Two million years ago, the area of France that became Le Puy-en-Velay was a huge lake with a volcano. As molten rock rose through the volcano, it cooled, shattered, collapsed, fused, grew, and became a volcanic plug. Over time, the volcano eroded away and the lake dried, leaving the volcanic plug looming above the town of Le Puy. 

In 951 AD, Bishop Godescalc wanted to celebrate his return from a pilgrimage by building a shrine atop the plug. At the same time, Local cathedral dean Truannas also wanted a chapel up there, in gratitude that the village survived a plague. Together, they oversaw the beginnings of Saint Michel d'Aiguilhe, or St. Michael of the Needle. The only way to get to the chapel is by climbing 268 stairs, yet plenty of people do it. It's no wonder they added living quarters for the serving priest. Read about Saint Michel d'Aiguilhe and see plenty of pictures at Kuriositas. 

(Image credit: PMRMaeyaert) 

A couple of other platforms I use (not Neatorama) are always asking me to use AI to write a blog post. That seems infinitely silly because if I typed up what I wanted it to write, the post is therefore written. That's understandable because I am a blogger. But social media and even my email service wants me to use AI, and I just don't wanna. I know how to write a letter to communicate. Ryan George explains what could go wrong, and it's a lot. 

No, I don't like artificial intelligence, and I don't like reading what AI has written. However, there are some uses for AI writing that may actually be helpful. A relative in the medical field has some AI program translate her notes into a report that a client can understand. Sure, she could write it herself; she's quite literate, but AI saves her time. Still, she reads the finished product for accuracy before sharing it.   

Through much of human history, men have been confounded by women. Men were (are often are still) seen as the default, and women as an inscrutable variant. So if something were wrong, or even just different about women, it must have something to do with their uterus. The word "hysteria" came from the Greek word for womb, hystera, and the malady called hysteria meant a uterus that moved about in the body, wreaking havoc on the other organs. 

Doctors knew so much about hysteria that they put on public demonstrations of women displaying it with fainting and seizures, and came up with all sorts of remedies. Later on it was dubbed a mental illness, and became a catch-all diagnosis for women who experienced pain or "inappropriate" emotions. However, the symptoms of hysteria are easily explained by either real physical ailments men rarely suffered, society's unrealistic expectations for women's behavior, or a mental illness that would be likely be further explored in a man. Read the history of hysteria at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: André Brouillet) 

On April 6, 1917, the United States entered the Great War with a very small army and limited equipment. How would the Yank endure and ultimately prevail over the challenges of Twentieth Century warfare?

Helmets were in common use among the soldiers of the different nations. Different designs were considered, including the Model Number 8, pictured above. This was built by the Ford Motor Company and designed by Bashford Dean.

Dean's career began in zoology, but his interest eventually focused on historical armor. At the time that the US entered the war, he was the Curator of Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dean accepted a commission as a major in the Army and set about designing, from his historical knowledge, helmets for American soldiers. They included this model inspired by Fifteenth Century Italian armor.

It did not see widespread use.

-via Jalopnik

Etsy seller GremlynRugs (content warning: artistic nudity) makes tufted rugs that you could walk on or hang decoratively. But please don't actually eat them! This piece looks like a grilled cheese sandwich cut and then stretched apart with cheesy goodness overflowing the edges. But it's all fabric.

-via The Awesomer

Would you like to login to this online interface? We'll just need for you to download an app, create a new account with a highly complex password, submit a DNA sample, and participate in a retinal scan.

Actor and comedian Russell Parry illustrates the ordeals of passing online scrutiny to verify our identities.

Content warning: foul language.

Funniest thing happened at Comic Con today. I was walking around as Deadpool (per usual) and a Foggy Nelson cosplayer with a She-Hulk tap me on the shoulder to serve me these papers.

I love it LOL pic.twitter.com/vCj5Z3TAuD

The Emerald City Comic Con is currently underway in Seattle. X user @justpids is cosplaying as Deadpool. He's now facing consequences for his crimes with the assistance of Jennifer Walters--the main character from She-Hulk: Attorney at Law--in her professional capacity. Wade has been summoned to appear before a US District Court to answer for first-degree murder and breaking the fourth wall.

This is a very good thought experiment. Who are the five authors that most 20th c writers have read but most 21st c writers have not?

What about 19th c writers? https://t.co/s2ttoUJBrN

Some works of literature are considered essential reading or even classics in the past, but cease to be popular or highly regarded and thus fade from the Burkean parlor of inter-generational discussion.

For example, as we noted in the past, Herman Wouk's 1951 novel The Caine Mutiny was lauded as great literature at the time of its release and was required reading for many colleges, but is no longer a book that one could assume that most people have read.

X user T. Greer poses an interesting question: which Nineteenth Century works were essential foci of public discourse, but have since faded away from it?

My immediate answer is Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay, which was among the most widely read works of Victorian literature (as a child, Winston Churchill memorized it). But contemporary critics, including Matthew Arnold, disparaged it as trash. Arnold's perspective is apparently confirmed by its absence from literary discussion in subsequent times.

An important part of most marriage vows is the limiting phrase "'til death do us part." That wouldn't be applicable at all when you marry someone who is already dead. In France, that was made legally possible in 1959. The case that changed the law was a disaster in Fréjus in which André Capra was killed and his fiancé Irene Jodart was not. Jodart was pregnant, and the press raised a lot of sympathy for her. President DeGaulle got involved, and new law was enacted to allow her child to be classified as legitimate. 

Once the law was passed as a kindness to Jodart, the floodgates were opened and others filed for marriage to someone who was already dead, creating a new class of instant widows. The reasons ranged from the understandable to the bizarre, and not every case was accepted. Read about the French posthumous marriage law at Weird Universe. -via Nag on the Lake 

How do you woo a woman? My advice: find a pretty stone that suits the tastes of your preferred companion, place the stone in your mouth, then deliver it to her nest.

Trust me, bros. It works.

This is how male gentoo penguins at the Edinburgh Zoo impress female penguins. About a hundred of these creatures live there and the mating season is upon us. To assist the penguins in their romantic ambitions, children painted stones and presented them to the males, who picked through the pile in search of the perfect rocks that will win the hearts of their beloved companions.

A handheld rocket launcher is bad enough, so how about one that carries three rockets at a time? The YouTuber called Current Concept has a 3D printer and plenty of time, so that seemed like a challenge- the kind that will get you a knock on the door from some government agency. Still, he started out knowing nothing about rockets, so the main part of the story is figuring out how his rockets failed so hilariously. And they failed in every kind of way. 

The next challenge was to design the revolver, which he skips through quickly. Maybe it's because he didn't want anyone to try this at home for national security reasons, but I believe it's because it wasn't quite as funny as the rockets. The rocket revolver finally worked! And you'll be glad to hear that the only one injured was himself. 

There's a sponsor message from 4:28 to 5:13. -via Born in Space 

Did you grow up watching CHiPs?

For many people, it was their first introduction to motorcycle officers. While the show was entertainment, it inspired plenty of riders who eventually chose a career in law enforcement.

Our Motor Unit is a valuable part of the Orange County… pic.twitter.com/5K1Fx2yRQF

CHiPs, which stands for California Highway Patrol, was an hour-long television series that aired from 1977 to 1983. The Orange County Sheriff's Office recently created a shot-for shot remake of its iconic introduction showing two of their officers in the place of Jon and Ponch.

-via Direto da América

In January of 1934, John Dillinger was arrested in Arizona and extradited to Indiana, where he was lodged ion the Lake County Jail at Crown Point. The jail had a reputation as being extraordinarily secure. Another notable fact was that Lake County, which operated the jail, had a woman sheriff, which was quite rare at the time. Extra personnel were assigned to Dillinger. A few weeks later, he made his escape.  

Dillinger pressed a gun into the back of a trustee, who became his hostage. Dillinger then locked the guards in a cell and took possession of their machine guns, and escaped in the sheriff's car. Dillinger was on the loose for 141 days before he was killed by federal agents outside a movie theater in Chicago. So how did he pull of the jailbreak? The "gun" he initially used turned out to be carved from wood, but we don't know if Dillinger made it himself. He had to have help, at least with arranging for the sheriff's car to be available. There were plenty of suspects, but no one was ever convicted of helping in the escape. Read what we know about Dillinger's jailbreak at Utterly Amusing. 

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

This creek in a New Jersey forest has concrete walls on both sides that extend for miles. People on both sides noticed a fawn that had fallen in, and wasn't able to scale the wall to get back out. He was pretty small, and was injured besides. Local people kept returning to the site to see if he was still there, and that went on for two weeks. It became clear he wasn't going to get out on his own, so they called The Last Resort Wildlife Refuge. Nancy Warner responded and took stock of the situation. This would require some work. A carpenter and crew built a custom set of stairs for the deer! A bit of time and some deer chow, and the stairs did their work. The two weeks the deer spent by himself in the ravine were recovery time for the injury, and now he is free to find his family. 

How long does it take for you to poop? How does that compare with other people and species?

According to a recent study on the fluid dynamics of poop reported on by PBS News, mammals spend an average of 12 seconds (plus or minus 7) performing excretion. From cats to bears to humans to elephants, 12 seconds is about all the time that you need.

That said, the distribution of pooping speeds is not uniform. In general, larger animals tend to pass droppings faster. Elephants, for example, poop at about 6 centimeters each second. For humans, the speed of poop is about 2 centimeters per second.

I for one do not care for my species to be known as sluggish. We're the dominant species on this planet and it's time that we act like it.

-via Kottke | Photo: Mark Buckawiki