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The Small but Wonderful World of Bird Memorials

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A statue in Maine made for a vagrant hawk offers one way to honor these fleeting visitors. Flaco fans take note.


In early March 2024, mourners gathered in New York's Central Park to pay tribute to Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl. The Central Park Zoo escapee—who, during his year free in the park, captured many of the city's hearts, minds, and rats in his talons—was killed on February 23, 2024, likely by a high-rise window. Hundreds came to his memorial service, and many laid flowers, letters, drawings, and photographs under the oak that was his preferred tree. Some are now seeking something more permanent. A petition calling on the City Council to install a statue of Flaco in the park has more than 4,000 signatures from people who, in the words of organizers Brandon Borror-Chappell and Mike Hubbard, wish "to commemorate his legacy—and to remind us all to keep a curious, respectful eye out for the myriad wonderful beings with whom we share this space."

If this happens, that statue will join a distinctive lineage: the bird memorial. While the world is aflutter with bird art in general, the flock of memorials for individual, known birds is small. Some of these honor domestic companions such as Alec, a goose who liked to walk children to school in 1920s Belfast, and Roscoe, a feral rooster who frequently crossed the road in Takoma Park, Maryland. Others are beautiful memorials for an entire extinct species, placed near where their endlings—the last members of a species, invested with symbolic weight before and after death—were last seen.

An impromptu memorial grew in Central Park to celebrate the beloved zoo escapee, Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl.
An impromptu memorial grew in Central Park to celebrate the beloved zoo escapee, Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl. Rhododendrites/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 4.0

But, as far as I've been able to find,* there is only one statue out there that specifically commemorates a free-living bird who ended up far from where he supposedly belonged. The sculpture, by bronze artist David Smus, portrays a juvenile great black hawk who lived for a short season in Portland, Maine. It's a unique and poignant tribute to a bird who, like Flaco, gave his life to be part of a new community.

A Brief Visit

The great black hawk memorial is at the west end of Portland's Deering Oaks Park. It's a 10-foot granite pillar holding up a shining bronze depiction of its subject: life-sized (great black hawks have a wingspan of about four feet), head swiveled, and one wing stretched as if ready to dive. Near the bottom of the pillar is a wary-looking gray squirrel, also in bronze. The sculpture was made to honor the first great black hawk ever seen in the United States. These birds of prey are common in South America and coastal Mexico, where they call to each other with a special whistle-screech and use their long legs to chase down prey on the ground. They generally don't travel much.

But in April 2018, a juvenile male was spotted in Texas, farther north than ever seen before. Birders got excited. In August of that year, the same great black hawk, identified by his plumage patterns, showed up way farther north, on the coast of Maine. He flew off again, but returned in late October, and eventually settled down in Deering Oaks Park.

Excitement grew. Many birds travel thousands of miles per year as part of their regularly scheduled programming, and make expected visits. East Coast Americans count on warblers coming through in the spring and fall, for instance. But on occasion, individuals from migratory and homebody species can go off course, pushed by wind or confusion or curiosity, and end up somewhere brand new. These birds, known as vagrants, often make a big impression among birders and in the wider communities that come to adopt them as their own. (At least two other vagrants have been memorialized in some way, if not with a full statue: a white-crowned sparrow who visited Norfolk, England, in 2002 was incorporated into a stained-glass window in a church there; and there is a stone in Blidworth, England, commemorating an Egyptian nightjar who was shot by a hunter.)

This is the great black hawk that appeared in a Maine park, far from his normal territory in South American and coastal Mexico.
This is the great black hawk that appeared in a Maine park, far from his normal territory in South American and coastal Mexico. JD Plourde II / Alamy Stock Photo

Birders, of course, love when an unusual species seems to have gone out of its way to visit—the reverse of the usual situation. But almost everyone tends to appreciate them. Like Flaco and other wanderers or escapees, vagrants seem out of place—a designation complicated by our time of captive breeding, zoos, human-mediated dispersal, and climate-change-driven range shifts, but one that still holds symbolic power and poses interesting problems. Their stories land as heartwarming or goofy; inspiring or tragic.

Maine's great black hawk was all of these and more. His presence was thrilling: Here (again, like Flaco) was a massive bird of prey with a flair for drama, lording over a city park. People came from around the country to see him; some who lived nearby came almost every day.

Watching him was intriguing and rewarding: What was this streaky juvenile, whose species generally lives off lizards and crayfish, going to eat in the winter? (He solved that puzzle quickly, and was rarely photographed without a bloodied squirrel.) "The fact that this incredible bird has survived so long so far away from its native range is simply astounding," wrote naturalist Doug Hitchcox in Maine Audubon. "How many Great Black Hawks have ever seen snow?"

In the end, the story was sad, too—the bird's chosen home could not take care of him. In late January, parkgoers found the great black hawk on the ground, his long legs frostbitten. A local rehab group, Avian Haven, made the difficult decision to euthanize him, and he died on January 31, 2019.

A Permanent Memory

David Smus, who lives about two hours from Portland, never got to see the great black hawk alive. But he has been sculpting herons, puffins, and other Maine birds for years, including some living at Avian Haven. After the great black hawk's death, he got a call from a volunteer there.

David Smus with his bird memorial in Deering Oaks Park in Portland, Maine.
David Smus with his bird memorial in Deering Oaks Park in Portland, Maine. Courtesy David Smus

People really missed their visitor. Several organizations, including Maine Audubon, Maine Fish and Wildlife, and the Friends of Deering Oaks, were thinking of working together to make a memorial for him—"a really nice depiction of what the bird really looked like, live in that park," Smus recalls. They asked if he would put together a proposal.

Smus took measurements and photographs of the hawk's body, which was later taxidermied for the Maine State Museum. He noted the attributes of the unfamiliar species—the lanky legs, the featherless lores (the space between the eye and the beak)—and of the individual, whose unique streaked pattern and bent tail feather had allowed him to be recognized easily on both sides of the continent.

Commissions, especially of public art, involve integrating different needs, Smus says. Asked to make the statue vandal-proof, he decided to place it on top of a granite column, where people could "see it from a great distance, and be drawn to it between the trees," he says. To ensure visibility from the ground, he stretched one of the hawk's broad wings, "like it's maneuvering through those trees." He designed the tail with a wonky feather. And to show how the hawk had survived (and to interest children, who might not be able to see up to the top) he included a bronze squirrel.

Smus's proposal was accepted. The finished sculpture, Extraordinary Journey, was unveiled in 2020, in a grove of spruce and catalpa trees, "a favorite spot for the bird to roost" and a good place for a picnic, Smus says. Nearby is an informational plaque that details the whole story in words.

Flaco eyed a trap in Central Park during its year on the lam.
Flaco eyed a trap in Central Park during its year on the lam. David Barrett/Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 4.0

Smus is also an admirer of Flaco, and hopes that a permanent memorial could take shape. In the meantime, more tributes to the owl are coming in, both abstract (a recent ice skating show was dedicated to him) and concrete (a group of state senators and assembly members proposing a bill that requires new buildings to incorporate bird-friendly designs have renamed it "The FLACO Act"). It's a bit funny to think of bird statues, which pay homage to a free-moving being by fixing it into place. But we're stuck on Earth, and this is one way we can keep them with us.

* If you know of other examples of bird memorial statues, please feel free to write me at caragiaimo@gmail.com.

Cara Giaimo writes about plant and animal science and culture across the Internet, and lives with her wife and two cats in Somerville, Massachusetts. Cara is also co-author of Atlas Obscura's upcoming book, Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders. Pre-order your copy today!


Why Clouds Vanish During Solar Eclipses

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New research explains the science behind the sudden disappearance of fluffy cumulus clouds during a solar eclipse.

In 1972, a group of umbraphiles gathered in Nova Scotia to witness a total solar eclipse. Just before the celestial event was to begin, clouds completely obscured the view. One of the group members, now-retired geoscientist Steve Dutch, recalled that, as the eclipse began, the clouds suddenly fled. "All of us had perfect views," he wrote in an online post.

The clearing wasn’t a fluke or divine intervention, but the now-documented reaction of certain kinds of clouds to solar eclipses.

Cumulus clouds—the low-lying, fluffy ones with flat bottoms and poofy tops—dissipate as an eclipse begins, according to a recent paper in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. The authors found that the moon needs to obscure a mere 15 percent of the sun to initiate cloud clearing. While this can be convenient for viewing the solar eclipse, researchers worry the phenomenon could be a problem for solar-deflecting technology.

Cumulus clouds are fluffy on top and flat on the bottom and can be found hanging low in the sky.
Cumulus clouds are fluffy on top and flat on the bottom and can be found hanging low in the sky. PiccoloNamek/ Wikimedia/ CC BY-SA 3.0

In the past, satellite data regarding cloud cover before and after solar eclipses hinted that clouds may dissipate during these celestial events. But measuring clouds during the actual eclipse is much trickier, because algorithms for predicting cloud cover and density don’t account for the decrease in solar radiation. Researchers were left in the dark—until they created a new model, which accounts for the percent of the sun obscured throughout the eclipse. Using the new approach, lead author Victor Trees and his research team at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and Delft University of Technology were able to revisit old satellite measurements from three eclipses a couple decades ago.

They discovered a chain reaction: The eclipse causes changes at ground level, which in turn affects cloud cover. Blocking sunlight cools Earth’s surface. This temperature change slows the rise of warm air and water vapor, which is responsible for cumulus cloud formation. So less sun means lower temperatures on the ground, which leads to fewer clouds. That's where that 15 percent threshold becomes important: that's the small fraction of the sun that needs to be obscured for clouds to thin out. “At that instant, there is still plenty of light outside and people don’t commonly realize an eclipse is happening,” says Trees.

And if you’re out at sea, you won’t see this phenomenon at all. When the eclipse's shadow passes over the ocean, clouds remain unchanged. The ocean doesn’t cool down as easily as land, keeping cumulus clouds kicking. And on land or sea, other types of clouds are less sensitive to subtle cooling and aren’t directly affected by eclipse-related temperature shifts—which means they can still block your view of the event.

While the clearing of some clouds can be a big plus for eclipse-chasers, these findings could have some negative implications for new technologies aimed at cooling the planet. One idea, for example, is to place reflective solar sails in space, which proponents say could deflect some of the sun's rays and theoretically cool Earth’s surface. If implemented, however, such projects could influence cloud cover in unintended ways, says Trees.

Cumulus clouds in particular play an important role in Earth's water cycle, and influencing their patterns could impact rainfall and actually increase temperatures. “You would weaken the natural cooling effect of these bright, shiny clouds,” says climate change data scientist Rick Russotto, at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who was not involved in the study. The potential result: You may have to deflect even more light to account for the loss of shade-bearing clouds.

While the implications of proposed technologies are still unknown, you need not fear cumulus clouds blocking a solar eclipse. You may even hope for them, just for the chance to see them disappear.

7 Unexpected Easter Traditions

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Why hide eggs when you can hang them on a tree?

In many parts of the world, the Christian holiday of Easter is now synonymous with bunnies and chicks, chocolate and jelly beans, and the decorating and hiding of lots and lots of eggs. But Easter—marked in 2024 by Western Christians on March 31 and by Eastern Orthodox Christians on May 5—has also been a holiday of ball games (in medieval Europe) and tree decorating (1890s New York), and it remains a celebration of bread, in the form of Ukraine’s paska and England’s hot cross buns. Take the Atlas Obscura tour of under-appreciated Easter traditions, from the towering Arches of Bread in Italy to graveyard feasts of Georgia.

How Easter Egg Trees Almost Became an American Tradition

by Anne Ewbank, Senior Associate Editor, Gastro Obscura

In the spring of 1895, Louis C. Tiffany, of stained-glass and jewelry fame, held a lavish “Mayflower Festival” to benefit a local hospital. “Among the evening’s entertainments,” writes culinary historian Cathy K. Kaufman, “was an Easter egg tree, dazzling with different colored eggs.” This wasn’t unusual at the time. In the era before plastic eggs, many Americans carefully emptied whole eggs of their contents and colored them brightly for Easter, hanging them on tree branches with scraps of ribbon or thread.

Sicily's Arches of Bread
Sicily's Arches of Bread Courtesy La Creativita di Un Popolo

Every Easter, a Sicilian Town Builds a Cathedral Out of Bread

by Vittoria Traverso

For months each year, residents of San Biagio in Sicily team up to build life-size structures made of local herbs, cereals, and bread. This monumental display is both centuries old and one of Italy’s most fantastical traditions: the Arches of Bread.

Why Georgians Dine in Cemeteries for Orthodox Easter

by Helena Bedwell

Every year around Orthodox Easter, Georgian cemeteries fill with families drinking wine, nibbling on platters of sweet bread, and rolling eggs dyed a deep blood red. They cry, they offer sweet words of remembrance, and they eat. It’s all part of a longstanding Georgian tradition of dining with the dead every spring.

These paksa breads have been traditionally decorated for Easter.
These paksa breads have been traditionally decorated for Easter. AMARTINIOUK/CC BY 3.0

The Powerful Symbolism of Ukraine’s Easter Bread

by Anne Ewbank, Senior Associate Editor, Gastro Obscura

It’s hard to imagine celebrating Easter, a holiday of spring and rebirth, in the middle of a war. But in Ukraine, bakers are still making their Easter breads, known as paska, with pride and defiance. Sweet, egg-laced breads are part of nearly every European country’s celebratory menu, especially around Easter, but Ukrainian bakers go all out, covering their breads with tiny, flour-y birds, braided shapes, and curved crosses, occasionally baking them into towering domes with lots of icing.

Remembering the Tansy, the Forgotten Easter Pancake of Centuries Past

by Natasha Frost

Almost every holiday comes with its own accompanying foodstuff. Easter treats seem self-evident: chocolate, eggs, and chocolate eggs. But for hundreds of years, the English ate something entirely different at Easter: a sweet, herbal concoction—somewhere between a pancake and an omelet—known as a tansy. It was green, herbal, and slightly toxic.

Sailors from HMS <em>President</em> with a hot cross bun at The Widow's Son in 2017.
Sailors from HMS President with a hot cross bun at The Widow's Son in 2017. COURTESY THE WIDOW’S SON

How This London Pub Got Its Buns Back for Easter

by Anne Ewbank, Senior Associate Editor, Gastro Obscura

Hanging hot cross buns from the ceiling has a long history in the United Kingdom. In ancient times, worshippers ate sweet buns marked with a cross to honor Eostre, the goddess of the dawn. When “Eostre” became “Easter,” the buns stuck around. Still today, the tradition continues in some London pubs.

The Lost Tradition of Playing Ball in Church to Celebrate Easter

by Sarah Laskow

In Auxerre Cathedral and other places of worship in northern France, on Easter Monday in the medieval era, clergy gathered around the church’s labyrinth, danced in a circle, and tossed a ball from person to person—a joyful celebration of Easter, with strict rules, that evolved from pagan rituals.

Wild Life: Relocated Tortoises

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In a preview of our new book, we look at some ancient reptiles who are getting new homes—sometimes in someone's backyard.

Each week, Atlas Obscura is providing a new short excerpt from our upcoming book, Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders (September 17, 2024).

Desert tortoises know how to weather change. Residents of the Mojave for more than three million years, they’ve stuck around even as their ecosystem went from a dripping jungle during the Miocene to today’s sunbaked desert. In recent years, the landscape has begun to shift again as new wind, solar, and housing development projects fence tortoises out of their habitat.

And so, with the help of concerned local citizens, some tortoises have taken up a new survival strategy: They live in people’s backyards. Since 1998, the California Turtle and Tortoise Club has been rehoming reptiles who find themselves displaced by energy companies or housing developers. Many tortoises removed from project sites are adopted by human families. (Other rehoming candidates come from households who took them from the wild as pets decades ago, before it was illegal, but can no longer care for them.) Desert tortoises are the only species on the United States “threatened” or “endangered” lists that can be kept in this way.

The slow-paced lifestyle of these tortoises translates well to many California desert homes. Tortoise caretakers feed their charges grasses, but the reptiles are also known to nibble on garden flowers. They dig backyard burrows—private, underground spaces where some spend up to 95 percent of their time. In the wild, tortoises use burrows to hibernate during both the cold winters and the hot summers. In captivity, tortoises tend to hibernate less, but in more unusual locations; keepers often find their missing tortoises under dressers or in closets.

A desert tortoise sips from a roadside puddle in Joshua Tree National Park.
A desert tortoise sips from a roadside puddle in Joshua Tree National Park. NPS/Public Domain

The tortoises are (relatively) high-maintenance in one respect: Unlike other desert creatures that can stay hydrated just by eating desert plants, they need to imbibe fresh water at least once every couple of years. A puddle on concrete, such as what you might find after a light rain, is typically enough to satisfy their thirst.

Desert tortoises help humans out, too. Companies proposing extractive projects in the desert often act as though no one lives there, ignoring not only wildlife, like the tortoise, but a number of Indigenous American groups with desert homelands. In the 1990s, a company proposed putting a nuclear waste dump in San Bernardino County’s Ward Valley, part of the territory of the Chemehuevi tribe and Mojave nation—and critical desert tortoise habitat. Images of radioactive, melting tortoises adorned posters protesting the project, and in the end, the tortoise’s threatened status helped stop it.

  • Range: Alluvial fans and sandy flats in California, Nevada, and Utah
  • Species: Desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii)
  • How to see them: In the wild, wait for an overcast day when rainfall seems imminent, or try springtime when the tortoises tend to be out chomping on plants. One well-known captive tortoise, Mojave Maxine, can be found at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Desert, California.
Illustration by Iris Gottlieb

THE WILD LIFE OF: A Tortoise Adoption Coordinator

Mary Dutro has been the adoption chairman for the High Desert chapter of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club for more than 20 years. During her tenure, she has placed more than a thousand tortoises in new homes.

How did you first become involved with the California Turtle and Tortoise Club?

When Charlene and Sherman walked into my backyard in 1960. They were two tortoises, a male and a female. They stayed in my backyard until they became an endangered species [in 1989]. Then Fish and Wildlife had us release them to help rebuild the wild population. So Charlene, Sherman, and their kids were released out where a high school has now been built.

In your role as adoption coordinator, how do you place tortoises in homes? What does someone need to do to keep a tortoise at their home?

You have to consider the habitat—if it will be good for them. You’ve got to make sure that they have sun, shade, and a shallow water dish. They need dirt they can dig in. Sometimes they use doghouses to supplement their burrows.

A desert tortoise examines old mining equipment at Keys Ranch in Joshua Tree National Park.
A desert tortoise examines old mining equipment at Keys Ranch in Joshua Tree National Park. NPS/Robb Hannawacker/Public Domain

Where do the tortoises that you get and rehome come from?

The majority come from households that can no longer care for them. Either a caregiver has died or they’re moving out of state, and they can’t take [the tortoises] out of state. Some of the tortoises have been in the same home for 40 or 50 years.

The other ones I’ve had turned in to me were living where [companies] were putting in solar fields. The ground under a solar field gets so hot that the tortoises can’t stay there. So the electric company, or whoever’s putting in the solar field, will rescue them and turn them in.

What are some of your other duties as adoption chair?

I did get a call from one gentleman who was trying to figure out why and how his tortoise died. We went through all the things as I’m trying to diagnose her on the telephone.

Finally, I thought to ask, “How old is she?” He said, “I don’t know exactly, but we’ve had her for over 140 years.” His grandfather found her out in the desert when she was the size of his hand.

So we figured that she was probably five or 10 years old when his grandfather found her—which, by the way, is against the law now; you can’t pick up a wild tortoise. We figured she died of old age.

What do you wish people knew about tortoises?

They are great pets. They don’t bark; they don’t bite! Desert tortoises don’t bother anybody. They do become associated with their families; they’ll recognize you when you come out. The tortoises will even knock on the patio door if you’re late putting food out for them.

They make nice pets as long as you treat them right and keep them safe. And they’ve been around here longer than the dinosaurs. They’re still here, and it would be nice if we didn’t wipe them out.

If you see a desert tortoise in the wild, don’t bother it! A tortoise might respond to being picked up by evacuating its bowels and losing precious water. If the tortoise seems to be in distress, note its location and contact the landowner or the local chapter of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club. For more information about adopting a desert tortoise, go to tortoise.org.

Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders celebrates hundreds of surprising animals, plants, fungi, microbes, and more, as well as the people around the world who have dedicated their lives to understanding them. Pre-order your copy today!

Which States in America Have the Oldest and Youngest People?

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Either way, everywhere in the U.S. is seeing a common trend.

Maine has the highest median age of any state in the country: 45 years. That’s two years more than retiree magnet Florida and fully 13 years more than Utah, the state with the lowest median age (32 years).

Why the big gap? Economics and religion. In Maine, jobs are fewer and wages are lower, so young people tend to leave in search of opportunities elsewhere. Mormonism is Utah’s dominant religious tradition, which prizes community—and large families. That makes Utah an outlier within the U.S., but very close to the global median age of 31 years.

Visual Capitalist

What all states share, though, is that their median age is creeping upward. North Dakota used to be an exception. Its median age dropped from 37 in 2010 to 35.2 in 2018, making it the only state that got younger over that period. But even the continued influx of a relatively younger workforce, attracted by the state’s thriving energy industry, hasn’t been able to maintain the trend: By 2022, the median age had crept up again to 36 years.

(“Median,” by the way, refers to the middle of a range of values, while “average” is the sum of all values divided by their number. The median is seen as a more robust measure of distribution because the average is often skewed by outliers with extreme values.)

The Atlas Obscura Crossword: Beyond the Moai

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Atlas Obscura's weekly crossword comes to us from creator Stella Zawistowski, a puzzlemaker who is also one of the fastest crossword solvers in America, with multiple top-10 finishes at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and a personal record for solving the New York Times Sunday crossword of 4 minutes, 31 seconds. She is the author of Tough as Nails Crosswords.

You can solve the puzzle below, or download it in .pdf or .puz. Note that the links in the clues will take you to Atlas Obscura pages that may contain the answer. Happy solving!

Podcast: Vent Haven Museum

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Here lies the world's largest collection of ventriloquist dummies.

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.


In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we visit the Vent Haven Museum, which is a dream destination or a nightmare—depending on how you feel about ventriloquist dummies. Inside, you'll find more than 500 of them. Enjoy!

Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their stories. Join us daily, Monday through Thursday, to explore a new wonder with cofounder Dylan Thuras and a neighborhood of Atlas Obscura reporters.

5chw4r7z/Flickr/CC By-SA 2.0

How to View an Eclipse Safely

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Don't be like Sir Isaac Newton, who nearly blinded himself during an eclipse.

This story was originally published on The Conversation. It appears here under a Creative Commons license.

A total solar eclipse will occur across a wide ribbon of North America on April 8. Millions of people along the path of totality in Mexico, the United States, and Canada will witness this spectacular event, while millions more will experience a partial eclipse.

It is imperative to take steps to protect your eyes from solar retinopathy, permanent eye damage caused by looking at directly at the Sun. Any direct viewing should only be done with the correct use of approved solar eclipse glasses that meet an international safety standard known as ISO 12312-2.

Also known as sun blindness, solar retinopathy has been recognized since ancient Greece. It affected astronomers including Sir Isaac Newton, who once used a mirror to look at the Sun and saw “afterimages for months.”

In Turkey in 1976, 58 patients sought treatment for eye damage after an eclipse. While some experienced initial improvements, the damage in others was unchanged 15 years later. In 1999, 45 people presented to the Eye Casualty of Leicester Royal Infirmary after an eclipse seen there. Retinopathy was confirmed in 40 of them. Seven months later, four people could still see “the ghosts of the damage” in their visual field.

And after the solar eclipse of August 2017, 27 patients in Utah presented with concerns about vision. For those people affected by solar retinopathy, the results can be devastating and lifelong.

Looking directly at the sun can cause solar retinopathy, or damage  to the retina's fovea centralis, seen here just left of center.
Looking directly at the sun can cause solar retinopathy, or damage to the retina's fovea centralis, seen here just left of center. DavidBolnick, CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia

Solar retinopathy is damage to the back of the eye (the fovea centralis in the retina) from exposure to intense light. It is typically caused by sungazing or eclipse viewing but can also result from welding without a shield, looking at laser pointers, and from some surgical and photographic lighting.

A process called “phototoxicity” happens when the energy in the light forms damaging free radicals and reacts with oxygen within the retina. This disrupts the retinal pigment epithelium (a layer of supportive cells beneath the retina) as well as the choriocapillaris (blood vessels) beneath.

Fragmentation of the photoreceptors, nerve cells within the retina that detect light and color, follows and can result in permanent loss of central vision.

Some wavelengths of light that cause solar retinopathy—such as ultraviolet-A radiation and near-infrared wavelengths—are not visible to humans, yet cause solar retinopathy in as little as a few seconds. This exposure doesn’t necessarily hurt at the time.

So eclipse gazing—even with little or no visible light and viewed briefly without pain—can lead to loss of vision. There is no proven treatment for solar retinopathy. Steroid medications have been tried without evidence of success, and may make things worse in some patients. Antioxidant medications are used in some eye diseases, but there are no studies showing a benefit in solar retinopathy. Vision may improve over time without treatment but many patients are left with residual deficits. The mainstay of management is therefore prevention.

When planning for the total solar eclipse, look for safety lenses that meet an international safety standard known as ISO 12312-2.
When planning for the total solar eclipse, look for safety lenses that meet an international safety standard known as ISO 12312-2. LeoPatrizi/Getty Images

Only approved glasses will absorb the appropriate wavelengths of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. They must:

  1. be purchased from reputable vendors to ensure they are not counterfeits
  2. display the correct safety certification (ISO 12312-2)
  3. not be scratched, cracked, or show any other signs of damage
  4. fit your face properly so no gaps let light in (check they fit over your usual glasses if you need these to see normally)
  5. be checked by looking at a lamp or light bulb; only light from the Sun should be visible through genuine eclipse glasses. This check doesn’t risk eye damage provided the previous steps have been followed.

Regular sunglasses, polaroid filters, welding shields, X-ray film, neutral density filters, red glass filters, mobile phones, and homemade sun filters are not safe for viewing the Sun or an eclipse.

Symptoms of solar retinopathy to watch out for include blurred vision in one or both eyes within one or two days of exposure. People may also experience blind spots, altered color vision, visual distortion (straight lines appearing kinked or wavy), micropsia (objects appearing smaller than normal), light sensitivity, and headache. There may be no symptoms at all in the first day.

If you have symptoms, abstain from further eclipse viewing. Use dark sunglasses and painkillers (such as acetaminophen) for light sensitivity and headaches. Arrange an urgent appointment with an ophthalmologist or optometrist, or go to an urgent care clinic.

A total solar eclipse may potentially be viewed without eye protection, but only during the brief period while the Moon completely covers the Sun (the period of totality)—and this still has risks. Eclipse glasses should only be removed after totality has commenced, when the Moon has completely covered the Sun and it suddenly becomes dark. Just prior to the Sun reappearing, eclipse glasses must be replaced, to keep observing the remaining partial eclipse.

A solar eclipse is a rare occurrence. People will naturally be curious to observe it. Following the right advice will mean they can do it safely.

Hessom Razavi is an ophthalmologist, and an associate professor at The University of Western Australia.


Go Beyond the Beef at Korean Barbecue

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Enjoy sizzling shellfish and duck over charcoal.

THIS ARTICLE IS ADAPTED FROM THE MARCH 23, 2024, EDITION OF GASTRO OBSCURA’S FAVORITE THINGS NEWSLETTER. YOU CAN SIGN UP HERE.

I grew up in Flushing, the home to Queens’ Koreatown. Or as we call it, the real Koreatown. It’s where 60 percent of Korean New Yorkers actually live, as compared to the over-the-top, Times Square-like entertainment center that’s become Manhattan’s K-Town.

After the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 removed national-origin quotas that favored European countries, the population of Korean Americans rose from 11,000 in 1960 to 290,000 in 1980, as they found their new homes in metropolitan areas of California, New Jersey, and New York.

That statistic includes my parents: my dad, a now-retired jewelry store owner in Harlem, and my nurse mom who worked throughout the worst years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Somehow, my mom still found the time to grill the most delectable meat, serving it with lettuce grown in her garden.

Nothing engages all the senses like Korean barbecue. And I’ve been privy to all of its forms both at home and at restaurants since childhood.

In recent years, Korean grill houses have become mainstream. Bulgogi and galbi are now part of the American foodie’s vernacular, but there’s so much more to Korean barbecue than beef and pork. There are live clams, frothing with liquor on grill slats. There are buoyant and buttery chunks of eel crackling over red charcoal embers.

Some of these proteins are eaten for special occasions, and often they come seasoned and prepared in a certain way. They all are grilled right at the diner’s table with a line-up of banchan that make for a magnitude of flavors—savory, smoky, sour, spicy—and textures, from the crunch of the lettuce wrap to the teeth-sinking tenderness of the meat.

Here’s a look at four special kinds of Korean barbecue, along with a list of restaurants in the States that specialize in them.

Duck Barbecue or Ori Gui (오리 구이)

Despite its richness, duck is considered a nutritious barbecue option.
Despite its richness, duck is considered a nutritious barbecue option. Atsuo Watanabe/Getty Images

In Korea, as in the U.S., duck is considered a premium meat for a special occasion. Since the philosophy of food as medicine is imprinted into our culture, health concerns draw Koreans to duck’s nutritiousness: collagen for beauty benefits and unsaturated fats (which don’t clog blood vessels in the way other animal proteins do).

At grill houses specializing in duck, the meat comes out sliced into thin, marbled rounds or chopped into chunks, either lightly salted or marinated. These are often cooked on a tilted grill pan that allows for excess grease to drip out.

Once the duck is cooked, get to making wraps. Dip the sizzling duck into a blend of Korean mustard and soy sauce. Add that to any of the wrapping leaves (usually lettuce and/or kkaenip, perilla leaves) along with a dollop of rice. Top it off with the grilled kimchi and seasoned chives that are usually served with duck.

Leave room for leftover magic. The servers scoop rice onto the grill pan and mix it together with the remaining duck and kimchi for bokkeumbap, carefully scorching the bottom for an extra charred, umami flavor.

Where to find it
In New York City: Daori BBQ, Kumsung BBQ, Han Joo. In Atlanta: Tofu Village Korean BBQ. In Los Angeles: Sun Ha Jang.

Eel Barbecue or Jangeoh Gui (장어구이)

Eel is a special-occasion meat.
Eel is a special-occasion meat. Photo: Kangheewan/Getty Images

Barbecued eel—one of my favorite grilled meats—is a rich, buttery treat that chars and curls as its skin contracts over hot charcoal.

Unfortunately, a number of factors limit its availability in the U.S. Compared to beef or pork barbecue, the demand for eel is not as high. Even among Koreans, it’s extolled as a special-occasion health food, whose oily, protein-heavy content lends itself to replenishing gi (기) or life energy.

In Korea, eel’s popularity peaks during the low-energy, dragging days of summer. The dish also requires eels to be stored alive in fish tanks, and a chef on staff needs to be experienced with handling live eels.

Here’s how to enjoy barbecued eel: Dip the crackling-hot eel into a sauce of sesame oil mixed with salt along with black pepper and/or spicy red ssamjang; drop that into a leaf of lettuce, add a spoonful of rice if you like, and top it with the customary pickled ginger. Then, plop the whole thing in your mouth for kaleidoscopic flavors and textures in every bite.

Where to find it
In New York City: Yuk Jun Gui. In Palisades Park, NJ: Jang-eo Jip. In Los Angeles, CA: Soot Bull Jeep.

Chicken Barbecue or Dakgalbi (닭갈비)

<em>Dakgalbi</em> isn't just chicken. The meat comes mixed with with vegetables and chewy rice cakes.
Dakgalbi isn't just chicken. The meat comes mixed with with vegetables and chewy rice cakes. Photo: Kuru man/CC BY 2.0 Deed

The word dakgalbi, which translates to chicken ribs, is a misnomer that hints to its storied past.

Long ago, it was a more affordable substitute for pork ribs, and it uses the same spicy seasoning as jeyook gui (spicy grilled pork). Lore also has it that a restaurant chef in Chuncheon in the Gangwon Province remixed the popular jeyook gui with chicken when he ran out of pork one day in the 1960s. To this day, Myeongdong Street in Chuncheon is so packed with dakgalbi restaurants—and patrons—that it’s nicknamed Dakgalbi Alley.

Thanks to Korean immigrants, you can have this tradition stateside, too. On top of the large round grill pan embedded into the table, the server lays out a glistening red mass of boneless chicken chunks in a gochujang-based sauce that typically includes chopped cabbage, chewy tteok (rice cakes) and wedges of goguma (Korean sweet potato). If you have to order these separately, don’t forego the tteok. They add a wonderfully bouncy texture and balance out the spicy seasoning.

Depending on the restaurant, the sides include lettuce and/or perilla leaf wraps and dongchimi, a refreshingly cold pickled radish broth that’s the perfect counterpoint to the hot and savory dakgalbi. Similar to the duck barbecue, leave room for bokkeumbap with add-ons like bean sprouts and extra gochujang-based seasoning.

Where to find it
In New York City: Doraon 1.5 Dakgalbi. In Houston: Lucky Palace Korean BBQ. In Palisades Park, NJ: Hong Chun Cheon Cheese Dak Galbi, Dumok BBQ.

Clam Barbecue or Jogae Gui (조개구이)

Live clams open up on a hot grill.
Live clams open up on a hot grill. Photo: Insung Jeon/Getty Images

Since clams are a lighter meat, they’re typically eaten as a drinking food—for when you’re buzzed and have a hankering for a snack to prolong the boozy session. In Korea, clam barbecue became a happy hour fad among office workers about 10 years ago, although coastal towns like Busan and Incheon have always specialized in it.

Whole live clams are placed on grill slats in the middle of the table, where they slowly open up. When the liquor starts bubbling, the gloved servers pick up each clam, shuck them open with tongs and place them on the outer edges of the grill to cool down. Traditional accouterments include cho (vinegar) gochujang sauce for dipping.

While the clams are the main draw for me, I love ordering other shellfish, too: scallops topped with melty mozzarella cheese and cho gochujang, mussels, shrimp, crab, and a small pot of mollusks and squid strips simmered on top of the grill pan.

Where to find it
In New York City: Goo Gong Tan. In Fort Lee, NJ: Obaltan. In Los Angeles: Burnin’ Shell, Jae Bu Do.

Podcast: Ganvie Lake Village

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A deep dive into "the Venice of Africa," a waterway-filled village in Benin.

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.


In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, producer Baudelaire Ceus talks with our host Dylan Thuras about his trip to Ganvie Lake Village in Benin, a place referred to as “the Venice of Africa.”

Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their stories. Join us daily, Monday through Thursday, to explore a new wonder with cofounder Dylan Thuras and a neighborhood of Atlas Obscura reporters.

Manu25/French Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0

Why Doomsayers Think the Eclipse Will Bring Disaster to Illinois

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The town of Carbondale sits in the middle of an astronomical crossroads.

The end of the world will occur in Carbondale, Illinois. That is one of the latest conspiracy theories that’s been floating around the internet over the past year. Seven years ago, this small town experienced a total solar eclipse, the path of which spanned the United States diagonally from South Carolina to Oregon. This year on April 8, the U.S. is once again seeing a band of 100 percent totality, but this time stretching from Texas to Maine. If the paths from both the 2017 and 2024 total solar eclipses were laid on top of each other, the two trajectories would form an X over the country. Carbondale sits right at the center of that X, one of the very few lucky places to see a total eclipse twice in seven years.

“If you lived forever, and you never moved from where you are today, on average, you would have to wait 400 years for a total eclipse to come across where you are,” says Frank Close, Professor of Physics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Exeter College. The likelihood that you could experience two total solar eclipses in one place in the space of seven years is miniscule. The chances are so low, that some believe something special is going on in Carbondale. In particular, conspiracy theorists believe that a seismic event will be triggered when the eclipse arrives in this part of the state, known as Little Egypt, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Carbondale sits at the center of an X shape formed by two eclipse paths.
Carbondale sits at the center of an X shape formed by two eclipse paths. larrybraunphotography.com/Getty Images

Conspiracy theories about eclipses are not new. They also sprung up about the 2017 eclipse, when a prominent Christian eschatologist named David Meade stated that the eclipse was a signal that Nibiru, a small (and non-existent) planet, would crash into the Earth. This year’s batch of theories have been fueled by the film Leave the World Behind. In it, a lunar eclipse looms on the screen, which follows a scene showing a newscast map of a cyberattack across the continental United States. Despite the fact that it shows a lunar—not solar—eclipse, some believe that it’s not just a movie, but rather a warning leading to one conclusion: The 2024 total solar eclipse passing across the United States portends an apocalypse, a mass human sacrifice event.

Conspiracies often arise as an “answer to the disenchantment of the world,” according to Michael Butter, Professor of American Literary and Cultural History at the University of Tübingen. Such theories “perform certain functions for people. They give them back a certain amount of control, because on a higher level, they can at least claim to understand what is happening and what they think is harming them. It also helps them to deal with a feeling of powerlessness.” Butter also proposes that, without widely held beliefs in a god, many people search for higher powers that are in control, for better or for worse.

Apocalyptic beliefs about eclipses are also an ancient phenomenon. One of the most dramatic comes from Norse mythology, with the story of the relentless pursuit of the sun and moon by two wolves called Sköll and Hati. As the story goes, if Sköll catches the sun goddess Sól, who is perpetually fleeing in her chariot, he eats her; this portends the beginning of Ragnarök, the end of the world. During solar eclipses, people would make loud sounds to try to scare Sköll away from eating Sól, hoping to frighten him into dropping her from his jaws.

In Norse mythology, a wolf trying to eat the sun will cause the end of the world.
In Norse mythology, a wolf trying to eat the sun will cause the end of the world. Ivy Close Images/Alamy

Mayan groups, including the Yucatec, Lacandón, and Ch’orti’, also believed that solar eclipses signaled the end of the world, and that either spirits of the dead or jaguars would emerge and devour everyone on earth. People reacted with chanting, human sacrifices, war cries, and the killing of any captives, in the hope that the catastrophe could be prevented. Even more recently, an eclipse in 1878 prompted fears of Armageddon in the United States, with many people believing it was the second coming of Jesus and therefore Judgment Day. One man went home, killed his family with an ax, and killed himself for fear of what would happen.

Kate Russo, psychologist and eclipse-chaser, explains that the difference between historical beliefs about eclipses and modern-day conspiracy theories is that myths from ancient cultures came from directly witnessing a solar eclipse and the collective storytelling that emerged from that awe-filled experience. When these stories developed, the scientific information we have today was simply not available, and people needed a way to make sense of what had happened. The creation of conspiracy theories both locally and globally today do not necessarily come from having witnessed an eclipse at all, and may instead relate to a distrust of the state, the elite, or a general feeling of lack of power.

There’s a lot that can be explained surrounding today’s conspiracies about Carbondale. The crossroads position of the town in two eclipse pathways is not unheard of. Total solar eclipses occur every two to four years, and each time, the path of totality hits a different part of the Earth. Those paths occasionally crisscross and form an X-shaped pattern across the globe.

The 2017 eclipse belongs to Saros 145, while the 2024 eclipse is part of Saros 139, which intersect to form an X shape.
The 2017 eclipse belongs to Saros 145, while the 2024 eclipse is part of Saros 139, which intersect to form an X shape. NASA/Public Domain

Because the Earth’s axis is on a tilt, and the Moon’s orbit is also on a slight tilt, total solar eclipses only happen when the Moon’s position is precisely aligned with the Sun. The shadow of that eclipse then tracks across the Earth and hits different countries and oceans at varying latitudes and angles each time, depending on the tilt of both bodies and the spin of Earth when the alignment takes place.

The X patterns essentially happen because of repetition over the years, where each eclipse traces a different path due to slight adjustments between the positions of the Moon, Earth, and Sun. Solar eclipses follow a pattern that repeats every 18 years (which is the time it takes for the three bodies to return to approximately the same relative geometry); this is called a Saros cycle. Each eclipse in one Saros cycle occurs slightly more West and South than the previous year, because the Earth is at a slightly different tilt and spin each time. But there are different Saros cycles, since there’s more than one position in which the Moon, Earth, and Sun can align to make an eclipse happen. That means all the slightly different-angled Saros cycles are bound to criss-cross over previous eclipse pathways sooner or later.

Many of these crossovers happen over water, uninhabited areas, or in many cases, simply not in the United States. Turkey experienced an eclipse in the same place in 1999 and 2006, and the next X will occur over the Pacific ocean. It is only when they make their way into the mass media and popular consciousness that conspiracy theories have the material to take root.

The woodcut from 1522 depicts an eclipse and an earthquake happening at the same time.
The woodcut from 1522 depicts an eclipse and an earthquake happening at the same time. piemags/ABTB/Alamy

The association between eclipses and earthquakes is also not new. The Greek historian Thucydides was the first to suggest in the fourth century BC that tremors could be triggered by the astronomical event. Today, the proposed connection has even been studied by seismologists. One study from 2016 found that large earthquakes do have a slightly higher likelihood of occurring during the full moon or new moon—times at which tidal pull is at its greatest. However, the effect is tiny and says nothing about an eclipse specifically. Other studies find no relationship between the celestial phenomenon and natural disasters. “Earthquakes happen a lot, and many other disasters,” says Close. “If you lumped all disasters and things together, one or two are bound to overlap with an eclipse.” He also points out, “if eclipses happen without disasters, is that significant, or would [conspiracy theorists] just ignore it?”

Bob Baer, a physicist at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, has heard quite a few doomsday predictions surrounding his home, but he focuses on promoting the science of the event. What he can say for sure is happening in Carbondale this year includes a number of informative talks and celebrations. Baer is part of the public astronomy observation program, which trains interested people in the science of astronomy. In particular, this year he is working with the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast Initiative, a citizen-science project aiming to take numerous photographs of the eclipse. Citizen scientist volunteers are prepared with telescopes along the path of totality, ready to collect imagery that can be captured at no other time.

The moment during the eclipse is so special, Baer explains, because normally when “the light from the sun is hitting all these dust particles in the atmosphere, and light scatters all over the place,” the sun’s corona cannot be seen. During a total eclipse, the sun’s light is blocked, and the corona is visible. By studying the corona through these pictures, astronomers can learn about the sun’s magnetic field, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections, some of which can cause problems with telecommunication systems here on Earth.

The events in Carbondale will just involve “edutainment,” according to physicist Bob Baer. “People are getting entertained while they're getting educated.”
The events in Carbondale will just involve “edutainment,” according to physicist Bob Baer. “People are getting entertained while they're getting educated.” Abaca Press/Alamy

In 2017, Baer saw a lot of hype and even anxiety arise about the total solar eclipse, but not because of fears of the apocalypse. With so many people descending upon such a small town, Baer says that people were “panicked about the planning and how the infrastructure was going to hold up.” The US Government Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a document noting that, in 2017, “several small communities were overwhelmed in the transportation, communications, and emergency services sector” due to the large eclipse-watching crowds, so it suggested management approaches for 2024. As a result, this year some states have called in the National Guard in to support them, a request that has thrown fuel on the fire of conspiracy. Despite necessary precautions and crowd-management, Baer explains that experiencing the eclipse in Carbondale tends to be more of a “positive, very unifying event,” with broadcasts in the stadium, an airforce flyover, and performances on the field planned for this year.

Whether viewers of the eclipse have photographs, coronas, or doom on their minds, there’s one thing Close recommends paying particular attention to if witnessing the eclipse this year. He says there’s a special moment in the final three minutes of totality that people can look for if they are prepared. “At the moment the sun reappears, look away and look to the east, because the shadow of the moon will be heading off at a thousand miles an hour,” he explains. “The contrast between light and dark is very good, and as daylight returns, you can see the shadow of the moon—gone. It’s as if the riders of the apocalypse have been through the city, and you see that they've left you behind. You’ve survived.”

Coronium, One of the Most Enduring Mysteries (and Mistakes) in Eclipse Science

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During the 1869 total solar eclipse, astronomers thought they had discovered a new element. They were wrong, and the truth was much weirder.

It was July 1869, and astronomers were making frantic preparations. A total solar eclipse was coming to the United States, and new, fundamental knowledge was going to be there for the taking, by whoever got there first. Scientific expeditions were planned to travel into the path of totality to peer at the Sun, and the rare sight of its ghostly, pale outer atmosphere.

There was good reason to be excited. Just a few months prior, scientists studying another eclipse, in India, had found a new chemical element inside the Sun, which was more readily observed during the event. What else was lurking behind the Moon’s shadow?

In the 19th century, during what historian Richard Holmes has called “the Age of Wonder,” scientific discoveries were happening at breakneck speeds. Sometimes discoveries were so monumental that scientists did not have the background knowledge to make sense of what they saw.

Among many advances, German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer showed that the Sun’s spectrum included lines, like a barcode, overlaying the band of colors that make up sunlight. These lines can reveal the presence of elements inside our star. They were finding proof of hydrogen, sodium, iron, and other chemicals within the star closest to us. (And in the early 1860s, a pair of married English astronomers named William and Margaret Huggins turned these techniques on other stars, too.)

Joseph von Fraunhofer's 1815 copper etching shows the full visible spectrum, including the "barcode" lines named after the early scientist.
Joseph von Fraunhofer's 1815 copper etching shows the full visible spectrum, including the "barcode" lines named after the early scientist. Deutsches Museum Archiv, BN 43952, CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia

With each eclipse came a new opportunity to study the Sun like never before. When its full disk is obscured by the Moon, we can peer at its atmosphere in detail. In October 1868, two astronomers, Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer, separately measured the Sun’s spectrum during a total eclipse. Each found evidence of a new line in the yellow part of sunlight that did not correspond to any known element, indicating a new discovery. Viewing it from smog-choked London, Lockyer assumed the new line was a metal, and he dubbed it helium, after the Greek god of the sun, Helios.

This discovery would lay the groundwork for one of the greatest eclipse mistakes—and one of the most enduring solar mysteries—in human history.

With helium freshly found, astronomers realized that eclipses could lead to other new findings. Lockyer in particular became an outspoken proponent of eclipse expeditions and began planning travel for a solar eclipse in India. His idea caught on, and astronomers in the U.S., which was eager to prove itself as a modern nation, were keen to observe the total eclipse of Aug. 7, 1869, which would cross North America from southern Alaska down through North Carolina.

Astronomers fanned out across the Midwest. Two chose Iowa: Charles Augustinus Young, a professor at Dartmouth College, traveled to Burlington, and William Harkness, a lieutenant commander and math professor in the Navy, traveled to Des Moines. (By the way, that is not the same William Harkness of Standard Oil fame immortalized in a Taylor Swift song, in case you were wondering.) As the Moon slipped in front of the Sun, both astronomers trained their telescopes on the Sun’s ghostly crown of flame.

Just as Lockyer and Janssen had a year prior, Young and Harkness saw a new “barcode” line in the Sun’s spectrum, only this one was bright green instead of yellow. Harkness was satisfied the discovery would go down in history: “We have succeeded beyond our most sanguine expectations,” he wrote. He and others hypothesized that the green line indicated another new element, later dubbed coronium. In 1902, Dimitri Mendeleev, father of the periodic table of the elements, renamed it newtonium. But regardless of what they called it, scientists struggled to understand it for decades.

The temperature of the Sun's surface is about 5,600 degrees Celsius (10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). That's hot, but nowhere near the temperature needed to cook electrons off iron.
The temperature of the Sun's surface is about 5,600 degrees Celsius (10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). That's hot, but nowhere near the temperature needed to cook electrons off iron. Stocktrek Images via Getty Images

Proving any new element exists requires replication in a lab, and in natural phenomena when possible. The discovery of helium in sunlight, for example, initially met with skepticism and ridicule—until 1882, when Italian physicist Luigi Palmieri analyzed hot gasses belching from Mount Vesuvius and found the same yellow spectral line Lockyer and Janssen had seen during an eclipse. A decade later, chemists produced helium in a lab, confirming its existence.

But no one could independently confirm coronium. In the 1930s, Swedish astronomer Bengt Edlen determined that coronium was not a new element after all. Instead, it was a form of iron that had been shockingly transformed, with 13 of its 26 electrons cooked off in temperatures so hot they seemed impossible.

To transform iron this way would require temperatures near 1 million degrees Celsius (more than 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit). That is unspeakably hot, far hotter than the surface of the Sun. Edlen’s discovery didn’t make much sense—and, in fact, it still doesn’t. For nearly a century, solar scientists have tried to understand how the Sun’s atmosphere could reach these temperatures. It remains one of the biggest questions in physics, and new spacecraft studying the Sun are now on the cusp of solving it.

The April 8 eclipse will provide new ways to study our star, and all the light that spills forth from its atmosphere. The mistaken discovery of coronium illustrates how the more we understand, the deeper our questions—and sometimes the answers show us how little we really understand.

Wondersky columnist Rebecca Boyle is the author of Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are (January 2024, Random House). She is a featured speaker at Atlas Obscura’s Ecliptic Festival, April 5-8, 2024, in Hot Springs, Ark.

Would You Eat This Purple Tomato?

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This fruit owes its luminous violet shade to snapdragon flower DNA.

It looks like the kind of nightshade one might grow in Fern Gully, a lustrous, near-black tomato veined with bursts of alien fuchsia. Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a Missouri-based seed company, has a long history of offering strikingly photogenic heirloom tomatoes. From Queen of the Night, an orange-flecked beauty, to the California Tulip, a flame-hued Russian cultivar, to the Orange Accordion, a monster-sized, pleated number, the company’s past seed catalogs overflow with fantastical fruit.

But customers thought that there was something different about the Purple Galaxy. This suspiciously vibrant specimen bore an uncanny resemblance to another variety known as the Purple Tomato developed by Norfolk Healthy Produce. This wouldn’t be a big deal, except that the Purple Tomato’s coloring comes from snapdragon flower genes—a clear violation of Baker Creek’s strict policy against GMOs.

On February 19, Baker Creek abruptly pulled the Purple Galaxy from their 2024 lineup and issued a public statement on Facebook. “Although we understand that you—like us—may be disappointed not to have a delicious non-GM purple flesh tomato in your garden, we are pleased that we were able to make this decision before a single seed of Purple Galaxy was made available to customers,” the post reads.

Baker Creek alleges that they believed that they were purchasing non-GMO tomato seeds from a plant-breeder in the European Union. The company's statement also notes that testing could not definitively establish a link between their Purple Galaxy and Norfolk Healthy Produce’s Purple Tomato, but that “the testing also did not conclusively establish that the Purple Galaxy is truly free of any genetically-modified material.” (Baker Creek did not respond to requests for comment.)

Norfolk Healthy Produce released a different statement on its FAQ page. “We are told that laboratory testing determined that it [the Purple Galaxy] is, in fact, bioengineered (GMO).”

“It's not clear to me exactly what happened with the Purple Galaxy and that's really Baker Creek's business,” says Nathan Pumplin, CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce. He personally has had no problem eating salads full of his company's Purple Tomato. “I find it has a very savory, earthy flavor,” Pumplin says. “It's fairly low in acid so, of course, the sweetness really comes through.”

The Purple Tomato makes for an eye-catching salad.
The Purple Tomato makes for an eye-catching salad. Courtesy Norfolk Healthy Produce

All the fuss over this tomato cuts to the heart of a decades-long debate over genetically-modified foods and the role they should play in the American food system. Currently, only a very small number of genetically-modified plants, such as the Bt corn available at Harris Seeds, are available to home gardeners. Norfolk’s Purple Tomato is one of the first to be specifically marketed to them.

It’s also the culmination of nearly two decades of work, mostly on the part of Cathie Martin, a professor of plant sciences at University of East Anglia in the U.K. and a researcher at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. In a 2021 interview with The New York Times, Martin said, “There’s just so much baggage around anything genetically modified. I’m not trying to make money. I’m worried about people’s health! But in people’s minds it’s all Dr. Frankenstein and trying to rule the world.”

Due in part to her type one diabetes, Martin has a personal as well as scientific interest in making a healthy tomato. The purple plant is packed with powerful, cancer-fighting anthocyanins, the same compounds found in blueberries, purple cabbages, and plums.

GMOs have been integrated into the United States’ food supply since the early 1990s. The majority of these wind up in animal feed rather than directly on human tables. Usually, genetic modifications are practical—higher crop yields, resistance to diseases or pests, or tolerance of herbicides—although a few, like the lycopene-rich Pinkglow Pineapples and Arctic Apples, which refuse to brown long after they’ve been cut, are cosmetic.

One way or another though, just about everyone living in the U.S. has eaten GMOs, whether they were aware of it or not. According to the USDA, in 2020, 92 percent of all corn and 94 percent of all soybeans planted in the United States were GMO crops. Historically, public skepticism towards GMOs has run high. An oft-cited 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that 48 percent of those interviewed thought that GMO foods were unsafe.

Del Monte Fresh company's pink pineapple is genetically modified for its vivid color and sweeter flavor profile.
Del Monte Fresh company's pink pineapple is genetically modified for its vivid color and sweeter flavor profile. Getty Images / RANDALL CAMPOS

“People think that we sit here with syringes and inject pesticides and horrible things into the fruit that they're going to eat and that's very far from the truth,” says Pumplin. In the case of the Purple Tomato, bacteria were used to insert two snapdragon genes into tomato plants, which then reproduced naturally for several generations. “At the end of the day, we're still breeding plants and farming the way that people have done for thousands of years. We’ve just added a little biotechnology piece.”

Many early critiques of GMOs centered around Monsanto’s “terminator seeds,” a program by which the agrigiant stripped seeds of their ability to germinate naturally and prosecuted farmers for practicing generations-old seed-saving techniques. The program was discontinued in 1999 under immense public pressure, but the stigma associating GMOs with nefarious Big Ag schemes persisted.

“I think you need to look at each genetically-engineered plant on a case-by-case basis and determine what the benefits are, what the possible risks are,” says Raoul Adamchak, who oversees UC Davis’s CSA program.

Both Adamchak, an organic farmer of more than 30 years, and his wife, Pam Roland, a plant geneticist and professor of plant pathology at UC Davis, have been deeply invested in the conversation around GMOs for decades. In 2008, the two coauthored Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food. Much like Norfolk Healthy Produce and Baker Creek, the couple might initially appear to occupy opposite sides of an ideological gulf.

“A lot of people wonder if Raoul and I can be friends—if we can even talk to each other,” Roland told the audience in a 2014 presentation at UC Berkeley. She was sharing the stage with author Michael Pollan, at the time a staunch critic of GMOs. “We can because we have the same goal.”

In 2005, a biohazard sign sits in front of a field of GMO corn in Germany. In 2015, the country banned GMO crops.
In 2005, a biohazard sign sits in front of a field of GMO corn in Germany. In 2015, the country banned GMO crops. Getty Images / Ulrich Baumgarten

That goal is a more abundant, secure food supply for an increasingly volatile world. Roland’s work centers on genetically-enhanced rice varieties that can survive floods, sequester carbon, and more. “If you have rising oceans, you're going to need salt-tolerant crops,” Adamchak says. “There are people working on virus-resistant plants and insect- and disease-resistant plants. So I think that all of this can be very beneficial in the future as agriculture just gets more and more challenges due to climate change.”

As Adamchak points out, there are already plenty of instances of GMO crops that have been beneficial. For instance, biotechnology essentially saved Hawaiʻi’s papaya industry from being wiped out by the ringspot virus, while pest-resistant biotech eggplants are being used to help fight hunger in certain areas. “There's not a huge list, but there's a list,” he says. “And you can see historically that there haven't been any negative effects on people's health from it.”

While genetically-modified organisms come with risks, “I don't see any more risk from genetic engineering or from CRISPR than we've had from plant-breeding,” Adamchak says. Many plants naturally contain toxins or allergens, which could creep into a new variety if a plant breeder is not careful. “The same goes for genetically-engineered plants, but they're so scrutinized that they're, in a way, less likely to cause those sorts of problems.”

Purple Tomatoes ripen on the vine.
Purple Tomatoes ripen on the vine. Courtesy Norfolk Healthy Produce

At present, GMO crops need to make it through a serious amount of red tape in order to get to market. Although Martin successfully made her purple tomatoes in 2008, it took another 14 years to get USDA approval. Norfolk’s Purple Tomato will begin rolling out at select locations around the U.S. this year, with the aim for a wider distribution by 2025.

“One really fun thing, I think, about the Purple Tomato is that it's not exactly the first [GMO] seed that a home gardener could buy, but pretty close,” Adamchak says. “It opens the door to thinking about what the possibilities are and maybe opens people's minds to be more accepting of genetic plant improvement.”

Although Norfolk Healthy Produce sold out of all 13,000 orders of Purple Tomato seeds, Adamchak reached out and managed to get a few for his own garden, which he plans to grow. “I'm curious how the plant grows and how it tastes and how it looks,” he says.

At the end of the day, if the Purple Tomato is going to stick around, he says it will need to be more than a curious science experiment. “It's one thing to say it has anthocyanins and it's going to be healthier for you, but if it doesn't taste good, people aren't going to buy it.”

The Hottest Drink of the 1893 World's Fair Was an Artificial Orange 'Cider'

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"You're drinking something that some guy just cobbled together out of Lake Michigan water and food dye.”

Imagine you’re a wide-eyed attendee of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, also known as the World’s Fair. Luckily, you’ve finally landed at the front of the line for the marvelous Ferris wheel, the first ever constructed. Unluckily, it’s a hot June day, and two rotations on the Ferris wheel take 20 minutes.

After stumbling out of the Ferris wheel cabin, you’ve sweated through your fine fair-going clothes. Feeling dizzy and nauseous from the heat more than the heights, you see a welcome sight: Next to the ride, a stand is selling ice-cold orange cider.

Sweet, sour, and nonalcoholic, orange cider was the hottest drink of the World’s Fair. Introduced by a Floridian drink manufacturer, the beverage grew wildly popular throughout the six months of the event.

World fairs and expositions have long been a way for nations, states, institutions, and businesses to show off their best sides to large audiences. Since people love novel foods and drinks, these events also popularized or inspired many foods we still eat today. Juicy Fruit gum got its start at the 1893 fair, as did the Chicago specialty Vienna beef. The St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 was where the ice cream cone became mainstream, and while the 1964 World’s Fair in New York was something of a disaster, it also kicked off a vogue for Belgian waffles.

This picture of the World's Columbian Exposition Administration Building was taken on October 9, 1893, or "Chicago Day."
This picture of the World's Columbian Exposition Administration Building was taken on October 9, 1893, or "Chicago Day." C. D. Arnold/Chicago History Museum

But orange cider, the runaway success of 1893, has not stayed in the culinary lexicon. According to Marissa Croft, a research and insights analyst at the Chicago History Museum, there’s a very good reason why. “Probably all the knock-offs made a pretty big ding to its reputation,” she says.

Orange cider, explains Croft, existed prior to the fair, but was sometimes made as an alcoholic drink, accounting for the “cider” in the name. With the American temperance movement well underway, many stands at the fair opted to sell soft drinks to the public. While lemonade and other citrus-flavored treats were available to many Americans, the appeal of the cider, Croft believes, was its association with Florida and other warm regions.

A majority of the U.S. states (plus one territory) had their own building at the fair. Florida’s was particularly magnificent. “The Floridian pavilion was really nice. It was lush, and they had this huge orange tower in the center,” says Croft. Florida’s pavilion sold orange cider, which they maintained had real oranges in it. Other businesses and exhibits soon followed suit, making orange cider into a genuine craze.

With 27 million total fair attendees, that meant a lot of people sampled orange cider. Businesses smelled an opportunity to cash in, and soon, much of the cider sold at the fair contained no orange at all. “You're promised orange cider, which sounds pretty straightforward, like a sugary fruity drink. But then you're drinking something that some guy just cobbled together out of Lake Michigan water and food dye,” says Croft.

An elegant stand at the fair, vending both orange cider and lemonade.
An elegant stand at the fair, vending both orange cider and lemonade. Public Domain

In a recent video, Croft and YouTuber Kaz Rowe whipped up one recipe for orange cider from an 1899 book, which contained simple syrup, orange essence, citric acid, and food coloring. The recipe, which Croft included in a blog post on the Chicago History Museum website, is a sweet, citrusy drink. It’s less complex than actual orange juice, but it’s pretty tasty and incredibly simple to make. It’s easy to understand why drink-makers would prefer to sell this version of “orange cider,” instead of messing around with actual oranges.

But there were much more offensive versions. “People got wise to the popularity and wanted to create their own version for cheap,” Croft says. “It was a mixture of molasses and apple cider vinegar, basically. So it had this orangey color, a little hint of sweetness, a little bit of tanginess, but not a drop of orange.”

As the fair went on, more and more people realized that what they were drinking wasn’t orange cider at all. “There's a joke, that's in the blog post, of the concessionaire at the World's Fair desperately phoning a grocery store [and saying,] ‘I need that keg of molasses and two-gallon jug of vinegar. I've been out of orange cider for hours!’” Croft laughs.

For some people, though, it wasn’t a laughing matter. The Floridian pavilion had to defend themselves, testifying that their cider contained actual oranges. Croft also notes that, when the office of the Illinois State Food Commission was founded, they conducted “chemical analyses of all of these fraudulent orange ciders that popped up after the fair.” Often, they found that the drinks contained no orange juice.

A view of the first Ferris wheel, from the Midway.
A view of the first Ferris wheel, from the Midway. C.E. Waterman/Chicago History Museum/Getty Images

Orange cider had made a name for itself, all right. It just wasn’t entirely a positive one. It didn’t help that the federal Food and Drug Act of 1906 was just around the corner, inspired by the era’s many food adulteration scandals. While even the grossest versions of orange cider weren’t harmful, many companies, Croft observes, “were passing it off as something that it wasn't.”

In October 1893, the fair came to an end, leaving a lasting impact on American ideas about architecture, art, technology, fun, and food. Even as the fair was being dismantled, orange cider was still considered something to joke about. As one publication noted, “The young woman who sold souvenir spoons and the young man who sold pure Californian orange cider made from vinegar and molasses are departed.”

For the next few years, trade publications and government reports covered instances of fake orange cider being sold in stores as the real deal. Sometimes, the cider was advertised as being the same drink served at the World’s Fair. “People are drinking this beverage called orange cider. And then it's really gross. It's flavored possibly with soap. They're probably going to be turned off of that beverage for a while, even if they had drunk it initially because they'd heard it was good,” says Croft.

In the early 20th century, orange cider slowly slid into obscurity. Ironically, one 1911 publication had a writer innocently wondering why. “As long ago as 1893 an excellent article of orange cider was made in California and sold on the grounds of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago,” they wrote. “It was a fine beverage and appeared to be in good demand. It would seem as if a little judicious advertising would have made it popular all over the world.”

This sweet cider can be cobbled together with simple syrup and citric acid.
This sweet cider can be cobbled together with simple syrup and citric acid. Anne Ewbank for Gastro Obscura

Podcast: A Journey Around the World With Sebastian Modak

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The New York Times' former "52 Places" reporter dives into the ups and downs of traveling for an entire year.

Listen and subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.


In this episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast, we sit down for a conversation with Sebastian Modak, a journalist who got arguably the coolest assignment—as The New York Times' “52 Places” reporter. The charms and challenges of the job were more than he ever imagined.

Our podcast is an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, we’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their stories. Join us daily, Monday through Thursday, to explore a new wonder with cofounder Dylan Thuras and a neighborhood of Atlas Obscura reporters.

Tom Barrett/Unsplash

The Mystery of 4,400 Preserved Brains—And One Scientist’s Quest to Solve It

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The former undertaker collects human brains, talks to them, and hopes they won’t haunt her.

As Alexandra Morton-Hayward stacks jam jars and Chinese takeout boxes containing human brains into the trunk of her car, she talks to them. “Alright, you guys, you’re going to go on top of each other, and I want you to stay on this side of the box. And you, I'm going to set you guys next to each other,” she tells them. This communication, she feels, is necessary; after all, “I don’t want them to haunt me.”

Morton-Hayward is an undertaker-turned-palaeobiologist at the University of Oxford. She has collected hundreds of brains, sometimes piling them into IKEA bags packed with dry ice and driving them back to the lab “like an 80-year-old grandma with a box of eggs on the seat,” as she puts it.

“It’s always a weird day when you set off in your car to go and collect a load of human brains,” she adds. After one of her recent trips to collect the remains from a dig site in South West England, she gathered 162 out of the 400 brains found in a 19th-century workhouse burial ground. It isn’t entirely unheard of to find brains preserved in the ground, but these ones were the only soft tissue left in the remains. And that makes them quite odd.

Fragments of brain dredged from a heavily waterlogged grave in a Victorian workhouse cemetery in Bristol, UK.
Fragments of brain dredged from a heavily waterlogged grave in a Victorian workhouse cemetery in Bristol, UK. Alexandra L. Morton-Hayward

Normally, our brains are the first to go when we die. The squishy, soft tissue that controls every function vital to life turns to liquid before any other organ decays—except when it inexplicably remains intact for hundreds or even thousands of years in the ground. That’s what researchers have realized is happening, as published in a new study on some 4,400 preserved brains recovered since the 17th century. The phenomenon was thought to be exceptionally rare before now.

Morton-Hayward is part of a team determined to find out why some brains bypass the carbon cycle while the rest start decomposing within minutes. “I have long been completely obsessed with death,” she says, “the decomposition and all the horrible, morbid things that folks don't like thinking about.” She first learned of brain preservation during the coronavirus pandemic, while pursuing a master’s degree in forensic anthropology and working as an embalmer by night. By the time travel restrictions lifted, she had plans to visit Denmark, where archaeologists had unearthed 10 brains once belonging to medieval monks.

“These skeletons were incredible,” (even “beautiful,” as she later describes them), “because a lot of the bones had been pyritized, so they were covered in fool's gold.” In humid conditions, skeletons can oxidize and form an iron sulfate, which results in the growth of crystals all over the bones. Despite their resplendence, Morton-Hayward looked past the impressive bones to the internal organs. “That was the first ancient brain I held in my hand,” she recalls. She was hooked.

"I tend to go with a big IKEA storage box full of dry ice and all the things I can get my hands on to handle them as best I can in bulk,” says Alexandra Morton-Hayward.
"I tend to go with a big IKEA storage box full of dry ice and all the things I can get my hands on to handle them as best I can in bulk,” says Alexandra Morton-Hayward. Graham Poulter

No stranger to working with dead bodies and body parts as an undertaker, Morton-Hayward now spends much of her working life surrounded by hundreds of ancient brains. As a doctoral candidate at Oxford, she has become a bona fide collector of archaic encephala. So far, her team has collected more than half of all recorded brains with unknown preservation mechanisms: about 570 from 12 sites across Europe and North America, some dating back 8,000 years. The brains are refrigerated—freezing would compromise them, Morton-Hayward says—and are currently filling four fridges at the University of Oxford.

“I'm endlessly running out of space, constantly buying new fridges,” she says. “When Russia invaded Ukraine and there was an energy crisis [in the U.K.], I bought a generator, just in case.”

She’s now helped research the mechanism of preservation for the 4,400 brains analyzed in the study. Morton-Hayward compares the texture of the brains to tofu. They’re often wet and mushy, all different colors from bright orange to black, and about five times smaller than the average size of a living brain. In some more understandable cases, the brains are preserved with the entire body due to the environmental surroundings; but in other cases, the brains were the only internal organ to survive.

For the majority of cases, the paper identifies four definitive explanations for how the brains persisted through time: dehydration, freezing, saponification, and tanning. These mechanisms occur in brains found with other preserved soft tissue, such as “in the desiccated remains of desert burials, the frozen corpses of mountain passes, and the tanned bog bodies of low-lying wetlands,” the study says. “However, the preservation of brains in the absence of other soft tissues—for example, among ancient human bones dredged from a swampy pond—is unexpected, poorly reported, and represents an untapped source of bioarchaeological information.”

The whole, shrunken brain from a burial ground founded in 1698 in Philadelphia, which was inundated after a devastating yellow fever epidemic.
The whole, shrunken brain from a burial ground founded in 1698 in Philadelphia, which was inundated after a devastating yellow fever epidemic. Alexandra L. Morton-Hayward

This is the mystery of the fifth mechanism, accounting for about 30 percent of all preserved brains in the archaeological record. This unknown cause is the second most common, too, behind dehydration, and it’s been discovered all over the world, from Florida to Italy, South Africa, New Zealand, and Japan. Specimens span a 12,000-year period, some dating back to the turn of the Holocene or earlier.

The study hypothesizes that the mysterious preservation mechanism could be molecular crosslinking, in which molecules are joined by a chemical bond. This could be a substance in the soil that helps stabilize the brain and preserve it. If their theory is right, it could inform current research on brain aging and neurodegenerative disorders like dementia.

“I strongly feel that these things, these brains, these human remains … they are our pilot work, at least. It’s showing that they are a hugely rich source of ancient biomolecules that we know and love as archaeologists, because they can tell us all the things about past human life,” says Morton-Hayward. “But until we know how they've preserved, we won't know how to maximize the information that's recoverable for them, so that's definitely the first hurdle.”

NASA Artists Are Creating Eye-Popping Posters for the Eclipse

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They’re continuing a long, prehistoric tradition of science art.

In the brief moments before totality, the palette of the sky deepens to a twilight blue. As the Moon glides in front of the Sun, wispy streaks of white-appearing light radiate outwards, while a halo of fire encircles our swiftly blackening star. There’s a lot of science going on during an eclipse. But scientists are not the only ones preoccupied with these heavenly views; for centuries, artists have stood beside astronomers, with paintbrush or chisel or camera in hand, trying to capture the colors, shapes, and shadows of the moment.

The extraordinary wonder and great dread of an eclipse have served as inspiration for some of history’s most impressive and imperative works of science art. And though artists from many millennia and cultures have used different mediums to capture the feeling of cosmic connection for their own reasons, sometimes they were enlisted by scientists. After all, documentation of celestial events can help astronomers further study the remote happenings of space. Now, NASA is once again turning to art for the solar eclipse on April 8.

Artistic creation hasn’t been far from astronomy since 3340 BC, when the earliest known record of a solar eclipse was created. A 5,364-year-old petroglyph depicting overlapping concentric circles was found etched on a stone megalith in Ireland, inscribed by Neolithic astronomer-priests. The mesoamerican Maya civilization also used rock art to record their startlingly accurate eclipse predictions, and the Pueblo society carved pictographs of a dark sun reaching outward with fiery tangles into New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon during the 1097 eclipse.

A petroglyph at Loughcrew in Ireland is believed to be the first artistic depiction of an eclipse.
A petroglyph at Loughcrew in Ireland is believed to be the first artistic depiction of an eclipse. Sarosecnology/CC BY-SA 4.0

Babylonian stargazers were first able to foresee solar eclipses with the discovery of the saros cycle around 7th or 8th century BC, but even this early scientific finding didn’t change the human desire to pair eclipse art with the unknown or mysticism.

Quite a few pieces from Asia depict mythology, such as Chinese book illustrations from the fourth through first centuries BC picturing legendary dragons or menacing dogs and cats devouring a sun, symbolizing the fear that their lifeforce would disappear. Intricate funerary vases sculpted by Chinese artists in the 1300s show the same fabled dragon chasing an eclipse with eager jaws.

In other parts of the continent, many traditional works of Tibetan art honor Rahula, a protective deity who was fueled by consuming bodies of the cosmos, causing the sun to eternally vanish. And in Japan, artists created woodblock paintings, such as a 14th-century woman confronting a wicked ghost below a shielded sun.

Painted eclipses in Europe tended to be associated with religion, since the Christian Bible describes one during the crucifixion of Jesus. Consequently, one famous piece by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele depicts the scene in the late 1800s with a charcoal-colored sun in the background.

Scientists hired landscape artist Howard Russell Butler to paint eclipses in 1918.
Scientists hired landscape artist Howard Russell Butler to paint eclipses in 1918. Howard Russell Butler, Princeton University/Public Domain

It was in the 20th century that art and science really became as intertwined as the Sun and the Moon. Before photographs could technically capture the exact instance, artists were commissioned to document the essential details of color and light during the moments of totality.

Then in 1918, in cooperation with Princeton’s Astronomy Department, the US Naval Observatory hired famous landscape artist Howard Russell Butler to memorialize one of America’s most extraordinary eclipses, one that would cross the contiguous United States from coast to coast. The science community believed Butler’s shorthand sketching and painting technique were perfectly suited to mimic the transient effects of nature. He cataloged the solar conditions with such astounding brilliance and accuracy, he was called upon repeatedly to record subsequent eclipses—forming an inextricable link between visual artists and scientists.

Art and science seem like disciplines that couldn’t be more disparate, but both fields draw from the powers of observation and interpretation, and both are rooted in the same human drives to explore and innovate. Many in each line of work equally seek the truth. Creativity has a constant and critical role in all scientific breakthroughs, just as art conveys society’s most penetrating and novel understandings through a highly personable lens.

Tyler Nordgren started creating eclipse art for NASA in 2017.
Tyler Nordgren started creating eclipse art for NASA in 2017. Tyler Nordgren, Astronomer and Artist

NASA seemed to recognize a connection between the fields. Six years ago, they launched a themed poster project to celebrate and further advance the art-science connection. The posters creatively depict the environments where people live within the paths of totality. Now, to honor what NASA astronomers are calling “The Heliophysics Big Year” (a global celebration of the different ways the Sun touches people on Earth), the project is showcasing artists who aim to design works that not only offer safety and factual information, but also use imaginative graphics.

“This is also about inclusivity. The posters were made by a diverse group of contributors from different races, backgrounds, and life experiences,” says Denise Hill with NASA’s heliophysics outreach team. “We want everyone to connect and see themselves in this art project.”

The 2017 solar eclipse traveled above multiple U.S. national and state parks and across America’s agricultural heartland. As it approached, NASA invited dark matter astronomer and eclipse-chasing artist Tyler Nordgren to create original scientific yet eye-popping posters that educate, engage, and foster astro-tourism in these remote locations.

It wasn’t until Nordgren attended a professional astronomy conference in Hungary that he would witness his first total solar eclipse. He was instantly struck with exhilaration and marvel. “I knew exactly what I was going to be looking at, yet my hair stood up on my neck, and in that moment, I understood the difference between knowing and feeling,” he says. “It’s a multi-sensory experience that evokes a deep emotional response.”

The colorful graphics show the American places experiencing the eclipse and the varied landscape of the U.S.
The colorful graphics show the American places experiencing the eclipse and the varied landscape of the U.S. Tyler Nordgren, Astronomer and Artist

Nordgren’s unique artistic style resonates with that sentiment. It’s a mesmerizing blend of must-have communication and dreamy nostalgia drawn in an array of muted nebula tones. His work so expertly highlights the iconic landscapes of eclipse regions that it has been adopted by the Smithsonian. Since the NASA project’s inception, he has prolifically produced around 85 pieces of striking poster art to promote public eclipse observation.

The art project extends through December 24 this year, but NASA intends to continue their art and science connection through various recurring collections. After April’s eclipse event, they will host an exhibit where the public can imaginatively share their eclipse experiences through social media. Hill adds, “It is a way for us to see beauty and connect to our universe creatively.”

The art brings a human perspective to the eclipse. As Nordgren explains, “An eclipse is not the alignment of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth in the universe. It’s the alignment in the universe of the Sun, the Moon, and you—the observer—at a rare moment in time.”

You could say the eclipse happens when the sun and moon align with you.
You could say the eclipse happens when the sun and moon align with you. Tyler Nordgren, Astronomer and Artist

Dungeons & Dragons All Started In This Tiny Wisconsin Town

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Since 2008, Lake Geneva has hosted Gary Con, a convention honoring the hometown hero who created the beloved game.

Every March, barbarians, wizards, and bards descend on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They gather to roll dice propelling them on epic quests, in search of treasure and glory. They battle monsters, combat evil, and foster friendships that last lifetimes.

Lake Geneva might seem like an odd place for Dungeons & Dragons (or D&D) fans to pilgrimage to, but it's here, a quiet town 55 miles from Milwaukee, that the game was born.

D&D now has millions of fans around the world and Luke Gygax, son of the game’s co-creator Gary Gygax, and other dedicated gamers have created an event, Gary Con, to recognize the role his father and Lake Geneva had in creating it.

Every March, 3,000 warlocks, magicians, elves, and other magical beings take over the Grand Geneva Resort during Gary Con.
Every March, 3,000 warlocks, magicians, elves, and other magical beings take over the Grand Geneva Resort during Gary Con. Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura

When Gygax published Dungeons & Dragons 50 years ago, his son Luke Gygax was one of the first to play it—the Gygax dining room table was the game’s testing lab.

“My earliest memories are gathering around the table with my dad and his friends and shaking dice,” Gygax recalls. “I was so young I couldn’t read or write yet, but my dad would say, ‘You’re playing this character.’”

The first role-playing game of its kind, Dungeons & Dragons allows players to create their own alter egos—warriors, wizards, thieves—who work together on a shared quest. They pick up spells and weapons along the way to strengthen their battle skills when facing off against villains. A Dungeon Master is assigned to narrate and guide the gameplay. The game’s flexibility means the quest can last hours…or years.

Getting D&D published in the first place was a feat for the elder Gygax. Luke, the youngest of five at the time, recalls that his father had been fired from his insurance sales job just a week before he was born. To try to make ends meet, Gygax started a shoe repair business he ran out of their basement.

These small figurines, known as miniatures or minis, represent the magical beings, monsters, and characters in Dungeons & Dragons.
These small figurines, known as miniatures or minis, represent the magical beings, monsters, and characters in Dungeons & Dragons. Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura

When Dungeons & Dragons is played, various dice are used to determine the outcome of different attacks, counterattacks, and spells.
When Dungeons & Dragons is played, various dice are used to determine the outcome of different attacks, counterattacks, and spells. Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura

“We were desperately poor—we didn’t have a car, we rented a tiny little house,” says Gygax. The family relied on food stamps and Luke’s mom, Mary Jo, gardened and canned food to make the dollars stretch.

Luke’s father loved all types of games and was especially interested in strategy wargames. In 1968, Gygax rented a venue called the Horticultural Hall to host a gathering he called the Lake Geneva Wargames Convention (later shortened to Gen Con) which still operates today as the largest tabletop game convention in North America.

When developing Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax collaborated with his fellow gamer Dave Arneson to conceive of a fantasy setting instead of a historical battleground. After his attempts to sell the game were rejected, Gygax, with an investment from his friend Don Kaye, decided to start his own company, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), to publish D&D in 1974. Sales skyrocketed over the next 10 years.

“It was a new medium where you were both the creator and the audience for your creation at the same time. He took storytelling and democratized it,” says Ben Riggs, gaming historian and author of Slaying the Dragon: The Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons.

Gary Gygax reportedly assembled the first editions of Dungeons & Dragons by hand in his kitchen. The game's box (shown here) showed a knight rearing up on a horse.
Gary Gygax reportedly assembled the first editions of Dungeons & Dragons by hand in his kitchen. The game's box (shown here) showed a knight rearing up on a horse. Courtesy The Collector's Trove Archive

As demand grew, Tactical Studies Rules rapidly expanded their real-world kingdom. At their peak in the early 1980s, TSR employed about 400 people, importing writers, artists, and editors to Lake Geneva, a town of less than 6,000 at the time. Although D&D was always their best seller, TSR made other games and had a publishing arm that printed fantasy novels set in D&D realms, and Dragon, a magazine that featured gaming tips and short fiction.

But in 1985, Gygax was ousted from his own company. The market was saturated, sales were slipping, and the shareholders voted to replace Gygax with the company’s general manager, Lorraine Williams. Gygax went on to design games for other companies and wrote fantasy novels.

After Gygax’s departure, TSR accrued millions of dollars of debt. Wizards of the Coast, a company that had a huge hit with their Magic: The Gathering game, bought TSR (including Gen Con) in 1997. The company still produces the game and historian Ben Riggs says D&D is as popular as ever.

“Ever since the 2008 recession the tabletop roleplaying game industry has been growing and growing,” Riggs says. He believes that the last decade has been among D&D’s best, attributing that success to a variety of factors—popular web series like Critical Role, where viewers are entertained by live game sessions; D&D’s appearance in Stranger Things; last year’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves film; and the pandemic, where people were introduced or reacquainted with D&D and played it in pods or via Zoom. But Gary Gygax never got to see this revival.

These photographs show Gary Gygax in the Lake Geneva home where he created and first played Dungeon & Dragons in 1974.
These photographs show Gary Gygax in the Lake Geneva home where he created and first played Dungeon & Dragons in 1974. Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Gary Gygax's Lake Geneva home still stands today and can now be rented for Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions.
Gary Gygax's Lake Geneva home still stands today and can now be rented for Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions. E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

In 2008, Gygax passed away due to complications with an aneurysm. Luke says he was “shocked” by the volume of condolences he received. People were calling him to tell him how important his father’s creation was to them, how D&D had given them motivation to face their challenges and make difficult changes.

“It came from all walks of life,” Gygax says.

The Gygax family decided the best way to remember Gary’s legacy was to do what he loved best. After his funeral, they assembled at an American Legion Hall in Lake Geneva (TSR had hosted several early Gen Cons there) to play games. This led to Luke envisioning an annual event, Gary Con, that would not only honor his father but other talented TSR game makers. As a kid, he would sometimes peek over their shoulders as these creators worked at drafting tables and typewriters.

“I considered some of them to be like uncles,” Gygax says. “I’ve gotten reacquainted with them and become friends with them again as an adult.” One of those people is Skip Williams.

Luke Gygax (center) speaks at the opening ceremony of Gary Con.
Luke Gygax (center) speaks at the opening ceremony of Gary Con. Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura

Two Gary Con participants play a tabletop jousting game similar to rock-paper-scissors.
Two Gary Con participants play a tabletop jousting game similar to rock-paper-scissors. Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura

Like several other TSR employees, Williams, a Lake Geneva high schooler at the time, started working in the company's game store, the Dungeon Hobby Shop, in 1976. He went on to run Gen Con in the 1980s and wrote the “Sage Advice” column for Dragon magazine, which answered questions about gameplay. He later became co-creator of the third edition of D&D in 2000.

Today, Williams is co-director of Gary Con’s events schedule. As someone who has helped organize both Gen Con and Gary Con, he says the latter is much more in tune with Gary Gygax’s original vision of Gen Con.

“Gary Con is very much game-orientated; Gen Con is a media event. I think one of the more difficult things to do at Gen Con is to actually play games,” says Williams.

After Gen Con settled in Indianapolis, it exploded into the largest convention of its type, with an attendance of over 70,000 last year. Gary Con, meanwhile, is capped at around 3,000 at their venue, the Grand Geneva Resort. This allows for a more intimate setting, and gamers might find themselves seated next to creators who worked on the game in front of them. Luke Gygax says gamers have traveled from as far away as Italy and Australia to attend.

These photos capture some moments from the 2024 Gary Con, from costume-clad attendees to old Gary Con posters (bottom left) to tables where patrons could paint and design their very own miniatures (top right).
These photos capture some moments from the 2024 Gary Con, from costume-clad attendees to old Gary Con posters (bottom left) to tables where patrons could paint and design their very own miniatures (top right). Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura

Other than Gary Con, there was little recognition of TSR’s history in Lake Geneva for decades, but in recent years, that’s begun to change, thanks largely to the efforts of Paul Stormberg, president of the Gygax Memorial Fund.

Stormberg, a D&D fan since he was 14, has followed an adventurer’s path—he’s worked as an archaeologist, cartographer, and combat medic. An interest in collecting vintage D&D materials led Stormberg to start his own company, The Collector’s Trove, in 2005, which auctions original roleplaying game art and ephemera. He took over operations of the Gygax Memorial Fund in 2019.

“It was just a natural progression of my love for the game and ultimately my love for its history and me feeling like I owe Gary something for enriching most of my life,” says Stormberg.

So far, the Gygax Memorial Fund has accomplished several of its goals. Stormberg helped set up a permanent display at the Geneva Lake Museum titled “The Wizard of Lake Geneva” about Gygax. In 2023, the fund produced the first Dragon Days Fantasy Festival, an annual celebratory weekend with a Renaissance fair vibe.

D&D fans can also visit the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum, located in a former TSR headquarters, which is open for private tours, and the Gygax family home can now be rented as the Center Street Dungeon: Birthplace of DnD for gaming sessions.

The Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum is located in the former headquarters of Tactical Studies Rules.
The Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum is located in the former headquarters of Tactical Studies Rules. Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura

The fund is currently pursuing its biggest goal, a Gygax memorial statue. Pending approval, the statue will be placed in a corner of Elm Park that they hope to rename Gygax Park and will feature a likeness of Gary Gygax sitting at the head of a table, where visitors can sit down and join him for a game.

The site is significant, Stormberg says, because Gygax would skip school and hang out in this corner of the lakeside park to read fantasy novels and daydream about dragons. Eventually, these dreams would become storylines of D&D, a creation that Luke Gygax says is much more than just a game.

“Being a gamer gives you certain skill sets you don’t realize you’re learning. You’re having fun, but you’re also problem-solving, you’re convincing a small group of a certain strategy—it’s collaborative,” Gygax says.

Gygax isn’t the only one who believes this—in recent years D&D has been used by therapists to develop social skills, encourage problem-solving, and explore identity.

“I knew how important it was to me: I grew up with it” Gygax says of D&D.

“It’s helped me excel throughout life—I went into the military and spent 30 years in the Army and always did well because I learned those skills in advance.”

He adds that it wasn’t until after his father’s death that he quite realized “how important it is in other people’s lives,” an epic adventure shared by millions of friends around the world.

One Gary Con vendor was selling these dragon dice holders. Also known as dice jails, these holders "detain" unlucky dice.
One Gary Con vendor was selling these dragon dice holders. Also known as dice jails, these holders "detain" unlucky dice. Brianna Griepentrog for Atlas Obscura




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