In Alaska's Denali National Park sits North America's tallest mountain, Denali (formerly Mt. McKinley). About three vertical miles below the summit, you'll find the upper reaches of Ruth Glacier. A gorge in the middle of Ruth Glacier is called Don Sheldon Amphitheater. There is no theater, rather, the circle of mountains around the wide plane makes it a natural amphitheater. It was named for Donald Sheldon, a pioneering Alaska bush pilot who specialized in glacier landings. His descendants own a swath of the amphitheater, and in 2018, they built a hotel. Sheldon Chalet is considered the most remote hotel in the world, in the middle of glacier in Denali, and only accessible by helicopter.



Sheldon Chalet can accommodate up to ten guests at a time, offering luxurious accommodations and dining, plus skiing, hiking, rappeling, and fishing. At night, you may be lucky enough to see the Aurora borealis.



A minimum three-night stay for two costs $35,000, which includes the round-trip helicopter ride. But honestly, imagine the cost of flying all the building materials into the amphitheater by helicopter to get the hotel built. Oh yeah, and flying up the staff and supplies, which we assume includes plenty of heating fuel. Read more about Sheldon Chalet at Oddity Central. -via Strange Company  

In the latest installment of their Honest Ads series, Cracked examines the depths of the online dating industry. Warning: this video contains adult subject matter and adult language. In other words, it's all about sex. And disappointment. And gambling. See, online dating apps are a far cry from the matchmakers of old. While you may be looking for a soul mate, the vast majority of people you encounter will be looking for sex. And it's even worse to find that they are looking for sex from someone other than you.

Oh sure, there are occasional happy endings, but you gotta take your chances to get there.  -via Digg

If you're of a certain age, you'll recall the heady days of the early World Wide Web in the 1990s, and the excitement of discovering that a person with very little programming knowledge can build their own website, free, through the web hosting platform Geocities! If you're not of a certain age, you look at the sites that were built back then and say, "What were they thinking?"

What they were thinking was how much fun it was to build your own internet site and fill it with colorful moving images, links, and even a musical soundtrack. The opportunity for everyday folks to build something personal on the internet was much bigger than having a purpose for their website. And it was more important than tasteful design. You gotta work with what you have. If you feel nostalgic for the days of Geocities, you can scroll through Cameron's World to see the range of colors, icons, designs, gifs, and special effects. Many of the pictures and icons are links to archived versions of the original Geocities website it was found on. Host Cameron Askin calls it "a tribute to the lost days of unrefined self-expression on the internet." Geocities folded because they weren't making any money, but the aesthetic lives on as a piece of internet history.   

Almost every country that's a destination for immigrants has procedures in place to make sure you're fit for residence there. They're not going to let you live there without knowing a bit about the country first. These guys know an awful lot about Germany for Irishmen, so you know right off that they'll be allowed to stay. The most important thing to keep in mind is that Germans have a serious sense of humor; it's just hard for Americans to detect it without context. This is the latest skit from the comedy troupe Foil Arms and Hog. -via reddit

At the turn of the 20th century, Chinese food was quite popular in Chicago. However, the Chinese immigrants who moved inland to Chicago started restaurants on a shoestring, and many were little more than stalls, called "chop suey joints." Chin Foin went a different route. He went after upscale white diners who went to theaters and the opera. His first restaurant, King Yen Lo, was above a saloon, but it had white tablecloths, an open kitchen to display its cleanliness, and even an orchestra. Chin opened a second restaurant, King Joy Lo, and then a third, the Mandarin Inn near the opera house. The Mandarin Inn had a large menu of Chinese-American dishes, Western dishes, and an extensive wine and liquor list.

Chin Foin played host every night wearing a tuxedo. His restaurants' recipes inspired the first Chinese-American cookbook in English. He became famous in Chicago, and quite wealthy, but still ran up against discrimination and laws designed to restrict the Chinese restaurant business. Chin also had to deal with the Chinese tongs of the day. He was not yet 50 when he died in a tragic event that the police ruled an accident, but is rumored to have been a murder. Read the story of Chin Foin at Atlas Obscura.

(Image source: the Chinese American Museum of Chicago)

World War I ended on November 11, 1918. Since then, November 11 has been a holiday around the world, called Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, or Memorial Day. But the United States already had a Memorial Day to honor those who died in war, established after the Civil War. Nevertheless, Armistice Day was commemorated in the US ...until after World War II, when veteran Raymond Weeks began a campaign to include living veterans of war in the holiday. In 1954, Veterans Day was established as a holiday.

But back in 1921, it was Armistice Day, and the first War to End All Wars was a fresh wound. That was the year that the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was established at Arlington National Cemetery. An unidentified American serviceman who died in combat in France was brought back to the states and given a funeral on November 11, 100 years ago today.



The National Archives has partnered with Google Arts & Culture to create an online exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary if you want to explore further. -via Metafilter

🐳 How much does a blue whale eat every day? If you guessed "a lot," you'd be right: a new study revealed that a blue whale eats between 10 to 20 tons of food a day, or about 20 to 50 million calories. To put that into perspective, that's the equivalent of about 80,000 Big Macs. Every. Single. Day. (Image above: Duke University Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Lab)

🚂 Instead of turning it into scrap metal, a retired train in Tokyo's Miyazakidai Station is reimagined as a shared office space that you can rent. And while the interior is not exactly the same, the train has all the vibes of the train featured in Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away.

🎬 Talking 'bout Studio Ghibli, this guy created a fantastic replica of Howl's Moving Castle using trash and junk items.

🎃 Understanding semiotics using pumpkin spice as an example. At the end, I still don't understand semiotics, but now I'm thirsty for pumpkin spice latte.

📷 Winning photos of the Close-up Photographer of the Year 2021 include this super cute Rat in Tyre Hub shown above. (Image: Ezra Boulton/CUPOTY03)

❤️ Paul Rudd is named Sexiest Man Alive, and his wife basically said, "sure, dear." Rudd said, "I'm going to lean into it hard. I'm going to own this. I'm getting business cards made."

Let's end with two fun and uplifting stories:

🐶 Good boi: Dog saved more than 100 koalas during brushfires in Australia

😻 You may love your Amazon delivery packages, but this cat loves the delivery drivers.

More neat stories over at our new sites: Pictojam, Homes & Hues, Laughosaurus, Pop Culturista and Supa Fluffy. Thank you for checking them out!

Introducing rocks, it's just rockshttps://t.co/Gh0jgjMDNe pic.twitter.com/2Vi4Iarsw8

— Neal Agarwal (@nealagarwal) November 3, 2021

Neal Agarwal made us a web toy that's relaxing and frustrating at the same time. Just go and stack some rocks. It's nothing but rocks, and you can stack them. Unless you can't. Because they have no straight edges, and they tend to fall. At the same time, there are no rules to follow, and the sounds of the ocean are quite soothing. I found out something by accident- since there are no rules, no scoring, and no finish line, you don't have to stack them all vertically. This is the best I have done so far.

Agarwal offers other web toys if you want to do some exploring.  -via Metafilter

I don't know why this little boy is blue and his mother is purple, but it really doesn't matter as his mom makes curry for dinner and explains how variety is the spice of life. Eventually we see how the curry is a metaphor for the earth. Everyone is different and they like different things, but it takes all those things to make the world go around. This pleasant and colorful animated short was made by an international team of directors at the French animation school Gobelins for their graduation project. You can read the story behind the film at the school's website. -via The Kid Should See This

The USSR had quite a few notable "firsts" in the space race. They were the first to put a satellite into space in 1957 and the first to put a man into orbit in 1961. By 1967, they were ready to be the first country to stage a docking maneuver in orbit. The plan was to launch two spacecraft, Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 2, line them up in orbit, and have two of the cosmonauts swap capsules via spacewalk.

But there were problems with the spacecraft. The launch was rushed in order to have it occur during the Soviet Union's 50th anniversary celebrations. Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was to pilot Soyuz 1, and he knew the spacecraft had at least 203 structural problems, any of which could be catastrophic. The only person in the USSR who had the power to cancel the launch was Leonid Brezhnev. But who would tell him? Komarov enlisted his best friend, backup pilot, and national hero Yuri Gagarin to get word to the Soviet leader. Gagarin approached everyone he could, but the only help he got was from a spy who was punished for even suggesting telling Brezhnev such a thing.

Soyuz 1 launched on April 23, 1967. The Soviet Union achieved another first with the mission: the first man to die in space. Vladimir Komarov and his capsule became a fireball as it plunged to earth. He had known it would happen, but if he had backed out of the launch, Yuri Gagarin would have taken his place. Read what happened to Soyuz 1 at Amusing Planet. The account, and one picture, may be disturbing.

Manfred Steiner grew up in Austria and attended medical school there before immigrating to the United States. He went on to become America's leading clinical hematologist while acquiring a second doctorate in biochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Steiner eventually taught hematology at the medical schools of Brown University and the University of North Carolina.

As he approached retirement in his seventies, he contemplated following an old dream. As a young medical student, he had been fascinated by quantum physics, but had been unable to devote time to it. In retirement, Steiner was able to return to the passion of his youth. NPR reports that, at the ripe age of 89, Steiner has successfully defended his dissertation titled "Corrections to the Geometrical Interpretation of Bosonization." He now plans to publish that dissertation and continue his research.

-via My Modern Met | Photo: Nick Dentamaro/Brown University

The Right Honourable Jacinda Ardena, who serves as the Queen's Prime Minister of New Zealand, has weighty responsibilities as the head of a national government.

She is also a mother of Neve, a three-year old girl.

NBC News reports that on Monday, Ms. Ardena was delivering a national address through livestream about the state of the coronavirus pandemic in her country and her government's response to it. It was past Neve's bedtime, but she was having none of that. During the livestream, Neve interrupted the Prime Minister not once, but twice in an effort to overthrow the tyrannical shackles of the bedtime mandate.

During the second rebellion, Neve protested that her mother, like all politicians, is too long-winded when at the (virtual) podium. Ms. Ardena's mother, then visiting Premier House, the official residence of the Prime Minister, returned Neve to her bed.

-via Marilyn Bellamy

🦆 The 50th New York City Marathon this past Sunday had 33,000 humans and one duck participants. Meet Wrinkle the Duck, the viral Tiktok star who ran the NYC marathon in a stylish red webbed footwear.

🏠 This woman found hidden stairs under her patio that led to a secret room under her house.

🐂 150 bison are coming straight towards your car and there's no where for you to go. What do you do? Film the stampede, of course.

🎬 Forget the Matrix, enter the Keanuverse instead! How many Keanu Reeves movies do you recognize in this supercut?

🕹️ Best IKEA hack ever: Fan created Donkey Kong shelf using IKEA Lustigt Wall Shelf.

😴 The best time to go to bed for your health, according to science.

🤣 This last one is a funny one: Taking three boys to school is like The Three Stooges IRL.

More neat stories over at our new network of sites: Supa Fluffy, Homes & Hues, Pop Culturista, Pictojam and Laughosaurus.

Image: @seducktive/Tiktok

In 1920, Harvard University was the site of a process so scandalous that it wasn't made public until records were revealed in 2002. At the time it happened, the school considered the scandal to be the students' behavior, but in the 21st century we know the real scandal was the university's response and the cover up of their actions.

It began when a Harvard student suddenly dropped out, went home to his parents, and committed suicide. It came out that he was having an affair with an older man. Letters he left behind named other students at Harvard who were also homosexual. School officials wanted to keep the matter quiet, in order to preserve the school's reputation, and besides, one of the named students was the son of a former congressman. But they wanted those students out.

The results of the "Secret Court," as it was actually called, were that eight students were expelled for no stated reason, and they were given negative recommendations if they applied to another school. One committed suicide soon afterward, and another a few years later. Read about Harvard's Secret Court of 1920 at Messy Nessy Chic.

Most modern humans have at least one chin. Some of us are blessed with multiple chins. But only one actually has a solid bone structure behind it. Why?

Cosmos reports on a recent article published by Robert Franciscus in the Journal of Anatomy looking at evolutionary history of chins. One popular theory among physical anthropologists has been chins provide support to chewing as humans age and eat harder foods. But Franciscus and his colleagues found that longitudinal studies of bone growth in chins did not support this hypothesis.

What they propose instead is that human chins became prominent when early humans had higher levels of testosterone, which impacts bone growth, especially in the skull. As humans' aggressive behavior and testosterone levels dropped off, hormonal changes caused this large bone in the front of the human face to become sharper and angular--a chin.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Andrex99