Late in his life, Sir Winston Churchill led Britain through World War II and cemented his place in history permanently. But as a young man in the 1890s, he was a writer who published two books about war. In 1899, an American novelist named Winston Churchill wrote a bestseller. You could go to a store and find vartious books by Winston Churchill who were two completely different men. Of course, they began corresponding with each other. The British Churchill wrote in 1899:
Mr. Winston Churchill presents his compliments to Mr. Winston Churchill, and begs to draw his attention to a matter which concerns them both. He has learnt from the Press notices that Mr. Winston Churchill proposes to bring out another novel, entitled Richard Carvel, which is certain to have a considerable sale both in England and America. Mr. Winston Churchill is also the author of a novel now being published in serial form in Macmillan’s Magazine, and for which he anticipates some sale both in England and America.
The letter continues in that confusing vein, and the American Churchill responded in kind. Eventually, the two authors met for dinner and confused everyone. Read about Churchill and Churchill at Kottke.
I sure hope this isn't an April Fool trailer. It can't be with such a star-studded cast. The Dead Don't Die is a zombie comedy from Jim Jarmusch, starring Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Selena Gomez, Iggy Pop, Chloë Sevigny, Carol Kane, Rosie Perez, Steve Buscemi, Austin Butler, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, Danny Glover, RZA, and Caleb Landry Jones. The Dead Don't Die will hit theaters on June 14. -via Metafilter
Every once in a while, you hear someone mentioning getting rid of all the nuclear weapons on earth. The simplest way to do that would be to detonate them all, but that's kind of missing the point. Kurzgesagt describes what that would be like. It ain't pretty.
Medieval monks copying manuscripts by hand entertained themselves by doodling in the margins, giving us a glimpse of their sense of humor. All kinds of subjects are contained therein, but killer bunnies are everywhere. The incongruity of such a harmless animal creating violence is still with us, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to Bunnicula to Night of the Lepus.
Jon Kaneko-James explains further: "The usual imagery of the rabbit in Medieval art is that of purity and helplessness – that’s why some Medieval portrayals of Christ have marginal art portraying a veritable petting zoo of innocent, nonviolent, little white and brown bunnies going about their business in a field." But the creators of this particular type of humorous marginalia, known as drollery, saw things differently.
Artist Joanie Lemercier makes three-dimensional light art in real time with geometric projections. She creates them out of thin air by first spraying an invisible mist of microscopic water droplets into the space, giving the projection something to reflect onto. The show called Constellations is 16 minutes long, and if you can't see it in person, this video gives us a small taste. -via Laughing Squid
Lyda Southard, also known as "Flypaper Lyda," has seven husbands. She first married in 1912 at age 21, and within three years her husband was dead, following the deaths of their daughter and his brother. Her second marriage lasted a year. Her third, just four months. Husband number four lasted three weeks before he, too, died. That's four husbands in eight years, and that's where someone started to get suspicious. Husbands number five and six survived because they did not buy life insurance as the first four did. Oh, and a prison guard who helped Lyda escape also died mysteriously before she broke out. Are you keeping up with all this? Lyda married a seventh husband, but we don't know what happened to him. Read the saga of Flypaper Lyda at Historic Horrors. -via Strange Company
Adam and Neil Pearson are identical twins, both with neurofibromatosis. Their DNA is the same, but the disease has disfigured Adam's face and left Neil so far unblemished. However, Neil suffers other symptoms. Read more about the Pearson twins at the Atlantic.
Humans are pretty resourceful when they need to be. When you don't have what you need, use what you have. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes it's a genius discovery that will be passed down to your descendants.
I once used a bra to hold up a disconnected muffler and keep it from dragging the ground until we could get back to our hometown. My mother was impressed, but bras are good for a lot of things.
Meet Charlie and Maverick. Charlie is 11 years old. He went blind from glaucoma and his eyes were removed. Maverick is his 4-month-old best friend and constant companion. The family didn't adopt Maverick to be Charlie's seeing-eye dog; that just happened.
"We originally got Maverick because we wanted our newborn son to grow up with a dog," Charlie and Maverick's mom, Chelsea Stipe, told BuzzFeed. "It just so turned out that he was also helpful to Charlie!"
Well, from the puppy's point of view, an old dog is more fun than a newborn. Charlie, who had settled into old age, gained the confidence to roam outside with Maverick by his side. He became more active trying to keep up with puppy games. And the two are inseparable. Read more about Charlie and Maverick at Buzzfeed, and see videos of them at Instagram.
A guy is writing his mother about his videos, but then stops to make a sandwich. This stop-motion animation might remind you of PES, but it's from omozoc, who may be worth keeping an eye on. -via reddit
Regency romance author Sarah Waldock was perusing old advertisements for women's clothing when she came across the term "invisible dresses." That, of course, deserved more in-depth research. At the beginning of the 19th century, British upper-class ladies' clothing changed considerably. The fashions of the Regency Era were known for the new soft, floating style of lightweight dresses, which were more comfortable than the previous tight-laced corsets and heavy skirts. But outside of trendsetters, women of the day didn't feel right about showing off the outlines of their bodies in these stylish fashions. That's where "invisible dresses" came in. They were neither invisible nor dresses, as we would define those words, but were some of the experimental designs for underwear that would solve the problems of the new Recency fashions. Read about invisible dresses and other underwear innovations at All Things Georgian. -via Strange Company
A company called Chromatography & Mass Spectrometry Solutions released an ad for their Thermo Scientific Virtuoso Vial Identification System. This is a fairly esoteric product aimed at a very specific market. But that small market was not unworthy of an animated ad with a catchy jingle. -via Digg
A meteor hit the earth 66 million years ago, which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and a lot of other life forms. At least that's the story. The evidence of the event lives in a sediment layer of ash, soot, and debris called the KT boundary, because the impact separates the Cretaceous and the Tertiary periods.
One of the central mysteries of paleontology is the so-called “three-metre problem.” In a century and a half of assiduous searching, almost no dinosaur remains have been found in the layers three metres, or about nine feet, below the KT boundary, a depth representing many thousands of years. Consequently, numerous paleontologists have argued that the dinosaurs were on the way to extinction long before the asteroid struck, owing perhaps to the volcanic eruptions and climate change. Other scientists have countered that the three-metre problem merely reflects how hard it is to find fossils. Sooner or later, they’ve contended, a scientist will discover dinosaurs much closer to the moment of destruction.
Locked in the KT boundary are the answers to our questions about one of the most significant events in the history of life on the planet. If one looks at the Earth as a kind of living organism, as many biologists do, you could say that it was shot by a bullet and almost died. Deciphering what happened on the day of destruction is crucial not only to solving the three-metre problem but also to explaining our own genesis as a species.
But in 2013, graduate student Robert DePalma found fossils in the Hell Creek Formation in North Dakota that he believes are direct victims of the asteroid. At the TK layer, he found tekites, glass globules that rained from the sky during the event. He also found plants, trees, seeds, fish, mammals, and dinosaurs that shouldn't be there together. DePalma thinks they were washed into the valley by a tsunami caused by the asteroid impact.
“We have the whole KT event preserved in these sediments,” DePalma said. “With this deposit, we can chart what happened the day the Cretaceous died.” No paleontological site remotely like it had ever been found, and, if DePalma’s hypothesis proves correct, the scientific value of the site will be immense. When Walter Alvarez visited the dig last summer, he was astounded. “It is truly a magnificent site,” he wrote to me, adding that it’s “surely one of the best sites ever found for telling just what happened on the day of the impact.”
The use of anesthesia to block the pain of surgery was a game changer for medicine. Dentist William T. G. Morton used ether to block the pain of tooth extraction in September of 1846. He then administered ether to a patient during neck surgery in the theater of Massachusetts General Hospital in October. The painless surgery caused a sensation, and Morton was quick to capitalize on it.
Morton toiled unsuccessfully for years to get the U.S. Congress to recognize his “discovery” and grant him a monetary award. He tried to disguise his ether with odorants and coloring agent, even naming it “Letheon,” after the river in Greek mythology believed to induce forgetfulness, in his unsuccessful effort to patent it. “Letheon” was quickly identified as ether, which was in the public domain.
What the world didn't know at the time was that Dr. Crawford Long of Jefferson, Georgia, used ether in surgery beginning in 1842. He had used the anesthetic in seven surgeries by the time of Morton's demonstration. So why did Morton get the credit? One reason is the difference between Massachusetts General Hospital and a private clinic in a small town in Georgia. But it was mainly because Long didn't publish his findings until 1849, for several very good reasons. The story of the first surgical use of ether pits publicity against scientific rigor, which you can read about at The Conversation. -via Damn Interesting
The Soufriere Hills Volcano on the island of Montserrat erupted in 1997. At first, the eruption was slow but unstoppable. Over several months, pyroclastic flows sent rock, ash, and gasses down the mountain. Parts of the island were evacuated, but life went on elsewhere. Then on June 25, a huge plume of ash engulfed Montserrat. Nineteen people died in the first 24 hours.
Mandatory evacuation orders went up. Survivors scrambled to gather belongings. They fled on foot and in cars. In the tumult, beloved animals became the unthinkable: afterthoughts. Even those who had the wherewithal to consider rescuing their animals had almost no options. More than two-thirds of the island had been rendered uninhabitable by the flows. A relatively small area in the north was available for evacuees and its shelters prohibited animals. Attempting to take a pet overseas would be daunting and costly.
Residents set dogs and cats loose in the streets in last ditch attempts to save them. They freed cows and donkeys in the fields. Then they fled to the crowded schools and churches and tents in the north, where food and supplies would soon run low; where Montserratians made do with cots and cook stoves and had little protection from lashing rains; where fading hope would turn to desperation. People who had remained in danger areas before the deadly events of June 25 or who had ventured back to care for animals now stayed away. The volcano was too dangerous, too unpredictable. There was no safety in its shadow.
Conditions worsened for weeks afterward. John Walsh heard about the plight of the animals left behind on Montserrat, and immediately went to work. It wasn't easy. All efforts were going into evacuating the islanders, and no one wanted to take Walsh there, much less help him in his mission to save the animals. That is, except for Gerardo Huertas, a fellow volunteer with the World Society for the Protection of Animals. Together, the two men found the abandoned pets, set up a shelter, enlisted help, and arranged to evacuate the cats, dogs, and donkeys they found, all while lava and ash fell for months. Read the story of the animals of Montserrat at Medium. Bring a hankie. -via Digg
