The Daily Drift

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Carolina Naturally

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Today in History

1219		The port of Damietta falls to the Crusaders after a siege.
1556		The Emperor Akbar defeats the Hindus at Panipat and secures control of the Mogul Empire.
1605		Guy Fawkes is betrayed and arrested in an attempt to blow up the British Parliament in the “Gunpowder Plot.” Ever since, England has celebrated Guy Fawkes Day.
1653		The Iroquois League signs a peace treaty with the French, vowing not to wage war with other tribes under French protection.
1757		Frederick II of Prussia defeats the French at Rosbach in the Seven Years War.
1768		William Johnson, the northern Indian Commissioner, signs a treaty with the Iroquois Indians to acquire much of the land between the Tennessee and Ohio rivers for future settlement.
1814		Having decided to abandon the Niagara frontier, the American army blows up Fort Erie.
1840		Afghanistan surrenders to the British army.
1854		British and French defeat the Russians at Inkerman, Crimea.
1862		Lincoln relieves General George McClellan of command of the Union armies and names Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside commander of the Army of the Potomac.
1872		Susan B. Anthony is arrested for trying to vote.
1911		Calbraith P. Rodgers ends first transcontinental flight–49 days from New York to Pasadena, Calif.
1912		Woodrow Wilson is elected 28th president of the United States.
1914		France and Great Britain declare war on Turkey.
1917		General John Pershing leads U.S. troops into the first American action against German forces.
1930		Sinclair Lewis becomes the first American to win a Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel Babbit.
1935		Parker Brothers company launches “Monopoly,” a game of real estate and capitalism.
1940		President Franklin D. Roosevelt is re-elected for a third term.
1968		Nixon steals the office as the 37th president of the United States.
1968		Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn, New York, becomes the first elected African American woman to serve in the House of Representatives.
1995		Andre Dallaire’s attempt to assassinate Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien is foiled when the minister’s wife locks the door.
2003		Gary Ridgway, known as the Green River Killer, pleads guilty to 48 counts of murder.
2006		Former president of Iraq Saddam Hussein, along with Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, is sentenced to death for the massacre of 148 Shi’a Muslims in 1982.
2007		Chang’e 1, China’s first lunar satellite, begins its orbit of the moon.
2009		The deadliest mass shooting at a US military installation occurs at Fort Hood, Texas, when US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 29.

Democracy's Dirty History

Democracy is a privilege—but it’s also kind of a pain in the butt. It involves long lines, an avalanche of fliers, and the lingering smell of baked ziti in public school cafeterias (or maybe the ziti is only at my polling station?).
But be thankful. In centuries past, voting wasn’t just a metaphorical pain. It was a literal one. Consider the common 19th-century custom called “cooping”: Party thugs would kidnap a voter, get him drunk, then make him vote multiple times, often disguising him in different clothes and wigs.
It sounds like fun and games, but it was anything but. If the voter didn’t comply, he was beaten or killed. Though the evidence is far from certain, some think Edgar Allan Poe was killed in a cooping incident. (He was found in a state of delirium on Election Day in 1849, wearing an un-Poe-like straw hat. He died soon after.)

In New York City, the best-known election riggers were from the notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall machine. One Tammany thug recounted a strategy for voting four times—once with a full beard, then with mutton chops, followed by only a moustache, and finally, totally clean-faced. Around the same time, Andrew Gumbel writes in Steal This Vote, Philadelphia’s Gas Ring gang drummed up votes from dead people, fictional characters, and pets.

If you did make it to the polls, casting the vote itself was something of a hassle, as historian Jill Lepore pointed out in The New Yorker in 2008. For starters, you had to bring your own ballot. You had to spell your candidate’s name correctly (write John instead of Jon and your vote was tossed). In fact, our forefathers regarded secret ballots with suspicion, arguing that they made voting for selfish interests too easy. Some states even required oral votes— you had to say your candidate’s name loud and proud.
On the upside, if you were shy, it was easy to find some liquid courage come voting day. Even George Washington knew the importance of getting voters totally wasted. When he ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758, he provided voters with 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of hard cider, which amounted to about a half-gallon of booze per voter. He wasn’t alone. Getting voters sauced was so common, it had a name: “swilling the planters with bumbo.” (Bumbo was a rum cocktail.) William Henry Harrison went so far as to dub himself the “hard cider candidate” and bring barrels of cider to parades for attendees to imbibe.
Even working at the polls was a risky endeavor. Election officials were subject to kidnapping, Gumbel writes, and even having their coffee spiked with laxatives “so they would be otherwise engaged during the most important phase of the count.”
My hope is that one day we’ll vote hassle-free online. Yes, there’s a risk of hackers—but no smell of leftovers.

Daylight Saving Time Ends This Weekend

Set your clocks back an hour Saturday night before you go to bed. If you are a night owl, set them back at 2AM Sunday, because that's the end of Daylight Saving Time in the United Sates this year. This one is the "good" time change. If you are on a schedule, this gives you an extra hour of sleep, the one that you lost back in the spring. If you can't sleep longer than you normally do, then you'll be up early and rarin' to go for a few days before you get used to it.

(YouTube link)

WhatsUpMoms sees the upside to this time change when it comes to getting kids to fall asleep in the evening and up for school on time. If you can keep the effect for yourself until Tuesday, then you can be at the polls early to vote.

The Witch House of Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills is known for mega-mansions and celebrities, but amongst the glitz and glamour lies the strange and wonderful Witch House. The strange structure was originally built in Hollywood back in 1920s for the silent film production company Willat Productions.

The house was built not only as a film set, but also as a studio dressing room and as an office, so it was a reasonable expense, but when the studio closed down and the house was slated to be torn down, producer Ward Lascelle stepped in to save it. That's when the home got moved to Beverly Hills.

You can read the rest of the home's history and see more photos over at LAist.

Grolier Codex is our oldest surviving record of Maya civilization

Once thought a fake, the Grolier Codex is our oldest surviving record of Maya civilization

Why Isn't Grape Ice Cream A Thing?

Those of us who love grape flavored sweets wonder why manufacturers don't make a grape flavored version of everything, and we assume it's because grape flavor doesn't work so well in things like cakes or donuts.
But grape flavored ice cream sounds like a delicious treat to me, so why isn't grape ice cream a thing?
Turns out it's because ice cream makers like Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's use fresh fruit purees, and grapes have too much water in them to be easily added to ice cream:

Grapes have a high water content, so when you try to use the fruit as a base for ice cream, chunks of that water therein tend to freeze. Chefs whipping up small batches of homemade grape ice cream can avoid this problem by pureeing the fruit, but it’s much harder to manufacture large volumes of ice cream when it’s flecked with bits of ice.
Of course, other fruits, like cherries, are also mostly water—and Cherry Garcia is one of Ben & Jerry’s most popular flavors. In short, it’s possible to make fruit ice cream on a larger scale, but the demand has to be there to make the hassle worthwhile (and for that matter, profitable). And as Cohen explained, most people don’t even think to associate grapes with ice cream—so if Ben & Jerry’s made a grape-flavored dessert, it's likely that nobody would buy it. Since cherry and vanilla are such popular flavors, it pays for the company to make Cherry Garcia.

The Bizarre History of How Corporate Food Industry Flooded Our Farmlands with GMOs

The Bizarre History of How Corporate Food Industry Flooded Our Farmlands with GMOs

Colorado's Sanders-backed health care plan could be a model for the nation

Why Colorado's Sanders-backed health care plan could be a model for the nation

Countess Amanda Feilding Has Spent 50 Years Altering Her Own Mental State

Countess Amanda Feilding Has Spent 50 Years as a Pioneer of Psychedelics Research and Altering Her Own Mental State

German prosecutors investigate Facebook over hate postings

German prosecutors investigate Facebook over hate postings

Because They're Having Sex, Sex I Tell You, And They're Not Letting Greg Abbott Watch

Just when you thought the gay marriage issue was kinda over … oh no.

Man accused of driving around while naked had electronic device with wires attached to genitals

A motorist accused of flashing his private parts to a pedestrian in Boynton Beach, Florida, had an electronic device with wires on his genitals, and drove naked in a neighborhood full of children, police said.It all began when police took a call from a pedestrian who said a man in a white 4-door Toyota drove up to him and asked him to look at his groin area. The witness told police the driver was naked and had some sort of electronic device with wires attached to his genitals.
The witness took a photo and shared it with police. The witness also said the suspect made sexual remarks to him, which he turned down. The suspect, identified as 56-year-old Kurt Allen Jenkins, made several passes through the neighborhood, according to the witness. Jenkins reportedly slowed down as children walked by.
The witness said children looked in the suspect's direction but did not approach his car. Police stopped the car. Jenkins got out wearing only a pair of red shorts, according to the report. Police say he refused to get on the ground, so an officer took him down. Jenkins is facing charges of lewd and lascivious exhibition, indecent exposure of sexual organs, and resisting a law enforcement officer.

Naked man allegedly banging on doors and windows was searching for a sexual partner

27-year-old Joshua Ivy, from Tennessee, was arrested early on Friday after residents of a Florida beach community called 911 to report “a naked white male banging on their windows and doors.”
When police arrived at the condominium complex in Santa Rosa Beach, they discovered Ivy was “completely naked and appeared extremely intoxicated.” Ivy, whose speech was slurred, could not recall how much alcohol he had consumed.
He also couldn't remember where he was staying, or how he had got to the Grand Isle Condominiums. But he did, however, have an explanation for why he was pounding on doors at 3:30am.
Ivy, a police report notes, said that he was “searching for someone to have sexual intercourse with.” He was arrested for disorderly intoxication and spent about five hours in custody before posting $1,000 bond o

Police hunt tutu-wearing man and accomplice who stole fruit and soda from farmers market

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida are seeking help identifying two men its deputies say broke into the Tampa Farmers Market on Tuesday and helped themselves to consumables.
The break-in occurred at around 1am on November 1st. Deputies say the men broke a glass door to gain entry to the farmers market. Once inside, the men began eating fruit and drinking soda.
Surveillance video captured images of the men, but the two moved quickly to cover the camera with a cardboard box. In the footage, one suspect is seen holding a melon and a cell phone with its flashlight illuminated before placing the melon on a counter-top.

YouTube link.

He is described as a white male with a thin build and was dressed in a tutu. It's also possible he was wearing a wig. The second suspect was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with an owl on the front. Anyone who happens to recognize the men is asked to call the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

26 Scientific Studies About Animals

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Scientists have conducted a lot of amazing studies and experiments with animals, many of which you've read about here at Carolina Naturally. But there are quite a few here that we've not heard of. Bears using computers to order food? Left-handed kangaroos? Bison that vote? Learn about all these in the latest episode of the mental_floss List Show.

Proof found that pigs really can fly

While visiting Cotswold Farm Park near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, Rebecca Tay captured this footage of a flying piglet.

YouTube link.

Residents terrorized by aggressive turkey

A turkey in Davis, California, known as Downtown Tom has become so aggressive residents have taken to calling 911 for help. The turkey spends most of his time hanging around the Wells Fargo parking lot in downtown, lunging at, circling and chasing after people.
The city’s even posted signs offering tips on how to handle the turkey. Officials recommend clapping your hands and shouting at the bird, not running away from it, and using whatever you’re carrying to block its approach toward you.
City Wildlife Resource Specialist John McNerney helped create the tips and also helped write a new ordinance passed last week that allows the city to euthanize aggressive turkeys. His advice is to not panic. “Be the dominant species, essentially," McNerney said.

YouTube link.

"Don’t let it intimidate you, which can be difficult for some folks.” On Tuesday, wildlife officials attempted to catch Downtown Tom without success. However, the half-mile chase pushed the bothersome bird out of downtown, where they hope it’ll stay. “They put a lot of fear into it - and really what we’ll call good negative reinforcement,” McNerney said.

This Turtle Thinks Sex is Just Plain "Wow"

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Finding a ready and willing sexual partner isn't easy, but when you do, it's sometimes surprisingly wonderful, leaving you with nothing to say but "wow." And this tortoise knows how that feels -and he can't stop expressing his excitement with just that word. At least there's no question as to whether or not he's having a good time.

Animal Pictures