The "birthday" of television could be any of its many early points, depending on how you define "television," and it's hard to wrap our brains around how old the technology really is, since most people never saw any television until after World War II. However, it was on October 2, 1925, that Scottish inventor John Logie Baird successfully transmitted the first recognizable television image in his laboratory. He used a mechanical system that utilized the technology of German engineer Paul Nipkow to scan images of a ventriloquist's dummy's face (because its features had high contrast). Afterward, Baird scanned the face of 20-year-old William Edward Taynton to see what a real face would look like on television. The first public demonstration of his system was on January 26, 1926. 

But Baird's mechanical television system was soon eclipsed by an electronic system invented by Philo T. Farnsworth, barely into his 20s when he demonstrated his system in 1928. 

Television was slow to take off, first because of the competing systems, and then because it required receivers, which were too expensive for a general public that didn't understand TV. It also required programming to make the investment worth the cost. The larger radio networks worked on the problem, and Nazi Germany jumped on TV for propaganda purposes, but the rollout was halted by World War II. In the postwar boom of American prosperity, a television set became a status symbol, and TV slowly spread to almost everyone. 

In the 100 years since that first transmission, television changed society, and you can explore with a mega-list of links at Metafilter. 

Bill McClintock is still doing what he does best- seamlessly mashing up rock songs with disco dance tunes. Here, we have Van Halen's "I'll Wait" from 1984 mixed with Donna Summer's 1979 song "Bad Girls." It will grab you from the start with a clever constructed dialogue between Summer and David Lee Roth. Could that opportunity have been the inspiration for this mashup? 

The song, which McClintock calls "I'll Wait for Bad Girls" by Van Summer, also contains guitar solo snippets from Steve Vai from David Lee Roth's song "Ladies' Night in Buffalo?" and Zakk Wylde from Ozzy Osbourne's "Breaking All the Rules." 

While the music moves smoothly, the video can be jarring in places. The clips are taken from footage up to more than 20 years apart. While Donna Summer is recognizable in all of them, Van Halen's appearance changed considerably as they aged. Donna Summer passed in 2012; Eddie Van Halen in 2020. -via Laughing Squid 

Jane Goodall, who knew more about chimpanzees than anyone, died from natural causes today while she was on a speaking tour in California. Goodall spent decades studying chimpanzees in Tanzania, but also dedicated many years working to reform the treatment of chimpanzees and other wild animals, educate people about animals, and to protect their habitats.

Since childhood, Goodall dreamed of going to Africa to work with elephants. She went to Kenya and got a job as a secretary for Dr. Louis Leakey, who sent her to the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to study chimpanzees as part of Leakey's Trimates plan. Goodall also earned a PhD in ethology from Cambridge, despite the fact that she didn't have a bachelor's degree. Her work for National Geographic brought her research to a worldwide audience. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, and went on to found other organizations to care for orphaned chimpanzees, to set aside animal reserves, and to advocate for the environment. She almost single-handedly ended the practice of using chimpanzees for medical research at the NIH.   



If you see a reference to "that Jane Goodall tramp" (like in our archives) be aware that it is not meant to be derogatory. It was the punch line to a 1987 Far Side comic. The Jane Goodall Institute took umbrage at the comic, but when Goodall arrived from Africa, she found it amusing, and later called it her favorite depiction in pop culture. Goodall later wrote the forward for one of Larson's Far Side collections. 

Goodall was still working for the benefit of the animals she loved so much when she died today. She was 91. 

The premise of the "What If" series has always been to treat stupid theoretical questions seriously, and therefore we might learn something or other. The dumb theoretical question in this video is "How long can the human race survive on only cannibalism?" Cannibalism is a disgusting idea and has always been taboo, but Randall Munroe and Henry Reich tackle it as serious (while still inserting their opinions). Relying on cannibalism would quickly make us pure carnivores, and there are many reasons that eating carnivores is a bad idea. This prohibition is passed down in cultural and religious rules, but even animals avoid it. 

Once you get around that, you get into the law of diminishing returns. If you are trying to "save" humanity, how many people must survive? It won't be enough to keep the freezers full of the unlucky ones going. Otherwise, if we all just eat each other over time, humanity will not last all that long. 

Helen Brayton was a wealthy woman whose hobby was breeding cats. In 1912, she imported a prize-winning English silver chinchilla cat named Don Dai. The cat had his own stateroom aboard the ship, plus his own private steward. On his arrival, Mrs. Brayton planned an opulent wedding for Don Dai and her show cat named The Quakeress at New York City's Plaza Hotel and invited her genteel friends who were cat lovers. The newspapers had a great time with that story. 

But even more interesting was how the Plaza Hotel began allowing pets in the first place. The rich are used to being catered to, and when one wealthy patron showed up with a tiny dog, the manager declared the hotel pet-friendly. But there are always those who push the envelope. Only a year after the new policy was enacted, an artist who was also technically a princess brought eight "pets" to the hotel that included a bear and two alligators! Then she stayed for five years. Read about the cat wedding in the latest post at The Hatching Cat, and the full story of the princess in an earlier post. 

Do you suffer from insomnia or sleep apnea? Do you wake up exhausted and lethargic after what you thought was a good night's sleep? Or have you ever suffered sleep paralysis? You may be the victim of a boo hag! This malevolent spirit that looks like a human, but has no skin, sneaks into your bedroom through an opening as small as a keyhole. A boo hag will then sit on you and steal your life force, or maybe even your blood, as you lay there helpless. 

The legend of the boo hag comes from the Gullah Geechee folk of South Carolina's coastland, so you might guess that keeping the boo hag away is a matter of painting your porch haint blue. There are other ways to deflect or defeat this terrifying monster, as Dr. Emily Zarka explains, along with the history of the boo hag, in this episode of Monstrum. 

You might be surprised at how many recipes are etched into gravestones. If someone was known for a wonderful dish they made, it may as well be documented for posterity. A few years ago, Rosie Grant went viral for her hobby of seeking out and making the food from recipes found on gravestones. She began when she was doing an internship in a cemetery, and developed the habit of taking the finished product to eat beside the recipe gravestone. Four years later, Grant has a cookbook coming out. 

One of those recipes is labeled "A Good Carrot Cake," carved into the gravestone of Christine W. Hammill. But Christine is still with us; she and her husband just wanted to designed their gravestones themselves, and so had them made ahead of time. The family carrot cake recipe is in the book, but you can find it at the Instagram page ahead of time. Click to the right to read the story, and see the awesome epitaphs on the front of the stones.

When Crosby, Stills, and Nash performed their song "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" at Woodstock in August of 1969, it was only the second time they had performed together in front of an audience. Their slot was in the middle of the night, but that audience was a half million people. No wonder they were scared. 

The song was written by Stephen Stills about his girlfriend at the time, Judy Collins. He had been writing down his thoughts about her in snippets of poetry for months, as the relationship deteriorated and he contemplated losing her (spoiler: he did). The various snippets of poetry inspired different tunes, but none of them had enough to make a complete song, so Stills mashed them all together. That's why "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" indeed sounds like a collision of four songs. Yet they were four really good tunes, and the completed love song became a staple of FM radio. Read how and why the song came about, and how Collins responded to it at Dangerous Minds. 

Do you remember when 10-year-old Keith Byrne and 13-year-old Noel Murray ran away from their homes in Dublin, Ireland, and managed to get to New York City by themselves? The boys were outside playing, and Keith's mom warned them not to go far, because dinner would be ready soon. Instead, Keith and Noel decided they would go to America and meet their favorite TV character- B.A. Baracus of The A-Team, played by Mr. T. See, this happened in 1985. 

The boys managed to hop trains without being confronted for their tickets. They blended in with crowds as best they could. They even bluffed their way through security at Heathrow Airport! Yes, security measures were very different in 1985, and free-range children were common. But Keith's and Noel's quick thinking and brazen confidence were definite outliers in any era. They made it all the way to New York City before anyone thought they might be out of place- and were discovered only because of their Irish accents. Their adventure became an international news sensation. However, they never got to meet B.A. Baracus. Read how they got away with it at Utterly Interesting. 

Monkeys are cute and resemble humans, but they do not make good pets. Sadly, some monkeys become adults before their human owners will admit that. What happens then? Monkeys raised in captivity do not know what they need to know to survive in the wild, much less become part of a monkey community, as in a zoo. The best they could hope for is to live in a shelter that takes their wild nature into account, like Animal Tracks, the same shelter where Frank the Armadillo lives. 

Tara is an aging Hollywood actress, relinquished when her animal casting company moved away. Why didn't she go with them? I suspect it's because Tara was 25 years old and no longer as photogenic as she once was. She is 30 now, and still feisty, but totally comfortable with humans. Her monkey companion Marley was raised as a neutered pet. That means his social status among monkeys is pretty low, but he's doing okay at the shelter with Tara. 

I remember the night I saw the 1978 movie Game of Death. It was at a drive-in theater, and when I saw the beginning of a fight between Bruce Lee and an opponent who was over seven feet tall, it took my breath away. It was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who I'd heard of, but didn't realize how big he was.

Bruce Lee had died in 1973, but his relationship with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went back to 1968, when the UCLA basketball star was known as Lew Alcindor. The NCAA banned the dunk in 1967, and Alcindor decided to perfect the skyhook instead. He sought training in martial arts to improve his basketball skills. A friend suggested he study under Bruce Lee, who Alcindor only knew as the actor who played Kato in The Green Hornet. Lee didn't know Alcindor at all, but when they met, Lee was intrigued by the possibility of learning to fight an opponent that was seven feet two inches tall. So he agreed to teach Alcindor. They became friends as well as a teacher and student, and Alcindor even babysat for Lee. Read about the martial arts star and the basketball standout who taught each other at LitHub. -via Damn Interesting  

It's almost October, the time of the year when you want to roam through cemeteries until dark, maybe to impress someone on your first date. Don't ask me why; I've just heard that some people do that. One of them is the YouTuber behind Dime Store Adventures, who lays out what seems like a scavenger hunt for graveyard enthusiasts. Among the seven unusual things you can learn to identify is the Sears headstone. Yes, Sears and Roebuck sold everything at one time or another, and a hundred years ago you could get a gravestone by mail order. Even before that, you could get a gravestone made of zinc! These "zinkers" are still out there, which says something about their longevity. Once you learn how to identify them, you'll see them everywhere. Armed with the knowledge in this video, you'll have a lot more fun in a cemetery. -via Laughing Squid 

No one likes to confront the fact that we waste a lot of food. In the US, wasting food is a given, even though we feel bad tossing out what we've paid for but didn't eat. After all, your parents or grandparents couldn't afford to waste food during the Great Depression or World War II. In Japan, that sentiment entered pop culture in the 21st century. When you see food items on Japanese TV, it will often come with a caption beneath that says "The staff ate it later." This became a thing in response to viewer complaints about the production wasting food. 

But is it true? We can imagine that it depends on the show and on how the food was used. Over the last ten years or so, various interviews have given conflicting answers. While the caption may head off complaints, its very commonality makes people suspect that it isn't true, and besides that it detracts from the drama of the show. Then again, TV crews have the same shame about wasting food that the general population has. Read about the ethics of food shown on Japanese TV at Wikipedia.   -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: 逃亡者 (ja:利用者:逃亡者)) 

There are some pretty famous cases of movies redoing the plot of an earlier movie, or copying characters and details. But if your movie takes just a detail here and an idea there, we often won't notice. That goes double if your movie isn't a big hit. If you don't see a lot of movies, you'll miss out on some of these "twin" plots, and if you see every movie, you might not be able to keep up with them all. For example, I never saw Up but I saw Gran Torino. I know, that's opposite most people's experience.  But someone, somewhere, will notice how two movies are similar in one way or another. 

Some of these are surely coincidences, while others are simply re-using an idea that worked out before, and some are blatant rip-offs. Check the list of 34 instances at Cracked, because you certainly haven't noticed all of these. 

The Toba supereruption, in what is now Indonesia, took place 74,000 years ago, and is the largest volcanic eruption of the past million yers. It ejected so much material that it blocked sunlight for years. Humans were spread through the world by then, but they left no documentation. Genetic studies hint that human population plunged around that time, but we don't yet have the evidence to ascribe their dwindling numbers to Toba. How could we get such evidence? 

Jayde N. Hirniak is an anthropologist studying just that. The materials thrown from a volcano are known a tephra, and the kind of tephra that is thrown the furthest is cryptotephra. It's not called that because it is legendary, but because it is so small that it's hard to find. Cryptotephra is microscopic shards of glass. Its exact chemical makeup can identify which eruption it came from. Hirniak looks for cryptotephra at archaeological sites that may have been active during the Toba event. The archaeological evidence could tell us whether that society collapsed afterward, or moved away, or changed some other way. Read up on what this research has found so far at the Conversation. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: USGS Volcanic Hazards Program, CC BY 4.0)