A microbiology professor at a university in Utah gave his students a microbe to identify. The lab instructor expected most of the results, at least from the better students, to come back as the common bacteria Plesiomonas shigelloides. None did. Instead, after studying the microbe's morphology and running chemical tests, they identified it as Neisseria meningitidis, which causes meningitis and other deadly infections. And it can be spread through the air. Checking the storage freezer, they found a vial of N. meningitidis, which shouldn't have been there, as well as P. shigelloides.

As a result, 32 of the 33 students, teachers, and lab workers present were given an antibiotic regimen, and two even had spinal taps! Some of them had been vaccinated for meningitis, which is recommended for college students. An investigation from the state's public health department followed, as well as one from university officials wondering how this happened. In the end, no one came down with a serious illness, but many procedural violations were unearthed. Read the whole story at Ars Technica. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: CDC) 

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was a 1978 spoof of the low-budget monster movies of the 1950s and '60s. It was cheaply made and critically panned, but made back five times its budget. The movie became a cult classic, and spawned several sequels. Almost 50 years later, it's time for a remake!  

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence is the updated 2026 version. It premiered with a showing in February at the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. The movie is scheduled for a limited release in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Diego on August 7, 2026, obviously so it can qualify for the Razzies. After that we expect it to be on YouTube soon. The timing of the release coincides with tomato harvest season. The scenes from this teaser reminds me of the tomatoes I have on my counters, in my windows, in my refrigerator, and even the freezer. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

In The Silence of the Lambs, the murderous cannibal Hannibal Lecter was confined to a cell in the basement of a mental asylum because he was so dangerous. It was made of bulletproof glass instead of bars, because he had managed to kill someone through bars already. It was eerie to see, but a similar cell had already been constructed years earlier for a real-life killer named Robert Maudsley. 

Maudsley's cell was custom-built for him at Britain's Wakefield prison in 1983. The glass was so two guards could keep an eye on Maudsley 24 hours a day. Besides a sink and toilet bolted to the floor, his furniture was made of compressed cardboard so that he couldn't make a weapon from it. He was kept there in solitary confinement for more than 40 years because he was so dangerous. 

The reason Maudsley was considered so dangerous was because he killed four people, three of them after he was imprisoned for the first! He got the nickname "Hannibal the Cannibal" because it was said that one victim was found with his skull crushed, and a spoon in his brain. That wasn't exactly true, and there is no evidence that Maudsley was a cannibal. Yet the crimes he was convicted of were so horrific, he couldn't be housed around other inmates. They are described in detail at Utterly Interesting. 

Going into the Honest Trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu, I realized I didn't know anything about the movie because its promotion was kind of lackluster and after it opened, no one talked about it at all. Oh yeah, it made money, because that's what Disney does, but it performed more poorly than any Star Wars movie since Disney bought the franchise. Critics were "meh, it's okay." Screen Junkies is here to show us why. 

Today I found out this movie continues the Disney habit of resurrecting favorite characters, in this case dead aliens, by putting new characters in the old CGI suits, first with Grogu and now with Jabba the Hutt, whose offspring are both heroes and villains. Also, Grogu learns to speak English, a skill that Yoda never mastered. And, of course, there's a lot of killing with no blood. The Mandalorian and Grogu is now available for digital download, and goes on sale on home media August 25th. 

As early as the first century BC, industrial workers in China's Sichuan Province were building derricks for wells, but they weren't drilling for oil. While most of the world got salt from ocean water or mines, Sichuan has salty aquifers underneath, and they built wells to bring this brine to the surface. They developed percussion drilling, which harnesses gravity power and patience, but will eventually reward you with salty water. And natural gas. 

It took hundreds of years to perfect the technology, but by 1835, they had drilled a well more than a kilometer deep near the town of Zigong. They also developed a method to harness the natural gas released, piping it to factories and using it to power the boilers that extracted salt from the brine. Pictures of the tall derricks of Zigong inspired American George Bissell to drill for oil in the United States in the 19th century. Read about the ancient salt wells of Zigong at Amusing Planet.  

(Image credit: Phreakster 1998) 

In the wild, many gray squirrels die in infancy, and those who survive can live to about six years on average. Thumbelina almost died in infancy. She was only a couple of hours old when her nest was destroyed, but this family took her in. That was ten years ago. Thumbelina is well adjusted to being an indoor squirrel, but she's got some problems in her old age. She developed polycystic ovarian syndrome, which causes her to gain weight easily, and left her quite round. She has also lost teeth, which means her family has to not only strictly measure her food, but puree it as well. 

How much effort is too much for a pet squirrel? Thumbelina's family doesn't seem to mind at all, even though they've gone to extraordinary lengths for her. She's got quite a personality and brings them joy. You can see more of Thumbelina at Instagram.  

I learned to drive on a 1970 Volkswagen Microbus. It had a gear shift that seemed three feet long. It wasn't powerful and didn't go fast, especially uphill, and it was never warm enough. As soon as I had my license, I was recruited to drive high school band members or the drama club to faraway events. Party time! 

These Microbuses are pretty rare these days, and the vehicle shown here isn't really a Volkswagen anymore. It's a Kindred EV Bus. Yes, all electric. The company Kindred buys up vintage microbuses and restores them with Corvette suspensions, automatic transmissions, and 300 horsepower Cascadia electric motors. Jason Torchinsky takes us through all that work and explains how the Kindred EV Bus has the look and feel of nostalgia with the performance of a high-end modern electric vehicle. Too bad it costs a quarter-million dollars. Read all about the electric Frankenbus at the Autopian. 

Fast food restaurants in the US gather together around interstate exits, and they offer variations on sandwiches, chicken pieces, pizza, burritos, and fried potatoes on the side. They taste the same from coast to coast. Then in late summer, state and county fairs go wild and offer expensive opportunities to combine wildly disparate foods just for the fun of it- then they go away. 

Those brands expanded to other countries where food cultures vary from the American model. You can't tell people in Italy that only American cheese is available, and you can't tell people in Thailand that chocolate doesn't belong on a hamburger. And fast food outlets have to give customers what they want. You know, I could get on board with an edible coffee cup if it weren't for all the people who touched it before me.   

Tom Blank, the original voice of Weird History, takes us on a tour of international fast food offerings that might gross you out, but might also make you want to travel to try them. 

Some 80,000 years ago, a huge iron and nickel meteor landed on earth in what would eventually become the Hoba West farm near Grootfontein in Namibia. In 1920, a farmer ran into the big hunk of metal while plowing, and scientists have been studying the Hoba meteorite ever since. How did such a large meteorite survive and not leave a huge crater? 

There are several reasons. One is the meteorite's shape, which is assumed to be a remnant of a much more massive meteor. It is a slab, and had to have arrived at a shallow angle, greatly slowed down by our atmosphere. You can almost imagine it coming in like a rock skipping across a lake. Its internal structure also plays a part. And 80,000 years later, it sits in the same spot where it landed because it weighs 60 metric tons, even after chunks have been taken over the past 100 years. Excavations have determined that Hoba actually had a crater once, although a strangely shallow one, which was filled in naturally over many centuries. Read about the massive Hoba meteorite and its weird history at ZME Science. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Compl33t) 

Magnificent music mixer Bill McClintock is at it again, with another unlikely rock/soul mashup. Eddie Kendricks never rocked so hard! This one features vocals from The Temptations's 1966 hit "Get Ready" and the music from "Lack of Communication" by Ratt from 1984. Despite being written and produced by Smokey Robinson, the Temptations' song did not do as well as was expected, and the remake by Rare Earth in 1970 was a bigger hit. Still, the Temptations version of "Get Ready" proved to be long lasting, and familiar even 60 years later. The Ratt song? Well, maybe you had to be a metalhead at the time to really know the song, but it has the distinctive sound of Ratt.

And if you are such a metalhead, you might recognize Dimebag Darrell's guitar work from the 1994 Pantera song "I'm Broken" in this mix as well. Enjoy songs song three different decades in this masterful mashup.   

New York City's Waldorf Astoria Hotel was once two hotels, the Waldorf and the Astoria. Both were considered the height of luxury in their day, with electric lights and a bathroom for every suite. The Waldorf Hotel opened in 1893, with the Astoria following in 1897. Before the hotels went up, those sites held two mansions belonging to heirs of John Jacob Astor, New York's first multimillionaire. On one side was Astor's great-grandson, William Waldorf Astor, and the other was his aunt Caroline Astor. The two mansions were separated by a garden. 

William moved to England, and had the Waldorf Hotel built in order to ruin the view for his aunt Caroline. Caroline's son, John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV, built the Astoria Hotel next door in revenge. It was many years later when these competing branches of the family made up and combined the two hotels into New York's premiere inn. But what caused the feud between William and Caroline? You'd be surprised at how petty it was, and you can read that story at Ephemeral New York. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Joseph Pennell) 

In this music video, musician Barry Bergen travels to Africa in the 1980s to glean the ancient wisdom of this magical land. Mr Jambo is an older man who must have the enlightenment Bergen is looking for, but he doesn't speak English. Indeed, the closed captions tell us that he is saying, "I don't speak English. Do you have a translator?" Meanwhile, Bergan mentions jambalaya and bears, as if they have anything to do with Africa. As silly as the premise is, the song is quite catchy. 

There is no Barry Bergen; he's a creation of comedian Kyle Gordon who has has made a career of parodying songs from genres you may not be consciously aware of, but you'll recognize when you hear them. The song "Mr. Jambo" is a parody of the "white guy goes to Africa" genre that you know mostly from Paul Simon's album Graceland, although it's been done by others. "Mr. Jambo" is from Gordon's third album Kyle Gordon Is Everywhere, to be released in October.  -via Boing Boing 

Have you noticed the strange phenomena of ice cream that doesn't melt? When a child drops a scoop or a novelty in your yard, you get the kid another and let the ice cream melt. Then you can pick up the stick and hose the cream down. But in the 21st century, you are liable to come back hours later and find a blob of ice cream still sitting there. I noticed this when my freezer died and a box of ice cream sandwiches sat there warm and intact. 

Homemade ice cream contains milk, cream, sugar, and flavoring (and sometimes eggs and/or salt). The big conglomerates who sell store-bought ice cream have found ways to recreate that product with less of the expensive cream by adding gums and emulsifiers that enable them to whip in more air to produce volume. This includes premium brands like Breyers and Ben & Jerry's. These formulations often bring the product below legal standards for ice cream, but it doesn't matter if you grab a familiar package from the frozen food section. Look carefully, and you may find that it doesn't say "ice cream" anywhere on the package. Read how these frozen dairy desserts are made and how far they've strayed from "ice cream." -via Fark

The smallest countries of Oceania, spread across the Pacific, are widely-spaced paradises. They aren't rich, but some of them make a surprising amount of money by getting creative and looking to the future. Vanuatu makes a ton of money by selling citizenship. Tuvalu prospers by leasing its .tv internet domain. And Tonga was fortunate enough to be the retirement home of a satellite expert, who saw a fortune in the starry skies above his new homeland. There's money to be made in selling, or in this case renting, what you have plenty of. For Tonga, that was its isolation, which gave them a large swath of the empty space overhead. Half as Interesting explains how Tonga leveraged its location and international pacts about the use of space to make millions of dollars passively. What happened to the money is another story. This video is only around five minutes- the rest is advertising. 

Stephanie Stullich of Beltsville Community Cats, a shelter in Maryland, received a call from Pet Supplies Plus that one of their kittens has been stolen from the store. She went down to the store and saw police cars arriving from all directions. She thought, "Wow, that's a heck of a response for a stolen cat." But there was more to the story. 

On Monday, July 13th, a yet-unnamed man came into the pet supply store and stole the kitten. Employees said he had been there many times, showing great interest in the three-month old tuxedo kitten named Magnolia. Then he went across the parking lot to a bank and tried to rob it! He asked the bank manager to hold the kitten while he wrote a note, which was a note to the teller demanding money. He didn't get away with it.

Magnolia was stashed in the manager's office until she could be picked up, and was not hurt in the incident. Since she is no longer listed at the shelter's PetFinder page, we assume that the publicity of her adventure led her to a permanent home. Read or listen to the story at I Heart Radio. -via Strange Company   

(Image credit: Beltsville Community Cats at Facebook)