Photo: Duncan Holmes

It’s easy to dismiss trees as inanimate features of the landscape, but these living, breathing organisms aren’t as stoic as they appear. Trees, it turns out, make all kinds of noises as they grow and respond to their environment. Happy, regularly growing trees sound different from drought stressed trees. Now, a team of researchers from Grenoble University in France is trying to pick out these cries for help amidst all the normal tree white noise in order to provide better, more targeted aid to trees suffering from drought, according to National Geographic.

In the case of drought, trees undergoing stress form tiny bubbles inside their trunks, NatGeo explains, which causes a unique ultrasonic noise.

Imagine using a straw to slurp the last few drops from the bottom of your glass: You have to increase the pressure even more. In drought-stricken trees, this increased pressure can cause the water column to break, allowing dissolved air to form bubbles that block water flow.

These breaks are called cavitations, and they can eventually lead to a tree’s demise, so researchers and managers are interested in identifying warning signs that indicate that a tree needs emergency watering.

Eventually, the researchers think this finding may lead to handheld microphones that specialize in diagnosing tree distress signals. Other contraptions could be permanently strapped to a tree, providing constant updates on the trees health and perhaps even trigger automatic watering systems in times of drought, a bit like a sprinkler system in a building releases its water when licked by flames. 

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Trouble With Trees 
Trees Weathered the Ice Age 

A portrait of Count Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean. Photo: Lithographie par Jacques Llanta

Count Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean was a peculiar fellow. Born in 1780 just north of Paris, by the time the young Frenchman turned 13 he already displayed a conspicuous interest in insects. He started with butterflies and moths but soon matured into a love for all things beetle. At the age of 15, he decided to devote his life to collecting and studying these insects. But that plan was interrupted. Dejean enrolled in Napoleon’s army.

Dejean quickly rose to the rank of Lieutenant General and aide-de-camp to Napoleon. Yet his love for beetles never waned. On the battlefield, Dejean took advantage of the opportunity to collect new and exciting specimens from all over Europe, including at the battlefield at Waterloo. His youngest daughter once described her father’s obsession: ”He recounted himself that during the battle he stopped his horse to attach a small insect to his helmet and then carried on forward to combat.”

In 1818, Dejean finally returned to Paris, made rich by his status as a general. He took advantage of that fortune by financing beetle-collecting expeditions. He also bought others’ collections to add to his own. All told, he amassed 24,643 species and more than 118,000 specimens. When he died in 1845, he owned the largest personal beetle collection in the world.

Now, two Canadian entomologists have decided to update Dejean’s famous catalogues. They republished two of Dejean’s catalogues from 1833 and 1836 and undertook a detailed review of his nomenclature and taxonomic recordings. The modern scientists’ task is to clear up any confusion regarding Dejean’s beetle names in the scientific literature by provided a detailed nomenclature summary of all the generic names since used for his species.

Dejean himself may have introduced some of this confusion intentionally. He once said: “I have made it a rule always to preserve the name most generally used , and not the oldest one, because it seems to me that general usage should always be followed and that it is harmful to change what has already been established.”

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Watch These Beetles Tear the Feathers Off a Parrot  
The Country’s Most Dangerous Beetles 

Photo: entendered

Thieves are plundering Europe’s museums of their rhino horns and elephant tusks. First it was Haslemere Educational Museum and Norwich Castle Museum in England, then the Florence Museum of Natural History. Overall, the Guardian reports, more than twenty museums and auction houses in Britain, Germany, Sweden, Italy and Belgium have lost tusks and horns to poachers looking to turn a quick profit. Last weekend, Paris’ Museum of Natural History came close to becoming the latest member to join this growing list. The Guardian reports: 

Police were called to the museum in the early hours of Saturday morning where they found a chainsaw still whirring after a man in his 20s escaped over a wall with a tusk over his shoulder.

The thief, startled by the museum’s alarm system, tried to make a quick break for it but wound up fracturing his ankle.

The elephant in question once belonged to King Louis XIV. The animal was a gift from the Portuguese king in 1668 and was much beloved by Louis XIV and his visitors.

It lived for 13 years in the royal menagerie in the grounds of the opulent palace of Versailles where it became the star attraction. When it died, its skeleton was transferred to the natural history collection in Paris, one of the biggest in the world alongside London’s Natural History Museum.

The tusks, in fact, were added to the skeleton in the 19th century. The wildlife black market isn’t paying for historical value, though; buyers are purportedly interested in the value of animal parts in traditional Chinese medicinal. Elephant tusks currently fetch hundreds of dollars per pound while rhino horns go for much higher prices.

The Parisien museum curators say they’ll restore the sawed off horn to its rightful place. Curators at other institutions, such as London’s Natural History Museum, are not taking any chances, however. They replaced their horns two years ago with fakes.

More from Smithsonian.com:

State Department Takes on Illegal Wildlife Trade 
China Covertly Condones Trade in Tiger Bones and Skins 

Image: Steve Rhodes

This week, the Supreme Court of the United States has been hearing arguments for and against the legalization of gay marriage, and the hearings have rekindled the debate among American people, outside the courthouse, in the news, on Facebook. But the U.S. isn’t the only nation struggling with the gay marriage issue. Here are where the debate stands in other countries around the world:

There are a few places where gay marriage is legal. Denmark began allowing couples to marry last year. Argentina did three years ago. It’s also legal in Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Spain legalized gay marriage eight years ago and ever since has been hearing counterarguments in court. It wasn’t until November of last year that the highest court in Spain rejected an appeal presented by conservatives, perhaps closing the case for good.

Other places are debating the issue much like we are. France in many ways seems like a mirror to the United States. The senate there will make a final vote on a bill that would legalize marriage and adoption for gay couples in April. Riot police were called to an anti-gay marriage protest on Sunday, where most estimate there were about 300,000 protestors (although conservatives who organized it claim there were 1.4 million). France’s president, much like our own, supports the bill.

Colombia is debating the issue now, and Uruguay will vote in April. Taiwan started hearing arguments on gay marriage this year, and if they legalize it they’d become the first nation in Asia to do so. India decriminalized homosexuality in 2009 but has yet to broach the marriage subject.

In China, the gay marriage question is a little different. The Los Angeles Times explains:

Women who unwittingly married gay men, dubbed “gay wives,” have pleaded to be able to annull their unions and then be labeled as “single” rather than “divorced,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported in January. Gay rights advocates countered the real solution was to allow same-sex marriage.

Sixty percent of U.N. countries have abolished laws that ban same-sex couples, but two-thirds of African countries still have laws banning homosexuality. Five countries still punish homosexuality with death: Sudan, Mauritiania, Nigeria, Somaliland and Afghanistan. In Russia, a huge proportion of the citizens are opposed to gay marriage—85 percent according to one poll. Five percent of the people polled said that gays should be “eradicated.”

The tides are turning elsewhere. In Uganda, an anti-homosexuality bill has been in the works since 2009, but protests against it have kept it from becoming law. Malawi no longer enforces its anti-gay laws. And even in Russia, things might be changing. The country’s first lesbian-only magazine was just published earlier this month.

So the U.S. isn’t alone in tackling the gay marriage question, and they’re certainly not the only citizenry up in arms on either side.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Pediatricians Back Gay Marriage
California Bans ‘Cure The Gays’ Therapy

Ponies up for sale at the Llanybydder horse mart. Photo: Sheffpixie

Ikea’s delectable little meatballs have been found to contain horse meat, in addition to the advertised pork and beef—at least in the Czech Republic, reports the Guardian. In the past few weeks, traces of horse meat have shown up in beef products across Europe, in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants. But with Ikea now involved, these findings take on a whole new import. “Given the chain’s international reach,” says Quartz’s Christopher Mims, “this might be the point at which Europe’s horse meat scandal becomes global.”

Though the news may rankle some modern sensibilities, people have been debating the merits of eating horse meat for a surprisingly long time. Under siege in the 19th century, with rations running low, Paris’ population turn to horse. Though initially hesitant, some Frenchmen went on to develop a fondness for the taste, says a December 1, 1870 story in The Food Journal:

The almost impossibility of obtaining beef and mutton naturally forced the use of horse-meat upon the people, and, after a little hesitation, it has been most cheerfully accepted. Some persons prefer it to beef, from the gamey flavour which it possesses, and compare it to chevreuil—the small doe venison of France—which certainly scarcely deserves the name; others particularly dislike it for the same reason. This is, however, simple a matter of taste. As good wholesome food it has been universally eaten, and the soup made from it is declared by everyone to be superior to that from beef.

The end of the siege did not bring the end of horse meat, and over time, the idea spread. Scientific American‘s volume XXXIII, published on July 3, 1875, included a piece making the case for horse meat as economic stimulus.

We have spoken from time to time of the progress of hippophagy in Paris, regarding the same as an experiment which there was no particular need of putting into practice here. It may nevertheless be demonstrated that, in not utilizing horse flesh as food, we are throwing away a valuable and palatable meat, of which there is sufficient quantity largely to augment our existing aggregate food supply. Supposing that the horse came into use here as food, it can be easily shown that the absolute wealth in the country would thereby be materially increased.

The downside, of course, is that a horse cut up for food is not a horse doing valuable work. But even here, Scientific American thinks that the good of dining on horse far outweighs the bad.

Moreover, in order that the horses should be available to the butcher, they must not be diseased or worn out. By this the owners are directly benefited, since, while on one hand they are obliged to sell their horses in fair condition, they are saved the expense of keeping the animals when the latter become used up and are unable to do but light work, though requiring more attention and more feed. So also with colts, which, whether they become good or bad horses, cost about the same to raise. If the animal bids fair to turn our poorly, he can be disposed of at once and at a remunerative price. The result of this weeding out in youth and destroying when old, coupled with the facilities which the former afford of selection of the best types, will naturally conduce to the improvement of breeds and a general benefit to the entire equine population of the country.

Nineteenth century horse eugenics aside, the case for eating horse in the 1800s are roughly the same as now, says the New York Times: it all comes down to price.

But from whence came the modern hesitation to dine on horse? The September 1886 edition of Popular Science may have the answer:

The origin of the use of horse-flesh as food is lost in the night of the past. The ancients held the meat in high esteem, and a number of modern peoples use it unhesitatingly. Several Latin and Green authors mention it. Virgil, in the third book of the “Georgics,” speaks of peoples who live on the milk, blood, and meat of their horses.

… While horse-flesh was generally eaten among the Germans till they were converted to Christianity, or till the days of Charlemagne, it was regarded with aversion by the early Christians as a relic of idolatry. Gregory III, in the eighth century, advised St. Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, to order the German clergy to preach against horse-eating as unclean and execrable. This prohibition being ineffective, Pope Zachary I launched a new anathema against the unfaithful “who eat the meat of the horse, hare, and other unclean animals.” This crusade was potent over the defectively informed minds of the people of the middle ages, and they, believing the meat to be unwholesome and not fit to eat, abstained from it except in times of extreme scarcity. Nevertheless, it continued to be eaten in particular localities down to a very recent period. The present revival in the use of horse-flesh, concerning which the French papers have had much to say, is the result of a concerted movement among a number of prominent men, the principal object of which was to add to the food resources of the world.

More from Smithsonian.com:

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Photo: loungerie

On January 31, France’s minister of women’s rights made if officially impossible to arrest a woman for wearing pants in Paris, the Telegraph reports. Previously, the law required women to ask police for special permission to “dress as men.” If fashionable French ladies ignored this rule, they risked being taken into custody.

The rule originally came into being just after the French Revolution, in the early 19th century. As anyone who watched Les Miserables will recall, rebellious ladies often donned pants in defiance of the bourgeoisie. This anti pants-wearing movement was dubbed sans-culottes, or without the knee-breeches (“cullottes”) of the high class.

In 1892, the legislation changed to allow women to wear pants only if she “is holding a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse.” That latest ordinance stayed in place until today, despite multiple attempts to get rid of it. Officials said the unenforced rule as not a problem so they didn’t want to waste time amending “legal archaeology.”

But politicians last July argued of the law’s “symbolic importance” and its potential impact on modern perspectives surrounding women’s rights. The minister then got on board, declaring:

This ordinance is incompatible with the principles of equality between women and men, which are listed in the Constitution, and in France’s European commitments.

From that incompatibility follows the implicit abrogation of the ordinance.

The Chanel-wearing fashionatas of Paris have paid no mind to this rule for decades, but it’s nice to know that France has finally sorted out its laws to reflect women’s hard-earned pursuit of equality.

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Army Women to Get New (Non-Comic Book) Armor 

Photo: Wally Hartshorn

Peruvians first domesticated the sweet potato around 8,000 years ago. And though the crop spread from there, the means by which it traveled have always remained contentious. One possibility was that Polynesian sailors first brought it home from across the ocean: The oldest carbonized sweet potato evidence in the Pacific hails back to about 1,000 A.D.—500 years before Columbus sailed to the Americas. The Polynesian word for sweet potato resembles the central Andes’ Quechua people’s word for the vegetable, too.

But the Polynesian sailor scenario was always just a hunch. Studying the plant’s genetic lineage remained tricky because Europeans often interbred Mexican, Caribbean and Polynesian varieties, sweeping away the molecular trail of crumbs. But French researchers stumbled upon a fix: sweet potato samples preserved in centuries-old herbariums assembled by some of the first European visitors to Polynesia. By analyzing the genetics of these sweet potatoes, ScienceNOW reports, researchers found evidence that Polynesian sailors, rather than Spanish or Portuguese explorers, introduced the now-ubiquitous yam across Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The researchers compared the herbarium samples to modern sweet potatoes and older specimens and found strong evidence for prehistoric contact between Polynesia and South America. ScienceNOW:

This finding supports the so-called tripartite hypothesis, which argues that the sweet potato was introduced to the region three times: first through premodern contact between Polynesia and South America, then by Spanish traders sailing west from Mexico, and Portuguese traders coming east from the Caribbean. The Spanish and Portuguese varieties ended up in the western Pacific, while the older South American variety dominated in the east, which would explain the genetic differences the French team saw.

As widely used as it is now, the sweet potato could play an even bigger role in feeding people across the world: climate change may help the roots grow even bigger.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Sweet Potatoes in Space 
What to Eat – or Not – in Peru

Photo: Joseph-Siffred Duplessis

When the French people beheaded King Louis XVI on January 21, 1793, accounts from the time report that many dipped their handkerchiefs in their executed ruler’s blood. Now, two centuries after that fateful day, researchers think they’ve found one of those revolutionary souvenirs, Discovery News writes.

The hankie in question turned up two years ago when an Italian family submitted the souvenir for genetic testing. They found it stuffed within a dried, hollowed squash decorated with portraits of revolutionary heroes. The squash reads, “On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation.” Monsieur Bourdaloue likely placed the fabric within the gourd and then had it pridefully embellished.

DNA tests hinted that the blood may be authentic, since it indicates that the bleeder had blue eyes and other physical features matching up to Louis XVI’s description. But the forensics team lacked DNA from Louis or any of his family members (their bodies were mutilated and strewn about the streets after the spree of executions), so at first they could not prove definitively that the handkerchief’s stain is genuine.

However, a mummified head saved the day. The head belonged to Henri IV, who held the French throne 200 years prior to Louis’ gruesome demise. A mysterious individual rescued the severed head from the grave-ransacking chaos of the revolution, and it was passed down through the years and kept in secretive collections. A rare genetic signature preserved through seven generations and shared by the two rulers confirmed the blood’s authenticity. Discovery explains:

“This study shows that (the owners of the remains) share a genetic heritage passed on through the paternal line. They have a direct link to one another through their fathers,” French forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier said.

Genetic markers in hand, the researchers think they may be able to use the newly identified code to identify any living relatives of France’s absolute monarchs of years past.

More from Smithsonian.com:

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Marie Antoinette 

Photo: Laurie Andler

Sugar is so interlaced in our snacks, meals and drinks that it’s hard to imagine a world without it. But prior to 1850, this sweet substance was a hot commodity that only society’s most wealthy could afford. Then, mid-nineteenth century, Napoleon changed all of that, flooding the European market with affordable sugar and perhaps inadvertently sparking an epidemic of obesity and diabetes a century and a half down the road.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln writes:

During the mid-1700’s, the German chemist Andreas Margraff discovered that both white and the red beetroot contained sucrose, which was indistinguishable from that produced from cane. He predicted then that domestic use and manufacture of sugar was possible in temperate climates, but these ideas would not be realized for another 50 years until new ways of extraction could be developed.

During this time, sugar came from plantations in the South Pacific. But the discovery of the sugar beet opened new routes for harvesting the sought-after ingredient.

The BBC explains:

Britain had the monopoly on the sugar cane trade for over a century. During the Napoleonic wars of the early 1800s the British blockaded France’s trade routes with the Caribbean, leaving the country with low supplies of sugar.

The European Food Information Council elaborates:

By 1806, cane sugar had virtually disappeared from the shelves of European shops. In 1811, French scientists presented Napoleon with two loaves of sugar made from sugar beet. Napoleon was so impressed he decreed that 32,000 hectares of beet should be planted and provided assistance to get the factories established.

Within a few years there were more than 40 sugar beet factories, mostly in Northern France but also in Germany, Austria, Russia, and Denmark

Napoleon encouraged new research with sugar beets, the University of Nebraska writes, and by 1815, over 79,000 acres were put into production with more than 300 small factories being built in France.

Soon, sugar beet sugar flooded the British market, and by 1850 sugar was at last affordable for all.

The BBC continues:

The public could not get enough of this cheap and tasty pick-me-up. From sweetened tea in the workplace, to meals on the family table, to the new working class tradition of high tea – sugar soon became indispensable.

It didn’t take long for sugar to become a household staple, and today, about 35 percent of the 130 metric tons of sugar comes from sugar beets. The BBC concludes:

So addicted were we to this new taste, that at the beginning of the 19th century we consumed 12 pounds of sugar per head. By the end of the century that amount had rocketed to 47 pounds per head.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Sugar on Snow 
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Photo: Google

Auguste Rodin, the French sculptor behind “The Thinker” and “The Kiss,” celebrates his would-be 172nd birthday today with a Google Doodle tribute. The Los Angeles Times describes the artist’s work:

Rodin’s sculptures emphasize musculature and movement, with subjects often assuming contorted and anguished poses. His work is often viewed as paving the way for modern sculpture of the 20th century.

His sculptures dabbled in mythology and allegory, and his unique ability to entice turbulent, deeply textured figures out of his raw materials ran counter to the predominant sculpture traditions of the time, earning him much criticism by contemporaries. Eventually, however, he outgrew those jealous judgements, rising to become France’s preeminent sculptor and gaining world-wide recognition by 1900.

Besides his enduring mark on modern art, Rodin is probably best known for his tumultuous love affair with fellow artist, Camille Claudel. The two met in 1883, when Claudel was just 18 years old. They embarked upon a passionate but stormy relationship, with Claudel often serving as Rodin’s model, while producing her own artistic works and assisting Rodin with commissions.

Meanwhile, Rodin kept up ties with Rose Beuret, his first love and mother to his child. “I think of how much you must have loved me to put up with my caprices…I remain, in all tenderness, your Rodin,” he wrote to her once, while still carrying on with mistress Claudel. In 1898, following an unwanted abortion, Claudel severed ties with Rodin for good. Soon after, she suffered a nervous breakdown and her family committed her (needlessly, many argue) to an asylum, where she spent the next 30 years, until her death in 1943. Her relatives never came to claim Claudel’s body, so she was buried in a communal grave without ceremony.

Rodin finally married Beuret, but only in the last year of both of their lives.

Rodin and Claudel’s tempestuous relationship has inspired plays, ballets and movies. A new rendition, staring Juliette Binoche as an asylum-bound, bitter Claudel, is scheduled to hit theaters next year.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Sculpture Blossoms in a New Garden 
Please Eat the Art 

Photo: Adolf Northern, Wikicommons

200 years ago, Napoleon’s army took on the Russians in the Battle of Maloyaroslavets. Though a French victory, the battle marked a major strategic setback, as the Russians moved to block Napoleon’s path of retreat out of their country. In the end, only 10,000 Frenchmen out of an initial half a million made it out of Russia alive.

Why did this happen? Historians still puzzle over this military catastrophe today, Big Think reports, but a new theory points to an unlikely culprit: the army’s buttons.

Ainissa Ramirez, a materials scientist at Yale University, explains that the bonding structure of tin atoms begins to change when temperatures drop below 56°F, and tin was the major metal used to make buttons in the French army’s uniforms. As the severe Russian temperatures approached -30°C, the buttons may have turned to dust.

In other words, the harsh Russian winter, combined with the chemical properties of tin, may have led to “the greatest wardrobe malfunction in history.”

Here, Ramirez explains the unfortunate gaff, plus some fun facts about tin:

More from Smithsonian.com:

Outsmarting Napoleon 
Chickens Dressed Like Napoleon 

Photo: Flickr user *Psycho Delia*

Since August, bees around the town of Ribeauville in northeastern France have been turning up with abdomens swollen in colors of blue and green, an unnatural rainbow that is also reflected in the color of their honey. Now, beekeepers are pointing fingers at a nearby biogas plant that processes waste from an M&M’s factory.

Though the colorful honey seems to taste identical to the normal amber variety, the apiculturalists are not amused. ”For me, it’s not honey. It’s not sellable,” one bee keeper told Reuters.

The company in question said they’ve adopted new cleaning procedures to try and deter sugar-seeking bees and that they will also start to store incoming candy waste in a covered hall.

The curious case of the blue and green honey recalls a similar incident in New York City in 2010, when some local Brooklyn and Governor’s Island bees began producing honey in “a garish bright red,” according to the New York Times. The culprit? Red Dye No. 40 from the Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company.

The Times pointed out the sinister irresistibility of such sweet treats for both bees and humans alike:

Could the tastiest nectar, even close by the hives, compete with the charms of a liquid so abundant, so vibrant and so cloyingly sweet? Perhaps the conundrum raises another disturbing question: If the bees cannot resist those three qualities, what hope do the rest of us have?

More from Smithsonian.com:

Humans, the Honey Hunters  
Honey was the Wonder Food that Fueled Human Evolution (and Now it’s Disappearing)

Images of Paris the researchers used to tease out the city’s essence. Photo: SIGGRAPH 2012

Software developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University automatically identifies key elements of any city, in this case honing in on Paris’ emblematic street signs, balustrade window and balcony supports and street lamps. When the same program is run on data from London, it singles out the ubiquitous neoclassical entryways, Victorian windows and cast iron railings that make London ‘London.’

The researchers point out that any resident or visitor to the City of Light, for example, would likely agree that certain elements contribute to the city feeling remarkably, well, Parisian. These may include promenades along the Seine; the ever-present Tabac signs; the towering plane trees lining the classy boulevards and reflecting the changing seasons. Indeed, most major metropolises have a certain individualized ‘feel’ about them. But even if these features are all around, it may be difficult for a human observer to list exactly which ones create that unique aesthetic

The researchers used a machine learning program to chew through more than 250 million visual elements gleaned from 40,000 Google Street View images of Paris, London, New York, Barcelona and other major cities. After crunching the data, the program presented at a set of geo-informative visual elements unique to each city, including New York’s fire escapes and San Francisco’s bay windows.

They admit that this analysis requires a significant amount of computing time, keeping 150 processors working overnight. But this may be preferable that running around a city taking snapshots for a week straight, as Pixar’s art directors did in Paris for “Ratatouille.”

And the authors’ ambitions don’t stop with movies. In a statement, they declared, ”In the long run, we wish to automatically build a digital visual atlas of not only architectural but also natural geo-informative features for the entire planet.”

Here, they explain a bit more about how their software works:

More from Smithsonian.com:

Is Paris Really for Lovers? 

Admiring the Masters 

A French postcard issued around 1900, predicting La France’s future. Photo: WikiCommons

Well, perhaps not. But visionary postcard artists like Jean-Marc Côté are allowed to dream. As the Public Domain Review points out, Côté and others illustrated around 90 of fanciful cards between 1899 to 1910 that imagined what the future held in store for France in the year 2000. Amongst their predictions were flying fire fighters and postmen, books that can be loaded directly into students’ brains and underwater croquet. Of course, they also envisioned machines that automatically cleaned laundry and aviation police, ideas that turned out not to be so crazy after all.

More from Smithsonian.com:

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We Are Already Living in Hollywood’s Dystopian Future 

Photos: reverendtheef & Mellagi

July 24 marks double jackpot for the intrepid explorers of years past, as well for as fans of the trend in “ruin porn.” The fine city of Detroit was founded 311 years ago, and the spectacular ‘lost city of the Incas,’ Machu Picchu, was “discovered” on this day 101 years ago. Little did the explorers know as they were hacking through the bush or laying their first stakes that their grand achievements would become staples of Tumblr’s latest pic fad. But before the rot and decay, before the industry crashes and hoards of backpack-toting tourists, there were two men: the self-absorbed, swindling Cadillac and the buccaneering womanizer Hiram Bingham.

History Today has the scoop on both of these celebratory explorers:

A French settler with a promising future ahead of him was Antoine Laumet de Lamothe Cadillac, a Gascon adventurer of tremendous charm and matching unscrupulousness, in his forties. He added de Lamothe Cadillac to his name to make himself sound aristocratic, equipped himself with a bogus pedigree, coat of arms and army commission, and concealed his origins so effectively that his early life has remained obscure ever since.

Cadillac made his splash in the New World scene in the 1680s and immediately got busy illegally selling Brandy to the Native Americans and taking bribes from the rowdy beaver pelt traders.

In order to better exploit this trade, he talked the French authorities into letting him found a new settlement – Detroit! – situated between Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair.

A small settlement developed, though both the colonists and the local Indians objected to Cadillac’s tyrannical and extortionate administration. In 1710, more or less in disgrace, he was packed off to be governor of Louisiana, which was considered a thoroughly undesirable post.

Cadillac eventually escaped the mosquitoes, ending his days in the comfort of his native Gascony. Besides establishing Motown, his legend lived on for years as his fake coat of arms adorned generations of Cadillac cars.

Fast forward 200 years and meet Hiram Bingham, a Hawaiian-born explorer who preferred football to missionary work. After attaining a pedigree degree at Harvard, Bingham married an heiress of Tiffany’s jewelry and promptly used his wife’s fortune to fund exploratory galavants through South America. His lady was left at home, of course, and his enthusiasm for exploration reportedly extended to foreign women as well as ancient ruins.

In 1911, pursuing whispered rumors of a lost city, he hit the motherload in Peru.

They soon came to what Bingham called ‘an unexpected sight, a great flight of beautifully constructed stone terraces, perhaps a hundred of them, each hundreds of feet long and 10 feet high.’

The ruins were overgrown by trees, bamboo thickets and tangles of vines and covered with moss, but the white granite walls were ‘carefully cut and exquisitely fitted together’ and the scene ‘fairly took my breath away.’

He took thousands of photos and carted boxes and boxes of temple objects back to North America, exposing Machu Picchu to the Western world. (Incidentally, he believed until his death that he had discovered a different lost city, Vilcabamba.) Eventually, his wife came to her senses and divorced him.

Today, we celebrate Detroit and Machu Picchu as icons of ruin porn; as meditations on bygone eras, on lives and dreams lost to the weight of history. We love the wistful nostalgia and crumbling romanticism of Detroit’s ruined factories and Machu Picchu’s moss-covered splendor precisely because they remind us of our own inevitable decline, a meditation that is both thrilling and terrifying to contemplate, but that, apparently, we can’t get enough of.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Everything Will Be Alright  

Saving Machu Picchu