You may associate virtual meetings and conference calls with Skype, Zoom, or Webex. But the task of gathering together large numbers of people to communicate with each other across vast distances long predates our century.

IEEE Spectrum reports that the large conference call dates back to 1916, which 5,100 engineers in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco gathered in live discussions that took place across telephone lines. There were even breakout sessions when local groups met privately to discuss particular topics.

The revolutionary nature of this event was widely understood at the time. President Wilson sent a telegram of congratulations, which was read to the participants. After musical performances, a keynote speaker addressed the virtual gathering and then the engineers conducted a formal business meeting.

-via Nag on the Lake | Image: IEEE

You’re not allowed to stop and watch the Las Vegas Formula One Grand Prix without a ticket and stopping in a pedestrian walking zone or on a bridge with a view will get you a ticket, a fine or worse trouble. A few locals and tourists are circumventing this by utilizing the… pic.twitter.com/u8d35JdDkF

— Jen G. (@vegasstarfish) November 24, 2024

The Las Vegas Grand Prix is an elite racing event. Tickets are extremely expensive, but 306,000 people paid to watch it, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

Vegas Starfish, a Las Vegas tourism guru, reports that other enterprising people found a way to watch the race up close for free. All that was necessary was that they ride escalators continuously without stopping, making laps next to a good viewing position.

Robin Duska is a volunteer at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, working on cataloging the museum's bird specimens. She discovered a snow bunting labeled as being found on May 29, 1872, by Emil Bessels. Duska did the research and found that Bessels was a physician who served as the science officer on the Polaris expedition, an 1871 quest to be the first to reach the North Pole. The expedition was led by Charles Francis Hall, who did not survive the unsuccessful trip. When the crew of the Polaris returned home in 1873 (without the ship, which had been crushed by ice), there were questions about Hall's death.

Was Hall murdered? Dr. Bessels had declared the cause of death a stroke, and an investigation agreed. Hall had been buried in the permafrost of Greenland. Then an autopsy in 1969 showed that Hall had ingested arsenic. Did Hall have any enemies aboard ship? Yes, many, as the crew was full of drunks, deserters, and men who didn't want to go to the North Pole. But Hall's biggest enemy was Bessels. Not only did they disagree about the expedition, they were both wooing the same woman back in Washington, a prominent young sculptor named Vinnie Ream. What does any of this have to do with a bird buried in the archives of a museum? Read about the latest clue in a possible murder mystery at The London Times.   -via Strange Company

The comedy troupe Foil Arms and Hog portrays two suitcases moving along a baggage conveyor belt at an airport. This time it's just Foil and Hog, because suitcases don't have Arms. One is highly upset about an insult they received. The other is caught in that no-win situation when your partner is pissed off about something, but can no longer respond to the one who wronged them, so they lash out at the closest person. Anything you say will be misunderstood and can well feed the flames, but you can't just say nothing, because that's wrong, too. You could (and should) call this "emotional baggage." Listen closely, because they've included quite a few luggage and airline puns.  

And after I went to all the trouble to keep the main joke here a secret, it's spoiled in the on-screen video title. This performance is from the current Foil Arms and Hog tour. They'll be in the US for four shows in March.  -via Laughing Squid

Lydia Faber and her husband live on a houseboat in Amsterdam. When they adopted a kitten named Nimis, they put him in a feline life jacket, because in some places, the city's canal walls are too steep for a kitten to climb. Some people joked that Nimis' bright yellow life jacket looked like a police jacket, so when Faber found embroidered patches at a surplus store that said "police," she added them to Nimis' uniform. The neighbors thought it was hilarious, tourists took pictures, and even the local cops took a shine to the "police cat." They don't mind the impersonation, because any official law enforcement officer in Netherlands would be labeled politie.



Nimis is three years old now, and can swim and climb as well as any cat who lives on a boat. But he still wears his jacket, because he is a celebrity not only in Amsterdam, but around the world. You can see videos of Nimis, along with his brother Tommy and his humans, at Facebook and Instagram. -Thanks, WTM!

If you've ever had a small fly annoy you in the shower, you've met Clogmia albipunctata. It's a species of drain fly bigger than a fruit fly and smaller than a house fly. You might have wondered where that fly came from, and that would be your drain.

Redditor daisy_bare took the cover off a basement drain and found a writhing mass of drain fly larvae. Before the mass was identified, suggestions included welding the cover back on and burning the house down. While the fly stage of Clogmia albipunctata is generally harmless and several people described the insect as "cute," you really don't want flies in your home. The adult flies are rather waterproof and don't live long, but their main purpose is to lay eggs in your drains, where the larvae can live off the gunk that lines your pipes. The ways to get rid of eggs or larvae in the drains are to 1. pour boiling water down the drain, 2. pour baking soda and vinegar into the drain (that can be dramatic), 3. use a drain cleaning product, or 4. scrub your drains or, if all else fails, call a professional to clean them.

Outside of your home, drain flies are quite useful in treating sewage. I am tickled with the taxonomic name, and had to go check the genus Clogmia to see if there is a species named Clogmia pipe. Alas, there is no such bug.  

(Image credit: Jerzystrzelecki)

Have you ever wondered how in the world audio artists like Bill McClintock and DJ Cummerbund make those marvelous song mashups out of very different songs from different genres? The secret is the chord progression. If two songs have the same chord progression, the melody can be transferred from one to another. Oh, they might be played in slightly different keys or have a different tempo, but those can be manipulated by computer, and if they are close enough to start with no one will notice. Besides, most songs are in the simpler keys anyway.

Pianist David Bennett illustrates how this is done by swapping the music and lyrics of disparate songs that have the same chord progression. Even if you don't know anything about music theory and don't care about chord progressions, you'll enjoy a video in which Michael Jackson sings over a U2 melody, and Celine Dion croons over a Phil Collins tune. The previous video he mentions is here.  There's a 30-second ad at 5:35.

Americans in the early-to-mid 20th century developed a taste for salad that was actually dessert. It wasn't their fault that the manufacturers of Cool Whip, marshmallows, Jell-O, and pudding mix came up with recipes that they labeled as "salad," giving us an excuse to indulge in highly-processed fat and sugar, and who doesn't love that? People today continue to enjoy these bizarre recipes at family gatherings like Thanksgiving and Christmas, because Grandma, or Great-Grandma, always made her signature sweet salad. And since it's "salad," people eat them with the main entree, even if it's just crushed candy bars glued together with whipped topping.

Neatorama readers know about Watergate salad, but have you ever eaten pretzel salad, ambrosia salad, Snickers salad, or frog-eye salad*? They are all regional favorites that you might want to try for some truly decadent occasion, unless your family has its own sweet salad tradition, although you might want to make the kids eat their dinner first. Read about all of them at Atlas Obscura.

*Note: frog-eye salad has nothing in common with frog pizza.

(Image credit: Marshall Astor)

As the saying goes, frog pizza is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. The Independent reports that this is an option at some Pizza Hut restaurants in China. The thick crust pizza is topped with a bed of parsley, serving as the frog's grassy home. The whole bullfrog is fried and served below two halves of a hard boiled egg which are decorated with black olives so that they resemble eyeballs.

It is unfortunate that this culinary masterpiece is available only in China. As an American, I fear that we are slipping behind China in pizza technology.

-via Dave Barry

Every year, Babycenter reveals the top names for new babies in the preceding year. How they do this is a bit of a mystery, since the definitive list from the Social Security Administration won't be available until well into the new year. The top 10 baby names (girls on the left, boys on the right) for 2024 are:

1    Olivia         Noah
2    Amelia       Liam
3    Emma        Oliver
4    Sophia       Elijah
5    Charlotte    Mateo
6    Isabella      Lucas
7    Ava            Levi
8    Mia            Ezra
9    Ellie           Asher
10  Luna          Leo

It may appear that the list is the same as its been for the past five or ten years, but there are some changes to the top ten, as Mental Floss explains. They also point out that Luna, number ten for girls, is also the most popular name for dogs and cats. If you are looking for a name that's not so common, but still popular, you might want to check out the full list of the top 100 names for both boys and girls at Babycenter. You might be pleased to see that John is still there at #48, and while Mary is not in the top 100, Maria is holding on at #85.  

Television, before it was fractured into a million channels, was a great language leveler. In elementary school, I noticed that my classmates who did not have TVs couldn't shake their hillbilly accent, while those who watched television learned to code switch at an early age, and speak like Hollywood actors when they wanted. Today, we have TV shows from around the world, so that children pick up words and accents from shows like Bluey and Peppa Pig. Dora the Explorer introduced millions of American children to Spanish. And TV is a boost to anyone learning a second language. Dr. Erica Brozovsky (previously at Neatorama) explains what is happening when children listen to the language of television.  

But more TV doesn't necessarily mean better language learning in children. Too much television actually hinders their learning, when it cuts into the time they speak with the adults around them. At the end, we find that Dr. Brozovsky is just as cute without the red lipstick.

The Los Angeles Times published an account of a dragon attacking a Southern Pacific Railroad train crossing the Colorado Desert on its way to Los Angeles on January 17, 1882. The dragon resembled a snake with wings, about 30 feet long. The train clipped the dragon's tail when they collided, enraging the monster. The dragon then grabbed the train and shook it, breaking several windows, and then flew away. The newspaper talked to the engineer and fireman aboard the train as well as several passengers for their report. The story was reprinted back east, and caused quite a stir. However, it was only one of many dragon sightings in the late 19th century as people flooded into the western US and saw things they'd never seen before. These dragons were described as snakes or alligators with wings, which only sometimes had feathers. They were all said to be enormous.

The dragon sightings, or at least their documentation, died out as the West was settled, communication improved, and newspapers became somewhat concerned about credibility and fact-checking. But the legends of those sightings live on. Read the accounts of 12 dragon sightings in the Old West at ThunderbirdPhoto.com. -via Strange Company

(Image: The Illustrated Police News, March 18, 1882)

Elle Cordova is a musician and comedian who specializes in one-woman sketches in which she personifies different objects. In the past, we've seen her conversation among different fonts. Most recently, she brings together the Holy Grail, Excalibur, and the Ark of the Covenant.

The three holy relics interview an applicant to join their crew. It's a modern object of desire and veneration common in households yet surprisingly elusive at times. Watch the elders ask insightful questions of the newcomer, testing her commitment to the lifestyle of a legendary artifact.

At the end of the sketch, the trio consider other applicants for the position.

-via Laughing Squid

Hoyte van Hoytema, the cinematographer behind Her, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer, brings to us this long-form narrative commercial for Volvo's XC90 SUV.

The point is, of course, to sell us cars. The hook for the ad is buried deep into the soul of every parent who has ever seen his or her child in life-threatening situation. It's a common if not normal experience and one that never leaves your mind completely.

Hence the genius of van Hoytema's commercial. It taps into both the delight and fear that begins with first learning that you're having a baby and ends . . . somehow, depending on about a million everyday decisions.

-via Normie MacDonald

A levitating frog, a necrophiliac duck, taxi drivers’ brains — the Ig Nobel prizes have shined a spotlight on offbeat work

Here’s an inside look at how winners feel about this sometimes unwanted ‘honour’ https://t.co/hryjpzYygE

— nature (@Nature) November 19, 2024

Every fall, we cover the awarding of the Ig Nobel prizes from The Annals of Improbable Research. These lighthearted awards highlight research that seems weird, silly, or outrageous. But that's how science is done, one tiny step at a time to reveal what's going on in our world. Last year, more than 9,000 research papers were nominated for the Igs, and when potential winners are selected, they have the option of turning down the honor. Eleanor Maguire once declined to accept the award, because she was afraid it would hurt her career. But three years later she was up for the award again and decided to accept it. Far from hurting her career, she was later introduced as the “the most famous member” of a science panel, even though that panel included actual Nobel prize winners. Well sure, we may laugh about the Ig Nobel prizes, but we remember them because odd and obscure science studies are more fun to read about than the "serious" science that wins Nobel prizes. An article in the journal Nature tells us how winning an Ig Nobel affected the careers of several scientists, including one who won an Ig Nobel and a few years later won the Nobel prize.  -via Damn Interesting