Dressing as the Queen of England isn't easy- one is expected to look perfect at all times. But it's even harder being a member of the royal family under the rule of the queen. Queen Elizabeth II sets the rules and enforces them in the family, whether by example or by a stern talking-to. Most of the royal dress code is unwritten, so new members like American Meghan Markle are expected to learn the hard way after a few faux pas. No bare legs, no bright nails, wear a hat, and keep your coat on. Other rules depend on the occasion, and some cover men and even little children. Read about the dos and don'ts of dressing as a royal at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Mark Jones)
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Matt Silverman and his kids Amelia and Arthur sing Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" with new lyrics about toys and media that kids have loved through the years, from Howdy Doody to Minions. The lyrics are at the YouTube page, but the video clips illustrate them well enough. -via Tastefully Offensive
There's a royal wedding coming up, as Prince Harry will marry American actress Meghan Markle on May 19, and today Queen Elizabeth II turns 92 years old. Happy Birthday, Your Majesty! In honor of the occasion, we celebrate British culture with a compilation video from Great Big Story, in which we will learn about about swan uppers, beadles, jellied eels, the Queen's stand-in, the world's best taxi drivers, and the history of the British obsession with tea. The eels are last, so you can stop there if you're squeamish. I did.
Jordan Watson gave us two lessons on the difference between Australia and New Zealand, because he is from New Zealand and people thought he was from Australia. He must have gotten some feedback from Americans -probably confused Americans. So now he brings us a lesson on the differences between the States and New Zealand, as if we needed that. But he is, as always, entertaining. I honestly saw "Howdy" coming a mile away, and then expected him to go from "chilly bin" to the "chili bun," which is a Southern US thing. -via Tastefully Offensive
British ornithologist Jamie Dunning normally studies twites, but for some reason he turned an ultraviolet light on a puffin carcass in January and found that its beak lit up like a Day-Glo stick at a rave. Now, these birds don't have blacklights at their parties, but they do have the ability to see colors we cannot. Humans see colors in a mix of red, blue, and green, while birds have tetrachromatic vision, meaning they have a fourth color available to them. A version of the fluorescent colors of the puffin beak could be not only visible, but important to them.
Birds probably don't see those ridges all lit up like we do, said Dunning.
"It's hard to say what it would look like [to them], we can't comprehend that colour space.
"But almost certainly it's attractive to the birds. They must be able to see it — that's the only reason it would exist."
The next challenge for Dunning is to study the beaks of live puffins under an ultraviolet light. For that step, he has designed sunglasses for the birds. You can see those, and read about the research, at CBC. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Jamie Dunning)
Forget reading Dr. Seuss to your kids at bedtime! Rap it instead, just like rapper Win Nevaluze did with the words of There's a Wocket in My Pocket to the rap song "Walk It Talk It" by Migos feat. Drake.
Via ScatterBrain News.
Sadie Burkhalter of New Hope, Georgia, will never forget the day that a plane carrying 81 passengers and four crew members crashed in front of her house. The plane had hit ground about a mile away and skidded to her front yard, taking out cars, power lines, and gas station pumps along the way.
On Monday, April 4, 1977, Sadie was a young mother of three boys living in the small community of New Hope, Georgia. That lovely spring afternoon, she stood in her living room and witnessed a scene almost out of a horror film. A man was running across her front yard toward her, frantically waving his arms, his clothing ablaze. Behind him, downed electrical wires snaked around charred bodies. A traumatized young man with red hair and badly burned hands had taken refuge in the yellow Cadillac parked in Sadie’s driveway. Another man, engulfed in flames, was running blindly toward the creek behind her house. In the midst of it all, a shimmering blue line painted on a fragment of metal was all that remained to identify the mangled fuselage of a Southern Airways DC-9-31 passenger plane that had just crashed into the Burkhalters’ quiet front yard.
Crash survivors, injured, burned, and desperate for help, made their way to Burkhalter's home for refuge. The final death toll was 63 from the plane (including both pilots) and nine on the ground. Read an account of what Burkhalter saw that day from Samme Chittum, author of the book Southern Storm: The Tragedy of Flight 242 at Smithsonian.
Last weekend at the annual Crufts Dog Show, a Papillion named Tinklebury Bingo had a memorable second round run in the agility course. The dog was suffering from either stage fright or a brain fart, but once the clock ensured that there was really no competition in the balance, the judge took things into his own hands, literally.
Honestly, this cute little doggo may have done this on purpose to get back at Melissa for naming him Tinklebury Bingo. A good time was had by all.
Also, if you recall Olly, the Jack Russell rescue that stole the show last year, you'll want to see him perform at this year's competition. -via Metafilter
Just because Pi Day has come and gone, that doesn't mean you can't make a pie this weekend. Right now, I have inspiration and some blueberries in the house ready to go. Lauren Ko makes beautiful pies that have to taste as good as they look. Her pies get intricately-designed upper crusts and her tarts feature mosaics of cut fruit in geometric shapes.
See more of Ko's lovely pies at Instagram, and read about them at Lokokitchen. If you'd like to see how she makes her pies, there's a video at Boing Boing.
(Image credit: Lauren Ko)
"All hockey hair innovation happens in the pomade plains here in Minnesota."
It is the dream of every hight school hockey player in Minnesota to be included in the All Hockey Hair Team. It may even be more important than winning the state hockey championship. John King of Game On! Minnesota assembles the best heads of hair every year for the honor. This very Minnesota video follows up on a previous honoree and his awesome life before it gets into this year's rankings. The number one head of hair may be a surprise.
Check out the team from 2017 and 2016. Also see the All Hockey Hair Teams from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. -via reddit
Everyone hates potholes, and you want the one that you have to drive over to be repaired. But with limited funds, government entities have to prioritize. Only the worst ones get fixed. Cheshire West and Chester Council is the Twitter account for the body of government responsible for local road repair in that area of the UK. They posted a now-deleted Tweet explaining how they determine which potholes will be fixed first. They should have examined the picture a little closer before they made it available to the public.
And Darren should have had his glasses all the way on.
Poor Darren! There are plenty more funny responses in an imgur gallery. -via Metafilter
The Dread Crew Of Oddwood call their musical genre "heavy mahogany," while others just call it pirate music. They perform at Renaissance festivals, fan conventions, and their own concerts. You can keep up with their schedule at their website. Check out their performance of the classic "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard."
Or maybe you'd prefer something a little more science fiction.
And here they are doing their pirate music.
-via reddit
Dr. William Horatio Bates was a well-respected ophthalmologist in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. He was wealthy and appeared happy to those who knew him. One night in 1902, he wrote a note to his wife explaining that he was going out of town to perform surgery. Six weeks later, Dr. Bates turned up working at hospital in London, with no memory of his previous life! He didn't even recognize his wife, who sailed to England to help him.
The doctor was reluctantly persuaded to join Mrs. Bates at the Savoy Hotel for a period of rest and recovery. There, he dimly recalled being called away from New York to board a ship and perform an operation on someone with a brain abscess.
Confused but relieved, Mrs. Bates planned to stay in London for as much time as necessary for her husband to recover from his ordeal, and for some further memories of his previous life to surface again. Her hopes, however, were dashed when Dr. Bates abruptly walked out of the Savoy two days after taking up residence there, disappearing once more into the London crowd. Mrs. Bates never saw her husband again.
But that wasn't the end of Dr. Bates. Years later, after his wife died, he turned up again, far from New York and even further from London. And that's when things really got weird. Read about the mysterious adventures of William Horatio Bates at Mental Floss.
Electronic mind control, psychological manipulation, bestiality, and sensory deprivation. Don't try this at home.
1. The Real World: Mental Hospital Edition
This is the true story of three schizophrenics, who all believed they were Jesus Christ. It wasn’t long before they stopped being polite and started getting real crazy. In 1959, social psychologist Milton Rokeach wanted to test the strength of self-delusion. So, he gathered three patients, all of whom identified themselves as Jesus Christ, and made them live together in the same mental hospital in Michigan for two years.
Rokeach hoped the Christs would give up their delusional identities after confronting others who claimed to be the same person. But that’s not what happened. At first, the three men quarreled constantly over who was holier. According to Rokeach, one Christ yelled, “You oughta worship me!” To which another responded, “I will not worship you! You’re a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!”
Unable to turn the other cheek, the three Christs often argued until punches were thrown. Eventually, however, they each explained away their conflicting identities. One believed, correctly, that the other two were mental patients. Another rationalized the presence of his companions by claiming that they were dead and being operated by machines.
But the behavior of the schizophrenics isn’t even the most bizarre part. Far stranger was the way Rokeach tried to manipulate his subjects.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg is the longest-serving woman justice on the US Supreme Court, and only the second woman ever appoint to the Court. But she had quite a distinguished career even before that. She was already a wife and mother when she graduated, tied for first in her class, from Columbia Law School in 1959, and spent the next several decades having to prove she was as good as any male lawyer. Ginsberg worked for the ACLU and took on gender discrimination cases all over the country. She was appointed to the US Court of Appeals in 1976, and to the Supreme Court in 1993.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg is a real-life superhero. And now the notorious RBG has her own superhero movie, titled simply RBG, a documentary set for limited release on May 4. May the fourth be with her. -via Uproxx
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