The first Social Security numbers were issued in November of 1936 as part of the New Deal. It didn't take long for people to start appropriating numbers that were not assigned to them. In 1938, a wallet manufacturer included dummy cards in their wallets to show how cards would fit into the slots. They used a mockup of a Social Security card that displayed the real number of a company executive's secretary, Mrs. Hilda Schrader Whitcher. What could possibly go wrong? 

People immediately began using the mockup card as their own Social Security card. It was printed in red instead of blue, but when the program was new, few people knew what the cards were supposed to look like. The wallet company claimed it was only half the size of a real card, but that makes no sense since it was made to show the size of a wallet slot, and a picture of Whitcher with the card shows it was the same size as her real card. 

Over the years, 40,000 or so people have claimed the number 078-05-1120, even without the mockup card. Some still use it today! Read the story of the first major Social Security card fraud at the SS website. -via Weird Universe 

Cities and states have climates and cultures attached to their names, and then it's easy to get a totally incorrect idea of where it is. The same happens when you take a piece of a round globe and straighten it out on a two-dimensional map. We think of Canada as north, Mexico as south, and South America as far south of the United States. But that doesn't tell the whole story. Laurence Brown pulled out a US map to determine where our National Parks are because he got a calendar of park posters for Christmas. That's when he found that what we think of the 48 contiguous United States doesn't have much to do with where they actually are. Besides what's in the video, commenters added more geographic facts that may blow your mind.

If you go south from Detroit, you enter Canada.
Over half of Canada's population lives south of the entire states of Washington and North Dakota.
The Atlantic Ocean enters the Panama Canal from the west and goes east to enter the Pacific.
Boston is roughly on the same latitude as Barcelona. 
The whole of the contiguous USA is further south than the whole of Britain.
New Orleans is about the same latitude as Cairo.
The International Date Line crosses Alaska, so it is both the westernmost and the easternmost state. (not true; see comments)
The state closest to Africa is Maine. 
Tijuana is closer to North Dakota than it is to Mexico City. 
Texarkana, Texas, is closer to Chicago than it is to El Paso.
Berlin is farther north than Winnipeg.

See, we've all been fooled by the weather and our own mental maps! 

When you want to watch a movie but you don't want to pay for streaming services or cable, you can turn to the internet and pull up a full-length feature film that's perfectly legal to watch at WikiFlix, a depository of public domain films. 

As of January first, all movies released in 1930 went into the public domain, meaning their copyright has expired. All movies made before that are also in the public domain. That includes films like Hell's Angels, All Quiet on the Western Front, Animal Crackers, and Anna Christie. All movies made before that are public domain, too, including many talkies. Films made later can be in the public domain for various reasons, like McLintock!, Night of the Living Dead, Charade, A Star Is Born, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. The newest one I found is a short from 2018. At WikiFlix, they are grouped by subject matter, and also include films from China, Japan, and the Soviet Union. See ya back in here in a couple of hours! -via kottke 

The British TV series Doctor Who has been around since 1963, and in all those years he (or she) has always had plenty to say. You can imagine that someone who transcends time and space has picked up a fair amount of wisdom. The best definition of wisdom I've heard is the ability to separate what's important from what is not important. This compilation of quote from the series, offered as advice for 2026, gives us the Doctor's perspective on life, the value of every person, and the hope that all of us can become better than what we are now. He has the right thing to say in times of despair and grief, and the best quips to bring down those who should be brought down a notch. But it's not strictly profound quotes, because there's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes!  -via Geeks Are Sexy 

In the early part of the 20th century, Iley Tate was a prominent and wealthy landowner in Haydentown, Pennsylvania, in the hill country not far from the West Virginia border. He traded in livestock and owned the only general store for miles around. Tate had twenty children from several wives, two of whom he actually married. The last one was around 14-16 years old when they wed (she wasn't sure). Tate never backed down from a fight, and was willing to shoot anyone who crossed him. He shot and killed at least two people, although he was never convicted. He was also suspected of poisoning his first wife.   

In the 1930s, Tate was living in West Virginia. In 1932, he was shot by his son George, who then smashed his skull with a rock to make sure he was dead. His brother Sam was with him. Another brother, John, was in on the plan. So was Tate's wife Nettie Belle, but she, pregnant at the time with her 12th child, was not charged in the case. The brothers went to trial where the defense appeared to be that their father needed killing. That's when Iley Tate's history of child abuse and child rape were uncovered. Read about the killing of Iley Tate at Pennsylvania Oddities. An addendum of the crimes of Tate's relatives is almost as horrific. -via Strange Company 

Do you recall what huge news it was when red dye #2 was found to be carcinogenic and banned in the 1970s? In the grand scheme of things, that was just one of many steps along the way to banning food dye. It really didn't make much difference, as food scientists came up with new ways to make our food more red. It's a process that's been going on thousands of years. Food dyes were used to make food more attractive when it was less than palatable under the surface, or even spoiled. When we got tired enough of dangerous stuff added to our food, we introduced the Food and Drug Administration, which has saved a lot of lives. 

At about the same time (well, the 20th century), food manufacturers came up with tons of new synthetic dyes to make processed food any color you can imagine. Each one is tested thoroughly, and many have been banned. Because it takes a long time to phase out these dyes, the industry comes up with new ones. But eventually, we are going to have to get used to food in its natural state, or at least dressed up with natural food dyes. Will that be so bad? Tom Blank of Weird History Food explains.  

Tessellation refers to a set of geometric tiles that fit together perfectly. They can be very simple, like a checkerboard or subway tiles, or they can be delightfully intricate, like the tessellations of M.C. Escher. The fish and bird tiles shown here were designed for his house in Amsterdam. 

People are still making representative tessellations like this, which is a bit easier with computer aided design. See plenty of examples at Tiled.art where artistic tessellations are animated. They go from a standard tile grid to a distorted grid to representative shapes featuring animals, people, and objects all fitting together with no gaps or overlaps. Watching these, you'll start to understand how they were designed.

And you can try it yourself! It may take a while to figure out all the tools, but once you get going, you start to understand how interlocking shapes can be created. I haven't gotten close to anything representative yet, but the further I go, the more fascinating it becomes. -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: HenkvD) 

Airlines always have trouble getting people to pay attention to the mandatory safety instructions. Unless it's their first flight, passengers have a tendency to zone out. Still, in the event of an emergency, it's crucial for these steps to be fresh in everyone's mind. Many airlines recruited their funniest flight attendants to give humorous monologues, and some produced videos filled with pop culture references to grab attention. Philippine Airlines goes a step further, and tells a story within a story while going over safety procedures.

Luisa faces a crisis that will affect the rest of her life. Will she follow her mother's advice, and wear her seatbelt properly? Will Diego be arrested for vaping? Will Anton find the emergency exit after he causes a sudden drop in cabin pressure? You will be on the edge of your seat as the drama unfurls. Then you'll have to watch it again to catch all the small but clever details. And you'll remember what to do if your tablet falls between the seats. -via reddit 

In 1966, when Star Trek first graced our TV screens, the writers of the space drama set hundreds of years in the future were free to construct a historical timeline that led to intergalactic travel and the United Federation of Planets that spawned Starfleet. They had no clue that the franchise would last into the 21st century. After all, TV itself wasn't much of a thing a mere 20 years earlier. So they explained away, and when Star Trek returned in the 1980s and beyond, they stuck to the historical canon established by the original series, just filling in more details. And now we have eclipsed part of that constructed history already, making it into a fictional "alternative history." 

In the Star Trek universe, 2026 was the year that World War III began. This 45-year war led to a loss of 30% of the human population, and the extinction of 600,000 plant and animal species. Yes, it was a nuclear war that wiped out many of earth's major cities. But it didn't just spring up suddenly. Before World War III, there was the Eugenics War and the Second American Civil War. Check out the details of Star Trek's World War III at Memory Alpha plus some more details on the year 2026 at the not-totally-canonical Memory Beta. 

In American history classes, we only learn the big things: Columbus, the American Eevolution, the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, and oops, better skip ahead to World War II or the school year will run out. In all these eras and in between, other important things were happening that shaped what America is today, but you wouldn't know about them unless you studied on your own.

Before and after the revolution, various factions in the colonies had their own grievances and drama. In western North Carolina, the Regulators, under the leadership of Herman Husband, rebelled against excessive taxation and predatory land speculators. Husband went on to lead other rebellions in other colonies and later states, siding with the working class against the rich and powerful. These rebellions had little to do with the American Revolution, technically, but they showed the independent spirit of the people who became Americans. PBS Origins tells the story.

American children learn about the Salem Witch Trials, in which 25 people killed, but in Europe, between 40,000 and 60,000 people were executed for witchcraft in a 350-year period. A striking number of these trials happened in Finnmark, a rural Norwegian county in the Arctic circle with a population of only 3,000 people. Between 1620 and 1693, 91 people were executed for witchcraft in Finnmark, which was about a third of all those executed for witchcraft in all of Norway's history. 

It all began with a sudden storm on Christmas Eve in 1617 that killed 40 fishermen, the majority of the men of the village of Vardø. Witchcraft was the only explanation for the storm. King  Christian IV of Denmark and Norway was a zealous witch hunter, and the people of the far north were already suspected of demonic tendencies. The first accused were the indigenous Sami, but suspicions quickly spread. Accused witches were tortured into confession, and into naming other witches. The trials took place at Vardøhus Fortress, shown above, where the accused could be held -and tortured- for months before execution. Only ten of 111 accused escaped being burned at the stake. Read about the Finnmark Witch Trials at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Timo Noko) 

Do you find that, every once in a while, you just stop paying attention? Some people call this daydreaming, others call it zoning out, and some call it boredom, or just a little break from all that stimulation. You've been told that this is bad, and you've trained yourself to never do it while driving. But you shouldn't feel guilty about zoning out, because science has found that your brain is actually performing necessary tasks while you aren't thinking about anything in particular. It appears to be a major clean out time. 

The latest research finds that zoning out behavior in your brain resembles what happens during deep sleep, and it happens more when you don't get enough sleep. There are physiological processes that occur during those times that result in a kind of biological hygiene. And since zoning out can be beneficial, maybe we should reserve some time to give in to those urges and let our brains rest. AsapSCIENCE explains further. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

The producers of the television show The Addams Family knew the audience would be familiar with the work of Charles Addams, who drew the family in cartoons for The New Yorker. Still, they wanted to go in their own direction and tell a story from the point of view of the family's butler, Lurch. John Astin would play the role. That's, of course, not how things turned out. Astin was perfect in the role of Gomez Addams, but casting calls went out for all the other roles. Plenty of people wanted to be in The Addams Family, and from the perspective of 60+ years later, they found the perfect actors. 

But you have to wonder about the other actors in the running. Vintage Everyday tells us about the 1964 casting process for the TV series, and gives us a gallery of those who tried out for the various parts. They threw their hearts into getting those roles, but all seem quite wrong to us now, especially the also-rans who didn't get the role of Lurch. -via Memo of the Air 

(Image credit: ABC Television) 

Henry Brown took the "photo a day" idea and made it speak. Every day during 2025, he talked to the camera, and then compiled it into a coherent essay about the passage of time in 365 video clips. The clips are not all in sequential order, but you can follow the times of the year mostly by the length of his hair and the background weather. In some places, there is more than one word for the day. Whatever you think of the finished product, you have to admire his dedication to the project. 

In one spot, Brown challenges you to recall what you were doing exactly five years ago. That would be difficult if it were any day but today- we all remember January 6, 2021, and we were all watching TV. If the effect of the video obscure what he actually said, you'll find a transcript at Laughing Squid. 

Imagine you discovered an ancient wall, 120 meters (394 feet) long, two meters (6.6 feet) tall, and averaging 20 meters (66 feet) wide? That's an enormous construction. On top of that, you found it nine meters (30 feet) underwater! That would be the only way it could have escaped detection all those years. How many years? Somewhere between 7300 and 7800 years. That makes it older than Stonehenge. 

The wall was found with LIDAR technology off the coast of France. Closer exploration found that the wall was built with 60 huge granite stones set into the bedrock in pairs, filled in with smaller stones between them. This all raises questions about how and why it was built. The sea level was lower then, so the wall now called TAF1 could have been a seawall, or possibly a fish catching device, depending on what conditions were like at the time. There is speculation that it could be a remnant of the legendary sunken city of Ys. The stories of Ys are fantastical, involving star-crossed lovers, supernatural floodgates, and even a mermaid. But that doesn't mean it wasn't based on some ancient event. Read about the Mesolithic underwater wall at Big Think.  -via Real Clear Science 

(Image credit: Yves Fouquet, et. al./International Journal of Nautical Archaeology)