The Nazis who ran the Auschwitz concentration camp assembled a band from musically trained inmates to play lively marches every morning as they hurried other inmates off to work assignments. The 40 or so women, mostly teenagers, were also required to play concerts for the officers and guards and visiting dignitaries. Later on, they greeted incoming trains of prisoners with music to lull them into thinking this place might be so bad after all. But music by Jewish composers was forbidden, so they had to hide in their barracks to play Beethoven for their own enjoyment. 

Survivors of the camp had mixed feelings about the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz. They were resented by the men's orchestras because they had to perform physical labor in addition to playing music. Some prisoners enjoyed the music as a respite from everything else around them. Some have traumatic responses to music because it was connected to the worst parts of their confinement. Surviving orchestra members also recall those days with mixed feelings, aware of their privilege and racked by survivor's guilt, while also acknowledging they had no choice in the matter. Read about the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz in a book excerpt at LitHub. -via Nag on the Lake 

If you watch the video before reading this description, it will be a lot more terrifying. Ulvi Ercan was paragliding at an altitude of 1100 meters (3600 feet) when he experienced a "60 percent asymmetrical collapse" which is terrifying, but he managed to recover. The point of view in the video is the camera he dropped. It spins and recovers over and over, but keeps filming the ground rushing up. Is this because the lens is the heaviest part of the camera? You can almost hear the camera go "Wheee!" when it's spinning and "Aaaah!" when its not. 

Luckily, the camera lands not on someone's head or on a boulder, but in a grassy area where an ant is somewhat surprised. Ercan checked his flight log to figure out the approximate location of the camera, then wandered around turning an app on and off to hear a beep and to find his GoPro. We assume the spunky little camera just kept recording until it was found. -via Born in Space 

Panic over consumer products that have been tampered with happens every once in a while. Every year, folks get concerned over Halloween candy, although the original panic was sparked by one incident of a father who attempted to kill his own kids (one died) in 1974. Then there were the Tylenol murders, a very real tampering case in 1982. So when a report of a couple who found a hypodermic needle inside a Pepsi can surfaced in 1993, it sparked a nationwide panic. 

After the case of the found needle made national headlines, around 300 other reports came in of needles or other foreign objects in Pepsi cans -and a few found in Coke cans, too. Over the course of the panic, Pepsi lost more than $50 million. The reports were thoroughly investigated by the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations. In the end, the panic faded as fast as it arose. Read how that all played out at Mental Floss.  -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Qirille) 

The 1997 monster movie Anaconda was about a documentary film crew in the Amazon looking for a legendary giant snake, which finds them instead. It was critically panned, but financially successful and spawned five sequels. The sixth movie in the series is somewhat of a remake, a comedy starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black. Also called Anaconda, the new movie sees Rudd and Black on a quest to remake the 1997 film, which was their childhood favorite, on location. They just can't see how history tends to repeat itself. 

I had no idea there were so many movies in the series already, but it's a bit of genius to keep the implausible monster while highlighting the cheesy plot points by making them into intentional comedy. The judicious use of "Baby Got Back" as a threatening background motif in the trailer is too clever by half. Anaconda opens nationwide on Christmas Day. -via Laughing Squid 

What is supposed to be a list of "12 Unforced Errors," is actually way more, since each item may contain a multitude of bad decisions. Each of them probably had their reasons at the time, but were profoundly regretted by someone after the fact. Burt Reynolds was an engaging comedic actor in the 1970s and '80s, with a lot of hit movies, but he could have been so much more. After his breakthrough role in Deliverance, he was offered the biggest roles in Hollywood. These included James Bond, R.P. in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Michael Corleone in The Godfather, and Han Solo in Star Wars. But he turned all those down. Bad decisions also involved studios that turned down movie projects that became classics for the thinnest of reasons, or no reason at all. Imagine greenlighting Howard the Duck after you passed on E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. Too much punctuation in the title? Read about these and plenty of other regrettable choices from Hollywood at Cracked. 

When European colonizers settled in Africa, they heard tales of an animal in the Congo that was made out of parts of other animals. That matched a lot of medieval fantasy, in which many creatures were described to be pastiches of more familiar animals. They didn't see this animal themselves. The story just seemed so fantastic they called it the "African unicorn," and dismissed it as a myth. You know, "pics or it didn't happen." The myth grew and spread to Europe long before the okapi was ever observed by white men and therefore deemed to be "real." Locals knew better all along, but they weren't seen as credible.

Dr. Emily Zarka tells us the tale of the African unicorn, and goes into detail on the history of mythical animals, real animals, and the weird paths taken in studying unfamiliar creatures not native to one's own region. The same disbelief occurred for the platypus, the giant squid, and gorillas. Some of these zoological "discoveries" are pretty recent, so who knows how many other legendary mythical animals may be yet found and studied.

The 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held Thursday night by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, at Boston University in Massachusetts. The awards honor and highlight research that may look ridiculous on the surface, but almost always has some underlying purpose in advancing the field of science. In other words, "Research that makes people laugh and then think." To be honest, many science studies are tiny parts of much bigger and more understandable projects. And even studies that don't lead to big breakthroughs all help to further our knowledge about the world. 

The theme for this year's ceremony was "Digestion." Indeed, many of the winning studies involved some form of digestion. The trophy, which is different every year, came in the shape of a stomach with happy and sad faces. A mini-opera titled The Plight of the Gastroenterologist was performed during the ceremony, and the five actual Nobel laureates present participated in non-singing roles. These Nobel laureates also read acceptance speeches by winners who could not attend. Continue reading for the winner's list.

Landon’s Animation Wheelhouse remade Back to the Future with computer animation, except it's wilder than you can imagine. Imagine those physics simulator traffic videos crossed with Grand Theft Auto starring our favorite time-traveling team.    

In this story, Doc drives like a maniac, so the Delorean's flux capacitor becomes damaged. They've lost the ability to pinpoint what date they are going to! Doc thinks he can fix it if he can get the part he needs, so he continues to drive like a maniac, causing massive mayhem on the roads. Along the way, they change history in ways that will make you laugh. It turns out that the Delorean is tough enough to endure a massive beating. Sure, it loses most of its exterior, but it continues to perform, unlike the real-life version of the automobile. And they do all this without dying. Don't think too much about it- it's just a cartoon. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

We are all familiar with CAPTCHAs that make us perform odd tasks that supposedly robots cannot do, like recognize a square or find a motorcycle a half mile down the road in a picture. We sometimes run into one that was surely made by a sadist who doesn't want any real humans to use whatever it is they're offering, either. 

Neal Agarwal of Neal.Fun (previously at Neatorama) made a game out of those CAPTCHAs to drive you mad without offering entrance to anything. A series of challenges starts out easy and get more difficult as they go. But they're also ridiculously funny. I only made it as far as a Where's Waldo? game because I never played that game and have no idea whether I picked too few or too many Waldos. Therefore, I have no idea how long this game really is. Play I'm Not a Robot, and let us know how far you got. -via kottke 

Would you make the decision to live forever if you could? You'd have time to do everything you ever wanted to do, but then what? Philosophers and ethicists have varying opinions. Sure, you could get bored, and you'd have to say goodbye to everyone over and over as they died, not to mention watching the love of your (present) life age while you stay 25 or whatever. Some would argue that time is only valuable to us because it is limited. 

Then there are further concerns in the YouTube comments. The proposition in this TED-Ed video says we wouldn't have to worry about death as immortals, but it does not specify whether we'd experience pain or hunger or mental illness. And to keep having adventures, we'd have to keep working to earn money. And we'd have to put up with the ups and downs of the civilization around us. Then when the earth dies out, we'd be stuck in space with nothing to do until the collapse of the universe. Maybe mortality isn't so bad after all.   

On September 17, 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia signed the final draft of the US Constitution. Since 1952, this date has been celebrated as Constitution Day. By law, all public schools that receive federal funding use this day to educate students about the Constitution. 

The US Constitution documented a framework for how the new nation was to be governed. Since a government ruled by its people instead of a king was a completely unique idea at the time, there were a lot of things to work out. The original document contains seven articles and is rather short, so you can read it in one sitting. Article V sets out how the Constitution could be amended to update the document or address issues not already covered. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 to clarify specifics of the people's freedom from government interference. Since then, another 17 amendments have been added to address issues such as slavery, voting rights, alcohol prohibition and repeal, and taxes. 

Schools, local governments, foundations, and other organizations are holding events across the country today to both teach and celebrate the US Constitution. You can attend one near you, or read about how the Constitution came about at Wikipedia in an article that is much, much longer than the Constitution itself.    

(Image credit: Howard Chandler Christy) 

Most of you know how you feel after a glass of wine. Or two, or three. But how do you look? These images are from Brazilian photographer Marcos Alberti as part of his ongoing series The Wine Project. Inspired  by the old saying, "The first glass of wine is all about the food, the second glass is about love and the third glass is about mayhem," Alberti invited friends to his studio, people from all walks of life. He took a picture when they first arrived, usually still stressed after work. He then offered wine, and took another picture after the first glass, then after two drinks, and finally after three glasses of wine. 

You can see some relaxation after one glass, and growing friendliness after the second. The third glass is a wild card, which can mean "mayhem." You can see plenty of these sets of four pictures at his website and at Instagram. -via Metafilter 


 

Math nerds love to take any opportunity to celebrate the mathematical beauty of a date. The way we keep track of days is a human-made system that has no bearing on the way the universe works, but we've done it for a long time and we may as well have fun with it. We observe Pi Day in March (3/14) and Square Root Day occasionally (3/3/09, 4/4/16 and 5/5/25). But today is also "a date of mathematical beauty." 

Written as 9/16/25 (as Americans do), today's date consists of three perfect squares. There won't be another date that does this until the next century. Mathematician Colin Adams points out that those particular squares are special because they are a Pythagorean triple, which illustrates the Pythagorean theorem: the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Adams explains how that happens on 9/16/25 at NPR.  

While we normally celebrate Pi Day by eating pie, Adams is celebrating Pythagorean Triple Square Day with the precisely-cut cakes shown above. We should all use this date as an excuse to eat cake, too. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Colin Adams)  

The castle known as Schloss Goldenstein in Austria was established as a convent and a school in 1877. The number of nuns dwindled over the years, and when the building was taken over by the Archdiocese of Salzburg and the Reichersberg Abbey in 2022, the decision was made to dissolve the convent (the school still exists). However, the few remaining nuns were granted the right to live there for the rest of their lives if their health allowed. The last three nuns, Sister Rita, Sister Regina, and Sister Bernadette were all in their 80s. In 2023, they were taken to a retirement facility, but they were not happy about it at all. 

https://t.co/Vke6We3kXS Enchanting story of octogenarian nuns on the run - should be filmed. As The Three Graces shows, you underestimate elderly women at your peril.

— Amanda Craig (@AmandaPCraig) September 13, 2025

So the nuns enlisted some of their former students to help them move back to the convent. They found the building locked, so they called a locksmith to let them in. We assume he had a hard time saying no to the elderly sisters. The convent no longer had electricity nor running water, but they felt at home again. You can imagine the archdiocese thought about evicting them again, but the nuns had many visitors and fans, and the publicity of kicking them out would not look good. Read about the rebellious nuns who just wanted to go home at BBC. -via kottke 

(Top image credit: Ricardalovesmonuments) 

If you are American, you should know that the biggest city in America is New York City, followed by Los Angeles and then Chicago. Many also know that Houston is the fourth largest. Pat yourself on the back. That list is ordered by population, the way most people define the size of a city. But what if we weren't talking about population, but about the area in the city limits? People already argue about that, since the huge Los Angeles metro area is made up of many smaller towns, and New York's population is only static because of city limits. In area, you might be surprised to learn that none of those four cities come anywhere near the biggest cities measured by area. I really don't want to tell you what they are, because that would ruin the surprise. 

Laurence Brown usually compares the US to Britain in his videos, but this one is just about the USA and the weirdness of the different ways the states define cities and draw city limits. For the purpose of this video, the difference between a city, a town, and a village doesn't even matter.