Redditor /u/ChangsManagement compiled this map with the Interactive ArcGIS tool and birthplace data from Hockey Reference. It shows all of the birthplaces of the National Hockey League within North America. It looks like the birthplaces concentrate heavily along Canada's own population, as well as a strip from Boston to Philadelphia.

As a patriotic Texan, I looked up the stats for my own state. 12 NHL players were born in Texas, 3 of from Arlington, a suburb of Dallas.

A worldwide map would also be interesting. It would appears that NHL players also hail from decidedly non-icy countries such as Brazil, the Bahamas, and Taiwan. An vastly disproportionate number were born in the former Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.

-via Flowing Data

The photorealistic remake of The Lion King in 2019 surprised fans of the 1994 original, even angered some, but kids loved it. In fact, it made a billion dollars in about three weeks. So of course Disney is going to do that again, with a prequel that tells the story of Simba's father. Mufasa: The Lion King will bring back many of the stars who voiced the previous movie in the same roles, this time listening as Rafiki tells Kiara (Simba and Nala's cub) how the orphaned Mufasa proved himself and became king of the Pride Lands. New voices include those of Mads Mikkelsen, Thandiwe Newton, Lennie James, and Blue Ivy Carter.

Mufasa as a cub is adorable, although I still can't get over the lack of expression in the realistic CGI lions compared to the classically drawn 1994 cartoon. And we can bet that we will be treated to a graphic demise of Mufasa's parents in true Disney fashion. Mufasa: The Lion King will open in theaters on December 20. -via Digg

Abraham Lincoln had neither a law degree nor did he pass the bar exam, but he was granted a license to practice law. Daniel Jackson Oliver Wendell Holmes Morgan never had a license to practice in any state, but beginning in 1949, he tried lawsuits and defended the accused in many states, under many names. Morgan studied law on his own when he was in prison, and he was quite good at it. He would set up shop under the identity of another lawyer, argued his cases hard and won more than he lost, and when anyone got suspicious, would flee to another state and find another lawyer's name to use.

In 1960, he defended three teenagers accused of murder, and they were sentenced to death. But when Morgan ended up in the same prison, he continued giving his clients legal advice -and they trusted him still. In fact, when Morgan was confronted by more of his clients who had been sent to court from prison to testify against him, they all spoke of his legal skills in glowing terms. The fact was that his services were badly needed in the Black community in the mid-20th century. Still, Morgan was in and out of prison for identity theft and practicing law without a license in one state after another.

But the law allows a person to act as his own lawyer, and Morgan did so many times, once even arguing his case before the US Supreme Court, a feat that degreed and licensed lawyers dream of. Read the crazy story of Daniel Jackson Oliver Wendell Holmes Morgan at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Ebony magazine)

The Nakizumo Crying Baby Festival is an annual ritual conducted in Shinto shrines across Japan. Sumo wrestlers carry babies into a dohyo (a sumo ring). Then priests put on bird demon masks and taunt the babies. The first baby in a pairing to cry wins. If both cry at the same time, the baby that cries the loudest is the winner.

Why do Japanese families do this? Traditionally, an innocent baby's cry is thought to ward off evil spirits. But the mothers interviewed for this video seem to be participating just to have a good time. They attended the festival in the city of Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo, which is so popular that babies have to enter a lottery for the chance to participate.

-via Dave Barry

Introducing the Thermonator, a robot dog that is equipped with a spotlight, laser guidance, and a flamethrower! The "first-ever flamethrowing quadruped robot dog" has a 30-foot firing range and is suggested for wildfire control (what?), snow and ice removal, and entertainment. What could possibly go wrong? Throwflame is taking orders for the Thermonator now. You can get one for just under $10K.   

If that sounds a little too evil for you, maybe this will make you feel better. Boston Dynamics has decided that its robot dog Spot has a brighter future in entertainment than anything else. After all, Spot's dance videos must be making bank at YouTube. Now they are looking to capture business from companies like Disney or even party rental rental places.



This is Sparkles, Spot's new robot dog friend that has the same structure underneath, but comes in a cute blue fur coat and enormous soulful eyes. Spot and Sparkles illustrate the magic of friendship by dancing! Now, does that make you feel better about the flamethrower? No? Me neither.

How wonderful would it be to get your order of french fries all fresh and hot with ketchup already applied? And better yet, the ketchup is on the inside of the fries, eliminating any danger of dripping ketchup on your clothing? It would certainly make eating them while driving easier. It doesn't even have to be ketchup- you might prefer cheese sauce, ranch, barbecue, or even mayonnaise if you are European.

Weird Universe tells us that Scott E. Brient of Roswell, Georgia, thought up a way to do just that, in 2006. He invented a device to inject sauce into individual cooked french fries on a conveyor belt, and received a patent for it in 2009. The device is thoroughly explained, and the injection is automatic, so wouldn't require more manpower than a fast-food outlet already has. There are 28 pictures if that makes it clearer.

So why aren't these in use already? One might suspect that the machine itself was never built. As it is, the patent is expired due to something about the fees, like they haven't been paid. -via Nag on the Lake

The runway model did not pee his pants.

Well, actually, that's possible. We don't know for certain. But the pants that he's wearing are made to look like he peed his pants. So it's possible he went ahead and peed in them anyway because, well, he's got nothing to lose at this point.

The revered journalistic outlet TMZ reports that the elite Jordanluca fashion house offers these luxuriously pre-stained (or pre-peed) jeans for a whopping $608--or it did until the jeans sold out of stock.

Cat chase POV pic.twitter.com/F9p86JJq8e

— Tweets of Cats (@TweetsOfCats) April 25, 2024

Someone attached a tiny camera on their cat's collar, which is always pretty interesting, at least if you know the cat. This one captures a dramatic encounter with another cat that starts with a challenge and then proceeds into a dizzying chase scene. No, you won't be able to keep up with the target because you do not instinctually chase small moving targets through the wilderness like a cat is born to do. You can hear the camera-cat begin to breathe heavily, but he is not giving up. The fugitive cat eventually decides that fighting will be less tiring than running, and it gets pretty confusing for a while, but then the chase picks back up. We don't know how long these cats went on; they might still be running for all we know. You have to wonder what this cat did to enrage the chaser so much. The only winner is the camera owner, because they got a viral video out of the incident. So far, this video has racked up 50 million views on Twitter (from one Tweet) and another 50 million on TikTok. -via Digg

In 1964, consumers suddenly had two pre-packed fruit-filled breakfast pastries designed to be heated in a pop-up toaster. They were called Pop Tarts (made by Kellogg’s) and Toast 'em Pop-Ups (made by Post). You might be surprised to learn that the original names for these products were Kellogg's Fruit Scones and Post Country Squares. The reason they were introduced at the same time was, of course, the longstanding rivalry between the two cereal companies (which we've covered in both text and video), but also due to an important innovation in packaging -developed by the dog food industry!  

We all know who won that battle, as pop tarts became a generic term for toaster pastries. Jerry Seinfeld stars in a new Netflix movie titled Unfrosted about the origin of Pop Tarts debuting next month. Before you see the comedy, read the real story behind the battle of the toaster pastries at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Evan-Amos)

Some people have odd habits in what they eat, or how they eat, like the maniac that eats a KitKat without breaking it into pieces. That's weird, but forgivable. We are familiar with the argument against pineapple on pizza, salads encased in gelatin, beans for breakfast, and the merits of mayonnaise vs. Miracle Whip. But some stories are just plain strange. Tales from an AskReddit thread tell of a woman whose mother always put mayonnaise in chili mac and thought that was the way it was supposed to be. You've heard of the hamburger served on a bun made of two doughnuts, but what about the person who put a chicken patty between two Pop Tarts for a sandwich? One person tried a bell pepper filled with whipped cream because their sister liked them that way, and found them abominable. And apparently there are folks who mix ice coffee with lemonade. And that's just the beginning of a gallery of 35 crimes against food that people have actually witnessed that you can read at Bored Panda.

(Image credit: OGRamRod)

James Bond movies have it all. Bond invariably saves the world, seduces beautiful women, and plays with the world's most innovative gadgets. Some of those gadgets from the movies are on display at a new exhibit titled 007 Science: Inventing the World of James Bond at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. They include a Bell Rocket Belt, the jetpack that Bond used to escape after he killed a target in the 1965 movie Thunderball.

When the movie was filmed in 1964, the stuntman flying the jetpack wasn't just a stuntman, he was Bill Suitor, test pilot for the Bell Rocket Belt who worked directly under its inventor Wendell Moore. Suitor knew the jetpack's limitations. It carried enough fuel to fly for exactly 21 seconds, and if you weren't near the ground when the fuel ran out, you were in trouble. When Suitor donned the jetpack on the set of Thunderball, he put on his helmet for the flight. The production team didn't like that at all, since they had already filmed Sean Connery's closeups for the jetpack sequence, and he wasn't wearing a helmet. Suitor knew the danger involved, and wasn't going to give in. Read about the innovative Bell Rocket Belt and the way it was filmed for the James Bond movie at Smithsonian.

It's a bit jarring to think that the turn of the millennium now qualifies as "history," but here we are, explaining the strange Y2K event for those too young to remember it. By 1999, the world was wired to run on computers, but those computers were running on operating systems that weren't designed with the year 2000 in mind, so the dates were assumed to always start the year with 19. Was this a problem? Yes, but not nearly as big a problem as the media made it out to be. Until the "millennium bug" made the news, many people didn't even realize how much of the world's infrastructure depended on computers running smoothly. As the date grew near, programmers worked hard to fix the problem in one system after another, so that when the time came, it turned out to be a big nothingburger. Personally, I don't recall as much panic as this video illustrates, but I was busy with young children. I did take the precaution of turning off my computer before midnight, just in case. I later found out that Macs were never vulnerable to the Y2k problem because they had always rendered the year in four digits.

This video includes a skippable ad from 4:12 to 5:47.

Statistics show, and you know this intuitively, that the music we listened to in our early teen years will be our favorite music through our lifetime. Sometime around age 30, we quit seeking out new music, and settle into a preference for the familiar songs we already know. Reasons given for this include too many choices and too little time. That sounds rather simplistic, but it makes sense from the perspective of busy people taking a poll. Younger people are students with more free time on their hands than adults who are working or caring for children. I recall when I was a kid, music was everywhere I went. If the radio wasn't on, it was because a friend insisted I turn it off to listen to this new album. You didn't have to put in effort seek out new music at all.

I was exposed to new songs throughout my 20s, 30s, and 40s because it was my job. I judged and memorized plenty of new music all the way to middle age, and liked a lot of it. But still, those songs I know from my thirties are not associated with particularly vivid memories like the music of my pre-teen and teenage years. Maybe the intense emotions of that stage of life are coded with those songs. I still like new songs, just not quite as many in my old age because the playlist in my head is pretty crowded. If you are afraid of "getting stuck in your ways" as you age as far as music goes, you are not alone. People who want to find new and varied music will find a way, but those songs won't replace the ones you loved as a kid. Read the research on what has been termed "music paralysis" at Stat Significant.  -via Metafilter

(Image credit: YouGov)

Fox 9 News reports that last week, a car crashed through a guardrail on I-94 in St. Paul, Minnesota and caught on fire. The driver was conscious, but also injured and trapped inside. Several motorists stopped and rushed in to save him.

As this dramatic video shows, they bravely struggled with the doors, which could not open because of the guardrail. Eventually, a highway worker used a tool to smash the window. The heroic rescuers then pulled the victim out of the burning car just before the flames reached the front of the cabin.

The driver escaped serious injuries but was taken to a hospital for evaluation.

-via David Thompson

If you've been holding your breath, anxiously awaiting the results of the world seagull screeching championships, you can now relax and collect your winnings with the bookie. The Guardian reports that the winner of the under-16 category is a 9-year old British boy named Cooper Wallace.

As I noted last year, thoughtful people admire this most noble beast of the sea. Admirers of the majestic seagull gathered in De Panne, Belgium for the fourth year to imitate the seagull's melodious screech. In this video, you can watch some of the top performances.

Notice that, in this video, the performances take place under a banana. Why? I'm fully capable of jumping to preposterous conclusions based on no evidence whatsoever. Specifically, Belgium is home the the world's largest collection of bananas and Belgium is, of course, a grotesque obscenity. Hanging a banana from the ceiling is a traditional Belgian way of summoning a blessing from the gods.

-via Super Punch