A strange sound pierces most residential streets in Indian cities: a recurring cry that sounds almost like an attempt to imitate a bird call. It is the resonant call of the feriwala, a street vendor who comes around to sell wares to customers at their homes.
The feriwala is not to be confused with the street hawker, who has a stationary stand where customers come to him or her. The feriwala, on the other hand, comes to you, by doing rounds of a few blocks’ radius within a neighborhood. Each neighborhood tends to have its own feriwalas, who usually only sell one type of ware each and are generally well-known to the residents.
Because their customers cannot see them from within their homes, feriwalas incorporate vocal announcements in their advertising practices. To let people know what kind of wares they are selling, each feriwala has a unique call. While sometimes the call is just the name of the good that the vendor sells, repeated multiple times, other street vendors choose a simple, recurring vowel sound with a unique, resonant pitch to alert customers to their presence.
What makes the calls so impressive is the fact that feriwalas have mastered the art of projecting their voices, and had figured out catchy jingles for themselves well before the advertising industry came into the game. The only difference is that an advertising jingle is a perky, upbeat ditty that may or may not burn itself into your brain, while the street vendor’s call is a haunting, piercing tune that lingers in your memory.
In some ways, the advertisements are like music, and the feriwalas the musicians. In 2003, artist Rashmi Kaleka decided to record some of the New Delhi feriwalas' “songs” as a way of preserving their sounds, which were becoming less and less common with the growth of other retail sectors in India, such as shopping malls and online shopping. Her project ended up lasting several years.
“When I ask the pheriwallas to look into the camera, they start performing,” Kaleka told Scroll.in. “They know immediately that they are the artist.”
You can listen to some of Kaleka’s recordings below.
In the above video, the seller repeats the same phrase over and over: "jharuwala," which means "mop man," or "broom man." As you can hear, the man pitches his voice up and down in the exact same way each time, as though the word were a lyric in a song.
In this video, if you listen carefully, you'll hear a meaningless yet ubiquitous sound at around 14 seconds in, which sounds like a drawn out "eh" that pitches upward at the end.
This video features a man who Kaleka recorded for several years, who is losing his voice, perhaps as a result of his daily sales pitch. In his chant, he repeats the Hindi word for vegetables, "sabzi," over and over again. At around the halfway mark, he begins listing each of the vegetables he's carrying–potatoes, cauliflower, tomatoes, okra–in a rhythmic pattern.
Normally, in the northern hemisphere, tornadoes rotate in a counter-clockwise direction; this one was an “anticyclonic” tornado that was moving clockwise. It traveled thirteen miles, with winds up to 110 mph.
No one knows exactly why some tornadoes decide to stand out by rotating the opposite direction from their brethren. Often, they seem to be satellite tornados, and this one could have fit that model. Another, stronger hurricane was twisting nearby, kicking up enough stormy weather that the anticyclonic tornado was hard to see with the eye. (Radars picked it up, though.)
An anti-cyclonic tornado in Colorado. (Photo: James Smart)
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.
Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the pets. As reported on WFAA8, a woman in Argyle, Texas has put up her pet bison for sale on Craigslist, mostly, Karen Schoeve says, because she wants it to find a more comfortable home.
Schoeve has been treating the bison, named Bullet, like a part of her family for her whole life, to the point that the animal now roams the halls of Schoeve's home as comfortably as she does the small acreage of land around it. The eight-year-old buffalo weighs over 1,000 pounds, but, according to Schoeve, when the animal is in the house, it is as careful and delicate as a large dog might be. She’s even housebroken. Whether she is plopping down near the sofa because it’s too hot outside or is just staring at Schoeve’s fish tank, the lumbering beast seems to behave just like a big pet.
As described in the Craigslist ad, Bullet is also somewhat famous, having been featured in the kid’s book Heaven Is For Animals by Nancy Tillman.
But Bullet is also a massive ungulate that needs more room to roam, and, in the ad, Schoeve says that she is looking to place Bullet somewhere where she will have more space, but still plenty of human contact. In an interview with WFAA8, Schoeve said, through tears, “I just think she deserves better.” If you think you could give Bullet a better home, she is on sale for just under $6,000. Brooklynites looking for a novelty pet need not apply.
Four canine trespassers managed to sneak into Tokyo's Haneda Airport yesterday, giving themselves the run of the place and making life ruff for pilots, TheAsahi Shimbun reports.
The pack, which started out with four dogs, has disrupted 18 flights so far. Some planes were left circling in the air for a while, while others had to go land at different airports. Officials are confused as to how the dogs got through their ten-foot sensor-equipped fences. "We have never heard before of dog intrusions at airports," one said.
As of six hours ago, three of the dogs had been captured, and transport ministry staff were going after the lone holdout. Video footage from the Associated Press shows the last pooch running through the tall grass, trotting down the runway, enjoying the ocean views, and easily avoiding the officials' slow-moving vans.
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.
A beater approaches a chaser with the quaffle during a quidditch match in Vancouver, British Columbia. (Photo: Anton Bielousov/CC BY-SA 3.0)
On fields across the world there are people running around with broomsticks between their legs, throwing volleyballs through hoops, and chasing a person dressed in all yellow. They are playing Quidditch, the fictional wizarding game J.K. Rowling created in the Harry Potter novels.
There are almost 200 college quidditch teams in the United States that set standard rules, have referees and leagues, and host major tournaments, according to the national governing body U.S. Quidditch. It's a true competitive sport, but with necessary limitations—players are bound to the ground and must rely on imagination to fill in the fantastical elements.
In Rowling's magical world, Quidditch involves two teams of seven wizards and witches who fly around on brooms shooting a ball called the quaffle through three hoops, knocking players out of the game with enchanted flying balls or bludgers, and zooming after a small humming bird-like ball known as the golden snitch.
Non-magical, Earth-bound humans have a hard time recreating these conditions. But lately, they've been trying. Recently, some particularly dedicated fans and daredevils (who would certainly be sorted into the Gryffindor house) dressed up in Quidditch costumes and played the game while skydiving.
“It’s pretty amazing, but dangerous as well,” Albert Globus, a senior research engineer for San Jose State University, remarks on the skydivers’ YouTube video posted in April. Plummeting towards the ground, these skydivers are probably the closest anyone has ever gotten to playing Quidditch like it’s described in Rowling’s books. But Globus believes an even better environment for Quidditch lies beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Last month, Globus announced the winners of the annual NASA Ames Space Settlement Contest for sixth-to-12th-grade students—a competition meant to inspire children to develop fictional space colonies. This year, a team of Korean high schoolers won with a 10,000-person proposed colony that would revolve 500 kilometers (311 miles) above the equator in the Equatorial Low Earth Orbit. The colony, named the Divinity space settlement, would contain an industrial complex, assembly bay, docking port, and a microgravity complex fit to support two Quidditch stadiums.
“One of the things I liked about [Divinity] was that it had a Quidditch field,” says Globus, who runs and organizes the contest every year in collaboration with the NASA Ames Research Center and the National Space Society. “The reason that you might be able to pull off something pretty close to ‘real’ Quidditch is that in space you have microgravity.”
Microgravity, also referred to as zero-gravity and low-gravity, is a condition in which objects appear to be weightless. Astronauts in the International Space Station float because they are in a continuous freefall, explains Josh Colwell, a physics professor and director of the Center for Microgravity Research at the University of Central Florida. Microgravity isn’t created from the absence of gravity, but rather from the lack of force that pushes up against an object. We experience brief moments of microgravity at the top of a hill on a rollercoaster or when an elevator ascends and stops at a floor.
In 2008, astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus on the Space Shuttle Endeavour float alongside fresh fruit in microgravity conditons (Photo: NASA/Public Domain)
“It’s actually a terrible name because it implies that there isn’t that much gravity. It should really be called ‘freefall,’” Colwell says. “It’s like the old saying about Superman: The secret of flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss, and that’s what is happening with things in orbit and in airplane flights like the Vomit Comet [NASA’s reduced-gravity research aircraft].”
The only known documentation of a sport being played in space was in 1971 when Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard brought a six-iron golf club with him and hit two golf balls on the moon—one floating off for miles.
Some sports are more feasible to play in space than others, says Colwell. The challenge in playing any sport in space is how you would move around in a low-gravity environment. Football wouldn’t quite work because players would drift off as they lined up for each play, and basketball players would have difficulty dribbling the ball. Sports that are played in confined spaces, like squash and racquetball, would be entertaining because you could launch yourself towards the ball as it bounces off the walls and ceilings.
Globus says that Quidditch would actually be a great sport to play in space—if you had the right kind of modified broom. In a StarTalk Radio segment, Neil deGrasse Tyson explains that space Quidditch would look like a lot of people on brooms drifting in every direction unless there was a specially designed broom that would allow players to maneuver the field.
The 88-page proposal of the Divinity space colony details the general technology needed to fly on broomsticks in microgravity:
“Where magical broom are substituted with players’ legs and a ‘dead’ broom hanging between the thighs, Divinity’s Quidditch will have brooms that operate similar to jet packs. Players will have control over maneuvering the broom in the intended direction with adjustment of flaps while its speed can be governed by the use of throttle.”
Depending on the size of the jet pack or propeller, the brooms will need a sufficient battery or power source, says Globus. “I’m not sure how fast you’re going to be able to move, but it should be better than galloping around with a broomstick between your legs on the ground.”
An 1892 painting by Carl Kahler, entitled My Wife's Lovers. (Image: Public Domain)
In the 1860s, the cats of England were suffering from a major image problem. Having experienced the highs of Ancient Egyptian veneration and the lows of medieval torture on account of their supposed allegiance with the devil, cats were regarded by the average Victorian as scruffy, mewling rat-catchers who weren't welcome in well-appointed rooms. Then came one man who, with his unabashed adoration of his feline friends, shook up the cat world for good: Harrison Weir, organizer of England's first cat show.
Before Weir united cats and aristocrats, kitties were considered street animals.Cats provided a useful service—rodent extermination—but were not generally valued for their cuteness, cuddliness, or companionship. Charles Darwin lamented their "nocturnal rambling habits" in 1859's On the Origin of the Species, while Windsor Magazine noted that the cat was merely a "necessary household appendage." To snuggle with a cat would be to snuggle with your pest exterminator—it just wasn't their function.
Weir, a lover of many creatures including poultry, pigeons, dogs, and rabbits, considered cats "possibly the most perfect, and certainly the most domestic” of animals. Weir was not always a cat enthusiast—in his 1889 book Our Cats and All About Themhe confesses to having had "a bias" against them and says he took "some time coming to this belief." But once convinced of cats' merits, Weir became a feline evangelist.
“Long ages of neglect, ill-treatment, and absolute cruelty, with little or no gentleness, kindness, or training, have made the Cat self-reliant,” he wrote, taking care to capitalize the word "cat." He also threw in a gratuitous interspecies jibe: “The small or large dog may be regarded and petted, but is generally useless; the Cat, a pet or not, is of service.”
Weir's view of the cat as “an object of increasing interest, admiration, and cultured beauty” led him to develop a whole new form of competitive entertainment: the cat show. To give the whole thing an air of legitimacy and attract an upper-class crowd, Weir drafted a set of points and standards by which the cats, divided by breed and size, would be judged.
The cat-lover appointed himself as an adjudicator, along with his brother John and a priest named Reverend Macdona. With the help of his newly appointed show manager, F. Wilson, Weir then approached cat-owning acquaintances and rounded up "a goodly number" of animals to be evaluated.
Fulmer Zaida, a champion show cat born in 1895 who ended up earning over 150 prizes. (Photo: Public domain)
On the train heading to the Crystal Palace for the big event, Weir happened to run into a friend, who enquired as to his well-being and the purpose of his journey. When Weir explained the cat show, his friend was astonished. "A show of cats!" he cried. "Why, I hate the things."
Weir took a deep breath. "I am sorry, very sorry, that you do not like cats," he said, before spending several minutes explaining all the reasons he adored the animal. They can unlatch doors, or even knock with their paws for admittance! They catch rats and mice! They are full of sense!
According to Weir's book, Our Cats and All About Them, this impassioned evangelism became a bit much: “’Stop,’ said my friend, ‘I see you do like cats, and I do not, so let the matter drop.’”
A litter of kittens was now adorable, not a menace. (Photo: Public Domain)
When Weir finally arrived at Crystal Palace—with his resentful friend from the train in tow—he discovered to his delight that the show was to be a great success. Cats of varied sizes, colors, and markings were lapping at milk, “reclining on crimson cushions,” and being coddled by their doting owners.
That first show at Crystal Palace certainly had an impact on the perception of cats, who were gradually becoming more welcome in homes. More cat shows were mounted around the nation, and cat appreciation clubs began to form. In 1887, Weir founded the National Cat Club and, as president, helmed its first official show, again at Crystal Palace. Over 320 cats were entered into the competition.
But although the numbers said success, all was not well in cat-fancying land. In 1892, Weir wrote a new preface to the second edition of Our Cats and All About Them. In it he expressed his remorse at being part of the National Cat Club, whose ideals he no longer believed in. “I now feel the deepest regret that I was ever induced to be in any way associated with it,” he wrote.
The main problem, he said, was that narcissistic pet owners had made cat fancying all about themselves instead of focusing on the animals: “I found the principal idea of many of its members consisted not so much in promoting the welfare of the Cat as of winning prizes, and more particularly their own Cat Club medals.” (Weir would never give up his reverent capitalizing of Cat.)
Evaluating the entrants at an English show. (Photo: Public Domain)
The general public was not eligible to win these special Cat Club medals, which were reserved for Cat Club members and their felines. Weir found that haughty approach distasteful. Seeking to raise respect for cats, he had courted aristocrats to attend that first show, then been burned by their elitist tendencies.
Though cats in general were no longer considered dirty and wicked, class issues and snobbery continued to pervade cat shows. Some judging categories were divided by the class of the cat owners, which resulted in uppity remarks. “I am sorry to see that some cats entered into the working-men’s classes are also entered in the ordinary classes," wrote one reporter who attended a National Cat Club show in 1899. "[T]hese, to my mind are only bogus working-men’s cats."
The less-than-egalitarian nature of cat shows didn't stop the animals from securing a more general affection. "[T]he cat is gradually creeping into the affections of mankind, even in this busy work-a-day world,” wrote Frances Simpson in 1903's Book of the Cat. Simpson singled out Weir as a difference-maker, noting that "great strides" had been made in the realm of cat fancying since that day in 1871 when Weir "was laughed at by his incredulous and astonished railway companion."
Lady's Realm magazine expressed a similar opinion in 1900, saying Weir had “done wonders for the amelioration of pussy.” In three decades, cats had gone from being chased in the streets to being welcomed onto the hearth. Whether they won a prize at some snooty show was beside the point—as Lady's Realmsaid, "how great has been the change in the conditions of life of the harmless, necessary cat!”
Built as an observatory, the seven-windowed module was attached to the ISS six years ago, used by astronauts for experiments, to aid in docking, and for staring out into the dark abyss.
The windows are the largest ever put in space. Each is thick too, containing four panes of glass, because there's a lot of space garbage out there. And even the tiniest fleck can cause a huge amount of damage, since the ISS orbits the earth at approximately 17,150 miles per hour.
So yesterday, when Tim Peake, a British astronaut, tweeted the top image, it was both reassuring and a little frightening. ESA said that the chip in one of the Cupola's windows was likely caused by a fleck the size of flake of paint, or possibly an even smaller piece of metal debris.
The episode raised fresh questions about what some scientists have worried about for years: the Kessler Syndrome, the idea that we're putting so much garbage into space that we may soon render it uninhabitable, and impossible for orbiting satellites. More space debris means more collisions between space debris, meaning even tinier and more numerous space debris, until you reach a point of no return, the theory goes. (For a visual representation of what this might look like, see the film Gravity.)
Still, we're not quite there yet, and, for his part, Peake didn't seem too concerned. “I am often asked if the International Space Station is hit by space debris," Peake tweeted. "Yes–this is the chip in one of our Cupola windows, glad it is quadruple glazed!”
The Turrialba Volcano, around 30 miles east of Costa Rica's capital San Jose, has been increasingly active in recent years, spewing ash on occasion, as well as minor eruptions in recent years.
But on Thursday, the volcano saw its strongest eruption in decades, as the mountain sent ash nearly two miles in the air. Volcanologists captured spectacular video of the eruption, taken by an infrared camera, that shows lava shooting from the volcano's mouth.
“It was a single explosion but a really strong one. This means that there was high pressure inside the volcano,” Javier Pacheco, a government volcanologist, told the Tico Times.
An airport nearby was briefly closed, according to the paper, to give staff time to clean runways, which had become encrusted in ash.
As of Friday, the air around the volcano was still filled with ash and smoke. (You can see a live shot of the volcano here.)
Nearly 11,000 feet, the volcano was a destination for hikers until 2014, when the country closed it off to visitors, due to increased volcanic activity. It's the second highest volcano in Costa Rica, behind Irazú, an 11,260-foot volcano which last blew its top in 1994.
In Glasgow, Scotland, during the 1970s and '80s, people in public housing might have heard the music-box-like song of Greensleeves drifting from the vehicle of everyone's favorite summer hero, the ice cream man. But it was best to resist the siren call of those cold, sweet treats. That’s because ice cream men at the time were handing out more than sugar highs. They were feuding with rival ice cream trucks over territory, often violently, and buying an ice cream cone on a hot day could be dangerous.
Mobile ice cream businesses have a surprisingly long history of illegal activity, hiding in plain sight; even recently, in 2013, police arrested an ice cream man in New York City for using his business as a front to sell painkillers and cocaine. These activities often end in arrests, but the illegal activities of ice cream men in Glasgow were more extreme, involving whole neighborhoods in territorial gang battles. During this era, known now as the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars, the news was filled with scoops of ice cream-related violence.
“Mafia-style warfare broke out when two brothers decided to muscle in on an ice cream monopoly controlled by two families,” read the Glasgow Herald in 1979, in a story detailing how two brothers, both ice cream men, had attacked a rival ice cream van with bricks and planks of wood, and caused a mob scene.
The site of these battles was the Glasgow housing schemes (similar to housing projects in the U.S.), which were mostly built in the 1960s to replace the old and dangerous tenement housing. The schemes were made for low-income families, and the amount of money going into the schemes died off once people moved in; they were built on the outskirts of the city, and often lacked access to basic shops and grocery stores.
Ice cream van businesses had been well-established in the area for decades, so to make up for the lack of shops, vans popped up as traveling stores to supply the schemes with much-needed goods. They sold groceries, toilet paper, and other things people sorely needed but couldn’t get nearby, but primarily advertised ice cream. This became a profitable niche for the time; some reports say an ice cream van could earn a profit of 200 pounds per week. Eventually, ice cream vans were also routinely selling drugs and stolen property. Of course, they also still sold popsicles and ice cream sandwiches, and played merry little melodies as they made the rounds.
These van companies declared claims over different areas surrounding the housing schemes. If you tried to sell ice cream or anything else in an area you didn’t have the “rights” to, you faced violence. In an episode of the BBC investigative series Trial and Error, which looked into a court case related to the ice cream wars, a “convicted van smasher” recalls that ice cream van gangs used rocks, knives, axes—anything to defend their mobile drugs and treat vans.
The ice cream gang wars frequently ended up in Glasgow crime blotters. Even a summer job as a server could put you in danger: On September 9, 1989, TheGlasgow Heraldreported that while serving ice cream in a van, an 18-year-oldwas shot in the shoulder and permanently disabled by a 23-year-old ice cream gang member, who felt so guilty he attempted suicide over the incident. In 1986 one ice cream van was robbed by two young men with “a plastic bag of two revolvers in it”; they planned to “damage ice-cream vans in Castlemilk,” a district of Glasgow.
By 1984, the violence had graduated to murder. Ice cream man Andrew “Batboy” Doyle infringed on someone else’s territory, and allegedly refused to back away or sell merchandise for the dominant gang’s vans. Another van company began intimidation tactics against Doyle. When the standard glass-breaking and threats didn’t drive him away, they started a fire at his house that ended in the deaths of Doyle and five members of his family, including an infant.
The police and public response to these murders were frantic, and the ice cream wars became central to one of Scotland’s most notorious miscarriages of justice. Desperate to make a conviction, police coordinated a plea bargain with jailed ice cream van robber John Love, who implicated ice cream van owners Thomas “TC” Campbell and Joe Steele as the culprits. When arresting Campbell and Steele as suspects, the police claimed to hear each man make separate incriminating statements referencing the crime, which were later criticized for being unlikely and possibly fabricated. Both Campbell and Steele maintained their innocence, but the utterances were considered evidence enough to sentence them to prison for a minimum of 20 years.
Campbell went on several hunger strikes in prison, while Steele escaped three times to protest the conviction with public stunts, including supergluing his body to the outer gates of Buckingham Palace in 1993. In 1992, Love had confessed that his original statement to the police had been invented; this and a series of appeals led to a reexamination of the case in 2001. Campbell and Steele were finally set free in 2004. The original arsonists were never found.
A decade after getting out of prison, Campbell told a Trial and Error journalist that he had regrets about the bizarre violence of the ice cream gang wars. “A lot of my friends were killed… I was near to death on a few occasions myself,” Campbell said. “I’ve been caught with axes, I’ve been caught with swords, open razors, every conceivable weapon… meat cleavers… and it was all for nothing, no gain, nothing to it, just absolute madness.”
In news stories about the violence, most of the people involved seemed like Campbell had once been, desperate and young, and usually under the age of 26; the ice cream was incidental. The ice cream wars continued for a few more years in the housing schemes, with minor acts of revenge mentioned in The Glasgow Herald throughout the 1980s. Eventually, though, the ice cream van business stopped being lucrative in Glasgow, thanks to the availability of ice cream at newer corner stores, though the occasional ice cream vendor scuffle still occurs.
Today, the mobile ice cream business is in serious decline, with just a few thousand ice cream trucks left in the U.K. Many housing schemes have banned the once-ubiquitous chiming vans, but this is largely due to concerns about childhood obesity and noise pollution, not ice cream men attacking each other. People who remember the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars likely view this ban with relief.
An 1884 beard trimming chart. Should men who look like this be taxed? (Image: W. W. Bode/Public Domain)
Beards—once associated strictly with hermits and wizards—have become one of the hottest fashion accessories for men in the past few years, with celebrities, athletes, and style-conscious men around the globe growing, grooming, and styling their facial hair to match the latest trends. But despite their current popularity, beards remain deeply divisive and this week, one British barber and businessman has floated a radical proposal to discourage hirsute faces, or at least make some money off the men who refuse to renounce them.
The proposal, a £100 tax on the bushiest of beards, with a reduced £50 fee for those with more modest growth, has a historical basis. According to the Worcester News, Kent discovered tales of Henry VIII’s 16th-century tax levied on the bearded men of England, and inspiration struck. He explained, “My head started whirring away and I started thinking you might be onto something here. I thought—they need to reduce the deficit, so maybe they can start taxing beards with them being so prevalent at the moment!"
Claims that Henry VIII introduced a beard tax in 1535 (despite possessing his own set of well-groomed whiskers) have found their way into numerous books, blog posts, and (of course) Wikipedia, but the tale seems to be apocryphal. One prolific blogger on the life and times of Henry VIII has noted that while he has found evidence that beard-pulling was a crime punishable by fines, primary sources for the 16th-century beard tax have been difficult to locate. Similarly, Dr. Alun Withey, an academic historian of medicine and the body, told the BBC in April that contemporary documents do not support the existence of Henry VIII’s beard tax.
While the prior existence of an English beard tax is dubious, there is well-documented historical support for the taxation of facial hair; specifically, Russia’s Peter the Great began taxing beards in 1698, a policy that created significant controversy at the time.
Peter developed anti-beard sentiments after his 1697 grand tour of Western Europe. The tour famously convinced the monarch that Russia was desperately behind-the-times — economically, scientifically, and sartorially — and inspired him to undertake substantial efforts towards modernizing his country. As Mental Floss explains, he initiated his grand modernization with quite a “barber-ous” gesture:
After Peter’s triumphant return to Russia at the end of his European voyage in 1698, a joyous reception was thrown in his honor. In attendance were his commander of the army, his frequent second-in-command Fyodor Romodanovsky, and a host of assorted aides and diplomats. Suddenly, the crowd’s mood went from elation to horror as Peter unexpectedly pulled out a massive barber’s razor. As biographer Robert K. Massiewrites, “After passing among his [friends] and embracing them… he began shaving off their beards” with his own hands! Given his political stature, none of his associates dared question this stunning turn of events.
An article in Coins Weeklyregarding the mass shaving incident adds that only the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church was spared. Long, flowing beards were considered a symbol of manhood, integrity, and piety according to Orthodox ideals, with Ivan the Terrible writing, “Shaving the beard is a sin the blood of all martyrs will not wash away. It would mean blemishing the image of man as God created him.”
Given this cultural preference for beards, Peter turned to taxation to incentivize shaving; with an exception for priests, men who refused to shave their beards were taxed 100 roubles a year—a small fortune at the time, according to Russia Today. Peasants were held to a modified version of the tax and only required to shave when entering a city (or pay a fine of one kopek to keep their luxurious facial locks).
A Russian beard token, signifying that the bearer of this coin has paid to look like that. (Photo: US State Department/Public Domain)
To verify that a bearded man had paid his tax and did not need to be forcibly shaved (and yes, noncompliant men were forcibly shaved) “beard tokens” were minted and given as proof that the tax had been paid. The token bore an image of the Russian eagle on one side and a bearded face on the other, and were inscribed with the phrases “The tax has been taken” and “The beard is a superfluous burden”.
Peter’s beard tax was abolished in 1772, ending the world’s most ambitious regulation of facial hair. But Kent is not the first person to unearth the concept. In 2014, Dr. Alun Withey discovered evidence that a New Jersey state legislator attempted to introduce a graduated beard tax. Convinced that beards provided a furry mask for the morally unseemly, the legislator suggested a taxation scale that can only be summarized as “strange.” Dr. Withey explains:
For an ‘ordinary beard’ the tax was levied at $1 per year. This was fairly straightforward. But, from then on, things got a bit strange. For those men whose whiskers exceeded six inches long the charge was $2…per inch. A bald man with whiskers was punished to the tune of $5, while goatee beards were clearly high on the undesirable list, coming in at a hefty $10 levy. The final (and rather inexplicable) stipulation was that, if any man sported a ‘red beard’ (i.e. ginger), an extra 20% was chargeable.
As mentioned above, Kent’s proposal is much more modest, but it remains to be seen whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take up this attempt to capitalize off fashion trends. But if you’ve been trying to convince a loved one to do away with their beard, you may want to contact your local representative about taxation opportunities.
For months now, the New York City police have waged war on frozen dairy bandits, who shoplift pints of ice cream from the city’s chain pharmacies in order to resell the products to neighborhood corner stores—locally referred to as bodegas— pocketing the proceeds. According to a report in the New York Post, police hoped a February crackdown would make a major dent in the practice; unfortunately, the raids have continued, with a $450 March Haagen-Daz grab and an April 15th heist lifting 148 pints of ice cream from the CVS at West 23rd St. and 10th Ave. The practice is highly appealing for those interested in criminal enterprise, according to a police source who spoke to the Post, “They’re selling them for 10 cents on the dollar, so it’s a good deal for the bodega and for the seller.” Plus, there’s free ice cream involved, presumably.
The heists are a fairly elaborate affair. CVS manager Frank Sarpong explained the strategy to the Post:
“They look to see if the employees are distracted or ask for help, and then they go back there and take it,” he told The Post. “They don’t take it all, but they don’t leave much.
“They don’t want to come in with a big, huge bag, so they do it little by little over the course of an hour,” he added.
Flipping stolen retail goods at bodegas isn’t a practice limited to frozen treats; The Huffington Post has reported on the practice of buying cigarettes at low cost in the southern U.S., then selling them at a profit to NYC bodegas, where cigarettes are among the highest-priced in the country. As HuffPo explains, “In places like Virginia, North Carolina and Delaware, they’ll buy cartons containing 10 packs of cigarettes for around $48 a pop, then come back to New York, where local stores will buy them around $55.” That works out to about $5.50 a pack, which the bodegas can turn around a sell for $8, or even $13 to $14—the standard price for a pack of cigarettes in NYC.
And it isn’t just economically-minded criminals getting in on the action. A February article in Crain’s noted that bodegas frequently purchase beer through retailers like Costco rather than wholesale distributors; bodegas generally stock smaller quantities than larger retailers, and buying just a few cases from a wholesaler can be expensive. According to the State Liquor Authority’s general counsel, Jacqueline Fung, bodegas are fined thousands of dollars for the practice “pretty regularly.” In an op-ed for the New York Daily News, David Schwartz argued that fining the bodegas rather than the big-box retailers selling to them represents an unfair penalty on small business owners.
So far, the NYPD has struggled to identify the bodegas buying the pilfered ice cream, making the thefts difficult to prevent. And with ice cream season well underway, most of the evidence is likely to be eaten.
Grave markers constructed by volunteers for the Dunn County potter's field. (Photo: Bstaab22/CC BY-SA-4.0)
Today, the New York Times has provided a look into the lives and deaths of some of the individuals who have found their final rest at New York City’s Hart Island, one of the few remaining active potter’s fields. The article, which highlights the ways the city has failed to protect the estates and burial wishes of the unclaimed or impoverished dead provides a tragic example of our past and present disregard for the poor and other disadvantaged populations. At the same time, there has also been growing efforts to identify the bodies’ interred in potter’s fields around the country and provide a more peaceful resting place for those who remain there.
Beginning in 2010, medical examiners have used DNA analysis to attempt to identify remains exhumed from Hart Island, according to a 2012 New York Times article. A story in the Tampa Bay Times explains how this practice has helped provide closure for family members of missing individuals such as Ben Maurer, who passed away in Manhattan in 2002. According to the article, at any given time there are 40,000 active missing persons cases in the US, with 25 percent of those cases located in New York. For the Maurer family and others, connecting those cases to John and Jane Does in potter’s fields like Hart Island provides an opportunity for closure.
Elsewhere in the U.S., similar identification efforts are underway. In San Bernardino, California, a team of college students led by anthropology professor Craig Goralski and forensic anthropologist Alexis Gray spend their summers working to exhume and identify remains in the potter’s field at the San Bernardino cemetery. The cemetery, which provided a final resting place to over 7,000 destitute or unidentified bodies for 100 years. As with Ben Maurer’s case, the DNA collected from the exhumed remains is entered into a national database, and families looking for vanished relatives must submit a DNA profile to the system to lead to a match. For Goralski, however, the effort is worthwhile; as he explained to the Orange County Register, “If something horrible were to happen to me, I would hate for it to be worse because my family doesn’t know what’s going on.”
While the DNA database is undoubtedly the best way to positively identify anonymous remains interred in potter’s fields, some individuals have turned to historical research. In Kansas City, Missouri, Georgia Lundy works to uncover grave markers and comb through death certificates to piece together the identities of those buried at the Leeds potter’s field; Lundy’s work was inspired by her discovery that her grandfather had been buried there in 1929. The potter’s field in Dunn County, Wisconsin, is actively maintained by the Friends of Potter’s Field, which seeks to identify as many burials as possible, along with providing grounds-keeping and signage to give the unfortunate souls there an appropriate burial ground.
Ultimately, today’s article in the Times portrays the growing empathy for those who through illness, poverty, or other misfortune found their final rest in the anonymous mass burials of a potter’s field. For Hart Island, this has played out in calls to increase access to the graves, including a proposal to convert Hart Island into a public park as well as efforts like the Hart Island Project, which works to document the burials at Hart’s Island and help family members get access to graves and burial information. Through efforts such as these, the loved ones of even the most disadvantaged among us might find some measure of peace.
Right now, Mount Nyiragongo, an active stratovolcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been spewing lava about every minute, reports the Weather Channel.
Scientists are more concerned about the amount of lava emitted from the Nyiragongo than eruptions. In 2002, a volcanic event sent 400,000 people running and resulted in 147 dead. Lava even overflowed onto Goma International Airport's runway.
In the original footage of the Goma Volcano Observatory scientists' expedition, they estimate that the volcano is spewing between a few hundred thousand to more than one million cubic meters of lava per hour. "This amount per hour is in the range of what has been emitted during the two events of 1977 and 2002," the scientist narrating the video says. "The difference is that the two eruptions lasted 32 minutes and 12 hours respectively, while this new event is on for 60 days."
While the research group says that the Mount Nyiragongo doesn't show any imminent danger, more studies need to be conducted to understand future activity.
Masaya Volcano
At the Masaya volcano south of Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, scientists bask in front of oozing lava with their cameras perched as they film the bubbling volcano. The chaotic activity deep beneath the earth’s crust contrasts the soft orange glow that washes over the rugged 900-foot walls of the caldera.
The footage, taken by geoscientist Wilfried Strauch, the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies, and the Nicaraguan government, shows the recent short-lived lava lakes that have formed in the Masaya volcano’s main crater. In slow-motion, you can watch the bright orange lakes bubble and boil with steaming molten lava, and at the one-minute mark you can see lava burst up-close.
It’s said that when the volcano was first discovered, Spanish conquistadors were so entranced by the beautiful lava lakes that they tried to take the molten “gold.” The volcano is also known for having large eruptions like the sudden explosion in 2001 that caused small fires, damaged cars, and left two visitors injured.
Kilauea Volcano
In this clip of the Kilauea volcano near Kalapana, Hawaii, you can see the power and violence of volcanoes. The scene is a primordial landscape akin to those of when the earth was born. The three-minute, slow-motion video shows a diverse array of volcanic activity from geysers of lava, hot plumes, volcanic cloud vortexes, and even lightning.
The scientists at the Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes at the University of Hawaii, Hilo explain that the lightning (at the 2:30-mark) in eruption columns is caused by “small particles of volcanic material colliding with one another at high speeds, and these collisions can result in separation of charges in the volcanic cloud that result in lightning.”
Lightning is not often seen among Hawaii volcanoes, but in July 2008 an ocean swell helped generate an especially large plume at Kilauea volcano that caused the strikes.
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.
Observers speculated earlier this year about the possibility of such a suspension, as Iran already banned travel to Saudi Arabia for minor pilgrimages (such as the Umrah) last April and has consistently been sharply critical of Saudi Arabia’s administration of the Hajj, which draws millions of foreign Muslims to the country each year.
But while the decision may initially appear novel, managing who gets to go to Mecca has become an increasingly complex balance of politics, safety, and fairness.
Iran has suspended pilgrimages to Mecca for political reasons more than once. Aside from the April 2015 ban — over the alleged assault of two Iranian teenagers traveling in Saudi Arabia, which conveniently occurred during a tense proxy war in neighboring Yemen—Slate uncovered a few previous politically-motivated pilgrimage bans. In 1943, Iran banned pilgrimages following the Saudi beheading of an Iranian national for — allegedly—vomiting near the Kaaba, considered the most sacred site in the Muslim world. Similarly, a ban was enacted in 1987 following a clash between Iranian protestors and Saudi security forces which left over 400 dead.
Occasionally, other countries have followed suit. In 2012, Syria banned its citizens from performing the Hajj due to Saudi opposition to the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad. But more frequently, concerns over public health and ensuring every Muslim has an opportunity to make the pilgrimage govern decisions on pilgrimage bans and restrictions.
Issues of public health and safety have increasingly come under scrutiny during the Hajj, as Muslims from all over the world descend upon Mecca. In recent years, some countries have banned pilgrimage to Mecca to prevent the spread of infectious disease; Tunisia suspended travel in 2009 due to concerns over swine flu, and in 2014 Saudi Arabia prohibited Muslims from Ebola-stricken countries from participating in the Hajj. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is also a continuing concern. Safety issues exist beyond the spread of disease, as well. Regrettably, stampedes are not uncommon. In recent years, many have died in stampedes during the “stoning of the Devil” portion of the pilgrimage.
Additionally, simple matters of logistics present obstacles to performing the Hajj. The Hajj is a mandatory religious duty as one of the five pillars of Islam, and providing that opportunity to each of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims presents a massive administrative challenge. As a 2015 article in Foreign Policy explains, Saudi Arabia has approached the issue by setting annual quotas for each country, and it’s up to each government to determine how to fill their allotment. Some, like Indonesia, charge fees to be placed on a waitlist, while others resort to lotteries at the national or local levels.
This year, Tajikistan took an unusual approach to regulating their waitlist—anyone younger than 35 was banned from participating. While some believe the ban is intended to prevent exposure to radical ideology, the government officially claims the move is meant to provide older Muslims who have not yet made the pilgrimage a greater chance of being able to do so.
Regardless of the motivating factors behind the various bans, quotas, and restrictions on eligibility for the Hajj, the rules are not to be taken lightly: per the U.S. State Department, “non-Saudis who perform the Hajj without a permit face immediate deportation and a 10-year ban on returning to Saudi Arabia.”
The family tree of German bishop Sigmund Christoph von Waldburg-Zeil-Trauchburg, from 1776. (Photo: Public Domain)
The language of trees has been used to describe human bloodlines for millennia. The ancient Romans called the scrolls that listed their genealogical history, stemmata (“garlands”). Similarly Rome’s historians used the growth and fall of trees to mark the rise and fall of imperial dynasties. Tacitus wrote of Claudius’ son Britannicus as being the “the true and genuine stock” and of suffering a “too-green” death. Pliny often used the arboreal terms “grafting” “splicing” and “pruning” to allude to the abortions, adulteries and child murder taking place around him.
However the first explicit link between woody perennial plants and human genealogy predates even the Romans. It appears sometime in the eighth century B.C in the Book of Isaiah:
“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”
This simple verse was to inspire what, thousands of years later, would become the first depiction of a family tree—the Tree of Jesse, a genealogical chart tracing the ancestors of Jesus Christ back to the father of King David. From the 11th century AD onwards, depictions of the tree began popping up in illuminated manuscripts, on stained glass windows and carved into church walls. In these portrayals Jesse is invariably shown reclining at the foot of the picture with the trunk of a tree springing somewhat priapically from his side (the many links between trees and male genitalia are best left for another time).
On the branches above Jesse sit some of the 43 generations that separate him from Jesus. There’s Solomon and Namah and Azor and good old Zadok, while at the very pinnacle of the tree sits Jesus himself. These depictions are by no means comprehensive. For instance, while the Tree of Jesse follows the patriarchal line, neither Joseph—Jesus’s non-biological father—nor God—Jesus’ non-biological father in a completely different sense—are included.
From its very beginning the family tree was not an object beholden to accuracy; the family tree has always been used to add a touch of pictorial plausibility to the utterly improbable. The clearly demarcated branches of these trees can cover up a whole host of messy asides, perhaps one of the reasons it remains the go-to metaphor for our genetic backstories.
A painting of the Tree of Jesse, 1499. (Photo: Public Domain)
In the case of the Tree of Jesse, its growth is arrested by the fact that Jesus had no progeny (probably). The Lurie family tree, on the other hand, is generally considered the oldest, or tallest, family tree in existence. Although it similarly begins with King David, the Lurie family tree continues up to the present day and includes among its members Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Felix Mendelssohn, and many of the kings of Judah. In fact it appears to hold within it almost every Ashkenazi Jew in existence, including many characters of questionable legitimacy, such as Andreas, a Jew who having converted to Roman Catholicism proved himself so devout that he eventually became Pope.
If the Lurie family tree is the tallest then that of the Chinese philosopher, Confucius (551-479 BC) is the most populous. First published in 1080AD, the Confucius Genealogy has been updated four times over the last millennia. In 1937 the fourth edition of the genealogy listed some 600,000 descendants. But the most recent edition published in 2009 stretched to 80 volumes and contained the names of more than two million descendants. This great leap forward was largely due to the World Federation of Confucius Descendants finally agreeing to include women, ethnic minorities and overseas descendants amidst their illustrious branches.
However living descendants had to pay a small fee to be included in the tree, raising questions as to whether an ancestral link to Confucius could simply be bought.
Of course family trees are not just reserved for human genealogies. Take, for instance Harold and Jon Newman’s A Genealogical Chart of Greek Mythology (2003), for which the father and son team spent nearly 40 years linking 3,673 figures from classical mythology into one family tree spanning 20 generations. Here you can find the marriages, affairs and progeny of gods, titans, kings, heroes, mortals, giants, rivers, stars and personifications of abstract concepts, most noticeably Chaos who sits at the very top of the tree. Chaos is a fitting paterfamilias to this brood considering the perplexity that bubbles beneath him. Zeus is said to have fathered 104 children. Poseidon some 150. With incest and parthenogenesis common occurrences in and around Mount Olympus, this is one of the most dysfunctional family trees in existence.
Much of the complexity in Greek mythology is the result of different authors using the same mythical characters over many hundreds of years. Fortunately family trees are actually rather useful in smoothing over authorial inconsistencies. A more recent attempt at mapping mythology can be found in Joe Stone’s family trees of the Star Wars films and Avengers comics. Equally daunting and disorderly due to their bevy of different sources and, in the case of the latter group, alternate realities, Stone is wise enough to stamp his charts with the warning “Confused? Read more comics.”
Less mythological but dealing with equally legendary subjects are the hand-lettered Rock Family Trees created by Pete Frame, who used the family tree structure to create a plethora of visual genealogies charting popular music’s many interconnections.
If you want to know how Black Sabbath is related to Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Whitesnake, or if you want to explore the many permutations of the Grateful Dead side project, New Riders of the Purple Sage, then this is your place to start.
The usefulness of family trees in drawing narrative links between seemingly unrelated subjects and allowing the reader to explore their unconsciously shared traits was best exemplified in the artist Nina Katchadourian’s Genealogy of the Supermarket, (2005) This is an elaborate and hilarious family tree of 78 advertising icons, from Mr. Clean to the Sun-Maid Raisin Girl that uses the paraphernalia of genealogy to draw out the strange congruities and ethnic stereotyping of fictional company shills. In Katchadourian’s chart, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima are shown as siblings, while the St Pauli Girl and Samuel Adams are lovers. The Quaker Oats man, meanwhile, is married to both Aunt Jemima and Betty Crocker, displaying the open-minded, abolitionist traits of his religious movement. While it critiques advertising’s often hackneyed traits, this family tree actually paints a rather loving picture of our world of commodities. Through the family tree we see them not as individual items but as one large, interconnected family with whom we might surprised to find ourselves on extremely familiar terms.
In many ways Katchadourian’s family tree depicts why genealogy is such a popular hobby to this day. Amidst the uncertainty of the world around us the family tree provides an illusion of structure. It allows us to see ourselves as part of a continuous line , of something bigger than our own lives. In short, the family tree gives us roots.
The Australian town of Allies Creek is up for sale for less than some homes. Located about five hours from Brisbane, the tiny mill town has a surprising number of features for anyone that’s looking to get into town running.
Allies Creek was once a large saw mill, and that legacy still survives with three mill buildings still standing, and a number of open air sheds throughout the property. In addition to the mill facilities, there are 16 homes in the town, about half of which are occupied by tenants. There are also paved roads, running water, and its own little power plant, in addition to a complete dam built on site, which Domain.com, which is hosting the sale, promotes as being a great place to catch seafood. “Imagine scooping a net full of red claw and fish to feast anytime!!!”
Prior to the sale, the town was owned by a couple, who first bought it in 2008. They first put the rural settlement on sale in September 2015 for over $2 million, later lowering the asking price to $750,000.
Domain.com suggests that the town land could be used for everything from corporate retreats to an RV park, with the current tenants an additional source of revenue. In other words, if owning a small town in the Australian wilderness is your dream, now’s the time to act.
Visitors to Cottonwood Island Nature Park in Prince George, British Columbia can walk green trails, gaze out at the intersection of the Nechako and Fraser rivers, and look for peace among the foliage.
If they take the right paths, though, they might find something else, too—a dozen artful faces, carved into the sides of the park's black cottonwood trees.
The carvings are about the size of a human palm, intricately detailed and in surprising locations. Some look like human faces, while others are more like chipmunk-sized houses. All were made by Elmer Gunderson, a local woodcarver seeking to pay tribute to what he calls the "spirits of Cottonwood Park."
Back in the early 1980s, Gunderson helped to supervise the original creation of the park. "We went in and cleaned up the debris, cleaned up the trails, built little bridges throughout the whole park," he told CBC News. "It's been in my blood for quite some time."
There are two generations of carvings in the park—the first were added about ten years ago, at the behest of then-Mayor Colin Kinsley. "Since then, Mother Nature's taken a couple of them and sent them down the river," Gunderson told CBC News, so he returned this past weekend to add some new faces, some of which he based on people who stopped to ask him what he was up to.
While some are easily accessible, others are off the beaten path. Park visitors like to go on scavenger hunts to find them all, and some refer to Gunderson as the "Magic Man of Cottonwood Island." He's not magic—just a talented guy with a set of saws—but the park just might be.
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.
Once a team of acorn woodpeckers has had their way with a tree, the tree is left nearly unrecognizable, and covered in small, individually bored holes. It becomes what is called a “granary tree.”
Acorn woodpeckers, which live along the west coast and in the southwest of North America, turn trees—as well as telephone poles and wooden siding—into storage units. They are the ultimate hoarders of the bird world, storing thousands of acorns in a single granary. There are even records of granaries with tens of thousands of estimated holes, which are utilized year and year again by the woodpeckers.
When finding good granary tree candidates, the birds seek out dead limbs, snags, and trunks with nice, thick bark, selecting for areas of dead tree tissue to avoid drilling into the sap. In more urban habitats, they’ll use other forms of dead wood, often leaving people’s homes or sheds completely pockmarked.
Walt Koenig, a Senior Scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, hears homeowner complaints about acorn woodpeckers all the time. He provides them with a simple three-point plan: move out of your house, bulldoze it, and rebuild it in stucco. (People don’t particularly appreciate this advice, he admits.)
“There are various ways you can stop them,” says Koenig. “But basically if you’re living in the middle of a good acorn woodpecker habitat, you really should have thought of that.”
Koenig wrote his thesis on acorn woodpeckers and has been studying them intently ever since, contributing to a research project that began in 1972. “They’re one of the most interesting birds in North America,” he says. “In fact, I can’t think of any others that even come close.”
And the granaries, it turns out, are only a small part of what makes them interesting.
The acorn woodpecker’s main food source is insects, but acorns and tree sap serve as key nutritional backup. Acorns are a critical resource, allowing the birds to make it through the winter. They live year-round in the same mild, Mediterranean climate, which gets wet but doesn't necessarily freeze in winter; if they simply stored their acorns in piles, the nuts would mold and rot. Instead, they need a place where the nuts will dry out.
The granaries are labor-intensive in both their construction and upkeep: the woodpeckers drill holes sections at a time to lodge the individual acorns, but as acorns dry, they shrink—meaning that one of their major activities during the winter is moving the acorns into better-fitting holes within the granary. A robust acorn crop can even get the birds through until fall.
On the lookout for acorn thieves. (Photo: TinyGerhke/courtesy Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
One of the strangest traits of the acorn woodpecker, however, is its collective behavior—in both food storage and childrearing. Family groups, says Koenig, vary from a single pair of birds all the way up to a group of as many as 14 or 15.
The entire group will contribute to a central granary, defending it against thieving squirrels and other woodpeckers.
Acorn woodpeckers are distinctly polyamorous creatures. When it comes to raising young, it’s a group effort. Multiple males will sometimes share a few females, while the younger family members will serve as helpers. The most complicated groups have brothers and fathers and sons all sharing the same females, who might be two sisters or a mother and daughter, laying eggs in the same nest.
This is actually less effective, says Koenig, than if they bred off on their own on a per bird basis. Certain ecological constraints keep the family's younger member's from striking out on their own; they may not have another available territory outfitted with the granary and nesting holes that are critical to their success and survival. As a result, the teens are better off staying home until they can hopefully fill a vacancy in another granary group.
When a nest has two females, things get tricky. The two females will keep removing each other’s eggs from the nest until they finally synchronize their egg-laying, an effort undertaken so that neither expectant mother’s hatchlings have a head start.
The cast-away eggs get eaten by other family members, which means that the birds are essentially eating their nephews, nieces, and grandchildren, points out Koenig. Only about a quarter of groups have this two-female system, producing a slightly larger clutch size of six to nine surviving eggs.
But there’s an obvious hitch to polyamorous collectives: the risk of incest.
Koenig says that back in the day, people thought that avoiding incest was a purely human thing. Indeed, instances of incest in the wild are uncommon, as most species just don't have much opportunity for it.
However, in a group of acorn woodpeckers, where everyone is related to everyone else—the breeder males and females and communal offspring—the specter of incest looms large.
If there is a lone breeder female and she dies, the group needs an non-incestuous outside replacement. Younger male and female woodpeckers from other groups, keen for opportunities to start their own families, will arrive to the territory and fight in sibling coalitions for the open spot. The bigger the coalition, the better their odds of securing one or two members of their group the status of new breeder female. Koenig says it is a really good case of incest avoidance in birds.
Koenig says he could go on and on about acorn woodpeckers. Between their unique community collectives, epic granaries, and quirky breeding tactics, there’s already a lot more going on than initially meets the eye.
The next time you spot an old oak or telephone pole that looks like the victim of an insect-borne disease or BB gun target practice, the culprit will no longer be a mystery.
Earlier this spring, when two divers were exploring Caesarea National Park, off of Israel’s coast, not far south from Haifi, they noticed that the sand of the sea floor had shifted and revealed a shipwreck. What they found, the Israel Antiquities Authority says, is a trove of marine treasure“such as…has not been found in Israel in the past thirty years.”
The two recreational divers immediately reported their find to the IAA. When marine archaeologists examined the wreck, they found that it was 1,600 years old, dating back to the Late Roman period, and full of rare bronze artifacts and clumps of coins, still in the shape of the vessel that had carried them.
The ship had carried statues of Roman gods—the sun god, Sol, and the moon goddess, Luna—and other bronze statues. These were often melted down and recast, so it’s rare to find bronze statues from this period in such good condition. The lumps of coins contained thousands of pieces stamped with the head of Constantine.
This would have been a merchant ship, one of many that traveled to Israel's ports. The archaeologists think it met its fate after being caught in a storm and smashing against the shore; the crew had cast anchors to stop the shift from drifting that close to land, but it went down, its cargo in tact and preserved on the sea floor until now.
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.
Paul Graviano, at home, has bonsais in his backyard and a model train in his basement. (All Photos: Zach Gross)
Paul Graviano does not live in the Brooklyn of waterfront condos and $30 beard trims. He operates his 40-year-old business, Bonsai of Brooklyn, in Gravesend, on the southern tip of the borough, just inland from Coney lsland. Where gentrifying Gowanus has storefronts displaying charming terrariums, Graviano’s tiny trees—Chinese elm, bougainvillea, Japanese red maple, and always, always, always, because they’re the best sellers, juniper, elephant bush, and Hawaiian umbrella trees—hide behind a stalwart fence of corrugated metal. In the winter, they go upstairs, to an insulated room that can fit a couple of hundred trees.
On the other side of the house, there is a photo studio of sorts, where each tree has its picture taken to be posted online. Graviano has cartons of soil here that he makes in a 400-pound cement mixer located in his basement. Other than his own bonsais, most don’t stay long enough to grow appreciably; on the second floor, every room has shelves of boxes, in more than 60 different sizes, in which the trees are shipped off, sometimes two a day, sometimes a dozen.
Since 1976, Graviano has made a business of selling bonsais; his store is one of the oldest in the country. If keeping one bonsai tree requires commitment and care, cultivating a community of bonsai lovers has its own alchemy. In New York, Graviano is one of the secret ingredients.
Most of Graviano's trees don't stay with him long enough to grow appreciably.
He bought his first bonsai tree in 1964, when he went to buy 49-cent plants for the waterfall he was building below his 125-gallon fish tank. There was a juniper bonsai on the counter. “Have you ever seen something where there was no choice?” he says. “That was it. There was no option.” He wasn’t sure what it was, just that it was a tree and that he had to have it. At $25, it was badly overpriced; he handed over the $15 he had, drove home and came back with the rest.
Trees live on a different scale of time than we do; if they seem timeless, it’s because they grow slowly and long and last beyond human lives. Bonsai trees compress all that into a miniature vista. You don’t have to gaze upwards at the length of a bonsai’s trunk to see its age—in fact, they can appear ageless since size is no arbiter of time on Earth. But at this scale, it’s also possible to see more clearly the influence of a person, or people, since bonsais can be passed down for centuries.
He mixes soil in a cement mixer in the basement.
One of the very first bonsai trees that Graviano ever made himself was an Alberta spruce, with a trunk as thick as his thumb. He stripped off most of the needles and cut off more than half of the branches, wiring them down, in pursuit of the sweeping look of a tiny Christmas tree. When he was done, he started worrying.
Like a teen with a set of tweezers and rapidly growing eyebrows, he had gone too far.
Graviano has been selling bonsai trees, full-time, since 1976.
Bonsai themselves need not be dwarf trees; they can be made from the same seeds that would grow tall, if not for the meticulous trimming, shaping, and sometimes grafting. The tradition is thought to have originated in China, although it really took off in Japan starting in the 7th century. In the ‘60s, there were only a small number of bonsai enthusiasts in America (the American Bonsai Society wasn’t formed until 1967), and even fewer in South Brooklyn. Graviano took the tree to Al, who sold bonsai pots at his nursery and who told him not to worry about the spruce. In 20 years time, he said, it would be gorgeous.
“I burst out laughing because I was 22 at the time,” says Graviano, now 73. “It was my lifetime, basically.”
Within a few years, though, the tree was beautiful, and he had sold it. By then, he had other spruces. Five years after buying the juniper, he had filled a two-car garage, converted into a greenhouse, with the bonsai he was making. “I’m a pretty obsessive person,” he says. (Currently, he is making his way through the entire run of “Friends,” a couple DVRed episode per night; he buys steaks by the half-dozen, cut an inch and a half thick, the perfect size for the charcoal grill he built in the backyard; in his basement, there is an extensive model train containing Coney Island, snowy mountains, and the elevated F train that runs by the old Bonsai of Brooklyn storefront.) To make room for more trees, he sold some for the first time, at a flea market in the parking lot of Aqueduct Racetrack. The market opened around 9 a.m.; they were sold out by 11 a.m.
The train set is another miniature world he created.
It was then that he started making bonsai with the intention of selling them. At first, it was still a hobby, like the band that practiced in his basement, covering Chuck Berry, Creedence, and a lot of Grateful Dead. He was doing well, financially, in his day job as a insurance salesman, with a summer house, a new car, a boat. But he was unhappy. He opened his bonsai store after he had a nightmare about one of his policyholders who he didn’t much care for. The next day, wearing dungarees and a t-shirt, he walked into the office to give his two weeks notice. Fifteen years ago, when the packing peanuts and boxes necessary for online retail overran the physical store, he moved everything to his home.
His personal collection is much smaller than you might think. Since Graviano started Bonsai of Brooklyn, he divorced, remarried, moved the store, quit smoking, started his website, closed the physical store, was diagnosed with lung cancer, survived. In 2004, when doctors told him his cancer was terminal and inoperable, before he found a surgeon who told him he’d be fine, he sold all of his trees. A pine went for $5,000. He kept only one, from his personal collection, which he’s had since 1985, and it wasn’t until this year that he added three more to his stash.
Repotting a tree is easy, if you know what you're doing, he says.
“It was just trees where I looked at them and said — I don’t want to sell this one,” he says. One was a Chinese elm. Two years ago, it almost died. Last year, it got even worse, and he was ready to toss it. “Maybe because of what happened to me,” he says, he gave it a chance. This year, about a quarter of the branches started putting out new growth and by the time he finished cleaning it up and trimming the good branches down, he had decided it was worth keeping. The next one, a bougainvillea, he’d had for three or four years; when he got around to trimming it, he decided, again—this one is mine.
“I just liked it,” he says.
Graviano has never been to Japan, where the art of bonsai has been refined over thousands of years; he would like to visit Hawai’i, although his last vacation was in 1996, a cruise. He was born in Brooklyn, after all. “I like to hang out here,” he says. “I’m very happy where I am.” He has his bonsai trees in the backyard, his thoroughly and beautifully equipped kitchen on the first floor, his model train in the basement. It is a small world of small worlds, thriving, carefully tended, expansive in their limits.
Every day, he sends off anywhere from two to a dozen trees.
