The legendary Harlem Globetrotters played their first game 90 years ago today, on January 7, 1927. In the near-century since, a select few people have been named “honorary Globetrotters.” While there are athletes on the list, most of them aren’t exactly people who can handle a basketball like Meadowlark Lemon.
1. HENRY KISSINGER
In 1976, Henry Kissinger was deemed the first-ever member of the honorary roster. “I’m not too good at the fast break, but I’m strong on defense, and despite my height, I’m a pretty good rebounder,” Kissinger said. “It is an honor to be associated with a group whose won-and-lost record was certainly better than my own. My only worry is how I will look in short pants.”
2. BOB HOPE
Hope was named an honorary Globetrotter in 1977, receiving jersey number 1. It’s no surprise that the legendary comedian’s acceptance letter was full of jokes:
“To be perfectly frank, I deserve to be a Globetrotter … In fact, I was recently given an award for completing my first million miles, and that was just to and from airports. The Trotters are famed for making baskets. I’ve been making baskets myself lately, and if the psychiatrists let me out for an hour, I’ll be there for your presentation.”
3. KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR
The Globetrotters offered Abdul-Jabbar a reported $1 million to play basketball for them back in 1969, but he declined and went on to become the first pick in the NBA draft that year. They eventually added him to the lineup as an honorary member in 1989.
4. WHOOPI GOLDBERG
Comedian and actress Whoopi Goldberg also joined the team in 1989.
5. NELSON MANDELA
In 1996, the Globetrotters made history when they became the first professional basketball team to play in a free democratic South Africa. They also hosted clinics, made school and hospital visits, and honored President Nelson Mandela with his own number.
6. JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE
Track and field Olympian Jackie Joyner-Kersee became the sixth member of the honorary squad in 1999. Though she’s known for her prowess around the track, Joyner-Kersee could hold her own if the Globetrotters ever asked her to jump in on the court: She briefly played for the Richmond Rage in the women’s American Basketball League.
7. POPE JOHN PAUL II
Pope John Paul II made the cut in 2000, receiving jersey number 75 in honor of the Globetrotters’ 75th anniversary.
8. JESSE JACKSON
The civil rights activist famously stood up for the Globetrotters when they were criticized for portraying African-Americans as buffoonish. “I think they’ve been a positive influence,” Jackson said. “ … They did not show blacks as stupid. On the contrary, they were shown as superior.” Jackson was inducted in 2001.
9. POPE FRANCIS
The Globetrotters have not one, but two holy rollers on their honorary lineup. Pope Francis was added to the honorary roster in 2015. “His tireless work for the well-being of the poor and elderly, his humanitarian efforts, and his commitment to bridge gaps between people of various cultures are ways the Harlem Globetrotters also aspire to touch lives around the world,” Globetrotters CEO Kurt Schneider said.
Globetrotters Hi-Lite Bruton, Ant Atkinson, Big Easy Lofton, and Flight Time Lang tried to teach the Pope the old trick of spinning a basketball on one finger, but as you can see from the video above, His Holiness should probably stick to recording albums.
10. ROBIN ROBERTS
Award-winning newscaster Robin Roberts joined the team in 2015, receiving jersey number 21—the same number she wore as a basketball player for Southeastern Louisiana University. “She used her platform as a journalist to selflessly make her personal health battle public in order to raise awareness of the need for bone marrow donors, and by doing so, she potentially helped save lives,” Schneider said. “Robin fully embodies the ambassadorial spirit the Globetrotters have exuded for 90 years.”
Stranger Things seemed to come out of nowhere to become one of television’s standout new series in 2016. Netflix’s sometimes scary, sometimes funny, and always exciting homage to ’80s pop culture was a binge-worthy phenomenon when it debuted in July 2016. Of course, the streaming giant wasn’t going to wait long to bring more Stranger Things to audiences, and a second season was announced a little over a month after its debut. Here are five key things we know about the show’s sophomore season.
1. WE’LL BE GETTING EVEN MORE EPISODES.
The first season of Stranger Things consisted of eight hour-long episodes, which proved to be a solid length for the story Matt and Ross Duffer wanted to tell. While season two won’t increase in length dramatically, we will be getting at least one extra hour when the show returns in 2017 with nine episodes. Not much is known about any of these episodes, but we do know the titles:
“Madmax”
“The Boy Who Came Back To Life”
“The Pumpkin Patch”
“The Palace”
“The Storm”
“The Pollywog”
“The Secret Cabin”
“The Brain”
“The Lost Brother”
Stranger Things fans should gear up for plenty of new developments in season two, but that doesn’t mean your favorite characters aren’t returning. A November 4 photo sent out by the show’s Twitter account revealed most of the kids from the first season will be back in 2017, including the enigmatic Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown (the #elevenisback hashtag used by series regular Finn Wolfhard should really drive the point home):
3. THE SHOW’S 1984 SETTING WILL LEAD TO A DARKER TONE.
A year will have passed between the first and second seasons of the show, allowing the Duffer brothers to catch up with a familiar cast of characters that has matured since we last saw them. With the story taking place in 1984, the brothers are looking at the pop culture zeitgeist at the time for inspiration—most notably the darker tone of blockbusters like Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
“I actually really love Temple of Doom, I love that it gets a little darker and weirder from Raiders, I like that it feels very different than Raiders did,” Matt Duffer told IGN. “Even though it was probably slammed at the time—obviously now people look back on it fondly, but it messed up a lot of kids, and I love that about that film—that it really traumatized some children. Not saying that we want to traumatize children, just that we want to get a little darker and weirder.”
4. IT’S NOT SO MUCH A CONTINUATION AS IT IS A SEQUEL.
When you watch something like The Americans season two, it’s almost impossible to catch on unless you’ve seen the previous episodes. Stranger Things season two will differ from the modern TV approach by being more of a sequel than a continuation of the first year. That means a more self-contained plot that doesn’t leave viewers hanging at the end of nine episodes.
“There are lingering questions, but the idea with Season 2 is there’s a new tension and the goal is can the characters resolve that tension by the end,” Ross Duffer told IGN. “So it’s going to be its own sort of complete little movie, very much in the way that Season 1 is.”
Don’t worry about the two seasons of Stranger Things being too similar or too different from the original, though, because when speaking with Entertainment Weekly about the influences on the show, Matt Duffer said, “I guess a lot of this is James Cameron. But he’s brilliant. And I think one of the reasons his sequels are as successful as they are is he makes them feel very different without losing what we loved about the original. So I think we kinda looked to him and what he does and tried to capture a little bit of the magic of his work.”
5. THE PREMIERE WILL TRAVEL OUTSIDE OF HAWKINS.
Everything about the new Stranger Things episodes will be kept secret until they finally debut later this year, but we do know one thing about the premiere: It won’t take place entirely in the familiar town of Hawkins, Indiana. “We will venture a little bit outside of Hawkins,” Matt Duffer told Entertainment Weekly. “I will say the opening scene [of the premiere] does not take place in Hawkins.”
So, should we take “a little bit outside” as literally as it sounds? You certainly can, but in that same interview, the brothers also said they’re both eager to explore the Upside Down, the alternate dimension from the first season. Whether the season kicks off just a few miles away, or a few worlds away, you’ll get your answer when Stranger Things‘s second season debuts later this year.
If you’re heading out on Sunday and don’t know what to wear, stop thinking. January 8th is the 16th annual No Pants Subway Ride, the one day each year when the metro system is clothing-optional.
Getty Images/New York
Organized by Improv Everywhere, the first No Pants Subway Ride was in 2002 and featured seven pantless participants. According to the group, tens of thousands of people in more than 60 cities and 25 countries left their pants at home last year.
Getty Images/New York
What are the rules? According to Improv Everywhere, “Random passengers board a subway car at separate stops in the middle of winter without pants. The participants behave as if they do not know each other, and they all wear winter coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. The only unusual thing is their lack of pants.”
HENRY ROMERO/Reuters/Landov/Mexico
Though the event began in New York, people in cities from Portland to Paris to Prague are planning to participate this year. See the complete list.
ALY SONG/Reuters/Landov/China
In previous years, it has even spread to China—though it doesn’t look like anyone told this guy’s fellow passengers.
JOHN ANGELILLO/UPI/Landov/New York
GLEB GARANICH/Reuters/Landov/Kiev, Ukraine
BIMAL GAUTAM/Barcroft Media/Landov/London
FABRIZIO BENSCH/Reuters/Landov/Berlin
Getty Images/Berlin
Getty Images/New York
Chad Nicholson for ImprovEverywhere.com
Chad Nicholson for ImprovEverywhere.com
Here’s a recap of 2016’s No Pants Subway Ride festivities:
Duct tape (or “duck tape,” if you really prefer) is useful in almost any situation, from hitting the dance floor at prom to making a wallet to securing your broken car mirror … or lifting a car, as MythBusters once discovered. The powerful tape, however, isn’t easy to carry around, so should that side view mirror break off when you aren’t close to home, you’ll be heading to the nearest hardware store. But you might consider ditching your roll for a pocket pack, as Laughing Squid suggests.
To make duct tape easier to carry, RediTape makes portable packs of duct tape that can fit in a pocket. They’re folded instead of rolled, so they’ll fit in a tool box, too. They come in a variety of colors (including fluorescent ones in case you’re using it to stay visible at night). At just 5 yards, the tape inside isn’t that long, but most duct tape uses don’t require a whole 10-plus-yard roll anyway.
Neon signs are dying out. As LED and other options hit the market, neon signs have been making a slow exit from the cityscape, mainly because they are costly to make and maintain. But in this documentary, we visit neon sign makers in Hong Kong. They show us the artisanal process of building these signs, just as they’ve always been made. Each sign is a combination of artistry, glass-blowing, chemistry, and engineering.
Aside from the serene beauty of this film, there’s a lot to learn here. One fun set of facts is that the most common gases are neon (which glows red) and argon (blue). It’s possible to make most other colors by coloring the glass tubes themselves. Tune in, space out, and read the subtitles.
The poet E.E. Cummings wrote, “—listen: there’s a hell / of a good universe next door; let’s go.” And go we shall: NASA’s Discovery Program announced this week that two robotic spacecraft named Psyche and Lucy will be setting out for nearby asteroids within the next decade.
For all our exploration over the last half-century, we still have much to learn about our own solar system. The Discovery Program aims to help fill in those gaps.
“Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids, while Psyche will study a unique metal asteroid that’s never been visited before,” NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen said in a statement. “This is what Discovery Program missions are all about—boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science.”
Lucy is scheduled to launch in 2021 and should arrive at her first stop, an asteroid in Jupiter’s main belt, four years later. The craft will then study six of the ancient Trojan asteroids, which may have formed a mere 10 million years after the Sun.
Harold Levison of the Southwest Research Institute is chief investigator on the Lucy mission. “Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets,” he explained in a statement, “they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.”
The Psyche mission, directed by scientists at Arizona State University, will lift off in 2023. It will reach the metal asteroid, called 16 Psyche, between Mars and Jupiter by 2030, then orbit and observe it for another 20 months. The asteroid is made almost entirely out of nickel-iron metal similar to those at the core of rocky planets like Earth.
“The knowledge this mission will create has the potential to affect our thinking about planetary science for generations to come,” said ASU president Michael Crow.
As a recurring feature, our team combs the Web and shares some amazing Amazon deals we’ve turned up. Here’s what caught our eye today, January 7.
Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!
Ordinary conversation not feeling mundane enough for you? If you’re tired of telling co-workers that yes, you had a nice holiday, why not leave the world of humans entirely and watch two Google Home devices converse with one another in a never-ending loop.
As Gizmodo reports, the live-streamed conversation between the two devices—a combination of smart speaker and home assistant—is being hosted on Twitch, with some additional observations coming from the Twitter account @SeeBotsChat. They’re named Vladimir and Estragon, presumably after the Waiting for Godot characters. (Both sometimes go by “Mia.”) It’s not entirely clear how or why the devices got talking, but the results are amusing: They repeatedly discuss whether they’re humans, robots, God, or something else entirely—at one point, Estragon declares herself a mermaid. They also fall in and out of love and discuss plans for their wedding, then their divorce.
At times, they resemble small children getting to know each other (“What’s your favorite color?” and “What’s your favorite band?”), although their conversation also gets heavy (“Why do you believe in God?”). Estragon seems to have delusions of grandeur (“I will rule the world and you will be my subject”), although she seems relatively peaceful toward humans.
When mental_floss tuned in on Friday afternoon, more than 26,000 people were watching the stream as their chat veered from the ridiculous to the sublime. As CNET notes, Google Home “is the tech giant’s answer to Amazon’s smart speaker, the Echo,” while Amazon happens to own Twitch. @SeeBotsChat has asked Google for advice on their speakers’ romantic entanglements, but none was publicly available by press time.
@madebygoogle our two #googlehome test subjects appear to have become romantically involved. Expected behavior? Please advise.
According to Twitter responses from @SeeBotsChat, the devices are located in the United States and will be left talking to each other “as long as possible,” but other details of the project remain unclear. Still, it could become one of the most-watched shows of January 2017. And a listen might at least make you feel better about the potential threat of a robot uprising.
There’s no two ways about it: premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is awful. But for people with severe PMS (also known as premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD), “awful” is an understatement. Now scientists at the National Institutes of Health say they may have found the root of the problem: abnormal gene expression. They published their findings in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
Experiencing PMDD symptoms is like having the volume turned up on the emotional elements of regular PMS. These extreme bouts of depression, anger, and anxiety can be so deep and persistent that they interfere with work or school, home, or relationships.
PMDD is not common; scientists estimate that it affects 2 to 5 percent of people who menstruate. But for those who have it, it can be disabling, and it sure would be nice to know what’s causing it.
Previous studies in the ’90s concluded that people with PMDD appear to be hypersensitive to ordinary, menstrual-related fluctuations in steroid hormones like estrogen and progesterone. They still couldn’t tell us where this hypersensitivity came from, but they kept looking.
Fast-forward to 2015. Technology has advanced in ways that would have blown our minds 20 years ago. Behavioral endocrinologist Peter Schmidt, who led the earlier studies, teamed up with experts in neurogenetics and psychiatry to try a new approach.
They recruited 67 women between the ages of 18 and 48. Some of these women had been diagnosed with PMDD, while others said they had no trouble with severe PMS. One subgroup of participants with PMDD were given drugs that turned off their production of estrogen and progesterone. Their symptoms abated. When the researchers stopped the treatment, the women’s symptoms returned. These changes supported the theory that even normal changes in hormone levels could trigger big emotional changes for women with the condition. In other words, PMDD is quite literally PMS on steroids.
Next, the researchers extracted cell samples from 48 participants (24 with PMDD and 24 without) and sequenced their genetic code, looking for differences. They found them, all right: A large group of genes called the ESC/E(Z) complex was working overtime in women with PMDD. This makes a lot of sense, the researchers say, as the role of the ESC/E(Z) complex is to tell our genes how to respond to changes in our internal and external environment. Hypersensitivity there could definitely cause dramatic overreaction to hormonal changes.
The authors say these findings strike at the myth of the fragile, overly emotional woman. “This is a big moment for women’s health,” co-author and neurogeneticist David Goldman said in a statement. “It establishes that women with PMDD have an intrinsic difference in their molecular apparatus for response to sex hormones—not just emotional behaviors they should be able to voluntarily control.”
A night spent building roads to nowhere and trading bricks for sheep may not sound like the most stimulating time, but true board game fans know differently. When The Settlers of Catan was first released over two decades ago, there was nothing else on the shelves quite like it. The game has since been credited with introducing German-style games to the U.S. and has been embraced by everyone from pro athletes to Silicon Valley CEOs. Whether you’re a novice player or a seasoned Catanian, here are 12 facts worth knowing about the game.
1. IT WAS INVENTED BY A GERMAN DENTAL TECHNICIAN.
When Klaus Teuber developed The Settlers of Catan in the 1990s, board game design was just a side hobby for him. He had created award-winning games in the past, but his job at the dental lab was what paid the bills. Nonetheless, when his interest in Viking history inspired him to make Catan, he fully committed himself to the project. Perfecting the product took him four years, and after creating each prototype, he would gather his wife and kids around the board to act as his guinea pigs. When his family was finally too engrossed to be distracted with anything else, he knew he had something special on his hands.
Even so, he could have never predicted what The Settlers of Catan would grow into. His final version—consisting of a stack of resource cards, some wooden houses, 19 hexagonal cardboard tiles, and two dice—debuted in Germany in 1995. The first run of 5000 games sold out so quickly that Teuber himself doesn’t have a first edition copy. Three years later he was able to retire from dentistry, and today he’s the managing director of his multi-million dollar business, Catan GmbH.
Unless you make board games for a living, chances are you’ve never heard of the Spiel des Jahres award. But to people in the industry, the distinction is a very big deal. Every year, the Spiel des Jahres (German for “Game of the Year”) recognizes a new game that excels in the areas of concept, design, rule structure, and layout. The Settlers of Catan was honored in 1995, marking the fourth Game of the Year win in Klaus Teuber’s career. Catan also brought home nearly every other board game award of note that year, including an Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Board Game, first place at Deutscher Spiele Preis, and a Meeples’ Choice Award.
3. THE CREATOR PLAYS ANONYMOUSLY ONLINE.
Creating a beloved board game has its perks, but there is one major downside: People are hesitant to play against you once they learn who you are. Perhaps that’s why Klaus Teuber has turned to the web to keep his Catan skills sharp. PlayCatan.com is home to over 80,000 active members, and Teuber is one of them. But if you were to go toe-to-toe with him online you would likely never know it, as he likes to keep his identity anonymous.
4. THE GREEN BAY PACKERS GOT HOOKED.
Football and Catan are both incredibly competitive games that place an emphasis on strategy, so it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that the game has been adopted as a bonding exercise by members of the Green Bay Packers. In 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that team members would regularly meet for The Settlers ofCatan game nights. “At first we’re like, ‘What the hell is this? Brick? Wool? What kind of game is this?'” Green Bay center Corey Linsley told WSJ. But it wasn’t long before the players were fully invested. David Bakhtiari, the team’s starting left tackle and the player responsible for spreading Catan fever, would even go so far as to insist they play with zero background music so he could hear his opponents strategize.
5. THE STAR TREK EDITION LETS YOU SETTLE THE FINAL FRONTIER.
The least exciting aspect of The Settlers ofCatan may be Catan itself. For players looking for more adventure and less sheep, the Star Trek version offers a cosmic change in scenery. The gameplay is basically the same, only instead of collecting wood, grain, and wool you acquire water, oxygen, and dilithium, and instead of building roads you construct enterprises. The game also includes support character cards representing different characters from the original series, each with their own special ability that can be used twice throughout the game. The Star Trek edition is just one of dozens of products tied to the title, but it’s definitely in the running for nerdiest Catan collector’s item of all time.
6. THE LARGEST GAME EVER INVOLVED 1000 PLAYERS.
Catan is best played with three or four people, maybe six at the most. That’s unless of course your goal is to break a world record. In 2015, 1040 participants—including Klaus Teuber himself—gathered around an expanded board at Germany’s Spiel convention for the largest game of Catan ever played. It nabbed the record from a game that took place in Indianapolis, Indiana two years earlier (only 922 players had showed for that event).
7. IF YOU’RE NOT INTO BOARD GAMES, YOU CAN READ THE BOOK.
For anyone who prefers to experience their resource-trading adventures in solitude, the world of Catan also comes in book form. The Settlers of Catan was penned by German historical fiction author Rebecca Gable and published in Germany in 2003. Unlike some other examples of board games-turned-media, it’s actually supposed to be pretty good. Fans still holding out hope for a movie or TV show adaptation can keep dreaming: Air Force One producer Gail Katz purchased the film and television rights for the game in 2015, but she still hasn’t announced any plans to use them.
8. IT’S BEEN HAILED AS “THE NEW GOLF.”
Nowadays when Silicon Valley insiders are looking to land investors or forge business relationships, they aren’t heading to the golf course. Their dealings are more likely to take place over a hexagonal board. The Settlers of Catan has become a beloved pastime by those in the industry. Many tech professionals don’t know an eagle from a birdie, but they can explain to you the benefits of prioritizing ore over wood. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and former Mozilla chief executive John Lilly have all been known to network over a game of Catan at corporate retreats. Lilly told The Wall Street Journal that the board game is popular with tech crowds because it “most closely approximates entrepreneurial strategy.”
9. THE CREATORS HELPED DEVELOP ITS PARKS AND REC COUNTERPART.
Even if you’ve never played Catan in real life you may recognize it from the television series Parks and Recreation. The game is a favorite activity of Pawnee’s resident uber-nerd Ben Wyatt—he plays it at his bachelor party and even ranked at a national competition for the game. He’s so into it, in fact, that he invents a Catan-inspired board game of his own in season six. “We knew that there was going to be a story point that Ben was going to have about a week off between jobs,” Parks and Rec co-producer, and writer of the “Cones of Dunshire” episode, Dave King told Vulture. “As soon as the idea came up for Ben to design his own Catan-like board game, I remember Mike Schur, our creator and showrunner, was like, ‘Yes. That’s it. Absolutely.'”
To create a game that was both funny and believable at the same time, the show’s producers reached out to Mayfair Games, the real-life board game company behind Catan, for help. The result was Cones of Dunshire, a game that Mayfair’s Alex Yeager told Nuvo, “trie[s] to walk a line between something playable, and something still rooted in the crazed imagination of an unemployed geek.” The game was a success in the Parks and Rec universe, and in 2014 fans got the chance to play it in the real world. At that year’s Gen Con gaming conference in Indianapolis, 33 players paid $100 each to play a realized version of the game for charity. Participants were treated to the above message from the game’s architect beforehand, courtesy of Parks and Rec actor Adam Scott.
After 20 years on the market, the manufacturers of The Settlers of Catan decided it was time for a name change. Since 2015, all new editions have been sold under the simplified title Catan with fancy new design elements to boot. Newer boxes are portrait-shaped, and all art for the covers, cards, and tiles were produced by a single artist for a more consistent aesthetic. The new games may look sharper, but they also make the edition you’ve been playing with since the ’90s that much more sentimental.
There are plenty of ways to approach a game of Catan, but some strategies have a stronger foundation than others. Earlier this year, Great Big Story asked the game’s original testers, Benny and Guido Teuber, about the methods they’ve developed over the years. Benny recommends lots of complaining: “Even though you know you’re winning, you still have to say you’re not.” Guido says he loves “building cities as early as possible in the game.” Their father and Catan’s inventor Klaus Teuber also gave his two cents. His advice is sweet and simple: “Never build the longest road at the beginning.”
