In 1995, Saturday Night Live saw a mass exodus in its cast. Most of the departures were voluntary, but Adam Sandler and Chris Farley were fired with no notice. Sandler, who had been with SNL for five years, had been laying out his plans for what he would do going forward on the show when he learned the truth. Farley went on to make movies, but then tragically died in 1997. Adam Sandler has been making movies ever since, and has brought in billions in box office dollars. He is now considered a talented dramatic actor as well as a comedy legend. What appeared to be a blow for Sandler's career at the time turned out to be a blessing in disguise. But was it the right thing for Saturday Night Live? Who knows what would have happened if things had gone differently. Nerdstalgic takes us back to 1995 for the story. -via Digg

Nigerian Ife head: Why UK police are holding a priceless sculpture Foto: Charly Levin de Grazia Hoffman Original Ife bronze heads, of which only some 20 survive, are thought to be about 700 years old. https://t.co/xmzovVLy7c BBC News - World

— Café negrito por favor (@cafecitonegrito) June 26, 2022

The bronze head shown above is a 700-year-old treasure of the Ife culture, part of the Yoruba Kingdom in what is now Nigeria. There are only 20 of these heads known to still exist. In 2017, one was presented to Woolley and Wallis auctioneers in London. The agent for the auction house said it would be worth around £20 million ($24.5 million), if it weren't stolen property.

The Jos Museum in Jos, Nigeria, had this head in their collection until 1987, when a gang of thieves made off with nine of the museum's most prized treasures. Most are still missing. However, this Ife head resurfaced in 2007 when an antiques collector bought it in Belgium at a confiscated art auction held by the Belgian police! The Belgians have no explanation for how that happened. The Ife head disappeared again until it turned up in London ten years later. Woolley and Wallace took the sculpture to British police, who have had custody of the head for five years now.

Nigerian authorities want to know why they can't have their bronze sculpture back. The sticking point seems to be the antiques collector, who insists he bought the head legally, and wants to be paid, at first €5 million, but now will settle for €39,000. Nigeria does not want to pay for its own stolen property. The ball appears to be in Britain's hands, but five years later there is no progress in the case. Read the weird story of the stolen head at BBC News.  -via Strange Company

How do you send a bookmobile around to places where there are no roads? In the 1930s, eastern Kentucky was full of tiny towns, coal camps, and isolated homesteads, but very few drivable roads to connect them. There were also few libraries, and they had few books. The Great Depression only made conditions worse. To fight illiteracy and help the small rural schools, the WPA launched a New Deal program called the Pack Horse Library Initiative, to deliver books to the most inaccessible Appalachian hollows by librarians or other "book women" riding horses or mules. These librarians and other volunteers had to supply their own horse, but they were paid a dollar a day, which was more than most people in the area were making at the time. They went above and beyond the call of duty, not only delivering books, but reading aloud and teaching classes. Local libraries and volunteers provided the books, and even made some books to share with people who otherwise wouldn't have any exposure to literature of any kind. -via Nag on the Lake   

You probably never thought about how old the sport of water skiing is, but it couldn't have been much of a sport before personal motor boats were a thing. The man who invented water skiing was Ralph Samuelson, an avid snow skier, who wondered if it would be possible to ski on water. He was only 18, but this is exactly the kind of thing 18-year-old men do. He tried using snow skis and various homemade boards on Lake Pepin, and finally had to design and build his own water skis. He then had to work out the best procedure for getting on top of the water by trial and error.  

After many attempts, Samuelson was able to stand up on water skis in July 2, 1922, behind a boat his brother was piloting. The site of that accomplishment on Lake Pepin, and the town of Lake City, Minnesota, are also the locations of this weekend's 100th anniversary commemoration of the birth of water skiing. Sadly, Ralph Samuelson didn't patent water skis, and someone else did a few years later. But his place in water sports history is safe. Read about how water skiing came about 100 years ago at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Scinauticando.com)

Roy and Moss are Norwegian forest cats living in Switzerland. The puzzle they are confronted with is designed for dogs, but can be fun for cats, too, if they don't claw the treats out from the top or stick their face down in it like Roy does. I would imagine most cats would knock the whole thing over in a few minutes, and then fight with each other over the treats. But Moss, on the left, stumbles upon the solution once, then seems to remember it for a second attempt. The third level is baffling, though, as that handle is on Roy's side, and the cat is too polite to invade his brother's space. But he finally figures it out. You can almost see the gears going around in the cats' heads. Well, at least Moss's head. Roy is happy to let his brother do the heavy thinking. See more of Roy and Moss at Instagram.  

The Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, or in English, the Perfume and Pharmaceutical Officine of Santa Maria Novella in Florance, Italy, is the oldest pharmacy still in business. It was established by the monks of the city who were growing and experimenting with medicinal herbs in the 13th century. One grateful and wealthy patient built them a chapel which became their laboratory for making medicines. In 1612, it opened to the public to sell concoctions like Seven Thieves Vinegar to ward off plague, ladybug liqueur, and the world's first alcohol-base perfumes.

The apothecary is still open to the public, but it's also a museum because it has changed little since the 16th century. You can still buy  Seven Thieves Vinegar under the name Aceto Aromatico. The pharmacy has other locations, too, and even a website to sell their products. Read a short history of the Santa Maria Novella pharmacy at Messy Nessy Chic.

We knew that Auralnauts was planning a series about Larry, a previously obscure Star Wars character who looks a lot like Ewan McGregor. It appears they made their fundraising goal, because episode one is here! The first three minutes are a less-than explanatory montage setting up the story. Then Larry explains his party background to Luke Skywalker. They managed to take clips from many different Star Wars films plus Obi-Wan Kenobi and make it a lot of fun. The first episode mainly deals with Larry trying to borrow some cash. Auralnauts say there will be six episodes in all, just like Disney+'s Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries. -via reddit

We have regular banks for storing our money. We have blood banks and milk banks to distribute life saving bodily fluids. We have sperm banks. The latest idea for storage that might be of benefit to one's health is a poop bank. It has become more common to treat digestive problems caused by the bacteria Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) by cleaning out a patient's digestive biome with antibiotics, and then performing a fecal transplant to establish a new colony of digestive bacteria. But there's the possibility that another person's bacterial colony might not be best for our bodies. A new science paper from researchers at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital posit that it may be time to establish the option of storing one's own poop when they are young and healthy for possible autologous transplant is and when they ever need it. They call it a stool bank. In fact, there's already one in the US.

Yeah, there are quite a few unknowns. What conditions should a, er, stool deposit be kept under for years? Would the essential bacteria survive freezing, drying, or long term storage at all? How much energy would such a project require? And would it be only available to the wealthy, like umbilical cord blood, eggs, or frozen heads? Read more about the concept of a stool bank at Gizmodo. 

(Image credit: Flickr user mary hodder)

In Altoona, Pennsylvania, they serve pizza in squares with each portion holding a slice of salami and a square of American cheese. St. Louis pizza is made on unleavened bread and topped with Provel cheese instead of mozzarella. Colorado's giant pizzas are sweetened with honey. We hear a lot about New York style and Chicago style pizzas, but many places have their own pizza traditions, which you might think are weird or which you might want to plan a road trip around. Each style has a story behind it, even if that story is lost to time. Check out six different pizza styles that go against the grain of the chains, and where to get them, at Atlas Obscura.

We don't know which is the "last" of anything until quite a bit of time passes afterward. The last human born will be someone we will never know about, because that means the human race will die out. Kurzgesagt doesn't have all the answers, but presents some important ideas in a thought experiment. There are a lot of variables in even speculating about a species dying out, especially the one species doing the speculating. We are currently doing our best to destroy our earth, but we are also exploring the idea of living on other worlds. We may slowly (or quickly) evolve into something that is a bit different, but more likely to survive.

While it may be depressing to think about the end of humanity, the best case scenarios are unimaginably far into the future. Kurzgesagt is actually quite optimistic about our future, if we can make it through the next couple hundred years. The subject is only ten and a half minutes long, the rest is promotional.

Wow, there are a lot of superhero movies if you can rank a list of the 50 best! Besides the two dozen or so Marvel Cinematic Universe films of the last 15 years or so, there are plenty of Batman, Superman, and other DC comics films. And then there are superhero movies you didn't think of right off, like Robocop and The Incredibles. Yes, animation is represented in this list, too, and some films from outside the US. And more of them are based on comic books than you may even know. You might agree, or more likely, disagree with the rankings, but after you calm down you'll have fun reading about some movies you haven't seen in a ranked list from Rolling Stone. While I can't argue about the ranking myself, I'm happy to say that I have actually seen four of the top ten. -via Digg

(Photo illustration by Matt Cooley)

Two weeks later, our emu is still carefully sitting atop his nest of adopted goose, duck, and chicken eggs.. he may actually hatch something. In emus, only the males incubate eggs and care for babies, the females lay eggs and bounce; that's the end of parenting for them. pic.twitter.com/hQsgnn03SZ

— Foxfeather Zenkova (@foxfeather) May 27, 2022

Foxfeather Zenkova is a wildlife rehabilitator and educator, and has a coop. In this coop are chickens, geese, turkeys, ducks, and now an emu. The male emu is just doing what comes natural, as emu females lay eggs and then take off, leaving the male to warm the eggs and then raise the young. This guy takes his responsibilities seriously, even though they aren't his eggs, or even his species. On June 23rd, the eggs began to hatch!

The best dad and his tiny child. pic.twitter.com/teggWmFwxq

— Foxfeather Zenkova (@foxfeather) June 24, 2022

He seems to be quite a patient and caring father. The chicks that have hatched so far are chickens; the other species will take longer. Before this is all over, this one emu dad could have his own menagerie!

Good morning from BB-8 and too many tiny emus!

You can hear him hissing and growling, the babies hiding behind him because the dogs were with me as I was doing morning chores.

Any dog could be a dingo and is not to be trusted (if you're a new emu dad, anyway). pic.twitter.com/RrxzGcTIaj

— Foxfeather Zenkova (@foxfeather) June 28, 2022

There are more pictures of this family you can see in the Twitter thread.  -via Metafilter 

Considering this True Facts video is about beavers, Ze Frank plows through it with an astonishing lack of sexual innuendo. Maybe he wants to be sure it will be picked up by external sites. Works for me. That said, it's quite interesting. Beavers are rodents, but you'd never know it by their behavior. They swim, eat trees, and build dams. Here we find out why and how they do those things, which includes taking a deep dive into the structure and composition of teeth. I now know more about horses' teeth because I watched a video about beavers. Yeah, there are jokes, but even without them, this would be interesting. There is a one-minute ad in the middle.   

You most likely never heard about monkeypox until last month when an outbreak was reported in Europe and America, but the disease has been around a long time. It was first identified as a distinct disease in 1958, when a band of monkeys in Copenhagen, Denmark, were found to have it. The first human ascertained to suffer from monkeypox was a baby in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1970. The disease is believed to be endemic in some nations of Africa, and has probably been around for thousands of years. It's not even particular to monkeys. The first person in the US to be infected was a three-year-old who was bitten by her pet prairie dog in 2003, and the virus has been found in a variety of animals.  

Monkeypox is somewhat similar to smallpox, although not as deadly. There is some evidence that a smallpox vaccine will give some protection against the virus that causes monkeypox. And that's caused a run on smallpox vaccine in the northern countries, leaving Africa with fewer reserves. In fact, some experts relate the current fuss about monkeypox to the AIDS scare or the smallpox eradication program. Read what we need to know about monkeypox in a short history here.

(Image credit: NIAID)