The study found that these airborne particles shoot out quickly, at speeds of 6.6 feet (2 meters) per second, reaching 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) above the toilet within 8 seconds. While the largest droplets tend to settle onto surfaces within seconds, the smaller particles (aerosols less than 5 microns, or one-millionth of a meter) can remain suspended in the air for minutes or longer.

These measurements came from the use of an optical particle counter. Toilets in most homes don't flush quite so powerfully, but they do expel particles. Closing the lid while flushing helps somewhat, but lids are rare in public toilets. And this is why I moved my toothbrushes inside a cabinet years ago. -via Boing Boing

Merle Oberon starred in many Hollywood films in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, and was the only Asian actress to have ever been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. But Hollywood didn't know she was Asian. Oberon was born in Bombay in 1911, when India was under British rule. When she broke into show business, Oberon let it be known that she was born in Australia to white parents and moved to India as a child. She wouldn't have been accepted as a leading lady if it were known she was mixed race (if you consider the British and Indians to be different races- this was really about color).

Oberon was an avid user of skin lightening creams, which contain what the FDA considers dangerous amounts of mercury. This could have contributed to her later skin and health problems. Oberon kept up the ruse about her origins almost all her life. She was invited to Hobart, Tasmania, and celebrated as a hometown girl, which caused her to almost have a breakdown. Only those closest to her knew she was born in India. But even they didn't know who her parents really were until after her death. It's possible that Oberon herself didn't know the full story. Read about Merle Oberon and the secrets she kept at Messy Nessy Chic.

The short documentary Dress a Cow takes us to the Canfield County Fair in Canfield, Ohio, where every year farmers bring their prettiest (and most patient) cow all gussied up to show off in the annual Dress a Cow competition. The cows are cleaned, groomed, and finally dressed in themed costumes for the big day. There are cows dressed as other animals, as Disney princesses, and as inanimate objects of some sort, leading one to think that maybe the selection of costume has something to do with the results. We don't really know, as the judges are just local judges, the kind that preside over courts. They have no particular expertise in the cow field. The judges and spectators are very appreciative of the contestants and their owners' efforts, because it's not easy to design a costume for a cow, much less dress one up! -via Nag on the Lake

In 1982, a Boeing 747 was being flown by British Airways from Kuala Lumpur to Perth on one leg of a London to Auckland flight. They were well over the ocean when strange things started happening. The passenger compartment started filling up with blue smoke, even though there was no fire detected on board. Then the crew started seeing bluish flickering lights. They recognized St. Elmo's fire, but had never seen it so strong.

Within two minutes, the situation suddenly went from strange to alarming as engine No.4 surged and flamed out. The crew immediately performed the engine shutdown drill, cutting off the fuel supply and arming the engine fire extinguishers just as they had been trained. But less than a minute later engine two also flamed out, followed almost immediately by engines one and three. The crew could scarcely believe it: all four engines had failed almost simultaneously – something which had never happened before on a 747. The mighty airliner, with 263 people aboard, had suddenly become the world’s biggest glider.

What the crew didn't know was that they had flown through a cloud of volcanic ash, thrown up by the erupting Mount Galunggung in Indonesia. Weather radar doesn't detect volcanic ash clouds. The ash did even more damage, as the plane's interior lost its pressure and the windshield became opaque. Should they drop to a lower altitude so they could breathe, or try to maintain altitude to make it to the nearest airport in Jakarta? How would they land if they can't see? Would they have to land a 747 on the water? Read the story of British Airways Flight 9 at Today I Found Out. 

50 years ago, the Apollo 17 astronauts captured an iconic Earth view of the “Blue Marble” as they set sights on the Moon. Today with #Artemis, this time-lapse footage showcases the Earth-Moon transit as @NASA_Orion captured our home planet and the Moon on flight day 13. https://t.co/H9oHsgiHfWpic.twitter.com/ZHIxYKnJy0

When the moon comes between the sun and person looking at it, that's a solar eclipse. When the shadow of the earth blocks our view of the moon, that's a lunar eclipse. So when the moon blocks our view of the earth, would you call that a terran eclipse? Wait, how can the moon block our view of the earth? It happens when we send a camera to the other side of the moon, which is what NASA did with the Artemis 1 mission. On November 28th, while Artemis was looping around the moon, it set a record for the furthest spacecraft designed to carry humans (even though it wasn't carrying humans this time). That was 268,563 miles (432,210 kilometers). It broke the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970. As for the eclipse pictured above, NASA calls it an "Earth-moon transit." I think terran eclipse is a better term, but that's just me.

Strangely, several commenters at YouTube called this video a fake because the moon is shown bigger than the earth, and we know that's not right. I wonder where they think the camera is? Read more about the accomplishments of the Artemis mission at Space.com. -via Damn Interesting

Here’s what we know about the Rosetta Stone: it’s a stone that is inscribed with a decree about all the good things Pharaoh Ptolemy V did for the priests and the people of Egypt. It’s also notable for the three different languages used to portray this message: Demotic, hieroglyphic, and Greek. 

That’s what all of us can say about it, whether it’s via a quick search on the Internet (which we are guilty of, it happens to the best of us, sometimes we don’t know the full details about this Stone except for languages) or stock knowledge. There are still things about the famous artifact that evade us, such as why was it built. Additionally, what does the stone actually say, word for word? 

Well, if you’re curious about that, Ilona Regulski has got you covered. Watch the curator of the Egyptian written culture at the British Museum in London as she walks viewers through the stone and its ‘decree’, issued during the Ptolemaic dynasty in 196 BCE here!

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Ever wondered where you can get all the sounds from the different aspects of life? Well, wonder no more with this unique collection!

Obsolete Sounds is an archive of sorts that is claimed by its creators as “the world’s biggest collection of obsolete and disappearing sounds,” contains over 150 different audio clips of rare and disappearing types. The collections houses rare clips from retro video games, recordings of old-fashioned transport, and plenty of mechanical sounds from outdated hardware.

Visitors to the online collection can find the classic Nokia ringtone from the 5120 model, the whirring of an old Seagate hard disk drive, the sound of an old 56K modem connecting to the Internet, and many, many other sounds. The high variety of odd sounds makes us question how did the creators of the library obtain all of these? 

According to the founder, Stuart Fowkes, they have collected sounds from over 1,000 artists in the world. That will certainly provide the library with such a wide range. Check out the Collection of Obsolete Sounds here.

Image screenshot via Obsolete Sounds

Space is a wide, vast nebula of different objects and phenomena that we might never uncover in our lifetime. Even if we develop our technology, again and again, there might be some things that we will never know about. 

The uncertainty of the unknown pushes experts to continue their explorations day by day. NASA, one of the most prominent astronomical organizations today, has consistently sent out different probes in various parts of space. One of them is on Mars. 

The rovers in the Red Planet have sent something interesting, though. Among the bricks of information and images, scientists have discovered a photo of an ancient “alien” statue. Scott C. Waring of UFO Sightings Daily discovered the artwork while zooming in on a large image released by NASA. He points out how one of the rocks looks like it isn’t a rock at all, but a statue with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. 

Take this with a grain of salt, of course, as there is no official statement concerning the matter. However, the CIA did once claim there were ancient civilizations on Mars. It’s best to look at the photo yourself and decide. Zoom into this large image where the sculpture is said to be, and let us know what you think!

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Well, this is certainly fascinating. On the surface, this incident just seems to be done by a woman who is crazy in love. 

A woman who lives in Brazil has defied all the odds of modern romance. Not only has she met, dated, and married a ragdoll that looks like someone’s mom DIY-ed them in just a few hours for a school project, but she also gave birth to their baby. 

You’ve read that right! A woman has delivered an equally ragdoll baby in an actual hospital, with an actual doctor overseeing the delivery. 

But the story actually starts when she brought home the doll and did a live stream on Facebook. Friends suggested naming the mysterious ragdoll boyfriend Marcelo, and that’s where it all started. 

The amount of people she pulled into this stunt is incredible. Her wedding day was grand and around 300 people showed up. Not only that, but she also got some free stuff from different corporations! 

Check out Kurtis Conner’s breakdown of the whole event in the video linked above. Personally, we believe it was a fun, harmless thing that everyone enjoyed. 

We’re definitely rooting for her, but we’re more curious as to how she was able to get the doctors on her side in pulling the birth of her ragdoll son!

Maybe it’s because we’re pressured to sleep? This might sound a bit confusing, but hear us out. We can’t sleep because we’re thinking about it. 

Many of us are obsessed with keeping track of how many hours of sleep we are getting. Some have tried to extend their hours of sleep, from meditating to valerian root supplements to moon milk, and have had no results. 

At some point, their obsession with ensuring they get a lot of sleep becomes an immense pressure on their psyche. Having a tracker can add to the pressure, especially with people emphasizing the need to sleep. 

Did they get any sleep? Sadly, no. According to a 2017 case report in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, there is a term for this phenomenon, called orthosomnia, the condition refers to people who obsess over their sleep. The researchers further explain why people get this disorder, "because the perfectionist quest to achieve perfect sleep is similar to the unhealthy preoccupation with healthy eating, termed orthorexia".

While not being recognized as a disorder, Dr. Nicola Barclay, lecturer in sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, believes otherwise. "Orthosomnia is a genuine condition and a real worry, especially as people rely increasingly on sleep trackers, most of which are wildly inaccurate, giving a very poor estimate of your real sleep. If your sleep tracker tells you you’ve had four hours of poor quality sleep — even if the truth is far from this — the chances are this will psychologically impact your mood, energy levels and productivity the following day. It’s this reliance that creates a vicious cycle and will negatively impact on your sleep," she explained.

Image credit: Ivan Oboleninov

最近のマクドナルド、手洗い場のみならずスマホ洗い場まであるぞ。。。 pic.twitter.com/sL6D4mZWoE

For most of us, washing our hands after using the toilet is a reflexive act ingrained by long habit. But how often do you wash your phone? I think that I intentionally do about once a month, but that probably isn't enough.

The news website Japan Today reports that the Japanese company WOTA recently introduced the WOSH system of sanitation stations. It's a portable, stand-alone barrel-shaped hand washing sink that includes a phone washing tool that uses ultraviolet light. The company claims that in just 30 seconds (long enough for you to wash you hands), it will sterilize your phone of 99.9% of pathogens.

-via Massimo

After much agonizing he went for it and hilarity ensued. There was a collective gasp as he fell but don’t worry, he landed on his feet and walked away unscathed, perhaps with just a bruised ego. I imagine him thinking, I hope no one saw that. Oh kitty, I got it all on camera.

We hope it was a learning experience for the cub. The same photograph also won Hadley the Alex Walker’s Serian Creatures of the Land Award. Hadley also won the Affinity Photo 2 People's Choice Award with this image entitled 'Talk to the Fin.'



You can see all the award winners and highly commended photos, too, in this year's winner's gallery.

People had plenty to worry about in 1929, like the Wall Street crash that ushered in the Great Depression and the difficulty of getting a drink. On top of that, people who owned parrots started dying. When word got out, people were very concerned, and even started abandoning or killing their parrots, which were a very popular pet at the time. The culprit was psittacosis, which scientists knew very little about at the time, and had no cure.

The news media had a field day with the illness, first stoking panic, then pulling back to say the disease was overblown, then stoking panic again. Scientists worked overtime, and research into parrot fever led to the establishment of the National Institute of Health. Cracked tells the tale of parrot fever and the 1929 panic over the disease, strangely, in a series of pictofacts images.  

The theme music to this classic television series, which aired between 1966 and 1973 is compelling and immediately recognizable. When Argentinian composer Lalo Schifrin wrote it for the series, NPR reports, it was an instant hit. That is endured into the modern film series, which has reworked the theme but found it irreplaceable.

In this remix, musician Jamie Dupuis uses a guitar and a banjo to perform the theme.

Although the banjo is traditionally associated with bluegrass music, it's appropriate for so many other pieces, such as "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Eine Kleine Natchmusik" and "Flight of the Bumblebee."

-via Born in Space