Life as we know it exists on the surface of earth. Life as we are learning more and more about exists in the oceans, even when they are really deep and incompatible with surface life. But there's a whole other biosphere underground, and that means way underground, going down miles under our feet. Down there where it is too hot, dark, and oxygen-depleted for most living things, there are microbes and multicellular life forms that thrive on heat and toxic chemicals. They make their own ecosystems out of whatever they can, including rocks, each other, and even their own bodies. Kurzgesagt shows us some of the bizarre adaptations that living creatures have developed in order to live and even thrive deep in the rocks underground. You might be surprised at the British pronunciation of "methane," which took me off guard. The last two minutes of this video are promotional.
Have you ever eaten a fluffernutter? It's a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow creme, and sugar-craving kids love it. I have made peanut butter fudge with marshmallow creme, but the idea of putting those things between two slices of white bread makes me ill. Be that as it may, the term fluffernutter goes back to the 1960s, but the sandwich was invented in 1918. That's long enough to declare the fluffernutter an American tradition, but you might be surprised to learn that the woman who invented it, Emma Curtis, did so to promote Snowflake Marshmallow Creme. At the time, that was a new product of the Curtis Marshmallow Company, which she founded with her brother. And so it goes. When you develop a new food product, you have to tell people how to use it.
A whole slew of your family's traditional recipes started out as promotional gimmicks. You shouldn't be surprised to find that Grandma's beloved pineapple upside-down cake with nuts came from a recipe on the back of a can of Dole pineapple rings. Read about these and more traditional American recipes that started out as product marketing at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Kimberly Vardeman)
Shooting baseball on a 130 year-old panoramic film camera ⚾️🎞️ pic.twitter.com/OjzLxnKNNt
— Miles | Expired Film Club (@expiredfilmclub) September 24, 2024
Miles of the Expired Film Club takes wonderful pictures of sports events with vintage cameras. Lately, he's been taking black and white panoramas with a Kodak Panoram from around 1900. This camera was introduced not long after film rolls were invented to replace glass plates. The camera was a box with a swinging lens that moved in the same arc as that of the film roll at the back. This camera was especially useful at taking sharp photos from a distance. Miles also shows us the images he took with this camera of automobile racing and soccer. Even though the camera was a breakthrough for its time, it is mechanically simple compared to what we use now, so it still works well 120 years later. If you're wondering where he gets the film, it's from a specialty supplier in Britain called Analogue Wonderland. They also developed the film. Despite their 2012 bankruptcy, Kodak continues to manufacture film for cameras, which it distributes through Kodak Alaris, one of its spinoff companies.
Pictured above is the family of Luigi Lo Rosso, a junk dealer in Italy. In the background on the right is a painting that hung in his home for many years. Eventually, Lo Rosso's wife made him take it down because she found it hideous. It sat in the basement for many years until Lo Rosso's son, Andrea, had it identified.
It's an original work of Pablo Picasso. Specifically, it's one of many portraits that Picasso painted of Dora Maar, one of the painter's many mistresses. The Guardian reports that art appraisers have priced its value at €6 million ($6.7 USD). Andrea Lo Rosso is pleased, especially since, as a child, he argued with his father that the signature on the painting was Picasso's. Now, he's finally proven correct and rich.
-via Dave Barry
Every year, the rangers at Katmai National Park in Alaska get the public involved in the conservation of brown bears by holding the Fat Bear Week tournament. Which of the park's bears has put on the most weight during the summer? That extra fat is crucial for sustaining the animals through their winter quasi-hibernation, particularly pregnant bears. There is no safe method for weighing bears to see how they've packed on the pounds, so they are photographed from a safe distance and we get to judge how well they've packed on the pounds during the summer.
Meet the bears of the tournament and check out the live webcams to see what the bears are doing. This year's contest comes in the wake of a couple of unfortunate incidents. A portion of the Brooks River was closed to visitors after some fishermen were observed to be feeding fish to bears. Human-bear interactions are not safe and make the bears lose their fear of humans. Bear No. 402 was sadly eliminated from the tournament before it began when Bear No. 469 killed her on Monday. Also, fan favorite Otis, who won the tournament four times, is no longer around. At an estimated 28 years of age, he might never return to the Brooks River.
Vote in each round at this page, and watch your favorite bear advance or be eliminated. The matchups will continue through October 8th, and the winner will be announced late that night.
The bigfin squid (Magnapinna) has rarely been seen or captured on camera, most often on surveillance cameras trained on deep sea oil-drilling operations. An adult bigfin can have tentacles up to eight meters (26 feet) long! But one was recently captured on camera in the Tonga Trench east of Fiji in the Pacific Ocean, the second-deepest ocean trench in the world. A team from the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre and Inkfish are exploring the Tonga Trench, and caught a glimpse of a bigfin with a remote camera sent to a depth of 3,300 meters (10,827 feet) with a fish as bait. The bigfin walks in from the darkness, using its tentacles as legs against the ocean floor. It's about a half-minute in before you can see it. It doesn't take the bait, instead straightening up before fleeing, as if something spooked the squid. Researchers believe this specimen is a juvenile, as its "legs" are only around 13 feet long. Read more about the bigfin at PetaPixel. -via Damn Interesting
Very happy to say that I've passed with minor corrections, after a really intensive and enjoyable few hours discussing with Profs. Thonemann and Magnetto.
— Oliver Clarke (@Astroclassicist) October 1, 2024
And friends in the grad community have produced the most amazing Western Asia Minor cake! pic.twitter.com/I3d2x2HM7s
Oliver Clark is a graduate student in ancient history at Oxford University who, if I understand it correctly, has completed his studies. These labors traditionally culminate with the preparation of a cake. Clark provides a map of western Asia Minor at some point in its history--I think the Hellenstic era.
Simona Bloom works as an IT professional, but her joy comes from making art. Her corpus includes paintings and colored pencil work. Her internet fame, though, comes from her composition of colorful cocktails that resemble real life objects. Lately, Bloom has recreated flags of many nations, such as the above cocktail that looks like the flag of Cameroon.
In October of 1809, New York City's Evening Post newspaper had a notice about a missing person. Diedrich Knickerbocker was last seen leaving his home, and readers were encouraged to come forth if they had any clues as to his whereabouts. They later published a letter from a man claiming to have seen Knickerbocker. Then a letter from his landlord appeared. By this time, readers were rather invested in the mystery of the elderly man who went missing, especially New Yorkers who had the historic Knickerbocker name. So when another story updated the public with the news that a manuscript had been found in Diedrich Knickerbocker's apartment, and it would be published, readers were quite curious about it.
The two-volume book was titled A History of New York, and it was supposedly published by Knickerbocker's landlord. He had written a preface to it himself, detailing Knickerbocker's disappearance. But the book wasn't written by Knickerbocker, and the landlord didn't exist. Neither did Diedrich Knickerbocker. The book was written by a young man named Washington Irving, and came with ready-made publicity thanks to the Evening Post. But that didn't mean that the letters about Diedrich Knickerbocker stopped. Read how Irving pulled off the hoax and the fallout that still remains, at Mental Floss.
The monstrous clown is an archetype that speaks to a fear and yearning within the collective unconscious of the human psyche. The Batman villain of Joker is but one modern incarnation of this primal impulse to destroy and be destroyed. Nerdstalgic explores how artists, filmmakers, and audiences have seen him over time.
The Joker first appeared in a 1940 comic book. His character was inspired by a 1928 adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel The Man Who Laughs. After a central role in the 1960s Batman television series, the Joker faded from media until revived in 1973 comics emphasizing the character's violent insanity. He continues to haunt media with nihilistic joy, perhaps at its most extreme in the 2019 film Joker.
-via Laughing Squid
When someone refers to the King James Version of the Bible, they are referring to King James I of England (also Scotland and Ireland), who commissioned a new standardized translation. James was made king of Scotland as an infant, and was used as a political pawn by the court and his family members. His mother was jailed and eventually executed by Queen Elizabeth I, who later designated James as her successor as the English monarch. It's no wonder that James had some peculiar ideas about women.
King James led quite an eventful life, so his campaign against witches hardly registers four hundred years later. It was very important to the women who were tortured and burned as a result. Under his rule, witches were put to death whether or not they had ever caused anyone harm. Confessions and accusations were gathered by torturing the victims, so if you were suspected of witchcraft, you couldn't win. This is what happens when leaders are convinced they are ordained by God instead of becoming king by the accident of birth.
The Himalayan mountain range is getting taller all the time, as the Indian tectonic plate continues to crash into the Eurasian plate. That's been going on for millions of years. Mount Everest, at 29,032 feet, is the tallest of the Himalayas, and indeed it is the highest point on earth. But Everest is growing faster in relation to the mountains around it, by about two millimeters a year. Why is that?
Scientists have determined that it is because of isostatic rebound caused by a river 47 miles away from the mountain. The Arun River carries away a lot of material that erodes from Everest. You'd think that erosion would make the mountain smaller, but the effect is just the opposite. The authors of a new study explain isostatic rebound by comparing the earth's crust to a cargo ship being unloaded, or a couch cushion when you stop sitting on it. There are also glaciers involved, and the same effect explains why sea levels are rising faster in New York City than in other places in the world. Read about the forces that are making Mount Everest grow taller faster than the other Himalayan mountains at Smithsonian. Personally, I'm still wondering who gets the job of climbing Mount Everest with a tape measure every year.
(Image credit: Nir B. Gurung)
Oktoberfest in Munich is the biggest folk festival in the world. More than seven million people took part last year, and they drank almost seven million liters of beer. How did this Bavarian tradition get started? It all began as a five-day royal wedding reception more than 200 years ago, which turned out to be so much fun the townspeople wanted to do it again. Oktoberfest couldn't help but grow and grow because of the beer. People really enjoy the beer. The festival spread to other German towns and throughout the world because of the beer. And people from all over the world travel to Munich to celebrate Oktoberfest and drink beer. This video describes what happens at the festival since you might want to book a ticket (hurry, the festival ends Sunday). Sure, they drink beer, but there are other things happening, too, like a parade, carnival rides, and food. But yeah, people don't travel from all over the world for those things. They do it for the beer. -via Laughing Squid
Atlas Obscura rolls out their annual series of spooky and supernatural stories for the month of October with a look at the legendary witch, Baba Yaga, in an excerpt from the new book Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods.
Baba Yaga is an old witch who lives in the woods of eastern Europe, according to tales told to scare children. She sweeps down and takes children who aren't good or don't obey their parents. But in her long folklore history, she's more than that. The earliest mention of Baba Yaga in text is from 1755, and lists her in a pantheon of deities, with no kinship to other deities. There are even older woodblocks that tell her story in pictures. The witch's purpose and characteristics vary somewhat from culture to culture, hinting that Baba Yaga goes further back in oral tradition than we know. She does have an origin story featuring the devil, but it was written in 1840. Even if it was based on older tales, Baba Yaga was around long before Christianity took over Europe. Baba Yaga may be a witch, but she has been a goddess and a sorceress, too. Read more about the ancient witch at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Ivan Bilibin)
It's almost October; bring on the scary movies! The full trailer for the new version of Nosferatu dropped today. This story has already made a cinematic splash twice, once in 1922, when the tale from the novel Dracula (with the characters' names changed) was brought to the big screen for the first time. Count Orlok the vampire returned in 1979 in a film by Werner Herzog. Now Robert Eggers brings us Nosferatu, starring Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok. Other cast members include Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney, and Willem Dafoe. No, we don't get to see Count Orlok in this trailer. Some things are better left to the big screen. A much bigger disappointment is that we will not get to see Nosferatu for Halloween. The movie will open on December 25th, a day on which you'll be looking for something to do.
