To say Arnold Schwarzenegger has led an extreme life would be an understatement. After a difficult childhood in Austria, he made a name for himself as a world champion bodybuilder at a rather young age. Then he landed movie roles even though no one could understand his English. Schwarzenegger became a huge action star in Hollywood, and then served as governor of California from 2003 to 2011. With highlights like that, you know there's a lot of details underneath that we don't already know.

 
Well, that one makes sense. It's impossible to duplicate the most extreme. Read more facts about Arnold Schwarzenegger in a pictofacts list at Cracked.

Misconceptions spread like wildfire on the internet, where you don't know who's an expert and who isn't. But many misconceptions about death go back hundreds or event thousands of years, because it's a subject that we tend to avoid discussing seriously. For example, you've probably been told at one point or another that fingernails and beards can continue growing after death. That's just not true, but there are some reasons people started to think so, and those people managed to tell a lot of other people. However, it is true that dead bodies can fart. That's the straight dope from people who have reason to know that, and not just from that Daniel Radcliffe movie. Mental Floss takes on eight common misconceptions about death to not only set the record straight, but explain why those wrong ideas persist. You can read them it in a list, or listen to a video at the same link.  

(Image credit: T. Bjørnstad)

The Golden Girls went off the air over thirty years ago, but the old ladies retain enormous cultural traction to this day. The fanbase remains very strong, even among people who were born after it went off the air. That's why the events company Bucket Listers created a pop-up restaurant that, the AP reports, brings the Golden Girls experience to Beverly Hills.

The restaurant is designed to resemble the famous kitchen set from the show. The Golden Girls Kitchen features lasagna--one of Sophia's favorite dishes--and a variety of cheesecakes. So bring a friend and bond over past loves or tales of St. Olaf or Sicily in the old days.

Photo: The Golden Girls Kitchen

The US Army has been rolling out a novel idea- getting the input of soldiers in developing new tools and equipment, because who else knows better how they will be used in the field? This part of military modernization is called touch points. One of the new projects grown from this is the Army Tactical Brassiere (ATB) program. Until last year, women in the military were expected to get their own underwear, and plenty of companies targeted them for sales. Now they are developing a military bra with specifications to make a soldier's work safer and easier.

ATB development began with seeking input from female Soldiers on what type of functionality and preferences should be considered during initial prototype design. Given that the ATB is a tactical rather than sportswear item, it will need to integrate well with equipment and body armor, providing enhanced protection and performance in addition to an ideal fit. This means that designers are evaluating options such as the inclusion of flame-retardant fabrics and expertly layered compression, structural and protective materials while also taking into account the importance of accurate sizing, reliable comfort, moisture management and breathability.

Project leader Ashley Cushon stresses the importance of those last four factors because it would "reduce the cognitive burden on the female Soldier." That's no laughing matter, because men in the military never have to think about whether their breasts are chafing under exertion or whether they will be blamed for too much male gaze. If the army can achieve all they want in a bra, they'd better make a ton of them because civilian women will want them, too. There are currently four types of bra in development that may be approved in the fall. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: US Army)

Fabricio André Bernard Di Paolo is a Brazilian pianist who goes by the stage name of Lord Vinheteiro. He has a popular YouTube channel in which he performes musical stunts, such as doing a live soundtrack of his wife's daily activities or playing a piano from several feet away using strings attached to the keys.

In this video, Lord Vinheteiro plays the famously challenging "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It's an athletically demanding task that requires spectacular coordination, but Vinheteiro is able to complete his performance in less than a minute while using only one finger.

Some people allege that there's some video manipulation going on.

-via The Awesomer

Is corn a conspiracy? 😂 🌽 #recesstherapy pic.twitter.com/S9hcIYJvnn

— Recess Therapy (@recess_therapy) August 4, 2022

I wish I could love anything the way this kid loves corn. Julian Shapiro-Barnum of Recess Therapy interviewed a young man at some festival enjoying a cob of grilled corn on a stick. We don't get the boy's name, but he seems to be around seven years old, judging by his teeth. He is not only adorable, but also quick-witted and has a sense of humor. This video is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Have a corntastic day! -via reddit

Believe it or not, Stonehenge was private property for an awfully long time. That goes back to British royalty, when a king could take what he wanted and do with it as he pleased. Henry VIII did just that, confiscating Stonehenge from an abbey in 1540 and then giving it to the Earl of Hertford. It was then passed around until an owner died with no heirs in 1915, and it went to auction. A lawyer named Cecil Chubb went to the auction house because his wife wanted either curtains or dining chairs for their house, depending on who is telling the story. But he came home with neither. Instead, he bought Stonehenge.

The ancient monument and 30 acres of land didn't draw all that many bids, and Chubb was afraid that a foreigner would purchase the site, so he outbid a farmer who needed pasture land, and bought the entire lot for £6,600! That was a lot of money in 1915, but imagine what the site would go for today, as both a plum piece of property and a historical treasure. Chubb's wife was not happy, but this impulse buy is the reason people can visit Stonehenge today. Read the story of that fateful purchase at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Mark Hamill is both Luke Skywalker and a talented voice actor (not to mention an all-around mensch). Doing voices goes way back for him. As a teenager, he worked at a Jack in the Box and thought it would be cool to use a crazy clown voice to take drive-through orders. Management didn't like that, and fired him. Now 50 years later, that same outlet invited him back, and he's still up to his old tricks. This time he can get away with it, though, because he is Luke Skywalker. And the Joker. Sure, it's an ad for Jack in the Box, but the people who drove through for lunch were first confused and then tickled pink. A good time was had by all.  -via Laughing Squid

The British tabloid Daily Mail introduces us to Henry Gray of Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK. He has an unusual medical condition called Lexical-Gustatory Synaesthesia. The areas of his brain which interpret sounds and smells are connected in a way that aren't for most people. As a result, when he hears sounds, he experiences smells, tastes, and sometimes textures.

This can sometimes be an unpleasant experience, as some names come with undesirable aromas. Dating can be problematic for Gray. It's not that Kristy herself reeks of urine--just her name. Daisy is rancid butter. Arabella is a smelly sock.

There are undesirable male names, too, on Gray's list. Harrison is an itch he can't scratch and listening to Ian's name is like having a plugged-up ear.

Gray is on the lookout for a Francesca, who smells like a warm, chocolate cappuccino, or an Abby, who tastes like orange bubble gum. Good luck to him as he smells his way to romance!

-via Weird Universe

When you think of the power of sound in war, the first thing that comes to mind is Joshua's Hebrew army blowing their horns until the walls of Jericho fell. There are many more examples from better-documented wars of sound used against an enemy. The Greeks brought elephants into battle against the Romans, and the trumpeting of the elephants frightened the Roman's horses so much they threw their riders. So the Romans came back, bringing squealing pigs, which frightened the elephants. An advancing army is only as good as what they are riding on. Then there's the case of the escaped prisoner who trained pipers to play music that would make the enemy's horses dance. Asian marauders from the northern steppes designed arrows that would scream as they flew to terrified their targets. Oh yeah, and there's the intimidating Maori haka. Read a rundown of the creative ways sound has been used in war at The Conversation. -via Damn Interesting      

(Image source: The British Library)

Thank you so much @NPR and @wynneellyn for sharing this poorly drawn cats love story with the world! @GrantSchroeder and @emmaf1878 I wish you all the best! And please send me Cheddar pictures as soon as you find your orange cat!! https://t.co/8WRPc94JQE

— poorly drawn cats (@poorlycatdraw) August 4, 2022

Poorly Drawn Cats is a Twitter account in which Brazilian artist Heloísa Nora draws other people's cats. The pictures aren't poorly drawn, just minimalist and often funny. In 2019, Grant Schroeder commissioned Nora to draw his kitten Luna. When the picture was posted, Emma Ferguson of Liverpool, UK, noticed it because she had a kitten named Luna as well. She went to Shroeder's Twitter account and saw a picture of him with Luna. So she followed him. He noticed, and followed her. Soon they were messaging each other and began a long-distance relationship. They met once when Schroeder flew to England, but then were separated by the pandemic for a year. They finally got married a couple of weeks ago. Nora made another drawing in honor of the occasion.

poorly drawn cats made this for emma and i and it’s truly the most gorgeous beautiful piece of art i’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/vrcoaITBFE

— grant (@GrantSchroeder) July 28, 2022

The couple now live in Liverpool with two cats. Schroeder's Luna stayed in Oregon with his parents and Ferguson's Luna has passed on. They are looking forward to getting another cat. -via Fark

How much do you know about amoebas? Not nearly as much as you're about to find out from Ze Frank. This video was shot completely under a microscope, and it will blow your mind. The amoeba Dictyostelium act like normal single-celled microbes as long as there is plenty of food to eat and no sexy amoebas around they aren't related to. But under the right circumstances, amoebas will form colonies and turn into a slug and then into a plant or fungus or something. Or at least that's how they act. It's very weird, and very well worth dealing with an in-video ad plus YouTube ads. At the end, we get a frightening scenario that only happens when two amoebas love each other very much and decide to take over the world. Plus all the double entendres you'd expect from Ze Frank.

For thousands of years, Australians have avoided swimming off the northern coast between November and May because of Irukandji syndrome. It's the sting of a creature then unknown, which leads to prolonged pain so severe that the victims often beg for the sweet release of death. And sometimes death comes anyway.

Australia has more than its share of deadly creatures, and a jellyfish was suspected of delivering Irukandji syndrome. The box jellyfish and the Portuguese man o' war have painful stings, but nothing like this. The creature responsible for such misery wasn't identified until 1961 by Dr. Jack Handyside Barnes. He managed to capture some tiny transparent jellies that had never been studied before.

But was this tiny creature really the cause of Irukandji Syndrome? While most scientists would have started by analyzing the venom’s chemical composition or testing the creature’s sting on an animal, Barnes had other ideas, skipping straight to human experimentation. As for the test subjects, this included Barnes himself, of course, along with local lifeguard Chilla Ross and, controversially, Barnes’ own 9-year-old son, Nick.

The experience of being stung by the jellyfish that was eventually named Carukia barnesi in his honor caused Barnes to spend the rest of his life trying to mitigate its effects. We don't know what lasting trauma the experiment had on his son. Read about the jellyfish and the doctor who found it at Today I Found Out.  

(Image credit: GondwanaGirl)

Guns 'n' Roses released their first album, Appetite for Destruction, in July of 1987, making it 35 years old. You might think it couldn't have been that long ago, and your memory is somewhat correct. The album sat in stores for a year before it took off and became #1 and stayed on the charts for six more months. Radio wouldn't play it because most of the songs contained f-bombs, stores wrapped the offensive original cover art in brown paper, and MTV wouldn't play the video for "Welcome to the Jungle." Geffen records founder David Geffen had to negotiate with the channel to get a single play.

Geffen and the network came to a compromise: They’d play the video at 4 a.m. EST and 1 a.m. PST, when they thought no one would be watching. However, the opposite happened: MTV’s switchboard lit up. “Every kid in America is calling them requesting this video,” Al Coury, Geffen’s head of promotion at the time, told Zutaut. From that point on, MTV added the video to their regular rotation, which helped increase record sales.

Read the story behind the iconic album and some of the hit songs it spawned at Mental Floss. Yeah, there are videos.

I think that it's fair to say that John Locke (1632-1704) is better known for his contributions to philosophy than to the culinary arts. This English Enlightenment philosopher is famous in modern times for advancing liberal* politics and an empiricist approach to epistemology.