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

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

(Image credit: Todor Bozhinov)

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  

(Image credit: Walter R. Allman)

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.

(Image credit: UchronicTime)

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

(Image credit: Neelix)

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.