The following is an article from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy.

Cows just kind of do what they do; They stand in fields and graze and moo, But they also do other things that make us stop and say, “Ooh!” So here are some cow stories, strange but true.

I’M OK, YOU’RE OK. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE COW?

One morning in January 2005, traffic backed up on Interstate 4 near DeBary, Florida. The cause: A cow was standing in a swamp beside the road… and she appeared to be sinking. Concerned drivers called the Highway Patrol, who quickly determined that the cow wasn’t in danger, but was merely grazing in the two-foot-deep bog. The officers left, but the worried calls kept coming in, so they went back out and put up an electronic sign on the shoulder that read: “THE COW IS OK.” Shortly after the officers left, however, the cow wandered off …but the sign remained.

Now motorists were really confused: What cow was okay? Was this some kind of spiritual message, or news of some event they hadn’t heard about? Those were just a few of the questions the Highway Patrol received over the next few hours. And as more and more drivers slowed down to look for the nonexistent cow, a second, larger traffic jam ensued. Officers eventually went back out and removed the sign.

UDDER CHAOS

This supercut shows how movie star Jackie Chan surmounts obstacles: fences, walls, buildings, and other barriers. He does it in style.

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It's no wonder his films always feature a chase scene on foot! The word "climb" doesn't really do it justice. It's more like he dances over obstacles. In one minute, Chan gets over over eleven barriers, and makes it look effortless. -via Tastefully Offensive

In 1832, a British Navy doctor, David Burnes, was approached by a sailor who had pain and infection in his back. It took a while, but it became apparent there was something in there -something made of metal. After several weeks of trying to extract it, the doctor cut out a dining fork! How did it get in there?

Strange as it may seem, even after its extraction, the man persisted in adhering to his original statement of his being ignorant how and when it had been introduced; and during the two months I remained in the ship I was not able to gain further information in the matter. He seemed to have no defect of memory in any way, for he, without hesitation, gave me every information I asked as to his former life and habits.

One of the tines of the fork was incomplete. Several years later, the same sailor approached the doctor again with a pain in his neck and -you guessed it- the missing end of the tine was extracted. You can read the painful story of the sailor with a fork in his back at Thomas Morris' blog. -via Strange Company

PS: The image above is not the exact size of the fork.

The Soviet Union founded quite a few towns during the Cold War that never appeared on maps; secret sites where research was done, bombs were built, or nuclear armaments were made ready. One such "closed city" on the eastern edge of Russia was called Gudym by the locals, but its official designation was Anadyr-1.

Gudym was built in the late 1950s, complete with an underground base for storing nuclear warheads. Over five thousand residents (military and their family) lived there beginning in 1961, residing in buildings above the secret facility that stored three RSD-10 pioneer nuclear missiles, allegedly intended for Alaska, Washington state, California and South Dakota in the event of nuclear war.

The nuclear weapons were removed in 1986, and eventually the town was abandoned. All that's left are the empty facilities, which haven't been updated since the '60s and are now quite run down. See a gallery of images from Gudym as it appears in the 21st century at Messy Messy Chic.

(Image credit: Hardscarf)

A textbook uses the analogy of a donut to explain how social media sites differ. It's in the way that people use them. And Google+ is the punchline. Who says textbook writers don't have a sense of humor? The price they expect us to pay for them would be funny, too, if it weren't so tragic. Be sure to like and follow! -via reddit

As civilization continues to encroach on the natural world, we set aside places for nature to remain intact. We have forest reserves, wildlife  preserves, and soon, the U.S. may have a dark sky reserve in central Idaho. It would be the first such designation in the U.S., where artificial light would be severely limited order to allow people to see the stars in the sky as they were meant to be seen.

Researchers say 80 percent of North Americans live in areas where light pollution blots out the night sky. Central Idaho contains one of the few places in the contiguous United States large enough and dark enough to attain reserve status, Barentine said. Only 11 such reserves exist in the world.

Leaders in the cities of Ketchum and Sun Valley, the tiny mountain town of Stanley, other local and federal officials, and a conservation group have been working for several years to apply this fall to designate 1,400 square miles (3,600 square kilometers) as a reserve. A final decision by the association would come about 10 weeks after the application is submitted.

The proposed reserve is on land already managed by the U.S. Forest Service. An application is being sent to the International Dark-Sky Association. Read more about the proposed dark sky reserve at the Idaho Statesman. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user Damian Ball)

Hey Maymo! Would you rather play with a hundred duck-sized ducks, or one horse-sized duck?

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Maymo the lemon beagle wants to play with all of them, of course. The video description sets this up as a "prank" on the dog, but he's just plain delighted. -via The Daily Dot

See more of Mayo's shenanigans.

Oh, you'd be surprised what kids remember. They may not recall those times together the same way you do, or the same details you recall, but they remember in their own way. My now-adult children talk about the adventures of their childhoods and the things we did together, but the details that stuck out in their minds were surprises to me. We all organize our memories in our own way, and adults tend to prioritize things that are novel. To kids, everything is novel, so what stays with them may seem random to us. But his main theme is correct -being there for each other is what matters most. This is the latest comic from Lunarbaboon.

In 1857, the U.S. mail ship SS Central America left California for the East Coast. Aboard were 477 passengers, many of them newly rich from the California Gold Rush. They were returning home with their gold, over $2 million worth (hundreds of millions in today's money). But on the last leg of the trip, between Cuba and New York, the ship encountered a hurricane.

The Central America sprang leaks, the water putting the fire out in the boiler, and the paddlewheel and pumps stopped working. Alarmed, the passengers and crew formed a bucket brigade to bail out the sinking ship, while Captain Herndon ordered the flag flown upside down – a universal distress signal.

By Saturday, September 12, the ship was doomed. That afternoon another ship was spotted, the Marine out of Boston, and Captain Herndon ordered the women and children into the Central America’s lifeboats to make the hazardous transfer to the Marine. Around 150 women and children made it before the weather forced the Marine to leave. The male passengers and crew could not make the transfer. Most of them were still on board when the Central America sank around 8 o’clock that night, settling on the sea floor about 8,000 feet below the surface, 160 miles offshore.

Only 49 men survived, and the loss of the gold to the bottom of the Atlantic caused several banks to collapse. Read the whole story of the sinking of the SS Central America and its aftermath. -via Strange Company

This guy in Croatia took three years to record this music video, and it's still only two minutes long. But he gained a full head of hair and a viral video. He most likely ended up hating the song, though.  

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The song is "Halo, Džozefina" (Hello Josephine) by Đorđe Marjanović, who was a star in Serbia (Yugoslavia) in the 1950s and '60s.  -via reddit

The Television Academy will presents the 2017 Emmy Awards ceremony Sunday night. Did you know the statuette was modeled after a real person? Yes, but that person wasn't named Emmy; the name has its own story. You can learn a lot of trivia about the awards before they air tomorrow night.  

9. CABLE SHOWS WEREN’T ELIGIBLE FOR EMMY AWARDS UNTIL 1988.

Up until the late 1980s, only network shows were eligible for Emmy consideration. Cable series competed for prizes at their own awards show, the CableACE Awards. But the Emmys modified their rules in 1988 to allow cable programming in. The last CableACE Awards ceremony took place in 1997.

10. LORNE MICHAELS IS THE MOST EMMY-NOMINATED PERSON OF ALL TIME.

The most Emmy-nominated individual of all time is Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, with a whopping total of 78 nominations. He'll compete this year for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for SNL.

But when it comes to actual wins, HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins has got Michaels beat; she has collected a total of 30 Emmy Awards over the years (compared to Michaels's 14 wins). She could up that total this year; she's nominated for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking for Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.

Read the rest of the trivia list about the Emmy Awards at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Flickr user Niall Kennedy)

A hedgehog is trying to cross a road in Tambov, Russia. A gaggle of geese know that the hedgehog is small and pavement-colored and it's likely that drivers won't see him. So they do the right thing and give him an escort! Notice the one goose that holds her wings out to be more visible. It looks like she is holding traffic back!

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They make right proper crossing guards, don't you think? Yeah, sure, it's possible the geese aren't paying a bit of attention to the hedgehog, but that's not nearly as cute. The entire group made it to the other side.  -via Tastefully Offensive

It is becoming obvious that 2017 will be a really strange year for trendy Halloween costumes. The company Yandy provides many of the super-specific meme costumes that you see each year, always in a "sexy" version. This year, one of them is "fake news." How do you make a concept into a costume? Just print it on a sexy little dress. The mini-dress sports a newspaper print, with the word "fake" splashed across the front in red. It's a one-joke costume that your grandchildren will be scratching their heads over when they see it for the first time when your possession are distributed. Let's hope this is the lamest of the year's trendy sexy costumes, but I would bet there are more to come. -via Mashable 

The doc is telling it like is. Every once in a while I try to think back to the time I wasn't at all careful running down the stairs and never thought about slipping in the shower. Back when my hip never hurt and I could see for miles and miles. Some of the changes are so gradual that they surprise you when you realize them, while others hit you like a truck. You just gotta keep telling yourself that getting older is better than the alternative. And try not to be so grumpy. This comic is from Chris Hallbeck at Maximumble.

In this edition of People Are Awesome, we see many women (and a few girls, and a even a baby or two) show amazing strength, skill, agility, grace, and overall athleticism. In other words, they are awesome.

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Yeah, I'm impressed …and maybe a little bit envious, although I realize that these women have put in many hours, or even years, of work and practice to achieve these things. -via Tastefully Offensive