Sweden was at the forefront of keeping an eye on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And even after the collapse of the USSR, the Swedish navy suspected the Russians of running covert submarines into their waters. In 1994, sonic recordings that sounded suspiciously like submarine activity caused a diplomatic row between Sweden and Russia that went on for ten years.

This diplomatic conflict raged on until 2004, when scientists made a vital diplomatic discovery: Herrings fart. Sent out to investigate the sound, researchers Magnus Wahlberg and Hakan Westerberg discovered that the hissing came from bubbles filled with gas, which herrings secrete through their anuses to covertly communicate with one another. (Same spycraft, different species.)

The researchers referred to the communications system as "fast repetitive ticks," or FRTs, and these FRTs just happened to sound exactly like the whoosh of a submarine. The discovery cleared the Russians of any wrongdoing, set the Swedish navy's mind at ease, and won Wahlberg and Westerberg an Ig Nobel prize to boot. Maybe diplomats should try blaming things on fish more often.

Oops. This is just one of 5 Historical Mysteries That Had Painfully Dumb Explanations that you can read at Cracked.

(Image credit: Yury Dolgorukiy)

Joshua Slice (the animator) and his much-younger nephew Lucas (the voice artist) bring us the further adventures of Lucas the Spider, in which the tiny spider must deal with summer heat.

In 1725, some residents of Hamelin, Germany, found a boy living in the forest. He was naked, walked on all fours, and did not speak at all. They assumed he was a feral child somewhere between 12 and 15 years old. Had he been lost or abandoned or cast out of his home? No one had a clue as to the boy's origins. The next year, King George I of England was visiting the area and the boy, now called Peter, was presented to him.

The Princess Caroline of Wales, the King’s daughter-in-law, requested that Peter come to London, and in 1926, he joined them at Kensington Palace. She entrusted Peter to Dr. Arbuthnot to oversee his education and socialization, while another team of servants oversaw his care.

The reputation of this “feral” child from the Hamelin woods spread, and there was much chatter within British society. Everyone knew him as Peter the Wild Boy. At first, he ate with his hands and preferred not to wear clothes. Life in the palace was, at first, distressing for him. In fact, his caretakers wrestled him into his suits each day. Instead of sleeping in bed, he preferred the hard ground in the corner of the room. Although he initially crawled on the floor, he learned to walk upright. Also, like other children, Peter had to learn what discipline was about and received his share with a “broad leather strap.”

Although characterized by his rambunctious behavior, everyone loved Peter. He was cheerful most of the time and absolutely loved music. During his time at the palace, he grew especially close to one of the Queen’s bedchamber women, Mrs. Titchbourn.

Peter lived with several different caretakers in his adulthood, and lived to be around 70 years old. He eventually learned to speak a few words, but never initiated conversation himself. Peter's case sparked debates on the nature of human development, as he seemed to have missed the crucial period where language is learned. But hundreds of years after he was rescued from the woods, there are suspicions that Peter wasn't a feral child after all, but instead had a now-identified genetic condition. Read about Peter the Wild Boy at Historic Mysteries.  -via Strange Company

Aliza Licht and Ilana Yunis loved summer camp when they were kids, but Ilana's daughter did not, and sent home letters telling how homesick she was. 

Aliza told BuzzFeed, "Serena was sending home these torturous, heart-wrenching letters. I felt terrible for her, but there was something amusing about her letters because they were so dramatic."

Ilana and her sister Aliza started an Instagram account called homesickdotcom. They get tons of letters submitted by parents who kept their children's funny letters from sleep away camp.



Check out more letters at Instagram and be prepared to kiss the next couple of hours goodbye -but at least you'll be laughing. -via Pleated-Jeans

Despite the framing of the headline, this story happened in the 19th century. A politically-connected bully named Bill Cottrell was elected mayor of Cedar Key, a town of around 2,000 people. He then went to work ruling the village to suit his whims, daring anyone to stop him.  

Residents were well-acquainted with the young mayor’s cruel—and at times homicidal—mood swings. Cottrell was first elected to the office in March of 1889, and was fond of using his firearms to intimidate his constituents. Readers across the nation would later learn of him forcing a black man—at gunpoint—to beat a telegraph operator senseless. Women shopping at a dry goods store were reportedly held hostage at gunpoint, seemingly for Cottrell’s amusement. As a child, rumor had it, he used a pocket knife to stab an elderly man who had dared to correct him, and the local Schlemmer House hotel was marked by bullet marks from the mayor’s drunken pursuit of a fellow patron.

“Aged men and prominent citizens have thus been treated…Ladies of the highest social standing were not exempt from these insults,” the New York World summated.

While his notoriety may have lent itself to exaggerated retellings, together the anecdotes paint a picture of Billy Cottrell as a young man out of control. “When [people] talk about him when he’s not intoxicated, he’s a normal person. He behaves, he gets along,” says James L. “Jim” Cottrell, great-grandnephew of Billy. “And then you throw some whiskey in him and he turns into Billy the Kid.” (Five years earlier, when racing his family’s schooner, Nannie, in Tampa Bay, another boat pulled ahead. An angry Billy ran below deck for his gun to shoot the competition before crewmates reined him in. The incident “speaks volumes to his character,” says Cottrell. “It doesn’t bode well.”)

Cottrell's reign of terror went unchallenged until a new federal customs officer arrived and was so appalled at Cottrell's behavior that he appealed to his employer, the US government, for assistance. The Revenue Cutter Service sent a ship to Cedar Key with the full weight of federal authority. Though the federal "invasion" was instrumental in bringing Cottrell down, his final comeuppance came from another source. Read the story of Cedar Key's bully mayor at Smithsonian. 

It's a common story: Someone comes up with a recipe (or song, or invention), and then finds out that it already exists. Or someone, either unconsciously or maybe consciously copies someone else. We probably won't find out who the true originator of Thousand Island dressing is, but honestly, how hard is it to combine mayonnaise and ketchup and dress it up with relish? The Europeans have been dipping their fries in something like that for a long long time. -via Digg

How do you serve ice cream from a 19th-century street cart, where there's no room to carry tons of dishes and spoons? You could wrap it in paper, but that still causes a mess, both for consumers and for the streets themselves. Someone came up with the idea of wrapping a slab of ice cream in cookies instead, and the ice cream sandwich was born. And that's why we celebrate Ice Cream Sandwich Day on August 2.

Written mentions of the treat start cropping up around the turn of the century. “It was written about a lot in newspapers,” Quinzio says. “This was quite the innovation. It sold for a penny, and you had to have a penny because they were making them so fast they didn’t have time to make change.”

In 1899, she says, the New York Mail and Express ran a story headlined “A New Sandwich.” “There are ham sandwiches and salmon sandwiches and cheese sandwiches and several other kinds of sandwiches,” it began, “but the latest is the ice-cream sandwich. As a new fad the ice cream sandwich might have made thousands of dollars for its inventor had the novelty been launched by a well-known caterer, but strangely enough the ice-cream sandwich made its advent in an humble Bowery push-cart.”

From there, the ice cream sandwich took off. High-end restaurants copied it and ice cream trucks depended on it. There are many modern variations, but people are still drawn to the vanilla slab surrounded by a chocolate wafer. Read the story of the ice cream sandwich at the Boston Globe. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Mr. Granger)

oomfies solve this pic.twitter.com/0RO5zTJjKk

— em ♥︎ (@pjmdolI) July 28, 2019

Twitter users are going head-to-head about a math equation posted by @pjmdolI. What do you consider to be the correct answer? I came up with one. So did a lot of other folks. But just as many say the answer is 16!

What I dont understand is why no one is testing the answers by reversing the equations ?

Eg
if 8÷2(2+2) = 16 then 16x2(2+2) = 8
if 8÷2(2+2) = 1 then 1x2(2+2) = 8

only one method can supply the correct answer, no ?

— Brendan Mac (@bmcguitar) August 1, 2019

took 3 calc classes, differential equations and linear algebra, it's 16 bro

— jake chyllenhaal (@corynhendrix) July 30, 2019

Mashable explains a little further.

The answer lies in the way you go about solving it, and that depends on where in the world you learned math. If you use the PEMDAS method, the order of the equation is Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. But if you were raised on the BODMAS method, then the order is Brackets, Orders, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction.

So technically, both are the right answers! Boo, that's no fun.

I may be revealing my age here, but I don't recall ever learning anything about order of operations in math. I learned more math from the movies.

the Field Museum in Chicago has around 60,000 eggs in their collection, representing all kinds of birds and reptiles. They also own the world's largest egg, which will never hatch and never be made into an omelet. It belonged to an extinct species called the elephant bird. Take one guess as to why it went extinct. While this big egg is fascinating, associate curator John Bates has an even better story that explains why collections like these eggs are so important.

Somewhere around the year 43 CE, the Roman Empire established a settlement in Britain known as Londinium, which eventually became London. Traces of that settlement are still being discovered, like the artifacts found when Bloomberg broke ground for their new European headquarters. One of the finds was a stash of 200 iron styluses, used to write on wax. One stylus is inscribed with a poem of sorts. In English, it says,

"I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift
with a sharp point that you may remember me.
I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able (to give)
as generously as the way is long (and) as my purse is empty."

-Burma Shave

Okay, Burma Shave wasn't on the stylus; I just couldn't resist adding it. The modern translation is even more familiar: "I went to Rome and all I got you was a cheap pen." Presumably, the t-shirts of the Roman Empire weren't built to last 2,000 years. The joke stylus is just one of 14,000 artifacts retrieved from the construction site, and is now on display at Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Read more about the souvenir and other objects from the site at LiveScience. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: The Museum of London Archaeology)

Woodstock 50 was supposed to bring the biggest names in music together for three days to recreate the magic of the original in 1969. The 50th anniversary event was the brainchild of Michael Lang, who was behind the first Woodstock festival, and who had presumably learned a few things since then. But after a series of setbacks, the hastily-organized festival was officially canceled Wednesday.

Many who have been following the months-long rollercoaster ride that was Woodstock 50 were probably also not surprised. The planned three-day event was announced in January featuring headliners like Jay-Z, the Black Keys, Imagine Dragons, Halsey, Miley Cyrus, and dozens more but was plagued with problems and controversy from the start. Over the last six months, Woodstock 50 lost its original financial backer, its production teams, and its first and second planned venues (Watkins Glen and Vernon Downs in New York State).

Even after it had shifted to another state — to Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland — questions remained: Which headliners would stick with it? Would the show be free and, if so, how would tickets be distributed? By Tuesday, many of its headliners, including Cyrus, Dead and Co., John Fogerty, and the Raconteurs, had pulled out, organizers had yet to file a permit application with Maryland officials and the festival appeared to be doomed.

Read the story of Woodstock 50 as it stands now in an interview with Lang at Rolling Stone.

Did you ever stare at raindrops on the window and marvel at the fluid dynamics they displayed? Well, you probably didn't call it that, honestly. Too much staring, and you are liable to start assigning agency to those water drops. Toby Tripp took one drop and made him into a cannibal who consumes other drops as he cascades down the glass. -via Laughing Squid  

There have been 26 James Bond movies, in which agent 007 clashes with various nefarious forces and invariably saves the world. Whether a good villain, or even a good plot, is crucial to the success of a Bond film is debatable, as some people watch them for James Bond himself, the Bond girls, the gadgets, or the action. Or even just out of habit. Esquire identified 104 Bond villains worthy of note and ranked them from the lamest to the most awesome. Looking through the list can be an exercise in nostalgia, and the villains you forgot about are just as wacky as they ever were, like the Three Blind Mice.    

The Film: Dr. No

The Actors: Eric Coverly, Charles Edghill, and Henry Lopez

The Basics: A trio of assassins who pose as blind beggars

Noteworthy for being the first Bond villains we see on screen, these three putter around Jamaica pretending to be blind so they can sneak up on their victims and pump them full of lead. One of their hits brings Bond into the plot. He returns the favor by sending them driving off a cliff to a fiery death. "I think they were on their way to a funeral," Bond quips.

No, I won't say where they ranked (the three are counted as one villain), but you can read about all 104 Bond villains at Esquire. -via Boing Boing

Rhubarb is an acidic plant that thrives in cool temperatures and contains a decent amount of vitamin C. Rhubarb was mostly a medicinal plant until the rise of affordable sugar. The leaves are toxic, but the stems are used in pies, jam, wine, and can be eaten raw when dipped in sugar. And where do you find the biggest rhubarb plants? In Alaska! The plant is not native to the region, but Alaskan farmers grow enormous stalks, mainly thanks to Henry D. Clark, the "Rhubarb King" of Skagway, Alaska.  

In early 1900s, settlers in the frontier marveled at rhubarb’s massive growth potential. Newspapers and books often profiled Clark’s farm in particular. The man himself came from humble beginnings, says Caroline Hill, general manager of Jewell Gardens, which occupies part of Clark’s old homestead today. Clark hailed from Wisconsin, and trekked to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. On the infamous White Pass Trail, Hill says, Clark witnessed people suffering from scurvy.

“We think that maybe he had rhubarb seeds in his pocket,” Hill says. On his return to the town of Skagway, Clark established his rhubarb farm⁠—a wise decision, considering the local lack of fresh food. A photo from 1913 shows Clark holding a humongous rhubarb stalk, topped with a large fluffy leaf, along with a yardstick in one hand to demonstrate its size. “That’s three feet just there,” Hill points out. “I don’t think he was an abnormally short or tall man. So it’s a very large piece of rhubarb.”

Read about Alaska's giant rhubarb at Atlas Obscura.

Even when things went wrong on set, Fred Rogers was always good-natured about it. As we've learned over the years, he was exactly the same off-camera and on-camera. -via Geeks Are Sexy