At the turn of the 20th century, most Americans didn't eat fish if it could be avoided. Eating meat was a symbol of prosperity, and fish (seafood, too) was food for poor people. In 1909, the average American ate 150 pounds of meat per year, and only 10 pounds of seafood. Then World War I began, and the government encouraged people to cut back on meat consumption in order to feed the troops. It wasn't enough to ask for sacrifice, they needed to make fish popular.

In 1915, the United States Bureau of Fisheries (which later became the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) hired a restaurant owner named Evelene Spencer and gave her the title of Fish Cookery Expert. Spencer took the job to heart, and participated in the government's push to promote fish in every way possible. She appeared on posters, in cooking demonstrations, in film, in newspapers, and became the celebrity chef of her time. Spencer wrote a book with the ungainly title Fish Cookery: six hundred recipes for the preparation of fish, shellfish and other aquatic animals, including fish soups, salads and entrees, with accompanying sauces, seasonings, dressings and forcemeats.

Housewives were eager to receive Spencer's advice, because eating fish was not only deemed patriotic at the time, but it was a lot cheaper than serving meat. Her book helped those who had never prepared fish to clean, cook, and preserve fish and seafood and make it more palatable than ever before. Spencer was America's Fish Cookery Expert until 1922, but her influence lasted much longer. Read about the Fish Evangelist and how she changed the American diet at Atlas Obscura.

(Image source: National Archives)

A video that starts out talking about set dressing on TV sitcoms turns out to be a deep dive into the work of French painter Jean-François Millet. Millet didn't have much success in his career, and quite a few setbacks and tragedies. His works were never appreciated in his lifetime, but bring millions today. That was because Millet painted everyday people, mostly farmers, who were considered a lower class. But even as Millet's story is quite interesting, that's not really what this video is about, either. The painting that adorned the wall of Sheriff Andy Taylor's home is not what we see on the canvas, but has a secret detail that gives the painting a whole new meaning. -via Kottke

In 1928, microbiologist Alexander Fleming noticed that "mold juice" tended to kill off staphylococcal bacteria. That was the discovery of penicillin, but it was only the beginning of the research into it. It took another decade to extract and purify the mold juice, and then tests on mice began, which showed promise in killing bacterial infections. Would it work in humans? Who wanted to the be the first test case?

Albert Alexander of Oxford, England, was suffering from sepsis, a virulent blood infection caused by his infected facial scratches, and was near death when doctors decided there was no hope for recovery with standard treatment. Fletcher knew he would be the perfect candidate for the experimental penicillin serum. Alexander received his first dose of penicillin on Feb. 12, 1941. And over the course of a ten-day treatment, the infection improved! Sadly, there was not enough prepared penicillin to save Alexander's life in the long run. But the treatment was proven to be safe and effective for human use.

However, the story illustrates how awful infections were before the age of antibiotics. It is horrifying to think that a man who had been scratched on his face by the rose bushes in his garden could suffer and die that way. The way Albert Alexander's story is told in microbiology classes is designed to elicit that reaction, but it isn't quite so. Read the real reason behind his painful injury and death at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

In a list of the strangest animals on earth, the sarcastic fringehead swims in its own lane. The species is Neoclinus blanchardi, named after Dr. S. B. Blanchard, who collected the first described specimen, but you really want to know how it got its common name. So do I. The "fringehead" most likely came from the fish's enormous and flexible mouth, which it uses in fights. Watch two sarcastic fringeheads do battle in this video. Swallow whatever it is you're drinking first. 



They are not really trying to kiss each other to death; it's more of a measuring contest. The fish that has the largest mouth always "wins." If they were talking, we can imagine they would be saying something sarcastic. Still, the name seems like a stretch. If I were coining its common name, I would call it hairtrigger bigmouth. Read more about the sarcastic fringehead and 16 other of the world's most bizarre animals in a list at Science Focus. -via Digg

(Image credit: Evan Baldonado)

Beth Ann Malow is a Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University, and is the director of the university's sleep research division. She is a proponent of keeping standard time all year long, instead of switching to Daylight Saving Time, as we will do this weekend. It's not so much of a problem in the fall, when we set our clocks back one hour, but setting them ahead in the springtime causes all kinds of problems. While everyone has anecdotal complaints in the spring, Malow has the numbers to back up her opinion. There is evidence that the time shift leads to increased strokes, heart attacks and sleep deprivation.  

This effect may be due to the balance between cortisol, a stress hormone, and melatonin, a hormone that promotes drowsiness. It might also have to do with the amount of light and its effect on the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes emotions. Young people are especially affected by the time change, from the onset of puberty through the mid-20s, when the correct amount of sleep is crucial to the body's efficiency. And it makes a difference whether you live on the eastern edge or the western edge of a time zone. Read about the effects of springing forward to Daylight Saving Time at the Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

The postage stamp named "Russian warship, go f**k yourself!" will appear in🇺🇦. The sketch by artist Boris Groh received the most votes and will soon be published by Ukraine's state postal company.
🇺🇦✌️#StandWithUkraine#StopRussianAgression pic.twitter.com/ByYAzw2tYq

— Emine Dzheppar (@EmineDzheppar) March 12, 2022

If you haven't heard of the February 24th attack on Snake Island in Ukraine, Wikipedia has a recap. The audio is on YouTube, with NSFW subtitles. We didn't post it here because it was first believed that all the Ukranian military guards were killed, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The operant phrase has become a rallying cry for Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, the business of government goes on in Ukraine, despite the attacks from the Russian military. The Ukraine postal service held a contest for a new postage stamp design, and the above image by artist Boris Groh garnered the most votes from the public. We don't yet know when the stamp will be available for sale. Read more about the project at the Guardian. The article contains NSFW text. -via reddit

Theodosia Burr Alston was the daughter of Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States and the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Theodosia led a tragic life, with the loss of her health due to a complicated childbirth, her father a pariah after that fateful duel, the death of her young son, and a probable case of cancer. Her husband, Joseph Alston, was elected governor of South Carolina in 1812, so he could not accompany her on her annual migration to her father's home in New York. Aaron Burr arranged for her to travel on a boat named the Patriot. The schooner launched from Georgetown in February of 1813, and was never seen again.

There were many theories about what happened to the Patriot, most having to do with pirates. Theodosia was said to have been forced to walk the plank to her death. The Patriot may have been attacked by the British. Or it could have been a storm that sunk the ship. Other tales had the young woman surviving the ship's demise. Some men have even confessed to witnessing the end of the Patriot. And there have been some intriguing clues unearthed over the years. Read about the life and mysterious death of Theodosia Burr Alston at Atlas Obscura.

One of the few things I recall from being in the Girl Scouts in the 1960s was reading about how young children, such as we were, could perform a blood transfusion in case of a nuclear attack or other wartime emergency. It didn't seem all that absurd to me at the time, but it drove home how precarious we thought our lives were. I memorized all the steps and probably earned some kind of badge for it. But Girl Scout badges come and go, and some are better left in the dustbin of history.

Girl Scouting has been around for 110 years as of March 12th, and in that time, there have been badges for grooming, laundry, and invalid cooking (which is preparing food for invalids, not cooking from your bed). There were also badges called Gypsy and "Oil-up," which were both for skills that had nothing to do with the title. Read what these and other erstwhile Girl Scout badges required as accomplishments at Mental Floss.

(Image: Library of Congress)

Thursday, KTLA reporter Gene Kang was on Hoover Street in Los Angeles reporting on a fatal hit-and-run crash that had occurred on February 26. No sooner did he utter the words "It's one of the most dangerous street in all Los Angeles...." when two sedans collided behind him, in full view of the camera. That's not a good time to flee the scene of an accident, but one car did. The TV crew called 911, since it was not an illustration for the story. No one appeared to be injured from this crash, which may be solved fairly soon, since the license plate fell off the car that fled the scene. That and the video evidence mean this hit-and-run driver will not get away with it.

Police are still looking for the perpetrator of the February 26 crash, which killed a 42-year-old pedestrian who pushed his wife and 2-year-old son out of he way. -via Digg

Over at Pop Culturista, we took at look at Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise and his most memorable catchphrase, "I'm a doctor, not a (whatever)!" That phrase was used over and over, and long outlasted McCoy and the original Star Trek series. However, it's not the only line McCoy relied on in the series. John DiMarco gives us another compilation that highlights McCoy pronouncing someone dead, over and over, throughout the show's three-year run. We usually remember this as "He's dead, Jim." But it varied quite a bit. After all, you can't address Jim when it's Jim himself, Captain James T. Kirk, who is the dead one in at least three of these clips. Lucky for us, Dr. McCoy was often wrong in that conclusion. -via Laughing Squid

Throughout history, there have been tales of dead animals washed up on the seashore that no one can identify. The really big ones make the news and have often been identified by witnesses as monsters of some sort. These are called "globsters," which is a combination of glob and monster. The more decomposed the creature is, the harder it is to identify. Once barnacles and other scavengers start feeding on it, it may start to look very strange indeed. And the sea can leave a decomposing corpse slimy or hairy or quite monstrous. You can see how this sort of thing once made people believe in dragons and sea serpents. These days, scientists can usually identify what this globster once was, but until then, it may as well be a sea monster. The 20-foot hairy globster pictured here was seen on a beach in the Philippines in 2018.

The white, shaggy carcass may have resembled the dragon from A Neverending Story (1984), but its origins were less fantastical. Local officials concluded that the remains belonged to a whale that had died a couple of weeks earlier—possibly after being struck by a ship. The long “hairs” were actually decaying muscle fibers, and the white coloration was a natural consequence of decomposition.

These are stories that are better read about than witnessed, mainly because of the smell. Read the stories of six really bizarre documented globsters at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Huntxel)

When you have a railroad snaking around mountains in areas where few people live, there's always the possibility of rockslides or even single boulders that can wreck a track and derail a train. In 1882, John Anderson came up with a system for the West Highland Line that travels through the Pass of Brander in Scotland, to warn approaching trains of falling rocks. It was so simple that it will remind you of when you were a child and set a rabbit trap you saw in a cartoon. The system is called Anderson's Piano, and it's worked fairly well for 140 years. It's not a perfect system- the parts get rusty and are hard to replace, but it doesn't depend on a power supply. As Tom Scott explains, so far, no one's come up with anything better.

Before the interstate highway system, Route 40 was the main road between Washington, DC and New York City. The highway crosses the Mason-Dixon Line, which traditionally separates the North from the South. Diplomats from around the world used this highway to commute between the United Nations in New York and their embassies in Washington. For African diplomats, this meant dealing with segregation laws in Maryland. Restaurants and gas stations along 40 in Maryland regularly denied service to men in limousines charged with representing an entire nation. An incident in 1961 made international headlines when the new ambassador from Chad, Adam Malick Sow, was denied a cup of coffee at a roadside diner.

The wife of the diner's owner refused to serve the diplomat because he was black. "He looked like just an ordinary run of the mill [N-word] to me. I couldn't tell he was an ambassador," Mrs Leroy Merritt later told the national magazine Life. "I said 'There's no table service here'."

The insult sparked an international incident, making the front page of newspapers across Africa and Asia. Soon after, diplomats from Niger, Cameroon and Togo reported similar experiences at Maryland restaurants.

The news coverage set off a campaign of protests. Some businesses agreed to serve diplomats only, but that only raised the stakes of the protests, as one group impersonated diplomats from a fictional country to make their point. Read about the role Route 40 played in the battle against segregation at BBC. -via Digg

(Image source: Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers collection #75026)

When a friend or family member is struggling with life or a mental health issue, it can be a real drag for you. Who has time to listen to someone painfully open up and confide in you? What you really want to do is just make the problem go away, which is easy when you have useless platitudes at your beck and call. Then you can tell yourself you helped, even if all you are doing is making them shut up about it ...or they stop being your friend. There, that was easy, wasn't it? This skit from Viva La Dirt League may wake someone up to how unhelpful they are being, even though that won't make a difference in someone who just doesn't care.

Then again, if you do care, the first and best thing you can do is listen. Sometime that's all that's needed. If not, be supportive and encourage them to get professional help.  -via Geeks Are Sexy
 

九尾の狐の伝説が残る、殺生石にひとりでやってきました。

縄でぐるっと巻かれた真ん中の大きな岩がそれ…

のはずなのですが、なんと岩は真っ二つに割れて、縄も外れていました。

漫画だったらまさに封印が解かれて九尾の狐に取り憑かれるパターンで、見てはいけないものを見てしまった気がします。 pic.twitter.com/wwkb0lGOM9

— Lillian (@Lily0727K) March 5, 2022

A large volcanic boulder in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, called Sessho-seki, or the Killing Stone, has an extensive mythology. The rock is supposed to embody Tamamo-no-Mae, who is a nine-tailed fox and beautiful woman who bewitched the emperor in the 12th century, both at once.

The Killing Stone is said to emanate poisonous gasses. Anyone who touches the rock is in danger of death. Still, the rock is registered as a historical site, and draws tourists who are more curious than scared. But in the last few days, the rock has split into two parts. Does this mean that the spirit of Tamamo-no-Mae has been released to do mischief, or maybe even cause calamity on the earth?

A local guide says the rock has developed cracks over time, and rainwater worked its way into the stone, leading to the split. But you can never be too sure. Read the story at The Guardian. -via Metafilter