Whether you’re into fantasy books or videogames, there’s a novelty chess set out there for every type of nerd. This set, currently for sale from M.S. Rau Antiques in New Orleans, is perfect for history geeks. The price tag? A whopping $1.65 million, Forbes reports.
The item, titled “Battle of Issus” after Alexander the Great’s second battle with the Persian army in 333 BCE, is a board game that doubles as a precious piece of art. Crafted in the late 20th century, each 14-karat gold piece stands in for a character or structure from the battle.
A jewel-encrusted King Darius III and Alexander the Great represent the kings on opposite sides of the board, while the Persian god of war and the Greek goddess of war and wisdom (Athena) assume the roles of their respective queens. When the base of each piece is twisted, a special mechanism is triggered, like the swinging of a sword or the rowing of a ship’s oars.
The board itself is also an example of master craftsmanship. The surface is checkered with pink rhodonite and green malachite, and the base’s perimeter depicts action scenes from the battle. It took a jeweler over 14,000 hours over the course of a decade to craft each detail by hand.
The final product contains nearly 9 pounds of 14-karat gold, 5 pounds of 24-karat gold, 11 pounds of silver, 320 grams of garnets, and accents of pearls, rose quartz, and turquoise. If you don’t have a space in your home worthy of such a game, M.S. Rau Antiques has got you covered: The purchase includes a mahogany table and two 19th-century leather upholstered chairs.
One of the biggest art crimes in recent memory has been solved. According to CNN, two of artist Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings stolen from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum in 2002 have been recovered. Their estimated value? $30 million.
Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen and Seascape at Scheveningen, both completed in the 1880s, were found missing after thieves used a ladder to enter the museum through the roof. Federal investigators reported in 2005 that two Dutch men had been convicted of the crime but that authorities had been unable to locate the artwork.
“Seascape at Scheveningen,” 1882 via Getty
The trail was apparently cold until Italian authorities reached a key point in their investigation of alleged drug kingpin Raffaele Imperiale. The two paintings were discovered in the basement of one of Imperiale’s apartments.
Museum curators said only minor damage to the edges of the paintings was observed; they were otherwise in good condition and expected to be returned once a criminal trial has been completed in Italy. Imperiale is believed to be on the run in the United Arab Emirates.
If you’re old enough to feel self-conscious about going to Chuck E. Cheese without a juvenile, Dave & Buster’s might be a reasonable alternative. The arcade-slash-theme restaurant has been going strong since 1982, offering a mix of amusement fun and finger food. Take a look at some D&B trivia you can use the next time you’re waiting for a table.
1. THERE IS BOTH A REAL DAVE AND A REAL BUSTER.
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Not all brand namesakes are rooted in reality—we’re looking at you, Betty Crocker—but Dave & Buster’s did actually start out with two guys named Dave and Buster. In 1977, Dave Corriveau opened an entertainment complex, Slick Willy’s World of Entertainment, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Not long after, former T.G.I. Fridays employee James “Buster” Corley opened his restaurant, Buster’s, a few doors down. Both Dave and Buster noticed customers floating in and out of both establishments, giving them the idea to combine their resources and put their offerings under one roof. Dave & Buster’s was born. (Dave’s name came first because he won a coin toss.)
2. THEY HAD VERY EXPENSIVE POOL TABLES.
Supervising two of the first Dave & Buster’s locations in Dallas, Corley and Corriveau wanted to make sure customers felt like they were in a higher-end gaming establishment. In addition to blackjack tables, the two ordered $15,000 pool tables that were handmade from mahogany and rosewood.
3. THEY USED TO OFFER A RIDE IN AN ELECTRIC CHAIR.
Always eager to try out the latest in arcade amusements, in 2000 a Dave & Buster’s in Maryland installed the Original Shocker—a replica electric chair that allowed patrons to simulate capital punishment. Players were strapped into an oak chair and grabbed on to handles to allow for a mild vibration in place of the 13,200 volts typical of the real thing. The attraction even offered a puff of smoke to mimic the singed flesh of the criminal element. In the understatement of the century, one spectator told TheWashington Post the ride “borders” on bad taste.
4. THEY TRIED SYNCHRONIZED MOVIE SEATS.
Dipping into theme park realms, in 1996 Dave & Buster’s offered to screen movies with something they referred to as “synchronized seating.” The mechanical seats were programmed to react to the action onscreen. Short films inspired byAliens and Days of Thunder were among the offerings.
5. EACH RESTAURANT HAS OVER $1 MILLION IN GAMES.
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You’re probably not going to find any dusty Pac-Man cabinets here. Owing to their reputation for offering electronic diversions, a typical Dave & Buster’s will have over $1 million worth of arcade and interactive games on hand.
6. THEY MIGHT BE WORTH MORE THAN AN ACTUAL CASINO.
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As a public stock, Dave & Buster’s has a market cap of $1.47 billion—that’s more than Caesars Palace, the Las Vegas-based casino empire with a cap of $947 million.
7. THEY WANT TO HELP DRESS YOU.
Earlier this year, the company began rolling out a possible substitution for its Power Card, the scannable card that keeps track of points accrued while playing games. For $10, customers can buy a Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) accessory that performs the same functions without having to be inserted into machines. You can wear it as a bracelet, lanyard, or as a Harry Potter-style wand.
8. IT TOOK THEM 34 YEARS TO COME BACK TO ARKANSAS.
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A Dave & Buster’s finally opened in Little Rock in 2016, 34 years after both owners had gotten their starts in the city. What took so long? Arkansas had legislation in place banning anyone from winning more than $5 in amusement games. A bill was approved that raised the cap to $500, so the franchise could continue to award big-ticket prizes like video game systems.
If you’ve ever parked yourself in front of the TV to watch Looney Tunes, The Ren & Stimpy Show, or countless other cartoons, the music of Raymond Scott should be instantly recognizable, even if you’ve never heard of the man himself. The musical mind behind countless Wile E. Coyote chase scenes (unwittingly) gave cartoons their signature sound, but his real passion was invention—especially when it came to the burgeoning world of electronic music.
Scott was born Harry Warnow in Brooklyn, New York in 1908, and was said to be composing his own music by 1924 in the “audio laboratory” he built as a kid. After graduating from New York’s Institute of Musical Art in 1931 (now known as Juilliard), he got a job as a pianist for the CBS Radio orchestra, which was conducted by his brother, Mark. To avoid charges of nepotism, he changed his name to Raymond Scott (which he picked from a Manhattan phone book) and began his career in earnest, establishing a studio, Universal Recording Company, Inc., and a music publishing company, Circle Music, Inc. in 1935.
In 1936, Scott formed the Raymond Scott Quintette (which actually had six members, including the father of film composer John Williams) and his unique musical voice began to appear. Scott’s style was a wholly different take on the music of the time—the manic energy and violent rhythms perfectly suited his weariness with modern swing and jazz, and his pieces regularly featured bizarre titles such as “Square Dance for Eight Egyptian Mummies,” “Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals,” and “Harlem Hillbilly.”
Scott’s deconstruction of modern swing music made him something of an eccentric curiosity, but when Warner Bros. bought the rights to his music publishing company in 1942 and began pairing it with their Looney Tunes shorts, he forever became a part of pop culture:
Even though Scott never actually wrote music for these cartoons (and may never have even seen them), the pairing was a natural one. Warner’s music director Carl Stalling thought so, too, because he used Scott’s tunes in about 120 Looney Tunes shorts over the next 20 years, with the most popular piece being Scott’s “Powerhouse.”
The deal with Warner Bros. (along with numerous commercial jingles) gave Scott the flexibility to work toward his ultimate goal: invention. In the years after the Warner Bros. purchase, he renewed his focus in the nascent field of electronic music, receiving patents on a number of different instruments, including a sound-effects machine named the Karloff, an early electronic keyboard known as the Clavivox, and his now-legendary attempt at artificial intelligence, the Electronium.
Despite his wild sound, Scott was known for his expectation of perfection from his musicians during practice and a disdain for improvisation. This machine-like attitude toward his musicians helped him make strides in the electronic revolution, as he built an armory of instruments that were less about emotion and more about precision.
Scott spent more than 20 years working on the Electronium, which was conceived as an “Instantaneous Composing Performance Machine” that would compose music while performing it—dubbed by some as “Beethoven in a box.” As advanced as this machine was at the time, Scott’s vision of music’s future ultimately entered the realm of the metaphysical:
“Perhaps within the next hundred years, science will perfect a process of thought transference from composer to listener. The composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely ‘think’ his idealized conception of his music. Instead of recordings of actual music sound, recordings will carry the brainwaves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener.”
Scott’s later career was marked with all manner of electronic experimentation, including a strange yet pioneering album of synthesized lullabies recorded in 1963 called Soothing Sounds for Baby—a three-volume forerunner to the minimalist movement, composed with his Electronium. His array of unique instruments, musical trinkets, and an inimitable sound led to a number of collaborations with a young Jim Henson, who brought Scott on board in the mid-1960s to provide the music for some of the creator’s early—very non-Muppet-y—films:
However, as Scott’s inventions and experiments became more and more idiosyncratic, his music began to move away from profitability. No longer writing music for commercials or mainstream projects, his later work very rarely saw the light of day, as he spent most of his time tinkering away on the Electronium and other projects—living as a recluse, according to some accounts. Scott reportedly sunk close to a million dollars into the development of the Electronium, but despite the investment—and interest from Motown, where he worked as Director of Electronic Music Research and Development in the ’70s—it never became the commercial wonder he imagined, nor was it ever actually completed.
When speaking about Scott’s unconventional mind, electronic music icon (and one of Scott’s occasional collaborators) Bob Moog said:
“He had so much imagination, and so much intuition—this funny intuition that some people have—that he could sort of fish around and get something to work, and do exactly what he wanted it to do. Obviously not everybody could do this. It took a huge amount of money, and a huge amount of imagination. And an impressive amount of craziness too!”
Scott died in 1994, but since then his music has seen something of a rediscovery, at least in certain corners of the industry. To this day, you can still hear “Powerhouse” and other pieces in your favorite cartoons, and Scott’s legacy as a trailblazing figure of electronic music is taking shape as a new generation has come along to add a modern flair to his work. Though people might not have been able to wrap their minds around his inventions and eccentricities at the time, his vision of the future of electronic music no longer sounds so far-fetched.
As a recurring feature, our team combs the Web and shares some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. Here’s what caught our eye today, September 30.
Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!
It’s hard to think of “pizza” without thinking of “delivery.” No matter where you live in America, it probably seems as if your local pizzerias have a lock on the food delivery game—and with good reason: The very first pizza delivery dates all the way back to 1889 (Italy’s Queen Margherita was the lucky recipient). But as online delivery services like GrubHub and DoorDash have made it easier for lazy-but-hungry diners to order what they want, when they want, we’re seeing lots of new culinary patterns emerging.
To find out exactly what Americans are chowing down on at home, Eater asked GrubHub—which facilitates more than 270,000 orders per day in more than 1000 cities across the country—to analyze their data and determine the most popular delivery foods in each state. The results just might surprise you.
While pizza is undoubtedly a staple delivery dish—it’s the most popular item in 12.5 percent of the states studied—it was bested by both Chinese food, which took 15 percent of the states, and chicken, which topped the list, and is a wide-ranging category that includes chicken tenders and wings.
A quick glance at the map reveals a number of regional trends; according to Eater, the three most popular delivery dishes in Wisconsin are full of cheese, with cheese curds taking the top spot. Does your favorite delivery dinner follow the lead of your neighbors, or are you a culinary trendsetter? Check the map below to find out.
If you feel like you’re constantly on the go, you’re not alone. A recent survey of more than 18,000 people from 134 countries found that 68 percent of people feel they don’t get enough rest.
While previous studies have analyzed the negative health effects of not getting enough sleep, less is known about the broader impact of not getting enough rest. In order to start a dialogue about the importance of rest and relaxation, and encourage more substantial research on the subject, researchers at the UK’s Durham University launched an online poll they called the Rest Test.
The poll asked participants about their resting habits, how much time they were able to spend resting on average, and what activities they perceived as most restful. It also asked participants to report on their sense of well-being. The researchers reported their results on the BBC Radio 4 program “The Anatomy of Rest” and say they will publish a full analysis next year (for now, an overview of survey results can be viewed here).
Researchers not only found that more than two-thirds of respondents felt they didn’t spend enough time resting, but that 32 percent believed they needed more rest than the average person. A mere 10 percent, meanwhile, claimed they needed less rest than the average person. Participants who felt they needed more rest were also more likely to have lower well-being scores, while those who either claimed to need less rest, or were able to spend more time resting, reported higher well-being. Some of the most restful activities, according to participants, were reading, being in a natural environment, and being on their own.
“These results show just how crucial it is to our well-being to ensure people do have time to rest,” says Radio 4 presenter Claudia Hammond. “We can begin to try to work out what the optimum amount of rest might be and how we should go about resting.”
Exhausted the current selection of Netflix’s catalog? The service is constantly adding new and original programming to keep you entertained. Check out what’s fresh this October.
1. BLACK MIRROR (2016)
Netflix
The consequences of relying heavily on technology is the central theme to this British-born anthology series, and it’s probably best you don’t know any more than that. After two seasons and a holiday special, creator Charlie Brooker is producing eight original installments for Netflix, including one curiously set in the not-very-digital ’80s. (10/21)
The decorated World War II military commander was the subject of this decorated biopic, which won seven Academy Awards and earned some of the best notices of star George C. Scott’s career. Despite the accolades, Scott disliked the idea of acting being a competition and refused to accept his Oscar, becoming the first performer ever to do so. When he won during the 1971 telecast, he was asleep at home. (10/1)
3. QUIZ SHOW (1994)
Buena Vista
Robert Redford’s fact-based drama tells the story of famous—and then infamous—quiz show contestants Charles Van Doren and Herbert Stempel, two warring personalities who were instructed how to answer questions in order to bolster ratings for the game show Twenty-One. Turns out the 1950s predicted reality television with precision. (10/1)
4. GRIZZLY MAN (2005)
Lionsgate
Werner Hertzog’s haunting documentary retraces the steps of Timothy Treadwell, an animal conservationist and free spirit who paid a steep price for his unshakeable trust in the grizzly bears he studied. (10/1)
5. THE 13TH (2016)
Netflix
Ava DuVernay (Selma) directs this Netflix original documentary about the plight of prison inmates in our country and how race can influence incarceration policies. The title refers to the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except in the case of punishment for a crime. (10/7)
6. MASCOTS (2016)
Netflix
Christopher Guest (Best in Show, This is Spinal Tap) directs another improv-heavy ensemble mockumentary, this time about the challenges faced by sports mascots competing for a prestigious annual award. This being a Guest movie, people will embarrass themselves. In dog costumes. (10/13)
