There are few feature films specifically about Thanksgiving, the best of which is the 1987 film Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It stars Steve Martin  as a businessman trying to get home for the holiday and John Candy as the goof trying to help him. Meanwhile, everything about their trip goes wrong. It was sort of based on a true story.

1. JOHN HUGHES ONCE HAD A HELLISH TRIP TRYING TO GET FROM NEW YORK CITY TO CHICAGO.

Before he became a screenwriter, Hughes used to work as a copywriter for the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago. One day he had an 11 a.m. presentation scheduled in New York City on a Wednesday, and planned to return home on a 5 p.m. flight. Winter winds forced all flights to Chicago to be canceled that night, so he stayed in a hotel. A snowstorm in Chicago the next day continued the delays. The plane he eventually got on ended up being diverted to Denver. Then Phoenix. Hughes didn’t make it back until Monday. Experiencing such a hellish trip might explain how Hughes managed to write the first 60 pages of Planes, Trains and Automobiles in just six hours.

6. IT WAS ALL MEANT TO BE SHOT IN CHICAGO, BUT THERE WASN’T ENOUGH SNOW.

Some exterior scenes were filmed in Buffalo, New York. Martin said that the cast and crew pretty much lived the plot of the movie. “As we would shoot, we were hopping planes, trains, and automobiles, trying to find snow.”

There's plenty more to learn about the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles at Mental Floss.

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research, now in all-pdf form. Get a subscription now for only $25 a year!

Cat- and dog-centric research
compiled by Leslie Muchmore, Improbable Research staff

(Image credit: Claudio Matsuoka)

Cats and a String
“Domestic Cats (Felis catus) Do Not Show Causal Understanding in a String-Pulling Task,” Emma Whitt, Marie Douglas, Britta Osthaus, and Ian Hocking, Animal Cognition, vol. 12, no. 5, September 2009, pp. 739-743. The authors, at the University of Nottingham, UK, report:

This study explored how domestic cats perform in a horizontal string-pulling task to determine whether they understand this case of physical causality. Fifteen cats were tested on their ability to retrieve an unreachable food treat in three different set-ups: (a) a single baited string, (b) two parallel strings where only one was baited and (c) two crossed strings where only one was baited. All cats succeeded at pulling a single string to obtain a treat, but none consistently chose the correct string when two strings were parallel. When tested with two crossed strings one cat chose the wrong string consistently and all others performed at chance level. There was no evidence that cats understand the function of the strings or their physical causality.
 

Classify Dogs’ Facial Expressions from Photographs
“Classifying Dogs’ (Canis familiaris) Facial Expressions from Photographs,” Tina Bloom and Harris Friedman, Behavioural Processes, vol. 96, 2013, pp. 1-10. The authors, at the State Correctional Institute, Marienville, Pennsylvania and Walden University, Florida, report:

Have you ever seen a paper balloon? The Japanese toy called kamifusen has been around for over 100 years. Japanese mathematician Tadashi Tokieda blows one up, but that's not the only way you can make your kamifusen round. The other way is surprising.

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Rocket scientist Ichiro Fukumori wrote about the properties of kamifusen.

Part of the kamifusen’s genius is the paper from which it is made. The paper is not only lightweight and relatively impermeable to air, but it also has a degree of plasticity that allows it to deform easily and retain its resulting shape. Because of those properties, the kamifusen inflates to a volume commensurate with its air content and maintains that volume until additional air is added. As a result, a squashed kamifusen can accumulate air and eventually inflate to its full size from repeated bouncing, even though the net pumping from a single bounce may be small. A balloon made of plastic, rubber, or any other material that does not share the key properties of kamifusen paper would not inflate as the Japanese balloon does.

-via The Kid Should SeeThis

Well, actually… you're going to think about this comic the next time that friend of yours has to get all pedantic and dissect the fine points of your everyday language. "Fire-breathing dragon" is what we've called that fictional beast for as long as anyone knows. Correcting such a common term is annoying in the best of times, but when there's a life-and-death situation going on, he shouldn't act so pleased with himself. That's as good a time for karma as any other. This comic is from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.

Food items you buy at the grocery store have dates on them, but that does not mean that the food expires on that date. What the date really does mean can vary depending on the food, the state, and exactly how it's worded. Stores use sell-by dates so they can make sure they're rotating their stock properly -to sell the oldest stuff first so nothing is wasted. Speaking of waste, you may be wasting food if you are convinced it goes bad by the date on the package.  

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Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything has the lowdown on how expiration dates work in the real world. And spoiled milk, which is a little icky. -via Tastefully Offensive 

Arlo Guthrie got arrested in 1965, and he wrote a little song about it. One of the reasons that the song has lasted so long is that it happened on Thanksgiving, so that "Alice's Restaurant" has become classic for a holiday that has a dearth of songs. Guthrie wrote "Alice's Restaurant" soon after the events happened, and added more context until the song eventually took up a half-hour of his live show.

But the song’s first true breakthrough, one that commemorates a second golden anniversary, was “Alice’s” February 1967 radio debut on New York City’s WBAI-FM. Said Arlo: “I’d been a big fan of WBAI. I’d been to their studios a few times and one night they asked me to perform live. I had no idea they were taping it, although it wouldn’t have stopped me from performing. I loved those guys.”

By May, the non-profit WBAI was receiving so many requests to play ‘Alice,’ it became a fund-raising gimmick. “WBAI…would play it after they’d been pledged enough money,” recalled Guthrie, then quipped: “Eventually they were playing it so often, they took pledges to stop playing it, and…raised even more money.”

Guthrie released the 18-minute recorded version in 1967, and the feature film was released in 1969. You know the story of the arrest; now read the story of the song that became a Thanksgiving classic at Smithsonian.

For Thanksgiving, Buzzfeed traditionally asks the staff at its UK office to try labeling a map of the United States with the state names, with often funny results. But apparently they are is getting too good at it, so this year, they solicited non-American readers to try it. The best (or funniest) have been posted today. Now, keep in mind that these were submitted by people who thought they knew something about the US, and they do, but the sheer number of states can become overwhelming for anyone who doesn't live here. SulliDowry, from China, did the map above, and although he knew there was a state that produced potatoes, he doesn't really know which one. Strnknd from Switzerland did this one.

 

Several labeled Kentucky as KFC, which is better than previous maps that did not label it at all. And everyone knows Florida -either from Disney World or the news. Check out the rest of the maps here.

The Awl is doing a series of posts on spices called The Anthology of Underrated Herbs. Yes, I'm sure they know spices and herbs are different things. Fran Hoepfner's contribution is paprika, specifically the custom of putting it on cottage cheese, which her parents do. Her entire interview with them about it is in the post.  

Me: The Awl is doing a series of pieces on spices, and the best I could come up with, because we’re not an aggressively spice-heavy family, is that you both do a thing where you eat cottage cheese with paprika on it. I wanna know why the heck that is.

Mom: I think the cottage cheese with paprika is me. It’s my twist on it. Your dad would always season deviled eggs with a pinch of paprika.

Me: Right…

Mom: Originally, I thought it was Dad who put it on cottage cheese

Me: Okay…

Mom: I’m saying, somehow Dad got the paprika on the table for me to see it because, as you said, we don’t use a lot of spices. There was no paprika in the house when I was growing up, so Dad definitely brought that into the marriage.

By the end, all I could think of was how sad that people can actually grow up in America without spices. Hoepfner's mom didn't even have salt and pepper on the table when she was child. The only reason they have paprika now was because their son brought some back from a trip to Hungary. How important were spices in your family? I use paprika on quite a few dishes, but I like my cottage cheese with salt, pepper, oregano, and parsley, and maybe a little grated parmesan. Read the rest of the amusing interview at The Awl.

(Image credit: The National Dairy and Food Bureau of Chicago via Cardboard America)

The award-winning 1997 animated film Anastasia (not the be confused with the 1956 version) was based very loosely on the fall of Russia's last royal family and the subsequent claim by Anna Anderson that she was the lost Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, one of Tsar's four daughters. The movie wasn't trying to be historically accurate, what with the supernatural elements and all, but for many young adults, Anastasia is what they know about the historical events. You know better, but maybe you don't know the details that went into making Anastasia.

It is well-known that Meg Ryan voices the main character in this film. However, she took some persuading to accept the job. She had just finished filming ‘Sleeping in Seattle’ and was dubious about getting involved with Anastasia due to the dark nature of some aspects of the storyline. The producers persuaded her by taking a clip of her acting in ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ and transforming it into an animation.

The animators had the character, Rasputin, fall through an iced river. This was a nod to how the real Rasputin was wrapped in cloth before being thrown into a river when he died in 1916.

Read more about the movie Anastasia at TVOM.

Selecting a title for your book is fraught with danger. It should be short and intriguing, but often ends up telling you little about the actual subject matter. For that, you need a subtitle. Snide Octopus is an Instagram account that takes book titles right out of the library and subtitles them to make you laugh.  

   
You can see ten pages of these book titles ranked by votes at Bored Panda. Keep up with Snide Octopus's ever-expanding collection (and participate in caption contests) at Instagram.  -via Nag on the Lake

Once You Pop… THAT'S GREAT! Don't you just love this counterfeit chip can design? The knockoff Pringles seem excited to tell you they are salt and potato flavored! How would a company get away with this blatant ripoff in the US?

If you look carefully at the front end of the skateboard, you'll see "CAH," which stands for Cards Against Humanity. The Prongles website just says "coming soon," but they are already available for sale here and there. Someone bought them and did some reverse-engineering to determine the origin. Yeah, there are chips inside, but they are made by someone else.

The chips are a promotion for an alternate reality game from Cards Against Humanity. They even have a Twitter account, which is where you can get updates on this weird, weird game tie-in. -via reddit

Wait, wait a minute. Has no one ever written a song about orange? Otherwise, it looks like your favorite classic rock artists have the spectrum covered pretty well. Looks like a pretty good playlist, too. This box of crayons is brought to you by John Atkinson at Wrong Hands. -via Blame It On The Voices

Residents of Vladivostok, in far eastern Russia, woke Friday morning to snow-covered roads. The snow hid a layer of ice, which drivers soon discovered. Oh, you could go places, as long as those places were downhill. Police received reports of 350 accidents in one day, some involving up to twenty vehicles.

The Russian news site VL.ru has 19 submitted videos of traffic problems due to the storm. You can vote on which is best in a poll at the bottom. I particularly like #19, in which a camera was focused on a hill across the street.

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-via Boing Boing

Jewelry made of turquoise and silver instantly brings Native American culture to mind. But much of the popularization of such jewelry came through a family of Italian jewelry craftsmen. Frank Patania, Sr. immigrated to New York with his parents in 1908 after training to be a goldsmith as a child. He was recognized as a talented jewelry designer even in his teens. But doctors sent him to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to recover from tuberculosis, and he opened a jewelry store there. And then another in Tucson.  

Frank Sr.’s designs stood out among the more familiar shapes of Native American jewelry, and in turn, his work influenced many artisans in the area. “He brought with him an Italian design sense, and worked silver in a gold and platinum style that made his pieces more sculptural and lighter in appearance than what was being done by Native Americans at the time,” Patania says. “His designs brought in clients who lived in the area part time and wanted jewelry that could be worn outside the Southwest.”

Although Frank Sr. did incorporate regional materials like silver and turquoise, as well as common motifs of Native American jewelry, his style blended these with European trends, such as the organic forms of Art Nouveau and the streamlined shapes of Art Deco. “Many of his motifs, like leaves, are not traditionally Native American, but they became ubiquitous in Native American work after he began using them,” Patania explains. “He brought an outsider’s design sensibility and work style that didn’t exist in the Southwest until he moved to Santa Fe in the early 1920s.”

The Thunderbird Shop also benefited from the expansion of Fred Harvey’s tourist company, which brought thousands of outsiders to the region, many looking for “authentic” souvenirs. Frank Sr. made jewelry for some of the company’s famous Harvey Girls as well as members of the Santa Fe creative community, including Mable Dodge Luhan and Georgia O’Keeffe. “His designs weren’t so regional, meaning his work could be worn with a wonderful fashionable impact in Manhattan, Chicago, or Kansas City,” Patania says.

The work was carried on by Frank, Jr., grandson Sam, and great-grandson Marco. Sam Patania talks about his family and how they influenced the jewelry of the American Southwest at Collectors Weekly.

Most TED Talk videos are lectures, but this is a dance performance, a pas de deux between choreographer and dancer Huang Yi and the industrial robot KUKA, which he programmed.    

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When the robot apocalypse happens, KUKA will be the one to reassure us that it is all for the best. She might even bring along a cellist -or a robot who plays cello. -via Digg