There are Old West replica towns across the U.S., but they are mainly museums and entertainment centers that are open to tourists. In England, the town of Laredo has grown from one wooden cabin to an entire town of 24 buildings, but it’s not open to the public (although it has been in the past). It’s for the exclusive use of the Laredo Western Club, whose members step back in time -and across the pond- when they set foot in town. Founded by John “JT” Truder in 1970, the town is now owned by his daughter Jolene Truder, who grew up in Laredo.

One of the things that makes Laredo convincing is that it feels lived in. That’s because at least some of the time, it is. The town is open to club members every other weekend; when they arrive, usually on a Saturday, they have about an hour to get themselves into their period correct clothing, holster their weapons (no live ammunition allowed), and to stash their modern gadgets and gear. Those who have specific roles in the town—Marshal, shopkeeper, bartender—stay in the town Saturday nights, in their part-time homes at the backs of or above their storefronts (these areas are off-limits to visitors without express invitation by their residents). Guests without residences can pay to stay in the hotel, in rooms decorated with antique bedsteads, washbasins, and floral wallpaper, or in the mining camp’s cabins. The hotel, which also houses the bar, is the physical and emotional center of the town, functioning in the same way a real saloon might in a real western town. Some nights, they can pack more than 50 people in there: “We clear the tables and we can have dancing. It’s really nice, you have all the men stood at the bar, it’s lovely,” said Truder.

The club members take their interest in the Old West seriously, putting in research to get every detail right, down to the smell. Read the story of Laredo and see picture at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Laredo Western Club)

We told you a while back about a project to brainstorm methods for warning future civilizations about the dangers of nuclear waste dumps. It said, in part,

But the strangest suggestion by far came from two European linguists. They argued that governments around the world should breed cats that turn colors when exposed to radiation. These so-called “ray cats” could then be immortalized in song and legend, so that even after the scientific knowledge of radiation had been lost to the sands of time, folklore would tell of their supernatural power to change their fur in the presence of extreme danger.

Matthew Kielty investigated the “ray cat” solution, including tracking down Paolo Fabbri, the man who first conceived of the idea. Kielty posted about it, and people started trying to make it happen.   

(vimeo link)

Emperor X produced an album of music about the ray cats, that includes the song “Don’t Change Color, Kitty!” Biologist Kevin Chen is looking into how we can make those cats a reality. He’s looking for collaborators on the project. -via Metafilter

If you put yourself in the place of ancient people, it’s a wonder that anyone ever came up with a number that means nothing. It doesn’t make much sense when you are counting objects, but it turned out to be pretty handy for mathematics.

(YouTube link)

Once the concept was there, it still wasn’t universally accepted. But time and science proved it was too useful to ignore. Dr. Hannah Fry  of the Royal Institution lays out a short version of the history of zero. -via mental_floss 

Remember when you ordered the Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys from an ad in the back of a comic book? When the enclosed brine shrimp were reanimated, you were quite disappointed that they did not resemble the picture in the ad, and they were awfully tiny. But still, there was something compelling about the idea of reanimating dried animals sent through the mail, and you cared for the little shrimp for as long as you could. Harold von Braunhut was the master of marketing who developed Sea-Monkeys, among many other ventures that weren’t quite as successful. When he died, he left the business to his wife, Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut. For the last few years, Signorelli von Braunhut has been embroiled in a lawsuit against Big Time Toys, the distributor of Sea-Monkeys.

A few years after her husband’s death in 2003, Signorelli von Braunhut licensed out part of the labor of his multimillion dollar Sea-Monkey enterprise, mostly packaging and distribution, to Big Time. If you’ve ever been 8 years old, then you know that Sea-Monkeys arrive in a small plastic aquarium with several small packets that include the tiny brine-shrimp critters, which reanimate once you add water — by way of a secret formula that Signorelli von Braunhut keeps locked in a vault in Manhattan.

The original deal held that Big Time would supply everything except the specially engineered critters — and the accompanying packets, which von Braunhut would manufacture and sell separately to Big Time, which would then bundle the full kits and handle the sales. Also in the contract was a second deal — to buy the company, including the secret formula. It allowed Big Time to pay a straight-up $5 million fee and then $5 million more in installments. Three winters ago, Big Time called up the widow and announced that it considered its previous payments for the packets to be a kind of layaway deal for the company and that, as far as Big Time was concerned, it now owned the Sea-Monkey franchise.

On top of all that, court documents revealed that Big Time is now purchasing brine shrimp from China instead of using Braunhut’s proprietary breed of shrimp. An article at the New York Times looks deeper into the lawsuit, the lives of Harold and Yolanda von Braunhut, the history of Sea-Monkeys, and how the new knockoffs compare to the original Sea-Monkeys. -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr use Tim Simpson)

Have you ever considered the plight of Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred? He deals with an eccentric millionaire with a mansion and a superhero with a laboratory in an underground cave. You rarely ever see any other servants in the mansion, and no one else knows about the bat cave. That’s a lot of work for one man!

(YouTube link)

Dorkly shows us what happens when Alfred reaches his breaking point. Which anyone else would have reached long ago. Alfred deserves more than a promotion- he deserves a full staff to help him get it all done!  -via Tastefully Offensive

Tragic in real life; an opportunity for a joke in movies. Deaths can be funny as long as we know they’re not real …and when they happen to someone in a movie we don’t care about. Funny deaths occur more often in comedies, but there are a few on this list at TVOM that give us a humorous left turn in dramas, too. You see a very familiar example above. What’s the movie death that made you laugh the most? It may be on there; if not, add it to the comments.

Royal Crown Cola, or RC, is over eighty years old. It was an innovative brand that paired well with deep-dish pizza in Chicago and Moon Pies in the South. And RC Cola was still eclipsed by both Coca Cola and Pepsi. Yeah, it’s still around, yet the brand doesn’t spend all that much on promotion, relatively, and it stays out of the “cola wars.”

But the number of RC drinkers could have been much, much higher. In an alternate—and completely plausible—universe, it would have given Coke and Pepsi a run for their money. At one point, it did. Believe it or not, Royal Crown Cola used to be one of the most innovative companies in the beverage industry. It came out with the first canned soda, the first caffeine-free soda, and the first 16-ounce soda. It was the first to take diet cola mainstream, and the first to stage nationwide taste tests.

Given its long and pioneering history, RC deserved to be more than the middling soda brand it is today. In an industry that lives and dies by marketing, RC didn’t do nearly enough. But its failure wasn’t just due to lack of initiative. It was also a case of supremely bad luck, bad judgment, and a fateful ingredient known as cyclamate.

Baby Boomers might remember what happened next, but you probably don’t know all the details. Today RC Cola and its sister brands like Nehi and Diet Rite are still sold, although you may have to look for them. Read about the rise and spectacular fall of RC Cola at mental_floss.

(Image credit:Flickr user pscc.ets)

AsapSCIENCE investigates the questions we didn’t even think of to ask. Can you fart and run away fast enough to escape the smell?

(YouTube link)

They use chemistry, physics, and math (as well as a few puns) to calculate the speed and diffusion of farts. Best quote in this video: “Farts are like snowflakes.” Yeah, right. The short answer is, probably. Now we need to ask the harder question: Can you outrun the sound of a bagpipe?

In today’s “list worth arguing over” department, Consequence of Sound has ranked 267 Disney songs from 55 animated movies. Each has a video and some trivia about the song. Songs at the bottom are forgettable, or are from movie you could have easily missed. You can skip to the top ten here.

Here’s a link to the entire list on one page, but it has 267 YouTube videos, so may have trouble loading. It froze my browser immediately. That said, Tarzan was robbed, and “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan should have ranked much higher. And I will never understand why “Circle of Life” doesn’t automatically make #1 on these types of lists. -via Metafilter

In an experimental program, the Moscow Police canine unit will train a group of Welsh corgi puppies to do police work. According to state news agency RIA Novosti, two puppies are in training already, a two-month-old and a six-month-old. Elena Haikova, head of the canine unit, said there is no guarantee the experiment will yield Corgi police dogs.

She explained that the relatively low height of the corgi means they may prove effective in sniffing out objects close to the ground, and move in tight spaces, searching for bombs or contraband goods.

“They still need to grow, be trained and undergo every test,” Haikova said. “The dogs may buckle under the workload.”

We should know within a year whether corgis turn out to be effective for the tasks they are training for. -via HuffPo

(Image credit: Flickr user mr_wahlee)

In the “might makes right” era, before the rule of law, there were no doubt some people who could manage to make a mockery of the system. Hafthor Julius Bjornsson comes to mind. Maybe this was why we changed to the rule of law in the first place, and all that King Arthur stuff was just retconned. This is the latest from John McNamee at Pie Comic.

Started feb 27 2016 #carrotman

A photo posted by Carrot Man (@jeyrick.sigmaton) on Feb 24, 2016 at 6:41pm PST

It only takes a couple of weeks to change someone’s life -if they are the subject of a viral social media post. In February, bakery owner Edwina Bandong took some pictures of a farmer taking a load of carrots to market in Sagada, Mountain Province, Philippines. The pictures went viral within days, and the attractive young man was identified as Jeyrick Sigmaton. The attention has landed the 21-year-old a modeling career. Boardwalk PH has made Sigmaton the new face of their clothing line.

You guessed it right! Welcome to the Boardwalk family, Jeyrick "Carrot Man" Sigmaton. We'd like to thank his fans for the overwhelming support! ‪#CarrotManXBoardwalkPH‬ ‪#ChooseYourStyle #ShineOn‬ ‪#Boardwalk25 ‬

A photo posted by boardwalkph (@boardwalkph) on Apr 13, 2016 at 1:10am PDT

See pictures from Sigmaton’s life as a farmer at Mashable and pictures of his modeling work at Uproxx.

The term “supermodel” didn’t come into vogue until the 1980s, when a few highly-paid models became known worldwide outside of the fashion industry. But 100 years ago, one woman’s face and body were used so much the you still see her image everywhere. Audrey Munson posed for photographers and artists, appeared in movies (nude!), and most lastingly, modeled for sculptors whose statues and monuments still stand.

Across the nation, from Florida to California, Audrey remains in our everyday lives. She stands as Liberty and Sapienta (Wisdom) on the Wisconsin state capitol. She can be seen as the nymphs on the James McMillan Memorial Fountain by the reservoir in Washington, D.C. She was the model for Allen George Newman’s Monument to Women of the Confederacy in Jacksonville, Florida, and for his Peace Monument in Piedmont Park, in Atlanta, Georgia. She posed for the figure of Evangeline inscribed on the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Memorial in the garden of the poet’s house by the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She inspired three-quarters of the statuary of the Jewel City built in San Francisco for the 1915 World’s Fair. A famous bronze of one of those statues, Descending Night, was acquired by press baron William Randolph Hearst, and now resides at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, on the California coast. One of her surviving “Star Maidens” from the fair now stands in the courtyard of the Citigroup Center building in San Francisco.

Born in 1891, Munson is the subject of a new book, The Curse of Beauty by James Bone, which is promoted in an excerpt at Vanity Fair. The title of the article is How America’s First Supermodel Was Nearly Erased from History. However, the article itself does not tell us how she was erased from history (supposedly the book does), but it introduces us to the woman behind many of the statues you see in New York City and around the country. You can find the short version of what happened to her at Wikipedia (contains nudity).  

(Image credit: Jim.henderson) 

(YouTube link)

Last month, we had a supercut of iconic movie lines delivered just before the star killed someone. Now it’s time for the followup: iconic movie lines delivered right after the star kills someone.

Often, the line is a continuation of something said right before the shot is fired, or maybe it’s a pun. But if you’ve seen these movies, you remember those lines well. Burger Fiction had all the raw material ready from researching the previous supercut. A list of the movies used is at the YouTube link. -via Tastefully Offensive

Brett Helling had surgery to correct a deviated septum in hopes that it would help his frequent sinus infections. Afterward, he suffered from an inability to feel himself breathe. He felt like he was constantly struggling for air. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, and he was eventually diagnosed with depression. Through his own research, he’d found something called “Empty Nose Syndrome,” which plagued a small minority of people who had turbinate reduction surgery. Only later did he find out that his turbinates had been reduced during the surgery. But he still couldn’t find a doctor to help him.

Inside your nose are two bony shelves divided by your septum, and these shelves contain three sets of turbinates. Each side of the nose contains a low, middle, and high turbinate. The low one, called an inferior turbinate, is the biggest — like a small cigar, about five or six centimeters long — and inside the inferior turbinate are blood vessels that can swell and shrink dramatically. (Imagine a penis and you’re not far off.) Turbinates help regulate airflow through the nose and also warm, filter, and humidify the air using a moist outer lining of tissue called mucosa.

Allergies, sinus infections, and other conditions can cause the inferior turbinate to stay enlarged, which leads to nasal blockage. If that’s the case, and if antibiotics don’t work, it’s not unusual for an otolaryngologist to recommend reducing the inferior turbinate (and, in rare cases, the middle turbinate).

There are a couple of doctors who are researching Empty Nose Syndrome, and one who is doing turbinate reconstruction. But it was too late for Helling. Read his story and the story of Empty Nose Syndrome at Buzzfeed. 

(Image credit: Mauricio Alejo)