Henry Paget held several titles: he was the 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, the 1st Marquess of Anglesey, and during the Battle of Waterloo, he was a cavalry commander. He also held several military ranks afterward, but it was at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 that Paget's leg was injured so badly that it was amputated.

Paget stayed at the house of Monsieur Hyacinthe Joseph Marie Paris during his surgery and recovery. Paris asked if he could have the amputated leg so he could bury it, and Paget consented. The leg was buried in a wooden box with an inscribed tombstone marking the spot.

Paget later used a wooden leg that was state-of-the-art at the time, with tendons and an articulated knee, so innovative that its maker applied for a patent. The discarded leg, however, became a tourist attraction in Belgium. This situation did not sit well with Paget or his descendants, and the controversy over the leg lasted until 1934! Read about Paget's right legs, both his first one and his wooden one, at Amusing Planet. 
 
If the name sounds familiar, this Henry Paget was the great-grandfather of another Henry Paget previously featured at Neatorama.

(Image credit: Constantinus Fidelio Coene)

The birds have declared war on earthbound animals, threatening them and making life miserable by bombing them with poop. They've even harnessed a rooster to provide more ammunition! The situation couldn't be more dire. The humans don't know what to do, and the dog is useless as usual, so it's up to the cats to save the day. You might not know it, but our feline friends have fighter jets at their disposal. Go figure.

This war movie from Aaron's Animals (previously at Neatorama) is incredibly elaborate and richly-designed, yet still as ridiculously stupid as cats flying fighter jets should be. It's got action, comedy, romance, and rooster poop. What else could you ask for?

In the 1970s, NBC was presented with an idea for merging a cop show with a medical show by focusing on forensic pathology. The show would revolve around a young, attractive medical examiner who solved crimes from the morgue. The premise of Quincy, M.E. was somewhat changed when the production snagged the very popular Jack Klugman for the role of Dr. Quincy. Klugman himself had a vision for the show. He wanted it to focus on people and their problems more than chase scenes and shooting. Klugman won that battle, which is one reason why Quincy M.E. scripts were 50% longer than that of a typical cop show.

Over time, the series focused more on little-known social justice issues, such as child porn and elder abuse. A 1981 episode titled "Seldom Silent, Never Heard" was inspired by Adam Seligman, a man who suffered from Tourette’s syndrome and testified before Congress about the difficulty of obtaining effective medicine. The episode introduced viewers to the idea of "orphan drugs," medicines that pharmaceutical companies didn't want to invest in because there were too few people affected to make a profit. Read the story of how Quincy -and Klugman- rallied popular opinion to pass the Orphan Drugs Act of 1983. -via Metafilter

Remember the uproar about red dye #2? It was banned in the US because in high doses, it can cause cancer in rats. But that was small potatoes compared to other colors that lead to real deaths among real people in history. Humans have always treasured bright, true, and lasting pigments to give color to... well, everything. It's only been relatively recently that their chemical nature became closely studied and regulated. Before that, way too many people died because of our search for pretty colors. This TED-Ed lesson looks at white, green, and orange and how deadly they once were. -via Nag on the Lake

David Bingham writes about cemeteries and the stories behind the people buried in them at the blog The London Dead. He admits he usually skips the more recent gravestones, as he prefers to dig up history, so to speak. But during one visit to Highgate East Cemetery in London, where relatively wealthy people are buried, Bingham noticed an intriguing headstone for a woman who died in 2019. It said, "This is life." That's a definite head scratcher. So he looked at others and found that the way many people want to be remembered (or really were remembered by the person who ordered the stone) were stories in themselves. Sally Hunter, who died in 2015, has a grave marker saying "LAWYER should have been a marine biologist". He hunted down the stories behind that and other epitaphs, such as the man who had five words describing his life, including "nudist," but couldn't find out anything at all about the man buried under the gravestone you see here. -via Strange Company

King Tut, who ruled Egypt over 3,000 years ago, captured America's imagination in the 1970s when the exhibit called The Treasures of Tutankhamun toured the US and showed off the golden artifacts he was buried with. The impression we've had ever since was that King Tut lived a glorious life of immeasurable wealth. While he was a wealthy king, he suffered from birth defects and poor health, then died while most likely still in his teens.

The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922. His embalmed remains got their first x-rays in 1968. A full CT scan of his body was performed in 2006. They reveal that Tut suffered a cleft palate and a club foot, possibly due to generations of inbreeding. He also had malaria and a broken leg. An article at Mental Floss looks at the speculation on what his cause of death may have been, and there are plenty of possibilities.

(Image credit: EditorfromMars)

'Dead Men's Bones' cookies are just one way that the island nation remembers the dead. Check out the recipe here.https://t.co/KrD4Fmkgce

— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) October 12, 2022

Malta, the island nation in the Mediterranean, marks November as the Month of the Dead. One of the traditions associated with the Month of the Dead is a cookie called Għadam tal-mejtin, which translates to Dead Man's Bones. Thanks to the influence of Halloween, these cookies start showing up in Maltese bakeries in late October.

They are more than bone-shaped. The outer layer is a sweet vanilla cookie with a consistency that you're used to in regular shortbread cookies. Inside, however, is the "marrow." It is a chewy yet crumbly dough made of almond flour with spices like cardamom and cloves. The baked cookie is often decorated with icing. Għadam tal-mejtin is more than a treat; it serves as a memento mori, a reminder that we are all destined to die one day. That reminder spurs people to remember and honor those that have gone on before them.

That said, who wouldn't want to try one of these cookies? You'll find the story of Għadam tal-mejtin, plus a recipe so that you can make your own, at Atlas Obscura.

Tourists captured the action in Kruger National Park when a honey badger found himself surrounded by three leopards. But you know honey badgers don't care. This one is not even trying to get away. He'll show those leopards a thing or two!

Two of these leopards are pretty young. They found the honey badger, and had some idea that they would make their mom proud with a kill. Then their mom joined in to supervise. Mom probably figured it would be a good lesson for those two young 'uns to find out what a honey badger is all about. As the badger walks away, you can imagine it saying, "and don't make me come back!" That will teach them to take on the world's most fearless animal!  -via Metafilter

The 2022 winners in the Nikon Small World microphotography competition have been unveiled. The first place winner is the photo above by Grigorii Timin and Dr. Michel Milinkovitch of the University of Geneva. This little hand belongs to an embryo developing into a Madagascar giant day gecko. The gecko embryo was stained with fluorescent dye and the image was made by stitching together multiple high-resolution microscopic images. The whole hand is about three millimeters long. Unless you call it a foot, but even then it's only three millimeters long.



Second place went to Dr. Caleb Dawson of the The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne for this image of "breast tissue showing contractile myoepithelial cells wrapped around milk-producing alveoli."



The third place winner is the above image of the blood vessels inside a mouse's intestines. Satu Paavonsalo and Dr. Sinem Karaman of the University of Helsinki managed to make them pretty.

See all the top winners in this gallery, along with other galleries for Honorable Mentions and Images of Distinction.

The excitement is growing during the annual Fat Bear Week tournament. On Sunday, a semifinal matchup between two previous champions, Holly 435 and Bear 747, ended in what seemed like a victory for Holly. However, those administering the tournament thought something smelled fishy, and it wasn't all that salmon that the brown bears of Katmai National Park have been eating all summer.

It appears someone has decided to spam the Fat Bear Week poll, but fortunately it is easy for us to tell which votes are fraudulent. We have discarded the fake votes and today’s official totals are:

747: 37,940
435: 30,430

— Katmai National Park (@KatmaiNPS) October 10, 2022

The tournament bracket was adjusted, and Bear 747, who is as big as a 747, advanced to the final round. He's so big that he's been referred to as Bear Force One by fans. Jezebel laments the decline of fairness when even Fat Bear Week can be corrupted by cheaters. But they are even more offended that in the first eight years of the tournament, only four bears have won the tournament, despite Katmai National Park being the home of 2,200 bears. Well duh, some bears are just naturally talented at putting on weight.

The championship round is today, and voting is open until 9PM Eastern and 6PM Pacific. Cast your vote here for either Bear Force One 747 or Bear 901. Both are extremely fat now. -via Fark

Update: Bear 747, aka Bear Force One, has won the title of fattest bear!

(Image credit: National Park Service)

The 1993 Disney film Hocus Pocus was too silly to be a horror film, too sexy to be a children's movie, and too feminine to be a Three Stooges comedy. After bombing in its theatrical run, it became a cult classic through annual airings on cable TV. And now that Hocus Pocus 2 is streaming on Disney+, Screen Junkies has gotten around to making an Honest Trailer to warn us against it 30 years too late. Still, the Honest Trailer is well worth six minutes of your life, especially if, like me, you've never seen Hocus Pocus.

(Image credit: Lon&Queta)

The ob-weaving spider you see above already had a fully-finished web ready to trap dinner. But it went back and gussied up the place with a lovely geometric pattern anyway. So did this St. Andrew's Cross spider, which was named for this kind of decoration. Charlotte would be proud.

(Image credit: Amos T Fairchild)

Spider of widely-varying species do this. The decoration itself is called stabilimentum, because scientists once thought it was done to make the web more stable. Arachnologists have abandoned that idea, but there's no agreement on why spiders decorate their webs. It could be because they are in a web-building mood and can't stop. Or maybe it makes them look bigger, or conversely, serves as extra camouflage. It could be to attract certain kinds of prey, or even to help the spider regulate its own temperature. Maybe they are showing off for mating purposes. But since this behavior has been observed in different species, they could have different reasons. Its even possible that spiders just like the look. Read about spiders and their stabilimenta at The Ark in Space. -via Everlasting Blort

The Gotthard Base Tunnel runs underneath the Swiss Alps for 35.5 miles. A passenger riding a train through it wouldn't see daylight for 20 minutes straight. Building the tunnel was an amazing feat of engineering that cost about $12 billion US, but saved so much time and energy transporting people and goods through the Alps that it was worth it.  

But with a tunnel so long and so deep, imagine if an accident were to happen in the middle of it. There can be up to 16 trains in the tunnel at a time. What about a fire? The temperature two kilometers below the surface gets up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. You'll be glad to know that there are multiple complex safety systems at work to make sure the trains run quickly and safely, or if not, that experts can respond to any emergency. Tom Scott is impressed, and you will be, too.  

The public radio show This American Life did an episode exploring the theme of whether most people are basically good (or not). The first guest was Jessica Williamson, who, some years ago, made the poster above about a found cat. You've seen the poster, but what you don't know is that in the original version, Williamson included her real phone number. She distributed the poster around her neighborhood, but never thought about someone posting it on the internet. As you can imagine, she got a lot of phone calls.

And then when I started listening to the voicemails, it was kind of like this very unscientific, I would say, social experiment. Because you could really lock the calls into three groups. And the largest group of people were actually very kindly just calling to tell me that it wasn't a cat and that it was a possum.

Williamson estimated that maybe 20% of the calls were playing along with the joke and claimed it was their cat, and another 10% were calling to tell her she is an idiot. Of course, this slice of humanity only involves those who went to the trouble of actually calling the number. You can listen to the eight-minute segment, which includes excerpts of the actual calls she received, or read the transcript here. Or listen to the whole episode if that interests you. -via Metafilter

Imagine yourself as a child turning nine years old. Your birthday party would probably consist of your best friends from school and maybe their siblings. You'd eat cake and play games like musical chairs and then open gifts. It wouldn't be anything at all like a party held 38 years ago today in Manhattan with a star-studded guest list.   

It was October 9, 1984, and Steve Jobs was going to a nine-year-old’s birthday party. He’d been invited just a few hours earlier by journalist David Scheff, who was wrapping up a profile of the Apple Computer wunderkind for Playboy. Jobs was far from the highest-profile guest, however. Walter Cronkite, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Louise Nevelson, John Cage, and singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson were also in attendance. And Yoko Ono, of course—it was her son’s birthday, after all.

Jobs brought a gift for young Sean Lennon: a Macintosh computer. Few people had one in 1984, and anyone who was introduced to Macintosh in the 1980s can tell you how game-changing they were. Andy Warhol was particularly impressed. A last-minute child's birthday gift turned out to be a great way to promote a product to pop culture influencers. See pictures from that birthday party at Vintage Everyday. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Sailko)