In the early part of the 20th century, Iley Tate was a prominent and wealthy landowner in Haydentown, Pennsylvania, in the hill country not far from the West Virginia border. He traded in livestock and owned the only general store for miles around. Tate had twenty children from several wives, two of whom he actually married. The last one was around 14-16 years old when they wed (she wasn't sure). Tate never backed down from a fight, and was willing to shoot anyone who crossed him. He shot and killed at least two people, although he was never convicted. He was also suspected of poisoning his first wife.   

In the 1930s, Tate was living in West Virginia. In 1932, he was shot by his son George, who then smashed his skull with a rock to make sure he was dead. His brother Sam was with him. Another brother, John, was in on the plan. So was Tate's wife Nettie Belle, but she, pregnant at the time with her 12th child, was not charged in the case. The brothers went to trial where the defense appeared to be that their father needed killing. That's when Iley Tate's history of child abuse and child rape were uncovered. Read about the killing of Iley Tate at Pennsylvania Oddities. An addendum of the crimes of Tate's relatives is almost as horrific. -via Strange Company 

Do you recall what huge news it was when red dye #2 was found to be carcinogenic and banned in the 1970s? In the grand scheme of things, that was just one of many steps along the way to banning food dye. It really didn't make much difference, as food scientists came up with new ways to make our food more red. It's a process that's been going on thousands of years. Food dyes were used to make food more attractive when it was less than palatable under the surface, or even spoiled. When we got tired enough of dangerous stuff added to our food, we introduced the Food and Drug Administration, which has saved a lot of lives. 

At about the same time (well, the 20th century), food manufacturers came up with tons of new synthetic dyes to make processed food any color you can imagine. Each one is tested thoroughly, and many have been banned. Because it takes a long time to phase out these dyes, the industry comes up with new ones. But eventually, we are going to have to get used to food in its natural state, or at least dressed up with natural food dyes. Will that be so bad? Tom Blank of Weird History Food explains.  

Tessellation refers to a set of geometric tiles that fit together perfectly. They can be very simple, like a checkerboard or subway tiles, or they can be delightfully intricate, like the tessellations of M.C. Escher. The fish and bird tiles shown here were designed for his house in Amsterdam. 

People are still making representative tessellations like this, which is a bit easier with computer aided design. See plenty of examples at Tiled.art where artistic tessellations are animated. They go from a standard tile grid to a distorted grid to representative shapes featuring animals, people, and objects all fitting together with no gaps or overlaps. Watching these, you'll start to understand how they were designed.

And you can try it yourself! It may take a while to figure out all the tools, but once you get going, you start to understand how interlocking shapes can be created. I haven't gotten close to anything representative yet, but the further I go, the more fascinating it becomes. -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: HenkvD) 

Airlines always have trouble getting people to pay attention to the mandatory safety instructions. Unless it's their first flight, passengers have a tendency to zone out. Still, in the event of an emergency, it's crucial for these steps to be fresh in everyone's mind. Many airlines recruited their funniest flight attendants to give humorous monologues, and some produced videos filled with pop culture references to grab attention. Philippine Airlines goes a step further, and tells a story within a story while going over safety procedures.

Luisa faces a crisis that will affect the rest of her life. Will she follow her mother's advice, and wear her seatbelt properly? Will Diego be arrested for vaping? Will Anton find the emergency exit after he causes a sudden drop in cabin pressure? You will be on the edge of your seat as the drama unfurls. Then you'll have to watch it again to catch all the small but clever details. And you'll remember what to do if your tablet falls between the seats. -via reddit 

In 1966, when Star Trek first graced our TV screens, the writers of the space drama set hundreds of years in the future were free to construct a historical timeline that led to intergalactic travel and the United Federation of Planets that spawned Starfleet. They had no clue that the franchise would last into the 21st century. After all, TV itself wasn't much of a thing a mere 20 years earlier. So they explained away, and when Star Trek returned in the 1980s and beyond, they stuck to the historical canon established by the original series, just filling in more details. And now we have eclipsed part of that constructed history already, making it into a fictional "alternative history." 

In the Star Trek universe, 2026 was the year that World War III began. This 45-year war led to a loss of 30% of the human population, and the extinction of 600,000 plant and animal species. Yes, it was a nuclear war that wiped out many of earth's major cities. But it didn't just spring up suddenly. Before World War III, there was the Eugenics War and the Second American Civil War. Check out the details of Star Trek's World War III at Memory Alpha plus some more details on the year 2026 at the not-totally-canonical Memory Beta. 

In American history classes, we only learn the big things: Columbus, the American Eevolution, the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, and oops, better skip ahead to World War II or the school year will run out. In all these eras and in between, other important things were happening that shaped what America is today, but you wouldn't know about them unless you studied on your own.

Before and after the revolution, various factions in the colonies had their own grievances and drama. In western North Carolina, the Regulators, under the leadership of Herman Husband, rebelled against excessive taxation and predatory land speculators. Husband went on to lead other rebellions in other colonies and later states, siding with the working class against the rich and powerful. These rebellions had little to do with the American Revolution, technically, but they showed the independent spirit of the people who became Americans. PBS Origins tells the story.

American children learn about the Salem Witch Trials, in which 25 people killed, but in Europe, between 40,000 and 60,000 people were executed for witchcraft in a 350-year period. A striking number of these trials happened in Finnmark, a rural Norwegian county in the Arctic circle with a population of only 3,000 people. Between 1620 and 1693, 91 people were executed for witchcraft in Finnmark, which was about a third of all those executed for witchcraft in all of Norway's history. 

It all began with a sudden storm on Christmas Eve in 1617 that killed 40 fishermen, the majority of the men of the village of Vardø. Witchcraft was the only explanation for the storm. King  Christian IV of Denmark and Norway was a zealous witch hunter, and the people of the far north were already suspected of demonic tendencies. The first accused were the indigenous Sami, but suspicions quickly spread. Accused witches were tortured into confession, and into naming other witches. The trials took place at Vardøhus Fortress, shown above, where the accused could be held -and tortured- for months before execution. Only ten of 111 accused escaped being burned at the stake. Read about the Finnmark Witch Trials at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Timo Noko) 

Do you find that, every once in a while, you just stop paying attention? Some people call this daydreaming, others call it zoning out, and some call it boredom, or just a little break from all that stimulation. You've been told that this is bad, and you've trained yourself to never do it while driving. But you shouldn't feel guilty about zoning out, because science has found that your brain is actually performing necessary tasks while you aren't thinking about anything in particular. It appears to be a major clean out time. 

The latest research finds that zoning out behavior in your brain resembles what happens during deep sleep, and it happens more when you don't get enough sleep. There are physiological processes that occur during those times that result in a kind of biological hygiene. And since zoning out can be beneficial, maybe we should reserve some time to give in to those urges and let our brains rest. AsapSCIENCE explains further. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

The producers of the television show The Addams Family knew the audience would be familiar with the work of Charles Addams, who drew the family in cartoons for The New Yorker. Still, they wanted to go in their own direction and tell a story from the point of view of the family's butler, Lurch. John Astin would play the role. That's, of course, not how things turned out. Astin was perfect in the role of Gomez Addams, but casting calls went out for all the other roles. Plenty of people wanted to be in The Addams Family, and from the perspective of 60+ years later, they found the perfect actors. 

But you have to wonder about the other actors in the running. Vintage Everyday tells us about the 1964 casting process for the TV series, and gives us a gallery of those who tried out for the various parts. They threw their hearts into getting those roles, but all seem quite wrong to us now, especially the also-rans who didn't get the role of Lurch. -via Memo of the Air 

(Image credit: ABC Television) 

Henry Brown took the "photo a day" idea and made it speak. Every day during 2025, he talked to the camera, and then compiled it into a coherent essay about the passage of time in 365 video clips. The clips are not all in sequential order, but you can follow the times of the year mostly by the length of his hair and the background weather. In some places, there is more than one word for the day. Whatever you think of the finished product, you have to admire his dedication to the project. 

In one spot, Brown challenges you to recall what you were doing exactly five years ago. That would be difficult if it were any day but today- we all remember January 6, 2021, and we were all watching TV. If the effect of the video obscure what he actually said, you'll find a transcript at Laughing Squid. 

Imagine you discovered an ancient wall, 120 meters (394 feet) long, two meters (6.6 feet) tall, and averaging 20 meters (66 feet) wide? That's an enormous construction. On top of that, you found it nine meters (30 feet) underwater! That would be the only way it could have escaped detection all those years. How many years? Somewhere between 7300 and 7800 years. That makes it older than Stonehenge. 

The wall was found with LIDAR technology off the coast of France. Closer exploration found that the wall was built with 60 huge granite stones set into the bedrock in pairs, filled in with smaller stones between them. This all raises questions about how and why it was built. The sea level was lower then, so the wall now called TAF1 could have been a seawall, or possibly a fish catching device, depending on what conditions were like at the time. There is speculation that it could be a remnant of the legendary sunken city of Ys. The stories of Ys are fantastical, involving star-crossed lovers, supernatural floodgates, and even a mermaid. But that doesn't mean it wasn't based on some ancient event. Read about the Mesolithic underwater wall at Big Think.  -via Real Clear Science 

(Image credit: Yves Fouquet, et. al./International Journal of Nautical Archaeology)

In 1904, J.M. Barrie produced a hit play about Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. Disney made it into a children's animated adventure in 1953. But the real story behind the story is anything but charming. In this video, it is told in three chapters. First, there is the tragedy of Barrie's own childhood, which left him with a serious case of arrested development. Then, it explores his relationship with the five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Davies, who inspired Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. Barrie became their guardian after their parents' deaths, and they all suffered from Barrie's immature handling of the family and from the fame that Peter Pan brought them. Two of them ultimately committed suicide. Lastly, we get a deeper look into the darker side of the protagonist in the original Peter Pan stories before they were Disneyfied, and how they reflect Barrie's own psychological problems. 

The original Star Trek ran from 1966-69, but only grew more popular in syndicated reruns during the 1970s. Paramount noticed, and drew up plans for a new series, called Star Trek: Phase II under the supervision of Gene Roddenberry. Sets were built and writers were enlisted. Most of the original Star Trek cast were rehired, with the exception of Leonard Nimoy, and actors were hired to portray new crew members. But one thing led to another, and ultimately Star Trek: Phase II was scrapped in favor of a feature film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979. The script for the Phase II pilot was reworked into that of the motion picture. But there were plans for 19 TV episodes, many of them with scripts ready to go. Whatever happened to those stories?

A couple of those scripts were reused in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which launched in 1987. Some of the ideas and elements found their way into later Star Trek movies and series. And some make you wish you could have seen them on TV. Woman's World has the synopses and notes from all 19 episodes of Star Trek: Phase II for your intergalactic fantasies of what could have been. -via Damn Interesting 

The song "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac was recorded in 1975 but wasn't released as a single until 1997 (a live version). Still, it became a classic for its wistful, melancholy melody and poetic lyrics. Stevie Nicks wrote the song as she contemplated her future with or without Lindsey Buckingham. Sure, she was looking at the Rocky Mountains, but a landslide was simply a metaphor. Nicks ultimately ended their romantic relationship but continued to work with Buckingham, which proved to be the right choice. 

But what if the song were about a real landslide, an avalanche, a natural disaster? Dustin Ballard, also known as There I Ruined It (previously at Neatorama) collaborated with guest songwriters Griefcat to make it so. Now the subject matter is completely at odds with the laid-back tune, but they match the title at least. And now we have a There I Ruined It song you can share with your mother.  

Back in the days when I saw every movie our local theater showed (two a week), I didn't bother studying movie posters or bothering to watch trailers (that was social time), so I was properly shocked at the twists in the movies Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes. But that was 50 years ago. It happens more and more often these days that a film studio -or rather, the marketing team- will go ahead and share way too many details that the filmmakers would rather reveal in the movie itself. Merchandise, released before opening day to capitalize on the hype, often adds to the spoilers.

Cracked has 15 examples of movie marketing spilling secrets within the movie plot. If you're lucky, you didn't know enough about the movie going in to put two and two together before you watched it. Still, the Planet of the Apes poster didn't look like it was from 1968. These do, and they have no spoilers. The more modern-looking poster was produced after the secret was out, which was just bad luck for subsequent generations who could have used a good twist.