Salt Mine Tours

Taking a tour of a salt mine? On the surface, it seems like a strange way to spend a day. What could be so interesting about seeing miners dig salt out of the ground? After all, it's not like taking a tour of a location steeped in history such as the Alamo or the Tower of London. Or a famous government building such as the U.S. Capitol. Or a tour of an interesting city such as San Francisco or New Orleans.

But a salt mine? You'll be surprised…

WIELICZKA SALT MINE IN KRAKOW, POLAND.  I saw a segment on the Travel Channel about this unusual tourist attraction. The mine consists of a lot more than just the tunnels and pits where they have been extracting salt for approximately 700 years (one of Europe's oldest salt mines). It was opened in the 13th century with commercial mining discontinued in 1996 but it continued to produce table salt until 2007. This is a unique tourist attraction and is listed on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list.

The tour is spread out over the three upper levels of the mine complex, ranging from 64 to 135 meters (208 to 439 feet) below ground. You'll need to take nearly 400 steps down to the mine but there is an elevator that returns visitors to the surface. Tourists can walk the 3 kilometers (1.8 mile) trail through a collection of objects related to the mine and mining industry over the centuries. You'll see underground lakes. But perhaps the most surprising and fascinating feature of this salt mine is all the works of art made by the miners themselves over the centuries, hand hewn entirely of solid salt—statues, frescos, beautifully adorned chapels including one very large chapel with chandeliers and staircases made entirely of salt along with other hidden treasures. In addition to the spectacular works of art, the complex has a reception room used for private functions including weddings.

The salt mine reaches a depth of 327 meters (1065 feet) and is over 287 kilometers long (172 miles) with the tour covering only a small portion of this total area.

STRATACA IN HUTCHINSON, KANSAS, USA.  Interactive dinner theater below ground in a salt mine? Scout campouts below ground in a salt mine? A large Hollywood film storage/vault facility underground in a salt mine? An event center underground in a salt mine? Yes to all of these…and more.

This salt deposit was formed approximately 275 million years ago when the Permian Sea dried up. This is one of the largest salt deposits in the world covering 27,000 square miles in central and south central Kansas. Adjacent salt deposits extend the entire area to include parts of Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle and south eastern New Mexico for a total overall of 100,000 square miles. The purest portion of the main salt vein is 650 feet underground and is still being mined. Strataca (when first opened for tours was called the Kansas Underground Salt Museum) has access to about 300,000 square feet of the mined out area.

Salt was discovered southwest of Hutchinson in 1887 by a land developer who was drilling for oil as a means of increasing land sales. Instead of oil, he struck salt. Strataca is located in the original Carey rock salt mine.

Even though the mine tour existed earlier and a large storage facility had been there since the 1940s, in 1999 the Reno County Historical Society recognized the importance of preserving and presenting to the public the Hutchinson salt story. Today's museum is the result of a collaboration of the Historical Society and two businesses that already existed in the mine—the Hutchinson Salt Company and the Underground Vaults and Storage. In addition to storing a vast number of original Hollywood movies (such as the master prints of Gone With The Wind and The Wizard Of Oz), it also stores millions of documents and items from around the world in a secure and environmentally conducive atmosphere.

The newly revamped and renamed Strataca was opened to the general public May 1, 2007. Their first Murder In The Mine interactive dinner theater was held in 2007 as was their first underground scout campout. The Visitor Center opened in July 2008. And in 2013, they launched The Salt Safari Adventure Hike.

Strangest Roadside Attraction in Each State New Mexico thru Wyoming 3 of 3

This week is the third and final entry in my 3-part blog series presenting the strangest roadside attraction in each state. This week is New Mexico through Wyoming.

31. New Mexico

Strangest attraction: Very Large Array

Year built:1980

You probably don't know its name, but you've see it in movies such as "Contact," and "Independence Day." The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array consists of twenty-seven 25-meter radio telescopes deployed in a Y-shaped array. Astronomers have used the VLA to observe black holes and protoplanetary disks around young stars.

32. New York

Strangest attraction: Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum

Year built: 1996

Once known as the Furniture Capital of the World, Jamestown is most proud of its best-known daughter, Lucille Ball. There's a lot to love here, including meticulous recreations of the "I Love Lucy" sets used for Lucy and Ricky's apartments in New York and Hollywood.

33. North Carolina

Strangest attraction: World's Largest Chest of Drawers

Year built: 1926

The World’s Largest Chest of Drawers is 38 feet high and was built to call attention to High Point as the Furniture Capital of the World. The original chest was a 20 foot tall building with knobs and served as the local bureau of information. In 1996, it was completely renovated and converted into a 38 foot tall Goddard-Townsend block front chest.

34. North Dakota

Strangest attraction: Tommy the Turtle

Year built: 1978

Turtles and winter are not a combo that comes to mind—certainly not a snowmobile-riding turtle. But the 30 foot tall Tommy the Turtle is the largest turtle of its kind in the world and straddles the largest snowmobile in the world (34 feet long) while guarding the entrance to Bottineau's municipal tennis courts. He's meant to be a symbol for the nearby Turtle Mountains.

35. Ohio

Strangest attraction: As We Are exhibit

Year built: 2017

It may be the ultimate headshot. The new exhibit, the As We Are exhibit, contains a photo booth capable of taking 3-D pictures. The pictures are then displayed on a construct of a head made from ribbons of ultrabright LED screens. The head is 14 feet high, weighs more than three tons, and displays the faces of everyday people 17 times larger than life.

36. Oklahoma

Strangest attraction: Big Beaver Statue

Year built: 1970

Beaver is known for its annual World Championship Cow Chip Throwing Contest in April. To commemorate the festival, there's a statue of a big beaver holding a large piece of cow poop. The beaver's home is a mobile trailer that moves around town at different times of the year. FYI: the record cow chip toss was set in 2015 with one chip flying 188 feet 6 inches.

37. Oregon

Strangest attraction: World's First Riding Mechanical Corndog

Year built: 2016

The Pronto Pup—a wiener on a wooden skewer that's dipped in cornmeal batter and deep fried—was created by George Boyington in the 1930s. It's honored today with a restaurant that is topped with a 30-foot fiberglass corndog as well as a mechanical, rideable corndog out front that costs a quarter for a ride.

38. Pennsylvania

Strangest attraction: Haines Shoe House

Year built: 1948

The Haines Shoe House was built by Colonel Mahlon Nathaniel Haines, the flamboyant "Shoe Wizard" for advertising purposes. It's 25 feet tall. The living room is located in the toe, the kitchen is located in the heel, two bedrooms are located in the ankle, and there's an ice cream shop in the instep.

39. Rhode Island

Strangest attraction: Green Animals Topiary Garden

Year built: 1872

Among the more than 80 pieces of topiary in the Green Animals Topiary Garden are teddy bears, a camel, a giraffe, an ostrich, an elephant, and two bears made from sculptured California privet, yew, and English boxwood. There are also pineapples, a unicorn, a reindeer, a dog, and a horse with his rider. Green Animals is the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States.

40. South Carolina

Strangest attraction: Mars Bluff Crater

Year built:1958

On March 11, 1958, a U.S. Air Force plane accidently dropped an unarmed 7,600-pound atomic bomb on this small community. The bomb created a crater 35 feet deep and 70 feet wide. The incident and the crater, which is now overgrown and on private property, are marked by a nearby historical marker.

41. South Dakota

Strangest attraction: Center of the Nation Monument

Year built: 2008

The Center of the Nation Monument—a massive map of the United States enclosed in a compass rose, designed by a local artist and made of 54,000 pounds of South Dakota granite isn't technically at the center of the country. The center, which is 21 miles north of the monument, is marked by a small metal pole stuck into a pasture, off of a gravel road behind a ditch.

42. Tennessee

Strangest attraction: Titanic—World's Largest Museum Attraction

Year built: 2010

Surprisingly, landlocked Tennessee is home to the largest permanent Titanic museum in the world. Half the size of the original ill-fated ocean liner, the museum lets "passengers" experience what it was like to walk the hallways, parlors, cabins, and grand staircase, while surrounded by more than 400 artifacts directly from the ship and its passengers.

43. Texas

Strangest attraction: Cadillac Ranch

Year built: 1974

This Route 66 landmark features 10 Cadillacs facing west in a line, all half-buried, nose-down in the dirt. From the 1949 Club Sedan to the 1963 Sedan deVille, the Caddies' tail fins are held high. Created by The Ant Farm, a group of art-hippies who had a silent partner—Amarillo billionaire Stanley Marsh III—who wanted a piece of public art that would baffle the locals.

44. Utah

Strangest attraction: Hole N’ The Rock

Year built: 1952

Hole N’ The Rock began as a home that was dug, carved, and blasted out of the rock beginning in the 1940s. Today, you can tour the 14 rooms arranged around huge pillars. A fireplace with a 65-foot chimney drilled through solid sandstone, a deep French fryer, and a bathtub built into the rock are among the attractions. There's also a petting zoo with a zebra.

45. Vermont

Strangest attraction: Ben & Jerry's Flavor Graveyard

Year built: 1997

On a hill in back of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream plant, beyond the bulk milk tanks, are grave markers to dearly departed flavors such as Ethan Almond and Bovinity Divinity. It's a good final stop after a 30-minute guided tour of the ice cream factory. After sampling the still-living flavors, you can pay your respects to those no longer there to give you a brain freeze.

46. Virginia

Strangest attraction: The Great Stalacpipe Organ

Year built: 1954

The Great Stalacpipe Organ is located inside the Luray Caverns near Shenandoah National Park. Instead of using pipes, the organ is wired to soft rubber mallets poised to gently strike stalactites of varying lengths and thicknesses. Leland W. Sprinkle created the organ by finding and shaving appropriate stalactites to produce specific notes. It can be heard anywhere within the cavern.

47. Washington

Strangest attraction: Nutty Narrows Bridge

Year built: 1963

Everyone's seen dead animals along the side of the road. After seeing a deceased squirrel with an acorn still in its mouth, Amos Peters also decided to do something about it. The result was a bridge to give squirrels a way to cross busy Olympia Way without getting flattened by passing cars. Today, there are five such bridges throughout the city.

48. West Virginia

Strangest attraction: The Mystery Hole

Year built: 1973

The Mystery Hole bills itself as a gravity-defying wonder. It includes attractions such as balls that roll up hill and a Volkswagen Beetle chopped in half seemingly crashed into the side of the building. Original owner Donald Wilson "discovered" the hole's mysterious powers in the 1970s and set up a kitschy tourist attraction that fell on hard times in the 1990s, but new owners are restoring it.

49. Wisconsin

Strangest attraction: Sputnik Crashed Here

Year built: 1962

People remember when satellites and rockets go up, but not so much when they come down. On Sept. 6, 1962, a 20-pound smoldering piece of the Soviet Union's 5 ton Sputnik IV satellite fell from the sky and embedded itself three-inches deep on Eighth Street, in Manitowoc in front of the Rahr-West Art Museum. The spot where it landed is now marked on the street, although the fragment is no longer there. The museum has hosted an annual Sputnikfest since 2007.

50. Wyoming

Strangest attraction: Cody Dug Up Gun Museum

Year built: 2009

Take the name—Cody Dug Up Gun Museum—literally. Almost all the weapons on display here were dug up. Some were found by metal detecting, some were spotted sticking out of the ground, others were lying in dry streambeds, and some were salvaged from battlefield dirt. The collection includes a revolver dropped in a creek during a Civil War battle and a rifle that exploded in a homesteader’s hand.

The 50 roadside attractions I've presented over the last 3 weeks were not determined by me and might not be the strangest (especially considering that strangest is a subjective opinion), but they are certainly very strange. 

Strangest Roadside Attraction In Each State Hawaii thru New Jersey 2 of 3

This week is part 2 of my 3-part blog series highlighting an interesting, unusual, or historic roadside attraction for each of our 50 states. This week covering Hawaii through New Jersey.

 11) Hawaii

Strangest attraction: Pineapple Garden Maze

Year built: 1999

Located on the Dole Plantation, the world's largest maze features 14,000 colorful Hawaiian plants, has nearly 2.5 miles of paths, and covers more than three acres. In the maze, the goal is to locate the eight secret stations. The fastest finishers win a prize and get their names recorded on a sign at the maze's entrance.

12) Idaho

Strangest attraction: Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 Atomic Museum

Year built: 1951

Ever wanted to touch the instruments in a nuclear reactor control room or try to use the mechanical arms used to hold radioactive materials? You can at the Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1, or EBR-1 for short, which made history on Dec. 20, 1951, when it became the first plant to generate usable electricity from atomic energy.

13) Illinois

Strangest attraction: The Superman Museum

Year built: 1993

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a Superman museum. Located on Superman Square in the Man of Steel's official hometown of Metropolis, the two-story building features more than 20,000 items from longtime Superman enthusiast Jim Hambrick's collection, including the only remaining George Reeves costume from the original TV series.

14) Indiana

Strangest attraction: United States Vice Presidential Museum

Year built: 1993

Officially known as The Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center after the 44th vice president, the two-story former church building showcases the history of all the vice presidents, including memorabilia and a theater. Did you know Mike Pence was the sixth VP from Indiana, following Schuyler Colfax, Thomas Hendricks, Charles Fairbanks, Thomas Marshall, and Dan Quayle?

15) Iowa

Strangest attraction: Future Birthplace of James T. Kirk

Year built: 1985

The town of Riverside, incorporated in 1882, is best known for an event that wouldn't occur for 210 years. That's when James T. Kirk, future captain of the USS Enterprise, will be born. A plaque commemorates the upcoming event, and an annual Star Trek festival is held in the town that claims Kirk as its own after creator Gene Roddenberry wrote that the captain was born in Iowa.

16. Kansas

Strangest attraction: Giant Van Gogh Painting on World’s Largest Easel

Year built: 2001

Kansas is the Sunflower State, so it makes sense that Canadian artist Cameron Cross pitched the city of Goodland for his third and so far last giant recreation of a famous Van Gogh work. The 32-by-24 foot "Sunflower" recreation rests on an 80-foot tall easel a half-mile off I-70. If you're curious, the other two are in Altona, Manitoba, Canada and Emerald, Australia.

17. Kentucky

Strangest attraction: The Vent Haven Museum

Year built: 1973

Hey, dummy, did you know this is the only museum in the world dedicated to ventriloquism? Housing more than 900 dummies used by ventriloquists from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, the dolls are from founder W.S. Berger's collection. Berger was not a professional ventriloquist. He retired as president of the Cambridge Tile Company.

18. Louisiana

Strangest attraction: National Hansen's Disease Museum

Year built: 1999

Located at the former National Leprosarium, it's a museum that honors the once quarantined on site leprosy patients and the medical staff who took care of them. The hospital began as the Louisiana Leper Home in 1894 before becoming one of two leprosy hospitals in the U.S.

19. Maine

Strangest attraction: Lenny the Chocolate Moose

Year built: 1997

Located in Len Libby Candies, a store that sells handcrafted chocolate and ice cream, Lenny is a 1,700-pound solid milk chocolate moose. He resides in a pond of white chocolate tinted with food coloring. The self-proclaimed "World's Largest Chocolate Animal Sculpture" is eight feet tall and over nine feet from end to end.

20. Maryland

Strangest attraction: National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Year built: 1993

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine is dedicated to demonstrating how techniques that developed on the battlefields of the Civil War contributed to modern medicine. If you like gore, this could be your place. More arms and legs were cut off during the Civil War than in any other war in U.S. history, according to the "Ammunition and Amputations" display.

21. Massachusetts

Strangest attraction: The Museum of Bad Art

Year built: 1994

One man's trash becomes an art fancier's dream. Antique dealer Scott Wilson started the collection after showing a painting he had recovered from the trash to some friends, who then suggested the idea. The pieces in the Museum of Bad Art range, according to the museum's website, "the work of talented artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush."

22. Michigan

Strangest attraction: Hoegh Pet Casket Co.

Year built: 1966

The tour at Pet Casket Factory starts in a showroom, where a complete pet funeral seems to be in progress—with casket, floral arrangements, candles, and velvet paintings of mournful, large-eyed puppies. It concludes at the model pet cemetery outside. And there's a brass plaque on the crematorium: "If Christ would have had a little dog, it would have followed Him to the Cross."

23. Minnesota

Strangest attraction: Jolly Green Giant

Year built: 1979

The 55.5 foot tall Jolly Green Giant statue grew out of a local radio station owner's "Welcome Travelers" program. As he interviewed people who passed through town, he gave them Green Giant vegetables (canned in a local factory) at the end of each show. The guests would sometimes ask, "Where's the Green Giant?" An idea and a monument were born.

24. Mississippi

Strangest attraction: Devil's Crossroads

Year built: 1938

Location: Corners of Highways 61 and 49, Clarksdale

Closest city: Oxford

If you’re a blues fan, you might be familiar with the legend of blues icon Robert Johnson selling his soul to Satan at this crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Legend aside, this busy intersection is hard to miss thanks to a signpost with giant guitars sitting atop. Nearby, learn more about Johnson at the Rock ‘n Roll and Blues Heritage Museum.

25. Missouri

Strangest attraction: Jesse James Home Museum

Year built: 1881

In the Jesse James Home Museum you can see the infamous bullet hole in the interior wall made after Robert Ford pulled out his .44 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and shot the legendary outlaw behind his right ear on April 3, 1882. After James's body was exhumed in 1995, it was determined that the bullet that killed him never left his body.

26. Montana

Strangest attraction: Talking Penguin Statue

Year built: 1989

Cut Bank, a town of 3,000, considers itself to be the coldest spot in the nation. To back up its claim it has a 27-foot tall talking penguin made from 10,000 pounds of concrete over a metal frame, which talks (when its speaker works), bleating out the slogan, "Welcome to Cut Bank, the Coldest Spot in the Nation!"

27. Nebraska

Strangest attraction: Kool-Aid: Discover the Dream exhibit at the Hastings Museum

Year built: 1927

Kool-Aid, the flavored powdered drink mix, is the creation of Edward Perkins, who came up with the concoction in his mother’s kitchen. The Hastings Museum's Kool-Aid: Discover the Dream exhibit explores the life of Perkins, whose other creations included Nix-O-Tine Tobacco Remedy and M, a gasoline additive.

28. Nevada

Strangest attraction: Toilet Paper Hero of Hoover Dam

Year built: 2007

Can you imagine cleaning latrines for 7,000 men in 120 degree heat? That was the inspiration for Steven Liguori for his statue to "Alabam," who worked at the nearby Hoover Dam construction site. Alabam cleaned the outhouses, a thankless job that Ligouri honored with this statue.

29. New Hampshire

Strangest attraction: The Redstone Rocket

Year built: 1971

Warren, a small town of less than 1,000 people in the middle of the state, stands out for its 66 foot tall Redstone rocket shell. This type of rocket was used to launch the first American satellites and astronauts. The Rocket stands upright on top of a cement block in the center of town between the Methodist church and the municipal building.

30. New Jersey

Strangest attraction: World's Largest Light Bulb

Year built: 1938

It shouldn't be a surprise that atop the Edison Memorial Tower at the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, named for the man who developed the practical electric light bulb, there's the world's largest light bulb. It's 14 feet tall, weighs eight tons, and crowns the 12-story tower.

Check back next week for part 3 of 3 covering New Mexico thru Wyoming. 

Strangest Roadside Attraction in Each State Alabama thru Georgia part 1of 3

The great American road trip remains a cultural touchstone. Hundreds of thousands of Americans each year pack into a car with their friends or family for a trip to reach the opposite coast, or an amusement park in a nearby state, or a beachside resort. And the country's long stretches of road have given us another tradition that many find as important as the destination—the roadside attraction.

These curiosities range from unusual museums to Guinness World Records to strange memorials. Giant statues of beavers, an enormous moose made out of chocolate and a jolly green giant are just a few of the sights that can take your mind off the road and give you a chance to stretch your legs. Whether it's a giant talking penguin, a museum dedicated to hammers, or the spot where a Soviet satellite crashed, every state has interesting, quirky, unusual, and just plain wacky places to visit. They're not the most famous or popular attraction, just ones that will make you scratch your head and say you never knew that.

The famous Route 66 that stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles was riddled with such curiosities, and many can still be found all across America to this day, along famous trip routes like the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Pacific Coast Highway to the back roads and scenic routes you might take just to see an unusual sight.

Sometimes, these attractions and museums were specifically created to be tourist traps, with no historical context for their presence. Others are sites of unusual, famous, and often infamous events in local history. And in one case, there's an event that hasn't even happened yet—and probably never will.

This week's blog covers Alabama thru Georgia.

1) Alabama

Strangest attraction: Unclaimed Baggage Center

Year built: 1970

Ever wonder what happens to luggage that never gets picked up from the airport? It ends up here, in the Unclaimed Baggage Center, and so do nearly a million annual visitors who come to comb through the contents of the bags—sorted ahead of time into departments for easy shopping.

2) Alaska

Strangest attraction: Hammer Museum

Year built: 2002

It's hammer time all the time at the world's first museum dedicated to preserving the history of the world's first tool. More than 2,000 hammers are on display at any given time, ranging from modern tools to old ones such as hammers from ancient Egypt, and from tiny hammers two inches long to as big as 20 feet. Just look for the giant ball-peen hammer in the front yard.

3) Arizona

Strangest attraction: Flintstones Bedrock City

Year built: 1972

What began as a six-acre tourist attraction, including theme park and replicas of the Flintstone and Rubble residences (furnished with props), today also doubles as an RV campground and parking site. This ode to the '60s classic cartoon has a large metal slide resembling a brontosaurus so you can recreate the opening credits. Yabba-dabba-doo!

4) Arkansas

Strangest attraction: Gallows of Hanging Judge Parker at Fort Smith

Year built: 1873

The gallows at Forth Smith is where 19th century hard justice was meted out. Fort Smith was where the Lawless West met the Civilized East. For 21 years, Isaac "Hanging Judge" Parker held the bench of the U.S. Court for the Western District of Arkansas and sentenced 160 people to death. The gallows that stands today is a reconstruction.

5) California

Strangest attraction: Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch

Year built: 2000

On a stretch of old Route 66, Elmer Long, who is often on site, created his Bottle Tree Ranch. Elmer Long welded together a forest of metal trees and hung dozens of colorful glass bottles from each one. And atop each tree he placed a found object such as a sewing machine, guitar, rifle, and various signs.

6) Colorado

Strangest attraction: UFO Watchtower

Year built: 2000

It makes sense that a UFO sighting hotspot would have a watchtower. The San Luis Valley has more UFO sightings than anywhere else in America, according to paranormal experts. The tower has a 360-degree view, so you can look all around as well as up. In addition to the observation platform, there's a campground and, of course, a gift shop.

7) Connecticut

Strangest attraction: Frog Bridge

Year built: 2000

Officially, it's the Thread City Crossing, but it's known as the Frog Bridge because of the four copper frogs on each end of the steel bridge over the Willimantic River. The frogs commemorate 1754's The Battle of the Frogs, a story about a large-scale death of frogs fighting over the last water in the middle of a drought. The frog deaths were loud enough to convince residents that the French and Native Americans were coming to town to slaughter them. The invaders never came, and the frog battle became a part of Willimantic history.

8) Delaware

Strangest attraction: Miles the Monster

Year built: 2008

The Dover International Speedway, a racetrack known as "The Monster Mile," is proud of its monster mascot. He'd been the mascot since 2000, so when the track got a makeover beginning in 2007, a huge 46 feet tall "Miles the Monster" creature statue was erected just outside the track. You can find Miles also on the winner's trophy, tickets to the races, t-shirts, as action figures, and other memorabilia.

9) Florida

Strangest attraction: World's Smallest Police Station

Year built: 1963

The World's Smallest Police Station that stands on U.S. Highway 98 is a replica of the original phone booth that served as the department's call box. Remember, those were pre-cell phone days, and calls would come to one location. The previous phone was bolted to the outside of a building. Standing inside the booth provided protection when it rained.

10) Georgia

Strangest attraction: Georgia Guidestones

Year built: 1980

Sometimes referred to as America's Stonehenge, the Georgia Guidestones granite monument consists of five slabs, astronomically aligned, and a capstone lying atop of them. A message consisting of a set of 10 guidelines or principles for humanity and Earth is engraved in eight different languages: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.

Check back here next week for part 2 of 3 covering Hawaii thru New Jersey.

MEMORIAL DAY—History of the holiday

The last Monday in May, in 2026 that's May 25^th, is Memorial Day in the United States—a holiday honoring the men and women who died during military conflict in service to the United States. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War but didn't become an official federal holiday until 1971.

The Civil War claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history. This required the establishment of the country's first national cemeteries. In the late 1860s, Americans in various small towns and large cities held springtime tributes to fallen soldiers by decorating their graves with flowers. On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan proclaimed May 30 as Decoration Day, the date chosen because it was not the anniversary of any particular battle.

On the first Decoration Day, General Logan made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery (Washington, D.C.) where 5,000 participants decorated the graves of 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there.

Decoration Day originally honored only those lost while fighting in the Civil War on both sides of the conflict. But by the time the U.S. became involved in World War I, the holiday evolved to commemorate American military personnel who died in all wars.

The name Decoration Day gradually changed over to Memorial Day during the ensuing years, but continued to be observed on May 30. In 1968, one hundred years after General Logan made his Decoration Day proclamation, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May in order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees. This law also declared Memorial Day to be a federal holiday. The change went into effect in 1971.

In addition to nationwide parades and the decorating of graves and monuments with flags and flowers, Memorial Day has come to hold a second distinction. It is also a time of many family gatherings which include backyard BBQs and picnics. With an official date of the last Monday in May, the holiday is considered the unofficial start of summer and the beginning of the vacation travel season in the U.S. with the Labor Day holiday on the first Monday of September signaling the unofficial end of the summer season. Many recreational boaters launch their boats on lakes and rivers over the Memorial Day weekend for the first outing of the summer. Tourist attractions gear up for the summer vacationers.

Updating Stonehenge's Origins

Many of us, me included, have visited Stonehenge in England. The theory, believed to be fact for many years, is that the giant stones were brought from Wales and erected on the Salisbury Plaine approximately 90 miles west of London.

But now its mystical origins have been challenged. Scholars previously believed they already knew most of what was to be known about the Altar Stone, the largest of the non-sarsen stones located in the center of the Wiltshire circle partially buried beneath two fallen stones. It was believed the huge 16ft by 3ft Altar Stone weighing in at 6 tons, one of approximately 80+ stones still on site, came from Wales. Researchers now believe the Altar Stone came from Scotland.

Studying age and chemistry of mineral grain, scientists created a chemical fingerprint of the stone. The composition matched rocks from northeast Scotland which were clearly different from Welsh bedrock. It was concluded that those mineral grains were between 1 billion to 2 billion years old while other minerals were about 450 million years old. A distinct chemical fingerprint suggested the Altar Stone came from rocks in the Orcadian Basin in Scotland, at least 750 kilometers (466 miles) away from Stonehenge.

What is now believed to be the Scottish origins of the Altar Stone raise an interesting question regarding how such a massive stone was transported so far during the Neolithic era of approximately 2600 BC. Transporting such a massive weight overland from Northern Scotland to Southern England would have been extremely challenging indicating the use of a likely marine shipping route along the coast of England. This suggests long-distance trade networks and a higher level of social organization than what was widely understood to have existed during the Neolithic period in England.

Dark Origins Of Fairy Tales

The origin of fairy tales dates back thousands of years. The history of fairy tales or fairy stories have fantasy creatures and talking animals. Enchantments and far-fetched events are also usually part of the plot. Unlike legends and folklore tales, they seldom contain any references to religion, actual places, persons or events. The term "once upon a time" is used rather than an actual reference to a date. Early oral fairy tales and folklore were for adults as much as for children. The early written fairy tales of the literary type definitely contained strictly adult material. In many instances, they were quite gruesome. They became more children's fairy tales in the 19th and 20th centuries.

There are two theories that have attempted to explain the common elements in the text of the different fairytales found spread over many continents. One theory is that a tale comes from a single source and spreads from culture to culture over time. A good example of this is the story of Aladdin, his flying carpet, magic lamp, and the genie. Disney made an animated movie of the tale and a live action film was made more recently. We all associate the story and the characters with the mideast/Arab world. In reality, the original tale came from China. The other theory is that these tales reference common human experience from many cultures and over time evolved into tales of similar human experiences. The first written fairy tales were from ancient Egypt and occurred around 1300 BC. It is amazing to find very similar stories/plots occurring in the folklore from different countries at different times and in totally different cultures.

Many of our most pervasive stories can be found in the tales of the Brothers Grimm and even earlier and have changed a great deal along the way. All the blindings, sexual misconduct, and death has been mostly scrubbed away in the last century or so. None of the stories with people getting nailed into barrels and thrown down hills or into ponds have really made it into the mainstream. Take a look at a few terrifying, gruesome, often bizarre early versions of ubiquitous fairy tales. Warning—the original versions of these fairy tales contain grisly details.

Sleeping Beauty:

In one of the very earliest versions of this classic story published in 1634, the princess does not prick her finger on a spindle, instead getting a sliver of flax stuck under her fingernail. She falls down, apparently dead, but her father cannot face the idea of losing her, so he lays her body on a bed in one of his estates. Later, a king out hunting in the woods finds her, and since he can't wake her up, rapes her while she's unconscious, then heads home to his own country. Some time after that, still unconscious, she gives birth to two children, and one of them accidentally sucks the splinter out of her finger, so she wakes up. The king who raped her is already married, but he burns his wife alive so he and the princess can be together. To keep everything "morally sound," the wife tries to kill and eat the babies first. Definitely not the type of story to tell children at bedtime. And definitely not today's Disney version.

Little Red Riding Hood

The Brothers Grimm actually made this story a lot nicer than it was when they originally got their hands on it. In the original version from 1697, there is no intrepid huntsman. Little Red simply strips naked, gets in bed, and then dies, eaten up by the big bad wolf. In another even darker version, she eats her own grandmother first. In the Chinese version of the story, it is a tiger instead of a wolf that is the villain and eats the girl.

Rumpelstiltskin

This story is pretty simple. The miller's daughter is trapped and forced to spin straw into gold or be killed. A little man appears to her, and spins it for her, but says that he will take her child in payment unless she can guess his name. In the Grimm fairy tale, when she finally figures out Rumpelstiltskin's name, he yells, "The Devil told you that! The Devil told you that!" He stamps his right foot so hard that he drives it into the ground right up to his waist. Then he takes hold of his left foot with both hands and tears himself in two. Again, certainly not acceptable fare for children, whether bedtime or not.

Cinderella

In the Grimm story, not only do the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet in order to fit into the glass slippers where the blood pooling in their shoes gives them away, but at the end, they have their eyes pecked out by doves, just for good measure.

Snow White

In the original 1812 Grimm Brothers version, the evil Queen is Snow White's actual mother rather than her stepmother, which makes the story more terrifying. The Disney version also left out the fact that the Queen sends the huntsman out to bring back Snow White's liver and lungs, which she then means to eat. In the Grimm version, she's not in a deep sleep when the prince finds her—she's dead. The prince, being an enthusiastic participant in necrophilia, is taking her dead body to his castle when his servant trips, jostles the coffin, and dislodges the poison apple from her throat. And once again, the Grimms gave the story a gruesome consequence for the villain. When the queen shows up at Snow White's wedding, she's forced to step into iron shoes that had been cooking in the fire, and then dances until she falls down dead.

Hansel and Gretel

The version of the story we know is already pretty gruesome—the evil stepmother abandons the children to die in the forest, they happen upon a cannibalistic witch's cottage who fattens them up so she can eat them. They outwit then kill the witch and escape. The Grimm version is basically the same, but an early French version, called The Lost Children, has an even more gruesome ending.

Rapunzel

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. In the Grimm version, she does just that for a prince on numerous occasions and winds up pregnant. She innocently mentions to her jailer witch that her clothes feel too tight. The witch doesn't want any competition so she chops off Rapunzel's hair and magically transports her far away, where she lives as a beggar with no money, no home, and after a few months, two hungry mouths to feed. As for the prince, the witch lures him up and then pushes him from the window. Some thorn bushes break his fall, but also poke out his eyes. But, surprisingly, there is a happy ending.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

In this tale's earliest known incarnation, there was no Goldilocks—only the three bears and a fox named Scrapefoot, who enters the three bears' palace, sleeps in their beds and messes around with their salmon of knowledge. In the end, she either gets thrown out of the window or eaten, depending on who's telling the tale. Interestingly, it has been suggested that the use of the word vixen to mean female fox is how we got to Goldilocks, by means of a crafty old woman in the intervening story incarnations.