The Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina is huge and inhospitable. That made it an unpleasant place to live, but preferable to living in slavery, and perfect for hiding from slave hunters. Great Big Story tells us how escaped slaves made it their hiding place, and then their home. -via Mental Floss

Psychiatry in the 19th century was filled with quack doctors and quack cures. The need for doctors specializing in mental illness rose quickly during and after the Civil War, and among the new crop of doctors was Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. He studied phantom limb syndrome among the many battlefield amputees, wrote about it, and became known as the “Father of Modern American Neurology.” Mitchell then turned to other mental maladies, such as “neurasthenia,” which could be pretty much anything. The cure for men was to get back to nature and do physical labor.

But the cure was not quite so simple for women. Ladies, too, found themselves impaired by the pace of modern life, or, at least, swept up in the medical trend. More specifically, white, upper-class, educated women came to dominate Mitchell’s patient demographic. Women who occupied privileged positions like this, who were often writers and artists, had been increasingly afforded time outside of the home, the opportunity to socialize, and higher education. But using their minds so extensively, Mitchell believed, could easily deplete their energy and fry their fragile nerves.

Mitchell proceeded to prescribe the rest cure almost exclusively to these women—“nervous women,” writes Mitchell, “who, as a rule, are thin and lack blood.” And the way to quell the overexerted brain and depleted blood supply of a woman was to, essentially, prescribe her a long, milky, much-needed rest.

Patient were prescribed isolation, bedrest for months at a time, a calorie-rich diet of milk and baby foods, and no mental stimulation. Many gained weight, which for some, was a benefit. Read about Dr. Mitchell's weird treatment at Atlas Obscura.

After the movie version of The Addams Family showed Thing as a hand with free movement about the house, it didn't take long for the toy version to become a Halloween classic. They are good for something besides scaring people, as Kiko the cat demonstrates. She is game for being petted by an automated hand for quite some time before she decides she's had enough. -via Tastefully Offensive

House-moving wasn't uncommon in the early era of photography. When you've spent years building a nice, roomy home for your family, you'll do whatever it takes to save it. For some, that meant moving the entire house with horse power. Maybe it was an urban renewal project. Maybe the railroad was coming through your land. In one case, the railroad came, but not close enough.   

In the 1920’s Lake Saskatoon was a bustling little community. When the railway bypassed the town by a few kilometres, that meant the end for Lake Saskatoon as a regional hub. The residents did what any sensible community would– put their houses and shops on sleds and had teams of horses pull them a few kilometres up the road.

See pictures from the history of house-moving, both before and after the switch to engines, at Messy Messy Chic.

Bass player Davie504 (previously at Neatorama) shows us how you don't have to know how to play an instrument to make a great music video. All you need is the time to edit. Yeah, it would help if you had an ear for music, otherwise your edit will be a mess. This reminds me of Amateur by Lasse Gjertsen.

-via Digg

You might see this picture around the internet claiming that these are the same people as the original stock image, just a few years later. That's not it at all. This spot-on recreation came about almost by accident. Charlie Todd, the guy in the middle, explained what really happened.

-via reddit

Evolution of Hokusai's "Great Wave".
1. When he was 33 (1792).
2. When he was 44 (1803).
3. When he was 46 (1805).
4. When he was 72 (1831). pic.twitter.com/hUXkjNjGxh

— tkasasagi (@tkasasagi) September 26, 2018

You've seen the iconic artwork everywhere, The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. It is both simple and intricate, colorful and calming, and infinitely meme-able. Hokusai created the woodblock print when he was 72 years old, after drawing sea waves for half his life, although he also illustrated many other subjects. Japanese literature PhD tkasasagi shows us Hokusai's other waves, and how they evolved through his career.

Springtime in Enoshima 1792

View of Honmoku off Kanagawa 1803

First Cargo Boat Battling the Waves 1805

The Great Wave off Kanagawa 1831

-via Digg

The World Snail Racing Championships were held in July in Congham, England. Yes, the report was slow getting here, but "slow" is what the sport is all about. Snails are placed in a circle and head toward an outer circle as a finish line that is 13 inches away.

“We take this seriously,” snail racer John McClean told Reuters.

“We have got training slopes. We look at diet, we are drug compliant as well. It is the whole thing when you look at elite sports.”

The competition has been held since the 1960s with each race lasting several minutes. Competitors are able to select a snail from the organizers’ stash or bring their own.

There were 190 snails participating, and 11 in the final heat. The eventual champion was Hosta, a snail Jo Waterfield of Grimston found in her garden.

"He spent all summer eating my hostas. I told him that if he didn't win I'd squash him!"

A good time was had by all. -via Boing Boing

Previously: A much faster snail race. 

The Detroit Meat Strike began in Hamtramck, Michigan, on July 27, 1935. The 500 women who swarmed the shopping district with signs and banners were not only protesting high prices, they blockaded the stores and attacked those who would cross the picket line. They were led by a 100-pound housewife named Mary Zuk.

In a state where unemployment topped 25 percent, and where layoffs by the burgeoning auto industry devastated working-class households, women like Zuk were still expected to put food on the table and stretch the family budget as far as it would go. Over the last three years, the price of meat had jumped 62 percent, according to author Ann Folino White’s Plowed Under. Butchers claimed it wasn’t their fault — they blamed President Roosevelt and the increased processing taxes caused by the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) — but the women of the country would not be placated.

That spring, black and Jewish housewives in New York closed 4,000 butcher shops with picket lines, and housewives marched against rising meat prices in Chicago. They were peaceful; their aims were modest. The Hamtramck women felt no such restraint. They were cutthroat, boisterous, even militant. With Zuk at their helm, they would strike back hard, and change the nature of consumer activism in America.

Within a week of that first protest in Hamtramck, Zuk organized a crowd of 5,000 people in Detroit. Some butchers were forced out of business, and eventually Washington got involved. Read about the Detroit Meat Strike at Narratively.

(Image credit: Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University)

A gas pump will shut off when the tank is full; we've always taken that for granted. It's a fine feature that keeps gas from spilling all over us. But how does it know? The mechanism is a low-tech yet surprisingly complicated system. It's easy to understand the way Brain Stuff explains it in this video, but later on when you try to explain it to someone else, you'll end up just showing them this video. -via Geeks Are Sexy

An October 4th auction at Sotheby's will feature 309 items from the collection of the late Robin Williams and his second wife Marsha. It will include several prized works of art, including three paintings by Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli, who was noted for being certifiably insane.

...a doctor at Waldau published a monograph on his patient in 1921 titled “A Mentally Ill Artist,” and even made the link between Wölfli’s “illness” and his creativity explicit by observing that “the effect of illness which dissociated and ravaged the superficial layers of his psyche, enabling the deeper layers, including his latent artistry, to develop.”

The same sort of thing is often said about all sorts of creative people—that their demons, if not their named “illnesses,” are also their sources of brilliance. When it comes to Robin Williams, it is hardly controversial to remark upon the unbridled, over-the-edge nature of his comedy. Indeed, many of us believed him to be at his best when he was on the verge of being out of control.

Read some musings on Robin Williams and his possible connection with Adolf Wölfli at Collectors Weekly. You'll also see the other two Wölfli artworks from the auction. 

The chiropractor had a walk-in clinic, but this guy decided to use the drive-through anyway.

A traffic accident in Atlanta was caught on surveillance cameras. But stitched-together footage from two different cameras still had people scratching their heads. The driver walked away unhurt. The accident starts to make a little sense when you see the location. The clinic roof is level with the adjacent parking lot, and the garage is underneath the lot. -via Boing Boing

A minor drama played out Friday morning on reddit, as pezmonkey was getting ready to board a plane. A guy handed him this card, which no doubt also went to everyone on the plane -except the guy's companion. Pezmonkey immediately posted it, and readers held their breath (figuratively) for an hour until they heard the news. She said yes!

We wish Andrew and Rachel all the best. You can read a reverse-play-by-play of the flight in pezmonkey's comments. Linked videos are sure to follow.

One guy is obliviously talking on the phone while the other guy is recording the surroundings. Can you guess what will come by? This was recorded a week ago in Winfield, Kansas. -via Digg

Princess Anne Antoinette Francois Charlotte was born to Prince René of Bourbon-Parma and Princess Margaret of Denmark in Paris in 1923. The family fled Europe ahead of World War II, which explains why the princess was educated in America and worked at Macy's. However, that was the the least interesting part of her story! Princess Anne eventually joined the war effort as an ambulance driver and nurse in several countries. Then King Michael I of Romania fell in love with her.   

It would seem the handsome young King had spotted Anne while watching a movie in the Royal Palace cinema hall. The princess was not there, nor herself ever an actress. So how did he see her? Before the movie there was a news real showing footage of the war, in this case specifically some footage from Morocco. In that footage was a few second clip of Princess Anne.

Infatuated with her, the young King had a small photograph made from the film reel of the princess which he kept. At some point, he seems to have clued his mother in on his choice of bride and the wheels were in motion.

Although they were second cousins once removed, it took a lot of effort to bring the two together, and even more effort for the king to convince the shy princess to marry him. When she finally said yes, communist forces deposed King Michael I, and Romania was no longer a monarchy. Read about the unusual life of the uncrowned Queen of Romania at Today I Found Out.