It's been almost seven years since we first saw the amazing puppet designing skills of Barnaby Dixon. With more videos over the years, we've also come to appreciate his ability to operate them in such a way as to trick our minds into seeing them as real characters separate from the puppeteer. This is because Dixon spent years studying anatomy and movement in order to make stop-motion animated films. The puppets came later because he was looking for a way to save time! And since he had no background in puppetry, he was free to think outside the box. In this video, we learn what goes into Dixon's puppets, in designing them, building them, and bringing them to life. -via Digg

The idea that alien beings come to earth in flying saucers has been a thing in the US since 1947. The saucer shape of our pop culture UFOs is due to a misinterpretation of that 1947 sighting. Or is it? Documentation of a UFO in Japan in 1803 involved a saucer-shaped vessel. In this case, UFO stand for unidentified floating object. It has become known as the utsurobune legend, although there are contemporary accounts that describe the event.

During the Edo period, Japan was officially closed off to foreigners, and any "invasion" should have drawn officials and caused a diplomatic incident. But this incident is a simple tale. A strange, saucer-shaped vessel floated to shore, and when it opened, people could see it was hollow. A woman emerged, speaking an unknown language and carrying a box. The vessel had writing on it no one could read. Unable to communicate, the Japanese witnesses sent her back to the ocean, never to be seen again.

While later accounts varied as to the date and place of the incident, there are several from 1803, placing it in the city of Hitachi. That lead researchers to believe that something really happened, but what it was is a mystery. -via Nag on the Lake

Build in the 11th century, Colditz Castle is an imposing fortress overlooking the town of Colditz, Germany. Rebuilt in the 16th century with 700 rooms, it was used as a political prison by the Nazis and during World War II it became a POW camp called Oflag IV-C. Since the fortress was considered impossible to escape from, it was a destination for Allied troublemakers and those who had attempted to escape from other prisons. However, these prisoners considered that a challenge.

The POWs at Colditz collaborated with each other on escape plans. They built trap doors, tunnels, shafts through the buildings, and even set up a telephone system to communicate warnings. Over five years, there were 300 escape attempts, 30 of which were successful. One prisoner was catapulted over the wall by his fellow inmates. Two men managed to tunnel to a guard house, where they donned German uniforms and then walked out as if they were going home from work. The most audacious escape plan was when prisoners worked together to build a glider on the roof! Read about the World War II prison at Colditz Castle and the many escape attempts at Amusing Planet.

(Image credit: Jörg Blobelt)

Jon Townsend (previously at Neatorama) is an expert in the lifestyles of colonial America, particularly the food of the era. The food was good if you had it, but there were no grocery stores, no refrigeration, and no canned food. If you wanted to preserve fresh food for later, you had to have salt. That wasn't always easy, especially during wartime. The tensions leading up to the Revolutionary War and the war itself caused disruptions in the salt supply lines that threatened to ruin the food cycle the colonists had established. The story of salt in colonial America is like many that Townsend tells: the struggles of everyday people in a new land just trying to get by. You'd never learn these things in high school history class, so we are glad we now get the chance.

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. It certainly was windy in Kentucky on Friday. Redditor ThirstGoblin was driving from Huntsville, Alabama, to Toledo, Ohio, with his fiancée and stopped at Bowling Green, Kentucky, to get something to eat. Oddly, Bowling Green is one of those rare towns that has both Kystal and White Castle outlets. He first went to Krystal, but found it closed. So he went to White Castle. About 15 seconds after getting out of the car, this happened.

ThirstGoblin bought $7.99 in food (no free lunch) and was so rattled, he ordered fries instead of onion rings. And he posted a picture to reddit. We assume that somewhere in all that activity, there was some notification of insurance companies. There were plenty of pictures taken, Twitter was on it immediately, and eventually the newspapers.

White Castle sign fell on top of a parked car in Bowling Green, KY. https://t.co/Ehc2zAKoXl pic.twitter.com/ze3R82vYCm

— Justin Hicks (@Hicks_JustinM) March 3, 2023

We hope that the couple will eventually get to their destination in Ohio.

(Image credit: ThirstGoblin)

The devastation of the earthquakes that flattened large parts of Turkey and Syria almost a month ago is unimaginable. Yet amid the horror, there are a few heartwarming stories of rescue. One involved the cat pictured above, now named Enkaz. The cat spent ten days buried under the rubble of a building in the city of Nurdagi, in southern Turkey. She was unearthed by a firefighter named Ali Cakas. The cat immediately perched on Cakas' shoulder, and posed for a series of pictures by photojournalist Halil Fidan. Unable to find her owner, Cakas took the cat home and named her Enkaz, which means "rubble" in Turkish.



Enkaz is adjusting to her new life well, and sticks close to Cakas. She has become a viral sensation in Turkey and all over the world. There is an Instagram gallery highlighting her post-earthquake life and displaying artworks sent in by fans.   



-via Laughing Squid 

In 2007, the Royal Canadian Mint issued a coin worth a million dollars. It was made of 100 kilograms of the purest gold in the world, certified 99.999% pure. The coin, called Big Maple Leaf, was the size of an automobile tire and held the Guinness World Record for the biggest coin for several years. After the first coin was minted, there were enough offers to buy it that the Canadians eventually minted six coins in total. Since then, the value of the gold in those coins rose to about four times the face value of the coin.

One of the coins still resides at the Royal Canadian Mint. The others went to private buyers, one of whom loaned the coin to the Bode Museum in Berlin, where it went on display to the public in 2010. While the Bode has 24-hour security, no one thought it would be possible to steal the giant gold coin because of its size. Until a gang made off with the coin in 2017. And it was never to be seen again. Read about the Big Maple Leaf and the audacious heist at Hazlitt. -via Damn Interesting

The candles shown above were used in the Victorian era, and they are kind of genius. The box they came in had a hole just the right size to be a candle holder. The candles themselves sometimes came with a phosphorus coating on the exposed wick, so that they could also be their own match. They are described as "brothel candles," because they were used in Victorian houses of ill repute as a timer. Light a candle when you go behind doors with a client, and when the candle is completely melted seven minutes later, his time is up.

Except that there is no truth to those last two sentences at all. Victorian prostitutes had their own watches and clocks that didn't need to be replenished. Besides, seven minutes is a long time when there are others waiting and money to be made. The brothel candle is a myth, a sexy story to tell, but that doesn't mean these candles aren't interesting in their own way. Read the real purpose of what were once called pocket candles at Fake History Hunter. -via Strange Company

In an excerpt from his new book, entomologist Frank Nischk tells us the story of that time he was alone at the research station at Reserva Otonga in the Ecuadorian Andes and battled a horde of army ants. He wasn't all that concerned for himself, but wanted to protect a collection of crickets he had spent two weeks finding and identifying. His weapon against millions of ants? A broom.

But interspersed with the fighting, Nischk explains the impact of army ants (Eciton burchellii) on some of the 559 identified other animal species that have evolved to rely on the ants for survival. If army ants went extinct, so could those other species. Several dozen species of birds follow army ants on the march, to scoop up the insects that the ants frighten out of their hiding places. Butterflies also follow, to feed on the bird droppings. Parasitic wasps also follow to find the scurrying insects. Other creatures feed on the carcasses of animals that army ants kill but can't carry with them. There are beetles that evolved to look like army ants and hide in plain sight right in an army ant's nest, for protection and to take advantage of the bits of food they bring in to feed their larvae. Come for the battle of human vs. army ants, and stay for the fascinating ecosystem they create, in the book excerpt at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Geoff Gallice)

Pretty sure this one was just TR's regular daily look.

— Timothy Smith (@tjsnh) March 1, 2023

Cam Harless gives us a gallery of digital images of the American presidents sporting mullet haircuts. They are hilariously strange. One reply summed it up: "Plenary power in the front, executive privilege in the back."

15. James Buchanan pic.twitter.com/QBaXOadETD

— Cam Harless (@hamcarless) March 1, 2023

Some of the presidents are rendered much hotter than they really are (or were): Biden, Trump, W, Buchanan, Lincoln. Harless doesn't say, but one might suspect that artificial intelligence is involved here and automatically gave quite a few presidents a model's square jaw. Some others came out uglier than their photographs: Bush the Elder, Nixon, Eisenhower, etc. The earliest presidents don't look all that different from their portraits, because they rocked that long haired look in real life with their powdered wigs.

34. Dwight D. Eisenhower pic.twitter.com/1Ffrsk1TW5

— Cam Harless (@hamcarless) March 1, 2023

John F. Kennedy looks more like his brother Bobby. Or his son, JFK Jr. In the comments, we learn that LBJ really grew his hair out after leaving the White house, and even wore a ponytail in retirement.

He actually did look like this in old age.

— John Sipher (@john_sipher) March 2, 2023

I rather doubt LBJ ever wore an earring. After showing us all the presidents, Harless added mullet portraits of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Hilary Clinton by request. All the presidents' images are available on a poster titled Mullet America at Etsy. See the good, the bad, and the ugly in the Twitter thread or at Threadreader.   -via Metafilter

Try to guess what would be the loudest sound on record for the earth we know. Those qualifications discount prehistoric events and celestial events like exploding stars. Would it be a nuclear explosion? A Who concert? The Tunguska Event? Your toddler throwing a tantrum? How about none of the above? Great Big Story reveals what experts consider to be the event that caused the loudest sound in recorded history, an eardrum-splitting 310 decibels that really did split eardrums for some folks who managed to live through it. More than 39,000 people did not.

But first they explain the decibel scale so we can get an idea of how very loud it was. Spoiler for those who can't wait for a two-minute video: you can read more about the deadly event at Wikipedia.  -via Laughing Squid

For more than a thousand years, the church had inordinate power over the lives of Europeans. When someone died, they had to be buried under consecrated ground in the parish cemetery. But that could be quite a long way from the small villages across the parish. Therefore, paths were made to get the deceased to the church in the straightest line possible, even if it cut through farms and forests. Even better if such a road could avoid passing by houses, because a funeral procession might bring bad luck to a household. These are called corpse roads, and there are many of them still in existence. Britain alone has 42 documented corpse roads.

Of course, when the purpose of the road is to transport the dead, there will be superstitions that grow up around them. There will also be stories of lights and apparitions. Messy Nessy Chic tells us about those traditions and superstitions, as well as the "rules" for building and using a corpse road. Oh yeah, there are plenty of pictures, too.

(Image credit: Alan Cleaver)

In the  image image above, your eyes tell you that you are looking at two bowls and a wooden cutting board. But your brain instantly recognizes recognizes Johannes Vermeer’s painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring." This version is by digital artist Emil Schwärzler. Vermeer's masterpiece is so iconic that mere shapes and colors bring us back to the original. Artists all over the world have reinterpreted the painting in many different ways, with different models, different themes, and even different media. The original normally resides at The Mauritshuis in the Hague, Netherlands, but is out on loan right now. So the museum is hosting a different exhibit called My Girl with a Pearl, featuring 170 modern interpretations of the painting, which are shown on a loop in the spot where Vermeer's masterpiece is normally displayed. My Girl with a Pearl will run until June 4, even after the original is scheduled to return to the museum on April first. But you don't have to go to the Netherlands to see the artworks- you can peruse 89 of them at your leisure at Instagram. -via Colossal

Wouldn't it be cool to be granted a super power? But then you find out that power of "superpropulsion" is the ability to fling drops of urine at high speeds. Comic book editors are going to love that. Although they've come up with worse.

The glassy-winged sharpshooter is a kind of leafhopper and an agricultural pest. It sucks fluids out of plants. Since the sap is 95% water, they drink a lot to get the nutrients they need, and have to expel a lot of water. Lucky for them, they have an anal catapult that expels a drop of water, and when it reaches a certain size, flings it away with a lot of force for a tiny insect. The physics and fluid dynamics of this pee-shooter are explained at Ars Technica. The upshot of this complicated mechanism is that it actually uses much less energy than just streaming urine like civilized animals. Flinging urine far away makes it harder for predators to smell their exact location. A study out of Georgia Tech gives us the visual above.

Other insects are "frass-shooters," "butt-flickers," and "turd-hurlers," but the glassy-winged sharpshooter is the only insect we know of that is blessed with superpropulsion.  -via Fark

Mussels are shellfish that spend almost all their lives attached to rocks and filtering the passing water for food particles. But before that, in their larval stage, they are parasites, and grow up inside a fish that their mother has caught for them. Yeah, nature is metal. Some species of mussel mothers snatch up a fish for this purpose, while others arrange their eggs and/or larva into a sort of pod that's shaped like something a fish would want to eat, which achieves the same purpose in the end. There's no one better to explain this weirdness than Ze Frank in his True Facts series. I mean, admit it, you wouldn't be exploring the reproductive habits of a mussel if it were from any other source. There's a one-minute embedded ad at 4:30.