The remains of a Neanderthal infant were found in a cave in Israel, dating back more than 50,000 years. The skeleton, named Amud 7, was surprisingly complete, and yielded some surprising findings. The growth of the teeth showed that only two had erupted, making the child around six months old at death. But the size of the brain case and the limb bones indicated a child that would be around 12-14 months old! The bones of Amud 7 were compared with known specimens of Neanderthal children who were somewhat older at death, and the conclusion is that Neanderthal children grew at an astonishing rate in the first year. 

The energy demands of such growth imply that nutrition was abundant where they lived. Neanderthals began eating solid food at about six months, just like ancient and modern homo sapiens. We don't yet know if Neanderthal children may have started walking at a much earlier age. But is this "abnormal" in the line of human development? It's possible that the line that became homo sapiens is the outlier in that human infancy is longer than it could have been. Read more about Neanderthal babies at ZME Science. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: AI/ZME Science)  

When I first moved to my current home, my neighbors were up in arms because my ten-year-old was out in the creek turning rocks over to find crawfish. Didn't I know that's not safe? Honestly, I wouldn't have expected anything less from her. Many people who grew up as free-range children lament the regimented lifestyles of today's youngsters, because it can result in anxious young adults ill-equipped to navigate the world. But we won't be going back to those days. Back then, there was safety in numbers, and now you can't even find other children except at school and play dates. Kids still need time, freedom, and risk to develop competence and confidence. So what can we do? 

One thing we can do is replicate some of the elements of free play and exploration with designed spaces that are less sterile and obvious and more open to imagination. Children want to try things they've never done before, and it helps if they get to figure it out themselves. This TED-Ed lesson looks at some of the factors that go into slightly risky play that helps children develop their own agency. The downside is that these kinds of playgrounds will inevitably cost money to use.  

In 1971, Apollo 14 became the third mission to land on the surface of the Moon. Alan Shephard and Edgar Mitchell reached the lunar surface while Stuart Roosa remained in orbit. To move scientific equipment around the Moon, NASA commissioned the creation of two-wheeled handcart called the Mobile Equipment Transporter (MET).

Jalopnik notes that the two tires on the MET were the first air-filled tires to reach the Moon. Goodyear considered possible options for the airless, rock-strewn terrain and settled on smooth, tread-less tires filled with nitrogen.

Shephard and Mitchell used the MET to cover two miles across the Moon. But the cart was so cumbersome that they quickly decided to just carry it, which was manageable in gravity 17% that of Earth's.

When you think of immigration, you have to consider why someone would want to move to a different nation, which almost always involves the promise of a better life. The nations of the world vary greatly in population, from city-states like Singapore and Vatican City to giants like China and India, so a map or list using percentages can be surprising. Brilliant Maps sorted all this out, and their results seem to show that people tend to move to smaller countries. This is a bit deceiving, since one person moving to a tiny country shifts the percentage more than one person moving to a huge nation. But you may still be surprised. There is one country on earth that is 100% populated by people born elsewhere, and you might be able to guess which it is. There's also one country that has no immigrants. The United States is nowhere near the top nor the bottom.

The image above showing the nations with more than 30% immigrants has two sizable countries. In Saudi Arabia, native-born citizens are supported by oil money through the government, so they hire people from other countries to do the work (smaller oil states do likewise). Australia just seems like a great place to live, despite the deadly wildlife.   

Besides the maps, there is an accompanying list of countries ranked by the percentage of immigrants, which also tells you where people want to live if they have the opportunity, the guts, and the wherewithal. -via Nag on the Lake 

The Garpenberg Zinc Mine in Sweden stretches to 1,120 meters (3,675 feet) below sea level, and even further from the earth's surface. The company that owns the mine, Boliden, thought "Hey! let's host a foot race down there!" And the idea of the World's Deepest Marathon was born. It happened last October, when 55 runners took off, wearing helmets with lanterns, and ran 26 miles in the darkness. The temperature stayed at 75°F and the humidity was at 72%. No electronic devices were allowed, so they ran in silence as well as darkness. To make 26 miles, they ran from one end of the mine to the other and back, eleven times. 

James Mason hadn't run a marathon in ten years, but he was intrigued by the idea and entered. He had never been inside a mine, though. The race was very different, because there was no music, and no scenery- just gray walls every inch. Mason was amazed to find himself crossing the final finish line first! He tells us about his experience at The Guardian. -via Metafilter 

The title is "She Holds Me Like This." Is it a love song or a cry for help? The song sounds like the cat is having the time of his life, while the expression on his face ranges from terror to anger to resignation. You know how cats are- some of them would rather die than admit they are enjoying your company, even when they very much do.  

A bangin' song, a black cat, wrestlers, musicians that include a penguin, and unhinged animation make for an earworm. This is Frugit, who is both a musician and a cat who works in a biscuit factory. Another song makes it clear that he has a great relationship with his human, but like any cat, he has days when he thinks the world is against him. Frugit can be philosophical, and he knows how to relax like nobody's business. See more of Frugit's animations, musical and not, at Instagram. 

In October of 1996, Dr. Jonathan Reed was hiking with his dog near Snoqualmie Pass in Washington state when the dog confronted a mysterious bipedal being about five feet tall with gray skin. The being zapped the dog with a torch or some other weapon, causing the dog to explode. Reed then struck the being with a branch and knocked it cold. Then he found the "alien's" spacecraft, which was a black obelisk floating in the air. Reed wrapped up the alien and took it home, assuming it was dead, and stored it in his freezer. Over the next few days, he saw evidence that it wasn't dead. It moved, opened it eyes, and moaned. Reed named the alien Freddy and took video of it. At least, that was his story.

Reed gained quite a bit of fame among UFO enthusiasts, especially after he told the story on Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM radio show. Even after Reed's story was debunked, it was passed from person to person. He later went viral in Mexico, where his story was revived on TV. Reed even demonstrated an artifact from the alien, which caused havoc with TV cameras. Read what we found out about Jonathan Reed and his notorious alien encounter at UNMYST3.   -via Strange Company 

(The image above is unrelated, but you can see Reed's photos here.)

Despite what you've heard, people who speak British English and those who speak American English can understand each other, most of the time, once you get away from the most extreme accents. You get used to the differences once you've listened for a while. However, once social media became a thing, suddenly millions of people who previously communicated only in speech were suddenly typing out their thoughts for the world to see. That's when Laurence Brown, who makes a living comparing Britain and the United States, noticed some writing quirks that appear in American English, but wouldn't happen in Britain. 

He's not really picking on Americans, but pointing out that some of these mistakes arise only because of the differences in how Americans use the language, which he explains along the way. There are also writing mistakes common in British English that would never, or rarely, happen in America, and he promises to make a video about those in the future.

The police force of Westlake, Ohio maintain a program called Are You Okay? It provides welfare checks on elderly people living alone. Every day, they call the person. If no one answers, police go to the home for a face-to-face check of wellbeing.

A few days ago, officers went to the home of a 91-year old woman who had not answered her daily call. They feared for the worst. Instead, WABI 5 News reports, they found the woman alive and well. She had a good reason for not answering her phone: she was attempting to beat her high score on a video game.

-via Jake Lucky

East Germany erected the Berlin Wall in 1961 to keep residents from fleeing to the west. They kept fleeing, and many (estimated between 138 and 200) died in their attempt, most of them shot by East German authorities. In 1979, two families managed to escape in a homemade balloon, but a later attempt ended in tragedy. 

Winfried Freudenberg and his wife Sabine surreptitiously gathered materials and built their own balloon, but instead of hot air they planned to use natural gas to avoid detection of a flame. Sadly, they were seen as they were filling the balloon. As police approached, Winfried untethered the half-filled balloon solo. With little gas and without the weight of Sabine, his flight plans were useless, and the erratic flight ended in Freudenberg's gory death. The kicker was that this all happened in March of 1989, only a month before East Germany began allowing crossings into the west. The Berlin Wall was completely defunct only a few months later. Read the story of Winfried Freudenberg at Amusing Planet.  

Orange cats have a lot of features in common. Most (but not all) are large, a bit dense, very much food-motivated, and have an inflated sense of themselves. They can be adorably goofy. Orange cats also tend to be more vocal than other cats, and most of their vocalizations seem to be complaints. None more so than Dave. Dave looks like a cross between my Apollo and Marmalade of Cole and Marmalade fame, and he's a typical orange cat. And he suffers so. 

Dave lives with Kat and Jackson, plus his mother Natilla (who was rescued in Costa Rica while pregnant) and his sister Gandalf, who all treat him terribly. Poor Dave! Has any cat ever had to deal with such indignities? His wretched life is chronicled in a series called The Suffering of Dave. This is entry six, and you will find all the other episodes at YouTube. You can see more of Dave and his entire family at Instagram. 

A mondegreen is a word for misheard lyrics. The term came about in 1954, when American writer Sylvia Wright reminisced about hearing the song "The Bonnie Earl o' Moray" and getting a line very wrong. It was "They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / And laid him on the green," but Wright was a child and heard it as a double murder because she thought the last line was "and Lady Mondegreen."

It happens all the time. The most famous are Elton John singing "Hold me closer, Tony Danza" and Jimi Hendrix singing "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy." There are a ton of them recalled from personal experience in a post at the GenX subreddit. Some of my favorites are:

Big Ol'Jebediah
we goin’ to Carolina
we gonna tear that line up
Big Old Jed had a light on

Two buckets of parasites, grab a spoon we’ll eat tonight
Two chickens to paralyze, pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight 
Two ticks and a pair of lice, back your bags we leave tonight 

Bakin Carrot Biscuits

slow moving Walter, fire engine guy

thirty thieves and the Thunderchief

Wasted away in my gorilla suit

We hold on a llama

Even of you don't recognize the original songs, you still have to laugh. There's a lot more eye-opening mondegreens at reddit.  

(Image credit: The NeatoShop) 

Okay, we know that when tectonic plates collide, they can push up huge mountains. We know this because it's still happening in the Himalayas. Hundreds of millions of years ago, this happened on an even bigger scale, producing enormous "supermountain" ranges. The way they figured this out is pretty neat, involving the radioactive decay of the uranium contained in zircon. This happened somewhere around 650 million years ago, before there was life on land. These mountains eventually eroded away over a long time, which coincided with the Cambrian Explosion, and may have even sparked it.

This theory came about as scientists worked backwards to explain the effects. Now, in science, we want experiments to be replicable, and that's not really possible in geology. But as complicated as the story is, they found that this wasn't the first time it happened in earth's history. And that's what replication is in geology. -via Damn Interesting

The US produces more oil than any other country, but our oil reserves are tiny compared to the Persian Gulf region, which is split into many countries. The gulf itself wasn't there before major flooding at the end of the last ice age, but people of the region were already using found bitumen for adhesion and waterproofing. Oil as a modern fuel was discovered there in 1908, and drilling for it has fueled our machines ever since. But those massive oil reserves have a history going back 35 million years.  

The abundance of hydrocarbons in the Middle East has to do with the collision of two major tectonic plates. We know that the Himalayas were formed when the Indian Plate crashed into Asia, forcing the mountains to rise. In the Middle East, however, the collision of the Arabian Plate and the Eurasian Plate is (yes, it's still happening) causing mayhem underground instead, bending and breaking rock plates. How this creates oil and gas and room for it to collect is explained in geologic terms at the Conversation. 

(Image credit: CIA/Library of Congress) 

The sculpture known as The Thinker by Auguste Rodin is familiar to everyone. Even if you've never been to France and never studied art, you've seen memes of the statue, often on a toilet. But what inspired this muscle-bound intellectual and his contemplation? Who was he? And what's he thinking about, anyway? 

Rodin had a hard road to artistic acclaim. First his sculptures were not good enough, then they were too good and were thought to be a fraud. After finally securing his reputation in the art world, Rodin took on a project that consumed him, and even though it was ultimately for naught, it inspired The Thinker. It began as just one of many sculptures for the project, but became the dominant element. And although Rodin used professional live models, it is supposed to be a particular person that you know of. This TED-Ed video explain how The Thinker came about.