Shannon Selin is the author of Napoleon in America. In researching the book, she came across an English newspaper article by William Cobbett, who had lived in America a couple of times for several years. He was responding to questions from a man who was thinking about emigrating to the United States. First Cobbett declines to give advice on whether the man should go to America at all. But he makes his feelings clear.

As to the first, I give you no advice at all. I never have advised any one to go to America, and I never shall. I would wish every one to stay and take his chance with his country; for richer, for poorer; for better, for worse. …

However, the rest of his advice makes the U.S. and especially New York appear to be heaven on earth, especially in how affordable everything is.

The hog meat is far superior to any thing of the kind known in England. There is more than one reason for this; but the chief reason is that the pigs are fatted with that delightful thing, the Indian Corn, which is eaten in all its stages of growth by man, woman and child. The beef in America is as full fine as in England…. Butter is cheaper than in England. Cheese full as good, upon an average, as the English cheese, is at about two thirds of the English average price. Spices of all sorts, at a quarter part of the English price. Tea, at less than half the English price. Sugar, the same. Coffee at a third of the English price. The chocolate in England is at about six shillings a pound, at New York it is about fourteen pence, English money.

Cobbett explains how housing, furniture, clothing, and other goods are better quality at lower prices than in England. Read the rest of his advice here. You have to wonder why he spent the rest of his life in England. -via Strange Company

Wednesday was #AskACurator day on Twitter. Many museums had people ready to answers questions from the public. But this one started a war!

Who would win in a staff battle between @sciencemuseum and @NHM_London, what exhibits/items would help you be victorious? #askacurator

— Bednarz (@bednarz) September 13, 2017

The Natural History Museum in London fired the first shot.

We have dinosaurs. No contest.

— NaturalHistoryMuseum (@NHM_London) September 13, 2017

The Science Museum, also in London, fired back.

@NHM_London is full of old fossils, but we have robots, a Spitfire and ancient poisons. Boom! #AskACurator https://t.co/lsdOS3HqyO

— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) September 13, 2017

And then it was on. They both started posting pictures of their exhibits in a game of one-upmanship which only the readers won. The whole thing got quite silly at times, but we saw some amazing exhibits, and both museums ended up looking pretty good. And they have a good sense of humor. See the entire battle here. -via Metafilter

In the early 1800s, several nations set out to explore what we now call the Pacific Northwest, and to take possession of those lands, despite the fact that the area was already populated by natives. In 1846, a line was drawn between the claims of Britain and the claims of the United States along the 49th parallel, except for a small part that followed "the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel.” The could be interpreted in more than one way, and between those two interpretations lay the island of San Juan. The British sent sheep to the island. The Americans sent a tax collector to bill the shepherd, Charles Griffin. The British refused to pay. The Americans sold the sheep for taxes owed.

For the next few years, tensions on the island stayed low, as Griffin oversaw the growth of the farm to close to 4,500 sheep, along with pigs and other animals. But in 1859 American settlers started arriving, intent on setting up their own farms. One brought 20 cattle. These newcomers did not take much stock in Griffin’s presence there. One new farm was located smack in the middle of one of Griffin’s best sheep runs.

Despite their best efforts, the humans on the island had managed to avoid direct conflict, but the animals were less discreet. In summer 1859, one of the pigs from Griffin’s farm discovered a plot of tempting tubers on the farm of American Lyman Cutlar and availed himself of the delights. Cutlar, having fended off this same pig before, could not stand for this theft. He shot the pig.

An argument broke out over the value of the pig, and before you know it, the American Army and the British Navy were facing off at San Juan Island. Read how the conflict played out at Atlas Obscura.

William Reed is a bodybuilder, and he's also colorblind. For his 66th birthday, his family all chipped in and got him a pair of Enchroma glasses that help a colorblind person to see colors. Reed suddenly sees the world as it is for the first time in his life. Yeah, it takes him some time to open the gift, so if you can't wait, skip ahead to 2:00.

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His joy is hard to see under the dark glasses …until he starts sniffing. It's a change we can't imagine unless we've been in his shoes. Reed says the colors make everything look 3D, so being able to see colors as others do must make a difference in depth perception, too. -via Digg

Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale, are considered as the Dark Knight trilogy. To some Batman fans, they represent the best incarnation of the Caped Crusader. Casual fans might not even think of them as a separate set of movies in the long line of Batman films. Either way, any Batman fan would be interested in knowing some trivia behind the Dark Knight movies. Here's a sample:  

14. Christian Bale is the youngest Batman out of the bunch.

You might have thought Keaton or Kilmer were fairly young but they were still older than Bale when they put on the suit.

5. There’s no mention of the Joker in the third film.

It’s as though he’s just simply gone. Fans might have noticed had it not been for an already tense plot and the expectation of Batman’s fall.

Read the rest of the 20 interesting facts about the Dark Knight trilogy at TVOM.

One thing you can say about the movie It, it readily lends itself to puns. We've seen that once already, and now the IT department is involved. In this skit from The Late Late Show with James Corden, Corden is Pennywise, or in this case, It.

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Sure, that one joke plays out pretty quickly, but goes in a different direction as Corden takes it upon himself to be helpful. The poor sap that called for IT help doesn't need that kind of freakout. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Have you ever wanted to emulate the look of saggy jeans while also keeping them securely in place? Then maybe the new Natasha Zinko High Waist Double Jeans are for you! They have wide legs, no hem, contrasting side stripes, and two zippers. And they are dry-clean only.

In an age of weird jeans, these are quite simply the weirdest jeans I have ever seen https://t.co/DSypOAr9Mm pic.twitter.com/v48EWBALAS

— Laura Bennett (@lbennett) September 14, 2017

Aren't they adorable? No, they are weird and not at all flattering. But then again, it doesn't matter what you think of the look. They cost $695 and they're sold out, the double whammy of conspicuous consumption, so these jeans are guaranteed to be popular among the trendy set. -via Boing Boing

Our friends at The Annals of Improbable Research have bestowed the annual Ig Nobel Prizes upon deserving scientists who caught our imagination with their fascinating but weird research. The 2017 Ig Nobel Award ceremony has just concluded at Harvard University's Sanders Theater. The winners include a study on whether twins can tell themselves apart, why old men have big ears, and if cats can be both a liquid and a solid. Continue reading for the complete list of winners. 

My school took field trips to many factories when I was young. The only two I can recall now are the cheese factory and American Greetings, both because of the smell. The cheese factory turned us all off cheese for a few weeks. American Greetings made scented candles, cinnamon at the time, and the fumes burned our eyes and made our noses run. The workers were used to it. Neither of those experiences compare to a visit to a factory that makes surströmming, or fermented herring. 

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Great Big Story explains surströmming and how it is made. Aren't you glad to be watching a video instead of taking a field trip to this factory?

Some people are confused, others just want to be difficult. This comic from Megacynics could have ended after the second panel, but they had to get some digs into each other. In case you don't get "it," It is a movie. First base refers to the classic Abbot and Costello bit about baseball players with odd names, best known as "Who's on first?"  

Maru the Japanese Scottish fold is ten years old, but he still loves his boxes, no matter what they are made of. His roommate Hana is all grown up, and still taking lessons from Maru. In this video, Maru confronts a see-through box, or what we'd call an aquarium.

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We can clearly see that Maru, like all cats, takes the shape of his container, and is therefore liquid. -via Tastefully Offensive

We know that technological breakthroughs only come after a series of failures. The main thing is that you learn from your failures and move on. Elon Musk's company SpaceX has had its share of spectacular failures, every one of which was highly publicized and enshrined on YouTube. That's the way of the world today.

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Since there's no reason to shy away from their failures, even if they could, SpaceX has released a compilation of their duds, crashes, and explosions on the way to achieving private space flight. Just imagine how many millions of dollars went into these clips. Look closely, and you'll see that their successes are included, too. -via Gizmodo

Jessica Lewis planned to bug out of her apartment and head to her parents' home in Atlanta before Hurricane Irma hit. She asked permission to bring her dog Luna to Dr. Kennedy's class on Thursday, so she could leave straight from there. Buttering up the professor didn't work.

So Luna went to a political science class, and yes, she was a good girl. A dog in the class had to be good for students axious about the hurricane.

“She was pretty well-behaved in class, She went straight to whoever was talking for the most part, like if someone was answering or asking a question. Just walked around and got pets from everyone and made friends. The really funny part was that every time the professor stopped and asked if anyone had questions or comments, she whined loudly like she was responding. It was hilarious.”

You can see the entire album of images from the story at imgur. -via Boing Boing

The latest comic from Grant Snider at Incidental Comics reminds us to look for the common things that have a hint of the extraordinary. Beauty is found where you look for it, when you look without preconceived notions of what you will find.

Snider's new book is called The Shape of Things, available as a 2018 calendar, too!

The 1979 film The Warriors took place in New York City during a time when New York had a reputation as a crime-infested wasteland filled with garbage and graffiti. It never was as bad as portrayed in the media, and the city is different now, but the movie lives on. To younger viewers, it seems to be set in a post-apocalyptic future, while old-timers know the movie, and the book it's based on, are relics of their era. If you are a fan of the movie, you might want to learn some trivia about the making of The Warriors.

5. It had a comic book series that filled in plot points.

As of now the comic is online and should be easy to find, but it occurs after the events of the movie. The gang attempts to free Ajax and the individual members continue to develop after returning to Coney.

4. Robert DeNiro was supposed to have a part.

It’s not really certain why he was never cast in the role of Cowboy but the rumors are that he simply passed on it or that the director didn’t want him there. In truth it would have given the film the star power it needed.

Read more trivia about the film The Warriors at TVOM.