Passports are travel documents that vary across the world and over time. Some are proof of citizenship, some aren't, but all are identification for travelers. While they were used here and there thousands of years ago, they were fairly rare before World War I. Only after World War II did they become universal, and even then enforcement varied.

As witnessed throughout history, the rules don’t always apply to everyone. Take Paul McCartney, who in 1967 was travelling to France and forgot his passport. As the story goes, he allegedly pulled the “you know who I am” card and was allowed to board his flight. Meanwhile in 1976, due to a law that anybody (dead or alive) travelling into France officially requires a passport, Rameses II (who died sometime in 1213 BC) required one so that his remains could travel to Paris for study. The Egyptian government did indeed issue the ancient pharaoh a passport.

An article on passports at Messy Nessy Chic doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive history of the passport, but contains plenty of fascinating tidbits about passports in history.  

(Image credit: Flickr user Ken Mayer)

This bonkers ad is rather amusing as a parody of both supermarket ads and deep fake technology. But it's not really a fake ad. It's a teaser for a new immersive art installation now open in Las Vegas from Meow Wolf (previously at Neatorama). Omega Mart is a combination of theme park, virtual reality game, art museum, and shopping. It's an experience in weirdness, let's say. -via reddit

You might ask yourself if a movie that makes a "best of" list can be a cult film at all. Why yes, in the internet age it's quite likely. Once upon a time, a box office failure would only live on in late night TV, but with home video and online group chat, any movie can have a second life by finding its audience.

To kick things off: a ranking. This ranking was assembled through the votes of Ringer staff members. And though there is no official definition for a cult movie—most times, you know it when you see it—voters were asked to consider only films that (a) were not successful at the box office, (b) were not widely and initially praised by critics, and (c) gained popularity only after they left theaters, whether by word of mouth, midnight screenings, or home-video success.

A cult movie may be the "so bad its funny" kind, but most of the films on this list were ignored by first-run audiences for other reasons, like not being the feel-good feature audiences expected, or being too confusing to appreciate in a single viewing. Still, there are points to argue, for example, you can't really call Monty Python and the Holy Grail a box office failure. Check out the list and the reasons why each movie became a cult film at The Ringer. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Adam Villacin)

To stay healthy and in shape, it is recommended that we take 10,000 steps a day. That may seem like an awful lot of walking and running, but when you do it by dancing, it's more fun and just as healthful. The Swedish nonprofit Generation Pep recruited 9-year-old French dancer Lilyana Ilunga to demonstrate how those steps add up in a joyful dance sequence. -via Nag on the Lake

When governments need money, they often go for a new tax wherever the money is. That makes sense, even when it is flagrantly unfair or even corrupt. But sometimes a tax can be used as a method for changing behavior, which was the impetus for a Russian tax on beards a few hundred years ago.

It’s often claimed that King Henry VIII of England introduced a tax on beards, despite there being no records to prove it. Russia’s Peter the Great, however, did place a tax on his bearded subjects. In 1698, in a bid to bring Russia up to speed with Western Europe’s trend for cleaner shaves, he imposed an annual beard tax. His poorer subjects were allowed to wear a beard for just two kopeks a year, while wealthy citizens had to pay 100 rubles. Bearded tax-dodgers could be forcibly shaved by the police, while those who paid the tax were given a copper token to carry, which proved that their beard was fully paid for.

Whatever the reason, there have been some pretty strange taxes imposed on various societies throughout history. Read about taxes imposed on single men, political enemies, and urine, among other things at Mental Floss.

Every year, one book wins the Diagram Prize for the oddest book title of the year. The year 2020 is the 42nd such competition, and a Canadian author has won for the first time. That would be anthropologist Gregory Forth of the University of Alberta.

A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path showed a remarkably clean pair of paws to the rest of the field, notching up 49% of the public vote—26 percentage points clear of second-place finisher, Introducing the Medieval Ass.   

Horace Bent, The Bookseller legendary diarist and The Diagram Prize administrator, said: “There has been little to shout about in a difficult year, but A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path is something to cherish, as long as you stay a good metre or two away and, perhaps, wear some stout wellies. Congratulations to Gregory Forth and McGill-Queen’s University Press: I am sure the champagne—or I guess something else—will certainly be flowing as they celebrate A Dog Pissing’s hard-earned victory."   

The book is about animal metaphors in Indonesia. Other titles in the shortlist were Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music, Lawnmowers: An Illustrated History, The Slaughter of Farmed Animals: Practical Ways of Enhancing Animal Welfare, and How to Make Love to a Despot. Read more on the award at The Bookseller. -via Kottke

Two and a half years ago, we posted the lovely story of a guy who found a cat and her four newborn kittens under his bed. British filmmaker Paris Zarcilla was astonished, and soon fell in love. He promised to protect them, and he's kept that promise by keeping all five cats. He named the mother Forever, and the kittens Pancake, Ronin, Mac, and Dobby. Zarcilla posts regular updates on the cats' antics at Twitter, and you can catch up on their story so far at Bored Panda.

This cat was just looking for a soft warm place to sit, but he suddenly became a horseback rider in the process. And it wasn't long before he was riding a bucking bronco! Maybe rodeo isn't in this cat's future, since he was eventually tossed off with a fairly gentle bucking. But these critters are friends, and the horse was obviously reacting to the cat's natural inclination to hang on with their claws. -via Boing Boing

The deep-sea whalers of Nantucket were hard-working men on a difficult job, but there was plenty of time between whale sightings to fill with activities that survive to this day. Those were keeping logs of the voyage, scrimshaw, drawing, and painting. The most common subjects of these works are, of course, ships and whales. The art those whalers left behind gives us a glimpse into the adventures they experienced as well as the boring days in between.

As with shore whaling, the key was to draw close to the great mammal before striking it with a harpoon attached to a long coil of rope. Once the harpoon’s iron was firmly lodged into the creature’s flesh, then it would either promptly die or, more commonly, flee, in which case a “Nantucket sleigh ride” would ensue. During this chase the frenzied whale would bolt with the boats in tow, until eventually, exhausted, the leviathan would collapse and be pierced to a gruesome death.

The cruelty of the hunt is not something that generally comes across in the logbook and journal depictions, where the blood and gore are replaced by anthropomorphised whales complete with unfathomably merry faces. Perhaps the brutality of whaling was difficult to reconcile with the principles of pacifism and non-violence that supposedly underpinned the Nantucketers’ Quaker way of life.

The "Nantucket sleigh ride" depicted above obviously has a little fantasy added, but that makes for more interesting art. See more of this, plus smiling whales and detailed ships in art at the Public Domain Review. -via Atlas Obscura

(Image credit: Log of the ship Susan)

The two stars that Hollywood can't get out of its mind- Godzilla and King Kong. The newest film to put these two together (like in 1962), Godzilla vs. Kong, is the third Godzilla film of the 21st century, promoted as a sequel to both Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Kong: Skull Island. This will be the 36th Godzilla movie and the 12th King Kong film. And from the looks of things, they've been growing all this time. Godzilla vs. Kong will hit theaters and HBO Max on March 26. -via Digg

I've always been fascinated with figuring out how old a map is by how the places on it are labeled. I'm not the only one. Borders and names change over the years, and it takes at least a bit of knowledge of world history to accurately date a map, or a world globe in this case. Redditor hi_everyone0 posted this image as a flat earth joke, and commenters immediately went to work figuring out how old the globe is. We only get to see one side, but we can narrow it down with history.

1. Before 1990, because the USSR is labeled.
2. After 1972 because Ceylon became Sri Lanka.
3. After 1980, when Vanuatu was founded.
4. Commenters posited that it was before 1979, when Peking became Beijing, but also pointed out that it took about ten years for the rest of the world to start using the name Beijing for the city. This kind of lag affects most maps in one way or another.

You can enlarge the globe image here, in case you want to help narrow the date down further.  

Digital artist scadarts (also known as mandal0re) uses Photoshop to put Star Wars characters into classic artworks. His latest series uses the classical Japanese style to portray Boba Fett, Ahsoka Tano, Darth Maul, and Leia Organa. Click to the right in the image above to see each work on its own. But that's just his latest series. Continue reading to see more.

Indiana Jones defied seven deadly traps to reach this treasure! But afterward, a giant ball of yarn chased him back out of the temple. This is the latest from OwlKitty, the cat who manages to crash every movie ever made. -via Geeks Are Sexy

A geologist in Brazil found a geode that, when split open, has an uncanny resemblance to a Muppet we all know and love- Cookie Monster! Mineral specialist Mike Bowers posted the rock to Facebook in a video with the appropriate musical accompaniment. The blue quartz with the unique cut might fetch a pretty penny.

Mike wrote: “I think this is probably the most perfect Cookie Monster out there.

“I have seen others but here you have it complete on both sides.

“This is very unusual. There are a few famous agates out there: the owl; the scared face. But it is rare to find one so well defined like this.

“Prices can be very high. I was proposed over $10,000 (£7,300) by five different buyers.”

Yeah, that's good enough for me. You can buy a lot of cookies with that kind of dough. -via reddit

(Image credit: Mike Bowers)

Before the world was inundated with the material we call plastic, the word meant "capable of being molded." That was its meaning in early plastic surgery, as surgeons used a person's existing living tissues to replace the parts that had been lost to war injuries. This technique was pioneered by Sir Harold Gillies, a surgeon at the Queen’s Hospital in Kent who worked to restore faces that had been marked by the ordinance of World War I.

Plastic surgery, there is no doubt, was working miracles and giving these badly wounded men a new lease of life, and a new sense of hope. No wonder then that the Linlithgowshire Gazette was calling it in August 1917 ‘one of the greatest scientific triumphs which owes its existence to the war,’ whilst in May 1919 a colonel in the Freeman’s Journal is hailing the practice as a ‘priceless boon to mankind, and one for which we have to thank the war.’

The same colonel goes on to describe the ‘hundreds of ways in which plastic surgery will be invaluable in civilian times.’ And indeed it was to be. In December 1930 the Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Guardian reports on the ‘Miracle of Surgery‘ that was performed on Skegness schoolboy Luke Foster, who was born with a congenital defect affecting his nose. Under the care of ‘one of the foremost plastic surgery specialists in the world,’ one Harold Gillies, Luke was given ‘a completely new nose,’ enabling him to ‘blow his nose for the first time in his life.’

Gillies' techniques were refined to help those with congenital defects, then to "improve" a person's looks in ways never imagined before. From building body parts like Foster's nose, to facelifts, ear tucks, nose jobs, and breast enhancements, you can skim through the history of plastic surgery as told in news stories at the British Newspaper Archive. -via Strange Company