In 1936, a young retail clerk found an interesting piece of metal near near San Rafael, California. He could make out the words "Sir Francis Drake" on the inscription. A year later, friends convinced him to take it to the local college, where UC Berkeley historian Herbert Eugene Bolton recognized it as an artifact he'd been looking for for years. Not long afterward, he called a meeting of his colleagues.

For centuries, historians had searched for Drake’s plate, the only physical evidence of Sir Francis Drake’s expedition to the California coast. The English privateer, fresh off raiding Spanish ships and towns along the Pacific coast, found safe harbor in the Point Reyes area in June 1579. While resting and restocking there, he claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I. He named it New Albion.

According to crew member accounts, Drake left an inscribed brass plate in the area to stake his claim. But in the 350 years since, no one had seen it.

Bolton was convinced it was still out there. Whenever his students said they’d be taking a weekend trip to the seashore, he asked them to keep an eye out for Drake’s plate.

Now, he had it. It was not what he expected, sure, but Bolton had explanations for everything. He told the assembled crowd and the media there was no doubt this plate was real. Its craftsmanship and writing (“BY THE GRACE OF GOD AND IN THE NAME OF HERR MAIESTYQVEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND AND HERR SVCCESSORS FOREVER, I TAKE POSSESSION OF THIS KINGDOME,” it read in part) was consistent with the 1500s.

There was skepticism from the start, but Bolton died in 1953 believing he had Drake's plate. In 1977, the plate was exposed as a hoax, but the full story didn't come out until 2003. Read the rest of the details behind Drake's plate at SFgate. -via Digg

Scientists are still analyzing data from NASA's twin study, in which astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year aboard the International Space Station, while his identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly acted as a control. A new research paper reveals that over 340 days in space, Scott Kelly's heart shrunk 27%!  

That might sound alarming, but it’s a reflection of how adaptable the human heart is, explains study author Benjamin Levine, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas, to the New York Times’ Kenneth Chang. On Earth, the heart has to pump blood hard enough to move it upward while gravity pulls it down. But in the weightless conditions of orbit, gravity is no longer a factor, and the heart shrinks to an appropriate size.

The study assures us that Kelly's heart is just fine now, and he has recovered from the changes his body went through during his 2015-16 space sojourn. However, you must imagine the strength necessary to re-adapt a smaller heart to dealing with the force of gravity again upon return. Scott Kelly has since retired from NASA, while his brother Mark left retirement to serve as a US senator. An article at Smithsonian explains what went on with Kelly's heart and also that of long-distance swimmer Benoît Lecomte as he attempted to swim across the Pacific Ocean.

(Image credit: NASA/Scott Kelly)

The Hood Internet has been remixing the songs of the year for every year, beginning in 1979. When this one dropped, people were eagerly awaiting it, but were then astonished. I myself was surprised that I knew a few of the songs. Folks know the songs that are important to their memories, and they know what year they were popular. As the video played, they saw there were errors upon errors until it became clear that this is an April Fools Day mix. Here's the real 1999 mix.

And I was still astonished that I recognized a couple of the songs.

This is really silly, but it's what the internet was made for. The movie Godzilla vs. Kong is in theaters now, pitting the giant movie monsters against one another. Their ridiculous size makes them perfect for cinematic violence, but what about cleaning up after them? In other words, which would produce the most waste? Mental Floss turned to the experts: primate expert Dr. Cat Hobaiter and reptile researcher Dr. David A. Steen, who give us the poop, so to speak, on the closest real world analogies to the movie monsters. Then we can extrapolate to their movie size and determine a, uh, winner. Would you bet on King Kong or Godzilla to drop the bigger load in a typical day? Find out what Mental Floss has determined in a scientifically and mathematically sound (but still fictional) competition.

After a year of pandemic precautions, you may have trouble envisioning what a movie theater interior looks like. But think back to the movies you saw in the 1990s, and what an experience it was to go out to the local multiplex, maybe in a mall, maybe with an arcade attached. It was an era in which theaters tried to be total experiences, like a theme park. And you might particularly remember the cosmic carpets that seemed to be in every theater across the country.  

But why the carpets? According to Dimensional Innovations, it was actually a practical maneuver. Once the global blockbuster era hit full swing (think Jurassic Park, Titanic, et al) people were going to the movies in droves, spilling their sugary drinks and melty Milk Duds on the floor in record numbers. “There used to be tile underneath the seats,” says Trotter. “It made it easy to clean, but people complained about how their feet would stick to the floor. These places were dirty.”

Enter the carpets—ones with hectic patterns in every shade of neon known to Pantone. “It’s got so many different colors in it, you can spill coffee or Coke or popcorn and it won’t show,” Trotter says. The Dimensional Innovations team would actually dump Coca-Cola on these new carpets, let it soak in, walk all over them, and check to see if it changed the colors. It didn’t. Even blacklight lights wouldn’t reveal the stains. “It was a pretty genius design,” says Trotter, still laughing, “just horrible.”

The carpets were only part of the movie theater aesthetic that was unique to the '90s. Read more about the look and where it went at A24.  -via Boing Boing

Born in 1826, Frenchman Louis Coulon couldn't keep a close shave. So he gave up and let his beard grow. And grow. And grow. It eventually reached eleven feet (3.3 meters) by 1904, according to contemporary accounts. Coulon was the subject of a slew of postcards, which changed up sometimes when he posed with other people, or birds nesting in his beard, or often his cats! If you look carefully at the picture above, you'll see a kitten climbing up the front of Coulon's beard. See a gallery of Coulon's postcards at Vintage Everyday. -via Metafilter

Keeping up with one young child is hard enough, imagine trying to keep track of four all the same age! This mother bear had her hands full trying to cross a street with four cubs in Winsted, Connecticut, on Monday. You carry one, another follows, one stays back, and one doesn't know what to do. At one point, she even tries to carry two cubs in her mouth at once, but that doesn't work. Lucky for the bears, traffic stopped completely to let the family pass through.  -via Laughing Squid

This lovely little house for sale in Baltimore is quite unique once you look past the front. It comes with some nice perks, like a detached garage, party bar, and a backyard fire pit.

The house is lighting up the internet as a statement on home decor. Every room is monochromatic, black furnishings against clean, white walls.



The current owner is easily pegged as a single male Goth football fan with a clear devotion to an aesthetic that is hard to define, although the term “American Goth” comes to mind. An interview with the real estate agent dubs it “sexy funeral goth.”

Slate: When you have a house with decor as unusual as this, do you try to get the sellers to neutralize it a little? Or do you just embrace it?

Matt Godbey: Well, you should have seen it before. He somewhat neutralized it. I told him: I’ve been doing this for 33 years, and I know what sells. Some of the things in there, I told him, will frighten people. There were about 25 mannequins in the basement and some upstairs.

Take a tour through 82 pictures at the real estate listing. -via Metafilter

We know from the movies that there's no basement under the Alamo, but the Lincoln Memorial in Washington is a different story. Construction on the memorial started in 1914, which began with digging 40 feet into the soft, reclaimed ground to lay a foundation. That foundation consisted of columns three stories tall to support the edifice above. The area is known as the Lincoln Undercroft.  

The underground cathedral of concrete pillars was then simply forgotten about until renovations in 1975. According to the Washington Post, in preparation for the Bicentennial, the memorial’s bathrooms were renovated, and the construction crews started peering into the building’s foundation. They brought along their friends, some of whom belonged to the National Speleological Society. The cellar was deemed a cave, complete with stalactites and its own ecosystem (insects, rodents, etc).

One other interesting find was historical graffiti from way back in 1914. Steven Schorr got to explore the Undercroft as a part of a digital preservation project, and described to NBC how “down in the basement of the Lincoln Memorial, they actually have things written on some of the pillars. The builders actually drew cartoons and they have them covered in Plexiglas.”

The basement was closed to the public again in 1989. Take a video tour, or you can visit the Lincoln Undercroft yourself in 2022, when it reopens for the memorial's centennial celebration. -via Metafilter

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Working dogs will venture into spaces that humans consider too dangerous. Whether this is due to extraordinary bravery or ignorance of the actual danger, you can't say that the dogs of war aren't brave in their own way. They're also loyal and hard-working. Dogs were first trained to find wounded soldiers in the late 19th century, but came into their own in World War I.

During World War 1, mercy dogs were trained by national Red Cross societies to serve the country in which the specific society operated. A typical mercy dog was equipped with a saddlebag containing water, alcohol, and first aid supplies, which a wounded soldier could use to tend to his wounds. The dogs were trained to move silently around no man’s land, usually at night, sniffing out wounded soldiers, ignoring those belonging to the other side. The dogs were smart enough to recognize and differentiate between slightly wounded men and soldiers who were beyond help. Their mission was to alert the troops back at the camp that a man who had a chance of survival was lying in the battlefield waiting for help.

Mercy dogs are credited with saving thousand of lives during the war. Some were awarded for outstanding service. Read about the mercy dogs of World War I at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company

There is growing evidence that the earth may have been completely covered by water billions of years ago. Some of the evidence comes from the mantle, the layer of the planet that makes up two thirds of the earth's mass. The minerals down there can hold water, but long ago they weren't able to hold as much water as they do now.  

What they posit is that, eons ago, the Earth's surface used to have a lot more water on it, maybe twice as much as it does now. Water seeping down into cracks in the crust may have weakened the crust, starting plate tectonics for the first time. When one plate slid under another (called subduction) it brought water with it, which was then stored in the mantle. As time went on and the mantle cooled, it was able to hold more and more water (plus as the mantle cools it's easier to form wadsleyite and ringwoodite, so it could soak up even more water). They suppose that over time the mantle sucked down about half the water on the surface, leaving us with what we see today.

The composition of the mantle is not the only evidence for an ancient water world, but it is the focus of an explanation from Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.

Icelandic photographer Garðar Ólafs has plenty of images of the new volcano at Geldingadalir, but this is spectacular. He got a view from overhead during the eruption with a drone! Sadly, the drone gave its life for this image, but it will always be remembered for its sacrifice.

Ólafs has been at Fagradalsfjall for a couple of weeks now capturing the birth of the new volcano. He says, under another image:

The Eruption 🌋 1100° lava blasting from the earth forming new land, no words can describe how it feels to experience this in person, the sounds, energy and heat from this is on another level! 🇮🇸

-via Fark

Astronomers and data scientists have discovered a 35-year-old fart while poring over the signals sent back by the Voyager 2 space probe as it traveled past Uranus in 1986. We  now know that V-ger flew through a plasmoid, a magnetic bubble that carried a piece of the planet's atmosphere into space.

This data was only just 60 seconds of Voyager 2’s 45-hour fly by. A proverbial needle in a haystack. Gershman added, “But if you plotted it in 3D, it would look like a cylinder…”. Comparing results to other planetary passes, this cylindrical shape is at least 127,000 miles long and 250,000 miles across. They think the plasmoid is made of ionized particles, mostly ionized hydrogen.

While some planets have twisted magnetic fields, Uranus’ field were smooth-closed-magnetic loops. Such loops they say are formed when a spinning planet flings small amounts of it’s atmosphere into space.

You can read more about the discovery here, or just file this away as a nomination for the headline of the year.  -via reddit

(Image credit: NASA)

Zoë Weiner bought a couch at a high-end furniture store last fall, which has not been delivered yet, due to supply line problems caused by the pandemic. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one waiting for a couch. The CEO of the furniture company sent an apologetic email explaining the delay. And he cc’d all 204 waiting customers on the message. It wasn’t long before they started to “reply all” with grumbles about their nonexistent couches.

Weiner seized the moment. “I’d personally like to make the most out of this bonkers thread and throw it out there that I’m a 29-year-old single woman in NYC looking for a Jewish man.” The floodgates opened. “You go Zoe shoot your shot!!” a woman named Tanesha Smith-Wattley responded. “This is legitimately funny and I am grateful for all of you, my new family of complete strangers,” Matt Freeman chimed in. Gus Goldsack: “Looking forward to meeting you all at Zoe’s wedding!” Moe Phillips: “I’d invite you all over but I don’t have a couch.”

Many of the 204 customers kept sending messages until they were their own social media group. They made friends, raised money for charity, and commiserated about their couches -the one thing they all had in common. Read the story of the social group that grew out of an email mistake at The New Yorker. -via Metafilter

Bach's first regular job was as organist for the town of Arnstadt, Germany. Although he was only about 20 years old, he was the most talented musician of the congregation, and eventually he was obliged to lead the church musicians in performing. He was not a patient director.

Bach was used to the musical proficiency of his extended family, or to that of the prestigious Weimar court orchestra (where he had briefly temped as a violinist before coming to Arnstadt, and where he would later return as organist and then concertmaster). Arnstadt’s town musicians were of a much lower skill level, and Bach did not have the experience yet to customize parts to players’ abilities (a skill that is highly evident two decades later, in the educational works he would write for his children and keyboard students).

So the bassoonist — a man named Geyersbach, a few years older than Bach yet still in high school[*] — struggled with the part until an exaggerated Bach threw up his hands and called him a Zippelfagottist. (More about this spicy insult below.)

An offended Geyersbach got together with his busking and drinking buddies, and lay in wait for Bach as he returned from a concert at the castle, accompanied by his cousin Barbara Catherina Bach. Geyersbach demanded an apology, and when that wasn’t forthcoming, cried out “you dirty dog!” and attacked him with his walking stick. Bach defended himself with his rapier until students separated the two, Geyersbach’s jacket having acquired a few ventilation holes.

The fallout from the incident led to Bach leaving Arnstadt, although for a better job. Read more on the incident, including a look at what "Zippelfagottist" might mean at Spin, Strangeness, and Charm. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Mazbln)