Reposted from Atlas Obscura

In 1933, a group of employees from the U.S. National Park Service found themselves in a bit of a pickle. The NPS was working hard to put together a display for the upcoming Chicago World’s Fair, a massive exhibition that promised to draw tens of millions of visitors. They already had a scale model of the Grand Canyon, wood samples from Petrified Forest, and a 12-foot-tall “miniature Mt. Rainer” that experienced a blizzard whenever visitors pushed a button.

But the director wanted to make sure they had something else—a fossilized cycad plant from the end of the Cretaceous period. Thousands had been preserved in the silt beds of South Dakota, and the best specimens were both familiar-looking and clearly ancient. If you were showing off the country’s wonders, a cycad was a good thing to include.

The staffers figured they knew where to find one: at Fossil Cycad National Monument, a 320-acre patch of land in South Dakota’s Black Hills, just south of Minnekahta. After all, it had been set aside for protection because it was littered with the things. But when they returned, they were empty-handed: not only did they fail to bring back a suitable specimen, they couldn’t even suss out where to look for one. “They came back and said they couldn’t find the site,” says Vince Santucci. “There were no resources left at the location.”

Santucci, a senior paleontologist with the National Park Service, is used to digging up and piecing together lost creatures. He’s spent the past few decades reconstructing a different kind of extinct thing: the lost saga of Fossil Cycad. One of only a few national monuments in U.S. history to be completely stripped of its status, the site—which started out as a trove of ancient treasures—eventually became the center of political skirmishes, dramatic staged excavations, everyday pilfering, and scientific self-sabotage. “An incredible story emerged,” says Santucci.

The tale of Fossil Cycad really starts in the late Cretaceous, when a large clump of prehistoric plants in what would eventually become the Black Hills was buried by a landslide. Over the next 70 million years, the plants slowly solidified, as their organic matter was replaced with built-up molecules of silica and other minerals. In the 1890s, South Dakota ranchers began discovering the resulting fossils in great numbers, nicknaming them “petrified pineapples” and selling them as curios.

Soon, scientists from the University of Iowa, the Smithsonian, and other institutions came out to investigate, and to buy specimens. The fossils were preserved to a unique degree, enabling researchers to dissect and study them almost as they would a living plant. (As Santucci explains, they were also actually cycadeoids, which have different reproductive structures than cycads—but this distinction was not made until later.) By the end of the 19th century, the land around Minnekahta was recognized as a unique and significant paleontological site.

One of these scientists was a young man named George Reber Wieland. A paleontology student at Yale University, Wieland had spent the beginning of his career chasing down dead animals, gaining a certain amount of renown for his discovery of Archelon ischyros, a Cretaceous-era sea turtle that remains the largest known to man.

In 1898, the year after he dug up the turtle, Wieland went to the Black Hills and found something that interested him even more: a fossil cycad, with what he later described as “the most perfectly silicified prefoliate fronds of any yet obtained.” He changed his focus to paleobotany, and embarked on a mission to achieve “a complete elaboration” of the structures of various cycad types.

“He became the world’s leading expert on fossil cycads,” says Santucci, who describes Wieland as “sort of an eccentric, crazy professor.” He wrote two books on the subject, American Fossil Cycads and American Fossil Cycads, Volume 2, in which he wrote rapturously of the “superb beauty” of particular cycads while laying out their anatomy and natural history. He even decorated his backyard with some of his specimens, arranged alongside living plants.

All this time, Wieland was also working on a related side project: trying to protect the fossil-rich area in South Dakota from which so many of his beloved specimens came. There were layers upon layers of the so-called petrified pineapples hidden in the dirt, but thanks to the attentions of collectors, tourists, and scientists like himself, they tended to disappear nearly as fast as erosion revealed them. This was, Wieland had written, “the most important of all the American cycad horizons.” Was there some way to keep it intact?

In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt gave him a possible way forward by passing the Antiquities Act, which granted presidents the power to designate federal lands as national monuments. Roosevelt quickly began using it, setting aside spaces including Devil’s Tower, Montezuma Castle, and the Muir Woods. “Wieland strongly felt that the site that he was working on was worthy of similar preservation,” and began lobbying the government to turn it into a national monument, says Santucci. “He invested a lot of energy.” During his research, Santucci found copies of dozens of letters the professor wrote to senators and Congressmen, asking for their support.

When that proved ineffective, Wieland dreamed up a different strategy. In 1920, under the auspices of the Homesteading Act—which was more meant to encourage people to move West, not to enable paleobotany—“he actually acquired 160 acres of land in which the fossils were situated,” says Santucci. “So he was using that as leverage, convincing the federal government that he would donate it back.”

This worked. On October 21, 1922, President Warren G. Harding officially deemed the area protected, placing it under the jurisdiction of the U.S. National Park Service. The paleobotanic deposits at the newly declared Fossil Cycad National Monument were “of great scientific interest and value,” Harding wrote in the corresponding Presidental Proclamation. “Warning is hereby expressly given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any of the fossils of this monument.”

Unfortunately for Fossil Cycad, its official recognition as an American landmark came at a difficult time for the country overall. “It was a period of economic hardship,” says Santucci. “Fossil Cycad wasn’t really developed like other national parks and monuments were.” That meant no one was hired to watch over the land. While the superintendent of nearby Wind Cave National Park was put in charge of its overall management, “day-to-day surveillance was entrusted to local ranchers,” writes Santucci. The site’s only sign—a 15-inch carved wooden plank—abbreviated both “National” and “Monument,” but made sure to spell out “NO PROSPECTING.”

Despite this lack of amenities, tourists continued to swing by, and to take pieces of the monument home with them. “People reading in newspapers about the monument in the Black Hills would come,” says Santucci. Natural erosion meant that new layers of fossils were gradually exposed, creating more buzz and more foot traffic. Such was the Fossil Cycad catch-22: when there weren’t any visible fossils, it wasn’t much of a monument. But whenever there were enough to attract visitors, those same visitors meant they were quick to disappear.

This cycle happened repeatedly. When the National Park Service sent the superintendent of Yellowstone to check on Fossil Cycad in 1929, he didn’t mince words. “There is nothing left that is of interest to visitors,” he wrote in his report. Pointing out that the NPS had a reputation to uphold, he continued, “It is a liability, not an asset, to the rest of the system… it would seem to be desirable to discontinue it as a national monument.”

For years, government authorities argued back and forth about whether to keep Fossil Cycad on the payroll. Meanwhile, Wieland wasn’t one to sit on his hands. In 1935, after the World’s Fair debacle, he brought a crew from the Civilian Conservation Corps to Fossil Cycad. As scientists and NPS representatives looked on, the workers dug a half dozen pits, revealing piles upon piles of previously unexposed fossils, over one ton of material.

Wieland had the fossils stored in Wind Park for safekeeping, but when the NPS asked him to write a report detailing the site’s precise value, he said he wouldn’t do any more work until they had committed to building some infrastructure. Specifically, he wanted a black granite museum where he could display his most interesting specimens.

The NPS called his bluff, suggesting that Wieland seek his own funding, and sending him once again into what Santucci calls “a frenzy of letter-writing” to various politicians. He began agitating for a visitor’s center as well, asking students at the Yale School of Architecture to draft design proposals, and trying to convince his own senator to earmark the cost into the Connecticut state budget. (He said no.

In the meantime, others related to the endeavor began to call Wieland’s integrity into question. In 1938, the superintendent of Wind Cave National Park, E.D. Freeland, told the South Dakota Argus-Leader that on several occasions, Wieland had had “carloads” of fossil cycads shipped to New Haven, both from the site itself and from the “protected” stash stored at Wind Cave.

“There is not one specimen at the Wind Cave national park, where every day interested visitors inquire about them,” Freeland said at the time. (As Santucci writes, National Park Service geologist Carrol Wegemann corroborated the claim, and Wieland later admitted to having stolen at least 1,000 specimens right before the monument was designated.)

Facing these accusations—and, one suspects, the prospect of having doomed his own monument—Wieland became more and more agitated. He responded to a proposal to build a cycad-related visitor’s center at Wind Cave instead as full of “bat dung,” arguing somewhat ironically that the fossils must be viewed “in situ,” or the site would “mean but little.” He called Freeland a “hill billy,” and referred to his park as “Windy Cave.” “You have stood my good plans off for fifteen years,” he wrote desperately to the NPS.

It was all for naught. Wieland died in 1953, and four years later, the monument—which by now just looked like grass, rocks and dirt—was officially abolished.

It has left one legacy, though. Fossil theft is still a big problem in national parks. “Over the past ten years, we have had more than 700 documented instances,” Santucci says.

Having pieced together this story, in which such transgressions were taken to extremes, he’s since been working its lessons into educational programs. “People are incensed to think that an area that was set aside as a National Park is no longer there,” he says. “The circumstances upon which that decision was made, to abolish it—I think it does help us to present the idea that fossils are non-renewable resources.” We’ve already learned that the hard way.

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Reposted from Ozarksfirst.com

More than a year after Andy Warhol soup can artwork was stolen from the Springfield Art Museum, there’s no update in the investigation. But the museum has seriously updated its security.

Some people, like regular Larry Clutter, say unseen security is making the biggest difference.

"They've obviously taken security guards who used to sit up right in the front little area, and moved them back to some area where they have a private office and I'm sure they've got umpteen more television screens and cameras,” Clutter said.

It’s something Clutter, who visits monthly, said he’s picked up on in the last year. Joshua Best, the Development and Marketing Coordinator for the Springfield Art Museum, said regulars like Clutter are sure to notice one change.

"We've also added additional gallery attendants, who are there to answer questions, that can also help monitor activity as well,” Best said.

Clutter said, “The monitors, kind of just watch you, but they're friendly and if you have a random question they'll help you with that.”

The museum also changed its hours.       

"We open at 10 in the morning now instead of 9, but we're open later in the evening,” Best said. “And that extra time in the morning helps security staff go through all the procedures that they need to to get us ready to open up."

Although you probably won't see any flyers anymore, asking for information about the stolen Andy Warhol prints, that doesn't mean they've been forgotten.

"Most of those changes happened as a response to the theft last April,” Best said.

So where are the stolen Warhol soup cans now?

"People are always curious,” Best said. “Warhol is a big name. Unfortunately the case is still open."       

Clutter has one theory.

"It's probably in Beijing or Seoul or Tokyo now,” Clutter said. “Fifty years from now somebody will die and then they'll discover it again."

The museum hopes to find the stolen prints sooner than that. Best wanted to remind the public that there is a reward for any information about the theft. Contact the FBI’s Kansas City Field Office to report any information.

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Reposted from The Buffalo News

In the pantheon of industrialists and philanthropists who made Buffalo a great city, A. Conger Goodyear holds a special spot.

Born here, he gained wealth and stature during the early 1900s as a railroad and lumber executive and avid art collector who owned works by Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. When Goodyear died, his personal letters went to the Buffalo History Museum.

On Thursday, a former museum volunteer admitted to stealing some of Goodyear's letters and, with the help of an alias, trying to sell them to a collector in Manhattan.

As a result of his fraud conviction, Buffalo's Daniel Jude Witek, 54, will face a recommended sentence of up to 10 months in prison.

"You can't allow this to happen," said Michael DiGiacomo, an assistant U.S. attorney, of Witek's thefts. "Buffalo has a lot of history and heritage and we have to protect that."

Witek was arrested in 2013 after an internationally-known collector in Manhattan emailed the History Museum, inquiring if important Goodyear documents had gone missing.

A few days earlier, the collector had offered $2,750 for five Goodyear letters and postcards being offered by a man who claimed to have several more.

By most accounts, the collector's email that day was the first hint that valuable letters from the Buffalo tycoon-turned-philanthropist might have been stolen from the museum’s archives.

During an interview with The Buffalo News in 2015, more than a year after he was first charged, Witek described himself as an art history and museum collections expert.

Museum officials called him a con man.

At the time, Witek acknowledged trying to sell the Goodyear letters to the collector but said the letters were his to sell. He said the museum, because of poor oversight and record-keeping, would be hard-pressed to prove otherwise.

He also claimed some of the letters were handed down from his grandfather and that he bought the rest from a New York City gallery.

Accused in court papers of using a fake name, Walter Payne, while trying to sell the Goodyear letters, Witek told the FBI he used a false moniker because he was selling cheaper items and wanted to preserve his reputation as a high-end consultant and collector.

“I wasn’t trying to get away with anything,” he said in 2015. “I wasn’t pretending to be the Count of Monte Cristo.”

Witek, according to investigators, was able to steal the letters because of the trust he gained as a volunteer who claimed he had his own Goodyear collection.

During Thursday's court appearance, defense attorney Patrick J. Brown asked U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny to release Witek until his sentencing in November, a request the judge granted.

"I just want this to be fully satisfied and be done with," Witek, who has spent several months in custody, told Skretny.

The History Museum's thefts came at a time when museums and libraries across the world were confronting embarrassing revelations about missing letters, documents and pieces of art.

About that same time, the Boston Public Library found itself trying to explain how two works of art, valued at $630,000, were discovered missing in April and were eventually found 80 feet from where they were supposed to be. The library president resigned after an audit accused the library of failing to maintain a complete inventory of prized possessions and putting its special collections at risk.

The Goodyear papers in Buffalo are valued because of the owner's reputation as an industrialist and philanthropist. Even more noteworthy, perhaps, was that Goodyear at one point served as president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Goodyear died in 1964.

Witek's guily plea is the result of an FBI and Secret Service investigation and a prosecution by DiGiacomo and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan P. Cantil.

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Reposted from Independent

Museum has now reopened following 'chaotic' scenes

The British Museum has been evacuated amid a "security concern" after a suspicious vehicle was spotted outside the London attraction.

Families enjoying a day out at the start of the school holidays were reportedly thrown into panic when they were suddenly asked to leave.

The popular attraction said on Twitter: “The Museum is evacuated temporarily due to a security concern nearby. We apologise and will update when we can.”

Several people took to social media to describe the disruption, with one person tweeting: “I’ve just been in a British Museum evacuation and it was total chaos."

“Russell Square closed and controlled explosion has taken place. Trying to get to hotel for wedding reception,” another person tweeted.

One said: “Suspicious package in Russell Square. Roads and park cordoned off. Our offices evacuated.”

The museum has now reopened and confirmed the closure was down to a security scare.

The Metropolitian Police said the operation has now been stood down and that nothing was deemed suspicious

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An international alert has been issued for a 1699 Giovanni Battista Rogeri violin - stolen in Freiburg, Germany on July 16th, 2017

An international alert has been issued today for a 1699 Giovanni Battista Rogeri violin – stolen from the Brandensteinstrasse district in Freiburg, Germany on July 16th, 2017.

The instrument, labeled ‘Rogerius Bon: Nicolai Amati … 1699’, has a one piece maple back and two piece spruce medium grain front.

It is 34.8cm in length – and 16cm and 19.7cm in width.

At the time of the robbery, the violin was contained in a small grey GEWA case – also containing a modern and a baroque violin bow.

If you have any information please urgently contact  +31 610361092 or Freiburg Police.

Please share widely.

Click here to see photos

Re-posted from Washington Post (07/10/17) 

Last month, attackers using a vehicle and knives killed eight people and wounded dozens more on London Bridge. Over a couple weeks later in an incident nearby, a man drove into people leaving mosques after Ramadan services, killing one and injuring 10.

And in May, a man driving in New York’s Times Square plowed into a crowd during lunchtime, killing one person and injuring 22. While authorities said the incident was not terrorism, the Islamic State, inspired by the crash, used it to warn that more attacks on the nation’s largest city and popular tourist destination would follow.

As terrorists overseas increasingly turn to vehicles as weapons, cities across the United States, concerned such attacks could happen here, are ramping up security in public spaces to protect areas with heavy pedestrian traffic.

“There’s unfortunately almost no end to the number of times these things happen by accident and, unfortunately, it is increasing the number of times these things are happening on purpose,” said Rob Reiter, a pedestrian safety expert and chief security consultant at Calpipe Security Bollards, one of the nation’s top bollard manufacturers.

Bollards and security barriers, as well as increased police presence at events, are among some of the strategies cities are using to guard against such attacks. In Las Vegas, Nev., 700 bollards are being installed along the Las Vegas Strip this year at a cost of $5 million in what has been called “a matter of life and death” to protect innocent bystanders from deliberate acts to use vehicles as weapons. Although there is no specific threat, authorities said recent terrorist propaganda featuring snapshots of the Las Vegas Boulevard cannot be overlooked. Each barrier is designed to resist a 15,000-pound, 30-foot vehicle, officials said.

In New York, officials have been calling for the installation of more bollards, citing the ones that stopped the speeding sedan in the May incident. The Los Angeles City Council, meanwhile, will vote this summer on whether to direct the police department and other agencies to issue a report on mitigation methods for vehicle attacks.

Transportation planners are exploring innovative ways to use landscaping to create buffers between roadways and sidewalks. Security companies say they are being consulted on how to protect main streets.

“Big cities are realizing that they could have a mass casualty event on all four sides of an intersection at any time,” Reiter said.

Attacks with vehicles used as improvised weapons became the single most lethal form of attack in Western countries for the first time last year, according to the London-based Risk Advisory Group, which keeps track of every terrorist attack worldwide. Just over half of all the terrorism-related deaths in the West were the result of vehicle-ramming attacks, the data show.

In the most deadly one, in Nice, France, a truck mowed down dozens of people celebrating Bastille Day last July, killing 87 and injuring 434. On Dec. 19, 12 people were killed and 56 injured when a man drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.

In the United States, a man inspired by the Islamic State drove into students at Ohio State University last fall, then emerged with a knife, injuring 11 people.

Experts say Europe will probably continue to experience such attacks because of the ease with which they can be carried out. As countries have stepped up security and counterterrorism efforts, terrorists have found it more difficult to strike using traditional means. It is easier to rent a truck than to acquire explosives or firearms without raising suspicion.

“It is much more nebulous. It is much more spontaneous,” said Henry Wilkinson, director of intelligence analysis for the Risk Advisory Group, which keeps track of terrorist attacks and provides security assessments for large events.

Views are mixed on the risk of such attacks in the United States, where so far there has been only one terrorism-related vehicle attack.

“Obviously, the United States has invested huge sums of money and time and resources into its counterterrorism program and the scale of intelligence collection and training and other things reduces the threat significantly,” Wilkinson said.

The availability of firearms in the United States makes it more likely that would be the weapon of choice, he said.

A Canadian man who yelled the Arabic phrase “Allahu akbar” before allegedly stabbing an airport police officer in Flint, Mich., last month was indicted Wednesday on charges of committing an act of violence at an international airport and interfering with airport security, in what authorities say was a possible act of terrorism. But most acts of terror on U.S. soil, including several domestic terrorist attacks, have involved firearms and explosives. The 2015 San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack, which killed 14 people and injured more than 20, was a mass shooting.

“If someone was inclined to go and carry out a terrorist attack, it seems more logical that one would use the effective way of carrying out that attack, and if given choice between using a car and a machine gun, you will probably use a machine gun,” Wilkinson said.

Still, U.S. law enforcement officials say the threat of such attacks is real. In an advisory issued in May, the Transportation Security Administration alerted the nation’s trucking companies about the rising risk of rental trucks and hijackings and thefts for purposes of such an attack. The agency urged vigilance as terrorist groups continue to employ the less sophisticated tactics, which can be carried out with minimal planning and training, but have potential to inflict mass casualties.

“No community, large or small, rural or urban, is immune to attacks of this kind by organized or ‘lone wolf’ terrorists,” the TSA report said.

From 2014 through April of this year, terrorists carried out 17 vehicle ramming attacks, killing 173 people and injuring 667, the report said. While the statistics represent only a fraction of all casualties from terrorist attacks worldwide, the potential for mass casualties and difficulty for law enforcement in planning for or preventing such attacks makes them attractive for would-be terrorists.

In the 1990s, barriers were designed to protect from car bombs after the 1998 vehicle bombings at U.S. embassies in East Africa. The use of barriers, such as bollards, skyrocketed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as officials sought to protect federal buildings and increase security at potential targets, such as airports and stadiums.

The latest threat has cities in Europe, Australia and North America making new investments, from barriers along a number of bridges across the River Thames in London to retractable bollards in the tourist area of Surfers Paradise in eastern Australia. Vehicle barriers along roads around the All England club were among the enhanced security measures surrounding Wimbledon this week.

In Washington, D.C., which is filled with high-profile targets as the nation’s capital, law enforcement officials would not discuss specific tactics, but acknowledged that they are pursuing various means to protect pedestrians, including the installation of more bollards on city streets.

“We are always trying to stay a step ahead of these terrorists,” Assistant D.C. Police Chief Jeffery Carroll said.

A visitor to the 14th Factory in Los Angeles, California, caused $200,000 worth of damage when she knocked over a display while attempting to take a selfie a few weeks ago. 

According to the museum, three sculptures were "permanently damaged" in the incident. 

The whole thing was captured on security cameras, and later shared to LiveLeak. In the clip, a woman can be seen crouching in front of a row of sculptures placed on pedestals, presumably trying to take a selfie. She loses her balance, and knocks the pedestal directly behind her over, which then in turn creates a domino effect, knocking over at least 10 pedestals topped with art. 

The gallery is described as a "monumental, multiple-media, socially engaged art and documentary experience conceived by the Hong Kong-based British artist Simon Birch." 

This is probably not the social engagement they were looking for.

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