Delta, British Columbia — Jolene Keith was working from home last Tuesday morning when her husband texted her some good news, telling her that he won $10 from his lottery tickets. This gesture led Jolene to check her own tickets as well. Upon checking them, she found out that she won Daily Grand. She immediately took a screenshot of her win and sent it to her husband, along with a message, “I think I have you beat.”
Keith won the second prize in the Daily Grand's April 20 drawing. She chose to take her winnings as a $360,000 lump sum, rather than $18,000 a year for life.
Unfortunately, the husband’s reaction wasn’t reported, but guess that both of them were overjoyed that day.
Kevin James gets a birthday surprise. And then reality rears its ugly head. If you must celebrate your birthday in isolation, keep in mind that it's all to make sure you have many more birthdays in the future! -via Digg
Four hundred years later, we usually assume that there are written records about every one of the crew and passengers of the Mayflower, which brought the Pilgrims to America. That ship's voyage has become a huge event in history classes, for better or for worse, even though many ships brought Europeans to the new continent. However, four passengers appeared to be abandoned children, who posed somewhat of a mystery.
For many years, historians were puzzled by the fact that among the Mayflower passengers were four young brothers and sisters who were unrelated to anyone else on board. The ship’s log listed Ellen More (aged 8,) and her siblings Jasper (7,) Richard (6,) and Mary (4) as “servants” of four different Pilgrim leaders. It was first assumed that these children were penniless orphans, or offspring of parents too poor to keep them. Then, it was discovered that according to the parish register of Shipton, Shropshire, that the father of these children, Samuel More, was a rich landowner.
This new information made the presence of these children on the Mayflower seem strange, even incomprehensible. Why would a man of wealth and standing ship all of his children to a foreign land, where they faced a dangerous and highly uncertain future? An English genealogist named Sir Anthony Wagner became so fascinated by the mystery that in 1959, he was able to persuade a descendant of Samuel More to scour the family archives for any clues as to what had caused More to virtually disown his offspring. Many clues were indeed found. And it all added up to a story that reads like something out of one of Thomas Hardy’s more depressing novels.
People are getting very bored, and very creative. Lisa Shmeesa's six-year-old daughter wrote a song, and it's become a viral hit. "I Wonder What's Inside Your Butthole" has already inspired cover versions, remixes, and tributes. Continue reading to see some of them.
Check out this video posted by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The video shows a pair of Laysan albatross doing a “courtship dance”. The pair can be seen bobbing and tilting their heads in a really adorable manner. The aforementioned video was shot on a remote South Pacific island.
"[The] elaborate courtship 'dance,' performed only by first-time breeders and pre-breeders, includes many movements including bowing [the] head, mutual preening, swinging head from side to side, pointing bill straight up while calling,” according to the Audubon.
Check out more details about the Laysan Albatross over at IFL Science.
Isn’t it amazing that we humans can recognize patterns from random objects that we see? This psychological phenomenon called pareidolia causes us to “see” faces to the objects that we see.
Sad and Useless compiles for us many pictures that are great examples of pareidolia. Check them out over at the site. For now, here are a few of them.
A 72-year-old man named Graham Walters arrived recently at the English Harbor in Antigua after spending 96 days out there at sea, battling against the waves and the winds of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as avoiding sharks during the entire trip.
Unfortunately, while Walters was able to set three world records because of his feats, there wasn’t much time to congratulate him, as the world has changed drastically for the past three months.
More details about Walters’s trip over at Cracked.
Tired of ordinary waffles? Add some speed to your day with this waffle maker that makes seven edible cars, trucks, and buses. Feel like a giant monster as you put these vehicles right into your mouth and eat them however you like!
The Cars & Trucks Waffle Maker by CucinaPro is available over at Amazon, along with the Dinosaur Waffle Maker.
Soon after Sputnik was launched in 1957, both the US and the Soviet Union found uses for permanently-orbiting satellites. They could map the earth, enable communications, and spy on each other. These activities required energy, and nuclear power was the way to keep a satellite running for years on end. Both the Americans and the Soviets launched numerous nuclear-powered satellites, some of which are still orbiting the earth.
The Soviet Union began launching nuclear satellites into space in 1965. For the next 22 years they launched over thirty satellites, each carrying a small nuclear reactor on board to power the various instruments. These satellites were mostly of reconnaissance type meant to spy upon the US Navy’s vessels and submarines. The satellites used radar to detect marine traffic, and because the radar signal rapidly loses power with distance, the satellites had to be placed in low earth orbit where there was significant drag from air molecules. The air resistance prohibited the use of large solar panels, leaving nuclear power as an attractive and probably the only alternative.
The majority of these satellites carried type BES-5 nuclear reactors fueled by uranium-235. Because of space and weight constraints, the fuel was highly enriched to weapons-grade level so that the reactors were fast, efficient and small, not to mention, extremely powerful. A typical BES-5 nuclear reactor weighed less than 400 kg and generated 100 kW of thermal power, of which about 3 kW was converted to usable electric power. The reactor was mounted inside a separate unit that could be jettisoned further up into space into a higher orbit once the satellite reached the end of its operational life. This way the dead satellite could safely re-enter earth’s atmosphere without the risk of radioactive contamination. But as far as space missions are concerned, things don’t always work out as planned.
That was the fate of the satellite named Cosmos 954, launched in 1977, which had numerous glitches. The USSR knew it wouldn't stay in orbit, and the mechanism to jettison the reactor was one of the components that failed. Read the story of the nuclear satellite that crashed over a 600-kilometer path in Canada at Amusing Planet.
Sora News 24 reports that Japanese-language Twitter is circulating a photo of a page from an English language textbook. The humorous practice dialogue features a heartless wife who's hungry and doesn't care what her supper costs her beleaguered husband. She has inspired fan art that will hopefully be placed in the next edition of the book.
If you're like me, the word "valkyrie" brings to mind that omnipresent song (and not the 2008 Tom Cruise movie). Valkyries were an important part of Viking beliefs because they were the ones who decided who won battles, and who died fighting in them.
In the Norse belief system, valkyries were supernatural women who determined who lived and died on the battlefield. Subsequently, they would take a select group of the slain warriors on horseback to Odin’s hall, Valhalla, where they would join the einherjar, the exclusive retinue who fight for sport during the days and feast at night. It is easy to see the attractions of such an afterlife, in which a man never goes hungry and fighting is a form of entertainment with no consequences, at least for those who belonged to the warrior class.
The Edda, a textbook about Norse mythology written in the 13th century by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, claims that the valkyries served drink to fallen warriors in Valhalla. But older sources, which are closer to what the Vikings thought and believed, usually emphasise the valkyries’ warlike aspects and their agency over life and death. Viking poets refer to them as ‘sword girls’, ‘spear maidens’ and ‘goddess of the spear/sword’. One poem, preserved in Njáls saga, even visualises a battle as the earthly manifestation of the valkyries’ weaving in the otherworld, using weapons as their tools and guts as yarn.
But most of the Vikings' raids and wars were fought by men, so why were the outcomes decided by women? Read about the nature of valkyries and some of the stories about them at History Today. -via Damn Interesting
Check out this katydid who blends in perfectly with the tree bark. The katydid can be seen moving slowly, most likely to avoid being spotted by the predators around the forest. This video was shot in Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park by wildlife photographer David Weiller.
A design firm created a concept that can change how we do videoconferencing in the future. Square is an artificial window that lets you work ‘beside’ a coworker, even if you’re really not in the office. The Square works like a window, as Fast Company details:
When you raise the shade, you can see a coworker, or two, working right there next to you. You can strike up a conversation, or ignore them. You can gossip, or hold a productive meeting. Just like a real office.
“This isn’t just for a conversation, this is a desk mate,” says Rolston.
“The amount of human emotion this thing could convey would be great,” adds chief creative technologist Jared Ficklin. “There have been a lot of reports lately about the energy effort and stress to engage our cognitive senses in telepresence. It’s exhausting. One reason I’d postulate is that you’re missing the nonverbal feedback.” Cognitive researchers agree that this so-called Zoom fatigue actually exists. A mere second delay in answering someone on a typical video chat—which would be perfectly normal in person—can be perceived as a slight, or as a sign of lack of mental engagement. As impressive as Zoom is, we’re all on edge during these video chats in a way that a more naturalistic window to someone else might mitigate (even if it’s completely simulated through technology).
You can use your travel items even in the comfort of your own home by using them in different ways. If you have compression socks, you can use them to get your blood flowing, especially after long hours of working on a desk. Check the full piece from Lifehacker for more tips!
In a deleted scene from Infinity War, Doctor Strange was wearing Iron Man’s armor when he was rescued from Ebony Maw’s ship. The details of the deleted scene and a photo of Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor who played Doctor Strange, was shared by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely on ComicBook.com's Twitter account for a "Quarantine Watch Party" of the Infinity War.
