Women's fashions in the 19th century went through many changes, as different designers tried out the ways they could make a woman look the way she should. The crinolines of the Civil War era didn't really work in cities that were becoming more and more crowded, but heaven forbid that a lady could dispense with overly-engineered undergarments that sculpted her into the latest fashionable silhouette. The bustle was patented in 1857 and became all the rage until about 1888.

An 1888 anonymous writer to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal voiced concerns about the fashion of the time in a letter headed simply “Bustles.”

The writer reels off the numerous health problems they see with everyday women’s fashion: corsets squeezing organs, shoes too small and pointed at the toe deforming the foot and particularly the bustle. “The woman with a bustle can never sit down in a natural position,” the letter records. “It is absolutely impossible for her to rest her back against the back of any seat of ordinary construction. I have no doubt some of the severe backaches in women whose duties keep them seated all day are due to, or at least aggravated by, this disability.”

Read about the rise and fall of the bustle and other 19th-century undergarments at Smithsonian.

Orson Welles broadcast his radio play "War of the Worlds," about an alien invasion, on October 30th, 1938. Some folks missed the disclaimer at the beginning that assured listeners that it was a work of fiction. Now, if they'd listened longer, these folks would find that out soon enough. But as luck would have it, a transformer blew in Concrete, Washington, during the broadcast. What would you do?

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This short film by Patrick Biesemans for Dust follows a curious young boy out on his own on that fateful night. -via Nag on the Lake

In this video from space, we see what happens to a spinning handle in low gravity. The gyroscopic force is strong with this one. What we are seeing is the Dzhanibekov effect, also called the Tennis Racket theorem.

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Cool! It works under gravity, too, although it's harder to see because the object falls down at the same time. There's a complicated formula that explains the phenomenon, but if you don't want to read a complicated formula (or you know that won't help you), Randy Dobson shows us how it works in this video.

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Think about tossing a tennis racket, then it makes more sense because most of have played with a racket like this before, or some other object in this way.  -via TYWKIWDBI

Here is a lesson in math by trauma. This dad is evil, but he blew my mind with a math trick that I did not know. Thank you, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. However, I find it impossible to hold up my ninth finger by itself. Good thing I memorized my times tables in third grade.

Getting enough sleep is important for everything else in your life. That's hard to deal with when you have deadlines, to-do lists, and people counting on you to take care of business. However, a proper amount of rest will help you do all those things more efficiently than if you are tired.

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There are a lot of things that can affect your sleep, and you might have to work on every one of them to get sufficient rest. Our friends from AsapSCIENCE have some facts about sleep and how we can get not only more sleep, but better quality sleep. -via Digg

How much time do you spend worrying about things? Do people tell you that you worry too much? That's not really useful, because that feeling of impending doom (or even just a little discomfort) is difficult to turn off. But are you worrying too much? Maybe, but you shouldn't worry about it. Worrying might actually be a good sign.

Well, maybe because — sometimes, in small doses — worrying can actually be good for you. In one study, for example, worrying was linked to recovery from trauma and depression, as well as increased “uptake of health-promoting behaviors,” like getting regular cancer screenings or resolving to kick a smoking habit. Others have found that worriers tend to be more successful problem-solvers, higher performers at work and in graduate school, and more proactive and informed when it comes to handling stressful events that life throws their way.

In other words, worry means you are being mindful about things that need solving or improvement. The key is to turn that worry into a plan to change what you are fretting about. If it's a problem you cannot change, some stress relief might be in order, or you can turn to worrying about something else that you can change. The Science of Us has more on the positive side of worrying.

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Here's a superstition I had never heard of until now. Disposable lighters come in all colors, but the white ones are bad luck. It's supposedly even more unlucky than lighting three cigarettes with one match. At least that one made sense, because you could burn your fingers if you held a match long enough. The white lighter taboo seems to be entirely magical thinking.

Even in 2017, it’s not uncommon to encounter smokers who not only won’t purchase white lighters, but won’t use them to light things even if they belong to someone else. Some people don’t even like being in the room when one is being used. But how did this legend get started in the first place?

The most common origin story behind this myth is actually tied up with another popular urban legend. The so-called “27 Club” includes young artists and musicians—Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix—who all died at the age of 27. A number of superstitions revolve around the 27 Club, one of which being that those musicians, as well as a later addition to the club, Kurt Cobain, had white lighters on them when they died. They didn’t.

There are a couple of other possibilities for the origin of this superstition, one that even makes sense, that you can read about at Atlas Obscura. The article is part of their series on luck running all this week.

Pusic was taken in when he was a very sick kitten abandoned in a box. He pulled through, as you can see in this video, and grew up to love the Russian couple who took him in. He especially likes getting picked up by his mommy, as you can see here, and biting his daddy's ear, as you can see in this video. But last fall, Dad went away for twenty days, and that was hard on Pusic.

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When he finally came back, it was a joyful reunion for the cat. -via Laughing Squid

Dino Ignacio took his daughter to Star Wars Celebration last week, and they went fully equipped. He made a batch of plastic datacards as the plans for the Death Star for his tiny Jyn Erso to deliver. In case you haven't seen Rogue One, Jyn Erso was the main character, and getting the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance was her mission.   

Jyn is actually named Harley, and she and her father Dino attended Celebration in Orlando last weekend with a special goal in mind, to pay tribute to the dearly departed Carrie Fisher. Harley, in costume as Rogue One’s Rebel Operative, would locate as many Princess Leia cosplayers as she could, and hand them a specially-crafted copy of the datacard containing the Death Star plans.

See pictures of Harley and the different incarnations of Princess Leia she found at Star Wars Celebration at io9.

PS: Harley was Rey last year.

On the very first Earth Day in 1970, Denis Hayes stood on a stage in Central Park, stunned by the number of people who'd come to honor the planet. Now 76 years old, Hayes remembers it was like looking at the ocean—“you couldn’t see where the sea of people ended.” Crowd estimates reached more than a million people.

For Hayes, who is now board chair of the international Earth Day Network, it was the culmination of a year’s worth of work. As an urban ecology graduate student at Harvard University, he’d volunteered to help organize a small initiative by Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson. Nelson was horrified by the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, and wanted to raise awareness about environmental issues by holding teaching events similar to those being held by civil rights and anti-war activists.

Senator Nelson saw a growing disconnect between the concept of progress and the idea of American well-being, Hayes tells mental_floss. “There was a sense that America was prosperous and getting better, but at the same time, the air in the country was similar to the air today in China, Mexico City, or New Delhi," Hayes says. "Rivers were catching on fire. Lakes were unswimmable.”   

Hayes talked to mental_floss about the process that led to the first Earth Day, and how the movement took off afterward and grew into a global initiative.

Cats love boxes, but some boxes are better than others. To determine which is the best, they must all be thoroughly checked out. Simon's Cat and the kitten are channeling Maru and his sister Hana in the latest animation from Simon Tofield.

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If he fits, he sits …and if he doesn't fits, he sits anyway. In color, no less. -via Tastefully Offensive

Did you ever have the macaroni nightmare? It doesn't have to be about macaroni, but anything you could possibly say that makes everyone laugh at you. And I guarantee we've all had that dream where people laugh at how uncool we are. It's almost as bad as people laughing at you in real life. This is the latest comic from Buttersafe.

You may think of hot dogs as a particularly American food (until you recall they were originally frankfurters), but Iceland is very proud of their hot dogs. Both locals and tourists say you must try the hot dogs in Iceland. So Fran Hoepfner and Cameron Scheetz had to go to Iceland to try them out. Well, to be honest, they also went for other reasons, but since airfares to Iceland are pretty cheap right now, why not? Fran says,

It felt weird to prioritize a hot dog, to our credit, a thing I maybe only otherwise prioritize if I’m at a baseball game, but yeah, our final morning of the trip we went to Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur—Bæjarins Beztu for short, obviously—which translates to “the best hot dog in town.” It’s just a little stand right in the center of Reykjavík, the capital city of Iceland, that’s been open since 1937. It’s also not just a tourist trap: The day we went the line was full of a healthy mix of tourists and locals trying to get their dog on.

Read their impressions and review of the famous Icelandic hot dogs at the A.V. Club.

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Ferryville, Newfoundland, is in the global spotlight right now because of an unexpected visitor. The town of about 500 people has seen its share of icebergs float by, but this one is a doozy- 150 feet tall! That's bigger than the iceberg that caused the Titanic to sink. The berg showed up on Easter weekend and is hanging around the Ferryville shoreline, drawing photographers, news media, and tourists looking for a thrill. Too bad the town's only two restaurants won't be open for another month. See more pictures and a video of the Ferryville iceberg at TVOM.

My neighbors think I am a great gardener. The secret is to immediately get rid of my failures, so that only the successes are seen. When someone compliments my lilac bush, I don't mention the several previous lilacs that died. Similarly, people talk about the risky behavior they survived in their younger years, while no one gets to hear from those who actually died. That is survivorship bias. This guy won the lottery, but that doesn't mean he has any particular wisdom about it, much less a foolproof method. After all, the many people who lost money on that lottery were not asked to speak about their experiences. This illustration of survivorship bias is brought to you by Randall Munroe at xkcd.