Now that Valentines Day is over and done, we can talk about rejection and breaking up. A hundred years ago, "handing someone a lemon" was a slang term for just that. There were greeting cards and postcards that would convey the message in an obvious way. Of course that message isn't at all obvious now, and Chantel Tattoli thought it was very nice idea to hand someone a lemon until she researched the history of the gesture. Lemons figured in all sorts of metaphors over time, and idea of using it for romantic rejection in the first part of the 20th century was one of those things everyone understood at the time, but seems rather obscure now. Read about the sour business of handing someone a lemon at The Paris Review. -via Nag on the Lake

Ten movie critics from Indiewire have constructed another movie list we can all argue over. What makes a great romantic comedy is a matter of opinion, as some feel the laughs matter more than the romance, or vice versa. Some of the movies really stretch the definition of "romantic comedy." It includes Bend It Like Beckham, which is a sports buddy movie, contains hardly any comedy, and just barely features a romance. Conversely, Coming to America, a hilarious movie centered around a romance, is not on the list, but is dismissed as an "urban fantasy." I might have more quibbles, but I haven't seen many of these movies. Check out the ranked list of 50 romantic comedies and feel your blood boil at Indiewire.

Jane Britton was a knowledgeable and well-liked graduate student in anthropology at Harvard. After she missed an important test, her boyfriend and a neighbor went into her apartment and found her bludgeoned to death. Who could have killed her? Was it a member of her anthropology team? One of the hippies she'd been known to hang around with? A criminal who knew that the locks on those apartments didn't work?

With a bone-dry suspect pool, police focused instead on evidence from the crime scene. Though they had managed to find traces of semen left behind by the killer during the sexual assault, the existing technology wasn't advanced enough for them to use that DNA to locate a match. They also discovered that a sharp stone—perhaps sharp enough to kill— Britton had received as an archaeological souvenir from the Mitchells had gone missing from her residence.

Then, just two days after Britton’s body was found, Cambridge Chief of Police James F. Reagan announced a black-out on any further news of the investigation until he himself decided to release more information, citing inaccuracies in media coverage of the crime. He wouldn’t elaborate, but he did give one last parting update: They had located the sharp stone.

As for any other details—where they found it, for example, or if it happened to be smeared with blood—Reagan didn’t say. The public was left to assume that the potential murder weapon was yet another dead end.

That was in 1969. Nothing else was publicized about the case until public requests spurred the investigators to reopen the case in 2017. Read how time and modern technology made all the difference in a murder mystery at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Middlesex District Attorney)

The Knuckle Huck is an unofficial snowboarding event at the XGames. There's somewhat of an explanation here, but it boils down to snowboarders showing off the weirdest and most dangerous stunts they can come up with. No one dies in this video. -via Digg

Of all the students who had applied to study at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, one of the top medical schools in the US, 364 made it to the final round of applicants being considered for 50 slots. On Thursday, acceptance emails were sent out. To all 364 applicants. Oops. Three hours later, a correction was sent.

"... Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine erroneously emailed 364 letters of acceptance to talented, engaging individuals seeking an appointment to the medical school. Soon after the emails were sent, a technical error was discovered and the letters of acceptance were withdrawn by e-mail," wrote Mayo Clinic Spokeswoman Heather Carlson Kehren in a statement late Thursday night. "All affected applicants have been contacted by phone. We deeply regret having caused disappointment to these applicants, and we are continuing to investigate the issue."

A later email was sent to 315 applicants, withdrawing the offer of acceptance. By then some students had already withdrawn their applications to other medical schools. Some shared their disappointment online.

"I literally ran down the halls of this prestigious academic institution yelling to everyone that I got into Mayo. I burst into my mentor's office and told him the news and he hugged me. I called other mentors and they immediately spread the news, resulting in me getting several texts congratulating me," wrote one poster. "The worst part about it was telling my mentor in person. He looked at me like how I'd imagine you'd look at a puppy who just got hit by a car ... It'll take me a while to get over this."

Read the details of the story at the Post Bulletin. -via reddit

(Image credit: Christo and Melissa Philips)

There are artworks everywhere that you recognize, even if you know nothing about them. And if you do know something about them, chances are that it's wrong. Especially if the artist has been dead for a long time.  

I do know the works of art listed, but since I've not had much art education, I didn't know the misconceptions. But I'm always open to learning something new. Read all 30 misconceptions about art at Cracked.

You might recall the case of the pizza delivery guy who was forced into robbing a bank. In 2003 in Erie, Pennsylvania, Brian Wells entered a bank and demanded a quarter-million dollars. He only got $8,702 in cash and the police caught up with him rather quickly. However, Wells had two pipe bombs attached to his neck by a metal collar.  

Whilst being cuffed, Wells helpfully informed the troopers of the bomb around his neck and that three black men had put it there. He further stated that, as far as he was aware, it would go off any minute.

Naturally, the officers all very abruptly backed away from Wells, no doubt mumbling to themselves that they were “too old for this shit”, if movies from that era have taught me anything. After getting a safe distance away, they called the bomb squad.

As for Wells, for 20 agonizing minutes he sat alone on the concrete, occasionally shouting to officers to check if they’d called his boss to inform him why Wells hadn’t come back to work after the delivery, and inquiring when the bomb squad was going to show up.

The bomb squad did not show up in time, and dead men tell no tales, so Wells left behind a mystery. Most people who remember the incident in the news never learned what happened, as the investigation saw details showing up in bits and pieces over quite some time. The explanation of the plot is exceedingly bizarre, and involved a body in a freezer, prostitutes and drug dealers, and a possibly fictional inheritance. Learn the story behind the "pizza bomber" at Today I Found Out.    

(Image credit: United States Federal Bureau of Investigation)

In 1889, a building on 75th street in Harlem suffered a gas leak in the middle of the night. Some background on the incident gives us pause, as quite a few families of up to seven people lived in two and three room apartments. The leaking gas filled the basement apartment first.

As the gas rapidly filled the cellar and made its way up into the basement and other floors above, all of the tenants remained sound asleep. At about 4 a.m., Mrs. May woke up and covered the kitchen sink opening with a cloth, thinking the foul odor she smelled was sewer gas. She went back to bed.

About an hour later, the May’s two cats began howling in the cellar. The loud duet woke up Mary, who asked her mother what she thought was wrong with the cats. Mrs. May said the cats were probably just sick. She then got out of bed and started preparing breakfast for the family.

Mary thought the cats were dying, so she got up to investigate.

Upon opening the door to the cellar, Mary was overcome by the gas and nearly suffocated. Her mother did not notice that Mary was in trouble until the family dog joined the cats and started howling.

You can read the entire story, plus a history of the gasification of New York, at The Hatching Cat. The moral of the story is that you need to know what a natural gas leak smells like, and it's good to have pets. -via Strange Company

Alasdair Martin's mother, who has been baking fanciful cakes for 45 years, made this cake for her office Valentines Day party. It's a reference to the Edgar Allen Poe tale. The Jell-O heart has a pump inside, and the writing on the book was made with an icing printer. The sound comes from a separate source. While we are impressed, only time will tell if anyone has the guts to cut and eat it. -via reddit

The double-lobed heart icon -the Valentine shape- existed as an iconic shape before it was associated with the blood pump inside us. It may have come from the shape of a butt, or testicles, or the silphium plant, or any number of other inspirations. That was a long time before it was associated with the physical heart, or with love.  

“[The heart] might’ve also been the brand for horses,” says Yalom, “Why not? The double lobes do suggest haunches.” Were they symbols of war? Strength? All the wine they would drink after battle? Who knows. But in the Middle Ages, the real fun begins. This was the age of courtly love. Medieval philosophers looked to Aristotle, who said that sentiment lived not in the brain but the heart, for cues on where to pinpoint thine #feels. In Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages, Josh Hartnell explains that they also inherited the Greek idea that the heart was the first organ your body made, and hence, the one that most anchored your human existence – it was the “house of the human soul.”

It took a long time for the physical heart, the heart icon, and the concept of romantic love to come together. How it happened is a story you can read at Messy Nessy Chic.

The folks at How It Should Have Ended had a lot to think about after seeing The Rise of Skywalker. They came up with about a dozen points in the movie where it could have ended rather suddenly, which they show us quickly. It took them two months to decide on the best alternate ending for the Skywalker saga, the one that would have been the most satisfying, not to mention funny.

Any parent who has stopped to peek into their children's notebooks before discarding them knows they can be a treasure trove of writing that reveals what's inside the child's mind. Simple composition books (or exercise books, as they are called elsewhere) can contain surprising insight into a child's life. A teenager named Anne Frank wrote her private thoughts down in notebooks that were eventually read all over the world. Thomas Pololi and Anna Teresa Ronchi collect children's notebooks from all over the world, going back as far as 1773, and started the Exercise Book Archive, an ongoing project to bring those notebooks to the public. Collectors Weekly interviewed Thomas Pololi about the project, the trends in education they reveal, the everyday things that were important to the students, and the eras they documented.     

What are some of the memorable historic moments recorded in these books?

Pololi: There are many historical periods narrated in the books from the point of view of children. It’s poignant because you have this contrast between the innocence of children and the drama happening around them. This is especially true of compositions about war, propaganda, or political events that we now recognize as terrible. But in the narration of children, there is often enthusiasm about the swastika in Germany, or the Duce in Italy (dictator Benito Mussolini), or for Mao in China. It is quite impressive because we know what happened, but reading the personal words of children is an immersion in the period and the daily life of children in these contexts. In most cases, the children tended to see the positive side of traumatic things, perhaps because their main goal is to grow up, and they needed to do it the world they lived in.

Read the rest of the interview and see a gallery of the notebooks at Collectors Weekly.

NBC baseball writer Craig Calcaterra has a 16-year-old daughter named Anna. He found a map of the Western Hemisphere that Anna had been working on, and we all have so many questions. My question is, what are Florida and Chile thinking, as they've taken so much land that will be underwater in a few years? Calterra posted the map at Twitter, but couldn't provide any explanation because Anna was at school. But she eventually was able to text.

Update: I asked her if Ohio2 was a replica of the actual Ohio or if it’s just a cutout shape. pic.twitter.com/SE6yrfd2Q9

— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) February 12, 2020

People have a lot of opinions about how their home states are affected in this map, and plenty of horror at the very idea of Ohio2, which is now trending at Twitter. Anna explained more about the map at CNN.  -via Mashable

(Image credit: Anna Calcaterra via Craig Calcaterra)

Both historians and contemporaries note a couple of striking things about President Abraham Lincoln in addition to his crucial place in history. First, he was funny-looking, which commanded enough attention to keep an audience until they became fascinated with what he had to say. Second, he was genuinely funny, and even won competitions for the humorous stories and jokes he told.   

Humor was an essential part of Lincoln, and a critical element in his success.  As a Congressional candidate, he used it to fire up crowds and put down hecklers. Running for the senate, his humor enabled him to score points off the well known and skilled politician, Stephen Douglas. When, for example, Douglas told a debate crowd that Lincoln was unqualified and unskilled, he added that Lincoln had once run a general store, selling cigars and whiskey. He added, “Mr. Lincoln was a very good bartender.” Lincoln retorted, “Many a time have I stood on one side of the counter… and sold Mr. Douglas whiskey on the other side.”

When Douglas accused Lincoln of being “two faced,” Lincoln shot back, “If I really had two faces, do you think I’d hide behind this one?”

Later, in the depths of the Civil War, Lincoln's humor offended some of his advisors, but the president often resorted to humor to keep his own depression in check. Read some of Lincoln's best quips and stories at the Saturday Evening Post. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Every year, some dogs are winners at the Westminster Dog Show, while others just go viral when they become audience favorites. Lobo the Siberian husky won the crowd.  

"Can he be fast, can he be clean, can he be a champion?" Uh, no. Lobo knows what to do, and he's fairly obedient, but no one can make him be enthusiastic about the agility course. They have minds of their own, as any husky owner will tell you.  -via Digg