If you are American and have nothing else in the refrigerator, you probably have mustard and ketchup. Even if you don't use them often, it's nice to have them available. But how did they originate? Mustard began as mustard seed, used as a medicine and a spice.

The paste-like form of mustard showed up roughly 2500 years ago. The Greeks and Romans blended ground-up mustard seeds with unfermented grape juice, or must, to make a smooth mixture. The first version of this concoction wasn’t necessarily food—it may have been used more for its medicinal properties, and not completely without reason: Mustard seeds are rich in compounds called glucosinolates, and when these particles get broken down, they produce isothiocyanates, powerful antioxidants that fight inflammation and give mustard its nose-tingling kick.

The Greeks and Romans applied mustard’s medicinal properties to almost every ailment imaginable—Hippocrates even praised its ability to soothe aches and pains. Many of mustard’s historical uses don’t hold up to modern science—for instance, it’s not a cure for epilepsy, as the Romans once believed—but it’s still used as a holistic treatment for arthritis, back pain, and even sore throats.

The whole idea of mustard as medicine reminds one of "mustard plaster," a term that confused me in childhood because that use had already died out by then. Read how both mustard and ketchup were developed and turned into modern condiments at Mental Floss. A video is included if you'd rather watch than read. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Anita Hart)

In the early 20th century, prizefighting was even more uncivilized than it is now. While fights between Black boxers and white boxers drew crowds, heavyweight title fights were segregated. There was the "World Heavyweight Champion," who was by default white, and a separate "World Colored Heavyweight Champion." But Jack Johnson worked for years to get the chance to fight heavyweight champion Tommy Burns, and defeated him in 1908. Former champ Jim Jeffries was brought out of retirement to win the title back.

Their fight, hyped as the “Battle of the Century,” took place in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910, in front of 20,000 mostly-white spectators and nine motion picture cameras. Throughout the nation, many thousands more listened to live telegram bulletins of each round. Johnson beat Jeffries easily, and, as a result, racist mob violence broke out across the country, and Black Americans celebrating Johnson’s win were attacked, and some were killed.

The fight was filmed, the film was banned, and therefore became the movie everyone wanted to see for years afterward. Vox has the story. -via Damn Interesting

She's upset that these guys were following her and trying to get her attention. They just wanted to alert her of the gas hose she's dragging. Real or staged? Yeah, getting this embarrassment on video seems too good to be true, but it's also behavior that doesn't seem too out of the ordinary to have happened somewhere. It reminds me of the movie Trains, Planes, and Automobiles, when a car tried to flag down our heroes going the wrong way on the highway. -via Digg

At the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Edison experimented with an electric car. It was not the first electric car, but Edison's battery was different. This battery had its drawbacks, one which may turn out to be a benefit 120 years later.

Edison had outfitted his car with a new type of battery that he hoped would soon be powering vehicles throughout the country: a nickel-iron battery. Building on the work of the Swedish inventor Ernst Waldemar Jungner, who first patented a nickel-iron battery in 1899, Edison sought to refine the battery for use in automobiles.

Edison claimed the nickel-iron battery was incredibly resilient, and could be charged twice as fast as lead-acid batteries. He even had a deal in place with Ford Motors to produce this purportedly more efficient electric vehicle.

But the nickel-iron battery did have some kinks to work out. It was larger than the more widely used lead-acid batteries, and more expensive. Also, when it was being charged, it would release hydrogen, which was considered a nuisance and could be dangerous.

In the 21st century, you've heard about the possibilities of hydrogen power. The problem is that it's difficult to produce hydrogen. A research team from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are revisiting Edison's nickel-iron battery to assess its function in both power storage and hydrogen production, and the results so far look pretty good. They named their version of the battery the "battolyser," a gadget that Batman would be proud to use. Read about the potential of the battolyser at BBC Future. -via Damn Interesting

The meme that just won't die has gotten the LEGO treatment! LEGO artist Ochre Jelly went ahead and put his toy pixels to work and created sculptures of the Hollywood Housewives, and Smudge the cat.



And then he uses these images to illustrate his own (mostly LEGO-themed) jokes. Click the image to the right to see more.



And since I've discovered Ochre Jelly's Instagram account, you can continue reading to see more of his internet memes in LEGO that you may have missed or haven't seen in a while.

A TikTok video asked people to share the dumbest tattoo they ever got. Leah Holland wins this one, although it was an unfortunate accident of timing.

Leah Holland, 25, had wanted to get this specific tattoo for two years before she finally did it.

"Basically I had a friend that said this quote about me," she told BuzzFeed News. "We were just talking about things that we really admire about the other person, and he said, 'You courageously and radically refuse to wear a mask.'"

She said she's the type of person who thinks it's pointless to pretend you're something you're not, so she liked the quote enough to get it tattooed.

She got it done on March 4, 2020. Two days later, Kentucky announced its first case of COVID-19.

Holland is not anti-mask, and was so mortified as time went on that she spent most of the summer wearing a cardigan. Read her story at Buzzfeed.

(Image credi: Leah Holland)

You might have never heard of the Great Smog of 1952, or you may have been introduced to it by an episode of The Crown on Netflix, like I was. While London is notoriously foggy, it was infinitely worse than usual on December 5, 1952, when a combination of fog and air pollution reduced visibility to only a few feet.     

The smog smothered the city for five days. Transportation came to a virtual standstill. Flights were grounded and trains cancelled. Only the Underground was running. Ambulance services were affected, leaving people to find their own way to hospitals. The fog even seeped indoors though windows and doors. Plays and concerts were cancelled because the audience were unable to see the stage.

Remarkably, there was no panic as Londoners were accustomed to fog. But the death toll increased. Most of the victims were the very young and the elderly with pre-existing respiratory problems. Estimates of how many people died during that period vary from 6,000 to as high as 12,000.

The smog was produced by a combination of weather, geography, and several sources of air pollution. Read about the factors that produced the smog and what's been done about them at Amusing Planet.

Neel Veterinary Hospital in Oklahoma City shows us a four-day-old puppy that has six legs! The veterinarians cannot find any record of such a case where a puppy has survived birth, but the female puppy, named Miracle and called Skipper, seems to be relatively healthy.   

She has a type of congenital conjoining disorders called monocephalus dipygus and monocephalus rachipagus dibrachius tetrapus which simply means she has 1 head and chest cavity but 2 pelvic regions, 2 lower urinary tracts, 2 reproductive systems, 2 tails and 6 legs among other things.

Skipper now has her own Facebook feed so you can find out more, keep up with her progress, and see videos. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Neel Veterinary Hospital)

The Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in 1620 and began a settlement called Plymouth. That's where our history classes about the region begin, but what happened before that? New England was home to 69 villages, each with a few thousand residents of the Mashpee Wampanoag people. The spot where the PIlgrams settled was previously a town called Patuxet. Wampanoag historian Steven Peters tells us what happened to Patuxet.

In 1616, we think the village of Patuxet becomes ground zero for what became the Great Dying. There was a plague that ripped through the Wampanoag nation where there are estimates of over 100,000 Wampanoag dying in just three short years. There were accounts of a French fishing ship that had wrecked off the coast of Patuxet, and of some of the fishermen coming into the village exhibiting signs of sickness, with yellowing of the skin and fever, and dying. Shortly after that, the plague just starts to rip right through the Wampanoag nation. Everyone in Patuxet either dies or fled the village, and they never returned. And that’s how the village of Patuxet ends up vacant in 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived. We know that the Pilgrims knew about the Great Dying, and they also must have known that that village of Patuxet was empty when deciding to make that Plymouth Colony.

The Pilgrims survived with the help of the Wampanoag, especially Tisquantum, who spoke English. Read what was going on in Massachusetts before the Pilgrims landed at Atlas Obscura.

Juanita Moody dropped out of college in 1943 to serve in the US Signal Intelligence Service, analyzing coded messages during World War II. She stayed on after the war, rising in the ranks of the SIS despite being both a woman and a civilian, until she was in charge of intercepting data from most of the world. By the 1960s, that included Cuba. The SIS had by then become the NSA, charged with data collection which was then handed over the CIA for analysis. That became an issue when it came to the Soviet buildup of arms in Cuba, as the White House wanted to be kept up-to-date with any new information, and Moody's boss Louis Tordella was wary of skipping over the CIA.

Impressed by her expertise, alarmed by what she had to say, and perhaps concerned that no one was providing the White House with this level of detail about an aggressive military buildup in Cuba, [assistant secretary of defense Edward] Lansdale asked Moody to write up her findings. Along with a few colleagues, she spent the next three days and nights compiling “wheelbarrow loads of material” into what she called “a special little summary for the assistant secretary of defense.” When she was done, Moody urged Tordella to “publish” her report, meaning circulate it among the intelligence agencies, the White House, the State Department and the military. Cautious not to step outside NSA’s prescribed role, Tordella rebuffed her, but he did send it to Lansdale, who sent it to President Kennedy, who returned it with his initials—signaling he’d read it. “I told my troops, ‘Keep this updated,’” Moody said of her report. “‘If you get anything to add to it, do it immediately and tell me.’”

Over the next few months, Moody repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, pleaded with Tordella to release her updated report. By early 1962, she said she was “really getting scared.” The amount of military equipment piling up in Cuba didn’t square with the Soviets’ repeated assertions that it was all “defensive.” Details about Soviet technicians “moving around in Cuba” were especially worrisome, and by this point the NSA likely knew the Soviets had moved surface-to-air missiles (not to be confused with ballistic nuclear missiles) to Cuba as well.  

Moody was determined to rush data to the president, and the CIA was not happy about it. Read the story of Juanita Moody's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the rest of the NSA career, at Smithsonian magazine.

(Image credit: Department of Defense)

You might expect that imported pop culture would be changed somewhat in order to be better understood in a different country, or to make it more relatable. That's not the only reason things get changed. Sometimes it's to make the finished product more lucrative, as in getting enough episodes of a TV show to sell in syndication. But one movie in this list was changed beyond all reason.

It's mind-blowing to think of Casablanca without Nazis, and without World War II. That's the whole point of the story! You can imagine it turned out to be about ten minutes long. I had to look that story up, and it's true. The German version of Casablanca brought the movie down from an hour and 42 minutes to an hour and 17 minutes, and wasn't particularly well received. See other movies and TV shows that changed dramatically when they crossed borders at Cracked.

Last week, NASA landed another robot on Mars, one with its own helicopter, using a sky crane, 131 million miles away, after a journey of a year and a half. Now, NASA has released a video that shows the Perseverance rover landing on the red planet. Even if you watched the coverage live, this is something special. The point of view is from several GoPro-type cameras installed on the various components.

The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft's descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface.

Notice the graphics at the bottom to keep us up on what stage the descent is in. It also contains audio from Mission Control and a reaction shot when it's all said and done. If all that's not exciting enough for you, there's also a fan version with music.    -via reddit

Daft Punk released their first video in five years today. "Epilogue" is mostly a clip from their 2006 film Electroma, and it serves as a goodbye to everyone. This video may be disturbing to sensitive viewers. Yes, the duo have broken up, or maybe just retired after 28 years. Read more about it at Pitchfork.  -via Metafilter

In the summer of 1959, polio swept across Canada, causing panic among parents who feared for their children's lives and health. In Quebec, there were thousands of cases, and 88 people died. Folks lined up for vaccinations, but the supply of vaccine could not keep up.

By August, Montréal was waiting desperately for more vaccines. It was a great relief when a huge shipment of the cherry-red vials arrived from Connaught Labs at the end of the month. The supply was enough to cover the city, and the surplus was planned for redistribution across the province.

Yet the redistribution never came to pass. One man by the name of Jean Paul Robinson, a temporary vaccine worker, had found the circumstances too enticing. Robinson had been tasked with running vials between the various clinics. He knew there was a shortage and that people were desperate. He also knew where the main supply of vaccine was stored: at the Microbiology Institute in the University of Montréal.

At 3 a.m. on Aug. 31, 1959, Robinson and two accomplices broke into the university armed with revolvers. They first locked the night guard in a cage with 500 lab monkeys. The thieves then broke the lock on the massive refrigerator, looted all the cases of the vaccine and stole the guard’s car as the getaway vehicle. In the end, they made away with 75,000 vials, valued at $50,000 (equivalent to almost $500,000 today). Robinson rented an empty apartment building and stashed his prize.

The crime shocked the country. The next day, the city announced it had completely run out of its vaccine supplies. Reporters seized on the situation, publishing reports of desperate mothers turned away from vaccine clinics in vain.

While the vaccine was infinitely valuable, one has to wonder what Robinson thought he was going to do with 75,000 vials of it. The vaccine had to be kept cold, or it would lose effectiveness. Selling it would only draw scrutiny. It turns out that Robinson hadn't really thought his cunning plan all the way through. Read the story of the polio vaccine heist at The Conversation. -via Damn Interesting

For some reason I've been offered my first covid jab and am now wondering whether I'm actually much older than I think I am

— Liam Thorp 💙 (@LiamThorpECHO) February 16, 2021

Liam Thorp, the political editor of the Liverpool Echo, got a notice from the National Health Service that he needed to come in for a COVID vaccine. Thorp is 32 years old and has no condition that would warrant a vaccine at this stage of the rollout. Why was he flagged to get one? He called to ask if it were really his turn, which led to some checking. His doctor later called back to say there had been a mistake and he wasn't due for a shot yet.

I mean I’ve put on a few pounds in lockdown but not that many

— Liam Thorp 💙 (@LiamThorpECHO) February 17, 2021

For reference, a BMI of 40 or more is considered morbidly obese - so I'm not sure what this would have made me.

The man's nervous tone cracked into a laugh when I joked about putting on weight and losing a significant amount of height during the lockdown.

If I had been less stunned, I would have asked why no one was more concerned that a man of these remarkable dimensions was slithering around south Liverpool.

Of course, the story went viral, and Thorp is now known as "the Morbidly Obese Pancake Man." You can read the entire story at the Liverpool Echo. -via Nag on the Lake