The biggest and the best entertainment extravaganzas were staged by Roman emperors who had the power and the wealth to do so. And the audiences were fairly bloodthirsty. The spectacles included chariot races, animal killing, executions, and gladiator fights. For around 200 years, women participated in those fights, and their bouts were often highlighted as the main event.

We don't have a lot of documentation on these female gladiators, and there's not even a Latin word for them, but we know they existed. Most were probably slaves, but there is some evidence that upper class women also participated, which was an even bigger draw. People disapproved of such behavior among higher-status women, but they also went to watch them fight each other. A woman who voluntarily became a gladiator was essentially throwing her reputation away, and that was worth watching, especially since they often fought topless and without a helmet to prove that they were indeed women. Read what little we know about the women gladiators of ancient Rome at Atlas Obscura.

Once upon a time, a bachelor's degree mostly meant that this person has a well-rounded education and can stick with a project for years at a time. That was a leg up in almost any job, no matter what subject the degree was in. Now it's too much of an investment to take any kind of risk. 

In the latest of Cracked's Honest Ads series, we learn the costs and benefits of a college degree. It can be quite a shock to the average 18-year-old to confront the costs and the debt they may have when they graduate. But once the dream is punctured, there are plenty of options for higher education. This scenario is a private college with a good reputation (except for Roger Horton's name on it). Students who are prepared for the college search ahead of time know that community college can get you quite a few credits for much less money, and a public university will cost less than a private school. For most careers, which school you go to matters little as long as it's accredited. But the real difference in a student's ability to pay back a student loan is whether they graduate, and whether the career they study for is something the world really needs.

Pictured above is William E. Dickey, the winner of the 1904 Olympics in the swimming event known as the plunge for distance. He doesn't look like a typical Olympic athlete because the plunge for distance was not a typical Olympic event. In fact, it was called the most boring sport of all time. The 1904 games were the only Olympics that the sport appeared in, and the only competitors were five Americans. But it was part of the competitive swimming scene in the US for decades.

The plunge for distance was a kind of competitive floating, to see how far an athlete could drift without any exertion after diving into a body of water. This particular act was made easier by extra body weight, as fat makes one more buoyant. It was taken seriously by those who competed, but for spectators, it was exceedingly dull, and the sport died out in the 1920s. Frank Parrington holds the world record in the plunge for distance at 86 feet 8 inches, a record that will stand forever. BBC Future talked to Parrington's grandson, Dave Parrington, head diving coach at the University of Tennessee, about the erstwhile sport of the plunge for distance.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image source: Missouri History Museum)

It's far too easy to pick up an infestation of bedbugs while staying in a hotel and then bringing the critters back home with you. That's why travel writer Lydia Mansel advocates for placing your luggage in the hotel room's bathtub as soon as you arrive.

Travel + Leisure magazine explains that bedbugs prefer to live in fabric surfaces, so the most straightforward solution is to reduce contact between your luggage and fabrics, such as the carpet.

You can also leave a note on your luggage to ask the housekeeping staff to leave your luggage in its otherwise puzzling location.

-via Nag on th Lake | Photo: Holidayextras

I once knew someone who had a screened-in party room at their house, and behind it was another screened-in room with a bed! It was a sleeping porch, used when it was too hot inside. This one caught breezes from three sides. Sleeping porches are one of many methods people used to keep cool before air conditioning became common. Pictured above is the freestanding sleeping porch President Taft had installed on the roof of the White House in 1910.

Evaporating water has been used for cooling for thousands of years, especially in dry areas. But it was used in the swampy city of Washington DC in 1881 after President Garfield was shot. His room in the White House was rigged with a device that blew air through wet fabric cooled with ice, and lowered the temperature by 20 degrees. It went through half a million pounds of ice over two months until Garfield died of his wounds.

Read about these and other clever methods that people used to keep cool in hot weather at Smithsonian.

You take all the standard tropes of a space adventure movie and put them together to make a parody. You shoot it in your apartment with a budget of zero and a cast of one playing all the parts. How good could it possibly be? In this one, it all comes down to the acting, and the zero-gravity effects, which were done only through acting. Oh yeah, there's one video effect, an illustration of product placement with a candy bar.

I saw a three-minute video on reddit and thought it was was quite good, and in fact was posted on the subreddit Best of the Internet. But I didn't post it here because I didn't know who made it. Then a friend pointed me in the right direction, and it turns out the full movie is nine minutes long and had a different ending. It was made by writer and actress Caroline Klidonas. Klidonas started posting vignettes on on TikTok during the pandemic lockdown that became full-blown productions. You can find quite a few of Klidones' full-length parodies at YouTube. -Thanks, Carol!   

In 1968, the Catholic Church established the Diocese of Orlando, which encompasses a large amount of central Florida. This area includes Cape Canaveral, from which the Apollo moon missions were launched in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

A 2019 article in L'Osservatore Romano, which is the Vatican's newspaper, republished at ETWN, reports that after the Apollo 11 landing in 1969, Bishop William Borders asserted episcopal authority over the moon.

The 1917 Code of Canon Law granted such authority over newly-discovered territories to the location of the launching expedition. Since Apollo 11 was launched within the boundaries of the Diocese of Orlando, the moon was the turf of Bishop Borders.

Bishop (later Archbishop) Borders once verbally asserted his lunar claim to Pope Paul VI, although the pontiff's response remains unknown.

-via Depths of Wikipedia | Photo: Archbishop William Borders and Pope Paul VI

If you were to tell a story about a late partygoer, you could mean someone who arrived long after the party started, or you might mean someone who died at a party. These very disparate uses of the word "late" can be confusing without the proper context. The reason that the word has two meanings goes back to the early use of "late" (pun intended). In the 15th century, the word was used to mean "recently." You can understand that by the phrase "of late." There are many examples that are now considered archaic, but we still use a form of it in phrases like "the latest comic from Randall Munroe." When referring to someone who died, the term "late" was originally only used for someone who passed away so recently that it might be news. But we strayed from that, and now say "the late Richard Harris," even though he died more than twenty years ago.

So the "behind schedule" definition has survived, and the "dead" meaning has been altered, but the in-between definition that meant "recently" has mostly fallen away. Read a rundown of how the word "late" has evolved over time at Mental Floss. Now, as far as the use of the phrase "the late, great..," that seems to have come about just because it rhymes and is therefore fun to say. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Roman Eisele)

Have you always wanted to walk through the Slurm factory, enjoy a donut with The Simpsons or do an alien autopsy of Roger from American Dad? If so, you'll want to head to Hulu's Animayhem activation at this year's San Diego Comic Con.

There's a lot of fun to be had here, including a snack of green sprinkled donuts, refreshing Slurm, a Solar opposites stress test that gives you a relaxing squishy toy, and some incredible pins at the end.

If you are in the area this weekend, stop by for some fun. 

Kid Robot had been selling blank vinyl toys for years, making it easy to color your own designs amd create your own one-of-a-kind creation... But unless you start adding on to the sculpture, it will always be the same shape as everyone else's.

If you really want to let your inner artist shine, you'll want to check out Marmals. We spotted these at Comic Con and my son fell in love -and so did I. These adorable creations have magnetic parts so you can switch around the head, arm, and legs, and even change parts between different models to create entirely new creatures. You can even deck them out with adorable accessories like sneakers and beanies.

Need a little help getting your design started? They also sell sticker packs you can color in. Not into making your own art? Then check out the gorgeous galactic designs. Whether for an art toy, desk toy, or a kid's toy, these cute creations offer something for just about everyone.

With today's all-volunteer armed forces, we might forget how common military service once was. Throughout most of the 20th century, young men could expect to be called up for World War I, World War II, the Korean War, or the Vietnam War. In between wars, service was seen as a useful bridge to manhood, or to see the world, or to learn job skills. So it wasn't odd to see half the houses in your neighborhood occupied by a veteran and his family. The language they brought back from their service could be colorful, but even when it wasn't, these veterans retained a lot of jargon that fellow veterans would understand, and soon those terms were used by everyone. We know what these terms mean, but we don't know how they came about. Weird History looks at a whole bunch of everyday phrases and idioms we use that you might not know came from the military, as far back as the Revolutionary War.   

I can't vouch for how accurate these stories are. Commenters at YouTube are especially upset about "balls to the wall," which they contend predates aviation.

Charles Byrne was born in Ireland in 1761 and grew to be seven and a half feet tall. This made him two feet taller than everyone around him. As word of the "Irish Giant" got around, Byrne decided to go to London and make a living off his unusual stature, because there were plenty of people who would pay to see a giant. And there was a also surgeon who would pay to have a giant. John Hunter was that surgeon, as he was also an anatomist who had dissected many human bodies to study them. Hunter made no secret that he would like to take possession of Byrne's body when the time came, to further his scientific knowledge.

Byrne was in control of how he was exposed during his life, but the thought of being dissected and then displayed after death horrified him. Even though he was a young man, his health began to deteriorate. The giant let it be known that he didn't want John Hunter anywhere near his body if he were to die. Byrne died at age 22. He had already made plans for his friends to bury him at sea, with weights to keep his body submerged so that the anatomist couldn't get to him. We don't know for sure how his plan went awry, but Hunter indeed ended up with Byrne's body. He dissected it for four years and then Byrne's skeleton went on display for hundreds of years -until 2023. Read about the restless corpse of the Irish Giant at ABC. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Maggie Jones)

The classic tale of the magic carpet from One Thousand and One Nights is completely separate from the story of Aladdin, but we all know what we saw in the 1992 Disney movie. The YouTuber who goes by Alladin Skylab was inspired by watching Aladdin as a child and now is experienced in flying ultralight planes, paragliders, wingsuits, and hang gliders. But now he has truly recreated that childhood dream by fashioning a colorful carpet to act like a wingsuit! Watch him base jump from a high mountain (does anyone recognize the location?) and soar on his own magic carpet just like Aladdin! Lucky for us, he has a drone following him to catch the action. How is he going to land on that kind of terrain? For that, he pulls out another of his flying skills. You can see more of Aladdin Skylab's stunts at TikTok. -via Nag on the Lake

One of the great things about the San Diego Comic Con is that there is always something fun to do - even if you don't have a Comic Con badge. A perfect example is the Paramount+ Lodge, where visitors can get an inside look at the some of their favorite shows. 

Want to get a better feeling for your favorite Ghosts character? You can smell a perfume representative of the sitcom's different ghosts. They even send you home with a small sample. 

If you prefer making ghosts over hanging out with them, you can always explore a little blood splatter at a killer's crime scenes from Dexter: New Blood. 

If you're hungry, you can grab a bite of pizza and a gourmet lemonade with the Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Or if you're thirsty, consider grabbing a drink at the Tulsa King Bred2Buck.

Other fun activities: get a custom-made Star Trek tee, go jellyfishing in Bikini Bottom, or get a picture with an imaginary friend from IF (though the photo op was broken when we went, so we didn't get to hang out with an IF).

If you find yourself in downtown San Diego this weekend, drop by the lounge for a good time. 

Richard Harris was known to my generation for playing King Arthur in the movie Camelot. You may know him better as Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films. He relinquished the role when he died in 2002 of Hodgkin's disease. Harris had been staying at the Savoy Hotel in London while his condition swiftly deteriorated. He was eventually carried out in a stretcher and sent to the hospital. As he was carried past hotel guests, he yelled, "It was the food!" That had to cause some panic among those who had dined there. As far as we know those were Harris's last words.

But he wasn't alone in using his last words as a joke, or to confuse people, or to get back at someone. Read about five men whose last words were a first-class example of trolling. It's likely they didn't know those would be their last words, but they were nevertheless clever.