The movie Gladiator II came out Thanksgiving week last year, a full 24 years after the original, and might as well have been called Gladiator: The Next Generation. It lacked both the originality of the first movie and Russell Crowe. But audiences flocked to theaters to see it, which proves that after 24 years, you can release the same movie again because no one cares about the first one. They introduced novelty into the story by making some characters and scenarios extra bizarre, whether that's historically accurate or not, because historical accuracy doesn't win awards or sell movie tickets. Besides all that, the highlight of Gladiator II was the villain, played by Denzel Washington, who stole the show for himself. And it has plenty of the violence that audiences crave. Screen Junkies pulls apart Gladiator II so you can decide after all this time whether it's something you might want to watch.

Back in the days when we had a lot of patent medicine but few actual cures, there arose one that was rather well-known even though no one talked about it. Redditor little_pwrlftr moved into a very old house and found Orange Lily vaginal suppositories in her attic. Asking about them online, she got a lot of information, including a link-heavy comment from historian gerardmenfin that tells the story.

Orangne Lily was supposed to cure womb diseases of all kinds, including "leucorrhoea, painful periods, irregularities, cancers in their earlier stages, tumors, displacements, lacerations and all ovarian troubles." Usually a medicine effective against such a broad list of maladies would be rumored to also cure pregnancy, and the product would be used as an abortifacient, although probably without much success.

Orange Lily was invented by Dwight Merriman Coonley in South Bend, Indiana, in the 1880s. It started out as a copy of Orange Blossom suppositories, which contained chlorophyl, starch, glycerine, petrolatum, borax, talc, cocoa, and soap. That doesn't sound like it would help any medical problem. Eventually, Orange Lily would also contain chloretone, which is a brand name for chlorobutanol, which is "a preservative, sedative, hypnotic and weak local anesthetic." In that iteration, Orange Lily may have been somewhat useful against bacteria and fungus, as well as pain. These suppositories were actually available in Canada up into the 1960s!

Several photographs at reddit show us the instructions for use and the testimonials that accompanied this medicine.  

KC and the Sunshine Band was big in the disco era because their music, while not all that lyrically  profound, was infinitely danceable. Their 1975 song "That's the Way (I Like It)" topped the Billboard chart twice and became an international hit. It would be easy to mash it up with another hit song, but which one?

DJ Cummerbund went on tour with KC and the Sunshine Band a couple of years ago (yes, they are still working) and had plenty of time to contemplate this mashup. He didn't want to decide between the many songs that could be set to that classic disco beat, so he used all of them. That's why this mashup is credited to Everybody and the Sunshine Band. He isn't kidding about everybody. The singing comes from such diverse musicians as Aerosmith, Dolly Parton, Nine Inch Nails, Hall and Oates, Crazytown, System of a Down, TLC, Bon Jovi, Coolio, and a few other artists who might really surprise you. This is the one song you should save for your daily dance workout, because you won't be bored. -via Laughing Squid

When you see a face where there is no face, you'd prefer it to look a little more cheerful than this, wouldn't you? This image wasn't generated by artificial intelligence, nor was it Photoshopped; it was taken from the air above Antarctica. You can see it on Google Earth. Is it the face of an alien or a demon? Redditor Technical_Captain_15 tells us the face resembles "Ahriman, the cold satanic force of materialism and nihilism." See the illustration here. Most commenters said it's pareidolia, which is the tendency for humans to see faces where there is no face. This is a snowy mountainside with crevasses where the eyes and mouth would be, and that makes it a face for humans, who have a vested interest in recognizing faces. But if it's not a face, it's a surely anguished snowy mountainside. See several pictures and the discussion at reddit. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Taylor and J.T. are middle school students, the age when boys are flooded with testosterone and are still easily impressed by what they see on TV and the internet. When the screen says "Don't try this at home," that registers as a challenge instead of a plain English command. Their attempts to recreate a stunt they saw in a video land them in "Xtremesylvania," a place that belongs only to those who take insane risks. But is Xtremesylvania a version of the afterlife, or a dream, or is it a hallucination spurred by a concussion? Is it real or imaginary, or maybe just a plot device? Your opinion will change as you watch the story unfold.

Charlie Hankin (previously at Neatorama) brings us the short film Xtremesylvania to get a look inside what young men go through trying to prove themselves to the world, to their own self, and to their peers. -via the Awesomer

If You Ever See This Speed Sign, You’re Probably Going To Diehttps://t.co/0IuMMiKODv

— The Autopian (@the_autopian) January 11, 2025

It's been some time since the end of the Cold War, and memories of always expecting a nuclear Armageddon are fading, possibly too fast for our actual safety. Even for those who recall those days, there are certain signs, literally, of the preparations made by our government for the unthinkable. Even far-flung agencies like the Department of Transportation made plans for what happens after the bombs drop.

In the 1961 edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, a catalog of official road signs, you'll find plenty of familiar signs, but you'll also find some signs that may be confusing. Once you know what they're for, it may send a shiver up your spine. For example, the sign in the image above was to be deployed in case of a nuclear war. It was to designate that you are driving through a radioactive area. Read the story behind the sign and those of others at The Autopian.  -via Metafilter

When a TV series is very good, you expect it to be renewed for a second, third, or fifteenth season, and sometimes the quality suffers in later seasons. But there are also series that were perfect despite being short, or more likely because they were short. Andor is so critically acclaimed that it could easily be renewed for several seasons, but the second season will be its last, because it's a prequel and will eventually run into the timeline of the movie it spun off from. The classic 1970s British show Fawlty Towers only had 12 episodes in total, because each episode was so painstakingly constructed that it could take four months to get it ready to air. The Queen's Gambit was a complete story told in seven TV episodes, which we used to call a miniseries. And believe it or not, there have been a couple of great shows that were canceled quickly. All these really shouldn't be compared to each other, but as a list, they serve as a recommendation for something you can binge on without committing too much of your future. Read a list of 21 short-lived but perfect TV series at Cracked. There are video clips.

If you saw a large and sometimes dangerous animal fall through the ice into a freezing lake, would you know what to do? Lucky for this moose, a group of loggers who saw her break through the ice knew exactly what to do. They couldn't lift her, because that would require a crane. Even a relatively small moose will weigh several hundred pounds. But they could encourage her to move in the right direction by cutting the ice just so. Yeah, this brings up the danger of one or more of the men falling through the ice, too, but apparently they knew just how far they could go. If any of them actually got wet, they didn't release any evidence. The marvelous moose maneuver saved the day, and the moose cow walked away with the advice to make and fire a get warmed up. There's no report of whether that happened, but the campfire story she would have brought to such an event would surely impress the other moose.

On the second of February every year, we pretend that a groundhog can tell us what kind of weather we will have for the next six weeks. That's when a groundhog is supposed to come out of hibernation and either walk around or else become frightened by his shadow and scurry back underground. Since finding a wild groundhog in February is not easy (they usually come out of hibernation in March), my mother told me long ago that we can just assume that if February 2 is sunny, he will see his shadow, and if that date is cloudy, the groundhogs will stay out. However, to celebrate the holiday, we have groundhogs in all parts of the country that are kept in captivity just for this forecast.

Groundhogs have no real expertise in weather forecasting, but some happen to be better than others. The folks at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) decided to rate them. They selected for the ranking 17 prominent groundhogs that have been predicting weather for at least twenty years, although we don't have to take that seriously; we know groundhogs are replaceable, and besides, three of the contenders have been given the taxidermy treatment and are still making predictions. Also in the running was a weather-forecasting tortoise and one statue that is purported to predict weather. They were studied and ranked for their accuracy between the years 2005 and 2024. You can find information about these groundhogs linked in this database. Who is the top weather-predicting groundhog? It isn't Punxsutawney Phil, who was featured in the movie. In fact, Phil came in close to the bottom. Nor was it the statue, which did rather well, considering. See the results of this study at NOAA. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Cephas)

Mammals walk, birds fly, and fish swim. But fish are restricted to swimming where there's water to live in. How did fish ever get to lake high up on mountainsides? Lake Titicaca is 12,507 feet above sea level, and it has many kinds of fish. That lake's water comes from glacial runoff and rain, but where did the fish come from? Even small mountain lakes have fish, and there have even been cases of fish living in lakes that dry up every year.

MinuteEarth gives us three possible scenarios in which fish from far away can end up living in isolated lakes, and the most likely scenario for a random mountain lake is also the most bizarre. Yes, those fish were taken there by another animal, one who is not restricted in its travel. Like Dr. Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, life, uh, finds a way. This video is only 2:40; the rest is an ad.

Our earth acts like a living thing, with the seasons, the weather and water cycle, and geothermic activity always moving about. You might get the idea that Mars is a dead planet, but it also has its movements that vary by season, and that includes geysers. These geysers aren't spewing water, though- they are explosions of carbon dioxide, which makes up 95% of the thin Martian atmosphere.

In the Martian winter, the CO₂ freezes to a solid around the poles. When the warmth of the sun returns in spring, the CO₂ closest to the planet's surface sublimates and expands into gas, while the topmost layer is still frozen. The pressure breaks through in weaker spots, creating geysers spewing carbon dioxide at speeds up to 160 km/h! The geysers also contain dark grains of sand from the surface, so they leave distinctive patterns behind that resemble spiders. The pressure can also form tunnels under the frozen CO₂. The surface features are called araneiform terrain or spider terrain. The illustration above is an artist's impression of Martian geysers in action: see real pictures of the terrain left behind along with an explanation of how they happen at Universe Today. -via Real Clear Science

(Image credit:  NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University/Ron Miller)

It may be hard to believe, but these people had a snowball fight in 1897 while being filmed in Lyon, France. The action was captured by the Lumière brothers, pioneers in the new art of motion pictures. It looks as if Hollywood made a period film and the latest technology captured it as if we were right there with them. But don't be fooled. While the snowball fight was in 1897, the one-minute film titled Bataille de neige by the Lumière brothers didn't look like this at all. It was in black-and-white, with high contrast, with the quick stuttering movements typical of the time. Of course, it didn't have music, either. You can see the original here, although there has surely been some deterioration from what audiences in France saw in 1897.

The footage from the Lumière brothers was reprocessed by "a Russian amateur film restorer" in 2020 using artificial intelligence to make it seem more modern. The motion was smoothed out, gaps were filled in, and somewhat later color was added. Yet it's still people from 1897 throwing those snowballs, which makes you wonder how they would feel having a synthetic director "correcting" their movements. And lest you think this is a slice-of-life documentary from 1897, that's not the story, either. These were actors putting on a show for the movies. We can imagine that people in the Victorian era might have had fun like this, but they would have been suspicious of a motion picture camera. -via Mental Floss

Australia's greatest folk hero was Ned Kelly, who was a habitual criminal from a young age, but really made a name for himself in 1878 when he and his brother Dan has a run-in with police that left three officers dead. Kelly spend the next two years on the run, while his exploits impressed the populace and the reward for his capture grew higher and higher.

Kelly considered himself to have been mistreated by police, which many other Australians could relate to. During a bank robbery, he destroyed evidence of mortgages and other debts, which gained more fans. Kelly became a hero to the poor and downtrodden and was admired for striking back against wealthy landowners and corrupt authority figures. The story of Ned Kelly had a particularly dramatic climax when he and his gang endured eleven hours of police gunfire. Officers started to believe Kelly was un-killable, until they saw that the gang had fashioned homemade suits of heavy metal armor that made them resemble robots. That vision of Kelly made him an icon of resistance against authority. Read the story of Ned Kelly at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Chensiyuan)

Coming up Sunday we have the only holiday dedicated to a rodent. Groundhog Day is actually about the weather, which we are more interested in than rodents this time of year, but in the United States, we have designated the groundhog as the animal most likely to forecast the weather for the rest of the winter.

The species Marmota monax goes by many names, but they are mostly called groundhogs these days, especially since that 1993 movie made the creature world famous. Groundhogs have been important in science, but not so much in meteorology. Groundhogs aren't all that great at weather forecasting. However, they have made a name in archaeology, since they are experts at digging, and in medical research, where they shine as research subjects. Savannah Geary of SciShow explains how valuable groundhogs really are. There's a 40-second ad at 3:33. The video actually ends at 8:32, but you'll be glad you continued watching after that. It will eventually make sense, except for that part where she takes a swig of what appears to be pickle juice.

Hachiogi Cemetery is in Hachioji, a municipality on the far west side of Tokyo. Like many public places in Japan, it has a public phone in a glass booth available to anyone who needs it, at the edge of the cemetery on Miyama-dori Avenue. But the Hachioji Cemetery Phone Booth is famous for being haunted.

Those who use the phone booth are said to be surprised by a woman suddenly in the booth with them. Or they pick up the phone and hear a woman moaning sorrowfully. Or they are led to the phone booth by a mysterious child who suddenly appears with the woman. However this apparition manifests itself, one is advised to leave the booth immediately and do not look back. Or else what? That part isn't explained all that well. Maybe we haven't heard from anyone who did look back. Survivor's bias, you know. Read more about this haunted phone booth at the Ghost in My Machine. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Google Street View)