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Want to know where your unclaimed bags went? Maybe go to the Unclaimed Baggage Museum and Store in Scottsboro, AL.

You can see unusual things found in lost luggage as well as shop the store full of unclaimed items.

It’s official. Farrell McGuire has found the actual location of the famous Backrooms photo. Technically he re-discovered it had been discovered in 2019, but nobody noticed.

For almost 20 years people have tried to figure out the location of this mysterious photo that spawned an entire genre of creepy pasta writings, videos, and games. It’s location has been investigated for years – but the location was elusive because there’s is almost no history of the photo online and so few clues. Image searches and examing for EXIF data came up blank.

McGuire did a lot of investigation into the image. He tried everything from low level digital file and image forensics to reverse image searches. He noted the photo appeared to be unedited copy straight from an old Sony Cybershot digital camera. The outlets on the walls appeared to place its origin in North America. The biggest addition is an observation about the strange walls – including some that don’t go all the way to the ceiling. He said it reminded him of older furniture store show floors. Searches, however, lead to too many dead ends and it was uncertain how to narrow things down more. There’s been a lot of furniture stores over the years.

Only a few weeks after his original video, a breakthrough was discovered. It turns out someone HAD found the original image. Way back May 29th, 2019 a Twitter user (@rkfg_me) posted that he found it. But nobody noticed.

FWIW, I've probably found the source image here: https://t.co/qYWubUwVvw EXIF says it's from 2002.

— rk⚡fg  (@rkfg_me) May 19, 2019

The original image link is dead, but the Internet Wayback machine had a copy of the Hobbytown website. Here’s the original image: https://web.archive.org/web/20040702085556/https://hobbytownoshkosh.com/Dsc00161.jpg

And the domain name gives the location away. It’s location is the HobbyTown in Oshkosh Wisconsin (807 Oregon St, Oshkosh, WI 54902). It’s also connected to a shop called Fabulous Finds next door that shared some of the original space.

The picture was part of a series of pictures from when Hobbytown employees were renovating the building from it’s previous owner in 2004: Rohner’s Furniture store. The store was purchased by Hobbytown and the photo was from the empty upstairs showroom when they converted it into a RC racetrack. Conversations people have had with the shop owner seem to confirm the renovation and story.

Here’s the rest of the photos from that website:

Amazing.

Previous investigation video with many of the twists and turns he took while investigating the photo:

Other interesting links:

• Timeline of how the investigation went: https://www.reddit.com/r/backrooms/comments/1d3pkif/how_the_backrooms_were_actually_found_a_timeline/
• Additional photos from the renovation: https://www.reddit.com/r/backrooms/comments/1d4tnkv/origin_of_these/
• More photos: https://www.reddit.com/r/backrooms/comments/1d4rgqf/more_images_of_the_backrooms_in_real_life/
• Diagram of where the original shots were likely taken: https://www.reddit.com/r/backrooms/comments/1d52mt7/i_went_to_hobby_town_and_fabulous_finds_and_made/
• It turns out the building is for sale. Who’d like to buy it for $299,000 and re-create it? https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/wi/oshkosh/807-oregon-st/pid_54460028/

Video walkthrough of the current Hobbytown space so you don’t have to go visit.

Bandai has decided to send it’s giant Gundam out in style. I got to see 2 different iterations of the Gundam one my trips to Japan – and the mini-shows were really great.

The 18 meter tall, life-sized replica of the classic RX-78-2 Gundam—the original main mobile suit of the 1979 anime—originally opened to the public at the Yokohama Gundam Base in Tokyo Bay in December 2020.

Bandai sent the Gundam out in style last night with one final exhibition, which featured luminaries from across the franchise’s history—including a few words from Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino

Article

• https://gizmodo.com/yokohama-gundam-closing-ceremony-witch-from-mercury-1851378366

Capturing the experience of a total eclipse is difficult. Even photographers like me with all the proper equipment fail to really capture the experience. There’s a host of sensory experiences that happen all at once. I’ve personally seen people moved to tears – and I found it such a profoundly moving experience the first time I saw one in 2017 that I flew to the Midwest to see my second one in 2024. Both times it never failed to awe.

I thought this thread on reddit had some of the best descriptions of the recent US eclipse.

So what is it like? Other’s have tried to describe it online:

• “Its like trying to explain the Grand Canyon or Yosemite. Imagine if Yosemite valley, or the Grand Canyon, just appeared in front of you for four minutes, then disappeared.”
• “Its hard to explain and hard to remember at least for me. I see why people travel so far to see it. I honestly wasn’t expecting what I seen. I just been telling people it looks nothing like what you see in photos.”
• “You can’t [explain it]. If they’ve never seen it, they won’t get it. I’ve just been telling people it’s exceeded every expectation I had.”

Trying to explain what totality is like

First off is the run-up and expectation. For months, even years, people start hearing about the next eclipse. I personally planned and bought my flights/hotels/rentals about 8 months in advance.

Around 6 months out you’ll start hearing about eclipse watching events taking reservations and selling tickets. The news will start mentioning it on air and online. Accommodations, flights, rental cars, and local attractions all along totality start making news as they start selling out.

A month out, the eclipse is a regular news item – everything from event organizers touting their upcoming events, local service industries (hotels, gas, food, etc) warning about floods of people overwhelming them, to advisories about traffic and safety issues. Within 2 weeks, there will be news every day. Energy and anticipation just keeps building.

Starting about 3-4 days out, all the eclipse chasers will be watching the weather reports. Comparing all the different predictions and trying to figure out the best place to go. If there is bad weather, there’s a flurry of last-minute changes of location and drive time calculations. Plans change fast and furious. Weather in my area was completely terrible just 12 hours before the event – would we see anything? There’s anxious nail biting and second guessing by lining up alternate plans.

The day before the eclipse, I went to bed tingling with anticipation and excitement. The weather reports were looking good; but the sky sure didn’t. I double-checked weather, my alarms, traffic conditions, routes to the location I wanted to get too. I had the car filled with gas. I went through all my gear, chargers, snacks, timetables, and had everything double-checked and piled by the door. I planned secondary plans if the primary location looked bad and went to bed.

I got up at the crack of dawn. I looked at last weather reports and checked traffic along the 1.5 hour route and left 5-6 hours before totality. I arrived in the path of totality, filled up the car with gas and stopped at a local greasy spoon diner nearest to my desired eclipse watching spot (10 miles away). I had nice leisurely tea and breakfast reading and chatting with locals – secure knowing I was already in totality even if traffic became madness.

About 2 hours before the moon started covering the sun, I loaded up with drinks and snacks I headed to my eclipse watching spot and settled it. I set up my gear and got all ready – excitedly talking with those around me about what to expect. The weather looked great – no need for last minute changes. We killed time catching up, looking up reports, talking about what we expected and had heard, watching the traffic on the interstates turn from green to yellow to red in google maps, and listening to live TV reports on eclipse events across the country.

Unnoticed to the naked eye, right on time, the moon appeared in front of the lower corner of the sun. For the first 25% of the moon covering the sun, you pretty much don’t notice anything besides the slow creep of the moon over the sun. It was exciting to see it start happening! I talked with those around me, took photos, and we watched as the moon took a bigger and bigger bite out of the sun through our glasses. Around us, little appeared to change though.

Right after the halfway point, however, you could see the light around you begin to change. At first it’s just kind of a general oddness of the light around you. Things seem a bit dimmer, but it’s so uniform that it feels…strange. It’s not like stepping from sunlight into a shadow, it’s all around you.

As you get from halfway to 75% covered, you notice changes in the shadows cast around you. They start looking odd – but it’s hard to see why at first. They just seem different or blobby. As things progress, you’ll see it clearly with sharp shadows. They aren’t round, but strange crescent shapes. All the little shadows between the leaves are creating thousands of pinhole cameras on the ground.

The light and air continues to change too. Slowly at first. Almost imperceptibly. The light becomes more dim, increasingly more like twilight, but with a different flavor. Instead of it just getting orange/red in the one direction of sunset, the color is on the horizon all around you.

These are the best shots I’ve found that capture what it looks like in the sky. The surrounding horizon in all directions looks like a uniform sunset. As you look up from the horizon to where the sun was, it goes from sunset colors to black. Almost pitch black. So dark you can see bright planets like Venus (if they’re in the right spots) or a few bright stars. The contrast between the light at the horizon gradually turning to complete blackness around the sun is astounding. Add to this fact that just 30 minutes before it was a bright and sunny day.

Then there is the sun – or where it used to be. There is a completely black circle surrounded by an impossibly electric white halo. It’s like looking at the white flash of a lightning bolt. Yet it doesn’t move or go away – or hurt your eyes. It seems like it should, but it doesn’t. It’s a camera flash that you can look at continually. It’s just hangs there around the black circle. White-hot electric mother of pearl color.

And it stays like that. You’re completely captivated; staring at it in awe. After an eternity that’s probably only 30 seconds, you notice all the changes around you. The coolness and stillness of air. All nature sounds have gone silent (no birds chirping, dogs barking, bugs buzzing, or anything else). The horizon in all directions looks like sunset – yet the sky around the sun looks almost pitch black. The suspended halo of shimmering, impossible light. You look around to be surrounded by dim light casting everything in a muted grey color. It’s hard to take it all in. I stared at the sun, then at the horizon, then made exasperated comments to my friends, then looked all around me at the colors of the horizon, then felt the air on my skin, the dimness of the trees and building around me – over and over again. Trying to drink all this sensory input at once. It happened all at once and yet each moment was like an eternity flying by.

After what seemed ages and yet the blink of an eye, the time grew close for the sun to peak out of the opposite side. We anticipated the light again but were trying to still soak all of this in. To squeeze every second out of the experience. Suddenly again, like the snap of a finger, the tiniest bit of sun came out from behind the moon on the opposite side and it was brilliant white again. 1% of the sun exposed could completely blind you like the full noon-day sun. The totality was over.

I barely remember what happened after that. We were so in awe and in wonder of what we had just experienced. The light came back up and all the effects unwound. I would occasionally look through my glasses to see the moon releasing more and more of the sun – but we were all excitedly talking about what we just saw. We gradually put away our gear and sat chatting. We started checking our phones, sending pictures, sharing texts, checking the traffic, etc. I had to put my hat on since the sun started baking us again. Only 20 minutes earlier, it was dark and cold.

We sat around and talked about everything and laughed and wowed. Then, after saying our goodbyes, we hit the road and took all this home feeling changed by the experience of having witnessed something so wonderful. You know you’ve been changed – but unsure how just yet. I drove home realizing this exceeded and shattered any expectations I could have possibly imagined.

Another description I found online

“Excitement bubbled as totality drew near. People were getting settled, climbing on top of their cars, or getting chairs from their trunk to sit on the side of the road or on the hillside. The light had changed subtly like a dying flashlight slowly going out. It was a gradual and strange dimness that was hard to notice at first. Realization set in that it was a bit cooler and although the sun was still fairly bright, it wasn’t warm on my skin anymore. With eclipse glasses on, spectators watched as the silhouette of the moon crept closer to complete coverage of the sun and the sky above us became darker yet. It was enough to cause an expectant hush over the crowd. The last small crescent of sun became only a sliver of brightness.

Then it happened somehow slowly and suddenly. It was safe to remove our glasses to see what we traveled so far and wide to see. When I looked up, I was so stunned by what I saw that I lost my breath and had to sit down! (I don’t know why I was standing in the first place.) The crowd oohed and aahed at the sky. Onlookers in the distance lit off fireworks. Some people laughed, some even cried, but many were silently looking up in awe. It was spectacular!

I looked up at the sky and saw a black orb with a thin band of dazzling light dancing around the edge. The dark disk looked like a wheel that rolled in a tiny bit of fine red glitter with brilliant golden light bursting from the sides. And the blueish corona flaring out beyond the light was astonishing in the dusky deep blue sky. Then I noticed the planets on their way around the sun. First I saw Venus, the brightest, then Jupiter. And because I knew where to look I also saw, faintly shining, Mars and Mercury. I tried to take it all in while sitting there on that hillside near the truck stop, eclipse glasses in hand. It was spellbinding. I took note of the dark sky above and the strange glow of light on the horizon, outside of the shadow. The sparkle of our star eclipsed by the moon was the closest I’ll ever get to observing it’s light with the naked eye and I wanted to savor every second. But time was up and just as slowly and suddenly as the sun disappeared, the light returned, first as a sliver then gradually a crescent. There was so much light from that tiny bit of sunshine. Shortly after totality, beneath the penumbra of the new moon, we headed back home.”

More amazing pictures can be found here

Spitbank Fort and No Man’s Fort are some unique properties for sale. The sea forts were 2 armor-plated forts completed in 1878 off the British coast. They defended the Portsmouth dockyards during WW 1 and WW 2. It must have been rough, because it was reported that “Life on site was grim; those serving were deliberately chosen for their inability to swim, to avoid any attempt to escape.” Ouch.

After 1956, they were decommissioned and sat empty until they were turned into a museum in 1982-2009. Spitbank was reportedly purchased for more than £1m in 2009 for and converted into a luxury hotel that folded during the 2020 corona virus pandemic. In late 2020, Pendulum live broadcast a concert from Spitbank.

Now they’re both for sale.

Check out their websites for the cool sales information.