The way this video begins will make you think it's about Lucretia Borgia, but that's just setting the scene for the real story. Even if Borgia were guilty of all the crimes she's been accused of, she still wouldn't hold a candle to Giulia Tofana. Tofana made a good living manufacturing cosmetics, but her real talent went into her signature product, Aqua Tofana. It's a perfect product name that will stick with you because it's fun to say. Aqua. Tofana. While the concoction was officially a cosmetic, those in the know could use it to obtain an old-fashioned divorce... if you know what I mean. And if you don't, you should read the many posts we've shared about arsenic. In other words, Giulia Tofana was a 17th-century professional poisoner, and a prolific one, too. Weird History tells her story with a bit of snark, since that's the only way to make it palatable.

For nearly 100 years, archaeologists knew how North and South America were populated by humans. They crossed over from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge about 13,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower. From there, they slowly sent their descendants southward through the two continents. But more recent archaeological discoveries, paired with genome studies, have sent the question back into the realm of "we don't know."

One of the most intriguing artifacts is a collection of human footprints at White Sands National Park, once thought to be around 10,000 years old, then maybe up to 13,000 years old, but have recently been dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. Other sites have artifacts that date prior to the previously-accepted Beringia crossing, although the oldest ones are questionable. Could humans have arrived in boats? After all, humans reached Australia in boats 50,000 years ago. Read about the oldest human artifacts in the Americas and what they mean to the story of human migration at LiveScience. -via Digg

(Image credit: National Park Service)

It took a few hundred years for science to go from wishful thinking to rigorous experimentation. During that time, the most renowned scientists who made great breakthroughs still spent time on alchemy. But each generation considered itself more enlightened than the one before. During the 19th century, there was an explosion of belief in spiritualism, communication with the dead, ghost sightings, and seances. So naturally, scientists of the day wanted to study the phenomena. Some went in looking for logical explanations for eerie events in new scientific fields, such as electrical activity and magnetism, or possibly psychology.

These scientists included Pierre and Marie Curie, Michael Faraday, and others you may be familiar with. While some discovered intriguing reasons for tables to move and Ouija boards to spell out messages, others revealed the spiritualist's tricks. And a some became sucked into the wishful thinking aspect of communication with the dead, often for personal reasons. Read the accounts of eight well-regarded Victorian era scientists who studied ghosts and other spiritual phenomena at Mental Floss.

Go back a few billion years to the beginning of life on earth, and we run into many possible ideas for how it could have happened. The truth is we just don't know, but we've got a lot of different hypotheses that may or may not explain our weird world. Kurzgesagt explores one idea, a concept that could explain how the earliest life forms on earth were already so evolved that they could live and thrive and evolve here. There is some math involved, but nothing you have to calculate yourself. Along the way, we learn about the conditions of the early universe, and the possibility that life elsewhere might not really be so alien to us. It might not be the right answer, but it does give us a lot to think about, mainly what a miracle our world -and universe- really is. The last couple of minutes of this video is an ad.  

(Image credit: u/Bubbly_Hat)

There are two types of car owners. One is just happy to have a reliable vehicle that gets you around, and it doesn't matter that it only comes in black, white, red, or gray (and you may have to wait for a black one). The second type says LOOK AT ME! This type is a minority, but you will notice them. You might even take a picture of their vehicle and post it on the internet.

(Image credit: u/Mantiseyeballs)

This truck wouldn't have seemed so outrageous of they'd stopped after the lavender paint job. Or the lifted height. Or the pink neon lights. But when you put them all together, it makes clear that this truck has no use other than to be noticed. Bored Panda has a collection of 50 outrageous cars of all kinds. Some are obviously art projects, some may be company advertising, and some that are funny workarounds for missing parts. But quite a few are just too strange to assign a motivation.

Once upon a time, you could just go to the store and get a bottle Sudafed when you had a cold, and hope that it would unclog your sinuses long enough so that you could get some sleep. Whatever kind of cold relief you took, you had to wonder whether it worked. No cold medicine is perfect, but maybe you would have felt worse if you didn't take it. Or maybe you were starting to recover. It didn't much matter; there are too many cold relief medicines on the market to try them all out and compare when you're sick. The main ingredient in Sudafed, which seemed to be a miracle, was pseudoephedrine. But it was discovered to be an ingredient in meth, so it became restricted, and you might not be able to get it when you need it. There was also phenylpropanolamine, which was eventually ruled unsafe. That left us with phenylephrine, which has been in the news lately because it was discovered to be ineffective. Yeah, they all sound the same to us, but what are we supposed to take for a head cold now? The real kicker is that phenylephrine was known to be ineffective years ago! The reason we are only now hearing about is comes down to funding. Phil Edwards of Vox explains what happened to our cold medicines. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

Longtime Neatorama reader know Tristan Da Cunha is the most remote place on earth where people actually live. That island seems downright civilized when compared to the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, known as Point Nemo, which has no people and no land. Point Nemo is the spot in the Pacific Ocean that is further from land than anywhere else on earth. It's cold and stormy and sees no one except for during the occasional round-the-world boat races. The nearest dry land is 1,670 miles away. Most of the time, the closest people are in the ISS, passing 258 miles overhead.

But Point Nemo has a lot of human artifacts, because space programs try to steer old satellites, including space stations, in the area near Point Nemo to keep it from falling somewhere it could do us harm. That's been the case since Skylab fell to the earth in 1979 and Australia issued NASA a fine for littering. How much space junk could be around Point Nemo? We don't know, because it's inaccessible. Read about Point Nemo and its treasure trove of space debris at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Timwi)

If you recall the state of the world around 20-30 years ago, we were worried about giant pandas. They wouldn't mate in captivity, and on the off chance a panda got pregnant, she didn't take care of her baby. Scientists figured that either we didn't know enough about pandas to manage them properly, or pandas are just stupid and might be doomed to extinction no matter what we do. How things have changed! Panda research at the Chengdu research center led to changes in panda management, and a great leap in the captive panda population. Pandas have developed their natural maternal instinct along the way. It was once difficult to get panda mothers to pay attention to their babies at all, and now it's hard to distract them long enough to take the panda cub for his veterinary examination. It's heartwarming to see a mama and baby having this much fun together, no matter how clumsy they are. But luckily, pandas aren't the brightest creatures on earth, so the temptation of a treat finally gets mama to loosen up just enough to whisk the cub away for his exam. -via Born in Space

Some houses are said to be haunted because they look scary, some because they are abandoned, and some just because people like a good story. A fine brick home with lavish woodwork and a wrought iron fence could have been a landmark, but it got a reputation as haunted, for an understandable reason.

Dr. Creed T. and Sophia Douglas Wilson had this house built in Jackson County, Indiana, in 1848. In 1861, their son Aesop wanted to heed President Lincoln's call for men to serve in the Union Army. Sophia objected, as Aesop was only 17 years old. But he ran away and joined the army, serving as a drummer boy. Aesop wrote to his parents, so it was a shock when they heard of his death. They had his body disinterred and sent home, where Sophia insisted on keeping his casket in the house, in front of an upstairs window, where she could talk to him. For twelve years. Aesop was only buried when he himself finally told his mother that's what he wanted. It's no wonder that the house was considered haunted by his spirit. Read the full story of Aesop's body at Fishwrap. -via Strange Company  

Imagine you wanted to be play the full orchestral version of a movie theme, but you didn't have any musical instruments. I have a sneaking suspicion that Matthew Van Ness probably has some musical instruments, most likely quite a few, but he doesn't need them because he has his voice. And he uses his one voice to recreate the entire Indiana Jones theme, instrument by instrument, by himself. He's a one-manorchestra!

Oh, it's easy. Just take the full score, separate every instrumental part, sing each one at the precise tempo, and then mix them all together on a computer. Nothing to it. Of course, it helps if you can consistently carry a tune, which excludes me from even trying. Van Ness has been doing this for some time, and his YouTube channel might contain a particular favorite of yours.

It's not easy being a member of the French nobility these days. The titles given out by royalty have lost their moneymaking power since France moved away from government by monarchy. Consider this: France has more than 30,000 castles, but many of them are in rundown shape because proper maintenance is so expensive. You can buy one for a song and a promise to restore it, but that doesn't help the poor aristocratic scion who inherited it.

By now you are playing music on the world's tiniest violin for these impoverished aristocrats. But they don't need your help. There is a club for aristocrats to support other aristocrats, called the Association for the Mutual Assistance of the French Nobility (ANF) to save the downtrodden elite from having to live within their incomes. The ANF has helped thousands of people, but those people have to prove they deserve it by documenting their lineage and titles, through their father's side only, and proof that lineage all comes through legal Christian marriages. If you jump through those hoops, you might get support, and even an informal dating service so you don't have to marry into the unwashed masses. Read about the ANF and their serious quest to preserve the French nobility at Messy Nessy Chic.

The winner of the 2023 Nikon Small World in Motion competition is Alexandre Dumoulin of the Department of Molecular Life Sciences at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The first sequence in this video is his winning entry, which depicts 48 hours in the development of neurons in a chick embryo as it develops its central nervous system.

...the footage shows the elongation of axons - projections from nerve cells - between the two hemispheres of the central nervous system. In neurological disorders, axons can be impaired. “By studying these, organisms I aim to enhance our comprehension of how the nervous system functions and identify potential factors contributing to neurodevelopmental disorders,” says Dumoulin.

It's important to understand normal neuron development, as deviations may lead to disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. For complete descriptions of the other prize-winning microscopy videos, you'll have to go to the Nikon Small World in Motion contest site. The Honorable Mentions are pretty amazing, too. -via Nag on the Lake   

Government officials and business owners pay close attention to how many cars are on the roads. High traffic areas need more maintenance, and low traffic areas need to justify their existence. That's where the  AADT comes in- the annual average daily traffic. Geotab gathered and crunched the numbers for both federal and state routes that are at least ten miles long to determine the least busy roads in the country.

You won't be surprised to find the route with the lowest AADT in the US is in Alaska. State route 11 (the Dalton Highway) covers 414 miles from Fairbanks to Deadhorse, and has an AADT of only 196. There are relatively few communities along the route, and people who need to travel from one city to another find it much simpler to fly. Yet the road is crucial for trucks carrying groceries and other supplies to mines, oil rigs, and small northern communities. Alaska, as usual, is an outlier.

Some of the other least-traveled routes are long and lonely, but quite scenic. When someone considers opening a gas station, they take AADT into account. You'll need to start with a full tank of gas, drinking water, and a fully charged phone. You might not have cell service, but you'll want to take pictures. However, lonely routes in the eastern part of the country are shorter and are more likely to provide services. Check your state to see if there's a road less traveled that you might want to check out to take advantage of cooler weather and see colorful leaves at Big Think. -via Atlas Obscura  

(Image credit: Karen Deatherage/Bureau of Land Management Alaska)

The first time I ever went to a comedy club, I had a good time, but also an epiphany. The greatest laughter comes from people in groups who've had a few drinks. If a comic bombs in front of people who are already primed to overreact, they've really bombed. Such a club would be the best place to record a laugh track. You may hate that TV shows use laugh tracks, but if they didn't, would you really know where the funny parts are? Watching a sitcom without the laughter is an eye-opener, when you realize it's really not all that funny. Laugh tracks evolved from live shows, where an audience will react not only to what's happening on stage, but also to the laughter around them. Recreating that ambience was easy for TV, all you needed was an audience. But recorded laughter was even easier, so it got to the point where you didn't need feedback to tell you if a joke was funny. Who cares if it's funny or not? The laughter will be there when you push a button.

Take a good look at this picture. If you walked by this tree in the forest, would you even notice something weird about it? An astonishing number of people walked by, completely oblivious to the tree shaped like a woman. The photograph is not altered. This tree is in southern Newfoundland, near the Conne River in the forest of the Miawpukek First Nation community. The tree is right on the walking path, but it still took a Facebook post to get anyone to notice it. The crucial person who saw that post was Colleen Lambert, Miawpukek First Nation’s tourism, culture, and recreation director. She came up with the idea of harnessing this "Lady in the Tree" to get more people out in the woods. A Facebook group was launched, along with a contest for Halloween 2022, and soon hundreds of folks were hiking through the woods to find the lady and take a picture with her.

But what you really want to know is how a tree root looks so much like a woman. Her body is all tree. Her head, on the other hand, has its own story. Her head wasn't there, then it was, then it wasn't again, but it has returned for Halloween. Read that story at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Roberta Buffett Collier)