The Soviets were really big on proving they were the best at everything, whether it was science, nuclear weapons, the space race, or Olympic competition. That probably had something to do with why they decided to dig the deepest manmade hole on earth. Oh, there were plenty of scientific research reasons, but the expense involved leads us to believe it was mainly another superlative they could brag about.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole is more than seven miles deep, or 12,262 meters, to be exact. The Soviets kept digging for 19 years, from 1970 to 1989. You may think, well, there's your answer for why they stopped digging, because the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 after a couple of years of really tense internal struggles. But the project had other problems, too, that had to do with the earth and what's going on seven miles down there. Half as Interesting explains the project in a little over seven minutes; the rest of the video is an ad. -via Digg
It turns out that they sell edible Crocs in Japan
— 𝕏 Ali Al Samahi 𝕏 (@alsamahi) October 14, 2024
These are waffles with various fillings added inside. pic.twitter.com/pW83mh5U9g
Foodbeast is calling these confections "edible crocs," but I think that appellation is insufficient. Any croc is edible if you put forward sufficient effort. The essential difference is that people enjoy eating these pastries, which are shaped like the futuristic but stupid footwear and are about the size of a child's shoe.
You can find your own at a bakery in Ōkubo, which is a Korean immigrant neighborhood of Tokyo. There are red bean paste, chocolate, and cheese fillings available.
-via Massimo
The German military developed the first weapons of mass destruction during World War I when they unleashed poison gas on the Allies, mostly chlorine and bromine, which are heavier than air and combine to form toxic acid. The Allies then developed their own chemical weapons and gas masks for defense. But the underfunded Russian army had no gas masks. In 1915, when the Germans attacked a Russian unit at Osowiec Fortress, which is in what is now Poland, the Russians had no defense. They did the best they could, soaking rags and bandages in their own urine and wrapping them around their faces. But the deadly gas caused them to cough up blood. What was amazing is that these men fought on. Thought to be already dead, they leapt from their bunkers wrapped up like mummies covered in blood. The Germans saw them as ghosts or zombies and fled in terror. That battle at Osowiec Fortress became known as the Attack of the Dead Men.
The story is often told as a horror tale by painting a picture of the dying Russians scaring the wits out of the German army, but the bigger horror story is the advent of chemical weapons. Read more about the use of poison gas during World War I at Creative History. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Library of Congress)
This image floating around the internet addresses the common trolley problem of ethics, which was invented by philosopher Philippa Foot. Do you throw the switch and kill one person or do nothing and allow five people to be killed?
In the past, we've examined absurd variations of this thought experiment, the the actual practice of railroad engineers who have to deal with the problem on a regular basis, and a solution developed by a 2-year old.
This variation, which is floating around the internet, imagines two scenarios: one in which the train kills an infinite number of people tied to the track and the other in which it continuously kills a finite number of continuously reincarnating people.
Which option do you choose?
-via Red Sun
XVIII century elevator table, allowing hosts and guests to dine without the presence of servants in St. Petersburg, Russia.pic.twitter.com/7ZwHnNCmK5
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 14, 2024
One of the challenges of aristocratic life in Eighteenth Century Russia was the ongoing proletarian nature of the servants who made life comfortable. I mean, the lower classes are occasionally useful, but you don't want them actually around, right?
The Hermitage Pavilion in the Peterhof Palace complex in St. Petersburg displays a solution to this problem. Russia Travel Blog shares photos and a video of a technically complex table with built-in elevators to raise food from a lower floor directly into the table itself on the upper floor. Servants could move individual place settings as needed.
A few years ago, redditor /u/whalecat_of_the_sea made these Rice Krispie treats with a wonderfully morbid ambiance. The "roadkill patties" look like they might be freshly scooped from the highway and then ground up, but there's no meat present. The artist used actual butcher trays, so they really look authentic meats from the local grocery store.
The labels, which include "Beef? Mince" and "Gerbil Mince" are a hoot, too. Perhaps we should make them for Christmas morning, too, and call them reindeer meat.
-via I Like Food
Conkers is a traditional British game that uses conkers--the fruits of a horse chestnut tree. They're inedible by humans, so Britons instead drill holes through them and attached a cord. Two players square off against each other, slamming their nuts together until the conker of one player ruptures.
The Associated Press reports that David Jakins may not have played fairly. Alastair Johnson-Ferguson complained that his nut disintegrated after a single blow by Jakins. He accuses the champion of using a steel prosthetic nut instead of a real one. Organizers found a steel nut in one of Jakins' pockets, but Jakins insists that he competed honestly.
Last year, Valkyrie Historical Auctions, a seller of World War II memorabilia, offered a copy of this paper pamphlet attributed to the occupied Netherlands during World War II. The Dutch inscription says, "Where is the fifth pig?" over images of four stocky pigs.
Fold the paper correctly according to the instructions and a fleshy Adolf Hitler appears.
-via Futility Closet | Photos: Alf van Beem
Irvine Kaye was an American businessman who created novel amusements from the 1960s until 1981, such as arcade games, luxury pool tables, and foosball games. A fan site devoted to his work describes an innovative pool table that was shaped like an ellipse and had a pocket off the center. Playing on the table requires thoughtful math work to calculate angles.
A few of Kaye's Ringo tables, as he named them, survive to this day. At 56 inches across, each unit sold for $225. Among Kaye's customers was the US Army, which purchased three for a hospital in Japan. As Ringo tables were smaller than standard pool tables, they were able to fit into the confines of therapy wards in hospital facilities.
-via Weird Universe
Bill Bailey is a British musical comedian who mixes up famous works of music so that they are recognizable, but sometimes unsettlingly different. In the past, we've seen his video switching minor and major keys. This video, recorded 3 years ago, features Bailey playing with the iconic Doctor Who theme.
Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire created the original version in 1963. It's electric, synthetic, and futuristic. Grainer suggests, though, that the music works well as a jazz composition. He knows enough about jazz to identify it as, specifically, Belgian.
I remember just enough high school French to get a gist of the lyrics, which glorify the heroism of the Doctor and the menace of the Daleks.
-via Thompson
Taco Bell has built quite a large business on the premise of combining the same five ingredients into a wide variety of food items in different shapes and sizes, with a wide price range. Staying open through the wee hours helped a lot, too. They've not been as successful with their quirky advertising campaigns, though. The biggest and most memorable was the Taco Bell chihuahua that was everywhere in the late 1990s. The dog was cute, the scenarios were funny, and you saw those ads every time you turned a TV on. The chihuahua image was made into plush dolls and graced t-shirts. Then suddenly, the ads with the chihuahua were gone, and no one really noticed because, well, it was advertising after all. Weird History Food explains where the chihuahua came from, how he (or actually, she) became a sensation, and why the dog disappeared so quickly. Spoiler: no, it wasn't because the dog died.
Last month, we marveled at the video winners of the Small World in Motion competition, and today the winners of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography competition have been announced for 2024. The image above, by Dr. Bruno Cisterna and Dr. Eric Vitriol of the Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, won first place. It shows differentiated mouse brain tumor cells magnified 100 times. Dr. Cisterna is leading a team studying how disruptions in the brain structures known as microtubules can lead to neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's and ALS. He spent three months perfecting the staining process so that the images they worked with would clearly show the brain structures.
The competition began in 1975, which means this year is the 50th edition of the photomicrography awards. Dr. Marcel Clemens came in second for an image of an electrical arc between a pin and a wire at 10,000 volts. The third place image, shown above, was captured by Chris Romaine. It is a cannabis plant magnified 20 times, showing its trichomes and cannabinoid vesicles. You can see the top twenty winners in this gallery. Also see the honorable mentions and images of distinction. Who knew that slime molds, disease cells, pregnant fleas, pollen, and intestines could be so beautiful!
A 19-year-old man was staying with his 15-year-old sister while their parents were on an overseas trip. His sister started her period and was bleeding excessively. She wanted to go to the emergency room, but he was unsure whether it was needed or just teenage drama, so he turned to reddit for advice, specifically the subreddit AskDocs. The doctors there urged him to take her to a hospital, and he did, while posting updates through the entire adventure. The community became totally invested in the story. OP (original poster) doesn't know much about women's bodies, but he cares about his sister, who's a feisty young woman.
The sister got the care she needed, and then everyone could acknowledge how hilarious OP's updates were. Trying to imagine what his mother would do, he packed sunscreen for the hospital, a detail he will never live down. Somewhere along the line, someone suggested he call their parents, which he did not think of on his own. The story played out over several days, and escaped the subreddit to enthrall greater reddit. You can read the essential points in this recap, and then you may want to check out the original post with replies. The upshot is that OP did what he had to do even though he didn't know what he was doing, and the whole family is loving, supportive, and oh-so funny. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Kai Hendry)
During the first half of the 20th century, many psychiatric disturbances were treated by cutting into the brain. A lobotomy is the procedure of cutting the connection between the frontal cortex and the thalamus, leading to calmer behavior but also a loss of personality and agency, and often left the patient with severe impairment. We've posted the history of such surgery, and a few horror stories. But why were doctors so keen on cutting the connections in people's brains? This video from Life Noggin explains that it was more of a societal problem than concern about the individual patient. Lobotomies made psychiatric patients easier to deal with. As bad as that seems, the conditions that led to lobotomies during the surgery's heyday make us cringe in the 21st century. They couldn't execute troublesome and inconvenient people, so they just cut their brains to make them into more convenient people. Some parts of our history truly resemble dystopian science fiction horror stories. -via Laughing Squid
You may have heard a local story of someone encountering an unknown child, or a group of children, seemingly lost or in need. They wear clothes that are somewhat out of style, or even of a different era. When you get a good look at them, they have black eyes. Not just pupils or irises, but the sclera, too -totally black eyes. They might talk to you in an eerie monotone voice. No matter how needy or fearful they seem, don't let them get in your car or in your home, because bad things will happen.
This is no ancient tale, but stories that contemporary people tell in their own experiences, going back about 30 years. And they come from all parts of the country. The exact details may vary slightly, and you have read these stories online and you have certainly seen such children in movies. But what does it mean? Read about the modern legend of the black-eyed children and what it means at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Megamoto85)
