The ancient Greeks, Romans, and the knights and other warriors of the Medieval Ages saw a lot of violence and bloodshed.

War was a typical occurrence in those days, and although we read about how wars started, how they ended, and why they were even waged in the first place, we never really got an idea of how people who experienced wars back then felt about it. Much less, how they coped with the trauma brought about by the horrific experiences of war.

We may not have firsthand accounts or anecdotes from survivors of wars in ancient times, but we can infer from other documents how those people coped.

In Medieval Europe, many turned to religion. There were many cleansing rituals and forms of penance recorded in the Ermenfrid Penitential that speak of what warriors needed to do to absolve themselves from "moral injury". Some justified the war by considering it as a holy act to release themselves from the guilt.

Ancient Rome used gladiatorial battles to desensitize warriors by making them accustomed to violence. Moreover, as the Romans were superstitious and legalistic people, they always sought the counsel of the gods before going into war. If they did not have the favor of the gods, then they typically will not go into war.

For Ancient Greece, their way of dealing with trauma was through drama. They processed their distress and memories from battles through plays, seeing them as a form of catharsis.

(Image credit: Birmingham Museums Trust/Unsplash)

Mosquitoes are the creatures that have killed the most number of humans on average each year. An estimated 1 million people die because of the myriad diseases they carry, which they transmit through biting.

All mosquito bites come from females as they are the only ones with the mouth structure to pierce and suck blood. The male's proboscis does not have the piercing power that the females have, thus they do not feed on blood but rather, they eat flower nectar and fruit juices.

Researchers, however, have found the oldest-known mosquito fossil in Lebanon, and these come with some surprising features. It showed two male mosquitoes which have the specialized mouth anatomy to pierce and suck blood. Therefore, at some point, male mosquitoes evolved from being hematophagous to simply feeding on plant nectar.

This also indicates that, originally, all mosquitoes were hematophagous and with the emergence of flowering plants, the males simply transitioned into becoming nectar-feeders. The significance of this is that the usual trajectory for hematophagous insects was for nectar-feeders to become blood-feeders.

With these mosquito fossils, researchers will have a better idea of the evolutionary pathway that mosquitoes took, and it will give them new avenues to study how and when those changes took place.

(Image credit: Erik Karits/Unsplash)

Rarely do we find fossils that have other fossil remains inside them. We should expect that things that have been digested would not become fossilized. But a new recent find in Alberta, Canada shows exactly that: a gorgosaurus fossil with what seems to be fossilized remains of baby dinosaurs in its stomach.

Most of the previous finds that had stuff in their stomachs were from herbivores, and that's why this rare discovery is stirring up a lot of excitement among the scientific community. The fossil was first discovered in 2009 by Darren Tanke, a technician from the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Tanke later noticed, as the team was cleaning up the fossil, that there were some toe bones poking out of the dinosaur fossil's belly. When they looked further into it, they discovered that there were two complete pairs of legs and feet inside. They identified the two baby dinosaurs as Citipes elegans, a bird-like dinosaur.

Apparently, the gorgosaurus only ate the leg parts as they are considered the meatiest part.

(Image credit: Darla Zelenitsky/University of Calgary)

Every year since 1927, Time Magazine has chosen a person whom they consider to have influenced the world events for that respective year, for better or worse.

Over the past century, many of Time's persons of the year have included presidents, politicians, business tycoons, moguls, figureheads, and other people who have achieved incredible feats worthy of global acclaim.

This year would mark the first year someone will be recognized for their success in the arts. And that someone is Taylor Swift. With her Eras Tour still ongoing as she will be visiting more countries in 2024, Swift has managed to do something that 2023 seems to have been bereft of. She brought a lot of people together and stood as a shining light in a world currently mired in darkness.

Perhaps, one of the biggest reasons why Time chose Swift to be their Person of the Year for 2023 is the way in which her story has unfolded, how she embarked on a kind of hero's journey in which her fans and the world around her have steadily watched her grow and walked alongside her as she continues to be a trailblazer.

This year seems to be Swift at her finest, with three no. 1 albums, becoming a billionaire, and receiving keys to the cities. And why not? Her Eras Tour is bringing in streams of revenue for all the cities she has performed in.

More than that, because of her honesty and candid persona, many people can relate with her and trust her. That's how she was able to encourage thousands of people to vote or become new fans of the NFL. In a world that has suffered successive blows over the past few years, Taylor Swift has helped us rediscover the sense of community that we seemingly have lost.

(Image credit: Time Magazine)

Geography can sometimes be tricky, and there are some common facts that many people get confused by a lot. For example, people may misremember what the capital city of Canada is (Ottawa), or for that matter, Australia (Canberra). Or, something that I recently found out was the location of Switzerland in Europe (nestled between France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, and Austria). I had often mistaken it for where Denmark is.

There are landmarks that many people may know about, but not exactly where they are found. Like that time when Coach Prime was corrected by a reporter when he alluded to Mount Rushmore being in California (it's in South Dakota).

Still, it's better to freshen up on our geography knowledge, so Kaitlyn McInnis and Mariana Zapata have taken on the liberty to list some of the facts that almost everyone gets wrong.

Now, perhaps the most surprising for me on this list and the most relevant is the fact that the Statue of Liberty isn't "technically" in New York. Although it has been legally declared part of New York by the Supreme Court in 1987, it is technically located on New Jersey's side of the state line. Well, that's a very interesting tidbit to note if I were to visit New York someday.

(Image credit: Louis Hansel/Unsplash)

Can anyone guess what’s going on here https://t.co/Ddkdcdl3RQ pic.twitter.com/W60uYGqTJH

— Zillow Gone Wild 🏡 (@zillowgonewild) December 8, 2023

Zillow Gone Wild posted about a house for sale in Batavia, New York. It has a four-car garage, six bathrooms, and a pool. It was selected for the X account because of the generous dose of taxidermy throughout the home. But what's going on with this bathroom window?

At first glance, it appears that the window is looking out on the scene of a plane crash, or possibly a parked plane. It's hard to tell with the reflection of the photographer and the arch around her. The location is a clue. Batavia has a fly-in community around Genesee County Airport, where you can keep your plane at your home and also close to the airport. This home is for an aviation enthusiast. So are we looking out at a plane in the backyard? No, look at the upper part of the window, where you see trees are growing. Someone guessed that the lower window has a wrap commemorating a crash that the homeowner survived. Continue reading for more. 

YouTuber Posy has taken what seems like still scenes and shows us just the parts that move. He's termed this technique "motion extraction," and he explains exactly how he did it, and how you can, too. But this is more than just a tutorial, because even if you will never try this, you'll be amazed by watching these clips. First, we get scenes in which only the moving parts are shown, no matter how subtle, and then he overlays the motion extraction video with the original video to make the motion a highlight. From there, he does all kinds of effects to make the motion the centerpiece of the scene, no matter how small or slow the movement may be. The clips are all quite beautiful, except for maybe the one where the guy makes the building shake by walking across a wooden floor, but that one is interesting in its own way. -via Digg

Luke Pickman is a musician who calls himself the "Instrument Maniac". He has an astonishingly vast collection of musical instruments from around the world. To call him a "multi-instrumentalist" is a huge understatement.

Last year, we shared Pickman's video in which he played "The Lick" on 92 instruments. Since then, his collection has grown. In 1 minute and 51 seconds, he performs a complete composition with 111 instruments. Some are ones I've never hard of, including an otamatone, a flexatone, and two different types of stylophones.

With each instrument, Pickman lists the manufacturer. Amusingly, for the musical saw, that's just his garage. For a conch shell, Pickman identifies the ocean as its creator.

-via The Awesomer

Is it Hanukkah or Chanukah? I have used both, usually going with the spelling used in whatever I am linking to. Both are correct, but in various places and eras, the holiday has been spelled

Chanucha, Chanuchah, Hanuca, Hanucka, Chanuca, Chanucah, Chanucca, Chanuccah, Chanuka, Chanukah, Chanukka, Chanukkah, Hanucah, Hanucca, Hanuccah, Hanucha, Hanuckah, Hanuka, Hanukah, Hanukka, Hanukkah, Khanukah, Khanukka, and Khanukkah.

That's due to the difficulty of translating חנוכה from Hebrew, which has its own alphabet. But Christmas has a similar history of various spellings, which include

Cristesmæsse, Xpes mæsse, Cristesmas, Crystesmasse, Kyrstemas, Kyrstemasse, Kyrstemaste, Kyrstemes, Cristmas, Crestmas, Crystmasse, Curstmas, Christmasse, Chrystmas, Christmass, and Christmas.

Oh yeah, there's also Xmas, which some folks objected to in recent years because they believe it takes Christ out of Christmas, yet the real story is exactly the oppposite. How did any of those odd spellings enter the lexicon? Find out in a history of holiday spelling at Grammarphobia. The article is about English spelling; there are plenty of other ways to say Christmas, from Noel to Navidad. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Leonhard Lenz)

The classic tale of a women who lost her shoe and gained a prince has been told for centuries in many different parts of the world. Those tales vary, but are mostly really gruesome compared with the 1950 Disney animated movie. They involve murder, adultery, cannibalism, mutilation, resurrection, and a massive dose of family dysfunction. The one version that creeped me out the most is not included in this video. The tale from China has the Cinderella character leaving her shoe behind at a banquet, and the king becomes obsessed with the owner of the tiny shoe, and vows to marry her even though he had never met her or had even seen her. That only makes sense in the context of the old tradition of binding a woman's feet to make her more attractive to men. It's creepy because it reflects historical reality. You may be more disturbed with the cannibalism in this video from Weird History.  

If you have experienced severe exhaustion, the inability to do activities which you had no problem doing previously and which cannot be relieved through sleep or rest, sleep problems, brain fog, and some form of generalized pain, and if you notice that these symptoms get worse after doing some physical or mental activity, then you might be having myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome.

According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 3.3 million Americans are experiencing CFS, but they have mostly been told that they are either hypochondriacs or are misdiagnosed with anxiety or depression.

The study has also shown that the condition was more common in women than in men, and in white people than in other ethnic groups. However, it does debunk the notion that the condition was a "rich white woman's disease".

The gap between men and women was only slight, and the difference between white and Black people was small or negligible. The study also indicated that poor people reported having the syndrome more than rich people, and this could be due to lack of access to health care.

Dr. Brayden Yellman believes that CFS may be similar to long COVID, or the presence of chronic health problems experienced over a protracted period of time. Since there is no cure as of yet, a mix of infusions and medications have been found to relieve the symptoms.

So, if you feel that you are experiencing symptoms of CFS, one of Yellman's patients suggests to tell the ER that you have long COVID, instead of CFS. It will make it faster to get treatment that way.

(Image credit: Shane/Unsplash)

Scientists have found a breakthrough in understanding how whales communicate and they believe that whales use vocalizations that are similar to human speech. Gašper Beguš, along with a team of researchers, have been studying sperm whale vocalizations for some time, and now, they have identified how whales use clicks and codas to talk to each other.

These clicks can be thought of as analogous to human vowels and diphthongs, and chaining these clicks together form codas, which could be thought of as words. In particular, they observed a high frequency of a pair of coda vowels, the a-vowel and the i-vowel.

In cracking the code for whale language, the researchers took hints from a deep learning AI model, programmed to imitate these sperm whale codas. From an analysis of a dataset containing 3,948 sperm whale codas, the researchers further found that, apart from the two vowels, the whales also varied their use of formants, or the frequencies at which they speak.

It is possible that with the different factors involved in how whales communicate, they might have a more developed and complex means of conveying information, similar to how tonal languages can express different meanings based on tones and pronunciation. -via The Daily Grail

(Image credit: Vivek Kumar/Unsplash)

For any avid reader, a proper bookshelf is a must at any home. After an essay about bookshelves was published, readers of The Globe and Mail wrote tons of letters about their own bookshelves as well as their rules in organizing them.

Some people organized their books by topic and then alphabetically based on the author's last name, others arranged their books alphabetically based on the title of the book, others did it by function (i.e. "working" books, childhood books, books borrowed from the library, etc.), and one reader sorted their books by country of author.

One couple even had serious discussions about the "right" way of organizing their books. And their system involved arranging the books based on category, and depending on the category, they either arranged them alphabetically by author, topic, or name of the subject, and for history books, chronologically. They also have an interesting way of grouping art books by style and photography books by type.

The above photo is from Beverley Kort who had a picture of her father's old library. She shared that he was a chemist and generally organized his books by topic and then, alphabetically by author. Her own library is also organized by topic.

(Image credit: Beverley Kort; submitted to The Globe and Mail)

Cillian Murphy, the Stone of Scone, Karl Lagerfeld's cat Choupette, and the Popocatepetl volcano. These were only some of the words that Babbel, a language learning company, had revealed as the most mispronounced words this year. Don't worry if you've been pronouncing them wrong. Unless you have some background knowledge of those words or their origins, you're probably saying it the same way everybody is.

Babbel listed several UK and US words which many people found tricky to pronounce. In the UK list, we have the Stone of Scone (pronounced SKOON), that slab of stone present at King Charles' coronation. We might have all been tempted to pronounce it like the pastry, since it would have a nice rhyme to it, unless you're British and you pronounce it as SKAHN.

In the US list, we have the name of the Oppenheimer star, Cillian Murphy. It's an Irish name and just like the word Celtic, it's pronounced with a K. The Boston Celtics are an exception. We also have the US singer who has been making rounds for her Grammy nominations, SZA (pronounced SIZ-uh).

Choupette (pronounced SHOO-pet), Karl Lagerfeld's pet Birman cat, is probably the easiest if you're familiar with French. And finally, we have the Mexican volcano, Popocatépetl (pronounced Poh-poh-kah-TEH-peh-til). For the rest of the words, you may check them out on Sky News.

(Image credit: Sky News)

Guitars have a circular hole so that the sound made by the strings can resonate inside the hollow body of the guitar and be amplified as it bounces back. Violins, on the other hand, have F-holes, those squiggly things on either side of the string.

They're called F-holes because they look like the cursive small f. However, the holes on either side of the violin weren't always shaped like that. Its earliest ancestor was the fithele (where the word "fiddle" came from) in the 10th century which had circular holes on either side. The design eventually evolved through the centuries, until Renaissance craftsmen found that the cursive f-shape produced the best sound for the violin.

The video above proposes that the reason for the F-holes was because of the obsession of Renaissance masters over perfection such as the fibonacci sequence or the golden ratio. And possibly, while somebody had been peeling a clementine, they found that it produced the shape of a cursive f.

However, other researchers, such as Nicholas Makris and his colleagues at MIT, say that 16th century violin makers most likely came upon the shape through trial and error, whether or not they understood the mathematical principles behind the design.

The researchers have found that elongated sound holes allow more sound to be produced by the violin and that explains why the design has remained the same for 500 years.

(Video credit: The Celtic Goldsmith Bellchamber)