Three years ago, we looked at trivia about the famous action television show Xena: Warrior Princess. That show was a spin-off of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It aired from 1995 to 1999. Here are some facts that you might not know about it.

1. Series creator Christian Williams looked at how Hercules had been presented in both the Greek myths and modern films, such as the 1958 Steve Reeves movie Hercules. He decided that the show should present Hercules with “a completely American persona.” His model for this character was Joe Montana (left), an American football star.

2. The franchise was conceived of as a series of televised movies, not a regular television show. The title role was offered to Dolph Lundgren (right), who was most famous for his portrayal of Rocky Balboa’s Russian opponent in Rocky IV.

3. The title role was given to Kevin Sorbo. He wasn’t the most muscular actor to audition for the role, but he conveyed the right personality for the character. Producer Dan Filie said that Sorbo’s Hercules seemed like “a guy you wanted to hang out with . . . a regular, good guy.”

4. The role of Zeus was offered to Charlton Heston. He passed. The producers then offered the role to Anthony Quinn, who accepted it.

5. Producer Eric Gruendemann searched for the right place to shoot the show. He wanted someplace in the southern hemisphere in order to get longer daylight outdoor shooting hours. He considered South Africa and Australia. But then another producer suggested New Zealand.

He and his colleagues explored New Zealand and found that it was an inexpensive place to film that offered great scenery. Gruendemann said, “Within two or three hours of Auckland, we can do so many different kinds of looks.”

6. Each pair of Hercules’s woven leather pants took multiple craftsmen 6-7 days to make.

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Jalopnik has a great discussion post up about engines, particularly car engines, with an odd number of cylinders. There are some real gems in the comments, such as this Lanz Bulldog tractor. It's a 1-cylinder engine, which is not that uncommon. Many old motorcycle designs, such as those of Royal Enfield, have only one cylinder.

But the Lanz Bulldog's two-stroke thumper engine has a displacement of 10.3 liters! Look at it shake in the above video. Also note that the steering wheel is used as a starter crank. This simple, rugged tractor design dominated the German market before World War II. John Deere bought the company in 1953.

Bonus Item: A five-cylinder rotary car engine that spins on a vertical axis.

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This is the only 1906 Adams-Farwell in existence. It has an air-cooled 4-stroke rotary engine, so the crankshaft remains stable while the entire crankcase spins.

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In this video, we see how a mother dog teaches her pup how to walk down the stairs. First she lovingly demonstrates, then she provides watchful encouragement. The puppy is scared, but he does the job. That's a good dog! Then we are treated to a look at a cat teaching a kitten how to navigate down the stairs. Now you know the difference between cats and dogs. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

(Image: Citynoise)

The United States secured its independence from Britain through the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The second article attempted to define the boundaries of the new nation. This led to further problems and disputes because the borders were often defined vaguely or based on inaccurate maps. For example, it was commonly believed that the Mississippi River extended well into Canada and that there was a "Long Lake" between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods.

The treaty established that the border between New Hampshire and Canada would be "the northwesternmost Head of the Connecticut River." That's simple enough until you try to get people to agree on precisely which body of water is that northwesternmost head. It was in this geographic confusion that the short-lived nation of the Indian Stream Republic was born.

Three major streams form the head of the Connecticut River. The government of Lower Canada--that's modern-day Quebec--insisted that either Indian Stream or the Connecticut Lakes constituted the head. New Hampshire maintained that the more northerly Hall Stream was the border. Depending on how these streams were defined, the two nations disputed between 50 to 120 square miles of land.

Wars have started over lesser disputes, but neither the United States or Britain was interested in pressing the issue. The inhabitants, however, were less patient about a resolution of their status. In 1832, 59 of them gathered and wrote a constitution for their area. In it, they proclaimed the establishment of the Indian Stream Republic.

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces.

That's the title of a 1943 book written by World War II embedded journalist Ernie Pyle. His stories put the folks back home as close to the war as words could -and contained the warning that the boys who'd gone off to war would be different when they returned.

LAST DISPATCH

All of America mourned the passing of 44-year-old journalist Ernie Pyle when he was killed by a Japanese sniper in April 1945. By then he'd traveled with American soldiers in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France, from Normandy to Paris. Then came Okinawa and, days later, death. Like the soldiers he wrote about, he too had changed.

SMALL-TOWN AMERICA

In 1941, when the United States entered the war, Ernie Pyle was already a well-respected, widely-read journalist. He'd perfected an appealing, simple, and straightforward writing style and an approach to his topics that would carry over into his 600 newspaper reports from the battle lines. From 1935, he'd been writing a travel column for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. He'd traveled the United States by car, going off the beaten track to meet people in out-of-the-way small towns. The towns and their people were his subjects. His columns read almost like diary entries but focused on the small details of life.

Pyle went to war in 1942 as a correspondent for Scripps-Howard. He wrote his first overseas column in November 1942 and continued -six columns a week with few interruptions- until his death. The columns, which appeared daily in more than 800 newspapers, were the most widely read reports of the war.

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Florida State University wants you to know about cold weather. I don't dispute that northern Florida can be cold to teenagers who have spent their entire lives in Miami, but treating them like complete idiots isn't called for. If the guy in shorts doesn't feel cold, telling him he does isn't going to help.

This video was uploaded a year ago by FSU Alerts, but they never uploaded a second video. Maybe they decided their animation department just wasn't up to snuff. Watch for the snowman to start either shivering or dancing at around :20 in. Oh, by the way, I already went to the FSU Environmental Safety and Health site, and there's nothing there about dealing with cold weather. -via reddit

The Central American acacia tree and the ant Pseudomyrmex ferrugineus live in a symbiotic relationship. The tree provides sweet nectar for the ants, and the ants protect the tree from weeds and animals. But we now know that the relationship is rather one-sided, as the tree not only causes the ants to become addicted to its nectar, but also damages the ants to make them unable to digest any other food! Martin Heil of Cinvestav Unidad Irapuato in Mexico studied the ants, and found that they are born with the ability to digest a variety of sugars, but then lose their invertase, an enzyme that breaks down sugars.

The disabled ants can then only survive on the partially-digested sugar of acacia nectar.
Heil has now shown that the tree itself is responsible. Writing in the Ecology Letters journal, he reports that acacia nectar contains chitinase enzymes that completely block invertase.

Shortly after the workers emerge from their pupae as adults, they take their first sip of nectar and their invertase becomes irreversibly disabled.

"Ain't nature grand?" says Todd Palmer of the University of Florida, who studies ants and acacias.

"What looks from the outside as another case of digestive specialization appears to be a sneaky manipulation on the part of the acacia to increase ant dependence."

That's kind of like a nefarious baby food company that offers to pay for your rotten teeth to be pulled instead of repaired. Like I've always said, never trust a tree bearing gifts. Read more about this research at NatGeo News.

(Image credit: Alexander L. Wild)