Fashion trends of the past were often so ridiculous that we have to wonder whether future generations will laugh at what we wear today. Yeah, they probably will. Taking a look at some trends of the past, we see that they are often a scheme to flaunt one's status at the expensive of others. Sometimes that idea backfired spectacularly. BlueJay explains four really weird fashion trends from previous centuries in a rather amusing way. -via Nag on the Lake

Remember when buying a box of sugary cereal meant there was a free toy inside? Remember your brother spilling cereal all over the kitchen to get the prize, and then your siblings would fight over it? It still happens, but those prizes are fairly rare these days, limited to special movie premieres or something. The premiums began to appear in cereal boxes in 1948 and were often disappointing, but some were surprisingly cool. Mr. Breakfast compiled a list ranking the 50 best cereal box prizes, and some of them make me wish my parents had bought sugary cereal. Coming in at #15:

In the 1950s, Wheaties cereal offered a snazzy little 2-inch high microscope with an adjustable focusing lens designed by General Scientific Corp. "Kids! Explore the Wonders of Nature with your 6 Power Microscope Free in this Box! Magnifies objects to 6 times normal size. See things invisible to the naked eye on leaves, flowers, insects (and) rocks."

Then I remembered that my dad was a science teacher and we had a full-size microscope. Here's #5, from 1989 or 1990:

To have a send-away offer to get a watch from a cereal wasn't unusual, but to have a working watch actually inside the box was very exciting for kids. To make matters even more incredible, it didn't display just the time. It could also show the date! From what we could find looking at pictures, there were as many as 8 different styles available over a couple years. The best ones had the Honey-Comb logo and graphic interpretations of the cereal pieces.

Yeah, you can imagine that toys containing batteries didn't last long considering the expense, but they have resurfaced as recently as 2008. Check out the list of the top 50 cereal box prizes for a walk down memory lane or a glimpse at what you missed out on. -via Fark

Halloween will be here in three weeks, and the theaters are full of horror films. But you don't want to go out. The TV schedule is full of horror films, but you don't want to spend the time. Why bother when you can get everything in them in about a minute?

Alasdair Beckett-King (previously at Neatorama) presents a horror movie about a haunted house that has everything that every haunted house movie has, except maybe the long slow buildup that you already know from seeing all the other haunted house movies. There, now you've saved yourself a couple of hours. If you were expecting a surprise twist, you may notice that the husband and wife are the same person. Surprise!

In 2003, Starbucks introduced its Pumpkin Spice Latte. It became an enormous sensation, even after we found out that there is no pumpkin at all, or even butternut squash, in the drink. The entire flavor came from the spices, a combination which cooks have known as pumpkin pie spice for a long time. It's a blend of flavors we adore because 1. it tastes good, 2. it's associated with autumn, which we love, 3. it has no real connection with Halloween, so it can be enjoyed through the other holidays and by those who don't do Halloween.

You may get the idea that the pumpkin spice craze has gotten out of hand, but even when it dies back, and it will sooner or later, we will still consume the flavor combination one way or another. Possibly in a pie. Read a history of pumpkin spice at Moss and Fog. -via Nag on the Lake

Every year, Tom BetGeorge of Tracy, California, pulls out all the stops to entertain us with his Halloween and Christmas light displays. You can find an archive of them here. These public performances are all charity fundraisers for McHenry House, a local family shelter, which goes a long way in assuaging the neighbors during the stressful holiday season. It's a challenge for BetGeorge to impress us a little more each year. This year's Halloween show features "Wake Up" by Rage Against the Machine to accompany the final scene of The Matrix. Another part of the show gives us "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from Nirvana.

The spotlights on top direct us in our head banging. The scowling pumpkins give the song an appropriate snarl to take us back 30 years to the height of the grunge era, when the album Nevermind was released.

If you are nearby, you can drive through and see the Halloween show live. Check the schedule for this year's performances.

In 1890, jealousy and envy destroyed two brothers. Isaac Sawtelle of Boston served time in prison for rape and assault. When he was paroled, he returned to his hometown to find that his younger brother, Hiram Sawtelle Jr. was running his late father's fruit store and managing his mother's inheritance. Hiram was a responsible man with a wife and children, while Isaac the older brother was an ex-con with nothing.

Isaac had a friend, though. He had met Charles Lewis Blood in prison. Blood had no official training, but he presented himself as a doctor to sell patent medicines. He even sold "oxygenized air" as a cure-all. One might feel a bit of trepidation for consulting "Dr. Blood," but that is neither here nor there. Blood knew about Isaac's predicament, and offered to arrange for the elderly Mrs. Sawtelle's business interests to be put into Isaac's hands for a mere $500. He had a grand scheme that involved kidnapping Hiram Sawtelle's seven-year-old daughter.

If you've seen a few movies, you know that the scheme did not go as planned, and soon police in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire were looking for the missing Hiram and the suspicious Isaac. Read the story of brotherly jealousy that led to murder at Geri Walton's blog. -via Strange Company

My Finances: pic.twitter.com/SasbwqAIRD

— Andrew Hilary but spooky 👻 (@AndrewHilaryUS) October 8, 2021

This is the cutest story you will see today. These kids and their cryptocurrencies!

Andrew Hilary drives an ice cream truck. When a little girl wanted to pay for an ice cream with a blue rock, he couldn't resist. He mentioned that no one should tell his boss, but the viral Tweet that resulted is worth its weight in gold. In the followup comments we find that the rock is plastic and glows in the dark! Speaking of being worth its weight in gold, Hilary has been offered $5 for the rock, and $500 for an NFT of the above picture. I don't think he's going to part with the rock.  

Other commenters admired his shirt and noted he could enter a Seth Rogan lookalike contest. A day later, we learn the rest of the story.

The sun is shining, I’ve got one of my best shirts on, and thanks to a kind stranger who saw my tweet and venmoed me, I just got to give a bunch of kids free ice cream!
(Note: do not send me money, i am super irresponsible😅) pic.twitter.com/lJzwqgLgJh

— Andrew Hilary but spooky 👻 (@AndrewHilaryUS) October 9, 2021

-via Fark

Ze Frank is back with a True Facts video that we know he's been collecting facts and jokes about for a long time. This one is about the most horrible killer animal on the planet: the Moscow-ito, er, the mosquito. We hate them because they are both annoying and dangerous, but they have a rather unique physiology and lifestyle that we should know about. Even the larval stage gives us mosquitos that breath through their butts and cannibalize their neighbors. And then there's the jokes. Anyway, that's why this video is longer than a normal Ze Frank video, but well worth your time, even if you have to watch it in installments. The visual horror show starts after the four-minute mark, when the adults emerge to spread their misery. By the time it when gets to the biting part, you should be ready for it.   

Has anyone ever accused you of relying on ellipses or dashes too much? Have you ever wondered if you use too many exclamation points? We now have a way to visualize the answers to exactly those questions.

Clive Thompson made a tool that strips all the letters from a passage of writing and shows you only the punctuation. Why? Because you can learn a lot about style that way. In explaining the application, Thompson himself realized that he used a lot of parentheticals, long ones with punctuation inside them, which indicates he digresses from the subject more than he would like. In another example, look at the image above. On the left is the punctuation in Adam J. Calhoun's analysis of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. On the right is Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. It only rakes a glance to see how the writing styles differ, just by punctuation.

You'll find the tool called just the punctuation here. I put in some of my own writing, and found that I don't use nearly as much punctuation as I expected to see. This is all the punctuation from an entire Mental Floss feature article from years ago.

' . ' , , , , . ' ? , , . , , , . , - , . , . , ! , , . ' , ' . , , , . , ' , . . ( ) , . , . . . . . , ' . , . , . , , . . , . . . . , ' . . , . . , , . , . ; ' . . ' - , . . , . , ' ' , . . ( ) , .


-via Metafilter 

The hit 1956 movie musical The King and I was based on the 1951 Broadway musical of the same name, which was based on Margaret Landon's 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam, which was based on the 1870 book The English Governess in Siamese Court by Anna Leonowens. There were also other movies based on the same story, one in 1946, two in 1999, and a TV series in 1972.

With so many iterations of the story over 150 years, you wouldn't be surprised to learn that it has historical inaccuracies. One would think that going back to the original 1870 memoir by Anna Leonowens, who really did work for King Mongkut of Siam (now Thailand), would give us the true story, but even that account was highly fictionalized for dramatic effect and to push Leonowens' feminist and abolitionist views.

Maybe it would be better to simply read about Leonowens life. That's where we find that Leonowens had begun fictionalizing details of her life long before she ever went to Siam! Read about the real Anna Leonowens and how she crafted her own life story at Historic Mysteries. -via Strange Company

Remember when you were a kid, and thought the very idea of combining cheese and cake was ridiculous? Several fellows from a remote area in the province of Punjab, Pakistan, had never eaten a New York cheesecake before, but they were willing to try. While they aren't big on showing surprise in facial expressions, they have a wonderful way of conveying their delight by their word choice. Note- those who speak the language have pointed out that the one guy who wanted to eat a whole cheesecake on a riverbank also said there would be a campfire there (although the subtitles left that out). Such a simple description conveys the idea of "heaven" no matter what language you speak. -via reddit

And now you are craving a slice of cheesecake, aren't you? Sorry.

You might know the word Samhain as the original Halloween, celebrated by ancient pagans in the British Isles. That's the short version. There are four Celtic festivals called Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain which fall halfway between the equinoxes and the solstices. For another example, Imbolc is when people looked for signs of spring and eventually became Groundhog Day. In that vein, Samhain was a harvest festival that had some spiritual overtones. Over thousands of years, that festival became split between a Christian holiday (All Saints Day) and a devil's holiday (Halloween). But neither of those have much to do with the original Samhain. Read about Samhain and how it changed so much at Mental Floss.

It's that time of year again! It only makes sense to share excess seasonal fruits with any animal that will eat them. The Oregon Zoo not only wants to give their animals a variety of food for nutrition, but also uses pumpkins as an enrichment tool. Besides that, they know we are suckers for cute animals eating -or playing with- the symbol of the season. It's like killing two birds with one stone: the animals get a treat, and we get to revel in their cuteness with this video. Then again, the zoo staff probably wouldn't even think of killing birds with a stone. -via Laughing Squid

Remember, you can see more adorable animals and read their stories at Supa Fluffy.

It's difficult to grow vegetables in the Himalayas. It's even difficult to grow feed for cattle. And it's also difficult to carry enough food for long treks through the mountains. But people adapt, and in Nepal, they found ways. A yak-cow hybrid called the chauri can live off the tougher grass available at higher elevations. The milk of the chauri is made into a cheese called chhurpi, which is so dry that it can be eaten for far longer than any other cheese. It is said that chhurpi can last for up to twenty years!  

Chauri milk is boiled, fermented, smoked, and dried for preservation. The chhurpi that results is lightweight and full of protein, with very little fat. That makes it easy to transport and easy to store, but not all that easy to eat. An experienced chhurpi chewer can do it in a few minutes, while an intrepid reporter never got it soft enough to ingest. BBC Travel visited a Nepalese family who produces chhurpi from their own livestock and from those of their neighbors to see how they make it and use it. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Arijit Dasgupta)

We've been to Wild West amusement parks where a gunfight in the street was scheduled for every hour, on the hour. When Palisade, Nevada, did it, those gunfights were scheduled according to when passengers arrived on the railroad train -and those disembarking had no idea it was all staged. See, when the transcontinental railroad opened for business, travelers complained that the Wild West wasn't nearly as wild as it had been depicted in dime novels. In 1870, the tiny new railroad town of Palisade decided to do something about that, and maybe drum up some tourist business.

Their plan worked magnificently. Gunfights broke out in the street every time a train stopped. The town developed a reputation as a "must-see" among tourists, and journalists were eager to describe the carnage, albeit without too many facts about the perpetrators or victims. The town also staged bank robberies and Indian raids, which kept the people coming to town for a few years. Despite all the "killings," the population of Palisade peaked at about 300 people during this period, almost all involved in the performances. Read about the Palisade Wild West show at Messy Nessy Chic.