Mobster turned witness turned tour guide Frank Cullotta was a consultant on the movie Casino. He was there when the events of the filmed occurred, although his character’s name was changed to Frank Marino in the film. He says the movie is “75% to 90% accurate,” but to tell the whole story, you need to know what comes before and after. So we get a history of organized crime in Las Vegas from the beginning. Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel opened the Flamingo, which led to Siegel’s murder in 1947. History professor Michael Green fills in the details.

The Thunderbird is built soon afterward and that’s tied to Lansky. The Desert Inn is being started; the builder of it, Wilber Clark, runs out of money. In comes [mobster] Moe Dalitz and the Mayfield Road Gang from Cleveland, and you do have — at this point — a proliferation of mob ownership and investment. Throw in that in November of 1950, Estes Kefauver brought his Senate organized crime committee hearing here, and he talked about how terrible legal gambling was in Nevada because of the mob. The result of his hearing was that they were shutting down illegal operations around the country. Where were they going to go to run casinos? Well, Nevada was the logical place and Las Vegas was the most logical place in Nevada. So there’s also this outside factor influencing things. But, certainly the success of the Flamingo, especially after Siegel is the victim of a hostile takeover — and when you’re shot that may times it’s certainly a hostile takeover — I think that contributed greatly to the mob’s interest in the area.

Green and Cullotta have plenty to say about the heyday of the mob in Las Vegas, which you can read at Uproxx.

Americans are so used to the concept of separation of church and state that we forget how rare it is in the rest of the world. In Iceland, everyone pays a church tax, which goes to the religious organization you register. If you are an atheist, or have no religious preference, your portion of the tax goes to the government, which uses it to support the Church of Iceland. But now there’s an alternative for those who would prefer not to support a church. The new Zuist religion is inviting people to join, by promising their tax would be refunded by the church.

On the Zuist website in Iceland it was advertised that anyone over the age of 16 registering with the religion ( and thus unregistering from the National Church of Iceland) would get a refund for these fees called parish fees. However, tax authorities have responded to mbl.is explaining that if Zuists go ahead to refund parish fees to their members they will have to pay income tax from these funds.

Zuists would like to abolish government funding to religious organisations in the form of parish fees and believe that the "state should stop gathering data on the personal religious beliefs of Icelanders."

The Zuist religion is based on ancient Sumerian texts. Read more about this new religion at Iceland Monitor. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Luis García)

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Canoramic Bathroom Reader.

Even extraordinary people suffer from ordinary problems. And having a difficult relationship with a parent is a pretty common one. (No, not us, Mom.) Say hello to George Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington.

THE ORPHAN

Mary Ball was born on a Virginia farm in 1708. Her father, Joseph Ball, died when she was three years old, and her mother, also named Mary, died when she was twelve. Afterward, the girl was raised by George Eskridge, a family friend. At 23, she married Augustine Washington, a 37-year-old widower with three children. The couple had six children together (one died in infancy) before Augustine died in 1743, leaving Mary to raise their five surviving children alone.

George Washington, named in honor of George Eskridge, was Mary and Augustine’s oldest son. He was only eleven when his father died. As the oldest male in the house, it fell upon him to help raise his younger siblings and also to help run the farm, and because Mary did not remarry, George had to shoulder these responsibilities for the rest of his childhood.

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

Perhaps because she had suffered so much loss over the years— or because as a single mom raising five kids on a farm, she just needed a lot of help— Mary became extremely possessive of George. She took no interest in his personal ambitions other than to feel threatened by them, and she was jealous of any time that he spent away from the farm. She habitually accused him of neglecting or even abandoning her, even though he was by all accounts a devoted and dutiful son.

When George was 14, his older half-brother Lawrence and some well-connected family friends hatched a scheme to get him out of the house and away from his mother by securing a position for him as a midshipman on a Royal Navy frigate. After a lot of persuading, Mary agreed to the plan, but she changed her mind at the last minute, and George, bags packed and ready to go, had to unpack and remain on the farm with her.

LAND LOTS OF LAND

A trio of young African civets enjoy a bowl of porridge with milk. They go at it wholeheartedly, while the cats are more fastidious. Well, the cats relish the milk, while the civets plow through it to get to the porridge on the bottom. Riverbank Fisher lives in rural Ghana and has civets living in his large walled garden. They are his pets, but stay outdoors. He says civets tend to destroy furniture.

(YouTube link)

A later video of the same civets shows how they have grown and become affectionate. Riverbank Fisher said he had to cut back on the milk when they started to get too fat! -via Tastefully Offensive

Humans are notoriously bad at detecting whether a potential romantic partner is dropping subtle hints of interest. Men overestimate the odds that women are flirting with them, while women underestimate the odds that a man is flirting with them. A person’s perception and interpretation of another’s behavior is often colored by their desires and their fear of rejection. Maybe an objective observer could do better.

In a study from Stanford University, researchers were able to more accurately determine if a heterosexual pair was flirting with a “flirtation detection system,” rather than the people who actually experienced the conversation. The subjects went on a series of speed dates, and then rated whether or not they were flirting and if they thought the other person was flirting with them. After that, the researchers pored through the audio recorded during the date and created an automated system that divided up the linguistic elements of the conversation — all the vocabulary, the pauses, the inflections.

In the end, the system beat the humans. The system could tell with 71.5 percent accuracy if the women were flirting with men, the men were only correct 56.2 percent of the time. Women were closer to the course — they were 62.2 percent accurate, while the system was 69 percent accurate.

So what do we do? An article at Inverse goes on to give us specific examples of the “flirting words” the system looked for, which was different for men and women. Maybe an automated system can teach us something about how to flirt and how to detect flirtation in others. -via Pajiba

(Image credit: Ion Chibzii)

Enjoy this lovely scene of a toddler out for a walk on a snowy day with the family cat. I think the cat wants the child’s attention.

(YouTube link)

Body slam! Orange cats are like that. If I’m outside gardening, mine thinks the only reason I could possibly be out there is to pet him. He also annoys the neighbors and passers-by until they pet him. I hope he doesn’t find a toddler he likes. Oh, there’s also a version of this video with commentary.  -via reddit

Ryan Myers’ daughter Lilith told him that she would need her name written on her lunch bag every day this school year. Since he already had the Sharpie out, he decided to have a little fun labeling her lunch on the first day of school.

And then the second day, and then the third… until it came to be a daily project to come up with the coolest lunch label possible. You can see 53 different lunch bags, each funnier than the one before, at imgur. -via Pleated-Jeans

In 1916, contraceptives and information about them were considered obscene, and as such it was illegal to send them through the postal system. Their mere existence was not illegal, but the "obscene" label meant that upstanding citizens wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole -at least publicly. That meant that women who didn’t have the proper connections: the poor, the uneducated, and those who didn’t speak English had no access to any kind of contraceptive. Margaret Sanger made her career out of trying to bring birth control to the masses. In fact, she was the one who coined the term "birth control." Part of her campaign was the establishment of the first family planning clinic the US, in Brooklyn.

Finally, Sanger and her team were able to rent out a storefront at 46 Amboy Street for $50 a month, and the nation’s first birth control clinic was born. Consisting of just two rooms and a spot outside where mothers could leave their carriages, the tiny facility was perfect for their needs. The patients could wait in the outer room while consultations were held in the inner room. Though Sanger was not able to find a doctor willing to work at the clinic, an examination table was put in the back room, just in case they ever could find a willing physician.

Thousands of fliers were printed, calling for mothers who wanted to learn about contraceptives. “DO NOT KILL, DO NOT TAKE LIFE, BUT PREVENT,” the leaflets proclaimed. They were printed in English, Yiddish, and Italian, and were stuffed into as many mail slots and pedestrians' hands as possible. Sanger was well aware of the legal trouble her new clinic could, and likely would, get her into. Far from operating in secret, she went so far as to mail a letter to the District Attorney of Brooklyn, letting him know that she would be distributing contraceptive information, and included the clinic’s address.

Having done everything she could to get the word out both to the women who needed to take advantage of the clinic and the lawmakers that needed to see it in action, Sanger and her associates opened the doors of their clinic on October 16, 1916. In her autobiography, Sanger said she didn’t know if anyone would show up, due to fear or disinterest, but she was relieved to find that when they opened the doors, there was already a line of some 150 people waiting to be treated. America's first birth control clinic was in business.

It didn’t last long. Read the story of how the clinic came to be, and what happened after it opened, at Atlas Obscura.

(Image source: The Library of Congress)

Teaching your children to write letters to Santa claus is fun for the whole family. The kids learn to write letters, or write at all, and parents find out what their fondest wishes for Christmas gifts are. But it wasn’t always that way.

Early versions of Santa Claus tended to depict him as a disciplinarian. The first image of St. Nicholas in the United States, commissioned by the New-York Historical Society in 1810, showed him in ecclesiastical garb with a switch in hand next to a crying child, while the earliest known Santa picture-book shows him leaving a birch rod in a naughty child’s stocking, which he “Directs a Parent’s hand to use / When virtue’s path his sons refuse.”

The earliest Santa letters are similarly didactic, usually coming from St. Nicholas, rather than written to him. The minister Theodore Ledyard Cuyler recalled receiving “an autograph letter from Santa Claus, full of good counsels” during his childhood in 1820s western New York. In the 1850s, Fanny Longfellow (wife of the poet Henry Wadsworth) wrote her three children letters each Christmas that commented on their behavior over the previous year and how they could improve it.

“[Y]ou have picked up some naughty words which I hope you will throw away as you would sour or bitter fruit,” Santa explained in an 1853 letter. “Try to stop to think before you use any, and remember if no one else hears you God is always near.” In an era before childhood was celebrated as a distinct period of a person’s life, gratifying kids’ imaginations was less important than teaching them manners that would speed them toward adulthood.

Well, we know that custom changed over the years. Postal rates fell, Santa Claus became a pop culture idol, and stores wanted to sell toys. Read the history of our custom of having children write letters to Santa Claus at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Flickr user Mo)

Kelly Angel at the webcomic Anything About Nothing waited six months after saying goodbye to her beloved dog Jay before she was able to write a tribute to him. But when she did, it was perfect.   

Most people will tell you their dog is the best dog. They're probably right, I know I was.

These panels are only a small portion of the story, which will leave you teary, yet happy that Jay had such a great life. See the full-size version at Taptastic.

Anticipation fatigue is starting to set in for Star Wars fans as we draw closer to the release of The Force Awakens. David Unger (previously at Neatorama) tried to pass the time by making a parody video based on footage from The Empire Strikes Back, with his own face spliced in and plenty of cultural references and visual puns added.

(YouTube link)

DUM is David Unger Music. You’ll find more songs with videos based on blockbuster movies at the website. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Haydock High School in St. Helens, UK, had a skeleton for about 50 years. It was first used in the science lab, and later went to the art department. When the skeleton was replaced by a new plastic model, it was put in storage. Only this year, when the skeleton called Arthur was rediscovered in a school cupboard, did the school find out that Arthur was made of real human bones! Specifically, it had belonged to a small malnourished Asian man with curvature of the spine, believed to have been between 25 and 30 years old at his death decades ago. The school consulted with authorities and found that it could not be disposed of without a proper burial. So the school held a funeral.  

Mrs Dixon said: “We learnt a lot from the skeleton, drawing his anatomy, then when I found him looking a state, we needed to do something about him.

“The children are just elated to have the service because he has been part of us for so long.

“It gives him the send off he deserves for all his years of service.”

Haydock Funeral Services donated the coffin, provided the hearse, and directed the service. Arthur was buried at Greenacre Woodland Burials. There’s a video of the funeral service at the Liverpool Echo. -via Arbroath    

A mother cat has two kittens. In this sequence brought to us by Ignoramusky, her dog friend offers to occupy the kittens for a while so the mother cat can take a break. Before it’s over, the dog is teaching the kittens to play pat-a-cake. At least that’s one interpretation.

(YouTube link)

Another interpretation is that the mother cat is showing the kittens how to slap a dog in the face. I prefer the more pleasant explanation. You notice after the kittens get bored and wander off, the dog and cat have their own little play tussle.  -via Tastefully Offensive

His stepdad declared he could balance a glass of beer on his forehead, and then drink it without using his hands or arms. Can he?

(YouTube link)

Yes, he did, and didn’t spill any, either! Don’t you wish your family holiday get-togethers were like this? -via Daily of the Day

August Engelhardt was a German nudist who came to believe that all human illness could be avoided if you eat coconuts, and nothing but coconuts. It was part of his back-to-nature philosophy, although real human populations who depend on coconuts also eat other things. He eventually bought a coconut plantation in what is now Papua New Guinea, and invited his devotees to join him.   

From 1902 to 1919, Engelhardt lived on a beautiful South Pacific island, eating nothing but the fruit of Cocos nucifera, which he believed was the panacea for all mankind's woes. Except that a coconut mono-diet proved to be a terrible idea. At the end of his life, der Kokovore was reduced to a mentally ill, rheumatic, severely malnourished sack of bones with ulcers on his legs. He was only 44.

Things didn’t end well for the other coconut cult members, either. Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone," and Harry Nilsson said, "You put the lime in the coconut, and drink them both together." Read Engelhardt’s story at The Salt. 

(Image source: Christian Kracht, author of Imperium)