Who says that a war has got to be fraught with blood and violence? One of the longest (and strangest) wars in history was between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly. It lasted 335 years (from 1651 to 1986) without a single shot being fired!

Photo: Isles of Scilly as taken by the crew of the International Space Station/NASA

Critics love A Star is Born, which opened this past weekend to satisfied audiences. The story of the relationship between a rising star and a alcoholic has-been is an enduring tale. The first movie titled A Star is Born came out in 1937, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. It was remade in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason, again in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and in 2018, starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. But first, there was the 1932 movie What Price Hollywood? which told the same story. A true story.

But the central partnership of What Price Hollywood?—that of the director and his newfound star—was modeled after the marriage of the silent film star Colleen Moore and John McCormick, the one-time publicity chief and later production head of First National Pictures. It was McCormick who turned Moore from the saccharine heroine of a string of forgettable pictures into the No. 1 box office star of the Jazz Age, with a Dutch bob and short shorts. (“I was the spark that lit up Flaming Youth,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once declared of the 1923 film. “Colleen Moore was the torch.”) But as Moore’s career soared, McCormick’s cratered as his binges grew worse. Moore nursed him through hospital stays and covered for him at the studio before finally divorcing him in 1930.

Each iteration of A Star is Born after that kept the basic plot, while reflecting elements of real people and adding modern touches. Read the history of A Star is Born at the Atlantic. 

A house on Woodrow Wilson Drive in Hollywood Hills has quite a history. It's been the home of Natalie Wood, Mama Cass Elliot, and Dan Aykroyd (and presumably other people not quite so famous). The house itself has a place in history because of what happened when Aykroyd moved there in the 1980s.

It didn’t take Aykroyd long to conclude that the house was haunted—something was turning on his StairMaster, playing the piano and slamming doors. Aykroyd says one night, he even felt someone, or something, crawl into bed with him—and it wasn’t his wife, actress Donna Dixon! He chalked it up to ghosts—and believes at least one of them was the spirit of the home’s former occupant Elliot, of the folk-pop group the Mamas and the Papas, who died of heart failure in 1974 at the age of 32. Instead of being unsettled by the paranormal activity, Aykroyd (who later moved out and sold the house) was inspired by it. The supernatural vibes gave him the idea to co-write (with Harold Ramis) the hit 1984 movie comedy Ghostbusters.

“I’m sure it’s Mama Cass,” the actor said in a 2003 interview. What made him so certain? Some of the disturbances were so “large” and noisy, Aykroyd noted, “you get the feeling it’s a big ghost.”

The house that inspired Ghostbusters is only one of eight places in haunted Hollywood you can read about at Parade. -via Metafilter

No, sadly it wasn't UFO.

People near Los Angeles, California, got a neat show in the night's sky, courtesy of SpaceX. The company launched the SAOCOM 1A Earth observation satellite for Argentina from the Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Image: @MayorofLA

"Corn maze designer" isn't exactly a full-time job, but somebody's gotta do it! Many farmers have discovered that opening their land up to tourists and locals for fall festivals and harvest events is a great way to raise some cash in the fall. A well-designed corn maze can be an extremely lucrative feature of their autumn. Here are some tricks experienced corn maze designers have learned.

Corn maze designers want their mazes to be challenging—but not so challenging that it cuts into a family’s pumpkin-picking time. Frantz says that one way to turn guests off a maze is to make them feel dumb. "You don’t want to make the player feel like a fool, like he was taken advantage of." One way a designer might do this is by making a dead end too long. "If you walk too far to realize it’s a dead end, that’s just mean," Frantz says.

At Golub's farm, where mazes cater to a lot of younger school kids, fairness is also important. “People who come to our place don’t want to spend two hours in a corn maze,” Golub says. “We want the [school field trips] that come here to go straight through. We don’t want them to make any wrong turns because we have time constraints.”

At the Hurd Family Farm, guests have the choice of the larger, more difficult maze or a simpler mini maze within the maze. “We have such a mixed bag of people who come to the farm,” Hurd-Dean said. “We wanted to make it easier for people.” And if for some reason guests still get lost, there are employees stationed around the maze they can call to for help.

In fact, the urge to make ever-bigger corn mazes caused a backlash in recent years. Read about that, and other secrets of corn maze design at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: jim williams)

Babies are adorable. Dogs are adorable. So what happens when we combine the two?

It's impossible to be in a bad mood after watching this video compilation of babies laughing at dogs.

Surely you've dented or crumpled an empty aluminum soda can before, but not the way Noah Deledda does it: he elevates can crushing into an artform. Literally.

Take a look at Deledda's dented aluminum can sculptures, that he made from otherwise ordinary energy drink cans by hand (well, mostly his thumbs) - without any special tools, over at his Instagram.

via Crooked Brains

Once he finished filming Avengers 4, actor Chris Evans announced that he was through with Captain America. We don't know the character's fate, but it's as good a time as any to look back on the movie version of the ultimate soldier and his character arc. -via Geeks Are Sexy

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem in 1858 entitled "Telling the Bees" about a New England custom that was dying out even then. Back when many households kept beehives for honey, wax, and pollination, the hardworking bees were considered members of the family. When a relative died, the bees must be informed and given a proper opportunity to mourn.

This practice of “telling the bees” may have its origins in Celtic mythology where the presence of a bee after a death signified the soul leaving the body, but the tradition appears to have been most prominent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the U.S. and Western Europe. The ritual involves notifying honey bees of major events in the beekeeper’s life, such as a death or marriage.

While the traditions varied from country to country, “telling the bees” always involved notifying the insects of a death in the family—so that the bees could share in the mourning. This generally entailed draping each hive with black crepe or some other “shred of black.” It was required that the sad news be delivered to each hive individually, by knocking once and then verbally relaying the tale of sorrow.

There were variations on the ritual over time and place, and folk stories that warned of the bad things that could happen if bees weren't kept current on family news. Read about the custom of telling the bees at Jstor.  -via Nag on the Lake

Miyu Kojima cleans rooms, but she's unlike any cleaner that you know.

You see, Kojima works for a company that specializes in cleaning up after kodushi or lonely deaths. In this increasingly common Japanese phenomenon, due to increased isolation and an aging population, someone had died alone - and often remaining undiscovered for a long period of time.

From Aljazeera:

At first, Miyu found the work tough. The scenes could be grotesque. Even after the body has been removed, hair and seepage from the corpse sometimes remain. The work can be physically demanding. But "what I find most difficult," she explains, "is to talk to the family. I don't know how much I can really ask or talk."

When someone dies of kodokushi, she says there's a sense of daily life that lingers. It's harder cleaning a house "where someone has been murdered or someone killed themselves", she adds, explaining that the air feels heavier in such places.

Partly to help her cope and partly as a public service to help spotlight the plight of isolated people, Kojima had turned to art. Now, she creates miniature dioramas of the rooms that she had cleaned.

From Spoon & Tamago:

To preserve and document the scene, the company always takes photographs of the rooms in case relatives want to see them. However, Kojima noticed that the photographs really don’t capture the sadness of the incident. And while she had no formal art training, she decided to go to her local craft store and buy supplies, which she used to create her replicas. She sometimes uses color-copies of the photographs, which she then sculpts into miniature objects.Kojima says that she spends about 1 month on each replica.

(Photo: Naoko Kawamura/Asahi News)

Francis Lee Smith went to work building his own log cabin in Wyoming, using local trees and mostly his own labor. Many people did the same thing when pioneers settled the West, but Smith started his project in 1980. A wildfire on Rattlesnake Mountain resulted in an offer of free timber to anyone who hauled it away. Smith took enough to build a grand home, and spent twelve years working on it.

Smith, who hails from Cody, took up residence in the house along with his wife and two kids as soon as the first floor was complete, but he never stopped construction. Night after night, Smith worked on his house by the light of a single bulb, until his crazy infatuation with the house tore apart his marriage and eventually took his life.

The house wasn’t even remotely cozy. There was no running water, or plumbing or electricity, except that provided by a small generator. A wood burning stove on the bottom floor was the only source of heat. The stove was also used to cook meals. The family dining table was a large tree stump, with smaller stumps around it as chairs. During winter, the entire family would sleep in sleeping bags on the floor huddled around the house’s only source of heat—the stove. During summer, Mr. Smith would sleep on a hammock, and sometimes his children would sleep in a separate oversized doghouse-like cabin on the front porch. Plenty of wild animals made the mansion their home when the family was still living. Raccoons, skunks, wild cats, owls and many other creatures took refuge in the structure or below the flooring.   

In 1992, Smith fell from a balcony while working on the house and died from his injuries. The house remains empty and unfinished 26 years later, despite the efforts of the Smith Mansion Preservation Project. The Smith Mansion is now for sale, and it can be yours for $750,000, which includes ten acres of property. Take a video tour of the house at the real estate listing and read the story behind the home at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Flickr user byron cain)

Food can make a wonderful art medium. Making food "cute" is also a great way to get kids to enjoy their lunch, as we've seen in many artistic Bento boxes. But when does food cross the line from one to the other? Instagram user Peaceloving Pax is a doctor in Thailand who is also a food artist. You have to wonder whether his/her creations ever are actually eaten.



Peaceloving Pax recreates rice balls depicting kawaii characters from Pokémon, Studio Ghibli, and other anime and cartoon worlds. See more of these wonderful rice balls, as well as dumplings, sandwiches, baked goods, and other foods at Instagram.


 
-via Buzzfeed

Ear Spring Geyser found in Yellowstone National Park, experienced it's biggest eruption in decades on September 15, 2018. The geyser spewed trash that had been thrown in there by visitors for decades.

According to the science based website Science Alert, among the items spewed out were plastic utensils, crumpled foil, cans, and a 1930's pacifier. Check out Yellowstone National Park's Facebook page to see some of the catalogued items.

Throwing any items into geysers and springs can cause damage to them. This reminds me of the old adage from Woodsy Owl,"Give a hoot and don't pollute!"

We've heard a cheetah cub squeak and a lion cub roar, but have you ever heard the sounds a baby caracal makes? This cub makes his presence known by making the sound of a small electric motor, like a remote control toy! -via Boing Boing

Even in today's supposedly cashless society where everyone pays with credit cards or mobile payments, cash is still king. In fact, it's more popular than ever.

Dan Kopf of Quartz explains why it's (still) all about the Benjamins:

In 2017, for the first time ever, the one hundred dollar bill became the most popular US bill in circulation, beating out the one dollar bill. It is quite the turn of events for Benjamin Franklin-faced banknote. Just 10 years ago, it was less common than both the $20 and the $1.

Why are hundreds so much more common these days? It’s not because more people are using them for day-to-day spending. The vast majority of cash transactions are still made in small bills.

According to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the $100 bill is on the rise as a form of savings ...

The Fed researchers suggest that people across the world are stashing hundreds under their beds as an alternative in case their local currency takes a dive.

Image: Atlas, with data from the Federal Reserve Board