The latest video from Screen Junkies is less an Honest Trailer and more of a tribute to the greatest James Bond ever, the original played by Sean Connery. His Bond was the ultimate role model for 1960s men: skilled, handsome, brave, sophisticated, clever, cool, and very lucky. He was also attractive to the women who could buy into the misogyny and objectification of the time. These movies offered action, intrigue, sex, comedy, and the good guy always won in the end. It was a standard formula, but one that worked. The Connery Bond movies were far from perfect, but they were enjoyable in a simple way.

Excavations in the ancient city of Jericho in 1953 yielded eight skulls that shared a peculiar commonality: they were covered in plaster. This was a unique funerary custom that baffled scientists, who dated the skulls to between 9,000 and 6,000 BC. Were they plastered as a form of portraiture to make them look like they did in life? Were they really loved ones, or skulls taken as trophies from warfare? Did they remove the flesh or wait until it naturally decomposed?

One of the skulls that came to be known as the Jericho Skull was from a man who died 9,500 years ago. The plaster was embedded with seashells where the eyes had been. Scientists in the 1950s couldn't find out much about him, but technology has come a long way since then. In 2009, the Jericho Skull underwent a Micro-CT scan, revealing the shape of the skull underneath. In 2016, the scan was used to make a 3D print of the skull, after which a forensic reconstruction of the man's face was made. Read how that turned out at The British Museum Blog.

Covering skulls in plaster is just one of 5 Of The Most Badass Ways Cultures Used To Treat Their Dead, which you can read at Cracked.    

(Image credit: Zunkir)

Orchestras vary from place to place, but they all have a basic organization. Who decided this? Why are certain instruments included and others not? British composer David Bruce brings us a history of the orchestra, in a style inspired by Bill Wurtz, but with a lot of solid historical information.

I was a bit surprised to learns there really weren't any orchestras until the 1600s. They early ones were somewhat experimental, but success breeds standardization, and competition breeds excess, but composers needed to know what instruments to write for. While the orchestral form is still quite standardized, it continues to evolve in new ways. Altogether, this video is way more interesting than you'd expect. -via Laughing Squid

Redditor uncle_stink shows us a water bill he received this summer. What in the world could have caused him to run up a $47,542 bill? He was accused of installing a water park in his backyard, but that's not it. There has to be an error here. Can you figure out what it is?

First, notice the dates. He was billed from July to April, which made the number of days negative. We don't think there is any time travel involved here, so either there was a typo or else someone entered the data in the wrong field. The machinery saw the dates were reversed and therefore reversed the meter readings. This didn't help, as now the present reading is less than the previous reading. When that happens, the system assumes that the meter rolled over, so a million units were automatically added.

It doesn't help that the right side of the bill should be read from the top down chronologically, while the left side should be read up chronologically. This is counterintuitive. The dates and the meter numbers as they were read on those dates should be lined up on a well-designed bill.

Let's hope that the bean counters at the water department can see that it's an error. In so many of these cases, they first offer to help set up a payment plan for you.

At the Brünnlisau shooting range in Switzerland, the shooters are on this side of the road, and the targets are on the other side. Meanwhile, traffic is passing along in between. What could possibly go wrong? What might surprise you is that this shooting range has been in operation for twenty years with no incidents involving the vehicles passing by!

The explanation lies in the design of the shooting range and the rules that govern it. These rules are bolstered by the gun culture of Switzerland, in which shooters are numerous, but also highly trained and regulated. Also noted: this range has some very cool technology for scoring your shots.   

Europeans who saw this video tell us that Brünnlisau is far from the only shooting range in Switzerland that ranges across a road like this. They also had a laugh at Tom mentioning that it's about two hours from Zurich. The response was that every place in Switzerland is about two hours from Zurich, including parts of Zurich during rush hour.  

PSA for anyone who might be dealing with robot gun dogs, from a farm robot specialist who wasn't really looking at robot wrangling from the public safety standpoint but here we are. https://t.co/PhQSmEnzOn

— Dr Sarah Taber (@SarahTaber_bww) October 17, 2021

You may have seen the "robot gun dog" on the internet in the last few days. Ghost Robotics, a company that makes quadruped robots for the military, attached a "special purpose unmanned rifle" to the robot to show off at an army conference last week. Its appearance is frightening, and so are your thoughts about what it can do.  

Crop scientist and industrial safety expert Dr. Sarah Taber is here to reassure you that there's no need to fear the latest lethal robot just yet. In a Twitter thread, she explains the troubleshooting challenges that await any new technology, particularly if it is designed to be used outdoors or in any unfamiliar environment. Her knowledge comes from working with hi-tech farm equipment, which is designed by very smart robotics engineers who have never worked on a farm. Taber lays out a list of problems these robots will face, which she admits is far from a complete list.

it's just really funny to me that these are supposed to be scary but probably can't stand up to a water balloon full of pickle juice

— Dr Sarah Taber (@SarahTaber_bww) October 17, 2021

See the original thread with replies at Twitter or at Threadreader if you prefer. -via Metafilter

These bottles of sand aren't decorated with colorful labels. The entire artwork is made of sand inside the glass bottle! This is the work of Andrew Clemens, who made these primarily between 1880 and 1886. Clemens was rendered deaf by a case of encephalitis in his infancy. During his summers away from the Iowa State School for the Deaf, he collected naturally colored sand from Sand Cave at Pikes Peak State Park and sorted the grains into various tints. Then he carefully layered the sand inside a medicine bottle, using tools he designed himself, with no glue or foreign substances to hold the design together.

While the most complex designs could take up to a year to produce, most of Clemens' bottles were completed somewhat faster. He suffered from poor health all his life, and died at 37. Of the hundred or so sand bottles Clemens completed, only a few survive today and sell for a pretty penny when they are put on the market. One of them went up for auction on September 30th. It was estimated to be worth $100,000, but eventually sold for $956,000! -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Wikifreaking)

When we think of jaguars, we picture them in the Central and South American rainforests, which is where 99% of them live. But at one time, jaguars roamed through the southern US, from California to Louisiana and even beyond. A government-backed campaign of eradication wiped them out in the first half of the 20th century. There are some jaguars in Mexico, where a preserve has been set aside for them, and occasionally one of the cats moves into the US. Solitary male jaguars wander a large territory, and there are two of them suspected of living north of the US border as of now.

Some conservationists believe the US should welcome jaguars back. We know from our experience with wolves that re-introducing apex predators will improve an ecosystem from the top down. Expanding the range of jaguars will also improve the species' chances of survival in the long run. One plan is to bring jaguars in from Mexico and Argentina to live in the Central Arizona/New Mexico Recovery Area (CANRA), a 20-million-acre area owned by Native American tribes and the federal government. Other conservationists believe it would be better to support the jaguar population in the Mexican preserve and encourage them to cross into US territory on their own.

There are people opposed to both plans. Some are concerned for livestock and other wildlife. Some believe it to be a waste of money and resources. And some jaguar fans believe that the US is just too dangerous for the cats in the 21st century, between fences, highways, hunters, and poorly-managed habitats. Read about the controversial plans for re-introducing jaguars to the US at Vox.

(Image credit: Leonardo Ramos)

A recent post at AskReddit said, "Autopsy Doctors of Reddit, what was strangest discovery you’ve made while preforming an autopsy?" (sic) Responses came in from medical examiners, autopsy techs, EMTs, pathologists, embalmers, med students, and plenty of other folks who have seen. Some. Stuff. Here is one example.

6. "When I was in my intro to EMS class, my teacher brought in a death investigator and former autopsy examiner to speak to our class. She told us while she worked as an autopsy examiner, she got this woman who, at the time, mysteriously suffocated after a car accident. Apparently, while she was driving, she grabbed her lighter from her purse and was holding it in her mouth while she fumbled through her bag for her cigarettes. While doing this, she got T-boned."

"The airbag went off and on the way to the hospital, they kept trying to put tubes down her throat to open her airway cause she was having trouble breathing. But no luck. She said when they cut open her throat during the autopsy they found her lighter jammed down there. Apparently, when the airbag went off, it got jammed down her throat and no one knew."

—u/I_Feel_Dizzy

You can read more weird causes of death in the original thread, or the 13 best stories at Buzzfeed.  Some of them may be disturbing.

When the red delicious apple was developed a hundred years ago, it was supposedly the best-tasting apple around. But the variety became a victim of its own popularity, as the apple was altered to suit the industry. By the time you and I came along, we were unimpressed and made jokes about the use of the word "delicious." Oh yeah, the red declicious apple stayed popular for a long time after it lost its taste, mainly because it was all you could find at the grocery store. Then just in the last few decades, better apples were developed to replace it.

What we have in this video is really a history of apples that leads up to the rise and fall of the red delicious. A neat story altogether, but it bothers me that the host cites Charles Darwin to explain crossbreeding of plants to develop new varieties when it should have been Gregor Mendel. -via reddit

Veijo Rönkkönen worked in a paper mill in Parikalla, Finland. He was also an artist, but never sold his works. He made concrete sculptures that over time numbered about 500 figures, all secluded in the woods around his home. Rönkkönen's sculptures are not altogether lifelike, but neither are they abstract. They portray people doing all kinds of everyday activities. The biggest number of them resemble a young Rönkkönen doing yoga poses. The artist would sometimes add quirky things to the sculptures, like speakers inside so they could produce sounds, or human teeth. Rönkkönen worked on these sculptures for 50 years until his death in 2010. He never exhibited them or sought fame for his artworks. In fact, he was quite shy as well as eccentric, but if someone came to visit he would show them around.



The Veijo Rönkkönen Sculpture Garden is now open to the public. The 500 or so human figures impress up to 25,000 visitors a year as creepy, funny, scary, whimsical, mysterious, or haunting. Rönkkönen is one of five people featured in a Cracked article who went all in on hobbies that others would consider downright creepy.

When Gustave Eiffel erected his eponymous tower in Paris, the deal was that it would be the cornerstone of the 1889 Exposition Universelle, and then remain for twenty years. Yet 132 years later, the tower is still there. Finagling longevity for his creation required a bit of cunning on Eiffel's part. To make the tower useful enough to avoid demolition, he made it a radio tower. Or rather, a "wireless telegraph" tower, harnessing the new communication technology that was at first limited to the military. To make the military staff more unobtrusive, a bunker was dug beneath the tower to house the radio operations. The radio transmissions were experimental at first, but later proved to be quite important.

During World War I, its bunker took on an even more important role as a potential escape route with a complex underground network and secret tunnels. The Iron Lady’s communication infrastructure proved especially useful when French forces jammed German communications, a significant factor in winning the First Battle of the Marne. The French military were also able to decrypt enemy messages; notably, an intercepted communiqué between Germany and Spain led to the arrest of exotic dancer and spy Mata Hari.

The bunker beneath the Eiffel Tower is still there, no longer a secret, although it's not open to the public. Read the history of this facility and see what it looks like now at Messy Nessy Chic.

What's the scariest movie you ever saw? If a particular horror film keeps coming back to keep you awake at night, part of the reason may be its spooky setting. Many horror films rely on someone visiting a new and unknown place that turns out to be haunted or maybe occupied by a killer lunatic. And those places are out there, somewhere, because that's where they filmed the movie. You might even want to visit someday, maybe to relive the thrill, or maybe to reassure yourself that it's not like the movie. You can still go to the gas station featured in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and eat barbecue), tour the lighthouse from The Fog, or climb the stairs where the priest and the demon battled it out in The Exorcist. Check out eleven iconic horror film locations and make your plans for a pilgrimage with the help of Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Rshao)

The Civil War consumed all of President Lincoln's time in the White House. He presided over the battle campaigns, of course, but he also worked outside the military on several fronts to bolster the Union. These schemes ranged from boosting morale on the home front to enticing southern states to leave the Confederacy with a bit of a bribe. This came in the form of the Land Grant College Act, in which the federal government pledged help to establish higher education across the country- but only in states that stayed loyal to the Union.

There was also the continued construction of the US Capitol Building. There was the Emancipation Proclamation, telegraphing the stakes of the war to the enslaved people of the rebellious states. Then Lincoln resurrected the forgotten holiday of Thanksgiving, designed to build unity and a sense of purpose. In 1863, there were actually two days of Thanksgiving.

Another of Lincoln's non-battlefield accomplishments was the Lieber Code, written by Francis Lieber. This military code set the standard for how to run an army that became an inspiration worldwide, and no doubt contributed to the relative cohesiveness and sense of moral superiority of the Union army that helped to win the war. Read about all these programs that, along with the fighting, took up Abraham Lincoln's time and last full measure of devotion at Military History Now.

Something really weird happens to Baxter the cat on RamsesThePigeon's security camera. Don't blame me if it gives you the willies. You'll need to watch this more than once to catch all the easter eggs, like the sampler on the wall.

Continue reading to see that scene again. You might learn a little more from this version.