My local hospital recently installed a system of pneumatic tubes. They send test samples to the lab and deliver drugs from the pharmacy with it, all in one building. This is a quantum leap above that. Tom Scott is at the University of British Columbia, where he's investigating the Rabbit Line that sends radioactive materials from a particle accelerator to a hospital a couple of miles away. Since these isotopes have a very short half-life, they are sent by underground pneumatic tubes because they'd never survive a car ride in Vancouver traffic. We find out what these isotopes are about and how they are used. It's a pretty neat system.

But what threw me was Tom's question that no one could answer, he says. Why is it called the Rabbit Line? Duh, has he never seen a Bug Bunny cartoon? The ones where the rabbit digs underground so fast he misses the left turn at Albuquerque? Makes plenty of sense to me.

By 1933, it was clear that Prohibition, the national experiment with outlawing the transport and sale of alcoholic beverages, was a failure. Although it was never illegal to drink, it had been illegal to provide alcohol since the 18th Amendment was passed in 1920. In the 13 years since, the country had plunged into the Great Depression. Without liquor taxes, both state and federal governments were suffering economically. Organized crime had taken over the business of supplying liquor, and public corruption ran rampant. Women had won the right to vote. Many thought that in itself that would doom the repeal of Prohibition, but mothers saw their children growing up without respect for the law, and women who flaunted the law were learning the joys of socializing with men over an illicit drink. Congress proposed the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution on February 20, 1933 to repeal Prohibition.  

The 21st Amendment is an outlier among the constitutional amendments because, for one thing, it is the only amendment that repealed a previous amendment. It is also the only time that state ratifying conventions were used instead of a vote in the state's legislatures. This idea alone would slow ratification down in the 21st century, as organizing a convention and selecting delegates would now take months at the earliest. But in this case, Michigan held their convention a mere 19 days after the amendment was proposed in Washington. In 1933, 36 states were required to ratifying an amendment, and the 34th, 35th, and 36th states held their conventions on December 5th (Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah). Just a few decades prior, it would have taken weeks for the results of those conventions to get back to Washington. But with instant communication by telephone, the amendment moved with astonishing speed. Utah's ratification, the 36th, came at 3:32 PM local time, 5:32 in Washington. It was only a few moments later that Under Secretary of State William Phillips signed the amendment's certification. One hour later, President Franklin Roosevelt issued a proclamation ending Prohibition.

Then it was party time. Bars had pre-applied for state liquor licenses to be triggered by repeal, and had been stocking up in anticipation of the 36th state ratification. See a gallery of images documenting the celebrations that ensued here. 

In 1628, the Dutch East India Company launched their new flagship the Batavia on a journey to, believe it or not, Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia). The ship carried sailors, soldiers, and passengers, 330 people in all, as well as stores of silver coins to trade for spices, and provisions for the journey. Several of the men aboard longed for riches and adventure beyond the company's plans. There was an attempted mutiny on board, right before the Batavia crashed against a reef 70 kilometers off the coast of Australia. Most of the survivors were were evacuated to the nearby islands. The ship's commander Fransisco Pelsaert, skipper Ariaen Jacobsz, and 50 others set out on a longboat to find help. They left 225 people on the islands. The ship's officers would not return for three months.

With Pelsaert and Jacobsz gone, the highest-ranking officer on the islands was none other than Jeronimus Cornelisz, who, despite having no sailing or military experience, appointed himself leader and assumed command of an elected Council of survivors. While this might have made sense at the time, there was the minor problem that Cornelisz was a raging psychopath and would soon turn the tiny islands into hell on earth.

Cornelisz was paranoid about the mutiny, and set about eliminating all witnesses. But first, he exiled the remaining soldiers to a different island under a ruse, which eventually turned into a full-blown war between the islands. Only 92 people were left when their rescue arrived, and even fewer by the time they were all transported to civilization. Read the horrifying story of the Batavia at Today I Found Out.  

(Image credit: Gouwenaar)

Notice: Read the description before watching this video.



We often read about the US citizenship quiz and how most Americans from birth wouldn't be able to pass it. That's concerning, because it's a rather short test. Encyclopedia Brittanica has a much bigger quiz about US history, geography, and government. Laurence Brown of Lost in the Pond (previously at Neatorama) took Brittanica's United States of America Quiz to see how much he's learned about the US since he moved here. To compare, you'll have to take the test yourself before watching the video.

I took the test and scored 52/60. I would have scored 53, but I didn't realize that it was timed until I missed one due to hesitation. You have ten seconds to answer each question. I would have known that if I watched the video first, but I also would have learned a bunch of the answers, too, and that's not fair. But rest assured that you'll get some of them right by just guessing, and if you're quick, you can get some answers right by process of elimination. Good luck!

William Lewis Moody Jr. bought a fine mansion in Galveston, Texas, just after the devastating 1900 hurricane. Moody and his family members lived there until Hurricane Alicia in 1983. The mansion has been restored and is now a museum. I'm sure our erstwhile Neatorama author WTM could tell us a lot more about it. The curators of the museum's treasures are a creative bunch.

Kerry Clark visited the Moody Mansion and was impressed by the "do not touch" signs. These are worth reading, and certainly get the idea across that it's not your home and it's not cool to mess with the furnishings. Many of them are accompanied by images of the previous residents of the house to drive the point home. Clark took pictures of about twenty of these signs and shared them with the Facebook group Useless, Unsuccessful, and/or Unpopular Signage. The problem is that these signs are useful, successful, and entertaining. -via Boing Boing

(Images credit: Kerry Clark)

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is an ugly bug that is rendered as strikingly artistic in an animation from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. They explain what happens from the time a single virus particle invades your lungs until it spews out the many copies of itself it has reproduced. The chemical reactions went over my head at times, but never lost my interest. Keep in mind this is the "general version." They go into much more detail in the "scientific version," which you can see here. 

What really amazes me about this video is how anyone ever learned so much about a virus. They are tiny compared to the individual cells of our body, which are already, well, microscopic. Here we see individual proteins working in tiny parts of a single virus, and in technicolor no less. The teams of virologists and molecular biologists working on COVID-19 research deserve every bit of respect for figuring all this out.  -via Kottke

In the 1860s, separate railroad companies worked to connect the eastern US railroad system with the west coast. The Union Pacific Railroad began work at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and built westward. They employed Irish laborers along with Civil War veterans and formerly enslaved workers. The Central Pacific Railroad Company, building from California to the east, employed Chinese laborers. These immigrants blasted tunnels through the mountains and hauled tons of rock, in freezing conditions they weren't accustomed to. They were generally treated abysmally.     

Union Pacific provided their laborers in the east with free meals. The Chinese workers, by contrast, were forced to procure, prepare, and pay for their own meals. While this cut into the workers' meager pay, it paradoxically worked out better in the long run, because left to their own devices, the Chinese teams ate much better food. Archaeological evidence left behind during the construction tells the story of the Transcontinental Railroad workers' diet and how it fueled the massive project. Read that story at Atlas Obscura.   

Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks created the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1927 for Universal Pictures. They produced quite a few Oswald cartoons, which proved to be highly popular. Oswald introduced the idea of a cartoon character with his own personality, which was neither all good nor all bad, but made audiences relate to him as well as laugh at him. Disney made enough money from the Oswald cartoons to buy land for his new animation studio. But Disney and Universal parted ways in 1928, and Universal owned the character. So Walt and Ub came up with a different character of their own they eventually named Mickey Mouse. Universal cranked out Oswald cartoons until 1938, then relegated him to comic books.

In 2006, Disney regained rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and 95 years after his debut they have a brand new Disney animated short featuring Oswald's classic physics-defying rubber hose humor, with the dialogue-free black-and-white style of the 1920s. Read more about Oswald and what he means to Disney at Gizmodo.

An unconventional shade for an unconventional time:
a new vision. Color of the Year 2023: PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta

Vibrating with vim and vigor, a shade rooted in nature descending from the red family demonstrating a new signal of strength.https://t.co/vxEQlBykRT#Pantone pic.twitter.com/pRIP6bI2NH

— PANTONE (@pantone) December 2, 2022

The Pantone Color Institute may or may not have any influence on an everyday person's style (honestly, did you ever recall seeing a lot of their previous colors of the year?), but they still pick one color they predict will be big for the coming year. They've made that announcement for the year 2023, and it's #18-1750 Viva Magenta. Pantone's Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman said,

In this age of technology, we look to draw inspiration from nature and what is real. PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta descends from the red family, and is inspired by the red of cochineal, one of the most precious dyes belonging to the natural dye family as well as one of the strongest and brightest the world has known.

Cochineal dye, also known as carmine, is made from the cochineal insect, a tropical cactus parasite. Pantone lauds the color as promoting joy and self-expression. NPR says,

Some skeptics would point out that magenta doesn't technically exist, since there's no wavelength of light that corresponds to that color.

Of course it exists. There's already a range of products Pantone is promoting with the color.  

As always with these kinds of lists, your mileage may vary. I am known for loving cherry cordials, but the brand makes a big difference. I love the ones with liquid centers, and cannot abide the ones with white cream in them. They aren't that difficult to eat, but it's a hoot (and a mess) to watch a kid try one for the first time. Mefites have a bone to pick with the chocolate orange, as the critics at Candystore.com got one with a cream center, and the classic Terry's chocolate orange is delicious orange-infused chocolate. I agree that Peeps and reindeer corn are just out of their league and should stay in their own holiday. It's been many years since I've even seen Christmas nougat. How about you? Do you love some of these candies that others hate? Read the justifications for the worst Christmas candies at Candystore.com. -via Metafilter

The No Shave November guys (previously at Neatorama) are back, with their annual cosplay photo to show off the beards they grew during the month. Every year since 2013, five friends (originally six) from Ventura, California, get together to grow beards during November to support cancer awareness among men, and every year they end the month with a different themed photoshoot, where they have portrayed lumberjacks, firemen, Vikings, and everything in between. This year they went with fantasy, dressing as a jester, wizard, king, warrior, and executioner. And they made a video of their photoshoot!



A good time was had by all. Yes, this completes ten years of No Shave November pictures. As one redditor noted, two more and they'll be able to put out a calendar. Too bad every month will be November.  

Too small? You can see an enlargeable gallery of all ten years of pictures here. -via reddit

Oh yes, it's a jolly Christmas indeed when you walk through the neighborhood and spot a gremlin lying in wait with a baseball bat, ready to brain you. Is this image supposed to engender good cheer and happy holidays? It wasn't exactly an outlier among Christmas cards from 100 years ago or more, which could be fairly disturbing. It could have been an attempt to elicit a laugh at other people's expense. As Mel Brooks once said, “Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.” Maybe that's what the designer of this card had in mind.

"Thoughts of you." That almost seems like a threat! But since there were a lot of these weird Christmas cards around in those days, maybe they were taken as the comedy they were intended to be. You can see a roundup of 20 disturbing vintage Christmas cards at Mental Floss.   

Now that the movie Cocaine Bear is being promoted as "based on a true story," people are clamoring for the real account. You can read the story of the drug dealer, Andrew C. Thorton II, at Wikipedia or in the book The Bluegrass Conspiracy. Thorton's last adventure was also the basis for a storyline in the TV series Justified.

But what about the bear? I realized that our previous post from years ago is suffering from link rot, so you might wonder how the bear came to be stuffed and displayed at Ky for Ky's Fun Mall. The bear, affectionately named Pablo EscoBear after the notorious drug lord, didn't leave any documentation of its life outside of eating 75 pounds of cocaine. However, his death was just the beginning of a wild story that involves a necropsy, taxidermy, Las Vegas, Waylon Jennings, a traditional Chinese medicine shop, theft, and wildfire. Read the whole crazy story at Ky for Ky.  -via Metafilter

The film previously known only as Indiana Jones 5 now has a title: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. We don't yet know what the title means, but we do know a few things about the movie. The opening set piece is set in the 1940s, which required computer "de-aging" to make Harrison Ford look like he did in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The rest of the movie is set in 1969 against the backdrop of the space race. Indy is supposed to be 70 years old in the film, well in line with the 80-year-old Ford's abilities. Mads Mikkelsen plays the villain, which is loosely based on Werner Von Braun. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will open in theaters on June 30, 2023. -via reddit

I had never heard of the Turntable Paradox until just now, but it makes me want to search through the basement for a working turntable and a billiard ball. Steve Mould explains how a solid ball set on a turntable will just roll along and chill for quite some time before eventually leaving off the side. Other objects are affected by centripetal force and get slung off pretty quickly. What's going on here? Mould explains the physics behind the Turntable Paradox, but it still looks like magic to me.  -via Laughing Squid