There were 33 children aboard the Mayflower when it sailed to America in 1620. Among those were John Billlington Jr. and his brother Francis. They were not good little Pilgrims, and archives of their rambunctiousness survives 400 years later. The ship hadn't even arrived in Massachusetts when the scandalous behavior started. From a journal written by William Bradford and Edward Winslow:

“The fifth day [of December, 1620] we through God’s mercy escaped a great danger by the foolishness of a boy, one Francis of Billington’s sonnes, who in his father’s absence had got gun powder and shot off a piece [musket] or two and made squibs [small fireworks], and there being a fowling piece charged in his father’s cabbin, shot her off in the cabbin. There being a little barrell of [gun] powder halfe full scattered in and about the cabbin, the fire [discharge] being within foure foote of the bed [bunk] betweene decks and many flints and iron things about and so many people about the fire. And yet by God’s mercy no harme was done.”

But that was minor compared to his brother John, who later went missing in the woods. He was eventually rescued by Native Americans, which caused a diplomatic problem. And their parents? Also troublemakers. Read about the Billington family at Genealogy Bank. -via Strange Company

Colin Furze found his own way to hover around, but back in 1959, you could zip along in Curtiss-Wright Model 2500 Air-Car. Or maybe not, as there were only two built. Curtiss-Wright is an aircraft company, but delved into experimental vehicles for the military, including this hover car.

Each engine was used to drive, via reduction gears, a single four-bladed lift fan placed within a plenum chamber. The two chambers created a cushion of air 10-15 inches thick. Forward propulsion was supplied by air bled off the chambers and expelled at low velocity through two sets of louvers on each side of the vehicle.

It was fairly maneuverable and could reach speeds up to 38 mph. It was not really capable of all-terrain operation and never caught on commercially.

It was big and heavy and pretty cool, but that seemed to be about ll it had going for it. Both prototype models are still in existence. Read more at Vintage Everyday. -via Nag on the Lake

Scientists have understood before that the mucus found in the gut is the body’s first line of defense against bacteria that attempt to attack the said part of the body. Now, scientists have discovered yet another feature of the gut mucus — it might also be the key towards therapeutic options for neurological disorders.

Bacterial imbalance in the gut is linked with Alzheimer's disease, autism and other brain disorders, yet the exact causes are unclear.

Senior author Associate Professor Elisa Hill-Yardin said these changes could be contributing to bacterial imbalance and exacerbating the core symptoms of neurological diseases.

"Mucus is a critical protective layer that helps balance good and bad bacteria in your gut but you need just the right amount -- not too little and not too much," Hill-Yardin said.

"Researchers have previously shown that changes to intestinal mucus affect the balance of bacteria in the gut but until now, no-one has made the connection between gut mucus and the brain.

"It's a new gut-brain connection that opens up fresh avenues for scientists to explore, as we search for ways to better treat disorders of the brain by targeting our 'second brain' -- the gut."

More details about this over at Science Daily.

(Image Credit: Pixel_perfect/ Pixabay)

It’s always amazing when we think how big our planet is, and then we see images of our planet from another place in space, and then we realize how tiny our planet is compared to the gigantic stars, moons, other planets, and other celestial bodies.

Just over three years ago, because the Sun was temporarily blocked by the body of Saturn, the robotic Cassini spacecraft was able to look toward the inner Solar System. There, it spotted our Earth and Moon -- just pin-pricks of light lying about 1.4 billion kilometers distant.

I can’t imagine just how grand the universe is, and how much outside our planet is left unexplored and unknown.

(Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL-Caltech, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team; Processing & License: Kevin M. Gill)

With all the many company names that you will hear over at the radio, and see over at your newspaper or on your computer screen, it’s hard to think that someone or a single organization can monopolize certain products or services. But unknown to normal people, entities such as these ones exist.

Cracked.com lists six monopolies that you wouldn’t have thought to have existed. Check them out over at the site. For now, here’s one that you’ll be very much surprised.

Tabasco Has Just One Factory To Make All Its Sauce

Speaking of stuff that's both food and the sacred blood of God, Tabasco sauce can be found in 185 countries with sales totaling 700,000 bottles a day. So, in the unlikely event that you'd given the matter much thought before now, you'd have assumed that this was some big international operation.

More fun facts over at the site.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

The world is a colorful place. At least, that’s what our brains tell us after processing the light that has passed through our eyes. Scientific research has shown for quite some that the colors we see are not really features inherent to the physical world. Rather, we see these colors because of how our brains process light.

A new study co-authored by a University of Chicago neuroscientist identifies those neural networks, particularly the areas of the brain that encode the colors we actually see.

“We’ve been able to show where it happens in the visual pathway, which is relatively early,” said Prof. Steven Shevell, a leading scholar of color and brightness perception. “It’s like a road map that shows where to look for the neural circuits that cause the transition from the earliest neural representations of the physical world to our mental world.”

While they were able to show in their study that the colors we “see” are in fact just how our brains perceive and process visual information, Shevell and his colleagues were not able to show how these transitions happen.

More details about this study over at Neuroscience News.

(Image Credit: DavidRockDesign/ Pixabay)

A few days ago, a brand new Minecraft game, developed by Mojang Studios and Double Eleven and published by Xbox Game Studios, was released for multiple platforms like the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Windows, and Xbox One. The new Minecraft game, however, does not feature two of the most iconic features in the original game, which is mining, and crafting. Instead, the new game, aptly titled Minecraft Dungeons, offers the player a hack-and-slash experience inside the dungeons of the Minecraft universe.

Here’s the elevator pitch: a great evil is threatening the land with swarms of familiar Minecraft mobs, and a lone hero must battle it back. But instead of the often-awkward first-person perspective of the base game, this time you’re hacking and slashing in isometric third-person.

The question is, is this good or is this bad? K. Thor Jensen evaluates the game on his article over at PCMag.

(Video Credit: Minecraft/ YouTube)

The Long Island serial killer, who is believed to have killed twenty, targeted mostly sex workers. One of the possible victims has been identified by the Suffolk County Police Department. Valerie Mack was a former Jane Doe that disappeared in 2000. Mack was working as an escort in Philadelphia at the time of her disappearance, as Rolling Stone details: 

 a website created by the SCPD to track updates in the case, Mack’s partial remains were found in November 2000 in a wooded area in Manorville, New York (it’s believed her remains had been dumped there a few months prior in September). Eleven years later, in April 2011, additional remains belonging to Mack were found much further away on Ocean Parkway, near Oak Beach. That location, however, is not far from Gilgo Beach, where the remains of several other victims had been found.

Mack was identified using genetic genealogy, reportedly a first of its kind for a police investigation in New York State. SCPD Commissioner Geraldine Hart said in a video statement that the process allowed investigators to establish a genealogy profile of the victim, which provided new leads to pursue. Hart said investigators followed the trail to New Jersey, where they spoke with potential relatives who provided additional DNA samples, which were then used to narrow down and confirm Mack’s identity.

image via Rolling Stone

A bear was roaming around a city in Florida, and the authorities managed to catch it with the help of sweets. No tranquilizers were used in catching the roaming bear. According to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Officer Adam Brown, drugs don’t usually work with large animals such as bears. The bear was instead lured into a trap sprayed with a blueberry-pie scent, along with Krispy Kreme doughnuts! 

image via AP News

It’s a golden necklace, adorned with a golden toilet roll pendant. The necklace, dubbed “the deluxe toilet roll chain,” retails for $75. It was created by German jeweler Jonathan Johnson. The Hamburg-based jeweler wanted to tap into something common yet rare, as Forbes detailed: 

It’s selling on his website for $75, and each necklace is made from gold-plated sterling silver. From each sale, 20% goes to a local homeless nonprofit called Arzt Mobil Hamburg.

“When the coronacrisis hit, you could see on TV how people jumped on toilet paper,” said Johnson.

“The diamond, the most desirable object of desire, and a symbol of wealth, was suddenly replaced by toilet paper.”

The goal is to create an object that will represent our current crisis for future generations looking back on 2020.

“The thought that, in the future, this crisis will be looked back on in a few generations, this could be an enchanting side effect,” he said.

image via Forbes

If you’re looking for some good movie recommendations, maybe this one’s right up your alley. Time Magazine has listed their top five 2020 movie releases. Even though we might not see them at the theaters, most of them are available on different streaming platforms. Check out their full list here. Do you agree with their picks? 

image via Variety

The more we learn about the depths of the earth's oceans, the more we realize there is so much more we don't know. And that's one reason the deep sea is a great setting for movies- it provides adventure, danger, tension, and fear of the unknown. But ocean movies often take liberties, because most folks (both filmmakers and audience) don't know much about what really goes on down there. The Ringer talked to marine biologist Dr. Stephen Kajiura of Florida Atlantic University to find out how realistic Hollywood movies are, like the ones that feature giant unknown monsters from the deepest trenches.

There’s just not enough energy down there for them. The bigger you are, you need a lot of calories. And there’s just not that much productivity in a deep-sea environment to be able to support big organisms. Also the bigger you are, you feed farther down on the food chain. Think of whales. Whales are the biggest thing in the ocean but they feed on little tiny plankton, krill, things like that. And they need to be feeding on these little tiny things because you need a lot of it to support their massive size.

As you get bigger and bigger and bigger—the whale sharks, the basking sharks, they’re all filter feeders. When they show these giant, enormous things that are out for human blood, it’s not going to work. Energetically, you can’t make that sustainable. You can’t be that big and still need to eat near the top of the food chain. There’s just not going to be enough out there to support you.  

Kajiura explains movie inaccuracies about sea creatures, pressures, actual ocean exploration, and how marine biologists are depicted in movies ranging from The Abyss to Aquaman to Deep Blue Sea to Finding Nemo at the Ringer. -via Digg

Tim Rousu and his family rent a house in Queensland, Australia. Due to social distancing rules, the agency that owns the home skipped their usual home inspection and instead asked him to send in pictures, two of each room, "to confirm the house is still upright." Rousu saw that as a unique opportunity for some fun, and took pictures of each room that included himself or a family member doing amusing or even horrifying things. Watch as he takes a bath, becomes stuck under the bed, and gets waterboarded by his daughter. You can see all the images and read about Rousu's home inspection adventure at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: Tim Rousu)

Now that’s something to admire. I can’t even work out comfortably in slightly tight clothes! Victorian women did exercises devised to account for the fact that women would be constricted by their clothing and elaborate hairstyles. Instead of burning calories, the Victorian women followed workouts that focused on blood flow. These workouts were also mainly written by men, as Mental Floss details: 

In his 1827 book A Treatise on Calisthenic Exercises, Signor G.P. Voarino detailed dozens of options for women, including skipping, walking in zigzags, marching in place, and bending your arms and legs at specific angles. Some exercises even called for the use of a cane, though they were more geared towards balancing and stretching than weight-lifting.

To Voarino, the light calisthenic exercises were meant for “counteracting every tendency to deformity, and for obviating such defects of figure as are occasioned by confinement within doors, too close an application to sedentary employment, or by those constrained positions which young ladies habitually assume during their hours of study.”

Nearly 30 years later, Catharine Beecher (Harriet Beecher Stowe's sister) published her own workout guide, Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families, which encouraged educators especially to incorporate exercise programs for all children into their curricula. Beecher was against corsets, but the illustrations in her book did still depict young ladies in long dresses—it would be some time before students were expected to change into gym clothes at school. Many of Beecher’s calisthenic exercises were similar to Voarino’s, though she included some beginner ballet positions, arm circles, and other faster-paced movements.

image via Mental Floss

Tonya Ruiz, a former model turned custom toymaker, has for years made realistic versions of Barbie and her household accessories. She publishes them on her appropriately-named Instagram feed Grandma Gets Real.

Recently, she's been producing kits for what Barbie, Ken, and their children would actually be living like if they were quarantined during the pandemic. Barbie is getting by as a homeschooling mom of young children who rarely dresses appropriately during her Zoom meetings and enjoys her new hobbies of baking and assembling jigsaw puzzles.

-via Colossal