We may marvel at an ostrich taller than we are, or an eagle with talons bigger than a human hand. But they have nothing on prehistoric birds, some of which we mind-bogglingly large. The picture above is a recreation of a Paraphysornis, or terror bird, that weighed around 400 pounds. But there was also Dromornis stirtoni, an Australian thunder bird, the males of which averaged 1400 pounds! A female South Island giant moa could reach ten feet tall. And a fossil named Pelagornis sandersi found in South Carolina had a wingspan of 24 feet.
Why were prehistoric birds able to grow so large? And why did they die out? As far as extinction goes, that was usually due to predators, including humans. Read about these enormous birds of the distant past at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Armin Reindl)
The Tim Traveler is looking for the oldest surviving building on earth. Now, you notice that there is no building identified in the title of this post, because such a question will have a lot of qualifiers. First, you have to define what you mean by "building," and then you have to define what you mean by "surviving." There could be any number of old buildings to top the list, depending on how you define those terms. Which is good, because that means we get to learn about several very old structures in this video. Tim has qualifiers that are different from Wikipedia's list. He makes the argument for the Cairn of Barnenez in France, because you can still go inside it and have a roof over your head. That would make me a bit nervous, because I've had bad experiences with very old man-made roofs. -via Digg
Nicholas Bostic, a pizza delivery driver in Lafayette, Indiana, noticed that a house in a residential neighborhood was on fire. He parked and ran up to the house to alert the occupants. Inside were five sleeping children.
Bostic rushed in through the back door of the house and screamed out that the house was on fire. He found four children and took them outside. They told him that a six-year-old child was on the second story. Bostic rushed back into the house, now engulfed with flames. The smoke was so thick that he couldn't see, but he nonethless found the child and jumped out of a window with her. Here he is carrying that child to firefighters who arrived on the scene:
Here’s the video to go along with the story. pic.twitter.com/TvZ5wzCg1f
— LafayetteINPolice (@LafayetteINPD) July 15, 2022
Bostic recieved a deep cut on his right arm and suffered severe smoke inhalation. He had to be hospitalized, but, People magazine reports, is now recovering and was released from a hospital in Indianapolis on Wednesday.
Lafayette Police are, quite rightly, calling Bostic a hero.
-via Sam Ro | Photo: Lafayette Police
The 1930s character Indiana Jones would say "It belongs in a museum!" and a 21st century audience would add "in the country you looted it from!" If you were disturbed by the story of the Nigerian Ife Head, you need to read about the New York Antiquities Theft Task Force. The task force is led by assistant district attorney Matthew Bogdanos, who began this work by tracking down antiquities looted from the National Museum of Iraq in 2003. Since then, the task force has recovered around 4,000 items, half of which have been returned to their place of origin. The rest are awaiting repatriation in a storage facility that is considered Manhattan’s best antiquities museum.
An interview with Bogdanos gives us insight into the world of looters, smugglers, dealers, collectors, donors, and museums that end up with precious stolen artifacts, and how cases are cracked. There is some comedy, as in the awkward process of serving warrants on the very rich and privileged people involved. But the best part is Bogdanos' philosophy around the work he does, which is about righting global wrongs and restoring the legacy of victim nations. -via Metafilter
An awful lot of obviously guilty people get away with crimes because of technicalities. There's a glaring loophole of geography and law in a small part of Yellowstone National Park that causes it to be known as the Zone of Death. No, not because people die there, but because it might happen someday, and if it was murder, the perpetrator could conceivably get away with it. The park exists in three different states, which makes jurisdiction kind of complicated, and the way the laws are worded would make any trial very complex, if not impossible. So if you want to commit the perfect crime, well, just don't. Even if the long arm of the law can't get you, karma will. Tom Scott explains what's going on in the Zone of Death, which is only on paper. In real life, no one lives there, and people rarely go there. It's just fine for bears and bison, however -they don't even bother with criminal trials.
Perlora Ciudad de Vacaciones is collection of about 150 midcentury buildings on Spain's northern coast. The resort was built under the authority of fascist dictator Francisco Franco, to provide a two-week holiday getaway for the working class. It opened in 1954. Although austere by modern standards, the hotel and cabins had electricity and plumbing, making them a luxurious upgrade for many Spaniards. Vacation City survived long past Franco's regime, and was a beloved destination for families up until it closed in 2005.
People who have fond memories of Perlora Ciudad de Vacaciones still go there. Although the remaining buildings are locked, the area is open to the public by law, and in the summer you'll find plenty of folks sitting in the yards of their old vacation homes, enjoying picnics or using the tennis courts. The resort is owned by the regional government, and they'd like to reopen it if someone with a proper plan can rehabilitate it. The proposals include everything from art workshops to retirement housing, but no project has made it to approval yet. Read about Perlora Ciudad de Vacaciones, its past, pressent, and future, at Atlas Obscura.
This is a compilation of familiar viral cat videos with a new soundtrack. Be on the lookout for the one cat who can actually form words. For some reason, I was trying to identify the movie in which Schwarzenegger made this particular noise, but I gave up on that pretty quickly. As one internet sage put it: "This is simultaneously both the stupidest and the greatest thing I've ever seen." After this video goes viral, you'll want to be on the lookout for the Werner Herzog version. Or maybe William Shatner. And this, kids, is the kind of thing that made the internet so popular in the 1990s, before we even had social media. -via Metafilter
David Bennett was 57 years old, and suffering from heart failure, among several other health problems. He was not a candidate for a heart transplant because he had a history of not following doctor's orders. In January, he had been in a hospital bed for two months when he received an experimental procedure of last resort: a transplant heart from a pig, an operation that had been in the works, but had never been performed on a human. The heart came from a pig that had been genetically modified with human genes to be more compatible. The pig heart started pumping, and Bennett survived the surgery. But he died 60 days later.
Why did Bennett die? The surgery was deemed successful, but if “cardiac xenotransplantation” is to ever be useful, post-surgical complications must be identified and addressed. Doctors still haven't pinpointed the cause of death, but they have four possibilities that are described and explored at Smithsonian. โ
(Image credit: University of Maryland School of Medicine)
For the past three years, you can barely surf the internet for a day without seeing the "Woman Yelling at Cat" meme. It's a convenient and engaging two-image combination to amusingly illustrate any statement with a comeback. We've posted the story of Smudge the cat. Now we get a chance to hear the story of the woman, Taylor Armstrong, who tells us what led to the image of her yelling on the reality TV series The Real Housewives of Beverley Hills. Warning: it involves domestic abuse. Armstrong is out of that relationship, but how does she feel about the meme?
It's good to know that even though the original experience was traumatic, you can feel okay about using the meme that it spawned. Meanwhile, Smudge is doing fine, and still sitting at the table, and occasionally doing that face. He still no like vegetals. -via Digg
A self-portrait of Dutch post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh has been uncovered hidden behind one of his paintings. The image was hidden behind cardboard and layers of glue https://t.co/PEz0MFk2fB 1/4 pic.twitter.com/IlEoPU2TGD
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 14, 2022
The famous Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh was never commercially successful during his lifetime. So, like a lot of starving artists, he reused canvases, painting over them repeatedly. Nonetheless, art convervators at the National Galleries of Scotland were surprised to find a rather complete self-portrait hidden in Van Gogh's 1885 work Head of a Peasant Woman.
The conservators x-rayed the painting in preparation for an upcoming exhibition on Van Gogh's work. Most artists who reuse canvases paint over previous works. But in this case, Van Gogh's self-portrait was painted on the back of Head of a Peasant Woman, then covered the self-portrait with layers of glue and cardboard.
-via Nag on the Lake
and I’m here, to remind you of the grass you left when you went away… ๐ https://t.co/3ISMFESryx
— Alanis Morissette (@Alanis) July 10, 2022
Lawn care companies are out in force this summer. There are so many of them that they've come up with memorable names, like "Lawn and Order" to stand out against the crowd. But one that just has a name on their equipment trailers captured the attention of just the right people. When Alanis Morrisette saw it, the puns just wrote themselves. Everyone had a take on Morrisette's biggest songs "You Oughta Know," "Ironic," and "One Hand in My Pocket") that could be used in the lawn care business.
It's some free mulch when you've already paid
— underscore (@the_under_score) July 10, 2022
Weird Al jumped in to protect his territory. Maybe he was already in the process of writing a parody song.
Hey! Stay in your lane! https://t.co/9wPAuWYUNy
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) July 11, 2022
He's not the only celebrity to jump in.
Holy shit. Wonder Woman is teaming up with @ThatKevinSmith's God on a 90's remix song @alyankovic style, and I can't think of anything better right now.
— William Ware (@jitterypillow41) July 11, 2022
All Morrisette songs are fair game for lawn care puns here.
Omggg snort laughed
— ILuv2Dance ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ (@ILuv2Dance) July 12, 2022
Even her name!
This is the content I'm here for
— Colleen Buck (@cjupiterr) July 11, 2022
Well done
Oh, there's plenty more in this ever-growing Twitter thread. -via a comment at Jezebel
The decommissioned Sheep Mountain Fire Lookout in Bighorn National Forest, Wyoming, is not exactly a tower, but it doesn't have to be because it's already high up on the mountain. It was constructed of rock by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1950, so you can bet it will be there for hundreds of years to come. But what makes this lookout so special is that it is available to rent overnight for camping. Yeah, it's real camping, with no plumbing or electricity, but it has a set of bunkbeds, a "single vault toilet" (outhouse), and you don't have to pitch a tent. But the biggest draw of the lookout is the spectacular view. It's so far away from city lights that you'll see stars like you've never seen before. See more pictures of the lookout facility and the view at TYWKIWDBI.
The odds are that any time you encounter a snake, it just wants to get away from you. Let it. But if you happen to step on a venomous snake, it may bite you in self-defense. Don't panic! Most of the people bitten by a venomous snake will survive, but you will need medical attention. Here are a few things you should know for the time being. Most importantly, you need to forget all those self-treatments you've seen in Western movies. They are just for movies. Get the real lowdown on how to respond to a snakebite from Tech Insider. -via Nag on the Lake
There’s a Baseball field in Finland that has a river camera. The results are what I’d expect. pic.twitter.com/XP5H4Fyzja
— Daniel Holland๐๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ เฅ (@DannyDutch) July 13, 2022
It would be tremendously fun if American baseball fields had rivers, too--especially if they ran through the field in order to create additional obstacles.
In this case, the river is simply a natural feature of the location of the field in Finland. The stadium of the town of Vimpeli, SB Nation reports, fills a small island in the middle of a river. It may be necessary for the outfielders to dive into the river to catch the ball and there are cameras set up to catch the amphibious action.
Strictly speaking, they aren't playing baseball. They're playing pesäpallo, a sport similar to baseball. The primary difference is that the pitcher stands next to the batter and tosses the ball straight up into the air. I don't know if river obstacles are standard.
-via Super Punch
Jim Thorpe is often considered the greatest athlete ever. Born in 1887, he became a standout athlete in college football. Then he won the decathlon and pentathlon competitions at the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912. However, in 1913, the International Olympic Committee stripped him of his medals because he had spent two summers playing minor league baseball during college, for which he was paid as little as $2 a game. There were strict amateur guidelines in effect at the time, although many assumed that racism played a part, as Thorpe was a Native American. The IOC had not followed its own rules that said a disqualification must be made within 30 days of competition. Thorpe went on to play professional baseball, football, and basketball (all in the same years), and also worked as a coach.
In 1982, the IOC reinstated Thorpe's Olympic victories, but listed him as a co-winner along with the second-place athletes in both events. On Friday, the 110th anniversary of the 1912 decathlon, the IOC voted to correct the record and designate Thorpe as the sole gold medalist in the 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon events. The change is the result of a painstaking two-year campaign that you can read about at AP. -via Digg
