The Lost Cosmonauts theory alleges that the Soviet Union launched humans into space before Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight — and that the cosmonauts onboard died. The strongest piece of supposed evidence came from Italian brothers Achille and Giovanni Battista Judica-Cordiglia, amateur radio operators in Turin who claimed to have intercepted transmissions from doomed Soviet spacecraft between 1960 and 1964. — Read the rest

The post Two Italian brothers claimed to have recorded dying Soviet cosmonauts that Moscow erased from history appeared first on Boing Boing.

In September 1944, nine American pilots were shot down during bombing raids on Chichijima, the largest island in the Bonin chain. Eight were captured. The ninth, who evaded capture, was 20-year-old George H. W. Bush.

The eight captured airmen — Lloyd Woellhof, Grady York, James Dye, Glenn Frazier Jr., — Read the rest

The post Japanese officers cannibalized four American POWs on a Pacific island in 1944 appeared first on Boing Boing.

The John Frum movement arose on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu no later than the late 1930s. Followers believe John Frum — often depicted as an American serviceman — will one day return bringing wealth and prosperity. In some versions, a native man named Manehivi appeared dressed in a Western-style coat using the alias "John Frum," promising houses, clothes, food, and transport. — Read the rest

The post A cargo cult in Vanuatu has been waiting for an American named John Frum since the 1930s appeared first on Boing Boing.

Emojli launched on August 29, 2014 — a social media app that restricted usernames and messages to emoji only. No letters, no numbers, no punctuation. YouTubers Tom Scott and Matt Gray built it after seeing the success of Yo, an app whose entire function was sending the word "Yo" to your contacts. — Read the rest

The post Emojli was a social network where the only language allowed was emoji appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Feast of the Ass was a medieval Christian celebration held on January 14, honoring the donkey that carried the Holy Family into Egypt. A girl and a child riding a real donkey would be led through town to the church, where the animal stood beside the altar during the sermon. — Read the rest

The post At a medieval church festival, the priest brayed like a donkey and the congregation brayed back appeared first on Boing Boing.

John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill — nicknamed "Fighting Jack" and "Mad Jack" — fought through the entire Second World War armed with a Scottish broadsword, a longbow, and a set of bagpipes. He graduated from Sandhurst in 1926, left the army a decade later to work as a newspaper editor and film extra, then re-enlisted when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. — Read the rest

The post The WWII commando who fought with a broadsword, longbow, and bagpipes appeared first on Boing Boing.

Surely, you've seen the old movie trope where our plucky heroes duck into an abandoned car to flee from some encroaching danger, fold down the visor, and have the keys drop right into their laps. Have you ever seen anyone do that in real life? — Read the rest

The post Why are car keys always kept in the visor in movies? appeared first on Boing Boing.

Kingdom Hearts is one of those weird franchises I've never understood, and which becomes more obscure every time I've attempted to do so.

So it's like Final Fantasy, but there are also a bunch of Disney characters there, along with a bunch of original characters that look like they've tumbled through a shared costume warehouse serving both franchises and a vat of hair gel. — Read the rest

The post I still don't know what Kingdom Hearts is about, but there's a new one coming appeared first on Boing Boing.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Larry David has been the master of awkward, people-talking-over-each-other comedy since Seinfeld, a talent he later honed on his long-running series Curb Your Enthusiasm.

With Curb officially over since 2024, I and many others have wondered what Larry is going to do next — and the answer seems to be "more Curb, but this time in a funny wig." — Read the rest

The post Larry David's new HBO show is basically historical Curb appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you were fired or excluded from a job due to your race, age, or other demographics unrelated to the work you're being paid to do, it's called discrimination. But in our late capitalist world, the yacht-owning powers-that-be call it surveillance pricing. — Read the rest

The post Washington Post sued over alleged surveillance pricing appeared first on Boing Boing.

Zack Snyder is known for many things. He brought an innovative, visually provocative rendition of Frank Miller's 300 to theatres! He was responsible for bringing Superman back to the big screen (again). He completely misunderstood the canonical role Pa Kent played in Clark Kent becoming Superman. — Read the rest

The post Jason Momoa won't touch the Escape from New York remake appeared first on Boing Boing.

Lowtein is a simple website that geolocates you and tells you about the cheapest proteins available in your location. Here in Pittsburgh, for example, it informs me that Giant Eagle has a special on pork chops (56% blow the regional average price), Martin's Food Market has inexpensive bacon, and that you can't easily go wrong at Aldis. — Read the rest

The post Website tracks protein meal deals for 171 cities in U.S. and Canada appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Information reports that Microsoft is considering several ways to set loose its XBox gaming division, including spinning it out as a separate company, restructuring it as a subsidiary, or establishing a joint venture. Reuters echoes the paywalled report, which is clear about the intended conclusion: selling it off. — Read the rest

The post Microsoft may spin off struggling XBox division appeared first on Boing Boing.

An early, sticker-sealed copy of Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. sold for $3m at auction today, stomping the record set in 2021. Chris Kohler writes on Bluesky that it's the first sticker-sealed copy (from Nintendo's earliest production runs) to go under the hammer. — Read the rest

The post Sealed 1985 Super Mario Bros game fetches record $3m at auction appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: If you're in the market for a budget-friendly alternative for desk-based work, this refurbished 2019 21.5-inch iMac offers a 4K display, solid everyday performance, and 1TB of storage for just $339.99 (reg. $1,499). 

If you think MacBooks are great, you aren't prepared for how much better iMacs are. — Read the rest

The post Turn your desk into a 4K workstation with this iMac for under $350 appeared first on Boing Boing.

The president of Taipei's Shih Hsin University told graduates to end their own lives if they couldn't handle the workforce, remarks that led to widespread anger. Yang Mien-chieh and Jake Chung of The Taipei Times add that he subsequently requested a two-month suspension of his duties and pay to atone. — Read the rest

The post College president suggests graduates "put a quick end" to themselves in commencement speech appeared first on Boing Boing.

Lake Powell is still more than 150 feet above dead pool, but it is only about 38 feet above minimum power pool, the line where Glen Canyon Dam stops generating hydropower. That is close enough to make the old "drain Lake Powell" debate feel less theoretical and more like reading the manual after the warning light comes on. — Read the rest

The post Lake Powell is approaching the line where Glen Canyon Dam stops making power appeared first on Boing Boing.

Grandpa Pudding Brains has found another election he may not respect: a Democratic mayoral primary in Washington, D.C., may serve as a reason to impose martial law.

Clearly, this man of the people has no respect for the will of the people. — Read the rest

The post Grandpa Pudding Brains set to invade Washington, D.C. appeared first on Boing Boing.

Reversing the egocentric high watermark of the MAGA Clown Reich, a newly re-annoited The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts shares this livestream:

How cheaply, and in the wrong font, Trump's slathering of his name on this monument to the arts, along with the absolute destruction of its message and integrity, is truly symbolic of what the Orange Menace is doing to all our institutions. — Read the rest

The post Watch the live Kennedy Center stream of Trump's name coming down (video) appeared first on Boing Boing.

In a Threads post, Craig Brittain, a former Arizona Senate candidate, says an FBI agent confronted him while he was protesting ICE at Delaney Hall in Newark, and the alleged agent refused to give his name.

Ignoring the grossness of an FBI visit for protesting peacefully, or the obscene amount of research the "Agent" had with him: the stranger detail is the new FBI outfit. — Read the rest

The post The FBI's protest-harassment fit has sponsors appeared first on Boing Boing.

Mel Fisher's treasure hunters are still pulling Spanish Empire leftovers out of the Florida Keys, and this time the ocean coughed up a 22-pound silver bar.

After hitting the object with a knife and examining the surface, Nicholas said he saw telltale markings that were consistent with a silver bar.

— Read the rest

The post Mel Fisher's treasure hunters find another chunk of Atocha silver appeared first on Boing Boing.

Residents of the Longfellow neighborhood in Minneapolis have been reporting loud, unexplained explosions for several decades. The booms mostly occur on summer nights and have been described as "house-shakingly loud" and low-pitched, distinct from a car crash or gunshot.

In 2010, the Minneapolis Police Department's Third Precinct said that while fireworks and exploding electrical transformers could account for half the noises, "the rest were unexplained." — Read the rest

The post Minneapolis has been hearing unexplained booms for decades and nobody can figure out why appeared first on Boing Boing.

In April 1977 the Japanese trawler Zuiyō Maru, fishing east of Christchurch, New Zealand, pulled up a decomposing carcass about 10 meters long. The Zuiyo-maru carcass had "a 1.5-m-long neck, four large, reddish fins, and a tail about 2.0 m long," and its appearance "resulted in speculation that it might be the remains of a sea serpent or prehistoric plesiosaur." — Read the rest

The post A 1977 trawler hauled up a carcass that Japan took for a sea monster appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: The flowkey Piano Learning app is a fun way to pick up a new hobby. Learn to read sheet music and develop proper technique at your own pace with this 5-year subscription for just $79.99 (reg. $899).

If learning a new instrument is one of your bucket-list items, this 5-year subscription to the flowkey Piano Learning App is an easy way to hit that milestone. — Read the rest

The post Score 5 years of piano lessons with flowkey for only $80 appeared first on Boing Boing.

Here's a question: when was the last time you went out to the store and got yourself a physical gift card for online games retailer Steam? Here's another question: when was the last time you saw an online scammer requesting a Steam gift card as an advance fee before releasing their millions to their victim? — Read the rest

The post Steam is killing physical gift cards to cut off scammers appeared first on Boing Boing.

When I say scammers are using the hantavirus, I don't mean they're engineering devious biological weapon attacks (although I'm sure they would if they could.) It feels like it's barely been any time at all since a hantavirus outbreak left a Dutch cruise ship stranded and quarantined. — Read the rest

The post Scammers are already using the hantavirus to fleece people appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: The Claude AI Professional E-Degree is on sale for $19.99 (MSRP $49) through June 14 and includes hands-on training for prompting, automation, integrations, workflows, and practical Claude AI productivity skills.

Every once in a while, the internet collectively decides one AI tool is suddenly the main character. — Read the rest

The post Claude AI is having a moment — this $20 course helps you keep up appeared first on Boing Boing.

Cicada 3301 is the name of "three sets of puzzles posted under the name '3301' online between 2012 and 2014." The first appeared on 4chan on January 4, 2012, and ran for nearly a month; a second came in 2013, and a third in 2014. — Read the rest

The post An anonymous group posted internet puzzles to recruit code-breakers, then vanished appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Yuba County Five were five young men from Yuba County, California, "each with mild intellectual disabilities or psychiatric conditions," who went missing after a college basketball game on February 24, 1978. Their car "was found abandoned in a remote area of Plumas National Forest, on a high mountain dirt road far out of their way back to Yuba County." — Read the rest

The post Five men left a basketball game in 1978 and drove into a mystery appeared first on Boing Boing.

New York, baby! Greatest city in the world! Or at least it is for a few hours this morning, because it's playing host to a massive inflatable bust of Elon Musk that appeared unannounced in Times Square.

The inflatable, which is a shockingly good likeness, depicts a shirtless Musk giving his usual gormless, dead-eyed grin, albeit sporting a few new tattoos. — Read the rest

The post Giant inflatable Elon Musk appears in Times Square, protesting Grok's lack of limits appeared first on Boing Boing.