Sometimes we look at history as distinct eras, with distinct events, most likely because that's the way history class presents it. But there's always a significant overlap in world events, eras, and people. We tend think of the American Civil War as ancient history, and the Civil Rights movement as recent -probably because of the TV coverage. However, the two eras were witnessed by some of the same people. The last surviving Civil War veteran died in 1956, after the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling!

But even more astonishing is Peter Mills, a man born into chattel slavery who died at age 110 in freaking 1972. We don't know for sure if he was the last living slave in America, because the country didn't keep the greatest records about people they considered less than people, but it's still wild to think that an American slave outlived Martin Luther King Jr., and was alive at the same time as Barack Obama.

This story is just one of 6 facts that show how history overlaps. Read about the correspondence between Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx, the ancient Chinese accounts of the Roman Empire, and more at Cracked.

This isn't a digital painting, or even Photoshop. Italian makeup artist Luca Luce creates wonderful optical illusions with makeup. Yeah, that's his face.



The geometric series is only the latest of Luce's facial transformations. He also uses illusion makeup to make three-dimensional objects appears in his hands. Check out more of Luce's makeup art at Instagram. -via Laughing Squid

People in Appalachia have been distilling illegal whiskey ever since they settled in the region, but selling it involves more than just making moonshine. You also have to deliver the goods to the customers, while bypassing federal agents who want the government's tax portion. When Prohibition made all whiskey production illegal, it was the Appalachian moonshiners who were already schooled in getting around the law.

In the early days, moonshine was sold locally, to friends and family; Pierce says it’s unlikely that people moved moonshine more than 20 or 30 miles by wagon. It might have remained a small, lawless enterprise if Prohibition hadn’t coincided with the advent of mass-produced automobiles. Bootleggers replaced 40 gallon stills with stills that could hold up to 1,000 gallons and hid them in Appalachia’s mountains, swamps, and thick forests. The local geography lent itself to secrecy and speed. No matter how swampy the terrain, there was usually a road nearby which led to customers. By 1934, Neal Thompson writes in Driving with the Devil, as many as 35 million gallons of moonshine were produced nationwide.

Moonshine runners took nondescript cars and altered them to have more power, speed, and maneuverability, plus the ability to carry lots of liquid without sagging. The most successful haulers were proud of their vehicles and proud of their driving. Read the exciting story of how that led to the new sport of stock car racing at Atlas Obscura.

(Image courtesy of Bill Blair)

In 1960, the National Film Board of Canada produced a film that followed the work of Ontario astronomer Donald MacRae. Universe introduces us to the moon, the sun, nine planets, and further heavenly bodies. Here is what we knew of the universe before Hubble, before Voyager, even before John Glenn's first orbital flight. A young filmmaker named Stanley Kubrick saw the film and was inspired to do a space movie, which became 2001: A Space Odyssey. He even used the narrator of the documentary, Douglas Rain, as the voice of HAL 9000. Read more about how Universe inspired Kubrick at Kottke.  -via Nag on the Lake 

ダム決壊 pic.twitter.com/4cFhdWUTFc

— 菅 浩江★『妄想少女』Web連載 (@Hiroe_Suga) January 23, 2019

We've presented the theory that cats are liquid more than once here at Neatorama. A study about it even won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2017. But those demonstrations mostly showed how cats take the shape of their container, which is an essential property of a liquid.

我が家の弓吉さんもドュルンと流れてます pic.twitter.com/jqKQGgziZ4

— ニボ (@nibonnu) January 23, 2019

A Japanese retailer has a Twitter account, Felissimo Nekobu, that operates as a "cat club." A recent Tweet presented the theory that cats are liquid and asked followers to contribute evidence. Looking through the huge number of data points in the replies, it appears that Japanese cat lovers approach the theory from a different position. Instead of taking the shape of the container, these cats are liquid because of the way they flow.

他にもあります！液体ハニー pic.twitter.com/In3HQMMTUZ

— ねね＠猫カフェラグドール (@choco_ragdoll) January 23, 2019

Yes, there are a few containers, but you'll enjoy seeing hundreds of cats in the act of flowing in the Twitter thread. Felissimo Nekobu supports cat rescue organizations in Japan.  -via Metafilter

We've seen plenty of insects and small animals trapped in amber, which is tree sap that becomes hard as rock over time. Gemologist Brian Berger has something much more rare: an insect trapped in opal! Opal is a mineraloid made of silica and water, and would have taken a very long time to form, so how did this happen?

Further research is being conducted on the specimen currently. The initial theory is that this encasement may mean the opal itself is opalized amber. Theoretically speaking, the insect likely was trapped in tree sap or resin which, over time and under the right circumstances, was preserved as amber with the insect encasement. This is a process many of us are familiar with. However, a second, much rarer process of opalization can also occur. And so, in this case, as conditions changed for the amber specimen, it is possible the amber opalized, preserving the inclusion. Amazingly, the silica surrounding the insect also structurally changed to produce the play of color.

Berger purchased the opal in Indonesia; it was originally found on the island of Java. Read more about the opal at Entomology Today. -via Gizmodo

(Image credit: Brian Berger)

That's a mighty big hole in the ground, judging by the buildings around it! This is the city of Mirny, in Siberia. It's a company town of 37,000 people, centered around the diamond mine that created the pit.  

The population is made up of workers who moved here from other Russian regions and former Soviet states, lured by the incentive of a higher than average wages. But with the higher wages comes the higher cost of living. The main access route to Mirny is via the airport and all the food to feed the town has to be flown in, hiking up the price. Whilst the wages may be attractive to some, if you’re not in the mining biz you won’t reap the one perk of life in Mirny. A school teacher here earns 19,000 rubles a month, that’s about $300.

For a small isolated town, Mirny has some intriguing features, such as a national park and a college, which mainly trains students in mining technology. Travel to Mirny is restricted by both logistics and the Russian government, but that may change. The town is trying to reposition itself as a tourist destination! Read about life in Mirny at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Image credit: Igor Dvurekov)

A man with a Rubik's cube for a head tries to fit in with other men with the same head, but they really aren't the same unless they are exactly the same. It's a super weird analogy for individuality and inclusiveness, but it eventually works. Cubed was Xue Enge's award-winning graduation film at Nanyang Technological University. -via Laughing Squid

Ryan is only six months old, but he's already got experience shaving, fishing, playing poker, lifting weights, mowing the lawn, working on the car, chopping wood, and other activities you'd associate with a more mature person.

Our son was born premature 9 weeks early weighing just under 3 lbs. I like to joke that he wasn't premature, he's just advanced. So I took some pictures of him doing some manly grown-up things.

With patience, props, and some photo manipulation, Ryan's parents have an entire gallery of pictures that show their talented son adulting. Don’t neglect to load the last photos at the bottom of the gallery. There’s one showing how Ryan has grown, which is only evident in relation to the dinosaur next to him. Way to go, Ryan! -via Boing Boing

Men in Black is a treasure of science fiction comedy. The Blues Brothers is the ultimate in comedy plus cool. So what if Men in Black were recast with Jake and Elwood in the buddy cop roles? Master mashup artist Fabrice Mathieu (previously at Neatorama) has crafted a short film with best of both worlds: the cool vibe of The Blues Brothers and the aliens from not only Men in Black, but a variety of other movies you know and love. Oh yeah, you better believe there's a chase scene! -Thanks, Fabrice!     

A new study shows that the vaccine against HPV has caused incidences of human papilloma virus to decline, even among women who don't get the vaccine. The vaccine protects against several strains of the virus, which are linked to various cancers. The study found that between 2006 and 2017, rates of vaccination among young women went from zero to 84%, and the prevalence of HPV in the vaccinated women went down from 35% to 6.7%.  

In other findings, the study showed that the prevalence of the four HPV types also dipped among patients who remained unvaccinated: At the outset, about one-third tested positive for those viral strains, and that figure dropped to 19.4 percent over time.

According to Kahn's team, it points to what's called "herd protection" -- where everyone benefits from having a large portion of the population vaccinated against a particular disease.

The finding is not surprising, Park pointed out: As the prevalence of an infection goes down, the overall risk of contracting it goes down.

However, she stressed, parents and young adults should not take that to mean it's safe to go unvaccinated.

The declining rates of HPV among unvaccinated women is an example of herd immunity, which means that a disease has more difficulty in spreading when a portion of the host population is immune. The higher percentage of population immunity, the more likely a disease will die out completely. But herd immunity doesn't assure protection for any particular individual. The best protection is vaccination. Read more about the study here. -via reddit

The vaccine has been recommended for girls since 2006. In 2009, the FDA recommended that boys also get the HPV vaccine, which not only protects men from some cancers, but also contributes to herd immunity. Last fall, the recommended upper age for the vaccine was raised from 27 to 45. Adults should check with their insurance company before getting the vaccine, which costs several hundred dollars.

(Image credit: Jan Christian)

These two lynx are having some sort of spat. It could be territorial, or maybe a lover's quarrel, but if you heard that coming from your back yard in the night, you'd get no sleep. It's just one example of the ways animals surprise us when we hear the strange sounds coming from them. The most famous example is the "sonic attack" on American diplomats in Cuba a couple of years ago, which scientists now believe was the call of the the Indies short-tailed cricket. Ed Yong goes through more examples, like puffins that sound like chainsaws, humming fish, and tortoises having loud sex. Read about totally weird animal noises, with video evidence, at the Atlantic. -via Metafilter

Silica dust, which is released from sandstone, causes black lung among coal miners. But the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster wasn't a coal mine, it was a tunnel cut through Gauley Mountain in West Virginia in 1930. The project was expected to take four years, but 3,000 laborers completed the tunnel in 18 months. Hundreds of them died from silicosis, including teenager Dewey Flack.

"The local doctors really were not quite clear at first what they were seeing. We had young, healthy people breaking down in a very short period of time and there really isn't a lot of precedent for that," says Martin Cherniack, a University of Connecticut professor who wrote a 1986 book about the tunnel.

The count of how many workers died varies. According to congressional testimony at the time, as many as 300 people died from silicosis, caused by exposure to silica dust. Cherniack estimates the number to be at least 764 workers — including Flack.

"They would become sick, profoundly short of breath, have severe weight loss, basically be unable to move and function and exercise themselves," Cherniack says.

Flack died on May 20, 1931, two weeks after his last shift in the tunnel. His death certificate says he died of pneumonia, but according to Cherniack, company doctors often misdiagnosed worker deaths or attributed them to a disease they called "tunnelitis."  

Although there were congressional hearings, Union Carbide maintained that the deaths were not caused by silicosis. Read the story of the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster at NPR.  -via Digg

(Image courtesy of Elkem Metals Collection, West Virginia State Archives)

For some reason, they remade the 1987 movie Predator and put an article in front of it. The Predator was not well-received. Screen Junkies explains why in this Honest Trailer. It apparently lacks the mystery, charm, star power, and plausibility of the earlier film. What else is there? Special effects? Even if the special effects are better thirty years later, the original film used them ever-so-cleverly.

The Parks and Recreation Department of Redwood City, California, has occasional coyotes in their parks, and erected this sign to warn park visitors. There are also tips on how to behave if you see a coyote. Don't miss the bottom part of the sign.

Call Animal Control if you see dangerous coyote activity such as:
Coyote carrying box marked "ACME"
Coyote detonating explosives/TNT
Coyote in possession of giant magnet
Coyote holding sign such as "detour" or "free bird seed"
Coyote in possession of a catapult
Coyote dropping anvil from hot air balloon

See, it pays to read the small print.  -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Stephen Zunes)