Many of the customs of modern-day Easter came from ancient spring festivals celebrating the equinox, a time when flowers bloom, birds lay eggs, and bunny rabbits appear everywhere the minute you start up the lawn mower. Over time, the Easter bunny has been illustrated and photographed in ways that render him/her cute,  creepy, or downright bawdy. See a collection of these Easter bunny images through the years at Flashbak. -Thanks, WTM!

Around 66 million years ago, an impact from outer space changed the world. Its effects wiped out non-avian dinosaurs and countless other animal species. Plants, too, although plant fossils in tropical areas haven't been studied as much. However, a 12-year study led by paleobiologist Carlos Jaramillo looked at fossil pollen from Colombia in order to trace the history of the Amazon rainforest. The Chicxulub impact led to the rise of the rainforest as we know it, but that just makes us wonder what it looked like before.  

Their findings paint a picture of a sudden, cataclysmic annihilation of life after the impact—but also of a phoenix-like rebirth in the millions of years afterward. Prior to the meteorite, the authors determined, South America’s forests featured many conifers and a brightly lit open canopy supporting a lush understory of ferns. Dinosaurs likely played key roles in maintaining these Cretaceous forests by knocking down trees and clearing out vegetation, among other things. Within moments of the Chicxulub meteorite’s impact, however, this ecosystem was irrevocably altered. Fires, which likely burned for several years, engulfed South America’s southerly forests. Along with many of the animals they supported, a total of 45 percent of the continent’s tropical plant species disappeared, according to the authors’ calculations.

It took six million years for the forests to return to the level of diversity they had before the meteorite, and the species that slowly grew back were completely different than what came before.

One might argue that the new species were not only different, but better. Read more on the study at Scientific American. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Shao)

There are two lessons to be learned from this video, but don't read them until after you watch.

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The A.V. Club goes down the Wiki wormhole to bring us the story of Vin Mariani, a French wine popular in the 1860s. Cocaine was a common ingredient in those days, and Vin Mariani, which incoprated cocaine in its recipe, was promoted as an aid to "health and vitality." Besides, Pope Leo XIII liked it!

Biggest controversy: Believe it or not, not enough cocaine. Chemist Angelo Mariani, who created the wine, marketed the drink in his native France with 6 milligrams of cocaine per ounce. But when Mariani tried to export his wine to America, he had to change the formula. Not to meet any kind of regulations—there were none regarding cocaine at the time—but because his drink was mild compared to the competition in the U.S. He had to add 20% more cocaine just to deliver the same buzz American coke wine did.

The effect of Vin Mariani on America didn't stop with the wine itself. It indirectly led us to Coca-Cola. Read how that happened at the A.V. Club. -via Strange Company 

In 1936, a young retail clerk found an interesting piece of metal near near San Rafael, California. He could make out the words "Sir Francis Drake" on the inscription. A year later, friends convinced him to take it to the local college, where UC Berkeley historian Herbert Eugene Bolton recognized it as an artifact he'd been looking for for years. Not long afterward, he called a meeting of his colleagues.

For centuries, historians had searched for Drake’s plate, the only physical evidence of Sir Francis Drake’s expedition to the California coast. The English privateer, fresh off raiding Spanish ships and towns along the Pacific coast, found safe harbor in the Point Reyes area in June 1579. While resting and restocking there, he claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I. He named it New Albion.

According to crew member accounts, Drake left an inscribed brass plate in the area to stake his claim. But in the 350 years since, no one had seen it.

Bolton was convinced it was still out there. Whenever his students said they’d be taking a weekend trip to the seashore, he asked them to keep an eye out for Drake’s plate.

Now, he had it. It was not what he expected, sure, but Bolton had explanations for everything. He told the assembled crowd and the media there was no doubt this plate was real. Its craftsmanship and writing (“BY THE GRACE OF GOD AND IN THE NAME OF HERR MAIESTYQVEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND AND HERR SVCCESSORS FOREVER, I TAKE POSSESSION OF THIS KINGDOME,” it read in part) was consistent with the 1500s.

There was skepticism from the start, but Bolton died in 1953 believing he had Drake's plate. In 1977, the plate was exposed as a hoax, but the full story didn't come out until 2003. Read the rest of the details behind Drake's plate at SFgate. -via Digg

Scientists are still analyzing data from NASA's twin study, in which astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year aboard the International Space Station, while his identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly acted as a control. A new research paper reveals that over 340 days in space, Scott Kelly's heart shrunk 27%!  

That might sound alarming, but it’s a reflection of how adaptable the human heart is, explains study author Benjamin Levine, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas, to the New York Times’ Kenneth Chang. On Earth, the heart has to pump blood hard enough to move it upward while gravity pulls it down. But in the weightless conditions of orbit, gravity is no longer a factor, and the heart shrinks to an appropriate size.

The study assures us that Kelly's heart is just fine now, and he has recovered from the changes his body went through during his 2015-16 space sojourn. However, you must imagine the strength necessary to re-adapt a smaller heart to dealing with the force of gravity again upon return. Scott Kelly has since retired from NASA, while his brother Mark left retirement to serve as a US senator. An article at Smithsonian explains what went on with Kelly's heart and also that of long-distance swimmer Benoît Lecomte as he attempted to swim across the Pacific Ocean.

(Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly)

The Hood Internet has been remixing the songs of the year for every year, beginning in 1979. When this one dropped, people were eagerly awaiting it, but were then astonished. I myself was surprised that I knew a few of the songs. Folks know the songs that are important to their memories, and they know what year they were popular. As the video played, they saw there were errors upon errors until it became clear that this is an April Fools Day mix. Here's the real 1999 mix.

And I was still astonished that I recognized a couple of the songs.

This is really silly, but it's what the internet was made for. The movie Godzilla vs. Kong is in theaters now, pitting the giant movie monsters against one another. Their ridiculous size makes them perfect for cinematic violence, but what about cleaning up after them? In other words, which would produce the most waste? Mental Floss turned to the experts: primate expert Dr. Cat Hobaiter and reptile researcher Dr. David A. Steen, who give us the poop, so to speak, on the closest real world analogies to the movie monsters. Then we can extrapolate to their movie size and determine a, uh, winner. Would you bet on King Kong or Godzilla to drop the bigger load in a typical day? Find out what Mental Floss has determined in a scientifically and mathematically sound (but still fictional) competition.

After a year of pandemic precautions, you may have trouble envisioning what a movie theater interior looks like. But think back to the movies you saw in the 1990s, and what an experience it was to go out to the local multiplex, maybe in a mall, maybe with an arcade attached. It was an era in which theaters tried to be total experiences, like a theme park. And you might particularly remember the cosmic carpets that seemed to be in every theater across the country.  

But why the carpets? According to Dimensional Innovations, it was actually a practical maneuver. Once the global blockbuster era hit full swing (think Jurassic Park, Titanic, et al) people were going to the movies in droves, spilling their sugary drinks and melty Milk Duds on the floor in record numbers. “There used to be tile underneath the seats,” says Trotter. “It made it easy to clean, but people complained about how their feet would stick to the floor. These places were dirty.”

Enter the carpets—ones with hectic patterns in every shade of neon known to Pantone. “It’s got so many different colors in it, you can spill coffee or Coke or popcorn and it won’t show,” Trotter says. The Dimensional Innovations team would actually dump Coca-Cola on these new carpets, let it soak in, walk all over them, and check to see if it changed the colors. It didn’t. Even blacklight lights wouldn’t reveal the stains. “It was a pretty genius design,” says Trotter, still laughing, “just horrible.”

The carpets were only part of the movie theater aesthetic that was unique to the '90s. Read more about the look and where it went at A24.  -via Boing Boing

Born in 1826, Frenchman Louis Coulon couldn't keep a close shave. So he gave up and let his beard grow. And grow. And grow. It eventually reached eleven feet (3.3 meters) by 1904, according to contemporary accounts. Coulon was the subject of a slew of postcards, which changed up sometimes when he posed with other people, or birds nesting in his beard, or often his cats! If you look carefully at the picture above, you'll see a kitten climbing up the front of Coulon's beard. See a gallery of Coulon's postcards at Vintage Everyday. -via Metafilter

Keeping up with one young child is hard enough, imagine trying to keep track of four all the same age! This mother bear had her hands full trying to cross a street with four cubs in Winsted, Connecticut, on Monday. You carry one, another follows, one stays back, and one doesn't know what to do. At one point, she even tries to carry two cubs in her mouth at once, but that doesn't work. Lucky for the bears, traffic stopped completely to let the family pass through.  -via Laughing Squid

This lovely little house for sale in Baltimore is quite unique once you look past the front. It comes with some nice perks, like a detached garage, party bar, and a backyard fire pit.

The house is lighting up the internet as a statement on home decor. Every room is monochromatic, black furnishings against clean, white walls.



The current owner is easily pegged as a single male Goth football fan with a clear devotion to an aesthetic that is hard to define, although the term “American Goth” comes to mind. An interview with the real estate agent dubs it “sexy funeral goth.”

Slate: When you have a house with decor as unusual as this, do you try to get the sellers to neutralize it a little? Or do you just embrace it?

Matt Godbey: Well, you should have seen it before. He somewhat neutralized it. I told him: I’ve been doing this for 33 years, and I know what sells. Some of the things in there, I told him, will frighten people. There were about 25 mannequins in the basement and some upstairs.

Take a tour through 82 pictures at the real estate listing. -via Metafilter

We know from the movies that there's no basement under the Alamo, but the Lincoln Memorial in Washington is a different story. Construction on the memorial started in 1914, which began with digging 40 feet into the soft, reclaimed ground to lay a foundation. That foundation consisted of columns three stories tall to support the edifice above. The area is known as the Lincoln Undercroft.  

The underground cathedral of concrete pillars was then simply forgotten about until renovations in 1975. According to the Washington Post, in preparation for the Bicentennial, the memorial’s bathrooms were renovated, and the construction crews started peering into the building’s foundation. They brought along their friends, some of whom belonged to the National Speleological Society. The cellar was deemed a cave, complete with stalactites and its own ecosystem (insects, rodents, etc).

One other interesting find was historical graffiti from way back in 1914. Steven Schorr got to explore the Undercroft as a part of a digital preservation project, and described to NBC how “down in the basement of the Lincoln Memorial, they actually have things written on some of the pillars. The builders actually drew cartoons and they have them covered in Plexiglas.”

The basement was closed to the public again in 1989. Take a video tour, or you can visit the Lincoln Undercroft yourself in 2022, when it reopens for the memorial's centennial celebration. -via Metafilter

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Working dogs will venture into spaces that humans consider too dangerous. Whether this is due to extraordinary bravery or ignorance of the actual danger, you can't say that the dogs of war aren't brave in their own way. They're also loyal and hard-working. Dogs were first trained to find wounded soldiers in the late 19th century, but came into their own in World War I.

During World War 1, mercy dogs were trained by national Red Cross societies to serve the country in which the specific society operated. A typical mercy dog was equipped with a saddlebag containing water, alcohol, and first aid supplies, which a wounded soldier could use to tend to his wounds. The dogs were trained to move silently around no man’s land, usually at night, sniffing out wounded soldiers, ignoring those belonging to the other side. The dogs were smart enough to recognize and differentiate between slightly wounded men and soldiers who were beyond help. Their mission was to alert the troops back at the camp that a man who had a chance of survival was lying in the battlefield waiting for help.

Mercy dogs are credited with saving thousand of lives during the war. Some were awarded for outstanding service. Read about the mercy dogs of World War I at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company

There is growing evidence that the earth may have been completely covered by water billions of years ago. Some of the evidence comes from the mantle, the layer of the planet that makes up two thirds of the earth's mass. The minerals down there can hold water, but long ago they weren't able to hold as much water as they do now.  

What they posit is that, eons ago, the Earth's surface used to have a lot more water on it, maybe twice as much as it does now. Water seeping down into cracks in the crust may have weakened the crust, starting plate tectonics for the first time. When one plate slid under another (called subduction) it brought water with it, which was then stored in the mantle. As time went on and the mantle cooled, it was able to hold more and more water (plus as the mantle cools it's easier to form wadsleyite and ringwoodite, so it could soak up even more water). They suppose that over time the mantle sucked down about half the water on the surface, leaving us with what we see today.

The composition of the mantle is not the only evidence for an ancient water world, but it is the focus of an explanation from Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.