Throughout the course of his prolific 40-year career, photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris amassed an extraordinary archive consisting of nearly 80,000 negatives. Starting in the 1930s, Harris documented Pittsburgh's African American community for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the country's leading African-American newspapers. He captured over 3,000 portraits between 1957 and 1977 for one regular column alone; in the 1960s, almost ten of his images ran per issue of the Pittsburgh Courier.
Today, this vast and significant collection, much of which has been digitized online, resides with the Carnegie Museum of Art. Over the years, the Museum invited various curators to stage exhibitions of his work. The most recent focused on performance, and now, with an election looming, Teenie Harris Photographs: Elections highlights Harris’ work chronicling Pittsburgh elections.
Known as "One Shot" due to his ability to capture his subjects quickly, Harris' photographs encompass the political process over several decades, including the organization around the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In one photograph, K. Leroy Irvis is captured in a voting booth in 1962. In another, taken ten years later, Shirley Chisholm receives a bouquet from Delta Sigma Theta sorority members.
Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from the exhibition, which runs through to December 5, 2016.
K. Leroy Irvis standing in voting booth for 15th District of Fifth Ward, Pittsburgh, November 1962.
Attorney Byrd Brown shaking hands with basketball player Maurice Lucas wearing championship basketball jacket inscribed "Luke," outside campaign headquarters for Byrd Brown for Congress, c. 1970.
Linda Starkey handing bouquet to Shirley Chisholm, surrounded by Delta Sigma Theta sorority members, including Christine Jones Fulwiley on left, Vivian Mason Lane, and Marcia Davis, in Loendi Club, March 5, 1972.
Republican campaign billboard with slogan "Make Our Homes and Streets Safe! Vote Republican" possibly on Morgan Street, Hill District, October 1949.
President John F. Kennedy speaking from podium, with Senator Joseph S. Clark and Pennsylvania Governor David L. Lawrence seated behind him, Monessen, Pennsylvania, October 13, 1962.
Four women, and man wearing ribbon inscribed "Talley worker, Pull the first lever," gathered around sample voting machine, September-November 1947.
Harry Truman campaigning for presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson and running mate Estes Kefauver, at intersection of Centre Avenue and Dinwiddie Street, Hill District, October 1956.
Alpha Phi Alpha members, from left: Atty. A. D. Stevenson and Alexander Allen, with officers swearing oaths: George Mason, H. D. McCullough, Dr. R. W. Taylor, Wilbur C. Douglass, Dr. Charles R. Cephas, and Charles H. Cuthbert at Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity house, 3046 Centre Avenue, January - February 1951.
William P. Young speaking before President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Hunt Armory, October 9, 1956.
At the advice of a respected astrologer, the Erawan Shrine was built in 1956 around the same time as the construction of a nearby hotel to eliminate the bad karma believed to be caused by laying the foundations on an inauspicious date.
Unhappy spirits were believed to be responsible for delaying the hotel's construction by injuring the laborers and causing the loss of a shipment of Italian marble intended for the building. To add to the cacophony of angry ghosts swarming around the Ratchaprasong intersection, the government had historically executed criminals in the same place. A Hindu shrine was seen as a solution, and the hotel plans were modified to accommodate the devotional site. The shrine is named for Erawan, the Thai name for the white elephant who carries a Hindu god, but the focus of the site is the golden statue of the four-faced Brahma, Phra Phrom.
Unfortunately, it wasn't all peaceful good times at the shrine from then on. In 2006, a man later judged to be mentally unstable attacked the Brahma with a hammer. He was subsequently beaten to death by an angry mob. In 2015, a bomb at the shrine killed 20 and injured 125. It is suspected to have been planted by Turkish nationalists in response to the deportation of Turkish prisoners. Since then the statue and the shrine have been restored.
Custer, Idaho is riddled with the hints of its former activity, like iron mining equipment rusted to a halt in overgrown grass and bullet holes in the poker table left after a skirmish.
Custer grew out of the various mineral rushes of the 1870s. After a grass fire destroyed the nearby town of Bonanza, Custer grew even more populous. It was just a one street town, but it was stirring with men, women, and children. However, as the mining industry dried up and gold was was more scant, the town was deserted.
But thanks to a 1981 designation as a historic site, the ghost town was saved from obsolescence. Significant portions have been restored and docents are on site during the summer to provide historical information. A few private cabins, the town schoolhouse, and the Empire Saloon have been restored and maintained in their 19th century state. The saloon no longer offers libations, and docents have water for sale but nothing else, so carry food and water if you plan to stay a while.
Jaye Derrick has a special relationship with the television sitcom Friends. Years ago, she began to notice a recurring pattern: whenever she had a fight with her boyfriend she would turn on her television and watch reruns of the popular sitcom. From her sofa in Buffalo, New York, Derrick noticed that Ross, Rachel, Joey, Chandler, Monica and Phoebe were beginning to feel like an extended group of friends.
Following the group's zany dramas and misunderstandings with one another—and seeing how they propped each other up—provided Derrick with a sense of support when her own personal life was on the rocks. The show's theme song “I’ll be there for you” rung true for her. She soon purchased a DVD box set of the show.
“Watching these episodes seemed to be taking away some of the feelings of rejection or distracting me long enough that the argument wasn’t a problem anymore,” says Derrick, a social psychology professor at the University of Houston in Texas, who was inspired by her relationship with Friends to study the phenomenon known as parasocial relationships.
These are one-sided, non-reciprocal relationships, often with a celebrity or other media persona. Parasocial relationships are strong emotional bonds with people you’ve never met and who do not relate back to you—or can't, if they are fictional characters.These relationships grow as you seek out more information about the person, reading magazine articles, watching interviews on YouTube, and discovering their intimate likes and dislikes on Instagram or Twitter.
Joey, Monica, Rachel, and Ross really can be your friend, parasocially. (Photo: Giphy)
People have formed parasocial relationships with an array of popular and surprising subjects, from television characters to real-life actors, singers, and public figures. If you have imagined that Jennifer Lawrence is your best friend, have a secret romantic relationship with Kit Harrington, or created a universe where you could hang out with Harry Potter every day (I know I did)—then you’ve been in a parasocial relationship.
“In the work that [our lab has] done, we’ve seen that almost everyone has done this,” Derrick says of parasocial relationships. “As soon as you explain it, they say ‘oh my god. I do that.’”
Similar to real-world friendships, where the parties are continuously caring and nurturing for the relationship between meetings, often through social media, those in parasocial relationships are keeping up with the latest developments of their chosen star's life, while waiting for the next TV show, album, or film to arrive. These days, Kim Kardashian’s feelings on various topics are less of a mystery than the feelings of many of those around us.
This common psychological scenario stems from our tendency to latch onto and identify with the people around us. In one-sided relationships, a screen is not a barrier. Even if that person will never know us or meet us, keeping up with their lives brings us joy. However, once fans know so much about the inner worlds of their favorite celebrities, it can be hard to feel at a remove from them.
“We as a species are dependent on social interaction to survive, and there is a part of our brain that can’t differentiate the face in front of me in real life with the face on TV,” says Gayle Stever, who has been studying fandoms and adult parasocial relationships for past 28 years at SUNY Empire State College in Saratoga Springs, New York. “It’s normal to be attracted to people in media, just as it’s normal to be attracted to people in real life.”
There are striking resemblances between parasocial relationships and the real life relationships we have with our siblings, best friends, coworkers, and romantic partners. Even though a celebrity or television character may not reciprocate your feelings, you experience the same emotional and psychological ups and downs in a parasocial relationship as you do in real life social relationships, says Derrick.
“Obviously with a parasocial relationship, they can’t provide physical support. So if you’re sick they can’t give you soup, but there are still parts of these parasocial relationships that seem to give us a sense of social support in the emotional sense,” says Derrick. “You feel like your TV characters are there, providing emotional support. They care about you.”
Parasocial relationships are found across ages, gender, social groups, and cultures. Studies by researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Calgary surveying young adults revealed that 90 percent felt a strong attraction to a celebrity, 65 percent felt strong attachments to multiple celebrities, and 30 percent even wished to be the celebrity they admired, reports Pacific Standard.
In our media-saturated world, where many people see actors through screens more frequently than they see their close friends, parasocial relationships have become some of our most important relationships. And while you may you may not be willing to tell others of your secret relationship with Beyoncé, you should know that millions of others probably share a close imaginary relationship with her, too.
While the phenomenon is generally associated with the rise of mass media in the 1950s, some psychologists believe that it stretches back much farther. “It’s definitely something that people have been doing ever since there have been stories and narratives around,” says Riva Tukachinsky, a communications professor at Chapman University in Orange, California.
The term, however, only dates to 1956, when Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl introduced the idea of parasocial interactions, hypothesizing that people form “an apparently intimate face-to-face association with a performer.” As radio was ubiquitous and television was becoming commonplace, the first relationships studied were with news anchors and radio hosts. Horton and Wohl initially reasoned that these interactions were a result of isolation and lack of time spent with other people—a stereotype that wouldn’t be debunked until the late 1980s.
Parasocial relationships are not strictly limited to celebrities or television characters. Both Derrick and Tukachinsky have heard of research subjects having parasocial relationships with book characters, video game characters, and even cartoons.
Paraocial connections can be made with heroes and heroines in novels. (Photo: Sonia Belviso/CC BY 2.0)
We form parasocial relationships for different reasons. They can be used as an escape, as a cognitive development benefit, or simply as a source of enjoyment, explains Tukachinsky. How we think, feel, and fantasize about our favorite media personas is based on a brain that has developed to treat parasocial contact like direct contact.
Like our social relationships in real life, parasocial relationships vary in type and depth. Relationships can be profound and develop over decades, while others are more like casual acquaintances. A person can have multiple parasocial relationships—some are romantic, some are friendships, and some are mentorships. Lady Gaga fans, which she calls “Little Monsters,” for example, often refer to her as “Mother Monster.”
Most parasocial relationships are completely harmless—the equivalent of caring just a bit too much about Brangelina's impending divorce. But the ones that get the most attention are the few cases where extreme parasocial relationships cross the line into stalking or other threatening behavior, generally in a person with underlying mental illness.
In 1981, John Hinckley Jr. believed he was in relationship with Jodie Foster, and thought by shooting Ronald Reagan he could get her attention. He was later not found guilty by reason of insanity. Margaret Mary Ray, who suffered from schizophrenia and believed she was married to David Letterman, was arrested eight times for trespassing on the television host's property, and stealing his Porsche. Ray was convicted of stalking, and spent much of her sentence in a psychiatric hospital.
Lady Gaga - or "Mother Monster" to her "Little Monster" fans. (Photo: proacguy1/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Various kinds of parasocial relationships can serve different functions throughout life. Stever categorizes parasocial contact into three tiers of varying intensity: parasocial interactions, parasocial relationships, and parasocial attachments.
Parasocial “interactions” occur while you are physically consuming the media, and begin to feel emotionally invested in it. Whenever you scream at a character to not go into the dark creepy cellar alone, or to break up with a vindictive boyfriend, you are interacting with the character. Shouting at a football player when he fumbles is a one-way parasocial interaction, an expression of frustration that he will never hear.
Meanwhile, parasocial “relationships” form when you continue to think about the celebrity in question when everything is turned off. During the height of the Twilight series, teens and college students expressed their parasocial relationships with both actor Taylor Lautner and his character Jacob Black, even sometimes referring to the two interchangeably, says Tukachinsky. Some parasocial relationships are powerful enough to influence big life changes. Mae Jemison, the first female black astronaut in space, spoke about how she was inspired by Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols who played the original Lieutenant Uhura—the lone black woman on the bridge of starship Enterprise.
“When I relate to someone and I’m thinking about them when I’m not watching the show, that’s a parasocial relationship,” explains Stever, who studies the Star Trek fandom extensively.
People can become deeply and emotionally invested in their parasocial relationships, which can be reflected in things like trending Twitter hashtags that show support, pressure a media outlet or program to make changes, or simply express heartbreak when a character dies.
Mae Jemison (left) was inspired to become an astronaut by Nichelle Nichols (right) and her portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura. (Photo: NASA/Public Domain/Public Domain)
Parasocial “attachment” runs a little deeper. An attachment develops when a person has a desire to be close to someone in order to feel more secure. Stever interviewed a woman with stage four cancer who could only get through her chemotherapy sessions by listening to songs by Josh Groban—the presence of his voice comforted her.
Aspects of the attachment phenomenon can be age-specific. Children often form relationships with cartoon characters, which can play a role in socialization and facilitate learning. Teenagers have been found to have romantic parasocial relationships with celebrities; it's now seen as a normal part of adolescence. Several researchers noted that parasocial relationships can help the elderly overcome the loss of a loved one.
In some cases, parasocial relationships can serve as a kind of therapy. For one of her studies, Stever interviewed a recent divorcee, who would watch reruns of The Andy Griffith Show online because seeing the community of characters reminded him of his childhood growing up in a small town similar to that on the show.
Stever has also encountered widows who noted that their parasocial relationships have led them to consider dating again. She met a widow in her mid-fifties standing outside of a Josh Groban concert. Her husband had died of cancer a few years before, and when the widow realized that she was attracted to this singer, she was stunned she could still have those feelings. “She said, ‘I'm thinking about maybe dating again,’” recounts Stever. “I hear that a lot.”
People in parasocial relationships can also experience messy breakups. Tukachinsky recalls a student who came to her office in tears, and between sobs explains that one of her favorite shows, All in the Family, was going off the air. She had formed a tight friendship with each one of the show’s main characters, and felt like “all of them were abandoning her all of a sudden,” Tukachinsky says.
The same feelings you experience during a real life breakup percolate when a show ends, members of a musical group go their separate ways, or when you simply lose interest and move on to your next parasocial relationship. People are also known to show a great deal of grief when celebrities die.
David Bowie fans gather around a memorial wall painting in Brixton in January 2016. (Photo: Mr Seb/CC BY-ND 2.0)
Such visceral displays demonstrate how influential parasocial contact has become, an aspect that has been enhanced by greater celebrity interaction through social media.
Platforms like Twitter have transformed the nature of parasocial relationships, both intensifying them and making them harder to define, as more celebrities actively interact with fans and share personal information. Through Twitter, fans now have the opportunity to hear back from a celebrity, eliminating the one-sided nature of parasocial relationships and transforming them into something closer to acquaintanceships.
@NiallOfficial Have a great day niall,stay happy and smile lots.I love you so much :)
“While parasocial interaction is largely imaginary and takes place primarily in the fan’s mind, Twitter conversations between fans and famous people are public and visible, and involve direct engagement between the famous person and their follower,” Alice Marwick and Danah Boyd wrote in the International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. “These interactions take the celebrities out of the realm of fantasy and reposition them as ‘real people.’”
In Marwick and Boyd’s study, they reviewed tweets of fans of multiple celebrities, including Mariah Carey. One fan explained why she followed her with a tweet: “I follow @MariahCarey becoz she has been with me through her music everyday of my life 4 the last 15 years! She inspires me!” Since there is now a possibility that Mariah Carey could respond, the parasocial dynamic shifts.
Twitter creates a new expectation of intimacy that didn’t exist before, Marwick and Boyd conclude. Some celebrities, like Josh Groban, even recognize fans, or Grobanites, by their faces or Twitter handles, says Stever. While Groban doesn't know each individual fan as they know him, he is aware of them as a group and follows their posts, Tweets and movements enough “to have a sense of who they are, how they think, and what they want from him,” she writes in one of her papers.
Stever also notes that this direct form of contact has also caused frustrations, as people are still restricted from the celebrity and lack control over the relationship. One of the subjects she interviewed said “sometimes I feel frustrated by Twitter because he has all the power” and “sometimes I feel a bit teased by the situation-but it’s not like it’s fault.”
“If you’re tweeting at a favorite celebrity and they tweet back, I can imagine that some people may have more trouble dissociating reality from fantasy,” says Derrick.
Despite some parasocial relationships’ increase in intensity, the vast majority of people understand that it’s not a ‘real’ relationship—even if psychologically it feels like one. “People know that Justin Bieber isn’t really on the other end of the telephone,” she says.
Kate McKinnon as Justin Bieber. Most people understand they are not in a relationship with either of them. (Photo: Giphy)
For decades, many people endorsed Horton and Wohl’s 1956 conclusions about the phenomenon, that those who formed parasocial relationships were lonelier and had low self-esteem. Several studies in the 1980s attempted to link loneliness to parasocial relationships, but the connection couldn’t be made. Conversely, researchers from the University of Delaware discovered those people who seek more relationships in real life are more likely to form more parasocial relationships.
In a 2008 study, Derrick found that people with low self-esteem can benefit from parasocial relationships. “Thinking about a favorite celebrity allows low self-esteem people to become more like who they would ideally like to be,” she says. They also provide those people with safe and reliable relationships (unless, of course, the television show ends, or your favorite character dies.)
Social relationships lie on a spectrum, says Tukachinsky. Some relationships are more imaginary than others. Even parts of our real life relationships are imaginary to an extent. When we talk about what our good friends are doing, based on their Facebook posts or Instagram feeds, we don't actually have much more insight than when we discuss the movements of Taylor Swift.
Yet parasocial relationships are real relationships. The person on the other end of the relationship may never know you, but those feelings you form when you read a blog about them or watch them on screen are real. Expanded media offerings have expanded our network of human connections, too.
“A lot of people talk about this online trend as being isolating—now you don’t have real friendships,” says Derrick. “That doesn’t look like that’s the case. Parasocial relationships are really normative. If you’re good at making friendships in the real world you’re also good at experiencing parasocial relationships.”
Player pianos lend a whole new meaning to the phrase "ghost in the machine."
Automated instruments date back to the early 18th century, but we generally associate player pianos with Old West saloons. Even without a decent piano player in town, bar patrons could be serenaded by a piano that played all on its own. It worked in a sort of analog mechanical way: the piano would "read" a tin spool or a perforated paper sheet, which it translated onto the traditional hammers and keys, that lowered with each note.
The eerie instrument was sort of an early precursor to the jukebox. The player piano came with several rolls, each of which would play a popular tune of the day. Establishments could purchase more for the piano to play, but maintaining the delicate machinery of the pianos was expensive.
After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, player pianos waned in popularity. By the time the market recovered, the instruments had been dethroned by radios as the de facto form of at-home musical entertainment.
As with any arcane machinery, today there are professionals who restore player pianos to working order. Such is the case with this one, a "nickelodeon" fixed up by Roberts Restorations. In this video, the piano plays "Circus Galop", a jaunty modern song composed in the style of 1900s popular music.
It's a sort of stress test for the piano, to see if it can keep up with the speed of the song. The tune also showcases the automaton's inhuman abilities. Watching the keys, one can see that the piano is doing things no human ever could, striking up to 12 keys at a time at a rate that would snap the fingers of even the most accomplished pianist.
Three weeks into fall and already sick of homework? Spain may have a tactical answer. CEAPA, a kind of mega-PTA representing the parents of schoolkids across the country, has recommended that fed-up students go on a homework strike.
Under the terms of the strike, participating parents "will formally ask schools not to set homework over November weekends," explained a statement from CEAPA, a collection of parent associations from across Spain. If the schools assign homework anyway, children won't do it, and their parents will send them to school on Monday with notes explaining their disobedience.
These measures are being taken in response to a recent CEAPA survey, which revealed that 41% of parents think their children receive too much homework. Many of the kids agreed, saying they didn't get enough rest or have time for extracurriculars. "The general perception is that more and more homework is being set as time goes on," José Luis Pazos, president of the El Pais chapter of CEAPA, told the Local.
Thus far, it's unclear how many families plan to participate in the strike. It's also unclear what will happen if the children end up breaking it by deciding to do their homework anyway—perhaps their dogs will get involved.
Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.
Riding the "cabinovina," or cable car, to the top of Monte Capanne is a unique experience, though not for the faint-hearted. Standing in what's essentially a giant open yellow bird cage, guests ride two by two first through the forest, and then climbing above the tree line to the top of Monte Capanne, the highest mountain on the Italian island of Elba in Tuscany.
Once at the summit, you can see as far as Corsica on a clear day, and take in 360-degree views of mainland Tuscany, the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean, and other islands in the Tuscan archipelago. To top it off, there's bar where you can grab a beer brewed using the island's natural spring water. If you have any energy to burn, you can climb the last few steps to the very peak.
A cliffside Norwegian village is home to an old Viking church that has looked over the neighboring fjord for going on 900 years.
Though this building has stood since around the year 1130, archaeological excavations indicate there were at least three buildings there before the church that stands today. Scholars believe church ground has been a site of Christian worship at least since the early 11th century. The church boasts an artistic style unique to Scandinavia in the 11th and 12th centuries.
The so-called "Urnes style" incorporates animal figures into the delicate, winding lines of traditional Viking carving. This is no museum piece though. The church has been in use from the time it was built, with architectural updates along the centuries. It has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The carvings on the church lend insight to the cosmology of medieval Scandinavian Christians, who combined Norse and Christian mythology. The most notable and mysterious carving in the church is on the northern wall. It depicts a snake-like creature being eaten by a four-footed animal. Christian scholars assert that this is a battle between Satan and Christ, each representing evil and good, respectively. Norse mythologists claim it is a representation of the end of the world, with the dragon Níðhöggr consuming the roots of the world tree.
The church continues to draw pilgrims who come to behold its religious and historic significance, as well as its aesthetic beauty. The church is situated on a verdant promontory that overlooks the Lustrafjord, one of Norway's greatest bodies of water.
Often described as the "most beautiful" of the pre-Columbian ruins in New Mexico (not a small feat when one considers the abundance of ruins in New Mexico), these cliff dwellings are truly off the beaten path. Nestled in a scenic side canyon in the Southwestern part of the state that's more noted for the later Apache occupation and Geronimo fame, these ruins provide solitude and beauty in equal amounts.
Who built these ruins? For years, mostly nomadic tribes used these naturally formed caves on the Gila River for shelter. A relatively small family group, sometime around the 1200s, decided to make this a permanent home. Sadly for them, this lasted only for about a generation before they abandoned the area. For us, however, the desert climes, coupled with the shelter from the elements in the caves, have kept the ruins remarkably preserved.
While occupied, these ruins housed roughly a dozen family groups of the modern-day classified Mogollon People. Considered to be on the northernmost boundary of the civilization, the park is home to a couple prominent ruin sites. In these canyons, with a scenic river flowing through them, the Mogollon hunted, planted their crops, raised families and enjoyed the shelter the caves provided.
In the main site, nestled in the five main caves, archeologists have identified 46 rooms. The walls are remarkably well preserved and relatively easy to visit. When visiting ruins of any type, it is often recommended to just sit quietly at the walls and peer at the sky, listening to the chirping wildlife and soaking up the experience. The Gila Cliff Dwellings, with its relatively modest visitation by tourists, offers a wonderful opportunity to do just this. Like Hovenweep to the north, it is remarkably easy to have a little time to yourself, in an effort to transport yourself mentally to the past.
The bombing seemed familiar: yet another attempt since 9/11 to sow fear and chaos in the city, apparently perpetrated by an amateur with ties to Islamic terrorism. But in the broader scope of time the Chelsea bombing might just be a blip.
That's because New York City has been bombed hundreds, if not thousands of times since the beginning of its existence—one 18-month stretch between 1969 and 1970 saw 370 bombings alone—and those carried out by Islamic terrorists number in the single digits. The rest came from people—most of them white—with other motivations, whether it was anarchists bombing Wall Street in an attack on J.P. Morgan, or bombs made by the Weather Underground, or George Metesky, who was known as the Mad Bomber and eluded authorities for years.
There were also Puerto Rican nationalists, who bombed the city 49 times in the 1970s; the bombing of the Communist Daily Worker in 1940, as tensions rose amid World War II; and, of course, mobsters, like some fur merchants who bombed their competitors in the 1930s.
"These things invariably … come back to New York," then Mayor Michael Bloomberg said after the attempted car bombing of Times Square in 2010.
Bombing New York City, in other words, is not terribly original, nor, has it been, in its long history, particularly effective.
The deadliest case, in fact, is one of the oldest: the Wall Street bombing, which killed 38—in addition to a horse—96 years ago. That attack featured a horse-drawn carriage laden with 500 pounds of small weights and an untold amount of dynamite, which exploded just after noon on September 16, 1920, in front of the offices of J.P. Morgan and Co. No one was ever arrested, though authorities suspected Italian anarchists were behind the attack, which, in any event, was quickly forgotten.
That was perhaps because, by 1920, bombs were already a regular feature of life in New York City. One that blew up in Spanish Harlem in 1914 was said to be intended for John D. Rockefeller. Five years after that, someone placed a bomb in the home of a judge.
A year later, Wall Street exploded, continuing a drum beat of violence that, by the late 1930s, had New Yorkers receiving hundreds of bomb threats a week, in addition to the bombs themselves. Many, like the one at the Communist Daily News, were thought to be politically motivated. Others, like a bomb found at the British Pavilion at the 1940 World's Fair, were surrounded by considerably more intrigue. Was it placed there by the British themselves, perhaps as a way to push the U.S. into war? No one knows, though two members of the N.Y.P.D.'s bomb squad died trying to defuse it, saving an untold number of lives.
Just a few months later, in November 1940, the city had its first encounter with a bomber who would haunt them for years: George Metesky, a disgruntled former ConEd employee who left a pipe bomb at a company building, along with a note: "CON EDISON CROOKS – THIS IS FOR YOU."
A similar bomb appeared several months later, before Metesky decided to pause because of World War II.
"I WILL MAKE NO MORE BOMB UNITS FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR," Metesky wrote police. "MY PATRIOTIC FEELINGS HAVE MADE ME DECIDE THIS."
True to his word, Metesky didn't resume bombing until 1951, when he captivated the media with a string of bombings over several years, many at city landmarks like Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library, and Radio City Music Hall, some 33 in total which never killed anyone but, for a time, set the city on edge.
But it was Metesky's chatty relationship with the New York Journal-American that eventually did him in. He was arrested in 1957, declared legally insane, and then spent nearly 16 years in an upstate mental institution.
Twelve years after Metesky's arrest, Sam Melville, an antiwar radical inspired in part by Metesky, took to bombing the city, though this time for ostensibly political reasons. Eight bombings shook Manhattan in 1969 at seemingly random places, each carrying its own political message for the newspapers. Melville was later arrested after trying to place some dynamite on an Army truck. He was sentenced to prison three months after three members of the Weather Underground died after a bomb they were working on exploded in Greenwich Village.
“Bombs are back,” Police Commissioner Howard R. Leary told a Senate committee, foreshadowing Bloomberg's comments 40 years later, according to the New York Times. “Bombing has reached gigantic proportions.”
Later in the 1970s and 1980s, bombing New York City became a bit more systematic, the main actors being the Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN, the Jewish Defense League, and Croatian terrorists, with FALN's bombs by far the deadliest. They are suspected in or tied to at least 49 different bombings in New York alone, including a 1975 explosive at the historic Fraunces Tavern, which killed four; the December, 1975 bombing of LaGuardia Airport, which killed 11; and a deadly 1981 bomb at J.F.K. airport, which had followed two 1980 explosions in Penn Stations.
The JDL, meanwhile, is suspected in or tied to a 1971 bomb outside Aeroflot's N.Y.C. offices, a fatal explosion inside the offices of local impresario, a pipe bomb outside the Polish Consulate in 1976, and five other pipe bombs near the United Nations building. That same year, a police officer died at Grand Central Station trying to defuse a bomb left by Croatian terrorists; four years later, more Croatian terrorists bombed the Statue of Liberty.
And then, around 1983, the bombings in New York slowed to a trickle. There was the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six; the 2008 Times Square bombing, which killed no one, and Saturday's attack—three in about about 20 years' time, down from an age not too long ago, when you could reasonably expect three just this week.
Melville died in the Attica Prison riots in 1971, having been one of its chief planners, but his then-girlfriend and co-conspirator, the Swarthmore educated Jane Alpert, is still alive. These days she is spending her time on Twitter, with a bio as benign as your mom's: "Strategies & Writing for Nonprofits. MPA from NYU. Reads ancient Greek. Former 1960s radical. Lives in SoHo and Adirondacks. Swims, does Bikram yoga."
Russian authorities say that a toddler in southern Siberia wandered away from his family's home and wasn't found until three days later, apparently happy and healthy.
The ordeal started last weekend, according to Reuters, after the boy chased some dogs and found himself lost in a forest. That set off a search that eventually involved over 100 people.
The 3-year-old, named Tserin, was finally found after replying to the call of his uncle, only about a mile from his family's home.
Authorities said he was healthy, perhaps because of good survival instincts.
"The first thing he did after he got lost was finish some chocolate in one of his pockets," according to Reuters. "Then he laid down in a dry spot under a larch tree and fell asleep."
The one thing he wanted immediately after getting rescued, the outlet reported, was his toy car.
Framed by the South Island’s stunning Southern Alps, a lonely tree has grown up to spread it's wings just off shore at the south end of Lake Wanaka.
Known as the "lone tree of lake Wanaka," it is said to be one of the most photographed trees in all New Zealand. However you still need to have the inside scoop to find it, as there are no signs directing people to the solitary tree. It's just enough off of the beaten path to not be bothered by too many tourists, unless they've done their research.
Walking along the lake to find the lone tree is a beautiful sight. When you arrive, you'll find beach access on the shore just a stone's through away from the tree, the perfect place to have a picnic and watch the sun set or rise. If you can stand the cold but refreshing water of Lake Wanaka, swimming is a great way to awaken the senses.
The lone tree is right at the foothills of Mount Aspiring National Park, a World Heritage Site, acting as a doorway into even more of the breathtaking landscapes that embody the South Island of New Zealand. Try visiting when the sun is low on the horizon and there's an abundance of colorful low light, rather than the view being bleached out by the midday sun. At this time of day you're also more likely to find the lone tree of Lake Wanaka, all alone.
Considering that humankind has from the very beginning subsisted on, resided near and built civilizations around water, it’s not too surprising that English and other languages are overflowing with terminology to describe the various forms aquatic geology. The precise definitions can be blurry, however. What exactly is a sound? What’s the difference between a bight and a bay? A sike and a ghyll? Why are there nearly 20 different words for a small stream?
If you grew up on the coast you may be pretty familiar with shoals and inlets, but perhaps things get fuzzy when trying to pin down the definition of the fjords found in Norway or a Scottish loch. If you've ever wondered about the wetter parts of the world, this guide is for you. Here is a rundown of the many different types of bodies of water, illustrated with examples of beautiful and unusual watery wonders in the Atlas. Dive in.
The distinction between the most common terms for flowing water—anything with a natural current moving from high to low—is roughly defined by size. As the old adage goes, “you can step over a brook, jump over a creek, wade across a stream and swim across a river.” A stream (#1) tends to be the generic term for flowing water; a river(#2) is the largest, while a creek (#3) is a small stream and a brook (#4) is even smaller, generally used in Old English and often babbling.
Beyond that there's a flood of even more specific or regional terms to describe a small stream. You’ve got a rivulet (#5, a very small stream or baby stream), a rill (#6, a very small brook or rivulet), a beck (#7, yet another name for small stream) a kill (#8, an old Dutch term in colonial New York for creek or stream), a streamlet (#9, yep, a small stream,), a runnel, also called runlet, run, rundle or rindle (#10, again, a small stream or brook or rivulet), a brooklet (#11, a small brook), a bourn (#12, a small stream, particularly one that flows intermittently or seasonally), a beck (#13, a small river or synonym for stream or brook), a crick (#14, a variation in the pronunciation of creek in parts of the U.S.), a ghyll (#15, a narrow stream or rivulet, or a ravine through which through small stream flows), and a sykeor sike (#16, another Old English term for small stream, especially one that is dry in summer).
What about a large stream? In Scotland and England that’s sometimes called a burn (#17). A spring (#18) is when water flows up from under the ground to the surface. A bayou (#19) is very slow moving water, generally a tributary of a lake or river that is sluggish and marshy and filled with vegetation. A tributary (#20) for that matter is any stream that flows into a larger main stream or river, while a distributary (#21) is the opposite: a stream that branches off from the main river and flows away from it. A meander(#22) is just what it sounds like, a turn or bend in a winding river.
A horseshoe-shaped meander of the Colorado River swirls around a 1,000-foot-high pedestal before flowing back through the Southwest. (Photo: MassimoTava/CC BY 3.0)
A freshet (#23) is a sudden flow of freshwater from rapid heavy rain or melting snow after a spring thaw. (It can also mean the place where a river or stream empties into the ocean, combining freshwater into salt water.) In that realm, an estuary (#24) is where a river empties into the sea—the place where the mouth of the river meets out the ocean tide. And theheadwaters(#25)is the source, the very beginning of a river or stream.
This small spot along the shoreline in Jinja, Uganda marks the place where, 1858, John Hanning Speke "discovered" the Nile's headwaters at Lake Victoria, though the claim has long been contested and controversial. (Photo: Stefan Krasowski/CC BY 2.0)
There is sweeping category of bodies of water that are either partially or entirely surrounded by land. The former is often found in coastal areas where the shoreline curves in, like a long broad indentation, so the sea is partially surrounded by land but with a wide mouth connected to the open ocean. A gulf (#26) is the largest of these broad inlets, and tends to have a narrow mouth opening to the sea. Smaller than a gulf is abay(#27) which is also largely landlocked but with a wider mouth. Smaller still we call a cove (#28), a small recess or indent in the shoreline that forms a sheltered nook with a narrow entrance. A cove will have just a narrowing opening to the sea, while a bight (#29) is a wide indent of the shore, like a bay but smaller and broader—these bights were historically a perfect safe harbor for pirates.
Speaking ofharbors(#30) these are defined as any area of water where ships can anchor and be sheltered from the rough waters and winds of the open ocean. That’s slightly different than a port (#31), which are specifically defined as any geographical area where ships are loaded and unloaded. In a similar vein, a sheltered body of water near the shore but slightly outside the enclosed harbor is sometimes called a roadstead or “roads" (#32). Here, ships anchor while they wait to enter the port.
We all know the term for a large body of water surrounded by land on all sides; that would be alake(#33). A pond(#34)is just a smaller version, and often formed artificially. A particularly shallow but broad sheet of standing water is sometimes referred to as a mere (#35), particularly in Old English dialects or literature. Even smaller and shallower is a puddle (#36), typically consisting of dirty rainwater. On the flip side, a deep body of still freshwater forms a pool(#37). And a tarn(#38)is a small pool or lake found in the mountains, sometimes with steep banks formed by a glacier.
The pink hue of Australia's Lake Hillier defies scientific explanation. (Photo: Kurioziteti123/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Things get interesting when the body of water is almost entirely surrounded by land. An oxbow lake (#39) is formed when a wide bend in a river is eventually cut off from the main stream entirely by erosion and becomes a free-standing pool of water. It’s named for its characteristic U-shaped curve, resembling an oxbow. A lake or inlet of the sea that is nearly landlocked is sometimes—primary in Scotland—called a loch(#40).
A freshwater Scottish loch on the Highland Boundary Fault, Loch Lomond is the largest lake in all of Great Britain as measured by surface area. (Photo: wfmillar/CC BY 2.0)
The English language has various ways of defining places where the sea projects inland—either as an indent in the shoreline like a bay or gulf, or as a more narrow water passage opening from the coastline. The common term for this is an inlet (#41), also called an arm of the sea or sea arm (#42).
A firth (#43) a regional word used in Scotland, is similar in that it’s a narrow inlet of the sea, or a large sea bay, or long arm of the sea. A fjord (#44) is a long, narrow inlet flanked by steep cliffs on three sides and is connected to the sea. It’s formed when a glacier cuts a U-shaped valley below sea level that fills with sea when the glacier retreats. They’re common along the Norwegian coast, an elongated arm of the sea that’s longer than it is wide.
An intricately carved Viking church overlooks the glistening Lustrafjord, one of Norway's greatest bodies of water. (Photo: Micha L. Rieser/CC BY-SA 2.0)
A sound (#45) is an ocean inlet even larger than a bay and wider than a fjord—specifically a part of the ocean between two bodies of land, like a wide inlet parallel to the coastline flanked by a nearby island. A channel (#46) is also constrained on two sides by banks, but is specifically a bed of water that joins two larger bodies of water. A strait (#47) is similar to a channel only narrower.
A lagoon (#48) is a shallow elongated body of water separated form a larger body of water by a sandbank, coral reef or other barrier, while a barachois (#49) is a coastal lagoon separation by the ocean by a sand bar that may periodically get filled with salt water when the tide is high.
Giants chunks of ice may not be exactly what comes to mind when you picture a lagoon, and yet the largest lagoon in Iceland is a beautiful pool of stunning multicolored icebergs formed by melting glaciers. (Photo: Daniel Knieper/CC BY-ND 2.0)
There are some aquatic terms that are a bit more unusual. A billabong (#50) before it was a surfwear company making boardshorts, defines where a river changes course and creates an isolated stagnant pool of backwater behind where the former branch dead ends. Akettle(#51) in addition to boiling water for tea, is a sort of pothole formed from retreating glaciers or draining floods, hollowed out when buried blocks of glacier ice melts.
These Massachusetts glacial potholes, or “kettles,” were ground down by granite by a whirlpool effect of water and gyrating stones. (Photo: aliwest44/CC BY 2.0)
A narrows(#52)is a narrow water passes where a strait or river passes through a vertical bed of hard rock. A lee (#53) can refer to as a natural body of running water flowing under the earth (though more commonly means the sheltered side of a ship or other object facing away from the wind). A canal (#54) is an artificial waterway meant for travel, usually connecting two other water bodies for ships to navigate. A shoal (#55) is a place where the sea, river or another body of water is shallow but the submerged sandbank is exposed at low tide. Anoasis (#56) is a fertile spot in the desert where water comes from an underground spring.
Known as the "Oasis of America,” Huacachina in Peru is one of the only true desert oases in the Americas. (Photo: Carlos Adampol Galindo/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Finally, though they're often used interchangeably, there's a linguistic difference between the ocean and sea. Anocean (#57) is the largest body of water there is, divided into five geographic bodies. Seas (#58) are generally parts of these oceans, located where the ocean and land meet. Used in the singular, however, “the sea” is used to mean the continuous body of salt water that covers most of the Earth’s surface—an interconnected global ocean blanketing the planet.
Capitol Street in downtown Charleston, West Virginia is chock-a-block with beautiful old brick buildings. Tucked away between two of them there is a miniature man made of concrete, a tiny escapee who looks like he’s trying to bust out.
Mortar Man is no bigger than a Happy Meal toy, a two-inch by four-inch sculpture that first appeared as a bit of a mystery. His snug home in the bricks is completely unmarked, and if you don’t know exactly where to look, you’ll pass him right by.
The figure was created by local sculptor P. Joseph Mullins, who is best known for his design of the Veterans Memorial at the West Virginia Capitol Building. Mullins was working on the façade of a building next door, and he had some left-over concrete mortar. On a whim he made the sculpture and tucked him up between the two buildings, about 12 feet off the ground. Mortar Man quietly watched the world go by, slowly building himself a fan club, until some renovations saw him removed. The little guy had become a bit of a mascot for the area, and enough people complained that he was carefully returned to his rightful place, overlooking the 100 block of Capitol Street.
Thousands of people still pass by Mortar Man and don't know he's there. If they’re lucky though, they’ll see a gawker or two gazing up between the buildings, trying to catch a glimpse. If they know where to look, they may just find the spot. Sometimes it really does take a village.
Dubai is famous for its luxurious Palm Islands, the easily recognizable manmade archipelago off of the city's coast. Based on the Palm’s success, Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Maktoum, envisioned an even bolder archipelago project in 2003: a group of islands shaped like a map of the world. Unlike the Palm Islands, however, it seems the World Islands may have been a disaster of global proportions.
Construction of the World Islands began in September of 2003. Requiring 321 million cubic meters of sand—the weight of one million International Space Stations—the World Islands cost over $14 billion to build. With one island for every country (excluding Israel), the World Islands together covered over 20 square miles of the Persian Gulf.
Located just three miles off the coast of Dubai, the 300 islands that made up the World Islands are supposed to resemble a world map when viewed from above. Unfortunately for the islands' developers, the archipelago turned out to be only vaguely recognizable. Due to weathering, sinking, and erosion, the World Islands have lost their well-defined borders. Central America is practically nonexistent, Australia is awkwardly made up of five rectangular strips of sand, and Europe, Africa, and Asia have merged into a largely indistinguishable blob.
In addition to the aesthetic problem, the World Islands don’t have a reliable source of electricity, as the plan to install electric cables under the Persian Gulf has fallen flat. For these reasons, 291 of the 300 World Islands have been left undeveloped and to this day remain nothing but sand. Even though 60% of the islands were sold to private companies and investors by 2008, after eight years nearly all have remained untouched.
As of 2016, only nine of the islands have been developed: Lebanon Island, Pete’s Island, the six islands making up the “Heart of Europe” resort, and Island Michael Schumacher (named after the seven-time Formula One World Champion). The entire continents of Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America remain entirely uninhabited blotches of sand.
The Simeonovo neighborhood in the outskirts of Sofia, Bulgaria isn’t known as a hotspot for many tourists. Yet, hidden in the hinterland, there lives a gigantic snail whose flamboyant rainbow coloration will stop passersby in their tracks.
Painted in swirls of red, orange, green, blue, and brown, Bulgaria’s Snail House is five stories tall and is said to have “no straight walls, corners, or edges.” Although it may look like a daycare center or a children’s museum, the Snail House is actually a residential area, the location where many eager spouses have begged their less enthusiastic partners to live inside a multicolored slug.
The architect of the Snail House, Simeon Simeonov, has built this rainbow snail abode in anything but a conventional manner. Featuring two tentacles atop its head and curved windows on its side, the snail was ingeniously designed to make all of the building’s appliances appear to be part of its decor.
The Snail House's door, for instance, is painted to be the slug's mouth, requiring residents to be “swallowed alive” before entering. Simeonov also substituted a standard chimney with a big yellow bee on the snail’s back. In addition to conducting smoke, the bee’s horns double as both night lights and lightning arresters.
At the Snail House, even the eyes have a purpose. The house’s air and gas ventilate through the eyelids and exit through the snail’s big red eyes. The radiators at the Snail House are disguised as frogs, ladybugs, and pumpkins.
Perhaps the most symbolic feature of this giant escargot, however, is its symbolic meaning for preserving the planet. The Snail House is constructed entirely with lightweight and eco-friendly material, making it truly energy efficient.
The next time you pass through the Simeonovo neighborhood, be sure to visit the Snail House, a building so bizarre that you'll have to drive by at a snail’s pace to get a good look at it.
While Shenzhen is the undisputed capital of electronics manufacturing, tucked away beneath the towering skycrapers is a more unusual claim to fame, the capital of mass replica art manufacturing.
Dafen Oil Painting Village is the knock-off oil painting capital of the world, producing 60% of the world's art reproductions. Here, you can buy as many Van Goghs, Monets, and classical Chinese landscapes as you'd like, or commission a painting of your own. In the galleries at Dafen Village, hundreds of budding artists work to recreate famous masterpieces to sell overseas at cheap prices. (Notably, in addition to the replicas, there are some artists who have independent galleries selling original work.)
The village has a surprising small-town feel within the extremely urban Shenzhen. Walk along the outskirts and you'll find chicken coops and kids running underfoot, as well as a cottage industry of all the painting supplies you could need.
On this map, you will find the real world locations where the heroes of books you might have read early in life lived out their adventures. On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, just a few blocks from Gracie Mansion, Harriet the Spy is forever taking notes about her neighbors and eating tomato sandwiches. In Portland, Oregon, Ramona Quimby is tormenting her older sister. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Ponyboy Curtis is coming out of the theater, about to be attacked by a rival gang.
For a kid, made-up worlds can seem as real as actual places, and real-life cities can seem as fantastic as any fictional town. For Betsy and Tacy, in Maud Hart Lovelace's classic Betsy-Tacy series, Milwaukee was "no ordinary city. Milwaukee was their secret"—one day, in Betsy's dark buggy shed, the two tiny heroines pretend to ride out of town until they see Milwaukee's towers in the distance, as exotic as can be:
"That's right," said Tacy. "I see palm trees." "The people will wear red and blue night gowns, like they do on the Sunday School cards, most likely," Betsy said. "Maybe there will be camels," said Tacy.
But just like there is a real version of Milwaukee, there is a real version of that shed, Betsy's "small yellow cottage," and Tacy's "rambling white house," down the street—they are in Lovelace's hometown of Mankato, Minnesota. You can go there and see for yourself.
So many of the worlds that seem adventurous and magical when you read about them as a kid are based on real-world and very specific places. Even when the author is clear about where the story is set, many young readers don't have anything to hang that knowledge on—your sense of how to reach Narnia (through the closet, clearly) might be more obvious than how to reach Boston.
So perhaps it comes as a surprise that the Nolan family, in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn lived on Lorimer Street in Williamsburg. That the Island of the Blue Dolphins, from the eponymous 1960 novel, is actually one of the Channel Islands off the California coast. That Caddie Woodlawn, in her "big house on the prairie" and Laura, in her "Little House in the Big Woods," were practically neighbors in Wisconsin.
For this map, we have restricted ourselves to literary heroes who happened to live in North America—Maniac Magee, Anne of Green Gables, Holden Caulfield—but even though the original idea was to feature children's books, we included some more likely to be filed under "young adult." How could we resist revealing the location of V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic or Bella Swan's hometown of Forks, Washington? We also focused on books that could be linked to a specific town, street, or even house.
But there are so many more stories that are set in specific but more loosely defined locations, or beyond the necessary boundaries of this project. The Yearling is in central Florida; the Murray's farmhouse in A Wrinkle in Time is somewhere in Connecticut. There could be a rich and thickly dotted map representing the British Isles: The Dark Is Rising, the Golden Compass, Winnie the Pooh, Ballet Shoes, Paddington Bear, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter—all of those have settings inspired by real-world locations. A world map would show Heidi in the Alps, Pippi Longstocking in Sweden, the Swiss Family Robinson in the East Indies.
Finding these connections, between the spaces of childhood fantasy and the cities and streets of adulthood, can make otherwise ordinary places seem special again. In one of the books that follows Betsy-Tacy, Betsy eventually makes it to Milwaukee, and though there are no palm trees or biblically dressed people, it still has a hold on her—it's never an ordinary city. The places on this map might have once seemed mythical; one of the great pleasures of growing up is being able to explore in real-life the world that you could only imagine as a kid.
Thanks to Lauren Young and Jack Goodman for the data mapping.
When the first “Rocky” movie was shot back in 1975 (released in 1976), they didn’t have a whole lot of money or a whole lot of time. The entire film cost just over a million dollars to produce, and it was shot in only 28 days – “the gestation time for a water bug," as Sylvester Stallone so eloquently put it. So choosing locations in Philadelphia meant two things: get it cheap, and get it fast.
The iconic scene of Rocky Balboa heroically running the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum was both. Because the scene was filmed with a brand new piece of body-mounted camera equipment called a Steadicam (Rocky was its first commercial use), it allowed for fast and smooth shots with very little setup, and almost no additional equipment or lighting. Rocky ran the steps, the cameraman followed, and it was in the can.
There are 72 steps in front of the Art Museum, and since their appearance in Rocky and five of the sequels, they’re now known simply as the “Rocky Steps.” To commemorate their status as a major Philly tourist attraction, the bronze Rocky statue that first made an appearance in Rocky III has been permanently installed at the bottom of the steps. Cast in bronze and weighing in at three tons, it was created by sculptor A. Thomas Schomberg as a commission from Stallone himself for the third film.
There is an identical Rocky statue at the Hall of Champions Sports Museum in San Diego. If you want one for yourself, a third casting was planned and put up for auction, but it didn’t reach its asking price of $5 million. The price was dropped a couple of times, but it looks like the piece is still available. If you need a little three-ton inspiration to get you up your own stairs, your very own Rocky might just be the ticket.
Problem is, they’re not a perfect way. And that is made obvious by the fact that you’re sometimes hit by at least a little of the wet stuff even after you use such a device. If it gets windy (or even if it doesn't), their structural integrity breaks down easily, exposing users to rain.
They can also be bulky, even unreasonably so. And they’re incredibly easy to forget and lose. For these reasons and others, this scenario is likely a common one: A person, frustrated by the device supposedly covering their head, thinks to themselves, “there has to be a better way,” runs to their garage, and starts working on a rethink of the device. Eventually, they form their idea, call up the big umbrella manufacturers, and go to the patent office, thinking their idea is unique. Turns out, they are far from alone.
Since 1790, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has had a mandate to help register the ownership of products to specific people and companies.
For nearly as long, people have been registering patents for umbrellas and all sorts of other things of varying complexity.
And it has its own designation from USPTO. According to the government office, an umbrella is generally considered "subject matter comprising an easily-portable canopy type having a cover, a stick, and a framework comprising stick-supported ribs and stretchers for supporting or shaping the cover."
That fairly broad canvas of a design (along with the "subcombinations and appurtenances peculiar to umbrellas" covered by patent law) has been used and abused in thousands of ways over the years, especially in the name of pet owners.
(And the popularity of umbrellas isn't just limited to the patents: The Travelers Companies has filed more than 30 trademark challenges against other companies attempting to create a logo with an umbrella baked in. “We have one of the best and most recognizable brands in the world and take seriously our responsibility to protect its value,” a spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal about its decision-making process, which has led the company to take on even tiny firms that would never hope to compete with the $33 billion company.)
In 2008, New Yorker scribe Susan Orlean highlighted the fact that the patent office received enough umbrella patent filings at the time that four people were on the umbrella patent beat in the federal government. A search of Google patents shows that, since Orlean's article was published in February 2008, 1,617 new umbrella-related filings have gone up in the USPTO database in the "Walking Sticks; Umbrellas; Ladies' or Like Fans" section, which is where umbrellas, fans, or other items on sticks appear.
And all those patent filings don't seem to actually impress the manufacturers of those umbrellas. Orlean explained why:
Totes Isotoner, which is the largest umbrella company in the country, stopped accepting unsolicited proposals several years ago. One of the problems, according to Ann Headley, the director of rain-product development for Totes, is that umbrellas are so ordinary that everyone thinks about them, and, because they’re relatively simple, you don’t need an advanced degree to imagine a way to redesign them, but it’s difficult to come up with an umbrella idea that hasn’t already been done. The three-section folding umbrella, for instance, which seemed so novel when it was first manufactured, in the nineteen eighties, was actually patented almost a hundred years ago.
But those long odds and cynical comments still haven't stopped folks from trying. In 2012, for example, a pair of Taiwanese designers took on the rain using a bold concept design it called the Rain Shield, which takes on sideways rain and avoids getting blown out of the way by wind.
(Despite the buzz it received, however, it has yet to hit the market in a meaningful way. Bummer.)
"An umbrella sheath is usable with the lightning rod to provide shelter from rain and to demarcate an area of lightning protection. An alternative lower electrode is disclosed for physical and electrical contact with water." — A filing for a portable lightning rod that, for some reason, comes with a built-in umbrella. The filing, when approved in 1983, was approved on utility grounds, despite a court stating, "we do not hesitate to say we would not consider using the claimed device for its intended purpose."
"It will be appreciated therefore that there is a need for an umbrella to protect a pet from inclement weather conditions and which umbrella is under control of the individual walking the pet as well as enabling the pet to be under control of the individual via the umbrella and a leash in both umbrella opened and closed positions." — A filing for a combined pet-leash and umbrella, a device that raises the obvious question: What about the owner? Multitasking two umbrellas and a dog leash sounds like a great exercise in coordination.
"This frame is set and riveted on the brim of the hat, and supports the whole mechanism. It may also be fixed below the hat-brim." — A filing for an umbrella hat that dates back to 1882. The innards of this thing had a number of pins that look a heckuva lot more complicated than actually picking up an umbrella.
"The present invention relates to sunning accessories, and more particularly, to pillows with retractable umbrellas."— A 2004 patent filing for a pillow with a retractable umbrella, just in case you were expecting something else.
"Briefly, to achieve the desired objects of the instant invention in accordance with the preferred embodiment thereof, a helium-filled sun shade is provided for protecting individuals engaged in outdoor activities." — A 1991 patent filing for something called a helium-filled sun shade. Sound confusing? Well, another way to put it is that it's essentially an always-on umbrella for the sun.
You have to wonder why, in an era when we can shove a computer into a watch, we've struggled to improve on this basic design in a way that's truly gone mainstream.
Sure, the basic design of the umbrella is pretty simple, and it's somewhat built to last. And the Totes exec quoted in the Orlean piece has a point about it simply being too common for a new design to break through.
On the other hand, while everything else on our person tends to get an upgrade, whether it's our phone, our shoes, or our personal style, umbrellas persist despite having a design that struggles at the one job it's been tasked to do. Why is that?
If I had to pin it on a single item, it'd be the fact that people don't want to actually pay for umbrellas. According to a 2010 report done by Accessories Magazine in accordance with NPD Group, the average price of an umbrella was just $6, a price point that suggests "disposable commodity" rather than "thing I actually care about." (That said, the report notes that 80 percent of the industry's profits come from umbrellas sold above a $5 price point. So maybe people who really like their umbrellas are willing to spend more?)
That issue is not limited to the present day, either. Umbrellas and Their History, an 1855 book by William Sangster, noted that a lot of innovation was happening in umbrellas at the time, but consumer interest was nonexistent in most of these innovations, as Sangster explains:
Simple as the construction of an Umbrella may appear, the number of patents that have been granted within the last thirty years might have been enormous, and a small book might be written on them, so it is of no use to attempt, in our small space, to more than mention a very few of the various improvements in their manufacture. With very few exceptions the inventors have not been repaid the cost of their patents. This has arisen, partly from the delicacy of their mechanical construction, unfitted for the rough usage to which Umbrellas are exposed; but chiefly in consequence of the increased cost of manufacture not being compensated by the improvements effected.
There are probably a variety of reasons for this incredibly frugal state of affairs—for one thing, wetness is a temporary condition—but I would say a big one is that umbrellas are really easy to lose. In fact, thousands of umbrellas get lost each year in London's public transportation system—10,907 in 2014 alone, according to the BBC.
Sure, people should be better about keeping their stuff, but in a world where we use many of the things in our bags for multiple reasons, a bulky single-use device is going to be the first to lose out.
Charles Lim, the author of the site Crooked Pixels, suggests that it's this disposability that makes it unnecessary to redesign umbrellas at all. In fact, he suggests (while responding to yet another umbrella redesign) that a better strategy would be to buy the cheapest, tiniest umbrellas you could find—say, from a dollar store—and carry one on you at all times.
"So what do you do with an imperfect dollar store umbrella? You throw it out," he wrote on his blog. "It’s disposable, like a condom. Most umbrellas sell for 10-20 dollars. A small Dollarama umbrella is two dollars. At that price, you can buy more than one because hey, you never know."
The company, which raised $344,000 from pledges, clearly was onto something (evidenced by the fact that some copycats quickly appeared). The umbrellas pull off a neat trick: Inventor Jenan Kazim figured out a way to produce an umbrella that traps the moisture inside—rather than leaving it outside to drip everywhere—while still looking exactly the same as an umbrella you'd see on the street during regular usage.
The problem with the idea, ultimately, is the price. When the umbrella goes on regular sale, it won't be cheap: It'll sell for a not-insignificant $58 a pop.
It's a good solution, but what if it's going after the wrong problem?
Maybe umbrellas need to be made of the cheapest, smallest, most recyclable materials one can find. And maybe we should just admit to ourselves that we're going to ditch them after a short period of use.
In other words, maybe our inventors haven't caught up with where the market actually is.
Umbrellas: imperfectly structured for wind and rain. (Photo: Peter/ CC BY-SA 2.0)
The other day, as I was leaving home, I forgot my umbrella. It wasn't the first time I've done that, nor will it be the last. In fact, I'll probably do it more often than not.
It was raining during the day, sure, but it was doing so in such a way where there were pockets of dryness. I ended up sticking around where I was at, waiting around for one of those pockets of dryness to show up, at which point, I skidaddled as a fast as I could to avoid another storm.
If there's something I could redesign about the umbrella, I would make it possible to only be there when I need it, and go away when I don't. If we figure out how to teleport stuff one of these days, the first thing we need to teleport is umbrellas into the hands of people walking out into rainstorms.
It's a single-use device in a many-use world. But without it, we're soaked.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
