Opus – Encyclopædia of the sublime

Plennie Wingo

Plennie Wingo was an unemployed Texas café owner who attempted to walk around the world backwards during the Great Depression. Wearing spectacles fitted with small rear-view mirrors, he set out from Santa Monica in 1931 and walked roughly 8,000 miles across the United States and Europe before authorities stopped him in Istanbul. He financed the journey by selling signed postcards to curious strangers. Eighteen months and thirteen pairs of shoes later, he returned home with four dollars.

Dashrath Manjhi

After his wife died following delayed access to medical care, Dashrath Manjhi decided the mountain itself was the problem. From 1960 to 1982, the labourer used a hammer and chisel to cut a 110-metre road through a quartzite ridge in Bihar, India. Villagers who initially dismissed him eventually brought food and tools. His passage reduced the journey to the nearest town from roughly 55 kilometres to 15. India Post placed him on a commemorative stamp in 2016. The mountain remained; the detour did not.

Tipu’s Tiger

Tipu’s Tiger is an 18th-century wooden automaton made for Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore and an enemy of the British East India Company. It depicts a near-life-sized tiger attacking a European man. Turning a handle makes the man’s arm move while hidden pipes produce his cries and the tiger’s grunts; a flap opens to reveal a small organ keyboard. British troops seized it from Tipu’s palace in 1799, brought it to London and made it a popular attraction.

Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race

The Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race is the world’s longest certified footrace, held around a single ordinary block in Queens, New York. Competitors have 52 days to complete 5,649 laps, running from six in the morning until midnight and averaging nearly 60 miles a day. The route passes a high school, a playground and the same collection of parked cars. Runners reverse direction each morning. Everything else remains exactly where it was.

Archduke Ludwig Salvator

Archduke Ludwig Salvator was a Habsburg prince who preferred a steam yacht to court life. He sailed the Mediterranean aboard the Nixe with scholars, sailors, dogs, cats, birds and monkeys, documenting entire islands in lavishly illustrated volumes. On Mallorca, he purchased a 16-kilometre stretch of coastline, protected it from development and filled it with paths and viewpoints. His former Mallorcan home, S’Estaca, is now owned by Michael Douglas.

Ibrahim Njoya

Ibrahim Njoya was the ruler of the Bamum Kingdom in present-day Cameroon. Around 1896, he began inventing a writing system for the previously unwritten Bamum language, refining hundreds of pictograms into an 80-character syllabary used in schools, histories, maps and court records. He also built a palace, established a printing press and exchanged a spectacular beaded throne with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who sent him a German Imperial Guard uniform in return.

Patiala Necklace

The Patiala Necklace was a five-tiered platinum necklace made by Cartier in 1928 for Bhupinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala. It contained 2,930 diamonds, Burmese rubies and the 234.65-carat yellow De Beers diamond—then the seventh-largest polished diamond in the world. The necklace disappeared from the Patiala treasury around 1948. Its central diamond resurfaced at auction in 1982; the gemless platinum framework turned up in a London second-hand jewellery shop in 1998. Cartier bought the remains and rebuilt the missing grandeur with synthetic stones and replicas.

Dusit Thani

Dusit Thani was a miniature democratic kingdom built by King Vajiravudh of Siam (the historical name for the country of Thailand) inside his palace grounds. Courtiers purchased tiny plots, elected representatives, joined rival political parties and read two competing newspapers. The king participated as an ordinary citizen under the name “Mr. Rama.” Siam remained an absolute monarchy; democracy was permitted at one-fifteenth scale.

Gangajalis

The Gangajalis are two enormous silver urns made for Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II of Jaipur. Travelling to England for Edward VII’s coronation in 1902, he brought thousands of litres of water from the Ganges rather than drink foreign water. Each vessel was formed from thousands of melted silver coins without soldering and weighs around 340 kilograms empty.

Asphalt volcanoes

Asphalt volcanoes form where oil rises through faults in the Earth’s crust and escapes onto the ocean floor. As its lighter components disperse, the thick petroleum left behind spreads and hardens into folds and domes resembling lava. Unknown to science until 2003, examples in the Gulf of Mexico lie around 3,000 metres underwater; others off California are larger than a football field. They are oil deposits that have built their own mountains.