If you are American, you should know that the biggest city in America is New York City, followed by Los Angeles and then Chicago. Many also know that Houston is the fourth largest. Pat yourself on the back. That list is ordered by population, the way most people define the size of a city. But what if we weren't talking about population, but about the area in the city limits? People already argue about that, since the huge Los Angeles metro area is made up of many smaller towns, and New York's population is only static because of city limits. In area, you might be surprised to learn that none of those four cities come anywhere near the biggest cities measured by area. I really don't want to tell you what they are, because that would ruin the surprise. 

Laurence Brown usually compares the US to Britain in his videos, but this one is just about the USA and the weirdness of the different ways the states define cities and draw city limits. For the purpose of this video, the difference between a city, a town, and a village doesn't even matter. 

Have you heard of the "Japanese missing cat method"? In Japan, if your cat goes missing, the best thing to do is approach another neighborhood cat outdoors (treats will help) and talk to it about your missing cat. Tell the cat what yours looks like, how much you miss him, and that you want him to come home. Then the cat will go and find him or at least tell all the neighborhood cats about it. Recently, British TikTok comedian Mel Moon tried this method after she'd tried everything else to find her missing cat Wade. Wade came home ten minutes later, and her post about it went viral. That sparked other people to tell similar stories. 

Does this mean the Japanese method works? It's hard to say. When a few people on the internet talk about something, others will join in. If one of them is particularly popular, or several are moderately popular, the idea will go viral and suddenly you have 100 success stories. But several million people have read about the idea, and you don't hear from the people for whom this method did not work. And there could be other factors at play. Several logical reasons for the success of the Japanese method were posted in the comments when we visited this subject years ago. If your cat goes missing, it's worth a try. -via Fark 

(Image credit: Gerda Arendt) 

People often think of armadillos as merely speed bumps in the road, but Frank has a personality all his own. Frank lives at Animal Tracks, a sanctuary for rescued exotic animals in California. They've managed to give Frank everything an armadillo could ever want, from dirt to dig in to the freedom to run around to a steady supply of balls that he can play with and burst. It's his hobby. He's also a bit set in his ways, and keeps to his personal schedule of recreation. While watching Frank check off his to-do list (basketball, digging, running, naps), we learn quite a bit about armadillos. They aren't cute and cuddly, and they don't make good pets. But when you get the know one like Frank, you start to appreciate his unique approach to life. Once you understand his ways, he starts to look cute, too. You can see more of Frank and the other animals at Animal Tracks at Instagram. 

When you marry the love of your life, you are also taking on that person's entire family, and that might be surprisingly unpleasant. Franklin Roosevelt's mother Sara never liked his wife Eleanor, which made life hard for Eleanor while Franklin appeared oblivious to the tensions. Harry Truman suffered the continuing scorn of Bess's mother, who even moved into the White House with the couple. To his credit, Truman graciously memorialized his mother-in-law as a "grand woman." 

In royal families, marital relations can lead to power grabs, paranoia, and death. Herod the Great of Judea felt threatened by his second wife's family, and had his brother-in-law, wife, mother-in-law, and two sons killed, although not all at the same time. It was business as usual for the ruler who decreed the death of all boys under two just to get the one who had already fled the country. Read these stories and others of families you really didn't want to marry into at Mental Floss. You can also listen to the list in a video at the same link.    

(Image credit: Alexander Master) 

The renowned Katz's Delicatessen in New York City is famous for its perfect pastrami that has delighted the people of the city since 1888. I've never been there, but I'm salivating over the Reuben sandwich on the menu.

Michael Palan of The Takeout ventured to Kith Treats, an ice cream shop, there upon hearing reports that it's offering a sundae flavored with the tastes of Katz's.

The Dilluxe has pickled, chocolate, rye croutons, and vanilla ice cream mixed with pastrami rub and mustard. Palan shies away from definitive approval of the mixture, but does affirm that the treat is reminiscent of Katz's.

Jonas Salk developed the first successful polio vaccine and gets most of the credit for defeating the disease. But he was one of dozens of teams around the US working on the problem in the 1950s. Salk's vaccine contained polio virus that had been inactivated (killed) and was introduced by injection. Not long afterward, Albert Sabin came up with an oral vaccine that used live but weakened polio virus that worked through the intestines, where wild polio would strike first. So how do you get the vaccine to millions of Americans in a hurry? In the 1950s, we had disposable syringes, but they weren't common and we certainly didn't have millions of them. Regular syringes were painful and had to be sterilized after each use. Putting the oral vaccine in a sugar cube and giving them to everyone was a huge undertaking, but it did the job. 

My school lined up all the students and took us to the auditorium two or three times a year to be vaccinated for something or other. We always hoped it would be the sugar cube, of course. Three sugar cubes laced with polio vaccine over time would give you lifetime immunity, and that meant something when we all knew older students who limped or had one shorter leg from polio. We didn't know the ones who didn't make it. 

Phil Edwards takes us through the process of developing the vaccine, and the massive logistical problems of getting it distributed to enough people to defeat the disease. There is a 110-second skippable ad at 3:55. -via Laughing Squid 

In the movie Wedding Crashers, two guys go to strangers' weddings to pick up women. This is kind of like that, but not at all like that. 

When Michelle and John Wylie got their 2021 wedding pictures, they noticed a guest that neither of them recognized. None of their parents did, either. They contacted the wedding venue, but no one at the hotel knew who the man was. He remained a mystery, even when Michelle asked on Facebook. It was only when she enlisted the help of a popular British internet personality that the man in the photographs was identified. He is Andrew Hillhouse. Was he a wedding crasher hoping to meet someone? Or just there for the food? No, his story is not at all nefarious and downright hilarious. Hillhouse was actually quite embarrassed about his participation in the Wylie wedding, but he's come clean now. He and Michelle have met and are now internet friends. -via Metafilter 

PS: The Metafilter threaded pointed to a similar story that happened to one of their members. 

We think of the steam turbine as the force that powered the Industrial Revolution. We think of automatic doors and vending machines as modern conveniences. But these things existed a couple of thousand years ago during the days of imperial Rome. They had accurate clocks, grain mills, and self-healing concrete, too, not to mention the amazing aqueducts and sewer systems that aren't covered here. Many inventions are ascribed to Hero of Alexandria, who was a gifted mathematician and an engineer who experimented with mechanical developments of all kinds, often powered by the physics of water, whether gravity or steam power. 

But before the Roman Empire gets all the credit, we have to remember that Hero was Greek, and Ctesibius as well, and they worked in Egypt. Both were probably expanding on even more ancient knowledge from both cultures. The Roman Empire was big and powerful enough to allow such geniuses to not only work but document their innovations in Alexandria, established by the Greeks as a center of learning and knowledge. Nevertheless, what those engineers of the Roman era accomplished is pretty impressive. -via Damn Interesting 

At about the same time every year, when huge Halloween props greet you at every store and every drink smells like pumpkin spice, SmokyMountains.com rolls out their Fall Foliage Prediction Map. It's almost all green right now, but you can move the slider below to see where the brightest colors will be for each week through November 17th. The map shown above is for the week of October 20th. If you want to plan a trip to see the autumn colors, this map is intended to help you decide what days to reserve accommodations. It's also handy to plan a photography day trip or invite your friends from the desert or the tropics to visit.  

The map uses historical data, weather trends and forecasts, user observations, and the kind of trees in each area to predict when and how the cooling temperatures will affect leaf color each week ahead. Conditions that are cooler and drier than normal in my corner of Kentucky means that leaves will turn earlier and be brighter than average. We should have some really beautiful mountains for a month or more. And, like every year, I will see those mountains and think about making a quilt in those colors, but I never do.  -via Laughing Squid 

Automobiles came along in the late 19th century, and before the 20th century rolled in were already up to more than 65 miles per hour! Of course, these were never our everyday cars, but race cars designed and built by those with a need for speed. Therefore, they looked pretty weird. Believe it or not, race cars broke the 100 mph bar in 1904. Eventually, they put jet engines and rockets in cars and got them up to ridiculous speeds, while the rest of us were driving at 75 mph or less, and we had to build a nationwide highway system just to do that. These cars were never meant to be mass-produced, because they would never be safe for getting to a destination.

Don't let the length of this video keep you from watching. They go through all the record-breaking cars in just four minutes, then show them again from the perspective of someone standing still on the roadside. Then the last four cars are shown again from an overhead drone view, twice. Somehow, I'm still most impressed with the earliest cars. -via Born in Space    

In the 1988 Tim Burton comedy Beetlejuice, the ghost with the most always spelled his own name Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is a star in the Orion constellation, and it has four common pronunciations; one of them is Beetlejuice, which is how it is pronounced in the film. But don't practice that pronunciation, because if you say it three times, you'll have to put up with him. In fact, the movie was almost titled Betelgeuse, but the studio figured audiences would have trouble with that. 

Beetlejuice became a staple of Halloween, because the costumes were both monstrous and funny. Spirit Halloween sold a prop that resembled the sign shown in the scene above, but the word was spelled Beetlejuice. Twice. Did they think buyers wouldn't notice, or care? Or did they think fans of the film would still be confused as to the pronunciation of Betelgeuse? Or did they assume most buyers decades later hadn't seen the movie? At any rate, true fans avoided buying the sign, even if their entire house was decorated in a Beetlejuice theme. 

They've finally corrected that. This year, Spirit Halloween is offering a movie-accurate sign that lights up. And all is right with the world.   

It took redditor /u/Barbi0za 22 hours and countless sprinkles to compose this cherry and almond cake. They used tweezers to carefully arrange each of the sprinkles into a remarkably accurate depiction of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. The solid forms of the sprinkles work well to convey the brush strokes of the original work.

When asked if it was difficult to cut into this masterpiece, /u/Barbi0za responded that they appreciate a temporary art form, so that experience was actually enjoyable.

Ellis Rosen is my favorite New Yorker cartoonist. Every one of his posts on Instagram is worth browsing through completely.

One of the stories that he is gradually developing is the struggle between Mr. Ruffles, a dog who is implied to be a secret agent similar to James Bond, and an evil squirrel who is his archnemesis. The squirrel usually has the upper hand. You can find a collection of cartoons developing this storyline here.

Ronobir Lahiri is a sitar player in Los Angeles who has accompanied musicians as famous as Katy Perry and Lil Nas X.

On his YouTube channel, Lahiri provides recordings of covers that he has created of pop and rock songs, such as the above "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. You can also find his covers of "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon, "Just Like Heaven" by The Cure, and "Take on Me" by A-ha.

-via Born in Space

Minnesotastan said, "There are approximately 10,000 covers, variations, and adaptations of Bohemian Rhapsody.  Over the years, all of them have been posted at Neatorama." Well, here's another one. 

Julien Cohen assembled singers and musicians from all over for a flashmob performance of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the streets of Paris. They are all good, but particularly notable is the guitarist, 11-year old Olly Pearson, known as Guitar Olly. Olly became widely known after appearing on Britain's Got Talent earlier this year. The other soloists are credited at the YouTube page. Pulling this off meant enlisting the cooperation of apartment dwellers all around the square, plus a team of videographers and sound people, all in stealth mode. Cohen is a pianist who has organized quite a few of these pop-up public performances before, so he had some idea of what he was getting into. Still, this is the biggest and most elaborate flashmob he's managed so far.   -Thanks, gwdMaine!