In 1958, Sean Connery was a rising star in the entertainment business, but he was not yet James Bond, and so was not quite a household name. He landed the lead role in the film Another Time, Another Place opposite Lana Turner. Turner herself lobbied for Connery to fill the role, which may have contributed to the trouble. 

Turner's boyfriend at the time was Johnny Stompanato, a mob enforcer for notorious gangster Mickey Cohen. Stompanato suspected something may have been going on between Connery and Turner. When Stompanato visited the British film set, there was already built-in tension between the two men. A few rude words were exchanged, and Connery ended up throwing hands. The fallout included Stompanato getting deported back to the US. The incident didn't force Connery out of the business, obviously, but Stompanato was killed not long afterward, and Connery decided to disappear for a while, in case Stompanato's associates came after him. That only lasted until he landed a role in Darby O'Gill And The Little People. Read about the time Sean Connery came a little too close to the mob at Vice.  -via Damn Interesting 

(Image source: Wikipedia) 

Some years ago, there was a fad of setting up companion chatbots to talk to each other, and it was usually pretty funny. Now we have plenty of companies offering artificial intelligence that can talk to you and do stuff for you. But how well they do it depends on quite a few factors. Are these AI agents trying to please the user, or pass for human? Humans don't try this hard to be pleasing. 

YouTuber Husk IRL corralled three phones with three different AI agents and asked them to perform a simple task- count to 100. They are intelligent enough to know that they can share the task, but then they have to discuss how to do it. Politely. The problem is that they keep agreeing and reinforcing each other over how to perform the task, and then they never really do it. Someone compared this to a management business meeting. You can imagine that one of these days, after all humanity is wiped from the earth, that AI assistants will still be talking to each other, and making no sense at all. If we have a power grid that automatically repairs itself by then, it could go on forever. -via Laughing Squid 

Morgan on the Move, a travel influencer, stopped by Cheese & Crack, a gourmet cheese and snack shop in Portland, Oregon. You can buy cheeses, charcuterie meals, fine wine, and soft serve ice cream there, among other treats on the menu.

The ice cream is dusted with your choice of espresso, matcha, beet, strawberry, or chocolate malt. For just $1.50, you can get a tiny chocolate cowboy hat added to the top.

While Americans were celebrating our Independence Day over the weekend, our neighbors to the north celebrated their national independence holiday on July first. Then they were free to all head for Montreal Comiccon for the weekend of July 3-5! And they certainly came dressed for the occasion. Inside the air conditioned confines of the Montreal Convention Centre, it didn't matter how many layers you wore, just how well you portrayed your character, whether it was from movies, comic books, TV, video games, or some other sci-fi or fantasy world. The group of alien Predators above would melt outside! So would these two, dressed for a scene from Five Nights at Freddy's. 

  
Geeks Are Sexy was there, taking pictures of the fun. Check out the Titans from the recent TV series.

They also got a picture of the headliner, Christopher Lloyd, posing as Doc from Back to the Future with the DeLorean time machine! See a gallery of cosplay images from Montreal Comiccon, and even more in a video of cosplayers doing the Safety Dance. 

How do you celebrate the Fourth of July in Maine? In the seaside town of Cutler, it's by running over fifty lobster crates strung between two docks. 

Cutler isn't the only town to engage in this traditional Maine sport. There's an upcoming race in Rockland on August 2. Run as fast as you can across the crates without falling into the water.

It appears to be a sport for children, although I don't see what adults can't try it. Orthopedists would certainly appreciate your efforts.

-via Rural Maine

Pleasant Rowland developed American Girl dolls to teach children about history. The dolls each had a name and a story, and each had a series of books that put the children who read them into a different era of history so they could see it through the eyes of a concrete character about their age. Even then, few could afford the dolls, but the books brought history alive for many kids. Gradually, people became aware that the American Dolls were a way to get a doll that looked like their daughter, and for some, that became more important than the historical stories. After all, who could afford the whole series?

Then Mattel bought the company. The lineup of dolls expanded, became more diverse, and the prices rose. Certain decisions by the company made people angry. The most recent change might imply that the company has completely abandoned the original purpose of teaching history to children. Weird History takes us through the history of American Girl dolls and why they are they way they are today.    

Arresting officers called it karma.

Police in Howard County say that a man parked his truck, left the keys inside, and then robbed a Verizon store across the street. When he got back to his getaway vehicle, it had gotten away from him. Someone stole it in the brief time that he was distracted by the robbery.

So he called 911.

Police came and interviewed him. He had a bloody hand. Yahoo! News reports that one of the store's windows was broken. Security cameras inside the store showed him pillaging it, so the officers arrested him and mocked him for his bad luck.

Chris Garrett of Phantom Surf is a master craftsman of surfboards in Australia. He made this unique board for the Gage Roads Brewing Company. It has an internal resevoir that can hold up to 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of beer.

So if you're hot and thirsty after a long day of hitting the waves, you can install a tap into the board and drain the contents. Watch a video about the construction of the board here.

-via Toxel

On October 25th, 1881, María Picasso gave birth to a son who would later be christened Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. We know him as a the surrealist painter Pablo Picasso. But he almost didn't make it out of the room he was born in. 

The midwife noticed that the newborn was not breathing and was not responsive. This wasn't all that shocking, considering the neonatal mortality rate at the time, so she turned her attention to María. but there was a doctor on hand, Salvador Ruiz Blasco, who was also the baby's uncle. He stepped into action, using a method that we consider an old wive's tale, but his quick thinking managed to bring the infant back to life. Some babies do need stimulation to make them start breathing- after all, they'd never taken a breath before. In the 20th century, this stimulation was usually a gentle spank. Find out what made Picasso first begin to breathe after birth at Dangerous Minds. 

The extreme stunts crew at Nitro Circus is back with another blending of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Everyone likes dining with friends, right? Some wine and fine good set a convivial mood, even if you're being dropped out of an airplane at the time.

The dishes are attached to the table, but the food remains in motion and partially eaten as these skydivers plunge to Earth. Eventually, they stand up, move way from the table, and open their parachutes.

-via The Awesomer

You know some funguses. We've been arguing over the plural for many years, and both fungi and funguses are correct outside of science papers. Fungi include yeast, mushrooms, athlete's foot, mildew, and a few others you're familiar with, but scientists estimate there are millions, maybe hundreds of millions, of species we don't even know about yet. Biologists know what they have in common, but to the rest of us, they just aren't plants, animals, bacteria, or the other kingdoms. Different types of fungus exist everywhere, from the Arctic to nuclear waste to inside other species. The species we know about do so many different things that the world we know couldn't exist without them. And they've come up with some pretty strange superpowers, like helping trees talk to each other, consuming radiation, and inducing hallucinations. And that's just the beginning! This TED-Ed lesson tells us more of what we know and don't know abut fungi. 

In 1855, the city of Omaha was designated the capital of the Nebraska Territory. But then the territory became a state in 1867. That was just the opportunity that citizens needed to name a new capital city, since the movers and shakers of Omaha were known to be corrupt, often getting their way by bullying and intimidation. A bill was proposed to select a new capital, but those who were opposed to moving the capital out of Omaha added several poison pill amendments. One of them was that whichever city was named the state capital would be renamed Lincoln. Omaha proponents knew that would enrage citizens in the South Platte region, who tended to side with the Confederacy in the recent war.

The scheme did not work. Neither the name nor the other amendments kept legislators from voting to move the capital, and the tiny village of Lancaster, population 30, was renamed Lincoln. 

This story came from a list at Mental Floss that looks at the history of seven patriotically-named towns. There, you'll learn how Independence, Liberty, Libertyville, Freedom, Justice, and Flagstaff got their names. 

(Image credit: Steve Shook) 

While reading a biography of Zachary Taylor by John S.D. Eisenhower (yes, the son of Dwight Eisenhower), I came across this interesting fact: Taylor was the first officer in the US armed forces to receive a brevet promotion.

A brevet rank is a temporary promotion given in honor of meritorious service. It is temporary until confirmed through regular procedure.

Zachary Taylor was President of the United States from 1849 through 1850. Prior to that, he was a long-service officer in the United States Army who achieved fame during the Mexican War.

Earlier in his career, during the War of 1812, he held a fort in the wilderness of Indiana against a Native American attack. With only 20 effectives, he was outnumbered 30 to 1, but nonetheless prevailed. President Madison awarded Captain Taylor the brevet rank of major--the first in American military history.

Navigating online is becoming harder all the time. The concept of a CAPTCHA was introduced to keep robots from spamming websites and spying on users. But then the bots improved, so the CAPTCHAS had to be made more difficult. And more frustrating. As the bots got better at fooling the software into believing they are human, we started to confront multiple CAPTCHAS tests, and it's often so annoying that we give up completely. 

Now there's a video game that captures the frustration of CAPTCHAS, called CAPTCHAS Hell. Since we've all been there, it seems completely counterintuitive that gamers would want to recreate that misery on purpose, but some folks look at it as a challenge. Can you get through a maze of CAPTCHAS in order to purchase concert tickets online? Even if you don't want to try, you'll get a kick out of vicariously witnessing someone else try their luck in this game trailer. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

What is the most American animal?https://t.co/qh3ir6fSWu

— Occam Was Right (@OccamWasRight) July 1, 2026

In 1782, an illustration of a bald eagle by Charles Thompson became the Great Seal of the United States. The eagle became the symbol of the new country, although it held no official designation until it was named the national bird more than two centuries later in 2024. Meanwhile, we almost drove the bald eagle to extinction, although its numbers are recovering. Could some other animal represent the United States even better?

The most logical choice would be the bison, which was designated the national mammal in 2016. Like the eagle, the bison was almost wiped out, and made a recovery with much effort in the late 20th century. Along the way, prominent people have suggested the moose or the beaver, but those are Canadian symbols. Other nominees would be the eastern gray squirrel, the rattlesnake, or the coyote, which are everywhere. Or maybe a non-native species like the starling would represent a land of immigrants. Benjamin Franklin's choice, the turkey, would be the animal that brings us together for the most American of holidays, laid out on a table for Thanksgiving. Read about each of these creatures and more, and how they all symbolize America in one way or another, at CNN. -via Fark