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 

According to the Harris Poll Reputation Quotient, the most respected company in the US is Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. The poll that determined that queried over 18 thousand Americans on the 100 companies that were the "most visible" during the previous year. TitleMax brings us a visualization of the top ten companies over the past five years and their movement, and also the bottom ten companies. Those that don't show movement may not have been so "visible" during other years.  

You can enlarge the graphic here if you need to. Read more about the graphic at TitleMax. -via Digg

The Kennel Club's Dog Photographer of the Year winners for 2019 have been announced. The overall winner Denise Czichocki for the picture above.

Swiss photographer Denise Czichocki was chosen as the Overall Winner and 1st Place Winner in the Oldies category for her image, Dreaming Merlin. Her photo beautifully captures the 14-year-old rescue Podengo, sat amongst a pink-flowered magnolia tree. “It wasn’t easy to take photos of him because of his absolute deafness,” says Czichocki. “So I couldn’t work with noises to get his attention…afterwards it wasn’t necessary. He gave me so many beautiful moments as you can see in this picture. This is Merlin, beautiful, dreamy and kind of wise. A wonderful old dog with so much charisma.” Czichocki will receive an original oil painting of her image by award-winning artist Sara Abbott.

There are also winners in eleven categories such as Dogs at Work, Dogs at Play, Puppies, Assistance Dogs, and more. Read about the competition at My Modern Met. See all the winners in the Kennel Club's gallery. -via Everlasting Blort

A bizarre clip of Nicolas Cage in the 1989 movie Never on Tuesday has gone viral thirty years after the fact. The movie, produced by Cassian Elwes, was a teen sex comedy that was not a hit and was never released on home video. But it was notable for having some big names in it, mostly as cameos. Nic Cage had already made a splash in movies like Raising Arizona and Moonstruck at the time, and Elwes was overwhelmed that he agreed to appear. Gothamist scored an interview with Elwes about the strange one-minute performance, in which Cage wears a fake nose, speaks in a falsetto voice, and comes across as reminiscent of Crispin Glover.

How did Nicolas Cage become involved? As I said, we made it very low-budget: under a million dollars. I made a movie called Oxford Blues a few years earlier with Rob Lowe and Ally Sheedy. I was hoping to get Rob Lowe to do that cameo in Never on Tuesday. At the last second, he couldn’t do it. We were scrambling—literally had like 48 hours to come up with a star. A friend of a friend said, “What about asking Nic Cage?” I was like, “Ask him!” Then he called me back and said, “Yeah, he’ll do it, but he wants to wear this nose in the movie.” I was like, “Tell him to come, bring the nose, no problem.” I didn’t know him at all.

Were you a fan? Yeah, a big fan. Nic was a huge star at that point. I can’t remember if Moonstruck was before that one? [Note: It was.] It was preceding Leaving Las Vegas, but he was already a huge young male star. So for him to come do this cameo in our film… Short of wearing a bag over his head, I was totally cool with whatever he wanted to do.

They just said, "Could he wear a fake nose?" I was like, “Sure!” I didn't know what it was gonna look like.

There's lots more to the story, which you can read at Gothamist.  -via Metafilter

The government of Japan has approved a research plan to create human-animal chimeras, or organisms with both human and rodent cells. Specifically, the plan is to grow a human pancreas in the body of a rat or mouse, with the goal of harvesting organs that can be transplanted into human patients.  Scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi has been working on getting approval for such a plan for ten years. The previous guidelines in Japan were to allow this kind of cell-mixing in embryos, but not to implant them into surrogate animal mothers, nor to grow them past 14 days.  

The strategy that he and other scientists are exploring is to create an animal embryo that lacks a gene necessary for the production of a certain organ, such as the pancreas, and then to inject human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into the animal embryo. iPS cells are those that have been reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state and can give rise to almost all cell types. As the animal develops, it uses the human iPS cells to make the organ, which it cannot make with its own cells.

In 2017, Nakauchi and his colleagues reported the injection of mouse iPS cells into the embryo of a rat that was unable to produce a pancreas. The rat formed a pancreas made entirely of mouse cells. Nakauchi and his team transplanted that pancreas back into a mouse that had been engineered to have diabetes. The rat-produced organ was able to control blood sugar levels, effectively curing the mouse of diabetes1.

There are quite a few hurdles between combining rats and mice and combining human cells with vasty different species. The ultimate goal is to be able to grow human organs in species closer to ours, such as pigs. Of course, there are ethical concerns. Read more about the planned experiments at Nature.  -via Gizmodo