What’s the origin of facial erections in turkeys?
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Improbable Research asks the very question you all were wondering. The snood – the long fleshy appendage above the beak, is what erects, becoming red as it engorges with blood. (The snood photo we reproduce here is from the Homegrown Hobby Farm blog.) Rebecca T. Kimball and Edward L. Braun…
In the 1930s, cigarette packs predicted the future
In the 1930s, This Age of Power and Wonder was a collection of scifi prophecies that could be found in the curiousest of places — cigarette boxes. Companies of the early 20th century would often include collectible cards with their foodstuffs and tobacco smokes. The New York Public Library has an extensive collection of these…
Why is Cthulhu on this 300-year-old gravestone?
The Reverend Ichabod Wiswall (1637-1700) is a historical footnote. When he’s remembered, it’s for giving the first funeral sermon in America, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. So why is there a Lovecraftian cephalopod on his gravestone? Wiswall was responsible, with the Reverend Increase Mather, for persuading Queen Mary to create the 1692 charter which united the colonies…
Before he wrote Candide, Voltaire helped pioneer science fiction
Before he wrote the famous eighteenth-century novel Candide, Voltaire wrote non-fiction books about Newtonian physics, and fiction about giant aliens visiting Earth from Sirius and Saturn. Cory Gross from Voyages Extraordinares explains. Voltaire is a crucial link in the great chain of authors — especially French ones — who forged the Scientific Romance. Born François-Marie…