Seeing faces on everyday objects, which is a phenomenon called “pareidolia”, is a pretty normal experience for a human being. But why does this occur? This paper published in the journal Psychological Science explains the reason.

Dr. Palmer [the lead researcher] says to answer this question we need to look at what face perception involves. While human faces all look a bit different, they share common features, like the spatial arrangement of the eyes and the mouth.

"This basic pattern of features that defines the human face is something that our brain is particularly attuned to, and is likely to be what draws our attention to pareidolia objects. But face perception isn't just about noticing the presence of a face. We also need to recognize who that person is, and read information from their face, like whether they are paying attention to us, and whether they are happy or upset."

Put it simply, the same mechanisms that help us identify faces also process the “faces” that we see on objects. 

Know more about pareidolia, and where this phenomenon may have come from, over at Medical Xpress.

(Image Credit: Ronnie MacDonald/ Wikimedia Commons)

The twist here is that they never dated back then. Greg Dabice and Janet Fenner were crowned homecoming royalty during their senior year at Montclair State University in 1992. They parted ways after homecoming, and married other people. But fate had other plans, after they both got divorced in 2016, they found each other: 

"I had a few glasses of wine. I went back on the dating app, and I was like, 'Ah, let's just take a look,'" she said of the night she saw him on the app. She swiped right on Dabice, but she didn't know it was him because he sported a beard in his photos that she didn't remember from her college days.

But Dabice recognized Fenner right away. He reached out to a friend from college with a good memory to confirm it was Fenner, and the friend reminded Dabice that he and Fenner had been on homecoming court together. He told him to "go get his queen," according to Fenner.

Dabice reached out to Fenner on Facebook, teasing her for swiping right on him. Fenner quickly remembered who he was, and the duo decided to meet up for drinks.

Dabice and Fenner got married on Montclair State’s football field this year,

Image via Insider

Rhinoviruses, influenza viruses, adenoviruses. These are just some of the well-known viruses in the world, and if there’s one thing that’s common between these viruses, it would be causing the common cold. In fact, the common cold is caused by hundreds of different viruses. But the most infectious of these viruses that cause the common cold is the human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). It is a pathogen “so infectious it infects practically everyone by the time they're 3 years old.”

While most people experience a mild cold-like illness for a week or so and then recover, RSV kills tens of thousands of infants and older adults globally each year. In infants, it’s also the main cause of bronchiolitis, a condition responsible for around 1 in 6 UK hospital admissions for kids, and the main cause of pneumonia in children under 1 in the US. So, for many people, an RSV infection is much more than a mildly annoying case of the sniffles; a vaccine for the disease could prevent thousands of deaths and unnecessary hospitalizations.

And, thankfully, a vaccine is under the works now, and it seems to be doing good in clinical trials.

Reporting in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, researchers from Danish pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic showed their vaccine is safe and effective at protecting against RSV.

Details over at IFL Science.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

A lava tube is formed when molten lava spews through the earth. The lava on the outside of the tube cools against soil or rock, forming a shell, while the hot molten part rushes through. The result is a cave. But the earth isn't the only place with lava tubes. Mars has really big ones, and on the moon, they are even bigger.  

"The largest lava tubes on Earth are maximum [about] 40 meters [130 feet] of width and height," said study co-author Riccardo Pozzobon, a geoscientist at the University of Padova, Italy. "So like a very large motorway tunnel."

That's certainly big enough space for some people to fit inside. But on Mars collapsed lava tubes tend to be about 80 times larger than Earth's, with diameters of 130 to 1,300 feet (40 to 400 m). Lunar lava tubes seem to be still larger, the researchers found, with collapse sites 300 to 700 times the size of Earth's. Lunar lava tubes likely range from 1,600 to 3,000 feet (500 to 900 m).

A lava tube on the moon, Pozzobon told Live Science, could easily contain a small city within its walls.

The upshot is that these huge caves may offer shelter and protection when humans venture out to the moon and Mars. Read what we know about them at LiveScience. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Dave Bunnell/Under Earth Images)

We've always known that Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain ...or is it? As with anything else, it all depends on how you measure it. Everest is officially 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) above sea level. But what if you started measuring from somewhere other than sea level? Then it turns out that Everest is not the highest mountain. It's not even the tallest. The video is only 6:30; the rest is an ad. -via Digg

For a long time, people have been asking if there ever was a real Sweeney Todd, otherwise known as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. As you can see here, there was a Sweeney Todd hair salon at 152 Fleet Street! One has to wonder whether clients had a Guinness to feel better about getting a haircut there. However, we can assume that the hairdresser(s) here did not slice up customers to make pies. The original Sweeney Todd debuted as a fictional character in 1846, while the barbershop pictured above was photographed sometime in the 1920s. Read more about it at Londonist. While there are plenty of Barbershops and salons named after Sweeney Todd today, none of them are on Fleet Street in London. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image source: Old Photos of Essex Kent & London)

Archaeologists in South Africa have determined that a grass and ash bed in a cave dates back 200,000 years. Why did early humans choose materials for their bedding? One of the archaeologists quoted by UPI explained that the ash may have been an insect repellent:

"We speculate that laying grass bedding on ash was a deliberate strategy, not only to create a dirt-free, insulated base for the bedding, but also to repel crawling insects," lead study author Lyn Wadley, professor of archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said in a news release. [...]

Because insects have trouble moving through fine powder, ash helped protect slumbering humans from the bites of insects. Atop the ash and grass bedding, researchers also found remnants of camphor bush, a plant that's still used as an insect repellant.

-via Instapundit | Photo: MADe

If the thought of sitting through 40 versions of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet sounds like torture, you're in for a surprise. This list of 40 Hamlets include movies dating from 1900 to the 21st century plus TV shows, short films, cartoons, skits, and even comic pages. Yes, everyone wants to put their unique spin on the melancholy Dane. Some are full productions, while others have a rather tangental relation with the original play -and many are quite funny. And the best part is that almost all have video clips that show why they are ranked the way they are. Check out 40 wildly different interpretations of Hamlet at Lithub.  -via Metafilter

The Hectics were a musical group formed by students at a boarding school in Panchgani, India. This picture was taken in 1959 when they were young teenagers. All five members went on to successful adult lives, and you should recognize at least one of them. If you don't, you can surprise yourself and read about them at Wikipedia.-via TYWKIWDBI

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Rudy Willingham likes to amuse the good people of Seattle. He does so by leaving around the city paper cut-outs that, when viewed from the right angle, turn an everyday object into something much more. Last year, he described his approach to King 5 News:

"Using the paper and the hand, as we opposed to just Photoshopping things, gives it a human element that I think people really respond to. It's a little more childlike and not as digital or forced."

Everything in this world changes. Products are no exception to theis fact, and you might be surprised at how entirely different the original purposes of these products were compared to how they are used in the present day. For example, corkscrews were meant to help a person safely dislodge a stuck bullet in a gun. Now, it’s used to remove corks from wine bottles.

Cracked.com lists 20 products that had a different purpose before.

Check out their interesting list over at the site.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Russia is indeed a strange country. There are many weird things there like their creepy playgrounds, and peculiar weddings. But of all these things that seem weird for us, cars that are made to look like tanks just might be the least weird of them all.

Check out the pictures over at EatLiver.com.

(Image Credit: EatLiver.com)

Hester Ford was born in 1904 in Lancaster, South Carolina. She lived and worked on a farm, growing and picking cotton, among other chores. She later married and had 12 children. Those 12 children eventually led to an estimated 120 great-grandchildren. On Saturday afternoon, many of those great-grand children were among the celebrants who drove by her home in Charlotte, North Carolina.

WCNC News talked with Mary Hill, one of Ford's grandchildren:

“It’s so important if you do have loved ones, no matter what their age, cherish them especially when they get older. and don’t forget to celebrate them,” Harris said. “Because life is so short. 

For years, Hester Ford always thought she was born in 1905, but just last year the census bureau documents show she was born in 1904. Ford is now the oldest person in the country, and the seventh oldest person in the world, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

-via Debby Witt | Photo: Ford Family

The producer behind The Skyscraper Camera Project started a new project right in front of his home - his door, to be exact. Kyle Roper transformed his front door into a large-format analog camera to safely capture portraits during the pandemic. His new photo series called Door Frames, showcased the portraits he was able to take thanks to his front-door camera, as Digital Photography Review detailed: 

Given ample time at home and the desire to continue creating images while observing social distancing restrictions, Roper converted his front door into a camera obscura using magnetic dry erase board, gaffer's tape, cardboard boxes, a dark cloth, c-stand, clamps and sandbags. For photo paper and film, Roper uses Ilford RC IV Multigrade Photo Paper, Ilford Direct Positive Paper and Ilford Ortho 80 Plus. His lens of choice is a Nikkor-W 300mm F5.6 lens in a Copal shutter.

Roper states that he was inspired by his friend, Brendan Barry, an artist and camera builder we've featured many times before. Roper was also inspirited by the work of Dorothea Lange and Francesca Woodman. The former is a particularly interesting inspiration given Lange's famous documentary and photojournalism work for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression.

Image via Digital Photography Review 

Serving a long prison sentence is to be cut off from the world. Ten or twenty years later, everything has changed. In a recent Ask Reddit thread, the question posed was "People who did a long time in prison, what was your biggest shock of the outside world?" The answers were quite varied.

5. "My old boss spent seven years behind bars. He said the morning he got out, his grandmother picked him up and they went to Target. He said his eyes were hurting because he hadn't seen the color red in years."

—GOAT1915

 7. "[My uncle] had been in prison for about 30 years and he didn't believe that you can just order stuff from the internet and it would be delivered. So we ordered dinner from Seamless, my treat, and he practically power-walked to the door when the bell rang. He swung the door open and enthusiastically greeted the delivery boy."

—jtrisn1

See 22 of the best answers at Buzzfeed, or read the entire thread at reddit.