Four thousand one hundred and eighteen things that are not here anymore.
A standing archive. Anyone may add to it. Nothing is ever removed, because removing things is the problem we are describing.
Recent entries
Ordered by the date the last one went, not the date it was written down.
The Alma tone
A three-second chime played at the end of every broadcast day by a station in Alma, Michigan, from 1954 until the licence lapsed. Six people remember it. No recording was kept.
Hand-drawn cel animation at Studio Kōmori
The last frame inked by hand was completed on a Thursday afternoon. The staff did not know it was the last one; the schedule simply never called for another.
The smell of the Fifth Avenue tunnel
Wet limestone and creosote. Reported unchanged for ninety years. Sealed and ventilated during the 2023 works; visitors since describe only cold air.
Speaking Yámana
Cristina Calderón was the last native speaker. She gave interviews for decades to people who could not answer her. She died in February 2022 at ninety-three.
Okjökull
An Icelandic glacier declared dead in 2014, and given a plaque in 2019 addressed to the next two hundred years. The plaque is still there. The ice is not.
Most of what has ever existed left no trace of its leaving. This is an attempt at a receipt.
Add one
It does not have to be important. Most of them are not. It has to be gone, and you have to be reasonably sure.