The Air Force has plans to upgrade and re-arm existing obsolete nuclear missile sites in the US. Maps Mania alerts us to an interactive map project concerning these missile silos. The locations are common knowledge thanks to satellite technology. Under the Nuclear Sponge theory, these missiles silos are located in relatively low population areas of the country, under the assumption that in a nuclear war, the enemy would attack these silos first, which would then affect fewer people. Small consolation for those who live in these areas. 

However, nuclear fallout following such an attack would cover much larger areas, depending on wind and weather. USA Today posted an interactive map showing which areas would be most affected under different weather models, indicating that highly-populated areas would not be safe even if a nuclear attack was limited to the silos. You can also explore the original map called Under the Nuclear Cloud without all the scrolling context at Columbia University. -via Nag on the Lake 

The premise of the short film Forevergreen is simple: a pine tree adopts a baby bear. Yes, there's a lot more to it, but that synopsis was all I needed to want to watch it. The tree makes a surprisingly good parent, but things go sideways when the bear reaches adolescence and is lured off by the temptations of the outside world. Then you start to see that it's a version of Yogi Bear. No, it's Smokey Bear. No, really, it's The Giving Tree. Or maybe it's the story of Groot. It's a bit of every story about trees or bears, but mainly it's about love. And junk food.

Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears spent five years making Forevergreen in their free time with no budget, and now it's nominated for an Academy Award. We'll find out who wins on March 15th. Meanwhile you can see a behind-the-scenes video about Forevergreen here.  -via Kuriositas 

The Olympics are underway in Italy, with venues scattered across a wide area of the Alps whether there is snow cover or not. The magic of artificial snow generation makes sure that what you see on TV appears perfect for skiing, snowboarding, and cross-country racing. In fact, many of the races at the Beijing Olympics in 2022 were run completely on machine-generated snow. Yet the lack of reliable snow over the past few deacdes affects the ability of athletes to train for the competitions in their home countries. 

Any Olympic course that doesn't have adequate natural snow will be groomed with manmade snow, which is real snow made from real water, but it's not the same. Flakes of natural snow are varied due to temperature, humidity, and other factors. Manmade snow is more uniform, and tends to compact faster. This leaves the courses slicker and often more dangerous. Read about the effects of using manmade snow at the Olympics at the Conversation. 

See also: The Science of the Winter Olympics. 

(Image credit: Jon Wick) 

Warning: This POV footage may induce vertigo. 

Ride along with freestyle motocross star Colby Raha as he breaks a world record. But that's only half the ride, and he does it twice. The frightening course was set up at the Record Breakers event in Mesa, Arizona on January 31st. First, he has to get up to speed. Then he jumps 275 feet over a pool with no margin for error. Then he zips up a quarter pipe, straight up, and lands in one piece. I'm impressed, but it's not quite a world record, so he tries it a second time.

The part where Raha has to go quite some distance to get back where he started is kind of cute, with fans waving him on. So he does the whole run again, this time reaching 90 feet above ground on the quarter pipe for a big air world record. I would recommend watching this GoPro video in full screen mode for maximum terror. -via Born in Space 

In 1926, Abe Saperstein organized a basketball team consisting of five elite athletes who had played for Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago. They were called the Savoy Big Five, and played at the Savoy Ballroom. The team grew, drew attention, and changed their name to the Globe Trotters in 1928. In 1930, they were rebranded as the New York Harlem Globetrotters. Despite the fact that they were based in Chicago, Saperstein wanted to indicate that the players were Black. The team won the World Professional Basketball Tournament in 1940. They also became widely known for their trick ball handling and showmanship. 

The National Basketball Association formed in 1946, but did not invite the Globetrotters to join because the players were Black. Then in 1948, the Globetrotters defeated the purported best professional team in the country, the Minneapolis Lakers. In 1950, the NBA began drafting Black players by recruiting three of the Harlem Globetrotters. The team itself was still not part of the NBA, so they became an exhibition team. Why bother following the rules when you aren't part of the club? Learn about the early history of the Harlem Globetrotters at Newspapers.com. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: MelanieWarner) 

Ze Frank made a True Facts video asking for input on a species name for a new chiton mollusk identified by Juila Sigwart of the Senkenberg Ocean Species Alliance. A panel of expert judges which fortunately excluded Ze Frank came to a consensus and selected a name. This morning, a new paper was published in the Biodiversity Data Journal announcing the naming of Ferreiraella populi, the "chiton of the people." 

More than 8,000 comments came in under the original video, so Ze Frank figured that some of the more humorous suggestions should be highlighted here since they did not make it into the science journal. Points for creativity, so to speak. Strangely, Ferreiraella chitonmcchitonface did not appear to gain any ground, but you might not be surprised that the most popular name in all those suggestions was Jerry. That one was disqualified from the competition by Jerry himself, if you can believe that story. 

The  World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has been asked to look into allegations of possible cheating by some ski jump competitors ahead of the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. How does one cheat in ski jumping? The claim is that some male athletes are injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid- but not during competition. So how could this possibly enhance their performance? 

It has to do with the uniform fit. A looser ski suit has been scientifically proven to increase lift and reduce drag, allowing a ski jumper to fly further. An injection to make one's penis temporarily larger during a uniform fitting (done with 3D scanners) may gain some fabric, and an athletic edge. Hyaluronic acid, which is naturally found in our bodies, is used to treat arthritis by cushioning joints, and as a filler in cosmetic surgery. It is not considered a performance-enhancing drug. So far, no athletes have been named and there is no evidence of the scheme yet, but the claims are being investigated. -via Metafilter 

The average ten-year-old boy knows more about Vikings than I do, but what he knows probably came from either Looney Tunes or Hagar the Horrible. Or that History Channel series he's not really allowed to watch. The Vikings were a Scandinavian people who raided and traded all over the world from the 8th to the 11th centuries. They did not have a written language, so whatever was documented about them was written by people who were terrified of them, or else was written long afterward. They didn't even call themselves Vikings; that was a word that referred to their raids. We actually know very little about them, but we do know that a lot of the things everyone knows about Vikings came from dubious sources or were just made up for dramatic effect. This TED-Ed lesson busts five myths that have grown up around the Vikings. -via Geeks Are Sexy

In 1949, Ray Bradbury wrote a story called "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" that has stayed with me since childhood. It concerns a colony of pioneers from Earth who settled on Mars, but without communication or ships from Earth, they turned into Martians. 

Most of a century later, people are seriously talking about sending people to Mars to live. If  a colony of humans were isolated on the red planet, how would they change over time? Would it require many generations for any differences to evolve, or would the very different environment on Mars cause changes? And how long would it take until they became a different species from the humans left on earth? We won't really know until it happens, but scientists have some idea about how the human body might adapt to an environment with different gravity, sunshine, and atmosphere. Read what those potential changes might be at Real Clear Science.

(Image credit: D Mitriy) 

Under normal circumstances, a job pays more when it's difficult, dangerous, or disgusting. Whale hunting is all three, so it wouldn't have ever been attempted if it weren't insanely lucrative. But in addition, it was also risky because there was always the possibility of not catching a whale, which meant no money at all. Still, the occasional success made it worthwhile for those hunters who survived. It involved finding a whale, killing it (which could take days), and then processing it while trying to make it back home.

Eventually, our need for whale oil was reduced when other products were developed, which was a good thing since the whale population was declining rapidly. But whaling continued with modern technology and corporate financing, which took the profit incentive away from those doing the actual work. It's a dying industry, and no one will miss it, especially the whales. Kurzgesagt After Dark tells the story. There's a 50-second skippable ad at 5:06. -via Damn Interesting

The internationally-accepted standard for the altitude at which space begins is the Kármán line, at 100 kilometers or 62 miles above sea level. NASA will bestow astronaut status on anyone who flies above 50 miles. 
    
NASA test pilot Joseph A. Walker flew an airplane into space. The plane was the experimental rocket-powered X-15, launched not from the ground, but from underneath a B-52 bomber already at high altitude. This plane had to be engineered differently from any other plane to operate without an atmosphere. From its peak altitude, the X-15 would be flown as a glider back to earth.

Walker, a World War II pilot and NASA experimental physicist, first flew the X-15 in 1960. Then on March 30, 1961, Walker overshot his mission's planned height and went into the mesosphere to an altitude of 51 kilometers. He became the first person to fly above the stratosphere, and held the world altitude record for about two weeks until Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the earth. 

But Walker wasn't done flying the X-15. In January of 1963, he qualified as a NASA astronaut by flying above 50 miles (80 km). Two more of his flights that year exceeded the Kármán line, at 66 miles (106 km) in July, and 67 miles (108 km) in August. Walker became the first American civilian in space. Read up on the adventures of Joseph Walker at Amusing Planet. 

(Image credit: NASA) 

K-Pop music arose in the 1990s, but you probably didn't know that because it was in Korea, and it was sung in the Korean language. Still, the music was inspired by the American pop scene, so occasionally, song producers would sprinkle in some English terms to make a song more "cool." A few more English terms, plus American soldiers rotating in and out of South Korea, and K-Pop started gaining a foothold in the US. And you couldn't miss the explosion of "Gangnam Style" in 2012, especially if you regularly read Neatorama. With a new English-speaking audience, K-Pop songs incorporated more and more of the English language without losing their Korean audience. 

So what's wrong with mixing languages in a song? Nothing at all! In fact, linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) thinks it's wonderful, and tells us how K-Pop influences young people to learn a second (or third) language.    

A few years ago, we posted some contenders for the earliest-born person to be photographed. The problem with all of them is lack of credible documentation on their birth year, and the best documented of those contenders was born in the mid-1740s. 

But then there is John Owen, who was born in 1735 in Connecticut and whose photograph was taken shortly before his death in 1843 (at the age of 107). What makes his claim about being born in 1735 any more reliable than others? Because he was a soldier in the French and Indian War, which lasted from 1754 to 1763. Military records show that Owen enlisted in 1758, and there are payroll records after that. Some sources list Owen's birth year as 1741, so his real age depends on whether he was 17 or 23 years old when he joined the army. Even if he was really born in 1741, he could still be the earliest-born person photographed. 

However, Owen's new claim to fame is based on his death date, which is well documented as being February 24, 1843. Previously, Jonathan Benjamin was commonly accepted to be the last surviving veteran of the French and Indian War. But Benjamin died in 1841, while Owen survived two more years. John Owen also served in the American Revolution and lived quite a long and colorful life afterward. -via Boing Boing 

Grub is not a normal cat. He has a genetic disorder that's quite rare in cats, so rare that medical specialists are studying him to learn about it. You might imagine that it's less rare than they know, because most cats with mucopolysaccharidosis wouldn't survive long enough to be properly diagnosed.

Stephanie took Grub in as a foster cat through the rescue organization Good Mews in Georgia. She and her family fell for the kitten, and immediately knew he was now in his forever home, well before his diagnosis. Grub can get around, but he can't run or jump and has various special needs, in addition to looking different from the average house cat. But he's a calm and affectionate kitten, and relates well to his caregivers. Grub is also very much loved by his humans, who want to make the most of the time he has. You can follow Grub's progress at Instagram. 

In case you haven't been keeping up, 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which preceded most of the Revolutionary War but is designated as the milestone that marks beginning of the United States of America. There are a lot of celebratory events planned for this year, all across the country. The Smithsonian Institution, being more of a museum than anything else, has an entire year of special events and exhibitions planned, with the first being an event from the National Portrait Gallery on February 14th. They also have a list of festivals and events in other parts of the country in their article Ten of the Most Exciting Ways to Commemorate America’s 250th This Year. 

But wherever you may plan to go this year, something historical happened, or else you can see the best of America on display. Explore the map called 250 Places to Celebrate America to make the most of your travels this year. 

But meanwhile, you probably have obligations at home, so you can start celebrating early by watching some historical television and brush up on the birth of the country. Smithsonian has  recommendations for the Best TV Shows About the American Revolution. I'm sure they'll have more on this historic year coming soon.