Victory in warfare often goes to the entity that develops the most horrendous weapons, as we all learned in 1945. But mysterious but horrifying weapons that you wouldn't expect abound in history. In the 7th century, Byzantine warfare included the use of what appears to be a flamethrower! This weapon was called Greek fire.

The chief method of deploying Greek fire was by projection through a tube called a siphōn, which was placed aboard ships or on siege engines called cheirosiphōnes. A handheld portable siphōn was also invented that is the earliest analogue to a modern flamethrower. Byzantine military manuals also give mention of Greek fire filled jars, caltrops wrapped with tow soaked in the substance, and cranes called gerania that would pour Greek fire onto enemy ships.

The Byzantines ascribed the discovery of Greek fire to “divine intervention”, for which the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos (AD 945–959) would later account in his book De Administrando Imperio to never reveal the secrets of its composition, as it was “shown and revealed by an angel to the great and holy first Christian emperor Constantine” and that the angel bound him “not to prepare this fire but for Christians, and only in the imperial city.”

There are accounts of what went into Greek fire, but they must have not been too helpful, because the technology was eventually lost. Read about Geek fire at Heritage Daily. -via Strange Company

This chart is a work of art. I hope multiple people got paid well to make it and I hope they get hit by a bus pic.twitter.com/XS6aWwwj7P

— Katelyn Gadd (@antumbral) June 24, 2021

Charts and graphs can be wonderful for breaking down information and showing trends over time, but only if they are constructed in a way that people can understand. On TV, the viewer only has a short period of time to grab that information, but when you take a screenshot, you see that there are many things wrong with this graph. Mefite Stark takes a stab at listing them.

1. The y-axis doesn't start at zero
2. The y-axis isn't labelled correctly (it should be % of Adults who report that they think violent crime is a problem)
3. The gaps between the data points on the x-axis are not representative of the gaps between the dates
4. The margin of error is not highlighted on the chart's data points
5. Straight lines between the data points imply a steady trend which may or may not be the case
6. In my opinion the most amazing weirdness is that the x-axis dates go from right to left!

Someone else mentioned that the x-axis is labeled in alphabetical order. Andy Baio took the information and made a much better chart.

Wait so it isn't even for actual violent crime? Just adults who THINK there's a violent crime problem?????

— Crim Lust (@Cr1ms0n_lus7) June 25, 2021

This is far from unique, though, as many media outlets rely on their graphics departments (or maybe an intern) to make charts instead of data scientists. You can go down the rabbit hole and see plenty of confusing or misleading information in charts here, here, and here. In fact, there are so many ways to make a bad chart that several sites are dedicated to explaining and shaming them. See more terrible charts archived at Bad Visualizations, WTF Visualizations, and the subreddit Data Is Ugly.  -via Metafilter

It is commonly thought that Homo sapiens came from Africa and Neanderthals evolved in Europe. However, a discovery in Israel appears to put both human species in the same location in the Levant. An archaeological dig started in 2012 at Nesher Ramla, and has yielded human remain in which a skull fragment appears to be Homo sapiens, while the jawbone sports Neanderthal features. Dental anthropologist Rachel Sarig says the discovery may force us into a new interpretation of human evolution.

Sarig’s paper describes the physical characteristics of the remains from Nesher Ramla, and the other paper describes the stone tools found at the site. The bones were compared to other members of the genus Homo using 3D morphometrics—basically, the researchers created a dataset of points in three dimensions and looked at how similar or dissimilar the skull fragment, jawbone, and teeth were from those of other humans. They also dated the specimen to between 140,000 and 120,000 years old, which would mean it lived at the same time as Homo sapiens in the area.

“The Nesher Ramla fossils certainly complicate a straightforward evolutionary story, which traditionally hinged on exclusive occupation of the Levant by either Neanderthals or Homo sapiens,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was unaffiliated with the recent papers. “Instead, there may be multiple species around at the same time, sometimes interbreeding, learning from one another and sharing in their cultural behaviors.”

That would certainly be a new way to look at human history. Read more about the research at Gizmodo.

There is some speculation that the human remains may be a previously unknown species that was a common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, instead of a hybrid of the two. 

(Image credit: Tel Aviv University)

In 1818, a British writer who published under the name "H" wrote an article for The Pocket Magazine in which he predicted the future of the United States. He (assuming it was a man) placed his musings 500 years into the future. It's only been 200 years, but some of them have come strangely true. For instance, Americans traveled to the moon, but some citizens didn't believe it. However, the method of getting there wasn't quite the way it really happened.

Baltimore, December 1, 2318.—“As many of our readers in distant parts of the country have doubted whether the voyage to the moon ever did take place, we do again assure them, upon our veracity, that the information was literally correct. This aerial journey must indeed appear to many who hear of it as a most extraordinary undertaking; particularly when it is recollected, that in the dark ages of English credulity, it was imagined that tubes two hundred and forty thousand miles in length, besides being exposed to many other insuperable objections, would break with their own weight. Yet such were the tubes used by our adventurers, and such were absolutely necessary to supply them with air from the dense atmosphere of our earth. At the period to which we allude, when every science was fettered with the adamantine chains of system, it was also thought impossible for goose-quill, or any other wings, to be of service where the air was so rare as to offer no resistance. This idea the undertaking of now under consideration has fully disproved; for, after the wonders one goose his quill has performed, what must we not expect from the labours of a number united […]

Other predictions in the article referred to automated doctors, the miracle of temperature control in the home, and the discovery of an unlimited liquid fuel coming from the earth. Read these predictions from 200 years ago at Reynolds's News and Miscellany. -via Strange Company

The US birth rate dropped by 4% during the pandemic, but it's a baby boom for the Tran family of Orange County, California. The Tran triplets, Gina, Nina, and Victoria, are all pregnant at once! The  three women were born just minutes apart, 35 years ago, and now are sharing commiseration, maternity clothes, and an obstetrician.

“I’m actually the oldest by four minutes and I’m having a girl, and her name is Leighton Grace,” Gina said.

“I’m in the middle by four minutes and I’m having a boy, and his name is Hendrix Paul,” Nina said.

“I’m the youngest by four minutes and then eight minutes, and having a boy,” Victoria said. “His name is Zaden Seth.”

The three births are expected in July, August, and November. Read more at CBS. -via Fark

(Image credit: The Tran Family)

Summer holidays are the time for putting away candy in favor of fresh fruit and ice cream, and for moving the cooking outdoors because the kitchen gets too hot. If your perfect cookout includes grilling a nice steak, you might want to learn a bit of the science behind the process. Meat scientists are willing to share what they've learned about grilling steak. First, they advise us on what to look for when selecting steaks at the butcher shop.  

The biggest influence on the final flavor of that steak, though, is how you cook it. Flavorwise, cooking meat accomplishes two things. First, the heat of the grill breaks the meat’s fatty acids into smaller molecules that are more volatile — that is, more likely to become airborne. These volatiles are responsible for the steak’s aroma, which accounts for the majority of its flavor. Molecules called aldehydes, ketones and alcohols among that breakdown mix are what we perceive as distinctively beefy.

The second way that cooking builds flavor is through browning, a process that chemists call the Maillard reaction. This is a fantastically complex process in which amino acids and traces of sugars in the meat react at high temperatures to kick off a cascade of chemical changes that result in many different volatile end products. Most important of these are molecules called pyrazines and furans, which contribute the roasty, nutty flavors that steak aficionados crave. The longer and hotter the cooking, the deeper into the Maillard reaction you go and the more of these desirable end products you get — until eventually, the meat starts to char, producing undesirable bitter, burnt flavors.

Read what science has to say about the way you prepare steak at Smithsonian.

Kevin Parry has entertained us with all kinds of stop-motions videos. In a followup to his fruits and vegetables video, he zooms into the inner structures of tropical fruits, some you may not be familiar with (there's a list in the top comment here). But the best part is after the fruits, where we get to see how it's done. And that's where it becomes clear why Parry didn't treat the coconut the same way as the other fruits. -via Kottke

Erstwhile Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein once wrote a romance novel, but that was totally non-controversial compared to his later literary adventure. As the supreme ruler of his nation, Saddam indulged his whims without the input of Islamic theologians, as in the time he commissioned a copy of the Qur’an to be written with his own blood!  

The dictator had recently re-embraced his Islamic faith after his son, Uday Hussein, narrowly survived an assassination attempt on December 12, 1996. In an official letter published in 2000, Saddam explained that the book was intended as thanks to God for bringing him safely through many ‘conspiracies and dangers’ throughout his long political career: “My life has been full of dangers in which I should have lost a lot of blood…but since I have bled only a little, I asked somebody to write God’s words with my blood in gratitude.”

To write the book, Saddam commissioned calligrapher Abbas Shakir Joody al-Baghdadi. Over the next two years a nurse drew a total of 27 litres of Saddam’s blood and delivered it to al-Baghdadi, who after treating it with chemicals to stabilize it, used the liquid to write out the 114 chapters and 6000 verses of the Islamic holy book. Completed in 2000, the finished book runs 605 pages and is written in lettering two centimetres in height with borders decorated in intricate blue, red, and black designs.

Saddam is no more, but the blood Qur’an remains, and presents quite a paradox. While the book and its contents are holy to Muslims, human blood is considered unclean, so what is the status of this particular copy? And is it really Saddam's blood -or that of someone else? The calligrapher al-Baghdadi refuses to discuss the project to this day. Read about the blood Qur’an and what it means at Today I Found Out.

Bored Panda culled some entertaining stories from the subreddit I Don't Work Here Lady. They vary greatly, but all involve someone who completely misunderstood the role of a stranger. In one of them, redditor Billiam201 recalled how he got a new phone number in a new town and discovered it once belonged to a business. The business owner had dropped one phone line, but still had the number on the receipts he gave to customers. That led to many callers who thought Billiam201 worked for that business, so he found and confronted the owner.

"You guys are still giving out my home phone number on your receipts."
"Yeah. So?"
"Well, f*****g stop it. It's been at least a year since you haven't had that number. At least cross it out or something."
"That's a pain in the ass, I'm not making my employees do that."
"So you're the manager?"
"I'm the owner."
"So let me see if I have this right. You, what was your name again?"
Let's call him Fred.
"You, Fred have decided that it's too inconvenient to cross my home phone number off of your receipts, so you're just going to keep giving it out?"
"Yup. What are you gonna do? Sue me?"

He didn't sue, but what he did was much more satisfying. Most of the stories involve bullies getting their comeuppance, but a few are wholesomely sweet. Like the time redditor somethingwithatwo2 had a guy get in his car thinking it was a taxi. He was going that way anyway, so he played along.  

We drove off together and he peered out the window, smiling.

He said "You taxis are much quicker these days! Ah it's a beautiful day for a train ride, don't you think?"

He looked at me, still with this big smile and said:

"I'm Jerry, lovely to meet you. I'm meeting my friend for breakfast today! I'm so excited. I haven't been on the train in years. All my friends have passed on and I don't really need to go out of town. Well, not until I made a new friend recently. It's funny how life goes isn't it? An old codger like me with a breakfast date! Can you imagine."

You could easily spend an hour reading all thirty wonderful stories posted at Bored Panda, even if you have to bookmark it to get to all of them.

Baseball uniforms change over time, but they change rather gradually so that we always recognize a baseball player in uniform. Pants go up, pants reach lower, stripes are in or out, shirts button or they don't. One fashion that comes and goes is stirrup socks. How did those ever become part of a baseball uniform? It's not just because of fashion, although fashion begins the story of how they came about.

In the mid-1800s, ballplayers were prone to wearing uniforms that had pants extending all the way to the top of the shoe. Then, in 1868, the players of the Cincinnati Red Stockings decided to make a fashion statement by hiking their pants up to just under the knees, knickers-style. Other teams followed suit in the belief that a shapely calf might excite female fans attending the game. (Remember, this was the 1800s.)

This, of course, showed their red stockings. The rest of the story has to do with practicality and safety, which you can read about at Mental Floss.

The new movie F9 is in theaters now. It's a simple name for the ninth film in a series centered around a set of characters driving cars very fast. That's nine movies, and a few spinoffs. These characters -and their plots- have come a long way from that first film in 2001, The Fast and the Furious, which Screen Junkies is just now getting around to making an Honest Trailer for.

A “Potemkin village” is a neighborhood or town purposely made into an illusion, with a shiny facade that hides a not-so-shiny truth. Named after Russian military leader Gregory Potemkin, these villages look prosperous and inviting on the outside, while inside they may be empty, or poverty-stricken, or even full of nefarious activities.

The sole purpose of a Potemkin village is to make outsiders think that a situation is better than it really is, and perhaps no other country is better versed in this practice today than North Korea. Situated in the Demilitarized Zone is a village called Kijong-Dong, built in the 1950s in an attempt to encourage defection from people in South Korea.

From afar, the small town which directly faces its enemy, also known as the “Peace Village”, looks relatively normal. It has clean well-kept streets, a number of brightly-painted multi-storey buildings and identical low-rise apartments which all appear to have working electricity which would demonstrate North Korea’s prosperity and economic success following the split. The government claims that the village is home to some 200 residents, a farm, a hospital, and a school. Despite appearances however, the more likely reality is, KijongDong has no permanent residents.

Telescopic lenses have revealed that the village’s buildings are nothing more than empty concrete shells, lacking glass windows, interior rooms and even flooring. According to South Korea, caretakers flip light switches and sweep empty pavements, all to preserve a grand illusion. Photographs from inside the village, are non-existent and Western media know it better as ‘Propaganda Village’.

But Potemkin villages exist all over the world, and they aren't always government projects. Read about such villages in different parts of the world, including the US, at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Image credit: Don Sutherland, U.S. Air Force)

We mistakenly sent out an empty test email to a portion of our HBO Max mailing list this evening. We apologize for the inconvenience, and as the jokes pile in, yes, it was the intern. No, really. And we’re helping them through it. ❤️

— HBOMaxHelp (@HBOMaxHelp) June 18, 2021

Last week, thousands of HBO Max subscribers received a mysterious email from the company. The subject was Integration Test Email #1, which implied there would be more, but there was no information that made any sense, and no action requested. HBO Max posted an explanation on Twitter, which blamed an intern, but also appeared to be supportive. You can just imagine how embarrassed and frankly terrified an intern could be over such a public screwup. Twitter users were also supportive, and shared the huge mistakes they made when they were interns, just starting out in their careers.

Dear Intern, I was using my desktop calendar to make a monthly note of when I started my menstrual period, but after several months I realized I was making that note on a calendar I shared with all of my colleagues company wide. I was 37 years old.

— Caissie (@Caissie) June 18, 2021

Dear Intern, when I was 25 I made a PDF assigning each employee to the Muppet they reminded me of the most. I meant to send it to my work friend, but I accidentally sent it to the entire company. My supervisor (Beaker) wanted to fire me, but the owners (Bert & Ernie) intervened. https://t.co/zMKvQ6nxjj

— aerin. (@AerinChevyFord) June 18, 2021

Some were very public, while others were only terrifying until someone else fixed it. The upshot was that you haven't really arrived in a job until you've messed up big time.

HBO Intern, you are breathtaking! I mean it! Congrats on making your first big mistake. It's like a right of initiation for us developers
HT to @_workchronicles pic.twitter.com/8SsQNiXBBr

— Charles C. Pustejovsky III 👍 (@CCPustejovsky) June 18, 2021

See a ranked list of the top 30 responses at Bored Panda, or all of them at Twitter.

The phrase usually refers to something important that everyone is aware of, but no one wants to talk about. In this case, there's no ignoring the real-life elephant that crashed through Ratchadawan Puengprasoppon's kitchen wall in Chalermkiatpattana, Thailand, Saturday morning. The elephant, named Boonchuay, lives in Kaeng Krachan national park, and was likely just looking for something to eat. Read about the incident and see the video at The Guardian. - via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Ratchadawan Puengprasoppon via reddit)

Welsh miners used to make their own fireworks to celebrate important occasions, which mainly consisted of sticking gunpowder into holes. These were called rock cannons. Tom Scott shows us how they worked. What could possibly go wrong? Please don't try detonating a rock cannon yourself, unless you have a test range and an expert explosive engineer. Also, be sure not to surprise your local law enforcement agency, because they could easily surprise you back.