A long barrow is a Neolithic underground chamber, found in many places across Europe. Not all were dug out from the ground, as it was easier to build the chamber, then heap earth over the top, creating a mound. It was even easier if you started with a depression in the ground or a hill. But what were they for? The newest Neolithic long barrows are thousands of years old, and were possibly used for different purposes in different eras, but were often used as tombs. We don't know for sure if that's what they were originally designed for.

These prehistoric chambers are not exactly safe for the general public to explore, so Tom Scott visited Soulton Long Barrow, which was built over the last ten years with modern safety standards in mind -and lighting. This barrow is part of the Soulton Hall estate in Shropshire, where you can stage a wedding or book a vacation.

The world's longest ultramarathon will begin on August 30 in Jamaica, Queens, New York. It will also end in Jamaica, Queens, New York. It's the annual Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race, which will take place every day beginning at 6AM until midnight, for 52 days. The goal is to complete 3100 miles in that time, so each runner needs to complete almost 60 miles each day to stay on track. The distance coupled with insufficient sleep (for those who need the entire 18 hours each day) will be exacerbated by the monotony, as the route is barely over a half-mile long, and must be run over and over and over again.

It takes a special kind of runner to participate in such a grueling event, but plenty of people have done it. This year's runners are nine men and five women, all accomplished ultramarathon runners, most of whom have run this race before, some many times.  

The annual race was founded by Sri Chinmoy, a spiritual leader and athlete who promoted self-transcendence through meditation and peace through athletic competition. The race itself was founded in 1985, and expanded to 3100 miles in 1997. You will be able to follow the progress of the runners each day through the race website. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: John Gillespie)

I don't recall when it happened, but when I heard that young people were drinking a lot of Jägermeister, I thought it might be because the green bottle and the spicy medicinal taste came across as an available substitute for absinthe. Silly me, those young people didn't know what absinthe was. Maybe it's the taste of cough syrup that makes one feel like one is drinking something illicit, especially when cut with ultra-caffeinated Red Bull. But Jägermeister has been around a long time. Long before it was available in the US, German people were using the liqueur as a digestif, which led to using it as cure-all. After all, if it taste like medicine, it might work as medicine. It might surprise you to learn that Jägermeister is a direct descendant of vinegar, although through business, not chemistry. Weird History Food takes us through the story of how Jägermeister was developed, marketed, and imported.

We saw in the latest Slow Mo Guys video how tattoo guns do not inject ink, but rather create holes in the skin that the ink automatically fills by capillary action. That same technique is a way to diagnose scabies. Scabies is a skin parasite that burrows under the top layer of skin and causes severe itching and overall misery.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a case study in which a man who had been itching for months was diagnosed by putting a "purple skin marker" (which sounds like something that we would call a Sharpie) on an itchy patch and then wiping the ink off with alcohol. The ink remained in a burrow under the skin, indicating that scabies had tunneled through. It's not the most pleasant way to get a tattoo, but the man was diagnosed and was able to get proper treatment for the skin mite. -via TYWKIWDBI

The Sally Lightfoot crab (Graspus graspus) is rumored to have been named after a Caribbean dancer, because they are agile and fast. They can only eat during low tide, when seaweed is exposed on the rocks offshore. That means every day they need to travel out to those rocks. They are indeed light-footed, leaping from rock to rock to get to their feeding grounds. Why don't they just swim? Because moray eels and octopuses are waiting for the daily pilgrimage. These predators will even leave the water to chase down a tasty crab dinner! Nature is brutal.

It's a treat any time we can watch a nature documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough. This segment is from the BBC TV series Blue Planet II. It's not only beautiful and informative, but quite dramatic as we follow a crab on the dangerous route to his daily feast.  -via Born in Space

At the turn of the 20th century, European monarchs were all related to each other through Queen Victoria's children, if not through earlier international marriages. This big happy family took a blow when Tsar Nicholas II was arrested in Russia in 1917 and then executed along with his family in 1918. For years, European royalty blamed King George V, leader of the massive British Empire, for not rescuing his cousin.

But all along, the British Consul at Ekaterinburg, Thomas Hildebrand Preston, who was stranded in Siberia during World War I, was working feverishly to protect the British citizens around him and the Romanovs from the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary factions. As far as the Tsar's family was concerned, his efforts were futile. Ekaterinburg was liberated just a few days after the execution.

Preston continued his diplomatic career, and found himself in Lithuania when World War II broke out. In 1939 and 1940, he wrote out at least 1200 British visas for Lithuanian Jews, many of them illegal. After retiring from the diplomatic service, Preston worked to set the record straight when rumors of surviving Romanovs cropped up, which happened often, especially concerning the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Read about the unique diplomatic career of Sir Thomas Preston at Helen Rappaport's blog. -via Strange Company

We tend to learn history in segments, often separated geographically. We learn European history separately from Asian history or American history, and end up with a timeline in our heads for each of them. But if you pick a year, things were happening in all those places and more. Another thing that warps our sense of time is that many of the things we think of as "modern" are much older than we realize. They just weren't part of our everyday lives until they became affordable. When we link these disparate items and events together, it can mess with our sense of time. Who knew that Mohandas Gandhi was lurking around London during the killing spree of Jack the Ripper? Not that he was a suspect... at least not until now. Casual Lectures has a list of historical confluences that show us how our perception of history can be confused by compartmentalization.  

In the early 19th century, a French ship was spotted sinking off the coast of England, near a small town named Hartlepool. The only survivor was a monkey, dressed in a military uniform. This was during the Napoleonic Wars, and the citizens of Hartlepool had never seen a French person before. They interrogated the monkey, who responded in a manner they couldn't understand. Obviously it was speaking French. The monkey was tried on suspicion of being a French military spy, convicted, and hanged in public.

Was any part of this story true? While it sounds like an urban legend, making fun of the people of Hartlepool for not knowing the difference between a Frenchman and a monkey, there are possible elements that could have been mangled enough to result in this tale. Either way, the legend has survived long enough that Hartlepool has learned to embrace it. The story is reflected in their sports teams, and they even have a statue of the monkey at their marina! Read about the legend of the town that hanged a monkey at Amusing Planet. 

Rheinhessen, Germany's largest wine region, has a peculiar architectural legacy gaining notice as these buildings are turned into restaurants, cafes, and wine-tasting businesses. These are "cow chapels." Step into one, and you have the feeling of being in a church from hundreds of years ago. The large rooms and vaulted ceilings seem almost holy. But these repurposed buildings were once stables for cows. Why would anyone ever build a barn with vaulted ceilings?

That's an interesting story that goes back to the French Revolution, when one thing led to another and some dairy farmers ended up with land that held empty churches. It would be wasteful to tear down a church just to build a barn, so the cattle were fed and sheltered in these churches. That doesn't mean the current cow chapels were churches turned into stables. Those few early churches had certain architectural benefits that inspired other farmers to build their barns using the design of churches, and that's how cow chapels were born. The full story of these unique barns can be read at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Gabriele Röhle)

We've long given names to hurricanes to keep up with them, and The Weather Channel started naming winter storms in 2012. But more people die due to heatwaves than to either hurricanes or blizzards. In that vein, meteorologist Guy Walton started naming heatwaves. Heatwaves have been named before, but not in the US. Last year, Walton gave heatwaves the names of dragons, such as Smaug, which killed 60,000 people in Europe. This year, he is giving heatwaves the names of oil and gas companies, to highlight their role in climate change.

Walton names heatwaves at category three or higher, which are heatwaves that are expected to kill people. In 2023, he's already used Heatwave Amoco, Heatwave BP, and Heatwave Chevron. The extreme temperatures currently around Portland, Oregon, where readings are more than 20 degrees higher than normal, got the name Heatwave Citgo. Walton has a list of twenty companies to use in alphabetical order. He explained his criteria at his blog, Guy on Climate. It is unlikely that any global association or governing body will adopt any naming convention for heatwaves, as the definition of a heatwave varies by country and by reporting organization. -via Kottke

A 5,300-year-old mummy discovered in the Alps in 1991 was so perfectly preserved that he's become world famous, and has been endlessly studied. We call him Ötzi after the place he was found. Scientists have examined every inch of Ötzi the Iceman, down to the cellular level, including the bacteria he carried, his clothing, and even the pollen caught in the fabric. They studied the remains for his medical history and the reason his body was so well preserved. But how did he die? Researchers first thought it could have been the cold weather, or any number of physical maladies catching up with him, but it wasn't old age. Years of forensic examination have determined that Ötzi was murdered. And further study is bringing us clues as to how that happened, in what's been called the world's coldest cold case. Catch up with what we know about Ötzi's death with this animated TED-Ed lesson.    

When there's a death in the family, you are devastated, and everyone knows it. They rush in to comfort you and help you through your grief. But that's not all you need. You need to know what to do right now, what to expect, and how to legally get their affairs in order, all at a time you are emotionally fragile and confused. The website My Parents Are Dead: What Now? takes you through those steps of getting things done, from moving the body to dealing with mourners to dispersing possessions to settling probate. The skeleton decorating the site is the "self-care skeleton" who has tips at the end of each section for de-stressing a little.

While this guide may seem irrelevant to you now, you should learn these things before you need them. If you haven't already done so, you will someday confront the death of your parents, unless you go first. And that makes the first section, the "to die" list, especially important regarding not only your parents, but you as well. Preparing ahead of time will be a wonderful way to make things easier for your children or other heirs when the time comes. Also, there's nothing like disposing of someone's else's possessions that will inspire you to pare down your own collection of stuff. -via Metafilter

Remember back in 1979 when you first saw the movie Alien and were horrified to see that the xenomorph queen had another set of jaws inside her jaws? That is actually pretty common sight in the world of fish, not restricted to the goblin shark we've seen before. Ze Frank introduces us to a variety of fish who appear to turn themselves inside-out to reach out for something good to eat. Nature is metal.  

Anyway, that's only the first few minutes of this video. It's actually another edition of Ze Frank's Animal Awards, which this time mostly go to the weird ways of fish, but also include birds and one strangely unlucky frog. As usual for the True Facts series, this video can be considered NSFW. There's also a one-minute skippable ad at the five minute mark. In case you missed them, you can watch the previous editions of Ze Frank's Animal Awards.

Scientists have previously managed to decode words from brain brain wave recordings taken from speech and languages areas of the human brain. Now they have managed to decode music. Patients who have electrodes attached to the surface of their brains were played a song. "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd, while their brain waves were monitored. The data from the brain waves were analyzed with the help of artificial intelligence and translated to sound. What came back was muffled, but rhythmic, and the words "All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall" were audible. You can hear that translated sound at the Guardian article. The researchers are convinced that the data would render better sound if more electrodes were used, placed closer together.

What does this mean? The research is intended to find ways to allow those with disabling neurological conditions to communicate using brain waves, which would be a boon to victims of stroke or ALS. Or if you want to look at the dark side, it means that artificial intelligence can read our minds. However, artificial intelligence has yet to learn how to implant electrodes in human brains. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Susan Vickery)

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was a 19th century politician and author who was the first to begin a novel with the line "It was a dark and stormy night..." (the entire twisted sentence is here). In his honor, San Jose State University holds an annual contest challenging writers to come up with the opening line of the worst possible novel. The entire novel, luckily, does not exist. The winners of the 2023 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. The Grand Prize winner is Maya Pasic of New York City, for this gem. 

She was a beautiful woman; more specifically she was the kind of beautiful woman who had an hourlong skincare routine that made her look either ethereal or like a glazed donut, depending on how attracted to her you were.

There are also winners in many varied literary categories, from children's books to Westerns. I was particularly taken with the Fantasy & Horror opening line, by Drew Herman of Midlothian, Virginia.

In obedience to the Thousand-year Mandate of Hawksrealm, following the prophecy of Glenfrik the Morrowsayer, Klagnar and his (thus far) loyal Deathsword Warriors journeyed countless skyturns across the Burning Plains of Hellsplat and the Great Eastern Doomsea to an immense, shining folkshive that more or less resembled Fresno, but with a more genre-appropriate name.

Read the winners in all categories, plus plenty of Dishonorable Mentions, at the Bulwer-Lytton contest site. -via Fark 

(Image generated with the Pulp-O-Mizer)