The Evil Dead franchise consists of four feature films and a television series, plus another film now in development. It also includes video games, comics, and other media, but Screen Junkies focuses only on the first three movies for this Honest Trailer. That’s just as well, because over almost 40 years, it’s all too much to keep up with.

In 1920, the audacity of one Black man trying to vote in the November election in Ocoee, Florida, led to a riot that left six people dead, and caused all of Ocoee’s black residents to leave forever. The Orlando newspaper covered the incident, highlighting “2 white victims.” Of the four Black people who were killed, only one, July Perry, was ever identified by name. Pamela Schwartz of the Orange County Regional History Center tell the story.      

That invoice and headline illustrate the challenge facing Schwartz and other researchers. They’re typical of what she calls the “intentional obfuscation” of much of Black history, the product of official records that are sketchy or apathetic or worse. As a result, much of the evidence we inherit of such events is indirect and incidental. “You just didn’t go to Ocoee,” recalled Francina Boykin, a Black woman from nearby Apopka, while describing her childhood in an oral history that informed the exhibition. “You just didn’t.” People don’t always know why they were raised to avoid the town, but Boykin’s comments echo “the sentiment from almost every Black person we’ve done an oral history with, [even on subjects] totally unrelated to the Ocoee Massacre,” Schwartz says. That’s the thing about oral history, she adds. It leads to “this whole other world of information that lives in each individual”—information that is not always precise, but is nevertheless revealing.

The Ocoee Massacre left a legacy felt to this day. The Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando declined to do an exhibit on the incident in the early 21st century because it was still too sensitive. But this year, an exhibit about it will run until February. Read about the Ocoee Massacre of 1920 at Atlas Obscura.

The Great Wall of China is a marvel of engineering. Built thousands of miles long over hundreds of years, the purpose was to protect China from Mongolian invaders from the north. Forces on horseback couldn't get over it, and watchtowers along the wall enabled warnings to defensive troops. But was it successful in its purpose?

But the Great Wall was not always effective. Genghis Khan and his armies had no trouble invading Chinese territory, for example, nor did various other tribes from the north. In some cases, the invaders may have simply gone around sections of the wall; in others, they found more ingenious methods. The Tanguts, in 1002, were able to cross the wall easily by filling in trenches along its length when they noticed the guards of the Song dynasty weren’t paying attention.

That incident points to a key weakness in the Great Wall: Defensive fortifications are only as good as the people manning them. This would prove true on more than one occasion during the Great Wall’s history. For example, in 1644, the Ming dynasty was betrayed to invading Manchu forces by a turncoat general who simply let the enemy army in through a gate.

These failures are at least partly why various rulers kept building, extending, and reinforcing the wall over time. There were plenty of successes to keep them going. Read about the defensive capabilities of the Great Wall of China at Discover magazine. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: George Saxton, NESDIS, NOAA)

YouTuber Walter Santi (not his name, but the names of his pets) equipped a special "cat room" for the feral cats who live in his garden. These are cats he feeds in addition to his many pets and rescue cats, some of whom we have featured before. If the length of the video bothers you, you can skip ahead to about 3:30, when the cats come inside. Watching the feral cats discover the joys of indoor living is heartwarming. They'll be domesticated just in time to stay warm for the winter! -via Digg

The pandemic has caused many families to break into smaller groups, and many are either canceling big family feasts or paring back the guest list. This means that farmers who've spent a lot of time and effort growing large Thanksgiving turkeys are facing a very different market. Their customers are asking for smaller turkeys.  

In Pescadaro, California, Dede Boies has had to dig into her wallet to ensure she is prepared for any demand in smaller birds. Boies, whose heritage turkeys were born in May, says by mid-summer she knew Thanksgiving wouldn’t look normal this year.

“It’s a little nerve wracking… If turkey sales are not where we planned them to be, then that’s going to impact us significantly,” she says, adding that if she isn’t able to sell the meat by December, it would put her in the red.

She’s paying her processor an extra dollar per turkey to cut the birds in half, as she is receiving so many inquiries for smaller size turkeys. Boies also decided to harvest half of her 200 birds two weeks early so they didn’t grow anymore. She has needed an extra facility to store them, which has cost an extra few thousand dollars.

So if you are looking for just the right turkey, you may have to pay more per pound. At the same time, if the turkeys don't sell, farmers will be in a spot. Read about the demand for smaller turkeys and how turkey farmers are coping at Smithsonian.

AC/DC has always been a straightforward band. Their songs are about rock ’n’ roll, partying, and sex, with no deeper message. The year 1980 launched them into global stardom, with the death of singer Bon Scott, the new guy Brian Johnson, their biggest album Back in Black, and their biggest hit song ever- “You Shook Me All Night Long.” Forty years later, everyone sings along when the anthem is played at weddings. What made that particular song stand out from the rest? For one thing, it was the first song Brian Johnson wrote for the band.    

What was different, though, was the noticeable affection that Johnson shows to his object of lust. AC/DC reveled in bad-boy sex songs full of locker-room talk. “We were in Australia, which at that time was still a bit outback,” Malcolm Young explained in 1989. “It was just a way of life, a way of talking, and that’s how we communicated with the audience.” Sure, it could be sexist and objectifying — judging by the stories they bragged about, AC/DC was definitely a boy’s club in which women were sometimes treated like playthings — but the band also evinced a sense of humor that suggested that, at least in the music, it was all just a bit of naughty fun, so what was the harm? (As music journalist Phil Stucliffe, who spent time with the band in the mid-1970s, put it decades later, “They stand for everything I disagree with about our chauvinist view of the woman’s role, yet they’re so totally honest, open and funny about it that I got carried away with liking them.”)

“You Shook Me All Night Long” was hardly chaste or sappy, but it felt far more admiring, practically worshiping this woman. It was as close as AC/DC ever got to writing an actual love song, not that it was actually all that close.

There’s more to it. To this day, many believe that the deceased Bon Scott had a hand in creating the song. And some see a feminist message in it. Read about AC/DC’s biggest hit, how it came about, and what it means at Mel magazine.

Every nation has different standards for what can be aired on broadcast TV. European countries are lax about language and nudity, but they are appalled by the American custom of advertising pharmaceuticals directly to consumers. Britain has a few hard and fast rules (imagine a strict limit on the number of advertising minutes on TV!) for somewhat obscure reasons, but the real story is the lengths that some shows have gone to get around those rules.

In the 19th century, when sugar was an expensive treat, Swedish people used candy for important occasions, such as weddings, baptisms, and anniversaries, wrapped in bright colors and adorned with celebratory images. They also used candies for funerals.

But funeral confectionery design was often downright macabre. There may have been sweets inside the wrappers, but the candies did little to sugar-coat the sad occasion, with wrappers carrying lithographs of skulls, graves, and skeletons.

“The thinking was, ‘We’re dealing with death here and a great loss,’ so visually the expressions were gloomy and morbid,” says Ulrika Torell, a curator at the Nordiska Museum and the author of Sugar and Sweet Things: A Cultural-Historical Study of Sugar Consumption in Sweden. “You were not making something milder than it really was.”  

These funeral candies were treated as precious souvenirs, and were not often eaten. But over time, changes in culture changed the custom of funerary candy until it has become a lost art. Read about Swedish funeral candy at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Karolina Kristensson/Nordiska Museet)

BetaSmash used Melodyne Autotune to turn the sounds of a cat fight into music. The point is to showcase how cats use tone, rhythm, and tempo to communicate their feelings, as we are more likely to listen when the caterwauling has been made a bit more pleasant. Still, I was impressed at how this ”cat fight” turned out to be more of one cat lecturing another about his place in the pecking order. There is a bit of violence about halfway through. Still, the animal kingdom has a way of winning and losing fights without causing too much damage; gotta look out for the survival of the species, after all. -via Boing Boing

For months now, people have been comparing the year 2020 to a badly-written novel, but the concept of “badly written novel” can sink ever lower. The English Department at San Jose State University sponsors the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the most confounding opening sentence to "the worst of all possible novels." The competition, now in its 37th year, is named for author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a popular producer of purple prose. The 2020 winners have been announced, and the grand prize goes to Lisa Kluber of San Francisco for this opening line:

Her Dear John missive flapped unambiguously in the windy breeze, hanging like a pizza menu on the doorknob of my mind.

The winners and “dishonorable mentions”in the various categories are a hoot as well. Julie Winspear is a winner in the Romance category for whatever this is:

In Gertrude’s experience lovemaking was always bittersweet, or at least it had been until one fateful night when Chaz, the seductive man behind the concession stand blessed her with the salty-sweet bliss reminiscent of both true romance and quality kettle corn.

While there’s plenty to read, you do not want to miss the category titled “vile puns.” See all the jaw-droppingly bad lines at the winner’s page. -via Fark

While Dr. Seuss is best known for his timeless children’s books, he created plenty of other things, like advertising copy and political cartoons. These were projects he did for a living, but there was also a hidden series he called the Midnight Paintings, which were personal, experimental, and sometimes surreal artworks that show us a different side of Dr. Seuss. -via Digg

Going home to isolate during the pandemic has led many people to new endeavors or hobbies. Gardening and making sourdough bread come to mind, and another is cooking with a cast iron skillet. However, so many who are new to cast iron cooking are intimidated by the experts, meaning those who have used them before. There seem to be so many rules about using a cast iron skillet, how will you ever get it right?

Say or write the words "cast iron" aloud or on the internet or so much as post a picture of a skillet, and someone will swoop in and offer complicated and unsolicited advice about the steps you must to take to keep from destroying it and rending a hole in the fabric of the universe. If some fella (it's always a fella—sorry fellas) perceives even a mild flaw in your pan, he may feel compelled by fella-law to instruct you how to build an entirely unnecessary electrolysis tank in your home as penance when honestly, steel wool and patience will do. He may tell you that you need a blast furnace and 37 layers of grapeseed oil to achieve a seasoning that won't earn his scorn. (Otterman notes that Lodge factory-seasons with canola at 700°F but they tell consumers that "a high temperature or an oil with a high smoke point" will do, and says coconut or flaxseed oil are fine options.) It's lovely if you want to spend your time that way, but making it seem that complicated, being told you have to earn your right to use this object, just strips the joy along with the rust.

Kat Kinsman of Food&Wine tells a story of rehabilitating a 90-year-old skillet and talks with the experts to calm your trepidation about using cast iron. -via Nag on the Lake

With the second season in full swing, everyone's going nuts for The Mandalorian! The Merkins are into the swing of things with a Mandalorian version of the Guns ’n’ Roses song “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” It just makes so much sense. -via Geeks Are Sexy

(Image credit: Envoy_to_the_Stars)

All you're trying to do is clean the house, and things just go from bad to worse. It's happened to all of us. Sometimes it's funny enough to take a picture and share, like the Roomba suicide above that occurred when its vision interfered with finding the steps. And that's far from the worst Roomba incident. But it doesn't have to be a robot vacuum- this is what immediately happened when someone at an animal shelter tried to clean up with a large canister vac:

(Image credit: Ski_ND)

See 43 more vacuum cleaner adventures gone wrong at Bored Panda.

What is more important- to be productive, or to have a good life? The people of Plovdiv, the second largest city in Bulgaria, emphasize the philosophy of “aylyak,” which translates to idleness or dawdling, but in reality embodies the idea that taking your time and savoring the moment is a valid and desirable way of life.

In the downtown Kapana district, people spill out of bars and cafes into the pedestrian streets. Under brightly painted murals on the walls, groups of young people hang out, flirt and check their phones. In the cafe by the Dzhumaya Mosque in the town centre, people sit for hours and sip cups of Turkish coffee. Even the cats in the cobbled streets of the old town seem more languid than elsewhere. They stretch and purr, then they roll over and go back to sleep. If you ask the people here why the city is so relaxed, they will tell you: Plovdiv, they will say, is “aylyak”.

Plovdiv's culture of a laid-back, social lifestyle owes its origins to history, but is also fed by its reputation, which draws new residents from around the world. Read about the city that takes its time at BBC Travel. -via Digg