Historically speaking, sports originate with military training. Some sports are more pure expressions of that origin than others, but few sports could compete with actual grenade throwing for practical applications during combat.

Weird Universe tracked down an online copy of a 1918 athletic training guide aimed at branches of the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, in the United States. The United States was massively mobilizing and adapting for its first major war since 1865, so it was necessary to get as many young men ready for modern combat as quickly as possible. Sports should therefore reflect battlefield needs, so Captain Lewis Omer of the newly-formed 86th Infantry Division proposes that young men practice grenade throwing as a sport.

The rules and field reflect life and death in the trenches of Europe. The player is inside a cage simulating a trench. In sixty seconds, he must throw as many grenades as possible into boxes at different ranges representing enemy trenches. Between each throw, he must hit the ground, touching his knees and his chest to floor of the cage. Close, as they say, only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, so land the grenades as close to the target as possible for maximum points.

The rest of the document is also interesting to read. Immediately after the section on grenade throwing is a description of Trench Ball, an adaptation of football for trench warfare.

Book historians refer to this binding style as "concertina" because of its accordion-like appearance. This particular book, now in the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen, was in the collection of Seventeenth Century scholar Peder Scavenius. It's a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew. Reading it requires flipping the book over as one proceeds through four divisions.

-via Paul Babinski

Initially, the crime appeared to be straightforward. Police responded to a report of a robbery at a convenience store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The clerk reported that a man had presented him with a written note that said "Give me all your money or I will shoot you." The clerk complied. Police tracked down the suspected robber and arrested him.

That's when the situation became complicated.

The suspect confessed to the crime, but said that a friend had set him up for the robbery. The police then talked to the friend, a young lady whom they arrested for an outstanding warrant. She said that one of her friends--the clerk at the convenience store--had asked her to rob the store because "he was tired and wanted to go home."* She provided texts to prove her claim.

All three criminal masterminds were arrested.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Pixabay

*We've all been there. Don't be jealous because someone else thought of this solution first and you didn't.

Luiz Pereira, a physicist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and his colleagues recently published the results of their study of why peanuts move up and down inside beer.

Placing peanuts inside beer is apparently a custom in Argentina, so generations of drinkers have noticed that peanuts tend to move up and down repeatedly. Why? If I understand the article correctly, it is because during their descent into the beer, air bubbles within the liquid attach to the peanuts, causing them to become buoyant. When the peanuts arrive at the surface of the beer, the bubbles pop and the peanuts lose their buoyancy.

-via Dave Barry

Before you get too excited, I must manage your expectations: the townsfolk do eventually pull the politician back out of the river. The immersion is a temporary affair.

The city of Trento in northern Italy holds an annual celebration called Feste Vigilane to celebrate the life of their patron saint, Vigilis, who was martyred after ordering Christians to throw an idol into the Adige River. My Modern Met explains that part of the festivities includes the Tonca, a ritualized and comedic dunking of a selected villain into the river.

A dramatic presentation of a Court of Penance determines who in the town is most worthy of being dunked. Politicians are a favorite choice. At the time of the Tonca, the convict is lowered into the river three times to the amusement of the population.

Photo: Feste Vigilane

I should clarify that Everard Digby's book De Arte Natandi was English in the sense that it was published in England. Digby, a theologian at Cambridge University, wrote The Art of Swimming in Latin. A few years later, Christopher Middleton translated it into English, which you can read online here.

The Public Domain Review describes De Arte Natandi within the context of European swimming practices of the time. The crawl was seen as an uncivilized stroke, but Digby does provide practical help for people who wish to swim through other means, such as the sidestroke:

This kinde of swimming, though it be more laborious, yet is it swifter then any of the rest, for that lying vpon one side, striking with your feete as when you swimme on your bellie, but that the pulling in and thrusting out of his hand, which then did onely keepe him vp, doe now helpe to put him forward: for onely the lower hand supporteth his bodie, and the vpper hand roweth like an Dare, as in this example.

De Arte Natandi came with at least thirty illustrations, all of which evidence that the swimsuit is a rather recent invention.

Pictured above is a pair of Great Tits.

Last year, researchers Els Atema, Arie van Noordwijk, and Simon Verhulst published the results of their study of Great Tits (Parus Major) in the journal Molecular Ecology. I bring it to your attention because I know that Neatorama readers take a great interest in this topic.

The scientists wanted to know if adding weight to a Great Tit, and thus increasing the physical workload it must endure while moving, would alter the telomere regions of its DNA sequence. They added a backpack weighing 0.9 grams to these birds and tracked their locomotion. At the end of their study, they found no significant changes to the attrition of the birds' telomeres. Perhaps the birds were physically stressed by the added weight, but they seemed to bounce back just fine.

Photo: Highway 45

As a father, I can see how this gets started. Rental bounce houses are popular at kids' birthday parties and other festive events. I've certainly thought about joining in on the fun. But is it okay to bounce along with the kids? Maybe not. It might look weird.

So, the Wall Street Journal (sorry, paywalled article) reports, companies that offer bounce house events are increasingly marketing their services to adult-oriented events, such as weddings, as well as offer bounce house events just for adults. Thus us grown ups can jump around without feeling socially awkward or worrying about accidentally falling on and injuring a child.

That said, we geezers aren't as flexible and nimble as we used to be. The Wall Street Journal reports that injuries occur, so it's necessary to know one's limits and get medical attention if you're a wuss you get hurt while bouncing around like the kid you are at heart.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Big Bounce America

King Charles III will likely be too busy to resume one of his former hobbies: painting. Since the 1970s, he's dabbled in watercolors, mostly creating landscapes. He actually held an exhibition in 1977, but has since given less attention to the arts in favor of his royal duties.

CNN reports that some of the King's earlier works will go up for auction with Hansons Auctioneers. The house will broker the sale of several drawings that Charles made as a little boy, including portraits of his mother and father. Hansons anticipates final sale prices between $6,500 and $12,700. These include the above portrait of Queen Elizabeth II rendered when Charles was five or six years old.

-via Nag on the Lake

Have you ever wanted to be in the Guinness Book of World Records? Canistus Coonghe of Sri Lanka is. He's secured fame by growing the largest (by volume and weight) kidney stone in the world.

Are you jealous of Mr. Coonghe?

Doctors in Colombo sugically removed the kidney stone, which was larger than the actual kidney in which it previously resided.* It measures over 5 by 4 inches across and weighs 1.76 pounds.

Mr. Coonghe's doctors reported that the rather stretched kidney had been working well prior to the operation. He's now recovering and, let us hope, taking joy in his fame.

Photos: Guinness World Records

*In a way, a kidney is like a TARDIS.

The Midland Daily News shares a heartwarming story from Saginaw, Michigan. Back in March, homeowner Tom Dexter was about to pull into his driveway when he noticed that an Amazon delivery driver was dropping off a package.

The driver had noticed that the American flag on display had become tangled. Despite his demanding schedule, the driver paused, fixed the flag, then delivered a precise salute. After giving Old Glory a loving caress, he returned to his duties.

Dexter and his wife confirmed this scene on their Ring doorbell camera and then tracked down the driver on social media.

His name is Delawrence Jones. As you might predict, this patriot is a veteran, having served as in the field artillery of the US Army, including a deployment in Afghanistan. In a video interview with Mid-Michigan NOW, Jones explained that he hadn't thought much of the incident at the time. This simple act caught on camera is just who he is and what he does.

One of the Library's missions is to preserve audio-visual materials. Much of this work happens at the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Virginia. Here's a quick look at the process of digitizing a 78 RPM disc, making it more accessible for Library patrons like you! pic.twitter.com/hhzBq6MDH7

— Library of Congress (@librarycongress) June 13, 2023

One of the missions of the Library of Congress of the United States is to digitize information sources to preserve them from loss and make them more broadly available. In this video, a professional conservationist takes a 78 RPM record from 1908 and prepares it for recording. He cleans the record, mounts it precisely on a turntable, and chooses the right stylus for this recording.

The song is "Don't Take Me Home" by Eddie Morton. It's a novelty song about a man who prefers incarceration to living with his shrewish wife.

The Daily Nous, a website about philosophy, shares the story of Garret Merriam, a professor of philosophy at Sacramento State University. He caught many of his ethics students cheating on a final exam.

Students sometimes use the website Quizlet to cheat by uploading and sharing stolen copies of exams. Merriam shared with Quizlet a copy of his final exam for the Introduction to Ethics course, which consisted of multiple choice questions. But the copy that he uploaded had several wrong answers.

When Merriam graded the exams, he found that 40 of the 96 students turned in answers reflecting the often "obviously wrong" answers that he provided in the faulty answer key on Quizlet. He ran a statistical analysis and determined that the likelihood that these students had coincidentally marked their answer sheets according to his faulty key to be profoundly unlikely.

Merriam confronted the cheaters and about 2/3 of them admitted to the deed. Those who cheated will face a zero on the exam and possibly a F grade for the course.

Some people on Twitter are accusing Merriam of entrapment, but the professor is standing by his decision. The students knew that the university regards looking at copies of exams without a professor's permission is cheating. They will now face the consequences of their decisions.

-via Kottke | Photo: Pexels

Port Revel is an artificial 13-acre lake in southeastern France that is the center of a ship handling school. The owners have designed this lake to simulate a variety of common ship handling challenges. Since 1966, the Port Revel Shiphandling Training Centre has offered courses to mariners who pilot 1/25 scale versions of cruise ships, containers ships, and supertankers.

U.S. States Ranked By How Easy They Are To Form By Nibbling A Graham

1. Wyoming
2. Colorado
3. Ohio
4. Idaho
…
…
49. Maryland
50. Alaska pic.twitter.com/AlYmE5kwMK

— Nathan W. Pyle (@nathanwpyle) June 11, 2023

When I was growing up in Alabama, we used to commonly say, "Thank God for Mississippi." This was usually preceded by the statement, "Our state ranks 49th in X." X represented a variety of socioeconomic indicators.

Nathan W. Pyle has yet to get around to either Mississippi or Alabama, but I'll bet the the curve of the Mississippi River will bring Alabama on top. It would be hard to shape with just human teeth into the crunchy and fragile form of a graham cracker.

Whilst taking care of an infant, Pyle, who is famous for his cartoon Strange Planet, has been chewing over which state outlines are the hardest to bite into graham crackers. You can view his ongoing work on Twitter.