When someone makes a tense encounter worse, we say they have escalated the situation. When we ride on an escalator, we could say that we escalated to the second floor (but we don't, because that just sounds pretentious). You might think that both actions use the same word because it means going one level up. The word might mean that now, but the word "escalate" didn't exist until 1900 when "Escalator" was trademarked for a moving staircase device. Yes, it's a brand name. See, we already had a term for going higher, and it was "elevate." But you don't see charges of a provocateur or police elevating a situation because that sounds like they are making it better.  

This is just one of several words for things that you think are named for another thing, but it's actually the other way around. Read about escalate and six other examples of names of things that didn't come from where you thought at Cracked.
 
(Image source: Know Your Meme)

In this episode of of the What If? series (previously at Neatorama), we get classically literal. The old saying is that an optimist looks at a glass of water and sees it as half-full, while a pessimist looks and sees the same glass as half-empty. Meanwhile, a pedant looks at the same glass and says that it contains a combination of 50% drinkable liquid and 50% air. That's pretty much when a logical discussion shuts down and people try to change the subject. We all know what an empty glass means; we've washed a lot of them. But if you are going to get really literal, you can forget all about optimists and pessimists. What does a physicist (Henry Reich) and an engineer (Randall Munroe) make of a glass that is only 50% full, and the rest is ...nothing? That means a vacuum, and a glass in that situation can get violent. Strangely, the effect can be recreated in real life, but be sure to have a broom and some paper towels handy.

In previous centuries, some people were buried with extra precautions in case they may want to climb back out of the ground and cause trouble, in eastern Europe and most often in Poland. Now archaeologists have found a similar grave in Germany, but the entire graveyard tells a chilling tale.

This burial place was at a gallows near Quedlinburg, where prisoners were executed by hanging from the 1660s to the 1800s. They found 16 intact graves so far, most without coffins. These were people who died without confession or absolution, and were found on their sides or face down, as if they were dumped in their graves after execution. There were also two bone pits with mixed-up skeletons that were most likely older and had been moved to make room for newer graves.

One burial was different in that there was a coffin, and the body was laid on its back. Speculation is that this may have been a suicide, so the body was buried there instead of in a church cemetery. Another person was found to have been laid on his back, with large rocks carefully piled on his chest. This is a sign that he might have been suspected of being a revenant or a vampire, and the rocks were there to keep him from rising from the grave. Read more about the discoveries at the gallows cemetery at LiveScience.  -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Jörg Orschiedt/State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt )

The things we re afraid of killing us are not the things we should really be afraid of. We hear about shark attacks in the news, and they are scary. Then we hear the shockingly small odds of a shark attack happening to us, and yet we are still afraid. But if you don't live or vacation near the ocean, you have no reason to worry at all. Similarly, I'm not afraid of flying because I haven't been on a plane in 15 years. But even if I did take a flight, the odds of dying are greater in driving to the airport. This video is all about statistics. Right off the bat, I found out that I'm not in the normal demographic to watch Kurzgesagt videos, but if you are, it's a good idea to know what's most likely to kill you, and maybe you can lower the odds. Despite the posted length, this video is only 10:30; the rest is promotional.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

In 1993, the Walt Disney Company began quietly buying up land in northern Virginia near Manassas under the names of shell companies. When that happened in thee 1960s, we got Disney World. This time the plan was to open a theme park called Disney's America near Washington, DC. It would be dedicated to American history, with sections that followed eras in our country's history, such as a colonial square, a Civil War fort, and Ellis Island.

One might think that such a theme park might take away from the family activities of the nation's capital, where you can already see history displayed at the Smithsonian, the mall with its memorials, various museums, and the actual seat of government. And how would if affect the real battlefield of Manassas? As soon as the park was announced, historians expressed concerns over the Disneyfication of American history. There were plans to present Ellis Island with the Muppets! Under pressure, Disney changed its plans and decided to make the park more like its other theme parks, under the name Disney’s American Celebration. Then the whole project disappeared completely. Read about Disney's America, the theme park that never was, at the Conversation. 

(Image credit: Mliu92)

This picture was posted at reddit with the honest question: "For purpose or looks?" As you might expect, people were throwing around guesses while having no idea what the real answer is. It's a scheme to deter skateboarders, roller skaters, or bikes. It's a lawsuit waiting to happen. It's to keep homeless people from sleeping there. It's to deter speeders.

Then folks realized this is not a horizontal surface at all, but a vertical one. It's the side of a building, which the poster assumed was obvious. Okay, now it's an old-fashioned fire escape. Or a ladder for Spider-Man. But Toronto Tom knows. He explained it is for looks, to make a change in the brick color look less like an accident, if they couldn't hide the transition in a corner. In Copenhagen in the early 20th century, they built the front facade from expensive red bricks, then transitioned to cheaper yellow bricks toward the rear. Others have seen this pattern used to delineate the size of different properties in row houses. It can also be used when adding on to an existing house, to blur the line between old brick and newer brick.

(Image credit: Rodutchi_i)

Have you ever heard of the TV show The Queen's Messenger? Probably not, since it aired in 1928. But wait! We didn't have TV until after the second World War! Well, we did, but no one had a TV set to watch it on. The Queen's Messenger was an experimental production, a radio play transferred to a visual format for broadcast on station W2XAD (also known as WGY) in Schenectady, New York. It is considered the first TV drama. Too bad no one saw it. Oh, the broadcast station set up television receivers around the city, with three-inch screens, so maybe a few lucky people saw it, most WGY employees.

Television was still in its infancy when World War II put aside its development, but afterward, programming became more plentiful and people started buying TV sets, which made all the difference. In this video, The Historian introduces us to five groundbreaking series that made television something everyone wanted to see. I would put one thing differently, though. I Love Lucy was certainly groundbreaking in its humor and quality, but its real impact was that it was the first TV show that was recorded so it could be replayed, and therefore introduced the rerun. That's why we can still watch I Love Lucy, but not the earlier shows.  

Even people who know history well often have a hard time comparing the timelines of disparate subjects. Which came first, Vermeer's paintings or the invention of the Burr truss? Amelia Earhart's date of birth or the development of the atomic clock? The movie It Happened One Night or the opening of Mt. Rushmore? That's the challenge in the Google Arts & Culture game called What Came First?

The matchups seem to be random, and sometimes they are pretty close. They can be confounding, like when one was Fleming's discovery of penicillin, which I very much know, with a painting by someone I'd never heard of. I've played it over and over, and I can't seem to break 500 points. But when one of the comparison items comes up again in a subsequent game, it will give you a bit of a leg up -but only if you are paying attention. Oh yeah, each matchup is timed, so you can't look them up. -via Kottke

High quality gold jewelry has always been out of reach for most people, and even more so in the days before gold electroplating was developed. In the early 18th century, a family of jewelry makers in London came up with a suitable substitute for gold called pinchbeck, after its creator Christopher Pinchbeck. This metal alloy looked very much like gold, but didn't tarnish. Pinchbeck jewelry became quite popular over the next hundred years or so, because not only could the middle class afford it, the ultra-wealthy could have copies of their real gold jewelry made from it to deter theft. And the Pinchbeck name was quite reputable among jewelry makers.

But over time, lower quality jewelry pieces started being passed off as Pinchbeck originals, and fraudsters would buy pieces made of pinchbeck and try to resell them as real gold. The Pinchbeck family didn't like what was happening to their reputation from such imitators and fraudsters, and took a strange tactic to end the business of selling jewelry made of pinchbeck. A couple of hundred years later, antiques made of real pinchbeck quite valuable to collectors, because they can no longer be copied. Read about the pinchbeck alloy and the family business that made it rare at Messy Nessy Chic.

The Marvel film Thunderbolts* assembles a team of antiheroes, who some would call villains, for a government mission. But, as you might guess, nothing turns out to be as it seems. Is this another case of making villains into heroes by explaining their motivations, or is it a thoughtful exploration of the shades of gray on the good-evil continuum? Or does that matter at all in a Marvel superhero action film? Thunderbolts* reunites some familiar MCU characters with newly-arrived screen characters from the comics, and some intriguing bonus characters, like Harrison Ford once again playing the president of the United States. MCU Fans have been waiting two years for Thunderbolts*, hoping this movie will turn Marvel's fortunes around. As for the asterisk in the title, that's very deliberate, although no one connected to the film will explain why. They say the reason will be apparent when you see the completed movie. Thunderbolts* will be the 36th MCU film, and the last of Phase Five. It opens nationwide on May 2, 2025. -via Geeks Are Sexy

We all know the story of how Alexander Fleming went on vacation in 1928 and left colonies of the bacteria staphylococci in his lab. When he returned, he found that one dish was contaminated with Penicillium fungus, and that it had killed the staph near it. That event led to the world's first antibiotic, penicillin. Fleming won a Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1945.

But in 1949, scientists discovered an 1897 doctoral thesis by French scientist Ernest Duchesne that pretty much made the same discovery. Duchesne found an antagonistic relationship between funguses and bacteria. He experimented with introducing E. coli and (separately) the typhus bacteria into guinea pigs along with the fungus Penicillium glaucum. While the pigs became ill, they recovered quickly, and in subsequent experiments they did not become ill. Duchesne urged further research on the therapeutic uses of the fungus, but it didn't catch on. Crucially, Duchesne did not name the antibiotic substance produced by the fungus Penicillium glaucum, and Fleming did.

However, even Fleming's 1928 discovery was overlooked for years until other scientists proved that the discovery was actually useful in human healthcare. Read about Ernest Duchesne and the history of penicillin research at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Science History Institute)

Sriracha sauce is a crucial condiment in households like mine, for cooking and for spicing up takeout from Asian restaurants that have toned down their dishes for Americans who think salt and pepper are exotic spices. For sriracha, or "rooster sauce," we can thank David Tran, who founded Huy Fong foods in 1980 and became a sensation. But in the last decade, sriracha sauce has had its ups and downs. We recall the incident in 2013 when the big new sriracha factory overwhelmed the town of Irwindale, California. The town and the company went back and forth for years before working things out, which not only affected production, but caused a run on sriracha and a shortage. There have been other shortages since then, caused by rumors of shortages, weather conditions affecting jalapeño crops, and disputes with suppliers. Weird History Food gives us the story of sriracha and the lowdown on why it might taste different from the way it did years ago.

The 1987 film Spaceballs was easily described just by saying "Mel Brooks does Star Wars." The goofy parody is getting a sequel after almost 40 years, which is in development now. Josh Gad will star and is writing the screenplay. But could we have a real Spaceballs sequel without Mel Brooks? Brooks is 98 years old and officially retired, but is enthusiastically involved in the movie, at this point critiquing and editing Gad's writing.

Gad know he couldn't do Spaceballs justice without Brook's blessing, but did not expect him to be so involved in the production at his age. He describes how he approached Brooks with the idea, taking 40 minutes to explain what's happened in the Star Wars saga since the original trilogy at Brooks' insistence. Read what happened at that meeting, and how Brooks is contributing to Spaceballs 2 at Cracked. We don't yet know when to expect the finished movie.

Toward the end of his life in 1953, Soviet leader Joseph distrusted his doctors and got rid of so many of them that there was no one to treat him when he died. But he had a different opinion in 1934, when Stalin heard of Dr. Alexander Bogomolets and his “anti-reticular cytotoxic serum.” Bogomolets had extrapolated on the discoveries that led to the diphtheria vaccine and further research on serum produced in animals. Bogomolets wanted to boost the health of a body's connective tissue, which he believed was the secret to a longer life. Stalin gave Bogomolets his own institution to produce the serum called ACS, and then received doses of it.

The recipe for ACS was pretty gruesome. It required cells from healthy young humans, and getting volunteers to donate bone marrow was a problem, so the process begins with "three corpses from healthy young men accidentally killed in within the previous 12 hours." It is up to the reader to wonder if Stalin helped with this part. The rest of the instructions sound like something from a witches book of magic spells, but there is some science involved. Read about Alexander Bogomolets and his quest for a longevity serum at the Montreal Gazette. -via Real Clear Science     

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Although I personally do not see the draw, the popularity of ocean cruises just keeps going up. To keep up with the demand, cruise ships are getting bigger all the time. Royal Caribbean's new ship Icon of the Seas is twenty stories tall and can carry almost ten thousand people, but it also cost two billion dollars and took years to build. Cruise companies get more bang for their buck by "jumboizing" their existing cruise ships. The "jumboization" process takes about nine months from start to finish, removes a ship from service for only a couple of months, and costs around $80 million.

What they do is cut a ship in half, slide in a new section in the middle, and weld it all back together. This requires precise measurement and design, so that the new section can be built to match every hallway and pipeline that runs through it. The exciting part (if seen in time-lapse form) is when the ship is brought in and cut into two pieces with acetylene torches. The parts are separated, and the new section is rolled in and welded. When it's done, a much longer ship leaves the dock, ready to book hundreds more passengers than before. New Atlas explains jumboization and has a series of videos documenting how this has been done to several different ships. So the next time you want to spend a week or so floating on the waves up close and personal with a few thousand strangers, there may be a ticket for you. -via Boing Boing   

(Image credit: Silversea Cruises)