Ernest Hemingway is a highly respected American novelist of the early 20th century. Even while he was alive, he had admirers who probably wanted to meet him personally and have a small chat about writing. That's what Arnold Samuelson did as a 22-year-old in 1934. He hitchhiked from Minnesota all the way to Key West, just to meet Hemingway.

When he got there, he only expected to talk with the man for a few minutes and be on his way back home. He stayed for a year with Hemingway, and wrote a book titled "With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba" which was published in 1984, three years after Samuelson's death.

While there, Hemingway gave Samuelson a list of books that he believed any writer should have read as part of their education. It included books by Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the American poet E.E. Cummings, the Irish novelist James Joyce, and the English novelist Emily Brontë.

Apart from that, Hemingway also gave Samuelson a few other tips on becoming a good writer. These included advice such as competing with dead writers and stealing from the things you read. These, and other words of advice from Hemingway on Flashbak.

(Image credit: Flashbak)

The above photo shows all the fifteen incarnations of Doctor Who. The show has been on air for the past 60 years, excluding a brief ten-year hiatus. What has kept the show alive for such a long time may very well be the brilliance of its premise. That is, whenever the Doctor dies, the character simply regenerates into a new body, a new Tardis, and new companions. Out with the old, in with the new, so to speak. However, if you take another look at the photo above, you will notice that Doctor Who just broke that premise.

David Tennant, who played the Doctor from 2005 to 2010, has returned as the Fourteenth Doctor. This was originally planned with Tennant returning for a special and then, during that special, he would morph into the Fifteenth Doctor, stripping away his old self, and living on as the new one, which will be played by Ncuti Gatwa.

This is where the show pulled an unexpected plot twist on everyone, which some argue may be ruining Doctor Who's premise altogether. Instead of dying off and passing the baton to Gatwa's Doctor, Tennant's Doctor split into two, Tennant and Gatwa, essentially saying that Tennant's Doctor will exist simultaneously with Gatwa's.

As Gatwa's Doctor goes on adventures, Tennant's will just be living in suburbia, like any retired person. Some may regard this move similar to the MCU's multiverse, and perhaps, moving toward that direction may stir some fans' nostalgia for previous doctors, and possible cameo appearances.

Some argue that the concept of regeneration and leaving the past behind is one that has been the cornerstone of Doctor Who, and trying to change that now, just seems self-indulgent. Although I doubt people will stop watching the show simply because it decided it's time to alter its premise.

(Image credit: BBC/Wikimedia Commons)

From the time that George Washington took his oath of office on April 30, 1789, until today, the Bible he laid his hand on has remained intact and been kept in good condition.

The story goes that prior to the oathtaking rites, everything was well-prepared and had gone smoothly, except, nobody brought a Bible. The only one at hand nearby was the Bible at St. John's Lodge. They hurriedly got it, opened it on a random page, and George Washington took his oath.

St. John's Lodge No. 1 Foundation asserts that none of that was by accident, pointing out that the Masonic Bible had been used intentionally to remain neutral from any denominational squabbling, and that the page used for the oathtaking was also carefully chosen.

How it survived more than 200 years, being made from vegetable-based inks, is not exactly described, but it remains intact and is currently at the possession of St. John's Lodge. When not being used, the lodge lends it to the Federal Hall in New York to be displayed.

As a testament to the Bible's longevity, four other presidents have used it during their inauguration - Warren G. Harding, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. It had also been used for other events such as at Zachary Taylor's funeral procession and Abraham Lincoln's lying in state.

(Image credit: Ramon de Elorriaga/Wikimedia Commons)

We have heard of how brutal it is to have lived in ancient Rome, not less for the underprivileged and lower classes of society at the time. Slaves in ancient Rome were treated like property, and often subjected to various forms of cruelty such as corporal punishment, torture, and summary execution.

Depending on how their masters viewed them and their perceived value to the household, they were either given the bare essentials for them to survive, or much worse conditions than that. Archaeologists at the Pompeii Archaeological Park have discovered signs of the latter, possibly.

In the ruins of a bakery-prison, there were hints that the slaves of that household had been put to work grinding grain to make bread. The room itself was narrow, with a high window secured with iron bars, leading to the house's atrium, making it difficult for the slaves to leave. Furthermore, indentations on the floor suggested that animals had been in the room with the slaves to work in the milling area.

The archaeologists also found remains of three individuals in the bakery room, suggesting that at the time Mount Vesuvius erupted, these people were trapped inside, left to fend for themselves.

(Image credit: Pompeii Sites)

Jimi Hendrix had had two albums before the 1968 release of Electric Ladyland. From the covers of his first two albums, it seems as though the record companies struggled to find a great angle of presenting Jimi Hendrix.

In his album, Are You Experienced, the cover featured the band shot with a fisheye lens. Seems groovy enough, it has its own charm. Then came the second album, Axis: Bold As Love, which featured the members of the band again, with a Hindu backdrop showing Vishnu and his avatars.

Hendrix commented how disrespectful it was seeing that the three of them were in no way related to what was shown on the cover.

Finally, with Electric Ladyland, Hendrix wanted to have a bit more input. So he wrote a letter to Reprise Records stating exactly what he wanted to include on the cover as well as the layout and typography. The recording company ignored his letter below and came up with the cover as shown above.

The UK cover was completely different and used a picture taken by David Montgomery of 19 naked women. Hendrix stated how he preferred Linda McCartney's photograph depicting two children in Central Park. In the end, what the art directors chose was what the recording companies put out.

Montgomery shares the story behind the UK cover and how his own artistic decisions were also ignored by David King, the art director, on Flashbak.

(Image credit: Flashbak)

I rarely use emojis in online conversations, and even when I do, I tend to use the same set of emojis so I don't really take notice of the rest. However, one scientist, Jennifer Anderson, an expert of aquatic fungi and a microbial ecologist, shared with two Italian ecologists, Stefano Mammola and Francesco Ficetola, her gripe with the lack of representation for other organisms, such as aquatic fungi, in emojis.

The thought captivated Mammola and Ficetola, so they set on a quest to find out just how many organisms from the tree of life are represented in emoji. Their findings, recently published on iScience, showed that there were 112 organisms depicted in emojis, based on the online catalogue of emojis, Emojipedia. Out of the 112, 92 were animals and 16 were plants.

These scientists assert that many endangered species lack awareness and attention from the general public, and that's even reflected in emojis. The idea is that if they can bring attention to organisms like the flatworm or arthropods, then conservation efforts may be given more attention.

Despite this, over the years, the scientists found that emoji biodiversity has been increasing. In 2015, only 45 animals were available as emojis, but in 2022, that figure rose to the 92 that they found from their study.

Whether or not having more emoji biodiversity will ramp up conservation efforts directly or indirectly is up for debate. Perhaps people may become curious about these organisms from emojis, and help raising awareness for them. That's if majority of the general public even use emojis in the first place.

(Image credit: Emojipedia/X)

How much blood sanitary pads, tampons, and other menstrual products actually absorb is a question that many researchers still struggle answering because the way tampon manufacturers have historically tested their products' absorbency led to inaccurate results.

Instead of using actual blood to test the capacity of these menstrual products, manufacturers used blue saline solution just as many period ads, like the one below, have depicted throughout the years. However, when studies were conducted to test how much tampons actually absorbed, results have shown that they absorbed more blood than indicated.

This inaccuracy in testing procedures can cause a lot of misdiagnoses or the inability to even figure out whether a woman has any underlying health conditions. Excessive bleeding may be a sign of something serious like endometriosis, fibroids, polycystic ovary syndrome, or infertility. But it's nearly impossible to determine how much women actually discharge based on how many tampons or sanitary pads they use.

Efforts are being made, however, to rectify the situation with a study that used real blood to test how much tampons, pads, cups, discs, and even period underwear can absorb. This study was conducted by a team of researchers from Oregon Health & Science University, and they used expired blood from the university blood bank to perform their tests.

Although it is touted as the first ever study to use real blood, a previous study had already been conducted by Nancy Reame, a nursing professor, which did the same thing. However, it was largely ignored since the FDA had approved the absorbency tests which used saline.

Now, more researchers are following in the footsteps of Reame, and are even going further by trying to figure out how the bleeding stops.

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I love eating those chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, also called chocolate teacakes. They combine the soft, fluffy texture of marshmallows, and the sweetness of the chocolate which accentuates the muted flavor of the mallow.

Back in the 1950s, the Royal Air Force included these chocolate teacakes into their ration packs. Everybody loved it. And they made an interesting discovery about these teacakes: they expanded as the aircraft climbed higher altitudes. They noticed that at 15,000 feet, the marshmallow started bursting out of the chocolate coating. Despite this, the flavor wasn't compromised. You basically got more out of the treat than when you started.

One incident, however, burst everybody's bubble, no pun intended. While on a flight, a captain and a student pilot unwrapped one of these teacakes and left it on the instrument panels. Then, the captain pulled an emergency depressurizing switch, which caused the teacakes to explode. The chocolate splattered on the windshield, the control panel, and the pilots' uniforms.

Needless to say, the RAF banned marshmallows from being brought into any aircraft ever again.

(Image credit: Twid/Wikimedia Commons)

Committing serious crimes and being convicted of them will usually result in life imprisonment. As the name suggests, that meant the offenders will stay in prison for the rest of their lives until pardoned, paroled, or commuted to a fixed term.

But there are times when judges deem the crimes to be deserving of even greater punishment, excluding the death sentence. So, the convicts are given prison sentences longer than life imprisonment.

The longest non-life prison sentence recorded was given to Chamoy Thipyaso who had been sentenced to 141,078 years in jail in 1989. Thipyaso had been the mastermind of a pyramid scheme on a national scale in Thailand, defrauding more than 16,000 Thai people including some members of the military and the Royal family. At the time, Thai law allowed only a maximum of 20 years for fraud. She ended up being released in 1993.

In the US, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people during the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which got him the death sentence. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, who helped him construct the bomb, received 161 life sentences plus 9,300 years without parole.

Another man, Charles Scott Robinson, also from Oklahoma, was found guilty on six charges of child sexual abuse, and received a 30,000-year sentence in 1994.

Check out the rest of the longest prison sentences in the world on NDTV.

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Who doesn't love fried chicken? Apparently, ancient Britons considered it taboo to eat them, as a study revealed that Gallus gallus domesticus had once been venerated by them to the point that men and women were buried along with their pet chickens.

After arriving in the UK in 800 BC, these chickens spent centuries being worshiped and celebrated by the Iron Age Britons. It wasn't until AD 43 when the Romans came over to England and began slaughtering the chickens for food.

From that point onward, ancient Britons began rearing them so that they can be farmed and eaten later. In fact, historic bones have shown how chickens have evolved over time so that they can grow faster and die younger, to satisfy humans' increasing demand for them.

Now, there are about 26 billion chickens being reared around the world, far more than any other bird on the planet. Pigeons in the 1800s had a population of 3 to 5 billion, and were considered the most common bird on the planet. Not anymore.

(Image credit: Thomas Iversen/Unsplash)

Hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers during WWI were killed in action, many of whom returned to their native lands and laid to rest. But there were those who had died but couldn't be identified, and so they were referred to as "unknown soldiers".

In 1916, David Railton, a chaplain serving in the British Army, after finishing the funeral rites of a fellow soldier, had found a solitary grave with the inscription, "An Unknown British Soldier of the Black Watch". From this came the idea of holding a ceremony for all the unknown soldiers during WWI.

He had suggested it to Rev. Herbert Ryle, the Dean of Westminster Abbey, and everything was quickly sorted out, with the Prime Minister and King George V giving approval on October 4th. Brigadier General Louis Wyatt was in charge of making it happen. So, he gave instructions for four unknown soldiers to be exhumed, one each from Somme, Aisne, Arras, and Ypres.

These were brought to St. Pol, and Wyatt randomly selected one among them, with the rest being reburied. The body was placed in a specially-designed oak coffin, and brought to London by train.

On Armistice Day, November 11, 1920, the Unknown Warrior was honored by the King and later brought to Westminster Abbey to be buried.

Many questions still surround the mystery of the unknown warrior such as the selection process, the number of soldiers, the identity of the soldier being known, and the place of interment of the remaining bodies.

But what's important is that every year on November 11th, the relatives of the 517,773 unknown soldiers may believe that the Unknown Warrior could be their lost friend, lover, husband, father, brother, or son.

(Image credit: Horace Nicholls/Wikimedia Commons)

The early life of Lucy Higgs probably resembles many African-Americans' stories in the 19th century. Born into slavery, she was later sold to the Higgs family of Tennessee, from whom she took her last name. She served that family for a couple generations, met her husband who was also a slave there, and the two had a daughter named Mona.

However, Lucy's life took a turn when the Higgs were forced to evacuate their plantation and move to Atlanta. Seeing her opportunity to escape, Lucy took her daughter and ran until they stumbled upon the Union Camp of the 23rd Indiana Regiment. It was here where she found refuge. Unfortunately, her daughter died during the siege of Vicksburg.

Under the tutelage of Dr. Magnus Brucker, Lucy gained practical knowledge on how to be a medic. She learned how to dress wounds, administer medicine, and even went into the battlefield as a combat nurse, although she bore no arms.

After the war ended, Lucy had been convinced by her fellow regiment troops to settle with them in New Albany, Indiana. It was there where she married John Nichols. Compensation and pension for war nurses had not been instituted until much later. Even then, they barely had any documents to show for their service, unless they had someone to vouch for them.

Fortunately for Lucy, she had a whole battalion, as shown in the photo. Despite being denied military pension for six years, through a special act of Congress, signed by President William McKinley, Lucy's application for pension had been finally approved in 1898, giving her $12 per month.

When Lucy died in 1915, she was given a military funeral. In honor of her memory, a limestone sculpture of her holding her daughter had been dedicated at Second Baptist Church, New Albany.

(Image credit: Floyd County Public Library/Wikimedia Commons)

The Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, aka Hergé (pronounced EHR-jay), created the beloved Tintin character in 1929, and produced a series of 24 comic books with the title The Adventures of Tintin. Tintin is a Belgian reporter who goes around the world and by chance, always finds himself caught up in dangerous situations and ends up saving the day.

Despite Tintin's success today, it received an equal amount of criticism and controversy for Hergé's depiction of other cultures, which, in today's terms would be considered horribly racist. Some might point to the volumes titled "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" and "Tintin in the Congo" to be blatantly so.

However, the fifth volume, "The Blue Lotus", would change Hergé's view of the world and other peoples for the better. In it, Tintin travels to China to cover the events that were happening during the 1931 Japanese invasion.

In order to provide an accurate depiction of not just the events prior, but also Chinese culture in general, Hergé took inspiration from Zhang Chongren, a Chinese student at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, with whom he became friends from the time they spent together as he wrote "The Blue Lotus".

Zhang became Hergé's main source of information as he had actually left the same day the Japanese invaded China. He also made sure that the facts and illustrations were correct.

"The Blue Lotus" was published in 1936 with critical acclaim, and is considered one of Hergé's finest works, influencing subsequent volumes.

Zhang returned to China after a few years, and the pair didn't see each other again until more than 40 years later, in 1981, when Zhang flew back to Belgium to meet with Hergé for one last time. Hergé passed away two years later.

(Image credit: VCG Photo; Jean-Marie Valheur/Quora)

Sometimes, when we find ourselves daydreaming or staring into the air, we might notice some squiggly lines or funny shapes floating about, and no matter where we look, they seem to be moving along with our eyes. There are different names for these shapes: eye floaters, vitreous floaters, and Muscae volitantes (lit. "flying flies"), but its scientific term is myodesopsia.

These floaters appear in our vision when blood or other cells that got into the vitreous humor - the transparent, gel-like substance filling the space between the lens and the retina - block light passing through the eye, casting shadows onto the retina.

Unlike the aqueous humor, the liquid substance found between the iris and the cornea, the vitreous humor never washes out or gets replenished. So, whatever gets into the vitreous, stays there for the rest of our lives. Meaning, if you are seeing eye floaters right now, you will continue seeing them until death do you part.

For most people, these eye floaters present no issues. We sometimes take notice of them until our attention drifts elsewhere. Others, however, might experience too many floaters clouding their vision, but this is more common in older people.

A sudden increase in floaters may be a sign that someone is suffering from posterior vitreous detachmant (PVD), when the vitreous becomes separated from the retina. This poses the risk of retinal tearing which can cause blindness.

Several treatments are available, but even the standard procedure, a vitrectomy, is still considered risky and must only be used as a last resort.

(Image credit: Acdx/Wikimedia Commons)

There are many inspiring words that came from famous people of history or characters in a film, and many statements that we often quote to this day. We are familiar with statements like, "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger" from Friedrich Nietzsche, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" from Franklin D. Roosevelt, and "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get" from Forrest Gump.

On Quora, somebody posed a question regarding the most badass things that historical figures have said. Some of my favorites include this roast by J.R.R. Tolkien when his book The Hobbit became popular and a German publisher, Rütten & Loening, contacted him in 1938 inquiring about his ancestry.

There's also this quote from the legendary Marine Chesty Puller who, during the Korean war, made this famous quote which was a great way to motivate his troops when they were facing insurmountable odds.

And this anecdote about St. Thomas Aquinas who had been ridiculed by his peers, and was called "The Dumb Ox" because he was quiet, reserved, and a bit large and slow. His response comes, I think, from the purest of intentions, not wanting to think ill of other people, but it actually sounds like the best comeback.

(Image credit: Leila Thomas, Cella Poynter, Jay Matthews/Quora)