Category: Bazaar News

Signalmen play integral roles in the rail industry, installing, repairing, and maintaining the signal systems used to direct trains. It’s a hard job, but in the 1880s, a signalman named James Edwin Wide taught a chacma baboon from South Africa to assist him. The baboon became known as Signalman Jack.

Training Signalman Jack

Wide had lost both legs in a work accident and needed an assistant to help him get to his job at the railroad. And apparently, he saw a baboon driving an oxcart one day on a trip to South Africa and decided he’d made a fine sidekick.

Wide named the baboon Jack and first taught him to push a small trolly to get him to his job each day a half-mile from his home. The baboon even helped with chores around the house, including sweeping and taking out the trash.

But it was when Jack followed Wide to work that he seemed to find his calling. The baboon learned to recognize the train whistles used to indicate the vehicle was about to change tracks. After watching Wide operate the signals to indicate which tracks they should take, Signalman Jack was eager to start pulling the levers himself.

Wide had no qualms about letting a baboon do his job.

Kicking back

Wide was eventually able to train Signalman Jack so well that he could sit back and pursue some hobbies while at work.

According to Mental Floss, “As the story goes, one day a posh train passenger staring out the window saw that a baboon, and not a human, was manning the gears and complained to railway authorities. Rather than fire Wide, the railway managers decided to resolve the complaint by testing the baboon’s abilities. They came away astounded.”

Eventually, the railway superintendent decided to formally hire the talented baboon. Signalman Jack was given his own employment number. He even got a salary of 20 cents a day (plus half a bottle of beer per week).

Signalman Jack worked in his job for 9 years without ever making a single error. Sadly, he died of tuberculosis in 1890. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Signalman Jack: The Baboon Who Worked for the Railroad—and Never Made a Mistake” — Mental Floss

In November 2012, Colorado dad Mark Redwine killed his 13-year-old son Dylan after the boy uncovered shocking selfies of his father wearing lingerie and eating feces from a diaper.

On Nov. 18, 2012, Mark Redwine picked up his 13-year-old son, Dylan, from the airport as part of his custody agreement with his ex-wife. However, Dylan Redwine didn’t want to go that day. In fact, he hadn’t wanted to see his father in the weeks and months prior to this particular holiday visit.

Dylan was upset with his father, having accidentally seen some truly shocking photos of Redwine the prior year, which he intended on confronting him over during this visit.

However, something terrible happened in Mark Redwine’s house that night, causing him to fly into a fit of rage and murder his own son. Initially considered a missing person, Dylan’s remains were discovered in the mountains near Redwine’s home months later, showing that Mark Redwine went to extreme lengths to hide the shame of his youngest son confronting him over his own compromising photos.

This is the disturbing story of Mark and Dylan Redwine.

Mark Redwine’s Dysfunctional Relationships

Mark Allen Redwine was born on Aug. 24, 1961. At the time of Dylan’s 2012 visit, Redwine lived in La Plata County, a rugged and mountainous area of Southwest Colorado. Twice divorced, Redwine had two children with his ex-wife, Elaine, and was involved in a custody battle over their 13-year-old son.

Dylan Redwine didn’t want to visit his father and told his brother Corey that he was upset and uncomfortable with him — likely because, in 2011 both brothers had seen photos on their father’s computer that horrified them.

The photos showed their father dressed in a wig and women’s lingerie, eating what appeared to be feces from a diaper.

Dylan and his father’s relationship declined over the months, and Dylan asked Corey to send him the sordid photos of their father prior to his November visit, so he could confront his dad.

Elaine Hall, Dylan’s mother, was concerned about the visit, seeing how upset he had been around Redwine. However, her attorney told her she could face prosecution if Dylan did not fly out to see his father.

Before Dylan’s trip, Redwine was aware that his older son, Corey, had seen the compromising photos, according to The Durango Herald.

Worse, in the middle of a text argument with Redwine, Corey had revealed that he knew about the photos, and antagonized his father, saying, “Hey beautiful, you are what you eat, look in the mirror.”

Dylan Redwine’s Fateful Trip

On Nov. 18, 2012, Redwine collected his son at the Durango-La Plata County Airport, and surveillance footage from the airport, and a Walmart in Durango, showed hardly any personal interaction between Redwine and his son. Dylan had wanted to spend the night of his arrival at a friend’s house, but Redwine had refused, and they both stayed at Redwine’s house that evening.

Through text messages, Dylan had arranged to visit his friend’s house at 6:30 a.m. the next morning, and his last communication with anyone on his phone that night was at 9:37 p.m. When Dylan’s friend texted him at 6:46 a.m. on November 19, asking where Dylan was, he received no response.

Redwine later claimed that he left his house that morning to run some errands and returned home to find his son missing. Dylan’s mother, however, immediately suspected that Redwine wasn’t telling the full truth according to The Associated Press. and a large-scale search of the woods and mountains surrounding Redwine’s home began.

Within days of Dylan’s disappearance, another of Redwine’s ex-wives told investigators of a previous disturbing conversation with Redwine, in which he said that if he ever had to get rid of a body, he would leave it out in the mountains. Redwine had also chillingly told her during their divorce and custody proceedings that he would “kill the kids before he let her have them.”

Mark Redwine’s Guilty Behavior

More than seven months later, on June 27, 2013, Dylan Redwine’s partial remains were located on Middle Mountain Road, roughly 100 yards off an ATV trail, and about eight miles from Redwine’s house. Interestingly, a witness had observed Redwine driving alone in te area in April of 2013, after which he left town, failing to return to search for Dylan in June 2013. Redwine was also very familiar with Middle Mountain Road and owned an ATV.

Upon the discovery of the boy’s remains, Redwine had a suspicious conversation with another son, discussing how the rest of Dylan’s body, including his skull, would have to be found before investigators could determine if blunt force trauma was the cause of death.

Then came Redwine’s bizarre appearance on the Dr. Phil show in 2013, where he and Dylan’s mother, leveled accusations at each other — and Redwine notably refused a polygraph test.

In August 2013 police detected the presence of Dylan’s blood, and human cadaver scent in multiple locations of Redwine’s living room according to court documents.

A canine also indicated the presence of human remains in the living room, and a washing machine, as well as on the clothes Redwine had reported wearing on the night of Nov. 18, 2012. A later search of Redwine’s vehicle in February 2014, by the same dog handling team also indicated the presence of cadaver scent in several areas of the Dodge truck.

Then on Nov. 1, 2015, some hikers found Dylan Redwine’s skull further up Middle Mountain Road. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Division confirmed the locations of Dylans remains, and later his skull. No animal known to the area would carry a body that distance up the mountain, and no animal would then transport the skull an additional one and a half miles through that terrain.

Mark Redwine Convicted Of Murder

Mark Redwine was arrested for second-degree murder and child abuse, following a July 17, 2017, grand jury indictment, and finally went on trial in 2021 after several COVID-19 restriction delays. A forensic anthropologist testified that Dylan suffered a fracture above his left eye, and that two marks on his skull were likely caused by a knife at or near the time of death according to CBS News.

The prosecution said the photographs triggered a fatal rage in Redwine, and revealed some telling details of Dylan’s first night missing. As rescue crews scoured the nearby woods, all the lights in Redwine’s house went out around 11 p.m. — “at a time when most people would have been out in the woods with a flashlight. A time when most people would know to leave the light on in case a child was lost in the woods. At 11 p.m., the defendant’s house went dark.”

On Oct. 8, 2021, Redwine was sentenced to the maximum term of 48 years in prison, with the sentencing judge summarizing Redwine’s appalling actions: “As the father, it’s your obligation to protect your son, keep him from harm. Instead of that, you inflicted enough injury on him to kill him in your living room.”

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After learning the shocking story of Mark Redwine, read how Mark Winger almost got away with murdering his wife. Then, learn about the twisted life of con man and murderer Clark Rockefeller .

Alkaline hydrolysis, also known as aquamation or water cremation may be the next frontier in the death industry. Researchers say it’s one of the most sustainable options for treating human remains.

What is aquamation?

In 2021, aquamation became a subject of interest after the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who requested that his remains be disposed of in this eco-conscious manner. Now, it’s a popular choice in the “green burial” movement.

The goal of aquamation is to avoid the use of non-biodegradable materials and promote the natural decomposition of the body. During the process, the body is liquified under pressure. Then, the bones are dried and turned to ashes in an oven. It reduces the need for ostentatious caskets and the greenhouse gases produced by traditional cremation by fire. It also cuts energy use.

Smithsonian Magazine (cited below) explains in more detail:

“During alkaline hydrolysis, a human body is sealed in a long, stainless-steel chamber, while a heated solution of 95 percent water and 5 percent sodium hydroxide passes over and around it…The process dissolves the bonds in the body’s tissues and eventually yields a sterile, liquid combination of amino acids, peptides, salts, sugars and soaps, which is disposed of down the drain at the alkaline hydrolysis facility. The body’s bones are then ground to a fine powder and returned to the deceased person’s survivors, just as the bones that remain after flame cremation are returned to families as ash.”

Choosing a “green burial”

While you may not have heard of water cremation, there are dozens of American companies that build machines for it. It’s legal in at least 26 states as well as throughout the world.

The process itself has been around for a long time, but it’s still not mainstream. However, it’s likely you’ll hear more about it as nearly every industry strives to become more sustainable.

There are states that still ban the practice because of concerns over the effects of residue in the water supply. It appears not to have any negative effect on water, but regulating it is still a challenge since aquamation’s use is still relatively rare.

According to the Berkeley Planning Journal, the chemicals and materials buried along with bodies in conventional American burials “include approximately 30 million board feet of hardwoods, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 104,272 tons of steel, and 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete.” Fire cremations in America “release an estimated annual 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as well as toxic materials like mercury.”

Smithsonian notes that “Alkaline hydrolysis consumes approximately 10 percent of the energy required to cremate a body in flame, its equipment runs on electricity rather than fossil fuels, and it emits no greenhouse gases.”

Once people get over the suspicions that come with novel new burial practices, experts believe the industry will grow. — WTF fun facts

Source: “Could Water Cremation Become the New American Way of Death?” — Smithsonian Magazine

(AP) — Populations of a vulnerable species of marine mammal, numerous species of abalone and a type of Caribbean coral are now threatened with extinction, an international conservation organization said Friday.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature announced the update during the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, conference in Montreal. The union’s hundreds of members include government agencies from around the world, and it’s one of the planet’s widest-reaching environmental networks.

The IUCN uses its Red List of Threatened Species to categorize animals approaching extinction. This year, the union is sounding the alarm about the dugong — a large and docile marine mammal that lives from the eastern coast of Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.

The dugong is vulnerable throughout its range, and now populations in East Africa have entered the red list as critically endangered, IUCN said in a statement. Populations in New Caledonia have entered the list as endangered, the group said.

The major threats to the animal are unintentional capture in fishing gear in East Africa and poaching in New Caledonia, IUCN said. It also suffers from boat collisions and loss of the seagrasses it eats, said Evan Trotzuk, who led the East Africa red list assessment.

“Strengthening community-led fisheries governance and expanding work opportunities beyond fishing are key in East Africa, where marine ecosystems are fundamental to people’s food security and livelihoods,” Trotzuk said.

The IUCN Red List includes more than 150,000 species. The list sometimes overlaps with the species listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, such as in the case of the North Atlantic right whale. More than 42,000 of the species on the red list are threatened with extinction, IUCN says.

IUCN uses several categories to describe an animal’s status, ranging from “least concern” to “critically endangered.” IUCN typically updates the red list two or three times a year. This week’s update includes more than 3,000 additions to the red list. Of those, 700 are threatened with extinction.

Jane Smart, head of IUCN’s Centre for Science and Data, said it will take political will to save the jeopardized species, and the gravity of the new listings can serve as a clarion call.

“The news we often give you on this is often gloomy, a little bit depressing, but it sparks the action, which is good,” Smart said.

Pillar coral, which is found throughout the Caribbean, was moved from vulnerable to critically endangered in this week’s update. The coral is threatened by a tissue loss disease, and its population has shrunk by more than 80% across most of its range since 1990, IUCN said. The IUCN lists more than two dozen corals in the Atlantic Ocean as critically endangered.

Almost half the corals in the Atlantic are “at elevated risk of extinction due to climate change and other impacts,” Beth Polidoro, an associate professor at Arizona State University and red list coordinator for IUCN.

Unsustainable harvesting and poaching have emerged as threats to abalone, which are used as seafood, IUCN said. Twenty of the 54 abalone species in the world are threatened with extinction according to the red list’s first global assessment of the species.

Threats to the abalone are compounded by climate change, diseases and pollution, the organization said.

“This red list update brings to light new evidence of the multiple interacting threats to declining life in the sea,” said Jon Paul Rodríguez, chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission.

It turns out fear isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, recreational fear – the kind of fear you experience on purpose by going to haunted houses or watching horror flicks – can be good for your brain.

Seeking out recreational fear

We know some fear can create a stress response in the body that can be harmful. But our body’s ability to feel fear is, overall, a good thing. It tells us to get away from danger and keeps us alive.

But what about the people who seek out fear?

Even a game of peek-a-boo as a baby starts to prime our bodies for being caught off guard. And it can be exhilarating. When we get a little older, we may tell ghost stories around the campfire. In many ways, we seek out fear. As adults, we may go on roller coasters, see slasher or suspense films, or participate in risky activities like mountain biking or skydiving.

But why do we go after this feeling?

According to Smithsonian Magazine (cited below), “One hypothesis is that recreational fear is a form of play behavior, which is widespread in the animal kingdom and ubiquitous among humans. When an organism plays, it learns important skills and develops strategies for survival.”

The benefits of fear

By seeking out recreational fear, we put ourselves in a situation that has little risk. And perhaps scaring ourselves in a controlled situation can help us cope with real fear later on.

You can learn a lot about yourself by the way you react to fear. It’s just that not many of us like to acknowledge that feeling or explore it.

Researchers at the Recreational Fear Lab, a research center at Aarhus University, Denmark are looking into the science of fear and trying to learn more about our responses to stress. One thing they’re looking at is the relationship between fear and enjoyment. After all, some people really seem to go after scary experiences in order to hit a “sweet spot” between boring and terrifying.

The question of what makes recreational fear appealing to some is still up for debate. But researchers suspect that “even though fear itself may be unpleasant, recreational fear is not only fun—it may be good for us.”

One suggestion is to not be so afraid of fear, especially when you can control the parameters.

“With research findings such as these in mind, we should maybe think twice about shielding kids and young people too zealously from playful forms of fear.” — WTF fun facts

Source: “Can Experiencing Horror Help Your Brain?” — Smithsonian Magazine

The 1965 film told the story of the musical von Trapp family that fled the Nazis in Austria, but there were a few key points that Hollywood either changed or left out entirely.

Most people have seen The Sound of Music, the beloved 1965 film that told the story of a loving governess, a gruff widower, and their musical family during the rise of Nazi Germany. But though the film is fiction, it’s based on the real-life story of the von Trapp family.

Just like in the movie, the von Trapp family was made up of a widower, his large brood, and a would-be nun named Maria. Like in the movie, the family began to sing together and eventually decided to leave their native Austria for the United States as Adolf Hitler gained power in Europe.

But the real von Trapp family has insisted that they’re different from their fictional counterparts. And though The Sound of Music is based on their lives, their actual story differs from the film in numerous ways.

How The Real-Life Maria Joined The Von Trapp Family

Like in The Sound of Music, the story of the von Trapp family begins with a woman named Maria, whose real name was Maria Augusta Kutschera. Born in 1905, the real-life Maria grew up in a secular family but became enchanted with religion after accidentally attending a Palm Sunday service.

According to the National Archives, Maria left the State Teachers’ College of Progressive Education in Vienna and entered the Benedictine Abbey of Nonnberg in Salzburg in hopes of becoming a nun. But there, like in The Sound of Music, Maria was a “problem” that the nuns struggled to “solve.”

“I was horrid, the worst you can imagine,” Maria recalled in 1980, according to the Washington Post. Not only did a lack of fresh air and exercise make her sick, but Maria remembered breaking china, speaking when she wasn’t supposed to, running through the courtyard, sliding down banisters, whistling Gregorian chants, and climbing on the convent roof.

When a World War I hero named Baron Georg von Trapp approached the nuns in hopes of finding a tutor for his sick daughter, also named Maria, the sisters swiftly volunteered their local troublemaker.

“The nuns unanimously chose me,” Maria said, per the Washington Post.

Like in The Sound of Music, Georg was a widower with seven children. But his family has rejected his depiction in the film as gruff and uncaring. In real life, he was warm-hearted and encouraged his children’s singing.

Likewise, the real life Maria wasn’t as even-tempered as the character in the film. According to the National Archives, the younger Maria remembered her as having “a terrible temper… from one moment to the next, you didn’t know what hit her. We were not used to this. But we took it like a thunderstorm that would pass, because the next minute she could be very nice.”

Like in the film, Maria and Georg fell in love and got married. But Maria has stated that her love for Georg, who was 25 years her senior, had more to do with his children than with him. She explained that she agreed to marry him because he asked her to be a “second mother” to his children.

“God must have made him word it that way,” she said, “because if he had only asked me to marry him I might not have said yes.” She added: “I really and truly was not in love… I loved the children, so in a way I really married the children… [B]y and by I learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after.”

Unlike in the film, they married in 1927, about a decade before the Nazis annexed Austria. The von Trapp family also wasn’t as wealthy as they seemed in The Sound of Music, as Georg lost most of his wealth during the global depression in the 1930s. And though his seven children are portrayed in the movie — with different names and often different genders — he and Maria actually had three additional children of their own.

But the film does accurately capture the family’s reaction to the rise of the Nazis.

The Von Trapp Family And The Rise Of Adolf Hitler

According to Forbes, the von Trapp family learned that Nazi Germany had annexed Austria in March 1938 around the same time that they celebrated one of the children’s birthdays.

By then, the family was a singing sensation. The National Archives report that the von Trapps, also known as the Trapp Family Singers, had become famous for performing all over Europe and had even won first place in the Salzburg Music Festival in 1936 (just as they do in The Sound of Music). But the rise of the Nazis changed everything.

According to Forbes, one of the children, Lorli, was disciplined shortly after the German takeover of Austria. Her teacher told Maria that she had refused to raise her hand in the Heil Hitler salute and refused to sing the German national anthem, announcing to the class that Georg had said “he’d put ground glass in his tea or finish his life on a dung heap before he would ever sing that song.” The teacher threatened to report them if it happened again.

Despite the danger, the family resisted the creeping influence of the Nazis. Georg refused to come out of retirement to command a submarine and the family declined an invitation to sing at Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Forbes reports that Georg gathered the children to discuss leaving Austria, noting that they would give up their “material goods” but retain their “faith and honor.”

“Then, let’s get out of here soon,” Georg allegedly said. “You can’t say no three times to Hitler.”

In The Sound of Music, the family mounts a daring escape, carrying their suitcases and instruments across the Alps. The reality — though they left one day before Austria closed its borders — was much less dramatic.

“We did tell people that we were going to America to sing,” the younger Maria said, according to the National Archives. “And we did not climb over mountains with all our heavy suitcases and instruments. We left by train, pretending nothing.”

Her stepmother put things more succinctly, noting in an interview reported by Biography that crossing the Alps would have led them straight into Nazi Germany. “Don’t they know geography in Hollywood?” she asked in 1967. “Salzburg does not border on Switzerland!”

The family made it safely to the United States, where Maria soon decided to share their story with the world.

‘The Sound Of Music’ Family After World War II

Following their flight from Austria, the von Trapp family continued to tour and eventually settled in Stowe, Vermont, where they ran a music camp and a lodge. Georg died in 1947, and Maria described the family’s experiences in her 1949 book The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

Maria eventually sold the rights of her book to German producers, who used her story in Die Trapp-Familie (1956), and Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika (1958). Shortly after the German films were released, The Sound of Music premiered as a play, then was adapted as a movie, with Julie Andrews as Maria.

The von Trapp family never made much money from the film and focused most of their attention on running the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe. Indeed, the family took some issue with the movie’s creative liberties, including the depiction of Georg as a harsh and cold father.

“Sound of Music simplifies everything,” Johannes von Trapp told The New York Times in 1998. “I think perhaps reality is at the same time less glamorous but more interesting than the myth.”

But his stepmother, Maria, came to understand why their story had such an impact. According to the Washington Post, she saw it as a tale of one family following the will of God and conquering a crisis together.

“I always told my children, ‘Find the will of God and do it,’ even in the little things,” she said. “Our life consists of living minute by minute. Someday a big minute will come and you must be prepared.”

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After reading about the true story of the von Trapp family, look through these photos of life in Nazi Germany. Or, discover the chilling story of the Nazi’s Hitler Youth.

Physicists Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin both suffered agonizing deaths after making minor slips of the hand while working on the plutonium orb known as the “demon core” at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico.

To survivors of the nuclear attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, the nuclear explosions seemed like hell on earth. And though a third plutonium core — meant for use if Japan didn’t surrender — was never dropped, it still managed to kill two scientists. The odd circumstances of their deaths led the core to be nicknamed “demon core.”

Retired to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaski, demon core killed two scientists exactly nine months apart. Both were conducting similar experiments on the core, and both made eerily similar mistakes that proved fatal.

Before the experiments, scientists had called the core “Rufus.” After the deaths of their colleagues, the core was nicknamed “demon core.” So what exactly happened to the two scientists who died while handling it?

The Heart Of A Nuclear Bomb

In the waning days of World War II, the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. One fell on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and one fell on Nagasaki on August 9. In case Japan didn’t surrender, the U.S. was prepared to drop a third bomb, powered by the plutonium core later called “demon core.”

The core was codenamed “Rufus.” It weighed almost 14 pounds and stretched about 3.5 inches in diameter. And when Japan announced its intention to surrender on August 15, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory were allowed to keep the core for experiments.

As Atlas Obscura explains, the scientists wanted to test the limits of nuclear material. They knew that a nuclear bomb’s core went critical during a nuclear explosion, and wanted to better understand the limit between subcritical material and the much more dangerous radioactive critical state.

But such criticality experiments were dangerous — so dangerous that a physicist named Richard Feynman compared them to provoking a dangerous beast. He quipped in 1944 that the experiments were “like tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.”

And like an angry dragon roused from slumber, demon core would soon kill two scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory when they got too close.

How Demon Core Killed Two Scientists

On Aug. 21, 1945, about a week after Japan expressed its intention to surrender, Los Alamos physicist Harry Daghlian conducted a criticality experiment on demon core that would cost him his life. According to Science Alert, he ignored safety protocols and entered the lab alone — accompanied only by a security guard — and got to work.

Daghlian’s experiment involved surrounding the demon core with bricks made of tungsten carbide, which created a sort of boomerang effect for the neutrons shed by the core itself. Daghlian brought the demon core right to the edge of supercriticality but as he tried to remove one of the bricks, he accidentally dropped it on the plutonium sphere. It went supercritical and blasted him with neutron radiation.

Daghlian died 25 days later. Before his death, the physicist suffered from a burnt and blistered hand, nausea, and pain. He eventually fell into a coma and passed away at the age of 24.

Exactly nine months later, on May 21, 1946, demon core struck again. This time, Canadian physicist Louis Slotin was conducting a similar experiment in which he lowered a beryllium dome over the core to push it toward supercriticality. To ensure that the dome never entirely covered the core, Slotin used a screwdriver to maintain a small opening though, Slotin had been warned about his method before.

But just like the tungsten carbide brick that had slipped out of Daghlian’s hand, Slotin’s screwdriver slipped out of his grip. The dome dropped and as the neutrons bounced back and forth, demon core went supercritical. Blue light and heat consumed Slotin and the seven other people in the lab.

“The blue flash was clearly visible in the room although it (the room) was well illuminated from the windows and possibly the overhead lights,” one of Slotin colleagues, Raemer Schreiber, recalled to the New Yorker. “The total duration of the flash could not have been more than a few tenths of a second. Slotin reacted very quickly in flipping the tamper piece off.”

Slotin may have reacted quickly, but he’d seen what happened to Daghlian. “Well,” he said, according to Schreiber, “that does it.”

Though the other people in the lab survived, Slotin had been doused with a fatal dose of radiation. The physicist’s hand turned blue and blistered, his white blood count plummeted, he suffered from nausea and abdominal pain, and internal radiation burns, and gradually become mentally confused. Nine days later, Slotin died at the age of 35.

Eerily, the core had killed both Daghlian and Slotin in similar ways. Both fatal incidences took place on a Tuesday, on the 21st of a month. Daghlian and Slotin even died in the same hospital room. Thus the core, previously codenamed “Rufus,” was nicknamed “demon core.”

What Happened To Demon Core?

Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin’s deaths would forever change how scientists interacted with radioactive material. “Hands-on” experiments like the physicists had conducted were promptly banned. From that point on, researchers would handle radioactive material from a distance with remote controls.

So what happened to demon core, the unused heart of the third atomic bomb?

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory had planned to send it to Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, where it would have been publicly detonated. But the core needed time to cool off after Slotin’s experiment, and when the third test at Bikini Atoll was canceled, plans for demon core changed.

After that, in the summer of 1946, the plutonium core was melted down to be used in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Since the United States hasn’t, to date, dropped any more nuclear weapons, demon core remains unused.

But it retains a harrowing legacy. Not only was demon core meant to power a third nuclear weapon — a weapon destined to rain destruction and death on Japan — but it also killed two scientists who handled it in similar ways.

Was the plutonium core cursed, as other scientists darkly suggested by giving it a new nickname? Perhaps, perhaps not. What’s certain is that this strange footnote from U.S. history embodies the grave stakes that came with nuclear power, and the devastating consequences of “tickling the dragon.”

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After reading about demon core and the scientists it killed, see how Hisashi Ouchi was kept alive for 83 excruciating days following a nuclear accident at Japan’s Tokaimura nuclear power plant in 1999. Or, learn about the animals who have thrived in the Chernobyl exclusion zone since humans fled the area following the 1986 nuclear meltdown.