The reason that Americans and the British pronounced words differently is because we think we need to identify British spies among us. Sooner or later you realize that's a horrible scheme, when you listen to an interview with the cast of your favorite TV show. Behind the scenes, they are all British! However, pulling off such subterfuge takes talent and training. Laurence Brown has lived in the US for 16 yers and is now an American citizen, but if he ever lost his accent or British pronunciations, we would be disappointed. So let's try another explanation. Americans like to pronounce words the way they are spelled, because that makes sense. But some words are spelled differently in British English, so Americans just take out the letters that aren't needed or don't make sense. Still, Brown has had a great time arguing with his wife over why things are pronounced the way they are, because both sides of the pond are pretty casual when it comes to how we pronounce simple vowels. You say cicada, I say cicada. This video has a one-minute skippable ad at 3:13. -via Laughing Squid

The full moon next Tuesday evening, September 17, is called the harvest moon because it is the full moon closest to the equinox. This year it is also a "supermoon," because it will be closer to earth than it normally is, and will appear slightly bigger. That's not rare this year, as we have four supermoons in a row, but September's is the closest. If those aren't enough reasons to go out and look at the moon Tuesday, there will also be a partial eclipse visible from all of North America.

A lunar eclipse happens when the moon passes through earth's shadow. The large area of visibility compared to a solar eclipse is because the moon is a lot closer to us than the sun is. The moon won't darken, except for a spot where we will see a "bite" taken out of it. This is a great time to gaze at the sky with anyone you know who insists the earth is flat, because the bite will be curved, showing us that the earth is indeed round. Smithsonian has tips for watching the lunar eclipse and the explanation behind it.

(Image credit: Catalin CACIULEANU)

Can you imagine Jim Carrey's goofy movie character Ace Ventura in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth? he's all kinds of excited about putting his life in danger to save the realm. The fellowship would be better off kicking him to the curb, but I guess they keep Ventura around for laughs, even though he's obviously screwing things up for them. YouTuber Your_Kryptonite7 used five different movies to make this mashup, which meshes rather well considering the silly premise. -via Geeks Are Sexy

In modern times, a funeral home usually has someone on staff who is skilled at shaving a man's face for his funeral. For women's hairstyles or more complicated men's hair, a funeral home will often have a relationship with a local salon to provide these services. But in the 19th century, a barber would be called in to shave the dead. As that custom was starting to change, a reporter from the Trenton Evening Times in New Jersey visited a local barber to get a shave and ask if the barber had ever shaved a corpse.

The exchange as recorded in the newspaper is quite amusing, as the barber not only dreaded being called for such postmortem services, but also didn't want to hear any jokes about it from the reporter. And when you are sitting in a barber's chair facing a man with a large razor at your throat, you don't want to piss him off. We'll also hear from an undertaker about the post-mortem shaving powder advertised above. Chris Woodyard brings us that account at The Victorian Book of the Dead. -via Strange Company

The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held last night at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), returning to the real world after four years of being held virtually during the pandemic. Ten prizes were awarded for research that makes us laugh, and then make us think. The theme for this year's award was Murphy's Law, which simply says, "if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong." An operetta on Murphy's Law was performed (or was it Murphy slaw?). As if illustrating the contrariness of that law, the ceremony went off without a hitch, emceed as always by Marc Abrahams. The awards, bestowed by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, have been held annually since 1991. Continue reading for a list of the winners.

The ring shown above, from Rome around the fifth century, is decorated with a hand pulling on an earlobe. It's far from the only example in Roman jewelry, so the design must have some meaning, unless it was a symbol of some designer or celebrity. That was long before The Carol Burnett Show, which was the first thing people thought of.

Minnesotastan asked his readers what they knew, and found that during the late Roman Empire, this kind of jewelry was given as a gift, and the hand pulling at the ear was a symbol of someone wanting attention. The ear was believed to be the seat of memory, so the design is saying, literally, "remember me." This gesture traveled far and wide, and the meaning in various countries and cultures changed a little bit over time. See more examples of ear-pulling jewelry (but not uncomfortable earrings) at TYWKIWDBI.

(Image credit: Nic McPhee)

Look at the sweet smile on this canine cutie! Mia was taken in as a puppy by Beldi Dog Refuge in Morocco. Her back legs are paralyzed, possibly from an encounter with a car. Mia ended up in the Netherlands with a family who loves her and proved she can get around just fine without using her back legs. This video is less about that and more about her efforts to make friends with her housemate Dino, an adult male cat who had a hard time putting up with the puppy's shenanigans. These frenemies eventually settled into a relationship. You can tell the cat loves her even though he has to keep up appearances. As for Mia, she's the world's happiest dog, and now that she has wheels, there will be no stopping her! You can read Mia's story from the day she was rescued and keep up with her further adventures at Instagram.

Determining what is the world's oldest cookbook depends on how you define cookbook, but a collection of cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia may fill the bill. The four clay tablets are dated to about 4,000 years ago, and contain dozens of recipes. The tablets are part of a collection of 45,000 artifacts stored at Yale University's Babylonian Collection, which has only recently been available to the public. Part of that effort is translating those old recipes. And trying them out.

Recreating those recipes is a challenge, because they contain ingredient lists but no specific instructions for preparing them. The inscribers must have assumed that cooks of the day knew what to do with them. That's not so easy 4,000 years later, but chefs have been working on them. Some of the dishes turned out pretty bland, but others are still tasty to this day. It must be a matter of the missing directions, since cuneiform writing wasn't as easy as typing on a computer, and only the best recipes would have been saved. The collection as a whole gives us a glimpse into the early days of agriculture, when grains and beer favored heavily in the recipes, and a variety of ingredients tell us about Babylonian trade practices. Read about these ancient recipes at Atlas Obscura, where you'll find a recipe for Babylonian Lamb Stew, with cooking. directions.        

(Image credit: the Yale Peabody Museum)

Here's a bike stunt that has never been done before, either because no one thought to do it, or if they did, they couldn't afford to make it happen. Enter Red Bull, who will pay for stupid human tricks all day long if anyone is up for trying them. Polish cyclist and world champion Dawid Godziek is willing and has the skills, but does he have the nerve? The plan is to show us some bike tricks including a flip on a moving train. He and his brother Szymon Godziek designed and built the run on top of ten cars from the Polish State Railways. The locomotive here is a high-tech model that can maintain a steady slow speed in order to load cargo from hoppers without stopping and starting. That allows Dawid to get used to the physics of performing on a moving train, and helps keep him in the shot.  -via Metafilter

Spoon & Tamago shares images of leather accessories created and sold by Cokeco, a firm in Fukuoka, Japan. The company offers a wide variety of handcrafted leather goods, most notably a series of fashion accessories that resemble octopodes and their kin.

At the subreddit /r/DataIsBeautiful, /u/profound_whatever showcases a huge chart illustrating when famous people in Western Civilization lived. It's useful for showing which lives overlapped each other.

The chart starts at the year 1200 and stretches to the current year. I focused on the era of Winston Churchill, that giant of the Twentieth Century who, during a 90-year lifespan, straddled multiple major political and technological changes.

Some redditors are looking at the simulanteous and sequential lifespans and drawing conclusions:

It would be interesting to see an expanded version that includes Asia. But other redditors are complaining about particular individuals being left out. I agree: the absence of Gallagher is unsettling.

-via My Modern Met

Ancient Roman military camp discovered in Swiss Alps via @https://twitter.com/Archaeology_Mag https://t.co/nn6DB5QNZL

— Alexa Russell (@AlexaHawaii) September 6, 2024

Around the year 15 BCE, the Roman army was conquering its way through Europe and fought the Suanetes tribe of what is now eastern Switzerland. Students from the University of Basel have been studying the battlefield near the Crap Ses Gorge since 2021. Last fall, they found something intriguing on the mountain above. They discovered the outlines of a Roman camp, perched high above the battlefield at around 7,000 feet in altitude. Using LiDAR technology, they have been able to locate an unearth its boundaries.

The encampment is bordered by three substantial ditches and a wall. From this high vantage point, the Romans could keep an eye on four important valleys, plus a well-traveled road. Talk about taking the high ground! Artifacts that have been found include Roman weapons and equipment, plus lead slingshot bullets stamped as belonging to the 3rd Legion. It must have been in use for quite some time.  -via Damn Interesting

The kids have gone back to school again, and it occurs to me that this year is the first that I don't have any children in school in a quarter-century. Yeah, they grow up fast, but they stay in school as long as they can. Anyway, a video from Charlie Berens popped up about teachers. Berens is best known at Neatorama for illustrating life in the American Midwest. The accent is still there, but the experience he relates here is universal. He completely captures the gym teacher, the cool teacher, the art teacher, and the substitute teacher in every school. They are exactly the same as they were 50 years ago when I was a student- I can even name the names from my days as a student, from my friends who became teachers, and as the parent of students. You know these folks, even if you haven't been to school in a long time.

Damon Beres, an editor for The Atlantic, shares this image of an elevator. He doesn't share its location, but various people on reddit have posted similar photos of elevator control panels with buttons marked yes and no.

Redditor /u/allysx3 explains that New York City's safety code for elevators includes options for people with disabilities in emergency situations. After pushing the emergency button, remote operators can ask people in the elevator yes or no questions through a speaker, which are answered with the appropriate buttons.

-via Super Punch

Rock star Jon Bon Jovi was a big deal back in the 80s, but has never stopped performing since then. In fact, he and his team were recording a new music video on Tuesday in downtown Nashville when they spotted a woman climbing over the railing of a bridge across the Cumberland River.

The crew realized that the woman was considering jumping off the bridge. Bon Jovi and his companions walked over to talk to her. They convinced her to climb back over the railing and seek help. The Tennessean reports that Nashville police credit Bon Jovi and his colleagues with saving her life.

-via Colin Rugg