The What If? series from Randall Munroe and Henry Reich (previously at Neatorama) seeks to give serious answers to ridiculous theoretical questions. The most common question they receive, over and over, is "What would happen if the sun went out?" This is also a common question outside of the series, too. What they are actually asking is how long would it be before we all froze to death. The answer varies, because humans know how to keep warm up to a point. But we would lose our light, our food supplies, and pretty soon our orbit. Since those scenarios have been addressed all around the internet, Munroe and Reich decided to look at the bright side, as if there is one. The lack of a sun would actually solve some problems we have here on earth. Not that any of that makes up for freezing to death, but here you are anyway with a list of benefits from the sun ceasing to burn.

If you knew nothing about the invention of Graham crackers, you might assume that they were invented by someone named Graham- and you'd be right. Sylvester Graham was born in 1794, the youngest of 17 children. He was sickly all of his life, and had an idea that white bread, with its refined flour, extra ingredients, and preservatives, was not good for one's health. And so Graham developed a cracker that used only simple ingredients, including whole wheat bran. This Graham cracker didn't even have any sweeteners in it. It was part of a healthy living regimen that became known as the Graham Diet.

We now know that whole grains and fewer preservatives are healthier overall. But physical health wasn't Graham's main concern. He was a Presbyterian minister who believed that alcohol was ruination, and food that contained meat, fat, or spices promoted lustful thoughts and sexual perversion. Only a simple, bland diet would put the proper limits on such desires. These beliefs didn't appeal to the general public, and indeed, Graham crackers only became a sensation when Nabisco started putting honey in them. Read about Sylvester Graham and his quest for better morals and better health at All That's Interesting. -Thanks, WTM!

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Western movie Tombstone came out in 1993 and therefore never got an Honest Trailer until now. With the passing of Val Kilmer a couple of weeks ago, a lot of people are thinking about his portrayal of Doc Holliday in the movie, so it seems fitting that Tombstone can finally get an Honest Trailer.

There have been plenty of movies that told the story of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the OK Corral, including one of that exact title, because it's an exciting Old West tale that happens to be true. But Tombstone stands out among those movies for assembling a large cast of talented and attractive actors, moments that are less serious and even lean toward comedy, and for its historical accuracy, which is, of course, relative to other productions. Screen Junkies can't find much to criticize Tombstone for, but they do manage to shoehorn some jokes into this Honest Trailer.

Last month, we brought you a video about murderers who had been featured on television for something besides murder. That was not exactly a complete list. It's happened in the movies, too, when those involved in the production only found out much later that they'd been working with a murderer. Sometimes the murder came after the movie job, and sometimes they'd already committed the crime and just hadn't been caught yet. This happened to the cast of The Exorcist, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Felon. Plus there are two cases of a murderer on a TV series that didn't show up in the earlier video. One is about a Jeopardy! winner who went on to kill his wife, and the last case is a real mind blower- the murders happened to produce content for the television show! That complicated story and four others are all explained in a list at Cracked.

This shrimp is a go-getter! Watch him do all the things you wish you had time to do in a day -in only a minute. He gets up early so he can get his exercise, sports, and gaming in before he even fixes breakfast and then goes to work making other creative things. Afterward, downtime is party time with his shrimp friends! It's a full day, for sure, so I bet he doesn't get up quite so early the next morning.

This series of shrimp activities are all automata made by  Amedeo Capelli of Stoccafisso design (previously at Neatorama). Shrimp are far from the only thing he animates in wood, but he has quite a few of the little crustaceans in his collection of clever and whimsical automata. And they do all the things! Some of these shrimp (and other automata) are available at his Etsy shop. -via Geeks Are Sexy

We love medieval doodles, from meticulously illuminated manuscripts to ink paw prints, but especially the humorous images of rabbits and snails doing things you won't find in nature. You have to wonder about the circumstances that led to these bizarre drawings. Now we have the story of how one particular volume came to be emblazoned with such creatures plus the spitting image of Yoda.

The Smithfield Decretals is a copy of the Decretales of Pope Gregory IX. It was published in the 1230s in French, with wide blank margins that were meant for scholars to add their own notes. That's not what happened, though. Someone in England got the copy some time before 1340, and knowing that books are better with illustrations, hired artists to add pictures to the margins. It's possible that the owner could not read French, and maybe hoped the artists could. But the artists either couldn't read French, either, or they didn't care about the dry papal correspondence in the text. They just went with what they knew was funny, and that included giant hares and snails and scenes of gruesome violence. Read more about the Smithfield Decretals at Open Culture. -via Nag on the Lake

The RMS Titanic sank on the night of April 14-15, 1912, 115 years ago today. There were 2,240 people aboard, but only 705 were rescued alive when the RMS Carpathia responded to the distress call. Later on, the CS Mackay-Bennett was dispatched to recover the dead, and that ship picked up 306 of the deceased, many of whom were buried at sea. That left more than 1200 bodies unaccounted for.

Some of those missing bodies sank to the bottom of the ocean, but others floated for days and were found hundreds of miles away. Some were identified, others were too decomposed. The last known body to be retrieved for burial on land was finally laid to rest almost two months after the sinking of the Titanic. However, those that were buried without identification were given markers, and some were identified by DNA a hundred years later. Read the grim story of the Titanic victims who weren't retrieved in a timely manner at Smithsonian.

When we say a person has a big mouth, it means they talk too much or spill secrets they shouldn't. But some people really have mouths that are larger than normal. You can't tell that Marie Pearl Zellmer Robinson has a big mouth just by looking at her- until she opens it was wide as she can. The woman from Ketchikan, Alaska, has been named the world record holder for the biggest mouth gape (female), meaning the distance from top to bottom when her mouth is all the way open. The official measurement is 2.98 inches (7.59 centimeters). That doesn't tell you much, but look at all the things she can put in her mouth! A whole orange. A ten-patty burger. A metal can.

Robinson has known her mouth is superlative since she was a kid and her siblings challenged her to fit things in her mouth, but she only recently learned that Guinness World Records had a record for women with large mouth gapes. When she saw what the record was, she knew she had already beaten it. -via Boing Boing

The Easter Bunny is a symbolic holiday character that doesn't make a lot of sense. What does a bunny rabbit and colored eggs have to do with the resurrection of Jesus? Nothing, actually. We often assume that the Christian holiday just incorporated older pagan traditions for a spring holiday the same way that Saturnalia was repurposed for Christmas and Samhain gave us a date for All Saint's Day. Indeed, eggs are a symbol of rebirth and renewal, and rabbits are everywhere in the spring.

Only it turns out that the traditions associated with spring celebrations mainly concern hares, which are a different animal altogether even though they are related. And their connections with ancient pagan mythology? You might be surprised to learn the Easter bunny myth is certainly mythological, but it's not all that ancient. That bunny that brings colored eggs for Easter is more a fairy tale than an ancient tradition. Read about the real origins of the Easter bunny at Mental Floss. 

Back in 1990, a new show called Law & Order arrived on our televisions. Was it a police procedural or a courtroom drama? The concept was both. One crime got split into two dramas: the part where the police find the perpetrator (order), and then the court proceedings to prosecute them (law). It became such a hit that Law & Order lasted twenty years- and was then revived in 2022. But that's not all- the idea was so grand that spinoffs abounded, the same idea with different actors so they could be produced in abundance. Law & Order so far has six spinoff series, one television movie, and several crossover episodes with other TV shows.

We are used to seeing some version of Law & Order every time we check the TV listings. But 25 years later, it would be good to go over the show's origins and how it became an entertainment behemoth over time. Weird History has the scoop on Law & Order.

Instant ramen noodles are great when you're hungry, but a handmade bowl of artisanal ramen is a dream come true. In Japan, ramen is the ultimate the ultimate comfort food, with filling noodles, delectable pork or other meat, eggs, vegetables, and most importantly, the soup. The soup is the foundation for a bowl of ramen piled with noodles and extras that can be a work of art. That soup can vary widely and contain almost anything. In Rishiri Island, that means highlighting the taste of the local seaweed for a soup that people travel hours for. That's the first of three stories about Japanese ramen from Great Big Story. They also go over the history of instant ramen, which is how most Americans were introduced to it. And finally, we learn about Toyama black ramen, which is only available in Toyama. Warning: this video may cause hunger pangs. -via Geeks Are Sexy

We know how the Nazis operated a system of concentration camps across occupied territory, to incarcerate, use as slave labor, and execute millions of Jews. Each one had its own story, but the notorious Bergen-Belsen camp in northern Germany was different from all the others in many aspects. The history of the camp is often overshadowed by the shocking story of its liberation by the British on April 15, 1945. The Wiener Holocaust Library in London has a new exhibit called “Traces of Belsen” to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation.

When the Allies advanced on German-occupied territory toward the end of the war, the Nazis desperately tried to destroy all evidence of the Holocaust, which meant killing as many inmates as possible, but there were also evacuations, bringing thousands of Jews to Bergen-Belsen. The ballooning population was not fed, and overcrowding allowed diseases like typhus to run rampant. More than 18,000 prisoners died in March of 1945 alone, although none were executed. When liberation came, the British found 55,000 emaciated prisoners among thousands more dead bodies.

But that horrifying event is just part of Bergen-Belsen's history. It was also a POW camp where thousands of Russians died, then a holding place for Jewish hostages to be swapped for German prisoners, a hospital camp, a death camp without death chambers, and finally a postwar displaced persons shelter. Read about this unique concentration camp at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: The Imperial War Museum)

At one-time in the past, you would hear about bear-proof garbage bins, but no one uses the term bear-proof anymore because you'll see. The best we can do is to call them bear-resistant. But bears don't even like that term, as ambiguous as it is. Anchorage Solid Waste Services is trying to design garbage bins that are more bear-resistant than previous bins. How are they doing? To find out, the agency took their latest design to the nearby Alaska Zoo. The bins were placed in the grizzly bear enclosure, and the bears thought these were wonderful new enrichment toys. Mind you, these bears are well-fed and not desperate to get into the bins. They're just having fun.  

But then I thought, why does a zoo in Alaska have bears? Doesn't Alaska have plenty of bears? Well, it turns out that the Alaska Zoo, the only zoo in Alaska, specializes in local and arctic animals. They began as a shelter for injured and orphaned wildlife, and the zoo's origin story is really interesting. -via Born in Space

Psychologist B.F. Skinner was an expert in behaviorism, and was also a prolific author and inventor. He invented what became known as the Skinner box, in which an animal subject could be trained by a system of rewards. But that had nothing to do with another of his inventions, which he called the "air crib." When Skinner's second daughter Deborah was born, he and his wife Yvonne designed a modern crib for her that was revolutionary. It was higher than normal, so a parent didn't have to stoop down to reach the baby. It was enclosed, with a glass front, and had temperature and ventilation controls plus a dust filter. The linen on the mattress was on a roller, so it could be changed with a simple crank. A few hundred families used the air crib with reportedly good results. Skinner wrote about the crib for Ladies Home Journal in 1945.

But it never really caught on, mainly because of Skinner's reputation as an experimental psychologist and the association of the crib with the Skinner box. News stories said that Deborah was raised in the crib, although she spent no more time in it than any baby would in a traditional crib. The idea smacked of automated parenting, even though Skinner's (and Yvonne's) goal was to reduce the drudgery of parenting an infant while providing a healthy environment. And that's somewhat of a shame, because now we know that widespread use of the air crib might have saved many babies' lives by preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Read about the concepts behind the air crib that turned out to be the right idea at The Los Angeles Review of Books. -via Strange Company

The band OK Go has a catalog of songs on generic subjects that are all quite pleasant but not earth-shattering. However, they will go down in history for their videos, which are not only clever but so meticulously choreographed that they should be classified as dancers as well as musicians. In other words, the videos themselves are an art form. The video for their new single "Love" (as generic a title as it gets) is all about mirrors and the kaleidoscopic effects they produce, with the aid of precisely-timed robots. It's a feast for your eyes. And the song is rather nice, too.

If you're interested and have 20 minutes to spare, you can see a behind-the-scenes video about the making of the "Love" video. But as a commenter said, you can just watch the music video itself and see exactly how they accomplished each scene in the video and it's still amazing. -via Laughing Squid