Every war gives us horrific casualties and medical advances. In World War I, doctors were able to save many soldiers whose faces were permanently disfigured, which led to breakthroughs in plastic surgery pioneered by Dr. Harold Gillies. But plastic surgery was in its infancy, and most veterans with facial disfigurements and missing features couldn't get such reconstruction. Into the void stepped Anna Coleman Ladd. The renowned sculptor leveraged her physician husband's connections in the Red Cross in order to go to France to help soldiers who had lost noses, jaws, ears, and other facial features to the war.

Ladd opened her "Studio for Portrait-Masks" in Paris in 1917, where she custom-made meticulously fitted and painted masks for veterans to wear that gave them a more normal appearance. Many of these men were able to set foot out of their homes for the first time with their masks, and went on to re-integrate with their communities. Read Ladd's story and see some of her work at Danny Dutch. -via Strange Company

Perception is the way we experience the world. Our perception is made up of the signals that come into our bodies through our eyes, ears, and other sensory organs, but is also made up of our brain's interpretation of those signals. We know that the way light comes into our eyes should be upside-down, but our brains unscramble those signals to match the world around us. That's just the beginning of the ways our brains change the incoming signals to be useful instead of confusing and overwhelming. The brain uses present signals to predict the future, so quickly that we never notice what we are doing. Kurzgesagt explains some of the chores your brain does at the microsecond scale, which is a lot, and it makes us wonder how we ever have time and brain power left over to just think (as we normally think of it) and make conscious decisions. This video is about 9:40- the rest is promotional. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Henry Rosenthal counts his cattle by the head, so when he says he has 50 head of cattle, he actually means 25 stuffed calves with two heads each. Those are the ones that have undergone taxidermy treatment. He also has preserved fetuses, skeletal remains, and a ton of ephemera and art devoted to two-headed calves and a few other animals. You can find them at the Two-Headed Calf MOOseum in San Francisco. Rosenthal became fascinated with polycephaly -a condition in which an embryo begins to split into twins, but doesn't fully separate- in his 20s when he saw a two-headed calf, and soon after he got a chance to purchase a stuffed specimen. His collection became a museum, or moo-seum, as the 2020 pandemic was taking off. The stuffed calves were joined by photographs, newspaper accounts, paintings, drawings, and figurines, all portraying calves born with two heads.  

Want to visit the Two-Headed Calf MOOseum? It's only open by appointment, but that's easily arranged if you are going to San Francisco. Or you can see what they have and learn the story behind the collection at Atlas Obscura.

Jareth was found wandering, abandoned, and came into the care of Life With Pigs Farm Animal Sanctuary. He proved to be, shall we say, hormonally blessed. Ryan and Mallory took him in, but he quickly decided that Mallory should be his mate. Not gonna happen, so the couple introduced Jareth to their hen. Jareth was all for that, but the hen didn't want to have anything to do with Jareth. You have to wonder whether the rooster's over-eager behavior was the reason he was abandoned in the first place. Twice shot down, Jareth then made friends with another rooster named Billy, and they were very happy together until Billy died. Poor lonely Jareth was then brought in the house, where he could sleep with the three pigs. Over time, though, Jareth built a new relationship with a rooster named Sebastian, and we hope that he's happy. You can keep up with Jareth and the other sanctuary animals at the Life With Pigs Instagram page.

Wild pigs moved out of Asia and into the Middle East and Europe long, long ago. THe number of pig bones found at archaeological sites indicate that they were eaten by all kinds of people thousands of years ago, although that varied who was domesticating and raising them. Pigs were limited to those who could afford sturdier pens than those required for sheep or goats. On the other hand, pigs presented advantages in cities, since pigs will eat anything, including garbage, and don't need grassy fields. But then, during a period when pork consumption was pretty low already compared to other livestock, the Hebrews enacted a ban on eating pork. Hundreds of years later, Islam also prohibited pork because pigs are considered unclean. Hinduism has no specific restriction on pork, but many Hindus avoid it because of the pig's unclean reputation.

However, these restrictions were never universally observed. And scholars still argue over why the ban on pork was instituted in the first place. Read what archaeologists have discovered about the history of pigs and pork consumption at Archaeology magazine. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Alexandr frolov)

And now for something completely different! Special effects artist Peter Quinn collaborated with Monty Python's John Cleese to create a semi-animated tribute to Cleese's career. I don't know if this had anything to do with the 50th anniversary of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail coming up on April 3rd, but the wealth of references to that movie makes me believe it was at least a valid excuse to make this video. Holy Grail fans will laugh at just the hint of the scenes featuring the French Taunter, Tim the Enchanter, and of course, the Black Knight. Monty Python fans will recognize bits from other eras, too, including an obviously dead parrot and that big foot. For the few who have no idea who John Cleese nor Monty Python are, this collage of nonsense will still be funny, in a violent Three Stooges kind of way. -via Laughing Squid

Imagine, if you will, a science fiction sitcom set in the future (of course), starring a robot with a strange foreign accent. The comedy comes from the robot's inept handling of his job. This was the premise of the 1977 television pilot Stick Around. And it was also the plot of the 1994 pilot LAX 2194. I don't know what else they had in common, but neither one was ever slotted as an actual series. They are two of the seven weirdest TV pilots ever made. Two of them are judged to have been great, but we never got to see the series executed, while the others only have a reputation for being awful. For some reason, Heil Honey I'm Home wasn't included, probably because they actually produced eight episodes before it was canceled after the pilot aired. The seven strange pilots listed at Cracked all have video evidence of one kind or another.    

Water, water everywhere, and nary a drop to drink. That's the ocean, and it's pretty big. Even if you're stranded out in the middle of the sea, you can't drink seawater, because it's so salty that it can poison your body. Most of the water on earth is seawater, and with climate change, fresh water is getting somewhat scarce in places where people need it. That's why there are more and more desalination plants every year, working to provide fresh drinking water but also contributing to the problem by using fossil fuels. Meanwhile, if you ever find yourself stranded out at sea, this TED-Ed lesson has a few tips on how to obtain fresh water, either from rain or dew, or from the blood and organs of certain sea creatures. To the person who doesn't have it, fresh water is more valuable than anything.   

People will argue about the origins of food, and hamburgers are no different. And if you're looking for the oldest hamburger restaurant in America, the White Mana Diner arguably has the provenance to claim the title. It originated in 1939, not as a real restaurant, but as an exhibit at the World's Fair that demonstrated how one could make a hamburger dinner while standing in one spot, using a huge griddle and a precisely designed system. That was impressive, and in 1946, the building was transported to Jersey City, New Jersey, and became the White Mana Diner. It's been in operation ever since.

But the diner itself is not as interesting as its owner Mario Costa. He began working at the White Mana in 1972 as a teenager, and within seven years bought the business. But he also bought rental houses in the neighborhood, another restaurant with a bar, and a gym. Costa offers the gym free of charge to neighborhood kids so they can box instead of getting in trouble doing something else. He once managed Mike Tyson, and still keeps Tyson's pigeons on his roof. Costa is a community hub unto himself, overseeing all his businesses every day, and making hamburgers at the White Mana Diner. Read a fascinating profile of a young man who made good, and now works to give back to the community, at Eater.

(Image credit: Paul Lowry)

You probably noticed the price of, well, everything, going up and up and up. We've heard plenty of explanations, like bird flu for eggs, supply and demand for housing, corporate greed for other stuff, supply chain issues, tariffs, etc. etc. But have we considered monopolies? Sure, monopolies are technically illegal, and so is price-fixing collusion between different companies, but modern technology in the form of algorithms run by third-party services can skip around that and produce the same result. Sam from Half as Interesting explains how that can happen with the example of french fries. He can do this because there is blatant documentary evidence of what's going on to make all our french fries so much more expensive, but this can happen in any industry. And if it happens with America's favorite vegetable, you know it must be going on with other foods and everyday expenses. This video is only 5:55, the rest is an ad.

The Medici family built a banking company that brought them great power in Renaissance Italy. They were of the merchant class and were not elevated to nobility until the 16th century, after which they produced several popes and monarchs. The Medicis also suffered from probably hereditary conditions that caused major joint pain and other problems.  

In 1565, Duke Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned the building of an elevated passageway connecting his residence, the Palazzo Pitti, with the seat of Florence's government, the Palazzo Vecchio. This enclosed passageway, called the Vasari Corridor, is about a kilometer long and snakes around other buildings on its way. The overt purpose of this private passageway was to allow the Medicis to commute without having to mix with the lower class rabble on the streets, and to hide them from potential assassins. However, Ex Urbe makes the case that the Vasari Corridor was also a disability access ramp, the world's largest, that enabled the Medicis to be pulled by donkey cart or carried by servants without being seen. Several of the passageway's features indicate that purpose if you know how the rich of the Middle Ages dealt with disabling infirmities. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Dror Feitelson)

This visualization of the earth's ocean currents is from NASA’s ECCO (Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean) Group, and uses data and models from all kinds of different sources. Your first impression may be like mine, when you saw The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh in the different swirling shades of blue. Not only do we have global ocean currents moving mostly east, they are surrounded at different depths by circular eddies and whirlpools of all sizes. Water likes to go around in a circle. All this movement is powered by the rotation of the earth, weather patterns, and temperature differences. As the weather affects the ocean's movements, those movements also affect the weather around the globe. It's as if there were a whole system underneath sea level that refreshes the earth by moving water, salt, and heat to other places all the time. Because that's exactly what happens. -via Geeks Are Sexy

We can assume that author Oscar Wilde's actual testicles are with the rest of his body, buried under a huge limestone memorial in Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery. The mystery is about the celebrated testicles that came with the stone figure carved into the 9 foot by 11 foot memorial over the grave. The statue, by sculptor Jacob Epstein, is of a winged man flying in a semi-prone position. In 1912, the statue's testicles were so shocking that cemetery officials covered the memorial stone with a tarp. After a court battle with Epstein, the tarp was removed but a bronze plaque covered the testicles. The plaque was later stolen. The statue was again covered in a tarp for some time. Then in 1961, the limestone testicles themselves were stolen. Rumor had it that the testicles were sent back, but were then used as paperweights by a cemetery employee. Meanwhile, visitors were kissing the memorial so much that a glass barrier was added. Read the long and winding story of Oscar Wilde's memorial stone and the testicles no one can see, at Mental Floss.  -via Strange Company

Twin Peaks, Lost, Stranger Things, Black Mirror, Russian Doll, Severance... there have been an awful lot of TV series that play with your mind by thoroughly confusing you. You either stick with it to find out if everything will eventually make sense, or you dump out because it seems like just too much effort to keep up. You start to wonder if the producers themselves keep up with all the details, and years later there are internet discussions about whether certain parts have been thoroughly explained. There are also shows that try to do all this in one episode, like The Twilight Zone (it will never be done better). These are called "mind bending shows." Alasdair Beckett-King has noticed the proliferation of such television shows, and also noticed they have certain things in common, so he had to do his own version. His show nails them all in 84 seconds, including the surprise ending.

By now you've heard of the "catio," an extensive cage built out into your yard that lets your cats experience the great outdoors while staying corraled and protected. While a catio is a big project, the Philadelphia Zoo has taken the concept to another level by constructing Zoo360, a mesh-enclosed network of walkways that allow diverse animals like monkeys and tigers to roam the zoo, safe from visitors, but able to see and be seen by visitors. Zoo360 allows the creatures to explore, exercise, and get their bearings in space, while safely being separated from humans. It's quite a sight to see, as the zoo residents pass through crowds and overhead as well. While the animals take their walks, you can stand in one place and see many different animals go by, under their own agency. That's a catio taken to extreme! -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Philadelphia Zoo)