In the 1880s, French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon introduced the standardized mug shot as a way to identify criminals. This was accompanied by his thorough system of measurements of the person, from height to the width of a foot. 

In 1903, the clerk at Leavenworth prison logged in a new inmate named Will West. Checking the records, he found that Leavenworth already had an inmate named William West who'd been there for two years. His mugshot (at the bottom in the image above) looked a lot like the new prisoner Will West (pictured at top), and his measurements, as recorded in the Bertillon System, were identical. Could these two prisoners be one and the same? The case is often cited as the death knell of the Bertillon System and the complete adoption of fingerprint identification of prisoners, although mug shots remained. Will West and William West had very different fingerprints. 

What throws a wrench into that story is the fact that Leavenworth prison did not adopt fingerprint identification until 1904. That's when the two Wests were first fingerprinted, so the prison had to have used a different method of keeping the two inmates straight until then. Read about Will West, William West, and the way we identify prison inmates at Utterly Interesting. 

You know the story of the Trojan Horse, of course, because you've read Homer's Iliad, the epic poem about the Trojan War, right? No, because you haven't read it, and also because the Trojan Horse isn't in the Iliad. But you know the story of how the Greeks won the war against the city of Troy after ten years by leaving a gift of a massive wooden horse behind, which the Trojans accepted and brought into the city gates, not realizing it was full of Greek soldiers. It only makes sense the Trojans would do that, despite the horse's odd weight, without looking to see what was inside. 

Is there any truth at all to the story? We once thought that the city of Troy was itself fictional, until Heinrich Schliemann found it in Turkey (and dug right through the layer that would have existed at the relevant time). But that doesn't mean there actually was a ten-year war. And while the tale of the Trojan Horse was layered with supernatural deeds by Greek gods, that was normal for both historical and fictional accounts in ancient Greece. Weird History looks at the story of the Trojan Horse, and reveals some theories about how it could have happened, whether it did or not. 

YouTube has been around for 21 years now, longer than many of its users have been alive. It exploded quickly, because it was free and easy to use, and it offered a platform for all kinds of creativity. That includes horror, and YouTube horror shorts soon proved that you don't need 90 minutes of film and a substantial budget to scare the pants off everyone. It also helped that you didn't have to telegraph your intentions ahead of time, proven by the 20-second film Relaxing Car Drive from 20 years ago that was anything but. 

YouTube horror shorts rely more on innovative ideas than cast or budget. They simply place you in a scenario that produces dread or horror that often isn't explained at all, but can still leave nightmares. Anna Dupre has compiled a history of YouTube horror shorts with plenty of embedded examples and links to quite a few more, in case you haven't been scared enough today. -via Nag on the Lake

In 1973, Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés put 11 young adults, including himself, on a raft sailing from the Canary Islands across the Atlantic for more than three months to Cozumel island, Mexico. He expected to document the power struggles, sexual jealousy, and violence that would inevitably overwhelm the group. Kind of like a reality TV show. But you know what they say about assumptions. 

I had heard about the Acali raft experiment, which was the subject of a full-length documentary, but didn't know a lot about it until I watched a video today. It was interesting, but with an AI-generated narration and images, I didn't want to post it. Then I spotted a video from three years ago with the exact same title, and it has most of the same narration and actual footage of the event. The newer AI video has an update about a reunion of the surviving participants, who had a wonderful time meeting up with each other 45 years later to make the documentary. 

Trendy young people make a big point of staying hydrated, and honestly, they are on to something. Giving your body plenty of water makes you look and feel younger, improves your mood, and can help you tolerate a heat wave. But you don't have to follow a strict regimen to improve your own health with water. The most important thing to know is that if you wait until you are thirsty to take a drink, you are probably already dehydrated. I was hospitalized for dehydration once, and it's no picnic. 

However, some of the scarier "rules" you've heard about hydration are things you don't need to worry about. Should you add electrolytes to your drinks? Does caffeine cause dehydration? How about alcohol? Is there anything better than water for hydration? And how much do you really need to drink in a day? For some questions, it just depends on whether you are a hard-working athlete or a regular Joe. Older people, those who take certain medications, and people who work outside in summer also need to pay attention to their water intake. As for how much to drink, the answer is usually just "more." Learn the basics of proper hydration without the hype at Science Focus. -via Real Clear Science 

Killer turtles with poison spears! Invaders of the slime glass fortress! The ballistic torpedo shark! These creatures sound like they came from a 1950s B-movie, but they are real, and they are dangerous. We humans simply ignore them, because we can't see them and barely know about them. These are protists, mostly single-celled organisms that are neither animal, plant, bacteria, or virus, but are the ancestors of them all. Now they feed on their descendants, with an amazing variety of weapons that are hard to believe possible from a single cell. The prey they feed on are also quite small, and some protists are even beneficial to humans by controlling the species they eat. Kurzgesagt introduces us to three of the weirdest predatory protists, to show what an amazing world lies underneath us while we don't pay attention. This video contains a sponsor message from 3:47 to 5:04, and the last minute is promotional. -via the Awesomer 

One problem with history that goes way back is lack of documentation. We didn't always have writing, and even when we did, records could be destroyed by war, natural disasters, and even neglect. Oral histories become distorted or embellished over time. That applies to many historical figures that are now considered fiction, even if they were inspired by someone at some time who really existed. The biggest example is King Arthur, who may or may not have been a real person, but historians believe he wasn't a king and most likely wasn't named Arthur. He is just one in a long line of folklore tales that were told as factual or fictional depending on when the story was told or who told it. 

An example from the list is William Tell. The story of Tell successfully shooting an apple off the top of his son's head, under pressure of course, is important in the story of the founding of Switzerland in the 14th century. But Tell didn't appear in the literature until more than a century after the events supposedly took place, and some points of the story are contradictory. Maybe someone greatly distorted the story, or maybe it was completely made up after the fact. Read about Tell and four other historical figures that never existed at all at Mental Floss. 

(Image source: Library of Congress) 

Somewhere between Veggie Tales and Sausage Party, there is The Fridge, a short film by Coby Palivathukal. Food comes alive in a weird animation style that soon becomes unimportant as we get to know the residents of the refrigerator. They realize that their time is limited, but meanwhile they deal with romance, betrayal, nihilism, and the hope of better days to come. Ted the carrot loves Rachel the tomato, but he's also a player. Beefster wants to escape, and Tot the potato is there to help him. So what does he think is going to happen to him if he gets out? Jake the cucumber falls for newcomer Sophie the avocado. Meanwhile, they get advice from Master Mayo, who knows things because he's been there forever. 

They all learn life's lessons in a hurry, because refrigerated food is nothing if not ephemeral. The story requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, because what is a potato, a tomato, and an apple doing in a refrigerator in the first place?  -via Nag on the Lake   
 

Britannica gives us a game that has nothing to do with words. Instead, in The Loop, you get a circle of twelve spots, and twelve icon images. The goal is to arrange the images in order so that each image is logically connected to the next, even when the circle reconnects at the top. The first image is placed for you, and you can go in either direction. Click on an image to get a larger version if you have trouble figuring them out. The images can be linked in many different ways, like a common idiom, the shape, if they are often seen together, etc. With some, you really have to think. 

You have five chances to check your progress as you go, green meaning correct and red meaning wrong. A yellow circle means that two images are linked, but they may be in the wrong order or the wrong place. You will start with today's game, and afterward you will be directed to previous daily games. I didn't have much trouble with today's game, and this screenshot is the beginning of yesterday's game. -via Metafilter 

Well, maybe not all of them are your favorite songs, but an awful lot of straightforward songs that profess love or tell stories have origins and inspirations that might surprise you. In an obvious reaction to the Doc Pomus story from a couple of weeks ago, we get a trivia list about where those song ideas came from. It may have been a simple cultural or language difference that gave the song an entirely different meaning, like "...Baby One More Time," the song that put Britney Spears on the map. Or it may have been inspired by a person, and good luck figuring out who. 

And there are some that were honestly pretty easy to figure out, llike "Sweet Caroline." But only if you were around at the time. Or if you were like me and made a living off of music trivia.

Read about 28 songs and where the ideas for them came from in a pictofacts list at Cracked. 

Every story is better when it's told with LEGO minifigs. Homemade movies have long used LEGO minifigs as characters, because they are attainable, first by stop-motion, then computer-generated. Eventually, we got official full-length LEGO movies, but like the homemade films, they are often parodies of popular live action movie franchises starring toys. Technically, Yellow is a parody of psychological horror films. It may remind you of the horror film Us at first, but the twist reveals that it makes plenty of sense within the world of LEGO minifigs, and mirrors what happened to the toys in the real world. 

Sure, this trailer gives away the twist (like so many real movie trailers do these days), but that's okay when you realize that there is no full-length movie. Yet. LEGO fans in the comments are clamoring for the full story of Yellow in an extended version, so creator George Coley is making plans to do just that. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

When the Founding Fathers designed the United States governmental structure, they took great care to make it look different from a monarchy. Therefore we have three equal branches, a house instead of a palace, and the custom of calling our leader "Mr. President." Occasionally, we have a president who wants to stray from those practices. 
  
The United States Secret Service Uniformed Division is a branch of the service that guards the White House and other locations. They are, and traditionally dress as, police officers. After visiting Europe soon after his first inauguration, Richard Nixon decided America needed more pomp and circumstance at the White House, and partnered with a Washington tailor to create fancy uniforms for the division to be worn for ceremonial occasions. The uniforms had double-breasted jackets festooned with gold braid and White House branding, and stiff caps trimmed in gold. They looked like marching band uniforms, and were ridiculed in the press. The uniforms were retired a few years later, and eventually went up for sale. What happened to the uniforms afterward is the more interesting story, which you can read at the Nixon Presidential Library. -via Fark  

Have you ever wondered how the International Space Station gets enough oxygen to keep its crews breathing? It's not shipped in, at least not often. The same goes for water, although humans use a lot of oxygen and water every day. The floating laboratory is equipped with hi-tech appliances for renewing its own supplies. Water is recycled into fresh water, and some of it is used to make new oxygen. Humans also expel a lot of carbon dioxide, which is not expelled from the station, but is converted into water and methane. New water is always welcome, but this video does not go into detail on what they do with the methane. One would like to think it's expelled, because a space station fart is amusing to think about. Maybe someday it will be used as fuel. 

These conversions require separating molecules into atoms, which is amazing enough, but they've also found a way to do it with no moving parts that could break down. I'm impressed.  

That leaning tower in Pisa, Italy, is not the only ancient structure that wouldn't pass inspection today. Poland has its own such tower, built of brick, in the town of Toruń, the birthplace of Copernicus. 

The tower dates back to the 13th century, when the Teutonic Order, a Catholic military/monastic order born of the Crusades, held the city of Toruń in the Baltic region. They built two towers as part of the city's fortifications against attack by the pagan Prussians and Lithuanians. The brick towers were quite heavy, and as soon as they were completed, they started leaning to one side as they settled into the soft ground underneath. At least, that's the practical explanation. An old legend says that one of the Teutonic Knights was commanded to build the towers to lean as punishment for falling in love with a local woman. 

Only one of the leaning towers is still standing, and it's been used as a prison, apartments, shops, and offices through the centuries. We can assume that the floors inside have been leveled, otherwise it wouldn't be useable. Read about the leaning tower of Toruń and the knights who built it at Kuriositas.  

(Image credit: Scotch Mist) 

Otto the dachshund has a nice life for a pet, at least from our perspective. He has a nice house, plenty to eat, and a human who loves him. But the human has become more and more obsessed with Otto. Constant photographs. Videos. And the clothing- all so undignified! Otto feels more and more uneasy about all the attention. The human doesn't even go to work anymore, because he's too busy posting videos of Otto and his brother Kaspar, who doesn't seem to mind a bit. He's not too smart. Then one day, Otto spots an opportunity to make a break for freedom. The human has left the door open! Otto takes his chance to escape the prying eyes of the internet. 

Sparky Jones' short film Confessions of a Dachshund highlights Otto's constant concern and his talent for the side-eye. No doubt Otto will be a star, but will not appreciate the adulation. You can see more of Otto, Kaspar, and the human at Instagram. -via Nag on the Lake