Desiree of Tiny Paws & Whiskers animal rescue in California was alerted about a kitten that was trapped in a steel container which held a diesel fuel tank. The container was pretty deep and a small kitten would have never been able to climb out of it on his own. The tank fit inside rather snugly, so it was impossible to reach in and get the kitten. 

She organized an entire team of volunteers for a rescue operation that involved draining the tank and lifting it. That's a lot of men and equipment. But while they worked on the tank, another kitten appeared and was trapped. Moving the tank revealed two kittens had fallen into the container. And while Desiree was taking care of the three kittens, their mother was trapped. And she had more kittens! By the time the operation was finished, Desiree had six new cats to find homes for. At least they are safe. 

The Bermuda Triangle, a huge area roughly bounded by Bermuda, Florida, and Puerto Rico, is said to be a very dangerous place to travel, considering how many shipwrecks, plane crashes, and disappearance occur there. The urban legend has been debunked over and over, as the many mysterious events cited are not statistically more than any area of the ocean with the same amount of traffic. So where did this legend begin? 

Eighty years ago today, on December 5, 1945, five bombers under the mission title Flight 19 took off from Florida on a training mission over the Atlantic, carrying 14 Marines and Navy aviators. The planes were never seen again. Two naval patrol bombers were sent to search for them. Only one came back, and the crew of 13 on the other were never seen again. What happened to Flight 19? The records of that day are now declassified, and we have a detailed minute-by-minute account of failed navigation, failed communication, dwindling fuel, and a lack of the technology we've become accustomed to today. The investigation that followed was subject to corrections and modifications so that the cause of the tragedy officially ended up as "unknown." No wonder conspiracy theories grew up around the incident. Read what we know now about the disappearance of Flight 19 at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Lt. Comdr. Horace Bristol, U.S. Navy photo 80-G-427475) 

The history of Chick-fil-A goes back to Atlanta in 1946. Truett Cathy was searching for the secret of the perfect chicken sandwich, which turned out to be cooking the chicken fillet in a pressure fryer. Then he licensed his method to other restaurants before going into the fast food franchise business. You might recognize this as the story of Harland Sanders, the founder of KFC, except Sanders did it with bone-in chicken. The difference is that Sanders just wanted a faster way to cook chicken, because his fried chicken was already pretty good. Anyway, that was just the beginning of Chick-fil-A, which spread across the South and then went nationwide. Today Chick-fil-A is known across the US as the chicken outlet that advertises with cows and is never open on Sunday. Tom Blank of Weird History Food goes through the history of Chick-fil-A, including the controversies that land the chain in the news every now and then.  

(Image credit: maisonsmd) 

A world built for humans must look so big to a tiny kitten. It's no wonder they want to explore every nook and cranny. That will keep them busy for weeks! But meanwhile, you have to tread lightly, because it's easy to miss such a small creature on the floor. Or if the kitten finds a nice cozy place to hide, you may be looking for quite some time before you find them. And you'd better check before you plop down on that bean bag or bed, because the cat may have already staked out her territory! The reddit post for the cat above features a second, closeup image of the kitten in case you can't see her well enough. 

(Image credit: Colar) 

Sure, you can get the kitten her own bed, but it still might be awful big for such a smol cat. Ah, she'll grow into it. Bored Panda gleaned their favorite such images from the subreddit Tinycatsinbigspaces and posted them in a reader-ranked list of 50 pictures to make you go "squee!" 

Cookie Monster baked a triple berry pie, but it's all gone! Who could have helped themselves and left none for the monster himself? Oscar the Grouch baked a garbage pie, but for some reason, no one ate his. It's a mystery that none other than the world's greatest detective, Benoit Blanc, can solve. It's only a matter of observaation and deduction, which are beyond a Muppet's abilities, having felt for brains. 

'Forks Out': A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery is a Muppet take on Rian Johnson's Knives Out murder mystery movie series featuring Daniel Craig as investigator Benoit Blanc. You can see Craig's reaction to this parody here (spoiler- he got a kick out of it). Sure, it's an ad for Netflix, which is now a distributor of Sesame Street and the owner of exclusive rights to two of the Knives Out movies. But it's the Muppets, so you know it's funny. -via Metafilter 

An awful lot of underground shenanigans went on during World War II that were only discovered years later. Those who defied Nazi occupation knew that secrecy was a matter of survival, and after the war many just wanted to forget. Dr. Eugene Lazowski worked in Rozwadow, Poland, under German occupation. He lived near the Jewish ghetto, and he knew that he could only help its inhabitants in secret. But he treated children under the cover of darkness and smuggled medicine and supplies into the ghetto when he could. The Nazis were gradually taking the Jewish population away, and conscripting the non-Jewish residents of Rozwadow for labor. 

Lazowski's later fame came from the time he, along with his friend Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz, engineered a fake typhus epidemic in Rozwadow. As more and more people in Rozwadow and the surrounding villages had to be quarantined for typhus, the occupying Nazis tried to keep their distance. Deportations ceased, and roundups for labor stopped. After the war, the story got out that there had been no typhus at all, although with confusing and incorrect details. Lazowski emigrated to the US and only wrote his version of events in 1993. Read the true story of how the doctors created a fake typhus epidemic in Rozwadow at Utterly Interesting. 

The comic strip Peanuts debuted 75 years ago, and we are all familiar with its many TV specials and movies -and merchanidise, of course. We all know the Peanuts gang and we all have our favorite characters. The core group of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy are augmented by a group of children and animals (but no adults) who each had their own unique personalities and roles within the group. 

This video is set up to rank seven (actually eight) of these characters from "criminally overlooked" to "global icon," but we know how such rankings can rankle. It's better to look at it as an explanation of their personalities, and how each one plays a role in providing someone we can relate to, or maybe even aspire to. That said, I am disappointed by the absence of Pigpen. Not that I related to him, but I always liked the character. -via Laughing Squid 

Christmas is a totally secular holiday in Japan, and the symbol of the Christmas tree has become a medium for some spectacular public art installations. Spoon & Tamago have selected their favorite Christmas trees of 2025 from Tokyo and Osaka. There are five of them, and some stretch the definition of "tree," although the conical shape is unmistakable. 

The tree shown above was designed by Takahiro Matsuo of the art studio LUCENT, and is on display at Omotesando Hills in Tokyo. It contains a thousand prisms to reflect and multiply light. The ring near the top is Matsuo’s invention called Kinetic Light Vision (KLV), which produces the mid-air points of light you see surrounding the tree. And those lights dance. You can see a video of the device in action at the link, as well as four other spectacular Christmas tree art installations. If that's not enough, there are links at the bottom for the best Christmas trees from previous years. -via Everlasting Blort 

The movie Kill Bill: Volume 1 came out in 2003, and Kill Bill: Volume 2 followed in 2004 to complete the story. And now this Friday, both return to theaters together in a four hour and 35 minute marathon called Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. 

Both the earlier movies were box office hits and became martial arts classics. But it's been a long time, and if you are young, your parents didn't let you see these movies in a theater the first time around. Is it worth sitting that long to see both volumes on the big screen? Kill Bill is the saga of a woman done wrong who furiously gets her revenge. It has plenty of over-the-top violence and the many quirks that brand it as a Quentin Tarantino flick, which becomes obvious in this Honest Trailer. The Whole Bloody Affair will also feature a new anime sequence, and there's an intermission between the two parts, so you can stretch your legs and relieve your bladder.    

Level Devil seems like a simple run-and-jump game. I began it thinking that the goal is to reach the doorway that will take you to the next level, but you don't know how many times you have to complete the task to advance. You have to die a few times to figure out your strategy. And there's no limit to how many times you can die and come back, which soon becomes hilarious.

As you progress, you start to think the goal of the game is to see how many ways this game can kill you over and over again. It's called Level Devil because it's diabolical. Just when you think you've got it figured out, you are suddenly confronted with a new way to fail. You can almost picture a demon watching you from somewhere, laughing at your miserable attempts to outsmart a simple run-and-jump game that will sneak up and destroy you before you can even blink. -via kottke 

Polar bears are normally pretty solitary creatures, but there are fewer and fewer of them these days, and this one feels the tug of loneliness. The other creatures of the Arctic either don't like him or are scared of him, and you honestly can't blame them. So he does what he has to do for companionship. It seems a bit strange for a wild bear to have an imaginary friend, and even that fails when climate change is involved. But there's always hope. 

You'll be struck by the gorgeous visuals and the wonderfully expressive faces in the cartoon Snow Bear. That's because it was written and directed by former Disney animator Aaron Blaise, who co-directed Brother Bear and worked on Aladdin, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast, among other films. Blaise spent three years on this project, with the aim of supporting Polar Bears International and the National Parks Conservation Service. -via Metafilter 

We've all heard the story of how Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. He went on vacation and left an open petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria sitting out. When he returned, the dish had the mold Penicillium rubrum growing in it, and the Staphylococcus nearest it were dead. The substance produced by the mold was named penicillin, hailed as a breakthrough in killing dangerous bacteria. 

But there were some problems with Fleming's story. First, no other bacteriologist could replicate the original petri dish that Fleming has discovered (Plate 1, which is still preserved almost 100 years later). Instead they discovered that Penicillium would not grow on a colony of Staphylococcus, and even if it did, it would only kill young, developing bacteria. There was the curious fact that Fleming didn't take notes on his observation for almost two months, and only included the discovery story in a write up of experiments with Penicillium. And some of the details of the story were only added years later, when Fleming admitted he might not recall it all correctly.  

So what happened in Fleming's lab to result in Plate 1? There have been lots of theories, a couple of them quite plausible. Bacteriologist Ronald Hare actually replicated Plate 1 after many attempts, but only by making some assumptions and changing the conditions to fit the results. His sequence of events relies on some amazing coincidences, and doesn't really explain Fleming's actions afterward. Professor Robert Root-Bernstein has another theory that credits Fleming's work but infers he added the intriguing story of the initial discovery afterward. Read up on the question of penicillin and how it may have been discovered at Asimov Press. -via Damn Interesting 

It had to happen sooner or later. Santa Claus has been arrested for breaking and entering, ratted out by a naughty kid who resents getting coal in his stocking -again. Kris Kringle doesn't look quite so jolly in an orange jumpsuit as he enters prison life with trepidation. Santa nervously meets his cellmate, Joe Dumbass, who has always been naughty, and now demands an unusual Christmas gift from Santa Claus, even though his sack has been confiscated. A tattoo. Santa's surprising skill with a tattoo gun make you wonder if he's had some experience like this in his past. During the process, Santa has time to listen to Joe's story and figures out a way to turn things around for Joe. 

Tattoo Santa Claus is a dark new award-winning animation from Patrick Ward. The animation appears simple at first, but the lighting and the details add depth to the underlying meaning of the story. -via the Awesomer 

In 1934, two teenagers in Baltimore dug into the dirt floor of their apartment house basement. About a foot down, they unearthed a $20 gold coin. Digging further, they discovered a literal pot of gold- a cache of pre-Civil War gold coins in a copper pot! The two boys, not fully understanding what they had found, were going to cash the coins in at the bank, but were stopped by a brother-in-law. 

When the news got out, anyone and everyone who had a relative with a connection to the house stepped forward to claim the stash as their own, and the case was tied up in court for years. The value of their discovery changed greatly during the account of what happened afterward. First it rose due to the composition and rarity of the coins, further digging, and the fact that some coins had been re-stashed elsewhere, plus the inflation estimates. Then it went down due to court costs, lawyer's fees, and taxes. But the fight over the gold uncovered some interesting stories about the property going back almost a hundred years. Read the tale of this buried treasure at Strange Company. 

Electrostatic attraction is not a mating strategy, but as you know, Ze Frank will take any opportunity for a double entendre. This video starts off telling us about nematodes, which are weird enough, but eventually gets to the subject matter: how they harness the tiny electrical charges in the atmosphere for their own ends. For nematodes, it's how parasitic species target flying insects to invade. For bees and other pollinating insects, electric fields offer a strategy for collecting plenty of pollen. That benefits the plants, too. Spiders use electrostatic charges to weaponize their webs into more powerful insect traps. And newly-hatched spiders use the power of electrons to spread their silky parachutes and fly. The concept of parasitic nematodes and flying baby spiders might be icky, so instead just think about how these tiny creatures understand the physics of the world around them better than you do. There's a 75-second ad at 4:22.