There's a reason why people say "pics or it didn't happen." Way before we had photography, people could tell tales that had no basis in truth and not only would people have no reason to doubt them, their fantasies would often end up in art or even books. We are familiar with exotic animals described by medieval travelers and then badly translated into art. But there were also tales of monsters that never existed at all, yet had some purpose in analogies or in adding to the storyteller's reputation. We know about unicorns and baselisks, but here we also learn about grotesques, the cynocephali, the tarasque, the griffin, blemmeys, and the tree that grows geese. There's a one-minute ad in the middle of this video. -via Everlasting Blort 

1. Johnny Damon, the dude had the sickest flow and beard with the Red Sox. Only to have to stripped when he went to the Yankees. pic.twitter.com/8JtDvTPrrT

— Levi (@GrizzlyShmadams) March 14, 2022

If you watch the New York Yankees play baseball from a distance, meaning the cheap seats, you have to be really tuned into the team to tell the players apart. Their jerseys do not have the players' names on the back, and they don't have distinctive hair. Yankees are expected to shave and keep their hair above their collar. When the team signs a new player, the news comes with a trim (the Tweet above has nine examples in the thread). It's been that way for almost 50 years now.

The clean-shaven era for the Yankees began when George Steinbrenner, along with 11 other investors, bought the team in 1973. At the time, Steinbrenner said that the investors would be hands off. "I’ll stick to building ships," he said. That didn't last long. You might be surprised at what changed Steinbrenner from an absentee investor into a micromanager. It was flowers.

The rules about facial hair that Steinbrenner instigated have a little wiggle room- mustaches and sideburns are allowed, and players have pushed the envelope over the years. But as other teams have relaxed or dropped grooming codes, the Yankees still expect a clean shave and short haircut, even after Steinbrenner died in 2010. Read the story of the clean-shaven Yankees at Mel magazine.

You might like the browser map game Back of Your Hand, in which you are quizzed on the map locations of your own town. But beware, if you normally navigate by GPS, or if you know how to get around but never pay attention to street names, you will not do well. I scored 80% on my town, because there are some subdivisions I've never been to. You can change the location by zooming out on the map and then zooming back in elsewhere, like the place you grew up in. I did much worse for the place I grew up in, because it has changed considerably in the past 40 years or so. Another tip- zoom in and replace your pin on the road before you confirm your choice, because you'll be penalized by how far your guess is away from the correct answer. Good luck.  -via Boing Boing

Wait, wait, before you bail out because of the title, there's a perfectly logical explanation. This is not a recipe.

Placenta cake was a delicious dessert from ancient Greece and Rome. It was made of multiple layers of thin dough, with honey and cheese in between. It sometimes included nuts and figs. After baking, the cake was covered in more honey. The Greek name for the cake was plakous, which in the Roman language became placenta. What you really need to know is that the cake came first. The body organ that mammals develop during pregnancy is named after the cake!

Placenta cake appears to have been quite popular, and was exported to other countries, where it was adapted into many different traditional sweets, such as baklava.  -via Fark

WMT-TV (now KGAN-TV) Channel 2 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, went from broadcasting in black-and-white to color with some ceremony during their local news broadcast on April 14, 1967. I don't know if other stations did that with quite so much aplomb, but news anchor Bob Bruner managed to keep his cool. You must imagine thousands of people at home watching this who wondered what they were talking about because their TVs couldn't receive color signals, and a few dozen homes where the viewers were amazed.  

When I was a child, it never occurred to me that the TV signal went out from the station in black-and-white or color. I just knew that our TV only worked in black-and-white, while my grandparents' TV was in color, as well as that of some of my wealthier friends. But switching to color transmission was a big deal for broadcasters. -via Laughing Squid

Statistics_Data_Facts made a chart showing how living arrangements have changed over the past 55 years for Americans ages 25-34 years old. The data comes from the US Census Bureau. Lifestyles have changed for this age group considerably. The biggest difference from 1967 to 2021 is the decrease in the percentage of those people who live with their spouse. Sure, more people are living with a partner without getting married, which is the pink line, but not enough to explain the plunge. Another chart combines the two, and it still plunges. Other factors include the rising age of first marriage, which has been going on a long time, extended education (with long term loans), and an economy that makes marriage appear out of reach.     

There are other charts that break down the statistics even further by sex. The percentage of people living alone has remained fairly stable over time, but has alway been higher for young men than for young women. This is understandable, for reasons that have to do with both economics and safety. However, men have slightly overtaken women in living with parents or other relatives over time. You can see the full sets of charts at Statistics_Data_Facts. -via Digg

In October of 1962, US spy planes found evidence of nuclear missiles from the Soviet Union building up in Cuba. This was bad news. The Joint Chiefs of Staff urged the president, John F. Kennedy, to send in air raids to warn the Soviets. Instead, Kennedy ordered a blockade to stop Soviet ships from bringing in more missiles. This is now known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the height of tensions in the Cold War.  

But at the same time, the US and the USSR were engaged in a different competition, the Space Race. This involved scientists who wanted nothing to do with war, but still wanted to be tops in space. In October of 1962, they were focusing on sending three unmanned probes to Mars, which had to launch during a planetary alignment between October 24 and November 4. Only decades later did we find out what happened at the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch site in what is now Kazakhstan. Rocket scientists Boris Chertok and Sergei Korolev were excited about the Mars mission when the real world crashed in them. The word came down from Moscow: the mission was postponed, the military was taking over the launch site, and the space program was suddenly pivoting to launching nuclear missiles aimed at the US.

Read what happened from Chertok's and Korolev's point of view, that of space exploration professionals who just wanted to do their job instead of starting World War III, at Ars Technica. -via Strange Company

What do you know about sea stars? Well, let's see. They used to be called starfish, but we changed that because they aren't fish. And if they lose an arm, they can grow it back. That's pretty much it. But Ze Frank knows a whole lot of interesting things about sea stars, and as always, he finds the most entertaining way to tell us about them. Spongebob Squarepants' best friend Patrick is a sea star that walks upright on two limbs, but real sea stars have several ways of walking, all of which are pretty creepy. They have feet coming out of their arms and an eye where a hand should be! If you think that's weird, wait until you see how they eat. And when you think it can't get any weirder, Ze looks at some sea star relatives which all have their own weird anatomy, defense mechanisms, and eating methods. Oh yeah, and to raise the squick factor, they have various reproductive strategies, too.  

After watching this video, I honestly wonder how science fiction screenwriters can possibly think that it's feasible for alien life to resemble humans at all. There are just too many other ways of doing life. Then again, it would be expensive if not impossible to get sea creatures to memorize lines.

When is a $20 bill worth $396,000? January 2021.

In 1996, someone at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) facility in Fort Worth, Texas, must have been snacking on a banana while working. The $20 bills they were printing go through three different stages of inking, and somewhere between the second and third stage, a banana sticker fell onto a bill. The third stage of printing was printed over the produce sticker. This left a very rare mint error, called a retained obstruction printing error. It came to be known as the Del Monte note. 

A student noticed the sticker in 2003 and sold the bill for $10,000. It went up for auction in 2006 and drew $25,000. Heritage Auctions sold the Del Monte note again in January of 2021, expecting to get $25,000 to $50,000 for it. The bidding went up to $396,000, setting a world record for an error note. That is one really expensive banana sticker!  -via Kottke

Dream of waking up & seeing Antarctica in all its glory? Penguins plodding around, the sun peeping over snow topped mountains. A job like no other. Join us & help protect Antarctica's heritage & conserve its precious environment. Apply by 25 April. https://t.co/NPSf6dKLdi pic.twitter.com/GmJYIq5w1m

— UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (@AntarcticHT) April 4, 2022

The UK Antarctic heritage Trust is looking for people to work in Port Lockroy on Goudier Island off the Antarctic Peninsula. There are three positions open, Base Leader, Shop Manager, and General Assistant. Port Lockroy is a museum and historic site, and one of few tourist stops on the continent. It's been closed for two years due to the pandemic, which is why they are recruiting new employees for the 2022-23 season.

The position of Base Leader is just what it sounds like. You supervise everyone else and will be responsible for everything. The Shop Manager will run the gift shop. Lest you laugh, every year, Port Lockroy receives around 18,000 tourists from cruise ships in the Antarctic summer. You will also run the post office, and are required to monitor the wildlife and environment, with a report due in March. That's the penguin-counting part. You'll also help out with the museum. The third position is that of General Assistant, which means you will help out at the museum, gift shop, and post office, plus monitor supplies and give lectures to tourists when the ships arrive. You'll also keep a blog and do some public relations work and advertising.

These jobs all sound like a neat Antarctic adventure. But be aware that the conditions are fairly spartan. You'll be rooming with the other staff, there is no running water, electricity is limited, and while emails may be sent by satellite, there is no internet access or mobile phone service. You'll also have to do your share of the cooking. The nearest doctor is in Argentina. Showers may be taken when cruise ships are docked. Read more about the recruiting campaign at UPI, and submit your application here. -via Fark

Her name was Louise Weber, but as a dancer in the chic Paris nightclubs, she became known as La Goulue ("The Glutton" in English) because of her habit of drinking up patrons' refreshments as she danced by. She was also called "The Queen of Montmartre." She snuck away from her family's laundry business at age 16 and danced in clubs around the Paris suburbs, building her reputation. La Goulue debuted at the Moulin Rouge in 1891 and reigned as their star for four years. She danced an early version of the can-can called the chahut and charmed audiences with her outrageous behavior. La Goulue became one of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's favorite subjects.

By 1895, Weber had saved enough money to strike out on her own. She invested in her own traveling show, but she did not dance- she instead became a lion tamer! Read the story of La Goulue at Europeana. -via Everlasting Blort

Digital effects made with computer power opened a whole new world as to what movies can be. But knowing, or just feeling, that the latest action film was whipped up by digital effects companies instead of actors on a set leaves us feeling a bit cynical about the entire entertainment industry. Or does it? TIFF Originals lays out the evidence. In certain movies, digital effects leave us with a bad taste in our mouths, while others sell it so well we don't care. They break down the making of Mad Max: Fury Road as the main example. People loved the practical effects, the real vehicles, the stunt men risking their lives, and the stars who went through hell to make the movie real. However, every scene in the film was enhanced with digital effects. It appears that the difference may be the characters. We know when real people are doing real things, it makes the movie seem more real. -via Kottke

Joseph Mikulec is not a household name these days, but 100 years ago, he was a celebrity that you might meet on the street. He was famous for walking all around the world, collecting autographs. Born in 1878 in Croatia, Mikulec began hiking the world around 1900. He told people he met that a publishing company in Croatia had offered him big money if he would walk 25,000 miles and write about his experiences. We don't know how true that was, but he walked six continents and collected autographs of famous people. The more publicity he received for the stunt, the more access he got to the movie stars, political figures, sports stars, and wealthy movers and shakers whose signatures he sought.

In the 1920s, Mikulec walked across the US, adding autographs and eventually becoming an American citizen. He compiled his autographs, along with travel souvenirs and newspaper clippings, into a huge volume that weighed 60 pounds. Still, relatively little is known about Mikulec, including anything at all after 1929. But the book of autographs has resurfaced, and is now for sale. Read what is known about Joseph Mikulec, the "Globe Trotter," at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

The movies in The Lord of the Rings trilogy total more than 11 hours. It was an awesome story, though, and many of us sat through the whole thing in theaters without an intermission. But does LOTR pass the Bechdel test? To do so, a book or movie must have three things: 1. at least two women 2. who talk to each other 3. about something other than a man. To show that LOTR indeed passes the test, Eight Foot Manchild made a supercut of the scenes in the movie in which women talk to each other. He said he scanned more than 13 hours of footage, which means the extended versions. That's a lot of work! And I guess that the movie technically passes.

A commenter pointed out there was  there was another scene in which these same two characters, Morwen and Freda, talked as the mother put her child on a horse. And they talked about the child's brother. Other fans pinpointed a couple of scenes in which a woman says the equivalent of "Hi!' to each other. I suppose that would make it better. Yet the top discussion at reddit was about the lack of dialogue between Legolas and Frodo. -via reddit

I recall some serious arguments in the my childhood between kids who insisted wrestling is fake and those who insisted it's real. What did we know- we were kids. According to Simon Whistler, the audience for professional wrestling was pretty much in on it from the beginning. Oh, wrestling was as serious as prizefighting and horse racing back in the day, but in the early part of the 20th century, spectators realized that legitimate wrestling was rather boring. Promoters stepped in to make it more exciting, and it became "staged" (which is a better description than "fake"). Those who produced the matches did anything they could to put butts in the seats. It wasn't long before betting died out of pro wrestling, but there was always money in tickets and later on TV. And there were plenty of other sports one could place a bet on.

This latest video from Today I Found Out goes through the history of wrestling and the steps taken to make it entertainment. You can skip to 1:18 to get to the subject matter. -via Boing Boing

You can also read the story of pro wrestling in our previous articles, The Man in the Mask and The Legend of Gorgeous George.