Everyone knows the tallest man ever recorded was Robert Wadlow, who grew to 8' 11". But you should also learn the story of the man who held the record previously, at an estimated 8' 9". His name was John Rogan, and his height was estimated because the weight of his bones left him unable to stand or walk before he reached his full height.   

Rogan was born in Tennessee in 1867 to formerly-enslaved parents. His height was unremarkable until he was twelve, when his bones began to lengthen rapidly, keeping him painfully bedridden for a couple of years. The most likely cause was a benign tumor on the adrenal glands, exacerbated by ankylosis that fused Rogan's joints and left him unable to walk by adulthood. 

Rogan had plenty of opportunities to join a sideshow, but he refused to be put on display, and was wary of those who wanted to study him. He wanted to live a normal life with his family and support himself with honest work. Since Rogan couldn't work on the family farm, he built a cart pulled by goats, and worked as a porter hauling luggage for railroad passengers. After his death, the family took extraordinary measures to ensure his grave couldn't be robbed for his remains to be put on display. Read the story of John Rogan at Utterly Interesting. 

Sheila Wallis is a British artist noted for her highly realistic yet also imaginative paintins and drawings that include portraits, nude figure studies, and watercolors.

She came to my attention on Instagram for her illuminated illustrations that include the use of gilding.

Rabies is an awful virus that doesn't work the way most viruses do. Once the symptoms start, it's fatal, and it's a particularly unpleasant death. You lose the ability to swallow, which is why the phrases "foaming at the mouth" and "hydrophobia" are associated with rabies. That's because the virus spreads through saliva, and successful viruses cause symptoms that enable them to spread to new hosts. The good news is that you can be vaccinated for rabies after exposure, and MinuteEarth will explain why that's so. 

You might think, well, why don't we just vaccinate everyone against rabies? My daughter is a veterinarian, and had to be vaccinated. It cost her $900. That's cheap compared to the cost of treatment after exposure. But for some reason, we can get our dogs and cats vaccinated for $30 or so. And that's turned out to be the best way to keep rabies under control in the modern world.

Victoria Dauberville is a French ballerina and choreographer who performed professionally for many years in Belgium and France. Last year, while on a cruise to the Antarctic on Le Boréal, she had the opportunity to perform on an unusual stage: the bulbous bow of the ship.

Unlike the theater on the fourth deck of this cruise ship, the bulbous bow is only accessible with a zodiac boat. Dauberville wore a classical dancing costume and slippers to dance with grace on the slippery surface while surrounded by ice-filled waters and frozen air. The video recording of this event promptly went viral.

-via NEXTA

San Francisco figures prominently in the Star Trek universe. The city's first appearance in the science fiction franchise was in 1893 in The Next Generation episode "Time's Arrow." Kirk and companions borrowed a couple humpback whales there in 1986 in Star Trek IV.

By 2024, though, this fictional San Francisco had become a complete dump as it was consumed by crime and poverty.

After World War III ended in 2053, San Francisco experienced a great revival as it became the capital of the United Earth and the headquarters of Starfleet. When the Federation formed, San Francisco became the de facto capital of the Federation government, as well as the Starfleet which served as the military arm of that government.

To commemorate the great role of the city in Star Trek, the public library system is offering user cards that show a starship flying over the Golden Gate Bridge.

-via Henry Wu

The Aboriginal people of Australia love their dogs as much as anyone, and a dingo's grave in Kinchega National Park in New South Wales shows that one dog was particularly revered more than 900 years ago. The grave was accidentally unearthed around the turn of the 21st century during road construction. This dingo was buried by the ancestors of the Barkindji people with the same care they would bury a human. But that's not all- they came back generation after generation to leave river mussels at the grave, as if they were providing food to an ancestor, for 500 years after the burial! 

An examination of the skeleton shows that the dog had been injured a few times and healed. It suffered broken bones and only survived due to the care of its human family. After thorough examination, the remains were returned to Barkindji elders for re-internment. You have to wonder if this dingo was a hero dog of some sort, or whether it was just so loved that its story was told to later generations with an admonition to tend to the grave. Read more about the honored dog's burial at Smithsonian.    

(Image credit: Amy Way/Australian Museum) 

Redditor /u/CornishShaman shares this photo of their library's beautiful new storytime chair. It's a custom sculpture commissioned specifically for Penzance, a town in Cornwall.

Free Range Designs, a Welsh furniture workshop created by Paul Bullen, composed it. Although the craftsmen there produce other pieces of furniture, their unique storytelling chairs have attracted the most attention.

The Penzance Library is in Cornwall, so its chair reflects the deep well that is Cornish folklore. Featured prominently are the Mermaid of Zennor, the Giant of Marazion, local pixies, and, of course, the Pirates of Penzance. The fish are pilchards (Sardinia pilchardus), a herring species that has been fished in Cornwall for centuries.

I've never seriously studied Greek mythology, so I was completely unfamiliar with Typhon. This mythological monster was made of snakes and lava and had no father, so of course he was bad news. He was so powerful that he was a serious rival for Zeus, who had to put Typhon in his place. That doesn't mean Zeus killed him, but it does explain volcanos, thunderstorms, and tsunamis. However, the stories of Typhon vary depending on who wrote them. 

Dr. Emily Zarka (previously at Neatorama) explains who Typhon was supposed to be. He's not described as a god, but was powerful enough to challenge Zeus for the title of supreme being. He and his wife Echidna spawned plenty of other mythological monsters that somewhat resemble real and usually scary animals. His later obscurity among laypeople like me may have to do with how he was dispatched relatively early in the Greek mythology saga. 

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, some citizens were vaporized, some escaped, and many were killed and then buried under rock, ash, and lava. Over the years, the soft tissues rotted away, leaving human-shaped voids in the rock. In the 19th  century, Giuseppe Fiorelli developed a method of preserving those voids by filling them with plaster, giving us at least the shape of the victims. But what's inside the plaster? A recent discovery revealed that one man may have been a doctor, because he was killed carrying a bag. CT scans and X-rays found a locking device inside the plaster, coins, and metal instruments of the kind that Roman doctors used. 

But even more interesting is the discovery of how the plaster casts have been messed with over the more than hundred years since they were made. Scientists used the same type of scans to check whether there are bones present in the plaster. They discovered that some of the plaster casts had been reinforced with steel rods for stability, and bones have been removed! Some even had artistic work done to make them more interesting. Read about these discoveries at Ars Technica.  -via Boing Boing  

Project Hail Mary hit theaters about six weeks ago and did really well with both critics and ticket sales. It's a science fiction movie in which untrained astronaut Ryan Gosling (who also produced the film) has to save the world. How could it not be a hit? The movie was lauded for its unique view of what extraterrestrial life could can be. However, I had no idea Project Hail Mary was as funny as Screen Junkies reveals in this Honest Trailer. The pre-release hype gave no clue. Gosling is an intelligent everyman who has to learn how to do everything alone and on the fly, and stays adorably goofy throughout. The special effects and the alien life forms are impressive, too. Honest Trailers rarely rates a film this highly, but they still find the repeated idioms that you would have never noticed otherwise. Altogether this is a much more effective movie trailer than the real ones. Now I want to see Project Hail Mary.

Lord Vinheteiro is a Brazilian musician who originally trained on the piano but is now must famous for his performances on rubber chickens.

In the past, we've seen him play a piano with a typewriter and perform "Flight of the Bumblebees" while using only one finger. After his rubber chicken performances rose to popular acclaim, we highlighted his rubbery renditions of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

In this funny video, his lordship explains how he goes about turning rubber chickens to be musically prcise instruments. He says, "True music does not depend on the instrument, but on the seriousness with which we approach it."

-via The Awesomer

A group of Swedish geologists have been keeping track of how geologists are portrayed on the silver screen. You might think that the profession is rare, and relatively it may be, but they compiled a list of 141 movies with 202 geologists between 1919 and 2023 (available to download). They appear in all genres, but most often in adventure films. These roles are broken down by age, sex, race, era, whether they are "the good guys," and even how they dress. 

However, geologists in movies die at an alarming rate, 34.2%, and often early in the story. Murder is the most likely cause. This may be because the function of a geologist is often to deliver bad scientific news and set up the adventure, after which they are superfluous. The puns just write themselves: Stone cold dead. Exploited for sedimental value. A geologist should join a band because they rock. Gneiss. It was their own fault. The data shows that being a "bad guy" raises the risk of a cinematic geologist's death to 77%. It's still unclear how geologists' survival in movies compares with that of other professions, but this paper was written by geologists for geologists in the magazine Geology Today. As the daughter of a geologist, I was fascinated. -via Metafilter 

In 2020, The Wildcat Sanctuary in Minnesota was called about an animal breeding facility for which the owner had died. They went to rescue four tigers, but found an additional newborn. Tiger Winona had just given birth. She was in poor health, plus she didn't know what to do with a cub since hers had always been removed after birth to socialize the cub and have Winona breed again. The cub was also in danger from his father Marcus, who was known to attack cubs. This was during COVID, so little Dash was isolated and raised by a single volunteer named Tammy. 

Dash was the first newborn big cat raised by the sanctuary, and his progress was documented thoroughly on videotape. The Dodo compiled lots of clips to show us how Dash grew up to be a big strong tiger. He'll never be released into the wild, but he can live his best life possible under their care.

One thing we all know about cassowaries is that they are very territorial, and can be dangerous to humans, which is why it is hard for scientists to study them. They have casques made of keratin on their heads, which resemble helmets. What they are for is still a mystery. They could be for fighting, showing off for the opposite sex, or maybe even to amplify sound. And lately we've found out that these casques are fluorescent as well! In a paper published in Nature,  scientists reveal that cassowary casques will glow in different colors and patterns that vary between the three existing species. They even vary somewhat between individual birds. Not only that, but the patterns displayed by biofluorescence are different from the pattern shown by their ultraviolet reflectivity. Therefore, under the right light, every cassowary has a distinct fluorescent color pattern that could be as individual as fingerprints. 

We still don't know how well cassowaries can see each other's fluorescent patterns, and how they use them. But we may be able to use the patterns to tag the birds for study. Read an explanation of this research at Refractor. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Todd L. Green) 

As a Kentucky native, I can tell you that in the 1960s and '70s, Kentucky Fried Chicken was something to behold- quick, delicious, and fairly local. It may have been "fast food," but it wasn't a burger to eat in your car. Rather, you picked up a bucket full of chicken to take home to the family, along with potatoes, gravy, and rolls. Instant Sunday dinner! Then Colonel Sanders sold his creation and spent the rest of his life complaining about what the corporate bean counters did to ruin his signature dishes. The quality of the food sunk item by item, and the name changed to KFC. The chain decided to be real fast food, and concentrated on a range of new items you could eat while driving. The prices soared and the portions shrunk. 

Of course, there was a lot more involved than that, and hardly any of my opinions in the above paragraph are addressed in this video from Weird History Food. KFC suffered from corporate trades and mergers, over-expansion, ridiculous promotional stunts, and most of all, competition from other chains that specialize in fried chicken. Yet they still make money, and this video explains how.