People will turn anything into a competition. If eating a lot of food in a hurry is something you do better than other people, you may as well show off, especially if there is a wager or prize money involved. And like any human contest, people will flock to see it happen. A notorious eater of the Roman Empire, Clodius Albinus, was documented to consume 500 dried figs plus a host of other fruits, most likely to show off his talents. Several medieval men made a living by wagering on how much they could eat, and made even more money by charging admission to watch.

The ethics of overeating and making a contest of it are arguable. Eating is something all of us do every day, and to make it worth watching, it must be extreme. Pushing the limits of one's body for a prize or a reputation is not safe. And in parts of our history, poor children were recruited into eating contests for the entertainment of the well-to-do. Today, competitive eating is regarded as a sport, regulated by the International Federation of Competitive Eating. Read how competitive eating got this way at Jstor Daily.  -via Strange Company

Have you ever seen a pregnant gecko? Or a pregnant possum? Or a pregnant zebra, guinea pig, or seal? Take the opportunity to see all kinds of animals about to give birth, including male seahorses who may have hundreds of offspring. The zebra above looks like she's going to have a litter, but it's probably just one foal. It's a good thing she doesn't have to fit through a door.



Besides all the exotic animals, you'll see a surprising number of pets who got a pregnancy photoshoot to celebrate the occasion. Like humans, it's a chance to wear a tutu and feel feminine while sporting a waistline three times the normal size. While we can't accurately ascribe human emotions to animals, these expecting mothers (and fathers, to include the seahorses) actually appear serene and glowing. But that could be lack of sleep. See 50 images of various animals getting ready to give birth at Bored Panda.

Ground has been broken and construction is underway for the Grand Stade Hassan II, a soccer stadium in Casablanca, Morocco. When completed, it will have a capacity of 115,000 people. The only stadiums with a larger capacity are a multi-purpose facility in North Korea built to one-up South Korea, and a cricket stadium in India. Morocco is a co-host of the 2030 World Cup, along with Spain and Portugal, and the new stadium will adhere to FIFA standards.

But what sets this design by Populous and Oualalou + Choi apart is the tent shape. The roof is not fabric, but it provides both light and shade with an aluminum lattice construction. There will be gardens inside, both at ground level and elevated to 28 feet. This being Morocco, there will be multiple levels of luxury boxes and hospitality facilities for 12,000 VIPs, including a royal box. See the plans for this big, innovative stadium at Arch Daily. -via Moss and Fog

(Image credit: Oualalou + Choi)

"Wobbly Cat" is a term for a cat with cerebellar hypoplasia. That's a birth defect in the brain that affects a cat's balance and coordination. The condition is not painful and doesn't affect a cat's overall health or longevity, although a wobbly feral or outside cat will be susceptible to falls and have trouble defending itself against attacks. So wobbly cats need a loving and understanding family who will keep them safe and accommodate their clumsiness.

Archie was lucky to be taken in as a kitten despite his lack of coordination. He turned out to be such a sweet cat that his foster family couldn't let him go. Not only that, Archie is so loving that the family took in another disabled kitten as a companion, and the two cats are affectionate and inseparable. In fact, the family now has eight cats, several with special needs. You can check them all out at Instagram.  -via Laughing Squid

Some languages have more words for colors than others, but how does this affect how we see them? It could make a big difference. Lithuanian has two main terms for blue, žydra and mėlyna, meaning light blue and dark blue respectively. In Norwegian, blue is blå no matter the shade. For a series of experiments, scientists recruited a number of people who spoke both Lithuanian and Norwegian, and administered a color discrimination test in which the subject was asked to pick one of two shades of blue that most closely resembled a reference picture. When the test was conducted in Lithuanian, both the accuracy and the speed of the discrimination was significantly better than when the same subjects took the test in Norwegian. Further experiments added people who only spoke one of those languages and found the same results.

While those results are intriguing, it opens up other questions, We know that women can discriminate between colors better than men on average. Could that be because women use more language terms for various shades? Show a woman something blue, and they will describe it as navy, cobalt, periwinkle, turquoise, azure, royal blue, cyan, robin's egg, seafoam, indigo, or baby blue. A man would identify it as blue, even using the same language. Obviously, more research is indicated. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Allenfleming)

Adult Swim has released this bumper for Rick and Morty by animator and director Aaron Fromm. It adapts images, ambiance, and music from the famous opening to Bruce Timm's Batman: The Animated Series. Compare it with the source material:

We clearly need a full half-hour episode of Rick and Morty developing this aesthetic.

-via Discussing Film

When you think of the rules that govern the Star Trek universe, you first think of the Prime Directive, which was broken all the time. The next rule is that Captain Kirk always gets the girl, and that any unknown crew member played by an unknown actor beaming down to the surface has a death warrant. And they probably wear a red shirt. But those last two rules only apply to the original series. John Farrier could come up with other obvious rules, but that's not what this video is about.

Believe it or not, there is an underlying philosophy that guides how Star Trek stories are told. Some of the nine rules governing the fictional universe may have been born of necessity, like how almost all aliens are human-shaped, but they have become incorporated into the framework of all the Star Trek movies and TV series. Some are contrary to the rules of our reality. Sometimes the rules are bent or broken, but that doesn't ruin the structure as a whole that makes this fictional universe so familiar and understandable to fans.

Tião e os Bravos is a Brazilian band that clearly takes its inspiration from American bluegrass music. Or the members at least have a hillbilly aesthetic. The use of a banjo, an upright bass, and a washboard certainly reflect a American folkways take on "All Star" by Smash Mouth.

Many of their vocal tracks are in Portuguese, as you would expect from a Brazilian band. Fortunately for the monolingualists among us, American classics such as "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana and "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters are presented in English.

-via The Awesomer

Genteel people with a working sense of empathy try not to draw attention to the farts we detect, lest we embarrass the perpetrator unnecessarily. But farts in general, fictional farts, and farts from unidentified persons are fair game. After all, flatulence is funny. We all know that it's natural, everyone does it, and it's hard not to giggle when you hear that sound, whether it's a fart or merely an imitation. In fact, the oldest joke we've found so far involves a fart. That one set off a never-ending stream of fart jokes, some that went into the history books, although you will find them more often in science books and fiction. Poetry, too.

In the history of fart jokes, some stand head and shoulders above the rest. Cracked brings us five of the most notorious fart jokes, from ancient Sumer, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, and Joseph Pujol.

You can read a more extensive article on Pujol right here.

(Image credit: Barb Crawford)

Canelo the dog lived on the streets of Cadiz, Spain, with the man who loved him. Canelo didn't regularly have a roof over his head, but he loved his human more than anything. The man went to the hospital for dialysis treatment every week, where Canelo wasn't allowed inside. But he would patiently wait outside the door for hours, which seemed like forever to the dog, because he knew his human would eventually come back outside. Until the day he didn't.

You might have to grab another hankie when you learn that this is a true story. It happened about thirty years ago, and people from Andalusia are very familiar with it. Canelo spent 12 years waiting outside the hospital, escaped from the pound twice, and refused to stay with families who wanted to adopt him. After his death, the street that ran in front of the hospital was renamed in the dog's honor. -via Nag on the Lake

Want more? We have similar stories of a dog's loyalty from Japan, Russia, and Brazil.

Leavenworth, Washington, was settled as a timber town with a productive sawmill. In the early 20th century, the town opened its first ski resort. Then in the 1960s, as the timber business was declining, they launched a scheme to draw in tourists and they rebuilt the town on a Bavarian theme. Leavenworth now sells beer, lederhosen, and pretzels. There are Bavarian restaurants, a "Krampus Kave," extensive Christmas shops, and a huge Oktoberfest every year. But how authentic is the experience?

Four journalism students from Austria, two of them born in Munich, Germany, spent the summer at the University of Washington in Seattle. Friends recommended that they visit Leavenworth to see how it compares to the real thing. To sum up their first impressions, "Wherever we look, it feels irritatingly familiar and completely strange at the same time." The students were baffled at how Americans associate Christmas ornaments with Bavaria, while they celebrate with Santa Claus and Mariah Carey. Krampus was another puzzler -why would Christians in America object to Krampus? Read what they thought of the food, the architecture, and the American idea of Bavaria in their report on the visit.  -via Metafilter

(Image source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

On August 31, 1939, the first issue of Timely Comics was published. The company changed its name to Marvel and became a beloved source of stories about Captain America, Iron Man, The Mighty Thor, and a pantheon of other superheroes. To celebrate Marvel's 85th anniversary, the company has released a tribute video featuring its biggest superheroes over the years, with a special emphasis on Marvel's most beloved character ever, Stan Lee.

But that's not all you'll see here. The tribute video also looks to the future, with the first official release of images of Harrison Ford as Red Hulk in Thunderbolts*, which we won't see until May of next year. You'll also catch glimpses of other upcoming projects such as the feature film Captain America: Brave New World (slated for February), the 2025 TV series Daredevil: Born Again, and the 2025 miniseries Ironheart. Read more about the anniversary tribute at Entertainment Weekly.

During the heyday of the sideshow, performers came in several categories. There were those who were born as physical oddities, those who became so through injury, those who merely displayed an exotic background (which was usually exaggerated), and those who worked hard to perform amazing feats. Martin Laurello had no exotic background, but he combined the other three categories to become "the Human Owl." He could turn his neck until his head was completely backwards!

Laurello was born flexible, and was a contortionist in a circus act. There is some evidence that he suffered an injury that left his neck even looser than before, and while recuperating, he trained himself to turn his head 45 degrees, then 90 degrees, then 180 degrees, although the last part needed his hands to achieve. Laurello worked for Ringling Brothers, then at Coney Island, then for Ripley's Believe It or Not. He was also an activist inside the community of human oddities, working to change the demeaning language of his time away from calling such people "freaks." Read about the life of Martin Laurello at Mental Floss. The article includes a video of Laurello doing his thing. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Txemari. (Navarra).)

Americans are pretty unique among the countries of the world in the way we love to display our country's flag. They are everywhere! And we are so familiar with the sight that when we see a different version of it, we immediately notice that something is off. The truth is that while our flag has had a constant design since 1960, it was changed a lot before then. In the early days of the United States, quite a few very different flags were tried out, and colonies and local regiments all made their own flags. The stars have had five, six, seven, or eight points and various stripe placements. Some looked nothing at all like the flag we fly today. But the basic design was set in 1777, and only the number of stars has changed since then. Weird History shows us some of the many flags that were tried out on the way to the stars and stripes.

I've tried to source this claim by the always-interesting X account Traces of Texas. The histiography is a bit sketchy. But it's not unreasonable for North Street in Nacogdoches, Texas to claim the title of the oldest public road in the United States.

The Spanish explorers and early settlers referred to the route as La Calle Real del Norte. It stretched across eastern texas, serving as a trade out between a variety of indegenous peoples, most notably the Nacogdoche and Nansoni.

A historical marker in Nacogdoches, one of the oldest settlements in Texas, notes the possible beginning of the route.

Image: Google Maps