I saw the headline of this article and thought, "Of course they did. Didn't everyone smuggle alcohol in?" Yes, but it was mostly by boat or some other vehicle. A submarine would be an extraordinary tactic, especially since the few that existed were owned by militaries. But there were rumors and sightings. Authorities rarely gave any credence to the reports, and when they checked them out, they didn't find any evidence.

People who claimed to have seen these boats were likely to agree with that assessment—because they didn’t think these were American Navy ships. The Puget Sound submarine was thought to have been built in Seattle but sold to the Canadian government, which later sold it for junk. And the boats on the East Coast were thought to come from Europe: “Up and down Cape Cod chin whiskers are bristling in the salt air as fishermen tell of a giant German U-boat which is torpedoing the Eighteenth Amendment with liquor and beer,” one United Press reporter wrote sun 1924.

Finally, after two years of rumors, evidence surfaced. As historian Ellen NicKenzie Lawson reports in her book Smugglers, Bootleggers, And Scofflaws, in 1924, a commercial mapping firm was flying over the Hudson River when it spotted two submarines, each 250 feet long, in the water 30 miles up the river. They shared a photo with the Navy, which confirmed the submarines did not belong to the United States. Could those photos, preserved in Coast Guard intelligence files, have shown the U-boats of rumor?

See that picture, and read about the practice of smuggling alcohol via submarine at Atlas Obscura.

What new gadget would make going back to school easier? A hypodermic needle shaped like a bunny, to interest young children in their vaccinations? Maybe a case for the banana in your packed lunch? A backpack that carries its own desk? But first, you have to make sure the kids wake up on time.

If a regular alarm just doesn’t rouse you in time, how about this 1882 patented “device for waking persons from sleep?” It consists of a frame suspended above the head of a bed. From the frame dangle cords with soft wood or cork blocks attached to their ends. The frame itself is attached to a clock; when the clock strikes the appointed hour, the frame drops, hitting the sleeper in the face with the blocks. That’ll teach you to oversleep!

Some ideas aren't so bad, like the magnetic locker decorations developed by a middle school student. See ten more back-to-school patents in a slide show at at Smithsonian.

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

 Joseph Levitch (Jerry Lewis) was born in  Newark, New Jersey, at Beth Israel Hospital on March 16, 1926. Note: at least one source claims Jerry's birth name was actually Jerome Levitch. Although he may have been referred to as "Joey" in these very early years, henceforth in this article, for the sake of simplicity and to avoid confusion, he will be referred to as "Jerry."

Jerry's parents were Daniel Levitch (he performed under the stage name "Danny Lewis"), a small-time journeyman master of ceremonies and vaudevillian, and Rachel ("Rae Lewis") nee Brodsky, a pianist, who would accompany Danny on their gigs around the country.

Little Jerry made his performing debut at a club in the Catskills at the age of six. He came on the stage and sang the then-popular depression era song "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" But besides singing, Jerry accidentally stepped on a stage light during his performance and it exploded. This accidental misstep surprised Jerry and evoked his first-ever laugh from an audience. "Not all kids would have liked being laughed at," recalled Jerry years later, "but I was a strange kid." Jerry said his next performance was at the age of eight.

The vast majority of our movies about encounters with aliens involve extraterrestrials that come in somewhat of a humanoid shape and fairly the same size as humans. That makes it much easier to cast those roles. And science fiction rarely ever deals with planets populated by life that's not intelligent enough to interact with humans. But now that we are able to detect planets outside of our solar systems and speculate on their conditions, scientists are entertaining the possibility of life one those planets. What form would those living things realistically take? Gizmodo talked to four scientists about what alien life might really be like. Caitlin Ahrens of the University of Arkansas said,  

I’ll put “life” in quotes due to it being a very vague term in regards to aliens. We have carbon-based life. But there’s theories for sulphur-based and other chemistries to form some biological structures. “Life” could mean anything from microscopic blue cupcake-loving worms to sentient snorkels that like polka—not necessarily human-like. Not necessarily intelligent either.

Read the rest of what they had to say about alien life at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Jim Cooke/Gizmodo)

You can develop a very special relationship with the professional who cuts your hair. Take care of that relationship, because it's a fragile and beautiful thing. This guy learned his lesson the hard way, when he cheated and used another barber.

(YouTube link)

The hurt feelings can escalate over time. Can this relationship ever be repaired? Comedian Anwar Jibawi has a message: don't cheat on your barber. -via Tastefully Offensive

F. Nephi Grigg grew up producing potatoes and corn on his family's farm in Idaho. In the 1940s, he understood the future of frozen food and opened a flash-freezing plant in Oregon with his brother. They named the company Ore-Ida, after the two states. The Grigg brothers made a fortune processing potatoes into frozen french fries. But cutting potatoes into fries presented a problem, in that the potato pieces that were too small to use were hard to separate from the fries.

When an equipment manufacturing company inexplicably showed up at their plant to demonstrate a prune sorter, Nephi and his plant superintendent Slim Burton chatted with them about a redesign. Could the barrel be redesigned so that it would eliminate the unwanted pieces of potatoes from the very wanted french fries? It could.

This being the northwest, and with the Grigg brothers’ company surrounded by farmland, Nephi decided that the scraps would go to feed the cattle and other livestock owned by the Grigg family. This was fine for a while, until Nephi realized that these cattle were getting enormous amounts of potato product. He was an entrepreneur, goddammit, and not one to waste anything, especially “product that has been purchased from the grower, stored for months, gone thru the peeling process, gone thru the specking lines and trimmed of all the defects, only to be eliminated into the cattle feed,” as Nephi wrote in a letter to an Ore-Ida representative in 1989.

You can see where this is going. It was those little scraps left over from making french fries that ended up in Tater Tots. Read the rest of the story of how Tater Tots were developed at Eater. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user Lower Columbia College (LCC))

(YouTube link)

A young cat is down in a hole, and this guy is going to do the right thing and give him a way out. The cat doesn't climb the ladder, so the guy goes down to execute a rescue. Surprise! The cat was apparently doing his own thing, and did not feel the need for your assistance. You'll want to let the rest of the video play out, because laughter is infectious no matter what language you speak. -via Digg

Matt Shirley gets a lot of use out of his dry-erase board. He tries to make a new chart of some kind every day. He posted this one for back-to-school at reddit today, tracing the feelings of a child experiencing his first day at school. Another chart shows what that kid did all summer (and his parents).

Here's one that explains why your assigned seat in the classroom was so awful.

He also has plenty of charts that have nothing to do with school, but they usually pertain to something we can all relate to.

Fellow overthinkers let's take a trip down anxiety aisle.

A post shared by Matt Shirley (@mattsurelee) on Aug 22, 2017 at 5:10pm PDT

You can see all of Shirley's charts at Instagram.

You might argue about what the internet's "first great meme" was, but Chuck Norris Facts is a classic. Did you ever wonder how Norris became the go-to tough guy of internet jokes? It all started with Vin Diesel on Something Awful. Seriously. Ian Spector, the man who launched the Chuck Norris Fact Generator in 2005, talked about how he pivoted to Norris, who he wasn't all that familiar with at the time.  

Walker, Texas Ranger followed the same classic formula of Norris movies, except the odds weren’t just insurmountable, they were sometimes downright absurd. Walker became a principal in a school, lost his vision but was still able to beat people to a pulp, checked himself into prison to bring down a fighting ring, and fought a bear.

These intense, and often insane, storylines played perfectly to Spector’s random fact generator. Spector took the advice of the crowd and launched the Chuck Norris Fact Generator in the summer of 2005. By early 2006, the website was getting close to 20 million page views a month. Chuck Norris Facts turned the aging star into a global phenomenon. The publishing industry and a certain actor took notice.

Read the rest of the story of how Chuck Norris Facts went viral at The Daily Dot.
 

Who doesn't love waffles? They're precisely-shaped, slightly crispier pancakes with perfect indentions to hold syrup, berries, or whatever you want to put on them. And you'd probably enjoy them more often if you had a proper waffle iron. You might never have thought about waffles in the movies, but those scenes are there to make your mouth water and to make you relate to the characters who love them as much as you do. Check out five scenes from film that make the most out of waffles at TVOM. Then go make yourself a second breakfast.

Fiction loves to surprise its audience with a plot twist. You either saw it coming, or you didn't. Surprisingly, knowing what's coming doesn't ruin the experience as much as you might think. However, for a plot twist to make a great story, it has to makes sense to the audience. Otherwise, it's like a deus ex machina that provides no real closure for the audience.

(YouTube link)

Jack Nugent from Now You See It (previously at Neatorama) explains the difference between a plot twist that satisfies and one that doesn't, which is completely different from a plot twist that surprises. Oh yeah, this video contains spoilers, but probably none that you care about. -via Tastefully Offensive

Pee-wee Herman is Paul Reubens, and Paul Reubens is Pee-wee Herman. But Paul Reubens just turned 65, and Pee-wee will always be young. Over thirty years ago, when Reubens became Pee-wee, he went all in for character, and became the Pee-wee we know and love.   

2. “PEE-WEE” WAS A HARMONICA.

Reubens says the character’s many distinctive traits were "a bunch of stuff all mixed in together. The voice came from a stage production that I was involved in. And then the name came from a kid I knew who was kind of off-the-wall. The name 'Pee-wee' came from a little harmonica I had that said ‘Pee-wee’ on it. I loved the idea of a nickname, because it sounded so real to me. ‘Pee-wee Herman’ sounds like a name that is so odd, how would you make that up? If you were going to make up a name, you’d make up a better name. It seemed real to me; it was a nickname with a last name that’s also a first name … And it went hand-in-hand with what I wanted to do, which was to make people think this was a real person, not an actor.”

3. PAUL REUBENS IS ALWAYS CREDITED AS “PEE-WEE HERMAN.”

To further enforce the idea that Pee-wee Herman is indeed a real person, when Paul Reubens is appearing as Pee-wee Herman, the credits simply list “Pee-wee Herman as Himself.”

Read plenty more facts you didn't know about Pee-wee Herman, including his Dating Game success, at Mental Floss.

This is what happens when a dog loves you. Kane is just a puppy, only eight months old. So why shouldn't he want to take a nap laying on top of his master? But Kane is a 160-pound mastiff.

(YouTube link)

It's not easy dealing with an awkward oversized child who wants to be close to you. They should have named him Clifford. -via Metafilter

The following is an article from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again.

For decades rumors have swirled around the CIA’s testing of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the 1960s. In seeking a knockout drug weapon, did the CIA slip substances to unsuspecting patsies? The answer is yes. And Frank Olson was the man who paid the heaviest price.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

The Olson family -Alice, Frank, and their three young children- lived an all-American, idyllic life in Frederick, Maryland. But unbeknownst to everyone, Frank had a secret life: developing ways of efficiently distributing deadly strains of diseases during bacteriological warfare for the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the army’s Chemical Corps.

LAB RATS

While Frank Olson was busy creating ways to hide delivery systems in shaving cream and bug spray cans, a CIA researcher and official, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, was developing very different weapons with his team, called MK-ULTRA. For years Gottlieb had been studying the use of narcotics such as cocaine and mescaline, hoping that he could come up with a pharmacopoeia of substances that could be used as tactical weapons. In the early 1950s he believed he had found something that might work—lysergic acid, aka LSD. LSD seemed perfect for Gottlieb’s purposes. It was colorless, odorless, and capable of reducing sane people to babbling, disoriented idiots.

EVERYBODY MUST GET STONED

Besides conducting experiments at universities and prisons, the MK-ULTRA team tested LSD on themselves, slipping it into each other’s food and drinks without warning. But Gottlieb wasn’t interested in LSD’s effects on willing subjects; he needed to know how average folks would react when fed the drug without their knowledge.

It's taken me many years, but I have a set of china that could serve a dinner party of two dozen people. Every once in a while, I look at that big stack of dinner plates and wonder if I'll ever use them all. I even considered putting the freshly-washed ones away on the bottom, but I never do it because the stack is heavy. Poor bottom plate. This comic is from LOL Nein, where you can see a different, second version of the story that isn't sad at all. -via Geeks Are Sexy