A notorious tale in aviation circles involves a Michigan pilot who bought a plane in California sight unseen and had some trouble getting it home in 2021. These seven incidents from the trip are described as "crashes," which may be technically correct, but no one was killed, and the pilot was flying alone. Also technically they occurred over nine days. Sixty-year-old Dennis Collier sold his house to buy a Seawind 3000, an experimental amphibious homemade plane. He was so excited about the plane that he didn't get a pre-buy inspection. When he picked up the plane, he found its history to be pretty sketchy, but he had already sunk $100K into it and the seller was in a hurry to leave.

The story reads like a comedy of errors, and it is, but it should also reassure us that many things can go wrong with a plane without dooming us to die in a fiery crash. Not that we should push our luck like Collier did. After reading the account at General Aviation News, you might want to also read an interview with Collier for a taste of the saga from his perspective. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: AirplaneHub.com)

We know the term the Gilded Age as a time of rapid industrialization, massive immigration the the US, and technical innovations that caused a few people to accumulate astounding wealth. In Europe, the period was called the Belle Époque. But the period between roughly 1870 to 1914 was also referred to as the Great Binge, because the industrial and economic boom was accompanied by an awful lot of drug use.

Industrialists and other businessmen raised capital by importing opium and cocaine. Politicians leveraged the trade to gain power over supplying nations and those trading with them. Authors, artists, inventors, and other celebrities indulged regularly. College students navigated a world soaked with dangerous but still legal drugs. Everyday people relied on opium and laudanum to ease the pain of conditions we couldn't fix, even for children. Heroin was developed as a "less addicting" pharmaceutical alternative to morphine. Coca-Cola got its name from the cocaine it contained.   

We've covered a lot of those turn-of-the-20th century drugs individually, but when you consider them all together in one historic period, it's a wonder anyone survived long enough to deal with World War I. Read about the Great Binge at Messy Nessy Chic.   

A long time ago, in a country far, far away... specifically in 1987 and '88, George Lucas did six ads for Panasonic, shown on Japanese television. Sure, he had plenty of money from the first three Star Wars movies and the first two Indiana Jones movies, but was also dealing with the disaster that was Howard the Duck and didn't know how long his charmed film career would last. Neil Cicierega used those six ads and some extra Star Wars clips and related material to construct a surreal, seomwhat psychedelic trip back in time and space to the "George Lucas Eggsperience." Levitate an egg, learn to load a VHS tape, and ponder the importance of the color red in this video. Meet Lucas' favorite droid, Sparky, but don't tell R2D2 or C3PO.

If you want to see the original ads, there's a source list at the YouTube page. -via Metafilter

The scariest, and most dangerous, hotel is the Frying Pan Hotel, 32 miles off the coast of North Carolina atop the Frying Pan Tower. The tower was built in 1964 with a lighthouse to warn approaching ships of the shallow Frying Pan Shoals. Since new technology made the lighthouse obsolete, the tower was sold to Richard Neil in 2010. Now it is a research station and marine wildlife refuge, but it also has an eight-room bed and breakfast.

The location is Spartan, but this hotel has amenities for those looking for adventure. There are boat and helicopter shuttles, a hoist to and from the water's surface, high-speed internet, scuba diving, snorkeling, fishing, shooting, golf, games, and a full kitchen. There's even an underwater camera so you can schedule your snorkeling around the sharks.

Book your adventure at the Frying Pan Hotel here. No pets, no children under ten, and guests over 300 pounds must travel by boat. All guests must undergo a safety briefing and sign a liability waiver. -via Everlasting Blort

The Prime Meridian is an arbitrary line drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole as a starting point for us to measure longitude. It was decided to place the meridian in a line going through Greenwich, UK, at the  International Meridian Conference in 1884. Before that, different countries used their own meridians as a starting point. The Prime Meridian is said to be the line between the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern Hemisphere, but as you can see, that doesn't make sense because then a big chunk of Africa, plus Spain and Britain, would be in the Western Hemisphere. Still, Britain held a lot of power in the 1880s. The equator is not arbitrary, because it's the midpoint between the poles, which are designated by the earth's rotation.

(Image credit: Graham Curran)

The point where the Prime Meridian crosses the equator is 0° longitude and 0° latitude. That place is hundreds of miles off the coast of Ghana, with no islands nearby. The numbers were just a point on a map before satellites and digital geolocation, but in the modern era, errors in geolocation will default to 0°,0°. In the internet age, this point on earth has come to be called Null Island. Redditors have designed flags for Null Island, and you can buy souvenir t-shirts. Only there is no island there. But there is a scientific buoy, named Soul Buoy, installed in 1997. Read about the imaginary Null Island at Big Think. -via Atlas Obscura

My sleep habits are very consistent. I crash quickly at 11 PM and at 2 PM. Seriously, I can tell what time it is by how my brain feels. That 2 PM part makes it hard to think about getting a real job, but it helps me skip the hottest part of the day in summer. There was a time when I could work way into the wee hours of the morning, but I probably didn't get enough sleep overall. Each person has their own natural rhythms, developed over a lifetime. Our bodies set our sleep schedules by releasing hormones. Can we change that? Yes, up to a point. The secret is to make sure we get enough sleep overall. Sunlight is a great help. But when those hormones start flowing, it's not easy to fight against them. If we only had the freedom to work with our bodies' natural circadian rhythms, harnessing the time of day we can be most productive, we could enjoy our free time and our sleep time more. The TED-Ed lesson explains circadian rhythms and what we can do about them.  

We are most familiar with Katmai National Park because of Fat Bear Week every autumn. The park in Alaska has cultivated many fans who keep up with the progress of bears gaining weight through the summer by watching live webcams set up around the park's bear country. That was a good thing for a hiker who became lost while walking on Dumpling Mountain last Tuesday. Users who were watching noticed a man addressing the Dumpling Mountain camera about 3:15. He had walked by the camera, then realized it was a chance to communicate and came back. The wind drowned out the man's voice, but viewers could see he was cold, wet, and miserable in the rain and fog.

Viewers contacted the site's moderators, and one even contacted his local police. About three hours later, park rangers found the unnamed man waiting near the bearcam. It was the first time that Explore.org's webcams were used for a rescue situation. We don't know if the hiker is a fan of Fat Bear Week, but anyone who wanders the park's four million acres must at least be familiar with it. He recognized the opportunity for help and used it to save his own life. Read the story of the rescue here. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Explore.org)

English as we know it today is a mishmash of words that came from everywhere. Sure, the majority of it came from German and evolved through Old English and Middle English until we could no longer read or understand the source languages. Then along the way, we've added a ton of words from other languages. Many can be traced directly to Greek mythology, Latin used in the Roman Empire, and real Greek people and things. So when you say "It's Greek to me," you should be able to figure at least some of it out. A lot of that is because the Greek and Roman Empires were widely influential and rather well documented. Some words were filtered from Latin by the romance languages that descended from it: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and Romanian. If you ever studied Latin, you can often figure out what new words might mean. And if you run across a Greek god you are unfamiliar with, you can often figure out their story by the modern word we took from their name. -via Digg

In 2011, NASA ended the space shuttle program, and the US began hitching rides to the International Space Station (ISS) in Russian spacecraft. What could possibly go wrong?

Astronaut Frank Rubio launched his mission to the ISS on a Soyuz space capsule on September 21, 2022. While docked, that capsule sprung a leak and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, decided it was too risky to bring anyone back to earth. Rubio's planned six-month mission on the ISS was extended until he could get a slot on another spacecraft. Another Soyuz capsule went to the ISS and back, but carried Russian crew. Other ISS personnel arrived and departed on SpaceX vehicles, with all seats taken. So Rubio stayed in orbit, along with the two cosmonauts he arrived with.

As of today, Rubio has spent 355 consecutive days in orbit, most of it unplanned, longer than any other US astronaut. He is scheduled to return to earth on September 27th, and by that time will be the first NASA astronaut to spend more than a calendar year in space, with a total of 371 days. A statement from NASA said, in part:

“Your dedication is truly out of this world, Frank!”

It's amazing how much dedication you can muster when you have no choice. Rubio's record is only among NASA astronauts. The record for the longest consecutive time in space is held by cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who stayed aboard the space station Mir for 437 consecutive days in 1994-95.

Incidentally, the investigation of the coolant leak in that docked Soyuz spacecraft determined it was caused by an external factor, such as space debris. Which brings up a whole other subject on the dangers of space travel.  -via Gizmodo

(Image credit: NASA)

A legal deposit library is one in which all printed materials are required to be deposited. The United States requires copies be sent to the US Copyright Office, but only if you want a copyright, and they don't retain materials forever. In the UK, there are six legal deposit libraries, but as of now, the only one a publisher is legally required to sent materials to is the British Library, and they keep it forever. As you can imagine, this collection is massive, requiring off-site warehouses. It's not easy to get a library card to do research among all those materials, but when an item is requested, they move heaven and earth to get it for you. This requires giant high-speed robots and an impressive archiving system that has evolved over time. It will have to evolve further, as they are now taking all UK materials published online as well. Tom Scott gives us an overview, and ends with some lucky timing.

Duolingo received a question from a reader: "Are there any words that all languages have in common?" It turns out that there are two of them. But first we are treated to several words that come close but still have a few exceptions. Of course, you could see "pineapple" coming a mile away. The word is "ananas" or some variant all over the world, but pineapple in English. However, it's also called "piña" in a few languages. After several neat stories about those words, we get to the universal ones. You may think (as I did) that these common words might tie all languages together and reveal what the world's oldest language really is, but alas, no. The reason that two words are universal is because they are things that originated in one place and were exported globally in a relatively short time. You might even be able to guess them before you check out the article at Duolingo. -via Kottke

Crystallization is when solids form from a liquid by organizing molecules into a predetermined structure. That by itself is mind-blowing, but when you use certain chemicals to start with, the colors and motion can be stunningly beautiful. German photographer Jens Heidler brings us a time-lapse video of the crystallization process of a mixture of vitamin C and the amino acid beta analin, along with water and alcohol. He varied the proportions of the ingredients and the temperature to get different sequences. Heidler lists the gear he used at the YouTube page. I would never pretend to understand the chemistry of it all, but it sure it pretty! -via Laughing Squid

The marri tree (Corymbia calophylla) grows in Western Australia where water is a precious commodity. Its sap has antiseptic properties, making it really valuable. Aboriginal cultures in the area have been caring for these trees for thousands of years, and developed a method for turning them into bowls to hold scarce rainwater! In the Menang language, the tree is called Gnaama Boorna, which means water tree.

They say the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, but a marri tree requires even more patience. Many generations of the Menang people cut the central branch off a young tree, then shape the peripheral branches up around it over years. By the time a tree is 150 years old, the central pruning spot would become a well to hold water. They also protect these precious trees, by cleaning brush from around them so they won't be destroyed by fire. Some living trees are 400 years old, and still collecting water when it's available. Read about the significance of the marri tree at ABC. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: David McCorquodale, CC BY 4.0)

The USS Enterprise is under attack, but any defense plan is derailed by Kirk using antiquated earth idioms. The bridge crew is very diverse, as the future Starfleet became more diverse every time a new Star Trek series launched. That means there are plenty of Enterprise officers on board who are offended by the things he says (and more than even the captain is aware of). Kirk starts to figure out a way out of the mess, but he throws a little too much mustard on his plan and it ends up taking longer than it should. Oh no, I've probably just offended a crew member from the planet Mustard.

This animated scene is from Casper Kelly, who gave us Too Many Cooks. It is the first of  a series of five videos called Very Short Treks that pay homage to Star Trek: the Animated Series for the series' 50th anniversary. We will be looking forward to seeing the rest!   

If you ever think of Fanta, you probably picture orange soda. Or possibly grape. I think they also have a red one, but Fanta is usually orange. Except for this fall, when there's a black Fanta available for a limited time. The flavor is a mystery, and we may never find out exactly what it's supposed to taste like. My wild guess is that it will taste like some marginally nostalgic ultra-processed artificial fruit flavor. Fanta's parent company Coco-Cola has been doing this with various sodas for a year now. They encourage people to try it and share their guess at the taste on social media. In other words, free advertising. The only hint at these mystery flavors is that they are designed to "fool the senses," so a black beverage could easily taste like egg nog.

But the real selling point for What The Fanta Zero Sugar is that the company says it will turn your tongue black, so if you get some, you will want to put at least one back for the night of your Halloween costume party. Or take some to school to share for guaranteed hilarity. -via Mental Floss

(Image credit: Fanta)