Born of a financial fiasco in the 1990s, the resort of Pirou-Plage in Normandy remained a half-built ghost town until its colorful houses were discovered by squatters and ravers in the 2000s. Since then the French village has taken on a new identity, becoming a hub for artists and filmmakers and blossoming into an art project open to all.
The 17-acre piece of land is situated a couple hundred yards from the beach, behind a lovely natural dune. The original plan was to turn it into an ambitious holiday village, with 75 houses, a hotel-club, and two tennis courts—all this in a seaside town that counts only 1,500 year-round inhabitants.
The promoter was a convincing salesman: he quickly sold all the houses—on paper, anyway. But no plans were made for water, electricity or draining. By April 1992, 25 houses were already up when the building work suddenly stopped. The contractors were not paid anymore: the promoter had vanished with its investors’ money. Pirou-Plage would never turn into a holiday village.
The new houses were systematically plundered: everything that could easily be taken away disappeared. Stripped of their doors, windows, and roof tiles, the desolate houses then became homes for squatters and ravers who came and went as they pleased. A sort of seasonal ghost village was born, open to whoever wanted to come, without barriers.
Pirou-Plage’s story took another interesting twist when it started to attract artists in the 2000s. Street artists, painters, photographers, and filmmakers adopted the abandoned resort, and for the first time its houses were lively. In 2014, some Pirou inhabitants were featured in projects led by the famous French photographer and street artist JR, and filmmaker Agnès Varda. Word of mouth and media coverage spread the news: Pirou-Plage had become a cool place to go. But unfortunately, not for long. Recently, local authorities made plans to bring in bulldozers and demolish the resort’s graffiti-covered structures.
Soon, you might plant these seeds in the ground, without even giving a second thought to the fact that you showed your support to the commercial seed industry. It’s a heckuva lot larger than you’d think, bringing in $45 billion globally each year according to the American Seed Trade Association.
Now, you might be wondering to yourself, “Wait, $45 billion? How? Can’t commercial farmers just use the seeds left over by the plants they grow?”
Well, this issue is way more complicated than that. And, largely, you can thank genetically modified crops, and, more specifically, the 1980 Supreme Court case that paved the way for them.
In Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the court then affirmed (in a narrow 5-4 decision) that genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, could be patented, setting the stage for the rise of seed industry giants.
“While laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable, respondent’s claim is not to a hitherto unknown natural phenomenon, but to a non-naturally occurring manufacture or composition of matter—a product of human ingenuity ‘having a distinctive name, character [and] use,” Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote.
This decision, while involving a form of bacteria that could break down crude oil, proved a major turning point for the seed industry, and allowed GMOs to propagate widely. This is the seed, in other words, that allowed the agricultural company Monsanto to grow into a multi-national giant.
It’s also quite the change from the time when the federal government used to seeds away for free.
No, really. They did that. When the American Seed Trade Association got its start in the late 1800s, the seed business was far from the massive success it is today. In fact, prior to its launch, many seed companies went under.
The culprit? The federal government, who spent nearly a century giving away seeds for free through a variety of organizations, starting with the agricultural arm of the U.S. Patent Office, eventually giving way to the USDA upon its 1862 founding.
For nearly a century, the federal government was organized around the reality of the economy, which is that it was still strongly agrarian. Many early post offices were hubs for picking up seeds. It wasn’t a cheap program, either: At one point in the late 1800s, roughly a third of the USDA’s budget was dedicated to distributing seeds around the country. And some political parties wanted the seed program to go even further.
All of this, though, didn’t stop more seed companies from starting up, despite the long odds for success. Eventually, the American Seed Trade Association was formed in 1883, with the free seed program the companies’ primary issue. It took a few decades of lobbying, but in 1924, things finally changed in their favor, when Congress ended the free-seed program.
Around that time, the seed industry came up with its first hybrid corn seed, which helped make the case that the commercial market could create seeds that produced better yields than the federal government. That helped set the stage for the commercial farming and food industry we have today.
To this day, commercial seed-growers understandably see the early period as the "bad old days," and, in modern times, are still fighting for their right to monetize their seeds. Take a 2013 Supreme Court case Bowman v. Monsanto Co., which pitted Monsanto against a farmer who wanted to reuse his genetically modified seeds. The seed industry argued that the government’s free seed program ultimately harmed the seed industry by removing incentives for farmers to develop their seeds, and therefore, their crops.
“Early seed breeders had little incentive to make costly investments in developing more productive plants because the free seed program crowded private breeders from the marketplace,” the brief, filed by 21 different industry organizations, stated. “Additionally, without intellectual property protection, seed breeders had little control over the fate of their genetic material; purchasers were not barred from saving seed or from selling the new seeds they grew to others for planting purposes without compensating the breeder.”
(The Supreme Court ultimately sided with Monsanto in a unanimous decision, finding that seeds remain patented even after you re-grow them.)
We may not have federally mandated free-seed programs anymore, but one thing we do have more of now than we did in 1862? Libraries.
And some of those libraries, more than 300 in the U.S. alone, are in the seed business.
Seed libraries, or grassroots-level seed exchange programs, generally work like this: you pick up the seeds you need, grow something in your garden, then when you’re done, you return some seeds back to the library. It’s a good idea, but the problem is, the practice is illegal in some states due to broadly-written agricultural legislation—legislation that, in many cases, also bans you from exchanging seeds with friends.
There has been at least one case, in fact, where a state agriculture department came down hard on a library for the heinous crime of seed-sharing.
In 2014, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture told a library in Mechanicsburg that they were in violation of a 2004 state law because they allowed people to plant seeds from the library, with the promise that they’d offer up new seeds from fully grown plants later on. The department told the library that this was a bad idea—the seeds had to be tested, had to come directly from commercial seed companies, and at the end of the growing season, all the extra seeds had to be thrown away.
“What they proposed to do at the library fell under the definition of seed distribution, and if you’re a seed distributor, you fall under the provisions of the act,” Deputy Agriculture Secretary Jay Howes told the Wall Street Journal.
When discussing the issue, Cumberland County Commissioner Barbara Cross suggested that the seed library created a legitimate threat to the food supply, and that it was important to get on top of the issue while it was still relatively manageable. She also managed to introduce the word “terrorism” to the conversation.
“Agri-terrorism is a very, very real scenario,” she told the Sentinel. “Protecting and maintaining the food sources of America is an overwhelming challenge … so you’ve got agri-tourism on one side and agri-terrorism on the other.”
Eventually, the library made a deal with the state—it would no longer let gardeners bring seeds back to the library, and would only sell donated seeds from corporations. Crisis averted, apparently.
The thing is, though, is that the controversy highlighted to the public that these laws existed in the first place. And while they were meant to discourage the threat of Frankenseeds and prevent diseased plants for propagating in the commercial farming system (a genuine concern, considering the mess we know that is), there’s evidence that they could have the side effect of putting gardeners on the hook for sharing seeds with their friends.
To the layman, it sounds—what’s a good way to put this?—insane.
Fortunately, there are organizations that have been working on this issue. One of them is the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a legal group focused on environmental issues.
They have been active in lobbying for updated laws and exceptions to the laws currently on the books for seed libraries around the country, particularly in California, where the group worked to get AB 1810 on the books—successfully, as the act was signed into law back in September. The law clarifies that seed sharing laws are not meant to cover non-commercial exchanges like libraries.
As for Pennsylvania, there’s some good news on that front as well: Earlier this year, the state’s agriculture department clarified that non-commercial seed exchanges were not covered by the state’s Seed Act of 2004, which allowed the library in Mechanicsburg can go back to exchanging seeds without any corporate influence.
Brian Snyder, the head of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, welcomed the change of heart by the state. While Snyder said the law had its place, it was necessary to clarify it wasn’t intended for grassroots-level gardeners.
“Seeds are a basic element of human life and wellbeing,” Snyder said. “Without this kind of informal cooperation among neighbors, that well-being is very much at risk.”
If you go into a Lowe’s and buy some seeds, you will most assuredly see the seed packets labeled with such phrases as "GMO-free” and “organic,” two phrases that you would not have seen on seed packets two decades ago.
But we can’t make that assumption anymore. As a culture, we’ve been having a longstanding debate about whether we want our food to have GMOs in it, whether it should be labeled, or even whether it’s a big deal. The federal government’s recent law on this issue, which allows labeling to be hidden behind an electronic code, definitely didn’t make some folks happy, because the devil is in the details, though a few critics out there claim that GMO labeling is a form of fear-mongering, anyway.
The portion of the seed industry that directly targets gardeners, at the very least, seems to have found its line on GMOs: If you care enough about your food that you’re willing to plant it yourself, you don’t want reprogrammed seeds.
The problem is, though, unless you’re a master gardener and living 100 percent farm-to-table, someone else is making that decision for you.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
Few people know that the first Watergate wasn't the hotel where a presidential scandal took place. It was a forgotten staircase on Washington, D.C.'s waterfront.
The stairs were originally intended to act as a dock for visiting dignitaries and politicians disembarking off the Potomac River. The idea was that guests would ascend the 40 concrete steps of the grand staircase from the river to the Lincoln Memorial as they entered the United States capital.
This plan didn't pan out, and instead the Watergate Steps became a concert space. The orchestra would play on a barge docked in the Potomac while the audience sat on the steps beneath the night sky. The "Sunset Symphonies" went on from 1935 until 1965, when they were cancelled because noise from jets flying overhead drowned out the music.
The original Watergate remains, a useless set of stairs leading to nowhere yet an integral part of the National Mall's landscape nonetheless. It's even rumored that the famous hotel and office complex took its name from the steps.
After watching this video you will have to eat every word your high school self ever uttered about how boring chemistry was and how lunch couldn’t come fast enough.
We usually think of precipitation as the ever-present meteorological phenomenon that brings water down from the sky in forms such as rain, snow, and diamond dust. This short film, however, focuses on precipitation as it is used in chemistry to condense a solid from a solution.
The process is used for various purposes, like purifying proteins and concentrating DNA. Visually, it is fascinating. The slow-motion twirls and splashes in the video show the grace and beauty of this microscopic reaction.
Precipitation2 is part of a project by Beauty of Science, which releases one video every week to inspire people to notice the wonder of science.
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.
It’s almost impossible to find one of Britain’s secret, underground military bases unless you know what to look for. In the years since they were built, starting in 1940, many of them have collapsed or fallen into disrepair. While the bunkers are no longer camouflaged today, they still guard their secrets. To the untrained eye, their entrances might look like random holes in the ground.
The enthusiasts working to document these bases—and the clandestine Auxiliary Units that manned them—know what they’re looking for, though. The bases are usually located in woody areas convenient to arterial roads, railway lines, and the other domestic infrastructure they were meant to disrupt.
During World War II, the British Army built more than 600 of these underground bunkers—possibly upwards of 1,000—to serve as bases for small groups of fighters who’d be mobilized in the event of a German invasion. These local Auxiliary Units weren’t meant to last more than a few weeks: they might slow the Nazi army down, but they’d likely die fulfilling that mission.
The bases weren’t meant to last, either. After the war, they were supposed to be destroyed, but many were not. For decades, they remained hidden in the woods: the men meant to use them had been told to keep the bases a secret, and they did. One of the only reasons they’re known at all is that historians, enthusiasts, and veteran Auxiliaries has been documenting the history of these covert units and seeking out the remains of their secret underground bases—when they can find them.
“It’s like the jewel in the crown if you find one with the roof still on,” says Tom Sykes, the founder of the British Resistance Archive, a network of researchers documenting this history and its remains.
In 1940, the Nazi Army was sweeping quickly across Europe, into Norway, Denmark, and France. Paris fell in June, and by the end of the summer, German bombers were attacking Britain’s harbors and cities, and it seemed possible that Germany might invade England.
Under these circumstances, the British War Cabinet approved the creation of Auxiliary Units, which would serve as an anti-invasion force, trained by the military to use guerrilla tactics against enemy forces. Each unit of eight or so men had its own operational base, often constructed with the help of the Royal Engineers.
These bases were, in many ways, exactly what you’d imagine a guerrilla base that was literally underground would look like. They had a somewhat standardized form: after digging a giant hole, engineers would lay a concrete floor and roof it with a half-cylinder of corrugated iron.
The bunkers were usually about 12 to 15 feet in length and tall enough to stand up in. At one end there would be an entrance shaft, lined with brick or corrugated steel, and at the other end an escape tunnel, often a tube made of concrete, running 20 to 30 feet away from the base.
These small quarters were furnished with wooden bunk-beds, basic cooking equipment, and chemical toilets. They were reasonably well ventilated and stocked with rations, including rum: one secret document recommended that unit leaders “Be scrupulously fair in its distribution, and not over lavish. Best issued on return from Patrol.”
Some of these bases, though, were more creative in their construction. One was built below the basement of an abandoned, burnt-out manor house. Another was built in a badger’s den; another in an old root cellar. In Scotland, some bases were built in centuries-old rooms dug by Picts, who lived in the region up until the early medieval period. One underground fort, intended for men who’d been routed from their own bases, according to David Lampe, who wrote about the Auxiliary Units in his 1967 book The Last Ditch, could have held 120 people.
Some of the entrances made use of ingenious mechanisms. One, Lampe reported, was hidden below a six-foot tree trunk that could be swung aside to reveal the entrance. Another had a doorbell of sorts—anyone trying to gain entry would have to find a marble left on the ground and send it down a hole that led to a can inside the bunker, alerting the doorkeeper inside. Even the basic entrances had a clever mechanism that lifted the doors up from the ground and allowed them to twist aside.
Because the Germans never invaded, the bases were never used for anything other than training. After the war, they were supposed to be destroyed, but many were simply left to decay. One, for instance, collapsed not long after the war under the weight of a cow.
Researchers with the British Resistance Archive have spent hundreds of hours trying to rediscover the locations of the bases. In most counties in Britain, they’ve found, there are one or two members of Auxiliary units still alive, and they can help locate the bases. If there are no obvious leads, a landowner or farmer in the area might know exactly where to look.
“Nearly all of them are on private land, and we never divulge where the exact locations are,” says Sykes. “We don’t encourage anyone to go looking for them.”
Today, Britain's secret Anti-Nazi resistance bases are quickly disappearing: the archive’s researchers don’t try to preserve the ones they find, just document them so that there’s a record they were there at all, before the earth swallows them all back up for good.
On a snowy night in 1976, a Buick LeSabre was parked outside a White Tower hamburger restaurant in New York's Meatpacking District. For photographer Langdon Clay, armed with a Leica and some Kodachrome film, it was an arresting moment. In Clay’s photograph of the scene, the empty car looks almost forlorn under the neon strip lighting. Around it, the street is empty. The only signs of life are the blurred figures inside the diner, presumably the car’s owners ordering food.
This photograph is just one of many Clay shot between 1974 and 1976. In those years he documented parked cars, in Manhattan and Hoboken, in streets devoid of people and always at night. The title of each image includes the names of the cars, which are themselves evocative: Chevrolet Bel Air, Plymouth Duster, Gran Torino Sport.
So, too, are the backdrops. One photograph shows a Buick Skylark on a shadowy street in Soho in 1976, in front of a small sandwich shop with the sign “Pat’s Hot and Cold Heroes.” Another has a Ford Galaxie 500 parked in front of the Carz-A-Poppin car wash on Houston and Broadway.
Four decades later these lonely cars, and most of the businesses around them, are long gone. But they can be revisited in Clay’s book, Cars – New York City 1974 – 1976, published by Steidl.
What would you do if you walked by a bucket filled with gold on the street?
One guy in Manhattan decided to just take it.
The bucket of gold, as the New York Times reports, didn’t just magically appear. It was left not by a leprechaun but the guard of an armored truck. The bucket was sitting unattended in the back the truck, along with many other buckets, presumably also filled with gold.
“A guard went to the truck’s cab for a moment, the police said, and the man probably did not know what was in it. But he probably had a suspicion,” the Times reports.
Not to judge the guard too harshly—presumably he had a very good reason to go to the truck’s cab—but if you leave basically anything unattended on the streets of Manhattan, someone’s going to try to take it. If you’re moving worn-out furniture into an apartment for a college student, you need to leave someone to guard the truck.
Of course the gold bucket thief should not have taken the gold. But imagine his face when he opened it up and found 86 pounds of gold flakes inside.
On the southern window of Brno's Church of St. James, one sculptural element of the impressive church seems somewhat out of place: an indecent little two-headed man cheekily displaying his bare butt to the world.
There are two legends attributed to the little man, both involving the competition between the Church of St. James and the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul on nearby Petrov Hill.
The first is that the two churches, each financed by a family from either side of town, were about to be finished. The spires of the two churches, but St. James' ended up being taller by roughly 30 feet. The naked man and his bottom were added on as a middle finger from the winning church to the losing one.
The second story is that the financiers of the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul were jealous of their competitors because, though Petrov Hill was a wealthier part of town, the stonemason on the Church of St. James was one of Europe's finest. In addition to his skill, he was an efficient and well-liked laborer, and as such work on St. James was going considerably faster than on the cathedral. Using power, influence, and money they were able to remove the stonemason from his position, but not before he finished one final window. This, of course, was the indecent little man, spreading his cheeks toward Petrov Hill for as long as the church stands.
Some historians claim that both these stories are apocryphal, and that the rude sculpture is merely a strange but not uncommon piece of Gothic adornment. You choose which story you prefer.
If a sea lion is in a recovery center, how can you make him happy? You can give him some toys to play with, and plenty of water to flop around in. You can house him with a friend, or toss him a fish or two.
But it turns out there are other options. In a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, Dr. Mystera Samuelson found that sea lions in rehabilitation responded well to a different kind of stimulation—a little bit of aromatherapy.
The wild world is full of fascinating smells. Rehabilitation environments, by contrast, are often pretty sterile. Researchers have long known that, for those species who appreciate it, a bit of olfactory excitement goes a long way. They've also found that, in many situations, catering to a particular animal's natural taste pays off. For example, a rehabbing lion gets more jazzed about urine from a prey animal he might encounter in the wild—say, an okapi or a zebra—than he does about something he wouldn't run into, like a sloth bear, says Samuelson.
The sea lions in this study, who live at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi, were much less picky. In a series of half-hour trials, Samuelson spiffed up their enclosures with a variety of scents, some more true-to-life than others. So for one trial, she rubbed a spot on the wall with kelp. The next day, she smeared a banana all over it instead. "I was interested to see, are they pre-wired to be enriched from scents that are from their natural environments?" she says.
The sea lions, like true gourmands, appreciated them all. "The majority of them really loved sardine oil, which wasn't terribly surprising," says Samuelson. They also liked playground sand and potting soil—analogues for the materials wild sea lions encounter on land—and the kelp. They showed their enthusiasm for these scents by sniffing them and continually visiting the spot on the wall where they were located. They also exhibited fewer stress-related behaviors, like repeatedly swimming in the same pattern, suggesting that they found a scented enclosure more enriching overall.
But the more esoteric smells—orange, banana, vanilla, and cinnamon—were hits, too, even though wild sea lions are unlikely to find themselves in situations that smell quite so Christmasy. Particular sea lions even picked favorites. "One individual, Sage, was crazy about cinnamon. Just absolutely crazy about it," says Samuelson. When the cinnamon was on the wall, Sage would act like a preteen with a magazine perfume sample, rubbing as much of her body on it as possible: "I had to start hiding the cinnamon higher on the wall because I was afraid she was going to rub her eyes in it," Samuelson says.
To Samuelson, Sage's newfound passion for cinnamon was one of the most telling parts of the study. "Often, when we think of animals, we like to lump them into a group: sea lions love this, tigers love that," she says. "But really, you need to be focusing on the individual, their own history and preferences." She thinks Sage, who has been in rehab the longest of all the study animals, may have had a positive cinnamon experience in her past. Maybe a beloved trainer loved Big Red.
Other researchers are excited about the implications of this study. Because it's now clear that sea lions can readily distinguish between smells, some experts who work with blind animals are considering using different scents to mark important spots in the enclosure. "If you were to rub cinnamon on the gate, or put orange around the water, maybe the animal could always find its way without being led," says Samuelson. There's also the possibility of rubbing scents on toys, to pump up the fun factor.
But there's one particular takeaway Samuelson wants to emphasize: keep switching it up. "I hope that trainers in other facilities try new things all the time," she says. You never know when a spice-loving sea lion will surprise you.
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.
You stand behind a line with your weight on your back foot, facing a wooden target. Raise your arms behind your head and with a flick of the wrist your weapon spirals through the air and (hopefully) slices into the inner circle of the target—bullseye. That's really all there is to axe throwing.
The bullseye is five points, the second circle is three points, and the third circle is one point. In the last round a thrower can call one of the "clutch boxes" in the upper corners for seven points if they hit their mark. It's a lot like darts, but instead of tiny pointed arrows the players chuck deathly sharpened axes.
Axe throwing has likely been around for centuries, but this kind of organized club can be traced back to Toronto, where a Backyard Axe Throwing League (BATL) has expanded its operations across Canada. The brutal sport hasn't caught on in the States quite yet though, and that's where Urban Axes comes in. "Axe Master General" Lily Cope hopes that axe-throwing will take hold like other obscure sports (shuffleboard, cornhole, bike polo) have.
Despite appearances, the directors of Urban Axes promise the sport is safe, as long as proper precautions are taken. Anyone can do it, physical strength or athleticism don't necessarily determine your skill at the game, and a little practice goes a long way.
Last week, the police in Gardner, Kansas set up some wildlife cameras to try and get a bead on a mountain lion who had been spotted around town.
Instead, they saw these surprises:
And also this specimen:
Plus, this whatever-it-is:
In a Facebook post titled "Wildlife concerns," the department detailed their original plan, and its unexpected results. "In an effort to determine if there was a possibly dangerous animal in the area we deployed two trail cameras," they wrote.
"We are glad to report that over the time they were up we did not see a mountain lion. We were however surprised by some of the images that the cameras did take."
Camera traps are great at capturing unsuspecting wild animals, but they're even better at grabbing those particular beasts who truly want to be captured. Last month, biology students at Virginia Tech went through their study photos and found a long series starring a very naked man. One more of these and we've got a bonafide trend.
There is one upside: "Now you will not have to worry about the mountain [lion]," one Facebook commenter assured the police. "He left because of the wild life in this place is crazy."
Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that’s only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.
Ontario's Bois Blanc Island, frequently abbreviated as "Boblo Island" opened its amusement park in 1898. With whirling rides, organ music, and brightly glowing lights, it attracted thousands to the shores of the little island to revel in wholesome fun.
For almost 100 years it was only accessible by ferry: The SS Ste. Clair brought passengers from Detroit while the SS Columbia departed from Amherstberg, and each boat could bring up to 2,500 passengers at a time.
The dance hall, financed by Henry Ford, was once the second largest in the world and capable of holding 5,000 dancers. It also featured one of the world's largest orchestrions, an automated self-playing orchestra machine, which features 419 pipes and its very own percussion section. There were also big band nights, which drew "black and tans," multiracial crowds of young people during the 1920s.
Attractions included rides such as the Nightmare, the Wild Mouse, and the Screamer as well as a ferris wheel, a zoo, and the popular "Scootaboats." Needless to say, the amusement park brought joy to all those who visited. Detroiters even referred to Boblo Island as "the Coney Island of Michigan."
But the old-fashioned charm of Boblo Island was eclipsed by more modern attractions like Cedar Point in its later decades, leading it to close its gates for good in 1993. Since the amusement park's closure, Boblo Island has been renovated for luxury homes. Though many of the amusement park structures have been torn down, you might still hear a passing shriek and the tinkle of organ music amidst the remaining century-old ruins of Boblo Island.
In 1945, when Joe and Stella Sobchik opened a small café on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, the war was still on, and that meant rationing. Running a restaurant was a challenge in those days, but Joe and Stella stuck it out and Virginia’s Café (named for Stella’s mom) did pretty well for a few years.
In the early 1950s Vegas was booming, and at the nearby Nevada Test Site for nuclear devices, so were mushroom clouds. Joe had grown tired of flipping burgers and saw an opportunity in catering to the liquor needs of Fremont Street, so with atom bombs literally and figuratively in the air, in 1952 the Sobchik’s shut down the café and opened Atomic Liquors. They lit up the now-famous neon, got themselves the very first Las Vegas Tavern License, and were on the road to becoming the oldest free-standing bar in town.
At first Atomic Liquors was just a package store, selling beer, wine and the hard stuff on a take-out basis. But with the newly-minted tavern license, mix drinks could be served alongside the stuff going out the door in paper bags, and it became a 24 hour a day business. Rooftop service was added so customers could tipple a few “Atomic cocktails” while watching the blasts 65 miles to the north (it being a time before the dangers of observing nuclear testing was understood).
All kinds of customers came–construction workers drank alongside the Rat Pack, Barbra Streisand kicked back with the staff and played a little pool, and casino workers dropped by at all hours to cap off a long shift dealing blackjack. A kind of respite from the glitzier Strip, the Atomic and its classic good looks drew the attention of Hollywood too, eventually turning up as a location in “The Twilight Zone,” and later in the films “Casino” and “The Hangover.”
Atomic Liquors has held down their corner of Fremont Street for over six decades, under the watchful eyes of the Sobchiks for most of that time. Joe and Stella were still in the house into their 90s, and in 2010, after they both passed away, their son Ron took over. A couple of years later the family sold to new owners, looking to keep the old haunt just as it had been back in those early Rat Pack days. The bar was restored to its original configuration, with the famous neon kept intact. You can still order up some Atomic cocktails–just hold the mushroom clouds.
In the early days of the United States' entry into World War II, the Navy was woefully under-manned, under-shipped, and under-gunned. The Atlantic seaboard was especially vulnerable to German submarines, whose attacks took a major toll on the U.S. merchant fleet, killing thousands and sinking nearly 400 ships. The Germans called it the “Great American Turkey Shoot,” and North Carolina’s Outer Banks was dubbed “Torpedo Alley.”
What the U.S. lacked in naval protection, Great Britain could offer, so a fleet of English ships and seamen crossed the pond to help out while the American Navy ramped up production and recruitment.
It was May 11, 1942 when one such ship, the HMT Bedfordshire, was patrolling the coastline for German U-boats when it was struck by a torpedo. The ship went down, and all 37 sailors on board perished. Most of the bodies were never recovered, but four washed ashore near the small town of Ocracoke, North Carolina at the very southern tip of the Outer Banks.
The people of Ocracoke wanted to honor the four men, and a small plot of land was donated to create a British Cemetery alongside the village cemetery. Initially it was unofficially cared for by the townspeople, simply thankful for the sacrifice of the sailors. Eventually the grounds were leased in perpetuity to the British Commonwealth for as long as the sailors are buried there, so technically the four men are buried on home soil.
Each year, on the anniversary of the sinking, there is a ceremony for the sailors, with representatives of the British Royal Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard. Plaques near the graves tell the story of Bedfordshire and list all the names of those who died, and a few lines from poet Rupert Brooke:
On what would have been the radical’s 80th birthday, we look back at one of the strangest incidents in Abbie Hoffman’s 13,000 plus page FBI file: when the Bureau tried to bust him for publishing the government’s own records.
In 1969, the Bureau managed to get its hands on a rough draft of Hoffman’s upcoming book, Woodstock Nation, having been tipped off that it was “anti-American.”
The book, written while Hoffman was awaiting trial for the infamous Chicago Seven case, describes Hoffman’s experience at the festival, and was of particular interest to the Bureau due to the chapter on attaching explosives to dogs.
As a side note for those unfamiliar with his work, Hoffman’s narrative style could charitably described as “all over the place.”
The recipe for said explosives came from the Army’s Field Manual 19-30, and the FBI launched an inquiry into whether Hoffman would be violating any Federal laws by publishing it.
That inquiry was almost immediately closed, however, when it was very quickly determined that the manual was a declassified public document literally available to anybody who asked.
Thwarted again by their inability to suppress their own information, the Bureau was powerless to stop the publication of Woodstock Nation a few months later.
The relevant section of Abbie Hoffman’s FBI file has been embedded below.
Bullets fly, the cold creeps in, and your body is so malnourished that you can barely walk. You know that if smallpox gets a hold of you, you don't stand a chance. You look at your fellow soldier's pus-filled lesion and realize there is only one way to survive the smallpox outbreak in your unit. You breathe in deeply, cut your arm open with your rusty pocket knife, and fill the wound with the liquid coming out of your comrade's pustule.
Strange as it may sound, this was the reality for many Union and Confederate soldiers of the American Civil War. In the 1860s, before germ theory had taken hold in the field of medicine, medical facilities often lacked the necessary hygiene to prevent infections. Because of this, thousands of soldiers were killed by simple infections and diseases we now consider non-threatening or obsolete. Of these, smallpox was perhaps the deadliest and most feared.
Plaguing the world since ancient times, smallpox brought down powerful rulers like Pharaoh Ramses V, and has been credited with aiding the fall of Rome and the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. It also led us to discover vaccination.
By 1861, the year in which the Civil War broke out, the western world had been vaccinating against smallpox for over half a century. This feat is accredited to Edward Jenner, an English scientist who demonstrated that infecting people with the less threatening cowpox disease would result in immunity to smallpox. Injections were yet to come, so doctors' preferred vaccination method was to gather fluid from an active pustule of an infected cow or person and introduce it into the patient's bloodstream by making a cut in the skin. While prone to certain complications, this method proved effective enough to be exported from Europe to the rest of the world.
During the American Civil War, vaccination was not easily achieved—though it was highly desirable. It was difficult to either find a cow or a suitable person with an active pustule that could be harvested to vaccinate others. Smallpox outbreaks were common on both sides, as were resulting deaths. According to the The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine by Glenna R Schroeder-Lein, the most accepted method was to look for small children to infect with cowpox. Once infected, doctors would wait seven or eight days for a pustule to fully form, puncture it, and take the lymph (fluid) from it. Alternatively, they would wait for a scab to form and then take it out.
Depending on whether it was the lymph or the scab, the virus could stay active from a couple of days to two or three weeks. Doctors would deep cut or scrape off the skin of new patients and introduce the lymph or scab directly into their bloodstream. After the virus took hold, the lesions from the newly vaccinated could be used to infect more children and more soldiers, in a never-ending cycle of purposefully transmitting festering body fluids from one person to the next.
But why would doctors specifically target children to help infect soldiers with cowpox? The simple answer lies in one of humanity’s least favorite topics: venereal diseases. Doctors knew that these diseases were common among soldiers, and that there was a risk of transmitting them through this method of vaccination. There was also the fact that smallpox and cowpox lesions look very similar to syphilis lesions, and can be easily confused. Children, then, provided the perfect solution to the risk.
Perhaps in peace time this would have worked, but not in the middle of a war. Joseph Jones, a southern scientist who after the war attempted to recover medical data, calculated that there was one doctor for every 324 soldiers in the south and one for every 133 soldiers in the north. Add to this appalling numerical disparity the shortage of medical supplies, the lack of sanitary conditions, and the high number of wounded soldiers, and you can see how extensive vaccination was almost impossible.
If you were a soldier out on the field, threatened by a smallpox outbreak, practicing arm-to-arm vaccination on yourself often seemed like the best, if not only, solution. After all, this informal method of vaccination seemed like a smaller risk than the ones they faced daily.
How would soldiers with no medical experience achieve this process? As Margaret Humphreys graphically describes in Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War, with the doctor too busy or completely absent, soldiers resorted to performing vaccination with whatever they had at hand. Using pocket knives, clothespins, and even rusty nails (again, most people had no concept of germs yet), they would cut themselves to make a deep wound, usually in the arm. They would then puncture their fellow soldier’s pustule and coat their wound with the overflowing lymph. Afterwards they could do nothing but hope for the best.
The best, however, was not very common in this scenario, as it too often led to spurious vaccination, or an attempt at vaccination whose result was unsuccessful or harmful. As common sense in the 21st century dictates, self-inflicted wounds made with unsterilized materials led to infections. While in some cases, the pain ended at that, it sometimes led to serious complications that would cause a need for amputation, and in extreme cases, death.
As if that wasn’t enough, there was also the problem of the commonality of venereal diseases. In the transmission of lymph into the bloodstream, soldiers would often get infected by their fellow soldier’s diseases, particularly syphilis. As you recall, there is an unfortunate similarity between smallpox and syphilis. This meant that some soldiers, untrained in medical matters, could easily confuse a syphilis pustule with a cowpox one. Thinking they could be immune to the terrifying smallpox, many Civil War soldiers accidentally infected themselves with syphilis.
Certainly, most cases of syphilis contracted during the war were, so to say, orthodox. Sex workers were common in stations and occupied cities, and the last worry on a soldier’s mind in that moment were venereal diseases. There were those unlucky enough, however, to contract the horribly painful disease through a self-inflicted wound rather than carnal pleasure.
If we are intent in finding a lesson to this story, let it be this: Even in the most dire circumstances, don’t cut your own arm and fill the wound with your friend’s infected bodily fluids. The results may surprise you.
Ferrari’s world famous supercars are manufactured entirely in Maranello, Italy, but over 2,800 miles away in the arid deserts of the United Arab Emirates lies the world’s only Ferrari-themed amusement park. At this outrageous supercar emporium, the exorbitant wealth of Ferrari is put on full display.
Covering over 900,000 square feet, Ferrari World is the largest indoor theme park in the world, shaped like a massive three-pointed star when viewed from above, featuring a 215-foot version of Ferrari’s yellow prancing horse logo on the curved red roof.
Inside the theme park, visitors have the opportunity to visit an operating Ferrari factory, take a spin on a real Ferrari, and wander through a gallery of 70 years of Ferrari models. The “Bell’Italia” ride takes visitors on a Ferrari ride through a miniature diorama of the marvels of Italy, including Venice, the Roman Colosseum, the Amalfi Coast, and, of course, Ferrari’s hometown of Maranello.
Fittingly, the park is also home to the world's tallest roller coaster loop and the famous “Formula Rossa,” a thrill ride that sets the world record for roller coaster speed with a maximum velocity of 149mph.
Ferrari World has been dubbed one of the best tourist attractions in the Middle East, and is planning to expand the amusement park to Spain and Orlando in the coming years.
When we think about where we live, usually our ideas start with political boundaries—we'd say we live in a particular state, city, or town. Ask about a neighborhood, sports team loyalties, or regions not defined by borders, though, and it might get a little fuzzier. In densely settled places like the East Coast, sprawl can make it hard to draw lines around places, too. Where in New Jersey does the New York City region end and the Philadelphia region begin?
These larger urban areas are sometimes called "megaregions," and in a new paper, published in PLOS ONE, Garrett Dash Nelson, a historical geographer from Dartmouth, and Alasdair Rae, an urban analyst from the University of Sheffield, teamed up to identify them across the United States, using commuting data and a computational algorithm.
Essentially, they used data describing more than 4 million commutes to look at how small units of place—census tracts—are connected into much larger units of place. One of the results from their algorithm is the map above, which shows how the country is divided into economically entwined regions that don't conform to city or state boundaries. Pittsburgh's region spills into Ohio and West Virginia; Denver's tips over the border into Wyoming; and Oklahoma City's reaches into Missouri and Arkansas.
There are limits to what an algorithm can do, though, the researchers argue. They point to this little isolated region, rendered in green, that floats in eastern Kentucky, near the Virginia and West Virginia borders:
"This area really is coherent and independent in a certain sense, for it has very weak commuter relations with neighboring communities," the researchers write. But, they wonder, does that mean it should be considered its own region, on this basis alone?
Their conclusion is that the algorithmic, data-driven divisions shouldn't be taken as gospel but can be informed by a human, interpretative understanding of the results. Taking the data-derived regions and massaging them just a little bit, the researchers come up with this map of U.S. megaregions:
It's a coherent view of the country that resonates on an instinctive level, even if some parts remain curious, like the wide region out West that expands over Salt Lake City and sneaks across Idaho and Nevada into California that doesn't get a name. Or the part that's simply labeled Deep South.
Apparently there are geographical quandaries that even humans and algorithms together can't solve.
Sitting in a valley surrounded by rugged hills, Graz is the second largest city in Austria and has historically been an important point of passage between Western and Eastern Europe. In medieval times, the hills around the city were fortified with watch towers and castles for defensive purposes. Few of these fortifications remain, but one of the highest peaks still boasts the eerie ruins of one Gösting Castle, one such relic of the Holy Roman Empire.
Originally built in the 11th century, the castle was gradually expanded and updated for several centuries, serving as an outpost above Graz to defend against invading Turks and Hungarians. However, tragedy struck on July 10, 1723, in the form of a lightning bolt igniting a gunpowder magazine, blowing the roof and several walls down while setting the rest of the castle ablaze. Being at that point somewhat antiquated, the owners opted to replace it with a more modern structure in a different location. The remains of the burnt-out castle were left to decay for almost two centuries until efforts were undertaken to stabilize it in 1925 by the Gösting Castle Preservation Society.
Today only the chapel, the keep, and the remnants of some of the walls are still standing. A small tavern and museum operate next to the castle as well. The ruins are situated 200m (656 ft) above Graz and offer a panoramic view of the Graz basin and the eastern Styrian hill country.
In ancient Egypt, where cats were first domesticated, they were often buried in a ritual, religious fashion. The cat burials found on the site of Berenike, an Egyptian town on the Red Sea that thrived 2,000 years ago, were different, though.
As IBTimes reports, these cats were not mummified or buried with much adornment—only a handful had a trinket found in their graves. Nor were there any signs that the cats had been killed, as in some religious burials. These looked like domestic cats who had died natural deaths.
Writing in the journal Antiquity, the archaeologist Marta Osypińska suggests that these features mean that these cats were not buried as part of "sacred or magical rites." Instead, she writes, this site should be considered "a cemetery of house pets."
For millennia, cats were worshipped in Egypt, one of the earliest places where they were domesticated. But by the beginning of the first millennia A.D., the cult of the cat was falling out of favor. The cat skeletons in Berenike that were found buried with items had either iron collars or ostrich shell beads by their necks. In this one area, 86 cat skeletons were found, and most of them were single burials. The ones that were paired were an adult and a juvenile skeleton, suggesting that they were buried together on purpose.
The other skeletons—nine dogs and four monkeys—discovered in this spot also suggest that it was used as a burial ground for beloved animals.
As Osypińska writes, all this is unusual. Usually, it's thought that keeping pets and burying them carefully is a modern practice. But in her eyes this "unique site" shows that's not necessarily the right assumption.
