Napoleon Bonaparte was only 51 when he died in exile on the island of Saint Helena in 1821. Doctors who attended his autopsy concluded that the cause was untreated stomach cancer, which caused years of suffering. Irish surgeon Barry Edward O’Meara described the former emperor's condition in a recently-sold letter from 1818.

“I found [Napoleon] laboring under a considerable degree of fever, his countenance displaying anxiety and being evidently that of a man who was experiencing severe corporeal sufferings,” O’Meara observed.

He added that the politician’s symptoms included “great increase of pain in the Right side, rending headache, general anxiety and oppression, skin hot and dry, pulse quickened,” all of which signaled a “crisis of a serious natures.”

While O'Meara had reason to exaggerate Napoleon's condition, the letter is one of the rare artifacts of his final years in exile. Read more about Napoleon's death at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Charles von Steuben)

Luxembourg trucking company P. Adams Schwertransporte posted pictures of a truck that you might find hard to wrap your head around. The cargo is a rotor blade that's 67 meters (220 feet) long! Yes, holding it up in the air certainly makes negotiating turns and traffic easier, but what incredible balancing powers this must require. Sure, the inner end of the blade is much heavier than the other end, but just imagine what a change in the weather could do to this rig.  What a sight to see this drive past your home! -via Jalopnik

When the 18th Amendment made booze illegal in the US, people went to great lengths to get something alcoholic to drink. Industrial methanol found its way into bootleg liquor, leaving behind blind or even dead drinkers by the thousands over the period known as Prohibition. Dr. W.H. Miles of the Oklahoma City Health Board was familiar with methanol poisoning, but he and his assistant Dr. Ephraim Goldfain began seeing cases of paralysis in 1930 that they suspected were from drinking alcohol, yet the symptoms differed from anything they'd seen before.  

But the strange paralysis exhibited by Dr. Miles and Dr. Goldfain’s patients was something completely new. After tracking down and investigating more than 60 cases, the pair soon noticed an intriguing pattern: all the victims were regular users of Jamaica Ginger, a popular brand of Patent Medicine. Patent Medicines were a type of proprietary cure-all sold over-the-counter in most drugstores. These could contain all kinds of substances, including herbal extracts, opium, cocaine, turpentine, and mineral oil, but not – strangely enough – actual snake oil. But one ingredient nearly all brands had in common was copious amounts of alcohol – up to 90% in certain cases. This had made Patent Medicines a popular source of alcohol in dry counties for decades. Jamaica Ginger was especially popular among poor labourers in the South. Boasting a 90% alcohol content and costing only 35 cents a bottle, it was typically mixed with soft drinks at soda fountains to help cut down its strong bitter flavour. Among drinkers the concoction was commonly known as ‘Jake’, and the paralysis it caused soon came to be known as ‘Jake Leg’ or ‘Jake Walk’.

But while the link between Jake consumption and paralysis was convincing, it was also puzzling. Jamaica Ginger had been sold since 1863 without any negative effects. What had changed?

The story as it unraveled revealed shenanigans with regulatory systems and the way manufacturers tried to get around them, which you can read at Today I Found Out.

(Image source: Library of Congress)

When you hammer a nail into a tree or a block of wood, it stays there. That's how nails are useful to us. Now consider the woodpecker. A woodpecker drives its beak into a tree with the force of a hammer, but then immediately pulls the beak out to hammer again. You've probably never thought about that before, but scientists have, and by slowing downside close-up footage of a woodpecker in action, they've figured out how they do it.

Once the tip of the woodpecker’s bill hits the wood, the bird’s head rotates to the side ever so slightly, lifting the top part of the beak and twisting it a bit in the other direction, the videos reveal. This pull opens the bill a tiny amount and creates free space between the beak tip and the wood at the bottom of the punctured hole, so the bird can then easily retract its beak.

-via Boing Boing

The Netflix series Bridgerton takes place in England between 1813 and 1827, which is known as the Regency Era. In the opening scene of the first episode, we see a maid lacing up a woman ever-tighter in her corset. The scene is a metaphor that’s quite common in period dramas, signaling how woman had no freedom, and were constrained by societal expectations to shape themselves into someone acceptable, no matter the pain or effort involved.

The trouble is that nearly all of these depictions are exaggerated, or just plain wrong. This is not to say “Bridgerton” showrunner Shonda Rhimes erred in her portrayal of women’s rights during the early 19th-century Regency era—they were indeed severely restricted, but their undergarments weren’t to blame.

“It’s less about the corset and more about the psychology of the scene,” says Kass McGann, a clothing historian who has consulted for museums, TV shows and theater productions around the world and who founded and owns the blog/historical costuming shop Reconstructing History, in an email.

Over four centuries of uncountable changes in fashion, women’s undergarments went through wide variations in name, style and shape. But for those whose understanding of costume dramas comes solely from shows and movies like “Bridgerton,” these different garments are all just lumped together erroneously as corsets.

There’s nothing wrong with using metaphors in movies or TV to make a point, but if you want historical information about women and their underwear, period dramas aren’t the most accurate source. Learn how corsets and other foundation garments were really used in the Regency Era and beyond at Smithsonian.

Who an actor is should never be confused with the roles he plays, but cinematic history is littered with talented people done in by their offscreen personalities and/or personal lives. Those successful at avoiding such fate are often playing a part even when they aren't playing a part. Cary Grant was a master of such role-playing. When not in character, he was the ultimate gentleman: confident, stylish, charming, and in control, with just the right amount of masculinity and aloofness. This facade made it all the harder to get to know him. Hollywood biographer Scott Eyman's new book Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise tries to find the real man, Archibald Leach, who became Cary Grant.  

Grant reached a level of fame rarely achieved, let alone sustained over decades, with so many great films bearing his name. The actor often joked that he wished he was Cary Grant. He was always torn between his origins as a poor kid from Bristol and the Hollywood legend he became. A friend once wrote of Grant, “when we were out together in Beverly Hills, people usually didn’t approach him, or interfere. He was an object of awe. Being famous, visibly famous, is a terrible fate.” The truth is that Grant had a brilliantly constructed persona, better than anything a studio marketing team could have developed.

Platypuses are the weirdest animals in the weirdest class of mammals known as monotremes. They lay eggs, feed their young with milk, have venomous spurs, and glow in the dark. They have duck bills, webbed feet, and fur. But when you look at them at a molecular level, they are even weirder. Scientists have recently managed to sequence a male platypus’s DNA, and found some surprising things.  

The authors were particularly interested in the animal's sex chromosomes, which appear to have originated independently from other therian mammals, all of which contain a simple XY pair.

The platypus, however, is the only known animal with 10 sex chromosomes (echidnas have nine). Platypus have 5X and 5Y chromosomes organised in a ring that appears to have broken apart into pieces over the course of mammalian evolution.

Comparing this chromosome information to humans, opossums, Tasmanian devils, chickens, and lizard genomes, the authors found the platypus's sex chromosomes have more in common with birds like chickens than mammals such as humans.

Read how the platypus genome resembles an interspecies chimera of sorts at ScienceAlert. -via Damn Interesting

You might think you're watching a travelogue from a train until you see the giant feline stalking your ride! Jonathan Lawton of West Yorkshire built this model railway and strapped a camera on the front, which is infinitely enhanced when his cat Mittens joins in the fun. -via Digg

When President John Adams was 85 years old, he attended a conference in Massachusetts and came down with the flu, which he suffered from for several weeks. However, it did not curb his activities much, as he related in a latter to his daughter Louisa.   

He wrote to Louisa after he recovered, saying, “I have had the influenza, and with great difficulty have got the better of it — but not perfectly cured.” Apparently it started as a cold that just got worse. “I attended every day the Convention,” he wrote, “and the air of that hall — instead of curing my cold imperceptibly increased it from day to day.”

Did he really expect the air of a crowded room to cure his cold? There was still a lot to learn as far as how colds and flus were spread in 1820, and Adams likely spread his disease far and wide. He wrote, “The unceasing hospitality of the gentlemen in Boston compelled me most willingly to accept invitations to dinner, almost everyday.”

Here is where the contact tracing list begins: “The company was most fascinating — an assemblage of the power, authority, wealth, genius, learning, and politeness of the State — the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, the President of Harvard College, the President of the Senate, the Chief Justice and other Judges, Mr. Webster, Mr. Prescot, Mr. Storry, some of the best of the clergy, strangers of distinction, electors of President and Vice President, and whatever characters there were most precious composed the company.”

In Adams' time, there were arguments back and forth about how illness spread. Adams attributed sickness to the weather, while Benjamin Franklin advocated for fresh air to blow stale air away. Neither really understood how diseases spreads, because no one did. Read about Adams' flu and how the former president might have infected all of Boston's elite at Plodding Through the Presidents. -via Strange Company

There's something very appealing about human skulls carved out of crystal. We now associate them with an Indiana Jones movie and the inspiration for a celebrity vodka, but for more than a century, they were sought-after relics of the Aztec Empire. In the late 1800s, these beautiful icons that illustrated the Aztecs' fascination with skulls began to be found in Mexico and sent to museums. It appears now that they are all fakes.  

When you combine the pre-Columbian fascination with skulls with the technical prowess at carving stone, it may have been easy for some to believe that these ancient people could have carved skulls out of crystal. And for nearly 150 years, that subtext helped a number of museum exhibit curators feel comfortable about displaying their crystal skulls, despite long-standing questions about these objects’ true origins.

It was only thanks to a number of investigations like Walsh’s in recent years that archaeologists have largely come to the consensus that these crystal skulls are fakes. Some still display them from time to time because of the public’s extreme interest.

So how did the crystal skull craze get started? Research traces them back to one man, who was able to profit handsomely on their authenticity because he was himself an expert on the authenticity of Mexican relics. Read that story at Discover magazine.  -via Strange Company


(Image credit: Gryffindor)

While we look forward to things calming down here on Earth, there's going to be plenty of activity in the heavens. Ars Technica put together an overview of plans that include everything from innovative rockets to private flights to the construction of a new space station. And three different nations have spacecraft scheduled to land on Mars in February!

The United Arab Emirates' first mission to the Red Planet, Mars Hope, is due to arrive on February 9. At this time, the spacecraft will make a challenging maneuver to slow down and enter orbit around Mars with an altitude above the planet as low as 1,000km. If all goes well, the spacecraft will spend a Martian year—687 Earth days—studying the planet's atmosphere and better understanding its weather.

China has not said when, exactly, that its ambitious Tianwen-1 mission will arrive at Mars, but it's expected in mid-February. After the spacecraft enters orbit, it will spend a couple of months preparing to descend to the surface, assessing the planned landing site in the Utopia Planitia region. Then, China will attempt to become only the second country to soft-land a spacecraft on Mars that survives for more than a handful of seconds. It will be a huge moment for the country's space program.  

NASA's Mars Perseverance will likely be the last of three missions to arrive at Mars, reaching the Red Planet in mid-February and attempting a landing in Jezero Crater on February 18. This entry, descent, and landing phase—much like with the Curiosity lander in 2012—will be must-see TV.

Read what else 2021 has in store for space exploration at Ars Technica. -via Digg

(Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

If you want some advice on how to spend a long lonely winter inside, safe from viruses but at risk for boredom, maybe we can take some tips from the Antarctic expeditions of a hundred years ago. Before permanent science stations and before the internet, these men knew the risk of being stranded meant they had to take along their own distractions. Most expeditions included at least one musical instrument, brought by someone who knew how to play it. The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902-1904) included a designated piper, Gilbert Kerr, pictured above. (This image was the subject of some Wikipedia shenanigans a few years ago.) The crew also produced diaries and newspapers, which I guess only differed from each other by whether they were shared.

There is a long tradition of polar explorers creating newspapers for themselves. Reports on the weather or accounts of visits to penguin colonies were interspersed with short stories, poetry, interviews, crossword puzzles and word games. They were illustrated with both humorous and artistic drawings. Over time, these texts took on a great deal of sexual content, including lewd jokes and fantasies.

As one explorer explained, “The importance of not allowing any sense of depression to become a part of the atmosphere of our life was clear to all.”

There were other methods these explorers used to keep their sanity, which you may find utterly dreary in comparison to video games. But you work with what you have. Read the rest at Atlas Obscura.

When retiring a nuclear warhead during the Cold War, the technicians at Lackland Air Force Base’s Medina Annex took care to remove the enriched uranium that gave it the unearthly power of a nuclear bomb. However, there remained quite a bit of TNT that was used to ignite the bomb, plus depleted uranium and natural uranium. The detonators also remained. On November 13, 1963, one of those warheads was interred underground in the nuclear weapons bunker at the Annex. Then something happened to trip a detonator.

“There’s no direct answer to what caused it that we know of,” insisted Floyd Lutz, who is eighty and owns a water treatment business in San Antonio. “When the igloo was fixin’ to ignite, we were inside setting down those units.” As soon as that loud crack! sounded, he and Ehlinger scampered through the open doorway amid dust and smoke.

“The fire started, so we hauled ass,” Lutz explained. They sprinted past Huser, yelling as they went.

“[They] didn’t have to tell me to run,” said Huser. “They went one way; I went the other down Perimeter Road. I guess it had rained the day before, and I bogged down in a ditch and fell, got back up and turned around and looked, and there was smoke coming off of the igloo’s vent. I was going to go to the next set of igloos to set off an alarm. I got about halfway, and the whole thing blew up.”

The blast itself was bad enough, as retold by those who were there, but those in the surrounding area thought World War III had erupted. And would there be nuclear fallout? Read the story of the 1963 detonation at Texas Monthly. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: 37th TRW Office of History and Research)

They call this Nordic Noir. I'm sure you'd have to have experience with the genre to fully get the humor, but it's funny even with no context. Anyone from Scandinavia willing to share their thoughts? The comments at reddit have links to some similar shows that you might want to explore, if you're into this sort of thing.