The following article is from the book Uncle John's True Crime: A Classic Collection of Crooks, Cops, and Capers.

From small-time crook to family man to the world’s most famous punk-rocking, beach-basking fugitive, this brash Brit captured the heart of a nation...and drew the ire of Scotland Yard.

ANARCHY IN THE U.K.

The greatest train robbery in British history was not orchestrated by Ronnie Biggs, nor did he have a big part in the heist. In fact, shortly before it took place—coincidentally on the night of Biggs’s 34th birthday in August 1963—he had all but given up a life of crime.

Born in 1929 to a poor family living in a poor section of South London, Ronald Arthur Biggs had been in trouble with the law since he was a teenager. Prone to stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down —pencils, pills, cars— he was caught as often as he was not, and spent much of his early adulthood behind bars. It was there that Biggs learned a trade, house-painting, and by his 30s, he had decided to go legit. Biggs married, had two sons, and tried to make an honest living as a painter. It turned out that he wasn’t a very good painter, either, and he was having trouble paying the bills. So he phoned a friend.

AN OFFER HE COULDN’T REFUSE

When Biggs called Bruce Reynolds, an old prison buddy, in 1963 to ask for a loan of £500 to “tide him over,” Reynolds offered Biggs something better—a job. And not just any job, but a role in a train robbery the likes of which had never been seen in the U.K. Biggs’s answer: No. He couldn’t risk losing his family to more prison time. But Reynolds pressed on, promising Biggs a payday of at least £40,000 for one night’s work. And Biggs wouldn’t even have to do the actual thieving. All he had to do was recruit a friend of his who could operate a train and then keep the actual train driver quiet while more experienced criminals did the hard stuff. Reluctantly, Biggs signed on. He told his wife he had an out-of-town painting job that would take a few weeks. Then he and Reynolds headed for the English countryside to meet up with the rest of the gang.

You are familiar with the rotating snake illusion. As your eyes move over the image, they appear to move. But if you hold your gaze still in one spot, the movement stops. Now try explaining that to your cat!

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Ryan Kotzin printed the illusion out and gave it to his cat Peter. The cat saw the movement and was as mesmerized as any human. After not getting anywhere with the moving snakes, he ate them.  -via reddit

Britain's rarest butterfly is the simply-named large blue, once coveted by collectors and almost driven to extinction. Now it is legally protected because they cannot be bred in captivity. Why not? That's the really weird part.

The remarkable life cycle of the large blue means it can only thrive in very particular habitats. Eggs are laid on the flower buds of wild thyme or marjoram. The larvae burrow into the flower heads and when they are about 4mm long drop to the ground and wait to be found by foraging red ants, attracting them with sweet secretions from a “honey” gland. The ants place them in their brood chamber and the larvae feed on ant grubs. They turn into butterflies, crawl above ground, and fly in midsummer.

An article at The Guardian about a case of butterfly poaching tells us how the large blue was re-introduced to Britain after it was declared extinct there in the '70s. -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: PJC&Co)

Some human teeth have been found in Italy that show evidence of dentistry around 13,000 years ago, even earlier than the development of grain cereals, which are blamed for a lot of tooth decay. Earlier teeth had been found with evidence of drilling, but the two teeth from near Lucca in northern Italy appear to have deliberate fillings! Archaeologist Stephano Benazzi explains.

The holes contain traces of bitumen, with plant fibres and hairs embedded in it, which Benazzi thinks are evidence of prehistoric fillings.

While the purpose of the plants and hairs is unknown, it appears that they were added to the cavity at the same time as the drilling, so are not simply the remains of food eaten later.

The Paleolithic dentist would have drilled out the cavities and filled the holes with bitumen to reduce pain and to keep food out of the pulp chamber, just like in modern dentistry, says Benazzi.

It couldn't have been pleasant. Read more about these early fillings at New Scientist. -via Gizmodo

(Image credit: Stefano Benazzi)

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It's an old trick, but watching this cute elderly couple do it is priceless. We would all be doing good to have a relationship with such a compatible sense of humor. He'll find some way to get her back, and they'll both laugh about that, too.  -via Viral Viral Videos

Mormon founder Joseph Smith was killed in 1844, and in 1847, his followers settled in the far west wilderness that would eventually be Utah, under the leadership of Brigham Young. They just wanted to be left alone without government interference in their religion. But the United States government eventually showed up in Utah. The U.S. had seized the Utah territory in the Mexican-American War, and sent David Burr out to survey it.

When David H. Burr, the first Surveyor General of Utah Territory, showed up in Salt Lake City in July 1855, Brigham Young, then territorial governor, was almost certain he was a spy for the federal government. “Burr has been watching for evil ever since he has been here,” Brigham Young wrote to Utah’s representative in Congress.

Young, also the spiritual leader of Utah’s Mormon settlers, did not have a high opinion of federal officers in general. He called them “dog and skunks … sent here by the authority of Government to rule over men as far above them as they are above the low and vicious animals they so faithfully represent.” But Burr posed a particular threat. He had made his name mapping states further east, but his task in Utah was a very different kind of job. He and his men were meant to parcel out the land of the territory into plots that could be sold or settled, and to the Mormon communities who already lived on some of the land, that work was a threat. Once the federal government had measured the ground beneath their feet, there was no guarantee they’d be allowed to stay.

The Mormons made Burr's task impossible. They read his mail. They stole livestock, beat one of his surveyors severely, and incited the Native Americans against the surveyors. The tension between the Mormons and the survey team eventually led to the two-year Utah War. Read how it came about at Atlas Obscura.

I ain't afraid of no goats! TheRiverMonkey spotted this product at a Waitrose supermarket in Sussex, UK. He couldn't resist printing out a label for it, then he left the label in his car for several months before he remembered to take it into the store. Yes, he left it there after he took the picture. Now to figure out who drew eyes on that innocent pineapple.  

This guy has an impulse to write an email to his 7th grade teacher, but what would he say? Would the teacher even remember him after all those years, considering how many kids he's taught? This video from Cracked contains NSFW language.

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The moral of the story is, don't pass up an opportunity to make someone's day. Most teachers put their heart and soul into their profession in order to make a difference in a child's life. How would they ever know if they were successful if you don't tell them? -via Digg

Where do comic artists get their ideas? Some adapt real life incidents from their family or work life, some do intense research, some just go with the flow, and some have a system. In his latest comic, Chris Hallbeck of Maximumble steps out of his regular cartoon world to answer the most common question he hears. It must be a common question, because he gave almost the same answer when he gave Neatorama an interview a couple of years ago, except for the part about the worm. He wasn't yet ready to give credit to his collaborator back then.   

Two cheetahs, a mother and daughter, gave birth to large litters in the same week at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, an adjunct of the National Zoo. One was a litter of five; the other cheetah gave birth to seven cubs, but the smallest two did not survive. The remaining ten cubs are doing just fine, and will spend the next 18 months in Virginia. After that, they'll go to other zoos or breeding programs.

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The sound on this video begins about halfway through, but even then you'll have to listen closely to hear the tiny cubs hiss. Learn more about the National Zoo's cheetah breeding program at Smithsonian.

Caitlin PenzeyMoog grew up in her grandparent's store, The Spice House. Her mother worked there, and so did she, eventually. Of course, this meant her childhood memories are particularly aromatic.   

This is where my grandparents would call my brother, sister, and me back when the rush of customers slowed, to read Gurdjieff out loud or mix cinnamon sugar while reciting the poem “Desiderata.” We’d do this while making a blend, which we’d stir in an enormous metal bowl exactly 111 times. My grandfather would make us pork chops on a George Foreman grill, seasoned with some unknowable pepper mix. The air was perpetually thick with the commingling of hundreds of spices, herbs, sugars, and salts, blending into a distinctive smell that lingered on your clothing and in your hair all day. It formed thick dust motes that floated in the sunlight coming through windows.

You’d think that spending a lot of time here would numb your olfactory senses, but the opposite was true. My nose learned to cut through the background smell to identify specific spices within the store—a good thing when replacing the apothecary jars with their correct lids, which is easily done when you can discern oregano from parsley and garlic from ginger.

From her lifetime of experience, PenzeyMoog offers us some simple advice about using spices, which is almost as interesting as her description of growing up in The Spice Shop.

(Image credit: Lenore Edman)

Tommy Edison (previously) routinely makes videos to answer questions about what it's like to be blind. Some things he doesn't know, because he hasn't experienced them, like vision. Christine Ha (previously), on the other hand, went blind later in life. Here they discuss their experiences.  

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There's a big difference between the two. Once you know what sight is like, you can miss it terribly. But you can remember it, too. Also notice the difference in how they use their eyes. Edison keeps his shut just about all the time, while Ha is very aware of what she looks like on camera and what it means to follow someone's eye gaze, even when you know it's not working.  -via Laughing Squid

In the belief that nature documentaries shouldn't be restricted to the wilderness, David Johns has produced a sketch of the Australian bin chicken. This parody features narration by Rupert Degas, a pretty good David Attenborough soundalike.

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Aside from parodying regular Planet Earth episodes, this is some pretty good coverage of the way that animals adapt to what humans have done to their environment. Read more about bin chickens here. -via Boing Boing

This is an extreme case, but it's nice to know that people can take pride in a job well done, no matter what that job is. On the other hand, it's sad how little others appreciate those efforts. Let's not belittle the dedication of the many folks who make our systems work as well as they do. But if Amazon starts intergalactic deliveries, you don't want to answer the ad for drivers. This is the latest comic from Death Bulge.

If there were any doubt that telescopes with the ability to see beyond our solar system would change everything, this is it. Planet GJ 1132b is 39 light years from earth, yet we are learning a lot about it. It is slightly larger than earth, and revolves around a small, relatively dim sun. Dr. John Southworth of Keele University explains the latest discovery about the planet.

Using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the researchers were able to study the planet by watching how it blocked some of the light of its host star as it passed in front of it.

"It makes the star look a little bit fainter - and it's actually a very good way of finding transiting planets - it's how this one was found," said Dr Southworth.

But different molecules in a planet's atmosphere - if it has one - absorb light in different ways, allowing scientists to look for their chemical signatures when the world transits its star.

The observations of planet GJ 1132b suggest that it has a thick atmosphere containing either steam and/or methane.

"One possibility is that it is a 'water world' with an atmosphere of hot steam," said Dr Southworth.

While the atmosphere is this particular planet is unlikely to sustain life, the bigger takeaway is how its atmosphere was detected, and the possibility that many other planets of similar size and stars could also have an atmosphere. Read more about the discovery at BBC News. -via reddit

(Image credit: Dana Berry/Skyworks Digital/CfA)