Hampton, Virginia, was once the site of Fort Monroe, a Union base during the Civil War. At the beginning of the war, three Virginia slaves went to the fort to request asylum. However, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a federal law, still obligated all U.S. citizens to report suspected fugitive slaves. What to do?
General Benjamin Butler, Fort Monroe’s commander and a former lawyer, was sympathetic to the men’s plight. He came up with a clever circumvention to the law by declaring the escaped slaves “contraband” that might be used to support the rebel cause, effectively creating a path to asylum.
Word soon spread, and Fort Monroe received hundreds of slaves seeking protection under the new contraband policy. Thousands ultimately settled in nearby fields and burned-out Hampton homes as white residents fled and Confederate forces, fearing a Union takeover, torched the town. The site buried beneath the now-demolished apartment complex is believed part of what came to be known as the Grand Contraband Camp.
Skip ahead some years, and the land where the Grand Contraband Camp stood was developed into part of the city of Hampton. An apartment complex there was torn down in 2012, giving the city an opportunity to excavate the area. All sorts of relics from the Civil War refugee community have been recovered. Read the story of the Grand Contraband Camp and other camps like it at mental_floss.
It’s hard to tell gangster movies apart, since they all have Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and/or Joe Pesci in them, playing tough guys who kill people. Shea Serrano plotted eleven classic gangster movies on a flowchart. Nine of the films have one or two of those actors, but none have all three. And he tells a couple of great stories to justify why he made the chart. The stories really have little to do with the chart, but I’m glad I took the time to read them. See the rest of the chart at Grantland.
Narcissus is a character from Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection in the water and drowned because of it. The psychological term narcissism refers to people who admire themselves above all others. Determining if someone is a narcissist is easier than you might think.
If you are a fan of the erstwhile series Key & Peele on Comedy Central, you’ve probably wondered how they got through those hilarious routines without cracking up. Well, they didn’t. Here we get to see the outtakes and bloopers, where we learn they had to go through the script a few times before they could keep a straight face.
Contains NSFW language. If you haven’t seen the relevant sketches, you’ll want to after seeing this. The series is over but many of the sketches are available online. -via Tastefully Offensive
Police officers have been associated with doughnuts so long that it’s become an easy cliche. Of course, that cliche is based on reality, and even cops occasionally have fun with the stereotype. There are plenty of practical reasons for law enforcement officers to hang out at doughnut shop and take advantage of the offerings, but the connection goes back further than you might think.
Stare harder into the hole, though, and the cop-doughnut relationship isn’t just a marriage of convenience—it’s deeper than that. In fact, we’ve officially stuffed the protecting-and-serving citizens of our country with sugary pastries since at least World War I, when the Salvation Army sent female volunteers to France to cook doughnuts and bring them to the front. The originator of this tradition, a young ensign named Helen Purviance, knelt before a potbelly stove to make the first batch in a frying pan. “There was also a prayer in my heart that somehow this home touch would do more for those who ate the doughnuts than satisfy a physical hunger,” she said later. For a while, U.S. soldiers were actually called “doughboys,” and though they may have originally gotten this nickname some other way, the millions of doughnuts certainly didn’t hurt.
The history of doughnuts is entwined with the history of urban (and eventually, rural) police work. Altlas Obscura looks at the connection between police and doughnuts in depth.
You might recall the Twitter feed INTERESTING.JPG, from the Universty of Toronto's deep learning group, that features photographs analyzed and captioned by an artificial intelligence program, to the best of its ability. Samim Winiger has been doing similar research, testing algorithms by having software caption video footage as it plays.
Some of the scenes are decently close, but others are hilariously incorrect. Two captioned videos, made up of clips from movies and viral videos familiar to us, and the funniest screenshots are posted at Medium. Read an explanation of Winiger’s work at Gizmodo.
The 25th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held Thursday evening at Harvard University. The event is a production of the magazine The Annals of Improbable Research, and co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association and the Harvard-Radcliffe Society of Physics Students. The winners, who traveled at their own expense, were awarded ten trillion dollars. That’s in Zimbabwe dollars. The prizes are to recognize scientific research that makes you laugh, then makes you think. The winners are as follows:
CHEMISTRY PRIZE — Callum Ormonde and Colin Raston [AUSTRALIA], and Tom Yuan, Stephan Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin Pugliese, Tivoli Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, Gregory Weiss [USA], for inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg. REFERENCE: "Shear-Stress-Mediated Refolding of Proteins from Aggregates and Inclusion Bodies," Tom Z. Yuan, Callum F. G. Ormonde, Stephan T. Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin M. Pugliese, Tivoli J. Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, Colin L. Raston, Gregory A. Weiss, ChemBioChem, epub January 2015.
PHYSICS PRIZE — Patricia Yang [USA and TAIWAN], David Hu [USA and TAIWAN], and Jonathan Pham, Jerome Choo [USA], for testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds). REFERENCE: "Duration of Urination Does Not Change With Body Size," Patricia J. Yang, Jonathan Pham, Jerome Choo, and David L. Hu, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014: 201402289
LITERATURE PRIZE — Mark Dingemanse [THE NETHERLANDS, USA], Francisco Torreira [THE NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM, USA], and Nick J. Enfield [AUSTRALIA, THE NETHERLANDS], for discovering that the word "huh?" (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language — and for not being quite sure why. REFERENCE: "Is 'Huh?' a universal word? Conversational infrastructure and the convergent evolution of linguistic items," Mark Dingemanse, Francisco Torreira, and Nick J. Enfield, PLOS ONE, 2013.
MANAGEMENT PRIZE — Gennaro Bernile [ITALY, SINGAPORE, USA], Vineet Bhagwat [USA], and P. Raghavendra Rau [UK, INDIA, FRANCE, LUXEMBOURG, GERMANY, JAPAN], for discovering that many business leaders developed in childhood a fondness for risk-taking, when they experienced natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and wildfires) that — for them — had no dire personal consequences. REFERENCE: "What Doesn't Kill You Will Only Make You More Risk-Loving: Early-Life Disasters and CEO Behavior," Gennaro Bernile, Vineet Bhagwat, and P. Raghavendra Rau, Asian Finance Association (AsianFA) 2015 Conference Paper. Accepted for publication in the Journal of Finance. Available at SSRN 2423044.
ECONOMICS PRIZE — The Bangkok Metropolitan Police [THAILAND], for offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes. REFERENCE: Numerous news reports.
MEDICINE PRIZE — Awarded jointly to two groups: Hajime Kimata [JAPAN, CHINA]; and to Jaroslava Durdiaková [SLOVAKIA, US, UK], Peter Celec [SLOVAKIA, GERMANY], Natália Kamodyová, Tatiana Sedláčková, Gabriela Repiská, Barbara Sviežená, and Gabriel Minárik [SLOVAKIA], for experiments to study the biomedical benefits or biomedical consequences of intense kissing (and other intimate, interpersonal activities). REFERENCE: "Kissing Reduces Allergic Skin Wheal Responses and Plasma Neurotrophin Levels," Hajime Kimata, Physiology and Behavior, vol. 80, nos. 2-3, November 2003, pp. 395-8. REFERENCE: "Reduction of Allergic Skin Weal Responses by Sexual Intercourse in Allergic Patients," Hajime Kimata, Sexual and Relationship Therapy, vol 19, no. 2, May 2004, pp. 151-4. REFERENCE: "Kissing Selectively Decreases Allergen-Specific IgE Production in Atopic Patients," Hajime Kimata, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, vol. 60, 2006, pp. 545– 547. REFERENCE: "Prevalence and Persistence of Male DNA Identified in Mixed Saliva Samples After Intense Kissing," Natália Kamodyová, Jaroslava Durdiaková, Peter Celec, Tatiana Sedláčková, Gabriela Repiská, Barbara Sviežená, and Gabriel Minárik, Forensic Science International Genetics, vol. 7, no. 1, January 2013, pp. 124–8.
MATHEMATICS PRIZE — Elisabeth Oberzaucher [AUSTRIA, GERMANY, UK] and Karl Grammer [AUSTRIA, GERMANY], for trying to use mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children. REFERENCE: "The Case of Moulay Ismael-Fact or Fancy?" Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer, PLOS ONE, vol. 9, no. 2, 2014, e85292.
BIOLOGY PRIZE — Bruno Grossi, Omar Larach, Mauricio Canals, Rodrigo A. Vásquez [CHILE], José Iriarte-Díaz [CHILE, USA], for observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked. REFERENCE: "Walking Like Dinosaurs: Chickens with Artificial Tails Provide Clues about Non-Avian Theropod Locomotion," Bruno Grossi, José Iriarte-Díaz, Omar Larach, Mauricio Canals, Rodrigo A. Vásquez, PLoS ONE, vol. 9, no. 2, 2014, e88458. [NOTE: The paper is accompanied by a video.]
DIAGNOSTIC MEDICINE PRIZE — Diallah Karim [CANADA, UK], Anthony Harnden [NEW ZEALAND, UK, US], Nigel D’Souza [BAHRAIN, BELGIUM, DUBAI, INDIA, SOUTH AFRICA, US, UK], Andrew Huang [CHINA, UK], Abdel Kader Allouni [SYRIA, UK], Helen Ashdown [UK], Richard J. Stevens [UK], and Simon Kreckler [UK], for determining that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps. REFERENCE: "Pain Over Speed Bumps in Diagnosis of Acute Appendicitis: Diagnostic Accuracy Study," Helen F. Ashdown, Nigel D’Souza, Diallah Karim, Richard J. Stevens, Andrew Huang, and Anthony Harnden, BMJ, vol. 345, 2012, e8012.
PHYSIOLOGY and ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE — Awarded jointly to two individuals: Justin Schmidt [USA, CANADA], for painstakingly creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects; and to Michael L. Smith [USA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS], for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm). and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft). REFERENCE: "Hemolytic Activities of Stinging Insect Venoms," Justin O. Schmidt, Murray S. Blum, and William L. Overal, Archives of Insect Biochemistry and Physiology, vol. 1, no. 2, 1983, pp. 155-160. REFERENCE: "Honey Bee Sting Pain Index by Body Location," Michael L. Smith, PeerJ, 2014, 2:e338.
Robert Indiana’s LOVE began as a simple Christmas card and grew into one of the most recognizable images in America. But as LOVE swelled, it nearly broke the heart of the man who created it.
During the 1960s, Robert Indiana was a leader in New York's Pop art movement. But while his famous LOVE sculpture was recreated in paintings, postcards, T-shirts—and in postage stamps that earned more than $25 million for the U.S. Postal Service—the work barely made Indiana any money. Instead, it earned him a reputation as a sellout. LOVE was full of deep personal meaning, but Indiana's intentions were lost on both fans and critics.
Raising Indiana
Robert Indiana's childhood was anything but glamorous.
He was born Robert Clark in 1928 in a small town in Indiana. After his father lost his job during the Great Depression, his parents shifted from house to house like nomads. The family moved 21 times before Robert turned 17, mostly to neighborhoods in and around Indianapolis. His mother's restlessness was partly to blame. In her obsession to relocate, she often took Robert on long car rides to gawk at suburban bungalows. The family car became the touchstone of Robert's domestic life or, as he put it, "more stable than home itself."
Amid this instability, Robert knew one thing: He wanted to be an artist. When he was old enough, he joined the Army Air Corps so that he could take advantage of the G.I. Bill. Then, after three years of service (mostly working in a secretarial capacity), Robert attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago followed by a stint at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
By the end of college, Robert was still struggling to find himself creatively. He moved to New York and took a job at an art supply store to make contacts in the field. He also earned extra money by working as a typist for a cathedral. One day, on the job, he was inspired to create a sprawling mural he called Stavrosis. The abstract piece, titled after the Greek word for crucifixion, used the shape of gingko leaves and an avocado seed to represent Christ between two thieves. After constructing the work, Robert Clark felt reborn. Deciding to rechristen himself after his home state, he became Robert Indiana.
There are very few TV shows I recall watching in the ‘90s, but I rarely ever missed ER from the first episode to the end of its 15-year run. We came to know characters and they moved on, leaving other characters we also knew. We followed the lives of the staff over time while rooting for the patients who only appeared that week. But there’s always more to know about a TV production, so you may be interested in things like these:
1. IT BEGAN AS A MICHAEL CRICHTON MOVIE SCRIPT.
It was about 180 pages long and featured more than 100 characters. Crichton was a medical student at Harvard Medical School in the 1960s, and John Carter was the stand-in for Crichton. Steven Spielberg was an executive producer on the project. That, coupled with the fact that Crichton had recently become a hot property following the success of Jurassic Park, helped the pair successfully negotiate a series order with NBC, after the network initially only agreed to a two-hour movie.
12. SOME ACTORS ASKED TO BE KILLED OFF.
Maura Tierney, who played Dr. Abby Lockhart from 1999 to 2009, asked to be killed off. Instead, she was given a juicy enough storyline that she was okay with sticking around until the end of the series. When Edwards told John Wells that he was leaving the show after eight seasons, Wells said that Dr. Greene was too important a character to just walk away from the show, so he asked Edwards: "'Do you mind if we kill him?' And I was like, 'Nope!' You’ve gotta do what’s best for the show, so that’s okay.” When Kellie Martin decided her character, Lucy Knight, wasn’t working for her, she requested that her departure be made “big.”
Dr. Knight’s death certainly was big, and Dr. Greene’s death still makes me feel all verklempt. Find out a lot more about ER, including the lives that were risked and saved because of the show, at mental_floss.
Do you remember the butterfly sequin tops of the ‘80s? I don’t, but that’s because I consciously gave up paying attention to fashion in January of 1977. They were big among the disco crowd, which meant they spread elsewhere as time went by. And now they are coming back due to the rage for all things retro. The look was a mixture of the ethnic styles of the ’60s with the sparkle of the ‘70s and the experimental shapes of the ‘80s.
Some of the most beautiful butterfly sequin tops were produced by Swee Lo International. Malaysian-born New York City fashion designer and couturier Madame Swee Lo first made a name for herself in the 1960s designing hoity-toity looks for Mrs. Howell on “Gilligan’s Island.” In her boutiques in New York City and Palm Beach, Florida, she specialized in delicate fabrics from India and China, “exotic” accessories, and of course, sequined evening gowns. In 1981, she officially incorporated her clothing company, selling her designs in upscale boutiques and high-end department stores like Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, and Bonwit Teller. Her butterfly tops often employed stunning color gradients in the sequin patterns and could run you $180, big money in 1980s dollars.
If it weren’t for the sounds, and the cat, you’d think these were two full-size trucks testing their off-road skills in the woods. But these are two hand-built remote control trucks! Specifically, a 1957 Ford pickup and an ’87 Dodge RamCharger, authentic down to the last detail. They keep going until they encounter an immovable object. Stubborn cat.
Headquake137 drove both for the video, and put them together through video editing -which is another thing you’d never know if you weren’t told. He credits Orange, the cat, as video director. -via Digg
In this Japanese elementary school, lunch isn’t just a break, it’s a learning experience. Some of the food is grown in the school garden by the students themselves. The kitchen staff prepare food for each class, and then the kids take over by bringing food to the classroom.
It’s an honor to be on the class serving crew, for which they learn about food safety and hygiene. They also learn about the sources of the meal. The teacher eats with the students, and then everyone brushes their teeth! Students also take care of cleanup, with duties dependent on their age. -via Viral Viral Videos
Back in 1876 an old boy named Bell invented a contraption that we know so well.* The telephone has evolved and changed so much that you might want to take your children to a museum to show them what kind of calls you once made. Alas, we have one less opportunity to do so. The JKL Museum of Telephony near San Andreas, California, featured an extensive collection of telephones from every era since the device’s invention.
The museum’s collection includes telephones and related equipment from all over the world, from as early as the 1880’s to present day. Among the many goals of the museum is to have working telephones and demonstrations from all eras, and to interconnect working telephones by way of the museum’s extensive “central office” switching system.
The museum also houses an extensive library of telephony publications, including 100 year old texts, catalogs, brochures, and telephone company publications. The library is unequaled by any U.S. museum dedicated to telephony and most likely in the world. The museum has grown by acquiring private collections, donations of library materials, and purchases from private and public sources. The museum’s non-profit status has encouraged very generous donations to the museum which has added immensely to the size and scope of the collection.
Remember how Roger and Anita met each other in the Disney movie 101 Dalmations? Their dogs, Pongo and Perdita, were determined to get together and drew their owners into each other’s arms. Corinne and Tony made engagement photos by recreating that scene, and they are just adorable.
Tony and Corinne don't have Dalmations, but their own dogs cooperated perfectly. The photos were taken by Corinne's cousin, Melissa Biggerstaff of Rusty Lion Art Photography. The entire sequence is delightful. See larger photos at imgur or at Facebook. -via The Daily Dot
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Adam West is the television icon of icons. After almost a decade of being a "that face is familiar" working, journeyman actor, in 1965, at the age of 37, he was cast as the title character in a new campy comic series on ABC called Batman.
Batman premiered as a mid-season replacement in January of 1966 and Adam almost instantly went from semi-anonymity to becoming the hottest actor in show business.
But the colossal success of Batman was a double-edged sword. Like a streaking comet, the show's huge success quickly fizzled out. After a brief two-and-a-half year run and 120 episodes, Batman was cancelled. Adam West quickly went from being red-hot to being a has-been, hopelessly typecast as the Caped Crusader. (He did nothing but personal appearances for two years.)
But time has a funny way of sometimes healing things, and now, over four decades after the demise of Batman, Adam West is a very successful actor and voice-over artist who earns small fortunes at signing shows in the U.S. and overseas. Adam's recurring guest role as “Mayor West" on the ultra-popular animated series Family Guy has gained him a whole new generation of avid fans.
Okay, let's take a look at a few things you may not have known about Adam West.
* Born William West Anderson, he changed his name to Adam early in his career (1959) because he liked the way it sounded with “West,” his mother's maiden name. Close friends still call him Bill.
* An avid comic book collector since he was ten, he was a huge fan of Batman comics as a young boy and always loved the character.
