Absinthe, sometimes referred to as "the green fairy" became quite well known among the artistic elite of Paris and elsewhere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Artists who illustrated the drink and authors who wrote glowingly of the joy it brought made absinthe oh-so fashionable and gave it the cachet that still mesmerizes us. Never mind that these same artistic types of the era were also indulging in opium, laudanum, cocaine, and other various drugs that were legal medicine at the time. Absinthe was their muse, and it eventually caused a moral panic.

But what is absinthe, anyway? It is green because it was steeped in a mixtures of natural herbs, which included the classic toxin wormwood. Wormwood was reportedly what caused hallucinations. Its flavor came from anise, which made the liquor taste like licorice. And its kick came from between 45% and 90% alcohol (that's 90-180 proof). The one ingredient that was missing was sugar, which led to the performative serving of absinthe with a sugar cube. Learn what absinthe was all about, and why it gained a reputation as the downfall of humanity at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: Viktor Oliva)

The evolution of birds has always seemed puzzling to me. There were once dinosaurs with feathers that didn't fly. There were once reptiles that flew (pterodactyls), and if they had feathers they didn't use them for flight. Why would an animal grow feathers if not for flying? And why did dinosaurs start to fly, anyway? A fossil discovery in 2007 shows us a weird transitional dinosaur/bird that illustrates how feathers really had nothing to do with the urge to fly. Birds developed the wing first, and in fact some resembled bats more than they resembled the reptiles they were. Or were they? The boundary between dinosaur and bird was blurred for an awful long time while they decided what they would use those feathers for. The fact that they ever got it together long enough to develop true wings and become flying birds is an astonishing turn in evolution. PBS Eons explains this strange transitionary species. This video is only eight and a half minutes long; the rest is an ad.

Where do you find gold in the United States? I know! Fort Knox! But you can't just go there and take that gold. And if you think that you can strike it rich by prospecting, remember the lesson of the California Gold Rush- the people who made the most money off of it were the ones who bought city property, shipped people and supplies to California, made jeans for, and sold tools to those prospectors. But there are people today who see prospecting for gold as a hobby, and one with the potential for excitement. Some use the classic panning method, while most use metal detectors. They know where to go for gold, and you can, too.    

You might never find the equivalent of the Comstock Lode, but there are places where you can give it a try, and not only enjoy prospecting as a hobby but take in awesome scenery and commune with nature. You might even pick up some nuggets, too! Read about five of those places at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: US Forest Service) 

In 2023, I’m creating an illustrated tiny sci-fi story every day. Here’s 001/365: pic.twitter.com/ofK2PkISSh

— small worlds (@smllwrlds) January 1, 2023

The Twitter account small worlds began 2023 with a pledge to post a tiny science fiction story in one image every day for an entire year. As of April 27, there are already 117 of these. Some of them will grab you where you least expected.

In 2023, I’m creating an illustrated tiny sci-fi story every day. Here’s 036/365: pic.twitter.com/0N8QgsSRcO

— small worlds (@smllwrlds) February 5, 2023

Yes, they are tiny, but that's the point. You'll want to say, "But what happened then?" That's completely up to you. These setups could serve as a writing prompt where you fill in the details.

It's still 42 https://t.co/Wr3AFwCvQ6

— σπιρκοτο* (@SookiCookie) April 12, 2023

This is particularly harrowing and I love it https://t.co/iITeHpXiUx

— MaxwellsDeamon, blm, 😷 (@MaxwellsDeamon) April 23, 2023

It might take you a while to read all 117 of them, but they are nested in order under this Tweet. You may want to bookmark it because there will be 365 of them by New Year's Eve. -via Geeks Are Sexy

If you've been around Neatorama for a long time, you know we've posted a lot of stories of parasites that turn animals into zombies, whether the parasites are from the plant, animal, and fungus kingdoms. Now we have Ze Frank bringing us up to speed on fungal parasites that do that to insects in his inimitable style. He starts off with fungal parasites in general before he moves onto how they've adapted to cause zombification. He shows us three types of fungal infection that take over and control the behavior of insects to their own ends. Yes, cordyceps is there, as you would expect. Beware that nature is metal, and what the fungus does to an insect can easily squick you out. In other words, this video may be disturbing for anyone who has empathy for insects. Also this video contains NSFW language. There's a one-minute internal ad at 5:17.

Thursday was "Take Your Child to Work" day at the White House. Reporters, Secret Service agents, and White House staff took their children in for a day of receptions, speeches, tours, and educational activities. Some of the kids were prepared ahead of time and took on or otherwise reflected their parents' roles, like press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre's son Andrew, who asked questions during a press briefing, and these temporary Secret Service agents. Oh yes, you better believe there was ice cream.

The comments at reddit were about how tired and fed up some of the kids in the pictures were, because that's the way all field trips are when you're in elementary school. Some joked about the states that have recently relaxed child labor laws. Sadly, the most common response to this picture is that these children are safer guarding the president than they are at school. A good time was had by all.

In Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, it is revealed that Mr. Rochester kept his first wife hidden in the attic for decades. The "madwoman in the attic" literary device has been used quite a bit since then, but it was shocking when the book was published in 1847. Brontë was inspired by a 16th century home in North Yorkshire, England, called Norton Conyers. There had been rumors about the home in Brontë’s time, which she would have been aware of. And it has an attic. But the house is undergoing a 30-year renovation project. The workers removed the floorboards in the attic, and discovered a secret set of stairs that had been covered over a long time ago. Did someone really keep a family member locked in that attic?

This is just one of a list of 15 places that have hidden or secret passageways that either have a detailed history behind them or remain a mystery to this day. You can visit most of them. Read about the various reasons people have built secret passageways in their edifices at Messy Nessy Chic. 

(Image credit: David Rogers)

The new Star Wars video game drops Friday with much fanfare. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, featuring protagonist Cal Kestis. In this promo for the game, Cameron Monaghan is performing motion capture duties for Kestis (which he really did), and Mark Hamill is coaching him on how to be a Jedi, or at least play one in a computer game. You can almost see why Luke Skywalker's Jedi academy failed and drove him to hermithood on Ahch-To. Wait, no, that's a movie. This is the actor Mark Hamill, who always manages to draw us into the fictional world and then laughs and slaps us sideways to remind us of the difference between actors and characters. That's a valid reason to use the Force.  -via Boing Boing

It's common knowledge that cats domesticated themselves around 10,000 years ago, when they followed mice and rats into human grain storage facilities in the Fertile Crescent as humans moved from hunting and gathering to agricultural societies. That also happened in Egypt 3,500 years ago. So experts thought cats were taken around to the corners of the Greek and Roman Empires on ships between the third and seventh centuries. But more recent research upends that notion.

It appears that house cats were already a thing in what is now Poland and Serbia during Neolithic period, around 8,000 years ago. Archaeological digs have uncovered bones of household cats that weren't much different in size from the cats of the Fertile Crescent. That would indicate that it wasn't ship's cats that traveled to Europe and beyond, but they naturally spread when agriculture did, many thousands of years earlier. Where the food is, that's where the mice go. And where there's mice, cats will find them. You can read more about this research at Strange Maps. -via Kottke

(Image credit: M. Krajcarz et al, Antiquity, 2022)

Magnets, how do they work? Here they are not so much working as playing. YouTuber Magnetic Games built a seven-note scale using magnets and the resonance they provide when they repel each other. After tuning the screws, he plays a couple of songs you will recognize. I'm not all that sure what he's doing in the second half of the video, but it looks like a lot of fun. But you're just wondering where you can get a big bag of magnets to play with. At the YouTube page, there's a list of them linked to their product pages. You have to wonder how much trouble they cause for the shipper.  -via Nag on the Lake

Steam-powered boats revolutionized trade and travel on American rivers in the 1800s, but they were dangerous. The wooden boats were powered by huge boilers that tended to explode. But new technology is something to get excited about, and any human endeavor will eventually turn into a competition, so steamboat races became a thing. These races were an ego trip for the boat captains, a way to advertise for boat owners, a new sport for gamblers, and something to do for spectators.

During competitions, the boilers on these steamboats would be pushed to their breaking point, which could spell disaster for all involved, especially passengers aboard at the time. The first steamboat race in 1811 didn't see any explosions or deaths, but the boats crashed into each other. Then in 1852, a steamboat boiler exploded during a race and 80 people died. Still, the story seemed to only add excitement to the races, which continued to be held on rivers far and wide, drawing millions in wagers. Read about the era of steamboat races at Smithsonian.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

The stereotype of Southern cooking is that it covers a lot of sins by adding butter, because everything's better with butter. Well, it's true, but you can also say that about French cooking. Deep-frying stuff in batter is typical of the South, yet it's also popular in plenty of other parts of the US. Casseroles are not limited to the South, either, as they are very common in the Midwest and in the Mormon corridor. So what really epitomizes Southern cooking?

To me, raised in a border state, it's the casual attitude towards measurements. I learned a few family recipes growing up, but I gradually altered them past the point of recognition. Then I doubled them to feed a big family. Then I got into the habit of using what I have rather than what I'd have to run out to get. By the time my kids were old enough to ask me for those familiar recipes, it was hard to go through my usual sequence and describe what ingredients and how much of them I use. That's the heart of Southern cooking. You ask for the recipes you love from Mama or Grandma or the nice lady at the church, and they will write them down for you... at least the parts they recall. Grandma doesn't cook anymore and is a bit forgetful, Mama never measured anything, and that church lady doesn't want you to outshine her in cooking. So even if you follow the recipe, you'll have to suffer a crushing blow to your ego in your first failures, then experiment with that recipe by adding a good amount of butter.    

The horror film The Pope's Exorcist, starring Russell Crowe, is currently in theaters, and has drawn mixed reviews for different reasons. The International Association of Exorcists is upset that the film "distorts and falsifies" the reality of exorcism. The movie is a fictionalized account based on the association's founder, Father Gabriele Amorth, who became the assistant to the the chief exorcist of the diocese of Rome in 1986, and then succeeded him as chief. Amorth wrote a couple of books about his experiences as an exorcist, which inspired the movie. The priest claimed to have performed 70,000 exorcisms, although that includes multiple rituals performed on the same person. Amorth also claimed that the vast majority of cases in which he was approached for help involved mental illness instead of possession. Amorth's life (he died in 2016) was not a horror story, at least entirely. Read about the real man behind the movie at Smithsonian. 

For those who have seen The Pope's Exorcist, History vs. Hollywood breaks down the incidents portrayed in the film and compares them to incidents from history and from Amorth's books.

You will be forgiven for thinking this is a stage effect from a Rammstein concert. It's not, but they might be inspired by this incident.

Disneyland has a show called Fantasmic! in which Mickey Mouse must save the day when Maleficent (the villain from Sleeping Beauty) turns into a 45-foot tall fire-breathing dragon. But during the last show on Saturday night, something went awry and the entire animatronic dragon caught fire! 



All cast members and guests were evacuated from the area, and fire and rescue extinguished the fire. No one was injured. Disneyland has temporarily suspended all fire effects in their shows pending an investigation. The same show at Walt Disney World in Florida will continue with fire effects.  -via reddit

If you come at the king, you should do it while he's on the toilet. It happened in Game of Thrones, and there are historical precedents. It makes sense, since one is most vulnerable when relieving oneself, and that's the time a powerful man is most likely to be completely alone.

Take the story of poor Jaromír, who was briefly the duke of Bohemia twice in the 11th century. Jaromír's older brother Boleslaus III was duke before him, and was quite paranoid about his younger brothers' ambitions. He had Jaromír castrated and exiled. That really set off the family squabbles, and Jaromír and his younger brother Oldřich spent the rest of their lives trying to take the dukedom from Boleslaus, each other, and the forces of the king of Poland. Jaromír was ultimately blinded on orders from Oldřich and imprisoned, where he was speared through one night while on the toilet.

Read that story and those of four other rulers who were offed while doing their business at Amusing Planet. It's not always good to be the king.