Of all the students who had applied to study at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, one of the top medical schools in the US, 364 made it to the final round of applicants being considered for 50 slots. On Thursday, acceptance emails were sent out. To all 364 applicants. Oops. Three hours later, a correction was sent.

"... Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine erroneously emailed 364 letters of acceptance to talented, engaging individuals seeking an appointment to the medical school. Soon after the emails were sent, a technical error was discovered and the letters of acceptance were withdrawn by e-mail," wrote Mayo Clinic Spokeswoman Heather Carlson Kehren in a statement late Thursday night. "All affected applicants have been contacted by phone. We deeply regret having caused disappointment to these applicants, and we are continuing to investigate the issue."

A later email was sent to 315 applicants, withdrawing the offer of acceptance. By then some students had already withdrawn their applications to other medical schools. Some shared their disappointment online.

"I literally ran down the halls of this prestigious academic institution yelling to everyone that I got into Mayo. I burst into my mentor's office and told him the news and he hugged me. I called other mentors and they immediately spread the news, resulting in me getting several texts congratulating me," wrote one poster. "The worst part about it was telling my mentor in person. He looked at me like how I'd imagine you'd look at a puppy who just got hit by a car ... It'll take me a while to get over this."

Read the details of the story at the Post Bulletin. -via reddit

(Image credit: Christo and Melissa Philips)

Jane Britton was a knowledgeable and well-liked graduate student in anthropology at Harvard. After she missed an important test, her boyfriend and a neighbor went into her apartment and found her bludgeoned to death. Who could have killed her? Was it a member of her anthropology team? One of the hippies she'd been known to hang around with? A criminal who knew that the locks on those apartments didn't work?

With a bone-dry suspect pool, police focused instead on evidence from the crime scene. Though they had managed to find traces of semen left behind by the killer during the sexual assault, the existing technology wasn't advanced enough for them to use that DNA to locate a match. They also discovered that a sharp stone—perhaps sharp enough to kill— Britton had received as an archaeological souvenir from the Mitchells had gone missing from her residence.

Then, just two days after Britton’s body was found, Cambridge Chief of Police James F. Reagan announced a black-out on any further news of the investigation until he himself decided to release more information, citing inaccuracies in media coverage of the crime. He wouldn’t elaborate, but he did give one last parting update: They had located the sharp stone.

As for any other details—where they found it, for example, or if it happened to be smeared with blood—Reagan didn’t say. The public was left to assume that the potential murder weapon was yet another dead end.

That was in 1969. Nothing else was publicized about the case until public requests spurred the investigators to reopen the case in 2017. Read how time and modern technology made all the difference in a murder mystery at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Middlesex District Attorney)

Ten movie critics from Indiewire have constructed another movie list we can all argue over. What makes a great romantic comedy is a matter of opinion, as some feel the laughs matter more than the romance, or vice versa. Some of the movies really stretch the definition of "romantic comedy." It includes Bend It Like Beckham, which is a sports buddy movie, contains hardly any comedy, and just barely features a romance. Conversely, Coming to America, a hilarious movie centered around a romance, is not on the list, but is dismissed as an "urban fantasy." I might have more quibbles, but I haven't seen many of these movies. Check out the ranked list of 50 romantic comedies and feel your blood boil at Indiewire.

Steve Irwin (1962-2006) was a famous wildlife expert, conservationist, TV show host, and daredevil known as the "Crocodile Hunter" for his dangerously close encounters with wild animals. His son, Robert Irwin, now 16 years old, is walking his father's path, even hosting his own animal encounters show.

On Twitter and Instagram, Robert occasionally recreates iconic photos of his father, such feeding Murray the crocodile. You can see a curated list of other photo remakes at My Modern Met.

When people have a lot of free time on their hands, they seem to go out of the way to try to satiate their boredom, or just to pass the time. This girl’s boyfriend locked her outside to see if she can actually unlock a chain door from the outside. See her successfully unlock the door at Rumble. 

image screenshot via Rumble

There are artworks everywhere that you recognize, even if you know nothing about them. And if you do know something about them, chances are that it's wrong. Especially if the artist has been dead for a long time.  

I do know the works of art listed, but since I've not had much art education, I didn't know the misconceptions. But I'm always open to learning something new. Read all 30 misconceptions about art at Cracked.

You might recall the case of the pizza delivery guy who was forced into robbing a bank. In 2003 in Erie, Pennsylvania, Brian Wells entered a bank and demanded a quarter-million dollars. He only got $8,702 in cash and the police caught up with him rather quickly. However, Wells had two pipe bombs attached to his neck by a metal collar.  

Whilst being cuffed, Wells helpfully informed the troopers of the bomb around his neck and that three black men had put it there. He further stated that, as far as he was aware, it would go off any minute.

Naturally, the officers all very abruptly backed away from Wells, no doubt mumbling to themselves that they were “too old for this shit”, if movies from that era have taught me anything. After getting a safe distance away, they called the bomb squad.

As for Wells, for 20 agonizing minutes he sat alone on the concrete, occasionally shouting to officers to check if they’d called his boss to inform him why Wells hadn’t come back to work after the delivery, and inquiring when the bomb squad was going to show up.

The bomb squad did not show up in time, and dead men tell no tales, so Wells left behind a mystery. Most people who remember the incident in the news never learned what happened, as the investigation saw details showing up in bits and pieces over quite some time. The explanation of the plot is exceedingly bizarre, and involved a body in a freezer, prostitutes and drug dealers, and a possibly fictional inheritance. Learn the story behind the "pizza bomber" at Today I Found Out.    

(Image credit: United States Federal Bureau of Investigation)

In 1889, a building on 75th street in Harlem suffered a gas leak in the middle of the night. Some background on the incident gives us pause, as quite a few families of up to seven people lived in two and three room apartments. The leaking gas filled the basement apartment first.

As the gas rapidly filled the cellar and made its way up into the basement and other floors above, all of the tenants remained sound asleep. At about 4 a.m., Mrs. May woke up and covered the kitchen sink opening with a cloth, thinking the foul odor she smelled was sewer gas. She went back to bed.

About an hour later, the May’s two cats began howling in the cellar. The loud duet woke up Mary, who asked her mother what she thought was wrong with the cats. Mrs. May said the cats were probably just sick. She then got out of bed and started preparing breakfast for the family.

Mary thought the cats were dying, so she got up to investigate.

Upon opening the door to the cellar, Mary was overcome by the gas and nearly suffocated. Her mother did not notice that Mary was in trouble until the family dog joined the cats and started howling.

You can read the entire story, plus a history of the gasification of New York, at The Hatching Cat. The moral of the story is that you need to know what a natural gas leak smells like, and it's good to have pets. -via Strange Company

The double-lobed heart icon -the Valentine shape- existed as an iconic shape before it was associated with the blood pump inside us. It may have come from the shape of a butt, or testicles, or the silphium plant, or any number of other inspirations. That was a long time before it was associated with the physical heart, or with love.  

“[The heart] might’ve also been the brand for horses,” says Yalom, “Why not? The double lobes do suggest haunches.” Were they symbols of war? Strength? All the wine they would drink after battle? Who knows. But in the Middle Ages, the real fun begins. This was the age of courtly love. Medieval philosophers looked to Aristotle, who said that sentiment lived not in the brain but the heart, for cues on where to pinpoint thine #feels. In Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages, Josh Hartnell explains that they also inherited the Greek idea that the heart was the first organ your body made, and hence, the one that most anchored your human existence – it was the “house of the human soul.”

It took a long time for the physical heart, the heart icon, and the concept of romantic love to come together. How it happened is a story you can read at Messy Nessy Chic.

Some people bite their nails out of habit, to ease anxiety, or just to calm themselves down. But biting your nails can cause injury, and in some cases, get you straight to the operating room. If you’re a nail biter, here’s one story that can hopefully convince you to stop the habit. Lauren Nichols stopped biting her nails after a cuticle infection, when she almost had to get her fingertip amputated. Buzzfeed has more details: 

she woke up one morning with red swelling around a green spot on her cuticle. She went to the doctor and found out she had paronychia, aka a cuticle infection.

Nichols eventually had to have a type of surgery called a therapeutic washout to remove the infection. Her doctor told her that she needed to stop biting her nails. "He told me that he has to amputate the tips of people's fingers because the infection gets too bad, and that I'm lucky I came when I did," she told BuzzFeed.

image via Buzzfeed

People tend to unwind and relax by doing things that they don’t usually do during their regular schedules. With the world’s fast-paced and tedious transportation system, sometimes we would like to step away from the daily rush towards work or school and just relax and enjoy the travel. India’s Kalka-Shimla ‘toy train’ is a perfect attraction for a relaxing tourist trip. The toy train is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is a tourism magnet, as CNN details: 

There's no denying that having "toy train" in the name ensures the rail line is a tourism magnet, a catchy description for the narrow-gauge, small-sized locomotives tirelessly serving the route.

But it's also got an interesting backstory too, its history interconnected with British colonial rule in India.

Ever since the beginning of the Raj -- the period of British rule on the Indian subcontinent from 1858 and 1947 -- the new rulers were searching for an "English climate," a place that would offer refuge from the unbearable heat of the Delhi and Kolkata summers.

They found it in Shimla, which, before the second half of the 18th century, was nothing but a remote forested area with a few temples.

British travelers who visited the area noted the climate's resemblance to their homeland and in 1863 the Viceroy of India, John Lawrence, decided to move the summer capital to Shimla.

It soon became a travel hotspot, its Neo-Gothic architectural core welcoming a colorful crowd of high-ranking officials, British soldiers and adventurists.

image via CNN

Moving through a day on bare minimum hours of sleep, or none at all, is a torture and a challenge. Half of the time you’ll probably just doze off, or you get cranky, find it harder to finish tasks, or fall into a bad mood. While these are very common effects of lack of sleep, it turns out that there’s another overlooked effect of sleeplessness, which is anxiety. A team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, found that the longer people go without sleep, the more distressed they begin to feel. Erman Misirlisoy has the details: 

Sleep disturbances are also a common symptom of major mood disorders such as depression. Improving sleep quality is an early target for many approaches to therapy, because when people sleep better, they feel better.

It could be that sadness and worry are simply consequences of feeling tired, but it could also be that there are direct links between sleep and mood regulation systems in the brain. To answer this question, the Berkeley researchers surveyed people’s anxiety levels both after a normal night of sleep and after a second night of total sleep deprivation. In addition, they recorded each person’s brain activity while they watched videos that made them uncomfortable (for example, witnessing a young child cry).

As expected, people felt more anxious when they were deprived of sleep than when they were allowed to sleep. When the researchers looked inside people’s heads with a brain scanner, they found that a brain area known as the medial prefrontal cortex — an area linked to emotional control — reduced its activity when people were sleep deprived. More specifically, this area of the brain was less active in response to the stress caused by watching uncomfortable videos. This suggests that a sleep-deprived brain is less able to control its reaction to momentarily stressful events.

image via wikimedia commons

The folks at How It Should Have Ended had a lot to think about after seeing The Rise of Skywalker. They came up with about a dozen points in the movie where it could have ended rather suddenly, which they show us quickly. It took them two months to decide on the best alternate ending for the Skywalker saga, the one that would have been the most satisfying, not to mention funny.

Despite the fact that the Americans spent $264.6 billion on health and fitness in 2018, which is far more than any nation, the United States still rank lowest in that same field.

The United States leads the world in spending for every segment, including fitness classes ($37 billion), sports and recreation ($58 billion), apparel and footwear ($117 billion), equipment and supplies ($37.5 billion), mindful movement, such as yoga ($10 billion), and related technology ($8.1 billion).

The question is, why? What are the underlying causes of this rather ironic situation?

There are a few factors, according to the Global Wellness Institute, for this discrepancy between the amount of money spent and the actual participation. These are: lack of sidewalks and bike lanes; youth sports becoming costly and hypercompetitive; and the lack of a supportive and communal exercise culture.

In addition, the health and fitness industry has become obsessed with complexity. Sometimes this is warranted, but often it’s not. One reason people make things complex is so they can sell them. It’s hard to monetize the basics, but come up with an intricate and sexy-sounding approach to something and people will pay for it.

Now that we know what the problem is, how do we fix it?

The answer is, we don’t need to spend that much money. We just need to move our bodies more.

More details over at Outside Online.

(Image Credit: Wokandapix/ Pixabay)

It’s been over a month ever since the new year, and now it’s that time of the year again colds and flus have once again become a trend, not to mention COVID-19, a newly identified respiratory disease. How, then, do we avoid getting infected? Or if you’re the one sick, how do you avoid infecting others?

To cut your risk of catching a respiratory illness on your next flight, experts offer two pieces of common-sense advice: Wash your hands frequently and keep a distance from people who are sick.

[...]

If you're sick with a respiratory illness, wearing a mask and opening the overhead vent could help prevent transmission.

Check out more details about these tips over at NPR.

I guess these tips not only can be applied while on a plane, but also on any transportation vehicle.

(Image Credit: StelaDi/ Pixabay)