Curio Cabinet

They didn’t think they needed another hero, but they got one anyway. Turns out, late American music star Tina Turner was a rugby icon in Australia, of all places. In 1989, Turner, the singer of hits like What’s Love Got to Do With It and Proud Mary, was at the peak of her career and fresh on the minds of Australians after starring in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, which was filmed in the country just a few years prior. That year, she starred in a promo for the Winfield Cup, now the NSWRL, where she sang What You Get Is What You See while accompanied by swimwear-clad rugby players. The promo was part of an effort to sanitize the image of the sport and make it more appealing to a family audience, not just young men. It was such a hit that the league followed up with another promo starring Turner, where she sang The Best. While the team-up was unusual, it wasn’t entirely random. Turner’s manager at the time was from Australia, and a big rugby fan. This connection turned out to be serendipitous, because the promos worked, and as the sport grew in popularity, Australian rugby fans fell in love with Turner. This adoration was on clear display when Turner posed with the Brisbane Broncos on the field after they won the Grand Finals in 1993, and the crowd broke into song in celebration. She may be gone, but rugby fans down under will always know that Tina Turner was simply the best.

[Image description: A white rugby ball in the grass.] Credit & copyright: W RUGBY, Pexels
 

Yesterday we talked about poisonous green books, and today we’re talking about mysteriously green water. Venice, Italy’s famous floating city, has found its canals turning green recently. The green water was spotted in the city’s Grand Canal, the largest of the artificial waterways that crisscross Venice. As far as anyone can tell, the color change is due to a fluorescent dye of some kind, although speculators on the internet have proposed the possibility of algae. Others blamed conservation groups who might have dumped dye into the water as some form of protest. It wouldn’t be entirely out of the question since similar acts have been committed before, but no one has come forward to take credit for it. Ultima Generazione, a group that previously put charcoal into fountains in Rome to turn the water black, disavowed any knowledge of the situation when people started pointing fingers at them. Regardless, the dye is likely nothing to be concerned about and is unlikely to have any permanent effects.
 
In fact, the city of Chicago dyes a river in a similar fashion on a much larger scale every year for St. Patrick’s Day. The city originally used 100 pounds of fluorescent dye, which turned the Chicago River green for a week. The next year, 50 pounds turned it green for three days. Today, they use just 40 pounds to turn it green for a few hours. Due to its harmless nature, the dye is also used in hydrology to track the movement of water. Still, the green water in Venice has residents and tourists fairly cranky. It’s not the first time the water there has been dyed, though. Argentine artist Nicolás García Uriburu once dyed the canal green in 1968 as a way to raise awareness of ecological issues during the 34th Venice Biennale. So, would doing your laundry in the canal to save on water usage be considered greenwashing?

 
[Image description: A small, empty boat floats in the water in Venice, Italy.] Credit & copyright: Helena Jankovičová Kováčová, Pexels

For those living in Indiana, Memorial Day weekend brings another time-honored tradition besides remembrance and barbecues: The Indianapolis 500. Although this year’s race took place on May 28, the very first Indy 500 took place on this day in 1911, and the event looked a bit different, back then. One thing that hasn’t ever changed, though, is the location. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, or the Brickyard, was the brainchild of local auto dealer Carl Fisher, who wanted to test the capabilities of new vehicles by racing them against each other on the track. As its nickname might suggest, the track was originally laid with bricks. It’s hard to imagine today’s state-of-the-art IndyCars roaring past cheering spectators on bumpy bricks, but the racers of the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911 were driving something that would hardly be considered a contender today. Back then, cars were smaller and casket-shaped with thin wheels, but they were still the speed demons of their day.
 
The winner of that inaugural 500-mile race, Ray Harroun, finished with a time of 6 hours and 42 minutes, averaging 74.59 miles per hour. Notably, Harroun had been the only driver to race on a single-seater, with all the other racers accompanied by a mechanic in the passenger side to pump the oil. That’s definitely something that wouldn’t be seen today. Progress came swiftly, though, and just a decade later, Harroun’s time in that first race wouldn’t have been competitive at all. The cars by then were becoming more rounded for greater aerodynamic performance and much lighter. These new pill-shaped cars would dominate the race during the early era of the event’s history, and they remain an iconic design. Today, the Indianapolis 500 is part of the IndyCar Series, which holds races from Salinas, California, to Toronto, Canada, with varying track layouts. Like the cars of their peers in Formula One, IndyCars look more like wingless planes with fat wheels than conventional road vehicles. Both IndyCars and Formula One cars are capable of going well over 200 miles-per-hour, though one big difference is that IndyCars don’t have power steering. Hey, if it’s worked for over a century, why change it now?

 
[Image description: An IndyCar races down a track. The background is blurred.] Credit & copyright: Collin Hanson, Pexels