This past Monday, Cécile Dionne (left) died at the age of 91. That leaves her sister Annette Dionne (right) as the sole surviving member of the Dionne quintuplets. While Annette has family members, her identical sisters were the only constant in her life. 

The Dionne Quintuplets were born on May 28, 1934, in a farmhouse near Callander, Ontario. They were the first quintuplets to survived infancy. The five sisters were born prematurely, so after first being warmed in a basket by the stove, antique baby incubators were shipped in because the house had no electricity to power modern versions. Their parents, Oliva and Elzire, already had five children and were desperately poor. To prevent the five girls from being exploited, the Canadian government took custody of them, and promptly exploited them. A nursery was built to house the quints, and soon was expanded to accommodate the thousands of people who flocked to see them. Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie, and Marie were Canada's biggest tourist draw, eclipsing Niagara Falls for some time. 

Their parents fought to regain custody, only achieving that when the quints were nine years old. But they never felt integrated into the family, which by then included another three children. Émilie died in 1954, Marie in 1970, and Yvonne in 2001.  

 -via Fark 

These guys are the epitome of a certain engineering stereotype- young, bright, tech-savvy, and disconnected from normal life. They don't want to extend the effort of putting their garbage directly into the waste baskets, nor do they want to take out the trash. But instead of getting a larger trash can, they design and engineer waste baskets with cameras, motion sensors, servo motors, and wheels that will move to the spot where the trash is being flung. Yes, that's the equivalent of driving a hundred miles out of your way to avoid making a left turn. But while they are impressing you with their clever technology, they are also quite funny, and that makes the whole project worthwhile. 

Once their labor achieved a waste basket that will follow you around and position itself under the garbage you are dropping, they went ahead and outfitted all the waste baskets with different kinds of high tech silliness. Being a mother who wanted to shake these young men for their sanitation habits, my favorite is the can that wants to destroy you for not throwing away your own trash. -via Born in Space 

A woman with a 20-year psychiatric history began taking an immunosuppressant. Suddenly, her seeming schizophrenia vanished. https://t.co/AHKtnfI9U8

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) July 28, 2025

Schizophrenia is the condition that divided psychiatry and neurology. Neurologists can find brain cancer and other physical conditions and psychiatric drugs and therapy can help many mental illnesses, but schizophrenia was considered an incurable lifelong condition that can at best be controlled by drugs, but only in some patients. Worst of all, no one knew what caused it. However, there is a growing awareness that some patients labeled as schizophrenic may be suffering from an autoimmune disorder. Occasionally, a person with schizophrenia is treated for another illness, and drugs meant to suppress the immune system actually cure the delusions. Mary was one of them. After more than 20 years of delusions, she emerged from treatment for leukemia with no psychiatric symptoms at all. 

The good news is that there are pilot programs designed to identify schizophrenia patients who could benefit from immunotherapy. But there's still the question of how someone with many years of delusions in their past can reintegrate with family, friends, and the world once they have been cured. Mary's daughters didn't feel they knew their mother at all after the delusions were gone. Mary herself doesn't know how to confront her years of insanity and her behavior as her children were growing up. Read her story and the potential of immunotherapy for schizophrenia in an article from The New Yorker. -via Strange Company 

You haven't thought about cream soda in a long time, even if you drink a variety of sodas. You don't see cream sodas in stores much at all. If you were to think about them, it would be to wonder why they are called cream sodas, since there is no cream or even milk in them. The name itself seems to work against the drink's popularity. If you've had one, you might think that the reason it's not popular is because it's too darn sweet. Like that ever stopped any other soft drink. 

But vanilla-flavored cream soda was once very popular, especially at soda fountains where it was mixed up on the spot. With the rise of bottled and canned sodas, every regional bottler had their own version of cream soda. It declined in the latter half of the 20th century for various reasons explained by Tom Blank of Weird History Food. Cream soda is still around, although its main draw these days is the nostalgia factor. But watch out- the nostalgia factor is gaining ground because people in troubled times go for comfort foods from their childhoods, and drinks, too.  

Artist Kate Bingaman-Burt is always delighted when she sees one of these charming hand-painted signs screwed to a telephone pole around town. Whenever she shared an image of one of them on Instagram, people responded with similar delight. She finally decided to text the business number and ask who painted the signs. She got a response from Landon, who cleans roofs, home exteriors, gutters, and patios, who said he paints all his own signs. That led to a long back-and-forth about the signs, and the two got to know each other.

Bingaman-Burt organized their texts into an interview. We find out more about Landon and the joy he gets from painting his signs (they get stolen a lot). The story is not just about one man who not only cleans but also gives color to Portland, but about how two friendly people who are complete strangers can reach out over something that may seem small, but ends up bringing joy to the rest of us. -via Metafilter 

Everyday customs and conventions stick around because doing things the same way is much easier than changing. Sure, you can come up with a better way, that will save time, effort, or money, but the process of change itself can be more trouble than its worth. So we've ended up saying "knock wood" instead of saying, "Oh no, I hope I didn't jinx myself by saying that." Everyone knows that's what you mean. YouTuber Chill Dude Explains goes through ten very different examples of things we do even though we've long forgotten why. 

It includes the QWERTY keyboard, which we've covered recently. Some, like the scrubs that surgical teams wear make plenty of sense once you think about it, although you've never had a reason to think about it before. But the most common background story is what you would expect- customs to appease deities or keep demons away. -via Laughing Squid 

Tequila is a liquor made from distilling the fermented juice of the blue agave plant, which is native to western Mexico (mezcal is made from other types of agave). Its popularity exploded during the 17th century under Spanish colonization. But who invented tequila? Mexico already had pulque, or fermented agave, but when did distillation begin there? 

There have been three theories. Maybe people in Mexico knew about distillation before the arrival of the Spaniards, although the evidence for this is rather thin. Or the Spaniards brought the technology to Mexico, which is plausible but also suspiciously Eurocentric, as Spaniards wrote that theory. But there is credible evidence that agave distillation was brought in by Filipino sailers, who not only traded with western Mexico, but sometimes settled there. Early tequila stills resemble the devices used in the Philippines to distill coconut sap. Read the very plausible story of how Mexico-Phillipines trade brought us tequila at the Conversation.

(Image credit: Roman664) 

In pop culture, hearing crickets means that no human is speaking. But even if they were speaking, you'd be able to hear any cricket in the vicinity. Ze Frank explains that sound, but first we learn about the amazing jumping abilities of grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets. Closeup and slow-motion shots show us their wild spring-loaded joints and amuse us when it all goes wrong. Katydids and crickets have ears in their forelegs, and grasshoppers have ears on their abdomens. Then we get to how they produce those annoyingly loud sounds. Katydids and crickets rub their wings together, and grasshopper have to be different- they use their legs to talk. What do they say? Well, these are mating calls, so you can use your imagination. But those sounds don't only attract mates, they also attract predators. The acting award in this True Facts video goes to a praying mantis named Nancy. 

There's an 80-second skippable ad at 4:10. When I first watched this, the skippable ad was interrupted by an unskippable ad.  

Some people think you must go to the beach or an amusement park during summer vacation, but the really cool destinations are caves. Cool, both literally and figuratively. Temperatures deep underground stay in the 50s both winter and summer and you don't have to wear sunscreen. Besides, caves contain fantastic geologic formations that teach you about earth science while you are sightseeing. About twenty years ago, I took my kids on the longest tour at Mammoth Cave that was open to children. They never got hot, tired, or bored. Even staying in a cabin with no AC was pleasant. There are no mosquitos at Mammoth Cave National Park because the ground is porous and the water table is low. And there are bats.

While I am quite proud of Kentucky's (and America's) biggest cave, there are opportunities to tour caves all across the contiguous United States. And they don't require steel-toed boots or crawling on your belly- just a light jacket and sometimes a reservation. Read about the features of ten of America's most spectacular cave trails at Mental Floss. 

(Image credit: w_lemay) 

There are certain basics of physics that anyone can understand, and you don't even have to understand physics to deal with them. Then there is quantum mechanics, which is totally over my head. Your mileage may vary. The first half of this video from Kurzgesagt attempts to bring us up to speed on the world of quantum mechanics and the many worlds interpretation. Then we get to the experiment that could prove it- but it involves one person dying over and over, like in the movie Edge of Tomorrow. That one person is you, and even if the experiment works, you will be the only person it has been proven to. Of course, you could then write a book about it, but no one would buy it. But from the perspective of one person (me), it still doesn't prove anything. If there are five (or more) versions of me, it doesn't matter to me because my awareness is only in this one. Even if this one were the version that survives multiple killings, I still wouldn't be aware of the other versions. So this scenario remains a thought experiment, but as such, it is pretty mind-blowing. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

The Japanese delegation introduced the beautiful water hyacinth to America at the 1884 World’s Fair in New Orleans. People liked it, and the plant thrived in Louisiana's lakes and bayous. By 1910, it was choking the state's waterways, and it seemed nothing could stop it. How do you combat an invasive species? Many times in the past, we've done it by importing another invasive species to eat it. A Louisiana congressman came up with an idea to combat the water hyacinth by bringing in hippos from Africa! That plan would have also helped with the nation's meat supply. What could possibly go wrong? Congress became excited about the prospect, but for various reasons, it never happened. 

A hundred years later, we can be thankful the idea wasn't tried. We now know that hippopotami can be really dangerous animals that don't lend themselves to domestication. Besides that, they are classified as a vulnerable species even in their native countries due to human encroachment. Read about the unrealized dream of American hippos at Strange Company. 

(Image credit: Bernard DUPONT) 

Today, the beer you drink is most likely either brewed by AB InBev, who owns the name brands, or else a small and possibly local craft brewery. That's the ultimate fallout of the beer wars that shook the industry in the 1960s and '70s. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the beer capital of the US thanks to the many German immigrants who settled there in the 19th century. The city was home to the Schlitz, Pabst, Blatz, and Miller brewing companies. Schlitz was the biggest seller in the US, but in 1957 was eclipsed by Budweiser down in St. Louis. Schlitz marketing head Bob Martin was willing to do anything to outsell Budweiser, with the exception of producing high-quality beer. 

The American alcohol industry is highly regulated at all levels, but those regulations are so numerous and intertwined that they can be creatively interpreted to one's benefit, or outrightly ignored until someone complains. Martin was a master of exploiting the many levels between brewing beer and the customers who drink it at bars, airports, sporting events, or at home. In 1978, the company was indicted for three felonies and 743 misdemeanors for their marketing practices. They involved bribes, kickbacks, money laundering, fraud, and other kinds of corporate malfeasance. Read what happened to Martin and the Schlitz company at Esquire. -via Metafilter 

Pulau Tiga is an uninhabited tropical island off the coast of Malaysia. It was formed by a volcanic eruption in the late 19th century, and most of it is a national park. But you may be familiar with this island, because it was the setting for the very first season of the reality TV game show Survivor. The show began in 2000, when the cast and crew traveled for hours to Pulau Tiga, not really knowing what they were getting into. 

Sure, a lot of the drama in Survivor was planned, like the weekly challenges and the tribal council when contestants were voted off the island. But since the show was the first of its kind, the producers were unprepared for the reality of making a TV show on an isolated island. They didn't even take tents for the crew or the equipment! They encountered tourist garbage, parasites, unexpected wildlife, and Australian special forces with guns. And not only did the cast begin to starve, the crew did, too. Emily Nussbaum, the author of the book Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV, gives us the story of the first season of Survivor at Atlas Obscura. The interview is in both text and podcast form.   

(Image credit: Bfyhdch) 

When the first Avatar movie came out in 2009, we had to explain to people that the James Cameron film had nothing to do with the animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender. But 16 years later, it is clear that Jake Sully is on his way to mastering the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Avatar: Fire and Ash is the third film in the series, following Avatar: The Way of Water from 2022. As in that film, our favorite Na'vi encounters a new culture. Cameron is portraying Pandora like Earth in that while the Na'vi are one species, they come in all flavors with varying traditions and motivations. They still have to contend with the invaders from Earth.

Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, and Sigourney Weaver return in their Sully family roles, and the movie will also feature Kate Winslet and Oona Chaplin as new characters in the saga. Avatar: Fire and Ash is scheduled to land in theaters on December 19th.  -via Gizmodo 

The Instagram account Amazing Maps has a never-ending supply of maps focusing on details you probably wouldn't have thought of on your own, but are quite interesting. Most of them either show Europe or the entire world, but there are US and New World maps occasionally. Bored Panda picked a few dozen to present for your education or entertainment.



The maps cover a wide variety of subjects, from the historical (countries Britain once owned) to the mundane (how to say "frog") to the whimsical (where capybaras live) to the scary (in which countries do men live longer than women). Of the world maps shown, there is a thread that commenters had a lot of fun with- the location of New Zealand. It appears variously in the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, up near Japan, and sometimes cannot be found at all. It might be fun to check for our Kiwi friends in the Instagram account. See 49 such maps at Bored Panda.