Beginning in the 1830s, New York City had a curious business called the Phrenological Cabinet. It was owned by brothers Orson and Lorenzo Fowler, and their sister and brother-in law, Charlotte and Samuel Wells. They studied phrenology, which entails the belief that a person's mentality and character can be determined by the size and shape of the skull, and that those characteristics can be generalized to entire racial groups. To this end, they collected evidence in the form of head casts, busts, portraits, and human skulls.

The Cabinet included replicas of famous busts depicting such men as William Shakespeare, Napoleon Bonaparte, and George Washington, as well as casts of “persons of eminence in talent and virtue.” They advertised specimens from “pirates, murderers, robbers, thieves, forgers, gamblers, pickpockets,” and more. Peter Robinson, who was described as having a “base, coarse, animal character,” sat among these.

Fowler & Wells spared no expense in filling the Cabinet. In his preface to an 1875 catalogue listing some conents of the Cabinet, which by then was located on Broadway near Astor Place, Samuel Wells described how “an artist was kept in requisition” to obtain casts of the famous and infamous, “and large sums of money have thus been expended sometimes, as a premium, for obtaining the head of some singular or vicious character.” In 1864, Wells specified that over the previous 25 years, they had paid “not less than $30,000” for busts, casts, and skulls. In today’s currency, that’s nearly half a million dollars.

As their reputation spread, people began offering skulls for sale from all over. As you can imagine, many of them came from suspicious circumstances. Fowler & Wells were not overly concerned about whether the skulls came from war, murder, or genocide. Read about the Phrenology Cabinet at Atlas Obscura.

After the cancelation of the TV series Batman, every idea they had left over made it into a theatrical film. It was just like the TV show, except it had slightly better production values. Batman: The Movie was non-stop silliness, but Screen Junkies managed to highlight the very silliest parts for this Honest Trailer.

Kim Kelly went to Coney Island this past summer to attend sideshow school, a four-day course in fire-eating, sword-swallowing, and other sideshow acts run by Adam Realman of Sideshow by the Seashores. She tells us about the classes and what she learned about sideshows.

A few days after graduation, once my fire-eating burns had healed, I called Realman to talk about the history of disabled performers and the sideshow. There are three traditional categories of sideshow performers, he said, explaining their place in the hierarchy. First, there are the working acts, such as fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, glass-walkers, and everything in between. These performers were considered the lowest rung because, as Realman explained, “anybody can do that!” The next level up are the self-made or “self-inflicted” performers, people who’d made the conscious decision to modify their bodies in various ways, like the famous “tattooed ladies,” Captain Costentenus the Illustrated Man, and the modern-day Lizard Man, with his full-body green scale tattoos and sharpened teeth.

Finally, at the top of the ladder are the “natural borns,” who made up acts such as early 1900s British conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton and Johnny “The Half Man” Eck, whose fame followed the sisters’ by a few years. “In a traditional sideshow, the natural borns were considered the royalty ... the creme de la creme of the sideshow; they were people who were born different,” Realman explained. “These were the people that were the highest-paid performers, because you can’t manufacture this.”

Kelly is a "natural born," and could have been a full-time sideshow "lobster girl" in another age. She has a rare congenital disorder called ectrodactyly, or lobster claw syndrome. Kelly tells how the old-style "freak shows" gave way to disability rights, leaving sideshows full of mostly working acts in the modern era. Read Kelly's experiences and what she's learned about sideshows at Vox.  -via Damn Interesting

What will we do with radioactive waste? The stuff is dangerous, so we bury it. But mere burial is not enough, since the earth moves, and someday, someone may actually dig that stuff up. In Finland, an island is being prepared to bury nuclear waste very, very deep, to keep it safely away from us. Tom Scott visited Onkalo, on the isle of Olkiluoto, to show us.

Tom refers to a 1993 report about marking nuclear waste sites. You can read some of the ideas generated here.

'My Mom Is Going To Yell At Me!': Kade Lovell, 9, Wins Sartell 10K Race By Accident https://t.co/g7W0vIBUcg pic.twitter.com/IyVIkud92G

— WCCO - CBS Minnesota (@WCCO) October 1, 2019

Heather Lovell was starting to panic. She has seen her nine-year-old son Kade start off in the St. Francis Franny Flyer 5K race in Sartell, Minnesota, but he was not among the runners at the finish line. She drove the route, and asked others to help look for Kade. Then she heard he may have been running the 10K route by mistake.

Kade said he realized his mistake when he saw the sign for the 10K turnaround.

"I thought, 'Mom is going to yell at me,'" he said.

So when Kade finally appeared near the end of the route, he was by himself. Lovell thought he was in last place. But she didn't care; he was safe.

Then a race coordinator told Lovell that Kade finished first.

Yes, Kade won the race overall, not just for his age group. He was a minute ahead of the second place finisher. That's how fast you can run when you think your mom is going to yell at you. Read the whole story at the St. Cloud Times.

Crazy event at ORD. Heads up safety move by a ramp worker! pic.twitter.com/SQi5zB0Ooz

— Kevin Klauer DO, EJD (@Emergidoc) September 30, 2019

A utility cart got away from its driver at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on Monday. It careened around in circles while American Airlines ramp workers calculated the odds of jumping on it. But those circles got closer and closer to the airplane, and could cause major damage. Dr. Kevin Klauer recorded the mayhem from the terminal.

"Everyone was actually really quietly watching this unfold," Klauer said. "When it ended, the whole gatehouse erupted in applause."

American Airlines said in a statement that preliminary reports showed the cart's accelerator got stuck and caused the cart to lose control.

"No American Airlines team members were injured and the incident resulted in one 10-minute flight delay," American Airlines said in a statement. "We appreciate the quick action of our team member who stopped the vehicle."

While the plane was unharmed, it appears that the drinks for the flight were a total loss. The remix with music is here, although "Yakety Sax" would have been more appropriate. Read the whole story at CNN.

Machias Seal Island off the coast of Maine is the last piece of disputed territory between the United States and Canada. The wording of treaties defining the two countries give both a claim to the 15-acre island. However, the US and Canada have been reluctant to fight over it. It makes a difference to locals, because the nations have different laws about wildlife conservation and lobster fishing. And then there are the tourists who want to visit Machias Seal Island to see the sea birds. The island was claimed by Tall Barney Beal, who lived there to avoid the Civil War draft. Tall Barney bequeathed the island to the first descendant named after him, who was his great-grandson Barna Norton. Norton spent his entire life defending his claim to the island, which he declared to be US territory.  

He would also tell—many, many times—a particular story. “I own the island,” went the simplest version. “It was given to me.”

This story conflicts with the official stances of two powerful nations. It flies in the face of the Canadian lighthouse that has stood on the island for nearly two centuries. It also complicates the United States’s position, which is to claim the disputed island as American territory without making too much of a fuss. But Norton never gave up on his story. In a time when the last thing most people want is another border controversy, I decided to try to find out why.

Tall Barney Beal and Barna Norton were both colorful characters. Norton took tourists to the island daily, and used its disputed status to smuggle liquor, but defended the seabirds who lived there. Read their stories, and that of Machias Seal Island, at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Greta Rybus)

Katmai National Park in Alaska is celebrating Fat Bear Week with their annual competition to crown the fattest bear. Bears emerge from their dens in the spring fairly skinny, and then spend all summer packing on the pounds to keep them going through the winter. Voting on individual bears will run October 2 through 8 at Facebook. 

Katmai's bears, home to one of the densest concentration of bears on Earth, appeared on the explore.org webcams in June as relatively skinny, sometimes gaunt looking, animals. But by September, the brown bears put on hundreds of pounds — some with bellies that nearly scrape the ground.

"It's been amazing to once again watch the bears' transformation from lean animals to the roly-poly giants they have become," marveled Mike Fitz, a former park ranger at Katmai National Park and currently a resident naturalist for explore.org.

There are 12 plump bears in the park's 2019 Fat Bear Week bracket. But this year, unlike many years, there are a number of top, formidable contenders.

Mashable has posted profiles of the four bears who have the best chance of winning. Personally, I'm pulling for the one named "Chunk."

(Image credit: Katmai National Park & Preserve)

London in the 19th century had a peculiar law that allowed plays to be performed at only two theaters in the city. That was good for the owners of those two theaters, but in 1808, Covent Garden Theater burned down. When it was finally rebuilt, the other theater also burned. Those seeking entertainment had little choice of business to patronize. Actor John Kemble was also the manager of the Covent Garden Theater, and took the brunt of the audience's anger when tickets to the newly-rebuilt theater were hiked 15% in price. One would think that patrons would protest by boycotting the plays, but instead, they paid for tickets and then disrupted the shows. Audience reaction and even participation was expected in those days, but Kemble would be pelted with rotten tomatoes and other produce while performing, over the new price. It got so bad that the theater closed for a few days, but that didn't help.    

The crowd thus continued their antics when the theater opened back up, with newspapers as far as Edinburgh regularly reporting on the nightly tumult at the Covent Garden Theater. People across the nation quickly took sides, with those wanting the prices reversed referring to themselves as “OPs”, and those who were on the side of the theater owners called “NPs”.

Beyond making a ruckus at the shows, protesters also reportedly regularly gathered outside of Kemble’s home at all hours chanting for “original prices”, including coming up with a variety of unflattering songs illustrating what they thought of Kemble and his new prices.

Back in the theater, along with plastering it in banners and posters protesting the price change, the theater denizens began to sneak even more ridiculous things into performances including farm animals, flocks of pigeons they’d release inside the building, giant distracting hats and even a coffin with a banner stating in part “Here lies the body of the new price…”

Protesters additionally began turning up to performances in outlandish costumes including full drag, as well as organizing races and mock fights in the pit- in all cases, attempting to either drown out anything the actors were doing on stage or otherwise distract from it.

Doesn't that sound like fun? Read the story of the Covent Garden Theater riots at Today I Found Out. There's also an extended coda explaining what happened to the tradition of audience participation.

Genie Milgrom fled Cuba for the United States with her parents when she was a young child. Her ancestors came from Spain hundreds of years ago via Portugal, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Milgrom was raised Roman Catholic, but converted to Judaism in her 30s. A few years ago, she found a stash of recipes in her attic, which turned out to be family recipes from several generations of women, and revealed how food can carry the stories of our heritage.

As a girl, Milgrom didn’t think to question the idiosyncratic customs her mother and grandmothers practiced in the kitchen.

Recipes didn’t mix milk and meat, eggs were always cracked into a separate bowl and inspected for blood before use, and rice and leafy green vegetables were washed carefully and checked for insects. Curiously, some recipes called for potato or corn starch instead of wheat flour. And perhaps most unusually, Milgrom was instructed by her Spanish-born grandmother that when preparing a large batch of dough, one had to always pull off a small piece, wrap it in foil, and throw it the back of the oven to burn.

“She told me it was for good luck,” Milgrom, 64, told The Times of Israel during a recent interview at a Jerusalem hotel.

See, Milgrom's ancestors were Crypto-Jews, meaning that they pretended to convert to Catholicism to avoid death under the Spanish Inquisition. Over many generations and immigration to new countries, Catholic beliefs took over, but Jewish dietary laws survived in the family recipes. One was even designed to make a sweet dessert resemble pork chops to throw off religious policing! Milgrom has written both fiction and non-fiction books about discovering her heritage, and now she has a cookbook of those rediscovered family recipes, tested and adapted for modern kosher kitchens, called Recipes of My 15 Grandmothers. Read the short version of Milgrom's story and how the cookbook came about at the Times of Israel. The article includes a recipe for Rosh Hashanah dark fruit cake. Learn more about the history of Crypto-Jews or Converso Jews with links posted at Metafilter.

(Image courtesy of Genie Milgrom)

Go deep into the art of a master filmmaker with Julian Palmer of The Discarded Image. He explains the way Stanley Kubrick used close-ups to give us lots of emotional information from the big screen in just a second or two. Contains a little NSFW language.

When you watch someone analyzing the smallest details of a movie like this, you have to wonder whether Kubrick (or another filmmaker) actually put this much thought into each shot, or whether the effective style became automatic and instinctive to him over time. -via Laughing Squid

As we slide into October, you'll soon be hearing ghost stories more often. In these stories, as well as in books and movies, the ghosts are usually wearing clothes. Why do spirits of the deceased need to wear anything? Both skeptics and believers give their reasons, from the ghosts not wanting to offend people to making sure they are recognized. But ghosts didn't always wear clothes! There have been stories off and on through history about naked ghosts. Really.

A tale that circulated in London between the 15-18th Centuries, concerned the fate of five condemned men. In 1447 the men were said to have been sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered – a particularly grisly fate. Once hanged, the five were cut down from the hanging tree and stripped in preparation for the gruesome denuemont of their punishment. Their clothing was distributed to the gaping crowds. An added twist in the tale lends poignancy to their fate by claiming that a pardon arrived just too late to save them from their deaths.

Railing at the injustice and humiliation of their execution, the unhappy spirits were said to have risen up from their corporeal bodies in a misty vapour. The ghosts accosted the crowd demanding their clothes be returned and then fled. The tale persisted for around three hundred years, with occasional reports of five ghostly naked men importuning startled strangers apparently still seeking the return of their clothing – and presumably their dignity.[2]

Otherwise, ghosts have appeared in tales wearing sheets or shrouds, nightclothes, all black or all white clothing, or everyday garb they wore in life, depending on the era in which the story originated. It seems that ghosts follow fashion! Read a timeline of what ghosts wear, and the sometimes bizarre explanations behind their choices at the Haunted Palace. -via Strange Company

Tyler Ivanoff is a schoolteacher in Shishmaref, Alaska. In August, he was picking berries and gathering driftwood at the shore when he found a bottle that was sealed up, and had paper inside. It was plugged up pretty well, but he managed to open it and found a letter written in Russian. Ivanoff went online to get translation help.  

“Heartfelt greetings!” began the letter, dated June 20, 1969.

The sender, Capt. Anatoliy Botsanenko, explained he was from the Far Eastern fishing vessel, the Sulak, and provided an address in the then-Soviet city of Vladivostok for a response — perhaps one day.

“I wish you good health, long life, and happy sailing,” concluded Botsanenko’s letter.

The message had traveled 1200 miles, but more surprisingly, it survived for fifty years in the ocean. The next thing to do, of course, was to harness the power of the internet to find Botsanenko. Read how that turned out at Public Radio International.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image courtesy of Tyler Ivanoff)

This microphotograph shows a cross-section of a blade of grass, and the structures inside. Some of those structures are vascular bundles, and they're showing their little smiley faces! Maybe they are happy because they have water. In a discussion at StackExchange, those who know say this is one of the species of grass that has adapted to live in dry areas, such as a desert, and the blade curls up to protect the side that absorbs water. A commenter named Always Confused tells us more about the grass.

The 2 sides of the leaf develop into different structure. The adaxial ("upper") surface, which in its underneath contain the the soft, green tissue, and the abaxial ("bottom") surface which contains more sclerotic tissue.

Normally, when dry-period runs, the leaf remains rolled in an way, so that soft side stay inwards , concave manner, closed, protected from evaporation. The outer, convex abaxial-face acts as a shield.

When rains come; the leaf work in a manner of bimetallic-strip. The inner (adaxial) surface absorbs water and expands (the "hinge cells" help it); and the inner-face become open. Then the inner-face work as a water-absorption tissue.

When dry-period come-again, the leaves enter their original state.

Another post identifies the species as Ammophila arenaria, or marram grass, used to stabilize sand dunes on the coasts. The color is not true. The specimen was stained to make the structures show up better, which happily highlights the pareidolia. -via reddit

It's natural for adolescents to rebel against their parents and try to find ways to relate to their peer group instead. An easy way to do that is through fashion, as folks inevitably find out when their children begin choosing their own clothing. Artist Myfanwy Tristram was puzzled by her 14-year-old daughter's look, but not exactly shocked. After all, she herself was a rebellious teenager once. A goth, in fact.

Fine: I’m proud of this fierce individual that appears to have inherited my own peacock inclinations. Not so fine: I find myself envious that she has a period of wild experimentation ahead of her — and a figure that means she fits into pretty much every thrift store find.

So, uncomfortable with this disagreeable feeling, and at risk of falling into the parental cliché of “you’re not going out dressed like that!” I realize that there’s just one thing to do. I need to try and understand more about where the crazy looks are coming from. Instead of sighing heavily at the mess and fruitlessly asking, once again, for her to just try and keep it in check, I sit down and ask her to give me a beginner’s guide to her style. She is delighted to assist.

Trendy teen looks in the 21st century have a twist: instead of being spread by the fashion industry, they owe more to peer influence from around the globe via internet. Read Tristram's findings as her daughter explains where her style comes from, and how it contrasts with her mother's experiences, in a delightfully-illustrated chronicle at Longreads.  -via Metafilter