There's no doubt that Japan, as a whole, loves cats. That's where we see Hello Kitty, Maneki Neko, cat cafes, cat shrines, and young girls wearing cat ears without a special occasion. The earliest written account of a cat in Japan was from the Emperor Uda, who wrote about a gift of a cat in 889 CE, where he proclaims "I am convinced it is superior to all other cats.” But cats are also demons, shapeshifters, and tricksters, taking up lots of space in Japanese folklore.

Japan has long held a folk belief that when things live too long, they manifest magical powers. There are many old stories explaining why this is true of foxes, tanuki, snakes, and even chairs. However, cats seem to be somewhat unique in the myriad powers they can manifest—and their multitude of forms. Perhaps this is because they are not indigenous to Japan. Whereas Japanese society evolved alongside foxes and tanukis, cats possess that aura of coming from outside the known world. Combine that with cats’ natural mysterious nature, their ability to stretch to seemingly unnatural proportions, how they can walk without a sound, and their glowing eyes that change shape in the night, and it’s the perfect recipe for a magical animal.

The first known appearance of a supernatural cat in Japan arrived in the 12th century. According to reports, a massive, man-eating, two-tailed cat dubbed the nekomata stalked the woods of what is now the Nara prefecture. The former capital of Japan, Nara was surrounded by mountains and forests. Hunters and woodsman regularly entered these forests around the city for trade. They knew the common dangers; but this brute monster was far beyond what they expected to encounter. According to local newspapers of the time, several died in the jaws of the nekomata. Massive and powerful, they were more like two-tailed tigers than the pampered pets of Emperor Uda. In fact, the nekomata may have actually been a tiger. There’s speculation today that the nekomata legends sprang from an escaped tiger brought over from China, possibly as part of a menagerie, or it was some other animal ravaged by rabies.

Read a history of Japan's magical folklore cats at Smithsonian.

Only two days after teenager James Hanger enlisted to serve in the Civil War, he was shot on the battlefield. To save his life, medics cut off his leg, making him the very first amputee of the war. He would not be the last- around 60,000 soldiers suffered limb amputation -most without anesthetic- before the war ended in 1865. Hanger went home and retreated to his bedroom, where his parents feared he was succumbing to depression. Meanwhile, the sheer number of soldiers coming home missing an arm or leg spurred improvements in prosthetic limbs. Dr. Douglas Bly developed America's first articulated prosthetics, designed to replace the standard peg leg of earlier times.  

What made Dr. Bly’s prosthetic limb superior to earlier designs was his knowledge of human anatomy and specifically the way the leg works at the ankle. His limb allowed for side motion instead of simply forward and backward, and mechanisms at both the ankle and the knee allowed for more natural bending and flexing. In fact, Dr. Bly was credited with inventing the first curved knee. The ankle movement was obtained through the use of a polished ball inside a socket of vulcanized rubber. Unfortunately, Dr. Bly’s invention was considered too expensive for a government contract.

Entered James Hanger — the 18-year old engineering-student-turn-soldier who had his limb shattered after just two days. It turned out that when he retreated to his room, he was not wallowing in self-pity, as his parents had feared. Rather, he took to heart the oft-said phrase “necessity is the mother of invention” and went to work fashioning a practical prosthetic limb. Three months later, by November 1861, he had developed The Hanger Limb. Like Dr. Bly’s prosthetic, it contained a hinged knee and ankle that allowed for greater mobility.

The most important innovation of the Hanger Limb was that it was affordable for the veterans who needed it. Read that story and the development of artificial limbs both before and afterward at 3 Quarks Daily.  -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Flickr user National Museum of Health and Medicine)

Circulatory Systems is an experimental short film described as "The major highways, the arteries and veins of our cities." Busy streets are layered in beautiful kaleidoscopic, even fractal, patterns. It's traffic, but it's pretty! -via Boing Boing

On Labor Day weekend, more than 200 campers were trapped at Shaver Lake near Fresno, California, when wildfires surrounded them. The California Army National Guard, who had been called up to fight the flames, took two helicopters over mountain crests and through thick smoke to rescue them.  

Emergency crews on the ground from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, radioed to Rosamond that it was too risky. The Creek Fire in the Sierra National Forest was out of control and they should put down at a nearby ranch miles away and wait for the smoke to clear, they were told.

"I was listening to the radio calls when the Chinook approached restricted airspace" near the lake, said Army Maj. Gen. David S. Baldwin, adjutant general of the California National Guard.

"Chief Rosamond told them, 'Just tell us where the people are. We're going to go get them,'" Baldwin said in a video conference call Monday with the aircrews and defense reporters.

And so they did. Chief Warrant Officer 5 Joseph Rosamond piloted a Chinook and CWO 5 Kipp Goding took a Black Hawk into the campground three times Saturday night. They and their crews loaded up 214 campers, twelve of them injured, and airlifted them to safety in Fresno. Read the story at Military.com and see a video of the Chinook approaching here. -via Fark

(Images credit: 40th Combat Aviation Brigade)

Batzorig Vaanchig is a Mongolian throat singer. Here he collaborates with his daughter Marla. The song is "Xotgoidiin Unaga" (foal from Xotgoidiin), about a horse with a white blaze who always wins races. One commenter summed up the performance:

When she began singing, I smiled, when he began...I became one with the universe.

He is a talented musician, and she is following in his footsteps, but together they are just adorably wholesome. Read more about throat singing here.  -via reddit

Even if you don't know the kings of history, you can recognize that the young man in the portrait is a Habsburg. Charles von Habsburg was born in 1500 as the heir to half the kingdoms of Europe, and eventually became the Holy Roman Emperor. As such, the matchmaking began early. Charles was engaged to be married by the age of seven. However, these things don't always work out.

Charles had an almost inexhaustible number of possible brides. During his lifetime, he was engaged to at least five different women, with only one resulting in marriage. He was engaged to two English princesses, two French princesses, and one Portuguese princess. Two of his fiancées were his close cousins.

That's what royals do. Read about the unfortunate early love life of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at The Freelance History Writer. -via Strange Company

The Hackney Mosaic Project has been beautifying the Hackney neighborhood of London by installing locally-produced mosaic art at Hackney Downs park and other places. Under the guidance of mosaicist Tessa Hunkin, people learn to make sturdy art from broken tiles and ceramics.

The Hackney Mosaic Project aims to help people with addiction and mental health problems and at the same time to improve neglected corners of the city. We engage volunteers, recruited both from the Hackney recovery Services and the local community, in making large mosaics in Hackney Parks and other locations. We also teach and encourage them to create their own artworks.

The Project does not just make colourful pictures out of broken fragments - it also helps to piece back broken lives, and build a new community by bringing people together around a shared vision.

The project's latest public work is a large mosaic called the Hounds of Hackney Downs, the second of its kind, featuring portraits of the dogs who frequent the park. The mosaic was installed Wednesday, and the official unveiling will be later this month, to which the dogs themselves are invited. You can see closeups of the mosaic dogs at Spitalfields Life.

Read more about the project at its website. You can even buy some mosaics through their Etsy store. -via Nag on the Lake

Science Insider gives us the real poop on taking the perfect poop. Yeah, this is very explicit, but at least it's all animated. Sure, you've been pooping for many years, and you've gotten pretty good at it by now. Still, there may be something in here you don't already know, and if you don't need the information now, you might some time in the future. -via Digg

If you want a taste of foods you actually eat at annual state fairs, you can push a stick into any random food item around the house, dunk it in pancake batter, then into a pot of hot oil. This is better. Since 2009, the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance has held the Heirloom Recipe Competition at various state fairs, highlighting family recipes that have been handed down for generations. Each entry comes with a story, like that of Amy Wertheim's peanut brittle, which won second prize at the 2011 Illinois state fair.  

In 2004, Amy Wertheim saw her family’s candy store burn to the ground. Along with equipment and more than 500 pounds of treats, she lost something far more precious: her grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ handwritten recipes. “Of everything we lost, that was the most devastating,” she writes.

One way Wertheim filled the void was by collecting cookbooks. At an auction in 2010, she picked up a weathered collection of personal recipes written down for a new bride. “As I turned the pages, I started seeing names I recognized … and then I saw the name, Mother Hoblit.” It was her great-grandmother’s family nickname. She also noticed something stuck in the book’s folds. “My hands were shaking as I unfolded the crackling paper … there, in my Great-Grandmother’s handwriting, was our lost peanut brittle recipe.”

Since state fairs and their competitions have been canceled this year, you may want to try some of these award-winning recipes at home. Gastro Obscura shares the recipes for blue ribbon pies, cakes, candy, biscuits, and moreover, the stories behind them.

(Image credit: Sam O'Brien for Gastro Obscura)

Here's a tale of small town government corruption that makes Walking Tall look like a Disney movie. During the 1930s and '40s, McMinn County, Tennessee, was the personal fiefdom of Paul Cantrell, who was the county sheriff, then Chairman of the County Court, and then a state senator -along with some other positions he was paid for simultaneously. Cantrell installed his cronies in other offices, and ran the county with an iron hand. Elections were rigged, everyday citizens were shaken down for money, and bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution flourished as long as it was profitable for the political machine. When World War II ended, hundreds of young local men who had been gone for years fighting fascism came home and did not like what they saw. After getting a taste of the local machine's power when Navy Seabee Earl Ford was murdered, the veterans organized and launched a slate of candidates for the county election of 1946 under the non-partisan “Ex-Serviceman’s Cleanup Ticket for McMinn County.” Their path would not be easy. Paul Cantrell himself was running for sheriff again, and his successor Sheriff Pat Mansfield ran for state senator.

Election Day had finally arrived. A local minister exhorted his congregation thus: “If you do not vote as your conscience dictates, then you have sold your citizenship and do not deserve to be citizens. It is the responsibility of each and every person to preserve our most cherished possession, liberty, or forever lose it.” Armed deputies “guarded” each polling place, and reports of election fraud poured in to GI headquarters almost immediately. One veteran lamented, “They already started knocking our boys in the head and putting them in jail. They’re taking this thing…This thing’ lost.” Bill White would have none of that, replying, “Now…this thing’s just getting started.” White was right; indeed, it would not be long before the machine drew first blood.

At one polling place, a deputy beat and shot a sixty-year-old whose only crime had been his surplus of gumption in exercising his right to vote. Meanwhile, another deputy delivered a brutal beating to a GI election judge after he protested the brazen voter fraud happening before his eyes; the deputy tried to draw his gun, and likely would have killed the veteran, but it snagged in his holster. When he had exhausted himself, he had the man dragged to the jail bloody and insensate. By this time, DeRose notes, “there were twelve ballot boxes: one in the jail, another inside a heavily defended courthouse, a third barricaded in the Dixie Café, a fourth in the vault in the Cantrell Bank Building, and poll watchers had been ejected at two other locations.” Inside the courthouse, deputies held a handful of GI poll watchers hostage, two of them wounded.

However, those hostage GIs were tougher than they were before they went off to war. And the rest of the veterans had developed skills with guns, explosives, and even airplanes. Read about the Battle of Athens in a gripping account at The Abbeville Blog. Oh yeah, and when the smoke cleared, there were election results. -Thanks WTM!

Suttie Economy is 94 years old and still alive, now recovering from heart problems at a veteran's clinic. He had told his longtime friend Sammy Oakey of Oakey's Funeral Service that when his time came, he wanted to be buried in a casket painted to resemble a pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. Since then, Oakey has been working to get permission from the Mars Wrigley company to use their gum logo.

"Suttie would come in here for visitation or just come in to visit and he would always bring a bunch of packs of Juicy Fruit chewing gum and put it out for the employees to enjoy," said Oakey.

"He didn't just do that here. He did it at restaurant and doctor's offices wherever he went."

During World War II, Wrigley supported US troops by taking Wrigley's Spearmint, Doublemint and Juicy Fruit off the civilian market and dedicating the entire output of these brands to the US Armed Forces, according to Mars.

Economy became fond of Juicy Fruit during the war and had been giving it away to his community ever since he came home, according to his brother, John Economy.

"It served as a symbol for his mission to talk to people about the World War II memorial and to honor the deceased veterans that died for our freedom," his brother said.

While the request was initially denied, a social media effort convinced Mars Wrigley to grant permission for Economy to have the casket he wants. Read more of the story at CNN. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Flickr user Thomas Hawk)

Imgur user angiexpangie found an opportunity to draw the attention of distance-learning students that aren't even her students! She explains,

My boyfriend is a High School math teacher and his school started distance learning recently.  His webcam faces my white board so I decided to start leaving his students messages. Here are some of my favorites...

Every day she surprises viewers with a new cartoon featuring a pun, dad joke, or meme. Check out a gallery of the best ones so far here. -via reddit

Taking a glimpse into the vastness of the universe might make you feel small, but it will also make you feel part of something beautiful. We are thankful for the photographers who bring those distant places down to earth for us. The Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition has selected winners for their 2020 competition.

This is the 12th running of the photo contest, which is managed by Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine and Insight Investment. For this year’s contest, judges had to pore over and shortlist 5,000 entries gathered from six continents.

French photographer Nicolas Lefaudeux’s stunning picture of the Andromeda galaxy (pictured up top) earned him the overall top prize of £10,000 ($12,860). Lefaudeux’s composition makes it appear as if the Andromeda galaxy—the closest galaxy to our own—is at arm’s length, even though it’s 2 million light-years away. The photographer created this tilt-shift effect by 3D-printing a part that held the camera at a key angle, while the blurring effect was created by a defocusing the outer edges of the photo.

There were also winners selected in various categories, such as Our Sun, Our Moon, Aurorae, People and Space, Skyscapes, and Planets, Comets, and Asteroids. See those winning images at Gizmodo.

Michael Kirk crunched the numbers to save money on food, big time. Here's his page containing a chart that ranks foods by calories per dollar, and by protein per dollar. Wheat flour tops both lists. Now, if you don't bake your own bread, the cost will go up for flour that is baked, and the cost for that varies widely, as does the quality. You might also be interested in the page that ranks nutrients per dollar, because man does not live on bread alone. To really understand the basics of eating better while spending less money, there's also a page on how to eat for $1.50 a day. Bon appétit!  -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Flickr user ilovebutter)

DoctorSbaitso shot drone footage of San Francisco on September 9 around 11AM, when skies are usually blue and the sun shines on the buildings. But this is 2020, and the bay area fires have the city shrouded in smoke and ash with an orange tint. Zach Fett took that eerie footage and added the soundtrack of the movie Blade Runner 2049, which only seems appropriate. -via Geeks Are Sexy