We are used to seeing the Muppets on a studio set, where the puppeteers are beneath the floor- although we habitually suspend our disbelief and don't think about them. So who's controlling the Muppets when they go outside and show their entire bodies? Today, they might use GCI, but that wasn't really a thing when Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas aired in 1977 or when The Muppet Movie came out in 1979. Jim Henson and his crew had to think outside the box, literally, to put the Muppets in the real world. How did they do it? In many different ways, depending on the scene. They might come up with a brand new elaborate method just for a few seconds of film, but it was worth it in the end. Alex Boucher shows us how Kermit sang in a swamp, how Fozzie Bear drove a car, and how a group of Muppets rode bicycles. The real wonder is that even when we know how it's done, even when we can see the puppeteers at work, we still consider the Muppets as distinct characters with their own personalities. 

On June 8, 1708, a fleet of 18 ships left Cartagena, Colombia, headed for Spain. They were intercepted by five British warships and a battle broke out. In the fight, a large supply of gunpowder on the galleon San José exploded, sending the ship to the bottom of the ocean. What was significant about the San José was that it was carrying around 200 tons of gold, silver, and gemstones, with a value of about $17 billion in today's dollars. 

It took more than 300 years for the ship to be found, when a wrecked galleon resembling the San José was spotted at almost 2000 feet below the surface in 2015. But is this shipwreck really the San José? Recent exploration with ROVs seems to indicate that it is. Photographs of gold coins scattered on the ocean floor sport evidence that they were mined and minted in Lima, Peru, in the appropriate era. Pending identification, ownership of the wreckage is the subject of a court battle between Colombia and Spain. Read the story of the San José and the remains that may prove to be the most valuable shipwreck in history at Popular Mechanics.  -via Damn Interesting 

(Unrelated image credit: Alberto Cutileiro) 

World War II ended with the aircraft carrier as the supreme warship type. So the leading navies of the world considered how to best optimize this platform.

A 2021 article in Naval History magazine explains that of the challenges of the new jet-powered aircraft was that the limited space and weight requirements for aircraft. Could a designer save on both by foregoing landing gear? In the late 1940s, Royal Navy considered this option. Perhaps a jet without landing gear could land on a carrier if the flight deck was covered with rubber. After hitting the arresting cable, a jet could come to a gradual if bouncy stop.

The US Navy conducted similar experiments. Although there were no serious accidents, it was a risky landing method. Furthermore, a jet without landing gear could land only on this type of runway. So relying on rubber-coated flight decks would be too limiting. Both navies ultimately dropped the idea.

-via US Naval Institute

Max Fosh made some prison wine, known as pruno in the US. His first attempt wasn't fit for human consumption, because these things take practice. So he enlisted Kevin, a self-made expert on prison wine who has been perfecting his technique for twenty years. That did the trick, but how good is it? Fosh invited three expert wine critics, or at least influencers, to try it out, along with five samples of commercial wine, selected for a variety of price points. All are unidentified. What would they think of his homemade hooch? 

The wine tasters were asked to rank all six wines, but Fosh settled for getting their most and least favorite pick. How many sips of wine does it take before you have a hard time keeping them straight? Only afterward did he reveal that one of the choices was his prison wine, made in a cooler and fermented in the bathroom. There's a one-minute skippable ad at 3:43.   -via Boing Boing 

We think of Lucille Ball as the queen of television -after all, she had four TV series with her name in the title. But before I Love Lucy, she was a model, a dancer, and a movie actress. In the 1940s, she had a hit radio show called My Favorite Husband. Television was in its infancy, no one knew for sure whether it would take off. CBS wanted Lucy to try a television series, which she considered to be a step down. 

However, Lucy's husband Desi Arnaz was a bandleader who was off on tour most of the time, and was famous for cavorting with women on the road. Theirs was a volatile relationship, and she'd already tried to divorce him once. If she could get Arnaz a role on the TV show, he'd have to quit touring. CBS didn't think much of Arnaz, and they didn't think American viewers would take to her being married to a "foreigner." But the network executives valued Lucy enough to agree to all kinds of demands to get her on the small screen. Read how Lucy got her way at Cracked. 

(Image credit: TV Guide) 

This is not a skit, but just a straightforward version of the Star Trek: The Next Generation main theme by a bluegrass band, featuring Gordon Lustig on his five-string banjo, guitar, and mandolin as well. Lustig credits composer Jerry Goldsmith, noting that the tune was originally written for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The music will make you smile, but the video of a starship shaped like a banjo might make you giggle. What's really funny are the comments at the YouTube page. Here's an example:

Space:
The Last Place I Reckon Will Go To.
These are Them There Adventures of the Starship Banjo-rpise.
It's contin-ya-in mission: to look fer new worlds, to russle us up some critters, and find like minded folks.
To go where none of y'all ain't ever been to!

Another imagines the cast of The Andy Griffith Show as the crew of the Enterprise. See more at the YouTube page. 

Princess Natalia Pavlovna Paley was the granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II and first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II. Born in 1905 in Paris, her exiled family moved back to Russia just a few years before the revolution. After the Tsar abdicated in 1916, the Paleys were placed under house arrest, and Natalia's brother Vladimir was arrested. Vladimir was executed the day after the Tsar and his immediate family were shot in 1918. Her father was arrested and killed later. Meanwhile, Natalia and her sister Irina escaped, riding a cattle car, then a horse-drawn sleigh, then walking the last miles to the Finnish border. Their mother joined them the next month. 

Natalie Paley moved from Finland to Sweden to France, where she married a French fashion designer and became a model, then moved to the US to become a Hollywood actress. Read up on the adventurous life of this Russian princess at Smithsonian. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: unknown)

Smoking tobacco used to be a completely mainstream activity. When I was in high school in the 90s, teachers had their own smoke-filled lounge. There was also an area of the campus known as the "gravel pit" where students were, at least unofficially, allowed to smoke.

In the 70s, it was hard to even convince people that tobacco could be dangerous, let alone attach a social stigma to the practice. Cigarette smoke carried an aroma of class and mystery. Weird Universe directs us to this print advertisement from 1972 offering people home water filters that would give tap water the taste of Tareyton brand cigarettes.

It's a completely real and quite prolific ad. You can see it in this issue of Life magazine.

The LOTI Pencil is an enormous public sculpture on the shore of the Lake of the Isles, Minnesota. It's on the lawn of a historic mansion and made from an oak tree that fell in 2017. In 2022, artist Curtis Ingolstad shaped and painted it into a realistic image of a pencil.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reports that the pencil received its annual sharpening--a task evidently conducted with a chainsaw. This cleaning task has become a major local public event, drawing large crowds to watch. Since the most recent sharpening fell on June 7, the birthday of the late musician Prince, the celebration included Prince music. Prince was a native son of Minneapolis, so his work is dear to the hearts of celebrants.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Ben Krsnak

People have been talking about it for years. Indeed, the original Star Wars parody Spaceballs set up a sequel called Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money. We don't know if that will be the actual title, but Spaceballs 2 is coming out in 2027. Mel Brooks himself, who will turn 101 years old in 2027, makes the announcement. Brooks will not direct this time, but he will reprise his role as Yogurt. Rick Moranis is coming out of this 30-year retirement to play Dark Helmet, and Bill Pullman will once again play Lone Starr. In addition, Keke Palmer has been cast, as well as Lewis Pullman, Bill Pullman's son. Their roles are as yet undisclosed. Amazon MGM Studios describes the film as “A Non-Prequel Non-Reboot Sequel Part Two but with Reboot Elements Franchise Expansion Film.” Which tells us nothing, but we'll find out more bit by bit over the next two years. 

After the American Civil War, there was some attempt to help formerly-enslaved people (40 acres and mule), not so much as compensation, but to help them start an independent life. Sadly, those efforts didn't last long. The intention, though, was a far cry from what happened during the Haitian Revolution, when France demanded that the newly-free Haitians pay French slaveholders as compensation for the loss of their "property." In between those events, Britain abolished slavery in 1833. You don't hear much about how that was settled. 

These enslaved people were held in far-flung colonies, while their slaveholders mainly resided back home in Britain. To make the transition smoother, the British government offered monetary compensation- not to the newly-freed people, but to the slaveholders. These former slaveholders included many with titles who would just as soon forget about the whole thing once they got the money. Abolition was fashionable at the time, and who wants to be on the wrong side of history? Read about the British aristocrats who pretended their slaveholding history never happened at Jstor Daily.  -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: William Clark) 

A couple of years ago, a meme from a Swedish Instagram influencer went around about how men think of ancient Rome a lot, many of them reporting thinking about it every day, and how that was baffling to women. Once translated to English, that idea went viral. Whether that's true or not, thinking about Rome back in the day when the empire thought it ruled the world is a far cry from studying it. If your knowledge about the Roman Empire comes from movies or memes, this TED-Ed video quiz might surprise you. On the other hand, if you learned about ancient Rome from Neatorama, like I did, you might ace this quiz like I did. It's rather easy, since you just select from multiple choice answers. Can you spot the myth or untruth? You don't have to share your score with us, but you are welcome to if you like. 

Patrick Stewart received classical training in his craft and was an acclaimed master of the Shakespearean stage long before he took up film roles and then became widely known to American audiences in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

When acting and directing are done well, the audience doesn't even notice it because the narrative flows so naturally. But good acting isn't done casually or naturally; it's the result of particular choices executed precisely.

In this video, Rowan J. Coleman describes how Patrick Stewart, in the role of Captain Picard, demonstrated masterful execution of timing, intonation, body language, and other facets of the actor's craft. He contrasts Stewart's portrayal of Picard with that of William Shatner's depiction of Captain Kirk to explain how top-tier actors express themselves so effectively.

-via reddit

This man has seen some things. This is Danish polar explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen, as he looked to his rescuers after two and a half years of holing up in a makeshift cabin with engineer Iver Iversen. They had gone on an expedition to northern Greenland in 1909 to recover documents from an earlier expedition. When their ship Alabama was trapped in ice, the two men set out with a sled to continue their journey. When they returned to Shannon Island, they found the rest of the expedition had left with a whaling ship on the assumption that the two were dead. Mikkelsen and Iversen built a hut from wood salvaged from the ship, and survived the next two winters on seal and polar bear meat. Finally, a Norwegian whaling ship found them in 1912. Read about the Alabama expedition and the ordeal of being stranded on Shannon Island at Vintage Everyday. 

A dog named Sienna was found as a stray on the streets of Altavista, Virginia. She then went into care at the Campbell County Animal Care and Control Facility, and no one came forward to claim her. Sienna was being walked at a public adoption event last weekend when she was strangely drawn to a man sitting down. He hadn't called her, and he didn't know the dog. But Sienna sat down and placed her paw on his foot. Then she pawed at his leg and sat down again. The man's wife appeared and thought the scene a big odd, then she realized that her husband was about to have a seizure. She was able to get him to their car and take care of him.

Sienna's behavior was exactly that of a dog who had been trained to detect and alert for impending seizures. But why would a dog with such training be abandoned? Is it possible that Sienna is so sensitive that she would warn a stranger even without training? At any rate, Sienna has been hailed as a hero, and she has received donations for veterinary care and several adoption applications. -via Fark 

(Image credit: Friends of Campbell County Animal Control)