My father was a geologist. When Interstate 75 was being built through Kentucky, a lot of hills had to be cut through, and Dad would often stop and take a look at the layers of earth and rock those cuts exposed, including layers that aren't horizontal due to tectonic uplift. I don't know if everyone else is as familiar with rock layers and geologic time as I was as a child, but most of us understand the concept somewhat.

At Siccar Point in Scotland, the layers are completely different. In the area called Hutton's Unconformity, the older layers are on their side, while others just above are horizontal. This changed the science of geology in 1788, when James Hutton studied these layers. Tom Scott takes us there and explains.    

Sesame Street has been around for 50 years. Its success has been attributed to the fact that it was designed by researchers in early childhood education, and the fact that the main characters for that entire time have been the Muppets. It's a formula that works, but great care has to be taken to ensure that the show and the Muppet characters stay consistent for all those years. A Sesame Street employee lets us in on some of the rules of the road for Sesame Street that he's picked up on over a couple of years. To illustrate, he gives us theoretical Sesame Street scenes and then tells us why it would never happen. The rules not only pertain to the Muppets, but also the preschool audience the show is serving.

Goodbyes are always tricky. In kids’ media, it’s no different.

At Sesame Street, the rule of thumb is to never say a full “goodbye.” A goodbye could leave kids at home panicking that they’ll never see their furry on-screen friends again.

To avoid this, we use phrases like “See you next time!” or “That was so much fun today! I hope you’ll join us again soon.” This way, no kids have to freak out.

Read the various scenarios and what rules they would be breaking at Cracked.

The Star Wars universe is well known for ridiculous alien design. The idea was that different sentient creatures in a galaxy far, far away would not all look like humans... but that idea clashed with what was possible with the special effects technology of the day. In the original 1977 Star Wars, we were astonished by the aliens at the cantina. Each movie afterward introduced more weird alien types. But as there was a limit to what can be done, there was also a limit to what the audience will buy. The story of the Lightman, or the Lightbulb Man, was the limit. He was a character in Return of the Jedi tested in 1982. The Lightman was covered in light bulbs.

According to Uproxx, the character was cut because it just looked so funny and not at all believable. But according to a much earlier article at Star Wars Aficianado, the idea was to cover the light bulbs with effects from Industrial Light & Magic to make him a luminescent alien of sorts. The reason for dropping the character was because it slowed down the pacing of the scene. So which is right, and why was the Lightman cut from the movie? Let's ask Phil Tippett, who was the visual effects supervisor on Return of the Jedi. He was there.

Looked just like that.

Everyone laughed.

Never got shot. https://t.co/4LkxvbWCDO

— Phil Tippett (@PhilTippett) January 25, 2022

I guess that's the real answer. Star Wars fans will accept some ridiculous alien designs, but with the Lightman, the production found an uncrossable line. Too bad they didn't have LEDs at the time. -via Mental Floss

Franz Josef Land is a cluster of 192 islands in the Arctic Ocean. Despite the name, it was never a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The first sighting of Franz Josef Land is thought to have been in 1865 when Norwegian sealers found the archipelago, but they kept that discovery to themselves to keep competition from other seal hunters away. That wasn't the case when a 24-man Austro-Hungarian crew set out on a science and exploration expedition on the ship the Tegetthoff. They were looking for a route to the North Pole.

The Tegetthoff left Norway in July of 1872. Before the end of August, the ship was encased in sea ice. The ice didn't break up the next summer. Nor the next. But it drifted, and carried the Tegetthoff into unknown waters. The ice carrying the ship reached a land mass in August of 1873, and scientists from the Tegetthoff duly trudged over to see and document it. They named the land mass after the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, who was most notable for later sparking World War I when he was assasinated. But the crew was no closer to navigable sea or rescue. In May of 1874, after nearly two years on the ice, the crew decided to walk out, dragging their lifeboats to open water. That journey took an additional three months. Read about the Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition and what they found instead at the Dawlish Chronicles. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Oona Räisänen)

As you might guess, the Invisible College of Experimental Flatology is a website about farts. ICEF was founded in 2020 as "a distraction during an otherwise bleak period in human history." Or at least according to the About Us page, that's a hypothesis about its founding. It could have been for scientific collaboration or just for kicks.

The posts include a lot of scientific inquiry into farts, such as their speed, power, and longevity. For example, experiments have determined that farts travel much slower than sneezes. Check out their many "tootorials" on the subject. There is also a fart generator in which you can set the parameters for a customized audio fart, and another in which you can turn text into Morse Code farts. You'll also want to see (and hear) the beautiful Fartworks. Whether the title is a play on "artworks" or "fireworks" is up to you. It's still all about farts. There's enough here to keep any 12-year-old busy all weekend. Somebody alert Alex. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user greg johnson)

For most of the 20th century, movies and TV were completely useless for deaf people. We take captioned entertainment on TV, streaming services, and video sites for granted these days- not only can you read what's being said, you can select a different language. It wasn't always so. You might be surprised to learn that television didn't use captions at all until 1980! And even then, the rollout was quite bumpy.

The scheme that the networks ABC, NBC, and PBS agreed to was for television caption decoders to be sold by Sears, with royalties going to the National Captioning Institute to be used to pay for adding closed captions to shows. It was an expensive proposition, as captioners had to be hired and trained, and it took 24 hours or more to caption a one-hour program. The devices were expensive, too. This created a Catch-22 situation. Deaf people didn't want to invest in the decoders for just a few hours of captioned TV, which might not even be something they wanted to watch. But captioning more hours was impossible without funds from device sales. What's more, CBS wouldn't get on board with the plan because they had already contracted to use an alternate system.

The ultimate goal was to not only caption all TV shows, but live events, too. The first captioned news broadcast didn't happen until 1984, and the first captioned Super Bowl was in 1985. Read how that happened in a condensed history of closed captioning at Engadget.  -via Digg

Since we are animals ourselves, we understand the seasonal movements of animals, as well as the refugee species that move into new territories for food or safety. Plants do the same, but on a different time scale and by a different method. Trees cannot just walk to a new place (ents notwithstanding), but instead disperse massive numbers of seeds. Those that fall into a better-suited area will take hold and thrive, while their parents may succumb to declining conditions. In this way, forests themselves move. We have records of tree species that have moved thousands of miles, whether they came from the fossil record or eyewitness testimony.

Trees die out in places where the soil is dry or depleted, the climate changes, or invasive species attack. In the last few decades, climate change has accelerated so much that the natural rhythm of forest movement itself is stressed. Logging has contributed to poor forest conditions, as well as the encroachment of farmland and human settlement. Global trade has fueled invasive species.

Emergence magazine has a multimedia article explaining natural forest movement, and how human activity and climate change have affected various trees' ability to find new homes. After the intro, scroll down to find text, videos, links, and charts explaining what's happening to our forests. The example of the black ash tree (also called the basket tree) is explored in depth, and there are links to the migration stories of sugar maple, paper birch, and red spruce trees, too. -via Damn Interesting

"When tweedle beetles fight, it's called a tweedle beetle battle..." *

Watching two massive insects fighting each other is interesting, but it's much better when set to the soundtrack of the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The two beetles are obviously mismatched from the beginning, both in size and in fighting skill. You'll be glad to know that in this version, neither combatant is left limbless and bleeding. It's just funny. Redditor moistobviously made this a long time ago, but only today posted it on the forum.

* This line is from Dr. Seuss's Fox in Socks.

Jay Ohrberg is the master designer of extreme cars. He was the one who built Kit, the car featured in Knight Rider, the Ghostbusters ambulance, the car in Robocop, and several iterations of the Batmobile. Oh yeah, and the Pink Panther car you see above. Somewhere along the way, he began to obsess about the limits of extreme cars: the widest, the longest, the most massive. And that's the origin of that limousine you saw on the early internet that you were sure was the result of image manipulation.



The limousine was real, held 72 passengers, and was 30.5-meters (100 feet) long. It sported a pool, a hot tub, a mini golf course, and a helipad, among other features. The limo made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. That was decades ago- what happened to the world's longest car since then? Find out where the limousine has been, and see plenty more of Jay Ohrberg automobile designs at Messy Messy Chic.

This song comes across as rather silly at first, but once you get into it, it's a wonderful story. A cowboy, who also happens to be a pumpkin, is dedicated to his cattle. He's a pacifist yet still a hero, seeking neither revenge nor accolade. He just does what a man's gotta do. Or what a pumpkin's gotta do, in this case. You'll also enjoy the villain, Cowboy Cat. "Pumpkin Cowboy" by Brian David Gilbert (previously at Neatorama) and performed by Jonah Scott was inspired by the purchase of a somewhat-smiling pumpkin toy at a flea market. But you already figured that part out, didn't you? -via reddit

Country music singer, actor, and national treasure Dolly Parton grew up in Sevierville, Tennessee, in a big family, so she learned to cook a long, long time ago. Now Duncan Hines has teamed up with Parton to bring you a line of her Southern-style cakes in mix form, with frosting, too! In March, you'll be able to find the Dolly Parton Baking Collection, including her Southern-style Banana Cake mix, Southern-style Coconut Cake mix, Creamy Buttercream Frosting, and Creamy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting at your local grocery store. Yeah, if it's Southern, you can expect plenty of butter.

Once the mixes are available, use them as ingredients for Dolly's recipes. Duncan Hines has posted a recipe for Dolly's Favorite Coconut Cake, which appears to be just the instructions from the box, and Dolly's Favorite Banana Puddin' Cake, which is a souped up version of the Banana cake mix, in which you add pudding and bananas to make it taste like Southern-style banana pudding. Why you would want to do this instead of just making banana pudding is your own business. -via Mental Floss

We've had a lot of fun in the past with medieval bestiaries, full of inaccurate depictions of animals. This was a result of world travelers who brought stories back to Europe of the amazing animals they encountered. Artists tried to recreate these animals from their descriptions, but were not all that successful. Those travelers could have been inadequate describers, or the animals they spoke of could have just been so far out of the artists' experience that they couldn't do the subject justice. If a witness had actually tried to sketch out the creatures they'd seen, the artist's finished product may have been more accurate, but for some reason, that wasn't a thing. As it was, medieval artists always seemed to start with a dog and add features they were told about, at least for land animals. For sea creatures, they started with a fish and added what they were told.

But that's not all that's going on in this video. We also learn about some weird myths these exotic creatures became burdened with. Who knew you could distract a tiger mother with a mirror? Or that pelican babies ate their parents? -via Laughing Squid

The biggest single-day disaster in the history of the District of Columbia occurred one hundred years ago, on January 28, 1922, but few even know about it today. It wasn't an act of war or terrorism, and that may be the reason it's been mostly forgotten. It was the night the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre collapsed.

What has since been called the Knickerbocker Storm was a blizzard that raged through Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas, and left 28 inches of snow on Washington, D.C. The storm was over by the 28th, and 200 or so people trudged through the snow and paid 25 cents to watch a movie at the Knickerbocker. It was still a slow night- the theater had a capacity of 1700. It also had a flat roof. The weight of all that snow caused the roof to come down in one piece, killing 98 people and injuring 133. Read about the Knickerbocker Theatre disaster at Smithsonian.

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Nothing's more fun than a music video made with Star Wars clips, especially if it's by the masters of the genre, Auralnauts. "Everyone in Star Wars Getting Ready to GO" is an original song by Scott Beetley and Auralnauts. The lyrics are at the YouTube page. Besides the song, the magic here is the absolute perfect clip choice for every lyric. That brings up the question: were the clips chosen to go with the lyrics, or were the lyrics written around the clips? This music video is an excerpt from their latest parody called Star Wars Ep. 7: Banana Time. It's long, but worth every minute. -via Boing Boing

As if February didn't have enough holidays: we have the Lunar New Year on the first, Groundhog Day on the second, the Super Bowl on the 13th, Valentines Day on the 14th, and Presidents Day on the 21st (Mardi Gras isn't until March first). Our friend Ron Gordon, keeper of the calendar holidays, informs us that February second is Trumpet Day. How's that? The date is written 2/2/22, which sounds like four notes of a classic trumpet fanfare!

Gordon is having a contest for Trumpet Day, which has been in the works since 2013. Now the time is here, and  they are looking for "the brassiest, classiest, sassiest way to celebrate the day!" Share your Trumpet Day ideas or celebration and win both money and bragging rights. Send in your entries by noon on February 15 to rongordon135@gmail.com or mail to

Ron Gordon
Box 5133
Redwood City, CA. 94063

The Trumpet Day Contest features our largest prize ever----$2,222---with nary a decimal. The prize will be shared by lots of folks---we will have 2+2+22 plus “to” plus “too” plus “two toooo!!” winners. Our best holiday math suggests that means Fifty-Two people will divide the prize---no one gets really rich, but all can brag and tooot their own horns about their brilliant accomplishments.

Read more about Trumpet Day at the Trumpet Day website.