You may be familiar with the story of Hachiko, the loyal Akita that returned for years hopping to greet his deceased owner at the train station (if not, go grab a hankie). But there are details of the story that you probably don't know. Evan Hadfield tells us the story with some extra background and more insight into how Hachiko became a national hero in Japan.

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In fact, Hachiko's fame ended up saving his breed. That's a good dog. This is the latest episode of the video series Chris Hadfield's Rare Earth. -via Tastefully Offensive

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!

(Image credit: Flickr user Jan Gleisner)

Research that concerns or inspires blushing
by Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Improbable Research staff

Blushing About Blushing
“I Blush, Therefore I Will Be Judged Negatively: Influence of False Blush Feedback on Anticipated Others’ Judgments and Facial Coloration in High and Low Blushing-Fearfuls,” Corine Dijka, Marisol J. Vonckenb and Peter J. de Jong, Behaviour Research and Therapy, vol. 47, no. 7, 2009, pp. 541–7. The authors, at the University of Groningen and at Maastricht University, report:

We investigate whether people attribute costs to displaying a blush. Individuals with and without fear of blushing were invited to have a short conversation with two confederates. During the conversation, half of the individuals received the feedback that they were blushing intensely. The study tested whether the belief that one is blushing leads to the anticipation that one will be judged negatively. In addition, the set-up permitted the actual physiological blush response to be investigated. In line with the model that we propose for erythrophobia, participants in the feedback condition expected the confederates to judge them relatively negatively, independent of their fear of blushing. Furthermore, sustaining the idea that believing that one will blush can act as a self- fulfilling prophecy, high-fearfuls showed relatively intense facial coloration in both conditions, whereas low-fearfuls only showed enhanced blush responses following false blush feedback.

Concomitants of Social Blushing
“Predictors, Elicitors, and Concomitants of Social Blushing,” Mark R. Leary and Sarah Meadows, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 60, no. 2, February 1991, pp. 254–62. the authors explain:

The Blushing Propensity Scale, a battery of personality measures, and a questionnaire about blushing were completed by 225 undergraduates. The frequency with which [subjects] reported blushing correlated most strongly with measures that reflect people’s concerns with how they are regarded by others. Four predictors (embarrassability, interaction anxiousness, self- esteem, and refinement) accounted for 40% of the variance in blushing propensity scores. A factor analysis showed that 2 distinct but correlated factors accounted for situations that elicit blushing.

Blushing and Whiteness in Eighteenth-Century British Portraiture

If you get your news from the internet, or even worse, from social media, you can't always trust that it's true. However, with a little effort you can develop a sense of what sources to trust. Factitious is a game that checks how well you can distinguish reliable news and fake news stories. I scored 100%. I don't know if that's because I'm careful with sources, or because I'd already seen all the stories in the game. It's true that I was burned a few times when I started blogging and quickly learned to check sources, or sit on something if it didn't pass the "smell test." That said, this game concentrates on news stories, and does not dwell on politics or opinion pieces. -via The Daily Dot

When a historic building gets remodeled, the process involves construction workers, historic preservationists, architects, and archaeologists. It was not always so. You never know what you might find, but the professionals working on restoring Thomas Jefferson's home Monticello had an idea of what they might find, and they did -the room where Sally Hemings lived. Hemings, a slave, was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife who became his mistress after Martha Jefferson died -and bore six children. Hemings' windowless room was next to Jefferson's, but was converted into a men's restroom in 1941 and now has been uncovered to reveal the original floor, hearth, and fireplace.

“For the first time at Monticello we have a physical space dedicated to Sally Hemings and her life,” Mia Magruder Dammann, a spokeswoman for Monticello, told NBCBLK. “It’s significant because it connects the entire African American arch at Monticello.”

By the late 1960s, Magruder said, the earlier bathrooms had become too small to accommodate Monticello’s growing number of visitors so local restoration architect Floyd Johnson renovated and enlarged the bathrooms in 1967.

But recently, historians studied a description provided long ago by a grandson of Jefferson who placed Hemings’ room in the home’s South Wing.

The current restoration project is an attempt to bring Monticello back to its original state when Jefferson lived there, including the relics of his slaves that were ignored or covered up previously. Read more about Hemings and the restoration of Monticello at NBC News. -via Atlas Obscura

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This doggo is a friendly fellow out on a walk, but the shadow he throws might give you other ideas. It's just one of many shadows that show something quite different from what you'd expect, considering who is throwing it. In contrast, this guy has a good boy watching him work, even though it's just his shadow.

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See over 180 submitted and ranked pictures of shadow pareidolia at Bored Panda. 

A great way for summer movies to emphasize that it is summer in the story, and to get audiences to relate good times with the movie experience, is to feature an Independence day celebration. At least for American audiences. We wouldn't mind seeing a Canada Day or Bastille Day picnic in July, either, but you don't often see that. Sop while you're in a patriotic mood, you might want to check out some iconic movie scenes that show our Fourth of July holiday celebrations at TVOM. As you can tell from the still above, not all of them are happy and fun all the way through.  

In the Library of Congress, there's a 241-year-old document that we celebrate every Fourth of July. Look closer, and you'll see a woman's name at the bottom. Mary Katherine Goddard was not a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but she was the brave printer who made copies for the colonies, and put her full name on the document. That could have gotten her killed if the Revolutionary War had ended differently.    

Goddard was fearless her entire career as one of America’s first female publishers, printing scoops from Revolutionary War battles from Concord to Bunker Hill and continuing to publish after her offices were twice raided and her life was repeatedly threatened by haters.

Yup, she faced down the Twitter trolls of 1776.

In her boldest move, Goddard put her full name at the bottom of all the copies of the Declaration that her printing presses churned out and distributed to the colonies. It was the first copy young America would see that included the original signers’ names — and Congress commissioned her for the important job.

Goddard led a fascinating life in a time when few people considered women capable of running a business. She was a journalist, publisher, printer, postmaster, and patriot. Read more about Mary Katherine Goddard at the Washington Post. -via Metafilter

In the region of Madagascar, 165 million years ago, before it broke off from Africa and India, there were  crocodilians of the species Razanandrongobe sakalavae. The newly-named species left fossils that indicate it was a land predator that ate dinosaurs for breakfast. Bigger than any existent crocodilians, it had a deep skull and relatively long legs. A real monster.

The fragmented fossilized remains of the horror-croc (nicknamed ‘Razana’, as in ‘Razana, Eater of Worlds’) have been described in a new paper in the journal PeerJ by a team of Italian and French paleontologists. The species was first documented in the literature more than a decade ago, but due to limitations of the fossils, its specific classification was unknown. Up until now, it wasn’t clear if Razana was a massive, meat-eating theropod dinosaur, or some other kind of reptile. New fossils of the jaws and teeth, collected from the same region of northwestern Madagascar where the first fossils were found, reveal that Razanandrongobe sakalavae—the “giant lizard ancestor from Sakalava region”—was actually a relative of today’s crocodiles and alligators.

Read what we know about this terrifying prehistoric croc at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Fabio Manucci)

Your eyes are deceiving you. This may look like a hamburger, but it's really dessert. KinkyKittenHeather made two dozen baked "hamburgers" for a family Fourth of July party. The ingredients are all sweet.

Cupcake bun, brownie "burger," coconut dyed green as lettuce, and red icing as ketchup.

Edit: The cheese is yellow marshmallow fondant.

She promised to report back and let reddit know how the burgers go over with the family. See more pictures at imgur.

Chris Poole is playing with his cat Marmalade. Marmalade knows his human's hand very well, but he's letting his imagination go wild. Maybe he's pretending the hand is a monster, or a large predator, or just something supernatural that's out to get him. Whoever says cats faces aren't expressive doesn't know Marmalade.

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See more of Marmalade's adventures with his buddy Cole from our previous posts. -via Tastefully Offensive

The new country known as the United States of America went through quite a few mascots before settling on Uncle Sam. There was Yankee Doodle, Columbia, Lady Liberty, and Brother Jonathan. Who? Jonathan was sometimes used as a term of disrespect, but like Yankee Doodle, Americans took a stereotype and shook it back at those who would belittle us.

While Yankee Doodle was primarily a comedic figure, Brother Jonathan was a more sinister one. Winifred Morgan, author of An American Icon: Brother Jonathan and American Identity sees Brother Jonathan during this period as a trickster in the tradition of Native-American and African-American folklore. “Tricksters are phenomenally powerful characters,” says Morgan. “They’re tough, they’re resilient, and Brother Jonathan has those qualities. But tricksters are also sly and self-interested.” And Brother Jonathan had to be. After all, he represented ordinary Americans who were trying to make their way in the harsh new world.

Americans liked to think that their wit and tenacity had won them their independence. They continued to see themselves as scrappy underdogs and turned their noses up at any whiff of pretension. This attitude played out in the political cartoons of the day which pitted Brother Jonathan against John Bull is a battle of old-world pomposity against new-world smarts.

The problem with Brother Jonathan was that he was long known to be a Yankee from the North, which didn't sit well with a large part of the country after the Civil War. Uncle Sam, while stern and  harsh, was from all of America. Read about Brother Jonathan and how he once personified America at Atlas Obscura.

A family goes on vacation, with their bikes strapped to the back of the van. But the youngest daughter's beloved tricycle falls off and is lost. The girl is upset, but the tricycle has its own weird adventures trying to find its way back to the family.

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A few scenes will make you fall in love with a simple tricycle. This delightful story by Michel Gondry was entirely shot on an iPhone, in French with English subtitles. Pay attention, because you don't want to miss the singing fish. Or the ending. -via Laughing Squid

A man snuck into the panda house at the Nanchang Zoo in Jiangxi province, China. He wanted to impress his female companions by teasing the sleeping giant panda. The animal woke up and proceeded to attack the intruder.

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You know how your dog can lean up against you when he wants to be hugged? Imagine that behavior in a bear-sized bear, if you will. If the man had commenced with the hugs and back scratches as directed, he might have been spared the panda rolling over on top of him. As it was, he managed to escape the pen after about five minutes. Both the man and the panda were unharmed. -via Boing Boing

Disney has unveiled a mini-series of animated episodes called Star Wars: Forces of Destiny to be shown on the Disney Channel and on YouTube. The short vignettes are designed to give us a little insight into the characters we already know. According to Wookieepedia,

Star Wars: Forces of Destiny is an upcoming canon animated miniseries that will take place around all eras of the Star Wars universe. Consisting of sixteen episodes, it will air online and on television,[1] beginning in July 3, 2017.[3] It will be accompanied by its own toy line and a series of tie-in books.[5]

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The first episode, Sands of Jakku, is narrated by Lupita Nyong’o (Maz Kanata), in a sequence just after Rey meets BB-8. It shows how Rey is Force-sensitive even before she falls in with the Skywalker gang. -via Uproxx

Americans have a worldwide, and totally deserved, reputation for wearing their patriotism on their sleeves. Some movies reflect this with scenes of reverence to the American flag, often accompanied by a stirring speech about freedom -in some cases supplemented with truth, justice, and the American way. If you are an American and feel the need to pump up your patriotic spirit ahead of our Independence Day holiday, or if you just want to relive some heartfelt moments from classic films, you'll want to check out five great movie clips centered around the American flag at TVOM.