The United States, while ostensibly welcoming immigrants from all over, has a peculiar history of demonizing those newcomers in waves, no matter where they came from. Some time later, we hear about it and wonder what the fuss was all about. One of those panics came from an influx of immigrants from -of all places- Canada. During the Civil War, shipments of cotton from the South ceased and New England mills shut down. As business resumed after the war, nearly a million French-Canadian workers arrived to operate the mills. While they became American citizens, they kept to themselves (mostly in squalid company tenements), spoke French, and worst of all, they were Catholic.

But U.S. opinion demanded of the naturalized citizen something more than a merely formal participation in civic life, and Franco-American efforts to preserve their culture soon aroused suspicion and enmity. By the 1880s, elite American newspapers, including The New York Times, saw a sinister plot afoot. The Catholic Church, they said, had dispatched French Canadian workers southward in a bid to seize control of New England. Eventually, the theory went, Québec would sever its British ties and annex New England to a new nation-state called New France. Alarmists presented as evidence for the demographic threat the seemingly endless influx of immigrants across the northeastern border, coupled with the large family size of the Franco-Americans, where 10 or 12 children was common, and many more not unknown.

Read about the struggles of the Franco-American immigrants at Smithsonian.

(Image source: The National Gallery of Art)

What's old is new again, and so is the popularity of tie-dye shirts in 2019. The resurgence of tie-dye patterns might remind you of hippies (and those of us who followed the fashion), and it's normal for fashion to look back at previous decades for both nostalgia value and to sell clothing to a new generation. But tie-dye never really went away, and it goes back much further than the hippie era.

In the United States, tie-dye is closely associated with the 1960s counterculture — Woodstock, the Grateful Dead, psychedelia — and for those who came of age in the ensuing decades, with childhood craft projects. But its history is much longer than that. Tie-dye is a relatively easy, flexible technique that accommodates any number of aesthetics, and many cultures around the world — in India, China, Indonesia, and Nigeria, to name just a few — have made use of it for hundreds or thousands of years, resulting in regionally specific styles that go far beyond candy-colored twists.

Read about some of those styles, and the timeline of tie-dye fashions in the modern era at Vox.

There have been no violent crimes about the ISS, as far as we know. But NASA is looking into whether astronaut Anne McClain may have crossed a legal line in communications from the International Space Station. McClain is accused of improperly accusing her estranged wife's bank account.

McClain's spouse, former Air Force intelligence officer Summer Worden, brought a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that McClain had committed identity theft, despite not seeing any indication of moved or spent funds.

Worden's parents then brought another complaint with NASA's Office of Inspector General, alleging that McClain had improperly accessed Worden's private financial records and conducted a "highly calculated and manipulative campaign" to gain custody of Worden's son.

McClain's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, told the Times that "she strenuously denies that she did anything improper" and "is totally cooperating."

He added that McClain was monitoring the account to ensure the well-being of Worden's son, who they had been raising, using the same password to access the account as she had throughout their relationship.

NASA declined to comment on personnel matters. Read more on this story at CNN.  -via Fark
(Image credit: Victor Zelentsov/NASA)

In 16th century Bavaria, a professional executioner named Frantz Schmidt kept a diary through most of his life. This left us an extraordinary opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a professional we mostly know from fiction and the very fringes of textbooks. Schmidt was an educated man, took his work seriously, and sometimes felt empathy for those he lawfully killed. But he didn't choose his work; like most folks in the Middle Ages, he inherited the career from his father. Vanderbilt University historian Joel Harrington tells us more about executioners.

Over time, this passing of the baton from father to son created what Harrington called long-standing "execution dynasties" that spread across Europe during the Middle Ages.

But the existence of those dynasties also reveals the poor image executioners had at the time. People were trapped in this family cycle of employment because, in reality, they had few other opportunities to work, according to Harrington. People whose professions revolved around death were people that the rest of society did not want to associate with. So executioners were typically consigned to the fringes of society — and even forced to literally live at the edge of town.

"People wouldn't have invited executioners into their homes. Many executioners were not allowed to go into churches. Marriage has to be done at the executioner's home," Harrington said. "Some schools would not even take the children of executioners."

It wasn't all bad, though. There were perks designed to keep the executioner from abandoning his job, which was seen as a necessary part of law enforcement. Read about the life of an executioner at LiveScience.  -via Damn Interesting

New York in the 1890s saw the rise of iceboxes. The city stayed hot in the summer, and food had to be brought in from further away than ever, so ice was harvested in the winter, stored all year long, and delivered to keep food fresh and cool. There were 1500 ice trucks in New York at the time, and deliverymen were a welcome sight. This led to raunchy jokes about all the housewives an ice man would see every day. Those joke inspired J. Fred Helf to write the hit novelty song, "How’d You Like to Be the Iceman?”  

An iceman had to be in good physical shape, which made his presence all the more concerning to husbands who were away. Unlike other delivery men, he had to come inside, and ensconcing ice in the box sometimes required chipping away at the block until it fit. It wasn’t unusual, after all that work, for the lady of the house to offer the ice man a drink or snack. It’s no wonder that he came to be perceived as a working-class lothario—sort of a 19th-century version of a buff pool boy.

“How’d You Like to Be the Iceman?” capitalized on the idea that icemen had it made. In the opening verse, the narrator admires a brownstone mansion and asks the servant if Mr. Vanderbilt is in. “I thought it the house of a millionaire,” the song continues, “but he told me the iceman resided there.” Subsequent verses describe the iceman trading ice for kisses at customers’ homes and enjoying free drinks at the cafe. (These are referred to as “tin-roof cocktails,” capitalizing on a joke with a double meaning about tin-roof cocktails being “on the house.”)

Read about the ice business, the song, and the ever-popular iceman at Atlas Obscura.

I added Aerosmith ft. Run DMC to this video of the shadow of a millipede walking and it has amused me more than it should have done. pic.twitter.com/esyBCaugXn

— Amanda (@Pandamoanimum) August 23, 2019

By now you've probably seen the viral video by Dr Juanita Arrieta of a millipede walking, made easier to see by the elongated shadow it cast. The millipede prancing jauntily along is intriguing, and of course the internet had to put music to it. @Pandamoanimum found a bunch of songs that not only refer to walking, but work with the bug's rhythm ("Walk of Life," "Footloose," "I Walk the Line," "Walking on Sunshine," "500 Miles," and The Imperial March, among others). You can see them in a Threadreader post, but I would recommend checking out the entire Twitter thread, as other people contributed their own ideas. My personal favorite is the one with music from Panjabi MC. -via Metafilter

In the 1960s, huge fiberglass advertising statues were erected across America, meant to draw attention and traffic to one business or another. These were called Muffler Men, since many of the 18- to 25-foot figures held a muffler or other product. The first one was a statue of Paul Bunyan, and the company that inherited the mold used it to make giant men of all kinds, and then branched out to other giant advertising statues, like chickens, dinosaurs, and women. In the 1970s, fiberglass giants fell out of favor, and out of advertising budgets. Now many of them have been repurposed, or belong to private collectors.  

One such collector, the Bay Area’s Bell Plastics, is refuge to what is perhaps the world’s largest conglomeration of original muffler men. Once a year, they invite the public into their warehouse for a unique opportunity to wander amongst various advertising giants, including the rare Uniroyal Girl (a bikini-clad female “Muffler Man” who is said to be modeled after Jackie Kennedy), two of San Francisco’s beloved Doggie Diner heads, a slightly demented Santa, a pair of industrious car washing octopi, and other oversized company shills. What makes this event even more special is that Bell Plastics has reconstructed the goliath molds using the original figures and now Big Mike threatens to roam the earth once more.

The bad news is that the open house at Bell Plastics was last week. The good news is that Boing Boing has a collection of images from the event. And there's always next year, if you want to start planning a road trip to Hayward, California.

(Image credit: Kai Wada Roath via Bell Plastics)

A couple of years ago, Quinn at BlondiHacks thought it would make things easier for her if she got an automatic food dispenser for her cat Sprocket. While the amount of food Sprocket would get would be the same as she got from human-feeding, the cat knew there was more food stored inside. And she took that as a challenge.  

Sprocket’s first gambit was very simple- she would nudge the machine with her little eight pound body, and some food would fall out. There were always some loose pieces near the end of the conveyor, and jostling the machine would send a few out. The machine is under a table, so I answered this first challenge with some stiff wire to anchor it to the table leg.

Undeterred, Sprocket then learned she could climb on to the stringers of the table to get high ground above the machine, then grab the top edge with her little mouth. She could then lift it and drop it, causing pieces to fall out. To deter this, I grabbed a heavy piece of steel off the junk pile and placed it on the machine to make it hard to lift with tiny feline choppers.

That was only the beginning. No matter what restrictions Quinn added to the gadget, Sprocket would figure out a way around it, or another way to hack the machine herself. Quinn added brackets, pins, guards, weights, and walls. Before the story was over, she had the entire machine encased in a steel box. It would have been easier just to go back to hand-feeding the cat, but it was the principle of the thing, ya know?

The trick is to be smarter than the animal with a brain the size of a walnut

You can read the full saga with more pictures and videos, and craft specs, at Blondihacks.  -via reddit

A US military plane crashed in New Guinea, in a remote area called Hidden Valley populated by unknown natives. There were no roads in or out, no place to land a plane, and the elevation was too high for a helicopter. Besides, the Japanese were pretty close by. The crash survivors were injured and desperate for rescue. The History Guy tells the story of an audacious, or frankly insane, plan to bring them home. -via Nag on the Lake

What happens when a relatively unknown actor takes the villain's role in a movie that becomes a classic? It becomes hard for everyone from children up to casting directors to see you in any other kind of role. And that was the story for Margaret Hamilton, a serious actress who took on the role of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz after another actress was afraid it would make her look unattractive.

Hamilton received hundreds of letters from other children all over the country, who would recall her notorious witch cackle and, in some cases, ask why she was so mean to Dorothy. Even during filming, Hamilton worried that her role would leave kids with the impression that she was scary — according to another Wizard of Oz expert, film critic Ryan Jay. Mild-mannered and sweet in real life, Hamilton would never have wanted anyone to be terrified of her.

“Everyone described her as so sweet and so approachable and so kind in her demeanor and personality,” Jay reported. “People of all ages wouldn’t believe it was really her until they asked her to do the cackle.”

But the role of the Wicked Witch of the West would take on a life of its own. Hamilton’s ability to scare became firmly rooted in the public’s mind. In the years that followed the film, she would take on a number of different roles, but it became nearly impossible for anyone to see her as anything other than the witch bent on destroying Dorothy and her dog Toto. Eventually, she started turning down opportunities to appear as the Wicked Witch.

The role that typecast Hamilton was not an easy one. She suffered both injuries and indignities to create the Wicked Witch of the West. Read Hamilton's story at Narratively.  -Thanks, hearsetrax!

PS! Sunday is the 80th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, which was released on August 25, 1939. I did not realize that, but found strange things happening when I Googled The Wizard of Oz to find an image for this post. Try it yourself! Click on the ruby slippers in the search results. When your computer settles down, you can click on the cyclone to "return home."

On the surface, the job of a restaurant critic seems like heaven. You get paid to eat at restaurants. You may have the power to make or break a business. You get to express yourself. Great job, huh? Sure, but there's a lot more to it than most of us realize. Eater talked with critics Julia Kramer and Ryan Sutton about the details of their jobs. One of the drawbacks could be a punishing schedule that affects one's body.  

When she’s on the road scouting new places, Kramer eats at least two lunches and two dinners every day, and often visits bars, coffee shops and bakeries between those stops to maximize her time in each city. “The back-to-back tasting menu is rough,” she explained. “I did it multiple times this year, and I do not recommend. It’s hard to enjoy the first meal because you’re so anxious about how much you’re going to have to eat at the second meal. And then it’s hard to enjoy the second because you’re so full from the first.”

Sutton says his job has impacted his health. “I used to have a pretty athletic body in high school,” he said. “Athletics are still a huge part of my life. I love skiing and cycling and what have you, but I’m not going to be a pure climber as a cyclist because I have a little bit of a gut and that’s simply the fact of the job impacting me.”

If a restaurant critic writes about two eateries, you can be bet that they've dined at a dozen or more that they didn't write about. Learn some of the the nuts and bolts of a restaurant critic's work at Eater.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Zeng8r)

The tentpole series for the streaming TV service called Disney+ is The Mandalorian. He's not Boba Fett, nor Jango Fett, but another warrior from the same planet. According to Wikipedia, it takes place in the Star Wars universe a few years after The Return of the Jedi. It has a star-studded cast, lots of violence, and it's Star Wars, so what could possibly go wrong? The Mandalorian will premiere when the channel does, on November 12.   

Morris Animal Refuge in Philadelphia posted pictures of their newest adoptable cat, Mr. B, and found themselves going viral. Beejay, or more formally Mr. B, is a large cat, a real megachonk, big-boned and meaty. He weighs 26 pounds! His enormous size and his truly sad eyes captured the internet's attention. The Daily Dot sent Stacey Ritzen to see if the cat was really as large as advertised.   

But folks, the hype is real. Mr. B’s head is roughly the size of a small melon, or perhaps a large grapefruit. His paws, the size of meatballs. I’m not sure why the food comparisons, because aside from being an overall large creature, Mr. B will likely need to go on a diet when he finds his forever home. That is, unless Morris decides to keep him as an office cat, which Solomon joked was a possibility.

Within 24 hours the shelter had received over 1,000 adoption applications for Mr. B. And on top of the media attention (6ABC Action News was just wrapping up a shoot when I arrived), the small, privately run operation is just completely overwhelmed. Not to mention, as a recent addition, Mr. B still needs a thorough vet examination before he’s ready to go anywhere.

Read more about Mr. B and his sudden fame at The Daily Dot.

(Image credit: Morris Animal Refuge)

To find a great restaurant in a faraway city, you'd turn to a travel guide. Before buying a car, you might check out J.D. Power. But if you wanted to find a good prostitute in 18th-century London, there was no better guide than Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies. The guide was published anonymously and annually from 1757 to 1795. The women were listed by name with a laughable attempt at disguise by deleting the vowels, along with addresses and prices.  

Harris’s List was a sort of essential read for any gentlemen visiting London for pleasure, and many sought it out for this exact purpose. One copy acquired by Wellcome Library had crosses and house numbers scribbled in the margins in pencil suggesting the book was really used, and “not just flicked through for vicarious pleasure in an armchair.”

Indeed, Harris’s List served as much to guide as to titillate. The physical appearances and the sexual prowess of the women were described in such explicit detail that some historians suspect the book was entirely fiction and was supposed to be read as erotica. Others feel that the book was authentic, and although the names of the ladies throughout the book were disguised by replacing letters with dashes, these were real people at real addresses.

If a particular lady had serviced a famous man, the book was sure to mention it.

Historians have some idea as to who may have been behind the guide. Read what we know about Harris's List, including some floridly explicit excerpts, at Amusing Planet.  -via Strange Company

Imagine you're going to visit Rome and soak in its history. You think you're going to tread the stairs where Julius Caesar was assassinated? Think again, because the area is prohibited. Prohibited to humans, that is, at least for now. It's the site of Colonia Felina di Torre Argentina, Rome's oldest cat sanctuary!  

Bystanders can view the temple complex known as Largo di Torre Argentina from the fenced-off street, but according to Conde Nast Traveler, after a $1.1 million restoration process, the sanctuary will open to tourists in the second half of 2021. For now, the only living things allowed in the sacred area (area sacra) are feral cats.

These are privileged felines, although they themselves do not consider the history of their home. Read about this unique sanctuary at Mental Floss.