Usually around summer or spring, depending on the region, you'll hear a chorus that sounds like a very loud buzzing or whirring noise, shaking of maracas, or two percussion instruments being rubbed against each other. Cicadas make this familiar song to attract each other during mating season, and after two to six weeks, they die.

Many species of cicada generally have a life cycle between two to five years, but the eastern North American species of the genus Magicicada, have either a 13-year or 17-year cycle which means these cicadas spend 13 and 17 years of their lives respectively before coming up out of the ground for their once-in-a-lifetime venture into the outside world to mate and die.

This year marks the first time in more than 200 years when two different broods of cicadas will be emerging simultaneously. Brood XIII from the 17-year group and Brood XIX from the 13-year group will be emerging from Illinois and several other states which hasn't happened since 1803.

Why the Magicacada live for so long underground and go out in large batches, one can only speculate to be a strategy against predators. Being able to come up altogether in such a huge throng makes it impossible for birds or other predators to thin out the number making it easier for the cicadas to mate and secure their posterity.

The map above shows the different cycles and times for when each brood will be coming up and where. From this year until 2038 except 2026, there will be broods emerging on the eastern part of the US.

(Image credit: Andrew M. Liebhold, Michael J. Bohne, and Rebecca L. Lilja, USDA Forest Service/Wikimedia Commons)

As far as historical artifacts go, dentures are a bit strange, but there are collectors who would give their eye teeth for these, so to speak. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill began losing his teeth in his 20s and had many upper partials made over his lifetime. One particular set that was made just as World War II began is up for auction. They are among the false teeth Churchill used when giving inspirational speeches such as the "We Shall Fight on the Beaches" speech. The denture is mounted in gold and is expected to sell for £5,000-£8,000 ($6,000-10,000).

The dentures were designed by Churchill's longtime dentist Sir Wilfred Fish. Yes, Churchill was responsible for Fish's knighthood. Churchill needed his dentures repaired or replaced often, partially because of his temper. He was known to thrown them when he got angry. The dentures were made by Fish's dental technician Derek Cudlipp, whose son sold them in 2010 for £15,200. While this auction estimate is lower, it's hard to put a price on a piece of history. What the auction winner will do with them is anyone's guess. Read more about Churchill and his false teeth at Smithsonian.

The "middle finger salute" is possibly the most widely-used rude gesture we have. It is often associated with road rage incidents, and is handy for instantly turning an argument into a fist fight, no pun intended. But where did it come from? Like many things we take for granted today, it originated with the ancient Greeks.

But 2,500 years ago, the meaning and usage of the middle finger was a bit different. The finger position was a straightforward phallic symbol that could be used for a number of communications. The gesture could be an insult, but was often a proposition or a part of a dirty joke. Greek playwright Aristophanes used it in several of his plays. The attitude was often more playful and ribald than challenging. According to ancient references, it was sometimes used to poke someone, with clear implications.

While the gesture itself is very old, referring to it as "flipping the bird" is much more recent. Get the lowdown on how the middle finger became both obscene and enduring at CNN. Be aware that the article is NSFW, unless you work at CNN. -via Fark

(Image credit: Clemens Stockner)

Give artificial intelligence a creepy idea and the algorithm will make it even creepier than intended. This 1950s-style newsreel tells us about a new amusement park. We expect the overdressed nuclear family having a good time with costumed cartoon characters, but this park has some extra features we're just glad the real world didn't think of back when lawsuits were less of a restraint. Just keep telling yourself it's all fictional. But you know, it might make a good horror movie in the right hands. Not that I'd want to visit Pooky Park, even in the cinema.

Honestly, be warned that this animation is weird and ridiculous and might be disturbing. The basic idea will remind you of the original TV series Squid Game and the uncanny rendering will remind you of the video for the song "Black Hole Sun." At least that's how it struck me. YouTuber Meme Dream Machine is to blame for this abomination. -via Laughing Squid

It's happened many times that an idea of how our world came to be the way it is arose just because someone thought it made sense. Ideas without any evidence are often proved wrong later, but once a theory is widespread, it's hard to take it back. Nineteenth-century lawyer and zoologist Philip Sclater published important work about the animals found in the different regions of the earth. But he was puzzled by lemurs, fossils of which were found in both Madagascar and in India. How does one explain that? Well, there must have been a land bridge at some time in the past. Sclater proposed that there was once a continent in the Indian Ocean he called Lemuria. That sunken continent (sometimes transferred to the pacific Ocean under the name Mu) captured the imagination of all sorts of people, and led to legends, fictional stories, and at least one religion that survives today.

The existence of Lemuria (called Kumari Kandam in Tamil) was disproven by plate tectonics later on. And in a final twist, the lemurs found in India were explained away as well. Read about the rise and fall of the continent of Lemuria at Atlas Obscura. 

(Image credit: Pradeep.doodh)

Biopics and movies about historical events can be wonderful jumping-off points for learning about history, but you can't just depend on them for your history education. Sadly, the blockbuster film version may be the only exposure many folks have to certain historical moments. Historical events are a great well of inspiration for movies, since they are truly original ideas at the time they happened, and the stories cannot be accused of plagiarism or piggybacking. But when a filmmaker takes on a historical project, they still have to fit the story into a feature film length, which means leaving out a lot of context, condensing long sequences, and sometimes taking shortcuts by making up scenes to get an idea across quickly. Nerdstalgic takes us on a tour of the ways true stories get changed for cinema. Those changes don't ruin a good movie, but as far as historical accuracy, we should be aware of them. -via Digg

This image of a Crab-eating macaque in Thailand won Suliman Alatiqi the Best in Show award in the 2023 Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest. Alatiqi spent two weeks diving near the Phi Phi Islands, and gained the trust of one particular clan of macaques before he could get up close and personal with them. The photograph won first place in the Portrait category as well.

The contest announced first through fourth place winners and honorable mentions in 14 categories. New rules this year restricted the use of AI in post processing for the 12 primary categories to ensure that the photos are 100% real, but also introduced two new categories without such rules, Underwater Digital Art and Underwater Fashion, where such editing can run free. All the photos are amazing, but I was particularly drawn to this one.  

Gabriel Jensen placed fourth in the Portrait category with this image of two fishes. The doctorfish seems to be posing for the picture, as if he's getting his smile right for a selfie, but he's also being eaten by a lizardfish! Jensen likened the image to the "this is fine" meme. Nature is brutal.

See all the winners at the contest website, with links to the story behind each. -via Everlasting Blort

We really don't know much about the real Arthur, but if he was real, he wasn't a king but rather a fourth-century warrior who was a hero to the Britons. As time goes by, heroes get elevated, in this case to a king and a legend. The story of Arthur was written and re-written over centuries to include other well-known legends, such as that of the round table, the knights who each had their own powers like MCU characters, the Holy Grail, the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere, and most of all, that sword. There are actually two swords, Excalibur and Caliburn, one from a stone and the other from the Lady in the Lake, even though strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. All of these stories may have come from some grain of truth that turned into a good story and then became folded into the Arthurian saga as it was resurrected again and again. Arthurian legends are like Katamari Damacy, the game where the further you roll, the more stuff you pick up along the way. You can't keep a good story down.   

John Baylies is a sousaphone player. The sousaphone has been around since 1893, but Baylies is famous for playing a far more advanced version called the SousaFX. This electronic accessory lets him control audio effects that give his instrument abilities that you'd never expect to hear in a classical orchestra, such as stutter and tremolo. What you see him manipulating with his left hand is actually a PlayStation 4 controller.

Baylies performs with Sousastep, an improvisational group based in Boston. You can listen to their work on SoundCloud.

The pulsating LED lights are a nice accent and Baylies has helpfully provided instructions on how to install them.

-via Massimo

The Trolley Problem is a thought experiment in ethics. A runaway trolley is on course to kill several people. You can throw a switch to divert the trolley down another track so it will only kill one person. If you throw the switch, you will cause less harm, but you've still killed a person. If you don't throw the switch, you can consider yourself blameless but more people will die. Mastodon user sidereal gives us the lowdown on how it should really be handled.

This actually comes from railroad workers talking in comments on a fb group. I just made the meme for them.

They were like "those trolley memes are stupid, we have to do this in our railyard like once a week when some intermodal runs loose."

Kudos to the railroad engineers who figured this out long ago, and not to the train robbers who used the scheme to rob passengers. While this explains the trolley example, it does not answer the ethical dilemma at the heart of the question. It just means we really need to come up with a new way to illustrate it. Or not, because the Trolley Problem scenario already asks us to assume a bunch of weird factors, like people being tied to two railroad tracks, and the subject knowing how to switch the tracks. And if you have enough time to consider the implications instead of panicking, why not just untie those people? Here's how a two-year-old solves the problem. I'm glad we had real railroad engineers on it long ago. -via Metafilter

Grand Traverse County: Body-cam footage captures daring ice rescue by MSP Motor Carrier Officer Kammeron Bennetts with the help of the victim’s dog Ruby. Great team work and well done! https://t.co/uTblTv3bhV pic.twitter.com/NDKKHZnysu

— MSP Seventh District (@mspnorthernmi) January 18, 2024

We don't deserve dogs, but we are grateful to have them. Last week, a 65-year-old man fell through the ice on Arbutus Lake in Michigan. A witness called 911 immediately and an officer responded right away, equipped with rescue equipment and a body cam. The ice was too thin to support the officer, but the victim had his dog Ruby with him.

Ruby responded to instructions from her master and the officer, and began to play the most important game of fetch in her life, bringing a rope and a rescue disc to the victim. Ruby is not a trained rescue dog, but her actions allowed the officer and an assisting firefighter to drag the man across the thin ice to safety. He was taken to a hospital, treated, and released. We have no doubts that Ruby was treated to a steak dinner when all was said and done. That's a good dog. -via Boing Boing

On January 22, 1984, Apple placed an ad during the Super Bowl (yes, the Super Bowl used to be in January) that recreated a scene from George Orwell's book 1984. That got our attention. It was an ad for their new computer called a Macintosh, which was made available two days afterward. It took users by surprise by offering a usability experience that we all take for granted forty years later.

I got my first used Mac a couple of years later. My family already had a Commodore 64 and an Apple II, and they were a lot of hassle for a little fun. The Mac's screen was small, and there were no colors. Besides, it was awfully expensive for a used computer. But once the guy who was selling it showed me how to use it in about 30 seconds, there was no turning back. You had to be there to understand what a game changer the Macintosh was for users. Read what the Macintosh did to home computing, to mark its 40th anniversary, at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Mark Mathosian)

The marker above has only small excerpts of a speech that has since been called Eulogy of the Dog. It was delivered by attorney George G. Vest in 1870 during a lawsuit over a dog that had been killed. It was, in fact, the fourth trial of a lawsuit between the dog's owner and his brother-in-law over who shot his favorite hunting dog Old Drum. The biggest dispute in the lawsuit was over the amount of damages one should be paid for the loss of a dog. What is the life of a dog worth? During closing arguments, Vest delivered an emotional justification that swayed the jury and no doubt drew a few tears in the courtroom. It has since been published and republished, and led to the erection of two monuments to Old Drum in addition to the historical marker. You should read the statement in full, as well as the story of Old Drum's death and the lawsuits that followed, and then go hug your loyal dog. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: Carldaniel)

For five years, we watched Walter White try to keep his meth manufacturing business a secret from his wife, his son, the police, and most importantly, from his brother-in-law the DEA agent on the TV show Breaking Bad. A big part of the show's allure was seeing his panic at the many close calls and wondering how long he was going to get away with his secret double life. But what if he hadn't put so much effort into not getting caught? The series would have been much shorter, but probably a whole lot funnier.

In this fantasy version of Breaking Bad from Alternative Cuts, White not only doesn't care about anyone finding out what he's been doing, no one in the cast cares about gun safety or road safety, either -or anything else for that matter. It's chaotic, but you have to admire the editing that made it possible. Do not miss the driving lesson sequence. -via reddit

Some are born great, some acheive greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. But Macie Davis-Southerland has greatness growing upon her.

Specifically, it's growing on her left arm.

In 2012, while in high school, Davis-Southerland discovered that one particular hair on her arm was longer than the others. She developed a plan: she would grow this hair until it secured for her a Guinness World Record.

Over the years, the hair sometimes fell out or was pulled out. But Davis-Southerland strove for victory and regrew it. Now she has secured the Guinness World Record for the longest arm hair on a woman. The hair measures 7.24 inches long.