People love to gossip, and gossip about someone famous travels wider and is remembered longer than gossip about your neighbors. Some bizarre and totally made-up stories about royalty find new life in print (see any tabloid), and the tales grow larger and stranger as they are passed along until idle gossip becomes a full-blown conspiracy theory. However, the term "conspiracy theory" has inched beyond its original meaning of a secret group engineering something that has a perfectly normal explanation. These stories are more like gossip, alleged scandals, and tall tales that just won't go away.

Any time a monarch dies young, there will be rumors of murder. That happened when King William II died in a hunting accident in 1100, and again when James I died in 1625 after refusing the advice of his doctors. Illegitimate children are a favorite subject of gossip, because everyone likes to think of a hidden royal somewhere. We've all heard the rumor about Prince Albert Victor (pictured above), Queen Victoria's grandson, being Jack the Ripper. And if you can believe it, Charles III is a vampire. Sure, he's related to Vlad the Impaler, but so is all European royalty. Read up on ten stubborn conspiracy theories involving the British royal family at Mental Floss.

Korean YouTuber 아픈 니가 청춘 is 193 centimeters tall, or 6' 4". All his life, he's been the odd man out, with people staring at him and asking if he plays basketball. In this video, he goes to Netherlands, where the average man's height is the tallest on earth, just over six feet. Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he is surrounded by men taller than he is. Many are two meters tall, which is 6' 6". He also discovers what normal accommodations for tall people are like. For example, he doesn't have to bend over to use a sink, and he can see his face in a bathroom mirror. He can stand up straight on a train! For contrast, he talks to an average-sized Korean woman who is also in Netherlands, and how she struggles with a world built for tall people. Those of us who are fairly average for our communities don't realize how much difference that makes. -via reddit

Many people keep journals of their lives for a variety of reasons, but through history, women could write in a diary to express ideas that wouldn't be accepted if she said them out loud. Sarah Gristwood's new book, released today, is called Secret Voices: A Year of Women’s Diaries. It is a collection of entries from women's diaries over the past 400 years. These personal musings include day-to-day events, but often delve into the feelings they experienced. There is joy, ambition, grief, misery, love, and transformation, but the most common theme over the entire project is frustration.

Beatrix Potter was an expert on fungus, but wasn't taken seriously in her day. Ada Blackjack was treated so badly on her Arctic expedition that she was relieved when the last man died. Florence Nightingale's family objected to her desire to become a nurse. Sophia Tolstoy wrote about the abuse she suffered from her husband Leo. The common theme is the inability to do anything about these problems. Gristwood read hundreds of women's diaries for her project, and she shares some of the more notable emotions she encountered in them at Smithsonian.

David "Sandy" Gottesman had a friend back in the 1960s named Warren Buffet. Over the years, he invested money in Buffet's company and left the portfolio to grow. Meanwhile, Gottesman's wife Ruth taught in the pediatrics department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. David died in 2022 after 72 years of marriage. He left his Berkshire Hathaway stock, now worth a billion dollars, to Ruth, telling her to "Do whatever you think is right with it." Yesterday the 96-year-old widow announced it would go to the medical school, with a stipulation on how it is to be used.

We are profoundly grateful that Dr. Ruth Gottesman, Professor Emerita of Pediatrics at @EinsteinMed, has made a transformational gift to #MontefioreEinstein—the largest to any medical school in the country—that ensures no student has to pay tuition again. https://t.co/XOy9HZLbfD pic.twitter.com/1ijv02jHFk

— Montefiore Health System (@MontefioreNYC) February 26, 2024

That amount of money ensures that the couple of hundred students admitted to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine every year will pay no tuition for as long as the institution remains in existence. Students who are graduating this spring will receive a refund on the 2024 spring semester. -via Fark

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This guy works way too hard to make his life simple. Pure nonsense, well done. His white pants stay clean while everything around him is dirty. He can't be bothered to brush his own teeth, but builds a stove with a hammer and chisel. And what's the deal with the toilet? But the parts you'll really remember are the video effects involving the chicken and the fish. Yeah, it's actually a rooster, but let's not quibble over details. The details are what makes this funny.

This is Hong Kong YouTuber GuiGe doing a parody of all those "rural life in China" videos. The sequence above is an excerpt from a much longer video called Mama Rong's Rural Life, featuring his mother. The weirdness of contrasting primitive and technical elements, the special effects, and the complete absurdity of it all will keep you watching. The song is "Aloha Heja He" by German singer Achim Reichel. -via reddit

The Thaua people of new South Wales, Australia, have always had a mystical relationship with killer whales, or orcas. They believe that after death, they are reincarnated as an orca. So is it any wonder that they learned to work together with the orcas to hunt whales? However, we don't know if the hunt came first or the beliefs. For centuries, Thaua people would sing to the orcas, and the orcas would herd baleen whales into Twofold Bay. Once trapped, Thaua hunters would kill the whales and harvest the meat, while giving the tender tongue to the orcas. This procedure was codified and passed on to each generation.

When European colonizers discovered how the Thaua hunted with orcas in 1844, they joined in and harvested whales successfully using the same method. But that only lasted so long. By the 1930s, orcas were rarely seen off the coast of TwoFold Bay, and the familiar families of the killer whales were dwindling to just a few members. The Thaua blame this on a few incidents when European whalers broke the code of the orcas. Read what happened to cooperative hunting with orcas at Amusing Planet.

The Boston Typewriter Orchestra (previously at Neatorama) has always made music with typewriters the old fashioned way: with manual typewriters, the ones that took real finger power to use and made loud noises. But now they've made a tiny step into the 20th century. They composed a new song for their submission to the Tiny Desk Concert series at NPR that uses electric typewriters! The song is titled "Selectric Funeral."

Still, these typewriters are far from new. I got a Selectric to take to college back in the 1970s, and it looked new compared to these machines. The "new" typewriters give the orchestra some flexibility in the sounds they make, with effects straight out of the 1960s. I love how one machine was equipped with a large bell to give it a "normal" carriage return sound. And having to repair something in the middle of a song is just the way you'd expect an electric typewriter to perform. -via Laughing Squid  

Through most of the 20th century, paleoanthropologists considered the birthplace of Homo sapiens to be in East Africa. Or maybe South Africa. That's where the oldest fossils were found, of both humans and their ancestors. But 21st century discoveries in Morocco, specifically from a site called Jebel Irhoud, suggest that modern man developed in Northwest Africa. Skulls excavated there date back around 300,000 years, much older than human skulls found elsewhere. But are they Homo sapiens? The facial features are modern, but the brain case is shaped a little differently. However, the same brain case shape is found in skulls from East Africa which were always considered Homo sapiens.

Who was there first? Humans could have traveled across Africa over time. There could have been many human species that interbred in different areas. But we have to acknowledge that the fossil record is scant, considering the geography involved, and just because we haven't found more fossils doesn't mean they aren't there. So at this time, we really don't know where humans evolved. Read about these recent discoveries and the questions they raise at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: © Philipp Gunz, MPI EVA Leipzig (License: CC-BY-SA 2.0))

In ancient Japanese lore, earthquakes are caused by the movements of a giant catfish. This idea got an artistic renaissance following the 1855 Edo earthquake close to what is now Tokyo. That earthquake leveled 14,000 buildings and between 7,000 and 10,000 people died. Immediately afterward, artists began producing woodblock prints called Namazu-e that illustrated the earthquake, the populace's reaction to it, and the catfish at the heart of it.  

Many people bought these prints and displayed them in their homes as a charm against another quake. And quite a few of them are rather lighthearted. This was because the greatest damage came to those who had the most to lose, and the earthquake was seen by some as a "great leveling" of social classes. Therefore, the authorities banned the production of Namazu-e within weeks of the earthquake. Some were still produced afterward, but almost all the surviving examples are from late 1855. See a gallery of 45 of these unique artworks at the Public Domain Review. -via Nag on the Lake

Jermain Loguen escaped from his Tennessee slavemaster in 1834 by stealing a horse. He made his way to New York, became a minister and a noted abolitionist, started a family, and built schools. As he became widely known, the wife of his enslaver wrote a letter to Loguen in 1860. It started off as a friendly update on her family and Loguen's family members who were still enslaved, then demanded Loguen send $1000 for the horse he stole (which had been returned), or else she would sell him in absentia. Loguen replied with a letter for the ages. Here's just a small part.

You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, “you know we raised you as we did our own children.” Woman, did you raise your own children for the market? Did you raise them for the whipping-post? Did you raise them to be driven off in a coffle in chains? Where are my poor bleeding brothers and sisters? Can you tell?

There's a lot more to the letter, which drips with "unutterable scorn and contempt." Read the entire response at Letters of Note. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: William Simpson)

When you have more money than you could possibly spend, you might consider traveling the world, or you might want to purchase (another) luxury home among other people of the same class. Then there are the people who do both. The World is a unique cruise ship that has 165 luxury apartments on board and cruises around the world every year. People can buy these apartments for millions of dollars, and then pay recurring fees for food and services. In return, all your needs are met in the swankiest ways, and you can see the sights of the world from the comfort of your own home. Plus your neighbors are all people of means who must be accepted by current residents before they purchase a slot on the ship.

Peter Antonucci spent six years on The World, in five different apartments, upgrading each time he moved. While the ship traveled around the globe, he came and went as he pleased, flying home to New York or going on extended adventures, and then flying to The World's location to rejoin the cruise. After moving back to dry land, he used his journals to write novels set on a ship. Antonucci told CNN about the process of purchasing an apartment on The World and what it's like to live this way. It's a glimpse into a life the rest of us can only dream of. -via Fark

(Image credit: Eric V. Blanchard) 

When my kids lived at home, they flew off on adventures often, and their flights always seemed to leave at 4, 5, or 6 AM. I know this because I had to drive them to the nearest commercial airport 90 minutes away. Now I know why- early morning flights tend to be less expensive than those later in the day. But that's not the only reason you might want to book an early morning flight -and annoying the person who gets up super early to drive you to the airport is not a sufficient reason.

Another reason to fly early in the day is that the odds of flight delays or cancellations are lower for flights leaving first thing in the morning, and there are a bunch of different reasons why later flights can run into problems. There are other reasons why morning flights are a better idea all around, which you can read at Mental Floss. It helps if you are able to sleep on a plane.

(Image credit: Dmitry Avdeev)

The Academy Awards will be given out on March 10, and that's only a couple of weeks away. That's as good a reason as any for Simon Tofield to present his "Simon's Cat Awards." These are some of the same categories as the Oscars, but the competitors are all characters from the world of Simon's Cat. What we get are vignettes from the many cartoons, around one to two minutes each, that illustrate the acting chops of the cats that create non-stop chaos and the surprising peripheral characters. However, I don't believe all of them are from the past year. My favorite is the visual effects award.  

What would you guess this object is? An ancient bead? A ball for some kind of game? Maybe a kitchen tool, like a rolling pin? None of the above, and it's not even manmade. This is a Klerksdorp Sphere, found inside a three billion-year-old rock formation in South Africa. It does look strangely round, and the grooves around the middle seem like deliberate decoration. But this is how they are found. Could they have been left by aliens, or maybe some long-forgotten sentient civilization that died out long before mankind arose? Some people believe that, and that they even have mystical powers. One in a museum is said to have rotated on its own, inside a glass display case.

However, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation, although the above link doesn't make it easy to visualize. Neither does Wikipedia. The best I can make of it is that they were formed by water seeping into metamorphic rock, which carved a round opening before the minerals dissolved in it crystallized into a solid sphere. The grooves around it were caused by rock layering over time. If you understand the process as described at either source, maybe you can explain it better. But it wasn't aliens. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Robert Huggett)

Fifty years ago, when Baby Boomers were starting families, demographers looked at the statistics and started to panic. World population was growing exponentially, meaning that eventually there would be more people than the world could sustain, and it would happen fast. But, like what happened in China, statistics and extrapolations don't tell the entire story. The exponential growth chart went awry, and population growth slowed. It hasn't gone down globally, but it isn't growing the way it used to. There are many reasons for that, as MinuteEarth explains.

However, fertility rate and population density varies widely by location, and so do demographics. Some countries are already lopsided, with more older people than young people, while other places have plenty of children. While we shouldn't worry about a population explosion, there are challenges in places that go to the extreme in any of those parameters.