Mildly Interesting Things

Rankenphile

Today I fell down the rabbit hole of wikipedia once again, as I have a tendency to do, and I learned details about the traditions of serving bread and salt. Being American and therefore immune to learning about other cultures by accident, I had only ever heard of this ceremony via George Rowdy Roddy Martin, because it is about food and therefore it is in his book. But it's not just a thing that happens between fighting and tits, it's a real thing.

Apparently this is practiced even during spaceflight. Buncha astronauts all "oh hey there, welcome to our sweet space pad, have some salt packets and bread packets, we're friends in space now!"

And that is awesome.

Here we can see Diamond Joe Biden being presented bread, salt and a tasty trio of saucy wenches as he arrived in Kiev in 2009.



So now this is a thing that I know that now you know.

It is one of those things that made me go "Huh."

What are some mildly interesting things you know or have learned recently?

Better yet, go wander around on wikipedia, hit random article and bring back the most interesting fact you find within six links of your landing page.

fightinfilipino

so in this situation, who is House Frey? Putin? Kim Jong Un?

Uriel

I found an Article about Canada's Involvement in WW2

And they had RAD posters.

The Judge

Luxembourgish is an actual language.

Clint Eastwood

Mildly Interesting, that's what they called me back in high school. Good times.

Rankenphile

Canada's new army needs men like WHEELIE CHAMPS

Kochikens

Other countries christmas traditions are way cooler than north america

Poland has a like, 13 course meal and always has an extra place set at their table for anyone to drop by who doesnt have a place to go. Also a starman??

Holland has a racist blackface santas slave man sorry dutch people zwarte piet is hella racist

Austria has a terrifying krampus creature

Iceland has 12 santas who just spent like 2 weeks fucking with your shit, stealing your soup ladles and peepin on you in the bathroom

The swedes all sit around watching donald duck



I prettymuch just want to get accepted into peoples familys and spend the holidays with them in december

Dongs Galore

2/3rds of the British Army's entire condom supply in WW2 was captured from the Italian Army in North Africa

tynic

The Judge wrote: »

Luxembourgish is an actual language.

yes, I was just there a few weeks ago and the street signs were interesting. I didn't hear anybody speaking it, though.

Foolproof

So I've been reading Hemingway lately. There is talk of absinthe so I went to wiki to learn all about it. The mildly interesting fact I learned was as follows.

Iced water is then poured...in a manner whereby the water is slowly and evenly displaced into the absinthe, such that the final preparation contains 1 part absinthe and 3-5 parts water. As water dilutes the spirit, those components with poor water solubility (mainly those from anise, fennel, and star anise) come out of solution and cloud the drink. The resulting milky opalescence is called the louche. The release of these dissolved essences coincides with a perfuming of herbal aromas and flavors that "blossom" or "bloom", and brings out subtleties that are otherwise muted within the neat spirit.

I may have to get a bottle or two to experiment with. Any brands (available in the US) worth looking for or avoiding?

Inquisitor

Kochikens wrote: »

Other countries christmas traditions are way cooler than north america

Poland has a like, 13 course meal and always has an extra place set at their table for anyone to drop by who doesnt have a place to go. Also a starman??

Holland has a racist blackface santas slave man sorry dutch people zwarte piet is hella racist

Austria has a terrifying krampus creature

Iceland has 12 santas who just spent like 2 weeks fucking with your shit, stealing your soup ladles and peepin on you in the bathroom

The swedes all sit around watching donald duck



I prettymuch just want to get accepted into peoples familys and spend the holidays with them in december

Christmas in Japan is a date night for couples (well, Christmas Eve more specifically) with fried chicken (preferably from KFC) being the dinner of choice.

Kochikens

Germans dont have most of youtube, like, nearly any of it because of their licensing laws


They also dont have streetview because of privacy laws (apparenty a few of the big cities have it now)


And shelter, internet and cable are seen as being basic human rights, so if youre poor you get an apartment with internet

Anndd you are legally your parents responsibilty til youre 23. Likewise, they are yours later on as well



These are mildly interesting things ive been told by germans

tynic

Kochikens wrote: »

Germans dont have most of youtube, like, nearly any of it because of their licensing laws


They also dont have streetview because of privacy laws (apparenty a few of the big cities have it now)


And shelter, internet and cable are seen as being basic human rights, so if youre poor you get an apartment with internet

Anndd you are legally your parents responsibilty til youre 23. Likewise, they are yours later on as well



These are mildly interesting things ive been told by germans

i can vouch.
The youtube thing is really annoying but it mostly only comes up with regards to music.

Uriel

I read a bunch of articles about the Sihk religion one time.

Turns out they had rad music.

Antimatter

Benito Cereno has a lot of interesting things to say, especially about Christmas and religion, though he also has a good grasp on comics

Look, there are a lot of contenders for this title. By definition, relics are MAGIC SKELETONS. Sometimes underwear, or hats. They’re all at least a LITTLE weird.

I considered the Mandylion, which was a towel on which Jesus’s face appeared after the ghost of Jesus wiped his face on it because a guy was sad he couldn’t do a good job painting Jesus. I also considered the amount of Mary’s breast milk that was being passed around in the Middle Ages (a lot) (John Calvin said about the sheer volume of this relic that “Had the virgin been a cow her whole life she could never have produced such a quantity.”

But, no, man. There’s only one that can be number one.

The Holy Prepuce.

Relic-1

Go ahead, google “prepuce.” I’ll waiNO I CAN’T WAIT IT MEANS FORESKIN

This is Jesus’s foreskin.

According to an apocryphal infancy gospel, when Jesus was circumcised, an old woman put his foreskin in a box of oil. This box of oil was eventually what Mary of Bethany (until recently conflated with Mary Magdalene) used when she washed Jesus’s feet with her hair.

Anyway, an angel gave the foreskin to Charlemagne at the Holy Sepulchre, and Charlemagne gave the foreskin to the pope when he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

The pope put the relic in the reliquary in the Lateran basilica, but it was stolen during the sack of Rome in 1527. The German soldier who stole it was imprisoned in the Italian village of Calcata, and he hid the relic in his cell. The village was subsequently plagued by strange storms and a fog made of perfume until the relic was uncovered in 1557, where it was the subject of many pilgrimages.

However, there were as many as eighteen different relics that claimed to be the actual Holy Prepuce all over Europe. The arguments over who had the real foreskin of Christ got so heated that in 1900, it was made a sin punishable by excommunication to even talk about the Holy Prepuce (whoops).

The Holy Prepuce appeared in visions to several female saints. Saint Bridget of Sweden saw an angel appear to her who put the foreskin on her tongue and she experienced multiple orgasms. Saint Catherine of Siena claims that Jesus appeared to her and give her his foreskin as a wedding ring.

Here is the experience of a nun named Agnes Blannbekin:

Crying and with compassion, she began to think about the foreskin of Christ, where it may be located [after the Resurrection]. And behold, soon she felt with the greatest sweetness on her tongue a little piece of skin alike the skin in an egg, which she swallowed. After she had swallowed it, she again felt the little skin on her tongue with sweetness as before, and again she swallowed it. And this happened to her about a hundred times. And when she felt it so frequently, she was tempted to touch it with her finger. And when she wanted to do so, that little skin went down her throat on its own. And it was told to her that the foreskin was resurrected with the Lord on the day of resurrection. And so great was the sweetness of tasting that little skin that she felt in all [her] limbs and parts of the limbs a sweet transformation.

Most of the claimants to being the real Prepuce were destroyed during the Reformation or the French Revolution. The most famous, though, the Prepuce of Calcata, lasted until 1983, when it was stolen. There are doubts about whether any Holy Prepuce still exists.

My preferred theory, however, about the fate of the foreskin of Christ comes from the 17th century Vatican librarian Leo Allatius, who claimed that, like Christ himself, the foreskin of our savior had ascended to the heavens, where it was transformed into the rings of Saturn.

Think of that the next time you gaze into the night sky.

facetious

According to a couple Norwegian friends, a big Easter tradition there is to read murder mysteries.

Which is pretty much the best holiday tradition I can think of.

Antimatter

http://www.incapsula.com/blog/bot-traffic-report-2013.html
61.5% of internet traffic is from bots
Spambots are down, sophistication and maliciousness is up

Uriel

facetious wrote: »

According to a couple Norwegian friends, a big Easter tradition there is to read murder mysteries.

Which is pretty much the best holiday tradition I can think of.

Cardasian Murder Mysteries are much more interesting.

Everyone is guilty, the game lies in figuring out who is guilty of what.

UnbrokenEva

Kochikens wrote: »

Other countries christmas traditions are way cooler than north america

Poland has a like, 13 course meal and always has an extra place set at their table for anyone to drop by who doesnt have a place to go. Also a starman??

Holland has a racist blackface santas slave man sorry dutch people zwarte piet is hella racist

Austria has a terrifying krampus creature

Iceland has 12 santas who just spent like 2 weeks fucking with your shit, stealing your soup ladles and peepin on you in the bathroom

The swedes all sit around watching donald duck



I prettymuch just want to get accepted into peoples familys and spend the holidays with them in december

A member of the provincial legislature here got in trouble for posting pictures of himself as zwarte piet on twitter this christmas. Even members of the local Dutch community were all like "tradition is all well and good man, but seriously we should probably all stop doing that because it is kinda really racist"

Sterica

A fever is when the hypothalamus, a sort of thermostat for you brain, raises your body temperature X degrees. This is why a fever is different from, say, heat exhaustion since in that scenario your brain has the set body temperature at the normal 98 degrees but your environment is increasing your temperature.

It's also why you seem to paradoxically feel cold during a fever, as your brain has set the thermostat above 98, and thus the various safeguards your body uses to keep you warm kick in. So you start shivering and feel cold despite being in your room with a fever.

Antimatter

http://comicsalliance.com/ask-chris-131-fear-of-santa-claus/

Benito Cereno wrote:

Although through the influence of modern depictions of Santa we’ve come to view St Nicholas as a gentle, and perhaps toothless, figure of kindness and generosity, the fact is, Nicholas of Myra was no joke.
He had a temper and would act on it when he felt his principles were being challenged. The earliest act of St Nicholas that raised him to some notoriety–if not fame–is that at the Council of Nicaea, he walked across the floor and cold punched the heretic Arius, who had dared to say that Jesus was the creation of the Father and not an equal. Just clocked him, right in front of the emperor Constantine. Turns out it is illegal to punch someone in front of the Roman emperor, so Nicholas was put in jail, the first of many instances in which he would do hard time. (Don’t worry; Jesus and the Virgin Mary came to him in the night, returned his bishop robes and freed him from his chains. So those dudes are on his side; don’t know if that changes anything for you.)
Also, there is historical precedent for that “he knows if you’ve been naughty or nice” thing. One of the most famous stories of St Nicholas, and how he became the patron of children, is how he walked into an inn, asked for meat, and then immediately revealed that the meat the innkeeper served him was the flesh of three young men the innkeeper had murdered for their money. Nicholas turned the chops back into living boys (the power to raise the dead, not too shabby), and turned the murderous innkeeper into his indentured servant until he had paid penance for his crimes. That guy still follows Father Christmas around France, frightening children as Pere Fouettard.
And that was hardly an isolated incident. St Nicholas kind of wandered the earth punishing child murderers and chaining them, putting them into God’s service. Sometimes these were humans, like Pere Fouettard, but more often they were demons, like everyone’s new favorite Christmas lol, the Krampus.
Krampus was a pre-Christian minor Alpine fertility god (aka demons to the Christian church), who, displaced from his shrines by the advent of the Christian faith to his region, got his revenge by eating children, until jolly old St Nicholas showed up with the chains of St Peter and taught him a lesson.
This chaining of a demon would be impressive enough on its own, but the fact is, he did it over and over across Europe and the Near East. Everyone knows Krampus, but other murderers and demons captured and put to service by St Nicholas include Klaubauf, Pelzebock, Hans Muff, Hans Trapp, Schmutzli, Belsnickel, Bartel, Rumpelklas, Bellzebub, Drapp, Buzebergt, and other variants, to say nothing of the innumerable nameless perchten that accompany the Krampus himself on his runs.
If defeating human criminals and minor pagan deities in single combat isn’t enough to show that St Nicholas is a formidable foe, how about a for-real A-list Greco-Roman god? Nicholas spent his whole life in mortal combat with the goddess Artemis, endlessly assaulted by her demons (or minor divinities) as he crossed Greece and Asia Minor destroying her temples and shrines, in an attempt to keep the locals who had recently converted from backsliding into their old pagan ways. Guess who won? (Hint: we don’t celebrate Artemis in December.) Nicholas destroyed the temple of Artemis so thoroughly that the foundations were ripped out of the ground, and the sound of screaming demons brought awe to everyone in the area.
What I’m saying it, Santa Claus ain’t nothing to eff with. But here’s the good news: he’s only out to punish the wicked. As long as you can say your catechism, I’m sure you’ll be safe.

http://comicsalliance.com/krampus-santa-claus-superman-batman/
and then there's this, which i've posted before, also by Benito Cereno, but illustrated by Evan 'Doc' Shaner

http://comicsalliance.com/true-tale-of-st-nicholas-benito-cereno-evan-doc-shaner/

Vixx

I recently read about the Circle of Security, which is a model can be used as a therapeutic tool to address insecure attachment styles between parent and child, however little evidence exists that it is still effective past adolescence

there are indicators that it's still useful for pre-teenagers but basically past 14 or so its efficacy decreases due to the individuating nature of adolescence

Mortal Sky

Foolproof wrote: »

So I've been reading Hemingway lately. There is talk of absinthe so I went to wiki to learn all about it. The mildly interesting fact I learned was as follows.

Iced water is then poured...in a manner whereby the water is slowly and evenly displaced into the absinthe, such that the final preparation contains 1 part absinthe and 3-5 parts water. As water dilutes the spirit, those components with poor water solubility (mainly those from anise, fennel, and star anise) come out of solution and cloud the drink. The resulting milky opalescence is called the louche. The release of these dissolved essences coincides with a perfuming of herbal aromas and flavors that "blossom" or "bloom", and brings out subtleties that are otherwise muted within the neat spirit.

I may have to get a bottle or two to experiment with. Any brands (available in the US) worth looking for or avoiding?

Delaware Phoenix and Pacific Distillery both make pretty fuckin' great absinthes. The Pacifique by Pacific Distillery is about the best absinthe you can get for the cost. The Delaware Phoenix stuff costs more, but is better than a lot of the French and other European product available.

The good French stuff is pretty available by special order, but try those American brands first, because they're both worth the price.

You'll balk at the cost of entry but good absinthe lasts forever unless you drink it like Hemingway.

My 21st birthday is going to consist of Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon - five flutes of champagne and absinthe in a 5:2 mix.

Antimatter

Pandora actually opened a jar, not a box. The word pithos, meaning jar, is similar to the word pyxis, meaning box.
The Greek mythology themed Magic the Gathering set, Theros, referenced the pop culture version of the myth, and in a sense, even managed to find a way to include hope due to the mechanics of the card.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=373669

UnbrokenEva

Let me tell you all about Hellburners, one of the earliest and definitely the most metal weapons of mass destruction

Fireships were a pretty common thing in the age of sail, they'd fill a ship with combustibles, set it on fire, and steer it (or allow it to drift) into an enemy fleet. For the most part this was a psychological weapon as a fire at sea is goddamn terrifying, and fireships were an effective way to create panic and make the enemy break formation.

Then along came an italian named Federigo Giambelli, an engineer hired by Elizabeth I of England. Antwerp had rebelled against Spain and the Habsburgs, and in 1585 it was under siege. Elizabeth unofficially supported the rebels, and so she sent Giambelli to assist them. His job was to destroy the Spanish blockade preventing food and supplies from reaching the city.

Giambelli was given two small merchant ships to use for his plan. Unlike previous fireships, these ones were outfitted with a clockwork mechanism to act as a fuse, with a flintlock striker when the timer ran out.

Also unlike fireships, these vessels were designed to explode, and in a very particular way. Each ship had a special chamber constructed in the hold, five feet wide and twelve feet long. The floor of the chambers were brick, a foot thick, and the roof was made of tombstones, and sealed with lead. The chambers were then each filled with roughly 7000 pounds of gunpowder, and the areas above and alongside the chambers were filled with rocks and bits of iron, then again covered in slabs.

Before launching the hellburners, Giambelli had prepared 32 normal fireships to be launched first, in waves. The Spanish got used to this tactic, and when the hellburners were launched, they were treated the same, with troops sent to try to extinguish the fire before the ships could ignite.

Last of all came the two infernal ships, swaying unsteadily with the current; the pilots of course, as they neared the bridge, having noiselessly effected their escape in the skiffs. The slight fire upon the deck scarcely illuminated the dark phantom-like hulls. Both were carried by the current clear of the raft, which, by a great error of judgment, as it now appeared, on the part of the builders, had only been made to protect the floating portion of the bridge. The 'Fortune' came first, staggering inside the raft, and then lurching clumsily against the dyke, and grounding near Kalloo, without touching the bridge. There was a moment's pause of expectation. At last the slow match upon the deck burned out, and there was a faint and partial explosion, by which little or no damage was produced...

The troops of Parma, crowding on the palisade, and looking over the parapets, now began to greet the exhibition with peals of derisive laughter. It was but child's play, they thought, to threaten a Spanish army, and a general like Alexander Farnese, with such paltry fire-works as these. Nevertheless all eyes were anxiously fixed upon the remaining fire-ship, or "hell-burner," the 'Hope,' which had now drifted very near the place of its destination. Tearing her way between the raft and the shore, she struck heavily against the bridge on the Kalloo side, close to the block-house at the commencement of the floating portion of the bridge. A thin wreath of smoke was seen curling over a slight and smouldering fire upon her deck...

The clockwork had been better adjusted than the slow match in the 'Fortune.' Scarcely had Alexander reached the entrance of Saint Mary's Fort, at the end of the bridge, when a horrible explosion was heard. The 'Hope' disappeared, together with the men who had boarded her, and the block-house, against which she had struck, with all its garrison, while a large portion of the bridge, with all the troops stationed upon it, had vanished into air. It was the work of a single instant. The Scheldt yawned to its lowest depth, and then cast its waters across the dykes, deep into the forts, and far over the land. The earth shook as with the throb of a volcano. A wild glare lighted up the scene for one moment, and was then succeeded by pitchy darkness. Houses were toppled down miles away, and not a living thing, even in remote places, could keep its feet. The air was filled with a rain of plough-shares, grave-stones, and marble balls, intermixed with the heads, limbs, and bodies, of what had been human beings. Slabs of granite, vomited by the flaming ship, were found afterwards at a league's distance, and buried deep in the earth. A thousand soldiers were destroyed in a second of time; many of them being torn to shreds, beyond even the semblance of humanity.

Richebourg disappeared, and was not found until several days later, when his body was discovered; doubled around an iron chain, which hung from one of the bridge-boats in the centre of the river. The veteran Robles, Seigneur de Billy, a Portuguese officer of eminent service and high military rank, was also destroyed. Months afterwards, his body was discovered adhering to the timber-work of the bridge, upon the ultimate removal of that structure, and was only recognized by a peculiar gold chain which he habitually wore. Parma himself was thrown to the ground, stunned by a blow on the shoulder from a flying stake. The page, who was behind him, carrying his helmet, fell dead without a wound, killed by the concussion of the air.

Kadith

Your butt is made out of elements forged in the furnaces of exploded stars.

Lost Salient

Yesterday I found out that in the 19th century they held Baby Shows, much like today's dog shows and livestock shows, where babies would be rated based on criteria like plumpness, etc.

YaYa

I learned in improv class yesterday that a character can be about love (wants another character to be happy) or power (wants another character to do what you want) but not both

so, you can't try and be nice about making a character do what you want, you're either so nice that you keep finding ways to please them or a dick about making them do your bidding, if you try both you seem like you're sitting on the fence

Anarchy Rules!

On the topic of racist festive figures the Iranians have a figure called Hajji Firuz. My (Iranian) girlfriend insists his origins is to do with Zoroastrians (the black face is soot apparently). Pretty much all historical evidence tends to point to it representing travelling African minstrels in Persia at the time (slaves and free).

Antimatter

The stone spheres (or stone balls) of Costa Rica are an assortment of over three hundred petrospheres in Costa Rica, located on the Diquís Delta and on Isla del Caño. Locally, they are known as Las Bolas. The spheres are commonly attributed to the extinct Diquís culture and are sometimes referred to as the Diquís Spheres. They are the best-known stone sculptures of the Isthmo-Colombian area.

Numerous myths surround the stones, such as they came from Atlantis, or that they were made as such by nature. Some local legends state that the native inhabitants had access to a potion able to soften the rock. Research led by Joseph Davidovits of the Geopolymer Institute in France has been offered in support of this hypothesis, but it is not supported by geological or archaeological evidence. (No one has been able to demonstrate that gabbro, the material from which most of the balls are sculpted, can be worked this way.)
In the cosmogony of the Bribri, which is shared by the Cabecares and other American ancestral groups, the stone spheres are “Tara’s cannon balls”. Tara or Tlatchque, the god of thunder, used a giant blowpipe to shoot the balls at the Serkes, gods of winds and hurricanes, in order to drive them out of these lands.
It has been claimed that the spheres are perfect, or very near perfect in roundness, although some spheres are known to vary by 5 centimetres (2.0 in) in diameter until 257 centimetres (104 in). Also the stones have been damaged and eroded over the years, and so it is impossible to know exactly their original shape. A review of the way that the stones were measured by Lothrop reveals that claims of precision are due to misinterpretations of the methods used in their measurement. Although Lothrop published tables of ball diameters with figures to three decimal places, these figures were actually averages of measurements taken with tapes that were nowhere near that precise

I had a book that mentioned these and other "mysteries", the book claimed that no one could make spheres so perfect!!!
of course it also mentioned the crystal skull and stuff
I remember a bit about perfect footprints in snow on roofs, believed to be the work of the devil
the sliding stones, natch
a bit about ogopogo
and then more practical stuff that it stated was myth, or actual cultural practices

Rankenphile

anti

never stop

Antimatter

ah, here we are!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Footprints

The Devil's Footprints is a name given to a phenomenon that occurred in February 1855 around the Exe Estuary in East Devon and South Devon, England. After a heavy snowfall, trails of hoof-like marks appeared overnight in the snow covering a total distance of some 40 to 100 miles. The footprints were so called because some people believed that they were the tracks of Satan, as they were allegedly made by a cloven hoof. Many theories have been put forward to explain the incident, and some aspects of its veracity have also been called into question.

i read about this and the spheres and the crystal skull and stuff when i was like, eight

Sterica

Barbecuing is a slow cook method; grilling is the direct application of flame.

Antimatter

you can probably blame/thank the creation of the legend of the chupacabra on horror movies

So what explains the original chupacabra myth?

One possibility, Coleman said, is that people imagined things after watching or hearing about an alien-horror film that opened in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1995.

"If you look at the date when the movie Species opened in Puerto Rico, you will see that it overlaps with the first explosion of reports there," he said.

"Then compare the images of [actor] Natasha Henstridge's creature character, Sil [picture], and you will see the unmistakable spikes out the back that match those of the first images of the chupacabras in 1995."

Another theory is that the Puerto Rico creatures were an escaped troop of rhesus monkeys on the island, which often stand up on their hind legs.

"There was a population of rhesus monkeys being used in blood experiments in Puerto Rico at the time, and that troop could have got loose," Coleman said.

some unpleasant pics of dead coyotes with mange in this article as well, just as a warning
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101028-chupacabra-evolution-halloween-science-monsters-chupacabras-picture/

Calamity Jane

Rick Springfield killed a Vietcong. Felicia Pearson gunned someone down.

Tommy2Hands

Foolproof wrote: »

So I've been reading Hemingway lately. There is talk of absinthe so I went to wiki to learn all about it. The mildly interesting fact I learned was as follows.

Iced water is then poured...in a manner whereby the water is slowly and evenly displaced into the absinthe, such that the final preparation contains 1 part absinthe and 3-5 parts water. As water dilutes the spirit, those components with poor water solubility (mainly those from anise, fennel, and star anise) come out of solution and cloud the drink. The resulting milky opalescence is called the louche. The release of these dissolved essences coincides with a perfuming of herbal aromas and flavors that "blossom" or "bloom", and brings out subtleties that are otherwise muted within the neat spirit.

I may have to get a bottle or two to experiment with. Any brands (available in the US) worth looking for or avoiding?

dunno brands but shouldn't there be something about a sugar spoon in there as well

Blake T

Two places near work have just started selling Vietnamese rice paper rolls.

So far I've only gone to the cheaper one.

They're alright.

Mortal Sky

The sugar thing is optional and really depends on personal taste, along with the flavor profile of the absinthe itself!

And if you light absinthe on fire, I'll smack you for wasting perfectly good liqueur.

Platy

Maybe some people know the story of Brontosaurus. It was named by Othniel Charles Marsh who thought he had discovered a new species when the skeleton he had unearthed was in fact a more complete specimen of Apatosaurus - which had already been given a scientific name two years before. But that's not the whole story - large sauropods are seldomly found with their heads still attached to the rest of the skeleton. For his reconstruction of Brontosaurus, Marsh substituted the head of another, distantly related sauropod, Camarasaurus, for the unknown skull of the animal. Upon the re-examination of the fossils and the folding of Brontosaurus into Apatosaurus in 1903, it became clear that this was a mistake and any "Brontosaurus" remains belonged to animals which had shared the slender, long head of Apatosaurus, not the short snout and domed skull of Camarasaurus.

So, effectively, Brontosaurus was not only a scientific mistake, but also a chimera, an animal which never existed in the form Marsh imagined. This is also interesting because early mounts of "Brontosaurus" always included the skull substituted by Marsh and these went on to heavily influence the portrayals of sauropods in art and popular culture. Contemporary discussions of Brontosaurus mounts tended to focus more on the head than any other part of the skeleton and made connections between its look and the animal's presumed lack of intelligence.

(And here's the book where I got all this information.)

Ladai

I have a book of weird presidential quotes. I think my favorite one is:

"I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics." - Richard Nixon on hip hop

Moriveth

Ladai wrote: »

I have a book of weird presidential quotes. I think my favorite one is:

"I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics." - Richard Nixon on hip hop

Well hey, Tricky Dick is a pretty goddamn good rap name.