The U.S. Naval Institute posted on X that, in earlier days, ship flagbags sometimes contained a pennant that would express frustration and/or confusion at other vessels. I traced the origin story down to Vice Admiral Milton E. Miles, who described the pennant in his book A Different Kind of War: The Little-Known Story of the Combined Guerrilla Forces Created in China by the U.S. Navy and the Chinese During World War II.

In 1934, Miles was captain of USS Wickes, a destroyer then responsible for being the rearmost ship while in a formation operating off the coast of China. He thus had the opportunity to witness blundering movements of other vessels and wished to communicate his distress. His wife suggested the above design which he then had made and later transferred with him.

Miles had amusing pre-war interactions with a Japanese admiral over the pennant which later led to questions directed to him in Washington, D.C. You can read his story here.

Jim Steinman's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as sung by Bonnie Tyler is one of the most iconic pop songs of the 80s. It is a mournful ballad about broken love. So it is fitting that a modern version is performed on rubber chickens.

Our musician is Lord Vinheteiro, a Brazilian master of several instruments, including the piano. He's not, though, actually a nobleman--Brazil hasn't recognized peerages since 1889. Lord Vinheteiro is just his stage name.

We love his work here at Neatorama and are pleased to see him expand his repertoire to include this revered orchestral instrument. Watch as he uses ever smaller chickens to move your heart.

-via Laughing Squid

Only a few decades ago, a limousine with a personal driver was a sign of great affluence. Now their status as a socioeconomic signal has greatly diminished. Why? Emily Stewart, a writer for Business Insider, explains.

Limousines began as large, horse-drawn carriages. When cars became more common in the West, some automakers produced extended sedans for wealthy buyers. In later years, limos became symbols of extravagance as builders tried to outdo each other by making their cars longer and equipped with more amenities.

Stewart concludes that limousines fell into decline after the 2008 financial crisis when being conspicuous about one's consumption became gauche. Now limousines have been replaced by large SUVs--to the extent that people would choose limousines over Uber and Lyft.

-via Jalopnik

In 2020 when it was hard to find toilet paper in stores, bidets became all the rage in private homes in the US. That wouldn't be possible without the technology that allows the device to be attached to an existing toilet. For hundreds of years, a bidet was something that Americans didn't use, and rarely spoke of, to the point that many people had never encountered one and did not know what they were used for, or how. Bidets were around in Europe long before plumbing was available, although they were only purchased by the upper class and sex workers. Once running water became common, bidets spread through the continent and other parts of the world. By then, Americans had either forgotten them, or considered bidets too foreign or too low class, due to their association with prostitutes.

Eventually, the US got indoor plumbing, but rarely installed bidets. Consider the above picture, from a 1912 ad for bathroom fixtures. We have a shower, sink, bathtub, what looks to be a sitz bath, and a foot-washing sink. You could clean a half-dozen children in there at once! But the toilet is in a separate alcove, with no bidet in sight. The manufacturer obviously thought of everything but a bidet. Or else they didn't think Americans would buy one, even as they tried to sell permanent sitz baths.

At any rate, the preceding paragraph is a departure from the actual history of the bidet, which you can read at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Top image credit: Antekbojar)

Normally, when someone wants to make an animated sequence these days, they just use computer software made for that purpose. If you want to go old school, you can draw individual frames, and people will be amazed at your persistence. Duncan McCabe took a much more difficult route, literally, to make a 24-second cartoon of a dancing figure.

Strava is a geolocation service that tracks where you've been on a map. The app is used by runners, hikers, cyclists, and even pilots to see their routes. Just making a recognizable shape is an accomplishment. McCabe planned his running to produce this cartoon figure, and changed it to make the figure dance. He selected maps from sequential runs he made from January to October of this year to produce a flipbook-style animation. Each run was about 10 kilometers, and took around an hour. Not the simplest way to dance, but the end result is pretty cool! In case you are wondering, yes, Strava has contacted McCabe about using the video. -via Born in Space 

Have you ever considered what a wide and varied pantheon of Christmas characters we have today? Look around your neighborhood and you'll see inflatables depicting Santa Claus, the Grinch, Charlie Brown, Nutcrackers, Elf on the Shelf, Scrooge, Rudolph, participants in the Nativity. Our customs have expanded, too, from Christmas trees to Advent calendars to snow globes to Christmas cards and another turkey dinner. Many of these traditions are newer than you might think, and many of them came about in the 19th century because of one person.

For example, many people are under the impression that Queen Victoria erected the first Christmas tree in England and started the custom. Christmas trees were a thing long before in Germany, and it was actually a different queen who brought it to England. Queen Charlotte, previously the German princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz before she married  King George III, who put up the first Christmas tree in Buckingham Palace in 1800. However, such a tree was only seen by the British aristocracy until Victoria made it all the rage when engravings of the family's 1848 Christmas tree were published.

Read about nine people who single-handedly brought us new Christmas customs that have become traditions at Mental Floss.

People who saw Violet and Daisy Hilton in a sideshow or performing on the vaudeville stage saw two smiling and well-groomed young ladies performing musical numbers. Their draw was that they were conjoined twins connected at the pelvis. What audiences did not see was the kind of lives the Hilton Sisters led.

Born in 1908 in Brighton, England, the twins' mother sold them to her employer, bar owner Mary Hilton, who saw the opportunity to make money off the sisters. She exhibited them in her bar, then at fairs and circuses. When the paying customers were gone, the girls were kept under wraps and treated as objects. When Hilton died, the "ownership" of Violet and Daisy was transferred to her daughter Edith and son-in-law Myer Myers. The couple toured with the twins, making thousands of dollars a week, while Violet and Daisy didn't see a penny, nor were they educated beyond what was necessary for their performances. When they finally broke free of the Myers, they were 23 years old and totally naive about directing their own lives and finances. That left them vulnerable to further exploitation, and as adults, they became fodder for tabloid gossip about their sex lives. Read the lucrative but tragic tale of Violet and Daisy Hilton, 1908-1969. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Progress Studio New York)

See also: Chained for Life, a feature film starring the Hilton Sisters.

In case you are avoiding the crowds at the Black Friday sales, sit back and learn something about how this Christmas shopping madness got started. Everyone knows the name Macy's because of the Thanksgiving Day parade, and from the movie Miracle on 34th Street. In fact, Macy's invented the concept of the "Christmas shopping season" by staging the annual parade. But that is far from the only retail innovation Macy's brought us.

These innovations included fixed pricing, pay as you buy, pricing in non-round numbers, Christmas window displays, and having Santa Claus right there in the store. Innovative and relentless promotion caused Macy's flagship store to grow to two million feet! That was 100 years ago; it's back down to a million now. Macy's bought up stores outside of New York that benefited from the name, peaking at around 850 stores in 2018. Since then, Macy's has cut back due to the decline of malls, but the brand is still synonymous with the heyday of department store shopping. -via Laughing Squid

It's a rather common practice for kindergarten teachers to ask students how to make Thanksgiving dishes. Chris Duffy has a friend who teaches a kindergarten class, and asks her students to collaborate on recipes. Then she prints up the recipes in book form every year. The above is the 2024 class recipe for stuffing/dressing. I'm not sure how much 200 meters of honey is, but I suppose it compliments the toppings.

Duffy also posted the recipes for turkey (which includes a decorative tent made of turkey bones), cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie at Threads. Other teachers and parents contributed recipes they saved from similar assignments over the years. -via Kottke

Happy Thanksgiving, everyturkey. Stay safe out there. Cartoonist Tyson Cole reminds us that the humans are on the hunt this day. It's like a Purge. So stay inside, lock your doors, and keep your mind clear of the horror films that you watched.

Norfolk Island is a community of about two thousand people in the south Pacific Ocean that are governed by Australia. They have a unique heritage with much of the population descended from the mutineers of HMS Bounty. The island is a mixture of Tahitian, English, Australian, and mutineer cultures.

There's even an American element. During the Nineteenth Century, American whalers frequently visited Norfolk. When an islander became the American consul, he decided to put on an American Thanksgiving Day celebration.

The practice stuck, although Gastro Obscura explains, the Norfolk approach has a local flavor. Churches are decorated with corn. There are pumpkin pies, but there are also coconut pies. Tahitian fish salads and many banana dishes appear at the feasting table. Norfolk is almost self-sufficient agriculturally and the Thanksgiving Day menu proves it.

It had never occurred to me that one could use a Bundt pan to prepare yeast breads. But it makes sense. Bluesky user Neven Mrgan is a genius! A ring sandwich continues indefinitely with no end until you bite into it. And you don't have to think too much about which part to bite into first because they are identical.

Question: could one prepare a sandwich in the shape of a Möbius strip? If so, how?

-via Super Punch

Anyone who has followed the development of artificial sweeteners knows the story is often the same. We go from "this is the greatest thing ever" to "this causes cancer" to "it only causes cancer in rats if they eat tons of it" to "this is not good for you for plenty of other reasons." This story isn't about artificial sweeteners, but it does evoke the confusion over food safety studies, regulations, and recommendations that swing from one extreme to another.

On November 9, 1959, the US government announced that some Pacific Northwest cranberries "may have been contaminated by a weed killer that could lead to cancer in rats." This was something the public wasn't used to hearing, as it was based on a new food safety law that has since been modified. Today, we would justify eating those cranberries by 1. reading the science studies, 2. checking where they were grown, 3. washing them, and/or 4. reminding ourselves that we only eat cranberries once a year. But in 1959, people were genuinely afraid. Cranberry producers across the country were upset because Thanksgiving sales would make or break their year. Politicians tried to assuage panic. But many Thanksgiving tables in 1959 just didn't have cranberry sauce. Read about the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 at History.com.  -Thanks, WTM!  

Chef Alton Brown shows us the ways we should not prepare a Thanksgiving turkey, but which may appeal to a certain portion of internet users. He calls this "Hazardous Turkey Cookery for Adrenaline Junkies." In part one, above, he addresses the dangers of deep-fryinging a turkey and how to make that adventure somewhat safer. Then he attempts to cook a turkey by electrocution, which involves attaching electrical wires directly to the bird instead of putting it into an electric oven. The results are rather implausible. But in part two, he harnesses an actual cooking method from Norway.

Yes, he really cooked a turkey with molten glass. It seems a valid cooking method until you get into the details. How do you get the turkey out of the glass? When the glass is hot, you could burn yourself or leave drops behind. If you wait until it cools, you'll have glass shards in your food. You'll be pleased to know that no one actually ate the turkey cooked in glass for those exact reasons. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Update: It has come to my attention that there is a third installment in this series. Continue reading to see it. 

It's become somewhat of a national pastime to surf Zillow listings to look at houses for sale. Some do it to dream, or to see how the other half lives, while others do it to keep up with local property values or to peek into their neighbor's homes. We occasionally post notable or (more likely) ridiculous real estate listings. Now there's a Zillow pricing game in which you can put that surfing experience to work. I think it's called Fliphaus.

You will be presented with two simplified listings. All you get is the location, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and an exterior picture. You decide from that information which home is listed at a higher price. The game only runs until you get one wrong, but it's easy to restart. Meanwhile, you will be insulted for your error or score. And if you haven't been keeping up with the enormous variation in housing markets across the US, you will be shocked at the price differences. Or who knows? You might even find your dream house for sale. -via reddit