The staff at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in Eatonville, Washington, had a great idea for a fundraiser. They put art supplies in some of the bear enclosures. The idea was that the bears would walk through the globs of non-toxic paint on the floor and then leave paw prints in bright colors on the paper that covered the floor. The paw prints could be sold as artworks to patrons of the park. But one bear named Fern had a better idea. She shoved her face in the paint, several colors worth, and used her own snout to create a masterpiece! It's an example of abstract art, of course, but her keepers think it's priceless. This brings a whole new meaning to the term face painting.

But that makes us wonder who got the honor of cleaning Fern's face when the painting was completed. That's what interns are for, you know. -via Fark

Peter Gabriel left his band Genesis in 1975. Two years later, he released his first solo single, "Solsbury Hill." The song went to #13 in the UK, and #68 in the US. Gabriel went on to record several #1 songs, but "Solsbury Hill" had an afterlife of its own. Almost a quarter-century after its debut, it started showing up in movie trailers. And why not? It's a pleasant, bouncy tune that sounds familiar to the audience even if they don't recall the song. To those who know the song, it conveys the theme of a personal journey. "Solsbury Hill" has also appeared in countless advertisements on radio, TV, and the internet.

Gabriel doesn't regret licensing the song for commercial use, although he admits it might be overused. However, it started out as a very personal illustration of his journey from Genesis to retirement to a solo career. Read how the song came about and what it means, as well as its metamorphosis to an advertising staple, at Mental Floss.

Arthur Hardy publishes a New Orleans Mardi Gras guide. He had been searching for decades for a rumored film clip of the city's 1898 Mardi Gras parade, the first one ever filmed. The rumors were true, and he finally found it this past March in, of all places, Netherlands. The Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam had a clip, less than two minutes long, the Holy Grail of New Orleans history documentation.

Taken on February 22, 1898, the film depicts six floats from the parade. The theme that year was “Harvest Queens,” per the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate. People carried silver bell-shaped placards before each float to commemorate the Rex Organization’s 25th anniversary.

People sure did dress up to watch a parade back then! The found footage was debuted to the public last month, and will be a part of an exhibit on the Rex Organization's 150th anniversary. I read that and thought, "I bet that's on YouTube already." You can read the story behind the film and the search for it at Smithsonian.

Finally finished one of these! ☄️ pic.twitter.com/Jwg0OKkzNv

— Birb Trek 64 (OPEN FOR COMMS + WORK) (@SpinaSanctuary) June 21, 2022

How much time during the 90s did you spend on a Nintendo 64? Was it too much or not enough? I'll bet that your answer is "yes!".

At the same time, perhaps you watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which is arguably the greatest series in the Star Trek franchise. BirdTooth Studios offers this adaptation of the introductory sequence to Deep Space Nine as though it was the beginning of a Nintendo game. It does not appear to be a direct translation, though, because it shows a Defiant-class starship, not a Danube-class runabout at the beginning. This does not happen in original source material.

-via Gizmodo

The original trolley problem, developed by philosopher Philippa Foot, is straightforward but complex: you can do nothing and let the trolley run over five people or switch the tracks and kill one person.

Neal Argawal, a maker of silly and fun online games, offers a long series of variations of the trolley problem. For example, would you save one cat or five lobsters? Would you kill one stranger or five clones of yourself? Five elderly people or one baby? The answers are rarely obvious, as this example demonstrates. I'd hate this one in particular because it would require me to do math under pressure.

-via Flowing Data

Craniopagus parasiticus is a condition of a conjoined parasitic twin that consists of a head joined to the other twin's head. The parasitic twin has either no body or an underdeveloped body, and cannot live without the autositic twin. Only ten cases have ever been documented, and only four survived birth. Of those four cases, one died shortly after birth, and two died from complications after surgery to remove the parasitic head. That leaves the earliest case known, that of a boy born in 1783 in Bengal, India.

The boy, whose name is not recorded, was exhibited by his parents for money for some time, and became rather famous. After he died from a cobra bite at age four and was properly buried, he was the victim of grave robbery and was dissected. The examination revealed a completely separate brain for the parasitic twin, which raises some serious questions. His skull now resides at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Read about the short but eventful life of this child and what was found out about his, or possibly the plural "their", anatomy at Amusing Planet.

In a region of northwestern Saudi Arabia called AlUla, anything ancient civilizations left behind is pretty much still there. With no water, no vegetation, little sand, and no archaeologists until recently, artifacts and structures don't end up buried or hidden. Exploration has revealed the existence of a culture here dating back to the Neolithic period, 7000 years ago. What's more, they built 1600 huge rectangles of stone walls, called mustatil, that are best seen from above. Scientists believe they have something to do with an ancient religion.

Thomas, McMahon and their teams have since unearthed evidence that suggests cultic practice. They've uncovered large numbers of cattle, goat and wild gazelle skulls and horns in small chambers in the heads of the mustatil, but found no indication that these were kept for domestic use. Since no other animal's body parts were found, it led the team to deduce that these were sacrificial. It further suggested that the animals were sacrificed elsewhere. This is important because it is evidence of a highly organised, cultic society, much earlier than was previously thought – predating Islam in the region by 6,000 years.

Read what we know about this ancient civilization so far, and see more of the mustatil, at BBC Travel.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Royal Commission for AlUla)

Not long ago, we looked at the many kinds of dumplings made around the world. But where did they get their start? The oldest documentation on dumplings we know of is a 1,700-year-old recipe found in China. While the Chinese might not have invented dumplings, they certainly made them popular, and exported that enthusiasm to other cultures. In this TED-Ed lesson, University of Michigan professor Miranda Brown traces the spread of dumplings around the world and looks at how they were altered and adapted to work with local resources and cultures. That means people learned about them, and then made them with what they had and what they liked to eat.  And that's why we have so many kinds of dumplings today. Warning: this video might make you hungry. It sure worked on me. -via Laughing Squid

On Independence Day (meaning the holiday, not the movie, but that's included, too), you'll find plenty of lists of facts about US presidents, and we've posted a lot of them over the years. Cracked went in another direction and gives us facts about fictional US presidents from movies and TV. There are way more of them than you realized. None of the 16 presidents are repeated, but they still didn't get to my favorite, Kevin Kline in the 1993 movie Dave. But I also liked President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.

You can see the rest of the pictofacts at Cracked. Then let us know who your favorite fictional president is.

When we think of flight simulators, we first think of video games, then we think of the computerized training programs that military pilots use to prepare for battle. But the first flight simulators came way before computers were available. The Link Trainer was a flight simulator used to train pilots during World War II! Tom Scott gives us an opportunity to look inside the "blue box" that new pilots used for practice instead of planes during the war. It looks a bit like the coin-operated kiddy rides you see at grocery stores, and it is entirely mechanical. The Link Trainer would move according to how the trainee worked the controls, and instructors could change the machine's response to simulate different weather conditions. You have to wonder how it simuated a crash. It's altogether a really cool piece of technology for its time, and even cooler as an antique.   

In 1898, Mrs. Ida Deane of Dover, Delaware, threw a dinner party. Her sister, Mrs. Mary Dunning, brought a box of chocolates to share. Before the night was over, Mrs. Deane, her sister, and three other guests were very ill. Within three days all five were dead. The other guests, who had not eaten the candy, were just fine. An examination of the candy revealed it was loaded with arsenic. Mrs. Dunning didn't make or buy the chocolates; they were in a package she received by mail the same day of the dinner party. There was no name on the package, but a note was included that said,

With love to yourself and your baby, Mrs. C

The postmark was from San Francisco. Who could have sent the package, and why? Mrs. Dunning was clearly the target, and we don't know if she knew the sender- or even thought she did. If she hadn't been so generous, she would have been the only one killed. If she hadn't been so trusting, she wouldn't have been killed, either. Mrs. Deane and Mrs. Dunning were daughters of a prominent former congressman. Both left husbands behind, but only one husband drew suspicion -and he had an alibi. Read about the investigation and the murder trial that ensued at Murder by Gaslight. -via Strange Company

Now this is weird. There are dinosaur footprints at Gettysburg, the historic Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania. What's even weirder, their footprints are on a bridge built in 1937! There's a perfectly reasonable explanation, told to us by the Adams County Historical Society at Gettysburg. This story isn't exactly a secret, but thousands of people pass that way to check out the historical site and have no idea. It's something neat you'll need to remember and check out if you go there in the future.

Ever since the debut of "flushable" wet wipes, they've been causing environmental problems. While they are designed to be flushed, and will not clog up a toilet, these wipes often cause problems downstream, where they absorb grease and oil and form "fatbergs" that clog up sewage systems. And even rivers. A mass of wet wipes has collected on the side of the river Thames in London, forming an island the size of two tennis courts. It's so massive that, according to the Times, it has changed the course of the river.

Many kinds of wet wipes contain plastic material, so even when they finally disintegrate, they can leave microplastics in the environment, affecting both wildlife and the water supply. Members of Parliament have urged residents not to flush wipes down the toilet, and they are considering a ban on wet wipes that contain plastic. Meanwhile, they are urging manufacturers to spell out more clearly how they should be disposed of. You can read more on this story at Business Insider. -via Fark

(Image credit: Edwardx)

Have you ever stopped to think about how much smarter and how much more you know now than, say, 20 years ago? You might congratulate yourself on learning some stuff, but what about if we turned that question on its head- think about how dumb you are now compared to what you will know 20 years in the future. That's not quite so easy to grasp, possibly because can't grasp what's in our future. Or it just may be our lack of intellectual humility. We all have some difficulty admitting that we may not know everything, or that we might be wrong about something or other. While we may understand the concept of the Dunning-Kruger effect, we don't see it in ourselves. And we all suffer from it at some time, in some ways, although we may never be aware of it.

Intellectual humility is the mindset that tells us we always have more to learn, as long as we are open to the possibility, and are willing to visit the idea that other viewpoints may be valuable. It could be the one trait that allows us to get smarter than we are. -via Digg