Month: November 2016

Art authentication can be a tricky business. Seasoned experts can be fooled by forgeries or miss important clues that could cement the authorship of a particular piece. At stake: reputations of museums and millions of dollars.

The art world’s latest controversy arrived Tuesday, when two prominent scholars of Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh declared that a 65-page sketchbook passed down as a family heirloom in France was once owned by the uni-eared painter.

Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, however, fired back with an open letter claiming the sketchbook was not the genuine article. Using their library of more than 500 van Gogh drawings as a reference, museum staffers wrote that the illustrations aren’t indicative of the artist’s development circa 1888 and that the brown ink used was inconsistent with his preference of black or purple ink.

It’s believed that van Gogh gifted the proprietors of a hotel in Arles, France with the sketchbook after he had been remanded to a mental institution after slicing off his ear; van Gogh had asked his doctor, Felix Rey, to pass it along to the Ginouxs, who welcomed the artist as their guest and had given him a ledger in which to draw. The museum argues that Rey had left Arles by then and had never come to visit him.

One of the scholars endorsing the work as genuine, Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, is a highly-respected van Gogh expert who has just issued a book titled Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook, featuring commentary and reproductions of select illustrations. Welsh-Ovcharov spent three years researching the sketches after discovering them in 2013. The book, she said, was in the Ginoux family for decades before it came into the possession of a neighbor, who was unaware of its significance. The neighbor’s daughter thought little of it until a friend suggested she show it to an art historian.

Welsh-Ovcharov maintains that an entry in the hotel’s 1890 date book supports her version of events. In it, an employee of the Ginouxs wrote: “Monsieur Doctor Rey left for M. and Mme. Ginoux from the painter Van Goghe [sic] some empty olive boxes and a bundle of checked towels as well as a large book of drawings and apologizes for the delay.”

[h/t The New York Times]

Around 1941, the Germans dropped a bomb on a street in Liverpool, exposing among the rubble a watertight metal cylinder about six and a half feet long. For several years it lay on the side of the street, more or less ignored. People used it as a bench, kids played on it, and nobody thought it was anything particularly unusual—until one day somebody took a look inside.

Liverpool had been the most heavily bombed British city outside London during the Blitz. Much of the city was destroyed, and amid the chaos, the explosion on Great Homer Street seemed just like any other. Rubble had been cleared away by American soldiers in bulldozers, who left behind some larger chunks of debris, including the aforementioned cylinder—which went largely ignored until July 13, 1945.

On that day, a group of children managed to break part of the cylinder open and peer inside. What they saw inside likely chilled them to the core: a corpse.

The police were alerted, and the cylinder was opened fully to reveal the skeleton of a man who, many locals presumed, had perished in the bombings a few years earlier. Curiously, however, the man was dressed head-to-toe in clothing much more suited to the Victorian era and lying on some sort of cloth. He also still had a few strands of hair attached to his skull, which was propped up on a makeshift pillow formed of a brick wrapped in burlap.

Rumors, speculation, and confusion surrounded the first few days of the discovery, with local newspaper the Evening Express stating that “at the present stage there did not seem to be any suggestion of murder. It was quite possible that the man was of the ‘queer’ type and had crawled into the cylinder to sleep. He may have been dead 20 years.” (In this context, queer likely meant somebody with a mental illness.) The mystery deepened a few days later, when the coroner, one Mr. G. C. Mort, announced that along with the body they had discovered two diaries (sadly illegible), a postcard, and a rail notice, all dating from 1884 or 1885, as well as a well-worn signet ring, a set of keys, and an undated receipt from a T. C. Williams and Co.

An investigation by the coroner showed that T. C. Williams and Co. had been a local paint manufacturing company that operated from the 1870s until 1884, when the company fell into financial ruin and closed for good. Its owner, Thomas Cregeen Williams, was declared bankrupt in 1884. Creditors were asked repeatedly to come forward and stake their claim to his assets, but by 1885 Williams had disappeared. Local papers announced the mystery solved—but the coroner wasn’t so sure. Williams had a son, born in 1859, and some believed that it was actually his body in the cylinder. This theory was ruled out when the investigation found the younger Williams buried in a cemetery in Leeds. Meanwhile, the elder Williams’s whereabouts remained unconfirmed.

As outlandish as it may seem that a body could lay undiscovered in residential Liverpool for 60 years, as far as the police were concerned, that appeared to have been what happened. On August 31, 1945, the official inquest recorded an open verdict, meaning the death was deemed suspicious but without an obvious cause. According to the Liverpool Evening Express, the coroner said it was “impossible to find the cause of death, which he believed took place in 1885.” Although the body in the cylinder has never been officially confirmed as that of T. C. Williams, this still stands as the prevailing theory.

But what of the cylinder? And how did the body end up in there in the first place? According to an official from the Home Office in 1945, the cylinder seemed to be part of a ventilation system (no traces of paint were found inside, ruling out any chance of a freak paint manufacturing accident). Was T. C. Williams sleeping in the vents of his old factory to hide from the creditors, and had he succumbed to deadly fumes? (The cylinder was found about a mile from the factory, but the bombs and bulldozers might have moved it.) Did he, as one theory put forward by the blog Strange Company suggests, fake his own death using this body as a decoy while making a break for America? Being that Liverpool was a major port city in the 1880s, it’s not logistically impossible, if perhaps a little farfetched. We might never know for sure. Perhaps the answer is still lying at the side of a road in Liverpool somewhere, just waiting to be noticed.

Not into sports drinks or protein bars? Reaching for one of these isn’t essential when you’re trying to get in shape. (In fact, they can be packed with so much sugar that they’re not even good choices unless you’re tackling an especially tough or lengthy workout.) When it comes to fueling up before and after you exercise, there are some beneficial—and somewhat surprising—choices that you likely already have in your cabinet or fridge. Read on for six foods and drinks that research has proven are awesome options for staying energized when you hit the gym and to help your body bounce back quickly afterward.

1. GREENS

There’s no end to the kale craze in sight—and now research suggests that it can help you work out harder, too. Eating leafy greens like kale and spinach regularly can help improve your muscle fibers, which in turn can boost your athletic performance—especially during high-intensity exercise, like sprint intervals, and if you’re exercising in a low-oxygen condition, like at high altitude, according to a new Belgian study. Researchers say the greens contain nitrate, which benefits fast-oxidative muscle fibers.

2. WATERMELON JUICE

Leave the Gatorade on the shelf and reach for refreshing watermelon juice before you get sweaty: Sipping on the sweet juice an hour before exercise relieved people’s muscle soreness, says a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Researchers say the fruit contains antioxidants and can increase muscle protein.

3. FAST FOOD

Leaving the gym and heading for the drive-thru could be a surprisingly good way to help your body recover post-workout. Yes, you read that right: Eating fast food is just as good at restoring glycogen (your muscles’ go-to source of energy) after you work out as traditional options like sports drinks and protein bars, found a recent study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Of course, load up on large fries with a cheeseburger and you can quickly overdo it on calories—so sticking to small servings may be your best bet.

4. CHOCOLATE

Permission to eat chocolate every day, granted. Nibbling on a couple squares of dark chocolate daily can improve exercisers’ endurance, according to a 2015 study. Researchers from Kingston University in London say the dark chocolate has similar benefits to beetroot juice and aids athletic performance by helping to dilate blood vessels and deliver more oxygen to muscles.

5. CEREAL

If you don’t have a protein bar on hand after exercising, reaching for a serving of cereal with non-fat milk can do the trick. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin found that eating whole-grain cereal with milk is just as effective for promoting recovery after a lengthy workout. A bowl of the breakfast staple provides carbs, which help replenish your muscles’ stores of glycogen, plus protein for muscle repair.

6. COFFEE

It’s widely known that caffeine can give you a little athletic jolt, and it turns out coffee is an especially good form to get it pre-workout. Downing a couple mugs of coffee before you hit the running trail or gym can help you go longer, according to a recent study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Researchers from the University of Georgia found that when exercisers consumed between 3 and 7 milligrams of caffeine from coffee per kilogram of body weight, their endurance performance increased by about 24 percent. A cup generally contains between 75mg and 150mg of caffeine, so you should feel a boost if you down one before your workout.

All images courtesy of iStock.

If you’re like 62 percent of Americans, you get the bulk of your news from social media. Facebook has done a great job at getting your attention, but when it comes to filtering out fiction from fact they haven’t been so successful. Headlines like “Pope Francis Shocks the World, Endorses Donald Trump” and “Britain Threatens to Invade Switzerland Over Toblerone Shape Row” (both of which are flat-out false) pop up alongside stories from respectable news sources. What’s worse, fake stories can rack up thousands of likes and shares, making it difficult for readers to spot a hoax when it’s in front of them.

Programmer Daniel Sieradski has taken this problem into his own hands by creating a Chrome extension called the “B.S. Detector,” Mashable reports. After installing the plug-in, Facebook users will see a red warning appear over any posts that lead back to dubious sources. The outlets Sieradski has flagged include fake news sites, satire sites, and untrustworthy sources from all political leanings.

The extension isn’t a perfect B.S. filter—it detects the sites, not the content of the articles themselves, and is only limited to the sources Sieradski programmed into the code. But it’s a good start for Facebook users looking to navigate their feed with a more skeptical eye. Facebook is just now beginning to crack down on false content, announcing recently that fake news sites were banned from using their advertising network. Still, experts remain pessimistic about the company taking more drastic action against the problem anytime soon.

In the meantime, there are plenty of steps web users can take to avoid getting duped. When reading an article, keep an eye out for things like detailed author biographies, citations and references, and original reporting to judge whether the piece is legitimate. Fake-sounding author names and headlines that seem too outrageous to be true are possible indicators that a story is a hoax. If you still aren’t sure if what you just read should be taken at face value, do a quick Google search to see if other outlets have covered it. If it’s nowhere else to be seen, there’s likely a reason for that.

[h/t Mashable]

Despite being a bladder-shattering 23.5 ounces, cans of AriZona iced tea have never wavered from the 99-cent price point introduced shortly after the drink debuted in 1992. It’s even printed on the label as a way of warding off sugar-water price gouging by retailers.

The fact that AriZona has been able to resist inflation for nearly a quarter-century is impressive. The fact that the cans usually wind up being cheaper than smaller soft drinks is also impressive, until you begin to realize how strange it is that a vat of iced tea and its accompanying ingredients somehow manages to be less expensive than plain water.

In a recent interview with Thrillist, AriZona chief marketing officer and co-owner Spencer Vultaggio shed some light on this convenience store mystery.

Unlike water titans Coke (which distributes Dasani), Evian, or Fiji, AriZona has virtually no advertising dollars invested in their teas. “We feel like it’s more important to spend money on something that our customer really cares about, instead of buying billboards or putting our cans in the hands of some celebrity for a few minutes,” Vultaggio said.

Even with a frugal approach to ads, AriZona still has to deal with rising production costs. To help resist increasing prices to compensate, the company has pursued alternative manufacturing methods, using 40 percent less aluminum in cans and having enough factories dotting the country to make transportation more efficient. Bottled water, in contrast, is sometimes sourced from abroad, making for exorbitant shipping costs.

In the end, it’s not the iced tea that’s more economical than the water; it’s that the container it comes in is simply cheaper to produce and transport. And while AriZona isn’t above charging a premium for fancier drinks—like a tea brewed with oak chips that sells for twice the price—their branding depends heavily on those familiar rows of 99-cent cans and the loyal consumers who keep reaching for them.

Have you got a Big Question you’d like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

In 2010, scientists started exploring the Abanda cave system in Gabon after getting a tip about something strange living there: crocodiles. And not just any crocodiles. Orange crocodiles.

Crocodiles will sometimes use caves as temporary refuges during droughts, but the dwarf crocodiles (Osteolaemus tetraspis) in the Abanda caves seemed to have taken up permanent residence there. When we wrote about the expedition a few years ago, the researchers didn’t know much about the cave crocs. They knew they were there, they knew they were weird, and they knew some of them had turned orange. The scientists, led by biologist Matthew Shirley, have since gone back into the caves to study the animals. Their new paper, published in African Journal of Ecology, overturns some of their early ideas about the Abanda crocodiles, showing that life in the caves has been good to them, and offers a new explanation for their strange colors.

After seeing the crocodiles for themselves, the team began surveying the caves and capturing crocodiles by hand, taking their measurements and determining their sex. To see what the reptiles were eating, they used a method called the hose-Heimlich technique, which is exactly what it sounds like. While one scientist flushed a croc’s stomach with an improvised stomach pump, another grabbed the animal and squeezed its belly, expelling the water and the stomach contents through the animal’s mouth. They did the same with a group of crocodiles living aboveground at streams in the forest around the caves.

While the forest crocs barfed up freshwater crabs, shrimp, crayfish, and a variety of insects, the cave crocodiles were eating cave crickets and bats—and little else. The difference in diets, the researchers say, suggests that cave crocodiles don’t hunt or feed aboveground and likely have very little contact with their neighbors. The animals have to come out of the caves to breed and lay their eggs because there aren’t any suitable places to build nests in there, but they apparently don’t spend much time on the surface. They’re not entirely trapped in the caves, as the researchers once thought, but they’re still very isolated.

Even with all that time spent in the caves, the Abanda crocs don’t appear to be changing in response to life underground. Despite some physical and genetic differences between them and the forest crocs, the researchers say that the cave crocodiles “showed no signs of physical adaptation, or repercussion, of living in a hypogean environment”—such as the reduced pigmentation or smaller eyes often found in other cave-dwelling animals. The only notable physical change the team thinks is connected to their lifestyle is the crocs’ orange skin. They initially thought that the color change might have been an adaption to living in darkness or caused by their diet. But they now have a different—and grosser—idea.

With thousands of bats hanging from the cave ceilings, the floor has become covered in a caustic mixture of water and bat waste. “We hypothesize that the orange coloration in large adults is caused by ‘bleaching’ of the skin after what is presumably years of inundation in bat guano,” the researchers say. In some cases, they found, the guano isn’t just bleaching the crocs’ skin and changing its color, but eroding it to the point where the scientists could clearly see the animals’ skulls peeking out through the skin.

Those don’t sound like the best living conditions, but the caves offer plenty to make up for it. After taking all the animals’ measurements, the researchers found that the cave crocodiles were in better physical condition than any of the crocs living aboveground. The team thinks this is because the cave crocs’ prey—bats and crickets—is abundant (numbering in the tens of thousands), easy to catch, and available year-round. Furthermore, the caves provide a stable microclimate and protection from the elements. The researchers also found more crocodiles in the caves than they did in the surrounding forest, where the animals are vulnerable to logging and bushmeat hunting, leading them to think that the caves also provide some safety from humans. Living in guano may have its costs, but at the end of the day, it’s not easy being green.