The grand marble structure next to the White House is the headquarters for the Organization of American States, an international diplomatic body that promotes peace and commerce between North and South American nations.
The OAS building was made possible by a philanthropic donation from Andrew Carnegie, a longtime supporter of world peace. The magnificent design was put together by Albert Kelsey and Paul Cret and quickly drew praise as one of the most elegant pieces of architecture in Washington, D.C. (Back then the OAS went by a different name, the Pan American Union).
One of the most intriguing bits of architecture was a large indoor patio area that featured flora from across the Americas. Exotic coffee trees, palms, mangos, and cacti made quite the impression on visitors when the building opened in 1910. According to newspaper accounts from the time, these prized plants were protected from the elements by an early retractable roof.
In 1910, The Washington Post wrote that “In the winter an electric engine will apply energy to a curious Yankee machine which will thrust out from a hiding place over this huge patio a roof of steel and glass, which will admit the light, but which will exclude the cold, the rain, and the snow.”
The botanical delights continue outside the building in a formal garden, where you can find a sunken pool and thematic bits of Pan American sculpture.
One of the more recent quirks at this site can be found in the 500 foot tunnel that connects the OAS main building with an administrative annex. The otherwise drab space was decorated in 1960 with a huge mural by Carlos Páez Vilaró. The work is titled “Roots of Peace,” and was completed with the help of dozens of student volunteers from the nearby Corcoran School of Art. According to OAS Historian James Patrick Kiernan, it’s actually the world’s longest mural. You can see more pictures here.
Soft with a slightly crunchy exterior, and stuffed with a sweet filling, these fish-shaped cakes called "taiyaki" are a traditional and popular street vendor snack in Japan.
Similar to a waffle or pancake, the adorable and delectable fishy treats are made in special iron molds. In the video above, a taiyaki baker expertly pours the batter, pipes out a sweet bean paste filling (but it can be anything from Nutella to cheese), and closes the mold. Out plops a row of fresh, hot golden taiyaki. The puffy, spongy texture will definitely make your mouth water.
Taiyaki means baked sea bream, a kind of fish that used to be an expensive delicacy only eaten on special occasions in the late 1800s to the early 1900s in Japan. People aren't sure exactly when and who started making the fish-shaped pastries, but the original circular molds were changed into to look like the sea bream—emanating a bit of that luxury of the precious fish.
Most street vendors stick to the traditional sea bream fish shape, however more recently, tayaki in the form of the flopping fish Pokémon Magikarp have been popping up for a limited time.
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.
After the Battle of Solferino on June 24, 1859—a decisive battle of the Second War of Italian Unification that led to the founding of the Red Cross— both the French army under Napoleon III and the Austrian army under Franz Joseph withdrew. They left the battlefield, strewn with the bodies of tens of thousands of fallen soldiers, to the locals to clean up.
The bones of around 7,000 dead soldiers were placed in the Church of San Pietro, where they remain today. The vast collection of bones are neatly stored according type. Thousands of skulls line the walls behind the altar, stacked on row upon row of shelving.
It may sound very gruesome, but the ossuary is a quiet and respectful place to reflect on the aftermath of war, and pay respects to the fallen soldiers.
Anyone that’s ever tripped and caught themselves, trying to play it off like nothing happened and hoping no one noticed, can relate to the feeling of relief when you know you got away with it. Unfortunately, here is one scooter-riding kid, who, this time, might not feel that way.
In a short Instagram video recently shared by user Paul Ahern, you can see a sheet of wet cement that appears to bare the cartoonish impression of handlebars, a pair of splayed hands, a faceplant, and even a deep divot where a front wheel embedded itself—the perfect picture of an unfortunate fall. The video ends by zooming in on the presumed victim, who's seen pushing away from the scene of the crime.
It's not clear where or when the video was shot, though Ahern has posted other pictures and videos that appear to have been taken on Australia's Gold Coast.
Wherever you are, small child who faceplanted, stay safe.
On Minnesota’s southern border (hundreds of miles west of the far more famous “Niagara”) is a geological spectacle known as Niagara Cave. The grotto is among the largest in the Midwest, and is home to a 60-foot subterranean waterfall, 100-foot-high ceilings, ancient fossils, unusual limestone rock formations, calcite flowstone, an echo chamber, and even a wedding chapel for the adventurous affianced.
The cave was discovered in 1924, when legend has it that three pigs disappeared from a nearby farm and ended up in a sinkhole. When their owner went looking for the wayward swine, he not only found his livestock—alive and well, 75 feet underground—he also discovered the underground chamber and its many wonders. Public tours started about 10 years later.
While the cavern itself is likely million of years old, Niagara Cave has a 21st-century claim to fame. In 2015 it became the first commercial cave in the world whose energy use is 100 percent offset by solar energy—its large photovoltaic solar panel array produces around 45,000 kilowatts of energy per year.
Visitors to the cave can embark on hour-long guided tours, consisting of a mile-long hike around the underground marvel. Outside the cave, visitors can also pan for gemstones in a manmade trough, play mini golf, picnic, and of course, shop.
Australians weren’t supposed to have used magic. The first British settlement on the continent was founded in 1788, at a time when superstitious practices and beliefs were thought to be dying out, replaced by rational, enlightenment thought.
But, in the present day, after Ian Evans saw his first apotropaic marks—ritual signs meant to avert evil—in England, he started looking for them in Australia, too. “On a casual sort of visit,” he says, he found one in the stables of Shene, a historic estate about 30 minutes of Hobart, the capital of Tasmania.
“Wow,” he thought, “they’re here, too.”
Evans is aiming to more thoroughly document apotropaic marks, through a new Tasmanian Magic Project. Though they were once commonly used, these symbols have never been systematically recorded, in Australia or in England, where they are better known. For years they were overlooked or dismissed as marks made by craftsman in the assembly of a building.
But as scholars begin to better understand what they call the “material culture of building magic,” there are new efforts to collect and understand these evil-averting signs. In the U.K., Heritage England put out a call this past fall for examples of ritual marks and received more than 600 responses. Evans’ project will have its first field season this coming March, and if the project raises enough money, there will be two more later in the year. The goal of these projects is to better understand how and why these symbols were used and to tease out the ways English-speaking people used magic, long after they were thought to have given it up.
Apotropaic marks are sometimes called “witch’s marks,” although Evans prefers to call them “evil-averting marks” (since there’s no evidence that people in Tasmania believed in witches). One of the most commonly found is the hexafoil or “daisy wheel,” seen above. Created with a compass, the shape forms a continuous line. It was thought that evil would be attracted to these shapes and get caught in an endless maze.
Other marks are “Marian symbols,” associated with the Virgin Mary, and burn marks created purposefully with candles. They have been found in churches and houses, barns and caves, often by some sort of opening to the outside world, whether a window, doorway, or chimney.
These signs were meant to protect the people within from the evils that might sneak in. They were part of an artillery of tools that could be used to fight evil, which included witches’ bottles, pierced and baked hearts, written charms, and objects, usually shoes or clothes, concealed in the walls of a building.
Since he starting finding evidence of magical practices in Australia, around 2004, Evans has spent years collecting examples of these rituals; in 2010 he completed a dissertation on concealed objects that were hidden in the walls and hearths of houses to protect against evil.
Evans can't say for sure that this brand of British magic came to Australia with the First Fleet, as early as 1788. "But there's a good chance that it did," he says.
But he realized, he says, that concealed objects were only part of the story of the practice of magic in Australia. In his original research, he found apotropaic marks in a series of buildings, and he’s convinced there must be more. In his preliminary investigations in Tasmania, he’s found burn marks in three stables. “In the stables of one house, there are seven horse stalls, and we found 58 burn marks in there,” he says. “These weren’t the result of some stable hand leaving his candle in the wrong place. They were deliberate.”
Burn marks might have been used to inoculate a building against fire or lightning. These signs were meant to protect people against forces, of one sort of another, that they couldn’t control. Australia in the 19th century was a scary, uncertain place for colonizers, who feared convicts, bushrangers, and Aboriginal people. Making protective marks may have offered settlers some certainty and relief. “I think they were motivated by fear,” says Evans. In his dissertation, he writes, “Folk magic gave emigrants and exiles a sense of control at a time when their grip on this world seemed fragile indeed.”
Evans is focusing on Tasmania because it has one of the highest concentrations of heritage houses in Australia. Some of these houses have been in the same family for generations: at one property, the eighth generation of the same family is still living there. In this part of the country, houses remain relatively unchanged, and there are still traces of the past to be found, by those who look carefully.
Earlier this week, Reddit user vadermeer was at the Seattle Goodwill Outlet, when “I noticed the Apple logo on letterhead sticking out from a bin of books” and started digging through the box. Inside was a trove of papers from the early days of Apple history, from 1979 and 1980, three or four years after the company was founded.
The pile of papers included “inter-office memos, meeting notes and progress reports” detailing the development of software security for the company’s new products. They belong to Jack MacDonald, who managed software for the Apple II and III.
Vadermeer uploaded the whole pile for the internet to see; they’re also now saved to the Internet Archive. Gizmodo paged through the documents and discovered some good tidbits. The team was trying to develop anti-piracy measures, essentially. The ideal level of security was “very secure,” defined as “breakable by hardware hacks with a respectable amount of effort to the point of being able to examine programs.”
But at that time, Gizmodo discovered, Apple considered secure anything that Steve Wozniak couldn’t break into.
“Randy feels that if he has a version that Woz can’t copy then it is as protected as possible,” one memo said.
The idyllic Alameda Park in Santiago de Compostela is reminiscent of a country estate, anchored at the center by the 17th century Baroque chapel of Santa Susana. There are lush gardens, historic statuary, elaborate tiered steps, and an unassuming stone bench: a “banco acústico” that holds a hundred years of secrets and whispers.
The granite seat is known as the Bench of Whispers, or sometimes the Lovers Bench. Its semicircular design and physical orientation give it an unusual acoustic characteristic. If you sit at one end and place your head up against the back of the seat, and speak even in the softest tones, your voice travels all the way across to the other end just as loud or even louder than it started out.
The bench was added to the park around 1916, and its special properties were soon noticed by courting couples. The spot became a well-known destination for innocent trysts during the Franco years, when crackdowns on social mores included regulating young unmarried couples. Touching in public, or even speaking, was against the rules. So suggesting an innocent walk in the park, where maybe your betrothed just happened to be walking too, might end up with a secret romantic word or two.
The nature of sound travel at the bench is similar to the phenomenon of the Whispering Galleries at the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral or at Grand Central Terminal. It’s not clear whether a person sitting in the middle of the bench can catch the whispers along the way, but if they do let’s hope they keep it to themselves.
Smoking is bad for you. You probably shouldn't do it. You definitely shouldn't attempt to convince your friends to do it. And under absolutely zero circumstances should you ever, ever force a chicken to do it.
Revelers at Stellenbosch University in South Africa learned this the hard way last weekend, when photos of someone sticking a cigarette in a rooster's beak at a party made the rounds on social media. At least one (human) offender may face prosecution, News24 reports.
The party, which took place Saturday, February 18th, was put on by a school dorm called Helshoogte Residence. The hall's emblem is a proud rooster, so they throw an annual "hoenderdag," or "chicken day" celebration, Stellenbosch University spokesperson Martin Viljoen told News24.
According to Viljoen, hoenderdag does not generally feature actual chickens—it's more of a food-stalls-and-DJs type of thing—but this year, an outsider brought along an impressionable rooster, and things got out of hand. Besides the smoking, a video shows the rooster being thrown high into the air, to an EDM beat.
The residency has publicly condemned the incident. A local animal welfare society filed a complaint with police, who have begun investigating, News24 reports.
As for the rooster, the animal welfare society says he was rescued by a bystander and is now "safe, happy and among other chickens." They're probably really into his cool, newly-raspy cock-a-doodle-doo.
While waiting on the F train platform on a Sunday in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, you might think you've stepped into the Twilight Zone when eight vintage subway cars barrel up to your station. This is the holiday train, a once-a-year treat courtesy of the MTA's New York Transit Museum, which whisks MTA patrons back in time.
The "Shoppers Special," comprised of cars from the 1930s to the 1970s, is bedecked with wreaths and bows for the season. People are charmed by both the similarities and differences between modern subway cars and those of yesteryear. Seats were upholstered with rattan, stops were announced by analog rolling signs, and the heavy doors would squish you if you didn't get out of the way. There was no air conditioning, of course, so ventilation was provided by ceiling fans and open slats above the windows (which would have made the ride much noisier). Even the ads are vintage—in one a flapper encourages you to chew Wrigley's spearmint after every meal, and another advertises a Central Park "Citizenship Day" celebration hosted by Mayor Robert F. Wagner.
The arrival of the holiday train is quite an event; so much so that some people dress up in period fashion just for the occasion. The immersive atmosphere is enough to make you believe the train could be shuttling you back to 1940, at least for the few minutes you have no cell service underground.
Outside the holiday season the vintage cars are on view at the Transit Museum. Visitors can walk through the museum's "nostalgia fleet" and appreciate all the historic transportation features–minus the rattle and rumble of the tracks.
British Palestine. The USSR. The Free State of Fiume. History is rife with states that simply didn't make it: ones, thanks to the precariousness of politics, that eventually switched names, changed hands, or disappeared altogether.
Tom Topol has been collecting passports for 14 years, and runs the website passport-collector.com, a repository of travel documents through the ages. Topol first became fascinated by old passports after a chance encounter with some at a flea market in Kyoto, Japan. "Today our passports are uniform," he says, "but look at an old passport [from the] 19th century—at that time they were really some kind of art." He has spent last decade and a half learning everything he can about the politics and geography of historical passports, as well as digging into the stories of individual booklets and their bearers.
One of his specialties is passports from these has-been countries. "Such documents are historical treasures, reflecting the politics and geography of that time," he says. Plus, with their soft-focus photos, curly signatures, and colorful stamps, they tend to be a lot prettier than our own drab travel documents.
Defunct passports may be no help when you're trying to cross a border—but they're great tools for traveling back in time. Here are six from Topol's collection, with some hints at the history they illuminate.
Colony and Protectorate of Aden, 1956
Rifle through the collection of a passport completist, and you'll notice that a lot of the covers sport the same coat of arms: a lion and a unicorn flanking a shield. That's because—surprise!—they're all from British colonies. "The British Empire issued passports in almost all of their territories," says Topol. "Collectors [are] always searching for these treasures," some of which are rarer than others—North Borneo, for example, is a prize find.
This particular passport, whose cover sports the familiar lion-and-unicorn, is from the Colony and Protectorate of Aden, one former identity of what is now Yemen. Like Zanzibar and India, the Aden Protectorate was never formally annexed by Britain—instead, in the late 1800s, the Crown decided they wanted to control the Port of Aden, and began moving into the area. Tribes around the Port then granted the Crown control over their foreign affairs in exchange for military protection.
This agreement is reflected in the passport's interior, which promises its bearer "the protection of Her Majesty's Government," and reads from left to right. In contrast, although the current Yemeni passport also has English and Arabic titles, the inside reads from right to left—and the Yemeni seal is on the front.
US Seaman's Passport, 1942
Fred Albert Bauman—a narrow-faced American with mischievous eyebrows—received his special Seaman Passport on Halloween, 1942. Although not technically from a defunct country, the Seaman Passport nonetheless illuminates a bygone era—as Topol explains, it was only issued from February 1942, a few months after the United States entered World War II, to August 1945, when Japan's army surrendered.
In addition to the standard information, the sea-green passport contains extra details about Bauman, who apparently had a scar on his left palm. It also specifies that its bearer may only use it when "following the vocation of seaman." Although Topol has seen a number of these passports, he says not many of them have very many stamps, suggesting that the seamen did most of their traveling after the war.
Free State of Fiume, 1923
Fiume—once a tiny state of its own, now part of Croatia—first became autonomous in 1719. Subject to the whims of various emperors and kings, it lost and regained its freedom multiple times over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries. By 1868, it was technically a part of the Kingdom of Hungary—but it was a diverse state where Italians, Hungarians, and Germans all rubbed elbows, and spoke a local dialect that was a fusion of its members' native languages.
In 1920, as the First World War raged, Fiume was declared an official Free State—again thanks to the international community, who thought it would be good to have a buffer between Italy and what would soon become the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It responded to its new sovereignty by remaining an unabashed melting pot. "Nationality was defined mostly by the language a person spoke," and everyone felt more like a Fiume-ian than anything else, explains Topol. This unique loyalty was underlined by the Fiume passport, which had the country's name on the cover in bold capitals, topped by a small, solitary star. Stamps to get back into the country had the same star, shown above in purple ink.
Soviet Union, 1928
Citizens of the Soviet Union used a number of different passports. An internal one, with a green cover, was issued to urban workers, and used to prevent peasants from entering the towns. This one, which belonged to a woman named Lydia Graff, was a different document that allowed for travel abroad—except to Bulgaria, Romania, Africa, the USA, and Palestine, which required extra documentation.
Graff's passport lacks a cover, but has visas showing that she traveled to Mongolia and China. It also has a crazy bureaucratic Easter egg—the stamped signature of Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda, who would later become the director of Stalin's intelligence service, and was eventually executed for alleged treason. The signature appears on the bottom left side of the page. That's one way to get an autograph.
British Palestine, 1944
It's all well and good to have a passport collection full of regular Joes. But to Topol, there's something special about finding a document that was once used to identify someone important. Such is the case with this passport from British Palestine, which once belonged to Captain Tuve T. Smolensk. Fifteen years after it was issued, the United States Coast Guard would congratulate Smolensk on his prowess in Atlantic search-and-rescue work, calling his efforts "in keeping with the highest tradition of the sea."
But—with no disrespect meant to Captain Smolensk—that's not even the best thing about this passport. That honor goes to a purple stamp on page 17, which reads "Haifa"— Israel's main port. "British Palestine turned into Israel in 1948," explains Topol. "To find nowadays a British Palestine passport with a stamp of Israel is pretty rare." For practical reasons, Captain Smolensk was likely allowed to keep his British Palestinian passport for a year or so after the switch, allowing for this strange convergence.
German Empire, 1916
The German Empire was comprised of various duchies, principalities, and free cities—including Duchy Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, which issued this green passport to one of its citizens in 1916, four years before it was absorbed by Bavaria.
The German Empire wasn't a great place to be in 1916, but the government apparently attempted to make up for some of the war and hardship by allowing citizens to take passport photos with their dogs. Did this young woman travel exclusively with her pup? Where did they go? What did they see? We may never know—but thanks to this ordinary document, we now get to wonder about it.
If you're driving through Mattoon, Illinois on an empty stomach and search “Burger King” into the GPS, you'll see there is one in the center of town, with the next closest lying more than 23 miles away. But upon arriving at the town BK, you’ll find that the classic red, yellow, and blue logo is replaced by a black-and-white sign, and the menu is noticeably different from other Burger Kings across the country.
This is Illinois’ original Burger King. Known to locals as simply “Burger King,” the small restaurant has no affiliation with the multinational fast food chain, but it sure has a long, complex legal history with it.
In 1952, Gene and Betty Hoots purchased Mattoon’s Frigid Queen ice cream shop and added burgers and fries to the menu. In need of a name change, Gene suggested renaming the shop to The Hot Dames, but Betty pointed out that “every queen needs a king.”
Taking his wife’s advice, Gene formally registered the restaurant as Burger King in 1959. His uncle, the former owner of Frigid Queen, advised him to register Burger King as an Illinois state trademark, which Gene did. Although it seemed like a meaningless decision at the time, it resulted in one of the most fascinating trademark disputes in legal history.
Although the now-famous Burger King chain first opened in Miami in 1954, by 1959 it hadn’t yet expanded to Illinois. But when it started setting up shop in the Hoots’ home state in the '60s, the family filed a state lawsuit, claiming that it had the rights to be the original and only Burger King in the Prairie State. The multinational chain responded with a federal suit, Burger King of Florida, Inc. Vs. Hoots (1968), and met the Hoots’ local Mattoon lawyer with a professional team of six attorneys.
Needless to say, the small family business didn’t stand a chance to uphold their state trademark against the power of a major corporation. In an important moment in legal history that served as a key interpretation of the Lanham Act, the United States’ primary federal trademark statute, the court ruled that the Burger King chain could operate anywhere in Illinois outside of a 20-mile radius of Mattoon.
But that still wasn’t enough for the fast food company. Burger King reportedly offered the Hootses $10,000 for permission to operate inside the 20-mile radius, but in an effort to preserve their claim and hinder competition, the family declined the offer.
To this day, the nearest Burger King to Mattoon is in Tuscola, a full 23 miles away from Mattoon. Serving Hooter Burgers (the family’s spin on the Whopper), it seems that the Hoots’ long legal battle has paid off after all, as to this day, Illinois’ original Burger King draws in hundreds of new customers fascinated by the restaurant’s peculiar history.
A cryptid is a creature whose existence, diplomatically put, cannot be proved or disproved by science. Cryptid lore tends to be less fantastical than ghost stories or fairytales, but not altogether believable. For some though, an unusual rock, unexplained crop circles, a footprint, or some hair are all the evidence they need that there are creatures unknown to humanity, hiding in the woods.
In these places, tales of mysterious creatures have become so embroiled within local narrative that whether the beast actually exists or not doesn't matter anymore. Can you imagine Loch Ness without its monster?
HAIRY HUMANOIDS
The Sasquatch, or as it's colloquially known, Bigfoot, is America's best known cryptid. It is typically depicted as a giant ape, standing around seven feet tall. Sasquatch lore extends back to American Indian mythology, which describes hairy wild men living in the woods. Anomalous sightings continued into the 20th century, but Sasquatch mania reached its peak following the famed Patterson-Gimlin tape.
Bigfoot is generally associated with the Pacific Northwest, with most sightings reported in Washington. Ape Canyon was the site in which a group of miners came under attack by a gang of wild “apemen” in 1924. According to the five miners, all of whom survived the incident and seemed convinced of its facts, they were asleep in their cabin when the assault started, and the beasts seemed out for blood. The event was widely publicized and no logical explanation was ever found.
The Sasquatch mythos has caught many in its spell. Refusing to accept claims that Bigfoot sightings are actually black bears or intentional hoaxes, believers continue their search for the hidden primate. California, Oregon, Washington and Canada are dotted with Sasquatch museums and research institutions for those who want to see footprints, photos, and other evidence.
Bipedal hairy beasts aren't confined to the West Coast though. Illinois and Ohio have remarkably high rates of Bigfoot sightings, and Arkansas has its own permutation: the Boggy Creek monster.
Ever since sailors first traversed the ocean they have returned with stories of unbelievable creatures emerging from the murky depths. Perhaps it's because we didn't (and still don't) really know what lies beneath the ocean's surface, a whale or squid could be mistaken for the Leviathan or a Kraken.
That lore is celebrated in places like Skrímslasetrið, Iceland's sea monster museum. Maritime history is inextricable from Icelandic identity, which includes many tales of ocean beasts lurking just off the edge of the map.
Creature stories also provided a useful explanation for misunderstood natural phenomena. The geyser of Kauai's Spouting Horn blowhole was originally attributed to a giant lizard monster trapped beneath the rock.
Lakes have their fair share of mystery too. The Loch Ness Monster is the most widely known, but prehistoric serpentine beasts have been reported on almost every continent.
That said, not all sea monsters take the form of slithering water snakes. The Kelpies of Scottish lore are massive demonic horses found in rivers and streams.
Mermaids are another sea beast, albeit a significantly more alluring version. Much of our modern mythos surrounding mermaids comes from Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid, but before the 19th century, mermaids were thought of as the deceptive, even evil sprites, no doubt based on the sirens in Homer's Odyssey.
The myth of Feejee mermaids was transported to the West from Japan. Travelers saw mummified "mermaids" in shrines like the 1,400-year-old one at the Tenshou-Kyousha Shrine. Allegedly, this mermaid was once a fisherman who trespassed in protected waters and was transformed into a hideous creature as punishment.
These weird hybrids, crafted from the upper half of a monkey and the bottom half of a fish, may have been inspired by the Japanese kappa, a mischievous water spirit.
Despite the fact that they were nothing like the lovely fishtailed maidens of fairytales, Feejee mermaids (as they came to be called—allegedly brought back from Fiji, not Japan) captured the Western imagination. They were quickly disproved as fakes, yet after P.T. Barnum had one in his famous sideshow, no cabinet of curiosity was complete without one.
The chimera, another creature of Greek mythology, was said to have the body of a lion, the head of a goat, and a snake for a tail, though today the term is applied to any creature with the body parts of various animals. Nobody does body horror like the Ancient Greeks, whose Minotaur myth (the half-man, half-bull trapped as the protector of the labyrinth) persists to this day.
Chimera made their way into American folklore. The Texas Woofus in Dallas is a longhorned pig-legged sheep-bird. Its critics call it pagan, and they may not be so far off the mark.
Another American chimera is the Piasa bird, a mysterious feathered beast painted on a rock in Alton, Illinois. The painting has been there since at least the 1670s, though no one knows its origin.
The chimera best known to Americans is the jackalope, a jackrabbit with the antlers of a buck. Mismatched animals like this abound around the world though, likely because hucksters could prove their existence through falsified taxidermy, or "gaffs." Still, reports of bunnies with massive horns proliferate in the Southwest and elsewhere.
Not all cryptids and chimera are leporine and sweet though. Some are more sinister, like the Pope Lick Monster, named after the Pope Lick Trestle Bridge it has been sighted beneath. It is said to be a monstrous man-goat hybrid that lures its victims onto the railway trestle.
The Jersey Devil was another cryptid seen throughout New Jersey in the 19th and early 20th century. In 1909 alone, hundreds of people reported seeing an unknown creature flying over the Pine Barrens, a forested area on the Jersey coast. They described it as something like a kangaroo with hooves and leathery bat wings that would let out a terrifying shriek before disappearing from the sky. The Jersey Devil hasn't been reported in recent years, though its memory is now thoroughly enveloped in New Jersey folklore.
One of America's more recent cryptids is the Mothman. In November of 1966, numerous people reported seeing a man-like figure with wings spanning upwards of ten feet. Those who saw the creature from their cars reported that its eyes shone red like bicycle reflectors when their headlights hit it. After a local bridge collapsed, killing dozens, Mothman sightings ceased. Conspiracies began to arise. The sightings had all been near the TNT area, a WWII munitions factory, leading some to surmise that the Mothman was a military experiment or an alien visitor.
The mystery was never solved, though skeptics claim it may have simply been an owl. Nevertheless, the story inspired a book and several films, and Point Pleasant commemorates its cryptid with a storefront museum as well as a downtown statue.
Cryptids come from all kinds of sources—misunderstandings of natural phenomena, tall tales, and sometimes, sheer human ingenuity, as with Karachi's very strange fortune-telling fox woman, Mumtaz Begum. They can become a mascot for the place that claims them, a weird source of pride for the people that live there.
Is there a cryptid lurking in your hometown we should know about? Have your own Feejee mermaid or creepy chimera? Add it to the Atlas!
Büsingen, a small, lowly populated exclave of Germany, separated from the country by no more than half a mile, is one of the world's most perfect blends between two countries. While it may belong to the Germans, it is exceptionally hard to distinguish from the adjacent towns under the sovereignty of the Swiss.
Büsingen is part of Germany politically and legally, but it is Swiss economically. It is the only place in all of Germany that doesn't use the Euro or belong to the European Union. Instead, it unofficially uses the Swiss Franc and remains more economically neutral than the rest of Germany.
Both Swiss and German postal codes can be used to send letters to Büsingen, and there are separate Swiss and German telephone booths in town. The borders are entirely open, and Swiss police are allowed to arrest German citizens in Büsingen and bring them into Switzerland.
Büsingen came incredibly close to becoming Swiss territory in 1918, when 96% of its residents voted to be annexed. However, Switzerland never offered Germany anything in return, so the Germans refused to give up their small exclave.
Although it may seem like this strange territorial oddity may only be useful in legal matters, it has drawn in a handful of tourists. Attracting visitors for its fascinating geographic history and quaint riverside appeal, Büsingen's two-country morph has turned out to be quite lucrative.
Step into an onion laboratory in 1959, where researchers bustle about to create the perfect pickled onion. A group of scientists at the British Food Manufacturing Industries Research Association in Surrey, England peels tubfuls of the vegetable, carefully pours vinegar in jars, and tests the flavor of the brine.
"The reason for this research is on matter of national prestige, for nearly all the best pickling onions come from abroad, mainly Holland and Egypt," says the narrator of the video above, archived by British Pathé. "Why, pray, shouldn't the cold roast beef of old England be served with English pickled onions?"
The laboratory boasted an array of impressive machinery to study the small white bulbs, including a large revolving drum that peeled the onions without causing the researchers to turn into a crying mess. Researchers in tweed suits pasteurized the jars, evaluated samples under microscopes, and analyzed the 'onion liqueur' in the jars.
But even with all the sophisticated tests and data analysis, the true seal of approval on whether an onion was been properly pickled came down to a panel of taste judges.
"Although this research may not seem to be of world shaking importance," says the narrator, "it is as well to remember that the scientists engaged in it have a truly breathtaking responsibility to the public."
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.
Red squirrels, or sciurus vulgaris, live and breathe all across northern Europe and parts of Siberia. But on the British Isles, their numbers, in recent years, have taken a nose dive.
That's thanks to, decades ago, human introduction of the eastern gray squirrel, or sciurus carolinensis, which is the kind of squirrel people on the East Coast of the U.S. are more familiar with but which can carry squirrelpox fatal to their red counterparts, in addition to harming broadleaf trees.
The decline in reds—there are some 3.5 million gray squirrels in Britain, compared to fewer than 140,000 red squirrels—has led to broad concern in the country, including, and perhaps especially, from Prince Charles, who developed the UK Squirrel Accord three years ago to confront the problem.
Earlier this week, one possible solution finally publicly emerged: a plan to feed gray squirrels oral contraceptives hidden in Nutella, according to the Sun. That plan could reduce gray squirrel populations by over 90 percent, officials said.
Gray squirrels enjoy Nutella, as many living beings do, and Prince Charles is said to prefer the plan because no squirrels will be harmed.
Tests on captive squirrels may begin soon, according to the Sun, with the chairman of the Squirrel Accord telling the outlet that, with regard to reining in the gray squirrels' population, "It is the most exciting prospect I have seen."
Which means that gray squirrels might unwittingly be confronted with an impossible choice: whether to sacrifice their fertility for a fleeting taste of chocolate perfection.
Maybe you don’t have a lot of street performers where you live, but all over the world they represent a web of underrepresented artists dedicated to performing live, day after day. It's exactly that fleeting, often unremarked quality of street music that led Daniel Bacchieri, currently a Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism Fellow at CUNY, to launch the Street Music Map project in 2014.
“I was traveling to Ukraine and I saw a musician playing in the streets of Kiev. He was playing bandura,” says Bacchieri. At the time, Instagram had just released a feature that lets users share 15-second videos, so instead of just snapping a picture of the musician, Bacchieri recorded video. As he continued his travels, he found himself taking yet more videos of street musicians, posting them to his personal account. Eventually an acquaintance suggested that he bring them all together in one place, and the idea for the map was formed.
Bacchieri, who's from Rio Grande, Brazil, began by personally curating a collection of videos sent to him from like-minded users of Instagram. If he's sent one he likes, he then goes to great pains to geolocate the exact spot the musician is standing on, and adds it to the map, where visitors can click on a pin and check out the video.
In a recent Medium post about the state of the project, Bacchieri writes that the map now holds clips of some 1,200 artists spread across 93 countries. The project’s Instagram account currently boasts over 42,000 followers who can send him videos from anywhere in the world where they encounter a memorable busker. “I consider the Street Music Map to be a global report on street music,” says Bacchieri.
The map continues to grow as Bacchieri and his followers discover more and more street performers wherever they go. “I believe it’s going to be endless, and that’s awesome,” he says. As the number of artists recorded on the map increases, the scope of the project has been growing as well. In addition to the map itself, Bacchieri has started what he believes to be the first Spotify channel dedicated to street musicians, allowing listeners anywhere to experience these fleeting artists, even if they can’t catch them in the wild. Check out the playlist embedded below to see Bacchieri’s top 55 picks from the map to date.
Bacchieri says he's increasingly interested in giving the artists more time than the length of an Instagram video, so he's started producing short documentaries on certain artists. He's also launched a podcast, which again, he believes to be the first and only one on the subject. In that format, he’s able to sit down with individual street musicians and learn their backstories, such as the focus of the first episode, Alice Tan Ridley, a former teacher who now performs full time in New York City subway stations.
As the Street Music Map continues to grow, Bacchieri’s ambitions expand as well. He says that in the future he’d like to organize a street music festival, either live or streaming artists online from every corner of the globe. “That’s one of the goals of the Street Music Map. To give voice to anonymous, amazing artists.”
Correction: Previously we stated Bacchieri as having been from Sao Paulo, which was incorrect. This has been changed to Rio Grande.
While Washington is most often remembered for his role in the Revolutionary War and the founding of the United States, this statue recalls his beginnings as an officer of King George III.
This statue commemorates the 1753 visit of then Major George Washington to the French Fort Le Boeuf. He was to deliver a letter demanding the relocation of French settlers from the Ohio Valley claimed by England. It was his first act as a major in the British Army, and the beginning of his military career. He was just 21.
The French sent Major Washing back to his commanding officer with a polite letter of refusal. Washington's account of the expedition was printed in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, making his name as a personage of military leadership. He would remain a loyal member of the British provincial militia throughout the French and Indian War and afterwards, until the Crown began imposing undue taxes on goods imported to the colonies.
The statue was erected in 1922 by the citizens of Waterford, Pennsylvania, the small town on the former site of Fort Le Boeuf, to commemorate Washington's first act of military diplomacy. True to the period, Washington is depicted wearing the uniform of the Virginia Militia and extends the cease-and-desist letter to the French.
With drivers speeding through their quiet streets at upwards of 60 mph, the tiny Scottish village of Hopeman have taken the law into their own hands. With hairdryers.
As the BBC is reporting, villagers ranging from elderly men to little girls have begun donning reflective vests and standing along the street, holding a hair dryer that they hope speeding drivers will mistake for a speed gun. Their efforts don’t seem to have necessarily slowed traffic any, but the locals hope that it will send a message both to the dangerous motorists, and to the actual police who would normally handle such things.
For their part, Police Scotland say that they are aware of the speeding problem in the area, and are continually addressing the issue.
Surprisingly, this is far from the first time this goofy scheme has popped up. A version of the hair-dryer-speed-gun trick in 2000, in the Oxfordshire village of Stanton Harcourt; a man in Palm Harbour, Florida who pulled a similar stunt in 2012; and even, in 2016, in Moscice, Poland, where someone set up a fake cop puppet which held a hair dryer. Apparently drivers who speed through residential neighborhoods aren’t just dangerous, they’re stupid too.
The Pontiac Silverdome was the former home of the Detroit Lions. The stadium, built in 1975, pioneered a new type of stadium ceiling, domed fiberglass held up by air pressure. In its 31 years of operation it hosted football, soccer, basketball, and ultimate frisbee games, concerts, WrestleMania, and even a mass by Pope John Paul II. It closed after the Lions left for Ford Field and has been deteriorating ever since.
When it opened in 1975 with a seating capacity of over 80,000, the Silverdome was the largest stadium in the NFL. Today it is a ghostly sight in its ruinous state. The stadium was sold in 2009 to buyers who had no plans for it. It briefly reopened for a few sporting events, then closed again, and it was announced the stadium would be auctioning off its property. Some equipment was sold, but most of the stadium was left to decay.
As for the famous silver dome, it collapsed in 2014 and now lies in tatters across the stadium. Exposed to the elements, moss began to grow on the cement floors. There are no more plans to repurpose the stadium, but its demolishing has been stalled since 2015. Not much is left inside the derelict Silverdome. It's currently a popular site of urban exploration, but hopefully soon will make way for new growth in the city of Pontiac.
