Around 1835, there was a movement to try to reconcile religious beliefs with scientific discoveries. There were also new and growing newspapers that would do anything to boost circulation, while feeling no responsibility for truth or journalistic ethics. In this environment, Richard Adams Locke wrote a series of satirical articles poking fun at those who believed that heavenly bodies would be populated because God wouldn't waste the space, so to speak. The Sun, which Locke worked for, published the articles, but didn't identify that they were satire. And the Great Moon Hoax was launched. Locke was shocked that readers took it seriously, but as we've learned many times since, people will believe what they want to believe. The Sun never bothered to explain that the articles were satire or print a retraction, because the hoax was profitable for them. Who cared if it was fake, as long as it sold newspapers? -via Nag on the Lake

In 1969, David Smith had a case of wanderlust. He was a high school math teacher, and hated his job. So he packed up his wife Jeannie and their baby and ran off with the circus, literally. Smith had been a gymnast in college, and reconnected with an old friend who was a flying trapeze artist. Smith learned how to do it, and then Jeannie joined in, too. The couple made quite a name for themselves in the 1970s with another couple of trapeze artists as The Rock Smith Flyers. But eventually David Smith found himself looking for something else. Inspired by another circus act, he designed and built a cannon to climb into and be shot out of as a human cannonball! Under the name Cannonball Smith, he became the reigning cannonball act in the US.

Along the way, David and Jeannie had six children who all grew up in the circus. The four girls and two boys learned the flying trapeze at early ages, and one by one were shot out of a cannon as they got older. All of them performed the act professionally at least once, with several doing it for years. The third child, David Smith, Jr. is now the premiere human cannonball act, known as The Bullet. Read the story of the human cannonball family at Narratively. -via Damn Interesting

In 1927, Ruth Snyder and her lover Henry Judd Gray were convicted of murdering Snyder's husband Albert and were sentenced to death by electric chair. It was a sensational trial that filled headlines and drew celebrities to the courtroom. But the execution on January 12, 1928, was even more sensational because of a photograph surreptitiously taken as Snyder was electrocuted.

You've probably seen the photograph, and the linked article contains two versions, but there is no need to post it here. While it is not gory, it is disturbing. That picture appeared on the cover of a special edition of the New York tabloid Daily News the next morning, and sold half a million copies above their normal daily circulation. It wasn't easy to get the picture, as cameras were not permitted at executions, and the guards knew every newspaper photographer in New York City. Photographer Tom Howard made history when he got away with taking it.

The image not only sold a lot of newspapers, it sparked a debate that still rages today between the public's right to see what happens and the unsavory appetites of those who would want to. Smithsonian looks at Snyder's crime, how the photo was taken, and the controversy surrounding its publication.

Warning: This video is liable to make you hungry. An American might imagine some pretty horrible insults passed around Down Under, but Australians can laugh most of them off rather easily. To some, the very worst insult is to be called "un-Australian." The latest annual ad from Meat and Livestock Australia makes it clear that the consequences of being un-Australian are harsh. But there's peril in such a narrow and rigid definition of what's Australian (and what isn't) that's dangerously xenophobic. She's right; it's getting out of hand. But when everyone is un-Australian, they can all be un-Australian together, and enjoy a lamb barbecue! You may need to consult an Aussie slang dictionary to understand everything these folks are complaining about, but it's not necessary to enjoy the video. Check out some funny outtakes, too. Still, you may be left with questions, like exactly how do Australians eat a meat pie? With a spoon? -via Metafilter

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, especially in the movie business. If your movie grosses $20 million at the box office, that's really good- if you made it for $5 million. But if you spent $100 million dollars to pay the biggest actors and travel to the nicest locations, then you've got yourself a bomb. Studios sometimes invest ludicrous amounts of money in a film just to see it crash and burn in front of audiences.

Shortly before Avatar: The Way of Water was released, James Cameron said that it would have to make two billion dollars to be profitable. That raised some eyebrows, but the movie is nearing the two billion mark now. Read about 15 movies that had huge budgets, but didn't turn out so well for their investors at Cracked.

Have you ever crossed a railroad trestle on foot? Have you ever done it at night during a storm that had already destroyed another nearby bridge? Wearing an ankle-length nightgown? You might do it if people's lives were at stake, and that's what 15-year-old Kate Shelley did in July of 1881. A storm had washed out the wooden supports under the Honey Creek railroad bridge in Iowa, which collapsed when a pusher locomotive crew came by to check the bridges.

Shelley lived nearby with her mother and younger siblings, and heard the locomotive crash. She told the two surviving crew members she would go for help. Living by the railroad, Shelley knew a passenger train would be coming in less than an hour, and she had to go to the station at Moingona to warn the railroad company of the bridge collapse. But to get there, she had to cross the larger Des Moines River trestle, and run two miles further to Moingona. Read the story of Kate Shelley's heroic actions that night that saved around 200 passengers and crew from plunging to their deaths at Honey Creek.

Eclectic Method has been delving into the artistic possibilities of artificial intelligence. In this video, he's fed video dance sequences into an algorithm and prompted it to produce anime-style characters dancing. The song is a real bop, but watching the dancers takes you slightly into the uncanny valley. You will recognize a lot of the dancing here, but it's not the people who originally made those oh-so-familiar moves. And the cartoon characters don't necessarily look as you'd expect.  

For example, there's a split second where you see what is obviously Pee-wee Herman dancing on the counter, but he has Steven Seagal's face. The video draws heavily on Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Dirty Dancing, and Footloose, among other movies. You'll also recognize the dancing of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, too. But really, is this any odder than rotoscoping by hand? You might be better off not thinking too much about the AI part and just enjoy the mashup. -via Geeks Are Sexy

My kids have always been impressed with my ability to instantly switch back and forth from formal, educated speech to my natural hillbilly patois,* depending on who I'm speaking to. That includes using the second person plural "you" instead of the much more useful contraction "y'all." However, "y'all" is the better word. There is a natural tendency among American English speakers to separate the plural "you" from the singular "you," which has given us abominations like "you guys" and "you'ns."

For much of the last couple of centuries, the use of "y'all" has tagged someone as being from the American South, which opened the door for denigration of the word because of who uses it. But it did not originate in the South; we brought it over from the old country, namely England. Nor is it isolated in the South. The rest of the US is fast adopting the word because it fills that need for a separate second person plural in a straightforward and inclusive way. Read about the origins and the modernization of "y'all" at the Conversation. Now if we can just get rid of that apostrophe, everyone would be able to spell it. -via Atlas Obscura



*In this case, "impressed with" actually means "laughed about."

If you've always had a yearning to drive the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, or if you're looking for a position that will take you places (and put you up in a hotel), then this is the job for you! Oscar Meyer is looking for recent college graduates to sign up for a year as a "hotdogger." Not only will you drive the Weinermobile, but you'll be a brand ambassador, giving talks to the public and logging your adventures on social media. This would be especially attractive to those with a new degree in communications, public relations, or marketing.

WRDW spoke to a couple of hotdoggers about what the job was like, and found out that the first thing a hotdogger does is learn how many hot dog puns can possibly be jammed into one interview.

The job description is online until January 31st, if you think you can cut the mustard.  -Thanks, WTM!

Who is the person who has killed the most people? This question is often answered with various leaders of nations or armies, like Hitler, Stalin, or Genghis Khan. While they might deserve the title, they only ordered those killings, which were carried out by many people. The one person who murdered more people by his own hand than any other in history is Vasili Blokhin, a name you've likely never heard before. He holds the Guinness World Record for the "World's Most Prolific Executioner."  

Blokhin killed plenty of people in World War I, then for the Soviet Secret Police, then in World War II he both gave orders for mass killings and killed a horrendous number of people himself. In the worst episode, in an operation to liquidate 20,000 Polish POWs, he personally shot more than 7,000 of them himself, one by one, over a 28-day period. Read about the bloody hand of Vasili Blokhin.  

After telling Blokhin's gruesome story, Today I Found Out attempts some mind bleach by looking for the person who has saved more human lives than anyone else in the same article. There are several very interesting candidates for that title.

The content you follow me for. 🌈 pic.twitter.com/0agRCcqXgd

— TG (@TG22110) January 5, 2023

Oooh, pretty! TG posted one of those parlor tricks that is circulated in schools and summer camps, but is rarely seen by those of us who don't have young children at home. Now we can all try it! The replies under this Tweet have some pictures from people who have done this at home, and a lot of inquiries into why TG didn't use any yellow Skittles. Maybe he ate them all. Since the Tweet was posted without explicit instructions, it drew the attention of two candy companies.

Please don’t try this with M&M’S @TG22110

— M&M'S (@mmschocolate) January 6, 2023

I, too, thought they were M&Ms at first glance. I don't eat Skittles, but this might push me into buying a small package. -via Everlasting Blort

Part of NASA's plan to return to the moon, which began with the first Artemis mission last year, will include a lunar base and a manned space station to orbit above. The space station already has a name: Lunar Gateway. It will be built near the moon, and the first components for it will launch as early as 2024.

The Lunar Gateway will be built through a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and other partners. But this will be no International Space Station. The cost of sending materials to the moon to assembled is very high, so the Lunar Gateway will be much smaller, about one sixth the size of the ISS. René Waclavicek, one of the designers of the astronaut living quarters, called the I-Hab, discussed the space station recently at a conference in the Czech Republic.

I-Hab “will have habitable space of about 8 cubic meters [280 cubic feet] and you will have to share it with three others,” Waclavicek said during the conference. “In other words, that would be a room 2 by 2 by 2 meters [6.6 by 6.6 by 6.6 feet], and you are locked in there.”

The I-Hab also has no windows. The only windows on the proposed space station will be in the nearby refueling module. However, the astronauts aboard could take advantage of any spacecraft docked at the station to get a little elbow room occasionally. Waclavicek assured us that the design team began with plans for a larger space station, but had to scale back due to restrictions in the materials allowed. Bummer.

(Image credit: NASA)

Luna Park in Melbourne has a very old wooden roller coaster, the second oldest in the world that's still operating. This roller coaster has been in contunous operation since 1912! In case you are now wondering, the oldest is Leap the Dips in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Anyway, the Great Scenic Railway has an employee on every ride, because they have to operate the brakes. That may sound strange, but it can be reassuring to know that the brake operator has some skin in the game, so to speak. To be an railway operator, you have to have stamina, a hearty sense of equilibrium, and you must undergo training. Tom Scott went to Melbourne to talk to the folks who run the Great Scenic Railway, and to take a ride himself. He seems to be having fun, which is in great contrast to his earlier roller coaster rides. Tom even made a video about his efforts to overcome his fear of roller coasters, only about six months ago. Looks like he has come a long way.

We make jokes about Spam, but you can't argue with its success. As a cheap alternative to whole meat products, it's no worse than sausage, bologna, scrapple, or any of the many recipes people have concocted to avoid wasting meat when butchering a pig. Besides, it's delicious and has been adopted by many countries as part of their cuisine. And there's always something new in the history of Spam that will surprise you, like the drunken party thrown to come up with the product's name. Mental Floss takes us on a tour of the history of Spam, highlighting the weirder side of its ups and downs since it debuted in 1937.

There were a lot of dangerous toys in the mid-20th century that you won't find on store shelves today, but here's one we haven't posted about before. The Cox E-Z Flyer probably wouldn't kill you, but could injure you in a number of ways. This model airplane was marketed to children in the 1970s.

The idea was to hold onto a cord attached to the plane while it flew in circles around you. Right there you have the danger of tying yourself up, or wrecking the plane. But it also required a second person to start it, with little time to get out of the way when the plane took flight. And it ignited fuel by the heat of its own red-hot engine! That's just a brief overview, and far from including all the ways the flight could go wrong. Pilot and writer Mark Slavonia reminisces about owning the plane that every little boy wanted and the many horrible things that could happen at Why is this interesting? -via Nag on the Lake