Author: Jake Rossen

When it comes to energy-sucking utilities, street lights have no equal. The pavement-illuminating fixtures are said to eat up $40 billion in costs worldwide each year, releasing 100 million tons of CO2 to make for a giant-sized carbon footprint. This past week, clean tech start-up EnGoPlanet and the city of Las Vegas teamed up to present a possible solution.

Four Smart Street Lights located in Boulder Plaza are powered by both solar energy and the kinetic energy of passersby, collecting power from footsteps that travel across energy-harvesting pads installed on the pavement. The lamps also double as a Wi-Fi charging station with a wireless charging pad available to the public.

While the pressure produced by a single footstep varies, EnGoPlanet estimates that they can harness between 4 and 8 watts whenever a shoe passes over their pad. The company’s eventual hope is to bring this kind of low-resource energy to impoverished areas of the world, where grid power is not in plentiful supply. The company currently has a fundraising campaign to target 10 areas of Africa via Indiegogo.

Overfishing and a correlating rise in inbreeding may be one of the factors responsible for an uptick in two-headed shark sightings, according to a new paper in the Journal of Fish Biology.

The study’s authors recently discovered a dual-faced Atlantic sawtail catshark (Galeus atlanticus), which joins earlier discoveries of a bull shark fetus with two heads and blue shark conjoined twins. The bull shark was examined in 2011 by staff at Michigan State University: an x-ray found that the specimen had two heads, two hearts, and two stomachs.  

While seemingly fit for a Syfy Channel movie, these fish typically don’t live long enough to terrorize anything: The two heads make it more difficult to swim and gather food. As NatGeo notes, most don’t even survive birth. The abnormalities are often discovered by fishermen who capture sharks and then examine the offspring they’re carrying rather than ensnare live samples.

Scientists believe metabolic disorders, viral infections, and pollution could also be possible contributors.

If that wasn’t disturbing enough, in 2011 a fisherman caught a dusky shark and discovered it was pregnant with a one-eyed embryo—a.k.a. the “cyclops shark.”

[h/t NatGeo]

For those of us who prefer our blood sugar to remain relatively stable, doughnuts are an occasional treat—nutritionally bankrupt but delicious fried dough laced with flavors from chocolate to bacon. You might even choose to indulge only in honor of National Doughnut Day, observed the first Friday of every June.

Curiously, a second National Doughnut Day pops up just five months later, on November 5. We don’t have two Thanksgivings, two Halloweens, or even two National Hot Dog Days. So why do doughnuts get to claim two dates?

It helps to know how the June date originated: During World War I, volunteers who wanted to support troops were charged with preparing food to deliver to soldiers on the front lines in France. The Salvation Army dispatched over 250 women there, who found that battle-tested helmets were perfect for frying up to seven doughnuts at a time.

In 1938, the Salvation Army decided to honor these proclaimed “doughnut lassies” by recognizing an annual pastry holiday that could also raise awareness (and money) for their charitable efforts. National Doughnut Day was born.

Its calendar doppelgänger is harder to trace. According to food holiday historian John Bryan Hopkins, who cataloged several fringe holidays for his site Foodimentary beginning in 2006, mentions of the November Doughnut Day could be found as early as the 1930s in copies of Ladies’ Home Journal. Hopkins speculated that the November 5 date is close enough to Veterans Day on November 11 that a retail outlet likely introduced the date to acknowledge their service.

But which date do the major doughnut industry forces recognize? Entenmann’s tells us they don’t participate in November 5 celebrations. In a statement, a Dunkin’ Donuts spokesperson told mental_floss:

“Dunkin’ Donuts celebrates National Donut Day which is traditionally celebrated on the first Friday of June, which was originally established in 1938 by the Chicago Salvation Army to honor women who served donuts to soldiers during World War I. This past year on June 3, guests were able to enjoy a free donut with the purchase of any beverage. The brand does not have any plans for the other National Donut Day holiday in November.”

Krispy Kreme likes to remain the Switzerland of doughnut delegating, having been known to give doughnuts away on both dates. But considering June’s date has a proven—and noble—lineage, you might want to side with Dunkin’ and consider it the more official of the two holidays. And if you manage to miss both days, don’t be concerned: June 8 is National Jelly-Filled Donut Day, and National Cream-Filled Donut Day lands on September 14.

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 the Guatemalan cities of Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez, mourners visiting loved ones in the cemetery during their Day of the Dead celebration aren’t content to bring flowers. They spend weeks creating elaborate, airborne kites and inflatables in honor of those who have died.

Every November 1, locals create buoyant tributes to the dead out of rice, bamboo support structures, and cloth tapestries, tying messages of tribute before holding them aloft. It can take up to 20 people to send one of the massive creations into the sky. The largest usually sit as monuments; others are able to catch wind and glide upward. Some who celebrate the day believe that when a kite is able to drift further away, the message it carries gets closer to Heaven.

Kite-building takes anywhere from 40 days to five months, with locals sourcing as much of the materials from nature as possible. To keep them light, tissue paper is used for exteriors. The largest can reach 57 feet in diameter, and groups who create the most inventive kite are awarded a monetary prize for their efforts.

[h/t Fest300]

The days of office vending machines stocked with soft drinks may be coming to a close. According to The New York Times, a growing number of workplace storefronts are looking to eliminate sodas from their inventory, eliminating the option of a sugary drink for their employees. And while people can certainly get their fix anywhere else, early observations indicate that making soda unavailable from workplace vendors may help curb employee cravings 24 hours a day.

At the University of California, San Francisco, every campus food supplier—including branded locations like Subway—was told to remove soda from shelves, the Times reports. As a health sciences center, UCSF was curious to see if the lack of availability had any measurable health effects on its 24,000 employees. While they’re currently in the process of evaluating 214 blood samples collected to observe changes in metabolic activity, a preliminary survey of 2500 workers indicated that consumption was being reduced by roughly a quarter. For some workers, who reported drinking up to a liter (or roughly three cans) a day, that’s significant.

UCSF’s changes—which have also been adopted by more than 30 medical centers around the country—come as policymakers are attempting to dilute soda consumption by raising sales taxes. In Berkeley, California, the introduction of a higher tax has been associated with lower intake. The World Health Organization has argued that a 20 percent price hike could result in a corresponding 20 percent reduction in soft drink ingestion.

USCF internal medicine specialist Kirsten Bibbins-Domino has also spearheaded a statistical analysis based on Mexico’s recent 10 percent excise tax on soda purchases. If the program continues, consumption may be reduced to the point where it could help prevent roughly half of new diabetes diagnoses in adults 35 to 44 over a 10-year period.

Those results could conceivably influence local legislation. Next week, California voters in San Francisco, Albany, and Oakland, and voters in Boulder, Colorado, will decide whether to implement soda taxes in their respective regions. Between escalating prices and limited workplace availability, soda fans might find their indulgence of choice getting harder and harder to swallow.

[h/t NY Times]

Talk show hosts have never gotten their due when it comes to theme park attractions, mainly because that would make no sense whatsoever. But Universal Studios Orlando is banking on Jimmy Fallon to change all that. The park is planning a ride based on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and they’ve just posted a sneak preview on their official blog.

Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon will take passengers on a virtual tour behind the scenes of the show, from wandering the halls backstage to encountering mascot Hashtag the Panda. Visitors can also sit behind a replica Tonight Show desk and pretend to lob softball questions at guests plugging terrible movies. From there, you’ll be shuffled to a “flying theatre” that will find itself in a race through the city against Fallon.

The attraction—which will also feature a historical look back at 62 years of the talk show—will replace the simulated tornado ride Twister: Ride It Out. It’s set to open in spring 2017.

[h/t /Film]

Instagram is already a haven for lifestyle gurus and fashion mavens, and a change to the platform could make it even easier for users to obtain the items they covet. The service, which allows smart phones to share and edit pictures for both personal and commercial purposes, is set to begin testing shoppable tags for images, TechCrunch reports.

Here’s how it works: When a user is combing through images from an apparel brand like Kate Spade or eyeglass storefront Warby Parker, they’ll be able to hit a “Tap to View” icon that will bring up more detailed information about the products displayed. Another tap on a specific product will lead the user to a description and checkout options—all while remaining in the Instagram app.

Services like LiketoKnow.it have already made it possible to source the items worn by your favorite style bloggers, but you have to wait for an email and then click through to the retailer in order to do so. Shoppable tags will cut out the middle man completely.
 

 
The service is set to roll out on iOS platforms with 20 retailers including Macy’s, Levi’s, Hollister, and Target. If it works, you can expect millions of Instagram images to become more interactive—and profitable—in the coming months.

[h/t TechCrunch]

The good people at Discover have just highlighted an important breakthrough in the field of cat science. According to a study published this year in Developmental Psychobiology, kittens can distinguish the vocalizations of their mother from those of any other feline.

The adorable research took 29 kittens at least four weeks of age with fully developed aural capabilities and presented them with recordings of meows and chirps from both their birth mother and from cats they were unfamiliar with. (We’d like to think they wore tiny headphones, but that probably didn’t happen.) The kittens had a substantially stronger response to playbacks of their mother’s “greeting chirps” and “meows,” being more attentive to the speaker emitting the noise and approaching it more quickly than when it was broadcasting the sounds of strangers. They also tended to lurk around the speaker longer.

The study authors argue that learning a mother’s voice is crucial to survival across a variety of species. Cats and other animals can chatter away when they can hear their parent is approaching, but it’s important to remain quiet in case a predator is looming.

And while cats will perk up at the sound of their mom’s cooing, they’re still likely to ignore you entirely.

[h/t Discover]
 
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How badly does Netflix want to keep your eyeballs glued to their screen? Bad enough to have invested a reported $800 million to deliver more than 1000 hours of original content in 2017, including a record-breaking $40 million check cut to comedian Chris Rock for two stand-up specials.

If you can’t wait that long for more original programming, check out five of the fresh documentary features hitting the service this month.

1. THE CONFESSIONS OF THOMAS QUICK (2016)

The same audience that turned out for the true crime series Making a Murderer and October’s Amanda Knox will probably devour this documentary about a Swedish man named Sture Bergwall who was confined to a psychiatric institution in the 1990s and eventually confessed to the murders of more than 30 victims. That’s only the beginning of Bergwall’s story—and if you can resist Googling the rest, the film should provide for a satisfying series of twists. (11/1)

2. NORMAN LEAR: JUST ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU (2016)

The pioneering television producer who radicalized American sitcoms in the 1970s with All in the Family and The Jeffersons is the subject of this documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The film was greeted with huge applause, at which point the then-93-year-old Lear told the crowd he was appreciative but “had to take a leak.” (11/1)

3. FOOD CHOICES (2016)

Originally slated as an Indiegogo project, Food Choices was completed and purchased by Netflix for streaming distribution this year. Director Michal Siewierski examines the health effects of a plant-based diet.(11/2)

4. THE IVORY GAME (2016)

Leonardo DiCaprio produced this on-the-ground documentary about the morbid business of ivory poaching: Activists capture the lucrative trade of illicit elephant tusks, risking discovery in the hopes of shining a fresh light on a practice that threatens the animals with extinction. (11/4)

5. SOUR GRAPES (2016)

Dubbed a “real life comic mystery” by Variety, Sour Grapes documents a wine fraud scam that rocked the vineyard community. Thousands of bottles of faux vintage wine were sold for more than $35 million, leading both collectors and the FBI to trace the sales to an enterprising con artist. (11/18)

History can be maddeningly unspecific about certain things, particularly chronology. But when it comes to the history of the chain letter, it’s very possible that Jesus was the first to author one.

Hundreds of years ago, a story made the rounds that seemed incredible. Fifty-five years after Jesus had been resurrected and ascended into heaven, he decided to author a letter offering wisdom to his human charges. The note was taken to earth and hidden under a rock, which a young and earnest boy was able to lift. From there, the note was copied and circulated, each facsimile bearing a strange warning:

“He that copieth this letter shall be blessed of me. He that does not shall be cursed.”

As hoaxes go, it wasn’t a bad way to get someone’s attention. Copies of the letter survive from as early as the mid-1700s, proof that people have always had an innate curiosity—and superstition—about chain letters. In the decades that followed, hundreds of thousands of people have received and forwarded letters that promise charity, prosperity, or religious enlightenment.

The price for not being on board? Usually awful luck. Or death.

In 1888, a Methodist women’s missionary group was having serious cash flow problems. Additions to their facilities had added up to an astounding $16,000. While the group leaders prayed for assistance, they also acknowledged they might need to take the initiative.

Just when all hope seemed lost, a woman who had heard of their troubles said that she had a possible solution: Someone had told her that arranging for a chain letter could be a possible avenue to financial reward. Around the same time, the church received a chain letter requesting funds for another now forgotten object, sent to them by someone who thought it would work for this group as well. The head of the congregation, Lucy Rider Meyer, took the suggestions seriously and drafted a letter that contained both a solicitation to send her one dime and to send a copy of the letter to three friends, who would (hopefully) repeat the process.

Meyer dashed off 1500 copies and waited. The responses came pouring in. The missionaries eventually raised $6000, with many people sending more than a dime and others even using the letter as the inspiration to join their flock. In spirit and cold cash, the chain letter had been a success. Mostly.

While most recipients were happy to either contribute or disregard the letter, a few took the time to write back and complain about being targeted multiple times. One irritated addressee wrote:

“To tell the plain truth, I am exasperated with this plan. I am a very busy woman, and this is the third benevolence I have been asked to help in this way.”

Others took a more direct way of holding on to their cash:

“I have figured up, and you must already have an abundance of money for the house. So I won’t send any.”

The missionaries dubbed the chain letter a “peripatetic contribution box,” a kind of postal hat-passing that immediately began growing in popularity. Newspapers like the New York World printed forms to raise money for a memorial for Spanish-American war soldiers; in 1898, a 17-year-old volunteer for the Red Cross devised a chain that solicited money for ice to send to troops stationed in Cuba. So many thousands of letters poured in that they choked her Babylon, New York post office, prompting her mother to issue an open plea to stop people from sending any more.

While potentially annoying to some, many of these letters were altruistic in nature—an attempt to drum up financial support for what was considered to be a worthy cause. But it didn’t take long for the template to be adapted to a less noble pursuit: conning people out of money.

At the height (or low point) of the Great Depression in 1935, the city of Denver became the epicenter of a massive chain letter campaign known as the Send-a-Dime effort. In a time of severe financial strife, recipients were urged to send along money to a list of names, with their own fortune coming when their turn arrived in the queue.

People in desperate need of hope began to rely on a promise of prosperity, populating chain letter brokerage firms that sold shares in names due to hit it big. The brokers made thousands; the letter writers made nothing. Western Union was sued for over $27 million for helping perpetuate the fraud, and the postal service threatened prosecution under anti-lottery and anti-solicitation statutes. Although dime letters have since fallen by the wayside, chain letters were never totally stifled. In 1978, students at Harvard became fascinated by the “Circle of Gold” ploy sweeping the nation, where a letter could be purchased for $100 from some well-meaning seller. Fifty of those dollars would go to the person selling the letter, and the remaining $50 would be mailed to an address at the top of a list of names and addresses. The top name would be crossed out, the second place name moved up, and the buyer would attempt to sell two more letters. These were interesting marriages of chain letters as pyramid schemes, a theme that has often repeated itself.

Often, chain letters took delight in provoking a person’s superstitious nature, warning of severe consequences for not following the instructions. In some cases, there was a caution that not advancing the message would result in no change to the status quo. In others, it would be an outright warning of misfortune. These often contained testimonials that tried to personalize fate by detailing the name of a past recipient who either followed the instructions and prospered or didn’t follow the instructions and was immediately struck by a bus. For people who might otherwise be prone to tossing the letter, it helped ensure that the deliverer’s message (or scam) would be tended to properly.

In the 1990s, just before email replaced physical letters as the delivery method of choice for these pyramid scams and religious tracts, an unknown source perpetuated what became known as the “underpants exchange.” The letter read:

“Send one pair of pretty underwear of your choice to the person listed below, and send a copy of this letter to six friends…If you can’t do this in seven days, please notify me because it isn’t fair to those who have participated…You will receive 36 pairs of pretty panties!”

Despite whatever curious urge was gripping the originator, the pretty panties circulation thrived: the Baltimore Sun reported several satisfied enrollees who got mailed several pairs of underwear every week.

Chain letters still exist, primarily as social media threads that solicit money or gifts for lists of people in the hopes a person’s “turn” will eventually come. Aside from the occasional deluge of undergarments, it’s always a losing proposition. When Denver’s Send-a-Dime Depression scam came to an end, more than 100,000 “dead” letters were forwarded to the real winner: the U.S. Treasury, which took possession of $3000 in dimes.