Who knew rats could become wine connoisseurs? Most people know what white wine is, but couldn't identify the variety of grape it was made from. A few people are very good at this, and won't ever let you forget it. The question was whether this learned skill is affected by the language we use in wine tasting. Rats have no wine-tasting language, but an experiment shows they can learn their grapes. Some rats were trained to push a lever if the wine they were exposed to was Sauvignon Blanc, while others were rewarded for pushing the lever when they were exposed to Riesling. During training, these wines were two consistent brands. Then the rats were tested on their knowledge without rewards, and were presented with different brands and types of wine made with Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc grapes, and they could still identify which was which.

Lest you imagine a rodent wine-tasting party with progressively drunken rats, the science paper reveals the detail that the rats were only exposed to the scent of the wine, and never actually drank any. Still, considering how many different kinds of wine the researchers had to purchase, you know someone had to dispose of the leftovers. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Elisa Frasnelli et al)

The more time travel movies we see, the more it becomes clear that the future is too close. In the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II, our hero zipped from 1985 to 2015 and found technology to be quite advanced 30 years into the future. Yet that date is now ten years in the past and we still don't have flying cars. Quite a few other movies set in the future have already been lapped without interplanetary travel or dystopian collapse -not to mention time travel itself. Those who follow such things have a sense of how long major technological advances can take. Plus, we still watch movies that are 50 years old. Star Trek had the right idea, setting its stories 300 years into the future, although we may still be watching when the time comes. Chris and Jack (previously at Neatorama) leverage that movie knowledge to judge whether they've really been visited by a time traveler.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

George Washington didn't have much of a sweet tooth, or many teeth at all, but he did enjoy fruit and alcoholic beverages. His favorite dessert contained both, and was served on special occasions and always on January 6th for Epiphany, which was also George and Martha's wedding anniversary. It's called Great Cake, which may be because the Washingtons liked it so well, or it may be because it's enormous. Martha Washington's recipe called for 40 eggs (separated) and four pounds of butter, as well as proportionate amounts of flour, sugar, fruit, and other ingredients, like brandy and wine.

While Great Cake is Martha Washington's recipe, it was made by enslaved people, and took hours to bake, not to mention all the time it would take to whip all those eggs whites into a meringue. If you have a really large cake pan and plenty of time, you may want to follow Washington's recipe, or if you prefer a normal-sized cake, you can follow an adapted recipe from Mount Vernon.

Production values have soared since the Dance Your PhD competition was launched in 2008, but we still get a kick out of doctoral students attempting to explain the subjects of their dissertations through interpretive dance. Dr. Sulo Roukka of the University of Helsinki sang and danced his way to the top of the heap this year with a production number about chemesthesis, or the way people react to extreme taste compounds such as hot peppers and menthol. His dissertation is titled Insights into oral chemesthetic perception: A focus on food-related behavior. Roukka won the chemistry division and the overall grand prize. There are also winners in the categories of biology, physics and AI, and social sciences. Continue reading to see them.

"Kerning" is the art of spacing letters so that the finished words are visually balanced and easy to read. It's more than just consistent spacing, because letters are shaped differently, and some should be closer to the next letter than others. Bad kerning gives us the word "keming," which is gloriously self-explanatory.

Pope Francis lived humbly for a pope, and requested that his tombstone be engraved simply with his name. He was laid to rest on Saturday at the St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome, and the tomb has a stone with his name, Franciscus, spelled FRANCISCVS in the Latin style. But the stone reads more like “F R  A NCISC VS.”

Some have argued that the bad kerning is a symbol of humility before God, but there is no tradition of such a gesture in papal tombstones. It may have been because the stone carving was a rush job, or possibly incompetence. Fast Company has a possible explanation of how the poor design could have occurred.  -via kottke

If you knew about an isolated mountain lake that was ringed with a whole bunch of human skeletons that no one had retrieved, you might think about avoiding that area, lest you become one of them. But that's not quite the case at Roopkund Lake, also called Mystery Lake or Skeleton Lake, at 16,470 feet of elevation in northern India. Plenty of Himalayan hikers have visited the site, and rearranged the skulls and bones found there.

An ancient tale tells of a royal entourage on a pilgrimage that was caught in a hailstorm near the lake and were all killed. But scientists have found evidence that whatever disaster befell those people happened more than once, and hundreds of years apart. Not only that, the dead of Roopkund Lake came from different corners of the earth! What happened to them? And where were they going? Savannah Geary of SciShow tells us what we now know and what we don't know about the Roopkund Lake skeletons. There's a 45-second skippable ad at 4:05.

Only a couple of hundred years ago, people weren't sure why birds disappeared in the winter (or the summer, depending on where you are). The idea that birds flew away and came back was common, but where did they go? Other theories were that they hibernated, possibly underwater, or as Aristotle mused, maybe they turned into another species. One Harvard scholar suggested that birds flew to the moon for the months they were missing. And people believed him, because they didn't know how far away the moon is. What they needed was a way to track where a particular bird had been.

Then in 1822, someone in northern Germany shot a stork. The stork was retrieved and was found to have a 31-inch arrow in its neck! We don't know how long the bird survived carrying the arrow, but it was sent to the University of Rostock for study. There it was determined that the arrow originated in central Africa, proof that the stork had flown more than 1,800 miles with an arrow in its neck. Over time, other birds were discovered flying with arrows from faraway places, and scientists confirmed the theory of bird migration. Eventually, we started tagging birds with less painful identifiers. Read about this discovery and how it changed ornithology at Xatakaon. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Zoologische Sammlung der Universität Rostock)

Birds are dangerous for planes, and vice versa. Up until the last decade or so, most airports killed owls and other birds that took up residence near airports. But Boston's Logan Airport was the exception. Snowy owls live in the Arctic most of the time, but migrate south during the coldest months of winter. They often ended up at the airport in Boston, where they could find plenty of mice and rats to eat, as well as other birds.

In 1981, Norman Smith began trapping and relocating the airport owls instead of exterminating them. He's been doing this ever since, and the idea has spread to other airports, especially for birds that are threatened or endangered. Logan Airport has relocated more than 900 snowy owls since Smith came on the scene, and he vows to continue saving these birds as well as the planes for as long as he can. -via Nag on the Lake

The company Open Bionics has debuted a new kind of prosthetic hand that not only has a wider range of motion and control, it can even work when detached from the prosthetic arm! The Hero Pro arm is super lightweight and water resistant. Each arm is 3D printed to fit the user, and the arm is loaded with sensors that take their cues as the user flexes their forearm muscles. These signals are interpreted and sent wirelessly to the hand to perform fine motions like "zipping a jacket, scrolling on a phone, or holding a guitar pick."

Singer and internet personality Tilley Lockey has been working with Open Bionics for ten years. She lost her hands to meningitis when she was a toddler, and has used and critiqued the company's advancements in prosthetics. Recently, she showed off her new Hero Pro arms on the British TV show This Morning. While we applaud the improved functionality of the hand, we can't get over how cool it is to control a hand when it isn't even attached to your arm. Read about Lockey and her new Hero Pro arms at My Modern Met. -via Damn Interesting 

What do accomplished cosplayers do to take their costumes to the next level? Make them stand out with glitter and shine! One can imagine this cosplayer wore numerous stormtrooper uniforms, and possibly other Star Wars costumes before adding rhinestones to every surface. Or is it sequins? I imagine rhinestones would be pretty heavy, but that won't stop the most dedicated. The stormtrooper was front and center at Laval Comiccon this past weekend in Laval, Quebec.

They weren't the only one reflecting the light at the con, either. Snow White poses with the Evil Queen, who was totally covered in sequins as she offers her stepdaughter a poisoned apple. There were also superheroes, fantasy and science fiction characters, and clever mashups dressed to the nines at Laval Comiccon, and Geeks Are Sexy was there to document the best costumes. See them in a this gallery, and cick on each one to bring up the full-size version.
 

Captain America: Brave New World is the fourth movie of the Captain America series from Marvel, unless you count the TV miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was, of course, on TV. But you have to have seen the TV show to understand who this new Captain America is. Harrison Ford is in this one, typecast as the US president. And the Red Hulk. Brave New World hit theaters in February, and needed a box office take of hundreds of millions to cover production and marketing costs. The movie opened strong, and then petered out as word of mouth got around. Reviews were mixed, and Brave New World seemed like another formulaic MCU movie. It may yet break even, as Captain America: Brave New World will be available on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 13. Meanwhile, Screen Junkies would like to help you decide whether to watch it or not with this Honest Trailer.  

We love watching outtakes from film sets, which often are a collection of actors flubbing their lines and then laughing about it. This happened on the set of The Usual Suspects, during the lineup scene. The laughter wasn't in the script, and in fact the actors were supposed to stand stoically through the scene. But Benicio del Toro kept farting during take after take, and the cast couldn't keep a straight face. So the laughter was included in the scene, which became quite memorable. More often, on set injuries ended up producing genuine fear or anguish, and the footage was deemed the best take on a particular scene, which happened in The Two Towers, Django Unchained, Die Hard, and Tora! Tora! Tora!

Other on-set flubs and accidents were inspirations for an improved scenes in your favorite movies, and Buzzfeed has collected 37 examples that ranged from a purring cat to exploding planes.

While test driving a Mercedes in Georgia, the driver heard a strange sound coming from the car. There was nothing wrong with the car, but it was meowing. The driver pulled into Royalty Auto Service where mechanic Sherwood Cook located the culprit- a tiny kitten (this was Sherwood, Jr. There's also a Sherwood III and Sherwood IV on the staff). The kitten wasn't easy to get to. They had to put the car on a lift to reach her! Meanwhile, Sherwood fell in love with the kitten, and declared that she would be part of the staff as well. After all, his grandchildren are already on the roster without actually having to work, why not a kitten, too? Besides, she's seen parts of a car that you and I never will. She was checked out by a veterinarian and given a new name- Mercedes.  
 

The Bayeux Tapestry is a 230-foot-long embroidered banner that depicts the events of the Norman conquest of England. It is believed to have been completed not long after the Battle of Hastings. It is a remarkable artifact, and the subject of much discussion. One of those discussions is about the number of penises that are illustrated in the needlework. One scholar declared the number is 93, meaning 88 on horses and five on men, while another scholar argues that there are six men with their anatomy showing. Don't bother looking in the picture above; I chose a random portion of the tapestry.

Another question is why all these penises are there in the first place. The tapestry is full of symbolism, so there are several theories and no official explanation. But even if the question of counting penises in a thousand-year-old tapestry never occurred to you, you shouldn't be surprised that it occurred to certain art historians. Read about this controversy over the Bayeaux Tapestry and what it "reveals" to us at Popular Science. -via Damn Interesting

A mansion that's on the National Register of Historic Places is for sale in Gardner, Massachusetts. This is the SK Pierce House, built in 1873-75, it is considered one of the most haunted houses in the US. It certainly looks the part. You might be reminded of a Charles Addams creation. However, the house wasn't always gray and black. See what it looked like before the recent renovation.

This mansion offers nine bedrooms and four bathrooms, and has 6,988 square feet of living area, but not much of a yard to speak of. So who lives there? A ton of ghosts, according to local lore. Soon after Sylvester Pierce had the house built, his wife Susan died. Later, the home was turned into a boarding house where numerous incidents occurred, including murder and a possible case of spontaneous combustion.   

The ghosts of S.K. Pierce himself, Susan Pierce, Edward Pierce, as well as a nanny named Mattie Cornwell, a gentlemen named David who some believe to have been the red room strangler, the prostitute who was murdered in the red room, a young boy, a younger girl who was perhaps the granddaughter of Pierce, Eino Saari, and some unnamed dark entities in the basement have been described as some of this mansion's many ghostly residents.

There are quite a few videos on this mansion, but most are pretty long. In 2015, the owners of Dark Carnival, a haunted attraction company, bought the mansion and restored it to its former glory under the watchful eyes of historic preservationists. They offered tours and overnight rentals, but couldn't make up for the renovation costs, so the home is for sale for $1,200,000. You can see 42 photographs the home at the real estate listing. -via Fark