A few species of animals naturally have a bone in their hearts, including cows, sheep, and dogs. This os cordis has not been seen in primates, until recently discovered in chimpanzees in a study by the University of Nottingham’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science. Not all chimpanzees, but some chimps who have heart problems, specifically idiopathic myocardial fibrosis (IMF). This is the first time a heart bone has been found in great apes.

For the new study, 16 chimpanzees, some with IMF and some without, had their hearts scanned with x-ray microcomputed tomography. No animal needed to be killed, as all chimps died of natural causes in European zoos. The scans generated clear, high-resolution images showing the tiny os cordis, which measures just a few millimeters across.

For anatomy nerds out there, this “hyperdense” bone structure was found inside the right fibrous trigone. Simply described, this meaty part of the heart forms a link between the aortic, mitral, and tricuspid valves.

Some chimp hearts also exhibited cartilago cordis, that is, cartilage formation. This is an important discovery, because the cartilage might have something to do with the growth of the rare bone structure, as cartilage has the potential to turn into bone.

This discovery might open up research into possible ossification of human hearts with IMF. Read more about the discovery at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Bjørn Erik Pedersen)

We know that soap is a surfactant made by combining fat and and an alkaline substance such as lye. Wouldn't you love to find out who first decided to combine these things, and what they were trying to achieve? But alas, like many products invented before written accounts, we don't know. We do know that ancient Mesopotamians produced soap in this way.

Ancient people used these early soaps to clean wool or cotton fibers before weaving them into cloth, rather than for human hygiene. Not even the Greeks and Romans, who pioneered running water and public baths, used soap to clean their bodies. Instead, men and women immersed themselves in water baths and then smeared their bodies with scented olive oils. They used a metal or reed scraper called a strigil to remove any remaining oil or grime.

While some people later used soap to clean skin sometimes, it was mainly a laundry product until after the Civil War! Read what history professor Judith Ridner knows about the history of soap at The Conversation. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Strobridge Lith. Co., Cin'ti & New York, restoration by Adam Cuerden)

Tom Hanks' new World War II film is called Greyhound, after the ship it's set on. Is it based on a true story? No, Hanks' character, Commander Ernest Krause, is fictional, as is his ship and his story. But the naval campaign at the heart of the movie was real, and it lasted six years. That may be the reason you didn't study the Battle of the Atlantic in school.

Greyhound takes place at a critical moment in the Battle of the Atlantic, which began in September 1939 and only ended with the Germans’ surrender on May 8, 1945. As Blazich explains, the conflict was centered chiefly on supplies: An island nation, the United Kingdom required a steady flow of imported goods and raw materials, many of which originated in the U.S. The Soviet Union, besieged by the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa, was also in dire need of food, oil and other essential supplies, which arrived via seaports on the Arctic Ocean.

“Had the Atlantic been lost, so too would have Britain,” writes historian James Holland for History Extra. “There would have been no Mediterranean campaign, no D-Day, no VE or VJ Days. The vast, global supply chain upon which the Allies depended … would have been cut, and with it the lifeline.”

The Allies sent supplies by convoy, merchants ships protected by navy destroyers and air cover. This added security made the convoys large and difficult to maneuver, all the easier for German U-boats to find and attack. Read about the Battle of the Atlantic and what it was like for those who participated at Smithsonian.

After its theatrical released was delayed several times, Greyhound moved to streaming television.  Its debut on Apple TV+ has been moved to July 10.  

Actors seem to be taken more seriously when they perform their own stunts. Maybe it's part of throwing themselves into a role, or giving their all for a production. And when they do those stunts bravely and enthusiastically, well, injuries happen. Producers hate it when a shoot has to be delayed because a star is in the hospital, but it happens ...often enough to make an internet list. Harrison Ford has contributed to these stories on more than one occasion.

During the filming of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Ford had to take a break from the set and fly back to L.A. for surgery after a rupturing disc in his back. Ford didn’t say exactly what the stunt was that caused the injury, but he told The New York Times in 1984 that he blamed the elephants. Indiana Jones climbing off an elephant and yelling, “Oww! My Back!” isn’t the most exciting story, but hey, that’s Hollywood stunt work.

Ford’s worst on-set stunt, though, would come decades later when reprising his role as Han Solo for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. According to The Guardian, Ford walked under the door of his trusty old spaceship, the Millennium Falcon, when the hydraulic door — which weighed the same as a small car — pinned him to the ground and nearly crushed him to death.

Ford was lucky enough to get out with only two broken bones in his leg — had somebody not quickly hit the door’s emergency stop button, Han Solo could have been down for the count before ever reuniting with Kylo Ren.

Read about stunt injuries involving Charlize Theron, Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, and others at Mel magazine.

Fake photos are initially difficult to spot. There are some photos that look too real, but at a closer inspection, have been tampered with multiple times. So how can we actually decipher if a photo has been edited or fabricated? It can be spotted by looking at shadows included in a photo, as Hany Farid tells BBC: 

One trick he has picked up over time is to check the points of light in people’s eyes. “If you have two people standing next to each other in a photograph, then we will often see the reflection of the light source (such as the Sun or a camera flash) in their eyes,” he explains. “The location, size, and colour of this reflection tells us about the location, size, and colour of the light source. If these properties of the light source are not consistent, then the photo may be a composite.”

Another giveaway is the colour of people’s ears. “If the Sun is behind me, my ears will look red from the front because you’ll see the blood,” he says. “If the light is coming from the front, you won’t see the red in the ear.”

Take shadow, for example. If you draw a line from the edge of a shadow in a photograph, to a point on the object that is casting the shadow, you can trace that further to reveal where the light in an image is coming from. If you map out several points on a shadow, the lines should intersect.

If a photo has been tampered with, the shadows of some objects in the image may not match the light sources in the rest of the picture, says Farid. He has shown it is possible with this method to identify images that have had objects or people added after they were taken.

image via BBC

A homemade version of Jurassic Park complete with cardboard dinosaurs!

Jean II Le Maingre, who was also known as Boucicaut, was a French knight and military leader in 15th-century France. He is well-known for his outstanding military skill and he was considered back then as the “embodiment of chivalry.” He was a man who always prepared his body (and probably his mind, too) for war.

Boucicaut traveled from Prussia to the Ottoman Empire, fighting in conflicts that helped define the map of medieval Europe. And he couldn’t have done so without a stringent, self-imposed exercise circuit, ideal for someone traipsing around in a clattering metal outfit.

And because he always made his body ready for battle, it wouldn’t be surprising if he did fitness feats that cannot be achieved by an average human being.

Boucicaut’s most astonishing fitness feat, though, was scaling a ladder while clad in his 60-pound suit of armor, taking each rung with both hands at the same time, without his feet to support him.

What was his workout like? Find out over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

People see us differently than how we see ourselves. While you might see yourself in a positive light, other people don’t, and more often than not, they would point out what’s wrong with you, and sometimes with brutal honesty. If you’re the boss, however, getting negative feedback might be something very rare for you, because one does not simply give his boss honest feedback, in fear of getting fired.

As a leader, you may believe that you’re approachable to your employees, but research shows that you’re scarier than you think.

I once received this exact feedback during a team member’s exit interview: “You’re scary.”

[...]

The good news is that there are things you can do to solicit honest, useful, and timely feedback from your team. Here are four strategies to help you collect important impressions on your performance.

The strategies are as follows:

• Call yourself out first
• Ask for ideas, not judgments
• Cultivate an air of calm
• Incentivize future feedback

Head over at Fast Company to know more about these things.

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Instagram is a social media platform where people dump their best photos. The app has a built-in filter feature which users can use to make their already fabulous photos even more fabulous. Now, the king of design editing softwares, Adobe, has released a new camera app with the powers of Adobe Photoshop, which makes Instagram’s filters look obsolete. The app is called Photoshop Camera.

Adobe has put some of the powerful photo-editing capabilities of its Photoshop software into a new camera app that uses AI to do all the hard work for you. But the app doesn’t just apply filters you can preview before you snap a pic—Photoshop Camera can even replace unwanted parts of a shot while you’re still framing it.

The new app, available for free on Android and iOS (a paid Adobe Creative Cloud subscription isn’t needed) is part of the company’s recent efforts to make its powerful image-editing and creative tools available and accessible to a wider user base. It’s an approach that, for the most part, hasn’t compromised the advanced capabilities of Adobe’s image-editing tools. That’s thanks to the company’s artificial intelligence system, called Sensei, which automates the editing process for novice users who don’t have hours to spend on a photo, or years to learn and master a piece of software as complex as Photoshop.

Amazing!

Learn more about the capabilities of the app over at Gizmodo.

(Image Credit: Andrew Liszewski/ Gizmodo)

Taking care of children is a thrilling and challenging task, one full of ups, downs, twists, turns, and mishaps — colorful experiences which you could write or draw about. “Professional comedy writer and amateur father” James Breakwell does just that in his webcomic series.

Where the Unbelievably Bad Webcomic series excels is character development and storytelling. It unravels Breakwell's everyday life with his wife and their four daughters, providing insightful and humorous insights into the chaotic reality of the modern family.

Breakwell's kids are the starting point for almost all of his jokes but his comics are an homage to parenting in general. "Everybody's kids are weird and my comics celebrate that," Breakwell said, "anyone who says they have normal children is lying."

Check out many of his stories over at BoredPanda.

What was your most memorable experience being a parent?

(Image Credit: James Breakwell/ BoredPanda)

Bill Wurtz’s “History of the Entire World, I Guess” may just be considered as the greatest of the many history videos that can be found in YouTube for two reasons. The first reason was it was able to tell the whole history of the world in just a short amount of time. The second was it was able to teach in an engaging and interesting way. Unfortunately, because the video constantly bombards you with historical facts, you won’t find time to process the information in your brain, and you might have to watch it in segments, or watch it for several times.

Mr. Terry helps us break down the many historical events that Bill Wurtz covers in his video, and he explains why these moments in history are important.

While the video may be a bit long (lasting about 51 minutes), it’s not boring.

(Video Credit: Mr. Terry History/ YouTube)

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My typical Sunday morning rituals - wake up and embroider in my pyjamas 🦄

A post shared by Embroidery on tulle ♡ Мoscow (@kathrin_marchenko) on Nov 24, 2019 at 1:19am PST

That's the adjective that I will use. Marchenko embroiders images on translucent tulle, which gives them the appearance of suspending in midair or, in the case of this mermaid, mid-water. She explains to Bored Panda that the effect of tulle is that "it makes embroidery visually more voluminous."

This public service announcement from New Zealand aims to get parents to drive home the fact that pornography doesn't depict sex, or anything at all, realistically. It's part of their Keep It Real Online campaign, and it's truly funny. -via Boing Boing

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This is my body.

A post shared by Ellen Sheidlin (@sheidlina) on Jun 14, 2019 at 4:09am PDT

The enigmatic artist Ellen Sheidlin offers no clue as to the meaning of her sculpture aside from the words "This is my body." It immediately reminded me of the liturgy of the Eucharist, but an Instagram commenter suggests that it is an allusion to a famous horror manga about a person who lives inside a chair.

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Peelometric

A post shared by Adam Hillman (@witenry) on Mar 23, 2020 at 3:51pm PDT

Isn’t it just satisfying to see things arranged in such a really meticulous way that you just stare at it with awe and amazement? This is just what Adam Hillman does in his masterpieces, which were featured on Colossal.

Using produce, candy, and breakfast fare, Hillman organizes an array of perishables into patterns and geometric sequences, which he often shares on Instagram. “There’s something beautiful about working with something so transient, and the beauty of the materials is something that can only be preserved through photography long after the food within the photo has either rotted or been eaten,” he tells Colossal.

Check out Hillman’s impressive artworks over at the site, and visit his Instagram account to see more of his magnificent artworks.

(Image Credit: Adam Hillman/ Instagram)