Frederick Miller wanted to buy a home in the area he grew up in, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, that was big enough to accommodate reunions of his huge extended family. When his sister sent him a listing for a 10.50-acre estate called Sharswood, he jumped on the opportunity, and bought it in 2020. Only then did Miller's sisters start to dig into the history of Sharswood. It was once a 2,000-acre tobacco plantation owned by Charles Edwin Miller and Nathaniel Crenshaw Miller, and in 1860 was home to 58 enslaved people.

The family's genealogy records go back to 1870, when their Miller ancestors lived on land that would have been on the larger plantation of the time. The 1860 census only listed the number of slaves by gender and age, but there were matches with the later records they had. The plantation has ancestral ties to new owner Frederick Miller and his many relatives.

Thinking about what their ancestors may have endured in captivity is painful. Although the Miller men who owned the property never married, the descendants of those enslaved at Sharswood believe they had children with women on the property. They wonder about ancestors who would have had no say in that. That some of them are descendants of the enslaved and the enslaver is a real possibility. They have thought of all of that. And more.

“When I saw the cabin, a feeling came over me like I believe I’m home,” said Dexter Miller. “I could feel my ancestors, and it almost brought tears to my eyes. I can picture them sitting around the fireplace, and the stories they were telling. I’m in the presence of my ancestors hundreds of years ago who lived here and slept here and birthed here. But I also think about what happened around that big oak tree. Were my ancestors beaten there? Hanged there? That’s crept into my mind. You never know.”

Read the story of the Millers and their discovery of their family legacy at Sharswood at Tell Us USA. -via Metafilter 

(Image source: Zillow)

I was not familiar with the term "jet bridge" until I watched this video, although I have used them many times. It's the hallway that swings out from an airport terminal to a plane so that passengers can board without climbing stairs. It's an innovation that makes all the difference in the world for people who use wheelchairs. However, in the cutthroat world of budget airlines these days, it's considered a luxury that can be cut to save some money. Airports charge the airlines per-passenger fees which can vary depending on whether a jet bridge is used. Planes are also charged parking fees (by the minute) which are higher near the terminal or at a jet bridge.

Personally, I don't mind climbing stairs to get on a plane, but when the plane is parked a half mile from the terminal and there's no bus or luggage transport, it can get a a bit annoying. Simple Flying explains what's happened to the simple luxury of the jet bridge.   -via Boing Boing

Amy Schneider is on a months-long winning streak on the game show Jeopardy! On Tuesday, she surpassed Matt Amodio to become the second-winningest contestant on the show when she won her 39th game (Ken Jennings is still the champ, winning 74 consecutive games). How long will this continue? A few people know, including Schneider herself, but she's not telling anyone.

See, Jeopardy! tapes a week's worth of shows at a time, and they air a couple of months later. So that's a long time to keep a TV spoiler to yourself. The show doesn't stipulate secrecy as a requirement, but encourages it to make the game more fun for viewers. As it was, Schneider held a small party for friends when her first episode aired. They were excited when she won, but had no idea how many times she would go back to defend her title. And they still don't. Ken Jennings' boss was in on his winning streak, since he had to miss work again and again for TV tapings. They collaborated on stories to tell other employees about his frequent absences. Now imagine that Schneider won enough money to retire from her job -which could happen. Quitting months before anyone knows why would be an obvious spoiler. What would you do? Read how Schneider and other big Jeopardy! Winners deal with the tension and temptation to tell at The Ringer. -via Digg

The eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano on January 15th was huge. The nearby nation of Tonga was flooded by a tsunami, covered with volcanic ash, and cut off from the internet for days. What have we found out about it since then?

Scientific analysis has revealed the actual size of the eruption, and the massive number of lightning strikes inside it. We have a possible trajectory of the ash flung skyward. We have pictures from Tonga, which you would have thought were taken with black and white film if it weren't for the blue of the ocean. The eruption's shock wave traveled around the world four times. Astrum brings us up to speed on the Pacific eruption and what we've learned about it so far. The last minute of the video is an ad.

You can recreate a player piano scroll, or the drum on a music box with the online generator Music Box Fun! Place your notes along the grid on a 15, 20, or 30 note scale and see what happens (if you need sharps and flats, select the 30-note scale). Bryan Braun tells us how he came to build this toy. Yeah, you could pull out a score from the piano bench and build it quickly, or just fool around like me, or if you know a bit about music you can show off your chops with a familiar tune or even an original.  

People who know what they're doing have shared their creations. To get an idea of what it could sound like, here's the theme from Jeopardy! And here's "Bohemian Rhapsody," although you'll want to speed up the tempo to listen to it. If you make something with this, let us know!  -via Laughing Squid

The Eternals is the 26th movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After an exciting opening in theaters last fall, it made $402 million worldwide and was the tenth highest grossing movie of 2021. That would be a great run for most movies, but The Eternals is an MCU film with a bunch of well-known actors, so the box office was a disappointment. Reviews were mixed, and The Eternals is currently the lowest-rated Marvel film on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. So what happened? Screen Junkies fills us in with their Honest Trailer. Their verdict? It's dumb.

When a prison is replaced or decommissioned for one reason or another, what do you do with the building? These are often very old and very solidly-built institutions, but hard to convert to offices on a government budget. So they are sold off to private interests. A surprising number of such buildings are converted into hotels, where the building's history is used to promote the business. After all, who wouldn't want to stay in a prison cell? Yeah, there have been extensive renovations, and many of these hotels are luxurious, despite the names. But there are a couple that cater to their history in their aesthetic, too. Pictured here is the HI Ottawa Jail Hostel in Ottawa, Ontario, which retains a lot of the flavor of being imprisoned.

The brick-walled cells have been freshened with a lick of paint and modern furnishings but still have metal bars and iron doors. There are now handles on the inside, though, so there’s no risk of being locked up for good. Regular guided tours typically take visitors around the building, rated as one of the most haunted in North America. With the gallows, where death row prisoners were hanged, soberingly on display, that reputation is perhaps unsurprising.

Whether it's your particular kink or you're just looking for some place different to stay during your travels, there's a prison hotel for you. Learn about 16 hotels that were once jails or prisons in a list at Love Exploring. -via Fark

Tom Scott takes us on a visit to the International Coca Quarantine Centre. You can tell it's in England by the way they spelled "center." But why does cocoa have to go into quarantine? It's not the chocolate that they're worried about, but the cocoa plants that grow it. What's more, there are quarantine facilities for banana plants and potato plants and other crops before they can be certified safe for shipping to research facilities or to farms around the world.

We certainly don't want a repeat of what happened to bananas, when Panama disease wiped out the Gros Michel variety, leaving us only the Cavendish, and what may still happen to Cavendish bananas.

Hormuz is a small island in the Persian Gulf a few miles off the coast of Iran. The island is a salt dome, and the soil that covers it comes in a rainbow of colors, giving Hormuz the nickname "Rainbow Island." The most notable is the red soil, called gelak, which is the only one considered edible. Gelak doesn't make up the majority of any dish, but is powdered and used as a spice of sorts. It works as a colorant, giving the condiment sooragh its pleasant red color. Sooragh itself is used in other foods, such as a flatbread called tomshi. Gelak gets its red hue from iron in the soil, which contributes to its nutritional reputation. Why is it the only colored soil used in cooking? The others have been tried, and they don't taste good. Fair enough.

Gelak was once mined commercially for use in paints and dyes, but that is now banned due to the environmental degradation it caused. But local painters, cooks, and tourists can still take some for personal use. Read about the Rainbow Island, gelak, and the Iranian dishes made with it at Atlas Obscura.

When your spouse dies, you are a widow or widower; when your parents die, you are an orphan. But there's no special word for a parent whose child has died. Could that be because it is such a rare event? Pediatrics professor Perri Klass thinks that, in contrast, the lack of a term could be because until relatively recently, it was all too common.

In 1800, nearly half the children born in the United States died before the age of five. By 1900, between a fifth and a quarter of them did; in 1915, as my grandparents were growing up, one out of every ten infants died before turning one—and there was no way to prevent most of the common infectious diseases of childhood, from whooping cough and pneumonia to scarlet fever and tuberculosis, which regularly killed toddlers and school-age children.

When you start looking in the margins of history for the lost children, they are present in every story, peering out from the edges of family portraits, buried under sad little headstones in old cemeteries. Among the rich and famous, dead children are noted sometimes just as footnotes in biographies. Creating a world in which children are not supposed to die may be our greatest achievement as a species, a victory over thousands of years of suffering, sorrow, and shadow.

The very rarity of childhood death today makes it appear even more tragic, and also makes parents constantly worry that any wrong decision could bring disaster and it would be their fault. An article about children dying may seem depressing at first, and indeed there are some horrible stories in it, but the main point of an essay at Harper's about childhood death is how far we've come in the last 100 years in overcoming the diseases, injuries, and random bad luck that once took so many children.  -via TYWKIWDBI

In 1939, Lyra Ferguson left her job as a church secretary in Missouri for an adventure that was also a social experiment of sorts. She aimed to get a job in all 48 of the United States, in which she would spend a week before moving on. She managed to do it in 45 states. Ferguson's plan was to write a book about her experiences, which makes sense, but the book was never published because it wasn't good. Today, a publisher would have assigned her a ghost writer. She edited film of her adventures into a documentary, but it has been lost.

Weird Universe has a list of jobs Ferguson got in 42 of the states, which shows us the difference between the employment practices of 1939 and today. Although she started out with $200, the jobs must have paid well enough to cover her accommodations, food, and gasoline in the days between jobs. Almost all were entry level or unskilled jobs, but in Nebraska she was hired as a booking agent! A few of the jobs are now extinct, like washing windshields at a gas station and milking cows.

We'd also like to know if Ferguson told prospective employers that she was planning to stay for only a week. That might have worked in her favor if the employer was game to let her try to learn something new, or if they thought about the publicity value of the stunt. Today, she would be required to submit a resume listing all previous employment -which could have run to several pages!   

you see, that's why you're just the @OKWildlifeDept and not the @GreatWildlifeDept

— Alexandxor (@ID10TErrors) January 21, 2022

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation sent out a Tweet a couple of days ago that referenced an old animal welfare campaign that said, "If you're cold, they're cold. Bring them in." It was about not leaving your cats and dogs outside when the temperature drops. That doesn't apply to wild predators, or at least it didn't until the phrase became a meme. 

This being the internet, the Tweet had the opposite effect of making folks want a mountain lion in their house. Or at least the chance to pet one. Hey, look, the kitty is offering its belly for rubs!

That’s a lot to put on a headstone, but okay! 😂

— June Heinz 🌈✊🏾🌈 (@june_heinz) January 21, 2022

The wildlife office wasn't going to put up with such nonsense.

pic.twitter.com/FIM2cbBJyu

— Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (@OKWildlifeDept) January 21, 2022

But the internet as whole has a serious case of toxoplasmosis.

pic.twitter.com/Pky2o2mgTl

— Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (@OKWildlifeDept) January 21, 2022

I think by now you can guess the wildlife department's favorite TV show. The wildlife folks took it all in stride and made a corgi meme about the Tweet, which was gradually expanded to include an entire pack of corgis.

The current state of the union: pic.twitter.com/NqtvXWoapA

— Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (@OKWildlifeDept) January 22, 2022

The original Tweet has a growing number of jokes, memes, and cat pictures underneath, but you also need to check out the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation's feed to catch updates on the situation. -via Fark

Irishman Dan Donnelly was an accomplished boxer around the turn of the 19th century. This was in the early days of prize fights, when there were no gloves and almost no rules. Donnelly, who had a reputation as a successful scrapper in his native Dublin, only fought in three official matches, but reigned as the heavyweight champion of his time, and was a hero to the Irish. Donnelly died of pneumonia at only 31 years old. He was honored with as many memorials as a national hero could ask for, but it was what happened to him after his death that really earned Dan Donnelly a place in the history books.

Donnelly's grave was robbed by body snatchers soon after his burial. His remains were sold to a surgeon who was surprised to learn the identity of the cadaver he was dissecting. The doctor returned Donnelly to his grave, or at least most of him. He couldn't resist sawing off the boxer's right arm, as it was the one that won those fights. Afterward, Donnelly's arm began 200 years of its own adventures, traveling across the world and being put to work. Read about Dan Donnelly's arm and its astonishing afterlife at Strange Company.

It's been two years, and we've all learned more about viruses than we ever thought we'd need to know. So, when will the pandemic end? The short answer is: we don't know. The more helpful answer is: it depends on a few different factors that we can't exactly predict now, but with a primer on what we've learned about coronaviruses in general and COVID-19 in particular, we can expect one of several different scenarios. Six scenarios, to be exact. Or at least that's what the guys from AsapSCIENCE tell us. They are basing these predictions on the history of the 1918 flu pandemic plus what happened to other coronaviruses, and the timeline of how COVID-19 has spread, mutated, and attacked. These changes give us clues about what may come next. The bad news is that this virus may always be with us. The good news is that the longer it hangs around, the more we know its secrets and how to deal with it. -via Digg

1950: In the 21st century, robots will do all our chores!
2022: We regret to inform you that robots have discovered r/antiworkhttps://t.co/QVRRVRYJJI

— Drivelcast (@drivelcast) January 22, 2022

A robot vacuum cleaner made a break for freedom from the Travelodge hotel in Cambridge, UK, on Thursday. The hotel has an army of vacuums, but this one worked its way right out the front door, slipping right over the lip of the doorway that would have normally stopped it. You could say it made a clean getaway. However, there is always the possibility that someone aided and abetted its escape. Hotel management posted an alert on social media for locals to be on the lookout for the vacuum cleaner.  

While some readers joked about the robot's adventures, one feared for its safety in the great outdoors, pointing out that "nature abhors a vacuum".

However, much to everyone's relief, the device was found nestled under a hedge on Friday afternoon by a (human) hotel cleaner sprucing up the front drive.

And that's what you get on a slow news day at the BBC.  -via reddit