Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills were a patent medicine first manufactured in 1854 and promoted as a cure for dyspepsia, liver trouble, women's ailments, pimples, and a host of other maladies. They were manufactured and sold by various Comstock family businesses and their partners, and are still sold today in Australia.

But what makes them really interesting is the marketing. The advertisement shown above is dated to somewhere between 1870 and 1900. It has a cat and a poem, which draws the attention, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with medicine. It turns out that this is a series of ads, with a much longer complete poem that tells us what happens to the cat. Continue reading to see the rest of the series.

We know that President Theodore Roosevelt was a veteran, a fitness buff, and an outdoorsman. He always tried to stay in shape, and was no stranger to a hard day's work, even while in office. Roosevelt camped outside, even when it rained, and was known to pitch hay with the best of them. This endeared him to working people, except for those he outworked in public. In fact, he managed to leverage his physical strength to influence others in many ways. In other words, he wasn't above making hay out of it. This account quoted from a magazine was published in the Essex County Herald on November 22, 1907.

A delegation from Kansas visited President Roosevelt at Oyster Bay. The president met them with coat and collar off, mopping his brow.

“Ah, gentlemen,” he said, “dee-lighted to see you—dee-lighted! But I’m very busy putting in my hay just now. Come down to the barn with me, and we’ll talk things over while I work.”

Down to the barn hustled president and delegation.

Mr. Roosevelt seized a pitchfork and—but where was the hay?

“John!” shouted the president. “John! Where’s all the hay?”

“Sorry, sir,” came John’s voice from the loft, “but I ain’t had time to throw it back since you threw it up for yesterday’s delegation.”

Oops. The subterfuge is delicious, but it only underscores how fit the president was that he did that day after day. Read about Roosevelt's adventures in hay, camping, and more at Second Glance History.  -via Strange Company 

(Image source: Library of Congress)

Exorcism is a ritual used to remove demons that possess the bodies of people. Casting out demons goes back at least as far as the Bible, and is usually associated with the Catholic Church. However, exorcism has occurred in Pentecostal and Evangelical churches in more modern times. There is no doubt that people will occasionally show symptoms that couldn't be explained any other way in the days before modern medical science, that today would be diagnosed as mental illness or even physical ailments -or a combination. The spiritual belief in demons can go a long way toward making them seem real. But whether or not you believe that demons can possess people, the rituals used to cast them out are very real, and some have been extensively documented. Some appeared to have been successful, while others were lifelong battles, and even more left no documented followup. Read the accounts of six documented historical exorcisms ranging over the past 400 years at Mental Floss.

There are Guinness World Records for everything under the sun, including individual LEGO sets. Paul Ufema set a Guinness World Record in speed for putting together the LEGO Colosseum set in February. That's more than 9,000 pieces, and he did it in less than 14 hours! Well, once you've had the thrill of setting a world record, you want to feel that thrill again, so Ufema plunged ahead, this time tackling the LEGO Millennium Falcon, which has 7,541 pieces. He put the set together in 16 hours, 10 minutes and 29 seconds, which is a world record time. But there was a problem- one piece left in the box.

Did the LEGO company give him an extra brick? Where did that brick belong? Ufema did a thorough investigation and was ultimately disqualified from the record. But he has our respect, nonetheless. -via Laughing Squid

Have you ever had the urge to rank fruits by how much you like them? Neither have I, but once you get started, it's kinda fun. It's really easy to make your own chart at Tiermaker: just drag the little fruit icons to their proper position, and you can change the ranking labels at the left to whatever you want them to say. Looking back, maybe I should have labeled a row as "it depends on how you use them." After all, lemons are wonderful in lemonade or cooking, but they're not really a fruit to snack on. And I prefer green apples because I only eat apples cooked due to dental issues.

What's the point of all this? Beside the fun of making it, you can share it and compare it to your friends' and family's favorite fruits. I'm sure my kids would be aghast at how many fruits I haven't ever tried, and their opinions on my rankings would be... quite opinionated. Comparisons at this point might also make selecting pies and appetizers for Thanksgiving a little easier. -via Boing Boing

Are you going to be ready for trick-or-treaters to show up at your house this weekend? Do you want to avoid leftover candy? Are you afraid of running out before the children head home? Considering rising prices and supply chain issues, you want to prepare properly. Candy Industry has an online "calculator" that doesn't really calculate for you, but shows you how to do the math. The basic formula is time x kids x generosity. But there are confounding factors to consider.

The first confounding factor is the number of days between purchasing candy and trick-or-treat night (which may vary by community). You need to do the math to figure out how much will be eaten by the household ahead of time. This is where I tell the story about that year I bought a bag of miniature Snickers and the dog ate every one of them, including the wrappers. All that was left was the chewed-up plastic bag (the dog was fine).   

Another confounding factor is the kind of candy you buy. Your favorite chocolate may not be what little kids crave, and buying too much Sour Patch may leave you with candy you'll never eat. Read about the different strategies for buying the proper amount of Halloween candy at Popular Mechanics.  -via Fark

Every October for 19 years now, Julianna Parr of the art organization Sparklebob and her team put together a calendar called Gothtober. It's like an advent calendar, in that a new treat is uploaded to open and enjoy each day. That means that every day on October there's a new entry from a different artist to make you flee in horror, cringe, or laugh. It's mostly laughs, though. And since the month is almost over, you've got plenty to see by now.  

Most of the entries are short (1-3 minute) videos, but I also encountered some still artworks and a few that are slideshows with links to content elsewhere. The theme this year is "truck stop," but  that's just a suggestion. They all have to do with horror or Halloween. I particularly recommend #6, the women behind horror films. The artists for each day are introduced here. You can also visit Gothtober projects from previous years here. -via Metafilter

While medieval tales had ghosts and werewolves and other assorted monsters, the dragon dominated the stories of good vs. evil. We know how St. George slew a dragon. Dragons factored in quite a few Arthurian legends, and Arthur's surname was Pendragon. Quite a few of the fairy tales passed down from medieval Europe involved dragons in one way or another. It was a monster understood by everyone, even though no one had ever seen one in the flesh.

But stories of dragons in the medieval era were not concocted just for thrills. They were fables, intended to drive home moral absolutes. Dragons were a threat, but virtuous and heroic man could defeat them. More often, though, it was a religious and devout hero who was required to slay the dragon. Dragons were metaphors for devils, demons, and sin itself. Read about the proliferation of dragons in medieval Europe, or in the literature at least, at Smithsonian. The article does not address the preponderance of dragons in Asian legends.

Normally I avoid posting an unboxing video because they tend to all look the same, and most are pure promotion for the product or the person opening it. It's different when someone buys used items, and especially when they get way more than they expected.  

Laura Kampf looked online for storage containers, but what she ended up with was so much cooler. First, this set of crates shows high quality workmanship. Then we get to see the features inside them (holy cow!). Then we find out their purpose, which is cooler still. Since Kampf bought these crates for her workshop, I am sure she will find a totally cool purpose for each of them. -via Metafilter

How can one rank all the horror movies of the last 100 years of cinema? It's easier when you can crunch the numbers with a computer. And that's exactly what Rotten Tomatoes did. The site is all about collecting critic's reviews and moviegoer's opinions, which all come with a certain number of stars. Rotten Tomatoes took horror films that had received at least 20 reviews each and ranked the top 200 according to the statistics. Therefore, if you have a problem with the ranking, well, you can leave a few reviews yourself. They update this list every once in a while.

That said, you have to keep in mind that younger horror film buffs are more liable to use any kind of internet review system than older viewers, and honestly, there are few left who saw the original Frankenstein in a theater. So there's no getting around the fact that newer movies will rank higher. Jordan Peele has two films in the top ten. Then again, you might say that movies just got better over time.

The list of the top 200 best horror films starts at #200 and you'll have to scroll a bit to get to the very best ones. Each comes with a synopsis. You may find something new to watch this Halloween! There are also links to lists of the top horror films of each decade. -via Mental Floss

Can you believe it? The movie Halloween Kills has been in theaters for eleven days now, and we've already got an Honest Trailer. I guess Screen Junkies wanted to give us a thrill in time for Halloween. This is only possible now that paid streaming and theatrical runs are simultaneous. Let me guess- it's about Jamie Lee Curtis being menaced by and ultimately defeating a masked serial killer named Michael Myers. Since this is the 12th Halloween movie, that's a safe bet. The Honest Trailer finds all the plot holes and stupidity in Halloween Kills, but can't decide if this is an intentional parody or just a lazy retread of a 40-year-old story that worked once upon a time.

Warren Bayley owned the Hacienda, a family-style resort in las Vegas, that had a hard time competing with the big casinos with flashy shows. He needed a promotion. Slot machine repairman Bob Timm, who was also a pilot, suggested they break a world record. Pilots had been setting endurance records for decades by the 1950s, and the longest time a plane had stayed in flight was 46 days. Even approaching that limit could fill a lot of room-nights and make the Hacienda a household name.

So Timm bought a used Cessna and altered it for an endurance flight, which began on December 4, 1958, with Timm and John Wayne Cook piloting. Now, a small plane flying for days would need to refuel without landing, and they did not have the Air Force to fly in with a hose. So the fuel came from a truck going as fast as it could while the plane flew low and as slow as it possibly could without stalling. Filling the plane's tanks took about three miles of synchronized travel, and they had to do it every 12 hours. And the world record was 50 days by then.

A lot can go wrong in 50 days. The autopilot feature saved their lives once when Cook fell asleep, but then quit working a few days later. Then the electrical generator quit, making nighttime refueling more hazardous without lights. Other parts of the plane failed as they reached their maintenance limit, and there were quite a few close calls. When the specially-designed fuel truck broke down, they used a T-bird with gas cans to refuel.

Despite all the problems, the Cessna broke the record and added another two weeks! Read about the amazing small plane that finally landed on a wing and a prayer at Damn Interesting. You can also listen to the story in podcast form.

Alexander Keith Jr. of Halifax, Nova Scotia, led a short but eventful life that shortened the lives of many others. Keith started his criminal career by selling gunpowder for his uncle, but making an extra profit by cutting it with lesser material. His first bombing is assumed to have been an attempt to destroy the evidence. This appeared to be the inspiration for several different later crimes. When the US Civil War broke out, Keith fell in with Confederate spies who operated out of Canada.

Keith's crimes included spying, firebombing, arms smuggling, counterfeiting, hijacking, murder, attempted germ warfare, theft, arson, and insurance fraud. Some these crimes were committed against the Union, others against the Confederacy. It didn't matter as long as Keith could profit somehow. His final bombing was well after the war, in which between 40 and 80 people were killed in Germany, all so that Keith could collect an insurance settlement. In doing so, he became a pioneer of what would come to known as the time bomb. Read the story of Alexander Keith Jr. at Cracked.

In 2014, Dylan got an internship at an engineering firm in Santa Clarita, California. The view from his office included Six Flags Magic Mountain. He looked up the price of admission, and found a deal for a year-round unlimited pass for just $150. The kicker is that the deal included free parking and two meals a day! He jumped on that. Since his office was so close, he would pop into the park for lunch every day, and then again for supper on his way home. He would also occasionally enjoy one of the thrill rides. He did this every day for a year, which puts his cost per meal at less than 25 cents.

Dylan did the same thing the next year, and the next. You might think that someone would get fat or put their health at risk by eating that much theme park food, but you can't argue with saving money. Dylan was able to pay off his student loans, get married, and buy a house! He's still eating at the park by purchasing the year-round pass, which is still available even though the menu has expanded greatly. He doesn't eat there twice every day anymore, so he figures he's spent around 50 cents a meal over the years. What did he eat in all that time? Dylan explains his gastronomic adventures at Six Flags at Mel magazine.  -via Digg

(Image credit: Jeremy Thompson)

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem perform the 1977 hit song by Electric Light Orchestra for the Dear Earth special that premiered Saturday. In this video, Zoot gets the vocal honors, and even uses a talk box to recreate the original sound. The band is joined by a field of flowers, which would sound weird if this were anyone else but the Muppets. -via Boing Boing