Nearly all domestic dogs are descended from the Eurasian gray wolf (Canis lupus). They first became pets long before we domesticated farm animals or developed agriculture or the written word, so we don't know where or when it happened. However, it only makes sense that the wolves who were the least fearful of humans got close enough to eat our leftovers. Their domestication was part natural selection and part deliberate breeding, and that's how we got the dogs we cherish so much today. 

There is plenty of evidence that ancient people loved their dogs just as much, even when their dogs weren't at all useful outside of companionship. This is probably because the puppies they raised learned to communicate with humans in a human way- the dogs made eye contact, which wolves will never do. They learned to read our moods and intentions. They learned that we like how they depend on us. They learned how to make us love them. Read how all this came about at LitHub. -via Nag on the Lake 

(Image credit: Razvan Antonescu) 

The Comedy Store in Los Angeles opened in 1972 and soon became a mecca for those hoping to break into the big time in standup comedy. The nightclub became famous for incubating the careers of some of the biggest comedians of the last 50 years. Of course, there have been plenty of comedians who graced the stage at The Comedy Store or else waited tables and never made it big. And some of them swear that the place is haunted.

Ghostly apparitions appeared early in The Comedy Store, and they are dressed in garb from the 1940s. Maybe that's because the building was not new in 1972. It had been a nightclub before, one run by the mob, with plenty of grisly stories to go with its reputation. The ghosts don't hurt anyone, but the stories can be pretty scary. And that's why no one wants to go down into the basement at The Comedy Store.   

 

You may consider yourself a pretty sedentary person, maybe even a couch potato. But even so, you are constantly traveling through space. You travel thousands of miles every day as the earth rotates (24,000 if you live at the equator, less towards the poles). You are also traveling with earth around the sun. And the sun is moving, too. How far have we come?

As they say, there's an app for that. The Cosmic Odometer will calculate how far you've traveled through space by your date and time of birth. There will be some variance because they don't ask for latitude, but the totals are so enormous it doesn't matter. You can see my stats above. I have traveled far enough to reach the moon and back more than two million times, to Pluto 306 times, and 19% of a light year. As they also say, your mileage may vary. -via Boing Boing 

Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece known as the Mona Lisa is the world's most famous painting. As such, you might be surprised to find out it's a rather small portrait, and so many people go to the Louvre to see it that you can't really get close enough to study it. But that's okay, because we have plenty of photographs. We can admire her smile, her eyes, and ...where's her eyebrows? Did Lisa del Giocondo, the model for the portrait, have her brows plucked out? Or did Leonardo just leave them out of the picture? 

August Moon takes us through serious research on the subject of the Mona Lisa's eyebrows, and what they are supposed to look like. In the process, we find that many of the world's greatest paintings are not what they seem on the surface. That surface is constantly being messed with in the hopes of keeping the paintings clean and undamaged, which still ends up damaging them. And we get a lesson in what really makes the Mona Lisa such a unique and memorable portrait.  -via Laughing Squid 

When Spain conquered Mexico, it opened up trade in all sorts of previously unknown products from the New World. One was Lignum nephriticum, a type of wood that, when soaked in water, would produce a tincture useful for treating kidney and urinary ailments. Lignum nephriticum literally means kidney wood. Physician Nicolás Monardes first described the wood in 1569. He couldn't describe the plant it came from, though, because he'd never been to Mexico. Monardes wrote about soaking wood chips in water, and seeing the water turn blue. But then other Europeans described a different result. When the wood chips were soaked with water in a cup made of Lignum nephriticum, the water turned blue, yellow, orange, and red depending on the light! The liquid could even display more than one color at once.

Scientists of the time were more interested in the colors than they were with the wood's medicinal value. But why were the descriptions so different? Could Mexico have more than one type of kidney wood? For one reason or another, no one put too much energy into solving the mystery until the 20th century. Read about the real origins of Lignum nephriticum at Jstor Daily. -via Strange Company 

(Image credit: Safford, William Edwin) 

We think of camouflage as what animals use to blend in with their background. A ship that has zebra stripes that aren't even straight is not what a normal person would call camouflage. But a still photo doesn't do it justice, because ships are always in motion, and the enemy is looking for a ship in motion. If a ship sits still, it's probably not in a battle zone. 

Razzle Dazzle camouflage was developed in World War I in response to submarines attacking them with torpedos. In order to understand the mechanism behind the idea, we have to put ourselves in the place of an enemy submarine aiming a torpedo. The bedazzled ship doesn't have to be invisible; it just has to be hard to destroy. Did it work? Not as well as hoped for, but any edge is worth the effort to save a battleship and its huge crew. Half as Interesting takes us through the steps behind the design. The camouflage ends around 5:35; the rest is an ad for a good cause. 

The JJ Walser House in Chicago was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1903. The home is on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a Chicago Landmark. Nevertheless, it is falling apart. The longtime owner died in 2019 and her family discovered she had taken out a mortgage to fix the roof. They couldn't afford the payments, so the home is in foreclosure. Since it has been unoccupied for six years (except for squatters), the house is deteriorating rapidly. 

Someone recently listed the house for sale at Zillow for far above the actual value, and drew the attention of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The listing was deemed a fraud and was removed, but the images show how far the home has fallen. The Walser house is being auctioned by Fannie Mae. Various conservancy groups are interested, but none can afford the expensive repairs in addition to the purchase price. 

Frank Lloyd Wright is the most famous architect America has ever produced. His buildings display clean lines and beautiful details. Yet no one wants to actually live in his houses, since they are form over function. The flat roofs leak, the doorways are too short, and the lovely ledges and stairs are dangerous. Read the story of the Walser House at Dwell. -via Metafilter 
 
(Image credit: Zol87) 

Someone observed that when a chocolate ice cream cone sideswipes a vanilla ice cream cone, both of them end up with a bit of each other. Others of the TikTok generation rushed out to replicate the experiment because, hey, ice cream! James Orgill of the Action Lab (previously at Neatorama) explains why they don't just mix together and why it's always both cones involved.

I must admit he almost lost me in the middle of the video. I understand laminar flow, but not so much quantum physics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. But hang on, because all he's explaining there is what's not happening. Then he compares the two ice cream cones to planets colliding and it all becomes clear. Still, all I could think of during this video is the old Reece's campaign: "You got your peanut butter on my chocolate! You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!" Because after all, these ice creams are two great tastes that taste great together.   

You can buy all kinds of memorabilia on eBay, often for a pittance. It takes a good eye and often meticulous research to know if it has historical significance, a task way beyond volume sellers. In 2010, space historian and collector Robert Pearlman paid $5.50 for a bundle of "remove before flight" tags. These are tags attached to parts of aircraft like pins and covers that are protective on the ground, but must be removed in order for the aircraft to function. He intended to use the tags, listed as from the space shuttle program, as giveaways. 

About a year later, Pearlman decided to check out the numbers on the tags. Such tags are labeled so they can be inventoried before flight to make sure each component is removed. By cross-referencing the numbers with NASA records, he found the tags were removed from the doomed space shuttle Challenger before it exploded soon after launch 40 years ago this week. But NASA was in flux at the time, and Pearlman had no luck in finding out more about the journey the tags took from NASA to eBay. He hopes to trace their story before donating the tags to a museum. Read his account of these tags so far at Ars Technica. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: collectSPACE) 

Valentine's Day is the perfect day for a perfect date, right? If you want to impress your sweetheart, you'll want to go all out. If you're just getting to know each other, a movie is not the best idea because it's two hours of no conversation or physical activity. So  how about a nice romantic dinner at a nice restaurant? The Takeout has 11 Tips For Picking The Best Restaurant For Valentine's Day. These tips are a bit depressing. If you want to eat at the nicest places, better make your reservations now, but be aware that on February 14th, a Saturday this year, all restaurants will be crowded. You can avoid the crowds by eating early, but how romantic is 4 o'clock dinner? It's enough to make you prefer eating at home. 

Making dinner at home can be fraught with peril, too. What do you cook? That's up to you, but the Takeout has a list of 11 Things To Avoid Eating On Valentine's Day. Almost all the foods you'd expect to serve on this occasion are there. If you're in a long-term relationship, count yourself lucky because you can stay home on Valentine's Day and watch a movie while eating pizza, and maybe eat out on a less-crowded day.  

The coolest weapon in the Star Wars universe is the lightsaber, even cooler than the death star. It's a high-tech plasma laser, but you can swing it like a sword and show off your swashbuckling skills. The real genius of the lightsaber is that you can kill all kinds of people on film and never have to spill any fake blood (or clean it up). The ability to sell a ton of them as cool toys is a bonus. The best fictional weapon ever. 

Lightsabers come with an in-universe explanation, which is that the business end is made of superheated ionized gas, or plasma. It would be hotter than the surface of the sun. In the real world, such a weapon would be impossible to train with, too dangerous to wield, and its actual use in battle would probably be a war crime. YouTuber Mr. Death explains in gruesome detail what a lightsaber wound would do to you. The good news is that such a weapon isn't at all feasible in the real world. -via the Awesomer 

Anyone who's ever tried to make it in Hollywood knows that every rejection makes you more desperate. You notice that those who get the really good roles either had existing connections in the business, or they cut corners, like lying about their experience or abilities. So what if you tell a casting director that you can ride a horse, speak German, or play the drums? If you get the role, you can learn those skills in a hurry. It's a little harder to pull off being a few inches taller than you really are, or being in a production that casting director knows very well. These are all true stories. 

Actresses often lie and say they are younger than they are. Mila Kunis, on the other hand, got her role in That '70s Show after she told the producers she was "almost 18," which is a strange way to say you are 14. The show was well into its run when the truth came out. Read about 15 actors who fudged a little -or a lot- when auditioning for a role that they became well-known for at Cracked. 

When is an appropriate time and place to listen to or even sing Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody?" The answer is: yes.

CDK Company is a world-famous dance troupe in the Netherlands. Under creative director Sergio Reis, it has interpreted many famous songs with original choreography executed by the finest dancers on the planet.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" always slaps and these dancers bring out the best in the music and lyrics. I especially appreciate their inventive response to the words "thunderbolts and lightning."

Other songs they've covered include "Bittersuite" by Billie Ellish, "Somebody I Used to Know" by Gotye, and "Eye on the Wall" by Perfume Genius.

-via Born in Space

Tuesday morning, a NASA pilot managed to set down a WB-57 aircraft at Ellington Airport in Houston after the landing gear failed to deploy. With no brakes, it had to be a butt-puckering experience, but no one on the crew was injured. Luckily, the runway was longer than the video. 

The WB-57, also known as the Martin B-57 Canberra, is a superlative plane. The B-57 was the first jet that could cross the Atlantic without refueling, and made the trip in just four hours and 40 minutes in 1951. It was used extensively as a bomber in Vietnam. The WB-57 variant could fly at altitudes up to 62,000 feet. That's why, when the Air Force phased out the plane, NASA snapped up the remaining three WB-57s in America. They are used for high-altitude research like collecting near-space samples and observing spacecraft launches. Read more about the WB-57 at Ars Technica. -via Fark 

A few weeks ago, we brought you the story of the unmade 1970s Star Trek revival series known as Phase II. But even before that, Star Trek was supposed to return as a feature film titled Star Trek: Planet of the Titans. Paramount saw the continuing interest in Star Trek when fans got the first NASA Space Shuttle named Enterprise. After plenty of discussion, they agreed to devote $10 million dollars to a feature film (a big budget at the time) that would begin filming in early 1977. 

The producers envisioned a Star Trek movie with the visual quality of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The story would be centered around Mr. Spock, and explore his struggles with his human side. Time travel was involved, and became the "twist" in the story. As more people became involved, the plot and focus changed, but the story was ready to go as 1977 came around. Then the project was suddenly canceled because "there’s no future in science fiction." That year, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind took over movie screens. Read what Star Trek: Planet of the Titans could have been at Woman's World. -via Damn Interesting