NASA's Apollo missions in the 1960s had one goal, to get to the moon before the decade was out, as President Kennedy had stated. Each Apollo flight made concrete steps toward that goal. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the surface in the lunar lander Eagle, and then stepped onto the surface. Everyone knows that. But what about Apollo 10, which left for the moon on May 18, 1969? Commander Thomas P. Stafford, Command Module Pilot John W. Young, and Lunar Module Pilot Eugene A. Cernan orbited the moon as a "dress rehearsal" for the planned moon landing. Yes, they had a Lunar Module (named Snoopy), which separated from the Command Module (named Charlie Brown) and headed toward the moon. But they were under orders to stop at 47,000 feet above the lunar surface and return to the ship, and then to earth. They went such a long way to stop short of the goal, which couldn't have been easy.

But Snoopy didn’t have enough fuel to land on the moon and then blast off again. According to Craig Nelson, author of the book “Rocket Men,” Cernan speculated that the lander’s ascent module had been short-fueled on purpose: “A lot of people thought about the kind of people we were: ‘Don’t give those guys an opportunity to land, ‘cause they might!’”   

Read about the mission that worked out the last kinks for the moon landing at the New York Times.  -via Damn Interesting

George Lucas, born on May 14th, 1944, is a retired film director, writer, and producer known for such movies as American Graffiti, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Labyrinth, and a film series collectively known as Star Wars. Despite endless discussion of the artist on the internet, there are things you don't already know about George Lucas.    

1. George Lucas didn't always want to be a filmmaker.

George Lucas didn't always want to be a filmmaker. In fact, it was only after failing at a handful of other careers that Lucas made his way into show business. According to The Hollywood Reporter, as a teen Lucas dreamed of becoming a professional race car driver until a near-fatal accident while he was in high school derailed those plans. After graduating from high school, Lucas attempted to join the Air Force but was rejected because he had too many speeding tickets.

So Lucas had to resort to becoming one of the most successful Hollywood figures ever. Read more trivia about George Lucas at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Flickr user raymond twist)

A grave discovered in 2003 near Prittlewell in Essex County, UK, has finally been completely excavated. Dated to somewhere between 580 and 605 CE, it may well be the oldest Christian burial found in Britain yet. The large burial chamber held accoutrements that make archaeologists pretty sure the man buried there was wealthy, and might even have been royalty. King Saeberht was the first Anglo-Saxon ruler to convert to Christianity, but the dates aren't right for this to be his tomb.

It’s quite possible, however, that the tomb belonged to one of the king’s relatives—perhaps even a prince—as the tomb’s contents indicate that the individual was of wealthy and noble status. (All that’s left of the body is some tooth enamel, which tells us only that the individual was older than six when buried.) Researchers were also able to identify the individual as male based on the presence of weapons and a triangular, gold belt buckle within the tomb. They could identify him as Christian, finally, by the two gold-foil crosses by the head of the coffin, where they likely rested over the man’s eyes.

Read about the discovery at Atlas Obscura, and explore the find in an interactive website about the tomb.

(Image credit: MOLA)

There was a big gap between the time communities developed specialized labor to the time of refrigerated transport. In between, dairy farmers had to get creative in order to deliver their goods to customers before it spoiled. Ian Spellerberg collects antique milk cans, and knows a lot about that history. He has milk cans from 20 different countries, and his book, Milk Cans: A Celebration of Their History, Use, and Design, has just been released in the US.

Naturally, Spellerberg also devotes a fair amount of his book to the myriad ways in which milk cans were moved from Point A to Point B. He begins with a section on “manual” transport, beginning with the milkmaids of 18th-century England and Europe, who carried unlidded cans on the ends of yokes like beasts of burden. It’s thought that milkmaids carried more than 100 pounds around their necks, several miles, every day. By the 19th century, milkmen had largely replaced milkmaids, but concurrently, the manual transport of milk was itself being replaced by carriages, carts, and customized hand trucks, each of which was designed to hold particular styles, sizes, and shapes of milk cans so that they could be rolled easily through the streets. Sometimes these devices were pulled by humans, sometimes horses provided the literal horsepower, but there are also examples of milk-can carts being pulled by harnessed dogs.

As the means of moving milk cans improved, the size of the cans increased, reaching peak milk can, if you will, around 1867 with the railway milk churn, which takes the last part of its name from its resemblance to traditional wooden butter churns. Railway churns were wider at the bottom to make them less susceptible to tipping over and spilling their 17 gallons of liquid, which, Spellerberg tells us in Milk Cans, is equivalent to 8 “barn” gallons or 68 quarts. However you measure it, when you add in the weight of the metal churn itself, a full railway churn weighed as much as 150 pounds. To move this milk-filled monster, dairy and railway workers alike would “reel” the churn by grabbing its top or handles and turning it on its bottom edge rather than lifting it.

Read about the history of milk delivery and see milk cans ranging from 25 gallons down to an eighth of a pint, at Collectors Weekly.

(Image from Milk Cans)

Why is a reservoir in Los Angeles covered with 96 million floating balls? To keep the sunlight from affecting the water. But lakes and reservoirs exist all over the world with sun shining on them! Veritasium host Derek Muller went there to find out what the story is. While the balls were an idea to solve a chemistry problem, they turned out to have other benefits, too. -via Laughing Squid

One of the reasons people avoid theaters is because it's so inviting to watch a movie from your bed. But what if the theater had beds? Pathé Schweiz cinema in Switzerland opened a new theater experience on May 9 with an auditorium outfitted with double beds! For 49 francs (around $48.50) a ticket, you get to recline with your date on fresh sheets and enjoy unlimited snacks delivered to your seat, er, bed. Other auditoriums in the theater have features such as reclining sofas, IMAX screens, and there's a special theater with bean bag seats and toys for children. However, the American response to the idea of a theater with beds is what you might predict: they are either wary of people having sex near them, or they are afraid of falling asleep during the movie. Read about Pathé Schweiz and see pictures at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: Pathé Schweiz via Facebook)

Imagine a world where years are not numbered. Would you know, or be able to explain how old you are? Could you imagine how long it will be before your future grandchildren could take over your job? How would you tell your community's history to someone from another culture? That's the way the ancient world was. Each culture had a different way of explaining when something happened.

In ancient Mesopotamia, years could be designated by an outstanding event of the preceding 12 months: something could be said to happen, for instance, in the year when king Naram-Sin reached the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates river, or when king Enlil-bani made for the god Ninurta three very large copper statues. Alternatively, events could be dated by giving the name of the holder of an annual office of state: something happened in the year when two named Romans were consuls, or when an elite Athenian was chief magistrate, and so on. Finally, and most commonly in the kingdoms of antiquity, events could be dated by counting the throne year of the monarch: the fifth year of Alexander the Great, the 40th year of king Nebuchadnezzar II, and so on.

Each of these systems was geographically localised. There was no transcendent or translocal system for locating oneself in the flow of history. How could one synchronise events at geographical distance, or between states?

You have to admit that our system of assigning year numbers that don't reset is much handier for understanding history, for planning the future, and for communicating. So how did that start? Hint- it was a long time before the BC/AD system was introduced. Read how the first universal linear year numbering system began at Aeon. -via Digg

(Image credit: Massimo Finizio)

Invent something to help a child sleep, and the world will beat a path to your door. There's been no shortage of attempts to come up with something workable -and marketable- to give a little relief to tired parents dealing with a fussy infant. These include everything from the classic rocking cradle to a planned "smart crib," in which the child is monitored by automation. There have been some truly disturbing contraptions that came and went along the way.  

The most bizarre crib in the patent category with bedside co-sleepers (“Children's beds capable of being suspended from, or attached to, window frames or other articles”) is the window crib. The first, but certainly not only, patent for such a crib appeared in 1919, not too long after American pediatrician Luther Emmett Holt insisted in his book The Care and Feeding of Children that “fresh air is required to renew and purify the blood” and that “those who sleep out of doors are stronger children.” So what were city-dwelling parents to do? Why, put baby in a cage suspended out the window, much like an air conditioning unit, of course! Eleanor Roosevelt used one in their townhouse window for their daughter, Anna, until a neighbor threatened to report her for child cruelty. “This was a shock to me,” Roosevelt wrote in her autobiography, “for I thought I was being a most modern mother.” Though they may not have been common in New York, they were quite popular in London. Thankfully, we aren’t “airing” babies out of windows anymore, but you can buy infant tents for naptime at the beach.

Read about some of the stranger inventions that have been patented for baby-rearing at Smithsonian.

You've heard it: "The best part about getting a vaccine isn't the lollipop -it's the part where you don't get sick and die." Just ask anyone who remembers the panic of polio or smallpox outbreaks. But nothing in this world is totally risk free. Most medications ignite side effects in some people, and even if the relative number of those people is tiny, science takes note. Kurzgesagt shows us how vaccines work, using measles as the example, and explains the odds of side effects in numbers we can understand. The most common side effect of the MMR vaccine is fewer dead children.   

Ottawa Comic Con always happens on Mothers Day weekend, which is fine if your mom is really into comic books, science fiction, fantasy, and/or cosplay. The costumed characters above portraying Rey and Leia have to be mother and daughter, because they look very much alike. For those of us who didn't get to attend, Geeks Are Sexy was there to document the best costumes! Check out this Ryan Reynolds mashup.

See the first gallery here.  Check back at Geeks Are Sexy tomorrow for more.

To mark the 30th anniversary of Salvador Dali's death, the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, is presenting a thoroughly modern exhibit called Dali Lives. The draw is the opportunity to interact with the artist himself, besides him being, you know, deceased. It's all thanks to artificial intelligence. Dali would be amused.

Dalí Lives is a series of screens throughout the museum that will be on display as a permanent exhibit. This digital Dalí was composited from over 6000 frames of the painter pulled from video and interviews. The museum then partnered with ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco (GS&P) — who used Deepfake artificial intelligence technology to train the algorithm for over 1000 hours to match and learn his facial expressions. The result, combined with an actor body and voice double, is 45 minutes of content and thousands of unique interactions. In your personal conversation with faux Dalí, he may comment about the weather, the latest news, or ask you to take a selfie with him. And then, as seen in the video below, he’ll text it to you.

The experience is available now. Get ready for countless social media profiles that include the artist.

Genghis Kahn was both feared and revered during his lifetime. The Great Kahn was adamant about what was to be done after his death: he was to be buried in an unmarked grave in the mountains of Burkhan Khaldun. However, the cause of his death was something he could not control. And neither can historians.

The death of Genghis Khan is shrouded in secrecy. The Great Khan died in the summer of 1227, during a campaign against the Tanguts, along the upper reaches of the Yellow River, in Yinchuan. But the manner of his death is unknown. It is reasonable to believe that he died of injuries sustained during the battle. It is also reasonable to believe that those wounds came not from an enemy arrow, as asserted by Marco Polo, but from falling off his horse during hunting, according to The Secret History of the Mongols—a semi-mythical genealogy of Genghis Khan written sometime after his death. It is unreasonable to believe that Genghis Khan died of bleeding when a crafty Western Xia princess, that the Mongols had carried off as war booty, inserted a contraption into her vagina so that when Genghis Khan came to sleep with her, it tore off his organs. That particular story, some Mongol scholars believe, was created by the Khan’s enemies to vilify him.

Genghis Kahn's burial spot is a mystery as well, but one that may be revealed one day. It won't be easy, because of the shockingly meticulous efforts that went into keeping the exact location a secret. Over time, the reputed area was enlarged until a search became a Sisyphean task. Culture also hinders the search, as Mongolians still try to honor the Khan's wishes. But archaeologists are trying to find a way. Read about the search for Genghis Kahn's tomb at Amusing Planet.  -via Strange Company

Dr. Zubin Damania, also known as ZDoggMD (previously at Neatorama), has been bringing us health and medical videos for years. He also has a series of less serious videos in character as Doc Vader, a Sith physician. In this one, he recalls that time he was summoned to help in an in-flight medical emergency. Trust me, you do not want to have a medical emergency when Vader is the only doctor around.   

We've noticed movie posters becoming more formulaic for decades. Teal and blue. A woman's backside. Looking through legs. But the more research that goes into what catches the eye, the more every movie is using each factor, until they are so alike that there's little need to actually notice any one of them. Blockbusters have a diagonal feature. Romantic comedies have two people back-to-back, with a red title on a white background, or yellow on blue if it's French. Read about how you can look at a movie poster and learn nothing at all about the movie, but everything about marketing at The Wrap. -via reddit

Flatbush Cats neuters and feeds feral cats in Brooklyn, and tries to find homes for as many as they can. One day a new stray showed up who was shy, hungry, and sick. Julius didn't have the strength to fight the humans who helped him, but he was scared. Watch his transformation into a beautiful, cuddly pet under the care of volunteers who go the extra distance for their feline friends. -via Laughing Squid