In 1870, Frederick "Fanny" Park and Ernest "Stella" Boulton were arrested in London while wearing women's clothing. While cross-dressing was not the main reason for their arrest, it was a minor charge tacked onto the prosecution, and it was the reason that their trial was a sensation in newspapers across England.

It was not just Boulton and Park that were on trial, however. Also facing the same conspiracy and incitement charges were Louis Hurt and John Stafford Fiske, the United State’s consul in Leith, Edinburgh. Three more had absconded – Martin Cumming, William Somerville and C.H. Thompson – meanwhile, another had died, the aristocrat Lord Arthur Clinton, whose love-letters to Ernest Boulton had been discovered by law enforcement. Clinton reportedly died from natural causes, but suicide has always been largely suspected.

Although seeking a guilty verdict for ‘conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence,’ the prosecution focused mainly on Boulton and Park’s cross-dressing, and brought in a variety of witnesses who had seen them dressed in women’s clothing.

The conspiracy and incitement charges were hard to prove, and even harder for journalists of the time to write about. Newspapers, like the prosecution, focused on the cross-dressing. However, no one really complained about Park and Boulton and their fashion choices. People who saw them agreed that they were well-behaved and did not bother anyone, so why were they on trial? Read about the sensational landmark trial of Park and Boulton at the British Newspaper Archive. -via Strange Company

The ethereal sounds of Toto's biggest hit are rendered on two Tesla coils. While the song is faithfully reproduced, it does have a bit of a kazoo vibe. Maybe they could tune the Golden Gate Bridge to play this! -via Geeks Are Sexy

The general consensus 400 years later is that Isaac Newton was a very smart young man. During isolation from the plague in 1665-66, he discovered gravity and invented calculus. How bored do you have to be to invent calculus? But even very smart young men have their clunkers. When Newton returned to the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College in 1667, he worked on battling the plague. And he came up with a recipe that will scare away the infection, and most patients, we presume.  

The first step in the cure is hanging a toad upside down in a chimney for three days. You’ll know your toad is ready when it pukes and dies; be careful to collect all the vomit, which Newton describes as containing “earth with various insects in it.”

Next, grind the toad into a powder and mix it with the vomit until you’ve formed several lozenges. Finally, place your toad vomit lozenges “about the affected area.”

However, he was a proponent of social distancing. Read about Newton's plague research at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Fir0002)

Redditor s1l4z_behr posted this picture asking others what this object is, and what it is used for. Do you have any idea? It's a pretty neat piece of engineering, and would be cool to have. It looks rather old.

When you give up, the answer is here. -via TYWKIWDBI

Okay, you can't be the Tiger King. Or the Lion King. But you can, thanks to a zoo in northern Japan, have lion-ripped pants. You can casually bring up in conversations with friends how your pants were torn up without mentioning that you weren't wearing them at the time.

Sora News 24 reports that the North Safari Sapporo zoo in Japan is offering this service as way of earning revenue while the zoo is closed to visitors during the coronavirus lockdown. Lion-mauled jeans cost about $639. Other items available include coasters gnawed beavers, paintings made by goats, monkeys, or seals, and earrings made from shed snake skin.

Image: Campfire

For about 50 years, the drive-in theater was a really big draw for movie fans. The advantages over walk-in theaters were that you had privacy (or social distancing, if you prefer), you didn't need to dress up, the kids could sleep in the back seat, and you could “smoke, chat, or even partake of refreshments.” That last one is kind of funny, since partaking of refreshments is the reason walk-in theaters still exist at all. The first drive-in theater opened in June of 1933.

Richard Hollingshead, Jr., the inventor of the drive-in theater, developed the idea during the midst of the depression. He was out of work but figured there were two things people weren’t willing to give up – their cars and going to the movies. He tested his concept by setting up a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his family car and projecting pictures onto a screen nailed to a tree in his yard.

Pleased with the results, Hollingshead sought financial backing from his cousin and opened the first drive-in theater. Patrons paid $1 per car or 25 cents per person. Speakers were mounted atop the 60-foot screen but didn’t provide very good sound. It would take years to improve the sound problem at the drive-in. Hollingsworth’s theater design included concentric, curved rows titled at a five-degree angle to ensure that everyone had a good view of the screen.

Drive-in theaters didn't really take off until after World War II, when the sound was improved and more people had cars. Read more about the rise of the drive-in theater at Newspapers.com. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Laxbot7)

Meet Moja, A Shiba Inu so large that you’d probably mistake her for another dog breed. But before you think that she’s big because she probably eats a lot and doesn’t exercise, then let me be the first one to tell you that for seven years, she has only been eating one meal a day. But why is she so chubby?

The reason why she looks chubby is that she has hormone disorder after getting neutered. So she can't lose weight even when she's only eating very little food.

She was also born with tracheal collapse.

To prevent her from getting any bigger, the vet suggested to her hooman to feed her one healthy meal a day, and her hooman did just that.

The 12-year-old doge lives with 4 shiba sister and a cat brother.

They love sunbathing and taking strolls.

Now that’s what you call cuteness overload.

(Image Credit: moja412744/ Instagram)

Tyler had an app on his phone which allowed the player to splat the bugs that would appear on the screen. Upon discovering this, Luna, Tyler’s pet lizard, would then spend many hours looking intently at Tyler’s phone screen. When Tyler realized what made Luna so interested in his phone, he decided to let her play with the app to see how good she was. And oh boy, was she good at splatting these bugs!

The reptile, from Kokomo, Indiana, used its quick reactions to virtually splat nearly every bug on the screen except a small ant which managed to scurry away.

[...]

She stares at the screen and pays close attention to the bugs which crawl across . . . it and quickly jabbing them with her tongue.

In the video, recorded in January last year, her fun is short lived as an advert pops up on the screen and interrupts her game.

Her family said they 'got a kick' out of watching their beloved pet playing on the phone.

Hopefully she had real bugs to snack on after a tiring game.

Watch the short video over at DailyMail.

(Image Credit: ViralHog/ DailyMail)

Ramen noodles are usually eaten plain in other countries. In Japan, however, rarely does this thing happen, as they usually put toppings on it. 

But what do you do when the toppings currently available at home are not suitable for the pack of ramen? This was the problem that the staff from SoraNews24 faced on one fateful day.

We didn’t have an egg to crack and stir into the broth, or even some chives to chop and sprinkle into the mix. As a matter of fact, aside from a pack of Nissin-brand Chicken Ramen noodles, all we had was some shredded cheese, a couple bell peppers, and a tube of zesty tomato sauce, which really are more like the toppings for a pizza.

And so they decided to do the unthinkable: make a pizza with the noodles as the crust.

The result? A delicious yet strange pizza.

More details about this over at SoraNews24.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: SoraNews24)

Google Search users will finally be relieved as Google put a new trick up its search engine’s sleeve which makes searching way easier than it was. 

Before, a person would put a search question on Google Search, and the search engine would then search the web to find the answer that the person is asking for. In some cases, aside from pulling up a massive list of search results, Google will also provide for the user a quick summary from one of the many results, and that is known as a “featured snippet”. The user, however, still has to find the exact text when he clicks on the site with the featured snippet.

It seems those days are gone, though.

Search Engine Land (via The Verge) has discovered that Google launched a new Search feature that highlights and scrolls down to text found in a featured snippet.

[...]

And now, when you click through to that webpage, you'll be sent to the exact part of the page the snippet was taken from, and you'll see the text from the snippet highlighted yellow...

Thanks, Google!

Kozo, a tattoo artist at the Bang Bang studio in New York City, makes ink with such precision that you'd swear that you're looking at a photograph or a digital rendering. He often uses figures from pop culture, such as this condensed image of the Last Supper.

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#車椅子 #車イス #車いす #椅子 #バルーンアート #wheelchair #chair #balloonart #おうち時間 #stayhome 背もたれは一切風船を捻ってない、本当の編み込み。最高難易度すぎて、これ以上キレイにできる気がしない😵💦

A post shared by バルーンなアーティストR🇯🇵 (@balloonnaart) on May 3, 2020 at 9:23pm PDT

I don’t really know what it is but there’s something fascinating about recreations of anything, from real-life objects to pop culture icons. Perhaps it is the fact that while recreations can give you a sense of familiarity, it still surprises or amazes you in ways you could not have imagined.

Check out the many balloon recreations of Japanese artist Ryo Kajiyama over at Laughing Squid. You may also visit his Instagram account if you want to see more of his recreations, which range from everyday objects like staplers and wheelchairs, to famous figures like Albert Einstein, and many more!

For now, here are some of them.

(Image Credit: balloonnaart/ Instagram)

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#天才 #アインシュタイン #genius #einstein #バルーンアート #balloonart #おうち時間 #stayhome できればかぶりながら動かしたかったけど無理だったわ🤔

A post shared by バルーンなアーティストR🇯🇵 (@balloonnaart) on May 2, 2020 at 11:35pm PDT

Hertha Ayrton was multitalented mathematician and engineer who filed 26 patents, but ran up against prejudice against women scientists all her life. She married her electical engineering professor, who was in awe of her genius. William Ayrton distanced himself from Hetha's projects, lest he be given credit for what she did, yet that happened quite a few times anyway. She came up with enormously useful breakthroughs and inventions.

In 1893, Hertha took over a project from William investigating the cause of an irritating hissing noise coming from the electric arc, which powered lamps in London at the time. The lamps consisted of two carbon rods with a charge running between them that produced an arc of light in the space between the rods. Hertha was the first to figure out that this loud hissing was due to the oxidation of the carbon electrodes. If you simply enclosed the whole contraption in a bulb so that it was not exposed to open air, the hissing stopped.

Hertha’s remarkable work on the electric arc won the attention and admiration of contemporary scientists. She was the first woman invited to give a paper at the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899 and became the first woman elected to membership of that Institution. She spoke about her findings at the International Congress of Women in London and at the Electrical Congress in Paris. Her appearances convinced the British Association for the Advancement of Science to include women on scientific committees.

But even with all this success, she still faced barriers. In 1901, her paper on the electric arc was presented to the Royal Society by a man standing in for her, since women were not allowed admission. In 1902, her name was put forth for admission to the Royal Society but was rejected by a majority of votes because, simply, they were “of the opinion that married women are not eligible as fellows of the Royal Society.”

This decision held even after, in 1906, Hertha became the first woman — and only the second woman to date — to be awarded the Hughes Medal for outstanding research in the field of energy.

Naturally, Ayrton became a suffragist, and even led Marie Curie to come out of her laboratory long enough to support the cause. Read about Hertha Ayrton at Massive Science. Curiously, the article does not say much about her fan invented to clear WWI trenches, but you can read about it here. -via Damn Interesting

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🍈🍈🍈 · · ヨーダメロン · · あまり 笑顔が 似合わない彼 · · 🤭 · · #メロンアート#スターウォーズ #おうちごはんlover#フーディーテーブル#マカロニメイト#ヨーダ#yoda#melon#melonart #wp_deli_japan#IgersJP#ig_japan#instafood#foodart#instagood#starwars #disney#disneyfood

A post shared by えとにママ (@etn.co_mam) on Jun 4, 2020 at 2:41am PDT

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. Even a melon can become more when Japanese food artist Etoni Mama gets to work. Most recently, she crafted this delicious display of Yoda. It would have been perfect to eat for a May the Fourth party.

In 1897, Bram Stoker's novel Dracula introduced the world to the perfect villain, the terrifying vampire who defined horror monsters for more than a century -so far. Countless studies examine the various inspirations for the character of Dracula, many of them leading to Vlad the Impaler, although the historic Romanian ruler added little to the novel besides his name. Another inspiration came from Stoker's mother, whose childhood memories include a cholera outbreak in her hometown of Sligo in Ireland. The 1832 outbreak killed more than 10% of the town's population, but that wasn't the most horrifying detail. Marion McGarry of the Sligo Stoker Society explains.  

McGarry says Stoker was inspired by a grisly account of that epidemic written by his mother, Charlotte Thornley, who hid from the plague in her home before she fled Sligo with her family. Thornley’s essay remained unpublished and buried in a Dublin archive until the Society studied the text and, last year, had it widely circulated.

“Bram as an adult asked his mother to write down her memories of the epidemic for him, and he supplemented this using his own historic research of Sligo’s epidemic,” says McGarry. “Scratching beneath the surface (of this essay), I found parallels with Dracula. [For instance,] Charlotte says cholera enters port towns having traveled by ship, and can travel overland as a mist—just like Dracula, who infects people with his unknown contagion.”

The strongest link McGarry found, though, was between Dracula’s liminal state—being simultaneously dead and conscious—and Thornley’s description of cholera victims who were buried alive. Stoker was morbidly fascinated by this detail. So much so that the working title for his novel was The Undead, before his publisher later changed it to Dracula.

Read more on the connection between Sligo's cholera outbreak and Stoker's vampire at Atlas Obscura.
 
(Image credit: Nick)