Smoking tobacco used to be a completely mainstream activity. When I was in high school in the 90s, teachers had their own smoke-filled lounge. There was also an area of the campus known as the "gravel pit" where students were, at least unofficially, allowed to smoke.

In the 70s, it was hard to even convince people that tobacco could be dangerous, let alone attach a social stigma to the practice. Cigarette smoke carried an aroma of class and mystery. Weird Universe directs us to this print advertisement from 1972 offering people home water filters that would give tap water the taste of Tareyton brand cigarettes.

It's a completely real and quite prolific ad. You can see it in this issue of Life magazine.

The LOTI Pencil is an enormous public sculpture on the shore of the Lake of the Isles, Minnesota. It's on the lawn of a historic mansion and made from an oak tree that fell in 2017. In 2022, artist Curtis Ingolstad shaped and painted it into a realistic image of a pencil.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reports that the pencil received its annual sharpening--a task evidently conducted with a chainsaw. This cleaning task has become a major local public event, drawing large crowds to watch. Since the most recent sharpening fell on June 7, the birthday of the late musician Prince, the celebration included Prince music. Prince was a native son of Minneapolis, so his work is dear to the hearts of celebrants.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Ben Krsnak

Patrick Stewart received classical training in his craft and was an acclaimed master of the Shakespearean stage long before he took up film roles and then became widely known to American audiences in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

When acting and directing are done well, the audience doesn't even notice it because the narrative flows so naturally. But good acting isn't done casually or naturally; it's the result of particular choices executed precisely.

In this video, Rowan J. Coleman describes how Patrick Stewart, in the role of Captain Picard, demonstrated masterful execution of timing, intonation, body language, and other facets of the actor's craft. He contrasts Stewart's portrayal of Picard with that of William Shatner's depiction of Captain Kirk to explain how top-tier actors express themselves so effectively.

-via reddit

At the subreddit /r/StarTrek, my fellow Trekkies are playing a game of adding "...if you know what I mean" to the end of favorite lines from Star Trek.

It works rather well. Such as the above line from a scene in the first episode of The Next Generation. Or, below, one from The Wrath of Khan. The results are salacious for those of us with corrupted minds.

Last Saturday, we posted about Ed, a pet zebra that had escaped from his home in central Tennessee. Ed is now back in the slammer, having been captured by local law enforcement, professional animal handlers, and volunteer drone operators according to WSMV 4 News.

How did they capture the zebra? The local NBC News affiliate interviewed the owners, Taylor and Laura Ford. The couple hired professional wranglers from Texas who used an off-road vehicle and a helicopter to drive the zebra. The chopper crew then dropped a net on Ed. After subduing him, the helicopter lifted him to a trailer for transportation to a more secure facility.

-via Super Punch

Turn the corner while browsing through the aisles of this 7-Eleven convenience in Monterrey, Mexico, and you'll see a living tree erupting through the floor and poking out the ceiling. Mike Leavy of Mexico Listo tells us that when 7-Eleven planned its 500th store, it decided to make one that was LEED Certified--that is, built to promote environmental sustainability.

The builders found a 60-year old walnut tree on the site and decided to keep it. Additionally, the store is built from recycled materials, makes great use of natural sunlight and reduces interior lighting when not needed, and uses enthalpy wheels to regulate ventilation.

-via Atlas Obscura

That's a retired Boeing KC-97 tanker aircraft built in 1953. Now it's the centerpiece of The Airplane Restaurant in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Historian James Thomas Flexner famously called George Washington "the indispensible man" of the American Revolution. As Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, General Washington refused to profit from the war, accepting only reimbursement for his expenses and returned to Mount Vernon only once during the eight-year long war.

Although he usually did not sleep on the bare ground like many of the enlisted men, his camp lifestyle was hardly comfortable. Pictured above and below is one of the beds that he used toward the end of the war.

You can find this bed within the collections of the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit.

-via Massimo

Crokinhole is a tabletop game that is popular in Canada. It involves flicking small disks at a hole in the center of a circle while hitting one's opponent's disks and not hitting your own.

CBC News reports that an American, Connor Reinman, had won the annual world championships for two years in a row. He's a graduate student in Indiana and, like many top crokinhole players, is a math guy.

USA! USA! USA!

Alas, it appears that American hegemony in crokinhole has come to a close. If I understand the results page correctly, the champion at world-level event yesterday is a Canadian named Shawn Hagarty.

-via Dave Barry

A week ago, a man in central Tennessee acquired a pet zebra from a zebra dealer in Texas (of course). It promptly escaped the next day. Zebras are hard to domesticate, so perhaps the zebra did not think of his new residence as a home.

The owners, Taylor and Laura Ford of the town of Christiana, call the zebra "Zeke." But the people of the internet, who have been following the week-long pursuit of the zebra in prison stripes, call him "Ed."

As of yesterday, the fugitive Ed remains at large. But Rutherford County Sheriff's deputies are tracking him with a drone.

USA Today reports that Brooklyn Anderson, a high school student student at a state-wide track and field competition in Oregon, stumbled at the end of a 100-meter hurdles race.

Even though she was in the lead, that fall probably would have ended her competitiveness in the race. But Anderson, relying on her background in gymnastics, turned the fall into a double somersault. Watch this video of her making the impossibly smooth rolls across the finish line.

Anderson was able to cross the finish line a split second before any of the other runners were, thus securing a first place finish and a time of 14.93 seconds.

-via ABC 7 News

A 2020 article in the magazine Naval History describes "Frankenships" -- ships that, like Frankenstein's monster, are built from parts of destroyed or damaged vessels.

HMS Nubian was a Tribal-class destroyer that was built in 1909 and torpedoed by a German u-boat in 1916 and lost her bow. HMS Zulu, a destroyer of the same class, hit a German mine in 1916 and lost her stern.

Engineers at Chatham Dockyard reasoned that, since the two ships were of the same class, it would be feasible for them join front half of Nubian to the back half of Zulu and put this new vessel into service. Thus the Royal Navy's Zubian --a name derived from those of her parents--was born in 1917. She would serve until disposed of in the postwar culling of the Navy 1919.

-via US Naval Institute

In February, Wendy Chadwick of Oldham, Manchester, UK died at the age of 51. She was a single mother of five children and, consequently, was not able to follow her dream of traveling the world.

BBC News reports that Chadwick's daughter, Cara Melia decided to do something about that loss. She placed her mother's ashes in a bottle and threw that bottle into the North Sea at the town of Skegness.

It was found twelve hours later on the same beach and mentioned on Facebook. But, we are happy to learn, Wendy Chadwick has resumed her eternal sea voyage with her daughter's hope will take her to Barbados or Spain.

-via Vit | Photos: Kelly Sheridan

This true-life story from Brazil would work really well as a premise for a romantic comedy film.

Daniela Signor first saw Apollo Scariot two years ago when she attended a funeral he was working. The story, as shared in the New York Post, is that Signor then began attending funerals that Scariot organized. She eventually made direct contact with them and they began dating. Signore then informed her boyfriend that she had shown up at his funerals to catch his eye. He hadn't noticed.

Signor definitely has Scariot's attention now. The couple just got married. Appropriately, they arrived at the wedding in a hearse provided by Scariot's employer.

-via Oddity Central | Photo: Daniela Signor

Do you remember the pet rock craze of the 70s? How about the invisible pet fad of the 80s? These were playful bits of counterculture in a bygone America. China is evidently experiencing a similar phenomenon.

Channel News Asia reports that young people in China are acquiring unconventional pets, including the aforementioned rocks, blobs of used toothpaste, sprouting mango seeds, and, most inventively, yeast cultures.

These novel pets get names and personality descriptions. Owners show them off online. Can a yeast culture be one of those Instagram pet influencers? I haven't found one yet, but surely that trend is coming soon.

-via Dave Barry