Martha Gellhorn was a war correspondent reporting from the Spanish Civil War in 1939 when she fell in with another correspondent named Ernest Hemingway. The couple moved to Cuba and Gellhorn eventually became Hemingway's third wife. But while Hemingway expected Gellhorn to become a 1940s wife and stay home, Gellhorn continued covering conflicts in far away places. He eventually resorted to undermining her career by snagging the sole press credential from her employer to cover the D-Day invasion. Determined to be where the action is, Gellhorn talked her way onto a hospital ship and locked herself in a bathroom overnight. When she emerged, the invasion was underway.   

Amid this otherworldly chaos, no longer caring about personal or professional consequences, Gellhorn learned that her hands—any hands—were needed. The vessel she had stowed away on by chance was the first hospital ship to arrive at the battle. When landing craft pulled alongside, she fetched food and bandages, water and coffee, and helped interpret where she could. When night fell, she went ashore at Omaha Beach with a handful of doctors and medics—not as a journalist but as a stretcher bearer— flinging herself into icy surf that brimmed with corpses, following just behind the minesweepers to recover the wounded.

All night she labored, with blisters on her hands, her mind and heart seared with images of pain and death she would never forget. Later she would learn that everyone of the hundreds of credentialed journalists, including her husband, sat poised behind her in the Channel with binoculars, never making it to shore. Hemingway’s story soon appeared in Collier’s alongside hers, with top billing and more dazzle, but the truth had already been written on the sand. There were 160,000 men on that beach and one woman. Gellhorn.

Hemingway soon met wife #4, and Gellhorn continued covering wars up to her 80s. Read the story of Martha Gellhorn's fascinating life and her relationship with Hemingway at Town and Country magazine.  -via Digg

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The logical way to divide a spinning planet into time zones would be to draw 24 latitudinal lines on the globe, leaving equal areas for each time zone. But that doesn't work for people who live with real life geography, national borders, and human nature. Countries did not adopt standard time all at once, and politics plays a big part. So we have some extra time zones that set their clocks a half-hour different from their neighbors, and some places that could use more time zones. RealLifeLore explains some of the weirder anomalies in global time. -via Digg

We are used to satellite imagery, drone photography, and of course pictures taken from airplanes. That was all pie-in-the-sky, so to speak, in 1909. Sure, people had used kites to take photographs from high above ground, but kites had their limitations. The pictures the public saw at at the 1909 Dresden International Exhibition of Photography were something else. They came about because a pigeon owner wanted to see where his birds went.  

His name was Julius Neubronner, and he had a family history of using pigeons in unconventional ways. His father, also an apothecary, received prescriptions and sent out urgent medications by pigeon. Neubronner also relied on pigeons to replenish his stocks of medications. But when a bird went missing for a month, Neubronner was curious to know where it had been. While other bird-owners might consider this thought a mere flight of fancy, an unanswerable question, Neubronner took a different view: He designed a camera, one that shot automatically, for his pigeons to wear.

The results were so good that in 1907 Neubronner filed for a patent on his pigeon-view photography. Read about Neubronner's pigeon photographers and see some of their images at Atlas Obscura.

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What could be more natural than combining professional wrestling with cosplay? They both have costumed characters that feed your fantasies with a live performance. Florida Supercon is going on this weekend at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, featuring Fantasy Super Cosplay Wrestling. A surprise entrant this year was caught on amateur video when Geoffrey the Giraffe entered the ring! Geoffrey is apparently looking for a new career since Toys R Us went out of business. Watch as he defeats Starlord and Dovahkin before he is bested by Gangrel's delivery from Amazon Prime. -via Uproxx

During World War I, the US struggled with getting food to soldiers fighting overseas. Meanwhile, there was a shortage of men to work the farms because they were busy fighting. This double whammy caused a food shortage on the home front. That's when activist women stepped in. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, founded the Woman’s Land Army of America to pick up the slack in working the farms of America.  

National and local newspapers were fascinated by the suffragettes turned farmerettes: “If you see Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the national suffrage president in a neat uniform of khaki gardening in some vacant lot near her home in New York, don’t think she has deserted suffrage for agriculture,” the Washington Times reported.

In Great Britain, the government-organized Women’s Land Army had already proved women were capable at taking over farm work during the war. In the summer of 1917, Vassar College had trouble finding male laborers for the college farm and decided to train and employ women instead, while a Women’s Agricultural Camp at Mount Kisco, New York, also sought to train women for local farming work.

All three of those efforts served as models for the Women’s Land Army of America (W.L.A.A.), founded by Chapman Catt and others that fall. At first, the plan was just to increase home farming and gardens, but soon they realized farms across the country didn’t have the laborers they needed.

Women responded, many even leaving high school to join the Woman's Land Army. They traded in their corsets for overalls and went to work on faraway farms. About 15,000 women worked farms in 21 states in 1918. Read about the Woman's Land Army at Narratively. -via The Week

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Smudge the cat had a bit of adjusting to do when the family's daughter brought home a bunny named Missy. But the feisty cat immediately adjusted his method of playing to be oh so gentle with Missy, and they became best friends. The odd couple are adorable together. And even though Missy went off to college with her human, she gets to visit Smudge often. You can see more of Missy (and Smudge) at her Instagram page.  -via Metafilter

There are some things that everyone just does, even though we've never been told to, and certainly we've never been told why. I always let people take what fries they want from my plate, because that's a lot of potatoes, and the hamburger will fill me up by itself. But if I order onion rings, suddenly everyone wants one, and there aren't that many in a serving!   



Well, of course I'm going to get nervous even though I've done nothing wrong. I'm nervous because a team of strangers is going to put me in a machine to see what my body looks like under my clothes, or else they will grope me. Or like the last time I went through security, both. (My teenage daughter got neither, because that would be "wrong.") However, there are a couple of "unwritten rules" in this list that you WISH people would follow.



See the rest of the 19 unwritten rules that everyone seems to follow in the latest pictofacts list at Cracked.

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Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were immediate friends when they met in 1907. They had plenty to talk about, as they were both groundbreaking psychoanalysts in their time. Their intense relationship was doomed to burn out eventually, the ostensible reason being their divergent philosophies about what influences the mind. Or maybe they were just tired of listening to each other. -via Everlasting Blort 

Social class in England during the Victorian era had much less to do with wealth than with your assigned station at birth -upward mobility was as rare as hen's teeth. Sophia Jarvis was a working class orphan who was sent to a workhouse and later an industrial school to learn the skills of a servant. Mrs. Mary Langton Thomas enjoyed a middle class life as the wife of a banker, although when he died she was left with nine children and a lower income. She could only afford one servant, Sophia Jarvis, from the industrial school. Jarvis did all the housework for the family of ten plus a lodger, for which she received the equivalent of £6 a week in modern money, a windowless attic room, and what food she was allowed to eat ...which became less and less over time. Mrs. Thomas accused Jarvis of theft, and punished her by withholding food, beating, and pouring water over her in the cold outdoors. Jarvis escaped to her former school, and later pressed charges against Thomas, which was quite unusual for the time. However, there was evidence backed up by the doctor who treated Jarvis after her escape.

Sophia, brought up since infancy in the care of the parish authorities of St George the Martyr, cut a sorry figure.  She had been accused of stealing forty stamps, two sacks of potatoes, cake, a 2lb lump of sugar, port and sherry—although her mistress admitted that she had not been able to smell alcohol on the girl.  Strangely, there was no suggestion that any of the Thomas children, or the lodger, might possibly have helped themselves.  After Mr Cockerel’s visit she was beaten almost daily with a stick, a rolling pin or a fishing rod, and had not been allowed to leave the house unless accompanying one of the children to church.

Not only had Sophia been physically abused, but Mrs Thomas had only given her a month’s pay in all the time she had worked there.  The rest of the money was kept to pay for the clothes she needed for her job.

The description of her physical state is distressing.  Dr Broad, the medical attendant to the Industrial School, described her emaciated condition, her sunken face and swollen fingers, her nails black with dried blood, her bruised back and elbows.  When he saw her on 20th December, her right eye had been black, and she had a wound on her head.  This was backed up by Thomas Evans, the police doctor.

Mrs. Thomas had the backing of prominent character witnesses, while Jarvis was a nobody. Who would the jury believe? Read the story of Sophia Jarvis and her quest for justice at London Overlooked.       
 -via Strange Company

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You're flying home, and you need a ride from the airport. Your family assures you they will be there to pick you up. But you don't know what they're going to do to stand out in a crowd so you will see them.

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I have two daughters coming in from different countries in the next couple of weeks. I may have to arrange something really embarrassing for the pickups.

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These are a few from a mega-list at Bored Panda that go beyond greetings and encompass more than 100  weird things photographed at airports.

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You loved Gary Larson's comic The Far Side, like we all did, where we learned about Thagomizers, Anatidaephobia, and that tramp Jane Goodall. But do you actually know anything about Larsen, the man? His life outside of The Far Side has been pretty interesting. He plays the banjo, and almost had a career in jazz (go figure). He keeps exotic animals. And there's more, all in this video from Today I Found Out.

Redditor zoggy90 has been drawing on walls and doors, but it's his house, not his parents' home. He's filling the side of the closet with "little spirits." Above is the first one, which he has now expanded upon.

These are pencil drawings, which will totally freak out the next owner of the house, whenever that will be. meanwhile, there should be some way he can sell these without having to draw on other people's homes. -via reddit

Full-color x-ray images sound too cool to be real, although seeing one can also give you the creeps. This is an ankle. The white is bone, the red is muscles, and the yellow is the cushioning under your heel. That's a real, live person's insides you're seeing! You can also see this ankle from all angles, and even in slices. The new technology from New Zealand company MARS Bioimaging is based on a scanning method developed at CERN.   

The MARS scanner uses a family of chips called Medipix, originally developed to track particles at the Large Hadron Collider. Medipix works like your camera — when the electronic shutter is open, each individual particle is detected and counted, creating high-res, accurate, noise-free images.

When used with the Butlers' MARS scanner and its software, the chips help to produce highly accurate, striking, three-dimensional color renderings of the human body that distinguish materials like metal, bone, soft tissue, and fat with different tones.

The x-rays are expected to go into clinical trials in the next few months. Read more about it and see videos at Mashable.

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The first contribution I ever made to Neatorama was a blurb that mentioned Floyd Collins. Collins was a native of western Kentucky, an area known for its many caves, most notably Mammoth Cave. Long before it became a national park, Collins had walked -and crawled- many miles through Mammoth, Crystal, and Sand Caves, among others. He eventually became known as the greatest cave explorer ever. In 1925, Collins became the subject of a rescue attempt when a cave-in brought down rocks that trapped Floyd Collins' lower body, deep in Sand Cave. He spent more than a day alone underground before his brother Homer was able to reach him. But getting him out would be a particularly difficult task. The passage that led to him was so narrow that men could only crawl headfirst, and then had to wiggle out backward.     

Worse yet, Collins blocked his own rescue. Pinched from the chest down, his hands and feet were out of view. Homer called up to have some food brought into the cave and fed his brother by hand, pouring a pint of coffee down his throat and bringing nine sausage sandwiches to his lips. Immediately, he began trying to remove the loose rocks clamped around Collins’s body, but new rocks tumbled to take their place.

Homer emerged hours later shivering violently, skin dangling from his fingers. As he recuperated near the cave's mouth, dozens more men attempted to navigate Sand Cave. All failed. Nobody would reach Collins until Homer re-entered at midnight.

Many others tried, and for more than two weeks experts across the country came up with ideas for rescuing Collins. Newspapers nationwide carried constant updates, and the area around the mouth of Sand Cave became a circus. Read the story of Floyd Collins' life, his time trapped in the cave, and his legacy at Mental Floss.

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In June of 1892, Ponciano Caraballo found his 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter dead, their throats slit, at their home in Argentina. His wife's throat was also slit, but she survived to tell the tale. Or two.

Francisca, who had been married to Ponciano for four years, told the police that she and her children had been attacked by their neighbour, agricultural labourer Ramón Velázquez. He had tried to seduce her and when she’d refused, he had threatened to kill them all. She later changed her testimony and stated that Velázquez had been attempting to take her children away from her, on behalf of her husband, from whom she was estranged. Whatever the reason for the attack, Ramón Velázquez was arrested on suspicion of murder.

As was customary at the time, the police used torture to elicit a confession from the accused. Velázquez was subjected to several brutal beatings, and forced to spend a night locked in with the children’s bodies. It is also alleged that a police officer dressed up as a ghost one night to scare the prisoner into confessing. Despite the violent and intimidating interrogations, Velázquez refused to confess and professed his innocence throughout. Unsure of what to do next, the local police requested help from the force in the provincial capital, La Plata, and Inspector Eduardo Álvarez was sent to Neocochea to investigate.

As you can probably guess from that setup, and having read or watched a few murder mysteries in your time, the eyewitness account is suspicious and Velázquez was innocent. Read how investigators from La Plata, Argentina, solved the crime at Victorian Supersleuth. -via Strange Company

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It’s about time we saw a new experimental animation from Cyriak Harris. Follow along as he takes a nightmarish dive into the innards of the human body. From watching this, it becomes obvious where those weird artificial intelligence programs have been getting their ideas. But then again, if Deep Dream saw this, it would probably render something closer to reality in response. -via Metafilter

If you liked that, we’ve got plenty more of Cyriak’s videos for you to enjoy.

Have you ever wondered why Lois Lane couldn't figure out that Clark Kent was Superman? These two ladies in Las Vegas went to Harrah's to see Tape Face perform. Remember Tape Face from America's Got Talent? He was on his way to work, and the women asked him to snap a picture of them as they posed in front of a cardboard cutout of... Tape Face. He was glad to oblige. They did not recognize him without tape on his face; they just saw a guy with tattoos who spoke with a New Zealand accent. Let's hope that he revealed his identity afterward. Redditor createch, who posted this picture, didn't say whether he did or not.

Today as I was walking home after my run I saw a large lemon rolling down the hill. It kept rolling for about a quarter mile. And now you can see it, too. pic.twitter.com/dQoHi4RrXS

— Mike Sakasegawa (@sakeriver) July 11, 2018

What would you do if you saw a lemon rolling down the street? You'd take out your phone and record it, of course! Mike Sakasegawa did just that, and posted the video yesterday. You'd do that, too. But the rolling lemon has become a star. Viewers became invested in its fate, and kept rooting for the lemon to keep going.  

I was at the top of the hill when I saw it, and it was already rolling. It rolled across the street and about a quarter of the way down the hill before I thought to catch up with it and take out my phone.

— Mike Sakasegawa (@sakeriver) July 11, 2018

Just to answer a couple questions that have been asked a bunch: the lemon stopped rolling because we got to the bottom of the hill. The lemon is still intact, in my kitchen, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet.

You know what they say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade! The video has been seen 4.5 million times in less than 24 hours, and there are about 6K comments, some of them hilarious. Sakasegawa has a podcast about art and literature, yet nothing he's done has been this popular, and he's having a hard time dealing with it. The lemon, at last report, is in his backyard hanging out with an immature lemon tree. -via The Daily Dot

Do you have plans to visit a theme park during your vacation this summer? Maybe ride some thrill rides? You can prepare by watching some movies set in theme parks -if you want to scare yourself out of having fun! The danger is real in these parks, although, thank goodness, the theme parks themselves are fictional -even when they are based on real parks.

The story behind Escape From Tomorrow is full of fascinating anecdotes, but perhaps the most surprising thing about the film is that Disney chose to ignore it. After its debut at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, many critics assumed that Disney would never allow a movie depicting Disney World as evil to be released. But Disney, perhaps realizing that blocking its release would just be free publicity for the filmmakers, let Escape From Tomorrow come out in theaters unobstructed. Shot surreptitiously at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland, the film posits that the cheerful facade of smiling princesses and costumed characters Disney presents to the world is just that—a facade. The surrealistic filmmaking ensures that the exact details of how this sinister underbelly operates remain vague, but cyborgs, sex trafficking, hypnotic amulets, alternate identities, an evil corporation, and a mysterious flu that makes unsuspecting visitors cough up bloody hair balls are all wrapped up in the conspiracy.

The odds are rather small that something horrible will happen to you at a real-life theme park -unless you consider endless lines and price gouging as horrible. Read about a dozen movies where theme parks are the danger at the AV Club. See how many films you can guess before you read it.

Emilie and Ryan Matthias have cried oceans of tears over the last nine months as their 5-year-old son Garrett battled cancer. Garrett, though, never lost his sense of humor. So instead of a standard funeral, his parents are carrying out Garrett's wishes in a celebration of his life Saturday that will feature bouncy castles and an appearance by Batman. Here's just a portion of the obituary for Garrett Michael Matthias.

When I die: I am going to be a gorilla and throw poo at Daddy!

Burned or Buried: I want to be burned (like when Thor’s Mommy died) and made into a tree so I can live in it when I’m a gorilla

Big or Small Funeral: Funerals are sad: I want 5 bouncy houses (because I’m 5), Batman, and snow cones

Emilie and Ryan Matthias will honor Garrett’s final wishes by having a Celebration of Life on Saturday, July 14th from 5pm – 11pm at 2377 132nd Ct Van Meter, Iowa

Note: Symbolic Asgardian burial ceremony and fireworks will be held just after sunset

A private burial of Garrett’s ashes will be held at a later time once his parents figure out how the hell to get his ashes made into a tree and locate a nature preserve, so his tree resides in a protected area.

There's a lot more to it, well worth a read. The Matthiases constructed the obituary from things Garrett said. It will be an awesome sendoff for an awesome kid. -via Metafilter

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Remember the Russian cat Pusic? In the latest episode of Pusic being spoiled for the video audience, his humans built a cardboard maze just for him. While this construction will no doubt be a fun playhouse for the cat once he's familiar with it, the first run-through was recorded to see how well he could negotiate the twist and turns. Pusic enters the maze about about 1:10 into the video. He only finds himself in one dead end, as far as I can tell. That's a smart cat. Mine would just plop down in the middle and take a nap. -via Digg

It has never been easy to conduct archaeological digs in Alexandria, Egypt. The city founded by Alexander the Great has been continuously occupied, and now has a population of more than five million people. But in the 21st century, some amazing finds have been unearthed under the city streets, like the University of Alexandria. Just recently, in the Sidi Gaber district, a huge black granite coffin was uncovered. It has been sealed shut for 2,000 years. 

The ancient sarcophagus was found by local authorities during standard archaeological excavations conducted before the construction of a new building on Al-Karmili Street. It was found approximately 16 feet below ground. A rough alabaster bust of a man, likely a depiction of the body in the coffin, was also discovered in the tomb, which is believed to date from the era of the Ptolemies, the Greek royal family dynasty that ruled for roughly three centuries from 305 to 30 B.C.E.

According to the Ministry of Antiquities, the tomb is about 8.6 feet long and more than 5 feet wide. Mostafa Waziri, general secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, says it is the largest sarcophagus ever excavated in the city.

Who could be buried in such a substantial -and expensive- burial vault? Commenters at reddit are of the opinion that it's either Alexander the Great himself, or some unspeakable evil that will unleash a curse on the entire earth when the sarcophagus is eventually opened.

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Watch a charming combination of colorful levers, pulleys, dominos, and spring action, all powered by gravity. YouTuber Sprice Machines worked for six months to get all this to work smoothly. -via The Kid Should See This

Today is 7/11 on the American calendar, which means your local 7-Eleven store is celebrating by giving away free Slurpies from 11AM to 7PM. Australians, who write the date differently, will get their chance on November 7th. In honor of the occasion, you might want to learn some things about the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores. This was the business that invented what we call the convenience store in 1927, but the name didn't come about until 1946, as a way to advertise how late they stayed open.  

2. 7-ELEVEN'S NEW SCHEDULE WAS UNHEARD OF AT A TIME WHEN GROCERY STORES CLOSED MUCH EARLIER IN THE EVENING.

No one thought there would be demand for a store that was open 24/7—until one night in Austin in 1962. The local 7-Eleven had seen such a rush of students following a University of Texas football game that they were forced to stay open until dawn the next day. Sensing a trend, the store continued to stay open all night on the weekends, and soon more and more locations adopted the new schedule as well.

So the name meant something, but for only about 20 years. Now most 7-Elevens stay open all night. Find out more about 7-Eleven at Mental Floss.

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It's gotten to the point where plot doesn't matter when The Rock stars in your movie -all you need is action! Rampage was the movie that came out earlier this year, before Skyscraper, where The Rock saves the day by performing superhuman feats of strength and ...suspension of disbelief. Just like the other movies starring Dwayne Johnson. It was apparently based on a video game. Screen Junkies gives us a proper Honest Trailer for Rampage. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Liquid Ass is a foul-smelling spray that was launched in 2005 for pranking purposes, although it was developed many years earlier, when the inventor was a high school student. People bought it, used it, and declared the unpleasant smell was worth it for the stories they were able to tell about it. But the spray is also in demand at medical schools and teaching hospitals because of its accuracy in replicating the smell of certain medical conditions and procedures.    

That’s why Kata Conde, an assistant nursing professor at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas, started buying Liquid Ass for the simulation lab she runs for her students. It’s the only product she’s found that accurately captures the smells that come from our bowels, and she would know: she had a 30-year career as a nurse before becoming an instructor. Conde now uses Liquid Ass in teaching scenarios in which a patient has soiled themselves while trying to get out of a hospital bed, complete with chocolate icing to set the scene. It’s also good for practicing bowel surgeries, like colostomies, where surgeons divert some of the large intestine to a new hole in the abdomen.

“The smell hits you like a huge wall,” she says. “It’s something people react to when they first experience it. We see all kinds of faces.” In a real-life scenario, any kind of reaction to a stench like wrinkling or covering your nose would make a patient understandably embarrassed and uncomfortable. To successfully complete the simulation, students have to demonstrate that they’re capable of giving adequate care while maintaining professionalism.

Liquid Ass is also used by scientific labs and even the military. Read about the practical uses for the product at Quartz. -via Metafilter

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This video from College Humor contains some NSFW language.

Everyone has nodded off to too many wedding speeches, and then when they need to deliver one, they promptly forget everything they ever hated about wedding speeches. People talk too long, they tell jokes that aren't funny, they make it about themselves, and they get too tipsy before they start. If you are ever obligated to deliver a toast at a wedding, remember to keep it short. If you do that, then you won't have time for the other awful mistakes most people make. I gave a wedding speech just last week, but I lucked out in that it was on video, so I did it over and over until I was actually happy with it. Sixty seconds, sweet, and sober.

The good news is spreading that all twelve members of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach have been rescued from a flooded cave in Chiang Rai, Thailand.

Bangkok sisters Aruni Aunhawarakorn and Jantima Manasviyoungkul have been working on an illustration of the many people and entities involved in the rescue operation. They've updated their work several times, and above is the latest version. See the image full-size at Facebook. The 12 soccer players and their coach are represented by boars. Notice the last one out of the cave is larger than the others -that's the coach. The other animals are representative of:

White Elephant - Former Chiang Rai governor Narongsak Osatanakorn

White Horse - The royal family and various Thai government agencies

Red Cross Horse - Medical team and nurses

Seals - Navy SEALs

Frogs - Other divers

Duck - The geography team

Blue Lion - British rescue team

Black Yellow and Red Lion - Belgian rescue team

Red White and Blue Lion - Netherlands rescue team

Kangaroo - Australian rescue team

Panda - Chinese team

Crane - Japanese rescue team

Moose - Swedish rescue team

Tiger - Myanmar rescue team

Brown Elephant - Laos rescue team

Eagle - American rescue team

Bear - Finnish rescue team

Rooster - French rescue team

Hawk - Rescue teams from the Philippines, Germany, and the Czech Republic

Beaver - Canadian rescue team

Swan - Danish rescue team

Cobra - Israeli rescue team

Iron Man - Elon Musk

Dog - K9 teams

Swallows - A team of climbers from Libong, Thailand

Dragon - Water pumping and drilling teams

Pig - Local farmers

Birds - Reporters

One Crow - Problems and those who would sow discord

Notice one of the seals has a halo and wings. That represents former Thai Navy SEAL Saman Gunan, who died in the rescue effort. Read more about this illustration at Buzzfeed.

Star Wars fans may have thought that the "old guard," meaning characters from the original trilogy, would be completely gone from Episode IX. It was supposed to be Leia's movie, but Carrie Fisher's unexpected death in December of 2016 changed those plans. But now there's Lando Calrission. Yes, Billy Dee Williams will be reprising his role from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. 

Chatter about Williams joining the production, which is set to begin later this summer, increased in recent days when the actor bowed out of an upcoming sci-fi and pop culture convention citing a conflict with a movie schedule. Sources confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that Williams will indeed be returning to the Star Wars film franchise for the first time since 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars: Episode IX has yet to be named, but is scheduled to open December 20, 2019. -via The AV Club

The canals of Amsterdam have been winding their way through the city for 800 years. Construction of a new metro line made it necessary to clean them out, and an amazing variety of items have been dredged up from the bottom. Those items have been collected, analyzed, sorted, and put on display in a digital archaeological database.   

The associated website, book and documentary set titled Below the Surface has been years in the making. This project catalogues everything from bits of ceramic, metal and glass to fully intact artifacts. Some finds predate the city’s founding — there are medieval coins and even pieces of sharpened stone from as far back as 4,300 BCE.

“Rivers in cities are unlikely archaeological sites,” explain the organizers and curators of the project. “It is not often that a riverbed, let alone one in the middle of a city, is pumped dry and can be systematically examined. The excavations in the Amstel yielded a deluge of finds.” The resulting website is an amazing interactive museum, allowing visitors to dynamically connect various artifacts by type, material and time period.

Read about the project at 99% Invisible, and take a look through the database here. You can even use the artifact images to make your own display! -via Digg