Josef Mencik, sometimes spelled Josef Menšík, was a real-life Don Quixote. We don't know much about his background, but he was born in 1911 in what is now Czechia. As a young man, Mencik bought Strakonicku castle in the village of Dobrs and lived there as if he were a medieval knight. He didn't use electricity or plumbing, nor a car, but he had a full suit of armor. By all accounts, he was what we would call "a local character" today.

He even had a suit of armour made in France.
Local school classes were invited to visit the castle and see his huge collection and learn about history.
Josef became a bit of a local celebrity. pic.twitter.com/XRogxpY9KS

— Fake History Hunter (@fakehistoryhunt) November 18, 2021

In 1938, the Nazis were eager to take what was then Czechoslovakia, which they considered historically their own. Mencik was 27 years old at the time, and fiercely patriotic. On September 30, 1938, a line of German tanks approached Mencik's village and his castle. Seating on his warhorse in full medieval armor, he stood bravely against the 20th-century army to defend his home and village all alone. Read the story of Josef Mencik, the knight of World War II, at Creative History. -via Strange Company

You are no doubt familiar with the iconic image of a cow being pulled up by a tractor beam into a flying saucer. You have to be a certain age to recall how this idea came about. In 1973, the first reports of mysterious cattle mutilations came in from ranches in the western US. Cattle were found dead, with their mouths, genitals, and anuses cut away, reportedly "with surgical precision." Other ranchers checked and found the same thing. By the end of the 1970s, around 10,000 such incidents were reported. Law enforcement agencies investigated, and found no evidence of human activity. So it had to be aliens, right?

That how the story was often framed in the media, and that's the story that stuck around long enough for the idea of cows being abducted and/or experimented on by aliens to become a permanent meme. Some speculated the cattle mutilations were the work of satanic cults. But cattle ranchers themselves blamed the federal government, citing covert biological weapons testing. It got to the point where ranchers were shooting at helicopters flying over their land. The story eventually died down in the national media, and the actual cause of the mutilations wasn't widely reported, or else we all forgot that part. But there's a perfectly reasonable explanation you can read at Jstor Daily. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: The NeatoShop)

We've seen plenty of clever song edits in which clips of words were selected from movies or speeches to recreate a song. Those are fun, but we've seen it a lot. The next step in this technology is here. Auralnauts has the characters of The Matrix singing the song "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, but it's not a rapid-fire editing of clips. It honestly appears that the cast of The Matrix was reassembled to sing the song. You can believe that, or if you select the other pill, you'll find it's deepfake technology with artificial intelligence voice training, and it's really eerie how well it can put words in characters' mouths. The better you know The Matrix, the more impressed you'll be with the song. Oh yeah, there's a special guest artist in the middle who will surprise you. For the moment, we can put the implications of this video technique aside and enjoy the performance, if you can call it a performance at all.  -via Boing Boing

March 17 is celebrated as St. Patrick's Day, the feast day of the priest who converted Ireland to Christianity. The feast day of a saint is often on the date of that person's death, particularly those dating back before birth dates of non-famous babies were well documented. Patrick died on March 17, 461. But March 17 is also the death date and feast day of a lesser-known saint of the seventh century, Gertrude of Nivelles.

Gertrude was born around the year 628 in the Kingdom of Austrasia. Having a prominent family, she was considered to be a good marriage match for various royalty, but Gertrude refused all offers. After her father died, her mother Itta of Metz founded an abbey so that Gertrude could live under protection from an arranged marriage. Gertrude took over the administration of the Abbey of Nivelles in what is now Belgium after her mother's death.

Gertrude died at the age of 33 the day after receiving a premonition from an Irish priest that she would die on St. Patrick's Day. And she did, in the year 659. St. Gertrude is the patron saint of several places in the region of the abbey, and the patron saint of travelers. She is also known as the patron saint of gardeners, as she was an avid gardener and was particularly successful in protecting the abbey's gardens from rats and mice. Gertrude's talent in that area led her to become known as the patron saint of cats in the modern era, starting around 1980 and propagated by the internet.  -via She Who Seeks

Dustin Ballard, known on the Internet as There I Ruined It (previously at Neatorama), occasionally comes up with something sublime and improved instead of ruined. He scraped the word "Yeah" out of a bunch of different songs you will recognized and strung them together in a really catchy tune. I saw this elsewhere a few days ago, but it was not in an embeddable format. Now it's hit YouTube, and there's a bonus song! He also collected a bunch of "No" clips (or "Nein" in the case of Rammstein) and made another song, although that's more of a comedy than a symphony. I think you will like it. -via reddit

Gustav Hogan became enthralled with Star Wars as a 6-year-old kid in the Netherlands watching Return of the Jedi. His fascination with the production of Star Wars movies stayed with him and inspired his life's work. Hogan grew up to excel in animatronics, and as creative director at Biomimic Studio in London, he has spent 30 years designing and giving life to Star Wars characters like Admiral Ackbar, Maz Kanata, the Crystal Foxes, and Babu Frik. Hogan has a long portfolio of creatures for other movies, too, from cute animated animals to horrific monsters. In this video from Great Big Story, you can see the enthusiasm and perfectionism he puts into his work. -via Laughing Squid  

It's Peeps season! And in addition to jousting, making dioramas, and even possibly eating them, you can now pay homage to ancient art with them. Art collective MSCHF is offering Peeps in the shape of the Paleolithic sculpture the Venus of Willendorf.

These Peeps come in yellow, purple, and pink, and while they aren't quite as detailed as the original, they are completely edible. Or, as edible as regular Peeps, anyway. But who would want to even think about consuming a work of art?

You can buy a 4-pack of each color, 12 peeps in all, for $75. -via Everlasting Blort

It's true, Ze Frank published his Animal Awards in December, leaving us to think that it would be an annual end of the year event. But since then, he's come up with more categories. Why wait when you have the facts? In this video, he shows us the champions of the Best Worst Jumping, Best Animal Call, Nature Photographer I Want to Party With, Most Unforgettable Sage Grouse, Fun Fashion on a Budget, Most Likely to Have Splashback in the Urinal, and Most Creative Home Security System. I suspect that this came about because he had some great facts about these critters, but not enough material for each species to make a five- to ten-minute True Facts video about each one. That's fine with me, because these are quite funny. Warning: there's a lot of poop in the Fun Fashion on a Budget category. There's also a one-minute ad at the four minute mark.

Mount Athos, a hilly peninsula in Greece, is famous for its 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and its prohibition against women. No human women are allowed in the territory, nor are female domestic animals- with the exception of cats, because their utility as mousers vastly outranks the value of dairy cows and egg-laying chickens. Or maybe the monks were unwilling to give up the pleasure of playing with kittens.

In 1938, the story came out that one man had lived in one of the monasteries since infancy, and had never left Mount Athos during his life, which ended in 1938. This puts Mihailo Tolotos in the position of being the the only man in history who lived a full life without ever seeing a woman. Newspaper accounts also said that Tolotos had also never seen a car, a plane, or a movie. Since he died in 1938, it is very possible that he never even saw a photograph of a woman ...if the story is true in the first place. Read what we known about Mihailo Tolotos at Rare Historical Photos. Which is odd in itself, because Tolotos was never identified in a photograph, and we do not know which monastery he belonged to. Still, there are pictures. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations)

I was all set for this to be an over-the-top trailer for a fake movie, along the lines of Cocaine Shark or Attack of the Giant Bubbles. There are two things you need to know before watching this trailer: 1. it's extremely gory and bloody, which fulfills the over-the-top part, but 2. Ninja vs. Shark is a real movie. The actors are well-known in Japan, and IMDb has a plot summary.

In the Edo period, at the remote village of Okitsu, the evil cult leader Koushirou uses ninjutsu to ensorcel sharks and forces them to attack local pearl divers so the cult can steal the pearls from their mangled corpses. Desperate for help, the village chief hires Kotaro Shiozaki, a guard at a nearby temple, but Kotaro soon finds his path blocked by lady ninja Kikuma, and a gigantic shark that doesn't seem like something from this world.

Besides ninjas and sharks, the movie has zombies and/or vampires. And tons of CGI blood. Ninja vs. Shark will open on April 14th in Japan. No release date has been set for the US. You'll learn more at the film's official site, if you can read Japanese. -via Geeks Are Sexy

When acclaimed playwright Tennessee Williams died on February 25, 1983, the medical examiner couldn't determine the cause of death immediately. It was later discovered that he had died from a bad reaction to Seconal, which he took as a sleep aid. But the publicity surrounding his death was important. Williams' assistant insisted that a cause of death be published or else speculation would lead to false rumors and who knows what that would lead to? So the medical examiner agreed to state that Williams had choked on a bottle cap. And that's what many of his fans believe to this day.

That's just one of 13 stories of strange deaths among authors. Others are truly bizarre, like the falling turtle, although the further back you go, the less likely it is that we have all the facts. Some had plausible causes of death that were nonetheless brought about by bizarre circumstances. Read all 13 stories of weird deaths among authors at Mental Floss. 

In the modern era, bars are where people often go specifically to meet people of the opposite sex. Once upon a time, it was anything but that. Pubs and saloons were thought of as places where men went to get away from their wives, and women who went in could be risking their reputations. Many bars completely barred women from entering! Others restricted women from entering without an escort, who was expected to order for her while she stayed in her place. Some pubs saw that business is business, and went out of their way to make it possible for ladies to discreetly come in for a drink.

One way they did this was with ladies entrances, which were hidden in an alley or otherwise shielded from crowds on the street. Another was to offer "snugs," or private rooms. Men-only drinking establishments, and misogynistic restrictions on women in bars, only died out during the second-wave feminism of the 1960s and '70s. Read about the way bars once were, and how that revolution came about at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Gerry Dincher)

If you want to add a subversive touch to your home that will get people talking, the bathroom is the place to do it, because it's small, private, and a great place for a laugh. You can get away with odd colors or a style that would cause objection in the family if it were anywhere else. If you don't have a cabinet over your toilet, it's the perfect place for artwork or a sign that you wouldn't put anywhere else. Everyone who goes in there will see it.

(Image credit: Aust1nL33)

It doesn't have to be fancy; it can even be homemade as long as it's clever and something you wouldn't see in anyone else's home. The framed review above was found in an Airbnb. The word "ply" had to explained to quite a few commenters.



There are more bathroom signs, but the actual list at Bored Panda covers 50 clever and funny home decorating hacks that include all rooms, holiday decorations, artworks, and pranks that will make you laugh. Don't miss the duck and the Christmas angles.  

The deadliest animal in the world is the mosquito. They don't kill on their own, but spread diseases that causes hundreds of thousands of human deaths each year. So maybe we should wipe them out! Well, we know what could go wrong. Pesticides end up killing other species. And sometimes an animal goes extinct before we realize what useful ecological function it filled. With mosquitos, modern science has found a way to make just the most dangerous species die out without affecting other species. So should we do it? So far, research shows that if disease-carrying mosquito species were eliminated, there would still be plenty of benign mosquitos to, say, feed the bats. But would it be the right thing to do? Funny how no one asked that about wiping out smallpox. Since this scheme involves genetic engineering, there are still ethical questions about mosquitos and the future of such technology. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Generation Z, sometimes called Zoomers, have never known a life without social media. They started sharing -or oversharing- their lives in middle school, and now have their own children. And many of them are vowing to never post pictures of their own kids online. Then there are those whose parents jumped on the internet during the rise of mommy bloggers or YouTubers. Their entire lives were published for the entertainment of others, and often for profit.

The race for viral fame and a comfortable living is not the childhood they would have chosen. One young woman tells how, as a child, she was responsible for supporting her family by starring in her parents' videos. She is contemplating cutting off all contact with them when she turns 18. Her story reminds us of Hollywood stage mothers who lived off their child's labor and corrupted their formative years in the pursuit of fame and fortune.

Social media influencers can make a lot of money at the expense of their children, but the ultimate cost can be high. Teen Vogue looks into the lives of children who grew up as internet content, only to regret the permanent archive of their formative years.

Wil Wheaton responded to the article with his own thoughts, because as a child actor, he could see it coming. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: George Norkus)