All around the world, cultures and peoples have rich stories about their history, their land, and the hidden or unknown things about the world.

Iceland holds a fascinating trove of tales about their huldufolk or hidden people. They are spoken of as guardians of the land, willing to give aid to those who need it while bringing harm to those who inflict it. Some liken them to elves who protect the natural world.

Though not all Icelanders believe in the huldufolk's existence, they don't dismiss them either as mere figments of their ancestors' imagination.

...there are modern day accounts of successful petitions to alter the road construction because it might disturb the dwellings of the ‘hidden people’, who would retaliate. This might not sound markedly different to beliefs about fair folk in other European countries, except that over half of Icelanders claim to believe (or not to disbelieve) in the existence of the huldufólk – and even those who don’t think them real nevertheless know that it ‘doesn’t pay to piss them off.’

Perhaps this is a reflection of the unpredictability of the landscape, the dangers it poses, and Icelander’s inextricable relationship with it. Icelanders might be close to their natural environment, but they’re also more threatened by it: 70-80 people have vanished without a trace since 1930 and historically, disappearances were not unusual.

My culture's folklore has similar stories about powerful supernatural entities and it's probably our ancestors' way of saying we need to protect nature and the land in which we were born. We shouldn't callously build roads and bridges without thinking about the consequences it will do on Earth. Because for better or worse, right now, Earth is our home. It is our duty to take care of it.

(Image credit: Alex Mustaros/Unsplash)

The Bubonic plague was a nightmare. It killed millions during the 14th century, some calculate the total death toll to be more than half of Europe's population back then. When the plague ended, everyone thought the worst was over. Until 1899, when the plague reappeared in Hawaii.

On the morning of December 8, 1899, Yuk Hoy, a forty-year-old bookkeeper, awoke in his bed to the flash of a high fever and a mysterious swelling in his thigh. Unable to do much more than mumble, he laid his head down and drifted in and out of sleep, largely ignored by the other men crammed into a windowless room of a two-story flophouse in Honolulu’s overstuffed Chinatown.

Having arrived just weeks before from his native China, Yuk Hoy had few friends in the bustling city, and his absence over the following days went unnoticed at the general store on Maunakea Street where he worked. Only his increasingly frantic cries alerted others to the misery of his existence.

Woken by his wails, a man named Fong, who lived on the same floor, stumbled in darkness to find him trembling in a litter of straw, his body quivering, as Fong would later describe it, “like the branches of a tree in thunder and lightning gone crazy.”

Yuk Hoy was brought to one of a few Chinese doctors who were trained in Western medicine, Dr. Li Khai Fai. After examining the symptoms, Dr. Li knew the fate of the man. It was something he had already seen once in his life, something he thought he would never see again. He brought other doctors to show them the case but by the time the other doctors arrived, Yuk Hoy was dead.

So when exactly did the Bubonic plague arrive in America? What were the subsequent events following this tragic discovery by Dr. Li? And how did the local government in Hawaii decide to fight off the disease? Read them on Lapham's Quarterly.

(Image credit: Hawaii State Archives/Wikimedia Commons; US Public domain)

Looking at the see-through church in Belgium from the side, it would appear as thought it is close to disappearing from view, like hazy streaks into the horizon. But the architectural design of this church is quite interesting.

The church is made of 100 metal plates, which are less than a half inch thick. It took 30 tons of metal and 2,000 columns to construct the church. The whole structure was placed on a reinforced concrete foundation. Visitors come to see the seemingly weightless chapel, which consists of two thousand rods connecting hundred layers of steel plates.

Built by Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout van Vaerenbergh, the installation was part of the Art in an Open Space campaign in 2011. It is situated at an orchard farm in Borgloon, Belgium.

(Image credit: Nolde16/Wikimedia Commons; CC by SA 4.0)

Heavy traffic, congested public transport, more traffic can all be very annoying especially when it's hot and humid outside. Thankfully, there are great alternatives to driving your car or taking a bus or train to wherever you need to go.

Urban Daddy gives us a list of all the coolest rides you can get on to make your way through the city.

...we've taken it upon ourselves to find seven of the coolest, most unique ways to get around this summer, whether to work or...not-work. This roundup does not include your typical road bikes or motorcycles or cars. But it does include a few motorized rides, one hoverboard-esque device and a flying motorcycle, which may or may not be reserved for military use.

(Image credit: Skitterphoto/Pixabay)

Via Real Clear Science

Scientists have been looking into various avenues to find any evidence that would strongly suggest that life on Mars is not just fiction or fairy tale but that it is a reality. We found clues that would point to the plausibility of Mars once being habitable.

Now, researchers say that certain meteorites could indicate the conditions that Mars had which might be clues to Martian life.

Now a new paper by Ildikó Gyollai from the Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences in Budapest, Hungary, and colleagues, claims that there might be clues to Martian life in another Allan Hills meteorite, this time ALH77005.

They base their conclusions on morphological and geochemical indicators—including the presence of organic material—which lead them to speculate on the past presence of iron bacteria in this Martian rock.

Still though, there are dissenting opinions to this evidence. We can't positively say that Mars once accommodated biological life despite there being supposed evidences of water or bacteria once present on Mars. Our search continues.

(Image credit: NASA/Wikimedia Commons; Public domain)

I have asthma and allergies to certain types of chocolate that trigger skin asthma. My mom's side of the family are allergic to various types of seafood. I had a pretty rough childhood when it came to diet and nutrition due to these restrictions.

Today, my asthma is dormant. Thankfully, it hasn't been triggered since high school and I can eat chocolate and seafood in moderation. But for many kids born at the turn of the century, the allergy situation has gotten worse. And researchers try to figure out why. But first, let's break the down the mechanisms behind allergies.

A food allergy results from a chain of biochemical misunderstandings. The first time the immune system encounters an allergen (as a protein that triggers an allergy is known), it mistakes the substance for a hostile invader—perhaps a parasite with a similar molecular profile.

In response, it produces an antibody called immunoglobin E (IgE), which is designed to bind to a specific protein and flag it for attack. These antibodies circulate through the bloodstream and attach to immune-system foot soldiers known as mast cells and basophils, which congregate in the nose, throat, lungs, skin, and gastrointestinal tract.

The next time the person is exposed to the allergen, the IgE antibodies signal the warrior cells to blast the intruder with histamines and other chemical weapons. Tissues in the affected areas swell and leak fluid; blood pressure may fall. Depending on the strength of the reaction, collateral damage to the patient can range from unpleasant—itching, runny nose, nausea—to catastrophic.

As many people with allergies will know and as you might have inferred, these are usually hereditary. They are passed down to your children and their children. There are cases when they don't manifest in certain members of the family or aren't as severe as others. We don't know why. But for the most part, the gist of why food allergies are increasing comes down to exposure.

So if we assume that everybody is born with the same immune system and that some have a slight vulnerability to allergies, we can say that these allergies develop as children grow and interact with their surrounding environment.

Given the mechanism of how our immune system fights allergens, the less it is exposed to these at an earlier stage, the less it will be able to develop familiarity or defense mechanisms for them. Perhaps, apart from less exposure to the elements, our comfortable lives have caused our bodies' defensive capabilities to atrophy, in a sense.

Though this may be a possible reason for the surge in food allergies, it's not the only one.

So which culprit is most responsible for the food allergy upsurge? “The illnesses that we’re measuring are complex,” says Sicherer. “There are multiple genetic inputs, which interact with one another, and there are multiple environmental inputs, which interact with each other and with the genes. There’s not one single thing that’s causing this. It’s a conglomeration.”

What can and should parents do for their children especially when they know their medical history? Read on at Leaps Mag -via Real Clear Science

(Image credit: Hannah Morgan/Unsplash)

Humans and animals have evolved to develop different parts of their anatomical and physiological structures mostly for functional purposes, though some according to research were for aesthetic purposes useful for evolution.

There are genetic differents and developmental variants that have no significant negative impacts on a person's well-being. They just oddly occur for various reasons but exactly why they do so is a mystery.

Whether there is a purpose for these variants or not, it's still interesting to note that our bodies - our cells, tissues, and organs - have different paths in growth and interaction with one another to make us who we are now. Let us look into five odd human anatomical variations here. One sample would be the teeth:

People have 20 primary teeth (“milk teeth”), which are lost and replaced by 32 permanent teeth. But up to 2% of people have extra teeth. Most of these people have one or two extra (supernumerary) teeth, but there are medical reports of people with many more extra teeth, with one female having 19 supernumerary teeth.

I also have a friend who has polydactyly on his left hand. It doesn't cause him any harm neither does it bother him. It has become part of his life. And it also makes for good small talk. I, on the other hand, am missing one of my front teeth which, doctors say is a congenital birth defect. Nothing that a little cosmetic dentistry can't fix.

(Image credit: Cplbeaudoin at English Wikipedia; CC by SA 3.0)

"Meeting Gorbachev" has been released and it gives us an inside look into the life and career of the man who ironically brought the Soviet Union down in that, due to his policies which were supposed to save Soviet socialism, they ended up doing the opposite.

Meeting Gorbachev, Herzog’s new documentary (co-directed with André Singer), is based on three long interviews with the Soviet Union’s final leader. As a historical figure, Gorbachev is difficult to categorize.

To the generation of idealistic liberals who came of age in the United States and Europe in the late 1980s, Gorbachev was and to some extent still is revered, a figure who can plausibly be mentioned in the same breath as Nelson Mandela as an icon of peace and reconciliation.

But whereas Mandela remains a beloved figure in South Africa even after his death, today many Russians despise Gorbachev, and most hardly think of him at all.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that it would be Werner Herzog who would make this sort of character study on Mikhail Gorbachev. He lived at around the same time as the old Soviet leader and perhaps even in almost similar circumstances.

Herzog doesn’t offer a materialist or ideological analysis of the transition from Soviet socialism to anarchic neoliberalism. The story he tells is resolutely individualist, a tragedy centered on a great man. Besides Gorbachev, he offers interviews with the men (they are all men, aside from some archival footage of Margaret Thatcher) who helped end the Cold War, including Lech Wałęsa, James Baker, and George Schultz.

Overall, the story he tells goes something like this: Gorbachev, with the purest intentions, tried to reform communism and bring about world peace, but was undermined by other, more cynical men, who replaced the Soviet Union with something worse.

(Image credit: RIA Novosti archive, image #28133 / Boris Babanov / CC-BY-SA 3.0; Wikimedia Commons)

Creating a world for stories, games, or other purposes could be difficult and tedious for people with little to no drawing abilities like me which makes this medieval town generator a wonderful tool to help you create one.

By adjusting parameters like size, color palette, building styles, and which features to include (rivers, coastline, temples), you can make a random ichnographic map of a medieval town or city.

Check out the tool here.

(Image credit: Kottke)

Which is good news for many online authors who are just starting out in digital publication and have no resources to get high quality images especially for very specific topics. Now, aside from other free license photo sources, Creative Commons will now add 300 million images for easier attribution through CC Search.

CC Search searches images across 19 collections pulled from open APIs and the Common Crawl dataset, including cultural works from museums (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art), graphic designs and art works (Behance, DeviantArt), photos from Flickr, and an initial set of CC0 3D designs from Thingiverse.

Aesthetically, you’ll see some key changes — a cleaner home page, better navigation and filters, design alignment with creativecommons.org, streamlined attribution options, and clear channels for providing feedback on both the overall function of the site and on specific image reuses.

via Kottke

(Image credit: Creative Commons)

An iconic character etched in the annals of cult history has now, as it is said in the popular space saga, "become one with the Force". The actor Peter Mayhew may have passed away but his memory and legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of Star Wars fans the world over and even beyond the galaxy.

We remember Chewbacca as the hairy, bellowing Wookiee who was the trusty sidekick of Han Solo and many have done impressions of his characteristic lowing but have you ever heard him speaking English? It turns out Chewie does it quite well.

During the filming of Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, actor Peter Mayhew, in costume as Chewbacca, spoke aloud in English (rather than Wookiee) in order to give Harrison Ford‘s Han Solo context for their dialog.

-via Kottke

(Image credit: Leandro Neumann Ciuffo/Flickr; Wikimedia Commons)

(Video credit: Eyes on Cinema)

Not to belabor the point but human activities have been pushing our world into a corner and at one point or another, nature will push back with deadly consequences and before that even happens, we need to proactively take steps to preserve and conserve the environment.

“We have never had a single unified statement from the world’s governments that unambiguously makes clear the crisis we are facing for life on Earth,” says Thomas Brooks, chief scientist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Gland, Switzerland, who helped to edit the biodiversity analysis. “That is really the absolutely key novelty that we see here.”

Without “transformative changes” to the world’s economic, social and political systems to address this crisis, the IPBES panel projects that major biodiversity losses will continue to 2050 and beyond.

What does it take to restore the damage that has been done to the Earth? Can it even be restored or is it already irreversible? We can only hold out hope that there are ways in which nature can be nursed back to health. But it's going to need a huge concerted effort for all stakeholders involved and it looks like that it would take at least a century for that to happen.

(Image credit: Daniel Hjalmarsson/Unsplash)

During the days of black magic and witchcraft, there were specific artifacts that people believed to have supposedly magical powers, most likely due to the origins of the object, which people would associate to some otherworldly craft that could not be explained.

One such artifact is the "Hand of Glory" which people believed to have the power to render people asleep or paralyzed. The story was that the hand had been cut off from a man who was hanged and they preserved the said hand.

The name “hand of glory” most likely comes from the French main de gloire, a corruption of mandragore, which is the mandrake plant. Mandrake has a long association with magic and witchcraft. The roots and leaves of the mandrake plant contains an alkaloid that induces hallucination, blurred vision, dizziness, headache, vomiting, and a variety of symptoms when consumed. In sufficient quantities, it can even send a victim to unconsciousness. Antique doctors often used mandrake as an anesthetic during surgeries.

It's weird to think that a dead man's severed hand would have the power to do anything but alas, the things people do when they're bored. The hand was dried and pickled with salt. Now, it is displayed at the Whitby Museum.

(Image credit: Badobadop/Wikimedia Commons)

Advancements in medicine has allowed us to give proper care for all sorts of situations especially giving birth. Traditional birthing practices are somewhat looked down upon because people think they are unsanitary or lacking in technical knowledge.

But midwifery is different. It provides a holistic approach to pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing. Not all midwives have the fancy tools that modern hospitals provide but in their own ways, they get the job done which involves careful attention before, during, after pregnancy, and even on women's sexual and reproductive health throughout their lives.

Recently, the International Confederation of Midwives has given awards to five midwife champions in the world, one of which is Selamawit Lake Fenta, who is a midwife from Ethiopia. She shares here the struggles that midwives face in her country.

(Image credit: Ricmart 01/Wikimedia Commons)

For those who have not yet seen Avengers: Endgame or any of the other films in the MCU thus far, there might be spoilers in this ranking list of all Marvel movies in the Infinity War Saga, so be warned.

Now that the blockbuster epic of our beloved Marvel heroes has come to a close (for the most part) in Endgame, it is time for us to look back and see how each film fared as standalone movies and in connection with the whole storyline.

Of course, this list is not an authoritative or even an exhaustive one, it's just some guy's opinion. And hindsight is 20/20, so there might be certain rankings that would be totally biased. But here is one of many. Take it however you would like.

(Image credit: Joel_Tempero/Reddit)