As the nights draw in and the temperature drops, access to a remote, cozy cabin becomes an appealing prospect—especially when the cabins are the architectural wonders that are found in the new book The Hinterland: Cabins, Love Shacks and Other Hide-outs.
The book explores the wondrous forms that the humble cabin can take. In the Southern United States, for example, there is a three-bedroom cabin built into the trees. Connected by rope bridges adorned with fairy lights, this cabin is part-tree house, part magical hideaway.
From the Italian mountains to a Danish archipelago, the locations of the cabins are almost as appealing as the architecture itself. Among the more unique in the book is an observation hut perched above the wilderness of Latvia, and a wooden cabin nearly camouflaged from view under snow-covered trees in Hungary.
Here is a collection of the most remarkable of the tiny houses:
On Facebook, Paul Jones announced a gruesome find. "Today at Great Yarmouth we found what looks like a dead Mermaid washed up on the beach," he wrote.
Great Yarmouth is on the eastern coast of England, on the North Sea, across from the coast of the Netherlands. It's not so far from Copenhagen, where Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid is memorialized in a statue—so perhaps it counts as traditional mermaid stomping grounds.
This mermaid, though, is not doing so hot.
Is this a real mermaid? As the Daily Mail notes, "Mr Jones’s Facebook profile shows him to be a keen modeller - particularly of creepy figures. He is a member of the ‘Horror and Halloween DIY’ Facebook group." So even if we were inclined to believe in mermaids, that weighs heavily against this one being real.
Still, those exposed intestines are an innovation in "real mermaid" finds. In that pantheon, recycled over and over again to create videos of mermaid sightings, plenty of the mermaids are desiccated or otherwise gross-looking. But there aren't any examples of mermaid internal organs!
The real question is: what should we name this specimen? The "Yarmouth mermaid" would be traditional, but we're open to other suggestions.
Archaeologists in northwest China have discovered a shroud made of cannabis plants in an ancient grave, adding further evidence to the notion that even thousands of years ago, people liked to stay up.
As National Geographic is reporting, a recently unearthed burial site, dating back around 2,500 years, was found to hold a cache of (assumingly legally obtained) cannabis plants. The 13 complete plants were arrayed over the male body inside like a burial shroud, covering the corpse from crotch to chin.
The discovery occurred during excavation of the ancient Jiayi cemetery in the area of Turpan. Cannabis seeds and fragments have been previously found in other graves in the cemetery, but this is the first time that complete plants have been discovered as part of the burials, allowing the researchers to determine that it was grown locally. The graves have been attributed to members of the Subeixi culture, who are thought to have been the first permanent residents of the Turpan basin.
While the exact significance of the cannabis plants as part of the burial rituals is not yet confirmed, the dank stash is seen as further evidence that the plant was used mainly for its psychoactive properties, much as it is today.
If you're wandering amongst the Spanish moss and live oaks of Savannah's historic Bonaventure Cemetery at dusk, a grinning green woman with sunken eyes might jump out at you from behind a corner. Don't worry–you're not the first to be spooked by the bronze jogger.
The unusual monument is dedicated to the memory of Julia Denise Backus Smith, a prominent member of Savannah society, who committed suicide in 2003. As her epitaph indicates, she worked with compassion for the less fortunate of Savannah as a city commissioner. She was also the first woman from her city to compete in the Boston Marathon, and went on to win races in Georgia.
While it's touching memorial to a woman doing what she loved, the statue's bronze skin has now oxidized to an eerie shade of green and her eyes have gained a blackened shadow, so it can give quite the start to those unaware.
It’s entirely possible that someone alive today on Earth will be the first person to die on Mars. The private company Mars One expects that, after a one-way flight, its interplanetary travelers will remain there for the rest of their lives.
Billionaire space magnate Elon Musk has said that, eventually, he’d like to die on Mars himself. His company, SpaceX, is planning a return flight on its Mars journeys, but, as Musk said last week, with the risk of death so high, anyone who goes on the first Mars flights must be prepared not to come back. If humans reach Mars, at least a few of us are likely to die there.
This would be a milestone of its own. In the history of humanity, only three people have died in space—cosmonauts on the Soyuz 11 mission when their return capsule depressurized at 104 miles above sea level, well past the boundary between Earth and the rest of the universe. No one’s ever been buried, cremated, or left to the elements on another planet.
If a person did die on Mars, what would happen to their body?
SpaceX concept art for Martian landing. (Image: SpaceX)
If left out on the Martian surface, a human body would last a very, very long time. On Earth, post-death destruction starts with decomposers, which move in fast and start using organic matter to fuel their own little lives. Mars has no biology, that we know of.
In the immediate aftermath of death, a body would still start to decompose there: the bacteria inside, transplanted from Earth, would go to work. If a dead body was left outside at the Martian equator, where temperatures sometimes reach pleasant-enough highs during the day, this could go on for a few hours. Without an insulating atmosphere, though, the planet cools quickly, and even balmy Martian nights are as cold as polar nights here. The body would freeze, stopping the work of the bacteria, and begin the slow, dry process of mummifying.
Working against the preservation of the cold would be ionizing radiation, which destroys organic compounds and bathes Mars at levels unheard of on Earth. One plausible explanation for why we haven’t found any traces of life on Mars is that the high levels of radiation there zapped any organic compounds into gases that show no trace of their former life.
Eventually, radiation would do away with more of the body, but it would take eons—100 million years from the first human death on Mars, it’s possible that the person’s bones could still be found.
Being human, Mars colonists probably wouldn’t just throw bodies out on the ground and leave them there. If a body was buried, though, it would be even better preserved than if it were left on the surface—the conditions would still be cold and dry, but the body would be protected from radiation.
To dispose of a body, Mars explorers or colonists would have to resort to cremation or deliberate decomposition. Either is possible; Mars One already chosen cremation as its method for disposing of the dead. A cremation fire would require two resources that Mars missions are already looking to extract or manufacture on Mars: oxygen and fuel. But even if the settlement is not manufacturing fuel, there could be enough leftover from the trip there to feed a fire.
The other option is less conventional, since it would basically amount to composting human bodies. However, a space bioethicist told Slate that this option seemed unlikely—“There are societies that desperately need fertilizer, and even they don’t use their dead bodies for the purpose,” he said—but it seems to be one of the first options that pops into people’s minds.
It makes sense: Any semi-permanent Mars colony would benefit from a composting system that reserved food waste and recycled it back into new plants, and astronauts already violate earthly taboos about waste by drinking recycled urine, for instance. If it’s possible to get past the taboo of death, actively composting a human body isn’t so different than burying it in the ground.
Besides Mars One, Mars-faring expeditions haven’t been so clear cut about their plans for death, though. NASA, presumably, would use a similar approach to its current preparation for astronauts—”contingency” or death sims, in which, astronaut Chris Hadfield has written, an entire team works through the basic questions: what to do with the corpse and its smell? How quickly will a body decompose? How should the person’s family be notified? How should the PR team respond?
Of course, we have to get to Mars first for any of this to be relevant. But planning ahead for end-of-life is always advisable.
If you're not familiar with the Pallas's cat, it's time you got introduced. This guy is housecat-sized, with soulful yellow eyes and more fluff than you could imagine. It looks like a cat in a fur coat.
It is also endangered and poorly understood. Luckily, researchers at an international conference on the Pallas's cat recently agreed to set aside a 14-square-mile patch of land to preserve and study it, the Siberian Times reports.
The Pallas's cat may look like he belongs at the foot of your bed, ready to star in Youtube videos and keep your feet warm. But they actually live in the rocky steppes of southern Siberia, Mongolia, and China, where they spend most of their time hiding out in caves and hunting for pika.
This new sanctuary, located within Sailyugemsky Nature Park in the Altai Mountains, is meant to protect the cats from poachers, and to enable further study. At this point, we know very little about these reclusive cuties: "The latest data on this species... hasn't been updated over the last 3 or 4 decades," researcher Alexey Kuzhlekov told the Siberian Times. They're not even sure exactly how many live within the new reserve.
So first comes a count—and after that comes, hopefully, the kind of true and rare understanding that bonds two species for eternity. Good luck, Pallas's cat ambassadors.
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.
Behind the Lake George Visitors Center there is a circular platform with a painted blue map of the lake and a compass pattern etched in. In the exact center of the circle two metal rails cross each other in the middle of the map, forming a literal "X" that marks the mystery spot. Stand here and you'll witness a strange natural phenomenon that seems to defy the laws of acoustics.
If you stand in this exact spot, facing the lake, and start shouting, you'll hear your own voice echo back to you as if from another dimension. Only you can hear it, and only in this precise spot.
The acoustical phenomenon will make your voice sound tinny to your own ears, while the other visitors around you will wonder why you are standing around shouting or singing opera. Only when they stand in the direct center as well will they too hear the effect.
Theories range as to how the mystery spot works its wonders. Some say your voice is bouncing off the curved semi-circular stone wall; others point to the position of the lake and mountains. The most intriguing explanation is a local Native American legend, which holds an ancient god appeared long ago at this spot and his wisdom still echoes around the lake. Regardless of the reason for this acoustical mystery, the Lake George Mystery Spot remains one of the best kept secrets of Lake George, hidden in plain sight.
On January 2, 1890, Amelia S. Givin gave a very large and beautiful gift to the people of Mt. Holly Springs. The Givin family had made a fortune from various business ventures in town and Amelia wanted to thank the community by providing a public library. Here in this sleepy little hamlet in South Central Pennsylvania, this stately library awaits anyone who would like to be temporarily transported back in time and halfway across the world.
In the late 19th century the public library building movement was just getting underway in the United States, and the most popular architectural style for public buildings was called "Richardsonian Romanesque" after it's namesake Henry Hobson Richardson, who pushed for the opening up of library architectural spaces.
In the 1890s a public library was a very different place than what we are used to now. Patrons were not allowed to browse the stacks on their own. Upon entering the library you would make known to the librarian what reading material you were interested in, and the librarian would then enter the stacks and pick what they thought you should be reading and bring the books to you. Richardson fought against this idea of keeping books sequestered from the curious public.
Givin chose prominent Pittsburgh architect James T. Steen to design the library based on his many well known Richardsonian Romanesque designs. The nearby Hummelstown Brownstone Company quarried and dressed the magnificent and stately exterior of the library. But what makes the Givin Library unique is its interior woodwork.
Steen picked the highly stylized Moorish Fretwork wooden lattice to delineate the different spaces in the library, creating an almost Harem-like atmosphere. These lattice screens are constructed by interlacing machine carved helical wooden sticks into elaborate ornamental patterns that are reminiscent of Harem screens from the Middle East. The screens and decorative door panels define the spaces in the library in a unique and exotic way.
Moorish Fretwork was a very expensive and fragile material that brought a bit of the allure of the foreign and mysterious unknown parts of the world directly into the heart of this very American small town. As part of the Orientalism movement in American art and architecture, Moorish Fretwork went out of style in the 1920s and very few examples of it still exist, and almost none that are in public buildings where they are accessible to all, making the Amelia S. Givin library a true gem.
Claude Monet's San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, painted in 1908. (Photo: Public Domain)
On any given day in a lab in New Jersey, a humming machine traces the lines of a hand-drawn image: a woman’s face drawn by Matisse. The machine highlights each new line it sees, recording and cataloging its thickness, shape, and the artist it was created by.
But the computer isn’t merely scanning the image, it’s learning. The Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Rutgers University is currently teaching the machine to appreciate and understand art, and the subtle differences within a painting or drawing.
“The A.I. will be able to tell a Van Gogh versus a Matisse, for example, based on the visual elements that are somehow unconscious to the artist,” explains Ahmed Elgammal, Professor and Director of the lab.
Scientists have been exploring artificial intelligence in relation to art for years, and while artificial intelligence systems can now make paintings of their own dreams, humans still have the only brains capable of appreciating them. This is where the Art and Artificial Intelligence lab comes in. Computer scientists there hope to bring artificial minds closer to mimicking human intelligence, and their work may also help solve a problem that has plagued the art world for hundreds of years: art forgeries.
From the machine at the Rutgers Laboratory, which tries to trace individual lines for analysis, used here on a work by Egon Schiele. The various colors are to differentiate the lines. (Photo: Courtesy Natalie Zarelli)
There is great potential foran A.I. detection system to identify counterfeit artworks. But first the researchers have to teach their electronic brain to learn many centuries worth of art history and technique. To do this, Elgammal and his fellow computer scientists took pictures and high-resolution scans of thousands of paintings, and entered them into their computer system. Over time, the computer traces each line in the drawing, and analyzes the image against others using machine learning algorithms, which the computer uses to count and quantify different tiny aspects of what it “saw.”
All of this is happening inside the "brain" of the computer, which uses information in its artificial neural network to recognize visual patterns in the artwork. We can see what the computer “sees” based on its output data, which is shown as a flat image on a screen that summarizes the computer brain’s results. When the computer is learning how Matisse tends to draw, it colors the lines it has learned and differentiates one small stroke from the next, remembering it forever.
The artificial intelligence that was developed at the Rutgers University lab has yet to be used in any investigative capacity to detect a forgery for a gallery—it’s still in its early stages. However, it is pushing past previous research where A.I. was used to detect forgery, using similar techniques.
Nearly a decade ago, art forgery research from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands found that the number of brush strokes in a given painting were indicative of whether a painting was authentic; Van Gogh, for example, tended to make the same number of brush strokes in a given area. When compared to a famous counterfeit Van Gogh painting, one of dozens sold in the 1920s by the German art dealer Otto Wacker, a computer decided there were far too many brush strokes for it to be a true Van Gogh, something that humans eyes would never be able to see on their own.
The National Gallery in London. AI could also help with the study of art techniques. (Photo: Xiquinho Silva/CC BY 2.0)
New research at the Art and Artificial Intelligence lab will also be able to understand this concept in deeper detail, using the texture and exact shape of each brush stroke to develop a range of characteristics that exist, on average, in an artist’s work.
Considering that contemporary art forgery scandals disturb the value of art while calling the abilities of art historians and dealers into question, it’s possible this technology could help clean up the art trade, though the primary goal of the A.I. lab at Rutgers University is to help an artificial brain think more like a human. “Art, and engineering art, is an ability that only humans have over other creatures,” says Elgammal. “If a machine is going to be intelligent, it also has to have this ability of looking at art and understanding art.”
These days, when a computer scientist asks the A.I. to notice something—for instance, which of several paintings is the most innovative for its time—the computer’s artificial intelligence is able to draw those conclusions. Recently, the lab’s computer began to pinpoint characteristics from individual artists; as it learns, it will be able to tell whether a painting seems authentic by analyzing minute characteristics of an artist’s brush, pencil or pen strokes. Using high resolution scans and photographs of paintings and drawings, the Artificial Intelligence can get a good look at thousands of details humans aren’t able to analyze.
The neural network is building on past research; last year the lab taught their computer to categorize roughly 62,000 paintings and rank them by how innovative the images were. The computer was able to note similarities in paintings created centuries apart; the resulting map of art placed paintings by Goya, Michelangelo and Vermeer (who is one of the most forged artists of all time) among the top most creative images for their eras, with the “Mona Lisa” by Da Vinci, and paintings by Durer and Ingres closer to the bottom.
The authorship of this painting, now attributed to Vermeer, was under scrutiny for many years. AI can be used to differentiate the visual cues of artists and so help spot forgeries. (Photo: Public Domain)
The computer learned composition, subject matter and color during that time, but today it is ignoring those characteristics, and learning to recognize the smallest brush stroke. Once that is mastered, says Elgammal, “then we can reach something that can avoid forgers being able to manipulate the machine.”
After looking at hundreds of various artists’ drawings, the computer’s A.I. can now identify the individual strokes of Matisse and Picasso with an accuracy of up to 80 percent, according to Elgammal. “If the machine can tell what are the characteristics of certain artists, advances can lead to the machine also reading art based on style, although that will still be ahead in the future,” he says. Currently, the AI can detect a line’s thickness, curvature, shape, tone, and smoothness. Eventually, the technology will be able to read a broader set of details within context.
Artificial intelligence critics, some of whom believe computers may one day replace human value in society, are likely to be wary of a robotic mind appreciating art. But Elgammal believes that artificial intelligence is not likely to replace art historians and aficionados. “In reality we are far behind in replicating human intelligence, even of that of a toddler,” says Elgammal. “The machine really complements human ability, it’s not a competition, and we will not be at a stage where it will be replacing the human identity—at least, not anytime soon.“
The Artificial Intelligence Lab’s system is also meant to complement other technologies that verify a painting’s authenticity, such as testing the age of the canvas and the chemical composition of pigments, and using infrared and hyperspectral imaging. The lab also employ artists and art historians to lend their knowledge to the computer base. Elgammal and his team will be publishing the results of their work soon, hopefully by the end of 2016.
Visitors at the Art Institute of Chicago. AI can be used to learn about composition, color and subject matter. (Photo: Phil Roeder/CC BY 2.0)
The computer scientists at Rutgers believe that not only will studying art help artificial intelligence systems become a better tool for art historians and art dealers, they may help us understand how and why we understand art ourselves. In the past few years some neuroscientists have theorized that art directly stimulates certain neurons in our own brains, and reverse-engineering this process for computers could potentially shed light on the process.
Indeed, the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab uses models of human neural networks in their research. The technology can also help uncover new facets of art history over long stretches of time using statistical analysis to learn exactly how styles and techniques evolved.
“That’s opening doors for me and new questions about art which I think is very interesting, because art and science has somehow been two different camps,” says Elgammal, whose own love of art is what drew him to the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab. “Now it’s time to make science and art come back together again and start asking these questions.”
Plus, if the fear of human workers being replaced by A.I. ever materializes, it may be somewhat comforting to know that our robot overlords are the cultured sort.
Located on a manmade island off the coast of Dubai, the Burj Al Arab is the third tallest hotel in the world, and, according to some, the most luxurious place to stay on the planet—dubbed "the world’s only seven star hotel.”
Built for $1 billion and standing at 56 floors tall, the shape of the Burj Al Arab is modeled after the sail of a J-Class yacht, and its features are no less extravagant; a room will run you between $2,700 and $24,000 per night.
The luxurious Burj Al Arab experience begins even before entering the hotel. Hotel guests are greeted at Dubai International Airport by their choice of a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce or a lift from a helicopter. Those who choose the latter will land on a helipad suspended at the very top of the hotel, a platform that was converted to a tennis court in 2005 to host an epic match between Andre Agassi and Roger Federer.
Once guests enter the hotel, the over-the-top extravagance becomes even more amplified. One of sixteen elevators will bring guests to the lobby, built with 258,000 square feet of Statuario marble. To add on to the marble, an additional 22,000 square feet of the Burj Al Arab’s interior is covered in 24-carat gold. In the Talise Spa's "Romantic Moonlight Swim" you can swim in four indoor and outdoor pools while enjoying champagne, strawberries, and a view of the Persian Gulf. There are nine restaurants at Burj Al Arab, including Al Mahara (“Oyster”), where you can dine beside a 260,000-gallon aquarium.
After a nice meal, you may want to lie down in your room, which come replete with revolving beds, gold-plated iPads in every room, a selection of 17 different types of pillows, mosaic tiling, a marble jacuzzi, and a private butler on each floor. The hotel staff is so committed to luxury that part of their training includes watching episodes of Downton Abbey.
Travel up the lazy slope of Mt. Petosukura on the island of Saipan, and at the top is an abandoned radar tower, a last vestige of Cold War surveillance trying its best to fight back against the encroaching jungle.
The facility dates to the late 1980s, when the Air Force chose some high ground on the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the western Pacific. They repurposed the site with some repurposed equipment, cutting out a patch of dense foliage and replanting it with a 40-foot radar tower. The installation on the island of Saipan was the third of the U.S. military’s Pacific Barrier Radar sites—or PACBAR III—and its mission was to detect and track Soviet satellites and missile launches.
Decommissioned equipment was rescued from the USNS General H.H. Arnold, originally a World War 2 Navy transport ship that had been converted to a floating Air Force radar station. One of its salvaged towers was trudged up the jungle pass, where it was installed alongside some support buildings (and from the looks of old photos, ample parking!). It took two years to complete, and by 1989 it was ready to start doing some detect-o work, intended to provide coverage for a blind spot between two other radar stations—PACBAR I in the Marshall Islands, and PACBAR II in the Philippines.
PACBAR III’s mission was short-lived, when the Cold War came to an end in the early 1990s. The military turned out the lights, and the site has since fallen into decay with several of the original buildings already engulfed by the jungle. What remains—the radar tower itself and a few outbuildings—are covered in over twenty years of rust and graffiti.
The abandoned village now colorfully known as "Helltown" is purportedly teeming with crybaby bridges, spooked school buses, mass human sacrifice scenes, and a mutant python for good measure.
The extreme folklore surrounding the region formerly known as Boston, Ohio is ironic since the only the only verifiable legend about the town is that it is deserted for a very frighteningly tragic reason. Founded in 1806, Boston Village’s original claim to fame was its standing as the oldest village in Summit County. Boston’s relatively uneventful life took a turn for the worse in 1974, when it became the unlucky victim of nationwide anxiety over the country’s disappearing forestland. Using the laws of eminent domain, President Gerald Ford signed a bill that gave the federal government’s National Park Service jurisdiction to expropriate land for the establishment of National Parks. The NPS decided that Boston Township would be the new home for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and began buying the properties of its longtime residents.
The sentiment among citizens who had no choice but to leave their homes was expressed in a message scribbled on the wall of one of the houses: “Now we know how the Indians felt.” The empty homes were boarded up and adorned with U.S. “No Trespassing” signs. The government quickly fell behind on its plan to create the park and the village sat neglected. The remaining buildings, remnants of a “vanished” town, have created a fertile soil for the innumerable urban legends that have popped up over the years.
There are a number of myths surrounding the vacant properties but some have been a bit more durable than others. There is the Presbyterian church which is said to have been built by Satanists complete with upside down crosses. The abandoned bus is said to be host to lingering ghosts and, maybe most outlandish of all, there is talk of mutants who were created by a chemical spill, including a monstrous snake known as the "Peninsula Python."
However, most of the myths have been conclusively refuted. There has never been a chemical plant nor toxic spill in the area. The upside-down crosses affixed to a local church are part of the building's architectural style and have no roots in satanic activity. The "haunted" bus was the temporary home of a family awaiting house repairs. These explanations, of course, don’t diminish the public's enthusiasm for legends of unusual occurrences in Boston, Ohio. For instance, the city still celebrates “Python Day” in honor of the legendary giant snake.
In 1986, Kleenex released this commercial in Japan. It's a simple, almost minimalistic premise: a woman in white and an ogre child sit on a pile of hay and enjoy their Kleenex brand tissues while the song "It's a Fine Day" by Jane & Barton plays in the background.
Almost instantly, TV stations and Kleenex corporate allegedly began receiving complaints regarding the ad. Perhaps it was its overall strangeness, perhaps it was the minor key of the song, but people were almost ubiquitously unnerved by the commercial and requested that it be taken off the air.
As mass media is wont to do, the advertisement sparked a number of urban legends. Several rumors began to circulate about the cast. One claimed the entire film crew met untimely deaths in freak accidents. Another reported that the ogre child had died immediately after filming. Still others circulated that the actress, Keiko Matsuzaka, died, was committed to a psychiatric hospital following a mental breakdown, or became pregnant with a demon baby.
The song, in particular, seemed to unnerve people. Many asserted that "It's a Fine Day" was a German curse, despite the fact that it was in English. Others claimed that when the ad came on late at night, the singer's voice transformed from that of a young soprano to a raspy old woman's.
Kleenex eventually pulled the ad and replaced it with this one, which was also arguably creepy, though didn't inspire the urban legends that its predecessor had. Though none of those legends hold any weight (Matsuzaka is alive and well), you can't say it wasn't a successful ad campaign.
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.
In Rome the cats have an ancient temple-complex all to themselves.
Known as Largo di Torre Argentina, this archaeological wonder was excavated as part of Mussolini's rebuilding efforts in 1929, revealing extensive multilevel temples that lie sunken 20 feet below modern street level. Besides several different temples, Torre Argentina also contains part of the famous Theater of Pompey, upon whose steps dictator Julius Caesar was betrayed and killed in 44 BCE.
Today, volunteers at Torre Argentina care for approximately 250 cats. After the site was excavated, Rome's feral cats moved in immediately, as they do all over the city, and the gattare, or cat ladies, began feeding and caring for them. Since the mid-1990s, the population has grown from about 90 to the current 250, and the organization has ramped up with care for sick or wounded cats, as well as an extensive spay and neuter program to keep the feral population in check. Most of the permanent residents have special needs—they are blind or missing legs or came from abusive homes.
On any given afternoon a small crowd gathers here to watch the cats sunbathe on ancient pillars and steps. At first it may be hard to spot the cats, but once you start to see them, they are everywhere.
Visitors can admire the cats and their ruins from street level, volunteer, and even adopt cats.
Today, a baker might show off their skills with cronuts, which take three days to prepare correctly, or a towering cake modeled after a famous piece of architecture. But in the early 1600s, when literacy was still low, women displayed their domestic and scholarly prowess by baking perfect pastry letters. This craft was once the height of fashion, but today it's all but disappeared, except in the Netherlands, around Christmas time, and in Iowa.
Edible letters, Professor Wendy Wall argues in a new book on early English recipes, were a part of a 17th century "kitchen literacy" that created opportunities for women to practice and perfect reading and writing. This craft extended from decorative swirls, similar to what might adorn cursive handwriting, to actual pastries formed in the shape of letters.
One desirable skill for women of the era was creating decorative "knots" of interlocking lines, either on the page or in food. In a simple form, these knots might be made from two strands of dough, twisted together and formed into a loop, before being baked. These sort of flourishes resembled the twists and turns that cursive letters might take—as Wall reports, writing manuals at the time considered knot-making a key tool for developing cursive writing skills.
When they were shaping delicate pastry and cookie dough into swirls, braids, and knotted loops, women were actually practicing the same art they'd use to write their letters.
Peter Binoit's 17th century still life featuring letter pastries. (Image: Peter Binoit)
Pastry letters were not quite as ornate as cursive handwriting, but they required more deftness to master. The instructions of recipes at the time were so vague that women would have to know exactly what they were doing: one recipe for "cinnamon letters" instructs the baker to roll the dough into long rolls and then "make fair capital Roman letters, according to some exact pattern."
These letters were a step above cookies or pastries in simple knots—they were "the hallmark of elegant dining and a source of intellectual contemplation," Wall writes.
Hundreds of years later, the recipes don't give many hints at how pastry letters might have been presented. Was it more impressive to bake the whole alphabet or to focus on the hardest-to-form letters? (B seems like it would be a challenge.) Would pastry letters spell out words, even sentences? Or was it enough to just pick a few?
One possibility, Wall suggests, is that pastry letters made puzzles. In one of the only clear pictures of this art, a still life by Peter Binoit, there's a pile of letters—a P, a B, a T, and an R—all letters from the artist's name, she notes. Perhaps the letter pile was meant to be an anagram of sorts.
It's a charming theory. Indeed, the letters resemble the sort of puzzles Graeme Base would have used in The Eleventh Hour, and word games were popular at the time. And, to the extent that letter pastries are still made, they are associated with names.
The social cache of making pastry letters diminished with the increase of literacy, and the art has all but disappeared. Today, they're more of a cute trick for kids, easily shaped by cheap cutters or molds.
But the 17th century practice does survive in a few places—most prominently in the Netherlands and in Iowa, where they show up around Christmas time. In the Netherlands, Christmas pastries include letterbanket, formed into the first initials of children's names. Good kids might get this treat as a sign that Sinterklaas favors them.
In Victorian England, the scariest boogeyman was a fire-breathing devil-man who could jump unnaturally high. Some said he was demon, while others thought he was just an extraordinarily agile human, but no matter what you believed about the legend, Spring-Heeled Jack was a name that inspired fear among the folk.
His name legend survives today mainly in the form of plays and references in various forms of media, but his legend still holds a bit of the original creep factor it had when it first bubbled up out of the public consciousness.
Reports of the wraith that would become Spring-Heeled Jack first started to appear in 1837. As described in historian Mike Dash’s exhaustive history of the figure’s reported appearances, residents of a London neighborhood began to report bizarre attacks—really more like harassments— from “a ‘ghost, imp or devil’ in the shape of ‘a large white bull.’”
Mainly attacking women, the figure/monster would ring a doorbell, and when someone would answer, it would ravage their clothes with its claws. Other sightings have him simply ambushing people who were out walking. Similar reports continued to trickle in throughout the rest of the year, with strange crimes being attributed to assailants in the guise of a ghost, a bear, and/or a devil. These disparate reports would eventually lead to the theory that this mysterious monster might have been a group of well-to-do men dressing up and scaring people on a bet. Others reported the figure as wearing red shoes, or armor.
The descriptions were all over the place, and so outlandish that when these tales hit the pages of the major London papers, Dash notes that most of the press was rightfully skeptical. The Lord Mayor of London, John Cowan, even came out in January of 1838 to address the growing number of stories, bringing up the theory that the attacks were perpetrated by a gang of wealthy jerks. However, that didn’t stop the legend from growing, and as the papers reported more accounts, the devilish figure came to be called Spring-Heeled Jack, as many of the reports involved the creep leaping in front of or away from his victims in such a way that no mortal man would be capable of.
Jack really took shape after two of his most well-known attacks. According to an account that was widely publicized at the time, in February of 1838, a man rang the doorbell of Jane Alsop, screaming that they had caught Spring-Heeled Jack, and that they needed help. When she brought the man a candle there in the dark street, he proceeded to breathe blue flame in her face and tear at her clothes and skin with metal claws. She ran back towards her house, but he continued to cut her with his claws, until Alsop’s sister came to her rescue, scaring off the attacker. Alsop described Jack as having eyes like red fireballs, and wearing a helmet and tight-fitting white outfit. It was a bizarre account, but Spring-Heeled Jack’s reputation as some kind of devil grew.
Just days later, another attack took place in a different part of London. Lucy Scales was walking with her sister when a shadowy man jumped out and also allegedly blew blue flames into her face, causing her to have some kind of seizure. While many of the initial reports of Jack’s attacks took place in outlying hamlets and villages, both the Alsop and Scales cases took place closer to the city, and received a great deal more attention, stoking the fires of Spring-Heeled Jack’s legend. Their testimonies also informed what would become his popular look as a gentlemanly devil figure.
After the attacks and attention given Spring-Heeled Jack in 1838, the figure became a popular boogeyman across England. He became a character in a number of cheap penny dreadfuls, many titled, “Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London,” where he was alternately portrayed as everything from a jilted brigand to a supernatural menace. All of these depictions just served to cement his boogeyman status. Parents would tell stories of the jumping devil to scare their kids into submission. Mysterious unsolved crimes would be attributed to Jack by sensationalist reporters looking to sell papers. This elusive monster now belonged to Victorian nightmares.
Eye-witness reports of Spring-Heeled Jack continued popping up all over the country, if less frequently and from much less substantial sources as the spate of occurrences in 1837-38. Copycat attackers were captured here and there, trying to take advantage of the legend. The mischievous devil made a series of appearances at the Aldershot military base, where he harassed and terrified sentry guards in 1877. Then in 1904, Jack made what is considered his last confirmed appearance in Liverpool, where he was witnessed leaping up and down the street before jumping onto the rooftops and bounding away forever.
But even if official sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack have stopped, his legend still survives. Characters inspired by Spring-Heeled Jack can be found from steampunk novels to mainstream comic books. The conspicuously Victorian air of the gaunt, springing devil continues to evoke the era in which his legend grew, making him a popular template for scare stories. Although today we might remember his name, for better or worse, Spring-Heeled Jack may never again inspire the kind of terror he once did.
Beer from the deep. (Photo: Mike Nash/Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Sydney Cove collection)
In 1796, the Sydney Cove sailed from India with a cargo of goodies, including tea, tobacco, and, most importantly, booze. The ship was headed towards Sydney, Australia, but, rounding the continent’s southern coast, it sank near Preservation Island, where the wreck was discovered centuries later, in 1977. Among the artifacts found in the ship were still-corked bottles of wine and beer. Now, 220 years after the ship sank, a team of scientists have rescued surviving brewer’s yeast from those bottles and used it to make new beer.
“The beer has a distinctly light and fresh flavour, giving a taste that has not been sipped for two centuries,” David Thurrowgood, a museum conservator and one-time chemist, told Australian Geographic.
The bottles were brought to the surface in 1990 and decanted. Twenty-five years later, Thurrowgood started wondering if the alcohol samples might still contain yeast. A team of DNA specialists examined the samples and found two types of live yeast, one a common yeast used in breweries, the other, Brettanomyces, a throwback that’s not often used in beer these days.
There’s an obvious question here: how do they know the yeast is old and not modern yeast that happened to find a home in the very old beer? The scientists considered that. The yeast DNA “have genetic sequences unique to science,” Thurrowgood told Australian Geographic, which convinced the researchers that they’re dealing with granddaddy yeast.
Right now, there are limited opportunities to taste this beer, but the museum is looking to put its old yeast to work making a commercial beer, that could help financially support the collection of artifacts from the shipwreck. Beer fermented by this yeast probably won't taste dramatically different from beer by a yeast lineage that didn't come from a shipwreck, but, as gimmicks go, this is an excellent one.
When birds fall out of the sky, people think the worst—apocalypse, environmental catastrophe, mass bird protest. Sometimes, though, the birds are just drunk.
That's what happened yesterday in Austria, where a whole flock of starlings guzzled down fermented berries and then decided to mess with some drivers. Soon, they were divebombing the A2 motorway, crashing into cars and trucks and causing miles-long traffic jams, The Local reports.
This happens to birds surprisingly often, especially in the fall, as freezing and thawing cycles turn berry juice into alcohol. "Most birds likely just get a bit tipsy," Meghan Larivee, a scientist with Canada's Environment Yukon, told National Geographic in 2014 after an incident with some hammered waxwings. "However, every now and then, some birds just overdo it."
In those cases, she says, "They cannot coordinate their flight movements properly or at all." But they probably think they're doing awesome.
Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that's only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.
The plain facade of this townhouse betrays nothing of the atrocities that may have taken place here when it was the residence of one Countess Elizabeth Báthory.
Elizabeth Báthory is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most prolific female murderer ever, but she might even be the most prolific murderer of all the Western World. She allegedly tortured and killed more than 600 virgin women in order to drink and bathe in their blood, believing it would preserve her youth and beauty.
Some historians believe that these accusations were trumped up as an intrigue to bring down a powerful woman, but the number of testimonies against her as well as Báthory's own confessions make for a convincing case.
At the turn of the 17th century, the "Blood Countess" intermittently lived in her husband's Hungarian House at 12 Augustinerstrasse, right in the heart of Vienna. The rest of her time was spent at Cachtice Castle, where she eventually moved full-time as she drew more and more suspicion.
The city's nearby markets served as a hunting ground for Bathory's servant Ficzkó, who was instrumental in providing a steady stream of young Viennese maids for the countess. With the promise of food, shelter, comfort, and security, the young women would leave their families to serve the mysterious noblewomen. Ficzkó and other servants would return year after year, luring in more and more young ladies (all of them beautiful), but those who left would never be seen again.
Some were taken to Cachtice Castle, though in the beginning some were employed at the Hungarian House. Though no townsperson dared to question the countess, there were frequently strange sounds emanating from the house at nighttime. Apparently the nocturnal disturbances once even prompted the monks from the Augustinian monastery across the street to pelt the house with earthenware, demanding silence.
It apparently began as simple domestic abuse, flogging them and leaving them naked in the snow—atrocious, to be sure, but not uncommon in these pre-OSHA days. But the abuse the young women suffered at the hands of the countess and her accomplices grew more and more diabolic. Reports included everything from pulling their fingers off to biting the flesh from their faces, and then, of course, draining their blood so that she could bathe in it.
All of this was eventually discovered at her castle, where she was put on an early form of house arrest—simply walled in and never allowed to venture out. You can visit the ruins, but for some Elizabeth Báthory deep cuts, pay a visit to her townhouse in Vienna, the place it all began.
Three camoufleurs in the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps make one woman disappear into the forest floor. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-1)
Imagine taking a quiet stroll through the expansive wilderness of Van Cortlandt Park in Bronx, New York. You’re surrounded by a forest of oak trees, stony ridges, and a tranquil lake—completely isolated and alone in nature. But in 1918, visitors to the 1,146-acre park were unaware that they were in the company of a group of women hiding among the rocks, trees, and grass.
“Weird shapes, the color of the rocks and earth, moved here and there, and from the tops of trees came loud halloos and catcalls from other shapeless objects,” journalist Elene Foster wrote in the April 28, 1918 issue of the New York Tribune. “I stumbled over a hump of grass, which squealed when I stepped on it, and rose before me."
These hooded women were frequent park visitors. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-19)
The women disguised in special (and fairly creepy) dried grass or "rock suits" were student military camouflage artists, or camoufleurs, of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps, a forgotten division of the National League for Women’s Service.
Female artists across the United States joined the ranks of this highly specialized military group in New York to help with the war effort during World War I. They used their creativity and crafting skills to develop designs and patterns that mimicked the landscape to provide soldiers with added protection.
Parks were used as laboratories to test different camouflage suits, and city streets doubled as studios for them to paint dazzling, distracting designs on battleships.
Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps sketch the landscape as a basis for their camouflage work at Van Cortlandt Park. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-23)
The photos uncovered by the National Archives and Records Administration reveal how the women hunched behind tree trunks or huddled against boulders, suddenly disappearing from view.
“The photos are really some of the most unusual I’ve come across during my time here,” says Richard Green, an archivist who’s worked at the National Archives for five years.
He found the 42 peculiar photos of the women in Van Cortlandt Park while working on the archive’s World War I film and photo digitization project. “There would be a picture of the girl and she would just fall down and disappear.”
Now you see her. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-21)
Now you don't. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-29)
While the photos appear somewhat comical today, they tell of the historical significance of these female camoufleurs, Green says.
Women played a crucial role during the war effort, working in factories, hospitals, machine gun battalions, and many other military organizations. At the same time, camouflage became an increasingly important military tactic during World War I.
French painter and military telephonist Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola is said to be the first to suggest painting artillery earth-toned colors to conceal soldiers from the enemy. In November 1914, the French established a camouflage service and began developing different techniques, and recruiting artists, sculptors, architects, mold-makers, and cartoonists for the group.
It quickly evolved from decoys and dummies to a sophisticated art form of elaborately disguised rooftops and painted battleships.
Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps study camouflage at Van Cortland Part, New York. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-21)
As men had to leave camouflage units to fight at the front, the work was left to women. Following in the footsteps of England and France, the United States began training a group of 40 female artists on April 1, 1918 in New York, forming the first class of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps.
The first group came from different parts of New York state and from Philadelphia, almost all of them working artists. To become part of the exclusive military unit, women had to have some training in painting, sculpture, photography, or wood carving, and be in perfect physical condition. All the women in the camouflage corps took the regular army physical examination. While there was no age limit, most women were in their early 30s, the oldest member of the first class being 45. After paying a $43 fee ($25 for the uniform, $18 for tuition), the women were ready to learn the art and science of camouflage.
“Camouflage is the sort of work which has a strong appeal to the woman with imagination who at the same time is clever at doing things with her hands,” wrote Foster.
A camoufleur stands alone on the top of rocks. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-39)
The entire top floor of 257 Madison Avenue served as the main headquarters. Lieutenant H. Ledyard Towle of the 71st Infantry, who directed the division, conducted the same training he gave to the men of the New York Camouflage Corps. In order to create the best protection for soldiers, Towle firmly believed that the women should be taught the ins-and-outs of modern warfare, including army formations and maneuvers.
The intensive three-month course consisted of three indoor lectures and two open “field days” per week, where the women would survey the environment and test their designs. The successful camouflage techniques would be sent to the U.S. military.
Climbing up trees and holding fake branches. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-30)
Camoufleurs would don “rock suits” which could keep the wearer safe from detection at a distance of 10 feet, Green wrote in a blog post about the photos. “Observation suits” were colored so the person could blend into the sky, snow, or ice.
Park police were aware that the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps were experimenting in Van Cortlandt Park, but some admitted that they often couldn’t spot them. A policeman informed Foster that he knew they were among the rocks, “but ye can’t see thim till they move.”
A Living Rock. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-13)
They also had to learned how to disguise rail lines, depots, aircraft hangars, supply bases, and trenches. A British zoologist noticed that gray ships were easily spotted, and suggested painting abstract, multicolored patterns to confuse the enemy. So the group mastered a unique form of camouflage for battleships called “dazzle camouflage.”
The United States Navy started using dazzle camouflage in March 1918, painting 1,250 ships with odd patterns. Out of the 96 ships sunk by German U-boats after March 1918, only 18 of them were camouflaged, Green wrote.
Women apply dazzle camouflage to a ship in Union Square, New York City. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-9)
A dazzled battleship in the middle of Union Square. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-8)
All 42 photos of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps are still in the process of being added to the National Archive catalog, but Green says that they will be made available for everyone’s enjoyment soon. While the women may have spent quite a bit of their time hiding in the forest cloaked in hooded suits, they wanted their work to be taken seriously.
“Please don’t go away with the idea that all we do is make costumes and dress up in them,” the camoufleur dressed as a patch of grass told Foster. “We are going to do every sort of camouflage work that they will allow us to do, from painting a battleship to making a fake tree.”
Try to see if you can find the Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps artists in these photos:
Blending seamlessly with the boulders. (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-22)
Can you find the camoufleur? (Photo: NARA/165-WW-599G-18)
