We all know the Acme Corporation. They were the ones who supplied Wile E. Coyote with all the gadgets and supplies he needed to catch the Road Runner. They didn't work all that well, but he could get them delivered out in the desert. Since those days, the name Acme has been used as a generic business name when you don't want to use a specific name. But wait, those Warner Brothers cartoons weren't the first to use Acme as a generic business name- they are just the most durable and universal media we have from 70+ years ago. Using Acme as a business name was already a Hollywood thing.

Even so, the name didn't spring up in Hollywood. It was a common real business name during the early 20th century, selected for a mundane but genius reason. While a few businesses that use the name Acme are still around, startups rarely select it because of its association with Wile E. Coyote and his many failures in using their products.

The city of San Francisco grew quickly and haphazardly starting with the California Gold Rush in 1848. Many thousands of residents were buried in the city's cemeteries, and over the years, they ran out of room. Besides, that valuable urban property was needed for other purposes. Burial in San Francisco was halted, and existing graves were dug up reburied elsewhere. Starting in 1930, they were sent to Colma for reburial, and the small town was established as the official burial site for San Franciscans.

But those reburials started as early as 1868, when thousands of graves were dug up from the Yerba Buena cemetery with a $10,000 appropriation from the city. That was not nearly enough money. When the funds ran out, the project was declared finished. The U.N. Plaza stands at the site today, above thousands of bodies still buried there. The same approach to moving graves went on in other cemeteries, which is why San Francisco now has a historical Chinese cemetery covered with a golf course and a Native American cemetery underneath a road and school. There are efforts to bring attention to and memorialize those forgotten graves that may never be recovered, which you can read about at Atlas Obscura.   

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Cyriak Harris (previously at Neatorama) has been producing bizarre and surreal animations for almost twenty years now, although not as often as we'd like. Except for a commissioned music video, this is his first animated project he's shared in two years. Cyriak has a talent for turning everyday objects, often animals, into Eldrich horrors. The subject this time is a goose, which is a silly animal to begin with, but this one is a contortionist, as you would expect.

I noticed that this video comes with YouTube's fairly new transcript feature. What would it say besides "honk"? It doesn't even say that!

I will have to start checking out other videos' transcripts to see if they are as nonsensical.

Precursors to "The Girl With the Green Ribbon" featured necrophilia, adultery, demons, and (of course) the guillotine.https://t.co/VWkXDvnGTp

— Mental Floss (@mental_floss) September 25, 2023

A spooky story called "the girl with the green ribbon" is today known as a Millennial thing, since many young folks were introduced to it through the 1984 book In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Stories by Alvin Schwartz. But it's actually much older. I was first told the tale in the 1960s, when it was a girl with a black velvet ribbon around her neck. It was presented as a long and involved, but spooky, shaggy dog story with a short and sudden punch line, making everyone laugh. Later, my friends and I referenced the story quite a bit when black velvet chokers became the style.

How old is the story, really? Tracing back its history, it became quite popular after the French Revolution, in which many people were executed by the ever-so-efficient guillotine. But even that wasn't the beginning! Although older stories are a bit different, you can see how the story has evolved, modernized, and simplified over several hundred years. Oh, and if you haven't heard the story, you'll get several versions, including videos, in the article at Mental Floss.

Graphic designer John Pasche was making a name for himself for his art deco concert posters in 1970, when The Rolling Stones contacted him about doing one for their 1970 European tour. They went back to him for some album art, and that's when the famous logo that became known as Hot Lips was born.

The iconic logo was first seen inside the Stones' 1971 album Sticky Fingers. I remember it well- I went to the local record store, and every copy they had already had the shrink wrap torn because everyone wanted to play with the zipper in the front.

Great Big Story talked with Pasche about his experience in making the logo that became recognizable all over the world. The starting point was the tongue, and the lips came afterward. And they are not Mick Jagger's lips. More than 50 years later, Pasche still gets a kick out of seeing those lips in the wild. -via Laughing Squid

It's never a good idea to date your gynecologist. But plenty of women did when it came to renowned Parisian doctor Samuel Pozzi. He developed new surgical techniques and instruments that are still used today. Pozzi hung around with the movers and shakers of the day, including Marcel Proust and Oscar Wilde, and had affairs with his patients, from actresses to princesses. It's no wonder he earned the nickname "the Love Doctor."

In his view of women, Pozzi was progressive in some ways. He advocated putting a patient at ease, and getting consent before touching, which was rarely done at the time. Pozzi also worked to improve medical practices, such as hand washing and providing a clean environment for surgery. In other ways, he was as sexist as most men of his time. He had no qualms about mixing his patients and his lovers. Pozzi discouraged his own daughter from pursuing a career in medicine, believing it would lead to more woman wanting careers, and we can't have that. He left his legacy not only in gynecology, but also in a famous portrait painted of him. Read about the uniquely alluring Dr. Samuel Pozzi at Messy Nessy Chic.

Some years ago, we gave you seven reasons not to climb Mt. Everest, but people still do it. It's a cool story to tell your friends, but reason #5 is that there's a good chance you will die up there. There are many ways that the climb might kill you- it's not just the cold and the lack of oxygen, although those are big and may lead to other problems.

Dr. Emily Johnson is a physician and a mountain climber. She's been to the peak of Mount Everest three times, and knows how dangerous it is. In this video, she enumerates the different ways you could lose your life climbing the world's tallest mountain. Dr. Johnson tells us that Everest is not the most dangerous mountain peak. Both Annapurna and K2 are tougher, but way more people die on Everest because way more people climb it, and many of those people are oblivious to the dangers and aren't as well prepared as they should be. Just because a lot of people have been to the peak of Everest doesn't guarantee that you'll make it back. -via Digg 

These days, there are roughly 200 Renaissance fairs and festivals held in the US every year. They serve as a glorious opportunity for cosplayers and historical re-enactors, as well as artists, craftspeople, actors, dancers, teachers, and historians. Even if you're just a spectator, they can be a lot of fun. The very first Ren fair was held in Southern California in 1963, the brainchild of Phyllis Patterson, who taught history, speech, dance, and drama until 1960. Sometimes she explained that she left teaching to become a stay-at-home mother, while other times she declared she didn't want to sign California's loyalty pledge that had been enacted in the wake of Joseph McCarthy's Red Scare campaign. Patterson made friends with many creative types, actors, writers, etc. who were out of work because they were blacklisted for being suspected of communist leanings. And when creative people have time on their hands, you get ideas like a Renaissance fair.

The first fair was so popular, they did it again year after year, growing exponentially. During the Summer of Love in 1967, the fair became associated with the counterculture and drug-using hippies, and local resistance made getting permits difficult. But despite those battles, Patterson's fairs grew and multiplied, and became more popular than ever. Read the story of the first Renaisance fair and those that followed at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: R'lyeh Imaging)

The Netherlands instituted an experimental architecture program in the 1960s so they could have more interesting houses. It's a great idea, because nothing is more boring and depressing than a suburb full of cookie cutter homes so alike that you have to look at the numbers to find your own. Some interesting ideas came of the program, and in 1984, the spherical house was launched. Now, you can probably think of several reasons why a spherical house won't work: wasted space, the furniture won't fit against the wall, and neither will artworks. But there's more! The foundation is small, and the curve underneath never gets sunlight, so mold grows on it. And the windows leak. So what did they do with all these spherical houses? Let poor people live in them! I suppose it's better than no housing projects at all, but still. And now you see why designers and architects have different training and careers, and if they collaborate, they must play devil's advocate with each other. Tom Scott tells the story of the Netherlands' spherical houses.

Zombies, vampires, and revenants are known to rise up from the graves of dead people and wander the earth, terrorizing and killing the living- or even eating them. These tales have been around so long and in so many places that cultures have developed quite a few methods for keeping the dead underground. We know this because ancient graves are excavated for archaeological purposes, and the evidence is there. Before being buried, bodies have undergone such indignities as tooth removal, stakes through the heart, chains holding them down, or even decapitation.

While the idea of keeping the bodies from digging their way out is the most common reason for these measures, it's not the only possibility. Interpreting ancient burial practices is a guessing game, and some cultures may have used these things for religious reasons, or to signify something about the person or the way they died. Some barrier methods may also have been used to keep the living from robbing those graves. Read about eight historical methods for keeping buried bodies buried that we've discovered, and what we know about each, at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Bin im Garten)

Think of the delicious sweet aroma that comes from marzipan, or Amaretto liqueur, or anything with a touch of almond extract. That scent comes from benzaldehyde. It is a part of nature's underhanded scheme to destroy mankind, although the plants that produce it would tell you it's just a defense mechanism so they can reproduce successfully.

Some plants produce amygdalin in their fruit pits. When that chemical is released by crushing or chewing, the amygdalin breaks down into two chemicals: the benzaldehyde that smells so good, and cyanide. The way these plants evolved, any creature that eats it is supposed to learn to stay away when they encounter that smell -or else just die. However, humans love it. Amygdalin is present in the seeds of peaches, apricots, cherries, mamey sapote fruit, cassava, and most of all, almonds.

But don't let that keep you from eating those foods. Cultivation of almond trees has given us the sweet almond, which has way less cyanide than natural bitter almonds, and people have learned to process the other foods to reduce their toxicity. You have to wonder how many people were killed on the way to learning those methods. Read about the cyanide in natural fruits and nuts at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Ivar Leidus)

I had some training in the art of illusion, or "magic tricks," many years ago when I worked at an amusement park during college summers. I can tell you from experience that it is easy to see how a trick is done once you get used to it, but it is hard to make it work in front of viewers. That takes practice, and lots of it, to make it seem natural. Making a coin vanish from your hand is the simplest and most basic magic trick you'll ever do, but if you can get it right, and understand the effort it takes, you can go on to learn many astounding illusions and impress everyone you meet. Magician Oscar Owen is glad to teach you many more illusions through his YouTube channel. He also offers a free magic course that emphasizes how fast you can learn magic tricks. But illusions are like chess; it takes about five minutes to learn it, but a lifetime to master it.

That said, the static image in this video still bothers me, because it looks like he's got a crusty wound on his hand. I don't know where that came from, but it's not relevant to the trick. -via Digg

An odd-looking baby is abandoned at the church steps and is taken in by a nun. The "troll girl" grows up as an outcast, trying to hide her true nature. She just wants to blend in and be left alone, but she is bullied relentlessly. Along the way, she finds inner talents that come in handy when she has to save the only person who ever loved her unconditionally. Troll Girl was written and directed by Kay Carmichael of Giantslayer Studios.   

A strange case of child trafficking came to light in Paris in 1909. A six- or seven-year-old girl approached the police and eloquently told a story in a language no one at the station could understand. When they determined she was speaking Armenian, an interpreter was brought in. The girl said a woman had kidnapped her from her grandparents' home in Syria. Only after the child's picture appeared in the newspaper did the woman emerge. The American woman said the girl was her daughter, who she had sent to her grandparents' home as an infant when she became a teenage widow, and she had recently retrieved her. The woman spoke a combination of English and French, and she and the child had no common language.  

The child, upon hearing that story, expanded her account by declaring she knew her mother, and had seen her only a year before, and that other parts of the woman's tale were untrue. She said her name was Marianne, although the woman called her Annette.

Another newspaper account has more details on the story, although it may be a little hard to read. The American woman's story was investigated, and apparently she had used several different names in her travels, and had drafted a letter to her husband about bringing home a young servant. Her story then expanded to accommodate that discovery, in that her second husband didn't know about her child from her first marriage, so she concocted the servant story. While we still don't know what happened in the end, it is doubtful that Marianne was allowed to leave Paris with the woman who claimed to be her mother.

 

Gravity will have its way, and it controls the way water works everywhere on earth. Water falls from the sky and then flows downward along the slope of the earth. Traditionally, people have respected that, and settled into places where nature provides a water supply. But in the modern era, people often disregard nature's water supplies to rely on technology. Still, there's a limit to how much we can do to overcome the laws of gravity and the enormous geography we have. Half as Interesting take a look at the way water flows in North America, and focuses on a singular anomaly in Wyoming. That's the home of mysteriously-named North Two Ocean Creek. Far from any ocean, this is the one place along the Continental Divide where water can flow to either the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans! It's not a phenomena we can engineer to bring water to the people who need it; it's both unique and natural.