What can a camel do to make itself stand out against the rest of the herd? Topsy did it all. The Bactrian (two-humped) camel came to the United States in the 1850s with one of the shipments of camels that became U.S. Army’s Camel Corps, formed to haul supplies for road-building. The camels scared horses, and settlers, too.

Their human companions, though, were charmed by their personalities and hauling skills. “As individual units became familiar with the animals, they were really quite fond of them,” says Johnson. As the expedition moved along, Topsy and her fellow camels lugged supplies and tools, and the humans cleared rocks and brush out of a continuous ten-foot swath, laying out what was then known as the “military wagon road.” This track would eventually become the westernmost part of America’s most famous highway: Route 66. “You can attribute Route 66 to the camels in this way,” says Johnson.

The Army, impressed with their new recruits’ performance, retained hope that they would be an asset in military situations as well. The camels’ endurance and speed—especially compared to that of the horses and mules that had accompanied them on the road-building journey—convinced the army that they’d found “a new superior weapon,” says Johnson. But before the camels could prove their worth in this way, a more pressing conflict boiled over: the Civil War. The resources that the Army had dedicated to the camels were needed elsewhere, and the project was disbanded.

Topsy the world traveler and road-builder, along with her Syrian handler Hi Jolly, was then put to work in the mining industry, then in a circus, then in a zoo. She lived to be an estimated 81 years old when she died in 1934. Read the saga of Topsy the camel at Atlas Obscura.

As you might have suspected, the most famous father figure in the galaxy is full of Dad jokes. In this video from Nerdist, Darth Vader delivers all the one-liners he wish he could've done in the original movies.

(YouTube link)

And the bad puns just keep coming, one right after another. Stop groaning, or you'll miss one! -via Geeks Are Sexy

Einstein the African grey parrot at Zoo Knoxville is 30 years old today. (They call it his "hatch day.") In honor of the occasion, the zoo released a video of Einstein showing off his impressions, sound effects, and singing. He has quite a repertoire!

(vimeo link)

Einstein was purchased for the zoo from a breeder in California at the age of 5. The talented parrot is an ambassador for the zoo, has appeared on TV, and even gave a TED talk in 2006. -via Laughing Squid

[Edit 4/6/17 by Alex with information from the zoo - Thanks Amy!]

The seven movies in the Harry Potter franchise had to be very detailed, because the books were, and you can't disappoint the millions of children who learned to love reading from the Harry Potter books. Also, the producers were pretty sure that more than one movie would be made, so sets and props could be re-used. Might as well make them to last, and not skimp on the quality.

What came from those basic ideas was a sumptuous, detail-oriented set of films that we are always learning more about. You'll learn a lot from an illustrated list of 70 Intricate Details About the Harry Potter Movies at TVOM.   

We send our kids to school because we don't have time to teach them all the things they need to know: how to read, write, and all that basic science and history stuff we learned. But you may be surprised to learn the economics behind the texts they are using, in both high school and college.

(YouTube link)

This Honest Ad from Cracked has the short version of how the textbook business became so profitable and uncompetitive.

Vanilla beans are a lot harder to grow than you'd think. Did you know that the vanilla vine only blooms one day a year? If a vanilla farmer isn't there on the spot to pollinate them by hand (a tricky process), he won't see any vanilla beans. And even if he does, there's a lot of processing to go through before the flavoring is usable. But vanilla is one of the most popular spices in the world, found in at least 18,000 different products. You might be surprised to learn that the majority of the vanilla we consume today doesn't even come from vanilla beans.

In the late 19th century, scientists figured out how to derive vanillin—the dominant compound that gives vanilla its signature aroma—from less expensive sources. These included eugenol (a chemical compound found in clove oil) and lignin, which is found in plants, wood pulp and even cow feces. Today, about 85 percent of vanillin comes from guaiacol that’s synthesized from petrochemicals. This isn’t something many of us realize, because labeling can be confusing.

In short, vanilla is the plant. Vanillin is one of up to 250 chemical compounds that make up the flavor we know as vanilla. The Food and Drug Administration broadly defines “natural flavors” as those derived from “a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material … whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.” Artificial flavoring, on the other hand, is defined as being derived from substances outside of those parameters—even if the chemical composition of the two products are similar.

So a product containing "natural" vanilla might come from something other than vanilla beans. However, producing vanilla beans is still a lucrative business. Read about the history and the process of producing vanilla at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: tirados joselito)

Almost twenty years after it ceased production, Seinfeld is still on a lot of fans "must see" TV list in syndication and home video. For nine years, Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer were NBC's John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Which was a pretty, pretty big deal for a show about nothing.

If Seinfeld is one of your best TV memories, you probably know a lot of trivia behind it, but you'll still find something new in this list of illustrated Seinfeld trivia at TVOM. If you've never seen the show, it might just to pique your interest.

No, this isn't about genocide or other war crimes, although history's worst dictators did plenty of that. Instead, Cracked lets us in on the weird peccadilloes indulged in by guys who could get away with them. There's Stalin putting humorous captions on nude pictures, Muammar Gaddafi's crush on Condoleeza Rice, Castro's ice cream obsession, and former Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu, who took extreme measures because he knew how hated he was. Normally, paranoid autocrats have their food tasted in case of poison, but Ceausescu went a step further.

Concerned that he might be poisoned by osmosis via substances put into the fabric of his clothes, Ceausescu began wearing a different suit every day and burning his clothes and shoes after a single wearing. Prior to being worn, each article of clothing was stored in a clear plastic bag and "sealed with high frequency electrical equipment." Once removed, clothing was stamped with colored ink and sent to the incinerator, leaving Ceausescu in a perpetual state of breaking in new shoes. His staff kept a 365-day supply of suits and shoes on hand, each article hermetically sealed and stored inside a climate-controlled warehouse.

Read these stories and others, in the NSFW language you'd expect from Cracked.

You can credit McMansion Hell for making us more aware of the architecture around us. The website caused Grant Snider to recognize a house that inspired this comic he posted at Incidental Comics. Snider says there's a house in his neighborhood that looks just like the one in the final panel. Minus his artistic interpretation, I assume. That is, I hope.

 

In Michigan, 500 sugar maple trees are harvested for a special project. Ten miles of boards are cuts from the trees, dried, and made into floor panels that fit together. They are assembled, sanded, stained, painted, measured, finished, and disassembled. Almost 40 tons of flooring travel 2,300 miles to be installed at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona for the NCAA basketball tournament Final Four games. ESPN has a photo essay that follows the preparation of the floor from trees to tipoff (with some video, too). It does not explain what happens to the floor after tonight's championship game.

(Image credit: Ross Dettman)

Neatorama is proud to bring you a guest post from Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. In another life, he ran ShortFormBlog.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Columbia House could do no wrong—as a way to get music, the mail-order service was cheap and easy at first. Then, the bills came.

A while back, a coworker and good friend of mine revealed to me a fact that made me feel very old. We were talking about Spotify—and his desire not to pay $10 per month for the service—and I referenced Columbia House. He did not know what I was talking about. I was taken aback by this news—I thought everyone knew what Columbia House was! The mail-order CD service (along with its competitor BMG) had a bright moment in the early ’90s, only to see its business model fall apart thanks to iTunes, and later, Spotify. Today in Tedium, we’re going to explain what it was, its effect on the music industry, and the shady business practice that made a penny stretch into a dozen CDs.

The perks of signing up for Columbia House

AOL may have had the most prevalent mail-and-magazine-based marketing campaign of the ’90s, but a close second goes to both Columbia House, which was owned by Sony, and BMG, which was owned by RCA.

It was a common sight in magazines of all shapes and sizes to see ads like the one above, which promoted extremely cheap collections of music in exchange for signing up for a membership. It even singlehandedly helped some CDs become hits—Hootie and the Blowfish, for example, is said to have sold 3 million copies of Cracked Rear View through the service.

The mysterious femme fatale. The jaded private eye. The rare object worth killing for. Dashiell Hammett invented all these classic elements of noir fiction with his 1930 breakthrough novel, The Maltese Falcon. But how did Hammet dream up this dark, new world of literature? By writing from experience.

In the 1920s, the world needed a new detective. Fiction was overrun with weak Sherlock Holmes imitators— erudite puzzle solvers who refused to get their hands dirty. Enter Dashiell Hammett, a former private investigator turned writer. In The Maltese Falcon, Hammett took the detective out of the drawing room, dumped him in a dark alley, and created an American classic.

THE REAL MCCOY

Unlike other mystery novelists, Dashiell Hammett really was a detective. Born in 1894, Hammett quit school at age 14 to help earn money for his family. After a string of low-paying jobs, he became an operative with San Francisco’s Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1915. There, he adopted a code that would define his life: Create a barrier between yourself and the rest of the world.

Double King is a beautifully animated story about a king doing weird but kingly things, like destroying all other royalty. There's a price to be paid, no matter who you are. 

(YouTube link)

Felix Colgrave (previously at Neatorama) worked for two years on this one. -via reddit

Vinh Long, Vietnam, is a village known for its pottery. The landscape is dotted with beehive-shaped brick kilns where ceramics are mass-produced by hand. Jürgen Horn and Mike Powell wanted to visit, but had a time getting there. People in Saigon wanted to sell them a package tour, and people in Vinh Long didn't know where the kilns were. Once they managed to find their way, they had a great time. 

The level of freedom was amazing. This was the opposite of a visit to some “touristy” craft village. Everyone we encountered was busy working, and they never tried to sell us anything nor usher us into a gift shop. Neither did they simply ignore us… they were just friendly and normal, and seemed amused that foreigners would consider their jobs photo-worthy.

In fact, at the third factory we visited, we were followed inside by a brother and sister who lived in a house on-site. They knew enough English for a proper interrogation, and after the standard “What is your name, where do you come from”-type questions, they asked why we were there. We said that we thought these kilns were very beautiful. And they looked at each other, hardly able to suppress their laughter. “Really?!”

You will agree, when you see the pictures at For 91 Days.

Owls are not great nest-builders. It's not uncommon for a nest to fail, and baby owls to fall out. Volunteers from the Dane County Humane Society's Wildlife Center in Wisconsin take it upon themselves to return these fallen owlets to their nests, or even provide a new nest, if they are sure the parents are around to care for the babies. Jenn Jackson posted pictures of two renesting missions, led by John Kraak and Michael Minardi. The first one is in this album. Be sure to read all the captions for the story. Here's a sample.

Mom guarding the insufficient nest, certainly not the worst we've seen.

If you’re new to this I’m pleased to introduced you to the patent pending, incredibly amazing MPJ Device. You may think it is a bucket, but let me be clear; this is a high tech renesting device.

First flight! Up goes the MPJ Device with owl in tow.

Finally, our own rooms!

There are a lot more pictures, so go read the full story. And check out the album for the second mission, too. -via Metafilter