The military accident that created the Hanbury Crater on November 27, 1944 was, at the time, the largest non-nuclear explosion ever to have occurred in the world. It occurred when some 3,500-4,000 tones of bombs, shells and rifle ammunition exploded at RAF Fauld, a bomb dump in a disused gypsum mine.
The resulting crater was 100 feet deep and 400 yards across (some report more than double these figures). Not all of the bombs exploded and it has been too dangerous to recover the unexploded ones from the crater—they remain as a potential threat to this day.
The cause of the explosion was said to be someone using a brass chisel to remove a detonator from a bomb, although these days the idea of returning unused bombs to a bomb dump still containing their fuses would seem ludicrous.
The effect was devastating. Nearby, an entire farm was obliterated. Water released by the destruction of a 450,000 cubic metre reservoir added to the damage and 37 people were drowned. About 70 people were killed in the incident including RAF personal and six Italian prisoners of war who were working at the site.
Another remarkable fact is that much of the mine and much of the stored ordnance survived the explosion and the facility continued to be used by the RAF until 1966. Until recently it had been possible to enter the underground facilities (probably illegally) but all entrances are now sealed. Visitors are not permitted to enter the crater but it's scale can be clearly seen from its perimeter. A memorial has been constructed close to the site, and there another at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas.
This island, formerly named James Island was an English slave fort on the mouth of the Gambia river. Today it's a powerful reminder of the evils of the slave trade, and particularly of Britain's role.
Kunta Kinteh Island is located near Jufreh, the birthplace of Kunta Kinteh, an ancestor of Alex Haley and subject of the early part of his book Roots.
The island, part of a UNESCO world heritage site, used to have numerous beads formally worn by young female captives. Apparently these beads had an important role in marriages and the captives, realising their fate, would throw them away in despair. Unfortunately over the years these have been stolen by tourists and very few remain.
Risk is a part of everyday life. Even basic tasks, such as commuting to work or eating, involve a minimal amount of danger.
Yet some people prefer activities that involve an inordinate amount of risk, activities in which the high risk might be the whole point.
It’s certainly the whole point of the Icarus Trophy, a cross-country paramotor race, that, for the second year in a row, has attracted some of the best paramotorists in the world. What is paramotoring? Imagine a parachutist with a propeller engine strapped to their back. With a running start from the ground, that setup, it turns out, can take you pretty far and high.
It is a predictably dangerous endeavor but also one that has its enthusiasts. For the Icarus Trophy, those enthusiasts gather to compete in two classes: race and adventure. To win a race class, pilots are required to complete a given course without pre-arranged support, while for the adventure class, the way to win is a bit more ambiguous, to simply have the best paramotoring adventure. (The adventure for the winner involved a medicine man, a nude selfie at a hot spring, and almost beating some of the best paramotorists in the world.)
For the privilege, Icarus pilots pay a $2,000 fee and cover their own expenses during the 14-day race, something the race's sponsor, the extreme sports firm the Adventurists, says is not for the faint of heart.
“These are not holidays,” the website for the Adventurists states. “These are adventures and so by their very nature extremely risky. You really are putting both your health and life at risk. That’s the whole point.”
During this year’s Icarus Trophy race, which began Sept. 30 and wrapped up Oct. 15, I followed along in Montana (and Idaho, and Utah, and Arizona, and Nevada), on the trail of the still relatively new extreme sport, trying to see what I could learn about flying, and desire, and risk.
The race began in Polson, Montana, where, on one beautiful Sunday morning, a small collection of pilots gathered. They were there to fly their paramotors, which are one of the cheapest and most basic ways to fly.
To take off, pilots turn on their motor, catch wind in their “wing," and start running. If the conditions are right, they quickly gain speed and, hopefully, take flight.
But of course, that doesn’t always happen, and at this Icarus Trophy race, failure was pretty common. Failure or liftoff is in large part determined by the air, which, at this race, was thin, thanks to an altitude of over 4,000 feet. Face plants were pretty common.
“The air changed on me,” Dean Kelly explained after a failed takeoff attempt outside of St. Ignatius, Montana. An Australian that’s piloted paramotors for over two years, Kelly cracked two props and damaged the outer cage surrounding his motor. Fortunately, he was not hurt.
The risk associated with paramotoring can seem great, but James Borges, a pilot from the United Kingdom, said that for him it was mostly about the reward.
“It’s not really about risk, we try to manage risk as much as possible," Borges said. "If we do that, we get to fly in a way few people experience."
Borges explained verbally what extreme sports athletes and scientists have long known: that while fear is common, the reward is a healthy dose of adrenaline and dopamine, the chemicals in the brain responsible for happiness and satisfaction.
In paramotoring, that translates to a lot of high fiving and handshaking after a successful flight, even if, pilots say, the adrenaline rush can wear off after a while.
“When you first start, oh yeah, there’s always an adrenaline rush,” said Trey German, an engineer from Texas that’s been flying paramotors for nearly three years. “After a while, you really only feel it during maneuvers or extreme conditions.”
Which might explain why these pilots would choose to participate in the Icarus Trophy, claimed by its organizers to be the world’s toughest air race. The 2016 version of the race started in Polson and ran 1,100 miles through five states before ending near Las Vegas. This course was 300 miles longer than the previous year’s, which ran from Seattle to Sacramento.
“During one flight, I experienced hail, snow, rain, and turbulence,” Kelly said about the experience. “I had never dealt with those conditions before and I got to deal with them all at once.”
The Icarus Trophy starts in Polson, Montana, which is around 3,000 feet above sea level, before moving to a host of cities across the West, including Moab, Utah; Monument Valley; Idaho Falls, Idaho; and, unofficially, the Bonneville Salt Flats, where some competitors made a stop this year to fly.
Along the way, tormented competitors and their support staffs dealt with cramped living conditions, unpredictable weather, and broken equipment.
On the first day, Scotty Duncan, a well-known Australian pilot, blew an engine and had to repair it with the help of a local machinist, who was also kind enough to serve him elk stew.
“It’s part of the experience and adventure,” Kelly said after his failed attempt to launch on the first day. “Where’s the fun if everything goes right?”
And then there are injuries, which, this year, thankfully, weren't too common. Seven pilots flew, in total, with all but one finishing. Last year was worse: one competitor suffered a severely sprained ankle, while another had a broken wrist.
This year, though, the hazards were, at most, some tumbles and muscle strains, in addition to a few strange situations.
German, for one, landed among thick desert shrubbery and had to remove his pants to pull out dozens of thorns. He later said he considered paramotoring about as safe as riding motorcycles.
“There are maybe twenty or thirty thousand paramotorists in the world but ones that fly regularly are much less, maybe ten thousand.” German said, “And there are only seven pilots with the balls to take on Icarus.
“Challenging yourself to do new things is a big part of Icarus,” German said. “If this were easy and without risk, it wouldn’t be as fun or memorable.”
Andrew Egan is a writer living in Texas. He’s previously written for Forbes and ABC News. He just completed his first novel, Nothing Too Original, and his collection Drink Your Whisky Like a Man spent one week on Amazon’s American poetry best seller list. You can find his terrible website at CrimesInProgress.com. A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
Happening across the strange pyramid in the woods of La Boulaye in the Saône-et-Loire Department of France, one wonders what it could be. As you get closer things get more strange, as a large mausoleum, old tombstones, and an old gate appear. They are the ruins of the old village of La Boulaye.
La Boulaye was not always located where it is today. In 1894, Henri Adolphe-Eugène Schneider, the iron master of Le Creuset, bought the old castle of La Boulaye and transformed it into his hunting lodge. He did not want to share the area around his castle with the local people, so he suggested the small village of 320 people move some distance to the north. As reward for agreeing to move, he offered to built the village a school, town hall, train station, new church and a new cemetery. He even offered to move the corpses of the people in the graves if the families desired.
Mr. Schneider died in 1898. It was his son, Charles-Prosper-Eugène Schneider, who went through with the plan. At the beginning of the 20th century the villagers left their homes, the church and the graveyard to move to the new La Boulaye. The whole process was finished in 1905 and the haunting lodge of the Schneider Family owned all the land around the castle.
Many buildings from the old village have been demolished, though a few vestiges remain if you look closely. But the old cemetery is still there, now abandoned in the woods and overgrown in most places. A few ruins of the old wall still surround the place, the old gate still hangs spooky and crooked in it's hinges, and the occasional fallen tombstone can be found.
A strange alleyway leads to a large underground mausoleum with a strange domed ceiling. On top of the domed part of the mausoleum sits the pyramid, it's heavy iron doors secured with concrete. The inscription of one of the doors says: "Sepulture de M. et M. Montmort." The Montmort family were the original Seigneurs (Dukes) of La Boulaye for many centuries.
Moors and Christians festivals are common throughout Spain. They commemorate the 13h century struggle between Christian kingdoms to the north of the Iberian peninsula and the Moorish occupiers in the south, which eventually resulted in the reoccupation of the whole of Spain by the Christian powers.
In many Spanish towns, bands of people representing various districts have for many generations annually dressed as either Moors or Christian knights to take part in week-long festivals of parades and mock battles. The various bands of each side of the "conflict" dress differently from each other and there is often great rivalry as to who have the best costumes.
The festival in El Campello, a small coastal town near Alicante on the Mediterranean coast, is a bit unusual. As a coastal community, they also incorporate into the festival a reenactment of the arrival of the Moorish fleet.
It starts before dawn, with fireworks and the firing of blunderbusses to announce the sighting of the fleet. As it gets light out, the fleet slowly comes ashore with even more loud explosions and eventually a rather formalised mock battle ensues on the beach. By about 9:30am this event finishes with a parade of the Moorish force as they march towards the coastal defence tower which is the focus of the celebrations.
Parades and mock battles continue for about a week, but the arrival of the fleet is very much worth getting up before dawn to see (and hear). The dates of festivals far throughout Spain but in El Campello it is in around the second week of October. The landing of the fleet is on the second day.
The Wir Waren Nachbarn (We Were Neighbors) exhibition is a memorial for the Jewish residents of the Tempelhof and Schöneberg areas of Berlin. It tells the story of the people forced to flee Germany, or who were exiled by the Nazis or killed.
More than 150 biographies of Jewish people and many firsthand accounts are displayed in a reading room in the Rathaus (City Hall) in Schöneberg. For each person or family there is an album containing their personal story and photos—memories that were not always easy to find. The organizers tracked down the surviving family members to get their story. Many were deported and died in one of the Nazi concentration camps, but there are also albums of the people who survived, fled or hid.
This very personal memorial is unique and impressive. The reader gets to know the respective person or family, is able to connect with them and gets a better understanding of their fears and feelings of hopelessness. There are some very courageous and astonishing stories.
The exhibition includes the stories of some of the more famous citizens of Schöneberg and Tempelhof, such as Albert Einstein, the Comedian Harmonists, Kurt Tucholsky, Billy Wilder, Alice Salomon, Nelly Sachs and others. The collection is continually expanding with the addition of new albums.
Located in the Saône-et-Loire Departement in France, the Abbey of Cluny was one of the most powerful religious centers in the Middle Ages and has been deemed the founder of Western monasticism. Built in the 10th century, the basilica was the world's largest church before the creation of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome—and one of the wealthiest.
The Abbey was founded in 910 when William I, Duke of Aquitaine, donated a large piece of land to found a Benedictine Monastery. It included cultivated and uncultivated land, vineyards, woods, fields, meadows, waters, mills and serfs. Then in an unusual move, William I resigned all power over the Abbey, leaving control of the place to the Abbots, which meant that Cluny was practically independent.
This lead to another novelty. The order in Cluny lived the opposite of the Benedictine tradition. They developed a form of government in which Cluny became the leader, creating a large order with several priories, the so-called Cluniac Houses, who had to answer to the Abbot of Cluny. At the best times about 1,200 priories with around 200,000 monks belonged to the system of Cluny. The Abbey of Cluny became rich.
The Benedictine monks, usually an order who work and pray, now only prayed. The decadence grew and Cluny, now the wealthiest monastery of the Western world, took in workers and managers for everything that had to be done. Forgetting the monastic ideal of frugal live, the churches of Cluny were decorated with gold, silver and gems, the monks feasted on the best of foods and wine, and they wore only the best habits, made from the finest materials available. However they also gave generously to the poor.
In the 13th century the Abbey started to run into economic problems. It lost its independency and came under the influence of the French kings. The Abbey was not able anymore to elect their Abbot and in the 15th century the King of France appointment people who did him personal favors to the position. The fall of Cluny started in the 17th century, when the monastery became part of the reformation order. At that time many of the old buildings were replaced by baroque buildings. With the French Revolution came the end of the monastery. The Order was abolished and the properties confiscated. Nevertheless, the buildings remained intact and untouched. Around 10 years later, in 1810, Napoleon had large parts of the Abbey blown up.
Today you can see the remains of the grand 10th century Abbey Basilica, including some chapels, walls, towers and stairs, strewn throughout the village of Cluny. The former church was transferred into a museum, telling the story of Cluny in its glory days.
Picketwire Canyon is a shallow canyon in southeastern Colorado on El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio or the River of Souls Lost in Purgatory. Within the canyon are the Delores Mission Ruins, the remains of Wineglass Ranch which belonged to a prominent 19th century ranching family, tracks from the Santa Fe Trail, numerous Fremont era native American archeological sites, a few ghosts from a lost troop of conquistadors and, most importantly, the largest dinosaur trackway in North America.
The river gets its name, and its ghosts, from a Spanish expedition lead by Francisco Leyva de Bonilla, a Portuguese captain in service to Spain and Capt. Pedro de Cazorlá, a Spanish captain. They were originally chasing Native American raiders but the stories of Quivira woven by the Pecos Pueblo Indians filled Bonilla’s head with thoughts of glory.
Cazorlá claimed that Bonilla was committing treason to the Spanish Crown and returned with a portion of the force to Peco Pueblo. Bonilla and his lieutenant, Antonio Gutiérrez de Humaña, pressed onward towards the high plains of Colorado. Because Bonilla was Portuguese, Humaña, chafed at taking orders from him and he argued with Bonilla over the campfire one night. Hot words were exchanged and Bonilla lay dead, his blood dripping from the dagger of Antonio Gutiérrez de Humaña.
The priests with the troop upon seeing Bonilla lying in a pool of blood vowed that they would not follow a murderer nor would they administer rights or communion to anyone who would. Along with a small band they returned to New Spain, leaving Humaña in command of a diminished, but still determined troop. Gold and glory were far more important to Humaña than sanctimonious priests! Humaña pushed on over Raton Pass and into the maw of the Comanche nation.
On the edge of a canyon of a small high plains creek, the Comanche surrounded the force at a place called the La Matanza, or "The Slaughter," and drove them to the edge with a grass fire. They then killed them to a man. Having no priest to offer them last rites or absolution, their souls were condemned to wander the banks of this insignificant river pouring out of the Spanish Peaks for eternity. Their moans of grief can still be heard echoing in the canyons of this tiny river.
But the real reason people visit the Picketwire, bastardized from the poetic name, is to see the tracks of strolling dinosaurs along a large inland sea from the Jurassic era. The dinosaur trackway contains 1300 tracks in 100 separate trackways over a quarter mile limestone deposits on either side of river. Most of the tracks are from either Apatosaurus or Allosaurus. The apatosaurus tracks are the most prominent and indicate herding behavior with the larger tracks flanking either side of a several smaller tracks. The allosaur tracks are those of a single animal hunting the apatosaurs. One of the apatosaur tracks shows a distinct slide in the mud as it makes a sharp turn to avoid the allosaur.
Recent removal of sediments on top of the track way show several allosaurs that may be hunting together. The allosaurus tracks show animals approaching with long strides and going into a short stride stalk. One may even show one of 3 allosaurs “springing” towards prey. This is the first set of tracks you see when you approach the river.
There are other, older, indications of dinosaur behavior not usually seen in track ways as well. One area, called the “trample” zone, is just a series of overlying tracks in an area that seems to be, well, trampled. But upon closer inspection, long round furrows can be seen in the ground. These are tail drags which indicate mating behavior as the apatosaurus had a rigid upright tail.
Blur your eyes, and the banknote above looks normal enough. It has the right proportions. It's covered in intricate line drawings, so as to discourage counterfeiting. It's got serious-looking slogans and strongly penned numbers. If someone passed it to you across a counter after a long night, you might not look twice.
Focus, though, and you'll notice a few weird things going on. A panel on the left side shows a bony, balding person dressed in a tattered American Flag. Across the top, a dragon rides a carriage through the streets, crushing pedestrians willy-nilly. The right side sports a donkey defecating into a monkey's top hat. And along the bottom, a dung beetle with a human face rolls a poop ball emblazoned with the bill's weird denomination: 75 cents.
In case you hadn't guessed, this bill is not legal tender. It's a parody note, "issued" during the Panic of 1837 to lampoon the figures on whom the artists blamed the crisis. Today, it provides a monstrous sort of history lesson, along with a timeless example of bonkers political art.
Like most economic crises, the Panic of 1837 was made of many stressful strands. Mostly, though, it hinged on how different parties defined money. In the early 1930s, Andrew Jackson was running a "hard-money" White House, insisting that it was best to use pin the U.S. economic system on money that had actual value—in this case, gold and silver coins, known as "specie."
This clashed with the policies of various states, and after Jackson revoked the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, these states began happily printing and issuing paper currency, without necessarily having the loot to back it up. The early 19th century also saw a pioneer-style real estate bubble, as speculators bought up Western land newly stolen from native people, using this paper money.
In 1836, Jackson issued an executive order requiring that people pay for government land in specie instead. As a result, paper money quickly lost value, and those who had been relying on it ran into trouble. Foreign investors began rescinding on their loans, hoping to get out before things got worse. On May 10th, 1837, banks in New York City announced that they would no longer trade paper banknotes for gold or silver, making them even more worthless. Thus began a seven-year recession, during which unemployment skyrocketed, banks shuttered, businesses were bankrupted, and entire fortunes crumpled away like the paper they were.
This banknote tells about the same story, but through the kind of surreal, nightmarish imagery only achievable in times of political crisis. It takes the form of a "shinplaster," a kind of ad-hoc small bill printed by merchants and other private entities. "Small bills were really important when you were paying workers, or trying to get your hair cut or buy a loaf of bread," explains Jessica Lepler, an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire and the author of The Many Panics of 1837.
But even state banks didn't issue bills smaller than $5, and thanks to the specie shortage, coins were hard to come by. To keep in business, barbers and shopowners drummed up their own local economies, issuing change in homemade shinplasters. "These shinplasters existed and before the panic, and even more after," says Lepler.
This particular shinplaster wasn't worth anything. Instead, it was the equivalent of an editorial cartoon, meant to lampoon all the high-level decisions that had forced average Americans to print their own cash. It was drawn by an illustrator named Napoleon Farrady, and printed by H.R. Robinson, a staunch Whig who blamed the other Democratic faction, the Loco Focos, for the crisis.
Look closely at its weird populace, and you'll see the caricatured faces of towering historical figures. That lady on the left side? "That's Andrew Jackson in drag," says Lepler. Jackson is dressed as Lady Liberty, and holding a knife that says "veto," meant to remind everyone of that time he had vetoed the Second Bank of the United States. The cracked globe he is standing next to represents The Globe, the leading newspaper of his party. "It was kind of the Fox News of its time," says Lepler.
Jackson also makes a second cameo on the right side, this time as an incontinent donkey. "He's pooping out gold currency because that's supposedly what he wants to happen to the money supply," explains Lepler. His vice president and successor appears too: "Martin Van Buren, his little trained monkey, is collecting the poop in a top hat." Van Buren was also widely maligned, both for sucking up to Jackson and for continuing his policies once he himself had taken office. (He was also considered overly stylish, which explains the top hat.)
It is also Van Buren's face on the crazy dragon on the top of the note, hoarding bags of money and riding in a wagon labeled "Treasury Department." The wagon is being pulled by Loco Focos, who in turn are being whipped by John C. Calhoun, an infamous Southern successionist who supported Jackson on economic issues, if very little else. The whole crowd is running roughshod over people in the street. "A lot of Democratic support came from working class men," says Lepler. "They're trampling them."
And then there's the dung beetle, sporting the small, determined face of Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton. "Benton was known as Old Bullion Benton, becuase he was really in favor of hard currency," says Lepler. "People called specie 'Benton's Mint Drops.'" The Benton bug is pushing a massive lump of dung, labeled with the banknote's supposed value. Around him, in pompous script, loops a promise "to pay out of the United States Treasury, seven years after it is convenient, the amount of seventy-five cents."
It's difficult to consolidate a whole issue into an image, as evidenced by today's one-panel political cartoons. As monstrous as this one looks, it's actually pretty subtle, lampooning the country's sad situation in its form—a useless piece of paper, dressed up as money—as well as its weird, weird content. As the Treasury Department begins to redesign our current American currency, they might want to consider a few more important financial players: flag drag Jackson, monkey Van Buren, and a certain human-faced, hard-money-loving dung beetle.
Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
Democracy has never been a smooth path. Starting with the ancient Greeks and modified by ancient Romans, the idea of holding elections is still relatively new. After all, it wasn’t until fairly recently that the Western world started questioning the idea of the “divine ruler,” beheading its monarchs or forcing them to grant citizens rights that absolute monarchs would have never dreamed of bestowing.
The world has witnessed several elections that place into question the efficiency of democracy as a system, and the veracity of common human decency. This map illustrates some of these most disastrous elections—the scandals, the bad decisions, the folly of voters.
Starting with Julius Caesar’s corrupt campaign for his election as consul, and moving through the line of history, there is a dark irony to this list. We are reminded of the tumultuous 1876 presidential elections in the United States, which were decided more by a truce between the candidates than by citizens: Not only was Rutherford B. Hayes elected president despite losing popular vote, but also Republicans withdrew from the South, ending the Reconstruction Period and giving way to a legacy of institutional disenfranchisement of black Americans.
Other disastrous elections include the rise to power of corrupt governors that take much more than they give. This includes Arnoldo Aleman, ex-president of Nicaragua, who stole 25 million dollars from the country; and Alberto Fujimori, who resigned by fax to his position as the Peruvian President as he was fleeing the country. Some are pitiful shadows of real elections, in which only one person is included in the ballot. Perfect examples of this are the North Korean "elections" and the Liberian contest of 1927, in which the standing president won with more than ten times the votes than there were voters.
Yet money and choices have unfortunately not always been the only thing taken away by democratically elected governors. Some elections have resulted in repressive regimes that have been responsible for horrible crimes against humanity, including genocide. The most notorious of these instances is the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in 1932. Though not elected by majority vote, the inconclusiveness of the parliamentary elections gave Hitler a way into political power, which he eventually consolidated as the Fuhrer of the Third Reich. Other examples of atrocious consequences of an election include Robert Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe and François Duvalier’s in Haiti.
For all the horrible electoral stories, however, there are sometimes positive outcomes. The election fraud committed by the standing president, Ferdinand E. Marcos, during the Snap Elections in the Philippines eventually led to the end of his rule. Likewise, the Rose Revolution that followed the Georgian parliamentary election of 2003 ended the Soviet regime that governed the nation.
Take heart, prepare yourself mentally, and peruse through a collection of these most disastrous elections.
If you feel like there is an election that should be included, just let us know. We’ll be happy to add it to the map.
Built as a set for the epic blockbuster Titanic, the Baja Studios production facility is built on 46 acres with more than 3,000 feet of oceanfront overlooking the Pacific Ocean near the Mexican resort community of Rosarito, Baja California. It's been the production site for several feature films since Titanic, including Tomorrow Never Dies and Peal Harbor.
If you’ve seen any of Michelangelo’s artworks in person, you have probably felt the same awe that millions of pilgrims to the Sistine Chapel have experienced, while staring up at his singular ceiling frescoes. With masterpieces like the Pieta and the astonishing statue of David, he is decidedly one of the most influential artists in the history of the western world. But what most people don't know is that, at the beginning of his career, Michelangelo was a forger.
In his teenage years, he was a protege of Lorenzo de Medici—also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent—and studied under some of the most respectable sculptors of the time. In his circle, he quickly gained a reputation for talent that went far beyond his years and experience.
But despite his promising future, back in 1496 he was just another starving artist trying to find ways to fund his art. At 21, he had the talent and the passion, but not the name necessary to sell his work at a profitable price. He was also working in Florence at the beginning of the Renaissance, when many art collectors were more fascinated by the idea of possessing some of the classical sculptures that were just beginning to be unearthed, than in acquiring contemporary art.
Faced with this dilemma, Michelangelo opted for the seemingly logical solution: he forged a classical sculpture by artificially aging it.
Or so one version of the story goes. In The Lives of the Artist—considered the first art history book of the western world—Giorgio Vasari complements this version with another one: Instead of Michelangelo, it was the art dealer Baldassari del Milanese who took the sculpture, which depicted a sleeping cupid, and buried it in his vineyard in order to age it.
Whether it was Michelangelo’s or Milanese’s idea, the statue was artificially aged and successfully sold as an antiquity to an Italian Cardinal named Raffaele Riario. Everything went according to plan until the victim of the pair’s astuteness became aware that he had been duped.
One could assume that the Cardinal’s hurt ego and depleted wealth would incur his wrath against the young artist. It seems, however, that his indignation was centered on Milanese, who had to give his part of the money back. As for Michelangelo, not only was he able to keep his cut, but he also received an invitation from the Cardinal to come to Rome, an opportunity that proved essential to his career.
Why would the Cardinal reward the artist who had taken him for a fool? To fully comprehend this attitude, it is necessary to grasp the artistic environment of the time. According to art historian Noah Charney, author of The Art of Forgery, far from valuing originality, Renaissance patrons of the arts admired artists who could reproduce the works of their masters. A good imitator proved that he had true potential. Therefore, being able to forge an ancient Roman statue showed the incredible talent Michelangelo had. Rather than hurting his career—as it would now—it helped propel him to fame.
As to the fate of the sculpture, it was returned to Milanese, the shady art dealer who had sold it. Reportedly, when Michelangelo asked for it back, the dealer refused, saying he would smash it to pieces before returning it. Instead, he sold it again, and kept all the profits. From there, the sculpture moved around, as it was sold or gifted to new owners, and even taken as a bounty in the sacking of a palace.
At some point in the late 17th century, the sculpture was transported to England, where it disappeared. The treasure is believed to have perished along with countless other priceless pieces in the devastating fire that reduced London's Whitehall Palace to ashes. Once the largest palace in all of Europe, the splendid Tudor house was brought down by a linen that was left to dry close to a fire. This was the last anyone saw of Michelangelo’s controversial cupid.
No other verified forgeries are known by this Renaissance master, though his past has aroused suspicion about the authenticity of other great works. The famous statue of Laocoön and his Sons has been viewed as a stunning sculpture from Greek antiquity since its discovery in 1506. Now, art historian Lynn Catterson is spearheading an investigation on whether the sculpture could be another one of Michelangelo’s forgeries.
The suspicion arose not only because there are early sketches from the artist that resemble this statue, but also because it was unearthed from the backyard of one of his close friends. This coincidence resulted in Michelangelo being commissioned to restore the sculpture. Though the legitimacy of the claim has been heavily questioned, there is no doubt that the great artist's less enviable past life has followed him.
In the eyes of the world, however, Michelangelo is the embodiment of a true artist, so much so that the adoring public seems to have turned a blind eye to the less inspired works he created at the beginning of his career.
Spon Street in Coventry was an industrial area from at least the 12th century, when it was predominantly occupied by dyers who were forced to move to the edge of the city because of the fumes from the urine they used. Other textile industries that needed good access to the nearby river were also attracted there, and the fabrics they produced were so renowned for holding their colour that it begot the saying "true as Coventry blue." This is still reflected in the all sky blue strip of Coventry City football team.
Today the street has become a sort of rest home for many of the historic timber framed buildings of the city. Coventry was bombed badly during WW2 but, being on what was then the periphery of the city centre, many of the street's timber buildings survived. During the post-war redevelopment of the city centre which largely resulted in the centre of Coventry becoming a largely glass and concrete jungle constrained by an over tight inner ring road (which cut Spon Street in half), many other medieval timber buildings were relocated to the portion of Spon Street within the ring road from elsewhere in the city in an attempt to preserve them. Some had been damaged in the bombing but others were simply just in the way.
Following the relocation of these historic buildings, in 1969 the area was designated a Conservation Area by the City Council. Spon Street, now promoted as a tourist attraction, has over 20 shops, restaurants, and pubs operating either from mediaeval buildings which are either original or relocated. It is often hard to know the difference. Look out for the Old Windmill where some of the seating has been converted from other old furniture including a seating booth created from a very large wardrobe.
Spon Street saw a shift in the industries based in the area in the 18th and 19th centuries. The street became established as an area for watchmaking throughout the early 1900s a reputation that continued well into the 20th century. This activity spread into adjoining areas where many of the otherwise un-noteworthy early 20th century buildings are 3 storey buildings with an upper workshop floor provided by inordinately large windows to admit the necessary light. Bicycle and motorcycle manufacturers then set up factories in and around Spon Street of which many examples can be found in the Coventry transport museum nearby.
In Fontanellato, near Parma, Italy, 1.85 miles of bamboo spread across 17 acres of land to create the Masone Labyrinth. If you reach the center, you’ll be greeted by a plaza with a pyramid—assuming you can navigate the maze of right-angled walls, some of which reach over 16 feet high.
The Mason Labyrinth is one of several featured in the new book by Francesca Tatarella, Labyrinths and Mazes: A Journey Through Art, Architecture and Landscape. It includes labyrinths formed from nature—hedges, bamboo, even snow—as well as those created as art, such as Via Negative II, pictured above. Created in 2014 by artist Lee Bul, it’s labyrinth of mind-bending proportions, in which visitors walked through a maze of mirrored walls and LED lights.
So if getting lost sounds fun to you, time to get lost. Just remember: There is always at least one way out of a maze. Here are a selection of images from the book:
As unusual as it may be to see a centenarian grandfather or cuckoo clock these days, finding someone who knows how those complex pieces of machinery works is even more difficult. Horology is complicated work and each old timepiece, whether it be a tiny pocket watch or a heavy French Morbier, comes with its own quirks and intricacies. This fall, Atlas Obscura set out on the modern trail with footwear, clothing, and accessories company Timberland, to learn the tricks of the trade from exceptional curators and clockmakers.
Philadelphia, our host city.
We began our adventure at the Franklin Institute, one of the country’s leading science and technology education centers. Museum curator Susannah Carroll offered us the rare opportunity to closely examine some of the antique timepieces in the Institute’s collection. These remarkable clocks, with their varied forms and delicate internal workings, are not usually on display to the public.
A minimalist timepiece from the Franklin Institute's collections.
Enough gears to go around.
Old clocks, like the ones at the Franklin Institute, require expert care. After a long lunch, we continued to the studio of one of these experts: artist-turned-clockmaker Lili von Baeyer. Lili is a master maker, fixer, and restorer of timepieces, who currently works with around 200 historic clocks.
Clockmaker Lili von Baeyer.
Under Lili’s guidance, we disassembled small clocks and challenged ourselves to put the pieces back together.
Sketching the clock's interior.
A participant inspects her half-finished clock.
As we sorted through our arrays of cogs and pins, we became increasingly impressed by Lili’s prowess. By the end of the afternoon, with a combination of beginner’s luck, focus, and her patient guidance, our clocks were ticking once again.
Carefully tightening a screw.
Timeless.
This event was part of Timberland and Brooklyn Brewery's Mash Tour, which focuses on urban art, culture, and exploration. You can watch a recap of our day (and get a peek inside some tremendous timepieces) above.
In the 1880s, the U.S. Mint tried an experiment: it created a 5-cent coin, made of nickel, that featured the head of Liberty in its design. The nickel wasn’t the only coin at the time to feature that design—the gold one dollar coin had it, too.
In fact, the new nickel looked a lot like the dollar coin, so much so that clever hucksters realized they might be able to inflate the value of the nickel 100-fold. There was a roman numeral, V, on the coin, indicating that it was worth five cents. But the coin didn’t actually say “cents” on it. To increase the coin’s apparent value, people would plate the nickel with gold and try to convince their marks that the V meant it was worth 5 dollars, not 5 cents.
There was a gold $5 coin at the time, so it wasn’t such a huge stretch to try to convince people these coins were just a new design. But not everyone was easily fooled by these “Racketeer Nickels,” especially in a place like the infamous Deadwood, South Dakota, the gambling frontier town where residents tended to have creative views of the law to begin with.
In Deadwood, some young men didn’t use the trumped up coins to buy goods, but used them as a fashion statement, reports the Rapid City Journal. As a local paper wrote at the time, “A number of the tony young men about town are wearing cuff buttons made of the new nickels… They are highly plated with gold, and to the uninitiated look for all the world like genuine five-dollar gold pieces.”
Back in 2001, the city dug up one of these fashion statements with a bunch of other coins during an archaeological study. But they only just realized what they had found, when coin experts came in to examine a separate haul of Chinese coins. The experts immediately recognized the Racketeer Nickel in the city’s coin collection. It’s not in particularly good shape or worth that much: Racketeer Nickel are not uncommon and are easily faked. What makes this one special is that it was found in situ—it’s an archaeological treasure, rather than a numismatic one.
World War II left all the bridges over the Rhine in Cologne badly damaged, necessitating the building of new bridges across the river. During the construction of one such bridge, the Severinsbrücke, a terrible accident occurred, killing five workers—according to the official count. The incident has been kept very secret, so secret that even many citizens of Cologne do not know about it. However some disturbing details about the mysterious tragedy have recently come to light.
There's reason to believe that the number of victims was much higher than five, and that the bodies of the victims, mainly illegal workers from Italy and former Yugoslavia who were not trained construction workers, were left behind in the collapsed pylon of the bridge, buried under tons of concrete.
Construction began on the Severinsbrücke bridge in May 1956. It was inaugurated three years later supported by a pylon 77 meters (250 feet) tall. Today, inside that pylon is a hidden grave of a man killed during the terrible accident that happened in the morning of September 21, 1956.
The accident occurred while the men were working down at the bottom of Rhine River protected by a drop shaft. The drop shaft slid down one side, and five men were killed in the water of the Rhine. Their bodies were recovered, but there is no plaque at the bridge memorializing the victims of the accident, and the whole subject would have been forgotten if documentary filmmaker Hermann Rheindorf hadn't went digging.
In his research for a film about Cologne's bridges, Rheindorf found hints that there was more to the accident than had been revealed. He tried to request an inspection of old records, and police said they could not find them. The historic archive of Cologne collapsed in 2009 and, conveniently, the files about the accident are among the documents that were lost.
Intrigued, the filmmaker went in search of eye witnesses. He met a firefighter whose father who was a policeman at the time of the accident, and told him that several victims are still buried in the pylon. A former worker of the nearby "Deutz" port confirmed that at least one victim is still in the pylon of the bridge. The daughter of Gerd Lohmer, the architect of the bridge, has said that her father was always depressed when he thought about the bridge. He, too, told his family about the secret grave in the pylon.
Exactly how many victims the accident caused and how many bodies are buried in the pylon, only the supervisor of the construction, Josef Roth from Aschaffenburg, can know. But he was the first victim recovered from the Rhine River 60 years ago. What really happened on September 21, 1956? How many men found their grave under tons of concrete in the pylon of Severinsbrücke?
Whichever 2016 presidential candidate you support or don't support, we can probably all agree that this election is causing a lot, a lot, a lot of anxiety.
With the election less than a week away and cortisol levels across America spiking, this nightmare political season is manifesting itself in many as actual stress dreams about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and general end-of-times scenarios. If you are suffering from such panic dreams, this is your outlet—tell us about them, and we will gather your stories into a pool of anxiety to share with the world. At least we're all in this together?
In 1646, scholar and polymath Athanasius Kircher took a break from inventing new projection devices and studying the blood of plague victims to try and hypnotize a chicken.
Kircher held a hen down on the ground, taking care to press firmly on her head. He waited for her to become still, and then drew a chalk line on the ground, extending from her beak off into the distance. When he backed away, he reported, she lay there, paralyzed—"as if, despairing of escape through the fruitlessness of her motions, she gave herself up to the will of her conquerer." Kircher figured she thought the line was a string, and was acting as though she had been bound.
Now, thanks to our slightly improved understanding of chicken psychology, it's clear that Kircher's hen wasn't roleplaying Fifty Shades of Grey— she was just super freaked out. This paralysis, which researchers now call "tonic immobility," is a fear response, probably meant to help chickens and other animals "play dead" in the presence of threats. (The chalk line isn't strictly necessary.) As the psychologist G.G. Gallup Jr. explained in a series of papers from the 1970s, chickens freeze for longer when exposed to loud noises, stuffed hawks, or other scary stimuli.
When it comes to over-the-top panic behavior, humans definitely win. But when faced with the many dangers of wild life, animal brains do strange stuff, too. Here are some of the weirdest fear responses in the natural world.
1. Stackable Toads
All different kinds of animals, from crayfish to rabbits, exhibit tonic immobility. Different physical orientations inspire the state—toads, for example, will conk out pretty easily when turned upside down. In the video above, a patient Australian man demonstrates a "simple three-toad stack that anybody can do at home," carried out in his garage with a few unlucky cane toads. As soon as he flips them over, they go limp and cross their arms, as though preparing for their little toad coffins. Fun!
2. Freezing Goats
Goats are among the most exciteable of Earth's creatures—one expert has attested that "it does not take much for them to scream bloody murder," and the Greek god Pan, namesake of panic itself, was half-goat. To top it off, certain of them straight-up fall down when they get scared. These particular goats have a condition called myotonia congenita, which means it takes their muscles a while to relax after seizing up. Because fear involves rapid muscle clenching, they get frozen in position and keel over. Take a moment to study it further, in the video above.
3. "Dead" Opposums
When an opossum gets scared, it, too, keels over. But the possum fear response involves a little extra panache—it also gapes its mouth, drools excessively, and begins leaking smelly green fluid out of its butt. This is likely meant to make predators think it's extra-dead, from some kind of foul disease. Next time you metaphorically "play possum" to get out of a tough situation, consider ramping it up a bit for accuracy.
4. Mutating Aphids
Fish, ants, and other animals that hang out in groups often warn each other about scary things by emitting "alarm pheremones"—smelly chemicals that mean "run!" The pea aphid, though, takes things one step further. When it gets a whiff of alarm pheremone, it not only takes off as fast as possible—if it survives, its offspring are more likely to be born with wings, enabling multigenerational escape. (The guy above didn't make it.)
5. Chicken Chickens
Let's finish this off with the classic choice. Kircher was far from the only person to make a hobby out of chicken fear—by the 19th century, The American Naturalist was calling chicken-hypnotizing "an experiment sufficiently familiar to all of us"—but despite its oversaturation, the pasttime has found popularity in every century. Hemingway shared his technique in The Dangerous Summer, and Iggy Pop sings about it in "Lust For Life," just before insisting that he's had it in the ear before. Comparatively, the people in the video above are just simple chicken-freezing folks. At least they wake their hen up again at the end.
Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.
Last week, nearly two dozen potential buyers showed up for a remote open house in Sugar Grove Station, West Virginia. Unlike typical open house-goers, though, they weren’t planning to buy a home. They wanted the whole town.
From the road, Sugar Grove Station looks like many of the other small towns that break up the forests in this part of West Virginia. There’s a bowling alley, a car wash, and a hotel. The town has the ability to generate its own electricity and pump its own water.
But Sugar Grove Station isn’t like the other towns. There’s a fence around the entire 123-acre town, and guard booths at the entrance. That’s because Sugar Grove Station was a base run by the Navy and the National Security Agency to monitor communications sent to the East Coast.
Operations around Sugar Grove have also been tied to the NSA’s controversial ECHELON surveillance program, according to National Security Archive researchers. The top-secret program was created during the Cold War to monitor Soviet and Eastern Bloc communications, but later evolved into a global interception and data harvesting system.
After being shut down last year, the spy town can now be yours—for a couple of million dollars.
Once home to some 400 government employees and their families, Sugar Grove Station’s only residents a year after it was decommissioned appear to be spiders and a particularly brazen groundhog. The spying activities have moved on, some of them to a related nearby base that’s still operational.
That leaves a whole lot of empty buildings, and not just ones related to the base’s NSA operations. The challenge of keeping hundreds of employees busy in the middle of West Virginia’s forests means that these days, Sugar Grove Station looks like a particularly desolate summer camp. The town has a swimming pool, tennis courts, a playground—even a Frisbee golf course.
Other parts of the base still show evidence of when the town was still operational. Navy plaques hang on the walls, while the base’s indoor basketball court has a mascot—a ram holding an anchor—and a chart with the names of the town’s forgotten basketball stars. One building has a wave pool, although heads up to potential buyers: it probably leaks.
The government shut down Sugar Grove Station in Sept. 2015. The NSA’s reasoning was characteristically cryptic, saying publicly only that they no longer needed the site. After an initial sale by the General Services Administration in July ended with a $11.2 million winning bid, but failed to find a buyer who could complete the sale, the whole town—valued at around $16 million in local tax assessments—is back on the auction block.
Anyone who buys Sugar Grove Station will have to deal with a big problem: cell phone service. It’s situated in the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile mile area surrounding the Green Bank Telescope where electronic transmissions are strictly regulated.
That electronic quiet made it easier for the base’s occupants to spy on transmissions headed to the East Coast, and it makes the area a haven for so-called “electrosensitives” who claim they’re made ill by cell phone or Wi-Fi transmissions. (Researchers who study the condition are more skeptical).
At Sugar Grove Station, meanwhile, the Quiet Zone means that cell service is all but nonexistent. While the town exists outside of the 10-mile area around the telescope, any attempt to set up a cell tower would require input from the Green Bank observatory to make sure its transmissions wouldn’t interfere with the telescope. Sometimes, according to a Green Bank spokesman, that can be as simple as changing the design on an antenna.
With its 80 townhouses and multitude of other buildings, Sugar Grove Station could definitely be...something. West Virginia politicians worked to find some use for the site that would bring jobs after the area after other military agencies opted against taking it over. Various government agencies have considered it for everything from a women’s prison to a temporary site for unaccompanied immigrant children.
The problem is that Sugar Grove Station—about an hour’s drive from Harrisonburg, Va. and two hours from West Virginia’s capital—isn’t really close to anything.
What do you with an empty small town in the middle of nowhere? Apparently, think of more unorthodox options. Potential buyers have considered the site for corporate retreats, or transitional housing for veterans. No matter what ends up there, it can be well-protected from a fire—Sugar Grove Station has a very new fire station with space for as many as six fire engines.
The town has even been considered as a potential movie set, says a spokesman for the General Services Administration, which is handling the sale.
Walking through Sugar Grove Station’s empty neighborhood, it’s certainly easy to see it in a horror movie. An overgrown playground straight out of Are You Afraid of the Dark is surrounded by rows and rows of empty, identical houses. One house still had an abandoned lawnmower; another, a children’s chalk drawing still on a brick wall.
While Sugar Grove Station has only been closed for a year, potential buyers got a surprise in the town’s 45,000-square-foot hotel-style dorm. As they stepped into an elevator, caretaker Junior Smith warned them that the elevator hadn’t been maintenanced in years.
