As many times as I've written and posted about serial killers, the world always has more crime and depravity. I'd never heard of Jesse Pomeroy until this past weekend, and now here's a list of fifteen serial killers who you probably aren't all that familiar with. Some of them flew under your radar because their crimes happened in some other country, and some of them were cases that were concluded before you were born. There are still others that should have made national news, but didn't for some reason, or else they are just relatively forgettable -of course, unless you know one of their victims. They range from the clearly psychotic to war criminals to a convenient way to collect someone else's pension checks. We've posted about a couple of these fifteen before, but there's plenty to learn in a list of serial killers at Cracked. Each killer has links to read more about them.

You know Pachelbel's Canon in D; we've posted about it enough. It provides a steady and pleasant basis for many popular songs you've heard. Well, pleasant unless you are a cellist. But pianist Hiromi Uehara performs the classic tune in ways you've never heard. It starts out in the most familiar manner, but gradually she adds jazz elements while keeping the basic bass line intact.  

Tony Williams transcribed Uehara's improvised performance so you can follow the insanity of what's she's doing in real time underneath the performance video. Note how she skillfully adds a half-beat at around the two-minute mark in order to synch the music with the offbeat clapping from the audience. She also alters her prepared piano during the song. The metal ruler gives it a harpsichord sound, but changing it while playing can't be easy. Even if you don't read musical notation, the narrative comments on the transcript add to the experience. -via reddit

In 1874, a 14-year-old boy named Jesse Pomeroy was arrested and convicted of murder in Massachusetts for the deaths of two children. He was also suspected of assaulting at least half a dozen other children, and possibly more murders. Donna Wells, a former archivist at the Boston Police Department, writes about how she fairly randomly found a photograph of Pomeroy (above), which ends up being the only known photograph of Pomeroy as a teenager. His crimes were pretty chilling.

When fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874 for the murder of Horace Millen, he was thought to have tortured at least six children and tortured and murdered two more. The two murder victims, ten-year-old Katie Curran and four-year-old Horace Millen had both been stabbed and nearly decapitated. Katie also had a fractured skull and several broken bones. Horace had also been nearly castrated, had one eyeball deeply pierced, and been set on fire. The victims that had managed to survive his attacks had suffered whippings, stabbings, beatings, which included broken noses and split lips, vicious bites to the face and buttocks, attempted castration, and attempted scalping. At the time of his arrest for Horace Millen’s murder, Jesse’s reputation in Boston as the “Boy Torturer” was firmly established.

Read how the photograph was found and identified at Murder by Gaslight. But you really want to find out what happened to the 14-year-old killer, and you can read that at Wikipedia. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Donna Wells)

When you see how this gadget moves, you can't help but say "whoa!" JK Brickworks calls it "unconventional, impractical, and completely awesome," so he had to make one of his own out of LEGO blocks. The original was the Bear Mobill toy from Bandai, but the LEGO version gives us a close-up look at how it's designed, constructed, and why it works. Just checking out what makes it go is a lesson in physics. Once he got the first version moving, he started working on the taller "Imperial" version, which isn't finished, but already resembles an AT-AT from the Star Wars universe. Yeah, while this contraption does not solve any transport problems for the real world, it makes a fascinating toy, which means it's perfect for Star Wars. After all, the AT-AT is totally impractical but looked so cool in the movies that we didn't care. -via Laughing Squid

When you're a wildlife photographer, the goal is to blend in with your surroundings, so that you don't scare off the animals 😂

🔊 sound up
credit: pets_usa pic.twitter.com/uLpEiJWA95

— Jess 🌻 (@jessi_asli) April 8, 2022

South African photographer, videographer, guide, and conservationist Nick Kleer was apparently the "high ground" that meerkats look for to stand up on and get a good look at the surrounding terrain. Here's another look at Kleer's new friends that higlight how tiny these animals really are.



See Kleer's photos of lions, leopards, elephants, and more at Instagram. -via Everlasting Blort

People who work in tropical tourist spots will tell you that monkeys love to finish off anyone's drink if they step away from from it for even a minute. The idea that monkeys seek out fermented fruit for its alcohol content in the wild has been around for quite some time, and now researchers are documenting it.  

Christina Campbell and Victoria Weaver's research on monkeys and their alcohol intake illustrates the difficulty of studying primates in the wild. Campbell, Weaver, and their team followed a troop of monkeys all day long, with the monkeys swinging through the treetops eating fruit, and the humans trudging up and down hills and retrieving the discarded fruit after the monkeys took a bite or two. And then they got urine samples from the monkeys, which shows a real dedication to science.  

What they found is that monkeys do prefer fruit that is fermented, and that they indeed metabolize the alcohol these fruits contain. They are deliberately seeking out alcohol in the foods they select. But while this shows alcohol-seeking behavior is natural and not limited to humans, the monkeys rarely get drunk. Analysis of their diet and their urine shows that over the course of a day, they may consume as much alcohol as one glass of wine. Read about the study and what it implies at Atlas Obscura.

The Harlem Globetrotters of baseball is a minor league team in Georgia called the Savannah Bananas. Only launched in 2016 after the Savannah Sand Gnats moved away, they've taken the baseball world by storm by focusing on fun and entertainment more than winning (although they win, too).

This. is. Bananas.
Welcome to Bananaland. #FansFirst #EntertainAlways pic.twitter.com/3yt2lcpv3R

— Jesse Cole (@YellowTuxJesse) September 9, 2021

They are always coming up with new stunts, like playing a game in kilts (for St. Patricks Day, which makes no sense). Their dance troupe is called the Banana Nanas. Their cheerleaders are the Man-Nanas, a dad bod cheerleading squad. Their mascot is a banana named Split. You'll find more entertaining links about the Savannah Bananas at Metafilter.

The story of Inês De Castro is so iconic and so well known in Portugal that once you've read it, you wonder why it isn't known as well as Romeo and Juliet. And they were fictional characters! Inês De Castro's story had been made into poems, plays, operas, movies, paintings, and other artworks, mainly in Portugal. The true story behind the tale is quite gripping. Crown Prince Pedro I of Portugal fell in love with Inês De Castro, his wife's lady-in-waiting, around the year 1340. His father, King Afonso IV, exiled Inês to remove temptation. But after Pedro's wife died, the two lovers lived together for years and had several children. Still disapproving, the king had Inês murdered, which led to a civil war between father and son. Two years later, Pedro was king.

That's where the historical record and the popular tale diverged. King Pedro hunted down and killed Inês' assassins and built a royal tomb for her. But as the story grew over the next couple hundred years, Pedro had Inês disinterred and make her queen of Portugal, complete with a coronation ceremony for her corpse, at which all nobles were obliged to kiss Inês' decomposing hand. It's a compelling story, to say the least. Read about the myth of the skeleton queen and how it took over the Portuguese imagination at BBC Culture. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Salvador Martínez Cubells)

The first World's Fair I recall reading about was Expo '67 in Montreal. It seemed so exciting, and I wanted to go, but I was just a kid. Then when the 1982 World's Fair launched in Knoxville, I lived relatively close by, but never bothered to go. Almost 55 million people visited Montreal, but only 11 million went to Knoxville for the fair. So what happened?

The first World's Fair took place in London in 1851. It showcased the reach of the British Empire and astounded people with demonstrations of modern technology and scientific breakthroughs. As other fairs followed, countries around the world came to show off, and there was plenty for visitors to see, including entertainment. A visit to a World's Fair was like a trip around the world. But attendance has declined since Montreal, and cities balk at the expense of reserving the land and building the required architecture. The last World's Fair in America was in New Orleans in 1984- does anyone remember that one? They are still held in other parts of the world. Read about the rise and fall of the World's Fair at Smithsonian.    

(Image credit: Anthony Conti)

Financial crimes can be irresistible to the greedy and the desperate, and there have always been an awful lot of greedy or desperate people. Victor Lustig got away with so many schemes because he conned people who were willing to break the law themselves, so it would be a problem to report him or testify against him. You might already know Lustig's story, but you'll still want to watch this video because it's quite funny in the way it tells the tale of his outrageously successful exploits that went on for a quarter-century before he actually served any time. Seriously, Lustig's life was like a screwball comedy in which so many things are going on that it's hard to keep up. You have to wonder if he might be in the running for the greatest number of crimes committed by any one man. Don't miss his list of ten rules for conmen.  -via Digg

Want to play a game of sorts? Redditor bort-bort-bort shared a picture that his 10-year-old daughter drew. Can you figure out what it is? Leave your guess in the comments, and I'll eventually let you know if you are right. Of course, you can go to the comments at reddit, but that would be cheating and less fun all around. The wrong answers in the forum there are almost as good as what was intended, but remember this is a 10-year-old girl we're talking about. I would have loved to have seen how she presented this to her father, and the laughs that came with it. 

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. That gives the planet twice as many solar eclipses as Earth (yeah, it's really more complicated than that). And now we have witnesses. NASA's Perseverance rover recorded the transit of Phobos across the sun on April 2. Mars rovers have been recording eclipses since 2004, but this is the highest-quality video sent back to earth yet. NASA scientists, who received still shots from Perseverance earlier, were tickled with the resolution and color of the video.

Phobos is much smaller than our moon, and its orbit is much more eccentric. It's also shaped like a potato. This video is not a time-lapse; the transit only took 40 seconds, much less time than any solar eclipse on earth. Phobos' orbit is slowly disintegrating, which means it will spiral down to Mars' surface, in a few tens of millions of years. So it's a good thing we have video. -via Boing Boing

When your child asks where the Easter Bunny comes from, you can now give them an exact answer: Cincinnati.

The White House has been hosting the annual Easter Egg Roll since 1878, held on the Monday after Easter. The event returned this year for the first time since 2019. If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed that the same three recognizable bunnies show every year for quite some time now, and you might have assumed that those costumes belong to the White House. But you'd be wrong. These costumes have enjoyed a continuity of care that would most likely be impossible from Washington. They were designed and built by Cincinnati costume shop owner John Schenz, who had a nationwide reputation for quality costumes. He was first contacted for a White House Ester Bunny costume in 1981.

Shenz's first White House Easter Bunny costume was a hit, but a year later he saw that the National Parks Service did not care for the costume to his standards. So when the government called him again, he not only made new costumes, he took charge of their care from year to year. Buzzfeed uncovered the story of John Schenz and his costumes, which have become an American tradition. Read how that all came about. -via Metafilter

The question at AskReddit was aimed toward restaurant servers: What’s the weirdest reason you’ve had someone send food back? Oh, you better believe the stories came out. They could be many years old, but some customers you never forget.

Lady sent her burger back, because it had sesame seeds on the bun, which she insisted are ‘made from pork’ and she didn’t eat pork…

We all started doubting our own sanity after a few minutes of back and forth, but rest assured folks, there is indeed no pork in sesame seeds. -Bleepbloopblurph

Not all of them were servers. A few were customers with confessions.

I did this once out of ignorance. I sent a plate back because I told the waiter that they hadn't rinsed their dishes properly. The food tasted like soap. The waiter looked puzzled and brought me back another plate, which still tasted like dishsoap.

And that was the day I first tasted cilantro. -LeoMarius

And here's one we should all be on the lookout for.

Someone sent a meal back because it “didn’t taste like anything” and it turned out they had Covid. -MagicPants

You can see a rundown of the 30 funniest stories about food that was sent back to the kitchen at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: www.audio-luci-store.it)

Parenting can be so stressful that sometimes you feel it's all you can do just to keep the kids fed and out of the emergency room. Occasionally, you get to slow down long enough to think about what kind of adults you want them to be: happy, independent, successful, caring, or maybe some other goals. But you can't just encourage a kid to be successful, or even nag them into it- you have to teach specific skills that will combine to give your children the best shot at making their own successful life, however they define that. And it's a long, slow process that takes modeling, repetition, practice, and seizing the teachable moment.   

Educational psychologist Michele Borba lays out seven factors that have been identified as skills that children can learn that will lead to a well-adjusted adult life. They are self-confidence, empathy, self-control, integrity, curiosity, perseverance, and optimism. She has some tips on how to teach and nurture each these qualities in your children as they grow up that you can read at CNBC. -via Digg

(Image Credit: Dominic Chavez/World Bank)