(Image credit: Flickr user Northampton Museum)

There is an argument over where the story of Cinderella came from, China, Egypt, or Greece. But the ancient tale of Ye Xian contains a rather creepy clue that the story originated in the land of the original foot fetish. In the Chinese version, the king never even meets our heroine at the ball -he becomes obsessed with finding her solely because of the miniscule size of the shoe she left behind. This makes sense in light of the traditional practice of foot binding. It is estimated that somewhere between a billion and four billion women in China had bound feet between the 10th and 20th centuries.

(Image credit: Flickr user Okinawa Soba)

Foot binding began in the late T'ang dynasty and lasted for about a thousand years, until the 20th century when the practice was outlawed. Why it ever started is the stuff of legends. Some say the public wanted to emulate a Emperor's favored concubine who had unusually small feet. Others tell of an Empress with club feet and followers who bound their feet in sympathy. There are even tales of an Emperor who ordered his female subjects to undergo the procedure. Whatever the reason for the first foot to be bound, the custom caught on. The reason most often given is that small feet were sexually alluring. Now, anything can be sexually alluring if you are told that it is. Why would crippled, deformed feet make a woman more attractive? The underlying reason is that a woman with bound feet is a status symbol, an indicator of wealth and social standing. Only a man of considerable means could afford to have a wife, concubine, or daughters who couldn't work.

(Image by Flickr user Okinawa Soba)

The problem with status symbols is that even people without status crave them. In reality, most women in China had to work, whether their feet were bound or not. With their feet mangled in this manner, women were essentially going through life balancing on their heels. As the practice spread from the upper classes to the rest of the population, the only groups that did not bind a daughter's feet were the Manchus (who still developed a shoe style to imitate the Chinese "lotus walk"), a few ethnic minorities, and some of the women who worked in southern rice paddies. Even poor families doomed their girls to a life of pain, in hopes that she would be able to marry up.

Slate is starting a series of posts on the periodic table of elements, with author Sam Kean writing a separate post about each of about two dozen of the most interesting elements. The first entry is for antimony, which I believe, is the sexiest of the elements. It was widely used in alchemy, but had better results elsewhere.

Egyptian women used one form of antimony, stibium, as eyeliner (hence the symbol for antimony, Sb, even though neither letter appears in the element's name). Pills of the element became popular as a medicine in the 1700s, especially as a laxative, able to blast through the most compacted bowels. It was so good the chronically constipated would root through their excrement to retrieve the pill and reuse it later. Some lucky families passed down antimony laxatives from generation to generation.

Unfortunately, antimony purges the bowels so well partly because it's poison—the body wants to get rid of it. But these were the days in medicine of fighting fire with fire: Doctors believed the only way to cure a violent illness was with an equally violent reaction to medicine, and antimony's popularity grew.

Other elements will be posted through the month of July. Link to introduction. Link to antimony.

(YouTube link)

You can no longer say you've never seen a tortoise dance. -via reddit

The Great Pyramid, velociraptors, Jesus, would you recognize any of them if you traveled back in time? Probably not, because the image we have of those things is shaped by Hollywood -or in the case of the pyramid, by what it looks like now. Take another look at the way they probably appeared in this list from Cracked. Pictured are velociraptors in the movie Jurassic Park and as they may have actually looked -with feathers! Link (NSFW text) -via Digg

Holy Taco challenged readers to use Photoshop to make Twilight: Eclipse into a watchable movie. They selected the best 19 entries to post. Many didn't really adhere to the original idea of the contest, like the picture here does, but they are funny anyway. Link

Superstitious fans and even players develop weird rituals to ensure a win for their team. Read the origins of some of the strangest, like how fans of the Detroit hockey team tend throw octopuses onto the ice after the Red Wings score a goal during a home game.

The origins of this tentacled tradition began in 1952 when fewer NHL teams meant that the road to the Stanley Cup only took eight playoff wins. Thus, the 8 legs on an octopus would symbolize the road to the Stanley cup with 8 winning games. Since then, hundreds of octopi have rained down onto the Redwing rink.

A list of recommendations state that the octopus should be cooked, as a raw octopus tends to leave slime on the ice. Link

Todd Franklin recalled the Death Star cookie his grandmother made him when he was a child. Recently, he pulled out the directions from his old copy of Darth Vader’s Activity Book and he and his wife made one for their son. A scan of the original recipe is posted at Neato Coolville. Link -via Holy Kaw!

You'd think that anyone could tell the difference between historical figures canonized by the Catholic church and Louisiana football players, but today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss is surprisingly challenging! I scored a dismal 42%. Link

Smithsonian magazine takes a closer look at nine of the 20,000 species of jellyfish that populate the world's oceans. Some are tasty. some are lethal, and some are just plain strange, like this specimen of Bathykorus bouilloni, which somewhat resembles Darth Vader, don't you think? Link

(Image credit: Kevin Raskoff)

A fireworks display Friday at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, California drew crowds of people -and yellow jackets! A swarm of insects stung fairgoers when their nest was disturbed.

The wasp attacks began shortly after the fireworks show started at 9:15 p.m. About 5,000 people were in the grandstands, and 15 minutes later sting victims started showing up in the first aid area, Knowles said.

"Apparently there were a number of (yellow jackets) also in attendance for the fireworks display last night," Knowles said Saturday.

She said emergency personnel at the fair set up a triage area to care for those who were stung. Everyone was treated on site and there were no hospitalizations, Knowles said.

By midnight Friday, an exterminator located and removed a ground nest, Mitchell said. The yellow jackets were probably disturbed by the vibrations as the fireworks were launched, not the explosions overhead, she said.

None of the victims were allergic to the stings. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user ChrisK4u)

Mark Lamster interviewed 97-year-old Morris Moel, who immigrated to the United States from Ukraine, a part of the Soviet Union in 1922. The story is typical of that era's immigrants, which means it was a heroic struggle to get here. His father came first, then Moel was separated from this mother when she went to Warsaw, and then his grandmother died. But Moel's mother arranged for strangers to get the youngsters out of Ukraine.

The Russian part of the border was all forest. And we were stopped. I heard rifles being cocked while we were walking. Russian soldiers. And the soldiers searched everyone and took everything that was valuable and said you’ve got to go back, and I guess they [the guides] knew another route so we got through. And the Polish border was absolutely free, but it was all snow. I was so little and my older borther dragged me across that border. Finally we got to the other side inside Poland. Stayed in a house for half a night and we were then taken to a train station. And that train took us into Warsaw. The first time I was in a train. And my mother was waiting for us in an office. We told her my grandmother died. She never knew about it.

It took many more months for Moel to actually reach America. Link -via Jason Kottke

Kelly Moss of Germantown, Tennessee was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving when police officers found her parked on the sidewalk and slumped over the steering wheel. The 48-year-old was unable to stand and could not complete a field sobriety test. What had she been drinking?

An officer noticed partially empty bottles of vanilla extract, labeled as 35 percent alcohol by volume, and Diet Coke in the front seat, and they said they smelled a strong vanilla odor on the woman's breath. A grocery receipt found in the vehicle listed two 8-ounce bottles of vanilla extract, purchased Wednesday.

This is Moss' third DUI arrest. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/jul/01/police-germantown-woman-drove-drunk-vanilla/

Cook's Illustrated magazine advises you to find out where your broiler's "hot spots" are by positioning bread slices all across the oven and studying the results after they are toasted. Link -via Nag on the Lake

What happens when the Jawas of Tatooine encounter Nazis on a secluded Mediterranean island? They end up as the heroes of the story, at least in this re-edited scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark! Even the Tusken Raiders are afraid of the little guerrillas. Link

This map, or geoid, shows the contours of the earth in a more precise manner than ever before. It was constructed with measurements taken by Europe's Goce satellite.

Launched in 2009, the sleek satellite flies pole to pole at an altitude of just 254.9km - the lowest orbit of any research satellite in operation today.

The spacecraft carries three pairs of precision-built platinum blocks inside its gradiometer instrument that sense accelerations which are as small as 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000 of the gravity experienced on Earth.

This has allowed it to map the almost imperceptible differences in the pull exerted by the mass of the planet from one place to the next - from the great mountain ranges to the deepest ocean trenches.

Two months of observations have now been fashioned into what scientists call the geoid.

This technology allows mapping of places that were too inaccessible for such precision before, such as the Himalayas. The BBC has a lot more on this project. Link -via TYWKIWDBI