Who doesn't love fried chicken? Apparently, ancient Britons considered it taboo to eat them, as a study revealed that Gallus gallus domesticus had once been venerated by them to the point that men and women were buried along with their pet chickens.

After arriving in the UK in 800 BC, these chickens spent centuries being worshiped and celebrated by the Iron Age Britons. It wasn't until AD 43 when the Romans came over to England and began slaughtering the chickens for food.

From that point onward, ancient Britons began rearing them so that they can be farmed and eaten later. In fact, historic bones have shown how chickens have evolved over time so that they can grow faster and die younger, to satisfy humans' increasing demand for them.

Now, there are about 26 billion chickens being reared around the world, far more than any other bird on the planet. Pigeons in the 1800s had a population of 3 to 5 billion, and were considered the most common bird on the planet. Not anymore.

(Image credit: Thomas Iversen/Unsplash)

Hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers during WWI were killed in action, many of whom returned to their native lands and laid to rest. But there were those who had died but couldn't be identified, and so they were referred to as "unknown soldiers".

In 1916, David Railton, a chaplain serving in the British Army, after finishing the funeral rites of a fellow soldier, had found a solitary grave with the inscription, "An Unknown British Soldier of the Black Watch". From this came the idea of holding a ceremony for all the unknown soldiers during WWI.

He had suggested it to Rev. Herbert Ryle, the Dean of Westminster Abbey, and everything was quickly sorted out, with the Prime Minister and King George V giving approval on October 4th. Brigadier General Louis Wyatt was in charge of making it happen. So, he gave instructions for four unknown soldiers to be exhumed, one each from Somme, Aisne, Arras, and Ypres.

These were brought to St. Pol, and Wyatt randomly selected one among them, with the rest being reburied. The body was placed in a specially-designed oak coffin, and brought to London by train.

On Armistice Day, November 11, 1920, the Unknown Warrior was honored by the King and later brought to Westminster Abbey to be buried.

Many questions still surround the mystery of the unknown warrior such as the selection process, the number of soldiers, the identity of the soldier being known, and the place of interment of the remaining bodies.

But what's important is that every year on November 11th, the relatives of the 517,773 unknown soldiers may believe that the Unknown Warrior could be their lost friend, lover, husband, father, brother, or son.

(Image credit: Horace Nicholls/Wikimedia Commons)

The early life of Lucy Higgs probably resembles many African-Americans' stories in the 19th century. Born into slavery, she was later sold to the Higgs family of Tennessee, from whom she took her last name. She served that family for a couple generations, met her husband who was also a slave there, and the two had a daughter named Mona.

However, Lucy's life took a turn when the Higgs were forced to evacuate their plantation and move to Atlanta. Seeing her opportunity to escape, Lucy took her daughter and ran until they stumbled upon the Union Camp of the 23rd Indiana Regiment. It was here where she found refuge. Unfortunately, her daughter died during the siege of Vicksburg.

Under the tutelage of Dr. Magnus Brucker, Lucy gained practical knowledge on how to be a medic. She learned how to dress wounds, administer medicine, and even went into the battlefield as a combat nurse, although she bore no arms.

After the war ended, Lucy had been convinced by her fellow regiment troops to settle with them in New Albany, Indiana. It was there where she married John Nichols. Compensation and pension for war nurses had not been instituted until much later. Even then, they barely had any documents to show for their service, unless they had someone to vouch for them.

Fortunately for Lucy, she had a whole battalion, as shown in the photo. Despite being denied military pension for six years, through a special act of Congress, signed by President William McKinley, Lucy's application for pension had been finally approved in 1898, giving her $12 per month.

When Lucy died in 1915, she was given a military funeral. In honor of her memory, a limestone sculpture of her holding her daughter had been dedicated at Second Baptist Church, New Albany.

(Image credit: Floyd County Public Library/Wikimedia Commons)

The Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, aka Hergé (pronounced EHR-jay), created the beloved Tintin character in 1929, and produced a series of 24 comic books with the title The Adventures of Tintin. Tintin is a Belgian reporter who goes around the world and by chance, always finds himself caught up in dangerous situations and ends up saving the day.

Despite Tintin's success today, it received an equal amount of criticism and controversy for Hergé's depiction of other cultures, which, in today's terms would be considered horribly racist. Some might point to the volumes titled "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" and "Tintin in the Congo" to be blatantly so.

However, the fifth volume, "The Blue Lotus", would change Hergé's view of the world and other peoples for the better. In it, Tintin travels to China to cover the events that were happening during the 1931 Japanese invasion.

In order to provide an accurate depiction of not just the events prior, but also Chinese culture in general, Hergé took inspiration from Zhang Chongren, a Chinese student at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, with whom he became friends from the time they spent together as he wrote "The Blue Lotus".

Zhang became Hergé's main source of information as he had actually left the same day the Japanese invaded China. He also made sure that the facts and illustrations were correct.

"The Blue Lotus" was published in 1936 with critical acclaim, and is considered one of Hergé's finest works, influencing subsequent volumes.

Zhang returned to China after a few years, and the pair didn't see each other again until more than 40 years later, in 1981, when Zhang flew back to Belgium to meet with Hergé for one last time. Hergé passed away two years later.

(Image credit: VCG Photo; Jean-Marie Valheur/Quora)

Sometimes, when we find ourselves daydreaming or staring into the air, we might notice some squiggly lines or funny shapes floating about, and no matter where we look, they seem to be moving along with our eyes. There are different names for these shapes: eye floaters, vitreous floaters, and Muscae volitantes (lit. "flying flies"), but its scientific term is myodesopsia.

These floaters appear in our vision when blood or other cells that got into the vitreous humor - the transparent, gel-like substance filling the space between the lens and the retina - block light passing through the eye, casting shadows onto the retina.

Unlike the aqueous humor, the liquid substance found between the iris and the cornea, the vitreous humor never washes out or gets replenished. So, whatever gets into the vitreous, stays there for the rest of our lives. Meaning, if you are seeing eye floaters right now, you will continue seeing them until death do you part.

For most people, these eye floaters present no issues. We sometimes take notice of them until our attention drifts elsewhere. Others, however, might experience too many floaters clouding their vision, but this is more common in older people.

A sudden increase in floaters may be a sign that someone is suffering from posterior vitreous detachmant (PVD), when the vitreous becomes separated from the retina. This poses the risk of retinal tearing which can cause blindness.

Several treatments are available, but even the standard procedure, a vitrectomy, is still considered risky and must only be used as a last resort.

(Image credit: Acdx/Wikimedia Commons)

In 1920, author J.R.R. Tolkien's oldest child, John, was three years old. He asked his father about Father Christmas, and Tolkien was glad to answer his questions. When John wrote a letter to Santa, Tolkien wrote a short reply in disguised handwriting. The next year, and for 23 years afterward, Tolkien's letter from Father Christmas arrived for his children, eventually four of them. The letters got longer and more involved, with Father Christmas telling stories about what happened at the North Pole that year that involved goblins, polar bears, elves, and world events. And they were illustrated with his drawings! Tolkien seemed to be testing stories and story elements that later became incorporated into his books.

The letters from Father Christmas continued until 1943, when his youngest child Priscilla was 14, at which time he wrote a farewell letter, promising not to forget them. Read about Tolkien's years of writing in the voice of Father Christmas and the tales he spun at Mental Floss.

(Image source: Amazon)

If you are in the armed forces and decide not to obey an order from a superior, you'd better be pretty darn sure you are right, or else are willing to pay the price for insubordination. In most cases, you'd be punished and if you are lucky, no one back home would ever know about it. But some famous cases of disregarding orders made a real difference in battle, or even for the survival of the planet. Those cases where disobedience turned out to be the right decision left the soldier a hero and the story might even be made into a movie. Sometime it led to disaster. And sometimes the soldier got away with it because the person issuing the order was on his last legs anyway. Weird History tells us eleven stories of disobedient members of their nation's military forces that left a mark on the world, in one way or another.

Every year for ten years now, redditor kakalacky_guy has designed and produced a Christmas card that shows us the chaos of celebrating Christmas as a family. His 2023 card shows he and his wife and three children attempting to ski even though they don't have snow and don't have a hill, either. What could possibly go wrong? He's been bringing us these funny and creative cards since 2014, when they only had two kids, although it seemed like a half-dozen at the time, as the card implied. Most of the cards put the children in dangerous situations that children would love to get themselves into if we let them. Continue reading to see the collection of cards through the years.

There are many inspiring words that came from famous people of history or characters in a film, and many statements that we often quote to this day. We are familiar with statements like, "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger" from Friedrich Nietzsche, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" from Franklin D. Roosevelt, and "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get" from Forrest Gump.

On Quora, somebody posed a question regarding the most badass things that historical figures have said. Some of my favorites include this roast by J.R.R. Tolkien when his book The Hobbit became popular and a German publisher, Rütten & Loening, contacted him in 1938 inquiring about his ancestry.

There's also this quote from the legendary Marine Chesty Puller who, during the Korean war, made this famous quote which was a great way to motivate his troops when they were facing insurmountable odds.

And this anecdote about St. Thomas Aquinas who had been ridiculed by his peers, and was called "The Dumb Ox" because he was quiet, reserved, and a bit large and slow. His response comes, I think, from the purest of intentions, not wanting to think ill of other people, but it actually sounds like the best comeback.

(Image credit: Leila Thomas, Cella Poynter, Jay Matthews/Quora)

We often think about the Middle Ages as the period when people swam in squalor and filth. Those may have been influenced by historical events like the Black Death and depictions of that time in movies or TV shows. However, contrary to popular belief, the people of the Middle Ages actually took pains to keep themselves clean.

Literature such as the Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum, a collection of 360 Latin poems alluded to various hygiene habits such as washing one's hands and face with cold water in the morning and keeping warm after a bath. Peter of Eboli's De Balneis Puteolanis actually speaks exclusively about bathing.

Monarchs like Charlemagne, Wenceslaus IV of Luxembourg, and Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland, are some great examples of medieval people's obsession with bathing. Charlemagne's palace had pool-sized baths where he, his sons, members of court, and even his soldiers were invited to bathe.

Wenceslaus enjoyed bathing so much that he was said to have given his mistress a bathhouse. And Jagiełło invited his fiancée Jadwiga's knight to take a bath with him to convince her of his own hygiene and cleanliness.

Even ordinary people during the Middle Ages went to bathhouses regularly to the point that bathhouses offered auxiliary services like haircuts, massages, and even medical procedures such as wound dressing and bloodletting. Other establishments often accused bathhouse owners of stealing their clients, to which bathhouse owners responded by doubling down and further providing food and live performances.

However, the reason why many people associate the medieval period with filth and grime is due to the Renaissance period completely abandoning bathing, because of an outbreak of syphilis. Naturally, people became scared to go to public bathhouses and stopped bathing altogether. -via Atlas Obscura

(Image credit: Denghiù/Wikimedia Commons)

The closest thing to a film noir that I have watched is the 1995 crime thriller Seven which featured Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Spacey. It left a weird impression on me, to say the least.

I liked the plot twist and how Spacey's character was completely shrouded in mystery for most of the movie. However, I'm sort of conflicted between liking the movie and being repelled by it. But one thing I know is that it made me think about the concepts of justice, truth, and hypocrisy.

Although not exactly a film genre, film noir has been used to refer to movies with a distinctive dark style, accentuated by stark lighting effects, amoral protagonists, and existential themes. They generally include a femme fatale and very complicated plots.

Everybody knows about Pulp Fiction, and there are debates about whether it's a film noir, neo-noir, or just a crime film featuring certain noir elements. But there are other relatively obscure noir films which we should know and watch. Here are the top 11 noir films from The Collector.

(Image credit: Maxim Hopman/Unsplash)

For over 1,000 years, the Kokusekiji temple in Oshu, Iwate Prefecture, has been holding their annual hadaka matsuri or "naked festival" every winter. Although it's called a "naked festival", very rarely are the participants completely naked. Rather, they would usually wear a fundoshi loincloth, sometimes topped with a happi coat.

The chief priest of the temple, Daigo Fujinami, recently announced that they will be holding their last festival on February 17th next year from 6 PM to 11 PM. They said that, since most participants are already aging and there was a lack of people to whom they can pass the baton to carry on the tradition, this will be the end for the festival.

For the festival held at Kokusekiji, participants will be fighting over a sack filled with talismans. They believe that the talisman will help them ward off bad luck, diseases, or any kind of disaster.

Despite the end of Kokusekiji's hadaka matsuri, it's not the only one that holds such festivals. Other places hold their own hadaka matsuri with slightly different elements involved such as the one at Konomiya and Saidaiji.

The Konomiya hadaka matsuri features a shin-otoko or 'man of god' who is selected beforehand and is given the blessing of the priests before he runs into the crowd. The goal is for the participants to touch the shin-otoko to transfer their bad luck to him. Afterward, all the bad luck is transferred to a giant black mochi which is buried in the forest.

On the other hand, the Saidaiji hadaka matsuri involves a purification ritual and the throwing of a pair of shingi sticks which is believed to bring the catcher good luck and happiness throughout the year. Before this, though, 100 smaller sticks called kushigo are thrown, representing a portion of the luck from the shingi.

(Image credit: CES/Wikimedia Commons)

Days before Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces, many Japanese people, who had previously been brought to Manchuria as part of the Japanese government's plans of conquering China and cultivating the resource-rich region in the northeast, had been making their way to Harbin to catch a train and go back to Japan.

After August 15, 1945, there were many stragglers with young children, toddlers, and babies who had already lost any hope of finding a way back home. So, in a moment of desperation, many Japanese mothers left their children behind hoping locals would be kind enough to take them in and some asked Chinese couples to take care of their babies.

Despite the pain, agony, and hatred that these Chinese locals experienced, they adopted these Japanese war orphans and raised them as their own children. Many, if not all of these foster parents, thought the same way, that these children had nothing to do with the war, and they were victims as well.

Throughout their lives, these Japanese war orphans were showered with care, affection, and even favor by their Chinese foster parents. They made sure to keep their adoption secret because they feared these children might become targets of bullying or harassment.

Even though some of the foster families were poor, they made sure that the Japanese orphans received the newest clothes or were well-fed, even if their own children didn't get those. That's why it was an extremely sad moment when the last of the Chinese foster parents died in 2020.

Majority of the Japanese orphans have been repatriated to Japan while some stayed in China, although several of those who returned to Japan later came back to China because of discrimination.

These war orphans have served as a bridge for China-Japan relations, since diplomatic ties began in 1972, and repatriation programs in 1981.

(Image credit: Wang Xiaonan/CGTN)

Theoretically, the chances that heads or tails will come up when we toss a coin should be equal. That is, if we were to toss a coin 100 times, the outcomes for either heads or tails should be 50/50. However, scientists are now disputing that commonly held belief.

A study from the University of Amsterdam shows that coin tosses aren't immune to biases. PhD candidate František Bartoš, along with a team of researchers, have built upon the initial research done by Stanford University statistics professor Persi Diaconis and his team, which hypothesized that flipped coins generally fall on the same side they started. They coined a term (no pun intended) for this phenomenon, "same-side bias".

It is a vexing proposition but when Bartoš' team conducted a trial flipping coins from 46 different currencies for a total of 350,757 times, they found that the coins came up on the same side they started around 51% of the time. It's not a big difference, but it's not 50%.

Some factors lend further credence to the theory such as the coin flipper themselves. Depending on the way the coin is tossed, the chances that same-side bias will affect the outcome is higher. "Vigorously tossing" the coin is how the team described the manner the coins were tossed.

Perhaps, to remove all the biases, we should simply twirl the coin on its side. Of course, it's more difficult than simply flicking your thumb and catching the coin. Or, maybe tossing the coin sideways?

(Image credit: Andy Henderson/Unsplash)

On December 1, 1958, "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" was released. It sold millions of copies and went to #1 that Christmas season, and proved to be popular every year since then. The success of the song was a triumph for Ross Bagdasarian, who not only write and produced the song, but sang all the parts, too. What's more, he owned the song, the publishing rights, and the master tapes, which was rare for musicians at the time. "The Chipmunk Song" led to more songs, and a TV series starring Bagdasarian as Dave Seville, the guardian of three talking chipmunks and their licensing rights. Bagdasarian also had three children, who inherited all that when Bagdasarian died in 1972 at only 53 years of age.

Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. also inherited his father's media instincts. He continued the legacy of the Chipmunks, and bought out his brother and sister in the 1990s. The senior Bagdasarian had relinquished the rights to the master recording of the Christmas song to his record company, but the family retained publishing and product licensing rights. Simon, Theodore, and Alvin have appeared in numerous TV series, comic books, and four live-action movies, not to mention the toys and other branded products. The Chipmunks have sold millions of records, and "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" was streamed 10.4 million times in December of 2022 alone. This is all very lucrative for Ross Jr. and his wife Janice Karman, who run Bagdasarian Productions. But what does Ross think when he hears that song every Christmas?

Honestly, I am so thrilled every time, because it brings back my dad. I get to hear his voice.

Read about the empire that one Christmas song started at Billboard. -via Metafilter