CGP Grey is back to lay some knowledge down. So which planet is closest to earth? Whatever you guess, you are wrong. The difference is in how we learned the planets in their order from the sun. They don't line up that way in reality. Here we get an amazing visualization of the planets in orbit around the sun, in their own speeds and paths, that might just blow your mind. You might also want to see a companion video that explores how the question is asked. -via reddit

Want to watch TV like it was way back when? MyDecadeTV is a data-stuffed project that can emulate the experience of cable television in its earlier days. First, select a decade: My 70s TV or My 80s TV or My 90s TV. Then you can select the kind of content you want (music, game shows, soap operas, movies etc). You can even select the exact year. And then flip through the channels with the on-screen remote control. I was flipping around and found myself watching a St. Elsewhere-Cheers crossover episode from 1985. And a comedian on The Oprah Winfrey Show thirty years ago. And music videos so old I'd never seen them. If you ever get bored with watching vintage TV, there's a help page that tells you how to explore further. Just be aware that you could lose a day or two.  -via Metafilter

Jezebel held a contest for the best scary stories. The only rules were that the story had to be scary, and it had to be true. I'm not sure how they determined whether a story is true, but the winners sure are scary. The top ten are in this post. They range from a few paragraphs to the equivalent of a few pages, so you might want to bookmark it to read in small doses. Here's a snippet of one titled Bees:

Sometimes, when I was upstairs, I’d hear movement in the kitchen. If I was in my room painting, I’d swear I’d hear someone come up the stairs and onto the second floor landing, where they’d stop. If I was in my loft, I’d hear what sounded like footsteps move up the stairs, onto the landing, and into my room, stopping underneath the overhang just where I couldn’t see them. Occasionally, I would see a figure out of the corner of my eye, a woman, I assumed. And, more than once, I’d hear the footsteps or see the figure and start talking to it. “Hey Ally, how was your night?” Or “What’s up?” Before realizing, Ally wasn’t back. A couple of weeks in, having never mentioned it, I started talking about to Ally about the feeling I got in the house. And, without missing a beat, she says “So you think we have a ghost too?” She relayed similar experiences.

After that, having finally spent some time there, Ally painted her bedroom a bright yellow in contrast to my navy blue. She then asked if I would draw something on her light switch cover as a finishing touch. I, seeing her cheery yellow, decided to draw bees believing that to be a fitting theme. That evening, we reinstalled the etched cover to her wall. And the very next day, Ally’s loft was swarming with bees. It didn’t make sense, we didn’t have a hive nearby and they weren’t building one. We often hung out on the roof outside the window and checked again today, no hive there either. They also weren’t even the more common wasps, they were proper bees and a lot of them. Mostly though, the timing was eerie, the morning after I adorned her room with bees, it was filled with them. From then on, it became a running joke that the ghost gave us bees. But what became more apparent was that whatever it was, for whatever reason, was keeping an eye on me.

Oh, and as if that weren't enough, they published ten more (shorter) stories from the contest that will also keep you awake at night.

(Image credit: Angelica Alzona/G/O Media)

It's been 50 years since ARPANET got one computer to communicate with another computer on October 29, 1969, laying the foundation of communications that would eventually give rise to the internet. It was quite a few years before that method of communication became available to the general public in the form of the World Wide Web, and engineers had no clue as to how we would use it. In celebration of the milestone, we get a condensed history of websites. These are not the most popular or the longest-lived, nor are they ranked, but a timeline of the websites that changed the way we live, work, and communicate. The first is CERN.

December 20, 1990 didn’t feel historic at the time, but it was the day a British computer scientist in the Swiss Alps published the first-ever website at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

From his NeXT computer, Tim Berners-Lee published, appropriately enough, a primer on the web, explaining the concept of hypertext and describing how to set up a server.

But Berners-Lee didn’t share the site with the public until a year later, when he told his friends in the alt.hypertext newsgroup about his creation. It would take another couple of years and the arrival of the first “killer app”—the browser Mosaic—for the web to catch on.

In 2013, to mark the 20th anniversary of making the web available to anyone, CERN recreated the original website in all of its black, white, and blue glory.

Check out all 50 websites and how they shaped the internet at Popular Mechanics. Some you've forgotten about, some you may've missed completely, and some are still thriving today.  -via Digg

The Shining is often hailed as the ultimate in horror. Stanley Kubrick doing a Stephen King story? How could that go wrong? Screen Junkies takes a look back at the masterpiece and sees things we have forgotten about the 1980 movie that make it seem not quite so horrifically perfect. Oh yeah, Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining, opens November 8.

The city of Detroit has its own legendary demon known as Nain Rouge, or the red dwarf. He's the star of an annual parade in the spring, because he's not always to be feared. The Nain Rouge is a michievous sprite who can confer status and riches if he pleases, or bring disaster if you cross him. He shows up just before Detroit suffers a calamity, and while some welcome his appearance as a warning, others think he might be the one causing the suffering. The legend goes back 300 years, to the founding of Detroit by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.

To hear Hamlin tell it, the trouble began at a party in Québec one March evening in 1701. At the castle of St. Louis, she writes, the French explorer Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac—who would soon depart to claim Detroit for the French and their fur traders—and other officials gathered around a table, “resplendent with costly silver and sparkling glass,” their heads swimming with wine from the building’s “noted cellars.”

Into that shimmering scene burst a “swarthy,” fortune-telling crone with a scrawny black cat on her shoulder. She called herself Mère Minique, La Sorcière, and she came bearing a warning. Things would work out well for Cadillac, she promised, but if—and only if—he appeased the Nain Rouge, or “Red Dwarf.”

It was a while before Cadillac encountered Nain Rouge, but when he did, his fortunes turned rapidly. Read that story and learn how Detroit embraces Nain Rouge today at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Flickr user Jeannette)

Scientific research might tell us there's nothing to worry about, but sometimes even the best news can lead our imaginations to terrifying places. Oh, Egyptian mummies were buried in tombs meant to stay sealed for eternity? Nuclear fallout can cause DNA mutations? What could possibly go wrong? It's a small leap from science to horror stories. Almost all our classic movie monsters sprang from real, if misunderstood, science.

Whether these classic monsters sprung from a swamp, Egyptian sarcophagus or, like Frankenstein, a bag of body parts cobbled together for an experiment gone awry, they were all rooted in the public’s fascination with (and sometimes fear of) science. Though the monsters’ look was the creative handiwork of Universal’s team of costume designers, makeup artists and set designers, the public’s scientific understanding (however limited it may have been) of amphibians, mummies, and anatomy fed into the horror.

“Without real science, these monsters would not have been as terrifying as they were,” says Beth Werling, collections manager, history, for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where a new exhibition “Natural History of Horror” explores the scientific inspiration behind cinema’s most popular movie monsters. “To one degree or another, all of these monsters had scientific origins.” While Werling cautions that it’s unlikely Universal undertook a concerted effort to bring actual science into the movies, “it is clear that they were certainly looking at images of King Tut's tomb for copying props and set design as well as some real scientific instruments for Frankenstein's lab.”

Read about the science that inspired our favorite movie monsters at Smithsonian. 

Josh Sundquist has unveiled his Halloween costume for 2019! The video above gives us the payoff in the first ten seconds, then you get a retrospective of his amazing viral Halloween costumes over the years, and then the story of how the Pixar Lamp stunt came together. -via reddit

In 1811, the Gulf Coast of the newly-annexed territory of Louisiana had 70 sugar plantations. The enslaved people working those plantations, who outnumbered whites five to one, had shorter life spans than any other slave community in North America. Inspired by the revolutions in France and Haiti, a group of plantation workers led the largest slave uprising in American history on January 8-10. The group marched more than 20 miles toward New Orleans, and grew to between 200 and 500 people along the way. Some 40-45 slaves were killed in the final battle, and dozens of others were executed in the aftermath. Their heads were displayed on pikes as a warning against rebellion.

In 2019, hundreds of re-enactors will commemorate the uprising on November 8th and 9th by marching 26 miles along the original route. The Slave Rebellion Reenactment is an art project by Dread Scott and will be recorded by filmmaker John Akomfrah.

The artwork will involve hundreds of reenactors in period specific clothing marching for two days covering 26 miles. The reenactment, the culmination of a period of organizing and preparation, will take place upriver from New Orleans in the locations where the 1811 revolt occurred—the exurban communities and industry that have replaced the sugar plantations will be its backdrop. The reenactment will be an impressive and startling sight—hundreads of Black re-enactors, many on horses, flags flying, in 19th-century French colonial garments, singing in Creole and English to African drumming.

A key element of slave revolts was the organizing of the uprising by small groups of trusted individuals, clandestinely plotting with others in small cells. Mirroring this structure, SRR will initiate several recruitment and organizing meetings of multiple small groupings of people to prepare the reenacted uprising. Extending the artwork’s performative reenactment of history, the meetings will take the form of conversations about why people choose to participate, about others they might involve, and why this history is important in contemporary society. The self-organization of the slave rebel reenactors is an essential part of the artwork.

There was limited fighting during the 1811 rebellion, so, in contrast to many war reenactments, much of SRR will be a procession, with only occasional skirmishes. The procession will be jarringly out of place as they advance past neighborhoods, strip malls, and oil refineries. This historic anomaly will form a cognitive dissonance for viewers, opening space for people to rethink long held assumptions.

Scott says they will not re-enact the massacre at the end of the uprising, but will offer other ways to learn about the rebellion in New Orleans. Read about the Slave Rebellion Reenactment project at its website. -via Metafilter

What do you know about San Marino? Probably not much, as it is tiny, but not the tiniest country in the world (that would be Vatican City, which like San Marino is entirely surrounded by Italy). With a population of 33,000, San Marino has its own rich history and architecture, its own laws, currency, and culture. And in a short travelogue by Half-Asleep Chris, you'll see that San Marino is utterly charming. -via Digg

We know you love a good truck spill story, and even better is a truck spill story involving cats. No, the truck didn't spill cats, but a Brooklyn spill in 1907 drew every cat in the borough to the scene. The turn of the century brought trolley cars to the streets of New York, which were already crowded with motor cars and horse-drawn wagons. On June 29, 1907, a trolley struck Charles Wolfert's milk delivery wagon in the Bedford Corners neighborhood, overturning it and breaking almost all the milk bottles. What happened next was thoroughly and delightfully described in the Brooklyn Citizen newspaper.

Working their way inward from all the sides were cats of every description. Spotted cats, cats with Tammany stripes, cats of maltese color, cats of jetty black, and others of spotless white, cats whose outer skin hung close to their ribs and others who showed more plumpness; cats who eked out their daily sustenance by thievery and those which were cast on their own resources by the family leaving for the summer, all were busily engaged in stemming the flood of the white fluid.

The pungent sweetness of the milk permeated the air, and the house cats in the neighborhood sat up and sniffed. Sniffing brought temptation, and cats who had never before strayed from the paths of rectitude stole out to “The Great White Way.” Kitchen corners were deserted, the pussies came forth from under the bed and off the chair. The solaces of old maids forgot everything to wander out whence to the place where the smell arose. In all the finery of belled collars and pink and blue throat ribbons, they left their homes and joined other wayward Toms and Tabbies.

The story describes how the cats gorged themselves on the milk, even swimming in it, and the chaos that followed as vehicles drove through and sent waves of milk over the throng of cats. The newspaper account took up two columns, and the complete story of the feline milk orgy takes two posts at The Hatching Cat, interspersed with the history of the Bedford Corners community.

You know how Boston Dynamics stress-tests their robots by hitting them with hockey sticks and generally abusing them? It's only a matter of time before the robots decide they have gone far enough. But this is Bosstown Dynamics (no matter what autocorrect says), a parody from Corridor. It's funny up to the point where you realize this could be going on in real life as we speak. -via Boing Boing

Where would you guess that the world's highest concentration of servals lives? Not in the mountains, nor a wildlife refuge, nor a national park. It's inside the fences at the world's largest coal liquefaction plant in northwest South Africa. Among the industrial smokestacks and barbed wire, servals have found a home. The Sasol plant’s ecologist Daan Loock heard rumors of the cats twenty years ago, and began setting camera traps in 2010. Evidence of the reclusive cats was right there, and their numbers are growing.   

The population is “incredibly important,” explains Dr. Sam Williams (one of Loock’s co-authors on a paper about the conservation value of industrialized sites and postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Venda) because it “demonstrates how carnivores can coexist with human activities at the extremes of what was thought possible.”

This might be the understatement of the year.  

The cats, which reside in grasslands and wetlands throughout sub-Saharan Africa, are about the same height and weight as a female whippet but they somehow manage to be slighter and more delicate — as their “near threatened” (in South Africa) status shows. Historically, the Highveld — the California-sized, high-altitude plateau where Secunda is located — was littered with wetlands. But mass agriculture (mainly maize and beef) has transformed the landscape and drastically reduced serval numbers.

Read how these cats adapted to the industrial facility at Ozy.

(Image credit: Daan Loock and Sam Williams)

The Ohio State Marching Band did Spongebob during their halftime show at Saturday's game. Yes, TBDBITL told an entire story with their formations. They called their episode "The Great Buckeye Chase." There's a tribute to the real Spongebob Squarepants episode "Band Geeks." The song you didn't get to hear is this one.

What city would you guess to be the halloween capital of the world? Salem, Massachusetts? Derry City, Ireland? Somewhere in Romania? Sleepy Hollow, New York? No, it's Anoka, Minnesota. The story of exactly how Anoka was first bestowed that title was lost when fire destroyed the original documents, but the declaration has been made again since then. There's no doubt that Anoka goes big for Halloween, with celebrations lasting the full month of October, and touches of Halloween available all year long. The origin of these celebrations goes back a full century.

It all began on November 1, 1919, the day after Halloween, when Anoka residents woke up to a prank of epic proportions at the hands of some of the local youth. As the sun rose, community members were greeted by wagons parked precariously on rooftops, overturned outhouses and cows roaming freely throughout downtown and inside the halls of the county jail. To prevent a similar debacle from happening the following year, civic leaders banded together to create a Halloween celebration that would not only prove entertaining for people of all ages, but would also curb any attempts at future hijinks.

“[Before the inaugural event], the pranks were getting bigger and bigger, with kids throwing chickens off of buildings,” says John Jost, who serves as chair of the celebration’s 100th anniversary, which will occur in 2020. “It had to stop. That was the purpose of the celebration, to divert pranksters and keep them busy.”

Anoka has embraced the holiday ever since. Check out the city's Halloween website. Read about Anoka and its Halloween obsession at Smithsonian.