Who paved the way for Hillary Clinton to (possibly) be our next president? A lot of people of course, though perhaps none more important than American suffragists, who were fighting for the right to vote in a time when it was just becoming conceivable that women could win elected office.
Embedded in the map above, you'll find the grave sites of dozens of them, sites perhaps deserving of a pilgrimage—as hundreds have done for Susan B. Anthony today.
Grave locations sourced in part from Find-A-Grave.
The Earl of Sandwich, a food shop on Boston Common, is located in an octagonal stone building that was once a men’s comfort station. Built of cast stone over terra cotta brick in 1916, the 660-square foot structure was nicknamed the "Pink Palace" because of its colored masonry.
Unused as a restroom since the 1970s, it crumbled slowly behind an iron fence. The decrepit building looked more like a tomb that had wandered away from the nearby Central Burying Ground than a public restroom. An engineering report commissioned by the City of Boston noted the building’s disrepair: “The current condition of the building is very poor,’’ the report states. “The glass and copper roof has failed, the entry door is severely damaged, and the interior finishes are damaged beyond repair.’’
One of nine historic structures on Boston Common, the building is located near the center, close to athletic fields, tennis courts, and the Parkman Bandstand. The Boston Landmarks Commission reviewed all of the company’s proposed changes to the structure before construction began.
The Earl of Sandwich, a national chain located in Orlando, Florida, spent over a million dollars renovating the former Men’s Comfort Station. The structure required both interior and exterior work. The company retained the original appearance, which included clerestory windows and the roof’s copper flashing. A new 24-faceted copper roof replicates the form of the original skylight and both the original roof monitor and ventilator were replicated in copper.
Abigail Adams was not only the wife of second United States President John Adams, she was a trusted advisor throughout his political career. From this strong position she did her part to champion women's rights, famously urging her husband and the other founding fathers to "remember the ladies" when writing the laws of the new nation.
Abigail joined other leaders at the time to argue that men should not have total authority over their wives, and that women should have access to a formal education. Abigail Adams is entombed alongside her husband John Adams and son, John Quincy Adams, in the family crypt beneath the United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Julia Ward Howe was a patriotic author, poet, and social reformer. She's best known for writing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" (also known as the lyrics to "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory") at the urging of President Abraham Lincoln, which became the anthem of the Union Army. However, her most prominent causes were pacifist feminism and suffrage for women.
In spite of the fact that her husband restricted her liberal progressivist causes, Julia published an abolitionist paper. After her husband's death, she immersed herself in activism. She lectured on women's rights while traveling around the United States as president of numerous women's associations she led and, in some cases, founded. During this time she also founded and wrote for the Women's Journal, which advocated for suffrage week after week. She also advocated for a then uncreated holiday called Mother's Day, during which mothers from around the world would advocate for peace.
Unfortunately, she did not live to see women receive suffrage. When she died in 1910 at the age of 91, her funeral service was so densely attended that two services were held at the Church of the Disciples and at the Boston Symphony Hall. Julia Ward Howe is buried in Boston's historic Mount Auburn Cemetery, where voters of all kinds can pay her a visit.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a leading women’s rights activist and an outspoken suffragist and abolitionist throughout her life. As a talented writer, she wrote the Declaration of Sentiments detailing the movement’s demand for equal rights for women including proposing the right to vote. Stanton, along with Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and others presented the declaration at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, launching the women’s rights movement.
A monument stands today at Stanton’s burial place at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. The gravesite, along with the resting place of Susan B. Anthony, saw an uptick in visitors during the 2016 presidential election.
While attending Vassar College Inez Milholland first became involved in women's rights activism. The college refused to allow suffragists to come speak at the college, and the young Milholland staged a protest in response. Though she was suspended from the school for her actions, her activist career had only just begun.
She went on to become a prominent labor law attorney in New York, a highly unusual position for a woman to hold in the early 20th century.
At President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, she led a march of 8,000 suffragists through Washington, D.C. on a white horse with her hair loose and flowing over a long cape. As a young and beautiful woman, she became the popular face of suffrage, as well as a model of the "New Woman": She liked to dance and date, and did both openly.
Inez was a founding member of the NAACP, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and the National Child Labor Committee, as well as other groups that championed the rights of disenfranchised people, particularly women.
While speaking in Los Angeles, she collapsed due to complications from anemia and died a month later. She was only 30. Her gravesite is in Lewis Cemetery, Elizabethtown, New York, and was frequented by feminist admirers long after her untimely death.
She succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the head of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and founded the International Woman Suffrage Association in an effort to bring votes to women in Australia, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and of course, the United States.
After American women received the vote in 1919, Catt stepped down as president and founded the League of Women Voters to inform women about their political choices. She also founded the Woman's Peace Party, the Committee on the Cause and Cure of War, and campaigned for American entry into the League of Nations. She was the first women to win the American Hebrew Award for her efforts denouncing Hitler's persecution of the Jews as early as 1933. Catt understood it as women's responsibility to end wars, as they were more "morally courageous" than men.
Catt died at home alongside her housemate of 20 years and fellow suffragist, Mary Garret Hay. She's buried in a stately grave in the Bronx's Woodlawn Cemetery, and requested that Hay be buried beside her, rather than either of her two former husbands.
On a tiny, cold and wet peninsula, outside the Free City of Danzig, the first shots of World War Two were fired. The first battle of the most devastating conflict in human history began when, on September 1, 1939 at 4:48am, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein let loose a barrage of artillery onto the Polish naval depot, Westerplatte.
Despite the fact that Westerplatte was tiny and poorly guarded, it was a surprise to few that this would become the site of the first battle of a war long in the making. Within the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk, today), Nazi support was at an all-time high among the largely German local population, which Hitler’s government had been trying to annex into the third Reich for years. Westerplatte was the location of the only Polish military presence in the area.
For nearly a decade, the Polish military had been warning its allies that a German attack was imminent, but provisions stipulated within the Treaty of Versailles limited the strength of the Westerplatte compound to just 88 soldiers. Against the treaty and in preparation of the ensuing violence, the Polish naval garrison began reinforcing their meager existing fortifications with machine guns, mortars, and antitank weaponry while the number of soldiers stationed there was nearly tripled.
It was all for naught, as the Germans won the battle, but against all odds, the outnumbered and outgunned Polish soldiers were able to keep a force more than ten times their number at bay for seven days. In the end, of the 3,400 Germans who took part in the battle, 300 died. Only around 15 of the 210 Polish forces perished.
German General, Friedrich-Georg Eberhardt, was so impressed with the valor and heroism of the Polish forces that, following the battle, he allowed Polish Major Henryk Sucharski to carry his saber into captivity and saluted the fallen Polish forces. The heroism of the loss became a rallying cry for Polish underground resistance throughout the war and the battle has been compared by Polish historians to Thermopylae and Verdun.
Today, an outdoor museum with a walkable exhibition leads you through the history of the peninsula, as well as the prelude, duration, and aftermath of the battle. Memorials at the site to the fallen Polish soldiers are continuously decorated with flowers and candles. Ruined buildings from the battle have been stabilized and can be walked through.
In 1966, the Soviet Government gifted a massive monument to the site called "A Monument to the Defenders of the Coast." A large sign stands next to the monument reads "Nigdy Więcej Wojny": War Never Again.
At a small museum in the small village of Ordino in the small country of Andorra, you'll find some of the smallest works of art in existence. Visitors must look through microscopes that magnify the artwork 300 times in order to see these tiny masterpieces that are otherwise nearly invisible to the naked eye.
The Miniature Museum features the works of Ukrainian microminiaturist Nikolai Syadristy, an artist who is renowned for being the best in the world at miniature art. In fact, the word "microminiature" was invented because of the pieces of art he created. From signatures on the tip of a human hair to a bottle on a single grain of sand, to a caravan of camels inside the eye of a needle, you'll find 13 very impressive Syadristy works at this museum.
Unrelated to the miniature art, the museum has also thrown in an impressive collection of crucifixes from throughout the centuries and heaps of handmade Russian nesting dolls along with a few other miscellaneous artifacts. Although Syadristy's works have significant monetary value, he does not sell them as he wants them to remain on public display.
In the Middle Ages, creating a book could take years. A scribe would bend over his copy table, illuminated only by natural light—candles were too big a risk to the books—and spend hours each day forming letters, by hand, careful never to make an error. To be a copyist, wrote one scribe, was painful: “It extinguishes the light from the eyes, it bends the back, it crushes the viscera and the ribs, it brings forth pain to the kidneys, and weariness to the whole body.”
Given the extreme effort that went into creating books, scribes and book owners had a real incentive to protect their work. They used the only power they had: words. At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures.
They did not hesitate to use the worst punishments they knew—excommunication from the church and horrible, painful death. Steal a book, and you might be cleft by a demon sword, forced to sacrifice your hands, have your eyes gouged out, or end in the “fires of hell and brimstone.”
“These curses were the only things that protected the books,” says Marc Drogin, author of Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses. “Luckily, it was in a time where people believed in them. If you ripped out a page, you were going to die in agony. You didn’t want to take the chance.”
Drogin's book, published in 1983, is the most through compendium of book curses ever compiled. A cartoonist and business card designer, Drogin had taken an adult-education class in Gothic letters and became entranced with medieval calligraphy. While researching his first book, he came across a short book curse; as he found more and more, hidden in footnotes of history books written in the 19th century, his collection grew to include curses from ancient Greece and the library of Babylon, up to the Renaissance.
To those historians, the curses were curiosities, but to Drogin they were evidence of just how valuable books were to medieval scribes and scholars, at a time when even the most elite institutions might have libraries of only a few dozen books.
The curse of excommunication—anathema—could be simple. Drogin found many examples of short curses that made quick work of this ultimate threat. For example:
May the sword of anathema slay If anyone steals this book away.
Si quis furetur, Anathematis ense necetur.
If a scribe really wanted to get serious, he might threaten "anathema-maranatha"—maranatha indicating "Our Lord has Come" and serving as an intensifier to the basic threat of excommunication. But the curses could also be much, much more elaborate. “The best threat is one that really lets you know, in specific detail, what physical anguish is all about. The more creative the scribe, the more delicate the detail,” Drogin wrote. A scribe might imagine a terrible death for the thief:
“If anyone take away this book, let him die the death; let him be fried in a pan; let the falling sickness and fever size him; let him be broken on the wheel, and hanged. Amen."
Or even more detailed:
“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand & rend him. Let him be struck with palsy & all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, & let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, & when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever."
Drogin’s book had dozens of such curses in it, and he had collected at least a dozen more to include in the second edition, which was never published. Inside his copy of the book, he still has a baggie of antique file cards, full of book curses.
As Drogin collected curses, he started to find repeats. Not all scribes were creative enough to write their own curses. If you're looking for a good, solid book curse, one that will serve in all sorts of situations, try this popular one out. It covers lots of bases, and while it's not quite as threatening as bookworms gnawing at entrails, it'll get the job done:
"May whoever steals or alienates this book, or mutilates it, be cut off from the body of the church and held as a thing accursed."
On a recent day in front of the Conchero, a statue of a dancing Chichimeca in downtown Querétaro, about 130 miles northwest of Mexico City, two clowns were moving through the opener of their show. At one point, a boy in a blue vest tells them he’s from Mexico City; in response, the clowns shriek and hide their money, before invoking Mexican slang for a Mexico City resident to explain their fear. “Last time a chilango came to the show, he robbed the Indian!” The shorter one, Piskachin, said. “It used to have clothes. A blue vest, if I remember…”
Cue laughter, as the boy goes wide-eyed looking down at what he’s wearing.
Piskachin’s joke—a charming throwaway in a routine that he has been refining with his partner Trompo for years—goes a small way toward explaining the appeal of clowning in Mexico, which is ubiquitous on the streets and, for hundreds if not thousands of performers, represents a full-time job. Their presence connotes little of the creepiness that clowns invoke across the U.S. (and also none of the widespread panic) but instead are happy fixtures in a wide array of social activities, from kids’ birthdays to bachelorette parties to government functions. Mexico’s version of The Daily Show, called El Mañanero, is anchored by a clown. And many in the country, like that boy and his parents in the streets of Querétaro, appreciate them for what they are: avatars of the absurd, an ever-present reminder that life is worth it, if just for the laughter. But many clowns also serve a broader, even subversive purpose, a strand of gay expression that’s acceptable in a country that is still largely sexually conservative. They can also bridge class divides. At one recent show in Querétaro, two women whose shoes cost more than my camera watched alongside some indigenous migrants who might later have to walk a dozen miles just to get back on a train heading home. For a brief moment, though, both groups laughed together in the one place in the city where all social groups mix—between the plazas and in the middle of a clown show.
Recently, I spent some time with three of Mexico’s street clowns: Piskachin, who briefly terrified the boy, his partner Trompo Trompito, and Marcelo Miserias Pelos Tristes. At 42, Marcelo’s the veteran and the current president of the clown association of Querétaro. He’d always wanted to act, and after high school he fell in with a mime and ended up performing for the first time in the Zócalo in Mexico City. He started out copying Charlie Chaplin’s tramp and called himself Plincha in honor of the character. He’s been through a lot of states, characters, and a marriage since then. His full name, Marcelo Miserias Pelos Tristes, and the way he wears his kinky hair when he’s performing, are each inspired by Marcel Marceau, the French mime.
Piskachin, 27 and a father of two, and Trompo, 18, are both sons of clowns, and they started out performing in their fathers’ shows as kids. “I’ve always been short,” says Piskachin, and where he’s from, piska, “a pinch,” refers to anything diminutive. He tacked the chin on, he says, because kids at parties took the feminine ending to mean he was a girl. Trompo means “top,” like the toy, and he got the name because of the way he used to bop around to the music at the bars where his father performed.
And while Marcelo’s career in clowning is well-established, and Trompo’s is just starting, Piskachin said that he had other options before going into clowning full-time, going to college for business and working for a Mexican railway before quitting to be a clown.
“They paid me very well, but it didn’t fulfill me,” Piskachin said, “and there came a time when I said, ‘Being a payaso is what I want to do with my life.’”
Now, Piskachin and Trompo play three shows in the street on Saturdays and Sundays and work the city buses Monday through Friday. In a good week they’ll play five or six private events, usually birthdays or bachelorette parties, for about $150 a pop.
The money at most of the normal shows is acquired through an ask, which Piskachin and Trompo also take the opportunity to turn into a bit. At one show they asked 10 people for bills, eventually getting seven after a woman exchanged a hundred for four of the clowns’ twenties, increasing their take but not, alas, the number of bills they’d originally asked for.
“Let’s count,” Piskachin says. “One, two, three, four, five, six…seven? We need three more!”
The crowd erupts.
The stakes for the clowns—literally, their livelihoods—are high, but their earnings are also hugely influenced by their position in the streets. Trompo and Piskachin’s spot, for example, is in one of the best plazas in town, a right that they earned through the local clown association, known as, the Collective of Artist Clowns and Urban Culture in the State of Querétaro, or CPACUEQ. There’s a list of requirements negotiated for each plaza by CPACUEQ and the municipal government, with hours of operation, maturity of language, and the freedom of the public way all taken into consideration. It’s not always easy for CPACUEQ to interface with the government, meaning that they often keep their agreements with the city by handshakes and words of honor. Clowns breaking the rules get a talking to by the boss of the plaza—always an elder statesman of the collective—and repeated infractions land them before a jury of their peers. Which is to say, clowns.
“We’re like a little republic,” says Marcelo. “Every plaza is its own state, and the boss of each plaza serves as representative to the collective.” Both Piskachin’s and Trompo’s fathers are representatives, and Marcelo became current head by dint of his work in clown labor organizing in Querétaro, Mexico City, and elsewhere over the last couple of decades. Each representative brings the concerns and needs of the clowns of his plaza to committee meetings, and if the CPACUEQ can’t resolve them internally, they go to the city. The organization also stepped in after, recently, some young Mexicans started organizing gangs to attack clowns following Mexico’s own brush with a clown scare—sometimes administering public beatings to working clowns in the process. Marcelo and the collective worked with the municipal government to get the groups shut down.
The organization also works with less urgent matters, like helping working clowns to manage their money, and what Marcelo says is the need for clowns to be socially responsible with their acts.
“We’re fighting against poor pedagogies of clowning,” he says. “Clowns are a medium of expression, and we project towards society a model of what to think and to feel.”
Still, a lot of Mexican clowning is rooted in old-fashioned jokes, and here that often means la picardía Mexicana, a form of wordplay and double-entendre that is a national pastime and a respected art-form. One night, for example, in an elaborate skit, Piskachin strapped into a raggedy, undersized wedding dress, prompting the crowd to howl and shout insults. But then Piskachin revealed two of his fictional names, to huge laughs from the crowd: Rosa del Bahío and Rosa la Manguera. Both turn out to be subtle dick jokes. Manguera, is, literally, a hose in Spanish, while Bahío is a mix of bahía, or bay, and bahío, slang for one’s genitals, both names that could be taken as innocuous or filthy.
The double-entendre is important, too, because the rules for this particular plaza are strict. No cursing, no blocking the public way, and nothing obscene before 10:20pm. Still, Piskachin and Trompo’s act could be taken as thoroughly adult throughout, mostly thanks to Piskachin, who grew up mastering the art of doing mature shows that are also safe for kids. In this realm, it’s the adults who turn into children, laughing hard at the joke on the surface before discovering the second one just below.
Clowns are also able to do and say things that would get other shows cancelled and, in certain barrios, might get a man killed, from lambasting the same city authorities that let them perform to insulting their audiences to kissing other men in the crowd.
Mexico’s come a long way in the last decade or so, and places like the Zona Rosa in Mexico City are as progressive as San Francisco, but the country as a whole is still machista, and, in a place like Querétaro, still very socially conservative. If you’re a clown, though, none of those rules seem to apply. Consider one recent scene where Piskachin gestured toward a man he’d picked out as a guapo, a desirable one.
“You’re perfect,” Piskachin said, touching him on the chest. The guy turned to give a thumbs-up to the audience, and Piskachin used the opening to leap up and kiss him on the face, much to the delight of his friends in the crowd.
Or take another sequence called the Waltz, normally done with men who fit a certain masculine ideal: muscly chests, thin shirts, and painted-on jeans. In the Waltz, though, the men are able to let their guard down a little, dancing in circles with a paunchy clown in a wig and appearing to love it.
But Piskachin and Trompo’s show doesn’t just subvert the macho, it’s built on it. The Waltz routine is one example, but it’s present throughout. Both clowns, for instance, constantly flirt with the men in the crowd, while during each opener, Trompo says that people tell him, “Don’t be a niña.”
“But I’m not a niña,” he says, “I’m 18. I’m a woman,” rubbing his hands down his sides.
Or take this bit, called The Story of the Bible, in which Trompo quizzes Piskachin: “Who was the first man?”
“Oh no,” Piskachin responds.
“Who was the first man?” Trompo repeats.
“It’s personal,” he says.
“Who was the first man?”
“Alright, it was him!” Piskachin yells, and grabs a man from the crowd.
This schtick is known as jotear, which might best translate to “queering around,” suggesting a more crass cultural appropriation, but Marcelo says that the point is to tear down the audience’s resistance to gay-coded behavior and normalize it.
“Suddenly they think, ‘You’re not taking my machismo away, I’m just playing in your game,’” says Trompo, “And they let you play with them, they think, ‘I’m getting out or getting to do what I can’t with my friends or my family.’”
In the earlier bit, after Piskachin kissed the guapo, a lascivious dance ensued, and Piskachin moved the guy’s hands down to his waist, while the guapo went even further, grabbing Piskachin’s ass and lifting him into the air. Towards the end of the routine, Piskachin had the men take hold of his ankles and lift him up, flopping his dress over the guapo’s head and thrusting towards him once he was in the air. Piskachin wobbled around until they had to let him go and he fell into a somersault, his dress flying over his head. As embarrassed as they would be at dropping a real quinceañera, the men all offered him a hand. He had them take a bow and they did, red-faced, smiling and giddy.
“We’re public figures,” Piskachin says, “And what we do has repercussions in society. I say, ‘Come on, come and play with me, have fun. I’m the ridiculous one.’ And like that, they participate.”
In the little town church of Ponte Nossa's Santuario Madonna delle Lacrime Immacolate (Sanctuary of Our Lady of Immaculate Tears, alternatively known as Santa Maria Annunziata) there is an important relic dangling from the rafters: a crocodile.
This is no ordinary stuffed croc though (if such a thing exists). Though its origins have been lost to the ages, the church has documents detailing the crocodile's removal from the church in 1534. At the very least, it's some 500 years old, making it the oldest existing piece of taxidermy in the world.
It was thought to be missing, but in the 18th century the crocodile had reappeared in the church's attic. It was strung up from the ceiling and has remained there ever since.
There are actually a number of crocodiles on display in European churches, which boggles the mind both for its apparent arbitrariness and the fact that there are no crocodiles in Europe. Elsewhere in Italy, a crocodile hangs from the rafters in the Santuario della Beata Vergine Maria delle Grazie, and another exists in Brno's Town Hall.
Scholars have suggested that perhaps this was what people thought dragons were, and given that dragons appear in biblical tales like that of St. George, a church was a fitting place to display one. Others have offered that there may have actually been crocodiles stalking Europe at some point, and these mounted specimens might have been trophies. Still others suggest that there may have been other animals on display at one point but because taxidermy had not yet been perfected, the reptiles' leathery hides were the only ones to survive.
In any case, there may be an ancient crocodile hanging somewhere nearer to you than you thought.
Have you ever wondered which president had the most dogs? What George Washington named his hound? Which president brought a parrot to the White House?
For years, you had somewhere to go to learn all this—the Presidential Pet Museum, an offbeat collection of paintings, photographs and fuzzy memorabilia. For 17 years, its proprietor, Claire McLean, schlepped the museum from storefront to storefront, bringing her trove of political animal history all around Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. But now she's retired, and much of the museum is boxed up in storage—waiting, like a patient pup, for someone to give it another chance.
McLean began her collection late in life, after a serendipitous encounter with the Reagans' dog, Lucky. McLean breeds Bouvier des Flandres, a species of Flemish herding dog with a rough outer coat that needs regular grooming. When Lucky needed a trim before his official portrait, the White House horticulturist called her in to do it. "I found out the next day I'd cut too much hair off," she says. "Mrs. Reagan was rather unhappy."
But they still asked her back, and for eight months, McLean was Lucky's official groomer. She kept all of his spare trimmings, and one day, her mother decided to paint a portrait of the First Dog, generously textured with tufts of his own fur. The cornerstone of the collection thus set, McLean began casting far and wide for more pet tchotchkes.
"I just started collecting. Anything and everything I could find," she says. "There were all kinds of animals that came through the White House, and each one brought a story with it."
After a decade and a half of dedication, she's built up quite the arsenal. There's a larger-than-life bronze statue of Barney, George W. Bush's terrier. There's a gold-framed photo of sheep grazing on the White House lawn, from the Wilson administration; and goofy snapshots of the Coolidges playing with their pet raccoon and possum. There's a T-shirt emblazoned with Socks, the Clintons' cat, staring out under a cheeky slogan: "I Tried Catnip Once But I Didn't Inhale."
There are also over 50 oil paintings, all McLean originals, showing presidential pets and owners in various tableaux: FDR and his Scotty, Fala, gazing out over the Washington Monument, and the Obamas playing with a whole menagerie of creatures. She made them to fill in the gaps in political pet legacies.
"When a president's pet goes to the great beyond or the rainbow bridge or just plain dies, they don't leave very much," she says. "Not lands, not stocks or bonds or jewelry or clothing or anything. You're lucky if you get a leash, a collar and a bowl."
McLean thinks for a moment: "Or just a rope, a tether and a cowbell," she revises. "Which we have. From William Howard Taft's cow, Pauline."
Eclectic as it is, the collection is something of a hard sell. People have always been happy to come visit, but thus far, no one has been prepared to fork over the $30,000 or so McLean is asking for it, which would give the buyer control of the museum's popular website along with all of the physical inventory. An online auction in July got plenty of press coverage, but no takers. "It seems like everyone wants it but they don't want to invest in it, because it takes a lot of money to run a museum," she says.
But McLean plans to try again soon, and she is nothing if not persuasive. Just ask Dave Baker, a journalist who, after one brief phone call with her, ended up a part owner. Baker originally called to fact-check a piece he was writing for Petful, a site he runs. "She gave me some details about the museum, and then she said, 'Do you want to buy it?'" he remembers.
He thought on it, and agreed to take charge of the website, which he has run for four years now. At the moment, his favorite presidential pet is Pushinka—Russian for "Fluffy"—a white mongrel gifted to Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Khrushchev. Pushinka and the Kennedys' Welsh terrier, Charlie, took a liking to each other and eventually had four puppies. "There's an American dog and a Russian dog, and love trumped all there," he says. "Just this wonderful bright light in the Cold War."
If the Pet Museum sells, Baker will miss it like, well, a beloved, departed pet. "I really believe in it," he says. "I would totally have it myself if I had space." McLean will miss her presidential animal trove too, so much that she's giving it a last hurrah—her current apartment, at a retirement community in D.C., hosts a rotating exhibit. "I've basically made one of the rooms into the Presidential Pet Museum," she says. Her neighbors come by to check out the stash, and to hear her stories.
In this business, though, change is inevitable—there are both term limits and lifespans to contend with. Even as they're working to sell, McLean and Baker are taking a minute to mourn something they have less control over: the imminent departure of Sunny and Bo, the Obama family's Portuguese water dogs.
Reading about the dogs' exploits, the life of a modern-day presidential pet comes into focus: campaign duties, kidnapping attempts, rides on Air Force One. Clearly, life in the White House is unique for pets as well as owners.
"It'll be sad to see them go," Baker says. "But it's interesting to think of what the next pets will be."
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.
Over its course of 119 km (74 miles), the Uvac River carves a deep and winding valley through a dramatic karst landscape of mountain peaks, towering escarpments, and expansive caves. Among such engaging terrain, the Meanders stand out as a particularly striking portion of the Uvac River's ruggedly picturesque channel.
The Meanders are formed by a series of tightly packed, looping arches that the river has sculpted out of its limestone bed over the millennia. In this stretch, the canyon walls can soar up to 100 meters (328 feet) above the twisting and turning waters below. The result is a natural setting that is as impressive from any elevation.
The Uvac River Meanders are part of the Uvac Special Nature Reserve, a protected area first created in 1971 that now encompasses a total of 7543 ha (29 square miles). The reserve is home to several notable species of birds and fish, including the osprey, eagle owl, goosander, chub, barbel, huchen, and sneep.
The area is particularly popular among vulture lovers, as it serves as a sanctuary for the griffon vulture, a bird featured on many Serbian coats of arms whose wingspan can reach 3 meters (10 feet). The griffon vulture face extinction as recently as 20 years ago, but is now thriving in the Uvac River Valley, thanks in large part to conservation groups that have set up large "outdoor restaurants" for the scavengers, stocked with carrion and slaughterhouse waste. The majestic birds can often be seen perched on the cliffs overlooking the Meanders.
In the 1960s, San Diego proposed to expand what is now known as State Route 163, the Cabrillo Freeway, through Balboa Park to an 8- to 10-lane freeway. Public protest stopped the freeway from expanding more than its existing four lanes, but not before a portion of the SR 163/I-5 freeway connection began construction. The built portion would have extended north over a pedestrian walkway. The stub is still visible today from the Bridle Trail in Balboa Park and connects to the SR 163/I-5 interchange, modeled after the "Four Level" US 101/SR 110 interchange in Los Angeles.
An architectural and engineering marvel is silently standing within a public building in the old town of Graz. Completed in 1438 under the guidance of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, The Burg of Graz was expanded by Frederick’s son, Emperor Maximilian, from 1494-1500. When reopened, officials and civilians marveled at the Doppelwendeltreppe, or “Double Spiral Staircase” that traveled two floors to the top of the tower.
The stairs split and rejoin several times as they circle upward to the top, and has often been interpreted as a symbol of eternity. Graz people call it the "stairs of reconciliation” for if you go separate ways, you will ultimately reunite.
Built by an unknown architect, the staircase has proven to stand the test of time, and feet, as the Burg is still used for official town purposes today. Double spiral staircases are not unheard of, though they are very rare. This one is remarkable for hollow spindles, which feature a remarkable amount of dexterity in engineering. The sister staircase of this one was built 50 years prior in Elisabeth Cathedral in Košice, Slovakia, but lacks the grandeur and sophistication of it’s successor.
We're all a little surprised here, and a tad punch drunk, and, perhaps losing our perspective a bit. So let's look at this: Earth from the International Space Station, slowly spinning and orbiting the Sun, a tiny blue orb in an infinitely large universe.
In September, Harambe-gate at UMass Amherst hit a fever pitch. The “Dicks out for Harambe” meme, which vulgarly paid homage to the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo, had been growing increasingly popular online and on college campuses across the country.
While many used Harambe tributes to poke well-meaning fun at the performative, almost daily cycles of public outrage and grieving, the meme was also often loaded with racist invective.
And then, UMass-Amherst found itself the butt of the joke: an email from RAs at UMass Amherst’s Sycamore Hall made its way to the internet, stating that the continued use of the meme was a “micro-aggression” against fellow students and that the proliferation of “Dicks out for Harambe” notes could constitute a Title IX violation.
Before the initial warning from the RAs, which appears to have been sent on September 5th, there were two recorded Harambe-related complaints, on September 3rd and 4th.
Campus officers were called, did a sweep and took photographs of the offending messages, and noted that they “concluded that the message was an inappropriate way to show support for the gorilla, Harambe, that got shot at a zoo.”
They also determined that the writing did not appear to be targeted, and it was not noted as a potential Title IX violation.
But the memo appears to have only led to more Harambe memorials: makeshift tributes to the gorilla appeared at least five more times after the memo was sent, and more might have appeared since - documents were only request through mid-September.
The first reappearance of the meme post-memo was actually on an unidentified RA’s white board, and was then followed by what was only described as a “strange phone call (harambe related)”:
More appearances then followed: “Take a shot for harambe he took one of you” appeared on a whiteboard on September 9th, and “Dick’s out for Harambe. f*ck trigger warnings” appeared on a resident’s room on September 11th.
The final Harambe incident included in the documents was also the most elaborate display:
“three windows with images in them in [redacted] on the 2nd and 3rd floor. they shared that one window on the 3rd floor that had “RIP Harambe” written with post its and that there were two windows on the 2nd floor that had images of what looked like monkey, potentially engaging in sex. The Das indicated that they could not tell what the images actually were. RD Jess called REL Michael, who advised her to call UMPD to check in about next steps. RD Jess spoke with dispatch, and Sergeant Green. Sgt Green shared that this could be taken care of within Residence Life and have a conversation. RD Jess called RA [redacted] and asked if they felt comfortable knocking on the doors and having a conversation with the residents. They indicated that they did, and their RD, Kristen, was on rounds with them.”
While no pictures of the depiction are included, it’s later detailed they were stick figures made of tape.
In this case, the RAs intervened directly with the students of one of the rooms and successfully negotiated to have “RIP Harambe” changed to “RIP Gorilla.” While they were not able to enter the rooms of the students who had put together the copulating stick figures, they were voluntarily removed the next morning.
Read all the UMass Amherst Harambe complaints below.
Ever since the opening chiptunes of Super Mario Brothers started issuing from television sets across the globe, the term “1-Up” has been synonymous for an extra life. But as it turns out, the origin of the 1-Up goes back even further, stretching back into the world of pinball.
We asked pinball champion Bowen Kerins where the term began. “I really have no idea what was the first game to do this, but it clearly predates any electronic video games,” Kerins says. During the 1960s, terms like “1-Up,” and “2-Up,” and so on began appearing on the back glass of pinball machines. In this context the term would usually appear next to a score display, indicating both a player’s accumulated points and also which player’s turn it was, or rather which player was "up."
Some older games like 1966’s Stampedemachine, made by pinball manufacturer Stern, had their score readouts labeled “1st Player” and “2nd Player,” with the “Up” off to the side near an arrow that would light up on a given player’s turn. A similar labeling can be found on 1963’s Race-Way by Midway. Eventually, this labeling system was shortened to the X-Up format which we’re more familiar with today, and which became the standard throughout the industry.
While the use of the terminology can be traced back to at least the 1960s, its exact first occurrence is not known, although Kerins suggested one back glass illustrator who may have had a hand in the term’s creation. “Note that both A Go Go and Capersville, even though built by different companies, were hand drawn by the same person (Jerry Kelley),” says Kerins. “Perhaps this person is the origin of the name ‘1 Up.’ Kelley's very first artwork, in 1963 for Midway, also had the ‘Up’ but in more detail.”
As the popular focus of gaming shifted from pinball to arcade video games through the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s, some of the lingo transferred over as well. Arcade games identified their players in all sorts of ways ranging from the simple “1p” to more game-specific designations like Gauntlet’s fantasy classes, in which you were labeled a Wizard or a Rogue. But still others, like Galaga, just brought over the old 1-Up/2-Up system from the pinball days, even though an increasing number of the games no longer required players to alternate rounds of play.
Having made the jump from mechanical pinball machines to digital video games, 1-Up’s next logical transference was to the world of home console games, where it made its biggest impact. Whereas before, the 1-Up label was simply there as functionary indicator, probably going complete unnoticed by most, that all changed with Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo. During the very first level of this beloved game, players could jump up at one point and find a secret extra life in the form of a green mushroom. Then, when the player collected it, the term “1-Up” floated out towards the top of the screen.
It was likely meant to signify, well, an extra life, described as another call out to the player first player. But whatever the original intention, 1-Up nearly instantly became synonymous for “extra life” in any video game.
Far removed from its pinball hall origins, 1-Up is still widely used slang for video game extra lives. The term 1-Up now adorns everything from websites to energy drinks, and is an ingrained piece of gamer grammar. But never forget that it belonged to the pinballers first.
In a 17th century mayoral house on an Amsterdam canal there is a museum that hones in on one specific region of fashion history: purses.
This collection might seem strangely specific, but the museum curators view the handbag as an historical artifact at the intersection of technology and fashion. It's also something we've produced a lot of throughout the ages, and as such, the museum is stocked floor to ceiling with purses, bags, cases, satchels, and all other sorts of storage accoutrement.
It's the largest collection of purses and bags the world over, with more than 5,000 artifacts and counting. The oldest bags in the collection date to the 16th century and were mostly used by men to carry Bibles, alms, etc. There are châtelaines, proto-toolkits women could carry attached to their belts on chains around the 17th century, that carry scissors, thimbles, and smelling salts. 20th century bags range from utilitarian rucksacks to tiny clutches, reflecting the many different roles women played throughout the century.
There are as many different kinds of purses as one could imagine. The museum has items like Margaret Thatcher's handbag and the Versace purse Madonna carried to the premiere of Evita. There are ancient bags made from dirtied goat's hide and purses encrusted with thousands of Swarovski crystals. The purse has always been a handy accessory, but here at the Tassen Museum it takes the spotlight.
