There was a female Pope!!!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope...XqfONwA#Legend

"subsequent popes were subjected to an examination whereby, having sat on a so-called sedia stercoraria or "dung chair" containing a hole, a cardinal had to reach up and establish that the new pope had testicles, before announcing "Duos habet et bene pendentes" ("He has two, and they dangle nicely"),[15] or "habet" ("he has them") for short.[16]"

Fun job.

Herbert Yardley, poker author and the most controversial figure in the history of US cryptography.

His National Security Agency bio is an even better read, though it's a bit long at 23 pages.

Thanks! Really interesting. Definitely going to look into his poker book. The description sounds great:

I have a copy. It's an interesting read, full of early-mid 20th century casual misogyny and racism, and some interesting self-presentation. They say everyone is the hero of his own story, and this is definitely an example of that. The poker info is ludicrously dated, and doesn't consider things like effective stacks or position very much at all, but would likely make you a winner in a pre-hold'em dealers choice game.

His first chapters set in small-town Indiana starting in about 1905 are fascinating. Although he never names the town, I figured out that it was Worthington from some references to things nearby. Of course, if I'd just googled his name, I could have found the same info...

Mostly common sense now, but at that time he was clearly on another level. His reasonings on when and how to bluff were pretty much perfect.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy

Rosemary Kennedy's story is so wild that I'm curious if I'm the only person who had never heard of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheese_mite

http://microbialfoods.org/microbe-guide-cheese-mites/

Caulerpa taxifolia - the world's largest uni-celled organism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caulerpa_taxifolia



A single cell can be 6"-12".

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0129160728.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet

Am I the only one who didn't know that all alphabets on earth originated from the same source? Caananite migrant workers who wanted to mimic what their Egyptian bosses were doing, but didn't have time to learn 1500 hieroglyphs. Their shortcut gave rise to all known alphabets and brought reading and writing to the masses.

Forgive the yootube but the concept of plants growing true to seed or not was mind-expanding for me. Only 1 in 80,000 apple trees produce good tasting fruit.

His "Education of a Poker Player" was the first book I ever read about poker.

I read of it long ago. Disgusting.

Interesting video, spoiled slightly by coming off a bit as an infomercial.

Sorry to Utoob again, but if you're interested in this kind of stuff, Weird Explorer is great.
He finds crazy fruits from around the world. As someone raised on a standard ~dozen fruits, this guy makes me want to travel more than any pretentious Instagram snapper does!

jfc this is amazing, especially the crab apple part, they have those all over, my driveway was lined with crab apple trees and we always wondered why on earth they planted crab apples instead of regular apples - figured maybe it was to feed the deer or something

also, i thought the rosemary kennedy thing was pretty common knowledge but also from mass so maybe because of that

Not sure if it's been posted but apparently the frontal lobotomy was a complete scam made up by quacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/an-...YJKKSRYMKGZEE/

My first thought when reading it is that it's such a bizarre story involving such a prominent family that I must be out of the loop and everyone else knows.

I don't know if I'd classify it as a scam from this reading. Science (maybe that should be in quotes) was a bizarre thing back then. For example this story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

I feel like Money started off with good intentions, and was convinced this would work. I could see that being true of the lobotomy inventors as well.

It seems like at that time there was so much ego in the scientific community, not enough people challenging them, and a population that was overly optimistic of scientific advances. Seems like a perfect storm for these doctors to take a shot without anywhere near enough evidence to back up what they're doing.

I'm not excusing it, and DEFINITELY not excusing continuing to do it after seeing the results, but I don't know if they were trying to scam people.

Where does that "fact" come from?

They say

His wikipedia article is actually pretty lame, but this story about the Scrooge McDuck (or Dagobert Duck, as he's called in Germany) bandit is very interesting.

And that is not true now?

Curtis Cullin, inventor of the hedgerow-cutting attachment for tanks during the Normandy invasion.

Garick may have already seen this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_C...an_Cup#Anomaly

Was hoping for something better from Cockboat that was abbreviated C...an_Cup#Anomaly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gij%C3%B3n

Rai stones - stone money used in Micronesia, the biggest being 3.6 metres (12 ft) in diameter and 50 centimetres (20 in) thick, and weighs 4,000 kilograms (8,800 lb).