The RMS Titanic hit an iceberg and sank on the night of April 14, 1912. The nearest ship, the Carpathian, arrived in time to rescue 706 people, which left 1522 dead, either floating among the wreckage or at the bottom of the ocean still aboard the ship. The CS Mackay-Bennett was the first of several recovery ships sent to the spot, arriving two days after the disaster. Funeral director John R. Snow, Jr. was aboard, and is believed to have taken this photograph of an iceberg during the recovery operation. Is it the iceberg that sunk the Titanic? There's no way to know for sure, but it is the only photographic evidence we have of an iceberg in that area. The photograph went up for auction in April, expected to draw between $5,000 and $8,500. It sold for $32,000.

But even more interesting is the recovery mission itself. The Mackay-Bennett was dispatched with 100 coffins and 100 tons of ice to bring back the remains of those who did not survive the sinking. That ship recovered 306 bodies, more than any of the recovery ships that followed. Bodies were handled differently depending on the status of the person, with first-class passengers being embalmed and steerage passengers getting a burial at sea. Read about the photograph and the mission of the Mackay-Bennett at Artnet. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd.)  

A project called Cat Royale explores the possibilities of enriching cats' lives by having a robot play with them. It is a collaboration between the art collective Blast Theory and scientists from the University of Nottingham. The original experiment was conducted in Australia last year and is now a traveling exhibit. Three cats, Ghostbuster, Clover, and Pumpkin, spent six hours a day for twelve days in a "cat utopia" built for the experiment that provided beds, food and water, climbing spots, litter boxes, toys, a Kino Gen3 lite robot arm trained on cat videos, and human supervision.

So what happened? Overall, the cats had a blast, but there was a time or two that they outsmarted the robot arm and the researchers had to intervene. The research themes of the project, such as the interaction of artificial intelligence with everyday caregiving tasks, are explored thoroughly in a scientific paper published this month. The shorter, more understandable version of the experiment and its purpose is laid out at Ars Technica. But the real fun comes in as you can watch highlights from the experiment yourself with an entire series of YouTube videos.

(Image credit: Blast Theory/Stephen Daly)

France continues to march forward in grandeur nationale, bearing the baguette as its symbol of collective pride. Last Thursday marked a special occasion for that leavened nationalism. It was the feast day of Saint Honoré, the patron saint of bakers. To celebrate, the national postal service released a scratch and sniff stamp that smells like a baguette.

France 24 reports that the stamp has a value of 1.96 Euros. The baguette is embraced with a ribbon showing the red, white, and blue colors of Revolutionary France--the proper order. The postal service is selling a total of 594,000 such stamps.

-via Marilyn Terrell | Image: Le Parisien

Fredrik Backman is an acclaimed bestselling author. He is also the very embodiment of Swedish humor. He was asked to speak at Simon & Schuster's 100th anniversary celebration on the subject of his work life. In a very dry, calm, and understated fashion, he carefully describes the inner workings of a Scandinavian author. There's a lot going on underneath that placid exterior, and it's not all good. His agent gets subliminally roasted for getting him into this predicament, and at one point he has to stop the audience from laughing because it's cutting into his time. Backman is ostensibly trying to encourage other people to begin writing, but to most people it might come across as a horror show. Still, the audience is full of people who are born to write, whether they ever achieve success or not, so they can relate to and even appreciate his revelations.  -via Digg

Dutch Schultz was a notorious gangster who rose to prominence and made a fortune in bootlegging during Prohibition, then afterward continued to enrich himself with racketeering, loan sharking, and other crimes. Some estimates had him making $20 million a year from his various schemes. He is said to have killed 136 men who crossed him. But on October 23, 1935, Schultz was shot by other gangsters because the crime bosses of New Jersey had decided he was a liability. He did not die immediately, but was taken to a hospital, where police recorded his incoherent speech for a full 24 hours before he died. Most of what he said made no sense, but some took those words to heart.

The reason was because, according to Schultz's lawyer, he had stuffed cash, bonds, and diamonds into a lockbox and had buried it somewhere in the Catskill Mountains. In 1972, a treasure hunter revealed that story, and said that Schultz's dying statements were about the location of the treasure. There was also said to be a map somewhere that had been lost. In the 50 years since, treasure hunters have torn up the area where Schultz and a confederate supposdly buried the treasure. Read what we know about the lost treasure of Dutch Schultz at Mental Floss.

In the Harry Potter stories, the Hogwarts Sorting Hat was used in a ritual to assign each new student to the house they would belong to. The inspiration for this ceremony might have been a graduation ritual at the University of Edinburgh, in which each student is tapped with the Geneva Bonnet, also sometimes called "the medieval space bonnet." The tradition goes back 150 years, but the cap is supposedly much older, having been made from the trousers of Reformation leader John Knox. He died in 1572, 13 years before the university was founded.   

But there is doubt about the bonnet's history. A restoration project in the early 2000s revealed a tailor's tag inside dated 1849. This could have been added during an earlier restoration, or it could mean that the cap was made up of whole cloth -pun intended. However, it's still quite old, and still used for every University of Edinburgh graduation ceremony. Read about the ritual of the Geneva bonnet, and how it came to called the medieval space bonnet at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: This is Edinburgh via Wikimedia Commons)

Trials cyclist Danny MacAskill (previously at Neatorama) has given us thrills for years with his bike antics. In this video, he reveals how he got so good at what he does by going out on a ride with his crazy friends in Scotland as they take on the Mast near Inverness. They aren't just following the death-defying trails; they also set up their own challenges along the way. The outing is funny, thrilling, ridiculous, and vertigo-inducing in places. In other words, you'll enjoy watching it and will be thankful it isn't you negotiating those challenges. These guys can admit being scared of a particular stunt, but then they go ahead and do it anyway. Adrenaline is addictive, after all. Bonus: no one had to be carried out and and sent to a hospital. Despite the American custom of adding captions to the dialogue, their Scottish-accented English is quite understandable. -via Kottke

Major General John Charles Frémont led US troops in California and had forged an army of crack troops who were experienced in war (the Mexican-American War), exploration, fighting Indians, hunting buffalo, and settlements in the West. The Civil War called him back to Missouri, where he commanded the Department of the West. In 1862, Frémont was assigned to the mountainous area of Virginia and what would later be West Virginia. He formed a unit consisting of a few dozen of his best fighters who called themselves Jessie Scouts, after Frémont's wife, who was considered to be smarter than her husband.

The Jessie Scouts used spy tactics to infiltrate Confederate units, which meant wearing Confederate uniforms, concocting false identities, perfecting a certain speaking style, and in at least one case, passing as a woman. They memorized code to recognize and communicate with each other while embedded with Confederates. Being found by Union soldiers could get them arrested, and being exposed to the Confederates would get them killed. Read the dangerous but crucial exploits of the Jessie Scouts at CrimeReads. -via Damn Interesting

There are certain towns that always show up on lists of odd town names, often because they sound dirty, or because they've capitalized on the name to cultivate notoriety and draw tourists. Here's a list that goes beyond the beaten path to explain the origins of one strangely-named town in each of the 50 United States. It includes towns that have fairly obvious origins, like Volcano, Hawaii, and towns that should have a great story but were honestly named after a person, like Dickshooter in Idaho. It was named after Dick Shooter. Some were named in frustration with the US Postal Service when another name was rejected, like both Why, Arizona, and Whynot, North Carolina -although their stories are different.    

Other town names have great tales behind them, like Two Egg, Corner Ketch, Bacon Level, and Bugtussle, although we don't know if they are even remotely true. Neversink, New York has a wild story, even though it doesn't explain where the name originally came from. Check out odd town names in all 50 states at Mental Floss. The list is also available in video form, if you prefer.

(Image credit: Ken Lund)

Like football, high school graduation is a big deal in the South. The schools are enormous, the moms are crying, and the dads are bored out of their minds. Matt Mitchell lays it all out for us, including the once in a lifetime (for each kid) dinner at Red Lobster. Mitchell recorded this video on Monday, a fact he pinned in the comments, because Red Lobster outlets across the country closed suddenly on Wednesday. He says, "Life comes at you fast, but Chapter 11 bankruptcy comes faster."  

Although the video is about high school graduation, it hits home for me. I went to one of Auburn's graduation ceremonies last week (with 30,000 students, they have about a dozen commencements). I wore a suit, proper for spring in Kentucky, not realizing that Alabama is already at 90° in early May. All the other moms were in dresses and sandals. We went to Red Lobster, and had the whole place to ourselves. My kid had wanted to eat there for years, and got in just days before it closed.

The waters between the Farallon Islands and the San Francisco mainland are extremely dangerous. They're cold, often populated by sharks, and are prone to brutal currents. Only six people have successfully swam the 30 mile stretch between them. Only one, the San Francisco Gate reports, have done so while starting from the mainland itself. That person is Amy Appelhans Gubser.

The 55-year old nurse and grandmother is already a noted world-class competitor in marathon swimming. She's planned this swim for five years. Gubser started her swim early in the morning last Saturday and arrived at the Farallon Islands seventeen hours later.

-via Conor Friedersdorf | Photo: Amy Appelhans Gubser

On the left is the Muppet named Pepe the King Prawn. He's not supposed to be pretty; he is supposed to be a shrimp. But the abomination on the right is supposed to look like Pepe, and it does not. Would you buy this plush toy for your five-year-old Muppet fan? The astonishing part is that this toy did not win the competition for the ugliest Muppet toy- it came in fifth. I did not want to traumatize you with those who scored higher, so you'll have to see for yourself.

Tough Pigs, a site dedicated to Muppet fandom, unveils the results of the Ugly Muppet Toy Pageant 2024. The 26 contestants are revealed from the least objectionable to the ugliest and least recognizable Muppet toys submitted by fans and voted for by readers. Each has "color commentary" from voters who try to guess how each toy went so wrong. You still have to wonder if there was any quality control in the designs at all, especially with those that are officially licensed Muppet merchandise (although you can bet that not all of them are).  

They've been doing these ugly Muppet toy pageants for years; check the previous collections out if you are so inclined. -via Metafilter

Ze Frank manages to keep focused on nothing but scientific facts about pigeons for the first two minutes of this video, which are about how pigeons keep their vision steady, with information on how we do it ourselves. After that, it gets into their mating rituals, and it's not quite as wholesome as his surprising last video about bees posted here, but it's also not nearly as juvenile as his earlier episodes of True Facts. He goes on about how surprisingly smart pigeons are, considering their tiny bird brains. Those little brains are more densely packed with neurons than human brains! A pigeon's behavior is not all that sophisticated to us, but within their world, they have super powers that take advantage of opportunities that ensure their survival. At least the pigeons we have today outlasted the passenger pigeon, which went extinct in 1914. This video has a one-minute skippable ad at 3:48.

Are hot dogs sandwiches? Are Pop-Tarts sandwiches? These are questions that remain unadjudicated. But now we do know that tacos and burritos are sandwiches--at least in the State of Indiana.

WISH TV 8 News in Fort Wayne reports Judge Craig J. Bobay ruled that Famous Taco may open a restaurant in a strip mall under a zoning ordinance which prohibited the opening of fast food restaurants. The judge determined that sandwich shops are not fast food establishments and that tacos and burritos constitute sandwiches.

In his ruling, Judge Bobay describes tacos and burritos as "Mexican-style sandwiches." He also notes that the ruling document would also permit "Greek gyros, Indian naan wraps, or Vietnamese banh mi."

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Claudia_midori

Back in the day, attending college was an accomplishment possible for a rare few, and graduation for even fewer. Along with the accolades from your family, you could be subjected to scathing insults from your classmates to be preserved for eternity in the school yearbook. Redditor jetpackblues_ unearthed the 1909 yearbook from the University of Minnesota and found the wildest, weirdest reviews of students printed along with their portraits. She shared 19 of the funniest ones.

While we are amused at "a case-hardened buttinski" or "a math shark and a man hater," these folks went on to long, productive lives with careers and marriages, as we learn in the comments.



The entire yearbook is available as a 98-megabyte pdf download. The portraits start on page 328. If you don't have the time to read them all, I took some interesting screenshots.