Saturday Night Live airs live from New York, of course, with ninety minutes of material that was written just that week. Sketches are changed all the way up until show time. No wonder that cue cards are a big part of the production. Now we get the inside scoop from the people who are in charge of feeding lines to live performers on SNL. We also get to see some memorable scenes from the show and a peek at how they were done. -via Tastefully Offensive
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How do you study an earthquake that happened more than 110 years ago? With modern cutting-edge technology, applied to records made in 1906. That's when the San Francisco Earthquake killed 3,000 people and destroyed much of the city. A new science paper turned its attention on evidence from contemporary accounts, and analyzed this description of the overturned train pictured above.
At Point Reyes Station at the head of Tomales Bay the 5:15 train for San Francisco was just ready. The conductor had just swung himself on when the train gave a great lurch to the east, followed by another to the west, which threw the whole train on its side. The astonished conductor dropped off as it went over, and at the sight of the falling chimneys and breaking windows of the station, he understood that it was the Temblor. The fireman turned to jump from the engine to the west when the return shock came. He then leaped to the east and borrowing a Kodak he took a picture of the train here presented.
From this story and picture, researchers calculated that the hypocenter, the very beginning of the earthquake, must have been south of Point Reyes, California. Read how they figured this out at Gizmodo.
Color television is taken for granted these days, but when it was new, it was sensational. Vice President Richard Nixon even compared the development of color TV to the Soviets' space program in 1959. Of course, he was displaying some Cold War one-upmanship, but color television changed our perception of the world. However, networks were slow to broadcast programs in color, and consumers were even slower to buy color sets. The development of color TV actually goes back to the 1920s! Believe it or not, the technology was pushed with the aim of helping physicians practice surgery. It was demonstrated at medical conventions in the 1940s.
Peter Goldmark, the head of the CBS lab and one of the inventors of color television, noted that audiences at medical conventions responded strongly to the images produced by his system. “The operations were so realistic that some of the viewers, including doctors, fermented in front of the television screens,” he wrote in his 1973 autobiography. “We began to measure the impact of our television shows by the number of faintings we could count.” Goldmark championed his color system by not only asserting its ability to represent the real in true fidelity, but by claiming that the electronic color image of the surgery had even more psychological and visceral impact on viewers than watching it with their own eyes.
Read about the history of color television at Smithsonian.
Movie poster designer James Verdesoto compares posters for original movies to those for the remake that were made later, sometimes much later. In the case of A Star Is Born, that means four versions. Along the way, we will learn a lot about the design elements that have been used in movie posters over the history of film. -via Boing Boing
Not everyone can grow their hair really long, and many of those who can never even know how long their hair can grow because very long hair is a real hassle. How much of the admiration of long hair is because it is a sign of wealth? People became obsessed with women who grew very long hair during the Victorian age, but that may be because it was a hallmark of those who didn't need to work for a living, and had servants to carry out household tasks.
When the beauty craze shifted there was a serge of real-life Rapunzels’ amongst the middle and upper classes. Land-mermaids letting their long hair loose signified social status, as the poorer classes found it difficult to maintain such a mane. Disease was rife and physical hygiene wasn’t easy to upkeep during these times, so the best bet for the lower classes was to chop it all off and sell it for cash.
Taking care of all that hair took time, too, which signified a life of leisure. That doesn't mean that every long-hair Victorian woman was wealthy -some supported themselves by exhibiting their hair, or advertising hair care products. Read about the Victorian craze for very long hair, with lots of photographs, at Messy Nessy Chic.
“How do you stay warm when it’s 30 below?” pic.twitter.com/yv9QkkVi0j
— Blair Braverman (@BlairBraverman) January 7, 2019
It gets mighty cold in Alaska when you're training for the Iditarod. Musher Blair Braverman (previously at Neatorama) shows us how she dresses for days when the temperature hits 30 degrees below zero, backwards, by taking it off. It takes a while, even though the video is slightly sped up. The Twitter thread is a Q&A about the clothing, with an obvious discussion about answering the call of nature. -via Everlasting Blort
Bird Box is a Netflix movie that everyone was talking about for a couple of weeks. Or, at least, everyone who has Netflix. It's about an apocalypse terrorized by unseen monsters that are Medusas. That means you can't see them. Screen Junkies has a field day tearing Bird Box apart.
Killeen, Texas: A line of cars stretching for miles to attend the funeral of an Air Force Veteran with no family.. after fears he would be buried with no one attending. pic.twitter.com/IC5z7IlDjh
— Janet Shamlian (@JanetShamlian) January 28, 2019
Joseph Walker served in the US Air Force from 1964 to 1968, during the Vietnam War. He died of natural causes in November in central Texas. Walker was 72. His body was held for two months in order to notify family, but no family members were found. The Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen expected no one to attend Walker's funeral Monday besides the cemetery staff. They said as much on Twitter. People from all over responded. The Texas General Land Office facilitated the funeral. Marc George of the Christian Motorcyclists Association stepped in to conduct the service. Other motorcycle clubs were there, too. KVUE sent a camera crew. Veterans groups came. The people from all walks of life showed up to honor Walker.
One attendee put the number of people who turned out at more than 1,000. The crowd extended far beyond the plaza's rows of folding chairs, out onto the pavement where dozens of rows of people stood quietly in the sunshine. Photos showed that the road leading into the cemetery was clogged with vehicles bearing people who wanted to be there for Walker.
Texas officials say Walker served during the Vietnam War, from Sept. 10, 1964, to Sept. 9, 1968, when he left the service with an honorable discharge. At the funeral service, George noted that little else is known about Walker's military service, including his rank.
"I don't have a lot of information, but it doesn't matter," he said, "because once upon a time, like a lot of us other vets, he signed a blank check for our nation."
Alexandr Trubetskoy used data points submitted by redditors to create this map showing how much snow will cause the local schools to close. There are some explanations and caveats you can read at the map page. You know that cities and counties that keep snowplows and salt on hand at all times are better at keeping schools open. I would add that the terrain makes a difference. School busses where I live must climb mountains and negotiate curvy roads, often with no guard rails. Heck, the county school system here will close for flooding, because quite a few rural bridges will be under water (the city system stays open). Maybe that's why school starts in early August in the South, since it's easier to build in estimated snow days on the school calendar that to pay for a fleet of snow plows that might not be used. -via Digg
The classic Queen song "Bohemian Rhapsody" is illustrated in memes. Luke Maynard adapted his viral slideshow to video so the song could be incorporated. The funniness really picks up after the first guitar solo. -via Metafilter
American football announcers can get quite excited during play-by-play. That's their job. Nick Murray Willis took some of the things said in NFL games completely out of context and illustrated them with scenes of everyday life. Everything makes perfect sense, but the over-the-top delivery makes it special. -via Laughing Squid
Gibraltar is a curious place. It is a small peninsula at the south corner of Spain, at the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea. Morocco is only eight miles across the water. Gibraltar is a British colony, one of the few remnants of the British Empire, and home to 30,000 people.
The peninsula is just 2.6 square miles, and consists mostly of sand, rock, and scrub. It is not an especially hospitable place, with little fresh water and few natural resources beyond sunshine and beaches. The plant and animal life is also fairly limited, with a few foxes and rabbits and a decent selection of frogs and lizards. It is a migratory stop for many birds, but they don’t breed or spend much time there. Gibraltar has few trees, just some hardy, shrunken wild olive trees and a bunch of imported palms, shrubs, and succulents from elsewhere in the British Empire, past and present.
And yet there are also roughly 200 Barbary macaques, tailless monkeys native to Morocco and Algeria. On this small, dry peninsula, largely dedicated to tourism and the military, with barely any fresh water and few other mammals, are monkeys.
Monkeys and apes tend to live in warmer climates. They moved out of Europe during the last ice age. But the Barbary macaques have lived in Gibraltar continuously, at least since the early 17th century, when they were included in the first history of the area. Why the monkeys have flourished on the small and inhospitable peninsula is a story you can read at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Nathan Harig)
A spectacular documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last week. Apollo 11 relives the NASA moon mission 50 years after the fact, with narration-free archival footage that will bring back memories to those who watched it on TV. Except this film is much clearer than our TV sets were in 1969.
“Apollo 11” is a cool, meticulous, at times enthralling documentary that captures the Apollo 11 flight in its entirety through raw footage drawn from the NASA vaults. Some of the footage is 70mm and quite spectacular; just about all the footage has never been seen before. We witness the hours before the launch, the surging cataclysm of the liftoff, the flight into space, the orbiting of the moon, the landing of the lunar module, Armstrong on the moon, Buzz Aldrin on the moon, the relaunch from the moon’s surface, the return flight, the re-entry into the atmosphere and the splashdown, all accompanied by the watchful natterings of mission-control analysts.
My friend got married last month and her dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses ALL HAD POCKETS.
— Nell Goddard (@alianoree) January 23, 2019
And yes, we did use them for storing snacks, thank you for asking. pic.twitter.com/3fRWtmJS2F
A bride and six bridesmaids, posing with their hands in their pockets. Men don't understand what's so special about this picture, but women know immediately. See, these dresses were custom-made, or else they wouldn't have pockets! Eve Paterson of Cambridge, UK, made sure the dresses all had pockets sewn in.
Mrs Paterson, a charity worker from Cambridge, said: "It's just so rare for women's clothing to be practical.
"It might seem ridiculous to most men, but we often have to choose between convenience and looking good."
The dress suppliers offered the option of pockets, which Mrs Paterson said made "perfect sense".
Perfect sense, in that it's impossible to carry purses through a wedding ceremony and reception. Besides snacks, the women were able to carry the day's schedule, the seating plan, and their phones. Another bride commented that her custom pocket held the groom's ring for the ceremony. Note to clothing designers: incorporate usable pockets into women's wear, and customers will be beating down your doors. Photographer Toby Mitchell took more than one picture highlighting the pockets, which you can see at BBC News. -via Metafilter
True crime fans know Ann Rule as the queen of the genre. But she had yet to write her first book when she worked at a crisis hotline in the early 1970s. There she befriended a co-worker named Ted Bundy, and even gave him ride home occasionally. Later, when there was a serial killer on the loose in Seattle, the physical description of the perpetrator reminded her of Bundy.
What helped ease her mind was that encounters with the killer often included mentions of a Volkswagen Beetle. The assailant often lured his female victims to the car under the pretense of needing help carrying bags, with a fake cast on his arm or leg to diminish suspicion. The killer would then hit them with a crowbar and stuff them into the passenger side of the car, where he had ripped out the seat to better accommodate their unconscious and prostrate frames.
Although the physical description seemed to match Bundy and one witness overheard the assailant saying his name was “Ted,” Rule knew that the Bundy she had once worked alongside—and was still friendly with—didn’t own a car. Still, she harbored doubts. So she asked a friend on the police force to check his car registration, and was surprised to learn Bundy owned a tan 1968 Volkswagen Beetle.
Bundy was eventually convicted of three murders, although he was suspected of dozens more. The VW Bug supplied evidence of those crimes. But what happened to the car after Bundy's arrest? The story of the world's most notorious Beetle is told at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: DCTWINKIE5500)
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