Water running off a stone building can cause real damage over time, so cathedrals and other classical stone buildings were equipped with gargoyles. The purpose of gargoyles was to direct rainwater away from a building, so they had to protrude away from the walls. And since this feature would be so noticeable, they were carved into the forms of dragons, animals, demons, chimeras, and human beings. Some were designed with humor, while others served as a warning against sin. The word gargoyle came from the French for "water conduit," although the original meaning was "throat." Most gargoyles directed water out of their mouths onto the streets below, which made them appear to be throwing up, but you didn't want to be outside during a rainstorm anyway. 

Kuriositas takes us on a tour of some of the more interesting gargoyles on European cathedrals and government buildings. Some have a well-known meaning behind them, while others are enigmas. They divert water through their mouths, with one exception at the end that may be a bit NSFW. 

(Image credit: Son of Groucho) 

If you've ever wondered about the functions of all those buttons Darth Vader wears on his chest, the secret is now out. They are controls for his cassette deck. Yes, Vader has achieved what we've all dreamed of at one time or another- carrying around our own soundtrack, so we have the best music for an entrance at our fingertips, plus mood music and sound effects for the appropriate times. Darth seems to prefer his own theme song to any other song, but he also has the mashup "Another One Bites the Bee Gees" by Craven Moorhaus. What else does he have on his favorite mixtape in that conveniant chestplate? 

Auralnauts hasn't posted a new Star Wars comedy series since they wrapped up Larry three years ago. Since this scene is labeled "Episode 1," you can bet there will be more to come. You can keep up at their YouTube channel. -via the Awesomer 

In the few short years between the Wright Brothers' first flight and World War I, airplanes really took off, so to speak. England, France, and Germany all used them in the war as bombers, which at first consisted of pilots throwing bombs by hand, but advanced quickly. 

The US did not enter the war until 1917, but for years beforehand had supplied the British with gunpowder and various explosive ordinance. These were produced by DuPont, who expanded their operations with new facilities across the eastern half of the country. Their workforce grew from 5,300 people in 1914 to 48,000 by 1918. And there were quite a few factory explosions. A rash of explosions during the war could be explained by the rapid expansion of the project, with many new factories and inexperienced workers. But there were plenty of eyewitness accounts of airplane sightings just before a factory disaster. Were German infiltrators spying on those munitions factories? Were they actually throwing bombs? It was hard to tell, since the reports came from ordinary citizens, many of whom had never seen an airplane before. At least one sighting was attributed to balloon toys. No evidence was ever found to prove or disprove the possibility that DuPont's gunpowder factories were the victims of German bombing. Read about those scary days at American Strangeness. -via Strange Company  

Researchers and engineers at the General Robotics Lab at Duke University have developed the Argus--a robot that can move in any direction. It doesn't have a back, front, or sides. It can move in any direction at once. Its central design principle is dynamic symmetry, which means that its propusive force can apply in any direction.

The video suggests sea urchins as an analogy. The Argus has 20 legs and 20 cameras, so it can move and see in any direction. If a leg or camera--or even a few of them--fail, the Argus can continue forward relentlessly hunting you across the lifeless postapocalyptic landscape of our futures. It's an unstoppable juggernaut.

-via David Thompson

YouTuber KoalaOK subtitled his wordless animated film Pit with "A Short Film About Human Nature." So you'd expect to see humans, right? Or maybe not- there are no humans in sight until halfway through the film. Instead, we get fantastical monsters fighting to the death over a piece of food. Are these weird creatures an analogy for humans? And are they really fantastical monsters? It doesn't matter; you're too caught up in the violence and creative animation. But then it takes a sharp left, and you're wondering if this is really a comedy. Okay, maybe, or maybe it's just a story with some funny parts. But which part is about human nature? Actually, all of it, but you'll need to stay through the credits because there's a whole new scene afterward. I guess you could call it a punch line. If you're interested in the animation process, there's another video about that. -via Memo of the Air  

People are traveling to Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington to celebrate the nation's 250th birthday this year. You might want to add a stop in New York, because the New York Public Library is offering something unique- beer brewed from George Washington's personal recipe. It was found in a journal Washington kept in 1757 while he led a Virginia militia during the Seven Years War. Notes from the 25-year-old Colonel instruct the brewer to use 30 gallons of boiled barley hops, three gallons of molasses, and a quart of yeast. 

This was a "small beer," not very alcoholic, but it was safer to drink than water for a traveling militia. The library partnered with a local brewer named TALEA Beer Co. to produce it. They toned down the molasses flavor somewhat and boosted the alcohol content to 6.5% to make the recipe palatable to modern consumers. They call it Liberty Lager. It will be available this summer at TALEA taprooms and New York restaurants. If you want to try making your own, the recipe is at Smithsonian. 

See also: George Washington's Whiskey: Not the Best. 

(Image credit: New York Public Library)

Grocery stores sell fruit in mesh bags because it's to their advantage for you to buy twelve oranges when you only need two. If the last few oranges go bad before you finish the bag, then you'll go buy more. You might even find a couple have gone bad as soon as you open the bag, because you can't inspect each orange in a five-pound bag before you buy them. They looked so good when you picked them up, and some of that is an optical illusion.  

However, it's all relative. Oranges with some green in them can still be perfectly ripe, but Americans won't buy those, because you can't really be sure. Our best strategy is to try different fruits from different stores and go back to the food vendor that delivers what you like. MinuteFood explains the illusions that grocery stores use to make food more appealing. The video is only six minutes long; the rest is a sponsor message. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

Nic C is a musician who samples music from classic television programs. He takes short slices--just a few notes each--of these famous songs and uses them to compose new music that is simulatenously original and familiar.

A game that combines food and geography is quite relevant to my interests. That game is FoodGuessr, which is a little like GeoGuessr, but it uses food instead of a location photograph. You'll be given a photograph of a dish and a description of its ingredients and preparation method. You have five guesses as to which country the food is from. You pick the country from a list, which is the most time-consuming part because they are arranged by continent and then by alphabet, which is tedious. If your first guess is wrong, they will tell you whether you are warm, hot, or very hot. You get 5,000 points for being right on the first guess, and lesser amounts for subsequent guesses. 

There are actually three games. You can compete with other players in the daily game, which has three rounds. Or you can play by yourself in the unlimited 5-round Quick Play mode. There's also a different game, called Plate Off where you are shown two different dishes, and you guess which is most liked globally. I first tried the Quick Play, where I did better than I expected.

No matter how you score, you'll learn about dishes from around the world that you might want to seek out and try. Or some you may want to avoid. -via Metafilter 

(Image credit: Joseagush) 

My Modern Met informs us the UK/Ireland division of the Subway restaurant chain has created a functional sleeping bag that looks like one of its iconic sandwiches.

The art project is called "Sleeping Bag-uette." It's modeled on Italian B.M.T. sandwich, but doesn't taste as good because it's made of fabric.

The company commissioned the project to promote its food with music festival attendees.

You can see a video of the sleeping bag in action on Instagram.

Some serial killers commit murder in the furtherance of other crimes, like bank robbery. Some do it for a sexual thrill. Some are lashing out at a world they believe did them wrong. But it takes a truly terrifying personality to kill over and over for no discernible reason at all. Experts go back and forth about psychopaths- are they a product of an awful childhood or are they born that way, and is that condition even real? 

The 20th century blueprint for psychopathy are the crimes of 19-year-old Charles Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate. Starkweather committed his first murder in November of 1957. Then on January 21, 1958, he killed Fugate's parents and two-year-old sister. Over the next eight days, the two traveled around Nebraska and Wyoming, killing almost everyone they encountered. The sensational murders inspired several movies including Badlands in 1973 and Natural Born Killers in 1994, plus the Bruce Springsteen song "Nebraska." Weird History brings us the story of Starkweather and Fugate and the trail of dead bodies they left behind them. 

The sitting room, of course. Lorelei Teegarden shared images of her grandmother's half bath, where she keeps her collection of miniature chairs. It's a work in progress, since she's been collecting them at least since Teegarden was a child. There are over 100 chairs at the time this picture was taken, and many are smaller chairs sitting on chairs. After posting pictures, other people offered to send her more miniature chairs.  

Honestly, a bathroom is the perfect place to display an eccentric collection, although I suspect this choice was in service of the pun. If you've always wanted to decorate a room in purple, black, or mermaids, the bathroom is the place to go wild. They are usually small rooms not easily visible from the rest of the house, so a different look will not disrupt the style of the home as a whole (much). Imagine you just have to "go," and find yourself among this delightful collection- you can't help but smile. See more pictures of the sitting room at Facebook. -via Messy Nessy Chic 

(Image credit: Lorelei Teegarden) 

You know this song- "We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters. It was heard at every wedding you went to for about twenty years, and a lot of graduations, too. You might think it pretty clever for a bank to use it in an ad inviting young couples to establish their accounts. But couldn't they afford to use the hit version? 

But that's backwards. "We've Only Just Begun" was written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols specifically to advertise The Crocker Bank in Mendocino, California. Local non-actors were recruited to appear in the commercial, which debuted in 1970. Richard Carpenter heard the ad, liked the song, and reached out to the ad agency for the music rights. The Carpenters recorded an expanded version that proved to be a hit and helped them win the Best New Artist Grammy in 1971. It's not the only advertising jingle that was so catchy it became a song, as you will learn in a list of nine such stories at Mental Floss.

The Incredible Mr. Limpet was a 1964 film starring Don Knotts as a man who magically turns into a fish and helps the Allies win World War II. It was a mix of live action and animation, and Mr. Limpet was drawn as a fish who had Knotts' most recognizable features. The movie was not a big hit, and today has a 40% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I loved it, only because I was five years old. So you might be surprised to learn that Hollywood spent years trying to produce a remake starring Jim Carrey.

The problem was that Carrey would be an animated fish for most of the film, and in the late '90s, he was a superstar and just too expensive to star in a movie in which his face wouldn't be shown. They tried to work around that by animating a fish with a photorealistic rendering of Carrey's face using motion capture technology. The results were terrifying, much worse than the drawing shown here. The movie was in development for around 18 years, but the core problem was never really solved, so the project ran out of steam and was abandoned. Read about the remake of The Incredible Mr. Limpet, and see the test footage of the fish with Carrey's face at Cracked. 

Middle Ground Lighthouse lies off of Newport News in Chesapeake Bay. Though built in 1891, it remains in nightly operation. Northern Virginia magazine reports that it's also been renovated and is available for sale as a functional house.