During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, our Founding Fathers hammered out the rules for running a democratic government, and it wasn't at all easy. A lot of stuff was a compromise between all the disagreeing factions. On the question of how long a president should serve, some thought it should be for life, while others suggested a six, seven, ten, or even 12-year term with no re-election. Since no one could agree, the question was sent to the “Committee on Postponed Matters,” which sounds like a good committee to be on, especially for procrastinators. However, they did come up with the four-year term with re-election possible.
As far as presidents serving two terms, that was not in the original constitution. It became a custom, though, set by Washington and Jefferson, because presidents get really tired of the job after eight years. The few who did not found that the voters got tired of them after eight years. So why do representatives and senators get to run for re-election as long as they want? Read up on what the US Founding Fathers had in mind for these offices and how our system came to be the way it is at Mental Floss.
What do you know about capybaras? They are the world's largest rodent, and I hear that they are calm, friendly, and delicious. Despite the fact that they never change their facial expressions, other animals -and humans- like being around them. The capybara will tolerate your attentions in a super-chill manner, without a thought of the possibility of being eaten for dinner. They are the very illustration of nonchalance. You might learn some more things about capybaras in this nonsense song from Jonti Picking (previously at Neatorama), like how their teeth grow all the time or how good they are at playing saxophone. But the main point is that you're going to be happy around a cappy. -via Everlasting Blort
Update on the wind turbine blade accident:
— Maine State Police (@MEStatePolice) August 9, 2024
Initial investigations indicate the tractor trailer was not far enough into the left lane when navigating under the train trestle, resulting in the crash. The blade, mounted on large brackets, struck the trestle, causing the rollover.… pic.twitter.com/SCUS2ZXNsK
Wind turbines are being installed all over the US, while the factories that make them are few. Transporting those enormous turbine blades is a real hassle. Taking them around curves and intersections required the invention of new machinery. But going under low bridges remains a challenge.
On Friday, a 240-foot blade was being taken to Columbia, Maine, when it hit a bridge over Route 1 in Stockton Springs. The collision overturned the truck and damaged the blade. No one was injured, but Route 1 was closed for the rest of the day. The blade will was returned Saturday to a cargo terminal in Searsport, Maine, where it was shipped in. The Boston Globe uses the term "storrowed," which is a unique Boston word for trucks hitting a bridge, explained in a previous post.
What do you do with a damaged turbine blade? They are made of fiberglass and resin, and were once considered impossible to recycle. But new technology is turning them into other building materials. -via Metafilter
The Smithsonian Institution is not only the world's largest museum, it is situated along the National Mall in our nation's capital, and admission is free. Almost everyone goes to see it sooner or later, although it's impossible to see it all in one trip. So it's no wonder that many urban legends have been attached to the institution in its 178 years. You may be familiar with some of them.
For instance, the Hope Diamond is supposed to be cursed. Sure, some bad things happened to some of the owners, but that's life among the rich and powerful. The story of the "curse" was made up by a jeweler in the early 20th century to entice a rich socialite to buy the diamond. It worked. But then what? The woman who bought the diamond experienced several tragedies, and after her death and the sale of her gems, the postal worker who delivered the Hope diamond to the Smithsonian also suffered several tragedies within the next year. He said, “If the hex is supposed to affect the owners, then the public should be having the bad luck.” I guess we know who to blame, then.
Other myths and legends about the Smithsonian are true stories that the institution had nothing to do with, or were viral hoaxes, or just plain historical misunderstandings. Yes, benefactor James Smithson's remains are at the Smithsonian Castle, just not in the rumored spot. Read the truth behind 13 Smithsonian legends at (where else?) Smithsonian.
(Image source: Smithsonian Institution Archives)
The 1994 movie The Lion King was so successful it got two direct-to-video sequels, a Broadway musical, a "live-action" remake in 2019, various TV and video game adaptations, and now a prequel. Mufasa: The Lion King tells the story of Mufasa and Taka (who would later be known as Scar) as they grow up as inseparable brothers. We immediately learn that the two are not biologically related, which takes some of the sting out of the implied incestuous mating in the series. The movie is notable for the CGI lions that now have facial expressions, which were glaringly missing in the 2019 movie.
Mufasa: The Lion King seems to fall into the same trope as Malificent, Joker, and the Star Wars prequels, in that since audiences loved the villain, let's go back and explain why it's not their fault that they are evil. In this case, Taka was originally the heir to the "king" position in the pride. Such antihero stories are a break from the rigid white hat/black hat dichotomy of earlier tales, but when it happens over and over again, you have to consider whether we've swung too far in the opposite direction. In this movie, the enemy is a group of white lions led by a king who is amusingly not named Kimba. Mufasa: The Lion King opens in theaters on December 20.
"Wingnut" is mostly heard these days as a term for an unhinged political extremist. The slang term came about meaning someone who is odd or eccentric or otherwise deviates from the norm. But the real, literal wingnut is a very useful nut with wings that allows us to tighten bolts by hand. That's the kind of wingnut you'll find in the new Wingnut Museum that opened on July 13th in Berkeley, California. The origin of the museum is quite a story.
Urban Ore is a salvage yard in Berkeley that recycles building materials, furniture, housewares, and other things. An employee who goes by Neko was sorting through hardware and started lining wingnuts up on a shelf. Other employees set wingnuts alongside them until they became a collection. Customers began to donate wingnuts, too. When the shop decided to unionize, the organizers referred to the collection and chose a wingnut as their logo, as it represented both the employees and their customers. Since it was now a union symbol, the shop owners decided the collection had to go. Read how the Wingnut Museum came to be, and how you can visit and see wingnuts from all over the world at Berkeleyside. -via Metafilter
For a large chunk of history, human mating was a matter of couple forming with family approval. In small communities, young people all knew each other growing up, as did their parents. As communities grew larger and people traveled, some cultures turned to professional matchmakers, and the upper classes and royalty arranged marriages for political or financial reasons. In America, young people got to know each other through "courting," which consisted of a young man visiting a young woman's family home, trying to impress her and her parents as well.
That changed in the 1920s, as more people had automobiles and places to go for amusement. "Dating" replaced "courting," although the origin of the word dating is more salacious than you ever knew. The custom of dating went through changes in both meaning and procedure through the rest of the 20th century, and is done quite differently in the internet age. Hey, it was easy to meet people in high school; not so much these days when careers are far from one's hometown and marriage is put off until years after graduation. Read up on how dating started and where it then went at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company
We like to document the first of anything, and in the modern era we often over-celebrate the first time something happens, since it might not last long enough for anyone to care. It wasn't always so, like the first Air Force One, which no one though worth preserving until many years later. It's even more difficult to document the last of anything when it disappears. Who could know that this guy was the last smallpox patient until years afterward? In other cases it's obvious, like the last flight of the Concorde or the last Woolworth's lunch counter, which was preserved for nostalgia. Even the twelve stories of "the last" things in this video might prove to be wrong, if someone decides to bring an elephant to a war zone, for example.
This is actually the second compilation that Weird History has done on the last of things; check out another video from a few months ago on the same subject with 13 different items.
Look! Someone took a rock and etched a bunch of emojis on it! Well, that's certainly what it looks like, but this is a natural stone. The amazing shapes on its surface are crinoid fossils, plus some bivalve fossils. The rock is a floatstone, a type of limestone. The stone formed at the bottom of Lake Michigan, and was embossed with a hash of crinoids pieces that fell on it. The circles, and half-circles, were once parts of the tubular crinoid stem that fell to the lake floor in different states of decay and at different angles. My guess for the "teeth" shapes are a stem piece that partially split crosswise and then lengthwise as it made contact with the developing stone.
Redditor DrewHoov posted this image on the subreddit r/whatsthisrock. To my surprise, no one in the comments suggested this was Photoshopped. I guess only real rockhounds follow the subreddit. We have to remember, our emojis, and symbolism altogether, are based mostly on things that our natural world produces.
This video contains NSFW language. The new movie Saturday Night is about the beginning of the TV show Saturday Night Live, or actually the run up to the first show on October 11, 1975. It was an audacious idea, doing cutting-edge comedy in a live broadcast with an ensemble of young unknown improvisational actors and counterculture writers. No one involved with the production had any idea if it would work. We know it did, because SNL is going into its 50th season next month. But what everyone wants to see in this trailer was whether they could cast young actors that could pull off the unforgettable real characters: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, and Chevy Chase, plus Lorne Michaels, who is still running the show. It looks like they did pretty well, since they don't have to introduce any of them. Saturday Night will open on October 11 at a theater near you. -via Digg
(Image credit: Daan Noske/Anefo)
Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Truman had airplanes at their disposal, but they didn't use them much. Dwight Eisenhower was different. As a military general, he flew on planes often, and made a lot of use of the 1948 Lockheed C-121 Constellation aircraft designated for the president. The plane was named Columbine II. But there was an incident at an airport that showed how confusing it was to use the plane's military tagline, 8610. That's when the use of "Air Force One" came into being. Now any airplane carrying the president is called Air Force One.
(Image credit: Fadamor)
But that first Air Force One was traded for another in 1954, and after various other roles, was abandoned in the desert, where it sat, rusting, until 1970, when Mel Christler bought it for parts. Years later, he found out about the plane's history, and he couldn't scrap it. But he couldn't afford to restore it, either, so the Columbine II sat in great disrepair until 2014. But now it's in the hands of a group trying to restore it for posterity. Read about the travels of the first Air Force One and when we can expect to see it ourselves.
Even if you are an avid video gamer, you might not have ever heard of the game Ciftlik Bank. It's a Turkish game, and in English the title is Farm Bank. From a cursory description, it sound like a lot like FarmVille, but it was so much more. Ciftlik Bank was set up to be a game, an investment in Turkey's struggling agriculture industry, and a money-making opportunity for players all at once. The whole complicated idea was appealing to a lot of people, but it actually turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. Ciftlik Bank was developed by Turkish rapper Mehmet Aydın, also known as Egoman. Aydın got rich off the game, and managed to enjoy his loot long after the players realized they were being fleeced, and long after Turkish authorities started looking for him. The whole story of Ciftlik Bank boils down to never trusting a person trying to sell you an idea that seems too good to be true. You can either ignore it, or ask questions of someone who isn't going to profit from your trust.
This video comes with a list of sources in case you want to read more on this story. There's an ad at 3:45, but it's only about 20 seconds long. -via Damn Interesting
There have been myths and legends throughout history of a pig-faced woman, usually an upper class lady, with the underlying curse of greed. But in London in 1815, a rumored sighting of a woman in a carriage with a pig's face blew up into a what we would call a viral sensation today. Many newspapers of the time didn't distinguish between fact and fiction, and printed what would sell newspapers. The stories led many Londoners to peer into the faces of people on the streets trying to find the pig-faced woman. Personal ads were submitted from people who wanted to meet her, work for her, or even marry her. The story inspired art and fictional publications as well.
Not all the newspaper stories fed the rumor. The Times tried to bring people to their senses with an article that stated, “Our rural friends hardly know what idiots London contains.” It took months for the story to die down, but even afterward, fairs and carnivals managed to draw people in to see the pig-faced lady. Read about the most sensational London story of 1815 at Atlas Obscura.
(Image source: Wellcome Images)
Redditor innkling got married on Monday and showed us the cake her new brother-in-law brought to the wedding. If you are from the Deep South or have seen the movie Steel Magnolias, you know this as a groom's cake.
While you may have some trouble with a cake in the shape of a cockroach, you have to admit that the execution is perfect. The only way it could have been better would have been if hundreds of little cockroaches emerged when the cake was cut. As it was, the cake had a delicious lemon flavor. The Greens are "wannabe entomologists" who raise and sell insects, so the cockroach cake was appropriate for the occasion, but her grandma, who hosted the wedding in her back yard, didn't like it. A good time was had by all.
If you haven't seen Steel Magnolias, the groom's cake was in the traditional shape of an armadillo.
If you've been watching table tennis at the Olympics, you have to be impressed with the skill, power, and competitiveness displayed by the world's best players. This is nothing like that at all. Oh, you'll see skill, but no competition and a lot of fun. Pongfinity is a group of three friends who met playing together on the Finnish junior national team. Now they play table tennis (or ping pong) as entertainment! This video is a compilation of their craziest stunts of 2023. Emil, Mikka, and Otto all have their specialty skills on display here, and crazy ideas that had to come up during brainstorming sessions from all three. They experiment with weird table configurations and use strange implements like extended arms, a leaf blower, and a suit made of paddles. In some stunts, they mash up ping pong with other games like billiards, dominoes, or Jenga. If you get exhausted watching elite players being super serious, this will help you see that table tennis can be just plain fun, even in the hands of the best. -via Laughing Squid
