Chocolate is a magical food, but the health benefits of the cacao beans are subverted by the huge amounts of sugar and fat we use to make it palatable. What if we could make sweet chocolate without all that sugar? What if we just used other parts of the cacao fruit to do it?

Cocoa is made from fermenting, roasting, and grinding the seeds (beans) of the cacao fruit. But other parts of the fruit have value, even though they are normally thrown away. There is a layer inside the shell, called the endocarp, that contains abundant plant fiber. The juice of the pulp that surrounds the seeds is sweet. A group of Swiss scientists found that when you pulverize, dry, and combine these two parts of the plant, you can produce a sweet gel substance. Add cocoa powder, and the candy produced is almost as sweet as a chocolate bar.

This new kind of chocolate is healthier because it provides fiber to regulate sugar absorption, but it also reduces waste since it uses more of the cacao fruit. If the process can be refined, it may be possible for cacao farmers to produce finished, edible chocolate right there at the source. Find out more about this process at ScienceAlert.  -via the New Shelton wet/dry

From the branding practices of Florida tourism, you'd think that the state would be overrun with flamingos. It turns out that the iconic bird on so many Florida souvenirs, buildings, beach towels, and yard decorations is left over from the 19th century. As the 1800s came to a close, flamingos were nearly wiped out in the state because they were hunted for their feathers, used to decorate ladies' hats. That coincided with habitat loss, as Florida swamps were drained and wetlands were greatly diminished in the early 20th century. For most of the last hundred years, the Florida flamingo was fairly fictional.

But things may be changing. Conservationists have worked to restore the Everglades and other wetlands to their natural state, which is enticing passing flamingoes to stick around. Sightings of flamingos have risen year by year. Stories of flamingos appearing after hurricanes indicate that the birds are blown off course, and scientists suspect that around 100 flamingos were blown into Florida by Hurricane Idalia last year. That's not all that unusual, but this time, they seem to be sticking around in the improved Florida habitat. This time, we need to keep our hands off their feathers. Read about the return of flamingos to Florida at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Betty Wills (Atsme))

If you live alone and eat sandwiches like I do, you only have a few dirty dishes that will take forever to fill a dishwasher, so you just hand wash them. But most Americans live in families or groups of friends, and use dishwashers all the time even though they don't really know what's going on inside those things. Minute Food does the heavy lifting for you and explains what goes on inside the dishwasher that you can't see. They also explain in detail how you should load a dishwasher, which might resolve some family arguments. Dishwashers take a long time to run, but they save your time and labor, and they use the minimum amount of water to get the job done.

That said, I have the world's cheapest dishwasher, and it would not remove food from dishes even way back when it was new and worked. Don't buy the world's cheapest dishwasher.

In 1904, Charlotte Bleakley was under chloroform when she gave birth to a premature baby girl in St. Louis. She was given a dead infant to bury. But the baby had been switched with another premature girl born to an unmarried woman, possibly for nefarious reasons. That woman, who'd unknowingly had a stillbirth, left the child to be adopted. But since the baby was premature, she was sent to the World's Fair. What? The St. Louis fair had an exhibit of those newfangled "incubators" that kept premature babies alive, like the one we've posted about at Coney Island. The infant was labeled as Emily Darwin, because she looked like a chimpanzee. But she got better.

Bleakley found out her baby was alive, but allowed the wealthy Stella Barclay to adopt her. She later changed her mind, and wanted the little girl back. She kept taking the girl over and over as the lawsuits over the child went all the way to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, all the details of the custody dispute were in the papers because of the bizarre baby switch and the notoriety of the child displayed at the World's Fair. At one point, the little girl's actual relation to Bleakley was questioned, but there were no DNA tests at the time. The girl went from being Emily Darwin to Thelma Barclay to Marian Bleakley. Read about the notorious case of the incubator baby kidnapping at The American Scholar. -via Strange Company   

We know that Mount Vesuvius erupted on August 24, 79 CE, and buried the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. We've been digging through the rubble for almost 300 years, documenting the deaths of their residents. But what about the people who survived that disaster? Pompeii had 30,000 residents, and we've only uncovered a small fraction in excavations. There is evidence that many people fled. Where did they go?  

Professor Steven L. Tuck has spent the last decade tracing down the residents of Pompeii and Herculaneum who did not perish when Mount Vesuvius blew its top. The Romans kept pretty good records, considering that was almost 2,000 years ago. Many of the refugees were wealthy tradesmen and merchants, and settled in nearby towns to continue their lives, and there are records of not-so-wealthy survivors, too. Read how they coped and made new lives elsewhere, where their descendants may still live, in an article at the Conversation.   

(Image credit: Matthias Süßen)

The US battle against the New World screwworm involves breeding screwworms in a Panamanian factory so we can carpet bomb that country with bioengineered screwworms that, well, screw other screwworms. Panama is a long way from the US, yet we worked our way down there in an amazing story of parasitic species eradication that took decades and does not involve dumping tons of chemicals into the environment. And it's working! You might be squicked out by the thought of hiking the Darién Gap and the one danger you didn't prepare for being worms falling from the sky (which might make a great movie). But you will also be charmed by learning that deer love to eat doughnut holes. The program costs about $15 million a year, in case you are wondering where your couple thousand in income tax goes, but the benefits are that we get to have a livestock industry, and our booboos don't get infected with flesh-eating maggots. The video ends at 7:30; an ad follows. -via reddit

Stride of New Zealand: ancient ‘walking tree’ wins tree of the year https://t.co/EUu97CaBK1

— The Guardian (@guardian) June 5, 2024

The third annual Tree of the Year award, sponsored by the New Zealand Arboricultural Association, has been won by a 32-meter tall northern rātā (Metrosideros robusta) tree growing near Karamea. It garnered 42% of all votes in an online poll. This local favorite has earned the name "The Walking Tree" because it resembles an Ent from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings saga. Why does it grow like that? The northern rātā starts out as a type of parasite that grows on another tree. As it matures, it sends roots down to the ground, which then resemble trunks. So this tree grew down as well as up!

The Walking Tree is massive, and very old. When the land was cleared for farming in 1875, the farmer decided to leave this one standing. Read more about The Walking Tree and see the full photo in all its magnificence at The Guardian. -via Nag on the Lake

In 1977, Signet Books published a YA novel titled Rage by Richard Bachman. The author was really Stephen King, but publishers at the time thought it was unwise to print more than one book a year from any one author, so King used the pen name. Rage was pretty popular, and it was an engaging, well-written story. However, when you, here in 2024, find out what the plot involved, you will immediately see the problem. King himself eventually turned against his own novel. The author can't help that his scary stories appeal to young readers, but since then he has mainly stuck to supernatural terrors, such as drain-dwelling clowns and telekinetic prom queens. Rage has been out of print for a long time, which just drives up the price for used copies. Maybe those high prices will keep it from young, alienated, and impressionable students. Weird History explains the weird case of Rage and why it's no longer available in bookstores.  

The poem “The Rainbow Bridge” has long comforted animal lovers who are mourning a pet. But for decades, its author remained a mystery. https://t.co/i8YqEkvWaZ

— Mental Floss (@mental_floss) June 6, 2024

When a pet owner tells you that Fluffy has crossed the Rainbow Bridge, you know in an instant what that means. It is a reference to a poem that has been posted and reposted for thirty years, since Dear Abby published it in 1994. She did not have the author's name, and it remained a mystery for decades. But the first sentence in this post, while in common usage, doesn't fit with the source. If you read the full poem, a pet does not cross the Rainbow Bridge to heaven immediately, but enjoys playing with other pets, all in good health, until the person who loves them joins them to cross the bridge together. If you are tearing up thinking about it, you are not alone.

It was only last year that author and historian Paul Koudounaris tracked down the author and the real story behind "The Rainbow Bridge," which was originally written in 1959! Read how the tear-jerking poem came about at Mental Floss.

Summer officially begins, astronomically, with the summer solstice, which this year will occur on June 20, at 20:51 UTC (4:51 PM EDT). Yes, we are used to the solstice being on June 21st, but not this year. In fact, the last time the solstice was this early was when George Washington was the US president!

An explanation of this phenomena starts out pretty dense and confusing, but it's actually pretty simple. First, we get an explanation of the solstice as it pertains to earth's orbit. Then there is an explanation of how calendars work, with a history that we've covered here at Neatorama a few times. It all boils down to leap years, when we add an extra day to the year to make our calendars fall more in line with the earth's orbit around the sun. An actual year is 365.242189 days, so we add an extra day every four years to straighten it up. Every leap year makes the solstice earlier, but then non-leap years make it later again. But you can see by that fraction of a day that more adjustments were needed after a few hundred years.

In the late 16th century, more rules about leap years were added, so that century years (1800, 1900, etc) are not leap years, unless that century year is divisible by 400. The year 2000 was a century year divisible by 400, so it was a leap year, the first century leap year since the Gregorian calendar was finalized. Therefore, we have now had a long string of leap years every four years, making the solstice earlier than ever. This is all explained mathematically at Big Think.

(Image credit: Jfishburn)

This video contains NSFW language.

My high school math teacher once offered a bonus question for extra credit on a test. It was "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Explain." I think I was the only one who bothered to answer it. I just wrote "I Am the Walrus." That 1967 song from the Beatles was hard to memorize because the lyrics didn't make any sense, and most of us chalked it up to the band's drug use. Did John Lennon really write the lyrics to deliberately be nonsensical, or was there a hidden meaning underneath? Noah Lefevre of Polyphonic takes a deep dive into how the song was constructed, which has more to do with a potpourri of rhymes designed to illustrate the melody than any one idea or theme. However, there were ideas behind some of the lyrics. The video is only eight minutes long, the rest is promotional -via Laughing Squid

The actual title of the article is ‘If Not Friend, Why Friend-Shaped?’ which speaks to the quirkiness of human perception. Have we been influenced by Paddington Bear, Yogi Bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Smokey Bear? Maybe, but the reason bears have been turned into so many pop culture characters is because they look so friendly in the first place. Experts were asked why we look at bears this way, and have a few ideas. Bears resemble dogs, which are man's best friend. Bears remind us of humans, too, since they live where we do, eat like we do (anything from honey to pic-a-nic baskets), and sometimes even walk like we do. Also, they tend to appear rotund, which signals harmlessness to humans who aren't that familiar with real bears. Bear cubs are adorable for their own reasons, and grow up to retain some of the baby features we find attractive. And there is at least one kind of bear that isn't all that dangerous and is also infinitely cute- the vegetarian giant panda bear. Read about the factors that make bears "friend-shaped" at Scientific American.  -via Metafilter

On June 6, 1944, Allied forces landed on the shores of Normandy in what was called D-Day. The 80th anniversary of the invasion that turned the tide of World War II is being celebrated in France by dozens of world leaders and surviving veterans from all over. In Lower Peover, Cheshire, UK, the commemoration is quieter, but the people are proud of the part their village played in the operation. General George Patton and General Dwight Eisenhower spent two days eating at the local pub called the Bells of Peover, and used the time to finalize plans for the Normandy invasion in the pub's dining room. A diary from an unknown soldier was later found in the pub, and is framed, open to entries for the dates of June 5th and 6th, 1944. A map of the invasion is also on the wall. British and American flags are displayed at the front door.

The citizens of Lower Peover still talk about the Americans who were based there during World War II, and about the villagers who proudly served in the war, including those who participated in the D-Day invasion. Read about the Bells of Peover and its place in history at BBC.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Dave.Dunford)

The original Star Trek TV series ran for three years and was canceled. The final episode aired on June 3, 1969. That episode, “Turnabout Intruder,” was not written as a finale, since back then that's not how TV worked, especially when a series was canceled. It was the one where Captain Kirk was the victim of a body-switching scheme launched by a vengeful ex-girlfriend. Inverse explains how that episode didn't live up to Star Trek standards, which weren't all that high to begin with. While Star Trek was notably progressive in most areas, it was still quite sexist.

But then we find out that the plot of the final episode wasn't what saved "the fandom and the franchise" at all. That had to do with the person who was on set while the episode was filming, and spent the next few years making Star Trek into something more than a short-lived science fiction series. Fifty-five years later, read about "Turnabout Intruder" and what it led to at Inverse.

(Image credit: CBS/Paramount)

Chet Phillips (previously at Neatorama) has created a plastic-coated poker-size deck of cards that features 58 different illustrations of cats. The cats include stereotypical themes like "crazy cat lady" and "scaredy cat," but others are puns like "cat call" and "catalyst." There are pop culture cats, too, like "Dracatula" and "Clockwork tabby." The royal cards are illustrated as cats see themselves -as regal. Wait, 58 cards? That's a standard deck plus two jokers and four extra wild cards, because Phillips apparently had that much inspiration. I can see these being repurposed as a tarot deck for some people. Let's see a few closeups.



Caution: when playing a game with this deck, keep your eye on the values in the corner. Laughing at the illustrations can distract you into losing the game, and prolong play to a ridiculous degree. That goes double when you are playing a card game with children. The Cat's Meow deck can be ordered at Phillips' website for $15. -via Laughing Squid