Why do salt and pepper always go together, and why are they the only two additives found on all restaurant tables in Western nations? It wasn't always this way, and to find out how it happened, BBC Ideas gives us a short history of both salt and pepper. -via Laughing Squid
In Chicago, the Uptown tunnels connect the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge with several theaters and other businesses underground. Why would tunnels be built connecting unrelated businesses? Stories abound of the 1920s, when Prohibition made the liquor trade illegal, and Al Capone made a fortune supplying the city with booze.
Numerous theories about the tunnels’ purpose abound, largely surrounding the Green Mill, a 1920s speakeasy and now classic jazz club. It was founded as Pop Morse's Roadhouse in 1907, a place for mourners to gather after funerals at the two nearby cemeteries. In 1910, it was sold and renamed the Green Mill Gardens, complete with bathrooms in the basement.
During Prohibition, the bar became a speakeasy with Capone connections, so people theorize the tunnels were used to run alcohol up to the bar, fueled by the fact the trap door is still in use behind the bar and alcohol kept in the basement. Others claim the tunnels were used as escape routes during police raids; folks could scamper underground and emerge elsewhere in Uptown as if nothing happened. Other ideas suggest illicit card games and liquor storage.
But the tunnels were not built with booze running in mind.
Still, it's not a great leap to think that these shenanigans may have happened. Read the real story behind the tunnels under Chicago, particularly the Uptown tunnels, at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Flickr user Keith Cooper)
In the Madonie mountains of Sicily, Giulio Gelardi works to save the manna industry, in which his family and a few other producers have toiled for generations. This manna is the sweet sap of the ash tree Fraxinus angustifolia. Once used as both a sweetener and a laxative, the natural sap was replaced by cheap cane sugar and artificial medications. But Gelardi has spent 40 years growing, perfecting, and promoting manna for a new generation.
When I ask if his manna is the one referenced in the Bible, Giulio laughs. “As you can imagine, it’s a source of much debate in these parts,” he says. However, the biblical descriptions of manna being “like coriander seed, white” with a taste “like wafers made with honey” are consistent with Giulio’s product. Did it come from heaven? If we consider the phrase allegorical, then yes, it comes from up high and drips down onto the ground. Could it have sustained a generation of Israelites for months and helped them survive harsh conditions? Maybe. People have survived on less nutritious foods. By all accounts, if this is not the very same manna described in the Bible, it might as well have been.
Learn about manna's history, production, and future at Atlas Obscura.
If you grew up watching classic Disney movies or Warner Bros. cartoons from the Golden Age, you've no doubt encountered "facts" about the animal kingdom that are totally wrong. Some of these myths were continuations of misguided common knowledge from an earlier era, while others were supposed to apply to just one character. But children don't know that Bugs Bunny's carrot-chomping habit was a family-friendly substitute for Groucho Marx's ubiquitous cigar. And some things we learned about animals were just made up of whole cloth to make an interesting story.
See 18 pictofacts containing totally wrong information about animals from TV and movies at Cracked.
A woman of Omagh, Northern Ireland posted a photo of an angry dog she found eating a dead rabbit on the side of the road. What a weird thing to do. Disgusting and quite daring if you ask me. Who knows what diseases this wild dog could have had or whether it would savagely attack anyone who gets close to it? But, she decided to let her huge heart shine by letting the dog inside of her car and inside of her home. This shouldn't go well. She'd be lucky if it did.
While driving with this wild dog on her way home, she noticed how angry and 'wicked’ it acted. Ok, so she likely just thought that the dog just needed tender unconditional love from its family, and so she kept driving with this thing in her car for miles. You have to admit that this woman was quite brave to have continued to drive while this angry wild dog remained in her possession. Most of us would've pooped or at least peed our pants doing such a thing.
The dog was without a collar when she found it, she says. So she only hoped that if she wrote a post online that it would find the owner.
United Airlines’ first class nuts are on sale. You don’t have to take any of their flights (with the pandemic, I’m not sure you can anyway) to get a taste of the airlines’ snack. The airlines stopped serving these nuts to passengers to reduce contact between passengers and flight attendants, as One Mile At A Time details:
As a result, GNS Foods has more than 30,000 pounds of excess nuts… that’s a lot of nuts!
As Kim Peacock, owner of GNS Foods, describes the situation:
“Not only are we left with bags of mixes, we are also left with the raw ingredients and ingredient contracts from the suppliers. We were asked to maintain United’s costs on their mixes for one year. In order to do that, we had to sign raw ingredient contracts for one year.
Now we’re left with these contracts. If nut prices rise, then you can sell the contract at a profit. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Nut prices fell, and the raw ingredient suppliers are looking to us to make up the difference! The other question is, ‘Where to go with all of these nuts?'”
Peacock believes these will be “scooped” up in no time:
Image via One Mile At A Time
An Indian travel company has announced a new bus service that can take passengers from New Delhi, India to London. The cost per passenger will be around $2,700. Private tourism company Adventures Overland will also take care of the passengers’ visa requirements, as Travel Update details:
The package will also include stay at 4 or 5 star hotels. Overall, the bus will cover approximately 18,000 kilometers in 70 days.
Adventures Overland on August 15 announced the “first-ever hop-on/hop-off bus service between Delhi and London”, named “Bus to London”. People taking this tour will travel through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France.
The idea was pushed by one of the co-founders of Adventures Overland after he and his colleagues did a road trip from India to London for three consecutive years in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Adventures Overland co-founder Tushar Agarwal told IANS, “We planned this trip after a lot of people passionate about travelling expressed their wish for a road trip to London. This was announced on August 15 and we hope that the first bus to London will be flagged off in May 2021.
Image via Travel Update
Alejandro Zuluaga and Andrea Palacio packed up their bags and resigned from their corporate jobs to live on their sailboat named Hakuna. The couple rented out the two empty rooms in their house and sold their cars. In a few months, they were able to move in with their dogs to their sailboat and sailed to the Dominican Republic. Forbes interviewed the couple about their unconventional lifestyle. Check the full piece here.
Image via Forbes.
Well, that’s to be expected from a lake growing in the belly of a volcano. A mysterious lake the size of five football fields is growing inside Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. The deadly waters range from 176 to 185 degrees (80 to 85C), according to the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, as the Lexington Herald Leader details:
“Globally, only a few volcanic lakes have surface temperatures greater than ... 176 degrees Fahrenheit,” the USGS reported Aug 8.
Why is the water so hot? Experts have not settled on a specific reason.
One factor could be “residual heat” built up in rubble at the base of the site’s pit crater, the USGS says. Another possibility is the nearby gas vents ( fumaroles ) that produce heat in the range of 302 degrees Fahrenheit, the report said.
The lake began forming sometime after a May 2018 eruption caused the floor of Kilauea’s caldera to collapse, leaving “a hole nearly as deep as One World Trade Center,” according to a report by NASA’s Earth Observatory. Prior to the eruption, the caldera hosted “a large lake of lava,” NASA says.
“In July 2019, helicopter pilots began to notice water pooling into a pond in the lowest part of the crater. Water levels have risen steadily ever since,” NASA says. “Today, the lake — now with a rusty brown sheen on its surface due to chemical reactions taking place in the water — has an area larger than five football fields combined and a maximum depth of roughly ... 100 feet.”
Scientists believe the lake is growing because the crater’s floor fell low enough to put it below the water table, NASA says.
Image via Lexington Herald Leader
The Salpalinja, also known as the ‘Salpa Line’ is a system of more than 700 field fortifications along Finland’s eastern border. The system was built between the Winter War and the Continuation War to prevent the Soviets’s invasion of Finland. Salpalinja consisted of bunkers, trenches, fueling stations, and more. The massive wall of defense never got to fulfill its purpose, as the potential Soviet invasion never came. The system is now a popular tourist spot, as Atlas Obscura details:
Along the line are multiple museums dedicated to its past and its bunkers, as well as tours that provide a great overview of its history.
However, many bunkers, dugouts, and obstacles are buried deep in the forests, away from guided tours and foot traffic. These areas offer great experiences for those interested in a different or additional perspective from the various museums. The Ventovuori area in Virolahti offers numerous bunkers and systems to explore but it is still just a very small part of Salpalinja.
Salpalinja was painstakingly built in the name of preparedness and defense, but today it remains only as a reminder of a history that never was, but could have been.
Image via Atlas Obscura
Emma Aldenryd, 18, is known as the "human Etch A Sketch." She has dermatographia, a medical condition that makes the skin very sensitive to the touch. By using a pencil as a stylus, she can make temporary, artistic marks on her body.
Whether we’ve seen the beauty of a comet in motion through a telescope or shooting in the night skies, it’s definitely a magnificent visual worth witnessing. Its tail of gas and dust discharge that shines brilliantly as it is moved by solar winds and sunlight pressure from the sun is worth a photo for all the world to see. And the history and schedule in which it returns can prepare us to snap our own little photos for our picture collage.
For over 30 years, Paul Knapp Jr. has been taking travelers out into the Carribean Sea to let them hear the songs of the humpback whales. He has guided some 4,000 people on these listening trips. Science and tech journalist Dyllan Furness is one of these people, and he writes about his experience over at Outside Online.
After 20 minutes, we reached Knapp’s most reliable listening location, an indistinctive stretch of open water just west of a peninsula. Knapp cut the engine, plugged a hydrophone into a pair of boat speakers, and dropped the device into the water. “OK,” he said as the cable ran through his fingers, falling to 50 feet below the surface. “Let’s see if we hear anything.”
Within seconds, a chorus of cetacean song filled the air—humpbacks emanating a series of elevated chirps and bellows and downward-spiraling moans. I’d listened to countless whale recordings in preparation for the trip, but they failed to convey how haunting the songs are in person. Knapp fell silent for a few minutes before rattling off guesses at the whales’ numbers and distance from us—two or three of them, maybe three or four miles away.
Furness is lucky enough to have been able to listen to the humpback whales in person. But perhaps there will be no more humpback whale songs to listen to in the future, and that is because of human-made noise, as well as seismic blasts, which affect zooplanktons (a main food source for whales).
More about this story over at Outside Online.
(Image Credit: NOAA/ Wikimedia Commons)
Ever since the release of Justice League in 2017, people have been asking for the director’s cut, which is commonly known as the Snyder Cut. On May 20 of this year, Snyder himself confirmed that it will be released.
Just recently, the official trailer of Zack Snyder’s Justice League was released, and fans are looking forward to the film, which will be shown sometime next year. The trailer features some muted scenes from the film, overlaid with the song Hallelujah.
(Video Credit: IGN/ YouTube)
Pfc. Austin Ferrell will most likely graduate from basic training in the US Marine Corps on September 4. He's already broken marksmanship records. Every marine is supposed to be a rifleman and Ferrell has already proven that he can deliver the lead on target with remarkable precision. The Marine Corps Times reports:
The new Marine scored 248 out of a possible 250 on Table 1 of the Marine Corps Rifle Qualification and followed it by a perfect 100 on Table 2, earning him the recruit record at Parris Island, South Carolina, under the modern scoring system.
Table 2, which consists of close range fire at multiple targets and moving targets, was added to Marine Corps rifle qualifications in 2005.
After a perfect score at 200 yards, Ferrell missed at 300, causing a loss of two points. But he once again scored perfectly at 500 yards. He was so good that some instructors were skeptical that his performance was real:
“I was told by the recruits in the pits that were doing my target that all of the drill instructors were over there talking to make sure I wasn’t cheating … because they couldn’t believe it either,” Ferrell added.
Appropriately, Ferrell hopes to become a sniper.
-via Super Punch | Photo: Cpl. Shane Manson/USMC
