In 1878, the American Neurological Association was informed of a strange phenomena in the lumber camps of northern Maine. A visit to the camps proved the stories to be true. Many of the lumberjacks and their family members were extremely sensitive to being startled, and they reacted by jumping to extreme heights. Not only that, but they would unthinkingly and immediately obey any command given to them during the startle. Those afflicted became known as "the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine," since many of them were of French-Canadian heritage. 

Later studies proved that the condition was not limited to any ethnicity, nor to the state of Maine. Experts thought it might be genetic, but it only appeared that way because the affected logging camps contained families. At first you might think the jumping reflex might be related to the dancing manias of medieval Europe, but then it also seems akin to the physical condition that led to the fainting goats of Tennessee. Then in the 1960s, yet another possible cause arose from sociological studies in isolated lumber communities. We still don't know the exact cause of the jumping syndrome because it doesn't happen anymore, but you can read what we do know about it at Amusing Planet. 

You would have a hard time finding entertainment franchises as different as the sitcom It's Always Sunny inPhiladelphia and The Lord of the Rings. But that's exactly what makes this mashup so funny. Danny DeVito's character Frank Reynolds is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. He frequently pulls a gun for the slimmest of reasons, or for no reason at all. Putting him in LOTR, among characters regarded for their loyalty, bravery, and honor is totally antithetical to the ethos of Tolkien's tales. YouTuber Your_Kryptonite7 edited Reynolds into Middle-Earth, using clips from both The Lord of the Rings movies and The Hobbit films. Frank is just Frank, in all his psychopathic glory, while Gandalf, Aragorn, Galadriel, and the other characters can't hide their feelings of bafflement, disgust, and shock. What Galadriel is shocked by is blurred out, but you get the point. Yeah, it's a deranged idea, but you will be impressed by the editing and timing. -via Cracked 

Remember when you first watched Star Wars on the big screen back in 1977? The movie blew you away because the special effects were way beyond anything else movies had at the time. Then the years went by and George Lucas kept fiddling with the original, bringing us Special Edition after Special Edition with his improvements. Fans hated the changes, like making the puppet Jabba into a CGI Jabba and having Han shoot Greedo only in self-defense. Eventually, Hayden Christensen became a Force ghost even though he wasn't even born until 1981. Meanwhile, George Lucas refused to allow the original print to be shown. 

Until now. A group of movie critics and avid Star Wars fans were invited to see the 1977 print screened by the British Film Institute as part of their Film on Film Festival. That's when fans learned that a lot more has changed besides Jabba and Greedo. The 1977 special effects that were so groundbreaking at the time now look laughably amateur. The sets appear cheap. The sound effects are tinny. The audience realized that Lucas had changed so much more than just the scenes they recalled, and that's why watching A New Hope on TV looks almost as good as watching Rogue One. Read how the 1977 version of Star Wars went over at The Hollywood Reporter. -via Fark 

Once upon a time, wolves were the stand-ins for any evil in folklore. There was a good reason for that, since hungry wolves were dangerous for small villages, and children had to be warned to stay out of the dark forest lest they become dinner. But when it's just a story and not a literal life lesson, wolves can be anything. But the danger still comes from the dark and mysterious forest. 

Lesllie Pulsifer reworked the folk tale of Little Red Riding Hood into a new story titled The Wolves Are All Gone. It's an allegory about strangers with malicious intent upending the established way of life by frightening the populace. You have to let go of the traditional reputation of wolves in such stories to really understand the metaphor. Relating the tale to modern times, who the wolves are and who the stranger is all depends on your preconceived notions of friend and foe.

Pulsifer wrote the story, created the animation, and wrote and performed the music, which will give you an earworm. 

The movie Fantastic Four: First Steps will hit theaters on July 25th, and the marketing is ratcheting up quickly. Leading the pack is a pizza from Little Caesars that is a four-in-one combo. Each quadrant has different toppings: cheese, pepperoni, Italian sausage and bacon, and pepperoni and jalapeño. The jalapeño quadrant obviously represents the Human Torch, and the sausage quadrant looks like rocks, so it should represent The Thing. But which quadrant is Mr. Fantastic and which is The Invisible Woman? More importantly, how are we going to split this pizza when everyone wants the pepperoni and jalapeño slices? 

But that's just the beginning. The Fantastic Four will also appear on cereal boxes on grocery shelves, on boxes of limited edition Pop Tarts, on jugs of flavored blue milk, and on Snapple tea. Read about all of these food tie-ins that appear to tell us this movie is a kids film at io9.  

Mack Roesch was riding his bike near his home in Florida when he saw a raccoon with an aluminum can stuck on his head! The raccoon couldn't see and was wandering near the road, so he would have eventually become roadkill. Mack tried to pull the can off, but it was securely jammed on the raccoon's head. Not only that, but the scared creature was keen to attack anyone who touched him. But other strangers got involved. A woman used a yoga mat to pin the raccoon down while Mack went to get some tin snips. Then a construction worker stopped and used a truck mat. It took all three to free the raccoon, who didn't so much as say thanks before he scurried off into the woods. That's a lot of work for one raccoon, but saving the little fella made everyone feel warm all over. And Mack got a video. 

The picture above is of actor Pedro Pascal. You might know him from his roles in Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, or The Last of Us. In 2023, Pascal was quoted as saying there is no good Mexican food in New York City. Annisha Garcia, owner of Son Del North Mexican restaurant in Manhattan's Lower East Side begs to differ, and he got the idea to stage a Pedro Pascal lookalike contest. The contest was yesterday. You'll have to click right on the picture to the third image to see the winner. He is George Gountas of Brooklyn, whose family and friends noted his resemblance to Pascal back in the days of Game of Thrones. His family insisted he enter the contest. 

Gountas, a lighting designer at The Daily Show, won $50 and a year's supply of burritos. We don't know how many burritos that is, but it's a nice haul for Fathers Day. At The New York Post, you can see all the contestants, a couple of whom actually have a passing resemblance to Pascal. -via Fark 

Jerry Wayne Longmire is a Houston-based comedian who is not just Texan, but very Texan. In this video, he describes a very relatable experience that, as a fellow Texan, I feel in my sweat-soaked overalls: Longmire must look at his energy bill as the summer heat (made all the worse by the moisture blowing in off the Gulf of America) erodes his being.

Longmire tells the story as the long-winded Southern novelist William Faulkner would. Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi is geographically far from East Texas, but not culturally far from this kudzu-stangled land ruled by mosquitoes, cottonmouth snakes, and languid despair.

-via Elai

A paradox is a statement that is internally self-contradicting. A conundrum is a confusing or difficult question. An unanswerable question can be either a paradox or a conundrum, or something different. In this compilation of such questions, there are a couple that depend on the way we use language, like how much is a heap, and whether a hot dog is a sandwich. Some refer to fictional scenarios, like the transporter on Star Trek. But others, even though they are dressed up in absurd situations, present a bend in logic as we know it. Oh sure, you can explain a few things by assuming that someone is lying, which is anything but illogical. Or you can spend way too much time overthinking the question. Besides, it's already too late to not do drugs in the 1970s. Kelevin presents nine different paradoxes that may keep you up at night. Which one you choose to obsess on is up to you, or you can spent nine sleepless nights pondering each one. This video contains some NSFW language. -via the Awesomer 

Lorkulup was a lion who lived in Kenya’s Maasai Mara wildlife reserve. The name Lorkulup means "runny nose" in Swahili. The lion's distinctive disheveled look came from the fact that he had a hole in his palate that made drinking difficult. He wasn't a dominant male as we think of the term, but the lionesses of his pride loved him. He was a mighty hunter who made sure his pride ate before he did, and he was gentle and attentive with the cubs. Lorkulup became a viral sensation in China, where he is called Quan Quan, loosely translated as "radio collar." Hundreds of fans began following Lorkulup and his pride via internet.  



In February, the news came that Lorkulup was dead. His head was severed from his body, supposedly by animal scavengers, although some believe he was killed by a human. The outcry from his fans in China was immediate. They have donated money for an investigation into Lorkulup's death, and for publicity to demand justice for the lion. Read about the unfortunate lion and his fans' response at Sixth Tone. 

-via Nag on the Lake 

We are used to seeing the Muppets on a studio set, where the puppeteers are beneath the floor- although we habitually suspend our disbelief and don't think about them. So who's controlling the Muppets when they go outside and show their entire bodies? Today, they might use GCI, but that wasn't really a thing when Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas aired in 1977 or when The Muppet Movie came out in 1979. Jim Henson and his crew had to think outside the box, literally, to put the Muppets in the real world. How did they do it? In many different ways, depending on the scene. They might come up with a brand new elaborate method just for a few seconds of film, but it was worth it in the end. Alex Boucher shows us how Kermit sang in a swamp, how Fozzie Bear drove a car, and how a group of Muppets rode bicycles. The real wonder is that even when we know how it's done, even when we can see the puppeteers at work, we still consider the Muppets as distinct characters with their own personalities. 

On June 8, 1708, a fleet of 18 ships left Cartagena, Colombia, headed for Spain. They were intercepted by five British warships and a battle broke out. In the fight, a large supply of gunpowder on the galleon San José exploded, sending the ship to the bottom of the ocean. What was significant about the San José was that it was carrying around 200 tons of gold, silver, and gemstones, with a value of about $17 billion in today's dollars. 

It took more than 300 years for the ship to be found, when a wrecked galleon resembling the San José was spotted at almost 2000 feet below the surface in 2015. But is this shipwreck really the San José? Recent exploration with ROVs seems to indicate that it is. Photographs of gold coins scattered on the ocean floor sport evidence that they were mined and minted in Lima, Peru, in the appropriate era. Pending identification, ownership of the wreckage is the subject of a court battle between Colombia and Spain. Read the story of the San José and the remains that may prove to be the most valuable shipwreck in history at Popular Mechanics.  -via Damn Interesting 

(Unrelated image credit: Alberto Cutileiro) 

World War II ended with the aircraft carrier as the supreme warship type. So the leading navies of the world considered how to best optimize this platform.

A 2021 article in Naval History magazine explains that among the challenges of the new jet-powered aircraft were the the limited space and weight requirements for aircraft. Could a designer save on both by foregoing landing gear? In the late 1940s, Royal Navy considered this option. Perhaps a jet without landing gear could land on a carrier if the flight deck was covered with rubber. After hitting the arresting cable, a jet could come to a gradual if bouncy stop.

The US Navy conducted similar experiments. Although there were no serious accidents, it was a risky landing method. Furthermore, a jet without landing gear could land only on this type of runway. So relying on rubber-coated flight decks would be too limiting. Both navies ultimately dropped the idea.

-via US Naval Institute

Max Fosh made some prison wine, known as pruno in the US. His first attempt wasn't fit for human consumption, because these things take practice. So he enlisted Kevin, a self-made expert on prison wine who has been perfecting his technique for twenty years. That did the trick, but how good is it? Fosh invited three expert wine critics, or at least influencers, to try it out, along with five samples of commercial wine, selected for a variety of price points. All are unidentified. What would they think of his homemade hooch? 

The wine tasters were asked to rank all six wines, but Fosh settled for getting their most and least favorite pick. How many sips of wine does it take before you have a hard time keeping them straight? Only afterward did he reveal that one of the choices was his prison wine, made in a cooler and fermented in the bathroom. There's a one-minute skippable ad at 3:43.   -via Boing Boing 

We think of Lucille Ball as the queen of television -after all, she had four TV series with her name in the title. But before I Love Lucy, she was a model, a dancer, and a movie actress. In the 1940s, she had a hit radio show called My Favorite Husband. Television was in its infancy, no one knew for sure whether it would take off. CBS wanted Lucy to try a television series, which she considered to be a step down. 

However, Lucy's husband Desi Arnaz was a bandleader who was off on tour most of the time, and was famous for cavorting with women on the road. Theirs was a volatile relationship, and she'd already tried to divorce him once. If she could get Arnaz a role on the TV show, he'd have to quit touring. CBS didn't think much of Arnaz, and they didn't think American viewers would take to her being married to a "foreigner." But the network executives valued Lucy enough to agree to all kinds of demands to get her on the small screen. Read how Lucy got her way at Cracked. 

(Image credit: TV Guide)