Situated in the rural part of Eastern Poland, the Land of Open Shutters is a rustic, traditional place that is rarely visited by outsiders and where the locals seldom leave.
In this group of communities—a unique conglomeration of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Belarusian peoples with a mix of religion, art, language, culture—time has seemingly stopped, untouched by modern advances. It's a place where tradition and heritage still reign supreme against the ever-marching progression of gentrification.
The Land of Open Shutters is mostly inhabited by Orthodox Belarusians just a few hundred strong, and encompasses just three small villages in a valley of the Nawet River: Trześcianka, Sotse and Puchły. The area is largely supported by agriculture and logging industries, which is reflected in the area's pastoral architecture. Small and folky cabin-like homes in the rural villages take on similar appearances in these tight-knit communities. The famous old wooden buildings the locals live are known for their vibrant and colorful window shutters that adorn the otherwise simple bucolic houses.
Each plot of land and home is similar in size and design, save for the unique colors that decorate the facades. Typically, a small wooden fence runs in front of the homes while two windows face the main street. Sometimes there is carved ornamentation above the window sill. Two to three more windows run the length of the buildings and each corner of the house is decorated with a dynamically designed edge guard. Homey and simple, but pleasant in it’s honesty to heritage, visiting these villages should make for a quiet, introspective afternoon.
Unlike in the U.S., where it is forbidden by law, in Europe it's not rare to see a man standing to pee at the side of the road, or even at a tree in the city. Less common but not unheard of is a woman hovering behind bushes with her pants down. Some might wonder what the flora has to say about all that. The artist Friedrich Karl Waechter surely considered this when he created his piece Pinkelbaum, or Peeing Tree.
As part of the Frankfurt art initiative Komische Kunst (Funny Art), the artwork is installed in an old maple tree. A plaque near the tree reads (translated from German): “For 300 years I was pissed at, starting today I piss back.”
Just walking towards it, the tree looks very innocent, but once you get closer, there it is: the passerby is hit by a stream of “pee.” Most people, after recovering from the shock, find it quite funny.
The tree is located at the side of the way around the little lake Jacobiweiher, near the Oberschweinstiege, one of Frankfurt's nature areas. The pee stream breaks only in winter for a short time. The Pinkelbaum is still there, but it does not pee, to prevent damage by frost.
After you have visited all of the mandatory sites in Venice, you may want to spend some time in a more laid-back, peaceful atmosphere. Torcello is a small island in the North Lagoon of Venice, just beyond Burano and Murano, and it has a rich history. Torcello is where the city of Venice began more than 1,500 years ago.
Once heavily populated, with over 20,000 residents, the island now has only a handful of full-time residents. The primary sites include a Byzantine-Italian cathedral, the Basilica Santa Maria Asunta, which dates back to about 639 AD, and an adjacent church and Campanile (bell tower) that, with an easy climb, offers a great view of the entire area.
Invisible from both road and air, Hospital Cave was strategically important in the Vietnam-American War.
Built from 1963-65 with the help of the Chinese, the concrete bombproof cave was laid out over three stories; the bottom two acted as a hospital where soldiers could rest, recuperate and relax, and the tiny third floor acted as a safe house for Viet Cong leaders. The shelter was equipped with access to fresh water and ventilation shafts, and there are even escape tunnels ready for the event of a quick getaway.
Hospital Cave was abandoned in 1975, but in recent years has become a popular attraction on Cat Ba, where English-speaking guides show visitors around, fully justifying the extremely cheap 15,000 dong entrance fee. Although the rooms are now empty, it’s possible to see the how the Hospital was once set up. It includes an operating theatre, doctors office, several recovery rooms, and a huge natural cavern that was used as a cinema room.
If you tried to rob a bank in England in the 1940s, your efforts may have been thwarted by a gramophone. Or, more precisely, a gramophone burglar alarm.
The possibility of setting off an electric alarm had never been an option until 1858, when the first such device was installed in 1858 in Boston. Similar gadgets quickly became popular in stores, banks, and even the private homes of the wealthy. Over the years, many forms of burglar alarms appeared, each new one trying to better the faults of its predecessors. However, there is no alarm, past or present, that is as visually intriguing as the gramophone burglar alarm.
This device was designed exactly like a gramophone, with a small turntable record that played as soon as the needle scratched it. Only instead of playing the fine tunes of the jazz age, you got an unnerving alert message letting the listener know that a premises were under attack.
Its mechanism was simple, yet quite innovative for its time. The machine would be installed in the back room of a high-security building, and connected to the front of the building by an electric cord. If the cord was tripped, the device would start playing a pre-recorded message while simultaneously dialing 999 (England's emergency phone number). When the police picked up the call, they would hear the message and know that the building was under attack. However, the people inside the building would not be able to hear the message, thus giving the device the nickname of the "silent alarm."
But why opt for a discreet alarm, rather than the loud and panic-inducing one that is so often portrayed in outlaw movies? The idea came from both practicality and safety.
Often, victims of burglary could not set off alarms until the robbers were off the premises and no longer posing a direct threat to their lives. This meant that the authorities arrived too late in many cases. With the gramophone alarm, a bank teller or store employee could trip a cord hidden behind a desk with his or her foot, thereby alerting the authorities silently. The robbers, unaware that the authorities were on their way, would not feel as urgent a need to leave as if they heard the alarm. They would also, in theory, have no reason to harm the person who pulled the alarm, because they had no way of knowing that this had happened until it was too late.
Though the invention was introduced in 1917, it didn’t start gaining attention until after the end of World War II. The silent alarm now seemed like a great solution, not only because it was a safe way to alert the authorities, but also because the devices were often wired to their own power source. Some burglars had the foresight to cut the power lines of the places they robbed, so as to disable alarms. By making the power source of the gramophone alarm independent, such efforts were thwarted.
As Donald Thomas explains in his book, Villains’ Paradise: Britain's Underworld from the Spivs to the Krays, the device “was rare and was regarded at first as an eccentricity rather than a necessary precaution.” By the '50s, however, it seems like more businesses were opting for including it on their premises, in an effort to protect themselves from possible attacks.
If we are to believe this 1955 article of The Age, the gramophone burglar alarm was quite effective. According to the short note, the device had been central to 67 arrests in three different cities in Yorkshire, England. Because of the silent nature of the alarm, the note claims, the burglars were completely unsuspecting right until the police had arrived.
While it is very possible that the gramophone alarm played a role in many successful arrests, there is some doubt about whether the devices were as effective as was often claimed. According to Thomas, despite burglars being unaware that an alarm had been set off, the police still often arrived too late. Burglars were well aware of the risks they were taking, and took as little time as possible to complete their hits. But the most suspicious fact is that the newspaper notes that praised the device were often paid for by Burgot Alarms, which owned and manufactured it. Though the figures might have been accurate, one should always be a little suspicious of the veracity of facts given by a company about its own product—especially when they hide it within the newspaper as news rather than advertising.
But whether or not the gramophone alarm was actually as successful as Burgot Alarms claimed, the influence of both the company and the device on future security systems is undeniable. Their legacy can be seen in the discreet and silent nature of most modern alarms, especially in those present in banks. No longer would a bank robbery be marked by a piercing alarm alerting everyone in the vicinity of the occurrence, but it would be discreetly pushed by an employee before putting his or her hands up in the air.
Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com
One of Detroit's hidden gems, this outdoor sculpture garden, created by Detroit's Premier outside artist Tim Burke, is made from a collection of building pieces scavenged from demolished historical buildings that were once iconic landmarks of the city.
The iconic buildings incorporated into the sculpture garden includes the Detroit College of Law, the J.L Hudson's Department Store, the Packard Motor Car Company, and the Studebaker Car Company, to name a few—not to mention the ten tons of granite Burke recovered from the renovation of the Detroit Institute of Arts, that he used to make tables and benches. He also makes jewelry out of copper from the buildings, which is sold in the Detroit Institute of Art gift shop.
The otherwise unassuming town of Casey, Illinois is home to an outsized number of the world's largest things. The odd collection of giant objects includes a giant golf tree, wind chime, knitting needles and crochet hook, mailbox, birdcage, and rocking chair—all located downtown.
With chimes suspended 49 feet above the ground, the massive wind chime stands 55 feet tall and is a sight to behold (located at 109 E Main St). The longest of five chimes is 42 feet long—nearly double that of the previous world record holder. The chimes sing gentle and deep as they strike the clapper.
On display across from the huge wind chime (at 100-198 E Main St) is the world's largest rocking chair. This new chair, which was topped off on August 25, 2015, is 56 feet, 6 inches tall, and weighs 46,200 pounds. It beats the previous largest chair (42 feet, 1 inch tall) in Fanning, Missouri, which held the record for over seven years.
A supremely impressive construction effort, a massive mailbox (1-79 W Main St) features a door that opens and closes by means of a cable winch. It’s across the street from a giant birdcage in which you can actually swing on the perch.
The world’s largest golf tee, was placed behind the clubhouse at the Casey Country Club (203 NE 13th St) in 2013. The golf tee measures more than 30 feet from the ground to the top, with a head diameter of 6.26 feet and a shaft diameter of 2.1 feet, and is constructed with yellow pine boards held together by 60 gallons of glue and 120 pounds of screws. The total structure weighs 6,659 pounds.
Things just keep getting bigger and bigger in Casey as the latest installment is a large pitchfork at Richard’s Farm Restaurant (607 NE 13th St). At 60 feet long and weighing 1,940 pounds, this creation is be one of the new items in Casey vying for the Guinness World Record.
The Chesterfield Canal in northern England will be celebrating its 240th birthday in 2017. It originally connected West Stockwith to Chesterfield over 40 miles away, and like many canals of the pre-industrial 18th century, goods were transported by horse-drawn barges. To make their way up and down a 250-foot difference in altitude required locks—64 of them all together—and one particular section is known as the Giant’s Staircase.
The Chesterfield and its locks represent the peak of 18th century canal construction, thanks in large part to the expertise of an engineer named James Brindley, master of staircase lock design. Multiple locks clustered together on a canal are known as “flights,” and grouping locks together so one directly feeds another, creates a “staircase.” In this case, one fit for a giant.
OK, so the term here is a little bit looser than is technically a lock staircase, but the name was locally coined, and it is a combination of two flights—with a rise of almost 100 feet, nearly the height of a 10-story building. Even more impressive for canal enthusiasts (and yes, the world is full of canal enthusiasts), on this stretch of the Chesterfield there are 20 locks within a single mile, an engineering feat likely unequaled anywhere else on the British canal network.
The Chesterfield Canal is also known as the Cuckoo Dyke, picking up the name from cargo boats called “cuckoos," a unique type found only on the Chesterfield. They were never mechanically powered, but were horse drawn right up to the end of commercial traffic in the 1950s. Real cuckoo boats are long gone, but an accurate reproduction has recently been built by members of the Chesterfield Canal Trust.
No one really knows where the “cuckoo” name came from, and seeing the replica (or any other boats) navigate the flights is relatively rare. But the canal is undergoing ambitious restoration plans, so check with Canal Trust to find out about their occasional boat trips. Plan it right and you can catch one up or down the staircase.
Tucked away on Malet Place behind an unassuming door and up a flight of stairs, this small archaeology museum is absolutely packed full of Egyptian artifacts. From sarcophagi to preserved leather shoes, there are so many artifacts crammed in these three rooms that it spills out into an adjoining stairwell.
Visitors are handed a flashlight upon entering since many of the glass cases holding the exhibits are stacked on top of each other, causing the bottom ones to be shrouded in darkness. Crouching in a quiet corner shining your flashlight over the darker areas of the museum really gives a feeling of exploration, a feeling you don't always get in the more crowded and well-lit museums.
Like the Grant Museum of Zoology just around the corner, the Petrie is available to students for research so some artifacts may come and go as they are checked out by UCL attendees.
Easter Island is home to 900 stone monoliths called “moai.” They are often characterized as “heads,” but they are actually entire bodies with the extra-large heads taking up over a third of the full figure. The forms of the moai are not all the same, but to the Polynesian people, they are all sacred.
Nine thousand miles away, on the southern tip of Japan, seven moai statues rise up from a cliff at the Pacific Ocean, mimicking the famous figures of the largest “ahu” (a kind of stone plaza or platform) on Easter Island, called Tongariki.
The figures anchor a seaside park in the Japanese city of Nichinan-shi, and it is said to be the only place in the world that is officially sanctioned to replicate the real moai. There are seven figures in all, each with a double meaning: each one is responsible for a specific blessing (good health, love, leisure, marriage, money, business, and academic study), and also to represent the spirit of seven legendary Easter Island explorers.
The park opened in 1996, and the statues are the main attraction (besides the spectacular ocean views of course). There is a moai-themed museum, several gardens and trails, and plenty of opportunity to stock up on moai charms and trinkets from the gift shop–to take home and make your own “ahu.”
When the cockpit recorder transcript from Air France Flight 447 was leaked to the public in 2011, many startling details emerged. The plane, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009, killing all 228 people on board, had been under the control of pilots who were communicating poorly and not realizing one another's mistakes. The plane's speed slowed to dangerous levels, activating the stall alarm—the one, in the words of Popular Mechanics, "designed to be impossible to ignore." It blared the word "Stall!" 75 times.
Everyone present ignored it. Within four minutes, the plane had hit the water.
Alarm sounds are engineered to elicit particular responses in humans. And yet, sometimes, humans choose not to respond, having decided that the situation is not urgent enough or that the sound is a false alarm. Audio alarm designers seek to avoid this by designing sounds that have an intuitive meaning and precisely reflect the level of urgency. But what makes an "awooga" sound more or less urgent than a "ding"? And how do you create an alarm noise that’s annoying enough to get someone’s attention, but not so annoying that said person disables the alarm?
Auditory alarm designers like Carryl Baldwin face these questions regularly. Baldwin, a human factors psychologist, constructs sounds in a lab, tests those sounds on human subjects to see if they are communicating the intended meaning, and ensures they are appropriate for use as alarms in household, aviation, medical, and automotive settings.
Of course, the door alarm that LG uses in its fridges to convey “Your food needs to stay cold, silly” should be different than the alarm that signals your commercial jet is about to crash. But what factors go into the design of these sounds?
One of the main considerations is the annoyance factor. To test for annoyance in the lab, says Baldwin, “we’ll construct sounds and we’ll look at all of the different acoustic parameters, so we might vary, for instance, intensity, frequency, the number of harmonics, how fast it ramps up and down, the temporal characteristics—like whether it’s going d-d-d-d-d-duh rapidly or duhhhh-duhhhhh-duhhhh.”
The faster an alarm goes, the more urgent it tends to sound. And in terms of pitch, alarms start high. Most adults can hear sounds between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz—Baldwin uses 1,000 Hz as a base frequency, which is at the bottom of the range of human speech. Above 20,000 Hz, she says, an alarm "starts sounding not really urgent, but like a squeak.”
Harmonics are also important. To be perceived as urgent, an alarm needs to have two or more notes rather than being a pure tone, “otherwise it can sound almost angelic and soothing,” says Baldwin. “It needs to be more complex and kind of harsh.” An example of this harshness is the alarm sound that plays on TVs across the U.S. as part of the Emergency Alert System. The discordant noise is synonymous with impending doom.
After the alarm designers create a range of sounds in the lab, says Baldwin, they will test the annoyance factor of these sounds in a process called “psychophysical matching, or psychophysical ratings.” Yes, this involves subjecting human beings to a bunch of irritating sounds. Participants determine how annoying the sounds are by sorting them into categories ranking them on a scale of one to 100.
Then there's more testing. “If it’s a medical alarm, for instance, we’ll start using that sound and then we’ll maybe measure people’s physiological response to it—does their heart rate go up, does their skin conductance level go down, what happens to their brain activity,” says Baldwin. Skin conductance measures how much the sound affects the body—skin gets better at conducting electricity when the body is physiologically aroused.
An effective audio alarm is one in which the annoyance factor and perceived urgency of the sound is matched to the hazard level—a soft little chime for the fridge door, say, and a “BREHHHHK BREHHHHK BREHHHHK” for a plane in a tailspin. “We want it to be detectable, so to get your attention, but for you to recognize what it means right away,” says Baldwin.
One factor that the design of individual alarms doesn’t take into account is how that sound will mesh with the other audio in its intended environment. This is especially relevant in the medical and aviation fields, in which multiple alarms and alerts may be pinging and screeching at the same time—and indicating widely varying levels of danger.
In hospitals in particular, there are “so many nuisance alarms going off all the time, that people—nurses, doctors—just tune them out,” says Baldwin. “They don’t even hear them anymore.” The statistics say that most of these alarms are not indications of peril. A 2012 review of medical audio alarms found that in one intensive therapy unit, “of 1455 soundings of alarms, only eight were associated with potentially life-threatening problems.”
These noises, says Baldwin, are “having a negative impact on the stress levels of both the medical providers and the patients, from having these constant annoying alarms going off in the background.”
Audio warnings that go off simultaneously in a cockpit can have a similar effect on pilots. The paper Auditory Warning Sounds in the Work Environment offers this worrying tale from a pilot:
I was flying in a Jetstream at night when my peaceful reverie was shattered by the stall audio warning, the stick shaker, and several warning lights. The effect was exactly what was NOT intended; I was frightened numb for several seconds and [took hands off] instruments trying to work out how to cancel the audio/visual assault rather than taking what should be instinctive actions.
The current way to prevent such a confusing cacophony in the workplace is via "alarm management," a process that looks at the full line-up of possible alert sounds within one environment and how they combine. The phrase "alarm philosophy" is also bandied about in these circles—it involves prioritizing alarms to ensure that the sounds that signal a potentially life-threatening moment are the most attention-getting.
They may be annoying, says Baldwin, "but that doesn’t matter in a time-critical life-or-death situation. We don’t really care if it annoys you a little bit as long as it gets your attention—and gets you to hopefully avoid that plane crashing.”
When you picture a Japanese kimono, you probably think of something like a haiku in clothing form. Maybe stylized scenes of chrysanthemums, long-tailed birds flying over blossoming cherry trees, or a picturesque mountain landscape. Now imagine a kimono showing two children in military gear marching to battle with their faithful puppy. How about a kimono showing Mussolini on horseback? Or one with a cute child in infantry garb with sword held aloft?
Welcome to the shocking, beautiful, fascinating world of Japanese propaganda kimonos, a form of Japanese popular art that flourished from 1900 to 1945 and has only been rediscovered in the past decade. Known as omoshirogara—literally, “interesting” or “amusing” designs—they include kimonos and other traditional Japanese apparel worn by men, women and children. This includes the nagajuban, an under-kimono; the haura, the inner lining of the haori, a kimono-like jacket; and the miyamairi kimono, the swaddling infants are dressed in for their first visit to a Shinto shrine at one month of age.
Propaganda kimonos first appeared at the end of the 19th century as Japanese textile manufacturers responded to society’s hunger to modernize. The stunning, vivid designs employ a broad, bold palette and show direct influences of social realism, Art Deco, Dadaist and Cubist collage, early cartoons, and other graphic media. Indeed, the images often appeared on other media as well – matchbook covers, posters, magazines and Japan’s first movies. Bright as the designs were, propaganda kimonos were mainly reserved for inside the home or at private parties. Since the designs were often on undergarments or linings, a host would show them off to small groups of family or friends.
Typical omoshirogara designs from the early 1920s to the late 1930s depicted a bright, Westernized, consumerist future – cityscapes with subways and skyscrapers, ocean liners, steaming locomotives, sleek cars, and airplanes. To judge by popular graphics, Japan’s bright young things, “modan garus” and “modan boyiis,” followed Hollywood fashions and knew about jazz. A new spirit was in the air. Japanese women entered the workforce; Western dress and hairstyles were in vogue.
This period of optimism was short lived, however. By the later 1920s, conservative and ultra-nationalist forces in the military and government elites began to push back, reasserting more traditional values. Military power, the will to use it, and the ability to manufacture its hardware became ever more central to Japan’s self-image. “This was a period in Japan when militarism was synonymous with modernization,” says Rhiannon Paget, co-curator with Philip Hu of “Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan,” a stunning exhibit that opened in October at the St. Louis Art Museum. The show includes woodblock prints, posters, magazines, and other printed artifacts, as well as kimonos. The dominant themes of the show illustrate Paget’s point – Japanese leaders had only to look in their backyard to see the benefits of military action. The British had taken Hong Kong, the Dutch were in Indonesia, Russia had advanced into Manchuria, the United States had taken over in the Philippines and had annexed Hawaii, and Germany had moved into New Guinea and Samoa.
Japan countered with its own expansion, invading Manchuria in 1931 and installing a puppet regime there. Historians agree that this marked the beginning of Japan’s descent into militaristic nationalism and aggression and its increasing isolation from the West. By the end of the decade, Japan’s only Western friends were its future Axis partners, Germany and Italy.
The propaganda kimonos adapted, combining nationalist themes with popular culture iconography. A child’s kimono (1933) shows an adorable boy in a sailor suit surrounded by a gunboat, a biplane, a sleek automobile drawn directly from a Raymond Lowey design, and an assortment of friends in kiddie versions of military uniforms.
Dogs were recurring figures, as they embodied loyalty and bravery. One recurring canine icon was Norakuro, a black and white dog who began life as a manga character in 1931, before he appeared on a 1933 kimono. Norakuro is seen with his trusty friend, against a backdrop of armored vehicles, planes, and surrendering enemy soldiers. The image even features the white-on-gray sprockets of a motion picture newsreel.
The story of the Three Brave Bombers was repeated in multiple graphic forms in 1930’s Japan. The bombers were three real-life young soldiers who died in action while laying explosives to clear out the enemy’s barbed wire defenses. Their exploits endured in film, drama, magazines graphics—and in numerous kimono designs.
Japan’s military action in Manchuria and eastern China became more brutal through the 1930s, culminating in the Massacre of Nanking, which generated international condemnation. In Japan, however, the fall of Nanking in 1938 was cause for celebration. Newsreel footage was adapted to make widely popular graphic representations of the victorious general, Matsui Iwane on horseback in front of the gates of the city.
Increasingly isolated, Japan forged closer ties with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Kimono designers acknowledged that link repeatedly, showing, for instance, Ethiopia and Somaliland as Italian colonies. The detail shows the strange, startling contrast between Mussolini’s puffed up pose and the cheery innocence of the Ethiopian child in army fatigues pushing a barrow full of artillery shells. It is kitsch and chilling at the same time.
Most troubling of all are the images that supported Nazi Germany. The only defense is that these images were made in 1936-1940, before the full horror of the extermination camps was widely known in Japan. The result is a mix of the terrible and the tender. On one nagajuban (under-kimono) from 1936, a child soldier (wearing a Wehrmacht helmet) and his puppy prepare a care package for soldiers at the front. In the background a Nazi flag flutters and Panzer tanks grind forward.
The 1940 kimono celebrating the signing of the Axis Tripartite Pact shows the naval flags of Italy, Japan, and Nazi Germany. Though it seems a somewhat pro forma design compared to the usual standard, there are discordant touches of wit – steam from the chugging locomotive blends with the clouds where the Axis bombers fly, and the puffs of anti-aircraft fire resemble Japan’s traditional symbol, the chrysanthemum.
Though widely popular from the 1920s to the early 1940s, Japan’s propaganda kimonos, now viewed as a source of shame, have long been forgotten or suppressed, save by those who’d made or sold them. Their eventual rediscovery is largely the work of Jacqueline M. Atkins, an American textile historian and recognized scholar of Japanese 20th century textiles. In 1995 Atkins was a Fulbright scholar researching quilting in Japan and, as part of her research, sought out textile shops that sold used kimonos and textiles to quilters. Now and then, she came across some with militaristic designs, which intrigued her. After asking around, she was referred to a particular dealer known for her extensive collection of kimono textiles, including those with wartime designs.
After initially refusing to show Atkins and her assistant the kimonos, the woman relented and invited them to her house, where she had the kimonos stored. “She started pulling out boxes of them,” Atkins recalls. “They just floored me. I had never seen stuff like this.” When Atkins told the woman that these remarkable textiles were worthy of an exhibition, the woman flatly refused.
Atkins returned to the U.S. to complete her monograph on Japanese quilting, but vowed to return to the subject of these kimonos. “I became obsessed,” she says. The subject was all the more tantalizing and frustrating for having no written documentation: “I couldn’t find anything about them. Specialists in Japanese visual culture looked at me like I didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Her project on quilting completed, Atkins returned to Japan to meet with the woman who’d first shown her the trove of wartime kimonos. Through her, Atkins met other Japanese collectors. They were a secretive lot: “Many kept their collections private, never showing them. One told me, ‘My family doesn’t even know I collect these.’” It was understandable, says Atkins, “The Japanese lost the war and these kimono designs were all about victory.”
In the years following, Atkins has uncovered more than 1000 different omoshirogara designs and has contributed to two scholarly books on them. Her work on these kimonos has influenced exhibits at several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MFA in Boston, and the current exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum.
Atkins approached Susan Weber, director of the Bard Graduate Center in New York, about mounting an exhibit on the kimonos. When it opened in 2005, the show, “Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States 1931–1945,” alerted potential collectors outside Japan that these remarkable garments existed – and could be purchased for a few hundred dollars. Today they typically cost in the thousands.
One large collector is Norman Brosterman, an art dealer living in East Hampton, New York. His collection of over 150 kimonos formed the basis of an exhibit last year at the Edward Thorp Gallery in Chelsea, from which many of the images here are taken. He has sold, donated, and loaned many kimonos to museums in the U.S.; the rest he hopes to sell. If you’d like to buy one, Brosterman is happy to oblige.
After much hesitation, Japan is also beginning to show an interest in these kimono designs. There have been a number of small exhibits devoted to them there, but no major show. Still, Atkins and others were heartened in 2015, when crown prince Naruhito, Hirohito’s grandson, stated that he felt it important to “correctly pass on the tragic experiences and history that Japan pursued” during the war years, before the participants die or their memories fade. It’s a signal, Atkins feels, that Japan is willingly turning a page.
“These kimono designs offer an extraordinary window for research into the culture of war,” says Atkins. “Although the designs are unique, their concept is not; other countries – U.S. and U.K. included – had a history of wartime textiles as well. These Japanese examples were not an isolated phenomenon but rather an integral component of the culture of their time.”
The new book Palazzos of Power: Central Stations of the Philadelphia Electric Company, 1900-1930 explores the history and present state of the vast, imposing power stations built by the Philadelphia Electric Company in the first few decades of the 20th century. This was a time of growth for the company: the number of customers increased nearly 25-fold between 1902 and 1923.
The power stations—designed by architect John T. Windrim and engineer William C. L. Eglin—are massive in scale and grand in stature. The Turbine Hall of the Chester Power Station contains doric columns; at Richmond, vast arched ceilings soar above a cavernous space.
Today, these behemoths lie empty, waiting for a second life. The Delaware Station Power Plant, in operation since 2004, has since been purchased a developer who plans to turn it into a hotel and events complex. Richmond Station closed in 1984 and has stayed empty, save for appearances in the occasional movie.
Written by Aaron Wunsch with striking, large format photographs by Joseph Elliott, Palazzos of Power examines the history and design of these now-abandoned monoliths. Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from the book.
One Monday morning, at the Shinnecock Canal, a thin strip of water that separates two Long Island bays, locals found an apocalyptic sight.
Hundreds upon hundreds of dead fish were floating on the canal’s surface, so dense that one man told local news that “you could’ve walked across the water.”
These were bunker fish, which are also called menhaden or pogies. They’re a flat fish, that never grow too large—no more than about 15 inches. They’re one of those fish that play a key role in the aquatic food chain: they’re prey to many of the larger fish that humans tend to favor as food.
And it’s likely that a school of some larger fish is responsible for this massive bunker fish die-off. Predator fish could have chased the menhaden into this canal, where they crowded together in a dead end, quickly sucking out all the oxygen from the water and suffocating.
Not all of these fish will go to waste: local fishermen are gathering them to sell as lobster bait, and any bird that comes across this bounty will have a feast to contemplate.
Inside the "Parco Archeologico delle Terme di Baia," one little tree defies physics.
The modern city of Bacoli holds the ruins of Baia. It was once a playground for the super-rich of Rome, the emperors and their ilk. Julius Caesar had a villa there and so did did Emperors Nero and Caligula. Now the ancient resort town is a venerated archaeological site, but no one told the defiant upside-down fig tree that grows from the crumbling brick of an ancient building.
The tree sprouts from the ceiling of the arch it grows inside, which was allegedly part of the Emperor Nero's private villa. No one is quite sure how the tree ended up there or how it survived, but year after year it continues to grow downwards and bear figs.
UPDATE on the Best Buy scene: IMPD is still stationed at main entrance & is searching for somebody inside w/ a K-9. FD still has ladders up. pic.twitter.com/k75resC6FN
Around 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, police, tipped off by an alarm, showed up to a Best Buy in Indianapolis, Indiana, finding signs, according to WISH, of a break-in.
About an hour later, they found the possible source of those signs: a man, hiding in the ceiling, who was subsequently arrested for breaking into the electronics store.
Details were still pretty scarce late Wednesday morning, but other outlets reported that a K-9 unit helped cops track down the suspect, and a fire truck gave police access to the roof.
The suspect, clad in all black, was later seen being escorted away by officers in handcuffs. He was not injured.
During World War II and the occupation of Poland by Germany, symbols that were tied to Polish independence were removed or destroyed by the Nazis. Depictions of national pride, culture, or history—on buildings or in homes—were crushed by the unwelcome invaders. In some places, even the Polish language was banned.
Unsurprisingly, the Poles—who revered the banned symbols of their heritage—did not take this well.
In the city of Bydgoszcz, on the outside of the famous Fara Church there is one symbol that survived, overlooked by the Germans: a Polish White Eagle from the nation’s coat of arms.
The eagle was hidden in plain sight, on a downspout of the roof gutter that surrounds the church. The gutter had been installed in 1919 by a master roofer named Louis Sosnowski, and the eagle was added to symbolize Poland’s post-World War 1 independence following the fall of the German Empire.
The symbolic eagle gained even more sentimental value throughout the Second World War, as locals would often come to the church, look up in secret and pay tribute to this relic of national identity, untouched and unseen by the enemy all around.
To this day it remains an emblem of the struggle and pride of the people who fought back for Polish independence once again.
and the fundamental role the journalism plays in the preservation of democracy …
Okay, so that last one wasn’t a joke, but considering that Hoover would have wept no bitter tears if the Washington Post burned to the ground, it’s still pretty funny.
Think of the best scene from your favorite children's book. Easy, right? The Very Hungry Caterpillar emerges from his cocoon, now a beautiful butterfly that takes up two whole pages. Sal and the Mama Bear run into each other in the blueberry patch. The rascally mouse gets yet another cookie.
There's a reason this particular page stuck in your mind. Maybe it surprised you, or taught you a lesson, or made you laugh. But have you ever wondered if it's accurate?
Yes, children's books are bastions of fantasy, the rightful homes of dragons and magic crayons and talking cheese. But as kids spend less time outdoors, and more time learning about nature through screens, some experts are taking a closer look at how well the lessons translate. The answer is often a resounding "Needs Improvement." And fixing up picture books—those colorful gateway drugs to further education—might be a good first step.
Depending on who you ask, there's a lot to be done, and some scientists have been holding grudges for decades. "When I was working with an entomologist on an insect book, he said that one of his pet peeves is that the editor for Eric Carle's book about the hungry caterpillar did not vet it [with an expert]," says Donna German, General Manager at Arbordale Publishing. "He cringes to think at how many people, kids and adults, think that butterflies emerge from cocoons because of this one book." (Butterflies instead come out of chrysalises.)
Arbordale, which is explicitly focused on science and math education, works closely with scientists to check everything for accuracy. "You will not see penguins and polar bears living together in our books," German says. Some of their advisors take an even harder line—against cats in hats, talking trees, and other fun abominations. In those cases, German exerts a balancing influence. "Some scientists hate books that feature anthropomorphic characters," says German. "However, we believe that young children in particular will better relate to books if they can identify with the characters. So, yes, we publish some books where the animals 'talk' to each other."
But in this, too, they try to be clear about the line between fact and fantasy. "We follow up on all of these stories with facts and activities so that children understand where, how, when, why," says Arbordale's Public Relations manager, Heather Williams. "We pride ourselves on getting it right!"
Not everyone does. A quick look at the current New York Times Children's Picture Books bestseller list shows that three out of the top 10 titles are about various creatures, real and imagined, interacting with very human foods—dragons and tacos, mice and brownies, and cats and cupcakes (a fourth, about a frog at a French bakery, is close behind).
Other experts say kids' books have a trickier job than pure correctness. "Books and media have to find new ways to increase the valuation and appreciation of nature," says Juan Luis Celis-Diez, a professor of ecology at the University of Chile. Celis-Diez usually studies plant structures, but he has lately turned his attention to children's books. For a recent study, published last month in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Celis-Diez and five colleagues surveyed 1,242 Spanish-language textbooks and storybooks, each of which contained drawings or photographs of wild landscapes.
Celis-Diez and his team found some explicit mistakes, usually with animals in the wrong place—a red deer, found in the northern hemisphere, was the hero of a book about the southern rainforests, he says. But he's equally concerned about how few picture books published in Chile actually focus on Chilean animals. In the study's set, 70 percent of the textbooks and 89 percent of the storybooks examined focused on exotic animals, mostly from Africa and Europe. Children were far more likely to read about, say, lions, giraffes, and rabbits than animals or plants they might actually encounter. (This despite the fact that Chile is home to some incredibly cool species—guanacos and flamingos, anyone?)
Studies in other countries have found a similar disconnection. One survey, done in France in 2007 and 2008, saw children much more concerned with the fates of far-away species, like pandas, than those close to home. Sometimes these animals are very exotic—in an infamous 2002 study of a group of UK schoolchildren, kids older than eight were better at identifying Pokemon than real-life local animals. Meanwhile, some surveys make it seem like the genre is giving up entirely—in 2007, the Oxford Junior Dictionarytook 30 nature-related terms out ("wren", "dandelion") and replaced them with words like "blog" and "celebrity."
This trend worries Celis-Diez. While he understands the appeal of these more famous critters, if Chilean kids don't care about their plant and animal neighbors, who will? "The systematic loss of connection and appreciation of the local environment is replaced by knowledge of more charismatic or widely distributed species," he explains. If something isn't done, he says, "this loss of local knowledge will increase with the coming generations." Kids who grow up reading only about tigers don't know to teach their own kids about the colocolo.
Katie Cunningham, Senior Editor at children's book publisher Candlewick Press, says her editorial strategy sees a way forward in balance. "We are committed to books being both windows and mirrors for children," she says. So a city kid might see their world mirrored in a book about a pining for a new bike, and expanded in a counting book about lions. "Books that validate a worldview and books that expand a worldview are equally worthy," she says. "Lucky for us, that is not a hard sell for kids." As for books about cats in hats and mice with brownies, those have their place, too. "In fiction, we suspend all kinds of disbelief in service to a larger truth," she says. "If, in pursuit of that truth, a pig must fraternize with an elephant, then so be it."
Animals will never squirm their way out of the library entirely, and children's books should always be a place for kids to stretch their imaginations, across the ocean or into the realms of impossibility. But by choosing to focus only on a smaller or displaced menagerie, we run the risk of making them ignore what's right outside—and failing to impart the knowledge that they can affect their own story.
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.
The church pews, miniature train, and bandstands of the House of David used to be overflowing with believers. Now, the cultish religious colony has just two members, but the history remains.
Benjamin Purnell, a traveling preacher and former broom maker, declared himself to be the incarnation of God's seventh and final prophet, Shiloh, in 1903. Following Purnell, thousands relocated to Benton Harbor to join the "House of David" and live in the commune that promised Heaven on Earth. Members abstained from all vices: sex, meat, alcohol, tobacco, were forbidden, and so were personal possessions. Everything was shared amongst the commune.
However, the members of the House of David were no sticks in the mud. They were known for being wholesome and fun. All profits went back to the colony, and with their money they opened a zoo, a farmer's market, and an amusement park called Eden Springs. The money also went towards building homes for its members, including a particularly grand Queen Anne-style mansion for Benjamin and his wife, Mary. They were totally self sufficient, harvesting and canning their own food from orchards and even providing their own electricity.
The residents of Benton Harbor and neighboring St. Joseph's were drawn by the twinkling lights of Eden Springs to see concerts, eat ice cream, and ride the train. The House of David Museum director, who grew up nearby but is unaffiliated with the colony, said, "Yeah it probably was a cult, but, you know, a good cult... They wanted to invite America into their lives."
The colony was perhaps best known for its baseball team. The traveling team was founded in 1914 and became popular not just because of the oddity of their appearance (the men had long, uncut hair and beards to be in the likeness of Christ), but also because they were quite good. The House of David baseball team became known for their "pepper game," or trick shots. They got popular enough that they began hiring outside professional players, some of whom grew out their facial hair in deference to the God of Israel. Others just wore fake beards.
The House of David met its end when Benjamin Purnell was convicted of the rape of hundreds of the girls and women in the community. The scandal was widely covered in the press in particular because of the irony of it occurring in a celibate colony. The House of David split into two factions, the Israelite House of David and the Old House of David, but both of these eventually dwindled.
The colony is now mostly empty, but not totally. A few members remain in the buildings, waiting for Christ to come again and reestablish his kingdom on Lake Michigan.
