I try to get to the bottom of one of Mount Vernon’s greatest mysteries. https://t.co/R6387AOqRi

— Howard Dorre (@plodwithme) October 15, 2019

If you were to visit Mount Vernon, and if you were at all curious about how wealthy people in 18th-century America lived, you would of course want to see the toilet. Well, that was in a building outside. Or, to be more precise, those were in an outhouse.

On a recent visit to George Washington’s home of Mount Vernon, I was struck by one particular building – the “necessary,” AKA privy, outbuilding, outhouse, or latrine.

It was actually a replica of Washington’s original necessary house, an educated attempt to recreate the structure where America’s #1 went #2.

What struck me about it was that there were three holes.

No stalls. No partitions. Just three open holes, right next to each other.

You can imagine that privacy would be dispensed with in a large family with only one outhouse, but you have to wonder whether the father of our country was in the habit of pooping with friends. Howard Dorre of Plodding Through the Presidents goes to great lengths to explore the answer to that question. -via Strange Company

The question came from a reader, but  before answering, Daven Hiskey of Today I Found Out has to give us a history of drink vending machines, starting with water fountains that featured a common cup for everyone to drink from. That in itself is quite interesting, but eventually he begins to approach the question at hand.

This finally brings us to slightly more modern times. Ubiquitous today, with Japan having the highest number of vending machines per capita at just under 6 million (or about 1 vending machine for every 22 people), one of the most popular vending machines is the kind that dispenses life giving water-based product. For some odd reason, many of these are placed in that eerie region that exists outside of our mother’s basements known as “out of doors”. This area, which exists in a region that has no solid barriers between you and the never ending void of space, occasionally gets cold (we’re told), despite the silent glowing orb in the sky watching, judging, showering us in ionizing radiation in its efforts to destroy us all!

In other words, he doesn't get out much. But he does give us several of the ingenious reasons that vending machine drinks don't freeze in cold weather at Today I Found Out. Of course, your mileage may vary.

(Image credit: 掬茶)

For more than 50 years, trucks have been getting their roofs sliced off by a certain underpass in Durham, North Carolina, that has a clearance of 11 feet, 8 inches. There were so many low clearance accidents that in 2008, Jürgen Henn set up a camera to catch them. The videos on his website, 11 Foot 8, made the Gregson Street trestle famous for its frequent can opener crashes, some you may have seen here at Neatorama.

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

— Magus (@Magus) October 19, 2019

But that era is coming to an end. The Durham Transportation Department has announced that the overpass, after standing at the same height for 100 years, is being raised. To see plenty of incidents from this underpass, watch the 12-minute documentary OVERHEIGHT MUST TURN. -via Metafilter

By the age of 22, Jane Scott had been surrounded by death. Her younger sister died when Jane was a teenager. Then Jane gave birth to three children over the next few years with two -and possibly three- of them dying in infancy. Her young nephew also died. Then her parents took ill on the same day in 1827, and Jane fetched a neighbor, Mrs. Cragg, who found the husband and wife writhing in pain.

Mrs Scott said, ‘I am poisoned by the porridge’. So did Mr Scott. Jane said she would get rid of the porridge and that nothing more should be said of it.

Mrs Cragg said she saw it whilst she was holding Mrs Scott’s head. Mrs Scott told Jane not to dispose of it, but, Jane, who was close enough to hear completely ignored her and disposed of it. Dr Brown, the surgeon, was immediately sent for and instructed Jane to put the tin pan used to make the porridge to one side, but not to wash it out.

Jane and a Mrs Bilsborough went to fetch Jane’s half-brother, David Graham, as she feared her parents were dying. On arriving at the house, David found the doctor busily using a stomach pump on his mother and immediately accused Jane of causing them to be unwell.

While records of Jane's earlier life were scant, the newspapers were avid to print the details after she was arrested for the murder of her parents. Read the story of the Preston Poisoner, filed under the tag of "difficult women," at All Things Georgian. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Wellcome Images)

Want to get excited about a job that's very, very hard? NASA has released a dramatic video to promote their Artemis program, which aims to put astronauts on the moon in 2024, with a longer-term goal of building a lunar station and then using it as a launching pad for travel to Mars. NASA is partnering with other space programs, both international and commercial, to achieve these goals. Read more about the Artemis program here. Now, if they could just build a spaceship that could carry people to the ISS and back...  -via Laughing Squid

Every picture tells a story, don't it? This one tells the story of an extra-greasy sausage left on the stove just long enough to preserve the evidence of theft. But the image was posted at reddit, which meant that other stories followed in the comments. First, jgr83 told a story about the time his brother mistook saved bacon grease for gravy and ate it. Then  Prince_Edward_IV replied with the story of his roommate's bacon candles. Bacon candles? It wasn't long before Salegosse linked a recipe for bacon candles. So now a sausage-stealing cat has taught you how to make your life smell like bacon.  -via TYWKIWDBI

A lot of modern cuisine arises from the fusion of dishes that people happen to like, like taco pizza. We love tasty new ideas, like putting bacon on everything until it became a joke, and then moving on to do the same with pumpkin spice. Fast food and snack companies got in on the act, too, as when Taco Bell started making tacos with Nacho Cheese Doritos as a shell. Years later, America has moved on to other strange fare like the KFC Cheetos Sandwich, while the Doritos Locos Taco has just recently made it to Britain, where they have to ponder why. Is it an American thing?    

Sure, the US loves junk food and is a massive country whose huge highways gave rise to the modern roadside drive-through. But the origins of processed food are global, diverse and span thousands of years, from the salt-cured fish stored in pharaohs’ tombs in ancient Egypt to the invention of canning in 19th Century France. Fast forward to today, and processed foods are omnipresent the world over, whether it’s a packet of crisps in the glove box or shopping centres brimming with takeaways.

So maybe it’s no surprise creations like the Cheetos chicken sandwich aren’t limited to the US. In Japan in 2015, Kit Kats found their way into a whipped-cream-and-orange peel sandwich at First Kitchen, a fast food chain. Pizza Huts in Australia made pizza crusts from Doritos in 2014. Nutella was used in dessert burgers at McDonald’s in Italy in 2016. Last month, McDonald’s in the UK introduced its Galaxy Salted Caramel McFlurry, using a well-known chocolate brand.

Of course, whether these "stunt foods" are any good or not, they are all worth the trouble of creating just for the publicity. Read about the rise of junk food-fast food fusion at BBC Worklife.   -via Metafilter

According to Irish legend, there is an island about 200 miles west of Ireland that only emerges from the sea once every seven years. That's Hy-Brasil, home to the pagan gods of old, or else a lone magician in his castle (which reminds us of a certain solitary retired Jedi master). There are plenty of Hy-Brasil sightings, and a few stories of those who claimed to have visited it, mostly told second hand or referencing older, lost writings.    

The legend of the Hy-Brasil eventually traveled outside Ireland, and began popping up on maps belonging to explorers with really primo explorer names, like Angelino Dulcert, Abraham Ortelius, Gerardus Mercator – the list goes on. The point is, this went on for another five centuries, on over 300 nautical charts. Everyone who was anyone walking talking Hy-Brasil. In the words of Shakira, the maps don’t lie:

Of course, we know that maps do lie sometimes. But there is that one story from a Captain Nisbet, who claims to have stayed on Hy-Brasil and met the magician. Even if it is only a legend, there are as many explanations for such claims as there are islands around Ireland. Read about Hy-Brasil at Messy Nessy Chic.

When you see someone often in movies or TV, you start to notice things that make them different from other celebrities. Maybe it's a facial expression, or the way they dress, or something they do over and over. Most of the time, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Why does Bill Nye wear a bow tie? How did Jason Momoa get that scar? Was that Marilyn Monroe's natural voice? You'll find out in the latest ranked pictofacts list at Cracked. 

Randall Munroe went from a job as a NASA programmer and roboticist to creating the webcomic xkcd. He has a new book called How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems. This video shows you the kind of thing the book contains, as Munroe weighs the pros and cons of various ways of providing sustainable power to your home. -via Digg

In December of 1883, a wayward humpback whale was spotted in the estuary near Dundee, Scotland. Townfolk were so excited, they decided to catch the whale. They only succeeded in killing it. But a dead whale is still exciting, and people came from miles around to see it. Surgeon and naturalist John Struthers wanted to dissect the whale and study its anatomy, but there was money to be made.

Struthers measured the whale, but he wasn’t permitted to cart it back to his lab. The fate of the 45-foot, 29-ton cetacean was decided at auction, where a local oil merchant named John Woods—“Greasy Johnny”—paid £226 (about $34,000 today). It came to be known as the Tay Whale, for the body of water it had strayed into. Twenty horses hauled the carcass half a mile to Woods’s scrap yard, Williams writes. It took 26 hours.

Almost immediately, Woods went into the souvenir business. He commissioned commemorative photographs of the whale, Williams writes, “whereby the dull surroundings of the yard were replaced by a scenic view of the Silvery Tay, with rail bridge and a sunset on imaginary hills.” And he began charging for views. On a single Sunday afternoon, 12,000 visitors paid to gawk. In a town of 200,000, some 50,000 turned out to see the whale. “Enthusiastic visitors even jumped on the whale’s back and did somersaults on it!” Sedakat says.

Woods was eager to wring every possible penny from the whale, even as it decomposed over time. He allowed Struthers to dissect it piece by piece, which lightened the load until Woods could take the carcass on the road. And every day it smelled worse. Read about the extended afterlife of the Tay Whale at Atlas Obscura.

Saharan silver ants (Cataglyphis bombycina) were already on the list of extreme species because of their unique ability to tolerate the heat of the desert in midday. A new study of the ways they've adapted to the Saharan environment describes their amazing ability to run.

Around noon each day in the Sahara Desert, silver ants emerge from their underground nests. Despite this being the hottest part of the day, they come out to scavenge dead insects, which are most likely to drop dead when sand temperatures can reach 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius). The ants have to be quick, though. Their prey is scarce, and they have lots of desert to search.

Just how quick these iridescent arthropods can be, and how they achieve those speeds, is explained for the first time today in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Saharan silver ants can travel at 108 body lengths a second, the researchers found. This makes them one of the fastest known running species, bested only by the California coastal mite and the Australian tiger beetle.

To illustrate how fast that is, 108 body lengths per second is the equivalent of a human running more than 400 miles per hour. Read how these ants do it at Discover magazine. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen)

The folks at Big Cat Rescue in Florida are always looking for ways to enrich the cats' experience that will also look good on YouTube. They were recently gifted with large cardboard boxes decorated with autumn motifs. It appears that both goals were fulfilled!

This intriguing photograph was taken by Sara Germain for the Lynx Project. It shows the moment Nathan Berg realizes that the large predator he's carrying is waking up from sedation. The Canada lynx is focused on the photographer but is most likely surprised to be in the arms of the very species he's spent his life avoiding. We can assume that no harm was done because the photo managed to be posted.

After we place a satellite collar on each lynx, weigh them, record measurements, and collect samples for genetic and isotope analysis, we place them back in their enclosed log box trap until they have fully recovered; then we release them. This adult male was just beginning to wake up as we carried him to and placed him back in his enclosure to recover. Thanks @sara.germain for the fantastic photo!

The Northwest Boreal Lynx Project is studying the movements of Canada lynx in relation to their main prey, the snowshoe hare. Read more about their work here.  -via Bored Panda, where you'll see plenty more images of Canada lynx.  

Henry, Emma, and David are sand bubbler crabs. They are tiny, and they eat the even tinier creatures that live between grains of sand in the ocean and on the beach. Ze Frank makes it clear how very weird this lifestyle is in his latest edition of True Facts.