And, specifically, Angostura bitters. That's a particular type and brand of bitter liquor from Trinidad and Tobago. Bitters are liquors that are traditionally served as aids to digestion. Do they work? I don't know, but folk medicine traditions say that they do. That's the crux of our story today.

Nelsen's Hall, a bar on Washington Island in Lake Michigan, faced a serious problem during the Prohibition Era. Its primary means of doing business--serving alcohol--was now illegal. But it was legally permissible to offer liquor for medical purposes. Atlas Obscura describes how bar owner Tom Nelsen took advantage of this loophole:

“During Prohibition, Tom got a pharmaceutical license so he could legally sell bitters,” says Sarah Jaworski, whose parents have owned Nelsen’s since 1999. This loophole wasn’t quite the same as that used by doctors who prescribed alcohol during Prohibition. Rather, the bitters were classified as a “stomach tonic for medicinal purposes” instead of alcohol, meaning that a doctor’s prescription wasn’t required. “Medicinal tinctures are usually taken in smaller doses, but since Angostura bitters are 90 proof, he was able to legally sell it as a tincture,” she says. “He just sold it as shots.”

Tom’s tonic proved to be extremely popular among locals, many of whom apparently suffered from previously undiagnosed stomach ailments. In fact, customers who kept Nelsen’s open for the entirety of Prohibition are directly responsible for the pub being the oldest continuously-operating tavern in Wisconsin.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, Nelsen reopened all bar services. But a taste for bitters stuck with the locals. It continues to this day. Customers at Nelsen's Hall remain the largest consumers of Angostura bitters. Drinking a shot gains you entry into the Bitters Club. Custom dictates that you're not a true islander until you've had yours.

Images: Nelsen's Hall, Google Maps

The bucket truck in Santa Rosa, California caught fire after the crane had already lifted a worker up. Now he unable to escape the fiery inferno except taking a long, dangerous jump to the ground.

That's when truck driver Efrain Zepeda sprang into action. He drove his truck next to the conflagration so that his trailer was positioned beneath the bucket. The trapped worker was then able to drop down to the top of the trailer and escape.

Here is the hero, Efrain Zepeda. Glory to his name and to his house.

-via Debby Witt | Photo: Estes Express Lines

Would you like to look like a dish scrubber? How about a bottle of floor cleaner or a can of mackerel? Then Felipe Cavieres, a fashion designer in Chile, has the perfect selection of clothes for your new look. You, too, can show the people around you that you have the fashion sense of a steel wool pad.

Food artist Manami Sasaki, who is internet famous for her elegant slices of decorated toast, says that:

I feel that breakfast, which wakes up our senses for the day, and shoes, which take us to the exciting world outside, have something in common . . .

Run, don't walk, to or with this sandwich to fuel you through the day. It's completely edible, vegetarian, and made with several different types of bread.

-via My Modern Met

Octopus Decanter
by Josh Dewall pic.twitter.com/DTbqqZpRgP

— 𝐀𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐩𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐚 (@A_aphrodisia) April 25, 2021

The wine aerates as it flows through the eight legs of the octopus. It's an ingenious design by Joshua DeWall, a glass artist in Virginia. Look at his other extraordinary glass sculptures, many equally functional, on display on Instagram. I'm especially taken with DeWall's delicately composed arthropods.

-via Fabulous Weird Trotters

Tumblr user Glumshoe, if I understand their bio correctly, works in science communications on the Lake Michigan shore and thus knows something about how the mysterious and sometimes dangerous sand dunes in Indiana Dunes National Park work. It was in that location that, several years ago, a 6-year old boy sank into and almost died in the interior of this real-life sarlacc.

Physically speaking, how is this possible? Glumshoe drew this comic and explained:

The current leading geological theory as to how this happened is that the organic material you engulf, like trees, slowly decompose beneath your slopes, leaving behind unstable voids held together only by the fragile remains of the decayed material. When these voids are walked over, they collapse, forming sudden sinkholes that can swallow visitors whole. The rules that typically govern stationary dunes, or wandering dunes in areas that are not forested, no longer apply to you. You are unpredictable and dangerous and have remained closed to visitors except on guided hikes ever since.

-via FYSS

The New York Times has broken open a scandal at NASA and other space agencies around the world. Have you ever eaten one of those sweetly-flavored food bars labelled in NASA gift shops as "astronaut ice cream"? Then you've accomplished something that no astronaut has done while in space:

With real ice cream available, there is no need in space for those blocks of chalky Neapolitan astronaut ice cream parents buy for their children at museum gift shops. Indeed, in the 60 years of the space age, no astronaut has ever eaten astronaut ice cream, at least not in space.

The freeze-dried ice cream was indeed developed in 1974 for NASA — for the gift shop in the agency’s Ames Research Center in California. The company that makes it, Outdoor Products of Boulder, Colo., now sells a couple million of them a year.

Sorry for linking to a paywalled article, but this is an important scandal for people to know about.

-via Super Punch | Photo: Ruth Hartnup

Under Taiwanese law, companies must provide newly married couples 8 days of leave. So a married couple divorced and then immediately remarried and claimed those 8 days. They repeated the process. The bank where the husband works concludes that this was an unfair exploitation of the law. CTV News reports:

But an unnamed bank employee decided to game the system last year, claiming 32 days of leave using a novel ruse.

Over a period of 37 days, he and his wife got married four times and divorced three times, claiming the full eight days for each of their nuptials.

The bank balked and the employee appealed to Taipei city labour department, which initially fined his employer Tw$20,000 (US$670) for violating the leave regulations.

-via Marginal Revolution

Miru-chan enjoys the walks his human servant takes him on. When it rains, he's protected from the elements with an appropriately-sized umbrella. The transparent materials lets him see all around himself without difficulty. Such is the good life.

-My Modern Met

滅多に見る事が出来ない激アツシーンがこちらです pic.twitter.com/ch7SyZGGfu

— 五条ミソる (@nakamanian) April 24, 2021

Gravity is for losers. The top seagull knows this fact. He can just take a break on his pal while the winds provide enough lift for both of them. We've all had co-workers like this (or are one).

-via Adrian Lozano

Sadly, Nordstrom is sold out of the Pavé Chair Bag, which was designed by Area X Myreality. It's less of a functional purse (since you can't carry anything in it), and more of an art piece that makes a statement about the person who wears it. But what is that statement?

-via Super Punch

The in-laws of redditor /u/Yamaha234 tore up the carpet in home to replace it. They found a complete Monopoly game board underneath! S/he hopes to convince them to just coat it in epoxy so that it can be played in the future. Such huge game boards may have been a trend once upon a time, as other homes have old Monopoly boards, too.

Other redditors propose ideal games for giant floor play. I suppose choosing Twister would be self-defeating.

-via Laughing Squid

From her home in Geneva, Celine Rousseau produces La Table. C'est magnifique! Her kitchen gives birth to amazing tarts, pizzas, and charcuterie. This pizza doesn't use cherries, but it does use cherry tomatoes, parmigiano reggiano, and ricotta.

-via Totally Gourmet

One day, a particular employee at a hospital in Catanzaro, Italy stopped showing up for work. He still got paid, though, for the next fifteen years. He was paid the equivalent of $646,545 for that time.

The man is now under criminal investigation, as are six other people at the hospital connected to the incident.

How did he get away with it? BBC News explains:

The employee was a civil servant, and was assigned to a job in the hospital in 2005. It was at this point he stopped going into work, the police said.

The police have also accused him of threatening his manager to stop her from filing a disciplinary report against him.

That manager later retired, police added, and his ongoing absence was never noticed by her successor or human resources.

-via Dave Barry | Unrelated photo by Pixabay

Video director, writer, and all-around Renaissance man Mark Slutsky is on fire lately with brilliant, innovative ideas for products and services that could be in our near future.

Why do we use old fashioned fire alarms that scream at us? That tech is decades old. We can do and build better now.

But wait--there's more! Slutsky is already improving his idea before it hits the prototype stage:

An NFT is some sort of blockchain thing. And don't ask me to define blockchain--just invest my life savings in one.

-via Super Punch