Who would you call if you had a wood-related question? The Forest Products Laboratory, of course. But, did you even know of its existence?
The Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) was created in 1910, and was moved to its current building atop a knoll overlooking the University of WisconsinMadison Campus in 1932. There, research is conducted on all things wood-related. The lab's xylarium, or research wood collection, is the largest in the world, with over 103,000 samples. Its herbarium contains one of the largest collections of wood-decay fungi in existence.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, FPL is the only federally funded wood utilization research laboratory in the United States, and as such it answers to the public as a government resource. Operating under the Forest Service, the laboratory dispenses timely advice on wood through its hotline—just call 608-231-9200.
When its not answering the public’s burning questions, FPL is a repository of oddities. In their xylarium they have a piece of Leadwood, which is the heaviest and hardest wood in existence, weighing 85 pounds per cubic foot. Another sample, a piece of African Crossfire Mahogany, was the veneer used on the interior of Pontiac automobiles in 1973. It’s a beautiful specimen with brown waves rippling through its golden grain, like caramel cascading down a candied apple.
Within the walls of this curious laboratory, innovative research is conducted on a daily basis for society’s benefit. And resting in cabinets sit artifacts accrued over a century, waiting to tell a story about our past and the potential future of wood technology.
Architect Raymond Hood, once described as a “brilliant bad boy,” is celebrated for designing the Rockefeller Center, the Daily News Building and Chicago’s Tribune Tower, among others. But what about his designs that only ever remained as blueprints and drawings? Can we admire how a city might have looked?
This question is central to Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin’s new book Never Built New York. It’s an intoxicating look at the designs for New York that, either through bureaucracy, budget or bad luck, never came to pass. Hood’s “Skyscraper Bridge” proposal, pictured above, joins a plethora of other eye-catching and intriguing never-built designs.
With a desire to ease New York’s intense congestion – by 1925, the metropolis had surpassed London as the world’s largest city – Hood proposed a series of bridges over Manhattan’s rivers, lined with skyscrapers 50 or 60 stories high. There would be amenities on the bridges—shop and theaters—and elevators to the river for water sports. In total, Hood envisioned over a dozen bridges fanning out from Manhattan.
While Hood’s vision never came to pass, it certainly hasn’t been the only plan to utilize Manhattan's waterways. In 1946, Wallace K. Harrison and William Zeckendorf proposed X-City, a vast complex on the East River, which included curved skyscrapers and a landing facility for helicopters and light aircraft.
Over a decade later, Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Key Project” would turn Ellis Island into a mini-city, with apartments, hotels, theaters, hospitals—and even a planetarium and a yacht club.
Atlas Obscura has a selection of the dazzling designs for a New York that never came to be.
As a literary genius and master of wit, Oscar Wilde has fascinated the world since he first started writing. There is one area of his life, however, which remained in obscurity until the 1940s, and which continues to be a mystery: The horrifying death of his half-sisters.
The existence of Emily and Mary Wilde, the illegitimate daughters of Sir William Wilde, was kept hidden from most of the world. However, they still enjoyed considerable social standing and were often invited to events by Ireland’s high society.
On October 31st 1871, the sisters were enjoying themselves at one such event. The Hallowe’en party was hosted by a man named Andrew Reid at the Drumacon House in Ireland. Everything was a success right until the end of the party when the host asked one of the sisters—most likely Mary—to one last dance around the ballroom. In a dark twist of fate that turned a night of joy into a tragedy, Mary got too close to the candlesticks and her dress caught on fire.
Panic ensued. The remaining guests screamed in wild terror as Emily dashed to her sister in an attempt to put out the fire. The attempt did not only prove futile, but also deadly, as Emily’s dress also caught on fire.
Here, accounts vary. Some say that Reid put his coat around the sisters and pushed them down the stairs, then made them roll around in the snow until the fire was out. In other accounts, he carried the sisters outside to the snow, and yet in others, they fled down the stairs themselves and rolled onto the dirt (which is much more feasible than there being snow in November). The facts remain that the fire was put out, but not before both sisters had acquired third degree burns in large portions of their bodies.
After the incident, the sisters endured prolonged extreme physical and psychological pain. Little could be done to save their lives, but their injuries took weeks to bring about their inevitable death. Mary died on November 9th and Emily on November 21st.
Now, if the story had died there, it would have merely been a gruesome tale of an unfortunate incident. But the accident was hushed and kept in obscurity for around 70 years, covering it with an irresistible shroud of mystery.
There was only a small death notice on the Northern Standard in its November 25th, 1871 edition:
DIED
At Drumaconnor, on the 8th inst. Mary Wilde
At Drumaconnor, on the 21st inst. Emma Wilde
Such a tiny notice was not customary for well-to-do families of the time, but its discreteness succeeded in not drawing attention to the events.
When it comes to investigating the case, however, one detail does draw attention—the change of Emily’s name to Emma. One could probably chalk this up to a simple mistake if the names of the sisters weren’t repeatedly changed on other official records.
Luckily, some dedicated scholars and authors have investigated the matter. In her book Wildefire, written in 2002, Heather White details the life and death of the sisters. Her investigation organized the scattered accounts of the events.
A year later, Theo McMahon shed more light onto the tragedy in his 2003 report for Clogher Record. In it, he provides details of the coroner’s report on both deaths, revealing that their last names had been changed to Wylie. Their first name was not just changed, but completely omitted, as they are simply called Miss M Wylie and Miss L Wylie. One could guess that the M refers to Mary and the L refers to Emily. However, the report would then contradict the death notice and parish records, which list Mary as having died first. On the coroner’s report, Miss M Wylie died on November 22 (another contradiction) from injuries sustained from helping her sister, so this had to be Emily.
The real question is, why would the coroner willingly change facts in two official reports? And why would an official report not require the first name of a victim? The answer, it seems, lies on Sir William Wilde himself. As a prominent doctor with a reputation to upkeep, he did not want the news of his illegitimate children and their ghastly death to spread.
We do not even know whether Oscar Wilde ever knew of his sisters’ existence. What we do know, however, is that Sir William Wilde wrote a note to the constable to ask him not to tell Emily of her sister’s death, so as to not aggravate her already fragile state. He also convinced him not to make an inquest on to the affair, and merely make an inquiry—a shorter investigation that required no witness statements. It could be stipulated, then, that he might have also asked the constable to change both of the names, as well as his own.
It seems as Sir William’s efforts to keep the affair private—even from his family—were worth it, given the obscurity which shrouded the events for decades. The next mention we find of the incident is in T.G. Wilson’s biography of William Wilde published in 1942. In it, there are details of a 1921 letter by J.B Yeats, W.B Yeat’s father. He knew of the incident because he had once been told the story by an old friend.
The tragedy had by then become part of the oral history of Dublin society, and had evolved into multiple accounts. Add this to Sir William’s active efforts to confuse information, and it is no wonder that so much of the story is elusive and contradictory.
To bring even more intrigue into the story, several accounts claim that for years after Mary and Emily’s death, a mysterious woman cloaked in black would visit their graves. No one ever knew who she was, and she would disclose nothing except her being intimately close to the victims. This mysterious woman in black also appears on Oscar Wilde’s personal writings as the enigmatic figure who visited his father on his deathbed. This elusive piece in the puzzle may or may not be an embellishment of oral history.
We may never have the small details right, but by bringing the story to light, people seem to think, we honor the sisters in their death. Perhaps this is why years later an epitaph was erected at the graveyard of St. Molua’s church in Drumsnat in their honor. It reads:
In the middle of Main Street Cambridge's Central Square, squished between a UHaul and a pan-Asian restaurant, sits an anonymous, foreboding building. Its walls are graying and dingy, and its windows are covered from the inside. No signs identify its purpose. It doesn't seem like a great neighbor.
But several times a week, as the sun sets over the city, the building begins releasing a sweet, chocolatey-mint scent. As it turns out, it's home to a branch of the Tootsie Roll Company—specifically, the one that churns out Junior Mints.
The Tootsie Roll Factory is the last bastion of what was once a burgeoning Cambridge candy scene. With the rise of huge candy conglomerates like Hershey's and Nestle in the mid-20th century, neighborhood confectionaries became more and more rare. More recently, sugar prices have driven many factories overseas—we lost the Jolly Rancher plant, which "almost always smelled like grape," to Mexico in 2009.
But there's still plenty of opportunity for good stateside sniffing. Pennsylvania churns out everything from Kit Kats to Peeps. The Blommer Chocolate Company has cast a perpetual cocoa cloud over the east side of Chicago. And if you're out West, there's California's Jelly Belly Factory, which offers up as many different smells as it does beans.
Enjoy this nosewitness view of the country—and if you live near an aromatic candy factory, let us know, and we'll add it to the map.
The peaks in the Ausangate mountain region of the Peruvian Andes are all uncommonly colored: Some are terra cotta, some lavender, others are a vibrant turquoise. They're colored by the sediment and atmosphere of the area, unique because of its altitude and isolation close to the ocean. But none are quite so marvelous as Vinicunca, also known as Rainbow Mountain.
For all its striking colors, Rainbow Mountain is notoriously hard to find. It's located deep in the mountain range, and even the most adept travelers with highly experienced guides have reported difficulty locating it. At the quickest, it takes six days of hiking to reach its peak.
To be sure, those who love hiking will enjoy the journey; the Ausangate trek is one of the most popular among visitors to Peru. There are hot springs, local villages and vendors, stunning views of the Ausangate Glacier, and llamas and alpacas along the way. And nothing caps off almost a week of trekking like a visit to this breathtaking painted mountain.
Brownhills is in the West Midlands on the edge of an area known as “the Black Country,” an identity earned through the soot, smoke and slag of its coal mines. In the middle of town there is a stainless steel statue to commemorate the coal industry, a shiny colossus in the center of a roundabout.
The statue is called “Jigger” after Jack “Jigger” Taylor, who was killed in a mining disaster in 1951. He was from a multi-generational mining family, and was working in the pit at Walsall Wood when the roof suddenly collapsed. His nickname was submitted to a competition to christen the sculpture, by Taylor’s own great-grandson.
Census data shows that up to 80 percent of the Brownhills population worked in the mining industry at its peak (in the 19th century that included children as young as 11), but by the 1950s the 300-year mining history of the Black Country was gasping for air. It wasn’t long before all the pits would close, exhausted by the relentless pace of extraction.
“Jigger” came to Brownhills 50 years after the decline of the mines, intended as both a celebration of the industry that built the town, and to serve as a reminder of the toll it often took on its workers, on Brownhills, and the Black Country communities.
The piece was created in 2006 by artist John McKenna, a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, and at 40-odd feet tall, its size has drawn some comparisons to the better known “Angel of the North” in Gateshead, England.
The videos all start out the same way, with a shaky, grainy image of a group of musicians in uniform. The audience coughs and shuffles their programs until the conductor makes an announcement in Portuguese. Then, the familiar strains of Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds” begin to play.
In more than a dozen YouTube videos shot all over Brazil, the song remains a bizarre constant. Whether it’s a police brass band in Minas Gerais or a youth orchestra in the city of Campo Grande, the arrangement is always the same. The only variables are just how off-key the woodwinds are, and whether the sax player struts into the audience to wild applause.
Brazil is known for its rich musical heritage, so a divorcecore ballad from the ‘80s may seem like an odd choice for a concert. Brass band performances of Bee Gees hits and the theme to Flashdance may look just as unusual to American eyes.
But public brass band performances are as firmly rooted in Brazil’s history as Jobim’s bossa nova—and so vital that the Brazilian government pays to train new musicians to carry on the tradition.
In order to figure out how those bands ended up playing Phil Collins, however, we must first start with another famous, diminutive man with a similar hairstyle: Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1807, the Grande Armée invaded Portugal in the first act of what would become the Peninsular War. Shortly before Napoleon’s troops arrived, Portugal’s royal family fled Lisbon for Brazil—then a Portuguese colony—establishing a court-in-exile in Rio de Janeiro from 1808 to 1821. As befit a royal court in those days, a few musicians came along.
“The court eventually went back to Portugal and Brazil eventually became independent, but it sowed the seeds of military bands,” says DePaul University professor Katherine Brucher. She would know: Along with Suzel Reily, Brucher literally wrote the book on the history of brass brands in Portugal and its former colonies.
Brazil’s military bands played upbeat marches called dobrados to keep soldiers motivated during a brutal war with Paraguay that took place between 1864 and 1870.
Once the war finished, however, the army never collected its instruments. The musicians brought them home, and that’s how the tradition of municipal bands started.
“Essentially, you have a lot of men who have learned to play wind instruments, and to play in bands, and they bring this tradition back to their villages,” Brucher says.
Over the years, those bands became the accompaniment for political rallies, social events, and—most importantly—religious celebrations.
“There’s a tradition of having processions for Holy Week and for Saints Days,” Brucher says. “The music and the procession is part of the spectacle.”
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Brazilian towns often supported two or three bands. As the number of religious festivals fell, however, the stature of brass bands eventually diminished.
“They were actually dwindling—partly because the church wasn’t having as many processions and they didn’t have as many events to perform at,” says Reily, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Campinas in Brazil.
How they rebounded—and why they're now playing Phil Collins—is all thanks to a unique government program.
In 1976, Brazil’s national arts foundation—the Fundação Nacional de Artes, better known as Funarte—created a nationwide program to support municipal bands out of concern for the tradition of brass bands.
Called the Projecto Bandas de Música (Music Bands Project), it continues to this day with a goal of training musicians and supporting performances throughout Brazil. Today, there are 2,455 bandas playing across Brazil, with the majority in the state of Minas Gerais. Funarte has given out around 40,000 instruments in the past 40 years.
According to Funarte’s Marcelo Mavignier, the band project is also designed to reach young people in high-risk areas, with performances that benefit the musicians as well as the communities they come from.
“They usually present in public squares, theaters and auditoriums,” he says. “The target audience is the population.”
And this explains how the bandas ended up playing Phil Collins.
Instead of competing against each other, as school bands tend to do in the U.S., Brazilian bands play at friendly events called encontros, or meetings. After a day of playing old favorites and dobrados, Reily says, the bands host an evening concert to entertain the audience—and each other.
That’s when the bands show off by playing popular music, like “Against All Odds.” According to Brucher, that particular song checks a lot of boxes that would make it popular in an encontro.
“If you’re a band with a proficient saxophone soloist, it’s a big way to feature them,” Brucher says. “It’s a radio hit, it’s very melodic, it’s one of those songs—the lyrics are pretty simple, it’s really universal, and even if you didn’t speak English, you still could sing along.”
More importantly, she says, the arrangement isn’t too complicated. “The rest of the band can still play it.”
But how did that arrangement end up in the hands of so many conductors? Reily says that in the spirit of the encontro, it’s common for bands to share their work. “A new song comes up, and the band director will create an arrangement, and they pass them from one to the other.”
Mavignier says that some arrangements come directly from Funarte, while others come from the bands themselves. One of the YouTube videos attributes the “Against All Odds” arrangement to Ibanez Dutra Munhoz, whose sheet music credits a recording by the Phil Collins Big Band.
Munhoz’s arrangement was originally written for a military police band in Mato Grosso do Sul. Brucher says that isn’t surprising, as military and civilian bands trade musicians all the time. “If you come up through your community band and you’re a good musician, one of the professional avenues is to join a military band,” she says.
With all that history in mind, those grainy videos look less like weird outliers and more like a modern interpretation of a grand tradition.
“As an American, you have preconceived notions about where you would expect to hear a Phil Collins song,” Brucher says. To the bandas, however, a song’s provenance matters less than the overall performance. Musicians don’t get paid, so a successful encontro is when both the audience and the musicians have fun. Indeed, in most of the videos, you can hear the crowds singing along.
Brucher recalled an encontro she attended that paired a Russian folk song with the theme from Oklahoma!—and the crowd loved it. “They both have a good melody, so of course they go together.”
The Brunel Museum is a circular, squat, sea-foam building. But through its doors lies the dark world below London, the Thames Tunnel. An unprecedented feat of engineering ingenuity, the tunnel was home to an underground funfair, marketplace, crime, prostitution, and eventually trains. Now this portion has been reborn as a performance and exhibition space.
At the beginning of the 19th century, London city planners identified the need to connect the North and South banks of the Thames. Docks were too crowded with river traffic and bridges were expensive and congested. Engineer Marc Brunel, with the help of his teenage son Isambard, attempted what had been considered impossible in the past: They would dig a tunnel underneath the Thames River.
It required a 1,000 ton instrument called the tunneling shield, which would burrow into the earth under the force of its own weight like a pastry cutter. Once underground, Brunel's laborers dug horizontally through the sewage and mud. It was slow, brutal work. The work was impeded by regular floods and methane gas explosions, which took nearly two decades. Isambard himself was nearly trapped behind a locked emergency door during one flood, only to be pulled out by the collar of his coat.
The Thames Tunnel was an engineering success but not a financial one. As soon as it opened in 1843, people came from far an wide to walk beneath the river. However, planned provisions for vehicles proved impossible so it simply remained a footpath. The walkway eventually became an urban marketplace where people could by souvenirs commemorating their visit to the tunnel. Not much later though, the Thames Tunnel had fallen into social and structural decay. It was a spot for thieves and prostitutes to hide beneath the city. Eventually it was repurposed as a train tunnel.
The circular Brunel Engine House in Rotherhithe was originally there to pump water from the tunnel when it flooded, and later became a ventilation shaft. When the East Line closed for renovations in 2007, transit historians took groups on tours of the old tunnel. Interest peaked, and as of 2016 the engine house was opened as the Brunel Museum, an exhibition space with a bar and rooftop garden. The inaugural performance was by singers of the roving Popup Opera, who appreciated the space's accidental acoustics. Despite new coats of paint and strings of twinkling fairy lights, the museum's walls bear the marks of its previous occupation, coated in decades of industrial soot.
Vincent Simonetti began his tuba collection when he was touring with the Moyseev Ballet Company as their resident tubist. While in Boston, he came across a 1910 Cerveny halicon and knew he couldn't leave it behind.
In the 50 odd years since, Vincent and his wife Ethel have continued collecting tubas. In spring of 2016, the Simonettis put their collection of nearly 300 horns on display for the public to see in a little yellow North Carolina house.
The museum features a range of instruments in the tuba family. There are saxhorns, ophicleides, euphoniums, sousaphones, and of course, tubas. Lots of tubas, each one unique. The museum tracks the history of the tuba, from its invention circa 1830 all the way up to the present day.
Though practically every surface in the house is covered in brass instruments, this is only a portion of the Simonettis' collection. The rest was left behind when Vincent parted ways with The Tuba Exchange. Still, though, this collection is nothing if not impressive. For those who can't make the trip to Durham, the Simonettis' website includes a comprehensive catalogue of all their historic tubas.
Halloween is just 10 days away, which means more homes are sporting pumpkins, tombstones, spider webs, and other creepy decorations. But the elaborate maze of ghoulish décor at this house in San Marcos, California will be hard to beat.
Unofficially named the “Best Decorated Halloween House 2015,” the property in San Marcos certainly embraced the Halloween spirit. Trick-or-treaters were amazed by the house’s LED lights, fog machines, animated skeletons, and terrifying lunging cats (check it out at the 4:44-mark). There’s even a soaring ghost that greets visitors. The wired rig sends the ghost between the haunted house to the neighbors across the street.
The whole front yard is transformed into a cemetery filled with tombstones that project skeleton heads, and an animatronic monster tree terrorizes the gateway. People can take a gander inside the garage where there’s a whole miniature Halloween town and mad scientist’s laboratory. There are projections in the window, and the homeowners put a skeleton in the passenger seat of their car.
At the 1:55-mark you can hear a youngster exclaim, “I’m scared.” We don’t blame you, kid.
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.
At last night's Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner—a strange electoral tradition where presidential candidates razz each other to benefit Catholic charities—Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each got a few laughs. But the real surprise came at the end of the night, when the festivities were nearly over. At that point, NPR says, Clinton and Trump decided to shake hands. "The development was announced from the stage, to applause," the outlet reports.
In most situations, a political handshake would barely merit acknowledgement, let alone applause. But this race is different, because increasingly, the candidates and their families have been keeping their hands to themselves. At the second debate, the families of the nominees planned their entrance choreography so that handshakes would be impossible. Wednesday evening, at the third and final debate, the candidates themselves didn't shake at all.
After examining footage going back to the first televised debate, in 1976, the Miami Herald found that this was unprecedented. Every set of nominees, from Carter and Ford through Obama and Romney, has always taken a moment to lock hands before attempting to rhetorically eviscerate each other.
It's strange, but undeniable: even in this age of ceaseless, high-pitched discourse, a handshake—or the lack thereof—speaks volumes. How did this silent action become such an important part of political rhetoric?
Handshaking is such a simple gesture, it's difficult to say exactly who came up with it. According to the Assyria Times, the ritual dates back at least to 1800 B.C., when Babylonian kings would clasp the hand of a statue of a god, in order to allow the god to "hand over" his authority—ensuring, in other words, a peaceful transfer of power. Ancient Greek monuments feature carvings of gods, soldiers, and couples shaking hands. Greek and Roman handshakers also used the gesture to shake each other down for hidden weapons, and to prove they weren't carrying any themselves.
Leaders in the Middle Ages had a slightly different way of signaling good intentions—the "Kiss of Peace," taken from the Bible and generally performed lip-to-lip. "They didn't use handshakes," political scientist Tanisha Fazal told the National Postin 2012. "Sometimes there was an exchange of hostages, but most often the kiss of peace was used."
There's something informal about a handshake, and George Washington also didn't like shaking hands with his guests, preferring instead to bow. Thomas Jefferson was the first American politician to bring the handshake to the White House proper, using it to take the office slightly down to earth. Since then, American politicians have made the handshake a campaign staple, bringing it both out to the streets and into diplomatic chambers. Lyndon B. Johnson supposedly shook so many hands that he'd finish out the day with swollen, bruised fingers.
The assumption that everyone deserves a handshake has led to a number of minor political scandals. During his 1963 campaign for District Leader, Ed Koch refused to shake hands with opponent Carmine De Sapio after De Sapio accused him of committing voter fraud by registering dead people. Adlai Stevenson may have lost his campaigns partly due to a palpable distaste for the emptiness of gladhandling. "Perhaps the saddest part of all this is that a candidate must reach into a sea of hands, grasp one, not knowing whose it is, and say, 'I'm glad to meet you,' realizing that he hasn't and probably never will meet that man," he told a friend in 1952.
And then there are the many, many bungled political handshakes, each of which seems to suggest some kind of communication breakdown—Raul Castro gripping Barack Obama's bent wrist like a trophy, the Obama/Trudeau/Nieto three-way shown above, John Kerry and Francois Hollande ending up in a kind of swing-dance posture after being unable to decide which greeting was most appropriate.
There are a lot of ways for a handshake, or a non-handshake, to go wrong. But when both people choose to stay away from the gesture, it's not really a snub—more a mutual decision. At the very least, it's something they can agree on.
During World War I the Sherwood Foresters Regiment of the British Army—the local regiment for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, the two counties that contained the ancient Sherwood Forest—lost a staggering 11,410 men. The members of the regiment were awarded nine Victoria Crosses, more than any of the British Army's elite Guards.
To commemorate this loss, a lighthouse-like tower was constructed in 1923. The public feeling for this memorial is evident by the fact that the iron railings at the base of the tower were spared the fate of most decorative iron railings during WWII which were melted down for the war effort.
The tower was erected at this particular location in Crich to satisfy the feelings of both counties, away from the barracks at Derby but in Derbyshire and in sight of the Nottinghamshire border. As a result, it appears like a rogue lighthouse located 100 miles from the sea.
Whether you wish to visit the site for its historic significance or for the architecture, if you go on a clear day you will not fail to be impressed by the view from the beacon chamber at the top of the tower. From here you can see the counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Lancashire and Lincolnshire. On a very clear day, without binoculars, you can make out Lincoln Cathedral over 50 miles away.
Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire are coal mining areas and many young men with mining experience who volunteered for the Sherwood Foresters between 1914 and 1918 were enlisted into the Regiment and then diverted to the Royal Engineers to take part in the highly dangerous subterranean mine warfare on the Western Front. Their fallen are not included in the 11,410 total.
The story of the Luisenburg rock labyrinth in Wunsiedel, Germany starts 240 million years ago, when lava flowed into the mountainous area. After the lava solidified and crystalized, erosion began to slowly break down the softer rocks and round off the hard granite leaving the boggy, woodland area strewn with formations of giant rocks and boulders, caves and plateaus.
Fast forward to 1790 when the landscaping craze of the early romanticism swept across Europe and the good people of Wunsiedel began draining the area, laying down paths and carving out stairs, slowly turning the boggy and rock filled forest into a romantic wonderland inspired by English gardens.
The labyrinth project was funded by a regular visitor to the area's baths, Baron von Carlowitz from Regensburg, who also penned several of the rock inscriptions. This first part of the maze ended by the ruined castle and one-time robbers' den called Luxburg, which had been crumbling away amongst the rocks and boulders since at least 1352. In dramatic style, the ending of the labyrinth was marked with the words "This Far and no Further" carved into the rock.
In 1805, Frederick William III of Prussia came to visit the area for the first time since its annexation to the Prussian Crown and the mayor of nearby Wunsiedel Dr. Johann Georg Schmidt renamed Luxburg and surrounding area "Luisenburg" to honor the Prussian Queen Louise. On this occasion, the mayor also initiated the expansion of the maze, however it was temporarily halted by the Napoleonic occupation between 1806 and 1810.
After the war, three of Schmidt's sons, including Florentin Theodor Schmidt, who made his fortune trading in sugar, picked up the work of expanding the labyrinth. (Today several rocks at Luisenburg bear the inscription FTS.) Luisenburg was completed in 1820, featuring paths, benches for resting, numerous poetic inscriptions in the granite rocks, and an open air theatre. Rock formations were given enticing names like The Three Brothers, Napoleon's Hat, Sugar Loaf, and Devil's Staircase.
The open air theatre has been expanded and modernized on several occasions and to this day hosts outdoor plays in the summer season. Allegedly, these plays predate the rock maze—the first plays are said to have been staged at the natural cave theatre by the entrance as early as 1665 as part of the Margarethenfest, thus making the Luisenburg Festspiele the oldest existing outdoor theatre in Germany.
The labyrinth gets more difficult to navigate as you progress. In the beginning the paths are wide, you can make little detours to explore vantage points and small caves, some of which are covered in a luminous moss. But as you get nearer to the climax of the maze you have to squeeze through narrow passages, climb steep, wet stairs and the ground can be soggy. Once you reach the end, you are led back out along other paths and walking gets easier as you've finished your adventure. Your return to civilization is tranquil affair: One of the first inscribed rocks you encounter on your way back bear the words "Ego in Arcadia — I am in Utopia."
On your way towards the exit, you come across a seven-meter tall rock sat in a small pond. It's known as Insel Helgoland, named after the North Sea island of Heligoland. The island held a particular place in Schmidt's heart. As it was under English rule, the English used Heligoland as a harbor for smuggling sugar ,and thus made trading sugar with Germany possible despite a trade blockade imposed by Napoleon. The monolith is crowned by a wooden pagoda—the current one is a replica built in 2005 as part of a large scale renovation of the park marking the bicentenary of Queen Louise's visit.
The Model T, the first car available for sale to the general public, was a symbol of all the dawning 20th century had to offer. As Ford wrote in his autobiography, "I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for... [I]t will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."
Henry Ford's famous business model was known for interchangeable parts and assembly line production, which provided jobs to the middle class of Michigan and other parts of the burgeoning Rust Belt region. In turn, they could buy the very cars they made for an affordable $350.
The first Model Ts were built at the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit, but once production really got rolling he expanded operations to this plant in suburban Highland Park. The plant was the largest in the United States at this point in time, with administrative offices, a foundry, and a power plant all on the premises in addition to the factory area. This model would influence not only Ford's other factories, but practically every other factory to come after. It was here that the 15 millionth Model T was built, and wheeled out onto the streets of America.
Less than a decade later Ford moved operations to another, larger factory in Dearborn. The factory buildings are still owned by Ford, many of which are used for storage. A local Highland Park association offers tours through other factory buildings though, where visitors can walk "In the Steps of Henry."
In order to preserve their value to the historic record, FBI files on prominent individuals and groups are routinely handed over to the National Archives for safekeeping. It’s a nice idea. It would be even nicer if anybody could remember what exactly they handed over and where they put it.
Earlier this year, we ran a crowdsourced campaign to request FBI files on famous women. One of the first names on that list was Lucy Parsons, the labor organizer and activist whose name has become synonymous with people doing the kind of work that should be done.
We filed the request, and a month later, the FBI wrote back, saying that Parsons had, unsurprisingly, made the cut, and records had already been sent to NARA.
They did, however, provide the specific reference numbers for the Parsons files, which should make tracking them down in Archives a cinch.
“Should” being the operative word here.
We refiled the request with Archives and provided said reference numbers. About a week later, we heard back - those numbers weren’t for Lucy Parsons, but 30 years of investigatory files on the Communist Party of the United States, consisting of “approximately 178,000 pages in 71 boxes.”
With no ability to narrow the search any further, and Parsons at best a definite maybe in any of the files, the request was closed as overly burdensome, and we were directed back to the FBI to begin the whole process all over again.
Sadly, this is far from an isolated incident - just a few months earlier, a request for the FBI files on Dorothy Parker was similarly rerouted to NARA. In that case, the numbers provided by the FBI referred to a file where she was only mentioned in passing, and another file regarding a completely different woman who happened to share Dorothy’s maiden name.
Considering the FBI’s less than stellar track record with record keeping, we applaud their efforts to ensure the long-term preservation of these valuable, first-hand accounts of the people and events that shaped history.
But if nobody can find the damn thing, it kinda defeats the point.
Not far from the capital city of Belarus is one of the most grandiose defense museums in Eastern Europe, the Stalin Line Historical and Cultural Complex, named after the original Stalin Line, a network of fortifications along the Western border of the former Soviet Union. The fortified line was built in the 1920s to protect against attacks from the West. But when an attack from the West did come two decades later, the line provided little defense.
The Stalin Line was an impressive line of concrete bunkers and weapons emplacements, aka pillboxes, that stretched from the Karelian Isthmus near Finland to the shores of the Black Sea. However it was abandoned by 1940 in favor of a newer line being built further West at the frontier of the expanding USSR. When Germany invaded in 1941, the new line was not yet finished, and the old line was in disrepair, leaving the Soviet Union vulnerable.
Today, what remains of this historical system can be found in various places across Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. To commemorate the 60 year anniversary of Great Patriotic War (World War II), a collection of military paraphernalia was amassed in the area of the line near Minsk. The museum complex includes a collection of trenches, roadblocks, bunkers, dots and other fortifications, and all kinds of technology like radar systems, boats, helicopters, war planes, tanks and weapons. Visitors who are keen on racing around in a war machine can even try out some of this equipment. But one exhibit stands as a reminder of the horrors of warfare: Called "Bombed House," it is a replica of what an ordinary house would look like after being bombed in war.
In bustling Tokyo there is an alchemist's dream: thousands of pigments with names like "Autumn Mystery" and "Luxury Twinkle" line the neat, airy bamboo shelves of a store called PIGMENT.
Pigment is dry concentrated color dust used to give fabric, ink, plastics, and, of course, paint their hue. By adding a binding agent like oil or glue to the powder, the pigment becomes adhesive. It's an older style of paint-making as opposed to purchasing paint pre-mixed, but many artists prefer it for its simplicity and versatility. The store also sells other traditional Japanese painting supplies like brushes, papers, frames, natural animal glue, and ink stones.
PIGMENT (the store) is just as beautiful as its contents. It was designed by renowned architect Kengo Kuma, whose work connects ancient principles of Japanese art and ideology to the modern day. Much like pigment, it's simple, natural, and basic but elegant too. The store is made almost entirely of bamboo with gently waving lines, lots of open space, and light.
The store does ship art supplies ordered online, but PIGMENT's physical store and displays are something to behold.
In 1976, Joyce and Lowell Berg were on vacation in Florida when they saw two Italian angel figurines on a seesaw. This moment filled their hearts with a love for angels, and from that day forward the couple decided to commit their entire lives to the joy of the little saints.
In the late 1970s, the Bergs began to collect angels from all across the country and the world. They took three vacations every year to flea markets, angel conventions, and angel-owning families across America to add to their collection. In the end, the Bergs accumulated a grand total of 13,600 angels from a whopping 60 countries, including Italy, Russia, Japan, and India.
The Bergs also collected 600 African American angels directly from Oprah Winfrey. On one episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah claimed with despair, “why are there no black angels?” Much to her surprise, her fans responded by sending in hundreds of black angels to prove that they were, in fact, in existence. These angels were later donated from Oprah directly to the Bergs.
While the angels were originally kept in the Berg’s home, the collection eventually grew so large that it required a much larger facility. In July of 1994, the Bergs found St. Paul’s Catholic Church, which had been abandoned for nearly a decade and was slated for demolition. Using city funds and community donations, the Bergs returned the church to its original 1914 state and constructed stained glass windows, a garden filled with stone angels, and two large grottos.
Walking through the Angel Museum, visitors will pass display case after display case of the thousands of angels that make the Angel Museum the world’s largest angel collection. On display are animal-themed angels, corn husk angels, spaghetti angels, hobo angels, and bride and groom angels. Other angels double as fire alarms, candles, lipstick holders, bells, and pencil sharpeners. In addition to these varieties, another type of angel found at the museum is Joyce Berg, who often dresses up in a silver costume with a halo and angel wings for special occasions.
Picture this: You’re out on the woods on a fair autumn afternoon when you’re stopped in your tracks by the horrific sight of the devil’s fingers emerging from the earth. Your mind flashes back to that day in third grade when you stole Jimmy Patterson’s lunch and blamed Amy Johnson for it. The devil has finally come to take you back with him.
As the fingers come out of the earth, they seem as if they’re looking for you. They get closer and closer until they, suddenly and with seeming pain, deflate, leaving behind the putrid smell of rotting flesh. You’ve been saved from damnation—or you’ve simply encountered one of the world’s most visually horrifying fungi.
This time-lapse video, shot by Belgian photographer Kris Van de Sande, captures this exact scenario by following the hatching and maturity processes of the devil’s fingers (Clathrus archeri). Also known as octopus stinkhorn, this fungus is unique in its shape. It hatches from an egg-like stage and develops four to eight arms which move freely. Its reddish inner skin is dotted with black spores and exudes a horrid smell that’ll make you feel as if you’re in a horror movie.
In real time, the devil's fingers life cycle takes place over several hours. But with this time-lapse version available, why prolong the horror?
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.
On an Andean cliff overlooking Sacred Valley, there are three ovular glass pods dangling from the rock face. They're not art, nor are they UFOs. They're hotel rooms.
The "Skylodge" is owned by a tourism company called Natura Vive, and these three suites comprise the entire luxury hotel. The three pods are the size of a tiny airplane cabin, and are transparent on all sides. They're mostly bedroom and bathroom, with the first taken up entirely by a down bed and the second equipped with curtains for privacy.
There's not much to do in the pods, but then again, you're not coming for comfort. Just to get there you have to hike up 1,200 feet of Via Ferrara or zipline in (for extra cost). Once there though, you'll have a bird's eye view of the valley below, the surrounding Andes, and condors circling in the open skies above.
