Question Mark, Ohio, is a fictional town that is much like many small towns you know. It is also a slow-rolling internet mystery story that is quickly gathering fans. Question Mark high school student Violet Bookman is documenting the weird things going on in her town at Instagram (start here and click the left arrow to read her posts in order). First, her shoes went missing. Then she hears strange sounds that continue through the account. Then the cat Mr. Business went missing. It turns out there are a lot of missing pets in Question Mark.



Along the way, we meet interesting characters, like the city worker who used to be a wrestler and the teacher from Cleveland with an umbrella tattoo. In addition to Violet's Instagram account, you can keep up with contributions from other Question Mark residents at the city's announcement page. The goings-on are rather entertaining (like the elementary school play), but you are drawn to stay with it to get the answers to lingering questions. Does the fact that Violet wears hearing aids have anything to do with the odd sounds she hears? Why does Bruno communicate with pictograms instead of speaking? What does the umbrella signify? Why does the French teacher hate Violet? And where does that big hole in the ground go?  

This project is the brainchild of Joe Meno and Dan Sinker, who talk about Question Mark in this interview. They worked on it for six months before launching late last month.  -via Metafilter

PS: If you cannot access Instagram, this link may help you keep up.

The 2002 movie Gangs of New York was a strange film that introduced people to a historic subculture they had no clue about. Really, unless you grew up in New York City, your history classes never addressed what was going on in the city during the Civil War. Weird History looks at the Five Points neighborhood in Manhattan depicted in the film, why it was such a slum, and how the people who couldn't afford to live anywhere else dealt with it. Forming gangs is a logical move when normal government protections fall apart.

What happened in Five Points is not an isolated case. Poverty leads to substandard and unsafe living conditions, which lead to desperation, which leads to crime. Housing and infrastructure regulations can lift a neighborhood, but the question will remain: if we don't tolerate poor living conditions, where can the poor afford to live? -via Digg

We humans once thought we were special because we had language, but animals of other species communicate with each other in many different ways. It may be that language of words and phrases and syntax isn't unique to humans, either. Chimpanzees talk to each other all the time, and we may be just a little closer to understanding what they are saying. Scientists have collected many sounds they make, such as "alarm-huus" when they are surprised or detect a danger and “waa-barks” which means something like "Come here."

A new study published in Nature Communications found that chimps combine such sounds into phrases that mean something completely different from the sounds when used alone. Combining an "alarm-huu" with a “waa-bark” apparently means "snake." That makes sense, as in saying "Come here, you're in danger," but the combination has the added meaning of a very specific danger to chimps. That's the kernel of how syntax develops. Read more about how the researchers determined this meaning at Boing Boing.

(Image credit: Frank Schwichtenberg/CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Ku Klux Klan began in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee. The first members were young fiddle players starting a social club, eager to harness the trappings of ancient secret societies to draw intrigue and respect. They were also quite frustrated over the Confederacy's loss in the recent war. They were publicized as a minstrel group or a drinking club, but it wasn't long before politics and "vigilantism" made the klan what it came to be.  

The costumes members wore changed considerably over time, but eventually settled on the long robes and conical head coverings that resembled the Spanish capirote or the capuchon that mocked them. Their terrifying midnight raids were modeled after the European custom of harassment called charivari. Charivari was used in Europe to shame a member of the community. Read about more of the traditions that were made up for the Klan at Lapham's Quarterly.  -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Green Berry Raum)

Roboticists are always looking for new ways to make a robot move. Mimicking the kinetic abilities of animals has given us Atlas, designed like a human, Spot, designed like many quadruped animals such as dogs, and hexapod robots designed like six-legged insects. But why would anyone ever want to replicate the way a seal moves on land? It's not at all efficient, as seals are built to swim, not to slither around out of their element.  

A team led by Dimuthu Kodippili Arachchige at DePaul University in Chicago built this robot with four legs that can fill with liquid to selectively become rigid or soft, and therefore mimic a seal's forward motion. It sure is funny-looking. They say this method of motion may be helpful in search and rescue operations, where wheels might not work. Honestly, it's more likely that this robot will become a best-selling cat toy. -via Laughing Squid

Fame and fortune. Those who have one tend to seek the other. The rich want to rub shoulders with, or even seek friendships with, movie stars and royalty. Royalty wants to be with the rich, who can help them to live in the style they were accustomed to before the world moved away from royal rule. In Monaco, the tiny principality nestled between France and Italy on the Mediterranean coast, every third person is a millionaire, and many of the rest have titles and pedigrees and genteel mannerisms. Marketing and public relations professionals, as well as journalists, love both types because of the headlines they generate.

Into this world came Stefano Cernetic, Prince of Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Voivodina and Hereditary Titular Emperor of Constantinople, Romania and Greece. He became known as the prince of Montenegro for simplicity's sake. Cernetic claimed a familial relationship with Julius Caesar, Vlad the Impaler, and the British royal family. He dressed elegantly, threw lavish parties, and raised money for charity. Cernetic was very charming as well, and had hundreds of photographs with powerful and well-connected celebrities, including other royalty. Cernetic was welcomed wherever he went, and was generous in distributing titles and diplomatic passports. He even bestowed the title of countess on actress Pamela Anderson in 2015, which brought him worldwide publicity.

But those who worked with, or for, Cernetic started having doubts about the prince. They saw certain clues that he wasn't exactly who he said he was. And he wasn't. There is no law against telling people you are royalty, but Cernetic has to answer charges in Italy of impersonating a diplomat. The people he took advantage of will not file claims, because of embarrassment and because they still like the prince. And Cernetic still claims royal lineage. Read the story of Stefano Cernetic at Truly Adventurous.

(Image source: Emine Tepeören Pala)

When you live in the same place for a long time, the changes seem subtle. One thing changes, and you get used to it quickly, and then it's hard to recall what that spot looked like before. Over time, many parts change, and when someone comes home after being gone for a few years, they notice the difference while you really don't. Singapore is a huge city (that is also its own country) that just keeps growing. Keith Loutit took hundreds of thousands of pictures of the city over eight years (2012-2020), and then aligned and combined them into 3000 time-lapse sequences to show the city's amazing growth and transformation. It's quite beautiful. -via Kottke

The Statue of Liberty was a gift from France that first showed up in New York in 1876. You can read the history of its design and construction in an earlier Neatorama post. Even though the statue was impressive, it wasn't requested, it was expensive to maintain, and it didn't even function well as the lighthouse it was designed to be. It wasn't all that popular among New York residents.

Emma Lazarus wrote the poem "The New Colossus" in 1883 for an art auction that was a fundraiser to build the pedestal for the statue. However, the poem was never published and played no part in the opening of the statue in 1886. Lazarus died in 1887.

Georgina Schuyler was a friend of Lazarus, and around the turn of the century, she began campaign to revive the poem, for two reasons: she wanted to honor her friend, and she wanted to make a stand against the bigotry Americans felt for some of the new immigrants coming to the shores of New York. New immigrants already saw the vision of the Statue of Liberty as a sign that they had arrived. Schuyler succeeded in getting a bronze plaque of the poem installed at the statue in 1903. From there, Lady Liberty took on a new meaning and a new reputation. Read how all that happened at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: MadGrin)

Nature is brutal, but this story has a happy ending. A tawny eagle swooped down and bagged a small jackal pup in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The mother jackal immediately chased after the eagle, which decided the pup was too heavy, or else was too much of a hassle with the mother chasing along. The jackal rescued the puppy and was able to hide it in a new den. The pup seemed to be unharmed. Still, it was not a good day for any of the three animals in the picture.

It was a good day for wildlife photographer Ateeb Hussain, who was at the right place at the right time and captured the action. This amazing image made the weekly selection for Africa Geographic's ongoing Photographer of the Year competition. We don't know when the winners will be announced, but the winners themselves will be notified some time this month. -via reddit

If you've seen the new Amazon Prime series Dead Ringers, or if you saw the 1988 movie starring Jeremy Irons (shown above), or if you read the novel Twins, then you might want to learn a little about the real life twin New York gynecologists they were inspired by.  

Stewart and Cyril Marcus were prominent and talented gynecologists that were renowned for saving difficult pregnancies. But they were only 45 years old when they were both found dead in the apartment they shared. That was the end point of a decline that involved mental illness, drug abuse, weight loss, withdrawal, and loss of employment. That the identical twins had died together was a shock to New York City, and the fact that authorities didn't want to talk about it made the story even more intriguing. A few months after they were found dead in 1975, writer Linda Wolfe, who was a patient of Cyril Marcus, did her own research on the doctors and their deaths for New York magazine. Vulture has reprinted that article, so we can all know the doctors who left behind a bizarre pop culture legacy. -via Metafilter

Does this sea slug look like a tree, or a peacock, or a cartoon character? The species Costasiella kuroshimae is also called the leaf slug, leaf sheep, or salty ocean caterpillar. The species is most notable (to scientists) because of the unique way it harnesses plants. It eats them, but retains the chloroplasts in its cells to continue photosynthesis! This process is called kleptoplasty.

If you said it looks like a cartoon character, you're not alone. Another nickname for the leaf sheep is the Shaun the Sheep slug, because of the uncanny resemblance to the British cartoon character. Note the close-set eyes, the wide "nose," and the tentacles that look like ears (or sometimes horns). It looks rather charming, doesn't it?

Underwater photographer Alex Mustard took the picture at the top and tells us something else we didn't know about these slugs. They are hard to photograph because they are incredibly tiny, only 2-3 millimeters long, or about 1/16 of an inch! But photographers keep trying, because the slugs are just so cute. Continue reading to see more of these slugs.

The SS Valencia was a steamship that took off from San Francisco bound for Seattle in January of 1906 with tons of cargo and 108 passengers as well as a crew of 67 men. En route, the ship encountered bad weather and in the dark of night became lost. The crew didn't know the ship was lost, but the officers disagreed about the ship's speed and where they were. When Captain Johnson assumed the ship was near Cape Flattery, he headed toward the shore. But he was wrong, and the Valencia crashed into a reef. Two lifeboats were deployed, but the waves and the rocks tossed the boats around until a very few survivors made it to shore. By the next morning, they could see they were in the middle of nowhere, with a cliff lining the shore, and the Valencia, with more than a hundred people still on it, falling apart.  

In daylight, more lifeboats were launched, but they also lost most of their passengers. The survivors landed miles away. It would be several more days before anyone knew about the wreck of the Valencia. Some tried to swim to shore, others refused to leave, and some braved more lifeboats. None of the women and children aboard lived through the ordeal. Read the story of the Valencia shipwreck, from the accounts of its 37 survivors and those who found them. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Yiran Jia)

Melton Barker was an "itinerant filmmaker." He went from small town to small town across the US, where he would cast local children -and a few adults- in his latest film. It was always the same film, The Kidnapper's Foil. He charged each "actor" a fee to cover production costs. Was it a scam? Not much of one, since he actually produced the films, which were shown in each local theater. Barker made a living, and the kids got to be in a movie. What's more, these local movies, the ones that survive, are a snapshot into the era of the small town in which they were made. Sure, some parents may have had unfulfilled hopes of stardom for their children, but the kids mostly just had fun. And Barker kept making this same movie for 40 years! Was this movie made in your hometown? Check out this map to find out. Filmmaker David Friedman would like to see a revival of The Kidnapper's Foil, so he linked to the script in case you want to film your own community production of the movie. -via Laughing Squid

(Image source: kaupas24)

I wanted to believe the house you see above is a Photoshop job. No, it is an actual house in Nigeria. Two floors, three facades, five colors, and what's going on with the columns? Putting them on the corners would be sensible, but they couldn't even center them together in the middle.

(Image source: HimD98)

While the images are called architectural fails, it's pretty obvious that no trained architect was involved at all. Professionals go to school to learn how not to end up with stairs like this. It's the exact reason why my daughter's kitchen has one cabinet that's just a dummy door, to provide headroom for the staircase below it. Bored Panda has a list of 50 such weird building results, some the result of bad planning from the start, and many of which are the result of modifying a structure without paying a penny more than they had to.  

We know that in the history of mankind, rotten teeth came about because in the abundance of the modern world we consume a lot more sugars and starches than our ancestors did. But what about crooked teeth? They weren't so common in ancient times. Did we evolve to have smaller jaws with no room for teeth to line up, much less wisdom teeth? It seems so, although animal studies have shown that eating soft foods vs. hard foods can affect jaw development regardless of genetic history. It may be a use-it-or-lose it thing. Now I'm wondering if switching diets make any difference in how crooked an adult human's teeth could be, or whether it's too late by then. What foods could we serve our children to encourage bigger jaws and straight teeth? Chewing gum? -via Digg