One of the more bizarre ways to die is spontaneous human combustion. This is when a person's body is found to be burned while the surroundings, and often the person's extremities, are not burned at all. Dozens, and maybe hundreds, of cases were recorded during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, so much that Charles Dickens included the phenomenon in his book Bleak House (shown above). Those cases were sensationally covered in press reports, and were often exaggerated for effect. But spontaneous human combustion is a real thing, although rare. 

But it's not something that the rest of us should be afraid of. It never happens in public, and never in the animal kingdom. There are certain similarities in the documented cases that give scientists a clue. Forensic pathologist Roger Byard said that spontaneous combustion doesn't happen in animals because animals don't “wrap themselves up in blankets and drink whiskey and smoke.” Read about the particular sequence of events that lead to spontaneous human combustion at Popular Science. -via Strange Company 

In the Star Trek universe, everyone had a universal translator, which enabled aliens from various planets to communicate with each other. That was necessary to tell the stories on television, but it made the whole idea seem impossibly simple. The fact that beings from different planets would use language to communicate is about as likely as meeting extraterrestrials that had arms, legs, and faces. The 2016 movie Arrival addressed the difficulty of cross-species communication, but Star Trek went there back in 1991 with the Star Trek: TNG episode "Darmok." This one that stayed with a lot of fans. 

Even with the universal translator, Starfleet cannot understand what Tamarians are saying, because their language is not as simple as words and ideas. Captain Picard is challenged to find what their language is really about. Andrew Muir of The Art of Storytelling explains how profound the difference is, and how Captain Picard learned the way to decipher what a Tamarian is really saying.  -via Laughing Squid 

Crokinhole is a tabletop game that is popular in Canada. It involves flicking small disks at a hole in the center of a circle while hitting one's opponent's disks and not hitting your own.

CBC News reports that an American, Connor Reinman, had won the annual world championships for two years in a row. He's a graduate student in Indiana and, like many top crokinhole players, is a math guy.

USA! USA! USA!

Alas, it appears that American hegemony in crokinhole has come to a close. If I understand the results page correctly, the champion at world-level event yesterday is a Canadian named Shawn Hagarty.

-via Dave Barry

This pink refrigerator would be right at home in a Barbie Dreamhouse, but it's out in the Namib Desert, about a 20-minute drive from the main highway in Namibia. What's even more surprising is that it's working, powered by solar panels. And it is stocked with cold drinks! 

Desert travelers might think it's a mirage, the kind you see in old cartoons when a character is stranded in the desert. No, this is an installation from the Namibia Tourism Board, as a quirky rest stop for those willing to seek it. It was puzzling when it was first installed a few years ago, but now tourists take a detour off the main road just to check it out -and get their picture taken with it. Not only is it a delight for sightseers, it makes you wonder why solar refrigerators aren't in every home in that country. A little digging tells me that such fridges are quite expensive because they are taxed extra as a luxury item in Namibia. Incidentally, those who have been to this refrigerator warn others not to sit on the metal chairs.  -via Nag on the Lake 

One generation was traumatized by Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 movie The Birds. Another generation, perhaps their children, learned to get along with their friends and neighbors thanks to an eight-foot feathered friend named Big Bird. The Bell Brothers have brought those things together as Big Bird steps into the horror flick as if he belongs. Chaos ensues. Meanwhile, Big Bird is frantically performing the rap from Outkast's 2000 song "B.O.B (Bombs Over Baghdad)." Every time a number comes up on the lyrics, the Count from Sesame Street is there for it. As well he should be. The resulting avian remix is titled B.O.B. (Birds Over Big Bird). It's projects like this that make me feel a little less apprehensive about the future of the internet. -via Geeks Are Sexy

When someone references "the world's smallest violin," they mean that their sympathy for you is minuscule and they really don't care. The earliest pop culture reference was in a 1978 episode of M*A*S*H, when Margaret Houlihan rubs her thumb and finger together and says, “It’s the world’s smallest violin, and it’s playing just for you.” However, the joke could be much older.

But now scientists at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England, have broken the record for making a violin very small. They covered a chip in two layers of a gel substance, then used thermal scanning probe lithography to etch a violin on it. A layer of platinum was applied, then the underlying material was removed. The result is a platinum violin that is 13 microns wide and 35 microns long, smaller than the finest human hair.

The violin is just an image, and is not playable. If it were, you wouldn't be able to hear it. But it's terribly tiny.  -via Slashdot

(Image credit: Loughborough University)

A week ago, a man in central Tennessee acquired a pet zebra from a zebra dealer in Texas (of course). It promptly escaped the next day. Zebras are hard to domesticate, so perhaps the zebra did not think of his new residence as a home.

The owners, Taylor and Laura Ford of the town of Christiana, call the zebra "Zeke." But the people of the internet, who have been following the week-long pursuit of the zebra in prison stripes, call him "Ed."

As of yesterday, the fugitive Ed remains at large. But Rutherford County Sheriff's deputies are tracking him with a drone.

USA Today reports that Brooklyn Anderson, a high school student student at a state-wide track and field competition in Oregon, stumbled at the end of a 100-meter hurdles race.

Even though she was in the lead, that fall probably would have ended her competitiveness in the race. But Anderson, relying on her background in gymnastics, turned the fall into a double somersault. Watch this video of her making the impossibly smooth rolls across the finish line.

Anderson was able to cross the finish line a split second before any of the other runners were, thus securing a first place finish and a time of 14.93 seconds.

-via ABC 7 News

A 2020 article in the magazine Naval History describes "Frankenships" -- ships that, like Frankenstein's monster, are built from parts of destroyed or damaged vessels.

HMS Nubian was a Tribal-class destroyer that was built in 1909 and torpedoed by a German u-boat in 1916 and lost her bow. HMS Zulu, a destroyer of the same class, hit a German mine in 1916 and lost her stern.

Engineers at Chatham Dockyard reasoned that, since the two ships were of the same class, it would be feasible for them join front half of Nubian to the back half of Zulu and put this new vessel into service. Thus the Royal Navy's Zubian --a name derived from those of her parents--was born in 1917. She would serve until disposed of in the postwar culling of the Navy 1919.

-via US Naval Institute

In February, Wendy Chadwick of Oldham, Manchester, UK died at the age of 51. She was a single mother of five children and, consequently, was not able to follow her dream of traveling the world.

BBC News reports that Chadwick's daughter, Cara Melia decided to do something about that loss. She placed her mother's ashes in a bottle and threw that bottle into the North Sea at the town of Skegness.

It was found twelve hours later on the same beach and mentioned on Facebook. But, we are happy to learn, Wendy Chadwick has resumed her eternal sea voyage with her daughter's hope will take her to Barbados or Spain.

-via Vit | Photos: Kelly Sheridan

This true-life story from Brazil would work really well as a premise for a romantic comedy film.

Daniela Signor first saw Apollo Scariot two years ago when she attended a funeral he was working. The story, as shared in the New York Post, is that Signor then began attending funerals that Scariot organized. She eventually made direct contact with them and they began dating. Signore then informed her boyfriend that she had shown up at his funerals to catch his eye. He hadn't noticed.

Signor definitely has Scariot's attention now. The couple just got married. Appropriately, they arrived at the wedding in a hearse provided by Scariot's employer.

-via Oddity Central | Photo: Daniela Signor

We have a hard time visualizing how big the earth really is. We know intellectually that it's more or less a sphere that's about 24,000 miles around at the middle. From the surface to the sphere's center is 6731 kilometers (3958 miles). We've barely scratched the surface, literally, when we try to dig deep into it. How can we visualize that distance in a different way?   

Here's another mind blowing comparison from MetaBallStudios (previously at Neatorama). They take a core sample out of the earth the size of New York City and raise it up above the surface! The city itself is included for scale. This core blows past the altitude of the ISS in no time. You might want to keep your cursor over the pause button, because there are captions that describe what we are seeing, including terms you'll want to look up. Stay to the end, because there's a surprise sequence you won't want to miss.  -via The Awesomer

The Great Depression changed the US in more ways than people realize today. Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president as the economy sank further and further. His New Deal programs were designed for the three "R"s: relief, recovery, and reform. There were many programs the government rolled out between 1933 and 1938, and those that didn't yield results were dropped, while the most effective survive today. The programs that worked gave us affordable mortgages, electricity in rural areas, the minimum wage and the 44-hour work week (since changed to 40), protections for bank accounts, national park amenities, old age pensions, protection for our natural resources, rules for Wall Street trading, and a lot more. All this required massive government spending, but it got us through the decade. After World War II boosted the American economy into the black, some Depression era programs were considered so important that they were made permanent. Read about those New Deal programs and how they changed America at Mental Floss.

(Image source: Library of Congress)

You know of Ed Gein, even if you were never sure how to pronounce his name. He was a serial killer who inspired numerous cinematic killers such as Buffalo Bill, Norman Bates, Leatherface, and a bunch of other movie characters, including himself. In 1957, investigators searched Gein's home and found bodies and body parts of numerous people in various stages of dismemberment. Gein was trying to make a suit out of human skin that he could wear and become his mother. He had exhumed most of them from graveyards, but confessed to two murders. Gein was convicted of one murder and is suspected to be behind many other cases of missing persons around Plainfield, Wisconsin. He spent the rest of his life in a mental institution.

You can read about Gein's crimes in many places, but you also have to wonder, what could have led to Gein's twisted view of the world and of the people he treated so carelessly? Weird History focuses on his early life with his parents, and uncovers a story that can best be described as "how not to raise children." It's no excuse for his actions, but it is another horror story connected with Gein. 

When Europeans colonized the Americas, they found corn, an easily-grown and inexpensive grain. Eventually, many of the poorest people in Europe were eating little besides corn, made into polenta in Italy, and began to suffer from a disease called pellagra. For hundreds of years, no one knew what caused pellagra, but some suspected it was caused by a fungus or insects associated with corn. Only in the 1920s did they realize it was a nutritional deficiency, and in the '30s it was found to be a lack of niacin (vitamin B3). The poor folks who consumed mostly polenta suffered from skin rashes and diarrhea, and if it went untreated, they developed dementia, called pellagrous insanity.

During those hundreds of years, Italian sufferers could end up at San Servolo or San Clemente, two islands off of Venice with hospitals for the mentally ill. Treatment of these inmates varied according to their social status and the medical philosophy of those in charge of the hospitals. It took way too long for authorities to figure out why an improved diet would "cure" individuals, only for them to return later after eating little besides polenta in their home towns. Read about the mental hospitals of San Servolo and San Clemente at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Kasa Fue)