In the 1850s, political forces were splitting the US in the lead to the Civil War. Abolitionists were campaigning against slavery, people were reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, and women were organizing for the right to vote. Meanwhile, the federal government was trying to deal with the vast expanses of land that the US owned, but had yet to control.

It was in this divided atmosphere that the May 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act opened the Kansas and Nebraska territories to settlement and eventual statehood. The assumption was that Nebraska Territory would become a free state, while Kansas, under the sway of its pro-slavery neighbor Missouri, would become a slave state. The Act infuriated Northerners because it undid the Missouri Compromise of 1830 and allowed for the expansion of slavery.
 
But the assumptions of the Act were disrupted by the social movements and civil rights discussions occurring in New England. An organization called the New England Emigrant Aid Company hatched a bold plan to transport New England settlers to the open hills and plains of Kansas Territory in 1854 and 1855, for the purpose of voting for Kansas to become an anti-slavery “free state.” In line with the ideals of the American Renaissance in New England, the principal founder of the Company, Eli Thayer, wrote that its goal was “to go and put an end to slavery.”

Thayer wanted to establish as many New Englanders as possible in Kansas before the Kansas-Nebraska Act was signed a year after its passage. It wasn't easy, as travel was arduous, and passing through pro-slavery Missouri was downright dangerous. Read about the Yankee emigrants who settled Kansas at Zocalo Public Square. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

If you've watched every movie on Netflix and are tired of binge-watching ancient TV shows, there is a new alternative. EXP TV is an internet channel that streams obscure content 24/7. It's sort of a combination of Adult Swim and Everything is Terrible, as if you've taken a leap into the rabbit hole of YouTube. The daytime programming is called Video Breaks, while the nighttime fare is called Night Owl.

What treasures would reward the loyal Video Breaks viewer?  Ventriloquist dummy sales demos, Filipino Pinocchios, LSD trip-induced talking hot dogs, Liberace’s recipe tips, French synth punk, primal scream therapy seminars, Deadhead parking lots, empty parking lots, Israeli sci-fi, scary animatronics, teenage girls’ homemade art films, Belgian hard techno dance instructions, Czech children’s films about UFOs, even Danzig reading from his book collection. And that’s all in just one hour!

We’ve been collecting obscure media for decades, but we’ve sorted through it all and cherry-picked the funny, the bizarre, the relevant, the irrelevant, the visually stunning, the interesting, the infamous, the good, the bad and the fugly.  We’ve done all that so the viewers don’t have to.  They get to kick back and experience the sweet spot without having to dig for rare stuff themselves or sit through an entire movie waiting for the cool part.

EXP TV is not video on demand; you cannot select what to watch, it just streams like an old-fashioned TV channel. But there is a guide so you can plan your day around it. Dangerous Minds interviewed EXP TV founders Tom Fitzgerald, Marcus Herring, and Taylor C. Rowley to give us an overview of EXP TV so you will know what to expect. Oh yeah, it's free.

"My husband is not a cat person. We adopted a cat yesterday. Here is him figuring out how cats work."

It's a common but adorable story. A man or woman will tell you they are not a cat person, and they might even express a preference for dogs. But sooner or later they meet a cat or two and their story falls apart. Yes, they are a cat person after all! They just had to meet the right cat. Yeah, right, every cat is the right cat, once you get the know it. Read 15 posts about people who swore they weren't into cats at Buzzfeed.

(Image credit: chocoflavor)

If you've always wanted to build the LEGO Millennium Falcon, but you didn't have the time or the patience to put 7,541 pieces together, nor the $800 to buy the set, this is the next best thing. Watch as the ship assembles itself in stop-motion! Also notice there's some interesting toys doing stuff in the background occasionally, and the music is darn near perfect. -via Geeks Are Sexy

It has often been said that World War II was won with British intelligence, American steel, and Russian blood. The Soviet Union was crucial in defeating Hitler's military, but that didn't mean they were friends with the US. The Americans sent Stalin tons of weapons, military hardware, and food, but one thing the US did not want to share was the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the most advanced aircraft of the time, and the ultimate war machine.

Luckily for Stalin, B-29 crews were instructed to land in Russia in case of emergencies, and in the summer of 1944, exactly such an emergency befell three B-29s during a bombing raid to Japan. The three aircrafts—General H.H. Arnold Special, Ding How, and Ramp Tramp—landed in Vladivostok, and at once, the Soviet whisked them away to a facility in Moscow. The crews were sent back home, but not after desperate pleas from the US. Demands for the return of the planes were ignored.

With these three aircrafts, Soviet engineers began one of the most complex and audacious reverse-engineering projects ever. Of the three, one was dismantled. To keep track of the growing mountain of parts, the second one was use as reference. The third was used for test flight.

The massive project was more work than they anticipated. Find out how the reverse-engineering turned out at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Flickr user Andrey Korchagin)

ants trying to steal my mail from r/WTF

You have to wonder what's in this package- maybe candy! A time-lapse video shows a colony of ants carrying an envelope to, I don't know, somewhere. They are apparently great at teamwork, but a little fuzzy on the directions. This was posted by okcoolmachine at reddit.

Redditor CatchingWindows posted a picture of what he found in his attic. It's an entire other house! He then shared a gallery of images from the discovery. Some investigation revealed at least parts of the story behind it. But it's far from the first such discovery that shocked people looking around the home they just bought.  

The unsettling discovery brings to mind strange and dark history of “Disappointment rooms”. The term was attributed to what was until fairly recently, a tragically common practice for keeping family members (usually children) suffering from mental or physical disabilities out of sight from the public eye. Until well into the 20th century in the United States and England, a Disappointments room might have been found in the attic or top floor of a house, cruelly depriving a family member of special care, dignity and respect, while the rest of the household continued to live freely under the delusion that the arrangement was for the good of society and the unwell. Amongst elite society, these rooms became one of the world’s best kept secrets.

Messy Nessy Chic gives us the story of CatchingWindows' attic, which appears to be a simple case of architectural shortcuts, and some famous cases of disappointment rooms for good measure.

YouTuber The Unusual Suspect went to an awful lot of trouble to edit clips from movies you know and love to make them sing "Mambo No. 5." This works a whole lot better than you'd expect, and the rhythm is smooth and natural. The song itself is only two-and-a-half minutes long; the rest is an ad.  -via Blame It On The Voices

We know that Woody Guthrie and Arlo Guthrie, both famous American folk singers, are father and son. However, you probably never envisioned Arlo as an infant, and Woody Guthrie as a proud new father bursting to tell the world about his newborn. He designed the announcement you see here.

The Arlo Guthrie birth announcement was sent by Woody to his friend Alan Lomax in 1947. Typed and embellished with finger-painted lettering, the announcement is in the form of a handmade greeting card, a single sheet folded in half to form a front and back cover and a center spread. The front consists of stylized line art representing a mother and baby, a greeting to the Lomax family, and the name “Arlo Guthrie,” painted in several different styles and colors. The back consists of the words “Here I Am” in large painted letters. Both sides bear the date, and the name “Arlo Guthrie” written in Woody’s handwriting.

Inside he wrote the story of Arlo's birth from the baby's point of view, which is quite funny, whether or not any of it is true. Read it at No Depression.  -via Nag on the Lake

We once thought of dinosaurs as really big creatures. Some were, while others were not so big. But you've never seen a four-inch-tall dino before! Scientists have described a new species found in Madagascar as a teacup-sized example of Ornithodira, a group of the last common ancestors of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. The 237-million-year-old fossil was named Kongonaphon kely, which means "tiny bug slayer."

K. kely is the smallest known species in a family of early dinosauromorphs called Lagerpetidae. These early examples of Ornithodira are known to be small, but with recent discoveries such as the tiny bug slayer, researchers are coming round to the idea that the smallness of discovered specimens is no accident.

"Although dinosaurs and gigantism are practically synonymous, an analysis of body size evolution in dinosaurs and other archosaurs in the context of this taxon and related forms demonstrates that the earliest-diverging members of the group may have been smaller than previously thought, and that a profound miniaturisation event occurred near the base of the avian stem lineage," the team writes in a new paper.

This little dino no doubt struck terror into the hearts of nearby insects. Read more about it at Science Alert. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Frank Ippolito/AMNH)

Same derriere, different decade

You can track Henry VIII's burgeoning bottom through our collection of his combat armours. The Tudor tubster went from a modest 32in waist in 1520 to a whopping 51in booty by 1540.

A 60% increase in trunk junk 🍑 pic.twitter.com/vpx9mQyCpA

— Royal Armouries (@Royal_Armouries) June 26, 2020

Museums around the world have a unique bond with each other on social media. While they are kindred spirits, they love to one-up each other for our benefit. The Yorkshire Museum grabbed everyone's notice late last month with a "curator battle" that challenged other museums to share their best bum (or butt in American English). The photos rolled in under the hashtag #BestMuseumBum. Of course, we saw posts of sculptures, ancient artifacts, and paintings, but some museums contributed butts from animals, insects, vintage advertising, and even skeletons! But the most popular are the sculptures, of course.

I hear @YorkshireMuseum is searching for the #BestMuseumBum
I nominate these fine examples from @walkergallery pic.twitter.com/k7w2Z2T7UV

— Bernie Blackburn (@bernieblac) June 27, 2020

See plenty of butts, clothed and unclothed, at the original thread, under the hashtag, or in a ranked list at Bored Panda. Some images may be NSFW.

This photography contest is for the birds! The winners of the annual Audubon Photography Awards have been selected, and the top prize went to Joanna Lentini for the image above. It's an underwater view of a cormorant diving for sardines. Below you'll see a magnificent frigatebird puffing up his throat pouch at sunset, by Sue Dougherty, which won the Professional category.  



See all ten winning photographs and read the stories behind them at Audubon magazine. -via Digg

One thing about furloughs and isolation and social distancing, it gives creative people plenty of time for those off-the-wall projects they'd never thought they'd get around to. Even a dumb idea has plenty of time to blossom, like ranking movies that have little in common besides a few title words. K. Thor Jensen did it.  

One night, I was thinking about how weird it was to wander the empty streets during the pandemic, which made me think about the 1984 post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie Night of the Comet, which made me think of other movies that use “Night of the” in the title. Then some guy on Twitter said I should rank them. I said I would.

This was a foolish choice. There are a lot of movies that use “Night of the” in the title, even if you cut out short films and TV movies. But hey, I’m in lockdown.

He found 82 such movies! Of course, you thought of Night of the Living Dead, and probably Night of the Lepus, but have you ever heard of Night of the Wererooster? It came in dead last. In fact, if you were to throw a random word out, there has probably been a movie named Night of the (Random Word). They include horror, comedies, drama, porn, and science fiction. Try to guess the top ones and then see the clip-filled list at Polygon. -via Metafilter

Screen Junkies continues its series about summer blockbusters with a look at the Indiana Jones trilogy. Some might argue that there are four Indiana Jones movies, while others would tell them they are wrong. Anyway, in this video, the narrator tells us about three great films: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, while we get to see the best action scenes from each of them. That in itself is worth a watch!

You've probably never heard of the disease called chlorosis, because we don't deal with it anymore. But in the 1890s, it was quite common. Chlorosis gave the sufferer a host of symptoms, but the most baffling -and the one responsible for the name- was a green tint to the skin.  

For centuries, chlorosis was a constant — though the diagnoses behind it shifted with the societal and medical norms of the time. First described in 1554, it was known until the mid-1700s as the “disease of virgins,” and the best cure was thought to be intercourse (bloodletting was also a popular treatment).

“Chlorosis was absolutely seen as a women’s disease, which meant, as it still often means today, that it got little attention and was easily dismissed with absurd cures,” says Anna Scanlon, director of the writing center at Illinois Wesleyan University and an avid researcher of chlorosis. Other treatments included telling women to conceive, exercise or abandon education. While there were physicians who believed that men could also contract chlorosis, such cases were thought to be extremely rare, and those men diagnosed with it were usually described as effeminate. The disease was predominately associated with the upper classes until the mid-19th century, when the medical establishment realized that poor women could also lack adequate nutrition and exposure to sunlight.

Luckily, since then medical science has figured out what caused chlorosis and how to treat it. But the reason for the green tint is still somewhat of a mystery. Read about chlorosis at Ozy. -via Digg