Ada Blackjack was an Iñupiaq woman who married at 16 and had three children before her husband abandoned her. Only one child survived infancy, and he suffered from tuberculosis. Blackjack walked 40 miles to Nome, Alaska, carrying her son Bennett in order to place him in an orphanage, because she couldn't afford his medical treatment. She desperately wanted him back, and that's why she signed on to the doomed 1921 expedition that Vilhjalmur Stefansson organized to explore the possibility of a colony on Wrangel Island, the uninhabited Russian island in the Arctic Ocean where the last woolly mammoths survived until 4,000 years ago. The plan was iffy, but the $50 a month pay was enticing.

The four young men and one woman (plus a cat) only had six months worth of supplies. As the crew went into its second winter on Wrangel Island, they were starving. E. Lorne Knight was sick with scurvy, and the other three men left to try and reach Siberia, but did not make it. Blackjack was left to care for Knight, herself, and the cat, although she was only hired to be a seamstress for the crew. But she stepped up and hunted game, hauled firewood, built tools, and kept a diary of her experience. When a rescue ship finally reached Wrangel Island in August of 1923, Knight had been dead for 57 days, but Blackjack and the cat were holding on. Read how Blackjack spent two years on Wrangel Island and took on the work of four men to make it back to her son, at Jstor Daily. -via Damn Interesting   

(Image source: Archive.org)

Minnesotastan was naturally proud of his state when the University of Minnesota Dance Team won the College Dance Team National Championship last weekend. It's their 22nd national championship. Minnesota won the title for their pom routine, but their jazz routine (which took second place) was the one that went viral. The sequence that got everyone's attention starts at about 1:30, where all twenty dancers spin on one foot, then do a synchronized aerial flip, then spin on one foot some more. That's a very difficult move for one person, but to get the entire team so precisely synchronized is amazing. They had initially planned for only a few dancers to execute the move, but then went ahead and included everyone. The choice of Aerosmith's "Dream On" for the routine is a throwback to the 2004 team, which used it 20 years earlier. Also, in a case of nominative determinism, their assistant coach's name is Tina Tumbleson. -via TYWKIWDBI

The credit for this picture is NASA/JPL-Caltech, but it was actually taken by the Left Navigation Camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. The date on earth was January 9, but on Mars the date was Sol 4062. What we are looking at is the route uphill to Mount Sharp, or Aeolis Mons, where Curiosity is trying to figure out how water once flowed there. However, what we are seeing is that Starfleet got there first.

I bet the Star Trek fans on the @MarsCuriosity team smiled like Cheshire Cats when they saw this new image appear on their screens... :-)

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech pic.twitter.com/SdWyq4Sc5P

— Stuart Atkinson (@mars_stu) January 10, 2024

There's no way the many Star Trek fans who work at NASA missed the unique and ubiquitous shape of a Starfleet insignia, worn as a badge by all service members, and used as a communicator in Star Trek: The Next Generation and other series. I have one in my jewelry box. You could say it's pareidolia, but considering it's a new planet we're exploring, the first one we've been able to, it might be a sign of something. -via Boing Boing

Airline pilots were asked which airports they'd rather not fly to, and got some wild stories. LaGuardia, Lake Tahoe, and and the Hillary-Tenzing Airport in Lukla, Nepal got mentioned by more than one pilot. Kai Tak gives at least one pilot nightmares even though it closed a quarter-century ago. One is an aircraft carrier, which is quite understandable.

What makes an airport difficult for a pilot? Some runways are very short, and may have a sudden cliff at the end, above or below the runway. Some require you to climb suddenly for noise abatement, like Los Angeles airports. Some are surrounded by mountains or buildings. Skiathos Airport in Greece (pictured above) has a low approach that requires you to fly just a few feet over the heads of gathered tourists. At least one airport made the list because of the staff's attitude. Read the reasons why 35 pilots don't want to fly into certain airports at Bored Panda. Keep in mind, the rankings are from readers of the site.  

(Image credit: Timo Breidenstein)

The first people to fly through the air were balloonists, beginning with the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. The early balloon trips were called flying circuses because they were so novel. Seeing one, or for a few people, going up in one, was pure entertainment, and any flight would draw a huge crowd. But for Thomas Baldwin, the very idea of an aerial balloon offered a chance to advance science, to study the atmosphere, and to see the world from above it.

Baldwin was no balloonist, but when daredevil balloonist Vincenzo Lunardi came to Chester, England, in 1785, Baldwin was ecstatic. Lunardi was injured before his scheduled flight and offered Baldwin the chance to take his place. It was Baldwin's only balloon flight, but he made the most of it, taking scientific instruments with him on his trip to take measurements, and a sketchbook to illustrate what he saw. Read how Baldwin gave us the first aerial maps from human eyesight at Atlas Obscura.

"Weird Al" Yankovic's very first single was "My Bologna." He wrote the song in 1979, the same year that The Knack took over our radios with "My Sharona." Yankovic recorded it in a bathroom for the Dr. Demento Show, and it became so popular that Capitol Records eventually let him record with a backing band, released as a single from his first album in 1983. But there was no official video. In those days when MTV was new, you have to be an established star to justify the expense of making one.  

But now it has one, made by Yankovic fan Isaiah Ferguson. It took him ten months of work to produce this stop-motion video that captures the spirit of Weird Al quite well. It's less than a minute long, while the original song is just over two minutes, but let's be honest, that's about all we can handle. -via Laughing Squid

In the 1500s, cartographer Robert Thorne floated the idea that the North Pole wasn't covered with ice, but merely was protected by a ring of ice around it. In the 19th century, August Petermann resurrected the idea, and thought that ring might have channels through it, so that sailing ships could cross the North Pole and make intercontinental travel shorter. By then, some explorers claimed they had actually seen the North Pole ocean. But two expeditions, in 1869 and 1872, failed to get through the ice.

An American expedition wanted to try reaching the pole through the Bering Strait, and in 1879, the Jeannette sailed out of San Francisco. But upon reaching the Arctic, the ship became encased in ice -for two years. The crew abandoned ship in June of 1881 when the Jeannette fell apart. They carried three boats to the edge of the ice and then tried to reach Siberia. Two boats made it to land, but only one crew survived to reach civilization. Read the story of the Jeannette expedition at Amusing Planet.

Having watched a lot of Saturday morning TV in the 1960s, I was aware of the Easy-Bake Oven, but I never really craved one until I got to elementary school and found out that many of the girls in my class had one. I asked for one, but my parents thought that was silly, since I was already using the regular oven to make tiny cakes in tiny pans whenever my mother baked a full-size cake. Besides, it was too expensive -and so were the tiny packets of cake mix. That was logical, but not easy for a six-year-old to hear. So the most nostalgic part of this video for me is seeing the Kenner Gooney Bird.

Forty years later, my own children never expressed any desire to bake tiny cakes with a light bulb. I honestly didn't know they were still made until I watched this video from Weird History Food. The Easy-Bake Oven turned 60 years old just tecently, and has had a lot of ups and down in its history. The older ones that still work fetch a premium in the vintage toy market, but good luck finding light bulbs that are hot enough to bake a cake.   

In the Star Trek universe, Bloodwine is what Klingons drink, often to celebrate winning battles or during ceremonies. It is twice as potent as whiskey, and will knock non-Klingons for a loop. Believe it or not, Klingon Bloodwine is not available at Star Trek Spirits as they specialize in Romulan liquor, but you can order it through Star Trek Wines. Still, it might not be what you imagined because the title comes with "Cabernet Sauvignon" appended, telling us that it is made with earthly grapes instead of blood.

Firewhiskey figures in the Harry Potter books and movies as a liquor that witches and wizards drink. It's quite a step up from Butterbeer, and leaves one with a burning sensation and expanded courage. Both Jack Daniels and Jim Beam produce Fire Whiskey, but since they use two words for the product, it couldn't be the Harry Potter drink.

So what are fans to do if they want to toast their favorite franchise with someone that will leave you totally tipsy? Make your own at home. The Fresh Toast offers recipes for cocktails that will replicate the imagined taste and the cachet of Firewhiskey and Klingon Bloodwine. The Firewhiskey is literally a "goblet of  fire" and the bloodwine has an extra kick with a dash of tabasco. -Thanks, Hearsetrax!

A gene called ORF1, referred to as Line 1, is found in the human genome, but it has no purpose that we can find. Scientists have long considered it an example of junk DNA. But just because it does nothing to benefit our bodies' functions doesn't mean it doesn't do anything, as Hank Green of Sci Show explains. Line 1 is a cut and paste machine, replicating itself and inserting its copies into other strands of DNA. It's not too picky about where it inserts those copies, either, which can be a problem. Line 1 can turn up in a place that breaks another gene sequence and cause chaos as the affected cells replicate, enabling many horrible syndromes including cancers. However, the fact that it replicates rapidly with growing cancers means that we may find a way to detect it in a blood test. Elevated levels of line 1 will not exactly diagnose cancer, since it won't show us the location of tumors, but it might turn out to be a simple screening test that sends affected people for more tests. This video is only 6:45; the rest is an ad.

The Simpsons has been running since 1989, and now has 760 episodes in 35 seasons. The prime time animated series always had gags for adults and children, who appreciated different parts of the show. If you are too young to have seen the earliest episodes, you've probably been able to catch them in reruns. There are plenty of jokes you may have missed the first time around because 1. you were too young to get the joke, or 2. the gag may have relied on much older cultural references that you never encountered, and there were also 3. some jokes that relied heavily on current events, which were no longer current when you caught the episode years later. 

In looking through the 13 joke explanations at Cracked, some were always funny to me because I was an adult when the series premiered and I knew the cultural references. Some are just too subtle and may have only gotten a laugh from the production crew. And a few were only funny for that one week 20-something years ago, and only then if you were up on the news. Check them out and see how many you recall.

John Paul Getty was 16 years old when he was kidnapped in Rome in 1973. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of $17 million because Getty's grandfather was oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the world at that time. Some family members thought that the kidnapping was a hoax, but then the kidnappers sent John's severed ear to a Rome newspaper. The only person who had enough money to pay the ransom was J. Paul Getty, but he didn't want to. The young Getty was held for five months before a deal was worked out. His notoriously cheap grandfather negotiated the ransom down to $2.89 million, and insisted that his son, John's father, pay a substantial part of it, which meant getting a loan- from his father. The trauma of the kidnapping stayed with young Getty for the rest of his life.

Other kidnapping stories involved prominent and not-so-prominent people. Frank Sinatra, Jr. was held until his father paid $240,000 for his release. Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of publisher William Randolph Hearst, was taken by the Symbionese Liberation Army and then appeared to have joined forces with them. Adolph Coors III, heir to the Coors Brewing Company, was kidnapped in 1960 for a half a million in ransom, but was never released. Read the details of all these kidnappings and more, nine in total, at Mental Floss.

The US is going through a cold snap right now, but in Antarctica, the sun is up and it's summertime!

You might recall the blogger at brr (previously at Neatorama), who writes so eloquently about his experiences there. After overwintering at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, 14 months on the continent in all, he finally left Antartica in November after the sun came up and regular transportation became available. He's back in the US, where he can experience winter all over again, but it's still quite moderate compared to the South Pole.

Now that he's had time to adjust, he fills us in on the process of leaving Antarctica, which involves waiting for the sun to rise through September and October. Then the station swings from "winter mode" into "summer mode" as the crew prepares for the arrival of the larger summer crew. That means restocking all supplies, checking the infrastructure, and cleaning up. Read how it's all done in part one of his redeployment post. In part two, he explains how airlines work in Antarctica. A Canadian airline comes to ferry people on and off the continent, and it's not all that easy even getting the planes there!  -via Nag on the Lake

The Drunk Men's Choir is just what it says on the tin. YouTuber DougDoug organized a group of singers who do cover versions of well-known songs while drunk. The purpose is to offer the use of their music to any content creators without having to pay royalties or receive DMCA takedown orders, because the filters that find copyrighted music can't detect it. They are that drunk. Yet the songs are recognizable enough to use in place of a protected soundtrack. Their catalog so far is mostly video game songs. They even did the THX sound effect for your listening pleasure.



Each musician has their own link at the YouTube page. These guys are going places. Let's just hope they aren't driving there. -via Boing Boing

In 1990, ex-cop and bodybuilder Tim Todd was looking for a hitman to kill his wife Patti. She had thrown him out of the house for having an affair with a teenager. For help, he turned to his boss, Bill Pagano, who was also his best friend, mentor, and the father of the girl he was having an affair with. Bill, who was the former police chief and the richest man in Festus, Missouri, recorded the conversations and confided in the county prosecutor. At that point, Tim had not committed a crime by talking about the hit for hire, but if Bill could arrange a transfer of money for that purpose, that would be evidence of a crime. Bill facilitated a money transfer, and then arranged to meet Tim at his house, where he planned to arrest him.

However, the meeting did not go as planned. Tim was dead, shot in the head twice. Both the prosecutor and the town's medical examiner knew of the meeting ahead of time, and to them it was surely a case of self-defense. Everyone knew that Tim was taking anabolic steroids and had some crazy episodes in his past. But the prosecutor recused himself from the case and brought in two investigators from Cape Girardeau to look into Tim's death. They determined that the first shot was to the back of Tim's head, so how could it have been self defense? As they looked further into everyone involved in the case, they uncovered a web of connections, crimes, and coverups in Festus. Read a full account of this strange murder in a small town at Truly Adventurous.