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Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

A real man ...! 

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 209 countries around the world daily.   

  
Greetings ... !

Today is - National Handshake Day

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Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told

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Bermuda - Bolivia - Brazil - Canada - Costa Rica - Mexico 
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Belgium - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bulgaria - England - Finland
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China - Hong Kong - India - Indonesia - Iran - Japan - Mauritius 
Pakistan - Saudi Arabia - Singapore - Thailand
Africa
Botswana - Egypt - Morocco 
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Australia - New Zealand - Philippines

Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here.

Today in History

1520		Montezuma II is murdered as Spanish conquistadors flee the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan during the night.
1857		Charles Dickens reads from A Christmas Carol at St. Martin’s Hall in London–his first public reading.
1859		Jean Francois Gravelet aka Emile Blondin, a French daredevil, becomes the first man to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
1908		A mysterious explosion, possibly the result of a meteorite, levels thousands of trees in the Tunguska region of Siberia with a force approaching twenty megatons.
1934		Adolf Hitler orders the purge of his own party in the “Night of the Long Knives.”
1936		Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone With the Wind, is published.
1948		John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley demonstrate their invention, the transistor, for the first time.
1960		Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Psycho, opens.
1971		Three Soviet cosmonauts die when their spacecraft depressurizes during reentry.

50 of America's Best Diners

To pay tribute to the classic American diner, Extra Crispy compiled a list, not of the 50 best diners ranked, but a great diner from each state in the Union. You could easily argue with their choices, because the definition of a “diner” is hard to pin down (you know one when you see it), and chains were excluded. What’s left are people’s opinions on what makes a great diner: hearty food, friendly service, decent prices, and memories. West Virginia’s entry is the Hometown Restaurant in Peterstown.

Peterstown, West Virginia (population 650), which is about a stone’s throw from the Virginia border and right smack in the heart of the Appalachian mountains, has one seriously tasty claim to fame, and that’s Hometown Restaurant. Linda Fox, who opened Hometown nearly 31 years ago, makes nearly everything from scratch, from her signature biscuits and gravy to one of West Virginia’s finest creations: a big bowl of pinto beans topped with chow chow relish served with a wedge of crumbly cornbread. (We don’t call West Virginia “Almost Heaven” for nothing.)
Breakfast is a testament to true soul-satisfying mountain cooking and it’s served all day. Country ham, grits, fried potatoes, and biscuits are always on the menu, as are three different kinds of pan-seared steak to go with your eggs: rib-eye, crispy fried steak, or chopped steak. For something different, get the fried apples over a biscuit, a sweet and savory delicacy that pairs especially well with salty bacon or country ham. Be sure to grab one of Linda’s homemade whole coconut cream pies on your way out (she makes eight different cream pies twice a week), which boast the tallest meringue I’ve ever seen. —Kendra Bailey Morris, author of The Southern Slow Cooker

Check out the list and let us know which ones you’ve been to, and whether they are really that good.

The Restaurant Built in a Waterfall

Chances are you never looked at a waterfall and thought "that's a place I wanna eat," but after looking at a few photos of the Labassin Waterfall Restaurant in the Philipines you might start feeling that way. This stunning restaurant lets dinners sit at the base of a waterfall and feel the water flow over their feet as they eat. You can even head over to the flow and let it run over you between bites.

How running a marijuana business cost this man life insurance

How running a marijuana business cost this man life insurance

“If they’re willing to insure people who utilize cannabis, what’s the concern with someone operating under state laws?” says Derek Peterson.

Adults Who Were Bullied as Children Can Suffer From Debilitating Symptoms Similar to PTSD

Adults Who Were Bullied as Children Can Suffer From Debilitating Symptoms Similar to PTSD

Wingnuts freak out over ‘UN takeover’ after spotting trucks made in Virginia and sold overseas

Wingnuts freak out over ‘UN takeover’ after spotting trucks made in Virginia and sold overseas

Wingnuts — including Palin — are freaking out over reports of United Nations vehicles spotted on highways in Virginia and Kentucky.

The stupidity is truly breathtaking, and hilarious.

Lunatic Alito’s Bizarre And Offensive Attack On Atheists

Alito’s Bizarre And Offensive Attack On Atheists

Gay ex-Mormon could be the true heir to the British throne in strange royal love child scandal

Gay ex-Mormon could be the true heir to the British throne in strange royal love child scandal

A scandalous secret marriage to Roman Catholic Maria Fitzherbert may have produced an heir to George IV and the British throne that no one knew existed.

The 2016 Anti-LGBT March For Marriage Was A Complete Flop

237 people. We counted, and we were generous.

N.C. wingnuts backpedal on trans bathroom ban to stop NBA from moving All-Star Game

N.C. wingnuts backpedal on trans bathroom ban to stop NBA from moving All-Star Game

"What the league is looking for is for anyone to be able to use, at any All Star venue, the bathroom associated with their gender identity," said the station's source, who was not identified.

Berkeley teacher hit with threats after clashing with neo-Nazis

‘I hold Dumbass Trump responsible’: Berkeley teacher hit with threats after clashing with neo-Nazis

“I am disgusted and condemn these attacks on myself and the children, the faculty and staff at my school,” Yvette Felarca told Berkeleyside.

Jehovah’s Witnesses accused of vandalizing 7,000 year-old pyramid out of fears of devil worship

Jehovah’s Witnesses accused of vandalizing 7,000 year-old pyramid out of fears of devil worship

According to local media sources, recent damage at the base of a pyramid at the San Bartolo Tutotepec archeological site falls in line the destruction of altars in the area that cult members have taken responsibility for.

Sorority sister who texted ‘no more baby’ gets life in prison for tossing newborn in dumpster to die

Sorority sister who texted ‘no more baby’ gets life in prison for tossing newborn in dumpster to die

A Ohio sorority sister was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury found her guilty of giving birth to a baby girl and then throwing her away.

Man sneaked into closed restaurant before sprinkling himself with sugar

Surveillance video caught a man sneaking into the Mother restaurant in midtown Sacramento, California, when it was closed over the weekend and pouring sugar over himself for several seconds in the eatery’s empty kitchen.

Ryan Donahue, a partner in the Mother and Empress restaurants in Sacramento, said he was walking by Mother at about 1pm on Saturday when he saw the man and followed him out. Donahue said he then called the Downtown Partnership, a property improvement organization, which he presumes called police.
On Monday, Sacramento police said officers detained 38-year-old Sacramento resident Shannon Berry near the location shortly after the incident. Berry was arrested on suspicion of burglary and was served with a notice of trespass, police said. Donahue said the man went into six or seven businesses in a span of 10 minutes. He appeared to have got into Mother when an employee left the door partially open, Donahue said.
The surveillance video shows Mr Berry hiding behind a counter, then grabbing a beer and some other items, and sprinkling himself with sugar. “He was on another plane,” Donahue said. “He didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. It was the closest thing I’ve seen to Daffy Duck and the Tasmanian Devil ... It was unique even for K Street ... It wasn’t malicious. It was just weird.”
You can watch the surveillance video here.

Man accused of trying to shoot his ex-girlfriend and her friends with a bow and arrow

A man from Salisbury, North Carolina, was arrested on Sunday night after trying to shoot his ex-girlfriend and her friends with a bow and arrow through the window of her home, according to deputies. The incident began just after 10:30pm in Rockwell when, deputies said, 46-year-old Jody Edgar Hall showed up with the bow and arrow and began threatening his ex-girlfriend and two of her friends.

The victim told authorities that she and her friends heard yelling outside. When she opened the door, she saw Hall with a bow and arrow, which he drew back to release just as she closed the door. She said he then tried to force his way into the front door, but couldn't get in. The victim said she then went to a bedroom where her friend was lying on a bed.
That's when officials said Hall fired an arrow through the bedroom window. It reportedly stuck into the wall over the friend's head. When Hall told the victims he would burn down the house if they didn't come outside, the ex-girlfriend called 911. When deputies got to the scene, they found Hall's moped, but could not find him. It was later discovered he had climbed to the top of a tree to hide.
While one deputy went to the Rowan County Magistrate's Office to get an arrest warrant, other deputies continued searching the area. That's when Hall reportedly returned to the home and tried to kick in the door. The victim called 911 again and Hall was arrested. Hall was taken to the county jail and charged with three counts of felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and three counts of first-degree burglary. He was given bond of $250,000 on the assault and $250,000 bond on the burglary charges.

Mystery surrounds apparent theft of roof from house

What someone took from an home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has a neighborhood baffled. It couldn’t have been easy, but someone swiped an entire roof right off a house. Now the homeowner wants to know who these mystery men are. From the front, the home in northwest Albuquerque looks normal. However, when Cory Archuleta went to check the mail on Saturday, he noticed something major was missing. All of the shingles from his roof were gone. “Even the police officer couldn’t believe it,” Archuleta said.

He said his insurance adjuster also had to laugh about it at one point. “She said that they’ll have to claim it as ‘stolen,'” he chuckled, still baffled by the strange theft. He learned from neighbors that before the weekend, someone had stripped the entire roof off of the house. “That’s all they left,” said Archuleta, pointing to a few shingles on the ground. He’s been in the process of selling the house, and the future resident hasn’t moved in yet. “My first thought was to call the realtor to see if maybe the new owners were doing anything yet,” Archuleta recalled. “But we haven’t closed on the house so I don’t know why they’d be working on it.”
He called his realtor, Alex Morgan. “He said, ‘well, my roof is gone. The original roof is gone,'” Morgan recalled. “And I was like, ‘what? How the hell is that possible? How does somebody steal a roof?'” Neighbors tell Archuleta they saw a crew there on Thursday and Friday tearing the roof off, but they didn’t think it was suspicious at the time. “They just figured it was part of the sale of the house,” said Archuleta. “They were in a truck with no sign, no business signs on it, so nobody knows who they are.” The home didn’t need a new roof. Archuleta said the houses in the neighborhood are fairly new. Whoever did all that work mostly cleaned up after themselves.

YouTube link.

“They put the tar paper back,” Archuleta pointed out. His best guess is that someone ordered a new roof, just not this address. “It’s just surprising that they did do all that work and then you know, must have found out they were at the wrong residence and decided to stop where they were at,” Archuleta said. He hopes the mystery men might return to finish the job. Archuleta is now working to get the roof replaced before it rains. So far no one has come forward to claim a mistaken job location. Neighbors said the mystery men were in a silver extended cab pick-up truck with a white flat-bed trailer. On the bright side, Archuleta said the new owner will be getting a new roof. In the meantime, Archuleta has to fork out $1,000 up-front for his insurance deductible.

Pony, donkey and cow headed to local pub after escaping from their paddock

A pony, donkey and a cow headed to a pub in Australia's Northern Territory after escaping from their paddock on Monday night. The unusual trio trotted about a kilometer from their home to the Humpty Doo Hotel, about 40km north of Darwin. Mary Walshe, who lives next door to the hotel said she woke at 2:30am after her dog began barking. "Our little Jack Russell security alarm was a bit persistent, and of course I listen to my animals and I jumped up," Ms Walshe said.
"I had a look out the window and a bit of a white flash went across the back of the pub, then another little white flash, which got my attention. There was a tiny pony, and a tiny donkey and a cow." Ms Walshe began to get worried about the animals' safety. The pub is located on the Arnhem Highway, a road frequented by large trucks during the night.

"I went in and woke up my long-suffering dear husband ... which didn't go down really well, I might add," she said. Ms Walshe said she was also worried someone who was hungry enough could have tried to capture the heifer. "She was exceptionally good, the cow. She could have been eaten by anyone quite easily, which is what I was worried about," she said. That was when Ms Walshe called the police. "I had to convince them that I wasn't on any sort of substances that might be causing this story."

Officers took the situation seriously and helped Ms Walsh lead the animals into her backyard using a bag of bread. The blame for the escapade was later laid solely on the pony. "The little stallion [was] definitely the leader of the pack and had the other two following," added Ms Walshe. Following a public appeal for information, the owners of the animals came and collected them on Tuesday morning before returning them to their paddock.
There's a news video on this page.

First Mammal Goes Extinct Due to Human-Caused Climate Change

First Mammal Goes Extinct Due to Human-Caused Climate Change

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The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

A real man ...! 

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 209 countries around the world daily.   

  
We like cake ... !

Today is - There is no special celebration today

You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told

Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Bermuda - Brazil - Canada - Mexico - Puerto Rico - United States - Venezuela
Europe
Belgium - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bulgaria - England - Finland - France
Germany - Greece - Hungary - Ireland - Italy - Latvia - Netherlands - Norway
Poland - Portugal - Romania - Russia - Scotland - Serbia - Slovakia - Slovenia 
Spain - Sweden - Turkey - Ukraine - Wales
Asia
China - Hong Kong - India - Iran - Japan - Mauritius - Pakistan - Saudi Arabia 
Thailand - Vietnam
Africa
Algeria - Djibouti
The Pacific
Australia - New Zealand - Philippines

Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here.

Today in History

1236		Ferdinand III of Castile and Leon take Cordoba in Spain.
1652		Massachusetts declares itself an independent commonwealth.
1767		The British parliament passes the Townshend Revenue Act, levying taxes on America.
1862		Union forces, falling back from Richmond, fight at the Battle of Savage’s Station.
1880		France annexes Tahiti.
1888		Professor Frederick Treves performs the first appendectomy in England.
1903		The British government officially protests Belgian atrocities in the Congo.
1905		Russian troops intervene as riots erupt in ports all over the country, leaving many ships looted.
1917		The Ukraine proclaims independence from Russia.
1925		An earthquake ravages Santa Barbara, California.
1926		Fascists in Rome add an hour to the work day in an economic efficiency measure.
1932		Siam’s army seizes Bangkok and announces an end to the absolute monarchy.
1938		Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, and Olympic National Park, Washington, are founded.
1950		President Harry S. Truman authorizes a sea blockade of Korea.
1951		The United States invites the Soviet Union to the Korean peace talks on a ship in Wonsan Harbor.
1955		The Soviet Union sends tanks to Poznan, Poland, to put down anti-Communist demonstrations.
1966		The U.S. Air Force bombs fuel storage facilities near Hanoi, North Vietnam.
1967		Israel removes barricades, re-unifying Jerusalem.
1970		U.S. troops pull out of Cambodia.
1982		Israel invades Lebanon.

20 Heroes, Villains, Aliens, And Monsters Who Ran For President

We all have politics on the brain nowadays, but regardless of your political leanings or feelings about the candidates, it's worth remembering that it could be weirder. Here's a list of the best, the worst, and the strangest beings who tried to take residence in the White House.

60 Years Ago: The Last Packard Rolls off the Assembly Line60 Years Ago: The Last Packard Rolls off the Assembly Line

Founded in 1899, Packard was one of the last independent car manufacturers in the US. The luxury brand survived the Great Depression and two world wars. It emerged in good financial shape after domestic car production picked up in 1946. But it couldn't keep up with changing markets and its larger competitors.
In 1955, Packard merged with Studebaker--another company that would soon disappear. The following year, Packard unveiled the Patrician, an example of which is pictured above. On June 25, 1956, the last Packard came off the assembly line in Detroit. For a few more years, there would be Studebakers re-branded as Packards. But this would be the last true Packard. Blake Z. Rong writes mournfully at Road & Track:

All the things that went wrong with Packard—a move downmarket, chasing volume instead of brand image, strange styling, intense cost-cutting, defects, recalls, pissed-off dealers, model lineup bloat, the dreaded scourge of "badge engineering," a desperate merger with a tarnished car-maker just to compete with bigger companies—are still happening today. Maserati comes to mind. The last Honda Civic. Every dead GM brand that didn't survive the bailout, plagued by lost identities and muddled marketing, surviving this far only by dint of pure nostalgia. Mercury. Plymouth. The Mercedes-Benz CLA. Is Volkswagen going to follow the same route? Or Fiat-Chrysler? It's always sad when a car-maker dies, and we never wish for that to happen. Not even for Mitsubishi.

Neo-Nazis are creating bizarre dance music that mixes Hitler speeches with club beats

Neo-Nazis are creating bizarre dance music that mixes Hitler speeches with club beats

Fox 'News' Attacks LGBT Community With Disgusting Story Saying They’re After Young Children

The depths to which wingnuts will sink to demonize the LGBT community knows no bounds.

Continue Reading 

Five Wingnut Predictions About Marriage Equality That Still Haven't Come True

Sunday marked the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality decision, which, if religio-wingnut agitators were to be believed, was to usher in a horrible tyranny that would lead to mass deaths and war. Of course, the religio-wingnuts’ doomsday predictions about what would... MORE

SCOTUSBlog Brilliantly Trolls The Trolls Who Attack Them Following Supreme Court Rulings

SCOTUSBlog Brilliantly Trolls The Trolls Who Attack Them Following Supreme Court Rulings

Following the end of every term for the Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog, which is in no way run by the Supreme Court, inevitably finds itself under attack from...

Federal Judge Rules ‘Christians’ Can’t Use ‘Religious Liberty’ To Deny Marriage Licenses To Gay People

Federal Judge Rules ‘Christians’ Can’t Use ‘Religious Liberty’ To Deny Marriage Licenses To Gay People

It’s almost poetic. Just after the news broke that Mike Huckabee will have to pay $25,000 for the unauthorized use of Survivor’s “Eye...

Pro Tip: You Don't Need to ShowerPro Tip: You Don't Need to Shower

Do you bathe on a regular basis? Stop. You don't need to.
James Hamblin, a physician, explains in The Atlantic that it's unnecessary. Your body will naturally regulate its own filth if you would just leave it alone:

The odor of bodies is the product of bacteria that live on our skin and feed off of the oily secretions from the sweat and sebaceous glands at the base of our hair follicles. Applying detergents (soaps) to our skin and hair every day disrupts a sort of balance between skin oils and the bacteria that live on our skin. When you shower aggressively, you obliterate the ecosystems. They repopulate quickly, but the species are out of balance and tend to favor the kinds of microbes that produce odor.
But after a while, the idea goes, your ecosystem reaches a steady state, and you stop smelling bad.

Hamblin put the theory to the test on himself. It worked! His friends tell him that he doesn't stink:

And everything is fine. I wake up and get out the door in minutes. At times when I might’ve smelled bad before, like at the end of a long day or after working out,  I just don’t. At least, to my nose. I’ve asked friends to smell me, and they insist that it’s all good. (Though they could be allied in an attempt to ruin me.)

So knock it off with bathing. Live naturally. The people around you will appreciate it.

Scientists have found a way to get all the shampoo out of the bottle

Scientists have found a way to get all the shampoo out of the bottle

Pizzeria Uses Robot to Prepare Pies, Bakes Them on Delivery Truck

Her name is Marta. She's the next generation in pizza chefs. Marta, who is a robot, assembles pizzas, then gives them to another robot named Bruno. Bruno loads the pizzas into an oven where they bake partially--but not all of the way.
The pizzas are then loaded onto delivery trucks. Each truck has 56 ovens. When a computer calculates that the truck is 3 minutes and 15 seconds away from the destination, it turns the oven on.
So when the customer gets the pizza, it's extremely fresh because it just came out of the oven.
This is the business model for Zume, a new startup located 2 minutes away from Google's headquaters in Mountain View, California. Bloomberg News (auto-start) investigated what may the the future of food:

"We are going to be the Amazon of food," said Zume's co-founder and executive chairman, Alex Garden. […]
Garden is confident it won't be long before he's competing with the major pizza chains. "Just imagine Domino's without the labor component," said Garden. "You can start to see how incredibly profitable that can be."

The Mysterious Origins of Sausage

What can you say about sausage? That it’s funny because of its phallic shape, that you can’t always know what’s in it (and that’s scary), and just about every culture around the world has it. Sausages vary from place to place, and in different eras, and the variety of force meat in casings means it can even be hard to define.

The ubiquity of the food makes it hard to trace its first moments on Earth; sausages were a solution to a problem that every culture was likely to come up against. “Sausages were created originally for two reasons: One, to make use of every little piece of the meat, so nothing is wasted, and two, by using salt and smoking, it was a way to preserve it,” explains Gary Allen, author of Sausages: A Global History, pointing to the rise of coordinated hunting and the ability to pull down increasingly larger game as one of the conditions that led to the birth of sausages.

Read about the development of sausage and the many different sausages of the world at Atlas Obscura.

10 Must-See Islands You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

If you go to France, you may as well skip the Louvre because it’s overrun with tourists. If you go to Italy, you may be disappointed in how commercialized the Leaning Tower of Pisa is. And if you are looking for a relaxing island getaway, you might do well to skip the most popular destinations and organized tours, and try one of the beautiful, lesser-known islands of the world. Like the volcano called Aogashima.

About 358 km away from Tokyo, Japan is the small, volcanic island called Aogashima. It is the most isolated island of the Izu archipelago, though it is inhabited by approximately 200 villagers. The island is a crater made by a volcanic eruption, and inside the crater is another volcano. Its 1780s eruption classifies it as active, because nearly half of the people living there died. For more than fifty years, nobody returned.
It is a lush tropical island in the Philippine Sea with a mysterious lure. Its serenity brings travelers to unwind in its geothermal sauna. The adventurous come to hike and cook their meals in the volcanic steam vents using pots provided at the sauna. Ferry and helicopter are the only options for reaching the island. It is a bit like Shangri La, only in the midst of the sea. It also comes with a warning that nobody knows when or if it will erupt again. The brave may reap the experience of a lifetime there.

See nine other surprising island destinations at Money Inc.

NASA rover findings point to a more Earth-like Martian past

NASA rover findings point to a more Earth-like Martian past

Beware Kangaroos Claiming To Be Window WashersBeware Kangaroos Claiming To Be Window Washers

People who live in a kangaroo-less country don't realize how dangerous those muscular marsupials can be when they're mad, but there's a reason they call a group of kangaroos a mob.
And thanks to this terrifying but true video footage shared by Gem 106 we're reminded why the world is better off without a bunch of bounding brutes banging on our windows.

(YouTube Link)

And you thought door-to-door salesmen were the most annoying creatures on the planet!

The Critters Are Coming!

What happens when the delicate balance of nature tips in such a way that a particular animal population spikes to unsustainable levels? Pretty much what you’d expect: chaos… famine… and critters out the wazoo.

THE 48-YEAR CURSE

The wild bamboo forests in northwest India and parts of Burma are home to an odd curse: Every 48 years, like clockwork, they produce an army of hungry rats that devour the local rice crop. The phenomenon is called mautam (which translates to “bamboo death”) and is caused by the life cycle of melocanna bamboo, the local variety. The plants live for exactly 48 years, at which point entire forests die off simultaneously. But before they die, they produce a tremendous amount of seed-filled fruit. The fruit will replant the next generation of bamboo, but in the meantime, it also provides a huge increase in the amount of food available to the local black rat community.

The sudden food surplus sets off a population boom. For as long as the good times last, the rats breed continuously. It takes only about 11 weeks for the baby rats to reach maturity. That means, during the year that the forest fruits, the rat population jumps exponentially every couple of months— from as few as 100 rats per acre to as many as 12,000 per acre. And at just about the time that the rat population is hitting its peak, the bamboo fruit runs out.  
When that happens, millions of starving rats swarm the countryside, eating everything in their path… which spells disaster for the local rice farmers. In the past, without advance planning and no ability to bring in extra food from outside the region, the rat plague could lead to famine and political upheaval. As for the rats, once they’ve decimated the rice crop, they starve to death en masse. Their population numbers crash back down, but everyone knows they’ll be back… in 48 years.

THE HOUSE MOUSE INVASION

For more than a century, Australians have been at war against what they call the “mouse plague.” Once every four years on average, somewhere in Australia, vast stretches of farmland are devastated by millions of hungry mice. Why are Australian mice so hard to control? Probably because they aren’t natives— they’re an invasive species.
The mice that cause such destruction Down Under actually belong to one of the most common mouse species in the world: the house mouse. Native to Asia, these mice abandoned foraging in the wild in favor of scavenging in human settlements nearly 10,000 years ago. And as human agriculture and civilization spread across the globe, the house mice spread too. They most likely arrived in Australia as stowaways aboard the first ships that brought settlers there in the 1780s.
House mice are among the fastest breeders in the world. A female’s pregnancy lasts just 19 days and produces five to ten baby mice. Those baby mice start having their own babies when they’re only six weeks old. Oh, yeah— and females can get pregnant again just one to three days after giving birth. This means that one female mouse can produce 500 new mice in less than six months.

THE ORIGINAL AND STILL THE WORST

Desert locusts are the granddaddy of all animal plagues. Ancient Egyptians wrote about them 3,500 years ago, and they’ve been menacing much of North Africa and the Middle East ever since. For thousands of years, no one had any idea where they came from. Most years, there were no locusts at all. In a bad year, though, they showed up by the billions, in huge clouds dense enough to blot out the sun. The clouds swept across the countryside, eating every bit of vegetation in their path and leaving farm fields stripped bare. It wasn’t until the 1920s that scientists uncovered the secret of the locusts’ mysterious appearances.
It turns out that locusts are just regular grasshoppers driven crazy by overcrowding. The desert is a harsh environment, and there’s usually not enough food to support a large grasshopper population. To ensure survival of the species, female grasshoppers lay as many as 150 eggs just under the surface of loose, sandy ground. Ordinarily, not all of the eggs hatch— and not all of the ones that hatch survive. But when a particularly wet winter comes along, two things happen: First, more of the eggs hatch. And second, the extra moisture means that extra vegetation grows, providing enough food to support the extra population… at first.
Scientists aren’t exactly sure why, but overcrowded conditions cause grasshoppers to change both their appearance and their behavior. Their color morphs from green to a yellow-and-black pattern. More importantly, their personalities change— from solitary individuals to being clustered together in an organized mob that moves across the landscape as one giant, food-frenzied unit. Weird but true.

Bonus: The swarm, American-style. For the first three or four decades of settlement on the Great Plains, American farmers regularly had their crops wiped out by the Rocky Mountain locust. In 1874, a swarm of locusts estimated at a size of 198,000 square miles— about twice the size of Colorado— swept through Nebraska. By the early 1900s, the Rocky Mountain locust had disappeared from the landscape, apparently gone extinct. The only explanation scientists have come up with for why this happened is that the settlers may have plowed up the locusts’ breeding grounds without even realizing it.

Duck and Dog Play Chase

(Video Link)

The duck's only chance is to outwit his much faster opponent. Perhaps he could double back and catch the dog behind him Or, like Khan in Star Trek II, his opponent may be thinking in 2 dimensions instead of 3. He could fly over the rock to catch his foe from above.

9 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of a Shark Week Cinematographer

Shark Week is upon us, as it has been for 28 years. While we marvel at the awesomeness of the predators of our nightmares, you have to wonder about the folks who actually get in the water with them to get the footage. Andy Brandy Casagrande IV, in addition to having the world’s most awesome name, is a shark cinematographer. He’s the one who gets a great white shark to say "cheese" for the camera. He shares some tidbits about his job with us.

The shark-proof cage so often seen in TV specials serves a real purpose. Casagrande is well-known for diving without one, but there are times when even he prefers the security a cage can provide. “The cage protects you from sharks that might be a little more bitey than usual,” Casagrande says. “It can keep you safe from sharks that might sneak up on you, or if visibility is bad, or in the dark.”
Sharks have unique personalities just like people, according to Casagrande. “If you’re at a party or a bar and you see some dude that has bloody knuckles or a black eye, and he looks angry, that’s not the kind of guy you walk up to and stick your GoPro in his face," he says. "Often if a shark is all chewed up and looks like a brawler, that shark is not afraid to engage in conflict.” But many sharks are ambush predators, and so you may not see that brawler coming—hence the cage.

Read more about being a shark cinematographer at mental_floss.

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