Fast food restaurants in the US gather together around interstate exits, and they offer variations on sandwiches, chicken pieces, pizza, burritos, and fried potatoes on the side. They taste the same from coast to coast. Then in late summer, state and county fairs go wild and offer expensive opportunities to combine wildly disparate foods just for the fun of it- then they go away. 

Those brands expanded to other countries where food cultures vary from the American model. You can't tell people in Italy that only American cheese is available, and you can't tell people in Thailand that chocolate doesn't belong on a hamburger. And fast food outlets have to give customers what they want. You know, I could get on board with an edible coffee cup if it weren't for all the people who touched it before me.   

Tom Blank, the original voice of Weird History, takes us on a tour of international fast food offerings that might gross you out, but might also make you want to travel to try them. 

Some 80,000 years ago, a huge iron and nickel meteor landed on earth in what would eventually become the Hoba West farm near Grootfontein in Namibia. In 1920, a farmer ran into the big hunk of metal while plowing, and scientists have been studying the Hoba meteorite ever since. How did such a large meteorite survive and not leave a huge crater? 

There are several reasons. One is the meteorite's shape, which is assumed to be a remnant of a much more massive meteor. It is a slab, and had to have arrived at a shallow angle, greatly slowed down by our atmosphere. You can almost imagine it coming in like a rock skipping across a lake. Its internal structure also plays a part. And 80,000 years later, it sits in the same spot where it landed because it weighs 60 metric tons, even after chunks have been taken over the past 100 years. Excavations have determined that Hoba actually had a crater once, although a strangely shallow one, which was filled in naturally over many centuries. Read about the massive Hoba meteorite and its weird history at ZME Science. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Compl33t) 

Magnificent music mixer Bill McClintock is at it again, with another unlikely rock/soul mashup. Eddie Kendricks never rocked so hard! This one features vocals from The Temptations's 1966 hit "Get Ready" and the music from "Lack of Communication" by Ratt from 1984. Despite being written and produced by Smokey Robinson, the Temptations' song did not do as well as was expected, and the remake by Rare Earth in 1970 was a bigger hit. Still, the Temptations version of "Get Ready" proved to be long lasting, and familiar even 60 years later. The Ratt song? Well, maybe you had to be a metalhead at the time to really know the song, but it has the distinctive sound of Ratt.

And if you are such a metalhead, you might recognize Dimebag Darrell's guitar work from the 1994 Pantera song "I'm Broken" in this mix as well. Enjoy songs song three different decades in this masterful mashup.   

New York City's Waldorf Astoria Hotel was once two hotels, the Waldorf and the Astoria. Both were considered the height of luxury in their day, with electric lights and a bathroom for every suite. The Waldorf Hotel opened in 1893, with the Astoria following in 1897. Before the hotels went up, those sites held two mansions belonging to heirs of John Jacob Astor, New York's first multimillionaire. On one side was Astor's great-grandson, William Waldorf Astor, and the other was his aunt Caroline Astor. The two mansions were separated by a garden. 

William moved to England, and had the Waldorf Hotel built in order to ruin the view for his aunt Caroline. Caroline's son, John Jacob "Jack" Astor IV, built the Astoria Hotel next door in revenge. It was many years later when these competing branches of the family made up and combined the two hotels into New York's premiere inn. But what caused the feud between William and Caroline? You'd be surprised at how petty it was, and you can read that story at Ephemeral New York. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Joseph Pennell) 

In this music video, musician Barry Bergen travels to Africa in the 1980s to glean the ancient wisdom of this magical land. Mr Jambo is an older man who must have the enlightenment Bergen is looking for, but he doesn't speak English. Indeed, the closed captions tell us that he is saying, "I don't speak English. Do you have a translator?" Meanwhile, Bergan mentions jambalaya and bears, as if they have anything to do with Africa. As silly as the premise is, the song is quite catchy. 

There is no Barry Bergen; he's a creation of comedian Kyle Gordon who has has made a career of parodying songs from genres you may not be consciously aware of, but you'll recognize when you hear them. The song "Mr. Jambo" is a parody of the "white guy goes to Africa" genre that you know mostly from Paul Simon's album Graceland, although it's been done by others. "Mr. Jambo" is from Gordon's third album Kyle Gordon Is Everywhere, to be released in October.  -via Boing Boing 

Have you noticed the strange phenomena of ice cream that doesn't melt? When a child drops a scoop or a novelty in your yard, you get the kid another and let the ice cream melt. Then you can pick up the stick and hose the cream down. But in the 21st century, you are liable to come back hours later and find a blob of ice cream still sitting there. I noticed this when my freezer died and a box of ice cream sandwiches sat there warm and intact. 

Homemade ice cream contains milk, cream, sugar, and flavoring (and sometimes eggs and/or salt). The big conglomerates who sell store-bought ice cream have found ways to recreate that product with less of the expensive cream by adding gums and emulsifiers that enable them to whip in more air to produce volume. This includes premium brands like Breyers and Ben & Jerry's. These formulations often bring the product below legal standards for ice cream, but it doesn't matter if you grab a familiar package from the frozen food section. Look carefully, and you may find that it doesn't say "ice cream" anywhere on the package. Read how these frozen dairy desserts are made and how far they've strayed from "ice cream." -via Fark

The smallest countries of Oceania, spread across the Pacific, are widely-spaced paradises. They aren't rich, but some of them make a surprising amount of money by getting creative and looking to the future. Vanuatu makes a ton of money by selling citizenship. Tuvalu prospers by leasing its .tv internet domain. And Tonga was fortunate enough to be the retirement home of a satellite expert, who saw a fortune in the starry skies above his new homeland. There's money to be made in selling, or in this case renting, what you have plenty of. For Tonga, that was its isolation, which gave them a large swath of the empty space overhead. Half as Interesting explains how Tonga leveraged its location and international pacts about the use of space to make millions of dollars passively. What happened to the money is another story. This video is only around five minutes- the rest is advertising. 

Stephanie Stullich of Beltsville Community Cats, a shelter in Maryland, received a call from Pet Supplies Plus that one of their kittens has been stolen from the store. She went down to the store and saw police cars arriving from all directions. She thought, "Wow, that's a heck of a response for a stolen cat." But there was more to the story. 

On Monday, July 13th, a yet-unnamed man came into the pet supply store and stole the kitten. Employees said he had been there many times, showing great interest in the three-month old tuxedo kitten named Magnolia. Then he went across the parking lot to a bank and tried to rob it! He asked the bank manager to hold the kitten while he wrote a note, which was a note to the teller demanding money. He didn't get away with it.

Magnolia was stashed in the manager's office until she could be picked up, and was not hurt in the incident. Since she is no longer listed at the shelter's PetFinder page, we assume that the publicity of her adventure led her to a permanent home. Read or listen to the story at I Heart Radio. -via Strange Company   

(Image credit: Beltsville Community Cats at Facebook) 

Oh look! It's July, and we have a trailer for a Christmas ghost story! The trailer says "The name you know, the story you don't." Hogwash. Everyone knows the story of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. There have been over a hundred movie and TV adaptations of it. Knowing the story doesn't keep us from watching it again and again. The 2026 version titled Ebenezer stars Johnny Depp in the title role, along with Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit, Daisy Ridley as his wife, and Ian McKellen as Jacob Marley. 

The trailer focuses on the star power of Depp and the many oddball characters he's played before. We can assume with this cast that the acting will be good. As far as I'm concerned, the success of Ebenezer will depend on how they portray the ghosts. Meanwhile, it is kind of nice to see scenes of falling snow while we swelter in the summer heat. Ebenezer opens on November 13th.

At the beginning of World War II, the Soviet Union had an agreement with Hitler to split conquered territories in Europe. The Soviets deported up to a half-million people from occupied Poland to labor camps in Siberia. In 1941, the USSR changed sides when Hitler double-crossed them. So what would they do with the Polish exiles now? Men were recruited for a Polish military unit, and tens of thousands of women and children were evacuated to Iran. From there, no one seemed willing to step up and take the refugees. The British considered settling them in India, but the Indians, who were suffering from wartime shortages like everyone else, were hesitant. Especially at risk were hundreds of malnourished Polish orphans, whose parents had died in transit or in Siberia.

Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja was the wealthy maharaja of Nawanagar, one of the local rulers who operated semi-independently but still under British authority. He stepped forward and said he would take all the orphans, risking his position by bypassing British permission. He personally welcomed the orphans, and had a camp built at his summer palace to accommodate them, complete with a school, a library, kitchens, and even a Catholic church. Before the war's end, Digvijaysinhji would take in around a thousand children. Read about Digvijaysinhji and the Polish children he adopted at Smithsonian. The article includes an hour-long documentary about this little-known chapter of history.       

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is an informal motto of the US Postal Service. However, mail carriers are not obligated to deliver your mail when you're obviously messing with them. 

Vlog Creations, a YouTube channel dedicated to non-harmful pranks, invested in a long series of mailboxes of varying sizes and heights, and gradually installed smaller and smaller ones to see how long it took for the mail carrier to notice. Yeah, he noticed, but he's more amused than annoyed. Then it became a battle of wits to see how small they could make the box and still get their mail picked up and/or delivered. My mail carrier will never pick up outgoing mail unless he has some to deliver. This carrier put up with ridiculous challenges all the way through. 

You can see a much longer video detailing this prank here. 

Living in a castle isn't all that great, since they are hard to heat and the wifi is often blocked -and plumbing can be a nightmare. But we still swoon when we see the grandeur of what was built centuries ago. The interactive map Castlemap will help you discover new historic castles and fortresses all over the world. As you might guess, Europe has always been big on castles- notice you can recognize the area in the screenshot above just by the dots. Zoom in to separate them. Germany has many, but in Luxembourg, you can't swing a cat without hitting a castle. The same in Japan. In the US, most are military forts. You can sort the map by date or type of landmark. 

It's not just a map, though. Click on any dot to bring up more information, collected from Wikidata and Wikipedia. Check out a list of the most famous castles, with links to more information and images. Sadly, there are no floor plans in this map. -via Metafilter 

Watching someone open a box has never been my cup of tea, but what's inside this one is pretty cool. Gillian Anderson comes out of retirement to portray FBI Special Agent Dana Scully confronting a mysterious delivery. Inside is the new 1,478-piece LEGO set depicting The X-Files TV series! It was submitted to LEGO Ideas by Brent Waller of Brisbane as part of the LEGO Ideas ’90s Nostalgia Challenge. It has Fox Mulder’s office on the bottom, topped by an eerie forest scene, over which a UFO is hovering. It includes eight minifigs, both human and alien. 

Kids won't be all that excited about this theme, since the show ran from 1993 to 2002, although there have been a couple of feature films since then. But adult fans will want to check out the set, and read more about its features here. The X-Files set will be available on August 4th, or August first if you're a LEGO Insider. -via Laughing Squid 

There is a theory that an area of China once called Liqian was settled by around 145 middle-aged Roman soldiers more than two thousand years ago. Roman Legionnaires smack-dab in the middle of China? A clue may lie in the place name, as Liqian was used to refer to the Roman world. The story goes that the Roman army lost the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC near where Turkey and Syria meet today. That's historical. Thousands of Romans were captured and sent east to defend other parts of the Parthian Empire in Central Asia. In 36 BC, 17 years later, another battle occurred, and the Chinese captured 145 soldiers as prisoners. They were taken to northwestern China to serve as border guards. 

Can any of this story be true? There are some artifacts found in the village of Zhelaizhai that point to the possibility, and some residents show European features. Locals believe in their Roman ancestry. However, the more likely explanation is the Silk Road, which had been used by traders from all over long before those battles. Read up on the evidence for and against this theory at Amusing Planet. 

(Image credit: Emilio Rubio Villanueva)  

H. H. Holmes is often called "America's First Serial Killer," but if you say that, people will cite Albert Fish, Boone Helm, or the Bloody Benders as earlier examples. And there may have been others we don't know about. Be that as it may, Holmes was terrifying- once he got caught. That's when the secrets of a building he owned were revealed, and it became known as the Murder Castle. 

But we still don't know the extent of Homes' crimes. He confessed to 27 murders, but not all those people were even dead at the time. Some estimate the total to be in the hundreds, but he was only convicted of one murder. Historians have since confirmed at least nine victims, and suspect many others. Homes had plenty of other crimes in his history, too, and the part of his story that may be the most shocking is how many red flags were ignored before he was finally stopped. Weird History tells us what we now know about Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, which wasn't even his real name.