Pat and Diane Farla of Shropshire, England moved into their home three years ago and wondered what a rectangle in the floor represented. On Good Friday, they has a few drinks and decided to find out. They pulled the metal grid up and found a narrow tunnel which led to an underground chamber! The room held a wooden cross, brick seats along the wall, an open chest containing newspapers from the 1930s, and some hooks hanging from the ceiling. The Farlas also found a stairway leading back up to a cupboard in their dining room.

The Farla said the deeds of the detached house dated from 230 years ago and they believe that at some point it had been used as a pub.

Richard Westwood Brookes, historical documents expert for nearby Shropshire auctioneers Mullocks, said: 'If the deeds are over 230 years old and the room dates back to the 1700's, there's a chance it could have been used as a Catholic hideaway or for other nonconformist religious groups.

'There's a possibility a room like that could be used as a clandestine Catholic church as you couldn't be a Catholic during that time - you would be persecuted and executed.

'It may well have been a Catholic priest hole - but it all depends on what the age was.'

He added that if it had been built during World War II it could have been a type of bunker.

Link -via Metafilter

Phil Gyford created an infographic about infographics, which says what many of us are thinking. Link -via Laughing Squid

Pixar studios has proven that Disney isn't the only game in town for quality animated films. How well do you know the Pixar films? Find out in this quiz from mental_floss! I scored 33%, way below average, even though I've seen most of these movies. You, no doubt, will do better. Link

(YouTube link)

Kid's entertainment in Finland is a little different. Hevisaurus is a metal band composed of dinosaurs! Here they perform the song "Jee Hevisaurus." -via Metafilter

Some people (up to 24% in one survey) tend to sneeze when they are exposed to bright light. A new name for this reflex is Autosomal Cholinergic Helio-Ophtalmologic Outburst syndrome, or ACHOO for short. Har har. The same researchers who came up with this acronym compared EEGs of people who sneezed as response to light and those who don't. The subjects also filled out a questionnaire designed to stimulate brain activity, and also to find out how much their noses tickled in response to light. Bursts of light accompanied the EEGs.

You can see the red line above showing the photo sneezers had much higher nose-tickle response to bright light, and showed stronger activity in the somatosensory cortex, an area that processes sensory information. So it appears that people with ACHOO Syndrome have higher sensory responses to both the tickle sensation and to the visual stimulus of the bright light.

Unfortunately, they weren't able to come up with a connection between the two areas and a sneeze reflex center (we're not that good yet), but it's certainly a first step, and the hypothesis is that the insula, may link the areas, though other pathways could exist as well (the insula is totally everyone's favorite brain area right now, ain't it?).

Could it possibly be that some people are just more sensitive than others? Link

This concept of hell is brought to you by the webcomic xkcd. Only a couple of days after this particular comic went viral, there is a playable version. Understand, I said a playable version, not a winnable version. Link -via b3ta

A cow apparently wandered into a culvert in Kaysville, Utah and squeezed through the town’s storm drain system until she became stuck where the drain narrowed just enough. Animal Control officers officers were alerted when a couple heard noises and found a full-grown cow in a street drain.

Holden Holt and his wife told FOX 13 they found the cow stuck the drain while walking Thursday morning.

"We heard a noise in the storm drain and my wife went over and looked and there was a head with some eyes poking out. It was a little frightening," Holt said.

Animal Control staff tried in vain to chase the cow out the way she came in. Finally a crew had to dig up part of the street, and a tractor was used to pulled the cow out. Officers said she was underground for at least five days. The cow, covered with bruises and scratches, was returned to the farm and reunited with her calf. Link -via Fortean Times

A couple of two million-year-old skeletons found in South Africa have been classified as a new species and named Australopithecus sediba. This discovery may be a "transitional species" between australopithecines and humans.

Growing to just over 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall, A. sediba has a number of key traits that some would say mark it as an early human, like Homo habilis, which many consider the first human species.

A. sediba, for example, had long legs and certain humanlike characteristics in its pelvis, which would have made it the first human ancestor to walk—perhaps even run—in an energy-efficient manner, the study says.

However, there are also many apelike traits in the new species. Link

(image credit: Brett Eloff)

Burkina Faso native Assami Semde was delivering two pizzas in the Harlem area of New York City when he was accosted by two hooded teenagers. One drew a gun and demanded the pizzas. Semde put the pizzas down and punched the gunman, who ran off. Then he grabbed and held the other man until police arrived. Then he finished delivering the pizzas, still hot, before he went to file a police report.

Semde's boss, Frank Grecco -- a retired NYPD detective with 22 years on the force -- called the teen "very courageous" but added, "I told him, 'Next time, leave the pizza!'

"He now realizes that he may have done something a little bit crazy," said Grecco, who owns the East Harlem Famous Famiglia.

Semde agreed.

"It's crazy. I think it's better not to fight," he said.

Link -via Arbroath

Wired takes a look at new technologies for delivering nutrients to our bodies, from meat grown in laboratories instead of farms to ocean-grown crops. And there's a possibility we won't even need food in the future! Scientist Robert Freitas imagines humans ingesting nanorobots that could supply each cell with energy as it is needed.

This would only replace food’s caloric aspect, so we’d still need to take vitamin and nutritional supplements in order to provide the body with new matter as cells die off, according to Patrick Tucker, director of communications for the World Future Society. Still, there’s a certain cold comfort in knowing that if worse comes to worst, nanotechnology might give us a food pill that, taken every 10 years or so, would power our bodies if the planet loses the ability to do so — or if we’re forced to leave the planet, as Stephen Hawking suggests.

Link -via Digg

(image credit: Flickr user GE Healthcare)

(Daily Motion link)

Patrick Jean created this video about retro 8-bit video game characters taking revenge on the modern world. -via mental_floss

If history had swung in a slightly different direction, we may have spent fourth grade memorizing the capitals of Sylvania, Deseret, Texlahoma, and Forgottonia. I would be living in Transylvania!

American pioneer Daniel Boone also had a thing for the "sylvania" suffix. If he'd had his way, Kentucky would have been called Transylvania and we'd be placing bets on horses at the Transylvania Derby. Boone hoped to call the colony's capital Boonesborough, but much to the explorer's chagrin, North Carolina and Virginia voted against Transylvania's existence.

Read about more of these "lost states" at NPR. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125142955&sc=fb&cc=fp -via Metafilter

This picture shows what hydrogen atoms might look like if we could see them.

The chart above shows the appearance of a single hydrogen atom in a few of its lowest excited states. In each of those states, the electron is found in a different orbital, some of which have unfamiliar shapes. But even the term "shape" is a little funny for something that you can't hold in your hand. These are actually probability density plots, which show the likelihood of observing the electron in any one position at a given time-- and more correctly, 2D projections of 3D probability densities.

So even the humble hydrogen atom can be a bit complex. Fortunately, we have advanced technology that can help us cut though the quantum mechanical haze: Cookies!

What we can see (and taste) are cookies made to resemble the shapes of the hydrogen atoms in the chart. The folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories made these cookies and will show you how you can make them, too! Link

(YouTube link)

Every Easter in Stratford, Ontario you can see the swans returning to the Avon River in style. They are escorted from their winter quarters in a fenced area to the water by a parade of bagpipers! The Stratford Police Services pipe band wore kilts and marched to the river while playing music. The swans waddled behind. Link -via Arbroath

In 1931, a schoolboy wrote a fan letter to his favorite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs. It said, in part:

I am a fourteen year old boy and am a low Junior in High School. Today at school our teacher was discussing "good literature." I asked if Edgar Rice Burroughs was all right for a book report. I knew she'd say "no" (teachers always do) but I didn't expect her to lecture to the class for the whole period about how terrible your books were!

The author of the Tarzan novels wrote back, in part:

My stories will do you no harm. If they have helped to inculcate in you a love of books, they have done you much good. No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

Which explains why I bought the Twilight books for my youngest daughter. The 14-year-old boy who wrote the letter was Forrest J. Ackerman, {wiki} who grew up to coin the term "sci-fi". Ackerman was a film producer, actor, and the editor of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, and made a name as the biggest science fiction fan ever. Read both letters in full at Letters of Note. Link