Toward the end of World War 2, mission updates from the 415th Night Fighter Squadron took a mysterious turn. Along with details of dogfights over the German-occupied Rhine Valley, pilots began reporting inexplicable lights following their aircraft.

One night in November 1944, a Bristol Beaufighter crew—pilot Edward Schlueter, radar observer Donald J. Meiers, and intelligence officer Fred Ringwald—was flying along the Rhine north of Strasbourg. They described seeing “eight to 10 bright orange lights off the left wing…flying through the air at high speed.” Neither the airborne radar nor ground control registered anything nearby. “Schlueter turned toward the lights and they disappeared,” the report continued. “Later they appeared farther away. The display continued for several minutes and then disappeared.” Meiers gave these objects a name, taking a nonsense word used by characters in the popular “Smokey Stover” firefighter cartoon: “foo fighters.”

Reports kept coming in. The objects flew alongside aircraft at 200 mph; they were red, or orange, or green; they appeared singly or with as many as 10 others in formation; and they often out-maneuvered the airplanes they were chasing. They never showed up on radar.

Richard Ziebart, historian for the nearby 417th Night Fighter Squadron, heard many of the stories directly from the 415th crew members: “The pilots were very professional. They gave the report, talked about the lights, but didn’t speculate about them.” Still, the pilots found the sightings unnerving. “Scared shitless” was how a 415th pilot described feeling to Keith Chester, author of Strange Company: Military Encounters With UFO’s in World War II.

At the end of the year, an Associated Press war correspondent, Robert C. Wilson, celebrated New Year’s Eve with the 415th. The next day, his story on the foo fighters was featured on the front page of newspapers across the country. Other squadrons had seen them, but it was the number, consistency, and impact on the 415th crews—and the fact that a reporter listened to the airmen—that finally prompted investigations into the sightings.

Amateur psychologists, military aviation buffs, and conspiracy theorists offered explanations, but none that the airmen found credible. They didn’t believe they were hallucinating because of battle fatigue. And because the lights caused no damage, the pilots doubted they came from remote-controlled German secret weapons. St. Elmo’s fire, a discharge of light from sharp objects in electrical fields, seemed unlikely, since the foo fighters exhibited such extreme maneuverability.

Eventually the Army Air Command sent officers to investigate, but their research was lost after the war, Chester reported. In 1953, the CIA convened a panel of six top scientists familiar with experimental aviation technology to determine if the lights constituted a national security threat. The Robertson Panel, named for its chair, Caltech physicist Howard P. Robertson, offered no official conclusion.

Ziebart, the historian, offered no explanation either, only an insight. “I think the foo fighters didn’t show up on radar because they were plain light,” he said. “Radar had to have a solid object. If there was any bogey out there, the pilots would absolutely be able to tell.”

Some dogs can understand 250 words.

Dogs are man’s best friend, and the canine ability to understand human words has gone a long way to solidify that world-changing relationship. According to the American Psychological Association, the average dog can understand 165 words, and “super dogs” — those in the top 20% of canine intellect — can understand around 250 words. Dog intelligence can be divided into three main types: instinctive (what the dog is bred to do), adaptive (what a dog learns from its environment), and working/obedience (what a dog is trained to do). Research into the levels of working/obedience intelligence in various dog breeds shows that border collies displayed the highest levels, followed by poodles, German shepherds, and golden retrievers. With the ability to also understand simple math (1+1 = 2, for example), these “super dogs” have an estimated cognitive ability of 2- to 2.5-year-old humans.

Although an understanding of 250 words is already impressive, it’s by no means the absolute limit. The Einstein of the dog world is a border collie named Chaser. According to the journal Behavioural Processes, Chaser had the ability to recall and correctly identify 1,022 words. This far exceeds the vocabulary of any known dog, and pushes Chaser into the cognitive ability range of a 3-year-old. Now, that’s an extremely good girl

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

We are months away from the election, and already we are being told that if the election does not go his way we will have violence in the streets. Is this terrorism we are being subjected to at this time? Sounds like it and we are to do as he wants for the sake of keeping the peace. 

  He can murder someone on the streets and not be prosecuted for it, another attempt at throwing a gauntlet down and saying you best let me have my way. So what is a simple fix for this issue? Maybe death in the street, his. That would certainly put an end to the ongoing stream of foolishness that is coming from his mouth. 

  The other thing that needs to happen is that anyone roaming around with a gun is a fair target for law enforcement and anyone else that is carrying a weapon. Gun violence has become our biggest fear. It seems there is nowhere that a fool with a gun cannot be expected to appear. Perhaps we need to disarm ourselves so that petty spats and goofy misunderstandings are not always resolved with lead. Even children are entitled to guns and then they go use them and we wonder why.

  The video games kids play all have a reset button. Kill that guy today, reset and do it again tomorrow, unfortunately real life does not work that way and the kids do not understand. The people behind the gun push see no reason not to arm each of us. If we would prefer to be without a gun around at all times then we must be stupid and the NRA has lessons to help us. 

  Going back to the election and all the effort to ban him from it. There is no justification for allowing him to be on the ballot, he clearly violated the 14th 3rd issue and is not allowed to run for even something like dog catcher. Does not seem to matter as the entire Congress and Supreme Court appear to be spineless and will roll over on this issue.

  The news is full of Trump and he will say or do anything to keep his name and image in the forefront of the news. Time to stop covering his rantings and his stupid comments about anything and everything. The press seems to not be able to turn away from him and yet the best way to kill that ego is to remove access to fame. Try it for say 3 days and see what happens.

George Washington opened a whiskey distillery after his presidency. 

FAMOUS FIGURES 

Shortly after departing the presidency in March 1797, George Washington set out on an entirely new endeavor. The founding father was encouraged by his farm manager James Anderson to use the vast expanse of the Washington family estate, Mount Vernon, to open a whiskey distillery. Anderson believed that the estate’s extant gristmill and plentiful water supply would make for a thriving operation. Sure enough, the prediction came true, and the distillery blossomed into a highly profitable business venture for Washington.

In October 1797, construction began on a stone house large enough to contain five whiskey stills, and 50 mash tubs were added over the next two years. By 1799, the distillery was producing nearly 11,000 gallons of alcohol annually, valued at $7,500 (roughly $185,000 today). Other Virginia-based distilleries, by comparison, produced an average of around 650 gallons each year. The Mount Vernon distillery was known for its cinnamon whiskies as well as apple and peach brandies, and rather than bottle, brand, or age its whiskey, the distillery quickly delivered its product to local merchants in 30-gallon wooden barrels, which meant a rapid influx of cash. Washington died on December 14, 1799, just as the business reached its apex. The former President’s nephew Lawrence Lewis inherited the operation and ran it until around 1808; six years later, the original distillery burned down in a fire.

The average body temperature is not 98.6 degrees.

In 1851, German physician Carl Wunderlich conducted a thorough experiment to determine the average human body temperature. In the city of Leipzig, Wunderlich stuck a foot-long thermometer inside 25,000 different human armpits, and discovered temperatures ranging from 97.2 to 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The average of those temperatures was the well-known 98.6 degrees — aka the number you hoped to convincingly exceed when you were too “sick” to go to school as a kid. For more than a century, physicians as well as parents have stuck with that number, but in the past few decades, experts have started questioningif 98.6 degrees is really the benchmark for a healthy internal human temperature. 

For one thing, many factors can impact a person’s temperature. The time of day, where the temperature was taken (skin, mouth, etc.), if the person ate recently, their age, their height, and their weight can all impact the mercury. Furthermore, Wunderlich’s equipment and calibrations might not pass scientific scrutiny today. Plus, some experts think humans are getting a little colder, possibly because of our overall healthier lives. Access to anti-inflammatory medication, better care for infections, and even better dental care may help keep our body temperatures lower than those of our 19th-century ancestors. 

In 1992, the first study to question Wunderlich’s findings found a baseline body temperature closer to 98.2 degrees. A 2023 study refined that further and arrived at around 97.9 degrees (though oral measurements were as low as 97.5). However, the truth is that body temperature is not a one-size-fits-all situation. For the best results, try to determine your own baseline body temperature and work with that. We’re sure Wunderlich won’t mind.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

The ugly truth of our country is that far too many people live with prejudge and hate as a main stay of their daily world.
At present we have a legal battle going on in Georgia and the chief prosecutor has been accused of having an affair with one of the other attorneys on the case. This somehow is supposed to make the prosecutor ineligible to manage the case and cause the entire case to be thrown out on the grounds that some sort of impropriety has taken place. Yet another attempt by the Trump organization to throw shit in the fan to cover his tracks. Why this even got off the ground is a question that cannot be answered with logic only with bullshit excuses as to some nonsense reasoning of sick minds. What needs to happen is that someone needs to put the clock on all these cases and prosecute one right after another until you have all of them resolved before the summer is over. Each time a delay is asked for it should be denied as this mess has had the nation tied up for years and that is long enough to resolve all superfluous issues.
The ugliness of the constant issue of difference whether that be in religion, who we love, who we think we are, race or importance needs to end. This world will some day end and if we are to survive as a species we need to move from here to some other galaxy and that is not going to happen until we learn to trust and work together. It would be nearly impossible to conduct hostile actions on Earth and send teams into space to find another home.
We know not what genetically may be there to meet us. We know that on earth we are 1% brighter than our next closest relative on the evolutionary ladder, the chimpanzee and if the beings we encounter on our travels are advanced that much or more beyond us the effort may be doomed before it can get started. At the present time we are only able to judge ourselves against ourselves and while many base superiority on arbitrary things the true difference has nothing to do with where you are from, what church you attend, or the color of your skin. The true differences are going to be up for grabs and we best be ready.

Pangea Is Only the Latest of Many Past Supercontinents

Look at a world map today, and the continents appear like pieces belonging to an ancient puzzle long disassembled — and that’s basically true. Starting some 200 million years ago, the supercontinent known as Pangea (surrounded by a global ocean called Panthalassa) began to break apart until this slow but steady dance concluded with the seven distinct continents we know today. However, Pangea is really only the latest supercontinent in Earth’s history. In fact, the Earth’s landmasses have been crashing into one another, separating, and crashing into one another again basically since the Earth’s formation. Previous supercontinents includeGondwana and Laurasia, which actually collided to form Pangea in the first place, as well as Pannotia, Rodinia, and Nuna, to name only a few. Just as Pangea isn’t the only supercontinent in Earth’s history, it also won’t be the last. In 200 million years, the Earth will form a new supercontinent, which scientists call Amasia (a portmanteau of America and Asia) as the Pacific Ocean continues to shrink about an inch every year, making the slow continental collision inevitable.