Sean Bean has played many a villain in his career, who one would expect to die before the movie is over. But even when he plays a hero, he often kicks the bucket before the final act. After more than two dozen deaths, it's getting quite old, and Bean has announced he will no longer take the roles of the doomed. But it's not because of his ego.   

“I’ve turned down stuff. I’ve said, ‘They know my character’s going to die because I’m in it!’” Bean told The Sun. “I just had to cut that out and start surviving, otherwise it was all a bit predictable.”

So if he's rejecting roles to avoid spoilers, won't we now have spoilers anyway, because we know he won't play a character who dies? It's all so confusing. You can read more at Indiewire. -via Mental Floss

The medical drama ER premiered 25 years ago this past week. It ran for 15 seasons, but in the beginning, it was difficult to get a TV network interested in the concept. It was based on writings by bestselling author Michael Crichton, backed by Steven Spielberg, and it was a medical drama. Why wouldn't every network want to jump on it? According to producer John Wells, it was because it was too real- the patients often died, as they do in real hospitals.

Long before “prestige drama” was a thing, ER had all the qualities of one. It was created by one of the world’s most popular authors, shepherded by Hollywood’s most powerful director, and bolstered by a diverse cast filled with stars, up-and-comers, and a future Academy Award–winning leading man. The series featured complex characters and through its story lines boldly tackled dozens of issues of the day, including racism, AIDS, substance use disorders, and domestic violence. Its influence can still be seen in the hundreds of uncompromising hour-long shows that have followed.

“The audience is intelligent,” Wells says. “And particularly video literate, in that they’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of hours of storytelling and they can follow. You do not have to talk down to your audience. And in fact, if you don’t talk down to your audience, they appreciate it and reward you.”

There were other factors that made ER a unique show in the landscape of 1990s television. Read a history of the show at The Ringer.

Thousands of people worked in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and someone had to feed them. That task fell to restauranteur Joe Baum, who opened the iconic Four Seasons restaurant in 1959. In the early 1970s, he had a grand vision for a series of eateries in the World Trade Center, capped by a spectacular complex of fine dining on the 107th floor. Baum had high hopes for the restaurant that would became known as Windows on the World.

In 1970, he told the New York Times he was planning 20 restaurants in the WTC, mostly housed in the concourse, which was beneath its open plaza, as well as private cafeterias for the Port Authority, the United States Customs House, and New York State employees. He also said that the restaurants included a “luncheon club” on top of the North Tower, with exclusive access for its one thousand members during the day. At night, the restaurant would be open to the public, which could use the World Trade Center’s 2,000-car underground garage for free.

“This will not be a tourist trap,” Baum said, perhaps a defensive impulse that the Times reporter ran with when he highlighted the irony that the creator of the Four Seasons was now setting up snack bars — which he very much was: about 60 of them and other small-food operations throughout the complex.

But Baum positioned his task as just as impressive as any of his previous grandiose projects. He emphasized the international flavor of the restaurant, which people would want to go to, he suggested, before heading uptown to the theater. As for feeding the masses, he was thinking big, conjuring carefully planned eating aeries that would form “vertical neighborhoods... little cities, each with a life of its own.”

From 1976 to 2001, Windows on the World was the ultimate place to see New York City from above. The new book The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World tells the story of the restaurant, particularly its last day on September 11, 2001. Read an excerpt that goes back to the restaurant's beginnings at Eater. -via Nag on the Lake

The fifth film featuring Sylvester Stallone as Vietnam vet John Rambo, Rambo: Last Blood, opened this weekend. The most successful of the franchise so far is Rambo: First Blood Part Two, the 1985 film in which Rambo returns to Vietname to rescue American POWs that were secretly held after the US pulled out of the country. More than 40 years later, there is no evidence that any POWs remain in Vietnam, but that doesn't convince those who still believe. Where did that conspiracy theory begin? It began when support for the war faded among the American public.

As the many fictions necessary to sustain the war were exposed, Nixon and company needed a new approach — and a new lie. In a press conference on May 19, 1969, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird announced the existence of around 1,300 American soldiers now deemed “missing in action,” around half of whom were believed to be prisoners of war. The unaccounted for would now publically be described as “POW/MIA,” implying that any serviceperson missing in Vietnam could also be a prisoner of war. This transformed the war from a political issue into a humanitarian one, trading public support for sympathy. It didn’t matter why we were there in the first place: our boys were there, and by God were we going to do anything to get our boys home.

Suddenly, the public image of Vietnam looked very different. The very real footage of brutalized Vietnamese bodies, wailing children, and napalmed villages was traded for a fantasy — all of the violence that had been done in Uncle Sam’s name was now being done to him. The POW issue soon became a cause celebre.

That continued after the war, as many people were convinced that there were more prisoners being held after hundreds were released by the new Vietnamese government. After all, more than a thousand US troops are still unaccounted for (compared to more than 72,000 still listed as "missing" from World War II). Former Green Beret and Special Forces operative James Gordon “Bo” Gritz emerged as the leading proponents of the idea that POWS were still being held in Vietnam. In 1982, he actually led a raid on Laos to free those prisoners. Gritz's adventure in Laos became the template for the second Rambo movie, Rambo: First Blood Part II, although the plot was changed to have a successful ending. Read about the POW/MIA myth and its consequences at the Outline. -via Digg

In this song parody, YouTuber Liechee uses Carly Rae Jepson's song "Call Me Maybe" to tell the story of The Little Mermaid. It's not only a clever and funny idea (if a little dated), but the song and video turned out right nice. -via Geeks Are Sexy

(Image credit: Flickr user Fon Zhou)

In the 12th century, the people of Fujian province in China developed an architectural wonder to protect their communities from bandits and warfare. A tulou is a fortified apartment home for several hundred people with a central courtyard and outer walls up to six feet thick! The floors are cantilevered to maximize living space while preserving the common courtyard.  

Most tulous are either circular or rectangular in shape.  As a result of the walls and their sheer size the result was a mini-city which was also wind-proofed and extremely well ventilated: the tulous are an oasis of coolness in the hot summer months and the insulation provided by the walls means that they retain warmth in the winter.

There was also another significant advantage of these vast structures.  Whether it was planned originally or not, the tulous are able to stand up to high magnitude earthquakes – the major contributor to their centuries of longevity.

(Image credit: Flickr user Squashimono)

The Fujian Tulou is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some of the tulous are still occupied, while others are used for reunions by families who retain property rights. Read about tulous and see plenty of pictures at Kuriositas.

Chad Riden's grandma turned 101 years old. When her children ordered the birthday cake, they said she would be one hundred and one. So the decorator wrote a hundred, then a one. Here she is, trying to look upset, but you know she's suppressing a giggle.

A discussion on the wording of numbers tells us that you shouldn't use the word "and" because the numerals would be 100.1 or maybe 100.01 which some say is taught in school, but I'd never heard of that before. In this case, you can be sure that the decorator just wasn't thinking. If it were a proper cake phrase, the numeral would be 101st. You might imagine what would have happened if they'd have asked for "Happy one hundred and first birthday."    

-via reddit

The original plan was to gather millions people to overwhelm security and get inside Area 51, the military's secret facility in Nevada. The goal was to find the extraterrestrials that are supposedly hidden inside. Two million people signed up for the event via Facebook. The reality was that several dozen people camped out in Rachel, Nevada, and then approached the gates of Area 51 long before daylight.

The only person to be arrested was a man caught urinating near the entrance and a woman was detained for an undisclosed reason, Associated Press reported.

Jeffrey Gonzalez was there and shot a video of the confrontation.

According to Gonzalez, who runs ParanormalCentral.net, about a hundred stormers arrived at one of the gates for the U.S. Air Force base known as Area 51, and they were greeted by several members of law enforcement who were amicable and even joked about the strange moment.

“It was history. This was the first of its kind as far as storming Area 51,” Gonzalez told Gizmodo. “We stormed it. Well...” he trailed off and shrugged his shoulders, but conceded, “I was part of history last night.”

The like-minded individuals who gathered in the Nevada desert included some who sported space suits or tinfoil hats, and were almost matched by the number of security personnel and journalists. Read a short account of the raid and see the video at Gizmodo. A good time was had by all.  

The autumnal equinox falls on September 23 this year, which is the traditional time to balance an egg on its end, so you may as well learn to do it properly. It's not an important tradition, like changing the batteries in your smoke detector, and is in fact rooted in folklore.  

Legend has it that balancing an egg on its end was so difficult that you effectively needed planetary alignment to make it happen. Thus, the myth was born that balancing an egg was only possible on the equinox.

Fortunately, it’s completely bogus.

It's also not that hard to do if you know how. From The Art of Manliness, we get complete instructions on how to balance an egg on its end, any day of the year. Go here to see the rest of the instructional graphic. You can use this on Monday to perpetuate the myth and impress the kids, or just use it any other day to bust the myth and still impress the kids.  

(Image credit: Ted Slampyak)

World history is such a vast subject that it is often reduced to soundbites one can remember, whether they are true or not. Most likely, you learned in school that Ferdinand Magellan was the first to sail around the world. It's true that his 1519 expedition set out to do that, in order to find a new route to the spices of Indonesia. But only one of his five ships made it back to Spain in 1522, and Magellan was long dead by then. That's because he made his way around the globe while pillaging, killing, and trying to convert everyone he met along the way.     

As the crew forged across the Pacific Ocean, food spoiled and scurvy and starvation struck. Magellan and his men briefly made landfall in what was likely Guam, where they killed indigenous people and burned their homes in response to the theft of a small boat.

A month later, the expedition reached the Philippines. To the crew’s surprise, Enrique, an enslaved man Magellan had purchased before the journey, could understand and speak the indigenous people’s language. It turned out he was likely raised there before his enslavement—making him, not Magellan, the first person to circumnavigate the globe.

Magellan swiftly claimed the Philippines on Spain’s behalf, but his involvement in what Bergreen calls an “unnecessary war” was his undoing. “He wasn’t defeated by natural forces,” says Bergreen.

Read about Magellan's extraordinary quest and what really happened along the way at National Geographic.

For months, they were just two robots passing in the night. But one night the stars aligned, they finally met, and sparks flew. They coupled and then fell asleep. Philip Bloom captured the incident on two Nest cameras and another camera attached to his cat feeder. Since both robots have edge detectors, you'll have to watch the video to see how it happened. -via Digg
 

Absinthe is a liquor that gained a very particular reputation in the 19th century, as it was adopted by the artistic community of Paris, then spread to fashionable society, and then finally became affordable enough for commoners. The fancy rituals of serving absinthe and its supposedly hallucinogenic effects gave it a cachet of forbidden fruit that many wanted to experience. The website Victorian Paris gives us a rundown of the rise and fall of absinthe, including the backlash that got the drink banned in several countries.

Discussions followed discussions. Petitions were signed. The vise slowly tightened around absinthe. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a series of particularly brutal family murders for which absinthe was blamed – largely unjustly. For instance, preceding the crime, one of the murderers drank not only two glasses of absinthe but also a mint cream, a cognac, six glasses of wine to water his lunch, another glass of wine after work, a cup of coffee with brandy, a liter of wine on the way back, then another coffee with brandy. Only absinthe was blamed for his murderous dementia.

Intrigued, I Googled "absinthe murders" and found Jean Lanfray. After a day of drinking, he shot his pregnant wife and two young daughters. Lanfray also shot himself, but survived to be convicted of the murders. The publicity surrounding the case, promoted widely by temperance organizations, led to a ban on absinthe in Switzerland beginning in 1910. Although absinthe originated in Switzerland, the ban remained in effect until 2005. -via Strange Company

You might think you've seen this before, maybe in a movie or something. Photographer Rachel Perman decided to do a photo shoot with her twins for their fifth birthday. Her daughter Emilee wanted a unicorn theme, and those pictures were lovely. Elijah wanted his pictures to center around his favorite movie, Pixar's Up! The family enlisted Elijah's 90-year-old great grandparents, who closely resemble Carl and Ellie from the animated film. You can see many more of the pictures, from both sessions, in Perman's Facebook post. -via Considerable

Before antibiotics and immunization, infectious diseases were terrifying killers, and there wasn't much we could do about it, outside of separating the sick from the healthy in hopes that the disease would not spread further. To this end, New York City opened the New York Marine Hospital on Staten Island in 1799, which most people called the Quarantine. No one was happy about it. The sick were held against their will, the employees risked their lives to care for them, and the neighbors wanted the facility gone.

During the 1850s, two million immigrants arrived in New York City, and some of them were beset with the contagious diseases shipboard-confinement fostered: yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, typhus (or “ship fever”). A single case of yellow fever aboard a ship could put all the passengers and crew under quarantine for as long as six months. There could be as many as eight thousand patients in the Quarantine over the course of a year. Before vaccines, as Stephenson notes, it was dangerous work for the staff: “Funeral expenses for employees was a category in the accounting books.”

Locals never liked the Quarantine. Disease outbreaks on the island were blamed on the facility and the quarantined ships anchored off-shore. In 1848, Staten Islanders petitioned the state to remove the facility. The state agreed, but plans to move the facility to the other end of the island were thwarted by repeated arson attacks on the construction site.

By 1858, the people of Staten Island had had enough, and set out to destroy the hospital on their own. Read about the storming of the Quarantine and the motives behind it at Jstor. -via Damn Interesting

Auralnauts are back with a new Star Wars song, addressing the relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey during the movie The Last Jedi... and it only took them two years. The jam called "Reylo" is a love song with a catchy dance beat and silly rhymes delivered in Kylo's voice as if he were wearing that Darth Vaderish mask. The lyrics are available at the YouTube page. It's a good production about old news, but it makes you wonder what's going to happen in episode nine, which is only three months away now. -via Geeks Are Sexy