While visiting a Brooklyn church whose subterranean tunnels were part of the Underground Railroad, I came across an arresting painting. It was a copy of an 1860 oil painting by Eastman Johnson called The Freedom Ring, and showed a young slave girl in a red coat. That same year, the congregation at the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights, led by pastor Henry Ward Beecher (and brother of activist Harriet Beecher Stowe), had raised enough money to buy her freedom.

Surprisingly, a caption noted the original painting was owned by Hallmark Cards Inc. of Kansas City, Missouri. 

Most Americans don’t realize that the massively successful greeting card company has its own museum-quality art collection, known as the Hallmark Art Collection, which was specially collected over the last century to inspire its staff artists. I sure didn’t. But last year, Americans sent around seven billion greeting cards, over half of which were made by Hallmark Cards. All required original art.

Part of the vast Hallmark art collection; here two women sort entries for the 1949-50 Hallmark Art Awards program. (Photo: Courtesy of the Hallmark Archives, Hallmark Cards, Inc)

Yet fuzzy animals and Christmas trees are not all you’ll find in the company’s collection of around 3,800 works in Kansas City. Their vast collection ranges from Norman Rockwell and Salvador Dali, to the folk art of Grandma Moses, and optical illusion artworks made in the 1950s and ‘60s.

It also includes thousands of Hallmark’s own commissioned works, of everything from cats and teddy bears, to New England churches and villages covered in snow. This improbable mix of priceless modern art and snuggly card illustrations is surprisingly—and utterly—charming. 

The combination of art and carefully crafted words that saw Hallmark become America's largest manufacturer of greeting cards. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

My contact at Hallmark Cards headquarters was Ron Worley, who for many years has worked as the Outreach Supervisor. Worley tells me how over 500 artists, writers, stylists, photographers, editors and production staff work there, designing around 10,000 cards a year.

But rather than a stale, corporate atmosphere, as one might expect at such a large company, walking into Hallmark Cards is like stepping into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory—if it were pastel-colored and located in the middle of an 85-acre complex in the middle of downtown Kansas City.

Crown Plaza, an 80 acre 'city-within-a-city' and home of Hallmark. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

Even more surprisingly, Hallmark, despite its vast size and reach, is still a family owned company, and largely the vision of a teenager who dropped out of high school.

At the turn of the last century, sending postcards was the height of fashion. An enterprising 16-year-old from Nebraska, Joyce Clyde Hall, set up his own part-time business with his two brothers, importing and selling foreign postcards. After quitting school, J.C. Hall took a train to Kansas City with two shoe boxes packed with postcards. Soon, he opened his own stationery store, called Hall Brothers.

Hallmark artists working on flower designs at the card manufacturers headquarters in Kansas City. (Photo: Courtesy of the Hallmark Archives, Hallmark Cards, Inc)

He had a novel gimmick, though: Hall felt that greeting cards, sent in sealed envelopes, could provide a far more intimate way of sending a personal message than a postcard. At that time, greeting cards were only sent for Valentine’s Day and Christmas.

In 1919, the Hall brothers created the first “everyday card,” as they called it then. It featured a line from a poem by Edgar Guest: “I’d like to be the kind of friend you’ve been to me.” The Hall Brothers’ cards proved so popular that sending “everyday” cards fast became the preferred social custom. 

Saul Steinberg, one of the New Yorker's most iconic artists, started designing Hallmark cards for Christmas, 1952. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

In addition to pioneering the idea of sending greeting cards, the Hall brothers also created another universal holiday ritual. During one Christmas, sales at the store were going so well that they ran out of the tissue paper that, until then, was how Christmas store purchases were always wrapped.

Finding an unused stack of nicely decorated French paper that was designed for lining envelopes, the Hall brothers used decorative paper to wrap their holiday items, unwittingly inventing the idea of gift wrap.

J.C.Hall's friendship with Sir Winston Churchill led to a series of cards bearing Churchill's paintings in the 1950s. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

By the 1920s, J.C. Hall replaced the Hall Brothers logo with a crown and the word ‘mark’, thinking that the name “Hallmark” would bring to mind the quality and craftsmanship of European gold and silversmiths.

But at the forefront of J.C. Hall’s rapidly growing greeting card business was a love of art. 

Sir Winston Churchill and J.C.Hall; the British prime minister, close friend, artist and Hallmark card illustrator. Photo: Courtesy of the Hallmark Archives, Hallmark Cards, Inc.)

Hall steadily began collecting contemporary art, not only to use on the front of his cards, but also to inspire the artists who worked for him. Feeling that it was crucial for his employees to enjoy and be stimulated by museum-quality art, he started collecting works by the likes of Edward Hopper and British statesman Winston Churchill, and commissioned original works by Salvador Dali and Saul Steinberg. 

In 1948, he started a lecture program, wherein notable artists would come to Kansas City to give lessons and inspire the Hallmark staff. The first lecturer was Norman Rockwell.

Card design by Norman Rockwell. J.C.Hall invited Rockwell to Kansas City to give art tutorials to his staff. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

But Hall also began hiring full-time painters and illustrators, from veteran fine artists to students fresh out of art school, from painters expert in depicting quaint New England villages to those who loved drawing cats.

Hallmark has been producing their own painted cards for nearly a hundred years. One artist has been there for over half that time. Mary Hamilton started working at Hallmark at the age of 19. Until she retired in 2015 at the age of 74, Mary Hamilton was still painting cards four days a week. Her specialities were teddy bears, angels, and animals. 

Mary Hamilton, one of Hallmark's longest serving artists. Her speciality is teddy bears, angels and animals.  (Photo: Courtesy of the Hallmark Archives, Hallmark Cards, Inc)

“They’re sweet little things”, she explains. “They convey lots of love and emotions, and I never get tired of painting them. I just love it.” Mary Hamilton has painted over 3,000 cards for Hallmark.

Another veteran Hallmark artist is Ken Shelton, who has been illustrating Hallmark cards for over 20 years. Some of his most popular cards feature his three daughters, whose growing-up years he has closely chronicled. “It’s shocking to see how fast the transition happens,” he says. “There’s this compulsion to try and stop that, and I can do that when I’m drawing.” 

A long collaboration with Charles Schultz led to one of Hallmark's most enduring and popular lines. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

But of equal importance to the eye-catching artwork on the outside of the card is the written sentiment on the inside. Molly Wigand has been a greeting card writer since 1979. For Wigand, writing in rhyme is “kind of a lost art. There’s a perception that people don’t like it, but really they do,” she says.

Today Hallmark Cards are written for just about every social occasion imaginable, from National Nurses Day (May 6th), to Clergy Appreciation Day (October 9th), from passing your driving test to cards offering congratulations for receiving a Girl Scout Gold Award.

Crown Plaza was designed to include offices, apartments, hotels, theaters and even an aquarium. (Photo: Luke Spencer)

“Sometimes it starts with a writer,” explains Worley, “who has found the right words and needs the visual to complete the message, or it might happen the other way around. Sometimes the artist goes through a life event and they capture it in their work.”

Today the company’s reach is staggering, from television channels to crayons to, of course, the cheerful cards found in over 40,000 stores around the U.S. Yet ultimately, the multi-billion-dollar company rests on the individuals in Kansas City who, in the words of greeting card writer Molly Wigand, are in “the business of helping people to be nice to each other." 

It looks almost like any other neighborhood hardware store now, but a few aesthetic giveaways reveal this shop's former life as "Chicago's Brightest Pleasure Spot," the heart of the Windy City's jazz scene.

The Meyers Ace Hardware in Chicago's historically black Bronzeville used to be the Sunset Cafe jazz club, which hosted some of the best black performers of the 1920s and '30s.

Cab Calloway got his start at the club, and Louis Armstrong played there often as his manager owned it. Gene Krupa and Benny King played there too. Earl "Fatha" Hines would broadcast live performances from the club when it became known as the Grand Terrace (and was also owned by Al Capone). Later, Sun Ra and his orchestra performed three shows a night for a stretch of time. The club's clientele were referred to as "black and tans," because it was patronized by both black and white audiences. It was a rare site of admiration for black culture free from segregation (if a bit exoticizing on the part of white patrons). 

Many of the decorations and memorabilia from Chicago's 1920s jazz age are preserved back in the break room. Those interested in seeing it should ask for manager David Meyers, whose family bought the building from Satchmo’s manager Joe Glaser in 1960. Meyers is aware of how special this place is. While he earns his living running the hardware store, he wants to maintain the history of the Sunset Cafe as well as boost his tourist appeal. The building was granted landmark status in 1998, so the what's left of the Sunset Cafe will be preserved amidst the paint supplies and lawnmowers for years to come.

The construction of the so-called "lunatic line," or Uganda Railway, began in 1896 from Mombasa on the Kenyan coast and finally reached Kisumu on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria in 1901, costing an estimated four lives for every mile of track laid along the way—including some deaths infamously caused by a pair of man-eating lions on the Tsavo plains.

Today, in the centre of Kenya’s capital city, the Nairobi Railway Museum is dedicated to the history of the country's rail network. There you'll find an intriguing jumble of artifacts plus a variety of exhibits and ephemera that illustrate the construction and running of the railway. There are models of railway engines that operated on the line, photographs of the railway throughout its history, and a varied selection of other oddities, including an interesting motorized railway bicycle.

In the surrounding yard are a number of mostly steam and some early diesel locomotives which operated as part of what was initially the Kenya-Uganda Railway, then the East Africa Railway Company and currently the Kenyan Railways Corporation. The most impressive are some of the company’s old "Garratts," a particularly large articulated steam engine that was capable of hauling heavy loads over the long distances and steep inclines of the narrow gauge track. The museum is connected by track to the main Nairobi station and some of the engines are reportedly used for excursions.

Wandering on and around the locomotives makes for a lovely outing and gives you a surprising amount of insight into the nation’s development. The museum itself is almost a time capsule within a time capsule—a well preserved effort from the post-independence days of the 1970s to conserve an emblematic part of its colonial past. Fitting then is the location of the museum, tucked away amid the modern skyscrapers of the central business district. The rising buildings are a constant reminder that all these days are past, a fact further underlined by the ongoing replacement of the obsolete track laid in the 1800s.

Cultivated blueberries. (Photo: Steven DePolo/CC BY 2.0)

The wild blueberry harvest, up in the blueberry barrens of Maine, starts in July and goes to early September. In these parts of the state, north past Acadia and the touristed summer haunts, there are stretches of land where all you can see are blueberry bushes, low to the ground, for hundreds and hundreds of acres.

Blueberries grow naturally here, in the acidic soil, and for decades growers have been working to better understand them, in order to coax the bushes into producing more fruit. In the past 30 years, they’ve succeeded more than ever before, so that yields have almost doubled since the 1980s.

But as the supply of wild blueberries has increased, so has the production of their fatter, cultivated cousins, which in America is three times as large as of wild blueberries. At the same time, blueberry cultivation has spread around the world, to Mexico, Chile, New Zealand, Spain, Poland, South Africa, and China. There are more blueberries being harvested now than at any other point in history—so many that despite the industry’s best efforts to market them, there are more blueberries than people are ready to eat.

The blueberry industry is nowhere near the scale of Big Corn, but blueberries are now big enough business that when supply is high and prices drop low, the government considers stepping in. There may not be Big Blueberry yet, but the industry has enough economic heft and political clout that in the past few years the USDA has increased its spending on blueberries. The danger is that, like Violet Beauregarde, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's famous girl-turned-overstuffed-blueberry, the industry will get so large and plump it will be helpless without assistance.

Wild blueberries, ready to be picked. (Photo: Allagash Brewing/CC BY 2.0)

Most of the fruits and vegetables we eat were tamed long ago, but the blueberry is relatively recent acquisition. The first cultivated crop of blueberries was harvested just a century back, in 1916, and it created a split in the blueberry world.

Today, two main types of blueberries are sold in North America. The fat, farmed blueberries, the ones you’ll usually find fresh at grocery stores, likely come from New Jersey, Michigan, Washington, and Georgia, and in the winter are imported from further south. The smaller, wild ones, from Maine and Canada, are more likely to show up in the frozen food section or in packaged or prepared food. 

The wild relatives of most fruits and vegetables are no longer of much interest to us as foodstuff, but these northern, wild blueberries are unusual. They remain tasty little balls of sweet-tart fruit, and while they’re not domesticated, they are under the influence of humans.

Blueberry barrens in Maine. (Photo: Wild Blueberry Association of North America)

Wild blueberry bushes are survivors. They thrive in Maine and Canada along glaciated plains that are inhospitable to many plants. Unlike cultivated blueberries, wild blueberries can’t be planted—and when they do spread, they grow slowly, so that a new stand can take a decade to become productive. But they do well in disturbed places: when a fire sweeps through, they’re the type of plants that jump right back and start working as fast as they can.

“If you get a blow down in the forest, they respond rapidly and produce fruit so that birds and bears eat and distribute it,” says David Yarborough, a wild blueberry specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. “We’re taking advantage of that adaptive strategy to produce a wild crop in a commercial manner.”

In other words, wild blueberry farmers try to create conditions for blueberry bushes to produce as much fruit as possible and swoop in to collect it. In practice, that means controlling weeds, maintaining a regular cycle of burns, and bringing in extra bees to help with pollination. These strategies have dramatically increased the Maine harvest from an annual average yield of 55 millions of pounds from 1985 to 1995 to an annual average of 93.5 million in the past decade.

At the same time, though, cultivated blueberries were going through their own boom. In 2014, world production hit one billion pounds, and one industry group estimated production in North America alone could hit one billion pounds by 2020.

Blueberry barrens turn bright red in the fall. (Photo: Wild Blueberry Association of North America )

Despite the antioxidants, despite the smoothie trend, despite blueberry industry efforts to find new ways to use blueberries, that is too many blueberries. Prices have dropped; for U.S. wild blueberries, which compete with Canadian crops, the exchange rate, which means Canadian farmers can offer an even lower price, is hurting too.

This summer, the USDA chose to support both the cultivated and wild blueberry industry by buying up a portion of those massive piles of blueberries. These buys are part of a food assistance program, funded by taxes on imports, and every year the USDA has some discretion on what it purchases. One of the aims of the program is to support farmers by keeping prices from bouncing around too much, but the industry has to make a case to the agency that it should be included.

In 2013, for instance, wild and cultivated blueberries ranked fourth and fifth, by dollar amount, in the program’s contingency purchases (after turkey, chicken products and potatoes, but ahead of cranberries, grapefruit juice and catfish products). When the wild blueberry industry asked for the USDA to buy blueberries in 2015, though, the agency declined.

The wild blueberry industry has found new ways to take advantage of government purchasing, too, by making the case for including frozen blueberries in a fresh fruit program for school lunches. But these sorts of strategies have become more necessary as overall blueberry production has grown. “We as a commodity group have received bonus buys off and on since the mid-2000s,” says Nancy McBrady, the executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine. “It’s taken on a different color and a sense of urgency these last couple of years.”

Has the world reached its capacity for blueberries? The industry doesn't think so, of course. The cultivated industry talks about introducing new markets to blueberries. (An industry report notes, "Ten years ago, we were told that Latin Americans did not like blueberries. Today Mexico is one of our leading markets for frozen blueberries. Now the rest of the Americas—the area from the Panama Canal to the Arctic—are turning on to blueberries!") 

The wild blueberry industry likes to talk about how wild blueberries have an extra-high wallop of antioxidants, and in our health-obsessed age, it looks like that’s paying off: as Eater reported in July, they’re showing up everywhere from lobster salad to Panera scones and Clif bars. Perhaps the world's fruit fans just doesn't realize yet how many blueberries they want.

Kostel svatého Jiří (St. George's Church) in Luková, Czech Republic, has been neglected for more than 40 years. Believing it to be haunted, the congregation refused to set foot into the church, which slowly fell into decay. Until it was saved by ghosts.

Consecrated in 1352, the church was victim to an unusual amount of fires over its long years, and was partly rebuilt and fixed many times. The final spooky event took place in 1968 and caused the congregation to flee. During a funeral service, part of the roof fell down into the church. From then on the congregation, who always suspected as much, was convinced that the church is haunted and refused to enter. They held mass under the open sky rather than set foot inside the haunted building.

While Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule this was not considered a problem as the government was not a friend of religion anyhow. The years that followed have not been kind to the little church. On top of the increasing decay, everything that was possible to move was stolen, including paintings, religious items, statues, the clock in the tower and even the bell. The rest became victim to vandalism.

Not too long ago some people decided that the church, a cultural monument of Czech Republic, was worth saving. Unfortunately nobody could come up with the money to restore it. Then Jakub Hadrava, a sculpture student at the University of West Bohemia, had an idea: He sculpted ghosts to inhabit the abandoned church. He used fellow students as models, wrapping them in plastic and raincoats. Slowly but surely 30 ghosts came to "live" in the Kostel svatého Jiří, creating quite a spooky ambiance in the dilapidated place.

Jakub Hadrava also wanted to create a monument for the difficult history of the area. Luková, once called Lukowa and part of the Austria-Hungarian empire, became part of Czechoslovakia after World War I. In 1938 the Nazis annexed this area to Germany and declared every German-speaking inhabitant German, which lead to the expulsion of all German-speaking citizens from Czechoslovakia after the First World War. Jakub Hadrava's ghosts resemble the ghosts of the German-speaking people who once lived here and built this church.

The plan worked. Word about the "Ghost Church" got around and it made it into the international press. Since than people keep coming to see the haunted church of Luková. Many visitors have left donations to save the church, making it possible to fix the roof and secure the sturdiness of the structure. The people of Luková have likewise embraced their haunted church. The congregation does not hold mass under the free sky anymore, but happily comes into the church, where they sit among their friendly ghosts. 

A martial artist uses a multi-bladed Sri Lankan variation of a traditional urumi. (Photo: Angampora/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Whips are the coolest weapon, just ask Indiana Jones. Of course, someone like Ned Stark would say the same thing about his sword. But the Indian martial art of Kalaripayattu has both of them beat with the urumi, a sword that acts like a whip.

The urumi hasn’t regularly been used as an actual weapon for generations, but even as a demonstration weapon, it is still incredibly dangerous. Especially to the user.

The urumi (which can be translated as “curving sword,” and is also known as a “chuttuval”), hails from southern India. The historic weapon was saved from the erasure of time when it was incorporated into Kalaripayattu martial arts, an Indian fighting style that is considered one of the oldest in the world. Incorporating elements of yoga and performative dance, Kalaripayattu movements look like violent but graceful choreography. Urumi fighting is no different, it is just far more dangerous to those who would attempt to learn the skill.    

Sparring with dual-bladed urumi. (Photo: Zzvet/Shutterstock.com)

Like any sword, the urumi comes in a number of varieties, with a variable length, and even a variable number of blades, but they all follow the same basic construction. Usually simpler than more elaborately decorated sword weapons, at its simplest, the urumi consists of a hilt connected to a thin, flexible steel blade. The handle is usually protected by a crossguard and knuckle-guard. The long blades extend somewhere between four and six feet in length (or even longer in some cases), and around an inch in width, but the aspect that makes the weapon unique is that the steel is always thin enough to flop around. Almost like a cartoon-version of a rubber sword.

Given the urumi's unique construction, wielding it is also an art unto itself. Since the flexible blade is no good for stabbing, it is slung around similarly to a traditional leather whip. In order to make continuous strikes with the weapon, it must stay continually in motion so that the momentum which gives the blade its slashing power is not lost. This usually requires the user to swing it over and around their head and shoulders in furious arcs.

While this makes the urumi incredibly hard and dangerous to use, it also provides it with one of its major benefits as a weapon. When the blade curves around the sword wielder in quick arcing slashes, it creates a defensive bubble of flying metal that an opponent would be reckless to get close to. In addition, it makes a terrific weapon for defending against multiple opponents, both by providing a good barrier at a number of angles at once, and for the long, wild attacking arcs the steel whip provides.   

Urumi sparring incorporates small buckler shields that are used to deflect direct swings of the weapon, but when the urumi was used in actual combat, it was said to have had the added benefit of curving around the edges of enemy shields, landing cuts even when blocked.

As an added bonus of having a wildly flexible blade, the urumi could be tightly rolled up for easy travel and concealment. In fact, it has often been worn as a belt.

Of course all of this versatility comes at a price. As you can imagine, winging metal whips around your delicate face flesh at high speeds can easily result in a missing nose, or other mishap. Wielding the urumi correctly and safely takes years of training, learning techniques for everything from bringing the blade to safe stop, to altering the rotation of your swings without slicing your arm off.

In the hierarchy of Kalaripayattu weapons training, the urumi is usually taught last due to the high degree of difficulty in wielding the weapon. Sometimes, students begin their training using a piece of cloth instead of the metal blade, so that they can master the intricate moves of the urumi before picking up any steel, learning a graceful flow and rhythm to their swings.

That's a long urumi. (Photo: SukhwinderSinghNihangSingh/CC BY-SA 3.0)

All of this training is required to wield an urumi that has only one blade, however many variations of the weapon have multiple steel belts radiating from the handle like a slashing flog. Without question, the more strands on a given urumi, the more difficult it becomes to wield, but the more deadly it becomes to the opponent. According to one source, there was a Sri Lankan version of the urumi that had 32 blades, and was usually double-wielded, with one in each hand, although evidence of this is hard to find, and also… seems like suicide.

While use of the urumi is today relegated to demonstrative bouts by Kalaripayattu masters, the weapon still springs up in popular culture from time to time. The weapon can be found in tabletop roleplaying games like Pathfinder, and urumi-wielding warriors can be summoned as troops in the 2007 strategy game Age of Empires III: The The Asian Dynasties. There was even a 2011 Indian historical drama called, Urumi, which prominently featured the main character using the weapon.

It might not be as popular as Indy’s whip or Ned Stark’s broadsword, but the urumi is too badass to die.      

Correction: The caption of the header image has been changed to reflect that the weapon pictured is a Sri Lankan variant of the urumi. Also, a reference to the birthplace of the urumi has been changed from "the Indian state of Tamil Nadu," to  "southern India."

After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the Eastern Bloc went through the so-called Khrushchev Thaw that saw a relaxation of social and cultural repression. In Poland, one consequence of this shift was an era of "neonization," an official policy to bring some of the glitz of Western nightscapes to the streets of Polish cities. 

The Neon Museum seeks to preserve and display the signs produced under this odd, charming state program. The museum's collection consists of hundreds of neon signs that were put up throughout Poland from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Commissioned and installed by Reklame, the official state advertising agency, the signs were frequently designed to promote cultural and nightlife venues as well as a (theoretically) burgeoning consumer culture. However, since there were no brand names or privately owned shops or businesses, the signs often simply stated what could (again, theoretically) be found at a location (e.g., "Jewelry," "Sewing Machines," "Dancing," "Theater," etc.) in graceful loops of electric color.

The signs were designed by some of Poland's most prominent artists and graphic designers, and frequently featured totally unique, hand-written fonts. There were many non-typographical, purely decorative signs as well, designed to beautify drab facades and animate the night sky. These neon signs became a defining characteristic of Polish city streets and served as landmarks for the people below.

As these signs started to disappear in the post-Cold War era, photographer Ilona Karwinska set out to document this unique industrial art form that left an indelible mark on a particular period of Polish urban life. The resulting exhibition, "Polish Neon," laid the groundwork for The Neon Museum, which Karwinska opened with her partner David Hill in 2012. It is the largest collection of neon signs in Europe.

Elevator rides can be awkward. The tiny space forces passengers into close quarters as they slowly scale up and down buildings. In this clip from a '60s episode of the American hidden camera show Candid Camera, the first unsuspecting rider, a middle-aged man in a trench coat, gets an even more unusual elevator experience. As other passengers follow behind him the man finds all of them oddly facing the back wall.

“You’ll see how this man in the trench coat tries to maintain his individuality,” says the host of the show, Allen Funt. The man in the trench coat rubs his face and nose in confusion at the other passengers. “He looks at his watch, but he’s really making an excuse for turning just a little bit more toward the wall.”  

In the 1960s, social conformity experiments got all the laughs. The 1962 Candid Camera episode “Face the Rear” tested the Asch conformity experiments. Polish psychologist Solomon Asch developed the series of studies in the 1950s, investigating how individuals succumbed to or defied a majority group, and the effects of such behavior. And what better environment to conduct these psychology experiments than in an elevator recorded by the Candid Camera crew.

Today, psychologists and researchers still turn to and Asch’s experiments, the famous Candid Camera clip popularly shown in psychology classes. “Conformity is all around us,” Jennifer Wosmek, a psychology professor at Bethany Lutheran College, told Free Press.“But it’s hard to get at systematically.”

Wosmek and colleagues at Bethany Lutheran College replicated the elevator experiment in 2011, and found similar awkward situations seen in the 1962 clip. People turned around to match the other passengers without question, while others confusedly asked if there was a second door that opened. They also found that men conformed more fully, while women often only did so partially. Younger people also conformed much more often than older.

Perhaps the Candid Camera victim who gets the most laughs is the young man who enters the elevator at the 1:20-mark. The Candid Camera crew in the elevator turn multiple directions in the elevator—each time the doors open, the young man has also turned to face the same way. He even follows along without question when the men take of their hats and put them back on.

While the experiment on the prank television show was for laughs, it also reveals how powerful conformity can be.

Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.

An artist's rendering of Rosetta just before impact. (Photo: ESA)

Over 11 years ago, the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta spacecraft, which was sent about 350 million miles into space to study a comet with the unwieldy name of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (most commonly just 67P).

On Friday, Rosetta died, after scientists here on Earth steered it onto 67P's surface, crash-landing the spacecraft in an intentional kamikaze maneuver. 

The scientists, many of whom have been working on Rosetta for the majority of their careers, could've also put the craft to sleep, and perhaps gotten one more round of data when 67P next came across a brighter part of our atmosphere. But they went the kamikaze route instead. 

Why? It was possible that Rosetta would never wake up again, for one. And also: rock 'n' roll.

"It's like one of those '60s rock bands; we don't want to have a rubbish comeback tour. We'd rather go out now in true rock'n'roll style," one scientist told the BBC.

Fair enough. Rosetta has already brought the ESA reams of data about 67P, including a lot of images. It took its last picture just moments from hitting the surface. The photo is blurry because Rosetta's camera was not designed to take photos so close up. 

(Photo: ESA)

"Farewell Rosetta; you've done the job," said European Space Agency mission manager Patrick Martin, according to the BBC. "That was space science at its best."

California's ghostly Salton Sea was once a popular tourist spot, but now is so salty it can't sustain life. This deadly lake makes for some strange environments. Bodies of birds and fish that can't take the salt wash up on shore, and the arid sand surrounding the water is dotted with leftovers from its life as a fishing destination. 

The Salton Sea is also bookended by giant obsidian buttes which predate the manmade lake by maybe as much as 8,000 years. These ungainly domes add another element of unearthliness to the alien landscape. The buttes were born around 6,000 and 0 BC, out of the volcanic activity beneath California's tectonic plates.

The obsidian ranges in color from chalky white to dusty gray to shiny black. Visitors are free to take obsidian samples for themselves, but due to the salinity of the environment the obsidian generally isn't dense enough. 

The house in Brunswick, where the owners claim that Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. (Photo: David Jester)

When Harriet Beecher Stowe penned Uncle Tom’s Cabin, her residence was a drafty, colonial style home in Brunswick, Maine. For over a century, The Stowe House at 63 Federal Street has been touted as the location of where the famous anti-slavery novel was composed. That Beecher Stowe’s novel was written in this quaint Maine town is not in dispute, but in recent years, what residence gets to claim fame to it has been.

Over the last two years, a local family has challenged this bit of history. There is now ongoing litigation between them and Bowdoin College, which owns Stowe House.

Surrounded by the rapidly expanding campus of Bowdoin College, Arline Lay’s home is New England quintessential. Black shutters adorn crisp, white painted clapboard, and a white picket fence runs along the sidewalk. This house at 28 College Street, named Angel’s Home, is where the Lay family claims Uncle Tom’s Cabin was truly written.

The Stowe House at 63 Federal Street in Brunswick, Maine. (Photo: David Jester)

It wasn’t until 2014, when the house was put up for sale, that the claims of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s connections to the home became public. That year, Angel’s Home went on the market for a hefty price of $3 million, with just about every listing for the six-bedroom home mentioning its alleged connection to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Historical significance or not, this was a surprising price tag for a sleepy town like Brunswick, especially in a downtown area, away from the ocean. (The home’s estimated market value is around $200,000, the Bangor Daily News writes.)

According to Elizabeth Burgess, collections manager at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut, there is no documentation that links Harriet Beecher Stowe to this home, and there is tangible evidence—through family correspondences —proving Stowe wrote at 63 Federal Street, as well as Appleton Hall at Bowdoin College.

But the Lay family asserts that Harriet Beecher Stowe actually wrote the lion’s share of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a second-floor room at Angel’s Home. Family stories passed down through generations make up a large portion of their claim. These stories put Harriet Beecher Stowe upstairs in a rented room, during the early months of 1851. Beecher Stowe rented this room to escape everyday life and the distraction of her six children, the family contends.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, c. 1880. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-USZ62-11212)

Their evidence for the home’s connection to the author is shaky, scholars say. Both Arline Lay, 86, and her cousin recall statements about Beecher Stowe renting a room there, made by a relative, Robert Peter Tristram Coffin, a poet and Bowdoin College professor. A small inscription in a pane of glass of an upstairs window, reading “Angel’s Home” (a reference to a song sung by Uncle Tom in the novel), was etched there by Arline Lay’s grandfather, James Coffin, to reflect Harriet Beecher Stowe’s tenancy there, they say.

Penned during the spring and summer of 1851, Uncle Tom’s Cabinbecame the watershed for abolitionist literature. Released in serial format, in the anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era, this book propelled abolitionist sentiment, and directed the minds of Americans, towards a United States free for all. This book spurred Beecher Stowe to international celebrity status, her book translated into 60 different languages.   

Harriet Beecher Stowe only moved to Brunswick in the mid-19th century. In 1849 Calvin Stowe, her husband, accepted an appointment at Bowdoin College to the Collins Professorship of Natural and Revealed Religion. This set Beecher Stowe and her children on a journey from Cincinnati to Brunswick. In May 1850, after a month of traveling, they arrived at what was then called the Titcomb house, at 63 Federal Street, an 1807 house named after Benjamin Titcomb, a printer-turned-Reverend who struck off the first printed sheet of paper in the state of Maine.

“Son Charles Stowe’s 1889 biography, The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, which was heavily edited by Stowe herself provides evidence,” that they lived there, notes Burgess.

The plaque commemorating the house. (Photo: David Jester)

This home, only a short walk from Bowdoin College, already had an extensive literary history. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow resided there in the early 1820s, while attending Bowdoin college, and during this time befriended Calvin Stowe, future husband to Harriet Beecher. It was also at this house, in the late months of 1850, that the Stowe’s harbored John Andrew Jackson, a fugitive freedom-seeker. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s popularity has endured for some 165 years. However, her former house is not, as might be expected, a museum devoted to the author and her life. It has hardly been preserved like a time capsule. In 1855, just three years after Uncle Tom’s Cabin came out, it was remodeled in a Greek Revival Style. Then the residence spent more than half a century as a restaurant and inn, from the mid-1940s to the late-1990s. Today, after yet another renovation, the house is used as offices for Bowdoin faculty. A former parlor room there is devoted to Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Angel’s Home also has strong connections to cultural history, in the form of a Longfellow poem entitled “The Old Clock on the Stairs,” said to be about a grandfather clock in the house, as well as two Lay family members who were painted by Norman Rockwell. Before the house came into the possession of the Lay family, it was owned by a Mrs. Lamb. The Lays say Beecher Stowe rented a room from Lamb in the 1850s. Purchased in 1905 by Arline Lay’s grandfather, James Coffin, Angel’s Home was moved from 183 Park Row, to 28 College Street a few blocks away.

Bowdoin College in 1910, which owns Stowe House. (Photo: Library of Congress/2007662219)

After the house remained unsold, it went back on the market in the early months of this year for $1.6 million. Bowdoin College has remained staunch in their denial of the family’s assertions. They believe the Stowe House at 63 Federal Street—which they own—is the true location. They declined to comment further due to ongoing litigation with their family (Bowdoin is trying to buy the College Street house at 125 percent above its appraised value, not the $1.6 million ask, and claims a 1996 agreement with the family gives them first right of refusal on the property, which abuts their campus).

But even with all the evidence stacked against their claims, the Lays plod on undaunted. Above the door of the home, hangs a sign reading “Angel’s Home.” A waist high, freshly painted, white picket fence surrounds the picturesque residence. The home itself is on the National Register of Historic Places, but for other reasons, like the Longfellow poem. 

So the debate rages on, and the only person who could end this argument is Harriet Beecher Stowe, and she is long gone.

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren operated for decades as the preeminent voices in the believer community, and their strange career of ghost-hunting and demon-busting is on display in their very own Occult Museum.  

Open since 1952 when the Warrens founded the New England Society for Psychic Research, the ever expanding collection of knick-knacks and artifacts that had been touched by evil is kept in the basement of their own home. The Warrens were popular lecturers in their day when they were not delving into such high profile cases of demonic mischief as the Amityville haunting, the murderer who claimed demonic possession as his defense, and the exorcism of the witch Bathsheba (a case which was most recently portrayed in the film, "The Conjuring," which also featured a version of the museum). Throughout these cases the Warrens collected trinkets and totems they claim were defiled by evil, locking them in the museum to keep them safe from the public.

The eccentric collection contains everything from an alleged vampire's coffin to a child's tombstone which was said have been used as a satanic altar. Death curses, demon masks, and psychic photographs line the walls of the museum accented by a Halloween store's bounty of plastic props (assumedly for mood). However, the most prevalent item seems to be cursed dolls. In addition a number of nameless toys, the museum's centerpiece is the Raggedy Ann doll by the name of Annabelle, which was said to have killed a man. Annabelle sits in her own glass case, backlit by a haunting red light. Looking at the Warrens' collection one might begin to thing that Hell has a thing for dolls.    

Unfortunately Ed Warren passed away in 2006, but the museum is still tended to by Lorraine Warren and their son. Whether or not one believes in the paranormal, the Warrens' Occult Museum may be one of the preeminent chronicles of modern culture's obsession with the supernatural. Of course it could also be just a spooky collection of stuff in an elderly woman's basement. 

Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters," one of the works that was stolen. (Photo: Public domain)

Officials said Friday that two Van Gogh paintings—stolen in 2002 in a brazen robbery at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam—were recovered in Italy, where they had apparently been in the hands of the Italian mafia. 

The paintings' recovery wraps up one of the longer art theft cases in the world, though it was nothing compared to a different robbery at the same museum, which took place in 1991, when 20 carefully-chosen paintings were recovered in an abandoned car 35 minutes after being stolen. 

Four men were later arrested and convicted for that robbery, including a security guard, in what officials said was apparently an inside job. 

But for all of its planning—one bandit hid in a restroom toilet stall at the Van Gogh Museum for hours—the theft was ultimately undone by a flat tire. 

It began around 3 a.m. on April 14, 1991, when one thief emerged from the bathroom wearing a ski mask and wielding a gun. He then approached two security guards on duty, locking one in a storeroom (who was later revealed to be an accomplice) and forcing the other two to open the front door and disable the museum's security systems. 

After another thief entered, they carefully scanned the museum for 45 minutes deciding what to take, ultimately emerging with a haul of art, the most famous of which was "The Potato Eaters," Van Gogh's depiction of rural Dutch poverty. 

They left the Van Gogh Museum in one of the guard's cars and made it as far as the Amsterdam Amstel railway station. A planned rendezvous with a different car was thwarted when that car got a flat tire, so they abandoned the first car—and the paintings inside—and fled.

Just three months later, four men were in handcuffs, all Dutch nationals, who would each spend years in prison. The officials suspected the perpetrators were working on the orders of higher authorities, but never arrested anyone else in the crime. 

Despite the recovery of those paintings, and the pair on Friday, most lost art is never found. But art stolen from Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum has a pretty good track record of eventually turning up. 

The undeniably beautiful 130-year-old body of Bernadette Soubirous is displayed in a purpose-built crystal coffin, housed in a chapel at the abbey where she served as a nun. Her uncannily lifelike visage, clad in nun's robes, is one of the most commonly used illustrations of incorruptible saints whose bodies never decay. After her death, she was exhumed no less than three times and found to be perfectly intact at each, which makes it seem strange that the lovely face and hands that are so famous are actually made of wax.

Saint Bernadette began her life relatively recently, by saintly standards, growing up in Victorian-era France. The eldest daughter in a poor family, she struggled with ill health her whole life.

Her fame began at age 14 in Lourdes, with a series of sightings of a young woman taken to be Virgin Mary, now known as Our Lady of Lourdes. The apparition appeared eighteen separate times, occasionally giving the girl small bits of encouragement, and most famously, pointing her to the source of the healing spring waters there. Bernadette reported her sightings, and her appearance as a piously innocent, somewhat simple—not to mention exceptionally pretty—young woman may have helped to fuel her reputation and spur on the repetition of her stories.

The Lourdes apparition ask for the shrine that was built at the site of the grotto, which is now one of the most popular Christian pilgrimage spots. It's also a place of miraculous healings, receiving between four and six million visitors annually. The miraculous healings began in Bernadette's lifetime and were credited to the spring water. Although several miracles turned out to be short-term recoveries or outright hoaxes, many others were confirmed at the time, and claims continue to this day.

Bernadette herself moved away from Lourdes and joined a nunnery in Nevers, where she lived the rest of her life. She died in 1879 of tuberculosis.

As part of the canonization process, her body was exhumed three separate times, in 1909, 1919, and finally in 1925, when she was moved to the crystal casket. Her body was pronounced by the church as officially "incorrupt," but it seems the qualifications for that term may have been somewhat lax. In the words of the attending doctor in 1919: "The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts... The skin has disappeared in some places, but it is still present on most parts of the body."

After a few ribs were removed to be sent to Rome as relics, it was decided that the "blackish color" of her face might be off-putting to pilgrims, and so a "light wax mask" was in order. Her new face and hands were designed by Pierre Imans, a designer of fashion mannequins in Paris.

The body is on display at the Chapel of Saint Gidard at the Sisters of Charity in Nevers. Visitors should remember that this is an active chapel, and a holy place for many.

In clandestine corners of the world, the elite come together in secrecy. Some of them don’t mind that we know of these society meetings, while others maintain that they do not organize at all.

Yet doormen speak to their friends, initiation rites are leaked, people peek in windows, chanting in far underground lairs can be heard by a passerby. Conspiracy theorists have long held that someone, and not the Fates, is manipulating our world, and perhaps in these secret societies the strings are being pulled.

Here is a list of seven groups so secret some members will never admit to their involvement, and their meeting places hiding in plain sight.

Skull and Bones Tomb

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 

The Tomb. (Photo: Sage Ross/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Ivy league Yale University is considered to be one of the most selective higher educational institutions in the United States, if not the world. Its motto lux et veritas translates to "light and truth." On the historic campus in New Haven, Connecticut, there is a building where "light and truth" are reserved for carefully selected members and alumni.

What is known about the Skull and Bones secret society is minimal. The organization started in 1832. An official roster of its members was published up until 1971. Bonesmen, as members are called, have been heads of corporations, senior government officials, Supreme Court justices, and even presidents. Theories about what the Skull and Bones actually do range from its members controlling the Central Intelligence Agency, being a part of a global network aimed at world domination, to being a branch of the Illuminati.

It’s also unknown exactly what happens in The Tomb, the group's headquarters, but there are strange rumors of what is contained in the windowless sandstone building. The Egypto-Doric style of the structure makes it appear as an immense sepulcher. The tomb is thought to hold secret documents containing the roster of all members, ritual details, as well as multiple stolen relics. Some of the bones rumored to be in The Tomb include the skulls of Geronimo, Pancho Villa, Martin Van Buren, and the gravestone of Elihu Yale, the school's founder. Bonesmen are also known to take other societies' belongings in a show of thievery and cunning known as crooking.

Bilderberg Club: Hotel de Bilderberg

OOSTERBEEK, NETHERLANDS

Hotel de Bilderberg. (Photo: Michiel1972/CC BY-SA 4.0) 

In November of 1954, 50 delegates from 11 countries in Western Europe and 11 Americans spent three days in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, at the Hotel de Bilderberg. The purpose of the meeting was said to foster conversations between Europe and North America. Those in attendance included a prince, a prime minster, and the head of the CIA. Since that meeting, each year a group of international leaders in the fields of politics, business, media, and communications have met to discuss… we’re not exactly sure.

There is no agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no voting of any kind is executed, and no positions or policy statements are issued. The meetings are held in a different location each year and each year the topics of the meeting are up for the general public to theorize over. The roster of attendees is never officially made public, but there have been leaks over the years. Conspiracy theories abound, especially because of the group’s intense level of secrecy. Many believe the group is conspiring to impose capital domination, a world government, or a planned economy. What is certain is that the more prominent you are, the more likely you’ll be to get an invitation to next year’s Bilderberg conference. 

Scientology's Trementina Base

TREMENTINA, NEW MEXICO

Trementina Base, New Mexico. (Photo: Google Earth)

Scientology is most visible today because of celebrity members like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, yet the organization has been aggressive over the years in tackling critics and maintaining its secrets. One of the most controversial religious groups, some characterize the movement as a cult.

Basic Scientology belief holds that humans are immortal beings who have reincarnated and have lived on other planets before finding themselves now on Earth. One of the things that makes the religion controversial is its assertive nature, often turning to character assassination or litigation in dealing with skeptics and critics who question their practices. The church is also extremely secretive, holding many of its teachings from members until they have made it through multiple levels.

Scientology operates several churches called Celebrity Centres that are opened to the public, but are primarily meant for "anyone with the power and vision to create a better world.” The Church of the Spiritual Technology, or CST, is reserved for the most trusted of members. Many of these members manage elaborate bases including the Trementina Base. The official word from the church is that the base is a location used to preserve Scientology founder Ron L. Hubbard’s writings, which are said to be engraved on steel sheets and encased in titanium cases. It’s thought that Trementina is more than just a location to archive Hubbard’s works, however.

Trementina contains underground dwellings and tunnels, but what’s most interesting about the base is what you see from the outside. Aerial photographs above the base show huge images dug into the Earth. The images are that of the church’s logo. Former members have claimed that the symbols are to mark the return point for members when they travel into the future. Other members have stated that this is the place where Hubbard is supposed to go when he returns.  

The Illuminati: Domus Sanctae Marthae

VATICAN CITY, VATICAN

Pope Francis entering Domus Sanctae Marthae (Photo: Pufui Pc Pifpef I/CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Established in 1776 in Bavaria, Germany, this group of freethinkers, humanists, and academics opposed superstition, prejudice, religion, and its influence over the public, and they supported the advancement of women.

The Illuminati were a shadowy group, believed capable of influencing movements in government and the arts. The group was infiltrated and shut down a decade after its founding, or so the official record goes. Conspiracy theorists have long been obsessed that the world has been controlled by the Illuminati for generations. There are many modern groups that claim to be the descendants of the original Bavarian Illuminati; they go so far as to use the name “Illuminati” in their title, but there is no evidence that these recent organizations are tied to the original.

Besides its actions, what is a major mystery of this group is the location of its headquarters. Theorists have claimed many prominent locations are the headquarters of the Illuminati from Disney World in Orlando, Florida, the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Big Ben in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and, among many others, the Vatican.

The theory that the Illuminati headquarters is located at the Vatican is especially interesting due to the group's opposition to the church. It's believed by conspiracy theorists that the church was long ago infiltrated by the society and so that would make its leader, the pope, one of the Illuminati's highest ranking members. Today, the pope resides in a simple room at Domus Sanctae Marthae, a guest house adjacent to St. Peter's Basilica. The five-story building containing 106 suites and 22 single rooms is for clergy who are in town on official Holy See business, or perhaps for an Illuminati meeting or two.

Ordo Templi Orientis: Bay Area Thelemic Temple

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

Mural of Aleister Crowley at the Abode of Chaos. (Photo: Thierry Ehrmann/CC BY 2.0)

The Order of the Temple of the East was founded between 1895 and 1906 in either Austria or Germany. It is believed wealthy industrialist, Carl Kellner, began the religious movement, but it was famed occultist Aleister Crowley whose name and additions to the group shrouded it in curiosity and mystery.

OTO was modeled somewhat after another secret society, Freemasonry. But Crowley added a layer, his own self-created belief system called Thelema. Thelema’s practices and beliefs are written out in a book titled The Book of Law and its core belief is: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Ideas from occultism, and Eastern and Western mysticism, found their way into Thelema and thus OTO. The religion is highly secretive and members move through the order in a series of rites and rituals, moving up levels in the forms of initiations. Levels have curious names such as Minerval, Master Magician, Illustrious Knight, Grandmaster of Light, and so on.

There are two components at the core of OTO: magical rituals, which have been rumored to include tantric sex, the summoning of angels and demons, and astral projection. Then there is the gnostic mass, reminiscent of a Catholic mass only because it contains a host and wine toward the end. The gnostic mass includes elaborate costumes, and at the climax of the mass it's believed that the host turns into the Body of God and the wine the Blood of God.

There are multiple locations of worship called camps, oases, or lodges. The majority of them keep their locations secretive to the greater public. The relatively small location in Oakland is an oasis. They hold a weekly gnostic mass in a temple decorated in candles and Egyptian imagery. It’s unknown exactly what takes place during initiation ceremonies and what knowledge is shared during these events. According to Crowley's autobiography, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: "the OTO is in possession of one supreme secret. The whole of its system [is] directed towards communicating to its members, by progressively plain hints, this all-important instruction.”

Priory of Sion: Bibliothèque Nationale de France

PARIS, FRANCE

National Library of France Reading Room. (Photo: Vincent Desjardins/CC BY 2.0)

The secret of this secret society is that many people believe in its existence, but scholarly claims have repetitively stated the group is a complete myth, constructed by the imagination of a madman.    

The myth begins that the Priory of Sion was a group charged with protecting the descendants of Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene who eventually went on to settle in France. It was leaked in the 1970s that the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, the French National Library, was in possession of a file called Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau that pointed to the Priory of Sion being located in France. The file contained an introduction, maps of France, genealogies, newspaper clippings, letters and a list of grand masters of the Priory of Sion that included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci.

The authenticity of these files has been questioned ever since they were left at the library. Eventually, they were traced to Pierre Plantard. It is believed Plantard planted the document at the library in order to perpetuate an elaborate hoax. He himself claimed to be a descendant of Jesus' bloodline. Academics went on to agree that the Priory of Sion was a hoax constructed by Plantard. Yet, books, articles, and movies continue to be made about this group. Whether or not there is a secret society dedicated to protecting a family descendant from biblical times we may never know.

Rosicrucianism: Rosicrucian Park

SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum grounds. (Photo: Ginabovara/Public Domain)

Several manifestos were anonymously published in the early 17th century that told of legends, mysticism, alchemy, and the Order of the Temple of the Rosy Cross. One of these documents was the Fama Fraternitatis which was published in Cassel, Germany.

The Fama spoke of the 15th century German doctor and mystical philosopher Christian Rosenkreuz who traveled through parts of the Middle East where he learned esoteric wisdom, studying in places such as Turkey and Egypt. There, he claimed to learn extensive knowledge regarding nature and the universe. When he returned, he attempted to share what he learned but he was dismissed. He then formed a like-minded group called the Fraternity of the Rose Cross. 

The year of his birth and death remain shadowy, but some documents claim he lived over 106 years. The group upheld Christian beliefs, but strongly opposed Roman Catholicism, and was also said to have influenced Freemasonry along with hundreds of other groups, many of which have adopted titles with similar names throughout modern times. At its simplest form, the group aimed to promote a “Universal Reformation of Mankind.” Some reports claim that the requirement for membership was that one must have been capable of using more than the average amount of brain power.

During Rosenkreuz’s life, the group was thought to have only consisted of a handful of members, each of whom was a doctor. All members took an oath to remain bachelors, and also to treat the sick without payment and to find a replacement for themselves before they died. Interest in the group peaked between 1607 and 1616 with the appearances of the anonymous works that included the Fama Fraternitatis which ranged with content that included mysticism and apocalyptic warnings.

Whether Rosenkreuz’s original idea continued is unknown. One of the hundreds of groups claiming to be tied to the original is the Ancient Mystical Order Rosea Crucis that has some connection to occultist Aleister Crowley. AMORC claims to be devoted to the “study of elusive mysteries of life and the universe.” They utilize ideas from major philosophers, including Thales and Pythagoras, healing techniques, alchemy, symbolism, and mysticism. The group claims its history can be traced to pharaoh Thutmose III in 1477. The AMORC headquarters is located at Rosicrucian Park in San Jose, California, which spans a city block and includes several structures. The park is home to elaborate gardens, a research library, a planetarium, a temple, and it houses the ashes of Harvey Spencer Lewis, founder of the secret society.

The Vidraru arch dam on the bank of the Argeş River in Romania is an engineering jewel. Built in 1966 to create hydroelectricity, it was the fifth largest dam in Europe at the time. It required 42 kilometers of tunnels, over a million hard rocks extracted from underground and nearly a million cubic meters of concrete to build, plus the loss of about 80 builders' lives.

The vast dam is itself worth a visit, and those who do will also catch a glimpse of a statue of Prometheus watching over the dam from atop Plesa Mountain, holding a flash of lightning in his hand to symbolize electricity. The ancient Titan—who in Greek mythology stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to humans—looks like a modern-day superhero backdropped by the Frunţii Mountains and Ghiţu mountains that surround Lake Vidraru.

There's something hiding in these hills, too. The Vidraru dam was designed with an ingenious safety measure. To avoid nearby cities being flooded from a crack in the dam (from a bomb or otherwise), dynamite was placed strategically in the surrounding mountains. In the event that the dam breaks, the dynamite would be detonated and form a substitute dam out of the rock blasted out of the mountains.

The Freedom Bell (Freiheitsglocke) was a gift given by the American people to the people of West Berlin in the early days of the Cold War as a show of solidarity. Commissioned by the National Committee for Free Europe (the organization behind Radio Free Europe) and modeled after Philadelphia's famous Liberty Bell (minus the crack), the Freedom Bell was hung in Rathaus Schöneberg, which served as the seat of government in West Berlin, in 1950.

After the bell was cast in the UK, it was transported to New York and taken on a coast-to-coast tour through 26 American cities as part of a fundraising and propaganda campaign called the Crusade for Freedom. At each stop, people could donate money to support Radio Free Europe (which in fact helped to conceal the CIA's funding of the broadcasting network) and sign the "Declaration of Freedom," thereby expressing commitment to "freedom" and opposition to "aggression and tyranny."

The campaign collected 16 million signatures, which were installed along with the bell in Rathaus Schöneberg on October 21, 1950. The Freedom Bell rang for the first time three days later, on United Nations Day, in front of a crowd of over 400,000 Berliners. Dedication remarks were given by General Lucius D. Clay, who had orchestrated the Berlin Airlift. The bell's first peals could be heard round the world via radio, including in Eastern Europe thanks to Radio Free Europe. Ever since, the Freedom Bell has rung every day at noon, as well as at midnight on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

Given its symbolic importance, the Freedom Bell has also sounded to mark significant events such as the anti-Communist uprisings in 1953 and 1956 (in East German and Hungary, respectively), as well as the beginning of construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. The plaza in front of Rathaus Schöneberg was the site of John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in June 26, 1963, made in the wake of the wall's completion; it also hosted a spontaneous gathering of mourners when he was assassinated a few weeks later. Within days, the name of the plaza was changed to John-F-Kennedy-Platz. The Freedom Bell later rang to mark German Reunification in 1990, and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

It was hot the afternoon of July 22, 1913. The fire started after lunch, when a careless worker at the Binghamton Clothing Co. tossed a lit cigarette down a stairwell.

Some of the ladies had stripped to their undergarments due to the increasing heat. Others thought this was another fire drill and refused to leave their work stations until it was too late. Thirty-one employees burned to death in the single greatest loss of life the city of Binghamton, New York has ever seen. Twenty-one of those bodies were too badly burned to be identified.

The victims were interred atop a hill at Spring Forest Cemetery. Unmarked stones mark each grave in a ring around a standing headstone at the center. A copper plaque details the events of the tragedy and lists the names of the unidentified dead. The plaque has turned green and the graves are sunken, but the site is still well-tended and remembered.

Situated between the major cities of Buffalo, Syracuse, Scranton, Boston, and New York City, Binghamton was an important manufacturing hub at the turn of the century. Endicott-Johnson employed up to 20,000 workers. Eastern European immigrants were filling ready-made jobs and houses. Many new Americans knew only one English phrase when they arrived, “Which way E-J?

The Binghamton Clothing factory caught fire two years after the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist fire in Manhattan, during which 146 workers burned to death. After 1913, with mounting pressure on officials, regulations such as regular inspections went in place to protect workers crammed into confined factories.

The image of three-legged Martian attack tripods and rivers covered in strange red weeds, are now iconic symbols of alien invasion, thanks to H.G. Wells’ influential science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds. But when his story was first published, the illustrations were a far cry from the otherworldly imagery described in the text.

So Wells did what any professional artist would do: he went back and added a paragraph talking shit on the artist.

Having been adapted into multiple films, radio plays (Hi, Orson Welles!), and just about every other form of media, The War of the Worlds is probably the most famous alien invasion yarn of all time. In case you are unfamiliar with the story, The War of The Worlds was Wells’ fictionalized account of an attempted Martian takeover of Earth. Arriving in advanced fighting machines that walked around on three, tall, spindly legs, they were outfitted with heat rays and a poisonous black smoke. Earth’s forces were no match for the Martian blitzkrieg, and the planet falls into blasted defeat. In the second half of the book, which takes place after the Martians have seemingly won, the waterways of England are choked with Martian red weed, and all resistance has been crushed. However, as the narrator goes it bit mad and decides to stand up to one of the robotic fighting machines in a suicidal pique, it is discovered that the Martians are all dead or dying in their machines, brought down by the common cold. 

The War of the Worlds was initially published as a serial in Pearson's Magazine in the U.K., and Cosmopolitan in the U.S. throughout 1897. The story, one of the first to detail a war with another planet, was a popular hit during its initial serial run, at least with readers. Wells himself wasn’t so pleased with everything.

A Martian heat ray in action. (Photo: Warwick Goble/Public Domain)

“Wells was unimpressed with the illustrations,” says H.G. Wells expert Michael Sherborne. “He complained about the pictures in a letter to his agent.” Goble, a fledgling artist at the time, who would go on to have a successful career as a children’s illustrator, envisioned the Martian fighting machines as ovular pods that stood on metal beams, which looked like a standard construction support. In some ways they didn’t look very alien at all (see a modern critique of Goble’s art over on Open Culture). And Wells wasn’t having it.

In 1898, the first collected version of The War of the Worlds was released, and Wells had added a handful of new and previously omitted material to the narrative. Included in the additions was an entire paragraph directly commenting on his disappointment with Goble’s illustrations. Found in Book II, Chapter 2, in the middle of dealing with a planet blasted by alien war, the narrator takes some time to give a sort-of bitchy, and suspiciously familiar critique of a war reporter’s illustrations:

I recall particularly the illustration of one of the first pamphlets to give a consecutive account of the war. The artist had evidently made a hasty study of one of the fighting-machines, and there his knowledge ended. He presented them as tilted, stiff tripods, without either flexibility or subtlety, and with an altogether misleading monotony of effect. The pamphlet containing these renderings had a considerable vogue, and I mention them here simply to warn the reader against the impression they may have created. They were no more like the Martians I saw in action than a Dutch doll is like a human being. To my mind, the pamphlet would have been much better without them.

The tripods have arrived. (Photo: Warwick Goble/Public Domain)

Of course this in-world account was simply a not-very-veiled reflection of Wells’ reaction to Goble’s work. In his new book The War of the Worlds: From H.G. Wells to Orson Welles, Jeff Wayne, Steven Spielberg and Beyond, author Peter Beck describes the reasoning behind Wells’ objections to Goble’s artwork, saying, “Apart from being a very visual writer capable of both conjuring up vivid fantastic images for readers and representing his thoughts through picshuas, Wells had strong feelings about the illustrations employed to support his work, as evidenced by his above-mentioned critique of Goble’s illustrations used for the story’s serialization.”

Some versions of the first edition of The War of the Worlds contained Goble’s illustrations, right in the same volume as Wells’ meta-critique, but as the novel fired up the imaginations of countless other science fiction artists, they were replaced by the work of numerous other illustrators in later editions.

A Martian in the flesh. (Photo: Warwick Goble/Public Domain)

In subsequent years, Wells would loosen up his opinion on Goble’s illustrations, coming to see them as just another vision of his creation. Wells eventually authorized the use of Goble’s illustrations in printings of The War of the Worlds, and as noted in Beck’s book, he seems to recant his negative opinion of Gobles’ work, saying in a 1920 interview in Strand Magazine, that the art, “was done very well by Mr. Warwick Goble, during its first magazine publication.”

But the dismissive critique remains in modern additions of the text to this day. Just like his greatest Martians, H.G. Wells' greatest troll is now a permanent fixture in the sci-fi canon.

Cats in Istanbul are kind of a big deal, but even among Istanbul’s famous cats, Tombili stood apart. An unusually portly cat, Tombili rose to social media fame after being caught on camera leaning a casual elbow against the step, contemplating the world.

Fenomen kedi 'Tombili' hayatını kaybetti https://t.co/iViYnPxMIlpic.twitter.com/pNELNuiT2C

— NTV Yaşam (@ntv_yasam) August 10, 2016

Tombili was known for being a chill cat, and this was a common pose for him. But this particular photo achieved a higher level of internet fame, putting Tombili in the pantheon of Beloved and Bememed Internet Cats.

In August, Tombili died, and since then friends and fans have been pushing for a permanent monument to his life. On October 4, World Animal Day, that desire was be officially fulfilled, when a commemorative sculpture by local artist Seval Şahin was unveiled.

RIP Tombili, may you chill forever.