In 1920, Harvard University was the site of a process so scandalous that it wasn't made public until records were revealed in 2002. At the time it happened, the school considered the scandal to be the students' behavior, but in the 21st century we know the real scandal was the university's response and the cover up of their actions.

It began when a Harvard student suddenly dropped out, went home to his parents, and committed suicide. It came out that he was having an affair with an older man. Letters he left behind named other students at Harvard who were also homosexual. School officials wanted to keep the matter quiet, in order to preserve the school's reputation, and besides, one of the named students was the son of a former congressman. But they wanted those students out.

The results of the "Secret Court," as it was actually called, were that eight students were expelled for no stated reason, and they were given negative recommendations if they applied to another school. One committed suicide soon afterward, and another a few years later. Read about Harvard's Secret Court of 1920 at Messy Nessy Chic.

Mountains are a literary metaphor for something that is eternal and immovable, but that's not always so in the real world. Mountains are subject to both gravity and entropy. The village of Brienz/Brinzauls in Switzerland is itself moving downhill as the ground shifts underneath, but the mountain above the village is falling apart, sending boulders rolling into the valley. How do these people live with the danger? The highway that runs across the foot of the mountain is in even more danger from falling rocks, but Swiss engineering is on it. No, they cannot stop the rocks, but they can make the road safer. Tom Scott has the story.  

By the way, if you listen to the geologist while reading the subtitles, you'll hear Swiss as a fairly close relative of English.

Traveling trash can visits Ireland from Myrtle Beach (3,500+ miles)… We received an email yesterday from a man in Ireland who found one of our bins. Click here to read the full email exchange! https://t.co/83mtGAMrUv pic.twitter.com/TgOrtR2fG7

— City of Myrtle Beach (@MyrtleBeachGov) November 8, 2021

A recycling barrel washed up on the shore in Mulranny, County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland. Keith McGreal saw it on his local beach and took a closer look. The stickers on the bin clearly showed that it belonged to the city of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina! That's a distance of 5500 kilometers, or 3500 miles. McGreal sent a message to Myrtle Beach via the city's website, telling of the find.

Someone on the town's staff replied and joked that one employee had already volunteered to travel to Ireland to fetch the wayward barrel, but apparently that request will not be honored. They asked that McGreal go ahead and recycle the bin on his side of the Atlantic.

No one knows when the bin started its journey to Ireland, but the barnacles it collected along the way indicate that it has been quite some time. -via Boing Boing

Artisans in Japan have been using lathes to shape wood since the 9th century. Originally pulled by hand, they became pedal-powered in the 1890s, and now are spun by motors. These lathes are what artisans called kojin use to make traditional kokeshi dolls out of well-dried wood. The dolls are durable and sparsely decorated, lending themselves to imaginative play. The Tohoku region of Japan is responsible for the popularity of kokeshi dolls, as they sold them to tourists who came to ski in Tohoku in the mid-19th century. Manami Okazaki fell in love with kokeshi when she visited her mother's family in Tohoku, and has written two books about the dolls. The latest is Japanese Kokeshi Dolls: The Woodcraft and Culture of Japan’s Iconic Dolls. Okazaki gives us a look at how kokeshi dolls charmed those who bought them.    

It didn't hurt that kokeshi were also undeniably cute, defined more precisely by Okazaki as a type of “subdued” cute known as shibu kawaii. “Kawaii, the culture of cuteness, is probably the dominant pop-cultural aesthetic at the moment,” Okazaki tells me. “My bankcard has Hello Kitty on it. You see buses in the shapes of bears or pandas, airplanes in the shapes of dogs. It’s endless. But shibu kawaii is a kind of cute that’s cute in a way that isn’t—a retro or old-school cute.”

In other words, a level of cute that won’t give you diabetes. “I wrote a book on kawaii culture,” Okazaki says. “I spoke with designers from gaming companies whose work is 100-percent maximum cute. They told me that if you really want to see the roots of kawaii, you should check out kokeshi.”

Kokeshi has also been credited (or blamed, depending on how you look at these things) as the template for the mix of uniformity and variation found in everything from Be@rbrick toys to Pokemon. That may seem like a stretch if you are wondering what a kokeshi doll could possibly have in common with Pikachu or Bulbasaur, but the similarities have less to do with the decorations on the forms than the utility of the forms themselves as armatures for myriad variations.

Okazaki tells us more about the history, the craftsmanship, and the appeal of kokeshi dolls at Collectors Weekly.

We've seen animals wander onto the playing field during televised football and baseball games quite a bit, but they are usually dogs or cats or an occasional escaped mascot. You don't expect to see a wild animal invading a game, especially in a packed stadium. When Arizona State played the University of Southern California in Tempe on Saturday, broadcasters were surprised to see a fox on the field! The fox seemed surprised, too, and tried to escape by jumping into the stands.

It was a novel situation for all involved. The crowd, of course, was amused but also concerned with the safety of the fox. If it were a dog or cat, they would try to grab the animal, but it was hands-off all around in the case of a fox. After another trip through the playing field, the fox made its escape, to thunderous applause.

You might wonder why a wild fox would ever approach a crowded stadium. Wild animals have been forced into the proximity of humans by encroaching cities and loss of both habitat and prey, and they've adapted by taking our trash for food. A fox does what a fox gotta do. -via Digg

The town of Casey is near where interstate 70 crosses the Illinois-Indiana border. It has a population of only 2,404 people, but the town has plenty to brag about- like multiple Guinness World records for large items. They have the world's largest wind chimes, rocking chair, knitting needles, mailbox, clogs, pitchfork, and more. The town holds eleven world records as of now, and that draws people off the interstate to come see them.



In most small towns that put themselves on the map, so to speak, there is usually one person behind the attractions. In Casey, that would be local business owner Jim Bolin. He built the wind chimes as the first "big thing" for Casey, and then just kept on creating everyday items on a scale that's larger than life. In addition to the record-holders, the town has quite a few other enormous objects to show off. Read about Casey and its big things at Mental Floss.

Vintage postcards are available for locations all over the world, but somehow, they all have the same sky. Or one of three skies, it seems, with recognizable cloud formations if you keep an eye out for them. Vox takes a deep dive into them with James Brouwer, a postcard collector who found this phenomenon in his massive collection. Yes, there is an explanation. We'll learn a lot of about tourism postcards in the process. As soon as I finished watching the video, I went to my envelope of postcards. They aren't vintage, just family souvenirs. Most don't even have clouds, and I saw no duplicates. Then again, they are all from the last 20 years or so.  -via Nag on the Lake

Dr. Katalin Karikó was a biochemist in Hungary who didn't get the respect or funding her research deserved. So she, her husband, and infant daughter made their way out of communist Hungary in 1985 by selling their car, converting the money on the black market, and hiding it inside the baby's toys. She made it to the US and got a research job at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine. While that's quite a story, it was only beginning. Karikó ran into the same problems in the US- supervisors who did not believe in her research and would not go to bat to get the funding she needed.

You see, Karikó was a pioneer working with messenger RNA, or mRNA. She believed it could be made to work against a host of human illnesses, but the substance was a problem to work with in the lab. Her colleagues considered her experiments failures, but Karikó considered them learning experiences. Still, it was hard to get funding without someone higher up to believe in what you're doing. She began to collaborate with immunologist Drew Weissman, who was looking for a vaccine for HIV. They had a breakthrough in 1997, but it still took several years to get a peer-reviewed paper published. By 2013, Karikó was making progress, but she had worked for Penn for almost 30 years, and she'd had enough. She left for a position at a fairly new biomedical startup called BioNTech.

You can see where this story is going. You can read the full version at Glamour magazine. -via Metafilter

Maurice Evans has been collecting fireworks for most of his life, and he's in his 80s now. The gentle author at Spitalfields Life takes us to his home in Shoreham to see the collection and hear his story, with just a bit of trepidation.

My concern about potential explosion was relieved when Maurice confirmed that he has removed the gunpowder from his fireworks, only to be reawakened when his wife Kit helpfully revealed that Catherine Wheels and Bangers were excepted because you cannot extract the gunpowder without ruining them.

This statement prompted Maurice to remember with visible pleasure that he still had a collection of World War II shells in the cellar and, of course, the reinforced steel shed in the garden full of live fireworks. “Let’s just say, if there’s a big bang in the neighbourhood, the police always come here first to see if it’s me,” admitted Maurice with a playful smirk.

But it seemed safe enough, as Maurice still has nine of his ten fingers. The story of his pyromaniacal past and how he developed a fondness for fireworks is more interesting than the collection itself. Read about Maurice Evans and his fantastic fireworks collection at Spitalfields Life. -via Nag on the Lake

Vehicles that run on electricity were around when the first powered vehicles were developed. However, when a new technology comes out in many forms, we usually managed to whittle them down to one type in order to embed the necessary infrastructure, like trained mechanics, factories, and most importantly, fueling stations in all locations. In the case of cars, the gasoline engine won out due to Henry Ford and the abundance of crude oil. But electric power has always been there, mostly in the background, waiting for the right conditions to make a comeback. This TED-Ed animated video explains the history of electric cars. -via Laughing Squid  

As they say, a lie can travel around the world before the truth gets out of bed. I recall telling my Mom that you can't go swimming for an hour after eating. She said, "You're not doing laps for the Olympics. You're just playing in the water. Go on." And she was right, even if that didn't quite debunk the myth. We call them old wives' tales or urban legends, but there are people who will argue with you about these myths today. Some may have once had a reason behind them, or at least faulty reasoning that seemed to make sense at the time, while others are just made up of whole cloth, like eating spiders in your sleep.

You know what can make you feel old? I can remember when some of these untrue "facts" were considered "news" or at least new research findings. See all 14 myths that aren't true at Cracked.

Go, dog, go! On October 23, Frisbee Rob McLeod and a very talented dog named Sailor performed during halftime at the Calgary Stampeders and Saskatchewan Roughriders game in Calgary. Rob threw a Frisbee from one end zone to the other- and sailor not only caught up with it, he caught it!

This sets a new world record for the longest catch at a live sporting event. Earlier this year, Rob Gronkowski caught a ball from 200 yards, albeit that was a ball dropped from a helicopter into an empty stadium. The longest catch possible in an official football game is the 99-yard pass, which has been done quite few times. But Sailor did it the hard way, by starting in the same spot as the thrower. If you want to see more of Sailor, a longer (five minute) video shows us the entire sequence.

That's a good dog. -via reddit

How does one survive the Antarctic cold? Seals develop a thick layer of fat. Penguins combine fat, feathers, and the habit of clinging together in large numbers. People build science stations with heaters. But the Antarctic icefish (Channichthyidae) is cold-blooded and uses some really weird alternative anatomy. It is the only known vertebrate that doesn't have hemoglobin in its blood! The blood of the icefish is almost clear.

What the fish's blood does contain is organic antifreeze. It has unique and specific proteins that lower the freezing point of water, so neither the blood nor the fish's tissues will develop ice crystals. Inspired by the icefish, a food company developed a yeast that produces these same antifreeze proteins and uses it in ice cream!   

But back to the icefish. Without hemoglobin, how does the fish get oxygen to its tissues? Luckily, Antarctic Ocean water holds more oxygen than warmer water. The fish has no scales, so it absorbs some through it skin. It also has a heart that's four times the size of those of similar-sized fish. Read more about the strange Antarctic icefish at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: Marrabbio2)

The best part of the traditional Thanksgiving feast is the dressing, unless you call it stuffing. The basic recipe for both is the same: bread, turkey broth, onions and celery, and spices. My recipe calls for cornbread and lots of sage, others use white bread, sometime sausage or oysters, and an article at Lifehacker mentions eggs, although I never found eggs necessary.

In the South, it's called dressing. If you call it stuffing in the South, people will think you are making Stovetop Stuffing, the instant stuff that comes in a box. In the West, it's more likely to be called stuffing. Other areas vary between the two terms. Semantically, it is stuffing if you put it inside the turkey to be cooked, and dressing when it is cooked separately and served on the side. Still, people tend to use the word common in their region instead of by how it is used.  

No matter what you call it, you shouldn't cook the stuffing inside the bird, though, regardless of what your ancestors did. The reasons why are spelled out at Lifehacker.

In the 1980s and the decades afterward, a cult flourished that revolved around Ior Bock, a Finn who claimed to be descended from mystical ancient pagans. Bock was once a well-known actor in Finland, and he spent years as a tour guide for a historical site until he was let go for embellishing his historical tales. Honestly, Ior Bock's biography is bonkers, involving incest, adoption, fratricide, showbiz, cult leadership, mental illness, paraplegia, and murder -and some of it is true.

In the 1970s and '80s, Bock spent his summers in Goa, India, which was at the time a refuge for hippies looking for enlightenment. He told the story of his family's saga as the keepers of history. It explained the origins of all the people of the world and how they are related, as well as the pagan paradise that was once the North Pole, but is now in Finland. Bock gathered followers and told them of a temple called Lemminkäinen that was a chamber full of treasures from the early civilizations he spoke of.  

So, since 1987, a small but dedicated team of amateur archaeologists have been excavating the Temple of Lemminkäinen on the Bock family estate.

According to Ior Bock, the temple was sealed in 987AD to protect the pagan artefacts from Catholic crusaders who invaded Finland, so the first job was to open it back up.

They've been digging for more than 30 years now. Dutch author Carl Borgen traveled from Canada to Goa as a teenager and heard Bock's saga, but didn't follow him back to Finland. He kept in touch with friends who did, and now had published a book called Temporarily Insane, which is an account of Bock and his followers. Read an overview of Bock, Borgen, and the book at The Scotsman. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Paasikivi)