Virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini packed concerts with fans who believed his talent came from the devil in the 19th century. Charlie Daniels told us about how the devil went down to Georgia. But those examples were only two in a long line of stories depicting the devil as a fiddle player.

The image of Satan as a fiddler took off during the Baroque period, beginning around 1600. When Thomas Balthazar played in England in 1655, a music professor at Oxford reportedly stooped down to inspect the German virtuoso’s feet to make sure they weren’t cloven hooves. Later, “Devil’s Trill Sonata,” which dates from 1740, was said to have been composed by Giuseppe Tartini after he woke from a fevered dream in which the Devil played him a solo “so singularly beautiful and executed with such superior taste and precision, that it surpassed all he has ever heard or conceived in his life,” wrote 18th-century French astronomer and music enthusiast Jérôme Lalande.   

Read about the origins and progression of the concept of the devil as a violinist at Ozy. 

(YouTube link)

Instant noodles are a miracle. When you're really broke, they are the cheapest meal you can eat in a hurry, with almost no kitchen equipment necessary. And if you aren't broke, you can dress them up with a variety of other foods. And kids love them. Personally, I avoid ramen because of the association of being way too broke for way too long, but I can understand how others look at these noodles more nostalgically. But where did they come from? Momofuku Ando set out to develop an inexpensive food that could be easily stored. Great Big Story tells us how he did it. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

The fairly new Twitter account @Movie_goofs exposes plot holes in movies we know and love from the perspective of someone who just. Doesn't. Get it. Not only are the misunderstandings funny, but the responses from people who want to set him straight are priceless as well.

Seriously?! It was the one moment where it became clear that it was a movie about time travel -that last scene was a warning. And apparently no one paid heed.

— Sally Lansdale (@wislanscraft) August 1, 2018

 
The account is run by a computer programmer named Sean, who explained to The Daily Dot how he was inspired by IMDb critics who didn't understand the movie, and how his Twitter account attracts other people who don't get the joke -meaning they think that @Movie_goofs is serious. He never breaks character when responding to them, but only offers more "plot holes." However, there are plenty of followers who run with the joke.

It was a common name back then. For all intents and purposes, of the equivalent of Jim.

— Bigshotprof (@thebigshotprof) July 31, 2018

This is one Twitter feed that you'll want to check in on regularly.  

I Love Lucy was a groundbreaking TV show in many ways. It ran from 1951 to 1957, and is the oldest show in syndication because it was recorded on 35mm film and then broadcast, so good copies of 180 episodes are available all these years later. Let's learn some more about I Love Lucy.

1. CBS DIDN’T THINK AMERICANS WOULD BUY THAT LUCY WAS MARRIED TO A “FOREIGN” MAN.

When CBS approached Lucille Ball with the offer of turning her popular radio show My Favorite Husband into a television show, she was agreeable with one condition: that her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, would be cast in the role of her spouse (played on the radio by Richard Denning). The network balked—there was no way that American viewers would accept average housewife Liz Cooper (her character’s name on the radio series) being married to a “foreign” man with an indecipherable accent. Never mind the fact that Lucy and Desi had been married more than a decade; such a “mixed” marriage was unbelievable.

2. LUCY AND DESI HAD TO TAKE THEIR SHOW ON THE ROAD TO CONVINCE THE NETWORK BRASS.

Arnaz had a successful career touring the country with his rhumba band, which was one of the reasons Lucille wanted him to get cast as her TV husband—to keep him off the road and close to home. In an effort to show the network (and potential sponsors) that they could work together as a comedy team, they crafted a sort of vaudevillian skit that was inserted into the middle of performances by the Desi Arnaz Orchestra during a tour in the summer of 1950. The audiences roared over Lucille’s antics and her interaction with Desi as she interrupted his band’s concert confusedly, cello in hand, thinking she had an audition scheduled. The “Professor” skit not only convinced the network powers that be that the couple could, in fact, be convincing as husband and wife—it also was such a hit that it was incorporated into episode six of I Love Lucy’s first season.

We also get some trivia about our favorite episodes, like the grape-stomping, the chocolate-dipping, and Vitameatavegamin, in a trivia list about I Love Lucy at Mental Floss.  

The evolution of a food preservation makes one wonder about the failures that came along with experimentation. How many people had to die before we figured out the perfect way to cure a ham? And so it was with canned foods, which were invented in France in the early 19th century, but weren't common in the US until after the Civil War. People didn't quite trust the process, with good reason. However, it turns out that humans have evolved to deal with spoiled food, for the most part.    

Most canned food spoilage is fairly obvious—either the can itself becomes deformed or its contents are visibly spoiled—and relatively harmless, perhaps leading to digestive upset or mild illness. But there was one rare kind of bacteria that was far from harmless: Clostridium botulinum.

This bacteria produces botulinum, the deadliest toxin known to humankind, which can’t be detected by sight, smell, or taste. Botulism doesn’t itself cause cans to be externally deformed, neither dented nor bulging, but those external signs often suggest an insufficient canning process, which can breed both botulism and other kinds of bacteria that have more visible effects. Botulism is also anaerobic, meaning it thrives in oxygen-free environments, precisely like that of canned food. Though it was rare, botulism terrified canners.

Dead consumers tend to dampen the market, so canners not only welcomed regulation by the government, they were quite strict about self-regulation, too. As the industry developed, they worked hard to avoid botulism outbreaks like the one that killed 18 people in 1919. Read about that, along with the history of canned food, at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Serge Ouachée)

(YouTube link)

Okay, that explains that. Simon's Cat is having fun in a wheat field that's getting a little deep, when he sees something strange in the air. This video is part of a new series Simon Tofield calls "Sketches," short and not as polished as some of his cartoons, and he expects to have a new one ready more often this way. -via Tastefully Offensive

Lucy the Elephant was built in 1882 in what is now Margate, New Jersey. James V. Lafferty had a six-story elephant constructed as a public relations stunt to draw attention, and it sure did. Lafferty probably had no idea his elephant would outlive him and everyone who was there at the beginning.

The idea was to catch folks’ interest with it, and then lure them inside to show off his South Atlantic City properties from the look-out. Once she was completed in 1882, everyone from presidents, to celebs and the Average Joe came to gawk at the “Elephant Bazaar”. The building was composed of about a million pieces of wood, and 12,000 square feet of tin for the exterior.

She towered over present day Margate, New Jersey, at a height of 65ft. The elephant’s eyes contained telescopes and acted as an observatory for visitors. Its manager claimed to see, from the elephant’s back, Yellowstone Park, Rio de Janeiro, and Paris.

Lucy, as a building, has been used for a quite a few different purposes over the years. She was looking her age when a restoration project was launched to save the elephant in 1969. She got a face lift and a new, permanent home. See pictures spanning almost a century of Lucy's life, including her ride down the street at Messy Nessy Chic.

Good choices come from experience, and experience comes from bad choices. And no matter what you think, there are things your parents tried to teach you that went in one ear and out the other. You had to learn that lesson the hard way.

Everyone's got a story like that to tell, although the exact stories vary from person to person. The upside, after the pain subsided, was that you never forgot it. 

 

Read 39 such lessons learned at Cracked, and add yours in the comments here.

(YouTube link)

Judy was an English pointer born in Shanghai in 1936. She was purchased to be a mascot for a British gunboat, and lived quite an adventurous life from that point on. Not only did she become a prisoner of war during World War II, she was smuggled around the Pacific theater, escaped a torpedoed ship, gave birth to puppies, and managed to attack Japanese prison guards and live to bark the tale. Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out tells the story of Judy, the heroic war dog.   

Zoos aren't what they used to be, and that's a good thing. The philosophy behind keeping animals in captivity was once simply that of education and entertainment for people. The educational part is still there, but zoos now justify their existence with serious conservation efforts and scientific research. That involves keeping animals in the healthiest, most natural, and least restrictive environments possible. How can we do that and still allow visitors too see them? Archstorming held a competition for zoo design to be used at the Zoo of Barcelona. First place went to a team from Bangkok for a design called Re-Habitat. See all the finalists of the Coexist: Rethinking Zoos architecture competition at Archstorming, and see some enlargeable pictures of the top three entries at Web Urbanist.  -via Nag on the Lake 

(YouTube link)

The dairy industry wants to restrict the word "milk" to the products of mammal lactation, in response to the growing use of almond milk, soy milk, cashew milk, and other drinks used as a milk substitute. It's more a matter of business than semantics, as the dairy industry still has no problem with the words "peanut butter." Nor are they worried about milk of magnesia or milkweed. In response, Know Ideas Media visited a third-generation almond milk producer, played by Tyler Duffy, to find out exactly where almond milk comes from. Warning: unless you have the world's cleanest mind, you'll find this video full of double entendres. -via Tastefully Offensive

Sir Patrick Stewart made a surprise appearance at a Star Trek convention in Las Vegas earlier today, and mentioned that he will once again play the role of Jean-Luc Picard in a new Star Trek series to be shown on CBS All Access, the streaming service that already hosts the show Star Trek: Discovery. Stewart also released a statement on Twitter.

It is an unexpected but delightful surprise to find myself excited and invigorated to be returning to Jean-Luc Picard and to explore new dimensions within him. Read my full statement in the photo. #StarTrek @cbsallaccess Photo: @shervinfoto pic.twitter.com/8Ynuj3RBNm

— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) August 4, 2018

Stewart hasn't played Picard on a Star Trek TV series since The Next Generation ended in 2002, but he has appeared in four Star Trek feature films. We don't know anything else about the new series, or when it will air. -via Uproxx 

Make it so!

Thursday night was the annual Algonquin Cat Fashion Show at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. It's a fundraiser for the Mayor's Alliance for NYC Animals. It also marked the society debut of the hotel's newest resident cat, Hamlet VIII. The theme of the gala this year was "Purring 20's," so the cats were costumed in replicas of 1920s fashions. Gothamist took photographer David "Dee" Delgado to capture the event's best-dressed felines, which you can see in a gallery at Gothamist, along with a video. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: David "Dee" Delgado/Gothamist)

(YouTube link)

You see some weird stuff on New York trains, but last Monday, some riders got to share a car with this guy relaxing on a leather couch. What's the deal? Turns out he's moving the couch to a different house the cheapest way possible.

(YouTube link)

We don't know how he got it through the turnstiles, but here's how he got it into the car.

(gfycat link)

Commenters at reddit say he probably took the couch through a wheelchair opening in the turnstiles. There are probably a dozen more videos of this stunt, including the turnstile phase. A good time was had by all. -via Laughing Squid

#Breaking - About 100 goats are on the loose right now in a #Boise neighborhood. They are going house to house eating everything in sight. Nobody has a clue where they came from...updates to follow pic.twitter.com/K0ghUwQEfk

— Joe Parris (@KTVBJoe) August 3, 2018

A neighborhood in Boise, Idaho, was overrun by a herd of 118 goats on Friday morning. The goats belonged to the company We Rent Goats, which had dispatched the herd to clear out vegetation around a storm retention pond. The goats either discovered or made an opening in the fence and moseyed down the street to a neighborhood off Five Mile Road. The neighbors were surprised -and delighted.    

The hungry herd moved from lawn to lawn, chewing down grass, munching on rosebushes and stripping low-hanging branches bare.

"Half the neighborhood's lawn has been cut - I mean, mowing for free!" Dunn said. "It's kind of funny to see them in the road a ton, like not even caring about the cars."

The goats quickly attracted a crowd, as neighbors emerged to snap photos and pet the friendly animals. Animal Control officers responded with a single truck, but quickly realized that would not be enough.

See videos of the goats on the loose at KTVB. -via Metafilter