In 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange took pictures at a pea pickers camp Nipomo, California, for a federal government agency. One of the images, a closeup of Florence Owens Thompson later dubbed Migrant Mother, illustrated Great Depression desperation as it was published and republished ever since and became a staple of history textbooks. Thompson was stranded at the camp with her husband and seven children after their car broke down. Lange never asked her name, and no one knew who she was for almost 40 years after the photo session. Neither she nor Lange made any money from the classic image. 

Thompson was not proud of her role as the face of depression-era poverty. It was the lowest time of her life, and that's how the world remembers her. Thompson's children felt differently, as the photo spurred government action to help migrant workers. And it wasn't the only picture taken of the family that day. See more photos from the roll of film that gave us Migrant Mother, and read how Thompson's family leveraged her fame late in life, at Vintage Everyday. -via Nag on the Lake 

Learn more about the life of Florence Thompson in a previous video. 

In this spooky cartoon, an evil necromancer raises an army of the dead to go to war with his enemy. As most of the skeletal soldiers trudge off to battle, there are other tasks to be done. Two castle guards are left behind, and they are quite surprised to find themselves reanimated. One of them decides he wants nothing to do with the current situation, and wants to go back to resting in peace. He enlists the help of his comrade in that plan. But they find it's not a simple thing to die when you're already dead. That's when it starts to look like a Looney Tunes story, with various methods of destruction that just don't work. However, there's a secret to the magic spell, which eventually makes sense. Or does it?  

Back to Bones is a collaborative project from GreasyDoesIt and BlackDrop_Animation, who spent a year making it. -via the Awesomer 

Rikers Island is known as New York City's jail, but it's more than that. The island itself started out as rather small, about 90 acres, but has ballooned to more than 400 acres. This was because of its long use as a garbage dump, starting in the late 19th century. Mountains of refuse and ashes added mass to the island- and rats followed. The city fought the rats with dogs, then poison gas and poisoned bait, to no avail.

In 1914, the new head of the city's Department of Corrections hired a chaplain and invited him to bring his cat to the island. The cat, named Bill, proved to be a great rat hunter, but the idea of using cats to control rodents didn't catch on at the time. It was many years later that corrections officers began bringing unauthorized cats to the island. The abandoned cats formed a huge feral colony that still inhabits the island, preying on rats long after the garbage dump was closed. The organization Rikers Island Cat Rescue spays and neuters the cats and tries to find permanent homes for them. Read the history of Rikers Island and its cats at The Hatching Cat. 

Her dogs love to play hide and seek, but how good are they at it? Mom put on a skin suit the same color as their very white house and stood behind a shelf, rendering her body invisible. When Dad brought the German shepherd home, they didn't know how long it would take him to find Mom. 

"Where is she? Is she in here? No, in here? No. I know she's in here, I can smell her! Dad, give me a hint! Maybe I missed her the first time around. No, but she's got to be here. It's time to put my nose into high gear and find Mom!"

When the dog finally finds her, he's not at all bothered by the odd way she's dressed. Maybe she dresses oddly all the time. This couple also has two golden retrievers, so they tried the same trick on them, one at a time.



It took them longer to find Mom, with more confusion and some barking involved. You can see more of the dogs Leo, Tiger, and Nala at Instagram. 

Design Boom introduces us to the work of Hayden Clay Williams, a stained photographer and digital media artist in Brooklyn. Recently, Williams has expanded his range of media to include stained glass.

His three published sculptures juxtapose the refinement of stained glass with the ordinary and forgettable forms of the egg carton, the traffic cone, and wet floor sign.

I associate stained glass with church windows that, for over a thousand years, have illustrated Biblical narratives for worshippers. This panel likewise tells a story of pride, folly, and fall.

History mentions 1,709 battles on land and sea that the Romans and their successors fought from the foundation of the city in 753 BC until the fall of the Principality of Theodoro (a Byzantine successor state in Crimea) in 1475.

Of those battles, Rome won 916, lost 512, and reached draws in 41. 236 occurred during civil wars, so whether Rome won or lost those is a matter of debate.

Iosif Lazandis of Harvard University conducts quantitative studies of historical data and produces interactive tools with them. With his Roman battle explorer, you can see the conflicts year by year or sort by enemy, era, or results. 

Queen Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen, ruled over England for nearly 45 years and never married. She didn't see the upside of having a husband, but that didn't stop her from using her single status for political purposes. Marriages between royalty meant alliances, and the possibility of marrying a sitting monarch was tempting to numerous other rulers. Elizabeth kept the option of beginning vague and discrete diplomatic negotiations with nations that were either threatening England or had something she wanted. 

Ivan the Terrible was the Russian tsar, and prized closer relations with England, but he was a terrible match for Elizabeth. He was a murderous despot who had already outlived several wives. The tsar didn't want to take no for an answer, no matter how vague Elizabeth's rejection by proxy was. His rage caused him to insult the queen and shatter a trade agreement with England. But there is evidence that Ivan tried to court Elizabeth long distance a second time. Even after that, he kept up a dream of marrying another English royal. Read how the queen broke the tsar's heart, or more likely his pride, at Smithsonian. 

(Image collage by Meilan Solly) 

We brought you Bill McClintock's new mashup of "Ghostbusters" on Monday for dancing at your Halloween party, but now we have a much shorter Halloween mashup that will make you laugh, from Dustin Ballard of There I Ruined It (previously at Neatorama).

The secret of Ghostbusters Super Mashup Party, as this is called, is in the clip selection. You have the unmistakable beat from Ray Parker Jr's "Ghostbusters" overlaid with vocal clips from a variety of other songs. Many of them rhyme nicely, which is funny enough, but you also get different clips quoting the movie together, and a tribute to the best Halloween trick-or-treat candy you can receive. Even the way Ballard labeled the clips is designed to bring out the funny. Far from ruining "Ghostbusters," this makes it into a one-minute giggle to brighten your day.  

Sponsors can find the full two minute extended version of this at Ballard's Patreon site. 

In the 1970s, we learned about the possibility that ergot, a rye fungus, may have cause the strange behavior of some young women that eventually led to the Salem witch trials of 1692-3. You can read about that theory in a previous article. It was criticized and debunked rather quickly, but the theory went viral, in a chain of events Jorge Cham illustrated in this comic. The story went viral long before the internet, because (as journalists and scientists know) the initial story makes the front page, and the retraction is always on page ten or so. And people are still spreading the ergot theory today.  

So what happened? Undergrad student Linnda R. Caporael had to write a paper for a history class. She was a science major, so chose a scientific approach to the Salem witch trials. When she later became a grad student, she submitted that paper to a science journal, which published it in 1976. The story was intriguing, and was soon covered by science journalists. Read how the erroneous theory was proposed and debunked, yet stayed with the public for more than 50 years so far. 

-via Strange Company 

Unitree Robotics shows off its new H2-X Kung Fu Legend Guardian robot by first terrifying us, then pulling back to make him seem useful and heroic. This robot can beat your car up while showing off its martial arts moves. It would probably make short work of hauling you in for questioning, and might break your bones while doing it. But oh, it's also useful for protection from bad guys, and its strength and quick reflexes could work for saving lives. But who decides whether it will be used for nefarious or humanitarian purposes? The H2-X Kung Fu Legend Guardian is not yet available, and might never be sold to the public. The video description has a CYA line: "Please use the robot safely and in a friendly manner." Don't hold your breath about that. All that said, I'd love to see the outtakes from this production.  -via Born in Space 

There are prison programs in which inmates care for dogs and cats, train service animals, and even learning pet grooming. But the Monroe County Detention Center in the Florida Keys is the only county jail with a zoo. It's only open to the public two days a month, and former inmates sometimes come back to visit the animals. It all started by accident. The jail took a flock of wild ducks in to keep them safe from highway traffic, and when word got around, people started bringing them unwanted animals. They also accepted rescued creatures, some quite exotic. 

More than 30 years later, the jail has a variety of animals sheltered underneath the building, which is on stilts. They have a a kinkajou, a zebu, a capybara, and an ostrich along with poultry, livestock, pets, and wildlife. Only nonviolent inmates with a low flight risk are allowed outside to care for the animals, and they enjoy the work. Read about the jail, the zoo, and its residents at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: Monroe County Sheriff's Office Animal Farm)

The Spanish band Broken Peach does elaborate stage shows that are as much a play as a concert. The combine visual storytelling with music into a huge production, and don't always cover their faces with paint. You can see what they look like without the theatrical makeup in other videos at their YouTube page. 

Broken Peach tours Europe constantly, but here in the US they are mostly known for their holiday videos, especially for Halloween. This year they bring us a hard rock version of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." They also incorporate parts of "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell into the song, and we get a small taste of a surprise song at the end. 

This song is so Halloweeny that they don't need their full body skeleton costumes, and instead they dress like Jackson in the classic 1984 video. Be assured that Broken Peach's glitchy twitchy dance moves are still part of the act. 

See Broken Peach's previous Halloween videos, too! 

One of the many downsides of being famous is that your body might eventually be stolen or end up on display for your fans. Or you might be dismembered and then remembered for only parts of it. There are reliquaries everywhere that contain the venerated remains of saints, or someone who could pass for a saint. There are also museums that display body parts of notorious characters that were separated from their bodies before or after death. Some museums have bones or organs from looted graves. And there are some people in these grisly displays who only became famous after death, because of the parts that were kept. 

Atlas Obscura offers a roundup of places you can see human body parts, more or less preserved, from the likes of Galileo, Chopin, Einstein, plus several saints and sinners. It might be inspiration for your next vacation, if you're into that sort of thing.   

(Image credit: Patrick) 

The Principality of Monaco is a historically and geographically fascinating country. The entire area is under a single square mile (0.8, to be precise), yet it has its own semi-sovereign government and, technically speaking, an army.

I say semi-sovereign because, by treaty, France has authority over Monagasque foreign affairs and economically dominates it. France maintains an embassy there. It's only 50 meters from the border of France.

-via Iain Cameron

Since the dawn of time (1993), people have yearned to play the famous first-person shooter video game Doom. Some people use desktop computers or video game consoles for this purpose.

Others, usually engineers, take up the challenge of running and playing Doom on unconventional platforms, such as refrigerators, lawnmowers, cooking pots, and human brain cells. It is possible to power the game powered with potatoes or using a rotary phone as a controller.

Kati, though, daringly ran the game on Clotty, which is an electrical gadget for tracking a woman's menstrual cycle--one that I gather that Kati invented and built herself.

-via Hack A Day