The USSR was first established in December of 1922, but months earlier, the new nation's future leaders ordered the deportation of a large number of Russian intellectuals.
The idea to exile the ideological opponents of the new Soviet state had come from Vladimir Lenin himself. In May of 1922, Lenin sent a letter to the head of the GPU, the state security organization in charge of, among other things, dealing with dissidents and enemies of the Soviet state. The letter ordered the director, Felix Dzerzhinsky, to organize teams to research the backgrounds and political leanings of academics and writers. Dzerzhinsky, a loyal Bolshevik, set to work and established a pair of committees, one to create a list of troublesome professors, and another to focus on students.
By mid-August, the individuals targeted by the GPU began to be arrested under the auspices of anti-Soviet activity. Prominent among them was the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, but the arrests targeted a wide array of thinkers, including “philosophers, economists, sociologists, scientists, journalists and other intellectuals.” The majority of those singled out by the GPU were not active counter-revolutionaries, but people who had intellectual differences with the Bolsheviks’ government plan.
Berdyaev, for instance, was a Christian philosopher. An anti-authoritarian in general, he did not believe that Communism was compatible with a truly equal society. Boris Brutskus, an economist, had been vocal in his belief that the proposed economic structure of the USSR would fail. Yuly Aykhenvald, a literary critic, had been critical of Leon Trotsky.
On September 28, 1922, loaded with its cargo of exiled thinkers and their families, the ship Oberbürgermeister Haken disembarked for Germany. And in November of that year, a second German vessel, the Preussen, carried yet more deported thinkers to Germany as well. All told, some 220 prominent intellectuals were forcibly removed from Russia before the official establishment of the Soviet Union.
Those who were deported on what are now remembered as the “Philosophers’ Ships” had lost the homeland they had spent their lives trying to improve. Some, such as Berdyaev, who along with some fellow exiles started a philosophical academy, were able to continue their intellectual careers in Europe. Others were not so lucky, falling into poverty and destitution.
At the time, the Philosophers’ Ships were portrayed by the Soviet Union as a peaceful, humane answer to dealing with problematic dissidents. On the rare occasions when this mass deportation is remembered today, it's often as just another blip in the rise of totalitarianism in Russia. The reality is that it signaled a clear shift toward enforced anti-intellectualism.
Edinburgh's busy High Street is now a popular spot for shopping and tourism, but a few centuries ago it was home to the United Kingdom's most heinous prison, the Old Tolbooth. All that remains now is the Heart of Midlothian, which marked the point of no return, the entrance to the prison.
The Old Tolbooth was known throughout Great Britain as a vile place to end up. Though it began as a debtors prison, it soon imprisoned all kinds of thieves and murderers, as well as petty criminals. Some of these were women and small children. The Tolbooth was notorious for its instruments of torture—thumbscrews and pillories were common punishments. Executions were all public, performed on a platform above the town square. The most infamous criminals would have their heads impaled on spikes facing High Street as a warning to other would-be lawbreakers.
Its conditions were bad enough that in 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots ordered it torn down and rebuilt. The new building was modish and its new features included, among other things, a heart at its doorway. This didn't indicate any kinder practices though, and the torture and executions at the New Tolbooth continued until it was demolished in 1817. The prison and its heart became famous through Sir Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian, which fictionalized a riot at the Old Tolbooth.
The only thing left of the Old Tolbooth is the Heart of Midlothian. It is traditional for Edinburgers to spit on it as they walk past, though no one can definitively say why. Some say it's a practice left over from when passersby would spit at the prison in solidarity with those inside. Others say it was the prisoners themselves who spat on the heart as they were released through its doors. Still others say it's a gesture of good luck for the Edinburgh football team the "Hearts."
Sure, the human heart is a wonder—it keeps us alive, it's literally electric, it's the metaphorical seat of the soul, and so on. But can it regenerate itself? Does it pump exclusively clear blood? Can it freeze and then come back to life?
Some animal species' hearts can do this and more. We scoured the animal kingdom for cardiac marvels, from the depths of the ocean to the top of the Himalayas. Here are some of the strangest we found, divided into categories for your convenience.
Bugs
Earthworm
Depending on how you define your terms, earthworms either have five hearts, or no heart at all. While they lack the chambered, muscular organ that normally comes to mind, they do have five special blood vessels, called aortic arches, that contract in order to pump blood through the worm's body. Look really closely at a specimen, and you can see the arches squeezing and releasing. So if you break an earthworm's heart, don't worry—it has four more.
Cockroach
A human heart has four chambers, each with a specific job—if any of them fail, it's bad news. A cockroach heart, on the other hand, has 12 to 13 chambers, all arranged in a row and powered by a separate set of muscles. This built-in redundancy means that if any one chamber fails, the cockroach is barely affected. We humans have been outmatched once again.
Marmalade Hoverfly
Marmalade hoverflies like to linger in the air over flowers, harvesting as much pollen as possible in one trip. To do this, they've evolved what is essentially a one-track heart—it spends almost all of its time and energy pumping blood forward into the head and thorax, where the wing muscles and mouthparts are. The abdomen gets only the occasional kickback, when the heart would otherwise be resting.
Fish & Their Neighbors
Zebrafish
Sure, the zebrafish looks like your average pet store minnow, but under that stripy exterior beats what is, effectively, a superhero's heart. In 2002, scientists discovered that if you cut out up to 20 percent of the zebrafish's lower ventricle, they regenerate all that lost tissue within a couple of months. This happens thanks to specialized muscle cells that not only promote their own growth, but jumpstart the production of new veins. By studying these self-healing hearts, researchers hope to eventually apply their strategies to human organs.
Ocellated Icefish
Ocellated icefish live about a kilometer down in the Southern Ocean, which is the one next to Antarctica. How do they cope with the cold? Partly thanks to their tickers, which are much larger, and about five times stronger, than your average fish heart. Their blood also lacks hemoglobin, the red protein that normally binds to oxygen—instead, thanks to the low temperatures, oxygen is dissolved directly into their plasma. Because of this, they have clear blood. Icefish indeed.
Cuttlefish
Like all cephalopods, the cuttlefish has three hearts—one for each gill, and a third for the rest of its body. Research has shown that cuttlefish in cold waters have larger hearts than those in warmer waters, to enhance aerobic capacity. They also have hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin in their blood, which means that their blood is blue. Very aristocratic.
Birds
Blue-Throated Hummingbird
You've probably heard that hummingbirds flap their wings 15 times per second—so fast that the human eye just sees a blur. Enabling that wingspeed is an even faster heart, which in the blue-throated hummingbird has been measured revving up to 21 beats per second. This efficiency helps enable the hummingbird's unparalleled ability to bring oxygen to its muscle mitochondria, which researchers say "may be at the upper limits of what [is] structurally and functionally possible" for vertebrates.
Bar-Headed Goose
Migration is tough on every bird, but the bar-headed gooses' route is particularly taxing—they head straight over the Himalayas. Flocks are regularly observed winging it through mountain passes about 20,000 feet above sea level, powered by unusually strong hearts, which are connected to the flight muscles by super-organized sets of extra capillaries, and can pump five times faster in flight than at rest. They're also able to hyperventilate without getting dizzy, which helps.
Emperor Penguin
Emperor penguins are famous for the softness of their hearts. Serial monogamists, penguin couples spend most of each year tending each other, their eggs, and their chicks. Less well-known, but equally important, is the slowness of their hearts. While diving, emperor penguins can dial back their heart rate to about 15 beats per minute, shutting off blood supply to all but the most vital organs and doling out only as much oxygen as is necessary for deep-water hunting. And when they come back up, they do so at a sloping angle, like a scuba diver avoiding the bends.
Reptiles & Amphibians
Wood Frog
Plenty of animals, from bears to groundhogs, slow down their hearts when hibernating—but as far as we know, only wood frogs can stop the beat completely. During the winter, these frogs essentially become frogsicles: thanks to special solutes in their cells, they can halt metabolic activity and allow most of their body water to solidify, all without any lasting damage. Their hearts take it in stride, stopping when the world freezes and starting again when it thaws out.
Glass Frog
All frogs have three-chambered hearts, with two atria, which receive blood from other parts of the body, and one ventricle, which shunts it back out again. Glass frogs are unique in that you can actually see this happening—their translucent abdominal skin provides a great view of the heart at work, as well as the blood vessels snaking through its other organs.
Python
If a human heart is filled with fat, there's cause for concern, but if it's a python heart instead, things are going great. After one of its famously giant meals, a python's heart increases in size by about 40 percent, swelled up by fatty acids absorbed from the meal. (This speeds up digestion, which still takes days.) Its blood gets so full of the fatty acids, it turns opaque—"like milk," researcher Leslie Leinwald told National Geographic.
Mammals
Blue Whale
Popular legend holds that a blue whale's heart is as big as a car, and that a human could crawl through its aorta. This isn't quite true—those that scientists have on hand are closer to "the size of maybe a small golf cart or a circus bumper car for two," and the aorta could barely fit a human head, as scientist Jacqueline Miller told the BBC in 2015, after dissecting one. Still not too shabby, though.
Giraffe
You know those carnival games where you hit a lever and, if you're good, the target shoots six feet up into the air? A giraffe's heart has to do that all day, every day, fighting the pressure of gravity to get blood up to the head. He manages this by having extra-thick, extra strong cardiac walls, and blood vessels that expand and contract quickly and easily. The blood vessels also get thicker as the giraffe's neck gets longer, so that they don't collapse under the increasing weight.
Cheetah
A cheetah's resting heart rate is around 120 beats per minute, about the same as a jogging human's. But while the human heart rate tops out around 220—and takes a little while to get there—the cheetah's heart skyrockets to 250 BPM in a few seconds. This ramp-up is so intense that it limits the cheetah's sprinting time to about 20 seconds, after which her organs would become so hot they'd be permanently damaged.
Riggs Library at Georgetown University is one of the United States’ great old book shrines. Dating to 1898, Riggs has four floors of cast iron walkways laid out around a central light court. Sixteen columns divide the hall into smaller alcoves and two spiral staircases connect walkways.
Riggs was designed by an architect named Paul J. Pelz who had just finished drawing up blueprints of the Library of Congress. It’s located on the top floor of Healy Hall and has sweeping views down the Potomac River.
Construction of Georgetown’s library was financed by Elisha Francis Riggs, to commemorate his father George and his brother Thomas, and the centennial of the university. Thomas was the force behind the Riggs family fortune. He made a fortune in banking (he ran the so-called “Bank of Presidents”) before turning to philanthropy.
Back in the day, Riggs Library boasted an impressive collection of storied old books. Contemporary writers marveled at the numerous first editions, 18th century prayer books, Chinese dictionaries, and Renaissance-era Italian texts. This treasure trove was protected by “fire proof” building materials: masonry walls, cast iron shelves and terracotta tile floors.
Riggs was a functional library until the 1970s when a larger library facility opened on campus. Today it is used mainly as an event space.
Some stories are so good that they’re told over and over again, morphing in their details but staying the same in their essence. In Europe’s High Middle Ages, one of the most persistent stories was a gruesome tale of love and cannibalism, the Legend of the Eaten Heart. For years, starting in the 1800s, scholars tried to sort through the story’s many versions to puzzle out where it had originated, but there was a difficulty—one Indian version of the exact same story that had to be somehow factored in.
The scholars who collected versions of this story counted them differently, but there are somewhere between about 14 and 24 distinct tellings, starting around 1150 A.D., as an aside in the story of Tristan and Iseult. In the most basic version of this story, a married woman takes a lover, and her husband finds out. When the lover dies or is killed, the husband takes possession of his heart, cooks it, and feeds it to his wife, who dies shortly after.
There are two main variations, dealing with how the lover dies. In one version, the husband tracks down the lover and kills him. In the second, the lover dies some other way, usually when he goes off to the Crusades. He wants his heart removed and sent back to his lady love (this was a popular gesture at the time), but while the heart is en route, the husband intercepts it and takes possession.
No matter what, the wife eats the heart. That’s a key bit. She almost always dies after that, usually by throwing herself out the window or refusing to eat, sometimes both. Occasionally she dies of grief. When she survives, which is rarely, she ends up in a convent. Although she’s always in love with the dead man, in some versions of the story, her love is innocent and never consummated. More often, though, she’s an unrepentant adulteress. In one of the most famous versions, the Lai d’Ignaure, there’s not just one but 12 women involved, all of whom have cheated on their husbands with the same man.
Besides being a thrilling tale about a woman or women being tricked into cannibalism, the legend of the eaten heart is a story about power. Who wins in the end, the husband or the wife? Different versions have different answers to that question: sometimes the husband is explicitly punished for his transgressive act by a vengeful relative of his wife or by being exiled from his home.
There’s a Christian overtone to the story, too, in the ritual consumption of the body; in Ignaure, the 12 women stand in for 12 apostles, and it’s not clear that they’re the villains. In A Perverse History of the Human Heart, the scholar Milad Doueihi writes that the story is a sort of parody, working at “the intersection between Christian and Greek mythology,” drawing on both the story of Christ and of Dionysus, who is cooked and eaten by the Titans and reborn from the one organ they don’t consume, his heart. In Consuming Passions, another scholar, Merrall L. Price argues that the Christian overtones of consuming the heart allow the women in the stories to “regain a final dignity” and “punish their husbands doubly in choosing to die.”
For many years, it was thought that this story came from Europe. Most of the extant versions came from European literary traditions, in England, Germany, France, and Italy. There was one Swedish version, too. In the 1880s, though, one folklore scholar found a version of the story that included all the key elements in the Punjab district of India, and everyone studying this story had to scramble to account for that. Was the Indian version derivative of the European versions, or vice versa?
Some scholars changed their allegiance to a possible origin outside of Europe; others staunchly defended the status quo. But an influential article published in 1911, dedicated to understanding the interrelationship of the stories, had a different answer. That paper showed that it was most likely the Indian version of the story and the European versions, particularly those in southern Europe that inspired the version in Boccaccio’s Decameron, most likely came from the same, unknown source. No one place could definitely lay claim to this story—it’s just a classic.
Set in the remote prairie of North Dakota, surrounded by wheat fields, cattle pastures, and oil rigs, are the remains of the first mosque constructed in the United States.
In 1929, immigrants from what is now Syria and Lebanon erected the original mosque on the periphery of Ross, a town of 100 people about 60 miles south of the Canadian border. The Muslim community, who sought farmland through the Homestead Acts, held services in the original sub-basement building, a 364-square-foot shelter that offered a coal stove, benches, and prayer rugs.
The modest building fell into ruin and was removed in 1979. The family of its founders and Christian friends donated money to build a new mosque in 2005. Today, the land here is home to a 92-square-foot structure, with 15-foot-high cinderblock walls on each side of a squared frame crowned with an aluminum dome and four minarets. Inside, visitors find photographs of the founders and a rug arranged eastward toward Mecca. The Assyrian Moslem Cemetery remains outside as it did 88 years ago and continues to serve as a burial site for practicing families.
In 2013, researchers excavating a convent in Rennes, France dug up a 450-year-old lead coffin. Inside, they found a strikingly well-preserved body, wearing leather shoes and swathed in religious cloaks.
They also found something else—another, much smaller lead box, in a familiar shape. When they opened it up, there was a human heart inside.
As National Geographic reports, the body was that of a 17th century noblewoman, Louise de Quengo. The heart belonged to her husband, a knight named Toussaint de Perrien.
Historians already knew that European aristocrats were occasionally buried apart from certain of their body parts, generally for political and religious purposes—to maximize prayer sites, or, if the deceased perished far from home, to pay fealty to their country.
But according to new research from France's National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, Louise and Toussaint are the only dead couple on record to have done it for love.
"Toussaint de Perrien died in 1649—seven years earlier than Louise—and was buried 125 miles away" from her home in Rennes, National Geographic writes. But first, his heart was cut out and stashed in the lead container. Louise hung onto it until she died, too, and then she literally took it with her to her grave.
There's another piece to the puzzle: when researchers performed a CT scan of de Quengo's body, she, too, was missing her heart. They figure Touissant probably has it. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
Fingernails have a functional purpose—they’re shells for our fingertips—but they sure come with an annoying side effect.
That effect? The fact that, every couple of weeks, you have to cut them. No matter who you are, you have to go through this process where small pieces of your keratin fly everywhere because you’re shoving them in a nail clipper. But the modern nail clipper is a fairly recent phenomenon, roughly as old as the Swiss Army Knife. Which means that for most of human history, clipping one's nails was a little harder than digging your rusty clipper out of the medicine cabinet.
Nail-clipping history, it turns out, is also surprisingly complicated, a hygienic practice that at times was shrouded in superstition, in addition to including a lot of unknowns. Who invented the ubiquitous modern nail clipper? That's one fact, for starters, that we might never know.
Around 1875, patents for the modern nail clipper began to appear, with the first such trimmer, designed by a man named Valentine Fogerty, though the design of his device could best be described as a circular nail file rather than a keratin clip. The first design in the USPTO’s files that I could find with anything in common with modern designs came from inventors Eugene Heim and Oelestin Matz, who were granted a patent for a clamp-style fingernail clipper in 1881. (These days, standard nail clippers are so common that any patents on them have long since faded away, though that hasn't stopped new variations from being created, much like with the umbrella. Who hasn't ever wanted a nail clipper that automatically stores your nail clippings?)
Both devices were trying to solve a problem that, before then, was solved with old-fashioned knives. Take the patent for R.W. Stewart’s finger-nail cutter, which has more in common with peeling an apple than pressing a clamp. And if you’ve ever used a paring knife to peel an apple, that’s how fingernails were cut before there was a designated tool for it, whether using an actual knife or small scissors. In fact, based on my research, terms like “trim” or “cut” generally weren’t used to describe the process until the 19th century. Before that, we described it as “paring.”
Still, by the end of the 19th century, superstitions about how and when to trim fingernails were pretty common. An article published in the Boston Globe in 1889 (though credited to the New York Sun), noted that one superstition of the time was that people couldn’t cut their fingernails on weekends out of fear that it might lead to back luck.
“It is unlucky to cut the finger nails on Friday, Saturday or Sunday,” the article explained. “If you cut the on Friday you are playing into the devil’s hand; on Saturday, you are inviting disappointment, and on Sunday, you will have bad luck all week. There are people who suffer all sorts of gloomy forebodings if they absentmindedly trim away a bit of nail on any of these days and who will suffer all the inconvenience of overgrown fingernails sooner than cut them after Thursday.”
(Let’s be honest: This superstition sucks. A much better superstition: The idea that white specks on the fingernails would lead to good fortune.)
But all this chatter about paring knives and superstitions only gets us back two centuries. Where do we go after that?
Well, since we don’t have a firm backing for a lot of this historic stuff, literature is a helpful friend. In 1702, for example, Irish dramatist George Farquhar’s The Twin Rivalsmakes a reference to nail-paring.
“… I found another very melancholy paring her Nails by Rosamond’s Pond," according to one passage, "and a Couple I got at the Chequer Alehouse in Holboure; the two last came to Town yesterday in a Weft-Country Waggon.”
Going back further, we know a few other things about fingernails, like the fact that the longer your nails were during China’s Ming Dynasty, the less likely it was that you did hard labor. But our interest in well-groomed fingernails comes from even further back: the ancient Romans, to be specific.
Again, the evidence comes from literature. The satirist Horace repeatedly touched upon fingernails in his works. In the work Satires, dated 35 B.C., Horace came up with the idiom of biting one’s fingernails out of nervousness (or as he put it, with some modernization, “… in the composition of verses, would often have scratched his head, and bit his nails to the quick.”)
But a later work, the first book of Epistles (circa 20 BC), offers up the largest historic hint. In a passage where he introduces an auctioneer, he also makes reference to the process of nail trimming in ancient barber shops. A modern reference from Poetry in Translation:
Philippus the famous lawyer, one both resolute
And energetic, was heading home from work, at two,
And complaining, at his age, about the Carinae
Being so far from the Forum, when he noticed,
A close-shaven man, it’s said, in an empty barber’s
Booth, penknife in hand, quietly cleaning his nails.
Also in Horace’s time was a pivotal moment in the history of nail polish. Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra, who lived between 69 and 30 B.C., was known for using the juice of henna plants to paint her nails in a rust-red color—and due to the social code of the time, she was one of the few to dye her nails red.
Going even further back, there’s a reference to trimming fingernails in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 21:12, replete with some ancient gender politics. Per the New American Standard translation:
When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.
So, a written acknowledgement of fingernail-trimming that dates back to, roughly, the eighth century B.C.—long before Valentine Fogerty’s existence.
But let’s say, after reading all that, you’re more interested in where nail-clipping is going, rather than where it’s been.
To put it simply, the clipper has evolved in some weird ways in recent years, including:
Giant handles: Do your toenail clippers need a strong grip so they don’t keep falling out of your hands? If so, the well-reviewed Bezox Precision Toenail Clippers might be your ticket. Maybe they’re overkill, but so are your toenails.
A rotary turn: One of the problems with standard-size fingernail clippers is that one hand is often stronger than the other, meaning that when your non-dominant hand cuts, it’s more likely to slip, making it more likely to bend a nail. A potential solution the the problem comes in the form of a rotary nail clipper, which turns the clamping motion on its side.
Really long clippers: Combining the first two items in a wacky way is the Antioch Clipper, a device introduced in 2011 to make it possible to clip toenails without bending over at the waist—which may be of benefit in some cases, but lends itself to a design that is best described as a combination nail clipper and pair of tongs.
Really expensive clippers: Do you really need the world’s best nail clipper at your disposal, as the Khlip Ultimate Clipper describes itself? Perhaps not, even though it “gives you increased control and leverage as you trim your nails” due to its award-winning design. A Gizmodo review really says it all: “The Klhip Ultimate Nail Clipper Is Ultimately Just Expensive.”
Going electric: The Vanrro V1, a futuristic nail clipper, is looking for support on a crowdfunding site, though the term clipper is actually a misnomer—it’s really a nail grinder, kind of like the sort they sell for dogs. But the attempt has only raised $210 so far, and a similar effort shut down with no notice whatsoever last month. Hey, at least the clippers don’t support IFTTT.
But maybe the real issue isn’t the clippers—but that you don’t know how to clip your nails the right way, to ensure they’re even all the way around. Fortunately, there’s plenty of advice on that.
“Look at all ten nails and pick out the shortest, or that with the smallest amount of ‘white’ at the tip,” notes Deborah Lippmann a celebrity manicurist, in an article at GQ. “Use that nail as a reference to ensure all nails are being filed to a uniform length and shape.”
Lippmann also recommends using an actual emory board on your nail, treating your cuticles right so as to avoid hangnails, and to leave a sliver of “white” at the top of the nail.
The best-looking fingernails, in other words, aren't cut with anything special, they are just the ones with the most TLC.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
This unusual fountain is intended to evoke the emotional and sometimes strange music of Igor Stravinsky. In addition to the expected treble clef, a clown's bowler hat, a pair of red lips, and a mermaid with water squirting out of her breasts are some of the fountain's figures inspired by the most influential classical music of the 20th century.
This is the work of sculptor Jean Tinguely and painter Niki de Saint Phalle. Tinguely's works are typically in a Dadaist style—intricate machine-like structures painted shining industrial black. Saint Phalle's works, on the other hand, are primitive and bright. The combination of these two styles makes the fountain appear whimsical and disorderly.
According to Tinguely, the "circus-like" chaos of the fountain is intended to evoke Stravinsky's encounters with jazz. Additionally, the artists asked that the water be left untreated and that moss be allowed to grow on the fountain so that nature could contribute to the work.
It wasn't without controversy though. When it was unveiled in 1983 some found the primary colors and abstract shapes gaudy and at odds with the refinement of classical music. The fountain remains one of the most photographed attractions in the neighborhood though.
The artists did not want the fountain to overwhelm the already eye-catching Centre Pompidou. The fountain is low to the ground and approachable, with low-powered motors in the waterworks so that visitors can wade in the water on hot days.
It was February 20, 1892, in the middle of New Zealand’s hottest months. In the stands overlooking Ellerslie Racecourse in Auckland, an earl and a countess watching the races cooled themselves with a fan made of fine silk, feathers, and ivory. But this was no ordinary fan. If you looked closely between the creased silk, you could make out the names, ages, and weights of the horses as well as the program for the day’s races.
The special racing event was held in celebration of the earl, William Hillier Onslow, the governor of New Zealand, who was about to return to his parliamentary career in England. For special Auckland Cup races and events, programs were fashioned out of the finest material, but it was rare to find one crafted into the form of a fan.
The ornate fan program was given to the Onslows as a farewell token. It was completely decked with valuable materials and references to the honoree. The trim of the 12-inch-tall fan is adorned with feathers, while the ribs are made of ivory that are etched with intricate patterns. The silk is printed with typical information of a race book that you’d get today, says Andrew Henry, a librarian and heritage resource developer at Auckland City Libraries, which holds the limited-edition silk race program fan in the Auckland Libraries Ephemera Collection.
The horse’s name, age and weight, the rider and his colors, the time each race starts, the distance and winning stake are all there. The February 20, 1892 issue of the New Zealand Heraldalso noted that the cover of the books featured the monogram of the club and the Onslow coat of arms and motto “Festina lente,” which is Latin for “Make haste slowly.”
Silk programs weren’t uncommon in the Ellerslie Racecourse stands. “It would seem that for special events with visiting dignitaries it was quite common to print on silk,” says Henry. The Auckland Libraries Ephemera Collection also has an assortment of playbills printed on silk from the mid to late-19th century. But this is the only race program fan ever found.
But Henry has yet to come across another silk racebook that’s been converted into an alternative item. “February 20 is around when we get the hottest weather here in New Zealand so it could be very hot wearing Victorian-style clothes to the races,” he says. The fan potentially could have been used for “practical purposes.”
Even though the object was a lavish gift, the actual race was not a success at all, says Henry. The newspapers lamented the poor weather and turnout, as well as the small amount of money that had been wagered. But despite the disappointments of the race day, at least we ended up with this one-of-a-kind fan.
Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
In 2008, if you took a walk through the central oval lawn of Madison Square Park in New York City at dusk, you would have been immersed in flashing lights pulsing to the beat of someone's heart. Created by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, "Pulse Park" was a temporary interactive installation that transformed Madison Square Park into a brilliant beating heart made of 200 beams of light.
The intensity of the "matrix of light beams" was synchronized with a person's heart rate, which was measured by sensors near the north end of the oval lawn. As a park visitor's systolic and diastolic activity was recorded, the spotlight rays would eventually dance across the grass to the time of the heartbeat. Then, as the person left the sensor, their heartbeat pulses would be sent to the first light, bumping previous recorded heart rates down the circle.
At a given time, 200 people's heart rates could be seen flashing at once, capturing a small sample of the city's pulse. "The electrical activity of the heart is amplified by 150,000 watts of light," the video says.
This is one of several heart-inspired art installations Lorzano-Hemmer has created. He made an interactive "Pulse Index" that records people's fingerprints and heart rates and displays the data on large monitors in Sydney museum, and a water hose that uses heartbeat data in a park in Spain. In 2015, he projected powerful beams into the sky, the lights flashing in time with heart rates of people in Abu Dhabi.
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.
Outside of Austin, Texas, off of an uneventful stretch of Highway 71, sits a U-turn worthy site for the squirrel worshiper in us all.
Standing at 14 feet tall, Ms. Pearl beckons anywhere from 30 to 100 passersby a day from the highway to have their picture taken with her. If you're wondering why she is clutching a pecan bigger than your head, it probably has something to do with the nearby Berdoll Pecan Candy & Gift Company, a family-owned business that includes a gift shop, a pecan orchard, and an enormously adorable squirrel statue.
Originally constructed in August of 2011 by Berdoll, Ms. Pearl received her sassy name from a customer as part of a contest. In 2015, the squirrel goddess received a facelift in the form of a fresh coat of paint as well as a deck to support her many worshipers. She is available 24 hours a day and while the nearby gift shop has regular business hours, there is an eternally available vending machine outside the shop with fresh, full-sized pecan pies replenished daily for any late night, squirrel-inspired snacking needs.
Certain uranium isotopes, famously, were used to start the nuclear age, like Uranium-235, the isotope used in the bomb known as "Little Boy," which fell on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and almost instantly killed an estimated 70,000 people.
Uranium-238, on the other hand, is a bit different, since it's the isotope that, by a wide margin, is the one most commonly found in nature. Not typically used in nuclear weapons, Uranium-238 is used in nuclear power plants, but on its own, Uranium-238 is relatively harmless. Just don't swallow or inhale it (doing so, you might guess, increases your risk for cancer.)
On Monday, a woman cleaning out her garage at a Phoenix retirement community came across some Uranium-238. But, not knowing exactly what it was, she did the prudent thing and called the authorities. The uranium was inside a three-inch-thick lead case, according to ABC15.
The woman, who was not named, said that it was likely her late father-in-law's. He was a chemist, according to the Arizona Republic, and performed experiments at home. All of which isn't very reassuring, but state officials said tests revealed that the area around her home and garage did not contain excessive amounts of radiation.
The uranium itself was safely carried away for disposal, a bit of the element that, this time, probably won't end up being used for any deadly aims.
In Logie Durno, in the council area of Aberdeenshire in northwest Scotland, local children, as they frequently do across the world, sometimes like to play soccer.
Fields there (known as pitches across the pond) are available for just this use, but recently residents were startled to find that a bunch of fruit trees had been planted on one of them, directly between two sets of goal posts.
All of which prompted a few ridiculous-looking pictures (like the one you see above) to spread across social media.
The trees had been planted by the Aberdeenshire Council, in what they told the BBC was part of a "biodiversity" initiative.
But they did so apparently without consulting locals, who were confused and angry.
"Unless Aberdeenshire Council has added the trees for extra dribbling practice, I think it’s ridiculous," a community worker told the Evening Express. "It’s so strange, I just can’t understand the thinking behind it—especially plonking them right in the pitch."
A spokeswoman for the council said that they would consult with the community on where to go from here, while offering a seemingly very British apology.
"We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused," she said.
In addition to being a beautiful state park in which enjoy the outdoors and a view of the Richmond skyline, Belle Isle is dotted with the remnants of hundreds of years of history. Scattered throughout the island are historic ruins from many eras of the United States.
Originally a Native American settlement site, this small 540-acre island on the James River was at one point explored by the famous John Smith. In the early 1800s a nail factory was built on the island, the ruins of which can be found on the east end of the island, where they are quite hard to miss.
The island is most notoriously known for its role during the Civil War, during which it was a Confederate prison camp. The prison was equipped to house 3,000 Union prisoners, although, based on varying accounts there were over two to three times that amount during certain parts of the war. Thousands of prisoners died while imprisoned on Belle Isle. However, the remains have since been removed.
There are the remains of an old oil and explosive materials storehouse, as well as an abandoned hydroelectric plant from the early 1900s on the south side of the island, with a beautiful view of the river rapids below. Consider heading to the west side of the island to take in the expansive view of the James River and be sure to look across the water to see the multiple dams as well as the massive Hollywood Cemetery on top of the hills.
To walk through this biblical garden is to experience the world of ancient Israel in a direct, embodied way. Seeking to illustrate the metaphor of the Creator as a gardener, Rabbi Walter Jacob and his wife included each of the more than 100 plants referenced in the Old Testament, even going to the extent of finding a caper bush thought to be extinct.
The garden, located behind Rodef Shalom Temple, which houses Pennsylvania's oldest Jewish congregation, now displays more than 100 tropical and temperate plants from biblical times. Olive trees are there, as are figs, pomegranates, and dates (though the Pennsylvania climate makes it so they rarely ever bear fruit.)
Papyrus reeds flank the miniature Jordan River and an herb garden illustrates what Ancient Israelites would have grown for their food. Plants are labelled with biblical, common and scientific names as well as marked with scriptures where they can be found.
Walking among these plants brings the Old Testament to life: Sweets were so hard to come by a "land flowing with milk and honey" would have set any mouth to watering, and a fig leaf does make for a decent loincloth to cover one's nakedness. Each year the garden has a new theme. One year was "paradise"; another exposed the meanings of different plants in various faiths.
The garden is free to visit between the months of June and September. During the winter the plants must be replanted in a greenhouse to ensure their survival. This requires a great deal of labor and expense, thus donations are greatly appreciated.
When Australia was bogged down by economic Depression, Phar Lap the chestnut racehorse became an unlikely symbol of hope.
Born in New Zealand, he started as an awkward, unpromising colt without the grace and beauty typical of most champions. But his handlers saw promise in him, and named him after the Thai word for lightning. This underdog coached by an unheard-of trainer ended up winning 37 of his 51 races from 1928 to 1932, frequently by several lengths, including the coveted Melbourne Cup. Phar Lap's unlikely success made him a fan favorite, attracting Australians who had never once been to a race to follow the "Wonder Horse's" rise to the top.
Tragically, Phar Lap died suddenly after his first North American win in 1932. No clear cause of death has ever been decided, though speculations include infections and deliberate poisonings. It wasn't Australia and New Zealand went into mourning for the horse, and his remains were distributed like relics.
His skeleton went to New Zealand's national museum, while his hide was mounted for the Melbourne Museum. His massive heart, weighing almost 14 pounds (about twice as big as an average horse’s heart), inspired the phrase “a heart as big as Phar Lap’s.” The organ that powered the incredible horse is preserved in the National Museum of Australia, a fitting place for the relic of a national icon.
Westbrook Pegler was extremely good at calling people names. Particularly politicians. In his syndicated newspaper column, he called Franklin D. Roosevelt “Moosejaw” and “momma’s boy.” Truman was “a thin-lipped hater.”
Pegler was a bit of hater himself. He didn’t like the labor movement, Communists, fascists, Jews, and perhaps most of all, liberals. In one 1938 column, he coined a term for liberals that would eventually come to define conservative scorn for the left. Pegler was the first writer to refer to liberals as “bleeding hearts.” The context for this then-novel insult? A bill before Congress that aimed to curb lynching.
Before the 20th century, the phrase “bleeding heart” was popular in the religious-tinged oratory of 19th century America. Throughout the 1860s, it comes up often in poetry, essays, and political speeches, as an expression of empathy and emotion. “I come to you with a bleeding heart, honest and sincere motives, desiring to give you some plain thoughts,” said one politician in an 1862 speech. The phrase comes from the religious image of Christ’s wounded heart, which symbolizes his compassion and love. It was a common enough phrase that London has a “Bleeding Heart Yard” (featured prominently in the Dickens novel Little Dorrit) which is named after a long-gone sign, once displayed at a local pub, that showed the Sacred Heart.
By the 1930s, though, the phrase had fallen out of common use and Pegler, who one politician called a “soul-sick, mud-wallowing gutter scum columnist,” recruited it into a new context, as a political insult. He was a master of this art. As a contemporary of his wrote in an academic article on political name-calling, “Pegler has coined, or given prominence to, a fair share of unfair words.” (Pegler also called the AFL a “swollen national racket,” economics “a side-show science,” and Harold Ickes, who ran the Public Works Administration, “Donald Duck.”)
Pegler first used “bleeding heart” in a column castigating liberals in Washington for their focus on “a bill to provide penalties for lynchings.” Pegler wasn’t for lynchings, per se, but he argued that they were no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and “it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes.” The bill, he thought, was being “used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers.” And here was his conclusion, emphasis ours:
“I question the humanitarianism of any professional or semi-pro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single person must be allowed to hunger but would stall the entire legislative program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic figure, to save fourteen lives a year.”
Pegler was apparently pleased enough with this use of “bleeding heart” that he kept it up. He later wrote of “professional bleeding hearts” who advocated for “collective medicine” after a woman couldn’t find a doctor to help her through labor, and lobbed the insult of “bleeding heart Bourn” at a rival, left-leaning columnist. By 1940, he had condensed the phrase down to “bleeding-heart humanitarians” and “bleeding-heart liberals.”
Pegler’s usage did not immediately catch on, though. (Perhaps that’s because he went on to become so right-wing that he was asked to leave the John Birch Society.) If the New York Times’ archives is any indication, through the ‘40s and ‘50s, “bleeding heart” was most often used to refer to the flower Lamprocapnos spectabilis, which grows rows of pretty pink blossoms, and occasionally sports.
“Bleeding heart” was revived in a political context in 1954, by another infamous right-winger, Joe McCarthy, who called Edward R. Murrow one of the “extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio.” It wasn’t until the 1960s that it really started to come into common use, though. In 1963, the satirical columnist Russell Baker put it on a list of political insults: “If one is called a ‘phoney,’ about the only thing he can do is come back with some epithet like, ‘anti-intellectual’ or ‘bleeding-heart liberal’...or ‘you must be one of those peace nuts.’” By the end of the decade, Ronald Reagan, then newly elected governor of California, had picked it up as a way to describe his political trajectory. “I was quite the bleeding-heart liberal once,” he told Newsweek. By 1970, he was known as a “former ‘bleeding heart’ Democrat.”
After that, the phrase was fully ensconced in political short-hand and quickly claimed by liberals as a positive trait. “You are called a bleeding heart liberal because you have a heart for the poor,” one told the Times. “Count me with the bleeding heart liberals,” an NAACP lawyer wrote in a letter to the editor.
Alice Flagg was born into an upper class family along the coast of South Carolina in the early 19th century. Her story is an age-old tale of heartbreak—she was in love with a young man who was in a social class unsuitable for her to marry into.
Her disapproving brother, a doctor, demanded she end the romance at once, never to see the young man again. Alice defied her brother and she and the young man continued to see each other, eventually becoming betrothed.
Alice hid the engagement by wearing the ring on a ribbon around her neck, but her secret love was discovered and she was sent to a boarding school in Charleston to separate her from her intended. Alice became very ill, likely with malaria, and was rushed back home to her family who worriedly tended to her. As she lay in her sickbed her brother discovered the ring around her neck, ripped it off, and threw it away. A distraught Alice grew delirious with sickness, compounded by her sorrow that the ring and her beloved were taken from her. She spent her last days begging everyone she saw to find the ring for her, but her wish was never granted. Alice became hopelessly worn from her sickness, and soon died.
Alice was dressed in a favorite white dress and buried in the Flagg family plot at All Saints Cemetery near Pawleys Island. A plain marble slab bearing just her first name was placed over her grave.
Enthusiastic spirit spotters insist Alice's specter can be seen in the front door of the Flagg home, the Hermitage, as she moves silently up the staircase to her bedroom. Others claim she can be seen in the graveyard at All Saints Church, but wherever she appears she always seems to be searching for something with her hand on her chest.
Whether they believe the ghost stories or simply feel sympathy for poor Alice, visitors often bring flowers and small tokens of remembrance to her grave. The believers bring gifts in the hopes of contacting Alice and calming her heartsick soul; others just come to see the painfully simple gravestone to make a wish. Superstition says if you start and the right bottom of her gravestone and walk around it six times counterclockwise and then six times clockwise stopping at the letter "A" on her marker, you can place a token of recognition upon the resting place, make a wish, and it will be granted.
There might not be buried treasure in your area, but there could very well be a forgotten time capsule, which can be just as exciting to discover.
Let's start by defining just what a time capsule is. For centuries, human beings have been creating keystone caches, stashing things in walls, or burying keepsakes for posterity. Any of these could be considered time capsules in the broad sense, but properly, true time capsules have something more going on than just piles of hidden junk.
“I define time capsules quite narrowly, as something with a target date,” says Nicholas Yablon, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Iowa, and an expert on time capsules. Yablon has spent the past seven years researching the practice of burying and unearthing time capsules in the era between the 1870s and the 1940s, for a forthcoming book on the subject. “In the media, any box that gets opened is called a time capsule. That leads to a lot of confusion when you’re actually looking for time capsules online, or anywhere.”
In fact, the term “time capsule” wasn't popularized until 1939, when it was used by the Westinghouse company to describe a collection of items they buried as part of the World’s Fair that year. Expected to last 5,000 years, the original Westinghouse time capsule (they buried another in 1965) was intended to be a survey of information about life in the mid-20th century. Some of the items included were a 22,000-page essay recorded on microfilm and a vial of tooth powder (think proto-toothpaste).
Prior to the high-profile Westinghouse exhibitions, time capsules were called any number of different things, and were usually the province of a local government or historical society, making them somewhat more difficult to track down. "For earlier examples of this practice, you have to do more creative searching," says Yablon. "They have names like 'century vault' or 'centennial safe' or 'memorial chest.' Every one seems to have a slightly different name."
When trying to track down time capsules, Yablon starts with available archives and targeted Google searches. Keywords such as “deposit,” “box,” and “sealed” are good indicators that you might be on the right track. “Sometimes just random references I’ll find will lead me to the existence of a time capsule,” he says. “Some of those have been opened and are in archives now, but others were still unlocated. Some are not yet due to be opened.”
If you're lucky enough to track down an undiscovered time capsule, it’s important to play it cool. While it might be tempting to rush out and try to dig it up yourself, remember that most historic time capsules were meant to be a communal experience. Especially during what Yablon calls the “Golden Age of Time Capsules,” roughly the 1930s through the 1950s, the intention was to represent a community at a certain point in time, acting as the only form of long-term social posterity available.
Another issue to consider is that some of a time capsule's contents, usually paper ephemera (people love to bury books and papers), could be decayed and quite sensitive if they are old enough. “If you find one, contact the historical society or an archivist, and get people interested before it gets forgotten again,” says Yablon. “If it gets dug up inadvertently, it’s important to keep it sealed.”
The contents of every time capsule are different and there is no set definition of what should be placed inside, although Yablon says that there are some things that tend to be found again and again. Newspapers, phone books, directories, and photographs are especially popular. Then there are the more wondrous and bizarre things that people see fit to send into the future. “There was a matchbox with a molar tooth in it that I found in one time capsule, and it had a label saying, ‘Robespierre’s Tooth.’”
In recent decades, the practice of burying time capsules has fallen out of favor a bit, and even the more personal caches of things that people hide away, Yablon says, have become more banal and less of a conversation between generations. “In the 1970s, time capsules became more solipsistic," he says, "with people just kind of doing their own time capsule in their backyard, burying their own possessions, in a very non-collective way.”
But none of that means there aren’t still amazing time capsules out there to find. Both of the Westinghouse time capsules are still waiting where they were buried. The International Time Capsule Society maintains a list of the 10 most-wanted time capsules, including one at MIT that was placed beneath an 18-ton cyclotron, and a series of 17 time capsules that have been lost around the city of Corona, California.
As a researcher of time capsules of the past, Yablon says he doesn't consider himself a time capsule hunter. But he believes in the future of the time capsule, which should continue to give interested searchers something to quest after, so long as society survives. “The objects we leave behind or don’t leave behind for future generations will continue to interest people,” he says.
