We all learned about Prohibition, when alcohol was illegal, but people drank it anyway because to many, it was a necessary part of life. Less well-known, but following the same logic, earlier laws against birth control were flouted regularly. In America, the Comstock laws went into effect in 1873, banning the trade in "obscene materials" which included not only pornography, but also birth control, abortifacients, and any information about them. But all that did was drive such information underground. Birth control methods of the time weren't nearly as effective as they are today, but they were something. Women talked about them over the back fence or in their parlors, to avoid any written materials that might lead to arrest. But they were also available for sale to those who knew how to decode language designed to toe the letter of the law.  

Every day, across the nation, ads for abortion and birth control appeared in newspapers. Readers just had to know what to look for. “Women had to get creative” about how to get that information out, said Rendina. It was “restoring the menses,” not an abortion. It was “getting rid of a blockage,” or “cleansing the uterus. They came up with all these ridiculous euphemisms.”

A perusal of newspapers from this period shows advertisements for “Mother’s helper” or “Portuguese female pills,” medicine for those “laboring under the suppression of their natural illness,” “renovating pills from Germany” and the like.

Read about the whisper network in which women passed along such information when it was illegal at Atlas Obscura.

Which is better, old Batman or new Batman? The Caped Crusader has come a long way from from the campy style of the mid-'60s Batman. Now he's a dark, brooding, action-not-words type of superhero. Corridor saw the new movie The Batman and asked, why not both? And that's why we now have a version of The Batman with Adam West stepping in for Robert Pattinson. But that's not all- the Penguin and the Riddler have traveled through time to menace our hero as well. The worst thing about this mashup is that it could have been twice as long, and that's something you rarely say about a YouTube video these days. -via Digg

Anna Albertine Olga Brown was born in 1858, just one year before Jules Leotard invented the flying trapeze. Brown's parents must have been circus people, as she started performing at age nine. Under the name Miss Lala (or La La), she walked the high wire and flew on a trapeze, but what really astonished audiences was her iron jaw act. She was often elevated to the trapeze on a pulley, which she held onto with her teeth. This tiny Black woman with amazing strength could hold up the weight of a man with her teeth while suspended upside-down on a rope. She could even hold the weight of a 200-pound cannon- with her teeth! Miss Lala caught the attention of artist Edgar Degas, who in 1879 enshrined her in his only circus painting, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando. Over a 20-year career, she performed at venues such as the Folies Bergère in Paris and the Royal Aquarium in London, and all over Europe under various stage names. Read about Olga Brown, Miss Lala, at Messy Nessy Chic.

In the town of Funchal on the island of Madiera in Portugal, workers once used wooden sledges to transport lumber down the mountains to the cities and ports. Once easier cargo transport was developed, the sledges were repurposed for tourists. The hills are just as steep as they ever were, but now the sledges are fitted with wicker couches for people to ride while being pushed downhill at terrifying speeds by Carreiros do Monte. Why is it terrifying? Because you're sliding downhill on a public road with traffic and no seatbelt. What a thrill! Tom Scott tried it out so you don't have to. But if you want to, the Carreiros do Monte will be greasing the skids and resoling their shoes for you.

Tom sure gets around, but you have to admit he's put in the work to get there. He's come a long way from soaking his fingers in pineapple puree and throwing drums off a cliff.

As many times as I've written and posted about serial killers, the world always has more crime and depravity. I'd never heard of Jesse Pomeroy until this past weekend, and now here's a list of fifteen serial killers who you probably aren't all that familiar with. Some of them flew under your radar because their crimes happened in some other country, and some of them were cases that were concluded before you were born. There are still others that should have made national news, but didn't for some reason, or else they are just relatively forgettable -of course, unless you know one of their victims. They range from the clearly psychotic to war criminals to a convenient way to collect someone else's pension checks. We've posted about a couple of these fifteen before, but there's plenty to learn in a list of serial killers at Cracked. Each killer has links to read more about them.

You know Pachelbel's Canon in D; we've posted about it enough. It provides a steady and pleasant basis for many popular songs you've heard. Well, pleasant unless you are a cellist. But pianist Hiromi Uehara performs the classic tune in ways you've never heard. It starts out in the most familiar manner, but gradually she adds jazz elements while keeping the basic bass line intact.  

Tony Williams transcribed Uehara's improvised performance so you can follow the insanity of what's she's doing in real time underneath the performance video. Note how she skillfully adds a half-beat at around the two-minute mark in order to synch the music with the offbeat clapping from the audience. She also alters her prepared piano during the song. The metal ruler gives it a harpsichord sound, but changing it while playing can't be easy. Even if you don't read musical notation, the narrative comments on the transcript add to the experience. -via reddit

In 1874, a 14-year-old boy named Jesse Pomeroy was arrested and convicted of murder in Massachusetts for the deaths of two children. He was also suspected of assaulting at least half a dozen other children, and possibly more murders. Donna Wells, a former archivist at the Boston Police Department, writes about how she fairly randomly found a photograph of Pomeroy (above), which ends up being the only known photograph of Pomeroy as a teenager. His crimes were pretty chilling.

When fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874 for the murder of Horace Millen, he was thought to have tortured at least six children and tortured and murdered two more. The two murder victims, ten-year-old Katie Curran and four-year-old Horace Millen had both been stabbed and nearly decapitated. Katie also had a fractured skull and several broken bones. Horace had also been nearly castrated, had one eyeball deeply pierced, and been set on fire. The victims that had managed to survive his attacks had suffered whippings, stabbings, beatings, which included broken noses and split lips, vicious bites to the face and buttocks, attempted castration, and attempted scalping. At the time of his arrest for Horace Millen’s murder, Jesse’s reputation in Boston as the “Boy Torturer” was firmly established.

Read how the photograph was found and identified at Murder by Gaslight. But you really want to find out what happened to the 14-year-old killer, and you can read that at Wikipedia. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Donna Wells)

When you see how this gadget moves, you can't help but say "whoa!" JK Brickworks calls it "unconventional, impractical, and completely awesome," so he had to make one of his own out of LEGO blocks. The original was the Bear Mobill toy from Bandai, but the LEGO version gives us a close-up look at how it's designed, constructed, and why it works. Just checking out what makes it go is a lesson in physics. Once he got the first version moving, he started working on the taller "Imperial" version, which isn't finished, but already resembles an AT-AT from the Star Wars universe. Yeah, while this contraption does not solve any transport problems for the real world, it makes a fascinating toy, which means it's perfect for Star Wars. After all, the AT-AT is totally impractical but looked so cool in the movies that we didn't care. -via Laughing Squid

When you're a wildlife photographer, the goal is to blend in with your surroundings, so that you don't scare off the animals 😂

🔊 sound up
credit: pets_usa pic.twitter.com/uLpEiJWA95

— Jess 🌻 (@jessi_asli) April 8, 2022

South African photographer, videographer, guide, and conservationist Nick Kleer was apparently the "high ground" that meerkats look for to stand up on and get a good look at the surrounding terrain. Here's another look at Kleer's new friends that higlight how tiny these animals really are.



See Kleer's photos of lions, leopards, elephants, and more at Instagram. -via Everlasting Blort

People who work in tropical tourist spots will tell you that monkeys love to finish off anyone's drink if they step away from from it for even a minute. The idea that monkeys seek out fermented fruit for its alcohol content in the wild has been around for quite some time, and now researchers are documenting it.  

Christina Campbell and Victoria Weaver's research on monkeys and their alcohol intake illustrates the difficulty of studying primates in the wild. Campbell, Weaver, and their team followed a troop of monkeys all day long, with the monkeys swinging through the treetops eating fruit, and the humans trudging up and down hills and retrieving the discarded fruit after the monkeys took a bite or two. And then they got urine samples from the monkeys, which shows a real dedication to science.  

What they found is that monkeys do prefer fruit that is fermented, and that they indeed metabolize the alcohol these fruits contain. They are deliberately seeking out alcohol in the foods they select. But while this shows alcohol-seeking behavior is natural and not limited to humans, the monkeys rarely get drunk. Analysis of their diet and their urine shows that over the course of a day, they may consume as much alcohol as one glass of wine. Read about the study and what it implies at Atlas Obscura.

The Harlem Globetrotters of baseball is a minor league team in Georgia called the Savannah Bananas. Only launched in 2016 after the Savannah Sand Gnats moved away, they've taken the baseball world by storm by focusing on fun and entertainment more than winning (although they win, too).

This. is. Bananas.
Welcome to Bananaland. #FansFirst #EntertainAlways pic.twitter.com/3yt2lcpv3R

— Jesse Cole (@YellowTuxJesse) September 9, 2021

They are always coming up with new stunts, like playing a game in kilts (for St. Patricks Day, which makes no sense). Their dance troupe is called the Banana Nanas. Their cheerleaders are the Man-Nanas, a dad bod cheerleading squad. Their mascot is a banana named Split. You'll find more entertaining links about the Savannah Bananas at Metafilter.

The story of Inês De Castro is so iconic and so well known in Portugal that once you've read it, you wonder why it isn't known as well as Romeo and Juliet. And they were fictional characters! Inês De Castro's story had been made into poems, plays, operas, movies, paintings, and other artworks, mainly in Portugal. The true story behind the tale is quite gripping. Crown Prince Pedro I of Portugal fell in love with Inês De Castro, his wife's lady-in-waiting, around the year 1340. His father, King Afonso IV, exiled Inês to remove temptation. But after Pedro's wife died, the two lovers lived together for years and had several children. Still disapproving, the king had Inês murdered, which led to a civil war between father and son. Two years later, Pedro was king.

That's where the historical record and the popular tale diverged. King Pedro hunted down and killed Inês' assassins and built a royal tomb for her. But as the story grew over the next couple hundred years, Pedro had Inês disinterred and make her queen of Portugal, complete with a coronation ceremony for her corpse, at which all nobles were obliged to kiss Inês' decomposing hand. It's a compelling story, to say the least. Read about the myth of the skeleton queen and how it took over the Portuguese imagination at BBC Culture. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Salvador Martínez Cubells)

The first World's Fair I recall reading about was Expo '67 in Montreal. It seemed so exciting, and I wanted to go, but I was just a kid. Then when the 1982 World's Fair launched in Knoxville, I lived relatively close by, but never bothered to go. Almost 55 million people visited Montreal, but only 11 million went to Knoxville for the fair. So what happened?

The first World's Fair took place in London in 1851. It showcased the reach of the British Empire and astounded people with demonstrations of modern technology and scientific breakthroughs. As other fairs followed, countries around the world came to show off, and there was plenty for visitors to see, including entertainment. A visit to a World's Fair was like a trip around the world. But attendance has declined since Montreal, and cities balk at the expense of reserving the land and building the required architecture. The last World's Fair in America was in New Orleans in 1984- does anyone remember that one? They are still held in other parts of the world. Read about the rise and fall of the World's Fair at Smithsonian.    

(Image credit: Anthony Conti)

Financial crimes can be irresistible to the greedy and the desperate, and there have always been an awful lot of greedy or desperate people. Victor Lustig got away with so many schemes because he conned people who were willing to break the law themselves, so it would be a problem to report him or testify against him. You might already know Lustig's story, but you'll still want to watch this video because it's quite funny in the way it tells the tale of his outrageously successful exploits that went on for a quarter-century before he actually served any time. Seriously, Lustig's life was like a screwball comedy in which so many things are going on that it's hard to keep up. You have to wonder if he might be in the running for the greatest number of crimes committed by any one man. Don't miss his list of ten rules for conmen.  -via Digg

Want to play a game of sorts? Redditor bort-bort-bort shared a picture that his 10-year-old daughter drew. Can you figure out what it is? Leave your guess in the comments, and I'll eventually let you know if you are right. Of course, you can go to the comments at reddit, but that would be cheating and less fun all around. The wrong answers in the forum there are almost as good as what was intended, but remember this is a 10-year-old girl we're talking about. I would have loved to have seen how she presented this to her father, and the laughs that came with it.