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
Bran Castle, in Bran, Romania, is a historical monument in Romania. Outside of the country, it is better known as Dracula's castle, although there is no evidence that either Dracula author Bram Stoker nor his inspiration Vlad the Impaler ever set foot in the structure. But it nevertheless draws fans from all over the world, because it looks like the kind of place a royal vampire might live -and the Romanian government encourages such pilgrimages. The interior of Bran Castle has been made available to tour with Google Maps. Take a look around inside, just scroll, point, and click, and you'll see displays of instruments of torture, medieval clothing, weapons, furniture, and more instruments of torture. -via Boing Boing
Jeff Wright knows that a real alien invasion wouldn't be what we see in the movies. Real aliens would be smart enough to find our planet, but they would still be working without all the information they need, just like we do. This fast-moving video contains one NSFW word. -via reddit
The ship RMS Titanic sank in April of 1912, now 108 years ago. The disaster made global news, and even inspired a slew of popular songs. At the time, events in the news were commonly turned into songs, and also at the time, recorded music wasn't available in every home, so the songs were popularized by sheet music.
Yes, families could buy sheet music that focused on the Titanic. These songs provided families that had pianos the opportunity to play and sing everything from marches to ballads. In a time before electronic media, playing the piano and singing were a form of early entertainment for families, and they had a range of sheet music to choose from.
“The Wreck of the Titanic: A Descriptive March,” by John J. Thomas, is a musical re-telling of the story of the ocean liner. The sheet music doesn’t have lyrics to sing, but it provides a dramatic synopsis of the tragedy with short descriptions such as “tourists entering the ship” and “leaving port.” Its ending includes the descriptions “boilers explode,” “the death toll,” “boat sinking,” and “Carpathia coming to the rescue.”
But other songs published in the first few years after the Titanic disaster came with lyrics, addressing subjects like the musicians who played while the ship sank, and the concept of "women and children first." Read about the songs that resulted from the sinking of the Titanic at GeneologyBank. -via Strange Company
Just as native English readers are surprised by badly-translated English on t-shirts sold in Asia, so are native Japanese readers astonished by the bad combinations of Japanese characters on t-shirts sold in the West. You might think this is just progressive laziness among clothing designers, but there is a genesis for the story. Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out also tells us the origins of the reverse- Asian t-shirts sporting random English.
Oooh, look at that! If you are going to wear a face mask in public, you may as well impress everyone -and scare everyone into staying at least six feet away! This leather Cthulhu mask would have been reserved for special occasions only a couple of months ago, but now you can justify wearing it every day! It's just one of the items that creative people are offering to make social isolation a little less bleak. Find greeting cards, candles, art, toys, and more that are both useful and uplifting in a roundup at Rue the Day.
Imagine you've spent months, or maybe even years, planning your wedding, scheduled for April 2020. What can you do? You celebrate in isolation, knowing that love is all that matters. This short film is from Toronto filmmaker Ali Joy Richardson, with cinematography by Neil Silcox, and it appears that it might even be a true story. -via Metafilter
One fairly common ingredient in home remedies of the 17th century was snails. There were plenty of recipes for snail medicine, like this one for snail water to treat "green wounds, fits and convulsions."
Take shell snailes, take them out of their shells and wash them in white wine & take out [the] green stuff [that] is within them, take a quart of snails so prepared, & as much green angelico stalks sliced thin, 2 handfuls of Jerusalem cowslips, & 2 handfulls of coltsfoot, &a good capon all the flesh must be cut from the bones & cut into bits, but no fat, put all these into new milk, let the milk cover these things about two inches, let them steep twelve hours & still them in a cold still with a gentle fire, put up your still close, drink this with white sugarcandy and rose water. lay hartstoung in [the] bottom of your still. 1
The snails in this recipe aren't as gross as the raw chicken and milk steeping for 12 hours. It's no wonder one had to take it with candy and rose water. As to its efficacy, well, in the 1600s people just tried anything they could find. Read about other medicinal concoctions made from snails at Early Modern Medicine. -via Strange Company
We've read a lot about the similarities and differences between the coronavirus epidemic and the Spanish flu epidemic 100 years ago. Then, as now, public figures argued over the benefits of isolation, the use of face masks, and other issues. Many people did wear masks, and even had their pictures made in them. The five women in this photo wore masks, and included their cats Tommy and Golly, also wearing masks.
The photo is part of the collection of Dan Eskenazi, the curator of Seattle’s Giant Shoe Museum. Eskenazi’s friend Pat Dorpat, a columnist and historian, found that four of the five women lived together in a still-standing house on 43rd Street in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle. One can imagine the ladies—bored roommates during a seemingly endless epidemic—trooping outside in their glorious hats, then slipping the inglorious masks over Tommy and Golly’s heads. The photographer who snapped their photo captured a moment of levity in the middle of a scourge.
From what we know of cats, you can imagine that the project had to be done in a hurry. While photos of cats wearing face masks are rare, this isn't the only one from that era. And there was serious speculation about whether household pets could spread the flu virus. Read about cats and dogs and how they fared during the Spanish flu epidemic at Atlas Obscura.
Okay, time for a feel-good break! Robert Jones is back after a long break from video editing, with a new dance compilation. Characters still dance in movies the way they always did, so this video shows joyous dancing clips from the movies of the past twenty years. -Thanks, Robert!
The lion above is not made of stone, nor of concrete. It was cast in an "artificial stone" known as Coade stone. Coade stone was quite popular in the 18th and 19th centuries for its quality and versatility. Two hundred years after it was sculpted, this lion still shows no cracks or corrosion. They don't make statues like that anymore.
Coade stone looks and feels exactly like worked stone, but it isn’t stone at all. It is a type of ceramic called stoneware. Ceramic, as you know, is just baked clay, but depending on the type of clay and how intensely they are fired, the kiln will produce different types of material. Low temperature firing results in earthenware (terracotta, pottery, bricks etc.). These are fragile. Higher temperature causes vitrification of the clay and results in a much tougher material called porcelain. An even higher temperature is needed to produce stoneware. These are dense, impermeable, noncorrosive and resistant to scratching.
At the time Eleanor Coade set up her “Coade's Artificial Stone Manufactory” in Lambeth, there were many businesses manufacturing artificial stone in England. Eleanor Coade, the daughter of a wool merchant, in all likelihood, knew next to nothing about making artificial stone. On the contrary, she sold linen. But towards the end of the 1760s, she had the fortune of meeting one Daniel Pincot, who was already into the business of making artificial stone but was having difficulty keeping up with the finances. Eleanor Coade had the money and Daniel Pincot had the formula, and together they opened a factory on the south side of Thames where Waterloo Station stands today and began producing an unusually high-grade material. Coade originally named her stone Lythodipyra, which was Greek for “twice-fired stone”, before rebranding it to the punchier “Coade stone.” Within two years, Eleanor Coade had fired Daniel Pincot and nothing more is known about him.
So what made Coade stone so special? Find out at Amusing Planet, and you'll know why they don't make 'em like they used to.
We've become familiar with Joseph's Machines (previously at Neatorama) being ridiculously intricate Rube Goldberg contraptions, but this one is leagues above anything he's done before. The mere act of passing the pepper becomes an adventure in chain reactions. I lost track of the actual pepper early on, but it makes an appearance later. Meanwhile, you are constantly thinking, "Wait... what?" This sequence is designed to get you to look at something fascinating that has nothing to do with the actual progress of the "pepper." You may have to back up the video at a few points. Do not miss the cooking pasta, nor the stuff that will surely be spilled on the computer. -via Metafilter
While most of the big newspaper Peeps diorama contests have faded away, a new leader in the tradition is emerging. This is the second year for the World’s Finest Science-Themed Peeps Diorama Contest, also known as #PeepYourScience, and the judges had a hard time deciding among 70 entries. Now the winners have been announced, and the Golden Peep Award has been bestowed on the above diorama, called A Peep into the Life of a Data Scientist by Kerri Barton, Ally Hinton, Jaclyn Janis, Lee Lucas, Kim Murray, Shravanthi Seshasayee, and Deanna Williams. See a larger version here.
Our diorama captures four key data science tasks: data cleaning, data wrangling, data modeling, and data delivery. In each scene, the bunny peeps are the data scientists, and the chick peeps are data. The first scene represents the bulk of the work of data scientists, data cleaning. The second scene further depicts the data scientist’s task of taming messy data, or data wrangling. Sometimes data are missing, hence the “Wanted” chick peep sign. Once the data are ready to be analyzed, the data scientist will use statistical models to answer a question. In the data modeling scene, a chick peep takes on the runway before an audience of bunnies. Finally, when it is time to tell the world about scientific findings, a data scientist will deliver this information in the form of a journal article, represented by our bunny “stork” delivering articles (about positive end-expiratory pressure – PEEP).
Other winners and honorable mentions address the topics of sharks, space exploration, poop, elephant toothpaste, and of course, coronavirus. See them all at the Open Notebook. -via Smithsonian
We learned earlier that calico cats owe their color to the direct effect of genes, but cats who have “points,” like the coloration of a Siamese cat, use a very different process to determine their looks. Well, it begins with genes, but the exact path fro there is rather weird. Hank Green is here to explain it.
Between the ninth and twelfth centuries, the practice of stealing holy relics was rampant in Europe. Monks, priests, nuns, and even bishops were willing to break one of the commandments in order to possess even a small piece of some martyred saint's remains. Sure, a relic could produce miracles, but one would also be valuable to the monastery's prestige and even tourism business for the entire region.
Perhaps the strangest thing about relic theft is how open monks were about their capers. In fact, we know about it mostly because they wrote about it, quite unabashedly. There was a whole genre devoted to the topic of furta sacra (holy theft). Scholars contend that many of these tales were exaggerated or even fabricated outright. But that only makes the problem more perplexing. It’s strange enough to cheerfully confess that you or one of your brothers stole a holy relic. It’s even stranger to say so if you actually didn’t.
There are a few explanations. First of all, a story of theft could give an otherwise dubious relic a plausible backstory. Or the story could cover up other means of acquisition: theft might actually be preferable to commerce, which crassly reduced holy saints to the status of commodities.
