Thanks, Coach pic.twitter.com/wnv8W1pIjJ

— EA SPORTS (@EASPORTS) December 29, 2021

When one door closes, another opens - and for John Madden, the door that closed was a knee injury that practically ended his pro football career in his first year as a professional player. But rather than calling it a career-ending injury, perhaps it’s better to call it a career-starting injury, as it actually ended up starting Madden in his journey to become one of history’s greatest coaches. 

John Madden passed away recently at the age of 85. You may know him as a Hall of Fame American football coach, Emmy-winning sportscaster, or through his video games series Madden NFL but you probably didn’t know that the start of Madden’s football career wasn’t an auspicious one.

In 1959, in his first year as a pro football player for the Philadelphia Eagles, Madden suffered a devastating knee injury during practice. His doctor told him that he wouldn’t play that year, but maybe he could play the next. That didn’t sound very confidence inspiring to Madden, but he dutifully went through his physical therapy sessions with the team’s staff, which were held early in the morning so he could be out of the way when the players showed up to train.

It was during those early mornings that the then 23-year-old rookie Madden noticed that quarterback Norm Van Brocklin would come into the dark locker room to watch game films that he played on an old movie projector. Van Brocklin would watch and study the games for hours, and Madden would sit quietly in the back of the room to watch him watch the games.

One morning, Van Brocklin noticed the red-headed Madden and said, “Hey, Red. Come up here and watch it with me.” From then on, Madden would sit with the future Hall of Famer quarterback, and learn from him how to analyze the game of football at a deeper level.

The next year, Madden’s knee was still not fully healed so he went back to school to get his teaching credential. To earn some extra money while pursuing his degree, Madden took a job as a student-teacher at San Luis Obispo Junior High School. The high school was looking for an assistant football coach, so Madden’s first coaching experience was actually to teach 50 high school kids how to play football!

Reference: Madden: A Biography by Bryan Burwell and Pat Summerall

In this video, guitarist Dave Simpson of the Dave Simpson Trio is strumming his own guitar, but fretting the bass. Bass player Carina Powell/CiCi Bass is picking her bass, but fretting Simpson's guitar. While they are playing basically the same tune, the sensation of two very different instruments in different hands is quite jarring to a musician, but they pull it off well. They switch left hands back to their own instruments before the video is over, to show us what they're best at. It's cool to watch, and cool to imagine what it feels like. -via Laughing Squid

The history of human organ transplants is a series of small steps. Skin transplants have been around a long time, but the first successful replacement body organ was a transplant of thyroid tissue in 1883. The possibility of moving organs from one person to another opened up a whole world of speculative fiction. Randolph Hartley wrote a short story for Life magazine’s short story contest in 1915 called "The Black Patch." In the hundred years since, we've become used to organ transplants, but the premise that unfolds here is still gripping. It opens with:

I wear a black patch over my left eye. It has aroused the curiosity of many; no one has suspected the horror that it hides.

One has to wonder if Hartley won that contest, and what tale could have possibly bested it. You can read the entire story (it's not long) at Futility Closet. -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: FOTO:FORTEPAN/Saly Noémi)

I found the cutest little frog in the bottom of my romaine lettuce tonight- it’s too cold to set him outside (27 degrees), but he’s been living in the lettuce in the fridge for several days now- does anyone know what I should do so that he doesn’t die? pic.twitter.com/usaCIEWaLv

— Simon Curtis (@simoncurtis) December 21, 2021

Simon Curtis bought a box of lettuce. It was in his refrigerator for several days before he got to the bottom of it and found a tiny green tree frog in the container! Now, a lot of people would get squicked out and complain to the store, but this frog was alive. And adorable. Curtis didn't want to set the frog outside, because the temperature was below freezing, so he turned to Twitter for advice.

He kept the frog in the original container, but added moisture and a water dish, and kept him in the kitchen. He named the frog Tony, and found out Tony is somewhat of an escape artist. Curtis kept his Twitter followers updated on all of Tony's shenanigans, and every day fell more in love with the frog.  Tired of constantly looking for Tony, Curtis got a terrarium to give him a bigger, more secure home. After consulting wildlife experts, Curtis decided that he now has a pet frog.

You can read the entire saga as it unfolded on Twitter just before Christmas, at Bored Panda.

Language changes fast, especially in the internet age. But it had always changed. While we have words our ancestors never imagined, we have also lost words. We know how to be ruthless, but at one time we could be full of ruth. We recognize when something is unwieldy, but would we recognize a thing that is wieldy? Lexicographer and etymologist Susie Dent thinks there are plenty of words that need to be brought back, especially positive words.

If we could be full of "ruth," that would mean we are full of compassion. Another great word is "confelicity," which means taking joy in someone else's happiness. Or how about old words that are just funny, like "cacklefarts" for eggs? There are plenty of lost words in English, and in other languages, which deserve to be brought out and used properly. Read about more of them at The Guardian.  -via Metafilter

Did you know that the word "scientist" didn't exist before 1834? At the time, the term used was "man of science," and that couldn't apply to Mary Somerville, who was a woman. "Mathematician" didn't quite work, either, although she was a mathematician and for a long time taught mathematics to children, along with her studies and raising her own four children. Somerville was brilliant in so many scientific subjects that the word "scientist" was coined to describe her.

Somerville was born in 1780, a time when women weren't given much of an education. She was schooled in art and music, but her parents objected to her fascination with Euclid, which they thought would drive her insane. It did not, and she taught herself higher mathematics. In 1834, she published a book called On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, which described how astronomy, mathematics, physics, geology, and chemistry fit together to explain the world around us. It wasn't her first impressive science book, but it cemented her status as a "scientist." Read the short version of Mary Somerville's amazing life at the Marginalian. -via Damn Interesting

Elizabeth Bathory, known as the Blood Countess, was convicted of unspeakable crimes. The story goes that she tortured and killed virgin women and then bathed in the blood of her victims, believing it would preserve her youthful looks. Her legend partially inspired the tale of Dracula. Bathory is credited with killing 600 people, which is a world record for female serial killer.

However, most of what is told about Elizabeth Bathory was added to the narrative long after she died in 1614. If you go back to the actual investigation and trial, you'll find it severely lacking in evidence. There is no documentation of her torture chambers, and almost all the witnesses were powerless servants. Plus the investigator and the prosecution had powerful political motives for getting rid of Bathory. When you know all this, and how the other "facts" were added later, its easy to see how the whole incident could have grown from nothing at all. Read the Elizabeth Bathory story from another angle at Cracked.

In 1949, the Washington Post published an article about a 14-year-old boy who had been cured of demon possession. William Peter Blatty, then a college student, read the article, and many years later wrote the 1971 novel The Exorcist. Blatty had used the diary that Father Raymond Bishop, who assisted in the exorcisms, as a reference. The family had consulted their own Lutheran priest because their son "Roland Doe" (a pseudonym) heard mysterious noises and objects would move when he was present. The boy underwent an exorcism by a local Catholic priest in Maryland. The phenomena worsened, and the family went to St. Louis to consult the Jesuit order for guidance. That led to twenty exorcism sessions, led by William S. Bowdern and assisted by Father Bishop and two other priests.

When the book The Exorcist came out, and the movie two years later, supposedly based on a true story, journalists and skeptics wanted to find the real Roland Doe. It turned out that both Roland Doe and another name used in various 1949 news articles were pseudonyms, and also his hometown was misidentified to preserve his privacy. However, some background information yielded clues that various parties traced back further and further until they knew exactly who Roland Doe really was. Read how they figured it out at Skeptical Inquirer. -via Strange Company

After a year of delays, closures, and disrupted schedules, movies roared back into theaters in 2021, and  new movies debuted on streaming services in abundance. The release schedule hasn't quite caught up with regular Hollywood operations yet, but we got way more movies in 2021 than we did in 2020. Sleepy Skunk was ready, taking notes for his annual mega trailer mashup. This artful mix comes in three sections: comedy, drama, and action -or as one commenter put it, hilarious, touching, and thrilling. There are a lot of movies here. How many of them have you seen? This video contains a tiny bit of NSFW language.

See Also: Sleepy Skunk's year-end mashups from previous years.

The war-torn history of Cambodia in the 20th century is told in the ruins of a purpose-built town. Bokor Hill Station was designed as a retreat for French colonists. Of course, it was built by Cambodian labor, with hundreds of deaths among them during the construction. Bokor Hill Station, centered around the Palace Hotel and Casino, was completed in 1925, but then abandoned in the late 1940s as the colonial French saw the end of their rule. In the 1950s, elite Cambodians moved in. They left in the 1970s as the Khmer Rouge moved in. They stayed through a war with Vietnam in the '80s. But by then, Bokor Hill Station had fallen into ruin. Some Cambodians believe it should remain in ruins as a monument to its history, while others think it should be restored to its former glory, or something close. Meanwhile, tourists go to Bokor Hill Station to take pictures, which you can see at Kuriositas.

(Image credit: Flickr user michaël stone)

Your brain is a computer, you've got logic in your soul, Mr. Spock.

John C. Worsley (previously at Neatorama) is back with another master edit celebrating Christmas with Star Trek. This time, the characters from Starfleet sing "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" except it's targeted to our other favorite green-blooded fictional character. The video is taken from Star Trek: The Animated Series, while the audio clips are taken from wherever they were. The lyrics follow the original song except in places where something else would work better. I can't imagine how much work goes into one of these songs, but I, for one, am glad he took the time.  -via Metafilter

Check out Worsley's Star Trek Christmas playlist.

My late mother-in-law was quite superstitious. Every New Year's Day, she waited by the phone, hoping that the first person to call her would be a man. If a woman called first, the year would be a disaster. She believed the same about people coming to her door, although that was less likely to happen than getting a telephone call. My husband took on the duty of calling her early in the morning, just to set her mind at ease (no matter how late we stayed up). He also called the other people in the family who believed in this tradition, and at a respectable hour, we'd go see them, always making sure I was still messing with the car or something when the door was answered. I'd never heard of this superstition before then, but it appears to be one, or maybe two, of the Victorian New Year customs in a list from Mental Floss.

The New Year is a time not only for for parties, but for omens of how the year ahead will go. Most of the traditions listed are methods for predicting the future, or at least getting a clue as to whether it will be good or bad. But there's a few that grew out of the party mode, and were dropped because they were more trouble than they were worth. I'm particularly thinking of the ridiculous New Year pie, which you can read about at Mental Floss.  -via Strange Company

Enjoy a new Christmas song by Ingrid Michaelson featuring Zooey Deschanel called "Merry Christmas, Happy New Year." This is from her album Songs for the Season.

Also enjoy the video, in which Mr. Needlefelted Rabbit brings home a Christmas tree while Mrs. Needlefelted Rabbit bakes Christmas cookies. They are joined by plenty of woodland creatures celebrating the season. This sweet video was directed by Phoebe Wall and animator and fiber artist Andrea Love (previously at Neatorama).  -via Nag on the Lake

Merry Christmas from all of us at Neatorama!

Every Christmas Eve, local school Dutch children come to Holten & Groesbeek Canadian Military Cemeteries in the Netherlands to light a candle in the honour of every Canadian soldier laid to rest. pic.twitter.com/WwAlpGgIqe

— Arry Pottah🇨🇦 (@13murphy66) December 24, 2021

Canada paid a heavy price to liberate the Netherlands from the Nazis during World War II. Many never returned home. Over two thousand of them remain at the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery and Memorial. The Dutch, who suffered horribly during the war, remain grateful to this day. That's why, every year, Dutch children and their parents gather on Christmas Eve to light candles for each grave.

This tradition, Canadian Military Family magazine informs us, began twenty-five years ago when a Finnish visitor introduced the custom from her homeland. A few years ago at one of these ceremonies, local organizer Gerard Hendriks explained that the candles serve to "bring the light and the warmth to them as we do with our loved ones at Christmas time."

Here's a video from the lighting last night.

-via Nag on the Lake

For Christmas, The Hatching Cat has strung together similar stories in several animals posts with holiday themes. One is a list of cats who saved lives in New York around the holiday season between the years of 1904 and 1932. The list has six stories about six cats who saved the lives of a dozen people, plus four kittens. One story involves Patches, pictured here. Patches hung around a building and was owned by no one, until that fateful day during the Christmas season of 1912, when Patches jumped up on the shoulders of Daniel De Lena, the building resident who was the cat's worst enemy.

According to the New York Press, one morning Patches jumped on Daniel’s shoulder and then kept running to and from a rear window while excitedly meowing. At first, Daniel kicked at Patches and tried to shoo the cat away.

But finally, the cat’s persistency paid off. When Daniel got up to look out the first-floor window, he saw that the rear of the building was in flames. He ran through the four-story brick building, waking several people who lived and worked there.

De Lena afterward became Patches' best friend, and even adopted the hero cat. Read the rest of Patches' story and those of five other hero cats at The Hatching Cat. -via Strange Company

See also: Christmas stories of hero dogs and hero horses.