You've heard of the infinite monkey theorem. It states that "a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare." It has been used to describe the work here at Neatorama, but we don't have any monkeys. It's really about the idea of randomness. No one expects monkeys to learn how to write, but how much time would elapse before a certain set of words could be produced by random typing? There have been actual experiments to test this theorem.

Getting your hands on infinite monkeys is a bit challenging, let alone hiring infinite zookeepers to clean up infinite piles of feces, so computer programmers have attempted to simulate the monkeys using random text generators. One of the first attempts, in 2004, saw a tiny bit of success when one of the monkeys bashed out the phrase 'VALENTINE. Cease toIdor:eFLP0FRjWK78aXzVOwm)-‘;8.t', the first part of which was in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

That took the simulated monkeys 42,162,500,000 billion billion monkey years. The entire works of Shakespeare, it's fair to say, would take a long time.

That's close enough to an "infinite amount of time." That wasn't the only experiment using random text generation to crunch the numbers. Only once has it been tried with actual monkeys, at Paignton Zoo in Devon, England. Learn how that and other such experiments turned out at IFLScience. -via Strange Company

Weird Al has ventured into the world of arcade games with a unique pinball machine themed with his illustrious career. You can get one as a standalone or buy it as an upgrade if you already own a  P3 pinball platform. The name of this machine by Multimorphic is Weird Al’s Museum of Natural Hilarity. It features a video screen, camera, hamster wheel, ball run course, five flippers, and plays 17 Weird Al Yankovic songs.

To really understand how awesome this pinball machine is, you probably need to be at least a little familiar with the Multimorphic P3 pinball system, which is way beyond anything I've ever played. But if you know what you're getting into, the whole machine, upgrades, and various accessories are for sale here. Yeah, it's expensive. If you start from scratch and get all the upgrades and accessories, you're looking at around $13,000. But it sure looks cool, doesn't it? -via Boing Boing

Musician Nahre Sol bought a tiny toy piano that has keys for only two octaves and has the rinky tink sound of a cheap glockenspiel. How do the songs we know and love sound played on this piano? Sol had to rearrange songs to fit into two octaves, and plays a bunch of them for us. Most of the songs are labeled classical, but there are also songs from movies and video games and some surprises. In other words, you've heard them all. Then she rates which ones work on this tiny piano and which don't. There's at least one note on this instrument that's out of tune, but it doesn't get used much. This is one of those videos that may seem long, but once you get started listening to the songs, you can't stop watching. -via Laughing Squid

Here's a list that will really make you want to argue! MSN went to IMDb and found ratings for science fiction TV series, the ranked the top 50. The results may seem a little strange. For one thing, it skews very much toward recent shows, which can be explained by IMDb itself, which wasn't even a thing 50 years ago, and anything internet-based is skewed toward younger users. For another thing, you have to wonder how they defined "sci-fi series," since it includes fantasy, comedy, animation, and superhero series, and especially animated superhero series. There is only one live-action series based on comic book superheroes in the top 50. The highest any Star Trek series placed is #19. And The Twilight Zone, which is mentioned in the introduction, didn't make the list. What were they thinking? Oh yeah, they were thinking that people would check out the list and argue about its contents. See where your favorites lie in this ranking. -via Fark

Sure, that leads us to a whole 'nother question: How exactly does one define science fiction?

When Julius Caesar was 26 years old, he was a long way from commanding the Roman Empire, yet he was an impressive man. He was a Roman prosecutor, known for his way with words, educated and ambitious. Caesar wasn't all that wealthy, but he had plenty of family and political connections. As he was traveling the Mediterranean to further his education, the ship was boarded by Cicilian pirates. Most of the passengers and crew were sent off to be sold in slave markets, but the pirates could tell from his appearance and his demeanor that Caesar would bring more profit by holding out for a ransom. They suggested 20 talents. Caesar was insulted, and insisted that they demand 50 talents. The pirates took him to the island of Pharmacusa, where he lived with the pirates for 38 days while his allies arranged to pay the 50 talents. The pirates thought Caesar was funny, first because of his arrogance in demanding a higher ransom, and then by his bad poetry. But they admired his continual air of authority while in captivity. The ransom finally arrived.

As he prepared to board the ship back to Miletus, Caesar paused to address the pirates. He had no choice, he said, but to bring them to justice. Although they had failed to appreciate his poetry, they had in general treated him well, and individually he bore them no ill will. But they were, after all, pirates. And pirates must be hunted down and executed.

The pirates laughed. They whistled and cheered. He really was a fine speaker.   

Caesar was deadly serious. Seeking the pirates turned him from a lawyer into a warrior, and he hunted them down and captured them. Then he had to do it all over again, as the authorities he gave them to would rather sell them into slavery than crucify them. Read what Caesar did to the pirates at Truly Adventurous.

Ellis Brooks tells us about an accidental experiment with "dystopian food units." What he means is food that comes in shapes, colors, and/or textures that we aren't used to. A buddy gave him some ready-made meals from a delivery service that turned out to resemble astronaut food. A meal of salmon, sweet potato, and asparagus came in six squares in shrink-wrapped plastic. They are packaged that way for portability and ease of cooking, but also to control portions and ingredients. Brooks did not enjoy them.

It was like eating a sad, square-shaped memory of what food once was.

This might remind you of a certain dystopian movie that imagined what eating would be like in the year 2022. Brooks stayed with the packaged food for 24 hours to give it a chance, but ended up eating salad and licking maple syrup off a plate. Read his adventures with real but super-processed square food at OneZero. -via Kottke

(Image: Ellis Brooks)

Giuseppe Marco Fieschi built this gun to be dangerous. A former soldier and lifelong criminal, Fieschi hatched a plan to assassinate King Louis-Philippe of France in 1835. He pondered that old saying, "You come at the king, you best not miss." Not having that much confidence in his aim, Fieschi built a gun with 25 barrels to spray destruction on the monarch. The gun, later named the Infernal Machine, was designed to fire all 25 barrels at once. Fieschi positioned himself, along with the gun, on the third floor of a Paris building while the king performed his annual review of the Paris National Guard. What could possibly go wrong?

Regarding Fieschi's plan, everything went wrong. The Infernal Machine was dangerous to everyone in the Paris street and to Fieschi himself. The scene that day, as described by Amusing Planet, could have been a comedy if it weren't for so many people being killed. That eventually included Fieschi himself, who was executed for his crimes, along with two accomplices. The destruction was so profound that it's a wonder they were able to reconstruct the Infernal Machine well enough to display it in a museum.    

(Image credit: Parisette)

Tigers are revered in Bhutan, but they still try to stay away from humans whenever possible. In 2018, a large male tiger was observed hanging around the outskirts of the nation's capital, Thimphu. The tiger appeared listless and unafraid of humans. Tigers are nocturnal, but here it was in daylight, so something was definitely wrong with this tiger. Officials from Bhutan's Nature Conservation Division sent a unit out to find the tiger. A wildlife veterinarian flew in from Cornell University, concerned that the tiger might be suffering from canine distemper, which could spread to other tigers in the dwindling population of Bhutan. A local veterinarian thought the tiger might be suffering from a tapeworm that had been observed in local yaks.

It didn't take all that long to locate and capture the tiger, but figuring out what was wrong with it was another story. Read about the sick tiger and the conservationists who worked to solve the mystery at Atlas Obscura.

The History Channel series Vikings ran for six seasons and proved to be quite popular. Now Netflix is launching a sequel series called Vikings: Valhalla, to premiere Friday. The new series is set a hundred years after Vikings ended, and centers around Leif Ericsson, his sister Freydís Eiríksdóttir, and Harald Hardrada, who is Freydis' lover and Leif's close friend. All are historical characters, but Vikings: Valhalla is heavily fictionalized. You know Leif Ericsson, but who was Harald Hardrada? He was the king of Norway, a world traveler, and died while trying to invade England. Smithsonian calls him "perhaps the most interesting Viking in history."

Before you watch Vikings: Valhalla, you might want to learn what is historical about the series. For one thing, Ericsson and Hadrada were not quite contemporaries, so their relationship is just for the show. Ericsson was more of an explorer than a warrior, but he does give us a familiar name to orient us for the series. The battles depicted in the show are mostly historical, but somewhat out of order and fought by different people. You may be surprised at the appearance of a Black character among the Vikings, but Viking settlements were more multicultural than you may have realized, although not at all egalitarian. Read an overview of the action in Vikings: Valhalla and how it measures up with the historical timeline at Smithsonian.

Conan O'Brien's talk show on TBS was simply called Conan. It ran from 2010 to 2021. Jack Black was a frequent guest, and in this video explains that his first talk show appearance was on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. So O'Brien asked that Black be his final guest on the final episode of Conan, to air on June 24, 2021. Black wanted to go out with a bang, and came up with a great idea for a pre-taped skit in which he would be injured. It was all planned, except for the very real injury. That's why Black hobbled onto the stage for the final Conan segment wearing a medical boot. The plans went out the window, and O'Brien and Black winged it through the show.

Yesterday, after months of sitting at home, Black posted a video to explain the entire story behind his Conan experience. And since the bit was being taped, there's plenty of video evidence. There are plenty of funny lines, but you'll really get a kick out of the ambulance driver. We are glad to see that Black has recovered, and has grown a beard fit for a wild man. -via reddit

The question at AskReddit was for teachers: "What was the best excuse for being late that turned out to be true?" Oh, there are some great answers. The chickens were blocking the road. The bus blew up. My goat followed me and I had to take her back home. But the most highly-rated answer was pretty involved. It wasn't the student who was late, but an assignment.

I'm an English professor, and one year a pretty good student showed up without one of his 2 major term papers. He explained that his safe had been stolen by a contractor who was working on their house. His laptop was in the safe, and that's where his paper was. I genuinely believe him because he been a really good student.

But that's just the beginning of the story. The student investigated the theft himself, and ended up in a crack house bribing prostitutes. Then the Secret Service got involved because of counterfeiting. But the most important contents of the safe were recovered. It's a story you just have to read. And then the list gets into the funnier side.

"Sorry Bohemian Rhapsody came on just as I parked." - My art teacher when he was about 5:55 minutes late.

Read 40 of those stories in a ranked list at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: Flickr user William Murphy)

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive flood in US history, affecting 630,000 people and leading to structural changes in the engineering of the Mississippi River. Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie wrote a little song about it in 1929. You are probably more familiar with the 1971 version of the song by Led Zeppelin. That's the version covered by a couple of dozen musicians from all over the world, including Stephen Perkins of Jane's Addiction, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

"When the Levee Breaks" is about a terrifying natural disaster, and evokes our concern about unusual weather patterns, accelerating disasters, and environmental degradation brought on by climate change. This is the latest project from Playing for Change (previously at Neatorama), an organization that aims to connect the world through music. Read more about this video at their website. -via Digg

In the spring of 1918, families in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg, Russia) were suffering from a lack of food due to transportation challenges in the wake of World War I and the October Revolution. So they sent 782 of the city's children to the Ural Mountains in the south, to a summer camp run by a charity called the Union of Cities. There they were caught between Russian and Czech fighters and could not leave- they spent the winter at camp. Aid workers from the Young Men's Christian Association (yes, the YMCA) found the children and helped them evacuate further east, to Siberia. There, the children fell into the care of the American Red Cross at Vladivostok. Then the Japanese invaded Vladivostok, and took the children to sea. For reasons that aren't all that clear, they didn't go west through the Indian Ocean, but sailed east to the US, around through the Panama Canal, and then the children spent some time in New York City. They didn't return to their parents in Petrograd until January of 1921! What they thought would be a summer in the mountains turned into a trip around the world, which you can read about at Messy Nessy Chic.    

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Alfred Hitchcock seemed to have had an obsession with stairs. Staircases are featured prominently in many of his films, which stands out because a person going upstairs or downstairs, or just generally moving from one place to another, is the kind of thing that most filmmakers would skip to save time. For Hitchcock, it may have been an excuse to film actors from strange angles. Or maybe it represents the character's journey. Or maybe it was a way to build tension. When asked about those scenes, Hitch said, "Stairs are very photogenic."

Max Tohline compiled 39 staircase sequences from 39 Hitchcock films and named it Alfred Hitchcock’s 39 Stairs. Yes, the movie The 39 Steps is in there. The films used in this supercut are listed at the vimeo page. This video is less than three minutes long, because the compilation is shown twice.

Tohline points out that Hitchcock's very first film, The Pleasure Garden from 1925, opened with a staircase scene, and his final film, Family Plot from 1976, ends with a shot of a staircase.  -via Kottke