A couple of years ago, we told you about the Perth Museum, which, despite its name, is in Scotland. Perth, Scotland, to be exact. The museum will open on March 30 with an exhibit on Scotland's national animal, the unicorn.

This raises the question: why does Scotland have a national animal that doesn't live there and never has? Or anywhere else, for that matter? They could have chosen the Scottish wildcat, the Scottish terrier, or the wild haggis. But the designation wasn't put to a vote. King William I, or William the Lion, put the unicorn on his royal coat of arms in the 12th century. It was kept by later monarchs as a symbol of "purity and power." Today, the unicorn has many connotations, which the museum exhibit addresses. Read up on what the unicorn means to Scotland and see a preview of some of the museum exhibits at Smithsonian.   

(Image credit: Thomas Nugent)

Twenty years ago, we started playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, to see how everyone in Hollywood is connected to actor Kevin Bacon by either appearing in a movie with him, or appearing in a movie with someone who did. But it was not a new idea. The phenomenon of the Erdős number was first mentioned in print in 1969! Paul Erdős, who died in 1996, was the world's most prolific mathematician, publishing more than 1500 papers on mathematics. Collaborators whose name appears on those papers have an Erdős number of one, and anyone who produces a science paper with those people gain an Erdős number of two. Thousands of mathematicians have an Erdős number of two or lower, but a quarter million mathematicians have numbers. And you don't even have to be a mathematician to have this number. Elon Musk has an Erdős number of four, and Natalie Portman has a five.

Paul Erdős could publish so many math papers because he constantly thought about math and never did anything else. He never married or had children, had no hobbies, never learned to drive, and had no permanent residence. Erdős would move in with another mathematician to collaborate, but was a horrid houseguest with his singular drive to do math. Read about the brilliant but strange mathematician at Scientific American.  -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Kmhkmh)

Gustav Klimt portrait found after almost 100 yearshttps://t.co/SBjlxqPovF

— Debby Witt (@debbywitt) January 26, 2024

Gustav Klimt died in 1918, but his works still captivate the popular imagination. This Symbolist painter from the Vienna retains an iconic status among art lovers today due to his vibrant use of bright colors, even the use of gold leaf, as well as his subtle eroticism.

Klimt was in high demand as a portrait painter, and his Portrait of Fraulein Lieser, painted in the final year of his life during World War I, belonged to a Jewish family in Vienna when it was exhibited in 1925. In the ensuing decades its location became a mystery.

BBC News reports that its current owners have possessed it since the 1960s. Now that they are putting it up for auction, people in Germany, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Britain will be able to view it before it is sold.

Earlier this month, we looked at the relative number of victims of various pandemics in history. Now let's find out more about those diseases. What illnesses were people most afraid of during different historical eras? There was leprosy, influenza, bubonic plague, syphilis, smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, and COVID-19, but none of those existed by themselves, and even these diseases were sometimes misdiagnosed because there was always something else out there that wanted to kill you. And these deadly illnesses became epidemics because of close living conditions and poor sanitation in crowded cities. Our own sociability became a mass transit system for bacteria and viruses. Enhanced travel took diseases to other communities all around the world. If you worry about getting sick, just be thankful for modern science. Back when we couldn't figure out what was causing these diseases, much less prevent or treat them, your odds for surviving them were downright dismal.

Newborns can't tell us what's wrong, all they can do is tell us that something is wrong, and it's up to us to figure it out. Sometimes that's terrifyingly difficult. A case reported this week in the New England Journal of Medicine concerns an eight-week-old boy who wouldn't stop crying. The pediatrician couldn't find anything wrong, but after a week of crying, the baby became weaker until he couldn't nurse. He was rushed to the emergency room. There he underwent a battery of tests, x-rays, blood tests, an MRI, and even a spinal tap. They couldn't find the source of the illness, but suspected an infection and started a round of antibiotics. Then he stopped breathing and had to be intubated.

The good news is that the baby is fine now. The story of how doctors went about finding the cause of his plight by the process of elimination is gripping, and the diagnosis of a relatively rare illness is eye-opening. The baby spent three weeks in the hospital after coming close to death. Dr. House would have solved it instantly within an hour, but we all know that was fiction. Read a hair-raising account of the medical mystery at Ars Technica. 

(Unrelated image credit: Inferis)

This melancholy and poignant mixed media art film by a team headed by Pipou Phuong Nguyen was made in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon last year. The music is Pink Floyd's "The Great Gig in the Sky." The cartoon itself may be a little abstract, so the description lays out the story.

In a world blurring reality and imagination, Syd, a little 8-year-old boy faces his mother’s impending demise. Desperate to hide from the grasp of Death, they embark on an imagined hide-and-seek game, morphing into Earth’s creatures. Death plays along as their relentless predator.

The images are lovely, rendered in different animation styles for each sequence. But you already know who wins in the end. -via Laughing Squid

Johannesburg, South Africa, was founded as a mining town after gold was discovered there in 1884. Boom towns sprung up quickly around the area, but one soon became more boom than town. The Johannesburg suburb of Braamfontein received a trainload of dynamite in February 1896. With no room in the warehouses, the eight railroad cars containing 2,300 cases of dynamite were shunted off to a side track. What happened three days later when they were starting to unload the cars will never be known for sure, because all the witnesses were killed, but it is thought that a switcher locomotive collided with the cargo cars. It wouldn't have to be a big collision, but the resulting explosion sure was.

The explosion could be felt 200 kilometers away. It left a crater 60 meters (250 feet) long. The image above shows how the railroad tracks were curled up at the end of the crater, with wrecked buildings in the background. More than 70 people were killed and 3,000 were left homeless when their houses were flattened. The investigation afterward couldn't piece together the exact events of that day, but it uncovered many egregious safety violations in the everyday handling of dynamite in the mining industry. Read the story of the Braamfontein explosion and see more pictures at Amusing Planet. 

In any society, or even in small communities, there are a very few people who are totally selfless, and quite a bit more who never think of anyone but themselves. Most of us fall somewhere between those extremes. But are humans inherently selfish, and have to learn to think of others? Or have we evolved to consider the greater good for the well-being of the family and community? Are the things we do for others really about the expected reciprocation or the eventual benefit to ourselves in some way? We know that the easiest way to be happy is to help others, but does that in itself make generosity transactional? Philosophers have struggled with these questions for quite some time. But for our personal lives, if we are concerned about being selfish, there are some ways to change one's attitude and become more tuned into the needs of others. This TED-Ed lesson from Mark Hopwood addresses selfishness from various angles.

Until a few days ago, the streets of Provo, Utah, were safe at night due to the work of the mysterious hero known as the Fish Bandit. This modern-day Robin Hood filled a desperate need in the city by taping fish to ATMs across the town, then publishing photos of his deeds on social media. No greedy bank was safe from his vigilantism.

Alas, the gallantry of the Fish Bandit has come to an end. ABC News 4 reports that Provo police have identified the teenage boy (of course) responsible for the fish tapings and pressed property damage charges against him.

-via Dave Barry

Michelle Frankl, an American and a chemistry professor at Bryn Mawr, instigated a furor in Britain with the publication of her book Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea. In it, she cast aside centuries of wisdom from the foggy isle and, The Hill reports, argues that people should drink their tea with salt.

The British took offense at this heretical attack upon their national drink. It was up to the United States Embassy in London to smooth over the tensions with this prudent concession to British sensibilities:

An important statement on the latest tea controversy. 🇺🇸🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/HZFfSCl9sD

— U.S. Embassy London (@USAinUK) January 24, 2024

-via Aelfred the Great | Image: bryan

The Mary Celeste was both a real sailing ship and the subject of an 1884 short story by Arthur Conan Doyle (although he spelled it Marie Celeste). The fictional story soon overshadowed the historical event it was based on. In 1872, Captain Benjamin Briggs set sail on the Mary Celeste from New York headed to Italy. He had with him his wife, his young daughter, and seven hand-picked crew members, plus 1701 barrels of alcohol in the cargo hold. A month later, the ship was spotted off the coast of the Azores. There was no one aboard. The ship's one lifeboat and some navigational tools were missing, but the crew's personal effects, the cargo, and the ship's provisions were still aboard. The last entry in the ship's log, from nine days earlier, gave no clues. No trace of the ten people were ever found. While there are several theories about what happened, no conclusion has ever been determined.      

The fate of the Mary Celeste's crew is just one of 15 unsolved mysteries you can read about at Mental Floss.

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

The draw of the short film The Court Jester is how accurately Pauly Shore impersonates fitness guru Richard Simmons, but the real story is about David, a hapless segment producer on The Ellen Show who is only noticed when he screws up. That can do things to your self-esteem. But you know, self-esteem is what Richard Simmons is all about. The story is set during a real Simmons appearance on The Ellen Show.

The short by Jake Lewis premiered in Park City, Utah, last weekend during the ongoing Sundance Film Festival, although the screening was not officially part of the festival. This happened just after Netflix announced they are doing a full-length biopic about Simmons starring Pauly Shore, which Simmons insists he did not give permission for and is not involved with. Simmons, 75, retired from public life in 2014 and wishes to remain private. He has not yet responded to The Court Jester. -via Laughing Squid

Live Science gives us an exclusive peek into National Geographic's A Real Bug's Life series with a short clip showing how an entire colony of fire ants, living near a Texas backyard with a swimming pool, banded together to create a makeshift raft to save their queen.

Ants are quite resilient creatures. No matter what happens to them, they will get back up and work, or if ever any threats approached them, they will defend their colony and queen at the risk of their lives. In that sense, they're almost like cockroaches except less creepy and more communal.

How they were able to achieve the feat of surviving this water calamity (from their perspective) is astounding. With the help of a phenomenon called the "Cheerios effect", these ants were able to clump together and ride the water. They locked their legs and mandibles, and used trapped air bubbles on the water to keep themselves afloat.

Ants can usually carry 10 to 50 times their own weight. The structure that they created can apparently withstand 400 times their body weight and stay afloat for 12 days. In the specific situation captured in the episode, the ants were able to land safely with the help of a pool noodle. - via The Daily Grail

(Image credit: National Geographic/Disney+/A Real Bug's Life)

Nobody should have to be worried about what they ought to wear or not when they're out on vacation on a cruise ship, except for camouflage clothing. It's the oddest piece of advice to give cruise-goers but there it is, and the reason is pretty simple: camouflage clothing is banned in several countries, which are popular destinations for cruises.

Countries like those in the Caribbean e.g. Jamaica, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Bahamas. Why it's illegal to wear camo in these countries boils down to laws which maintain the distinction between civilians and military personnel.

To avoid confusion and prevent security threats, civilians are prohibited from wearing camouflage clothing since they might be mistaken for someone who is impersonating military personnel. Though cruise ships won't restrict you from entering the ship if you accidentally brought camo, it would be best to keep it in the ship when going out for excursions in those territories.

Furthermore, travel advisor Lauren Doyle remarks that there's also the association of camo with criminal gangs apart from the armed forces. Some other things that you shouldn't bring on a cruise according to Doyle include small appliances, electric blankets, drones, and medical marijuana. For other things that you can't do on cruises anymore, check out this article from Reader's Digest.

(Image credit: Peter Hansen/Unsplash)

Usually around summer or spring, depending on the region, you'll hear a chorus that sounds like a very loud buzzing or whirring noise, shaking of maracas, or two percussion instruments being rubbed against each other. Cicadas make this familiar song to attract each other during mating season, and after two to six weeks, they die.

Many species of cicada generally have a life cycle between two to five years, but the eastern North American species of the genus Magicicada, have either a 13-year or 17-year cycle which means these cicadas spend 13 and 17 years of their lives respectively before coming up out of the ground for their once-in-a-lifetime venture into the outside world to mate and die.

This year marks the first time in more than 200 years when two different broods of cicadas will be emerging simultaneously. Brood XIII from the 17-year group and Brood XIX from the 13-year group will be emerging from Illinois and several other states which hasn't happened since 1803.

Why the Magicacada live for so long underground and go out in large batches, one can only speculate to be a strategy against predators. Being able to come up altogether in such a huge throng makes it impossible for birds or other predators to thin out the number making it easier for the cicadas to mate and secure their posterity.

The map above shows the different cycles and times for when each brood will be coming up and where. From this year until 2038 except 2026, there will be broods emerging on the eastern part of the US.

(Image credit: Andrew M. Liebhold, Michael J. Bohne, and Rebecca L. Lilja, USDA Forest Service/Wikimedia Commons)