In 1971, an airline passenger going by Dan Cooper showed a stewardess that he had a bomb and demanded $200,000, four parachutes, and a private flight. His demands were met, and during the second flight with only Cooper and the flight crew, he jumped out of the plane somewhere between Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. He was never seen again. For 50 years, it was the only unsolved skyjacking in America.

Strangely, only five months later, Richard Floyd McCoy II pulled off an almost-identical skyjacking in Utah, in which he absconded with $500,000. McCoy was arrested soon after and convicted of the crime. He escaped from prison and was shot by FBI agents. McCoy has always been a suspect in the D. B. Cooper case, but was thought to have been too young to be the same person. Until now. Pilot and YouTuber Dan Gryder has been researching the case for decades, and in 2022 found a parachute on McCoy's property that could be the uniquely-modified parachute Cooper used when he bailed out of the plane.

Gryder was alerted to the existence of the parachute by McCoy's children, Richard II and Chanté. They were small children when the skyjackings occurred, and always suspected their father was the mysterious D. B. Cooper, but kept quiet until the death of their mother in 2020. The parachute is now in the custody of the FBI, which officially closed the investigation in 2016. It may soon be officially reopened. Read about the family's claims and the new evidence in a two part series at Cowboy State Daily, part one and part two. -Thanks, WTM!

(Images credit: FBI/public domain)

We've seen digital artists take vintage photographs and give them the stereoscopic treatment, in which a 3D effect is achieved by making the elements move slightly, more so for the objects in the foreground. This is not that at all. What happens in these postcard images is the kind of thing you'd expect from a Terry Gilliam animation, in that you don't know what is going to happen at all. It's pure nonsense, but there are no giant feet crushing landscapes. However, what they did to that lighthouse seems pretty destructive.

The vintage postcards are from the Isle of Wight, a popular vacation destination in the English Channel. The video was made by Justin Mason, also known as Drivelsieve, and is actually a followup to an earlier compilation video he did using the same subject. It's just as silly.

Mason began his series of animated Isle of Wight postcards ten years ago. You can see the entire series in this playlist. -via Nag on the Lake

The article, promising a recipe for Long Island cheese pumpkin pie, starts off telling us it was never a commercial hit. I immediately thought the name was to blame. Who wants to eat a pumpkin pie with cheese in it? But maybe it's cream cheese, which might be good. Then I find out that the pie is made from a "cheese pumpkin," which isn't grown nearly as much as other varieties. Of course not, who wants a pumpkin that tastes like cheese? But that's not how the pumpkin got that name -it was named that because its shape and color makes it resemble a wheel of cheese.

The article is not so much about pumpkin pie, but for those dreaming of next year's garden. The reason the cheese pumpkin didn't become commercially successful is because its shape kept it from rolling through a mechanized harvesting process as easily as round pumpkins. They taste wonderful, and can be grown in a variety of environments, including the Mojave desert. While a cheese pumpkin is the same species as the pumpkin puree you get in a can, this heirloom variety is infinitely adaptable, especially when you save the seeds and grow subsequent generations. Cheese pumpkins are becoming popular with backyard gardeners who cook their own pumpkins. Read about cheese pumpkins, and find a recipe for Long Island cheese pumpkin pie, at Atlas Obscura. There is no cheese in it, just as there is no tea in Long Island tea.  

(Image credit: Badagnani)

Rango was an animated Western comedy that came out in 2011. The title character was a chameleon who accidentally wound up in the desert and took on the persona of a tough guy to get by. While the movie did well, it didn't become a classic, cult or otherwise, so Rango seems a strange choice for a mashup. But mashup artist eli_handle_b․wav saw the possibilities. He set Rango into the virtual Old West of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2, where the chameleon seems right at home. That's a bit of a turn from playing a fish out of water, so to speak, in his original movie. These outlaws don't seem to have a problem with a 6-foot lizard in their midst. Rango manages to fall right into the Van der Linde gang, although he may regret that. The setup is beyond absurd, and the editing is smooth and impressive. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Robin Duska is a volunteer at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, working on cataloging the museum's bird specimens. She discovered a snow bunting labeled as being found on May 29, 1872, by Emil Bessels. Duska did the research and found that Bessels was a physician who served as the science officer on the Polaris expedition, an 1871 quest to be the first to reach the North Pole. The expedition was led by Charles Francis Hall, who did not survive the unsuccessful trip. When the crew of the Polaris returned home in 1873 (without the ship, which had been crushed by ice), there were questions about Hall's death.

Was Hall murdered? Dr. Bessels had declared the cause of death a stroke, and an investigation agreed. Hall had been buried in the permafrost of Greenland. Then an autopsy in 1969 showed that Hall had ingested arsenic. Did Hall have any enemies aboard ship? Yes, many, as the crew was full of drunks, deserters, and men who didn't want to go to the North Pole. But Hall's biggest enemy was Bessels. Not only did they disagree about the expedition, they were both wooing the same woman back in Washington, a prominent young sculptor named Vinnie Ream. What does any of this have to do with a bird buried in the archives of a museum? Read about the latest clue in a possible murder mystery at The London Times.   -via Strange Company

The comedy troupe Foil Arms and Hog portrays two suitcases moving along a baggage conveyor belt at an airport. This time it's just Foil and Hog, because suitcases don't have Arms. One is highly upset about an insult they received. The other is caught in that no-win situation when your partner is pissed off about something, but can no longer respond to the one who wronged them, so they lash out at the closest person. Anything you say will be misunderstood and can well feed the flames, but you can't just say nothing, because that's wrong, too. You could (and should) call this "emotional baggage." Listen closely, because they've included quite a few luggage and airline puns.  

And after I went to all the trouble to keep the main joke here a secret, it's spoiled in the on-screen video title. This performance is from the current Foil Arms and Hog tour. They'll be in the US for four shows in March.  -via Laughing Squid

Lydia Faber and her husband live on a houseboat in Amsterdam. When they adopted a kitten named Nimis, they put him in a feline life jacket, because in some places, the city's canal walls are too steep for a kitten to climb. Some people joked that Nimis' bright yellow life jacket looked like a police jacket, so when Faber found embroidered patches at a surplus store that said "police," she added them to Nimis' uniform. The neighbors thought it was hilarious, tourists took pictures, and even the local cops took a shine to the "police cat." They don't mind the impersonation, because any official law enforcement officer in Netherlands would be labeled politie.



Nimis is three years old now, and can swim and climb as well as any cat who lives on a boat. But he still wears his jacket, because he is a celebrity not only in Amsterdam, but around the world. You can see videos of Nimis, along with his brother Tommy and his humans, at Facebook and Instagram. -Thanks, WTM!

If you've ever had a small fly annoy you in the shower, you've met Clogmia albipunctata. It's a species of drain fly bigger than a fruit fly and smaller than a house fly. You might have wondered where that fly came from, and that would be your drain.

Redditor daisy_bare took the cover off a basement drain and found a writhing mass of drain fly larvae. Before the mass was identified, suggestions included welding the cover back on and burning the house down. While the fly stage of Clogmia albipunctata is generally harmless and several people described the insect as "cute," you really don't want flies in your home. The adult flies are rather waterproof and don't live long, but their main purpose is to lay eggs in your drains, where the larvae can live off the gunk that lines your pipes. The ways to get rid of eggs or larvae in the drains are to 1. pour boiling water down the drain, 2. pour baking soda and vinegar into the drain (that can be dramatic), 3. use a drain cleaning product, or 4. scrub your drains or, if all else fails, call a professional to clean them.

Outside of your home, drain flies are quite useful in treating sewage. I am tickled with the taxonomic name, and had to go check the genus Clogmia to see if there is a species named Clogmia pipe. Alas, there is no such bug.  

(Image credit: Jerzystrzelecki)

Have you ever wondered how in the world audio artists like Bill McClintock and DJ Cummerbund make those marvelous song mashups out of very different songs from different genres? The secret is the chord progression. If two songs have the same chord progression, the melody can be transferred from one to another. Oh, they might be played in slightly different keys or have a different tempo, but those can be manipulated by computer, and if they are close enough to start with no one will notice. Besides, most songs are in the simpler keys anyway.

Pianist David Bennett illustrates how this is done by swapping the music and lyrics of disparate songs that have the same chord progression. Even if you don't know anything about music theory and don't care about chord progressions, you'll enjoy a video in which Michael Jackson sings over a U2 melody, and Celine Dion croons over a Phil Collins tune. The previous video he mentions is here.  There's a 30-second ad at 5:35.

Americans in the early-to-mid 20th century developed a taste for salad that was actually dessert. It wasn't their fault that the manufacturers of Cool Whip, marshmallows, Jell-O, and pudding mix came up with recipes that they labeled as "salad," giving us an excuse to indulge in highly-processed fat and sugar, and who doesn't love that? People today continue to enjoy these bizarre recipes at family gatherings like Thanksgiving and Christmas, because Grandma, or Great-Grandma, always made her signature sweet salad. And since it's "salad," people eat them with the main entree, even if it's just crushed candy bars glued together with whipped topping.

Neatorama readers know about Watergate salad, but have you ever eaten pretzel salad, ambrosia salad, Snickers salad, or frog-eye salad*? They are all regional favorites that you might want to try for some truly decadent occasion, unless your family has its own sweet salad tradition, although you might want to make the kids eat their dinner first. Read about all of them at Atlas Obscura.

*Note: frog-eye salad has nothing in common with frog pizza.

(Image credit: Marshall Astor)

Every year, Babycenter reveals the top names for new babies in the preceding year. How they do this is a bit of a mystery, since the definitive list from the Social Security Administration won't be available until well into the new year. The top 10 baby names (girls on the left, boys on the right) for 2024 are:

1    Olivia         Noah
2    Amelia       Liam
3    Emma        Oliver
4    Sophia       Elijah
5    Charlotte    Mateo
6    Isabella      Lucas
7    Ava            Levi
8    Mia            Ezra
9    Ellie           Asher
10  Luna          Leo

It may appear that the list is the same as its been for the past five or ten years, but there are some changes to the top ten, as Mental Floss explains. They also point out that Luna, number ten for girls, is also the most popular name for dogs and cats. If you are looking for a name that's not so common, but still popular, you might want to check out the full list of the top 100 names for both boys and girls at Babycenter. You might be pleased to see that John is still there at #48, and while Mary is not in the top 100, Maria is holding on at #85.  

Television, before it was fractured into a million channels, was a great language leveler. In elementary school, I noticed that my classmates who did not have TVs couldn't shake their hillbilly accent, while those who watched television learned to code switch at an early age, and speak like Hollywood actors when they wanted. Today, we have TV shows from around the world, so that children pick up words and accents from shows like Bluey and Peppa Pig. Dora the Explorer introduced millions of American children to Spanish. And TV is a boost to anyone learning a second language. Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains what is happening when children listen to the language of television.  

But more TV doesn't necessarily mean better language learning in children. Too much television actually hinders their learning, when it cuts into the time they speak with the adults around them. At the end, we find that Dr. Brozovsky is just as cute without the red lipstick.

The Los Angeles Times published an account of a dragon attacking a Southern Pacific Railroad train crossing the Colorado Desert on its way to Los Angeles on January 17, 1882. The dragon resembled a snake with wings, about 30 feet long. The train clipped the dragon's tail when they collided, enraging the monster. The dragon then grabbed the train and shook it, breaking several windows, and then flew away. The newspaper talked to the engineer and fireman aboard the train as well as several passengers for their report. The story was reprinted back east, and caused quite a stir. However, it was only one of many dragon sightings in the late 19th century as people flooded into the western US and saw things they'd never seen before. These dragons were described as snakes or alligators with wings, which only sometimes had feathers. They were all said to be enormous.

The dragon sightings, or at least their documentation, died out as the West was settled, communication improved, and newspapers became somewhat concerned about credibility and fact-checking. But the legends of those sightings live on. Read the accounts of 12 dragon sightings in the Old West at ThunderbirdPhoto.com. -via Strange Company

(Image: The Illustrated Police News, March 18, 1882)

A levitating frog, a necrophiliac duck, taxi drivers’ brains — the Ig Nobel prizes have shined a spotlight on offbeat work

Here’s an inside look at how winners feel about this sometimes unwanted ‘honour’ https://t.co/hryjpzYygE

— nature (@Nature) November 19, 2024

Every fall, we cover the awarding of the Ig Nobel prizes from The Annals of Improbable Research. These lighthearted awards highlight research that seems weird, silly, or outrageous. But that's how science is done, one tiny step at a time to reveal what's going on in our world. Last year, more than 9,000 research papers were nominated for the Igs, and when potential winners are selected, they have the option of turning down the honor. Eleanor Maguire once declined to accept the award, because she was afraid it would hurt her career. But three years later she was up for the award again and decided to accept it. Far from hurting her career, she was later introduced as the “the most famous member” of a science panel, even though that panel included actual Nobel prize winners. Well sure, we may laugh about the Ig Nobel prizes, but we remember them because odd and obscure science studies are more fun to read about than the "serious" science that wins Nobel prizes. An article in the journal Nature tells us how winning an Ig Nobel affected the careers of several scientists, including one who won an Ig Nobel and a few years later won the Nobel prize.  -via Damn Interesting

To understand the context of this Letters Live performance, you need to know the cast of characters.

Dr. Serge Voronoff transplanted glands from monkey testicles into human men in the 1920s, in order to "rejuvenate" them and extend their lives.

Dr. Edward Bach was a bacteriologist who warned in 1928 that not only was Voronoff's surgery a con, but that the patients would take on a chimpanzee's "worst characteristics." While chimpanzees are not monkeys, Voronoff used the glands of both baboons and chimps.

Consul Junior was a chimpanzee at the London Zoo, and a favorite among visitors. A letter from Consul Junior appeared in the London Daily News shortly after Bach's statement.

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw was the actual author of the chimp's letter.

Actor Andy Serkis is a motion capture specialist who played Caesar in the 21st-century Planet of the Apes movies. In this video, he reads that letter from the chimpanzee objecting to what Bach considered a chimp's "worst characteristics." He really gets into the role. -via Laughing Squid