You've been playing Monopoly or Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit all your life, and they may seem boring by now. Instead of buying a new game that you may or may not like, how about combining the games you have into something new? Intriguing idea, but actually coming up with the rules for a board game mashup is a lot of work. Lucky for us, it's already been done. Check out the Board Game Remix Kit.

There are 26 different suggestions for ways to play, plus another four in the Valentine's Day Expansion. The simplest ideas are just tweaks to the original games, to make them differently fun: a more intensely strategic Scrabble, a faster Trivial Pursuit.

Then there are the new games: use lead piping to defend yourself from zombies in the Cluedo mansion; listen to the answer from a Trivial Pursuit card, and compete to come up with the most plausible question.

Finally there are mash-ups, combining pieces from more than one game: auction off individual Scrabble tiles with your Monopoly money; solve a murder mystery with Scrabble tile anagrams.

The Board Game Remix Kit has been released free online. You can download the kit here. -via Metafilter

The ability to easily produce fire was a wildly successful development for mankind. But for a large part of the 19th century, working in a match factory could lead to illness, bone loss, and even death. Occupational safety has come a long way since then. Eventually a less toxic form of match was developed, and in this video, you'll also find why "safety matches" are called that.

Source: CandyStore.com

People buy as much candy for Easter as they do for Halloween, and like Halloween, there are traditional candies you only find this time of year. She are pretty good, while some of the others ...well, you wonder why they are still around. Tradition, I guess. CandyStore.com conducts a poll every year to determine the best and worst Easter candies. Let's take a look at #1 for this year, Cadbury Creme Eggs. 

The chocolate shell is a problem. The thing is hard enough to eat without making a mess, but god forbid the egg has gotten a tiny bit warm and the outer shell has softened. Then you’re in for a sloppy mess with this awkwardly shaped candy whose liquid filling does nothing to support its shape. It falls apart into goo.

Speaking of the shell, its ingredients have recently gone through some changes. Cadbury Creme Eggs’ shell used to be made of Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate. But Cadbury was bought by Kraft in 2010, and that was an ominous event. Five years later, they announced the change to a “standard chocolate mix.”

Read about the other Easter candies that made the worst list, and check out the best list, too! -via Mental Floss

Europe has bounty of history, of kingdoms and nations large and small, with castles built for the ruling class as a symbol of their wealth as well as fortification against enemies. Many of those older castles are now in ruins, but a team of designers, architects, and digital artists have collaborated to show us how they once looked. Above is a recreation of Poenari Castle in Romania.  

Legendary Poenari Castle is so adorned with inspiring details that it feels like it came from a storybook. Indeed, it once belonged to Vlad the Impaler, the Voivode (Duke) of Wallachia, who inspired Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula. Climbing the 1,480 concrete stairs to the clifftop castle’s eagle nest position creates an uneasy sense of isolation. And it is easy to get giddy at such a height, especially in the knowledge that the ruins are partly due to a landslide that dragged the towers down to the river 400 metres below.

But Poenari needn’t be where visitors meet their doom. Vlad himself escaped attack through a secret passageway and into the Carpathian Mountains. The fortress itself was originally built directly into the rock and fortified with earth or lime, and Vlad rebuilt it with extra towers for defence. As a final fearsome detail, the castle is currently closed because of local bears – but it will re-open soon, possibly with a crémaillère tram to lift visitors up from the valley.

See six other ruins restored to their former glory with the magic of digital art. -Thanks, Luke!

Here we see video footage of a grizzly bear emerging from his winter hibernation, or more accurately, dormancy. Boo Grizzly was orphaned as a cub in 2002. He lives at the Kicking Horse Grizzly Bear Refuge in Golden, British Columbia, a facility created for Boo and his brother when they were rescued.

Among other things, the refuge permits a rare in-depth analysis of grizzly bear hibernation. A log den was constructed within the refuge for the cubs to use in the winter. This custom-built den includes a motion-activated camera in the roof that allows continuous monitoring of activity inside. As a result, we now know that grizzly bears engage in limited activity during the winter, unlike true hibernators. For that reason we now use the more accurate term winter dormancy rather than hibernation when referring to a bear’s winter slumber.

Boo's caretaker Nicole Marie caught footage of him coming back from his months of dormancy, and she's quite delighted. -via Geekologie

There are plenty of lists of good cars and beautiful cars, but what fun are those? Instead, let's be glad we never bought one of the truly ugly cars the automotive industry tried out. Often that was because they sold so poorly that few were made. And you can see why. Shown above is the 1951 Allard P2 Safari.

There are a few things in life we simply cannot wrap our heads around, and this is one of them: Who thought it was a good idea to graft the front of a sports car onto the back of a woody wagon? British automaker Allard did, and the results are every bit as revolting as one might expect. Production estimates for this Ford-powered eyesore range between 10 and 13, some five of which are known to exist. We imagine the rest were destroyed by mobs with torches and pitchforks.

As in any list, you may not agree with some of the choices -some of the newer cars don't really stand out in ugliness the way old ones do. But you might get a kick out of reading what made these cars ugly at Automobile magazine. -via Digg

Several years ago I was at a party (BRAG!), and I spotted a box of Triscuits. I asked everyone, "What does the word 'Triscuit' mean? It's clearly based on the word "BISCUIT," but what does the "TRI" mean?" (I'm great at parties.)

— Sage Boggs (@sageboggs) March 26, 2020

You've seen Triscuit brand crackers in stores all your life- the product is 120 years old. Have you ever wondered how the name came about? Sage Boggs asked friends, and the consensus was that the "tri" meant three, so there was three of something that went into the recipe or manufacturing process. Checking with the company debunked that idea, yet yielded no further information.

"The "TRI" does not mean 3." How... how do they know what it DOESN'T mean, but NOT know what it DOES mean? HOW??

— Sage Boggs (@sageboggs) March 26, 2020

The answer lies with Triscuit's early advertising in the 1900s. And if you were to guess, you'd have to place yourself back into that time frame to realize what was impressive about the cracker and its ads. Read the Twitter thread to find the answer, and don't miss an intriguing typo in one of the ads. -via Metafilter

We know that Roald Amundsen led the first expedition to reach the South Pole. We also know Robert Falcon Scott because he led the crew that all died trying to be the first. But there were other polar explorers who made significant discoveries and aren't as well-known. Charles Wilkes was commander of the United States Exploring Expedition in 1840, sailing on the ship Vincennes, which was the first to establish that Antarctica was a vast continent instead of a few frozen islands only seen from a distance before that. Wilkes mapped 1500 miles of Antarctica's coast, but gets little credit for his accomplishment, as his discovery led to an international mess. It was a case of serious exploration running up against claiming lands for one's country.

In a remarkable coincidence, a French expedition led by the legendary Jules Dumont D’Urville reached the same stretch of coastline on the same day. But D’Urville stayed just long enough to plant the French flag on a tiny offshore island before sailing back north. Wilkes, meanwhile, against the advice of his medical staff and officers, braved the cold, ice, and howling katabatic winds to claim glory for the Vincennes.

Charles Wilkes barely had time to announce his Antarctic triumph before British rival James Clark Ross (celebrated discoverer of the North Magnetic Pole) began to steal his thunder. Wilkes’s mistake was to send the lagging Ross his historic first chart of the east Antarctic coast. A year later, when Ross retraced Wilkes’s route, he found the American had been deceived in places by glacial reflections and had mistaken ice shelves for actual coastline, marking it several degrees too far north. These errors did nothing to undermine the substance of Wilkes’s discoveries, yet Ross and the British Admiralty built a public case against the American claim—with great success. Most 19th-century maps of Antarctica do not recognize Wilkes’s remarkable 1840 feat. Even his obituaries in American newspapers made only passing mention of Wilkes’ polar discoveries.  

Wilkes' findings are getting more notice today, when the melting ice of the Antarctic is making resource mining possible. Read about Wilkes' feat and what it means for the continent at Smithsonian.

Twenty-three-year-old Luella Mabbitt disappeared suddenly in 1886, never to be seen again. The people of Delphi, Indiana, suspected her former beau Amer Green, who came from a crime-ridden family and flew the coop during the investigation. Green, however, insisted that Luella was alive and well and living in Texas. With no body and no evidence, the townspeople took it upon themselves to lynch Green.

On the night of October 21, 1887, some two hundred men quietly marched through the streets, surrounding the county jail. They broke their way in and confronted the sheriff, demanding the keys to the prison. When he refused, some of the mob overpowered him, and the others used sledgehammers to break the locks leading to the cells. They went straight to the cell containing Amer Green. At gunpoint, he was seized and tied up. He was led outside and forced into a covered wagon. It drove off, with the bulk of the crowd following.

The wagon drove to the woods of Walnut Grove, about eight miles away. It was soon joined by a large caravan of carriages, wagons, and men on horseback. Green was taken out of the wagon and ordered to confess his guilt.

Green maintained the stolid calm of a man who knows he’s doomed. He quietly maintained that Luella was in Fort Worth. When asked why, if this was the case, she didn’t come home and resolve the mystery, he replied, “She would if I had the time to send for her.” He claimed that Luella had been desperate to leave her home for some time, and on the night she vanished, he had merely assisted in her desire to run away.

After Green was killed by the lynch mob, the investigation moved to Texas, where some intriguing clues emerged. Read the rest of the story of Luella Mabbitt, and also that of her sister and brothers who ran into legal troubles, at Strange Company.

Perhaps seeking revenge on behalf of the entire avian class, this crow spends a whole five minutes ruining a cat's day. But who knows? Maybe there's a history between these two. Maybe they were siblings in a past life. More likely, the crow just thinks this is fun.  -via Boing Boing

Think you know your comic book superheroes? In a different country, in another language, you might not even recognize your favorites. Over the last few decades, there have been some major changes depending on future, copyright, and various other reasons. For example, in the 1990s, the Argentinian version of the Flash was named Flushman. Really. And it wasn't a matter of being lost in translation.  

Flushman sounds like someone you'd call when your toilet tank is overflowing, not the fastest man alive. And yet, that's how Latin American readers knew the character in the '90s, after a publisher called Perfil scored the license to print DC comics in Argentina and neighboring countries. Among those comics was The Flash, but unfortunately, there was already an Argentinian gossip magazine called Flash. To avoid being sued (or simply having hurtful rumors printed about their persons), Perfil's editors decided to come up with a new name. After considering options like El Rayo ("The Ray") or El Relampago ("The Lightning"), they settled for Flashman, only to decide at the last moment that it was still too close to Flash. Hence: Flushman. The most logical solution.

Note that toilets make the same sound all over the world, so even in Argentina, "Flushman" still sounded like a poo-related superhero. Everyone hated it, including many of the people working on the comic. The translator claims he refused to type that stupid name in the scripts, to the editor's annoyance, which explains why the character was accidentally called "Flash" about once per issue.

Read the rest of that story and four others about how comic book superheroes were changed in other countries at Cracked.

(Image credit: DC Comics)

Monroe Strause was more than just a pastry chef. He was the Pie King. Strause joined his family's pie business in 1919, and began a journey to fix some of the problems of the pie industry at the time: competition from cake, and the blandness of cornstarch-laden cream pie recipes.  

Strause considered pie to be the “Great American Dessert,” and deemed it superior to just about every other food. A natural perfectionist, his driving motivation was to create better versions of the dish. But unlike housewives and grandmothers, the patron saints of pie, Strause approached pie-making in a way that reflected the growing emphasis on scientific thought that took root in the 1920s. He treated new pies as individual inventions, and methods of preparation as equations to solve. He even referred to his recipes as “formulas.”

In his 1939 book Pie Marches On, Strause’s publishers summed up his approach: “He has reduced pie baking to an exact science and measures each ingredient with the care of a pharmacist.” This style meant no volume measurements (Strause wrote that “the tea cup and teaspoon are the greatest enemies of a good pie”) and endless experimentation. Once, he made 150 different versions of cherry pie. His pie fixation also meant he had the tendency to get a little high-and-mighty. Strause once sniffed that housewives “tend to be too slipshod for scientific pie-making.”

Despite his opinions about home cooks, people flocked to Strause's pies. Read how the Pie King developed pie techniques that are quite familiar today, particularly chiffon pies and graham cracker crusts, at Atlas Obscura.

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Software engineer Andrew Eckel is one of the many people who now are expected to work from home, and who have to network with co-workers. That's what he's doing in the top picture. We've seen a lot of these lately, even on TV. You just have to look at the background and judge the home environment, don't you? His is pretty nice. But it's not real.

I work as a software engineer in cancer research and have an active but money-losing side gig as a musician*. The luxury apartment is improbable for my lifestyle, but anything's possible, right?

After I zoomed out and showed my co-workers the paper backdrop, they said they'd been quietly wondering how I could afford such a stylish place.  Or just why I had two office chairs.

Eckel said he was inspired by the Picture Phone from the TV show Pee-wee's Playhouse. Pee-wee Herman stood in front of a different fake backdrop every time he took a video call -on a tin can. Okay, Pee-wee was tickled to learn that Eckel got the idea from him. Then Pee-wee wrote a blog post explaining where he himself got the inspiration for the Picture Phone on his show that ran from 1986 to '90. That inspiration dates back to 1957, when video calls were a futuristic concept. But you won't be surprised to find out what it was. -via Boing Boing

Pepper Coyote sings a perfect topical parody of Barenaked Ladies' song "One Week." Credit goes to Twitter user @daniAWESOME for the lyrics in this thread. The band themselves gave the song thumbs up.

Yep. It’s really great! Nice work @daniAWESOME @PepperCoyote https://t.co/erZDFmcVXO

— Barenaked Ladies (@barenakedladies) March 21, 2020

-via Upworthy

At the beginning of the 1700s, European colonists were scattering about the New World while others were busy trying to figure out how to cash in on the new lands. Communication across the Atlantic was slow and not all that reliable, so it was easy to convince investors that the riches of the Americas could someday be theirs. In France, that led to the founding of the Mississippi Company, where investors could claim their share of the coming riches. There was a problem, though, in that France had very few colonists, and they were not extracting those riches. And even with the investments, few signed up for the journey.

The pressure is on to deliver. In order to recruit more people to the colonies to extract what John Law needs from the isolated territory, he begins falsely advertising the “Eldorado” allure of Louisiana. Despite his best efforts, few volunteer to leave the comforts of home and so he turns to society’s “black sheep”. He recruits in hospitals for paupers, prostitutes, drunks and disorderly soldiers. Then he goes to prisons and makes its occupants an offer they can’t refuse: marry a prostitute and set sail into the sunset … to Louisiana.

A honeymoon voyage, it isn’t. Those who accept the bargain for their freedom are shackled together until they board ships on a less-than-first-class voyage to America.

You might guess that this led to disaster, and you'd be right. Read the story of the "Mississippi bubble" that led to the coinage of the term "millionaire," at Messy Nessy Chic.