These two street signs face each other, about 5 metres apart, and are in scholarly dispute about apostrophe placement pic.twitter.com/jAnu8clKHM

— M@ (@mattfromlondon) May 12, 2023

I'm a stickler for apostrophe usage, but it's hard to say if either of these signs is incorrect. It all depends on whether King Charles III has many scholars or just one scholar. Google Maps suggests a plurality of scholars, but I think that we need a headcount.

Matt Brown, an editor for the Londonist, snapped these photos. He appears to be a published expert on London geography and the Twitter thread shares other examples of British locales with disputed place names.

-via David Thompson

A couple of hedgehogs wake up from winter hibernation and find that a city has been built over their burrow! They aren't the only animals who were surprised by the change in their environment. How will they ever survive? But woodland creatures are keen to adapt, and soon learn the ways of the city. They actually learn better than the humans ever did, and manage to get by just fine, thank you. I'm not going to spoil the plot, but it has an unexpected happy ending.  

The cute stop-motion animation Ezi un lielpilseta is from Latvian filmmaker Evalds Lacis. -via Nag on the Lake

There are basically two kinds of kisses: the social kiss between friends and family that is just a pressing of lips against skin, and the open-mouth sexual kissing between lovers. This research involves the latter.

The oldest kisses documented in text has been pushed back to 4,500 years ago, found in Mesopotamian cuneiform writing. That's a thousand years earlier than previously known documentation. But human writing only goes back so far, and since kissing has been found in such ancient documents, it may well have been an established custom before writing existed at all. Evidence of kissing before that relies heavily on how we interpret the clues.

We know that humans interbred with Neanderthals, but did they kiss? A DNA study of Neanderthal  tooth plaque found a 48,000-year-old microorganism that was rare in Neanderthals but common in human remains. While that could be evidence of kissing, there are other ways it could have leapt from one species to the other.

However, bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, kiss as a precursor to sexual behavior, while chimpanzees only employ social kisses. That may lead us to believe both kinds of kisses were already present when homo sapiens emerged. But it's not conclusive evidence.

These questions come from an article about a study that looked for a correlation between ancient text references to kissing and the spread of disease. You can read about that study, and the history of kissing, at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Francisco Osorio)

I always had a problem with the message in Disney's version of The Little Mermaid. A young girl completely changes herself to please a guy she only knows from afar, and then has to seduce him with just her looks. Somehow, that leads to a happy ending. Yeah, there are plenty of other things wrong with the fairy tale, as in all the Disney Princess films, at least the classic ones I have seen. But the folks at How It Should Have Ended just target the most obvious flaw, so it's a short video. There's a post-credit scene that has nothing to do with the fixed ending, but it's funny. The new live-action version of The Little Mermaid opens nationwide next weekend, presumably with the same ending as the 1989 animated version. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Expeditionary campers are travel trailers and motorhomes designed for camping away from the amenities of a campground. They're for something more akin to wilderness environments. Mammoth Overland, a manufacturer of such travel trailers, goes further with its ELE trailer.

Gear Junkie explains that ELE stands for "Extinction-Level Event". This trailer is thoroughly zombie-proof. Oh, the company says that it's designed to withstand a bear attack, but we know what it's really communicating. The walls and windows are bullet-proof, there are controls inside for bear spray emitters, and there's an air purification system that can last for up to 6 months of use.

The interior includes a combat information center that allows the user to observe the surrounding area with a nightvision camera mounted on a boom, launch a drone, or monitor radiation with a Geiger counter.

The system is pricey at $67,000. But isn't survival worth the expense?

-via Homecrux

An F-5 tornado passed through the village of Woldegk in Saxony (now Germany) on June 29, 1764. An F5 is the most powerful category on the Fujita scale. In fact, the Woldegk tornado, with winds speeds of 300 mph (480 km/h), is estimated to have been the most powerful recorded tornado in history! It flattened a path 30 kilometers long and was estimated to be 900 meters wide at its maximum. It pulled up mighty oaks, flattened houses, ripped up cobblestones, and even unearthed a skeleton from a grave.

But how do we know the power of that tornado? There were no modern meteorological devices in Woldegk, nor anywhere near. German scientist Gottlob Burchard Genzmer visited the area soon after the tornado and made an excruciatingly detailed survey of the damage, from the place where the tornado touched down to the point it fizzled out, including illustrations like the one above. Comparing the book Genzmer published to better-recorded tornados of later centuries allowed scientists to determine the twister's strength.

But the real kicker is that only one person died in that disaster. June 29 was Buß- und Bettag, a day of prayer and repentance, and almost everyone in town was inside the massive stone church, the only building that was safe from the storm. Read about the historic devastation of the Woldegk tornado at Amusing Planet.    

(Image credit: Gottlob Burchard Genzmer)

Hemlock Public Schools in Hemlock, Michigan recently issued a press release in hope of quashing a rumor of an impending alien invasion. This rumor spread on social media, led parents to contact the school district for information, and finally resulted in the necessity of the Superintendent speaking out on the subject. In short: the aliens have not arrived.

The school district has investigated the rumor and determined that it began with one student who wished to create a distraction that would allow him to avoid taking a math test.

The press release urges members of the school district to verify information claims before believing them, let alone spreading them online.*

This warning stresses the importance of information literacy, which is, as a librarian, the most important thing that I teach to my students. An outrageous rumor on campus is a good teaching opportunity.

I've toyed around with the idea of creating an information literacy game that begins with intentionally starting a wild and false rumor on campus that inductively leads students toward evaluating the veracity of the rumor. But the project proved to be too complex to practically execute.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Hemlock Public Schools

*Assuming that the press release is accurate, which I am unable to verify at this time.

Every once in a great while, you learn about a person you've never heard of before just to find out they have more than one claim to fame. Jack Parsons had way more than that. Parsons developed an interest in rocketry in the 1920s. In the 1930s, he dropped out of college. In the 1940s, he became an explosives expert, co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory along with other institutions, dabbled in communism, joined a religious cult founded by Alistair Crowley named Thelema, lost his adulterous lover to his housemate L. Ron Hubbard, tried to conjure up a goddess to re-order the world, and lost his security clearance due to his advocacy of "sexual perversion." In the 1950s, Parsons managed to kill himself.

Jstor Daily has an overview of Jack Parsons and his short but incredibly eventful life. Then you'll want to read a more detailed account at Wikipedia.  -via Damn Interesting

In 2003, Walt Disney Pictures released Haunted Mansion, a movie based on their theme park ride, starring Eddie Murphy. It was released just a few months after the mega-hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, also based on a Disney theme park ride. While Haunted Mansion made some money, it did not live up to expectations, either financially or by the reaction from audiences and critics. So Disney just waited twenty years, and is doing it again. Well, to be honest, they didn't wait that long. This reboot has been in development for more than a decade. Let's hope they get it right this time.  

The 2023 movie Haunted Mansion seems to be straight up scary in its supernatural scenes, while putting all the comedy into the normal humans' interactions with each other. As far as we can tell, it's more in line with the theme park ride than the 2003 film. It will star LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito, Rosario Dawson, Dan Levy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jared Leto, Hasan Minhaj , Dan Levy, and Winona Ryder.

If Haunted Mansion is a hit this time, it might make up for the so-so performance of Jungle Cruise in 2021. The Space Mountain movie is still in production with no release date set. We can't think of any other Disney theme park rides that aren't already based on a movie. Haunted Mansion will hit theaters July 28.  -via Boing Boing

An ocean cruise is a dream for some and a nightmare for others. The benefits are that you stay in your "floating hotel" while traveling at the same time, and you don't have to drive or select a restaurant. The drawbacks are crowding and possible seasickness. But how did that idea ever take off? German shipping magnate Albert Ballin wanted to take advantage of his ships' downtime. Boats cost money whether they are working or not. So in 1891 he offered an excursion on his largest ocean liner, the SS Augusta Victoria, for folks who wanted an adventure but weren't traveling to anywhere in specific. A 58-day trip through the Mediterranean in winter was a huge hit, and Ballin arranged for other ships to be used in this way.

But the first ocean liner specifically built as a cruise ship was the SS Prinzessin Victoria Luise, built in 1900. It was huge, and had 120 roomy and luxurious staterooms for its passengers. The entire ship was designed with passengers in mind, as if it were a fancy hotel. Read about the first cruise ship, see plenty of pictures, and learn about its tragic demise at Messy Nessy Chic.

(Image credit: Library of Congress)

The Social Security administration has released the list of the most popular baby names for 2022, and they have hardly changed at all from 2021. Or 2020. In fact, Liam has remained the top name for boys for six years now, and Olivia still leads for the fourth year.

The visualization above by redditor chartr shows that the top names just aren't what they used to be. While the most popular names appear to stick around longer, the diversity of names is exploding. A hundred years ago, the most popular name was given to 3% of all boys and girls, while today the top name is only given to 1% of babies. If you were a boy born in the 1940s, there was a 74% chance you were given a top 100 name, but only a 36% chance if you are a boy born in the last few years.  

That doesn't mean much on the ground, though. Thirty years ago, it seemed like half the high school was named either Mike or Jennifer, but now that schools are ten times as big, even a less-common name is heard a lot. The internet makes your name seem even more common when you try to register an email or a social media account. Just ask any early adopter who got an email address like mikesmith@gmail.com and constantly gets messages meant for someone else. Now that's a problem even for people with what you may think of as a unique name.

If you want to find out how the popularity of your name has changed over time, enter it into the Baby Name Explorer and get your own chart. -via Digg

I've come across A LOT of good 17th- and 18th-century Quaker names over the past 3.5 years, as I've worked on my thesis. Now that my thesis is done and submission is near, it's time to share the more than 90 wildest early Quaker names I've found (in alphabetical order): pic.twitter.com/Qj18jPELMI

— Isabella Rosner (@IsabellaRosner) May 16, 2023

Are you searching for the right baby name for your little bundle of joy? Picking the wrong name can result in a /r/Tragedeigh. So let us turn toward the noble and dignified names of Quakers during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.

Isabella Rosner is a doctoral student at King's College in London who studies the material cultures of Britain from the 1600s to the 1800s. She's an expert on women's needlework during that period.

She examines an era when Quaker sects of Protestant Christianity were enormously popular in England. As a result, she's run across a lot of names that were normal by standards of that culture and time, but would be considered a bit eccentric today.

Personally, I think that "Love Beer" would be an excellent choice for an adult. "Experience Cuppage", though, sounds a bit naughty.

The award-winning short film Higher Grounds has the earth welcoming our first alien contact. The aliens have announced their presence by flooding the earth's atmosphere with oxygen. Authorities here on earth take that as a gift, since we are choking ourselves with carbon dioxide. But is that really the aliens' intention? The ambassadors from the cosmos are two lower ranking aliens, Ralff and Rozzorokk, who both suffer from a lack of self-esteem. They can't even properly parallel park. One falls for an earthling, and the other is in a desperate search for a bathroom. Meanwhile, earthlings have their own problems. Chloe wants to go to the beach, despite the momentous happenings right there in the neighborhood, yet events conspire against her. It's a comedy, so don't get hung up on plausibility.

Higher Grounds is from Joe Kramer (previously at Neatorama), who plays the alien Ralff, and Christian Sarkis Graham, who plays the convenience store clerk. -Thanks, Joe Kramer!

When I became a mother, my husband and I had our first meeting with a pediatrician. The doctor had a lot of safety questions for us, and the very first was "Do you have a trampoline?" Pediatricians hate trampolines, even more than they hate swimming pools. Backyard trampolines are the reason we have around 100,000 trampoline related injuries every year. But people still buy them. Other dangerous toys are remnants of the past. Lawn darts were banned, then were completely redesigned for safety. The infamous Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab went the way of the dodo. Some other hazardous toys may surprise you. A Slip ‘N Slide doesn't appear all that dangerous, but there's a reason that adults are warned not to use them. Find out about that and other dangerous toys in a list at Mental Floss. You can also listen to the article in video form.  

(Image credit: Rob Swystun)

If you've seen the first edition of Ze Frank's Animal Awards, or the followup video, you know what you are in for with this video. This is where he finds a strange fact to tell us about an animal, but not enough to make a whole video, so we get a variety of critters that are totally weird in one way each, but that weirdness is extremely weird. The awards this time are in the categories of Close Knit Friends, Oh So That's Where It Is, Why You Should Always Wear Pants to a Picnic, Are You Afraid, Creepiest Dave, Cutest Bachelor Pad, and A Most Unfortunate Microphone. Some are informative while others are just funny clips that are well worth watching, like the crow and creepy Dave.  

This video contains adult subject matter. There is a one-minute skippable ad at 5:12. The post-credit scene has no information at all, but it's fun to watch.