Trees are able to communicate with each other through an underground network known as the ‘wood-wide web’. This system allows trees to loan sugar to neighboring trees, send warning signals about injury or disease, nurture their own offspring, and donate resources to conserve the forest.
Many MLB managers yell random things at umpires…
Many MLB managers yell random things at umpires during “arguments” (such as complaining about wine they had an Italian restaurant or how bad their team is) in order to fire up their team while not getting thrown out of the game.
Some languages don’t have the relative directions right…
Some languages don’t have the relative directions right/left. They instead use cardinal directions, for example: “It’s on the southern edge of the table.”
Meet the World’s Oldest Mime
Richmond Shepard has worked in the entertainment industry for five decades. He’s studied mime with Marcel Marceau, appeared in commercials and TV shows, and traveled the world performing solo and with mime troupes. And now, at 87, he’s the world’s oldest mime.
In the short New Yorker video above, Shepard talks about the ways being a mime affected his life—both on and off stage. Shepard, who lives in New York City, explains that being a mime taught him to appreciate the little, non-verbal interactions you share with people on the street, in an elevator, or on the train: “A lot of communication can happen in silence,” he explains, “but you have to listen.”
Banner Image Credit: NewYorker, Vimeo
September 8, 2016 – 3:00am
Lightning Kills 323 Norwegian Reindeer at Once
Never underestimate the power of a lightning storm. A powerful storm that struck the Hardangervidda mountain plateau in southern Norway on August 26 killed more than 300 reindeer at once, CBC News reports.
The Norwegian Environment Agency posted photos of the scene, which looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. It’s not unusual for reindeer to be struck by lightning, as a spokesman for the agency told the Associated Press, but this was a particularly deadly storm. The reindeer had likely huddled together during the storm, making them an even larger target for lightning.
Some 2000 reindeer visit the plateau each year. It’s unclear whether it was the work of a single strike or multiple, but around 70 calves were killed in the storm. All 323 bodies remain scatted in the grass, though researchers from the Norwegian Environment Agency took samples to test the bodies for disease. Normally, they would be left to let nature do its work, but since the storm was so deadly, the agency is discussing whether or not to move the corpses.
[h/t CBC News]
All images courtesy Havard Kjøntvedt, Norwegian Environment Agency
September 8, 2016 – 2:00am
Google Searches Could Predict Future Traffic Jams, Study Finds
If you stop to quickly Google traffic conditions before you rush out the door, you’re not alone. In fact, searches for “traffic jams” may actually be able to predict congestion before it happens, according to new research in PLOS One.
The study compared German Google searches for stau, or traffic jam, to reports of traffic jams reported by ADAC, a major German auto club. Author Nikolaos Askitas of the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn found that Google searches for road conditions peaked two hours before reports of traffic jams, both during morning rush hours (between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.) and the end-of-day rush between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. He used a program that scraped traffic data from ADAC every five minutes between September 28, 2015 and November 14, 2015. He linked these to weekly Google searches provided by Google Trends.
After controlling for variations in time and day of the week, Askitas argues that 80 percent of variation in traffic conditions can be linked to preceding Google search spikes.
“A one percent increase in Google [searches for traffic jams] implies a .4 percent increase of traffic jams,” he writes in the study.
The data isn’t comprehensive, but it represents a proof-of-concept for using search engines to examine wide-spread societal behavior. More research might be able to create further predictions of future behavior, and, in the case of traffic, lead to preventative measures.
Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.
September 8, 2016 – 1:00am
24 Historical Inaccuracies in Disney Movies
Don’t miss an episode of mental_floss on YouTube—subscribe here! Images and footage provided by Shutterstock. Here’s a transcript courtesy of Nerdfighteria Wiki:
1. Did you know there are some architectural inaccuracies in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Or “dahm.”
The story takes place in the late 15th century, but the Notre Dame in the film has a few features that weren’t added until later, like the large statues of the twelve apostles wouldn’t have been there even though they make several appearances in the movie.
And remember those stairs that Quasimodo’s mother died on? The real Notre Dame is more or less at ground level without gigantic stairs in front of it.
2. In Sleeping Beauty, Prince Phillip tells his father, “You’re living in the past, this is the 14th century!” So we have a pretty good idea of when the film took place. And there are some problems with that.
Like when Aurora waltzes with the prince, for instance. This type of dance emerged in the 16th century. Phillip and Aurora would have been doing a line dance in the 14th century. Or at least something involving holding hands. He definitely would not have been touching her waist.
3. Moving on to Mulan, this is an ancient Chinese legend, so we have a pretty good idea of the time period. Her story was first written in the 6th century and it was believed that she lived somewhere between 420 and 589 CE.
Unfortunately, Disney didn’t take those dates into consideration. They just kind of mashed together a bunch of Chinese history. Like, for instance, the Great Wall of China can be seen in the film. And while there were, yes, there were walls built around China from the 8th century BCE on, the one that appears in the film didn’t exist until the 14th century CE.
You know, around the time that Philip and Aurora wouldn’t have been waltzing.
4. At one point, Mulan also writes some text on her arm, which happens to be simplified Chinese, a bunch of characters that weren’t invented until the 1950s.
5. Another issue? Fireworks. It makes sense that they’re there, but they would not have been multiple colors. Multi-colored firework displays weren’t developed until the 18th century.
6. Now, it’s less clear when Beauty and the Beast was supposed to take place, but it’s probably in the 1700s in France. Not only is that when the story was written, but there are also some clues in the film like, uh, the appearance of rifles? And in that case, one anachronism at least, the Eiffel Tower appears during the “Be Our Guest” scene. The characters wouldn’t know about the structure because construction wouldn’t start until 1887.
7. There’s also some debate about when Tarzan takes place. The first book about him was published in 1914, but Disney enthusiasts put this version at around the late 1880s, partly because of a certain kind of typewriter helps date it. Regardless, it doesn’t make ton of sense when Jane tells Tarzan that she can take him to meet Charles Darwin and Rudyard Kipling. Darwin died in 1882 and Kipling didn’t become famous until 1889.
8. Frozen probably takes place around the same time. The costume designer said she was going for 1840 Western European look, so that gives us a clue. This means that Elsa wouldn’t refer to “frozen fractals” in the song Let It Go because the word fractal was first used in 1975.
9. Also, this is gonna sound weird, but in the 1840s in Europe, there should have been guns. There are way more swords and crossbows in that movie than there should have been. Those characters in that movie should have had rifles by that time.
10. Now, let’s move on to Tangled, because as our Disney fanatic viewers already know, it is said to take place in the same universe as both Tarzan and Frozen. I mean it, Google it. That means it takes place in the 1780s, at least according to the filmmakers, which means that Rapunzel would not have been able to use matches to light candles.
11. Hercules is obviously about a mythological character, but we’re still gonna mention some inaccuracies to the original myth because it was very real and important to ancient Greeks and Romans. First of all, he was never said to be Hera’s son like he is in the movie. His mom was actually a mortal named Alcmene.
12. And Hades wasn’t actually evil! In fact, for more info on that, you can see our episode on mythological misconceptions.
13. Okay, let’s move on to Robin Hood. So, the presence of King Richard in Robin Hood helps us place the film somewhere between 1189 and 1199 when he reigned. And that means at least a couple things are out of place—I mean, aside from talking animals and whatnot: Badminton and the farthing coins. Even badminton’s ancestors only date back to the 1600s and farthing coins wouldn’t be minted in England until 1222.
14. One of Disney’s first high-profile computer animated films was the movie Dinosaur from the year 2000. It was about a dinosaur who’s been raised by lemurs. I’ve had to watch it 4000 times and I’d just like to say there were no lemurs at any point when the non-avian dinosaurs were roaming the earth.
15. Another out-of-place animal in a Disney film, the Coelacanths in Atlantis: The Lost Empire. They can be seen in an aquarium, but the film takes place in 1914 and Coelacanths weren’t rediscovered until 1938. Until then they were believed to be extinct. [gasp] Just like the city of Atlantis! Maybe they did that on purpose. Those Disney people are geniuses.
16. Jasmine’s outfit in Aladdin would not happen. I mean, this film is estimated to take place sometime between the 4th and 7th century CE. She probably would have worn much looser clothing without her stomach showing. And because she was a princess, she’d probably have a veil.
17. Now, to be fair, the Genie references Jack Nicholson and the Marx brothers, so many people theorize that the film actually takes place in a post-apocalyptic future.
18. The opening of Pinocchio shows a clasp-bound book version of the story. But the story was actually published in 1883 and probably takes place around then too, and, of course, us book-binding experts know that a book written that late in time would not have clasps! They were reserved by then only for Bibles and journals.
19. Another hard-to-spot anachronism: One Hundred and One Dalmatians has a TV show within the movie starring an action hero dog named Thunderbolt, but it’s sponsored by Kanine Krunchies, a type of advertising that would have been against the rules in the UK at the time.
20. OK, we’re gonna finish up with a couple movies that are actually based on true stories, like the 2013 live action film Saving Mr. Banks. A couple important corrections: Walt Disney and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers did not ever visit Disneyland together.
21. Travers had also essentially signed away her work to Disney in 1960, before she even met Walt Disney and before going to his studio. The film doesn’t even start its story until 1961. That’s when we see Disney try to convince her to sign the rights over, which she had already done.
22. And while Travers did cry at the premier of Mary Poppins, it was not for the reason the film makes it seem: happiness and relief. According to the biography Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The life of P.L. Travers, she cried because it was still jarring to see the words Mary Poppins onscreen, let alone her name in such tiny print.
23. Another non-fictional person made into a practically fictional character: Pocahontas. The real woman went through a lot more turmoil than the movie portrays, and one thing that tends to shock people; she was only about ten years old when John Smith came into her life.
24. And finally, there was no romance between Pocahontas and John Smith either, you’ll be glad to hear. She did save his life, but he was just a friend.
September 8, 2016 – 12:00am
13 Surprising Facts About Amy Schumer
From her first appearance on Last Comic Standing to her headlining role in Trainwreck, Amy Schumer has never shied away from the spotlight. (Even when, as of late, she courts controversy.) The comedienne is so famous for her candor about her professional and personal life that it may seem like we know everything there is to know about her—especially with her memoir, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, now out on shelves. But these 13 facts might come as a surprise. Discover which roles Schumer nearly played, what Inside Amy Schumer originally looked like, and which celebrity’s cake she ate below.
1. HER GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WAS A MANHATTAN BOOTLEGGER.
Amy Schumer’s familial connection to Senator Chuck Schumer (they’re second cousins once removed) tends to get all the attention, but we should really be talking about her great-grandmother: Estelle Schumer was a New York bootlegger back in the days of Prohibition. Once booze was legalized again, her liquor store on 54th Street (Schumer’s Liquors) nabbed the seventh liquor license in the city. It’s still there today. “She was a badass,” Schumer told The Daily Beast. “She’d always say, ‘Hide your money from men,’ and lived in a studio apartment in a trundle bed into her 90s.”
2. HER PARENTS RAN A HIGH-END BABY FURNITURE STORE.
Schumer spent much of her childhood on Manhattan’s swanky Upper East Side, and it was all thanks to the cash flow from her parents’ baby furniture shop. Called Lewis of London, the store imported cribs from Italy. This played well with the Manhattan crowd, until other companies muscled in on the Italian imports and Lewis of London went under. The family had to downsize to a much smaller home in Schumer’s preteen years, but she says she wasn’t aware of the lifestyle change at the time. “I never really felt the effects of having less money,” she said in an interview with NPR. “I was I think 12 or 13 and just, you know, boy crazy and worried about what I was going to wear.”
3. SHE KILLED AT HER BAT MITZVAH.
The first time Schumer slayed a room wasn’t during one of her first stand-up sets—it was in the middle of her bat mitzvah. Schumer chose to chant rather than read from the Torah and completely cracked on her closing note. Although she was embarrassed at first, once everyone laughed, she laughed, too.
4. SHE WAS VOTED “CLASS CLOWN” AND “TEACHER’S WORST NIGHTMARE” IN HIGH SCHOOL.
The 1999 senior class at Long Island’s South Side High School bestowed two superlatives on Schumer: Class Clown and Teacher’s Worst Nightmare. Although the first one might seem obvious, Schumer explained that the second one was a bit misleading. “Half my teachers, like my English teacher and my history teacher, were shocked. Because if it was a class I was really interested in I would just listen and be attentive and was a good member of the class,” she said. “But if it was a class that I struggled or I felt wasn’t, you know, like business law, I remember, those are the classes I would kind of act up in.”
5. SHE HAS A THEATER DEGREE.
Schumer majored in theater at Towson University, and continued her acting education once she moved to New York. She took classes at the famed William Esper Studio for another two years, where she learned the Meisner technique. (While often confused with Method acting, the Meisner technique is a separate approach that focuses on instinct.) Schumer even starred in an off-Broadway play; Keeping Abreast was a dark comedy centered on a young woman diagnosed with breast cancer.
6. HER COLLEGE DEGREE WAS HELD HOSTAGE FOR FOUR YEARS.
Although she completed her credits on time, Schumer did not receive a college diploma with the rest of her class in 2003. The reason? Towson charged a fee to post her credits and Schumer found the policy maddeningly arbitrary. So she didn’t pay. But she received her degree four years later when she was passing through Baltimore on a Last Comic Standing tour. The Towson theater department chairman had been watching her on the show, and promised to fork over her diploma if she met him in the Baltimore Lyric Opera House with the cash. Schumer finally acquiesced. Today, Schumer has buried the hatchet and the Towson theater department refers to the incident as a “minor administrative matter.”
7. SHE REVIEWED HER EARLY STAND-UP TAPES ON THE BIG SCREENS AT BEST BUY.
When Schumer saw the footage from her first stand-up show at the Gotham Comedy Club, she was ashamed. So she decided to get serious. She began reviewing tapes from each of her subsequent sets and taking notes—but since she didn’t have a fancy TV, she watched herself on the display screens at Best Buy.
8. SHE AUDITIONED FOR GIRLS.
Schumer appeared in two episodes of Girls as Angie, the annoying friend of Adam’s girlfriend, Natalia, but she originally auditioned for a starring role. Lena Dunham recently revealed that Schumer auditioned for the principal role of Shoshanna. “Everyone in the room was stunned by the detail and skill of her improv, the wild talent radiating off her,” Dunham recalled. “It was clear Amy wasn’t meant to play an innocent Juicy Couture lover obsessed with emoji—even if her Meatpacking District club lingo was the funniest sh*t I had ever heard. But when she left the room, the vibe was very, ‘Someone get that lady a show, STAT!’”
9. INSIDE AMY SCHUMER WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A TALK SHOW.
When Inside Amy Schumer was still in its early stages of development at Comedy Central, the series was designed to be a talk show. After some prodding from her head writer, Jessi Klein, Schumer decided to switch gears. “I got a text from Amy before meeting with Comedy Central,” her co-creator Daniel Powell remembered. “It said: Scratch that. I want to do my Louie.” And so the show became the blend of stand-up, sketches, and man-on-the-street interviews it is today.
10. HER HOWARD STERN INTERVIEW GOT HER A MOVIE DEAL.
The way Trainwreck director Judd Apatow tells it, a single Howard Stern interview sold him on Schumer. She appeared on the radio show in 2012, and spoke very openly about her father’s battles with multiple sclerosis and alcoholism. Apatow was riveted. “Amy was so interesting that I didn’t leave, I just sat there in my car listening,” he said in an interview. “She was telling all these stories about her relationships, and about her dad and how she deals with that emotionally. It was very brutal, and also very sweet and funny. I thought, ‘Wow, she really sounds like a screenwriter.’” After he wrapped This Is 40, Apatow set a meeting so they could discuss a screenplay. That screenplay became Trainwreck, and Apatow soon moved into the director’s chair.
11. SHE MEDITATES REGULARLY AND AVOIDS CAFFEINE.
Despite Schumer’s bawdy image, she’s fairly health-conscious. According to Vogue, she currently practices Transcendental Meditation, schedules weekly acupuncture sessions, juices every morning, and avoids caffeine. Which means she probably won’t be returning to Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee any time soon.
12. SHE WAS CONSIDERED FOR THE GHOSTBUSTERS REBOOT.
Lots of insider information came out of the infamous Sony hack of 2014: Some of it revealed alarming pay gaps, some of it just concerned Adam Sandler flops. But one email floated Schumer as a possible ghostbuster in this summer’s all-female reboot. The email was sent by former Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal to original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, and mentioned Schumer along with Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Lizzy Caplan, and Melissa McCarthy as potential cast members. Obviously only McCarthy ended up in the picture, but Schumer was still stoked. “I saw that email! Sorry that happened, but I was psyched to be on that list,” she said in an interview.
13. SHE ONCE CRASHED AT JAKE GYLLENHAAL’S PLACE AND ATE HIS CAKE.
No, Schumer didn’t break into Gyllenhaal’s house and raid his fridge. She actually rented his apartment with her sister for a brief time. As she explained to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, she discovered an old birthday cake in his freezer while she was there. So naturally, she drunkenly ate it and declared herself a princess. Don’t worry: her sister got it on film.
September 7, 2016 – 12:00pm
The Cronut Is Coming to London
Back in 2013, a little bakery called Dominique Ansel—named after its now famous pastry chef—had normally impatient New Yorkers lining up for hours just to taste a sweet and flaky hybrid pastry called the “Cronut.” Now, that famous doughnut and croissant crossover is making its way across the pond: Konbini reports that the Cronut—and all the delicious chaos that comes with it—is coming to London.
Dominique Ansel, which already has locations in New York and Tokyo, will open its new London shop on September 30. In addition to Cronuts, the bakery will sell its famous frozen s’mores (chocolate and ice cream inside a frozen marshmallow), Waffogatos (espresso with vanilla ice cream and bits of waffle), and cookie shots (a shot glass-shaped cookie filled with milk). Ansel also plans to create a series of brand new pastries just for Londoners, including a welsh rarebit croissant and a banoffee pie made in a paella pan.
Ansel told The Telegraph he doesn’t want to rest on his laurels, and hopes his Dominique Ansel Bakeries will be famous for pushing the envelope with wild and creative pastries, not just the Cronut. “Our philosophy is not taking it too seriously: not to be afraid of criticism, to test and to try,” he said. “… We are not just feeding stomachs, we are feeding hearts and souls.”
[h/t Konbini]
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September 7, 2016 – 7:30pm
Mario Will Star in Nintendo’s First Traditional Smartphone Game
Nintendo has always prided itself on being at the forefront of the video game industry, but the company has been notoriously slow to adapt to the mobile gaming market. It took until this past spring for its first app, Miitomo, to debut for iOS and Android, with the slow pace causing unrest among shareholders. Miitomo isn’t even a game—it’s more of a social networking app that made very little impact on users. But now it looks like the company is finally all-in on mobile gaming, as it has officially announced that this December will see the debut of Super Mario Run for iOS.
The title was announced by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto during today’s Apple event. As reported by The Verge, Miyamoto showed a demo of the game, which, contrary to the title, isn’t just a clone of the countless infinite run games available on mobile. Instead, the demo showed a player jumping, stomping, and sprinting through a traditional-looking Mario level with graphics similar to the more recent DS titles.
Since this was one of the big reveals at the Apple event, there is of course some important news for iOS lovers. Super Mario Run will be available exclusively through The App Store before being available on Android. When that happens is a mystery, as Kotaku is reporting that Nintendo only said, “We do intend to release the game on Android devices at some point in the future.”
Kotaku also has footage of the reveal and gameplay from Super Mario Run, which you can watch in the video below:
September 7, 2016 – 7:15pm