The evolution of vampire movies seems to have followed two parallel tracks. The 1931 movie Dracula made Bela Lugosi the archetype vampire image for a series of Universal films and pop culture characters like Count Chocula that followed. The 1922 silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror used the same source material and spawned two remakes, the latest of which will open nationwide on Christmas Day, plus a movie about the making of the original movie.

The 1922 Nosferatu was the first production of the new German movie company Prana-Film, and as such, they spent as much money promoting the film as they did making it. The first newspaper reviews of the film were more about the party thrown after the premiere than about the film itself. The company soon went bankrupt, and it's a miracle that we have any existing copies of the film at all. That can't be said about earlier films based on the novel Dracula. Read up on the production of Nosferatu in a trivia list at Mental Floss. The most bizarre story is about the 1979 Werner Herzog remake, the one with all the rats.

There are special people who go to a pet shelter and ask about the cat (or dog) who has been there the longest. The reasons vary, but it's often just because they are older than other adoptable pets. Luna was just such a cat, plus her background was tragic. She had spent her twelve years with a cat hoarder who kept her in a cage. Luna had some health problems, too, as a result of her confined lifestyle. Living in a shelter was better, but she was still in a cage by necessity.

Julie Nashawaty makes a living taking care of other people's pets. For her own household, she only adopts senior cats. She decided to take a chance on Luna, since she looked at the situation from the cat's point of view. Luna needed to learn what a normal life was. There's a saying that "pets are only with us for a short while, but we are with them for their whole life." For Luna, that meant what was left of her life, and Julie knew that she deserved something better than what she'd already experienced, even if it was only for a short time. You'll see in this video that Luna was worth taking a chance.

Wildlife photographer Milko Marchetti is the top winner at this year's Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards for taking this picture of the back end of a squirrel. Titled "Stuck Squirrel," it only appears to be stuck. Marchetti caught the photo at just the right instant as the squirrel was diving into its nest. The photographer, knowing how the image came about, didn't see the humor in it, but when everyone he showed it to laughed, he decided to enter it into the annual competition.

Click to the right on the image above to see winners in the various categories of the competition. You'll see a fox with the zoomies, kissing owls, and a fish chasing an eagle. Read the stories behind these pictures and the photographers who captured them at just the right time in the winner's gallery, which also includes the highly commended photographs. My favorite of those is the cheetah playing hide and seek. See even more in the finalists' gallery.

The 1970s were hardcore. Australia is always hardcore. Tigers are hardcore, too. Between 1970 and 1985, Bacchus Marsh Lion Safari Park, north of Melbourne, pioneered the idea of driving through a reserve filled with wildlife, including lions, tigers, and other big cats. They learned safety protocols the hard way, but the park was never profitable enough to follow them. Nor were the big cats happy to be there. It's a recipe for disaster, and the safari park grew an unwanted reputation.

In the short documentary Strange Beasts, Ron Prendergast tells us of his days as a young zookeeper who was attacked by a tiger at the park -twice. His injuries were horrific, but the psychological scars were even worse. The film is presented in mixed media, with archival footage, re-enactments, animation, and Prendergast himself with a eerily poetic look back at those days. Strange Beasts was directed by his son, Darcy Predergast.  -via Nag on the Lake

Once World War II ended, the United States and the Soviet Union became locked in a competition to move beyond earth. The US had more German scientists, but the Soviets achieved many firsts: the first satellite in orbit, the first man in space, the first woman in space, the first space walk, etc. The USSR planned to land men on the moon in 1967, but that didn't happen, and the Soviet space program went awry in many ways. The US got to the moon first in 1969.

So what happened? The Soviets relied heavily on one man, Sergei Korolev. Korolev was a brilliant rocket scientist who spent the war in Stalin's Gulag, but was freed when it became clear that the US was recruiting Germany's premiere rocket scientists. Korolev designed the best rockets, and quickly. But after his death in 1966, it became clear to his organization that they had relied too much on the one guy who knew what he was doing. Read about Sergei Korolev and what he did for the Soviet space program at Big Think. 

(Image credit: Музей космонавтики/Главархив Москвы)

For decades, people have been drawn to Mexican Coca-Cola because it is made with cane sugar, while US Coke is made with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Those who know swear that Mexican Coke tastes better. The difference benefitted the Coca-Cola company because some people are willing to pay a premium price for Mexican Coke, while most Americans drank whatever Coke was available, and it was made with cheaper ingredients. But a 2011 paper claimed that there is no difference in the sugar content between the two Cokes. Has the company been lying to us? George Zaidan of Reactions decided to do his own sugar content tests to find out. His confounding results required more research.   

Sucrose, glucose, and fructose are all sugars, but they are chemically different. Sucrose, or table sugar, is made from sugar cane. Many of our processed foods are made with HFCS, which is a mixture of two simple sugars, glucose and fructose. And since HFCS is made from subsidized corn, it is much cheaper than cane sugar. But as we will find out in this video, cane sugar, or sucrose, has its own secrets that make everything clear in the end.

Next up, why does the sodium content vary so much between the two drinks? -via Damn Interesting

Microwave ovens have been around for more than 50 years now. They come in all configurations, and people have different habits in using them. Do you try to get to it before the the time expires to avoid that annoying bell? Some folks hit the stop button just before the timer runs out, while others just open the door, assuming no microwaves will escape. I hear this is not good, especially for older microwaves, and can wear out the mechanism that stops the cooking when the doors opens. And there are some people who just open the door, leave it open, and never clear the remaining time. Namely, my younger daughter.

Whichever kind of microwave user you are, there's a browser game that might be very satisfying. Microwave is simple. There are four seconds left in the cooking time. Your goal is to open the microwave door as close to zero as possible without letting the bell go off. Your score will depend on it. The highest score is 10,000, and the sooner you open the door, the lower the score will be. There are plenty of reports of people achieving 10,000, but rarely on the first try. Others are still trying. -via Kottke

It's not quite as difficult as it used to be to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, because the categories have gotten very specific. Also, I would imagine the book has gotten very heavy. On November 26, Sky Elements Drone Shows (previously at Neatorama) teamed up with UVify to stage a Christmas display over Mansfield, Texas. A portion of the show was deemed worthy of a Guinness World Record for "largest aerial display of a gingerbread village image displayed by multirotors/drones" with 4,981 drones. It's so new that Guinness doesn't have a listing for it yet, but they do have pages of world records involving aerial drone displays, many of them from Sky Elements Drone Shows.

But world records aside, the Christmas light show featuring almost 5,000 drones was quite beautiful, from the massive turkey (this was before Thanksgiving) to Santa Claus waving to all. -via Laughing Squid

Every sitcom in the 1980s tried to present a Christmas episode, but there's only so many ways to get festive and heartwarming and still subvert expectations to make the audience laugh. The series Married... with Children went there with a rather gruesome premise that aired on December 20, 1987, totally played for laughs. In the episode "You Better Watch Out," a mall sales promotion went wrong, and a skydiver dressed as Santa Claus crashes to his death in the Bundy's backyard. Ed is obliged to dress up as Santa himself to distract a crowd of children who witnessed the fall so that the coroner can remove the body. You can see the episode at YouTube. It aired with a rare parental guidance warning.  

What you might not know is that the inspiration for the episode was a real Christmas skydiving disaster that happened in 1932. In that incident, no one actually died, but many children were left traumatized by witnessing Santa Claus falling from the sky and crash landing. Read how that came about at Cracked.

Sometimes chemical reactions are so cool that you don't need to fully understand them to be fascinated by them. Here's an experiment in physics and chemistry that will blow your mind. There aren't many metals that are liquid at room temperature. Besides mercury, there's an alloy called galinstan that's composed of gallium, indium, and tin. It has such a low melting point that it can be used as a substitute for mercury, which is quite toxic.

James Orgill of The Action Lab (previously at Neatorama) explains some of the properties that make galinstan so darn cool. It reacts with other chemicals in a way that animates it like the metal blobs are living things. But because these reactions are purely chemical and physical, they can be controlled. Can he make a blob of galinstan find its way through a maze? You bet! There's a skippable ad from 4:48 to 6:16. -via Damn Interesting

The South Korean TV series Squid Game took the world by storm in 2021. The drama features a clandestine game show in which 456 desperate people compete for one enormous cash prize. The catch is (spoiler alert) that the 455 people who don't win will be eliminated by death. It's a bloody dystopian commentary on wealth inequality and unchecked capitalism. Season two begins December 26th.

In a promotion rivaled only by the real game show Squid Game: The Challenge in missing the point, McDonald's Australia is offering a special meal and a contest based on the show. Macca's Squid Game Meal is not exactly a Happy Meal, but it comes in a decorated box and includes ten Chicken McNuggets, fries, a drink, and dalgona candy, a Korean treat stamped with shapes like those featured in season one of Squid Game, plus one stamped with McDonald's arches. If you can nibble your way to the arch shape, you'll be entered into a drawing for a Squid Game tracksuit. The promotion runs from December 11 to January 7 in Australia only. Only Aussies will be able to chomp down on McNuggets while thinking about those 455 people who didn't make it out of the game. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: McDonald's)

In 2002, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland brought us 28 Days Later, which introduced zombies that moved swiftly and were therefore even more dangerous. In 2007, we got the sequel 28 Weeks Later. You may have been under the impression that the trilogy was complete then, but it turns out that the 2000 film 28 Days has nothing to do with zombies. At any rate, the third movie in the series is coming to theaters. 28 Years Later will be released on June 20, 2025.

In the trailer above, the soundtrack stands out as particularly intriguing. It is a famous recording, a 1915 recitation of the Rudyard Kipling poem "Boots" read by actor Taylor Holmes. The poem is about the forced marches of British soldiers across southern Africa during the Second Boer War, its cadence echoing the psychological torture of the march. Read more about the poem and find more links at Metafilter.

Santa Claus does magical things every Christmas, like flying all over the world and fitting down a chimney, not to mention surviving at the North Pole. The real historical figure he's based on, Nicholas, the 4th century Bishop of Myra in Turkey, is also credited with many miracles, although his were not appropriate fodder for children's bedtime stories. People apparently treated each other terribly back then.  

We know little about the historical Nicholas. There are no contemporary accounts, and he left no writing. But he had a reputation as a generous man, giving away his inherited wealth, and for standing up for common people. Centuries after his death, stories were circulated about St. Nicholas, which have evolved over time. One of them involves a butcher who chopped up three little boys and stored their remains in a tub of brine. Nicholas arrived seven years later and brought the boys back to life. Even if a person's faith made them believe in the miracle, the crime itself makes no sense at all. It's a horrifying tale, but the boys' rescue is the kind of thing Nicholas would do. Read about that one and seven other rather gruesome miracle stories attributed to St. Nicholas at Mental Floss.

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's ...sort of both. We think about bird flight as flapping wings, and plane flight as fixed wings and propellors or jets. But there is a lot more to bird flight than flapping wings. Birds take off by hopping into the air with their spring-loaded legs. A new drone project called RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments) combines the mechanics of birds and planes to give us a bird-inspired robotic drone, with vertical takeoff and landing.

Getting a bird's takeoff right wasn't easy, as you'll see in this video. Real birds have to learn how to launch themselves, and so do robotic drones. Notice they haven't exactly mastered the vertical landing yet, but they'll get there. Read about the research that went into the birdlike takeoff in the journal Nature. Then when you see a bird in the air, keep in mind that it could be a raven or maybe a RAVEN. -via Metafilter

Imagine, if you will, going to bed on Christmas Eve and instead of visions of sugarplums dancing in your head, you encounter Freddy Krueger invading your dreams! The Montreal Comiccon Holiday Edition was held over the weekend. This Christmas party gave cosplayers from all over a chance to get festive while still portraying their favorite pop culture characters, and boy, did they! They were pretty imaginative in mashing up movie characters and comic book superheroes with Santa Claus and his elves. Not all cosplayers went for a Christmas mashup, and some went totally Christmas. A few weren't even human!

Yes, that's Johnny Five from the 1986 movie Short Circuit, being all alive dressed as a Christmas tree. Geeks Are Sexy was there to take portraits of the best cosplayers, as they do. See and explore 47 of the best costumes from the Montreal Comiccon Holiday Edition in their gallery. Click on each photo to bring up the full-size version.