Two days ago, President Barack Obama told voters in Michigan that Donald Trump was "temperamentally unfit to be Commander in Chief." In August, Trump called Obama the "worst President in history," just the latest in a series of attacks that included impugning his legacy, questioning his sanity, and, of course, leading a years-long guerrilla inquest into his citizenship status.

It's not the kind of stuff that tends to lead to friendly playdates. But yesterday, Obama and Trump met privately in the Oval Office, to discuss a future that may require them to look past a few of these accusations. Like dozens of presidents before them, the outgoing and incoming presidents held their noses, stuck their hands out, and partook in a Democratic tradition—the post-election White House meeting.

As the Associated Presspointed out in 2008, the Constitution does not mention, let alone require, such a meeting. Federal law is also silent on the issue. Like the concession phone call, it has somehow slipped into the series of actions between an election and an inauguration—a way to keep things running smoothly. And the parties involved tend to bring their all to these meetings, whether that's an impromptu lecture, a surprise helicopter show, or just a hearty dose of goodwill.

Sometimes, the meeting provides an opportunity for true healing, as officials set aside polarizing campaign rhetoric in favor of common goals. Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, for example, ended up having a great chat in 1960. As LIFE later reported, Eisenhower, who had previously dismissed Kennedy as a "young whippersnapper," was very impressed by his successor, who had prepared extensively for the meeting.

"[Eisenhower] was overwhelmed by Senator Kennedy, the depth of his questions, his grasp of the issues, and the keenness of his mind," a White House aide told LIFE. And Kennedy, prepared as he was, was newly shocked by the difficulties that would soon face him. As Eisenhower briefed him on the economy and foreign policy, reality hit him hard—"I was finding out that things were really just as bad as I had said they were during the campaign," he later told his aides.

Part of the meeting involved blowing off some steam, though. The outgoing president was eager to show his succesor one of his favorite new additions to the White House: the panic button on the Oval Office desk that summons an emergency helicopter. Eisenhower had installed this button a few years earlier, and was proud of it. "He pushed the button, and Kennedy watched the fluttering helicopter coming down outside the windows within a few minutes," Kennedy's aides reported. (It's unclear whether this button still exists.)

Secret White House gizmos have proven to be a great bonding tactic. In 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson invited Richard Nixon to the White House, once again after a fraught campaign. As the once and future First Ladies toured the building room by room, Johnson took a moment to show Nixon a hidden surprise. "On our way to the West Wing, we stopped in his bedroom," Nixon later recalled in his memoirs. "'I wanted you to know about this,' Johnson said as he showed me how to open a small safe concealed in the wall."

Other meetings have fallen a bit flatter. Times of national crisis make for transitions that can get "really bitter," says Leo Rubiffo, a historian at George Washington Univeristy. In 1932, as the Great Depression raged, Herbert Hoover had taken to calling Franklin Roosevelt a "chameleon on plaid," while Roosevelt considered Hoover a "fat, timid capon."

When the two met up on November 22nd—the first of three meetings they would eventually hold between Election Day and Inauguration Day—Hoover had his Treasury Secretary lecture Roosevelt on the gold standard, and then called him "very badly informed and of very little vision." (Their other two meetings didn't go much better.) In 1952, as the Korean War dragged, Eisenhower had trouble forgiving Harry Truman for accusations made on the campaign trail. Their meeting went so badly that Eisenhower, pondering the limo ride on Inauguration Day, wondered "if I can stand sitting next to that guy."

And no matter the overall climate, it's an emotional moment for the outgoing party. "It struck me how hard it is for a defeated president to suddenly see cameras facing in the other direction," former Vice President Walter Mondale told the AP in 1992, recalling his own experience watching Jimmy Carter cede to Ronald Reagan in 1980. Even for those who remain undefeated, but instead have maxed out their term limit, this is the moment they begin letting go: "Your formal transfer occurs on January 20th, but the psychological transfer occurs then," Mondale said.

As for this particular meeting, Rubiffo predicted "a mutual attempt at cordiality." "Obama is by temperament conciliatory," he says. "Trump is—at least in part—a dealmaker. He will likely recognize that he has nothing to gain now by continuing the abrasive tone of his campaign." Although their discussion was private, some details have emerged. The two met for 90 minutes—much longer than planned. Obama called the meeting "excellent," while Trump said he considered it "a great honor." Michelle Obama toured Melania Trump around the White House.

But one part of the tradition was conspicuously absent: the photograph, generally taken outside the south entrance of the White House, of both families greeting each other. When they notice this absence in the history books, people of the future will have to draw their own conclusions.

In the summer of 2014, Elena Amabili and Alessandro Calvaresi were photographing the ghost town of Ibene in Latvia, home to a top-secret radio telescope. But while there, they found themselves intrigued by the town's more prosaic elements. The peeling paint and faded, torn wallpaper inside the abandoned Soviet-era apartment buildings seemed to offer a glimpse into the lives of the town's former inhabitants. 

Since then, Amabili and Calvaresi have traveled through other post-Soviet countries exploring deserted structures and, particularly, the interior walls of what were once peoples’ homes. Their project, Soviet Innerness, is a fascinating and unexpected look at Soviet-era interiors. Together, the images form an unsolvable visual puzzle about what life was like behind the Iron Curtain.

The photographs, all taken from the same angle, highlight small details of the homes. In one, peeling wallpaper reveals faded animal prints of a cat, a mouse and an alligator holding an umbrella. In another, a newspaper cartoon of a waving spaceman with a helmet initialed “1964” peeks out. Several images show wallpaper layered over newspaper, which was used to help weatherproof the walls.

Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from the project, below. 

A Chinese meditation center appears like a mirage in the middle of the Swedish countryside. The vision comes complete with a dragon, a tea house and a temple, and depending on your perspective, it’s a retreat of sublime spirituality, or a one-man money pit.

It all began in 1998, when a Polish-born Buddhist monk named Marcus Bongart wanted to bring his form of the ancient Chinese spiritual and meditative tradition called “Qigong” to southern Sweden. Bongart, who had escaped communist Poland in the early 1970s, bought an old school in the small village of Jönstorp, with the hope of creating a retreat center for Qigong, a practice related to Tai Chi.

Bongart got some investors to underwrite his plans, including Anni-Frid Reuss (of ABBA fame), who had an interest in Qigong and alternative therapies. The building project went on for years, and Anni-Frid gave Bongart tens of millions of Swedish krona to keep it going (although it's not entirely clear whether her money was intended as investment, donation, or flat-out gift).

With no end or opening in sight, a bankruptcy petition and lawsuits ensued, and Bongart’s Yangtorp project eventually halted altogether. Other than the occasional curious hiker, it sat dormant in the forest, burglars making off with everything that wasn’t nailed down (and a few things that were).

The site was put up for sale, and in 2013 finally found a buyer who paid öre on the krona (pennies on the dollar) to take it on and rebuild. The retreat opened in 2015 with Marcus Bongart remaining at the helm, even with a conviction of accounting rules violations and tax evasion to his credit (his sentence was only a hundred days of community service). Whether Bongart is to be seen as a pious Buddhist monk or a single-minded business man, probably depends on who you ask.

While the metaphorical skies might be falling down across America, in Myanmar, the skies are literally coming down, as according to the BBC, a large chunk of what was apparently space debris crashed down yesterday around a local jade mine.

Residents of the Kachin state in northern Myanmar began reporting hearing a loud boom that apparently shook nearby houses on Thursday. At first, the locals thought it might be an explosion or some kind of artillery, but the culprit turned out to be a large piece of metal junk returning to Earth.

Myanmar: Unidentified object falls from outer space - https://t.co/oz1BUemF0Zpic.twitter.com/5Cb4vP7oWS

— kaybat World (@kaybatworld) November 11, 2016

No one is positive exactly where it came from. According to early guesses, the 15-foot-long tube may have been a rocket stage that was ejected from a Chinese rocket launched back in March. These propulsion segments are usually meant to land in water or uninhabited areas, but it’s possible that it veered off course. This theory was corroborated by another, smaller piece of falling metal that shot through a local home around the same time. This bit of debris was reported as having Chinese writing on it.

This is not the first time large pieces of space junk have plummeted to Earth. The most famous example of such a crash being NASA's Skylab, pieces of which crashed back to Earth in 1979. Some of the pieces landed around the Shire of Esperance in Australia, which fined NASA for littering. No one was injured by the falling debris in Myanmar, but it remains to be seen if they will pursue a similar ticket. 

Driving through picturesque California wine country, you might be surprised to find a massive, rusted metal coyote baring its teeth in a howl.

Weighing seven tons, the Coyote sculpture was forged from steel and designed in such a way that the head can spin a full 360 degrees in a mild breeze. It's also fully climbable, in keeping with the Burners' spirit of adventure.

Coyote was created by sculptor Bryan Tedrick, and first exhibited in Nevada's Black Rock Desert for Burning Man 2013. The artist is best known for his gigantic works, usually in the shape of animals, assembled out of many pieces of of metal. Tedrick was inspired by the wanderers and outsiders who attend Burning Man. As he says, they are "... people who enjoy open spaces and the freedom to live freely, not unlike coyotes themselves."

After Burning Man, the sculpture was displayed along Highway 101 near Geyserville, California for 6 months as part of the Sonoma County Sculpture Trail.  Recently the owner of the Wilson Wineries Group purchased this sculpture as a present for his wife. Coyote was moved to its new home at Wilson Winery in Healdsburg in 2014. Given the rambling nature of the coyote though, this may not be its permanent home.

Nearly every inch of this Paris basilica is covered in ex-votos, devotional artifacts that take their name from the Latin "ex voto suscepto," or "from the vow made." The church houses an astounding 37,000 items. 

The church is named Notre Dame des Victoires, or Our Lady of Victories, after the unification of France under Louis XIII, who prayed to the Virgin for assistance. It became a popular site for Catholic pilgrims in the early 19th century, who would offer their offerings to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The collection of ex-votos is still growing, though wall space is becoming ever more scarce.

The ex-votos come in all different forms. Most are engraved bricks purchased by the offerer for the church. They read things like "La Sainte Vierge Ma Conserve Mon Petit Garcon En Mai 1856, C Et R" ("The Holy Virgin Saved My Little Boy In May 1856 C And R"), or No. 9011, "Jai Confié Ma Barque A L'etoile De La Mer Et Elle La Hereusement Conduite Au Port, L.C." ("I Have Entrusted My Boat To The Star Of The Sea And She Fortunately Led Her To Port, L.C."). There is one section of beautifully forged metal hearts. Another wall holds a case of military medals, offered by the soldiers to the Blessed Mother as thanks for their lives. 

We'll never know whether these prayers were granted by divine intervention, good fortune, or simply positive intentions, but it is heartwarming to see evidence of centuries of fulfilled vows and thankful people.

In 1977, Quebec passed legislation called “La charte de la langue française,” or The Charter of the French Language. Known simply as Bill 101, it cemented French as the official language of the Canadian province, and its effects were far-reaching. One unwitting victim was one-third of this bright red and white neon atop a downtown Montreal mill, flashing out the Five Roses flour brand.

The sign has been a fixture on the Montreal skyline since the late 1940s. It was originally erected to advertise flour made by Ogilvie, the company that owned the mill. In 1954 Ogilvie bought out an Ontario company called Lake of the Woods, who had been making flour since the late 1880s. The sign was changed over to the Lake of the Woods stalwart brand called Five Roses.

Before Bill 101 passed, the Five Roses sign read in three rows: “Farine - Five Roses - Flour.” Since “farine” means flour in French, now the official language, the offending English word was quickly removed from the sign. The other two lines continued to flash their familiar pattern: “Farine,” “Five Roses” – “Farine,” “Five Roses”. (The only reason the English words “Five Roses” escaped the language ax was an exception in Bill 101 for brand names).

1993 saw Five Roses bought out by the food giant ADM, but the sign stayed on. In 2007, after selling the brand to Smuckers, ADM was reluctant to keep advertising flour that now belonged to their competitor, and they shut it off. For a dark and dreary month, the sign remained dark.

Luckily there was enough public outcry, and with some pressure from preservationists at Heritage Montreal, Smuckers relented. They agreed to pour the needed funds into restoration and maintenance of the sign, and nine years and over a million dollars later, the lights are still on. At least for now.

Feeling the sudden need to split for a bit? Does the idea of a relaxing in an Italian bed and breakfast, sipping on wine, gazing over insanely verdant and benevolent hillsides, and doing all of this absolutely as soon as possible appeal to you at all? And do you have in your possession, say, extra virgin olive oil, nuts, lentils, beans, and/or chickpeas?

Next week is your lucky week. From November 14th through the 20th, thousands of B&Bs across Italy are eschewing the monetary system and instead trading their hospitality for various concrete goods and services, like vegetables, photography, and vintage gramophones, the Local reports.

The initiative, called "Barter Week," was inspired by VillaVillaColle, a Sardinian B&B that began accepting swaps in lieu of payment eight years ago. Others cottoned onto the idea, and the idea slowly expanded into a bonafide movement. Now you can barter your way into a night or two's sleep anywhere from Messina to Milan.

That is, as long as you have the right stuff. Many proprietors seem to be interested in local produce, wine, and olive oil. A lot would also love professional-quality photos and videos, musical performances, and iPhone 6s. Others are looking for deep cuts: sushi-making lessons; "CLOCKS... NOT MODERN"; or a secondhand Mercedes (which gets you an entire 12-bed villa for at least a week). Scrolling through these eclectic listings makes Italy seem very zany and fun—it's almost like a vacation on its own.

If you're interested, head over to the Barter Week website, where you can read what different establishments are looking for, as well as list your own particular set of skills and expendable possessions. And even if you just can't quite skip town right now, over 800 Italian proprietors are open to barter all year round. Wouldn't it be great to take a trip soon—say, on January 20th?

The new residents of Phra Prang Sam Yot aren't Buddhists or Hindus, they're primates.

Phra Prang Sam Yot is a 13th century temple built by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII. It was originally used as a Buddhist temple, converted to a temple to Shiva after Jayavarman's death, then repurposed for Buddhism again in the 1600s, all of which is evident in its multi-symbolic architecture. It remains one of the most popular tourist destinations in the old city of Lopburi, but not for its religious significance or cultural history. It's because of the monkeys.

The temple has been overrun by macaques. This may have started because of the annual Monkey Buffet Festival that occurs in the city, during which locals give them fruits and vegetables. Now the monkey population is over 2,000, and most of them live in the temple in relative isolation from the human population. However, living in such close quarters with humans has made them unafraid to snatch treats and personal belongings right out of your hands. Their aggression has gotten serious enough that the city has designated officials to feel them at specific times during the day so that they won't attack tourists.

Mexico’s famous Day of the Dead traditions might change because of eight minutes of Hollywood film. In a pre-credit sequence in Spectre, Sam Mendes’ second Bond film as director, and Daniel Craig’s last as the title character, 007 thwarts a terrorist plot in during a Day of the Dead parade in downtown Mexico City, chasing the Italian bad guys around giant skeleton floats, and through a crowd of thousands of revelers wearing elaborate costumes. The spectacular sequence features stunning shots of Mexico City landmarks, including the Zócalo, the city’s main square, and the Torre Latinoamericana, a towering 1950s skyscraper.

Mexico City fought hard for its eight minutes in Spectre. Leaked documents show that Mexican officials offered Sony Pictures millions of dollars in tax incentives in exchange for featuring the capital city in the Bond film. Sony Pictures even let Mexican authorities make certain changes to the script, including featuring a major Mexican actress, Stephanie Sigman, as the “Bond girl” and making the villains another nationality than Mexican.

Bringing Bond to Mexico was part of a project to promote Mexico City as a major tourism destination. Tourism is one of Mexico’s main sources of income, bringing the country hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and even surpassing oil revenue in the first part of 2016. Mexican chambers of commerce speak of the “Season of the Dead,” running from October 29 to November 2 as an important tourism season, bringing much-needed income to Mexico, especially to certain rural areas.

Large parts of Mexico City’s historic downtown had to be shut down to accommodate the filming, which took place over 10 days in March of 2015. The street closures cost 6,500 local businesses over 60 percent of their revenue, totalling at least 376 million pesos (about $20 million) in losses.

Mexico City Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco Marqués, who was involved in securing the film deal, saw the movie as (expensive) advertising for tourism to Mexico. He assured angry business owners and motorists that the traffic problems and lost revenue would be more than made up for when Mexico City became a “Bond City.”

“Bond Cities start booming as soon as the movie comes out,” Torruco Marqués told reporters at a press conference on April 1, 2015. “Not only in tourism, but also in investment. There will be a huge economic boom, and it will make up for the inconveniences.”

There was only one problem: the tradition depicted in the movie was completely made up. There are many traditions across Mexico that are associated with Day of the Dead, but a parade through downtown Mexico City has never been one of them. Mexico's tourism authorities found themselves facing a problem: tourists who have seen Spectre might come to Mexico City expecting a parade like the one they saw in the movie, and be disappointed to find that it doesn't exist. In order to take advantage of all the exposure they had gained from Spectre, they would need to invent a new tradition.  

So, on Oct. 29, 2016, Mexico City hosted its first-ever Day of the Dead parade. With over a thousand participants, including professional dancers, choreographers and visual artists, and dozens of floats and giant sculptures for the first edition, the parade aims to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to Mexico City in the future. Torruco Marqués said that it could even compete with the Rio de Janeiro Carnival for the title of the world’s biggest parade.

The event was presented as a showcase of diverse Day of the Dead traditions and art from around Mexico. It also got some more use out of the costumes and props from Spectre.

Tourism authorities made no attempt to hide the fact that the parade was based on the James Bond movie—they referred to it as a “Spectre-style parade” in press communications (but they took out the parts with the collapsing buildings and helicopter tricks).  

The artists who worked with the parade created modern dialogues with Mexican rituals surrounding death. Part of the parade was devoted to the tradition of la Muerte Niña, the mostly-defunct practice of creating family portraits—first oil paintings, later photographs—with recently-deceased children dressed up in extravagant clothing, sometimes as angels with heavenly crowns. 

At the 2016 parade, a retro-modern reimagining of la Muerte Niña appeared as adult women seated in meticulously preserved classic cars filling in for cradles, wearing festive colors and holding balloons.

From a tourism standpoint, the event was a success: attendance was higher than anyone expected, and attracted many foreign visitors. City government estimates say that 425,000 people lined the streets running from the Angel of Independence to the Zócalo. Few other events could have brought so many people out in Mexico City—not a protest march, not even a free Roger Waters concert.

It’s too soon to say how much tourism income the parade brought to Mexico City, but a forecast by a chamber of commerce estimated about a billion pesos (about $50 million) in income for Mexico City businesses related to the parade and the Formula 1 Grand Prix, which took place the same weekend. 

However, many Mexicans are offended by the government’s enthusiastic support for an invented ritual based on a Hollywood movie. Magaly Alcantara Franco, a student at the National School of History and Anthropology, believes the parade was influenced more by potential tourists’ perceptions of Mexico than by Mexican traditions themselves.

“For me, what I saw that Saturday didn’t represent, not even minimally, what the Day of the Dead celebrations are,” she says. “It was based on an idea that isn’t even Mexican, an idea that was imported from Hollywood.” 

Claudio Lomnitz, a professor of Mexican studies at Columbia University, wrote an editorial for La Jornada criticizing the parade. “There’s an element of what we could call ‘national-narcissism,’ of a national imaginary in love with its own image, reflected in the mirror of Hollywood,” Lomnitz writes.

This isn’t the first time that rituals surrounding death have been manipulated by the Mexican state for political purposes. As Lomnitz shows in his book Death and the Idea of Mexico, the late-fall death festival was born out of an effort by the Catholic Church to accommodate indigenous death customs with All Souls’ Day and All Saints’ Day. Later, efforts by the revolutionary state to build national identity led to the holiday’s current form and level of popularity.

For Lomnitz, what’s different about the new parade is that it is only a representation or performance of the Day of the Dead—the parade represents an image of Mexican culture, composed with the views of foreigners in mind.

Due to the success of the first incarnation of Mexico City’s Day of the Dead parade, it will probably become a yearly tradition. The event is essentially a Day of the Dead digest, a show, rather than a participatory tradition. But for a short-term visitor who wants to see Mexican death culture, it might be exactly what you’re looking for. 

In the mid-18th century, accepting the hospitality of women in the southern mountain regions of China presented an unusual risk. People told tales of women who seduced travelers, feeding men meals laced with a powerful poison known as gu poison to keep their lovers from returning to their homes in the north.

Gu poison, so the stories went, was collected by sealing venomous snakes, scorpions, and centipedes in a jar and forcing them to fight and devour each other. The surviving creature containing a concentrated toxin. Gu poison was considered a slow-acting poison. It was said to have no taste, allowing unsuspecting victims to go about their normal lives for as long as 10 days before they started feeling ill.

In the mountains, if a man was poisoned with gu and managed to return to his lover's home within the time he had promised, his lover would treat him with an antidote. But if he did not, he would be consumed from the inside out, the gu poison causing, “his heart and abdomen to swell and ache because the poison gnaws him from within,” writes John Hopkins University history of medicine professor Marta Hanson in Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine.

Dating as far back as 610, gu is also described as a form of black magic and witchcraft with the poison being a central part of the practice. Concocting a strong formula of gu poison required the “five poisonous creatures” in China: the viper, centipede, scorpion, toad, and spider. The poisonous insects, worms, and reptiles, referred to as “chong,” were thought of as evil spirits or demons that possessed a vessel, or the human body. Gu poison has been associated with several regions and peoples in China throughout history, but was most commonly linked to the Lingnan and Miao women, minorities of the south—creating stigmas based on northern prejudice.

There are several methods for formulating the perfect gu poison, according to Xu Chunfu, an official in the imperial medical bureau, who wrote about gu in 1556. The most well-known recipe is to gather different kinds of the “five poisonous creatures” and place them in a jar to fight. This done on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival, which is the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Some say that the jar is kept in darkness for up to the year. The body of the remaining venomous creature, which has eaten the others in the jar, will become the source of the lethal poison.

Xu also describes another recipe in which the gu sorcerer kills a poisonous snake, mixes it with an assortment of herbs, and sprinkles the body with water. The snake is left alone for a few days, until its meat decays and begins to grow mold. The body is ground into a powder and slipped into wine.

“In medicine, gu poisoning became an indicator of sources of danger: sexual indulgence, sorcery, non-Han peoples, and native poisons,” writes Hanson. “During the later periods, particularly during the Sui (581-617) and Tang dynasties (618-907), Chinese sources begin to associate gu poisoning with specific methods of magic attributed to minority cultures.”

Gu poison connections with the Miao and Lingnan regions began popping up around the 17th century, with fears heightened in the mid-18th century. The timing was no coincidence, according to Hanson. Descriptions of gu poisoned victims increased just after the Miao rebellion of 1735 and 1736. Northern Chinese disagreed with the Miao’s agriculture, social structure, culture, and particularly the independence of women. Miao women were thought of as “barbaric,” with their unbound feet, scanty dress, premarital sexual freedom, and ability to hunt and farm alongside men, writes Louisa Schein in Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics.  

After not being able to successfully instill northern Chinese influence in these regions, gu poison lore and gossip spread throughout the land to enforce ethnic boundaries out of fear of intermarriage with the Miao people, writes Norma Diamond in the journal Ethnology: “It is the tribal women who are repeatedly cited as a source of danger, rather than armed men threatening the stability of Chinese rule over the area.”

In 1556, Xu described the deep anxieties of gu poisoning. He explained that when the poison settles in the body it consumes the victim from the inside out with an internal burning. Symptoms are similar to heat exhaustion, the cursed lover experiencing prolonged fevers, loss of appetite and weight, and producing vomit like “soft (or rotten) cotton.”

“By analogy, a woman who seduced a man though magical means came to be thought of as practicing gu poisoning,” Hanson writes in her dissertation. In most stories, victims of gu poisoning were men. Legend says that after several days of love making, a woman may forbid her lover to return home and prepare a “fixed-time-of-year” gu poisoning, thereby killing the man if he does not return at the time he promises. However, there were some rumors that women, particularly the Miao women, captured children and fed them to their poisonous gu creatures. When the gu insects were fed young boys and girls, they defecated in shades of silver and gold.  

Despite the lack of confirmed accounts, widespread fear of gu poisoning led to a boon of various methods to detect and cure it. Jiangnan physician Zhang Lu wrote in the 17th century of a method to detect gu poisoning in the Lingnan region: “If you eat in the homes [of people who live there] immediately take rhinoceros horn and stir [the food] with it. If [the food] develops a white foam, it is poisonous, if there is no foam, it is not.”

Chen Guoqun wrote in 1942 that travelers should carry silver-tipped chopsticks and dip them into food and drink offered in a Miao home. If the silver points change color, the food may be poisoned, he reasoned. Xu Chunfu wrote about 15 formulas that each treat a different kind of gu poisoning. These should be taken immediately after feeling any kind of discomfort in limbs after eating food.

“This antidote was built on male fantasy and fear of intimate relations with Lingnan [and Miao] women,” Hanson writes in Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine.

Gu poison's make-believe tales were a product of prejudice against minority groups. Its association with the Miao and Lingnan women persisted into the end of the 19th century, with some scholars even writing that the Miao were prohibited from attending markets in various places in China in the 1900s. The fear of gu and associated judgement of outsiders has since diminished, and serves as a compass for historians trying to better understand differences between cultures in China.

While the story of gu poison may be that of folklore, its impacts created real geographic and ethnic boundaries that lasted for centuries. But the idea of a sealed container of fighting deadly creatures has sparked imagination. Today, gu poison’s legend lives on, the famous toxin playing significant roles in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the television Sleepy Hollow as a method to manipulate lovers and cause death. 

Solving a Rubik's Cube takes a lot of time, practice, and patience. But this robot, built entirely out of LEGO pieces, can match the colored tiles in two minutes and 37 seconds.  

This robot actually belongs to a whole family of robots that solves Rubik's Cube puzzles. The Rubik's Cube solver has a distinct style, with an orange mustache and prominent gray brow. On one arm, the robot operates a color sensor to detect the different colored tiles on a scrambled Rubik's cube, while the other grasps and flips the cube. The cube rests on a platform that spins around.  

There are other robots that can solve a Rubik's Cube at incredible speeds. A German robot can decipher the cube in 0.887 seconds. However the home-built LEGO bot can arrange the six colors in their appropriate places in 41 moves. Now, that's still pretty impressive. 

The pretty residential street of Rua Professor Otávio Coelho de Magalhães, or "Rua do Amendoim" (Peanut Street) as it is known to locals, will always have ample parking. This is because as soon as a car is stopped without the emergency break it will slowly begin to roll uphill, gaining speed as it goes.

There are lots of folk explanations, including that the hill is haunted or that a massive deposit of iron ore lies beneath the street, drawing vehicles up to its magnetic pull. 

In reality, the phenomenon is apparently an optical illusion. Though the street appears to be on a steep incline, there is actually a slight dip in the road. Though cars appear to be rolling uphill they're actually rolling down. That doesn't stop people from recording hundreds of videos capturing the strange sight of cars making their own way uphill though.

In what might be the makings of a future Disney film, a cow headed for export in Western Australia staged a daring escape over the weekend, according to the Guardian.

The cow was being loaded onto a ship in Western Australia’s Fremantle Harbor on Sunday, when suddenly they saw a chance for escape. According to the Guardian, the truck driver who was unloading the livestock followed incorrect procedures and allowed the cows a small window of freedom, which they took advantage of.

Of the ten beasts in the shipment, eight of them were immediately rounded up, while a ninth injured its leg and had to be put down. The tenth cow was able to jump into the water and swim away.

Rescuers attempted to coax the cow back onto land by herding it with a jet ski, but once it got on solid ground, it bolted. According to eyewitnesses, the cow was able to make it as far away as the town of North Coogee, a little over four miles away, where the animal remained at large despite efforts from both local rangers and the cattle company itself.

For better or worse, the fugitive cow’s journey came to an end on Monday morning according to the Fremantle Sea Rescue's Facebook page. According to a Monday update, authorities were finally able to catch it as it roamed in a field. In the end, the cow managed to elude capture for over 24 hours, which gives us all hope that when our time comes, we can taste freedom for even longer.   

In northwestern Iran, running for almost 200 kilometers from the southeastern shores of the Caspian Sea to the mountains of Bilikuh in the east, lies the remains of the Great Wall of Gorgan—once the largest defensive structure ever built.

It protected the ancient kingdoms of the region from raiding parties who would sweep down across the plains and deserts to the north. It was several meters high, and impressively thick, providing a secure imperial frontier, and was buttressed by 40 permanently garrisoned fortresses containing tens of thousands of soldiers.

It was so well-known that it allegedly factored into the plans of military legends such as Genghis Khan. Today, however, it’s been almost entirely forgotten—many locals living within a few miles of it don’t even know of its existence. 

The reasons for this are relatively understandable. Much of the Great Wall of Gorgan now lies buried under several meters of earth and sand built up over time, leaving only a large raised mound which has tended to serve as a boundary between farmers’ fields, or the demarcation line of a modern village.

The full extent of the construction was not rediscovered by archaeologists until 1999. Large sections of the remains are not discernible from ground level, but become strikingly clear from the air.

Despite laying dormant and unknown for more than 1,500 years, recent excavations have revealed that the Great Wall of Gorgan was a mighty enterprise of significant cost and investment. The sheer size and scale of the construction—larger than the combined area of the Roman-built Hadrian’s Wall and Antonine Wall in the United Kingdom—shows how strategically important it must have been to defend this open flank of the Persian empire. 

This was a well-organized, consistent effort from start to finish. A complex logistical system was set up to fire mud bricks of a uniform size and shape (40 x 40 x 10 centimeters), which meant that the wall could be built quickly and easily by the engineers, while maintaining the quality of construction. Remains of these kilns have been found shadowing the course of the wall.

The Great Wall of China, by contrast, varies hugely in terms of size, quality and material from place to place. The format of the Gorgan wall hardly changes at all, remaining 10 meters wide and three meters tall for almost its entire length, presenting an insurmountable barrier to the horsemen of the raiding forces. One of its many nicknames, “The Red Snake,” comes from the color of its bricks. 

The geography of the region is key to understanding the need for such an immense defensive project. The southern shores of the Caspian Sea, known as Hyrcania, are verdant, fertile, and have a mild climate year-round—all of which was ideal for sustaining large populations by agriculture and hunting.

Hyrcania, as part of the Sassanid Empire, was well-protected by sea to the north and mountains to the south, but lay wide open to the plains in the northeast, in modern Turkmenistan. These plains were traversed by the White Huns, who saw Hyrcania’s riches as a ready source of plunder. Their attacks were well-documented, and became so repeated and so costly that, sometime in the 5th Century, a wall was built to keep the raiders out.  

The exact dates of construction are unknown, but the evidence suggests the wall was put up with speed and utility in mind. The first part of it can be found near the town of Qomishan, a couple of miles from the current Caspian coastline (due to a higher sea-level in that period), from where it tracks the course of the Gorgan River, past the city of Gonbad-e Kavous, eventually winding its way up into the foothills of Bilikuh, part of the extended Alborz range.

Also known as “The Golden Wall,” it was heavily garrisoned, with the most recent estimates putting the number of soldiers protecting the wall at any given time at around 20,000. Several of the forts have been excavated, revealing a disciplined, practical approach to defense, with regularly spaced outposts and strong points, each protected by around 500 soldiers based in a nearby fort.

At strategic weak points, such as Gokche, where the wall crosses a river, additional fortifications and dams were built to prevent covert infiltration by water. Bits of these fortifications still stand proudly, guiding the river’s course to this day.

At the fort overlooking the Gokche crossing, where excavations are currently underway, the simple and hard life of a frontier soldier can be guessed at: it was a life spent in cramped mud-brick barracks open to the heat of the plains and the cold of the desert winter nights. Earthen ovens were used to make plain bread, while other food would have been hard to come by on these northern borders.

The relative lack of personal items found in the dig suggest that these camps were purely for soldiers—there is very little trace of families or camp followers having lived there, and the bones dug up nearby are all from adult males.

The remains of certain parts of the wall can be visited today, though they’re not easy to find. The best-restored fort is the final one on the eastern end of the wall, tucked up against the side of a mountain, which provided a natural defense once the man-made one reached its conclusion.

Near the village of Kaser-e Pishkamar, efforts have been made to preserve the remains of this last outpost, allowing visitors to get an idea of what this imperial Persian power managed to achieve on its borders more than 1,500 years ago.

The archaeological record confirms that all this effort was largely successful in stemming the raiders from the north, and the frontier region’s fortunes improved significantly in the century following the wall’s construction. Despite its apparent success, however, and the wall and its forts were inexplicably abandoned only 200 years later.  

All activity on the site mysteriously ceases, showing that it was impractical, unnecessary or impossible to maintain. Perhaps the troops were needed elsewhere, or money was a problem with dynasties feuding, or the threat of raiding lessened. Whatever the reason, this massive project—the largest in the world at the time—was left to gather dust and, like the empire that built it, be slowly buried by the shifting sand.

Say it's the mid-1800s, and you're on a beach in England. Things look pretty familiar: the wind tugs at parasols, children laugh and chase seagulls, the waves roll in and out. In the distance, though, an unusual figure straddles the water line, and stoops down over the sand. She's weighed down by enormous wool petticoats, and carrying a heavy bucket. From under her skirts peeks the unmistakable outline of a man's boot. 

This woman isn't foraging for food, or trying to save a drowning child. She's one of Victorian Britain's many female seaweed hunters. Beloved by figures like Queen Victoria and George Eliot, seaweed-hunting became a popular way for women to tap into the enthusiasms of their era—and contribute to the burgeoning annals of science.

Nineteenth century Britain was a hotbed of biological enthusiasm. "Natural history was absolutely huge," says Dr. Stephen Hunt, a researcher in environmental humanities who works at the University of the West of England. Households filled up with painstakingly stuffed mammals and birds. So-called "gentlemen scientists" traveled the world drawing, describing, and collecting plants and animals. As railway networks grew, and labor advances led to more leisure time, ordinary citizens got in on the trend. Microscopes became more affordable, and collecting clubs popped up across Britain. "It was cross-class to some extent—working class and middle class," says Hunt. "There was a democratization of natural history."

Women, though, were still largely left out. The biggest natural history clubs of all, the Royal Society and the Linnaean Society, refused female members, and barred women even from their "public" meetings. Hunting animals was too dangerous, and digging up plants was, well, too sexy. "There was a taboo on botany, because Linnaean botany was based on the sexual parts," says Hunt. "That was seen as controversial."

Luckily, there was seaweed—docile, G-rated, and available somewhat close to home. "It was accessible for women in ways that other things weren't," says Hunt. As the seashore itself gained a reputation as a restorative landscape, plenty of women found themselves there, either recuperating from illness or seeking family-friendly summer fun. Many of them were already diehard scrapbookers, and seaweed makes a particularly rewarding collage subject: not only does each specimen's strange color and shape present a design challenge, its gelatinous inner structure means that, when pressed onto paper, it actually glues itself to the page.

While it's unclear exactly how many women spent their Saturdays kelp-crafting, there are enough amateur seaweed scrapbooks floating around to indicate that it was a popular pursuit. There is even one famous, long-lost scrapbook—Queen Victoria's, which she reportedly made as a young woman—and George Eliot has hinted that she dabbled, too, writing in an 1856 journal entry that the tide pools on the shores of Ilfracombe "made me quite in love with seaweeds." A number of collectors took their hobby to the next level, publishing descriptive guides complete with illustrations and collecting tips.

One of the best known and most dedicated of these so-called seaweeders was Margaret Gatty, a children's book author who took up the hobby while convalescing in Hastings, on Britain's southeast coast, in 1848. Gatty's crowning work of algology, British Sea-Weeds, is an exhaustive compilation of local seaweeds, fully described and illustrated in 86 colored plates.

But it's also a primer for women who might have been wondering how to align their exciting new hobby with the conventions of the time. In an opening section on how to dress, Gatty endorses a compromise between practicality and social acceptability. Wear your regular outdoor ensemble, petticoats and all, on top, she suggests—they are "necessary draperies." But definitely, definitely go for men's boots, and own it. "Feel all the luxury of not having to be afraid of your boots," she writes. "Feel all the comfort of walking steadily forward, the very strength of the soles making you tread firm."

Companionship was another issue. While women were given slightly more leeway at the shore than in the city, it was still seen as a dangerous place, full of slippery rocks and impending waves. "A low-water-mark expedition is more comfortably undertaken under the protection of a gentleman," Gatty wrote. How to convince one of them to go with you, rather than heading off on his own more risky or risqué natural history adventure? Offer up other enticements: "He may fossilize, or sketch, or even (if he will be savage and barbaric) shoot gulls," she recommends.

British Sea Weeds is an impressive work—two volumes, comprising 200 specimens, compiled over the course of 14 years. But like her female peers, Gatty made sure to position herself not as a scientist but as a kind of evangelist, interested in seaweed primarily as a low-level expression of nature's beauty and God's grace. "A lot of the women writers were sort of self-deprecating," says Hunt. "They very much saw themselves as popularizing natural history, but they took pains not to come across as professional scientists."

Gatty, who once wrote that hearing a woman give a speech was "like listening to bells rung backwards," planted herself firmly in her prescribed social role.

Privately, though, she found a certain escape in her hobby: "A love of routine makes in private life half the world commonplace and dull," she wrote to her sister-in-law, encouraging her to try out seaweeding. "Your seaweed hours will be a sort of necessary repast to you!"

For Gatty and others, the prioritization of religious rhapsody over rigor, combined with the heady freedom of the hunt, led to magnificent written reports—many of which remain more accessible than the dense taxonomies of their male peers. In British Sea-Weeds, one specimen is "delicately membranaceous," while another is "crisp and somewhat rigid when first gathered." Colors are lovingly described: "the finest crimson," "rose-red," "pinky towards the tips."

All fads eventually dry out, and as the Victorian era gave way to the modern one, fewer and fewer British women spent their spare time on the shore, feeling good in their galoshes and casting around for bits of red and green. Gatty herself never wavered in her enthusiasm, and kept collecting until her death in 1873. Although British Sea Weeds is now long out of print, her collections survive at St. Andrew's University in Scotland, where, over the past few years, curators have begun to restore and reorganize them.

Today's seaweeders would do well to look out for Gattya pinella: a species of Australian algae, named for one of the many woman who successfully found joy in seaweed.

During the 1950s and 1960s, communist Poland was a grey and gloomy place. So it makes sense that the Polish people were naturally drawn to the vibrant colors and thematic artistic works (in addition to low cost) of movie, play, and musical posters hung up outside of the government approved cinemas and theaters. 

The popularity of the medium sparked the annual Warsaw Poster Art Competition, the world famous Biennale, in 1966, and led to the opening of the Poster Museum two years later upon the donation of 13,000 items from the National Museum in Warsaw. At its opening the Poster Museum became the first museum in the world dedicated to the art and presentation of this art medium.

The museum is still growing, with over 61,000 posters in its collection; 36,000 representing the history of poster art in Poland, and 500 preserved pieces from World War II. The small space is constantly rotating through its massive collection by way of temporary exhibits with interactive displays and multimedia presentations and is bound to be a different tract from the normal national art museum and quite the contrast to the stuffy Royal Palace just 50 meters away.

Located in the little town of Ladysmith, Wisconsin (population approx. 3,000), Toad House is kind of in the middle of nowhere—which is exactly where you need a bakery/coffee shop/art gallery/community center.

First came Toad House Publishing, founded by Eileen and Tony Ziesler, which was named after a series of encounters the couple had with a toad they fed insects by hand. When the toad failed to show up for their regular meeting by the light of a vending machine, they wondered, "Where can he hide? Where can he be?" This phrase went on to inspire a children's book, the first of many to come out of the publishing company. 

Later, the Zieslers restored one of Ladysmith's original houses and founded an arts center there. They named it Toad House. Much like the publishing company, the house seeks to cultivate "the wonder of childhood and beauty in nature."

Toad House offers events for "like-minded toads" such as felting classes, "Knit and Chat" meetings, and writing workshops. The bakery, always open, offers handmade European treats and beverages made from family recipes passed down through generations. Also of note are the Enchanted Woods behind the Toad House, where adventurers might happen upon some actual toads.

Not only the faithful make pilgrimages to holy places. On the top of a large, lonely mountain in the Rhone region of France sits a gothic church dedicated to the intoxicating passion that many share: alcohol.

This church is called La chapelle Notre-Dame-aux-Raisins. A literal translation is "Our Lady of the Grapes” and it dominates the summit of one of the more important crus in the Beaujolais wine region: Mount Brouilly.

Following three years of devastating harvest mildew from 1850 through 1852, local viniculturists decided to seek divine intervention and erect a church on top of the most important appellations of the area. The cornerstone was laid in October 16, 1854 in front of a crowd of several hundred and the it was inaugurated on September 8, 1857.

September 8th is the Roman Catholic feast day of the Nativity of Mary and is celebrated by some traditional winemakers across France who refer to the day as "Our Lady of the Grape Harvest.”

Each year on this day in the Beaujolais region, winemakers of the region make a pilgrimage to the church atop Mt. Brouilly with their best grapes from the early harvest. A priest blesses the grapes and bunches are put into the hands of a statue of Mary, wherein a feast takes place.

Needless to say, the site offers tremendous views of the surrounding French countryside and is ideal for a picnic lunch with a nice bottle of wine—a perfect crusade for wine enthusiasts from all over and all beliefs.

SUNDOWN from Liza Mandelup on Vimeo.

Summer camp is a great American tradition. And one completely out of reach for the so-called “children of the night”—the name given to kids who are allergic to the sun.

This rare condition, xeroderma pigmentosum, makes summer camp, or any daytime outdoors activity, painful and even fatally dangerous. Luckily, there is a place that seeks to reclaim the tradition for children afflicted with XP: Camp Sundown. Opened in 1995, the camp is celebrating its 21st anniversary this year, as it continues to grow in attendance and in its efforts to bring attention to the condition.

Directed by Liza Mandelup, this video takes us into the world of Camp Sundown, where the hours are inverted and everyone comes out as soon as the sun is down. Located in Craryville, New York, it allows children to form a family with others who understand their condition. They swim, play around, watch movies, and roast marshmallows, all under the cover of the night.

Some of the camp counselors, themselves veterans of life with XP, give us an insight on what life is like for attendees. The message, it seems, is that while life is not easy, there's always a ray of moonlight to be found. 

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