Carl Bach threatened to kill his wife Mary in 1881. She kicked him out of the house, but he returned and indeed killed her in a most gruesome way. It's a tragic story that happens everywhere, but Carl's murder trial was the most sensational thing that had happened in Bowling Green, Ohio.

When a new courthouse was built a few years later, it included an exhibit from the trial, including the murder weapon, the noose used to hang Carl Bach, and three of Mary's fingers he had hacked off, preserved in a jar. The display stayed there for almost a century, then was transferred to the Wood County Museum in 1979. The locals had mixed feelings about the exhibit over time, but people traveled from far and wide to see the three fingers in a jar. In more modern times, the unseemliness of displaying human body parts prompted the museum to remove the exhibit in 2014, but due to popular demand, they were again displayed beginning in 2020. Read about the case, the exhibit, and the controversy over Mary Bach's fingers at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company

If you really want to see the fingers, Roadside America covers the exhibit.

(Image credit: The Wood County Historical Society)

The production of beer goes back to the beginnings of agriculture, and there are experts who think that the desire for alcoholic beverages actually led to the development of agriculture. but while this video from Weird History Food starts off with the origins of beer, it doesn't claim to be a comprehensive history, not does it proceed in a linear fashion. Rather, it's a collection of anecdotes from the drink's extensive history, kind of like a highlight reel, which is more fun anyway. One thing that stands out is the availability of some historic recipes and beers recreated from earlier famous lagers and ales. And one ice cream. -via Laughing Squid

As soon as the United States became an independent country, the 13 existing states got really territorial. You can see on this map that six states just extended their borders westward to the Mississippi River, regardless of contiguity, while Massachusetts also claimed what is now Maine, and New York claimed what is now Vermont. Eventually that was sorted out, but Georgia, the last holdout, went through some real pains on the way.

In 1794, four companies, set up especially for the purpose, paid half a million dollars for about 40 million acres of land. Even taking into account all the bribes — another half a million — that was a ridiculously low amount: four acres to a dollar.

Georgians were furious, and state legislators, appalled to have been caught taking bribes, quickly rescinded the sale. But the contracts were signed, and the courts got involved. That set up a battle between landowners, the state of Georgia, the federal government, and US citizens in a country that was still trying to figure out how to be a working democracy. The legal case went to the Supreme Court, and established several legal precedents we still follow. It also led to the Indian Removal Act of 1830. And the establishment of Alabama and Mississippi. Read a quick overview of the Yazoo Land Scandal at Big Think.  -via Atlas Obscura
 

Beginning on August 8, wildfires spread through the Hawaiian island of Maui, destroying the city of Lahaina. The fire killed at least 115 people, and 388 people are still unaccounted for. Images of the aftermath are chilling, but what's with that one house with the red roof?  

After years of apartment living, Trip Millikin of Lahaina and his wife took the plunge and bought a house in 2021. It was built in the 1920s and needed extensive renovation. The neighbors were glad someone was going to live in the historic house and try to save it. The Millikins had five layers of asphalt shingles removed and installed a red metal roof. They also removed shrubs around the foundation and replaced them with rock as a barrier against termites. These are just some of the improvements they completed in 2022, but they proved to be the most crucial when the wildfire leveled the rest of the neighborhood.

The Millikins were in Massachusetts when the fire raged through, and were devastated to hear of the destruction. They were shocked to hear that their home survived, and have pledged to use it as a headquarters for the rebuilding efforts. Read about the Lahaina "miracle house" at NPR. -via Nag on the Lake

House cats love fish, but they rarely have to catch their own. That's what the fishing cat does on a regular basis. This threatened species is a relatively small wildcat that lives in the wetlands of Asia. A mother fishing cat has to teach her two cubs how it's done in this clip from the BBC miniseries Big Cats. They've never been to the water before, and mama can't help but show off a little. After all, she's helping them learn how to catch their own fish. The kittens make their best attempts, but their "catch" serves as a punch line for this video. -via Digg

You can see lots more cute cats at Supa Fluffy.

Science is looking into the early history of language, which is difficult because spoken words left no trace before the 19th century, and written words are only a few thousands of years old. But when we look into the ancient history of counting, we actually have physical evidence of prehistoric numbers. A South African cave held skeletons dated to the Middle Stone Age, some 42,000 years ago. In the 1970s, a baboon bone was found there, with 29 deliberate markings, evenly spaced but made at different times with different tools. This was a tally stick, used to record a number of something. This stick is not only evidence of human counting, but the earliest known use of an external object to record information.

Human counting appears to have arisen naturally and independently, because it is so useful for keeping track of allies, enemies, threats, and possessions (not to mention children). Different cultures came up with different numerically-based systems. The most obvious is base ten, because we have ten fingers. But there are also systems based on five, for one-handed counting, or twenty when you include toes, or other numbers based on handy body parts. It is believed that ancient Sumerians, who bought and sold goods, developed writing as an extension of keeping accounting records, which began with numbers. Read how these early tallying methods came about at Lapham's Quarterly. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Roger McLassus)

Dustin Ballard has a particular talent for taking iconic musical masterpieces and showing us how common they really are by presenting them in a completely different and nonsensical musical genre. Since he discovered artificial intelligence programs, this has been made easier and even seems strangely more authentic. The band Nine Inch Nails had a depressing song called "Hurt" that was famously covered by Johnny Cash in 2002. If you liked the song, you thought of it as deep. If you didn't, it was pretentiously angsty. Ballard, as YouTuber There I Ruined It, does just that by having The Beach Boys render the song in their good time surfer rock style. The results are completely ridiculous.  -via Laughing Squid  

When you try to determine superlatives, the first thing is to define your terms. Are we looking for the world's oldest language that is still in use? The world's oldest written language? Or the first spoken language? Actually, all three are being studied, but not yet determined. Linguists and historians are fairly sure that spoken language is much older than written language, and should be old enough that no one uses it anymore. It's even possible that the first representative language was gestural. And all that makes finding it very difficult.

But linguists are searching. They are working backwards to find the point in history where a language splits into two or more in different populations who no longer understood each other. Human migration and cultural changes also figure in. For example, Hebrew and Aramaic have written records going back 3,000 years, but both belong to the Afroasiatic family of languages, which may stretch back 10,000 to 20,000 years. But some Asian languages may be just as old, we just don't have the evidence. And there is the possibility that all humans once spoke the same language and every language is descended from that one. Read how this research is being carried out and some of the contenders for the title at Scientific American. -via Digg

(Image credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

WRCB channel 3 news anchor Cornelia Nicholson was recording some promo clips for the 11 o'clock news last weekend when a story popped up on the teleprompter that she hadn't read. She almost lost it when she saw the image of herself and her boyfriend, reporter Riley Nagel, on the screen. Nagel had arranged a surprise proposal to be taped for posterity. His initial idea was to do it during the live newscast, but his supervisors decided a taping session would be better in case anything went wrong. Nothing went wrong, outside of both broadcasters being visibly nervous, and the recorded proposal was shared with the television audience on the late news that night.

The two had met while working together in Billings, Montana, and when Nicholson landed a job at the Chattanooga, Tennessee, TV station, Nagel followed her, taking a job at FedEx until he was also hired at WRCB. -via Fark

Writers get their inspirations from many places. It could be a real-life incident that happened to them or that they read about, or maybe previous literature. Get more than one writer involved, and you've got multiple inspirations. Small details are added to flesh out the story, and those details may have come from somewhere completely different. Stories are changed, added to, and sometimes improved as they move from book to movie to TV spinoff. And it's fun to find out how far an idea traveled to get on our TV screens.

I must admit that I expected something supernatural when I first read the prophesy.

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill
Shall come against him

Tolkien's disappointment became Treebeard, and possibly Groot as well. That itself could become your inspiration for a new story- if you don't see what you want in pop culture, write it yourself!

Now that's a story worth looking up! Read about 28 of the inspirational origins of what you see in movies and TV, from the main story arc down to the smallest details, coming from different sources, at Cracked.

Tech video producer Marques Brownlee tells us about Cleo, a healthy dog who only has three legs. Four-legged animals can get along on three legs, but it puts a long-term strain on the leg that has to support twice the weight on its own, leading to joint pain and bone deterioration in old age. What Cleo needs is some support for her weight. The company 3DPets makes custom-designed prosthetics for pets using 3D scanning and 3D printing. No two dogs are alike, and neither are their amputations, so the scanning, printing, and fitting are crucial. The technique of 3D printing is perfect for this application, because if an animal's prosthetic doesn't fit and work perfectly, you can't explain to them how they should just put up with it. Cleo went through a breaking in period to get used to her new leg, but is coming to trust it and use it.  -via Laughing Squid

Honestly, you don't have to be a taxonomy geek to enjoy playing this game, but it helps if you understand a bit about animal classification. In Metazooa, you have 20 guesses to find the mystery animal of the day. Each wrong guess will give you another branch on a taxonomy tree. You will find out if your guess fell into the same phylum, clade, suborder, etc. as the real answer, or if not, you can look in another direction. The taxonomic tree pictured here is what they presented as an example, and has nothing to do with today's animal. Be warned that there are a lot of common animals that aren't in their database, but guessing one will not use up a turn. Oh yeah, they keep track of your wins, too.

I got today's answer in ten guesses, but it wasn't easy. In every taxonomic rank, I confronted words I had never seen before, and had to look them up. It's a good thing the game doesn't have a time limit. They have an option for a practice round that I didn't see before I played; just click the head-and-shoulders on the right. A new mystery animal will be loaded at 8 PM EDT tonight, and maybe at the same time every day. I will give it another try then. Maybe I'll learn a few things about taxonomy! -via Metafilter

Brights Zoo in Limestone, Tennessee, had a blessed event about a month ago when a reticulated giraffe gave birth to a healthy female calf. The six-foot-tall baby looks very different from her mother, though. She has no spots, just a coat of smooth brown fur.

The last known giraffe with no spots was born in 1972. At the time, there were three plain brown giraffes in the world. Now, this new baby may be the only one on earth. Fred Bercovitch of the organization Save the Giraffes says the spotless coat may be due to a genetic mutation, most likely inherited from the mother, but the phenomenon is so rare that it's difficult to study.

The zoo is holding an online poll to decide the calf's name. The four names to select from are:

1.  Kipekee - Unique
2.  Firyali - Unusual or Extraordinary
3.  Shakiri - She is most beautiful
4.  Jamella - One of great beauty

The winning name will be announced on Labor Day, September 4. -Thanks, WTM!

(Image credit: Brights Zoo)

During the 1980s and '90s, New York City parks commissioner Henry Stern insisted that all new city playgrounds incorporate animals to climb on. But over the years, that playground equipment was replaced by more modern, accessible designs, and the concrete animals were discarded one by one. But no more. From now on, they will be taken to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, where the “Home for Retired Playground Animals” has been established. The first inductees are two dolphins, one aardvark, one elephant, one camel, and one frog from all over the city. Last Friday, the Parks Department held an official retirement party for the first group of concrete creatures installed there. Children who grew up playing on these animals can now visit them anytime, and even take their children to see them. However, a sign asks visitors not to climb on them, because they've had enough. That's what retirement is all about. See pictures of the new park installation at Time Out. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Daniel Avila/NYC Parks)

We understand why bird embryos depend on a yolk sac for nourishment, as they are in an eggshell. But human embryos also develop a similar sac, beginning about a week after conception. A few weeks later, it atrophies and disappears, without ever containing yolk substance. Could this be an evolutionary leftover from creatures who were hatched from eggs? That doesn't make much sense, because that was a long way back down the evolutionary path. We left eggshells behind, so why not yolk sacs?

A new study reveals that scientists have learned a lot about the function of a human yolk sac. This is where the very beginnings of blood cells are developed, both red and white cells. It's also the place where enzymes and other parts of what will become the human immune system are manufactured. Those important cells are made and sent to the embryo's developing liver, where they will divide and multiply (as biology bends mathematics) to populate the body. Once those cells are "seeded," the sac is no longer needed. Read more about what we've learned about the human yolk sac at ScienceAlert. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Goh et al., Science, 2023)