A restaurant called KFC Halal opened in Tehran to crowds of customers lining up to try their fried chicken. It didn’t last long. The eatery supposedly had all the necessary permits, but police shut it down after just one day of business! A sign left by authorities said the decor was too close to the American flag and American influence is dangerous. Yeah, the red stripes and the picture of Colonel Sanders does look quite American, doesn’t it? That was no accident.

"The shutting down of Halal KFC was due to a misunderstanding," the store's manager, Abbas Pazuki, reportedly said. "We are part of a brand known as Halal KFC, which comes from Turkey. It belongs to Muslims and its target market is Muslim nations," he clarified. That KFC, he says, is a "rival of the American KFC."

"We are shocked with the news that an illegitimate KFC outlet has opened in Tehran, Iran," Laurie Schalow, a KFC spokesperson, told Mashable. "No franchise rights have been granted to any party in Iran. We are in contact with local authorities and external advisers and will be filing a legal action against any company or individuals claiming to have rights to open KFC."

The Colonel is indeed rolling in his grave. You’d think they would have been smart enough to change the name a little, like some others. Read more about the Turkish KFC at Mashable. -via reddit

(Image credit: KFC Halal)

Once again, Adam Ruins Everything. In the last decade, the toilet paper industry has spent millions convincing Americans they need to use moist wipes in addition to toilet paper. That may be all well and good (although expensive), but don’t put them in the toilet.

(YouTube link)

Sure, they say “flushable,” but just because you can flush them doesn’t mean that you should. Adam Conover explains flushable wipes in explicit detail.

Finally, an honest dating service! When you’re ready to settle, check out settling.com. They’ll find you someone, anyone. When you're really, really, desperate.

(YouTube link)

This parody of Match.com eHarmony is from Erwin Street. -via Tastefully Offensive

Robert Sikoryak uses Steve Jobs as the lead character of his graphic novel-in-progress called iTunes Terms and Conditions: The Graphic Novel. Yes, the text is the legalese in small print that no one reads because it would take forever. But Sikoryak injects action, intrigue, and even romance into the story with illustrations in the styles of many different graphic artists. You’ll recognize the styles of classic illustrators like Rube Goldberg and R. Crumb, major comic book artists like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Robert Kirkman, comic strip greats like Bill Watterson, and webcomic artists like Allie Brosh and Kate Beaton.

Use this link to read them in chronological order. -via Metafilter

Ladybird Books has been publishing children’s books in Britain for 100 years. To celebrate their centennial, the publishing company is launching a series targeted at grownups called, not surprisingly, Ladybird Books for Grownups. They feature nostalgic illustrations from their 1940s children’s books, but are hilariously different. The eight books will features such titles as How it Works: The Wife and The Ladybird Book of the Mid-life Crisis, but the most fun comes from The Ladybird Book of the Hipster.

See more pages from The Ladybird Book of the Hipster at Buzzfeed.

Back in May, Emily McDowell brought us a collection of Empathy Cards that said things that are actually meaningful for cancer patients and their loved ones. Now she has unveiled a second set of designs that work for a variety of illnesses and “general crappy situations.” They avoid the trite sayings you hear all the time and get down to the heart of the matter with feeling and even humor. McDowell said it was an intimidating project.

I am really, really happy and relieved to report that I survived the process, and that I actually think some of these new cards are even stronger than the first ones. We had so much customer feedback to consider when creating these – something we didn’t have the first round — and I wanted to make sure I honored that, while also making sure I was writing from a real place, AND that they were good, creatively speaking.

You can order yours at McDowell’s shop. And continue reading to see the rest of the collection.

The first time I played the video  to Adele’s new song “Hello,” I was frustrated by the intro, because I wanted to hear how the song sounded. That frustration is completely assuaged by Sir David Attenborough's golden voice and soothing pacing as he narrates the intro of the song, in the manner of his famous wildlife videos.

(YouTube link)

I don’t think Adele will be cross with him at all. You can hear the whole song here if you like. -via Tastefully Offensive

Poor Lassie can have no more puppies because it made someone think about sex. Rod Serling talked to Mike Wallace about censorship on TV in 1959. Not much has changed -you can still lose sponsors if someone complains.

(YouTube link)

A commenter pointed out how Serling was a genius at getting around such censorship, and how it contributed to the art of television.

The irony here is that the format of "The Twilight Zone" was created as a way to get around censorship. If social commentary was disguised as tales about aliens and monsters then it was easier to get past execs and sponsors; we might not have "The Twilight Zone" if not for Serling having to find a way to work around them.

-via Boing Boing

A trio of crime fighting females was a strange and different concept for a TV show back in 1976, and TV executives didn't think it would fly. But the audience took to Charlie’s Angels quickly, and the original cast, Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson, and Jaclyn Smith, became stars. I bet you didn’t know what the original title of the show was.

2. THE ORIGINAL TITLE WAS THE ALLEY CATS.

The 1970s were a crucial decade for feminism, with women successfully putting forward the idea of gender equality. Which made it a bad time for a network to consider calling a female-led series The Alley Cats, which is what Spelling and Goldberg had originally proposed. Kate Jackson, who had more acting experience than any of the other leads and was initially designated the “star,” preferred it be called Harry’s Angels, after the original name of their unseen benefactor. When his name was changed to avoid confusion over the detective show Harry-O, the series settled on Charlie’s Angels.   

3. THE ORIGINAL CHARLIE GOT FIRED FOR BEING DRUNK.

Producers decided on the novel concept of Charlie Townsend giving the Angels their case information via a Western Electric Speakerphone and never showing up in person. Spelling hired veteran actor Gig Young for what amounted to a voiceover role, but when Young showed up to record his lines, he was drunk. A frantic Spelling called John Forsythe (Dynasty) at 12:30 a.m. and begged him to perform the part before he had to turn in the pilot to ABC executives. Forsythe drove to the 20th Century Fox lot in his bedroom slippers to do Spelling the favor; he wound up on the show for its entire five-year run.

There are quite a few other secrets behind Charlie’s Angels that you can read at mental_floss.

(YouTube link)

Who would ever expect a chicken to maneuver an agility course? This chicken named Stripe did it, after only four days of training! With the proper incentive, of course. Yeah, it’s a short course, but she’s a birdbrain.  -via Daily Picks and Flicks

We’ve had plenty of posts on the unfortunate cookbooks and magazine recipes of the mid-20th century. Many of those Jell-o/Miracle Whip/Campbell’s Soup concoctions were developed to sell those brands, but some of them became staples of the suburban kitchen. You have to wonder why. Megan McArdle gives us six answers that make sense to those of us who grew up in mid-20th century America. For example:

5. There were a lot of bad cooks around. These days, people who don’t like to cook, or aren’t good at it, mostly don’t. They can serve a rich variety of prepared foods, and enjoy takeout and restaurants. Why would you labor over something you hate, when someone else will sell you something better for only slightly more than it would cost you to make something bad?

In 1950, the answer was “because we’re not made of money.” A restaurant meal was a special treat, not a nightly event, and prepared foods were not so widely available, in part because women tended not to work, but also because food processing technology was [not] so advanced. So women had to cook whether they liked it or not. Many of them didn’t like it, so they looked for ways to reduce the labor involved. And it’s far from obvious that what they did with those shortcuts was worse than what they would have done without them.

My mother was a pretty good cook by the time I was old enough to mourn the change from homemade white sauce to Campbell’s cream of whatever soup. But my dad told me a secret: she only became good with practice, and only because she had to. She’s now an excellent cook. And so am I, but I still made an easy tuna casserole while reading this article because I’m alone and I’m tired of sandwiches. Read the rest of the rationales behind the recipes we now make fun of, at BloombergView. 

CBS is planning on bringing back Star Trek, with a new series to be launched in January of 2017. Alex Kurtzman, who wrote that two latest Star Trek movies, will produce the show. It will air on CBS All Access, the network’s digital subscription service.

The new Star Trek will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966.

The cross-platform streaming service, which hosts thousands of episodes from CBS' roster (both past and present) is available for $5.99 per month. Included in the fee is the ability to stream the local network live. All previous Star Trek series are currently available on CBS All Access. CBS Studios International will distribute the series for TV and multiple platforms around the world.  

Fair enough. By 2017, I might be able to bother learning how to set up a digital streaming service for TV. Or they might just make it easy by then.  -via Metafilter

The main goal of America’s space program in the 1960s was to keep up with, and eventually outdo, the Soviet Union. Space exploration and technical advances were the gravy that came with the race. But one classified project had a different goal- to spy on the USSR. As satellites were developed, both sides started using them for reconnaissance. The U.S. military wanted to step things up with the Manned Orbital Laboratory, essentially a space station orbiting the earth with two astronauts aboard whose 40-day missions would be to take photographs of sensitive targets in the Soviet Union. The program began in 1963.

The MOL design quickly took shape. Essentially a 10-foot-diameter pressurized tube with solar and fuel cells for power, the lab would launch into low orbit atop a Titan rocket. After more than a month circling the planet, their supplies running low, the two-man crew would pack up their film and pile into a reentry capsule for the fiery journey back to Earth. The MOL’s main section would tumble down separately. “Upon mission completion or ascent abort, the laboratory vehicle shall be disposed of in the ocean to avoid compromise of intelligence information,” the Air Force’s MOL operating manual explained.

The Air Force portrayed the program as a giant science project, downplaying the MOL’s military missions. “Experiments related to reconnaissance will attempt to determine man’s capability, with appropriate aids, to point an instrument with accuracy better than 1/2 mile, to adjust for image motion to better than 0.2 percent and to focus precisely (if this is necessary),” Brockway McMillan, Under Secretary of the Air Force, wrote in a letter to one of his generals in March 1964. “These objectives will be classified under normal military security as SECRET.”

The MOL itself wasn’t a secret, but its true purpose was classified until this year. The program was discontinued in 1969, just a year before the first MOL was scheduled to launch. While there were concerns about the project destabilizing relations with the Soviets, that wasn’t the reason it was cancelled. Read the real details about the project at The Daily Beast. -via Digg

This little girl became a snake for Halloween and freaked out everyone who saw her. Redditor beningo83’s wife made the costume for their daughter. The snake body is held up by a hoop skirt-type harness worn underneath the costume when she’s standing or walking.  The eyes are makeup on her eyelids. So how did trick-or-treat go?

She did pretty all right but we didn't get to as many houses as we could have since she was always being stopped to take pictures. Lines started to form behind her so not only did she get candy, she prevented other kids from getting some as well.  

Today, she will virtually freak out people around the world.

Screen Rant introduces us to deleted scenes from the first six Star Wars films. You’ve seen the sequence about Biggs Darklighter, but most of these were new to me.

(YouTube link)

There, doesn’t that make you feel a little better about waiting another month for Star Wars: The Force Awakens? -via Tastefully Offensive