How Do Astronauts Scratch and Itch When In Their Space Suits?

Without the use of their hands, astronauts have to rely on other means to scratch various itches. For any itch outside of the face, retired astronaut Clayton Anderson explained, “You shake, rattle and roll, baby!  That’s the only thing really that you can do to alleviate that itch. Hopefully, between the incredibly bulky and stiff suit itself and the liquid cooling garment you are wearing beneath the suit, you can wiggle your body enough to effectively scratch that itch!”
Itches on the face can be a bit more tricky, but there are things within reach. For instance, under the helmet astronauts wear what is sometimes referred to as a Snoopy Cap that is equipped with earphones and a microphone. If an itch presents itself on the lower half of the face, the microphone is one commonly used scratching post. The downfall of this method is that the action sometimes moves the microphone out of position, interfering a little with the sound quality in communications.
Another option astronauts use is the valsalva device, which is a foam piece attached to the bottom interior of the spacesuit helmet. The purpose of the valsalva device is to allow an astronaut to block up their nostrils and blow to equalize pressure in the ears when necessary. Beyond its intended purpose, the foam block is a handy device for scratching an itch.
Of course, you could potentially get a little snot rubbed on the itchy spot if you’ve previously used the humps on the valsalva to stopper your nose, but desperate times and all that…
A third option to address facial itches is a strategically placed piece of Velcro. This was particularly used during the Apollo missions. (And, note, contrary to popular belief, Velcro was not invented by NASA, nor specifically for use in the space program.) The astronauts would typically place the Velcro on the little feed port flap that is held closed via the pressure in the suit when out in space. Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt noted, “Everybody seemed to agree that you needed that [Velcro]…”
If an itch pops up where nothing sufficiently abrasive can be rubbed against it, the astronaut simply has to endure, generally using the distraction tactic until the itch fades. This is easier than in some other settings. A typical spacewalk lasts between five and eight hours and being out there working is incredibly laborious due to how stiff the space suit gets when in the near vacuum of space (even just flexing your fingers to grip things is relatively difficult). Between the straining and extreme focus needed to complete some of the tasks the astronauts are out there for, not to mention the absolutely beautiful view and the knowledge that there is very little between you and the near vacuum of space, there’s plenty to get caught up in and forget all about the itch.
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Bonus Facts:

• Beyond having to deal with itches that are sometimes impossible to scratch, astronauts out space walking also have to potentially deal with having to go to the bathroom. The solution here is simple- essentially, an adult diaper specially designed for maximum absorption. Now just think that those space suits are re-used by other astronauts…  One can imagine space walking flatulence also isn’t terribly pleasant.  (And if you’re curious, see: Why Other People’s Farts Smell Worse).
• The term “astronaut” is derived from the Greek words astron, meaning “star,” and nautes, meaning “sailor” -so, essentially “star sailor”.
• In the free-fall state astronauts orbiting the Earth find themselves in, sweat and tears do not flow downward and instead cling to surfaces and blob together. This can become a major vision problem when sweat and tears form bubbles in the eyes or on eye lashes.
• Even worse is a potential coolant water leak during a space walk. This happened to astronaut Luca Parmitano, resulting in his space walk abruptly terminated as his helmet began to fill up with a giant glob of water.  Towards the end as he was waiting for the pressure to equalize on the hatch, with the water in the helmet continuing to increase, he was beginning to have trouble seeing, hearing, and even talking. The bigger concern, of course, was that he might accidentally suck up some of the glob of water as he was trying to breathe around it. This would have resulted in him coughing uncontrollable, only making the situation worse and potentially causing him to drown in the suit. As Flight Director David Korth said of the event, “You can imagine, you’re in a fishbowl… That’s not anything you take lightly.”  It was later discovered that one of the suit’s coolant line filters got clogged, causing water to leak out and into his helmet.  In total, the coolant system contains a little over a gallon of water and is essential to keep the astronaut from overheating in the suit.
• Before an astronaut ventures into space, the interior of the face shield is treated with an anti-fogging chemical to ensure body heat and sweat don’t fog it up. However, in 2011 astronaut Andrew Feustel went out on a spacewalk and ended up getting a droplet of the anti-fogger solution in his eye. The substance caused major irritation and his eye started to burn and tear up. Without the ability to use his hands, he was forced to use the valsalva device to try and reduce the stinging and get the tears to stop clinging to his eye so he could see from it again.
• Sneezing in space also presents problems and astronauts learn how to sneeze in the suits during training. Astronaut Dave Wold states that the trick is to have good aim– “Aim low, off the windshield, because it can mess up your view and there’s no way to clear it…”

What Happened to Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s Parents?

In 1934 Walt Disney introduced the world to Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse’s lovable ill-tempered friend. Donald was an instant success, becoming one of the most popular cartoon characters of all time. Three short years after his creation, comic artist Al Taliaferro got the idea to create three nephews for Donald: Huey, Dewey and Louie. In the trio’s comic debut on October 17, 1937, Donald received a letter from his cousin, Della, just before the boys arrived:

“Dear Donald:
I am sending your angel nephews Louie, Huey and Dewey, to stay with you while their father is in the hospital. A giant firecracker exploded under his chair. The little darlings are so playful. I hope you enjoy them.
Your cousin,
Della”

With open arms and a willing heart, Donald welcomed his nephews into his home. Of course, he soon realized that the “angels” and “little darlings” that Della referred to were rebellious, destructive monsters.
So what happened to their dad? As Della’s letter touched upon, their dear old dad was sent to the hospital after a firework exploded under his chair- a firework placed there by his own sons: Huey, Dewey, and Louie (or perhaps it was their phantom brother, Phooey!- the mysterious fourth nephew who appeared at random times in various comic panels).
This is the last we really hear about their dad. On one version of the Duck family tree, the triplets’ dad is nothing more than an obscured duck with no first name and a big question mark on his head. On other depictions of the family tree, their dad is seen as a nameless face beside his wife. His appearance on the Duck family tree is the only visual of Della’s husband.
Drawing from what little information is available, Daddy Duck either died in the hospital or abandoned his kids and fled as far away as possible to avoid any more of their high jinks.
So what about Huey, Dewey, and Louie’s mom? Dumbella Duck, aka Della, is a bit more complicated of a case. In her aforementioned letter, you may have noticed that it was signed, “Your cousin” not “Your sister.” She also explicitly states the three kids in question are Donald’s nephews. This would imply that Della was not their mother given she is Donald’s cousin here, unless the boys’ father was supposed to be Donald’s brother and we simply have a case of cousin marriage- not totally uncommon in this era (see: The Surprising Truth About Cousins and Marriage). Another possibility is that she is somehow Donald’s cousin and sister, but we’re not going to go there…
If the “Donald’s brother was their father” scenario isn’t correct, given that Della was seemingly caring for the children while their father was in the hospital, it would seem to indicate that their real mother was out of the picture at this point.
However, when a similar letter is read in the 1938 cartoon, Donald’s Nephews, the letter and story are modified slightly,

Dear Brother-
I am sending your angel nephews to visit you -Sister, Dumbella

To make things more confusing, when Carl Barks released his version of the Duck family tree in the 1950s, he refers to the triplets’ mom as Thelma Duck (perhaps going back to the original comic book story where Della was a cousin). On this line thinking, some fans have suggested that Dumbella, Della, and Thelma are different characters, while others argue that Della is just short for Dumbella. Since the name Thelma is never used in the comics or theatrical shorts, and her name changed back to Della Duck with Don Rosa’s 1993 revised version of the Duck family tree, Thelma seems to be null and void and simply a mistake in Barks’ work.
Given later story lines, it would appear the “Della and Dumbella are the same duck” theory is correct. For instance, in the comic book series, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, written in the mid-1990s, Donald and Della were shown wearing identical sailor outfits as kids and depicted not only as siblings, but as twins.
Thus, it would seem that when Della was originally introduced as Donald’s cousin, her character (and the boys’ backstory) was not given much of any thought as Huey, Dewey, and Louie at this point were only supposed to be around for a short visit- just a convenient plot device for an issue of the comic.  However, when they put the boys in the cartoon, they decided to explain where the characters came from in a way that made a little more sense; so Donald ended with a sister, instead of a cousin, sending him his nephews.
This brings us back to what happened to Della Duck.  It turns out that in the Donald Duck comics and cartoons, aside from the aforementioned letter, neither parent was ever heard from again. So did they die or just abandon Huey, Dewey, and Louie?
According to the Duck family tree, Della and Donald are equal in terms of their familial relationship with Scrooge McDuck, yet Donald is always the one referred to as Scrooge’s closest living relative. This strongly suggests that she died, perhaps along with her husband. Or, as others have speculated, they simply faked their deaths and went into hiding to avoid having to take back their children. (Donald himself would later abandon the children for a while, leaving them in the care of their great uncle Scrooge while he went off and joined the navy.)
That said, while Scrooge’s frequent assertions about Donald seem to indicate Della was a dead duck, in the comic strip, Amen!, the triplets are depicted saying prayers for their mom and dad, which may indicate that they are still alive and well…somewhere. Or maybe no one bothered to tell them their parents had died.
Whatever the case, in the 1942 cartoon, The New Spirit, it stated that Donald had officially adopted the triplets. As mentioned, the parents were never heard from again.
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Bonus Facts:

• Donald Fauntleroy Duck was first thought up after Walt Disney overheard Clarence Nash doing his now famous duck voice. Disney decided to hire Nash to do the voice of a duck character that would take over the role of some of the negative attributes that Mickey used to portray, but now with Mickey being a role model, could no longer do. Donald made his debut in The Wise Little Hen where he and Peter Pig tried various means to get out of doing work, such as faking stomach aches. Nash continued to do the voice of Donald for nearly a half century until he died of leukemia in 1985.  Other voices done by Nash included: Daisy Duck; Huey, Dewey, and Louie; and the bullfrog in Bambi.
• Like any set of identical triplets, Huey, Dewey, and Louie are difficult to tell apart. Originally they were created as “one” character split into three, as was evident by the way they flawlessly finished each other’s sentences, as if they were operating off the same brain. Only when they appeared in DuckTales, and then later, Quack Pack, did they really start to exhibit individual characteristics. The only way to tell them apart was by the colors of shirts and hats they wore. However, prior to the 1980s, when they weren’t dressed identically, colors for each nephew were chosen at random and rarely consistent. Once they established signature colors for each brother, Huey was dressed in red, Dewey in blue, and Louie in green. Dave Smith, Disney’s archivist said, “Note that the brightest hue of the three is red (Huey), the color of water, dew, is blue (Dewey), and that leaves Louie, and leaves are green.” This is not to say the triplets didn’t switch it up every once in awhile or appear in colors deviating from their “signature” color.  Not that it would have mattered to Donald necessarily. In the wartime short, Donald Gets Drafted, Donald Duck is shown to be colorblind, though it isn’t clear what type of colorblindness he suffers from.
• As if the triplet’s identities aren’t complicated enough, enter Phooey. Phooey is Donald’s phantom fourth nephew who has appeared in at least seven comic book panels over the years as a result of artistic errors not caught in time prior to publication.
• Huey, Dewey, and Louie joined the scouting organization, Junior Woodchucks, when they were 11 years old. Their involvement in this group is often attributed to bringing about the change in their behavior, going from rebellious monsters to fairly respectable individuals interested in helping their Uncles Donald and Scrooge in their adventures.
• Huey and Dewey were named after two political figures, Huey Long of Louisiana, and Admiral George Dewey of the Spanish-American War. Louis was named after Louie Schmitt, one of Disney’s animators. Their full names are Huebert, Deuteronomy, and Louis.

Why There Is No E in the A-F Grading Scale

Some schools do hand out E letter grades instead of an F, but they are in the minority. A majority of schools in the United States, particularly beyond primary age, give grades of A, B, C, D, or F.
Rather than a failure on the part of academic institutions to know the alphabet, the simple answer is that “F” stands for “fail.” The other four grades are more or less considered “passing” (though in some districts a D is also a failing grade), which is why they go in alphabetical order. The F is considered separate as it denotes a failing grade, and does not need to go in alphabetical order. It just so happens that “fail” starts with a letter that skips one letter alphabetically on the scale.
That said, E was used at one point. The first college in the United States to use a grading scale similar to the one we know today was Mount Holyoke College, an all-women’s university in Massachusetts.
Before that, Yale used a ranking system in 1785 where “optimi” was the highest mark, followed by second optimi, inferiore (“lower”), and pejores (“worse”). William and Mary ranked students by number, where No. 1 was the first in their class and No. 2 students were “orderly, correct and attentive.”
For a while, Harvard had a numerical grading system where students were graded on a scale from 1-200 (except for math and philosophy classes, which were 1-100). Yale had a four-point scale in 1813, switched to a nine-point scale somewhere down the track, and back to a four-point scale in 1832.
In 1883, there’s a single reference to a student earning a “B” at Harvard, but historians haven’t found additional documentation to back up the idea that a letter grade system was actually in place at that point. It is known that just a few years later, Harvard had a system of Classes in place—students were either Class I, II, III, IV, or V, with V being failing.
That brings us back to the 1887 Mount Holyoke system, which looked something like this:

• A: excellent, 95-100%
• B: good, 85-94%
• C: fair, 76-84%
• D: barely passed, 75%
• E: failed, below 75%

A year later, Mount Holyoke modified their grading scale. “B” became anything from 90-94%, “C” was 85-89%, “D” was 80-84%, and “E” was 75-79%. Below that, they added in the dreaded “F.”
Over the years, the letter grading scale became popular across colleges and high schools alike. A lot of schools skipped E and went straight to F. Apparently, some teachers were concerned that students and parents thought E stood for “excellent,” though there is no evidence suggesting that they thought A stood for “awful,” so it’s possible that schools were just trying to simplify the scale. After World War II, some schools—many in the Midwest—decided to go back to E, getting rid of F.
In truth, any letter could stand in for E or F and still mean the same thing. Some schools use “U” for “unsatisfactory” or N for “no credit.” Educators could use just about any letter and it would amount to the same thing. It is simply an indicator of a non-passing grade.
The grading scale itself has been marked with an F (or E, or U, or N) by some people who believe it is no longer a relevant way to judge students’ work. For one thing, there are variations across institutions. Some schools use + and -; some don’t. Some say an A is 90% and up, or 93% and up, or 95% and up. Some consider a D to be a failing grade rather than a passing one.
Critics of the grading scale believe a written analysis of students’ work would be more effective in terms of feedback, but they recognize that students and parents probably wouldn’t read them and teachers, who are often overworked as it is, don’t have time to write them anyway. Letter grades are just an easy way to generalize a student’s performance; so despite the discrepancies between schools, they’ll probably be around for a long time.
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Bonus Facts:

• Finland had one of the highest-ranked education system in the world for many years, but they lost out in 2013 to Japan.  The UK rang in at #3 in 2013; Canada #7; and the United States #18, out of 200 countries considered.  Surprisingly, Japan only spends and average of $10,596 per student and Finland just $10,157.  In contrast, the U.S. spends $15,172 per student, the highest of any country.  That’s about 2.5 times more per student than the #17 ranked Estonia, which is one ahead of the United States.
• According to the National Center for Education and Statistics, around 50.1 million children were attending U.S. public schools; 5.2 million were in private schools; over 1.5 million were homeschooled; and 21.8 million people were attending university.
• With record numbers of students attending university, around 2 million high school students took 3.7 million Advanced Placement exams in 2012, trying to earn college credit. Advance Placement exams are graded on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being the best. The minimum score to earn college credit is a 3, with many universities requiring a 4 or 5 on individual exams. When taking an AP exam, correct answers obviously count toward your score, but wrong answers will knock points off your score, while answers left blank do nothing.
• Two major standardized tests that U.S. high school students take in order to get into college are the ACT and SAT. Colleges usually accept one or the other. The first is scored out of 36, while the latter is scored out of 2400. In some states, these standardized tests have been integrated into state standardized testing.
• In the UK, the dreaded E grade is much more common than the F. Again, they both mean you probably should have studied more, so there isn’t much difference between them except for preference.
• 14% of adults in the U.S. are illiterate, according to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. A further 29% demonstrated only a “basic” reading level.

Why Neil Armstrong Got to Be the First to Step on the Moon

On July 20th, 1969, with “one small step,” Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. Since that date forty five years ago, the moon landing has been the subject of intense study and historical analysis. From what Armstrong actually said with his first step to if the American flags the astronauts planted are still there, mankind’s first rendezvous with the moon has captured the world’s attention in a way few other things have. Despite this, there are still several noteworthy facts that have remained obscure after all these years. Allow us to bring just a few to (moon) light:
Neil Armstrong was chosen to be the first person on the moon due to the basic structural design of a part of the Eagle.
Out of a group of 29 astronauts that trained for the Apollo mission to the moon, only three were chosen when the final announcement was made in January of 1969. Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and the oft forgotten Michael Collins became the official crew of Apollo 11. Immediately, attention turned to which crew member – Armstrong or Aldrin — would be the first to walk on the moon (Collins was the command module pilot and, therefore, was ineligible).
Even though both men were going to walk on the moon, it was a great honor to be the first. In fact, the question was asked at the press conference and the response was that it had yet to be decided.
Over the next four months, as the astronauts continued their training, debate and rumors circulated among the media. At first, it seemed that Aldrin would have the honor. This speculation came from the precedent set by the Gemini program, which made ten crewed flights for the purpose of testing ships and astronauts to spacewalk. During the flights, the commander (which Armstrong was to be for Apollo 11) stayed inside the ship while the pilot (which Aldrin was to be for Apollo 11) did the space walking. Further fueling this thinking was that it was rumored that Aldrin was actively campaigning to be the guy. According to the memoir written by Chris Kraft, head of Mission Control, “Buzz Aldrin desperately wanted that honor and wasn’t quiet in letting it be known.”
In April, only three months before liftoff, it was announced that Neil Armstrong would be the first man to walk on the moon. The main reason NASA gave for the decision was that the Eagle’s hatch opened to one side – rather than up or down – and that side was towards the pilot, Aldrin. The bottom line was that when the hatch was opened, the commander, Armstrong, had a clear path to exit, while the pilot was pinned in the rather cramped space of the module. By a sheer happenstance, it made more sense for Armstrong to exit first. Plus, as NASA’s heads pointed out, Armstrong was actually the more senior member of the team anyway, having entered the program in 1962, while Aldrin came in 1963.
In later years, despite the official hatch story, some, including Kraft and fellow astronaut Al Bean of have come out and said that NASA wanted Armstrong to have this honor rather than Aldrin because they thought Neil’s ego could handle it better than Aldrin’s. So perhaps the hatch design simply gave them the excuse they needed.
Armstrong’s famed “one small step” line was pre-planned, at least according to his brother.
Even until his last breath in 2012, Armstrong adamantly insisted that his first line was spontaneous and was only settled on in the moments prior to the walk. A BBC documentary released after the astronaut’s death disputes that. In the film, Dean Armstrong – Neil’s brother – tells the story of a note passed during a late-night game of Risk (yes, the board game).
In the months leading up to the mission, Dean, Neil, and their families spent time together on Cape Cod. After both men put their boys to bed, Neil challenged his younger brother to a hearty game of Risk. During that game, Neil handed Dean a piece of paper:

“On that piece of paper there was ‘That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.’ ‘He says, ‘What do you think about that?’ I said ‘fabulous.’ He said, ‘I thought you might like that, but I wanted you to read it.”

That said, both Aldrin and Collins made it clear that at no point did Armstrong share his thoughts about what he would say. Of course, perhaps his brother was an exception.
The second thing said on the moon was a tad less poetic than the first.
While everyone remembers that first line, few can recall the second. That’s because it didn’t hold the same “oomph” factor. According to the official Apollo 11 Air to Ground Voice Transcription, that line was “And the – the surface is fine and powdery.”
Armstrong continued on this line of thinking,

“I can – I can pick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.”

After further discussion about the ease of movement on the moon, they began to go back and forth about Buzz’s placement of the camera and backlighting. Exciting conversation, indeed!
President Nixon had an “In Event of Moon Disaster” speech ready
After the Apollo 1’s tragic fire in 1967 and the unproven nature of space travel at the time, the safe return of Apollo 11’s crew was far from an assured thing. To that point, President Nixon had to prepare for every scenario when he addressed the nation, including the tragedy of a “moon disaster.” So, he had his speechwriter, William Safire, prepare remarks that are both chilling and inspiring. The speech begins with these two lines,

“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.”

Additionally, below the “death” speech were instructions to what needed to be done both before and after the address to the nation. Before, the President should “telephone each of the widows-to-be.” Afterwards, NASA will end “communications with the men” and “a clergyman should adopt the same procedure as burial at sea, commending their souls to the ‘deepest of the deep,’ concluding with the Lord’s Prayer.”
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Bonus Fact:

• Buzz Aldrin’s mother’s name, before getting married, was Marion Moon.

Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses

humans have a lot more than five senses.  It turns out, there are at least nine senses and most researchers think there are more like twenty-one or so. Just for reference, the commonly held definition of a “sense” is “any system that consists of a group of sensory cell types that respond to a specific physical phenomenon and that corresponds to a particular group of regions within the brain where the signals are received and interpreted.
The commonly held human senses are as follows:

• Sight:  This technically is two senses given the two distinct types of receptors present, one for color (cones) and one for brightness (rods).
• Taste:  This is sometimes argued to be five senses by itself due to the differing types of taste receptors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami), but generally is just referred to as one sense.  For those who don’t know, umami receptors detect the amino acid glutamate, which is a taste generally found in meat and some artificial flavoring.  The taste sense, unlike sight, is a sense based off of a chemical reaction
• Touch:  This has been found to be distinct from pressure, temperature, pain, and even itch sensors.
• Pressure: Obvious sense is obvious.
• Itch:  Surprisingly, this is a distinct sensor system from other touch-related senses.
• Thermoception:  Ability to sense heat and cold.  This also is thought of as more than one sense.  This is not just because of the two hot/cold receptors, but also because there is a completely different type of thermoceptor, in terms of the mechanism for detection, in the brain.  These thermoceptors in the brain are used for monitoring internal body temperature.
• Sound:  Detecting vibrations along some medium, such as air or water that is in contact with your ear drums.
• Smell:  Yet another of the sensors that work off of a chemical reaction.  This sense combines with taste to produce flavors.
• Proprioception:  This sense gives you the ability to tell where your body parts are, relative to other body parts.  This sense is one of the things police officers test when they pull over someone who they think is driving drunk.  The “close your eyes and touch your nose” test is testing this sense.  This sense is used all the time in little ways, such as when you scratch an itch on your foot, but never once look at your foot to see where your hand is relative to your foot.
• Tension Sensors:  These are found in such places as your muscles and allow the brain the ability to monitor muscle tension.
• Nociception:  In a word, pain.  This was once thought to simply be the result of overloading other senses, such as “touch”, but this has been found not to be the case and instead, it is its own unique sensory system.  There are three distinct types of pain receptors: cutaneous (skin), somatic (bones and joints), and visceral (body organs).
• Equilibrioception:   The sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes.  This sense also allows for perceiving gravity.  The sensory system for this is found in your inner ears and is called the vestibular labyrinthine system.  Anyone who’s ever had this sense go out on them on occasion knows how important this is.  When it’s not working or malfunctioning, you literally can’t tell up from down and moving from one location to another without aid is nearly impossible.
• Stretch Receptors:  These are found in such places as the lungs, bladder, stomach, and the gastrointestinal tract.  A type of stretch receptor, that senses dilation of blood vessels, is also often involved in headaches.
• Chemoreceptors:  These trigger an area of the medulla in the brain that is involved in detecting blood born hormones and drugs.  It also is involved in the vomiting reflex.
• Thirst:  This system more or less allows your body to monitor its hydration level and so your body knows when it should tell you to drink.
• Hunger:  This system allows your body to detect when you need to eat something.
• Magnetoception:  This is the ability to detect magnetic fields, which is principally useful in providing a sense of direction when detecting the Earth’s magnetic field.  Unlike most birds, humans do not have a strong magentoception, however, experiments have demonstrated that we do tend to have some sense of magnetic fields.  The mechanism for this is not completely understood; it is theorized that this has something to do with deposits of ferric iron in our noses.  This would make sense if that is correct as humans who are given magnetic implants have been shown to have a much stronger magnetoception than humans without.
• Time:  This one is debated as no singular mechanism has been found that allows people to perceive time.  However, experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time, particularly when younger. The mechanism we use for this seems to be a distributed system involving the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia.  Long term time keeping seems to be monitored by the suprachiasmatic nuclei (responsible for the circadian rhythm).  Short term time keeping is handled by other cell systems.

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• How the Blind Dream
• Robins Can See Magnetic Fields, But Only In One Eye

Bonus Facts:

• The traditional “five senses” model (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) is credited to Aristotle
• One such method for testing whether humans have magnetoception is by placing a strong magnetic field near a person and then disorienting them.  Results have shown that people in this scenario perform significantly worse at being able to re-orient themselves in terms of the cardinal points than people who are not near a strong magnetic field.  More conclusive evidence has been demonstrated by examining subject’s brains when magnetic fields are produced near a person.  It has been shown that these magnetic fields will evoke a response in the brain’s activity.
• Numerous experiments have demonstrated that people do have the ability to detect accurately the passage of time.  One experiment showed that, without consciously counting or anything of the like, a group of 19 to 24 year olds were able, on average, to tell when 3 minutes was up within a 3 second margin of error.  Interestingly, the age group of 60-80 tended to average perceiving 3 minutes pass at around 3 minutes and 40 seconds consistently within the test group.  This would seem to indicate whatever mechanism we use to sense time slows as we age and thus as we get older time seems to pass faster to us.
• People with Parkinson’s disease and ADD have severely impaired sense of time passage compared to “normal” people.
• The vestibular labyrinthine system (equilibrioception) works by sensing the motion of fluid in three canals in your inner ear, as well as sensing the weight of small crystals of calcium carbonite on tiny hair-like sensory receptors.
• Proprioception (sense of relative position of body parts) comes from the Latin “proprius”, meaning “one’s own”.
• There exists a type of bacteria, called magnetotactic bacteria, that build magnets inside themselves in order to orient themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field.  They also migrate and form chains of themselves along magnetic field lines.
• Many avian life forms posses a region of their bodies that contain a biological magnetite, generally in their beaks.  It is believed this gives them a strong magnetoception and thus allows them to sense direction accurately.  More recently, it has been shown that certain birds have the ability to see magnetic fields.  How this works is the Earth’s magnetic field effects how long a certain molecule, cryptochrome, in their photoreceptor cells stays in the active state.  This then affects the light sensitivity of the bird’s retinal neurons.  The net effect is the birds can perceive magnetic fields with their eyes.   The biological magnate and ability to perceive magnetic fields with their eyes are thought to combine to form a very accurate mapping and directional system in the birds.
• Sharks, stringrays, and chimeara all possess an electroreceptive organ called an ampullae of Lorenzini.  This organ gives them the ability to detect even small variations in electric potential.  They can use this to detect magnetic fields, among other things.
• Cattle tend to align themselves north-south, which leads some researchers to believe they have a strong magnetoception sense.
• Some people experience something called synesthesia where they may perceive some sound and think of it as a color.  So a dog barking may be “red” to them or the like.  This condition does not generally occur naturally, though it can; it usually manifests itself when people are under the influence of hallucinogens.

The Men Who Dropped the Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

At 2:45 a.m. on Monday, August 6, 1945, a propeller-driven, four-engine Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft lifted off from the unassuming island of Tinian, its destination due North. Inside, as was customary for the B-29, was a bomb. However, unlike the bombs with which the US Air Force had scorched Japan for roughly a year, this bomb was not filled with the usual incendiaries. Rather than isobutyl methacrylate or its more famous kin, Napalm, this bomb was packed with two masses of highly enriched uranium-235. The bomb, named “Little Boy”, was anything but: snout-nosed and weighing in at 9,700 pounds, it resembled nothing more than an obese metal baseball bat. At 8:15 a.m. local time, poised above Hiroshima’s Aioi Bridge, Little Boy dropped.
44.4 seconds later it detonated. 60,000 people died instantly. 31,000 feet above, and 10 and a half miles away from them, Paul W. Tibbets, en route to Guam, felt a 2.5g shockwave driven before a kaleidoscopic pillar of smoke and debris. He felt no regrets.
Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, dropper of Little Boy, recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart and four Air Medals, was born February 23, 1915. The young Tibbets performed his first flight at the age of 12, dispensing candy bars to a crowd at the Hialeah, Florida racetrack. Bitten by the flying bug, Tibbets, in February 1937 enlisted in the army. His flight instruction performance at Randolph Field, San Antonio, Texas showed him to be an above-average pilot.
Upon graduating as a second lieutenant, Tibbets first stint was as personal pilot to George S. Patton, allowing him to rack up over 15,000 hours of flight time. Tibbets ascended rapidly through the ranks, becoming a captain with his first command by 1942. In 1942, Tibbets ran the gauntlet at Lille, flying lead in a 100-plane raid with a 1/3 casualty rate. Despite the seemingly heavy losses, this was seen as a qualified success, proving that US Air forces would not break under stubborn opposition. Promoted to lieutenant colonel by November 1942, Tibbet’s cut his teeth further during the war in Northern Africa, flying Eisenhower to Gibraltar for Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa.
By 1943, Tibbets had earned himself as reputation as a seasoned and senior pilot, one vouched for by Eisenhower himself. After testing the newly-minted Boeing B-29 for a year, Tibbets was recommended to Major General Uzal Ent for consideration, for a “special mission”. In September 1944, Tibbets became responsible for the organization, training and command of a secret unit, Silverplate, the Air Force wing of the Manhattan Project. Tibbets was tasked with ironing out the logistical and technical kinks: requesting modifications to bomb bay doors, in order to accommodate the bulky weapon, organizing crews with photography and scientific equipment, to record the event for posterity and finally, deciding that he himself would drop the atomic bomb.
Upon receiving orders targeting the cities of Hiroshima, Kokura and Nagasaki, as the primary, secondary and tertiary targets of the nuclear strike, Tibbets readied his crew. At 2:15 am, they were airborne. The rest is history. Tibbets, recollecting the sight of the boiling cloud in his memoirs, wrote, “If Dante had been with us in the plane he would have been terrified!”

Charles Sweeney

Three days later, Major General Charles Sweeney dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Sweeney was well prepared, flying five rehearsal test drops as well as co-piloting the support and observation aircraft for the Hiroshima bombing. Nonetheless, Sweeney’s flight performance on August 9^th had none of the aplomb that Tibbets had displayed. First, the night before, Sweeney’s B-29, named Bockscar, had malfunctioned, with the reserve fuel bladder failing to pump. Running on 600 gallons less of fuel than expected, Sweeney nonetheless decided to go, intending to rendezvous with his two escort aircraft at 30,000 feet near the island of Yakushima, a fuel intensive task at that height.
Due to confusion at the rendezvous, for which Sweeney would be reprimanded later, valuable time was lost. The crew finally reached Kokura only to find it partially obscured, which was problematic given the clear directives to conduct a visual, rather than radar, bombing. After two unsuccessful flyovers, and running low on fuel, Sweeney opted for his second target: Nagasaki. Sweeney’s bad luck was Kokura’s good – indeed, so much so that the phrase “Kokura luck” has entered into the Japanese lexicon. With desperately little fuel left, and heavy cloud cover over Nagasaki, Sweeney decided drop Fat Man by radar, despite his orders to the contrary. The resulting 1.5-mile inaccuracy spared Nagasaki a great deal of damage, with the surrounding hills intercepting much of the blast. With only 60 percent of Nagasaki destroyed and two engines kaput from fuel exhaustion, Sweeney made a rough landing in Okinawa, with just seven gallons of fuel remaining. To say Tibbets was unamused by Sweeney’s near-failure, would be an understatement. However, the close-shave success was sufficient to ensure that no action would be taken against Sweeney.
Post Nagasaki, both men have been unshakeable in defending the dropping of the bombs as right and proper. Tibbets remains “convinced that we saved more lives than we took,” and concludes, “It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die.” Sweeney, in his memoirs, made similar assertions, but drew fire for factual inaccuracies in his account of events. Indeed, so indignant was Tibbets at Sweeney’s account, Tibbets added a chapter to his own memoirs, in which he vented his displeasure at Sweeney’s command of the bombing.
Sweeney died at age 84 on July 16, 2004 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Tibbets died at age 92 in 2007, in his Columbus Ohio home.
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Bonus Facts:

• Paul Tibbets claims in his memoirs that the code name “Fat Man” referred to Winston Churchill, but Robert Serber who worked on the design project and actually named the bombs, claims in his memoirs that it was named after Kasper Gutman, “The Fat Man”,  in the film The Maltese Falcon.  Although, Serber also has been recorded to have said the names simply came from the size and shapes of the bombs.
• Only one person, Lt. Jacob Beser, flew aboard the aircraft on both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki atomic missions.

The Green Children of Woolpit

English folklore is filled with green people – the Green Knight, green fairies, the Green Man and Jack-in-the-Green. Two of the smallest were the Green Children of Woolpit.
Discovery
Depending on whom you read, the Green Children first appeared during the reign of Stephen (1135-1154) or that of Henry II (1154-1189).
One year during the harvest in the village of Woolpit in Suffolk, England (about 10 miles from Bury St. Edmunds), reapers working near old wolf pits (deep ditches dug to trap wolves) discovered two apparently lost young children – a girl and boy.
Most accounts agree that the children had green-tinged skin, wore strange clothes, spoke an unfamiliar language, were siblings, the boy was younger, and both refused to eat regular food like bread (at least at first). Some narratives describe the children as wearing “clothes of a strange colour, made from unfamiliar materials,” while others noted:

It was as if they had been skillfully fashioned from summer leaves or soft meadow grass, for just like their clothes, and even the strange hue of their eyes, their skin was green!

Each version recounts that the children were eventually taken to the local bigwig, Sir Richard de Calne, who was equally baffled by the children. Attempts were made to feed them, but none were successful until bean plants were introduced. By some accounts:

When the shoots were handed to them . . . [the children] amazed their observers by ignoring the bulging pods . . . and splitting open the stalks instead . . . they did not discover any beans . . . until they were shown that the beans were contained in the pods. At once they began eating the beans, and from their evident delight it was clear that these were a familiar food to them.

All narratives agree that the boy eventually became sick and died, with some associating his decline with depression. All accounts also agree that the girl remained healthy, “began to eat other food and lost her green coloring.”
There is no dispute that she learned English, was baptized, eventually “married a man from King’s Lynn,” in Norfolk, and at some point took the name of Agnes Barre. In at least one account she was rumored to have become “rather loose and wanton in her conduct,” while in another, she was alleged to have married a diplomat, Richard Barre.
The Girl’s Tale
Having learned English, eventually she told her story, which by its lack of detail and fantastic elements, indicates that she (and her brother) were likely very young when discovered:

She asserted that the inhabitants, and all they had in [their home] country, were of a green colour, and that they saw no sun, but enjoyed a degree of light like what is after sunset . . . . that [she and her brother] were following their flocks [when] they came to a certain cavern, on entering which they heard a delightful sound of bells . . . they went . . . wandering on through the cavern, until they came to its mouth when . . . they were struck senseless by the excessive light of the sun and . . . thus they lay for a long time. Being terrified . . . they wihsed to fly, but they could not find the entrance of the cavern before they were caught.

In other retellings, apparently she said that the two:

Are folk of St. Martin’s Land . . . and remember only that one day we were feeding our father’s flock in the field when we heard a great noise like bells . . . And on a sudden we were both caught up in the spirit and found ourselves in your harvest field. . .  Among us no sun rises . . . . Yet there is a land of light to be seen not far from us, but cut off by a stream of great width.

Truth or Fantasy?
Two contemporary scholars recorded the story: a Benedictine abbot, Ralph of Coggeshall, contributor to Chronicon Anglicanum, and William of Newburgh, author of Historia rerum Anglicarum.
Abbot Coggeshall named Sir Richard de Calne as his source, noting “that he had frequently heard the story” from him, while the historian from Newburgh noted that he believed the story because of “the weight of so many and such competent witnesses.”
Where Did They Come From and Why Were They Green?
Assuming the story was true, many have theorized as to the origin of the children and their green color, including that they were space aliens (of course) or that they came from another dimension.
Green Skin
Some have posited that arsenic poisoning could account for the children’s green coloring (as well as their lack of appetite and the boy’s poor health). Arsenic has been used in the production of green dyes, and it apparently will discolor the skin in a green-dotted rash. However, if the children presented with a rash, it seems unlikely the villagers would so eagerly take them in rather than fear deadly diseases like leprosy, measels and smallpox.
A more likely cause of the tinge could be chlorosis, a form of anemia characterized by a greenish tint to the skin. Well-known in earlier years, it was common at the turn of the 20^th century “among ill-fed, overworked girls” until iron supplements were used to treat it. In any event, it is easy to imagine how two young medieval children, who did not even know how to get beans from a pod, would be nutritionally (and iron) deficient.
Possible Origin
Writer and editor Paul Harris has proposed a plausible scenario. He opines that the children were Flemish immigrants whose parents were killed during persecutions in the area during the latter half of the 12^th century (including in the battle at Fornham in 1173).
Fornham, today known as Fornham All Saints, was apparently also known as Fornham St. Martin then, and is only two miles from Bury St. Edmunds. The church in St. Edumunds, in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, had bells that were known to “make a great noise . . . as when . . . they all peal together.”
In addition, the River Lark runs near Fornham St. Martin, and the area around Bury St. Edmunds is riven with underground passages from flint mines that had been in the area for thousands of years.
Detractors note that the Flemish persecuted during Henry II’s reign were mercenaries, paid to fight the King and who “would hardly have brought their families with them.” In addition, these Flemish had been in the country for a while, and it is unlikely that no one in Sir Richard’s household would have recognized the children’s language.
Furthermore, although there may be passages nearer Woolpit, the major flint mines, Grime’s Graves, are located 20 miles north of Bury St. Edmunds.
In rebuttal, proponents assert that the children could have been English but, like many at the time, only spoke their village’s unique dialect, many of which were unintelligible to outsiders. In support of this scenario, they argue that the children were poisoned (arsenic) or abandoned (chlorosis) by their evil caretakers and point to:

A centuries-old East Anglian legend [that] tells of how two young children, heirs to the estate of their dead parents, were poisoned with arsenic and then abandoned by their evil guardian in the depths of Wayland Wood.

Real Life Maelstroms

Where a unique combination of strong currents and geography meet, maelstroms, enormous and powerful areas of swirling water, dangerous currents and whirlpools, can be found across the globe. Although many form (and die) in a relatively short period of time in response to catastrophic events (like a tsunami), others have existed for centuries.

Asia

Naruto

Found in the strait between Naruto (in the Tokusima Prefecture on Shikoku Island) and Awaji Island, the Naruto whirlpools reside in the strait of the same name. As the strait connects large inland seas with the Pacific Ocean, the significant tide moves from anywhere from 8 MPH up to 12 MPH twice daily, producing a strong current. In fact, the super-speedy Naruto current is considered one of the fastest in the world and can pose a hazard to unwary ships.

Europe

Corryvreckan

Meaning the “cauldron of the plaid,” Scotland’s Corryvreckan is the world’s third largest maelstrom. Found off the country’s west coast, this maelstrom is formed when 10 MPH tides flood a narrow strait between two islands and butt against a deep hole and tall pinnacle. A collection of standing waves (some 30 feet high) and whirlpools are created and together they produce a roar that is audible 10 miles away.
According to Scottish myth, the maelstrom is formed when the goddess of winter uses the waters to wash her plaid clothes (which turn white when clean to become the region’s seasonal blanket of snow).
To study this beast, documentary makers put a life jacket and a depth meter on a mannequin in 2006 and threw her into the maelstrom. When she was finally found, she showed evidence of being dragged along the bottom, at a depth of 262 feet.

Garofalo

Otherwise known to the world as Charybdis, the whirlpool that sucked in Odysseus’ boat, Garofalo is found in the strait between Italy’s mainland and Sicily. Not technically a whirlpool, Garofalo occurs when the winds and tides meet at cross-purposes in the less than two-mile wide (but over 800 feet deep) Strait of Messina. The rough seas produced are known to be very hazardous for small vessels, and occasionally, even dangerous for large ships.

Moskstraumen

Perhaps the most famous of the maelstroms, and the monster that inspired the name, Moskstraumen’s might inspired both Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe when they wrote of fearful and deadly whirlpools. Located off of Norway’s northern coast, Moskstraumen, unlike its brothers that occur in rivers and straits, is found in the open sea.
To form Moskstraumen, strong currents combine with semi-diurnal tides (two high-tides and low-tides each day) and powerful winds where deep and shallow water meet between two islands to create a collection of eddies and whirlpools to catch the unwary. With its largest whirlpool about 130-160 feet across and currents that can exceed 17 MPH, some claim Moskstraumen is the most destructive of all the maelstroms.

Saltstraumen

Abutting Norway’s mainland, nestled in one of its many fjords, lies the strongest maelstrom in the world, Saltstraumen. With tidal currents that reach speeds of 25 MPH, Saltstraumen boasts whirlpools that are 33 feet across and 16 feet deep, and has been around for at least two thousand years.
Created when the tide enters the Skjerstadfjorden, the Saltstraumen renders its strait impassable, although fishermen enjoy its plethora of cod, halibut and coalfish (the strong currents suck in the microscopic life at the bottom of the ocean food chain, ultimately drawing in the larger fish). Later, when the tide turns and the water rushes out, the strait becomes navigable.

North America

Niagara Falls

Over four thousand years old, the Niagara whirlpool is formed downstream from the falls, as the fast-moving current (at 20 MPH) rushes out of the Niagara Gorge and meets an ancient underwater depression. This latter, called Saint David’s Buried Gorge, sits nearly cross-wise with the Niagara River and when they meet, a maelstrom is formed that usually produces a counter-clockwise whirlpool, although when significant water is diverted upstream, the circular current reverses.

Old Sow 

Situated in the Bay of Fundy, in the Western Passage of Passamaquoddy Bay in between New Brunswick, Canada and Eastport, Maine, Old Sow may be perhaps the most unpredictable of the maelstroms. Depending on her mood, she presents eddies (called piglets), spouts, holes, troughs, fast currents, and the occasional whirlpool. At one point, one of her vortices was recorded along the southern end of Deer Island with a diameter of 250 feet.
As with other maelstroms, under the ocean’s surface, tidal waters travel up a deep trench (about 400 feet), meet an underwater peak (here, at about 119 feet) and dive again to about 350 feet. The strong ocean tide meets with currents coming in from other straits, creating this fickle leviathan.
Her unique name is attributed to two distinct sources: (a) the Old Sow makes sounds that sometimes mimic the grunts of a pig; or (b) it reflects a misunderstanding of the world “sough” which refers to a drain or a sucking noise.
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Bonus Fact:

• Ephemeral whirlpools formed in the waters of Japan after the massive earthquake and tsunami that hit the island nation in 2011. As with the permanent maelstroms, the large rush of water suddenly meeting certain geographic features produced the whirlpools. In this case, however, most of these vortices formed after the massive amounts of water that had moved inland with the wave suddenly receded. The large whirlpools that were created sucked in at least one boat. It isn’t known if anyone was aboard.
  

The Origin of the Bigfoot Legend

Stories of a giant, hairy creature that appears half man and half ape have existed in various parts of the world for many centuries. In fact, the only continent not to have stories of “wild men” is Antarctica. In the Himalayas, it’s the Yeti. In Canada, it’s the Sasquatch. And in the northwest United States, it’s Bigfoot. Bigfoot is described by believers as being between six and eight feet tall with a large forehead and pronounced brow, like a cave man’s, and a rounded, crested head like a gorilla’s. He is covered in brown or red hair and has enormous feet that are his namesake, with the biggest estimation at a whopping two feet long by eight inches wide. Some “witnesses” claim that the five-toed Bigfoot prints they saw on the ground were accompanied by claw marks (not unlike a five-toed, clawed paw print of a bear—but rational explanations aren’t as fun).
Stories of a “wild man” existed among the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest long before white colonists moved in. Versions of Bigfoot ranged from harmless giants who stole fish from fishermen’s nets, to cannibalistic monsters living on mountain peaks. These stories varied from tribe to tribe, and even from family to family, which meant that Bigfoot had a lot of different names. In the 1920s, J.W. Burns compiled the local legends for a series for a Canadian newspaper, coining the term “Sasquatch” in the process.
It wasn’t until 1958 that the Bigfoot legend really started to kick off in the United States. That year, a man named Gerald Crew found a set of large footprints at a construction site where he worked in California. He had his friend make plaster casts of the prints. The story gained a lot of attention after being published in the Humboldt Times, and was picked up by the Associated Press, drawing international attention.
Turns out, the footprints were a hoax (surprise, surprise). After the death of a man named Ray Wallace—the brother of the man in charge of the construction site where the prints were found—his family stepped forward to say that he was responsible for faking the prints. Scoop Beal, the editor of the Humboldt Times, is also said to have been involved. Nevertheless, the 1958 prints find brought the first “Bigfoot Hunters” to the area.
In 1967, the “Patterson-Gimlin film” was captured. The film shows a tall, hairy “Bigfoot” walking through the forest. Believers in Big Foot note the creature’s inhuman way of walking is a major point toward the film being real. Patterson also claimed to have taken the film to a group of people working in the special effects department at Universal Studios who supposedly said,

We could try (faking it), but we would have to create a completely new system of artificial muscles and find an actor who could be trained to walk like that. It might be done, but we would have to say that it would be almost impossible.

However, a number of factors lead to skeptics believing it’s a hoax: people who knew Patterson have described him, frankly, as a liar; Patterson’s version of events—including an estimate of how tall “Bigfoot” was— also changed and escalated over time.  More to the point, a man named Bob Heironimus claimed to have worn the Bigfoot costume for the making of the film. Most likely, and not too surprisingly, the film was a hoax.
The most common explanation for Bigfoot sightings is that people are playing pranks. There was even once a thriving market for “Bigfoot feet” to create your own prints to trick your family and friends. People still even dress up in ape costumes and ghillie suits in order to perpetuate the legend.
Some sightings are also simply misidentified animals. In 2007, a photo was snapped in Pennsylvania using an automatically triggered camera hanging from a tree. While believers claimed the blurry photo—showing a large, hairy creature standing on all-fours—was that of a “juvenile sasquatch,” the Pennsylvania Game Commission said the creature was most likely “a bear with an extreme case of mange.”  Looking at the picture, it could also just as easily been a human in a suit.
One of the big questions posed to believers in Bigfoot is if there are enough of the creatures to maintain a stable breeding population, and over a reasonably large area given all the supposed sightings—which there must be, unless they have extraordinarily lengthy lives—then why has a body of Bigfoot never been found? In 2008, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have solved this problem after they supposedly found a Bigfoot body, posting a video of it on YouTube. The body was nearly eight feet tall and weighed over 500 pounds. Despite even some Bigfoot experts doubting the young men’s story, the discovery was covered by CNN, ABC, Fox, and BBC News, and the pair received $50,000 from Searching for Bigfoot, Inc. as “a measure of good faith.” However, when the body arrived in a block of ice and was thawed and examined, researchers found that the “body” was made up of rubber feet, fake hair, and a hollow head. Not exactly convincing. Dyer and Whitton later admitted that it was a hoax. (shocker)
While the idea of a real Bigfoot is pretty unconvincing, the stories have caught on and are so prevalent in pop culture that it’s unlikely the idea of Bigfoot will fade away any time soon. As with everything, treat the stories and information you hear or read with a healthy dash of skepticism. Someday real, solid proof of Bigfoot might emerge, but I’m not holding my breath.
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Bonus Facts:

• The term “sasquatch” comes from the Halkomelem word “sasq’ets” which is just a name for “wild men”, essentially referring to bigfoot-like creatures.   Halkomelem was a language spoken by a small group of Native Americans on the border between British Columbia and Washington.
• While most scientists believe that Bigfoot is a legend, or a combination of hoaxes and misidentification, a few scientists—including Jane Goodall—have shown some amount of belief that such a creature could exist.
• Nearly one third of all Bigfoot sightings are in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, with the rest of the sights spread out across the remainder of the states.

The Many U.S. Presidents Before George Washington

Schools in the United States teach children from an early age that the first president of the United States was George Washington. But teachers often forget to mention a small, kind of important detail- George Washington was the first U.S. president under the current United States Constitution, but he wasn’t the country’s first president.
Before the U.S. Constitution came into being, the Articles of Confederation served as the glue which held all thirteen states together as a single country. (See: The Articles of Confederation: The Constitution Before the Constitution) The Articles went into effect in 1781, and they established a loose alliance among the states. The Articles also defined the role of Congress to oversee the national needs, as well as the office of the president.
Due to the fear of giving too much power to one person, the office of president was extremely limited in power and scope, and was not even a paid position.  Rather, the primary roles of the president at this time were simply to preside over meetings and handle various state correspondence. The president was also the one who signed official congressional documents.
So who were these individuals who served such a lackluster position as the office of president?
The first president of the United States under the Articles of Confederation was John Hanson from Maryland. His term began in 1781 and ended in 1782. He at first attempted to resign directly after being elected (with so little power given to the office and no pay to boot, few wanted the position over political offices in their home states). However, ultimately a quorum could not be reached to name a successor, so he decided to stay on as president. Being the country’s first full-term president under the Articles of Confederation meant that he oversaw programs that helped to establish daily life in the new country. For instance, Hanson held the position of president when the government started on the road to creating what would become the U.S. Post Office and the National Bank. The government also established a single, uniform currency throughout the states under his mostly powerless watch.
Elias Boudinot of New Jersey became the second president, serving from 1782 until 1783. His presidency coincided with the official end to the American Revolutionary War. Boudinot presided over the country when the Treaty of Paris was signed in Paris on September 3, 1783. However, the Treaty of Paris did more than simply end the war; it required that the United States be recognized as an independent country and no longer a part of the British Empire. Besides being president, Boudinot was also noteworthy for his era for advocating for the rights of both Native Americans and black people, as well as directly sponsoring various youth among these groups so that they could receive an education.
Thomas Mifflin became the president for the term of 1783 until 1784. He oversaw the ratification of the Treaty of Paris during his presidency. Originally from Pennsylvania, he served under General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. That former position, and Washington’s later significance as the first president under the U.S. Constitution, made it somewhat ironic that president Mifflin accepted George Washington’s resignation as Commander in Chief.
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia served as the country’s fourth president from 1784 until 1785. His presidency might have been pretty uneventful, but his political career afterwards was not. He became a vocal opponent of the now current U.S. Constitution out of the fear that it would create a centralized government too similar to the government that the colonies lived under as British citizens. He also hesitated because the document lacked a Bill of Rights, though many of his later suggestions were incorporated into the United States Bill of Rights.
John Hancock, most famous for his large signature on the Declaration of Independence, held the position of the president from 1785 to 1786. His life in politics began long before the presidency, and he even helped to fund the American effort during the Revolutionary War. His life in politics continued after his tenure as president under the Articles of Confederation. He was reelected as Governor of Massachusetts—a position he resigned due to health before becoming president—and even ran against George Washington in the first U.S. presidential election under the Constitution. He did not expect to win, but had hoped to finish second so that he could become vice president. Ultimately that post went to John Adams.
Nathaniel Gorham, also from Massachusetts, served as the president under the Articles of Confederation from 1786 until 1787. Like many other presidents during the time, his presidency was simply another item on his long list of political accomplishments. He began his career as a public notary who quickly won election to the colonial legislature during the Revolutionary War. He served as a member of the legislature, became a judge even though he lacked legal training, and even attended the Constitutional Convention where he supported the new U.S. Constitution.  As for Gorham’s family, his sister was the wife of John Leighton, an ancestor of the second wife of Theodore Roosevelt, Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt.
The seventh president of the United States was a man from Ohio named Arthur St. Clair. He held the position between 1787 and 1788. He left Congress after finishing his term. He then received the appointment to governor of the Northwest Territory, a position where he often faced off with the Native Americans who claimed they, in fact, owned the land. Despite once being enormously wealthy, St. Clair ultimately died poor, with much of his wealth used to support the American Revolution and young government. Late in life, he gave away the little money that remained of his once vast fortune.
Cyrus Griffin of Virginia had a background in law before he became the eighth and final president of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. He helped to put the country’s new judicial system on the path to becoming what we know today as the modern American court system during his work at the Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture. He continued to contribute to the new country’s court system after his presidency when he went on to become a judge with the District Court of Virginia.
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Bonus Facts:

• There were also presidents before the presidents under the ratified Articles of Confederation.  These were Peyton Randolph, who served from 1774-1775 before taking a leave due to poor health; Henry Middleton, who served in Randolph’s absence; John Hancock, who served for two years at this point (and would later serve again, as noted above); Henry Laurens who ultimately resigned over a controversy concerning diplomat Silas Deane; John Jay, who also served as Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court at the same time he held the office of president; Samuel Huntington, who ultimately resigned due to health problems (including smallpox), but has the distinction of being the president when the Articles of Confederation were finally ratified; Samuel Johnston, who refused the office of the president when elected; and Thomas McKean, who ultimately resigned after the British surrender at Yorktown. McKean is notable as being the first president elected after the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, but is generally not considered the first president due to failing to serve a full year term as specified under the Articles of Confederation. (McKean only served for three months.) A few weeks after his resignation, in November of 1781, Congress met as specified in the Articles of Confederation (“the first Monday in November”), with John Hanson being elected president.
• John Hanson’s grandfather paid his way to America from England by becoming an indentured servant in the mid-17th century. By Hanson’s time, the family had rose significantly in wealth, allowing Hanson to help fund the revolution both via general fundraising and often paying soldiers out of his own pocket.
• The three branches of the American government that we know today—the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive Branches—came about with the Constitution. Under the Articles of Confederation, only the legislative branch existed.
• Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress couldn’t tax the states. It needed to ask them for money to run the government.  Needless to say, the government under the Articles was more than a little cash-strapped.  See: A Brief History of Taxes in the United States and Why They’re Due on April 15th
• The Articles allowed members of Congress to have freedom of speech and guaranteed they would not be arrested if they committed certain petty crimes.
• Confederate General Robert E. Lee was a descendent of the fourth president, Richard Henry Lee.

When Lincoln Was Almost Assassinated Nine Months Before He was Assassinated

In August 1864, the Sixteenth President of the United States of America was nearly assassinated about nine months before he was actually assassinated. This is the story.
The Soldier’s Home
Throughout the Civil War (1861-1865), President Abraham Lincoln and his family spent the summer and fall in a cottage on the grounds of the Soldiers’ Home in the country outside of Washington, D.C. Relatively isolated and poorly guarded, Lincoln was dismissive of any danger to himself or his family. He is reputed to have said: “It would never do for a President to have guards with drawn sabers at his door, as if he fancied he were . . . an emperor.”
Many in his administration were concerned about the lack of security, and on occasion took matters into their own hands, as reported by a friend:

The President and his family have been living out at the Soldiers’ Home, about four miles only this side of the rebel line of skirmishers; but on Sunday night Secretary Stanton sent out a carriage and a guard and brought in the family, who are again domesticated at the White House. The lonely situation of the President’s summer residence would have afforded a tempting chance for a daring squad of rebel cavalry to run some risks for the chance of carrying off the President, whom we could ill afford to spare right now.

Of course, Lincoln did have a contingent of guards, a part of Company K of the 150^th Pennsylvania Volunteers.
Remaining assigned to the President from 1862 until his death in 1865, the President’s Bodyguard developed a friendly relationship with him. Nonetheless, he disliked it when they accompanied him during his commute to the White House; in his typical wry style, Lincoln complained to the Army Chief of Staff Henry Halleck that he “was more afraid of being shot by the accidental discharge of one of [the new recruits’] carbines or revolvers, than of any attempt on his life.”
Even with the assigned guard, Lincoln frequently slipped away and commuted back and forth to the cottage alone; on many occasions, he even enjoyed a lonely moonlight ride to an evening destination like the Naval Observatory in Foggy Bottom.
1864 Assassination Attempt
It was during a lonely ride back to the Soldiers’ Home one night in August when an attempt was made on the President’s life. Riding slowly on the road that led to the entrance to the grounds, a rifle shot from approximately fifty yards away startled his horse; Old Abe, the horse, took off at what the President called “break-neck speed [which] unceremoniously separated me from my eight-dollar plug hat, with which I parted company without any assent, express or implied.”
When he arrived at the Soldiers’ Home at about 11 o’clock that evening, he met Private John W. Nichols, whom he knew. Nichols noticed that the President was “bareheaded” and riding briskly. When he asked, the President mentioned the rifle shot and that the quick jump of his startled horse “jerked his hat off.”
Later, Nichols and another soldier went searching and found the hat with a bullet hole in it. Nichols presented the hat to Lincoln who was dismissive of the danger. When his friend Ward Hill Lamon (to whom he told the story as a humorous, Ichabod Crane-type tale) expressed concern, Lincoln remained convinced that it was just an accident:

Now, in the face of this testimony in favor of your theory of danger to me, personally, I can’t bring myself to believe that any one has shot or will deliberately shoot at me with the purpose of killing me; although I must acknowledge that I heard this fellow’s bullet whistle at an uncomfortably short distance from these headquarters of mine. I have about concluded that the shot was the result of accident. It may be that some one on his return from a day’s hunt, regardless of the course of his discharge, fired off his gun as a precautionary measure of safety to his family after reaching his house.

In the end, Lincoln wanted the entire matter hushed up. He instructed Private Nichols that the event should be “kept quiet,” and told Lamon:

The whole thing seems farcical. No good can result at this time from giving it publicity. It does seem to me that I am in more danger from the augmentation of an imaginary peril than from a judicious silence, be the danger ever so great.

Lincoln continued to serve as President of the United States, apparently without another such incident, until his assassination on April 14, 1865.
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Bonus Facts:

• In early 1861, a plot to assassinate President Lincoln in Baltimore prior to his inauguration was discovered by Allan Pinkerton. The famous detective had been hired by railroad magnate Samuel Morse Felton to thwart a secessionist plot to seize or destroy the railways; during that investigation, Pinkerton discovered the plan to kill the President. Working with Felton, Lamon and others, Pinkerton spirited a disguised Lincoln in the dark of night through secessionist-sympathizing Baltimore and safely on to Washington, D.C. on February 22, 1861.
• On April 14,1865, a Good Friday, President Lincoln was shot in the head at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. by actor John Wilkes Booth and died the next morning. Booth, who was shot and killed approximately two weeks later, was known to frequent Baltimore’s Barnum Hotel where Cipriano Ferrandini, one of the leaders of the 1861 Baltimore Plot, had worked as a barber.
• In addition to Lincoln, three other sitting U.S. Presidents have been assassinated. James A. Garfield, the 20^th President of the United States, was shot by Charles J. Guiteau on July 2, 1881, after spending only three months in office. The 25^th President, William McKinley (whose widow’s story is a tad heart wrenching), was shot by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901 and died eight days later, reportedly more from medical malpractice than the actual bullet that hit his stomach. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35^th President, was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
• Although it’s generally thought that Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for JFK’s death, Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby on live television two days later, and no trial was ever held.  The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was formed to investigate the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace, concluded that the JFK assassination was probably a conspiracy, though what organization formed and executed the conspiracy was not determined.  They also concluded that there probably was a second gunman involved in the JFK incident.
• Besides Lincoln, unsuccessful assassination attempts have been made on Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
• Combined with the successful attempts, that’s a full 36% of all U.S. Presidents that have had known serious attempts on their lives made; about 7% of the U.S. Presidents have been assassinated.  Sure, the survival rate is a downside to the job, but you get the perks of working pretty much every day from sunup to sundown, a large percentage of the population hating you independent of anything you’ve actually done, and ridiculous amounts of stress.  What’s not to like?
• Teddy Roosevelt was shot by saloon keeper John Schrank on October 14, 1912.  His life was saved thanks to a steel eyeglass case and his 50 page speech he was carrying in his jacket, both of which the bullet had to pass through.  His decided to go ahead with his speech, rather than seek medical aid immediately, as he concluded that because he was not coughing up blood, the bullet must not have penetrated that deeply into his chest.  His opening line for the speech was, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”  X-rays later showed that the bullet had lodged 3 inches into his chest and was embedded in his ample chest muscle.  (more on the Amazing Life of Teddy Roosevelt here)
• After Richard Lawrence attempted to kill President Andrew Jackson, Jackson beat Lawrence with a cane and had to be forcibly pulled away from him, including by none other than Davey Crocket.

The Little Girl Responsible for Lincoln’s Beard

In 1860, the clean shaven Abraham Lincoln was running for President of the United States. That’s when he received the following letter from an 11 year old girl by the name of Grace Bedell from New York, dated October 15, 1860:

Dear Sir
My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have yet got four brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chautauqua County New York.
I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye
Grace Bedell

Apparently not too busy campaigning to answer the letter of a little girl, Lincoln wrote her back from Illinois on October 19, 1860:

My dear little Miss
Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received – I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters – I have three sons – one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers have never worn any do you not think people would call it a silly affection if I were to begin it now?
Your very sincere well wisher
A. Lincoln

Lincoln had numerous documented instances of self-deprecating jokes concerning his less than attractive visage. In one such instance, while publicly debating with his longtime rival Stephen Douglas- after Douglas called him “two-faced”- Lincoln reportedly replied, “If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?” (Note: Douglas was not only Lincoln’s political rival, but also a rival outside of politics- Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd was courted by both Lincoln and Douglas originally.  In the end, Lincoln perhaps wished he’d lost that battle given accounts of his married life- more in the Bonus Facts below.)
Given his attitude about his appearance, it’s perhaps not surprising that despite not definitively saying he would grow a beard, after replying to “little Miss” on October 19, 1860, Lincoln’s facial hair situation went like this (personally, I think he should have stopped at the middle one):

But this isn’t the end of the story. On Lincoln’s trip from Illinois to Washington D.C., the now President-elect made a stop in Westfield, New York on February 19, 1861.
On the train platform, he related the story behind his decision to grow a beard and asked if the little girl in question was in the crowd. She was and approached; at which point, according to Bedell, he said:

‘Gracie, look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you.’ Then he kissed me. I never saw him again.

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Bonus Facts:

• Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd, at the Edward’s home (her sister’s place) in Springfield, Illinois. Nicknamed Molly, Mary Todd first met Lincoln in 1840 when she was 21 and he was 31. Her family wasn’t too happy about the relationship because of Lincoln’s poverty & lack of political prospects. Nevertheless, she accepted his proposal and they were engaged. In 1841, they broke off the engagement and were separated for a while, till the fall of 1842. It was then, with the help of mutual friends (Mr. and Mrs. Simeon Francis), that the couple reunited and wasted no time in getting married (married after just 1 day back together, in fact).  Some speculate the rush was because Todd was pregnant with their future child Robert Todd Lincoln, or that Todd had seduced Lincoln into having sex with her, then forced him to marry her the next day.  There is no direct evidence of this, but Lincoln’s best man stated on Lincoln’s wedding day, he “looked like a man going to the slaughter” and it was reported that he also referred to his bride to be as “the devil” on the way to his wedding.  Their marriage was rocky right from the start and never seemed to get better.  Once, after a man sought retribution with Lincoln over his wife’s behavior (including beating the man with a broom), Lincoln said to him “Taggart, I’ve been putting up with her for the past 15 years, can you not put up with her for just 5 minutes for our friendship’s sake?”
• Shortly before Lincoln decided to grow a beard, something of a beard revolution swept the United States and by the mid-19th century the formerly predominately clean-shaven men of America now nearly universally were sporting beards. In fact, one reporter, doing a story on the new trend in 1857, walked the streets of Boston and after counting 543 men that walked by him, found that 62% of them were now sporting bushy beards and all but 4 of the rest had some other type of significant facial hair. Even those four that lacked any significant facial hair sported what would later be called Side Burns, after General Ambrose Burnside.
• The clean shaven look that Lincoln at the time was still clinging too, was essentially out of style. Needless to say, had Lincoln been running today, his campaign manager, rather than a little girl, would have told him he needed to grow some facial hair with most of the voting populace sporting it- particularly because at the time facial hair in America began being associated with radicalism; the Republican party was that.
• John C. Frémont was the first candidate for the American Presidency to sport a beard when he ran in 1856.
• After Lincoln, every elected President except William McKinley would sport facial hair. This trend finally ended when Woodrow Wilson took office in 1913.  From then on, U.S. Presidents have remained clean shaven.
• During the Civil War, Bedell, now aged 15 in 1864, wrote another letter to Lincoln, only very recently discovered in 2007. This time, she was asking if Lincoln could help her find work as her father had recently lost “nearly all his property” and she wanted to help support her family, though her parents hadn’t asked her too. There is no record of whether Lincoln replied or ever even saw the letter.
• As for what happened to Bedell, she went on to marry a Civil War veteran by the name of George Billings sometime around 1870 and took up work first farming, and then later George switched to banking. She lived to the ripe old age of 87 years old, dying in 1936.