Last week, we posted a picture from Harribel & Terribel of a group of teenage girls taken in Estonia in 1930. I expressed some curiosity as to what happened to them later, considering the history of that country. Kaisa was kind enough to send an update and tell us about her grandmother.

My grandmother's name was Aino and she was 15 when this picture was taken. They were just goofing around. She never smoked, by the way. She married my grandfather, a pharmacist, in 1939 and gave birth to my uncle in 1941. Toward the end of the war, when the Russians were advancing, a German officer billeted at their pharmacy wanted to get them out of harm's way. As far as I know, he was an aristocrat and had an estate near Frankfurt, so he told them to go to his family who would look after them. I don't know if he actually meant it or just made a nice gesture, and anyway, they refused and wanted to stay in Estonia. After the war, my father was born. My grandfather was sent to Siberia in the 1949 mass deportations on some trumped up charges (in reality, to fill a quota). He was sentenced to 25 imprisonment plus 5 years of exile (the standard sentence in those days). He was released with the amnesty given to political prisoners by Khrushchev but sadly his health had deteriorated and he died soon afterwards, so I never met him. I only know him by his art - playing cards and a set of Mahjong, which he made from start to finish, painting all the tiles by hand (!!!). We always used to play it whenever we visited her.

She was no delinquent, more like the opposite - porcelain skin, tiny, always perfectly groomed. My grandmother never remarried and passed away in 2009.

Here is the mahjong set her grandfather handcrafted.

Thanks, Kaisa!   

Has anybody seen the bridge? Sometime since yesterday, an entire bridge was taken from a village in Turkey.

The 22-ton bridge, which was 25 meters long, was in a village in Kocaeli's Gölçük district and was regularly used by villagers to cross a creek to reach their orchards. The villagers were astonished to discover the disappearance of the bridge on Monday morning as they were making their way to the orchards and immediately alerted the police.

Police arrived at the scene and determined that the bridge had been cut apart and loaded onto a truck by the thieves. They believe the bridge was stolen for scrap metal. Its worth was an estimated TL 20,000.

Meanwhile, villagers must the creek by wading. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: İHA, Uğur Ulu)

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Many of the facts as originally presented about the destruction of the Death Star just don't add up. What are they hiding? Was it an inside job? Conspiracy theorists are urged to confront the evidence. Which of the wacky scenarios make sense? You decide! This video by Graham Putnam is a parody of the 9/11 conspiracy video series Loose Change.  -via Boing Boing

In a previous post, we were told to pick up cookies with tongues. John Farrier quipped that we should be glad that we weren't ordered to use "thongs." You knew it had to happen somewhere. The grocer's apostrophe was a nice touch, too. Link

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What if Peter Falk had read a completely different story to Fred Savage in the movie The Princess Bride? Then what you'd have would be this clever mashup to promote the upcoming third season of the HBO series Games of Thrones. Inconceivable? It actually works surprisingly well. Contains spoilers for those who aren't current with the series. -via Uproxx

Paleontologists in China have discovered ancient ancestors of birds that had both front and rear wings.

Modern birds generally work with two wings, using small, clawed hind legs for ground travel. A few, like the golden eagle, have fuzzy down on their back limbs, which is for insulating their appendages, not flying. Though researchers have unearthed evidence of downy limbs in feathered dinosaurs, little evidence existed that early birds were using those hind legs for flapping.

But 11 specimens from Liaoning in northeastern China, from several species show evidence of long, stiff feathers with curved shafts jutting out nearly perpendicular to the leg -- a far cry from mere insulation.

The feathers were arranged in a relatively wide, flat plane, making it a potentially flight-worthy design, says a team of Chinese scientists studying feathered fossils.

That design didn't seem to work out too well for the birds, as those species eventually died out. The two-winged versions are more aerodynamic, and using your rear appendages for walking, perching, or catching prey is handy. Read more about the fossils at the Los Angeles Times. Link  -via The Week

(Image credit: David W. E. Hone, Helmut Tischlinger, Xing Xu, Fucheng Zhang)

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

May 18, 1980 was a day that people living in southern Washington state will never forget -the day that Mount St. Helens literally blew its top. Here's the story.

FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED

IN 1774, Spanish captain Juan Josef Perez Hernandez sailed the harbors along the coast of what is now Washington state and British Columbia. Apparently, he didn't see such of interest and never bothered to stop. Four years later, English captain James Cook dropped anchor in one of those harbors, now known as Nootka Sound. Cook landed to stock up on fresh water and to trade with the natives. He took a few sea otter pelts back to the Old World, and soon otter pelts were being sold in Europe for $4,000 each, worth more than their weight in gold. Thus began the Otter Rush.

The Spanish claimed that since they had been the first to sail through the sound, the Nootka area belonged to them. The English said that since they had been the first to set foot on the land, they owned the territory. The English built a fort; the Spaniards seized an English ship in retaliation. War seemed certain until England sent Ambassador Alleyne Fitzherbert, Baron St. Helens, to Spain to negotiate a treaty. In 1790, the Nootka Convention was crafted to give both countries access to the area. Several years later, when Captain George Vancouver was exploring the Northwest, he saw a majestic mountain in the distance and named it after St. Helens. The native name was Loo-wit-lat-kla, meaning "keeper of the fire." It was an appropriate name for a volcano.

On May 18, 1980, it exploded.

IMPENDING DOOM

Scientists knew an explosion was imminent in April of 1980, when a bulge 320 feet appeared on the side of the mountain, indicating that magma was pressing outward. The bulge was moving up at the sustained rate of 5 feet per day. Finally, the movement triggered an avalanche, which shook off the top of the bulge, exposing the white-hot interior to the air.

Under normal conditions, water can't be heated beyond the boiling point because then it turns to steam. But when it's kept under pressure (as in a pressure cooker) it can be heated beyond the boiling point and still remain liquid. When the pressure is removed, the super-hot water flashed into steam. Because steam takes up a lot more room than water, an explosion occurs. It's like carbon dioxide in soda: shake the bottle or can, and the gas wants to escape. Pop the top, and the release of pressure results in a mini-volcano of soda. That's what happened to Mount St. Helens.

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Pickles the kitten has a really strange meow. Maybe her mother was frightened by a billy goat while she was pregnant. Ya think? -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Adam Kennedy was inspired by the rusty round spheres atop older fire hydrants in San Francisco, because they displayed patterns that look like planets. So with Photoshop and other effects, he makes them into images of exoplanets! See more of them with the hydrants at an imgur gallery, and the artwork with all the effects at his site. Link | Artist's website  -via reddit

One more reason to buy a Volkwagen: it's cheap to fix when your wife wrecks it! The ad copy actually says, "Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things." Is that why insurance companies charge more to cover male drivers? Eventually, ads like this went away as more women bought cars without their husbands along to make the buying decisions. The ad is part of a collection at Buzzfeed called 10 Retro Ads That Made Women Look Like Complete Idiots. Link

Ireland's Great Famine in the mid-19th century led to the demise of farms, starvation, and many Irish emigrating to other countries. The most common potato affected was the Lumper, a popular potato at the time because it would grow in poor soil. It had all but disappeared until recently, when farmer Michael McKillop grew some heirloom seeds to resurrect the Lumper.

As its name implies, this potato is not especially beautiful. It’s large, knobby, and, well, lumpy, with pale brown skin and yellow flesh. Still, it was widely grown in Ireland before the famine because it did well in poor soil and could feed a lot of mouths.

According to University College Dublin’s Cormac O’Grada, an expert on the history of famines, the blight (Phytophtora infestans) destroyed about one-third of Ireland’s potato crop in 1845 and almost all of it in 1846. Because so many people were poor and relied on potatoes for sustenance, the blight had catastrophic consequences, including food riots and mass death from starvation.

Spuds are faring much better today thanks to modern farming techniques and technology, although potato blight is still an ongoing concern for Irish farmers.

Killop wants to bring back the Lumper for historic purposes, not to produce on a large scale. They don't taste as good as more modern potatoes. Irish potato farmers today generally grow newer varieties of potatoes for better quality and disease resistance. The news article includes a recipe for potato gratin, calling for russet potatoes. Link

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I'd never heard of strumpfhosentanz until this morning. It translates to "sock trousers dance." There are a lot of YouTube videos of this dance, usually featuring men who can't keep their pantyhose hitched up -which makes it clear that the dancers are actually sharing their tights with the dancer next to them! That has to make it difficult to get to the stage. -via Arbroath

Three men decide to share a hotel room for the night. The desk clerk charges them $30. They each pay $10. After they go to their room, the desk clerk realizes the room is only $25, so he gives the bellhop $5 to take to the men. On the way up, the bellhop decides to tip himself $2 for his trouble. In the room, he gives each man $1 -which means that each guy actually paid $9 for the room.

So: 3x9=$27; the bellhop kept $2; that adds up to $29. Where did the other dollar go?

An hour later, two women check into another room. The room is $30; they each pay $15. Again, the desk clerk realizes the room is only $25, so he gives the bellhop $5 to take to the women. This time, the bellhop keeps $3 for himself and gives $1 to each of the two women. So each woman actually $14 for the room.

So: 2x$14=$28; the bellhop kept $3. That adds up to $31. And that's where the missing dollar showed up. Or is it?

Continue reading and it will all be explained.

(Image credit: Flickr user oxum)

A man goes to a party, drinks some punch, and then leaves. Everyone else at the party who drinks the punch dies of poison. Why didn't the man die?

Once you've decided on your answer, continue reading to see if you are right.

(Image credit: Flickr user Angela Vincent)

One day Kerry celebrates her birthday. Two days later, her older twin Terry celebrates his birthday. How could that be, when they were born a half-hour apart?

When you've given up and want to see the answer, continue reading.