What makes these swords and books 'magic'; plus, armadillos move north
|  | Monday, June 13, 2022 | | | | |
 | IMAGE COURTESY OF ALFREDO DAGLI ORTI/SHUTTERSTOCK
| | Could a rock, an amulet, a locket, a ring, a book, or a sword offer you supernatural powers or protection? Think King Arthur’s Excalibur or the Egyptian Book of the Dead (pictured above). Over the centuries, people believed in these “charmed” objects—and thought other items brought curses.
Why did belief persist in these objects, which often were cited in changing the course of history? Some supposedly carry curses to this day, such as rocks taken from the massive Australian monolith Uluru, or Ayers Rock (pictured below).
“The romantic nature of the stories swirling around them encouraged people to keep believing, even with little evidence to prove their validity,” Nat Geo’s History magazine reports.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH VIA STRUCTURESXX/SHUTTERSTOCK | | Please consider supporting our storytelling by subscribing to our magazine and unlimited digital offerings.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY NORFOLK HISTORIC SHIPWRECKS | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY AJI STYAWAN | | Ship to school: Pupils in the Indonesian village of Bedono used to be able to take the main road to school, but now it is flooded at high tide. So they ride a raft to classes. Declining groundwater levels have prompted the land to sink, an issue on parts of the nation’s island of Java, Nat Geo reports. More than half of Bedono’s residents have abandoned their homes and moved to higher ground.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY LORI NIX AND KATHLEEN GERBER, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | | Dioramas of disaster: The artists and life partners Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber imagine dystopian worlds in their miniature models. Hoping to provoke thought, they create “open-ended narratives—models of a post-human metropolis in the future, after an unknown catastrophe,” Nix told us in 2017. This image, of a botanical garden in a world without humans, was recently featured in our Photo of the Day archival collection.
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 | | BPK/SCALA, FLORENCE | | Egypt’s first pharaoh: He's known as Narmer. About 5,200 years ago he unified Egypt to create the world’s first great territorial state. A siltstone palette from the age (pictured above) shows his power as he smites an enemy. Other remnants from his era show him wearing crowns from the two kingdoms he united and worshipping the falcon-headed god Horus, symbol of cosmic and political power, Nat Geo’s History magazine reports.
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Today's newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard, Heather Kim, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. Have an idea you think is right down our alley? Let us know at david.beard@natgeo.com. Happy trails!
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