Fifty-four years before Marilyn Monroe starred in The Seven Year Itch, the same scene of a white dress being blown by an updraft from a sidewalk vent was shown to theater patrons. The 1901 movie was called What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City, and it was all of 77 seconds long. The film was presented as a slice of life, but it was scripted, and starred Florence Georgie and A.C. Abadie. The surviving film was in pretty bad condition. This copy has been restored and modernized by artificial intelligence.

1. Removed noise artifacts and stabilized original print.
2. Increased frame interpolation from 15 fps to 60 fps, using AI neural networks.
3. Increased to 4K resolution using AI upscaling.
4. Added color using Deoldify, a deep learning AI process.

Oh yeah, they added a bit of sound, too. The result is altogether charming. -via Nag on the Lake

The most common story of the history of Thanksgiving is the one we learn as children, either at school or from our parents. It's the short, simplified version: the Pilgrims sailed to Massachusetts for religious freedom, learned to grow crops from their native friend Squanto, and in November had a feast of turkey to thank God for a bountiful harvest. None of that is exactly accurate, but the nuances of history take some time and study to understand. UCLA historian Carla Pestana goes over some of the myths surrounding Thanksgiving, like the complicated idea of religious freedom.

There's also a narrative about religious freedom and persecution that we owe to Bradford, who says that the English king James I had harassed this little church out of England and they had to flee to the Netherlands, and that that church then came to settle Plymouth. It’s very compelling, but when they got to the Netherlands, they actually had perfect religious freedom. They don’t need to leave the Netherlands for religious freedom, and Bradford says as much; the idea that they go to America for religious freedom is just off.

I do think that in Plymouth they tended to be somewhat more tolerant of alternate religious views. Decades later when the Harvard president openly explains that he's a Baptist and has to leave Massachusetts, he goes to Plymouth. The first Quaker in Massachusetts who gets converted goes to Plymouth. I actually think that's one reason why Plymouth wins in the sweepstakes for becoming the most important founding moment in the region. They don't kill witches like Salem. They don't kill Quakers like Boston. Some of the worst things that people in the late 18th century were starting to be embarrassed about, about their ancestors, didn't happen in Plymouth.

Read more of what really happened to bring about our Thanksgiving holiday at Smithsonian.

McDonald's is not exactly known for gourmet food, but most people will agree that their french fries are pretty good- for the five minutes it takes to eat them before they get cold. But they were once better. The McDonald brothers sold a thousand pounds of fries every day even before Ray Kroc turned their operation into a franchise. So what happened to the those extra-tasty McDonald's fries?

McDonald’s original french fries were cooked in beef tallow. For that fact, they were bullied out of production by a well-funded, well-intentioned businessman and self-proclaimed health advocate named Phil Sokolof, who unknowingly dethroned what many fans claim was the greatest french fry to ever meet mass production. “The french fries were very good,” [Julia] Child said in a 1995 interview, “and then the nutritionists got at them … and they’ve been limp ever since … I’m always very strong about criticizing them, hoping maybe they’ll change.”

Child never lived to see McDonald’s fries return to their former glory, and sadly, and there’s no indication they ever will. That’s why I set out on a quest to find the original recipe.

Luke Fater not only found what he believes to be the original recipe, he also cooked them to see if they were as good as he'd heard. See that and read the history of McDonald's french fries at Atlas Obscura.

Name a more iconic duo. I’ll wait. pic.twitter.com/pxjLTKSxM9

— The Star Wars Underworld (@TheSWU) November 23, 2020

This week's new episode of The Mandalorian has the internet all abuzz, not because of anything in the plot as much as for the picture above, cropped from a promotional image released by Disney. To the left you see a person wearing jeans and a t-shirt! Who knew jeans were canon in the Star Wars universe? From the A.V. Club's review (which contains spoilers):

The Mandalorian had its Starbucks cup moment this week, as a crew member in a T-shirt and jeans appears on the left-hand side of a shot during the battle aboard the Imperial base. The gaffe even made it to the official still above, which I downloaded before this becomes a thing and Disney pulls it. (You can also see it at around 18:53 in the episode.)

And to show you how on top of things Ochre Jelly is, he's already recreated Jeans Guy in LEGO. He sent this image of a new LEGO set, and I had no idea what he was referring to ...so I looked it up. See more artwork in tribute to Jeans Guy at the A.V. Club.

The early days of space flight were quite different. Rocket scientists would sometimes even pull practical jokes on their team, such as the time Gene Kranz convinced flight director Chris Kraft that an Atlas rocket had actually taken off during a flight simulation. But a 1991 incident put a stop to all that. One Thanksgiving morning, Lead Flight Director Milt Heflin was informed that a dormant Turkish satellite could possibly collide with the space shuttle in flight in 15 minutes.

There was no way for Heflin's engineers to calculate an avoidance maneuver, wake the crew, and communicate with them before the blackout period began. Heflin was livid—why had the Air Force not given more warning about a potential collision? Typically, they provided about 24 hours' notice. By God, if that satellite hit Atlantis, they could very well lose the astronauts as they slept. The crew of STS-44 might never awaken.

An experienced flight director who had started work at the space agency more than two decades earlier during the Apollo program, conducting oceanic recovery operations after the Moon landings, Heflin was largely unflappable. But now, he grew tense. "When I think about all of my time, I don't remember ever being so nervous or upset about something as I was then," he told Ars recently.

You can see the "Turkish satellite" in the picture above. But Heflin was too busy look at it, and the joke went so far as to stop all practical jokes at Mission Control forever. Read what happened at Ars Technica. -via Digg

(Image credit: Milt Heflin)

You might enjoy playing Scrabble with your family and friends, but when you get outside your social bubble and run into a serious or even tournament-grade Scrabble player, well, that's a whole different world.

When the top players gathered in Torquay, England, last year for the World Scrabble Tournament (this year’s contest should have been this week, but has been cancelled thanks to you-know-what), it was to use ‘words’ like these in their games: dzo, ch, foyned, ghi…

Yep, that’s right; a whole lot of words that, let’s be frank about this, are not words. That’s why my spell-checker underlines them in red. The top players, you see, don’t win tournaments by being cleverer than the rest of us. They do it by memorizing a long list of non-words so they can avoid the problems ordinary players encounter.

Those words can be handy, but they're fairly incomprehensible. World-class Scrabble players don't have to know what they mean; they just have to know they are in the Scrabble dictionary. But that's not the only way elite Scrabble culture is different from that of us everyday players. Read more about top-level Scrabble culture in an article from The Spectator. Here's a non-paywalled link.  -Thanks, WTM!

(Image credit: Finemann)

This is kinda cute. They asked 100 children who the most famous person in the world is. First, the kids had to come to grips with what the word "famous" means. Some of them have a tenuous grasp of the words "is" and "person" as well. Then you get a taste of what kind of pop culture kids of different ages are getting into these days. -via Tastefully Offensive

At the beginning of the 20th century, wild turkeys were on their way to extinction, but efforts by Teddy Roosevelt and other conservationists ensured that they are thriving today. In fact, flocks of wild turkeys can encroach upon human territory, and sometimes they act in ways that make the news. It may seem funny when turkeys attack, but like geese and swans, these big birds can develop a bad temper. It isn't all that funny when you are the victim.

In 2009, the turkeys of Grand Haven, Michigan, started targeting one human in particular: the mail carrier, Doug Cody. “We can’t figure it out because anybody else can walk pretty close to them and they’ll just stay there and look at you, but even when he comes down in his truck—he’ll back his truck around and they’ll peck at the truck,” one resident told WWMT. Once, when a few menacing turkeys had cornered Cody on a resident’s porch, he called the postmaster for help. “She laughed so hard I think she just dropped the phone,” Cody said. Other postal workers treated the ongoing issue with similar levity, filling Cody’s office mailbox with turkey feathers and hanging “Wanted” signs for the fiendish fowl. Eventually, Cody took to bringing a thin plank of wood on his route to keep the birds at a distance.

Read five other stories of bizarre bird behavior at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Flickr user Judy Gallagher)

تصوير حركة نباتات خلال "٢٤" ساعة.
حياة🌿 pic.twitter.com/WeUPz1L0EC

— ميلورا (@Melora_1) September 3, 2020

Houseplants are far from static. Oh sure, they grow, and you might notice how a plant wilts and then perks back up when it's watered. But you can't sit around and watch those things happen, because they are very slow. Still, you might be surprised how much a healthy plant moves around in its daily life! The only way we can really see them do it is in a time-lapse video. This example is one of six such videos that will give you a new perspective on your plants at Moss and Fog. -via Nag on the Lake

You don’t see Christmas carolers much anymore, except maybe in shopping malls or preplanned shows, although many of us have fond memories of going caroling as children. Some houses expected us, and had treats ready when the music ended. But in the Victorian era, carolers were regarded as merely beggars, or even extortionists, who were often drunk and could get violent if they weren’t tipped well enough.     

Many people dreaded the oncoming Christmas carol season, taking to the papers many weeks before-hand to air their trepidation at the youths who, as this reader writes in October 1861, will be getting…  “their various mouths to every hinge, key-hole, letter-box, and opening of the doors and roar out in miserable discord (often two opposing companies together) names and events which all should hold sacred, the next moment running away with ribald jests, or cursing, swearing and quarrelling over the coppers they have received, as a tax to the nuisance”.

Read about the nuisance of Christmas carolers, including some accounts of violence, at News from the Past.

Jobriath was a glam rock star of the '70s you've probably never heard of. He had the looks, the talent, and the work ethic required, plus the luck to have been "discovered" by impresario Jerry Brandt, who managed Carly Simon. That led to an unbelievably lucrative record contract for its time, and a pathway to stardom.

He was the first openly gay rock musician to be signed to a major record label, declaring himself “glam rock’s truest fairy” to slack-jawed media critics and listeners alike. Touted as America’s successor to David Bowie, he was signed to Elektra Records for $500K and for a brief New York minute in the early 1970s, became the most visible homosexual figure in popular music. Everything about Jobriath screamed glam rock: the outfits, the theatrics, the vocal range, but in the end, he was destined to be the greatest glam rock star that never was. In celebration of his lost legacy, we’re revisiting his story – and finding some choice holiday tribute looks along the way…

Read about the spectacular rise and fall of Jobriath at Messy Messy Chic.

An artist who goes by the name Ukiyo Memes illustrates classic internet memes in the style of traditional Japanese woodblock prints. He calls the series Memes of the Floating World. Above you see his version of the Woman Yelling at Cat meme. He's also done Doge, Longcat, This is Fine, and quite a few others you may enjoy, which you can see at Bored Panda.

Throughout the early history the United States, Thanksgiving was a popular holiday, but a really disjointed one. A holiday set aside to feast and express gratitude would be proclaimed for a bountiful harvest, victory in battle, or even to celebrate the government. The growing number of states celebrated on different days, sometimes more than once a year. Thanksgiving was the favorite holiday of writer Sarah Josepha Hale, who fervently wished it would be a consistent celebration across the country.

For Hale, the holiday wasn’t simply about giving thanks to God; it was also about fostering national unity. The country had grown from 13 colonies to around 30 states by the mid-1800s, and Hale saw Thanksgiving as a way to collapse the physical distance between families.

“[Though] the members of the same family might be too far separated to meet around one festive board, they would have the gratification of knowing that all were enjoying the feast. From the St. Johns to the Rio Grande, from the Atlantic to the Pacific border, the telegraph of human happiness would move every heart to gladness simultaneously … ” Hale wrote in an 1851 editorial.

Those words seem especially apt for 2020, as we share the holiday on the same day, but not with far-flung family members. Read the story of how Hale got us all on the same page for Thanksgiving at Mental Floss. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: James Reid Lambdin)

There are 1,983 vertebrate species considered "critically endangered" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's famous Red List, and 235 species that are down to 50 or fewer individuals left. Many of those may be already extinct, as they have not been spotted for years. Anna Funk whittled that list down to 32 that may be still around, but are losing ground fast. You may have heard the Javan rhinoceros or the red wolf, but there are quite a few you may only ever see through this list, like the imperial Amazon parrot.

This 18-inch-tall parrot (Amazona imperialis) was once found on the mountains of Dominica, a small island nation in the Caribbean. Their population was doing all right (if 300 birds is all right) until 2017, when Hurricane Maria knocked down a third of the trees on the island and stripped the rest of their leaves and fruits. This reduced the parrot’s numbers to an all-time low. It evidently forced the birds to move outside their usual mountainy range and into the lowlands. About six months after Maria, 11 birds were spotted, but experts think there are fewer than 50 out there.  

Read about 31 more critically endangered species and why they are losing ground at Discover magazine. -via Digg

(Image credit: David William Mitchell)

November is Adopt a Senior Pet Month! To promote their wonderful older older dogs who need a home, the Flagler Humane Society in Palm Coast, Florida, did a photoshoot in which they dressed the dogs as senior citizens. With hats, wigs, glasses, and sweaters, the good dogs posed for photographer and adoption specialist Magdalena Grzona.



So far, most of the senior dogs have been adopted. See a gallery of the images at My Modern Met. -via Nag on the Lake