Astronomers knew about the periodic appearances of comets, but the return of Haley's Comet in 1910 came at a pivotal time in human history. Mass communications kept people informed better than ever before, with books, newspapers, and periodicals, while the average reader wasn't all that well educated in the doings of the cosmos. Into that world, eccentric French scientist Camille Flammarion wrote some sensational predictions in the journal L’Astronomie.   

The incoming of Halley’s comet, he said, contained a poisonous cyanogen gas that “would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet.” When The New York Times ran a story on his assertion, the fear amplified on a global scale in the tabloids. One science writer, Matt Simon, said folks were so frightened, they began sealing up the keyholes of their houses to “keep the poison out of their homes.”

The “Sacred Followers” religious group in Oklahoma was reportedly planning on sacrificing a virgin to ward off the disaster, but was stopped by police. Comet pills, comet shelters, comet soap, and even submarine rentals became the norm for doomsday preppers.

So while many cashed in on the comet by selling souvenirs and anything with a comet theme, others leveraged the panic with survival elixirs and protection devices. Read about the comet panic of 1910 at Messy Nessy Chic.  

Would you move to a small town in Italy if you could buy a home for one Euro ($1.10)? The actual cost turns out to be more, once you outbid other interested parties, pay the back taxes, and make necessary repairs. It's pretty much the same deal as the condemned homes in Detroit that were going for just a few dollars a few years back. Even with the extra investment, you'll end up with a historic home that's way less expensive than a new home... as long as you are happy living in rural Italy. -via Digg

As soon as photography advanced to the point where the subject didn't have to sit still for long, photographers found that the public loved to see pictures of animals, particularly funny pictures of pets. Harry Whittier Frees made a career out of posing kittens for amusing pictures, but dogs were popular, too, as seen the archives of the British Newspaper Association. The photo above appeared in the magazine The Tatler in October 1904.

In this quite surreal and charming photograph, it is a dog who is both behind the camera and in front of it, the caption from The Tatler reading ‘Thank you; would you mind turning this way, if you please, just for a few moments?’

This is just one of a gallery of dog pictures featured in newspapers and magazines of the past with the stories behind them at the BNA blog. -via Strange Company

People collect things for a lot of different reasons: the urge to complete a set, the satisfaction of acquiring things, the hope of increased worth, a sense of history, just a hobby, sentimental reasons, or they genuinely enjoy the objects they collect. There are two ways to look at the value of these things: what they are worth to others, or the objective market value, and what they mean to you. That's according to Jeff Foxworthy. You may remember Foxworthy best as the comedian who told why "you might be a redneck." He has a new TV show premiering August 4 on A&E called What's It Worth? in which he explores the value of the things people keep. Foxworthy himself has a collection of baseballs that don't quite fit the mold of collectibles, but they are worth a lot to him. Instead of being autographed by baseball stars, they are signed by his friends, fellow comedians, and country music stars.  

Another baseball that Foxworthy is unlikely to part with is the one he used to throw out the first pitch at a Braves game. “It was during the playoffs,” Foxworthy remembers. After Foxworthy did his first-pitch duties, “Someone said, Stand here until they’re done with the national anthem, then you can go back to your seat. And as I’m standing there, I look over and there’s Jimmy Carter seated in the front row. I had the ball that I had just thrown out for the first pitch, so after the anthem, I turned around and said, Mr. President, would you sign this? And he wrote ‘To Jeff. Great first pitch! Jimmy Carter.’ Well, that’s a great memory of that night, and it’s one of those collectibles that has a story behind it.”

Read about Foxworthy and his unique baseballs at Collectors Weekly.

Seafood fans know that the way to ensure the very freshest seafood is to consume it before it actually dies, although relatively few can bring themselves to do that. However, animals besides humans eat live prey every day. You have to wonder what that unfortunate meal goes through and exactly what kills it inside the consumer's body. While Today I Found Out explains that process, they also address the question of whether it is possible to survive being swallowed alive. It depends on the animal, both the predator and the prey, and the answers are both gross and informative.   

For example, the Tornatellides boeningi snail of Japan’s Hahajima Island are known to have a small chance of surviving an entire trip through a bird’s digestive system after being eaten. We like to imagine this process leaves the snail’s shell with a shiny new buff job, though it probably never smells quite the same.

As to how often they survive, Shinichiro Wada and his colleagues at Tohoku University found that, when these snails were fed to bird species native to Hahajima Island, about 15% of them survived the trip, with one of them even giving birth after the journey.

There are other examples, including prey that have managed to fight their way out, which you can read about at Today I Found Out.

The titles of the nine Star Wars movies work much better when you swap them around to the film they actually describe. This guy does just that, although he goes fast, so you might want to watch a second time.

Episode I: The Rise of Skywalker
Episode II: Revenge of the Sith
Episode III: Attack of the Clones
Episode IV: Return of the Jedi
Episode V: The Force Awakens
Episode VI: The Last Jedi
Episode VII: The Empire Strikes Back
Episode VIII: A New Hope
Episode IX: The Phantom Menace

-via Metafilter

While many of us were raised on stories of the legendary King Arthur, we eventually figure out he was a fictional character. Or was he? The name Arthur is probably based on tales of a local warrior from the earliest annals of British history, which was fleshed out in the 12th-century book The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey's version consists of a combination of folk tales and historical events that can be traced to real men. Five of them, actually, whose real-life exploits were reflected in Arthur's adventures. Find out who they were and what they did at History Extra. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Matthew Paris)

Liam Thompson (previously) has way too much time on his hands. He had a dumb idea and all kinds of trouble making it work. Yet his earnest and wry Kiwi humor carries you through this less-than-informative tutorial for building a trash can that rejects your trash.  -via Digg

Chicago started out as a fur-trapping station, which the United States wrestled away from the Anishinaabe and Algonquin peoples in 1833. While there were other kinds of animals trapped, much of that luxurious and lucrative fur came from skunks.

Skunks are “bona fide New World animals,” writes Alyce L. Miller in her book Skunk. They were likely some of the first mammals that early European trappers encountered when they reached the Chicago River in the 17th century. They helped the city ride the fur trade to prosperity. By 1920, warm and durable skunk pelts had become the second most valuable fur export in the Americas after muskrat. Skunks still had a stinky connotation, so sellers marketed their pelts with refined names such as “Alaskan sable” and “black marten.” But following World War II, the U.S. Congress passed the Fur Products Labeling Act, requiring sellers to accurately label fur products, and skunks soon fell out of fashion.

They may have fallen out of fashion, but plenty of skunks still live and thrive in Chicago. The origin of the city's name may have even come from skunks, as explained in a brief history at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Skeeze)

A freediver was recording a small octopus in the ocean off Mandelieu-la-Napoule, France, when the cephalopod decided he wanted that camera. He reached out and took the GoPro for himself! That led to a chase and a tug-of-war between the diver and the octopus. Luckily, the diver had a second camera ready to capture the struggle. -via, appropriately, Laughing Squid

The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, giving women the right to vote nationwide. Previously, women's suffrage had been a mishmash of state laws. Then suddenly, women were faced with the prospect of voting in a presidential election, and needed to be registered. That process varied widely.  

“The 1920 election is a good moment to remember how much elections are handled at the state level,” says Christina Wolbrecht, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. “… The 19th Amendment is ratified, but it’s up to the states to change their entire electoral administration.”

Consider the four Southern states in which women had been barred from voting booths entirely: As Wolbrecht and J. Kevin Corder, a political scientist at Western Michigan University, explain in A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage, officials in Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina decreed that individuals who had failed to register six months prior to the general election were ineligible to vote—a line of reasoning that conveniently overlooked the fact that women only won suffrage some three months after local registration deadlines had passed.

Blocking women from voting was a deliberate choice made by state lawmakers, says Wolbrecht. She adds, “[These states] are dominated by the Democratic Party, and the entire system is designed to minimize participation in elections,” particularly by African American men and women but also by women more broadly.

In fact, only one woman in the entire state of Georgia was able to vote in the 1920 election. Other states were more welcoming. Read how the first election after women's suffrage was handled at Smithsonian.

Michal Navrátil married Marcelle Caretto in 1907. The couple lived in France, had two sons, and separated in 1912. The boys, named Michel and Edmond, stayed with their father over Easter weekend that year, but Navrátil never planned to return them to their mother. Instead he bought tickets on an ocean liner under the name Louis M. Hoffman and registered his sons as Louis and Lola. The liner, named Titanic, was headed to America.   

You can read the short version of the story in pictofacts form at Cracked, or get more detailed information at the Wikipedia entry on Michel Marcel Navratil, Jr.

Now that children operate smartphones and computers long before they learn to read, we have a new phenomenon: pre-literate children communicating digitally with the language of emoji. Parents of children ages 2-5 report that their kids send all-emoji texts to family members quite often. Linguist Gretchen McCulloch took a closer look at these texts to see how emoji characters help children to develop their digital communication skills.  

When kids use emoji it may seem random—a bunch of silly pictures on a screen. But kids start out learning spoken and signed languages in a similar way: by babbling nonsense syllables, which teaches them the rhythm of conversation and trains them to make fine articulatory movements. The silly strings of emoji that young kids send could serve a similar purpose. By exposing kids to the rhythm of electronic conversations, emoji may be a useful precursor to reading—a way of acclimating kids to the digital reality of using symbols to communicate with people they care about.

McCulloch takes us through the stages of learning communication with emoji, which children use in a profoundly different way from adults. Read what she's learned at Wired.

There is more insight in the discussion at Metafilter, where Foci for Analysis shared a real emoji message sent by their niece,

🤡🤓😻🖤😼🙀😾🤝👁️👀🤝👏🤝🤜🤚👌👊🤵🤶🧙🦹👩‍⚕️👩‍🏭👩‍✈️👩‍🔧🤶🤵🤵👩‍👩‍👦‍👦👩‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👩‍👦👩‍👩‍👧‍👧👨‍👩‍👧👩‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👨‍👧‍👦🌃🌍🌟☄️🌗🌥️🌙🌦️⛈️💧🌘🌔🌘🐆🦖🐮🦛🦄🦄🦄🦄🦄🦄🦄🦄🦄

and Eyebrows McGee posted her observations about texting and how it makes students exceedingly more comfortable with writing than previous generations.   

the good news is my custom facemask arrived, the bad news is that they printed my face 20% too large pic.twitter.com/jBaVM7nbYI

— Cameron!! (@cameronmattis) July 27, 2020

The moment face masks became an accessory, entrepreneurs went all out to provide what people want. We've seen masks with various fandoms, political slogans, and colors to match one's clothing. But the most intriguing idea is to have a face mask that showed a face. Many people ordered face masks printed with a photo of their own faces (personally, I would have gone with a movie star's face). However, this is a fairly new idea, and many small companies are learning as they go. People who have ordered custom printed face masks are beta testers as these providers work out the kinks, such as wrapping a photograph around the corners of a face, and getting the size of the picture to match the size of the face wearing it.



As one person said, these are guaranteed to keep people six feet away! See some of the funniest custom face mask failures in a ranked list at Bored Panda.

Joseph Herscher of Joseph's Machines (previously) shows us how complicated it is to design Rube Goldberg contraptions by quizzing us on how different mechanisms will turn out. I got the first one right, but by taking the wrong path. These questions gradually get much harder. This turned out to be a lot of fun! -via Boing Boing