The Soviets were really big on proving they were the best at everything, whether it was science, nuclear weapons, the space race, or Olympic competition. That probably had something to do with why they decided to dig the deepest manmade hole on earth. Oh, there were plenty of scientific research reasons, but the expense involved leads us to believe it was mainly another superlative they could brag about.  

The Kola Superdeep Borehole is more than seven miles deep, or 12,262 meters, to be exact. The Soviets kept digging for 19 years, from 1970 to 1989. You may think, well, there's your answer for why they stopped digging, because the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 after a couple of years of really tense internal struggles. But the project had other problems, too, that had to do with the earth and what's going on seven miles down there. Half as Interesting explains the project in a little over seven minutes; the rest of the video is an ad.  -via Digg

The German military developed the first weapons of mass destruction during World War I when they unleashed poison gas on the Allies, mostly chlorine and bromine, which are heavier than air and combine to form toxic acid. The Allies then developed their own chemical weapons and gas masks for defense. But the underfunded Russian army had no gas masks. In 1915, when the Germans attacked a Russian unit at Osowiec Fortress, which is in what is now Poland, the Russians had no defense. They did the best they could, soaking rags and bandages in their own urine and wrapping them around their faces. But the deadly gas caused them to cough up blood. What was amazing is that these men fought on. Thought to be already dead, they leapt from their bunkers wrapped up like mummies covered in blood. The Germans saw them as ghosts or zombies and fled in terror. That battle at Osowiec Fortress became known as the Attack of the Dead Men.  

The story is often told as a horror tale by painting a picture of the dying Russians scaring the wits out of the German army, but the bigger horror story is the advent of chemical weapons. Read more about the use of poison gas during World War I at Creative History. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Taco Bell has built quite a large business on the premise of combining the same five ingredients into a wide variety of food items in different shapes and sizes, with a wide price range. Staying open through the wee hours helped a lot, too. They've not been as successful with their quirky advertising campaigns, though. The biggest and most memorable was the Taco Bell chihuahua that was everywhere in the late 1990s. The dog was cute, the scenarios were funny, and you saw those ads every time you turned a TV on. The chihuahua image was made into plush dolls and graced t-shirts. Then suddenly, the ads with the chihuahua were gone, and no one really noticed because, well, it was advertising after all. Weird History Food explains where the chihuahua came from, how he (or actually, she) became a sensation, and why the dog disappeared so quickly. Spoiler: no, it wasn't because the dog died.

Last month, we marveled at the video winners of the Small World in Motion competition, and today the winners of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography competition have been announced for 2024. The image above, by Dr. Bruno Cisterna and Dr. Eric Vitriol of the Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, won first place. It shows differentiated mouse brain tumor cells magnified 100 times. Dr. Cisterna is leading a team studying how disruptions in the brain structures known as microtubules can lead to neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's and ALS. He spent three months perfecting the staining process so that the images they worked with would clearly show the brain structures.    

 

The competition began in 1975, which means this year is the 50th edition of the photomicrography awards. Dr. Marcel Clemens came in second for an image of an electrical arc between a pin and a wire at 10,000 volts. The third place image, shown above, was captured by Chris Romaine. It is a cannabis plant magnified 20 times, showing its trichomes and cannabinoid vesicles. You can see the top twenty winners in this gallery. Also see the honorable mentions and images of distinction. Who knew that slime molds, disease cells, pregnant fleas, pollen, and intestines could be so beautiful!

A 19-year-old man was staying with his 15-year-old sister while their parents were on an overseas trip. His sister started her period and was bleeding excessively. She wanted to go to the emergency room, but he was unsure whether it was needed or just teenage drama, so he turned to reddit for advice, specifically the subreddit AskDocs. The doctors there urged him to take her to a hospital, and he did, while posting updates through the entire adventure. The community became totally invested in the story. OP (original poster) doesn't know much about women's bodies, but he cares about his sister, who's a feisty young woman.

The sister got the care she needed, and then everyone could acknowledge how hilarious OP's updates were. Trying to imagine what his mother would do, he packed sunscreen for the hospital, a detail he will never live down. Somewhere along the line, someone suggested he call their parents, which he did not think of on his own. The story played out over several days, and escaped the subreddit to enthrall greater reddit. You can read the essential points in this recap, and then you may want to check out the original post with replies. The upshot is that OP did what he had to do even though he didn't know what he was doing, and the whole family is loving, supportive, and oh-so funny. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Kai Hendry)

During the first half of the 20th century, many psychiatric disturbances were treated by cutting into the brain. A lobotomy is the procedure of cutting the connection between the frontal cortex and the thalamus, leading to calmer behavior but also a loss of personality and agency, and often left the patient with severe impairment. We've posted the history of such surgery, and a few horror stories. But why were doctors so keen on cutting the connections in people's brains? This video from Life Noggin explains that it was more of a societal problem than concern about the individual patient. Lobotomies made psychiatric patients easier to deal with. As bad as that seems, the conditions that led to lobotomies during the surgery's heyday make us cringe in the 21st century. They couldn't execute troublesome and inconvenient people, so they just cut their brains to make them into more convenient people. Some parts of our history truly resemble dystopian science fiction horror stories.  -via Laughing Squid

You may have heard a local story of someone encountering an unknown child, or a group of children, seemingly lost or in need. They wear clothes that are somewhat out of style, or even of a different era. When you get a good look at them, they have black eyes. Not just pupils or irises, but the sclera, too -totally black eyes. They might talk to you in an eerie monotone voice. No matter how needy or fearful they seem, don't let them get in your car or in your home, because bad things will happen.

This is no ancient tale, but stories that contemporary people tell in their own experiences, going back about 30 years. And they come from all parts of the country. The exact details may vary slightly, and you have read these stories online and you have certainly seen such children in movies. But what does it mean? Read about the modern legend of the black-eyed children and what it means at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Megamoto85)

The Tim Burton sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was released about six weeks ago and has so far made back more than four times its production budget. Audiences liked it, and so does Screen Junkies. This Honest Trailer gives us more insight into the film in case you haven't already seen it. Like the original 1988 Beetlejuice, the title character isn't the main character because he's just too chaotic and goes down better in small doses, yet Michael Keaton still has what it takes to spice up the story. Also like the original, most of the characters are dead, yet the creepiness is all so over-the-top, you never forget they are in a comedy. The main idea of the Honest Trailer seems to be that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is very much like the original, which was fun, but there's no real glory in doing something that has been done well before. That means it's worth a watch for anyone who enjoyed Beetlejuice.   

Hello Steve :O https://t.co/rEG9kZOhP9 #wildearth

— Ex Ranga (@vokstar) October 16, 2024

Eight years ago, a group of skywatchers in Canada saw an aurora that was unlike any they'd ever seen. It was a ribbon of green and purple. They didn't know what they were looking at, so they named it Steve. It wasn't the first time anyone has seen such a thing. Previous sightings were called a "proton arc," but that's not what it is. Of course, some scientists weren't happy with a phenomenon named Steve, so they fashioned it into an acronym (or "backronym") for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. It is caused by a ribbon of very hot plasma hundreds of miles above the earth.

During last week's solar storm, both the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis were seen in much wider areas than normal, and Steve was caught on camera by a number of people in South Australia, further north than the Southern Lights are usually seen. Normal aurora are caused by charged particles falling under the influence of the sun's geomagnetic activity. Steve, on the other hand, is more like "a welder's arc" in the upper atmosphere. Read more about this phenomena and see pictures at ABC. -via Metafilter

In an action movie, this simple exchange would be handled by experienced professionals who have no human faults and are confident in their mission. Real life doesn't work like that. We know that any story from Birdbox Studio is going to go completely sideways from what we would normally expect, even though the chosen scenarios are situations that can easily happen in real life. You can see that from the animations we've posted before. In their latest production called The Exchange, we see a suspicious meeting from a distance through binoculars, so we can't know what was said. But we can imagine based on what we see. Still, that inner dialogue changes when the unexpected happens, and that happens over and over in this one. Sure, you will feel sorry for the participants, but you have to keep telling yourself it's just a fictional story. We hope. -via Nag on the Lake

When times are tight and business is bad, people have to get creative just to get by. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, people developed ways to repair, reuse, and stretch what they had to avoid buying new things that they couldn't afford. This affected businesses, which had to look in new directions to stay afloat. Have you ever wondered how cars started offering radios as a standard feature? It wasn't because the public asked for them; it was because people stopped buying radios for their homes. Paul and Joseph Galvin had a radio parts business that suffered from the economic downturn, so Paul decided to concentrate on putting radios in cars. That meant they had to design a radio small and lightweight enough to install in a motor vehicle. A promotional tour was so successful they renamed their business after the car radio, becoming Motorola.

Read that story and those of four other inventions that were born of the deprivations of the Great Depression at History Facts.

(Image credit: Erkaha)

The Spanish band Broken Peach is really into Halloween and music. Two years ago they did a slasher version of "Don't You Want Me," and last year they performed Blondie's "One Way or Another" as skeleton cheerleaders. You can find a playlist of their Halloween songs going back to 2015 when you hit "more" at the YouTube page.

For this year's Halloween special, they are once again in their spooky skeleton getups as they do a rockin' mashup of Blondie's "Call Me" and Kiss's "I Was Made For Lovin' You" that is so seamless that you realize they are basically the same song. Also mixed in is a bit of the song "Joker and the Thief" by Wolfmother. You might watch this video and think there's some stop-motion shenanigans going on, but pay attention to the fog machine effects on the floor. It shows they are just that well-rehearsed in their jerky skeleton dance.

Google Trends has launched their annual Frightgeist site, ranking the top Halloween costumes as determined by web searches. The list of the top 25 costumes overall is dominated by this year's movies, with characters from Inside Out 2 and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice accounting for nine of the costumes. The number one costume is the character shown above -do you know his name? There are several pop culture costumes you might not be familiar with, but an article at Mental Floss might help.

You can also filter the list to show the top costumes for kids, dogs, couples, and costumes done with makeup. There are also lists for the top-searched party themes, holiday decor, and the top Halloween foods. Keep in mind that people will often search for multiple costumes before they decide on one to wear on October 31st, so the list might not accurately reflect what you will see at a Halloween party. But don't be surprised if you open the door and find a whole family of emotions in different colors looking for treats.     

 

The 10th anniversary Quebec Comiccon was held in both French and English in Quebec City over the weekend, and plenty of cosplayers put on their best to bring the worlds of comic books, movies, TV, video games, and literary worlds together. Our friends from Geeks Are Sexy were there to document the best costumes, like Goku and Vegeta from Dragon Ball shown above. The only thing bigger than Goku's muscles is his hair! Among the ambassadors from a galaxy far, far away was a large contingent from Mandalore trying to look more menacing than they really are.

And then there's this set of intriguing costumes that I didn't recognize at all. They are from the Nintendo game Pikmin. Check out a whole gallery of awesome cosplayers having fun at Quebec Comiccon at Geeks Are Sexy. Click on each photo to bring it up in full size. It's obvious from the video that a good time was had by all.

Just because something has been a mystery for hundreds of years doesn't necessarily mean that it's supernatural or extraterrestrial. It usually means that we just don't have the know-how to figure it out ...yet. The science of data detection, measurement, and analysis has grown by leaps and bounds in the last couple of decades. With new and powerful microscopes, telescopes, chemical analysis, geolocation, and DNA sequencing, we are busting mysteries left and right. For example, in 1997, scientists detected a low-frequency noise in the ocean they call the Bloop. It sounds like an animal, but is louder than any on earth can produce. Is there a sea monster in the depths we've never found? No, in 2012, it was determined that the sound is meteorological, not biological. It's the normal sound of glaciers breaking.

It's just one of five mysteries that you've read about on the 'net that seemed really intriguing at the time, but the logical explanation that has been discovered isn't as exciting and doesn't draw as many clicks. Four of these mysteries have been solved only since 2012, and the fifth has been determined to be no mystery at all. If you missed the news, you can catch up in a list at Cracked. 

(Image credit: Eros Films)