As an American with an expired passport, I guessed that I couldn't go anywhere outside the U.S. these days. I was wrong! But even more surprising, this video from Half as Interesting isn't just about Americans. If you are French, you could technically go halfway around the world and land on an island without a passport -if there were a practical way to get there without going to another country first. And there are other geographic and legal quirks to learn about here. -via Digg

Some experiments go on long past the original scientist's lifetime, like the Pitch Drop experiment that began in 1927. Experiments that have to do with living things and their longevity are harder to design, and often only come about by serendipity, like the Judean date palm grown from 2,000-year-old seeds. But now German microbiologist Ralf Möller has set up an experiment to study the longevity of bacteria that won't yield results for 500 years!

In the year 2514, some future scientist will arrive at the University of Edinburgh (assuming the university still exists), open a wooden box (assuming the box has not been lost), and break apart a set of glass vials in order to grow the 500-year-old dried bacteria inside. This all assumes the entire experiment has not been forgotten, the instructions have not been garbled, and science—or some version of it—still exists in 2514.

Putting such an experiment in place raises all kinds of questions. How should the scientists leave a record of the experiment and how to complete it? Paper crumbles, digital media become obsolete, and even the language may be gone by 2514. Read what we've learned from other long-running experiments and how this experiment will face those challenges at the Atlantic.

(Image credit: R. Möller and C. S. Cockell)

The Cut wanted to record people who didn't drink alcohol for one reason or another and were willing to try downing shots of liquor on camera for one reason or another. They manage to find three such people. They gave them a shot of whiskey, and then a shot of vodka, and then a shot of tequila (this is starting to sound like the lyrics to "Tubthumping"). A high-speed camera shows their reactions in slow motion. We don't know how long they waited between each drink, but I sure hope they gave them all a ride home after the recording was done. -via Tastefully Offensive

Redditor jonbees posted this picture with the title, "My Father’s chair failing at a Coast Guard change of command." So everyone waited for the video or gif to start, and when nothing happened, they looked for the play button. But when you see it, you realize that a still picture is all you need to tell the story. At least he didn't fall overboard.  

In my PhD thesis, I dozed in a coffin-like structure in the floor (F) of a wooden room with Chagas bugs (Triatoma infestans), wearing a modified gas mask to lead my breath out of the room & video-taped what happened on the gauze-covered opening (GCO) right above me. #goodolddays pic.twitter.com/kvqE84m5vx

— Andreas Rose (@medentorose) January 25, 2019

Jason Rasgon is a professor of Entomology and Disease Epidemiology at Penn State. He studies mosquitoes and the diseases they spread. He asked his Twitter followers to admit the weirdest things they've done in their science careers. Since Rasgon works in biology, the thread was overwhelmingly slanted toward gross biology experiments.

cryosat-sliced freshly snipped human foreskin (obtained by running to maternity ward with a styrofoam coffee cup and dry ice) to use as an immunohistochemisty skin control in grad school

— Heidi Moss Erickson (@heidi_moss) January 26, 2019

Indeed. Thinking that the weirdest thing was using a crossbow to take biopsy samples from seals. Same project also required us to clipper seals and then bleach them with born blonde hair dye for identification. May still be a seal out there with NEIL on his back.

— Neil Gemmell (@ProfGemmell) January 25, 2019

Massaged hamster testes during a peritoneal lavage to increase macrophage yield. Set the hamster on fire (it was an accident!) while attempting to collect lavage fluid.

— Laurey Steinke (@laurey19) January 25, 2019

Yeah that's a junior high school goth date

— Jason Rasgon (@vectorgen) January 24, 2019

But some brave scientists from other disciplines were eventually represented.

I licked something that was later identified as human remains. #archaeologist

— Josh (@Ace_Collins) January 26, 2019

And not all replies came from scientists.

When I was 13 my friend and I got our bfs to fart in a jar each, we sealed them up, carried them in our school bags for a week and then opened them to observe if the smell had matured or disappeared.

— Rosewilder80 (@Rosewilder801) January 26, 2019

There's a lot more stories, but you might need a strong stomach to read them all. Oh yeah, in the experiment at the top, Andreas Rose found that the "kissing bugs" stayed still when his breath was directed out of the room, and attacked otherwise, so it is apparently the breathing that attracts them. Read the entire Twitter thread here.

-via Metafilter

In 1975, William Shatner and John Travolta starred in a movie you've probably never heard of called The Devil's Rain. It was immediately panned by critics, and was never seen in theaters outside of New York and Los Angeles.

In the film, all the actors had casts of their faces made, because in the movie, the characters’ faces melt, and they needed to make masks for the melting scenes. In the film, the prosthetic for Shatner’s melting face looked like this:

You would not be expected to remember the picture above, or the movie, or even recognize the look. But the mold that it was made from -a cast of Shatner's face- began a long and creative life. Its influence can be seen in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Walking Dead, and at a Halloween store near you. Read about the birth and the strange longevity of Shatner's mask at Uproxx.

StreetsBlog USA's second annual Sorriest Bus Stop in America competition drew plenty of contenders. The ultimate winner for 2018 was the bus stop above, in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, on the outskirts of Vancouver. This bus stop was so sorry that voters ignored the fact that it's not even in America. It's just a sign on the road, with a concrete barrier. You can stand on the highway shoulder in front of the barrier, or if you want to wait behind the barrier for safety, you'll be in a ditch, and you'd have to climb over the concrete when the bus arrives. Meanwhile, four lanes of traffic speed by in each direction.

Local resident Jason Lee submitted a detailed rundown of stop 61452’s faults to Streetsblog, a nonprofit transportation news site, for its second-annual Sorriest Bus Stop competition. “This bus stop is a disaster waiting to happen,” he wrote. “In my three decades of riding transit, I have never seen a bus stop designed like this.” Thanks to its combination of safety issues and discomfort, voters dubbed it the absolute worst in North America in September 2018.

But global publicity can work wonders. After the award threw the spotlight on stop 61452, the local authorities revamped the bus stop. See what improvements have been made for the sake of safety at Atlas Obscura.

Checking in at StreetsBlog USA, it appears that Pitt Meadows won the competition because the other finalist, in Cincinnati, was so bad that the city moved it before the contest was over.

(Image credit: Google Street View)

In November of 1945, 14-year-old Thora Chamberlain was walking from school to a football game with her classmates. She was excited about cheering for her high school team, and was wearing the school colors. Chamberlain was also being watched by ex-con Thomas H. McMonigle.

McMonigle pulled up to the curb and motioned Thora over.  Rolling down the passenger window, he asked the girl if she’d like to baby-sit for him and his wife.  The fact that he was wearing military clothing (Navy grays with several medals, including a purple heart) may have made her less cautious than she normally would be.

Thora told him she was headed to the football game, and didn’t want to miss it.  He insisted that he’d pay her double, and it would only be for thirty minutes.  She’d be back in time for the game, he said.  Several classmates said they saw her get in the car and watched it drive away.  Before leaving, Thora called to a friend to “save me a seat.”

The teen was never seen again by anyone except her killer.

However, some of Chamberlain's possessions were found, notably her socks. McMonigle was eventually caught and, despite his changing stories, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. That's when the story gets really strange. A mad scientist from Berkeley petitioned authorities to take possession of McMonigle's remains after the execution in order to "reanimate" him! Read what happened to that case at Robert A. Waters' blog. -via Strange Company

If you've been reading Neatorama for some time, you are familiar with the many new species of living things that are named after celebrities, friends of scientists, and even fictional characters. When a scientist discovers, studies, and publishes a description of a new species, they get the naming rights, although they have to follow a few rules from the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, like not being offensive. Scientists, particularly those who've named a lot of species, often go out of their way to honor someone they admire with a new species name. But are these names ever intended to be an insult? That depends on your point of view.

For example, consider the curious case of, Baracktrema obamai, the official scientific name of a type of parasitic flatworm that lives in the blood of Asian box turtles.

Now, when it was first reported that parasitologist Thomas Platt had chosen this name for the parasite, it was framed by some in the press as a deliberate, knowing jab at the then president. However, Platt would later clarify that he intended for the gesture to be an honest compliment to Obama, noting that the creature reminded him of the president because – “It’s long. It’s thin. And it’s cool as hell.”

Parasitologists, as well as other specialized biologists, tend to see beauty in their subjects, even when most of us don't. Read the stories behind some wonderful species names like Crikey steveirwini, Scaptia beyonceae, Neopalpa donaldtrumpi (pictured), and more at Today I Found Out. While some may seem like insults, there's only one bona fide case of disrespect in species nomenclature.  

(Image credit: Dr. Vazrick Nazari)

Colonel Tom Parker started his own record company, Boxcar Records, in the 1970s. He couldn't legally release music from Elvis Presley, because Elvis was under contract with RCA. But Parker wanted to sell an Elvis album so badly that he produced Having Fun with Elvis on Stage, which had no singing at all! It was a spoken-word album, a compilation of stage banter from concerts held from 1969 through 1972.

Now, this would be great if Presley was as gifted at stage banter as Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies (or Robertson’s former cohort, Steven Page), but at this point in his career, he was dropping some seriously strange commentary. He had introduced karate moves to his act; he sometimes had trouble keeping to a single line of thought; and he at one point compared himself to Fat Albert in commentary that could best be described as awkward and opened itself up to far worse descriptions.

But in the right eyes, of course, this banter might have been seen as charming—especially to the type of person who found themselves at an Elvis Presley show in the mid-1970s. And Presley had a lot of “right eyes” looking at him.

Isolated from the musical performance, the material was awful, and the album Having Fun with Elvis on Stage was a badly-edited mishmash. It is often regarded as the worst album of all time. The truth is that some performers are great at stage banter, while others are ...not. Still, since concerts get recorded, what they say between songs lives on. Ernie Smith at Tedium looks at Having Fun with Elvis on Stage, plus other musicians who represent the very best and very worst of concert stage banter.  -via Metafilter

Erika Strong works at the office of Shopify in Toronto. Their office windows face an apartment building across the street, where cats sometimes sit in the windows. One cat was particularly intriguing to Strong and her co-workers. One day, they attached Post-it notes to their window that spelled out "What is your cat's name?" And then waited. For six weeks. It was a glorious day on Wednesday when the sign you see above appeared.

"Marshall," read the sign in a bold printed font, pasted right where Strong says the cat usually sits.

"I died," said Strong. "I freaked out. Everyone was so excited because they all knew we'd been waiting."

People on other floors in the building who'd similarly admired the cat (which this reporter believes to be a ragdoll) even went so far as to thank her for finding out more about him.

Strong posted their accomplishment at Twitter, which went instantly viral.

Every day I stare out the window @shopify at a cat in someone’s apartment. Weeks ago @_myles and I asked what its name was. Today they obliged and weve never been happier. pic.twitter.com/NKkMN9ViD4

— Erika Strong (@Erika_Strong) January 23, 2019

Now everyone in Toronto wants to know more about Marshall. You can read the entire story at blogTO. -via Buzzfeed

Earlier this month, archaeologists marveled at a newly-discovered ancient stone circle near the village of Alford in Scotland. Well, it was new to archaeologists. Reports were that "local farmers have known about it for generations." One neighbor remembered seeing it in the 1930s. It was apparently a rare find, featuring recumbent stones, estimated to be 3,500 to 4,500 years old. Neil Ackerman of the Aberdeenshire Council archaeological team gave some background on such circles.

The stone circles, Ackerman said, were often built on top of even earlier cairns of rocks and were used at later dates in prehistory for the burial of cremated human remains.

"The monument you see as the finished recumbent stone circle is the last stage, as it were, in a fairly long life of monument use, which is kind of normal for prehistory — people like building stuff on important places," he said.

A couple weeks after the story broke, the news had to be updated.

This ongoing analysis was cut short when a former owner of the farm contacted Mr Welfare to say they had built the stone circle in the mid-1990s.

Oops.  -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Neil Ackerman/Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service)

Gavin Free and Dan Gruchy are the Slow Mo Guys, and they are in Iceland taking footage of Strokkur Geyser with a serious drone camera. In this excerpt from their YouTube show Planet Slow Mo, they use a thermal camera to give us a good look at the temperature difference between Iceland in winter and the geyser itself. We also get a cool explanation of how geysers work. -via Laughing Squid

Meriwether Lewis is best known as the leader of the expedition to explore the new addition to the United States called the Louisiana Purchase. From 1804 to 1806, Lewis, with his second-in-command William Clark, traveled from St. Louis to the Pacific Northwest and back again under the sponsorship of President Thomas Jefferson. You might not be as familiar with what happened to Lewis afterward. He was appointed the Governor of the Louisiana Territory, and during a trip to Washington in 1809, died of a gunshot wound at an inn in Tennessee.

Some believers in the murder theory blame bandits—the Natchez Trace was not the safest route. Others have more conspiratorial explanations. The rough politics of the territorial frontier created fierce enmities. General James Wilkinson, the first governor of the territory, was an agent of Spain, or perhaps a double agent, and may or may not also have been conspiring with Vice President Aaron Burr. Then there was also the ongoing spat with Bates.

But most historians believe the suicide theory, even as they admit there’s not enough evidence to be definitive.

Lewis was only 35 years old; why would he have committed suicide? At least one scientist has a theory that may surprise you. Read about it at Jstor Daily.

A little ball of poo is a real treasure when you're a dung beetle. And in this little corner of South Africa, there must be a dearth of dung. Two dung beetles are locked in a deadly serious competition over a dung ball. The narrator can't help but laugh, while National Geographic brings us trivia about the insects in text. This has to be a metaphor for something. You can see a version of this battle with appropriate music here. -via Boing Boing