@HVRanch Check this out! South Dakota student dresses up for 'Ranch Day' in a literal and wonderful way https://t.co/sCOPZ3GhfO pic.twitter.com/govhaVLYSl

— argusleader (@argusleader) September 22, 2016

Brandon Valley High School in Brandon, South Dakota, held spirit days during homecoming week, in which the students were encouraged to dress up in a different theme each day. On “Ranch Day,” most students dressed as cowboys or ranch hands. Senior student Carson Haase thought outside the box and mocked up a cardboard bottle of ranch dressing as her costume. The photographs went viral on social media. Haase said she got up the nerve to do it in tribute to her friend Brittany Corcoran, who committed suicide in March.

In response, Hidden Valley, the originator of ranch dressing, sent Haase a supply of Hidden Valley dressing and swag, and also made a $500 donation to the Brittany Corcoran Memorial Scholarship Fund in Carson Haase’s name.

Thanks you @HVRanch!! We love it! pic.twitter.com/28ADxcGNzs

— carś (@CarsonHaase) September 27, 2016

-via Uproxx

It doesn’t matter so much that the 50 cities on this list are state capitals, because any list of town name origins contains some interesting stories. However, using state capitals gives every American a connection to at least one of them. I never knew the story, but I had assumed, I guess, that the capital of Kentucky has some connection to Frankfurt, Germany. Wrong.

Historians aren’t certain where Frankfort got its name, but most people believe the name memorializes an early settler named Stephen Frank, who was killed by Native Americans near a river crossing. The crossing came to be known as Frank’s Ford, later shortened to Frankfort. Frankfort is located in similarly named Franklin County, named for Benjamin Franklin.

But they get more interesting. Check out Minnesota’s capital.

St. Paul didn’t receive its elegant sounding moniker until 1849. Before that, it was called Pig’s Eye, after a local tavern owner named Pierre “Pig’s Eye” Parrant. Parrant was an unlikely inspiration for a town name: He had a bad reputation and was said to be a coarse, uncouth man whose bad eye lent his face a piggish expression. But according to legend, a customer at Parrant’s tavern gave “Pig’s Eye” as the return address on a letter he was sending, and from then on, the town was known as Pig’s Eye.

St. Paul might have been known as Pig’s Eye forever, if not for the arrival of a Catholic priest named Father Lucien Galtier, who established the chapel of St. Paul in the region in 1840. Nine years later, the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Minnesota, presumably weighing the pros and cons of naming the town after a licentious tavern owner or a Catholic saint, officially named the settlement St. Paul.

See if your state capital has such a colorful past, at mental_floss. 

(Image credit: Roke~commonswiki)

Biggy + Muppet Iggy = #BiggyPop #Biggy #Muppets #Cockatoo #Moluccan #cockatoosofinstagram #Birds #birdsofinstagram #Pets #Iggy #IggyPop #BreakIntoYourHeart #PostPopDepression #FF

A video posted by BiggyPop (@biggypop) on Sep 30, 2016 at 3:53am PDT

Iggy Pop has a cockatoo he adores named Biggy Pop. Biggy has his own Instagram account, because he is a natural performer. The video above was posted there just this morning, showing Iggy playing with Biggy in the guise of a hand puppet. Biggy shows off his rhythm as the puppet sings to him. -via Metafilter

Casey Neistat makes videos about his life that make the rest of us wonder why we even bother. He recently managed to get an upgrade on his Emirates Airlines flight from Dubai to New York City. First class on the flight is a $21,000 ticket, but since empty seats make no money, he was glad to help them fill the section. And show us what first class really is.

(YouTube link)

If you’re going to be a plane 14 hours, there’s no better way to do it. Read more about Neistat’s airline adventure at Money Inc. 

Americans may get the impression that Europeans speak all European languages, mainly because they often learn several languages. That’s not the case, as demonstrated by Norwegian comedian Anders Nilsen. A couple of years ago, he produced a song in Spanish. Nilsen doesn’t speak Spanish, as is made clear in the song, which consists of random Spanish words, names, and phrases, relying heavily on menu items. Nilsen wanted to make the point that a song could become a hit even if the lyrics make no sense.

(YouTube link)

Salsa Tequila indeed became a hit in several northern European countries: Norway, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden. The tune is certainly catchy, but was the song a hit because people got the joke, or in spite of it? In Spain, southern Europe, and the Americas, it’s obviously a nonsense song, but it still could have been popular.

Other versions of the song were produced by various folks in German, Dutch, Finnish, and a mishmash of Scandinavian languages. -via reddit

(Image credit: FedEx)

Whether it’s delivering polar bears to zoos or prize horses to the World Equestrian Games, FedEx rules the animal-shipping kingdom. David Lange, director of charter operations, reveals how they do it.

Since 2000, FedEx has shipped 12 pandas to zoos. How much did it cost?
It varies. We sell the entire airplane. Whether you want to move one ton or 80 pounds, you buy the entire airplane. Shipping an animal is different from shipping a box. Trying to translate a cost per pound for an endangered species, it’s hard to make a comparison.

What kinds of supplies do the pandas need?
We usually carry a breeding pair, so two enclosures with bamboo, water, apples—a couple thousand pounds of supplies. When we’re carrying horses we bring water and hay. One time, we carried 10 or 15 tons of tack and hay and feed.

America's foremost crossword guru¹ on how to get a clue.

(Image credit: Flickr user mtkr)

When I was growing up, every once in a while, our family would start a jigsaw puzzle in the evening. Everyone would drift off to bed, but I was a night owl. I stayed up. I cannot leave a puzzle unfinished. I would just keep going, and finish it at five in the morning. When everyone got up in the morning, too bad—the puzzle was done.

In eighth grade, I wrote a paper on what I wanted to do with my life: I wanted to be a professional puzzle maker. I imagined I would live in a garret somewhere cranking out my little puzzles for $10 apiece, and I imagined a life of poverty, and that was OK, because that was what I really wanted to do.

There’s a book called Language on Vacation, which came out in 1965. I wrote [the author] for advice. He wrote back a very thoughtful three-page, single-spaced letter explaining all the reasons why I should not have a career in puzzles and why it was basically impossible.

I’m the only person in the world who’s ever majored in puzzles.² Two years ago a guy majored in magic, and he looked upon me sort of as a mentor.

The summer before I started law school, I interned for PennyPress puzzle magazines. The spring of my first year in law school, I wrote my parents that I’d be dropping out at the end of the year to work in puzzles. You can imagine how well that went over. My mom wrote back a very thoughtful letter saying, “This is a terrible idea,” and listing all the reasons why. At the end she said, “We love you no matter what you decide.” I thought her reasoning was good, so I did get my law degree. Then I went into puzzles.

(Image credit: John-Patrick Thomas)

Certain professions have a built-in PR problem. People don’t like to think about what janitors or garbage collectors do, so they substitute bland job titles with euphemisms like custodial technician and waste management engineer. Not that these titles are fooling anyone. We scoff and roll our eyes at mixologist (bartender), scooping technician (dog walker), and dynamic optimization analyst (who knows?). But another term got its start the same way, and we hardly notice it anymore: the word mortician.

It has a fancy, classical Latin feel to it, right? In 1895, when it was first proposed in the trade magazine The Embalmers’ Monthly, members of the newly burgeoning funeral director profession thought so too. It was more customer-friendly than undertaker, which originally referred to the contractor who undertakes all the funeral arrangements, but had become tarnished by its centuries-old association with, well, death.

(Facebook link)

In this cute video from Mark Hughes, five Jack Russell terriers are getting their pool filled. One decides to show the garden hose who’s the boss, and shakes the poor hose by the neck. The hose continues to spew water, and the other four dogs chase after the water stream. By the time the hose is completely subdued, the whole backyard is wet! -via Tastefully Offensive

Stone Man Syndrome is a very rare condition in which a person’s tissues turn to bone. Rather, when the body tries to repair anything, it uses bone tissue, even when that's not appropriate. The disease is so rare that even identifying it is difficult, much less getting funding for research into it. Some of the images in this video may be disturbing for sensitive souls.   

(YouTube link)

Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out tells us about fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). Learn more about the genetic disease at the International FOP Association. -Thanks, Daven!

As music media became digital in the ‘80s with CDs, and later on with MP3s and now streaming, many audiophiles missed the rich analog sound of vinyl albums. Along the same route, the smaller media lost the visual art of the album jacket. There was less room for art, and forget liner notes. We missed those, too. That’s why there has been a resurgence on the old-fashioned vinyl record album in the last few years. And the  Stoughton Printing Company is ready to print new album covers, just as they have since 1964. Founded by Jack Stoughton, Sr. the company carries on in the 21st century under the direction of Clay Stoughton and his brother Jack Stoughton, Jr., who tells us about the early days of the business.  

“The Old Style jackets—that’s our trademarked name—can be printed on a variety of papers, substrates of any sort, really.” Jack Jr. says. “It can be book cloth, paper, foil, lots of different things, which gives you the ability to create many types of looks. We have highly specialized machines that are strictly purposed to make the Old Style jackets, be it an Old Style single, an Old Style gatefold, a gatefold single, you name it.”

If there’s a secret sauce to Stoughton, one of the ingredients is certainly its people, many of whom have been with the company for a long time, which means the institutional memory at Stoughton runs deep. “Some of our employees have been with us for decades,” Jack Jr. says. “They’ve seen it all.” Just as important is the fact that for every Led Zeppelin or Jack White, there have been countless other musicians of lesser acclaim who have turned to Stoughton to print their album art and design the packaging encasing their vinyl.

“When we started out,” Jack Jr. says, “we appealed to independent labels and artists. That was our niche. We had one customer, way back when, who sold his car to help pay for his record pressing. We had printed his jackets, so he came out here on the bus from Hollywood to City of Industry, which was about 25 miles eastbound. He probably made five or six bus transfers to get here. All he wanted was one box of 100 jackets, which he was going to take to the record-pressing plant so they could stuff them with his records, which he wanted to sell at a show that night. The jackets were ready, so we drove him and the jackets to the record-pressing plant, waited for them to get stuffed, and then took him home. He called us the following Monday to say he had been able to sell around 240 records that night, which effectively paid for his entire project. I couldn’t tell you that young man’s name today, and I don’t even remember if he went on to have any hits. But that was the way my dad treated everybody. In part, it was because you never knew who was going to be the next million-seller, but it was also to honor the dreams independent artists brought to us.”

Stoughton Printing Company is such a historic part of the record industry that the International Printing Museum is readying an exhibition called “The Music of the Presses: The Stoughton Printing Company Vinyl Jacket Collection” to open October first. Read about the history and the art of record jacket printing at Collectors Weekly.

Animator and lifelong Indiana Jones fan Patrick Schoenmaker produced an opening sequence for an Indiana Jones TV series. The only problem is that there is no animated Indiana Jones TV series. At least not yet.

(YouTube link)

Schoenmaker (previously at Neatorama) did some artwork for Lucasfilm to promote Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This animated sequence has been a side project of his ever since, and it’s finally been unveiled. He talked to Inverse about it.

My main idea was not to make a trailer that would have just been an excuse to take some random scenes and edit them together to look cool. I wanted a story, but I didn’t have the time to make it a full short, so instead, I came up with something like the intro to the Batman animated series.

It boiled down the feel and essence of any Batman story into a one-minute intro. It’s a great short film by itself because it makes you hungry for the episode, so I took that approach.

Well, there he’s nailed the biggest flaw in the video: it’s too short. If Lucasfilm would just hire him, he could work on Indiana Jones full-time. -via Den of Geek

This is how I operate when I’ve got a feature article deadline looming. The more I think about it, the more I remember the email, the dishes, the garbage, the bill that needs to be paid, and the nap I really need. Comic artist Sarah Andersen knows she’s not the only one. If it weren't for the last minute, I'd never get anything done. 

The international symbols for restrooms in the UK can be confusing. Should he use the restroom for people wearing pants, or the one for people with one leg? Maybe he should get a kilt to be sure! This Vine is from Josh Sundquist, who is a master of amputee humor, as well as soccer and Halloween costumes. -via reddit

Daniel Defoe published his book Robinson Crusoe in 1719, at a time when stories of shipwrecks, pirates, and castaways were hot, and there were plenty of narratives available. His book survived better than other accounts because it was particularly well-written and gripped the public’s imagination. And it was fiction, so therefore not constrained by actual events. After Defoe’s death, scholars pointed to the true story of pirate Alexander Selkirk as the main inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. But that’s not the whole story. According to Auburn University professor Paula Backscheider, there were other influences that can be traced directly to Defoe.

Take Robert Knox, for example. After his shipwreck on Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, he was held captive for 20 years (closer to the amount of time that Crusoe spent on an island).

“He started his own little corn business,” Backscheider says. “He even made little wool caps, and Defoe knew him personally.” This and other tales suggest that there were many people who influenced Defoe.

Backscheider says Defoe scholars are tired of the assumption that Selkirk’s story was the inspiration for Crusoe, rather than just one of many survival narratives that Defoe knew about. When people bring it up to them, “we just giggle,” she says.   

National Geographic explains several of the ways the tale of Robinson Crusoe differed from that of of Alexander Selkirk, and more about the other stories that were just as influential.