Who would have guessed that U.S. Grant was a never-nude? It just goes to show that the psychological quirk is not a recent invention, it's just that we never heard of it before the internet. The US has seen 45 presidents (one served twice), and they all had parts of their lives that were private. Private parts that weren't covered by journalists, but were often exploited by rivals when the opportunity arose, and eventually made the history books. A trivia list about the weird private lives of some presidents is heavy on the rumored and confirmed adulterous affairs in presidential history (which isn't really all that odd), but also contains some fun facts that are just fun.

 
One has to wonder if the story may have been culturally nonsensical and the interpreter decided to smooth it over, or maybe the interpreter was just lazy. Not all presidents are covered, and some appear more than once. Some are stories you've heard over and over, and some are things you've never heard before. Read them all in a pictofacts list at Cracked.

In 2015, John Farrier introduced us to Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton, who helped 669 Jewish children escape from Czechoslovakia in 1938, then went back home to Britain and never spoke of it. Even his wife didn't know until 1988 when she found his scrapbook. We got to see a very touching television appearance from that year revealing Winton's secret war efforts. That video serves as the framework for the trailer for One Life, a new feature film about Winton, starring Anthony Hopkins as the older Winton and Johnny Flynn as the younger Winton. Let's watch that clip from the BBC show That's Life again.  



The part the video clip does not show is that after the survivors stood up, the host asked if there's anyone in the audience who was the child or grandchild of a survivor, and the entire auditorium stood up. One Life will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival later this month, and will open in theaters in the US on January first.   

An 18th century pirate named Black Caesar is a legend around south Florida. There's a display at Biscayne National Park telling his story. No one knew his exact origins, whether he came from Africa or escaped from a plantation in the Caribbean or the southern US. Black Caesar would hide his ship among the islands in Biscayne Bay and wait for another ship to pass by before terrorizing and looting it. It was said that his buried treasure is still hidden somewhere in the bay. There was even an artifact in an iron ring affixed to a rock, where Black Caesar would tie his ship.

Is there any truth the the story at all? Pirates made no effort to document their crimes, but a good story about buried treasure can be a selling point for a parcel of land in Florida. A good yarn will bring tourists into a bar, a marina, or a national park. Maritime archaeologist Joshua Marano followed the legend of Black Caesar to get to the bottom of the stories, and ended up with a story about a story. Read what he found at Atlas Obscura.

The more recent history behind the founding of Biscayne National Park is a much better story. Sir Lancelot Jones almost single-handedly made sure that Biscayne Bay would be remain a natural green spot in the metropolis that Miami-Dade County came to be.

(Image credit: U.S. National Park Service)

Technology itself is neither good nor evil. We've seen again and again that it can be harnessed for the benefit of mankind, but is always used for someone to enrich themselves. How does that happen? On the one hand, modern technology has given us the surveillance state, geolocation, data harvesting, artificial intelligence, and social media. On the other hand, the world is full of people who will jump at the chance to give away everything that was once considered private for a new app that might be fun or will make your life slightly easier. People will even pay for the opportunity. And there are a bunch of folks who will part with their last dollar for the latest gadget if it has an apple on it. So what's next?

Introducing the Apple Eye, with a name that evokes the pleasant phrase "the apple of my eye," while looking and acting like nothing less than Big Brother's telescreens. It's the culmination of many invasive tech trends all in one device. Yeah, it's fictional ...for now. I'd bet when it really comes to market, it will be called the iApple. Or maybe iEye.  -via Geeks Are Sexy

When we use the term "Goody Two-Shoes" in everyday conversation, we are talking about someone who follows the rules to make themselves look good. But the original meaning of "Goody" was a shortened form of the title "Goodwife." In the 1765 novel The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the title character's name is Margery Meanwell, and got the nickname "Two-Shoes" when she was given a pair of shoes. She is an impoverished orphan who fights her way into a decent life by her own hard work and ambition. In other words, a progressive woman.

Over the course of the novel, Margery teaches herself to read, foils a major robbery, founds a school, earns her own living, stands up for animal rights and overcomes accusations of witchcraft. She was everything that 18th- and 19th-century British society thought women shouldn’t be: poor, well-educated, self-made and unmarried (at least until the last few pages).

Margery Meanwell was certainly "good," because she not only improved her lot but that of those around her. However, she did it by breaking the rules of social class and gender that were established at the time. The book was astoundingly popular among both boys and girls, and ushered in a whole new genre of literature- books aimed at child readers. Read up on The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the book -and the character- that started it all at Smithsonian.

Popocatépetl is an active volcano in Mexico. A webcam in Tianguismanalco, Puebla, is trained on it 24/7. Footage from that webcam taken on August 24 shows a fleet of spacecraft launching from the peak of the volcano in a line. Where are they going- back to the mothership or exoplanet where they came from? Or are they assembling to conquer earth? Maybe we should investigate the volcanic crater for the crystal skulls they may have left behind!

Or... the lines we see "coming out" of the volcano are passing Starlink satellites from SpaceX. The angle at which they are flying make it seem as if they are coming out of Popocatépetl's peak. Starlink, Elon Musk's global communications system, has more than 4,500 satellites in low earth orbit now, and there are plans to push that to 42,000 satellites eventually. That's scarier than the thought of UFOs in a volcano, because it's true.  -via Boing Boing  
   

If you want to encourage true diversity in wildlife, all you have to do is get rid of the people. We keep setting aside land for wildlife preserves, yet those areas are thick with people anyway- tourists who want to see wildlife, and who help pay for its upkeep. But in an area where people cannot go at all, nature truly takes over. When the Chernobyl nuclear plant melted down and exploded in 1986, the radiation cloud drifted north into what is now Belarus. Thousands of people were evacuated from villages and farms, and they never returned. While the Ukrainians have opened the region around Chernobyl for scientific study, the Polesie State Radioecological Reserve (PSRR) in Belarus is still off limits.

Without people around, the animals moved in. Boars, hares, beavers, deer, and more found freedom and relative safety in the PSRR. They don't know about radiation. And those prey animals were followed by predators. Wolves and lynx have moved in to take advantage of the deer and other wildlife. Even brown bears come through in the summer. These predators that normally hide in the woods are living in abandoned homes and farms, and stalking deer who graze in grasslands that used to be agricultural fields. We in the west are only now finding out about these animals reclaiming the land because of translation lag and the political fortunes of Belarus and other former Soviet nations. Read what we know of the diversity of wildlife in the PSRR at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Jon Glittenberg)

The day after Labor Day, as if on cue, five houses on my street suddenly have their fall wreathes or other autumn decorations up. Including mine. It's also the perfect day for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to launch their Fall Foliage Prediction Map. The map itself is all green right now, with just a bit of yellow along the Canadian border, but you can change the date with a slider. The image above is the map for the week of October 16. That might be the best time to schedule a drive through the Smokies, but wherever you go, there's a peak week for leaf-peeping.

The site also wants your feedback, with a survey that simply asks you to report the progress of fall foliage of your area today, and this year you'll have the ability to contribute current photographs of the colors you are experiencing in your neck of the woods. This data will help fine-tune next year's map. And there's a lesson in how and why leaves change color from their chlorophyll green to the bright autumn colors underneath produced by beta-carotene, anthocyanins, and flavonols. Plus you'll find a printable coloring book for the kids, and recipes for seasonal treats: pecan pie, moonshine apple pie, and pumpkin spice latte. Bookmark the Fall Foliage Prediction Map so you can plan a weekend getaway to a place that's going to be spectacular.     

The annual Bun Bang Fai Festival is celebrated in northeastern Thailand and in Laos in the run up to the rainy season. Its roots go back to earlier traditional festivals held to pray for abundant rain for the crops. The festival has all the usual stuff: parades, food, concerts, and political speeches, but the big draw centers around a competition of amateur rocketry. In the city of Ubon Ratchathan, the rocketry competition is hosted by professional rocket builder Niyom Butprom and his daughter Tarn. The rocket launches are judged by how high they fly, how long they stay up, and technical issues like a smooth launch and a soft landing. These rocket festivals are held at different dates in different towns, so you could travel to attend more than one every year. Great Big Story went to Ubon Ratchathan to see what this festival is all about. And as you might guess, a good time was had by all. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

You might recall the story of Ellen Sadler, the English girl who became famous for sleeping nine years straight. That was nothing compared to Sweden's Karolina Olsson, who went to bed and woke up 32 years later! Olsson didn't attend school until she was 14 years old, and within a month of beginning classes, she went to bed complaining of a tooth ache. That was in 1876. She stayed there, sleeping, for years without a medical consultation because her family couldn't afford to hire a doctor. The neighbors paid for a doctor visit in 1892, and soon medical specialists were coming to see her. Olsson was hospitalized for a month, but was discharged after she didn't respond to treatment.

Strangely, Olsson's appearance didn't change the way you would expect in a coma patient. Her mother tended to her needs, allegedly force-feeding her two glasses of milk every day for sustenance. Then in 1908, Olsson woke up, and seemed to have no lingering effects of her 32-year sleep, aside from being a 14-year-old in a 46-year-old woman's body. There is one telling fact, though. Olssen's mother died in 1905, and her daily care then fell to her father and the housekeeper. That's when she started losing weight, and was quite emaciated when she came to, echoing the experience of Ellen Sadler. Read the tale of Karolina Olsson at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Dagens Nyheter)

The subject of Tom Scott's latest video is why TV and video advertising is so loud. But that question isn't even addressed until about five minutes in, because first we have to define our terms. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, whether it makes a sound or not depends on how you define sound. Once you get past that, defining loudness is also pretty subjective. Does it depend on the physical nature of sound waves, like amplitude or frequency? Or is it a matter of what hurts your ears? Sound perception is very subjective. And people can argue about the average sound compression of a 30-second ad as compared to averaging the sound level of a two-hour movie (which has its own issues), but it comes down to advertisers just want to be as loud as possible to make sure you hear them.

When I typed the title Loudness is All in Your Head, I could hear (metaphorically) someone reply, "No, it's in your ears." Whether it happens in your ears or your brain, both places are literally in your head, okay? The last minute of this video is an ad, and it's about as loud as the rest of the video.    

In the 15th century, Tenochtitlan was the largest city in the Americas, with a population of more than 200,000 people, more than most European capitals of the time. The city was built on an island in Lake Texcoco, surrounded by volcanoes, and was expanded with landfill as the city grew. Tenochtitlan served as the capitol of the Aztec Empire until Spanish invaders destroyed it beginning in 1521. Mexico City was built over the ruins, and expanded considerably as the lake was drained.

What was Tenochtitlan like? Thomas Kole spent 18 months digitally recreating the city from documented history and from archaeological findings. Tenochtitlan was laid out in a grid, with sections connected to each other and to the lake shores by causeways, bridges, and canals. The city center contained temples, palaces, and government buildings, surrounded by neighborhoods segregated by class, each with their own marketplaces. Further out were agricultural areas, constantly expanded by filling in the lake with rubble. Kole's images let us see this metropolis from every angle. Most impressive are the overlays with drone images of Mexico City today. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Thomas Kole)

Back in 2003, there was no YouTube, no social media, and no Neatorama (yet). But on September 2, we got a flash animation called Badgers that went so viral it could be used to identify who was on the internet and who wasn't. You could say "Badgers badgers badgers badgers," and if anyone replied with "Mushroom, mushroom," you knew that you had found a kindred spirit. Badgers was made by Mr. Weebl, also known as Jonti Picking. In 2013, he partnered with Brian May to produce a new version called Save The Badger Badger Badger to protest a badger cull in Britain, which became a bona-fide musical hit just in time for the 10th anniversary of the orginal video.  

For the 20th anniversary of Badgers, Picking makes an attempt to give us a new "live action" version, using CGI and motion capture, which is difficult because the original dancers are getting old. But then he is accused of plagiarism. That brings up the question: how far back do dancing badgers really go?

About 70.000 people are stuck in the mud at #BurningMan2023 ⁰
Visitors to the legendary desert festival "Burning Man" in the US state of Nevada are stuck after heavy rains. The rain has turned the desert sand into ankle-deep and viscous mud. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/A9iUkgN4IV

— Vertical52 (@Vertical_52) September 3, 2023

The annual Burning Man Festival began on August 27, and was scheduled to run through Monday. This year, around 73,000 people went out into the Nevada desert to set up camp for the festival, but things aren't going the way they usually do. Normally, the ground is rock hard, but just less than an inch of rain on Friday and Saturday has turned the site into a morass of sticky clay mud. It's hard enough to walk in, but more importantly, vehicles are mired up and blocking the roads. More rain is expected Sunday.

People usually start leaving Burning Man after the traditional giant effigy fire on Saturday night, which has been postponed, but now authorities have closed the roads leading in and out of the site. Only authorized four-wheel drive vehicles are allowed, and only for emergencies. That means no supplies are being brought in, no porta-potties can be serviced, and most attendees cannot go home. Shuttles have been arranged for people who walk five miles out to the town of Gerlach, where the nearest paved road is. That still leaves thousands of people who cannot return rental cars, catch flights, or show up at work Tuesday.

Attendees have been urged to ration their remaining supplies, and ice sales are also now rationed. Organizers are installing temporary cell phone towers and so that people can contact their families and employers. Max Berger has been posting constant updates at TikTok. There are more videos at X (formerly Twitter). And the festival itself has emergency guidelines posted. Despite what you might read on social media, there are no cases of ebola at Burning Man. Trench foot may be another story. -via Boing Boing

With move-in day right around the corner, overpasses all over the Boston area need your help. They need to not be hit by a moving truck on Storrow Drive or Soldiers Field in Boston & Memorial Drive in Cambridge. Plan your move in day route accordingly & watch for the signs! pic.twitter.com/Wkfgcg6Nx3

— MassDCR (@MassDCR) August 23, 2023

We've gotten used to the many accidents at the infamous 11 foot 8 bridge in Durham, North Carolina, even after it was raised a few inches. But it's far from the only can opener bridge in the US, and sometimes these accidents are seasonal. Boston is America's biggest college town. Every August, culminating on Labor Day weekend, thousands of new students move into apartments and dormitories, often bringing their stuff in rental trucks that may be taller than they are aware of.   

In Boston, many of those trucks find themselves on Storrow Drive, a main thoroughfare that has several low-clearance bridges. Trucks and busses are prohibited on Storrow Drive for just this reason, but people coming in from out-of-town for the first time do not realize that until it's too late. Trucks hitting bridges here is quite common, and this phenomena has led to its own term: Storrowing. Could it be that bad? I searched for "Storrow Drive Bridge" on YouTube and got a long list of incidences.



Storrow Drive is not the only road in Boston that has low bridges. You can see why the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation felt the need to put out public service announcements to warn people traveling to the city. -via Metafilter