To the dedicated detective, everything looks like a clue. Take this approximately 3-million-year-old bees’ nest, for example: Researchers say its very presence speaks volumes about the world in which our early ancestors lived. They published their report today, September 28, in the journal PLOS One.
The ancestor in question is Australopithecus africanus, a small hominid species with both human- and ape-like features that lived in modern-day South Africa. Au. africanus was little to begin with—adult males averaged around 4’6”, females 3’9”—but the first specimen ever found was littler yet. The Taung child, as it came to be known, was first unearthed in 1924, and represented the earliest human ancestor ever found in Africa. Archaeologists found a few more Au. africanus individuals over the next decade, and then the wellspring of remains dried up. We haven’t found any more Australopithecus there since.
But the absence of bodies isn’t the same thing as a dead end. Researchers have simply turned their attention to exploring the world of Australopithecus in other ways: namely, looking at the site itself, at its geology, environment, and all the other fossils found there.
When we think about fossils, we typically think about the remains of plants and animals. But the traces left behind by these organisms can become fossils too. These footprints, burrows, and nests are harder to pin down to a single species, so scientists classify them into groups called ichnogenera.
Fossilized burrows in the ichnogenus Celliforma were most likely made by prehistoric bees. Unlike the humming, social hives of honeybees, each flask-shaped Celliforma nest was dug out of the ground and occupied by a single bee.
These nests are somewhat rare, and they’ve never been seen before in Africa, so researchers were understandably pretty psyched when they found one in Au. africanus territory near the edge of the Kalahari desert.
The nest was in great shape, given its age. The outside was covered with 25 small chambers, each of which would have housed a baby bee millions of years ago. Computed tomography (CT) scans of the entire nest revealed a complex system of tunnels and cells within, as well as traces of tiny plant parts that would have once lined its walls.
Parker et al. (2016)
The researchers say the nest’s overall structure is most similar to the homes of modern carder bees, which glaze the interior of their nests with a thin layer of clay, smooth it out with a wax-like substance, then add pieces of plants.
The nest’s structure and contents suggest that it was built in light, dry soil—findings that support previous studies, which hypothesized that Au. africanus may have lived in an arid, savannah-like environment.
“Insect traces are rarely considered in detail,” the study authors conclude, “yet they could offer important palaeoenvironmental insights, with the potential to reveal valuable information about hominin palaeoecology.”
No matter how much potential a movie might have, sometimes a studio just doesn’t get it right the first time. Whether it’s a matter of the wrong script, weak actors, or subpar directing, sometimes the same story needs to be told a few times on the big screen before it’s done justice. Some of the most popular movies of all times have been preceded by earlier versions of the same story—most of which acted like rough drafts for the eventual masterpiece. Check out earlier versions of six iconic films.
1. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1925)
Not only wasn’t 1939’s The Wizard of Oz the first adaptation of Frank L. Baum’s classic children’s book, it actually wasn’t even close. Before Judy Garland slipped on those ruby red slippers, there were numerous attempts to bring the land of Oz to live-action as both shorts and full-length films.
The most fully realized of these early attempts is 1925’s The Wizard of Oz, starring Dorothy Dwan as (appropriately) Dorothy, writer and comedian Larry Semon as the Scarecrow (and the film’s director), and a young Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man—this movie would premiere just a few years before the formation of the Laurel and Hardy tandem. Despite a screenplay co-written by Semon and Baum’s son, the movie itself bears little resemblance to the book—the Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion are simply farmhands in disguise, and there’s no Wicked Witch chasing the group down with winged monkeys.
The movie itself centers on the royal squabbling in Oz, revolving around Dorothy’s destiny as princess and the inevitable conflict against the aptly named Prime Minister Kruel. Instead of wishing to go back to Kansas, Dorothy falls in love with Prince Kynd of Oz, who beat out a guy dressed in a scarecrow costume to win her affections. The movie was savaged by critics and was a financial disaster—one from which Semon never quite recovered. Before long, he was back on the vaudeville circuit, soon ending up in a sanitarium before his mysterious death at 39.
2. FRANKENSTEIN (1910)
Before Boris Karloff and director James Whale famously gave life to Frankenstein’s monster in 1931, Edison Studios took a crack at the Mary Shelley tale in 1910. In this silent short, Frankenstein’s monster is created through an impressive special effects sequence meant to illustrate how the evil lurking in the mind of its creator literally gave birth to this abomination.
Like the Universal movie decades later, the Edison production isn’t exactly faithful to the source material, though it manages to pull off some genuinely frightening moments—especially given the state of the horror genre in 1910. The movie itself, which has a runtime of less than 20 minutes, was thought lost for years, until it reemerged several decades after its release. Destroying old films to recycle the silver in them was common practice back then, so the fact that this ever saw the light of day again is a feat unto itself.
3. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946)
Long before Disney turned Beauty and the Beast into the subject of lunch boxes and Halloween costumes the world over, French director Jean Cocteau gave the classic fairytale life for the first time on the big screen. Beauty and the Beast (released as La Belle et la Bête in France) doesn’t feature singing clocks or teapots, but the quirky fantasy elements are still there. There are some sentient candelabras, magical mirrors, enchanted gloves, and of course the Beast himself, whose animalistic look is achieved through some superb makeup.
The ideas in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast were well ahead of their time and have influenced generations of fantasy filmmakers in the years since its release. There’s fantasy, romance, tragedy, and even some horror—all of the elements you need for a Beauty and the Beast adaptation, and it’s one that any fan of the Mouse House needs to experience.
4. THE MALTESE FALCON (1931)
John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) is seen as the birth of the film noir movement, but it wasn’t the first attempt at adapting Dashiell Hammett’s pulp crime novel. In 1931, Warner Bros. hired director Roy Del Ruth to bring the novel to life in an era before strict Motion Picture Production Codes sanitized Hammett’s original story.
The movie, like the book, delved into the world of crime, violence, and illicit sex. One of the most controversial parts of the original film dealt with the homosexual relationship between Casper Gutman and Wilmer Cook, which was taken straight from the original novel. Unfortunately for the studio, production codes changed drastically when they tried re-releasing the film a few years later, leading to the film being barred from release.
In order to profit off of Hammett’s popular tale again, the studio decided to simply remake the movie—twice. First as an ill-fated comedy retitled Satan Met A Lady, and later again as The Maltese Falcon, famously starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. While the end result of this version was toned down considerably from the source material, the stylish production, impeccable acting, and tighter script made the original adaption nothing but a memory.
5. THE TRAPP FAMILY (1956)
The story of the von Trapp family didn’t first come to theaters with The Sound of Music; instead, it was a West German film titled The Trapp Family that originally brought the family’s exploits into pop culture. Based on Maria von Trapp’s memoir, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, The Trapp Family covers familiar ground: a nun is brought in to care for the family of a wealthy baron, soon turning them into a famous singing group that flees Austria to escape Nazi oppression.
The movie was actually well received by critics and successful enough to spawn a sequel, titled The Trapp Family in America. That title became much more literal as the von Trapp story was soon adapted by Hollywood in 1965 as The Sound of Music, one of the most beloved movies of all time. The film’s musical take on the von Trapp family story—and the fact that it’s not a remake of the original—helped it eclipse The Trapp Family, leaving it a mere footnote in film history.
6. VINYL (1965)
Despite the unfamiliar title, Vinyl is actually a very early adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, which, of course, was later masterfully filmed by Stanley Kubrick for a 1971 release. There must be something about Burgess’s novel that attracted some of the best artists of the 21st century, because not only did Kubrick give his take on the material, but Vinyl had another genius at the helm: Andy Warhol.
With a cast of novice actors and without the cinematic panache of a Kubrick, Vinyl is more of an experimental oddity than an ideal adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. It’s raw and improvisational as it loosely translated Burgess’s work to the screen. In fact, if you didn’t know it was based on A Clockwork Orange, you’d be hard-pressed to find any shared DNA between the two.
Pantone 448 C, the “world’s ugliest color” according to research, is used by many European countries on their tobacco products to dissuade people from smoking.
This Thursday, September 29, is National Coffee Day in the United States. In honor of everyone’s favorite morning beverage and the farmers who make its consumption possible, Starbucks has announced it will donate one coffee tree to a farmer in need for every cup of Mexico Chiapas coffee sold Thursday.
The Coffee Day initiative is part of Starbucks’s broader commitment to help wipe out coffee rust—a fungus threatening coffee trees in Latin America. For the last year, Starbucks has donated a coffee tree for every bag of coffee purchased in participating stores in America and Mexico. Already, the company has raised enough money to plant 18 million rust-resistant coffee trees, 10 million of which have already been delivered to farmers. They hope that by extending their “One Tree for Every Bag” commitment to cups of coffee for National Coffee Day, they will be able to meet their goal of donating 20 million trees by the end of 2016.
“I have seen firsthand the devastation coffee rust has had on farmers. The initial distribution of these coffee trees has already had a positive impact with potential to help farmers and their families for years to come,” said Starbucks Global Coffee executive vice president Craig Russell in a statement. “This is the perfect way to have our customers and the coffee community become part of the solution on National Coffee Day.”
If you don’t have time to sit down for a full meal, a new concoction from Red Robin concentrates the taste of one of their signature burgers into a glass of beer. The Grilled Pineapple Golden Ale looks like an unassuming beverage, but the flavor is anything but: it’s infused with brown sugar, ginger, pineapple, and black malt to impart a beefy, umami quality.
The beer, which is set to debut at Denver’s Great American Beer Festival in October, is a collaboration between the burger chain and New Belgium Brewing Company. The flavor profile is modeled after Red Robin’s Banzai Burger, a bold menu item topped with grilled pineapple and teriyaki sauce. According to Mashable, other burgers were considered for the experimental brew but none could compare to the Banzai’s unique style.
After its unveiling at the Great American Beer Festival, the Grilled Pineapple Golden Ale will be available on tap for a limited time at Red Robin locations in Colorado, the same state that brought us Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout.
Today, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is known for capturing incredible images of the cosmos, but 20 years ago, the project was struggling to validate its own existence. One astonishing photo changed that—and our view of the early universe—as Vox explains in a new video (below).
The vessel launched in early 1990 and had a big issue immediately: a flaw in the 94.5-inch primary mirror, which meant that Hubble was taking blurry photos. It would take until 1993 before the issue was fixed, but once the telescope was in tip-top shape, Space Telescope Science Institute director Robert Williams started thinking big.
While Hubble was generally used for documenting specific targets in space, Williams wanted to see whether there was any value in taking a broader snapshot. The resulting image of a small “keyhole” portion of the sky above the Big Dipper became an icon. Over the course of 10 days in December 1995, Hubble took 342 frames at four different wavelengths of light—light that had been traveling for billions of years, showing at least 1500 galaxies as they were near the beginning of the universe, and in various stages of evolution. The Hubble Deep Field photo proved that the telescope was capable of seeing far more than previously believed, helped to solidify public interest in the project, provided valuable information for researchers, and changed the culture around releasing data to both the wider scientific community and the public, as Vox explains.
The landmark image is now more than 20 years old. Check out the video from Vox for an even deeper dive into the Hubble Deep Field.
Some words are just perfect for shouting out in exasperation. These oldies will make you feel better the moment they pass your lips.
1. ZOONTERS!
This one got a little play in the 18th century as a minced oath—a swear that was modified to avoid being offensive. It’s a further mincing of zounds, which was itself a mincing of “his wounds,” as in Christ’s. Keep it handy in case you stub your toe in church.
2. OONS!
If zoonters is pushing it too close to the edge of blasphemy, just cut it down by a few more sounds. Oons was another minced oath formed off zounds.
3. DODGAST!
Much in the way that familiar forms like dagnabbit and doggone are ways to avoid saying God damn it! and God damned!, dodgast takes on the burden of God blast it! and makes it safe for children.
4. ADOD!
Yet another obsolete way to get the satisfaction of a swear without the taking of the Lord’s name in vain, this minced oath from the 17th century stands in for oh God. Its sibling egad! survived longer.
5. CRIVENS!
This one is a creative mashup of Christ! and heavens! It’s put to good use in this line from the 1935 book Shipbuilders: “Holy crivens, I nearly broke my flakin’ back.”
6. I SNORE!
Once you go a little bit out of your way to avoid some blasphemy, no reason not to keep going even further. The exclamation I snore! was an early American way to avoid even saying the word swear. In 1790, the Massachusetts Spy reported that “in one village you will hear the phrase ‘I snore,’—in another, ‘I swowgar.’”
7. BY SNUM!
If snore or swowgar isn’t far enough from offensive for you, there’s also snum. Snum came from vum, which itself came from vow.
8. BYR’LADY!
Not to be confused with beer lady!, this one was formed from “by our lady.”
9. RABBIT!
You’ve probably heard of drat! And rats! They started as God rot!, but before that, it was rendered as rabbit—as in “Rabbit the fellow!” from Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews.
10. WHAT THE RATTLE!?
There’s only one citation for this one in the Oxford English Dictionary, but it’s a good one, from 1790: “But what the rattle makes you look so tarnation glum?”
11. BONES OF ME!
This 16th century exclamation could show up as bones of me! or bones of you! The bones are the part of the body with the most staying power after death, so the expression has a force akin to “over my dead body” without the “don’t you dare” part.
12. GOOD LACK!
In addition to good God! And good heavens! There was good lack! Related to alack! and a sense of lack meaning fault or moral failing. It was used to express dismay at a state of affairs.
13. LOVANENTY!
An exclamation of shock and surprise, it’s probably from the phrase Lord defend thee. It also showed up as lockanties, lockintee, and lokins in Scotland.
14. MEGSTIE ME!
Another expression of surprise, it might be related to mighty. Other forms were megsty, maiginty, and megginstie, or meggins for short.
15. STAP MY VITALS!
This one probably started with Lord Foppington, a character in the 1697 comedy Relapse, who had a problem with pronouncing o as a.
16. SUPERNACULUM!
An obsolete exhortation to drink, this was a jokey combination of Latin and German. There was a German phrase auf den Nagel trinken or “drink to the nail,” meaning “drain your glass to the last drop.” Naculum was a play on what Nagel would sound like in Latin. Add super- or “over” to it and you’ve got supernaculum, which you can cry out as you turn your glass over to show you’ve chugged it all.
Identifying which of William Shakespeare’s many masterpieces is the most popular is a near-impossible task. After all, critics, actors, students, and casual readers all have very different perspectives on the Bard, and the longevity of his works means different plays have likely occupied the “most popular” slot over the years. However, according to Priceonomics, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is currently the most frequently performed of Shakespeare’s works.
Using data from the website Shakespeareances, which lists upcoming Shakespeare performances, Priceonomics was able to determine how frequently each of Shakespeare’s plays have been performed since 2011. Though the website does not list every Shakespeare performance globally (it mostly sticks to professional performances in North America, Australia, and England), Priceonomics believes it is the most comprehensive database of Shakespeare performances online.
Priceonomics found that A Midsummer Night’s Dream represents more than seven percent of the nearly 2000 Shakespeare productions listed on Shakespeareances, both in the United States and abroad. Meanwhile, in America, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night were the second and third most performed plays, while Hamlet and King Lear took second and third abroad.
Shakespeareances founder Eric Minton thinks A Midsummer Night’s Dream may be the most performed because it’s among Shakespeare’s most accessible plays. “It appeals to people who aren’t familiar with Shakespeare,” he explains. “You are gonna get the comedy even if you’re not proficient at speaking in verse.”
