This Sunday is Father's Day, but it's also the summer solstice, with the longest daylight of the year. Weather holidays were never a big thing in tropical climates, and the US is partly tropical and made up of a mixture of cultures. But in European countries where warm weather is a treat, many ancient festivals revolve around the annual movement of the sun. Midsummer is the most joyous -and longest- of those celebrations. 

When Christianity reached those northern areas, such festivals were renamed to move away from their pagan roots. The summer solstice became St. John the Baptist's feast day on June 24th, according to the tradition that he was born six months earlier than Jesus. But even with a new name and a new date, the ancient traditions lingered on, like dancing, building bonfires, and maypoles. The festival goes by different names in different languages, but they all celebrate the zenith of the sun. Read about the various solstice celebrations at the Conversation. 

(Image credit: Ivo Kruusamägi) 

Homer is the poet who defines classical Greece as a culture. Plough magazine asks:

If England has Shakespeare, Spain has Cervantes, Italy has Dante, and Russia has Pushkin, then who do we have? Do we have a great poet who captures the American spirit, the American story, the American identity?

The article authors suggest Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Herman Melville, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, among other writers.

There is much conversation today on X on the subject. I've seen proposals of Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Shelby Foote, and, quite cleverly, Walt Disney or Uncle Remus as America's definitive narrative author.

This, of course, assumes that America has a Homer. Within the Plough article, Jane Clark Scharl argues that there is no American national epic equivalent to Homer yet.

But if I had to decide, I'd go with T. Greer's response:

This is the only correct response.

The closest thing American culture ever had to a text like the Odyssey and Iliad… was the King James Bible. https://t.co/xUxuCwkjCi

— T. Greer (@Scholars_Stage) June 17, 2026

The language of this text that was commonplace in American homes has shaped the American English language more than, I think, any other book.

How would you answer the question? Who do you think is America's equivalent or approximate Homer?

Image: Kelly Library

This coffee pot and milk jug are so cute! They look like a pair of penguins on the march.

Various websites indicate that they are of Soviet origin--specifically the Oktyabrsky Porcelain Factory in what is now the Bashkortostan republic within Russia during the 1960s. They can sometimes be found with match cups and saucers.

-via Soviet Visuals

The What If? series by xkcd's Randall Munroe and Henry Reich of MinutePhysics (previously at Neatorama) takes on hypothetical questions no matter how dumb they are. Many of the answers end with "we'd all die," and that explains why this one is so short. The question is, "What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth?"

Now, antimatter is a difficult concept which they do not try to explain to us, otherwise the video would be hours long and no one would watch it. I don't understand antimatter, either, but if we just fall back on science fiction involving a mirror universe or an alternate reality in which everything is backwards, we can follow the video. You probably won't understand antimatter any better afterward, besides learning it's not a good thing for earth. But listen carefully, and you'll glean some neat stuff, like how at dawn we are facing the direction the earth is moving. We also learn that Munroe, a former NASA engineer, would really like to see another space telescope.

Last year, we brought you a video about how Red Lobster became famous for their endless shrimp offer until it almost bankrupted them. There have been rumors lately that Red Lobster may be bringing endless shrimp back- rumors promoted endlessly by the chain itself. Now we know what they are talking about. It's a sweepstakes.

There won't be endless shrimp for everyone, nor will it be available at all Red Lobster restaurants. Rather, one person will win an endless shrimp dinner once a month for the next 25 years. The prize also includes a year of jujitsu classes. But hey, somebody has to win, and if you're a real shrimp fan, you have only through tomorrow to enter. Get the instructions for doing that at Foodbeast. I don't know who dreamed up this promotion, but when you have one person enjoying all the benefits and thousands of losers, how is that going to make people go back to Red Lobster?  

It's become a tradition for parents to give their child the Dr. Seuss book Oh, The Places You'll Go! when they graduate from high school. It's a sentimental gesture for students who grew up reading Dr. Seuss books, and it's supposed to be inspirational. But we know the world is a really scary place, so it might be more realistic if the book were written by Stephen King. In this parody of the Dr. Seuss book, we get a tour of all the terrible places King reveals in his novels, called Oh, The Places You Should Not Go! If you've not read the books, you have at least seen the movies, and will recognize them as they turn up. This video is a gift to the class of 2026 from the Stephen King Book Club. If this were turned into a real book, it could easily become a best seller.

Machines that harness the energy of the wind are nothing new, and have been used to pump water or grind grain for more than a thousand years. But in 1868, French engineer Ernest Sylvain Bollée had a few ideas to improve on the standard windmill. His turbine, called the Éolienne Bollée, had two sets of blades. The blades facing the wind did not move, but funneled the wind efficiently onto a second set of blades that turned. A few years later, Bollée added an outer funnel to the design to concentrate more wind into the turbine. 

For even more efficiency, a weather vane below the turbine was added that determined wind direction and moved the entire turbine around to face oncoming wind! All this happened automatically, without outside power or human interaction. The Éolienne Bollée was not only a great innovation in efficiently generating power, the metal turbines were steampunk works of art. You can still find them today, some in working order. You would think this design would have been widely adopted outside of France, but either the company that held the patents couldn't produce enough of them, or they were too expensive. Read about the Éolienne Bollée and see plenty of pictures at Amusing Planet. 

(Image credit: Olvr) 

American stands at two hundred and fifty years since its independence. There are those who say that our best days are behind us; that we cannot accomplish great things anymore. Where is the next moon landing, atomic bomb, or squatty potty?

Dennis Lee, a patriot and writer for The Takeout, reassures us of our innately Promethean spirit. He tested the lore that one can produce blue hot dogs by boiling them in blue-colored (and presumably Smurf-flavored) Gatorade. Some experimentation was necessary, as hot dogs float and thus must be continuously rotated during boiling to produce a smooth coloration.

But the discovery works.

If you're in Maine, you might want to check out First Fridays at Bowdoin College's Special Collections Library. On the first Friday of every month, people gather together for a surprise. Some of them have even placed bets on the reveal. When News Center Maine attended First Friday a couple of weeks ago, the crowd was even bigger than usual as it was alumni weekend, and quite a few people skipped other planned events to see... a page being turned. Yes, one page every month, for ten years now. But this is a special book, kept under glass, with the regular page-turning timed to prevent sun damage to the paper. What will be revealed on the next page? The librarians know, but they aren't telling. What kind of book inspires this kind of interest? You'll have to watch the video for that, and you'll be delighted to find out. -via Metafilter 

PS: In the comments at Metafilter I find that this also happens every month at the Cincinnati Public Library.

A scientific study out of Russia shows us what we already know- the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and the french fries we steal from someone else's plate taste better. An experiment involving 120 people had them eat french fries under several different conditions, one in which the subject owned the fries, another in which they were given to them as a gift, and two in which they were instructed to steal them from someone else, either in a high-risk or low-risk situation. The fries themselves were prepared exactly the same way for each scenario. After each session, subjects rated the french fries on range of qualities. The fries taken in the high-risk thievery scenario were judged nearly 40% tastier than when the subject ate their own fries. The subjects also reported both guilt and excitement over it.      

The study cites the global maxim that "stolen food tastes better," which I've never heard, but maybe that's because of the way I was raised. Another finding was that how hungry a subject was at the time affected how good the fries were, which alludes to a maxim I've always heard, "hunger is the best sauce." The full study is not available publicly, but some of the possible underlying reasons are presented at Refractor. -via Damn Interesting 

When older people talk about how certain technologies were better in the past, young people roll their eyes. In some ways, the youngsters are right. It's really nice to have a phone, camera, flashlight, and clock all in one small gadget. However, there's a reason I have two vacuum cleaners. My modern 10-year-old vacuum is easy to use and picks up dirt quite well. But I also have a 75-year-old Kirby that's very heavy and not quite as efficient. Why? Because when the lighter vacuum breaks, I'll still have the Kirby. It refuses to break. 

I have a mental image of Chill Dude Explains as a young guy, from his voice and the way he pronounces some words. But even he has discovered that fancy modern features are not always the miracles they seem to be. Newer gadgets are fancy, lightweight, and convenient, but they don't last as long as they should and are expensive to repair or replace. In this video, he looks at ten things that are old school but will still do the job when modern innovations don't, and sometimes better.  

Two Australian paddleboarders rescued a stranded wallaby after it was swept out to sea pic.twitter.com/PyPe9Ql3S9

— Antidepressant Content (@depressionlesss) June 15, 2026

Nine News in Australia reports that two men were paddelboarding off the coast of East Grippsland in Victoria when they spotted a small furry creature struggling in the water. They were about 300 meters (176 Quarks stood end-to-end) off the beach, so it was an unusual sighting.

Huwan Medcalf and Harrison Mog found that the animal was a wallaby, which is a marsupial species native to Australia and New Guinea. They placed it on a board and brought it back to shore where it lay stunned for a while before starting to move on its own.

The Guardian reports that during a recent staging of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, an orange cat wandered on stage, seeking attention from the actors playing the lead roles. Given the physical actions on stage, I think it's during Act 5, Scene 3 in which the star-crossed lovers die. To his credit, the actor who played Romeo remained still after death (the character, not the actor) even as the cat played with his hair.

At the conclusion of this performance in Izmir, Turkey, the cast from the Imperial Russian Ballet Company came on stage to make their bows. The cat joined them.

-via Dailymeow

Benjamin Franklin was a polymath with many interests, but one of the most enduring was writing. The Founding Father was never shy about giving his opinion on anything and everything, and often peppered his opinions with something to make the reader laugh. He wrote a scientific letter about farting to poke fun at the pretentious Royal Academy of Brussels. But Franklin didn't use his own name all the time. He first used a pen name as a teenager to get his essays published in his older brother's newspaper, because otherwise they'd be rejected. 

But once that was successful, Franklin discovered he could say anything he wanted as long as he didn't use his own name. First there was Silence Dogood, a middle-aged widow. Then there was unwed mother Polly Baker. Franklin could step into the life of someone completely made up and make everyone interested in the details of their lives. Richard Saunders was the name behind Poor Richard's Almanack. And once Franklin entered politics, making up pen names became a way of swaying public opinion, or straight up insulting someone, without being targeted. Read about the many alter egos Franklin used to say whatever he wanted throughout his life at Smithsonian. -via Strange Company 

The biggest musical acts of the 20th century were Elvis Presley and the Beatles. They traded fame back and forth over time. Elvis owned pop culture in the late 1950s, right up until he entered the military, and afterward focused on movies. The Beatles took over during that period in the early '60s. Was Elvis jealous of the Fab Four's overwhelming popularity? It might seem so. Elvis considered himself the king of pop music, and he chafed under the thumb of Tom Parker, who insisted on so many movies instead of concert halls and albums. The Beatles, for their part, admired Elvis and wanted to meet him. That happened in 1965, although exactly what happened is rather vague, according to the differing accounts of those who were there. Elvis made his musical comeback in 1969, just as the Beatles were falling apart. Elvis' persona at that time made his rivalry with the Beatles about America vs. Britain. Weird History has the story as far as we know it about how each act regarded the other.