Elmer McCurdy wanted to be an Old West outlaw, but he was particularly bad at it. He and his gang once used too much nitroglycerin during a train robbery and destroyed the safe they tried to break into -and its contents. A bank robbery failed when they couldn't open a safe. And for his last robbery, he targeted the wrong train, which had no money. McCurdy was eventually shot and killed by police in 1911, and that's when his adventures really began.

McCurdy’s body was taken to the Johnson Funeral Home in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. He had no immediate kin to claim the body, so it was preserved in hopes that someone would claim it. Several weeks elapsed, and still, no one showed up to claim the body. The funeral homeowner decided to embalm the body and dress him in a suit. He put up the body for public exhibition, charging people 5 cents just to take a look.

For five long years, Elmer’s body remained in the Oklahoma funeral home, till one day it was claimed. Two men, James, and Charles Patterson showed up at the funeral home and requested the body. They identified themselves as Elmer McCurdy’s long-lost brothers. The funeral director was a bit suspicious of the two, but since the attraction fell out of favor, he decided to let go of the body. He also felt that McCurdy deserved a decent burial after an extended stay in the funeral home.

McCurdy did not get a decent burial until 1977. Read the story of Elmer McCurdy's restless corpse at Sometimes Interesting. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: W. G. Boag)

No words, just wow. The French police raided an 81-person orgy at a warehouse outside of Paris for breaking the city’s coronavirus curfew. The participants were fined 135 euros each, for breaching the curfew. An investigator also stated that the party lacked masks and social distancing (of course):  

"Those involved in the libertine party cooperated with the police, and there was no resistance to the police."

Police also confiscated sound and lighting systems set up for the "libertine party" and alcohol.

The orgy raid comes a little over a month after police in Belgium raided a 52-person orgy at a birthday party in a house in front of a coronavirus clinic.

All of the participants were fined for breaking coronavirus gathering rules.

"I’m angry, François Culot, mayor of a nearby town, said, according to the Independent. "Some people really don’t respect anything! Organizing an illegal party in the middle of the night in front of a clinic where Covid patients are treated? This is unacceptable!"

Image via the independent

Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire in 1206 CE. When he died in 1227, he was at the height of his power and reportedly healthy for a man in his 60s. He had made arrangements ahead of time to be buried in an unmarked grave at a location that would remain secret. Genghis Khan's grave has never been found.

While the conqueror's influence is well known, his death is shrouded in mystery. Genghis Khan's family and followers were instructed to keep his demise as their most hidden secret, since it happened during a vital stage of their war against the Western Xia, an empire the Mongols had fought for more than 20 years, the researchers said.

To honor or sully Genghis Khan's memory, both friends and foes of the Mongols told a number of legends about his death, the scientists said. One story claims he succumbed to blood loss after getting stabbed or castrated by a princess of the Tangut people, a Tibeto-Burman tribe in northwest China. Others suggested he died of injuries sustained after tumbling from his horse, fell in battle against the Chinese or died of an infected arrow wound during his final campaign against the Western Xia.

In the new study, the researchers suggested that all of these legends were likely invented well after Genghis Khan's death.

So how did he die? A new study can't say for sure, but research gives us the most likely scenario, which you can see at Real Clear Science.

(Image credit: Иван Коржев)

How many times have you read someone correcting pop culture errors and reminding you that you will never see penguins and polar bears in the same place? It's because polar bears live in the Arctic and penguins live in the Antarctic. Last week, the two species kind of met in the middle in St. Louis. The king and gentoo penguins of the St. Louis Zoo went on a field trip to visit the polar bears. Lucky for the penguins, the polar bears were kept behind the glass wall. -via Boing Boing

Different kinds of tea require specific steeping times and water temperatures. It’s not enough that we use boiling water to brew our favorite tea, we have to consider the temperature of the liquid we’re pouring. Tea specialist Kyle Stewart says that brewing temperature matters because some tea leaves are delicate than others: 

Stewart explains that when it comes to how long to steep tea, the duration varies for a similar reason: some types of tea have a stronger flavor profile than others. But he says letting it steep too long ends up making the tea taste more bitter than it’s meant to.

“Often, people will leave their tea bag in their mug while they drink their tea thinking that this is making the tea stronger so they’re getting more of the benefits from the tea leaves or herbs, but that’s actually not the case,” says Neva Cochran, RD, a registered dietitian who is friends with Stewart and a knowledgable tea expert in her own right. “Scientists have actually studied this and found that at a certain point, the benefits you’re getting from the tea reaches a saturation point.”

Both Stewart and Cochran recommend brewing tea using either an infuser or tea bags. They aren’t fans of the commonly used tea ball strainers. “People inevitably pack the ball too full and the outer tea leaves get more water exposure than the inner leaves, so it isn’t even,” Stewart says. 

Image via wikimedia commons 

When it comes to opening a window, the main dilemma is whether to trade your peace and quiet for some fresh air. Sure, your room gets ventilated, but in exchange it gets noisier because of the sounds outside. Scientists at the National University of Singapore come to address this problem with their Acoustic Friendly Ventilation Window (AFVW). The said window is claimed to “bring in more fresh air than a conventional open window, while still keeping out unwanted sounds.”

There are two horizontal louvered vents built into the assembly, one above the actual glass window itself, and one below it. The bottom vent is open to the outdoors, while the top vent opens into the room. An electric ventilation unit (basically a cylindrical fan) in the lower vent draws fresh air in from outside, pushing it up through the air gap between the panes, and out of the top vent into the building.

Along its way through the window, the air passes through a dust filter that removes pollutants. Additionally, sound-absorbing material located along either side of the air gap limits the amount of noise that makes its way in from outside. As a result, the setup is claimed to provide four times better ventilation than a conventional open window of a similar size, while also providing a fourfold reduction in the perception of outdoor ambient noise.

There's no word on the ventilation unit's power consumption, although it would be lower than that of an air conditioner, and likely similar to that of a standalone fan within the room.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: National University of Singapore/ New Atlas)

Researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new material that could recycle the 6.8 billion face masks we use each day. The material integrates shredded single-use face masks with recycled concrete aggregate (RCA). Adding this new material to roads could make them stronger, according to a  study:

Single-use face masks generate significant waste. In a July report, the UN called the influx of single-use masks a “toxic problem” and estimated that 75% of used masks and other pandemic-related waste will end up in landfills or floating in the oceans.

Roads might seem like an unlikely way to reuse masks, but some roads are already made of recycled materials. According to Jie Li, a professor at RMIT University who led the study, results from their experiment suggest that RCA mixed with face masks could be used for two of the four layers generally used to make roads. They estimate that paving a two-lane road that’s 0.62 miles (or one kilometer) long will require about 3 million face masks, rerouting 93 tons of waste from landfills.

Not only could the solution mitigate the environmental impacts of COVID-19, but it could also actually make the road work better. They found that the recycled concrete concoction can actually improve the road’s strength, ductility, and flexibility compared to a control sample of RCA without shredded fact masks in the mix.

Image via Fast Company

Artist Eliza Reinhardt and her beloved pup Finn took part in the Getty Museum Challenge that took place in 2020. Reinhardt and her furry friend recreated works of art every day for nearly a year. With the right props and a fully-costumed Finn, the artist was able to recreate a lot of artworks beautifully. My Modern Met interviews Reinhardt about the logistics of working with a dog and creating compositions each day. Check the full interview here. 

Image via My Modern Met 

What we have here is a lesson in flatulence in the animal kingdom. We'll meet a snake that draws in air to make scary noises, insects that kill with farts, and fish that can die if they don't break wind properly. But which farts are the worst? It depends on how you define "worst." -via Digg

Shall we take a trip to Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauo tamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronuku pokaiwhenuakitanatahu? That's a hill on the North Island of New Zealand named after a Moari hero. There are various spellings, the shortest of which is 85 characters and the longest is 105 characters. Atlas Obscura reports that the name translates as follows:

the hill of the nose-flute playing by Tamatea - who was blown hither from afar, had a slit penis, grazed his knees climbing mountains, fell on the earth, and encircled the land - to his beloved

Ouch! That sounds painful.

I hate it when I skin my knees.

Photo: Archives of New Zealand

Every once in a while, you comes across a name listed as "John Doe, Esquire," or something like that. What does it mean? The short answer is that it means John Doe is a lawyer. However, that pretty much only pertains to American lawyers, and there is no codified rule as to the word's use. The custom descends from British titles of nobility, and to understand it, you have to go back to how other titles came about, such as that of "knight." In medieval Europe, every knight had a "squire."

This is where esquires come into play. The word itself derives from Old French, and in turn from Latin, where it means something like “shield-holder.” In the 1200s and 1300s in England, a variety of languages were used, so such figures might be referred to as the Latin armiger (“arms-holder,”) or scutifer (“shield-bearer”), or the French escuier, which became “esquire.” These terms all refer to roughly similar people. This role was generally considered moderately prestigious for young men of some wealth, but at its core it was a service job. You carry a knight’s stuff, tend to his horses, that kind of thing. “Esquire” and “squire” were names for the same gig for a few hundred years.

In 1363, the esquire’s place as a respectable social rank was codified in the Sumptuary Laws, which were essentially a huge list of what different groups of people could and could not wear. That list included esquires as a social group, alongside gentlemen and anyone else below the level of knight who actually had money and land. This was the same time that the idea of a gentry emerged in England: People who are not noble, but certainly not peasants, either. They were people worthy of being ranked above somebody in the social hierarchy.

But how did "esquire" come to mean lawyer? For the rest of the story, you'll need to go to Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Kenneth C. Zirkel)

In the event that a sudden tragedy happens inside a room of six exits, the most logical course of action is for the crowd to divide themselves into the number of exits. That way, people can get out of the room safely. But in reality, that is not what happens. Instead, all of the people panic and try to go out in one exit, and the result is a stampede. This happens because we’ve developed a tendency to clump together when we find ourselves in a dangerous situation.

There are many advantages to that… from defense (it’s easier for a group to fight off a threat) to safety in numbers (people can hide in a crowd). When humans moved to agrarian and urban lifestyles, our dangers changed—but our responses didn’t, says Randolph Nesse, a professor of psychiatry at Arizona State University who studies the evolutionary reasons behind anxiety. “We continue to be afraid of things that were dangerous to our ancestors,” Nesse says. When we panic, ancient instincts kick in.

Is there a way to somehow solve this problem of ours? Hopefully, there is, and it seems that the solution is found in the humble creatures that we see in our homes: the ants.

More details about this over at Nautilus.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: monsterpong09/ Pixabay)

We humans love snowfall and winter storms because of the “cool” and fun stuff we can do outdoors, like sledding, snowball fights, and snow angels. Animals love snowfall, too, and for similar reasons.

The National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute has recently released pictures and videos of zoo animals enjoying the snow, which include the two giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian. See the pictures and the videos over at Smithsonian Magazine.

Cute!

(Image Credit: The National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute/ Smithsonian Magazine)

In an interesting turn of events, plants can now send us emails. Sort of. The situation is a bit more complicated than that. Scientists have engineered spinach plants into sensors. The plants can now detect explosive materials and wirelessly relay the information back to scientists. If the spinach roots detect an explosive compound in groundwater, the plant will emit a signal, which will be read by an infrared camera that will send an email alert to the scientists: 

This experiment is part of a wider field of research which involves engineering electronic components and systems into plants. The technology is known as “plant nanobionics”, and is effectively the process of giving plants new abilities.

“Plants are very good analytical chemists,” explains Professor Michael Strano who led the research. “They have an extensive root network in the soil, are constantly sampling groundwater, and have a way to self-power the transport of that water up into the leaves.”

“This is a novel demonstration of how we have overcome the plant/human communication barrier,” he adds.

Image via Euronews 

Restoring old items is an art and a meticulous process. From recreating new parts for the item to repainting the item, the process takes time and a lot of effort. There is also a certain art to it of course, as the main objective is to restore the item to its original glory, as if time has never touched it.A video from Art Insider features Kerchie, a YouTuber who repairs vintage Polly Pocket sets. Check out how she restores a 28-year-old Polly Pocket set.