A curious tombstone stands in the Hebrew Cemetery in Corsicana, Texas. Or it once stood; now it reclines instead. The name on the stone reads Rope Walker, although that isn’t a real name, but rather an occupation. The story goes that when an elderly one-legged tightrope artist died during a stunt in Corsicana, no one knew his name, so they did the best they could with the tombstone. Find-a-grave has the short version of the story.

"In the late 1890s a one-legged tight-wire walker was performing his act in downtown Corsicana as a promotion to bring people to town. He would walk a rope stretched across Beaton street from the tops of two buildings. The rope walker carried a cast iron stove on his back to add to the trick. On July 28, 1898, the 69 year old man, who claimed to have been born in Princeton, New Jersey on February 6, 1829, was performing his tight rope performance when the rope sagged excessively and he fell while halfway across Beaton Street. Mortally injured, the man called for a rabbi. There were none to be found but a Jewish merchant prayed with him in Hebrew. The dying man stated his date and place of birth but no cone could remember if he have his name and he was never identified. He was buried in the Hebrew Cemetery in Corsicana. His headstone simply reads "ROPE WALKER"

Find-a-grave also has a longer version of the tale, which seems like a standard Texas tall tale, because it is. The true identity of Rope Walker was known at the time of his death, although it may have been forgotten by the time the stone was ordered. The legend was untangled a few years ago, and you can read about it at the Corsicana Daily Sun.  -Thanks, WTM!

The Wright Brothers are credited with the first powered heavier-than-air flight, which took place in 1903. Their flying machine design started the evolution of the airplane, and it didn't look all that different from the biplanes that were made for a couple of decades afterward. The first plane to fly in England was another story. Horatio Phillips built what's known as the Philip’s Flying Machine, which left the ground in 1907.

Phillip’s aircraft actually had a brains-boggling 200 wings (a ducentiplane, if you’re into that)—Phillips called these airfoils “sustainers,” and technically the 1907 machine had four banks of 50 wings each.

This mass of very narrow wings and supporting hardware was dragged aloft by a 22 horsepower gasoline engine, and Phillips was able to fly it for over 500 feet—keep in mind, the very first hop by the Wright brothers was only 120 feet.

Read the story of the Philip’s Flying Machine at Jalopnik. -via Digg

Why would people immediately forget about a big moment in history? Maybe because they never heard much about it in the first place. Modern history is written by the press because news accounts are so readily archived. It's the headlines that are talked about and remembered, and if you are unfortunate enough to get your 15 minutes of fame while something else dominates those headlines, you won't get much publicity, and you may end up as just a footnote in history. Like Harriet Quimby, who deserves to be known and remembered.  

Harriet Quimby is the kind of badass Disney princess who breaks records as easily as she breaks the mold. While her pretty face landed her a modeling gig for a soft drink company and her quick wits allowed her to write six Hollywood movies, it was her eagle eyes and quick reflexes that made her the first female American ace pilot. But while she was in the air breaking some glass ceilings, some dumb dudes were in the water smashing into an iceberg.

In 1911, the 35-year-old Quimby became the first woman in the U.S., and only the seventh in the whole world, to earn her pilot's license and she was branded "America's First Lady of the Air." But for Quimby, being part of the flyboys' club wasn't enough, she wanted to run the joint. So not even a year after getting her license, Quimby did what only a single man had done before: pilot a solo flight across the English Channel in what was pretty much a wooden hot tub with a propeller taped to it.

There's more to the story, which you should read because Quimby's astonishing accomplishment was buried under the other headlines of the day- the sinking of the Titanic. Her story and five others are at Cracked.

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

While some of us in the hinterlands think it odd that a furniture store serves meatballs, those who have tried IKEA's Swedish meatballs rave about them. You can't shop there right now, so IKEA has made the recipe public, meaning you can (try to) make them at höme!

“Staying at home can be hard, but we want to help make everyone’s lives that little bit easier and more enjoyable,” said Lorena Lourido, country food manager at IKEA, according to Yahoo! News. “Bon appétit or, smaklig måltid, as we say in Sweden!”

Americans without kitchen scales might be a little confused by ingredients measured in grams, but Google will help you convert. For example, 500 grams of beef is just over a pound. If you cannot read the small print in the instruction graphic above, the full recipe is at InsideHook.

Here's a reason to get breast implants that probably should not sway your decision to do so, as the odds of them ever saving your life are rather small. But one woman's implants deflected a bullet away from her heart!

According to the report, the 30-year-old woman had been walking down a street in Toronto in 2018 when all of a sudden she felt “heat and pain in her left chest.” Upon looking down, she saw blood seeping out of her body and took herself to a local emergency room. She had an obvious gunshot wound located above her left nipple and was transferred to another trauma center.

Further examination revealed that the bullet had ended up in the woman’s lower right chest wall, underneath her breast. But she was otherwise remarkably fine. Doctors removed both of her silicone breast implants and saw that the bullet had clearly traveled through the left-side implant, which deflected it over to the right implant with enough force that it flipped the right implant upside down. The bullet then traveled through breast tissue before finally becoming embedded in her right chest.

Yeah, it's kind of complicated, but it's not the first time breast implants have stopped a bullet. Read more details of this story at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: McEvenue, et al/Plastic Surgery Case Studies)

Jeff Lyons hung a green screen in his home office and has been doing the weather report for WFIE in Evansville, Indiana, from his house. As we've seen, one of the dangers of working from home is the interference of the others who live there. In Lyons' case, it was Betty, his cat, who photobombed the forecast and the above screenshot became a viral meme. Since then, Betty has become a regular part of the weather report! She drawn quite a few fans, both locally and globally. You can see some of Betty's TV appearances at Laughing Squid. You can follow the further adventures of Betty the Weather Cat at Lyons' Facebook page.

(Image credit: Jeff Lyons) 

People who speak the same language often do it in a very different way, depending on where they are. British English is different from Australian English or American English, but if an American were to watch a lot of British movies, the accent becomes easier to follow over time. But how those accents arise in the first place is a continuing study for linguists. A mini-experiment presented itself in Antarctica with a group of people who were isolated together for just four months.

Two years ago, on a very, very cold March day in Antarctica, 11 people sat down to go over a list of simple words. Cooed. Food. Queued. Backhoe. It wasn’t free association, but rather the words are considered important markers in a larger effort among linguists to discern what happens to language when a group is separated from rest of the world—specifically, how quickly they begin to develop their own accent. Slowly, imperceptibly, the Antarctica group’s speech changed, as they all began to sound a bit more like one another and less like people on the other six continents.

Given enough time, they might have developed their own dialect. Read about the ways isolation spurs the rise of accents at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Jerzy Strzelecki)

Betsy Ross' family visited some duck nests in their local park. Unfortunately, someone had vandalized them. But amongst the wreckage was one egg that was intact except for one small crack.

“My kids were very upset about it … [they] found a lone egg with a small crack that wasn’t leaking and asked me to save it.”

“I really didn’t think I had a chance of saving it because I’ve never hatched an egg”

Ross looked up all the information she could, and since she couldn't afford an incubator, she put the egg in her bra to keep it warm. For 35 days. The duck inside continued to grow, and despite some problems, survived! Read the story of the duck and the Mom who wouldn't give up at Bored Panda. With plenty of pictures.  

The place you most want to feel safe is in your home. The actual odds of accidents, invaders, ghosts, and other bad luck often have little to do with our sense of security. It's easier to relax when you're convinced you've done something to protect yourself and your family. We've worked out myriad ways of reassuring ourselves of safety over time, including embedding objects in the structure of our houses.

When [Dan] Kolbert was renovating his late-1800s home in Portland, he was midway through the project when he tore open a bedroom wall only to find a small shoe entombed inside. It was a filthy scrap of a thing, brown and smaller than his hand. He was surprised to find it there; Kolbert didn’t know much about the history of the house, and nothing he did know would explain the presence of a lone baby’s shoe. “My house is just two blocks from St. Dom’s, in the heart of what was once the West End Irish community,” he said. “I’ve since learned it was a common good luck charm for Irish immigrants.” He kept the shoe. It’s a curiosity, a strange piece of history. Plus, it had been in the house for hundreds of years. I can’t help but think moving it would be somehow wrong.

Concealed shoes have been found all over America and in homes in the U.K., Ireland, and Europe. Historians believe the practice dates to the early modern period. The Northampton Museum in the U.K. has cataloged nearly 2,000 discoveries of concealed shoes, the majority of which were buried in the walls of homes, but some were also found in churches, barns, and shops.

Curbed looks at other ways people make their homes feel safe, from traditional talismans to exorcisms to more modern questions such as keeping a gun handy. -via Digg

(Image credit: Kelsey Borch)

We are used to seeing informercials on TV where a former celebrity endorses some product or another. The George Foreman Grill was an outlier in that group, as George Foreman was not exactly a has-been when it launched in 1995. Sure, his biggest victories were in the 1970s, but his comeback in 1994 made him a star all over again. Not long afterward, he became a star in infomercials selling a simple grilling machine.       

When the infomercial first hit the air, Foreman was in his mid-40s, fresh off one of the greatest career comebacks in boxing history. He’d won Olympic gold as an amateur in 1968 and gone pro, knocking out Frazier in 1973 to become the heavyweight champion. He was KO’d by Muhammad Ali a year later, and at 28, he retired to become a minister at his own church in Houston. Ten years later, Foreman returned, going on to knock out Michael Moorer, a man nearly 20 years his junior, to reclaim his heavyweight title.

Foreman arrived on our TV sets as a guy who could still go toe-to-toe with anyone, bringing along the promise that there was an easier way to cook healthy and perhaps stay that way. And that one-two punch would spark a cultural shift in how men—or at least this man, and every guy I went to college with—cook and eat.

Foreman secured a sweetheart deal with the manufacturer, and made a ton of money off the grills, which became familiar to all Americans, and a part of the kitchen for many of them. Read the story behind the wildly successful George Foreman Grill at Men's Health. -via Damn Interesting

STEP ASIDE ALL.

These are hand-made models of figures playing cards and of gold miners hauling gold nuggets to the surface. BUT the figures are made from crab’s legs and claws… Typical Victorians, they loved weird/creepy stuff. #CreepiestObject pic.twitter.com/A5NHiPGnVh

— York Castle Museum (@YorkCastle) April 17, 2020

The Yorkshire Museum kicked off another museum challenge, and we all get to enjoy the results. Museums were asked what their creepiest object is, and many rushed in to show theirs off. You'll see bad taxidermy, deteriorating toys, hoaxes, things made from body parts, weird art, nature specimens, and even food. See them in the replies to the original Tweet, or you can follow the #CreepiestObject hashtag. -via Mashable

Horror movies have scenes in the dark because that's scary. You never know what the darkness can be hiding! But when you're making that horror film, you have to take care to control what the audience sees. When a scene is filmed in a dark house, cave, or even outside space, controlling what is visible, half visible, or invisible is like walking a fine line. David F. Sandberg explains the quest for "good darkness." -via Laughing Squid

The Getty Museum started a hobby anyone can take part in by recreating famous works of art with only the props at hand. Most people have to select a painting that has only one or maybe two people in it, but the staff at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris get together to work anyway, so they went for recreating The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. Brilliant! If you recall, the medical staff from MASH did this in the 1970 movie. -via reddit

Philip was the last sweet potato in the store, so Sophie Blackall took them home and made clothes and put Philip to bed. But then Philip became sad, So Blackall ordered a friend named Bruce and then another friend named Princella, who Bruce fell for and married. The bride was lovely and the ceremony was joyous. Philip, feeling a bit lonely, went for a walk. That's what led up to the video you see above. -via Nag on the Lake

TLDR: To keep from having to click all those links, you can go to Instagram and click the left arrow to read the story in the captions.

What does the snow leopard say? I'm not sure, but it probably strikes terror into the hearts of mountain prey. The White Lion Foundation caught rare footage of a snow leopard calling out across the Himalayas in the Karakoram Mountains of northern Pakistan.

Dr John Knight said, ‘It is extremely unusual and special to be able to get such clear footage of a snow leopard vocalising in the wild, as they are by nature elusive and solitary, only coming together to mate and raise young. The adult male is exercising his vocal calls to establish territory and to let females know he is in the area’.

As snow leopard are a vulnerable species, let's hope this caterwauling sounds like a Barry White song to the ladies of his territory. -via Digg