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It takes a leap of faith to adopt a tiny kitten, especially one who has been abandoned, neglected, or abused. Or an older cat who has run out of luck. A good dose of love and time can make all the difference. It might even make you look smaller!

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A year later, you might not even recognize it as the same cat. See the difference a permanent home can make in the life of a struggling cat, and what a great companion it may turn out to be, not to mention handsome fellows. See 35 before-and-after pictures, many with stories, at Bored Panda.

Movie buffs and those in the industry eagerly await the weekend box office report to see how newly-released movies rank. Those statistics may be completely moot when theaters are closed. But the report still came out this week, and the Weekend Domestic Chart for April 17 lists Resistance and Swallow as tied for the number one spot. Both movies grossed $2,490 from one theater. It was a double feature at the Ocala Drive-In in Ocala, Florida. Slashfilm explains the weirdness.

This doesn’t mean that there’s only one theater open in the entire country — there are still a fair few drive-in theaters (official and makeshift) across the U.S. that are still open — but it seems Ocala is the only one still showing new releases and reporting their grosses. The majority of drive-in theaters show repertory screenings of older or classic films. But perhaps other drive-in theaters could take note of Ocala’s newfound renown — it is making headlines, after all — and start showing new releases so that we could get a fuller box office report. For now, it seems like the No. 1 movie at the U.S. box office is the unnerving Haley Bennett-starring thriller Swallow.

Contrast the report with the one from February 14, which had Sonic the Hedgehog at #1. It grossed $58 million in its opening weekend. The charts may fill out a bit when warmer weather spurs more drive-ins to open, but that still won't make more new movies available. -via reddit

When you think of a convergence between a king and a pirate, you wouldn't be surprised to find he was the descendant of the Vikings. Eric VII had been king of Denmark since he was seven years old, and that realm eventually included Norway and Sweden, too. He was an unpopular ruler, waging ill-conceived wars and levying taxes, until the Swedes began rebelling and the nobles wanted to overthrow him. And he didn't even have an heir. Matters came to a head in 1438.  

With the walls closing in, Erik saw that his fate was sealed. He decided to leave the country with the royal treasure chest, a few of the crown jewels, the royal regalia and the country’s historical flag. He knew where he was going: to join the pirates.

The pirates in question were sea-worn men who for years had created fear and havoc among the merchants and noblemen of Sweden, Denmark and the German towns known as the Hanseatic League. The pirates’ enemies — the nobility who were once King Erik’s friends — were the same people with whom he now found himself at odds. So naturally, his enemies’ enemies became his friends.

As he stood proud and unrepentant on that ship, the Dannebrog banner in hand, plowing through Oresund toward the pirate’s nest on the isle of Gotland, the Danish nobles were on his trail. And while he cursed the powers that be and readied himself for piracy, the nobles made a deal with his sister, Catharina, offering her son, Christoffer of Bayern, the Danish throne. They simultaneously started a rumor that King Erik was directly involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the Royal Council. According to a diary from the noble lady Anne Krabbe, found in the Royal Danish Library’s “New Royal Collections” and written in uneven handwriting, the nobles told a tale of Erik striking a deal with the rebel farmers of the time, supposedly telling them to kill their lords, so that Erik could return and claim his throne.

Read the story of King Erik VII of Denmark and his turn to piracy at Narratively. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit:  Darya Malikova)

The garden at Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, grows with more than 70 species of heirloom vegetables, plus herbs and fruit. It's not been a continuous garden, but a painstaking recreation of the experiment Jefferson was obsessed with, along with things like moose, macaroni and cheese, and wine.

The third U.S. president’s interest in fruits, vegetables, and spices was obsessive and indulged on a grand scale. From the perspective of ingredients, Hatch calls Jefferson early-America’s foremost culinary connoisseur.

“His devotion to obtaining rare varieties and experimenting with cultivation techniques bordered on religious,” says Hatch. “He dedicated more writing to the subject, about 700 pages, than any other.”

As an evangelical byproduct, Jefferson founded what was arguably the nation’s first seed bank.

“He would hear about a ‘new’ vegetable and have to have it,” says Hatch. If growing experiments proved fruitful, seeds, taste descriptions, and instructions were mailed to “everyone he knew”—including George Washington, James Monroe, and James Madison. The efforts helped introduce then-obscure ingredients such as tomatoes, eggplant, and okra into mainstream usage.

Recreating the garden at Monticello wasn't easy, but Jefferson left his detailed plans behind, which aided the accuracy of the project. Read about bringing Jefferson's garden back to life at Atlas Obscura.

humbly presented: jeff goldblum as poptarts (a thread) pic.twitter.com/9GDox0P4rX

— Rachel Clayton 🎣🛹 (@rachelclayday) April 14, 2019

That's about as nonsensical a post title as I've ever typed, but bear with me. Rachel Clayton had some extra time to investigate a pattern she'd noticed, which is how Jeff Goldblum's many sartorial expressions can be illustrated with different flavors of Pop Tarts. I was aware of the man's fashion sense, but I had no idea that Pop Tarts came in so many flavors.

pic.twitter.com/wmD08a3hQO

— Rachel Clayton 🎣🛹 (@rachelclayday) April 14, 2019

On the surface, it seems like a dumb idea. But when you see how well they match up a dozen times (plus quite a few more contributions from followers), it's worth sharing. See the entire Twitter thread here.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

Looking for historical accuracy in Hollywood movies is often a losing proposition, but some movies get it more right than others. You might be surprised at what fashion historian Hilary Davidson has to say about Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

I spent six years writing a book on Regency fashion, called Dress in the Age of Jane Austen. I have spent a lot of time looking at genuine Regency dress. But I also spent a lot of time in the last year or so doing a lot of tedious production work for the book. I watched a lot of films on the way. I love Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I was watching it in the background as I was copy editing my index or some tedious, tedious thing and just enjoying it. Then, we got to the bit where they kidnap Beethoven.

My eye is so attuned to Regency dress, and anyone who follows my Twitter will know that I get quite opinionated about Regency costume on-screen. I was looking at the background extras, and I suddenly paused it and went, “Hang on a second.” I rewound it a bit and went through it in slow motion and went, “You know what? This is really, really good.” It’s a 1980s teen comedy. You don’t expect a high standard of costuming. After that, I thought, well, that’s it. That’s my benchmark. If the main characters’ costumes in a Regency production aren’t better done than the background extras’ in a 1980s teen comedy, I think you’ve failed in the costume design.

So which movies pass the Bill & Ted test? Find out at Slate. -via Metafilter

Have you ever heard of a "bottle whimsey"? It's an object, artwork, or complete scene inside a glass bottle. You are familiar with the classic ship-in-a-bottle, but that's only one type among an astonishing variety of things that people managed to get into a bottle. It's a folk art that people developed as a hobby that resulted in an impressive accomplishment shielded from damage by the bottle itself. Susan D. Jones, author of Genius in a Bottle: The Art and Magic of Bottle Whimseys, explains the rise of the art form.

“The vast majority of whimseys date from after 1900, even 1910,” Jones explains. “They didn’t become something everyday people could make until bottles became common and thought of as disposable. My guess is that the first disposable small bottles were patent medicine bottles; so many of my older bottles are stamped with the name of a drugstore.”

After the Civil War, handmade bottle whimseys became more popular in the United States and the themes expanded from the craft’s European roots: Some showcased Masonic or fraternal objects, wishing wells, farm or household tools, elaborate whittled fans, and other general whimsies. As Jones writes in her book, “A growing and mobile population of laborers spread the art form through contacts on the job, in the Army and Navy, in prison, and by the late 19th century, through the hobo communities connected by river, road and rail. Houses, intricate interlocking wooden puzzles, shops and saloons and brothels, fans and birds, framed pictures and memorials, tools, chairs, and wishing wells all became the subjects of this folk-art expression.”

“I think the yarn winders and niddy noddies and spinning wheels were popular because they are difficult to make and wind,” Jones says. “The kind with different levels of spokes coming out from the center, wound with thread around them and sometimes with beads, are very challenging. So there is an extra ‘gee whiz’ factor. And yarn winders were something many people had at home to copy from.”

Read the rest of the story, and see some amazing examples of bottle whimseys at Collectors Weekly.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness is a documentary series on Netflix that took the world by storm when so many people suddenly were furloughed and told to stay at home. The subject is fascinating: people who keep big cats and other exotic animals. They include controversial Texas zookeeper Joe Exotic, who checks off enough boxes to be rejected in a pitch for a fictional series, and his rival Carole Baskin, founder and CEO of Big Cat Rescue in Florida. You've heard enough gossip about the series; should you sign up for Netflix and watch Tiger King? This Honest Trailer may help you decide.

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)