Willie Keil was born to Heinrich Wilhelm Keil and Louisa Moffit Reiter in 1836. A Prussian immigrant to the U.S., Wilhelm Keil established a utopian religious community based upon communal living and the Golden Rule in Bethel, Missouri in 1844. Over time civilization began to encroach on the commune, and neighbors convinced Willhelm it was time to go. So he headed west.
Young Willie was excited for the overland trek on the Oregon Trail, and set about learning to drive a pack team, so his father agreed that he could lead the wagon train to Washington. Shortly before their scheduled departure however, Willie contracted malaria and died at the age of 19.
Willhelm nonetheless kept his promise. He built a coffin lined with lead and outfitted a wagon as a hearse, laid his son in the coffin and immersed him the commune's own "Golden Rule" whiskey. They traversed the Oregon Trail with the hearse at the head of the wagon train, and according to some stories they had an easier time passing through hostile American Indian country because of it.
When they reached the site near the Willapa River in Washington state, they laid Willie to rest in the coffin by lamplight. The park itself is a grassy hill with a few scattered trees.
Willhelm himself found fault with the Willapa site and led the rest of the party south to establish a colony at Aurora, Oregon, between Portland and Salem.
This ancient burial site, also known as the Coldrum Stones, was built 1,000 years before Stonehenge. The site is situated just below the Pilgrims Way at the foot of the North Downs. The ruins are around 5,000 years old, and as such it took experts a while to figure out how the monument once looked.
In Neolithic times, this site formed part of a series of long barrows, rectangular prehistoric monuments thought to be collective tombs. There is another, much smaller, long barrow in a private garden in the neighbouring village of Addington, along with a damaged long barrow divided by a lane.
Built out of earth and some 50 local sarsen stones, the long barrow consisted of a rectangular tomb enclosed by kerb-stones. At the eastern end was a stone chamber, into which human remains were placed on at least two separate occasions during the Early Neolithic period. It would have been a huge feat of engineering to cut, transport and place the stones.
There is something strangely atmospheric about the location and it's worth spending a little time walking around the site and taking in this unusual and unexplainable ambience.
The artist who sold the most CDs in 2016 hasn’t toured in over 200 years, but is still more famous than Drake. According to a report on Billboard, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart made a massive comeback this year with a career-spanning box set that left other CD sales look weak in comparison.
Released in October, Mozart 225: The New Complete Edition is a 200-disc collection of Mozart’s entire musical catalogue. From his symphonies to his concertos, down to little scraps and fragments of his work, the set is one of the most comprehensive collections of Mozart’s music ever released. And at just over $300, it’s not even that expensive (considering the amount of music it contains).
The box set itself is a fascinating collection, and now it has the modern honor of moving more CDs than Beyonce, Kanye West, Adele, or David Bowie. While the set has sold just over 6,200 units, thanks to the hundreds of CDs it contains, it means that Mozart has sold 1.25 million discs. Pretty damn impressive for a long-dead composer.
But as impressive as it is, the figure may be ever so slightly off. According to the single one-star review for the set on Amazon, some of them may have shipped missing one of the discs (Disc 33, which contains portions of “Quintets String, Horn, Piano, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Adagio & Fugue, Clarinet Quintet, Adagio & Rondo”). It’s unclear how many of the sets were affected, although even with a small portion of his work missing, Mozart would still likely come out on top.
Nothing rings in the holiday season like a parade of demented yak-like demons wielding whips, smoke bombs, and a chainsaw or two. Welcome to Austria’s Krampusnacht.
The modern Krampus story goes like this: He’s the devilish sidekick of St. Nicholas, and his duties include throwing naughty kids into a sack or basket, beating them with a whip, and carrying them off into the night.
But in the Alpine region, Krampus-like creatures predate St. Nicholas by centuries. According to Austrian lore, pagan men would don animal masks and run around their villages in an attempt to scare away winter—or perhaps for the opportunity to make anonymous mischief for a night. Over time, these practices gave rise to more formalized folklore figures called Perchten, the winter spirits channeled by the masked men. Krampus is, essentially, a Percht that has taken on a life of his own.
According to a new English-language history of Krampus, Alpine Perchten were targeted by anti-witchcraft efforts during the Dark Ages. That makes Krampus’s survival particularly noteworthy: He outlasted most of his pagan peers because he was explicitly adapted to fit into the St. Nicholas narrative. By the 1600s, he’d begun to appear alongside St. Nicholas in Christmas morality pageants that were staged in rural Austrian homes.
Put another way, Krampus is one of the most obvious living examples of pagan and Christian syncretism in Europe, and you can’t understand one half of him without the other.
Today, the most common way to encounter Krampus is by attending a Krampuslauf or “Krampus run” in Austria. (A handful of towns also stage the UNESCO-protected Krampus morality pageants.) Most of the runs are held on or near December 5, known as St. Nicholas Eve or Krampusnacht.
Though multiple cities claim to host Austria’s biggest Krampuslauf, Klagenfurt am Worthersee (near the Austrian-Slovenian border) makes a particularly vociferous case: “It’s the largest Krampus run in Austria, with more than 1,000 Krampuses and Perchten, along with customary figures like angels, Nikolo, and witches,” reads a loosely translated city brochure.
The “1,000 performers” claim is clearly exaggerated, but Klagenfurt does draw dozens of Krampus and Perchten troupes from across Austria, Bavaria, Slovenia, and northern Italy. The run route stretches for almost a mile through the city center and begins with a troupe of young men who strap 45-pound bells around their waists. Called Krampusglocken or Balkenglocke, the instruments make a thunderous boom as the men march together, smacking the bells with their thighs. Not all runs start this way, but the bells signal Klagenfurt’s emphasis on Krampus as an Alpine tradition rather than as a rowdy, drunken terror.
Then, the street is flooded with winter spirits of all shapes, sizes, colors, and temperaments. Though most performers wear elaborate wooden masks and fur costumes, some use painted masks with LED lights and other modern accessories. Many carry birch or horsehair whips, which they use on adult and teenage onlookers.
The approach is gentler with smaller children, since the aim of most performers isn’t to terrify kids but to instill a sense of wonder. Many children shriek or cry when a Krampus shakes their hand or pats their head, but just as many offer smiles and giggles in exchange for the encounter.
There is no “grand finale” to the run. After the last troupe passes by, the crowd disperses toward the seasonal mulled wine stalls, and just like that, Krampus is gone.
Thanks to last year’s U.S. movie, there’s been chatter in Austria about the over-commercialization of Krampus. But in Klangenfurt, exactly one Christmas market stall was dedicated to Krampus, and it mostly offered devil-shaped chocolates. Even replicas of the early 20th century Krampuskarten (Krampus Christmas cards) that are often credited with Krampus’s fame outside of Austria are nowhere to be found.
The lack of Krampus kitsch appears intentional. Rural and suburban Austrians are protective of the tradition, and there’s little interest in helping visitors take part (the Salzburg area is a notable exception). Websites about Krampus events are almost never in English, and in some areas, runs are conducted along ad hoc routes that “you have to know to know.”
Though Krampus has always been a locals-first tradition, there are recent reasons for the antipathy toward outsiders. Increased international attention to Krampus has also meant increased scrutiny and regulation of Krampus’ more violent tendencies. Austria’s capital city in particular has little love for the creature; in 2006, several schools in Vienna permanently banned Krampus-related performances, and on the rare occasion that a Krampus appears publicly in the city, he’s required to play nice.
As a result, attending a traditional Krampus run in the countryside can feel thrillingly illicit, like a nose-tweak to urban sophisticates who “just don’t get it.” Because when it comes to Krampus, seeing really is believing.
More specifically, seeing a giant, growling man-beast chase after laughing onlookers with a whip really will make you believe that nobody does Christmas quite like Austria.
Back in the early 2000s, the Christmas tree industry was in distress. Artificial tree imports kept rising, threatening the livelihoods of domestic tree farms. The situation spiraled so out of control that in 2004, the National Christmas Tree Association launched a free online video game called “Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Tree.” The game invited players to throw snowballs at artificial trees, which were branded as “100% Fake” and “Made in China” and blamed for “sucking the spirit out of Christmas.”
Christmas tree growers were worried that their competitors in the artificial tree industry would quash them. Profit margins were shrinking. The soul of Saint Nick was on the line. Other agricultural producers in the United States—almonds, cotton, honey, watermelons, peanuts, raspberries, and other farm-grown products—have had similar moments, when competition, unpopularity, or lack of public understanding threatened to derail the industry.
Leaders in these troubled industries had taken advantage of a provision in the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996 to fund research and to launch advertising campaigns to repopularize and retell the story of their products. This is how America got the “Got Milk?” campaign. It’s why there’s such a thing as the National Honey Board, the American Lamb Board, and U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council. These checkoff programs use a combination of research and ads to try to bolster and distinguish their products.
Faced with the perception that potatoes are bad for the diet, for instance, the National Potato Board might put together a potato nutrition handbook. The Mushroom Council might stump for National Mushroom Month to burnish the reputation of the widely-derided fungus. These initiatives may seem funny, but they’re driven by people, who are trying to grapple with serious concerns in their respective industries.
The Christmas Tree Promotion Board wasn’t supposed to be much different. It was supposed to shine a light on the beauty of real Christmas trees, and bring tree growers together once and for all. It was supposed to fund focus groups to answer big questions, to figure out who wanted to buy real Christmas trees in the 21st century, to appeal to new demographics. It was supposed to let Christmas tree growers launch their own campaigns, to put up “Got Christmas?” advertisements if they wanted.
The process seemed straightforward: for every Christmas tree sold, a small deduction of $0.15 from each grower’s proceeds would go into a fund that would support the Board’s work. But it wasn’t so simple. The Christmas Tree Promotion Board had a powerful enemy, and thanks to him, the American Christmas tree would have to wait a full four years for its heroes to convene.
In photographs, rosy-cheeked, grey-bearded David Addington almost looks like Santa Claus. Don’t be fooled: from the perspective of Christmas tree growers, he’s more of an Anti-Claus. Addington will go down in U.S. history as the man who dumped some serious coal on the farm grown Christmas tree industry in America. This is the man who almost killed the Christmas Tree Promotion Board.
From 2005 to 2009, Addington had served as the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. He wielded so much power in the Bush Administration that many took to referring to him as “Cheney’s Cheney.” Richard L. Shiffrin, the Pentagon’s former deputy counsel for intelligence, called Addington “an unopposable force.”
In 2011, Christmas tree farm growers were on the verge of getting what they wanted. That’s when Addington made his move. On November 8, 2011, he published“Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax” on the Daily Signal. Addington wrote: “Nobody is saying President Obama doesn’t have authority to impose his new Christmas Tree Tax — his Administration cites the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996. Just because the Obama Administration has the legal power to impose its Christmas Tree Tax doesn’t mean it should do so.”
Then, he put a star on his own proverbial tree: “And, by the way, the American Christmas tree has a great image that doesn’t need any help from the government.”
The blog quickly amassed over 3,000 comments—many from frustrated Christmas tree farmers, who disagreed adamantly with Addington. They wanted to set the record straight about the threats to the Christmas tree industry. One commenter wrote in to clarify that the fee was something that the growers had been wanting since 1991. He added, “The majority of tree growers are Republican. It is not a tax and has been done for other agricultural products thru the years. This is a comical spin.”
The entire purpose of the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996 was to give people like the tree growers a chance to promote the commodity they were selling and protect it against competing markets, like the artificial tree industry. As one online commenter put it to Addington, “[It’s] simple business logic, you should be able to understand that.”
Nevertheless, the White House immediately postponed appointing board members to the Christmas Tree Promotion Board. No one in the U.S. government, especially President Obama, wanted to be labeled a tree-taxing humbug. In strategic terms, the delay made sense. Few people stepped up to try to explain the nuances of how checkoff programs worked, to clarify that the Christmas Tree Promotion Board embodied the very core concept of “for the people, by the people.”
Yes, the Promotion Board was for Christmas tree growers, by the Christmas tree growers, but the technicalities didn’t matter anymore. No one wanted to get on Fox News and recite thorny, polysyllabic clauses of legislation to prove that President Obama and his administration were actually on the side of the trees. The damage was done.
So Christmas tree growers had to wait four more years for their gift to come. And in 2015, they got what they wanted: a group convened to try to save their industry from a slow and painful death.
Tim O’Connor, the executive director of the Christmas Tree Promotion Board, reflected on the damper Anti-Claus Addington had put on the industry: “This program should have been implemented in 2011. It didn’t happen until 2015, because of that whole fiasco of presidential politics. The growers who work so hard on this program are so frustrated by that, because they didn’t want to get involved in presidential politics. They wanted to promote Christmas trees. They lost years and years of opportunities, and still are dealing with the hangover from that.”
Robert Bates, a professor of horticulture at Penn State University, lamented: “It probably would have been approved much sooner, but for David Addington's article. Once that piece created the (misguided) illusion that the Obama administration was ‘taxing Christmas’ the issue became a political hot potato and USDA delayed the process until later.”
Now that the Christmas Tree Promotion Board is in session, maybe Christmas tree growers in the United States can finally follow their star.
Stećci (singular stećak) are monumental medieval tombstones found throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and the surrounding areas. There are tens of thousands of these inscribed stones scattered around the region, but some of the best-preserved specimens are conveniently located a short walk from the Old City of Sarajevo, at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Stećci began appearing in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the mid 12th century, reached their peak in the 14th and 15th century, and fell out of use with the arrival of the Ottomans in the 16th century. They were used by followers of the different Christian churches in the region, including the Bosnian Church, Catholics, and Orthodox.
While most of the stećci are written in the now-extinct Bosnian Cyrillic alphabet, some inscriptions are written in the Glagolitic alphabet, the first Slavic alphabet created by the same Saint Cyril and Methodius who later created the Cyrillic alphabet.
The stećci at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina are located both outside the main entrance of the museum, and spread around in the botanical garden in the courtyard.
Nestled among a characteristically quaint rural New England neighborhood, which abuts the University of New Hampshire campus in Durham, Hamilton Smith Memorial Chapel is a curious hidden gem of local historic architecture in a campus town that sees faces from all corners of the globe.
The structure might seem little more than a postage stamp in comparison to the looming churches of England from which the picturesque chapel’s style was inspired. Built in the style of the Late Gothic Revival architecture, the tiny stone chapel now sits near hidden within the greenery surrounding the now town-owned property it was built on over a hundred years ago.
The chapel is situated on the outskirts of an estate owned by the late Hamilton B. Smith, who died suddenly of a heart attack on July 4th, 1900. The small stone chapel was built in his memory by his wife Alice. It was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 2012.
Simple in its construction, the chapel sports stone buttresses at each corner of the exterior, as is characteristic of the Late Gothic Revival style which was popular at the time of the chapel’s construction—now adorned by tendrils of crawling ivy along the walls, and splotches of moss which now call the stone monuments of the adjoining family cemetery their home.
When, in 1926, a new highway called U.S. Highway 66 was opened between Illinois and California, few could have envisioned its future cultural importance. It was promoted as the “shortest, best and most scenic route” from Chicago to Los Angeles, yet it soon took on additional significance.
A little over a decade after opening, Route 66 was immortalized in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as "the mother road, the road of flight"—a reference to the thousands of people who traveled along this route during the Great Depression. Twenty years after opening, Nat King Cole had a 1946 hit with "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66"; in the 1960s, there was even an eponymous TV show.
By the 1980s, however, drivers had started to favor wider, higher-speed interstate highways. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985. Since then, the highway has been subject to preservation efforts. Route 66 has, in the words of Congress, “become a symbol of the America people’s heritage of travel and their legacy of seeking a better life.”
There is a particular nostalgia that surrounds Route 66. It evokes gleaming cars and old school diners, roadside attractions and kitschy road signs. It’s the latter that is the subject of the new book Route 66 Roadside Signs and Advertisements, by Joe Sonderman and Jim Hinckley. Crammed full of images of faded signs, restored neon and painted murals, the book is a tribute to the markers that guided decades of travelers on their way across America.
There was a strong cold front, and the wind picked up, faster and faster, until it reached 50.4 mph. This was over the ocean recently, between Iceland and the U.K., off of the Outer Hebrides, the islands along the northwest coast of Scotland.
Out there in the ocean, as the wind blew, a wave grew and grew to 62.3 feet tall—taller than a six story building, as the Guardian puts it—to become the tallest wave ever recorded by a buoy.
There has been at least one wave taller than this new record-holder observed by humans. In 2002, the BBC reports, a ship saw a 95 feet wave cross the North Atlantic.
Virginia City was not only a big, splashy Warner Bros. movie and setting for the TV show “Bonanza,’ but back in the days of the Comstock Lode it was an important stop on the western theater circuit. And the center of culture and civic pride was Piper’s Opera House.
Today Virginia City is a small town of under a thousand people, but in the late 19th century, at the height of the Nevada silver rush, the population reached 25,000. That meant a lot of Comstock Loders to keep occupied.
Piper’s seated nearly a thousand people, and typical of “opera houses” of the 19th century, it rarely, if ever, saw an opera grace its stage. It was an eclectic venue–more of a music hall–but never too booked to find room for a political debate or revival meeting, a down-and-dirty bear fight, society dance, or even the occasional boxing match.
Piper’s hosted the best-known performers of the time, including Lily Langtry, Edwin Booth, and Lillian Russell. Samuel Clemens gave some talks too–a local newspaper man who not only called Virginia City home, but here turned himself into Mark Twain. In later years, when Vaudeville took over, big acts like Enrico Caruso, Marie Dressler, Al Jolson, and Harry Houdini all made sure to book themselves into Pipers.
The Opera House that stands today was built in 1885, but its history goes back to the 1860s. John Piper, a German immigrant, legislator and one-time mayor, bought his first theater in 1868. It was destroyed in 1875 in Virginia City’s Great Fire, a blaze that burned out a full square mile of the town. Piper built a new theater a couple of years later, and that one burned down too. But third time’s a charm, and in 1885 he built again, and the place has been standing at the corner of Union and B ever since.
By the beginning of the 20th century the lode was on the decline, and so was Virginia City. The old hall held on as a movie theater, roller rink, and even a makeshift gymnasium, but by 1929 it was time to call it quits. The doors were shut and the building sat vacant for a few decades.
Eventually the old theater was restored, an effort led in the 1970s by Piper’s own great-great-granddaughter. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places, and with help from the state of Nevada and the National Park Service, the boards are still being trod in this vestige of the old days of music hall, Vaudeville, bear fighting and silent movies. You know… the good old days.
The fascinating remains of this Roman theatre is quickly becoming one of the historic buildings that symbolise the ancient city of Cartegena.
The theater was built between 5 and 1 BCE, and for centuries was covered by a cathedral built over the upper part of the the theater's "cavea," or seating area. The first remains were discovered in 1988, and the theater underwent restoration, completed in 2003. Today the ancient arena still holds performances, and there is a museum at the site displaying the finds from a series of archaeological excavations.
Visiting the theater you can imagine what it would have been like in Roman times. The cavea sits above a series of vaulted galleries. The arena can seat some 6,000 spectators, and is divided horizontally in three parts, in order to be occupied by various social strata. The public would have entered from two side passages ("aditus") and the semicircular orchestra contains three rows of wooden seats which would be reserved for the authorities. To the rear of the stage were three semicircular plinths decorated by two rows of pink travertine columns, with marble bases and capitals marble.
Budget debates aren’t always the most interesting of processes. But a single throwaway gesture made in the middle of one, more than 45 years ago, led to one of the strangest items you’ll find inside a government library: a plastic-encased hamburger.
The year was 1969, and the members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Canada, were debating an interim supply bill. During the discussion, an independent member named Clarence Copithorne rose to his feet and offered a suggestion of his own. “When talking about supply,” the representative for Banff-Cochrane told the sitting Social Credit front bench, “one thing they should supply us with right upstairs is good nourishment at noon.”
Copithorne then reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a rather limp hamburger, complete with relish and onions, from the Legislature cafeteria. “This will give you something to look at,” he said. “The honorable ministers can ask themselves why they can’t do something about this.”
The Assembly seemed to agree with Copithorne’s assessment of their lunch menu. His demand was met, according to the Edmonton Journal, with “hearty deskthumping from both sides of the house.”
It was a theatrical move, to be sure, and perhaps partly motivated by bureaucracy-induced cabin fever. But Copithorne took things a step further by officially tabling the hamburger with the clerk of the Legislative Assembly. And once he did that, the burger was no longer just a foodstuff—it was now the official property of the Legislature. As such, the burger was given a sessional paper number (301/69), and then sent to be duly filed along with all of the other governmental reports and correspondence in the library directly underneath the chamber.
At least, it was supposed to be. What happened next is a bit of a mystery. While the documentation about the burger moved to the library, as planned, the burger itself disappeared. (This isn’t unique in the province’s food-tabling history: a loaf of bread, baked by students at Hairy Hill School, was similarly tabled by a representative in 1978, but all that remains is a piece of paper acknowledging its existence.)
It wasn’t until 2006—nearly 40 years later—that the burger resurfaced. Copithorne’s son contacted the Legislature library and mentioned that he had found it, now bizarrely encased in a block of resin, alongside a signed note from the then-clerk of the assembly, in his father’s garage, years after his death. Nobody is sure exactly when or how, but it is believed that the burger was entombed this way, shortly after the original tabling, and then presented to Copithorne as a gift.
Did the library want this, er, “official document” back? They most certainly did.
Today, the plastic-encased hamburger lives on in the Legislature library as originally intended, just a few feet underneath the desk drawer out of which it was first produced. The burger itself floats in the middle of the translucent brick, looking fairly well preserved, if not exactly appetizing. Beads of what appear to be condensation are visible on the top of the bun, suggesting it was freeze-dried first.
Rather than being shelved alongside the other papers from the second session of the province’s 16th Legislature, however, Copithorne’s burger is given special prominence, as part of a locked cabinet of curiosities that greets you a few steps inside the library. Also included are a piece of light-rail transit track, an unopened can of golden caviar, and an old bag of dirt from the banks of a controversial proposed dam project.
Alas, the plastic-encased hamburger isn’t likely to gain new neighbors any time soon. In 2002, the Legislature’s standing orders were amended so that only paper-based items can now be tabled. “We don’t get lovely stuff like this any longer,” says Heather Close, the library’s reference and research services coordinator. “Which is OK, because we’re not really cut out for it.”
The library, she says, has a responsibility to retain and maintain the many official documents of the provincial government. “It’s pretty tough to do that with a hamburger.”
Every year, the residents of North York, Toronto look forward to the holidays, when the trees around the skating rink in Mel Lastman Square are draped with festive lights.
That is, at least, until said festive lights start winking out, strand by strand. It happened in 2014, leaving the rink completely dark, and again in 2015, when they had to bring cherry pickers in to fix things. This year, though, the city thinks they've found the culprit.
"I believe it totally has to do with one or more squirrels who perhaps don't like Christmas," City Councilor John Filion told CBC News. The squirrels chew through the strands of lights, he explains, presumably as part of their own holiday celebrations.
The city plans to install large, colorful floodlights this year, down at ground level where they'll be less interesting to the squirrels. Your move, tree grinches.
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.
If you're lucky, you can live in a home where a hairy little household imp will help keep your kitchen clean, or a domestic god will grant you everlasting good fortune. So long as you keep them happy.
From ancient Greece's goddess of the hearth, Hestia, to the hobs of Northern England, household spirits have been around for centuries. But most such mythical creatures double as gods of fire and agents of chaos, so failing to tend to their needs can lead to missing items, broken dishes, and calamitous fortune.
As you prepare your home for the holidays this year, here are some tips on how to keep particular household spirits in good standing.
Domovoi
Slavic mythology
Originating in Slavic mythology, the hairy little imp known as the domovoi is one of the world's creepier household gods. As the legends go, each house has a personal domovoi, which usually resides somewhere beneath the threshold, under the stove, or in the oven. The creatures are sometimes thought to be the spirit of the original head of the household.
Domovoi take the form of a tiny old man, about the size of a small child, with a long gray beard. Sometimes they mirror aspects of a family ancestor, or even the current head of the household. They can also take on animal form, appearing as a cat, a dog, or even a snake.
To keep the domovoi content, you must keep a tidy household. The home needs to be kept in good condition, with dishes cleaned and put away, food not left out—unless it's a small table offering to the domovoi.
If the domovoi are happy, they might come out at night and perform small chores around the house and yard. However, if the domovoi becomes upset with the condition of the house or their treatment, they turn into pests, stealing small items, breaking things around the house, and disturbing people’s sleep, among other nuisances.
Kotihaltia
Finnish mythology
In Finnish mythology, there is a type of spirit known as a “haltija,” which acts as a protector of someone or something. And among these spirits, the kotihaltia looks after the home. Similar to other European household imps, the kotihaltia is a little elf figure that can act as either a helper or a trickster depending on its temperament.
These house gnomes are said to live in the attic or even the barn, looking out for and protecting the family that lives there. They are closely related to other haltija who hold domain over other parts of an estate, such as the saunatonttu, who specifically protect the sauna.
Trasgu
Spanish folklore
Originating in the regions of northern Spain, the goblin known as the Trasgu is another imp with a strange love of domestic chores and tendency toward mischief. Possibly related to the more violent and malevolent red cap of European folklore, the trasgu has more of an impish reputation than some of the more divine or ancestral spirits that can inhabit a home.
Trasgu appear as small, spindly elves that wear red cloaks and red caps. Their other notable features include a limp, and a hole in their left hand. Sometimes they are described as having horns.
Trasgu should be provided with small amounts of food and access to a warm place to sleep, such as near a chimney. If they are happy, they will perform small household chores such as washing up, but if they are neglected, they will move and hide items around the house, break dishes, and make a mess.
To get rid of a trasgu, legend has it that you have to assign them an impossible task, like picking up grains, which will fall through the hole in their hand. Eventually they will get discouraged and leave the house.
Hob
Northern English folklore
Coming out of the folklore of northern England, the hob is maybe one of the most well-known types of household spirits, having inspired the Harry Potter character, Dobby. According to the folklore, hobs are a more variable type of household spirit which can also inhabit shops and farms, helping with the work there, and being less closely associated with a specific house or family.
Not unlike in the Harry Potter series, hobs traditionally look like stunted elves that mainly come out at night to help with the chores, preferring not to be seen in their work.
Household hobs are often a positive presence, but one thing they really hate is to be rewarded for their work. Traditionally a hob will become offended and leave should the owner of the house try to give them a piece of clothing. However, pretty much any praise could be seen as an affront, and cause them to disappear. Just leave hobs to their work, and everything should be fine.
Zashiki-warashi
Japanese folklore
While some household spirits must be driven out in order to stop any calamity they might be inflicting on the residents, in the case of Japan’s zashiki-warashi, it isn’t until it leaves that you have to really worried.
For the most part, the zashiki-warashi remain invisible, or appear as a plump little kid, but only to children. Zashiki-warashi usually only show up to the adults or owners of a house if they are preparing to leave. Should the ghost vacate the premises, it is a sure sign of impending doom and ruin. Best to just put up with their hijinks, rather than drive them off, and subject yourself to a ruinous fate.
Zashiki-warashi tend to inhabit nicer, older houses. They are fond of playing pranks like making noise in empty rooms, and unmaking the bedcovers. Despite this mischief, they are not seen as evil spirits, and if they take up residence in the home, it is usually a sign of good fortune.
Gabija
Lithuanian folklore
Rising up from the tales of Lithuanian folklore, the figure of Gabija is one of the more potentially destructive household gods. Another goddess of the hearth, Gabija is more akin to the living embodiment of fire than some of the more benevolent hearth gods.
Gabija appears in human form as a woman clad in a red dress, although she can also take the form of a cat or a rooster.
Paying respect to Gabija is as simple as observing proper care of your household flame. If the fire needs to be extinguished completely, it is wise to only do so using pure water, as any other liquid might anger the goddess.
If Gabija becomes displeased, she is said to go wandering. In other words, fire would spread through your house. Keeping her well attended could mean keeping your house from burning down.
Mathematicians live out their days haunted by many questions. They may wake up some mornings already trying to prove the Hodge Conjecture. They may travel to work ruminating: Is every number greater than two truly the sum of three primes? And at the end of the day, they may drift off to sleep trying to figure out, once and for all, whether there are any odd perfect numbers.
But one problem, in particular, scourges them at dinner—that of the Incompatible Food Triad.
That conundrum goes like this: Can you think of three foods where any two of those foods taste good together, but all three combined taste disgusting?
Like so many long-lasting mathematical mysteries, this one is more difficult than it sounds. Thus far, it has stymied at least four generations of academics, who have not been able to come up with a group of foods that definitively fit the bill, nor a way to prove that it can't be done. George Hart, an engineering professor and mathematical sculptor, has been chewing on the Incompatible Food Triad for 36 years. "Is there a theorem that says if a and b are good, and b and c are good, and a and c are good, then a and b and c must be good? That's something that, on the face of it, seems reasonable," he says. "But then when you look for an argument, a truth, you don't find one."
Try it for yourself: Think of two foods that you like, and then try to mess them up by adding a third. Then, divide them out again, checking each pair individually. Mentally testing combinations like this feels like chewing Willy Wonka's three-course gum—you cruise through one food pair, and then the second, before the third turns you blue. Strawberries, chocolate, and brie? Strawberries and chocolate: delicious; strawberries and brie: a picnic classic; chocolate and brie: no way.
As far as the problem’s contemporary fans know, the Incompatible Food Triad was first pondered by Wilfrid Sellars, a Stanford philosopher better known for his work with semantics. Sellars used to bring the problem up over dinner with his students and colleagues. One of these was Nuel Belnap, a logician, and when Belnap rose up in the ranks, he, too, made the Triad part of his dinner conversation. That's where Hart first heard it, in the late 1970s, after which he also began pulling it out as a conversation starter.
It sparked some good debate—“It's a natural thing to talk about," he says. But, like a thread of spinach wedged high up in a molar, the lack of a clear solution continued to irritate him. He wanted more interlocutors. So, in August of 2003, he took the problem to the biggest dinner table of all time: the Internet. “Recently, at a wonderful dinner in southern Spain with a colleague, two graduate students, and a vast platter of tentacles and mysterious seafood, I realized it has been twenty-five years with zero progress,” he wrote. “…Better minds (or taste buds) than mine must now be brought to bear in this research.”
Something about the question hit a nerve—not just with mathematicians, but with the general public. Answers began trickling in, then pouring. Each had some shortcoming. Lemon, cocoa, and curry don't sound great, but it's not too hard to imagine a decent lemon mole sauce. Salted cucumbers, sugar, and yogurt might work, but if you count the salt, that's four ingredients, not three. You might not like the thought of potatoes, mayonnaise and cabbage, but someone has invented a corned beef salad that has all three.
At first, Hart posted the answers as they came, with his own commentary. He even tried to get Google in on it, asking some employees whether it would be possible to trawl through recipes for food pairs, and then cross-reference sets of them to try to find an incompatible triad (sadly, they said it was impossible). But soon, Hart found himself overwhelmed by the task. He got erudite hate mail: “I am baffled, shattered, and destroyed by the mind-numbing pointlessness of the Incompatible Food Triad experiment,” one non-fan wrote in. “It makes me ill.” He got trolled: “Get pregnant, and you can eat anything!” insisted another.
Eventually, he heard from renowned French gastronomer Hervé This, who took umbrage with the whole premise. ("May I tell you that your question is wrong, and this is why there is no solution," he wrote.) After that, Hart stopped adding responses altogether. “To have a world-renowned chef come and say, basically, ‘You can’t solve this’ was sort of a convenience for me, allowing me to put it away,” he says. (He also asked that Atlas Obscura beg any readers with possible solutions not to email him directly—so if you think you’ve found an answer, please send it to us instead, at cara@atlasobscura.com.)
But others have soldiered on. Reddit threads occasionally pop up, generate interest, and then die down again. Tiffany Inglis, a programmer and digital artist, took some time a few years ago to design a lemon affogato, in order to patently prove that a top Incompatible Food Triad contender—espresso, lemon, and milk—wasn't so bad after all. Inglis has set her own bar for success: "If there exists a combination such that the trio, but none of the pairs, creates a toxic chemical reaction, then it would be a true impossible triad," she says. "Until then, it's just a fun mental exercise."
Hart agrees. "Suppose someone had an empirical solution, an actual recipe—‘Put this together, taste them, it's all good. Put all three together, it explodes, it turns blue, it's awful!'—I think that would satisfy it in a beautifully clean way," he says. "Oh, I would love it." Until then, it's just another endless, delicious argument on the Internet.
There’s a pleasant circular walk around Clophill, but what is most interesting in this old English village is the abandoned church, St Mary The Virgin, built around 1350 just outside the main settlement. There are a few odd things about this ancient little church, the most significant being is that it was supposedly built the wrong direction.
Churches are traditionally oriented to face east, the direction from which the sun rises, which in the Christian religion is associated with the location of heaven and the return of the Messiah. Churches are positioned with the altar facing east so people will pray in that holy direction.
Some have claimed that because St Mary The Virgin faces away from God, it thus opens its doors to Hell. Indeed, the church has a long history of reported hauntings and supposed satanic rituals.
Another unusual feature of the ruined church is that nearly all of the gravestones sit against the wall of the graveyard, due to the area being cleared of gravestones in the 1970s after an incident of graveyard desecration. It makes for a very unusual and spooky setting.
The church was abandoned after a replacement church was built in a more convenient location in town in the 19th century. As the building began to fall apart, it took substantial funds from English Heritage to save the historic church, which stands proudly —albeit missing a roof or windows—looking down on the village it once served.
Drums echo through the cobbled streets. The air is thick with the smell of doughnut grease, sugar, and freshly-baked pastries. Festive lights flicker overhead while a group of townsfolk in traditional dress prepare themselves for an evening of lively dancing.
Behind the table of a street stall, an old woman wearing a gingham apron and a devout expression is wrapping some penis-shaped cakes into a parcel.
It's festival time in Amarante, a normally quiet village in the far north of Portugal, and these phallic cakes are in abundance. The street sellers lining the sidewalks have rows of them on display. These cakes are so integral to the identity of the village, in fact, that they’ve become its most recognizable icon. In their honor, phallic symbols are rife. Even the bunting overhead flutters with white paper phalluses.
But how did the erect penis become the symbol, the mascot, for a hyper-conservative Portuguese town?
The cakes are known as “Bolos de São Gonçalo” (Saint Gonçalo cakes) or sometimes "doces fálicos" (literally phallic sweets), and they’re the object of a long-standing fertility ritual. Forget the bunches of red roses: Amarante townsfolk prefer to exchange cakes shaped like erect penises as a (none-too-subtle) token of their affections. The pastries can also be bought by or gifted to single women as a love-life good luck charm. In a way the cakes are an offering to the revered saint; an edible prayer petitioning unity, fertility, and fidelity.
Exactly how the tradition originated is a mystery. São Gonçalo himself was a Roman Catholic priest who lived and died in Amarante in the 13th century. Cast out of his parish by his progressive (and rather unfriendly) nephew, Gonçalo joined the Dominican Order and lived the rest of this life as a hermit. As such, there’s little known about him that could explain his link to romance and fertility.
It’s probable that the tradition stems from pre-Christian times. Pagan practices were so deeply rooted during the time Christianity spread across Europe that it was far easier to absorb, rather than change or eradicate, them. Since phallic symbols were frequently used in Pagan fertility rituals, it’s easy to imagine the cakes as a direct descendant of those ancient rites which were, somewhere along the line, linked to São Gonçalo as a way of bringing them into Christendom.
The São Gonçalo festival is ever evolving. During the first weekend in June and on January 10, the town bursts to life with a calendar of activities that oscillates between the cheerfully modern and the deeply religious. DJs blast dance music into the streets. Intricate flower arrangements are laid at the feet of saints on religious floats. Carnival rides fling their technicolor arms into the night. Church bells call the townsfolk to a solemn Sunday mass service.
Even the cakes are evolving. There are those sold by street vendors, whose trestle tables groan under the weight of hard, edible, anatomically correct phalluses up to a meter in length. Then there are bakeries transforming the tradition into something softer, more subtle, more delectable. Some of their versions have cream fillings or come in miniature size. Capitalizing on the uniqueness of the tradition, they now produce the cakes outside the dates of the festival, too.
The cake tradition is, above all, resilient. It’s thought that during the Portuguese dictatorship, which began in 1926, the cakes were deemed obscene and against public morals. They were quickly outlawed. The people of Amarante, unwilling to give up a tradition so integral to their identity, continued to secretly make and exchange the sweets behind closed doors. When the dictatorship fell in the revolution of 1974, the cakes were once again free to stand proudly in street vendors' carts. There they remain to this day.
The Universidad Complutense of Madrid is one of the oldest universities in the world. Its story begins as far back as 1293, when the Archbishop of Toledo was granted a charter by King Sancho IV of Castile to found a "studium generale." Two hundred years later, in 1499, Pope Alexander VI granted a papal bull, which expanded the Complutense into a full university.
Today, the best reason to visit the University is its Museum of Anatomy, "Javier Puerta," created in 1787 by royal decree of King Charles III, who was known for his contributions to science and research.
Part of the college of medicine, the museum is made up of anatomical models, mummified and artificial body parts, and three sculpture collections. The wax polychrome sculpture collection displays a series of anatomically precise wax models, representing the stages of pregnancy from conception to childbirth, the oldest of which date back to 1794. The plaster polychrome sculpture collection is essentially a collection of plaster sculptures of human body parts. The ominous-sounding bone collection is comprised of thousands of skulls, and two skeletons.
One of these, which dates back to the Spanish War of Independence (1807-1814), is the skeleton of a French farmer and grenadier who, due to the mercury salts in his bones, is speculated to have been killed by mercury poisoning. The other is the the skeleton of the so-called Extremeño Giant, said to have been brought to the museum alive by Pedro Gonzalez de Velasco, the museum's director at the time.
Richard Feynman’s sprawling FBI file covers two-thirds of the physicist’s legendary career, from drama over his invitation to speak at a Soviet science conference to an unnamed colleague citing his hobby of cracking safes at Los Alamos as evidence he was a “master of deception and enemy of America.” But the file stops abruptly in 1958, and for a very Feynmanian reason: Feynman asked them to.
After decades of Bureau inquiries, it appears a fed-up Feynman simply pulled the “I made the atomic bomb” card and asked to be left alone.
To their credit (and perhaps due to Feynman’s not inconsiderable clout), the FBI obeyed Feynman’s wishes, with Hoover even writing a chastising memo reminding agents not to bother the man without a damn good reason.
So there you have it: if you ever wanted to get the Bureau off your back, try to get a job on the Manhattan Project.
Every February in the Hungarian city of Mohács, goat-horned monsters and mysterious women in lace masks parade through town, jangling bells and twirling noisemakers. This is Busójárás, a national tradition dating back to the early Middle Ages.
Busójárás achieves multiple purposes. First, it is a traditional Carnival, a festival of drunkenness and revelry celebrated the week before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. Second, it's the reenactment of a historic victory by the Šokci, a Croatian ethnic minority that has a large populace in Mohács.
As the story goes, the townspeople fled the city to escape the Ottoman Turks who had invaded in 1526. Hiding in the forest, they were approached by an old mystic who told them to don masks, weapons, and bells, and that a knight would appear to lead them into battle. Some nights later, when the masks were fashioned, the knight arrived and led them home to Mohács where the racket of bells led the Turks to believe they were plagued by demons. They deserted the town, and the townspeople had their homes back. Another, more ancient version tells that the Busos are chasing away winter itself.
The Busójárás parade occurs every year without fail. Modern amenities have made carving the Buso masks easier (each one is unique to its wearer), and as word of the festival spreads the crowd grows bigger each February.
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