We've laughed at retro posts examining the "exercise machines" of the early and mid-20th century, that required no effort at all and were essentially massages that promised to work your body for you. It's no surprise that people are drawn to the promise of effortless fitness But the first exercise machines weren't that at all.

Swedish physician Dr. Gustav Zander put his theories of muscle strength into practice in 1864 with his own exercise machines. They were designed to work individual muscles with weights and pulleys that could be adjusted for each patient, beginning with light resistance and were changed as the user grew stronger. That's pretty much the idea behind the machines at gyms today. The image above may look like an overly engineered effortless machine, but the woman is there to strengthen her back and core muscles by pulling against the weight. Zander did build some machines that were essentially massage devices, but they were specifically for paralyzed patients to fight muscle atrophy.

Zander opened a gym with his machines in 1865 in Stockholm, and his machinery became a sensation. Sadly, his machines were superseded by gym equipment that required less effort after his death in the 1920s, but they became a sensation again during the fitness craze of the late 20th century. Still, Zander's machines look quite odd to the modern eye because they were not photographed with the debilitated physical therapy patients they were designed for, but rather models in Victorian dress. See a gallery of Zander's exercise machines at Amusing Planet.

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is a bestselling children's book that is supposed to be soothing for young children, but some parents found themselves a little creeped out when reading it to them. This version may put those parents over the edge. Joris Bax used the text-to-image artificial intelligence program Midjourney to generate illustrations for the book. He used Lightroom and After Effects to process the images. The collection was so creepy he had to use a voice changer and a creepy soundtrack behind them. The result is a real nightmare that no child should have to endure, especially right before turning the lights out. -via reddit

San Diego Comic Con is in full swing this weekend, and that means lots of celebrity appearances, panels, many new trailers released, and news. We've long known that Marvel Studioos plans its movies years, sometimes decades, in advance. The stories would be impossible to keep up otherwise. The movie Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will be the final film of the current Phase Four of the MCU later this year. Thanks to covid, almost all of Phase Four was delayed, and therefore later movies were also delayed.

Today, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige announced the schedule of movies and television shows for Phase Five. Six new Marvel TV series now have dates, all to be shown on Disney+. The movies for 2023 include Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Blade. Captain America: New World Order and Thunderbolts will be in theaters in 2024. Read the complete list of the new announcements, previously scheduled upcoming Marvel movies and shows, and projects that still don't have an announced date at Gizmodo.

Update: Sunday they had some announcements about Phase Six.

The same guys behing the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards launched another competition in 2020 featuring pets! The entries in this year's Pet Comedy Photography Awards are in, and the finalists have been selected for 2022. Click to the right on the image above to see more of them. The categories are cat, dog, horse, all other creatures, pets who look like their owners or a celebrity, and the junior photographer category. In addition, they have a video competition. The finalist below, featuring Rosie, was photographed by Sarah Fiona Helme.



See all 26 finalists in a gallery here. You can vote on these finalists for the People's Choice Award, which also gets you entered into a sweepstakes drawing. Maybe your vote is what Rosie is begging for! The winners of the Pet Comedy Photography Awards will be announced on September 14. You can see more comedic pets in the other entries at Instagram.  -via Bored Panda 

Believe it or not, there's a word for the smell of the outdoors after a rain. It's called petrichor, and perfumers have managed to find a combination of chemicals to recreate it in a bottle, including the earthy-smelling geosmin. The smell after a rain is very familiar to all people, and usually quite pleasant because we know what it means. The taste of pure rain is like nothing, and please don't drink it after it has run down your roof or through the gutters. The smell we recognize as fresh rain (petrichor) requires a world of nature, but the actual components taste terrible. The earth is full of things we don't want to eat, like soil, leaves, and tons of bacteria. The smell of rain is good to us because of its implication. Adam Ragusea explains all of this in detail in this video. There's an ad from 3:30 to 4:30. -via Laughing Squid

Forensic science wasn't all that advanced in 1896 when a young woman's body was retrieved from the Miami River in Dayton, Ohio. Refrigeration wasn't a thing, either, so the unidentified body was assumed to be a suicide and quickly buried. However, Bessie Little was eventually buried three times as Police Chief Thomas Farrell tried to ascertain the cause of death as her family secrets came out.

Bessie was a domestic servant who fell for the wealthy young Albert Frantz. She was thrown out of her parents' home over the relationship. Albert was engaged to another woman, but it was thought that Bessie was either pregnant or had undergone an abortion, because of a visit to a doctor shortly before her death. Did Albert murder her? He insisted it must have been a suicide, but his story later changed to him witnessing her suicide. But after Bessie was disinterred the second time, her head was cut off to preserve evidence. The trial hinged on the question of whether someone could shoot themselves in the head twice.

Read the story of the gruesome investigation into a sad but everyday story of love gone deadly at Murder by Gaslight.  -via Strange Company

As if Velveeta nail polish wasn't enough, the company has unleashed a martini. The Velveeta company is collaborating with the BLT restaurant group to offer a $15 drink called the Veltini at several of its outlets in various cities for a limited time.

The unexpectedly upmarket cocktail will be served specifically between the hours of 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at five BLT-owned restaurants across the country, namely BLT Steak New York, BLT Steak Washington DC, BLT Steak Charlotte, and BLT Prime New York, as well as at their Italian concept The Florentine in Chicago.

The Veltini is made by "infusing" vodka with Velveeta cheese, meaning they mix them together a day ahead of time. The cocktail also contains olive brine and vermouth, served with a garnish of Velveeta, Velveeta-stuffed olives, and Velveeta pasta shells. Doesn't that sound yummy? You'd better hurry if you want to try one, because in a few days it will be gone. That's just long enough for people to try one and decide they never want to do that again. -via Boing Boing

Redditor grecianformula69 shared a picture of a treasured family heirloom that was bought during a Florida vacation in 1983. If you can't read everything that's printed on it, you can enlarge it greatly here. Floridians and geography nerds came into the comments to speculate on what went wrong. This ashtray was made long before Google translate was available, and it wouldn't have been this bad even in its early stages. But then they all realized that Tallahassee is the only word spelled correctly. How did that happen? Natives of Vtiike, Odemdo, and other Florida cities seem to agree that it must have been manufactured in Tallahassee, possibly at Florida State University.

 

Honestly, the most logical explanation is that the cities were listed phonetically in a non-Western alphabet, and translated in a Third World factory by someone who was given no time to research the words, or else was not paid enough to care. Possibly both. But it's much more fun to blame it on Florida Man!   

Technically, you can't call Mensur a sport, because there's no way to win, even though it is an offshoot of sword fighting or fencing. Mensur is also called German academic fencing, and is a tradition to this day among Studentenverbindungen or student corporations, which seems close to what we know as fraternities. But while fencing evolved to be safer over time, those participating in Mensur kept their swords sharp, and their injuries are a badge of honor.

Deriving its name from the Latin word for “dimension” – referring to the distance between participants – Mensur is a formal duel between two individuals fought using special sharpened, basket-hilted sabres called mensurschläger. Unlike in traditional fencing, fighters – or Paukanten – stand a fixed arm’s length apart and are forbidden from moving their feet or even dodging their opponents’ blows. There is also no scoring nor any designated winner or loser. This is because the aim of Mensur is not swordsmanship, but rather to demonstrate one’s courage and character by taking an opponent’s blows without fear or flinching.

They do wear body protection, and the only blows allowed are on the head. But that's only the modern version of Mensur. It evolved after bloody student sword fights in the 15th century led to regulated duels. You'll find Mensur going today in German-speaking countries and some Baltic states, too. Read about the tradition of Mensur and what it means at Today I Found Out.

Ray Harryhausen didn't invent stop-motion animation, but he advanced the technique so much that his name has become forever intertwined with the art of stop-motion. You've seen his work in films ranging from Mighty Joe Young in 1949 to Jason and the Argonauts (1963) through Clash of the Titans in 1981. Harryhausen pioneered techniques for mixing stop-motion skeletons, dinosaurs, and monsters with live-action actors. It was not any easy thing to accomplish without computers. Harryhausen had to line up all his shots by hand and time them frame-by-frame to get what he wanted. The finished product was a mind-blowing and surreal experience for the audience. The Royal Ocean Film Society shows us how he did it in this video. -via Laughing Squid

We've all encountered dunking booths at the county fair, in which you pay money for the chance to drop a local celebrity into a tank of water. Getting dunked is a volunteer position, usually to raise funds for charity. But between the mid-16th and early 19th centuries, it was a sentence used to punish women for crimes such as prostitution, adultery, making bad beer, or "scolding," which could mean insults, gossip, or just plain talking too much. They spelled it "ducking" instead of dunking back then, and it was a public spectacle meant to humiliate the woman and serve as a warning to others. However, it could be deadly.

Communities across England, and also in Scotland and colonial America, had a ducking stool, a chair with a lever or pulley that could be raised and lowered into a river or pond. The "scold" was strapped to the chair and ducked into the water as many times as local authorities deemed proper according to the severity of her crime. The message was clear: women should be silent and remember their place. Ducking continued until 1809, but the crime of being a scold was only abolished in England in 1967! Read about the crime of scolding and the practice of ducking at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: New York Public Library)

Piyo has lots of frogs, but Ruri Green Frog is special. Ruri loves Piyo very much, to the point of wanting to eat her up. When Piyo tries to take a video of another frog, Ruri is so jealous that she/he videobombs the project in a most spectacular way. Ruri makes no bones about how she/he feels about this!

Do frogs really have personalities? We often ascribe emotions or intelligence to animals in a very human manner, which is anthropomorphizing. But how else can we interpret this video sequence? Let's just say it's really cute. -via Metafilter

Since Tom Scott brought up the subject of being murdered in Yellowstone National Park, we may as well learn about how it happens. On the occasion of Yellowstone's 150th anniversary, Cowboy State Daily published a map and list of maulings, scaldings, and murders that have occurred at the park. The deaths are mostly gleaned from the book Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park. Now, before you get the idea that Yellowstone is a hotbed of unnatural deaths, keep in mind that the greatest causes of deaths in the park are auto accidents and heart attacks, just like everywhere else. And among national parks, Yellowstone is only the fifth most deadly, despite having the longest history.

But Yellowstone has dangerous attractions, namely geothermal features like geysers and boiling hot springs that tourists fall into and sometimes jump into. Others want to get close to the bison or the bears, with deadly results. You might conceivably call these natural deaths as they happen in nature, but they are usually due to human foolishness. After all, nature is metal. The list of murders in the park include several killings within a family, one case of cannibalism, and ends with Gabby Petito. You can read about some of these deaths, and download the map, here.

Since Thor: Love and Thunder is in theaters, Screen Junkies has gone back in time to revisit the Marvel superhero's first film. The name of the movie is really The Incredible Hulk Returns, a made-for-TV film released in 1988. It's just as cheesy as you might imagine. While we might enjoy looking into the seeds of what would eventually become the Marvel Cinematic Universe with its constant superhero crossovers, all we can think of when watching this is "That's so 1980s." You get the idea that the plot would have fit into a one-hour episode of The Incredible Hulk, but that TV series had ended six years before. The Hulk would go on to star in two more made-for-TV movies capitalizing on the earlier series. It would take another 24 years for the Hulk and Thor to appear in a movie together again. This Honest Trailer might make you feel better about Thor: Love and Thunder, which hasn't lived up to expectations.

We may marvel at an ostrich taller than we are, or an eagle with talons bigger than a human hand. But they have nothing on prehistoric birds, some of which we mind-bogglingly large. The picture above is a recreation of a Paraphysornis, or terror bird, that weighed around 400 pounds. But there was also Dromornis stirtoni, an Australian thunder bird, the males of which averaged 1400 pounds! A female South Island giant moa could reach ten feet tall. And a fossil named Pelagornis sandersi found in South Carolina had a wingspan of 24 feet.

Why were prehistoric birds able to grow so large? And why did they die out? As far as extinction goes, that was usually due to predators, including humans. Read about these enormous birds of the distant past at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Armin Reindl)