In the early 1950s, author Kurt Vonnegut was trying to get his writing career off the ground. His first book received favorable reviews, but the money wasn't coming in. With a family to support, he tried all kinds of jobs and ventures to bring in income. One he was particularly dedicated to was the development of a board game. It was a straightforward military strategy game called General Headquarters, and drew on his experience in World War II. But he never found a publisher that was interested.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and game designer Geoff Engelstein heard about the lost game and contacted Vonnegut's estate about it. He obtained 40 pages of Vonnegut's notes, rules, revisions, and rejection letters. From those, Engelstein put the game together and now it's available, 70 years after its inception, at Barnes & Noble. Read about General Headquarters at Open Culture. -via Nag on the Lake

Being a Russian historical figure is never a picnic, but Emperor Ivan VI had it worse than many. He was born in August of 1740, the son of a duke and duchess. His mother was the niece of the reigning Empress Anna, who had no children. At the age of two months, he was declared the heir to the throne just before Anna died. A year later, the toddler Emperor Ivan VI was overthrown by his cousin Elizabeth Petrovna, and he and his parents were imprisoned. At age four, he was separated from this parents and put into solitary confinement and the public was led to believe he was dead. While his guards were kept in the dark as to their prisoner's true identity, Ivan was taught to read only so he could read the Bible, and was otherwise left alone. He grew to be mentally ill due to years of isolation, and weak from the lack of any medical attention during his confinement. However, Ivan knew who he was, and eventually some of the guards knew, too.

When Catherine the Great ascended to the throne in 1762, she issued secret orders that the "nameless one" was to be put to death if anyone ever tried to take him out of his prison. And that's exactly what happened in 1764, just before Ivan's 24th birthday. Read about the hapless emperor at Wikipedia with more commentary at reddit.  -via Messy Nessy Chic

(Image credit: Ivan Ivanovich Tvorozhnikov)

During harvest season, we love to see videos of zoo animals having fun playing with and eating pumpkins. At the Oregon Zoo, they have the annual "Squishing of the Squash" event for the elephants (see several previous videos of that) Now we get to see the rhinos do it!

The Oregon Zoo's black rhinos showed us what those horns are good for -they are tools, used to open up a pumpkin by goring or even slicing it. They are also pretty good for tossing things or even carrying them around. You may call these magnificent beast rhinos, rhinoceros, tank puppies, or unicorns. Oh, yeah, the elephants have already had their Squishing of the Squash this year, too.



The pumpkins are donated by local farmers with extra pumpkins and hobbyists who grow giant pumpkins for the fun of it. The zoo animals have enjoyed a lot of prize winners in the past! A good time was had by all. -via Laughing Squid

On September 2-3, 1935, the first recorded category 5 hurricane swept through southern Florida. Storms were yet to be given names, so it became known as the Labor Day hurricane. Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West at the time, and the damage on that island was relatively minor, although it was cut off from the mainland when the hurricane wrecked the railroad bridge. Nearby Upper Matecumbe Key and Lower Matecumbe Key were flattened, with all buildings and most vegetation stripped away. Hemingway wrote about the destruction, particularly the 400 people who died in the keys.

Many of the dead were World War I veterans, employed by the federal government to work on highway construction. Hemingway was incensed that despite several days warning, these men were not evacuated to the mainland, but were left in their ramshackle dormitories. Their bodies were not taken away for days. The scene reminded Hemingway of the mass deaths he had seen on the battlefields of the Great War. Read how Ernest Hemingway reported the carnage and his anger at the Conversation.

The Soviets were really big on proving they were the best at everything, whether it was science, nuclear weapons, the space race, or Olympic competition. That probably had something to do with why they decided to dig the deepest manmade hole on earth. Oh, there were plenty of scientific research reasons, but the expense involved leads us to believe it was mainly another superlative they could brag about.  

The Kola Superdeep Borehole is more than seven miles deep, or 12,262 meters, to be exact. The Soviets kept digging for 19 years, from 1970 to 1989. You may think, well, there's your answer for why they stopped digging, because the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 after a couple of years of really tense internal struggles. But the project had other problems, too, that had to do with the earth and what's going on seven miles down there. Half as Interesting explains the project in a little over seven minutes; the rest of the video is an ad.  -via Digg

The German military developed the first weapons of mass destruction during World War I when they unleashed poison gas on the Allies, mostly chlorine and bromine, which are heavier than air and combine to form toxic acid. The Allies then developed their own chemical weapons and gas masks for defense. But the underfunded Russian army had no gas masks. In 1915, when the Germans attacked a Russian unit at Osowiec Fortress, which is in what is now Poland, the Russians had no defense. They did the best they could, soaking rags and bandages in their own urine and wrapping them around their faces. But the deadly gas caused them to cough up blood. What was amazing is that these men fought on. Thought to be already dead, they leapt from their bunkers wrapped up like mummies covered in blood. The Germans saw them as ghosts or zombies and fled in terror. That battle at Osowiec Fortress became known as the Attack of the Dead Men.  

The story is often told as a horror tale by painting a picture of the dying Russians scaring the wits out of the German army, but the bigger horror story is the advent of chemical weapons. Read more about the use of poison gas during World War I at Creative History. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

Taco Bell has built quite a large business on the premise of combining the same five ingredients into a wide variety of food items in different shapes and sizes, with a wide price range. Staying open through the wee hours helped a lot, too. They've not been as successful with their quirky advertising campaigns, though. The biggest and most memorable was the Taco Bell chihuahua that was everywhere in the late 1990s. The dog was cute, the scenarios were funny, and you saw those ads every time you turned a TV on. The chihuahua image was made into plush dolls and graced t-shirts. Then suddenly, the ads with the chihuahua were gone, and no one really noticed because, well, it was advertising after all. Weird History Food explains where the chihuahua came from, how he (or actually, she) became a sensation, and why the dog disappeared so quickly. Spoiler: no, it wasn't because the dog died.

Last month, we marveled at the video winners of the Small World in Motion competition, and today the winners of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography competition have been announced for 2024. The image above, by Dr. Bruno Cisterna and Dr. Eric Vitriol of the Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, won first place. It shows differentiated mouse brain tumor cells magnified 100 times. Dr. Cisterna is leading a team studying how disruptions in the brain structures known as microtubules can lead to neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's and ALS. He spent three months perfecting the staining process so that the images they worked with would clearly show the brain structures.    

 

The competition began in 1975, which means this year is the 50th edition of the photomicrography awards. Dr. Marcel Clemens came in second for an image of an electrical arc between a pin and a wire at 10,000 volts. The third place image, shown above, was captured by Chris Romaine. It is a cannabis plant magnified 20 times, showing its trichomes and cannabinoid vesicles. You can see the top twenty winners in this gallery. Also see the honorable mentions and images of distinction. Who knew that slime molds, disease cells, pregnant fleas, pollen, and intestines could be so beautiful!

A 19-year-old man was staying with his 15-year-old sister while their parents were on an overseas trip. His sister started her period and was bleeding excessively. She wanted to go to the emergency room, but he was unsure whether it was needed or just teenage drama, so he turned to reddit for advice, specifically the subreddit AskDocs. The doctors there urged him to take her to a hospital, and he did, while posting updates through the entire adventure. The community became totally invested in the story. OP (original poster) doesn't know much about women's bodies, but he cares about his sister, who's a feisty young woman.

The sister got the care she needed, and then everyone could acknowledge how hilarious OP's updates were. Trying to imagine what his mother would do, he packed sunscreen for the hospital, a detail he will never live down. Somewhere along the line, someone suggested he call their parents, which he did not think of on his own. The story played out over several days, and escaped the subreddit to enthrall greater reddit. You can read the essential points in this recap, and then you may want to check out the original post with replies. The upshot is that OP did what he had to do even though he didn't know what he was doing, and the whole family is loving, supportive, and oh-so funny. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Kai Hendry)

During the first half of the 20th century, many psychiatric disturbances were treated by cutting into the brain. A lobotomy is the procedure of cutting the connection between the frontal cortex and the thalamus, leading to calmer behavior but also a loss of personality and agency, and often left the patient with severe impairment. We've posted the history of such surgery, and a few horror stories. But why were doctors so keen on cutting the connections in people's brains? This video from Life Noggin explains that it was more of a societal problem than concern about the individual patient. Lobotomies made psychiatric patients easier to deal with. As bad as that seems, the conditions that led to lobotomies during the surgery's heyday make us cringe in the 21st century. They couldn't execute troublesome and inconvenient people, so they just cut their brains to make them into more convenient people. Some parts of our history truly resemble dystopian science fiction horror stories.  -via Laughing Squid

You may have heard a local story of someone encountering an unknown child, or a group of children, seemingly lost or in need. They wear clothes that are somewhat out of style, or even of a different era. When you get a good look at them, they have black eyes. Not just pupils or irises, but the sclera, too -totally black eyes. They might talk to you in an eerie monotone voice. No matter how needy or fearful they seem, don't let them get in your car or in your home, because bad things will happen.

This is no ancient tale, but stories that contemporary people tell in their own experiences, going back about 30 years. And they come from all parts of the country. The exact details may vary slightly, and you have read these stories online and you have certainly seen such children in movies. But what does it mean? Read about the modern legend of the black-eyed children and what it means at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Megamoto85)

The Tim Burton sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was released about six weeks ago and has so far made back more than four times its production budget. Audiences liked it, and so does Screen Junkies. This Honest Trailer gives us more insight into the film in case you haven't already seen it. Like the original 1988 Beetlejuice, the title character isn't the main character because he's just too chaotic and goes down better in small doses, yet Michael Keaton still has what it takes to spice up the story. Also like the original, most of the characters are dead, yet the creepiness is all so over-the-top, you never forget they are in a comedy. The main idea of the Honest Trailer seems to be that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is very much like the original, which was fun, but there's no real glory in doing something that has been done well before. That means it's worth a watch for anyone who enjoyed Beetlejuice.   

Hello Steve :O https://t.co/rEG9kZOhP9 #wildearth

— Ex Ranga (@vokstar) October 16, 2024

Eight years ago, a group of skywatchers in Canada saw an aurora that was unlike any they'd ever seen. It was a ribbon of green and purple. They didn't know what they were looking at, so they named it Steve. It wasn't the first time anyone has seen such a thing. Previous sightings were called a "proton arc," but that's not what it is. Of course, some scientists weren't happy with a phenomenon named Steve, so they fashioned it into an acronym (or "backronym") for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. It is caused by a ribbon of very hot plasma hundreds of miles above the earth.

During last week's solar storm, both the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis were seen in much wider areas than normal, and Steve was caught on camera by a number of people in South Australia, further north than the Southern Lights are usually seen. Normal aurora are caused by charged particles falling under the influence of the sun's geomagnetic activity. Steve, on the other hand, is more like "a welder's arc" in the upper atmosphere. Read more about this phenomena and see pictures at ABC. -via Metafilter

In an action movie, this simple exchange would be handled by experienced professionals who have no human faults and are confident in their mission. Real life doesn't work like that. We know that any story from Birdbox Studio is going to go completely sideways from what we would normally expect, even though the chosen scenarios are situations that can easily happen in real life. You can see that from the animations we've posted before. In their latest production called The Exchange, we see a suspicious meeting from a distance through binoculars, so we can't know what was said. But we can imagine based on what we see. Still, that inner dialogue changes when the unexpected happens, and that happens over and over in this one. Sure, you will feel sorry for the participants, but you have to keep telling yourself it's just a fictional story. We hope. -via Nag on the Lake

When times are tight and business is bad, people have to get creative just to get by. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, people developed ways to repair, reuse, and stretch what they had to avoid buying new things that they couldn't afford. This affected businesses, which had to look in new directions to stay afloat. Have you ever wondered how cars started offering radios as a standard feature? It wasn't because the public asked for them; it was because people stopped buying radios for their homes. Paul and Joseph Galvin had a radio parts business that suffered from the economic downturn, so Paul decided to concentrate on putting radios in cars. That meant they had to design a radio small and lightweight enough to install in a motor vehicle. A promotional tour was so successful they renamed their business after the car radio, becoming Motorola.

Read that story and those of four other inventions that were born of the deprivations of the Great Depression at History Facts.

(Image credit: Erkaha)