The UK government's space program began in 1952, and has always emphasized unmanned flight, mainly to launch satellites. But decades earlier, there was a private entity called the British Interplanetary Society that advocated for manned space travel. In the 1940s, they even produced a space suit for intrepid travelers to wear while collecting moon rocks! It looks bonkers, considering what came afterward, but was quite clever for its time. By the way, the British Interplanetary Society is still going strong.

You probably know a dog or cat who waits eagerly by their food bowl, or even passes up steak for their everyday dog or cat food. That's because the pet food business is very competitive, and companies go above and beyond the call of complete nutrition to make their kibble and gushy noms taste good to the consumer.

Many animals rely heavily on smell to navigate the world around them, and this is often the main sense that's targeted. While human noses contain around 50 million olfactory receptors, cats have 67 million, rabbits have 100 million and dogs have around 220 million. On the other hand, their sense of taste is generally less discriminating than ours – our relatively high density of taste receptors is thought to have evolved to help us cope with our diverse omnivorous diets.

The catch is that appealing to animals that find the smell of roadkill, sweaty socks, and vomit utterly enchanting – as carnivorous pets often do – while not making their human companions feel violently ill, is extremely tricky. "There is a slight paradox there, because the smells that cats particularly but also dogs seem to like are often the opposite of what humans like," says Logan.

There is no one secret ingredient that makes dogs drool over dog food, or cats caterwaul over cat food, but rather a whole library of additives that appeal to the cat or dog palate. Read about them, and the history of pet food, at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Flickr user bambe1964)

The guy from The Action Lab just blew our minds. Fumed silica is a desiccant, meaning it can keep things dry. It can even make water droplets hydrophobic! So what if you put those hydrophobic water droplets in a blender? The first thing you might think of is that this could be an amazing money-making toy, but alas, fumed silica is not healthy for the lungs. The video above is just the most amazing minute of this full presentation.

-via reddit

Bette Nesmith Graham’s story illustrates how business is supposed to work: identify a need, figure out how to fill that need, and profit. However, being a single mother with no high school diploma and no business connections in the 1950s meant doing it the hard way. After her divorce, Bette Nesmith got a job at Texas Bank and Trust, where she was mostly a typist.

Though Graham wasn’t a great typist, she eventually rose to the position of executive secretary — then the highest job available to the bank’s female employees.

At the time, IBM had just come out with a new line of electric typewriters that were faster than previous models and used carbon film ribbons.

But as Graham soon learned, the invention had several downsides:

    The sensitive keypad lent itself to more typographical errors.
    The carbon ribbons made these errors impossible to erase without leaving smudges all over the paper.

Graham had to find a way to fix her numerous typos. Soon, an idea struck.

Read how Graham invented Liquid Paper, and then manufactured and marketed it herself at the Hustle. -via Nag on the Lake

The enormous statue known as Christ the Redeemer was erected on a hilltop overlooking Rio de Janiero in 1931. Its 90th anniversary is an occasion for maintenance and restoration, as the statue becomes worn and damaged by weather. How that’s done is a fascinating story. Workers use ropes to rappel around the surface of the statue, but they get up there from the inside!

British writer Donna Bowater was reporting in Brazil when Christ the Redeemer lost the tip of its finger to lightning and had a rare chance to see the statue from inside while covering the story for the BBC.

“It was really surreal,” she says. “I’d been up to the base several times before as a tourist and with visitors, but going inside was a bit unnerving because it is crypt-like, with about a dozen flights of stairs zig-zagging to the top. Each level is numbered and almost at the top, there’s a heart on the inside that matches the heart in the middle of Cristo’s chest on the outside. At the top, the tunnel into the arm is low and only accessible by crawling along it. At two intervals, there are trapdoors where it’s possible to stand.”

Take a look inside, see closeups of the outside with safety manager Alexsandro Brauna, and learn about the statue’s history and future at Atlas Obscura.

You probably have a favorite television series in your memory that had a character you never saw. Maybe they were only a voice, or maybe it was someone who got talked about so much that you got to know them. I immediately thought of Carlton the Doorman.



Whichever unseen character is most memorable to you, you'll be surprised at how many shows have used this device. Cracked looks at 14 of them, and Carlton didn't even make the list, which makes me feel old.

S.A. Williams built a miniature car for his son Bobbi that proved to be so popular, William's friends encouraged him to market a full-size model. There was quite a market for automobiles after World War II, so Williams hired consultants and designers to produce a $500 car that would travel 50 miles on a gallon of gas. The Bobbi-Kar's odd look was the result of form following function. Its component design meant it could be taken apart and reassembled as needed.

Production models were to be equipped with lightweight plastic body panels in various colors mounted to an inner structural body for easy repair. The one-piece rear deck and fender assembly were hinged at the back and could be raised, unlatched, and removed.

Releasing latches located above the windshield and at the rear deck line permitted the easy removal of the hardtop, which could be stowed away in the package compartment under the flat hood. Inside, the dashboard was covered with thick foam rubber padding and upholstered in leather—a less expensive alternative to applying expensive chrome trim, graining, or decals.

Since you've never heard of the Bobbi-Kar, you might assume that the company went out of business because the car was ugly. That's not what happened at all. Read the surprising story of the Bobbi-Kar at The Old Motor. -via Everlasting Blort

After Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821, his autopsy was witnessed by eight physicians and nine other people. There was a lot of cutting and study, but 200 years later there are still arguments and theories as to what caused the French emperor's death. When the autopsy was over, several body parts were missing, most notably his penis. The organ was taken away by Napoleon's priest Ange-Paul Vignali. From there it changed hands numerous times, and was first seen by the public over a hundred years later.  

In 1927, the shriveled body part went on display for the first time at the Museum of French Art in New York. A New York newspaper covering the event observed observed that “Maudlin sentimentalizers sniffled; shallow women giggled and pointed. In a glass case they saw something looking like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shriveled eel.”

Two decades later, Dr. Rosenbach sold the appendage to Donald Hyde, a collector of the books and letters. When Hyde died, his wife returned the desiccated tendon to Rosenbach's successor, John Fleming. Some time later, a wealthy collector named Bruce Gimelson acquired the Vignali collection for a reported $35,000.

The relic changed hands several more times over the years. Read the incredible journey of Napoleon's penis, which still doesn't rest in peace, at Amusing Planet.

The railroad over the infamous 11' 8" underpass in Durham, North Carolina, was raised eight inches in 2019, so now it's called the 11'8"+8 bridge. We thought that might be the end of a years-long string of videos in which unwary truck drivers collided with the bridge or peeled off the top of their trucks. However, the underpass is still claiming victims. Earlier this month, a rental truck was caught on video as it perfectly peeled off the truck roof. The driver didn't even stop -and he barely slowed down! -via Geekologie

Henry Ward Beecher was the pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn and a leading abolitionist in the mid-19th century (and the brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe). He was also widely rumored to have led numerous affairs with the women of his church. Most famous was his relationship with Elizabeth Tilton, the wife of his friend and assistant, Theodore Tilton. Theodore Tilton found out about it in 1870.

Despite the devastating revelation, Elizabeth, Theodore, and Henry decided to keep the affair private. They had several good reason to do so. It protected Tilton’s pride, avoided moral censure of Elizabeth, and preserved Henry’s good name. Nonetheless, their pact did not last because Elizabeth confessed the affair to her friend Paulina Wright Davis, who then told three people: women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony, Henry’s younger half-sister Isabella Beecher Hooker, and the leader of the women’s rights movement Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had also already heard about the affair from Theodore.

As word spread and some of the more influential parishioners within the Plymouth Church congregation learned of the affair. Henry became concerned and prompted Elizabeth to retract her confession. When she did Theodore became upset and demanded that his wife retract her retraction, which she did the same evening. Still, everyone thought news of the affair would go no further. However, that was not the case because Stanton repeated the story.

Another women’s rights leader, Victoria Woodhull, heard it. She was a proponent of free love, a social movement whose goal was to separate the state from sexual matters and the idea of free love.

Woodhull did not disapprove of the affair, but was offended by Beecher’s hypocrisy in that he preached against her philosophy of free love. When Woodhull published news of the affair in her newspaper, it lit the fuse of a widely-publicized and salacious scandal. There was a criminal trial, a church investigation, an excommunication, and a lawsuit. But Beecher was not the one who suffered. Rather, it was Victoria Woodhull and Theodore Tilton who paid the price for the affair. Read the whole story of the Beecher-Tilton scandal at Geri Walton’s blog. -via Strange Company

(Image source: Library of Congress)

The Panspermia Hypothesis is the idea that life on earth was originally transported here from somewhere else by microbes riding through space on asteroids. To survive such a journey, any life form would have to be pretty tough. The toughest critters we know of are tardigrades, or water bears, which have proven they can survive being frozen and the vacuum of space. But could they survive the impact of colliding with a planet? A team led by Alejandra Traspas at Queen Mary University in London tested how impact-resistant tardigrades are by shooting them from a gun.    

For the experiment, Traspas, along with co-author Mark Burchell, took 20 tardigrades of the species Hypsibius dujardini and fed them a (potentially) last meal of mineral water and moss. The well-fed microbes were then put into hibernation—a frozen state in which their metabolism dropped to a mere 0.1% of normal. Groups of two to three individuals were put inside water-filled shafts that were in turn placed inside a nylon cylinder. A two-stage light gas gun was used to fire these cylinders, along with their hibernating passengers, at sand targets inside a vacuum chamber. Six shots were fired at speeds from 1,244 to 2,237 miles per hour (556 to 1,000 m/s), which the scientists measured with laser light stations.

While the experience of tardigrades shot from a gun doesn't prove anything about billion-year-old single-cell organisms in space, it may be a step in that direction. Read how that experiment turned out at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Schokraie E, Warnken U, Hotz-Wagenblatt A, Grohme MA, Hengherr S, et al. (2012))

Some days you hate your computer, and some days your computer hates you. They are fragile little creatures, and if you don't treat them just right, they will turn on you and exact revenge- by forcing an update! -via Geeks Are Sexy

The latest from filmmaker Fabrice Mathieu (previously at Neatorama), The End is a tribute to the lost year of 2020, an experimental montage made using looping gifs from classic films. It's set to the tune "My Fault" by Ennio Morricone, which you might recall from the spaghetti Western My Name is Nobody. At first it seems like a simple mashup of similar images, but it takes us from waiting to coping methods to confusion to panic to despair as it goes along. Watch it once for the mood, then again to see how many movies you can identify.  -via Laughing Squid 

Where do you go when you want to get away from the pressure of the rat race? Yes, but what if you already live in Tahiti? The 18th-century chiefs of Tahiti took their downtime at Teti’aroa, a lush atoll 30 miles to the north.

The emerging story confirms Teti’aroa was the vacation spot for the royal family of Te Porionu’u. But the islets also served other functions: Leaders from other islands and their delegations convened there for rituals and negotiations. The youngest members of chiefly families also partook in ritual fattening, or ha’apori, on the atoll: They holed up in dwellings, out of the sun, and fed on a high-calorie fermented paste of breadfruit and coconut water. After weeks they would emerge, looking plum royal: pale and fat.

Ongoing research also shows that Teti’aroa has been a prized destination for native Polynesians much longer than thought—probably ever since the archipelago’s largest islands, Tahiti and Moorea, were first settled, some 900 years ago.

The modern era is no different, as wealthy people in the know book vacations at the single resort on Teti’aroa. There are also intense efforts to conserve the ecosystem of the atoll and document its rich history. Read about Teti’aroa at Atlas Obscura. 

Viruses are incredibly weird, as they exist on the edge of our definition of life. The problem is most likely our definition of life. If we expand the definition to include viruses, then we have to include other obviously non-living things like artificial intelligence and living things that aren't organisms, like prions. But viruses are currently the edge case in the argument, as SciShow explains. -via Geeks Are Sexy