10 Book Burnings

This weekend, sadly, marks the anniversary of the bonfire of the vanities. Not that novel from the ‘80s, but the actual bonfire of the vanities, the event in 1497 when thousands of objects that might tempt people to sin were reduced to nothing but ash. Unfortunately, burnings such as this one weren’t that unusual – they have happened many times over the course of history and have cost us countless priceless works of art.

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Mental Floss

Ancient East Asian Found in Roman Empire

The discovery is the first good evidence of an Asian living in Italy during Roman times.

Researchers found his body on an imperial Roman estate and took dental samples. Why examine teeth? Well, the water you drink at birth leaves a distinct signature in your teeth. That water signature is in the form of oxygen isotopes, atoms of oxygen with different numbers of neutrons. Isotopes say something about the latitude and elevation of your birthplace—which in the case of our mystery man definitely wasn’t southern Italy.

Then the researchers tested his mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through your maternal lineage. And this fellow had east Asian genes. The finding appears in the Journal of Roman Archaeology.

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Scientific American

5 Sources of Alternative Energy You May Not Have Heard Of

As fossil fuels increasingly fall out of favor, many are looking into alternative energy sources to help us power our lives with a smaller impact on the environment. You already know about solar power and wind energy, and hydro-electric power and nuclear power have been around for decades. But scientists are increasingly looking to the natural world for additional solutions.

Here are 5 alternative energy sources that you may hearing more of soon:

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Physorg

Ancient Mongolian Tomb Holds Skeleton of Western Man

THE GIST:

* DNA analysis of 2,000-year-old bones found in eastern Mongolia reveal a man of Western heritage.

* At the time, the vast territory in and around Mongolia included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes.

* Two other skeletons found at the site show genetic links to people living in northeastern Asia.

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Discovery News

The Real Rules for Time Travelers

Time travel may in fact be possible, but it wouldn't work like in Back to the Future. (For one thing, you don't have worry about your parents failing to create you—you already exist.)

Einstein described our universe in four dimensions: the three dimensions of space and one of time. So traveling back in time is nothing more or less than the fourth-dimensional version of walking in a circle. All you would have to do is use an extremely strong gravitational field, like that of a black hole, to bend space-time. From this point of view, time travel seems quite difficult but not obviously impossible.

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Via: Discover Magazine

Ultra-high-strength composite metal foam

The ultra-high-strength composite metal foam created by Afsaneh Rabiei is a highlight of a well-traveled career during which the researcher has tried to learn everything she can about advanced materials. The result: a brand new material that can save energy and lives.

“Basically, it is a new material for all sorts of safety devices,” said Rabiei, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University.

Rabiei’s invention isn’t the first metal foam, but she says it’s the strongest. The main weakness of existing metal foams is the varying sizes of their cells — tiny pockets of space inside the material. Instead, Rabiei used cells of standard sizes and combined them with a metallic matrix to support the cell walls.

After five years of work —with a group of her students — she has the results. Rough traffic accident calculations show that by inserting two pieces of her composite metal foam behind the bumper of a car traveling 28 mph, the impact would feel the same to passengers as impact traveling at only 5 mph.

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Via: Live Science

15 Big Cheats and Fakers Who Won

There are all sorts of fakers and cheats; many win and get away with it, many others get caught and shunned for their actions. Some are even found out, but walk away as though nothing happened, because the public simply doesn’t care. These are the 15 biggest cheats, fakers and frauds who won. Some kept their winnings, and some are hated and reviled to this day.

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Via:Manolith

15 Cute Animals That Will Cause You Horrible Harm

When we think of animals that will destroy us, rend us limb from limb, and leave us in a bloody mess, we usually thing of the huge and horrifying. Which means we forget about the real threats: the tiny, the cute, the gorgeous. The animals at which we ooh and aaah over, but are deadly, poisonous and generally all around nasty. And, after writing this list, I've come up with two pieces of advice. 1) Never go in the water. 2) Never visit Australia. Combine the two, and it's even more true: never go in the water in Australia! Seriously, terrifyingly deadly critters everywhere.

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Via: Brainz

4 Lost Civilizations (and what might have happened to them)

I’ve been to Pompeii, the Italian town that was buried by the 79 CE eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. To see a town that was abandoned so abruptly, coupled with plaster casts of the victims who weren’t able to evacuate in time, was positively chilling. I can only imagine that visiting the remains of the four civilizations Nathan Johnson from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside dug up for this story would be equally sad and thought-provoking. Nathan is an Economics major who came to UW-P from the University of Minnesota, making me think he has an affinity for below-zero temperatures. – Stacy Conradt

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Via: Mental Floss

6 More Cannibal Killers

In comparison to the worldwide murder rate, cases of cannibalism are rare, but they stand out because of the horror they instill in the rest of us. In addition to the six cases featured in the post 6 Horrifying Modern Cannibals, I found these six cannibal stories from all over the world.

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Via: Mental Floss

10 More Enigmas That Defy Explanation

What is it about the bizarre and mysterious that piques our curiosity? It entertains our sense of wonder and excites our imagination, for sure. Luckily for us, history is marked with strange, logic-defying occurrences to amuse us. Here is a list comprised of 10 more unexplainable and interesting phenomenon and incidents that we crave so much.

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Via: Listverse

Slaughterhouse-Five: A letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his family

In December of 1944, whilst behind enemy lines during the Rhineland Campaign, Private Kurt Vonnegut was captured by Wehrmacht troops and subsequently became a prisoner of war. A month later, Vonnegut and his fellow POWs reached a Dresden work camp where they were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse known by German soldiers as Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five). The next month - February - the subterranean nature of the prison saved their lives during the highly controversial and devastating bombing of Dresden, the aftermath of which Vonnegut and the remaining survivors helped to clear up.

Vonnegut released the book Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969.

Below is a letter he wrote to his family that May from a repatriation camp, in which he informs them of his capture and survival. Transcript follows.

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Via: Letters of Note

25 Famous Thinkers and Their Inspiring Daily Rituals

Many find it interesting to glimpse inside the lives of famous thinkers in an effort to understand where such thought and intelligence is rooted. In that vein, here is a peek into the routines and rituals that writers, philosophers, and statesmen have depended on to keep their work on track and their thoughts flowing. Whether you need inspiration to make it through the next college semester or are working on a future best-selling novel, explore these daily rituals you may want to incorporate into your life.

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Via: Online College

6 Horrifying Modern Cannibals

Cannibalism, as repulsive as it is, can be understood in cases where consuming the deceased is an alternative to certain starvation. Those who eat human flesh by choice, however, tend to be the kind of people who will torture and murder to satisfy their curiosity. Be warned that some of the following links are disturbing.

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Via: Mental Floss

Democracy on the High Seas: How Pirates Rocked the Vote

Everyone knows that swashbuckling types aren’t exactly known for obeying the rules. But years before the United States gained its independence, democracy was actually thriving aboard pirate ships. Perhaps that’s because they reasoned that a little law and order was better than the alternative. Crammed aboard a ship with 300 unruly sailors, pirates were quick to adopt a government rather than let anarchy ensue.

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Via: Mental Floss