Up through most of the 20th century, school discipline could involve paddling, rapping your knuckles with a ruler, or forced labor. That last one might still be in use. But science teacher H.T. Opsahl had an electric chair, and he used it to punish unruly students. 

The chair began as a science experiment. A 25-year-old military veteran, Opsahl had rigged the wooden chair with a metal bar that would conduct electricity from a Tesla coil into the body of whoever sat in it. Opsahl had punished at least two other misbehaving students with time in the chair before 14-year-old Earl Tenneson, but it was Tenneson who told his father about it. The elder Tenneson stormed into Barnesville High School in Minnesota demanding an explanation. This was in 1924, and the school authorities said it was no big deal, the student was alright. Read about the classroom electric chair used as punishment at Mental Floss. 

Whatever year you can name out of the last 100 years, there has been a movie that is set in that year, or at least covers it. YouTuber kaptainkristian (previously at Neatorama) found a movie that depicts each year between 1925 and 2025 and arranged them in chronological order. While some just evoke the era, most of them show us a familiar historical event that you've either experienced or have read about -and the ones that you lived through hit the hardest. Has it really been 36 years since the Berlin Wall fell? Every once in a while the year is displayed to help keep us straight. Toward the end, the movies move from historical to futuristic, as many classic science fiction stories are set in years that have already elapsed. There is a list of these movies at the YouTube page, because you might not have seen them all. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

The greatest whodunit writer ever was Agatha Christie. She wrote 66 novels, 14 collections of short stories, and 20 plays, almost all challenging the reader to figure out who perpetrated a crime, usually murder, from the clues left behind. Many of those murders involved poisons. Christie had a background in chemistry, as she had worked as a pharmaceutical assistant back in the days when pharmacists mixed up medicines themselves. She knew which chemicals could be easily obtained, which had medicinal uses, and how much of it was required to kill someone. 

In her  murder mysteries, Christie became a science communicator, giving the reader all the clues they needed to identify the killer if they could figure out how those clues fit together. For example, in her 1939 novel Murder is Easy, one victim dies by ingesting oxalic acid. It was found that a cough syrup bottle had been filled with hat paint, which was made with oxalic acid. Only by learning what hat paint was and the type of person who used it can the reader find the killer -and Christie makes it all clear, little by little. Chemist and science writer Kathryn Harkup has written two volumes on Agatha Christie's poisons, and lets us in on how the novelist taught us about various poisons without sounding like a university lecturer, at Big Think.    

(Image credit: Kenny Louis) 

We know exactly why Screen Junkies has gone back to 1987 to review Spaceballs. Spaceballs 2 has only recently been announced, to be released sometime in 2027. Sure, you went to see Mel Brooks' Star Wars parody, and you laughed, but you might not recall the plot. This Honest Trailer goes over it, even though it doesn't make sense and it doesn't really matter. The point of the film was to make fun of the Star Wars franchise's merchandising and generally cashing in while the iron was hot. Little did we know then that the money-making machine that is Star Wars would continue for the next 50 years at least. Spaceballs'  constant stream of jokes, self-deprecation, double entendres, and random crashing of the fourth wall only made us laugh more, and yeah, you had to go see it a second time because you missed a lot of jokes while you were laughing the first time around. Did Screen Junkies like Spaceballs? You betcha!  

You've seen many lists of the funniest films, and the writers behind them know that a good way to keep people from arguing about #1 is to let Blazing Saddles top the list. The 1974 movie had a problem during the filming, though- the crew would break out in laughter, ruining take after take. The lighting guys and the production assistants may have read the script, but Brooks encouraged the actors to improvise when they could, so you never knew what would come out of their mouths when the time came. 

The chaos on the set was a glimpse into how successful Blazing Saddles would be in theaters. If the crew broke up, that meant whatever they heard was really funny. But laughter slowed the process down, and Brooks was well aware that every extra minute cost money on an already-tight budget. So he came up with a workaround, an on-set rule that apparently worked well enough to get the shooting done each day. Read what Brooks did to keep the crew from cracking up at Cracked.   

This is statistics class, so the professor has stats on how previous classes have done on tests. The charts show that this class scored so well that they had to be cheating. When I started watching this, I thought it might be a real video of the fallout after an incident of cheating in a college class. No, this is a "recreation," otherwise known as a skit. But it draws you in. How did the students score so high on their tests? Was it ChatGPT? Collusion? As the story progresses, you start to think that there's some reality-bending going on. About halfway through, you realize you are right, but you're still only halfway through, so what's to come? That's when everything goes completely off the rails. Contains NSFW language. -via Memo of the Air 

I believe was inspired by a real cheating incident at the University of Central Florida that provoked a lecture that went viral 15 years ago. 

True bravery is serving your country from deep inside the lion's den. James Armistead Lafayette was an enslaved man from Virginia who volunteered to work for the British military during the American Revolution. They made him a spy. What the British didn't know was that Lafayette was already working for the Continental Army, who arranged his move to the British. As a double agent, Lafayette fed false or useless information to the British while relaying critical information to the Americans. After the war, he did not achieve his freedom as promised, because he was a spy instead of a soldier, until 1787.  

Mental Floss has a list of "forgotten figures" of the American Revolution. Why were they forgotten? Some of them fought for the British side, and were therefore ignored in American history classes, and this war is barely a side note in British history. Some of them were Black or women. I would argue about Crispus Attucks being a forgotten figure, since we all learned in school that he was the first person killed in the war. But his story and those of seven others are all worth reading as we prepare to celebrate the 249th birthday of the USA.  

Our pet cats would love to communicate with us, but they aren't equipped to speak our language. Mine can understand the English words that are important to them (except for the deaf one, who understands some gestures), and they are very good at telling me what they want with body language. Digit, on the other hand, goes the extra mile to hold conversations using his cat speech the best that he can. Sure, he understands words and obeys well compared to other cats. His human knew he wanted more, so she set him up with speech buttons to express his needs and desires. Digit is very smart, and knows he must take pills every day, but probably doesn't quite understand why. It's difficult enough for people to understand autoimmune disease. You can learn more about Digit's medical history in this video. You can keep up with Digit and his special needs housemates at Instagram. 

On June 30th, 1995, the movie Apollo 13 opened nationwide and was the #1 film for four weeks. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won two. Apollo 13 was based on astronaut Jim Lovell's book Lost Moon, although the movie rights were sought before he even wrote it. Lovell was the commander of the real Apollo 13 mission in 1970, in which an oxygen tank blew up and the crew miraculously made it back to earth. Even though everyone knew how it turned out, the story was made for the big screen. 

Few movies hold up as well as Apollo 13 thirty years later, but it was a period piece based on historical events rendered with astonishing accuracy. For example, scenes of weightlessness were filmed on the KC-135 "Vomit Comet" because it was actually cheaper than recreating the effects on a sound stage. But it wasn't as thoroughly accurate as the memories of some at NASA. Director Ron Howard did take a few liberties with the story, in order to streamline the plot and keep the cast of characters to a manageable level. Read about those liberties, as well as the memories of some of those involved, and learn about the quote that didn't happen and its effects on NASA, at Ars Technica. 

How close can we actually get to the Sun? Well, we are 93 million miles away now, and the sun burns our skin if we stay outside on a sunny summer day. Any further away, and we'd freeze up, so that's a good distance to keep. However, this question isn't about "we," meaning you and me, but about launching probes to gather data. We've been sending probes to the sun since 1961, and have learned a lot before each probe failed or stopped communication.

The Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, has the record for the closest approach while still functioning when it got to 3.8 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) from the sun on June 19, 2025. The probe is nearing the end of its planned mission, but since it's still in good shape, NASA plans to let it continue orbiting the sun until next year when they decide what to do with it next. The TED-Ed lesson explains how we've come this close to touching the sun without melting.  

If I were to tell you about a furry animal that lives high in the rainforest trees of Central and South America, climbing up with its two long claws and sleeping all day, you would assume I'm talking about a sloth. No, the silky anteater (Cyclopes didactylus) may have borrowed some of its lifestyle from a sloth, but it eats ants. Otherwise, it doesn't much resemble anteaters you've seen before. The smallest species of all the anteaters, it has fluffy golden fur, a relatively short snout, and enters a state of semi-hibernation during the daylight hours. At night, it descends to the ground to browse for ants, in its own ecologically-sustainable way. 

Silky anteaters are tiny and cute, but what's really mind blowing is the method of camouflage they have developed to fool predators while they are sleeping. Read about the silky anteater and see plenty of pictures at The Ark In Space. 

(Image credit: Sylvère corre) 

(Image credit: Chris Coman)

A staircase is a way for people to walk to a different height. They can be pretty, but they don't need to be clever, cool, or artful. They need to be safe! Just ask anyone who's ever fallen down a flight. The stairs above are carpeted, but there was no need to use a striped pattern that changes direction randomly. You can't just shut your eyes and hold the handrail, either, since the stairs themselves change direction close to the landing. Or do they? A staircase is the last place you want optical illusions. Other stairs can be dangerous because they lack handrails for the sake of style, or they won't accommodate your feet. Then there are ancient staircases that were built to access places that are just too steep.

(Image credit: Felipe Muniz)

Sure, the angle probably makes these look worse than they really are, but I would be holding onto the chain rail for dear life. Bored Panda has a ranked list of 50 such confusing, scary, wacky, and/or dangerous stairs. Nice to look at, but you don't want to use them.  

This music video mashup is silly and completely generated by artificial intelligence, but it's also intriguing. Miami Vice introduced the rest of the country to stylish cops in pastel suits who clubbed along the coast of Miami. Here we have familiar Star Wars characters doing the same thing without even a thought of overthrowing the Empire. They're not only young, but most of them are quite hot. Not Yoda, of course, he's just cool. When you recall the saturated neon colors and glowing skin of the real Miami Vice series, the AI sheen makes sense here. The algorithm's abilities to render familiar faces out of pure fantasy is a bit unnerving. There's one scene at about 3:06 where I couldn't decide whether the man was Mark Hamill or Hayden Christiansen. The face is a blend of both, which makes sense in the Star Wars universe. It's only a matter of time before this kind of thing takes over feature films. 

America has had women doctors since Elizabeth Blackwell got her medical degree in 1849. Yet by 1910, women made up only 6% of medical doctors, and were mostly limited to serving women and children. In 1917, America was dealing with two supposedly unrelated forces: World War I and the women's suffrage movement. The National American Woman Suffrage Association organized group of American doctors under the title Women’s Oversea Hospitals (WOH), who brought those two forces together when they went to Europe to help in the war effort. Neither the US Army nor the Red Cross would sponsor such a trip, but the French were desperate for medical help and invited them. 

These doctors wanted to serve their country and help those suffering from the war, but they also wanted to prove that women should have the right to vote. They also wanted experience in surgery, which was largely restricted at home. The French doctors had little respect for the WOH, and wanted them to only treat women and children. But soon after the first group arrived, the local hospital was inundated with war wounded, and WOH doctors quickly learned how to amputate limbs and dress horrific wounds. They were eventually commissioned into the French military. Even after the Armistice, WOH stayed to care for POWs, refugees, and the wounded. Read about the doctors of WOH, their wartime experience, and their legacy at Smithsonian.  

We post a lot about endangered species and how we should protect them and their habitats. We've also posted a lot about invasive species that cause us problems. Coyotes are neither of those. They are native to the US, and they are thriving. Actually, the coyote population is exploding. These wiley canines have expanded their range and have adapted to life around humans. Killing a coyote is actually liable to produce more coyotes! This is because of a quirk in coyote culture (which is more than just ordering from an ACME catalog) and biology. Wildlife biologist Cameron Duke of Minute Earth explains how that happens. The upshot is that it is impossible to exterminate coyotes. Not that we'd really want to, but we'd like to keep them under some control before they outnumber us. This video is only 2:16, since they get right to the point, and the rest is advertising.