After World War II gave us the first nuclear detonation, the world had only two nuclear powers, the US and the Soviet Union. As time passed, scientists began to think about using nuclear technology for things other than war, constructive odeas such as digging canals. Oh yeah, what could possibly go wrong? But that is hindsight talking. In 1969, engineers in Britain came up with a plan to conduct an underground nuclear explosion in a national park in Yorkshire. The purpose was to create a large hole for a gas storage tank in a very short time.

As Americans, we are used to such stories, but Tom Scott found out about this forgotten plan, and was horrified. In the years since 1969, we figured out what an insane idea it was to use nuclear bombs for digging holes. Take a video trip with Tom to the site where this could have happened- but didn't.

Johnny Eck was an actor, artist, musician, and sideshow performer who was billed as "The Amazing Half-Boy," among other titles. You may remember him from the 1932 movie Freaks, or as the Bird Monster in early Tarzan movies. Due to sacral agenisis, Eck appeared to only exist from the waist up. He actually had all necessary body organs, and even underdeveloped legs and feet, but hid them under his clothing. John Eckhardt, Jr. was born a twin. His brother Robert had a normal build, and although they were fraternal twins, the brothers looked very much alike.

Robert was often part of Johnny's act. This made possible an amazing stunt you won't soon forget.

In 1937, Eck and Robert were recruited by the illusionist and hypnotist, Rajah Raboid, for his "Miracles of 1937" show. In it they performed a magic feat that amazed audiences. Raboid performed the traditional sawing-a-man-in-half illusion, except with an unexpected twist. At first Robert would pretend to be a member of the audience and heckle the illusionist during his routine, resulting in Robert being called on stage to be sawed in half himself. During the illusion, Robert would then be switched with his twin brother Eck, who played the top half of his body, and a dwarf, who played the bottom half, concealed in specially-built pant legs. After being sawed in half, the legs would suddenly get up and start running away, prompting Eck to jump off the table and start chasing his legs around the stage, screaming, "Come back!" "I want my legs back!"

You must read the rest of the story for the exquisite audience reaction. No doubt a few were seriously traumatized. The article includes more about Eck's astonishing career. -via a comment at Metafilter

My husband and I used to tell each other, "It's okay that we don't look too good, because we don't see too well, either." Then he got cataract surgery and left me. But I digress.

Another quote that comes to mind is from It's a Wonderful Life: "Youth is wasted on the wrong people." Old folks who have been together a long time understand what is important, and it's not a hot bod or a smooth face. The hormones get replaced by respect, familiarity, and a lifetime of adventures together. At the same time, they can look at each other and picture what how they appeared when they first fell in love, and just that can bring up a tiny rush of hormones -which is enough. This poem was written by Josh Whicker and illustrated by Lauren Dodson. -via Fark

If you've ever received a Valentine card that you thought didn't quite measure up to your expectations, try to be forgiving. At least it wasn't one of the misguided, bizarre, or downright insulting cards of the Victorian era. The morbid example above, in case you can't read the script, says,

My late dear Wife preserved in a glass case
She was such a darling Pet that I had her stuffed.
Will you be my second?

That's probably the worst marriage proposal I've heard of ...ever. Twitter user Lauryn Ipsum posted a thread that shows us some of the worst valentines of bygone eras. Some are well-meaning but accompanied by creepy imagery. Others are cringeworthy, including some "vinegar valentines" and the plainly misogynist cards aimed at suffragettes. Some are, frankly, just incomprehensible.



Yeah, it was a different time. Maybe we should be thankful for the kinder, gentler valentines at the corner convenience store, even if they are blandly generic. See all of these unhinged vintage valentines in the Twitter thread, or in a more image-friendly version at Threadreader.

-via Metafilter

If you are planning to dedicate a love song to your sweetheart for Valentines Day, it might pay to listen to the lyrics first. Any wedding DJ will tell you that "Every Breath You Take" from The Police will be requested for the reception, because people think it's a song about undying devotion. But if you really listen to it, it's clearly about stalking. Just as people embraced the mistaken idea that "Born in the USA" is a patriotic song, lovers take the wrong message from a song's title or chorus, isolated from the full set of lyrics. Or they just like the tune. For example, "Marry You" by Bruno Mars. While it has been effectively used to express true love, the lyrics are more of a pickup line.

According to this 2010 Bruno Mars hit, marriage is a sacred union involving two people and a whole lot of booze. “Is it the look in your eyes / Or is it this dancing juice?” Mars asks in the chorus. It’s definitely the latter, as this couple is admittedly wrecked on tequila and “looking for something dumb to do.” As for the next morning, “If we wake up and you wanna break up, that's cool,” Mars sings.

Read about ten other songs that are used as love songs until you listen to the lyrics at Mental Floss.

Just in time for Valentines Day, but sadly too late for a Oscar nomination this year, Tibo Charroppin and his cat Lizzy, whose stage name is OwlKitty (previously at Neatorama) have unveiled their newest cinematic creation. OwlKitty has landed the role of Rose in the 1997 movie Titanic! Poor Kate Winslet has been relegated to a bit part. It's a romantic masterpiece, as Rose and Jack frolic aboard the doomed ship and kindle a romance for the ages. You'll be swept away by the sheer joy in their hearts. Don't miss the part where OwlKitty gets her portrait drawn. She's naked, but it's still SFW because, well, she's a cat and is quite hairy. That in no way undermines her magnificent performance.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

Sweets for the sweet! That makes so much sense that it's hard to imagine a Valentines Day without candy, whether it's fancy chocolates in a heart-shaped box from your sweetheart or a desk full of handy conversation hearts you picked up at the checkout counter. But it was not always so.

The holiday started out as the feast day of St. Valentine, first observed in 496 AD. It wasn't associated with romance until centuries later, possibly when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a poem in the 1300s mentioning St. Valentines Day as the day birds chose their mates. If that's the case, the holiday as we know it today came about simply because it's mating season.

Candy is a nice gift to show romantic feelings, along with flowers and jewelry, and certainly more affordable. Candy as a Valentines Day gift got off the ground during Queen Victoria's reign. Victoria was a hopeless romantic, had a sweet tooth, and was the world's biggest influencer in her time. That was also when a man named Cadbury invented the heart-shaped candy box. Then came Hershey's Kisses, Russell Stover assortments, and conversation hearts. Read the history of Valentines Day candy at Cracked.

(Image credit: Parnote)

1955 Disneyland Casa de Fritos Matchbook https://t.co/qfLqdDgDkL pic.twitter.com/AkwhcbABs9

— Cory Doctorow RIGHT-CLICKING WORDCEL MENTALITY (@doctorow) November 12, 2018

Does anyone remember the restaurant Casa de Fritos at Disneyland? It was sponsored by Fritos (later Frito-Lay) and served Mexican food at the park -dishes heavily dependent on Fritos- from shortly after the park opened until the name was changed in 1982. You could get a full combination plate there for a dollar, and then purchase a small bag of Fritos from an elaborate vending device featuring a statue of the Frito Kid. Casa de Fritos got their tortillas delivered from a manufacturer called Alex Foods.

“One day, a salesman from Alex Foods noticed that Casa de Fritos was dumping stale tortillas in the trash,” Bob Sorokanich wrote for Gizmodo. “He gave the kitchen a tip: instead of trashing the stale tortillas, cut them up and fry them.”

Now, mind you, this wasn't an original idea from the tortilla salesman. He was passing along a trick that came from tortilla manufacturer Rebecca Webb Carranza that had been in use since the 1940s to produce tortilla chips. But the resulting chips became very popular at Casa de Fritos, and Fritos partnered with Alex Foods to market them nationally in 1966. Read the story of how Doritos came about and took the country by storm at SFGate. -via Digg

National borders are artificial constructs that you can't see from above. However, they are important to people who live in those countries, and are carefully surveyed by cartographers. They are marked with signs, survey markers, and sometimes fences. Many are also supervised by border guards and immigration officials. But when national borders are also natural features of the earth, like rivers, oceans, or mountain ridges, they can sometimes move. This brings us to the glacier that covers the peaks of the Alps. The border between Switzerland and Italy runs over the highest ridge of the Alps, and the glacier underneath is moving. This is cause for concern, as you can imagine. It's a special concern for businesses, such as ski resorts, that can change nationality without moving at all. Vox tells us the history of the Swiss-Italian glacial border and what's to become of it as climate change melts the glacier.

One part of figure skating that you don't see that much of on TV is the part where a skater's fans will throw things onto the ice after a performance. At one time, it was customary to throw flowers on the ice, but that left a lot of debris that had to be cleaned up, and in 2001 the US banned flowers from rinks because of security concerns after 9/11. But fans found another way to show their adoration- by throwing stuffed animal toys on the ice. Skaters talked to NBC Sports about the gifts they've had thrown at them, which sometimes require an army of sweepers to collect. Michelle Kwan had a full skating outfit thrown once -and it fit her! Elvis Stojko and Patrick Chan have seen lingerie thrown on the ice. Stojko got a bra once with a name and phone number attached. Debi Thomas once got a Domino's pizza. And of course, there are the stuffed animals.

What happens to all those toys? For international competitions, shipping them all home is out of the question, so skaters pick and choose what to keep, while the rest are given away. Michelle Kwan once threw a stuffed animal on the rink for a skater she admired before she became famous. Now she still has a great number of stuffed toys still stored at her parents' home, but believes they may be too old to give away. Read about the toys and the stranger items thrown at figure skaters at NBC.  -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Luu)

We've been graced with a few songs by The Kiffness where he turns cat noises into music here and at Supa Fluffy. We've also seen TikTok chains where people add onto existing videos until it's a full orchestra. In this video, TikTokers started with a Kiffness video in which an angry cat has already been autotuned, but changed the song to something you'll recognize. These TikTok chains can go in many directions, but this particular collaboration is an earworm. The third vocalist (second rapper) has some NSFW lyrics. -via Fark

The question from AskReddit was, "Teachers of Reddit, what was the worst thing you had to confiscate from a student?" The post got more than 10,000 comments. Some of the stories shared were pretty funny.

I had to confiscate a sea bass from a student who had brought it in to use in the playground at break time...he was walking around slapping people in the face with it and challenging them to a duel..

-FearlessPressure3

The bass in that story was dead, but live animals made the list several times: cats, dogs, fish, and this.

When I taught grade 2 a kid managed to bring a live wild badger in a box. It promply escaped and we had to evacuate while animal control was called. The kid's parents had no idea how he caught a badger, and he never told us where he got it.

-Leprechan_Sushi

Of course, there are stories of dangerous items like guns and ammo, a tattoo machine, and a 6-year-old with a broken bottle to be used as a weapon. One kid brought his baby sister to school without his parents noticing. You can read the best 30 stories in a ranked list at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: Flickr user John Campbell)

It's been more than five years since we introduced you to Tania Hennessy’s page called Doughnut Kitten. It's a cute and relaxing look at a kitten riding a frosted doughnut along a path of rainbows. You can't get any sweeter than that! It's good for meditation or for a smile anytime you need it. It's a project from Tania Hennessy, an artist and photographer in Vancouver who fosters kittens for VOKRA (the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association). The kitten in the doughnut was one of her foster kittens. His name is Spaghetti.



Spaghetti was a member of the litter Hennessy called the pasta kittens. You won't be surprised to learn that the other kittens were named Orzo, Tortellini, Penne, and Macaroni. Spaghetti is the one on Hennessy's shoulder.


Hennessy tells us about the photoshoot that became Doughnut Kitten.

He’s sitting in a 3D printed doughnut prop which is attached to a set we built to lock it into exactly the right place. There was even a space under the prop that hid a little pillow for maximum kitten comfort.
During auditions, our adorable models would drift off to sleep in the prop, make playful silly faces, and photobomb each other as we attempted to get them to look at the camera with all kinds of toys, treats, and weird sounds.

That led to some wonderful outtakes!



The image that was chosen for Doughnut Kitten has Spaghetti looking directly at the camera, so his eyes follow you when you look at him. The result is "a pastel frosted confection" that we can turn to when we need a kitten, a doughnut, or a rainbow. -Thanks, Tania!

CGP Grey is back after six months off to explain the interstate highway system to us. He lays out the plan of the grid as it was originally intended, which over time led to many oddities and exceptions. It makes sense in general, but the US is not completely sensical. The needs of urban areas clash with restrictions of land and geography -not to mention local politics- to give us some strange bits of roadway. Even if your city isn't mentioned, it's probably got something that doesn't quite adhere to the overall plan.

This information will definitely separate the generations. We got to five minutes in before I learned something I didn't already know, because I learned to drive while the interstate was still being constructed, and I drove all over the country using maps, landmarks, and dead reckoning. I have a daughter who is 40 years younger. She also drives all over the country, using nothing but GPS, and will never consult a map, much less learn how to orient herself by knowledge about highway systems. I hope she is never traveling when the electrical grid goes down. -via Digg

Last week's Sunday crossword puzzle in the New York Times was called Sci-Fi Showdown. It contained plenty of answers that were references to the worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars. The real kicker was the revealer clue, at 70-across. The puzzle isn't playing any favorites, as both Star Trek and Star Wars works! The beauty in the scheme is how the down clues work: they had to fit, use either franchise in the answer- meaning they had to be only one letter different, had to be correct with the same clue, and also work with the words going across them.

Trekkies, you’ll find TRAP, WRIST, PAYEES and LEAKED at 71-, 67-, 47- and 35-Down, making your crosses. Star Wars fans, you’ll get different entries that fit the same clues. “It’s a TRAP” can also be “it’s a WRAP”; a “body part that precedes ‘band’” can be a WRIST or a WAIST; “ones involved in a transaction” can be PAYEES or PAYERS; and “let out, in a way,” can be LEAKED or LEASED.

Whether you're a fan or Star Trek or Star Wars, or both, or neither, and even if you don't like crossword puzzles, this is pretty mind-blowing. Crossword constructor Stephen McCarthy gets the credit. If you aren't subscribed to the New York Times, you can find the entire puzzle revealed here. Note the 21-letter answers for 3 and 17 down.  -via Boing Boing