The Kp-index has indicated that a magnetic storm on the sun is taking place, causing mass ejections of plasma and pieces of the sun's magnetic field. These usually take a few days to reach the earth, and when they arrive, the skies will be lit. That means the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, will be especially vivid and will be visible across the upper tier of the United States.

The forecast is for the geomagnetic storm to be visible Wednesday from Washington state to Maine, including the areas around Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and Halifax. On Thursday, the aurora will be visible even further south, in Nebraska, Maryland, Wyoming, and Massachusetts, among other states.

Read an explanation of magnetic storms and how the aurora is formed at NPR, as well as a viewing guide if you happen to be in a place where the aurora will reach.

(Image credit: Elaine R. Wilson)

Tom Scott got the chance to visit a rotating house, because it's on the market. He's there to find out the answers to the real questions we have about such houses: how do the utilities work? I paid close attention, and I think I understand how slip rings work, and how the concept of four funnels inside each other work, but how do you integrate the liquid utilities with the electrical utilities? Maybe the electricity and cable come in from the top and the liquid utilities are connected at the bottom of the house. It still sounds way more complex than feasible outside of a major metropolitan area, where the really expensive maintenance companies are. The owner, Al Johnstone, is an engineer who worked out all the technology when he built the house in 2000. If you think you might want to buy this house, you better get to know him, because you'll have to learn a lot about this house to keep it rotating.  

Around 620,000 soldiers died in the US Civil War, but that toll would have been higher if surgeons hadn't become schooled in the art of the quick amputation, along with other battlefield medical innovations. Another half-million men were injured in battle, many of them left with life-long disabilities. Even those that recovered often faced a long and painful rehabilitation. But overworked battlefield doctors had something to help them through it- opium, morphine, and laudanum, which were prescribed for everything from wounds to malaria to stomach aches.

After the war, many of these men went home addicted to painkillers. There were no drug rehab programs in place. In fact, these veterans were shunned for being weak and unmanly. Reliance on opioids could get a veteran excluded from housing benefits or pensions, even widow's benefits if he was discovered to have been taking opioids. Read about opiate use in the Civil War and the stigma it left behind at Jstor Daily.

Meteorologist and storm chaser Reed Timmer saw a huge tornado in the distance in Nebraska, and rushed to get as close as possible to it. Timmer was quite excited, while those in the vehicle with him weren't so sure about getting that close to a tornado that big. If there had been any structures around, we would have seen more debris flying and more damage. As it was, the windshield was broken pretty early in the video. What to do? Just stick your head out the window and drive, and stick the camera out, too! This gets pretty intense for a while, and then the tornado moves away, probably wanting to escape from these crazy guys. -via Digg

The page above is from a chapbook titled The Child's New Year's Gift published around the year 1770 that contained riddles for children. A chapbook was a cheap publication that folded up and sometimes consisted of only one sheet of paper. As such, there are only two original copies of this book surviving in libraries. This particular riddle is guaranteed to make kids laugh. In case you have a hard time reading the text, it says,

Since the world first begun, I was never once seen,
Though everyone knows in their presence I’ve been.
No sooner I’m born than I give a loud cry,
And your noses inform you, I presently die.

The answer to this riddle is, of course, a fart. The picture added the provocative but unnecessary detail that the figure is farting toward a candle. One can imagine how this might have inspired children to try the dangerous deed.  -via Boing Boing and commenter allenk

You don’t expect an old bachelor to remember something like that.
by u/XqueezeMePlease in funny

Brides all over get their ideas about weddings from American movies, in which the officiant ends with "You may now kiss the bride." That's not universal, and it isn't a part of the basic Catholic wedding liturgy. So this Irish priest walked away when he finished the wedding rites, but the bride reminded him about the kiss. Yes, that's what she's saying, although the accent had me thinking she was asking about "keys" at first. The priest responded in perfect fashion, and gave everyone who attended a reason to remember this wedding.

You might even get the idea that he didn't forget anything; he just wasn't used to telling a couple to kiss after their vows. But to give her what she wanted, he feigned forgetfulness with a humorous quip at his own expense. A good time was had by all. -via reddit 

McDonald's is a fast food outlet, also called a restaurant, that is globally successful and has sold untold billions of hamburgers. Their real success is in expanding that chain and becoming the first fast food people think of. But like any successful corporation that has a long history, McDonald's has experimented with expanding beyond its core mission. That's happened over and over, and if Mickey D's weren't so big already, some of these projects could have spelled the end of the company.

Yeah, you know about McDonald's experimenting with the food, like the McPizza, the Arch Deluxe, and a burger with a slice of pineapple on it. But that's just food. McDonald's also tried out the McTrain, the McBarge, the McPlane, and the McUFO ...and more. Read about these ventures into putting the McDonald's name on something other than what they do best, and how each attempt gave them reason to stay in their lane, at Messy Nessy Chic. 

(Image credit: Aero Icarus)

Warning: if you are still on the fence about whether it is ethical to eat an octopus, this video might push you right over the edge.

Elora Explora owns a watersports center in Bonaire in the Caribbean. But before that, she lived in Belize, where she went diving almost every day. One day, she saw a tiny octopus and reached out her hand toward it. The octopus reached back! Another day, Elora found him again, and he seemed to remember her. Elora named him Egbert and they became friends. She brought him food and toys, and he would run to meet her. Uh, I mean swim to meet her, I guess. One time, Elora didn't get to dive for a whole week and she wondered if Egbert would remember her. Of course he did!  

You can see more of the sweet interactions between the diver and the tiny octopus at Laughing Squid. 

Here's a mega-list of funny films that will certainly give you ideas for what to watch this weekend. It's supposedly a list of "the funniest movie the year you were born" but I don't see how that makes a movie special among great films. All the listed movies that I've seen are indeed worth the time, and I want to check out some of them that I haven't seen. The funniest comedy of each year was determined by ratings on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, with later movies also factoring in box office. Bonus: trailers are included.

Your opinions may vary, for the designation of "funniest," and even the categorization. I saw The Graduate during its initial run, although its been a long time, and I never knew it was supposed to be a comedy. For most of the years represented, it's hard to complain when you can't think of what other movies came out that year, but in 1987 I have to argue that Raising Arizona was much funnier than Moonstruck, which I also didn't realize was a comedy.

Check out all 73 films, one for each year from 1950 to last year, at Mental Floss.

What if you staged a robbery and no one cared? A man tried to rob a nail salon in Buckhead, Georgia, near Atlanta. But no one paid any attention to him as he demanded money. The guy behind the counter was on the phone, and the waiting customers just ignored him. What did he expect? It's a nail salon; they probably didn't have much cash, since people pay with credit cards, and there's no expensive merchandise to take. He obviously had no weapon, even though he held his hand in a bag like he was trying to fool them into thinking he might have. The guy managed to grab one woman's phone as she left, but since he was getting nowhere, he just gave up and walked out. Police are asking the public if they can help identify the suspect, but if they catch him, you can imagine the giggles when the jury is shown the security footage.  -via Boing Boing

It happens quite often that old legends and folk tales turn out to have a grain of truth behind them, even if the details get muddied over time. We also read just the other day how classic archaeology can be very destructive, as in ruining a 1,000-year-old structure to find the 2,000-year-old structure underneath it. But new technology is finding a way around that.

In southern Mexico, in the city of Oaxaca, the much older Zapotec city of Mitla lies in ruins. In 1674 a Catholic priest described a bygone temple there as having four chambers above ground and four below ground in which the dead were buried. One of the underground chambers had a sealed entrance to the underworld, called Lyobaa. Spanish missionaries considered this heretical, so in 1533 they destroyed the temple and built churches in its place. The churches are still there, making exploration of the area impossible until now.

A collaboration of scientific and government entities have employed non-invasive geophysical methods to explore what may be underneath, and have discovered underground voids that indicate the chambers may still exist. Read about the ancient city of Mitla and the Zapotec temples at Ars Technica.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Marco M. Vigato/ARX Project)

Ready for a brain teaser? In this puzzle from TED-Ed, you are the protagonist in a Back to the Future scenario. You have to go back in time to set some things right, but apparently you are not meant to get it right, because you from the future, uh, your future, is also there. This time travel paradox can be a bit confusing, but I think you can find your way out of it, at least theoretically. We really don't have time-traveling Deloreans. If you want to solve the puzzle on your own, stop the video at two minutes in. They will give you the answer and explain it thoroughly after that.

If you get confused, I have a clue, but only if you need it. Show clue

Every year, Duck brand duct tape awards scholarships to high school students who make their prom attire out of duct tape. There's a $10,000 scholarship at stake for the winner in both the dress and the tuxedo category in the Stuck at Prom contest, plus $500 goes to the four runners-up in each category. The 2023 contestants are in, and they've been winnowed down to the top five dresses and top five tuxedos. Now you can help decide who wins! See the finalists at this page. Click on the name to bring up their story and more pictures. Clicking on the image indicates a vote, but your selection can be changed up until you register your vote with the button on the bottom of the page. You can vote for one dress and one tuxedo every day until July 12. But what of the contestants that didn't make the top ten? You can see eleven pages of them in a gallery here.  -via Boing Boing

Presentacion espectacular. pic.twitter.com/WBkdBwtSDP

— Solo para Curiosos (@Solocuriosos_1) June 25, 2023

A domino shot is exactly what it sounds like- a series of cocktails made by arranging one ingredient to fall into another and also initiate the falling of the next cocktail. You can buy special glasses to do it. Adding pyrotechnics is just icing on the cake, so to speak.

Ideal Tafarshiku is a mixologist at Studio 1806 in Pristina, Kosovo. A master of theatrics, he recently mixed 151 domino shots in one graceful move. These weren't just falling glasses- these drinks involved dry ice and burning alcohol on the bar (hence the music). Too bad the falling cocktails outran the fire. It's still an impressive accomplishment, and must have taken hours to set up. A few people pointed out that there are way more drinks made here than there are people in the bar, but it was done for the 'gram, and if it were a busy time of day, they would have never been able to set these up all the way around the oblong bar. The original video is here.  -Thanks, WTM!

Theodore Roosevelt never knew what to do with his daughter Alice. On February 14, 1884, Roosevelt's mother died just hours before his beloved wife Alice died. He could not face raising the daughter she had borne two days earlier, nor could he bring himself to speak her name, which was the same as her mother's. Baby Alice was sent to live with her aunt, and only became part of the family when Teddy remarried and then had five more children. But Alice was always the odd one out, never getting along with her stepmother and always rebelling.

As a teenager in the White House after Roosevelt became president, Alice continued her contrary ways, by interrupting presidential meetings, drinking, driving around with boys, and smoking on the roof. She became a media star when her debutante ball was held at the White House, and the papers began following her every move. She was called everything from a guttersnipe to a princess, but she refused to conform to expectations. President Roosevelt thought he had the problem of Alice figured out when he began sending her overseas as an informal diplomat, but instead of keeping her out of the national headlines, her foreign antics continued to draw the press. Read the story of the First Daughter who refused to play the part at Messy Nessy Chic.    

(Image credit: Théobald Chartran)