The last royal family of Russia were the Romanovs, headed by Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra, a German princess and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. They produced four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and then finally a male heir, Alexei. But Alexei was hemophiliac, and it seemed like the Romanov dynasty was doomed. That was true, but it wasn't due to the lack of a healthy male heir. 

The Romanovs were great proponents of photography, and documented much of their family life in pictures. Official photographs were numerous, and stood in place of an accessible monarch. But they also took lots of private photos, which they guarded as fiercely as they did their private family life. Under pressure from revolutionaries, Nicholas abdicated the throne in 1917, and the entire family was killed in a sudden and particularly gory execution in July of 1918. The new Soviet government tried to find and destroy all images of the royal family that they could, but official photos were already available internationally, and six private photo albums were smuggled out of Russia soon after the executions. It was the last thing the family would have wanted, but those private photos are now public domain. See a selection of images from the private life of the Romanov family, along with their story, at Smithsonian.  -via Strange Company 

A group of first class domino experts got together to break a Guinness World Record. And they did, on June 20th, when they toppled a 3D pyramid containing 29,193 dominos. But would you believe that is about the least interesting part of this sequence? This 123,456-piece domino fall takes up a whole gym, and it's quite entertaining. 

There are lots of mind bending side quests, while the main line continues in a back-and-forth manner intended to give you enough time to enjoy the side quest without losing the point of progress. I had to go back and watch the pair of gummy bears again to figure out how they made them fall twice. There are a couple of places where an art piece did not entirely fall. That seems a shame, but maybe they were just setting the viewer up for the surprise duck. In between sequences, there are non-domino transitions that make this a truly Rube Goldberg contraption, and they often don't work the way you expect them to. After all that, the record-breaking pyramid didn't seem all that important, but overall, it's quite a ride. -via Born in Space 

It is hot outside. Like, really hot. Dangerously hot if you stay out too long.

Sora News 24 brings us a solution from Japan. The company SRDS manufactures refrigerators and vending machines. It has re-purposed some of its designs to create boxes where people can seek temporary relief from the heat a 59ºF environment.

The Do Hiemon Box provides a seat and blows cold air on the head, neck, shoulders, and back to prevent and counteract heat exhaustion.

The machine has three airflow settings and automatically shuts off after 20 minutes of use. One is already in public use at the city hall of Maebashi in central Honshu.

In the 1980s, before everyone was on the internet, Japanese photographer Satoru Tsuda created a sensation with Namennayo cats (sometimes also called Nameneko). These cats dressed like high school gangsters and juvenile delinquents, among other characters, and posed rebelliously in elaborate miniature settings. They could be seen smoking in the boy's room, sneaking kisses, peeping into the girl's bathroom, showing off their motorcycles, and intimidating normal adults. Since they couldn't be passed around on the internet, these cat photos were purchased, and each sold in the millions. While that's about as viral as you could get in those days, Namennayo were little known outside of Japan.



Like Harry Whittier Frees almost a century earlier, Tsuda trained kittens from an early age to wear clothing specially designed for them, and posed them gently and patiently for short periods of time. Read about how Tsuda came to develop Namennayo and see more of these cats at Flashbak.  -Thanks, WTM!  

Little Horrors Glassworks in Atlanta produces works of stained glass that are terrifying and amusing if you have a sick sense of humor like I do. Her corpus includes many facehuggers from the Alien franchise because you always need more facehuggers in your life.

Yokai are a Japanese pantheom of supernatural folklore spirits that range from demonic to the beneficial. They include monsters, ghosts, and demons, which aren't always separate categories as they are in the West. Kitsune is the one you are most likely to run into today. 

Foxes are known for being cute and intelligent, so clever that it was easy to ascribe superpowers to them, which is exactly what happened in ancient Japan. The supernatural fox called Kitsune could be a mischievous prankster, a shapeshifter, a protector, a blessing, or a spirit that possessed humans, depending on the time and place. They are rarely 100% malevolent, but they can ruin your life in order to teach you a lesson. Kitsune can take a form of a beautiful woman, and in some cases even reproduce with humans to provide hybrid offspring or some form of Kitsune ancestry. 

Dr. Emily Zarka explain Kitsune, from ancient tales (with many tails) to modern depictions in pop culture, including a bizarre (and clueless) American plan for weaponing Kitsune against the Japanese during World War II. 

African penguins are a critically-endangered species, but the New England Aquarium in Boston has a thriving colony. These penguins usually live 10-15 years in the wild, but in the aquarium's protective environment, they can live to more than twice that age. Earlier this year, the aquarium designed a separate island as a geriatric ward, sort of a retirement home, for six penguins. Four of them are in their 30s, and two others, aged 29 and 14, were included because they are mates of the older penguins. The penguins are dealing with maladies like arthritis or cataracts that penguins in the wild rarely survive long enough to suffer. 

The new island separates the "retired" penguins from the more rambunctious younger birds, although they are still in sight. It is equipped with level mats that make it easier for older penguins to get around and to find their way despite poor eyesight. They also get world class medical treatment and nutritional supplements for their aches and pains. Read about each individual retired penguin and their new home in a press release. You can read more about meeting the penguins' medical needs at National Geographic, although you'll have to sign up for notifications to read it. -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Vanessa Khan/New England Aquarium) 

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Maryland is, apparently, a romantic venue for couples. A few days ago, Jacob and Selena became engaged there when Jacob dropped to one knee and popped the research question.

Note that the museum was an enthusiastic participant in the plot. I gather that it allowed Jacob to place the engagement ring in an exhibit and direct attention to it with an official marker.

How do you set the mood? Direct your lady to a mock-up of some grisly surgical procedure. Then wait for her to read the placard and turn around.

-via Patrick Heizer

We think of time as a constant, sometimes the only constant, in our lives. It's true that time seems to pass much more quickly as we get older, but that's just a matter of human perception. The way we measure time varies from place to place and from culture to culture, so we manage to confuse ourselves about it. Human perception of time can't always be trusted, but objective time isn't always constant, either. It's mind boggling how time itself can vary once you get away from the earth, whether it's merely on a mountaintop or in outer space. Chill Dude Explains (previously at Neatorama) gives us a list of ten anomalies in time, from the mundane and easily understood to the cosmic. There are no time machines here, just real examples of time distortion, or at least distortions in the way we understand time. The mispronounced word in this video is Byzantine. 

When the Vikings settled Iceland a thousand years ago, it had plenty of forests, but the trees were cut down to build homes and ships, and to clear the land for livestock. That led to erosion and poor agriculture. For centuries, the only wood available to build homes was driftwood. So people instead built homes using wood for only the roof supports and doors, and filled in the walls and roof with turf. These homes were innovative, and today would be called sustainable and charming, but they weren't what we'd call pleasant to live in. 

For one thing, if you had a decent-sized turf home, you were obliged to take in all family members, plus widows and other indigent people as servants. These all lived together in one room upstairs with the family's children. Downstairs, you might need to take sheep inside to gain a little extra warmth. Besides that, the turf tranferred moisture inside. They may be traditional, but when imported lumber became available, Icelanders rushed to replace their turf houses with wooden structures. This was not only for comfort, but to shed their reputation as uncivilized. Read about life in the turf houses of Iceland at JStor. 

X user Patrick Heizer brings to our attention this geographical oddity. Under the current law of the sea, nations have exclusive economic regulatory authority over a certain distance beyond their territorial seas.

Many of these claims overlap each other or lead to unusual borders for the exclusive economic zones. The Bering Sea Donut Hole refers to one such area that was heavily overfished in the 1980s. Several nations with large fishing fleets rejected American claims to the maritime region.

The Donut Hole Convention (as it was popularly but not officially called) is a 1994 treaty between the United States, Russia, Poland, Korea, Japan, and China determining the status of the area.

Yes, that's Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with all words replaced with meows.

You may think it's a fun gag, but have you seen the state of public education these days? Many cats are functionally illiterate. Even those cats who can read at grade level aren't getting exposure to the classics.

Fortunately, the Meow Library is here to help. This organization has translated essential works from the Western canon into cat, including War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, The Odyssey, and the Constitution of the United States of America.

The organization also has a podcast for cats interested in engaging with serious literature.

For security reasons, many public performance venues do not allow people to bring in bags unless they are transparent. Accessory makers manufacture and sell specialized bags to accommodate this need.

Etsy seller Slater the Creatorr of Chattanooga, Tennessee offers an alternative: a clear plastic corset. In a video on Instagram, she demonstrates how to use it.

The new movie Digger is the story of Digger Rockwell, a wealthy and powerful oil tycoon whose previous actions have set the world on a course of total environmental destruction. The character may remind you of any of a number of real people. Facing old age and possibly death, he decides he now has to save the world. The real kicker is that it's a satirical comedy.

You might not recognize Tom Cruise at all in the title role. The actor is 64 years old, and has taken some criticism in the past few years for continuing to portray much younger characters. He seems to have finally come to terms about playing someone his age, or older in this case. The movie also stars Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, and John Goodman as the president of the United States. But we can tell right now that the real star of the movie is Digger's beloved cat. Digger is scheduled to open nationwide on October 2.  This trailer contains NSFW language. 

The United States declared its independence from the British Empire in 1776, but it was almost 90 years later that its enslaved people achieved their own independence. In France, the abolition of slavery started and ended earlier, but it came about in fits and starts. 

In 1789, during the French Revolution, Count Mirabeau of the new National Assembly declared that freedom should extend to all men, even the slaves in the French colonies of the New World. His suggestion was ignored, because the plantations of the Caribbean were just too lucrative. Then in 1794, enslaved colonists were not only granted freedom, but also citizenship. This only lasted until 1799, when Napoleon took over and rescinded those rights. Meanwhile, Haiti staged its own revolution and became independent in 1804. It wasn't until 1848 that slavery was permanently abolished in France, but they were still ahead of the US. Read how the French abolished slavery at the Conversation.