The Daily Drift

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Carolina Naturally

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Today is - Black Cat Appreciation Day

 You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
Some of our readers today have been in:
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Argentina - Barbados - Bolivia - Brazil - Canada - Chile - Colombia 
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Austria - Belgium - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Czech Republic 
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Montenegro - Netherlands - Norway - Poland - Portugal - Romania - Russia 
Scotland - Serbia - Slovakia - Slovenia - Spain - Sweden - Switzerland -
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Asia
Bangladesh - Brunei - Burma - China - Hong Kong - India - Indonesia 
Iran - Israel - Japan - Korea - Malaysia - Mauritius - Nepal - Pakistan 
Saudi Arabia - Singapore - Sri Lanka - Taiwan - Thailand - Vietnam
Africa
Libya - South Africa - Tunisia - Zambia
The Pacific
Australia - New Zealand - Philippines

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

Today in History

1743		By the Treaty of Abo, Sweden cedes southeast Finland to Russia, ending Sweden’s failed war with Russia.
1812		Napoleon Bonaparte‘s army defeats the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk during the Russian retreat to Moscow.
1833		The first steam ship to cross the Atlantic entirely on its own power, the Canadian ship Royal William, begins her journey from Nova Scotia to The Isle of Wight.
1863		Union gunboats attack Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, for the first time.
1942		Marine Raiders attack Makin Island in the Gilbert Islands from two submarines.
1943		Allied forces complete the conquest of Sicily.
1944		The mayor of Paris, Pierre Charles Tattinger, meets with the German commander Dietrich von Choltitz to protest the explosives being deployed throughout the city.
1945		Upon hearing confirmation that Japan has surrendered, Sukarno proclaims Indonesia’s independence.
1960		American Francis Gary Powers pleads guilty at his Moscow trial for spying over the Soviet Union in a U-2 plane.
1978		Three Americans complete the first crossing of the Atlantic in a balloon.
1987		93-year-old Rudolf Hess, former Nazi leader and deputy of Adolf Hitler, is found hanged to death in Spandau Prison.
1988		Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq is killed in an airplane crash suspected of being an assassination.
1998		President Bill Clinton admits to the American public that he had affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
1999		A 7.4-magnitude earthquake near Izmit, Turkey kills over 17,000 and injures nearly 45,000.
2005		Israel begins the first forced evacuation of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank, as part of a unilateral disengagement plan.
2012		Moscow’s top court upholds ban of gay pride events in Russia’s capital city for 100 years.

Hidden Figures

It’s only been in the last couple of decades that we learned the history of the “human computers,” the women whose brains powered the calculations that developed software, built the atom bomb, and took us to the moon. Even less likely to be in our school history books are the black women among them.

(YouTube link)

Margot Lee Shetterly grew up in a family of black scientists, engineers, technicians, and teachers. Her new book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race goes on sale next month and is already a movie. She writes:

After the start of World War II, Federal agencies and defense contractors across the country coped with a shortage of male number crunchers by hiring women with math skills. America’s aeronautical think tank, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the “NACA”), headquartered at Langley Research Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia, created a pool of female mathematicians who analyzed endless arrays of data from wind tunnel tests of airplane prototypes. Women were thought to be more detail-oriented, their smaller hands better suited for repetitive tasks on the Friden manual adding machines. A “girl” could be paid significantly less than a man for doing the same job. And male engineers, once freed from laborious math work, could focus on more “serious” conceptual and analytical projects.
The war also opened doors for African-Americans. In 1941, under pressure from labor and civil rights leaders such as A. Phillip Randolph, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which created the Fair Employment Practices Committee, and prohibited race-based discrimination in the country’s defense industry. Shortly thereafter, help wanted notices began appearing in Negro newspapers around the country, looking for blacks to fill positions at Federal agencies and defense contractors. Langley advertised in Norfolk, VA’s Journal and Guide, seeking machine shop workers, laborers, janitors—and African-American women with math degrees.
These women were nearly all top graduates of historically black colleges such as Hampton Institute, Virginia State and Wilberforce University. Though they did the same work as the white women hired at the time, they were cloistered away in their own segregated office in the West Area of the Langley campus-- thus the moniker, the West Computers.  But despite the hardships of working under Virginia's Jim Crow laws, these women went on to make significant contributions to aeronautics, astronautics, and America's victory over the Soviet Union in the Space Race.

You can pre-order the book to be released September 6, and the film Hidden Figures will hit theaters in January. -

How Old Is Too Old for a Safe Pregnancy?

How Old Is Too Old for a Safe Pregnancy?

10 Subtle Signs You’re About to Get Canned

10 Subtle Signs You’re About to Get Canned 

100 Amazing Bathroom Ideas

A bathroom is necessary, but it doesn’t have to be just utilitarian. Even if no one goes there but you, you’ll want to make it as pleasant and pretty as you can. Housely has some design tips you can run with and make them your own. They look at how you can update your bathroom with a glass shower, use tile to add color and style, make a bathroom work in a small space, and how to accessorize yours to made it personal. And there’s 100 picture to illustrate those ideas, at Housely.

Are Rotisserie Chickens a Bargain?

Grocery stores are selling a lot of rotisserie chicken from their delis. You walk in and see them immediately, or smell them, all hot and spiced and cooked just right and ready to take home for dinner. Getting one already cooked saves you time in the kitchen, especially if you aren’t confident about cooking a whole chicken. And they are often the same price as the whole chickens you see at the meat counter. How can they do that? And why?

In most stores, the cooked chickens aren’t any cheaper. They just look cheaper. The per-chicken price favors the deli counter, but the per-pound price favors the refrigerator case.
A lot of chicken went into the previous sentences—14 to be exact, one rotisserie, one from the refrigerator case, from seven separate groceries in California, ranging from Costco to Whole Foods to a Middle Eastern market. After being prepared and cooked, the refrigerated chicken almost always weighs significantly more than the rotisserie option.
Our investigation into the rotisserie chicken industry reveals that it’s not as cheap as people believe. But it is a gift to the lazy and rushed.

Pricenomics breaks down the history and process of selling grocery store rotisserie chicken, and the results of their experiment, in which the staff supposedly consumed 14 baked chickens. Read the article and the results, but be warned that you may find yourself craving a hot spiced whole chicken before you finish.

This Is What Happens When A Fly Lands On Your Food

Flies are everywhere, and even when we don't see them they're hanging around somewhere waiting for a chance to get at our food.
They aren't exactly subtle about their intentions either, and without hesitation a fly will land on our food right when we're in the middle of chowing down, making us wonder if the food is still safe to eat.
Well, here's the thing- flies eat really gross stuff like poop, rotten meat and toxic trash, and they vomit enzymes onto their food, or our food as the case may be, before they eat it.
But that's not how flies transfer some of the over 200 types of bacteria they may be carrying around, because as this DNews video shows the nasty stuff is actually sitting on the little hairs all over their legs and body.

(YouTube Link)

The World's Weirdest Food Vending Machines

Looking for some caviar or live crabs, but don't have time to stop at the shop or just simply don't want to deal with people? Then hit the vending machine instead. That's right, these are some of only a few of the totally weird products you can buy in a vending machine these days. If you're not in the mood for expensive snacks, then how about some fresh baked pizza or a baguette? This Thrillist list even features vending machines that sell beer and sausages, so you can Octoberfest like a pro.

15 Surprising Facts About Marco Polo

Born in the Republic of Venice in 1254, Marco Polo was a trader, traveler, and adventurer, who (probably) journeyed to Central Asia and China in an era when vast swaths of the world were still uncharted and just traveling to a neighboring town could take you days.
When he returned from his adventures, he brought back stories that helped introduce Europeans to Asia, and contributed to demystifying the largely unknown continent. But as amazing as all that may sound, it only scratches the surface of the bizarre and exciting life of the traveling merchant. Here are 15 things you might not know about Marco Polo.

Smelliness, Anxiety, and Dominance

The Search for the Smell of Anxiety

“Induction of Empathy by the Smell of Anxiety,” Alexander Prehn-Kristensen, Christian Wiesner, Til Ole Bergmann, Stephan Wolff, Olav Jansen, Hubertus Maximilian Mehdorn, Roman Ferstl, and Bettina M. Pause, PLoS ONE, vol. 4, no. 6, 2009, e5987. The authors, at the University of Duesseldorf and several other institutions in Germany, report:

Here, we investigate how chemosensory anxiety signals conveyed by the sweat of humans (N = 49) awaiting an academic examination are processed by the human brain, as compared to chemosensory control signals obtained from the same sweat donors in a sport condition. The chemosensory stimuli were... administered to 28 participants (14 males) synchronously to breathing via an olfactometer. The stimuli were perceived with a low intensity and accordingly only about half of the odor presentations were detected by the participants. The fMRI results (event-related design) show that chemosensory anxiety signals activate brain areas involved in the processing of social emotional stimuli (fusiform gyrus), and in the regulation of empathic feelings (insula, precuneus, cingulate cortex).

Smelliness and Social Acceptance
“You Are As You Smell: The Effect of Odor and Breath Odor on Social Acceptance,” Alan R. Hirsch, Journal of Breath Research, vol. 2, no. 1, 2008, 017001. The author, at the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, reports:

This article discusses the many factors that can influence odor perception, including association, expectancy and context and a good number of perceiver response variables such as age and gender as well as personality type. A historical background is included together with a wide range of references.

Personality Clue Strength: Appearance or Odor?
“Seeing or Smelling? Assessing Personality on the Basis of Different Stimuli,” Agnieszka Sorokowska, Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 55, no. 2, 2013, pp. 175-179. The author, at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, explains:

This study examines whether people can accurately assess personality on the basis of facial images and body odor and whether attractiveness influences these relationships.... Naive observers assessed neuroticism and dominance at above-chance levels based on body odor, and they assessed extraversion (and in some cases, neuroticism) at above-chance levels based on either facial images alone or body odor and facial images presented together. The accuracy differed depending on the sex of the targets and the raters. In addition, facial and body odor attractiveness predicted the targets’ personalities and the assessments of their personalities.

Some People Can Smell Your Personality Traits, Maybe
“Does Personality Smell? Accuracy of Personality Assessments Based on Body Odor,” Agnieszka Sorokowska, Piotr Sorokowski, and Andrzej Szmajke, European Journal of Personality, vol. 26, no. 5, 2012, pp. 496-503. (Thanks to Hugh Henry for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Wroclaw and at Opole University, Poland, explain:

Odor donors were given 100% cotton white T-shirts laundered in delicately scented washing powder... and were asked to wear them for three consecutive nights on one scheduled weekend.... Sixty odor samples were assessed by 20 raters each. The main finding of the presented study is that for a few personality traits, the correlation between self-assessed personality of odor donors and judgments based on their body odor was above-chance level.... Further analyses showed that... the ratings of dominance were particularly accurate for assessments of the opposite sex.

 

Researchers Pin Down Old Fossil Hoax To One Suspect

In 1912, the 'Piltdown Man' fossils were credited as the great 'missing link' between apes and humans, but by 1953, they had been debunked as a fraud. Since then, one thing has remained. Who created these false artifacts, and why?
Researchers from the Liverpool John Moores University in the UK decided to take on this task of finding out who was guilty once and for all. They found that the bones are really half orangutan and half human bones from two different people.

Police officer jumped onto and stopped out of control speedboat after drunk owner fell off

A man narrowly avoided being hit by his own out of control speedboat when he fell into Lake Zurich in Switzerland on Sunday.
The 56-year-old, who was later found to have been drinking, fell off his boat off the shore of Bäch. As he fell, he lent against the tiller, meaning the boat then started to turn in circles. The man then had to dive under the water several times to avoid it hitting him.
He was finally rescued from his predicament when a member of the Schwyz lake police, who happened to be passing, was able to stop the boat. The police officer was able to jump from his own vessel onto the errant speedboat and bring it under control.
After failing an alcohol breath test, the man’s boat license was withdrawn immediately. Swiss drink-driving laws also apply to people in charge of a boat or other recreational craft on an inland lake. The blood alcohol limit for driving is 0.5mg/ml.
You can watch the video here.

Overreaction to False Reports of Gunfire at JFK Airport Reveals the Depths of America's Fear Culture

Overreaction to False Reports of Gunfire at JFK Airport Reveals the Depths of America's Fear Culture

Staring knight and his suit of shining armor detained by police

A man who had been dressed as a knight and was armed to joust was detained by police in Solna, just north of Stockholm, Sweden, on Saturday evening.

“He wasn’t doing anything; he was just sitting and staring straight ahead,” said Anders Jansson from Stockholm Police. Police found the man after receiving a tip-off from a member of the public at 6.30pm.
When police arrived they found him sitting outside a school. Beside him lay his chain mail, silver helmet and knightly sword. The man, described as being in his fifties, seemed exhausted, as if he had just been practicing some knight moves.
“I don’t know if his tournament was over or if he was out playing while drunk. There was no risk to life or limb in any case,” Jansson added.

Man caught trying to make toast with cigarette packet in empty house he'd taken a liking to

Police arrested a man they say took down a for sale sign outside an empty home and then moved in because he had taken a liking to it.

Officers were called to the house in Seattle at about 5:30am on Tuesday after they were told someone was living in a house that should be empty. Police arrived and found that someone had taken down a real estate company's sign and dumped it in the yard.
Officers entered the home through an open door and found a 23-year-old man who was trying to set a cigarette packet on fire. The man told police that he liked the house and decided to move in. Officers said the man, who appeared to be high on methamphetamine, had set up a grate over the cigarette packet.
He had then then put a piece of bread on the grate, in an attempt to make some toast. Police booked the man into the King County Jail on property destruction and trespassing charges and contacted the home's owner, who lives outside of the United States.

Antlers worth $1.5 million stolen from taxidermy shop

Police are looking for suspects after $1.5 million in moose, elk, and stag antlers were stolen from a taxidermy shop.

Investigators say that the suspects arrived at Advanced Taxidermy in Caledon, Ontario, Canada, at around 2am on Friday.
A pick-up truck was stolen, along with two trailers, one of which carried two all-terrain vehicles. The second trailer was filled with 69 sets of moose, elk, and stag antlers, valued at $1.5 million.
Police say the vehicles were stolen from the parking lot. The suspects abandoned the ATV trailer nearby, but made off with the ATVs. It is unclear at this stage how many suspects participated in the theft, and suspect descriptions are also being investigated by police.

Pond Safari

Microscopic life in a single drop of pond water.

YouTube link

This is How You Get Raccoons

Hey, I know! Let’s give the raccoons something else to eat, and maybe they’ll stay out of our bird feeders! You can see what this leads to- more raccoons, as they invite their siblings and cousins to the nightly smorgasbord.

(YouTube link)

Then with a regular food supply, the raccoons have plenty of free time to produce litters of more raccoons! The homeowner who recorded this says they’ve been doing it for a few years now, and he lives in a secluded area where there are no neighbors to annoy.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Sleep we all need it ...! 

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.   

  
Roller Coaster Ride ... !

Today is - National Roller Coaster Day

 You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Argentina - Barbados - Bolivia - Brazil - Canada - Dominican Republic 
Mexico - Nicaragua - Peru - Puerto Rico - United States - Venezuela
Europe
Austria - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Czech Republic 
England - Finland - France - Germany - Hungary - Ireland - Italy 
Latvia - Montenegro - Netherlands - Norway - Poland - Portugal 
Romania - Russia - Scotland - Serbia - Slovakia - Slovenia - Spain 
Switzerland - Turkey - Ukraine - Wales
Asia
Bangladesh - Brunei - China - Hong Kong - India - Indonesia 
Israel - Japan - Korea - Malaysia - Mauritius - Nepal - Pakistan 
Saudi Arabia - Sri Lanka - Taiwan - Thailand - Vietnam
Africa
Libya - South Africa - Tunisia - Zambia
The Pacific
Australia - New Zealand - Philippines

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

Today in History

1513		Henry VIII of England and Emperor Maximilian defeat the French at Guinegatte, France, in the Battle of the Spurs.
1777		France declares a state of bankruptcy.
1780		American troops are badly defeated by the British at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina.
1812		American General William Hull surrenders Detroit without resistance to a smaller British force under General Issac Brock.
1858		U.S. President James Buchanan and Britain’s Queen Victoria exchange messages inaugurating the first transatlantic telegraph line.
1861		Union and Confederate forces clash near Fredericktown and Kirkville, Missouri.
1863		Union General William S. Rosecrans moves his army south from Tullahoma, Tennessee to attack Confederate forces in Chattanooga.
1896		Gold is discovered in the Klondike of Canada’s Yukon Territory, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
1914		Liege, Belgium, falls to the German army.
1945		Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese on Corregidor on May 6, 1942, is released from a POW camp in Manchuria by U.S. troops.
1965		The Watts riots end in south-central Los Angeles after six days.
1977		Elvis Presley dies of a heart attack in the upstairs bedroom suite area of his Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
1984		The safe of the sunken ocean liner Andrea Doria is opened on TV after three decades, revealing cash and certificates but no other valuables.
1986		Sudanese rebels shoot down a Sudanese Airways plane, killing 57 people.
1987		Astrological alignment of sun, moon and six planets marks what believers maintain is the dawning of a New Age.
1988		IBM introduces artificial intelligence software.
1990		Iraq orders 2,500 Americans and 4,000 British nationals in Kuwait to Iraq, in the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of that country.
2012		In South Africa police fire on striking mine workers, killing at least 34.

Olympic Proposal

The bar has been raised for big public proposals. Chinese Olympic diver Qin Kai dropped to one knee in front of billions of people to propose marriage to fellow diver He Zi as she stood on the podium after winning a silver medal in the women’s three meter springboard event in Rio.

(YouTube link)

So He Zi will go home from the Olympics with a silver medal and a diamond ring. You won’t be able to watch the video if you aren’t in the United States, but you can see more pictures at Buzzfeed.

Pay Like A Wizard With This Almost-Magic Wand

Samsung Pay seems like magic to some extent -seeing as how you can use it almost anywhere with a wave of your phone. But there's something distinctively "meh" about using your phone to pay -especially when you could be using a magic wand instead.
The Ollivander19 is a brilliant invention that claims to be (and probably is) the first contactless payment wand. And because magic can't be bought, but only inherited, the only way to get one of the eight wands in existence is to win one on the Card Cutters website. So if you think you've got what it takes to do magic, head to the site and try your luck today.

US Fertility Rates Are Lower than Ever Recorded

US Fertility Rates Are Lower than Ever Recorded

Teaching Kids Empathy

Teaching Kids Empathy: In Danish Schools, It’s … Well, It’s a Piece of Cake

This is your brain on sentences

This is your brain on sentences

Researchers at the University of Rochester have, for the first time, decoded and predicted the brain activity patterns of word meanings within sentences, and successfully predicted what the brain patterns would be for new sentences. The study used functional magnetic...

High and low levels of ‘good cholesterol’ may cause premature death

High and low levels of ‘good cholesterol’ may cause premature death

Commonly touted as “good cholesterol” for helping to reduce risk of stroke and heart attack, both high and low levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol may increase a person’s risk of premature death, according to new research at Washington University...

Musician 'prevented from traveling on flight because her cello needed a visa'

A musician has said she was prevented from traveling with her cello on a British Airways flight because the instrument apparently needed a visa to travel in the extra seat she had booked for it. Jane Bevan, 35, was attempting to board a flight from Zurich to Baltimore, when she was told at check-in that her cello needed a US ESTA travel visa. Ms Bevan, who booked her cello in its own seat under the name "Chuck Cello", said she called BA a month before her flight and was told that the second seat followed airline policy. "When I arrived at the airport I was told by a BA steward there was a problem with the booking," she said. "I waited for half an hour while she spoke with her supervisor and was then told the check-in for the extra seat could not be completed because the system needed an ESTA visa."
Ms Bevan said she waited in the airport for two-and-a-half hours and ended up missing her flight. The amateur musician said she did not receive any compensation from BA, and flew out the following day with United Airlines. “I had no problems with United Airlines,” Ms Bevan said. “The staff were very friendly and even offered to put my cello in first class. I’ve flown with my cello before using easyJet and Swiss Airways.
"I’m used to the situation being unfamiliar to staff and having to wait for them to speak with their supervisors, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before." BA said in a statement: "This was a highly unusual incident which arose after the customer booked a seat for her cello as a named passenger. This is what triggered the requirement for an ESTA from the US government. The ticket the customer booked through a third party website was non-refundable."

Nebraska bikini boxing devolves into brawl

Nebraska bikini boxing devolves into brawl — police forced to use pepperball guns to break it up

Omaha police were forced to use pepperball guns to disperse a crowd, after various audience members broke into fights in the arena hosting a bikini boxing event.

Lunatic Fringe Wingnut Agitator Tells Milwaukee ‘Patriots’ To Shoot Black ‘Women And Children’

Lunatic Fringe Wingnut Agitator Tells Milwaukee ‘Patriots’ To Shoot Black ‘Women And Children’

‘In the backs.’ Yes, he thinks it’s a great idea to hunt down black women and children and shoot them in the backs.

Woman run over by own car walked away

A woman who was accidentally run over by her own car survived and walked away. The incident was seen by the driver behind her who caught the entire mishap on his dash cam. The accident happened on Tuesday in the parking lot of Costco in Burlington, Washington, as the woman waited in her vehicle at a red light.

Another driver pulled up to signal that her gas cap was loose. She then stepped out and walking to the back of the car. David Alger is the driver who was behind her and watched as his camera recorded. "She just went to pick up the gas cap and realized the car was moving, so she went back to jump back into the car and grab the steering wheel," he recalled.
"And as she grabbed the steering wheel with the car still moving forward, I would imagine the wheel turned to the left and that's when she was dragged underneath the left rear tyre and run over. Both legs. Went right up over her buttock and over both legs." Alger jumped out of his car to help, and was astounded when the woman got right to her feet. "She wanted to take off after the vehicle and run through the intersection and I said, 'Whoa, hold on here. How are you, let me help you, hold on to me.' And she said, 'I'm fine. There's nothing wrong with me I'm fine,'" he said.

YouTube link.

Other drivers tried to stop her rolling vehicle, but a tree did the trick. Alger said he feels terrible for the woman, but blames the unusual accident on simple distraction. "She was distracted so she got out. I remember her looking up at the red light, 'Oh, I got plenty of time, go screw the cap in,' " he said. "But she forgot one thing. And that was putting the car in park." After police and paramedics checked her out, the woman drove away in her own vehicle. He did not get her name, and police are protecting her privacy, concerned she may be embarrassed.

Police Have a History of Making Up Threats to Justify Crackdowns

Police Have a History of Making Up Threats to Justify Crackdowns–Why Does the Media Keep Repeating Them?

Couple accused of attacking man's grandmother for refusing to drive them to house for sex

A Florida man and his girlfriend allegedly beat up his grandmother after she refused to drive them somewhere so that they could have sex, police said.

Michael Rubio, 25, and Jacquelyn Carrasquillo, 27, were arrested in Miami on Thursday on charges of battery to a person 65 or older.
According to Miami-Dade police reports, Rubio and Carrasquillo were arguing with the woman because she wouldn't take them to a home for sex. Instead, she stopped her car and got out to walk home.
Police said the couple got out of the car and hit her multiple times, causing lacerations on her face and throwing her to the ground. The woman ran towards her home, and the couple drove away, the report said. Rubio and Carrasquillo were later arrested and taken to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. Police didn't say whether they ever had sex.

Assistant District Attorney who prosecutes DWI cases arrested on DWI charge

An assistant District Attorney who prosecutes DWI cases was arrested in Waco, Texas, early on Saturday morning on a charge of suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Kristen Parker, 27, was arrested by a Baylor University police officer before she was booked into the McLennan County Jail shortly before 4:45am.
Parker was released later the same day after posting a $1,000 surety bond. Parker joined the McLennan County District Attorney’s Office about a year ago.
She is typically responsible for prosecuting misdemeanor DWI cases. Parker is a 2010 Vanderbilt University graduate and got her law degree from Baylor Law School in 2014, according to her LinkedIn page.

Man who mistakenly drove to police office to pay utilities bill arrested on suspicion of DUI

Police arrested a 49-year-old man who mistakenly drove to a Washington State Patrol office after smoking marijuana in an attempt to pay a public utility bill.

The man arrived at the Burlington WSP office at around 6am on Friday, WSP Sgt. Mark Francis said. The man parked his car and walked into the office, where he attempted to pay his PUD bill.

Troopers told the man state patrol had nothing to do with public utilities, WSP said, but the man insisted he had paid his bill at the office before. The man appeared confused, and smelled of marijuana.
When asked if he had been smoking marijuana, the man said he had and that “it was a lot,” according to troopers. The man was arrested on suspicion of DUI involving drugs, although the trooper never saw him drive.

Woman faces burglary charge after attempting to open stolen safe by driving over it with her car

A woman from Berwick, Maine, was arrested early on Saturday after she allegedly stole a safe from a business, tried to open it by running over it with her car, and then led police on a high-speed chase before she was stopped.

Maine State Police reported that Tatiana Gagnon, 33, was charged with burglary. They said the incident began at about 4am when police responded to a burglary alarm at a Hometown Mobil convenience store in Lebanon. Someone had smashed in the side door of the business and removed a safe.
They had then tried to run it over with a car in an attempt to open it. The safe became lodged under the car and dragged along the road, where it was abandoned. Police said witnesses reported seeing a small blue sedan with New Hampshire plates running over the safe. Surveillance video captured the car’s plate. Police spotted the car at about 6:20am near the Hometown Mobil store .
Maine State Police Sgt. Kevin Rooney, who tried to stop the car, was led on a high-speed chase before he managed to stop the car. Gagnon was taken to Southern Maine Health Care in Sanford for evaluation before being booked at the York County Jail on $10,000 bail. State police said more charges may be brought by the York County District Attorney’s Office. Gagnon is a suspect in three stolen vehicle cases in Lebanon and in New Hampshire, police added.

Ancient Bones Found On Greek Mountaintop May Confirm Chilling Legend

The find gives credence to the idea that human sacrifice was part of ancient Greek culture. ​

by Nicholas Paphitis

This undated photo released Wednesday Aug. 10, 2016, provided by the Greek Culture Ministry, shows the 11th century B.C. skeleton of a teenager excavated recently at Mount Lykaion in the southern Peloponnese region of Greece, the mountaintop sanctuary of Zeus

Archaeologists have made a sinister discovery at the top of a Greek mountain which might corroborate one of the darkest legends of antiquity.

Excavations this summer on Mount Lykaion, once worshiped as the birthplace of the god Zeus, uncovered the 3,000-year-old skeleton of a teenager amid a mound of ashes built up over a millennium from sacrificed animals.

Greece's Culture Ministry said Wednesday that the skeleton, probably of an adolescent boy, was found in the heart of the 30-meter (100-foot) broad ash altar, next to a man-made stone platform.

Excavators say it's too early to speculate on the nature of the teenager's death but the discovery is remarkable because the remote Mount Lykaion was for centuries associated with the most nefarious of Greek cults: Ancient writers — including Plato — linked it with human sacrifice to Zeus, a practice which has very rarely been confirmed by archaeologists anywhere in the Greek world and never on mainland Greece.

According to legend, a boy was sacrificed with the animals and all the meat was cooked and eaten together. Whoever ate the human part would become a wolf for nine years.

"Several ancient literary sources mention rumors that human sacrifice took place at the altar, but up until a few weeks ago there has been no trace whatsoever of human bones discovered at the site," said excavator David Gilman Romano, professor of Greek archaeology at the University of Arizona.

"Whether it's a sacrifice or not, this is a sacrificial altar ... so it's not a place where you would bury an individual. It's not a cemetery," Romano told The Associated Press. A very unusual detail, he said, was that the upper part of the skull was missing, while the body was laid among two lines of stones on an east-west axis, with stone slabs covering the pelvis.

The mountaintop in the Peloponnese region is the earliest known site where Zeus was worshiped, and even without the possible human sacrifice element it was a place of massive slaughter. From at least the 16th century B.C. until just after the time of Alexander the Great, tens of thousands of animals were killed there in the god's honor.

Human presence at the site goes back more than 5,000 years. There's no sign yet that the cult is as old as that, but it's unclear why people should otherwise choose to settle on the barren, exposed summit.

Zeus was a sky and weather god who later became the leader of the classical Greek pantheon.

Pottery found with the human remains dates them to the 11th century B.C., right at the end of the Mycenaean era, whose heroes were immortalized in Greek myth and Homer's epics, and several of whose palaces have been excavated.

So far, only about 7 percent of the altar has been excavated, between 2007-2010 and again this year.

"We have a number of years of future excavation to go," Romano said. "We don't know if we are going to find more human burials or not."

Bananas for Miss Baker

If you’ve ever been to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, you might have noticed a gravestone right there in the parking lot. it’s a monument to an early NASA astronaut you may have never heard of, known as Miss Baker.

She was one of many animals sent to space, but the first ever recovered alive by NASA. In 1959 Miss Baker, a squirrel monkey, and Miss Able, a rhesus monkey, were outfitted in tiny space suits and shot out of Earth's atmosphere. Their flight lasted a mere 16 minutes.
The monkeys landed in the Atlantic Ocean, and were recovered with much excitement by NASA. Their safe return meant that primates could survive space travel. Miss Able died just four days later due to being given too much anesthesia during surgery, but Miss Baker lived a long life after her pioneering mission into space. She spent her retirement in captivity at Huntsville's U.S. Space & Rocket Center, and upon her death in 1984 was buried in the parking lot. Visitors to her grave typically pay their respects with bananas.

This is just one of many locations you can visit that fill in obscure stories of the space race between the US and the USSR. If you have time for a road trip, or a flight to Russia or Kazakhstan, you can take your own space history tour. Or you may have a weekend to check out one of these locations near you. Read about these places at Atlas Obscura.

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