The mysterious femme fatale. The jaded private eye. The rare object worth killing for. Dashiell Hammett invented all these classic elements of noir fiction with his 1930 breakthrough novel, The Maltese Falcon. But how did Hammet dream up this dark, new world of literature? By writing from experience.

In the 1920s, the world needed a new detective. Fiction was overrun with weak Sherlock Holmes imitators— erudite puzzle solvers who refused to get their hands dirty. Enter Dashiell Hammett, a former private investigator turned writer. In The Maltese Falcon, Hammett took the detective out of the drawing room, dumped him in a dark alley, and created an American classic.

THE REAL MCCOY

Unlike other mystery novelists, Dashiell Hammett really was a detective. Born in 1894, Hammett quit school at age 14 to help earn money for his family. After a string of low-paying jobs, he became an operative with San Francisco’s Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1915. There, he adopted a code that would define his life: Create a barrier between yourself and the rest of the world.

Double King is a beautifully animated story about a king doing weird but kingly things, like destroying all other royalty. There's a price to be paid, no matter who you are. 

(YouTube link)

Felix Colgrave (previously at Neatorama) worked for two years on this one. -via reddit

Vinh Long, Vietnam, is a village known for its pottery. The landscape is dotted with beehive-shaped brick kilns where ceramics are mass-produced by hand. Jürgen Horn and Mike Powell wanted to visit, but had a time getting there. People in Saigon wanted to sell them a package tour, and people in Vinh Long didn't know where the kilns were. Once they managed to find their way, they had a great time. 

The level of freedom was amazing. This was the opposite of a visit to some “touristy” craft village. Everyone we encountered was busy working, and they never tried to sell us anything nor usher us into a gift shop. Neither did they simply ignore us… they were just friendly and normal, and seemed amused that foreigners would consider their jobs photo-worthy.

In fact, at the third factory we visited, we were followed inside by a brother and sister who lived in a house on-site. They knew enough English for a proper interrogation, and after the standard “What is your name, where do you come from”-type questions, they asked why we were there. We said that we thought these kilns were very beautiful. And they looked at each other, hardly able to suppress their laughter. “Really?!”

You will agree, when you see the pictures at For 91 Days.

Cosmas and Damian were twin brothers and physicians, who were beheaded for their Christian beliefs in 287 CE, and then became saints. Hardly anything else is known about them, but a story about one of their medical cases had become legend. A Russian blogger tells the story, machine-translated:  

This episode is described in the text of an incunabula from the life of the saints, which appeared in Augsburg in 1489, as follows: "One person suffered from foot disease. Medications did not help.

Once in a dream, he appeared to both saints. With them they had a surgical instrument and ointment. One asked the other: "Where should we take a foot to replace this?" He replied: "Today they will bury a black Moor with a healthy leg." The first one said: "Bring it." He cut off the foot of the Moor, put it to the foot of the patient and heavily applied the ointment.
A sick leg put the Moor in the coffin.

When the patient woke up, the pain did not happen. He got up and ordered his servants to bring candles. He always told me what had happened to him. People ran to the coffin of the Moor and saw a cut off leg. They rejoiced at the miracle that was accomplished and thanked God and the saints of Cosmas and Damian with fervor. "

From perusing the many images in the post, I believe that "A sick leg put the Moor in the coffin" means that they buried the patient's amputated leg with the Moor. Cosmas and Damian are now regarded as patron saints of doctors. -via TYWKIWDBI

Owls are not great nest-builders. It's not uncommon for a nest to fail, and baby owls to fall out. Volunteers from the Dane County Humane Society's Wildlife Center in Wisconsin take it upon themselves to return these fallen owlets to their nests, or even provide a new nest, if they are sure the parents are around to care for the babies. Jenn Jackson posted pictures of two renesting missions, led by John Kraak and Michael Minardi. The first one is in this album. Be sure to read all the captions for the story. Here's a sample.

Mom guarding the insufficient nest, certainly not the worst we've seen.

If you’re new to this I’m pleased to introduced you to the patent pending, incredibly amazing MPJ Device. You may think it is a bucket, but let me be clear; this is a high tech renesting device.

First flight! Up goes the MPJ Device with owl in tow.

Finally, our own rooms!

There are a lot more pictures, so go read the full story. And check out the album for the second mission, too. -via Metafilter

TomSka has been producing the asdf movie series for quite a few years now, or maybe it just seems that long because there's so much time between episodes. The ninth asdf movie was in 2015. Now we have number ten!  

(YouTube link)

Beep, beep! I'm a sheep! The series of vignettes make no sense at all, and can be somewhat disturbing in places. But it goes pretty fast, so pay attention.  -via Laughing Squid

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Colleen Jordan recorded her two-year-old twin daughters Maddie and Scarlett acting out a scene from the movie Frozen as they watched it on TV. You think these little girls have seen the movie a few times before? They may grow up to be Hollywood stars! -via Tastefully Offensive

Maude Wagner was the first American woman who displayed tattoos done of her own volition, but she also became the first American woman tattoo artist. She was a circus performer, an aerialist and contortionist. What caused her to became the tattooed lady? It was love.

He was Gus Wagner, a midwestern man himself who had been sailing the world in the late 1800s and returned home covered in nearly 300 tattoos. He claimed to have learned his tattoo technique from tribesmen in Java and Borneo.

Wagner met Maud at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, where she was working as an aerialist. At the time, Gus was also traveling in circuses and doing sideshows, amazing audiences with his intricate and extreme ink work. In exchange for a date, Gus offered to give Maud a lesson in tattooing. She obliged, and the rest was history.

Gus and Maude looked like any ordinary family, with their daughter Lotteva, dressed with their arms and legs covered like proper Victorians. But without the yards of clothing, they were covered in art. They even taught Lotteva to ink tats, starting when she was nine years old. Read the story of Maude Wagner at Messy Messy Chic.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

Dawn Elberta Wells was born on October 18, 1938, in Reno, Nevada. Dawn Wells has lived such a full, rich, idyllic life, it is a bit ironic that her very first dream was probably the only one she never achieved. "I wanted to be a ballerina more than anything," she says, "(but) I couldn't get 15 inch thighs and grow another five or six inches. And my knees started dislocating."

Nonetheless, Dawn had a very happy childhood, she rode horses, and her mother grew the family's own fruits and vegetables. She attending Reno High School where she was class treasurer, president of the debate team, and an honor roll student. After high school, Dawn enrolled at Stephens College in Missouri, where she studied chemistry. But after taking a theater course, Dawn got the acting bug and transferred to the University of Washington, where they had a good theater department.

A knockout, Dawn also entered and won the Miss Nevada beauty pageant in 1959. She competed in the Miss America pageant in 1960, in which (hard to believe) she did not win. Although she didn't win, the contest paid for Dawn's last two years in college.

After graduating, Dawn went to Hollywood to attempt a career in show business. She got both her first agent and her first acting job within six weeks. Dawn was to marry her agent Larry Rosen in 1962. Beautiful, eager, and talented, Dawn got many guest starring roles in tv series including '77 Sunset Strip, Wagon Train, Maverick, and Bonanza.

In 1964, Dawn auditioned for a new show on the CBS schedule called Gilligan's Island. She met with the show's creator, Sherwood Schwartz, where the two chatted about the character she was up for- Mary Ann Summers, a farm girl from Kansas (based on Judy Garland's "Dorothy" character in The Wizard of Oz.)

The best April Fool prank I've seen yet. You have to wonder how many medical emergencies this has caused already. According to those who have actually encountered this at PornHub, clicking either of the buttons will let you know it's an April Fool joke. -via reddit

April Fool's Day has turned out to be a shopping spree for pets, featuring products that don't exist across the corporate world. Liberty Games has an arcade game for cats, and another for dogs.

Petco offered a poop-scooping drone.

(YouTube link)

Florida Atlantic University will allow students to bring pets to school next fall. They even offer a meal plan for pets, 15 campus cat trees, and a video explaining the program. The scheme is only revealed when you register your pet.

Trulia has doghouses for rent.

Analog Watch Co. will make a watch band for you out of your pet's discarded fur.

The candy store Sugarfina unveiled its first boutique candy for dogs, Beef Broth gummy bears.

Puzzlenation launched a line of puzzles for pets.

But the pranks from retail companies don't all involve pets. See a running list of corporate April Fool jokes at Time.

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

(Image credit: Geoff Gallice)

Research about a theory about worms
compiled by Stephen Drew, Improbable Research staff

Velvet Worms and Caterpillars (Yes)
"Caterpillars Evolved from Onychophorans by Hybridogenesis," Donald I. Williamson, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 106, no. 46, November 24, 2009, pp. 19901–5. The author, at the University of Liverpool, explains:

I reject the Darwinian assumption that larvae and their adults evolved from a single common ancestor. Rather I posit that, in animals that metamorphose, the basic types of larvae originated as adults of different lineages, i.e., larvae were transferred when, through hybridization, their genomes were acquired by distantly related animals.

Lutz Heck is the villain in the new movie The Zookeeper's Wife. The real life Lutz Heck (director of the Berlin Zoo) not only plundered the Warsaw Zoo, but he directed a Nazi animal breeding program. It was a continuation of the work he had begun with his brother Heinz (director of the Munich Zoo) before the Nazis came to power. They were trying to "back breed" domestic animals to recreate their wilder ancestors. One was the wisent, the European bison that was close to extinction, another was the auroch, wild cattle that had gone extinct in 1627. The practice of back breeding involves selecting existing animals with some of their ancient ancestors' traits and breeding them to bring out those traits in their offspring. But the rise of the Nazi party separated the brothers. Heinz became a political prisoner, while Lutz joined the party and intrigued them with his experiments.

“Göring saw the opportunity to make nature protection part of his political empire,” says environmental historian Frank Uekotter. “He also used the funds [from the Nature Protection Law of 1935] for his estate.” The law, which created nature reserves, allowed for the designation of natural monuments, and removed the protection of private property rights, had been up for consideration for years before the Nazis came to power. Once the Nazis no longer had the shackles of the democratic process to hold them back, Göring quickly pushed the law through to enhance his prestige and promote his personal interest in hunting.

Lutz continued his back-breeding experiments with support from Göring, experimenting with tarpans (wild horses, whose Heck-created descendants still exist today) and wisent. Lutz’s creations were released in various forests and hunting reserves, where Göring could indulge his wish to recreate mythic scenes from the German epic poem Nibelungenlied (think the German version of Beowulf), in which the Teutonic hero Siegfried kills dragons and other creatures of the forest.

The idea of an forest preserve full of ancient wild animals was one reason Göring was so excited about the annexation of Poland. Read the story of Heck's breeding experiments and what happened to those animals at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Henryk Kotowski)

Researchers from the University of Utah took seven calf carcasses out to the desert to see what would happen. They were going to record, count, and identify the vultures, coyotes, and other animals that tend to feed off dead animals. Evan Buechley, co-author of the study, returned to the area to find one of the carcasses gone. He admitted he was disappointed because dragging the calf out there was "a ton of work."

But examination of the pictures from the camera trap revealed an extraordinary turn of events. A badger completely buries the calf, with the animal setting to work almost immediately after its initial discovery of the carcass. Despite being a nocturnal creature, the images show it digging both during the day and at night.

From the time-lapse video created from the images, the badger can be seen digging around the calf until the dead bovine sinks into the dirt as the tunnels dug beneath it collapse.

The badger then covers its cache with soil, before taking what appears to be a well-earned rest atop the mound, looking directly at the camera. “I was really shocked and amazed, and really excited,” said Buechley.

You can read more about the study, and see the time-lapse video at The Guardian. Meanwhile, at Metafilter, Hairy Lobster summarized the incident with a poem.

my name is badge
and wen its nite,
i find som meat
and take a bite
i cannot eat
much more than half
i dig the dirt
and hide the calf

(Image credit: University of Utah)

Disney has made an official LEGO version of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, even though they titled the video Star Wars: Rogue One -go figure. Does it contain spoilers? No, it's nothing like the movie. But it's cute.

(YouTube link)

It's also pretty much an ad for LEGO, but the obvious product placement works into the plot. -Thanks, Paul Panday!