Inflation

A story out of China last week recounts the actions of 18 police officers responding to a call about a woman in distress in a lake in Shandong province. They rushed to the scene and spent 40 minutes bringing the victim to shore only to find that she was inanimate. They can surely be excused for erring on the side of caution. It's not their actions I wish to poke fun at, I am just tickled by the photo that has made its way around the world (above) - and it's a good excuse for a weird news round-up of inflatable dolls:

• January 7, 2009 - A man in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, was wanted for breaking into 3 adult shops, having sex with blow-up dolls named "Jungle Jane," and then dumping them in a nearby alley.
• January 3, 2010 - The suicide of a man in Shanghai, China, was prevented when his inflatable doll, which he clutched as he jumped out his 6th-floor window, broke his fall.
• January 17, 2011 - A 19-year-old couple is rescued from Melbourne, Australia's Yarra River on inflatable dolls after getting into trouble.
• July 11, 2011 - Author Graeme Donald has uncovered a 1942 Nazi plan to produce sex dolls as a hygienic alternative to the French prostitutes that the German frequented.
• August 12, 2012 - Several hundred Russian men took part in the 9th Annual Bubble Baba Challenge in which they swim with sex dolls through the rapids of the Vuoksa River.
• April 2, 2012 - A 21-year-old man from Renton, Washington, is the latest driver to be issued a citation for using an inflatable, human-shaped doll to serve as a “passenger” so that he could travel in an HOV lane.
• July 26, 2012 - Applebee's has launched a series of 6 life-size inflatable office workers intended humorously to replace actual employees while they are enjoying the restaurant chain's "Pick N' Pair lunch. 

But this is the one you will remember:

• July 11, 2012 - Art installation by James Lomax.

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Related posts:

Manikins

Floating

Gorillas preventing poaching

“Our battle to detect and destroy snares from the park is far from over. Today we can proudly confirm the gorillas are doing their part, too,” said Veronica Vecellio of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund’s Karisoke Research Center in Musanze, Rwanda. Earlier this month, a group of field staff and tourists in the Virunga volcanoes conservation area witnessed a group of gorillas dismantle a poacher's snare. They watched as 2 4-year-olds named Dukore and Rwema and a teenager named Tetero approached the snare. Applying what they had apparently learned from silverbacks, the juveniles jumped on the taut branch attached to a noose and removed the rope. Then they repeated their actions on another snare nearby. This was the first time staff members have been able to see up close exactly how gorillas recognize and dismantle the traps, and they were able to photograph the event (above, more photos here). “How they did it demonstrated an impressive cognitive skill.” This type of snare is simple, but effective, and has killed at least 2 young gorillas this year, including an infant named Ngwino just 2 days earlier. Virunga is home to more than half of the world’s 790 remaining mountain gorillas. Fossey Fund field staff have to work hard to protect the critically endangered animals from bush-meat hunters - removing more than 1,000 snares per year.

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Previous posts about gorillas:

Ape escape

Vet photos

Alternative medicine for zoo animals

Gorillas!

Lowland gorillas and an orangutan

Elastic skin

In sideshow lingo, there are "made freaks" and "born freaks." Pierced people and tattooed ladies are examples of the former and conjoined twins, dwarfs and giants, and wolf-boys are among the latter. Another variety of "born freak" is an individual with what appears to be rubber or elastic skin. Their ability to pull and ply the skin (1st image) is a sign of the incurable medical condition known as Ehlers–Danlos syndrome or Cutis hyperelastica, an inherited connective tissue disorder with many less marketable symptoms. There have been several men (and the occasional woman) over the years who have chosen to take this strange trait on the road, including James Morris, "The Rubber Man"; Felix Wehrle, "The Elastic-Skin Man"; and Heinrich Haag, "The India-Rubber Man." The latest member of this exclusive group is Gary "Stretch" Turner (2nd image, more photos and video here). Stretch realized his paper-thin skin had some unusual qualities when he was only a toddler. Now 41, he has a better understanding of his collagen abnormality: "The best way to describe it is I'm built rather like a badly woven basket, if you can imagine that, which will pull apart." Stretch is performing in London with the Royal Family of Strange People for the Priceless London Wonderground (slideshow here).

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There's a special shelf in Quigley's Cabinet for human mavels:

Millie-Christine McCoy

Myrtle Corbin and Hannah Kersey

Talker

Human ashtray(s)

Two halves

Bearded mom

Dwarfs on display

Eddie Carmel

Big weddings

Giants

He Pingping

Newest oldest shortest man

Sword swallower

Eli Bowen and Charles Tripp

Insect headgear in the headlines

In May of last year, treehoppers (Membracidae) were being talked about because of what their helmets (1st image) show about their evolution. These varied structures - some of which resemble bird droppings, dead leaves, thorns, even in one species an ant in attack position - have been shown to originate not as simple outgrowths of the cuticle, but dorsal appendages attached to each side of the thorax by an articulation, with muscles and a flexible membrane that allow it to move. Examined under the electronic microscope and confirmed genetically, the helmet is in fact a 3rd pair of profoundly modified wings. It is the 1st example in 250 million years of insect evolution that a new set of wings has appeared, rather than an existing set transforming or disappearing. Since its debut around 40 million years ago, the helmet has totally freed itself of the structural constraints linked to flight. The team from the Institut de Biologie du Développement de Marseille-Luminy (CNRS) led by Nicolas Gompel and Benjamin Prud'homme concludes, "In short, it's a wing that's no longer a wing. Freed of its flight function in this group of insects, this wing has been able to diversify its shape and texture without moderation."

This month, the Japanese rhinoceros beetle (Allomyrina dichotoma) is making news because of its headgear (2nd image), which can grow to as much as 2/3 of its body length. Scientists have discovered that not only is the size of the forked horn useful for flipping rival males off a branch (see video here*), it is an unfailing indicator of his health and prowess. The horn is 8 times more sensitive to insulin and related molecules called insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) than any other body part, so well-fed beetles may have larger wings and bodies than poorly-fed ones, but they have much larger horns. A study by entomologist Doug Emlen of the University of Montana confirmed that the loss of insulin signals - triggered artificially in his experiments, but naturally by lack of nutrition - resulted in their horns growing 16% smaller. Dr. Emlen has shown that the reason the beetles can't grow flashy horns is not that they would need their strength to bear the heavy burden, but that the size of those ornaments is tied to their nutrition-dependent insulin levels and that can't be cheated. "They can’t fake their way to showiness."

*While researching this post, I learned that insect fighting is a popular spectator sport in Japan, China,  and other Asian countries!

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A review of my book

appears on 

Morbid Anatomy

Giles Newsom

I "met" the boy in the photograph on-line yesterday. Here's how:

1

In the news there was a photo of workers at the top of 1 World Trade Center that was being compared to a photo from 1932 during construction of a skyscraper at Rockefeller Center. I had featured that earlier photo - known as "Lunch atop a skyscraper" - in a June 2009 post about Lewis Hine. Remembering that, I googled "Lewis Hine" and also had a look at that earlier blogpost.

2

When I reread the comments, I was reminded that the lead photo was not in fact taken by Hines, but by his contemporary, Charles C. Ebbets. The attribution was confirmed in 2003 by a private investigator working for the Bettman Archive. The anonymous comment had been written by the niece or nephew of the 8th man on the beam. Each of the other comments in the Cabinet named a worker as her father, so I decided to see if all the members of the crew were identified, and they have been (and their countries of origin indicated):

1. Martin "Matty" O’Shaughnessy, Irish immigrant (Co. Galway)
2. James Joy, Irish
3. Austin Lawton, Canadian (Newfoundland)
4. John Charles Cook / Akwesasne, Native American (Mowhawk)
5. Claude Stagg, Canadian (Newfoundland)
6. John Patrick Madden, Irish descent (b. 1905 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania)
7. "Stretch" Donahue, Irish
8. Francis Michael Rafferty
9. Thomas Enright, Irish
10. Thomas "Norton" Naughton, Irish
11. Patrick "Sonny" Glynn, Irish immigrant (Co. Galway)

During my research of this question, I discovered that Ireland just celebrated the photo earlier this month.

3

When I returned to my search results for Lewis Hine, who was known for documenting child labor, I learned that the fate of one of the subjects of his photos, said Master Newsom (above, additional photos here), - was uncovered by Massachusetts historian Joe Manning - also earlier this month:

On August 21st, 1912, 11-year-old Giles Edmund Newsom had been working for several months at Sanders Spinning Co. in Bessemer City, North Carolina,with his younger brother. That particular morning, a piece of machinery dropped onto his foot and caused him to fall into a spinning machine. The unprotected gears mangled his hand, crushing and tearing out 2 of his fingers. The hand was bandaged in the photos taken by Hines when he photographed mill workers in the state in October. A settlement with the mill of approximately $360.00 was apparently never disbursed. At the age of 18, Newsom indicated on his draft registration card that he was doing the same work at another textile mill, but he no longer appeared in the census and was not mentioned as a survivor in the obituaries of his mother (d. 1927), father (d. 1949), brother (d. 1965), or sister (d. 1981). Death records and a newspaper obituary indicate that Newsom, whose name had been misspelled, died in the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918. 

The boy who was photographed by Hine and became the image of child labor was buried in an unmarked grave.

Coral and climate

It's easy to forget that coral is not a plant, but an animal. So stories like this are an eye-opener. Consider a quote from yesterday's New York Times: "As Dr. Hagedorn and her assistant watched, one coral tightened its mouth and seemed to exhale, propelling a cloud of sperm into its bath with surprising vigor. The water bubbled like hot oatmeal." The voyeurism of Smithsonian scientist Dr. Mary Hagedorn is for a good cause: to restore and rebuild the world's coral reefs (2nd and 3rd images, reefs in Florida), which may be devastated by 2050 due to several causes:

• Global climate change (graphic here) is warming the oceans and making corals vulnerable to disease and bleaching, a condition in which the stressed organisms expel the algae critical to their food supply. 
• Carbon dioxide levels are rising and acidifying the oceans, weakening coral skeletons and inhibiting their growth.
• Budgetary constraints limit efforts to study the reefs (1st image, the underwater Aquarius Reef Base in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary), establish protected refuges for existing coral, raise it in captivity, and reintroduce it into its natural habitat.
• Overfishing damages reefs directly, but also causes a shift in the reef ecosystem.
• Pollution also alters the ecosystem, for instance introducing runoff that causes massive algae growth that blocks sunlight and depletes oxygen.
• Coastal development

These and other problems have killed half the coral in parts of the Pacific and 80% of that in the Caribbean. With loss of coral comes loss of other marine species, 1/4 of which are dependent on the reefs. 

Hagedon has gathered samples from corals in Hawaii, the Caribbean, and Australia to establish the 1st coral sperm bank. She estimates that she has frozen 1 trillion coral sperm (enough to fertilize as many as 1 billion eggs) and 3 billion frozen embryonic cells. Although corals can reproduce asexually, only sexual reproduction maintains the genetic diversity that protects its capacity to survive and adapt to change. Protecting the reefs buys time, but Nancy Knowlton, a coral-reef biologist at the Smithsonian, warns, “But if we continue on this greenhouse-gas emissions trajectory, the only place we’re going to be able to find many corals will be in Mary’s freezers."

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Related posts:

Sea stars, eating and being eaten

Ice finger of death

A tale of two yachts

Mystery fossil

Underwater automobiles

Creative cremains

Diving into the Mayan underworld

Freediver

Sjakie snuggles

My niece Miranda and I love sloths, so I am taking the opportunity to highlight this international story about the rescue of an animal baby by a human toddler. Sjakie (above, more photos here) was born at Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem, in the Netherlands on May 19th. Almost as soon as he was born, he began to waste away because his mother wasn't producing enough milk. Hand feeding was not itself a problem, but getting the newborn to nurse away from Mom was. "Baby sloths need to cuddle, especially when they nurse. We knew it needed to take milk from a syringe but without mum there it was not interested," explains zookeeper Boudewijn Stenbreker. He offered plush toys from the zoo's gift shop without success. Then his 2-year-old daughter stepped up and offered her teddy bear, which was already broken in. It worked! "Lieke was delighted. Sjakie took to the bear as if it was its own mum and now grasps it while zookeepers feed the baby extra milk as well as liquidised vegetables." Sjakie is with his mother when he is not with the teddy, but another similar bear has been given to Lieke to break in just in case a 2nd surrogate is needed.

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Previous posts about zoos:

Bitty bear

The boy and the egg

Ape escape

Victims of a flooded zoo

New digs for Detroit lions

Hope, Sesi and Watoto

Escapees

Alternative medicine for zoo animals

Elephant multiple and miracle births

"Big" cats

Cheap hotel

For little more than what it would have cost for a 3-night stay, Swiss contractor Lucia Filippi has just purchased a luxury 4-star hotel! The unique accommodations, hollowed out of the Swiss Alps, include 17 rooms, a restaurant, a library, spa and swimming pool, and 4,000 sq m of conference space - and are valued at $3.8 million. The site offers stunning views, but is only accessible to visitors during the summer months. Originally an an underground artillery fort, La Claustra (photos here) opened in 2004 after pricey renovations paid for by the state and private investors. It operated until 2010, when it was declared bankrupt due to insufficient visitors and high operating costs. The new owner had no intention of becoming a hotelier when he attended the July 10th auction in Biasco, Ticino, Switzerland. The bidder who did was planning to open with an offer of $102,294, but had neglected to bring a checkbook. Because of a procedural mistake, the poorly attended auction had to be started once again and asked for an opening bid of only $1,023. Filippi raised his hand and, with no further bids, paid less than the hotel's annual electricity bill in cost and fees to take ownership. Though not yet sure what he intends to do with La Claustra, he has plenty of offers for it.

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Hotels in the Cabinet:

Lease a lighthouse

Chilly churches

Sleepover in the slammer

Jaws in 1916

Aquaria

The smell of space

A composite of 2 photographs of the sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory taken on July 12, 2012. An extreme-ultraviolet image of arcing solar material is superimposed on a picture of the magnetic fields. Taken just before a powerful solar flare was unleashed, the combined photos help scientists better understand the origins and causes of the flares.

Astronaut Tony Antonelli states that outer space "definitely has a smell that's different than anything else." Yet, the odor has been compared to many things:
"seared steak"
"hot metal"
"welding fumes"
"metallic"
"a distinct odor of ozone, a faint acrid smell"
"a little like gunpowder"
"sulfurous"
Popsci.com concludes, "The final frontier smells a lot like a Nascar race - a bouquet of hot metal, diesel fumes and barbecue." NASA is trying to reproduce the elusive smell for training purposes, hiring scent chemist Steve Pearce, who recreated the scents of the Mir space station for an art installation on "Impossible Smells." According to him Mir is stinky: "Just imagine sweaty feet and stale body odor, mix that odor with nail polish remover and gasoline ... then you get close!" Compared to that, the odor that clings to astronauts after a spacewalk outside the International Space Station - attributed mainly to ethyl formate - is nowhere near as foul. Astronaut Don Pettit says, "The best description I can come up with is metallic; a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation. It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space."

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Less than 2 hours after posting this, 
I learned of the death of 61-year-old Sally Ride. 
R.I.P.
America's 1st female astronaut

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Related posts:

Death in space

Views from space

Auroras

Space chimp

A few female firsts

Documenting the fight

When the woman he had married just 5 months earlier was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, Cleveland-born photographer Angelo Merendino used his skills and their intimacy to document the struggle. He was with her during every doctor's appointment, chemotherapy infusion, and hospital stay. His photos (above, watch slideshow on his website) capture moments of hope, exhaustion, empathy, and lack thereof - a starkly honest walk through the next few years, at the end of which Jennifer Merendino died. Recently, 50 of the black and white images were shown at The Gathering Place, a cancer support center in Westlake, Ohio. Beauty and truth were found in the photos by both critics and cancer patients. But a mere 6 days later, rather than the planned 10 weeks, the images have been taken down and handed back - with apologies - to the photographer and widower. Executive Director Eileen Saffran said that people were upset by them. Kristina Austin, director of community relations and marketing, called the exhibit "amazing and exceptionally powerful," but said, "We removed it because of the reaction of our participants." The reaction of the patients who use the center and the volunteers who work there - many of whom are cancer survivors - was "very emotional." Merendino understands that, but wonders why no one expressed concern upon reviewing the images last year when the exhibit was being planned. The photographer has stated, "Sadly, many people do not want to hear these realities; around the time of Jen’s re-diagnosis we felt that our support group was fading away. Other cancer survivors share this loss. People assume that treatment makes you better, that things become OK, that life goes back to 'normal.' However, there is no normal in cancer-land. Cancer survivors have to define a new sense of normal, often daily. And how can others understand what we have to live with everyday? We tried talking and when words came up short I turned to the only other way that I know to communicate - my camera. My photographs show this daily life. They show the fear, concern and sadness we face. They show the joy from the endearment of a friend. They show the deep love and trust between Jennifer and me. They humanize the face of cancer, on the face of my wife." Let's look.

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Select previous posts about cameras and photographers:

Starlight camera

Capturing cave art

Nadar and the Paris catacombs

Photography by the blind

Überkamera 

Minus two photojournalists

The living photos of Arthur Mole  

Calvarium camera

Mole man of Hackney

Now entirely roofless, the 20-room house above in the Hackney area of north London (1st and 2nd images) has sold for more than £1.1million ($1.7million). The property belonged to the infamous "Mole Man," retired civil engineer William Lyttle (3rd image, another photo here), who spent decades tunneling beneath it until his death in 2010. Here is a brief chronology:

Lyttle hollowed out a labyrinth of tunnels up to 18m (60') long and up to 8m (26') deep beneath the home he had either inherited from his parents or purchased. Beginning in the 1960s, he is estimated to have scooped 100 cubic meters of earth from beneath his lot and the adjacent roads and houses. "I often used to joke that I expect him to come tunnelling up through the kitchen floor," said a neighbor. But Lyttle countered, "I first tried to dig a wine cellar, and then the cellar doubled, and so on. But the idea that I dug tunnels under other people's houses is rubbish. I just have a big basement. It's gone down deep enough to hit the water table - that's the lowest you can go." In and around that "basement," he squirreled away 4 Renault cars, a boat, scrap metal, bathtubs, and dozens of TV sets. His backyard contained 30 tons of excavated gravel and junk, and he had propped up the house with wooden beams and household appliances.

August 2006
Lyttle had been blamed for holes appearing in the pavement and regular power blackouts. Surveyors finally confirmed the danger of the situation and the court ordered Lyttle to stop tunnelling. Evicted and put up in a hotel by the Hackney Council until 2009, he was eventually resettled in an apartment.

April 2008

To prevent collapse, the Council surrounded the house with scaffolding and poured concrete into the tunnels. The High Court ordered Lyttle - who was by no means poor - to pay £293,000 ($460,000) to the Council for repairs and legal costs, and banned him from his property. The amount due ballooned to £408,000 ($640,000) after he refused to reimburse the Council and incurred further debt for maintenance and rent on his temporary accommodation.

 June 2010 
After Lyttle dies, officials embark on a search for a possible estranged wife and daughter of the tunneller, who would inherit the proceeds from the sale of his property.

July 2012
Once containing a total of 33 tons of debris, the house and lot went on the market for £750,000 ($1,177,000). The derelict building will be razed and 2 3-storey townhouses with gardens and basements will be built on the lot.

The buyers want to remain anonymous, but said through a spokesman, "They are very pleased with the property," which has the added cachet of having once belonged to the "Mole Man."

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Previous posts about hoarding, squatting, evicting, and digging:

Collyer brothers

Birthing and hoarding bunnies

Squatting

History in the back garden

Knock knock

New neighbors

Rediscovered kitchen

An eviction and an exhumation

Paleolithic plaque

A cave called El Sidrón (3rd image), discovered in northern Spain in 1994, continues to yield rich evidence of occupation by Neanderthals 47,300-50,600 years ago (1st image, video about the reconstruction here). It was reported by National Geographic that at least 13 individuals had been butchered for their brains and marrow at the site. Their remains (2nd image) fell 60' into a sediment-filled hollow before they could be scavenged by animals, and there they mineralized. The teeth of 5 of these cave-dwellers (4 adults and a child) have just revealed that Neanderthals - long thought to be predominantly meat-eaters - ate a variety of cooked plant foods and were aware of their nutritional and medicinal qualities. The dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) has been analyzed on a molecular level by an international team of researchers led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of York. They combined thermal desorption and pyrolysis gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry with morphological analysis of plant microfossils to identify starches and carbohydrates. Chemical markers of exposure to wood smoke indicate that some of the foods were cooked, and the fact that others are bitter and of little nutritional value shows that they were eaten  for reasons other than taste. Karen Hardy is lead author of the study just published in Naturwissenschaften and sums up, "The varied use of plants we identified suggests that the Neanderthal occupants of El Sidrón had a sophisticated knowledge of their natural surroundings which included the ability to select and use certain plants for their nutritional value and for self-medication. While meat was clearly important, our research points to an even more complex diet than has previously been supposed." That diet included the following:

• nuts
• grasses
• green vegetables
• yarrow
• camomile

Antonio Rosas of Madrid's Museum of Natural History says, "El Sidrón has allowed us to banish many of the preconceptions we had of Neanderthals. Thanks to previous studies, we know that they looked after the sick, buried their dead and decorated their bodies. Now another dimension has been added relating to their diet and self-medication."

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Previous posts about human teeth:

Testing a tooth

Churchill's choppers

Kunstkammer

Charles Gaal, Jr.

Jonny Quest

When we weren't visiting archaeological digs, celebrating Halloween, reading Ripley's Believe It or Not, or seeing interesting films like the one about the Ostrich People, my sister Melissa and I* could be found watching "Jonny Quest." The adventure cartoon features the title character, his friend Hadji, their tutor and bodyguard Race Bannon, and Jonny's dad, reseach scientist Dr. Benton Quest. Dr. Quest is called upon internationally for missions that require his scientific and technical expertise. Every Saturday morning, Race and the boys - and their bulldog "Bandit" - would accompany him to solve mysteries, quell villains, and unravel nefarious plots. I called Melissa last night (on my new iPhone 4S!) to ask her which episode was her favorite, pretty certain what the answer would be. The general consensus - and our mutual opinion - is that the best and most frightening episode is "The Invisible Monster." I found it on-line, if you want to watch:

Jonny Quest - Beginning and End Credits (2:10)
Jonny Quest - The Invisible Monster, Part 1 (6:30)
Jonny Quest - The Invisible Monster, Part 2 (6:30)
Jonny Quest - The Invisible Monster, Part 3 (6:30)
Jonny Quest - The Invisible Monster, Part 4 (3:36)

Blogger Chris Webber speculates on the inspiration for the monster and remarks that "Jonny Quest" maintains "what has to be one of the biggest and most loyal fanbases of any TV animation series ever." After revisiting this cinematic gem, I agree with blogger B2, who writes: "It was the kind of episode that 40 years ago would have had my lights on all night. It was that scary! Watching today, I may have slept comfortably, but I can still recognize class when I see it. It's truly one of the most memorable of all of the Jonny Quest episodes. One thing I noticed looking at it today, the monster doesn't have the same polished appearance of the other artwork from Jonny Quest. It's a simple design with colors that change from frame to frame. But I guess with a creature made of molecular energy, you could do almost anything with it and it would look okay. And that solitary eye – creepy! And that noise – even creepier. I love it!" 

*Fashionably dressed by our Mom (see photo here).

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Other posts about cartoons:

Kilroy was here

Rube Goldberg and his U.K. counterpart

Remy Charlip

Dr. Seuss

Lengberg lingerie

This ratty tatty underwear is proof that the brassiere as we know it is not a 20th c. invention. Evidence suggests that these were worn in the 15th c! This unprecedented find was pulled from a vault beneath the floorboards of Castle Lengberg (video in German here) in Nikolsdorf, East Tyrol, Austria. Organic material (twigs, straw, wood, and leathers) and textiles were used to fill a spandrel. Beatrix Nutz of the University of Innsbruck discovered the set with hundreds of fragments of clothing during renovations that began in 2008. The undergarments were constructed from lace and linen, and the bra has fitted cups and delicate straps. A total of 4 bras were found, 2 of which are much more rudimentary. It was previously believed that women of the time wore shorts on the bottom and a smock on top, so the news turns what we know about Medieval clothing on its head. Fashion curator Hilary Davidson of the Museum of London says it rewrites fashion history. "Nothing like this has ever come up before....It’s rare that everyday garments of any kind survive from this period, let alone underwear." The undergarments were apparently tucked away in 1480 during building extensions, and dry conditions kept them from disintegrating. The 1485 bra is featured in the

August issue of History magazine.

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Previous underwear-related posts:

Androgynous models

Nipple shields

Breastless chest

Devin and Viktoria

Vickie's knickers

Happy Memorial Day!

The creeps

Coincidences

Poking around last night for something to blog about today, I visited this great website Historivision, which caters to short attention spans and offers Ripleyesque content, and the post entitled "The Strangest Coincidence Ever Recorded?" Having blogged about coincidences before, I had a listen and suggest that you do, too. It's an amazing story about 3 shipwrecks decades apart (1664, 1785, and 1820) in the same location - each with a lone survivor of the identical name. When I searched for further information about these wrecks, I found that writer and blogger Rick Spilman had published the answers I was looking for a mere 38 minutes earlier. Spilman authenticates the story in his article, "The Unsinkable Hugh Williams – Truth Behind the Legend?," but points out the following:

• The Menai Strait off the coast of Wales (depicted above) was treacherous, but was also frequently travelled. Spilman estimates that some 300 ships went down in the 2 centuries that the story spans and there were probably thousands of victims, increasing the likelihood that some would share the same name.
• "Hugh Williams" is a very common Welsh name.
• The date of the 19th c. shipwreck is in question, with sources indicating a different year (1842) and a conflicting month (August rather than May).

Spilman writes, "So it appears that the video version on the Internet may have been slimmed down and improved a bit." I agree with his conclusion that "It is a good sea story all the same." But perhaps the strangest maritime coincidence - although again the name of the victim is not uncommon - is that covered in my post, Custom of the sea.

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Previous shipwreck-related posts:

Flotsam and jetsom

Going down with the ship

Titanic memorabilia

Submerged steamers

Castaways, real and imagined

Dendochronology

The Raft of the Medusa

Franklin Expedition

Bears everywhere

It's been a busy summer for bears here in the U.S. Every day, a new story about one or more encroaching on a suburban neighborhood. It prompts a news round-up by state:

ARIZONA
Removed in Dewey
Killed in Saddlebrooke

CALIFORNIA
Treed in Bradbury
Ear-tagged in Duarte (video here)
Becoming a celebrity in Glendale (another photo here)
Nicknamed in La Crescenta
Rescued from a garage in South Lake Tahoe


COLORADO
Put down in Roxborough
Carjacking in Snowmass Village
Tranquilized in Steamboat Springs

CONNECTICUT
Captured in Greenwich

FLORIDA
Wrestling in Longwood
Spotted in Orlando (photos here)
Relocated on Sanibel Island
Reappeared in Tampa


MASSACHUSETTS
Sighted in Springfield (1st image)

MONTANA
Killing sheep in Conrad
Eating chicken in West Glacier

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Attacking in Grafton
Captured in downtown Manchester (photos here)

NEW JERSEY
Tranquilized in Camden
Taking a swim in Morristown
Roaming an office park in Parsippany
Crosses the road in South Brunswick

NEW YORK
Spotted in Rye Brook
Visiting Tannersville (3rd image)


OHIO
Observed in Canfield
Disrupting garage sales in Hudson


PENNSYLVANIA
Leads chase in McCandless
Freed from a tree in Tresckow (2nd image)


TENNESSEE
Tagged in Knoxville

Even though this list covers a mere 6 weeks, it is far from exhaustive...

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Bitty bear

Polar-grizzly hybrids

Bear bites butt

Catching a bear

Bear bones

Another kind of crittercam

Odd animals

Bears in the news

Mammoth graveyard

 

First, the bones of a female mammoth dubbed "Vika" were found at the site in 2009. Now, the fossilized remains of up to 6 more mammoths are being excavated, and the director of the Archeological Project Viminacium, Miomir Korać, has declared the find unique. While the location of a singular elephant graveyard is a myth, here paleontologists have identified the world's first collective graveyard of a herd of mammoths (images above, more photos here). The discovery was made in mid-June at an open pit coal mine in Kostolac, Serbia. Mining operations were halted when bones were damaged by equipment as they dug 20yds underground. By the time experts could be summoned to the site, which covers roughly 20,000 square meters, a torrential rain exposed more bones, Korac's team vowed to use everything from toothpicks to infrared screening to locate and unearth the skeletons, a task expected to take 6 months. Excavation - which shouldn't be difficult, since they are buried in a matrix of loose sand - will be followed by collaboration among international paleozoologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists to shed light on life as long as 1 million years ago. Korać says, "This is a rare global treat because no such place exists elsewhere in the world."

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Always room in the cabinet for more mammoths!

Mammoth maybe

Accidental fossil discoveries

Frozen baby mammoth

More mammoths

Woolly mammoth

A convergence of robins

Christina Bothwell, "Old Soul Baby," cast glass and raku clay

Follower Chase recommended the brilliant website The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things, which is written by Chelsea Nichols, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. As I scrolled down, I saw several things I'd blogged about myself, then came to the art of Christina Bothwell (example above, slideshow here), which Nichols describes as follows:

"Taking aesthetic inspiration from vintage toys and dolls, antique medical illustrations and old machinery, her work embodies a sense of the nostalgic entwined with that ineffable emotion of wonder. With their colorful glass bodies, delicately modeled limbs and faces, hidden layers and surreal appendages, Bothwell’s imaginative figures seem like they were plucked from some forgotten fairy tale (one which I am desperate to read). There is an enchanting quality about her work which I can’t quite articulate, but I think at least part of it stems from her use of the translucent glass to explore the co-existence of the inner and outer workings of the body. The glass allows a soft light to radiate through the figure and reveal hidden treasures and imperfections within, but its material vulnerability also mirrors the vulnerability of the figures she depicts: little girls, infants, and small animals. A little bit magical and a little bit menacing, Bothwell’s intriguing sculptures invite the viewer to imagine their own narrative for her figures and to delight in their visual curiosity."

Bothwell moved from New York to Stillwater, Pennsylvania, in 1995 and that same year discovered an old clay kiln at an auction and taught herself to work with pit-fired clay. After taking a workshop in glass casting at Corning Museum, she began incorporating glass into her work with clay, sewn materials, and found objects. The artist has received numerous grants and several awards. When she began to use animal parts in her sculpures in 2009, she stated, "For a long time the idea of taxidermy made me feel kind of queasy, but this past winter I saw a taxidermied blue jay at a child’s birthday party and it was so beautiful I couldn’t stop thinking of it. What started out as consumer lust eventually led to thinking about how I could add that element to my work and maybe capture some of that same quality that moved me in the blue jay." I think she's succeeded - in the work with and without birds.

Also in my e-mail in-box (which I am trying to weed out) is a link from family friend Sandra to the video of a family of birds that nested in a hanging plant.  Entitled "Robins: 4 Eggs, 4 Weeks," it's worth a look!

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Previous sculpture-themed posts:

Stolen statue

Sharon Baker

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Rat netsuke

Statue of Liberty

Human hybrids

Caryatids

Bird Girl

Jan Karski statue