You've probably seen this photograph somewhere on the internet in the last couple of weeks. It appears that the devil himself is rising from the ocean. Is it an omen? Maybe. Is it a Photoshop? No. Amateur astrophotographer Elias Chasiotis planned carefully to take images of the December 26 solar eclipse in Al Wakrah, Qatar.

The images aren’t results of pure chance and luck. Chasiotis intentionally chose a place with the open horizon where he got a perfect view of the eclipsed sun emerging from the sea. “I hoped that optical effects like inferior mirage would be visible and I was lucky enough to capture them,” he said. “The weather conditions didn’t look good in the beginning as there was a lot of haze and low clouds in the southeast.”

“I was worried that nothing would come out of the eclipse. However, when the sun finally began to rise, it looked like two separate pieces, some sort of red horns piercing the sea. It soon took the form of a crescent, with the so-called ‘Etruscan vase’ inferior mirage effect visible. Due to its shape, the phenomenon was nicknamed the ‘evil sunrise.'”

Read more about the image, and see the entire series of photographs Chasiotis took that morning at Bored Panda.      

(Image credit: Elias Chasiotis)

The world is full of wonders, and that includes some that even scientific research hasn't figured out yet. But curious scientists are working on them. Some are fairly inaccessible and difficult to study, some have been studied but have more than one plausible explanation, and some are just baffling. The picture here seems to show what's at the end of the rainbow, a bubblegum pink lake named Lake Hillier.

This small, saltwater lake on an island off Western Australia is only one-third of a mile long, but its bubblegum-pink color makes it especially striking. The lake was documented in 1802 by British explorer Matthew Flinders, who took a sample of its waters but failed to understand how it got its startling hue. Tourists can visit only by helicopter, though it is safe to swim in the waters.

Scientists today suspect the color is due to the presence of a pink alga, Dunaliella salina, and/or a pink bacterium, Salinibacter ruber. But unlike other pink lakes around the world, such as Lake Retba in Senegal, Lake Hillier’s color doesn’t fluctuate with temperature or sunlight—so the investigation goes on.

That explanation leaves us with another question, though- hasn't anyone taken samples from the lake? Are the helicopter pilots charging too much? Lake Hillier is only one of many geologic mysteries around the globe that scientists haven't yet solved. Read about six more of them at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Kurioziteti123)

It's a story of another of the many men who immigrated to America and then made their way to California to make a great fortune in the boom following the Gold Rush. Griffith J. Griffith dealt in real estate, among other ventures, and is best known for his bequest of land that became Griffith Park, sometimes referred to as the Central Park of Los Angeles, but much bigger.

At the entrance to Griffith Park, off Los Feliz Boulevard, stands a 14-foot bronze statue of a proud, portly Victorian gentleman. He is Griffith J. Griffith, who donated 3,015 acres of the former Rancho Los Feliz to Los Angeles in 1896, to be used specifically as a park for the “plain people” of the city. His face, decidedly noble and assured, lords over his “princely gift” to the city, which is no doubt one of L.A.’s greatest public resources. While portraits and photos of Griffith are plentiful, there are hardly any in existence of his wife, Tina — from whom a great part of his fortune and prestige sprang — and none after the year 1903. Because that year, Griffith J. Griffith shot his wife in the face, permanently disfiguring her. 

As you can guess, the prominent city benefactor led a private life that was more complicated than his public persona would lead one to believe. Read the story of Griffith J. Griffith at KCET. -via Metafilter

Deepfake video technology is scary when applied to news, or the concept of using actors without paying them to act. But it also gives us delights like The Beatles starring in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In this video, Paul McCartney is Frodo, George Harrison is Gandalf, Ringo Starr is Samwise, and John Lennon is Gollum. However, if producer Alex Skorkin had dispensed with the deep fake faces and just gone with the music mix, this still would have been delightful. Also- why didn't he call it Lord of the Ringo? -via Geeks Are Sexy

The footbridge shown above crosses the river Cam on the campus of Queens' College in Cambridge, England. The Mathematical Bridge was first built in 1749. It has a nice arch, but there are no curves in the design- all the timbers are completely straight.

The Mathematical Bridge is constructed out of interlocking pieces of timber. Each rib of the superstructure are set at tangents to the circle describing the underside of the arch of the bridge. In the arch itself, each member is under compression with little or no lateral force that could cause bending. Where the main members cross, the wood joint transmits the compressive stress from one member to the next, with a bolt serving to hold the joint together laterally, rather than itself carrying any stress. There are also radial members which both support the top rail and lock all the overlapping tangents into a rigid truss. The load bearing deck is supported by horizontal cross-beams attached to the bottom of the radials, close to the junction of two tangents. When a load is applied the vertical forces get distributed along the tangents as compression opposite to the compressive forces from the tangents, thus balancing each other.

The rest of the article on the bridge at Amusing Planet is less technical, and goes into the history of the design, which has been used elsewhere, and may have originated with Leonardo da Vinci.

(Image credit: Flickr user Michael Jefferies)

In 1791, 41-year-old Czech composer Frantisek Kotzwara died unexpectedly in London. Was it an accident or murder? The reason behind his death was fairly prurient, and was revealed at the trial.  

Standing trial for murder at the Old Bailey, Susannah Hill explained what happened. Hill was a sex worker, and Kotzwara was a client. On the 2nd of September, they had dinner and drinks together, then she took him back to her room, “where a number of most indecent acts took place.” So far so normal, but Kotzwara had a special request. He wanted Hill to hang him.

Claiming it would add to his pleasure, he asked to be hanged for five minutes, then released. He gave her money and sent her out to get rope, and she came back with two thin cords, placing them around his neck at his request. He hanged himself off her door, but when she cut him down after five minutes as he had told her to do, Kotzwara collapsed and died.

The circumstances of Kotzwara's demise made sensational gossip, but it was only notable because it was so public. There are other historical archives on the practice of erotic asphyxiation, detailed at Dirty Sexy History.  -via Strange Company

We all know someone who is going to be late. If it's someone in your family or friend circle, the group will count on their tardiness and plan around it. But what causes someone to be constantly behind schedule? Psychologist Philippa Perry found there can be many reasons people develop a habit of running late.

Punctual people may believe that late people are passive-aggressive and that their time is more valuable than those who wait for them. But reasons for lateness are generally more complex. The reason may be the opposite of arrogance. It could be that they don’t value themselves enough. If this is the case, might they be unable to see how others could possibly mind their non-appearance?

But that's just one explanation. There are others, which you can read at the Guardian. -via Nag on the Lake

I've always loved seeing glass bricks installed in architecture. My brother once installed a glass brick in his floor -with a light underneath- for no reason at all. You may have noticed grids of glass installed in the sidewalks of a city, which we assume are there to let light in. But where does that light go, and why is it needed? What are the origins of those grids? And most importantly, why are some of them purple? You'll find answers to all those questions at KQED. The question they don't answer is: Where can I get some of that purple glass for my floor? -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user Mike)

This video by  Steve Cutts (previously at Neatorama) takes a look at the state of our planet and asks, what if the shoe were on the other foot?

The British Newspaper Archive takes a look at the twenties -the 1920s, that is, from a British viewpoint. Among several new innovations that were introduced was the newly-invented refrigerator. The American company Frigidaire had sold hundreds of thousands of refrigerators in the US by 1926, and wanted to expand into Britain. It wasn't that easy.

But the introduction of the fridge was met with some scepticism by the British. There was an assumption ‘that we don’t need such cold storage because we don’t have enough hot weather to make it worth while in the average home.’ But the British population was up against a new challenge: the eradication of preservatives in food.

According to the same article in The Sphere, ‘less preservatives are to be permitted by law,’ meaning that the population had to look for some other way of keeping their food fresh. The answer, naturally, was the Frigidaire.

It certainly helps when regulatory agencies make your product necessary. Read about refrigerators and other innovations of the 1920s, such as television and the death ray, and find out why a full English breakfast includes baked beans, in the list at the British Newspaper Archive. -via Strange Company

You might recall the harrowing story of Harrison Okene, who was rescued from a sunken ship after being trapped for three days in 2013. Okene has the unwanted title of "accidental aquanaut." In this video,  RealLifeLore explains why Okene's ordeal was so frightening, and his survival so amazing.

Every local newspaper announces the first baby born in the new year, but the story is even bigger in Carmel, Indiana. Dawn Gilliam and Jason Tello weren't expecting their twins to arrive for another seven weeks, but children have a way of stepping on your holiday plans. The twins were born on different days, in different years, and even in a different decade.

Joslyn Grace Guilen Tello was born at 11:37 p.m. on December 31, 2019 at Ascension St. Vincent Carmel and her twin brother, Jaxon DeWayne Mills Tello, was born at 12:07 a.m. on January 1, 2020.

Not only were their birthdays unique, but they were the last baby born in 2019 and the first baby born in 2020 for the hospital.

The babies are each four pounds and change, and are doing well according to the hospital. When they are older, they can one-up each other in ways most twins cannot. Joslyn will never let Jaxon forget that she is the elder twin, and Jaxon will never let Joslyn forget that he was a New Year Baby while she was not.  -via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Dawn Gilliam)

People save the darnedest things. Janet Gnosspelius was a British architect and historical preservationist who died in 2010. Her obituary tells us:

Janet was meticulous in everything she did – and eccentric. She was known for her jodhpurs, collar-and-tie, handmade tweeds and elegant cigarette holder, her cats (who signed off many letters), 1939 Sunbeam Talbot car, prodigious workload and caustic red pen. She carried on an extraordinary range of correspondence, all hand-typed on a battered Imperial.

That meticulousness was a lifetime habit. As a teenager, Gnosspelius kept her cats' discarded whiskers as she found them, documented the circumstances of each, and bound them in a book. That catalogue is now part of an exhibition about Gnosspelius' distinguished family, and you can see images of it (and her cats) at Colossal.  -via Metafilter

If you see a tiny building standing by itself, check the door. If there's a crescent moon cutout there, you know it's an outhouse. We all know that, just the way we know a barber shop has a striped pole and a pawn shop has three balls outside the door. But why a crescent moon? And how did that custom begin? There are a lot of explanations, some more plausible than others.

For example, in Outhouses, it’s claimed that “it’s a widely held historical view” that the crescent moon is a holdover from a time when illiteracy was rife. Supposedly before the adoption of the more familiar male and female bathroom symbols, it was common to use a crescent moon to denote that an outhouse was for women and a sun to denote that it was an outhouse for men. This supposedly being a nod to the fact that women have long being associated with the moon and men supposedly with the sun.

From here, opinion is divided on why the crescent moon rather than the sun caught on as the defacto symbol for an outhouse, with perhaps the most common explanation being that men’s outhouses fell into disrepair because men would just do their business in the great outdoors as God intended, without need of such an enclosure. Thus, only the women’s outhouses were left regularly used and the others went the way of the dodo.

As you might have guessed from the number of “supposedlies” in our previous paragraphs, there is absolutely no evidence supporting that being the origin of the crescent moon on outhouses. And, in fact, the evidence we do have seems to indicate that that hypothesis is about as accurate as the contents of that political chain-letter forwarded to you by your great-grandmother.

The true story behind the crescent moon on an outhouse will surprise no one who's had to live with an outhouse, nor anyone who has struggled to use a scroll saw. And besides answering that question, we get a bonus history of the act of "mooning," at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: Javier Robles)

What if you just want one kernel of popcorn? Then all you need is a blowtorch and a hairdryer. This film by Zita Bernet and Rafael Sommerhalder, under the name CRICTOR, shows us how it's done. If you're interested in the physics, this is an example of the Coandă effect. The rest of us just think it's pretty neat. If you prefer to oil-fry your single kernel of popcorn, that will take a little longer. -via Metafilter