Wildlife

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In painting backdrops for the dioramas at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in the 1970s, artist Kent Pendleton hid eight elves. “It was just kind of my own little private joke,” he said in 2018. “The first one was so small that hardly anyone could see it, but it sort of escalated over time, I guess. Some of the museum volunteers picked up on it and it developed a life of its own.”

The museum’s field guide currently lists nine hidden finds, but there are more — the exact number is not known.

The Georgia Guidestones

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

In Elbert County, Georgia, stands a granite monument bearing 10 guidelines inscribed in eight languages:

  1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
  2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
  3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
  4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
  5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
  6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
  7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
  8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
  9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
  10. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

It was commissioned in 1979 by a man using the pseudonym Robert C. Christian, who seemed to have considerable resources. A ledger nearby explains that the structure operates as an astronomical calendar and that a time capsule lies 6 feet beneath.

It’s thought that the inscription lists the principles that will be needed to rebuild a devastated civilization. A tablet reads, “Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason.”

Nuts

The nuts-and-bolt illusion, devised by American magician Jerry Andrus.

“I can fool you because you’re a human,” he once said. “You have a wonderful human mind that works no different from my human mind. Usually when we’re fooled, the mind hasn’t made a mistake. It’s come to the wrong conclusion for the right reason.”

A Fitting Mascot

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This is almost comically American: Between 1830 and 1836, a bald eagle lived at the Philadelphia Mint. Named Peter, he would roam the city by day and roost in the mint at night. Fatally injured in a coining press, he was stuffed and mounted and is currently on display in the lobby.

He is said (uncertainly) to have been the model for the eagle on U.S. silver dollars issued between 1836 and 1839 and the Flying Eagle cents of 1856-1858.

“A Remarkable Dream”

On Saturday morning a man about 30 years of age, named Benjamin Collins, was found drowned in a small dam belonging to the Whitehall pit, at Wyke. When found he was kneeling in the water with his head down, being only up to the shoulders in the water. He had been drinking for several days, and became restless. He got up about 2 o’clock in the morning, partly dressed himself, and said he could not sleep. Soon afterwards he went out, and about 4 o’clock his uncle, Mr. Mark Collins, of Lower Car Close farm, went in search of him in the barn and stables, but not finding him there returned to the house. Mrs. Collins then desired her husband to go to the place where the body was found, as she had just dreamt her nephew was drowned there. Mr. Collins acted as his wife requested, and, to his amazement and horror, saw the literal fulfillment of her dream.

York Herald, quoted in The Law Times, Dec. 17, 1864

Etna’s Rings

Periodically Mount Etna emits rings of steam and ash. Not much is known as to how they form — perhaps a vent has assumed a particularly circular shape, so that emitted gas forms vortex rings — but they can be hundreds of feet wide.

Naturalist filmmaker Geoff Mackley captured these in June 2000, but they’ve recurred as recently as 2013.

Ho Ho Ho

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Every Christmas for more than 30 years, someone has decorated this 20-foot juniper tree in the median of Interstate 17 about 55 miles north of downtown Phoenix, Arizona.

The decorations, the same ones every year, go up before Thanksgiving, and they’re taken down after New Year’s Day.

“I know who started it, but I’m not going to go into that,” former transportation department employee Tom Foster told the Arizona Daily Courier in 2009. “I heard there’s some elves that got to looking at how bleak we were … and people weren’t celebrating Christmas very well. They thought [the decorations] are a good way to brighten the drive between here and Phoenix.”

“But don’t stop on the road. That’s not what Santa wants.”

A Very Bad Day

In September 1914, three ships from Britain’s 7th Cruiser Squadron were on patrol in the North Sea to prevent the Imperial German Navy from entering the English Channel to interrupt supply lines between England and France.

Fifteen-year-old midshipman Wenman Wykeham-Musgrave was aboard HMS Aboukir when the German U-boat U-9 attacked. His sister recalled in 2003:

“He went overboard when the Aboukir was going down and he swam like mad to get away from the suction. He was then just getting on board the Hogue and she was torpedoed. He then went and swam to the Cressy and she was also torpedoed. He eventually found a bit of driftwood, became unconscious and was eventually picked up by a Dutch trawler.”

U-9 had sunk all three cruisers, killing 1,500 men. Wykeham-Musgrave was eventually rescued by a Dutch trawler.