As the sun shines on Earth, it creates three distinct long shadows in a triangular shape behind it. The darkest of these, as you can see in the video above, is a triangle within the wider triangle, known as the umbra. But on each side of the umbra is the penumbra, lighter shadows, accounting for some of the sun's rays that manage to sneak by our orb.
As it orbits Earth, the moon passes through these shadows on a (somewhat) predictable basis, creating shades of colors on the moon one doesn't commonly see. In a full lunar eclipse, for example, when the moon passes through the umbra, it goes red, creating a blood moon. But tonight it will only go a little bit darker, as it will only be passing through the penumbra.
You should try to see it! Which you can as long as you don't live in Australia, or parts of East Asia and Alaska, where it will not be visible. At 7:43 p.m Eastern time, look up at the sky, hope that it's not cloudy, and experience your moon, since it will also be full (a requirement for eclipses).
Eclipse or not, the February full moon has long been referred to as the "snow moon," which, according to Farmer's Almanac, was one of a number of nicknames given to various moons by American Indians.
Meanwhile, around seven-and-a-half hours after eclipse, while the snow moon is still snow mooning, a comet, called 45P, will streak across the sky. The comet will fly by around 7.4 million miles from Earth, which should make it visible if you look to the east around 3 a.m., according to USA Today. Seeing it with the naked eye might be a challenge, though, so try using binoculars or a telescope if you have one.
If you miss the penumbral lunar eclipse, you will have to wait until at least 2018, as astronomers say it will be this year's only one (lunar eclipses happen up to five times a year, with only a third of those being penumbral.) But if you miss the comet you'll be in for a slightly longer wait, as it won't fly by again until 2022.
Near the center of Newtown, Connecticut, there is an old colonial-style campus that could be mistaken for a typical New England college or boarding school. Town residents walk their dogs next to colonnaded red brick buildings and jog through the hundreds of acres of surrounding forest and pastures.
But buried beneath the grounds there is a system of deep tunnels, leading not to lecture halls or the student union, but to confinement rooms, psychosurgery laboratories, operating rooms, and even a morgue.
For most of the 20th century, the tunnels were used to shuttle psychiatric patients between their treatments, in what grew to be Fairfield State Hospital, also known as Fairfield Hills, one of the largest psychiatric institutions in New England.
The state-run hospital treated patients from the early 1930s until it was shut down in 1995. Over the decades, the facility expanded from 500 beds in the early years, to over four thousand at its peak. And although it was built as a way of easing the overcrowding of two other Connecticut facilities, the ratio of the medical staff to patient was always a challenge, averaging 200 to one for doctors, and 80 to one for nurses.
Since the last residents were moved to other facilities in 1995, the campus has sat mostly vacant, its buildings slowly crumbling and tunnels sealed off. Its fate rests in the hands of the town of Newtown, which acquired the entire parcel from the state in 2004, and there have been various redevelopment plans that have come in fits and starts. Today there are a few buildings in use, and several trails and park areas are open to the public.
In 1928, after 35 years of circling the globe, jumping exploration hurdles, and establishing a new standard for what it meant to be a man of discovery, Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen set out to find a crew of fellow adventurers who had been lost in the arctic—and he never came back.
In the island town of Tromsø there are several reminders of the great explorer and favorite son of Norway, including this slightly larger-than-life bronze statue atop a stone plinth. The statue was unveiled as a memorial to Amundsen in 1958, placed in a small park not far from his final home, looking out over the harbor.
Roald Amundsen set so many records in such a short period of time, it’s hard to keep track. Originally from Borge, Norway, he is uniquely associated with arctic and Antarctic exploration, leading the first documented over-the-top trip through the Northwest Passage (a three-year slog), the first expedition to reach the South Pole, in 1911, and the first airship expedition to the North Pole, in 1926. Consequently he was the first person ever to reach both poles in one lifetime.
Amundsen lived his later years in Tromsø, at the very top of Norway, 750 miles from where he was born at the very bottom. His final trip was a rescue mission from here, hoping to find the crew of fellow-explorer Umberto Nobile, who hadn’t returned from a trip to the North Pole. Amundsen’s seaplane crashed, somewhere in the Barents Sea, and neither his body, nor the bodies of the five-member crew, were ever found.
While Washington, D.C. is known for the plentiful and often free museums lining the National Mall and scattered elsewhere in the city, there is one D.C.-area museum that even many locals don't know about.
Tucked in the back of the lobby of the Drug Enforcement Agency headquarters in Arlington, Virginia is a public museum detailing the effects of drug addiction and the law enforcement agency's history in fighting their manufacture and trafficking.
The agency began collecting objects for future display in 1976. In 1999, the DEA Museum opened at the agency's headquarters. The museum shows the history of illicit drug use in the United States, beginning with opium in the mid-1800s and continuing to the cocaine smuggling cartels and pharmaceutical drug abuse of the modern day.
On display are hundreds of pieces of paraphernalia, firearms, photographs of celebrities and athletes that died of drug overdoses, disguises that were used by undercover agents, passports belonging to former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, the wreckage of a crashed makeshift aircraft that was flown over the USA-Mexico border, and numerous other objects. The collection provides an extensive, if one-sided, history of law enforcement's war on drugs.
Back in June of 2016, Tess Newall wore her great-great-grandmother's wedding dress to be married. The lacy dress had been made by hand in 1870, and it was still in tact all those years later—Newall only altered the top.
A few months after her wedding, Newall took the dress to the dry cleaners, like you do. The next month, though, that shop closed and went into bankruptcy. Newall couldn't get the dress back; recently she posted on Facebook that the dress was probably sold. She was sending out a plea to the world—if anyone found the dress, she wanted it back.
It turned out, though, the dress hadn't gone that far at all. Though the firm dealing with the bankruptcy had told her the dress was long gone, the landlord of the building where the shop had been located went into check.
The dress was there, crumpled in a corner.
It still needs cleaning, but Newall is "absolutely over the moon" to know it's not lost, according to the BBC.
After Lee Harvey Oswald was captured as the prime suspect in President John F. Kennedy's assassination, he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby on the way into his final interrogation. It may have just been grief or it may have been to silence Oswald. The true motivation for his murder may never be known. Oswald was laid to rest in Fort Worth's Shannon Rose Hill Burial Park. There were no mourners at the funeral, so reporters present were asked to act as pallbearers.He did not rest peacefully.
Oswald's original headstone, a simple granite slab bearing his full name, birthdate, and a cross, was stolen on the four year anniversary of Kennedy's death. The assassin's mother replaced the stone with a red stone that simply read "Oswald." The original headstone then reappeared, and has been contentiously traded amongst one family dealing in JFK memorabilia.
Then in 1981, a conspiracy suggesting that a Russian body double had been buried rather than Oswald led forensic investigators to exhume his body, cross reference his dental records, and confirm that it was indeed Lee Harvey Oswald in the ground.
Only adding to the myriad conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's assassination, the plot next to Oswald bears an almost identical grave engraved with the name "Nick Beef." Some speculated that this might be a Russian conspirator, but cemetery records indicated that the plot was empty. Others assumed it was a sneaky directive to Oswald's grave. As cemetery staff were not allowed to give out the location of the assassin's plot, tourists could simply ask, "Where's the beef?"
In reality, the empty Beef grave was the work of "non-performing performance artist" Patrick Abedin. Abedin, who grew up in Dallas and saw Kennedy the night before he was killed, would visit the Rose Hill cemetery with his mother to see Oswald's grave. When he found out the plot right next to it was available, he began a years-long process of purchasing it in $10 installments. When the time came to put down a headstone he gave an inside joke name. Despite all this, he doesn't plan on being buried in Rose Hill Cemetery (he plans to be cremated instead). The stunt is more about creating permanence in a world that can change in an instant.
The heart shape, with its rounded top and pointy end, is pretty innocent for a graphic: ❤️️ lacks the ribald connotations of a lipstick smack, or the peach emoji. But when using it to mean "I love you," we may be calling back to something slightly more risqué: an ancient contraceptive.
Silphium, which once grew rampant in the ancient Greek city of Cyrene, in North Africa, was likely a type of giant fennel, with crunchy stalks and small clumps of yellow flowers. From its stem and roots, it emitted a pungent sap that Pliny the Elder called "among the most precious gifts presented to us by Nature."
According to the numismatist T.V. Buttrey, exports of the plant and its resins made Cyrene the richest city on the continent at the time. It was so valuable, in fact, that Cyrenians began printing it on their money. Silver coins from the 6th century B.C. are imprinted with images of the plant's stalk—a thick column with flowers on top and leaves sticking out—and its seed pods, which look pretty familiar:
So what was so great about silphium sap? According to Pliny, it was a kind of cure-all, used to treat everything from chills to fevers to corns. (Best of all, he wrote, "it is never productive of flatulency.") Hippocrates said it could be used as a poultice, or to soothe the stomach. Cooks also used the plant in their recipes, perhaps the same way we use fennel seeds today.
It may also have been used as a type of birth control. "Anecdotal and medical evidence from classical antiquity tells us that the drug of choice for contraception was silphium," writes the historian John Riddle in Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. He points to the ancient physician Soranus, who suggested taking a dose of silphium "the size of a chick-pea" once a month, both to prevent conception and "destroy any already existing."
In his Poem 7, Catullus wrote that he wants to share as many kisses with his beloved "as the number of Libyan sands that lie in silphium-bearing Cyrene." It's not too hard to imagine that he's providing two prescriptions at once here: one for getting busy and one for preventing unintended consequences. Riddle also describes another, more explicit Cyrenian coin: "A seated woman has silphium at her feet, while one hand touches the plant and the other points to her reproductive area."
Not everyone buys Riddle's theory about silphium's ancient use. In a 1994 New York Times article, other experts called it an "intriguing hypothesis" but went no further, saying there's not quite enough evidence to crown the plant as a common form of ancient birth control. And even if we grant it that status, it's still a bit of a leap from "heart-shaped seed of ancient contraceptive plant" to "enduring symbol of love." There are also plenty of other theories about where the heart shape came from, ranging from a Catholic saint's divine hallucinations to a bad organ description by Aristotle.
Today, ancient silphium is likely extinct, which bodes poorly for everyone who may have pledged eternal love via the shape of its seed pod. But there's another plant that was probably used for contraception: the wild carrot, which is still around. If you want to show your Valentine truly undying love, consider drawing a different vegetable this year.
On January 3rd, 1944, the USS Turner was undergoing routine drills off the coast of New Jersey when an explosion tore through its stowage. As blast after blast rocked the naval destroyer, nearby ships rushed to save those onboard—but when she sank, around 8:30 in the morning, she took 136 sailors with her.
For years, the Pentagon marked these men "missing." But thanks to a new collaboration between a WWII historian and the Department of Defense, they may be found after all.
As the Washington Post reported, the case was reopened last year, when WWII historian Ted Darcy dug up documents that indicated four of the "missing" men had actually been buried—in a military cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island. At the cemetery, he found four white graves marked "Unknown U.S. Sailor," along with the date of the Turner's sinking.
Darcy thinks more sailors may be buried there, too. Now, The DoD is officially looking for more details, the Associated Press reports.
Even with the government on the case, there's still a long road ahead. In order for to justify disinterment—required to identify buried remains—more paperwork needs to be unearthed, something that could take years. And at least one sailor rescued from the sinking ship doesn't think many bodies were recovered in the aftermath.
But relatives and descendants of the fallen soldiers, who have gone without any clues for over seven decades, are somewhat relieved. "I'd like to see if we can have closure on this," Richard Duffy, the nephew of a sailor killed in the blast, told the AP.
Marjorie Avery, who is now 82 and was the daughter of the Turner's captain, had a bittersweet response when informed that her father might not be missing after all. "Oh my goodness," she said. "I would've liked to have known that."
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.
The nurses, clad in pink, crowd around the man on the hospital bed. Posing, their bodies are pressed against his. Even though you can’t see their mouths through their face masks, you can tell from the crinkle of their eyes that they are smiling, grinning even. The man looks jovial, his head tilted to the side and his mouth open as if he were shouting a greeting or something funny for the camera. He’s middle-aged, and his chest is bared through a noisily patterned bathrobe, all the better to show off the dramatic incision that bisects his body, held together with stitches.
The nurses are so adoring, the man could be a movie star. He is a celebrity, but not for the usual reasons: In 1968, during a seven-hour surgery throughout which the medical team listened to pop-music, Frederick West became Britain’s first heart transplant recipient. The picture is one of many images that subsequently flooded the media to sate the curiosity of a transfixed public.
Just five months before, on December 3, 1967, the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard transplanted the heart of a 25-year-old car accident victim into the chest of 55-year-old Louis Washkansky, a grocer suffering from congestive heart failure. Washkansky lived only 18 days after the procedure, but Barnard’s feat nonetheless kicked off what the media dubbed “The Year of the Heart Transplant”. In 1968, as Vietnam, protests, and space exploration claimed headlines, so did the over 100 heart transplant surgeries that took place around the globe. The world looked on in awe, at times enthralled or appalled at the revolutionary surgery, and the media and medical world obliged their fascination by serving up breathless, constant coverage.
Prior to the reality of transplantation in the hospital, the general public was offered images of transplantation by Hollywood via such medical horrors as 1940’s Black Friday, in which Boris Karloff plays a doctor who endeavors to save a critically injured friend by replacing part of his brain with that of a dead gangster’s. His friend survives, but is embedded with the criminal’s personality. This kicked off decades of U.S. horror flicks depicting the dangers of brain, face, and even skin transplants. In 1969, on the heels of the Year of the Heart Transplant, Mexican audiences were treated toLa Horripilante Bestia Humana (The Horrible Man-Beast) about a man implanted with the heart of gorilla who goes on a killing spree. Suffice to say, fear and fascination swirled around the idea of replacing one’s organs with a stranger’s.
West, a 45-year-old married building contractor, had the distinction of receiving his transplant not only during the Year of the Transplant, but during what the media was reporting as the busiest week of heart transplants ever. In London, as West was receiving the heart of a 26-year-old construction worker who had fallen to his death, two other men were being implanted with new hearts in the United States. They were: Joseph Rizor, a 40-year-old carpenter from Salinas, California who would be given the heart of a 43-year-old man who had died of a brain hemorrhage; and Everett C. Thomas, a 47-year-old Phoenix accountant who would receive the heart of a 15-year-old female who died of an accidental gunshot. All three surgeries would be reported on nearly daily, with doctors and hospitals frequently updating the press.
West’s operation was an object of national obsession in Britain, and it kicked off an unprecedented relationship between the media and the medical world, as historian Ayesha Nathoo meticulously chronicled in her book Hearts Exposed: Transplants and the Media in 1960s Britain. Photographers and reporters mobbed the hospital; one member of the operation team described a street clogged with arc lights and so many people “the whole thing looked like a royal wedding being watched”.
The hospital went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate the press. They held a hastily assembled press conference where attendees fought and shoved each other, and reporters were admitted into their halls. “As West was recovering,” wrote Nathoo, “photographers and film crews were allowed right inside the hospital space, turning the patient ward into a television studio and bringing the hospital world into public view.” In addition to posing with smiling nurses, West was photographed winking for the camera and even filmed playing chess.
On May 5, United Press International reported that West had given a “weak thumbs up” following his surgery. Meanwhile, Riznor’s lungs were “confused” by his “borrowed heart” and, once his respirator was removed, Thomas was able to talk with his wife. That same day, the National Heart Hospital told the Associated Press that West lay upon a “sterile shrine”. West’s surgeon, Dr. Ronald Ross, defended the surgery against critics as “morally correct and morally acceptable”, stating that the only alternative for West was death. The same AP article related the strange anecdote of Thomas’ first post-surgery moments. He wrote a note to his wife asking her if he had a new heart or if his own heart had been repaired. She informed him that he now had the heart of young girl.
Survival for early heart transplant recipients was far from guaranteed; many died within months, or even hours, of operation. This was the sad fate of Rizor, who died just four days after his surgery at Stanford University Medical Center. But West and Thomas persevered, and their stories were celebrated. On May 29, the Los Angeles Times ran a photo of West (in the same noisy bathrobe) wearing a doctor’s stethoscope and gazing down at his chest as he performed the strange act of listening to his own, brand-new heart. Thomas modeled for publicity photos in which the sports fan donned a helmet and posed as if about to toss a football. When he returned to work, the media snapped shots of him sitting behind a desk and talking on the phone. He was photographed on a fishing trip with his wife and two sons.
The press transformed doctors into celebrities, too, especially Barnard, who had performed the fateful 1967 surgery in Cape Town. It helped that Barnard was photogenic; young and slim, with dark, straight hair and a toothy smile, he was dubbed “The Film Star Surgeon”. He made television appearances and was photographed vacationing, posing in speedboats and strolling down a frothy beachfront with his bikini-ed wife.
He graced the cover of Time and Paris Match. On May 7, Barnard paid a visit to West at the National Heart Hospital. He was greeted by a churning crush of reporters and cameramen. In a photo of the event, it is hard to pick Barnard’s face out the crowd; today it’s a media scrum more suited for Britney Spears than a doctor.
Sadly, like many of the patients before them, West and Everett did not live long. West died of a massive infection six weeks after his operation; he never went home. Everett, the banker who had returned to work and embarked on fishing trips with his family, lived 205 days—longer than any other U.S. heart transplant patient at that time—before dying two days after receiving a second heart transplant. Their deaths, of course, were noted by the press.
Following The Year of the Transplant, the number of surgeries plunged. In 1970, only 18 were performed. Of the patients operated on around the world in 1968, two thirds perished within months, days or hours. In Britain, heart transplantation was abandoned at the end of 1969 for a decade. The crush of media coverage was not without consequences. Nathoo argued in her book that the press “was central to bringing about the moratorium.” Experts and pundits debated the effectiveness and ethics of heart transplant surgery in every medium; the public became increasingly leery of the surgery, wondering if donors were truly “dead” when their hearts were removed. The number of willing donors plummeted.
Posing in his bathrobe, West would never know the complicated legacy of his glamour shot, nor would he ever know another Englishman, John McCafferty, to whom his own life is indelibly linked. In 1982, McCafferty would receive a heart transplant and go on to live 33 more years, earning a Guinness World Record as the longest living heart transplant patient to date.
In 1893, when Herbert Smith arrived in Honolulu after sailing from Liverpool, England, the island kingdom was in disarray. American immigrants had overthrown Queen Liliʻuokalani and taken over administration of the islands; within a few years, the United States would annex her kingdom.
Smith was a draper from Manchester, who came to live on the islands for a year or so. He wrote to his family back in England of his journey and what he found. He also took a series of photos that captured life around Hilo Bay, on the Big Island.
He took shots of sugar plantations, banyan trees, a turtle being made into a mean, fishermen, kindergarten students, and skilled surfers, who were riding the waves long before the sport became popular elsewhere.
Smith's family kept the album for years and recently decided to sell it: it'll be auctioned by Bonhams on March 1 in London, as part of a Fine Books and Manuscripts sale.
The start of the great Danube, which flows 1,700 miles, through 10 countries, all the way to the Black Sea, can be found in the small town of Donaueschingen in Germany.
Though Donaueschingen is a charming old town, its only real tourist attraction is the Donauquelle, the source of the Danube ("Donau" in German), marked by a small blue pool of water. The basin is framed by wrought iron fence and a group of allegorical statues sculpted by Adolf Heer in 1895. These depict the Baar, Germany's great central plateau, as a mother showing her daughter, the Danube, the way out into the world.
The Danube officially begins at the meeting point of two streams, the Breg and the Brigach. However locating the source of the river has not been without controversy. The Breg, the larger of the two streams that feeds the river, originates in the town of Furtwangen, which claims that this makes it the true location of the Danube's origin. But Donaueschingen has been widely regarded as the source of the Danube as far back as the Roman Empire, and in 1981 the German government granted the pool in Donaueschingen the sole official designation of Donauquelle.
The Basilica of the Martyr Saints Justus and Pastor may be the oldest church in Barcelona. The current Gothic structure was built around 1342, but it's believed that a Christian church has sat on this site since 300 CE, and that even before that it was a place of pagan worship.
It's believed this ancient church may have originally been a shrine to Castor and Pollux, twin figures of Greco-Roman mythology. As Barcelona became a Catholic city over the centuries, the twins may have evolved into or been conflated with Justus and Pastor, two Christian boys beheaded by the Roman Emperor Diocletian for refusing to deny their faith in 304 CE.
The relics of the boy martyrs are now venerated at the Barcelona basilica, which is offered up to them and "La Moreneta," the Black Madonna. She is the patron saint of Catalonia, and is also believed by some to be based on an ancient source, the Egyptian goddess Isis.
The clashing architectural styles of the church are a result of its long history. Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neolassical elements all mingle to create a unique atmosphere outside of time and place. It was promoted to the rank of minor basilica by Pope Pius XII in 1946.
Interestingly, it also held significant political power. After retaking Barcelona from the Moors in 801, King Louis the Pious declared that a last will and testament made by any king inside the church was a legally binding. This was later extended to anyone inside the church, and was not repealed until 1991. Combatants preparing to duel would also swear on a Bible in the basilica that they would fight fairly. If one of the fighters was Jewish (as much of the city's population was at one point), the church provided a copy of the Ten Commandments for them to swear upon.
Valentine's Day doesn't have to be about candlelit dinners and heart-shaped boxes of candy. For those of you still scrambling, we've compiled a list of last-minute gift ideas that, much like our 2016 holiday gift guide, takes cues from the unusual and fascinating stories we've shared on Atlas Obscura over the past year or so. Whether you relish the romance of it all or seek a darker interpretation of this annual holiday, we've got something curious and unexpected for you.
Victorian Flower Dictionary
Bouquets aren't always just bouquets. Sometimes, they contain secret messages. Or at least, that was the case during the Victorian era, when people used floriography, a form of communication based on floral arrangements, to express sensitive emotions. A flower dictionary became essential for those who wished to send and decode such messages. Try your hand at botanical cryptology with this modern-day version.
You could pull a Lloyd Dobler and try to woo your date by standing outside their window with a boombox. Or, you could play "What Is Love," Haddaway's mega-hit from 1992, on a homemade music box and see how that goes.
Vinegar valentines, also known as penny dreadfuls or comic valentines, were the snarky alternative to a traditional card for that not-so-special someone. The sender could not only express disinterest in the recipient anonymously, but also get in an insult or two for good measure. You can find a selection of old vinegar valentines on eBay, replete with Victorian sass, or you could get into the anti-spirit of the holiday and make one yourself.
Irv Teibel was an audio pioneer who believed that listening to the sounds of the natural world could produce myriad benefits for the human mind. He recorded oceans, storms, the ambient sounds of a swamp, and much more. Teibel ultimately released 11 installments of his series environments, but it's environments 5 we recommend for your Valentine's Day enjoyment. Side A features a female athlete's heartbeat, which the album liner notes suggest is ideal for "lovemaking and meditation."
If you didn't think socks could be romantic, think again. These socks are knitted by people living on the volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha. Traditionally, they were used to express affection for the recipient, with the number of stripes on the sock indicating the degree of endearment.
Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders
Are you and your partner looking to get off the beaten path in 2017? Pick up a copy of our New York Times bestselling book. Celebrating more than 700 of the world's most extraordinary and unusual places, this tome offers travel inspiration for those who prefer their vacations to be filled with the hidden, the unexpected, and the curious.
The Rose of Jericho, also known as the Resurrection Plant, may look dead, but don't be fooled. With a little bit of water, the persistent plant will open up and turn green again. Once the water is removed, it will go back to being a desiccated mass.
Kaleidoscope of Butterflies Poster from Pop Chart Lab
This butterfly print from our friends at Pop Chart Lab is sure to impress the entomologist in your life. Depicted are almost 50 species of the winged insects, from the iridescent blue Ulysses to the camouflaged dead leaf.
$29 from Pop Chart Lab (use code PCL-VDAY20 at checkout for 20 percent off this and other posters)
Love Fucking Sucks T-Shirt From the Museum of Broken Relationships in Los Angeles
Maybe you just broke up with someone. Maybe you're pretty unhappy about it. Maybe all these Valentine's Day gift guides make you want to claw your eyes out. Maybe you're over the whole flower-card-chocolate industrial complex. Then the Museum of Broken Relationships in Los Angeles has the perfect shirt for you.
In Japan and Korea, and increasingly in the U.S., blood type personality theory has become a guiding principle for some in the dating world. The idea is that your blood type indicates your personality, and so biology becomes a handy cheat-sheet for matchmaking purposes. The theory lacks scientific grounding, but if you're still interested in trying it out, all you need is to know your blood type and that of your intended partner.
From 1974 to 1976, the photographer Langdon Clay took portraits of lonely cars on New York City streets. The cars sit by themselves, without a driver or passenger in sight. Some are covered in frost from a cold winter's night, while others prominently display the dents and bruises accrued over their driving lives. If you're alone this holiday and feeling a little dreary, meditate over this collection of long-gone cars and remember: everything is impermanent.
Surprise your sweetheart with a trip to Venice! Join us this July as we explore the hidden side of this beloved Italian city. Together we'll see forbidden islands and secret canals, indulge in local food and music, and celebrate the end of the Plague at the 500-year-old Redentore Festival. Your hosts include the psycho-mambo brass band Gato Loco, who will perform for you during the trip.
A Cabbage, or a Carrot, or a Piece of Celery, or Even a Radish
Sure, you could go the cliché "box of chocolates" route this February 14. But why be like everyone else? Instead, purchase your partner some produce... and then turn that produce into a musical instrument and play it with your nose. If you need some inspiration, vegetable artisan Junji Koyama has an entire YouTube channel where he plays the cabbage slide whistle, the celery nose flute, and the radish ocarina.
The featured ingredient in the house salad at Cedar Key’s Island Hotel is, nominally, heart of palm, the crisp and tender core of a tree. The ingredient that makes it remarkable is the scoop (or two) of bright-green ice cream that sits atop the whole concoction.
To those in the know, this salad is a local delicacy and delight. To outsiders, it is a bit of a mystery, with two questions at its heart: What is going on in this salad, exactly? How could it be good?
Cedar Key has always been an out-of-the-way sort of place. The small city, which as of 2010 had a population of 702, is located on an island on Florida’s west coast, a little more than an hour’s drive from Gainesville. Once it was covered in cedar trees, which formed the basis for thriving export economy in the years around the Civil War, when the Island Hotel was first built, as a general store that later turned into a boarding house and hotel. By the time Bessie Gibbs and her husband arrived in Cedar Key, though, the place and its economy had taken a downward turn, and the hotel had been used most recently as brothel and a speakeasy.
The Gibbs cleaned the place up and in 1947 re-opened the building as a hotel, bar, and restaurant, which became known among locals and vacationing visitors for its fresh seafood and giant portions. Bessie oversaw the kitchen and the cook, Catherine “Big Buster” Johnson, and is credited with creating the original hearts of palm salad.
In Florida, heart of palm has long been a fresh and local delicacy, distinct from the canned hearts of palm that are served in salads up north. Natives of south Florida call the vegetable “swamp cabbage” and might prepare it boiled with a bit of bacon or ham. The heart of palm comes from a type of palm tree that grows wild in Florida, which is officially named the Sabal palmetto but goes by a variety of other colorful names, including blue palmetto and cabbage palm. There are some palm trees that grow many stems and can produce hearts of palm without giving up their lives, but the cabbage palm isn’t one of them: to eat one’s heart, you have to cut it down.
The salad that Bessie and Catherine cooked up was an original. Along with heart of palm, it featured colorful fruits and sharp candied ginger. The ice cream was the true pièce de résistance, though, a creamy, nutty dressing that would quickly melt over the whole shebang.
There are a few versions of the recipe floating around, and though they all agree that the salad should include hearts of palm and ice cream, there is some disagreement about what else goes in. There are usually dates involved and fresh fruit, which might be banana, pineapple, papaya, or some combination thereof. Sometimes there’s a garnish of candied ginger. Often, these ingredients are meant to go over a bed of lettuce.
For the ice cream dressing, it’s clear that it’s supposed to be green. One version of the recipe calls for pistachio ice cream, a few for lime sherbet. But in the older versions of the recipe, the green coloring of the ice cream is merely for decoration (or, possibly, to make the otherwise appealing coloring of the dressing). In those old versions, the dressing is made from vanilla ice cream, peanut butter, mayonnaise, and green food coloring. It’s all mixed together and then re-frozen.
For decades, the hotel has served some version of this salad. Bessie Gibbs owned the hotel into the 1970s, even while she took on more civic duties. (She was even mayor for a short while.) It was briefly discontinued in 1980s, when cabbage palms were being over-harvested the state put restrictions on chopping them down, and only the most dedicated swamp cabbage fans might risk acquiring a fresh palm heart. Today restaurants all around Cedar Key offer a version of the salad, and the Island Hotel still serves the original recipe.
As iconic as the salad is for this island, though, is it actually good? The reviews, surprisingly, are positive. According to TheNew York Times, “This salad is better than dessert.” A visitor writing for the Los Angeles Timesconcurred: “The dressing sounds weird but tasted so good we asked for the recipe.”
In 1985, renovators of the Treasury Building made an unexpected discovery. Behind the walls of the old office of the Treasurer, they had stumbled across the forgotten armored vault that used to guard the U.S. government's cash.
The old vault was designed in 1864 by Isaiah Rogers and employed a creative "burglar-proof" design. A double layer of large ballbearings were sandwiched between a metal housing—the theory was that an attacking drill bit would just penetrate one layer and get caught in the spinning the balls. In any case, a retinue of 20 guards used to watch over the space to ensure that it never came to that.
By 1881 the Rogers vault was crammed with $1 billion in securities, $500 million in bonds and several million in gold and silver coins, as well as paintings, photographs, furniture, artwork, and other strange treasures. A pioneering female journalist named Emily Edson Briggs got a look inside in 1870 and reported on discovering several forgotten items including a bottle of rose oil (sent to Martin Van Buren by an Indian prince), hundreds of jewels, a snuff box, counterfeit coins and dies, and a hoard of Confederate currency.
The vault fell into disrepair by the turn of the century, and a Congressional inquiry blasted it as "a disgrace to the government and of such obsolete character and inferiority of construction and minimum of security as would cause them to be rejected as unfit for use by any country bank in a backwoods town." The Congressional report highlighted the Treasury guards as the vault's most effective defense.
The Rogers vault was replaced by a larger cash room in 1909 under the Treasury Department's south plaza. The newer subterranean space had double-story shelving, similar to library stacks. According to the Washington Post, the only way to get in was "by way of a tiny hydraulic elevator, which is protected by an iron door, opening almost at the elbow of the chief of the division of issues, who keeps the key in his desk."
Contemporary newspaper articles fawned over an advanced-for-the-time alarm system. The walls of the room were lined with a dense mesh of wires that, if disturbed from the outside, would send an electronic alert to a nearby guard station. The alarm would also activate if the connection between the guard post and vault were interrupted. The alarm "checked in" with the guard post every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day.
The government moved its gold and silver reserves in 1935, per the Treasury policy to move large gold deposits out of cities exposed to enemy attack. The so-called "deep storage" loot is now stored at Treasury facilities in Fort Knox, Denver, and West Point. Contrary to some conspiracy theories, we know exactly how much gold is at each location.
On Monday, the North Ayrshire Council, which represents some 136,000 people in southwest Scotland, issued a warning on their website: beware, they said, of poisonous parsnips at the local beaches.
The plants in question, known as Hemlock water dropworts, are not actually parsnips, they just look like parsnips. They've been spotted on beaches in Ayrshire, on the Scottish coast, around 25 miles from Glasgow.
The council is especially urging pet owners and parents to be vigilant. If consumed, the plants can be deadly for animals, while just touching them can produce severe burns for humans.
The Hemlock water dropwort "can often be found in shallow waters and is most toxic during late winter and early spring time," notes the Ardrossan Coastguard Rescue Team ("Search and Rescue—it's what we do") on Facebook.
The plants have been known to be poisonous for decades now, if not millennia. In fact, they might have been responsible for what Homer called the risus sardonicus, or the "sardonic grin," a bizarre distortion of one's face. In ancient Sardinia, the plant was fed to older residents who could no longer care for themselves, Scientific Americanreported in 2009, thus giving them a grin before they were ceremonially killed.
The symbol of the jester, or joker or fool, has inspired thrones, playing cards, and comedic fart acts. But there's one particular image of the king’s fool that has remained a true mystery among cartographers and historians.
In the engraving above, colloquially referred to as the Fool’s Cap Map of the World, the intricate bust of a court jester—complete with bells and bauble—includes a face showing the world as it had been charted in the 16th century. Despite researchers making close examinations of the map, they can only speculate why, when, and by whom this peculiar map was made, explains the map journalist Frank Jacobs on his blog about strange maps.
The Fool’s Cap Map of the World “is one of the biggest mysteries in the history of western cartography,” Jacobs writes.
This is what we do know about the map: measuring about 14 inches by 19 inches and printed with a copper-plate engraving, researchers estimate that the map dates between 1580 and 1590. That's because it matches the Ortelius oval map projections that had become common in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
The Fool’s Cap Map of the World isn’t the first time the world has been visually mocked by a jester. In 1575, the French mapmaker Jean de Fourmont created his own foolscap map with a chart framed by the hood of a jester. While de Fourmont’s map is slightly smaller, and more oval in shape, the similarities are uncanny, writes Anne Chapple in Studies in English Literature. Academics believe that de Fourmont’s map most likely inspired the illustrator of the Fool’s Cap Map of the World.
The identity of the mapmaker is another unsolved mystery. In the left-hand corner, the name Orontius Fineus is inscribed, which is Latinized for Oronce Finé, a French mathematician and cartographer. Some claim Finé to be the illustrator, but he died at the age of 50 in 1555, before the map has been estimated to be published. Jacobs suggests that his name appears because he could have been the map's subject of ridicule. In 1524, Finé was jailed for practicing judiciary astrology, in which people would reason, make predictions, and even base medical decisions off of star charts and arrangements. Finé’s role in the map's creation remains a subject of speculation.
Many scholars believe that the mapmaker was Epicthonius Cosmopolites, whose name is mentioned in the left-hand cartouche: “Democritus laughed at it, Heraclitus wept over it and Epicthonius Cosmopolites portrayed it.” Still, very little concrete background information has been found. The Fool’s Cap Map of the World has created an array of deep, and dark, interpretations the world.
Traditionally, the fool was one of the only people who could freely criticize the monarchy. Some academics have thus interpreted that the map was created as a commentary on the inaccuracy of depictions and charts of the world in an age where much of it had yet to be thoroughly documented and discovered. Maps of this era were even known to be altered visually to support certain political ends.
“One way of reading the image would suggest that all seemingly universal truths, all apparently trustworthy knowledge or authoritative maps, are partial and untrustworthy in that they conceal a hidden social ordering,” writes David Turnbull in the book Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers.
Others see a more melancholy outlook on the world. The Latin phrases inscribed on the jester’s cap, staff, and shoulder belt lament the vanity of the world and the foolishness of those who love it, writes Chapple. On the staff is the phrase “vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” and one of the medallions of the shoulder belt says “oh, the worries of the world.” The quote on the bottom of the map, from Ecclesiastes, sums up the message of the map: “The number of fools is infinite.”
“The world is, quite literally, a foolish place,” writes Jacobs. “The uncomfortable truth told by this map is that the world is a somber, irrational and dangerous place, and that life on it is nasty, brutish and short.”
Map Monday highlights interesting and unusual cartographic pursuits from around the world and through time. Read more Map Monday posts.
Europe’s steepest non-funicular railway is in southern Norway, covering 10 miles from the high plateau of Myrdal to the tiny fjord-side town of Flåm.
The historic Flåm Railway (Flåmsbana in Norwegian) passes through wide valley vistas and alongside dramatic waterfalls, and chugs at a leisurely pace through 20 tunnels, some with “windows” carved in the side so passengers don’t miss a beat.
Starting construction in 1924 after decades of planning, it took more than 15 years to complete the short line, including the steepest grade of any European railway that runs on standard gauge track. Funiculars and miniature railways may rise at more of a slant, but the Flåm line’s five and a half percent grade is hard work for a locomotive, and the payoff is some of the most beautiful fjord landscape in Scandinavia.
With a grade on this much of a slope, keeping control of the train’s speed is crucial, both going up and coming down. The engine averages around 19 mph (30 km/h) on the downhill trek to Flåm, and tops out at 25 miles an hour (40 km/h) on the way up to Myrdal. You can almost hear the train whispering “I think I can, I think I can…”
Sometime around 12,000 years ago, a group of Paleolithic people went to the a beach on the Mediterranean Sea and gathered up pebbles. They were looking for a certain size and shape of rock, small and oblong. When they had collected enough, they used the pebbles for a special purpose: to apply red ochre coloring to the body of a dead person, as part of a funeral rite.
Millennia later, researchers have discovered 29 of those pebbles in an important Paleolithic gravesite. According to their analysis, published in a new report in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, those ancient people then purposefully broke the stones by hitting them at their center.The researchers believe they were “killing” the stones, breaking them of the power they had obtained from touching the dead body.
The cave where the pebbles were found, the Caverna della Arene Candide, is on the coast of Italy, not far from Genoa. It was rediscovered in the 1860s and has long been a source of evidence for archaeologists about the traditions of people living far in the past. Archaeologists have found 19 well-preserved burials here, including one of a young man buried 23,500 years ago.
The pebbles the researchers examined still had traces of red ochre on them. Archaeologists have found similar evidence of people breaking objects as part of funeral rites, but none that goes back this far in time. "If our interpretation is correct, we've pushed back the earliest evidence of intentional fragmentation of objects in a ritual context by up to 5,000 years," the study's lead author said in a release.
