It makes news headlines every time that Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates switch places as the richest person on earth. What you have to remember is that those rankings are based on publicly available data. They don't include people who have enough money and power to hide their wealth. And then there's the problem of defining exactly what we mean by wealth. Cash and property are measurable, while the ability to use money that belongs to other people usually doesn't factor into the tally. And what about the power wielded by enriching and therefore obligating others? These abilities lead some to assert that the richest person in the world is actually Vladimir Putin.  

Once elected, Putin, like his predecessor, reported his finances and holdings publicly, including his salary and exact amount in his many bank accounts. He has continued to do so since. The result? Over the years while his salary has changed regularly from year to year, he has made approximately $100K-$190K annually in that span, for example in 2018 reporting an income of $135K. Today between his wife’s and his own accounts, the couple seem to have a little over a half a million in cash in various bank accounts, though why he isn’t investing this is rather curious given his apparent lack of any other investments and almost complete lack of actually needing any cash for his day to day life given the government foots the bill for most everything. Of this, Putin states, “Honestly speaking, I don’t even know what my salary is. They deliver it to me, I take it, put it my bank account and don’t even count it…”

As for his other assets, he also owns a studio sized apartment in Saint Petersburg, a slightly larger apartment in Moscow, owns a small garage, a couple cars, a small plot of land outside of Moscow, and otherwise has various minor assets of no great worth.

Of course, over the years people can’t help but notice that Putin has a collection of watches he wears very publicly whose purchase price combined is around that of his reported entire net worth, ringing in at about $400,000-$700,000 if various reports are to be believed. For reference, the highest valued watch he has been spotted wearing costs around $140,000- a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar watch.

On top of that, the clothing he can often be seen wearing is likewise extremely expensive, such as his $6000+ tailored suits from outlets like Kiton and Brioni. Not just expensive suits, in one photo of him working out, Putin can be seen wearing sweatpants that cost over $1,400 a pair, apparently made from silk, cashmere and the tears of impoverished children, along with a similarly priced top.

Read up on what is known and what is rumored about Putin's wealth at Today I Found Out.

(Image credit: Presidential Press and Information Office)

What really makes us grateful for modern medicine is learning about not-so-modern medicine. In the 16th and 17th centuries, epilepsy was beginning to be seen as a disease instead of demonic possession, but there was still very little that could be done about it. Known by many names, such as grand mal, the sacred disease, crank, and the falling sickness, epilepsy was studied, but little understood.

The natural causes of the disease were debated extensively. Various explanations were proposed including rising vapours within the body; black bile and other bad humours; elemental similarities to thunderstorms; and excessive pride (leading to a fall).

The possible cures for the falling sickness were also wide-ranging and varied in their availability. The hermetic physician, Paracelsus, recommended mistletoe, blood from a decapitated man, pieces of the human skull, preparations of gold and coral or spirit of vitriol (now known to contain ether). Another treatment, based on the doctrine of signatures (which used herbs which resembled particular body parts to heal those parts), was powdered soap-wort seed, offered for three months at the time of the new moon; this was a substance which frothed when rubbed in water.  

Adding to the difficulty was the tendency to accuse a practitioner of witchcraft if a patient actually got better. Read about the early modern era of epilepsy at the British National Archives. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Wellcome Images)

The video above shows the top winner in the annual Illusion of the Year competition. It's called the Dual Axis illusion by Frank Force. Is this shape spinning vertically or horizontally? You can't tell, because it's a 2D image, but your brain makes it seem one or the other, until visual cues help you change the orientation. Another of the finalists, Bodiject Fingers by Kenri Kodaka, shows us how seeing one's fingers as disembodied from our hands makes them seem like separate foreign objects.  

All it takes is a mirror, and some students to freak out. See all the top ten finalists here. -via reddit

If you've ever purchased clothing online, you know how difficult it can be to find something that fits right. So you receive it, try it on, and return it for a different size. Or maybe you order three different sizes and return the two that don't fit. You might be surprised to learn that the ones you return may be sent straight to a landfill. This sounds awfully wasteful, and it is, but it's a matter of economics.

It actually costs a lot of companies more money to put somebody on the product, to visually eyeball it and say, Is this up to standard, is it up to code? Is this going to get us sued? Did somebody tamper with this box in some way? And is this returnable? And if it's clothing, it has to be re-pressed and put back in a nice packaging. And for a lot of companies, it's just not worth it. So they will literally just incinerate it, or send it to the dumpster.

Learn about the waste that comes with online retail and what you can do about it at CBC. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Peter Griffin)

Believe it or not, until recently, Buddhist nuns in the Himalayan region weren't allowed to hold leadership positions, or even exercise. That changed when the Drupka order instituted a new regimen for nuns that includes physical training, martial arts, and cycling. This is due to their spiritual leader, Gyalwang Drukpa, who has been working against patriarchy in Buddhism. Read more about the Drupka Kung Fu Nuns at Kottke.

This is Manggo. She is one of three cats living together in Japan, and she's an Instagram star because of her delightfully expressive face. Yes, Manggo is a large cat, but she's on a diet and has already lost half a pound.  





You can see 30 ranked pictures of Manggo at Bored Panda, and follow her progress at Instagram.

The Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east end of Russia is a geologic wonder. It's covered with both snow and a chain of volcanoes, making it a difficult place for people to settle. Amid the volcanoes is a small gorge discovered only in 1975 that is known as the Valley of Death. There are no people there, and the valley acts as a trap: animals go in, but they don't come out.

When the snow melts, various critters, from hares to birds, appear in search of food and water. Many die soon thereafter. Predatory scavengers such as wolverines spot an easy dinner; they slink or swoop into the valley—only to die themselves. From lynxes to foxes, eagles to bears, this 1.2-mile-long trough has claimed innumerable victims.

But the killer here is a phantom. The dead, whose corpses are naturally refrigerated and preserved, show no traces of external injuries or diseases that would be responsible for their expirations.

Scientists have studied the region in the years since, and have almost pinpointed the reason for the animal deaths. They can't stay there long, however, or they might join the animal carcasses. Read about the cursed geography of the Valley of Death at Atlas Obscura. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: ISS Expedition 25 crew)

Here we have a mathematical and scientific breakdown of Santa Claus' trip around the world on Christmas Eve. It's a good thing little kids don't know all that much about math and physics. Yeah, it's silly, but interesting. -via Laughing Squid

Christmas in Japan is a relatively new phenomenon, and it is celebrated with the traditions of a romantic date, a strawberry cake, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's traditional. KFC for Christmas seems weird to us, but it's been that way since the 1970s, and the chain makes a big chunk of its yearly sales during Christmas. The company has long explained it as American expats looking for a substitute for turkey for the holiday, but we assumed that they just told Japanese customers that fried chicken was a traditional American Christmas food. But it turns out that it wasn't the company that did it. It wasn't even an American. It was a franchisee named Takeshi Okawara, who opened Japan's first KFC outlet. His store in Nagoya didn't go over well, and Okawara had to take side jobs, like playing Santa Claus. It was that job that inspired the lie.

Okawara promoted fried chicken as a substitute for traditional Christmas turkey, which the Japanese knew from TV and cinema was eaten for Christmas throughout the West. Selling chicken and sides together in Christmas-themed “Party Barrels” and decorating his store’s Colonel Sanders statue as Santa-san brought in enough customers to save his business.

With word of the Christmas “Party Barrels” making their way across Japan, the national broadcaster NHK interviewed Okawara about his role in bringing the Colonel to Japan and asked if KFC for Christmas was a common custom overseas. Unable to turn down such a glaring opportunity, the young entrepreneur said yes. “I still regret that, but people liked it because it was something good [they thought came] from the U.S. or European countries,” he told Household Name.

Read the story of how Christmas in Japan came to include Kentucky Fried Chicken at Atlas Obscura.

Yeah, it's easy to mess up a word or two when you're live on air, but it's hard to just correct and go on when the entire studio is laughing at you. This is a long video, but you don't have to watch it all at once. Unless you want to spend 15 minutes giggling.  -via Digg

In 1912, the body of a murder victim was found in Georgetown, Connecticut. She had been tied with wire and had holes in her head. The eventual discovery of a burned crate nearby led police to look for the killer in New York City.

Two weeks after the body of an unidentified woman was discovered in a Connecticut mill pond, a cat helped police find the murder weapon in the East 40th Street apartment where the woman had been killed.

The story had everything a news editor could want for writing eye-catching headlines: murder, sex, mystery, gore, and some very colorful characters, including an Italian laborer called Monkeyface Suciciada, a prostitute named Grace Carbone, and a beautiful teenage girl named Turiddi.

Oh yes, there was also a cat named Tipsy involved in the drama. The cat had a reputation as an expert mouser. The man she helped nab was called Salvatore “the mouse” Geracci.

Read the story of the murder investigation, and how Tipsy the cat factored into it at The Hatching Cat. -via Strange Company

This lonely hearts ad looks like a joke, but it is a real story about a real duck. Chris Morris of Blue Hill, Maine, had three ducks, but two of them were taken by a bobcat. Yellow Duck fell into a funk, mourning the loss of Brown Duck and Gray Duck, one of which was her mate. She stopped hanging around the chickens and quacked at unusual times.

So the 31-year-old special education teacher crafted a singles ad for her and hung it on the community bulletin board at the Blue Hill Co-op.

“Duck seeking duck,” Morris wrote. “Lonesome runner duck seeks companion. Partner recently deceased. Serious replies only.”

“We wanted to post about this to try to find a duck, and that just seemed like the best fit,” Morris said.

The ad worked! Yellow Duck will have her pick of new mates. Read the details of the story at the Bangor Daily News.  -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Brook Ewing Minner)
 

Private Wojtek served proudly with the Polish Army during World War II, although he never set foot in Poland his entire life. He was a diligent worker, loading ammunition before and during battles, and retired as a hero. Also, Private Wojtek was a bear. In 1942, a unit of Polish soldiers adopted a baby bear in Iran after its mother had been shot by a hunter. The bear, named Wojtek, ended up with the 22nd Artillery Supply Company.  

Sergeant Peter Prendys was appointed as Wojtek’s principal guardian. The quiet 46-year-old sergeant, soon dubbed “Mother Bear” by his soldiers, truly became the cub’s surrogate mother, wrapping the bear in his army coat on chilly evenings and cuddling him to sleep in their shared tent. Soon, Wojtek graduated from condensed milk to fruit, marmalade, honey, and syrup. But his favorite treat was cigarettes, which he preferred to eat rather than smoke.

As Anders’ Army headed toward Palestine to meet up with British forces, Wojtek grew up playing with Prendys and his other human friends, who taught him to wrestle and salute. He enjoyed lingering in the camp’s kitchen area, where he would happily eat or drink anything the cooks offered him. When he had been a very good bear, the men would give him a bottle of beer or wine, which he would gulp down before staring mournfully into the empty bottle until one of the soldiers took the hint and tossed him another.

By 1944, Wojtek was full-grown and the unit was ordered to Italy. In order to take the bear, Wojtek was drafted into the army as Private Wojciech “Wojtek” Perski. It was in Italy that Wojtek showed his bravery, utility, and heroism in battle. Read the full story Wojtek the war hero bear, or listen to it, at Damn Interesting.

It's nice to see something focused on the good things that happened this year. That's an inspiring video, but to find out what people really searched for in 2019, check out the Google Trend report for 2019. Spoiler: the number one search term was Disney Plus. You can see by this graph that interest peaked during the week the service launched, and not when Baby Yoda first appeared.

Archaeologists worked from 2011 to 2016 at a site called Beta Samati in Ethiopia. They uncovered a Christian church, a basilica to be exact, from the fourth century CE, which is when Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity. That makes it the oldest Christian church in sub-Saharan Africa. The site is only 30 miles from the ancient city of Aksum, the capital of the Aksumite kingdom, which controlled trade between most of Africa and the rest of the world.  

The excavators’ biggest discovery was a massive building 60 feet long and 40 feet wide resembling the ancient Roman style of a basilica. Developed by the Romans for administrative purposes, the basilica was adopted by Christians at the time of Constantine for their places of worship. Within and near the Aksumite ruins, the archaeologists also found a diverse array of goods, from a delicate gold and carnelian ring with the image of a bull’s head to nearly 50 cattle figurines—clearly evidence of pre-Christian beliefs.

They also uncovered a stone pendant carved with a cross and incised with the ancient Ethiopic word “venerable,” as well as incense burners. Near the eastern basilica wall, the team came across an inscription asking “for Christ [to be] favorable to us.”

Read more about the dig and what has been discovered there at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Ioana Dumitru)