You might have noticed while you're traveling that there are some posts or fences that have purple paint on them, and you might have wondered what those meant. Is it just a sign of unfinished paint work or is there some kind of deep, hidden meaning behind it? Or perhaps, it's a secret message between two people. Well, it's none of those things. Reader's Digest gives us a quick explanation to what these purple-painted fences are all about.

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I watched a video on Youtube once of a panel in a conference, and as a final question to the panel, they were asked what they would want to have written on their headstones when they die. One of them jokingly said, "I told you I was sick", which garnered a laugh from the crowd. The other one had a more thoughtful remark on how he would want to be remembered by those he left behind. Either way, headstone inscriptions try to summarize in a short statement the kind of life that the deceased had lived. And it's not limited to just the run-of-the-mill epitaphs we often read, which are not bad in and of themselves, but sometimes even the inscriptions can be a way for the deceased to express their personalities one last time. Like the one of Merv Griffin above, which is said he often joked that he wanted to have inscribed on his tombstone. 

Mental Floss has collected these 11 very creative inscriptions that will surely make you rethink about what you would want to have written on your headstone when the time comes.

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When you think about urban landscapes, what first comes to mind would probably be the cities of New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, or Barcelona. But over the course of history, different groups of people have also constructed cities underground. For whatever reason they built these cities, they are quite intricate and the design suggests that as many as tens of thousands used to live in them. Austin Harvey, from All That's Interesting, shows us 11 underground cities that would leave anyone bewildered as to how they were made and why.

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Going to university these days isn't as difficult as it was back when they had only begun. There weren't a lot of places where universities could be found and most people who wanted to go to university had to travel far and wide, leaving their families and relatives to pursue higher education, unlike today wherein we have all sorts of transportation systems that make it possible even to study abroad. During the medieval days of universities, such luxuries were nowhere to be found. And so, we can only surmise how it must have felt for students and their families back then. A few letters survive from that time, and Elena Rossi, who is a PhD student researching about medieval women in university networks, gives us a few insights into what medieval students' relationships with their families were like.

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On the day of her mother's funeral, Brisbane jounalist Amelia Oberhardt saw a photo that she had never seen before. It was a photo of her mom holding a baby with a young man standing beside her. What shocked her at that moment was that the baby was not Amelia and the young man was not Amelia's dad. Her friend, who helped organize the photos for the slideshow, thought that the photo was of Amelia's parents and her as a baby. When everybody else saw the photo, they were equally shocked.

"We both sort of at that moment, turned around and stared into the eyes of all the family and friends - their jaws were on the floor," Oberhardt told Mamamia's True Crime Conversations podcast. "Everyone was quite rattled by the photo and I could tell straight away, it wasn't meant to be there."

That day sparked a 12-year search for answers for Oberhardt about her mother's past. What had driven her mum to the alcohol addiction that killed her at just 56? And who was the man and the child in the photo?

Amelia's quest led her to a point in Australia's past that affected not only her mother but thousands of other women as well. Nikita Lee Fletcher of Mamamia takes us to that history and the truth that Amelia had uncovered in this surprising sequence of events that all began with the mysterious photo at her mother's funeral.

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My grandmother is 85 years old and has had moderate dementia for the past 13 years. We have grown used to her repetitive anecdotes or those moments of cognitive fuzziness that she experiences from time to time, and we just roll with it. But it may seem quite cumbersome for someone to be telling the same story multiple times. Of course, for some, that may be intentional. While others may already be struggling from those same bouts of forgetfulness that we inevitably suffer as we grow older. Oliver Pritchett puts those concerns to rest as he has invented the solution for it: an app called Borenomore. This he shared on The Oldie:

Its database holds hundreds of your best anecdotes. By means of sophisticated voice-recognition technology, each anecdote can be identified by a trigger word or phrase, such as my dear old granny or donkey’s years ago or my headmaster or complete fiasco – and of course a great mate, my first car, a prank, the war and rather a funny thing actually.

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What do women find attractive in a man? Seems like the perennial question whenever you turn to a TV show like The Bachelorette where 25 to 30 men compete to see who among them would win the heart and the hand, if it gets down to that, of the lady of the show. In relation to this question, The Hustle wanted to figure out whether the job titles of contestants on the show had anything to do with their success rates, and this is what they found in their investigation.

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Scientists have discovered why the fungus Candida auris refuses to be removed once it has attached itself onto a surface. The difficulty of getting rid of it has been the primary cause of outbreaks since there were cases reported of infections in 2012, and it has continued on its rampage, quickly moving from one location to the next. One can only imagine the amount of persistence this fungus must have to repudiate the ones trying to eradicate it.

Darian Santana, a microbiologist at the University of Michigan Medical School, along with his colleagues have found the reason for the tenacity of this fungus to keep holding on for dear life no matter where it finds itself perched.

Most fungi make adhesive proteins that rely on hydrophobic interactions to glom onto surfaces. Think oil and water, says Teresa O’Meara, a microbiologist and geneticist in whose lab Santana works. Oil droplets congregate with other oil droplets, while water is attracted to water. Similarly, hydrophobic fungal proteins attach themselves to hydrophobic, or water-repellent, surfaces.

However, despite having the same mechanisms present in their structure, C. auris has another method of sticking to surfaces. And to find out what that is, check out Tina Hesman Saey's article on Science News.

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It is no secret that the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, and former English monarch, George V, shared the same blood, and many possibly blamed George V for failing to come to his cousin's aid when the Bolsheviks came after the whole Romanov family in 1918. But apparently, Nicholas had originally intended to save his cousin and his family, but decided against it.

Several accounts from the British ambassador to Russia at the time, Sir George Buchanan, as well as that of Alexander Kerensky, the then justice minister of the Provisional Government, pointed to the fact that such an exchange was in the books, however, it also indicated that there were two opposing sides to the story. Buchanan insisted that the offer to the tsar and his family remained open and that it was the Provisional Government of Russia which intercepted the planned extraction of the Romanovs. Meanwhile, Kerensky contended that they were told that England will no longer be accepting the Romanovs into English soil. So, which account was true?

Apparently, it was Nicholas himself who blocked the Romanovs' sailing to English soil after being convinced that it would be detrimental to the reputation of the British crown if England were to offer asylum to "Bloody Nicholas" and his family. The book, The Dissolution of an Empire, written by Buchanan's daughter Meriel and published in 1928, exposed the truth behind the whole facade.

For more details on the whole debacle between George V and Nicholas II, Alexey Timofeychev of RBTH shares the story behind the betrayal of the century.

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Some years ago, we gave you seven reasons not to climb Mt. Everest, but people still do it. It's a cool story to tell your friends, but reason #5 is that there's a good chance you will die up there. There are many ways that the climb might kill you- it's not just the cold and the lack of oxygen, although those are big and may lead to other problems.

Dr. Emily Johnson is a physician and a mountain climber. She's been to the peak of Mount Everest three times, and knows how dangerous it is. In this video, she enumerates the different ways you could lose your life climbing the world's tallest mountain. Dr. Johnson tells us that Everest is not the most dangerous mountain peak. Both Annapurna and K2 are tougher, but way more people die on Everest because way more people climb it, and many of those people are oblivious to the dangers and aren't as well prepared as they should be. Just because a lot of people have been to the peak of Everest doesn't guarantee that you'll make it back. -via Digg 

These days, there are roughly 200 Renaissance fairs and festivals held in the US every year. They serve as a glorious opportunity for cosplayers and historical re-enactors, as well as artists, craftspeople, actors, dancers, teachers, and historians. Even if you're just a spectator, they can be a lot of fun. The very first Ren fair was held in Southern California in 1963, the brainchild of Phyllis Patterson, who taught history, speech, dance, and drama until 1960. Sometimes she explained that she left teaching to become a stay-at-home mother, while other times she declared she didn't want to sign California's loyalty pledge that had been enacted in the wake of Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare campaign. Patterson made friends with many creative types, actors, writers, etc. who were out of work because they were blacklisted for being suspected of communist leanings. And when creative people have time on their hands, you get ideas like a Renaissance fair.

The first fair was so popular, they did it again year after year, growing exponentially. During the Summer of Love in 1967, the fair became associated with the counterculture and drug-using hippies, and local resistance made getting permits difficult. But despite those battles, Patterson's fairs grew and multiplied, and became more popular than ever. Read the story of the first Renaisance fair and those that followed at Smithsonian.

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The Netherlands instituted an experimental architecture program in the 1960s so they could have more interesting houses. It's a great idea, because nothing is more boring and depressing than a suburb full of cookie cutter homes so alike that you have to look at the numbers to find your own. Some interesting ideas came of the program, and in 1984, the spherical house was launched. Now, you can probably think of several reasons why a spherical house won't work: wasted space, the furniture won't fit against the wall, and neither will artworks. But there's more! The foundation is small, and the curve underneath never gets sunlight, so mold grows on it. And the windows leak. So what did they do with all these spherical houses? Let poor people live in them! I suppose it's better than no housing projects at all, but still. And now you see why designers and architects have different training and careers, and if they collaborate, they must play devil's advocate with each other. Tom Scott tells the story of the Netherlands' spherical houses.

Grid Studio is showing us exactly what GameBoy's insides look like, and that's not all. They also took apart several handheld consoles and put them in dioramas. Kotaku's Mike Fahey takes us into a tour of the different handheld dioramas made by Grid Studio in a fascinating collection of video game history.

Grid takes actual gaming hardware, from the Game Boy to the Nintendo DS, disassembles it, and mounts the individual parts on a board that’s printed with labels explaining what function the components perform.

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Vibrant colors and intricate patterns are distinct features of African textiles. A very good friend of mine from Ghana had occasionally worn clothes that emanate that kind of style and apparently, Kente cloths, as they are called, were once strictly reserved for royalty. And the way they are made is evidence of the weaver's mastery of the craft.

A novice weaver typically begins with a simple, unadorned wood pulley, whereas a master weaver, known for his quality work, will use an extremely well carved pulley in his loom, carved by a master carver, subtly announcing to all who pass by, the quality of his work.

Collectors Weekly tells us in more detail about the heddle pulleys and their various forms used to create beautiful African textiles.

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The headwrap is more than just a piece of adornment or accessory that goes on, usually, a woman's head. It's not just a fashion statement. It has had quite a radical history, and Timeline will take us through it.

As a descendant of the cloths that adorned the heads of women in ancient Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa, it’s come to represent the cultural and historical lineage black Americans have maintained with the African continent.

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