The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

One Tardis for them all ...! 

 

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Today in History

1248		The city of Seville, Spain, surrenders to Ferdinand III of Castile after a two-year siege.
1785		John Hancock is elected president of the Continental Congress for the second time.
1863		Union forces win the Battle of Orchard Knob, Tennessee.
1863		The Battle of Chattanooga, one of the most decisive battles of the American Civil War, begins (also in Tennessee).
1903		Italian tenor Enrico Caruso makes his American debut in a Metropolitan Opera production of Verdi’s Rigoletto.
1904		Russo-German talks break down because of Russia’s insistence to consult France.
1909		The Wright brothers form a million-dollar corporation for the commercial manufacture of their airplanes.
1921		Warren G. Harding signs the Willis Campell Act, better known as the anti-beer bill. It forbids doctors to prescribe beer or liquor for medicinal purposes.
1933		President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalls the American ambassador from Havana, Cuba, and urges stability in the island nation.
1934		The United States and Great Britain agree on a 5-5-3 naval ratio, with both countries allowed to build five million tons of naval ships while Japan can only build three. Japan will denounce the treaty.
1936		The United States abandons the American embassy in Madrid, Spain, which is engulfed by civil war.
1941		U.S. troops move into Dutch Guiana to guard the bauxite mines.
1942		The film Casablanca premieres in New York City.
1943		U.S. Marines declare the island of Tarawa secure.
1945		Wartime meat and butter rationing ends in the United States.
1953		North Korea signs 10-year aid pact with Peking.
1968		Four men hijack an American plane, with 87 passengers, from Miami to Cuba.
1980		In Europe’s biggest earthquake since 1915, 3,000 people are killed in Italy.
1981		Reagan signs top secret directive giving the CIA authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1990		The first all-woman expedition to South Pole sets off from Antarctica on the part of a 70-day trip; the group includes 12 Russians, 3 Americans and 1 Japanese.
1992		The first Smartphone, IBM Simon, introduced at COMDEX in Las Vegas, Nevada.
2005		Ellen Johnson Sirleaf elected president of Liberia; she is the first woman to lead an African nation.
2006		In the second-deadliest day of sectarian violence in Iraq since the beginning of the 2003 war, 215 people are killed and nearly 260 injured by bombs in Sadr City.
2011		Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signs a deal to to transfer power to the vice president, in exchange for legal immunity; the agreement came after 11 months of protests.

Make Your Own Fire Tornadoes

Kevin Kohler, the Backyard Scientist, makes fire tornadoes with no fan or machinery. This is not only pretty cool, but pretty, too!

(YouTube link)

Once you see how it's done, then it all makes sense. And with different kinds of fuel, you can make flames of different colors. He even makes one tornado with two different colors!

Don’t Flush Sodium Down The Toilet

Don't flush sodium down the toilet. I've actually been told that before. Chemistry teachers routinely say it, which only makes students want to do it. Instead, watch two mad scientists with YouTube channels do it for us. Grant Thompson, the "King of Random" teamed up with CodyDon Reeder to flush sodium down a toilet to show us what will happen.

(YouTube link)

My brother told the tale of how some "friends of his" tossed sodium into their college dorm toilet for fun many years ago. The toilet would routinely throw the sodium chunk back at them. Then some fool got the bright idea to flush it, and you now know what happened. The administration never pinpointed who was responsible, but every resident of that building got a good dressing-down.

17th-Century Dioramas Made from Real Human Body Parts

Born in Netherlands in 1638, Frederik Ruysch studied plants and trained as an apothecary. He also studied animals, and then humans, which led him to study anatomy and become a renowned authority on the subject. He was responsible for several breakthroughs in the art of embalming and otherwise preserving dead tissue. And the reason Ruysch was so keen on preserving dead things that were once alive was because of his art. Ruysch wanted to share the inner structure of the body with the public, and to do that, he made dioramas out of skeletons and body parts, to appeal to the public's sense of aesthetics. He opened a museum to house his collection and works.

Among jars of embalmed specimens, there were several startling dioramas containing skeletons of infants adorned with delicate and morbid decor. In one of the pieces, depicted below, five skeletons are carefully positioned on a vase foundation made of inflated tissues from human testes. There was a feather headdress, a girdle of sheep intestines, and a spear made of the hardened vas deferens of an adult man.
The skeleton standing at the top of the pile of preserved human remains holds a piece of bone like a violin and a dried artery for a bow. Its head tilted towards the heavens is coupled with the inscription, “Ah Fate, ah Bitter Fate!”

The dioramas were a combination of science display and memento mori. Read more about Ruysch and his dioramas at Atlas Obscura. While the illustrations of his works are drawn instead of photographed, they might still be disturbing to some readers.

10 Tricks Retailers Will Use On Black Friday

Retail companies (if not their employees) are looking forward to Black Friday so they can start the Christmas shopping season with a bang. If you are planning on participating in this week's Black Friday sales, you need to go in prepared. Getting a bargain is not as easy as it may seem, and the savings might not be worth the time and hassle. But if you are determined to do all your holiday shopping during the Black Friday sales, keep[ in mind that it's a competition, and only the strong will survive.

When you look at the Black Friday circulars, you should keep in mind that many stores carry a very limited amount of their sale items. Over the years, shoppers have figured this out. This is the reason that they get in line hours before the store even opens so that they can get their hands on certain items before they are all gone.

That's only one of the ten cautions for shopping Black Friday sales at SheBudgets.

Irish People Taste Test Thanksgiving Food

Thanksgiving is a day to give thanks -for food! And there's no better way to show that gratitude than to pig out, and to share those wonderful American dishes with the rest of the world. Let's see what Irish people would think of American Thanksgiving dishes: turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, pecan pie, and some side dishes that aren't all that universal.

(YouTube link)

When you see what Irish people think of our traditional dishes, you have to feel sorry for them. What have they been eating all their lives?

Protein and salt drive post-meal sleepiness

Sleepiness after a large meal is something we all experience, and new research with fruit flies suggests higher protein and salt content in our food, as well as the volume consumed, can lead to longer … Read more

It Costs New York City Taxpayers $1 Million a Day to Protect Tax Dodger Dumbass Trump

It Costs New York City Taxpayers $1 Million a Day to Protect Tax Dodger Dumbass Trump

Police Injure Hundreds at Dakota Access Pipeline Standoff

Police Injure Hundreds at Dakota Access Pipeline Standoff

Woman arrested on drug charges was all smiles until she found out the amount of her bond

A Florida woman was all smiles about being arrested on drug charges until she was read her bond amount, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.
Kaley Ann Kunkemoeller, 24, of Stuart faces several charges including sale of oxymorphone, sale within 1,000 feet of a school and possession of drugs. She’s being held on $265,000, according to Martin County jail records.
Kunkemoeller was smiling after her arrest, but her demeanour became more serious once she learned her bond amount, authorities said. Oxymorphone, known as Opana, is a highly additive opioid.
Kunkemoeller was wanted on warrants surrounding the sale of drugs and was found hiding 50 miles south of Stuart in Boynton Beach by US Marshals Fugitive Task Force. She attempted to flee, but was arrested soon after on Friday. Kunkemoeller was also arrested in September for drug possession including the narcotic painkiller buprenorphine and drug paraphernalia. That case remains open.

Rising Sea Will Remake the Coastlines of Endangered U.S. States

Here's How the Rising Sea Will Remake the Coastlines of Endangered U.S. States and Drown Much of the World We Know

Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior

Frozen beneath a region of cracked and pitted plains on Mars lies about as much water as what’s in Lake Superior, largest of the Great Lakes, a team of scientists led by The University of … Read more

The History of the Rubber Duck

I don't recall whether I had a rubber duck to play with in the bath when I was little, but I certainly took one to college with me -and found that college dorms do not have bathtubs. No matter, I kept that rubber duck and still have it today. But how far back do those cute rubber ducks go? Further than you may think.

(YouTube link)

Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out gives us the complete history of rubber duck bath toys, from the development of vulcanized rubber to the Sesame Street Song "Rubber Duckie" and beyond.

Pheasant helps farmer to round up his sheep

For the past 18 months, a game cock pheasant has been helping a farmer round up his sheep. The unnamed bird appears several times a day while Chris Purdham is doing the rounds on his quad-bike checking on his fell sheep at his farm in Gamblesby, Cunbria.

“He’s there first thing in the morning, and last thing at night, and even when I go down at times during the day to check on the sheep,” said 33-year-old Chris. “He just appears when he hears my quad-bike.” Chris says the bird first appeared during his 2015 lambing season.

YouTube link.

“He first started following me around the fields and down the lonning. Then one day he just started to round the sheep up. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first, but I have got used to him now. He even waits for a couple of seconds to make sure all the stragglers are through,” added Chris. “He’s not even afraid of my sheepdog.

YouTube link.

“They seem to have got used to each other, and the pheasant is definitely cock of the walk. He just goes where the sheep are. After I’ve finished checking the sheep, we both go our own way to get our breakfast,” he added. He said the bird helps him round up a flock consisting of about 270 sheep. “They are our fell ewes wintering near Glassonby, and are checked every day,” he added.

Unfortunate man bitten by snakes twice in three days

A young man in Queensland, Australia, is either very lucky or extremely unlucky after surviving two painful encounters with snakes in three days. The 18-year-old contractor was working at a property on Friday about 300km west of Rockhampton when he was bitten on his right leg by an unidentified "brown colored" snake. An RACQ CQ Rescue helicopter airlifted the man to Mackay Base Hospital in a stable condition.
On Sunday, the man went back to work in the same paddock when he was bitten again by a snake, twice on the left forearm, when he put down his chainsaw. He had been clearing trees and shrubs on the opposite end of the paddock to where he was bitten on Friday.
Another rescue helicopter, with a doctor and care paramedic aboard, airlifted the man to Mackay Base Hospital just before midday. The young man couldn't describe the type of snake to aircrew, only that it was "brown colored". "This incredibly unlucky fellow wasn't very talkative as he was in great deal pain when we arrived at the hospital on Sunday," an RACQ CQ Rescue crewman said.

Rabbit Hash Has a New Mayor

A very important Kentucky election flew under the national news radar because of the presidential race, but the scoop is out now. Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, has a new mayor. The small community has been under the watchful eye of Mayor Lucy Lou for the past eight years, but beginning in 2017, the mayor will be a pit bull named Brynneth Pawltro, or Brynn for short.

Rabbit Hash has had previous dog mayors. Three of them before Brynn, in fact, starting in 1988 with the inauguration of Goofy Borneman — a pup "of unknown parentage," according to his official bio, who served several years before dying in office at the age of 16.
The position, as you may have guessed, is largely ceremonial. The elections serve as fundraisers for the Rabbit Hash Historical Society. Participants pay $1 per ballot, and are encouraged to vote early and often.   

Lucy Lou is retiring from the job, which consists mostly of sitting on the porch at the general store and greeting visitors. That will make her the first canine mayor of Rabbit Hash to survive her tenure in office. Not that the job is deadly; it's just that Rabbit Hash mayors tend to be re-elected. You can keep up with the new mayor's activities at her Facebook page.

New dominant ant species discovered in Ethiopia shows potential for global invasion

A team of scientists conducting a recent biodiversity survey in the ancient church forests of Ethiopia made an unexpected discovery — a rather infamous ant species (Lepisiota canescens) displaying signs of supercolony formation. According to … Read more

Between a rock and a hard place ...

Biologists unearth sandstone-excavating bees

In the popular nursery story The Three Little Pigs, the prudent porker who builds his house of brick is chided by his pals, who choose much easier ways to construct their respective abodes. Only later … Read more

Animal Pictures