In the 1860s, separate railroad companies worked to connect the eastern US railroad system with the west coast. The Union Pacific Railroad began work at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and built westward. They employed Irish laborers along with Civil War veterans and formerly enslaved workers. The Central Pacific Railroad Company, building from California to the east, employed Chinese laborers. These immigrants blasted tunnels through the mountains and hauled tons of rock, in freezing conditions they weren't accustomed to. They were generally treated abysmally.     

Union Pacific provided their laborers in the east with free meals. The Chinese workers, by contrast, were forced to procure, prepare, and pay for their own meals. While this cut into the workers' meager pay, it paradoxically worked out better in the long run, because left to their own devices, the Chinese teams ate much better food. Archaeological evidence left behind during the construction tells the story of the Transcontinental Railroad workers' diet and how it fueled the massive project. Read that story at Atlas Obscura.   

Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks created the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1927 for Universal Pictures. They produced quite a few Oswald cartoons, which proved to be highly popular. Oswald introduced the idea of a cartoon character with his own personality, which was neither all good nor all bad, but made audiences relate to him as well as laugh at him. Disney made enough money from the Oswald cartoons to buy land for his new animation studio. But Disney and Universal parted ways in 1928, and Universal owned the character. So Walt and Ub came up with a different character of their own they eventually named Mickey Mouse. Universal cranked out Oswald cartoons until 1938, then relegated him to comic books.

In 2006, Disney regained rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and 95 years after his debut they have a brand new Disney animated short featuring Oswald's classic physics-defying rubber hose humor, with the dialogue-free black-and-white style of the 1920s. Read more about Oswald and what he means to Disney at Gizmodo.

An unconventional shade for an unconventional time:
a new vision. Color of the Year 2023: PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta

Vibrating with vim and vigor, a shade rooted in nature descending from the red family demonstrating a new signal of strength.https://t.co/vxEQlBykRT#Pantone pic.twitter.com/pRIP6bI2NH

— PANTONE (@pantone) December 2, 2022

The Pantone Color Institute may or may not have any influence on an everyday person's style (honestly, did you ever recall seeing a lot of their previous colors of the year?), but they still pick one color they predict will be big for the coming year. They've made that announcement for the year 2023, and it's #18-1750 Viva Magenta. Pantone's Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman said,

In this age of technology, we look to draw inspiration from nature and what is real. PANTONE 18-1750 Viva Magenta descends from the red family, and is inspired by the red of cochineal, one of the most precious dyes belonging to the natural dye family as well as one of the strongest and brightest the world has known.

Cochineal dye, also known as carmine, is made from the cochineal insect, a tropical cactus parasite. Pantone lauds the color as promoting joy and self-expression. NPR says,

Some skeptics would point out that magenta doesn't technically exist, since there's no wavelength of light that corresponds to that color.

Of course it exists. There's already a range of products Pantone is promoting with the color.  

As always with these kinds of lists, your mileage may vary. I am known for loving cherry cordials, but the brand makes a big difference. I love the ones with liquid centers, and cannot abide the ones with white cream in them. They aren't that difficult to eat, but it's a hoot (and a mess) to watch a kid try one for the first time. Mefites have a bone to pick with the chocolate orange, as the critics at Candystore.com got one with a cream center, and the classic Terry's chocolate orange is delicious orange-infused chocolate. I agree that Peeps and reindeer corn are just out of their league and should stay in their own holiday. It's been many years since I've even seen Christmas nougat. How about you? Do you love some of these candies that others hate? Read the justifications for the worst Christmas candies at Candystore.com. -via Metafilter

The No Shave November guys (previously at Neatorama) are back, with their annual cosplay photo to show off the beards they grew during the month. Every year since 2013, five friends (originally six) from Ventura, California, get together to grow beards during November to support cancer awareness among men, and every year they end the month with a different themed photoshoot, where they have portrayed lumberjacks, firemen, Vikings, and everything in between. This year they went with fantasy, dressing as a jester, wizard, king, warrior, and executioner. And they made a video of their photoshoot!



A good time was had by all. Yes, this completes ten years of No Shave November pictures. As one redditor noted, two more and they'll be able to put out a calendar. Too bad every month will be November.  

Too small? You can see an enlargeable gallery of all ten years of pictures here. -via reddit

Oh yes, it's a jolly Christmas indeed when you walk through the neighborhood and spot a gremlin lying in wait with a baseball bat, ready to brain you. Is this image supposed to engender good cheer and happy holidays? It wasn't exactly an outlier among Christmas cards from 100 years ago or more, which could be fairly disturbing. It could have been an attempt to elicit a laugh at other people's expense. As Mel Brooks once said, “Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die.” Maybe that's what the designer of this card had in mind.

"Thoughts of you." That almost seems like a threat! But since there were a lot of these weird Christmas cards around in those days, maybe they were taken as the comedy they were intended to be. You can see a roundup of 20 disturbing vintage Christmas cards at Mental Floss.   

Now that the movie Cocaine Bear is being promoted as "based on a true story," people are clamoring for the real account. You can read the story of the drug dealer, Andrew C. Thorton II, at Wikipedia or in the book The Bluegrass Conspiracy. Thorton's last adventure was also the basis for a storyline in the TV series Justified.

But what about the bear? I realized that our previous post from years ago is suffering from link rot, so you might wonder how the bear came to be stuffed and displayed at Ky for Ky's Fun Mall. The bear, affectionately named Pablo EscoBear after the notorious drug lord, didn't leave any documentation of its life outside of eating 75 pounds of cocaine. However, his death was just the beginning of a wild story that involves a necropsy, taxidermy, Las Vegas, Waylon Jennings, a traditional Chinese medicine shop, theft, and wildfire. Read the whole crazy story at Ky for Ky.  -via Metafilter

The film previously known only as Indiana Jones 5 now has a title: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. We don't yet know what the title means, but we do know a few things about the movie. The opening set piece is set in the 1940s, which required computer "de-aging" to make Harrison Ford look like he did in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The rest of the movie is set in 1969 against the backdrop of the space race. Indy is supposed to be 70 years old in the film, well in line with the 80-year-old Ford's abilities. Mads Mikkelsen plays the villain, which is loosely based on Werner Von Braun. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will open in theaters on June 30, 2023. -via reddit

I had never heard of the Turntable Paradox until just now, but it makes me want to search through the basement for a working turntable and a billiard ball. Steve Mould explains how a solid ball set on a turntable will just roll along and chill for quite some time before eventually leaving off the side. Other objects are affected by centripetal force and get slung off pretty quickly. What's going on here? Mould explains the physics behind the Turntable Paradox, but it still looks like magic to me.  -via Laughing Squid

You might look at these maps and think, "come on now, there couldn't be that much variety in which toys each nation likes best." And you'd be right. The clue is in the title here. Last year, ToyZone made maps of each nation's most popular toy, and the results were about what you'd expect- game consoles ruled the world, with a few places preferring Barbies or LEGO. That might be accurate, but it makes for a boring map. In their map this year, they gathered the data on the toys with the most Google searches in each country, and then compared each answer with the popularity of toys in surrounding nations. So while these toys are popular, the "uniquely" part comes in when a toy is searched more in one nation than the others. That's why Lincoln logs are the toy mapped for the US. It's not that Lincoln Logs are all that popular; it's that no one else in the world plays with them. The rest of the world buys LEGO, Duplo, or Nanoblock building toys.

Personally, I think these maps would be more useful if they were broken down into age groups, but that's difficult when your research consists of analyzing Google searches. There are world maps of toys broken down into categories, such as dolls, building blocks, board games, and video game consoles. See the maps for each continent, category, and the world at Toy Zone. -via Metafilter

A drug transport went bad in 1985 and led to a plane ditching $15 million dollars worth of cocaine, which landed over the woods of Georgia. A bear found some of the cocaine and ate 75 pounds of it. The story became a legend in Kentucky, where the drug smuggler was from (he died parachuting from that flight). The bear is even on display in Lexington! Ever since the story came out in the papers, people have been talking about the movie that should be made from the story. For a long time, it fell into that category of "not believable enough." But times have changed. Now, Cocaine Bear has become a reality.

Watch the first trailer above, which contains several F-bombs. The movie appears to be a bloody gore-fest that is also a comedy. It has been highly fictionalized, since no one actually encountered the bear before it died, but can you blame them for bringing us an extra-large bear in a cocaine rage? Cocaine Bear will be in theaters February 24th. -via reddit

Kitchen appliances that do one thing only have to be very useful to stick around for hundreds of years. The waffle iron is an exception. Sure, we can do without waffles, but who doesn't love the taste of hot fried batter with extra crust and little spots that hold syrup? Waffle irons were a part of medieval kitchens long before the use of electricity. People found it well worth the effort to heat up a heavy iron device over the fire for a plate of waffles. The oldest known waffle recipe was recorded in 1393, although we have found waffle irons that are even older. Today we are just as likely to pop waffles into a toaster as to mix up the batter ourselves. Or even order them at a restaurant. Atlas Obscura takes us behind the scenes to explain three different aspects of waffles: the history of the waffle iron, how Eggo waffles came about, and the origins of San José’s delicious green waffles.

(Image credit: Georg Flegel)

It would be nice to have some oversized Christmas decorations for your yard that aren't the same as everyone else's, but that means spending a lot of money. Unless you make them yourself! Jen and John Yates of Epbot created a variety of decorations that turned their neighbors' home into a giant gingerbread house! The gingerbread man you see here is cut from a panel of pink foam insulation, and his eyes and buttons are tree ornaments cut in half. They also explain how they made peppermint stick columns, a giant mint lollipop, starlight mints, and these huge wrapped candies, which ended up in a tree.

The wrapped candies are the easiest to make, requiring only a trip to Dollar Tree and a few minutes to assemble, plus you can take them apart and reuse them next year. The rest of the projects involve some painting, but nothing that requires specialized power tools or a workshop. See a video of the finished house here. The process of making all these decorations is explained and illustrated at Epbot.

If you're wondering why the post is titled "part 2," it's because part 1 is about decorating the same house last year.

Ah, the joy of dancing as you rapidly try on a series of toupees. Yeah, and you thought at first this guy was wearing tribbles on his jacket. It's astonishing how good each of these toupees look, even when slapped on in a hurry. Sure, it's advertising, but it's also fun to watch! Stay with it; there's a surprise later in the video. This is asiantoupeedude, also known as asianwigman on TikTok. He has an extensive gallery of videos showing how he helps people have hair where was was no hair there, including himself. He is not bald, but shaves his head to make these demonstrations easier. That hairless spot sure makes it easier to change styles every few seconds! The fact you can dance in them is another selling point. He says he is working on launching an online store. In case you're wondering, the song is 家财万贯 (DJ版). That's "Rich Wealth" in English.  -via reddit

In 2018, a science experiment went viral because it involved six doctors swallowing LEGO heads just to see how long they would take to pass through their digestive systems. Now the doctors involved have reunited in an article to explain their methods and motivations. Emergency physician Dr. Andrew Tagg was always interested in the many things children swallowed. The most common are coins, followed by plastic toys. There was already research in how long it took to poop out a coin, but none on plastic toys. Meanwhile, frantic parents were searching through toilets to find what had been swallowed. But there was a second motivation, shared by many research doctors- the thrill of an article that might be published in the famous December issue of the British Medical Journal, where odd and often funny studies are highlighted. That desire helped Tagg recruit other pediatric doctors. Then they had to set the parameters, agreeing on coordinating their bowel movements and their methods of searching through them. And they had to choose their toys.   

I don’t think anyone specifically went out to buy Lego heads to find which was the tastiest looking one to have. It was much more of a case of which head had the best-looking face to swallow. You want one that looks kind of shocked and scared as it goes down.

Four years on, the doctors give us the lowdown on what they went through to test the passage of the LEGO heads. You won't regret reading it. -via Metafilter