Bazaar News | ReportWire publishes the latest breaking U.S. and world news, trending topics and developing stories from around globe.
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Uniswap’s UNI token jumped over 7% on Dec. 2 after a governance proposal calling for a vote to reserve a portion of trading fees was posted. https://terminal.thedefiant.io/chart/1/UNI-Price/3-18-8?interval=1h&start=1669953569680&yAxis=Separate&dataType=ohlcv If it passes, it will only apply to…
#guillaumelambert #leightoncusack #daieth #defiantterminal #defi #pooltogether #cornell #regulatoryandlegalconsiderations #governanceproposal #pilotprogram
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Medieval shipwreck found in a Norwegian lake, Neolithic sacrifice victim unearthed in Denmark, knight with an elongated skull discovered in Notre Dame.
The post This Week In History News, Dec. 11 – 17 appeared first on All That's Interesting.
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Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and AntiquitiesThe necropolis is located in modern-day Minya and was constructed in 1346 B.C.E.
Researchers working at the Tell El-Amarna necropolis along the eastern bank of Egypt’s Nile River recently uncovered a collection of ornate gold jewelry dating back 3,500 years in the grave of a young adult woman.
Per The Jerusalem Post, the team comprised of Egyptian and English archaeologists were excavating sites at the Amarna North Desert Cemetery, the burial ground for the city of Amarna, or Akhetaten, which once served as the capital city for 18th-Dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten.
The young woman’s body was wrapped in a matting made of textiles and plant fibers, and she was adorned with a golden necklace and three gold and soapstone rings — one of which features an engraving of Bes, the Egyptian god of childbirth who was worshiped as a protective deity to mothers and children.
The other rings featured inscriptions that translate to “lady of the two lands,” which researchers believe may be a reference to the two kingdoms of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, which united in 3150 BCE after a campaign by the Pharaoh Menes.
According to Arkeonews, the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge’s Dr. Anna Stevens said, “[The young woman’s] burial is located at the Amarna North Desert Cemetery in the low desert west of the North Tombs. It includes a small number of burial shafts and tombs, as well as pit graves.”
Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and AntiquitiesThe necklace found around the neck of the young girl buried at the Armana grave site.
The Armana project has been underway since 2005, with research specifically focused on the Armana necropolis. Since then, a number of relics have been discovered and undergone restoration. The larger archaeological mission at Tel El-Amarna, meanwhile, has been supported by the University of Cambridge since 1977.
The site also hosts numerous temples dedicated to the Egyptian sun god, Aten, who was the subject of a new religion started by Pharaoh Akhenaten called Atenism. Akhenaten is also notable for being the father of the famous boy king, Tutankhamun, who later abandoned his father’s capital city to return to Thebes, following Akhenaten’s death.
Akhenaten’s shift away from the polytheistic religion that was practiced by most ancient Egyptians towards the monotheistic Atenism was also a divisive choice, and upon abandoning the capital, many objects were hidden away, and Akhenaten’s name was erased from the list of rulers.
Tutankhamun also famously suffered from a number of serious health issues, the result of being born of an incestuous relationship between his father and his father’s sister.
When Tutankhamun took the throne at only 8 years old, his conglomerate of political advisers quickly ushered the young king and his people back to their original capital in Thebes and quickly abandoned the worship of Aten, meaning the people were now free to worship any of the other major deities, including Atum, the creator god.
In a sense, Tutankhamun became a symbol of restoration, who righted the perceived wrongs of his father. Of course, his myriad health issues did not lead to a long life, and King Tut died in his teenage years — but not before marrying his half-sister Ankhesenamu, with whom he had two stillborn daughters.
Still, the ancient Egyptians mummified Tutankhamun and erected a lavish tomb in his honor, which has become the subject of numerous archaeological investigations since its discovery by British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922.
Wikimedia CommonsAn Egyptian relief depicting the Pharaoh Akhenaten, Queen Nerfititi, and their children.
The discovery of the ancient jewelry is also the latest in a long line of discoveries that are changing our understanding of the lives of ancient Egyptians.
Just earlier this year, archaeologists discovered bronze branding irons which they believe may have been used by the ancient Egyptians to brand their slaves.
The irons, they determined, were too small to be used on cattle, but “the identification of these marks as brands emphasizes the dehumanization of these enslaved persons and implies that their status was on par with other property such as cattle,” said Ella Karev, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago who authored the study that examined the branding irons.
Before that, researchers discovered 2,600-year-old cheese that had been stored in clay vessels, and two tombs housing 2,500-year-old mummies with golden tongues alongside 402 funerary figurines, amulets, and scarabs.
According to the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the golden tongues were believed to allow the dead to speak to Osiris, the god of the underworld who judged new arrivals in the afterlife.
Many of the items discovered in these archaeological excavations will one day find themselves on display at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo.
After learning of this new discovery, read about the discovery of the oldest-known brewery found at an Egyptian burial site. Then, learn about the recently-discovered tomb of a previously unknown Egyptian queen.
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Austin Harvey
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Support Intelligent, In-Depth, Trustworthy Journalism. Leave your feedback New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including the Jan. 6 committee prepares to vote on recommending criminal…
#judywoodruff #washingtonpost #indepth #jonathancapehart #trustworthyjournalism #trump #davidbrooks
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GUERCHOM NDEBO/AFP via Getty ImagesThe study’s authors observed the movements of chimpanzees to understand how early humans might have developed bipedalism.
Walking on two legs is one of the defining features of mankind, and researchers have long assumed that our ancestors developed bipedalism while traversing grasslands. But new research suggests that early humans may have started walking on two legs while still living in trees.
In a study published in Science Advances, researchers from University College London, the University of Kent, and Duke University explained how their study of chimps in Tanzania’s Issa Valley led them to believe that trees had played an “essential” role in the evolution of bipedalism.
“We naturally assumed that because Issa has fewer trees than typical tropical forests, where most chimpanzees live, we would see individuals more often on the ground than in the trees,” explained study co-author Alex Piel of University College London, according to Eureka Alert.
Piel added, “Moreover, because so many of the traditional drivers of bipedalism (such as carrying objects or seeing over tall grass, for example) are associated with being on the ground, we thought we’d naturally see more bipedalism here as well. However, this is not what we found.”
While studying 13 chimpanzee adults (six females and seven males) and noting how they climbed, walked, and hung from trees over a 15-month period, the researchers came to a surprising conclusion.
According to Science Alert, more than 85 percent of observed bipedalism took place while the chimps were in trees — not on the ground.
The researchers suspect that bipedalism is an advantageous way for the chimps to forage for food while traversing the treetops.
“[Bipedalism may help them] safely and effectively navigate the flexible branches and access as many fruits as possible when they find them,” study lead author Rhianna Drummond-Clarke of the University of Kent explained to The Guardian.
Massimo Insabato/Archivio Massimo Insabato/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty ImagesA chimpanzee in a tree at a zoo in Rome.
To the study’s authors, the chimps’ behavior suggests that our early human ancestors started walking on two legs while still living in trees. This contradicts the widely-held belief that bipedalism developed because climate change started shrinking forests, forcing early humans onto grasslands.
“Our study suggests that the retreat of forests in the late Miocene-Pliocene era around five million years ago and the more open savanna habitats were in fact not a catalyst for the evolution of bipedalism,” Piel told Eureka Alert. “Instead, trees probably remained essential to its evolution — with the search for food-producing trees a likely a driver of this trait.”
Study co-author and University College London biological anthropologist Fiona Stewart seconded Piel to Science Alert.
“To date, the numerous hypotheses for the evolution of bipedalism share the idea that hominins (human ancestors) came down from the trees and walked upright on the ground, especially in more arid, open habitats that lacked tree cover,” she said. “Our data do not support that at all.”
Adam van CasterenThe Issa Valley in western Tanzania where the researchers conducted their study.
While the study does not definitively prove that humans developed bipedalism while living in trees, and not while traversing grasslands as previously believed, it does complicate the original theory.
“I think we have long told this very logical story, that at least our data don’t really support,” Piel told The Guardian.
He added, “Rather than time on the ground stimulating [bipedalism], it may have catalyzed it, but it was already there. And that fits perfectly with the fossil record because all these early hominins have both arboreal and terrestrial adaptations.”
Next, the research team hopes to fill in more blanks about the evolution of bipedalism in our early ancestors.
“What we need to focus on now is how and why these chimpanzees spend so much time in the trees,” Stewart told Eureka Alert. “That is what we’ll focus on next on our way to piecing together this complex evolutionary puzzle.”
After reading about how humans may have developed the ability to walk on two legs while still living in the trees — and not on grasslands as previously believed — see how early humans may have tried to domesticate cassowaries, known as the “world’s most dangerous bird.” Or, look through this list of some of Earth’s most unbelievable prehistoric animals.
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Kaleena Fraga
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It’s a day every parent dreads: When their child approaches them and begins asking pointed questions about Santa Claus. How can Santa travel the globe in one night? How do reindeer fly? How can he fit into a chimney? Is Santa real?
At some point, common sense will intervene and a child will begin to suspect Santa is a mythological creature, like the Tooth Fairy or a person who returns shopping carts to their proper place. What should a parent say? And should they be misleading a kid in the first place?
According to Victoria Talwar, Ph.D., author of The Truth About Lying: Teaching Honesty to Children at Every Age and Stage, telling children Santa Claus exists doesn’t occupy the same fraught territory as other forms of deception. “The Santa lie falls more into the realm of tradition and culture,” Talwar tells Mental Floss. “If I’m lying to kids to get them to go to bed early, that’s different from Santa. Santa is cultural. Everywhere you go, Santa Claus is there. It’s not just something the parent made up. It’s something quite different, outside the realm of a full parental lie.”
In Talwar’s view, Santa’s mythology is a buy-in that can have a net positive effect on a child’s outlook. “The sentiments behind Santa are really positive,” Talwar says. “You can turn around and make magic for others. It has underlying principles we want to communicate with children. We want them to be honest. We should make sure we’re underscoring that in how we talk to them. Values like generosity, giving, caring for others, all those values are part of the Christmas story.”
Research indicates that roughly 85 percent of children 5 years of age think Santa is real. Not long after that, a child may begin to question Santa’s existence, when logic starts to intervene or a friend or classmate begins insinuating the jolly old man might be fictional.
But age isn’t the only way to determine when a child is catching on to reality. According to Mona Delahooke, Ph.D., a pediatric psychologist based in California, Santa suspicions can happen at any time.
“It’s more about developmental stage than chronological age,” Delahooke tells Mental Floss. “Each child will have their own trajectory based on their social and emotional development. But somewhere between 3 to 5 years old, children begin to wonder about the difference between ‘pretend’ and ‘real.’ That’s when some of the questions can start about the logistics of the Santa story.”
According to Talwar, that curiosity doesn’t necessarily require a parent come clean. It may instead be more beneficial for a kid to ask questions.
“Let the child guide that,” Talwar says. “If they say, ‘Well, Santa isn’t real.’ Or they say, ‘I heard Santa isn’t real,’ the parent can say, ‘Well, what do you think?’ If they ask, ‘How does Santa get around the world?’ ‘Well, how do you think he does?’”
The reason to avoid coming clean is that kids “may not be ready to leave that magical childhood story. They’re just questioning it. You can see where the child is. They’ll tell you.”
And if they insist? While some parents may play a game of semantics, insisting Saint Nicholas was a real person (a 3rd-century monk) or that Santa Claus lives (one man changed his name in 2012, making that true on paper), it’s probably better just to lay it out. “If they still get back to wanting you to answer, you need to be honest,” Talwar says. “I don’t think parents should lie. It’s a general rule. Parents lying to children is not a good thing. It can have long-term negative impacts on parents and on childhood.”
Some kids, Delahooke says, might have a foot in and a foot out: They doubt Santa, but it might be more fun to play along. “That’s where the power of our imaginations and symbolic thinking can allow a child to hold two realities at once: ‘I kind of know Santa’s not real, but I’m going to pretend that he is!’ That’s OK,” she says.
Can a child feel deceived once they find out the truth? Possibly, Delahooke notes. “Sometimes, kids hear about it at school or somewhere without a compassionate adult presence and they are surprised in a stressful way,” she says. “Sometimes, a child may feel that a parent lied to them. It all depends on each child’s perception. One child may feel betrayed and another may not.”
While Santa Claus may not be a toxic fiction, Delahooke adds the same cannot be said for Elf on the Shelf, the relatively recent holiday trend that sees parents putting up an elfin figure to monitor a child for misbehavior. “Elf on the Shelf, if used to surveil children, is harmful. It’s a trick that seems innocuous but has an underlying message [of] ‘don’t get caught’—instead of ‘do the right thing.’”
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Jake Rossen
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TwitterOver 240,000 gallons of water erupted from the AquaDom, the world’s largest cylindrical aquarium, and out onto the street.
Earlier this morning, a 46-foot-high aquarium burst in the lobby of a Berlin hotel, unleashing a flood of water that injured at least two people and caused roughly 1,500 exotic fish to spill out onto the street.
As Reuters reports, the massive aquarium, called the AquaDom, held 264,172 gallons of water and decorated the lobby of a Radisson hotel. According to Sea Life Berlin, the AquaDom’s operator, it was the world’s largest freestanding cylindrical aquarium and contained a clear-walled elevator for guests.
Of course, when the aquarium suddenly burst, the scene could only be described as chaos. One hotel guest, Sandra Weeser, told Reuters, “The whole aquarium burst and what’s left is total devastation. Lots of dead fish, debris. It is quite a drama.”
All 1,500 or so fish that were kept in the aquarium died, but efforts are being made to rescue fish from other, smaller tanks near the AquaDom that were thankfully not damaged but are in need of rehousing due to power cuts in the building.
“It looks a bit like a war zone,” Weeser told the Associated Press.
At the moment, it is unclear what exactly caused the AquaDom to erupt. Some speculated that freezing temperatures overnight reaching as low as 14 degrees Fahrenheit may have caused the glass tank to crack — and the pressure from the water subsequently led to the explosion.
The hotel is just one of many businesses in the DomAquarée leisure complex, which also contains apartments, museums, shops, cafés, and restaurants. In addition to the hotel, a Lindt chocolate store, several restaurants, and an underground parking garage sustained damage.
Two people were close enough to suffer injuries from the splintered glass, including one hotel employee. Shortly after, emergency services asked around 350 of the hotel’s guests to pack their bags and leave, in case the building suffered structural damage. Buses arrived to provide shelter for the guests.
Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey noted that as unfortunate as the incident is, it could have been much worse. The AquaDom burst early in the morning while the lobby was mostly empty and few bystanders were present.
“If this hadn’t happened at 5:45 a.m. but even just one hour later, then we would probably have had terrible human loss to report,” Giffey said.
TwitterThe AquaDom aquarium in the Radisson hotel lobby prior to the incident was a major attraction and featured a ten-minute elevator ride through the center.
Sea Life meanwhile said that it was shocked and saddened by the incident, and that it is collecting more information from the AquaDom’s owner, Union Investment Real Estate, to determine a cause for the sudden explosion.
Hours later, an entire block of the street outside remained shut down and covered in water, The New York Times reports. The force of the water is estimated to have weighed around 100 tons and torn plants and telephone poles from the ground.
TwitterThe Radisson hotel emailed its Loyalty Members informing them that it would remain closed until any structural damage could be properly assessed.
In the early afternoon, firefighters arrived to help with the cleanup effort, assess the damage, and save any remaining fish in the building — many of which were thankfully in the building’s basement breeding facility.
“We have to pump out a mass of water. We have to check and completely stabilize the building here. Also — and this is our number one priority right now — we have to save the living fish that are in the basement,” said James Klein, spokesman for the Berlin Fire Department.
Numerous businesses including local veterinary practices and the Berlin Zoo offered to take in the surviving fish as well.
“It’s a tragedy for the fish,” said Markus Kamrad, an official at the Berlin Senate responsible for animal protection. “The good news is that we really were able to save many protected and rare species.”
After reading about this devastating aquarium news, read about the aquarium jazz night that ended with a man swimming naked with sharks. Or, check out these 27 incredible underwater photos of schooling fish.
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Austin Harvey
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From their early identity as “Russian Mountains” in France to today’s death-defying drops, roller coasters have embodied humanity’s paradoxical desire to put themselves in (at least an approximation of) harm’s way. How did we go from slow-moving coal carts to stomach-churning feats of speed? And just why do people find it fun to feel terrified?
In the second episode of The History of Fun, Mental Floss producer and host Justin Dodd traces the topsy-turvy track of roller coaster history and explores the science behind being thrilled. Professor Brendan Walker, known as the world’s only professional thrill engineer, weighs in with the physiological and psychological insights gleaned from his research.
During the latter half of the 19th century, many of the influential roller coasters that resemble the ones we ride today were being made not in Europe, but in America. La Marcus Thompson was an inventor who, over his life, accumulated several patents for various roller coaster technologies. He’s known as the “Father of the Gravity Ride” and the “Father of the American Roller Coaster.” But as we explore in the video, those labels might be more up-for-grabs than it first appears.
Check out the full video about the history of the roller coaster to learn more, from how loop-the-loops were originally tested (it involves more monkeys than you might imagine) to how our fight-or-flight response contributes to the fun of an amusement park.
Subscribe to Mental Floss on YouTube for new videos every week covering history, science, and much more.
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Jon Mayer
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Have you watched the new Lindsay Lohan Christmas movie, Falling for Christmas, on Netflix yet? The storyline is silly, the characters are over-the-top, and the plot moves too fast to be realistic—but there’s no denying it’ll leave you with a little happy sparkle in your heart, just like every other holiday movie this time of year. And as it turns out, there’s a scientific reason behind that joy we get from watching them.
Pamela B. Rutledge writes in Psychology Today that because holiday movies are predictable and not stressful, they can lead to feelings of comfort and sentimentality, which naturally boost your mood. According to a 2020 study in the book Nostalgia Now, because these movies are easy to follow and have happy endings, they can even reduce stress hormones and increase your cardiovascular health. Plus, if you watch them with someone else, your relationship bonds strengthen.
“When it comes to those cheesy holiday movies we love to watch, we know they are always going to work out in the most positive way and have a happy ending,” Courtney Cope, a psychologist with BetterHelp, told L’Oreal Thompson Payton in an article for Fortune. “It’s a nice vacation from reality for our brains where we can suspend belief and imagine a world where the good guy always wins, families always resolve their differences, the main character always finds true love, and there’s always enough money for the most magical and extravagant dream Christmas gift or trip for the whole family!”
More scientifically, the movies play to our nostalgia bias, a cognitive process that makes us long for past times because we think they were somehow better than now. Holiday movies are designed to work exactly that way. And with the added comfort of a holiday routine (watching the same movies every year, or even new cheesy Hallmark ones) we feel safe and calm—and that’s something that can be hard to find right now, so when we do, our brains eat it up.
Looking for a new movie to watch, or at least a movie that’s new to you? Mental Floss’s new book, The Curious Movie Buff: A Miscellany of Fantastic Films from the Past 50 Years, offers behind-the-scenes details and amazing facts about some of the greatest movies of the past half-century. And it’s available now at your favorite place to buy books, or online right here.
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Jennifer Billock
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Beloved for his iconic performance as Back To The Future hero Marty McFly, and his courage and charitable efforts on behalf of Parkinson’s disease research, Michael J. Fox is that rarest of Hollywood figures—someone that nobody has a bad word to say about.
From his breakout role as teenage Republican Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties, Fox built up a career as a movie star and the lead on another successful sitcom, Spin City. He subsequently channeled his fame into raising enormous amounts of money for Parkinson’s disease research following his own diagnosis three decades ago. All that, and the 60-something actor barely looks a day over 35. Maybe he really does have a time machine.
Fox’s middle name is Andrew, and he was credited in his first Canadian acting roles simply as “Michael Fox.” But when he moved to the U.S. and joined the Screen Actors’ Guild, he had to change his name because there was already an actor named Michael Fox (who, coincidentally, starred in multiple episodes of Science Fiction Theatre, George McFly’s favorite TV show in Back To The Future). He was worried that “Michael A. Fox” would be misinterpreted as either boastful of his own handsomeness or as a riff on the Canadian interjection “eh,” so he opted for a J. The choice was partly in homage to Bonnie and Clyde star Michael J. Pollard.
Fox and his Back To The Future dad Crispin Glover both worked on the 1983 TV movie High School USA, also starring Todd Bridges and Anthony Edwards. While he and Glover haven’t spoken since BTTF, Fox remains very close friends with Christopher Lloyd, who played Doc Brown. Later in his career, Fox enjoyed bringing back former co-stars—his directorial debut on an episode of Tales from the Crypt co-starred BTTF’s Principal Strickland, James Tolkan; Spin City featured appearances from Family Ties alumni Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter; and The Michael J. Fox Show featured guest appearances from Lloyd and Spin City colleague Richard Kind.
At 5 feet, 4 inches tall, Fox’s height almost derailed his career before it had really begun. NBC president Brandon Tartikoff insisted Fox was too short to play Alex P. Keaton (Michael Gross, who played his father, is 6-foot-4-inches) on Family Ties. Show creator Gary David Goldberg stuck up for him, saying, “Look, all I know is this: I send the kid out with two jokes and he brings me back five laughs.”
Around the same time, the filming schedule of Back To The Future included reshooting multiple scenes which had already been shot with 5-foot-11-inch Eric Stoltz playing Marty. Even shots of an arms reaching in from off-screen had to be redone. Perhaps to acknowledge these snafus, Fox’s second memoir was titled Always Looking Up, both a reference to his unending optimism and his stature.
Fox was a keen guitarist until the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease got in the way, and is rumored to have once auditioned to play bass in the Canadian hard rock band Helix. But his performance of “Johnny B. Goode” in Back To The Future still took him weeks of preparation. He worked with guitarist Paul Hanson to perfect his finger positioning and choreographer Brad Jeffries for his overexcited stage moves. Fox lip-synced to vocals performed by an uncredited Mark Campbell of the band Jack Mack and the Heart Attack.
During his leading-man days, Fox was occasionally uncomfortable about being pigeonholed as a comedy star. While his dramatic films—Casualties of War, Light of Day, and Bright Lights, Big City—were all reasonably well-received, people revered his sitcom beginnings and iconic comedy roles. While promoting Casualties Of War, a Vietnam War drama directed by Brian de Palma, he told The New York Times, “In a comedic film, I may be taking my pride and putting it out there, but not my guts. If I just do comedies, I will have blown it for myself.” He also joked that if the film made $1.50 at the box office, he’d spend the rest of his career making movies with titles like Bikinis Away. Following his diagnosis of Parkinson‘s diagnosis, he also wondered if audiences would be uncomfortable laughing at him in comedies. As he wrote in his memoirs, “can you laugh at a sick person without feeling like an a**hole?”
Across the three Back To The Future movies, Fox played Marty McFly at ages 17 and 47, as well as his son Marty Jr., daughter Marlene, and great-great-grandfather Seamus. He also voiced an adult William McFly—Seamus’s son and Marty’s great-grandfather, seen as a baby in the third film—in Back To The Future: The Game. Over the years he also revived the role of Marty for various skits and cameo appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live, in a Spike TV promo, and in Lil Nas X’s Holiday video.
Fox was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease at the age of 29 in 1991, while filming Doc Hollywood. He went public with it in 1998, establishing the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which to date has raised over $1 billion. Fox has described the illness as “the gift that keeps on taking,” yet credits some of the happiness of his personal life with the choices his condition forced him to make. “I don’t know that I would have the family that I have now, the life I have, the sense of purpose, if none of this had happened,” he told The Guardian in 2020. (While the causes of Parkinson’s disease are not known, researchers theorize that genetic and environmental factors are likely involved.) In November 2022, Fox’s charitable efforts were recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
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Mike Rampton
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Ether (ETH) price is down on Dec. 16 and the pre-FOMC rally to $1,350 was obliterated after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell issued hawkish statements following a 0.50% hike in interest rates. The Ether sell-off follows a market-wide decline that has sent Ethereum network fees plummeting by…
#ethereums #ethers #ftx #howey #ethereum #shanghai #defi #jeromepowell #commodityfuturestradingcommission #cftc
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Have you ever wondered why today’s Brussels sprouts don’t taste as gross as they might have while you were growing up? It’s not just your palate that’s changed, but the sprouts themselves. Thanks to some genetic tinkering, Dutch scientists have made Brussels sprouts bitter no longer.
Brussels sprouts simply don’t taste the same way they did a few decades ago. If you hated them as a kid, there’s at least some chance you might like them now.
According to NPR (cited below): “This all started to change in the 1990s, and it began in the Netherlands, where Brussels sprouts have a simpler name: spruitjes. A Dutch scientist named Hans van Doorn, who worked at the seed and chemical company Novartis (the seed part is now called Syngenta), figured out exactly which chemical compounds in spruitjes made them bitter.”
The next step was to consult the seed archives (libraries of seeds for different types of Brussels sprouts). Companies then planted them all and began selecting for the ones with the least bitterness.
Once scientists chose the best candidates for less bitter sprouts, “They cross-pollinated these old varieties with modern, high-yielding ones, trying to combine the best traits of old and new spruitjes. It took many years. But it worked.” Then word spread in the professional culinary scene. It took off mainly in the United States, not in Europe.“
Once word got out about everyone’s least favorite vegetable from childhood tasting a bit different, big-name chefs (like David Chang at Momofuku in New York) got on board and started selling them again. People were delighted to have a new vegetable to enjoy and the “new” Brussels sprouts took off without people knowing the bitterness chemical had actually been bred out of them.
Most of us who like Brussels sprouts now assume we just have more mature palates. But we actually have the Dutch to thank for getting our greens with less suffering. — WTF fun facts
Source: “From Culinary Dud To Stud: How Dutch Plant Breeders Built Our Brussels Sprouts Boom” — NPR
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YouTubeDennis Depue and his wife, Marilynn, in an undated photo.
On Easter Sunday, April 15, 1990, Ray and Marie Thornton were on a traditional weekend drive along Snow Prairie Road, a rural highway 12 miles outside Coldwater, Michigan. In their rear-view mirror a Chevrolet van suddenly appeared, driving aggressively, before overtaking them.
The couple had been playing a game of making slogans from the license plates of passing cars, so when the van sped past, Marie saw the plate beginning ‘GZ’ and remarked, “Geez he’s in a hurry.”
As they approached an abandoned schoolhouse, the Thorntons saw the same van parked to the side of the building — then Marie caught a disturbing sight. The driver was holding what appeared to be a bloody sheet and walking toward the rear of the schoolhouse. Marie, although shocked, was not quite sure what she had just witnessed, and as they discussed calling the police, Ray Thornton saw an ominous van approaching again in his rearview.
Gaining speed rapidly, the same Chevy van they had just seen at the schoolhouse now eerily rode their rear bumper for the next two miles, inspiring the opening scene of the 2001 horror movie Jeepers Creepers according to The Grunge.
Google MapsThe abandoned schoolhouse in Michigan where Dennis DePue was trying to hide his wife’s body when the Thorntons drove by.
As the Thorntons worried what the driver pursuing them would do, they turned off the highway, just as the van suddenly pulled to the side of the road. To try and obtain the full license plate for the police, Ray Thornton turned his car around and they approached the green van again.
Now, however, the man they had seen driving was now crouched down changing the rear license plate of the van.
The Thorntons could also see the van’s open front passenger door — and the inside was soaked in blood. Rushing back to the schoolhouse the couple found the bloody sheet partially stuffed into an animal hole. As they contacted the Michigan State Police recounting what they had just witnessed, unbeknownst to them, police were already scouring the area looking for that man and his injured wife.
The couple had just encountered 46-year-old Dennis DePue.
Twitter/Unsolved MysteriesRay Thornton, a witness to Dennis Depue’s crime.
Dennis Henry DePue was born in 1943, in Michigan, remaining in his home state as an adult and working as a property assessor. In 1971 he married Marilynn, who became a popular high school counselor in Coldwater. The couple had three children, two girls and a boy, but DePue’s paranoid and controlling ways had emerged, wearing Marilynn down. The sullen and withdrawn DePue isolated himself from the family and frequently accused Marilynn of “turning the children against him.”
Marilynn filed for divorce in 1989, telling her attorney that DePue was trying to control every decision in her life. DePue made no claim on the house following the divorce but maintained a home office in the garage.
One day Marilynn came home to find DePue sitting on the couch in the living room despite her having changed all the locks. The couple’s divorce was finalized in December 1989 — and just five months later, Marilynn would be dead.
DePue became completely unhinged on Easter Sunday, 1990, as he arrived at the family home to pick up two of their children. Their younger daughter, Julie, had refused to go with DePue that day, and as he went inside, he became angry, when their son, Scott, also began stalling. When Marilynn talked to DePue, his anger increased, and he grabbed her, shouting accusations.
Grappling with Marilynn, DePue pushed her down the stairs, and as their horrified children looked on, DePue mercilessly beat her at the bottom of the stairway. With the children pleading with him to stop, Jennifer, their oldest daughter ran outside to a neighbor’s house to call the police.
DePue left the house with Marilynn seriously injured, telling the children he was taking her to the hospital, but they never arrived. The police had begun a widespread search for them both, then the Thornton’s encounter with DePue’s van and the bloody sheet came to light, making Dennis DePue the main target of the police’s investigation.
A forensics team sealed off the abandoned schoolhouse crime scene, and tire tracks at the school matched DePue’s van. The evidence strongly indicated Depue killed his ex-wife, which was confirmed the next day, as a highway worker discovered Marilynn’s body, shot once in the back of the head, lying near a deserted road. The road was midway between the schoolhouse and her home according to an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. By then Dennis Depue was in the wind, a fugitive wanted for murder.
United ArtistsRay and Marie Thornton’s chilling roadside encounter with Dennis DePue inspired the opening scene of the horror film Jeepers Creepers.
Over the next several days, and weeks, DePue sent a series of bizarre, rambling letters to friends and family, attempting to justify Marilynn’s death. Seventeen in all, postmarked in Virginia, Iowa, and Oklahoma, in which he ranted over her tricks and lies, writing how he had lost his wife, children and home, and was now too old to start over.
On the evening of March 20, 1991, as a Dallas, Texas woman arrived home, she noted her boyfriend’s van sitting in the driveway, unusual because he usually kept it inside the garage. Once inside, her boyfriend “Hank Queen,” told her he needed to make an emergency trip home, his mother was very ill.
“Hank” kept an interested eye on the Unsolved Mysteries episode playing on the TV, gathering up his clothes and personal items, asking her to make him some sandwiches for the trip. He deliberately wanted to keep her distracted in the kitchen so that she would not see the show – the second half of which featured a man named Dennis Depue wanted for the murder of his ex-wife.
As “Hank” said goodbye to her, driving off in his 1984 Chevrolet van, the woman had a suspiciously weird feeling that she would never see him again. DePue took off immediately fearing one of his girlfriend’s friends would recognize him from the popular show and drop the dime on him. He was right, as state and county law enforcement already had the false Texas license plate of DePue’s van based on a tip off from the show.
It took DePue four frantic hours to drive into Louisiana then across the Mississippi state border. Louisiana state troopers had spotted Depue’s van, and he led them on a 15-mile high-speed chase, refusing to be pulled over according to The Associated Press. Across the state line, Mississippi authorities lay in wait alerted by their Louisiana counterparts and the FBI, that the driver was wanted for murder.
When DePue’s van blasted through a roadblock, Warren County, Mississippi, Sheriff’s officers shot out both rear tires. DePue shot at officers’ cars, trying to ram them off the road, as his van dragged along before coming to a forceable stop by officers around 4 a.m. As an officer approached his van, DePue was found dead ″with the .357 in his left hand and his thumb on the trigger.″
Although certainly fancified, the chilling event that kicked off the manhunt for Dennis DePue was immortalized in the tense opening sequence of Jeepers Creepers.
After learning the disturbing story of Dennis Depue and his wife’s murder, read the grisly story of BTK Killer Dennis Rader . Then, learn Rader’s unsuspecting wife, Paula Dietz.
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Neil Patmore
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Celebrating the New Year is a big deal in Scotland: The Scots participate in globally observed traditions, like fireworks displays and midnight kisses, but also add a few of their own unique customs to the mix. In Scotland, New Year’s Eve is called Hogmanay (pronounced hog-muh-nay), and the celebration keeps going into New Year’s Day and beyond. Read on to learn some festive facts about Hogmanay.
Prior to 1560, Christmas in Scotland had a long history of being celebrated. That changed with the arrival of the Reformation, which saw the spread of Presbyterianism and the rejection of Catholicism—and by extension, Christmas. In 1640, celebrating the December 25 holiday was officially banned by an Act of Parliament.
The story is similar in England. But while those south of the border soon brought the holiday back—and in years to come, would be decorating Christmas trees and sending creepy cards—north of the border, the Church of Scotland held firm against Christmas. While the ban was technically lifted in Scotland in 1712, it wasn’t until 1958 that Christmas Day was officially made a public holiday and began to be properly celebrated. During the nearly 400 years without Christmas, the Scots instead made Hogmanay their main festive event in winter.
While England, Wales, and Northern Ireland get January 1 off work as a public holiday, Scotland gets both January 1 and 2. Jokes may abound about Scots needing two full days to recover from their Hogmanay hangovers, but there is more than a seed of truth in the humor. January 2 was typically taken as a day off work to rest after the celebrations, so when public holidays were regulated by the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, January 2 was made an official holiday in Scotland to adhere to the custom.
These days, first footing is not as commonly practiced as it once was, but those who still observe the tradition arrive after the bells ring at midnight with gifts, such as a coin for prosperity, a lump of coal for warmth, and whisky for a wee dram (a small drink). There is also a superstition that the first footer should be a dark-haired man for good luck; it’s thought that this is tied to the Viking invasion of Scotland, when the arrival of a fair-haired stranger was often a sign of trouble.
Although no one knows for sure where the Scots word for New Year’s Eve comes from, there are a number of theories. Dr. Donna Heddle, the director of the Centre for Nordic Studies at Orkney and Shetland College UHI, believes that “the most likely source seems to be French. In Normandy presents given at Hogmanay were hoguignetes.” This is supported by Hogmanay spreading in Scotland after Mary, Queen of Scots returned from France in 1561. Heddle explains that it may also have roots in the Anglo-Saxon phrase haleg monath, which means “holy month;” the Scandinavian hoggo-nott, a term used for “yule;” or the French word hoginane, meaning “gala day.”
“Auld Lang Syne,” which translates to “for old time’s sake,” is often attributed to the Scots poet Robert Burns, but the song has a slightly more complicated history. Here’s the quick version: Burns himself said, “I took it down from an old man.” But historians generally believe that he added his own spin when he wrote the words down in 1788. The iconic melody was added by music publisher George Thompson in 1799 and it soon became customary to sing the song at Hogmanay. It became the worldwide anthem of New Year after bandleader Guy Lombardo and his band played it during a 1929 New Year’s Eve broadcast.
Edinburgh’s Hogmanay is not only the biggest New Year’s Eve celebrations in Scotland, but also one of the biggest in the world. Since 1993 the official street party has been held on Princes Street, below Edinburgh Castle. The event features live music and a fireworks display from the castle ramparts at midnight.
The street party held December 31, 1996, reportedly drew crowds of around 300,000 people, which raised safety concerns and led to the following year’s party being ticketed and numbers being restricted to 180,000.
Stonehaven’s Hogmanay centers around a fireball ceremony, which sees a procession of around 40 people walk down the main street swinging huge flaming balls above their heads. The fireballs are made of a wire mesh shell that is filled with flammable materials like cardboard and newspaper. Crowds line the street in the hours leading up to midnight, and when the clock strikes 12, a pipe band leads the procession through the town down to the harbor, where the fireballs are thrown into the sea—they’re later recovered for use the next year.
No one knows exactly why it became a tradition to eat steak pie on the first day of the year. The most common theory is that in the years before the day was taken off as a holiday, families were too busy working to cook, so they would buy a steak pie from the butcher.
The Loony Dook—loony being short for “lunatic” and dook being the Scots word for “dip”—involves plunging into the icy waters of the Firth of Forth, north of Edinburgh, often in a fun costume. The first Loony Dook took place in 1987, after a man named Jim Kilcullen, while at a bar with a friend, suggested “Ach, let’s jump in the Forth on New Year’s Day, maybe it’ll clear the hangovers!” His friend Andy Kerr named it the Loony Dook and what started as a small tradition between friends then grew into an official event with around 1000 people braving the Dook each year.
Although the Loony Dook has been absent from Edinburgh Hogmanay’s official schedule for the past few years—due to Covid restrictions and funding challenges—loonies can still participate unofficially. There are also unofficial New Year’s Day dooks that take place in other freezing bodies of water across the country.
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Lorna Wallace
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Is aging a disease? Well, it depends on how you look at it. It’s a natural process, so in that case, the answer is no. And yet The World Health Organization (WHO) added “aging” as a disease to the 11th edition of their International Classification of Diseases in June of 2018.
In many ways, it may seem silly to call gaining a disease since it’s both universal and natural for all living creatures. However, some types of aging can be seen as pathological because they are sped up and therefore abnormal. (One example is the deterioration of the skin due to UV exposure, which can lead to rapid aging and cancer.)
Aging is also a risk factor for many diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.
But to call aging a disease would be to classify us all as constantly in a state of disease. But you can also argue that aging serves no purpose and then it seems less natural.
Disease is seen as a deviation from the normal (at its most basic). In this sense, aging is completely normal. It may also be desirable since it tends to come with the accumulation of wisdom. However, it’s simply to argue that not every old person brings wisdom into old age.
Those who want to classify aging as a disease don’t necessarily want to valorize the youthful (after all, they have no control over their age) and will someday be old. However, calling aging a disease allows researchers to investigate its causes and, potentially, actions that might stop bodily and cognitive decline that are the hallmarks of aging.
When people die of old age, autopsies show a series of degradations in their bodies that could potentially be stopped. They are the body’s typical reaction to the passage of years, but they represent abnormal cellular functions that lead to the body growing more frail and senile. Those aren’t judgment calls but facts.
But should aging fall outside the scope of medicine? Should doctors stay away from treatments that can help reverse the effects of aging? If it’s not a disease, then technically they should not treat the symptoms.
Aging is harmful to the body no matter how you look at it. And the more we look into it, the more we see there are specific causes related to the body wearing down with age. Should we do nothing about them? If we were to reject age as a disease, then only a few researchers would be able to study it with age-related research funding. Later, only the rich would have access to aging treatments because insurance companies wouldn’t cover aging treatments. That might leave us with a civilization comprised only of the rich. — WTF fun facts
Source: “It is time to classify biological aging as a disease” — Frontiers in Genetics
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was a production largely defined by tragedy. The premature death of Chadwick Boseman in 2020 shaped the film both in terms of story, which had to be rethought drastically to deal with T’Challa’s absence, and as a filmmaking experience, with cast and crew united in grief.
Something vastly less tragic? The movie had a fish-poop CGI person.
As ComicBook.com wrote, building the underwater world of Talokan, the aquatic kingdom ruled by Namor, took an enormous amount of work. The production designers did deep research into Mesoamerican civilizations, working with academics and experts in Mayan history, culture, and architecture to create an environment that felt authentic and complete.
However, the kingdom being underwater meant that other, more practical elements needed to be considered—and fish waste was one of them. So one employee of Wētā FX, the visual effects company co-founded by Peter Jackson and best known for its work on The Lord of The Rings movies—had the full-time job of making sure there was enough scat floating around.
Why? Because the sea is full of poo. Go down deep into the ocean and there’s a constant stream of, well, stuff, raining down. It’s known by a few cheery euphemisms—marine snow and marine dandruff being two of them—and is a mixture of broken-down dead sea creatures, sand, and, yep, fish feces. We don’t tend to think of it as poop, because nothing would suck the breathtaking beauty out of gazing out at a glorious undersea vista like doo-doo chat, but there’s a lot of poop in there.
As Wētā VFX supervisor Chris White told ComicBook.com, if you get the poop wrong, being underwater simply doesn’t look right. “We were literally discussing the shape of the fish poop that makes up all of the stuff that’s floating around, and how we need to make sure that shape is correct,” he said. “Because when the lighters light it and it’s not the right shape, it doesn’t look like underwater.”
CGI models of all common fish poop shapes were constructed, and distributed in their millions throughout the movie’s digital world, all managed and wrangled by one CGI artist, who was there to ensure the movement, density, and composition of the deep-sea dung was correct.
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.
[h/t ComicBook.com]
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Mike Rampton
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Sexsomnia, also called sleep sex, is a disorder in which sleeping people engage in sexual behaviors such as masturbation or initiating sex with another person. Even if their eyes open and they make sexual noises, they are truly asleep and unaware of their behavior once they are awake.
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From a cultural standpoint, there are quite a few seasons beyond the basic winter, spring, summer, and fall (football, awards, open, mating, etc.). The phrase ’tis the season, however, only refers to one of them: the holiday season.
But that wasn’t always the case.
Some of the oldest instances of ’tis the season from the 17th and early 18th centuries—when people frequently used ’tis as a contraction for it is—actually involve warm weather.
“[’Tis] the season of the year that calls to me,” Springlove says in Richard Brome’s 1641 play A Joviall Crew: Or, the Merry Beggars. As his name very unsubtly suggests, he’s talking about spring, when birdsong and other pastoral cues tempt him to become a vagabond until the weather grows too cold for wandering. In Richard Steele’s 1705 play The Tender Husband; Or, the Accomplish’d Fools, a character describes spring as follows: “Oh, ’tis the Season of the Pearly Dews, and gentle Zephirs.”
Poets and songwriters well into the 19th century continued to deploy ’tis the season to celebrate springtime and all the renewal, beauty, hope, and romance it signaled after a long, hard winter.
Here’s an example from 1828:
“’Tis the season of joy and delight,
The season of fresh-springing flowers;
Young Spring in her innocent beauty is bright,
And leads on the rapturous hours;”
And a similar one from nearly 30 years later:
“’Tis the season when deep, holy feeling,
Gushes up from the depths of the soul,
In light, love, and beauty revealing,
The music of Spring’s sweet control!”
But that’s not to say 19th-century writers weren’t mentioning the expression in reference to the holidays—they were doing that, too. British bishop Charles Bloomfield opened a Christmas poem with the line “’Tis the season for friends and relations to meet” in 1824; and a song dating at least as far back as the 1850s repeated variations on this stanza:
“We’ll sing a merry song to-night;
And quaff a cup of cheer;
For ’tis the season of delight,
And comes but once a-year.”
It would be another—and more famous—Christmas carol that helped the holidays steamroll spring as ’tis the season’s main season.
In the mid-19th century, Welsh harpist John Thomas collaborated with Welsh poet Talhaiarn and Scottish lyricist Thomas Oliphant on a multi-volume series of classic Welsh songs. Thomas tackled the musical arrangements; Talhaiarn was in charge of Welsh lyrics; and Oliphant penned an English version of each entry.
The second volume, published in 1862, contained “Nos Galan”—or “New Year’s Eve”—based on a Welsh melody that had shown up in print at least as early as the 1750s (and possibly performed long before that). Apart from the title, Oliphant didn’t much concern himself with direct translations. While Talhaiarn’s first two lines meant “The best pleasure on New Year’s Eve/Is house and fire and a pleasant family,” Oliphant went with “Deck the hall with boughs of holly/’Tis the season to be jolly.”
Though it wasn’t the first time “Nos Galan” had been set to English words, it was the first time those words featured deck the hall—a phrase that eventually stuck (with an extra s at the end) as the track’s English title. Some of Oliphant’s lines got scrapped in later versions of the song: “Fill the mead-cup, drain the barrel,” for example, was replaced with “Don we now our gay apparel.”
But “’Tis the season to be jolly” never fell out of fashion, even as ’tis itself grew more archaic. And when “Deck the Halls” became a staple of American Christmas concerts during the early 20th century, it promulgated the notion that ’tis the season could only mean one thing: it’s Christmastime.
By the mid-19th century, people had co-opted ’tis the season for everything from holiday advertisements (“’Tis the Season to Be Giving Oomphies,” from 1946) to holiday public service announcements (“’Tis the Season For Food Poisoning,” from 1959).
That’s pretty much where it stands today. Right now, ’tis the season to protect your hearing, and to switch to Verizon, and for employers to address skyrocketing employee stress. And, of course, to be jolly. Fa la la la la, etc.
Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us atbigquestions@mentalfloss.com.
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Ellen Gutoskey
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It’s that time of year again, where instead of layering on roughly half of all the clothes you own to brave the mounds of snow outside, you’d probably rather make hot tea and dive under a blanket to hibernate. While you’re bundled up, what better way to spend the time than to plunge into a good read?
For some, books are a great way to alleviate the loneliness that comes with winter. Here are 11 tomes that could be good to dive into this season, plus some that may serve as reminders that other people have survived far worse cold than you’re experiencing right now (we hope).
As the third entry in Murakami’s “Trilogy of the Rat” series (which also includes Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, as well as Dance Dance Dance), this early work reads like a classic noir by way of Alfred Hitchcock, but as seen through the lens of Jean-Luc Godard. In it, an advertising exec receives a postcard depicting a sheep with a star-shaped birthmark. By the end, we’re in the snowy mountains of northern Japan. Shorter and faster-paced than his later works, A Wild Sheep Chase comes with that wonderful thrill of reading a great, exciting writer before they become firmly established. And like the other titles considered part of the “Trilogy of the Rat” series, this book—which was first published in 1982—includes a mention of November 25, 1970, a significant date in Japanese history, wherein acclaimed novelist, poet, and activist Yukio Mishima died by seppuku in the aftermath of a failed coup at a military headquarters near downtown Tokyo.
Buy it: Amazon
While it might not seem like a prototypical winter book, Zadie Smith’s debut novel does begin and end with New Year’s events (although calling them celebrations would be a bit of a stretch). It’s New Year’s Day 1975 when Archie, a middle-aged Englishman (and one of our many narrators), decides he doesn’t want to die by suicide. The novel grows around the life Archie decides to live, plus the lives of his best friend, Samad Iqbal, and his family. Eventually, everything collides on New Year’s Eve 1992. If that’s not wintry enough, you may also enjoy that most of the action takes place in England, a place legendary for weather that no one wants any part of. New Year’s isn’t quite the whole theme of the book, but it is an examination of the aftereffects of resolutions—both the healthy kind (wanting to live) and the unhinged kind (kidnapping your own children). And if you really love the book after you’ve read it, you may want to check out this television adaptation, which originally aired in 2002 on Channel 4, a public broadcast network in the UK.
Buy it: Amazon
Frankenstein’s monster makes it easy to forget that this classic novel isn’t just a tale of horror—it’s actually framed by an Arctic voyage. The story begins with a captain and crew stuck in ice on a foolhardy voyage to the North Pole, which serves as an apt comparison to Victor Frankenstein’s own scientific overreach. The melancholy horrors on the ship by the end feel like a fitting conclusion to such a heightened, gothic tale—not to mention the cold isolation of Victor’s laboratory nights, which mirror the loneliness of winter.
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With its sparse lines and white cover, this book just looks like winter, right from the jump. What was left of Sappho’s original work was written on not-exactly-durable papyrus, meaning huge chunks are missing. Carson notes the destroyed pieces and illegible words with brackets, though not every imperfection can be marked, as that would make “the page a blizzard of marks.” The end result is that many of these pages appear almost written on, with fragments smaller than most haikus.
If you’re not used to fragmented work, this book might be an adjustment. Carson explains that the collection of lyrics featured here are meant to be sung with Mixolydian musical accompaniment, which she describes as “an emotional mode also used by tragic poets.” But Carson—a poet/ancient Greek translator who previously turned fragments of Stesichorus’s “Geryoneis” poems into a contemporary novel—ensures the sparse ink that makes it to the page reads like poetry. It’s fascinating to simply meditate on just how ancient these surviving lines are.
Buy it: Amazon
In this debut novel from author Shane Jones, the month of February has taken over an entire town, a climate nightmare if ever there was one. Actually, the villain is a god-like spirit named February, who is punishing the town for flying, and the result is endless February weather. It’s enough to make some of the town’s residents sink into paralyzing depression, while others opt to wage war on February. While some critics of the book contend there are close similarities to Salvador Plascencia’s novel, The People of Paper, Plascencia confirmed in a 2010 interview that all plagiarism charges had been cleared, and said “a lot of it is petty—a playground tiff by adults.” Either way, you might want to give both of these surrealist works a read this winter and decide for yourself.
Buy it: Amazon
This is the short story collection that gave the world Brokeback Mountain, not to mention other unforgettable tales like “Job History” and “The Half-Skinned Steer.” Shortlisted for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Close Range: Wyoming Stories is filled with hardscrabble characters that are as tough (and often brutal) as the chilly Wyoming settings they inhabit: They’re ranchers, rodeo bull riders, and women who read the lonely hearts ads out loud. The interplay of humans on the margins and the harshness of the land itself, which refuses to be tamed, unfolds through Proulx’s masterful descriptions.
Buy it: Amazon
If The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo craze of the early 2010s didn’t inspire you to check out more Scandinavian noir, allow us to remind you that it’s well worth it. This atmospheric mystery focuses on rookie cop Ari Thór Arason and a woman found murdered in the snow, set against a backdrop of a fishing village in northern Iceland.
If cold-weather murder mysteries are your cup of tea, this is also book one in the “Dark Iceland” series, which includes six novels in total, all centered around Ari Thór and various confounding Icelandic crimes. There’s some discrepancy between the publication dates and the chronological timeline of the series, so be sure to check out this explainer from Book Series In Order to keep it all straight.
Buy it: Amazon
We can’t mention Scandinavian noir without also including radical Swedish surrealism (those are the rules). Aase Berg writes reality-distorting, hallucinatory poems conjuring up every kind of horror Mother Nature could muster and some she hasn’t even thought of yet (“The hare is also a constellation / in the listless, frigid hydrosphere / Same cosmic fatstiff freezefearflood”). Berg is a poet’s poet, shattering conventional boundaries of what language on a page can do. Wintry hallmarks like darkness, wool-sweater lint, and whale blubber dot the imagery of her poems. The strange nature of Berg’s vision makes that blizzard your own local meteorologist is predicting for tomorrow seem not so bad, after all.
Buy it: Amazon
“The highway only goes south from here. That’s how far north we live.” So opens this novel about a nameless young woman trying to navigate life in an alcoholic-filled coastal town after her father was seemingly lost at sea 11 years earlier—an event that might have contributed to her thinking she’s a mermaid. Some tales set in a remote town by the sea make you feel warm and alive with possibility, whereas others are a reminder that the ocean is a cold and unforgiving beast, whose love can only ever be unrequited. The Seas is the latter.
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The goth dude who provided the source material for that one “Treehouse of Horror” episode on The Simpsons also completed only one actual novel during his lifetime. It tells the tale of Arthur Pym, whose first foray into sailing is a drunken whim that nearly gets him and his best friend drowned before being rescued by a whaling ship; from there, Arthur only wants more sea.
If thinking about sailing in the crisp Nantucket air doesn’t make you shiver enough, the characters end up careening towards a massive cataract of fog while sailing for Antarctica. In between, there’s some voluntary stowing away aboard a whaling vessel, delirium, and drawing straws for cannibalistic purposes (the character Richard Parker ends up drawing the short straw and is subsequently killed and eaten by the remaining crew).
This classic novel, published in 1838 and predating the works of both Herman Melville and Jules Verne, would lay the foundations and plot conventions for many mind-bending nautical stories to come. And nearly 50 years after this book’s publication, real-life would end up mimicking one aspect of the tale in a particularly gruesome way, when a real-life Richard Parker ended up being killed and eaten by his fellow shipmates after their yacht, the Mignonette, sank in a storm.
Buy it: Amazon
This frequently funny and often heartbreaking collection of poetry builds a surrealist world riddled with large refrigerators, unkind swans, stars lined up like teeth, and various observances of absurd deaths. Things thaw out of steep cliff walls, and even plane crashes are subsumed by terrifying silences. The speaker navigates an icy landscape of oddities, haunted all the while by the knowledge of the first poem, “What Would Kill Me,” an ominous and shadowy work which includes the line: “… And then, just like I knew it would, it came late one night, booming with slowness, from the fjords.”
Buy it: Amazon
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Chris Corlew
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The main level offers a spacious living room featuring a prominent brick hearth, a formal dining room perfect for entertaining and an exquisitely remodeled kitchen. Windows and archways provide beautiful light and great flow from the entry to the beautiful kitchen and the yard. This level also…
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