The US Embassy in Australia sent out invitations to a meeting accompanied by a picture of a cat lounging in pajamas with a plate of cookies. That is a sure way to get people to show up for a meeting! But alas, the invitation was a mistake. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall said it was a "training error." And everyone was disappointed, as they had hoped to attend a pajama party with cats. Diplomats on Twitter had a great time with the story.
No, the title does not mean someone is having a stroke. Tom Scott looks at an old written language called Ogham. It's a language carved into stone that fell out of use a thousand years ago. It turned out to be unique for translating languages into unicode, so it could be used on the internet. As you can see by the title of this post, they managed to do it.
Children often grow up to enter the same profession as their parents, and that goes for criminals, too. Studies in different countries show that a small number of families account for an outsized number of people in prison. But criminality doesn't get passed along genetically. The case of the Bogle family illustrates how a penchant for crime is learned.
I met the Bogles through an official at the Oregon Department of Corrections, who called me to say he knew of a family with what he thought were six members in prison. Little did I know that, after 10 years of reporting, the real number of people in the Bogle clan I found who have been incarcerated or placed on probation or parole would turn out to be 60.
The Bogles had a story to tell about what happens in a criminal family. “What you are raised with, you grow to become,” says Tracey Bogle, who served a 16-year prison sentence for kidnapping, armed robbery, assault, car theft, and sexual assault. “There is no escape from our criminal contagion.”
While Tracey’s father, Rooster, was the most malevolent member of the bunch, the family’s history of criminality stretches back to 1920, when Rooster’s mother and father made and sold moonshine during Prohibition. Since then, members of the family have committed crimes including burglaries, armed robberies, kidnapping, and murder.
All ten of Rooster Bogle's children ended up incarcerated at least once. Read about the Bogles, and some innovative programs that are trying to stop the transmission of criminal behavior through family ties, at the Atlantic.
Martin Stanton lives in Ireland, and his neighbors down the road have a donkey named Harriet. Harriet never learned how to heehaw like other donkeys, but she's got an operatic soprano voice with occasional vibrato. I am not making this up. -via Laughing Squid
If the name Eugene Shoemaker means anything to you, it's probably because he, along with his wife Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy, discovered the comet that was later named Shoemaker-Levy 9, which crashed into Jupiter in 1994. That was only one part of Shoemaker's scientific career.
Shoemaker enjoyed a celebrated career combining his main discipline of geology with more astronomical applications, helping to create the field of planetary science. He studied a number of craters here on Earth, and in the early 1960s, he founded the Astrogeology Research Program within the United States Geological Survey. Shoemaker used his knowledge to train a number of Apollo mission astronauts about what they could expect to find on the surface of the Moon, in terms of terrain.
His fascinating life came to an abrupt end on July 18, 1997, when he died in a car crash while exploring a meteor crater in Australia. But even in death, as it turned out, his journey was far from over.
Shoemaker wanted to be an astronaut, but was eliminated from the NASA flight program over medical concerns. Still, he went to the moon, or at least his earthly remains did. Read how Eugene Shoemaker became the only man buried on the moon at Atlas Obscura.
Purdue student Tyler Trent has been battling bone cancer since he was 15. He kept up his classes as long as he could, and even now is an avid Purdue football fan. Trent made it to the Purdue-OSU game on Saturday, and predicted Purdue would win, when no one else thought it possible. Despite the fact that OSU was ranked #2 in the nation, the Boilermakers won 49-20. ESPN spoke to Trent after the game.
Quebec Comiccon was held in Quebec City over the weekend, and there were superheroes, Vikings, aliens, villains, and fantasy characters galore in attendance. Our friends at Geeks Are Sexy were there to record the best costumes to make you wish you'd been there.
See them all in a gallery of enlargeable photographs, part one and part two.
As they do every year, the Oregon Zoo put on a show when they let their elephants loose on a truckload of giant pumpkins! The Squishing of the Squash took place Friday morning in front of an appreciative crowd. Champion giant pumpkin grower Larry Nelson of Albany, Oregon, supplied the pumpkins. The pachyderms had fun kicking, smashing, and eating the pumpkins, and one might imagine they were putting some extra mustard on for the spectators. A good time was had by all. -via Tastefully Offensive
Drinking laws in the United States are a patchwork of state and local ordinances. There are some places where you can buy liquor inside the city limits, not not outside the limits. Then there are towns inside "wet" states that prohibit alcohol sales within the city limits. The reasons for these towns to hold out against alcohol sales vary greatly. In Panaca, Nevada, it was a matter of geography.
If you want to find the Nevada town that is the most opposite of Las Vegas, check out Panaca, which allows no drinking and no gambling (though their town market does have a nice selection of local honey, so they’ve got that going for them). Founded in 1864 as a Mormon colony, Panaca was originally part of Utah, but congressional redrawing in 1866 pushed the town into Nevada. Still a Mormon community today, Panaca has never allowed drinking, meaning it’s now the only teetotaling town in Nevada. (Interestingly, in Utah, despite the dense Mormon population, no town is dry because no local law can conflict with a state law, so alcohol is permitted everywhere.)
The longest non-stop flight in the world is the 18-hour hop from Newark to Singapore. That's a terrifying amount of time to ride in a jet, but it beats a slow boat. The good news is that the amenities on an overseas flight are always better than domestic flights. Scott McCartney of the Wall Street Journal does a lot of traveling, so he has some tips to pass along for making a long-haul flight more comfortable than it would be otherwise. Some tips are also good for just a few hours in the air. -via Laughing Squid
A post shared by Disgusting Food Museum (@disgustingfoodmuseum) on Sep 25, 2018 at 10:00pm PDT
Malmo, Sweden, is welcoming a new museum opening at the end of this month. The Disgusting Food Museum will highlight recipes from around the world that make some folks salivate and others feel a bit queasy. Museum founder and organizational psychologist Dr. Samuel West is most known for opening the Museum of Failure last year.
There has been some criticism of the Disgusting Food Museum as an exercise in othering—deeming the food of some cultures to be normal and delicious, and the aromas, flavors, and ingredients of others to be weird and off-putting. Just as the Museum of Failure does more than just poke fun at the idea of Hot Road, the Harley Davidson perfume (the larger purpose is to explore the relationship between failure and innovation), the Disgusting Food Museum paints a more complicated picture of why we eat certain things and push others away in revulsion.
The items features on the museum’s website fall into roughly three, often overlapping categories: unfamiliar creatures (bats, dog, insects) or parts (penis, intestines, heads); very strong flavors, textures, and aromas (durian, natto, root beer); and items that violate certain religious or moral beliefs (pork, meat, jell-o salad).
Heritage Square Amusement Park in Golden, Colorado, operated continuously from 1971 to 2018. Built on the theme of the area's prospecting history, it includes a miniature town, an Old West train, an Alpine slide, and plenty of rides. But the park closed for good in June, and now the contents are up for auction. It's your chance to purchase your very own roller coaster!
According to Norton Auctioneers’ brochure, bidders at next week’s sale of a “COMPLETE AMUSEMENT PARK,” can buy rides built as far back as 1963, along with a 1980 “space shuttle,” a 1993 spinning teacup ride, and nine swan paddle boats—eight white, one black. And in true arcade game fashion, it’s wise to have a solid wad of cash to play, as the auction prefers cash paid in full on the day of. But don’t worry: buyers of the park’s largest items will have additional time to transport their casual new Ferris wheel away in something other than a sedan.
If you’d like a piece of the park but can’t quite incorporate a swan boat or two into your lifestyle, the auction also boasts the sale of a chili cheese dispenser, soft-serve machines, metal gazebos, cash registers, round (or square) trash cans, and a 36-hole mini golf set up for your backyard.
As the group of Qinling golden snub-nosed monkeys jumped from tree to tree, Marsel struggled to keep up, slipping and stumbling over logs. Gradually he learned to predict their behaviour, and captured this male and female resting. With the Sun filtering through the canopy, they are bathed in a magical light, their golden hair glowing against the fresh greens of the forest.
The title of Young Photographer of the Year went to Skye Meaker of South Africa for this close-up called Lounging Leopard.
Wes Hurley and his mother Elena Hurley tell us how they lived through the fall of the Soviet Union and then immigrated to America. There's a lot more that happens after that. Read more of the story behind the film Little Potato at the Atlantic.
Every year (except 2017), redditor aubra_cadabra and her friends do a group costume for Halloween, focusing on the roles of one versatile actor. They've done Bill Murray, Robin Williams, Will Ferrell, Jim Carey, and Johnny Depp. This year, they chose Tom Hanks. The movies represented are, from the left, Toy Story, Castaway, Apollo 13, Forrest Gump, Big, David S. Pumpkins from Saturday Night Live, and A League of Their Own.
