The United States Constitution is a framework for how our government operates. As democracy was an experiment at the time, it was our second attempt at enshrining the basics on paper. The Articles of Confederation, drafted during wartime, proved to be so inadequate that the whole thing was scrapped and replaced during the Constitutional Convention in 1789. It was not a simple task.

1. MAKING THE CONSTITUTION WAS A SWEATY, SMELLY AFFAIR.

The Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia in 1787 over the course of a humid summer. The windows of Independence Hall were shut to discourage eavesdroppers, and many delegates, who were mostly from out of town, wore and re-wore the same thick woolen garments day after day. Many framers stayed at the same boarding houses and shared rooms that, we can only imagine, reeked with a distinct eau du freedom.

Tidbits like that glimpse into history are fun, but this list also has important information about the formation of the Constitution itself.

11. THE FIRST AMENDMENT WAS ORIGINALLY THIRD.

When the Bill of Rights was drafted, James Madison proposed 19 amendments (the House sent 17 of them to the Senate, which were consolidated into the 12 amendments that went to the states). The first two, however, were not ratified immediately. The first amendment set "out a detailed formula for the number of House members, based on each decennial census," writes Andrew Glass at Politico. "Scholars have calculated that had the amendment, which is still pending, been adopted, today's House would have either 800 or 5000 representatives." (It currently has 435.) The second amendment regulated Congressional compensation. That amendment was not ratified for another 203 years: Originally the second, it became the 27th amendment.

Read all 21 Things You May Not Know About the U.S. Constitution at Mental Floss.

The Cingino Dam in Italy is a 160-foot tall dam with rock walls made with stones that just happen to have salt-crust that Alpine Ibex goats love to lick.

The fact that the dam wall is nearly vertical, with teeny tiny toeholds for climbing, doesn't seem to faze these goats at all!

Neutron stars, formed when dying stars collapse into itself, are small and incredibly dense. About a kilometer below the surface of this type of star, atomic nuclei are squeezed together until they merge into a clump of matter thought to be shaped like blobs, tubes or sheets - which physicists lovingly referred to according to their pasta equivalents: gnocchi, spaghetti and lasagna.

Turns out, this nuclear pasta is incredibly dense: about 100 trillion times the density of water and is incredibly strong - breaking a nuclear pasta would require 10 billion times the force required to crack steel.

(Photo: Casey Reed/Penn State University/Wikimedia Commons)

The Italian Ministry of Culture tweeted the excavation of a strange stone urn at the site of the former Teatro Cressoni in the town of Como. Inside the vessel are hundreds of 5th century gold coins - all in mint condition!

It only takes a second of inattentiveness for the unthinkable to happen. Though honestly, all this stuff can happen just as well if you are looking right at your children. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

Alaska-based artist Ryota Kajita took some amazing photos of natural ice formations in the waters of Fairbanks, Alaska. The alien-like structures are formed as rivers and lakes freeze from the surface down, trapping bubbles that formed in the water.

Check out Kaijta's series Ice Formations over at his website - via Brain Pickings

Above: Frozen Bubbles#2, Ice Formations (all images by the artist)

Frozen Bubbles#26, Ice Formations

Frozen Bubbles #27, Ice Formations

Gold has been valued for its rarity and beauty since antiquity, and regarded highly for its stability. It does not corrode like other metals. That led to the logical assumption that ingesting gold could imbue the human body with its anti-corrosiveness, and stop the aging process.  

According to Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen’s book Quackery, gold-drinking evolved from curiosity to downright fervor during the medieval era, when an alchemist figured out how to dissolve solid gold into a liquid. Aurum potabile (sometimes known as aurum potable), as drinkable gold was known around the 16th century, was advertised as a cure-all for everything from epilepsy to mania.

Gold-imbued recipes made their way into chemistry manuals by the likes of French medical professionals Jean Beguin and Christophe Glaser, and even the short-lived Portuguese Pope John XXI. In 1578, he wrote a laborious recipe for a gold-laced, youth-preserving water. It involved taking gold, silver, iron, copper, iron, steel, and lead filings, then placing that mixture “in the urine of a virgin child on the first day,” then white wine, fennel juice, egg whites, in a nursing woman’s milk, in red wine, then again in egg whites, in that order, for the following six days.

In a sense, it worked, because the alternative to aging is early death. Read about the trend of drinking gold and some of its more prominent victims at Atlas Obscura.

The years 1793 and 1794 during the French Revolution were known as the "Reign of Terror." During that time, there were over 16,000 official executions by beheading using the guillotine.

And in a macabre way, fashion and style followed the events of the day, and guillotine earrings became all the rage.

From Cult of Weird:

Barbaric or not, people loved the guillotine. When the Reign of Terror began taking heads on an average of 46 per day, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the terrifying instrument of swift death became part of everyday life. It was the subject of art, music, and fashion.

“It was depicted, recounted, and bandied about by popular songs with their series of refrains on ‘the widow,’ ‘the national razor,’ ‘the patriotic haircut,’ ‘the sword of equality,’ and ‘the altar of the nation,'” says Murat. “People no longer referred to ‘being guillotined’ but spoke of ‘sticking your head through the cat-flap,’ ‘poking through the window,’ or ‘sneezing into the basket.'”

“Like tricolor skirts and nosegays, or jewelry set with chunks from the Bastille,” Jane Merrill and Chris Filstrup write in I Love Those Earrings, “the guillotines testified to a person’s daring (unmistakably they were symbols of castration) and being on the winning side.”

( Photo: @hannahtraining )

A new study led by Dr Marcus Smith of the University of Chichester showed that drumming could help children diagnosed with autism learn in school:

Preliminary results showed:

A vast improvement in movement control while playing the drums, including dexterity, rhythm, timing.

Movement control was also enhanced while performing daily tasks outside the school environment, including an improved ability to concentrate during homework.

A range of positive changes in behaviour within school environment, which were observed and reported by teachers, such as improved concentration and enhanced communication with peers and adults.

The study was actually a continuation of research done by a group of researchers which include Clem Burke, the drummer of band Blondie.

(Photo: University of Chichester)

Some people like to dress up when they travel, and other people like to dress for comfort. German artist Menja Stevenson, on the other hand, decided to coordinate her clothes with her mode of transportation.

For her 2008 art project "Bustour," Stevenson decided to wear clothes made from the same fabric as the bus seats to see if anyone noticed:

“I couldn’t believe that many people didn’t realise the connection seeing me and the seats together,” Stevenson says. “Did they think that it was sheer coincidence? Some curious people at least talked to me, and a very few laughed, but most passengers would look shyly at me and quickly look the other way again.”

It may look like a scribble on a rock, but according to archaeologists, it's the earliest known drawing created by man:

Dating back some 73,000 years, the mysterious picture consists of three lines intersected by six angled lines, like a more complicated version of the hashtag (#).

The picture was unearthed at Blombos Cave, a site about 300 kilometers east of Cape Town. The cave was frequented by humans as early as 100,000 years ago and is packed with evidence of tool-making and symbolic designs.

The cute cliff-dwelling Porg from the planet Ahch-To in the Star Wars universe has invaded planet Earth as cute life-size LEGO set. Details and build photos over at The Brothers Brick.

A little more than half of American adults live in middle-class households, but it seems like almost everyone thinks they are middle-class. The Pew Research Center constructed a handy calculator that will let you know for sure. It takes your income into account, of course, but also your household size and where you live, because the cost of living varies so much in different parts of the country. Enter your data, and try not to be too disappointed with the results. -via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Jax 0677)

Blair Braverman came home to some "minor tornado damage," meaning there were tree branches all over the yard, so she put her puppies -and some grown dogs, too- to work. After all, dogs are great at fetching sticks!  

I HALP pic.twitter.com/jiIBKOi8jP

— Blair Braverman (@BlairBraverman) July 6, 2018

The clean-up project was so adorable that the neighbors had to come by for a cuddle. But the best part of the day was the bedtime story that Braverman told the puppies about their grandfather (told to us complete with pictures). It's a tale you don't want to miss at Threadreader. -via Metafilter

This apple cake looks as delicious as the fruit but yummier as it's made of mousse with Callebaut gold chocolate, apple vanilla compote, almond sponge cake, shortcrust dough and raspberry sauce.

It's created by pastry chef Dinara Kasko (previously on Neatorama).