In the mid-1980s, fragments of orange plastic Garfield telephones began washing up on the shores of Brittany’s Iroise Coast in Western France, sometimes nearly whole, sometimes in small pieces. Over the course of nearly four decades, thousands of Garfields have appeared on the beach like seashells: striped, orange, smiling, and weathered from years of bobbing along the waves. The mystery of the téléphones Garfield baffled locals for decades, and continues to cause concern for the local waterways. Full of diverse marine life and home to a very old fishing community, the Iroise Marine Nature Park was named France’s first protected marine area in 2007. The French anti-litter organization Ar Vilantsou has made the Garfields a symbol of beach pollution in the area.

Read More

If you were domestically inclined in the early ’00s and you liked watching interior design makeovers on TV, there were few options available to you. In retrospect, this is staggering to contemplate. In 1994, HGTV took to the airwaves in 44 markets across the United States reaching about 6.5 million households. Though it got off to a relatively slow start, within a few years it was picking up steam, with 64.2 million viewers by 2000.

Read More