Author: Annetta and Dylan

Reed College Research Reactor

Reed College Research Reactor

The only nuclear reactor operated by undergraduates

Manned by a staff of 40 undergraduate students, the Reed College Research Reactor has been in use as a research and teaching facility since 1968, and is the only liberal arts college in the world with a nuclear reactor.
the technical details, according to their web site: “The Reed College Reactor is a TRIGA Mark I water-cooled, “swimming pool” reactor at the bottom of a 25-foot-deep tank. It uses 58 zirconium hydride/uranium hydride fuel elements in a circular grid array. The uranium fuel is enriched to 20 percent in uranium-235. The reactor is surrounded by a graphite ring which minimizes neutron leakage by reflecting neutrons back into the core.”
In order to be part of the team that works with the reactor, students must get a license from the school, which is based on a 3-hour written exam and 4-hour walk through-operational-oral exam administered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington DC. Since Reed does not have a nuclear engineering department (or any engineering department), the staff comes from a broad selection of academic majors, primarily the sciences but including nearly every major including English, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Economics, Political Science.
The primary purpose of the reactor is to produce neutrons, which are used for research. The reactor produces 250 kilowatts of heat, about 10 times as much as a home furnace, which they currently do not use.
In 2005 ABC News sent an team to investigate the security of the reactor along with several other university reactors. Although they found the Reed reactor locked behind several doors, they questioned why a school with no engineering program needed to maintain such a device.
The reactor receives about 1000 visitors a year, often from other schools.
The College also offers a 40-hour Radiation Safety Officer (RSO) Class, is licensed by the State of Oregon to perform calibrations of radiation survey meters (for a fee).

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Category: Strange Science, Inspired Inventions, Instruments of Science
Location: Oregon, US
Edited by: Annetta, Dylan

April 7, 2010
Mauseturm Tower

Mauseturm Tower

Legendary site where an evil bishop was devoured by rodents

“And in at the windows, and in at the door,
And through the walls by thousands they pour,
And down from the ceiling, and up through the floor,
From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below,
And all at once to the Bishop they go.
“They have whetted their teeth against the stones,
And now they pick the Bishop’s bone;
They gnaw’d the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him.”
This diminutive toll tower near the town of Bingen is most famously the setting of a grisly cautionary tale from the middle ages.
According to legend, Bishop Hatto II, Archbishop of Mainz was a cruel and selfish ruler, responsible both for the collection of tolls along the Rhine as well as the distribution of food. When famine struck Germany, the townspeople found themselves starving, and they plead with the Archbishop to give them more food from the storehouse. In response, he invited them all to come into the storehouse, and take all the food they could carry. But once the townsfolk were inside the storehouse, he barricaded the doors, and set the place ablaze, remarking to his conspirators that their screams of anguish were comparable to the squeals of rats.
That evening the Archbishop returned to his mansion to feast in peace and celebrate his solution to the famine. When he woke the next morning, he found that his portrait had been eaten out of its frame by rats. Then news came that a swarm of rats had descended on local farmland and then the storehouse and eaten everything in sight. As he looked out from his window, he saw the army of rats headed straight for him, and he fled to his island tower, where he barricaded himself in for the night. He awoke to the sounds of his cat:
“He listen’d and look’d—it was only the cat;
But the Bishop he grew more fearful for that,
For she sat screaming, mad with fear,
At the army of rats that were drawing near.”
The rats had taken to the water, swimming to his island tower. In the end, the cruel man is devoured by rats, in a sort of (sadly, totally apocryphal) poetic justice.
In reality, the Mauseturm Tower is one of many Rhine River toll stations, built in the middle ages as one part local taxation, one part of an elaborate extortion scheme. The name “Mauseturm” (mouse tower) is a corruption of the original name “Mausheturm,” or toll tower. Those in control of the towers were widely reviled for abusing their positions of authority and extracting unsanctioned fees from passing boats, and were even accused of outright piracy, kidnapping, and even of stealing entire ships.
The Mauseturm Tower has had buildings of some sort on the location since Roman times, but the current tower dates to the 13th century, with major restorations into its current neo-Gothic appearance in the mid 1800s.
Although there does not appear to any literal truth to the legend, Archbishop Hatto II was a real man who by all accounts has had his name drug through the mud undeservedly. Truth aside, over time the legend became firmly attached to the tower. The story became well known with the publication of the Curious Myths of the Middle Ages compiled by Sabine Baring-Gould, a Victorian scholar.
Baring-Gould pointed out many of the motifs in the legend are common to German folklore and art, wherein the mouse is often a symbol of the soul. Also, it seems that the fate of being devoured by mice or rats was not uncommon. Other places throughout Europe are associated with similar stories, particularly where a picturesque tower is surrounded by water.
The popularity of such stories says something about the intimate relationship between people in the middle ages and swarms of hungry rodents, as well as concerns about famine and rapacious noblemen.
Mauseturm Tower is close to the town of Bingen am Rhein, and is only open by special appointment.

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Category: Fascinating Fauna, Memento Mori, Hoaxes and Pseudoscience, Disaster Areas, Curious Places of Worship
Location:
Edited by: Annetta, Dylan

April 3, 2010
No Man’s Land Luxury Sea Fort

No Man’s Land Luxury Sea Fort

Victorian sea fort, deluxe hotel, abandoned wasteland

It was built to defend the coast from invasion, was sold off as a private island, turned into a luxury hotel worthy of Dr. No, and was the site of strange business machinations that lead to a property developer taking the only set of keys and barricading himself inside the island fortress.
Of the four forts constructed in the Solent straights to protect the shipyards at Portsmouth, No Man’s Land exemplifies the strange fates of “Palmerston’s Follies”, a series of mammoth fortifications built in Victorian times to defend the coast against perceived threats of invasion from France. The most expensive and extensive fortifications ever built in peacetime, the Palmerston Forts, which include No Man’s Land, Spitbank Fort, St. Helen’s Fort, and Horse Sand Fort, were outdated by the time they were completed. As deterrent, perhaps they worked, for the French never did invade.
No Man’s Land was constructed over nearly twenty years for the not-small fortune of £462,500
Nearly 200 feet across, the cannon-laden armored artificial island was intended to host 80 troops and 49 cannon. The sunken center of the circular fort originally provided protection form the elements as well as a freshwater supply from a well dug into the sea bed. Although it never saw action against the French, it served as a defense station against submarine attack in WWI and held anti-aircraft guns in WWII.
The fort was decommissioned in the 1950s and sold by ministry of defense in 1963. In the 1990s it was transformed into a luxury hotel, replete with two helipads, 21 bedrooms, a roof garden, and restaurants. The lowered center was glassed in as an atrium for the heated pool. Unfortunately the remote hotel never really took off, and in 2004 the developer Harmesh Pooni bought for it £6 million, with the intention of renting it out for special occasions, perhaps evil henchmen’s conferences or doomsday device planning sessions. Unfortunately for Pooni’s plans, the contaminated water in the hotel pool caused an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, and his business went south as a result. In 2007 it was put up for sale for £4 million, but was not sold (although there were rumors that Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon was considering purchasing it as a hideaway).
Faced with financial troubles and the possibility of losing the island to debtors or new investors, Harmesh Pooni did the logical thing: he packed up his bags, grabbed the keys, and locked himself into the fortress. When he was interviewed in 2008, photos showed a marked decline in standards of the property: dead plants, dusty furniture, and a half-empty pool full of murky brown water. Mr. Pooni was finally evicted in early 2009.
Most recently No Man’s Land sold for the bargain price of £910,000 (just a little over twice what it cost to build 150 years ago – in un-adjusted pounds) in March 2009 to Swanmore Estates Ltd, who are based in Gibraltar. It is unclear what their plans for the fortress are, but they have renewed an application to build a floating breakwater and dock – as well as yet another helipad.

Read more about No Man’s Land Luxury Sea Fort on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Anomalous Islands, Odd Accommodations, Eccentric Homes
Location:
Edited by: Annetta, Dylan

April 3, 2010
The Mithraeum at Circus Maximus

The Mithraeum at Circus Maximus

The underground sanctuary of a mysterious ancient cult

One of the largest secret Mithraic temples in Rome is hidden next to the famous Circus Maximus. Discovered in 1931 as part of Rome’s fascist-era building projects, the small subterranean space was once dedicated to the mystery cult of the god Mithras.
Although several mithraeums have been discovered throughout the ancient holding of the Roman Empire, including sites in London, and several in Germany, France, and Hungary, little is known about the actual religious practices of the movement’s followers. The Mithraic Mysteries emerged and gained popularity throughout Rome between the 1st and 4th centuries. The cult and religious sanctuaries were open only to initiates, and their rituals secret. The central imagery is of the god Mithras slaying a bull, a motif known as “tauribolium”, found in most if not all mithraeums. Some trace the origins of the cult to the Iranian god Mitra, based on statements made by 3-4th century AD philosopher Porphyry, but some question whether he actually knew what he was talking about. In any event, the cult died out at the end of 4th century as Christianity began to gain momentum.
Mithraeums were often underground, sometimes built into natural caves. The central chamber was dark and windowless, in contrast to the open and bright structure of most early Roman temples. The structures are small and intimate, designed to hold only 30-40 people as a place of secret ritual prayer, sacrifice, and ritual meals of bread and wine.
The mithraeum under Circus Maximus is accessible by appointment only. The site dates to the 2nd century AD, and features five parallel but separate chambers with a central sanctuary paved in white marble, with two niches for statues of Caute and Cautopates, and a place of honor which would have held a statue of Mithras.

Read more about The Mithraeum at Circus Maximus on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Curious Places of Worship, Subterranean Sites
Location: Roma, Italy
Edited by: Annetta, Dylan

March 26, 2010