We've all heard the story about the discovery of coffee, when an Ethiopian goat herder noticed his goats frolicking energetically after consuming coffee beans. Once the goat herder shared his discovery with the local monastery, there was no turning back. We don't know whether there's any truth to the legend, but we do know that coffee consumption began in Ethiopia. It was consumed in several ways. I sometimes distinguish coffee from tea in conversation by referring to one as bean water and the other as leaf water, but some early coffee was made by brewing the leaves of the coffee plant! The more fascinating story is how the beverage took over the world, and that history is documented. After all, what's better than a beverage that makes you happy without making you do stupid things you'll regret tomorrow? This TED-Ed lesson from Jonathan Morris follows the rise of coffee as both its flavor and its caffeinated effects got the entire world hooked.

Grandpa will always tell you about "the blizzard of __," of which you kids have no concept. I tell my kids about the ice storm in February of '98, when the electricity was out for two weeks and we had to sleep in the kitchen after we burned all the wood we could find. Yet personal memories are nothing compared to scientific measurements and news stories. The end of the 19th century was particularly bad for blizzards in the US, but some of the most deadly blizzards happened elsewhere. In 1972, 26 feet of snow fell in southern Iran. Yes, feet. That happened as the country was undergoing a years-long drought! Around 4,000 people died, many of them frozen to death inside their homes. In 2008, blizzards killed hundreds of people in both Afghanistan and China. But the US still has more blizzards than anywhere else. As we approach the beginning of spring, look back at ten of the worst blizzards in recorded history at Mental Floss.

When people really want to do something, they will find a way around the law. America found that out in a spectacular way during Prohibition in the 1920s, so much that we rescinded the 18th Amendment by passing the 21st Amendment. Alcohol consumption is still regulated, more so in some places than others, but there are plenty of legal loopholes. If you restrict liquor sales to restaurants, suddenly all bars become restaurants. If you can only make wine at home for personal consumption, there will be plenty of folks willing to sell you the instructions, the tools, and the "materials" used to make it. When the only way you can get booze is by prescription, doctors will write them freely for friends and important people. You get the idea. Read about six of these clever loopholes people have exploited in their quest to wet their whistles at Cracked.

(Image credit: Przemek Pietrak)

A "title drop" is when the name of the movie is said in the movie's script. When it comes, it can seem momentous or awkward or, on a few occasions, even natural. You know that some movies don't have a permanent title when shooting begins. Sometimes a good line becomes the title instead of the other way around. But it often seems forced.

Dominikus Baur and Alice Thudt analyzed 73,921 movies going back to 1940 for title drops. Only about a third of them have a title drop in the actual movie dialogue, so that's 26,965 movies. They identified 277,668 title drops, which is an average of more than ten per movie! But... some movies are extreme outliers, like Barbie, which says the word "Barbie" 267 times. That makes up for many movie like The Fellowship of the Ring, which has those words exactly one time. Documentaries and biopics tend to have a lot of them, because they are often named for the subject. It's the same for fictional movies named after the main character.

But the deep dive into the data of title drops goes much deeper. What are the highest rated movies with title drops? Where do those drops occur? In which decade are title drops most common? What are the longest title drops? (Hint: it's 17 words long!) There's even a searchable database so you can look up your favorite movies and find out if and where it has a title drop. -via Metafilter

Rumors, gossip, disinformation, and conspiracy theories are nothing new. People have a tendency to believe the most outlandish things, particularly when they are fearful, such as during wartime. In World War II, Axis powers did their best to spread fear and disinformation among Allied countries, even those on the home front in America, far from the battlefields. But Axis propaganda was greatly supplemented by the homegrown rumors that spread among civilians. At least back then, they spread more slowly without the internet. Some rumors were about the war itself, about fictional defeats and secret missions that destroyed morale. Others were plain disinformation, such as the one that urged people to destroy their victory gardens. And many of these rumors blamed the evils of wartime on oppressed groups, exploiting existing prejudices.

American newspapers and magazines fought back against these rumors by publishing what they called "rumor clinics," in which they revealed rumors and fact-checked them. The federal government used a different tactic, as they believed even printing the rumors would spread them. Federal authorities instead just published the facts without repeating the rumors themselves. Information to combat disinformation, in other words. Read about the rumor clinics that attempted to set the record straight at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

Who is the most illogical person to portray a superhero? The same person who portrayed Arnold Sharzeneggar's twin brother, Danny DeVito, so why not make him an an X-man? Corridor Digital edited DeVito's character Frank Reynolds  from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia into the world of the Wolverine movies. Contains NSFW language and partial nudity, but that's from the TV show, not the movies! His origin story is included, and Frank reacts about the way you'd expect him to. It works well, but you have to wonder about the mind who came up with this idea in the first place. It had to start with one realization while listening to the dialogue of It's Always Sunny, and then led to excruciating research to find more places to use DeVito's character. -via Born in Space

Do you know where your state or hometown got its name? Or the original meaning behind it? Some have pretty wild stories. Manchester is a name that means "breast-like hill," but you might not find such a landmark in New Hampshire because that city was named for the city in the UK, where there was such a hill when it was founded as a Roman fort in 79 CE. Kansas City was named for the Kansas River, which was named for the Kanza people, which means "people of the South wind." And Kansas City, Kansas, was named after Kansas City, Missouri, even though it's in Kansas state. And speaking of Kansas, Topeka means "a good place to dig potatoes."

WordTips looked up and researched the history and the meaning of all 50 US states, plus each state capital, and for good measure, 179 of the country's biggest cities. You can enlarge the above map of the state and state capital names at WordTips. You'll also find maps of the major cities by region with their name meanings, and read some of the better stories, too. While many place names came from Native American languages, some place names were appropriated then re-translated. Honolulu was originally called Ke ʻAwa O Kou (the harbor of Kou), but British Captain William Brown named it Fair Haven when he arrived. It reverted to the Hawaiian language, but kept Brown's impression by becoming hono (port) and lulu (calm). My hometown was named after the guy who founded it, but hey, it's still a story. -Thanks, Taylor Tomita!

The 96th Academy Awards will be announced this coming Sunday night, March 10. There are ten films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and Screen Junkies has a word to say about each one of them. They are not necessarily good words, but it is SFW. You can tell when they really like a movie, yet they can always find something to poke fun at.

There are only nine entries, because Barbie and Oppenheimer are combined into one, as they are essentially the same movie with a different tone. While I haven't yet seen any of these movies, there is a big chasm between the ones I've written about enough to feel familiar with and those I'd never heard of before the nominations were announced. The short vignettes on the Best Picture nominees are followed by a few quick supercuts of what they have in common, and an inexplicable segment about The Beekeeper.

This is called the Coffer illusion.

In this image there are 16 circles. Can you find them? pic.twitter.com/b0bOZkQDD5

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 4, 2024

Can you count how many circles are in this image? No? Can you see any circles at all? What seems to be a series of rectangular boxes does contain circles, but you have to look for them, because there are no curved lines in the image. Try concentrating on the vertical bars and ignore the horizontal bars for a minute. If that doesn't help, look at this visual aid at imgur. Still can't see them? That's okay, it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.   

The Coffer Illusion is not named after Dr. Coffer, but for the appearance of decorative panels in a door, called coffers. This illusion was created by Anthony Norcia, psychology professor at Stanford University. It was a finalist in the 2006 Illusion of the Year competition. While there are explanations for the visual perception involved, they all mostly boil down to the fact that we identify what we are looking at quickly, and once that identification is made, we have a hard time shifting our brains to see something different. -via Digg

Linguist Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) makes us feel a little better about mispronouncing words. First, we are not alone, and there are quite a few words that the majority of us mispronounce, which over time will lead to our way of saying them becoming correct. That's how language evolves, after all. And second, there are common and logical reasons why we don't just intuitively know how to pronounce a word. The rules for English have more exceptions than it has rules, so even native speakers can't keep up all the time. Then there are times when a mispronunciation actually communicates what you mean better. For example, I know how to pronounce schadenfreude, because I looked it up, but it always comes out scootin fruity. You may laugh, but you also know what I'm saying.

While watching this video, I realized that I don't ever recall hearing anyone say the word "dour" out loud, correctly or incorrectly. I don't even use it, but when reading it, I imagined it pronounced "dower." That's a word that we have plenty of other, easier terms we can use instead, like stink-eye or RBF. The comments under the YouTube page for this video are full of amusing stories of mispronunciations. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Last year, McDonald's decided not to put their Filet-o-Fish sandwiches on sale for Lent, and people were upset. This year, they are on special at two for $6, which is underwhelming for those of us who used to buy them for 35 cents. Besides, if you can only eat one before they cool off, you are out of luck. But on Fridays during Lent, you should be able to find a community fish fry somewhere to pick up a full meal of fish, potatoes, hushpuppies, and cole slaw served piping hot to raise funds for churches, charities, or community organizations, especially in the Midwest. What was once seen as a sacrifice, giving up meat on Fridays, is now a treat and a beloved tradition that brings people together. In fact, there are so many fish frys that several cities have fish fry maps or lists shared online, that can direct you to a fish fry nearby. Read about the tradition of community fish frys and how to find one at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Steve Snodgrass)

Bookworms read all kinds of literature, and over time they can recognize certain authors just by the way they put words together.  But it takes a literature expert or linguist to see exactly how an author's language is different from the next talented writer, and to explain it to the rest of us. This talent has even been used to solve crimes. For example, Jane Austen wrote in a very different style from previous novelists in that she used what linguists call "free indirective speech." It's a technique for connecting the narrator with the character and the reader all at the same time, yet separating them all enough to allow the freedom to critique that character. Even if you're a Jane Austen fan, you might not have ever noticed this, and even if you did, you probably couldn't explain it as well as Nerdwriter1 does. It's one of the many devices that gives an author a distinct voice and a distinct feel for the way she tells a story. -via Kottke

There are plenty of riddles in literature and pop culture, not to mention in dad jokes and those lists your aunt sends by email. Most have an answer that will make you laugh or groan, but some have no answer at all, or at least no answer that makes sense in the real world. In Lewis Carroll's book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter asks Alice, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Alice tries to answer, but she doesn't know. It turns out that the Mad Hatter doesn't know, either. In the more than 150 years since the book was published, plenty of people have come up with plausible but not-so-funny answers, and even Carroll explained it (nonsensically) at one point. But the fact that there is no answer is there to illustrate that the Hatter is, indeed, mad.

But that's just one example. Read about the raven and the writing desk and four other literary riddles that can't be solved because there is no definitive answer at Cracked. 

A best man's speech can be fraught even if it's your brother giving it, because you never know what he's going to say. At this wedding, captured by Tali Joy Photography, Dave's little brother is the best man. The speech is intended as a thank you for taking the fall for the younger brother's frustrated screwup twenty years ago when they were young boys. However, the twist is that the groom had no idea what really went on all those years ago, and why he was in trouble. The look on his face when he realizes what really happened is priceless! Several of his friends from back then were there and remembered the exact incident. Yet this was the perfect time to set the record straight, since the statute of limitations has surely passed. A good time was had by all. -via Laughing Squid

Long before Pepper Anderson, Maddie Hayes, Dana Scully, and Olivia Benson solved fictional crimes, there were real women opening doors in the crime-fighting arena as detectives. On the one hand, it was unseemly work for a lady, as were most professional careers before the 20th century. On the other hand, women made great undercover officers and spies because no one paid all that much attention to them. They were few, but they opened the door to generations of detectives to follow.   

Kate Warne talked the Pinkerton Agency into hiring her, and proved her mettle by single-handedly foiling a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as he traveled to his inauguration. Antonia Moser learned her craft from a master detective, then lived with him as his lover, then competed with him when she opened her own agency. Maud West (shown above) was a master of disguise and was so good at it she showed the newspapers, knowing she'd never be recognized. Read about these women and more, seven in all, who became detectives when such work was considered out of reach of most women. -via Nag on the Lake