The difference between fruits and vegetables depends on whether you are talking to a botanist or a cook, but Daven at Today I Found Out gives us a decent short course in telling the difference. He also explains the difference between jelly and jam, kosher salt and table salt, and the different colors of pepper. What blew my mind was the difference between green olives and black olives. I thought they were different kinds of olives! Personally, I much prefer the taste of green olives. -Thanks, Daven!
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There are uninhabited islands and abandoned islands, and then there are these: ghost islands, with a past that sinks over you like a specter. There are mostly sad reasons these islands aren’t inhabited, like Poveglia Plague Island.
Poveglia served as a plague quarantine station for Venice from 1793 to 1814, and some rumors state that 50% of the soil is composed of the remains of the dead. A mental hospital was later opened, and remains in ruins in the overgrowth of ivy. It's also not the only ghost island in the Venice area, which is spotted with these abandoned relics of eras gone by.
Other islands were abandoned due to war, starvation, industrial decline, border disputes, and there’s even one that sank too much to live on. Read about all eight at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Flickr user ntenny)
It sounds as if Jon Snow is leading the Night’s Watch on a mission, but as his pep talk continues, it begins to remind you of something much more familiar This is not exactly a Halloween special from Westeros. It’s the holiday offering from Funny or Die.
For the Halloween edition of the mental_floss List Show, John Green has a whole long list of facts about Halloween! The biggest pumpkin, the origin of Jack-o-Lanterns, why people used to eat chicken feed for Halloween, and a whole lot of superstitions about the holiday. He says he is wearing Halloween masks because he’s being punished, but I prefer to think it’s a fortunately seasonal workaround for some kind of facial blemish.
Josh Sundquist is an athlete, a math nerd, a rapper, and an author. He lost his left leg to cancer as a child. Lately he’s become internet-famous for his imaginative Halloween costumes: the Gingerbread Man from Shrek in 2010, the leg lamp from A Christmas Story in 2012, a flamingo in 2013, and we couldn’t wait to see what he’d cook up next.
This year’s costume is infinitely appropriate for a one-legged athlete. He’s a foosball player!
-via Blazenfluff
Only Kevin Richardson, the lion whisperer (previously at Neatorama) could strap a GoPro camera on a lion. And that’s just what he did. Richardson also has a camera, but he can’t keep up with a lioness on the hunt. Watch Meg stalk her prey on the African plain, and take a waterbuck down in the blink of an eye. -via Viral Viral Videos
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Harry Houdini is, far and away, the most famous magician and escape artist in world history. Like Shakespeare, Babe Ruth, Elvis and the Beatles, he is the undisputed number one in his field. But Houdini, beside being a gifted artist, was also a very fascinating person who lived an amazing life. Okay, let's take a look at a few things you may not have known about the one and only Harry Houdini.
He was a man of many names.
Houdini was born Erik Weisz to Jewish parents in Budapest, Hungary. He changed his name to Erich Weiss. His friends called him “Ehrie,” which inspired his Americanized first name “Harry.” He changed his surname to “Houdini" in honor of legendary magician Robert Houdin. Houdini's other stage names include “Eric the Great,” “The King of Cards,” and “Eric, Prince of the Air.”
Early performance and abilities.
One of Houdini's early performances was escaping from being sewed up inside the belly of a whale. In another early gig, he was billed as "the wild man.” Clothed in a loincloth, Houdini was locked in a cage and ate raw meat.
Houdini was ambidextrous and could manipulate cards easily with both hands. He would practice card tricks over and over without looking at the cards, while casually talking with friends. He also could calmly untie knots repeatedly with his feet.
Houdini’s first public performance.
Fascinated with magic at an early age, Houdini’s first performance was at the age of 9. He picked up pins with his eyelids while hanging upside-down. Admission was 35 cents.
I have to say I was honestly surprised by an article at Sploid that explains how KFC makes fried chicken. First, I was surprised that so many people did not already know how fried chicken is made, and also by how many people were surprised by KFC’s technique. But then I remembered that I live down the street from Colonel Sander’s first restaurant (now a museum) and that I’ve made fried chicken all my life. I also worked at KFC for a short time, which I’m sure many folks have. But if it’s new to you, it’s worth telling you about.
The process is pretty much how your grandmother would make chicken (and you should have paid attention), with one big difference: the pressure frying. Grandma would love to be able to fully cook chicken pieces in ten minutes like KFC does, but the equipment to do it is large and expensive. Read the entire procedure at Sploid.
Ambition is a short film to advertise the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission. Rosetta met up with comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in August, and will deploy the the Philae lander to land on the surface of the comet on November 12th. It will be a major event in the history of space exploration.
Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger) and Aisling Franciosi star as master and apprentice talking about the mission as ancient history. The film was produced by Platige Image and directed by Tomek Bagiński. -via Digg
See also: more on the Rosetta Mission.
At the time they were created, no one ever thought that the tiny images on matchbox covers would be collectors items one day. Not only are they nice little pieces of anonymous art, but they give us a glimpse into the era, the country, and the advertising culture in which they were printed.
Matchbox labels from Eastern Europe often featured government-owned businesses or public health and safety messages—yet despite their bureaucratic messaging, the designs incorporate a bright, clean modernism. As McDevitt asked on her blog, “Why did this area of the world embrace modern design and imagery when many countries, including Britain, still preferred the Victorian aesthetic?” By adopting the Mid-Century Modern forms, these socialist states projected the brightest of futures, even in a time of Cold War tensions. The labels capture a time of transition, carefully balancing a reverence for nature and family with Space Age technology and urban living.
See a gallery of dozens of these matchbox covers from all over the world at Collectors Weekly.
Hey, you wanna see something really scary? Then be warned before you watch this montage of horror movie clips that it is graphic and gory. If you’ve seen the movies, it shouldn’t bother you, but it will bring back memories of that first frightful time you saw them. If you haven’t seen a lot of horror movies, the clips are disturbing and you might want to just skip it. This horror fest is set to the song “Panic Station” by Muse. Another masterful supercut by Robert Jones.
Put some fun in your Halloween festivities with a horror comedy that’s more family-friendly than anything you’ll find under the horror label: Beetlejuice! The 1988 movie was Tim Burton’s second feature film as director, sandwiched between Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and Batman. And here’s some neat things you might not know about Beetlejuice:
5. Sammy Davis Jr. was Burton's first choice for Beetlejuice.
The laid-back Rat Pack member would have likely brought a very different vibe to Beetlejuice. Burton described the reaction from his producers to this casting suggestion as "deer caught in headlights." Producer David Geffen stepped in and suggested Michael Keaton. Though the star had already seen success with Mr. Mom, Johnny Dangerously, and Gung Ho, Keaton was an actor totally unknown to Burton. But once he saw him in action, Beetlejuice proved to be the start to a fruitful period of collaboration between the director and star that went on to include Batman and Batman Returns.
10. Beetlejuice was nearly called Scared Sheetless.
In the book Burton on Burton, the Beetlejuice director revealed that studio execs weren't fans of the film's title and pushed to change it to House Ghosts. Repulsed by this idea, Burton jokingly suggested Scared Sheetless as an alternate name, and was appalled when Warner Bros. actually considered it.
We’re glad they settled in the title Beetlejuice, even though it didn’t make any sense until you met the character. You can read the rest of the 15 things about the movie at mental_floss.
The title makes this sound like some kind of art mashup, but in this case, the Boston hockey players are dressed up as characters from the Disney movie Frozen. The occasion is their annual Halloween visit to Boston Children’s Hospital to hand out goodies to kids who’ll miss trick-or-treating in their neighborhoods. Let's see who these Bruins are:
If you’re like me and have by some wizardry escaped seeing the film, and can’t tell your Olafs from your…um…other people…here’s a helpful key (from left to right): Kevan Miller is dressed as Kristoff, Matt Fraser is Anna, Matt Bartkowski is Sven the Reindeer, Seth Griffith is Hans, Torey Krug is Olaf the Snowman (I knew there was an Olaf in there somewhere!) and Dougie Hamilton is Elsa, the Snow Queen. Dougie Hamilton might also be my new favourite hockey player.
The two guys who portrayed the sisters deserve a hand -and a shave. You can see a video of the hospital visit at Uproxx. A good time was had by all.
(Image credit: Boston Bruins via Twitter)
What sounds spookier: The theme to the movie Halloween, or Vincent Price’s laugh? An antique toy or a slow knock at the door? Funny or Die is staging an online tournament to determine what you least want to hear alone in the dark. You can listen to each sound effect and make your selections. The tournament is down to the final day of voting in the quarterfinals, with the final four round voting tomorrow. Yeah, it’s a silly idea, but silly can be fun -or frightening, in this case.
Carl Tanzler was a German immigrant with a wife and two daughters in Zephyrhills, Florida. But when he took a job as an x-ray technician at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Key West in 1927, he called himself Count Carl von Cosel and lived as a single man. Tanzler met a tuberculosis patient less than half his age named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos and fell deeply in love. Despite Tanzler’s best efforts, Maria Elena died, and was interred in a mausoleum the Count bought for her. At least for a while. Unbeknownst to Maria Elena’s family, Tanzler retrieved her body from the mausoleum and took it home with him.
Over the years, Tanzler kept Elena “alive” using wire hangers to preserve her frame, stuffing her abdominal cavity with rags, routinely reapplying wax to her face, replacing her decaying scalp with real hair, and constantly dousing her in disinfectants and oils to mask the rotting smell of her body. While attending to the physical demands of his moldering bride, Carl attended to her material needs as well, purchasing her clothing and perfume, and even installing a curtained cloth veil for privacy on the bed they shared (apparently feminine modesty was a prerogative for a man who routinely saw Elena’s innards). This domestic Ed Gein’s style bliss went on for seven years.
Everything was going great, until people inevitably started asking questions. The combination of Carl’s habit of routinely buying women’s clothing, his absence from the mausoleum, and a local boy’s sighting of him through a window dancing with what appeared to be a giant doll, aroused some serious suspicion. The rumors began to swirl that Tanzler was keeping Elena in his house.
Find out what happened to Tanzler, and to what was once Maria Elena, when the story became public at Atlas Obscura. Be warned that the story is gruesome and may be disturbing.
(Image credit: Flickr user Florida Keys Public Libraries)
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