The Eiffel Tower was the centerpiece of the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the world's fair in Paris. Although originally slated to be demolished after 20 years, it still stands, 131 years later, recognizable to folks around the globe. Strange to think it could have been something completely different.

Gustave Eiffel’s Tower was just one of 300 to 700 submitted pitches (estimates vary) vying to be Paris’ world’s fair centerpiece.

Yet the spire that was ultimately erected on the Champ de Mars was an order of magnitude less audacious than one of the most peculiar also-rans: a 1,000-foot-tall guillotine that would have commemorated France’s headless-horseman history, when at least 17,000 people were guillotined during the Reign of Terror, including King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. Little is recorded of the ornamental, Godzilla-sized pillar with a blade — no contemporary illustrations, no manifesto behind its conception, no specs on the size of the cutting edge, only enough stray details to tease us with what might have been.

One can hardly imagine such a structure becoming a permanent part of the Paris skyline. The Eiffel Tower is just one of many iconic buildings that originated from world's fairs, and others were also in competition against some really strange alternatives. Read about the weirdest of those competitors at Ozy. -via Digg

Ben Sizemore was checking for invasive plants in the woods and spotted a camera trap aimed at a moss-covered log. Not one to pass up an opportunity, he posed in front of it and let the motion-sensor camera take a series of pictures. The owner of the camera, wildlife photographer Jeff Wirth, was completely delighted to find clear pictures of the most dangerous animal species: homo sapiens. Click on the right arrow to see the photo that Wirth was really trying for.  

After posting the pictures on Twitter and Instagram, Sizemore made himself known to Wirth. Read the full story and see more of Wirth's camera trap images at Bored Panda.

The YouTuber with the account name There I Ruined It did something you would never, ever think of. He did a bluegrass version of Michael Jackson's "Bad" and made it synch with the original video. As one commenter said, "This is both unforgivable, and amazing." The creator apologized in the YouTube description. -via reddit

The Weekly World News held a unique place in the supermarket tabloid display as the epitome of fake news. What it lacked in celebrities and color, it made up in sensationalism. The headlines were never believable, and rarely had much to do with the actual story, but they worked because they made you want to read more. For 28 years, the Weekly World News worked to outdo itself, because who doesn't want to know more about Bat Boy, aliens hobnobbing with politicians, and the still-alive Elvis? Strangely, but not surprisingly, the genesis of the tabloid was an attempt to make a buck off obsolete equipment.  

Generoso Pope Jr. could be considered the father of the modern supermarket tabloid newspaper. With the aid of a $25,000 down payment reportedly borrowed from the mob, Pope purchased The New York Evening Enquirer (which later became The National Enquirer) in 1952. The lurid paper specialized in tawdry headlines like “Starving Mom Eats Own Child” before softening its content to gain retail space at grocery stores in the 1970s.

When rival tabloid The Star went to a color format, Pope was forced to follow suit. That left him with an unused black-and-white printing press, which he saw as an opportunity to return to the bizarre news of the early Enquirer. In the summer of 1979, a small staff supervised by editor Phil Bunton, stationed inside the Enquirer offices in Lantana, Florida, began work on what would become Weekly World News.

Mental Floss spoke with more than a dozen former editors, managers, and writers to piece together the story of how the Weekly World News became the king of fake news, which you can read here.  

When you hear that a part of the coastline rises and falls twice a day, you surely think, "Yeah, that's the tides. The land is not falling, but the water is rising." And so that's what people thought of the rise and fall of the peninsula of Cornwall. But with precise modern measurements by GPS, we found that the land does indeed rise and fall in that area, in tune with the tides but not just in relation to where the waterline is. Tom Scott explains this anomaly.

The Japanese festival Tanabata is based on the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi, literal star-crossed lovers who are separated across the Milky Way and can only see each other on the seventh day of the seventh month each year. It is celebrated at different times in July and August in different cities of Japan. The biggest festival, in Sendai, was cancelled this year, but while gatherings didn't happen, confectioners in Japan made seasonal treats anyway.

近江屋の上生菓子【天の川】
錦玉制
レモン果汁入り
天の川を手の平に表現するイメージで作りました^o^
星雲を表すために色々と工夫しております！
まずは目で小さな天の川を堪能して
最後は口の中でほんのりレモン味の織姫、彦星の恋愛模様をご堪能下さい。#天の川 #和菓子 #近江屋 pic.twitter.com/HewLdp22R7

— 菓舗 近江屋 (@oumiya_toyota) June 30, 2020

The sweet shop Ōmiya in Toyota produced Tanabata-themed wagashi representing the Milky Way itself!

Done in kingyoku style and flavored with lemon juice, we created a rendition of the Milky Way that can fit into the cusp of your palm! We used multiple colors to imitate the heavenly clouds. First, be sure to enjoy the gorgeous colors with your eyes, and then lastly, enjoy the subtle taste of lemon representing Orihime and Hikoboshi’s bittersweet love with your mouth.”

The transparent sweets are made of agar colored to resemble the heavens, with flecks of gold for the stars. We don't know whether the flecks are actual edible gold, but they sure look nice! Read more about Tanabata and see more artistic treats made for the festival at SoraNews24.  -via Everlasting Blort

We've seen version of the classic plague doctor's mask, shaped like a bird's beak and filled with aromatics to prevent inhaling the deadly miasma. While those did exist during the 17th century, they weren't universal. They were kind of expensive, so doctors and others who were charged with treating plague victims were more likely to wear something akin to what you see above, which resembles a cross between modern medical hazmat suits and Ku Klux Klan robes.  

The sleeves on this get-up are tight to the wrist like modern protective gear, which fits the admonition above to not wear fancy sleeves (Ruisinger questions the 1656 engraving on this basis; the man has voluminous sleeves and may not even be wearing gloves. To this I would suggest that views on miasma were a matter of opinion, not science). The most interesting aspect for me is that the hood has a long bib at the front; a feature shared with two of the Italian beaked masks that I featured in my other article. Perhaps those were the ‘Gucci’ option, or just an alternative view on what would work best?

Read more about the features and variety of the PPE of centuries past at the BS Historian. -via Strange Company

The Batwoman (La mujer murcielago) is a 1968 Mexican superhero wrestling film that harnesses a gender-swapped DC character we all know. Batwoman wears full tights while wrestling, but fights crime in a bikini. If this idea intrigues you, get this- she is fighting mad scientists who are kidnapping wrestlers in order to create a sea monster. It's all explained in another video on the next page.  

“I’ve been keeping bees since 1976, and this is the first time I’ve seen anything like it” https://t.co/5r5cHvfq3t

— National Geographic (@NatGeo) August 7, 2020

Beekeeper Joseph Zgurzynski found a very odd bee with big yellow eyes a couple of months ago. Photographer Annie O’Neill was there to document the bee, which showed features of both male and female bees. Scientists who studied the pictures determined this bee shows mosaic gynandromorphism, meaning it has both male DNA and female DNA throughout its body. How does that happen? You probably know a bit about genetics, reproduction, and mutations in humans and other mammals, but you can throw all that out the window when it comes to honeybees. Entomologist Natalie Boyle of Pennsylvania State University explains.

When a queen and a drone mate, their fertilized eggs only ever generate female bees. That’s because males are created from unfertilized eggs, which means they only have one set of chromosomes—those of the queen. As a result, male bees have no fathers or sons, but they do have grandfathers and grandsons.

“If you think about it for too long, you just wind up in a little bit of a mind pretzel,” says Boyle.

While the development of this particular bee has not yet been determined, there are some possibilities you can read about at National Geographic. -via Damn Interesting

The popular image where you can see either a bunny or a duck is nothing new. This carved illusion is 900 years old! You see two animals, but does the head in front belong to a bull or to an elephant? It was carved into the Airavatesvara Temple in Darasuram, Tamil Nadu, India. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is dedicated to Shiva, but it features relief sculptures of many Hindu gods. -via reddit

(Image credit: KARTY JazZ)

Practically anything can be used for an exchange medium, as long as the community recognizes and agrees on its worth. It also helps if the item used is hard to counterfeit. Seashells have filled that job in all parts of the world throughout history, even into 20th-century California.

When the America’s banks closed during the Great Depression, communities strapped for cash began circulating their own temporary currency. In 1933, Leiter’s Pharmacy in Pismo Beach, California, issued a clamshell as change, which was signed as it changed hands and redeemed when cash became available again. That shell (pictured top) is now on display at the National Museum of American History.

Read an overview of how seashells have been used as currency in different places at Messy Messy Chic.

(Image credit: Chase Manhattan Bank)

As you may recall, Yogi Bear and his sidekick Boo Boo were always looking for unaccompanied pic-a-nic baskets belonging to tourists at Jellystone Park. That concept was based on real bear behavior, which you can see is still the modus operandi any time bears and humans are in the same place. This bear has no use for a cooler full of ice, except as a stepping stool, but he found the bag of lunch right away and made a quick getaway. -via Digg

Caroline Ewen was a serious cat lady in New York City. An original member of the Society to Befriend Domestic Animals, she worked to support a cat shelter and a nocturnal project to euthanize stray cats. But her claim to fame was that she kept between 80 and 180 cats in her own three-story brownstone home. The neighbors weren't happy at all, mainly due to the noise. They complained for years.

In August 1904, two of Caroline’s neighbors at 103 and 107 East 101st Street petitioned the Board of Health regarding the nightly concerts of 80 or more fat and sassy cats sheltered in the woman’s three-stone brownstone at 105 East 101st Street. “It is not that we object to Miss Ewan’s humane impulses in caring for all the stray and homeless felines of the neighborhood, but the noise of her pets is something wonderful,” the petitioners said. “It is enough to drive a strong man with a newly-signed pledge in the pocket to drink.”

According to petitioners Jacob Thorman and J. Kaplan, “There are bass cats and soprano cats, tenor cats and contraite cats, but there is no feline to drill them and make them sing in unison or harmony. I am fond of good music, but I do not consider eighty cats singing in eighty keys and eighty kinds of time good music.” 

Ewen was forced to move elsewhere, but she continued to advocate for stray and unwanted cats for the rest of her life, and even after her death. Read about the devoted cat lady of East Harlem at The Hatching Cat. -via Strange Company

If you cannot make up your mind what subject to make a film about, how about making a film about the struggle to decide? Or on the other hand, don't do that. Chico Jofilsan did just that, and the delightful animation that resulted ended up being strangely meta. -via Laughing Squid

We are coming up on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. The conclusion of the biggest event of the 20th century is celebrated on a specific day, which is different depending on where you are, but was actually a series of steps wrapping up the war. Still, the surrender of Japan on August 14, 1945, is a milestone we don't see in wars that have been waged since then. And you might be surprised at how much you don't know about how the war actually ended. For example, 

6. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan less than a month before World War II ended.

At the Allies' Tehran Conference in November 1943, the Soviet Union had agreed to declare war on Japan three months after Germany's surrender to force an end to World War II while retaking occupied territory from Japan. That day came on August 8, 1945. About 1.6 million Soviet troops were swiftly dispatched to Japanese-occupied Manchuria (modern-day northeastern China). The USSR inflicted heavy losses during their engagements with Japanese forces in China, Korea, and the Kuril Islands.

You can't blame the Soviets for wanting a three-month breathing period -and it no doubt took most of that time to move troops across Eurasia. Read more about the many steps taken to officially end World War II at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: Office of the Chief Signal Officer collection)