On Christmas Eve, Isaac Jones went hiking with his new metal detector, on a trail by the Yuba River, near Nevada City, Calif. It was the first time he had ever used a metal detector, and at the beginning of his walk, he found the sort of small items that metal detectors most often pick up—coins, bits of metal trash and bullet shells, as the Union reports.
After hiking for about a mile, though, he came upon an unusual object. It was a human jawbone, buried in the ground. The metal detector had noticed the three gold teeth embedded in the bone.
The spot where Jones found the jawbone, known as Edward’s Crossing, was a toll road used by miners during the gold rush, when people would pan for gold in the river.
Local authorities will send the jawbone for testing to find out how old it is. It’s possible that it’s a century old, although could also have been buried more recently. “Maybe I can help a family get some closure or potentially help with an unsolved case,” Jones wrote on Facebook.
There are over 30,000 places in the world where you can eat McDonald's. You can buy a vanilla shake in the middle of the Negev Desert. You can get a Happy Meal at Guantanamo Bay.
And now, thanks to the chain's newest conquest, you can grab a Big Mac at the Vatican. According to the Local, a McDonald's has opened just around the corner from St. Peter's Square, on the first floor of a building that houses seven cardinals.
Its new neighbors aren't too happy. "It's a controversial, perverse decision," one cardinal said in October, when the restaurant was first proposed.
But the cardinal in charge of renting out the space—for $33,000 a month—wasn't buying it. "I don't see the scandal," he said. Or maybe he just loves fries.
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.
Throughout the 1960s, during the aspirational fervor of the Space Race, the emerging field of radio astronomy made great strides—and largely thanks to an Australian engineer named Ron Bracewell, who, among other pioneering contributions to the field, created one of the world's first radio telescopes.
Using radio signals, Bracewell's breakthrough telescope produced images of the surface of the Sun and mapped the solar temperature every day for 11 years (the length of a solar cycle). This solar activity information was used by NASA during the Apollo missions to the Moon to, among other things, predict solar storms that would have endangered the astronauts.
The radio telescope, located at Stanford University, consisted of an array of dish antennas each placed atop a concrete pier. The array was abandoned in 1980, but 10 of those piers were rescued in 2013 and brought to the VLA radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico, where they were integrated into a radio sundial there as a tribute to Bracewell, who passed away in 2007.
The 10 piers are covered with historic signatures from when Bracewell used his Stanford radio telescope as a sort of guest book, having visitors chisel their names into the concrete. The signatures include other pioneers in the field of radio astronomy including two Nobel Prize winners. (There is a full list of names at the VLA visitors center.)
The Bracewell Radio Sundial at the VLA tells the time of day, the time of year, as well as some more unusual applications, such as marking important dates and celestial objects in the history of radio astronomy.
Vaughan Cornish had come to Canada’s Glacier National Park to look at waves. As a geographer, waves were his great passion. He was fascinated by undulating forms in seas and in deserts, in the movement of the clouds and in the movement of the land during an earthquake. In Canada, he wanted to observe waves of snow.
In December 1900 he and his wife Ellen, an engineer and artist, left Britain and began their three-month journey to cross wintry North America on the Canadian Pacific Railway. In Montreal and Winnipeg and out the window of the train, they had observed fresh fallen snow, and drifts, and the waves Cornish was so drawn to. But when they reached Glacier National Park, they discovered a class of natural snow formations they’d never seen before.
Hovering just above the snowy ground were giant balls of suspended snow, somehow balanced on thick stems. They looked a lot like giant toadstools, and Cornish called them “snow mushrooms.”
Snow mushroom formation begins with a tree, fallen or felled, that leaves behind a wide stump a few feet in height. In the winter, these stumps start accumulating snow. In Glacier National Park, the snow falls heavy and fast—as much as 12 inches an hour, at some times, averaging 48 feet in total over the course of the winter—and the wind is calm. The result is that the snow gathers around the top of the stump.
The resulting snowballs can become giant. Cornish found snow mushrooms as wide as 12 feet in diameter. They were also surprisingly sturdy, as he reported in a 1902 issue of The GeographicalJournal:
“When I attempted to detach a small snow-mushroom from its pedestal, I found that it was very firmly fixed. Having driven a long pole into the mass of snow, which was about 4 feet across, I found it to be tough and tenacious, and I was unable to dislodge it…Place my pole against the tree, I gave successive pushes until the tree rocked violently, when at last the snow-cap fell, but as a whole, and it was not broken with its impact with the soft snow beneath."
The effect of the snow mushrooms could be haunting. In some places, there were fields of mushrooms that would spring up above the snow. If the mushroom "stems" were short enough that the accumulation of snow eventually reached the mushroom bottoms, the balls created a undulating field of mysterious bumps.
Glacier was the only place that Cornish found these features in his trek across Canada. But after he wrote in a popular publication about the discovery, he heard about a few other places in the country where these rare formations could be found. The conditions had to be exactly right: stumps big enough and tall enough, snowfall heavy and wet enough, and wind calm enough for the mushroom caps to form.
More than 100 years later, it’s still possible to find snow mushrooms in Glacier National Park, although it seems they are rarer than they once were. On occasion, they pop up elsewhere in the world—here are a few in Japan—and they’re not always large. In this century, though, when there are fewer stumps wide enough to make snow mushrooms, these formations are a rare natural wonder.
This rustic 18th century building's whitewashed walls and the antique waterwheel outside betray the its original use as a mill, which may lead one to believe the museum inside is dedicated to industry of yore or English history. It's neither of these. It's a museum dedicated to Bakelite, the world's first plastic.
Bakelite, "the material of a thousand uses," was a watershed invention during dawn of mass manufacturing in the early 20th century. It was pliable and easy to produce, so it went into dinnerware, telephones, toys, radios, jewelry, and even cars and airplanes.
However when its patent expired it was quickly replaced by newer types of plastic, so Bakelite has become a sought after collector's item, a vestige of the 1920s–60s.
This quirky little museum has a wealth of of all things Bakelite, including some of the aforementioned goods produced in the early plastic's heyday. There are some rarities as well, including a fleet of tiny Bakelite caravans in the surrounding meadow and a Bakelite coffin indoors. Mixed in are items from the pre-industrial era, like flour bags and watermill machinery, which provide whimsical contrast to the sleek, brightly colored retro treasures.
There's also a sweet tearoom attached with a wonderful cream tea and friendly cats and dogs. The museum is surrounded by an idyllic English pastoral landscape, with a brook, ivy-covered statues, and water meadows, perfect for exploring.
The city of Las Vegas does its absolute best to bring the whole world to The Strip, featuring a replica of the New York City skyline, a 460 foot Eiffel Tower, a giant Egyptian sphinx, and the Grand Canal of Venice. But right off the main drag, Las Vegas also boasts a tiny piece of tropical Florida: the Flamingo Habitat.
Inside the aptly-named Flamingo Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, the Flamingo Habitat is situated on 15 acres of lush tropical grounds in the center of the hustle and bustle of the Entertainment Capital of the World. Scattered along the winding garden pathways are parrots, swans, hummingbirds, pelicans, turtles, koi fish, and, to the delight of all visitors, a flock of flamboyant flamingos.
Resting on Flamingo Island in the exotic gardens of the Flamingo Hotel, dozens of pink Chilean flamingos prance across the verdant landscape, feeding on aquatic life and admiring the hotel’s beautiful waterfalls. The tranquil environment provides a relaxing escape from the fast-paced world of Las Vegas gambling. On daily presentations at 8:30am and 11am, tourists can learn about these unique creatures in between rounds of poker and tropical drinks at the adjacent Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.
Unknown to many, the majority of The Strip - including the Flamingo Hotel - is not actually located within the city limits of Las Vegas, but rather the unincorporated place of Paradise. The Flamingo Habitat surely seems to live up this reputation: a little piece of paradise in Sin City.
In the heart of Marietta, Georgia, just off the city's square, you'll find the unassuming but elegant cemetery that belongs to the nearby St. James Episcopal Church, established in 1849. Most who travel to the St. James cemetery do so to pay respects to its most famous inhabitant, JonBenet Ramsey, the little girl whose unsolved murder on Christmas Day in 1996 has haunted us ever since.
Visitors can drive into the back of the cemetery through an entrance on Polk Street. As you step out of your car, to the right of the driveway, you'll find JonBenet, who is buried alongside her half-sister Elizabeth, who died in a car accident in 1992, along with her maternal grandparents, and her mother, Patsy Ramsey.
The cemetery is small, and JonBenet has a special spot in the back corner, underneath a few trees, with an adjoining stone bench to sit and reflect. Visitors to her grave have left wind-chimes on the trees, which dangle precariously, tinkling eerily. Others have left JonBenet, who was only six years old at the time of her murder, toys like little tricycles and teddy bears. For such an infamous story, visiting JonBenet's actual resting place feels surprisingly overwhelming. Her grave bears a small stone covering the grass, as if emphasizing how her life was cut short.
But JonBenet's is not the only memorial of interest at St. James Episcopal. There are a striking number of aged graves here. A quick walk around the grounds and you'll find those who were born in the 1700s in England and who traveled to make a life for themselves in Georgia at the birth of the United States.
Another notable resident of St. James Episcopal is Mary—or Marion—Meinert. Her unusual moment sits at the front of the cemetery, near the original gates. If you are standing near JonBenet, Mary's back will be to you. As you come upon her, you'll see that she holds two infants in her arms. The local legend is that Mary died in childbirth, and that her memorial is haunted. High school students over the years have claimed to hear the sobbing of a young woman, or even the cries of a baby. Others say that the statue cries tears of blood.
Haunted or not, the truth is that Mary was a beloved member of Marietta society, and died of a lung ailment, probably tuberculosis, in 1898. As the mother of twins, her family erected this gorgeous memorial in her honor. Her husband, Henry, is buried alongside her under an unusual and striking large cross, adorned with flowers, on a pedestal stand.
Despite its age, St. James Episcopal Cemetery is very well kept by the church. The tombstones and memorials are regularly cleaned, their marble and granite reflecting bright in the afternoon sun.
During the maple syrup season in spring, maple trees drip their sap into buckets that harvesters haul away so they can boil down the sap into syrup. But before the syrup gets distributed, the hot liquid is drizzled over a finely packed trough of snow, solidifying it into sugary maple toffees.
Making maple toffees, also known as "sugar on snow" candy in the United States and tire d’érable in Canada, is an old tradition of the maple sap harvest. In this 1955 video archived by British Pathé, a large group of eager children and adults huddles around the packed snow and watches as a woman pours the hot syrup. It only takes a couple of seconds until the candy can be rolled, dolloped with popsicle sticks and gobbled up.
The tradition of making these chewy candies goes back to pioneer days, the production of pure maple syrup being one of the oldest agricultural enterprises in the United States. It's a popular treat in regions of maple sap production, including eastern Ontario, New Brunswick, northern New England, and Quebec.
People still carry on the tradition. In New England, communities gather at Sugar On Snow Parties, where the maple toffee is made in large quantities and eaten with sour pickles and doughnuts to contrast the sweetness. In the video below, a maple syrup candy maker in Quebec, Canada has a station where she pours a tin canister of syrup and rolls up little lollipops to sell to customers.
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.
On a bright, clear Fourth of July in 1975, a crowd of onlookers and reporters assembled in the vast parking lot of the Cow Palace, a convention center just outside San Francisco. They had been summoned by a curious press release that read in part: “On July 4, 1975 members of Ant Farm will drive a Phantom Dream Car thru a wall of burning television sets in an event called MEDIA BURN.”
The irreverent Ant Farm art collective had been putting on performances and making attention-grabbing installations since the late 1960s. By 1975 they had already made one of their most iconic pieces, Cadillac Ranch, a sculpture in Amarillo, Texas that consisted of ten Cadillacs sunk nose-first into the earth. (The cars are still standing today, in a cow pasture near interstate 40, and have accumulated a skin of vibrant graffiti.) The group were frequent media critics, and for their latest stunt they would use the media to assist them in the critique.
John Turner, one of the invitees, had just started working for the media in 1975. He was working as a part-time editor for a few news stations in San Francisco; later that year he would become an arts reporter and producer at a local channel. He had also mingled with Ant Farm socially, hanging out at the group’s San Francisco studio. He had some idea of what the collective was planning and knew it would be worth documenting, so he attended with a Pentax camera in hand.
The scene was odd and also festive. Women in hotpants hawked souvenir t-shirts, programs, and posters. Camera crews amassed behind yellow barriers. A Basset hound in a cape wandered around. As promised, a pyramid of old-fashioned television sets was assembled on the concrete, with the largest on the bottom. The group had also set up a grandstand decorated with patriotic regalia.
Turner already had an idea of how things would go down, so he arrived ready to get his shot.
“I scoped it out, and I thought, ‘Well, for me, the best vantage point is probably about twenty five to thirty feet away from the sets,” he told me in an interview. So he claimed a spot, placed the camera on a fast shutter speed, framed his shot, and waited.
Things happened quickly. A car arrived bearing “John F. Kennedy” (artist Doug Hall) and a bevy of faux Secret Service agents. Kennedy/Hall mounted the star-spangled stage and delivered a speech praising the “pioneers” who would pilot the Phantom Dream Car. He asked the audience: “Who can deny that we are a nation addicted to television and the constant flow of media?”
Once the speech had ended and the fake president was spirited away, the Phantom Dream Car was unveiled. A spacey marvel, the modified Cadillac convertible looked like it had arrived from the set of a science fiction film. Where a front windshield would normally be were two clear domes; jutting from the top of the car was a massive fin containing a camera. Once the drivers were in the car, the clear plastic domes would be shrouded in protective black fiberglass. The drivers would pilot their vehicle via the closed-circuit camera, which sent a live feed to a monitor mounted in their dashboard. The pyramid of televisions would then be doused in gasoline and set on fire, and the Phantom Dream Car would plow through them at about 55 miles per hour.
Turner knew that his success depended on a matter of seconds.
“If I was watching the car coming from behind me, I would have definitely missed the shot or the focus would have been jarred,” said Turner. “So I thought, ‘The easiest way to do this is to just do it by audio.’ So what I did is, when I heard them start the car, I took a look back, and then I turned my head and as I heard the sound getting closer to me, I gauged where the car was and I decided to take the photograph as I saw maybe a fraction of the front of the car enter my camera frame.”
The car slammed into the pyramid of televisions with what Turner described as a “thump,” but he couldn’t tell you what it actually looked like. He was listening so hard trying to get the shot, he said, that he didn’t see the action.
“From the time that the thing was lit to the cars actually hitting the center target or wherever they were aiming for, it was probably under ten seconds,” Turner told me. “So there really wasn’t time for me to get a good waft of the smoke or even see the fire. The part of my brain that was paying attention to audio was on adrenaline.”
Once the smoke and the crowds cleared, Turner sent his Kodak film off to be developed. “It happened so slam-bang I had no idea if I had gotten a useable image,” he said.
In fact, he would find, his audio trick had worked; he managed to capture the Phantom Dream Car at the moment it explosively collided with the television pyramid. The otherworldly vehicle’s nose is submerged in the sets, their neat pyramid only just beginning to cave as vibrant yellow and orange flames spread beneath and above. Behind is the incongruous scenery of rolling hills and green trees. It’s a wonderfully confounding image.
Turner is sanguine about his success; he called it a “lucky shot”, if luck is “skill and opportunity meeting at the same time.” He compared it to a scientific image that captures a specific and fleeting moment, like a bullet shattering on impact.
“There were other people there taking the same photograph and mine just happened to be, through this moment of luck, an interesting view,” said Turner. “Because it gave a sense of location and noise and fire and danger and all these things.”
Turner knew he had a good shot, and he showed it to Chip Lord, one of the founders of Ant Farm. Lord liked it, too, and asked if he could turn it into a postcard. Turner agreed. Suddenly the image had a life of its own.
The postcards were a runaway success; mail art was wildly popular in the 1970s and the bizarre image of a futuristic car ploughing through television sets captivated people who sent them all over the world. Copies are still circulated on eBay, where collectors snap them up.It was a document of an audacious art piece, a visual thumbing of the nose to powers-that-be, and an anarchic celebration of destruction.
“The event was only attended by maybe 300 people, including news media and friends of the artists,” says Turner. “But this postcard had a kind of life, an afterlife, and an after-afterlife, and then it just became like pop culture photography.”
The image proliferated. In addition to the postcards, it appeared in art books around the world, in a pamphlet for an early MTV awards show, on the cover of a German pop album, and in museums. Turner got used to seeing his photo in unlikely places. And in spreading the image of Media Burn far and wide, he also became, in a way, part of the act.
“Though this high-octane performance would appear to be Media Burn, it was, in actuality, not,” writes Constance Lewallen in Ant Farm 1968-1978, a catalog produced for the first major Ant Farm retrospective in 2004. “The performance attained its raison d’etre not in the fiery collision, but in its transformation to an image: it was in that singular moment when the Vidicon tubes blinked that Media Burn occurred—or, perhaps more correctly, when “Media Burn” arrived at Media Burn.”
In other words, the video produced by Ant Farm, the hundreds of photos taken by spectators, and the news reports that were issued afterward became the core of the art project, not the ephemeral stunt itself. And Turner just happened to snap an iconic image of an image-fueled experiment.
In the ensuing years, Turner—who still lives in the Bay Area and still receives requests to use his Media Burn photo—has had a long career in television, written books on seminal folk artists, and made a movie about mysterious musician Korla Pandit. He has also watched the nature of photography shift radically from waiting for Kodak to send images back from the lab, to children snapping hundreds of digital images daily. In his estimation, he told me, this change has been an improvement.
“In today’s day and age of the camera phone, there are so many lucky shots taken every day throughout the world, that capture moments of impact or moments of high emotion,” says Turner. “Just because somebody holds up an instrument and decides to press a button, they get these amazing images and I’m constantly surprised and impressed.”
But even though digital wizardry has ushered in a new era of lucky shots, Turner says he never again got a shot quite so lucky as the one he captured with nothing more than a handheld Pentax, instinct, and the sound of a roaring Phantom Dream Car just outside the frame.
Palau Dalmases is among the most beautiful 17th century palaces in Barcelona, situated on the historic Calle Montcada. This street, world famous for the Picasso Museum, was once the heart of the city's most prestigious district, where wealthy families and ennobled merchants chose to build their Gothic residences.
The facade of the building dates back to the 14th century, but the palace's Baroque architectural gems are from after it was remodeled by a wealthy merchant and nobleman Pau Ignasi Dalmases, who lived there between 1690 and 1705.
During this time the palace was the meeting place of the Academy of Desconfiats (Academy of the Distrustful), a scholarly society created by a group of aristocrats in Barcelona in 1700 to study language, culture, history, literature, and philosophy. Its members, known as "Els savis del Born" ("The Wise Born") enjoyed exquisite meetings around the palace's cabinet of curiosities and musical instruments.
Today, the historic Palau de Dalmases operates as a wine and cocktail bar, but has retained some of its original treasures, such as the Baroque courtyard and the salomic columns on the staircase, on which you'll find a frieze depicting the mythological story of Neptune's chariot. It is one of the few civil historic landmarks of this artistic style remaining in Catalonia, as most of the monumental heritage from the era has been lost to the destruction of wars and the steady march of time.
Whether they like it or not, Australians are becoming real cat people. In fact, according to a recently released report, nearly 100% of Australia is now infested with wild cats.
As is being reported in the Guardian, researchers have discovered that Australia has a feral cat density of about one cat per every one and a half square miles. This density exists across 99 percent of the country save for some outlying islands where they have been eliminated and in some cat-free areas that have been fenced off. A collection of nearly 100 wildlife surveys showed that there are between 2-6 million cats occupying the continent, which turns out to be a pretty safe number given that they originally estimated that they would find around 20 million.
Wild cats were first introduced to Australia when it was colonized by Europe, and they have spread out across the entire island, wreaking havoc on the native species. Australia and Antarctica were once the only continents without a native cat population, so their native wildlife evolved without the necessary defenses against felines, making them extremely vulnerable to predation by invasive cats.
Despite outcry from many animal rights supporters, Australian officials are looking into a number of methods of culling the cat population. Unfortunately the wily animals are pretty hard to trap, making more humane methods, such as sterilization, nearly impossible. Fittingly enough, one of the methods being discussed is to release dogs that could hunt down feral cats. So far though, the untamed cats still have the run of the place.
By 1931, Benito Mussolini had been in power for 10 years, and he marked the anniversary by sending a few replicas of Rome's iconic Lupa Capitolina (Capitoline Wolf) statue around to other cities, including this one to Cincinnati. Unlike the cities of Rome, Georgia or Rome, New York (which each have one too), Ohio’s third largest city isn’t named after the Italian capital, but for the beloved Roman statesman, Cincinnatus. And that was good enough for Il Duce.
Set in Eden Park along the banks of Twin Lakes, the bronze statue is the same strangely shaped canis lupis as the original, an artwork that has come to symbolize Rome. It depicts the legend of Romulus and Remus, twin founders of the city, suckling at the she-wolf's teat.
There are scores of copies around the world, many of them given as gifts by Mussolini. The one that landed here came through an arrangement made by the Order Sons of Italy, Cincinnati Chapter. As the only city in America to honor the great Cincinnatus, it seemed like a no-brainer at the time.
When the statue was gifted to Cincinnati, Mussolini had already established the Fascist Party and installed himself as Italy’s ruler. But if things looked like they might get a little dicey with a gift from a dictator as the 1930s wore on, the statue somehow managed to escape too much controversy. It has stayed put on its marble pedestal for the more than eight decades since.
Mention the word “vineyard” and most people will think of rolling green hillsides or sweeping valley views. Yet few of them would expect to find one right in the heart of one of Berlin's hippest districts, Kreuzberg. A true relic from the Cold War era, this tiny urban vineyard is one of the German capital’s best kept secrets. The vineyard covers a tenth of a hectare and it produces about 350 bottles of wine yearly, called Kreuz-Neroberger. Grapes for the rare wine are grown at the very birthplace of the first programmable computer in the world, which only adds to its mystique. It is notoriously hard to obtain.
Over the last couple of years the secret vineyard has been overseen by Daniel Mayer, a jolly 44-year master oenologist and winemaker. A Berlin native, Mayer worked for many years as a wine buyer before taking control over the small urban vineyard, and pulling the German capital’s little-known but glorious winemaking past into the 21st century.
“I took over the Kreuzberg vineyard in 2010 when a friend of mine asked me if I would be interested in it,” says Mayer. He wears a T-shirt with an inscription in Latin saying Vinea in Monte Crucis/MCDXXXV Vindemia MMXV (The Vineyard in Kreuzberg, 1435-2015). The text, although ironic, reflects an important historical truth: vines has been grown in this part of Berlin for centuries, with the first vineyard planted on the hills of Kreuzberg more than 580 years ago.
The Kreuzberg vineyard that Mayer is taking care of is not nearly that old. It was planted in 1968, in the midst of the Cold War era, when the district’s twin city of Wiesbaden donated five Riesling vines. Between 1971 and 1973, Bergstraße county, a wine region in the state of Hesse, gifted another 75 vines. In 1975 the town of Ingelheim am Rhein donated 20 Blauer Spätburgunder vines. Today the Kreuzberg vineyard contains 350 vines in total, all of them gifts.
Like many of the best vineyards, the one in Kreuzberg is planted on a slope, not far from the charming 19th-century idyll of Viktoriapark. But what’s even more unique about the vineyard’s location is that it grows at the very birthplace of Z3—the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer, designed by German engineer Konrad Zuse. Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Zuse (1910-1995) is often regarded as the inventor of the computer. Unfortunately the machine and its blueprints were destroyed during World War II, in a bombing of Berlin in December of 1943. So was the laboratory of Zuse, as well as the whole block around it, which opened a wide gap in the otherwise densely built urban area.
“A couple of years ago one of the mayoral candidates of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough came with a guy from the museum and an architect and said that according to some plans, the cellar of Zuse’s house has never been filled up with earth after the war, so there might still be a computer in there,” laughs Mayer.
The Romans first introduced viticulture to the southernmost area of present-day Germany about 2,000 years ago, and by the early Middle Ages, it was usually being made in monasteries. In fact, Berlin’s Kreuzberg district has older winemaking traditions than more popular regions such as California, Australia and South Africa. But with the rapid expansion of Berlin in the 19th century, many of the vineyards were pulled out and replaced by residential buildings. Yet Berlin and the surrounding Brandenburg area abound with names that are deeply rooted in its glorious winemaking past, like Weinmeisterstraße (Winemaster street), Weinbrennerweg (Wine distiller way), and Weinbergpark (Vineyard park), to name but a few.
“Wine was a big thing here. And sometimes it was cheaper than beer which helped its popularity. The city produced so much of it that they even exported some to Scandinavia and the Baltic republics,” explains Mayer. “But then all this came to an end. One of the reasons was globalization, as it was much easier to get cheaper and better wines via the railway from other parts of Europe.”
The Kreuzberg vineyard was a project started by then-Mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt, in 1966. Its goal was to seal the city partnership between Kreuzberg and Wiesbaden. It was a strong political statement, saying that West Berlin, which existed between 1949 and 1990 as a political enclave surrounded by East Germany, had not been forgotten by West Germany. The annual harvest was initially modest, with 11 bottles in 1970 and only seven bottles in 1971. The choice of grapes was political, too, but not necessarily the best one for Berlin’s climate.
“Riesling takes a very long time to mature, but back in the 1960s they had different, political reasons. The Riesling vines came from Kreuzberg’s sister city of Wiesbaden, the capital of federal state of Hesse, which is in the Rhine district famous for its white wines,” explains Mayer.
Due to Berlin’s northern continental climate, the grapes planted at that time couldn’t ripen well and the wine was thin and acidic. Or as they used to say, “Brandenburg’s wine goes down one’s throat like a saw.” The wine made in Kreuzberg wasn’t an exception.
But in recent years its quality has improved, thanks to the rising temperature of the city. Berlin’s urban area has a unique microclimate: heat is stored by the city's buildings and pavement, and temperatures inside the city can be 4°C (7 °F) higher than in its surrounding areas. According to Mayer, sometimes as little as half a degree makes a big difference on the grapes’ ripeness.
Two grape varieties are grown—Riesling, the most widely planted of German grapes, and Spätburgunder or "Late Burgundian", as Pinot Noir is known in Germany. The vines are lovingly taken care of all year long by Daniel Mayer and volunteers who help with all the work, including pruning and harvesting. Each one of the 350 vines produces roughly one 0.375 liter bottle of wine which is 100 percent organic, as Mayer uses only copper and sulfur fungicides which are more or less harmless.
“The vineyard is so small that we do everything by hand. We spend about one hour of work per bottle of wine. Or 350 hours yearly in total. But this is only to produce the grapes. Then we have to bring them to the sister cities which turn them into wine and this adds to the cost of production,” explains Mayer.
The Kreuz-Neroberger wine is still bottled in the same narrow, oblong, cylindrical bottles made of brown glass that were used for first time in 1970, when the first vintage of it was pressed. But what about the wine itself?
“It’s uncomplicated table wine with floral notes. It has hints of peaches and light citrus notes, a good balance and a medium-long finish,” explains Mayer.
The Kreuz-Neroberger wine is famously hard to obtain. You won’t find it in the wine lists of the fancy restaurants and you can’t buy it in the shops, not even in the specialized ones. However, a donation of 10 Euros (about $10.60) to the district office of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg will get you a standard 0,375 liter bottle.
The other way of scoring a bottle is a bit trickier: if you reach the ripe old age of 100 years, then you’ll get a bottle of it for your birthday.
In 1870, artist Robert Bateman painted an unusual scene. In it, a mandrake plant is pulled carefully from the earth with lengths of string. The painting depicts just one part of the extensive mythology surrounding the mandrake—its ability to kill with its scream when uprooted. In painting this scene, Bateman also added to the rich history of how the supernatural is portrayed in art.
This is the subject of Christopher Dell’s new book The Occult, Witchcraft and Magic: An Illustrated History. Full of art, illustrations and photographs, the book brings together a compelling visual history of magic and its uses, from ancient Egyptian magical spells printed on papyrus, to the film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
As the book shows, the mandrake is just one of the many objects that humans have imbued with significance. In palmistry, it’s the lines of the hand. In both alchemy and fraternal societies, it's secret symbols. Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from this fascinating collection.
In the bakery aisle of a Tesco supermarket in Coventry, England, a vigilante poetry-lover left a surprise, as the Coventry Telegraph reports.
There, near the bread, was a printed poem entitled “Bread,” by W.S. Merwin, a prolific modern American poet. It begins:
Each face in the street is a slice of bread wandering on searching
somewhere in the light the true hunger appears to be passing them by they clutch
Elsewhere in the store, another poem appeared. This one was entitled “Deer” and came from “A Bestiary,” by Kenneth Rexroth.
Deer are gentle and graceful And they have beautiful eyes. They hurt no one but themselves, The males, and only for love.
There are few clues as to who might be leaving these poems about, but in December, the same Tesco had another rash of vigilante notes left on its shelves. The December notes targeted diet drink products, like SlimFast, and told would-be buyers “You don’t need these chemicals” and “Stop counting calories! You look great.”
During World War II the White House purchased a luxury Pullman rail car named the Ferdinand Magellan and transformed it into a rolling White House, codenamed "U.S. Car Number 1." Franklin Roosevelt used this Air Force One predecessor on countless cross-country trips during the war.
Today you can visit the Magellan at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum, in Miami. The train has nickel-steel armor and three-inch-thick bullet-resistant windows. The rear door alone tips the scales at 1,500 pounds (though this inconvenience is minimized by carefully balanced hinges). In total, the car weighs 142 tons—almost double the weight of the standard 80-ton Pullman car. By way of comparison, a modern M1 Abrams tank weighs 62 tons.
When it was in service, the Magellan traveled with a fleet that included sleeping and office cars for White House staff, an Army medical car, and a communications car nicknamed “the crate.” The Presidential Limousine and Secret Service Cadillacs were brought along in a special garage car. Two locomotives were often required to drag this ensemble up steeper track grades.
The interior of the Magellan contains a Presidential Suite (two separate bedrooms for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt), two guest rooms, a conference room and an observation lounge. The rear platform was wired with a microphone and loudspeakers that came in handy during whistle-stop campaign speeches.
Cross-country trips on the Presidential train were a complex logistical undertaking. Robert Klara’s history of the U.S. Car Number 1 details the security precautions:
"The railroad’s police would begin taking up posts at overpasses and junctions. Plainclothesmen would appear at stations along the route, peering over broadsheets and watching for anyone who struck them as suspicious. Track gangs would begin a slow, watchful trek by foot down every mile of track that the president’s train would travel, checking for broken rails and locking switches as they went."
The Magellan enjoyed first right of way wherever it traveled, and railroad companies kept other traffic at least 30 minutes ahead or behind the president.
FDR traveled 50,000 miles on the presidential train during his 12-year presidency, and when he died in 1945 the Magellan carried his body from Washington to Hyde Park.
President Truman also made frequent use of the train, and he often urged the engineers to push it up to speeds of 80 mph. (FDR had preferred a languid 30 mph pace that didn't jostle his wheelchair.) In 1948 Truman traveled across the country on the Magellan as a part of his whistle-stop reelection tour, and the famous Dewey Beats Truman photograph was taken on the back platform.
That was the highwater mark for the Ferdinand Magellan. President Eisenhower preferred to travel on Air Force One and rarely used the train. It was last officially used by Mamie Eisenhower, and in 1958 it was declared surplus. The White House mothballed the train at Fort Holibird in Maryland and offered it to the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian failed to act quickly (they claimed that there wasn't any space).
According to a Gold Coast Railroad Museum history, " Losing no time, the founders ... a Senator from the State of Florida, and the President of the University of Miami became interested parties. Negotiations resulted in the United States Government transferring the Magellan to the Florida Development Commission, who, in turn, gave the car to the University of Miami." The acquisition cost $80,277.53.
On Wednesday evening, a Danish cargo ship ran into a vicious storm on its way back from China, losing five containers in the process. As a result, this morning, kids on the German island of Langeoog woke up to a treat—thousands of Kinder eggs scattered across the shore.
The wrappers and chocolate had washed off, so the tide line was strewn with colorful plastic eggs, each with a toy inside. Residents immediately took to this sea-sponsored scavenger hunt, filling bags with the treasures, The Local reports.
By the afternoon, the egg cleanup was complete, but the ocean had more presents for the island's kiddos. Legos—much harder to gather, and dangerous to sea creatures—were washing ashore. "This isn't funny anymore," the mayor said. What's next?
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 tocara@atlasobscura.com.
Oswald's Bear Ranch is the largest in the United States, with roughly two dozen rescued bears. They live in huge enclosed habitats that visitors can observe from viewing platforms. The cubs have their own smaller habitats, complete with a waterfall for them to play in.
Dean and Jewel Oswald opened the ranch to the public in 1997, though they had been taking in orphaned bear cubs for 13 years before that. Dean, a former firefighter, had previously been a bear hunter but decided he would "rather save them than hunt them" after his retirement.
Though the ranch found itself in controversy when an attorney reported seeing visitors feeding Froot Loops to bears, which led to a complaint from Michigan's Fish and Wildlife Department, forcing a brief closure. However, the Oswalds have repeatedly been commended on their safety provisions for both humans and animals alike on the ranch, where visitors can walk about and see bears much as they would be in the wild.
In early December, the House Freedom Caucus—a group of conservative Republicans aiming to push their party rightward—released a detailed agenda for the first 100 days of the new administration. The document consists mostly of hundreds of existing rules they'd like to see repealed. Some are expected targets: climate regulations, Title IX provisions, the National School Lunch Program. Others are a bit more surprising—they also want to roll back conservation standards for ovens and dishwashers, and block rules that would restrict tanning to consumers over 18.
But high up at the top, in box 3A, flops an unusually scaly legislative actor: the catfish.
An unexpected political hot potato, the regulatory status of catfish has beleaguered Democrats and Republicans alike for nearly a decade. The story of its rise to controversy involves multiple nations and years of legislative strife—and, perhaps, a rare opportunity for bipartisan consensus.
Catfish has long been an important part of the American diet. Native Americans and European settlers stewed and fried them by the millions, and the first large-scale aquaculture endeavors in America were catfish farms, which began stretching across Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in the 1960s. A few decades later, though, a competitor emerged: pangasius, or "Asian catfish." A major export of Vietnam, pangasius began swimming into American markets after the U.S.-Vietnam trade embargo was lifted in the mid-1990s, and quickly gobbled up a large percentage of the market.
This has sparked what is known as the "Catfish Dispute"—an ongoing argument between American and Vietnamese producers. Catfish Farmers of America, the industry's main U.S. trade association, has sued the Department of Commerce repeatedly. Although they have won some victories—all Vietnamese catfish must now be labeled "Made in Vietnam," for example—it hasn't been enough to stop the torrent of competition. And so in 2008, they took an unusual step: they asked to be more strictly regulated.
Their argument, at the time, was food safety. "There were a lot of Youtube videos [of Vietnamese fish farms] floating around that were not appealing—it's not a situation that you want to have your food come from," says Dan Flynn of Food Safety News, who has reported on this saga since the outset. Together with a few food safety groups, Catfish Farmers of America pushed for more stringent inspections. Thanks mostly to the influence of Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, the 2008 Farm Bill contained a special provision moving catfish inspection duties from the FDA to the USDA.
Up until this bill, food inspection responsibilities in the U.S. were clearly delineated: the USDA checked out meat, poultry, and eggs exclusively, while the FDA took care of everything else, including our favorite whiskery fish. "This goes back to the days of Upton Sinclair," says Flynn, "based on the principle that meat should be subject to continuous inspection."
While the FDA does random inspections, the USDA checks all the domestically produced and imported goods under their jurisdiction, unless they are confident that the countries and states producing the goods have similar inspection standards.
Deciding to treat catfish—and only catfish—like beef or chicken throws a wrench in the system. "When you walk into a facility that processes seafood, you see cod coming down the line, you see shrimp coming down the line, or tuna. All of those products are regulated by the FDA," says Gavin Gibbons of the National Fisheries Institute, a U.S. seafood industry trade group. "Now stop the presses—quite literally!—refit the manufacturing, and roll the assembly line again for catfish, and now USDA is the regulator."
It is—and here Gibbons uses that bogey-word that sinks so much legislation—duplicative: "We do not need the police department and the sheriff standing at the stop sign to make sure people don't run it."
So far, though, this wrench is largely hypothetical. Before the switch could be made, there had to be a plan in place—and this was a slow, seven-year process, full of tug of wars, inter-agency drama, and arguments over what exactly a catfish is. "Millions were spent, both agencies had responsibilities, and no catfish really got inspected," Flynn wrote in 2014. The USDA didn't look at its first fish until spring of 2016.
Despite these setbacks, some supporters of the bill have held the line. But Giffords and others doubt their motives. "It's a running joke in Washington that this has anything to do with food safety," he says—instead, he casts it as a blatant attempt to undercut free trade. Plus, he says, individual catfish farmers are jumping ship, fearing that the regulations will make life harder for them, which Giffords diagnoses as "a classic case of 'be careful what you wish for.'" (Catfish Farmers of America did not respond to requests for comment.)
Meanwhile, nouveau catfish inspection has gained a lot of enemies on both sides of the aisle. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has deemed the program unnecessary ten times. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen has repeatedly sponsored amendments that move toward eliminating it, along with Republican Senator John McCain. (In a 2013 article in Politico, McCain called the species in question a "crusty mudfish," and accused it of being a "bottom-feeder with friends in high places.") Other senators have accused it of violating various aspects of the World Trade Organization treaty, which would leave the U.S. open to disputes from other countries, and fear it may lead to boycotts on American goods.
Nowhere is this sentiment more apparent than at www.repealcatfish.com, a website dedicated to getting rid of the inspection program. Run by the National Fisheries Institute, the site contains a lot of convincing arguments for supporting the repeal—and, thanks to its smorgasbord of custom videos, cut-and-paste infographics, and heated slogans, it's also a good way to viscerally understand exactly how fed up the regulation's opponents are. There are multiple comparisons to the Emperor's New Clothes, and an infographic entitled "The Twelve Days of Catfish," which suggests that they would like you to bring this issue up at a Christmas party. "Unless you've been living under a rock, you know everyone's urging Catfish Repeal," the homepage promises.
Perhaps, in this divisive political age, catfish repeal will be what finally unites us. Maybe the controversy will land the U.S. in World Trade Organization court. Or maybe the catfish will remain stuck in limbo—neither cat nor fish, neither meat nor seafood, inspected either double or not at all. It's hard to tell. As Flynn says, chuckling: "The more years it goes on, the stranger it gets."
Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.
The main Amtrak stop in Buffalo, New York is known informally as ‘America’s Saddest Train Station’. A modest, one-story brick building, smaller than the average house, it currently sits with a blue tarpaulin covering its roof, which partially collapsed during a storm in September 2016. It's a symbol for the struggles and hardships, most of them economic, Buffalo has faced in recent history.
But a little further east is another train station, lying forlorn and mostly forgotten. It also happens to be one of America’s Art Deco treasures: the old Buffalo Central Terminal.
Opened in 1929 for the New York Central Railroad, the Buffalo Central Terminal was every bit as grand and opulent as Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, Philadelphia’s 30th Street station and Washington DC’s Union Station.
These were the days when Buffalo was known as the Queen City, built on the strength of automobiles, livestock, steel, and other heavy industries prospering along the seam of the Erie Canal, connecting New York to the Great Lakes. Buffalo thrived to such an extent it was chosen to host the prestigious 1901 Pan American World’s Fair. At this point, Buffalo was the eighth-largest city in the United States.
Designed in stunning Art Deco style by Alfred T. Fellheimer, the principal architect of New York’s Grand Central Terminal, it featured an ornate dining room, telegraph offices, luncheon rooms, soda fountains and liquor stores. It even had its own in-station tailors. Towering over the Terminal was a 17-story, state-of-the-art office complex for the New York Central Railroad. This was the golden era of refined, luxurious train travel; of sleeper cars, red caps, and the romantic sounding lines like the 20th Century Limited, the Chicagoan, the Empire State Express and the Knickerbocker. In its heyday, Buffalo Central Terminal was servicing 200 trains a day.
But the decline in Buffalo’s economic fortunes, and the rise of domestic airlines and automobiles, spelled the end of the grand Terminal. In the early hours of the morning of October 28, 1979, the last Lake Shore Limited train service heading west left Buffalo. The grand old Terminal was never used again.
For decades, the building was left abandoned, silently falling apart, while the surrounding neighborhood similarly declined. But the spirit of the Nickel City is strong. No more so than in the recent efforts of the non-profit, Central Terminal Restoration Corporation (CTRC), which has been fighting to not only preserve the Terminal, but restore it to its original magnificence.
The cavernous, ornate ceilings are cathedral-like in size, and echo with the sounds of footsteps on the marble and concrete floors. Stenciled lettering above empty doorways shows where there were once newspaper stands, ticketing offices and deluxe services for the luxurious Pullmans.
Adjacent to the shoe shine kiosks is a long private room, that like most of the Terminal has been all but stripped of anything that could be sold. But the faded markings on the floor show the imprint of curved U-shaped dining counters. It is easy to imagine a din in the building and the excitement of passengers waiting for the grand cross country trains, or newlyweds heading to Niagara Falls, or the tens of thousands of GIs who passed through here on the way to Europe.
One of the largest problems facing the Terminal is in keeping the elements out. Carl Skompinski, a Buffalo resident who has been working with the non-profit group that has owned the Terminal since 1997, says that once they found kids had broken in and were ice skating across the Terminal floor.
“I got involved because I grew up in the area,” Skompinski explains. “I’d like to see it reopening as a multi-use facility with offices, condos or apartments in the tower, a publicly opened concourse and Amtrak station. I’d like it to be a gathering place for the community and be able to be self-funding.”
With the current Amtrak station downtown in such a state of disrepair, there have been calls in Buffalo for a new station. Skompinski and his group argue that there’s no need to build a new one when the beautiful Central Terminal is ready to be used. “The main line runs past the Terminal already,” says Skompinski. All Amtrak would have to do “is run a couple pair of tracks to the old platform building.”
But the building itself would need extensive repairs. Forty years of neglect have seen much of the original fixtures either stolen or stripped, particularly in the mid 1980s, when the Terminal was sold off in a foreclosure sale. One ornate Art Deco lamp found its way into a Hong Kong nightclub. Today, the CTRC maintains excellent security, preserving what is left, and gradually refitting the Terminal. But the process is expensive and a labor of love; each glass bulb for the ornate outside fixtures costs $220, and there are over 20 to replace.
While Buffalo doesn’t attract the numbers of tourists of other major East Coast cities, it is a city rich in history and architectural treasures—none more so than the forgotten beauty of the old Central Terminal.
Perhaps the best chance for the Terminal’s rejuvenation lies with Canadian property developer Harry Stinson, who was named as the designated developer of the site by the City of Buffalo and the CTRC in 2016. Plans include a hotel, offices, stores, restaurants, housing and entertainment spaces. Whether the trains return to the station is yet to be determined.
