Dr. William P. Key was a formerly-enslaved self-taught veterinarian in Tennessee who made his living by selling his patent medicine Keystone Liniment. He was particularly talented with horses and always advocated for a gentle touch and humane treatment of animals. In 1889, one of his mares gave birth to a foal that was a “miserable looking specimen.” Key took the foal into his home and named him Jim Key. As Jim grew into a magnificent adult, Key taught him a vast repertoire of tricks.

"Beautiful Jim Key" was exhibited across the country for years, where he wrote his name, properly exchanged money, and spelled out audience member's names by selecting letters from a rack. He could also solve math equations by picking numbers. Jim was one of the biggest draws at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. All that time, Dr. Key used Jim to spread the message of kindness to animals and how training was most effective when using gentleness and patience. Read about the show biz career of Beautiful Jim Key. -via Strange Company 

CC is a wobbly cat, meaning she has cerebellar hypoplasia. But you don't even notice that when you see her- what you notice is that she's a heckin' chonker. CC weighed 23 pounds when she came into the care of The Big House Cats in Ontario, a rescue shelter for very overweight cats. CC was so fat she couldn't climb into her litter box, and she could barely take a few steps before she had to sit down.

Restricted food and lots of love got her started. Then they added exercise, and found that CC really wanted to play, but she was just too big to do it. As she lost weight, she became more playful. So far, she's lost six pounds! At around five minutes, you get to see before and after pictures that show how far she has come. Her goal is to lose five more pounds. See more of the Big House Cats at Instagram

The adage that counting sheep will help you sleep has given us a lot of jokes, but not a lot of sleep. The idea is very old. In the book Disciplina Clericalis, a collection of fables from the early 12th century, a king summons his storyteller, who is sleepy and doesn't want to tell stories. He tells a tale of a shepherd with 2,000 sheep, and to get them home they must cross a river. The only available boat will only hold two sheep, so they must make 1,000 trips. The first two sheep were loaded into the boat when the storyteller fell asleep. The king woke him, but the storyteller insisted that each sheep must be taken across the river. I'm not sure where the story goes after that; the only copy of the book I could find was a 1519 translation that didn't have that particular story. 

The gist of it is that this story hints that falling asleep due to counting sheep was already an established concept understood by many before the story was written. Cervantes later made it funnier in Don Quixote. But does counting sheep in your mind actually help you fall asleep? The research is mixed, but you can see an overview of it at Purple Motes. -via Boing Boing 

(Image credit: amenclinicsphotos ac via Wikimedia Commons) 

There are people in this world who can afford to spend millions of dollars on a wedding. That's the perfect way to show the world how filthy rich you are, because there's going to be a lot of pictures testifying to how much you spent on a one-day party. And what good is money if you can't conspicuously consume it? Ryan George was obviously inspired to make this video by Jeff Bezos' and Lauren Sánchez' wedding last year, which reportedly cost $50 million. That wedding made all the papers for its outrageous flaunting of wealth, while Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott quietly spends her days writing large checks to charities. 

But that's not the only over-the-top wedding designed to flaunt a family's wealth highlighted in this video. Some are more expensive than others, and some are just weird. He also takes a special look at ridiculous wedding cakes, which probably won't even make you hungry.  

  

Marisa Whittamore, a stained glass artist, and Amanda Rosenblatt, a photographer, collaborated to create this extraordinary work of stained glass. This mind-bending work emerges from two dimensional space into the viewer. It's on display at the THAW Group exhibition in Jacksonville, Florida.

Janus Cycle faced the challenge of powering a modern device with humanity's earliest artificial energy source: fire.

The key components are a pair of Peltier modules. These devices convert heat into electricity. Janus Cycle placed these modules over an open flame in a cardboard box to concentrate the heat. He used thermal compound to conduct the energy and route the electricity to the Game Boy.

Obstacles included the fragility of the Peltier modules, which can endure a maximum heat of 250°F, while generating enough electricity (about 4 volts) to power up the Game Boy. The project was successful and Janus Cycle played Castlevania.

-via Hack A Day

A mere ditch separates the American and Canadian border between South Surrey, British Columbia and Blaine, Washington. On a daily basis, the Canadian cat Louis Vuitton flaunts US sovereignty by crossing that border whenever he wishes.

CBC News reports that there are security cameras and guards, but Louis Vuitton ignores them (and the Oregon Treaty of 1846) and strolls around the territory of the United States of America to receive tribute in the form of pats and belly rubs. He occasionally hunts squirrels, mice, and snakes to bring back across the border to Canada to offer to his humans.

-via Wholesome Side of X

Let's not overcomplicate this.
"Alpine divorce" is just plain ol' coercive control but in a Patagonia vest and hiking boots.

Putting your partner in a dangerous situation and leaving her there is a classic abusive tactic of punishment and control.
https://t.co/OEomZdZR9g

— Dr. Ann Olivarius (@AnnOlivarius) March 17, 2026

When I first heard the term "alpine divorce," I assumed it meant a case of murder or at least negligent manslaughter, like the recent case in Austria where a man abandoned his girlfriend on a mountain to die. But the term isn't limited to cases that end in death. There are plenty of stories on social media of dates that involved hiking or mountain climbing that ended the relationship. 

An outdoors enthusiast wants to take a romantic partner or spouse up to a mountain to share their passion. But the lesser-experienced person, usually but not always a woman, cannot go as fast or as far. Do you slow down to accommodate your partner, or do you abandon her and push on ahead to conquer the challenge of the hike? How mountaineers answer that question reveals whether the priority is the relationship or their ego. Everyone is new to the experience when they start out, and not accommodating a newbie will not only ruin a relationship, it can put them in serious danger. Read about the phenomenon of alpine divorce at the Guardian.  -via Metafilter 

Georgia is proud to be called the Peach State, and that branding is everywhere, from water towers to the many streets named Peachtree in Atlanta. How did the state get that way? Peaches aren't a native fruit in America- they came from China by way of Europe. And when colonists found peach trees growing across the south, they didn't much like them. Instead, they started growing cotton, mostly for export, and made a ton of money. Even today, the cotton crop in Georgia is bigger than peaches, but "the land of cotton" as a slogan doesn't resonate the way it did 200 years ago.   

How peaches became the symbol of Georgia is a neat story, but the most useful thing you'll learn is the difference between cling peaches and freestone peaches, which is good to know when you're at the grocery store. This video has a sponsor ad from 4:12 to 4:54. 

I feel sympathy for students who have to do the scut work in scientific studies on their way to becoming a scientist, like sorting through millions of insects or timing and measuring poop. Finally, one of these sacrificial lambs is getting the recognition they deserve. Chris Zuo was an undergraduate when he volunteered to help with a study on mosquitos (he now has a masters) at the University of Georgia. He wore a mesh suit, presumably the kind of mesh used for mosquito netting, and went into a room with 100 mosquitos. In four minutes he was covered with mosquito bites.

They found the mesh suit didn't work, but that wasn't even what the study was about. Instead, they were studying the flight patterns of mosquitos on their way to detecting a human target. Zuo didn't quit the study, however. He was game to try again, using other methods of protection so that the researchers could get high-speed video of the insects' flight patterns. Read what Zuo went through, and what the team discovered about how mosquitos detect a target at the Conversation. 

(Image credit: David L. Hu, Georgia Tech) 

Creating a LinkedIn profile is essential for the job hunting process in many professions. I gather that so is despairing over the content posted therein. LinkedIn is notorious for being popular with business influencers who share ficticious or wildly inaccurate stories about their working lives or how they apply incidents in their personal lives for the workplace. There's a subreddit called LinkedIn Lunatics for the worst offenders.

The search engine Kagi created an AI tool that takes the work out of creating nonsense for your LinkedIn followers. It automatically generates LinkedIn gibberish based upon prompts from your daily life experiences.

-via kanav

Last week when I wrote about the guy who turned blue, I knew there were two reasons for people to turn blue, but I couldn't recall what the other one (besides colloidal silver) was. Now I remember! It's methemoglobinemia. I've even written about it. What does that have to do with Tylenol? You'll have to watch the video to find out. 
  
Tylenol has been sold since 1955, but its history goes back much further. The underlying medicine's fever-reducing talent was discovered purely by accident, and I mean an accident at a pharmacy that could have been much, much worse. But it worked, not only to reduce fever, but to squelch pain as well. Testing has deemed it safe and effective, but scientists still don't know the exact mechanism of that effectiveness. It's possible that we might never know, because there are much more important problems than the exact mechanism of a drug that's already safe and effective. This video from Half as Interesting is a minute shorter than it looks, because that last part is an ad.    

     

When we think about an uprising of the common people against ruthless overseers, we think of the French Revolution or maybe the Haitian Revolution, but one story from medieval Spain illustrates the concept well, whether it's true or not. And it all started over a single fish. 

In 1158, in the town of Zamora on the border between the kingdoms of León and al-Andalus, a marketplace dispute began. A shoemaker bought the last trout of a fishmonger, when a servant of the local ruling knight Gómez Álvarez showed up and demanded the fish for his lord. A dispute ensued, and other townspeople joined in both sides. The servant left without the fish, and Álvarez was angry that the peasants didn't know their place. He gathered other knights together with the idea that such resistance cannot stand because it would undermine their authority. Meanwhile, the townspeople who supported the shoemaker gathered to burn down the church where the knights were meeting. The battle eventually escalated to the King of León. Some doubt the details, or if it ever even happened, but it's a great story you can read at Amusing Planet. 
      
(Image credit: New York (State) Forest, Fish and Game Commission) 

The board game Monopoly was invented by Lizzie Magie in 1904. She called it The Landlord's Game, and it was designed to illustrate the evils of capitalism. Charles Darrow stole the idea and made Monopoly to appeal to a player's greed, and that's when it took off. The game has been teaching children how to be ruthless ever since. 

But people don't read the rules of the game anymore. They are long and involved and the print is too small. People tend to just play Monopoly the way they were taught, forgetting half of it, and many of the original rules have fallen by the wayside. Simon Whistler explains some of the most common Monopoly rules that are altered or ignored in the 21st century, and how the way most folks play it these days slows the game down and makes it more boring. It's still pretty ruthless, though. Your children will learn better things by playing Scrabble, or even Candyland.

People who are born blind and have their sight restored at a later age tend to not look at people's faces when they speak to them- they instead look at their hands. That's because they have built their sensory world around touch, hearing, and other senses and have more experience with someone else's hands than with faces. But that's only one way newly-sighted people have to learn how to deal with a world they can suddenly see. 

Children born with cataracts can be treated surgically, but in developing countries this treatment may be out of reach. This gives us a population of people to study who have their sight restored after they have learned to live as a blind person. Their brains have to adjust to perceive the signals that an infant learns naturally over time, like separating shapes from colors, depth perception, distinguishing outlines, and facial recognition. During blindness, the visual cortex is often rerouted to process non-visual signals. Still, the brain is very adaptable. Read about the way people see for the first time at Big Think.

(Image credit: MC3 Michael Feddersen)