Are Americans obsessed with sharks? Well, in 1975, Jaws defined what we now call the summer blockbuster. And Shark Week still draws audiences more than 30 years after it began. But the real obsession with sharks began earlier, when Americans were put in real danger from sharks. That wasn't their greatest danger, because we're talking about World War II. But it was the time that millions of Americans were introduced to ship travel in the armed forces, where surviving an enemy attack could lead to yet more danger.

Local newspapers across the country transfixed civilians and servicemen alike with frequent stories of bombed ships and aircraft in the open ocean. Journalists consistently described imperiled servicemen who were rescued or dying in “shark-infested waters.”

Whether sharks were visibly present or not, these news articles magnified a growing cultural anxiety of ubiquitous monsters lurking and poised to kill.

The naval officer and marine scientist H. David Baldridge reported that fear of sharks was a leading cause of poor morale among servicemen in the Pacific theater. General George Kenney enthusiastically supported the adoption of the P-38 fighter plane in the Pacific because its twin engines and long range diminished the chances of a single-engine aircraft failure or an empty fuel tank: “You look down from the cockpit and you can see schools of sharks swimming around. They never look healthy to a man flying over them.”

There were some fairly terrifying incidents of ship attack survivors being eaten by sharks, drawn by the blood of the wounded and the dead. Read about the rise of shark fear and how it lingers all these years later at The Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

Paints, dyes, and other colorants have been very important in history- particularly those colors that are hard to manufacture. Red was among those up until Spanish conquistadors came to the Americas and found native industries cranking out red dye from the cochineal insect.   

Spain, realizing it had a precious product, cornered the market on cochineal red. It became one of their most valuable exports from Mexico, second only to silver. They even put laws on the books to protect cochineal—and the mysterious bug that created it. “You couldn’t take gold or silver or cochineal out of Spain, without authorization, on pain of death,” Greenfield says.

The country also had strong censorship policies to control information about cochineal and keep it from other countries. For years, Europeans remained unaware that the dye came from an insect. Many wondered if the dried cochineal that formed dyes was some sort of plant or animal. Once the secret source of Spain’s coveted dye eventually got out, it wasn’t long before Europe’s monarchies were plotting ways to fight—and kill—for it.

Read the history of cochineal red and how it took Europe by storm at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez)

Until recently, there were only 27 species of trapdoor spider, which are found all over the world. However, it's been 50 years since any new species of the genus Ummidia were described, and the technical tools for examine the species (meaning DNA) has come a long way. Rebecca Godwin and Jason Bond from UC Davis have now reworked the spiders' taxonomy and have reclassified and named 33 new species among spiders that have already been studied. You can imagine the opportunity for naming this presented.

U. neilgaimani, U. gingoteague, U. rongodwini, U. okefenokee, U. richmond, U. macarthuri, U. colemanae, U. rosillos, U. mercedesburnsae, U. paulacushingae, U. waunekaae, U. gertschi, U. timcotai, U. gabrieli, U. pesiou, U. rodeo, U. huascazaloya, U. anaya, U. cuicatec, U. brandicarlileae, U. riverai, U. frankellerae, U. hondurena, U. yojoa, U. matagalpa, U. carlosviquezi, U. varablanca, U. quepoa, U. cerrohoya, U. quijichacaca, U. tibacuy, U. neblina, U. tunapuna.

You might recognize some of the names. U. neilgaimani is for author Neil Gaiman, who had another spider named for him in January. U. gabrieli is named for musician Peter Gabriel, U. brandicarlileae is for singer Brandi Carlile, and quite a few others are named for scientists. -via Boing Boing

While I know some people who would want this, it's not an official LEGO set, just the latest project from LEGO artist Iain Heath, also known as Ochre Jelly (previously at Neatorama). Besides, we know that while the lightsaber was eventually recovered, the hand was never seen again. -via Mark Hamill

#TooSoon 😢 https://t.co/r1RVaNUeee

— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) July 9, 2021

A farm near Amesbury, in Wiltshire, UK, hosted a particularly unusual contest in 1883. Two men battled it out to decide who could work better- a laborer who had been drinking beer, or a laborer who only had water. Mr. W. F. Terrill, a farmer from Wiltshire, drank beer and harvested corn, while Mr. J. Abbey of the Church of England Temperance Society did the same while drinking only water.

From the very start in the contest, Mr. Terrill assumed the lead. At four o’clock, he had cleared 15a. 3r. 16p. [acres, roods, and perches], and Mr. Abbey had cleared 14a. 3r. 0p. Therefore at that time Mr. Terrill was about one acre ahead. A short cessation of work took place. Mr Terrill, it was stated, was “annointed” by his friends, the “ointment” consisting of whisky. But this is denied. However, he worked well after the pause.

After four o’clock, Mr. Abbey gained steadily, continuing to so so to the finish, when he was only 3r. 21p. behind, having gained something like an acre in about three hours and a quarter. The quantity pitched by Mr Terrill was 29a. 2r. 7p., and that of Mr. Abbey 19a. 2r. 26p. It is stated that a man who clears 12 or 13 acres in a day is considered have done a good day’s work. After the contest, Mr. Terrill and Mr. Abbey shook hands in a most cordial manner, and each proposed cheers for the other.

You might guess that the real winner of the competition was Mr. George Melsome, the owner of the farm, who cleared 48 acres with free labor. But the question of the benefits of beer vs. water was far from settled, once you look into the background of the contest and the men who took part. Read the whole story of the competition at Singular Discoveries.  -via Strange Company

British comedian Chris McCausland is blind. On the TV show Would I Lie To You? he tells the story of that time he had a neighbor who ignored him... or so he thought. This is really funny, but it also shows us how modern technology can enable communications between people who otherwise would not communicate at all. -via Digg

The medieval kingdom of Makuria ranged over parts of what is now Sudan and Egypt. Its capital was Dongola, a Sudanese site on the Nile River where archaeologists have been digging since the 1960s. They previously found a church, and expected to find a town square as well. However, the massive structure they uncovered appears to be a much-larger cathedral.   

Archaeologists from the University of Warsaw’s Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology (PCMA) believe they have found two walls of the church’s apse, painted portraits of the Twelve Apostles, and the domed covering of a tomb. Artur Obłuski, director of the PCMA, told The Art Newspaper that the tomb could be the resting place of a powerful archbishop from Nubia’s Christian period, which ran approximately from the 6th century to the 14th century. That theory is based on the layout of another ancient church found in Sudan in the 1960s, just west of a bishop’s domed tomb.

At its height, Dongola was about the size of Paris today, so it only makes sense that they would have a large cathedral. Read about the discovery and the kingdom of Makuria at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Artur Obłuski, Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw)

UFOs are easy to explain -they are unidentified flying objects, and are unidentified because we don't know what they are. There are often several possible explanations; we just don't know which one is correct. However, when you start talking about aliens and flying saucers and extraterrestrials, suddenly everyone is interested. While odd things have been seen in the sky since ancient times, they've only been publicized, recorded, and studied since around 1947. Penn State historian of science Greg Eghigian is writing a history of American UFO sightings, and tells us how it all got started.

What happened in 1947?

A pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold was flying his small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington state. As he was flying around he said he saw some sort of glimmer or shine that caught his eye and was concerned that maybe he was going to have a collision with another aircraft. When he looked, he saw what he described as nine very odd-shaped vessels flying in formation.

After Arnold landed, he reported his sightings to authorities at a nearby airport and eventually talked to some reporters. When a reporter asked Arnold to describe how the things moved, he said, “they flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across water.” Some very clever enterprising journalists came up with the headline “flying saucers” and from that point forward they were flying saucers – even though Arnold never uttered the phrase himself.

A Gallup poll six weeks after the event discovered that 90% of Americans had heard the term flying saucer. This was the beginning of the phenomenon that some call the flying saucer era and the contemporary idea of UFOs.

Eghigian gives us an overview of UFOs in the public eye and the in military studies in the interview at The Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: George Stock)

The 19th century was a unique time for archaeology, with wondrous treasures being unearthed all over the world and sent back to the discoverer's home country (or sponsoring country) to be kept in a museum. Museums became very competitive in acquiring ancient artifacts, which sometimes led them to be too trusting as to an artifact's provenance.

For the better part of a decade, the widely celebrated and esteemed Louvre Museum of Paris proudly displayed a supposedly ancient tiara made of solid gold. Experts at the Louvre identified it as belonging to the Scythian king Saitapharnes who ruled sometime in the 3rd century BCE. An inscription on the tiara mentioning that it was a gift from Olbia, a Greek colony on the Black Sea coast, to King Saitaphernes left no doubt about the item’s authenticity and great age. But later it became clear that the tiara's new owner had been a little haste in acquiring the item. The exhibit is now locked away in storage—an embarrassment, for the tiara was proved to be a hoax perpetuated by two Russian art dealers.

Embarrassing for the museum curator, but the incident turned out to be quite lucrative for the goldsmith who made the tiara. Read the story of the Scythian tiara hoax at Amusing Planet.

This is an interesting story. However, it happened twenty years ago, and there is apparently no video footage from the actual incident -just still photos. So they pulled up a bunch of stock footage of "leopards" and ended up with mostly cheetahs, at least one ocelot, and possibly a margay. Just so we're clear, cheetahs live in Africa, and ocelots and margays live in the Americas. The producers assumed we wouldn't know the difference. Also, there are quite a few different kinds of cows pictured, many of which do not live in Pakistan. Sure, it's a sweet love story, but would this video have racked up three million views in a week without the cheetahs? -via Digg 

It's true that an army moves on its stomach, since troops who aren't fed won't be able or willing to fight. While there is plenty to complain about in modern-day MREs and the C-rations that came before, those are luxuries compared to what was fed to soldiers of the American Revolution. The rebels had no government infrastructure behind their supplies, but they did the best they could. At the beginning, the Continental Congress declared how much of different foods each man should be allotted, and Washington ordered that each soldier carry two days worth of provisions. But as the war dragged on, food was harder to come by.  

In situations when rations were scarce, which was more often than not, many Continental Army soldiers had to resort to subsisting on what was known as biscuit, fire cake, or hardtack. This simple flour and water dough was baked into hard, flavorless cakes that were often so dry that soldiers had to soak each bite in water, broth, or tea in order to eat it. If Continental soldiers were lucky, the mixture wouldn’t be absolutely ridden with insects. They often weren’t.

The supply situation got so bad that soldiers were impelled to steal food from civilian settlements. The British had their own problems with food supplies as well. Read about the difficulties of getting enough to eat during the American Revolutionary War at The Drive. -via Fark

(Image credit: National Park Service Digital Image Archives)

Australian photographer Danny Huynh has an amazing hobby. He builds remote control animatronics based on pop culture characters. They are works of art, but the real magic takes off when they move!



Sadly, Huynh's creations are not for sale. Continue reading to see more.

The new MCU film Black Widow opens in theaters this weekend. This post has nothing to do with the Avengers, but the movie opening is a good excuse to learn something about the real black widow spider. As with many of the earth's creatures, our common knowledge about them turns out to be less than true.

Black widows earned their name because scientists witnessed the females eat their mates after copulation. But research has shown that in a related species, redback spiders, females only cannibalize their mates about two percent of the time, so experts suspect that American black widows have similar rates of cannibalism in the wild.

The widows’ cannibalistic behavior was first observed in the lab, where males had nowhere to run away from their larger, hungrier counterparts. But in the spiders’ natural habitats, males have the opportunity to make an escape.

Male black widows also have strategies to avoid riskier sexual encounters in the first place; for instance, research suggests they can tell whether or not a female is hungry by her pheromones, so they can avoid potential mates who seem a bit peckish.

Learn more about the black widow spider at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Ken Thomas)

The Slinky is an amazing toy. It's just a metal spring, but you can do so many things with it! The guy from Action Lab shows us how weird slinkys are when you drop them vertically, thanks to slow-motion video. Someone in the comments compared the slinky's behavior to a Loony Tunes character, recreated in the real world where physics is a thing. -via Digg

It's a mistake to think that if you have enough money, you can travel anywhere. Quite a few places are forbidden, some to outsiders, others to any human beings at all. The reasons are varied. Some locations don't want visitors because they hold precious treasures, fragile artifacts, or delicate ecosystems. Others are dangerous due to volcanoes, radiation, or animals. The rest are top secret for one reason or another. The Island of Surtsey is both volcanic and a delicate ecosystem.

In the 1960s, an undersea volcanic eruption created a brand-new island off the coast of Iceland. It’s not every day that scientists get to study an island from the moment it emerges, so they decided to make the most of the opportunity. The island, named Surtsey, has become a case study for how ecosystems develop without any interference from humans. (Other than the ideally noninterventionist scientists who study the island, that is.) Some of the lifeforms that have found their way to Surtsey include molds, fungi, at least 89 bird species, and, supposedly, one plucky tomato plant.

In 1969, an Icelandic scientist named Ágúst Bjarnason was asked to make a trip to Surtsey to identify a mysterious plant, which he identified as a tomato. Bjarnason looked into the situation a bit further; as he later recalled, “Someone had done their business … and this beautiful tomato plant … had grown out of the feces.”

Read about seventeen other places you can cross off your vacation list at Mental Floss. The list is also available as a video. Strangely, North Sentinal Island is not among them.

(Image credit: Bruce McAdam)