For decades, elegant card catalogs occupied a central spot in the Library of Congress Main Reading Room. Before computerization, they were as central to the research process as a search engine in the present day. The last old card catalog was deemed obsolete the 1980s and pushed down into the basement, where it remains to this day.
The Library of Congress card catalog system dates back to 1898. By 1901 the LC Card Division was producing vast quantities of them for sale to libraries across the country—the cost: 15 cents per card. Every book in the collection had a standardized card listing, relevant metadata, and cross-referenced topics.
There’s something undeniably interesting about perusing the rows of cards, taking in the subtle variations in typography and handwriting on each one. The cards are pleasantly tactile, and the paper has the faint smell of old book. It’s the same physical power that keep some book lovers from ever making the switch from hardcover to ebook, convenience be damned.
Romance aside, digitalization of the card catalog made a lot of sense. “But to some people, it’s an icon,” LC Director of Planning Bob Zich told the Washington Post in 1984. “It’s like a religion.”
Modernization proceeded under the direction of Henriette D. Avram, a former NSA programmer and pioneering female computer scientist. The project began in 1967, but was not complete until the mid-1980s because of the vastness of the Library of Congress collection.
In addition to the backlog of about 20 million existing cards, thousands of new entries came in every day as the digitalization slogged forward.
In the '80s the LC removed the wooden card cabinets from their spot of honor in the Reading Room and brought in personal computers. The catalog was first brought onto the World Wide Web in 1993. The webpage wasn’t as sexy as the old card system, but it was far more accessible to the American public. Today it is queried millions of times per day. Bizarre side note: The online catalog website actually had operating hours when it was first launched and "closed" at 5 p.m. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Margot Williams warned her readers in 1994 "don't try this [accessing the website] at midnight."
Despite the advent of the internet, Library of Congress employees fought hard to keep the old cards around as a backup. So down they went into the basement.
Star forts, five-sided forts designed to give guards a panoramic view of any potential attackers, originated in Italy in the 15th century. Providing the optimal structure for protection from threats, star forts were used in Italian warfare for years and eventually diffused to the Groningen region of the Netherlands, where the Bourtange star fort was constructed in 1593.
The star fort was a premier defense system throughout the Netherlands and the perfect force for Fort Bourtange, which today is one of the world’s only remaining star forts. The fort remains perfectly preserved, with historic churches, cobblestone streets, wooden windmills, marvelous bridges, and old military barracks strewn across the 11-acre pentagon.
Originally constructed by William the Silent to aid the Dutch in the Eighty Years’ War, Bourtange was strategically surrounded by a marshy moat and complete with sturdy fortifications for defense against the Spaniards. Years later, when the German army of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster attacked in 1672, the army was crippled by the impassable swamp that surrounded the fort.
Fort Bourtange was a military success for years, until agricultural practices dried up the fort's protective swamp. In response, Bourtange converted itself into a non-military residential town by 1851, where life flourished for nearly 100 years. By the 1950s and '60s, however, Bourtange saw a second wave of troubles as job growth began to stagnate, forcing the local government to declare Bourtange an open-air historical area by 1960.
Among the fort’s three historical rooms and museums is a 19th-century synagogue that was the place of worship for Bourtange’s Jews before Adolf Hitler's invasion of the region. Historical reenactments are common; every June, the Battle of Bourtange is recreated at the fort, the largest reenactment in the Netherlands. Torture devices can also be found throughout Bourtange, including the Wooden Horse, in which a prisoner would sit atop the back of a manmade horse and have weights tied to their feet.
Today, Bourtange is one of the Netherland's most fascinating and unique historical areas, a moat-surrounded village where you can literally walk atop a star.
The surfaces of Shah Cheragh, a mosque in the Iranian city of Shiraz, glisten and shimmer as you walk by. Mosaics made of mirror shards and tiles cover each wall. Glittering chandeliers hang from the ceilings and spots of light dance in the domes. As the above video by Great Big Story shows, being inside is like inhabiting a disco ball.
Shah Cheragh, also known as the Emerald Mosque and the Shrine to the King of the Light, was originally built in the 1100s as a funerary monument to Ahmad and Muhammad, brothers who took refuge in Shiraz during the 10th-century persecution of Shia Muslims. Many additions and renovations have taken place over the centuries. Shah Cheragh is now the third most holy Shia shrine in Iran, and draws a substantial crowd for Friday night prayers. It's not unusual to see worshippers kissing the mirrored walls post-prayer.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com
It's rarely a good thing when wildfire consumes a protected park area. Yet when an overgrown juniper forest burnt down in Cove Palisades State Park near the Deschutes National Forest, it revealed a series of seemingly impossible balanced rocks.
The slabs are perched atop cylindrical rock towers on a hillside overlooking Lake Billy Chinook to the east. The Park Service had been aware of the rocks' presence, but had left them off maps for fear of vandals and errant climbers. After the fire, the location was no longer a secret, and park rangers are now happy to direct hikers to the rocks. They offer a fabulous view of the Metolius River.
The rocks are remnants of volcanic activity in Oregon millennia ago. The rock spires were created by one volcanic eruption, while the balancing slabs on top were created by others. Because of their differing sedimentary make-up, the rocks eroded at different rates.
Flying above eastern Texas from Houston to Austin, air passengers gaze down to find a giant word spelled out with over three miles of trees, each letter stretching thousands of feet in each direction.
This humongous geoglyph, spelling out the last name of local landowner Jimmie Luecke, is the world's largest signature. (Proving once again that everything is, in fact, bigger in Texas.) Created originally out of simple egocentrism, the giant "Luecke" of eastern Texaswound up proving quite useful, albeit unintentionally.
The giant signature has been used by the U.S. government to analyze its satellite imagery. According to a statement released by NASA, “by clearing forest so that a pattern would be visible to landing aircraft, a landowner outside Austin, Texas created a target that is also useful for evaluating spatial resolution of astronaut photographs.”
It is possible that the geoglyph serves an agricultural purpose as well. The use of strips of trees to divide pieces of farmland, a process known as alley cropping, is commonly used to protect the soil from erosion.
Jimmie Luecke, it seems, has made a name for himself in more ways than one.
Standing at approximately 100 feet tall and measuring 20 feet around its trunk, the Comfort Maple is believed to be Canada's oldest sugar maple tree. It is around 500 years old.
The Ontario Forestry Association believes the tree could be as old as 541, but this is an approximation as the maple's rings have never been counted. Its impressive dimensions are indisputable though, and it is certainly the largest sugar maple in Canada.
The tree is named for the Comfort family, who owned the land for 145 years before donating it to the a Niagara conservation organization in 1961. It has since become a symbol of Canadian heritage.
The Comfort Maple has experienced its share of hardship in its half a millennium. It has been struck by lightning at least once, and it was recently found to be afflicted with rot. Wounds in its trunk have been filled in with bricks and cement in some places, and wires have been rigged to help hold up its ancient branches. Its believed that the tree is nearing the end of its life.
Yet year after year the maple continues to display the brilliant red autumn foliage iconic to its species. This is a popular time of year to photograph and picnic under the maple, but if you're unable to visit you can still own a piece of the Comfort Maple. Fallen branches have been made into pens, available for purchase at $55 apiece.
Out in Idaho and other parts of the American West, winter storms have dumped an unusual amount of snow all over the region. In some places, more than four feet of snow have accumulated, and collapsing buildings have become a real danger. The snow has also driven animals looking for food into towns, and over the weekend one unlucky moose accidentally stumbled into a basement in Hailey, Idaho.
The moose was not intending to sneak downstairs; he fell through a window well into the basement.
Senior Conservation Officer Alex Head, who has some experience getting moose out of homes, was called to the scene. As the Idaho Department of Fish and Game reports, he “attempted to herd to moose up the stairs and out the front door to freedom.”
However, the moose, which presumably had never been in a basement before, was freaked out and did not want to be herded. “The moose was having none of it, charging the officers several times,” the department reported. Head and colleagues decided their best choice was to sedate the moose.
Once the moose was calmed by drugs, the humans were able to remove him from the basement. “With all hands on deck, the sleeping giant was carried up the stairs and out the front door. It woke up in the snow covered street, groggy and confused, but free.”
Have you ever wondered what the tallest active volcano is? Or wanted to compare the height of mountain peaks and the lengths of rivers around the world? So did John Emslie and James Reynolds.
Between 1849 and 1851, topographical illustrator and engraver Emslie and publisher Reynolds designed scientifically based diagrams that measured out these geologic landforms and features in the 12-plate book Geological Diagrams. During the era,chartmakers helped increase accessibility and visibility of the latest scientific research by creating maps, illustrations, and figures depicting natural and man-made wonders around the world.
Emslie and Reynolds “take numbers, acute scientific details, and measurements, weaving them into something that’s beautiful to look at and easier to understand,” wrote Sara Barnes in My Modern Met. Part art and part informational chart, these pieces are early scientific infographics that serve as the foundations of the educational diagrams we see today.
The 1800s were marked by significant scientific discoveries, from the first observation of Neptune to theories of evolution. As early as the beginning of the 19th century when Alexander von Humboldt created what are considered the first infographics, publishers and cartographers designed a wide array of vivid displays to explain these new and complex ideas to the public.Reynolds' publishing business in London printed an enormous output over his approximately 30-year career, responding to the popular demand for information on science and engineering developments. Reynolds worked with several cartographers and engravers, but one of his main collaborators was Emslie.
Together, they produced numerous infographics and maps, and were both elected to England’s Royal Geographical Society—a professional organization dedicated to providing accurate cartographic and geographic information. The appeal and charm of their work comes from a combination of formal cartographic techniques, scientific knowledge, and artistic flair.
Colored by hand and highly detailed, Emslie and Reynolds’ 1851 Geological Diagrams is one of their many artistic portfolios. Maps show the distribution of plants, air currents, and religion, while charts ingeniously splay out major rivers, mountains, waterfalls, and even famous historic buildings.
For example, the panoramic map of principal rivers and lakes line up a selection of the world’s major rivers, visually comparing the lengths of the Colorado, Rhine, Nile, and Amazon rivers. Each are dotted by the major cities that they run through. Above the row of rivers, different lakes including the Dead Sea, the Caspian Sea, Lake Geneva, and Lake Erie are compared. You can see just how expansive the Caspian Sea in Russia and the Black Sea in Turkey are from this view.
In addition to the 12 engraved plates in Geological Diagrams, Emslie and Reynolds also worked together on other volumes and single issues of optical charts, school atlases, and astronomical diagrams. Emslie shows the differences between astronomical and geographical clocks, the earth’s revolution around the sun, and the topographical surface of the moon. Some of the astronomical maps were made transparent, allowing viewers to amplify and highlight celestial bodies and constellations by shining a light through the back.
Currently, a selection of Reynolds and Emslie’s astronomical diagrams from the 1850s can be viewed in person at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University’s Green Library. Explore more of these early scientific infographics below.
Map Monday highlights interesting and unusual cartographic pursuits from around the world and through time. Read more Map Monday posts.
The island of Lanai is tiny: The population hovers around a little over 3,000 people, mostly staffing the island's Four Seasons resort. However amid the Hawaiian island's turquoise waters and endless green foliage, hundreds of cats live in their own secluded paradise at the "Fur Seasons," a sprawling sanctuary for the island's feral cats.
The Lanai Cat Sanctuary is home to some 500 furry felines, who happily roam and play on 25,000 square feet of land on one of the most remote islands in the United States.
The cat paradise was created in 2009 to rescue the island's cats that were being hunted do to overpopulation. It now opens its doors to thousands of cat lovers a year, some of whom travel to the island just to visit the "Hawaiian Lions," as they are lovingly known.
Lanai became overpopulated with cats after the animals were first brought to Hawaii more than a century ago on whaling boats. Strays were crawling all over the island, begging for food from residents and tourists. Viewing them as pests, residents took to trapping and killing the cats. So a volunteer program was started to catch the feral felines, neuter them, and release them back to the wild. But when it was discovered the cats were also endangering the native 'Ua'u birds, a shelter was created to rescue the island's cats and protect its birds at the same time.
Upon entering the eternally sunny sanctuary visitors will hear happy mews as they become the center of attention for a few Lanai kitties looking for love. Each of the cats is also available for adoption. The site lies on a plot of land with fresh running water but not much else. There is no electricity or plumbing. The sanctuary runs entirely off of donations from tourists, money the organization has been trying to put toward expanding the sanctuary and establishing a medical system for the feline residents. Lanai is so small and remote, there are few if any veterinarians on the island.
Victory Memorial Drive is an impressive sight that many Minneapolis residents do not know exists. It was dedicated in 1921 as a World War I Memorial to servicemen and nurses killed in the line of duty. As part of the Grand Rounds park system, Victory Drive serves as the western border of the city of Minneapolis.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
The boy that would become Scatman John had a hard time growing up.
Before his massive international hit "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)," before selling millions of records globally in a style of music that hadn’t been popular in generations, and before he entered the National Stuttering Association's hall of fame, Scatman John was just a kid in suburbia, born John Paul Larkin in El Monte, California in 1942, developing a stutter early in life that made communicating with others very difficult—and got him bullied.
“As a child, I had to fight a few times,” Larkin said in a 1995 interview with Advance for Speech Pathologists and Audiologists Magazine. “I went into a rage a few times. I remember one instance where some neighborhood kids … mock[ed] my stuttering at the top of their voices. That really hurt. It just crushed me. I waited until the next day when they had forgotten about it. I didn’t. I ran after them, and the rage was so strong I would have killed them if my father hadn’t stopped me. But that pain, I hope, has made me into the good person that I try to be.”
Larkin instead turned to music, which became a nonverbal source of creative expression, later gravitating toward jazz piano. He first learned about the scat style of singing listening to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. He worked as a musician—fairly anonyously—for decades, playing piano bars and festivals, until he finally released a self-titled album under his birth name at the age of 42. The album did not sell well, and by 1990, John decided to give his career one last push, moving to Berlin with his wife.
“After several months of going through the usual trials and tribulations of moving to another country and overcoming culture shock, Judy and I managed to secure an agent and I began to get booked into a European hotel circuit and I was well on my way to becoming the best hotel pianist I could be,” Larkin said once. “My feelings were … ‘Success at Last’ … I was so grateful to have actually had the opportunity to make a living as a musician. This, I thought, was as good as it could get.”
In Europe, he found greater acceptance of jazz, which inspired enough confidence that he incorporated singing into his act. Larkin reportedly received standing ovations for some of his performances.
And once he found that confidence, things changed quickly for him, as his growing musical reputation eventually led to a music contract with BMG Hamburg, which had a unique idea to incorporate his jazz scatting with the house music dominating Europe at the time.
Eventually, he was teamed with producer Antonia Catania, who helped Larkin, then 53, create the surprise hit, “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)”.
A uniquely ‘90s blend of jazz scatting, rap, and house beats, “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” was released along with a video that made the rounds on MTV.
Though the song caused little reaction upon its initial release, steady airplay on mainstream radio gave it enough momentum to chart in two dozen countries, reaching number one in twelve of them, including Canada, Italy, and France. In the U.S., the single got has high as number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100.
And fueled by the massive popularity of the song, the album Scatman’s World would go on to chart in 24 countries, including Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to strong album and single sales, Scatman also found a home for his music in entertainment and advertising. “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” was used in a Good Humor ad campaign and the 1996 Martin Lawrence/Tim Robbins buddy road comedy Nothing To Lose. As perhaps the ultimate sign of ‘90s pop culture respect, the video was even featured in an episode of Beavis and Butthead.
“There should be a name for this kind of music,” Beavis notes.
“There already is a name for this kind of music, it’s called ‘crap,’” Butthead replies.
Scatman John might have just been a one-hit wonder except that his third album, released in 1997, became an unexpected hit in Switzerland and Japan, selling well over a hundred thousand copies.
And it was in Japan where Scatman John truly came into his own. He sold 1.56 million copies of Scatman’s World in Japan alone—where it is the 11th-highest-selling international album of all time.
Unfortunately, it would be Scatman John’s last moment in the limelight. He was diagnosed with lung cancer shortly after the release of his third album, but continued touring until his death in 1999.
From start to end, his career as a pop star lasted four years. But he embraced every moment of it, taking advantage of the platform he had to speak about the issues he really cared about—like stuttering, the subject of his most famous song.
“The fact that I’ve been a stutterer since I’ve been speaking has compelled me to find another way to speak another language,” he said in a speech to the National Association of Communicative Disorders. “My greatest problem in my childhood is now my greatest asset. I’m trying to tell the kids today that Creation gave us all problems for a purpose, and that your biggest problems contain a source of strength to not only step over those problems, but all our other problems as well.”
Andrew Egan is writer and editor of Crimes In Progress. A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster happened in 2011; now, almost six years later, Tepco, the company responsible for the plant, thinks it may have found lost nuclear fuel debris in one of the reactors, Reuters reports.
The company says it may have detected damaged uranium rods below the No. 2 reactor, which was destroyed in the tsunami that followed the 2011 earthquake.
Those rods are melted and highly radioactive. Tesco says its robots spotted “a black lump of material” that may be the fuel.
If the company has located the fuel, it still needs a plan to clean it up. As Reuters reports, Tepco has been using robots to approach the radioactive site, but “as soon as the robots get close to the reactors, the radiation destroys their wiring and renders them useless.” Estimated costs for the clean-up are now at $188 billion.
Eighty falcons flying together would be a grand sight wherever they were.
But eighty falcons flying together... on a plane?!
The above photo was posted by Reddit user lensoo, with the comment "My captain friend sent me this photo. Saudi prince bought ticket for his 80 hawks."
In the photo, about thirty of the birds (which are falcons, not hawks) are visible, hooded and ready for takeoff. They appear to be perched on planks of wood that have been laid out on the seats for the occasion. Plane travel is fairly common for hunting falcons in the Gulf States, and many airlines have their own rules and regulations for skybound birds.
It's not clear exactly where these came from, where they were headed, or what airline they chose. But odds are good that each one has his or her own falcon passport—which now has one more stamp.
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.
Everyone poops, including cattle, who don't poop more than other mammals, but do poop commensurate to their size—which ends up being a lot of poop, if you have a lot of cattle. Farmers, for decades, have repurposed such poop as fertilizer, but, if they don't, it just piles up. It also smells unpleasant, if you don't like the smell of poop, especially the poop that is fresh and wet and pungent.
It's that latter category of poop that a couple in New Brunswick, Canada has accused their neighbors of intentionally piling up along their property line, part of a long-running feud, according to the Calgery Herald. The poop, pictured above, would smell whenever the wind blew the wrong way, or after it rained. It was also so large that it was viewable on Google Earth.
The poop appeared in November 2013, and was removed less than a year later, in October 2014. But in that time the poop was "fresh, unseasoned, wet, raw manure. The smell was disgusting," David Gallant, who sued his neighbors Lee and Shirley Murray over the poop and other issues, wrote in an affidavit, according to the Herald.
A judge recently ruled in Gallant's favor, awarding him and his wife $15,000 in agreeing that the Murrays had used the poop as a tool of harassment.
“I have little doubt these activities were initiated by the Murrays and designed to inflict fear, nuisance and harassment against the Gallants,” the judge said.
According to the Herald, it's unclear how the dispute between the two neighbors, who live in a rural area, started, though they have been living in close proximity since the Gallants bought their property from the Murrays in 2001.
It eventually came down to the poop, and legal action, and, finally, perhaps, some poop justice for the Gallants. Lee Murray, though, says he plans to appeal, claiming that the poop was old and didn't smell that bad. He would never, he said, intentionally put a big pile of cow poop near his neighbor's property line just to harass them.
It's only four miles from Butte, Montana as the crow flies, but it takes a good two and a half hours to get up and back to see “Our Lady of the Rockies,” 8,500 feet above sea level, high on top of the Continental Divide.
At ninety feet tall, the ginormous Virgin Mary is the third largest statue in the United States (the Statue of Liberty and a Pegasus stomping on a dragon in south Florida both have her beat). The idea for the statue originated with one man, who dreamed of a monument in honor of his wife who had battled cancer and won. He wanted a way to express his gratitude, and also honor the contributions of all women of the world.
It took a few years of planning, and in 1985 the Lady was up, and open for tours in the summer and fall. Completely funded by donations, it took a team of volunteers, engineers, construction workers and the Nevada Army National Guard to get it up the mountain. The monumental figure had to be broken down into four pieces for the ride, courtesy of a Sikorsky CH-54B Skycrane helicopter.
Besides the statue itself, the site has a small chapel with an observation deck, and a Women’s Memorial wall, where anyone can underwrite a tile dedicated to a woman who made a difference in their lives. Our Lady of the Rockies might not top Lady Liberty or that crazy Pegasus/dragon thing, but only she lights up the Rocky Mountain night sky.
The typical bridge in the Dutch town of Leeuwarden is a bascule bridge: when a boat approaches, one side of the bridge is hoisted up to make a 90 degree angle with the ground until the vessel passes by. This hinged style is consistent with all bridges in the town—except for one.
For reasons unknown, Leeuwarden’s Slauerhoffbrug "Flying Drawbridge" is perhaps the world’s only bridge to physically move the road out of the way by completely dissecting it from the bridge. As sailboats pass by, a massive, multistory pylon hoists a 50-square-foot piece of the road into the sky. After the boat passes through, the road is automatically squeezed back into its waiting crevice.
Every day, the Flying Drawbridge is raised and lowered 10 times, a unique process that takes approximately three minutes. Its unique, ingenious design is likely the result of the an effort to find a more efficient and innovative way to part the many bridges throughout the Netherlands.
But the Slauerhoffbrug Flying Drawbridge, named after the Dutch poet J. Slauerhoff, who was born minutes away in Leeuwarden, isn’t just practical. It’s also a work of symbolic art. The giant metal arm that hoists the road up is painted yellow and blue to represent the town's yellow and blue striped flag.
The tuatara should, by all rights, be extinct by now. The last living members of a 200-million-year-old family of reptiles called the Sphenodontia, the tuatara survived the cataclysm that wiped out the sphenodonts along with the dinosaurs and three-quarters of life on Earth, about 60 million years ago.
Today tuataras are stranded at the end of a broken branch on the evolutionary tree, an intriguing jumble of evolutionary clues and holdovers: Their skulls and sexual habits are birdlike, but they have the crude ears of a turtle and a brain like an amphibian’s. Their primitive hearts and lungs predate all of those. Strangest of all is the vestige of a “third eye” planted in the top of their skull like a scaly pimple.
Cold-blooded and slow-moving, the ancient reptiles—picture a sort of chubby, thick-tailed iguana about the length of your forearm—can only move at top speed for short bursts, after which they have to stop, winded and panting. Their hearts beat just six to eight times a minute, and they can go for years without eating. In the winter, they descend into hibernation so deep they seem dead. A newly hatched tuatara, roughly the size of a paperclip, may take more than 20 years before it’s old enough to reproduce—if isn’t eaten first. Even then, a female may only lay a clutch of eggs every few years.
Just don’t call them lizards. If the tuatara belongs with any group, it’s the “living fossils” —the obsolete species not yet informed of their obsolescence—like the coelacanth fish, the horseshoe crab, the nautilus, and the gingko tree. Native to New Zealand, tuataras were nearly wiped out by the rats that hitchhiked to the isolated continent with early Polynesian explorers. Rats out-ate and out-bred the lethargic reptiles across the mainland of New Zealand, and nearly all the outlying islands. Today, tuataras persist on only 35 small, rat-free islands, a fraction of their former habitat.
Now the nocturnal, burrowing reptiles are staging an unlikely comeback in the bulletproof-glassed “tuatararium" jutting from the back of the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, in the sleepy New Zealand city of Invercargill. The glass, along with an array of motion detectors and silent alarms, is there to dissuade any ambitious rare animal collectors who might think of skirting the law; the last one to try got away with two of the animals before he was tracked down and rewarded with a five-year prison sentence. Thefts aside, the museum’s breeding program has been so successful that, at the moment, it has more tuataras than it knows what to do with.
The icon of the museum’s success is Henry, the original male in the museum’s scale collection and holder of the tuatara record for lifespan in captivity. Henry has been living at Southland for 46 years, during which time he’s served as a kind of ambassador for New Zealand, Skyping into local classrooms and posing for photos with visiting dignitaries. No one knows how long tuataras live in the wild, but Henry is thought to be at least 80 years old, possibly more than 100—an extrapolation based on his size. At one point, his keepers guessed he could be as old as 111, but they’ve since scaled that estimate back down. These days, Henry holds court over more than 80 other tuataras, including 20 breeding females (like his namesake, Henry VIII, he’s not exactly a shining symbol of monogamy).
After living most of his life in cranky solitude, too aggressive to breed with the museum's female tuataras, several years ago Henry finally had a cancerous tumor removed from his cloaca (the rudimentary reproductive organ shared by tuatara and modern birds). Suddenly, he was ready to make up for decades of lost time. One typical headline from the time: “Henry, 111, is finally in the mood.”
While Henry has recently retired from reproductive life—a product of both his decreasing fertility and the conundrum of conservation programs, where successful breeders are quickly overrepresented in a captive population’s limited genetic pool—his love life is emblematic of the unexpected success of the Southland Museum’s tuatara breeding program.
That has a lot to do with Lindsay Hazley, who has served as the museum’s tuatara caretaker for the last 44 years. Hazley, a tall, fast-talking man with close-cropped gray hair and a gangly athleticism that belies his sixty-some years, started volunteering at the museum as a high school truant ditching gym class. He worked odd jobs for the staff, setting up exhibits and hanging paintings, until they hired him straight out of high school. The job suited him. Hazley was put to work looking after the museum’s two tuataras, including Henry.
But since no one had really figured out how to raise tuatara in captivity, he was more or less left to experiment. Breeding was a particular problem, beyond Henry’s outright aggression (luckily for his prospective mate, Mildred, tuataras are capable of regenerating their tails). Captive tuataras often play coy and refuse to mate, or their eggs never hatch, or they hatch only for the baby tuataras to die after just a few days. Until recently, no zoo or program outside of New Zealand had managed to raise a tuatara from an egg.
Hazley’s breakthrough came from talking with a neonatal doctor. Since the museum’s tuataras lived in an enclosure sheeted in UV-blocking gardening plastic, they had trouble with uptake of vitamin D and calcium, losing bone mass and laying thin-shelled eggs that rarely hatched. So Hazley got a special light bulb used to treat premature babies and started to expose newly hatched tuataras to a couple of hours of UV-rich light every day.
After a few months of this, when the tuataras were returned to their UV-poor enclosure, they continued to thrive. Hazley theorizes that, just as premature babies need UV to regulate melatonin, a hormone that helps govern circadian rhythms, tuatara needed some help with their out-of-whack hormones. Whatever the reason, it seemed to work.
Now Hazley finds himself in an unusual predicament: Many of the tuataras he raises have nowhere else to go — not unless another zoo wants them, or until rat-eradication programs clear up more territory.
While New Zealand has put an extraordinary amount of money and effort into the fight against non-native mammals like rats, possums, and stoats, its ambitious goal of making New Zealand predator-free by 2050 still lacks the technology necessary to make it happen. So far, the country’s conservation department has verified 100 islands predator-free since efforts began to eradicate all mammalian invaders. National and regional pest control programs spend more than $70 million a year in trap maintenance, poison drops, and developing new technologies. If tuataras have a future, it hinges on finding more humane, efficient ways to kill rats.
Until then, the museum’s breeding efforts have ground to a halt. For the first time since he came to the museum 44 years ago, Hazley is just letting nature take its course.
Meanwhile Henry is getting on in age, whatever his is. These days, his only public appearances come in the form of the nearly life-size tattoo of Henry occupying Hazley’s right bicep. The tattoo, a 60th birthday present-slash-dare from his daughters, is a sign of the closeness between Henry and Hazley. The two have spent so much of their lives together that Henry reliably appears in his enclosure when he hears Hazley's voice on the other side of the glass.
“He’s looking quite happy,” Hazley reported in October. He would know.
The American History Museum has collected an assortment of sushi ephemera as the Japanese dish gained popularity in the U.S. over the past few decades. Why collect sushi at a history museum? If you take a step back you'll remember that culinary trends come and go throughout the ages. After all, early Americans consumed vast amounts of game and alcohol; only a fool would have thought about eating raw fish.
At the Smithsonian's Sushi Collection, each sushi artifact is dutifully cataloged, measured, and accompanied by a detailed description for future historians. It may seem boring today, but think about how interesting it can be to pour over cultural relics from the past like 1960s appliances, World War II propaganda posters, or vintage Coca-Cola ads.
The two part container has a black tray with a detailed red and gold maple leaf pattern and a clear plastic lid. The clear plastic counterpart is shaped to leave space for the sushi inside, and allows for the contents of the tray to remain visible to the customers. This is an example of a small sushi tray used for packaging sushi.
These trays often contain of a variety of rolls and nigiri, and include a side of wasabi and gari (pickled ginger) as condiments. Upon purchase, the customer is provided with a pair of disposable chopsticks and a single serving packet of soy sauce. These trays are disposable, and therefore these prepackaged sushi trays make a convenient lunch option.
One can only imagine how a century from now, the museum’s disposable chopstick exhibit will form an important touchstone for the American experience.
Hundreds of years after her death, Marie Antoinette lives on—as an automaton. For most of her time, she sits idle in a dark room at the Musée des Arts and Métiers in Paris. It's only when a hand cranks the plunking, whirring gears that the miniature robotic 18th-century French queen comes to life.
Built in 1784 by the German cabinetmaker David Roentgen, the automaton is no typical replica of Marie Antoinette. The approximately 20-inch, intricately crafted doll sits playing a dulcimer, a string instrument struck with handheld hammers. In the video, the Metropolitan Museum of Art demonstrates how the Marie Antoinette dulcimer player, or La Joueuse de Tympanon, works. When wound up, the music box mechanism moves the figure's head and arms, making them dance across the strings and chime out a ping-y tune. The player has a repertoire of eight songs.
The automaton was presented to King Louis XVI, who gifted it to his wife. It's said that the beautiful lace dress was made from fabric of one of Marie Antoinette's dresses, and that mannequin even has some of her real hair. While the Marie Antoinette automaton is a stunning masterpiece, the uncanny rigid movement of her neck and eyes as she awakens may make you shiver.
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.
Of all the names guaranteed to chill the heart of a Londoner, none was as terrifying as Newgate Prison. Located in the original City of London not far from St. Paul’s Cathedral, Newgate incarcerated the capital’s wicked for more than 700 years until it was demolished in 1904.
Today the site of the once-fearsome prison is home to the Old Bailey, London’s principal Central Criminal Court, with nothing to remind passersby of the infamous old prison other than a simple plaque on the Court wall. But across the street, hidden in the depths of an old Victorian gin palace lie what's rumored to be the last remnants of the old jail cells.
Newgate’s construction was ordered as far back as 1188 by King Henry II. Over the centuries it held every kind of criminal, from thieves to highwaymen, to cutthroats and murderers. In 1783, Newgate grew in notoriety when London’s gallows were moved from the Tyburn Tree in the west of the city to the prison. Until May 26, 1868, it was possible for the public to watch the executions, with the best views sold for a premium. Over the centuries, the prison underwent numerous structural changes from its original cellblock within the old medieval City walls, but by the 1770s, it was said to resemble a “massive monolith of windowless brick.”
Among the common criminals of London, many notable ne’er-do-wells spent time here at His or Her Majesty's Pleasure. William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania was detained in contempt of court for allegedly refusing to remove his hat during a trial for being a Quaker, while Daniel Defoe was imprisoned for writing anti-church pamphlets in 1702. Giacomo Casanova was withheld for accused bigamy, and notorious pirate Captain Kidd was sent to the gallows from here.
Across the street from such salubrious confines is the elegant Viaduct Tavern. Originally built as a drinking den for the labourers working on the nearby viaduct bridge, it was transformed into one of London’s finest gin palaces in 1869. Glittering vast mirrored murals depicting the statues of Commerce, Agriculture, Science and Fine Arts were carved onto the Holborn Viaduct. Still today, drinking patrons can see at the back of the bar, an elaborately carved booth, where the landlady would sell gin tokens to customers.
But downstairs, past cellars filled with beer barrels, you'll find what's believed to be some of the former Newgate jail cells. Dark and damp with rusted iron bars, the cramped rooms certainly have the air of a centuries-old dungeon. It is said that there was once a tunnel that connected these cells with the main prison across Newgate Street. Whether this is true or a story passed down by locals over the year is unclear. It does seem likely though that the Viaduct had strong links with Newgate Prison, and was built on the site of an old debtor’s prison called the Giltspur Compter.
There are other rumours surrounding the Viaduct Tavern, such as an opium den being installed on the floor above the pub, and a brothel in the upper floors. Perhaps the real story of the mysterious, chilling cells in the basement of the pub will never be known. Regardless, a visit to the Viaduct Tavern offers the opportunity to enjoy one of the few remaining, authentic Victorian gin palaces in London.
