A sunny yellow edible mushroom has just joined the noble ranks of new species named for the Windy City. Writing in the journal Mycologia, fungus researchers say the Chicago chanterelle had been under our noses all along.

There’s a reason we missed it: fungus is kind of tricky. “Plants are there almost all the time,” lead researcher and Field Museum mycologist Patrick Leacock told mental_floss. Fungi are far more ephemeral. Some species pop up only once every five years, others once a year. They appear overnight and are gone just a few days later. “You have to be in the right place at the right time” to see them, Leacock said. To date, he and his colleagues have cataloged more than 1000 different fungi species across the Chicago area.

Leacock and his co-authors had seen yellow chanterelles there, too, but they had no reason to believe the mushrooms were special. There are chanterelles all over the place. Then researchers in other parts of the country began taking a closer look at the chanterelles in their backyards. They sequenced the fungi’s genomes and discovered that what had appeared to be one standard North American variety was actually a number of distinct species. One 2014 paper suggested that there might be as many as 100 unidentified types of chanterelles still out there.

The Chicago team decided to test their own wild specimens. During the summers from 2000 to 2014, they collected yellow chanterelles in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, noting the location in which each mushroom was found. They extracted DNA from 21 of their fresh specimens, 20 dried mushrooms, and one preserved piece, and sequenced each sample.

 
Sure enough, the golden mushrooms nestled at the base of Illinois oak trees were a species all their own. Cantharellus chicagoensis looks a lot like its nearby cousins, but its flavor is more delicate and its aroma milder.

Want to find your own? You’ll likely have to wait until next summer, as C. chicagoensis is a summer variety. Head out of the city center and into the nearby forest preserves. Look for oak trees and check at the base.

Because this is Chicago we’re talking about, we had to ask: How would this new species fare on a slice of deep-dish pizza?

So-so, Leacock said: “It’s not the best use of it.” He recommends a nice omelet instead.

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From The Sound of Music to Dead Man Walking, nuns have always had a place on the silver screen—but none of those movies have given personality to the women behind the habits quite like Sister Act (1992). If Sister Mary Clarence and the sisters of St. Katherine’s made your toes tap, here are 14 facts you’ll give praise for.

1. DELORIS/SISTER MARY CLARENCE WAS PARTIALLY INSPIRED BY A REAL NUN.

As part of his research, screenwriter Paul Rudnick visited the Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut, to meet Mother Dolores Hart. Hart had been a Hollywood actress, singer, and dancer, starring in movies such as Where the Boys Are and King Creole. Though she left the industry to become a nun when she was just 24, she’s a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to this day.

2. BETTE MIDLER WAS ORIGINALLY ATTACHED TO STAR.

Though the Divine Miss M was originally onboard, she later backed out for reasons she came to regret: “I said: ‘My fans don’t want to see me in a wimple.’ I don’t know where I got that from. Why would I say such a thing? So Whoopi did it instead and, of course, she made a fortune.”

3. THE NAME OF THE MAIN CHARACTER WAS CHANGED WHEN MIDLER LEFT.

The original name of the singer-turned-sister was Terri Van Cartier. It was changed when Whoopi Goldberg was cast, because, according to Rudnick, “She’d always wanted to play someone named Deloris.”

4. CARRIE FISHER HELPED REWRITE THE SCRIPT.

When Midler backed out, script adjustments went far beyond a name change—but Disney only allowed writers two weeks to overhaul the script after the lead actress change. Additional writers were brought in to help doctor the script; in addition to Carrie Fisher, other contributors included Nancy Meyers and Robert Harling. Fisher, by the way, has a long history of fixing scripts—she also worked on last-minute rewrites to Hook, Lethal Weapon 3, and The Wedding Singer.

5. THE WRITER “JOSEPH HOWARD” IS NOT A REAL PERSON.

By the time the movie was released, it had been rewritten so much that Rudnick didn’t consider it his work anymore. He suggested the work be credited under the name R. Chasuble after the priest in The Importance of Being Earnest. That was rejected, so Rudnick tried for “Screenplay by Goofy.” Another no-go. Finally, “Joseph Howard” was accepted. “It sounds like the name of someone who helped found the Mormon Church,” Rudnick later wrote.

6. KATHY NAJIMY BASED HER CHARACTER ON MARY HART.

Kathy Najimy wasn’t totally sure how she was going to portray such a bubbly, cheerful nun—until she happened to catch anchor Mary Hart on Entertainment Tonight. “I turn on the TV. It’s something with me and Sally Field running around, and they come back to Mary Hart, and she went, ‘That Sally Field, ya gotta love her!’ And I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s my nun!'”

Najimy later sent Hart a bouquet of roses. “[But] I didn’t say why.”

7. SOME OF THE ACTRESSES GOT UP TO SOME MISCHIEF BETWEEN SCENES.

The production spent some time filming in a Reno casino, which the actresses loved. “That was great, because I love gambling,” Najimy said. “Wendy [Makkena, who plays Sister Mary Robert] smokes, and we’d sit at the 21 table in our nun outfits with drinks in front of us. That was hilarious.”

8. NO, THAT’S NOT THE REAL ACTRESS SINGING SISTER MARY ROBERT’S PARTS.

One of the subplots of the movie is Deloris’ efforts to bring the timid Sister Mary Robert out of her shell. We eventually realize that the soft-spoken sister can really belt one out—but it’s not really actress Wendy Makkena singing. She was dubbed by singer Andrea Robinson. Whoopi, however, did her own singing.

9. ONE OF THE SCENES WAS CHANGED AT NAJIMY’S BEHEST.

There was originally a scene that called for Najimy’s character, Sister Mary Patrick, to protest against a pornographic bookstore. Najimy felt it encroached on her First Amendment rights and asked the director to come up with something different. Instead, Sister Mary Patrick ended up selling raffle tickets.

10. THE PRODUCTION WAS SUED FOR PLAGIARISM.

In 1993, Donna Douglas (better known as Elly May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies) filed a $200 million suit against Whoopi Goldberg, Bette Midler, their production companies, Creative Artists Agency, Walt Disney Pictures, and more. Douglas had optioned a book called A Nun in the Closet, which they turned into a screenplay and submitted to the studio. They were turned down—and then Sister Act came out. The plaintiffs declined $1 million from Disney to settle, which was a mistake; eventually, the judge found in favor of Disney.

11. THEY WERE SUED AGAIN IN 2011.

This time, a nun by the name of Delois Blakely claimed that Disney and Sony Pictures sourced from her autobiography without permission. The filing stated that Blakely was a “young, Black, singing nun serving the street people and youths of Harlem,” which was the focus of her 1987 book The Harlem Street Nun.

12. DESPITE APPEARANCES, THE CHURCH SCENES WERE SHOT IN AN UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS NEIGHBORHOOD.

The church scenes were shot at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in San Francisco, which is in an affluent area of town. To make it look rundown, which was important to the plot, the street was dressed with trash and cars that appeared to be abandoned.

13. THE MOVIE WAS MADE INTO A MUSICAL.

Sister Act opened on Broadway in 2011 and received several Tony Award nominations that year. Unfortunately, it was often up against The Book of Mormon, which took the Tonys by storm. When the show went to London’s West End, Whoopi Goldberg made a limited appeareance—but this time, she played Mother Superior.

14. A REMAKE IS IN THE WORKS.

Could there be more sister shenanigans on the way? Maybe. Last year, Variety reported that writers and producers had signed on for the remake. Whoopi might be up for it:

“I generally say no to that, because so many of the nuns have passed and it just wouldn’t feel right for me,” she said on Watch What Happens Live. “I’m kind of old for it now. That’s not to say I wouldn’t do it, but it feels like there’s a new generation for Sister Act and so maybe I can be a nun now.”

Swedish automotive company Scania has created a massive 750,000 square foot clock made entirely of moving trucks, Engadget reports. Replacing gears and motors with massive engines, and clock hands with the latest line of Scania trucks, the company successfully created a functional timepiece that ran for 24 hours.

In the video above, Scania drivers and stunt coordinators reveal how they managed to accurately keep time for a full day without stopping or crashing. The stunt, which was designed to show how dependable Scania vehicles are, involved an amazing 90 drivers and 14 trucks. Though the Scania truck clock may not be the most practical or environmentally friendly way to keep track of the time, its huge scale and perfectly timed choreography are certainly impressive to watch.

[h/t Engadget]

Banner Image Credit: Scania Group, YouTube

Scientists looking to test the impact of solar radiation on their materials don’t need to send them to space. Instead they can pay a visit to the new solar simulator designed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which burns brighter than 20,000 suns, Gizmodo reports.

The light system at the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Science and Engineering in Switzerland is described in the journal Optics Express [PDF]. It consists of a seven-foot-wide cluster of 18 lamps lit by Xenon bulbs. When the beams of light converge, the luminous flux measures in at 21.7 MW m-2, or the equivalent of 21,700 suns. (That’s bright, but not as bright as some machines that have been built in the past: a particle accelerator in Berkeley, California is more luminous than a billion suns).

Such a powerful simulator could have numerous applications, like testing out solar power equipment and crafts built for space travel. A duplicate of the machine in Australia is accessible to researchers on an open-source basis. The energy of 20,000 suns likely isn’t a requirement for most projects—thankfully, the output level can be adjusted.

[h/t Gizmodo]

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To become an astronaut, one has to meet an extraordinary set of standards and excel physically, mentally, and emotionally. They also need to have a firm handshake.

That’s according to YouTube’s SciShow Space, which recently did an installment on the rarely discussed astronaut ability that’s all in the wrist—and the forearm, and the hands. You see, in zero gravity, space travelers don’t have much use for their legs, especially when performing extravehicular activities (EVAs), a.k.a. spacewalks. As SciShow host Caitlin Hofmeister explains, these outings require a ton of strength and agility, and because of friction, sometimes even result in a lost fingernail. In a 2005 NASA study, nearly half of all EVA training-related injuries were in the hands.

To prepare for the grueling nature of EVAs, astronauts train underwater leading up to the mission. They spend hours in a pool with their spacesuits on to simulate the experience of weightlessness, and to help get their muscles ready. They’re not totally without help, though—for one, they’re tethered to the ship. Also, NASA and General Motors have developed a “Robo-Glove” (officially called the Human Grasp Assist device) which, when responding to pressure from an astronaut hand, can double or even triple the user’s grip strength. (It’s now being applied to factory work as well.)

The Robo-Glove technology could one day even become a complete space suit. So yeah, while astronauts are currently engaged in exhausting, hours-long physical feats, they’re paving the way for a future where superhero-like spacesuits could help us explore the final frontier.

Check out more in the SciShow video below.

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

From the European discovery of America through to the land rushes and gold rushes of the 19th century, a host of explorers, navigators, cartographers, and prospectors have opened up the landscape of the United States over the years—and provided vivid accounts of everything they found. The stories behind the discovery and earliest descriptions of five of America’s most familiar natural landmarks are listed here.

1. OLD FAITHFUL // WYOMING

The giant geyser named Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park was discovered in 1870 by members of the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition, a team of explorers led by the surveyor-general of Montana, Henry D. Washburn, and explorer Nathaniel P. Langford. Old Faithful, so called because it erupts so frequently and predictably, was the first geyser in Yellowstone to be given a name.

On the afternoon of September 18, Langford and a party of his men traveled down the Firehole River and found themselves in what is now the Upper Geyser Basin. He later wrote:

“Judge, then, what must have been our astonishment, as we entered the basin at mid-afternoon of our second day’s travel, to see in the clear sunlight, at no great distance, an immense volume of clear, sparkling water projected into the air to the height of one hundred and twenty-five feet. ‘Geysers! geysers!’ exclaimed one of our company, and, spurring our jaded horses, we soon gathered around this wonderful phenomenon. It was indeed a perfect geyser … It spouted at regular intervals nine times during our stay, the columns of boiling water being thrown from ninety to one hundred and twenty-five feet at each discharge, which lasted from fifteen to twenty minutes. We gave it the name of ‘Old Faithful.’”

Yellowstone was given National Park status just two years later, with one of its earliest advocates, U.S. Army General Philip Sheridan, spending much of the latter part of his military career fiercely protecting its land from development—although his passionate environmentalism seemingly didn’t pass down to the men in his 1882 expedition, who used Old Faithful to do their laundry.

2. DENALI (FORMERLY MT. MCKINLEY) // ALASKA

While the native Koyukon living in the area knew of North America’s highest mountain long before anyone else, and Russian explorers may have come across it in the 1770s, the earliest known European description of Denali is from the British naval captain George Vancouver, who noted “distant stupendous mountains covered with snow and apparently detached from one another” while he was exploring the area in May 1794.

Other accounts would soon follow: in 1878, Arthur Harper and Al Mayo supposedly described “a great ice mountain off to the south which was plainly visible.” In 1885, Lieutenant Henry Allen is said to have made a sketch of the range, and in 1889 Frank Densmore traveled to the region and returned to the Yukon with such effusive praise for the mountain that locals started referring to it as “Densmore’s Mountain.” But the peak would remain obscure to the outside world until 1897, when a gold prospector named William Dickey wrote an account of his time panning for gold in the Susitna river near the mountain in the New York Sun:

“We named our great peak Mount McKinley, after William McKinley of Ohio, who had been nominated for the presidency and that fact was the first news we received on our way out of that wonderful wilderness. We have no doubt that this peak is the highest in North America, and estimate that it is over 20,000 feet high.”

He wasn’t far off: McKinley—which was officially renamed Denali in 2015—stands 20,310 feet tall.

3. NIAGARA FALLS // NEW YORK AND ONTARIO, CANADA

The French cartographer Samuel de Champlain navigated and mapped Lake St. Louis (now Lake Ontario) as early as 1604. Although it’s thought that he didn’t actually see Niagara Falls himself, he nevertheless included a description of it in his journals, based on the description from a young Algonquin that they met:

“That there was a fall about a league wide and a large mass of water falls into said lake: that when this fall is passed one sees no more land on either side but only a sea so large that they have never seen the end of it, nor heard that anyone has.”

The earliest eyewitness description of the Falls didn’t appear until 1683, when a Belgian-born Roman Catholic missionary named Louis Hennepin published a travelogue, Description de la Louisiane, translated into English in 1698:

“Betwixt the Lakes Ontario and Erie, there is a vast and prodigious cadence of water which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch that the universe does not afford its parallel. ’Tis true, Italy and Suedland [Sweden] boast some such things; but we may well say they are but sorry patterns, when compared to this of which we now speak.

At the foot of this horrible Precipice, we meet with the River Niagara … It is so rapid above this descent, that it violently hurries down the wild beasts while endeavoring to pass it to feed on the other side, they not being able to withstand the force of its current, which inevitably casts them above six hundred foot high.”

4. GRAND CANYON // ARIZONA

As early as the mid 16th century, a Spanish conquistador named Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led an expedition from modern-day Mexico as far north as Kansas, in the hope of finding the legendary city of Cíbola. Coronado’s expedition might not have succeeded in locating the Seven Cities of Gold, but it did at least take in the Grand Canyon.

On hearing word of a huge river in the middle of the desert from Native Americans living in the area, Coronado dispatched one of his commanders, García López de Cárdenas, along with around a dozen of his men to locate it. They likely arrived somewhere near to what is now Moran Point in September 1540, becoming the first non-Native Americans in history to see—and eventually explore and describe—the Grand Canyon. An account of their arrival later recorded that:

“After they had gone 20 days, they came to the banks of the river. It seemed to be more than 3 or 4 leagues [10-13 miles] in an air line across to the other bank of the stream, which flowed between them … [They] spent three days on this bank looking for a passage down to the river. It was impossible to descend, for after the three days Captain Melgosa and one Juan Galeras and another companion made an attempt to go down at the least difficult place, and went down until those that were above were unable to keep sight of them. They returned … in the afternoon, not having succeeded in reaching the bottom on account of the great difficulties which they found, because what seemed easy from above was not so, but instead very hard and difficult.”

5. DEATH VALLEY // CALIFORNIA

After gold was discovered in California in 1848, pioneers from all across the United States began to trek across country to try their luck prospecting in the West. The ill-fated Donner Party expedition from two years earlier—in which a group of emigrants became trapped by the snow in the Sierra Nevada, leading to the deaths of almost half the travelers and grisly stories of cannibalism—was still fresh in many people’s minds, so most of the prospectors delayed their journeys to escape the worst of the weather and risk the same fate. One party of 49ers, however, waited too long.

A group of around 100 wagons arrived in Utah in early autumn, much too late in the year to cross the Sierra Nevada without risk of getting snowbound. With little alternative but to spend the winter in Salt Lake City, they opted instead to take the “Old Spanish Trail,” a route that would take them around the southern edge of the Sierra Nevada and was, more importantly, traversable all year round. They set off in mid-October led by a local guide named Jefferson Hunt and, following the Beaver River, soon reached modern-day Minersville. From there, Hunt attempted an untried shortcut south into the desert. After nearly dying of thirst, the group was forced to turn back, effectively wasting a week’s worth of provisions. With their confidence in Hunt shot—and after a chance meeting with a pack train led by a New Yorker named Orson K. Smith, who had a trapper’s map showing a different route through Walker Pass—the party disbanded. Only seven wagons maintained their faith in Hunt and continued heading south to the Spanish Trail, while the remainder followed Smith. Barely 25 miles from the trail, however, Smith’s party began to regret their decision.

Ahead of them was a vast canyon, impossible to cross with a wagon. After several days trying to find a suitable route across, the majority of the 49ers turned back in the hope of catching up with Hunt and following his original route south around the mountains, while the rest set off around the edge of the canyon in the hope that, so long as they kept vaguely heading west, they would eventually reach the pass through the mountains.

Days and eventually weeks went by as the group headed further out into Nevada’s Great Basin Desert. With provisions running low, they were forced to drink from puddles and eat ice to quench their thirst, began slaughtering their oxen (and eventually their horses) for food, and dismantled their wagons for firewood. Disagreements among the group led to their numbers dwindling even smaller: Some turned south to try to intercept Hunt’s party, others headed north towards a distant range of snow-capped mountains in search of a better water supply, while one group—the Bennett–Arcan party, of around a dozen individuals—first headed south, but then changed direction and headed to what they thought would be safety. Instead, they were unwittingly walking straight into Death Valley.

What happened next was recorded by a 29-year-old fur-hunter turned gold prospector named William Lewis Manly, who had joined the 49ers just outside Provo, in Utah. When it became clear that the Bennett-Arcan party was hopelessly lost, the group set up camp beside a small spring (now called Bennett’s Well) while Manly and a fellow prospector named John Rogers climbed out of the valley and set off on foot to find aid. Two weeks and more than 250 miles later, they reached Rancho San Fernando, a small settlement 30 miles outside Los Angeles, where they managed to procure a mule, two horses (which wouldn’t make it), and additional supplies—before they headed back, another 250 miles across the Mojave Desert, into Death Valley to rescue the rest of their party.

They arrived in February 1850 to find that one of the group, a Captain Culverwell, had died just days before they returned, while other members of the group had given up hope and headed out of the valley themselves, presuming Manly and Rogers to be either lost or dead. Those that had remained followed them out of the valley and back towards civilization.

Manly and his fellow prospectors are today credited with the discovery of Death Valley, while Manly’s description of it—and of his and Rogers’ rescue of the Bennett-Arcan party—included in his memoir, Death Valley ’49, remains one of its earliest accounts:

“West and south it seemed level, and low, dark and barren buttes rose from the plain, but never high enough to carry snow even at this season of the year … The range next east of us across the low valley was barren to look upon as naked, single rock. There were peaks of various heights and colors, yellow, blue firery [sic] red and nearly black. It looked as if it might sometime have been the center of a mammoth furnace. I believe this range is known as the Coffin’s Mountains. It would be difficult to find earth enough in the whole of it to cover a coffin.

“Just as we were ready to leave and return to camp we took off our hats, and then overlooking the scene of so much trial, suffering and death spoke the thought uppermost, saying:—“Goodbye, Death Valley!” … Even after this, in speaking of this long and narrow  valley over which we had crossed into its nearly central part, and on the edge of which the lone camp was made for so many days, it was called Death Valley.”

It took another 23 days for the Bennett-Arcan party to cross the Mojave Desert and reach civilization. The shortcut Smith’s map had promised—and which had taken them away from Hunt’s original route—had led to a four-month-long ordeal.

All images courtesy of iStock.