It wasn’t Dracula. Plus, the world’s largest bony fish and why cats know your voice
| | Tuesday, October 25, 2022 | | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY HARRY BURTON | |
Forget Vlad the Impaler. Without Peter Plogojowitz, there may not have been Dracula.
Legend holds that the Serbian man asked his son for food (and maybe shoes)—except that Peter was dead. And his son would be soon, as well as nine townspeople who said on their deathbeds that the “undead” Peter sucked their blood.
Horrified townspeople unearthed Peter’s body, which (supposedly) had fresh blood around the mouth, plunged a stake through his heart, and burned the body. The 1735 account sparked a vampire mania throughout Europe, fueling the market for bloodsucking tales, such as Bram Stoker’s blockbuster novel. Even if Peter is gone, the storytelling genre is energetically undead today.
Read the full story here.
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY PAOLO VERZONE | | Zombies, too: While the top image is of a Romanian castle that may have been an inspiration for Dracula, storytellers branched out from vampires to werewolves and zombies. Pictured above, an infestation of zombies gleans the fields of Pennsylvania for fresh flesh in Night of the Living Dead, a 1968 film that spawned a craze for The Walking Dead and other zombie stories. Where did the notion of zombies begin? Read more.
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 | | ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW FAZEKAS | | | The Halloween sky at night: Trick or treaters should know—there will be fireballs racing through the sky while they are out. Two meteor showers known as the Northern and Southern Taurids (above right) peak around Halloween night. No need for telescopes or binoculars for these shooting stars. Also, Thursday, look for the thin crescent moon pairing with the orange star Antares (above left). Not enough night skies for you? Catch our new Stargazer Atlas, just out today. — Andrew Fazekas | | | |
| | Can you picture it? By 2045, about 945 square miles of this forest (shown above) will be developed to make way for the new capital of Indonesia. The current capital, Jakarta, is rapidly sinking and it’s unclear whether the plan to save it will succeed, Nat Geo reports. The new capital’s name? Nusantara, meaning “archipelago” in Javanese. See more stunning images on our Instagram. | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPHS BY ATLANTIC NATURALIST.ORG | | A 6,049-pound whopper: Giant sunfish begin life hardly the size of a pencil eraser. But as scientists discovered when a carcass drifted near Portugal’s Azores Islands last year, the Mola alexandrini can weigh as much as a white rhino. The dead fish (pictured above) set the record for the world’s largest bony fish, beating the last behemoth by 1,000 pounds. “It’s a colossal reminder that our ocean still holds so many mysterious surprises,” says marine biologist and Nat Geo Explorer Tierney Thys.
Related: How one unlucky creature got the name “bony-eared assfish”
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| We hope you liked today’s newsletter. This was edited and curated by Sydney Combs, Jen Tse, Heather Kim, and David Beard. Have an idea or a link for us? Write david.beard@natgeo.com. Happy trails! | | | |
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