Twenty-five-year-old Lawrence Nelson of Lenoir, North Carolina, went missing in 1906. His body was found a couple of months later, and two men were arrested for his murder. Charles Hampton Kendall and John Vickers were convicted and sentenced to 30 and 26 years, respectively. Soon after the conviction, Nelson's father, the pastor of a local church, erected a tombstone for his son that gave his name and birthdate, then underneath was carved, "Murdered and robbed by Hamp Kendall and John Vickers, Sept. 25, 1906." Most families would have been discouraged from using such an epitaph, but it was his son and his church cemetery.

But Kendall and Vickers were pardoned by the governor ten years later, mainly because there were doubts about the one witness against them. Then the real murderer confessed. But the tombstone remained, because to change it would be grave desecration, which was a crime. That set up a conundrum that went on for decades. Read what eventually happened to the falsely accused murderers, the tombstone, and the laws surrounding gravestones at Atlas Obscura. Yes, there's a picture of the tombstone. 

"Celebrity" is a catchall term for someone who is famous, or at least notable. Usually there is a reason for their fame, some accomplishment in movies, TV, sports, music, politics, business, or even crime. In our modern media-obsessed culture, there are also people who are just famous for being famous. We call them celebrities because there's no other way to describe them, except maybe "influencer."
 
But the phenomena is not new. Giacomo Casanova was born in 1725 in Venice and was neither fabulously wealthy, nor powerful, nor all that talented in any one area. Yet he was definitely a celebrity, always appearing in the news and in gossip. He cultivated that reputation because his greatest goal in life was to be famous. We remember Casanova today mostly because of all the women he was associated with- in fact, his name became a term for a womanizer. He would have appreciated that. But in his time, he was noted for simply being noticed. Read the story of Giacomo Casanova's self-made fame at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company     

(Image credit: Francesco Narici)

Auralnauts has redone the first Star Wars movie, now known as A New Hope, as if Zack Snyder had been at the helm. The story is familiar, but is now chock full of Snyderesque touches, like the overuse of his signature slow motion shift for dramatic emphasis (executed appropriately and perfectly at 8:50), the camera lingering unnecessarily on the most gory details, and too much nonsensical exposition in the dialogue. That weird explaining is necessary to save time for the slow motion shots. All this comes with an over-the-top score to clearly tell us what we are supposed to be feeling. While these tropes can be tiring over a whole movie, you have to admit that Auralnauts greatly improved the originally lame lightsaber fight between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Oh, and the ending telegraphs the fact that Snyder just ran out of time. Those slow motion sequences sure do eat up cinematic minutes!  -via Boing Boing

On March 10, 2020, Food and Wine informed us that McDonald's was going to start serving Big Macs with four hamburger patties, to be called the Double Big Mac. Do you recall what else happened on March 10, 2020? My kids called me from from school crying because they were told to vacate their dorms by Friday and go home. Their graduation was off because the school was shutting down due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Also, the Double Big Mac didn't get much notice for its limited run.  

Four years later, McDonald's is going to try this again. The Double Big Mac will be on the menu starting on January 24, for a limited time at participating restaurants. If it sells well, this massive meat monster could find a permanent place on the menu. The real question is: how much will it cost? A company spokesman wouldn't say, because prices will vary by location. True carnivores should start saving up. -via Mental Floss

In the latest video installment of his What If? series, Randall Munroe explains the disasters that would follow if our earth stopped spinning on its axis. The hypothetical question included the fact that the atmosphere would continue moving at the same speed, so that part is enough to blow us all away pretty much immediately. We are used to the earth's movement at up to a thousand miles per hour at the equator, so it would be quite disorienting if the rotation stopped, but we wouldn't have time to deal with it because of that atmospheric movement.

Then the long-term consequences would kick in. The oceans would throw a lot of water into the atmosphere, but retain plenty enough to blast the land with tsunamis, and our days would change to years. That makes surviving the effects pretty darn difficult. But all things considered, the earth would eventually start rotating again someday, probably without us. -via Damn Interesting 

J.R.R. Tolkien's world called Middle-earth is vast and varied, with many kinds of sentient creatures interacting through the adventures in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and other works. Swedish chemical engineer Emil Johanssen is a fan who took on the huge project of collating and parsing the information from Tolkien's works in maps, charts, and breakdowns of all sorts. One part of the project is figuring out the demographics of the various kinds of characters.

One thing quite noticeable about those demographics is the dearth of female characters, which are only 18% of the 982 characters mentioned. Hobbits are 30% women, but no other type comes close. There doesn't seem to be any female Orcs at all, but that may be because they were created by sorcery. However, that was only one of several possible Orc origins Tolkien mentioned. The life spans of each type of character vary widely, also. Hobbits live past 100 years easily, but the only two that lived past 130 were both aided by the Ring they carried. The lifespans of Men depended on which age they lived in. Read more about the statistics of Middle-earth at Big Think. -via Kottke

In 2016, the BBC commissioned Aardman Animation Studios to create an animated tribute to biologist and television host David Attenborough on his 90th birthday. They made three stop-motion videos in the style of their Creature Comforts franchise of the 1990s, with wild animals talking about their own impressions upon meeting Attenborough. Rich Webber, who directed the project, recently uploaded a video featuring the best lines from the series featuring the penguins, gorillas, and lyrebirds that have worked with Attenborough. Keep an eye on the crazy stuff going on in the background of each vignette. You can see all three of the original videos in their entirety here. Attenborough, now 97, is still working in television. -via Nag on the Lake 

Strangely, fights to the death staged between gladiators weren't invented in Rome at all. It was an imported custom that was first launched in Rome in the year 264 BCE. That was when Brutus Pera, a powerful member of the Brutus family who ran the Roman Republic, died. His sons held a lavish wake, called a munus, where they distributed meat and wine to the public. They also had six slaves fight each other to the death for entertainment. That began a custom in which the funeral rites of prominent people often included a bloody battle that took more, although less important, lives.

These battles changed and evolved over time. They became so elaborate and popular that the excuse of a funeral became stretched and finally abandoned. The tradition was tweaked to make the fight more horrific, and slaves were trained for the fights. Read the origins of gladiator fights and what they led to at Atlas Obscura.  

(Image credit: Carole Raddato)

Trader Joe's is a grocery stores known particularly for their natural and organic products sold under their store brand. A few years ago, I read that the companies Aldi and Trader Joe's were founded by two German brothers and the family still owns both grocery chains. That was not true, but a confusion of the story of Aldi, which was founded by two brothers and then split into two companies, and the fact that Aldi Nord bought Trader Joe's in 1979. Trader Joe's was already an established grocery chain with an interesting story and a founder named Joe.

Joe Coulombe built his business on the back of alcohol and a slightly exotic vibe that was just perfect for its time and place. The only thing you might notice that Trader Joe's and Aldi have in common is a limited selection of items compared to huge supermarkets, which helps control expenses. Weird History Food brings us up to speed on the story of Trader Joe's.  

You may have guessed that Bum Farto wasn't his real name. He was born Joseph Farto. Farto was the Chief of the Key West Fire Department from 1964 until he disappeared in 1976. He was a well-known local character as well as a skilled firefighter, wearing bright red leisure suits and driving a lime green car with a Santeria shrine on the hood. Farto was also a drug dealer. He would sell marijuana and cocaine right in front of the fire station, and no one thought much about it. After all, that was Key West in the 1970s.

But the law finally caught up with Farto, and between his conviction and his sentencing, he just disappeared. In doing so, he became more famous than ever, sparking the sale of t-shirts like the one seen above. Farto is now a legend in Key West, and there was even a musical written about him as recent as 2022. Read what we know about Bum Farto and where he went at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Jenni Konrad)

The trend in institutional dining has been toward pre-processed, pre-packaged, and even pre-cooked food, for schools, colleges, hospitals, and prisons. Sure, it saves kitchen space and the expense of personnel, but at what cost? The Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, Maine, initiated a pilot program to reverse all that and grow their own food on farms near the prison. What they got was more home-style dinners that are fresher and more nutritious, plus both the farm and the kitchen serve as training programs, because the inmates are producing the food themselves. The kicker is that the program saved money over contracting with outside suppliers, like Sysco, Aramark, or Sodexo. Too bad elementary school children and hospital patients can't work their own farms and kitchens. -via Damn Interesting

Renaissance mathematician, astronomer, physician, economist, and clergyman Nicolaus Copernicus, or Mikołaj Kopernik in his native Poland, published the theory that the earth revolves around the sun. That is merely the most memorable of his many accomplishments. When Copernicus died in 1543, he was buried under Frombork Cathedral, along with about 100 other people (although not at the same time). In the centuries since, the floor of the cathedral has been replaced several times, and the few grave markers that survived the renovations ended up in the wrong places. No one knew where Copernicus was buried, although searches were conducted a few times.

Polish archaeologists began a new quest to find Copernicus' remains in 2005. This time, they had information that narrowed the search. They exhumed 13 skeletons, one of which was the right age to be Copernicus, but skeleton 13/5 was the most badly damaged of them. And how would they confirm Copernicus' identity, anyway? He left no heirs, neither did his brother, for DNA comparison. A lucky find and DNA tests led to the conclusion that skeleton 13/5 was indeed Nicolaus Copernicus. Read how that happened at the Conversation.

An article in Polish shows an image of the facial reconstruction of skeleton 13/5, done by an artist who had no idea that it might belong to anyone in particular. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Jan Matejko)

Mickey Mouse starred in a short film called Steamboat Willie in 1928 and became a legend. The mouse character was not Walt Disney's first popular character, nor even his first anthropomorphized critter rendered in rubber hose animation, but something about him resonated with audiences so much that he became the symbol of Disney for the next 95 years. In fact, Steamboat Willie wasn't even Mickey's first cartoon! As we celebrate the mouse entering the public domain this year (at least the original version), it might do to look back and try to figure out what made Steamboat Willie such a special cartoon. After all, Mickey was just another of the many cartoon characters of the era that looked pretty much the same. Phil Edwards takes us back to 1928 to show us how it wasn't the character that was a breakthrough, but the technical wizardry of the short itself, helped by some serious public relations work. (via Digg)

Today's romantic and sexual relationships often don't fit into the classic terms we have for courting, like "dating," "going steady," "boyfriend," or "girlfriend." Even the more modern terms like "friends with benefits" and "friendzone" don't cover all situations, so the word "situationship" has arisen for what Facebook used to call "it's complicated." Often even those involved don't know how to define it because they're not sure how the other feels, or else both are just not all that committed.  

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. That's exactly what Sweethearts Candy is doing for the upcoming Valentines Day holiday. They are making use of their rejected conversation hearts -meaning those that didn't print right and came out blurry- and marketing them as Sweethearts® Situationships, with the tag line "Messages as blurry as your relationship."

A gift of these candies might spark a conversation about what this relationship is and where it is going. After all, they are conversation hearts. And it's a great idea for using candy that would otherwise be wasted. But how many misprints could they possibly have saved? The situationship candies went on sale this morning and are already sold out. But they'll make more before Valentines Day, even if they have to deliberately misprint them.  -via Boing Boing

Rodney Holbrook of Builth Wells in Wales has a work bench in his shed where he often leaves a project out at night, intending to take up where he left off the next day. But when he returns to it, he finds that the bits and pieces he left out are mysteriously put back where they belong! This happened almost every night for two months. Did he have a brownie living in his shed? Holbrook got a clue when he found birdseed stashed in a shoe, and set up a camera to find out who was tidying up at night. It was a mouse!

The mouse cleaned up the bench by stashing all stray objects into a wooden tray. Holbrook began leaving out larger objects to catch the mouse's limitations, but the rodent diligently cleared the bench every night. Holbrook never bothers to clean up the bench anymore, as he knows the mouse will see to it. Read more about the tidy mouse at the Guardian. -via Metafilter