Author: cosmicautumn and Dylan

Park Slope Plane Crash

Park Slope Plane Crash

One of the deadliest American air disasters is nearly forgotten in Brooklyn

No memorial at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn, marks the site of the one of the worst aviation disasters in American history.
On December 16, 1960, a United Airlines Flight 826 landing from Chicago and TWA Flight 266 coming from Ohio collided in mid-air. The TWA Lockheed Super Constellation jet plummeted onto Staten Island and the United Douglas DC-8 plane crashed into the brownstones of Park Slope.
All of the TWA passengers were killed on impact, but no pedestrians were harmed on the ground in Staten Island. However, debris from the United plane and sections of fuselage pummeled the buildings and sidewalks in Brooklyn, one piece falling on the McCaddin Funeral Home, causing embalmed corpses to fly into the air and onto the street. The Pillar of Fire Church was engulfed in flames and the left wing of the plane slashed through the apartment building next door. In the middle of the intersection, the entire tail section fell upright. Debris included numerous wrapped Christmas presents thrown from the plane, mingled with bricks ripped from the buildings.
There was one United flight survivor: eleven-year-old Steven Baltz. Although he was taken breathing to New York Methodist Hospital, he died 26 hours later from burns and broken bones. The Phillips Chapel at the hospital has a memorial plaque including the five nickels and four dimes Baltz had in his pockets.
128 passengers and six people on the ground were killed in the disaster. A new condominium building stands where the plane crashed and there are small reminders of the damage at the quiet Park Slope intersection. The bricks on top of 126 Sterling are different from the rest of the building and repairs are visible on the upper floors of many buildings on Seventh Avenue.

Read more about Park Slope Plane Crash on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Disaster Areas
Location: Brooklyn, New York, US
Edited by: cosmicautumn, Dylan

April 11, 2010
The Room of Endangered and Extinct Species

The Room of Endangered and Extinct Species

A haunting collection of the vanished and disappearing natural world

Holding 257 rare specimens, La Salle des Espèces Menacées et des Espèces Disparues (The Room of Endangered and Extinct Species) is a glimpse into natural worlds that human progress has pushed to endangerment or extinction.
The wood-lined room is one of the original galleries of the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution. It is kept cold and dark, with most light coming from the glass and wood display cases. The specimens, in various states of completion from whole taxidermy examples to single pressed branches, represent animals and plants that have been completely extinguished, and others that are fading from existence.
There are disappearing animals like the Aye-aye, a large nocturnal lemur from Madagascar; the critically endangered Sumatran Tiger; and a preserved Coelacanth, the ancient fish long believed to be extinct that resurfaced in Indonesia in 2008. A Barbary lion and Cape lion, both extinct in the wild, snarl and stare from their shared glass case in the center of the room.
Many of the taxidermy animals, skeletons, and other specimens are the only examples of extinct creatures. The gallery contains the sole complete black emu skeleton and only complete mounted Schomburgk’s Deer, chased for its ornate antlers in Thailand. There is the extinct quagga, a zebra with stripes only on its head; a Rodrigues Giant Tortoise; a dried Cry Violet; a pinned Xerces Blue butterfly; a Tasmanian Tiger; one of two known specimens of the Santa Lucian Giant Rice Rat; a mounted Bluebuck skin; one of only seven preserved Hawaii ʻOo, a bird hunted for its striking yellow feathers; one of three Seychelles giant tortoises; and one of ten known specimens of the Martinique Muskrat, a species that met its final end when it chose the Mount Pelée volcano as its last refuge, perishing in the 1902 eruption.
Alongside these relics of natural history is a gold clock made for Marie-Antoinette by Robert Robin, Louis XVI’s clockmaker. It was confiscated during the French Revolution and still chimes through the stillness of the gallery.
In addition to the Room of Endangered and Extinct Species, the Grande Galerie de l’Evolution extends to 3,000 specimens in its central atrium alone, and 7,000 in the adjoining rooms. It is one of three museums at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle complex in the Jardin des Plantes.

Read more about The Room of Endangered and Extinct Species on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Museums and Collections, Natural History
Location:
Edited by: cosmicautumn, Dylan

April 8, 2010
Pentaceratops Skull: Sam Noble Museum of Natural History

Pentaceratops Skull: Sam Noble Museum of Natural History

The largest land animal skull ever discovered

At ten-and-a-half-feet tall, the Pentaceratops skull at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History has the record for the world’s largest land vertebrate skull.
The enormous fossil with its towering frill is attached to a fully articulated Pentaceratops body, and it’s estimated that the living creature weighed around 13,000 pounds. The Pentaceratops is similar in shape to the better-known Triceratops, although with a couple more horns jutting from its head. The five-horned dinosaur skull was discovered in New Mexico in 1941.
However, due to the onset of World War II and the loss of scientific funding, the massive cranium was left in its rock matrix in crates underneath the football stadium at the University of Oklahoma. (Sadly the University of Oklahoma mascot was not a Pentaceratops) In 1995, paleontologist D.E. Savage, who helped as a student on the original expedition, came to work on the museum’s new dinosaur exhibits and rediscovered the huge skull. The Pentaceratops skull is 15% larger than the previous record holder: a Torosaurus latus skull at Yale University’s Peabody Museum.
The Sam Noble Museum of Natural History is located on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. It also holds the world’s largest Apatosaurus and Saurophaganax maximus dinosaurs and the “Cooper Skull,” the oldest painted object found in North America.

Read more about Pentaceratops Skull: Sam Noble Museum of Natural History on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Museums and Collections, Natural History
Location:
Edited by: cosmicautumn, Dylan

April 3, 2010
La Dune du Pyla

La Dune du Pyla

Bordered by forest on three sides and the ocean on the other, the Great Dune of Pyla is the highest sand dune in Europe

La Grande Dune du Pyla, or the Great Dune of Pyla or Pilat, in the southwest of France on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean emerges suddenly from the forest around it. At 107 meters (351 feet) above sea level, it is the highest sand dune in Europe and is estimated to contain 60 million cubic meters of sand.
Each year, the dune adds more and more of the surrounding forest to its mass. The pine trees, planted to prevent erosion in the 18th and 19th century, can be seen disappearing on the edges of the dune. Other sand dunes are in the southwest of the Gironde department, but none so big as the Dune of Pyla, which grew on top of a smaller dune known as la Dune de la Grave. In a short geological time, the Great Dune of Pyla consumed much of plants, roads, and even buildings around it.
The sand made fine by the ocean wind makes it difficult to climb to the top of the dune, but the reward are clear views of the Bassin d’Arcachon, the bay below the dune; the Landes pine forest; and, on a clear day, even the Pyrenees mountains on the border between France and Spain. Numerous paragliders use the wind and height of the dune to launch in the air and other visitors sprawl in the sands.

Read more about La Dune du Pyla on Atlas Obscura…

Category: Geological Oddities
Location: La Teste-de-Buch, France
Edited by: cosmicautumn, Dylan

April 1, 2010