ATLAS OBSCURA

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theatlanticcities:

“I hope that viewers of my website would know the character of each escalator, and would pay attention to escalators in their cities.” -Miha Tamura

Today, Eric Jaffe introduces us to the woman behind the Tokyo Escalator blog, Miha Tamura. She’s on a mission to save escalators from obscurity, documenting them in order to show how extraordinary they can be. 

Tamura grew up in Kanazawa, where there are very few escalators besides local department stores. She currently lives in Tokyo, a city with plenty of escalators to keep fueling her fascination.

Read: Photographing Tokyo’s Coolest Escalators

[Images: Miha Tamura/Tokyo Escalator]

(via theatlantic)

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The island of Socotra is part of an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. It is so isolated that a third of its plant life is found nowhere else on the planet. Notable are the dragon’s blood trees that look like flying saucers perched on trunks. Adenium socotranum are trees that look like elephants’ legs with pink flowers on top. Birds such as the Socotra starling, Socotra sunbird, and Socotra grosbeak are found nowhere else on Earth. Bats are the island’s only native mammal.

In 2010 a Russian archaeological team discovered the ruins of a city on Socotra dating to the second century AD. The island is also held by some to be the location of the original Garden of Eden, due to its isolation, biological diversity, and the fact that it is located on the edge of Yemen’s Gulf of Aden, which many connect with the ancient Sumerian tales of a paradise called Dilmun.

There are almost no roads on the island, which is also home to a collection of caves and a number of shipwrecks.

How to get to Socotra Island…

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895,000 tiny buildings compose the largest architectural model of a city in the world. The Panorama of the City of New York in the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was built for the 1964 World’s Fair as a commission from Robert Moses.

Moses was famously, or more accurately, infamously, the powerful parks commissioner who so profoundly altered the infrastructure of New York, and he was integral to the creation of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs themselves. The panorama, built in the New York City Pavilion, took 100 workers three years to create with modelmakers Raymond Lester Associates.

But but but… How’d they pull it off in the days pre-Google Earth?

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Caves of Remouchamps - Ayailles -  Belgium 

Hiding the longest subterranean river known in the world.

Located in Belgium, the Caves of Remouchamps has among its many wonders the longest subterranean river known in the world. Opened in 1912 and originally equipped with torches, the caves are explored in two parts. The first is a long walk to a grand “cathedral”, followed by an hour and a half boat ride down the caves’ quiet and entirely underground river, the Rubicon. Floating down the underground river gives the impression of an entering a lost underground fairy kingdom.

The history of the Caves of Remouchamps is also quite unique. Some 8,000 years ago, Paleolithic hunters sheltered themselves in the cave, and much later, the same area was used as a wine shelter, and a shelter during World War II.

Throughout the cave there are a handful of remarkable sites for visitors to see. Bat sightings are a treat for guests and while drifting on the Rubicon, look closely for the niphargus, a blind, translucent shrimp. Many stalactites and stalagmites decorate the interior of the passageways, one famously noted for its resemblance to the Virgin Mary.

A detail of Robertson's grave in Paris' Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

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In the smoky haze of an abandoned convent in Paris, ghosts were conjured out of the afterlife to a horrified, yet mesmerized, crowd. The spirits in this show of phantasmagoria were the work of Étienne-Gaspard Robert, who assumed the stage name of Robertson, a man interested in both spectacle and science at the end of the 18th century, when France had just experienced its brutal Revolution, and the wake of the bloody Reign of Terror trailed a fascination with death and the macabre. 

Long interested in the supernatural, his love of art and physics merged into phantasmagoria, its name roughly meaning a gathering of ghosts. He’d been inspired by Paul Philidor’s magic lantern shows, as well as reading on 17th century scholar Athanasius Kircher’s lantern and the contemporary shadow plays of François Dominique Séraphin, and decided with all his optics knowledge he could do even better. So he built a magic lantern on wheels called the Fantoscope, and with it he could not only project layers of images all at once, but move around so as to make the figures appear to approach the audience. This combined with a spooky candlelit room he set up in the run down Couvent des Capucines near the Place Vendôme, as well as an introduction by Robertson on the afterlife, eerily monotonous accompaniment from a glass harmonica, and ventriloquism for the ghouls, made for a most unsettling evening.

According to the Glass Armonica, the advertisement for his first performance in 1798 read:

Fantasmagorie … by citizen E-G. Robertson: apparitions of Spectres, Phantoms and Ghosts, such as must appear or could appear in any time, in any place and among any people. Experiments with the new fluid known by the name of Galvanism, whose application gives temporary movement to bodies whose life has departed. An artist noted for his talents will play the Harmonica.

More on the history of Robertson’s Fantastic Phantasmagoria, An 18th Century Spectacle of Horror…

That that Buzz Aldrin was interested in academic studies of manned orbital rendezvous in space as a student at MIT is often overshadowed by his fighter pilot persona, and just the fact that nothing is ever going to top that first landing on the moon, a place Aldrin described as having “magnificent desolation.” Yet he emphasized that while that feat of walking on the moon was a fantastic point for human ingenuity, it’s disheartening that since then, we haven’t reached beyond into space. As for a trip to Mars, he said it’s “not to go to something desolate next door, but to go to another planet and set up a growing permanence.” Buzz Aldrin Explains Why We Should Go to Mars High-res

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That that Buzz Aldrin was interested in academic studies of manned orbital rendezvous in space as a student at MIT is often overshadowed by his fighter pilot persona, and just the fact that nothing is ever going to top that first landing on the moon, a place Aldrin described as having “magnificent desolation.” Yet he emphasized that while that feat of walking on the moon was a fantastic point for human ingenuity, it’s disheartening that since then, we haven’t reached beyond into space. As for a trip to Mars, he said it’s “not to go to something desolate next door, but to go to another planet and set up a growing permanence.”

Buzz Aldrin Explains Why We Should Go to Mars

An uncoordinated team of powerful-pawed moles are delving into history unreachable by humans. Epiacum, also known as Whitley Castle, is a Roman fort in England dating back to the 2nd century, and the details of its long history are being revealed by the wandering tunnels of moles that bring up shards of artifacts with the disturbed earth. Epiacum annually has molehill surveys, the Journal reports, and this most recent examination of the gateways to the subterranean mole world resulted in around 200 items believed to be Roman. Paul Frodsham with the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which organized the molehill volunteers, told the Journal: “We even found a ladies’ glass bead in the men’s barracks block, and wondered what it might have been doing there!”   Mole Archaeologists Excavate the Unreachable Underworld of a Roman Fort High-res

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An uncoordinated team of powerful-pawed moles are delving into history unreachable by humans. Epiacum, also known as Whitley Castle, is a Roman fort in England dating back to the 2nd century, and the details of its long history are being revealed by the wandering tunnels of moles that bring up shards of artifacts with the disturbed earth.

Epiacum annually has molehill surveys, the Journal reports, and this most recent examination of the gateways to the subterranean mole world resulted in around 200 items believed to be Roman. Paul Frodsham with the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which organized the molehill volunteers, told the Journal: “We even found a ladies’ glass bead in the men’s barracks block, and wondered what it might have been doing there!”  

Mole Archaeologists Excavate the Unreachable Underworld of a Roman Fort

Divers have long held exclusive backstage passes to the planet’s other 70 percent. Until recently, though, their experiences exploring underwater marvels have generally been limited to two options: either go it alone and risk overlooking some notable features, or rely on a structured tour, potentially limiting the freedom of exploration. Recently, English Heritage, an organization that works to preserve historic sites in the UK, has begun offering a third option for curious adventures. The institution is expanding its tourist trails to include several underwater shipwreck sites. These trails include markers and waterproof guidebooks to add structural and historical context to sunken remains. …There are currently 46 English wreck sites protected under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act, according to the English Heritage website. Of these wrecks, only two are visible during low tide. The rest remain submerged and beyond the reach of land-bound visitors. Underwater trails now exist at the site of three of these wrecks, though the organization plans to expand its underwater trail to include many more sites by 2018. A fourth site, the wreck of Britain’s first submarine, is slated to open this summer. More on how heritage tourism is making the briny deep historically accessible…

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Divers have long held exclusive backstage passes to the planet’s other 70 percent. Until recently, though, their experiences exploring underwater marvels have generally been limited to two options: either go it alone and risk overlooking some notable features, or rely on a structured tour, potentially limiting the freedom of exploration.

Recently, English Heritage, an organization that works to preserve historic sites in the UK, has begun offering a third option for curious adventures. The institution is expanding its tourist trails to include several underwater shipwreck sites. These trails include markers and waterproof guidebooks to add structural and historical context to sunken remains.

…There are currently 46 English wreck sites protected under the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act, according to the English Heritage website. Of these wrecks, only two are visible during low tide. The rest remain submerged and beyond the reach of land-bound visitors. Underwater trails now exist at the site of three of these wrecks, though the organization plans to expand its underwater trail to include many more sites by 2018. A fourth site, the wreck of Britain’s first submarine, is slated to open this summer.

More on how heritage tourism is making the briny deep historically accessible…

From venerated saint relics to improbable travels of famous skulls, we know well that death is not always the end for the journeys of the human body. Recently, Seattle-based writer Bess Lovejoy published Rest in Pieces on “the curious fates of famous corpses,” and tonight she’s joining San Francisoc-based musician Jill Tracy for “A Fate Worse Than Death,” an event that’s part of Atlas Obscura’s ongoing salon series at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco. We asked Lovejoy a few questions about her research into the roaming cadavers of the famous, as well as our evolving perception of death and the potential fate of her own bones, and included some of the places in the Atlas that appear in her book (you can see a complete map of the Rest in Pieces locales here): Your book Rest in Pieces chronicles the curious afterlives of the corpses of around 50 notable people. What first drew you to this subject of death not really being the end for these famous bodies? I used to work on a series of non-fiction books called Schott’s Almanac, where we spent a lot of time reading the news to try to find interesting ideas for stories. In December 2008, I read two news articles, one right after each other, about famous last wishes. One was about the pianist André Tchaikowsky, who had willed his skull to London’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company for use in Hamlet. The other was about the painter Francis Bacon, who had once said, “When I’m dead put me in a plastic bag and throw me in the gutter.” After his death, a photographer friend took a photo of his corpse and turned it into a piece of art, which created a bit of an uproar in the British press. Both stories got me wondering about famous last wishes, and whether it would be interesting to do a book or some other kind of research project collecting them. But once I started the research, I realized the most interesting stories were not what people wanted to happen, but what did happen. There were just so many wonderful stories, with larger-than-life characters and bizarre anecdotes, and I could see it had great book potential. I’ve always been interested in death — not so much the physical side of things, the blood and guts — but how humans deal with their impending mortality. How we make sense of our own deaths and the deaths of others. Finitude. I like writing about how people deal with the corpse, because in a way it’s an examination of how people have dealt with the idea of mortality. And it helps me confront my own mortality. Einstein’s Brain in the Mütter Museum Your book is full of surprising and unsettling stories, whether it’s the cross-country trip Einstein’s brain took or the skull of René Descartes that became a museum exhibition. Is there any one that stands out to you as a favorite? I got attached to my stories while writing them, and I thought of each corpse as my own weird little child. So I don’t really have favorites. But people often ask about the story of Rasputin, who supposedly refused to die (despite being poisoned and shot), and whose penis may have been cut off by one of the nobles who murdered him. That object certainly has a curious story, and made it all the way to Paris, despite later being shown to be a sea cucumber. It’s hard to top that tale. For the rest of the interview… Wandering Souls: Bess Lovejoy Chronicles Some of the Most Famous of Wayfaring Corpses High-res

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From venerated saint relics to improbable travels of famous skulls, we know well that death is not always the end for the journeys of the human body. Recently, Seattle-based writer Bess Lovejoy published Rest in Pieces on “the curious fates of famous corpses,” and tonight she’s joining San Francisoc-based musician Jill Tracy for “A Fate Worse Than Death,” an event that’s part of Atlas Obscura’s ongoing salon series at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco.

We asked Lovejoy a few questions about her research into the roaming cadavers of the famous, as well as our evolving perception of death and the potential fate of her own bones, and included some of the places in the Atlas that appear in her book (you can see a complete map of the Rest in Pieces locales here):

Your book Rest in Pieces chronicles the curious afterlives of the corpses of around 50 notable people. What first drew you to this subject of death not really being the end for these famous bodies?

I used to work on a series of non-fiction books called Schott’s Almanac, where we spent a lot of time reading the news to try to find interesting ideas for stories. In December 2008, I read two news articles, one right after each other, about famous last wishes. One was about the pianist André Tchaikowsky, who had willed his skull to London’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company for use in Hamlet. The other was about the painter Francis Bacon, who had once said, “When I’m dead put me in a plastic bag and throw me in the gutter.” After his death, a photographer friend took a photo of his corpse and turned it into a piece of art, which created a bit of an uproar in the British press.

Both stories got me wondering about famous last wishes, and whether it would be interesting to do a book or some other kind of research project collecting them. But once I started the research, I realized the most interesting stories were not what people wanted to happen, but what did happen. There were just so many wonderful stories, with larger-than-life characters and bizarre anecdotes, and I could see it had great book potential.

I’ve always been interested in death — not so much the physical side of things, the blood and guts — but how humans deal with their impending mortality. How we make sense of our own deaths and the deaths of others. Finitude. I like writing about how people deal with the corpse, because in a way it’s an examination of how people have dealt with the idea of mortality. And it helps me confront my own mortality.

Einstein's Brain - Mütter Museum - Philadelphia

Einstein’s Brain in the Mütter Museum

Your book is full of surprising and unsettling stories, whether it’s the cross-country trip Einstein’s brain took or the skull of René Descartes that became a museum exhibition. Is there any one that stands out to you as a favorite?

I got attached to my stories while writing them, and I thought of each corpse as my own weird little child. So I don’t really have favorites. But people often ask about the story of Rasputin, who supposedly refused to die (despite being poisoned and shot), and whose penis may have been cut off by one of the nobles who murdered him. That object certainly has a curious story, and made it all the way to Paris, despite later being shown to be a sea cucumber. It’s hard to top that tale.

For the rest of the interview… Wandering Souls: Bess Lovejoy Chronicles Some of the Most Famous of Wayfaring Corpses