Saturday, March 11, 2017
Magic May Not Be Real, But This School of Witchcraft Sure Is
Smithsonian Scientists Retrace the Mysterious Circumstances of an 1866 Death
Robert
Kennicott was a well-liked and respected young naturalist for the
Smithsonian Institution in its early days, when naturalists actually
lived in the museum together. He was dedicated to collecting specimens
for the institute, up until his untimely death at age 30. Kennicott's
bones will be put on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
Natural History on March 10 as part of an exhibit called “Objects of
Wonder.” For Kennicott, that might be the ultimate honor. But his story
did not end with his death. Over a hundred years after burial,
Kennicott's coffin was exhumed for examination to determine the exact
cause of death.
The mystery begins with Kennicott’s death on May 13, 1866. He had been on another long mission to the Yukon—this time for the Western Union Telegraph. He was the only person who had lived in Russian America, and was to help that company find a route to lay a cable connecting the United States with Europe via the Bering Strait. Kennicott and two fellow naturalists also planned to collect rare specimens, but they arrived just below the Arctic Circle as winter began in 1865. They made a grueling trip to Fort Nulato on the Yukon River, 500 miles from any other fort, in temperatures as low as 60 below zero.Kennicott's family never really bought the idea that he had committed suicide. In 2001, forensic anthropologist Kari Bruwelheide and the museum’s division head for physical anthropology Doug Owsley performed a thorough examination and a chemical analysis to find out why he died. In analyzing Kennicott's remains, they also got a glimpse at the chemicals that 19th century people were exposed to, both accidentally and medicinally (such as lead, strychnine, and mercury), and the effects of diseases that were common at the time. Read the story of Robert Kennicott at Smithsonian.
By spring, Kennicott intended to begin his own work as a naturalist. But he didn’t show up for breakfast that day, and his men found him dead by the bank of the river near the fort. Rumors began that he had committed suicide by swallowing the strychnine he often carried to preserve specimens. His friends spent eight months on a journey to bring Kennicott’s body back. He was buried in January 1867 at The Grove, in an airtight metal coffin.
The Men Who Volunteered to Be Poisoned by the Government
Harvey
Washington Wiley of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of
Chemistry was concerned about the unrestricted contents of food that
Americans were buying. So when he sent out a call for volunteers, 12
young men, mostly poorly-paid clerks, answered the call. They must have
been hungry, because they didn't run for the hills as soon as they found
out what kind of six-month experiment they'd signed up for.
The results of those experiments led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906. The experiments lasted for five years, although the squad of volunteers changed. Read what those young men went through in the name of science and safety at mental_floss.Wiley’s staff would put borax in their butter, milk, or coffee. Formaldehyde would lurk in their meats, copper sulfate and saltpeter in their fruit pies. Wiley would begin at low doses and then ratchet up the amount until one or more of the men complained of debilitating symptoms, like vomiting or dizziness. Those people would then be excused from the program until they felt well enough to resume. In the event a subject died or became seriously ill, he would waive the right to pursue legal remedy against the government.
The year was 1902. With funding and consent from Congress, Wiley was about to embark on an experiment he dubbed the “hygienic table trials,” but it was the Washington news media that came up with the nickname that would stick: They called his volunteers "the Poison Squad."
The Candy Thief
Ivan:Okay, the clue is that each child told the truth in two sentences and lied in one sentence. Who stole the candy? Don't let the fact that there are 15 sentences deter you; it's not that difficult when you get into it. When you come to an answer or give up, see the explanation at Futility Closet.
1. I didn’t take the box of candy.
2. I have never stolen anything.
3. Dennis did it.
Sylvia:
4. I didn’t take the box of candy.
5. I’m rich and I can buy my own candy.
6. Linda knows who the crook is.
Ernie:
7. I didn’t take the box of candy.
8. I didn’t know Linda until this year.
9. Dennis did it.
Dennis:
10. I didn’t take the box of candy.
11. Linda did it.
12. Ivan is lying when he says I stole the candy.
Linda:
13. I didn’t take the box of candy.
14. Sylvia is guilty.
15. Ernie can vouch for me, because he has known me since I was a baby eight years ago.
Sex party priests and prostitution rock the catholic cult
An ungodly scandal is erupting across
various parishes as priests have been accused of engaging in orgies,
porn, and sex parties.
Friday, March 10, 2017
The Daily Drift
Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
Carolina Naturally
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.
Piper ... !
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Today in History
| 515 BC | The building of the great Jewish temple in Jerusalem is completed. | |
| 241 BC | The Roman fleet sinks 50 Carthaginian ships in the Battle of Aegusa. | |
| 49 BC | Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon and invades Italy. | |
| 1656 | In the colony of Virginia, suffrage is extended to all free men regardless of their religion. | |
| 1776 | “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine is published. | |
| 1785 | Thomas Jefferson is appointed minister to France. | |
| 1806 | The Dutch in Cape Town, South Africa surrender to the British. | |
| 1814 | Napoleon Bonaparte is defeated by an allied army at the Battle of Laon, France. | |
| 1848 | The treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo is signed which ends the United States’ war with Mexico. | |
| 1876 | Alexander Graham Bell makes the first telephone call to Thomas Watson saying “Watson, come here. I need you.” | |
| 1893 | New Mexico State University cancels its first graduation ceremony, because the only graduate was robbed and killed the night before. | |
| 1902 | The Boers of South Africa score their last victory over the British, capturing British General Methuen and 200 men. | |
| 1910 | Slavery is abolished in China. | |
| 1924 | The U.S. Supreme Court upholds a New York state law forbidding late-night work for women. | |
| 1927 | Prussia lifts its Nazi ban, Adolf Hitler is allowed to speak in public. | |
| 1933 | Nevada becomes the first U.S. state to regulate drugs. | |
| 1941 | Vichy France threatens to use its navy unless Britain allows food to reach France. | |
| 1943 | Adolf Hitler calls Field Marshall Erwin Rommel back from Tunisia in North Africa. | |
| 1944 | The Irish refuse to oust all Axis envoys and deny the accusation of spying on Allied troops. | |
| 1945 | American B-29 bombers attack Tokyo, killing 100,000. | |
| 1947 | The Big Four meet in Moscow to discuss the future of Germany. | |
| 1948 | Author Zelda Fitzgerald (wife of F. Scott) dies in a fire at Highland Hospital. | |
| 1953 | North Korean gunners at Wonsan fire on the USS Missouri, the ship responds by firing 998 rounds at the enemy position. | |
| 1954 | President Dwight Eisenhower calls Senator Joseph McCarthy a peril to the wingnut cabal. | |
| 1966 | The North Vietnamese capture a Green Beret camp at Ashau Valley. | |
| 1969 | James Earl Ray pleads guilty to the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King and is sentenced to 99 years in jail. | |
| 1971 | The Senate approves a Constitutional amendment to lower the voting age to 18. | |
| 1975 | The North Vietnamese Army attacks the South Vietnamese town of Buon Ma Thout, the offensive will end with total victory in Vietnam. | |
| 1980 | Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, lends his support to the militants holding the American hostages in Tehran. | |
| 1982 | The United States bans Libyan oil imports, because of the continued support of terrorism. | |
| 1987 | The Vatican condemns surrogate parenting as well as test-tube and artificial insemination. |
We’re Spending $30 Million For Melania To Live In NYC
Taxpayers
are footing the bill to the tune of an estimated $30
million for Melania Trump to live in New York City, while the Dumbass'
federal hiring freeze is causing the military to close down
child care programs.…
No evidence immigrants displacing U.S. workers
A
new study from Sonoma State University shows no evidence for immigrants
displacing American citizens in the workforce. “Empirically, I don’t
see any evidence that immigrants are going to take our jobs or decrease
our … Read more
Burger's Bun Is Made From Fried Brie
Some
days you want to diet and some days you just want to eat yourself to
death. When you want to watch your body's whole world burn, there is the
EatFamous Burger from Holy Chuck Bugers.
This marvelous monstrosity takes two full wheels of brie, breads and
deep fries them and then uses them as buns for an already over-the-top
burger that features four burger patties, eight strips of bacon, four
slices of aged cheddar and a fried egg on top.Of course eating this beast isn't just difficult due to all the calories, but also because those two gooey cheese buns don't exactly make it easy to pick up and chow down. But a mess is a small price to pay for something this ooey-gooey good.
Lady of the Lake
The Sunken B-29 Superfortress of Eielson AFB
Eielson
Air Force Base in Alaska has a strange piece of history in a pond at
the end of a runway. A Boeing B-29 Superfortress has been sitting there
in the water for at least 60 years, where it's earned the nickname the
Lady of the Lake.However, a recent underwater survey has unearthed details about the plane leading to its exact identity, and it turns out to have quite an interesting history. You'll want to read that story, and see more pictures of the Lady of the Lake at Urban Ghosts.For decades, all that was visible of the sunken B-29 from the roadside was the starboard wing, the distinctive metal lattice of the cockpit and the tip of the vertical stabiliser. The latter is adorned with faded bumper stickers and pockmarked by modern bullet holes, reminders that the Lady of the Lake may be abandoned, but isn’t forgotten.
For years, it’s been widely held that Eielson’s last Superfortress was dragged to the its watery resting place in the 1950s for use in aircrew evacuation drills. But its role as a crash rescue trainer eventually came to an end when the airframe sank deeper into the mud, becoming dangerous. After that, the enigmatic B-29 was abandoned where it lay.
Firefighters Rescue Same Dog Twice in One Hour
About an hour later, firefighters received another public assist call to same location for the dog on the roof. The dog apparently wanted to be back outside again and reopened the window and let himself out again.That's one determined pooch! So they got the ladder out again and a firefighter once again got the dog back inside. This time, they made sure the window was secure. -Thanks, John Farrier!
Animals No Longer on the Endangered Species List
There might
still be a lot of animals that need our help out there, but articles
like this are a reminder that we can make a difference and bring animal
populations back from the brink. So see the whole list over at TopTenz.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
The Daily Drift
Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
Carolina Naturally
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.
Panic Button ... !
You want the unvarnished truth?
Today in History
| 1617 | The Treaty of Stolbovo ends the occupation of Northern Russia by Swedish troops. | |
| 1734 | The Russians take Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland. | |
| 1788 | Connecticut becomes the 5th state. | |
| 1796 | Napoleon Bonaparte marries Josephine de Beauharnais in Paris, France. | |
| 1812 | Swedish Pomerania is seized by Napoleon. | |
| 1820 | Congress passes the Land Act, paving the way for westward expansion. | |
| 1839 | The French Academy of Science announces the Daguerreotype photo process. | |
| 1841 | The rebel slaves who seized a Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, in 1839 are freed by the Supreme Court despite Spanish demands for extradition. | |
| 1862 | The first and last battle between the ironclads U.S.S. Monitor and C.S.S. Virginia ends in a draw. | |
| 1864 | General Ulysses Grant is appointed commander-in-chief of the Union forces. | |
| 1911 | The funding for five new battleships is added to the British military defense budget. | |
| 1915 | The Germans take Grodno on the Eastern Front. | |
| 1916 | Mexican bandit Pancho Villa leads 1,500 horsemen on a raid of Columbus, N.M. killing 17 U.S. soldiers and citizens. | |
| 1932 | Eamon De Valera is elected president of the Irish Free State and pledges to abolish all loyalty to the British Crown. | |
| 1936 | The German press warns that all Jews who vote in the upcoming elections will be arrested. | |
| 1939 | Czech President Emil Hacha ousts pro-German Joseph Tiso as the Premier of Slovakia in order to preserve Czech unity. | |
| 1940 | Britain frees captured Italian coal ships on the eve of German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop’s visit to Rome. | |
| 1956 | British authorities arrest and deport Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus. He is accused of supporting terrorists. | |
| 1957 | Egyptian leader Nasser bars U.N. plans to share the tolls for the use of the Suez Canal. | |
| 1959 | The Barbie doll is unveiled at a toy fair in New York City. | |
| 1964 | The first Ford Mustang rolls off the Ford assembly line. | |
| 1967 | Svetlana Alliluyeva, Josef Stalin‘s daughter defects to the United States. | |
| 1968 | General William Westmoreland asks for 206,000 more troops in Vietnam. | |
| 1975 | Iraq launches an offensive against the rebellious Kurds. | |
| 1986 | Navy divers find the crew compartment of the space shuttle Challenger along with the remains of the astronauts. |
How a News Story Becomes a Hoax
You may have seen viral "weird news" story over the weekend about a man in Japan who died when his six tons of pornography fell on him. It was exactly the kind of story that goes viral. The problem is that it did not happen, or more accurately, it did not happen that way, but was "sexed up" to grab headlines.
Yes, the man had a porn collection, and it factored into the story, but not in the way it was circulated. The story of how it got changed along the way is even more interesting than the viral hoax. Gizmodo looks at how the story became something it's not and the importance of digging deeper when something doesn't pass the smell test.So what really happened? Recently a Japanese man was found dead in his apartment. The man lived alone and had been dead for a month before he was discovered. The coroner ruled that he’d died of a heart attack. How do we know the real story? It was reported in Nikkan Spa in Japan on February 28, 2017. The Daily Mail story was published on March 3rd, 2017.
The Daily Mail story doesn’t link out to Nikkan Spa, or acknowledge at all where its information came from. The average reader would assume that all the information presented in the Daily Mail story was collected by the Daily Mail alone. It appears that nothing in the Daily Mail’s version contains original reporting, aside from the sensationalist errors that it introduced.
The Witty Epitaphs of Key West Cemetery
The Traffic Sounds of the Future
Electric
cars are eerily silent. Hybrid cars will give you a start when they go
from gas to electric or vice-versa, because we are used to the sounds go
a gas engine. We've read about how car manufacturers are adding artificial sound
to make electric cars sound real, but that will become even more
important in the future when there are self-driving cars on the streets.
As a pedestrian, it’s been pretty great being able to hear if a car’s coming. But with the rise of electric vehicles, pedestrian accidents have increased. These problems will only get exacerbated once self-driving cars go mainstream. The computers behind the wheel will need a way of alerting others to their surroundings — Google’s autonomous car team has already said their cars will “honk patiently,” but there’s no denying the fact that computers will have to make up for even more of the noises missing from traditional cars.Read about the need for those regulations and the technology that is being developed for car sounds in the age of self-driving vehicles at Inverse.
With a series of regulations set to come into force, car manufacturers are getting ready: the next generation of cars are going to need to make noise, and somebody has to come up with them.
Polluted Ghost Towns Caused by Environmental Disasters
While exact causes of the fire remain disputed, analysts agree that a 1962 fire tore through the town’s abandoned coal mines and has not yet stopped. Residents became aware of the fire decades later, and in 1984 Congress allocated more than $40 million to relocate Centralia residents — many of whom did not see the risk that the fires posed.So check out the full story of Centralia as well as four other cities destroyed by environmental disasters over on All That is Interesting.
Then-governor Bob Casey condemned all Centralia estates in 1992, but backlash from Centralia citizens kept Centralia’s zip code alive until 2002.
Brain-controlled Robots
While the robot itself is not all that impressive, the interface between the brain and the action is almost supernatural. That an EEG can actually sort these kinds of messages is amazing. Read about the experiment in the original MIT paper.
The Best Breakfast Spot in All 50 States
Yes,
of course, "best" is always a subjective word, and a list of the best
of anything is going to cause a little controversy. However, you cannot
argue that these breakfast diners aren't good.If you like meat with your breakfast, Gold Rush Cafe is the place to go. Their bacon cheeseburger skillet omelet and breakfast burger melts are rich and decadent, but the meatloaf omelet is truly an original. It comes with meatloaf bits, veggies, cheese, and barbecue sauce. If the thought of that much breakfast meat is giving you the sweats, try the bread pudding waffles with baked cinnamon apples on the side.Check out the list of the best breakfast restaurants in each state at mental_floss, let us know how well they picked the best from your state, and if you've got a road trip planned, you might want to make notes on breakfast for your traveling days ahead.
The Loneliest Five-Star Restaurant in the World
Concordia Station is a French-Italian research facility in Antarctica. It is roughly halfway between
the Antarctic coast and the South Pole, which makes it pretty isolated
from anything. However, the French and Italians care greatly about the
food served to the station's crew. Luca Ficara spent a year as the
station's chef.
Ficara was challenged with feeding 75 people during the summer (November to February) and then providing interesting meals for 13 during the long dark winter, using an inventory of supplies that must last eight months, with no assistants. And for the Sicilian Ficara, another challenge was that the wine is all French. Read about how he worked with what he had to create amazing meals at the bottom of the world.Each year, the Italian National Program for Antarctic Research (which maintains the base along with the French Polar Institute Paul Emile Victor) holds a lottery to determine who will be spending the next year as the resident chef at Concordia. This lottery system has won the station something of a reputation for its food, which received a nod in the Lonely Planet as a place "considered by many to enjoy Antarctica's best cuisine, with fine wines and seven-course lunches on Sundays."
While Ficara didn't really expect to end up in the Concordia Kitchen, he turned out to be the perfect fit for the job given his diverse culinary repertoire. The chefs chosen by the PNRA must demonstrate not only proficiency as cooks, but also a robust knowledge of international culinary practices so that they can cater to the tastes of the 13-person Concordia winter crew, who hail from England, Switzerland, France, and Italy.
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