Rickshaw pulling is one of the growing tourist attractions in Japan, where you can take a leisurely stroll around the streets on a two-wheeled cart pulled by a driver. Rickshaw pullers were mostly men but a surging number of Japanese women have also entered the profession, and Tokyo Rickshaw, the company operating within the Asakusa district, reports that women comprise about a third of their pullers. This sudden interest can be attributed to social media as rickshaw pullers post videos of their trips online to promote themselves, attract more customers, and gain repeat customers.

It might seem like a dangerous job for women, since it's physically demanding and there's always the risk of sexual harassment from customers or discrimination. However, the women themselves find it engaging and fulfilling, and so they continue to work. Moreover, popular drivers can earn over 1 million yen a month which is twice the average salary of a typical Japanese employee, and ten times that of the minimum wage.

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Traffic laws differ from country to country, although some rules might be similar such as rules against running a red light, speed limits, and rules on where to park. In the UK, they have what is called The Highway Code which lists the rules that govern the road for motorists, cyclists, and even pedestrians. There are 307 rules categorized by the type of road user as well as additional guidelines for light signals, traffic signs, road markings, and vehicle markings.

A survey conducted by Scrap Car Comparison found that thousands of people had been breaking the rules listed in The Highway Code without even knowing it. One such rule that almost 90% of respondents said they had broken was flashing their headlights in order to give way to another driver, which The Highway Code prohibits. Nottingham Post lists the other nine UK road laws people unknowingly break.

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Located near Norway's border with Russia, Kirkenes has become a town where everybody knows someone who has been involved in spy activities, or has been approached by the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) for seemingly innocuous requests, until Russian Intelligence suddenly arrests you while you're in the middle of an errand, and charges you with espionage. That was the story of Frode Berg, who was unknowingly sent by the NIS to deliver a memory card that tried to look into Russia's submarine weapons systems. He was caught, and after seven months, sent back home through a prisoner exchange. That would be the last he'll take on a request from the NIS.

Berg isn't the only one, it seems, as many locals of Kirkenes have experienced a similar encounter. Many of those being approached by the NIS were business owners and people with personal connections in Russia who risk being seen talking to the NIS as Russian spies lurked among the people of Kirkenes. When Berg had been arrested, he shared that the intelligence officers showed how much they knew of the town, its residents, and even the goings-on in the town. This has stirred unrest and paranoia among the residents and understably so, after news of Berg's arrest spread. Everybody became suspicious that the person they were talking to might be a spy.

Ian MacDougall visits the town to investigate further and recounts the spy stories he heard during his stay in Kirkenes.

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This video from Weird History is titled "Major Medical Discoveries That Happened By Mistake." That's really a misnomer, as most of these breakthroughs are anything but mistakes. It would be more accurate to say they were made by accident. Medicine and devices that were developed for one reason ended up being very successful for a different application. There's no real "mistake" in that! These ten stories cover some things you read about before, and a few you probably haven't. I was tickled to learn where vaseline actually came from, although that story really has no mistakes or accidents involved in it. I'd never heard the false story about Fleming's sandwich leading to penicillin, because we had the real story here years ago. The story about Edward Jenner doesn't appear to be an accident at all, but we all need to know it anyway. Overall, if you take this as just a list of medical breakthroughs alone, it's both edifying and enjoyable.

The culture of beekeeping in Slovenia is serious business, and neighborhood beekeepers have developed systems for making honey production easier, more efficient, and even beautiful. Most use a type of beehive known as the AŽ hive. This involves a particular design for each hive that allows them to be stacked together. The bees come and go from the front, and the beekeeper takes the honey from the back. Stacking those hives builds walls, which become a building, sort of a bee shed, which shelters the hives (and the keeper) from the weather and allows them to stay warm.

The particular Slovenian innovation that really draws our attention is the custom of painting the front of each hive. This began so that the bees will recognize their own hive among the dozens stacked together. We now know this is not necessary, but it has become tradition. These painted front panels, called panjske končnice, sport bold primary colors with folk art added. They are quite unique, and are often sold as souvenirs. Some are hundreds of years old. See more of these beehives and read their story at Atlas Obscura.

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A new world record has been broken for the fastest time a person has traversed a greased pole. The record is now 3.04 seconds, set by Antonino Papa of Italy. Papa is a second-time record holder, since he bested everyone else in 2014 as well. Now, I'm sure that you want to see that, but even more, you want to see all the folks who didn't make it across, because that's much more entertaining. And that's what they show us first in this video. People fell off every which way, but you have to agree that it's better to fall off the pole than to fall on it. By the time we get to the guys who are actually good at this, we have some appreciation for the difficulty of the stunt. This is not something I'd ever want to try, but you had better believe I'll watch it any day. -via Boing Boing

It would probably be much easier to believe that once you throw your plastic waste into the bin, they will all go to the same place where they get recycled and put back to good use at some point of their useful lives. Waste management systems in the West have been so efficient that people don't even notice what happens to their garbage after they throw them away. Well, they get picked up by the collectors and off they go, to who knows where? Actually, those plastics go into large containers where they are shipped to countries in Central America and Southeast Asia.

Living in one of those countries, I know that those wastes don't get disposed of properly. Without the proper technology to deal with them, a less organized system of segregation, and no proper backing from the government, those wastes are just piling up somewhere.

If I could do something about it, I would suggest that we just incinerate them. I learned in university that, though the process may release fumes into the atmosphere, it would solve our waste problem. At least, it's better than burying all that non-biodegradable material under the earth where it would take centuries if not millennia before they break down. Not even the whole population of plastic-eating worms will consume all the plastic we have built up.

For more on this story, check out Holly Hogan's article on The Walrus.

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NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has discovered a planet that, by all stretch of the imagination, shouldn't be there. It's called 8 Ursae Minoris b, and it's orbiting a red giant star which, scientists say, should have engulfed the planet. Marc Hon suggested two possible scenarios that might explain why the planet is still there.

The first is that when two stars, about the size of our sun, were orbiting one another, one star accelerates its expansion, becoming a white dwarf, a relatively smaller but denser star, before it collides with the other star, thus mitigating the impact and leaving the planet unscathed.

The second theory is that when the two stars had merged and exploded, a copious amount of debris scattered and those remnants coalesced to form the planet that we see today. If the second scenario were the case, then scientists say that this might give a deeper insight into planetary formation and destruction.

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Police officers from Palos Park have reported sightings of clusters of these so-called "jack-o'-lantern mushrooms" (Omphalotus olearius) growing in the forest preserves in Palos. They have bioluminescent properties which make them glow in the dark at night, so for any nature lovers walking around the area, be careful not to eat them. Despite only being of medium severity, its poison can lead to a serious case of vomiting, cramps, and diarrhea. Commonly found in midwestern and eastern United States, they usually sprout in late summer and well into fall. 

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However, do not confuse them with the chanterelle mushrooms which are completely edible. One marked difference between the two is that the jack-o'-lantern mushroom has true, sharp, non-forking gills while the chanterelle has false gills like ridges; and when the stem of the jack-o'-lantern is peeled, the inside is orange, as opposed to the paler hue of the chanterelle.

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The idea of a book club is simple enough: on a regular interval, the group decides to read a particular book, and when they convene, they talk about it. However, one particular book club has been talking about the same book for over 28 years, and they are only about to finish reading it. That book is James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake which many consider one of the most difficult novels to read because of its unconventional storytelling. And the book club, the Venice-Wake group, is a project launched by filmmaker Gerry Fialka out of curiosity. He says of the origins of the book club:

"I thought, 'Well, the only way I'm gonna learn 'Finnegans Wake' is by diving in. I'm not a scholar. I'm not an academic. I haven't even read any other Joyce. And I just said, 'Why not?' So it's been 28 years and it really blossomed into a lot of things."

The reason why it has taken the book club 28 years to finish reading the book stems from their choice to read it at a slow pace. Fialka quips that they would read one page and proceed to talk about it for two hours. Considering that the length of the book is 628 pages, it's no wonder why it took them almost three decades to go through the whole book. Now, that they're about to finish, one wonders what book they will read next, to which Fialka cheekily replies:

"No, we're never done. The same thing will happen next month," he says. "We'll read page three again next ... There's nothing different really."

- via Dave Barry's Blog

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I remember distinctly when I was in freshman year of high school that the very first assigned reading we had for English class was Mark Twain's The Prince and The Pauper. It took me three days to finish reading the 300-page story. At that time, it was the most daunting task to do and a chore to read, especially as I was unacquainted with the older English prose. For the most part, I only understood about 25% of what was written, and I had to look up notes and guides online to help me fill out the rest. However, that began my curiosity about books, and I swore that I will learn to read such complicated books enough to not make me fear them.

Now, I love reading books of all kinds, and the only thing that will deter me from tackling any book is its availability to me, which is no longer a problem with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and e-books. There are a few books that might still be intimidating even for the most seasoned readers, not merely because of their length, but at times due to their narrative style, structure and chronology, word choice, symbolism, and imagery.

One such book which I struggled a bit is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. His style of infusing magical realism in telling the narrative perplexed me at times, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless. Along with that, here are nine other of the most difficult books you'll ever read.

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An awful lot of us were introduced to the concept of American history in the lower grades, when we learned of the hero named Christopher Columbus, who "discovered" America. This was when our history began, regardless of the millions of people who already lived here, and had for thousands of years. Columbus wasn't the first European to visit the New World (that was the Norsemen) and he didn't set foot on the mainland (John Cabot did that in 1497). For a couple of hundred years after his voyages, he was rarely mentioned and little remembered. But by the time the 20th century rolled around, Columbus was not only a hero of American history, but a hero of science as well, for proving the world was not flat.

How did that happen? It was a deliberate move, almost like a public relations campaign, although it had no organized sponsors. It began during the American Revolution, when the colonists needed a hero to define their history, and it was most important that the hero had nothing to do with the British. Read how the cult of Columbus began, and came to define American history as it was taught in schools for hundreds of years, at Smithsonian.

Those are some gorgeous photographs, and better yet, they have dogs and cats in them! There were so many entrants in this year's International Pet Photographer of the Year competition that they decided to show us the top 100 of them in a video. The top photographer award was earned by Sanna Sander, whose images of good dogs in nature are breathtaking. But there are also top winners in the categories of Action, Creative, Documentary, Pets and People, and Portraits. You can see the winners and finalists in each category with a pulldown menu at the competition website. Or you can see a selection of the winners in a bigger format at My Modern Met. -via Fark

Ancient Egyptians preserved human corpses with a convoluted process that involved a variety of natural substances, including aromatic resins, beeswax, oils, and bitumen. When Europeans discovered this in the Middle Ages, it set off a fascination for all things Egyptian. That included owning a little piece of those preserved ancient bodies -as medicine. They told themselves it wasn't cannibalism, since the bodies were ancient, dried, made into powder, and had plenty of other ingredients. Or maybe they didn't think about it at all.

We can't blame people for wanting to be as well-preserved as those mummies, but they were already dead when it happened. How people came to believe mummies could be medicine was because of the word that eventually gave us the term "mummy." Mental Floss explains why the craze for ingesting mummies came about and how it played out during the Middle Ages, although that part is rather gross.

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The Balmoral Castle and Estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland is open to the public and popular with bicyclists and hikers. A couple of weeks ago, YouTuber Andrew McAvoy and his friends were riding over the rocky trails. They saw armed guards around the area, which was fitting, as the place is a royal residence.

What they did not expect was to see King Charles III himself hiking alone along a trail. They chatted with the king for a bit about hiking, bicycling, and the estate and then went their separate ways.