You don't have to be Indiana Jones to hunt treasure. If you're lucky enough, you don't even have to hunt for it! A crew of construction workers were renovating a mansion in France a couple of years ago and found a metal box embedded in a wall. It was full of gold coins- rather old ones, it seemed. That was on a Friday. The next Monday, the workers found another stash of coins, this time in a bag buried in a wall. François Mion and his wife, who purchased the mansion in 2012, were suddenly glad they decided to renovate and join the three buildings on the property.

After the 2019 find, Mion alerted the local authorities and later sent the treasures away to be studied and verified. Archaeologists determined that the coins were minted during the reigns of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, monarchs who ruled France from 1610 to 1643 and 1643 to 1715, respectively. The most recently minted coins were likely created during a series of money reforms that Louis XIV enacted to finance several costly wars. During his 72-year-long reign, Louis XIV also oversaw massive expansions to the Palace of Versailles.

Beginning in 2016, all treasures discovered in France automatically became property of the state. However, since the mansion owners purchased the property in 2012, they have the rights to sell their finds, reports France 3. Per French law, the proceeds from the sale will be split in half, with half going to the married couple who owns the property and half to be split evenly among the three discoverers.

You have to wonder how close the Mion family came to putting off renovations for a few years. The coins will go up for auction on September 29, and are expected to bring more than €250,000. Read the entire story at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Ivoire Auction House)

The 1995 teen comedy Clueless was a big hit and is now considered one of the best teen movies of all time. What? From the comments at YouTube, it's apparent that Clueless is cherished as a work of art by the Millennials who watched it as teens. However, if all you know about the film is what is in this Honest Trailer, that can be mystifying.

Dave Kloc got his start in poster art by making 310 posters for the stand-up comedy television series The Meltdown that aired from 2010 to 2016. Now, art posters for a television show are not really a thing, and neither are posters for standup comedy night, but when Kloc went to a show, he was assigned the job.

“A friend of mine named Jordan Vogt-Roberts invited me to a comedy show in the back of a comic-book store,” Kloc tells me over the phone. “It turned out to be the first ‘Meltdown’ show. It wasn’t like a typical comedy club, a two-drink-minimum kind of place,” Kloc says of the 175-seat NerdMelt Showroom behind Meltdown Comics on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. “It had a very different vibe. I went up to one of the hosts, Jonah Ray, and said, ‘This feels like an old punk show. You should do some posters.’ He said, ‘Do you do posters?’ I didn’t, but I knew how. So I said ‘Yeah,’ he said ‘Great,’ and after I figured out where to get paper and stuff like that, I did roughly a poster a week for more than six years.”

That takes chutzpah. Sow how did Kloc end up as a renowned artist of posters for concerts? While Kloc had never designed posters before The Meltdown, he did have some art training back in Michigan where he grew up. He interests were art, hockey, and music. Kloc, a bass player, quit his band, moved to Los Angeles in 2008, and became a tour manager for other musicians.  

While the work was steady, it was not 52-weeks-a-year steady, which meant Kloc would find himself at loose ends between tours for weeks at a time. “One time after I got off the road,” he says, “I went to a concert at a little gallery called Nomad’s, which also turned out to be a screenprinting shop. It was the coolest place.” Kloc made a deal with the owner, Damon Robinson, to tidy up around the shop and generally help out in exchange for learning how to screenprint. “He taught me the ins and outs of screenprinting,” Kloc says of Robinson, “and I helped him print a lot of gig posters.”

Kloc’s experience with Robinson was the reason he found himself saying “yes” to Jonah Ray at that first “Meltdown” show when Ray asked Kloc if he made posters. In turn, Kloc’s experience as the poster guy for “Meltdown” eventually allowed him to make a few gig posters of his own.

“I still had all the contacts I’d made from years of touring, I still talked to those guys,” Kloc says. “As I got better at making posters, it became reasonable for me to ask if they needed one for an upcoming tour.”

They did. In fact, by the time of Kloc’s last “Meltdown” poster in October of 2016, he was already pivoting to a second career as a gig-poster artist, printing his work from a windowless janitor’s closet in an apartment building near downtown L.A. “It was just a piece of wood clamped to a table,” Kloc says of his makeshift press. “It would be 90 degrees outside, which in L.A. is not uncommon, and 110 in the closet. Between screens, I’d stand outside with my shirt off to cool down, questioning every decision I’d ever made in my life before going back inside to face the heat and humidity. If I needed 30 good posters, I had to print 50. It was awful, but I printed posters there for years.”

Read about Kloc's art and see plenty of gorgeous posters at Collectors Weekly.

So you've inherited your grandmother's precious dolls, which she cherished, but you can't stand them because they look so creepy. You aren't alone, as many people end up with dolls that are ugly, haunted, or give off uncanny valley vibes. You could toss them, but that's neither respectful to Grandma nor is it environmentally-friendly. What to do?

Sara and Brian have found their niche in recycling. They run a program called Unsettling Toy Removal and Rehoming, in which they take in your unwanted dolls and offer them to people who are not so bothered. If you're interested, you can look through the dolls that are available, or for a real horror show, see the permanent collection. 

Note: video may be NSFW due to the presence of a medical dummy named Maria.

-via Boing Boing

AskReddit is a never-ending source of stories that range from delightful to cringeworthy. Graceful_Swan_Ronson asked servers, "what's the most ridiculous request you've gotten from a customer at your restaurant?" Of more than 3000 comments, there are quite a few gems.

1. "A mom and her eight-year-old son came into the restaurant I waited tables at for lunch. The mom asked her son what he wanted to eat, and he replied 'ranch.' I politely asked if he meant a salad with ranch? Or French fries with a side of ranch? The woman looked at me and clarified he wanted a soup bowl full of ranch dressing."

"I walked into the kitchen and discussed with my manager because I had no idea how to charge them for a bowl of ranch dressing. We came to the conclusion that we should charge them for an entire bottle of ranch, so she paid $10.99 for a soup bowl full of ranch dressing. Yuck."

 -Dpg2304

18. "I had a customer ask where the lobster was from that we used in our lobster bisque. According to him, he was allergic to shellfish...but only shellfish that comes from a certain ocean."

 -erikarew

But they aren't all weird orders. One story was simply a hilarious miscommunication.

8. "I was at the Cheesecake Factory with a friend who ordered a 'coffee with Bailey's in it' for dessert. It took ages, but eventually the server comes back with a cup of coffee containing two bay leaves. I can only imagine how confused they were putting that one together."

 -AdequateSteve

Read a roundup of the funniest orders taken at restaurants at Buzzfeed.

(Image credit: Joi)

Mark Rober (previously at Neatorama) is pretty well known for his cool and entertaining stunts, which have only gotten bigger over the years. This time he's going for the world record in shooting elephant toothpaste into the air. But this video is about so much more than that. It's the story of the elephant toothpaste, alright, both his past failures and the new project. But it also involves some debunking of certain internet videos, a jet ride, a pool with a foam slide, a pool filled with millions of orbeez, and a rainbow of devil's toothpaste.

It's also the story of a young cancer survivor and how the community came together to make the best surprise party ever for him. Together, all that justifies the length of this video. -via Fark

The Romans were all about pomp and circumstance. That's why we have arenas today. However, among the chariot races and gladiator fights, one annual ritual stands out for its bizarreness, in which a lucky duck, er, goose is honored at the expense of a few good bois.

On a warm summer day in August in ancient Rome, a brilliantly decorated litter is carried solemnly in the direction of Circus Maximum. Its occupant is neither a senator nor a highborn lady, but upon arrival at his destination he is revealed to be a humble goose, and he had arrived at the venue, now seated on a luxurious purple cushion, to watch the crucifixion of some dogs.

This macabre ritual, called supplicia canum (or “punishment of the dogs”) is celebrated to commemorate the anniversary of a traumatic episode in the history of Rome—the sacking of the city by the Gauls in 390 BC or 387 BC. Supplicia canum is supposed to serve as warning to dogs not to fall asleep on guard duty. In the same procession, geese were decked out in gold and purple, and carried in honor for alerting the last defenders of the city from falling into the hands of the Gauls.

It's hard to believe anyone took the "warning" to the dogs seriously, but the ceremony might have served some purpose in teaching Rome's military history, which makes us glad we have documentation and schools and books from which to learn history. You can learn the circumstances of the sacking of Rome that led to the supplicia canum at Amusing Planet. 

(Image credit: Marie-Lan Nguyen)

Richard Branson's trip to near-space in July wasn't quite the picture-perfect flight we were led to believe at the time. The Federal Aviation Administration gave the company notice that all their space flights will be put on hold until an investigation is completed. So what happened?   

Indeed, the Unity 22 flight, as far as we knew until now, seemed to go exactly as planned, but as the New Yorker article reveals, pilots David Mackay and Mike Masucci ignored warning lights during the ascent. Specifically, the pilots brushed off an “entry glide cone warning,” which indicated that VSS Unity wasn’t climbing steeply enough and that the spaceplane wouldn’t have enough energy to glide back to the designated runway at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

And by flying outside of this cone-shaped volume of space, the spaceplane strayed beyond the mandated airspace for the mission, which it did for 1 minute and 41 seconds. This is a big no-no for the FAA, who enforces these rules.

The New Yorker article suggests the pilots should’ve aborted the mission when the warning lights came on. The warning should’ve served like the discouraging Monopoly card: Go directly to runway jail, do not pass into orbital space, and do not collect $200. Had the pilots done that, however, Richard Branson would probably not have been the first billionaire to reach space—especially given that Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos achieved the same feat just a few weeks later. Instead of aborting the mission, however, the pilots allowed VSS Unity’s engines to go at full throttle for the required one full minute.

This grounding will put some would be space tourists, willing to shell out $450,000 each for a flight, on hold for now. Read more about the kerfuffle at Gizmodo.

According to Know Your Meme, the "milk create challenge" got its start on August first and went viral. The problem with the milk crate challenge is that everyone falls, and many have been injured. Engineering professor Dr. Nehemiah Mabry explains how humans aren't made to negotiate this type of structure. Oh, you might be able to stand on two stacked milk crates, as a short person with high shelves can tell you, but anything more is way too risky.

This is a warning: just because a challenge is fairly impossible doesn't mean you'll get any kind of acclaim if you accomplish it. More likely, you'll hurt or possibly kill yourself trying, and even if you are successful, you'll be contributing to other people's injuries as they try to emulate you. -via Digg

Ambergris, the rare effluvia of a tiny minority of sperm whales, occasionally washes up on the beach and makes someone quite wealthy. Although perfumers now use a synthetic version, the real thing is rare enough to be prized. It's been that way for hundreds of years, as ambergris' many uses were known a long time before its origin was pinpointed.

Though ambergris has been traded since at least the Middle Ages, we still know remarkably little about the substance. Even the fact that it originates from sperm whales is a relatively recent discovery. For hundreds of years—even as beachcombers were finding ambergris washed up on shore and sailors were recovering the substance from carcasses—naturalists and physicians treated the theory that whales produce ambergris as outlandish. Ninth-century Muslim travel writers proposed that whales likely consume a substance produced elsewhere and later regurgitate it, a view that remained in circulation for several centuries.

The Hortus Sanitatis, an encyclopedia of herbal medicines published in 1491, cited theories that ambergris was tree sap, a type of sea foam, or some kind of fungus. In the 12th century, reports from China suggested ambergris was dried dragon spittle. It has at various times been proposed to be a fruit, fish liver, or a precious stone. According to a 2015 paper from the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, “By 1667, eighteen different theories existed on this matter and various animals were considered producers of this substance—including seals, crocodiles, and even birds.”

While we now know that ambergris is produced by a whale's gut, the exact process is still being debated. However, the global trade in ambergris and the clandestine ways it continues today is quite a story in itself, which you can read at Hakai magazine.  -via Smithsonian

Daniel Lambert was born in Leicester, England, in 1770. That was a time when only the rich could always get enough to eat, and stoutness was an admirable quality, since it signaled one's more-than-adequate wealth. But Lambert wasn't upper class; he worked at the local jail, like his father before him. And when he was a young adult, he gained a lot of weight. Lambert became a local celebrity for his girth, and showed off his athletic ability as he participated in sports, especially hunting- until he got too heavy to ride a horse.

Morose about his weight, Lambert became a recluse and shut himself up in his house. In the meantime, stories of his bulk had spread far and wide and curious visitors came to Leicester and used various pretexts to visit his home. Lambert kept away from public eye as much as possible. He also refused to allow himself to be weighed. His friends once tricked him into getting into a carriage on the pretext of going to a cock fight. Once he had squeezed his way into the carriage, the rest of the party drove the carriage onto a large scale and jumped out. By deducting the weight of the previously weighed empty carriage, they calculated that Lambert now weighed 320 kg, making him officially the heaviest person in history, surpassing the previous record-holder, Edward Bright.

That's 705 pounds! In 1806, Lambert decided to make a living by putting himself on exhibition. He become famous nationwide, and even received a visit from King George III. Read the story of Daniel Lambert at Amusing Planet.

Mike Ryan decided to use his lockdown time to catch up on old movies he'd always meant to watch. He thought he would see twenty movies, but as the pandemic dragged on, he caught up on 602 movies! One of the things he noticed is how movies in the 21st century end very differently from older films. Before 2000, the movie went to credits when the plot was resolved. What happened to the characters after that was left to our imaginations. Modern movies can resolve the main plot and spend another 40 minutes tying up every loose end and explaining where the characters then went. Talking to screenwriters and filmmakers, he came up with several reasons for this.

“Well, I think it has a lot to do with CinemaScore and the testing process,” says a screenwriter. “Movies are looking for that little boost at the end to get that final impression up a bit right as people leave the theater. That’s why post-credit sequences work. You can see that movies that end ambiguously score lower in testing and on CinemaScore. So the longer endings remove all ambiguity.”

He continues, “There is a screenwriter guru person. She says people don’t care about victories; they respond to people celebrating the victories. That’s what makes audiences happy. Hence the medal scene at the end of Star Wars. That’s what gives people joy, not the Death Star exploding. I think maybe we’ve overlearned that lesson.”

And that medal ceremony scene at the end of Star Wars? Do you know how long that scene is? It’s one minute and forty seconds long. That’s it. Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star and they wrap everything up in a tidy scene less that two minutes long. It’s perfect. Compare that to the ending of The Rise Of Skywalker that I think is still going. Every little thing had to be resolved, even Chewbacca finally getting a medal from this aforementioned medal ceremony. Think about watching the first Star Wars in a vacuum in 1977, without all the sequels that would come later. Do we think Han will stick around? Darth Vader got away, what’s he up to? What happened to Ben, why did he just disappear? This created discussion and it created a more satisfying experience because, we, the viewer, could think about those questions and it made us think about the movie more.

You know what they say: nothing succeeds like excess. There's more to be said about how movies have changed, which you can read at Uproxx.

Measuring scales go back into antiquity. The act of balancing an unknown quantity with a known quantity of weight is the simplest way to measure weight and assign value to goods for sale. Archaeologists have found evidence of these known quantities all over the world. One such find in Jerusalem appears to have quite a story.

Found in the northern part of the City of David in Jerusalem's Old City and dating back to 2,700 years ago during the First Temple period, the weight in question is just 14 mm. in diameter and 12 mm. in height, and is only the second one of its kind to have been found in Israel. Made of hard limestone, the it contained engravings indicating it has a weight of two gerah, which equals 0.944 grams.

Despite this, however, the weight does not weigh two gerah. Rather, the researchers found that it weighed at least 3.61 grams, over three times as much.

Researchers believe traders used the weight to scam people. For example, if someone brought in their gold jewelry to sell, they could set six gerah of gold on the scale and be paid for only two gerah. This was apparently a problem in the ancient world, as several places in the Bible warn against the sin of using misleading weights and measures. Read more about the find at The Jerusalem Post.  -via Strange Company

Carl Koppelman put his art and tech skills to work in amateur forensics to help police connect seemingly unrelated crimes. Aware of how many dead bodies found in suspicious circumstances were unidentified, Koppelman recreated pictures of the deceased as a living person, hoping that they would be more recognizable by those who knew them. As a volunteer, he was instrumental in solving several cold cases. In 2009, he came across the 1999 case of an unidentified young woman found dead in Racine County, Wisconsin, where nobody knew her. Looking through missing persons reports, he saw the case of Aundria Bowman, who had been missing since 1989. Aundria was considered a runaway. Could she have been murdered ten years later?  

Aundria and the Racine County Jane Doe shared physical characteristics, and their ages aligned: Aundria would have been 25 in 1999, when the Jane Doe was killed. Holland, where Aundria disappeared, sits directly across Lake Michigan from where the Jane Doe was found—it’s just four hours by car from one location to the other, tracing the lake’s southern shoreline and passing through Chicago. To test the possible identification, Koppelman created a composite image, superimposing Aundria’s photo with ones from the Jane Doe’s autopsy. He marked the similarities in red.

Koppelman took his theory to law enforcement, who found it compelling enough to investigate. To determine whether the Jane Doe was Aundria, police would need to compare DNA from the body with that of someone in Aundria’s family. Because Aundria was adopted, authorities had to track down her birth mother. Koppelman knew that could take a while, or that it might never happen, forcing investigators to find other avenues for identification.

But Aundria's birth mother was found. Cathy Terkanian had no idea what had happened to the daughter she relinquished until someone called wanting DNA to identify a dead body. When she learned of the case, she teamed up with Koppelman to find Aundria's killer. Their investigation uncovered a lot of other crimes in a story that is disturbing, to say the least. Read how Aundria Bowman's murder was solved more than 30 years after she went missing at age 14 at Atavist magazine. -via Damn Interesting

When we say pickles, we often mean pickled cucumbers. But any number of vegetables (or meat, or eggs) can be preserved in a solution of vinegar or salt brine. While the process of pickling foods goes back into antiquity, it became very handy for sailors during the Age of Exploration.

Scottish doctor James Lind discussed how pickles could fight scurvy, noting how the “Dutch sailors are much less liable to the scurvy than the English, owing to this pickled vegetable carried out to sea.” The pickled vegetable in question was cabbage. And Captain James Cook was such a proponent of what he called Sour Krout that he gave his officers as much as they wanted, knowing that the crew would eat it as soon as they saw the officers liked it.

But not everyone was a fan. John Harvey Kellogg, who as we’ve previously discussed was deeply concerned about eating food with any known flavor, felt pickles were one of the "stimulating foods" that needed to be avoided.

The history of pickles is full of anecdotes like this, which you can see, or watch in a video, at Mental Floss.