (not to mention all the other medical professionals in the operating room) deal with the bad smells? There’s a simple trick: a drop, or a few, of something strong and more pleasant-smelling on the surgical mask everyone’s wearing anyway. Vicks vapor rub, oil of wintergreen or benzoin tincture usually do the trick.

For Sale: Over $1 Million in Costumes and Props from The Hunger Games

0
0
article-image

(Photo: Kendra Miller/CC BY-ND 2.0)

Offer yourself up as tribute, because The Hunger Games are going on sale. On May 20th, The World of The Hunger Games auction is going to be selling off a whole catalog of items from the film franchise, including a number of Katniss’ bows.

In a move reminiscent of the movies themselves, interested buyers will be able to enter the auction arena and battle it out for ownership of hundreds of items used in the movies, including weapons, furniture, and vehicles. Among the items on auction are small props like the glass “Reaping Bowl,” still filled with little sealed names (all Primrose Everdeen!), a collection of Effie Trinket’s outlandish outfits, and full 20-foot-tall Peacekeeper vehicles. But, according to People, auction expert Joe Maddalena says that it is the collection of Katniss’ bows that will be the real draw. Whether you want to grab one of the wooden bows that Katniss used to hunt in her home District, or the more advanced bows she used in the Hunger Games, both will be available.

The massive auction aims to make items available to both high-end buyers and average collectors with the starting price of most things ranging from $100 - $10,000. Maddalena tells People that the auction is expected to fetch over $1 million in total. 

Bids can be placed online, but there will also be an in-person auction at the Profiles In History auction house in Los Angeles. In-person bids should be placed by raising a three-finger salute. May the odds be ever in your favor.

There's Only One State Where You Can Become a Master Cheesemaker

0
0
article-image

Wisconsin cheesemakers don't mess around. (Photo: Boston Public Library/Public Domain)

There is only one state in America in which cheesemaking is elevated to an almost otherworldly realm. That state over the years has firmly guarded its status as America’s Dairyland. It also goes by the name of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is the sole state where you can be crowned a certified Master Cheesemaker. But before any of that happens (a process involving a three-year course of study and a practical apprenticeship)—an inductee will need to have possessed a cheesemaker’s license in Wisconsin for at least 10 years. They'll also need to be a resident of one of Wisconsin's 72 counties. 

“Here in Wisconsin, we’re proud of the fact that we have more Master Cheesemakers hard at work creating quality products than most states have cheesemakers,” the program directory declares.

article-image

Wisconsin has always taken dairy seriously; this is a milk testing laboratory at a Wisconsin dairy school. (Photo: Public Domain)

There are currently over 1,200 licensed cheesemakers in the state, dispersed in both corporate cheese companies and artisan fromageries. Of those, only five percent have attained Master Cheesemaker status. In this elite class, men dominate the field; there are just two female Master Cheesemakers. 

Obtaining a professional cheesemaking license is no small feat. In the Dairy Kingdom, it’s treated almost like learning to drive. The requirements include 240 hours of apprenticeship under a licensed cheesemaker and five university-level short courses (topics include Dairy Sanitization and Principles of Milk Pasteurization). At the end of all this, aspiring cheesemakers need to pass a written exam. In total, the license costs individuals around $3,000, and can take between one and two years.

article-image

State regulation ensures that no one is making cheese via this ancient Swiss method. (Photo: Audrius Meskauskas/CC-BY-SA-3.0)

Wisconsin's strict licensing program has its share of detractors, though. Some artisanal cheesemakers and cheeseheads, as Wisconsinites are called, have spoken out against it. According to criticsthe stringent requirements only serve the interests of established factories, but are burdensome to individuals and smaller companies.

Cheesemakers outside the state are skeptical, too. Barbara Hanley, of the Massachusetts Cheese Guild, wrote in an email, “Would you rather have someone making cheese because they are talented and dedicated, or making it because they can afford a license?”

In terms of regulation, Hanley says that Wisconsin’s licensing cannot possibly exceed the requirements of FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) and third-party audits currently being implemented across the country, along with FDA inspections. Indeed, Hanley's log notebooks, HAACP plan and required documentation take up six feet of shelf space at Shy Brothers Farm, an artisan cheesemaker.

"You simply cannot make good cheese if you don’t care about it,” she says. “There are better ways to obtain quality and safety than licensing.” 

article-image

But is it cheese, or is it Master Cheesemaker cheese? (Photo: Dorina Andress/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Wisconsin cheese guru Jeanne Carpenter disagrees, writing that the stiff licensing requirements uphold industry integrity. In 2010, Carpenter established a Beginning Cheesemaker Scholarship to help out cash-strapped aspiring cheesemakers.

Anyone who is willing to spend the time and money on the license is the kind of person she’d want making her cheese, writes Carpenter, adding, “Anybody can make cheese in their bathtub. That doesn’t mean I want to eat it.”

(Hanley says that when it comes to commercial cheesemaking, making cheese in a bathtub “is just not possible.”)

article-image

Once you enter the world of cheese, there's no turning back. (Photo: Zerohund/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Marianne Smukowski, outreach program manager at Wisconsin’s Center for Dairy Research, says that Wisconsin already had some of the strictest state regulations–and still does–even before the Food Safety Modernization Act was signed into law in 2011.

Wisconsin's Center for Dairy Research began the Master Cheesemaker program in 1994, when co-creator Jim Path noticed the existence of Master Cheesemakers in Europe and decided that Wisconsin, with its $43 billion dairy industry, ought to have something similar. 

There are now over 60 Master Cheesemakers in Wisconsin. While cheesemakers from other states can enroll in the short courses, they cannot attain Master Cheesemaker status. Only cheeseheads who have built their empires in Wisconsin are allowed in this club. 

Two Baby Eagles Ate A Kitten While Pittsburgh Watched

0
0

article-image

(Photo: Coffee/CC0)

Spring is baby animal season, and humans really don't want to miss out. We've got cams trained on Alaskan bear cubs and Maryland turkey chicks. We're hitting refresh on sharks and chipmunks. Jellyfish: on notice. We are surveilling adorable new life all over this darn planet.

But even babies have to eat. On Tuesday afternoon, two bald eagles in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania brought their kids a controversial snack—a kitten. The growing eaglets happily tore it apart.

The Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, which runs the cam, took to Facebook to substantiate the rumors. "It's true that they brought in a cat," they wrote on Facebook, "and it's also true that they fed it to the eaglets."

The interaction left some viewers "squeamish or disturbed," reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Audubon Society spokeswoman Rachel Handel saw it as a teachable moment. “A lot of people have an idyllic view of these eagles," she told the Post-Gazette. "I think the eagle cameras are providing an education of what it takes to survive and raise offspring in nature.”

Others seemed well aware of this, and had more practical concerns. "To be honest, it appeared to be so tough I don't know why they wouldn't just stick with fish," eagle chat user MaOtter said afterwards.

As of press time, the eaglets are huddled together, likely plotting how best to disturb their voyeurs today. If you want to get in on the action, tune in here.

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.

The First Woman To Put Her Face On Packaging Got Trolled Like Crazy

0
0

article-image

A Vegetable Compound label, featuring the portrait that confused the world. (Image: Public Domain)

As every single person on the Internet knows, women who dare to enter the public eye are regularly pilloried. Message boards are rife with misogyny. Trolls lurk under every tweet. "Don't read the comments" has become a necessary mantra.

But as 19th century apothecary Lydia E. Pinkham might attest, none of this is particularly modern. In the late 1800s, Pinkham's face became among the most recognizable in the world—and this brought consequences. Until she came along, the only woman whose image showed up regularly in public was Queen Victoria.

When Pinkham first put herself on a bottle of her bestselling Vegetable Concoction, men sent her hate mail, harping on her haircut and her "cast-iron smile." Journalists mixed her up with other famous women. College choirs made fun of her in song. All because she dared to put her portrait on a label.

Before becoming a well-known medicine maven, Pinkham had led a relatively quiet life. She was a schoolteacher, mother, and dedicated abolitionist in her hometown of Lynn, Massachusetts. She got into preparing medicines at the age of 56, through knack and necessity: the economy was tanking, her family needed money, and she happened to have a great recipe for a much-needed drug.

Nineteenth century pharmacies were full of patent medicines—mixtures which, though dodgy by modern standards, helped citizens through illnesses and complaints, often by slyly dosing them with cocaine or opium. Pinkham had spent years concocting a menstrual cramp-soothing mixture that all the neighborhood women swore by. In 1875, hoping local appeal would translate, she brewed up the first commercial batch of her "Vegetable Compound"—some roots, some seeds, and a generous amount of alcohol, all stirred together on the stove.

article-image

A page from "Lydia Pinkham's Recipe Book" illustrates some of the company's other prescient marketing strategies. (Image: Lisa Yarost/CC BY 2.0)

The bitter brown sludge didn't look or taste like much, but it hit the spot for a number of women with nowhere else to turn. As Sarah Stage explains in Female Complaints, science during that time had all sorts of hysterical ideas about the female reproductive system, and doctors "frequently overtreated and maltreated the uterus," sometimes going so far as to pre-emptively remove a woman's ovaries to save her from the ravages of menstruation. Fearing such drastic measures, patients were often reluctant to discuss even basic aches and pains with their doctors.

In this climate, Pinkham's medicine, made by and for women and billed as "a Sure Cure… without the knife," flew off the shelves. To help it along, Pinkham offered up her services as a kind of medically-minded Dear Abby, inviting customers to write in describing their ailments—for which she would prescribe, of course, more Vegetable Compound. They would then write back with effusive thanks. 

Meanwhile, her sons Will and Dan turned themselves into a two-man marketing team, converting Lydia's advice and customers' testimonials into flyers, pamphlets, and newspaper ads. A few years into the venture, hoping to expand the business's reach even more, Dan decided to add something new to the Vegetable Compound bottle—a picture of Lydia. Her wise, kind face would help make her product even more relatable, the Pinkham family thought. In 1879, they commissioned a portrait, and rolled out a new campaign with Lydia front and center.

article-image

Buffalo Bill Cody featured himself prominently in ad campaigns, like this 1900 one for his Wild West Show. (Image: Library of Congress)

This wasn't just new for the company—it was new for the world. "In the 19th century, a woman offering her image for circulation in the public sphere was almost unheard of," writes Elizabeth Lowry in "Eponymous Elixirs." While entrepreneurial men used their own faces to advertise cough drops and Wild West shows, women shown in ads were usually generic consumers, shown smoking cigarettes or reducing their chins. "Mrs. Pinkham's use of her own image for circulation was considered extremely unladylike," Lowry writes.

Nevertheless, the Pinkhams leaned hard on their new tactic, shipping giant lithographs of Lydia to drugstore owners and printing small ones on collectible cards, which they attached to advertisements. Soon, their founder's face was gazing out from jar labels, newspapers, and the windows of well-trafficked streets. According to Sammy R. Danna's Lydia Pinkham: The Face That Launched a Thousand Ads, the picture was painted on walls and posterboarded on fences, and even infiltrated people's homes.

One newspaper reported that the company sent "large, mounted portraits of Mrs. Pinkham" to "various lady correspondents." "Soon, many household walls were adorned by the familiar, motherly face of the Massachusetts woman who had done so much for all women," the article read.

article-image

A Pinkham trading card from the 1880s. (Image: Boston Public Library/CC BY 2.0)

The response was immediate and double-edged. "The portrait took on a life of its own," writes Danna. Some confused newspapers began using Mrs. Pinkham's face to stand in for other famous women, including Susan B. Anthony and "a few presidents' wives." One legend holds that, late one night, the Boston Herald's layout guy got drunk and pasted a picture of Lydia on top of every single column in the paper.

Other responses were overtly hostile. Men took advantage of the Pinkhams' request for testimonials to send letters telling Lydia to change her hair or to stop smiling so much. This note, sent in 1880, sums up the most common complaints:

Madam,

If it is necessary that you should parade your portrait in every country paper in the United States can’t you in mercy to the nation have a new one taken once in a while? Do your hair a little differently say – have a different turn to your head & look solemn. Anything to get rid of that cast iron smile! You ought to feel solemn any way that your face pervades the mind of the nation like a nightmare & that you have become a bug bear to innocent children. Also that portrait is destroying the circulation of the newspapers. I have stopped my county paper to get rid of it & I know of several flourishing papers that have been absolutely killed by it. I think my words express the heartfelt desire of a long suffering people & that I am sustained in this request by the strongest public sentiment ever brought to bear on any subject!

Yours,

T.G Scott

By the mid-1880s, there was a popular college choir song making fun of Lydia: "There’s a face that haunts me ever, there are eyes mine always meet / as I read the morning paper, as I walk the crowded street," it began. "Sing, oh! Sing of Lydia Pinkham, and her love for the human race / how she sells her vegetable compound and the papers publish her face."

article-image

A Vegetable Compound ad, weighing down the East River Suspension Bridge in the late 1800s. (Image: Boston Public Library/CC BY 2.0)

Despite this rash of critical men, actual Vegetable Compound sales went through the roof. By the end of the 19th century, Pinkham was "the best-known woman in America," LIFE Magazinewrote decades later. After Lydia's death, in 1883, her relatives kept her portrait on company materials, and customers continued to write her for advice. The Pinkhams, who couldn't afford to lose Lydia's promotional power, hired other old, wise women to answer the letters.

In 1904, as part of an expose titled "How the Private Confidences of Women are Laughed At," the Ladies' Home Journal published an updated Pinkham portrait—a photo of her 20-year-old tombstone. But even this didn't really affect sales. In 1949, the company was selling three million bottles a year. The original Lydia Pinkham Medicine Company Factory, in Lynn, didn't close shop until 1973.

These days, thanks to some trademark transfers, you can still buy Pinkham-branded compounds and supplements. Lydia's portrait, slightly simplified over the decades, continues to gaze calmly out of the packaging. Were Lydia herself around to answer letters, she might have to reconsider her medicinal formula. But she would also have at least one well-earned, timeless piece of advice to offer: Never mind the haters.

Over Half a Ton of Ancient Roman Coins Unearthed by Construction Workers

0
0

Over 1,300 pounds of ancient Roman coins were discovered by a construction crew laying pipes on Wednesday in southern Spain.

The coins, many of which were minted with the likenesses of the emperors Maximian and Constantine, were found in 19 amphoras, sealed jug-like containers that were apparently used to store the money. 

The coins were not buried deep, just about a yard beneath the earth in Tomares, outside of Seville, according to the Associated Press

"The machines hit against something that wasn't normal for this soil," a town official told a CNN affiliate. "The workers immediately stopped, and soon discovered that there were many coins there, inside broken amphoras."

Pipe-laying, for now, has been halted as archaeologists survey the earth. Once verified, officials say, the coins will likely go on display in the Seville Archaeological Museum.


Watch Hopes and Dreams Get Crushed in Seconds

0
0

Tune into minute two of this video, and you'll see that watching the crushing of hopes and dreams has never been more fun! Hydraulic presses are normally used for forging, molding, and metal forming operations, but at the Finland-based Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube, you can see them put to much more creative uses. (Think: deep-frozen stuff and fruit salads.)

What does the hydraulic press operator have to say about crushing hopes and dreams?

"That was quite easy."

Happy Friday—now go out there and crush it.

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.

The U.S. Has Mountains of Cheese in Storage

0
0
article-image

(Photo: Taryn/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Maybe this is a dream you have. To be in a room with a mountain of cheese. Well, around 1.2 million pounds of it is stored at this very minute in industrial refrigerators across America–the most since 1984, according to Bloomberg–meaning your dream might be more possible than ever. 

The huge stockpiles are the result of cheap cheese from Europe flooding the market. The U.S. was the top importer for European cheese in January and February, which resulted in less demand for American-made cheese at home. 

Over half of the U.S. cheese in storage is literally that: American, the processed cheese. Two percent more is Swiss, while the rest is a variety of other cheeses, according to Bloomberg

Cheese is good, and you should be eating cheese, maybe even a mountain of cheese. Or becoming a Master Cheesemaker in Wisconsin

Newly Found Walt Whitman Series Reveals He Advocated for Paleo Diet

0
0
article-image

Walt Whitman in 1887 in New York. (Photo: George C. Cox/Public Domain)

It turns out that Walt Whitman, known as the bard of democracy, also had some pretty strong views when it comes to diet, exercise, and even standing versus sitting while you work. 

In what some are calling the biggest new Whitman discovery in decades, 47,000 new words attributed to the poet have been discovered, the New York Times reports

The discovery, of a series of articles Whitman did for a long-forgotten New York newspaper, contains exhortations, practical advice, and a holistic philosophy of personal health, with an emphasis on moderation. 

The series was published in 1858, when Whitman was 39, in the New York Atlas. A graduate student in Houston discovered the articles last summer on surviving copies of microfilm, according to the Times. Entitled "Manly Health and Training," the series is being published for the first time since the 19th century in the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Among Whitman's advice? Eat mainly meat, "to the exclusion of all else," a principle that presaged modern diet trends. Don't be sedentary and stand up if you can. Make the use of "base-ball" shoes—then softer on the feet than more common footwear—more widespread. 

Mainly, though, his message is: keep moving. 

“To you, clerk, literary man, sedentary person, man of fortune, idler, the same advice,” he wrote, according to the Times. “Up!”

The World's Most Powerful Particle Collider Was Thwarted by a Weasel

0
0

article-image

Inside part of the Large Hadron Collider. (Photo: Image Editor/CC BY 2.0)

Located in the countryside near Geneva, Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful and expensive particle accelerator, does important work for physics, recreating events that happened right after the Big Bang by smashing high-energy particles into one another at super-fast speeds. 

But all that stopped early Friday, when a mysterious power outage halted the 38,000-ton machine; engineers who investigated found that even the smaller creatures among us can threaten the work of dedicated scientists—specifically, a tiny weasel.

The little mammal reportedly snuck into the collider’s electrical system and gnawed through some very important wires, causing a short circuit that damaged the collider’s transformer connections. According to the BBC, the creature didn’t survive the escapade. 

As part of the rodent family, weasels and their ilk love to chew and explore. Unfortunately for the scientific community, this weasel chose its last great adventure just as LHC scientists were closing in on new data for new particles and the Higgs Boson, a theorized particle that can help explain a lot of modern particle physics, according to NPR. The physicists will have to wait; the LHC will shut down for a week or two to fix damages. 

For officials at the LHC, this isn’t necessarily an unexpected occurrence in the wilds of Switzerland. In 2009, for example, a bird is suspected of dropping a piece of bread into the machine, causing a brief stoppage then. 

“We are in the countryside, and of course we have wild animals everywhere."Arnaud Marsollier, representative for CERN, the organization of scientists who run the LHC, toldNPR

While CERN’s own thorough report on the incident says it plans to "resume physics" as soon as repairs are made, it also shares that this is, “Not the best week for LHC!" Apparently, it’s not the best week for adventurous rodents, either.

Wolverines Are Now Being Trained to Find Avalanche Survivors

0
0
article-image

A wolverine, a native species notorious for its relentless hunting and scavenging instincts. (Photo: Per Harald Olsen/NTNU/CC BY 2.0)

People have recruited animals for all kinds of tasks throughout time—huskies have pulled sleds, birds carried messages, horses and donkeys brought humans and their wares to faraway places. Now, a new animal is getting ready to take the limelight: the notoriously vicious wolverine, which may become the next expert animal for finding avalanche survivors. 

Wolverines are about the size of a small dog, and are powerful predators and scavengers that move deftly in the snow. Mike Miller at Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center saw potential in the furry, sharp-toothed mammals, and recently made the proposal to use the wolverine to help others. They can be trained to sniff out humans specifically, and can learn to do so in as little as a week; the program’s founders say they’re actually smarter and easier to train than dogs, which are used currently to find avalanche survivors. “Anything you can train a dog to do, you can train a wolverine to do, five times quicker,” Miller told Outside.   

Six people have died in Alaska due to avalanches this past year, and avalanches caused numerous deaths in the U.S. between 1950 and 2013. One of the challenges of saving people caught beneath the waves of heavy snow is finding them. Wolverines have evolved to have high endurance for physical activity and smell efficiently in the snow, and they naturally look for carrion beneath avalanches. 

While many are wary of using a sharp-toothed predator/scavenger to help injured people out of the snow, one of the project’s founders, Steve Kroschel, is confident they can be gentle. He’s kept and trained wolverines in captivity for decades, playing with the sharp-clawed beasts like they were kittens. "It will bite me on the neck and drag me around, and do all that play behavior like it's killing its prey. And in all these years, I've never been sent to the emergency room,” Kroschel told CBC, though the wolverines will be supervised by a human when on rescue missions. 

To make wolverines gentle enough to help humans, they have to imprint on a human just after birth. One of the challenges now faced with these wolverine trainers is breeding them, which has been difficult to do in captivity. Luckily, two wolverines, Kayla and Kasper will be making a go of it soon; it might only be a matter of time before wolverines are synonymous with search and rescue.

The Legacy of May Day Violence isn't a Maypole—It's the 8-Hour Workday

0
0
article-image

Workers in a fuse factory in the 1800s. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

May Day is a confusing holiday in America. For most who think of it, it celebrates the ancient Celtic day of flowers and rebirth, with laughing children dancing around the maypole. Many might remember picking a flower as the subtle celebration of this on the first of May.

But May Day has a bloodier, revolutionary past in this country. The International Workers' Day of May Day, the holiday's full name, originated in the United States in 1886 as a radical response to abusive employers, for something many people take for granted today: the eight-hour workday. 


In the 1880s, employment conditions were harsh: workers often performed dangerous tasks while under-fed and under-slept, working from 10-16 hours per day, seven days a week. Many died due to accidents. The working class, disenchanted by a capitalist system that only benefited their bosses, were romanced by socialism and a power from the people. Socialist groups formed; anarchist groups followed in response to socialists' bureaucracy, calling for the end of all hierarchal structures so workers could fully control their own conditions. Socialist and anarchist workers, with their intense involvement, swelled the worker’s unions

According to Eric Chase at the Industrial Workers of the World, “the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." They held to that commitment, with one anarchist paper printing: 

Workingmen to Arms!
War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.
The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.
One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!
MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.


Workers planned to organize a strike; what wasn’t planned was how many people would join. In 1886 on the first May Day, 300,000 workers left their jobs across the country—and the demonstrations became violent. Around 40,000 people in Chicago gathered to make speeches and crush the falsehood of capitalist dreams. As the picketing continued, so did the tension. Families and children gathered at Haymarket Square for a smaller, 3,000-person talk on May 3rd,  to address police brutality and the eight-hour-day. The crowd dwindled, according to Time, to only a few hundred—the Mayor even left and “went to bed”. As police told the crowd was told to move along, a police officer and detective alleged that one anarchist insisted it was a peaceful gathering, making a scene. 

Suddenly, someone threw a bomb. 

article-image

Etching of the Haymarket Massacre of May 1st, 1886. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
No one knows who detonated the explosive, even today, but the police reacted to it as evidence they needed physical force. Police fired recklessly into the crowd, killing at least seven and wounding 40 civilians who had gathered for the talk. According to Chase, even the police officers who died were killed by their own shooting-frenzy, rather than the bomb, though 67 were injured.  “Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American," Chase wrote. Eight prominent anarchists were sentenced to death, some of which allegedly weren’t at the public discussion, and the holiday was immediately maligned. 

After that, there were several attempts to keep anarchists and socialists away from the larger public. In 1958, Eisenhower declared the practically Orwellian “Law and Order Day” as May 1st  to celebrate laws made to ensure freedom, not coincidentally in congruence with an anti-Soviet sentiment and a perception that all socialist and anarchists were dangerous. Every year since, American presidents declare the holiday on May 1st. 

The eight-hour day is something that many still strive for—service industry workers in particular are often given long double shifts with hardly a meal break in between. “Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began,” Chase writes. Amid the possible flower picking and law-abiding activities this May Day, don't forget to nod to the workers who gave their all just to have a normal work day. 

Army General Inadvertently Creates Stir with Mention of 'Little Green Men'

0
0

 

article-image

 UFO theorists believe alien life has already made contact with planet earth. (Photo: Flickr Media Commons/Davide.Santoni)

For anyone who believes in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and alien-human contact, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Malley just opened a flying saucer-shaped pandora’s box with his speech to Norwich University students on the 100th anniversary of the ROTC program.

Though his speech was short, two little phrases was all it took for believers in government-alien conspiracies to spread the word, according to the Army Times.

The speech began normally enough, with the general discussing the complexities of our world, which have increased since WWI and WWII. 

"You're going to be leading the soldiers and sailors and the airmen and the marines in that world,” said General Malley. “You'll be dealing with terrorists, you'll be dealing with hybrid armies, with little green men, you're going to be dealing with tribes… you're going to be dealing with it all, and you're going to be dealing with it simultaneously.”

Alien enthusiasts latched on to “hybrid armies”, which supposedly refers to human-alien hybrids, among other theories. “Little green men,” they argued, of course meant life from outer space.  

Articles and YouTube videos began flooding conspiracy circles; an article at Ground Zero Media combines apocalyptic possibilities and that the hybrid army could have to do with human-tech hybrids and super soldiers, among other hidden possibilities in the General's "amazing announcement". A video by UFO theorist username twophaseofmoon provides some commentary for the speech. One host points out that while General Malley speaks, “…nobody's laughing here. Nobody's laughing at the statement. Is this disclosure, at hand, right now?" and asks, "Why is an army chief of staff saying something like this?”

His co-host couldn’t wait to make his own statement, adding that ”Mark Malley—he's coming up, he's not afraid. I think he knows something that everybody else doesn't want to tell us," and added "He’s not hiding nothing here. He left it all on the table.” 

But not everyone thinks he left it all on the table for the alien enthusiasts among us. Army officials assured the public that this supposed proof of alien contact with planet earth was not what General Malley was saying. Army Timesreports that “little green men” is actually another term used by Russian and Ukrainian reported to described soldiers who wear unmarked green uniforms, and mentions of a "hybrid threat" has been used to describe the complex threats that include enemy hackers and terrorist groups. As if that would stop the alien inclined to stop theorizing.


Singaporean English is Almost Impossible to Pick Up

0
0
article-image

The Merlion is a famous statue and symbol of Singapore. "To merlion" in Singlish means to puke everywhere. (Photo: WolfgangSladkowski/CC BY 3.0)

"Two dollar onny, dis one," a street vendor might say to you in Singapore. A local might reply, "Wah! So espensive one, cannot leh."

While this might sound like broken English, it is an example of Singlish, the highly complicated English creole spoken in Singapore. Its staccato, off-grammar patois is the subject of much bemusement for visitors to the country, and it's almost impossible for outsiders to imitate.

“Singlish is easy to learn, but hard to execute,” says Sai Pogaru, who moved to Singapore in 2001 and is now a citizen. “There is a certain flair to the language/accent. It actually requires lots of practice to sound authentic.”

Singlish is not just one creole: it’s an amalgamation of many different Southeast Asian dialects and pidgins all rolled up into one. If you haven’t heard it, the video below offers a humorous Singlish voiceover for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

Singlish comes from the mixing of Singapore's four official languages: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. English, now the lingua franca, was brought over by the British during Singapore’s period of colonization, which lasted from 1819 to 1965. Following its introduction into Singaporean schools, English began to permeate the streets outside them, and was picked up by the Malay, Chinese and Indian populations. After independence, the newly formed Singaporean government made the decision to continue teaching in English after identifying that there was a need for a common language in the country.

Many British expatriates moved back to England after Singapore's independence. In the unregulated environment following their departure, the English spoken in Singapore became substantially influenced by Malay—the native language—and the other languages brought over by immigrants: Tamil and the Chinese Mandarin and Hokkien dialects.

The grammar of Singaporean English began to mirror the grammar of these languages. For example, a modern-day Singaporean could say “I go bus-stop wait for you,” to mean that he will wait for you at the bus stop. This phrase could be translated into either Malay or Chinese without having to change the grammatical structure of the sentence. Those unfamiliar with the grammatical structure of these languages, as a result, have a hard time picking up Singlish.

Words from the other languages became appropriated into the creole as well, creating an entire Singlish lexicon that is used today. The word “ang moh,” for example, is a Hokkien word which literally translates to “red hair,” but is used in Singlish to describe people of Caucasian descent. The Malay word “makan” is commonly used to mean food, or the act of eating. The Tamil word “goondu,” which means “fat” in its original language, is used in Singlish to describe a person who is not very smart.

article-image

An advertisement written in Singlish on the Singaporean island of Pulau Ubin. (Photo: Michael Elleray/CC BY 2.0)

Perhaps the most famous Singlish word is the ubiquitous “lah,” an example of the language’s more playful sensibilities. It is essentially a filler word with no meaning. “Lah” can be placed anywhere in a sentence, but is often used as a form of audible punctuation at the end. Another popular exclamation is "wah lao," or the even more flamboyant "wah lao eh," used to express surprise or wonder.

One of the many barriers to picking up Singlish is its complicated intonation. English is a stress-timed language, which means that some syllables are longer, and others are shorter. Singlish, however, is syllable-timed, which means that each syllable is pronounced for an equal amount of time, making Singlish far more staccato in nature.

Where it gets even more complicated is in the tones. English is a non-tonal language, which means that words do not have particular tones associated with them. Chinese, on the other hand, is a tonal language, in which words change their meaning depending on the tone used to speak them. Singlish retains all the tones of the Chinese words that it borrows, but maintains no tones in its English, Malay and Tamil words, making it a semi-tonal language.

There’s more. Though Singlish is prevalent all over Singapore, it operates on a spectrum dependent upon the circumstances, making it even harder to trace down. In formal settings, for example, Singlish tends to be toned down to its acrolectal form: Singlish words and grammatical structures are eliminated, and only the accent remains. In the day-to-day, however, a more colloquial form of Singlish is used.

article-image

A warning sign in Singapore written in the country's four official languages: English, Chinese, Tamil and Malay. (Photo: Gabbe/Public Domain)

Pogaru, who moved to Singapore with his family at the age of eight, explains that his ability to speak Singlish only came when he joined the Singapore Armed Forces at the age of 18. “Singlish to me was just an accent with a "lah" thrown in at the end of a sentence,” he says of his opinion of the creole before joining the army. “I didn’t think much of it.”

His experience with Singlish drastically changed in his first year of National Service, the two-year period of compulsory service required of all male citizens of Singapore. “I vividly remember an incident in Basic Military Training where my sergeant told my platoon, 'You all have 15 minutes. Go up and lepak [relax],’” says Pogaru. He spent the next 15 minutes trying to figure out what “lepak” meant and what exactly the sergeant wanted. “Singlish was the language of communication in NS, and I realized that I would have to learn some new vocabulary to truly understand what was happening."

Though Pogaru has worked hard to increase his understanding of Singlish over the years since his time in the army, he’s not quite sure he has it down yet. “Despite knowing Singlish, I still have not been able to impress my Singaporean friends with my attempts to sound local,” he says. “Guess I just have to keep practicing.”

The Fascist Building in Upper Manhattan

0
0
article-image

Casa Italiana at Columbia University. (Photo: Another Believer/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Columbia University's Casa Italiana is most recognizable today for a star turn in FX's spy thriller The Americans. While a carefully-constructed soundstage lookalike is used now, the Casa served as the original filming location for the show’s opulent Soviet Rezidentura. Its real-life history might be as interesting as its onscreen identity, though: the stately Casa currently hosts a renowned research institute—but the uptown Manhattan building has a history of political intrigue that’s little known outside the ivory tower.

Built in the tumultuous 1920s and intended to promote Italian culture in the United States, the Casa Italiana was political from the start. According to a January 20, 1926, article in the New York Times, Italy’s Fascist prime minister Benito Mussolini was involved with the Casa even before construction began, having first learned about the project from Columbia instructor and General Secretary of the Institute of Italian Culture Peter Riccio in July of 1925. As the Timesreported,

“The Prime Minister was enthusiastic over it, offering to equip the entire house with Italian furniture of various periods, paintings and art objects obtained from the old royal palaces of Italy.”

article-image

The stairwell in Casa Intalian, as shown in The Americans. (Photo: Screengrab/FX)

The Casa’s first political scandal took place in February, 1928, when a prominent anti-Fascist named Luigi Criscuolo publicly complained that every lecturer scheduled to speak at the Casa had Fascist sympathies.

Just four months earlier, the Casa’s Columbus Day opening ceremonies had been presided over by radio technology pioneer and Fascist party official Guglielmo Marconi.

article-image

 Annet Mahendru as KGB agent Nina in the Casa's library from Season 1, Episode 4. (Photo: Screengrab/FX)

Columbia’s president Nicholas Murray Butler dismissed Criscuolo’s allegations, writing:

“The university does not permit itself to be used for what it has become fashionable to call propaganda of any kind, nor would it under any circumstances take part in or foment the partisan discussion of the international politics of any State or nation.”

Regardless of the truth of Criscuolo’s allegations, American support for Fascism was widespread when the Casa opened. In fact, a 1932 documentary about the Prime Minister titled Mussolini Speaks became a runaway hit with American audiences, who earnestly admired how Mussolini’s Fascist party had tackled Italy’s economic and infrastructure problems head-on. As the decade progressed, however, American criticism of Fascism gained steam.

On October 5, 1934, the front page of Columbia’s student newspaper was dominated by an article about an upcoming anti-Fascist protest planned by university’s Socialist Club paired with a withering editorial by an Oxford University student, who begged President Butler to take a stand against Fascism. 

article-image

Mussolini was enthusiastic about Casa Italiana. (Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-08300/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The next month, prominent political magazine The Nationtook Butler to task for continuing to support—or, at least, not to denounce—Fascism. In an article bluntly titled “Fascism at Columbia University,” an anonymous writer singled out the Casa Italiana:

“[I]t is rather surprising that Dr. Butler says nothing about, and therefore presumably is not aware of, the subtle Fascist propaganda within the walls of his own university. The center of this propaganda is the Casa Italiana... it has become an unofficial adjunct of the Italian Consul-General’s office in New York and one of the most important sources of Fascist propaganda in America.”

The Nation’s campaign didn’t sway President Butler immediately, but as the prospect of a second World War loomed ever closer, the Casa’s activities became less political. In the decades since, the allegation that the building had served as a covert Mussolini mouthpiece in the 1930s has come to dominate student rumors about and even academic discussions of the building. American intellectual historian John Patrick Diggins even called it “a schoolhouse for budding Fascist ideologues.” 

article-image

Radio pioneer and Fascist party official Guglielmo Marconi. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-39702)

“It’s true,” says Dr. Barbara Faedda, the associate director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, which has operated out of the Casa since the early 1990s, “that members of the Fascist regime enthusiastically came to visit the Casa. The Fascist government sent checks for the purchase of appliances. And the Casa worked with the Fascist government to arrange for student exchanges.”

This is only part of the story, however. Contrary to the claims made by Criscuolo in 1928, Dr. Faedda has come across evidence in the archives showing that visiting lecturers were far from unanimously pro-Fascist—Marxist and Jewish gatherings were also held in the building in the 1930s. These findings only make the building more intriguing to Dr. Faedda, who noted, “I think it is impossible not to be fascinated by this building and its history.”

article-image

Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler in 1916. (Photo: Library of Congress)

Still, Mussolini’s connection to the Casa Italiana looms large in campus legend. “Some visitors ask to see Mussolini’s portrait,” Dr. Faedda told me, “and seem disappointed when informed that we have no such portrait.” Ironically, during the building’s on-screen run as the Rezidentura, one of the biggest changes The Americans’ set designers made to the building was to hang in the Casa’s marble stairwell an enormous portrait of another controversial 20th century leader, Vladimir Lenin.

How to Raise an Army by Debasing Your Currency and Screwing Your Neighbor

0
0
article-image

Coin debasers hard at work. (Photo: Public domain)

In the early 17th century, Germany's numerous lords, princes, and sundry other rulers had a problem. This area of the world was on the verge of a war. A big one. 

Wars cost money, and at that time money was still made from actual precious metal. Wars were paid for in gold and silver, and that's what these soon-to-be warlords needed. That hunger for precious metals set off one of the most dramatic financial crises in European history, the "Kipper und Wipper" period, in which neighboring states were actively defrauding each other with bad currency.

In the early 1620s, when the crisis peaked, Germany as we know it today didn't exist yet; there was only a collection of German states united under the failing Holy Roman Empire. Many of Germany's states minted their own coins, and they could vary from state to state, especially in small denominations. What made these coins valuable, no matter what border they crossed, was the silver within. 

But, to raise money, it was possible to create coins with less precious metals than the value stamped on their face. Kipper und Wipper, a term that came from contemporary pamphlets and broadsheets, refers to the clipping of coins' edges and the swinging of the scales as good money was exchanged for bad.

Charles P. Kindleberger, author of Manias, Panics and Crashes, gives the most comprehensive English-language account of the crisisA simple way to debase currency was to trim off the edges and use that metal to make new coins. A more complicated way was to create a whole new batch of coins that contained a higher proportion of copper—although not so much that it'd be obvious. Either way, the coins were worth less than they were supposed to be.

The coin altering practice probably began in northern Italy, but by the beginning of the 17th century, the debased coins had spread. Towards the end of the 1610s, as the Thirty Years War began, traders in German states started aggressively swapping bad coin for good. An excellent way to do this was to take debased money from one place, cross a border to a place where the currency had not yet been debased, and trade doctored money for above-board money. Then, you could take the honest money, with its higher silver content, back to the mint, extract a portion of the silver as profit, and take your newly minted bad money back out into the world to trade it for good money again.

article-image

Debased coins. (Photo: Public domain)

These sort of trades had a domino effect. The state that had gotten the bad end of this deal then had an incentive to go ahead and debase its coins, and trade its now-adulterated currency for the legitimate currency of a new place. Soon the southern German states were awash in "Kippergeld"—coins that weren't worth much of anything. Some coins had been stripped of their silver entirely and were just copper coins, made to look kind of silvery.

These practices only affected small coins: larger denominations of silver and gold were left alone. Accordingly, some people, often poorer people, did very badly in this era. Some people, often richer people, did very well. It was a profitable enough practice that mints started popping up everywhere: Kindleberger notes that the number of mints in Brunswick, a city in Lower Saxony, more than doubled in just three years.

Eventually, the monetary system was in such bad shape that German states entered into a mint treaty that reset the value of currency and reinstated some controls on the mints that made them. Bad coins were taken out of circulation and good ones made to replace them. But not before whole fortunes were made by aggressively screwing over one's neighbor.

For Sale: Rare Picasso Tableware that Could Fetch Millions

0
0
article-image

Not great for eating on, but still worth millions. (Photo: coffee shop soulja/CC BY 2.0)

For the first time in history, a complete set of Pablo Picasso’s embossed silver plates is going up for auction. They might not be right for eating dinner off of, but these pieces of truly baller tableware are already expecting to draw over $2 million.

Of course, Picasso is best known for his work as a painter, but he was also an accomplished sculptor who wasn’t afraid to branch into mediums like… plates. The artist created the set of 24 plates in conjunction with French silversmith François Hugo. Picasso made up the plate designs in ceramic, which he then gave over to Hugo to turn into silver plates and medallions. Originally, the set of plates were meant to simply be part of Picasso’s personal collection and were only on display in his studio for friends and visitors, but, in 1967, he allowed the silversmith to begin making limited runs of each plate for sale to collectors.

Each of the plates features a different design, usually an abstract face, and range from the highly detailed to the simple. While many of the plates feature bullfighting themes, probably the most remarkable of the 24 depicts Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline Roque, as it is the only one that seems to directly represent a specific subject.

According to Blouin Artinfo, only 20 editions of each plate were ever produced (not including Picasso’s personal proofs), and the June 23rd auction set to take place at Sotheby’s Hong Kong will be the first time that all 24 of the designs are being sold as a complete set. Such rare works by Picasso aren’t going cheap, with the entire set expected to fetch over $2 million on auction. Not bad for some plates.

Found: Captain Cook’s Ship

0
0
article-image

The HMS Endeavor. (Image: Samuel Atkins/Public domain)

In 1768, James Cook sailed from England in a ship named the Endeavour. He was aiming for the Pacific Ocean and the lands there that Britain had yet to map. The ship made it around Cape Horn and into the Pacific, all the way to Australia.

But while Cook became famous, his boat slipped away. It was renamed the Lord Sandwich and sold to a private fleet. In 1778, the ship was hired to carry British troops to America, where it disappeared.

It’s long been known that the ship was scuttled off the coast of Rhode Island, but its exact location was lost. Now though, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project says there's an “80 to 100% chance” they’ve located the ship.

In 1998, the project turned up historical documents detailing the locations of the Lord Sandwich and other scuttled ships. Since then, the project has studied 13 ships at 9 different sites. They were able to determine that the Lord Sandwich was part of a group of five ships. They've located the wreck sites of four of those five ships, and possibly the last one as well.

The project has plans, yet to be detailed, to confirm the identity of the ship during 2016.  But if they've located all five ships, one of those should be the Lord Sandwich—it's just a matter of determining which one. 

Bonus finds: Climbers who disappeared 16 years ago

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. 

Viewing all 11432 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images