TikTok celebrity Brodie Moss was out in his transparent kayak with several cameras when he saw a surprising sight. A whale tail breached the surface in front of him and then... just stood there. He'd never seen such a thing, and frankly, neither have most of us. Sticking a camera underwater, he sees that the humpback whale is just floating upside down, airing out her tail. We can assume it's a female, as her calf was there, too.

This is not an unknown behavior. It's called tail sailing, and it's been seen by others, but no one knows why whales do it. There are many possibilities. It could be a good position for resting, or it may be a way to warm up or cool down, since the tail has a lot of vascular activity. While the term tail sailing is pretty cool, there's no way it's used for propulsion considering the size of a whale compared to its tail. Incidents of tail sailing have been observed all over the world, and can last as long as 12 minutes. Read more about tail sailing at ScienceAlert. -via Damn Interesting 

When I was young, I thought this banjo-playing comedian on TV must be old because he had gray hair. But Steve Martin started going gray at a young age, and he was completely gray by age 32. By then, he'd already performed magic at Disneyland, written for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, had a standup act, and had won The Dating Game. Born on August 14, 1945, Steve Martin is still going strong and celebrating his 78th birthday today.

Martin has a long resume, with a slew of memorable characters: the Wild and Crazy Guy, King Tut, Navin Johnson, Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, and others. He's also branched out in many directions. He is a member of the Grammy-winning band the Steep Canyon Rangers, who still tour. He became a father at age 67. He's an avid birdwatcher and art collector. And Martin now stars in his first TV series, Only Murders in the Building, with his longtime friend Martin Short. Read 78 bits of trivia on Steve Martin's long showbiz career at Cracked. The list includes plenty of videos.  

The UK is full of quaint festivals that feature weird traditions from hundreds of years ago. The Gloucester cheese roll comes to mind. But the tradition of throwing pennies to the masses in Honiton, a town in East Devon, harks back to a horrifying past. Honiton had a celebration after being granted a Royal Charter in the year 1221, which became an annual festival. In the early days, the landed gentry would climb to the upper stories of its buildings and throw hot chestnuts to the poor people below. This was soon changed to hot pennies, because the elite found it amusing to see desperate people scramble for the pennies and risk burning their hands to catch them. It wouldn't be the only time a horrific show of abuse was turned into a beloved tradition. Tom Scott made it to Honiton this year to witness the Honiton Hot Pennies ceremony for himself.

James Arnold & Son was a London company that make surgical instruments, but also branched out into other areas with some innovative ideas. In 1881, they registered a design for a combination knife and fork called the Desideratum, which would be a boon to someone who had only one hand to eat with. The knife was a cutting edge that could be closed scissors-style to form a fork. Let's look closer. The sharp edge of the knife would have to be on the outside of the blade, because putting it on the inside would make it fairly impossible to cut anything. So what happens when you put a forkful of food in your mouth? I see no locking mechanism to hold the knife edge closed, and even if there was one, you'd better pray that the two parts of the instrument would hold together closely enough to not cut your mouth.

The fork-knife-scissors gadget is one of five Victorian inventions listed together. The others include a parasol with eye holes, a trumpet developed by Adolphe Sax, who found greater success with the saxophone, and something called the "Improved Telekouphonon," which actually worked and sold well until it was eclipsed by the telephone. Read about all of these inventions at the British National Archives. -via Strange Company

The recent DC superhero movie The Flash raises ethical questions that go way beyond Ezra Miller. The plot of the film involves time travel, and the complications include creating alternate timelines. The result is the appearance of multiple versions of superheroes as they appeared in different media, sometimes portrayed by actors who are long dead, with the help of CGI and artificial intelligence. But would those actors have approved of the use of their personal images in this way? Not only does this bring up the sticky question of dead people having rights, it also foreshadows one of the issues of the current writers and actors strikes. Will prior work of living artists be harnessed to create new movies? Will those artists be owed any input or compensation? The whole moral of The Flash is the inadvisability of messing with the past, but the producers did just that in making the movie they way they did. Nerdstaligic explains the finer points of this argument in a spoiler-filled video. -via Digg

When Freddie Mercury died in 1991, he left his house, Garden Lodge, and all it contained to Mary Austin, who he described as the love of his life. She moved into the home and lived there for the next thirty years without moving Mercury's possessions. But Austin, now 72, has decided to liquidate the furniture, artwork, costumes, and ephemera Mercury left behind at auction. For the first time, Austin has spoken with the media about her relationship with Mercury, his life away from the spotlight, and the home he loved. She also gave them a tour of his home and possessions. Find an alternate link here.

Austin hasn't decided yet whether to sell Garden Lodge or not. Sotheby's auction of Mercury's items will be September 6. You can see the items up for auction here. Until then, the items are on exhibit at Sotheby's in London with no admission charge. -via reddit

An enormous amount of goods and supplies sold in the US pass through the Panama Canal. Shipments may be a bit late because there's currently a 21-day wait to make the journey through. There are 154 ships waiting for their turn! The culprit is climate change, as a drought is limiting the water necessary to fill the locks along the canal.  

Wait- isn't climate change causing ocean levels to rise? And isn't the Panama Canal open to oceans on both ends? You'd think they would have plenty of water, but that's not how it works. The Panama Canal is 51 miles (82 km) long, and the inner locks are fed by nearby Panamanian lakes. Alhajuela Lake is at its lowest level in years, and the Panama Canal Authority has enacted water conservation measures. The largest ships are the most severely restricted, and a 40% weight limit reduction is leaving some supertankers without the ability to make passage at all.

Things won't have to get much worse to make a voyage around South America faster. That route adds 23 days to an ocean trip, but it would cost a lot more in fuel. Another possibility is to offload shipping containers to smaller ships that could obtain permits through the canal, but that would also add cost, and raise the number of waiting ships, too. Read about the Panama Canal traffic jam at Jalopnik.

This doorbell camera video shows people entering the house like they always do, except they didn't notice the snake perched on top of the storm door. The snake even lunged at the guy as he went into the house! So why did they go back and watch the video later and then share it? Because of what happened later that same evening.



Ouch! He was probably hurt worse from falling than from the snake attack. I'm sure he was panicked, but yelling "I got bit!" without further explanation would only ensure that other people would run out the door. It would have been so much more useful to yell "Snake! There's a snake on the door!" Of course, that's easy to think of when you're just watching the video and haven't been bitten by a snake. I hope the guy's alright. Let's assume that someone behind the video would let us know otherwise. -via Born in Space

In 1969, there was a spate of odd sightings near a Texas lake near Forth Worth. The Lake Worth Monster was reported to be shaped like a man-goat hybrid, with both scales and fur, that was prone to chase or attack people. It was seen by plenty of folks over the course of that summer, but never again. Allen Plaster took a photograph of it, shown above.

Another creature described as a man-goat hybrid is said to be haunting the area around Gallup, New Mexico. It doesn't have a common name, but the author calls it the Gallup Goatman. Several people have reported seeing it over the past year.  

And then there's a story from Black Mesa, Oklahoma, about a sighting of a horse that is also a man. The Navajo Horse Walker story might be related to the Navajo skinwalker legend, but we don't know when it happened or how true it is.  

Of course there is a perfectly logical explanation for all of these: a human-animal hybrid is traveling from state to state. Read about all of these mysterious sightings at The Weird and Wild West. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Allen Plaster)

Hoopfinesse and Musa are identical twins. Musa has been away for 18 months, and Hoopfinesse picked him up at the airport, but their father has no idea that Musa is coming to visit. So when they went to Dad's house, Musa dressed as Hoopfinesse and walked to the door with his brother's wife and baby son (who had to be confused). Watch as Musa talks about Musa with his dad and what happens when the shenanigans are revealed. This is pure wholesomeness.

Yes, I believe Hoopfinesse is an internet handle, and not his real name. -via reddit 

The old adage "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" doesn't make sense anymore, because who wants to keep a doctor away? It's hard enough getting an appointment to see one as it is. The saying does make for some interesting graduation pictures at medical schools. But is an apple really all that nutritious?

Apples don't have all that many vitamins, compared to other fruits and vegetables, but they fall into a class called a functional food. That's a fairly new class of foods that contain bioactive substances. Such substances are not vitamins, nor do they provide high caloric energy, but they convey some benefit to our health when eaten, like repairing cells or staving off cancer. An example would be the antioxidant beta-carotene, which apples do not have. But apples have plenty of other beneficial ingredients like anthocyanins, phloridzin, and fiber. Lots of fiber.

But back to the original question. Studies show that people who eat an apple every day do not show a significant difference in how many doctor visits that person makes, nor in the number of prescription drugs they take. But apples can help in losing weight and in glucose management. Read about the health benefits of apples and other functional foods at the Conversation. 

(Image credit: Marco Verch Professional Photographer)

A lot of movie and TV story concepts grew out of a desire to show off what could be done with special effects. One example is the series of movies featuring Francis the Talking Mule in the 1950s. Arthur Lubin, who directed six Francis films, couldn't get the rights to bring the mule to TV, so he looked into the stories of a talking horse by children's author Walter R. Brooks. Still, there were problems making a TV series about a talking horse work, until the perfect horse was found. That horse was named Bamboo Harvester, and he is what this video is mainly about.  

Mr. Ed aired from 1961 to 1966, and lived on for years afterward in syndication. How Mr. Ed could talk was never explained in the show, nor why Wilbur (played by Alan Young) was the only person who could hear him. Not that anyone really cared at the time; it was just supposed to be funny. In case you're interested, the Mr. Ed theme song is here, and the Tiny Tim version is here.

Some years ago, I read that deejays at wedding receptions are tired of playing "You Shook Me (All Night Long)" at every wedding, but someone always asked for it. I remember that because it's a rockin' dance song, yet quite explicit for a party where your grandparents are celebrating the beginning of your marriage. But that must have been from a different generation, because the song doesn't appear anywhere in the list. This data is gleaned from Spotify, which only launched in the US in 2011. The popularity of songs were determined by the number of Spotify playlists that were tagged with "wedding" or related keywords. The top song is "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" by Whitney Houston. Despite the fact that it's 36 years old, the tune is perfect because it's got a great dance beat, it's about love and dancing, and it's Whitney Houston. However, Bruno Mars is the most popular artist on wedding playlists, with three songs on the top 50. Still, only the top ten songs are shared with us.

The site Givetastic also generated lists of popular artists in playlists for pre-wedding parties, which they call "stag dos" and "hen dos."  The notable artist among the stag do playlists is Neil Diamond, whose song "Sweet Caroline" from 1969 was featured in 1,038 playlists, making it the number one Spotify song for a stag do. It makes sense, as the song is commonly used for sporting events of all kinds in many English-speaking countries.

See the top ten wedding songs and the related lists as generated by Spotify data at Givetastic. -via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Paulhaberstroh)

This picture is not Photoshopped, even though you've seen similar jokes on the internet for years. The Lakewood Community Driving School in Lakewood, Colorado, was the scene of the accident on Tuesday morning. Even more ironically, the driver who crashed through the front of the building was not a student driver! Police did not release the driver's name, but he was described as an instructor at the school. However, Steve Rohman, who owns the driving school, said the perpetrator was a new employee on his second day at the job, and "had yet to be considered an instructor." He was still in training, and had never taken a student out on the road. The driver is no longer employed at the driving school.

There was only one minor injury, as people in the building were able to get out of the way. The driver was ticketed for reckless driving. The real victim was the building, which sustained major damage. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Lakewood Police Department)

People living their everyday lives in their everyday homes have no idea that hundreds of years in the future, the everyday items in your everyday home might be historically significant. People move, throw out trash, give away belongings, until there's nothing left for historians to study. And for 99% of places, it does not matter. But priorities change, and sometimes the smallest scraps of paper can be very significant in telling a story.

The rats who lived unseen in the walls of buildings in Colonial Williamsburg for many generations over hundreds of years weren't heroes. They were just doing what pack rats do, which is collecting things for their nests. Many of the things they saved -buttons, utensils, scraps of newspapers, pottery shards, fabric, or anything that caught their eyes- shine a light on what people were doing in those buildings during the early days of the United States. This is particularly important as a new part of Williamsburg is being preserved. The building that once held the Bray School was only confirmed in 2021. It tells a story that has been overlooked in the past, of a school that taught around 400 Black children to read in the late 1700s. Read how the history of the school is being investigated and how the rats who collected artifacts are helping at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: H. Zell)