It's enough of a shock to find you are pregnant with twins. It's an even greater shock to find you are carrying twins in two different uteruses! That happened recently to a British woman.

Kelly Fairhurst, 28, only learned she had uterus didelphys, a condition where a woman has two wombs, when she went for her 12-week scan. She was also told she was carrying twins, one in each womb.

“The twins could be identical. The condition itself is quite rare but they went on to tell me that it was a one in a 50m chance for me to conceive twins in each womb,” she told the Sun.

Fairhurst, who was also surprised to be told she had two cervixes, already has two daughters, aged three and four. “With my second baby they said that I might have a bicornuate uterus, which means it’s not fully formed. So when I went for this scan, I was really surprised to learn that I have two of them.

To forestall the possibility that Fairhurst might have two different labor and deliveries, the twins will be born by cesarian section. Read more at the Guardian.  -via Damn Interesting

(Unrelated image credit: David Roseborough)

These guys are experts on skateboards, and they are fearless, too! But the real hero of the day is the guy who always has the ramp at the right place at the right time. Thrasher magazine gives him the props he deserves in this video. -via Digg

The Fourth of July always brings us warnings about keeping dogs indoors, because many of them are terrified of fireworks. It's the loud sounds that spark their fear, which you might also notice during thunderstorms. But some dogs are so nonchalant about booming noises that they can carry out their duties during a bomb attack or open warfare. What makes the difference between the two types of canine reactions?

Dogs that have little to no negative associations with loud sounds can still be found cowering during a storm, while others who had a scary early experience can learn, often through counterconditioning and desensitization, to overcome the fright. One explanation for this can be found in temperament. Unlike personality and mood, which are more fluid emotional states, temperament is a deeper, more hardwired system affected by genetics and early development. Temperament is shaped by epigenetics, or the way an animal’s genes are influenced by external factors, and this can play a significant role in the dogs’ inherent predisposition to stress, anxiety and fear.

For example, studies in humans and animals show that mothers who experience high levels of stress during pregnancy can pass on a propensity for anxiety to their young via the stress hormone cortisol. When signaled by a stress-inducing event, the brain’s hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) becomes active and produces cortisol, which then travels throughout the body keeping an individual on “high alert.” High cortisol levels in the mother’s bloodstream have subsequent negative effects on the developing baby, or in this case, puppy.

But that's just one factor. There are quite a few others that can determine how a dog reacts to fireworks, which you can read about at Smithsonian. They also have a technique you can try to help your dog become less fearful.

Crime is much more meaningful when you can relate personally to the victim (or the killer, if you are that sort). We may find it hard to personally relate to people who died 8,000 years ago, but at least now we can put a face on one man whose head was erected on a stake after he was killed in a violent manner.

Researchers from Stockholm University and the Cultural Heritage Foundation found the original skull, along with several others, in 2011 at the Kanaljorden site near the Motala Ström river. The remains of 10 people—nine adults and one infant—were found stacked atop a thick layer of large stones. All adult skulls exhibited signs of blunt force trauma prior to death, which may explain how they died. Some skulls, including the reconstructed skull, had evidence of past injuries that healed. No mandibles were found at the site.

Strangely, three adult male skulls displayed signs of sharp force trauma after death, in manner consistent with the skulls having been mounted to stakes. And indeed, one of the specimens still had a wooden stake sticking out of the cranium. This was an odd post-death ritual for hunter-gatherers and not something seen commonly until the Middle Ages.

Swedish forensic artist Oscar Nilsson reconstructed the man's face from the blues in his DNA, evidence from the archaeological site, and what we know of the area's history. Read how he did it at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Oscar Nilsson/S. Gummesson et al., 2018)

Steve Martin performs his song "Office Supplies" from his new album The Long-Awaited Album, in collaboration with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, who don't have anything else to do today. Cue the banjo jokes! -via Everlasting Blort

Bob Geldof organized the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas" in 1984 to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. It raised more than $28 million, but it wasn't enough, so he decided to go bigger the next summer with an all-star concert. Thirty-five years later, Live Aid is still considered to be the biggest music event ever, featuring 50 of the music industry's biggest stars on two continents. It wasn't easy to pull off.

“He had to call Elton and say 'Queen are in and Bowie's in,' and of course they weren't,” production manager Andy Zweck told The Guardian of Geldof’s tactics. “Then he’d call Bowie and say 'Elton and Queen are in.' It was a game of bluff.”

With the help of producer Michael C. Mitchell, Live Aid sold broadcast rights to 150 countries, at least 22 of which aired telethons. Both MTV and ABC carried the feed in the United States, the latter in the form of a primetime special hosted by Dick Clark. All told, Live Aid raised approximately $140 million.

Read about the production of Live Aid, some of its unique stories, and its lasting legacy at Mental Floss.

Walter Murch was contemplating bar-headed geese. These geese spend their summers in Kazakhstan or Mongolia, and their winters in India. To migrate, they must fly over the Himalayan Mountains. That's a feat that requires world-class lungs, so Murch decided to write a story for his granddaughter explaining how they work.

All mammals, including us, breathe in through the same opening that we breathe out. Can you imagine if our digestive system worked the same way? What if the food we put in our mouths, after digestion, came out the same way? It doesn’t bear thinking about! Luckily, for digestion, we have a separate in and out. And that’s what the birds have with their lungs: an in point and an out point. They also have air sacs and hollow spaces in their bones. When they breathe in, half of the good air (with oxygen) goes into these hollow spaces, and the other half goes into their lungs through the rear entrance. When they breathe out, the good air that has been stored in the hollow places now also goes into their lungs through that rear entrance, and the bad air (carbon dioxide and water vapor) is pushed out the front exit. So it doesn’t matter whether birds are breathing in or out: Good air is always going in one direction through their lungs, pushing all the bad air out ahead of it.

How did birds get such great lungs? They inherited them from dinosaurs. Birds are dinosaurs! When I was growing up in the 1940s, there was a category in biology called Aves, which meant birds. But scientists have now folded Aves into a category called Dinosauria, and those dinosauria, like pigeons and seagulls and geese, are flying all around us today. If you want to know what a dinosaur probably tasted like, eat some chicken!

But how did dinosaurs evolve the great lungs they eventually bequeathed to birds? The answer involves plants, gravity, fungus, and oxygen. Oh yeah, and dinosaurs. The entire story, delightfully told at an understandable level, is at Nautilus.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Rodrick rajive lal)

Magnus Egerstedt of Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering watched sloths in Costa Rica and was inspired to create a robot that was just as energy-efficient, if a bit slow. The result is SlothBot, a robot that slowly monitors the environment at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

Built by robotics engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology to take advantage of the low-energy lifestyle of real sloths, SlothBot demonstrates how being slow can be ideal for certain applications. Powered by solar panels and using innovative power management technology, SlothBot moves along a cable strung between two large trees as it monitors temperature, weather, carbon dioxide levels, and other information in the Garden’s 30-acre midtown Atlanta forest.

All that, and it's cute, too! -via Laughing Squid

For thousands of years, men wore hats in public, first for protection, but soon after for decoration. The hat design signaled a man's status and fashion sense, but could also broadcast his profession, affiliation, wealth, or ancestry.  

So how is it that mens hats, after playing such an active, evolving role on both cultural and political levels, seemed to virtually disappear from everyday society? There are a few facts, stats, and theories that come together to explain their gradual retreat from popularity. For one, the rise and evolution of the automobile meant men didn’t need to cover up their heads as much for protection from the elements.

The Hat Research Foundation (HRF), which was apparently a real thing, also found that 19 % of men in 1947 who didn’t wear hats said it was because they triggered the trauma of war associated with their uniforms.

There were other reasons, but the real point of the article is to celebrate the history of men's hats in all their former glory, in pictures that span more than a century, at Messy Nessy Chic.

For twenty years now, Duck brand tape has held the Stuck at Prom competition, in which scholarships are up for grabs for the best prom dress and tuxedo made from Duck tape. The 2020 competition is now closed for entries, but the winners have not been determined yet. One dress that sticks out enough to go viral is the one you see above. Peyton Manker had never sewn a dress before, but she got some tape and went to work. When her prom was canceled, she decided to finish the dress, and use it as a canvas for COVID-19 themed art.

So, the COVID-themed duct tape prom dress features a number of details that reference all the things that happened during the lockdown. This includes imagery of zoom classes and online graduations, people in masks and those sneezing, people running away from the coronavirus, a call to flatten the curve, and also an image honoring essential and front-line workers.

Besides the predominantly blue and gold gown, Peyton also crafted a duct tape mask, a coronavirus shaped purse, and a number of smaller accessories like a hair clip and a wristband, all adorned with viral imagery.  

Manker estimates she spent around 400 hours on the dress. See all the images of the dress, accessories, and art details at Facebook. See more Duck tape prom attire at the Stuck at Prom gallery.

(Image credit: Suzy Smith Manker)

It appears that DNA evidence shows that huskies, malamutes, and sled dogs descended from Siberian wolves. The genomes of modern Greenland sled dogs were compared to a 9,500-year-old sled dog found in Siberia and a 33,000-year-old Siberian wolf. Curiously, the genomes suggest that sled dogs did not descend from any lineage of American wolves.  

The site at Zokhov Island that yielded the 9,500-year-old sled dog genome also includes physical evidence of sleds and harness materials. Bone analysis has led one team of scientists to suggest that the site may represent the earliest-known evidence for dog breeding, with sledding as a goal, and that the process may have started as long as 15,000 years ago.

The sled dogs’ genetic history aligns with archaeological evidence. Together, the findings suggest the dogs have been established for nearly 10,000 years and have spent those many millennia doing the same things they do today.

What were sled dogs doing back then? Evidence shows that they were helping to transport large game, such as polar bears and reindeer, to human communities. Read more about the study of the lineage of modern sled dogs at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Markus Trienke)

Johnny Harris goes on a rant about the standard American breakfast, but it has a lot of interesting information in it. American breakfast comes in two versions; the "diner breakfast" which he describes as IHOP serves it, and the sugar-encrusted cold cereals that paid for all those Saturday morning cartoons. These are not the only ways to eat breakfast, and we can all benefit from expanding our menus ...or even skipping breakfast. The video is 10:40; the rest is promotion and ads.  -via Digg

As one who has dealt with the dinner dishes for more years than I care to admit, one thing I will admit is that this headline kind of floored me. Dishes must be clean! Clean them all the way! Well, that's what I tried to teach my children. Then I stopped to think, I use two coffee cups over and over, one for tea and the other for coffee. I don't wash them often; I just rinse one as I switch to the other. Yes, they get stained, but a little Comet will fix that ...later. So no one is perfect, and some people would like to wash their dishes less.  

For real: So what if there’s a little sauce residue here, or a bit of caked-on food there. I mean, a half-assed rinsed-out glass of lemonade isn’t going to hurt anybody, right?

Incredibly, the experts agree. “Unless you’ve been working with raw meats or a plate that’s been used by someone who has been sick, the risk is quite low, and so [keeping your dishes perfectly clean] may not be as important from a microbiological perspective,” says Jason “The Germ Guy” Tetro.

Read what's important and what's not important in dishwashing from a microbial viewpoint at Mel magazine.

Face it, girl, he's just not that into you. Julie Nolke (previously at Neatorama) plays three friends discussing a man. I've heard this exact conversation both among friends and in my head, and the upshot from my many years of experience is to listen to the Julie on the left. Contains NSFW language. -via reddit

The photograph above has not been filtered nor Photoshopped. It's a rainbow swamp!

With its sometimes-swampy landscape stippled with soaring cypresses, Congaree National Park in central South Carolina looks like a prehistoric diorama. And occasionally it also resembles a Lisa Frank folder come to life. When conditions are right, standing water appears orangey, blue, and pinky-red—hues usually reserved for garish school supplies or swirls of melted sherbert on a hot day.

Find out the precise conditions that cause this colorful effect and how you can see it yourself at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: National Park Service)