I've just discovered this amazing Scottish musician named Ruairdh Maclean (the most Scottish of all possible names) who has gained internet fame for his remixes of popular songs. He attributes "Dueling Banjos" to his native fishing village in northern Scotland, although I think the song originates with a South Carolinian named Arthur Smith.
Maclean has also covered "Ring of Fire" popularized by Johnny Cash, "Delilah" as sung by Tom Jones, as well as classics of Celtic music, such as "Jean's Reel."
I've got to say that AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" works very well for the accordion.
Blowing out the candles on a birthday cake is a grand tradition to celebrate the passage of life and hopes for its future. But it's also somewhat unsanitary. It's done with the breath of the celebrant and therefore contaminates the cake with the blower's germs.
In 2014, Brian Donnelly of East Northport, NY received a patent for a series of shields that cover different sized cakes with perforated shields that allow for the passage of candles while providing some protection for the cakes.
Donnelly provided six different designs to reflect a variety of cakes, including circular cakes, layer cakes, cupcakes, and pies.
We love watching outtakes from film sets, which often are a collection of actors flubbing their lines and then laughing about it. This happened on the set of The Usual Suspects, during the lineup scene. The laughter wasn't in the script, and in fact the actors were supposed to stand stoically through the scene. But Benicio del Toro kept farting during take after take, and the cast couldn't keep a straight face. So the laughter was included in the scene, which became quite memorable. More often, on set injuries ended up producing genuine fear or anguish, and the footage was deemed the best take on a particular scene, which happened in The Two Towers, Django Unchained, Die Hard, and Tora! Tora! Tora!
While test driving a Mercedes in Georgia, the driver heard a strange sound coming from the car. There was nothing wrong with the car, but it was meowing. The driver pulled into Royalty Auto Service where mechanic Sherwood Cook located the culprit- a tiny kitten (this was Sherwood, Jr. There's also a Sherwood III and Sherwood IV on the staff). The kitten wasn't easy to get to. They had to put the car on a lift to reach her! Meanwhile, Sherwood fell in love with the kitten, and declared that she would be part of the staff as well. After all, his grandchildren are already on the roster without actually having to work, why not a kitten, too? Besides, she's seen parts of a car that you and I never will. She was checked out by a veterinarian and given a new name- Mercedes.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a 230-foot-long embroidered banner that depicts the events of the Norman conquest of England. It is believed to have been completed not long after the Battle of Hastings. It is a remarkable artifact, and the subject of much discussion. One of those discussions is about the number of penises that are illustrated in the needlework. One scholar declared the number is 93, meaning 88 on horses and five on men, while another scholar argues that there are six men with their anatomy showing. Don't bother looking in the picture above; I chose a random portion of the tapestry.
Another question is why all these penises are there in the first place. The tapestry is full of symbolism, so there are several theories and no official explanation. But even if the question of counting penises in a thousand-year-old tapestry never occurred to you, you shouldn't be surprised that it occurred to certain art historians. Read about this controversy over the Bayeaux Tapestry and what it "reveals" to us at Popular Science. -via Damn Interesting
Greenlandic ice is noted for its natural purity and age. Dubai partygoers are noted for being very wealthy and profligate. Put them together and you have a business opportunity.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a startup company in Greenland is breaking up icebergs that roll off of the island's icecap, packing the ice cubes for refrigeration, and then shipping them to Dubai in packages of six cubes priced at about $100 USD.
In Dubai, bartenders place them in expensive cocktails. Customers are willing to pay extra for drinks that have unique origin stories. Their tastes may allow Greenland to expand the diversity of its economy, which consists primarily of fishing and mineral extraction.
Australia is home to some of nature's most dangerous predators, as well as nightmarish heat and drought. But Valerie, a Miniature Dachshund, survived for a year and a half on her own after she got separated from her humans.
BBC News describes how Valerie got lost (or escaped) while camping with her humans on Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. Owner Georgia Gardner asked for help online and many volunteers combed island for the missing dog.
They finally set a trap baited with Gardner's clothes (and therefore scent) to attract Valerie. The dog fell for the bait and remained inside the trap until Kangaroo Island residents could contain her. Valerie is now back at home where she belongs.
A mansion that's on the National Register of Historic Places is for sale in Gardner, Massachusetts. This is the SK Pierce House, built in 1873-75, it is considered one of the most haunted houses in the US. It certainly looks the part. You might be reminded of a Charles Addams creation. However, the house wasn't always gray and black. See what it looked like before the recent renovation.
This mansion offers nine bedrooms and four bathrooms, and has 6,988 square feet of living area, but not much of a yard to speak of. So who lives there? A ton of ghosts, according to local lore. Soon after Sylvester Pierce had the house built, his wife Susan died. Later, the home was turned into a boarding house where numerous incidents occurred, including murder and a possible case of spontaneous combustion.
The ghosts of S.K. Pierce himself, Susan Pierce, Edward Pierce, as well as a nanny named Mattie Cornwell, a gentlemen named David who some believe to have been the red room strangler, the prostitute who was murdered in the red room, a young boy, a younger girl who was perhaps the granddaughter of Pierce, Eino Saari, and some unnamed dark entities in the basement have been described as some of this mansion's many ghostly residents.
There are quite a few videos on this mansion, but most are pretty long. In 2015, the owners of Dark Carnival, a haunted attraction company, bought the mansion and restored it to its former glory under the watchful eyes of historic preservationists. They offered tours and overnight rentals, but couldn't make up for the renovation costs, so the home is for sale for $1,200,000. You can see 42 photographs the home at the real estate listing. -via Fark
At Less Wrong, a blog devoted to rational thinking, Arjun Panickssery notes that English language sentences have gradually decreased in length. Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote sentences that were on average 42 words long. The modern writer J.K. Rowling, on contrast, wrote the Harry Potter series with sentences about 12 words long.
Why has this changed?
Panickssery suggests a few possible causes. One is that journalists, who tend to have a terse style, inserted their writing norms into writing as a whole. Another is that much writing in the past was intended to be read aloud rather than silently, the latter of which emphasizes shorter sentences for clarity. Panickssery also suggests that writers learned a style derived from classical Latin works with very long sentences and the abandonment of this style led to reduced sentence lengths. Modern writers are taught to write with short sentences, whereas their predacessors were taught to write very long, complex sentences.
As World War II was drawing to a close in the spring of 1945, the Allies were advancing on German occupied territory, and the Nazis were keen to destroy evidence of the Holocaust. SS chief Heinrich Himmler was under the illusion that he could lead Germany after the fall of Hitler, and was interested in gaining credit for a humanitarian gesture, as long as der Führer didn't find out about it. Himmler negotiated with a Swedish diplomat to evacuate concentration camp inmates with convoys of Red Cross buses. Around 15,000 people were evacuated, first to Denmark, then by ferry to neutral Sweden. Thousands were taken from Ravensbrück, a camp for women, mostly political prisoners, in northern Germany.
To accomplish the rescue, every bus that could be commandeered was quickly painted white. The evacuation was fraught with danger, as Himmler's secret plans could be discovered by Hitler loyalists, and in fact, a couple of convoys were bombed on their journey. The Red Cross evacuations from Ravensbrück occurred only weeks or days before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. From the vantage point of history, the women who ended up in Sweden were much luckier than those who later found themselves residents of East Germany. Read about the secret negotiations that led to Sweden's Red Cross rescue at France 24. -via Damn Interesting
A controversy among linguists which has been raging for a long time is the concept of universal grammar. Is there a fundamental set of rules that people use, no matter what their language is? Anyone who has tried to learn a second or third language knows how different these languages can be. English speakers have a hard time wrapping their heads around gendered nouns. People who speak other languages don't understand why we put adjectives before nouns in English. But there are certain features that almost all languages have in common, such as subjects, verbs, and objects, although their order can vary. But is this universal grammar due to something innate in the human brain, or did it come about when written language developed, or does it point to how languages were all originally related? Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains how linguists have disagreed, or even fought each other, over this controversy.
When Peter Benchley wrote his novel Jaws, which made great white sharks into scary monsters forever, he drew inspiration from the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1916. It was a very hot summer, and throngs of tourists went to the beaches to cool off. It was also the summer that sharks killed four people and badly injured a fifth in New Jersey. Three of those attacks came on the same day! The carnage led to a panic, and people petition for the extermination of sharks. Sharks weren't considered much of a threat before 1916, but their reputation changed overnight.
Could the attacks have come from the same shark? Armed crews went out in boats to kill as many sharks as possible, of all species. One great white was found with human remains in its gut. Some experts thought that the killer shark(s) would more likely have been bull sharks, since they venture into freshwater, and two of the attacks occurred in an inland creek. Some thought that the activities of German U-boats was to blame, causing sharks to develop a taste for humans after devouring the war dead. Others thought that a sea turtle might be the actual culprit. Read about the summer that turned sharks into enemies at Amusing Planet.
Once again, the comedy troupe Foil Arms and Hog throw a party and have a great time, more or less. This time they are impersonating the elements of the periodic table.
The elements all have their individual characteristics, and that comes out in the small talk. Some personality quirks have to do with the chemicals themselves, like oxygen, which is a breath of fresh air. Others have to do with their reputation among humans, like aluminum, which wears a foil hat and is a bit paranoid. And some are just puns, like how boron is so very boring. Some of them even dress the part, like neon wearing Day-Glo colors. Watch for some surprises, like when two nitrogens and one oxygen merge and get the giggles, because that makes nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. That's why it's so important to go over your guest list multiple times to make sure your guests won't clash and cause trouble, or in the worst case, explode. -via Laughing Squid
In 1888 and '89, Vincent van Gogh painted three versions of the bedroom where he slept in Arles, France. He titled them The Bedroom, but they have since been known as Bedroom in Arles. The Yellow House that contained the bedroom was bombed during World War II and no longer exists. But avid Van Gogh fans can still visit and even stay a night or two in the bedroom, because a recreation exists as an Airbnb in Charroux, France. Behold La Chambre de Van Gogh. The accommodation has a living room, kitchen, and bath, which are all nice and modern, but the bedroom is something to behold. Charroux artist François Lassere has transformed the bedroom into Van Gogh's vision as rendered in the paintings.
Compare the details. Lassere has even copied Van Gogh's brushstrokes to give the entire room the illusion of a painting, yet you can sleep in it. The bed is described as a double bed, but that might be part of the illusion, or else beds really are just smaller in France. See more pictures in the gallery.
Surströmming is known around the world these days, mainly for YouTube videos of people retching when the get a whiff of it. Surströmming is canned, fermented herring from Sweden, where it is considered a delicacy. Elsewhere, it is considered the stinkiest food in the world. That may be enough to keep you from ever trying it yourself, but you have to wonder what it is about Surströmming that some Swedes love. To find out, Great Big Story went for a deep dive to explain how Surströmming was invented, how it's made, what makes it so smelly, and then what's good about it. Apparently the taste is much better than the smell, but it takes a talented eater to completely separate the two senses. Even the head of the Surströmming Association says to open the can outside.
That said, between people from all over the world wanting to try it, and environmental changes affecting the fish supply, it's now hard to get your hands on a can of Surströmming!
