The spring of 1809 was a rough time for Ludwig van Beethoven. His beloved, the countess Giulietta Guicciardi, had recently cut off contact, citing irreconcilable class differences. He was experiencing an expanding rift with his brother and former manager, Kaspar. Perhaps worst of all, his patron and close friend, the Archduke Rudolph of Austria, was being forced out of their home city of Vienna, fleeing Napoleon's oncoming troops.
So that April, while preparing for the Archduke's departure, Beethoven did what composers do with their excesses of feeling: he went to the piano. The result was the first movement of what is now called the Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Opus 81a. The work begins with a three-note, descending motif, over which, on the sheet music, Beethoven wrote "Le-be-wohl"—German for "fare thee well." This pattern repeats throughout the piece, which eventually unspools into a lament that alternates between brooding and cathartic, driven on in parts by an unusual, galloping rhythm.
Writing on Opus 81 in 1899, the musicologist Frederic Horace Clark called its principle sentiment a "mixture of pain and loss." "Here the tears course silently down," he wrote. More recent criticism agrees: "It is hard to see how anyone performing the work would fail to recognize that Beethoven is saying [farewell] over and over again," Edwin Thompson Jaynes wrote in 1994. But where some educated listeners hear emotional pain, others are attuned to ghosts of a more physical ailment. For decades, music-loving cardiologists have interpreted the stuttering rhythms of Opus 81a as potential signs of an undiagnosed cardiac arrhythmia.
A cardiac arrhythmia is any type of unusual heartbeat: one that's too fast, too slow, or skips around a lot. While having one can be a problem, they're often benign. Although he couldn't take advantage of today's relevant diagnostic procedures, there's no reason to think Beethoven—who suffered a number of ailments, from deafness to diarrhea—didn't have one. "He may have had a cardiac arrhythmia that was probably benign," says Zachary Goldberger, a cardiologist at the University of Washington Medical School.
Beethoven doesn't mention heart health in his letters, and his autopsy report is silent about it as well. But in Goldberger's mind, what we do know of the composer's life and work suggests he might have experienced some off-kilter beats, and listened to them. Arrhythmias often come during periods of stress, and Opus 81a, at least, was written during a difficult time. "Perhaps his loss of hearing heightened other senses and made him more aware of his heart rhythm," says Goldberger.
Along with two colleagues—Steven Whiting, a musicologist, and Dr. Joel D. Howell, an internist—Goldberger published a paper on the subject, "The Heartfelt Music of Ludwig van Beethoven," in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine in the spring of 2014. But speculation about Beethoven's heart dates back to at least 1980, when, in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the physician Samuel Vaisrub brought it up as one example of what he called "the close link" between music and somatic rhythms. "Long before [Willem] Einthoven recorded heartbeats through graphic representation of their electric potentials, Beethoven expressed them in musical notes," Vaisrub wrote. "Having experienced frequent cardiac arrhythmias, he composed music (ie, Sonata No. 81) that reflected a disordered rhythm."
It's hard to say where Vaisrub got this theory—he died soon after his letter was published—but over the years, others took it up. In the introduction to his 1995 work History of the Disorders of Cardiac Rhythm, the cardiologist Berndt Lüderitz mentions Beethoven's Opus 81a in between accounts of other musicians, including 17th-century vespers singers, who took more straightforward inspiration from the heartbeat. (That's where Goldberger learned about the theory.) Two years later, the cardiologist Tsung O. Cheng put forth a brief reading of Opus 81a, too—"Having experienced frequent premature ventricular beats," he wrote, "[Beethoven] composed his Piano Sonata op 81a… which reflected a disordered rhythm."
Goldberger and his colleagues went further than most—in addition to thoroughly examining Opus 81a, they dug into two other Beethoven pieces, Opus 130 (or "String Quartet in B Flat Major") and Opus 110 ("Piano Sonata in A Flat Major"). The first has a section that Beethoven labeled should be played "Beklemmt"—German for "heavy of heart" or "squeezed." The second features repetitive, arrhythmic figures played by the left hand, as well as a somewhat breathless melody covered by the right.
Although Cheng passed away last year, and Lüderitz could not be reached for this article, both expressed delight at the study's new conclusions after it was published. For some doctors, matching up dead people with potential illnesses is a way of playing historical detective—shunting contemporary knowledge back into the past, where, even if it can't help, it can shed some light on the mysterious lives of figures we now admire. Goldberger brings up the persistent speculation that the gangly Abraham Lincoln may have had Marfan's syndrome, and mentions that one of his colleagues thinks Mozart may have died from trichinosis. Cheng in particular made something of a hobby of posthumously diagnosing classical composers—according to his speculative tally, Mozart also suffered from infective endocarditis, and Brahms had liver cancer.
But others are less enthusiastic about this line of inquiry. "The idea that Beethoven’s arrhythmia of the heart (if that’s in fact what he had) could explain the mystery of his music’s quixotic rhythmic structures doesn’t actually help you much in terms of understanding, say, the op 130 quartet," wrote Tom Service in the Guardian. "The issue is not so much what the inspiration, medical or otherwise, might have been, but what composers do with it that matters."
Goldberger has a different read on the research's purpose, which he says can enhance appreciation of well-tread pieces, and even bring some underappreciated ones back into the spotlight. "I'm not sure [speculating on his heart] elevates my own listening," he says. "But it certainly makes me more attuned to the remarkable rhythms he has." Enjoying them centuries later, Beethoven's musical decisions still ring true, whether they came from his heart, or merely from his brain.
This gigantic 36-foot statue of a Russian soldier can be seen across the ancient Bulgarian city of Plovdiv. Erected in 1957, it stands as a monument to the Red Army's "liberation" of the city during World War II.
The towering memorial sits atop one the few hills in Plovdiv overlooking the city. The monument's name, Alyosha, comes from a common nickname for Russian soldiers, and is also the title of Plovdiv's official anthem during Bulgaria's Soviet period.
Though the monument has faced destruction attempts and vandalism—and the city almost allowed it to be turned into a gigantic Coca-Cola bottle—Alyosha still silently stands guard over Plovdiv, and continues to be one of the most prominent reminders of the Soviet period in Bulgaria.
The views from the top of the structure are unbeatable, and you'll likely be the only one visiting. Climbing the weaving path to the top, the Roman amphitheater on an adjacent hill comes into view. Old town's famous "Kapana" (The Trap) area is also visible, and looks like a labyrinth of winding cobblestone alleys from up above.
Hunted nearly to extinction, the northern elephant seal was given protected status by Mexico in 1922. Since then, the elephant seal population has expanded along the coast of California, including south of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse near San Simeon.
Initial sightings of the resurgent population occurred in 1955 on Año Nuevo Island, and records of the first pups being born were in 1961. The numbers have grown drastically since that time, with current reports estimating that over 25,000 seals visit the Piedras Blancas Rookery every year, an expanse of central California coastline that stretches for nearly 6 miles north along Highway 1 from the town of San Simeon.
Northern elephant seals are the largest seal in the northern hemisphere, and the second largest in the world. Adult males range between 14 and 16 feet in length and can weigh up to 5,000 pounds. Female elephant seals weigh in around 900 to 1,800 pounds and average out at about 11 feet long. And the pups are not slouches either—they are 70 pounds and 3 to 4 feet at birth.
The Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery is just off Highway 1, and access to the viewing areas is very close to parking. This is a bit of a good news / bad news scenario: good news that the seals can be appreciated from close-up, and bad news that it’s easy to disturb their habitat. When checking them out, keep in mind that they got there first–they only took a break from these beaches for little while.
It was taken by an unknown thief or thieves overnight between Saturday and Sunday.
It's three feet tall and made of concrete, and while the base was recovered not long after the theft, the bird itself is still missing.
Perhaps more mysterious is why the chicken statue existed at all. The Statesville Record & Landmark named the owner of the statue as Pete Gilleland, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Atlas Obscura.
But the world needs more massive, unnecessary chicken statues so if you know where the statue is or you are in fact the thief, please return it. Thank you.
In September 1885, a bunch of librarians spent four days holed up in scenic Lake George, just over 200 miles north of New York City. In the presence of such library-world luminaries as Melvil Dewey—the well-organized chap whose Dewey Decimal System keeps shelves orderly to this day—they discussed a range of issues, from the significance of the term “bookworm” to the question of whether libraries ought to have a separate reference-room for ladies.
They then turned their attention to another crucial issue: handwriting. As libraries acquired more books, card catalogs needed to expand fast in order to keep track of them. Though the newly invented typewriter was beginning to take hold, it took time and effort to teach the art of “machine writing.” Librarians still had to handwrite their catalog cards. And this was causing problems.
“The trouble in handwriting,” said Mr. James Whitney, of the Boston Public Library, “is that there is apt to be too much flourishing.”
Professor Louis Pollens of Dartmouth College agreed: “We want a handwriting that approaches as near to type as possible, that will do away with individual characteristics.”
A Mr. C. Alex Nelson, of the Astor Library in New York, then mentioned that “T.A. Edison, the inventor” had lately been experimenting with penmanship styles in order to find the most speedy and legible type of handwriting for telegraph operators. Edison, Nelson recalled, had ultimately selected “a slight back-hand, with regular round letters apart from each other, and not shaded.” With this style, Edison was able to write at a respectable 45 words per minute.
Hearing this, Dewey set out a catalog-minded mission for the group: “We ought to find out what is the most legible handwriting.”
This was the beginning of “library hand,” a penmanship style developed over the ensuing year or so for the purpose of keeping catalogs standardized and legible.
Influenced by Edison and honed via experimenting on patient, hand-sore librarians, library hand focused on uniformity rather than beauty. "The handwriting of the old-fashioned writing master is quite as illegible as that of the most illiterate boor," read a New York State Library School handbook. “Take great pains to have all writing uniform in size, blackness of lines, slant, spacing and forms of letters,” wrote Dewey in 1887. And if librarians thought they could get away with just any black ink, they could think again real fast. "Inks called black vary much in color," scoffed the New York State Library School handwriting guide.
Dewey and his crew of “a dozen catalogers and librarians” spent, in his estimation, “an hour daily for nearly an entire week” hashing out the rules of library hand. They started by examining hundreds of card catalogs, looking for penmanship problems and coming up with ways to solve them. They concluded that the “simpler and fewer the lines the better," and decided that, while a slant was best avoided, a slight backward slant was acceptable. Then they got to the more nitty-gritty stuff, such as whether to opt for a "square-topped 3" or a "rounded-top 3." (The rounded-top 3 won out, as it is less likely to be mistaken for a 5 during hasty reading.)
Since the aim was legibility, not haste, library hand wasn't so speedy to execute—but the pace depended on the scribe. Dewey conducted a test in which four cataloguers wrote the Lord’s Prayer in both “catalog hand” and their standard note-taking hand. One cataloguer took three-and-a-half minutes in note-taking hand and almost 12 minutes in catalog hand. But another took three-and-a-half minutes in note-taking hand and four-and-a-half minutes in catalog hand. And the time saved among librarians who had previously mistaken 3s for 5s was priceless.
Now that card catalogs have been replaced by electronic indexing, library hand is a rare sight—unless you know where to look. After the New York Public Library removed its physical card catalog in 1971, every card was photographed and composited onto the pages of an 800-volume set of black books. These books, collectively known as the Dictionary Catalog of the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library, 1911-1972, can be found on public shelves in the main branch of the NYPL, as well as in over 65 libraries around the world. Though most of the cards are typed, you'll find many examples of library hand in these black books. Below is a selection.
If you find yourself driving down Highway 71 though Texas, you're probably going to want to keep an eye out for signs directing you toward the giant squirrel statue holding a pecan. Because next to this peculiar roadside statue is something that should absolutely not be missed: a vending machine stocked with full-sized homemade pecan pies.
Both the squirrel statue and pie vending machine belong to the nearby Berdoll Pecan Farm, whose pecan pies were in such high demand the business put in a 24-hour vending machine to satisfy pie-lovers ‘round the clock.
The pecan pie machine—thought to be the only one of its kind in the United States (thank you Texas)—is located out front at the Berdoll Pecan Candy & Gift Company shop. It's restocked every day with freshly baked pies and other sweet pecan treats, and even more frequently during the holiday season.
As for the squirrel, aka "Ms. Pearl," it stands 14 feet tall, clutching a pecan bigger than your head. The statue beckons dozens of passersby a day off the highway for photo ops. And of course, pie.
In September of 1777, the British defeated George Washington’s troops at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania, prompting panic among the people of Philadelphia who now found themselves defenseless against British occupation.
Facing this threat, the state government ordered that several of the more important bells in Philadelphia be removed from the city to prevent the British from melting them down to forge weaponry. This included the bell from the Pennsylvania State House, the now famous Liberty Bell.
The Liberty Bell was secreted away from Philadelphia and taken to present-day Allentown, escorted by heavy guard and hidden on a hay wagon. It was taken to Zion Reformed Church, where soldiers hid it, along with several other prominent bells, under the church floor. The bell remained hidden in the church throughout the British occupation of Philadelphia, until June of 1778, when the bell was returned to the State House.
Today a replica of the Liberty Bell is on display in a small museum at the historic Zion’s Reformed United Church of Christ, which provided safe-keeping to the icon of American Independence all those years ago.
Drugs are important to different kinds of people. For the police, they can be an opportunity to make an arrest. For dealers, they are an opportunity to get paid. For users, they are an opportunity to ... well, you get the idea.
Many drugs are also illegal of course, including, in many places, the popular drug marijuana. The demand for that drug, though, also creates a massive market, frequently forcing dealers to resort to creative measures to get their product into the hands of users.
And so it happened last Friday that agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, patrolling near Douglas, Arizona, came upon a group of people in the desert, who, after spotting the agents, quickly fled. Upon closer inspection, the agents discovered the device you see above: a catapult, attached to the south side of a U.S.-Mexico border fence. Nearby, the agents also found 47 pounds worth of marijuana.
The catapult as a drug delivery device has been tried before, the primary benefit—as opposed to say, simply tossing the drugs over the fence—apparently being that a catapult would allow for more drugs to be flung over the wall.
According to C.B.P., Mexican authorities took and dismantled the catapult, while American authorities kept the marijuana, each seizing the items that were found on their side of the fence. Despite its high-flying adventure, the authorities did not say whether the marijuana would be used to get anyone high.
For decades, an elegant card catalog occupied a central spot in the Library of Congress Main Reading Room. Before computerization, it was as central to the research process as a search engine in the present day.
When the Main Reading Room was closed for renovation in 1987 the Library returned the room to its original form with desks in a full circle. This meant moving the card catalog to desks adjacent to the Main Reading Room on the first floor of the Jefferson Building. No cards have been added since 1980, but the catalog is still used by researchers and librarians.
The Library of Congress card catalog system dates back to 1898. By 1901 the LC Card Division was producing vast quantities of them for sale to libraries across the country. Every book in the collection had a standardized card listing, relevant metadata, and cross-referenced topics.
There’s something undeniably interesting about perusing the rows of cards, taking in the subtle variations in typography and handwriting on each one. The cards are pleasantly tactile, and the paper has the faint smell of old book. It’s the same physical power that keep some book lovers from ever making the switch from hardcover to ebook, convenience be damned. The Main Reading Room is open to the public twice a year for an open house. Adults visitors often venture in to the catalog area and breathe in deeply as they remember the smell of the library they grew up with.
Romance aside, digitization of the card catalog made a lot of sense. “But to some people, it’s an icon,” LC Director of Planning Bob Zich told the Washington Post in 1984. “It’s like a religion.”
Modernization proceeded under the direction of Henriette D. Avram, a former NSA programmer and pioneering female computer scientist. The project began in 1967, but was not complete until the mid-1980s because of the vastness of the Library of Congress collection.
The catalog was first brought onto the World Wide Web in 1993, making the collection far more accessible to the American public. Today it is queried millions of times per day. Bizarre side note: The online catalog website actually had operating hours when it was first launched and "closed" at 5 p.m. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Margot Williams warned her readers in 1994 "don't try this [accessing the website] at midnight."
A different card catalog, used by primarily by catalogers, is stored in the basement of the Library of Congress Madison building, and is not open to the public.
Although at one time this masonry arch bridge outside of Washington, D.C. was the longest of its kind in the world, it has become better known for the controversial names on its dedication plaques than the engineering feats of its construction.
The Union Arch Bridge was part of the Washington Aqueduct, planned after a fire broke out in the Capitol building and there wasn't a ready supply of water to fight it. The construction of the bridge began in 1857, and while this work moved along smoothly, there was no shortage of drama and political intrigue going on behind the scenes.
The Civil War broke out the year the bridge was completed. One of the primary architects of the bridge, Army Corps of Engineers officer Alfred Rives, resigned and joined his native Virginia in the Confederacy. The other, officer Montgomery Meigs had his name removed from a dedication plaque on the bridge and replaced it with the Latin phrase “Esto Perpetua” or “Let it last forever."
Another plaque commemorating the bridge listed the names of government officials who started the project and those in office when it was finished in 1861. However the Secretary of War when the project began was Jefferson Davis, who was now infamous as the president of the Confederacy. The decision was made to remove his name from the plaque as well.
By the early 1900s, however, Southern politicians began lobbying to have Davis' name carved back into the bridge. Theodore Roosevelt, in one of his last acts as president, controversially ordered that Davis' name be returned to its original place.
Although officially dedicated as the Union Arch Bridge, over time the bridge became more well known as the Cabin John Bridge, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Cabin John Aqueduct. Whatever you want to call it, it was clearly constructed well, still carrying water to Washington, D.C. from the Potomac River, as well as vehicle traffic the engineers couldn't have anticipated.
"Trifot" is a kinetic sculpture by Czech installation artist David Černý, who is known for his whimsical, provocative works like the babies crawling up Žižkov Tower and a bus doing push ups. This sculpture, installed outside the Czech Photo Centre gallery, offers a decidedly dark perspective on surveillance and privacy.
The 40-foot-tall statue is modeled off of vintage cameras with eyeballs in place of lenses. The bulging eyes swivel about independently, watching passersby, who might be shocked to find themselves broadcast onto one of six monitors in the area.
Černý's sculpture references the dystopian future of unchecked government surveillance in George Orwell's 1984 and the terrifying alien technology in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. According to the artist though, it's also meant to honor the observational art of photography. Those who find themselves unwittingly filmed by Trifot might feel differently however.
Since last week's release of the new Michelin Guide France, people have been flocking to the Bouche à Oreille, on Route de la Chapelle in the small town of Bourges. Michelin gave the restaurant—a roadside diner specializing in inexpensive French staples, like €13 beef bourguignon—one of its coveted stars, a sign of quality and sophistication.
The problem? They've got the wrong Bouche à Oreille.
As The Local explains, the famed guide, published last week, meant to list a different restaurant, also named Bouche à Oreille. That one is on the Rue de la Chapelle in the South of France, and serves more rarified stuff—lobster tarts, veal sweetbreads, things like that. Michelin plans to correct the mistake.
In the meantime, the diner's owner, Veronique Jacquet, is tickled, but also a bit nervous. Her regulars are local workers, and she doesn't want them to get pushed out by the sudden influx of would-be tastemakers. "I'm starting to get snowed under," she told The Local. "We don't have a big area and we only have four hands." Sounds like the makings of a new culinary movement.
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.
Hundreds of feet above the picturesque Black Sea coastline, the structural skeletons of an unfinished socialist dream protrude from the greenery.
In the 1970s Lyudmila Todorova Zhivkova, daughter of Bulgaria's socialist leader, was at the forefront of numerous projects aimed at promoting Bulgarian culture worldwide. The most ambitious of these initiatives was an arts education center in Arkutino, which would house gifted children from countries around the world.
Lyudmila died unexpectedly in 1981. Her father, Prime Minister Todor Zhivkov, set out to honor her wish. He began construction on the massive complex in 1985, which was to contain an auditorium, classrooms, and rehearsal spaces. Summer programs where world class musicians would host workshops would draw the most talented students to the seaside resort.
But in 1989, as the Soviet Bloc was crumbling the project was abruptly halted. Despite various attempts to revive the arts center or repurpose it, the Arkutino school remains unfinished and abandoned to this day. The names of construction workers can still be seen on the unfinished cement walls of the complex, along with the date that project was abandoned.
The beach at Arkutino remains popular although the abandoned building looms just beyond the shore. The views from the roof of the buildings provide a beautiful panorama of the water below, and a beachside hotel called the Arkutino Family Resort now neighbors the unfinished school.
One of the baseline geological facts of the world is that there are, in our current age, seven continents—North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and Antarctica. But a new paper published in GSA Today, the journal of the Geological Society of America, argues that list is incomplete. The paper’s authors suggest the existence of an eighth continent, Zealandia.
Zealandia, they report, extends 1.9 million square miles and is 94 percent underwater. The land that peaks above the ocean surface is primarily the two islands of New Zealand and the island of New Caledonia. But this land mass is elevated relative to other parts of the ocean floors and is isolated from Australia.
You might think that a continent is defined by its huge mass of land, and previous to this New Zealand was considered part of "Oceania," a catchall for the non-continental parts of the world. But there are particular features that define continents, which don't necessarily include large amounts of land above the current level of the oceans.
"The identification of Zealandia as a geological continent, rather than a collection of continental islands, fragments, and slices, more correctly represents the geology of this part of Earth," the researchers write.
The idea of Zealandia has been around for at least two decades, but this is the first peer-reviewed paper to make the case for it. For New Zealand geologists, the idea is "nothing new," The Guardian reports. Australia seems remarkably sanguine about the separation, especially considering that, as The Sydney Morning Herald reports, "Zealandia also includes parts of Australian territory, Lord Howe and Norfolk islands." Perhaps this will finally explain the great Australia-New Zealand rivalry—they're not just two English-speaking countries lumped together one corner of the world; they're two English-speaking countries on totally different continents.
Update: An employee of American Disposal Services wrote Atlas Obscura to say that the raccoon reached safety. "As soon as we knew he was hitchin' a ride, the driver pulled over and made sure he was okay while we waited for Animal Control," the employee, a training coordinator at the company, said. Long live garbage truck raccoon. Our original post is below.
This morning, Helena B. Evich, a reporter at Politico, spotted a raccoon. But not just any raccoon: one that appeared to be hanging on for dear life on the back of a garbage truck.
This raccoon is having a rough morning-just wanted some trash & ended up in Rosslyn!
That's a raccoon who surely didn't think it'd end up in this situation.
Evich later tweeted that she'd contacted the garbage company, who, she said, was "super responsive" and had the truck's number.
The raccoon itself seemed to have a good grip, later crawling farther up the truck after Evich took the photo.
It's unclear what ultimately happened to garbage truck raccoon, as Evich eventually lost track of the animal, agreeing with one Twitter user that she hopes garbage truck raccoon is all right.
As do we. Stay safe out there, garbage truck raccoon.
The nondescript, office park-looking building which houses the Museum of Socialist Art perfectly fits the subject matter of its collection. The building is drab, utilitarian, and situated in a shabby neighborhood. But this surrounding only adds to the atmosphere of the museum, which exhibits art from Bulgaria's time as a communist state, from 1946 to 1989.
The museum's collection features works of socialist painting, sculpture, and propaganda, many from eminent artists of the day. Subjects include native communist leaders such as Bulgaria's first communist leader Georgy Dimitrov and its long-ruling dictator Todor Zhivkov, as well as international communist figures like Vladimir Lenin.
Of course, smiling Bulgarian peasants and sweating steelworkers working for the common good of the people and state also make an appearance. The museum shop has a small theater which shows propaganda movie and television reels, with English subtitles.
The museum, which opened in 2011 and is a branch of the Bulgarian National Gallery, is somewhat small, but the exhibits are interesting. Undoubtedly the premier attraction is the collection of communist statuary arranged outside the museum in the front courtyard, culled from former communist buildings, cellars, and warehouses and saved from being melted down or destroyed, the fate that met many such works with the ousting of Zhivkov in 1989. Huge busts of Lenin glare lifelessly ahead and Bulgarian workers clutch rifles in stone-faced silence, ready to meet the evil forces of capitalism. It even has the gigantic red star which used to sit atop the Communist Party House in Sofia, now an administrative building for the Bulgarian National Assembly.
The Morpeth Arms is among the creepiest of old pubs in London. In addition to originally being used a prison and transfer facility for the old Millbank penitentiary, the building was also a deportation holding centre for convicts being shipped off to Australia.
Convicts would be led from their cells at Millbank through the tunnels below ground, where they would be locked up temporarily before being taken aboard a ship or a carriage. The tension of the space can still be felt in the air, which has a distinctly eerie vibe. Millbank Prison closed in 1890, but the underground cells remained.
It's now a typical London pub with beer, food, and loyal patrons, but the dark history of the cells in the basement hasn't been forgotten. Bar staff have reported seeing movements or items replaced, and a general feeling of unease when closing up at the end of the night. The phantom feelings have gotten to the point there's a closed-circuit TV with a camera fixed on the cells monitoring for spectral activity.
The other notable feature of Morpeth Arms is its "Spying Room." The room is on the second floor of the pub, decorated in a 1920s style and themed after Mata Hari, the infamous dancer and double agent. Its windows, which just so happen to look out upon the British Intelligence Service building across the street, are adorned with binoculars so pub patrons can spy on the spies. MI6 and FBI agents are said to stop by the bar for a pint from time to time.
Knut the polar bear, rejected by his mother and raised by zookeepers, became an international celebrity after his unfortunate beginnings. He was the first polar bear cub to survive at the Berlin Zoo in more than 30 years, and the fluffy bear was happy to frolic with humans, particularly when rewarded with his favorite treat, croissants.
Sadly, Knut died at only four years old after an encephalitic seizure, the first known case of such a disease appearing in a non-human. Germany went into mourning for its beloved bear, and Knut's pelt was mounted at the Museum für Naturkunde.
The bear was displayed in the entranceway of the museum, and later was added to the museum's hefty collection of other taxidermy. Though he was a bear that lived a fairly tame life, Knut's afterlife will be spent among his wild companions.
Ever wonder how pilots manage to stay on course without road signs or anything? Well, sometimes they don’t. And just like regular, land-locked drivers, sometimes they have to stop and ask for directions.
As seen in a YouTube video shared by The Aviationist, a fully-loaded Kazakhstani helicopter recently plopped itself down on in the middle of a snowy Kazakhstan highway, so that they could get out and ask a passing truck driver for directions. In the video, one of the passengers can be seen exiting the helicopter and running over to the parked truck, like he’s just making a neighborly request. After gesticulating wildly over the right directions with the driver, the military passenger gets back in to the chopper and they fly off.
According to The Aviationist, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defense said that the surprise landing was part of a training exercise to teach their helicopter crews to find their way if they get lost in a storm, or their equipment becomes unreliable. Among the suggested techniques was “human survey.” So, just asking for directions.
My hunt for hearts began, as I'm sure at least a few other meals have, with a still of Daenerys Targaryen tearing into a raw stallion's heart. I had been thinking about hearts, and I kept coming back to the idea of eating one, which is no casual meal. Hearts are food for hunters. They convey power, and eating one promises to transform a person by bestowing the qualities of the dead animal. Looking at Daenerys, knowing she was fictional, I still wondered, what would it be like to eat a horse's heart? Could I do it?
Practically, of course, no, I could not. In the United States, horses aren't considered food for people, except in extreme situations. But I started to wonder what other hearts might be available to me. I had never considered heart as an appealing food before, but after a few quick minutes of research, I had a list of hearts that people did eat—beef hearts, duck hearts, lamb hearts, pigeon hearts, chicken hearts—and I was sure there must be more.
In most places in the world, I imagine it might be difficult and probably impossible to obtain a heart to eat. I live in New York City. The question flashed into my mind: How many different hearts could I try? How many different hearts could I buy in one day?
It was a challenge to myself and to my city. I've lived here for more than seven years, not long by some standards, but longer than I've lived almost anywhere else. New York and I have settled into a comfortable relationship, a Sunday kind of love, of familiar tiffs, pleasant routines, and favorite pastimes. But if I were to search for hearts, I would have to open myself up to the city's possibilities and explore again. I had some ideas about where I might start on this heart hunt, but I didn't know where it might take me.
New York is full of speciality shops that somehow make a business of selling obscure items and foodstuffs, and I imagined that to find a heart at all, I would have to visit a hipster butcher or a meat market in a more diverse neighborhood. But I was wrong. The first hearts I found were at the Stop & Shop in Atlantic Center, right by a Target and a Best Buy.
The morning of the heart hunt, I began by looking at the supermarkets on my way to work. I live in a wealthy neighborhood in Brooklyn, where grocers are stocked with ingredients for both adventurous cooks and a wide array of ethnic cuisines; it seemed unlikely but possible that I might find what I was looking for there. I first tried the supermarket around the corner from my apartment, where I found a surprising variety of animal parts—lard, neck bones, shin bones, cow feet, sliced liver, tripe, chicken gizzards, oxtails, chicken feet, pig feet, smoked hocks, pork skin, and a lot of imitation crab meat. No hearts, though.
A few blocks down, at Key Foods, there was still more variety of parts: slab bacon, fat back, smoked turkey tails and necks, pigs' tails, both white and black pudding, lamb necks, marrow bones, rendered duck fat, ground buffalo meat... and still no hearts.
When I got to Stop & Shop, I wasn't expecting to find anything: their meat selection was more basic than the other two markets'. But there with the chicken, instead of just gizzards, was a styrofoam package of gizzard mixed with hearts. Hearts! I picked them up and paid $2 for my first hearts of the day.
Perhaps, I thought, this would be easier than I expected. Preparing for the hunt, I had started to worry that New York might let me down. The first couple of butchers I called said that they sometimes had heart meat available, but there could be no guarantee that they would have it on any particular day. "Sometimes our beef has a heart and sometimes it doesn’t," one butcher told me. I was nervous enough that I would end the day with no hearts at all that I ended up ordering a beef heart in advance. It's always good to have a heart on layaway, a backup to rely on at the end of the day, when all other options have been exhausted.
So I knew I would end the day with one type of heart, at least, and now I had two.
The next heart, though, was harder to come by. After lunch, I set out from my office and visited the Polish meat markets in the Brooklyn neighborhood where I work. I had always intended to peek inside these places, but at the end of the day my body would always switch to the automatic routine where it rushed home or off to meet friends. When I walked inside the first one, I guessed immediately I would not find what I was looking for. I was met with the toothsome smell of smoked meat and cases of well-crafted sausages, in all shapes and sizes. There was fresh meat, too, but a limited selected. Still, I asked. They did not sell heart. Neither did the shop across the street. I had to go further.
Brooklyn's been blessed in the past decade with ambitious butcher shops that treat meat like a treasure, promising ethically raised, tasty cuts, for a price. The popular enthusiasm for off-cuts might have crested a few years back, but I still thought I would try my luck at Marlow and Daughters, which buys whole animals from small farms. They didn't disappoint. They had beef heart, and I kicked myself for my lack of faith in New York City serendipity. They usually had chicken hearts, too, but they had sold their last tub of guts, they said. Only one of the farms that sold them pork sent the heart along, and it wasn't the one that had delivered this week. After an hour's search, I was heartless. I headed to Chinatown.
Of New York's three main Chinatowns, the one in Manhattan is the most tourist-oriented. But it was closest, and I held out hope that I could still find what I was looking for. A few blocks from Canal Street, I walked into the Bayard Street Meat Market, and my own heart grew hopeful. The meat cases were stocked with every random cut of meat I has seen earlier in the day, plus more. There were whole blocks of black blood; there were chickens, including black-skinned Silkie chickens, on ice with their feet and head still attached; in the freezer, there were testicles from more than one kind of animal. But as many times as I walked up and down the shop, I didn't see a heart. When I asked, they had only bad news: no hearts were available that day.
The next shop I went to was on Catherine Street, on the other side of the Bowery, past the spot where I had waited with my college boyfriend for a Chinatown bus to go... I couldn't remember where now, no matter how much I tried. This small area of Manhattan, squished behind the Police Department and between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, feels a little cut off from the rest of the city, and I could remember coming here only once before, to find a book that only the library branch located here had in. When I found the meat shop, I was optimistic. While the one I had just visited had signs in Chinese and English, this sign's shops were entirely in Chinese.
When I asked for a heart, the man behind the counter said, "Pork heart?" and nodded yes. He showed me a tray full of little red coins of meat, and I was surprised—they were so small! Was that what pork heart looked like? When he asked me how many I wanted, I hesitated. "Five?"
"Five pounds or five pieces?" he asked.
"Five pieces?" I was unsure, and he looked surprised. He went into the back, came back carrying a bucket, and it was only then that I noticed at the back of the tray three large hearts—hearts, clearly hearts—and realized I had made a mistake. I only wanted one, I told him, and he laughed, because five hearts! That was a lot of heart to order. He weighed one for me, and handed it over. It cost $3.
Carrying that heart, I felt for the first time the weird weight of the mission I had started on. A pig's heart looks almost exactly like a human heart, and I started wondering whether I had ever seen one before. I knew the heart when I saw it; I knew exactly what it was supposed to look like. But where would I have encountered a heart? In photos, only. Was this the first heart I had ever seen in real life? Later, I realized that I must have seen a human heart preserved in a jar, most likely at the Mütter Museum. Still, this was the first time I had held a mammal's heart, a heart like my own, in my hand.
From there, the hearts came more easily. I went to Greenmarket at Union Square, where I bought the last package of lambs' hearts (it came with two) from Shannon Brook Farm. At the duck stand, I found duck hearts, only they were freeze-dried as dog treats, not meant for people. Another stall sometimes sold goat heart, but it was the end of the season, so they were out. They could offer me a veal heart, though, which I balked at when I saw it was 1.86 pounds. (When I had ordered the beef heart, the butcher had told me it would be 2 to 3 pounds, but if the veal heart was so heavy, how much larger might the beef heart be?)
It was around this time, chicken, pork, and lamb hearts already acquired, that I started worrying that I wouldn't get enough hearts. Had I bought enough chicken hearts in the morning? Would I be able to find more than four kinds? Suddenly four hearts didn't seem like enough, and I started hoping for a goat heart. I had just enough time before I needed to be back at the office to visit the meat-packing district, where at a meat market on 9th Avenue, I bought a whole package of chicken hearts only. Dozens and dozens of them. Too many chicken hearts.
My last stop was Esposito Meat Market, which has been in business since 1932 and seemed like the sort of business that's hard to find in New York now. While I was waiting to be served, a customer walked in, and the butcher greeted her by name—"Hi, Audrey." A few minutes later, another regular came, and told the man behind the counter, "Give me the breast this week, Mitch," as she pointed to the chicken. When it was my turn, I found that I could have come straight here, if all I wanted was heart. What kind of heart did I want? They had pork heart, beef, sheep…
"Goat?" I asked. They sold me a goat heart, a small, frozen handful of flesh. I put it into the bag with my other hearts, which had started to feel a little bit creepy. As I rode the subway, I wondered what other people would think if they knew that I was carrying around a collection of animal hearts. The pork heart, the sheep heart, and the goat heart all looked like different-sized versions of the exact same organ, small, medium, and large. What kind of creep carried around four hearts? Even then, before I was faced with the problem of eating them, I started feeling queasy about the meat I had chosen. Most meat is easy enough to distance from living animals, but a heart is proof of death: in Snow White, the Queen asks the hunter to bring back the maiden's heart. Carrying these hearts, I had to face more directly the fact that these animals had died, and I would eat part of them.
Later that evening, when I picked up the beef heart I had ordered from the Meat Hook, another small, hip butcher shop, it only added to the weight I was carrying: it was a whopping three-and-a-half pounds.
I had fulfilled the task I had set for myself. New York had lived up to my expectations, even dazzled and charmed me. I remembered again why I love this city, and I had acquired many hearts, almost certainly too many hearts. What was I going to do with them all?
Eating heart meat is uncanny because, I think, the experience is both similar and distinct to the experience of eating more common cuts of meat. People kept pointing out that, after all, it's just a muscle, and though I started out from that place, I came to feel it wasn't accurate. I started pulling out knowledge lodged in my brain from high school biology and talking about the distinction between skeletal muscle, which we eat most often, the smooth muscle of the esophagus and stomach, and cardiac muscle, which isn't quite like either of the others. Like the smooth muscles of the body, the heart works involuntarily, without direction, but it looks a bit like skeletal muscle, strong and striated. But heart cells are organized differently, which means that the muscle's texture—the meat's texture—is different. There was a gap between eating other meat and eating heart meat, and it required a bit of bravery to cross. (Is that what they mean when they say "take heart"?)
I went looking for heart recipes, and despite the fad of nose-to-tail butchering, the internet wasn't much help, although I did learn that a small number of people have a passion for fresh venison heart, grilled or corned. Still, most of the recipes I found came from paleo diet blogs and basically advocated for a quick sear. The cookbooks I had at home were of no help at all. For this, I needed experts.
"With all animal hearts you have two choices—cook it fast and rare or long and slow," says Jennifer McLagan, a Toronto-based chef whose cookbook Odd Bits covers all manner of offal. "Anywhere in the middle is awful." This, I learned quickly, was the main piece of advice for preparing heart. One of the most popular preparations for beef heart, for instance, is Peruvian anticuchos, where the meat is marinated with peppers and lime, then skewered and quickly grilled. The other options is to braise the meat, either whole or sliced: heart is stewed with various vegetables and spices everywhere from Portugal to the Philippines.
Anissa Helou, a London-based chef and author of Offal, prefers the fast-and-hot preparations.
"The treatment would change according to the heart," she says. "If it is from a medium to a big animal, sliced thinly and grilled very quickly on a griddle would be perfect, and if they are from a small animal such as chickens or ducks, grilled quickly on skewers would be great. You can also stew them but they won’t be so good."
McLagan also had a recommendation for one preparation in particular. "Heart tartare is amazing," she said.
I tried the beef heart first. When I first unwrapped it, perhaps because it was so fresh, it smelled stronger than any other piece of meat I'd ever had—not bad, but a sharp tang of metal and blood. I seared a piece of it like I would a steak. After it rested, I sliced it thinly and took a bite. It did taste like steak, but also not—the texture was mushier, more like baby food, and the taste stronger, more like meat boiled down to its umami essence. It wasn't unfamiliar, though I couldn't quite place where I had tasted it before. Later, I would read that commercial ground beef could contain a certain percentage of beef heart meat, and I placed the taste: the thin patties of fast-food burgers.
The chicken hearts were next, marinated with lemon juice and garlic and skewered on rosemary, a recommendation I'd picked up at Marlow and Daughters. They looked like little grey nuggets of meat, and when I tasted the first one, I was surprised how much I liked it. While the beef heart had tasted like bizarro steak, the chicken didn't taste like anything else I'd tried. It didn't taste like chicken; it was meatier and smoother. I had a few more.
In McLagan's book, she offers suggested substitutions for each of her recipes, and it seemed like many of the hearts were interchangeable. The "Peruvian heart kabobs" could be made with beef heart, lamb heart, or poultry hearts; the beef heart in the heart salad could be subbed for lamb heart or pork heart. When I asked her how I should choose what to do with my many hearts, she told me to consider that "it really is just like any other piece of meat." The beef would taste like beef, the pork like pork, the lamb like lamb. Treat it accordingly.
I wanted to braise at least one of the hearts, so I replicated a pork stew I had made when I was trying out a medieval diet. I sliced and grilled pieces of goat heart plain. I marinated more beef heart to make the Peruvian anticuchos; I saved some of the beef heart—there was so much of it!—and the lamb heart for the tartare.
None of it was impossible to eat. Each time I started working with a heart, I noticed that my fear of it slipped away when I sliced it into pieces and it looked like more familiar meat. Each time I went to eat it, though, the fear returned a little bit. It did taste like any other piece of meat, except that it didn't. Something was always a little different. The texture was both softer and chewier; the aftertaste more metallic. I enjoyed the goat heart, which I thought tasted milder than other goat I'd had, and the beef anticuchos were different enough from any other beef kabobs I'd had that they tasted like a new treat. The pork heart from the stew did not taste bad; it had a mild porkiness to it and a stronger, liver-like flavor.
I tried the tartares last. The beef was darker than the pinkish lamb, and I mixed them both with the salty and sharp condiments of tartare, minced shallots and capers, a dash of dijon mustard, and umami worchestire sauce. I put a bit on a cracker and tried it. The meat melted away, soft and pleasant and rich. Of all the ways I had prepared the hearts, this was the first one where I thought: I could keep eating this. In that moment, it felt like the hunt had been worth it. I had learned to love something new.
Where to buy heart in New York City
Stop & Shop 625 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, Marlow & Daughters 95 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY Catherine Meat Market 21 Catherine St., New York, NY Shannon Brook Farm Union Square Greenmarket Big Apple Meat Market 529 9th Ave., New York, NY Esposito Meat Market 500 9th Ave., New York, NY The Meat Hook 397 Graham Ave, Brooklyn, NY
