“Can be single, double, triple or more.” pic.twitter.com/edKh5on46Z

— TM (@tempdownatkzug) June 8, 2020

One reason restaurant chains are so successful is that they are consistent at every location, so fans and travelers know what to expect. There's a reason all Cracker Barrels face the interstate, even when that puts them at an odd angle to the road they are actually on. When one fast food outlet goes rogue, everyone notices. That was the case in 2014 at the South Side Burger King in Pittsburgh.  

The epic saga began when customers noticed that their food didn't seem to taste like Burger King. That's usually a compliment, but if you specifically choose to go to Burger King, it's because you want that special experience of having your tastebuds beaten with a used sock full of nickels. The situation deteriorated as food began to be served in plain brown paper bags, without the famous BK logo. Fries came in dixie cups, drinks were in plain styrofoam cups, the burgers were wrapped in tin foil or sandwich paper. Some expert soda connoisseurs claimed that the Coke machine appeared to be dispensing Pepsi. Rumors spread that employees had been sighted loading up on burger buns in a nearby Giant Eagle supermarket.

The shenanigans at the particular outlet got much weirder before the media noticed and began investigating (after social media, of course). Read the true tale of the fake Burger King at Cracked.

As was done with Star Wars, Shrek, and Back to the Future 2, the classic summer blockbuster Jaws has been remade by more than 100 dedicated fans. The feature-length remake is called Jaws WeMake, a tribute for the film's 45th anniversary, produced by The Daily Jaws. The participants contributed their talents in acting, animation, stop-motion, toys, lip-synching, and a wide-ranging bunch of costumes, props, and effects to create a glorious new Jaws. Some of the actors have an eerie resemblance to Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. After you've seen the trailer above, continue reading to see the entire film.

Daven Hiskey looked at a couple of the highest honors that the UK and the US can bestow to compare and contrast them, namely, a British knighthood and the American military's Medal of Honor. This may seen silly because the two are very different and really have nothing in common besides being a high honor, but we can learn something new about each of them.  

As we’ve covered before in great detail, it turns out getting knighted entitles you to just about nothing, other than getting to attend a special ceremony where you’re knighted and then afterwards you can adopt a title, such as “Sir”. That said, there are more intangible perks, such as a slightly higher profile, more impressive looking resume, potential invites to parties one would otherwise not have been, quicker seating at some exclusive restaurants, etc. But, on the whole, you officially get basically nothing.

This lack of official perks is in keeping with historical precedent, with the title of Knight throughout history being largely ceremonial in nature, especially in the United Kingdom. For example, as noted by the Royal Collection Trust, the title in ancient times didn’t confer any monetary benefit upon a person since anyone granted the title of Knight would, to quote them, “Be expected to have the financial ability to support the honour of knighthood, so that he could provide himself with arms, armour, horses and the required number of armed followers to render military service to his Sovereign for a minimum period each year.”

Knighthood can be given for pretty much any reason, as long as the recipient is a citizen of the United Kingdom. The Medal of Honor is a completely different story. They are not easy to achieve, being given to members of the military who have distinguished themselves through acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty. Beginning with World War II, nearly half of the medals have been awarded posthumously. But for recipients who survived their acts of valor, the rewards are pretty sweet, which you can read about at Today I Found Out.

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Ben Hed of Pet Foolery took some famous illusion photos of pets and drew them as if they were real. Click to the right to see all of them. These are some fine animals, and I'd like to sign up to adopt one, especially the cat with antlers. I have plenty of cucumbers. -via Bored Panda

While many film buffs have long held that Florence Turner was the first movie star, there is evidence that Maurice Costello should have that designation. Of course, "movie star" is hard to define, especially in the silent film era when the term wasn't widely used, but Costello took first place in a 1912 poll in Motion Picture Story Magazine, garnering more votes than Florence Lawrence and Florence Turner combined.  

Shulman argues that “what D. W. Griffith did for film direction […], Maurice did for screen acting: that is, he raised the bar to a higher standard that quickly became the norm. And he did it a year before Griffith, who didn’t come work for Biograph until 1908.” Maurice transformed how players acted in front of the camera. Because cranking speeds varied by cameraperson, just as projection speeds varied by cinema, there was a wide range of movement on the silent screen. Some exhibitors even sped up their prints so as to fit more screenings into a day. As Shulman shows, Maurice was hailed — locally in the Pittsburgh Gazette and nationally in Photoplay — as the star who implemented a slower style of acting that played back onscreen more realistically. By 1910, Vitagraph was billing Maurice as the star of the program, with promotional blurbs such as, “A Vitagraph Night with Maurice Costello.” Helene and Dolores were also getting screen time as extras whenever children were needed.

Helene and Dolores were Maurice Costello's daughters, who went on to be movie stars in their own right. Dolores married John Barrymore and Helene starred in the first all-taking feature film, but they had plenty of other accomplishments and scandals, as did Maurice. Read more about the Costello film family in a synopsis of the book Film’s First Family: The Untold Story of the Costellos by Terry Shulman at the Los Angeles Review of Books. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Cinema News)

So what if college and professional sports are cancelled? Welcome to the American Hedgehog Bowling Association match between reigning champ Pepper and the 11-week-old newcomer Tuck! Rest easy, the hedgehogs are not thrown down the lane as you may have imagined, but instead are the athletes playing under their own steam in this riveting bowling match. -via Laughing Squid

Beginning in 1881, European nations raced to colonize Africa, until almost all of the continent was under the rule of various faraway countries. In 1935, as tensions that led to World War II were building, Italy invaded Ethiopia.  

The continent’s only remaining nation to avoid colonization in Europe’s Scramble for Africa, has just been invaded by Benito Mussolini. And more than seven thousand miles away, in a historic display of Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism that took place across the United States, this was the Black American community drafting itself to defend the Empire of Ethiopia when no one else would. Today’s forgotten chapter of history connects to a number of fascinating stories about America’s first Black aviators, taking us from the streets of Harlem to Africa, with an unexpected stop in the English countryside following the little-known footsteps of the last Emperor of Ethiopia (who just so happens to be regarded as the incarnation of God by the Rastafarian religion).

Because Ethiopia was not an official ally of the US, the government prevented most volunteers from going off to fight. But those who managed to get there left a mark. Read about the volunteers who fought for Ethiopia and the legacy the conflict left at Messy Nessy Chic.

Malala Yousafzai, who at age 15 was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating for the education of girls in Pakistan in 2012, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Redditor starstarstar42 sums up the family celebration.

Doesn't matter if you've won a Nobel Prize. Doesn't matter if you are the voice of your generation. Doesn't matter if you are an inspiration to people of all ages and religions around the world. Doesn't matter if you graduated from one of the top schools on the planet. Doesn't matter what you've accomplished because...

...some relative will always be there to give you bunny ears in a photo.

That wasn't the only indignity showered on the graduate.



She handled it like a pro. -via reddit

(Image source: @malala)

Ryan George plays the part of the first guy to ever have a home, or apparently any kind of shelter. He also plays a stranger he's explaining it to. However, the home is fairly contemporary and we know that it was something that evolved over a long time. Maybe it would be better to pretend this is a homeowner trying to explain the concept to an alien from another dimension. It would be pretty strange to someone who's never seen been exposed to the concept of shelter or privacy or property. Oh yeah, the skit is only three and a half minutes, the rest is an ad. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The sun is the source of all of our energy, directly or indirectly. The sun has always been the subject of myths, legends, and even religious worship as long as people have observed the star. The sun takes on even more meaning in latitudes further from the equator, where the sun comes and goes over the course of a year. The June solstice is the point that sun climbs the highest in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere and gives us the longest daylight, so the date was important for those who lived before artificial climate control, spawning festivals, celebrations, and rituals of all kinds.  

In Ireland, the Midsummer fires were lit at sunset after being sprinkled with holy water. In Ireland and Scotland bonfires were lit in memory of the Baal fires, a name derived from either Celtic sun god Bel (bright) or the Saxon word bael (fire). These bonfires were believed to boost the ebbing power of this life-giving, mysterious solar fire. In Irish folklore, fairies took the form of whirlwinds to try and extinguish these powerful Baal fires but throwing burning wood in their direction usually discouraged them. Children joined hands and leapt through the embers to symbolise the growth of corn and harvest abundance. Farmers drove animals through the ashes to protect them from disease. On the Isle of Man, blazing furze was carried around cattle for the same purpose. In Cornwall, the Midsummer fire was lit by “The Lady of the Flowers” who cast flowers into the flames. Cornish elders could then predict futures by reading the fire.

That's just a few of the rituals associated with the summer solstice. Read more of them at Folklore Thursday. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Andrew Dunn)

Did you have a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe when you were a kid? You might be interested in the history of the toy, which has become fairly universal since its development 40 years ago. -via Digg

To study how humans evolved large brains compared to other primates, scientists experimented with marmosets, a small primate with a small brain that is still genetically similar to humans. At the heart of the study is one of a few genes that appear in no other species besides humans.

ARHGAP11B, a gene found only in humans, is known for its role in expanding neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions such as language and planning. In experiments detailed in a new study published today in the journal Science, researchers inserted the gene into the fetuses of marmosets, who, like humans, are primates, but don’t carry the gene. The team found that after 101 days, the neocortices of the monkeys’ developing brains were larger and had more folds in the tissue than normal monkey fetuses without the gene.

If this experiment sets off your cringe response, you aren't alone. How man human brain genes can be transferred to another species before that species becomes human? More than one, apparently. Read about the experiment and what it could mean for the study of "humanness" at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Leszek Leszczynski)

An archaeological site in Russia, near the Mongolian border, has baffled scientists. Set on an island in Lake Tere-Khol, it is unlike other ancient structures in that it contains no supporting artifacts, like bones, pottery, or tools that would give clues as to its age or purpose. Even the discovery of the site reads like an adventure game.

Since its presence was learned from a stone near the Selenga river (a runic tablet with an inscription detailing the site), the settlement—known as Por-Bajin—has eluded understanding. A complex roughly the size of Buckingham Palace, with 30-foot-tall clay walls and numerous courtyards set alongside its numerous buildings, the eighth-century Uighur construction yielded surprisingly few of the archaeological artifacts you’d expect from a building of its magnitude—items that are usually telltale markers of a place’s purpose.

“There was a lot of mystery around the site,” says Margot Kuitems, an isotope researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and lead author of a new study that dates the site, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences. “Who built it? When was it built? But also for what purpose? Was it a monastery? Did it have defensive purposes? Or was it a palace?”

That sets up the mystery, which has been solved in an amazing way. Analysis of tree rings in the timbers used pinpoints the construction date at 777 CE. That reveals its place in history, from which the details could be filled in. Read how they did it at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Por-Bajin Fortress Foundation)

That beekeeper heart honeycomb image. A thread. pic.twitter.com/55lqUZ4uiI

— Steve Byrne #stayathome #wearfacecoverings (@byrnesong) June 16, 2020

Have you seen this picture before? It recently went viral with a caption about a French beekeeper who neglected to insert frames into a beehive, so the bees went freestyle with their comb and managed to come up with a heart shape. Many people thought that was adorable, while some beekeepers were suspicious. Steve Byrne, an internet folklorist, recalled that he had seen the image before. So he decided to investigate and find the story behind the story -the true origin of the honeycomb image. The journey led him back to 2015, then 2013, and to a South African beekeeper who, seven years later, had physical evidence of the honeycomb he grew that year. And we learn how he did it.

The thing to take away? On the internet, search behind what you see. Don't take things at face value. Don't let your "aww" gene get in the way of thinking, hmm, is this for real? Because there are people out there who seek to use such kindly human instincts in unkind ways. /34

— Steve Byrne #stayathome #wearfacecoverings (@byrnesong) June 17, 2020

You can read the entire story in detail at Twitter, or the simpler Threadreader version if you prefer. -via Nag on the Lake

Not gonna lie, totally into Lady Spock pic.twitter.com/2L2OEdq9WD

— Art Of Coop (@ARTofCOOP) June 16, 2020

People have been having fun with FaceApp and other image manipulation tools to see what they would look like as the opposite gender. I tried one of those many years ago and discovered what my father would look like with long hair. Lately, a new trend has emerged: seeing what fictional characters would look like gender-swapped. The cast of Star Trek: The Original Series looks pretty good! Impressed with that, Geeks Are Sexy went and found plenty of other Star Trek characters, from The Next Generation and later series, in gender-swapped versions. You can see them in this gallery.

Next, they decided to use FaceApp to see what the characters from Firefly would look like. Shown above is Captain Malcolm Reynolds. You can see their gender-swapped versions of the entire Firefly cast at Geeks Are Sexy.