If you knew about an isolated mountain lake that was ringed with a whole bunch of human skeletons that no one had retrieved, you might think about avoiding that area, lest you become one of them. But that's not quite the case at Roopkund Lake, also called Mystery Lake or Skeleton Lake, at 16,470 feet of elevation in northern India. Plenty of Himalayan hikers have visited the site, and rearranged the skulls and bones found there.

An ancient tale tells of a royal entourage on a pilgrimage that was caught in a hailstorm near the lake and were all killed. But scientists have found evidence that whatever disaster befell those people happened more than once, and hundreds of years apart. Not only that, the dead of Roopkund Lake came from different corners of the earth! What happened to them? And where were they going? Savannah Geary of SciShow tells us what we now know and what we don't know about the Roopkund Lake skeletons. There's a 45-second skippable ad at 4:05.

Only a couple of hundred years ago, people weren't sure why birds disappeared in the winter (or the summer, depending on where you are). The idea that birds flew away and came back was common, but where did they go? Other theories were that they hibernated, possibly underwater, or as Aristotle mused, maybe they turned into another species. One Harvard scholar suggested that birds flew to the moon for the months they were missing. And people believed him, because they didn't know how far away the moon is. What they needed was a way to track where a particular bird had been.

Then in 1822, someone in northern Germany shot a stork. The stork was retrieved and was found to have a 31-inch arrow in its neck! We don't know how long the bird survived carrying the arrow, but it was sent to the University of Rostock for study. There it was determined that the arrow originated in central Africa, proof that the stork had flown more than 1,800 miles with an arrow in its neck. Over time, other birds were discovered flying with arrows from faraway places, and scientists confirmed the theory of bird migration. Eventually, we started tagging birds with less painful identifiers. Read about this discovery and how it changed ornithology at Xatakaon. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Zoologische Sammlung der Universität Rostock)

Birds are dangerous for planes, and vice versa. Up until the last decade or so, most airports killed owls and other birds that took up residence near airports. But Boston's Logan Airport was the exception. Snowy owls live in the Arctic most of the time, but migrate south during the coldest months of winter. They often ended up at the airport in Boston, where they could find plenty of mice and rats to eat, as well as other birds.

In 1981, Norman Smith began trapping and relocating the airport owls instead of exterminating them. He's been doing this ever since, and the idea has spread to other airports, especially for birds that are threatened or endangered. Logan Airport has relocated more than 900 snowy owls since Smith came on the scene, and he vows to continue saving these birds as well as the planes for as long as he can. -via Nag on the Lake

The company Open Bionics has debuted a new kind of prosthetic hand that not only has a wider range of motion and control, it can even work when detached from the prosthetic arm! The Hero Pro arm is super lightweight and water resistant. Each arm is 3D printed to fit the user, and the arm is loaded with sensors that take their cues as the user flexes their forearm muscles. These signals are interpreted and sent wirelessly to the hand to perform fine motions like "zipping a jacket, scrolling on a phone, or holding a guitar pick."

Singer and internet personality Tilley Lockey has been working with Open Bionics for ten years. She lost her hands to meningitis when she was a toddler, and has used and critiqued the company's advancements in prosthetics. Recently, she showed off her new Hero Pro arms on the British TV show This Morning. While we applaud the improved functionality of the hand, we can't get over how cool it is to control a hand when it isn't even attached to your arm. Read about Lockey and her new Hero Pro arms at My Modern Met. -via Damn Interesting 

What do accomplished cosplayers do to take their costumes to the next level? Make them stand out with glitter and shine! One can imagine this cosplayer wore numerous stormtrooper uniforms, and possibly other Star Wars costumes before adding rhinestones to every surface. Or is it sequins? I imagine rhinestones would be pretty heavy, but that won't stop the most dedicated. The stormtrooper was front and center at Laval Comiccon this past weekend in Laval, Quebec.

They weren't the only one reflecting the light at the con, either. Snow White poses with the Evil Queen, who was totally covered in sequins as she offers her stepdaughter a poisoned apple. There were also superheroes, fantasy and science fiction characters, and clever mashups dressed to the nines at Laval Comiccon, and Geeks Are Sexy was there to document the best costumes. See them in a this gallery, and cick on each one to bring up the full-size version.
 

Captain America: Brave New World is the fourth movie of the Captain America series from Marvel, unless you count the TV miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was, of course, on TV. But you have to have seen the TV show to understand who this new Captain America is. Harrison Ford is in this one, typecast as the US president. And the Red Hulk. Brave New World hit theaters in February, and needed a box office take of hundreds of millions to cover production and marketing costs. The movie opened strong, and then petered out as word of mouth got around. Reviews were mixed, and Brave New World seemed like another formulaic MCU movie. It may yet break even, as Captain America: Brave New World will be available on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 13. Meanwhile, Screen Junkies would like to help you decide whether to watch it or not with this Honest Trailer.  

We love watching outtakes from film sets, which often are a collection of actors flubbing their lines and then laughing about it. This happened on the set of The Usual Suspects, during the lineup scene. The laughter wasn't in the script, and in fact the actors were supposed to stand stoically through the scene. But Benicio del Toro kept farting during take after take, and the cast couldn't keep a straight face. So the laughter was included in the scene, which became quite memorable. More often, on set injuries ended up producing genuine fear or anguish, and the footage was deemed the best take on a particular scene, which happened in The Two Towers, Django Unchained, Die Hard, and Tora! Tora! Tora!

Other on-set flubs and accidents were inspirations for an improved scenes in your favorite movies, and Buzzfeed has collected 37 examples that ranged from a purring cat to exploding planes.

While test driving a Mercedes in Georgia, the driver heard a strange sound coming from the car. There was nothing wrong with the car, but it was meowing. The driver pulled into Royalty Auto Service where mechanic Sherwood Cook located the culprit- a tiny kitten (this was Sherwood, Jr. There's also a Sherwood III and Sherwood IV on the staff). The kitten wasn't easy to get to. They had to put the car on a lift to reach her! Meanwhile, Sherwood fell in love with the kitten, and declared that she would be part of the staff as well. After all, his grandchildren are already on the roster without actually having to work, why not a kitten, too? Besides, she's seen parts of a car that you and I never will. She was checked out by a veterinarian and given a new name- Mercedes.  
 

The Bayeux Tapestry is a 230-foot-long embroidered banner that depicts the events of the Norman conquest of England. It is believed to have been completed not long after the Battle of Hastings. It is a remarkable artifact, and the subject of much discussion. One of those discussions is about the number of penises that are illustrated in the needlework. One scholar declared the number is 93, meaning 88 on horses and five on men, while another scholar argues that there are six men with their anatomy showing. Don't bother looking in the picture above; I chose a random portion of the tapestry.

Another question is why all these penises are there in the first place. The tapestry is full of symbolism, so there are several theories and no official explanation. But even if the question of counting penises in a thousand-year-old tapestry never occurred to you, you shouldn't be surprised that it occurred to certain art historians. Read about this controversy over the Bayeaux Tapestry and what it "reveals" to us at Popular Science. -via Damn Interesting

A mansion that's on the National Register of Historic Places is for sale in Gardner, Massachusetts. This is the SK Pierce House, built in 1873-75, it is considered one of the most haunted houses in the US. It certainly looks the part. You might be reminded of a Charles Addams creation. However, the house wasn't always gray and black. See what it looked like before the recent renovation.

This mansion offers nine bedrooms and four bathrooms, and has 6,988 square feet of living area, but not much of a yard to speak of. So who lives there? A ton of ghosts, according to local lore. Soon after Sylvester Pierce had the house built, his wife Susan died. Later, the home was turned into a boarding house where numerous incidents occurred, including murder and a possible case of spontaneous combustion.   

The ghosts of S.K. Pierce himself, Susan Pierce, Edward Pierce, as well as a nanny named Mattie Cornwell, a gentlemen named David who some believe to have been the red room strangler, the prostitute who was murdered in the red room, a young boy, a younger girl who was perhaps the granddaughter of Pierce, Eino Saari, and some unnamed dark entities in the basement have been described as some of this mansion's many ghostly residents.

There are quite a few videos on this mansion, but most are pretty long. In 2015, the owners of Dark Carnival, a haunted attraction company, bought the mansion and restored it to its former glory under the watchful eyes of historic preservationists. They offered tours and overnight rentals, but couldn't make up for the renovation costs, so the home is for sale for $1,200,000. You can see 42 photographs the home at the real estate listing. -via Fark

As World War II was drawing to a close in the spring of 1945, the Allies were advancing on German occupied territory, and the Nazis were keen to destroy evidence of the Holocaust. SS chief Heinrich Himmler was under the illusion that he could lead Germany after the fall of Hitler, and was interested in gaining credit for a humanitarian gesture, as long as der Führer didn't find out about it. Himmler negotiated with a Swedish diplomat to evacuate concentration camp inmates with convoys of Red Cross buses. Around 15,000 people were evacuated, first to Denmark, then by ferry to neutral Sweden. Thousands were taken from Ravensbrück, a camp for women, mostly political prisoners, in northern Germany.

To accomplish the rescue, every bus that could be commandeered was quickly painted white. The evacuation was fraught with danger, as Himmler's secret plans could be discovered by Hitler loyalists, and in fact, a couple of convoys were bombed on their journey. The Red Cross evacuations from Ravensbrück occurred only weeks or days before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. From the vantage point of history, the women who ended up in Sweden were much luckier than those who later found themselves residents of East Germany. Read about the secret negotiations that led to Sweden's Red Cross rescue at France 24. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: National Museum of Denmark)

A controversy among linguists which has been raging for a long time is the concept of universal grammar. Is there a fundamental set of rules that people use, no matter what their language is? Anyone who has tried to learn a second or third language knows how different these languages can be. English speakers have a hard time wrapping their heads around gendered nouns. People who speak other languages don't understand why we put adjectives before nouns in English. But there are certain features that almost all languages have in common, such as subjects, verbs, and objects, although their order can vary. But is this universal grammar due to something innate in the human brain, or did it come about when written language developed, or does it point to how languages were all originally related? Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains how linguists have disagreed, or even fought each other, over this controversy.   

When Peter Benchley wrote his novel Jaws, which made great white sharks into scary monsters forever, he drew inspiration from the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1916. It was a very hot summer, and throngs of tourists went to the beaches to cool off. It was also the summer that sharks killed four people and badly injured a fifth in New Jersey. Three of those attacks came on the same day! The carnage led to a panic, and people petition for the extermination of sharks. Sharks weren't considered much of a threat before 1916, but their reputation changed overnight.

Could the attacks have come from the same shark? Armed crews went out in boats to kill as many sharks as possible, of all species. One great white was found with human remains in its gut. Some experts thought that the killer shark(s) would more likely have been bull sharks, since they venture into freshwater, and two of the attacks occurred in an inland creek. Some thought that the activities of German U-boats was to blame, causing sharks to develop a taste for humans after devouring the war dead. Others thought that a sea turtle might be the actual culprit. Read about the summer that turned sharks into enemies at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: acapacio)

Once again, the comedy troupe Foil Arms and Hog throw a party and have a great time, more or less. This time they are impersonating the elements of the periodic table.

The elements all have their individual characteristics, and that comes out in the small talk. Some personality quirks have to do with the chemicals themselves, like oxygen, which is a breath of fresh air. Others have to do with their reputation among humans, like aluminum, which wears a foil hat and is a bit paranoid. And some are just puns, like how boron is so very boring. Some of them even dress the part, like neon wearing Day-Glo colors. Watch for some surprises, like when two nitrogens and one oxygen merge and get the giggles, because that makes nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. That's why it's so important to go over your guest list multiple times to make sure your guests won't clash and cause trouble, or in the worst case, explode. -via Laughing Squid 

In 1888 and '89, Vincent van Gogh painted three versions of the bedroom where he slept in Arles, France. He titled them The Bedroom, but they have since been known as Bedroom in Arles. The Yellow House that contained the bedroom was bombed during World War II and no longer exists. But avid Van Gogh fans can still visit and even stay a night or two in the bedroom, because a recreation exists as an Airbnb in Charroux, France. Behold La Chambre de Van Gogh. The accommodation has a living room, kitchen, and bath, which are all nice and modern, but the bedroom is something to behold. Charroux artist François Lassere has transformed the bedroom into Van Gogh's vision as rendered in the paintings.

Compare the details. Lassere has even copied Van Gogh's brushstrokes to give the entire room the illusion of a painting, yet you can sleep in it. The bed is described as a double bed, but that might be part of the illusion, or else beds really are just smaller in France. See more pictures in the gallery.

-via Messy Nessy Chic