Smith plays a young Prince Philip as arrogant, cocksure, and even a little dangerous—all traits he shares in common with Daemon Targaryen, the character Smith portrays on HBO’s Game of Thronesprequel show House of the Dragon. In fact, watching The Crown was one of the things that convincedHouse of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal that Smith would be a great fit.
That said, Daemon goes quite a bit further than Philip ever did. He indiscriminately puts a bunch of peasants to death in the very first episode, and things just get wilder from there. Seducing his own niece, marrying her, strangling her in the finale, murdering his former wife by bashing her head in with a rock … there’s little Daemon isn’t capable of.
And that was hard for Claire Foy to watch. “I’ve watched all of [it],” she said, per the Daily Mail. “It took a huge amount of commitment, which waned towards the end.”
She continued: “I was a very committed friend [of his character] but I disagreed with him in many scenes. I then had to tell [Smith] that I found them disgusting to watch.” If Foy feels she needs to watch the second season as well, things are only going to get worse.
Fans and fellow writers were shocked to learn that Susan Meachen died by suicide in 2020, but Meachen just resurfaced on Facebook and admitted that she’s still alive.
Susan Meachen/FacebookSusan Meachen in an undated Facebook photo.
Roughly two years ago, a woman claiming to be the daughter of romance writer Susan Meachen posted on a Facebook fan site and claimed that her mother had died by suicide. But now, in a startling twist, Meachen has come forward to say that she’s very much still alive.
“I debated on how to do this a million times and still not sure if it’s right or not,” she wrote on Facebook. “There’s going to be tons of questions and a lot of people leaving the group I’d guess. But my family did what they thought was best for me and I can’t fault them for it.”
Meachen added: “Let the fun begin.”
But many of her fans and fellow writers believes this is more fraud than “fun.”
Facebook / Susan MeachenA Facebook post allegedly from Susan Meachen’s daughter, urging people to buy more of her mother’s books.
Meachen’s strange story started back in September 2020, when her daughter posted on a Facebook fan group for her mother’s writing — called The Ward — that Meachen had died by suicide. The 2020 Facebook post implied that Meachen had taken her own life after being bullied, which opened up a gulf among the writers who’d befriended her.
“When it came out that one of our own had taken her life, that was destructive enough, we were grieving for that alone,” Samantha A. Cole, a writer who’d met Meachen online, told the BBC. When the bullying allegations came out, she added, “All the finger-pointing started and it drove a huge wedge in the community that lasted for months.”
Many indie writers like Meachen — who self-publish their novels and are sometimes looked down upon by traditional publishing apparatuses — often keep in close contact with similar writers online. And in the wake of her “death,” many of Meachen’s online connections sought to honor her memory.
The BBC reports that they organized fundraisers and book auctions, and even put together an anti-bullying anthology that sought to keep “bullying where it belongs – in fiction.”
“Several authors got together and published it, donating proceeds to Susan’s family,” fellow romance writer T.E. Ridener said. “I’ve been in the indie community since 2011, and the battle against bullying started even back then. We all do our best, but there are still some really bad apples.”
In the meantime, posts continued to appear on The Ward urging people to buy Meachen’s books. In October 2020, a Facebook user named Connie Ortiz encouraged people to purchase the book Meachen had finished before her “death,” Love To Last A Lifetime. And in February 2021, a user claiming to be Meachen’s daughter warned that her mother’s work would go “unpublished” unless people started buying more books.
Susan Meachen/FacebookOne of Susan Meachen’s romance novels.
Then, in January 2023 — in a twist that seems more like fiction than fact — Meachen reappeared on Facebook. “Returning to The Ward doesn’t mean much but I am in a good place now and I am hoping to write again,” Meachen wrote.
According to the BBC, Meachen has told some people that she never authorized the post about her death. Instead, she claims, she had voluntarily committed herself in 2020 because of mental health and addiction issues, and her family had made the post saying she’d died.
“I simply want my life back,” Meachen wrote to Cole, who messaged her on Facebook demanding an explanation. “My family was in a bad place and did what they thought was best for me.”
To many, that’s simply not a valid excuse.
“To find out that it was a hoax, two-and-a-half years later, was just a slap in the face to everybody,” Cole told NBC News.
Ridener added: “To say we’re shook is the understatement thus far of 2023 … She crossed a line that no one should ever cross. I have loved ones who suffer from mental illness, and I also have had people I really cared about who were victims of suicide. She was so nonchalant about the whole thing.”
BBC reports that some suspect that Meachen’s alleged suicide was a publicity stunt meant to sell more books, and some writers have reached out to local law enforcement to see if they can get money they donated back. But the next chapters in this story are, for the moment, still unwritten.
Imagine you’re at a stoplight—what feels like the longest stoplight. As the unblinking red orb continues to glow, your attention wanders to the cars around you, and you can’t help but wonder, “What’s the deal with those funny shapes on that bumper?”
As it turns out, they’re more than just a cosmetic oddity. The circle and square shapes you might see on the front, rear, or possibly both bumpers are actually tow eye covers (also called tow hook eye caps). Once these little plastic panels are popped off—don’t worry, they snap back into place—you’ll see a weld-nut, which is part of the vehicle’s bumper beam. Through it, you can screw in a tow eye (also referred to as a loading eye bolt). Cables or rope can be attached to the tow eye, ideally allowing the car to be safely pulled onto a rollback tow truck without causing damage to the bumper.
Generally speaking, they’re not good for long-haul towing or for pulling a vehicle out of a muddy ditch. This is because tow eyes don’t have much side-force strength. “Loading eye bolts have minimal strength for side force. They’re just designed to pull straight ahead, and only if the vehicle is still in an adequate condition to roll, i.e. still has 4 wheels/tires,” Larry Muzamel, former executive director of theCalifornia Tow Truck Association, told Slate in a 2013 interview. If you’re unsure about how to use one (or if it’s even wise to do so with your car), be sure to talk to your tow truck operator first.
Now that you know what tow eye covers are, you might notice that there are more of them on modern cars than there were in the past. Why the proliferation? For one thing, there’s stylistic appeal: Some fancy cars in the 1980s were designed for tow-eye use, and this became more popular in the 1990s, particularly with imported vehicles that were lower to the ground or had “lower front body panels (spoilers or air dams),” according to Muzamel.
Another reason why they’re more commonplace now could be because tow points are required on the front and rear ends of all passenger cars in Europe. As Jalopnik reports, they’re not required in North America, but car manufacturers use them on vehicles intended for “multiple markets” as a way to keep things simpler, more affordable, and to make transporting vehicles easier. And according to Mike Sweers, senior vice president and executive chief engineer for F platform vehicles at Toyota, these “recovery points” may have also become more widespread due to market demand for a safer way to pull cars without damaging them.
Now that you know those funky geometric shapes on a car’s bumper aren’t just for show, you may want to learn more about what the symbols on your dashboard mean, or why some rear car windows don’t roll down all the way.
Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us atbigquestions@mentalfloss.com.
Before video games and TikTok, the world spent its idle time picking up rocks to skip across a body of water. Seeing how many times a stone could hop before sinking offered a high degree of personal satisfaction. But what if everything we knew about skipping rocks was wrong?
A new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A sheds some new light on this seemingly frivolous practice. According to experts at the University of Bristol and University College London, opting for a bulkier rock may deliver more spectacular results than the flat stones normally selected.
Using a mathematical model, the paper examined how stones move across a liquid surface depending on their mass and curvature. If a stone is bulkier but retains a curve on its underside, it may perform better than you’d expect, effectively bouncing off the water and launching itself into the air. It’s counter-intuitive to the normal preference for thin, flat stones.
“If you’ve got a heavier rock, you can get a super-elastic response, where you get a single mega-bounce rather than lots of little bounces,” Dr. Ryan Palmer, co-author on the paper, toldThe Guardian. “There’s this almighty leap out of the water.”
The rock’s curved bottom depresses into the water more deeply, which quickly results in the water pushing the rock back up with sufficient force to get it some airtime.
Flat stones are still superior for the number of skips, as a bulkier rock won’t have much momentum. (Skipping refers to the number of bounces before a stone sinks; skimming is the distance.) But when they do skip, they’ll probably make a bigger impression. While you can opt for larger, potato-shaped rocks, bulky, curvy ones are best for maximum bounce.
While the practice may seem meaningless, that’s not quite the case. Such examinations can help shed light on practical issues, like how planes or other bodies might land on water.
From what causes ice ages and how many we’ve had, to the species that thrived and the ones that died, here’s what you need to know about the ice age, adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube.
The Utah Geological Survey defines an ice age as “a long interval of time … when global temperatures are relatively cold and large areas of the Earth are covered by continental ice sheets and alpine glaciers.” Basically, a weirdly cold winter or five wouldn’t be an ice age, but millions of years of chilly temperatures with ice sheets and glaciers would.
Glaciers wiped out North American earthworms. / Ed Reschke/Stone/Getty Images
For thousands of years, there were barely any earthworms across a large swath of North America. The animals all but vanished from the northern part of the continent around 10,000 years ago, and it wasn’t because they were gobbled up by some sort of prehistoric early bird: Glaciers caused their demise.
During Earth’s most recent glaciation period, which peaked around 20,000 years ago, glaciers crept across the northern latitudes, grinding and scouring everything in their path. Soft, squishy earthworms were no match for the heavy ice. For thousands of years, much of the continent’s soil was without earthworms—that is, until European colonists inadvertently introduced hordes of the creepy crawlies to the landscape.
Earth has been both really hot and really cold. / Erik Von Weber/The Image Bank/Getty Images
Over its 4.5-billion year history, Earth has swung between periods of extreme heat and extreme cold. Crocodile-like reptiles once lurked within the lakes of the North Pole and palm trees swayed in Antarctic breezes.
Volcanic eruptions may have led to acid rain, which could have contributed to planetary cooling. / Arctic-Images/Stone/Getty Images
There are a number of factors that might help plunge the planet into an ice age, and some explanations aren’t particularly intuitive. You probably know that increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere can warm the planet, but they might also have the opposite effect, given the right set of conditions.
Around 460 million years ago, the volcanic eruptions that helped create parts of the northern Appalachian Mountains dumped record-breaking amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. It’s believed that all that carbon created acid rain. As geochemist Lee Kump explained to the Earth science publication EOS, when acid rain “‘attacks silicate rocks like granites and basalts,’ a chemical reaction incorporates the CO2 into limestone, which removes the molecule from the atmosphere.” More carbon in rocks and ocean floor sediment and less in the atmosphere might have contributed to the Earth’s cooling.
That volcano example is a somewhat speedier version of what’s sometimes called the slow carbon cycle, in which carbon moves between rocks, soil, the ocean, and the atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years.
Because rocks can sequester carbon—remove it from the atmosphere and store it in a form that doesn’t contribute to the greenhouse effect—scientists are interested in what factors might slow down or accelerate the weathering processes that break down rocks and lead to this sequestration. The formation of large mountain ranges, like the Himalayas, is often at the center of these investigations. Some believe that the formation of these mountains causes increased weathering, which could then allow more carbon from the air to get stored in rocks [PDF].
Newer research complicates this picture—it may be that mountain formation doesn’t lead to an increase in weathering overall, but instead exposes rocky material that’s more reactive, and therefore more efficient at weathering rocks and sequestering carbon. Anything that exposes new rocky material would therefore lead to increased carbon sequestration.
This is an area of intense interest for geologists and other climate scientists. At minimum, the slow carbon cycle could give us insights into how the planet regulates its temperature. More ambitiously, some believe that human beings could eventually harness certain rocks’ carbon sequestering powers to help combat climate change.
Earth From Apollo 16. / Heritage Images/GettyImages
The planet’s orbit and the tilt of its axis aren’t as constant as you might think, and variations in them can contribute to ice ages. These changes happen regularly over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, affecting the amount of sunlight that different latitudes on Earth receive, and by extension, the planet’s temperature. When the angle of Earth’s tilt decreases, summers cool down, allowing snow to accumulate. As layers of snow condense into glaciers and ice sheets, they reflect more sunlight—and therefore heat—causing global temperatures to drop.
Each of the major ice ages themselves went through cycles of freezing and thawing, called glacial and interglacial periods. During an interglacial period, glaciers recede toward the poles but don’t completely disappear. This ebb and flow of ice and heat is a long process that plays out over a span of tens of thousands of years, so you can probably cross off an instant planetary freeze, à la 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, from your list of climate concerns.
An artist’s concept of a snowball Earth. / MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images
The first of Earth’s five major ice ages was the Huronian glaciation, which kicked off about 2 billion years ago, possibly helped by a 250-million year pause in volcanic activity. That ice age was so intense that the entire planet froze over to form the first of a few “snowball Earths.” (Though many geologists think “slushball earth” would be a more accurate label, as the planet may not have been entirely frozen.)
Plants may have contributed to the ice age. / KDP/Moment/Getty Images
It’s believed land plants caused the Karoo, or Late Paleozoic, ice age, which started around 360 million years ago. As plants covered the planet, they sucked carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and released oxygen into the air, which caused temperatures to once again plummet.
When people talk about the ice age, they aren’t talking about any random glaciation period. They’re referring to the most recent glaciation during the Pleistocene epoch of the Quaternary period. (An epoch is a timeframe within a period; a period is a longer timeframe within an era.) So when we refer to the ice age, going forward, we’re talking about a specific timeframe that lasted from about 120,000 to 11,500 years ago.
The tectonics that created Panama might have had something to do with the ice age. / omersukrugoksu/E+/Getty Images
It’s believed tectonics played a big role in triggering the Quaternary Glaciation—more specifically, the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, the strip of land that links North and South America. The land bridge divides the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. When it formed, it drastically changed both oceans’ currents, as the warm, tropical water could no longer flow between them. The warmer water went north, causing more precipitation in the Northern Hemisphere’s high latitudes. This precipitation—which, at high latitudes, fell as snow—kept piling up and freezing to form glaciers and ice sheets. All that ice reflected more light and absorbed less heat than the darker oceans it now covered, creating a positive feedback cycle that further decreased the planet’s temperature.
The ice age reached its height, a period called the Last Glacial Maximum, around 20,000 years ago. Back then, 8 percent of the Earth’s surface, and a quarter of the planet’s total land area, was buried beneath ice. Ice sheets up to a mile thick covered North America—including a whopping 97 percent of Canada—as well as large parts of Northern Europe, Asia, and Patagonia.
Other parts of Northern Europe were basically transformed into a tundra, wiping out the warm-weather plants that had previously thrived there. Steppes, which are flat, unforested grasslands, expanded across the planet and sub-Saharan Africa became more arid. Because of all the water locked in frozen ice sheets at the time, the sea level was 400 feet lower than it currently is.
During the Last Glacial Maximum, on average, the planet’s temperature hovered around 46°F. That’s 11 degrees colder than the 20th century’s average global temperature. And average Arctic temperatures back then were 25 degrees cooler than today’s.
Megafauna like woolly mammoths dominated during the ice age. / Daniel Eskridge/Stocktrek Images/Getty Images
Despite the cooler temperatures, wildlife thrived. Animals we still see today, like shrews, mice, and lemmings, survived despite the changing landscape.
Megafauna reigned supreme during the ice age. We don’t know for sure why prehistoric animals were so big. One theory says that bigger prey animals were less likely to be hunted. Another theory, which follows a contested principle known as Bergmann’s Rule, suggests that larger animals are more likely to be found in colder climates and higher latitudes.
Whatever the cause, there were some big animals walking around in those cold climes. Woolly mammoths stood up to 11 feet tall at the shoulder. The largest saber-tooth cats, commonly (though incorrectly) called saber-tooth tigers, reached nearly 1000 pounds—more than double the size of modern tigers. Bear-sized beavers roamed North America, and 12-foot-tall giant ground sloths burrowed around South America. There was also the Irish elk, one of the largest deer species ever recorded. They stood 7 feet tall at the shoulder and had antlers that spanned up to 12 feet—that’s double the size of a moose’s antlers.
Hunting the Mammoth. / Historical/GettyImages
A lot of the iconic ice age megafauna went extinct after the ice age ended. There are multiple theories as to why. One suggests that when the last glacial period ended and the climate shifted, it caused the vegetation that certain animals depended on to change. This was bad news for the large herbivores—and bad news for the large carnivores that depended on them.
Another theory suggests an intense cold snap was the cause. One far-out idea claims meteorites or comets slammed into Earth, shifted the climate, and annihilated various species. And of course, there’s a popular theory that says a particularly powerful species of hunter was responsible for these mass extinctions: humans.
Humans thrived during the ice age. Modern Homo sapiens evolved around 300,000 years ago. It was during the last glaciation period that Homo sapiens began leaving Africa and spreading across the globe.
A neanderthal skull at London’s Natural History Museum. / Mike Kemp/GettyImages
Anatomically modern humans were already in Europe, mixing with Neanderthals and creating detailed cave art, tens of thousands of years before the ice age hit its peak. It’s believed that our unusually big brains—and the tools and weapons Homo sapiens had spent millennia advancing—allowed people to survive and continue expanding their range during the harsh conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum.
The last of the other human species scattered around the world went extinct during the ice age. The latest known evidence of Homo erectus dates to between 117,000 and 108,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared roughly 30,000 years ago, and some think the cooling climate in the years before the Last Glacial Maximum may be to blame. Though the Neanderthals had spent hundreds of thousands of years adapting to Europe’s chillier climate, the changing landscape may not have suited their hunting styles.
The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. / Victor Decolongon/GettyImages
The last glacial period ended over 10,000 years ago. Earth’s orbit changed, and the planet’s angle of tilt increased, leaving the Northern Hemisphere exposed to longer, more intense summers. Ice melted and the sea level rose. All that exposed water absorbed rather than reflected light, causing the planet’s temperatures to increase.
You can still see traces of the ice age today. Head to Southern California’s La Brea Tar Pits, where you’ll find a bubbling, tarry sludge full of ice age animal bones, including dire wolves and saber-tooth cats. Or visit Kerry, Ireland, where there’s a single lake that’s home to the only population of the Killarney shad, a type of fish whose ancestors split their time between the ocean and freshwater but who became trapped in an Irish lake after ice sheets altered the landscape. On Canada’s Calvert Island, you’ll find human footprints from 13,000 years ago, left behind by the people who migrated to North America during the ice age.
Loch Ness. / Tom Stoddart Archive/GettyImages
When ice sheets moved across the land, they left deep scars in their wake. Melting glaciers then filled those holes, creating famous bodies of water like the Great Lakes and Scotland’s Loch Ness. Norway’s famous fjords are valleys carved by glaciers, which later filled with sea water.
But you don’t have to travel to some far-flung location to find hints of the ice age. If you’re ever hiking in the woods and find a large, scratched up rock, you’re likely looking at glacial striations caused by debris being dragged against the rock by an unrelenting chunk of ice. Or, if you’ve ever seen a massive boulder seemingly dropped out of nowhere, it’s most likely a glacial erratic, which is basically just a rock left behind by a moving glacier.
A glacier in Iceland. / renATE photography/Moment/Getty Images
The ice age ended a long time ago, but we’re actually still in an ice age: the Holocene interglacial period of the Quaternary ice age. Large portions of the Northern Hemisphere are no longer covered by ice, but we do still have some glaciers and ice sheets. Despite rapidly increasing global temperatures, our glaciers and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are still hanging around—for now.
If you’re not a parent of a little one, there’s a good chance you’re not familiar with Peppa Pig. The animated show is British, aimed at preschool-aged children. It follows the adventures of a female pig and her family. Riveting stuff. But it actually does get interesting if you know that there was a Peppa Pig episode banned in Australia!
Why was a Peppa Pig episode banned in Australia?
The episode of Peppa Pig called “Mister Skinny Legs” came out in its first season, in 2004. This particular episode indicated that spiders are friendly and there’s no reason to fear them. It’s a good reminder not to be afraid of things just because they exist as “scary” in the public imagination. In fact, the episode points out that most spiders and small and can’t hurt you.
When a spider enters Peppa Pig’s room, her dad explains that there’s nothing to be afraid of and lets the little piglet pick it up and tuck it into bed with her.
This simply did not fly in Australia. You know, the place where spiders are not all small and can be very harmful.
The Guardian (cited below) revealed:
“This advice from the British-produced show was deemed to be ‘inappropriate for Australian audiences’ and the ABC banned it from future broadcast. The episode had not been broadcast on TV because of its unsuitability, but was ‘accidentally published online due to a technical problem,’ the ABC said at the time.”
When the episode aired on Nick Jr years later, parents wrote in with complaints. Nick Jr pulled the episode from the air again.
The episode is a mere 5 minutes long, but parents felt it posed enough of a danger that they didn’t want their kids encouraged to see spiders as their “friends.” — WTF fun facts
After proving to be America's most accurate national poll in the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, results for 2020 show the IBD/TIPP poll has done it again. IBD/TIPP has now been the most accurate in each of the last five election cycles. But the election polls are just one part…
A large shark has been spotted swimming close to a popular beach in the Australian city of Perth.
Beachgoers were forced to cut short their dips at Mullaloo Beach after the 2.5 metre-long (8ft) tiger shark was seen around midday on 9 January.
The beach was particularly busy when the predator approached, as it is currently the long summer school holiday in Australia.
This was the second time the beach had to be shut in less than a week after a previous sighting of a shark along the shoreline on 5 January.
Aerial footage showed the shark prowling the shoreline, just metres away from oblivious swimmers enjoying the water.
The video shows a woman wading in the shallow waters very close to the shark and a child with a bodyboard running out of the water.
The beach was eventually reopened shortly before 2pm.
The video was filmed by Perth resident Toby Nicol, who said: “We nicknamed it Trevor. The shark has been using the shallows of Perth’s northern beaches for a month now and has had many close encounters with people.”
Tiger sharks have been known to attack and even kill humans – they are second only to great whites in the number humans they are known to have attacked.
Western Australia is no stranger to shark attacks either. In October last year, a man nearly lost his arm after being attacked by an unidentified species of shark while spear fishing near Port Hedland on the north coast of the state.
The standards for hygiene vary from one generation to the next. What was once considered normal by one generation may seem filthy years later.
This change is often for the better as cleaner practices eliminate or significantly reduce preventable diseases.
The medieval age isn’t the model for cleanliness. So let’s take a look at some unhygienic practices from this era.
They didn’t bathe often.
How many times do you shower daily? Whatever your answer is, it’s probably more than the average person in the medieval age.
They would generally go for at least a few days before taking a bath. This might seem odd now, but it wasn’t all their fault.
Water wasn’t always available, so one couldn’t bathe frequently. As a result, many people would go to streams, lakes, or rivers to clean themselves up.
It was a risky activity, especially for those who couldn’t swim well. So people also visited public baths.
They shared bath water.
You probably won’t want to visit a medieval-age bathhouse.
The warm bath wouldn’t be so relaxing once you know where the water comes from.
Bathhouses used firewood to heat water for patrons.
Water was scarce, and so after a guest finished their bath, the next one jumped in without a water change.
This would go on for a few cycles. Multiple people could also share the same bath at a time.
Thankfully, modern bathhouses don’t have any problem getting clean water, so you won’t be using someone else’s bath water.
They used rivers as toilets.
If you ever travel back to the medieval age, don’t take a sip from the rivers. They served as public bathrooms.
Without water closet toilets or running water, people had limited options.
Some high-income households had latrines, while others relieved themselves in nearby bodies of water.
As you would imagine, water hygiene became a problem pretty quickly. Most surrounding water bodies were too dirty for drinking.
So, what did the average person living in the medieval age drink?
Well, they definitely didn’t drink from the lakes or ponds – that would make them sick. Instead, they mainly chugged alcoholic beverages.
Some writers in the 15th century encouraged pregnant women to drink wine over water.
Their houses had no concrete floors.
Straw mixed with herbs was strewn across the ground.
This would stay on for a long time, but cleaning wasn’t easy as dirt and moisture would build up, giving the entire house a musty smell.
Also, straw floors were excellent hiding places for rodents and other pests.
The plague soon had people looking for better floors.
Wooden floors became popular because they were much easier to clean. People used rugs, animal hides, or carpets over their wooden floors.
Wealthier homes had clay or marble floors.
They emptied chamber pots in the streets.
People often had chamber pots beside their beds to relieve themselves through the night.
What they did with its contents the following day might make you shudder.
Residents would throw the contents of their chamber pots over their balconies into the streets.
If you were walking through the streets without paying much attention, you might miss the warning and end up drenched in overnight urine.
In some cities, people will throw poop from their balconies too.
The pandemic made us familiar with wearing face masks in the streets, but in the medieval period, they wore nosebags for different reasons.
All that waste thrown into the streets would remain there for a while. The nosebags contained flowers to help people deal with the stench.
They didn’t wash their hands often.
You probably wash your hands more than a few times each day, but this wasn’t the norm in medieval times.
Even now, people sometimes eat without washing their hands, which is generally seen as unhygienic.
But due to lack of fresh, clean water, sometimes washing hands properly just wasn’t an option.
They didn’t always use soap.
Even among people who washed their hands, not everyone used soap.
They may splash on a bit of water before drying their hands.
When people used soap, they were most likely not scrubbing away dirt for the mandatory 20 seconds.
Even when their hands appear clean, they probably still contain illness-causing germs.
They treated wounds with urine.
You’ve probably heard people suggest peeing on a jellyfish sting.
In medieval times, people also used urine to treat bruises and other open wounds.
There are some problems with urine therapy.
It’s not an entirely sterile solution but contains small amounts of bacteria that increase when stored.
Treating open wounds with stored urine exposes a person to infection.
Fortunately, thanks to modern antiseptics, this isn’t a risk you have to take anymore.
There are lots of fascinating things to learn from the medieval ages.
Although these practices may not be the most sanitary, it’s still quite impressive to see how far we’ve come.
That said, we shouldn’t follow any of these medieval hygienic practices.
The first draft of author Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was written on a rented coin-operated typewriter in 1953. It charged 10 cents for every 30 minutes. People estimate that the monetary cost of producing the draft was around $9.80.
What is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
You may have heard of the iconic dystopian novel in high school or college. At least, hopefully. If you’ve only heard about it in the news, chances are you’re not getting the full story (in more ways than one).
Bradbury wrote his novel during the Red Scare and McCarthy era, a time of ideological strife and oppression as the Nazis burned books and Americans threatened to. Some see connections between the current political climate and the one Bradbury wrote in, so the book occasionally comes up during political conversations. As with any book, it’s better to read it for yourself (and also know a bit about the precise context in which it was written since Bradbury was not commenting on 21st-century matters).
The author has given a few different motivations for his writing – fear of American book burnings, fear of mass media (specifically, the rise of radio and television) ruining our interest in literature, and government censorship. Again, these are all things we worry about today, but in a different context.
If you know anything about Bradbury himself, it can further complicate the reading of the book. He felt that political correctness was a form of censorship, but also abhored politics in general, especially in education.
Set in the distant future, the book is about “firemen” who are charged with burning any book they find. The main character eventually grows disenchanted and dedicates himself to the preservation of books.
Bradbury’s basement writing
Bradbury had great disdain for media consumption via radio, TV, and later the Internet. In his later years, he often encouraged students to “live in the library” instead. Unable to afford college, he educated himself at the Los Angeles Public Library. But he was also disappointed by their lack of science fiction literature.
Nevertheless, in the early 1950s, he worked in the basement at UCLA’s Powell Library. He had children at home, so needed a quiet place. It was there that he typed out the first draft (or novella version) of Fahrenheit 451. It was originally called“The Fireman.”
As for the title, according to Open Culture (cited below):
“When it came to finding the book’s title, however, supposedly the temperature at which books burn, not only did the library fail him, but so too did the university’s chemistry department. To learn the answer, and finish the book, Bradbury finally had to call the fire department.”— WTF fun facts
Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager described Alameda’s objection to Binance.US’ bid for its assets as “hypocrisy and chutzpah.” Voyager said the bankrupt crypto trading firm has “desperately sought to undermine and sabotage” its restructuring efforts. The lender said Alameda tried to front-run its…
President Joe Biden on Sunday visited the Southern U.S. border at El Paso, Texas, after tensions over migration to the United States have been simmering for months. These, for example, included the busing of migrants north from the Southern U.S. – at times approved by Republican governors. Ahead…
Cardano’s price increased by a whopping 30% in the past seven days, charting the majority of these gains in the last 24 hours. Cardano did not disappoint and started this week with a massive rally booking, a 16% price increase in the past 24h. In the process, ADA turned the $0.30 resistance into…
At the helm of the program is chief marketing and communications officer Raja Rajamannar. Tools like NFTs, he told Ad Age at CES, can help artists achieve scale at critical junctures in their career. This is why the accelerator will kick off in the spring with a Music Pass NFT, which will allow…
According to data from crypto staking data provider Staking Rewards, Polygon (MATIC) is the top staking asset in the first week of 2023. The firm noted that the network hit an all-time high for its staking balance of $3.55 billion. MATCI’s weekly inflow increased to $127.99 million, accounting for…
Solana’s native coin, SOL, is one of today’s top performers, pumping by 24%. But analysts anticipate a correction. Solana’s momentum is increasing as its native coin outperforms its brethren today. However, the dust has yet to settle from the FTX fiasco and its impact on Solana. This could have…
While chaos was the prevailing mood of 2022, the Potatoz NFT collection defied the odds by quietly gathering momentum in the background. Now however, Potatoz has witnessed a surge in sales prior to the arrival of ‘The Captainz,’ the second NFT drop in 9Gag’s Memeland project. How Potatoz Rose to…
