Did you know that lapis lazuli once adorned great works of art from the past? The material has been associated with ‘cosmic wisdom,’ and it was once more precious than gold. From adorning King Tut’s coffin, and other ancient funeral items, to coloring the most expensive blue paint, the gemstone once ruled the hearts of artists and craftsmen: 

But in addition to being used on pharaoh's masks, scarabs and beads, it is rumored that pulverized lapis lazuli was the eyeshadow of choice for Cleopatra.

During the Crusades, lapis lazuli began making its way to Europe where it was also ground, but in this case for paint. It's "rarity and cost meant that it could be afforded for the creation of art works only by the richest of patrons," Roderick Conway Morris wrote in a 2015 piece for The New York Times.

During that medieval period, the pigment, a color named ultramarine, which means "beyond the sea," was "more precious than gold," Ravi Mangla wrote in The Paris Review. It was so special (and expensive), ultramarine was usually reserved for special commissions or parts of paintings like the Virgin Mary's robes.

Until the 19th century, lapis lazuli was the only game in town for "true blue" ultramarine. But in the 1820s, French chemist Jean-Baptiste Guimet created a synthetic alternative.

Image via How Stuff Works 

The Tropicalia is a conceptual greenhouse that will be built in Northern France by 2024. Designed by French firm Coldefy & Associates, the greenhouse will span over 215,000 square feet and will be covered by a huge 35-meter-tall dome. The Tropicalia will accommodate a diverse range of fauna and flora: 

The experience will be nothing less than that of an enchanted forest as visitors are led along a kilometer-long path where they pass by an 82-foot-high waterfall, an 82-foot-long “tactile pool” filled with koi carp, and an Olympic-sized pool filled with Amazonian fish, some even growing up to 3 meters in length! You can either choose to look at these fish through an aquarium-style glass surface or a platform and pontoon if you are feeling adventurous!

At this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, you will be able to catch a glimpse of Tropicalia’s architecture, engineering systems, and sustainable air treatment engineering. It will also include the current state of the research on tropical fauna and flora, and how they benefit the ecosystem, the planet, and our health. Tropicalia’s exhibit wants to showcase how science provides ways of peaceful coexistence between man and nature as we move towards a sustainable future. Tropicalia is expected to attract 500,000 visitors per year when it opens and it is certainly on our bucketlist!

Image via Yanko Design 

George Upson has been painting on pavements to get potholes filled. The New Zealand resident understands the power of dick graffiti, as he managed to draw attention to local potholes in need of repair by drawing penises on them. AV Club has the details: 

Upson says he’s “spent about NZ$400 ($286 [USD]) on spray paint this year” and estimates that he’s tagged more than 100 holes to date (though some get shafted, receiving less eye-catching paint circles instead of cartoon dicks). Aside from helping drivers avoid the potholes, the graffiti tends to speed up road repairs when the media reports on the pictures.

The results of his penis praxis have inspired others across New Zealand to join in the practice, but Upson has also been in trouble with the police over his work. He says he’s cooperated when asked to provide formal statements even though he’s concerned about facing “potential charges” or possible jail time.

Image via AV Club 

In developing language, regular people use words for things that we can recognize and agree on, like what a “tree” is. Then scientists got involved and tried to identify and categorize every species of tree. And once genes began to be studied, scientists realized that trees are not all related to each other at any level, and maybe even our definition of what a tree is cannot be trusted.  

“Trees” are not a coherent phylogenetic category. On the evolutionary tree of plants, trees are regularly interspersed with things that are absolutely, 100% not trees. This means that, for instance, either:

The common ancestor of a maple and a mulberry tree was not a tree.
The common ancestor of a stinging nettle and a strawberry plant was a tree.
And this is true for most trees or non-trees that you can think of.

I thought I had a pretty good guess at this, but the situation is far worse than I could have imagined.

So, what is a tree? You might say it’s a plant made of wood, but our definition of wood is pretty muddy, too. It turns out that an awful lot of non-woody plants have genes to make wood, and could be trees if conditions are right. And it gets weirder from there. Read how nature keeps making trees out of other plants, and vice versa, at Eukaryote Writes Blog. -via Metafilter

Imagine finding a marble head of Rome’s first emperor while you’re doing renovations! Well, construction workers in Isernia, Italy, were surprised to find a long-lost portrait of Augustus, who ruled as the first Roman emperor from 27 B.C. to until his death in 14 A.D. The marble bust has remained relatively intact, as the Smithsonian details: 

Speaking with isNews, superintendent Dora Catalano and archaeologist Maria Diletta Colombo, both of whom are overseeing the new project, said that some locals had proposed supporting the historic walls with concrete pillars.

“We highlighted that the solution was not feasible, not in the least because the piling would have risked destroying the foundation of the walls and any traces of ancient presence in the area,” the pair explained, per Google Translate.

“Yes, it is really him, the emperor Augustus, found today during the excavation,” writes the Archaeological Superintendency of Molise in the statement, per a translation by ARTNews’ Claire Selvin. “Because behind the walls of a city [lies] its history, which cannot be pierced with a concrete [pillar].”

Per a separate report from isNews, Mayor Giacomo D’Apollonio announced that the rare artifact will remain in Isernia and eventually go on display in the nearby Museum of Santa Maria Delle Monache.

Image via the Smithsonian 

The remains of a Middle Stone Age child were discovered at the mouth of a Kenyan cave. The burial was composed of a cluster of 78,000-year-old bones of a child believed to have been between 2.5 and 3 years old when the child was buried. In addition to the bones, researchers have found historical artifacts such as beads and tools:  

When archaeologists found Mototo's highly decomposed remains, they couldn't immediately identify them as human. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the National Museums of Kenya detail how they came to conclude, through microscopic analysis of the bones and the surrounding soil, that the skeleton in a cave's shallow circular pit belonged to a child who'd intentionally been laid to rest. 

"Deliberate burial of the dead is so far confined to just Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, setting us apart from all other ancient hominins, and any other animal," Nicole Boivin, an archaeological scientist and director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, tells me. "Study of mortuary and burial practices gives us insight into the evolution of our own species, our thoughts, emotions and cosmological beliefs, and what it means to be human."  

Image via CNET 

Artist Melanie Scott did this doodle of Guilala from 1967's The X from Outer Space!

source: twitter

Recently, I shined my dress shoes for the first time in a year. Since I wasn't wearing them daily to the office, there seemed like little reason to keep them shiny. Other people are making similar fashion changes as the pandemic recedes. This is having an impact on the fashion industry. The Wall Street Journal (sorry, but it's a paywalled article) reports:

In the past few weeks, pants with buttons and zippers have begun outselling those with drawstrings or elastic waistbands at L.L. Bean Inc. At Saks Fifth Avenue, sales of dresses, blouses and sandals are exceeding levels not seen since spring 2019. And employees at Haggar Clothing Co.'s distribution center are working overtime to replenish trousers and blazers at department stores and other retailers that sell its clothes.

"The fact that sales came back so strongly, so quickly before offices reopened speaks to the need for people to dress up as they get out there and socialize," said Michael Stitt, Haggar's chief executive officer.

Industry analysts are developing a consumer behavior model called "2-mile fashion". People can be very casual about what they wear within two miles of their home. Beyond that limit, they tend to dress up:

It found that when people stay within 2 miles of their home, they tend to wear sweatpants and carry just a few credit cards. If they travel farther than 2 miles, they put on pants and grab a wallet. The radius varies depending on whether people are in the suburbs or cities, but the habits stay the same.

"We embraced the idea of 2-mile fashion," said Brad Seabaugh, a Randa senior vice president, meaning that people wear different things whether they are close to home or farther away.

Some of these changes may be permanent as people try to carry comfortable, at-home fashion into the outer world:

That led Randa to bet big on several types of products, including slippers with soles that can be worn outdoors, large wallets and cargo pants. Randa executives figured that with men no longer carrying messenger bags or backpacks, they would shove everything in their wallets or pockets. A cargo pant with seven pockets is currently one of Haggar's bestsellers.

-via Super Punch | Image: Wish

BBC Earth has compiled clips of various bird species from their shows into one video showcasing extreme bird behavior, including fishing with bait, adoption, and cooperation with other species. It's 15 minutes long, but you can watch it in parts, because there are a lot of birds here, all interesting. -via Laughing Squid

I found this image on Totally Gourmet, but the origins of the photo remain mysterious. It looks straightforward enough: dump at least a dozen eggs into a bundt pan and bake them into a gelatinous ring of eggs. Although it's too late to do this for Easter, there are later opportunities to surprise guests with this innovate recipe that seems to frighten faint-hearted people of the Internet.

To enjoy a science fiction action film, one must always approach the story with a certain suspension of disbelief. Filmmakers, and storytellers in general, take certain liberties to keep the plot rolling, and even more so for a series of films spanning four decades and an entire  fictional galaxy. Overanalyzing the minutia of the Star Wars universe has become a cottage industry, but some questions are better left without a thorough explanation. For example, how does the Force work?

In the original movie, Obi-Wan gives one simple, succinct explanation of the Force: It gives a Jedi power because "it surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together." Otherwise, the old General opted to show, not tell, what the Force could do (bamboozle Stormtroopers, mostly). Yoda did much the same in Empire Strikes Back, moving rocks and adding a touch of spiritual poetry: "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

Then came The Phantom Menace, where Lucas unveiled the concept of midichlorians — tiny cellular creatures that are present in large quantities in the blood of the Force-sensitive. Fans feared that a deeply spiritual concept was now being given a biological explanation. Lucasfilm tried to explain that midichlorians are markers of the Force, not the cause of it, but the damage was done. (Lucas never cared about the backlash, and his plans for the sequel trilogy, shelved by Disney after he sold the company, delved even deeper into the microbial world.)

Midichlorians were completely absent from the later films, and rightly so. Mashable explores seven mysteries of the Star Wars universe and why they don’t need to be explained.

Modern drivers are very much used to going 100 km/h (62 mph), although we do it on paved highways in enclosed vehicles with windshields. None of those things were in play when Camille Jenatzy broke the land speed record in an automobile in April of 1899. Jenatzy drove an electric car he designed himself, called Le Jamais Contente (The Never Satisfied) that resembled nothing so much as a torpedo.

When asked to describe the feeling of traveling faster than anybody had ever done before on a road vehicle, Jenatzy said: “The car in which you travel seems to leave the ground and hurl itself forward like a projectile ricocheting along the ground. As for the driver, the muscles of his body and neck become rigid in resisting the pressure of the air; his gaze is steadfastly fixed about two hundred yards ahead; his senses are on the alert.”

Jenatzy reached the speed of 105.88 km/h (65.792 mph) that day, a record which stood for three years. Read the story of that vehicle at Amusing Planet.

Japan has a mascot for every product, agency, sports team, town, company, and public service campaign. The cute costumed characters draw attention and engender fan clubs, as each mascot has their own backstory and personality. Over the past year, a new masked superhero has joined their ranks- a pink cat called Koronon, who promotes health measures to fight COVID-19. Koronon walks the Ikebukuro and Shinjuku districts of Tokyo, handing out face masks and reminding people to keep a social distance.

The soft creatures can also be a balm. “Mascots help take the edge off when grim and serious matters are being discussed,” says Carlier. Kaila Imada, an editor at Time Out Tokyo who has previously reported on mascots, echoes that sentiment. “I think part of it is about bringing a bit of joy,” Imada says. Taizo Hayashi, designer and manager of Koronon (and Al-pha Co., an event promotion company), says he hopes the mascot helps make “the world peaceful” by providing a bit of light-heartedness against a backdrop of tough times.

While Koronon (whose name loosely translates to “no corona”), appears to be the only mascot created in response to the coronavirus in Japan, it isn’t alone in its fight against the pandemic. Throughout the country, mascots have been repurposed to educate the public on issues surrounding the virus.

Read more about Koronon and how other mascots are dealing with the pandemic at Atlas Obscura.

We know that the Wright Brothers are credited with the first flying machine, actually the first successful, manned, powered, heavier-than-air flying machine. You might not know that there were dozens of engineers and inventors working on the problem of powered flight in the years leading up to Wilbur and Orville’s breakthrough in 1903. You probably have not heard of the Aerodrome, a flying machine that made a spectacular flight in 1896, although with no pilot aboard.  

History would be made that day, May 6, 1896, as this apparatus—a flying machine, known as Aerodrome No. 5—was started and then launched from a spring-loaded catapult. The Aerodrome would take off and travel for 90 seconds some 3,300 feet in an effortless spiral trajectory and then gently land in the river.

The third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Pierpont Langley, an astronomer who also enjoyed tinkering with his own creations, was aboard the boat. His winged invention had just made the world’s first successful flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven, heavier-than-air craft of substantial size.

This experiment led to a manned flight of Langley’s followup aircraft called the Great Aerodrome, which had a pilot, in October of 1903. Because you know the Wright Brothers and not Langley, you can infer that it was not successful. Read the story of Langley’s flying machines at Smithsonian.

In the evening of Christmas 1895, two friends got into an arguments at a saloon in St. Louis. It ended when Lee Sheldon shot and killed William Lyons. It was reported in a newspaper that Lyon had taken Sheldon's hat and would not give it back. Alcohol was involved.  

There were four other murders that Christmas night in St Louis, but this was the one that counted. Work songs, field chants and folktales describing how Lee 'Stack Lee' Shelton killed Billy Lyons started to spring up almost immediately. The earliest written lyrics we have date back to 1903, and the first discs to 1923. There have been well over 200 versions of Stack's story released on record since then, giving him a list of biographers which includes some of the biggest names in popular music. Duke Ellington, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and James Brown have all recorded the song at one time or another, as have Wilson Pickett, The Clash, Bob Dylan, Dr John and Nick Cave. Even Elvis Presley had a stab at it in a 1970 rehearsal session which later surfaced as a bootleg CD.

The new century's seen other media join in too. In 2006, Derek McCulloch and Shepherd Hendrix published a fat graphic novel telling Stagger Lee's story in careful detail. Movie versions have come from Samuel L Jackson, who gives a storming live rendition of the song in 2007's Black Snake Moan, and Eric Bibb, who uses it to comment on the action unfolding around his character in the following year's Honeydripper.

Songs about Stagger Lee varied widely in their details over the past century, so what was the real story? Paul Slade did a deep dive into the story of Lee Sheldon, first setting the stage in late 19th-century St. Louis and then following what is known of the crime and what  might be inferred. He also looks into the evolution of the song-story and what different versions meant for their time. -via Strange Company