Would you be unnerved if you cracked an egg and found no yolk inside? Earlier this month a Japanese woman boiled some eggs and when she sliced one open, she found only the white inside. No yolk to be seen—at least on the photo she posted on Twitter.
Sometimes hard-boiled yolks hide themselves by drifting far to one side of the egg, but in this case it seems that the yolk is actually missing. What's going on here?
Yolkless eggs are actually common enough that chicken keepers have a number of names for them—fairy egg, witch egg, rooster egg, oops eggs, dwarf egg, wind egg, and, most commonly, fart egg. This last and most evocative name derives from the theory that the eggs are produced by chicken farts. In fact, they are formed when a piece of reproductive tissue ends up in an oviduct, which grinds into gear and makes an egg around errant tissue.
Often, though, fart eggs are significantly smaller than normal eggs; perhaps what's most impressive about this yolkless egg is how large it is. Usually these eggs are identified and kept out of supermarket-bound packages, and this one just happened to slip through. (This does seem like a missed market opportunity—a dozen egg-white only eggs would be perfect for people who choose egg-white omelets or recipes that call only for egg whites.)
Really, what's most amazing about the surprise of the yolkless egg is that anyone's surprised at all. The sorting and packaging of eggs obscures all the different ways egg production can go wrong—like many natural processes, egg-laying can get messy.
Salvador Dali: famous eccentric, leader of the surrealist art movement, chef extraordinaire, face of Lanvin chocolates.
If one of these things is not like the rest, let’s keep in mind that in Dali’s universe, nothing makes more sense than something that is out of place. Seen this way, this 1968 advertisement that he did for Lanvin —a brand of chocolates that is part of the Nestlé group— is exactly what you'd expect from him.
With Beethoven as a soundtrack, and snow-covered mounts on the background, he breaks off a piece of chocolate with swift, precise movements that make the common action seem like a deliberate act of rebellion. After he takes one bite, his eyes roll all the way back as he is lost in the pure ecstasy of the flavor, and his iconic mustache shoots up like the hands of a broken clock. Looking at the camera with intense, wide eyes, he declares: “I am crazy for Lanvin chocolate.”
It's the perfect ad for those who like their chocolate sprinkled with surrealism.
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.
The oldest historic site in Hartford is the Ancient Burying Ground, adjacent to Center Church, founded by Rev. Thomas Hooker and built in 1636. As the city's first cemetery, all who died at the time were interred here. The earliest surviving gravestone dates from 1648.
As was the custom in those times, burials were randomly placed regardless of family relationship. Gravediggers would use metal rods to locate a vacant spot, when necessary. When available space began to be an issue, bodies were stacked atop one another. In the process, grave markers became misplaced or destroyed. The burying ground became a crowded site of decay, with over 6,000 corpses in the cemetery.
Over time, the premium site in Hartford's city center, became attractive to developers. As early as 1712, a church meeting house was built on top of several grave sites. This was seen as an honor for those buried beneath, as the custom in England was to bury honored personalities within churches. By the 1890s, several structures had been built upon what was meant to be burial plots. Coffins were unearthed, bones were dug up. Some were reburied. Others were not so lucky and were carted off to the dump. In general, the cemetery was not actively used for burials and became neglected. Gold Street was but a mere 16-foot-wide alleyway lined in a slum. Efforts were made in the late 19th and 20th centuries to clean up the area, widen Gold Street, install an iron fence around the perimeter of the cemetery and generally keep the area maintained.
A popular site for gravestone rubbing, the burial ground is maintained by the Ancient Burying Ground Association which has launched an ongoing restoration program to clean and preserve the remaining headstones and provides walking tours of the site. It offers a glimpse into the early days of Hartford as a 17th century New England town.
When searching for their subjects out in the field, animal researchers rely on a whole bag of tricks. They might hide in hunting blinds until their species of choice comes by, or pinpoint them with satellites. They can set up nets to catch them, bait them into humane traps, or use automatic cameras to figure out whether they've wandered through.
Wolf experts, though, have a different strategy. If they're hoping to locate a pack, they don't usually bother with waiting, or equipment. They just tilt their heads back, purse their lips, and let out a nice, long howl.
This is the gist of a technique called "elicited howling"—biologist-speak for "making noises at wolves so that they'll howl back at you." For decades, elicited howling has been an indispensable part of the wolf researcher's toolkit.
"It's standard for anyone working with wolves who wants to find out where they are," says Dr. Dave Mech, chair of the IUCN's Wolf Specialist Group. And despite the rise of high-tech alternatives, many expect it to reverberate long into the field's future.
Wolves howl for a few reasons: to find stray pack members, to chat with their friends, and to tell everyone else to stay away. Because it's such a social sound, when wolves hear a howl—or something like it—they typically respond in kind. They're also not very picky: "Wolves will reply to fire sirens, to train whistles, any number of things," says Mech. Scientists can then use those replies to figure out where the pack hangs out, approximately how big it is, and whether there are any pups, which have slightly squeakier howls.
Rigorous elicited howling began in 1959, when a biologist named Doug Pimlott brought a recording of wolf sounds and a playback device with him into the field. Pimlott drove the equipment to various spots in Ontario in order to survey different populations.
For a few years afterward, this method was de rigueur: "I had a battery-operated vinyl disc player that I hauled around with me in a backpack," Mech remembers. "In various places, I would just play the record of wolves howling, and try to get replies." But this was a cumbersome way to do work—and so Mech evolved. "Eventually, I learned to just do the howling myself," he says.
These days, despite the prevalence of radio tracking, GPS, and other high-tech methods, plain old howling is still standard practice for wolf biologists. "In an area where you're starting out and you don't know where the wolves are—or even if there are any there—just about everyone knows that one way to find them is to do this howling," says Mech. Over the course of a long study in 1979, he and his research partner, Fred Harrington, howled a combined 7,600 times. The best practices they laid out after this experience—stick to dusk or nighttime; alternate "flat" and "breaking" styles; wait two minutes between howls—are still cited today.
Despite these prescriptions, Mech insists the process is intuitive. "Most people learn right away," he says. "You just imitate what you hear." In Youtube videos, experts like Wisconsin's Adrian Wydeven and Sarah Boles demonstrate their howls—some barky, some keening, some loud and some quiet, to cover all their bases. They claim about a five percent response rate. If you want to practice with some real wolves, Mech's original study site, Algonquin Provincial Park, has held weekly howls for the public every August since 1963 (no dogs allowed).
Some researchers, though, are moving away from this technique. In a recent article in Bioacoustics, a group of European wolf experts details the merits of "non-invasive acoustic detection"—a less active strategy, which involves leaving sound recorders out and waiting for the wolves to howl on their own.
"Wolf surveying is a difficult and often expensive task" when undertaken solely by people, writes the article's lead author Stefan Suter, of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. When he and his team used passive recording devices—and ran the results through a spectrogram, so as to look at them visually—the howl detection process was 18 times faster than if they had done the howling themselves.
Non-native howlers can also stress out the wolves, who will assume someone has invaded their territory, says Suter. Their human neighbors may not take it so well, either. Suter enjoys howling—"I get emotionally touched when I hear a wolf," he says—and says that doing it himself gives him a "keen sense" about the creatures he's studying. But he thinks the new tools are crucial, especially in places like the Swiss Alps, where the wolves' recent return is causing problems for sheep herders.
Mech sees the pros and cons. "With a passive system, you don't have to be out there all the time—and sure, that's an advantage," he says. But it also doesn't account for the fickleness of the particular lupine subject. "Wolves don't howl just when you want them to," Mech insists. Only humans do that.
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.
After a single day of horrors, organizers in Edinburgh cancelled what was supposed to be a weekend-long celebration of chocolate, STV News reports.
The event, the Scottish Chocolate Festival, was to be held at the Biscuit Factory, an "arts and fashion hub" in Leith. While biscuits and chocolate normally get along fine, this time something went amiss.
Festival organizers said they had to clean up "broken glass, cigarette butts, vomit and urine" from an earlier event. (A video on their Facebook page shows an empty warehouse strewn with trash, captioned "7 hours to transform this place into a Chocolate Festival.") Plus, they said, most of the power outlets didn't work, there was no light on the second floor, and the storage facility next door had crushed a "Santa's Grotto" delivered especially for the purpose.
The venue hit back, calling the allegations "categorically false."
According to the festival's Facebook page, entrance and vendor fees are currently being refunded—but the emotional damage has been done.
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.
Tapton house is a place of pilgrimage for railway enthusiasts. It is the former home of railway pioneer George Stephenson, the engineer who built the first-ever steam-hauled passenger railway and designed the famous locomotive, Locomotion.
Stephenson lived at Tapton from 1832 until his death in 1848, during which time the engineer engaged his passion for gardening: He was said to have grown pineapples as big as pumpkins and spent much time trying to grow perfectly straight cucumbers.
It's often said Stephenson retired at Tapton because he liked the town so much, but it is more likely that he stuck around because he discovered coal when driving the Clay Cross tunnel for the North Midland Railway. Armed with this information he bought up parcels of land in the area and established a coal mining and iron manufacturing company, which he apparently took a great interest in until his death.
The railway pioneer is probably Chesterfield's favorite adopted son, and numerous buildings and streets around town bear his name. He is buried at Holy Trinity Church where his equally famous son, Robert Stephenson, installed a memorial stained glass window.
When the elder Stephenson died he left the house to the town of Chesterfield and it has subsequently been used as a school. After being taken over by Chesterfield College, the school grounds were designated a public park. During the construction of a new building on the grounds, the waste spoil from excavations was used to construct a very large turf maze within the park, called the "Earth and Wild Flower Labyrinth. Built in 1996, it is said to be the largest classical labyrinth in the world.
Former West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller's Rock Creek Park mansion is one of Washington, D.C.'s most luxurious residences. The 1920s-era house sits atop a leafy 16-acre estate known as “The Rocks” and has two mailing addresses. The main gate is on Shepherd Street in Crestwood and a second winding driveway cuts across national parkland to connect with Park Road.
The public got a rare look inside the palatial estate in 2008 when Rockefeller hosted a fundraiser for the Obama campaign. A New York Times reporter was in attendance and described what he saw:
“Our night began at The Rocks, Jay Rockefeller’s chateau away from chateau deep in the hills of Rock Creek Park. To reach the site of this particular Obama fundraiser, you wind along the edges of Rock Creek Park and then turn up a steep, long, hey mistah Rockefeller, how about $3000 to shovel your driveway sort of entryway. … There are oaks and Chestnut trees and then there’s the house, with four Ionic columns and a slate roof and 17 windows across the front and the Rockefellers apparently suffer no critical shortage of guest bedrooms. It is a useful reminder that before the Gates and Bloomberg and Warren B., there was old man John D. Rockefeller, who bequeathed successive generations of descendants a truly astonishing boodle of money.”
Rockefeller bought the 21,000-square-foot house for $6.5 million in cash when he was elected to the Senate. Remodeling and the addition of a tennis court, detached pool house, and two four-car garages raised the current value to an estimated $18 million.
The house dates back to 1927, when Daisy Blodgett built it as a wedding present for her daughter Mona. (Interesting side note: Mona’s father-in-law lead construction of the central portion of the Panama Canal). Mona’s husband died in 1982, and with no living children she sold the family estate to the Rockefellers in 1984. She passed away in 1990. Mona and her husband both served in the Army (Nurse, and Corps of Engineers, respectively), so they are buried together with their son in Arlington National Cemetery.
Washington used to have numerous private estates like The Rocks, but the majority are now open to the public as museums, art galleries and schools. Hopefully Jay Rockefeller will consider opening up The Rocks to the public if he ever moves back to West Virginia.
In the era of Easter Island's famous moai carving (sometime between 1250 and 1500), another special stone, Pu o Hiro (Hiro's Trumpet) was located in Hanga Roa, the main village. It was named for Hiro, a Rapa Nui rain deity, and its musical capabilities bestowed it with sacred responsibilities.
Villagers would blow into the natural hole at the top of the stone, creating a loud, breathy trumpeting sound. This was used for several purposes: to summon their neighbors for a gathering, aid in fertility (in spite of its phallic shape, the stone has some petroglyphs carved into it that resemble female genitalia), or coax fish to swim up to the shoreline.
Pu o Hiro was revered for these perceived magic powers and traveled around the island as a trophy for the victors in battle.
The stone has settled at its current location on the north coast of Easter Island, where it is fenced off to discourage tourists from attempting to sound the trumpet themselves.
With four days left until Christmas, people around the world are preparing for the celebration. The Christmas trees have been decorated with ornaments and lights, stockings have been hung, presents have been wrapped, and images of Santa Claus and the nativity scene have been put up.
Of course, there are millions of people who will not be celebrating Christmas, from followers of other faiths to atheists. Among these people, however, there is one particular group you would not have expected to find: fundamentalist Christians.
Given “Jesus is the reason for the season,” followers of the faith are usually enthusiastic to celebrate the birth of their Messiah. Some criticize the commercialization of the holiday, which has placed an emphasis on presents rather than the birth of Christ. But there is a group of Christians that takes the sentiment a step further and has declared outright that Christmas is actually un-Christian.
It is difficult to say what percentage of Christians shares this view of Christmas, but blog posts and comments on Christian websites show that the sentiments can be strong. Rejection of the holiday is also an official doctrine followed by several churches, including Jehovah’s Witnesses and members of the Restored Church of God.
Why would any Christian be against the celebration of the birth of Christ? The answer lies in interpretations of the Bible, and a rejection of the pagan origins of the holiday. One of the main arguments against Christmas is that early Jews and Christians did not celebrate birthdays. Pagans, on the other hand, believed that on the day of one’s birth one was more vulnerable to spirits, so they celebrated with rituals such as wishing a good day, lighting candles, and eating cake—all of which were believed to help in warding off bad spirits.
The Bible is also used as an argument, as only three birthdays are mentioned in the sacred book, and they all end in disaster and death. In Genesis 40:1-23 the Egyptian King executes his baker to celebrate his birthday; in Matthew 14:3-11, Herod gets caught in the excess of his party and does good on his promise to kill John the Baptist; and in Job 1:4, Job’s 10 children are killed by Satan after celebrating their birthday with an assumably raucous party.
If birthdays were depicted negatively in the Bible, and if Jesus never celebrated his birthday, some Christians argue, then celebrating the birthday of the savior is not actually following his word.
Besides, December 25 is most likely not the actual date of birth of Jesus. As Time pointed out last year, factors such as the shepherds being out with their flock have put to question the validity of the winter date. One astronomer used software to recreate the night sky at the time of Jesus' arrival and claimed that his birth happened in the summer rather than the winter. Others say the big day was in autumn.
December 25 has long been a significant date, though. Occurring four days after the winter solstice, it marks the dawn of longer days and more sunlight. This has afforded it a special place in the hearts of people in several civilizations, including the Romans, who used to celebrate the feast of Saturnalia in honor of the god Saturn. This feast was surrounded by a spirit of joy, as families would gather together and present gifts to children.
When Emperor Constantine I declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, it is said that the church purposefully co-opted the date of December 25 to incentivize pagans to convert. After all, it was better to ease them into the new faith by replacing their traditions rather than by changing them.
Thus, Jesus, who is supposed to bring new light into the spiritual state of the world, replaced the Roman god of literal light. His birth was seen by the early adopters of Christmas as a logical symbol for the birth of a new era whose positive change was reflected in the natural world. Some of the most iconic symbols of Christmas, like the decorated tree, the presents, and the date, are the result of syncretism between Christianity and pagan Roman rituals.
Some Christians believe allowing these two to mesh is a mistake. Otoniel Morraz, who stopped celebrating Christmas five years ago, says: “As a Christian, if the lord warns me, ‘don’t do as the pagans did and say that you do it for me’ then I don’t do it.” Morraz has also stopped eating pig and tries to keep sabbath, in accordance to the scriptures. Rather than celebrating Christmas, he says, true Christians should celebrate the seven holy days that the scriptures command to be kept.
Many Christians argue, however, that Christmas symbols have long lost their association with paganism, making the celebration of December 25 perfectly reasonable. The significance, rather than the origin, seems to matter more to defenders of the holiday, who counter-argue that wedding rituals, months, and the days of the week are also a legacy of paganism—and no one objects to those.
The gardens of Josep Altimira, the eccentric millionaire who returned to Barcelona from Cuba in 1860, are no ordinary gardens. They are especially famous for containing a zoo, subterranean galleries, and a hypostyle room, a pillared hall with esoteric symbolism.
The gardens' allure is bolstered by numerous strange stories of dubious veracity surrounding Altimira's life in Barcelona, for instance that he had a trained orangutan waiter who served drinks at his parties.
Altimira was a truly unusual man. An eccentric Freemason stock market investor with businesses in Cuba, he was known as the "Count of Monte Cristo" for his fabulous wealth. Upon acquiring the estate in 1867, he built a new house on the property called the "Tower of the Golden Dome." The gardens were prodigious: In 1880 there were lakes, waterfalls, caves and exotic vegetation. But while the flora was astounding, the garden architecture was what made the place amazing.
The spectacular pillared hall was similar to another in Guell Park in Barcelona. The columns are reminiscent of those in ancient temples, and its underground location is not accidental. The portico provided access to other caves connected to the house. It is said that at various points the caves were flooded so that Altimira and his guests could boat through them.
A statue of the god Mercury, which today is preserved in Casa Garí outside Barcelona, resided in the crystal temple. The god Mercury is the equivalent of Hermes, the godly archetype most revered by the Freemasons. This type of garden, reflecting the owner's intellectual interests, was very common at the time and had precedents in Barcelona, such as the Labyrinth Park in Horta, built in 1802.
Joseph Altimira's princely lifestyle eventually led to his ruin. When he died in 1900, he gave all his property to nuns, the Missionary Sisters, an institution which still occupies the house. The park, however, became property of the city. The public is welcome to come bask in the 19th century grandeur of the Altimira Gardens.
Most of Iceland lives in the western part of the island, where Reykjavík is located, which means that when it comes to forecasting the weather, meteorologists tend to put most of their focus there.
For a long time, east Icelanders have been resigned to their place in the weather hierarchy. But then Sigurður Jónsson, a television weatherman, began physically blocking viewers from seeing the other parts of the country.
Annoyed east Icelanders retaliated with a Facebook page. That page is appropriately titled "Stop standing in the East dear meteorologists." It has 224 members.
"We should ask for a left-handed weather reporter on RÚV; or just use a pointer stick like the old days," one viewer complained, according to the BBC.
The Facebook group was apparently created in October, and since then has been developing a head of steam. A few days ago, one member posted Jónsson's broadcaster RÚV's response to the whole matter, which amounted to a plea for patience.
"Hello, the problem is the foundation behind the card (green screen) is in the wrong proportions relative to broadcast. It's been working to get a new screen that should fix this problem."
Hang in there, east Iceland. You may yet get the weather information you deserve.
St. Mary and All Saints Church was built in the late 13th century. It is the largest church in Derbyshire, built in local stone in a Decorated Gothic style. Altogether it's a church much like any other in England, unremarkable except for its strangely crooked tower. The 228-foot-high spire leans, spectacularly, nine feet from centre and is visibly twisted in a Tim Burton-esque fashion.
The wooden framed spire was added to the stone tower in the early 1360s. It was initially believed that the twisting was a result of all the skilled craftsmen having died off in the Black Plague, leaving only unskilled laborers to construct the church spire.
The theory now is that the distortion was caused by the lead covering added to the wood shingles some years after initial construction. During the day, the south side of the tower heats up in the sun, causing the lead there to expand faster than that on the north side. This imposes a twisting movement due to the pattern in which the 33 tonnes of lead were applied. Also, in the 14th century it was common to use unseasoned timber during construction as seasoned wood was too hard to work with the hand tools available at the time. This would cause the wood to warp with the shingles, further facilitating the twist.
As usual, folklore provides much more interesting reasoning for the strange phenomenon. Several local legends hold the Devil responsible. In one tale, a blacksmith was fitting a horseshoe to the Devil’s hoof and knocked a nail into the soft part of his foot. The Devil then jumped over the town in pain, knocking the spire out of shape as he passed. Another story has the Devil sitting on the spire and wrapping his tail around it. The people of the town rang the church bells and the Devil, frightened by the noise, tried to escape with his tail still wound round the spire, causing it to twist.
Another, somewhat cheeky story is that that a virgin from Chesterfield once married in the church and the building was so surprised that the spire turned around to look at the bride. The legend is that that if another virgin from Chesterfield marries in the church, the spire will straighten up again (in some versions it is specifically a virgin from a particular part of the town or even from the nearby city of Sheffield, depending on who the teller wants to wind up).
Toad's Mouth is an ill-defined area of land near Hathersage in Derbyshire, England named for a slightly modified but largely natural piece of rock called "The Toads Mouth Rock." No one knows exactly when the toad's eye was carved onto the rock formation (it only has one) but it has been suggested to be mesolithic in origin.
It's unusual that a view is given a name, but if driving from Sheffield as you turn the corner at The Toad's Mouth Rock you are confronted with what is aptly named “Surprise View.” The vista spans two valleys, and is framed by the impressive cliff face of Mam Tor in the distance.
The other attraction of Toad's Mouth is the millstones. There are sites where millstones and grindstones were made all around in the northern part of the Peak District but this place has hundreds of stones in all phases of completion. In the 17th to 19th centuries these stones would have been transported, by horse and cart, about 9 miles to Sheffield, some carried a further 15 miles to the inland port at Bawtry. They were then shipped down the River Idle and then via a canal dug by the Romans to the River Trent for trans shipment to the rest of the country and even as far as the Netherlands. Why so many were never finished is not known.
In East Antarctica, under sea ice that grows five feet thick, there's a whole ecosystem of marine life that thrives year-round. It's surprisingly warm in the water under the ice—or at least not as frigid as one might expect. The water temperature here hovers around 30°F, and the sea ice protects from storms above.
When a team of scientists with the Australian Antarctic Program sent a robot down into O’Brien Bay to fetch a data logger, they had the robot collect video footage of the world under the ice. They found colorful "sponges, sea spiders, urchins, sea cucumbers and sea stars," Science Alert reports. It's just one more demonstration of how life can flourish even in places we humans would rather not go.
Inspired by the waves of the nearby Pacific and the nature of the coast, this spiritual outpost makes visitors feel like they've fallen into a fairy tale.
The Sea Ranch Chapel is a nondenominational refuge for people of any faith for meditation and prayer. Robert and Betty Buffum, both residents of Sea Ranch, gave this chapel to the community in memory of Kirk Ditzler, a local navy pilot and artist.
The San Diego-based architect James T. Hubbell, who is known for blending art, architecture and nature together, designed the chapel in 1984 based on Ditzler's drawings. It was built out of local copper and redwood by local carpenters and builders. It appears the church was based on the form of a murex shell, though others have compared it to a mushroom or a conquistador's helmet.
The Sea Ranch Chapel is easy to miss when traveling along Highway 1. Hubbell's expression of the "windswept coast in forms of earth, sea, and flight" in his design makes it blend into its surroundings. But those who stop to pay a visit to the chapel will step into a serene world full of whimsical design and intricate details.
Not all legendary creatures—cryptids, as they're called—are supernatural monsters like Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil. Sometimes a cryptid is just a regular animal found in a place where it seems impossible that that animal could be. Such is the case of phantom kangaroos, supposed examples of the hopping boxers that are said to live in secret outside of their native Australia.
As far as conventional science is concerned, kangaroos of any and all variety are endemic to the Australian continent. They are not found anywhere else in the world. But if dubious reports of the elusive phantom kangaroo are to be believed, the iconic marsupials can be found all over the world.
Also known as “Errant Kangaroos,” according to multiple (admittedly spurious) cryptozoology guides, reports of these mythic marsupials began to appear at the turn of the 19th century. The most referenced initial sighting of these out of place animals dates back to 1899, when a woman in New Richmond, Wisconsin reported seeing a kangaroo run through her neighbor’s yard. According to an entry in Unexplained!: Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena, the circus was in town at the time, and it was immediately assumed that the animal must have escaped. But it turned out that the circus didn’t keep a kangaroo in its menagerie.
While the mysterious animal was never captured or spotted again, it was far from the last reported sighting of a wild kangaroo in the U.S. Allegedly, another wild kangaroo was spotted in 1907 in Pennsylvania. In Hidden Animals: A Field Guide to Batsquatch, Chupacabra, and Other Elusive Creatures, you can see the more outlandish legends that phantom kangaroos are also dangerous, bloodthirsty monsters. It mentions a sighting from 1934, near South Pittsburg, Tennessee, where a kangaroo-like creature attacked local pets and ate a pair of police dogs. A more extensive list of sightings can be found in famed cryptozoologist Loren Coleman’s book Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders. The book covers many more kangaroo sightings down the ensuing decades in locations in Nebraska, Kansas, and Minnesota.
Maybe the most well-documented example of an errant kangaroo in the U.S., occurred in 1974 in and around Chicago. On October 18 that year, a kangaroo was discovered on the city’s Northwest Side. Police officers managed to corner the five-foot-tall animal in an alley, but before they could capture it, it bounded over a fence and escaped. According to a small piece in the Chicago Tribune the next month, the kangaroo was later spotted in Indiana, but once again disappeared. A number of other reports of kangaroo sightings sprung up around Illinois-Indiana in the later part of 1974, but no kangaroo was ever caught.
Phantom kangaroo sightings in America have continued to crop up over the years. Coleman’s book alone mentions sightings around the U.S. and up into Canada throughout the rest of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. Most often they are described as out-of-place marsupials, but other reports mention red eyes, a ghost-like appearance, or describe the creature as frighteningly large. Even into the new millennium, reports continue to trickle in of phantom kangaroos glimpsed hopping across fields or standing on the roadside. There’s even a YouTube video from 2013 that claims to show a kangaroo bounding off across a field in Oklahoma.
Supposedly, errant kangaroos have also been spotted in Japan and Europe—where at least one small breeding colony was established at Kew Gardens—but even abroad, these alleged sightings are hard to verify. Explanations for the sightings range from the classic escaped circus/zoo animal, to a misidentified dog or deer, to Coleman’s own theory that at least some of them aren’t kangaroos, but a totally different type of cryptid called a “devil monkey.”
As unlikely as it is, the simplest explanation would be that there is an unknown kangaroo population in America. All species of kangaroos are herbivores, and even in their native Australia, they are found living in habitats ranging from forests to grasslands. They can even weather colder temperatures. It’s not impossible that a kangaroo population could live off the land in the U.S., but as the largest marsupial on the planet, it would be hard for them hide.
Unfortunately, the American phantom kangaroo is probably nothing more than wishful thinking, but for those that want to believe, it’s a lot more likely than a Jersey Devil.
It's a classic conundrum: Everyone wants coconuts, but no one wants to pick them.
Fear not, though. Students at Amrita University in Kerala have developed a solution—a coconut-harvesting robot.
The students began exploring this idea when a coconut farmer approached them about it in 2013, the Times of India reports. Three years later, they have unveiled their machine, which has grasping arms, a chunky torso, and several circular-sawblade appendages. (You can see some pictures of it here.)
Coconut harvesting is a field ripe for disruption. It's hard, dangerous work—you either have to climb the tree and hang on while plucking the coconuts, or stand beneath it and saw them off with a long, blade-ended stick. The young people who would normally do it have lately been "taking up more 'dignified' professions," the Times of India says.
Even those people who have stuck with the job are less than efficient: your average human can pick only 80 coconuts in a day. Instead, many farmers are using captive macaque monkeys, who can harvest up to 1600, NPR reported last year.
This robot, which requires only about 20 minutes of setup, can harvest a coconut in seconds. It can be controlled by remote or smartphone. Its inventors, who are pursuing large-scale production, expect that one robot will be enough to help out a whole village. Will a follow-up robot help us put the lime in it? Only time will tell.
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.
During the Berlin Blockade in 1948, the Soviets blocked off transport and electricity to West Berlin and imposed a new currency, leaving the millions of Germans and Allied soldiers living there at the time without access to food, medication, heating material and energy. This attempted takeover of the West Berlin sector—at the time, an island in the middle of Soviet-occupied Germany—is considered one of the early events of the rising tensions of the Cold War.
As a solution, the Allies came up with the idea of the Luftbrücke, the Berlin Airlift. In record time, just 90 days, the French Forces built the Berlin Tempelhof airport, which became the landing airport for the airlift. Using the three runways the Russians had guaranteed the Allies after the war, the airlift provided West Berlin with over 2 million tons of goods between June 24, 1948 and September 30, 1949—including 23 tons of candy for the local children, as a particularly sweet side operation that earned American cargo planes their nickname.
One of the pilots of the cargo planes that transported goods to West Berlin was Colonel Gail Halvorsen, who was stationed on Rhein-Main Airbase in Frankfort at the time. After one of his flights, Halvorsen went to explore the surrounding area of the airport, and met about 30 German children outside the fence watching the planes landing and taking off. He started to talk to them and gave them two strips of gum. When he saw how the children carefully broke the gum in little pieces to share it, he felt so sorry that he did not have more and told the children to watch out for him the next day, and he would drop them more candy. When the children asked him how they would know it is him, he told them he would “wiggle” his wings.
During the next night, Halvorsen and his crew members collected their candy rations and packed them. The packs were heavy and the men feared that it would hurt the children, so they crafted little parachutes from handkerchiefs and connected them to the packs of candy. True to his word on the next day, when he flew one of his regular flights, he passed the children “wiggled” his wings and dropped the candy, earning him the name Onkel Wackelflügel, or Uncle Wiggly Wings. Halvorsen and his crew continued the candy drops, and each time they arrived at Tempelhof-Airport, the group of waiting children grew.
When General Tunner got wind of the candy “operation,” he liked the idea, and "Operation Little Vittles” soon expanded to the whole squadron. Women and school classes in the U.S. got together and sewed small parachutes; others donated money or candy. Operation Little Vittles lasted from September 1948 to May 1949 and provided the children of West Berlin with more than 23 tons of candy coming down to them on more than 250,000 little parachutes. Because the candy rations included little packs of raisins, which the children seemed to take to the most, up to this day American cargo aircrafts are called Rosinenbomber (Raisin Bomber), or the Americanized version, Candy Bomber.
Unfortunately, the airlift also had its dark side. More than 120 accidents occurred, causing 101 fatalities. The names of those who lost their lives to, yet again, bring freedom to West Berlin, are engraved in the base of the Luftbrückendenkmal monument, erected at the now abandoned Rhein-Main Airbase.
The monument is flanked by two cargo planes, a C-54 and a Douglas C-47 Dakota, bearing the painted name Rosinenbomber on their sides. When the U.S. Air Force closed the airbase in October 2008, as a final reminder of the airlift, the honor of the last takeoff from the base was given to a Rosinenbomer, heading to Berlin-Tempelhof 342 miles away.
In 1826 in a southern suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, a frail-looking doctor with red hair prepped his instruments for a highly dangerous procedure—a cesarean operation. Once Dr. James Barry, a Royal British Army surgeon who was no taller than five feet, had assessed the severity of the patient’s contractions, he saw there was no other choice. The newborn needed to be removed surgically.
Barry had read of only three cases where both the mother and the child survived. None of them were performed in the British Empire. But Barry had a unique perspective to most doctors of the time.
“Aside from his expertise in midwifery, he had a secret advantage,” writes Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield, experts who have written extensively about Barry’s life. “There was not another practicing physician or surgeon in the world [in the 19th century] who knew from personal experience what it was like to bear a child.”
Barry became the first doctor in the British Empire to perform a successful cesarean operation. It was one of many major medical contributions the Irish surgeon accomplished for the British military, from enforcing stricter standards for hygiene, improving the diet of sick patients, to popularizing a plant-based treatment for syphilis and gonorrhea. Barry served around the globe, eventually earning the title of Inspector General, the second most senior medical position in the British Army.
But despite these achievements, Barry’s reputation was kept a secret for nearly a hundred years. The military locked away the doctor's records after finding out Britain’s Inspector General was born a woman.
Around the age of 20, Margaret Ann Bulkley became James Barry: a hot-tempered ladies’ man donning three-inch heeled shoes, a plumed hat, and sword. In 1809, she decided to embody a smooth-faced young man in order to attend the men's-only University of Edinburgh and practice medicine—a guise that would last for 56 years. It wasn’t until after Barry’s death in 1865, that the doctor's secret was finally discovered.
Bulkley’s masquerade was “one of the longest deceptions of gender identity ever recorded,” du Preez writes in The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. “Dr. Barry is remembered for this sensational fact rather than for the real contributions that she made to improve the health and the lot of the British soldier as well as civilians.”
Born in 1789 in Merchant’s Quay, Cork, Ireland to a grocer father, Margaret Ann Bulkley was a sociable and outgoing child. As a young girl, she once wrote of her desire for “a sword and a pair of colours [military uniform].”
Bulkley had an older brother, John, whose “fecklessness and selfishness brought the family in debt,” writes du Preez in the South African Medical Journal.John received most of the family’s money to fund his education and an apprenticeship at an attorney’s office in Dublin. In 1803, he became infatuated with an upper-class woman and spent £1,500 of the family’s savings on the marriage settlement. The Bulkley family spiraled into bankruptcy, and Margaret's father was sent to prison when she was 14, leaving the family without a source of income.
Her mother sought the help of her older brother in London, the famed Irish artist James Barry. The artist had a difficult personality, however, and was not welcoming to his sister's family when they arrived in London. Yet Barry introduced Margaret to his elite circle of friends, some of whom offered her teaching and mentorship. Margaret did not have the social standing to marry well, but her family hoped she could study to become a teacher or governess.
While mentoring his new charge, the Venezuelan general and revolutionary Francisco Miranda became impressed by Bulkley's intelligence. He was the first friend of Barry's to encourage Bulkley to take on the persona of a man to enter the male-dominated field of medicine. After Margaret graduated from medical school, he reasoned, Bulkley could shed this disguise and practice freely as a woman doctor in Venezuela. Miranda proposed she use her medical skills in his revolutionary efforts in Caracas, Venezuela.
“In the early 19th century, only men were admitted to the medical schools in Britain, and discovery of the sex of the young medical student would have ruined any chance of success,” writes du Preez.
In 1806,her uncle James Barry passed away and left his fortune to the family. In turn, Bulkley assumed Barry’s name and used the money to finance three years of medical studies at the University of Edinburgh beginning in December 1809.
The new James Barry was a diligent student. Barry pursued a diverse load of coursework, ranging from anatomy and surgery, botany, and midwifery. The number of subjects Barry studied was only exceeded by one Army medical officer and matched by one other student in his cohort of over 45 doctors, wrote du Preez.
In 1812, Barry was nearly exposed on the cusp of graduating. Edinburgh authorities tried to bar Barry from taking the four-stage final exams, claiming that the student looked underage but likely suspecting more. Yet at the time it was not unusual to see 16-year-olds at medical schools, and the ban was not enforced. After completing a thesis on the femoral hernia (primarily a female condition), Barry became the first woman to graduate from a medical school in Britain.
Unfortunately, Barry's post-graduation plans with Miranda would never come to fruition. In the summer of 1812, Miranda’s revolution was thwarted and he was imprisoned by the Spanish. But instead of coming out as a woman in Britain instead of Venezuela, Bulkley opted to continue the role of Dr. Barry—hiding under the false identity till death.
Barry joined the British Army's medical unit in 1813. It’s unknown how the young doctor passed the mandatory physical exams, but scholars believe Lord Buchan, a nobleman who had been a friend and supporter of her late uncle, likely played a role. In 1815, Barry was appointed as colonial medical inspector in Cape Colony, South Africa, and was granted authority over all medical, surgical, and public health matters in the colony.
People noted Barry's unusual lifestyle. The medical inspector was a vegetarian, kept a goat nearby to drink its milk, carried a small dog named Psyche, and was almost always seen with a trusted servant, Danzer, who would stay by Barry's side for 50 years. Each morning, Danzer laid out six small towels for Barry to wrap and conceal his curves and broaden his shoulders. The doctor wore high-heeled boots, and “the longest sword and spurs he could obtain,” surgeon Edward Bradford wrote when he met Barry in Jamaica in 1834.
Barry's flirtations with women also threw off suspicion. Many women fell for Barry’s sweet, beardless face—a latter-day Orpheus, according to du Preez and Dronfield. Women stated how Barry was a “perfect dancer who won his way to many a heart,” while comrades often saw the doctor attached “to the finest and best-looking woman in the room."
Barry, who cursed constantly and had a fastidious temperament, often butted heads with other doctors when their treatments conflicted, and even fought a couple of duels with rival officers. The hot-headed doctor even got into a tussle with the medical reformer and nurse Florence Nightingale, who wrote, “he behaved like a brute” and was “the most hardened creature I ever met throughout the army.”
Despite having a bad temper, Barry had a comforting bedside manner. During the cesarean delivery in Cape Town, Barry stayed next to the mother’s side for the rest of the day. The couple, Wilhelmina and Thomas Munnik, named the child James Barry Munnik and Barry the godfather. In gratitude, Barry offered what is now one of the most famous portraits of him—a small painting of the doctor in a red uniform coat.
Barry was reserved with most people, but had a close relationship with Lord Charles Somerset, Cape Town’s governor. Lord Charles favored Barry, providing the doctor with private chambers. When Lord Charles was on his deathbed, Barry clashed with the prestigious physician caring for him. People spread rumors that the governor and doctor were in an intimate relationship, but the scandal was never proven. Scholars believe that Lord Charles likely knew Barry’s true identity, and some claim he may have loved the doctor.
Barry wrote in a diary that Lord Charles was, “my more than father, my almost only friend.”
In 1857, Barry fell ill while stationed in Canada and was taken back to London. The doctor and surgeon died at age 76 on July 25, 1865, most likely of dysentery or cholera. Barry's medical career had lasted 46 years, with the celebrated doctor assisting the wounded in the Peninsular War, at a military hospital at Plymouth, and treating French prisoners from Waterloo, in addition to stints in South Africa and Canada, writes du Preez in the Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
It was Barry's final wish to remain in his original clothing and buried immediately, explains Earl Nation in the Journal Urology. However, Barry's servant Sophia Bishop examined her boss's body and discovered the doctor was “a perfect female,” with stretch marks indicating the birth of a child.
According to du Preez and Dronfield, Barry had a daughter back in Ireland, Juliana Bulkley, who never knew that her mother was an accomplished Army doctor practicing medicine around the world. It remains unclear who the girl's father was, but scholars suspect it could have been one of Bulkley's relatives.
Military officials soon found out of Barry's great disguise, and that they had unknowingly employed a woman for nearly half a century. Ashamed of these revelations, top officials in the Army tried to cover it up, imposing a 100-year embargo on all documentation concerning the "fraudulent" Inspector General.
Barry had already been given a military funeral at Kensal Green Cemetery in London, but after the revelations only a plain sandstone marker was placed atop the grave. The death certificate was male, and there was no obituary in the papers for the well-known doctor.
The tale was not unknown to the contemporary public; over the next few years, there were news stories, novels, and a play that sensationalized Barry’s life and legacy. But slowly, the military’s efforts to obscure the doctor's career sunk in, and Margaret Ann Bulkley and Dr. James Barry’s existence disappeared.
The doctor’s story was finally unearthed in 1958 by scholar Isobel Rae, who discovered the “Barry Papers” in the British War Office and Public Records Archives. She wrote the first researched biography of Barry and Bulkley, which was followed by articles, books, and a film. On December 13, it was announced that actress Rachel Weisz will play Bulkley and Dr. Barry in a future biopic.
Margaret Ann Bulkley found a means to pursue her ambitions despite the gender restrictions of 19th century society. The globe-trotting doctor worked to advance the field of medicine half a century before Elizabeth Garrett became the first known female to qualify as a doctor in Britain, in 1865—the same year Barry died.
While Dr. James Barry was “pernickety, bad-tempered, frail, fastidious,” one acquaintance recalled, “this small, curious person raised the standards of medicine and touched the public conscience about the condition of the most degraded members of society...wherever she went.”
In 1896, an upstart producer named William Selig made a little movie called “Tramp and the Dog.” It was about a tramp who stole some pies, then was chased by a dog. That’s about it. It’s under two minutes long, but it marked the beginning of a film production hub on the North Side of Chicago.
The short, now lost to history, was the first film made by the Selig Polyscope Company, one of two local producers of some of the earliest motion pictures. (The other was the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, just a couple of miles away.) Selig’s company took up an entire city block in what is now the North Center-St. Ben’s neighborhood. The last vestiges of this early flicker powerhouse can be seen at #3900 N. Claremont, at the corner of Byron.
Selig’s block of stages, production facilities and outdoor sets now has small apartment buildings, a gas station, and some low-rise commercial space, but the largest structure is still there. What was once a glass-topped silent film factory is now a tiny building of luxury apartments and lofts.
Over the front door is the most obvious sign of the Selig days, the trademark “S” in a diamond. The original glass cap on the building, a requirement of early film cameras and their thirst for light, is long gone, but look to the upper right and you can make out a slightly off-tone triangle of darker yellow, showing exactly where the original top was later bricked in.
Selig was a native Chicagoan, but traveled the country as a magician and fake “medium” in tent shows and minstrel troupes, calling himself a “Colonel” along the way. He was on the road when he first encountered the Edison Kinetoscope, sparking his ambition to make movies. When Edison’s patents got in the way, he “borrowed” some technology from the competing Lumiere Brothers. In 1909, when the lawyers came knocking, he opened up shop in a little backwater out west called Los Angeles, creating the first Hollywood movie studio.
The diamond “S” came along with the Colonel, but Selig Polyscope didn’t make it for the long haul. By 1918 he was out of the film business in Chicago altogether, and in LA was left running a dusty and ragtag zoo and animal rental company.
