On January 6, 1592, Irish patriots Hugh Roe O'Donnell, Art McNeill, and his brother Henry Shane McNeill escaped from English captivity in Dublin Castle. They ran fro 62 kilometers to safety in the wild lands of the Wicklow Mountains. The winter conditions were brutal and Art O'Neill died and Hugh Roe O'Donnell lost his big toes due to frostbite.

To commemorate this heroic moment in Irish resistance to foreign rule, runners participate in the Art O'Neill Challenge. There are running, hybrid, and trekking categories. All participants strive to reach the summit of a mountain topped by Art's Cross--the spot it is thought that Art O'Neill was buried.

-via Frank McNally | Photo: History Ireland

The subreddit No Stupid Questions implies a judgement-free place to ask about what you don't know. One reader posted, "In pre-cell phone movies, parents are shown giving babysitters numbers to restaurants to reach them in case of emergency. Is this a real thing and how did it work? How would the restaurant know who I am to hand me the phone?" This is not a stupid question, just one outside of their experience. And it sure makes us feel old. 

Yes, this was a thing back in the prehistoric time of land lines. Restaurants knew about babysitters. If they got such a call, they would either find the parents by a description, or call out a name, or check the reservation list. But no, they wouldn't just hand you the phone. The parent would go to the front desk to take the call. Sure, in the swankiest of restaurants, like in the movies, they might have a long phone cord or extra plugs in the dining area, but that was rare. The post at reddit has more than 350 responses, and some of those are stories of such emergency calls that are very much worth sharing. Continue reading to see them.

Cats love to stroll along kitchen counters because they are human-high and often contain tasty or at least interesting things. People have tried many methods to stop them, but all cats are different, so nothing works consistently. I have one cat who roams the counter, leaving evidence that she scratches herself with my cactus garden. I cope by putting dirty dishes away quickly and not leaving uncovered food out. And cleaning the counter often. She has me trained. 

Cookie is a hard case, though. He roamed the whole kitchen and was not susceptible to human tricks. The guy behind the YouTube channel Lab-X is an engineer, so he built an AI-assisted robot with a squirt gun built in, and trained it to recognize Cookie and deter him. He named it Puffy. There were plenty of tests and failures and tweaks to be made before it actually worked. If you don't care about the tech stuff, you'll still get a kick out of Cookie's antics. My cat would spot the robot and knock him off the counter immediately.    

Pissing off my friends in valheim by building dollar generals pic.twitter.com/zjAZNPdauh

— Greg the Sorcerer (@gregthesorcerer) January 11, 2026

Valheim is an open-world multiplayer survival and sandbox game set in the era of the Vikings. You use natural resources to build your own tools, weapons, and shelters. What could possibly go wrong? Well, you could get killed, but besides that, you might find yourself playing with Greg. 

Greg The Sorcerer saw a need in the Valheim world, and filled it by building a Dollar General Store, complete with bad fluorescent lighting. And you know when one Dollar General pops up, there's always going to be more, so he continued to populate the Viking set with more Dollar General stores. It's a genius trolling strategy, designed to pull other players out of the fantasy world and back to reality. In other words, he is spoiling everything. Twitter, excuse me, X users joined in to suggest a Waffle House, and so Greg The Sorcerer made it happen. And he kept building Dollar General stores. PC Gamer tells the story, and suggests that of any of the businesses go belly up, a Spirit Halloween should replace them. -via Metafilter   

No cap, Dr. Alison Luchs drips the rizz on us with her totally slay vibe about "Urn with Grotesque Masks," a treasure at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. A professional historian with decades of teaching experience in art history, Luchs mogs the haters with her exposition on this Egyptian stone turned into a column by the Romans, then modified into an urn by Sixteenth Century Florentines.

It's giving, especially given that this gyatt urn likely held nothing but the owners' aura. Some might find it sus, but the artists responsible would have no opp in their era or modern times.

So get out and touch grass at the National Art Gallery. Staying at all home day is big yikes.

Can you think of a more unpleasant science task than to collect and analyze the buildup of scum on someone's else's bathtub? That's a job for grad students, but what they found gives us a good look at life in ancient Pompeii. In the city's public baths, researchers found traces of lead and other dangerous metals, and a good amount of human skin cells and bodily fluids. 

But that doesn't tell the whole story. Pompeii was only under Roman rule for about 160 years before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius buried the town. Before that, the public baths of the Samnite people were fed from contaminated wells. The Romans installed aqueducts that brought fresh water from distant springs. However, the fact that so much buildup was left behind makes one wonder if they ever cleaned the pools, and how often they changed the water. If you picture how these baths looked when they were being used by many people, it's no wonder that some ancient folk got the idea that bathing was bad for you. Read about the research into the baths of Pompeii at Science Focus. -via Strange Company 

YouTubers Monen mit Melonen (Google Translate says that's German for "monkeys with melons") are master violinists. Yet they are also starving artists who can afford only one violin. It would appear that they're not fond of taking turns or their practice time is limited and thus necessitates simultaneous practice.

In several videos, they play one violin simultaneously.

-via David Thompson

In the 17th century, the city of Edo (modern day Tokyo) had almost a million residents, but was suffering on the brink of ecological collapse due to the cascading effects of deforestation, which affected housing and food supplies, and threatened the very ground beneath it. 

Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled with an iron hand but mostly with an eye toward the long-term benefits to the country and its residents. The government enacted a series of reforms that were difficult, but over time turned Edo into a recovering and sustainable city. One has to wonder how well the people who lived there at the time understood the long-term goals of the sacrifices they had to make- especially those with few resources of their own. The reforms of that period went a long way toward making Tokyo what it is today. 

This TED-Ed lesson by social philosopher Roman Krznaric was directed and beautifully illustrated by Héloïse Dorsan Rachet.

The premise is ingenious: we have the classic Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet most memorably told by William Shakespeare but we experience that story from the perspective of Godzilla.

How does Godzilla appear in the most well-known play? My immediate thought was to replace Friar Laurence with Godzilla as the cleric's personality and role in the story is very fitting for the great kaiju.

But it will be necessary to wait for the release of IDW Publishing's one-shot comic book on April 8 to know for sure. Godzilla's official website informs us that readers can expect love, intrigue, and the destruction of fair Verona.

-via Discussing Film

If you saw this sight on a road trip, you'd never forget it. It would make you crave chocolate, don't you think? These three silos sit near the Malley’s Chocolates factory in Brook Park, a suburb of Cleveland. The silos are 88 feet tall and each is 12 feet wide. They can easily be seen from the nearby 480 freeway, and have become local landmarks. 

The silos were recycled from a bankrupt factory across the road in 2011. Is storing cocoa, milk, and sugar in silos even feasible? We don't know, but that was the original plan. There were to be tunnels underneath the silos to move the raw materials to the factory when needed. Moving the silos, setting them up, and painting them pink was quite a job. But the plan to store cocoa, milk, and sugar in them was scrapped before they were ever filled. Still, they serve as a long-term advertisement for Malley's Chocolates. -via Boing Boing 

The startup Galactic Resource Utilization Space (GRU) has launched a website to take reservations for a hotel on the moon. No, the hotel is not on the moon yet, but the plan is to have it in place by 2032. Availability dates will be subject to transportation, and of course, whether the hotel is ever built. Or we should say, installed, because it's going to be an inflatable structure. It will hold up to four people for multi-day vacations, which may include sightseeing, driving, and golf. Talk about an "out of this world" honeymoon! 

GRU is the brainchild of Skyler Chan, a 21-year-old Berkeley graduate, who has enlisted tech investors such as SpaceX and Nvidia. A big chunk of money is expected from the guests, though. Reservations range from $250,000 to $1 million, depending on the vacation package. What's in those packages? Who knows- it costs $1,000 just to apply for a reservation. It sounds like pie in the sky, although that metaphor seems a little too on the nose. -via Nag on the Lake 

Shane Martin has a construction business in Cobar, NSW, Australia. He arrived at his shopfront to find the glass shattered in the door and three windows. Was someone trying to break in? He watched the security footage and saw a feral goat head-butting the shop for about 20 minutes straight! 

They say all the wildlife in Australia is trying to kill you. However, goats are not native to Australia, but are an invasive species imported by humans. Maybe the environment has affected their instincts. The goats around Cobar usually stay near the reservoir, but dry conditions could have caused this one to roam into town. Martin surmises that the goat probably saw his reflection as a rival that needed to be challenged. The goat hasn't been found, and Martin is left with thousands of dollars in damage. You can see video footage of the goat attack at ABC News.  -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Shane Martin)

At the end of World War II, Walt Disney thought his animation company might be on its last legs, so he was looking for something different. An amusement park? Okay, but it had to be better than what other amusement parks had to offer at the time. The design of Disneyland was an entirely new concept, with architecture created to immerse visitors into a fantasy world. And people would have to pay to get in, which was unheard of at the time. 

The story of Walt Disney World in Florida is pretty astounding, since it is so much bigger and has more features, but in pulling off that first park in 1954 was a bigger risk. Disney invested his personal fortune, and took out $17 millions in loans. The park was built in only a year! But no one knew whether it would go over with the public. Well, we know now, but it was a white-knuckle experience for Walt Disney. Too bad you can no longer get in for a dollar. -via Damn Interesting 

The grandeur of the Pokémon universe began thirty years ago and Japan is celebrating the franchise. Sora News 24 tells us that a permanent Pokémon theme park is opening in Tokyo. It's called Poképark Kanto.

It consists of two sections: Pokémon Forest, where visitors will be able to encounter Pokémon in natural environments, and Sedge Town, which consists of attractions aimed at the needs of trainers.

A few promotional photos are available. They show this lovely carousel ride with your favorite pocket monsters. You'll be able to ride it starting on February 5 with the grand opening. But demand for tickets is so high that the park managers have a lottery system for visits up through March.

"Yeah, I know how stupid this is. But it had to be done."

No, Aaron Christophel is far, far from stupid. His project is intelligent and thoughtful. What if you want to play Doom but only have access to a Krups Cook4Me electric cooking pot? Christophel provided detailed instructions on which steps you need to take.

If I understand him correctly, Christophel has arranged his Doom porting in such a way that a person must complete the game in order to again use the cook pot for cooking food. That's motivation to kill the demons and secure final victory!

-via Hack A Day